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Tucson, Arizona
There is a relationship between violent political rhetoric and physical violence. Anyone who has studied the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis is aware of that. Which is why I’m puzzled, in the light of the debate going on in America at the minute after the tragic shootings in Arizona, that this basic – obvious – relationship is somehow in doubt.
I guess what is really being disputed are the facts of this particular case. Sarah Palin and her ‘tea party’ colleagues dispute that their rhetoric influenced the killer who murdered six people at Democratic Congresswoman Gabriel Giffords’ political meeting in Tucson last weekend. They might be right – they might be wrong. We don’t know yet.
But there is surely no doubt that a recent previous attack on Congresswoman Giffords’ office in Tucson, perpetrated just hours after the vote on health reform, was politically motivated. Nor is there any doubt about the violent gun-related rhetoric Sarah Palin uses to conduct her politics. She, for example, proselytizes a motto she says she gained from her father: ‘don’t retreat, reload’; and she published a list of districts she wanted to unseat Democrats from with the targeted area highlighted under a telescopic gunsight – this list of districts included that of Congresswoman Giffords, who is today fighting for her life after the shooting. (The idea, pushed by one of Palin’s aides after the shooting in Arizona that these were not gunsights but ‘surveyor’s symbols’ would be laughable if this were not so serious.)
