What's wrong with Tit for Tat?

Virginia Tea Partiers Endorse Posting Periello's Home Address, Insist They're Not 'A Violent Group Of People':

On Monday, Lynchburg Tea Party member Mike Troxel posted what he believed to be the home address of Rep. Tom Periello (D-VA), encouraging people to drop by for a “good face-to-face chat”
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We also contacted Nigel Coleman, leader of the nearby Danville Tea Party in Virginia. In the past, Coleman gained attention for his group’s plan to burn Periello and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) in effigy, although the stunt was eventually canceled. Coleman said that he knew Troxel and had no problem with the posting of Periello’s home address. “There’s an assumption that we’re a violent group of people and we’d do something bad to the man,” he said. “We’re just trying to get heard.” The Danville News reported that Coleman also posted the address to his Facebook page, and when told it was actually the brother’s address, he replied, “Oh well, collateral damage.”

It turns out that the address posted wasn't Tom Periello's, but his brother Bo's. Bo Periello discovered that a live propane line at his house was cut.

This is a textbook definition of political terrorism and political threat.

I understand at some level the idea that "we are better than they are". I also understand the history of counterinsurgency operations in Northern Ireland and in Vietnam -- and the fact that using insurgency techniques against an insurgency is often very effective.

So here's my question, and it's a serious one...

Why can't I publish Nigel Coleman's address and email? I can get it for $0.95 from an online search site.

Mike Troxel and Nigel Coleman set the rules of the debate when they published an address knowing that it would encourage violent behaviour. As they would say in Law & Order, they are exhibiting "depraved indifference".

The martial art I study (American Kenpo) has a very simple philosophy: I'm not gonna start a fight with you, but if you start one with me, I am going to do my best to finish it -- quickly and with minimal damage to myself. Once the fight starts, I don't care how much damage I have to do to you in order to stop you from hurting me.

So why can't I publish Mike Troxel's address and email? I didn't start threatening people, and I didn't set the rules of the debate. Mike Troxel and Nigel Coleman did, and Nigel (who's clearly not paid to think) considers attempted arson at Bo Periello's house as "collateral damage".

In my eyes, that makes them fair game -- as fair game as someone who took a swing at me.

Update 20100324 2054 PDT -- It occurs to me that Mike Troxel and Nigel Coleman don't think they did anything dangerous -- to them. If I were to publish their addresses, I'd do it in a deniable way, preferably a way that makes it difficult or impossible to link it to me. Because I would know that I was doing something dangerous. Dangerous to me. Dangerous to my family.

I want bullies like Mike Troxel and Nigel Coleman to understand that they did something dangerous. Dangerous to them. I want them to be afraid that something bad will happen to them because they did this.

Remember what happened to Michelle Malkin when she published addresses? From Wikipedia, with references:

In April 2006, Students Against War (SAW), a campus group at University of California, Santa Cruz, staged a protest against the presence of military recruiters on campus, and sent out a press release containing contact details (names, phone numbers and e-mail addresses) of three student leaders for use by reporters. Malkin included these contact details in a blog column entitled "Seditious Santa Cruz vs. America".[47]

Malkin claimed the contact information was originally taken from SAW's own website, but that later SAW had removed it and had "wiped" the "cached version."[48]

The students asked Malkin to remove the contact details from her blog, but Malkin reposted them several times [49] writing in her blog: "I am leaving it up. If you are contacting them, I do not condone death threats or foul language. As for SAW, my message is this: You are responsible for your individual actions. Other individuals are responsible for theirs. Grow up and take responsibility."[47]

SAW remarked: "Due to the continued irresponsible actions of some bloggers, members of the group have received numerous death threats and anti-Semitic comments through phone calls and emails." [50] A blog war ensued. Malkin claimed that she received hostile e-mails[51] then her private home address, phone number, photos of her neighborhood and maps to her house were published on several websites. The Santa Cruz Sentinel reported receiving an email from Malkin saying that this forced her to remove one of her children from school and move her family.[52]

Now that's what I'm talkin' about!

Bullies only understand bullying.

Clarifying 20100324 2246 PDT -- I do not approve of any threat to Michelle Malkin's family, especially her children. So when I say "Now that's what I'm talkin' about!", I refer to the reciprocal revelation of Malkin's address alone. Anybody who would threaten her family is a sick f*ck.

There's more...

Kickin' Ass and Namin' Names

(Dale Robertson, a Tea Party activist, holding his sign at the Feb. 27, 2009 Tea Party in Houston)

The conservatism which took hold in America during the cultural devastation of Ronald Reagan, the Neocons who successfully married the Religious Right, depends on conning the working class to benefit the owning class by actively maintaining or advancing two bedrock values: woman-hating and white supremacy. It's a one-two punch that sucks in otherwise progessive males who are covertly terrified of powerful women and otherwise intelligent women who are covertly terrified of brown folks. (Or not so covertly.)

I agree with Katha Pollitt that I'm personally relieved we are not sitting in the raging floodwaters of woman-hating sewage that would fill all the airwaves if Hillary Clinton had won the Presidency. The backlash would be horrific.

But equally horrific is how white supremacy has come out from under wraps (well. it never was concealed for those of us without privilege or choosing to not accept denial) and has fueled a 250% increase in terrorist organizations whose raison d'etre is race hatred. And make no mistake about it, to quote Bob Cesca's essay at Huffpo today, "The Tea Party is all about race."

I'm going to quote a few sections from his post to whet your appetite but I hope you'll go read it for yourselves. We must continue challenging the media coverage which acts like these people have a rational agenda and force exposure of what actually brings them together -- why separatist, eliminationist Sarah Palin is their darling. Why Rick Perry is running for Governor of Texas with TV spots openly declaring his support for Tenthers, a code for white supremacists who want to roll back federal civil rights protection in "their" states. We have to decode their dogwhistles at every turn and organize that majority of citizens for whom race hatred is un-American. We are the real patriots, and we must not let them steal that term.

From Bob Cesca The Tea Party Is All About Race:

"...when you strip away all of the rage, all of the nonsensical loud noises and all of the contradictions, all that's left is race. The tea party is almost entirely about race, and there's no comparative group on the left that's similarly motivated by bigotry, ignorance and racial hatred.

"...The tea party is an extension of talk radio. It's an extension of Fox News Channel. It's an extension of the southern faction of the Republican Party -- the faction that gave us the Southern Strategy, the Willie Horton ad, the White Hands ad and the racially divisive politics of Lee Atwater and Karl Rove. It's an extension of the race-baiting and, often, the outright racism evident in all of those conservative spheres.

"...In the final analysis, when you boil away all of the weirdness, it becomes clear that the teabaggers are pissed because there isn't yet another doddering old white guy in the White House -- like they're used to. That's what this is all about."

(Hat-tip to Brilliant at Breakfast for pointing me toward the Cesca post.)

There's more...