The Hypocrisy Of The Right

Power of Narrative's Arthur Silber challenges the right-wing's hypocrisy on the cartoon fury:
Get Your Propaganda Right Here: Cartoon Lies, and Stoking the Hatred

The detail with which he outlines his argument is worthy reading in full, but here's his main point-

The war propagandists have once again framed this controversy in a way that is deeply dishonest. As the Newsweek onslaught less than a year ago demonstrated -- and that example could be multiplied hundreds of times -- freedom of the press is not exactly a consistently high priority for them. What they truly want, as I pointed out in my entry about the Newsweek brouhaha, is a George Creel press, as in World War I: a press that prints "nothing but good news," 24/7. If they can't achieve official censorship, they'll settle for de facto censorship, achieved by relentless intimidation.

But in the case of the cartoons, the war propagandists now tell us that every news organ in the world is obliged to print them. Nothing less than the future of civilization is at stake. I do not exaggerate: "This really is a case of civilization against the barbarians."

I called out this hypocrisy a week ago, as well. The right is many things, but free speech advocates they're not.

He concludes with a harsh, but accurate, point-

The Bush administration and its most rabid supporters have internalized this view completely: at best, other cultures are inferior to the West. At worst, they are "barbaric" -- and not even human. This pattern of particularly vicious racism is a commonplace in American history, especially in wartime.

PS- For the some of the most hysterical, warmongering far-right shrill on the net, see Fox News darling Michelle Malkin in action (FreeRepublic and others provide similar examples, to a lesser extent). Unlike some others, she doesn't even bother to contain the glee with she stokes the fires. Ann Coulter may have been the only one to openly say we need to kill all these people or convert them to Christianity, but many others did share the same general sentiment, particularly right after 9/11.

We are fighting a serious war on terror and these people want a watered-down Crusades.