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Although Mr. Beck has never directly urged his followers to menace Ms. Piven, he has frequently been subjecting the leftist scholar to tirades on Fox News and his widely syndicated radio show. He has called her an "enemy of the Constitution" and one of the "nine most dangerous people in the world," and accused her of trying to destroy the economy and incite violence. The anonymous threats that his followers made against the 78-year-old scholar took the form of since-deleted posts in the comment field of one of his Web sites, The Blaze.
Commenters wrote: "I am all for violence and change Frances: Where do your loved ones live?"; "We should blow up Piven's office and home."; "Maybe they should burst through the front door of this arrogant elitist and slit the hateful cow's throat."
Like those who have sought to link the recent shootings in Tucson, Ariz., to the right's harshest rhetoric, many prominent academics have declared that the threats against Ms. Piven signal that the level of debate in America has deteriorated so badly, and grown so uncivil, that other scholars are in jeopardy, and academic freedom is at risk. Calls for Mr. Beck and Fox News to disavow violence and tone down the commentary have been issued by leaders of the American Association of University Professors, the American Political Science Association, the American Sociological Association, and the Society for the Study of Social Problems....
For his part, Mr. Beck has denied any responsibility for the threats against the scholar. In a response to a New York Times story on the controversy, he said on one of his shows, "Let me just say this: I am against violence in all cases." He reiterated his view that Ms. Piven herself has used violent rhetoric by, for example, recently writing an article for The Nation calling for a protest movement by the unemployed that, to be effective, would have to look like recent student protests in England (which have turned violent), or "like the strikes and riots that have spread across Greece in response to the austerity measures forced on the Greek government by the European Union."
Fox News has similarly denied culpability. In response to a letter from officials of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a civil-rights organization, that accused Mr. Beck of "recklessly endangering" Ms. Piven with an incendiary "campaign of misinformation," Dianne Brandi, Fox News's executive vice president for legal and business affairs, wrote back that Mr. Beck denounces violence, defends the free-speech rights of Ms. Piven and others, and has based his criticisms of the scholar on her own words. Noting that the center had publicly disseminated its letter via a news release, Ms. Brandi said, "we doubt this is a sincere effort on your part to stop hostile public speech, but rather an attempt to create ill will for our company."
The scholarly association leaders rallying around Ms. Piven seem disinclined to let Mr. Beck or Fox News off the hook. While emphasizing that they strongly support the free exchange of ideas, they argue that reasonable debate requires tolerance and civility, and cannot occur where people are personally vilified.
In the statement they issued last month, officers of the American Sociological Association accused Mr. Beck of engaging in "plain demagoguery" rather than any serious discussion of issues. "While it is true that death threats are generally only a form of extremist rhetoric," the statement said, "they indicate an overheated emotional atmosphere that researchers on collective violence call 'the hysteria zone.' It is a zone in which deranged individuals can be motivated to real violence against those targeted by demagoguery." The statement invoked the shootings in Tucson as an example "of how abundant, polarizing rhetoric by political leaders and commentators can spur mass murder."...
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