{"id":45,"date":"2018-02-03T11:05:16","date_gmt":"2018-02-03T16:05:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/rhetoric-terrorism\/?p=45"},"modified":"2018-02-03T11:05:16","modified_gmt":"2018-02-03T16:05:16","slug":"week-3-readings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/rhetoric-terrorism\/2018\/02\/03\/week-3-readings\/","title":{"rendered":"Week 3 Readings"},"content":{"rendered":"

In these readings, the focus was on America\u2019s heightened fear of terrorism and terrorism attacks, and the Right-Wing responses to September 11 within a historical context. It was very eye opening to see the citizens\u2019 knee-jerk viewpoints on the War on Terrorism in contrast to the more strictly political viewpoints, as they are more similar than some would think when unpacking both. <\/span><\/p>\n

Peter Baker\u2019s article in the New York Times was written just before Obama was about to make his last State of the Union speech, discussing what he would probably say about what his administration was planning on doing to continue to protect Americans against the threat of international terrorism. Baker suspected that Obama would not touch on the inflating sense of danger, although he points out that its an important fact to acknowledge. Baker discusses a lot of the same statistics that we discussed in class, repeating the notion that we are much more at risk from things that we encounter every day then of terrorism attacks. He reiterates the idea that by the very definition of what terrorism<\/a> is, its almost impossible to refute the irrational fear that it invokes. I think that as a leader of our country, it must be very difficult to balance the irrational fears of a nation without completely dismissing them and still attempting to keep the level head that is required of a leader and calming the nation. <\/span><\/p>\n

In Matthew Lyons\u2019 article, he discusses the distinctions in history that make up four right wing movements, and their specific responses to 9\/11. First, Lyons defines the three major ideological currents that stand out in right-wing movements seem to embody, racial nationalism, business nationalism and Cold War nationalism, which are discussed in the four movements.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the second part of his article, he defines the four different movements within the broad right-wing category. \u00a0He first discusses neoconservatism, stating that their roots were primarily in the Cold War nationalist ideology. Neoconservatives, like George W. Bush, changed America\u2019s policy from defensive warfare to preemptive warfare in the wake of 9\/11. \u00a0They truly felt that the United States had a duty to spread capitalist democracy, and that it was our duty as a nation to rid the world of terrorism. \u00a0This idea stems from John O\u2019Sullivan\u2019s Manifest Destiny<\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n

In contrast, the paleoconservatives used business nationalism and an overt racial nationalism as their platform. They did not believe in American exceptionalism<\/a>, and instead were suspicious of the federal government, advocating that we turn our attention into fixing our government. Paleocons believed that the U.S. courts were corrupt and that the federal government was dishonest. For example, they vehemently opposed the USA PATRIOT act<\/a> that was enacted post 9\/11, thinking that it was a serious threat to civil liberties. That being said, they supported the idea of racial profiling of Middle Easterners, and they wanted an immediate halt to all immigration and to deport all undocumented immigrants. <\/span><\/p>\n

The third movement that Lyons discusses is the Christian Right movement, who\u2019s fundamentals were grounded in the belief that the United States was a Christian nation. They felt as though the United States was being punished through 9\/11 because they had become a nation filled with gays and lesbians, abortion providers, and liberal advocacy groups. They were sort of a middle ground, echoing paleocon ideas about the globalist conspiracy threatening U.S. sovereignty, but also agreed with the neocons about issues of trade and military intervention. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The last movement Lyons discusses is the Far-Right movement, which consisted of two sub-branches, Cryptofascists and the more military groups such as Aryan Nations<\/a>. A lot of groups, such as the Neo-Nazis, respected the sacrifice, and some even said that they praised the hijackers for aiding in the killing of jews. They felt as though the enemy of their enemy was their friend. That being said, they were divided within their own movement and not all felt that way. <\/span><\/p>\n

Through both readings, I feel as though we gained a lot of knowledge on how the average citizen feels about the world post 9\/11 and how the right-wing feels about post 9\/11. I think it would be very interesting to read a similar article on the left ideologies post 9\/11 and their responses. It is clear that the viewpoints on terrorism and 9\/11 are very starkly defined, both in the citizens\u2019 irrational fears and in the politician’s\u2019 inability to budge and see the other side. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In these readings, the focus was on America\u2019s heightened fear of terrorism and terrorism attacks, and the Right-Wing responses to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3847,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/rhetoric-terrorism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/rhetoric-terrorism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/rhetoric-terrorism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/rhetoric-terrorism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3847"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/rhetoric-terrorism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/rhetoric-terrorism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/rhetoric-terrorism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/rhetoric-terrorism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/rhetoric-terrorism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}