When does free speech become hate speech?
Can someone’s words be both things at the same time?
Consider the air pollution belched forth recently from syndicated broadcaster Mark Levin — a right-wing crank — over the powerful radio station WJR (760-AM) in Detroit.
Levin dislikes Rashida Tlaib, the third-term Democrat in the United States House of Representatives whose 12th Michigan district includes parts of Detroit’s west side and several suburbs.
“You are such a pig … You are a pig, Rashida Tlaib,” Levin said last Friday night over WJR and other outlets. “Absolutely unbelievable.”
Tlaib is the only Palestinian-American in Congress. Many Muslims and Arabs live in her district, although it is multi-racial, multi-religious, and multi-ethnic. Levin presented his contempt for Tlaib’s people as a plea to change immigration rules.
“This is what happens when you don’t vet people coming into the country, like her parents, I guess, or her grandparents,” Levin said, adding, “Rashida Tlaib is an example of a completely broken immigration system. She’s an Islamist. She’s an Islamist who believes in ‘river to the sea.’”
Some consider this phrase a code for the elimination of Israel, Levin said, adding that Tlaib once kept a map on her wall showing the Middle East without Israel. Tlaib vociferously opposes U.S. support for Israel in a war against Hamas in Gaza that began on Oct. 7 with an attack against the Israelis by Hamas from Gaza.
Levin also accused Tlaib of representing and speaking to “Hamas front groups” protesting the war.
“And there she is in the House of Representatives!” Levin screeched. “Embraced by the Democrat party! Embraced by [President Joe] Biden! Embraced by the Jews of the Democrat Party! … Sick! Nuts!”
Levin said he was angered when Tlaib voted “present” on a resolution to condemn Hamas. He said her fellow Democrats refuse to criticize her because they need her vote on other issues.
“‘It’s expected, it’s Tlaib!’” Levin shouted, mocking Democrats by pretending to speak for them. “‘It’s Rashida. We know Rashida. She’s a good gal.’”
Levin then changed his tone to a snarl of bitter spite.
“She is a mouthpiece for terrorism,” Levin said. “And I’m sick and tired of it.”
As a gesture of protest to Biden for supporting Israel, Tlaib has called for her constituents to vote “uncommitted” in Michigan’s Democratic presidential primary, which ends on Feb. 27.
But Levin charged Biden with betraying “Israel and the Jewish people” to please Tlaib’s voters in the general election in autumn.
“He needs the votes of her constituents,” Levin said. “He needs the votes from Dearborn-istan.” (That’s one of Levin’s favorite new words: “Dearborn-istan.” Get it?)
“He [Biden] needs the Jew-hating, neo-Nazi vote,” Levin said. A few days before, Levin widened the scope of his aim to Dearborn’s Muslim religious leaders who, Levin said, also want a “river-to-the-sea” solution.
“And they say as much in Dearborn,” Levin said, “like in Dearborn, Michigan — which you’re not allowed to mention — and yet the imams there are clear antisemites. Not all of them. Most of them.”
A message to Tlaib’s office for comment was not returned. She is not expected to face serious challenges for re-election either in the primary from Democrats or in the general election from Republicans on Nov. 5.
But Biden’s presidential race against the demagogue Donald Trump could hinge on turnouts and margins in Michigan and, particularly, in places like Dearborn, which are politically engaged more than some communities.
Day or night, in the undertone of some WJR commercials, you can hear the fear and paranoia that WJR programming, local and national, tends to stoke.
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Although WJR now holds a dwindling share of a dwindling media platform, its 50,000 AM watts carry to many states as well as into Canada. No doubt its signal passes through Dearborn, Dearborn Heights, Southfield, Livonia, Westland, Inkster, and the west side of Detroit, where Tlaib’s voters live.
WJR’s “news-talk” format appears to be in flux and can be divided roughly into Right Wing Lite — with local hosts in the daytime — and Right Wing Spite at night, with Levin and other syndicated voices attacking liberals and progressives more viciously after dark.
In the early afternoon, they recently dumped the syndicated Dan Bongino, who had replaced the late Rush Limbaugh. They’ve shuffled their (mostly white male) daytime voices.
And Levin’s attitude gets echoed by day by local hosts like Tom Jordan, who said Tuesday on “All Talk” that “I absolutely believe that Joe Biden is listening to the likes of Rashida Tlaib.” (On “All Talk,” he is rarely “President Biden.”)
“She is denouncing what she calls these war crimes by Israel against Hamas,” Jordan said, “but ignoring the countless war crimes by Hamas.”
This is a cute verbal trick. Tlaib decries aggression against innocent civilians, not against terrorists. The radio man simply merges them. Later, Jordan blended Tlaib supporters with people who deny the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7.
“It’s absolutely crazy,” Jordan said, “but there’s people in our — the likes of people who support Rashida Tlaib — they’re denying Oct. 7 actually occurred.”
Last October, Jordan said of Tlaib: “She supports, it seems, Hamas, a terrorist regime … She is denouncing Israel. That is absolutely un-American … She is a terrorist sympathizer.” He then listed other terrorist groups that “she probably sympathizes with.”
Day or night, in the undertone of some WJR commercials, you can hear the fear and paranoia that WJR programming, local and national, tends to stoke.
Like that gritty-voiced feller for “My Patriot” emergency food supply urging you to spend your money to prepare “fer whut’s comin’.” Oh, they also sell “survival gear.” Need some, buddy? ‘Cuz ya know whut’s comin’.
Of course, WJR has no obligation to balance its political tone or racist biases because, since 1987, radio and television stations are no longer subject to what was once called “the Fairness Doctrine.” President Ronald Reagan took care of that. Hey, didn’t he start his career in AM radio?
Perhaps the quaint concept of “the public airwaves” has been demolished by technology that transmits media from satellites that orbit in outer space, above the public air. The abandonment of Fairness triggered the Limbaugh era for AM radio which continues to this day, three years after his death.
It also enabled right-wing television networks like Fox News Channel and its various imitators that have popped up like weeds in a garden.
But AM terrestrial radio stations like WJR are still land-based, just as WJR was in the 1920s, when it launched the career of Father Charles Coughlin, the antisemitic “radio priest” of Royal Oak whose nationally broadcast sermons were interrupted by World War II and the Holocaust.
Come to think of it, Mark Levin and Charles Coughlin share the same air, a century apart, emitting similar odors from different directions. Strange bedfellows.
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