Tuesday, August 17, 2004

Political thuggery

There's always a certain amount of petty vandalism and things like sign theft in any election, usually on both sides. But this year, things seem to have ratcheted up another notch, nudging closer to real violence -- and it all seems to be coming from the right-wing side.

The most recent incident to come to my attention happened a week and a half ago right in my own neighborhood:
A Renton woman is facing hundreds of dollars in car repairs because someone didn't like her politics.

A vandal struck Joni Job's car while she shopped this weekend at a Fremont grocery store.

It seems someone didn't like her Kerry-Edwards bumper sticker.

The vandal left his own political message on the side of her car. "Bush in 2004'" was scrawled in red paint.

Her car also has a new dent in the wheel well and a Confederate flag slapped on the back.

"That was the real bone chiller, that was the real bone chiller," said Job. "I just thought what, are we at civil war? This is crazy people ... stop."

[Via Xan at Corrente]

Somewhat more typically, someone has also been marking up yard signs in Dallas. But another commenter at this blog made an even more interesting observation:
The other day someone at work made a comment about my sticker, they asked me if it was my car who had the Kerry sticker and told me to be careful because someone might vandalize my car. I thought it was strange but didn't think anything of it.
The following day someone else saw me driving into work and they said it was career suicide.

As I say, a certain amount of this is probably normal in any election. But this year seems to have brought out the really fascistic tendencies of the right, especially at the level of the general populace. There's a reason for that, I think, and I'll be discussing it in detail soon.

In the meantime, of course, it will be safe to predict that we'll continue to hear tut-tutting from the Foxcist pundits about "Bush hatred." And when, as many are already predicting, the right-wing provocateurs show up in New York City to help incite "liberal violence," the latter will be all we'll hear about for the remainder of the campaign.

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