7/01/2004

Digital Brownshirts

Mainstream conservative "family values" group sends Michael Moore's home address to its public email list.

Republican groups jammed phone lines in New Hampshire to stall get-out-the-vote efforts by Democrats.

And Bush uses campaign ads that intersperse images of Hitler with Democrats (watch the ad for yourself, titled "Kerry's Coalition of the Wild-eyed")

The common thread here is that the Republican mainstream - not the fringe - refuses to debate ideas, preferring to smear its opponents, misrepresent their arguments, and circumvent the system to win at all costs.

5 comments:

Phlegm said...

Oh the irony. "This is not a time for rage, it's a time for steady leadership." Leadership that provides steady fear that invokes that rage. Heh.

ubaid said...

intersperse images of Hitler with DemocratsThose images are from ads on Moveon.org, which compare Bush and his administration to Hitler/Nazi Germany.

Aziz P. said...

wrong ubaid - MoveOn sponsored an ad contest, to which two hitler-imagery ads were submitted, and MoveOn explicitly REJECTED those ads and disavowe them publicly.

The Bushg campaign misrepresents that the way you (perhaps unknowingly?) did just now in your campaign, which is a lie on their part. Then the Bush campaign argues that "because they did it first, we can d it" which is immoral and unprincipled. And they continue to keep those ads on their website.

which is desperate.

Unknown said...

When I first heard that the family values group sent moore's home address to its email list, i was outraged. Then I thought about how i was a bit impressed with protestors enacting a performance of soldiers and tortur-eeees from abu ghraib, in front of rumsfeld's house (although a part of me was a bit uncomfortable about going to rummy's house too).

But at the same time, what Rumsfeld has been doing has been costing lives, and people peacefully demonstrated outside his house. What Moore has been doing has been telling a side of the media that is not told by the mainstream media, and he's not committing a crime. So people better not front... I'll be so upset if someone gets hurt.

I'm not sure how I feel about all this. But I agree here -- there's a lot of propaganda going around (especially with the kerry coalition of the wild-eyed).

ubaid said...

I'm not sure if you got the point I was making, from the post it looks like you are saying the Bush campaign is interspersing images of Hitler and the Democrats, however, "Kerry's Coalition of the Wild-eyed" seems to be complaining that Kerry's wide-eyed supporters are out of their minds and cites the rejected (I'm aware of that issue btw) ads from MoveOn.org as evidence. Of course, the Bush ad is in itself rather misleading but this administration has never been forthright about anything any way.
I'm not, in any sense of the term, a supporter of Bush - Cheney '04, not that my support would make any practical difference to either side :)