Review of "Outright Barbarous" by Jeffrey Feldman

First, it's an important book on an important subject - "how the Right's language of violence is polluting our public discourse and limiting the free exchange of ideas" -- no matter where you live.

Second, there's a Virginia connection: Feldman lived in Charlottesville for nearly a decade, earning is PhD in cultural anthropology at the University of Virginia.

Third, "Outright Barbarous" begins with a declaration by Feldman that his "decision to write a book on the problem of right-wing pundits use of violent language came in the days following the horrific massacre of students in Blacksburg, Virginia on April 16, 2007."

Finally, I've read Feldman for years on Daily Kos and elsewhere, and am always fascinated by the precise logic, crisp writing, and powerful "framing" that he brings to bear on just about any political subject.

Now, Feldman devotes a book to taking on leading "conservatives" like Ann Coulter, Dinesh D'Souza, James Dobson, Wayne LaPierre, Pat Buchanan, and Bill O'Reilly.  Honestly, it's hard to know which of these characters is the worst, as Feldman lays out a strong case for why each is particularly heinous in their own unique and wondrous way.
Thus, LaPierre frames everything in terms of violence, the ever-present threat of violence, and the utter inability of law, government, or collective institutions of any kind to protect us from that (essentially inevitable) violence.  Flowing from that bizarre worldview comes the only possible conclusion: you're on your own, they're coming to harm you, and you'd better be armed to the teeth when they do.  As Feldman writes, "What LaPierre suggests is...a full-scale military escalation of civil society."  Just as bad, LaPierre boils everything down to a false dichotomy -- a common strategy of right-wing political language - in which the only two choices are either "(A) we allow individuals the "right to carry" guns or (B) we allow criminals to make victims of more and more Americans." That's it, end of discussion.   Which, come to think of it, is exactly what the Wayne LaPierres of the world wanted in the first place.  How convenient.

And on and on it goes, from Pat Buchanan's "constant narrative on the death of American civilization at the hands of a new Barbarian invasion" (from Mexico, that is) to Ann Coulter's bizarre claim that "the American left had been fighting and concealing its designs to destroy America for over half a century," to - perhaps most disturbingly of all - James Dobson's violent, sex-obsessed and pain-laden "fear and punishment rhetoric" aimed at undermining any possibility of a "common good" in American society.

At this point, you might be thinking, "how depressing, why would I want to read this?"   For starters, despite the disturbing subject matter, Feldman's skills as a writer make this is actually a highly enjoyable book to read - almost a "page turner," if you can believe it.  Second, Feldman doesn't just lay out the evils of the right-wing pundits he discusses in his book, he also lays out "six suggestions to resolve the problem of violent language in the American political media." Finally, as Feldman writes at the end of his book, "[w]e cannot, as Orwell warned, 'change this all in a moment'" but  "we can change one political debate at a time with the simple act of making new choices about how to write and speak." This book will help us do so.

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