Reply #17: RW accusations are not just to tar the accused, but to preempt LW criticisms that go along the same [View All]

lines: thus, "moderates" (the less-informed) can say "you're just saying that" when we liken secret camps and arrests to fascism--because the RW has made the same accusation about Fannie Mae. the deluge of attacks also casts suspicion on LW criticisms of Dem officials: it makes it easier for listeners to "turn off" when we accuse * of seizing power and shredding the Constitution: "that's what they all say," thinking that such accusation are "politics as usual" with nothing behind them. this sort of well-poisoning took place in the Cold War: the RW was getting hit by Watergate and CIA atrocities, so they invented their own "whistleblowers" against those real whistleblowers, and we got Mitrokhin "confirming" that the almighty Kremlin was behind criticisms of Hoover and McCarthy and the nuclear disarmament movement, and Reed Irvine saying that El Mozote never happened.
a lot of this false equivalency comes from the idea of "fair play": both "sides" of an issue must be presented on TV, to prevent "censorship." this creates the impression that both sides have the same value--or are even interchangeable (how many times have we heard the chestnut that the far left and right are really the same? or that "green wackos" are as honest as a PR flack). remember, it's not really the wingnuts whipped up by Hal Turner, Ralph Reed, and * rallies that were the key to the Bush regime, but the moderates who did his bidding on everything but the Culture-War issues: they're Blairites, using their records on abortion and race to browbeat us when we complain after they vote for war, indefinite detention, torturer pardons, Indonesian deforestation, etc. this Blairism has extended to the War on Islam, with Islamophobia being concocted on "liberal" rationales: they're uncivilized, sexist, theocratic, totalitarian, worse hillbillies than Deliverance's, etc.: Hirsi Ali, Hitchens, Fallaci, Bernard-Henri Levy, blind Israel boosters see themselves as liberal (even though they sound just like Raspail, Le Pen, or Nick Griffin)
RW policies are pushed through by both the right and the moderates, and the kingmakers use different approaches to them. this is similar to how PhRMA uses both doctors and Palinoid Creationists living in an ocean of fundie misinfo, or how the chemical industries use both people in white coats extolling the unquestionable authority of Science AND global-warming deniers.