The Mass Media’s Distorted Lens When It Decides Who to Blame for Mass Murders

Mass murderers often follow various public personalities and causes. Sometimes, they commit their mass murders in the name of those public personalities and causes. Who is to blame when that happens? It depends on whether news outlets approve of the personality or the cause. Glenn Greenwald explains in an article titled "The Demented - and Selective - Game of Instantly Blaming Political Opponents For Mass Shootings: All ideologies spawn psychopaths who kill innocents in its name. Yet only some are blamed for their violent adherents: by opportunists cravenly exploiting corpses while they still lie on the ground." Here is an excerpt:

To be sure, there have been a large number of murders and other atrocities carried out in U.S. and the West generally in the name of right-wing ideologies, in the name of white supremacy, in the name of white nationalism. The difference, though, is glaring: when murders are carried out in the name of liberal ideology, there is a rational and restrained refusal to blame liberal pundits and politicians who advocate the ideology that animated those killings. Yet when killings are carried out in the name of right-wing ideologies despised by the corporate press and mainstream pundits (or ideologies that they falsely associate with conservatism), they instantly leap to lay blame at the feet of their conservative political opponents who, despite never having advocated or even implied the need for violence, are nonetheless accused of bearing guilt for the violence — often before anything is known about the killers or their motives.

In general, it is widely understood that liberal pundits and politicians are not to blame, at all, when murders are carried out in the name of the causes they support or against the enemies they routinely condemn. That is because, in such cases, we apply the rational framework that someone who does not advocate violence is not responsible for the violent acts of one's followers and fans who kill in the name of that person's ideas.

Indeed, this perfectly sensible principle was enshrined by the U.S. Supreme Court in the landmark 1982 unanimous free speech ruling in Claiborne v. NAACP. That case arose out of efforts by the State of Mississippi to hold leaders of the local NAACP chapter legally liable for violence carried out by NAACP members on the ground that the leaders’ inflammatory and rage-driven speeches had “incited” and “provoked” their followers to burn white-owned stores and other stores ignoring their boycott to the ground. In ruling in favor of the NAACP, the Court stressed the crucial difference between those who peacefully advocate ideas and ideologies, even if they do so with virulence and anger (such as NAACP leaders), and those who are “inspired” by those speeches to commit violence to advance that cause. “To impose liability without a finding that the NAACP authorized — either actually or apparently — or ratified unlawful conduct would impermissibly burden the rights of political association that are protected by the First Amendment,” ruled the Court.

This principle is not only a jurisprudential or constitutional one. It is also a rational one. Those who express ideas without advocating violence are not and cannot fairly be held responsible for those who decide to pick up arms in the name of those ideas, even if — as in the case of James Hodgkinson — we know for certain that the murderer listened closely to and was influenced by people like Rachel Maddow and Bernie Sanders. In such cases, we understand that it is madness, and deeply unfair, to exploit heinous murders to lay blame for the violence and killings on the doorsteps of our political adversaries. [More . . . ]

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Congress is Pollyannaish on War

Who could possibly be against financial oversight? And what about additional oversight into how this mountain of weapons will be used next year or five years from now, and against whom? At a time of skyrocketing inflation, Congress wants to spend money that we will be forced to borrow or print out of thin air based on sloganeering, but it is afraid to ask hard questions in public. If I took out a car loan today, I would be asked a hell of a lot more questions then Congress is asking itself.

Over this century, we have a clear track record for coddling our military contractors, pouring weapons and military into conflicts that have little to do with American interests in the absence of any metric of success, eventually slinking out of that shattered country, having depleted our treasury, thereby permanently losing opportunities to address the needs of our own citizens. Has anyone considered how angry we were when we (falsely) accused the Russians of offering bounty for the killing of US troops in Afghanistan? Our leaders are now bragging that they were instrumental in killing a dozen Russian Generals and sinking a Russian warship. Why would we not think that there will be blowback to this, perhaps in the form of Russian funding of terrorist acts against the US or in the form of nuclear annihilation? Why won't Congress discuss any of these issues in public?

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Ideology Carves out the ACLU

Are there any modern institutions that are so strongly bolstered with hallowed traditions and fortified with well-crafted first principles that they are immune from attack by trendy ideologies? Sincerely. I'm asking.

Nazis marching at Skokie now seems like an ancient happening that is so old that it has faded into irrelevance at the new cash-flushed ACLU.

What follows is an excerpt of from a new article written by Lara Bazelon, a professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law, where she directs the Criminal and Juvenile Justice Law and Racial Justice Clinics. The title: "The ACLU Has Lost Its Way: The organization now seems largely unable or unwilling to uphold its core values."

Progressive causes are near and dear to my heart. I am a feminist and staunch Democrat. As a federal public defender turned law professor, I have spent my career trying to make change in a criminal legal system that is riven with racism and fundamentally unfair to those without status and financial resources. Yet, as someone who understands firsthand that the fundamental rights to free speech and due process exist only as long as competent lawyers are willing to vigorously defend extreme positions and people, I view the ACLU’s hard-left turn with alarm. It smacks of intolerance and choosing sides, precisely what a civil-liberties organization designed to defend the Bill of Rights is meant to oppose.

I used to be a proud card-carrying member of the ACLU. Today, when its fundraising mailers and pleas to reenroll arrive in my mailbox, I toss them in the recycling.

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Rethinking Citizens United

This is the latest installment of a fascinating exchange of ideas at FIRE's First Amendment News. This installment was written by Ira Glasser, former Executive Director of the ACLU. This conversation was provoked by Florida's repeal of Disney's special tax status in response to Disney's criticism of Florida's Parental Rights in Education bill, misnamed the “Don’t Say Gay” law by many on the left.

I'm repeatedly struck by the ill-thought tactics of many people who try to mess with the First Amendment.  These tactics usually amount to "Free speech for me, but not for thee."  The First Amendment is a boomerang, however.  It is an equal-opportunity provision that doesn't (and shouldn't) care about who is speaking or the content of particular speech.  Your well-intended tweaks and restrictions of the First Amendment (here, in the form of Citizens United) can come back and hit you upside your head. What follows is an excerpt of Glasser's latest comment:

But two liberal law professors who had spent 12 years vigorously opposing the Citizens United decision — my longtime colleagues Burt Neuborne and Erwin Chemerinsky — leaped into the fray supporting the First Amendment right of the Disney corporation to express its views on that legislation and opposed the state’s attempt to retaliate. When I chided them for it in light of their long opposition to Citizens United, they responded with a blizzard of legal distinctions that, however interesting and important, were disconnected from the political realities that resulted in the broad law that Citizens United struck down, and unresponsive to my question.

Buried in that blizzard, however, was the answer to my question, almost as an aside: “Citizens United,” they now declare, “was rightly decided on its facts.”

Floyd Abrams then replied, saying he was startled to discover that they now said they believed that “Citizens United was rightly decided on its facts” because for 12 years, or ever since Citizens United was decided, they had vigorously and consistently criticized that decision as having been wrongly decided.

I, too, was startled. What had changed? Certainly, the facts of that case hadn’t changed since the case was decided. Moreover, if Burt and Erwin had ever before proclaimed that Citizens United had been rightly decided in the many public fora where they discussed that decision, I missed it, and apparently, Floyd Abrams did, too.

So if the facts of the case haven’t changed, what has?

We can only speculate.

But in any case, we now have two accomplished liberal law professors saying: 1) that Citizens United was rightly decided; and 2) that a business corporation like Disney has a First Amendment right to express its views on a contentious law.

I need to fall on the sword here too. I got caught up in the anti-Citizens United wave years ago and posted several regrettable posts (at this site) indicating positions I no longer hold.  The turning point for me was a very slow and careful read of the Citizens United opinion combined with sober consideration of impossible real world challenges we would have faced had Citizens United had been decided the opposite way.

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