Book review: Feldman takes on the right’s Outright Barbarous talk

In his 2007 book “Framing the Debate,” author and blogger Jeffrey Feldman analyzed historic presidential speeches and found ways for today’s progressive activists to use the principles behind those speeches for modern advantage.

Feldman is back just a year later with his next offering: “Outright Barbarous: How the Violent Language of the Right Poisons American Democracy,” which comes out this week. It’s a slightly more inflammatory title for a book that is a lot more aggressive in taking to task some of the most infamous spokespeople for the modern conservative movement: The National Rifle Association’s Wayne LaPierre. Former presidential candidate and inexplicable media personality Pat Buchanan. Ann Coulter. James Dobson. Dinesh D’Souza.

In each case, Feldman devotes a chapter to outlining numerous examples of the subject’s violent rhetoric and how that violent talk seems designed to instill fear in the audience, preventing any kind of pragmatic discussion or policy-making from taking place.

But Feldman doesn’t stop there — he links each example to the real issue at hand, and provides a progressive frame on how to combat violent rhetoric and pinpoint the underlying issue. Consider his thorough argument against Pat Buchanan on the “issue” of illegal immigration.

Buchanan is not concerned with separating races within American society, nor does he blame social ills on the biological mixing of races through marriage and reproduction, which was the hallmark belief of the various, racist fascisms that bloomed in the early twentieth century and which led to such moral aberrations as the Nazi extermination camps. Instead, Buchanan turns the late twentieth century critique of racism on its head, arguing that western guilt over “Hitler’s crimes” have lulled America and Europe into letting their guard down. Buchanan would have us believe that seeing the world in terms of distinct, hierarchical races with white Europeans at the top is not a problem, unless one commits crimes based on that belief. Those who critique racism are misguided in Buchanan’s eyes because their concern gets in the way of racial common sense.

An indictment of Buchanan’s racist rhetoric? Sort of. As Feldman puts it a few pages later, “Immigration has become a political issue because of trade, not because of race or ‘civilization.’”

The theory that economic markets can exist without any rules, however, does not make logical sense. If rules are not set in advance, then the strongest player sets them by default.
…
Foreign nations should not be banned from conducting business in the United States any more than U.S. companies should be barred from pursuing business interests abroad. And yet, the propagandistic notion of “free trade” has given rise to a system of influence peddling and trade agreements that have tipped the American economy into a crisis … To swing the civic debate back towards pragmatic solutions to the problems created by free market economics and free trade treaties, the public discussion must shift away from fears of cultural destruction to the economics that affect our everyday lives.

The biggest criticism of Feldman’s work (that I’ve seen, at least) is that it’s nothing more than common sense, just everyday messaging techniques with a new political term — “framing” — applied along with a fresh coat of paint. But there’s more to this type of material than a message. When thinking in messaging terms, the talking points will eventually run out, and the communications staffer will hang up the phone because he or she simply has nothing more to say. The message has been pushed. But framing these messages in progressive terms means finding ways to really think about (and get one’s audience to think about) issues in a way that is more effective and insulated from the fear caused by hateful, violent, reactionary right-wing rhetoric.

“Outright Barbarous” makes a great read, more accessible but no less insightful than “Framing the Debate.” Feldman offers prescriptions for a particular set of ills in our politics as he closes with a chapter entitled “The Return of Pragmatism.” They are prescriptions that everyone from volunteers in city council races all the way to presidential candidates should be reading and practicing.