Three Way News: Stabbed in the back

Monday, July 17, 2006

Stabbed in the back

This Harper's piece is long and literate review of the Right's campaign to label the Left as enemies of the nation. It's difficult to excerpt anything meaningful without stripping needed context. Here's one snapshot of the Korean War period:

Republican Senator William Jenner of Indiana bellowed from the floor of the Senate that Âthis country today is in the hands of a secret inner coterie which is directed by agents of the Soviet Union. We must cut this whole cancerous conspiracy out of our Government at once. Our own choice is to impeach President Truman and find out who is the secret invisible government which has so cleverly led our country down the road to destruction.Â Nixon, his new colleague, agreed in barely coded language, attacking Âthe whining, whimpering, groveling attitude of our diplomatic representatives who talk of AmericaÂs fear rather than of AmericaÂs strength and of AmericaÂs courage.Â He claimed that Âtop administration officials have refused time and time again to recognize the existence of this fifth columnÂ or Âto take effective action to clear subversives outÂ of the government.

Striking language and charges on the floor of the Senate. Perhaps more extreme than one would expect on the Senate floor today -- unless it was being quoted from the latest Coulter screed or Michael Savage show.

Deeper in the piece comes this question:

If the power of the stab-in-the-back narrative from Vietnam is beyond question, it still raises the question of why. Why should we wish to maintain a narrative of horrendous national betrayal, one in which our own democratically elected government, and a large portion of our fellow citizens, are guilty of horribly betraying our fighting men?
The answer, I think, lies in Richard NixonÂs ability to expand the Siegfried myth from the halls of power out into the streets. Government conspiracies are still culpable, of course; ironically, it was NixonÂs own administration that first Âleft behindÂ American POWs in North Vietnam. Yet this makes little difference to the American right, which never considered Nixon ideologically pure enough to be a member in good standing, and which has always made hay by railing against government, even now that they are it. What Nixon and a few of his contemporaries did for the right was to make culture war the permanent condition of American politics.
...This has become such an ingrained part of the right wingÂs belief system that the Bush Administration has now become the first government in our nationÂs history to fight a major war without seeking any sort of national solidarity. Far from it. The whole purpose of the war in IraqÂand the Âwar on terrorismÂÂseems to have been to foment division and to win elections by forcing Americans to choose between starkly different visions of what their country should be.

The piece is full of history which I am not competent to judge. However, the theme it presents is easily verifiable against contemporary events. It's a theme -- left as enemy -- to be tested again in November. So far, at least, the enemies in Minnesota are doing quite well.

2 Comments:

I read that article in my paper copy of Harper's and I think my favorite bit was the explanation about how the stabbed in the back strategy isn't working anymore in part because Americans aren't historically literate enough to follow the historical chain of paranoia anymore.

By Scooter, at 7:39 PM