Frequent blind squirrel Dana Milbank (in the great "mainstream media" tradition of infantilizing the crackpot right) first wonders if the violent imagery used by "conservative leaders" is "unwittingly" giving justification to people like Dear to commit violent acts. "Unwittingly?" These are adults who have spent enough time in the public arena to know that demagogic, inflammatory rhetoric inflames -- and they simply don't care because it benefits them. They can blame it on a "transgender leftist" or misdirect attention to Black Lives Matter (see video below), or claim they had nothing to do with the violence. That's usually enough for their credulous base.
Then Milbank finally gets to his aha moment:
There will always be the irrational and the unstable. But when political leaders turn disagreements into all-out war, demonize opponents as enemies and accuse those on the other side of being subhuman killers, the unbalanced can hear messages that were never intended."... that were never intended." Karnak Milbank then goes on to briefly catalog the hate speech of the various Republican candidates and their cheerleaders at Fox "News" that have contributed to the violent atmosphere surrounding Planned Parenthood. All "unwittingly" and "never intended," of course!
Emily Bazelon in the New York Times has a deeper, spot- on dive into the connection between the right's hate speech and the results seen in Colorado:
Abortion opponents have every right to lobby to take the funding away, and to use whatever language they choose in doing so. The First Amendment protects them. But that doesn’t mean that the killings necessarily came from nowhere, or that no one cautioned that the recent burst of angry accusations carried a physical risk. In September, the F.B.I. warned of an uptick in attacks against abortion facilities, singling out “lone offenders” using tactics “typical of the pro-life extremist movement.” After the shooting, Vicki Saporta, president of the National Abortion Federation,said in a statement: “We have seen an unprecedented increase in hate speech and threats against abortion providers. We have been quite worried that this increase in threats would lead to a violent attack like we saw today.” [snip]
... In the past four years, Planned Parenthood’s opponents have concluded they can wage political warfare by creating a swirl of negativity around the organization with extreme rhetoric. The most vitriolic of them have marked off an increasingly narrow space for themselves, embracing the language of brutality and violence while disavowing real violence when it occurs.Finally, we turn to Larry Wilmore, who shows us how Republicans have been mixing the violent Kool-Aid ("Haterade") for their base. (h/t Crooks and Liars):
BONUS: Cliff Schecter says "guttersnipes" like Tailgunner Ted Cruz and Snarly Carly Fiorina "built this."
BONUS II: Here's Planned Parenthood's statement on the domestic terrorism perpetrated on their Colorado Springs facility and the false and violent rhetoric that preceded and followed.
