DIY Law Enforcement: Right Wing Media Promote Vigilante Fury
By Kevin Howley, October 7, 2022
Ever since Richard Nixon swept into office as the paid spokesman for the “silent majority,” conservative politicians and right wing news outlets have made crime a go-to election issue. And despite the cruel irony of the self-proclaimed “party of law and order” issuing the twice-impeached former president Get Out Of Jail Free cards with each passing news cycle, the GOP continues to win on its tough on crime rhetoric.
Last month, WND, the far-right and increasingly far-out conservative news platform released a special issue of its monthly Whistleblower magazine: “Stopping the Madness: A Midterm Election Guide for Voters Who Love America.” You know who you are.
Unsurprisingly, Whistleblower reports, crime is among the “7 biggest election issues stealing midterm elections spotlight.” Better to steal the spotlight than the election, I suppose.
Put plainly, we ignore right wing media hyperbole over crime at our peril. Especially these days. The American Thinker recently ranted, “There’s a Reason Conservatives are Becoming Less Tame.” When Republicans fan extremists flames, they threaten to unleash the fury of well-armed vigilantes eager to take law enforcement (sic) into their own hands.
Populist Policing
On the heels of America’s short-lived and soon-forgotten “racial reckoning” in the aftermath of the May 2020 police lynching of George Floyd, conservative forces decried calls to “defund the police.” They haven’t let up since.
Predictably right wing media seized upon a narrative that never stops giving: Crime rates are soaring and police morale is tanking. The result, according to law and order Republicans, a near state of anarchy that calls for drastic measures, such as deputizing citizens to step in and step up.
Consider this none-too-subtle message from Florida Governor and climate change denier in disco hip waders, Ron DeSantis, who issued a warning, courtesy of the local business community, to would-be looters in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian: “They boarded up all the businesses, and there are people that wrote on their plywood, ‘you loot, we shoot.’ At the end of the day, we are not going to allow lawlessness to take advantage of this situation.”
War on Crime Redux
Talk is cheap. But this sort of rhetoric is deeply disturbing; the latest, and perhaps most troubling reboot of the long-discredited “war on crime” — one of the few vestiges of LBJ’s “Great Society.”
Who says bipartisanship is dead? Indeed, as Newsmax reported last month, the Democratic-controlled House passed a sweeping “policing and public safety package” with “strong bipartisan support.”
But that don’t impress right wing media much.
Rather, conservative outlets, catering to the very same senior citizens they work tirelessly to scare out of their collective wits, run celebratory stories about elderly civilians taking the law into their own hands.
Of course, lauding homeowners for standing their ground is a standard trope in right wing media. But applauding city officials for hiring untrained civilians to assume law enforcement responsibilities goes beyond scoring political points ahead of the midterms.
Training Days
Headlined, “Desperate Democrat-run City to Hire Civilians Amid Police Shortage, Violent Crime Spike” WND gives two thumbs-up to New Orleans Police Superintendent Shaun Ferguson’s recent announcement that NOPD is hiring upwards of 50 civilians to make up for staffing shortages and “reduce the workload on officers and decrease the police response time.”
Aside from answering phones and assuming administrative duties, “some citizens will be trained to take over detective work.” Ferguson added, “The goal of all of this is to make our officers feel safe so they can make our citizens and visitors feel safe.”
Ferguson’s rationale may appeal to the Blue Lives Matter crowd, but it rings hollow for those calling for greater police accountability and an end to the over policing of low-income and minority communities.
Worse yet, “scraping the barrel” to staff shorthanded police departments — and offering unqualified people “huge benefits” may be sound reasoning for fans of authoritarian rule, but lowering the bar for domestic law enforcement will have the same predictable results we’ve seen in recent US military adventures across the globe: well-armed and grossly unqualified mercenaries wreaking havoc in the name of public safety, national security, and a quick buck.
Kevin Howley is a writer and educator whose work has appeared in Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism, Social Movement Studies, and Interactions: Studies in Communication and Culture. His most recent book is Drones: Media Discourse and the Public Imagination.
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Lauding homeowners for standing their ground is a standard trope in right wing media. But applauding city officials for hiring untrained civilians to assume law enforcement responsibilities goes beyond scoring political points ahead of the midterms. (Photo: Outlook India)
