Glenn Greenwald has an essential piece on the current movement of far-right and white supremacist tactics into the purported "mainstream" of conservative bloggers -- Front Page Magazine, Michelle Malkin, and others.

I'll quote some key points (all emphases are mine), but you need to go read the whole thing:

One of the favorite tactics used by [white supremacist] groups is to find the home address and telephone number of the latest enemy and then publish it on the Internet, accompanied by impassioned condemnations of that person as a Grave Enemy, a race traitor, someone who threatens all that is good in the world. A handful of the most extremist pro-life groups have used the same tactic. It has happened in the past that those who were the target of these sorts of demonization campaigns that included publication of their home address were attacked and even killed. But these intimidation tactics work even when nothing happens. Indeed, these groups often publish the enemy's home address along with some cursory caveat that they are not encouraging violence. The real objective is the same one shared by all terrorists -- to place the person in paralyzing fear. [...] This weekend, prominent neoconservative David Horowitz proclaimed that the United States is fighting a war and "the aggressors in this war are Democrats, liberals and leftists." In particular, he cited the now infamous NYT Travel section article on Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld's vacation homes as evidence that the employees of the NYT are among the enemies in this war, and he then linked to and recommended as a "proposal for action" this post from his associate, Front Page contributor Rocco DiPippo. [...] DiPippo published the home address of NYT Publisher Arthur Sulzberger, along with directions to his home, and linked to a post by right-wing blogger Dan Riehl which contained directions to Sulzberger's home along with photographers of it. In a now-deleted post, DiPippo also published the home address of Linda Spillers, the NYT photographer who took the photograph of Don Rumsfeld's vacation home (with Rumsfeld's express permission), and he urged everyone to go (presumably to the home address he provided) and confront Spillers about her actions.

I want to re-emphasize this point. Rocco DiPippo was, as near as we can tell, the individual who first published the home address and home phone number of the photographer involved in an attempt to solicit an intimidation campaign against her.

This is no low-rung blogger, as most of the far-right bloggers who got caught promoting the campaign against the photographer and NYT staffers tittered in their own defense once things went much too far -- this is a writer for Front Page Magazine. Nearly the entire far-right conservative blogosphere links to them, and protestations of integrity notwithstanding, continues to do so -- in large part because of the far-right tactics of thuggery which Horowitz makes his stock in trade. DiPippo has yet to face any consequences for his actions -- apparently because Horowitz himself was their promoter.

That was not an isolated incident. This week, Bartholomew's Official Notes on Religion reported on the new "project" implemented by the group StopTheACLU.org. As that group describes it, the project is called "Expose the ACLU Plaintiffs," and promises to publish the home addresses of all individuals who are "using the ACLU" in any First Amendment lawsuit based on the Establishment clause which challenges the constitutionality of governmental promotion of Christianity. The first such enemy targeted for this treatment is a Jewish family in Delaware who sued their local school district over its alleged promotion of Christianity in the public schools. [...] Stop the ACLU is not some fringe, isolated group. To the contrary, the "official blog" of StopTheACLU.org is StopTheACLU.com (h/t Hunter), a very prominent player in the right-wing blogosphere. That blog is the 14th most-linked-to blog on the Internet, and is often promoted and approvingly cited to as a source by numerous right-wing bloggers such as Instapundit and Michelle Malkin. The blog Expose the Left (which aspires to be the C&L of the Right), yesterday condemned the "nutcases on the left side of the blososphere" who "are sending unfounded attacks" against StopTheACLU for this plainly despicable thug behavior. These self-evidently dangerous tactics are merely a natural outgrowth of the hate-mongering bullying sessions which have become the staple of right-wing television shows such as Bill O'Reilly's and websites such as Michelle Malkin's (who, unsurprisingly, has become one of O'Reilly's favorite guests). One of the most constant features of these hate fests is the singling out of some unprotected, private individual -- a public school teacher here, a university administrator there -- who is dragged before hundreds of thousands of readers (or millions of viewers), accused of committing some grave cultural crime or identified as a subversive and an enemy, and then held out as the daily target of unbridled contempt, a symbol of all that is Evil. Malkin frequently includes contact information for the identified Enemies, and O'Reilly often shows photographs or video of them on multiple programs. These bullying tactics of intimidation -- whereby people who are often just private individuals and who have no defenses (as opposed to, say, prominent politicians or media figures) are singled out for widespread public rituals of contempt -- have quite foreseeable consequences, chief among them placing those targets in fear of retribution. Publishing the home addresses of such individuals is not some wholly different approach, but is merely the next small and foreseeable step, an obvious outgrowth of the hate sessions on which many leading representatives of the Right now heavily rely.

The critical point here, just in case anyone is still unclear, is that the far-right tactics of thuggery -- tactics mainstreamed directly from white supremacist groups and organized intimidation campaigns meant to endorse and assist assaults and actual murders of abortion doctors -- is now a commonplace and eagerly embraced tool for the online so-called "conservative" movement. It simply can't be denied or dismissed as elements of an unknown "fringe" -- look at any right-wing blog, and you'll see links to, advertisements for, or endorsements of the above sites and, in many cases, explicit endorsements of the very "outing" campaigns that they are becoming known for.

Malkin, FrontPage, StopTheACLU, and similar sites are among the most prominent destinations on the right, attracting large hives of supporters that then move the themes of thuggery and intimidation throughout the movement. They're the cornerstones around which the online far-right is built. In other smaller cells of the movement, linking to and being promoted in turn by the "big boys", the racist targeting (primarily against Muslims) becomes even more pronounced, and the rhetoric of violence leaps from the implicit thuggery of the "prime" sites into the more blunt and explicit pronouncements of the far-right underbelly that represents their targeted readership.

These aren't isolated incidents. This is the face of right-wing extremism as it attempts to mainstream itself through figures like Horowitz, Malkin, and a variety of others. And the conservative blogosphere endorses it, promotes it, assists it, and applauds it when it happens.

Read Glenn's entire piece, and internalize it.

