Michael Keegan, President of People for the American Way, sent out a letter today describing the ridiculous claims of far-right politicians about the Charleston massacre.

 

Keegan writes:

 

A horrific event like this — an attack on our people, our values, and our very way of life — should bring us together in mourning. And it should force us, as a country, to confront the uncomfortable truths about our history and our culture that erupt, too often, in devastating violence.

 

But no. We can’t have that full discussion. Because the powerful interests — and the political leaders beholden to them — that benefit from the status quo and from Americans being divided won’t let us.

 

What do I mean by that? Let’s have a look at the responses to this tragedy from the Republican candidates for president and other leading right-wing figures, which range from willfully ignorant to astonishingly delusional to crassly dishonest.

 

When asked if the shooting in Charleston was racially motivated, Jeb Bush said, “I don’t know.”
Lindsey Graham joined the right-wing media trend of trying to take the focus off race and advance the myth that this was really a hate crime against religious Christians, saying the shooter may have been “looking for Christians to kill.”
Rick Perry called the shooting an “accident,” that was possibly caused by the over-prescription of medication and that is being exploited by President Obama to try to “take the guns out of the hands of everyone in this country.”
Mike Huckabee joined a chorus of many on the Right in saying the shooting could have been prevented if only the church members were armed.
The American Family Association’s Sandy Rios said that President Obama “enjoys” such incidents because it will give him another chance to “remove guns from the hands of the American people.”
Right-wing talk show host Alex Jones linked the shooting to a socialist race war plot.
Far-right radio host Jesse Lee Peterson said simultaneously that the shooting was intended to start race war but that racism is not an issue in America today, and said that identifying racism is the real threat because white people are being made to feel guilty and fearful about being called racist, which will lead to built-up anger boiling over into more violent race-based attacks like the one in South Carolina.

 

He might have added to this list that a board member of the National Rifle Association blamed Reverend Clementa Pinckney for the massacre because, as a state legislator, he had opposed “conceal carry.” If the members of the church had been armed, they could have shot the killer. Thus, in his view, gun control causes gun violence. Everyone should be packed and ready to fire.

 

What a country that would be. Everyone armed and everyone on edge, wondering when the firing begins.