Days of Rage -- The Noxious Transformation of the Conservative Movement into a Rabid Fringe

[proud2BlibKansan]

An excellent recap of the right wingnut war on Obama. Long but great read.

By Max Blumenthal

I am not sure when I first detected the noxious fumes that would envelop the conservative movement in the Obama era. It might have been early on, in April 2009, when I visited a series of gun shows in rural California and Nevada. Perusing tables piled high with high-caliber semi-automatic weapons and chatting with anyone in my vicinity, I heard urgent warnings of mass roundups, concentration camps, and a socialist government in Washington. "These people that are purchasing these guns are people that are worried about what's going on in this country," a gun dealer told me outside a show in Reno. "Good luck Obama," a young gun enthusiast remarked to me. "We outnumber him 100 to 1." At this time, the Tea Party movement had not even registered on the national media's radar.

In September 2009, I led a panel discussion about this book inside an auditorium filled with nearly 100 students and faculty at the University of California-Riverside. Beside me sat Jonathan Walton, an African-American professor of religious studies and prolific writer, and Mark Takano, an erudite, openly gay former Democratic congressional candidate and local community college trustee. In the middle of our discussion, a dozen College Republicans stormed the front of the stage with signs denouncing me as a "left-wing hack" while a hysterical young man leaped from the crowd, blowing kisses mockingly at Takano while heckling Walton as a "racist." Afterward, university police officers insisted on escorting me to my ride after the right-wing heckler attempted to follow me as he shouted threats.

Who was this stalker? Just a concerned citizen worried about taxes? His name was Ryan Sorba and he was an operative of a heavily funded national conservative youth outfit, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. Besides founding dozens of Republican youth groups across the country, Sorba has devoted an exceptional amount of energy to his interest in homosexuals. His intellectual output consists of a tract titled The Born Gay Hoax, arguing that homosexuality is at once a curable disease and a bogus trend manufactured by academic leftists. Adding to his credentials, Sorba has a history of run-ins with the law, he explained when I called him about the order.

My encounter with this aggressive right-wing cadre seemed a strange, isolated event. But the hostility turned out to be symptomatic of the intensifying campaign to delegitimize President Obama and his allies in Congress. The Right's days of rage were only beginning.

more ... http://www.alternet.org/teaparty/147784/days_of_rage_--_the_noxious_transformation_of_the_conservative_movement_into_a_rabid_fringe_/

[MadMaddie]

1. Does Sorba's groups remind you of the German Brown Shirts?

or the Nazi Youth organizations?
<snip>
Just a concerned citizen worried about taxes? His name was Ryan Sorba and he was an operative of a heavily funded national conservative youth outfit, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.
<snip>

One other question is it a Rovian tactic to call all academia Black Americans racists? Have you noticed this trend? They have been calling President Obama a racist from the get go....

[theothersnippywshrub]

2. We are seeing the culmination of the Republican Southern Strategy, started under Nixon

and brought to fruition by the Great Prevaricator. The Republican Party made the decision to become a neo-confederate party based upon bigotry, hatred and fear.

The party of Lincoln now is the party of John Wilkes Booth.

[katanalori]

3. That is an INCREDIBLE piece.

I read Max Blumenthal's "Republican Gomorrah," also excellent.

The alternet piece is LONG, but so worth it - highly recommend.

[EFerrari]

4. K&R

[proud2BlibKansan]

5. Blumenthal is good

He connects the dots well.

[LatteLibertine]

6. Everything they do is

geared towards continually concentrating money and power upwards to a small very wealthy minority. All for the most wealthy status quo and fuck the rest of us. The Southern Strategy and vilifying gay people are ploys to distract and divide the poor/middle class.