Hate is a powerful emotion and we cannot deceive ourselves that, even though Barack Obama won the election in a landslide, there are not "patriots" who would undo the result through a violent act. The America correspondent for Telepolis – Florian Rötzer – reminds us that political assassinations are as American as apple pie:
Die USA haben zwar eine Demokratie, aber auch eine Kultur des Attentats
entwickelt, was die weite Verbreitung von Waffen unterstützt. Vier
Präsidenten wurden getötet, auf acht Präsidenten gab es
Anschlagsversuche. (The US may have a democracy, but it also has developed a culture of assassination which is also fed by the preponderance of firearms. Four presidents were killed, while attempts were made on eight presidents.)
The threats against Barack Obama have accelarated thanks to the rhetoric of the McCain-Palin campaign. Sarah Palin repeatedly told crowds of any white voters that Obama "palled around with terrorists" and held "un-American" views. The UK daily Telegraph reports that the US Secret Service blames Palin for a spike in threats against Barack Obama:
"The Secret Service warned the Obama family in mid October that they
had seen a dramatic increase in the number of threats against the
Democratic candidate, coinciding with Mrs Palin's attacks.
Michelle
Obama, the future First Lady, was so upset that she turned to her
friend and campaign adviser Valerie Jarrett and said: "Why would they
try to make people hate us?""
Nor has the election put these threats to rest. There is still the sense among right-wing extremists in the US and abroad that the election was somehow illigitimate, that Obama is, in fact, a Muslim terrorist. The German hate-blog – Politically Incorrect – hints that Obama won the election thanks to nefarious influences of Islamic states, that he is, in fact, the 12th Iman. The blog still has an American flag in its banner and describes itself as "pro-Amerikanisch", even though the American voters have demonstrated over and over that they reject the hate propagated by Politically Incorrect and its commenters.
As a vocal Obama supporter with a presence on the Web, I get my share of threats and hate mail. But nothing prepared me for a chilling e-mail that was meant to incite violence against the president elect (NYTreeFarmer – whoever you are, I forwarded your message to the FBI). Here it was alleged that President Obama will confiscate the guns and other property of white people as part of his plan to "redistribute the wealth". Furthermore, he will even resort to murder and other barbaric practices ("Thus, the sale of body parts harvested from
greedy white people is well within the scope of foreseeable means for
supporting Obama's proposed "National Security Force"), The e-mail concudes with a banner that reads: Re-elect Biden 2012. It took me a second to grasp the meaning of that; then chills went down my spine.
