The qualifications of a candidate should not be issue-oriented as much as character-oriented. They should be “able” and “experienced” men of course for the position which they seek. Beyond that, Scripture says they should be men who “fear God, ” that is, they should be Christians, as affirmed by John Jay. They should also be “men of truth” and “wise and discerning” men. This means that they should be Christians with a Biblical worldview–men who reason from absolute truth, not human wisdom. Many candidates may claim to be “Christians,” but do not hold to a Biblical worldview. Former President Jimmy Carter was an example of a Christian whose mind was unrenewed by Scripture and thus reasoned and governed from a “humanistic” worldview. Finally, Scripture says that our representatives must “hate dishonest gain.” This means that beyond a correct worldview, they must have Christian character, a godly home life, and pure motives…. Even if Christians manage to outnumber others on an issue and we sway our Congressman by sheer numbers, we end up in the dangerous promotion of democracy. We really do not want representatives who are swayed by majorities, but rather by correct principles.

— Beliles, Mark A. and McDowell Stephen K. (1991, 265) America’s Providential History

In book 8 of Plato’s Republic, Socrates argues that people are not naturally led to self-governance but rather seek a strong leader to follow. Democracy, by permitting freedom of speech, opens the door for a demagogue to exploit the people’s need for a strongman; the strongman will use this freedom to prey on the people’s resentments and fears. Once the strongman seizes power, he will end democracy, replacing it with tyranny. In short, book 8 of The Republic argues that democracy is a self-undermining system whose very ideals lead to its own demise. (Stanley, Jason. How Fascism Works (p. 41). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.)

Fascists have always been well acquainted with this recipe for using democracy’s liberties against itself; Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels once declared, “This will always remain one of the best jokes of democracy, that it gave its deadly enemies the means by which it was destroyed.” Today is no different from the past. Again, we find the enemies of liberal democracy employing this strategy, pushing the freedom of speech to its limits and ultimately using it to subvert others’ speech. (Stanley, Jason. How Fascism Works (p. 41). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.)

Desiree Fairooz is a former librarian and activist who was present at the confirmation hearing of U.S. attorney general Jeff Sessions. Sessions is a former Alabama senator whose nomination to the federal bench had been rejected by the U.S. Senate in 1986 over accusations of far-right extremism, particularly racism (as a senator, Sessions had made a name for himself by fomenting panic about immigration). When Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama declared that Sessions had a “well-documented record of treating all Americans equally under the law,” Fairooz chuckled. She was immediately arrested and charged with disruptive and disorderly conduct. The Justice Department, headed by Sessions, pressed charges against her. After a judge dismissed the charges in the summer of 2017 on the grounds that laughter is permitted speech, Sessions’s Justice Department decided in September 2017 to continue to pursue charges against her; it was not until November of that year that the Justice Department abandoned its attempt to bring Fairooz to trial for chuckling. (Stanley, Jason. How Fascism Works (pp. 41-42). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.)

U.S. attorney general Jeff Sessions is hardly a defender of free speech. And yet the very same month that his Justice Department was again attempting to bring an American citizen to trial for laughing, Sessions delivered a speech at Georgetown Law School excoriating university campuses for failing to live up to a commitment to free speech because of the presumption that the academy discourages right-leaning voices. He called for a “national recommitment to free speech and the First Amendment” (in the week Sessions gave this speech, news was dominated by President Trump’s call for the owners of National Football League teams to fire players who knelt during the national anthem to protest racism, an exercise of First Amendment rights if ever there was one). (Stanley, Jason. How Fascism Works (p. 42). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.)

In 1950, McCarthy gave a routine speech at an obscure forum in Wheeling, West Virginia, in which, according to audience members, he claimed:

I have here in my hand a list of 205 … a list of names that were made known to the secretary of state as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department.

McCarthy possessed no such list and apparently made up the number 205, which changed with further iterations. But no matter. McCarthy had struck a match in a political climate that was saturated with the fumes of suspicion and fear, and in the media explosion that followed he became the most famous man in the country. Over the next several years, he falsely accused numerous people—government officials, journalists, Hollywood writers, lawyers, professors—of espionage and communist associations. McCarthy did not possess any solid information that any of them were communists, just rumor and innuendo that had long ago been checked out by the FBI and other government agencies. In a series of committee hearings, he and his colleagues bullied, smeared, and humiliated a long line of witnesses—none of whom was ever convicted of a crime in a court, but many of whom lost their jobs because of skittish employers. Hollywood screenwriters drawn into the net were blacklisted.

— Posner (2020, 195-196) The Demagogue’s Playbook.

The social media site Nextdoor has implemented a Good Neighbor Pledge. The evidence above in which Nextdoor user Brandon Kask posts — without a shred of evidence of who said what when and where — accuses collectively the Black Lives Matter movement, protesters, his neighbors, and elected officials of being part of a “communist” conspiratorial plot to bring about a “coup” simply by changing the sheriff’s position from an elected position to an appointed position. As with all hate speech, it is meant to incite others to follow on and amplify the malicious hate rhetoric that is meant to result in elimination of those who are targeted. It is not meant to foster intelligent discussion of informed citizens, but merely to demonize the “other” through hate speech rooted in fear mongering, racist and eliminationist rhetoric exhibited in Scott Neiman’s response in which he refers to those who hold a different view on the issues as being followers of “leftism,” “extreme leftism,” “commies,” and advocating “authoritarianism.” These are examples, detailed below, of eliminationism and eliminationist rhetoric — a form of hyper-partisan political hate speech. Left unchecked this kind of hateful rhetoric, whether from the extreme left or extreme right culminates in acts of violence towards the targeted group.

Hateful rhetoric escalates over time, first labeling people of another political party as “liberals,” then commies,” and eventually it will be a call to “get rid of the Democrats.” This is classic hate speech meant to harm others and aimed at demonizing an entire segment of the population. Yet, Nextdoor moderators let it sit there until someone reports it despite the fact this bile attracts trolls who pile on the “likes” spreading hate into our neighborhoods. Judy Hampson is a perfect example of the kind of hate mongers who foster eliminationism.

How is that moderators on Nextdoor cannot see this? How is it that they let this kind of hateful rhetoric which clearly violates Nextdoor’s own guidelines sit on the site collecting “likes” from other like minded hate mongers? Their silence and lack of action is consent to such forms of hatred being pumped into our neighborhoods by Nextdoor.

It is clear that Nextdoor has no intention of fulfilling its phony Good Neighbor Pledge. It is the same cast of characters, like Greg Robel, who engage in debased and degenerate form of demeaning communication to others on Nexdoor’s platform. And when such hate filled bile is posted on Nextdoor and it is reported (as Robel was) it sits there despite Nextdoor claiming that such hateful rhetoric has no place on its platform.

Yet another example of hateful rhetoric that passes as acceptable on ND. Homophobic posts also find a home on ND as a post by “Sam A.” (always best to spew hateful homophobia anonymously, for such is how cowards behave). Nextdoor claims to not tolerate discrimination, yet one finds homophobic posts sitting on the site collecting likes from religious bigots and homophobes. Here we see a so-called Christian engaging in hateful homophobic discriminatory posting those in the LGBT community are somehow not healthy but are like drug addicts who need treatment. Of course, this is simply blatant ignorant religious bigotry which Nextdoor claims it does not tolerate, yet clearly ND moderators do tolerate it for there it sits.

Bad social media platforms (e.g., Nextdoor) need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men and women (aka paid employees of ND) should look on and do nothing, or worse, publish greenwashed falsehoods while bile is still pumped into our social fabric.

— John Stuart Mill, Updated for Modernity

This is evidenced in the fact that Nextdoor relies on volunteer moderators that are so incompetent that they remove Scott Neiman’s hateful eliminationist rhetoric but leave Brandon Kask’s original eliminationist hate speech that makes baseless accusations without a shred of evidence aimed at anyone who holds a view different from his own that they are communists part of a communist plot to bring about a coup. How ludicrous considering the issue would be voted on and only implemented if passed by a majority, a very democratic thing to do and which alone refutes this hateful rhetoric.

The fallacious absurdity of Brandon Kask’s claims is evidenced in the history of King County Council itself. The post of sheriff was changed from an elective position to an appointed position in 1968 and then back to an elective position in 1996 all by a democratic process of free and fair elections just as this initiative too will be decided. (See King County — Thumbnail History)

Brandon Kask and Scott Neiman are through their words revealing they are intellectual parrots of AM Hate Radio and the rhetoric of eliminationism that has been pumped into American minds over the last thirty years of a fratricidal culture war that eschews intellectual political discussions grounded in mutual respect of one’s neighbors and restrained by reason and logic and evidence. That Nextdoor allows such hate speech to pass as civil reveals how dangerous it is as a social media platform, not unlike Twitter or Facebook, in that it allows toxic hateful messages to pass as neighborly conduct when it is anything but neighborly to call, without evidence or proof, one’s neighbors, one’s elected officials, and entire groups of people “communist.”

Brandon Kask and Scott Neiman (and since it is allowed to pass as “neighborly” discussion, Nextdoor too) are no different than the Nazis who used hateful and malicious false labels of those they viewed as the “enemy” and didn’t agree with politically to demonize them and thereby make them the target of group hate. This is exactly how the Nazi’s used anti-Semitism:

The Nazis equated all opposition movements—socialist, liberal, communist, humanitarian, cosmopolitan, individualist, democratic—to the Jewish cabal. (Tsesis 2002, 24)

The truth and facts have absolutely no place in Kask’s and Neiman’s rhetoric. Its purpose is to incite hatred and nothing more. And Nextdoor as a social media platform amplifies such hateful rhetoric and undermines our neighborhood’s social fabric by treating such as good neighborly forms of communication when it is anything but good for our social well being. Such rhetoric as Kask and Neiman post is a form of prejudice and scapegoating perpetrated through hateful stereotypes.

Stereotypes may be words specially formulated for disparaging a particular group or may simply be natural language expressions that channel hatred against an outgroup. These communications are geared toward representing the victims as objects of derision and designating a course of action against them—be it judicial unfairness or job discrimination. In Kantian terms, stereotypes are schemas for memory, retrieval, evaluation, and understanding. Concepts assigned to outgroups, such as lasciviousness, greed, immorality, and infidelity, become integral parts of vernacular descriptions and imaginings about them. Stereotyping eases the processing of information because it furnishes an already established scheme for compartmentalizing sense stimuli. After having been exposed to negative images of blacks, people are more likely to anticipate that blacks are dangerous. Completely innocuous events—for example, a black man approaching in the middle of the street at night—are often interpreted as perilous even when no factual reason for fear or added anxiety exists. The event may be recorded in the memory as having been a hazardous situation even though no evidence substantiates such a conclusion. (Tsesis 2002, 87-88)

Prejudices are means for convincing oneself why it is appropriate to act in ways that contradict basic ethical standards against inflicting harm. They are instrumental for excusing behavior that undermines the underlying structure of well-ordered society. Supremacism has profound consequences both when opportunities to discriminate are present and in conditioning sentiments that can be conducive for later unfairness. Ethnocentric people recognize that oppressive acts are not humane. So, derogatory images portraying outgroups as inferiors help them dismiss the notion that the others are by nature worthy of compassionate treatment, too. A violation of ethical norms is easier to explain away if the victims belong to an outgroup and are widely portrayed as demonic adversaries who are purportedly menacing to the population. (Tsesis 2002, 91)

In July of 2008, a graying, mustachioed man from the Knoxville suburb of Powell, Tennessee, sat down and wrote out by hand a four-page manifesto describing his hatred of all things liberal and his belief that “all liberals should be killed.” (Neiwert 2016, 1)

When he was done, Jim David Adkisson drove his little Ford Escape to the parking lot of the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville. A few days before, the church had attracted media attention for its efforts to open a local coffee shop for gays and lesbians. Leaving the manifesto on the seat of the car, he walked inside the church carrying a guitar case stuffed with a shotgun and 76 rounds of ammunition. (Neiwert 2016, 1)

The congregants were enjoying the opening scene from the church’s production of the musical Annie Jr. when Adkisson, in a hallway outside the sanctuary, abruptly opened the guitar case, pulled out the shotgun, fired off a harmless round that startled everyone, then walked into the sanctuary and began firing indiscriminately. Witnesses report he was saying “hateful things.” An unsuspecting 61-year-old grandmother and retired schoolteacher named Linda Kraeger was hit in the face with a shotgun blast. A 60-year-old foster father named Greg McKendry got up to shield others from the attack and was hit in the chest. (Neiwert 2016, 1-2)

(….) A detective who interviewed Adkisson and examined his four-page manifesto reported to his superiors that Adkisson targeted the church “because of its liberal teachings and his belief that all liberals should be killed because they were ruining the country, and that he felt that the Democrats had tied his country’s hands in the war on terror and they had ruined every institution in America with the aid of media outlets.” (Neiwert 2016, 2)

When the detective interviewed Adkisson, he said he’d decided that since “he could not get to the leaders of the liberal movement that he would then target those that had voted them in to office.” (Neiwert 2016, 2)

Knoxville’s police chief told reporters the next day that Adkisson was motivated by his “hatred of the liberal movement” and “liberals in general, as well as gays.” He was also frustrated by his inability to get a job, a problem he also blamed on liberals. His neighbors in Powell described Adkisson as “a Confederate” and a “believer in the Old South.” (Neiwert 2016, 2-3)

When detectives went to Adkisson’s home in Powell, they found—scattered among the ammunition, guns, and brass knuckles—books written by leading conservative pundits: Liberalism Is a Mental Disorder by Michael Savage, Let Freedom Ring by Sean Hannity, and The O’Reilly Factor by Bill O’Reilly, among others. Adkisson’s manifesto, released some months later to the public, was largely a distillation of these works, ranting about how “Liberals have attack’d every major institution that made America great. … Liberals are evil, they embrace the tenets of Karl Marx, they’re Marxist, socialist, communists.” (Neiwert 2016, 3)

(….) The events that sunny Sunday left the church’s pastor, Rev. Chris Buice, with a shattered congregation. “People were killed in the sanctuary of my church, which should be the holy place, the safe place. People were injured,” he told PBS’s Rick Karr a couple of weeks later. “A man came in here, totally dehumanized us—members of our church were not human to him. Where did he get that? Where did he get that sense that we were not human?” (Neiwert 2016, 4)

Such incidents—the nasty personal encounters, the ugliness at campaign rallies, the violent acts of “lone wolf” gunmen—are anything but rare. If you’re a liberal in America—or for that matter, anyone who happens to have run afoul of the conservative movement and its followers—you probably have similar tales to tell about unexpected and brutal viciousness from otherwise ordinary, everyday people, nearly all of them political conservatives, nearly all directed at their various enemies: liberals, Latinos, Muslims, and just about anyone who disagrees with them.

What motivates this kind of talk and behavior is called eliminationism: a politics and a culture that shuns dialogue and the democratic exchange of ideas in favor of the pursuit of outright elimination of the opposing side, either through suppression, exile, and ejection, or extermination.

Rhetorically, eliminationism takes on certain distinctive shapes. It always depicts its opposition as beyond the pale, the embodiment of evil itself, unfit for participation in their vision of society, and thus worthy of elimination. It often further depicts its designated Enemy as vermin (especially rats and cockroaches) or diseases, and disease-like cancers on the body politic. A close corollary—but not as nakedly eliminationist—is the claim that opponents are traitors or criminals and that they pose a threat to our national security.

Eliminationism is often voiced as crude “jokes,” a sense of humor inevitably predicated on venomous hatred. And such rhetoric—we know as surely as we know that night follows day—eventually begets action, with inevitably tragic results.

Two key factors distinguish eliminationist rhetoric from other political hyperbole:

1. It is focused on an enemy within, people who constitute entire blocs of the citizen populace.
2. It advocates the excision and extermination of those entire blocs by violent or civil means.

(….) Eliminationism—including the rhetoric that precedes it and fuels it—expresses a kind of self-hatred. In an American culture that advertises itself as predicated on equal opportunity, eliminationism runs precisely counter to those ideals. Eliminationists, at heart, hate the very idea of an inclusive America.

— David Neiwert (2009, 11-12) The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right. Routledge.