Joe Hildebrand: Michael Moore playing dangerous game by implicitly endorsing motives of murder
Instead of being about a catastrophic healthcare system, the murder of a health insurance CEO has become a debate over whether deadly violence is justified for political ends, writes Joe Hildebrand.
Opinion
Don't miss out on the headlines from Opinion. Followed categories will be added to My News.
America is burning. And yet some want to see it burn more.
And Moore. Yes, filmmaker Michael Moore wants to “pour gasoline” on the anger exploding among activists in the wake of Luigi Mangione’s alleged murder of a health insurance CEO.
In an apparent response to repeated questions about Mangione, who explicitly cited Moore’s work, the Fahrenheit 911 maker condemned murder but not its consequences
“Some people have stepped forward to condemn this anger. I am not one of them,” he said.
“The anger is 1000 per cent justified. It is long overdue for the media to cover it. It is not new. It has been boiling. And I’m not going to tamp it down or ask people to shut up. I want to pour gasoline on that anger.”
The left is all too often desperate to limit free speech. And even most of those on the right concede the limit to free speech is any potential incitement.
Moore might have explicitly condemned murder or violence, but he is implicitly endorsing its motives.
This is an incredibly dangerous game and it is one only the most crazed activists are willing to play. And it is the worst possible thing for the US and the world right now.
Instead of provoking white hot rage in America’s heart, this should send a deathly cold chill down America’s spine.
The US healthcare system is indeed a catastrophe that few other Western citizens would fully realise unless they befell it.
This, perhaps, tells us more about the enlightened benefits of most Western nations than it does about America’s peculiar pitfalls but that is another column on its own.
However this is not a debate about whose healthcare system is better than whose. It is a debate about whether deadly violence is justified in the pursuit of political ends and whether such violence should be rewarded.
This is why the West’s pro-Palestinian outpouring in the wake of the October 7 terrorist attack is so disturbing.
I fully support the establishment of a Palestinian state as part of a two-state solution in which Israel’s right to exist and defend itself is unequivocally enshrined. But linking Palestinian statehood so explicitly to an act of such grotesque barbarity doesn’t just undermine Israel, it also undermines Palestine.
It tells the world that all you need to do to draw attention and sympathy to your cause is kill people in a spectacular fashion.
This rolls out a blood-red carpet to would-be terrorists and assassins wherever they may be and whatever cause they may believe in.
Just think about the consequences of that.
Those on the extreme left believe that their cause is noble and pure enough to justify the killing of innocents, be it in the pursuit of a free Palestine or affordable healthcare.
The rationale remains the same among revolutionaries throughout the world and throughout the ages.
And yet this belief is fundamentally fascist. It means that a contest of ideas can be reduced to brute force, the capacity of one human being to kill another.
This is literally the cornerstone of fascist doctrine, that the strong must survive while the weak must die.
Of course the Antifa counterpoint would be that this is the weak rising up against the strong. That the oppression of evil corporate America has been brought down by … the barrel of a gun.
Oh. So much for all those left-wing gun control advocates then.
And so much for democracy, debate, reason, science and all those pesky things. Why bother when you can just shoot someone? At least it starts the conversation!
Of course the extreme right is just as bad: Why bother with freedom and democracy? If things don’t go your way, just storm the Capitol with a bison on your head.
How many of those who condemned that disgraceful insurrection are now “pouring the gasoline” on the current flames of anger? Michael Moore for one. On the third anniversary of the Capitol riots he denounced Donald Trump because “he decided to stage a coup and called upon his rabid right-wing followers to come to the nation’s Capital to halt, with violence if necessary, the peaceful transfer of power”.
And now after a father and husband has been shot and killed in cold blood? “I want to pour gasoline on that anger.” So much for nonviolence, not to mention CO2 emissions.
America’s healthcare system is a basket case in dire need of reform. But that is not what is at stake here.
At stake is the world’s most powerful nation being overrun by violent mobs and deranged assassins who believe that death, not democracy, is the pathway to salvation. And those foolish enough to pour fuel on that fire will be engulfed by the inferno.
Download The Real Story with Joe Hildebrand wherever you get your podcasts
Here’s to a hopefully wokeless New Year
That enchanting background music is the sound of wokeness crashing into reality. It’s the sound of wokeness being smashed to tiny pieces upon jagged rocks.
Don’t let culture warriors shred veterans’ reputations
The Australian War Memorial has announced it will host an exhibit that validates mere allegations of war crimes — despite the absence of any trials, let alone convictions, writes Gray Connolly.