Last updated on April 19th, 2013 at 07:00 pm
Rush Limbaugh is leading the way for Republicans by comparing the Boston Marathon bomber to Bill Ayers, and claiming that environmentalists are the nation’s most violent terrorists.
Here is the audio:
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Transcript via Rush Limbaugh:
LIMBAUGH: Hey, I’m just joining the circus here. I didn’t lead off with this stuff. How about this: You know this is how Bill Ayers got his start? Bill Ayers is now responsible for educating American kids. He got his start blowing up the Pentagon. Ditto his wife, Bernardine Dohrn. We just learned that Kathy Boudin, who murdered a cop, is now a professor at Columbia. So could we say that whoever did this has just helped their effort to get hired by a major university?
Could we?
I mean, it’s how Bill Ayers got his start. It’s how Kathy Boudin got her start. There are a bunch of celebrated Americans today — former terrorists, Bill Ayers, Kathy Boudin, any number of them — who began just this way, and they are now heralded. They are exalted. The left politicizes everything, but is it untrue to say that this how Bill Ayers got his start? No. Is it untrue to point out that a professor at Columbia did something similar to this?
It was a resume enhancement, apparently, for the American university system. So don’t be surprised. So if the left politicizes everything — which they do and which we’ve documented and which I have further documentation for in this incident now — is it reasonable to ask, “How might the left be calculating this incident to be of the greatest use to them?” ‘Cause everything to them is politics, and the evidence of that is how quickly they launched into trying to blame people like us, folks.
….
LIMBAUGH: Do you know who the most militant extremist groups in America are today, folks? Do you know who it is? Environmental wacko groups are the number one group. They are leftists, and the environmentalist wackos are the number one (or close to it, anyway) terror group. Now, you just heard Mr. Bergen here on CNN. It’s either Al-Qaeda — but we really don’t think so, and we really hope not — or “other” right-wing extremists. Just like the groups that tried to attack the Martin Luther King parade in Oregon in 2010.
The Martin Luther King parade in 2010?
It is just not possible that any left-wing, Occupy Wall Street radicals or environmental radicals or people unhappy with the economy did this. Not even possible, you see.
The irony is that Rush Limbaugh was politicizing this bombing, while accusing the left of politicizing the terrorist attack in Boston. Limbaugh also suffers from an odd obsession with environmentalists. Last February, Limbaugh warned his audience that environmentalists are coming to take away their electricity.
His claim that environmentalists are the number one extremist group in the country is way for him to deny the rise of the sort of right wing extremism that he cultivates through his radio show every day. Limbaugh’s comparison of the person/persons who carried out the Boston Marathon bombings to Bill Ayers was especially disgusting. Unlike the events in Boston, Bill Ayers never killed anyone. (This fact doesn’t make what Ayers did acceptable, but it is the truth.)
The whole point of Limbaugh’s rant was that the right is being falsely accused, while the media is covering up the “violent left.” The idea that those who carried out the Boston Marathon attack are lefties because of Bill Ayers is crazy, but it isn’t half as insane as pretending that environmentalists are the most violent terrorists group in the country.
If the right wasn’t always talking about revolution, Second Amendment remedies, and violence against the government, people wouldn’t suspect them every time an act of mass violence occurred. No amount of silly excuses or fantasies about environmentalist death ninjas, can distract from Rush Limbaugh’s role in disseminating destructive rhetoric.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
