Blowing Smoke - Michael Wolraich [69]
Spreading the Word
Almost perfect, anyway. There was one problem: the rationalizations were lies. In their more extreme forms, they were ridiculously obvious lies. Those who claimed to be persecuted must have realized that on some level, just as Festinger’s UFO cultists must have recognized that their prophet was a fraud. Thus, if Festinger’s theory holds, we should be able to find examples of proselytizing among believers in persecution politics as they seek to bolster their confidence in flimsy rationalizations by winning converts who affirm the lies.
And, indeed, the insecurity of persecution theorists is palpable. Paranoid conservatives incessantly reassure themselves and the world of their tolerance and open-mindedness. George Wallace, for instance, drew a fine distinction between a racist “who despises someone because of his color” and a segregationist “who conscientiously believes that it is in the best interest of Negro and white to have a separate education and social order.” Pat Buchanan defended Wallace by saying, “I don’t think the Governor owes anyone an apology. How do you blame Governor Wallace who stands with his traditions and customs and state, and defies an entire national establishment?”15 Richard Nixon assured his constituents that their feelings of resentment against blacks were not racist:
When a mother sees her child taken away from a neighborhood school and transported miles away, and she objects to that, I don’t think it is right to charge her with bigotry. When young people apply for jobs—in politics or in industry—and find the door closed because they don’t fit into some numerical quota, despite their ability, and they object, I do not think it is right to condemn those young people as insensitive or racist.16
Anita Bryant promised, “I never condoned nor teach my children discrimination against anyone because of their race or religion.” Sean Hannity challenged Obama to point to “a single instance in which President Bush or McCain or Karl Rove or Sean Hannity or talk radio or any other major Republican has made an issue of Obama’s race.”17 Tea Party leader Mark Williams, whose race baiting is so inflammatory that the National Tea Party Federation eventually ejected his Tea Party Express organization, insisted, “It’s impossible for there to be a racist element in the tea party.”18 The Louisiana justice of the peace who refused to perform interracial marriages assured journalists, “I have piles and piles of black friends.” And David Duke repeats in almost every article he writes that he’s not antiblack; he’s pro-European American.
But even more than professing their tolerance, leaders of the paranoid right endlessly rehearse accusations of intolerance against their liberal and minority opponents. George Wallace raged, “You know who the biggest bigots in the world are—they’re the ones who call others bigots.”19 Pat Buchanan complained, “What the government is doing today, in its conscious favoritism toward blacks, feminists, Indians, and the Spanish-speaking, is no more defensible than what the segregationists of another era used to do.”20 Anita Bryant insisted that homosexuals were “infringing upon my right or rather DISCRIMINATING against me as a citizen and mother.”21 Rush Limbaugh rhetorically asked, “How do you get promoted in a Barack Obama administration? By hating white people.”22 Tom Tancredo called one civil rights organization “a Latino KKK.”23 Tea Party leader Mark Williams called Obama a “half-white racist president” and told CNN, “The racists have their own movement. It’s called the NAACP.”24 Bill O’Reilly described Latino civil rights supporters as “the real racists” and secular Christmas messages as “bigotry.”25 But leave it to Pat Robertson to deliver a persecution politics tour de force on behalf of oppressed Christians:
Just like what Nazi Germany did to the Jews,