Tuesday, February 13, 2007
"Extremist"
Along with the "far-left"/"far-right" appellations you read all over the place, on blogs, in editorials, in books written by pundits, I think the word "extremist" should be retired from intellectual discourse. It's too easily hijacked by headlines for purposes of delegitimizing opponents' viewpoints without actually attending to the arguments they make.
In my fantasy world, where my novel gets published to great acclaim and I make the rounds on television news, creating little controversies everywhere, I'm sure I would be branded as an 'extremist,' 'Commie,' 'far-left' tool of the 'radical homosexual agenda' before I opened my mouth, and who would want that to happen (to themselves--in fantasy world)?
Glenn Greenwald, who is by far the best blogger I've ever read, does it in his inaugural post for Salon. It's not so much that I want to stick up for Glenn Reynolds, the extremist in question, who is a fascist and doesn't really deserve attention as a serious thinker. However, damning all conservatives or Bush-supporters as extremists clouds the big picture. (Although, honestly, you have got to be seriously devoid of introspection to be cheering the government on at this point).
Dyed-in-the-wool right-wingers aren't simply these parochial blowhards to whom the mainstream media grant disproportionate airtime as part of a backbreaking attempt at appearing fair. They're not all carbon copies of Fred Phelps. They command legions of readers, or followers, as the case may be. When conservatives condemn liberals as extremists, it's part of a successful enterprise in which the mainstream creeps ever rightward, with liberals and leftists cut out of what passes for a 'national conversation' while apparently no one can be too far to the right to forfeit credibility as a public figure (cf. Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and Pat Buchanan). At the risk of oversimplifying the already one-dimensional axis on which political affiliations are graphed, you can't be further to the right of those men without being a Klansman or skinhead. On the left, there's a vast gulf that could be filled with all sorts of people, but--just to name a few--Ralph Nader's too "unreasonable," black leaders are too "militant," and for whatever reason, the only academics that ever get on television are moderate-to-conservative and gender-conforming.
As of yet, reality simply can't accommodate this strategy when liberals employ it, because there's a giant swath of this country who identify as evangelical Christians, and those people are already acutely attuned to feeling "shut out" by "cultural elites." The right can ignore the left, but for the left to ignore the right or label its spokespersons as extremists reinforces the prevalent ethos whereby left-wing intellectuals know nothing about ordinary people's lives and don't give a shit about them, either. So not only is tarring someone with the "extremist" label needlessly corrosive to reasonable discussion, it might just be adding fuel to the fire of the right's dizzyingly adroit campaign to screw liberals and leftists, no matter what they say or do, or even if they say anything at all.
In my fantasy world, where my novel gets published to great acclaim and I make the rounds on television news, creating little controversies everywhere, I'm sure I would be branded as an 'extremist,' 'Commie,' 'far-left' tool of the 'radical homosexual agenda' before I opened my mouth, and who would want that to happen (to themselves--in fantasy world)?
Glenn Greenwald, who is by far the best blogger I've ever read, does it in his inaugural post for Salon. It's not so much that I want to stick up for Glenn Reynolds, the extremist in question, who is a fascist and doesn't really deserve attention as a serious thinker. However, damning all conservatives or Bush-supporters as extremists clouds the big picture. (Although, honestly, you have got to be seriously devoid of introspection to be cheering the government on at this point).
Dyed-in-the-wool right-wingers aren't simply these parochial blowhards to whom the mainstream media grant disproportionate airtime as part of a backbreaking attempt at appearing fair. They're not all carbon copies of Fred Phelps. They command legions of readers, or followers, as the case may be. When conservatives condemn liberals as extremists, it's part of a successful enterprise in which the mainstream creeps ever rightward, with liberals and leftists cut out of what passes for a 'national conversation' while apparently no one can be too far to the right to forfeit credibility as a public figure (cf. Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and Pat Buchanan). At the risk of oversimplifying the already one-dimensional axis on which political affiliations are graphed, you can't be further to the right of those men without being a Klansman or skinhead. On the left, there's a vast gulf that could be filled with all sorts of people, but--just to name a few--Ralph Nader's too "unreasonable," black leaders are too "militant," and for whatever reason, the only academics that ever get on television are moderate-to-conservative and gender-conforming.
As of yet, reality simply can't accommodate this strategy when liberals employ it, because there's a giant swath of this country who identify as evangelical Christians, and those people are already acutely attuned to feeling "shut out" by "cultural elites." The right can ignore the left, but for the left to ignore the right or label its spokespersons as extremists reinforces the prevalent ethos whereby left-wing intellectuals know nothing about ordinary people's lives and don't give a shit about them, either. So not only is tarring someone with the "extremist" label needlessly corrosive to reasonable discussion, it might just be adding fuel to the fire of the right's dizzyingly adroit campaign to screw liberals and leftists, no matter what they say or do, or even if they say anything at all.
