The Attempted Assassination Of Gabrielle Giffords

The Arizona Congresswoman Shot On Saturday Had Ominously Predicted The Possible Consequences Of Violent Rightwing Rhetoric

By Alex Hannaford
Sunday 9 January 2011 03.12 GMT
Courtesy Of "The Guardian"

A police investigator photographs the area outside a Safeway store after a gunman targeting Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords opened fire in Tucson, Arizona on Saturday 8 January 2011, killing six and wounding at least 13; Giffords is critically ill in hospital after surgery for a brain wound. Photograph: AP Photo/James Palka

In March last year, Gabrielle Giffords, the Arizona congresswoman who was shot in the head in Tucson around lunchtime on Saturday, was interviewed on the MSNBC news channel. Just the day before, she had voted in favour of Obama's healthcare reform, and that night, the door of her office was destroyed.

She told the interviewer she wasn't fearful for her life, but that protesters' rhetoric was becoming "incredibly heated". She was asked if the Republican leadership should have spoken out more to denounce the violence. Diplomatically, she said both parties should. But then, she recounted how she was on Sarah Palin's hit list. "We have the crosshairs of a gun sight over our district," she said. "And when people do that, they've got to realise there are consequences."

Giffords was referring to a map of the US that Palin had posted on her website. There were a number of gun sights; one was for Giffords. But shortly after the shooting on Saturday, it mysteriously disappeared from Palin's site.

That's not all. Giffords' Republican opponent in the 2 November race for a seat in the House of Representatives was Jesse Kelly. He had held a campaign event in which he invited his supporters to "Get on Target for Victory in November". He asked them to "Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office – shoot a fully automatic M15 with Jesse Kelly."

Of course, there's no suggestion that the suspected gunman – a college graduate from Arizona who lists reading as his favourite pastime – was particularly inspired by Sarah Palin or Jesse Kelly. But it's this kind of rhetoric that is lighting a fire under extremists who believe that Obama is, in fact, the devil – and, by association, so are all Democrats.

That may sound ludicrous, but last year, civil rights organisation the Southern Poverty Law Centre (SPLC) said extremist groups had exploded in the United States since Obama's election. These groups, it said, had increased by 244%, were "steeped in wild, anti-government conspiracy theories" that exploited populist anger across the country and had infiltrated the mainstream.

Since Obama took office as president, there have been two skinhead plots to assassinate him, a plan to set off a dirty bomb packed with radioactive materials during the inauguration, and now this.

This is not some fallacy. Judge John Roll, who was killed in Saturday's shooting, had allowed a $32m civil rights lawsuit filed by illegal immigrants to proceed against a local Arizona rancher. In one afternoon,Roll received over 200 phone calls – some threatening him and his family. One online rant said: "We should kill him. He should be dead."

One film on suspected shooter Jared Loughner's YouTube channelfeatures the song "Let the Bodies Hit the Floor", by metal band Drowning Pool, as a man – presumably, Loughner – wearing a brown, hooded top and a strange skirt made from a black dustbin sack approaches a US flag and proceeds to set it on fire. In another video, he writes: "I know who's listening … government officials" and people who "aren't aware of mind control and brainwash methods ... If I have my civil rights, then this message wouldn't have happen [sic]."

He then goes on about sleepwalking, terrorism and Bibles. "You don't have to accept the federalist laws," he writes. "I can't trust the current government."

Much of this is clearly the paranoid ramblings of a messed-up conspiracy theorist. But, if the SPLC is to be believed, these are paranoid ramblings that have been gaining currency.

Following the release of the SPLC report, I interviewed an armed militia group in west Texas. Many of their fears, I discovered, were of a kind of post-apocalyptic future in which the very infrastructure of civilisation collapses – something that could come about, apparently, if the government imposes public healthcare or increased gun control. One man recruiting for a new militia in Oklahoma told me he wanted to be "prepared to put down a tyrannical government". A member of a group in Mississippi said that if the government "did something crazy" – like take away their guns – he couldn't predict what people would do: "This could get real ugly, real quick."

Unfortunately, it seems it already has.

Incredibly, though, what happened on Saturday is already being seized upon by the pro-gun lobby. One comment on Sarah Palin's Facebook page reads: "This will be another avenue for gun control groups to further their sick agenda."

I didn't detect one hint of irony.