Aren't you being just a teeny bit rude?

What's the difference between incivility and demonization? It is merely the level of rudeness or viciousness coming from the speaker? David Niewert, who watches for signs of fascism in our country thinks there is a great deal of difference. So much difference, he says, that demonizers are more properly termed eliminationists (about which he wrote a book). Here are some of the ways the two are different.

* Eliminationist speech depicts opponents as the embodiment of evil, unfit for participation in society. They are like vermin or disease. The opposition is to be eliminated.

* Such speech gives permission to act out against those seen as undesirable, to deny the humanity of the contaminant. This kind of talk inspires hate crimes.

* It usually surfaces when the speaker is striving for a "godly" view of the world. To a achieve it, the speaker must identify those who will bring it about and those who will prevent it. That second group becomes the scapegoats for why the world isn't "perfect" or why the world will soon end. There are calls for purification.

* When fascism arises, elimination speech is a part of it, though not all episodes of high eliminationist speech turn into fascism.

America has a long history of eliminationists. In the past the targets have been Native Americans, African Americans, Chinese and Japanese immigrants. The current targets are gays and Hispanic immigrants.

All that was an introduction to an interview of Niewert by Frederick Clarkson. Some thoughts from that interview.

* There are some ordinary conservatives who are beginning to wake up to how the GOP has been hijacked by eliminationists (the ones who hang on Limbaugh's every word), though they deny the depths of the takeover.

* Some Fundies are now praying that God will smite Obama (and gays). This is definitely eliminationist speech, the permission to act is amped up as religious permission. Such permission is supercharged when someone in the military offers a prayer like that.