Weiye Loh's Library tagged Rightwing →  View Popular, Search in Google

“Do you see why I am worried? I myself have spent some time in the past trying to show ‘the lack of scientific certainty’ inherent in the construction of facts. I too made it a ‘primary issue’. But I did not exactly aim at fooling the public by obscuring the certainty of a closed argument—or did I? …

“… While we spent years trying to detect the real prejudices hidden behind the appearance of objective statements, do we now have to reveal the real objective and incontrovertible facts hidden behind the illusion of prejudices? And yet entire Ph.D. programs are still running to make sure that good American kids are learning the hard way that facts are made up, that there is no such thing as natural, unmediated, unbiased access to truth, that we are always prisoners of language, that we always speak from a particular standpoint, and so on, while dangerous extremists are using the very same argument of social construction to destroy hard-won evidence that could save our lives.

“Was I wrong to participate in the invention of this field known as science studies? Is it enough to say that we did not really mean what we said? Why does it burn my tongue to say that global warming is a fact  whether you like it or not? Why can’t I simply say that the argument is closed for good? Should I reassure myself by simply saying that bad guys can use any weapon at hand, naturalized facts when it suits them and social construction when it suits them? Should we apologize for having been wrong all along? Or should we rather bring the sword of criticism to criticism itself and do a bit of soul-searching here: what were we really after when we were so intent on showing the social construction of scientific facts … Isn’t this what criticism intended to say: that there is no sure ground anywhere? But what does it mean when this lack of sure ground is taken away from us by the worst possible fellows as an argument against the things we cherish?…

The Religious Right/Far Right et al. favored private "facts," too.

They claimed that global warming wasn't real. They asserted this because scientists (those same agents of Satan who insisted that evolution was real) were the ones who said human actions were changing the climate. Worse, the government said so, too!

"Global warming is a left-wing plot to take away our freedom!"

It's a question of legitimacy and illegitimacy.

What the Religious Right, including the Religious Right's Roman Catholic and Protestant enablers, did was contribute to a climate in which the very legitimacy of our government--is questioned as part of religious faith itself.

It was in the context of delegitimizing our government that actions by domestic terrorists like Timothy McVeigh became thinkable. In 1993 McVeigh told a reporter, "The government is continually growing bigger and more powerful and the people need to prepare to defend themselves against government control."

Change a word or two and his words could have been lifted from my father's 1981 book A Christian Manifesto, or for that matter a few decades later, from statements by the so-called Tea Party or those by Michele Bachmann, or Robert George or his follower Glenn Beck.

In my father's book he called for the overthrow of the US government unless non-violent ways were found to overturn Roe v Wade. He compared America to Nazi Germany.

In an op-ed at Jadaliyya, Shiva Balaghi calls the events a "Tragic Day for Norway; Shameful Day for Journalism." She summarizes her own view of the reports:

 

  I read a story in the New York Times that squarely pointed to jihadi groups angered at the war in Afghanistan...The Financial Times was no better. From the start, it reported allegations of Islamic terrorism, continuing with this view well into its evening reporting by which time an arrest had already been made in the case... Judy Woodruff’s interview with a Norwegian journalist that aired on PBS’s Newshour followed a similar scenario.

 

  In this 24/7 news cycle driven even more mad by terror experts who conduct research using google and tweet a mile a minute, journalists should exercise caution... Perhaps today the neo-Nazis in Europe count Muslims among the problems that drive their madness. But to a large degree, these right wing extremist views shaped twentieth century Europe.

Ibrahim Hewitt writes an editoral at Al-Jazeera, where he observes that once media outlets noted that the suspect was not Muslim, they disassociated connections between the suspect's beliefs and his alleged violent actions.

 

  ...the perpetrator was a "blond, blue-eyed Norwegian" with "political traits towards the right, and anti-Muslim views." Not surprisingly, the man's intentions were neither linked to these "traits," nor to his postings on "websites with Christian fundamentalist tendencies." Any influence "remains to be seen"; echoes of Oklahoma 1995. Interestingly, this criminal is described by one unnamed Norwegian official as a "madman."

These motives provide followers of far right and fundamentalist groups with a compelling and convincing rationale for getting actively involved. Foremost, these citizens perceive that a wider community is under threat, whether from al-Quaida, supranational organisations such as the EU or UN, immigration or the growth of settled Muslim communities.

Furthermore, they also contend that this threat is cultural rather than economic. It is not simply about jobs or social housing. It is a profound sense of concern that a set of values, way of life and wider community are under threat, and that only the most radical forms of action can remove this threat.