Extremism and Conspiracy Theories

I spent much of Saturday driving which meant little opportunity for blogging but I did spend part of the time listening to podcasts of recent NPR shows. One of particular interest was of last Thursday’s episode of Fresh Air entitled Extremism, Conspiracy Theory And Murder. Terry Gross interviewed Chip Berlet, who provided background on extremism and conspiracy theories. The show concentrated on right wing extremism, noting nine murders by right wing extremists so far this year, including the recent killing of a guard at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

The show also discussed the atmosphere of hatred created by the right wing media and how it promotes violence from the more unhinged element of the right. Berlet discussed the manner in which Bill O’Reilly targeted George Tiller. He argued that while he could not be held legally responsible for the murder, O’ Reilly is morally responsible.

While they primarily discussed right wing extremism and conspiracy theories, going back to conspiracy theories involving the Bavarian Illuminati, Freemasons, and the Elders of Zion, the show did also touch on conspiracy theories held by some on the extreme left with a discussion of the 9/11 “truther” theories.

12 Comments

  1. 1
    DriveTimeHappyHour says:

    Extremism and Conspiracy Theories – Liberal Values – Defending … http://bit.ly/15ReD2

  2. 2
    DriveTimeHappyHour says:

    Extremism and Conspiracy Theories – Liberal Values – Defending … http://bit.ly/15ReD2

  3. 3
    Anonymous says:

    All these anti-jewish, anti-semetic, anti-Israel terrorists; clearly fueled by right wing talk radio. Great  point.

  4. 4
    Mike b.t.r.m. says:

    Hmm, I hope Ron doesn’t think I made the Anonymous post above as a “staw man” just to knock it down. Let me merely re-hash what I believe, correct me if I’m wrong on this, but what I believe Ron’s opinion is. Right wing talk radio is not accused of having anti-Jewish hate, it has other forms of hate speech that may possibly rev up such above mentioned terrorists. Is that a good summary? Assuming so, I would counter, that perhaps talk on such radio shows (of which I admit to constantly listening) could be far more accurately described as “fear mongering” rather than “hate mongering” if one were to argue that one leads to the other, I don’t know, I’d consider that debate once made.

  5. 5
    Ron Chusid says:

    Mike,

    Remember, I see the internet addresses on all comments so I know it probably isn’t you. (Of course there are ways to send a comment so it comes through a different one).

    I’m also trying to figure out why all your comments, as well as those of some others, are being held for moderation when neither your name or IP address is in the moderation list.

  6. 6
    Mike Hatcher b.t.r.m. says:

    No worries, if it isn’t too much a burden for you, I kind of like the moderation, like training wheels, I don’t have to fear making a mistake.

  7. 7
    Ron Chusid says:

    Sneaky. The last comment came from a different IP address than your earlier one. Perhaps such changes is what is triggering the system to hold your comments.

  8. 8
    Mike Hatcher b.t.r.m. says:

    The ip difference is easy to explain, work computer v.s. home computer, that being said, it is odd that at work, all external e-mails are simply blocked, but these blog postings aren’t.

  9. 9
    Fritz says:

    Mike — blog output goes on a different port than email.  Does your work block gmail?  (Unlike most web email systems, gmail uses ssl by default, which is nice).    Also, if you have web access to your email provider, you should be able to ssl to your email and send/receive that way.

  10. 10
    Mike b.t.r.m. says:

    Sounds interesting, sadly I’m not very computer savvy, we have offical office e-mail and I don’t know what ssl is. It just “feels like” I’m sending an e-mail everytime I do a blog post.

  11. 11
    Ron Chusid says:

    Fritz,

    If this is becoming the tech thread, I figured out the cause of the problems I was having with my home desktop freezing up when rebooting.  Last week I went through the tedious process of using msconfig to limit what loads until I found the problem.

    The problem turned out to be from the anti-malware program. It was harder to find initially because sometimes Windows would load fine with it there at times but other times it would freeze before everything loaded.

    I don’t think the problem is the program itself. I think that programs which happened to be running when I had a Windows crash which preceded the problem were damaged, including this. Since I uninstalled the program and reinstalled everything has been running fine.

  12. 12
    Fritz says:

    I was just giving Mike some hints about how to get around business policies against sending private email.  Bad of me, I suppose.

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