The First Refuge of Scoundrels

Posted on July 23, 2011 in Stigma Terrorism Violence

In the wake of yet another act of terrorism by a right wing zealot, we hear the tired cry that this was the work of a “madman”. How quick people are to blame what Anders Behring Breiviks on psychosis! Do they have any evidence at this point? No. It is just an attempt to exculpate all the years of shrill talk from right wing pundits and demagogues that led up to this.

I know the darkness of psychosis personally. I have not been perfect, sometimes sadistic but never to the point where I have wreaked physical harm on others, much less attempted to kill. Do I have to cite statistics that show the so-called sane are more dangerous, that serial killers typically do not have schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or depression — again? Do I have to show that this is the work of a sociopath who wrapped himself in the cross and the Tea Party?

I should not have to. But the Right runs like the Right always runs from the facts. Suppose I said that we shouldn’t take the 9/11 attacks seriously because bin Laden and the men who flew the planes were merely “madmen”? Would you let Al Qaeda and the various associated prophets of terrorism off the hook even if they did nothing but write and make speeches?

“Madman” is right-wing political correctness for white male terrorist.

I think we need a corollary to Dr. Johnson’s maxim about patriotism being the last refuge of a scoundrel. There is a first refuge that the Right always takes when its evilest impulses betray themselves: stigma. Stigma is the first refuge of a scoundrel.