PrintShare the hate
Last night, at a claimed 3192 locations nationwide, Moveon.org held house parties to view the new film Outfoxed, an unfair and unbalanced attack on the Fox News Channel. Already hyped by the New York Times and discredited by Fox News, the film offered a chance for like—minded folk to gather and share the hate. They feel hate for President Bush. They radiate hate for media outlets like Foxnews and talk radio, which dare break ranks with the dominant media liberalism. Most of all, they feel themselves ever so superior to conservatives, whom they hate and hold in contempt, those stupid, evil, primitive, and yet cunning malign beings.
You can still use their 'action tool' to see the source of those hate vibes you might have been experiencing in your own home last night, while watching Rita Cosby. Just fill—in your zip code, and read the street addresses of the Outfoxed parties in your town. Act quickly, though, because sooner or later Moveon will take this page off of their server.
The frenzy of the left continues to unfold before our very eyes.
The internet was first used to organize local affinity groups, as part of a mass political movement, by the Howard Dean campaign. By hooking up with local people of like mind, the Deaniacs were able to amplify their enthusiasm, and reinforce their belief in their righteousness. It felt really, really good to the participants, but ultimately was of no use in winning an election. If anything, spending too much time in each others' company seriously misled them about the extent to which their worldview was accepted, understood, or even regarded as sane. Non—joiners found them a bit, well, odd.
For the haters, the dangers are even greater. Most Americans do not see themselves as motivated by hate, and have little fellow—feeling for those who are. But among the haters themselves, at their video parties, in their faculty lounges or newsrooms, popularity is earned by the sharpness of the attack, the vitriol of the language, and the intensity of the revulsion at the way things are going in America. They have formed a subculture increasingly out of touch with the mainstream.
This strength and size new counterculture of disdain created the Radio City Music Hall fundraising debacle for Kerry—Edwards a couple of weeks ago. Surrounded by glamour and wealth united in their targeted disgust, it was easy for even the cautious Kerry to get caught—up in the enthusiasm, and praise the obscenity—hurling performers as the 'heart and soul' of America.
There is a good word to describe groups based on common beliefs at variance with society at large, which tend to flock together socially, and which define themselves as smarter, better—informed, and more correct than everyone else. They are termed 'cults.'
Cults can and do attract new members and grow, when they are tuned into a widely—felt need. But cults also tend to alienate non—members, precisely because the beliefs which bind cult members to one another gain social strength to degree that they are at variance with the rest of society. When a cult gains widespread support, it becomes a religion, a regime, or simply a common belief. But it loses its snob appeal.
There are enough hate cultists in America today to constitute the base audience for a successful polemical movie like Fahrenheit 911. Perhaps ten to fifteen million people, roughly five percent of Americans. They can make Al Franken and Richard Clarke into best—selling authors, and they can probably buy a lot of DVD copies of Outfoxed. So far, however, they have not been able to make Air America Radio into a successful talk radio operation.
In other circumstances, the hate cultists would be restrained in their public expressions, to avoid alienating too many 'gentiles' (people who don't share the core beliefs, that Bush is an idiot frontman/evil fanatic, that Foxnews and talk radio have no right to broadcast, and that conservatives are all beneath contempt). Their principal warning mechanism, keeping them from going too far over the line and alienating the mainstream folk, would ordinarily be the press. Critical commentary, editorials, and arched eyebrows from newsreaders would let them know that they need to cool off a bit, when their rhetoric becomes overheated.
But a substantial portion of the press has joined the cult. They applaud vigorously when a Whoopi Goldberg spews. They are useless as a feedback mechanism to keep the cult moving in the direction of majority rule, rather than in the direction of Jonestown.
The hate cultists are going to discredit the Democrats before the election is over. Remember how the country reacted to attacks on President Clinton, even those which were founded in fact. Blatant hatred is repellant outside the subculture which produced it.
Thomas Lifson is the editor and publisher of The American Thinker.
