An argument for considering the Tucson Massacre a political event

1. Jared Loughner had a politics, one that included violence as an expressive political event.

2. Rep. Giffords was a national politician, who was engaged in local political work at a public place when Loughner attempted to kill her.

3. Rep. Giffords had local political opponents who contested her election and her policy choices, sometimes by using violent speech, symbols and actions. Some of her opponents were Republican partisans and some were likely movement activists associated with that Party.

4. America's political culture, along with the society of which it is a part, is composed of fragments, some of which consider themselves authorized to act violently in order to defend their interests and to defend what they consider to be an authentic American way of life. They believe they have this authority because they utilize the thoughts and symbols of the American Revolution and because they, in some cases, draw upon the Protestant political theology that many of America's colonists brought with them from Europe.

5. Those social fragments which consider themselves authorized to act violently in order to defend their interests and to defend what they consider to be an authentic American way of life are mostly if not exclusively located within the orbit of the national Republican Party.

6. The national Republican Party seeks and has long sought to monopolize the naming and defining of what is truly American. The Republican Party attempts to achieve this monopoly, in part, by excluding every competitor they encounter in this matter. In this way the national Republican Party practices what can be identified as an absolutist politics.

7. As a practitioner of an absolutist politics, the national Republican Party seeks to effectively if not to actually eliminate its opponents as political opponents. It is motivated to achieve this end because of its commitment to an 'authentic American life' and because of the religiosity of some of its member groups.

8. Mr. Loughner's attempt to assassinate Rep. Giffords neatly encapsulates this dangerous and uniquely American political situation, a situation which provides the context in which we must evaluate the Tucson Massacre.

The attempted assassination of Rep. Giffords was a political event because her assailant had a politics that made her a target while, in turn, she had a politics that motivated some politically violent individuals to make her a target; she was a politician with a local following and a national reputation; the assassination attempt occurred at an open, public political venue, more specifically, at a place where Giffords practiced her politics; Loughner's violent act reflected key features of the local and national political culture; and the killings could be irrationally justified by the assailant and others by drawing upon the symbols, rhetoric and violent nature of America's founding. To the reactionary, assassinating Giffords could be defended as an act of a patriot. He sought to water liberty's tree with the blood of tyrants.

It can be and has been argued that Jared Loughner was incapable of reasonable thought and action because he suffered from a severe but as of yet unknown mental illness. Loughner, because of his illness, was incapable of acting politically because politics in general assumes a modicum of rational thinking capacity and because Loughner was incapable of rational thought. Consequently, Loughner's actions cannot be rightly considered political because, to put it simply, he was not sane or, at best, barely sane.

This argument fails, I believe, because it ignores the context in which the Loughner lived and thus learned to think, feel and act. In recent years this context was flush with violent rhetoric and behavior, most of which issued from the mouths, keyboards and bodies of the reactionary right. Much of the locally generated violent talk took Rep. Giffords as a key target. This discourse of violence crystallized during the 2010 midterm campaign. Moreover, Giffords was a member of Congress, and thus a plausible threat to the weak and marginal in America, at least she was thought to pose this kind of threat by those on the right who believe government to be an evil in every instance when that government exceeds its minimal size. Loughner, it seems, was such an individual. His internet videos reflect this kind of thinking. His deed and words reflect this local and national political context. And his action was premeditated. He acted purposefully in the weeks that preceded the massacre. Thus, Loughner's deed can be judged a political act because it was meant to be a political act and produced political effects.

That said, even if one believes that Loughner's mental distress meant that he was unable to form a politics, that is, even if Loughner was insane and unable to rationally formulate a politics and a practice, it remains the case that his deed also reflects the thinking and recommendations of the reactionary component of the national Republican Party and the movements related to it. The context confers political significance on the event no matter what Loughner intended or could intend.

It is for these reasons that I believe the Tucson Massacre to be a political event, and ought to be considered a political event even if Jared Loughner were to proven to be criminally insane. Any claim which refuses to consider Loughner's act a political act also refuses to consider the facts as they are known and refuses to treat politics as an activity that cannot be wholly reduced to the subjective intentions of this or that individual.

This essay was cross-posted at OpenSalon and All Tied Up and Nowhere to Go

One feature of America’s fearful political culture

Glenn Greenwald wrote the following this morning:

There has been much talk over the last several days, in the wake of the Arizona shooting, about attempts by some citizens to instill physical fear in elected officials. That's a worthwhile and necessary topic, but the fear that government officials are attempting to instill in law-abiding, dissenting citizens is far more substantial and sustained, and deserves much more attention than it has received.

He wrote this paragraph while concluding another one of his long, lucid and well-argued essays on the WikiLeaks saga. When I broadly consider his position, I believe he was right to take it. After all, there can be no doubt that America's political-legal assault on WikiLeaks and Julian Assange wants to intimidate whistleblowers like Bradley Manning, citizen journalist like those found at WikiLeaks along with those citizens who would protest and thereby reform the use of government power in the United States. Nor can anyone doubt that such intimidation has been achieved to some degree. Why would willingly desire to be tortured as Bradley Manning has been since his incarceration?

Nevertheless, unlike Greenwald, if I have accurately interpreted his essay, I do not believe that a state induced fear and a socially induced fear are wholly distinct. Nor do I believe that popular reactionary violence and the threat of such have taken aim only at America's elected officials, especially those officials who are members of the Democratic Party. It is not even clear to me that one practice is more important than the other. Fear, like radiation, has a scope that is far greater than its direct target. It is both immediately devastating for those targeted and broadly instructive for those who witness a fear-inducing attack. It often attaches a stigma to its targets and it enforces the sense that keeping one's head low means that someone cannot take it off at the neck.

The Tucson bloodbath this past weekend has had the noticeable effect of drawing attention to the use of fear in politics in the United States today. This fear, as stated above, is meant to eliminate political opponents while cowling others into silence. It is a political act and has political consequences.

The Tucson attack also has achieved more than pointing to the use of fear as a political tool in the United States. It has also focused attention on the work of one American political movement, with its famous and not-so-famous leaders, a reactionary political movement that wants to intimidate different political movements, organizations, parties and institutions. The violence-laden rhetoric, the symbols and tools of violence used by this movement, the attacks it mounts on human diversity — these practices achieve an end similar to the ends pursued by the government when it seeks to intimidate those who threaten it, namely, the suppression of what remains of liberalism in the United States, of a political commitment to a full set of rights and of a strong democracy emboldened to contest a strong government. I also believe it is clear that this reactionary movement provides the squadristi and Sturmabteilung for that faction of the Republican Party that has absolutist pretentions and that actually believes it expresses the essence of an authentically American life. Like the surveillance and security practices of the federal government, the violence prone reactionaries function as an agent that constrains political speech and action in the United States.

Since the reactionaries have more than a foot in American government, including the military, it is not too farfetched to identify the reactionaries as the sometimes extra-legal agent of a terror that, all things being equal, affirms governmental power! It surely affirms the security and surveillance apparatus, which must now protect good apolitical Americans from the extremists. It also affirms bipartisan government, a kind of American political compromise that actively suppresses political conflict, especially conflict that originates within civil society. When thought of in this way, governmental surveillance and security work complements actual and potential political terror produced by America's reactionaries, and vice versa. Both produce depoliticizing effects.

The proof of this is ready at hand. The United States currently lacks an opposition party and has not recently produced an effective opposition movement that can contest the policies and practices of the American political system. This absence is not due to luck, to America's well-designed institutions or to the well-being enjoyed by most Americans. It is an effect of long-term political work by America's government system, including its legacy parties and the duopoly they compose, and by the reactionary popular forces originating within civil society.

Although the Tucson shootings have caused some of America's political elite to take a step back with respect to their use of inflammatory talk, I could not help but to agree with Alexander Cockburn's assessment of America's near-term political future: "I doubt [America's] rhetoric will stay subdued for long." It appears that there can be only one American politics, and it is vain, militaristic, violent and narrow.

This essay was cross-posted at OpenSalon and FireDogLake

Assassination attempt in Arizona

Representative Gabrielle Giffords, a three-term Democrat, was shot this morning by a gunman who also injured some of her staff. Giffords is a liberal on many issues, married to an astronaut and defeated last November a Tea Party conservative that criticized Sarah Palin from the right.

Although the motives of the gunman for shooting Giffords are currently unknown, the shooting must be counted as a political assassination attempt because of the grass roots political conflict present in the United States today.

This is a breaking news story; live updates can be found at the Huffington Post.

Update

Rep. Giffords, along with six others, died as a result of this shooting, according to NPR.