Thinly veiled hate speech communicated through code has stoked the worst of American racism and violence at McCain town halls this week. Word choices like “dangerously unprepared,” “domestic terrorist Bill Ayers,” “radical,” and “risky” in McCain’s campaign ads inflame xenophobia and the impulse to seek refuge in the bosom of White Supremacy. Palin’s ignorant and loose language, like her assertion that Obama has a history of “palling around with terrorists,” juxtaposed with her proud display of a purse emblazoned with the words “real women hunt moose,” signal to disenfranchised whites that Obama is their rightful prey. Though McCain himself seemed horrified by the responses of his supporters, who appear on the network and cable news channels like Klan members rallying before a good ole fashioned lynching, he has allowed his own impotent slide in the polls and backlash over his poor judgment and erratic behavior to overwhelm any shred of decency in his campaign – and, perhaps, in him.
Even before entering McCain’s town halls, while lined up outside, McCain supporters have been caught on amateur video explicitly expressing pure hate. Anxiety over the free-falling economy, the ongoing trickle-down violence of two wars, and a constant beating of the Palin dumb dumb drum have pushed many right-wingers back over the color line to the side their forefathers occupied. The othering of African Americans during slavery and the Reconstruction and post-Reconstruction Eras is exacerbated by outright lies about Obama’s citizenship, religion, and political allegiance.
Coming from right-wing blowhards, this language would be bad enough. Coming from a legitimate presidential campaign, this language is criminal.
The Secret Service should curb this language immediately. If the Republican Party fails to comply, the FBI should be brought in to impose limits on the sly use of hate speech in this and all future political campaigns. If our criminal justice system labels hate speech as particularly heinous in any street-level assault charge, certainly the institutions that govern our society should be prevented from rousing threats of physical violence among the party faithful.
Otherwise, given free rein to express their hate, the folk gunning for Obama will soon be coming after us.