Written by Bob Williams   

Political invective and its role in creating violence has been much in the public’s mind since Representative Gabrielle Giffords was gunned down along with Judge John Roll and some of her constituents in Tucson, Arizona. Congresswoman Giffords was a political moderate, not given to strident or angry speech; not an extremist nor a lightning-rod in any sense. This makes the tragedy even more of public concern; a tragedy people wish to understand.

Two expected positions surfaced almost immediately. At the murder scene Sheriff Clarence Dupnik said, it’s “the vitriolic rhetoric that we hear day in and day out from people in the radio business and some people in the TV business.” Rush Limbaugh countered with the contention that, “What this is all about is shutting down any and all political opposition and eventually criminalizing it, criminalizing policy differences, at least when they differ from the Democrat Party agenda” thereby stoking the paranoia that is a part of the problem.

The more thoughtful Republican commentator, David Brooks on the PBS News Hour argued, “there's no -- absolutely no evidence,” that there was a connection between the Tucson shootings and vitriolic political speech. He argued that crime has come down as video games and movies have become more violent. He also argued that political assassinations have not increased as political speech has become more violent.

David Brooks’ first point is irrelevant to the issue and his final point is incorrect. Hate preached long enough, indeed leads to criminal attacks not just against political figures, but against entire groups that the haters have encouraged their listeners to revile.

During the civil rights protests in our southern states the anti-integration, states’-rights rhetoric became extremely heated and only toned down after the death of four children in the bombing of a Birmingham, Alabama Baptist church. In 1964 the use of hatred and fear of inter-racial marriage, of legal abortion, and other hot-button social issues became a part of the Republican “Southern Strategy” to switch the South from Democrat to Republican.

Republican leaders did not dirty their hands with the invective of hatred and fear. Talk radio took on this role. In 1964 the Supreme Court ruled that “public figures” were not slandered by untrue or outrageous invective if the speaker thought their statements were true, that is, if they did not intend slander. Under President Reagan the Fairness Doctrine regulating broadcast radio was dropped. The gloves came off. Hatred, low-brow invective, and an “us against them” mentality became talk radio.

President John Kennedy was warned not to take his planned 1963 tour with Lyndon Johnson in Texas due to the level of hatred for him there. I was teaching one of my first courses at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. I had to walk into class that morning and announce that President Kennedy was dead. He had been assassinated. One student got up and cheered. A sub-culture of unbridled hatred can produce that.

Paul Krugman recently noted the upsurge in political anti-government hate-talk after the election of President Clinton. This culminated in the bombing of the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City by Timothy McVeigh and two accomplices, killing 168 innocent Americans and injuring 450. McVeigh and his accomplices were not mentally or emotionally deranged. Hate talk had converted them into domestic terrorists. Krugman also cited a report “on a surge in threats against members of Congress, which were already up by 300 percent” in 2009.

Perhaps the murderous actions of the emotionally disturbed Jared Loughner have caused us to focus on the wrong question. We will rarely know if a mentally disturbed loner would have committed heinous acts with or without the stimulus of political invective. What we can and do know is that hatred and thinly veiled threats of violence has effects on many people – some of whom act. Such statements were common in the recent elections. An example is Tea Party favorite Sharron Angle’s statement, “if Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies . . . .” Such statements, like cancer-causing agents, have cumulative effects.

What we also know is that hateful political rhetoric has overreached in the past, has had disastrous consequences, and has been toned down – but only temporarily. Political leaders of both parties, and even Fox News, are now toning down the invective. The question is how long will this last? Hate-mongering has had large political payoffs since the 1960s. Since the late 1940s if you include McCarthyism. How can those with our country’s best interests at heart keep it from ratcheting up again? This is far more important than speculating on the mind of a Jared Loughner.