Two weeks ago, following the occupation of College President Phil Hanlon’s office, omniscient TV personality Bill O’Reilly weighed in on the purported crisis caused by the anti-authoritarian left. Tracing this movement back to the late 1960s and protests against the Vietnam War that created a nascent “culture based on anti-authority,” O’Reilly claimed that “we have a new anti-authority movement, and it has been created by the grievance industry which President Obama and the Democratic Party have used very effectively to assume and maintain power.”
A 20-year old dispute made headlines last week. Cliven Bundy, who for two decades grazed his cattle on federal land, refused to pay the persistent fines — which now total $300,000 — or move his cattle because the cows threatened several species protected on federal land. After the Bureau of Land Management seized the cattle and held Bundy, armed militia rallied to the rancher’s side. Training their automatic weapons on the base camp of unarmed demonstrators supporting the enforcement of federal law, the militia members were enough to make the heart of any red-blooded American swell with pride.
Thankfully, no one has died in the standoff between the law and the lawbreakers, but the glee with which some have welcomed armed militia staring down government officials has no place in Bunkerville, Nev. There is an anti-authority movement in this country, but it’s not coming from Obama and the Democratic Party, rather from figures like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, who have lauded Bundy. With some exceptions, the anti-authority movement that O’Reilly claims to loathe emanates from the right-wing media that O’Reilly embodies. Such anti-government rhetoric has dangerous consequences.
Suggesting that conservatives or the Republican Party had a hand in the Oklahoma City bombings or in the Tucson shooting would be inane. But their rhetoric does have other ramifications. In one sense, it legitimizes fears in delusional minds. For instance, the 1995 Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh had a pathological hatred for the federal government. In its analysis of 2011 Tucson shooter Jared Lee Loughery, the Anti-Defamation League found “a generic distrust of government and a vague interest in conspiracy theories.” The antipathy for government is similar to that of Grover Norquist, who infamously said he wanted to shrink government “down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub,” and who created a pledge to never raise taxes that received overwhelming support from the Republican party.
It is not just anti-government rhetoric that has become pervasive in the right-wing anti-authority handbook. Some on the right have repeatedly questioned other forms of authority, like that of scientists or doctors. How else to explain the shockingly widespread beliefs that scientists lie about climate change and evolution or that doctors hide the truth about vaccinations? Such superstition belongs in the same era as witchcraft trials, but conservative talking heads have legitimized those fears.
On the other side of the spectrum, certain demonstrators at Dartmouth have also taken issue with power structures. Although the goal of an inclusive community is worthwhile, attacking Hanlon and other members of the student body creates schisms and destabilizes any hope of overcoming pre-existing divisions, whether they’re racial, sexual, ethnic or socioeconomic. If by virtue of being white I can never support calls for justice and equality, how can I ever be part of a community without racial divides? This strain of politics — because of postmodernist convictions that everything under the sun is socially constructed and everything is individual — threatens community. Not every institution contributes to an oppressive cultural hegemony. But unlike the anti-authoritarians on the right, these demonstrators do not coax violence.
On both sides of the political spectrum, but more so in what now suffices as the mainstream right, anti-authority bombast has seized the political discourse. Authority is never self-justified, so we should have legitimate debates about the role and place of authority, but without the dramatic hyperbole that now passes as rhetoric. If we are to come together as a nation, and, more locally, as a community, we need to ignore those who spew ill-founded anti-authority messages.
