Gabe Phifer, Mike Ferguson in the Morning
Last week, NewstalkSTL was treated to this lovely tweet by failed State Senate candidate Jess Piper.
And hilarity ensued. Typically, I like to laugh off this kind of rhetoric. It’s unserious, maliciously stupid, and comes across like a child calling me a “poopy head” during a tantrum. I might as well respond, “I know you are, but what am I?” Same energy.
But, sometimes, this decidedly libelous mantra of the Left to label everyone to the right of Chez Guevara as a Nazi needs to be called out for what it is.
Everyone understands the politics of personal destruction when it comes to actual campaigns.
Candidates and their supporters have been sliming their opposition pretty much since voting became a thing. I’m always brought back to the presidential election of 1800 where a pro-John Adams essay in a newspaper predicted that a Thomas Jefferson victory would lead to “your dwellings in flames, female chastity violated,” and “children writhing on the pike.” As distasteful as I find such rhetoric, I believe the average voter understood the hyperbole simply to mean that Jefferson was the wrong guy for the job. I doubt anyone took to heart the idea that Jefferson’s character was one that relished in everything he was being accused of promoting. There’s not much in the history books suggesting he suffered any lasting personal damage. But that isn’t so for regular folks. When the politics of personal destruction is allowed to flourish among neighbors, those reputational scars can be very real, their legacies unrelenting, and their consequences dire.
If you’ve ever read up on witch trials, particularly the most famous American example from Salem,
Massachusetts, you’d see less a tale of superstition and misplaced religious fervor (though such elements were contributors), but more a story about the power of character assassination. The reason could be anything, from jealousy to political ambition, personal grudge to self-preservation – but once the accusation was made, it was nearly unstoppable. The accusation would lead to gossip and doubt, which would lead to fervent denials by the accused. The denials would be taken as evidence supporting the gossip and the real finger-pointing would begin. Ostracization would follow with official actions not long behind. The courts would be of the kangaroo variety and the punishments would be swift and brutal.
A witch was a consort of the Devil, you see. A person who had traded their humanity to Satan in
exchange for power, so they weren’t really people anymore. It was, therefore, socially acceptable to
treat these inhuman servants of evil like the monsters they were. Once the wider social order had come to that conclusion, their property was forfeit, their rights non-existent. And it was obligatory to discount anything they said, especially in their own defense. Of course, a witch would lie to save themselves from the fire! A witch can only speak lies. Only a fool would believe them, and only a comrade in their villainy would speak up on their behalf. Those accused of being a witch were dead to the village way before their actual executions. They just didn’t know it yet. Being labeled a witch was the ultimate in marginalization in the late 1600s.
It’s a very similar thing to be labeled a Nazi (or racist, or misogynist, etc.) in modern America. The Left REALLY loves their Nazi Hunts. Granted, the court of public opinion no longer has the power to outright kill (yet), but many of the same elements remain. Your humanity is denied so your rights are up for grabs. And certainly, your voice must be silenced because nothing good could come from the lips of a “Nazi.” At least, that’s the way the Left has intended things to work. Because they’ve been used so often and so wrongly in full public view, the power of these words has diminished nearly to the point of irrelevance. (Thus, my tendency to brush them off.) But the intent is still there to silence and marginalize, to destroy on as many levels as possible. Given the Leftist tendency to dance on the graves of deceased conservatives, it wouldn’t be a stretch to think that they truly wish death upon their political adversaries.
My Dad grew up in the Jim Crow South and spoke about how he was taught to behave in the unlikely event he found himself anywhere near a white woman. Don’t shake her hand. Don’t speak to her. Don’t even look her way. Do everything in your power NOT to be near her. Give them not one excuse upon which to build their case against you – because all it would take is one accusation. The lynching that would follow could be via an unruly mob or a court-appointed one, but it would come. And even if you managed to physically survive, your reputation wouldn’t. No one would want to be associated with you
for fear of such severe consequences that you might as well be dead anyway. So that’s what’s truly at work here. It’s the same ugly spirit that seeks to silence and destroy that motivates Leftists to default to this language. Be on your guard. Ignore them when you can. Confront them when you have to. But know what they’re trying to do and don’t be surprised. I’m neither shocked by what was said, nor who it came
from. My Dad warned me about it.
More Posts for Show: Mike Ferguson in the Morning
