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On Violence
by Alex Thurston  No matter who wins the presidential election this year, big chunks of America will feel left out. Does that mean, to put it bluntly, that our country will see an uptick in political violence? We’ve enjoyed relative calm in the years since the riots of the 1960s, the assassinations of JFK and RFK, and the attempted assassinations of George Wallace and Ronald Reagan. But political violence has taken place throughout our history and continues to take place around the world. With the economy suffering, political differences sharpening, and accusations flying, I’m wondering whether we might find real cause to worry for the safety of politicians and their supporters. In a way, I’m surprised we haven’t seen violence already this year. The Democratic primary this spring was not nearly so heated as those in 1968, nor perhaps those of 1988, but accounts like thereisnospoon’s report of Clinton supporters’ behavior in Nevada made me feel like the political temperature was already rising in January. Here’s my story: I got to the location at 10:30am and set up. The Hillary people were already there. In charge of them was a 60-ish woman with a slight Brooklyn accent. Here were the irregularities in my precinct alone: The Hillary operative tried to force the doors to close at 11:30am. KK was outside greeting people, and she overheard the Hillary campaign mention that the doors would be closing at 11:30am, and she went to talk to the precinct chair. So we intervened and said that that was absolutely not legal by the rules. She then started screaming at the chair to close the doors. When he read the rules that they were open until 12noon, she said that “that’s not what I was told, other campaigns were spreading misinformation.” We stood our ground, and the doors remained open… And that was just confrontations between Democrats. With the final month of the election at hand, the political temperature between Democrats and Republicans is rising even more. As Jeffrey Feldman and others have documented, we’re seeing hate speech against Obama coming directly from McCain and Palin - and then being echoed by their supporters in ways that suggest the desire to assassinate Obama. When you disagree strongly with your political opponents on policy, that’s democracy. When you or your supporters call your political opponents traitors or terrorists, that’s verging into antidemocratic demagoguery. I think the words of Rev. Chris Buice, the minister of a Unitarian Church where a rightwing gunman opened fire on attendees this summer, fit here. Rev. Buice suggests a continuum between healthy debate and hate speech of the type that played a major role in igniting Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, where Hutu extremists spent months calling Tutsis “cockroaches” on local radio: “I believe in rigorous debate,” Buice said, speaking to his belief in the danger of dehumanizing language that can label and categorize one person from another. “But what’s the difference between a political opponent and a cockroach? You stomp a cockroach. You debate a political opponent. I believe, if you truly listen to your opponent, it will make you better.” Even were Obama to die, I don’t believe it would help McCain. Quite the opposite. Now that Biden has introduced himself to a massive national television audience and proved himself both likable and tough, I think he would win a resounding victory and have a massive mandate - maybe even for a “liberal shock doctrine,” LBJ style. So I worry about Obama’s death, but even more than the death of any individual I worry about violence between Americans, in our cities and in our streets. From my perspective, I worry about Bush loyalists who are willing to overlook the executive’s violence to the Constitution - unflinchng support for that kind of president, I think, is something different from democracy. And perhaps they see me, and my support for Obama, in the same way. Progressives have been left out of major decision-making in America for the better part of forty years now, and we have reacted, with very few exceptions, non-violently. When the tables are turned, can we expect the same from the right? Alex Thurston is currently a student in the Master's Program of Arab Studies at Georgetown University. He graduated from Northwestern University in 2005 with a BA in Religion and spent the winter of 05-06 working at various jobs around Chicago, including at the notorious 1000 Liquors. In 2006-2007, he lived in Senegal as part of the Fulbright exchange program and studied Muslim youth movements in the capital city, Dakar. His interests (other than politics and religion) include hip hop and literature. He can be reached at alex[at]theseminal.com.
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