{"id":367065,"date":"2018-06-28T06:09:49","date_gmt":"2018-06-28T05:09:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/wapos-civility-fetish-delegitimizes-opposition-to-trump\/"},"modified":"2018-06-28T06:09:49","modified_gmt":"2018-06-28T05:09:49","slug":"wapos-civility-fetish-delegitimizes-opposition-to-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/wapos-civility-fetish-delegitimizes-opposition-to-trump\/","title":{"rendered":"WaPo\u2019s Civility Fetish Delegitimizes Opposition to Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"WaPo:<\/p>\n

The Washington Post<\/strong>‘s Gary Abernathy (6\/25\/18<\/a>) claims “Trump Country…is more tolerant than the left”\u2014ignoring the massive spike in hate crimes<\/a> that followed Trump’s election.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The Washington Post<\/b> ran three articles between Sunday, June 24, and Monday, June 25, calling for \u201ccivility\u201d and criticizing those who interfered with the dining experiences of Trump administration officials. In the highest-profile case, workers at the Red Hen in Lexington, Virginia, decided not to serve White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders over<\/a> the government she represents\u2019 discrimination against transgender people and its policy of separating children from their parents at the US\/Mexico border.<\/p>\n

Post<\/b> contributor Gary Abernathy\u00a0(6\/25\/18<\/a>) portrayed \u00a0those who have confronted members of the Trump administration as menacing hordes with a \u201cmob mentality,\u201d who, like vigilantes, have \u201cessentially evicted from restaurants\u201d Sanders and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen \u201cfor the crime of Trump association, similar to a misdemeanor but quickly approaching felony status.\u201d For Abernathy, these are the actions of tyrants that seem<\/p>\n

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designed to justify and even encourage harassment, intimidation and \u2014 then what? The rising McCarthyism of the left will soon lead to the money question: Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Trump coalition?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Post<\/b> editorial writer Charles Lane (6\/25\/18<\/a>), meanwhile, suggests that incivility is Trump\u2019s fault but nevertheless characterized the people challenging his officials as irrational gangs, describing those who use this tactic against the administration as using \u201cunconventional weapons \u2014 ostracism, heckling, mobbing\u201d\u2014in an article titled, \u201cThink Before You Mob.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lane went on to claim:<\/p>\n

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When civility prevails among the politically active, it spills over into calm and normality for everyone else; where you shop, or dine, or go to the movies doesn\u2019t have to be a political statement. Commercial establishments are, in that sense, safe spaces.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s unlikely, however, that \u201ccivility…among the politically active\u201d will bring \u00a0\u201ccalm and normality\u201d to thousands of caged children<\/a>\u00a0who have fled the devastation<\/a>\u00a0of their home countries, of which the United States was a\u00a0prime agent<\/a>\u2014children who, in the words of an ACLU report (5\/22\/18<\/a>), have been subjected to \u201cwidespread abuse,\u201d including sexual assault, punches, denial of medical treatment to pregnant minors, withholding of \u201cpermission to stand or move freely for days,\u201d and threats of \u201csolitary confinement in a small, freezing room.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"WaPo:<\/p>\n

The Washington Post<\/strong> editorial (6\/24\/18<\/a>) warning of “a world in which only the most zealous sign up for public service.” (Post<\/strong> opinion writer Molly Roberts provided a counterpoint to the paper’s civility obsession, pointing out that “dissent is under siege” in Trump’s America–6\/25\/18<\/a>.)<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Opposition to what\u2019s called incivility is opposition to resisting the extreme injustices of the present moment. A Post<\/b> editorial (6\/24\/18<\/a>) highlighted this point: The editors say they are against much of the Trump government\u2019s actions and rhetoric, but \u201cwe nonetheless would argue that Ms. Huckabee, and Ms. Nielsen and Mr. Miller, too, should be allowed to eat dinner in peace\u201d\u2014referring to Stephen Miller, one of the architects<\/a> of the policy of ripping apart families.<\/p>\n

The editorial worried about the work\/life balance of Trump staffers: \u201cNever-at-rest social media have blurred the line between work hours and private time. Cellphone cameras make it ever easier to intrude and broadcast.\u201d Those who run the Trump administration, the paper suggests, deserve to be able to clock out after a hard day of sending migrant children to internment camps<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The civility fetish, to borrow a phrase from Nima Shirazi and Adam Johnson (Citations Needed<\/b>, 6\/13\/18<\/a>), narrows the horizons of resistance\u2014for example, the academic Steven Salaita was fired for opposing Israel\u2019s massive 2014 assault on Gaza with \u201cuncivil\u201d tweets<\/a>. By suggesting that it\u2019s going too far to mildly inconvenience people who propagate transphobia<\/a> and carry out what the UN describes as<\/a> an \u201cunlawful,\u201d \u201cserious violation\u201d of the rights of children, the Post<\/b> is delegitimizing efforts to stop such measures.<\/p>\n

The propaganda effect of insisting on the need for civility is profoundly harmful, considering that virtually every gain won by workers, LGBTQ people, people of color and women\u2014and the many who belong to more than one of these groups\u2014has involved actions the Post<\/b> would call \u201cuncivil,\u201d such as armed strikes<\/a>, riots<\/a>, and attacks<\/a> on politicians\u2019 \u201chouses, churches, railway stations and post offices\u201d by women who believed \u201cthe only way to win the vote for women was to follow in the violent footsteps of men.\u201d<\/p>\n

The civility shibboleth requires a radical relativism in which virtually all political perspectives and actions are equally valid\u2014provided they aren\u2019t too threatening to the status quo\u2014and it\u2019s effectively impossible to reach a judgment about any of them. Both the editorial and Abernathy\u2019s column serve up the same ludicrous comparison between opposing the Trump government\u2019s transphobia and racism and supporting women\u2019s rights to choose to have an abortion\u2014comparisons that wrongly imply that attacks on people providing abortion services is a hypothetical, even though considerable violence of this type, including bombings and assassination, has taken place, sometimes with the encouragement of prominent media figures (Media Beat<\/b>, 8\/3\/94<\/a>; Salon<\/b>, 5\/31\/09<\/a>).<\/p>\n

According to the Post<\/b>:<\/p>\n

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Those who are insisting that we are in a special moment justifying incivility should think for a moment how many Americans might find their own special moment. How hard is it to imagine, for example, people who strongly believe that abortion is murder deciding that judges or other officials who protect abortion rights should not be able to live peaceably with their families?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Abernathy writes of Hillsboro, Ohio, where he lives, that \u201csome restaurant owners in this adamantly pro-life town\u201d believe that abortion is an \u201cinhumane and unethical\u201d practice that \u201ccannot stand,\u201d but would treat pro-choice politicians<\/p>\n

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with respect, even though their politics, lies and defense of the indefensible, as perceived locally, are as loathsome to most people here as Nielsen and Sanders supposedly are to those who forced their exits.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Yes, who\u2019s to say whether allowing a woman to control her body is any better than jailing children and forbidding them to hug one another<\/a>? Because the civility fetish entails fatuously pretending that almost every political position that doesn\u2019t challenge entrenched power is legitimate, it is demobilizing\u2014one cannot act against injustice without parsing justice from injustice\u2014at a moment when mobilization is badly needed.<\/p>\n

Because the Post<\/b> has sanctified civility, small departures from its codes seem dangerous. Thus the paper misses an important angle to the story, namely that Trump\u2019s officials have encountered an astonishingly small amount of pushback to this point, and that this lack of resistance is the real danger facing the United States and the rest of the world.<\/p>\n

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Messages can be sent to the Washington Post <\/strong>at letters@washpost.com<\/a>, or via Twitter<\/strong> @washingtonpost<\/a>. Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective.<\/em><\/p>\n

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