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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums"You are responsible for your wake."
"You are responsible for your wake."Who is responsible for the shootings in Colorado Springs?
When I was a kid, I saw a sign on a lake that made an incredible impression on me. To this day, I think about that sign: "You are responsible for your wake."
In boating, "wake" refers to the waves created as a boat travels across water. Smaller craft my be capsized and inexperienced swimmers may drown in the wake of larger boats. Boat operators are legally responsible for that damage.
The same rule should apply to politics and news organizations. If you use misleading propaganda to vilify a specific group or to raise funds for your campaign, then you are responsible for your wake. When your words encourage or support the ideology of groups or individuals associated with domestic terrorism, then you are responsible. When you imply or state outright that Second Amendment Solutions are appropriate, then you are responsible for the violence that occurs when people take your words to heart. When you intentionally empower people who hate, you are responsible for the actions that follow.
If you don't condemn it, then you condone it.
Yesterday was an act of terrorism. If you doubt that, then imagine how Fox News would have covered the event if the shooter had been a Muslim. Or an immigrant. Or, for that matter, if he had been Black.
The Right says that we shouldn't talk about guns in the aftermath of something like yesterday's terrorist attack. Fine, if you don't want to talk about guns, then let's talk about domestic terrorism and who is behind it. Let's talk about who incites these attacks.
Let's talk about being responsible for your wake.
https://www.facebook.com/bobseay
etherealtruth
(22,165 posts)Thank you for posting this
Action_Patrol
(845 posts)Every single thing matters.
seabeyond
(110,159 posts)that feed this hate.
I was reading replies to an article about the killings. Too many people dismissed the deaths without consideration to stand on their anti abortion high ground. The rhetoric has created this.
Scuba
(53,475 posts)Hekate
(90,865 posts)cwydro
(51,308 posts)ms liberty
(8,609 posts)I grew up on the west coast of Florida, boating on the Gulf. This speaks to me.
haikugal
(6,476 posts)K&R
Wounded Bear
(58,743 posts)"Free speech" prevents a legal/legislative cure, but more people have to get this message and take it to heart.
The only cure is for people to turn away from and refuse support for those who generate such "wakes" as they plow through the marina of life. Unfortunately, there is a vast contingent of people in this country so inured to hate speech from their own "side" that they can no longer see the connections.
SickOfTheOnePct
(7,290 posts)I would in no way favor criminal charges, but effectively shunning them, both privately and business wise? Absolutely.
gregcrawford
(2,382 posts)... Charles Manson should never have been charged for the murders of Sharon Tate and friends. He didn't kill them, but he incited his followers to do it. Incitement to riot, and incitement to commit murder are punishable offenses. So I have to disagree with you on this one.
SickOfTheOnePct
(7,290 posts)between a cult leader that has close, daily, intimate contact with followers whom he orders to murder others and loudmouths on radio and TV.
Invalid comparison.
icarusxat
(403 posts)the sad and sorry followers of hate radio believe they are best buds with Rush and his ilk. The way the media pretends that only the right wing exists provides the true believers with the daily, intimate contact they need to satisfy the comparison given...
SickOfTheOnePct
(7,290 posts)Then it's pretty pointless to discuss it with you any further.
JoeyT
(6,785 posts)If I come up to you and say "icarusxat, my good buddy, do you remember that guy that lives down the road? Brandon Notarealname? Yeah, he's been a thorn in our side for too long. I want you to take this gun and kill that son-of-a-bitch." you're guilty of what Manson is guilty of.
If I come up to you and say "icarusxat, don't you know Brandon Notarealname? Yeah, that guy's a real prick. I hope he dies." It'd be an opinion that was protected by the 1st, but I'd still be morally responsible if you killed the dude, especially if I said it to you hundreds of times a day, and had everyone else saying it to you over and over. That's where anti-abortion groups are now.
Morally, they're culpable. I know it, you know it, Sick knows it. Everyone knows it. No one that isn't one of them is going to deny they're 100% to blame for this, but we also all know that there's no real way to prosecute them for it.
SickOfTheOnePct
(7,290 posts)Great example, thank you.
FourScore
(9,704 posts)In Nazi Germany, the people only had one radio station, and it was, of course, owned and operated by the Nazi Party. So the people only heard Nazi propaganda and nothing else. After the war, Germany enacted some very strict anti-hate laws. For example, in Germany, the Nazi party or the KKK would never be allowed to march in a parade, like they do in NYC - because the sole purpose of the group is hate and discrimination. In America, they're allowed. When I lived in Germany, I argued about the slippery slope of who determines what is hate and what isn't, and how allowing such hate groups their freedom is the negative side of free speech, and all the other "noble" arguments of allowing hate to flaunt itself. But, I always felt like I was losing that battle, because of course people know hate when they see it, and it is dangerous.
Hate can be identified. Propaganda is the most useful method of propagating hate. It is a relentless drumbeat of false information and hateful, imbalanced rhetoric. Everyone knows who the hate groups are in a parade, everyone knows when a news organization or radio personality is promoting hate. It needs to be defined and somehow held accountable. I think it needs to be stopped.
gregcrawford
(2,382 posts)... and the thugs he sicced on the BLM protester. But Fux News has skirted indictable hate speech more than once, and distance, be it a hundred feet or a hundred miles, does not excuse those fomenting hatred and violence. Radio personalities in Rwanda were tried and convicted for inciting Hutus to slaughter Tutsis. Or was it Tutsis killing Hutus, I don't remember, but whatever; People like that should never be able to light the fuse of lethal violence with incendiary rhetoric and then just walk away.
SickOfTheOnePct
(7,290 posts)Since there are no hate speech laws in the U.S.
deathrind
(1,786 posts)Walks into a theater and yells fire when there is not one. 3 people die from the ensuing stamped should that person not be held accountable. He was not a cult leader and was a stranger to all. Granted there is a more direct line in the cause an affect of my analogy but none the less...people died.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)By company, I mean CIABCNNBCBSFakeNoiseNutworks of course.
shadowmayor
(1,325 posts)The whole "Tiller the baby killer" BS should be hung around Billo's neck for the rest of his miserable days.
niyad
(113,619 posts)brer cat
(24,625 posts)KT2000
(20,591 posts)and I will now be using it. It speaks volumes.
valerief
(53,235 posts)cantbeserious
(13,039 posts)eom
malaise
(269,219 posts)Rec
Duval
(4,280 posts)FailureToCommunicate
(14,026 posts)tblue37
(65,502 posts)RW hate speech was a driving force in his choice to commit violence against what he perceived to be a manifestation of the federal government, without concerning himself about "collateral damage" among the innocent--not even the babies and toddlers in the onsite daycare:
For a short (all too short!) time afterward, a few of the hateful public mouthpieces kept their heads down and tempered their ugly rhetoric. I doubt they felt any guilt or shame, but they knew others held them at least partly responsible, so they acted to protect themselves until the furor died down.
Now, though, they have no shame at all, no sense of their own responsibility, and no one seems willing to call them out about it--except, of course, for us totally dismissed and discounted "dirty f***ing hippies" on the left. When Dr. George Tiller was murdered, Bill O'Reilly never once conceded that repeatedly, incessantly, calling him "Tiller the baby killer" on his show might have provoked his murderer and prompted the man's decision to shoot Dr. Tiller.
Unless the M$M decides to connect the dots for the public, the RW hate speech purveyors will escape responsibility this time, too.
Unfortunately, though, I have no hope that the M$M will do the right thing.
Don't forget, though, that the radio broadcast of hate speech was what led the Hutus in Rwanda to attack and kill 800,000 Tsutsis and their few Hutu associates and supporters. Propaganda that demonizes and dehumanizes opponents as "other" makes it a short step for many people to start considering the possibility of eliminating the "vermin."
passiveporcupine
(8,175 posts)We have to remember that there are lots of crazy people who will not take, or are not able to take responsibility for their actions. They will stew and rage until they go nuts and kill someone. Because this is a social truth, with no way to stop it, incendiary language, that encourages whackos to do evil things, needs to have some kind of penalty.
I don't want anyone or everyone to have to worry about anything they say, but people in public places like politicians, news, leaders, radio hosts, preachers, all need to take responsibility for their speech, when it is used to incite hatred and violence. Even if they "never really meant it"...Bull Shit they didn't. Maybe they never meant for someone to be killed because of it, but they did mean to stir up the hatred and fear.
tom_kelly
(962 posts)dae
(3,396 posts)Thespian2
(2,741 posts)SusanCalvin
(6,592 posts)3catwoman3
(24,071 posts)...spot, with the power of brevity.
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)riderinthestorm
(23,272 posts)raouldukelives
(5,178 posts)All branching out from corporations willing to give money to anyone who is willing to help them defraud us, demoralize us or demonize us.
It's like I always say about Wall St. One small ripple today in it today is quite potentially devastating to any democracy, any progress and any life that the tiniest liberal soul desires.
We are responsible for our wakes.
lark
(23,166 posts)In trying to gin up some social conservative righteous indignation, they completely lied and misrepresented the facts and now people have died as a result. Of course they won't acknowledge this, saying it's too soon, have to wait, etc. etc. trying to bury the facts that they are responsible. They created these conditions and they should be held accountable for fomenting domestic terrorism.