RW said they would constantly attack us, make us fearful to speak out. Media complicit. [View All]

[madfloridian]

The media has been complicit in allowing the right wing to continue their attacks against the left, and to continue to be in denial about what their actions and words have done.

You can't solve a problem if you won't admit it exists. The present state of our media is such that they have become the problem.

The leaders of this conservative movement said they would deliberately do things to cause us to be outraged, they would be as obnoxious as they needed to be. They would keep up a constant barrage against us, they would not let up.

We will maintain a constant barrage of criticism against the Left.

They wanted us to fear even opening our mouths.

"This essay is based on the belief that the truth of an idea is not the primary reason for its acceptance. Far more important is the energy and dedication of the idea’s promoters—in other words, the individuals composing a social or political movement..."

"There will be three main stages in the unfolding of this movement. The first stage will be devoted to the development of a highly motivated elite able to coordinate future activities. The second stage will be devoted to the development of institutions designed to make an impact on the wider elite and a relatively small minority of the masses. The third stage will involve changing the overall character of American popular culture..."

"Our movement will be entirely destructive, and entirely constructive. We will not try to reform the existing institutions. We only intend to weaken them, and eventually destroy them. We will endeavor to knock our opponents off-balance and unsettle them at every opportunity. All of our constructive energies will be dedicated to the creation of our own institutions..."

"We will maintain a constant barrage of criticism against the Left. We will attack the very legitimacy of the Left. We will not give them a moment's rest. We will endeavor to prove that the Left does not deserve to hold sway over the heart and mind of a single American. We will offer constant reminders that there is an alternative, there is a better way. When people have had enough of the sickness and decay of today’s American culture, they will be embraced by and welcomed into the New Traditionalist movement. The rejection of the existing society by the people will thus be accomplished by pushing them and pulling them simultaneously."

"We must create a countervailing force that is just as adept as the Left at intimidating people and institutions that are used as tools of left-wing activism but are not ideologically committed, such as Hollywood celebrities, multinational corporations, and university administrators. We must be feared, so that they will think twice before opening their mouths..."

Heubeck report

They said they would do outrageous things, they would plan things to deliberately upset people. Remember the purple band-aids during the Kerry campaign? Remember the bake sales they held in which the price depended on your race? Remember the Catch an Illegal Immigrant game?

They were planned outrages, what they called "controlled controversy."

We are seeing the fruit of such constant hostility in politics now. Building that kind of anger toward groups of people is taking its toll....those who are not mentally and emotionally sound have trouble with so much anger and hatred.

Controlled Controversy..the RW plan to build anger.

Much of this is from a Salon article called My Right Wing Degree. I could not access the archives today yet, but here is the gist of it. Here is the part about their planned outrages...designed to make us angry. They like to appear to be obnoxious, they think it is a good idea. They carry these ideas over into their Campus Leadership Program.

Unlike chapter-based political organizations, CLP clubs are unaffiliated with either the Leadership Institute or each other. According to Blackwell, this trait offers a serious advantage: "No purges." The clubs' independence also comes with the benefit of plausible deniability. "You can get away with stuff that you would take a lot of flak for doing in the College Republicans," says CLP director Dan Flynn. "Because we're independent, we can do activities that push the envelope," agrees University of Miami senior Sarah Canale, whose CLP-organized Advocates for Conservative Thought threw an affirmative action bake sale last year in which the price of a cupcake varied according to the race of its buyer. That it was controversial, she believes, was a victory in itself.

The Leadership Institute teaches the same principle. Controlled controversy -- making your point in a manner so bombastic that your opponents blow their cool -- is a Blackwell specialty. Before the 2004 Republican Convention, the conservative elder personally went to a drugstore and bought little pink heart stickers, bandages and purple nail polish. At home, he made the "Purple Heart Band-Aids" that he later distributed in Madison Square Garden to mock John Kerry's war wounds. From Blackwell's perspective, the Kerry camp's outrage at the gag was a tactical disaster. Democratic Party chairman Terry McAuliffe, Blackwell says, kept the story alive for days by "running around like a chicken with its head cut off."

They loved our anger at those band-aids. They loved that we were upset.

Eric Heubeck laid out the plans of this new conservative movement years ago. I found a copy still posted at Yurica Report. They said they would control the media as well as keep up an attack against the left.

I can not find the original as the Free Congress site is down now. This was a statement at that site. I posted it in 2003 and was able to find the quote.

Our mission is to increase our influence over the key cultural institutions

SNIP...."However, we don’t need to wait for a generation to pass before we can start acting. For example, we can train college students to confront the leftism they experience on campus, in large part as a way to reinforce their own beliefs, to bolster the idea that the traditionalist vision is one worth fighting for. We can also train them to appreciate what a traditionalist society should look like and to create campus communities that reflect those ideals. College students are in the best position to be preparing themselves to create alternative cultural institutions after they have graduated. At the very least, no matter what line of work they go into, they will be prepared to create traditionalist communities among the coworkers and other acquaintances they meet through work.

It should be understood that when we say we will take control of the "key cultural institutions," we do not mean MCA Universal, The New York Times, Harvard University, or Simon & Schuster. What we mean is the entertainment industry, the news media, academia, and the publishing industry. Our goal is not to infiltrate organizations opposed to our world-view, but to directly compete with them, and eventually, to make them irrelevant. The Left was able to take control of these organizations because the believers in traditional values who ran them were complacent and lacked vision. The modern-day Left is not complacent, and is more than willing to use its power to crush any challengers before they have a chance to become established within these organizations; hence the need to bypass the existing organizations altogether......"END SNIP

DU archives from 2003

Read the bolded paragraph at least twice. They wanted to control the news media, academia, and the publishing industry. Seems to me they did pretty well at accomplishing their goals.

The media is almost protective of the right wing after the AZ shooting.

Not surprisingly, Karl Rove worked closely with the Weyrich group. From Time 2001:

Not surprisingly, Karl Rove is closely allied with this group of people. This is from a Time Magazine article in 2001.

The Bush administration is apparently quite cozy with Weyrich. This quote from a Time magazine article is apropos, Time Magazine wrote this:

"Each Wednesday Rove dispatches a top administration official to attend the regular conservative-coalition lunches held at Paul Weyrich's Free Congress Foundation. When activists call his office with a problem, Rove doesn't pass them off to an aide. He often responds himself. When Weyrich heard a few weeks ago that Bush's budget slashed funding for a favorite project called the Police Corps, which gives scholarships and training to police cadets, he complained to the White House. To Weyrich's surprise, Rove called back. “We've taken care of it,” Rove said. “The problem is solved.” Weyrich, who says his memos to the Reagan and Bush Sr. White Houses were rarely read, was impressed. “That,” he gushes, “is what it means to have friends in the White House.”

Sunday, Apr. 22, 2001
The Busiest Man in the White House
BY JAMES CARNEY AND JOHN F. DICKERSON

The original website is down now, Paul Weyrich's Free Congress site...but the entire Heubeck article is preserved at the Yurica Report.

Quite long:

A Program for the New Traditionalist Movement