Joseph Stack and the Liberal Blood Libel

4:39 pm, 2/19/10

If you haven't read the manifesto of Joe Stack, you should.

From reading it, it's clear that Joseph Andrew Stack subscribed to a series of conspiracy theories that filled his head with anti-capitalist, anti-corporate, anti-Bush rage. He quotes Marx, bemoans the failure of ObamaCare, and blames the string of failures that marked the last twenty years of his life on Ronald Reagan's tax cuts. Far from being "anti-tax", his real problem appears to have been that he didn't feel others were paying enough in taxes, that, in his view, "the poor" "die" for "the mistakes" of "the wealthy". 95% of his ode to class warfare would hardly seem out of place as a "Special Comment" by Keith Olbermann, and much of it is fundamentally identical to what you see on the signs of ski-masked anarchists setting fires at G8 meetings. It's like some awful tribute to Operation: Mindcrime.

Seven years of power
The corporation claw
The rich control the government, the media the law
To make some kind of difference
Then everyone must know
Eradicate the fascists, revolution will grow

The system we learn says we're equal under law
But the streets are reality, the weak and poor will fall

To the left, all of this somehow means that he was obviously a right-wing extremist, and that conservatives and libertarians are to blame for his crimes.

Daily Kos:

Just like the 9/11 terrorists, he had no regard to innocent lives either in that building or on the ground. He is no different, he is no hero, and he was incited to do what he did, because of the Limbaughs, Becks and Hannitys who day after day only play on people's misery and fears because of their own personal agenda. They need to be forced to own up to this.

Democratic Underground:

Tea Party Terrorist Crashes Plane Into Government Building

Comments at Oliver Willis:

Joe Stack was a Reagan republican. Sorry nazis, he's one of you, he's a right winger.

Janeane Garofolo:

Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly created the atmosphere for a Joe Stack!

Someone even rushed to distribute "evidence" that Stack had donated to Ron Paul, ignoring that it was obviously the wrong Joe Stack.

We've grown to expect those antics from the dementia patients at DailyKos and Oliver Willis, but much more deeply alarming is the speed with which the mainstream media ran with the idea that simply because he tried to kill people over taxes, he's obviously somehow tied to the Tea Party movement, even if it's impossible to articulate how:

The New York Times:

In April 1990, a firebomb packed with a tea bag - a reference to the Boston Tea Party - and addressed to the I.R.S. was placed in the mail in Royal Oak, Mich. It exploded, injuring a postal worker.

NY Mag:

In fact, a lot of his rhetoric could have been taken directly from a handwritten sign at a tea party rally.

Time

Toward the end of what appears to be his final note, Stack wrote, 'Well, Mr. Big Brother IRS man, let's try something different; take my pound of flesh and sleep well.' (See the making of the Tea Party movement.)

The Washington Post's "Post-Partisan" Blog:

There's no information yet on whether he was involved in any anti-government groups or whether he was a lone wolf. But after reading his 34-paragraph screed, I am struck by how his alienation is similar to that we're hearing from the extreme elements of the Tea Party movement.

It just is, right?

While I'm not the biggest fan of how the Tea Party movement playing out, to see "serious journalists" so eager to go this far, some of them obviously smirking at their keyboards as they try to "carefully" imply the Tea Party movement's guilt by association not merely in the promulgation of policies which the press is biased against but in murderous terrorism is disturbing, particularly since it that flies in the face of the known facts. It runs with the radical left's fetishistic belief that those who disagree with their views aren't merely people who honestly believe differently than they do, but people who are evil, Timothy McVeighs in waiting, or as reprehensible Democratic Congressman Alan Grayson has claimed, people who actually want Americans to die.

It's a baseless blood libel, and while political partisans say regrettable things, people of conscience have a reason to be outraged when they see it creeping it into the news content of their daily newspaper.

Update: Jonathan Capehart, the author of the offending Washington Post blog excerpt above, has since clarified his intentions, but still seems to miss the point. It's obvious to everyone that he was "careful" in choosing his words, and that he selected the excerpts that supported his point. That's why people are disgusted. Complaining that he was "careful" to choose words that don't technically call everyone on the right a terrorist is asinine. He should've known better than to think it wouldn't cause significant offense, particularly when he was, by his own admission, ignoring the excerpts that undermine his point.