Christians tell each other that Jews need human blood for their passover rites. Then, a story goes around that local Jews have stolen some of “our” Christian children and are torturing and murdering them at this very moment. Historians have called the story, “The Blood Libel.” Violence against the out-group results.
What does this have to do with the Colorado Springs clinic murders?
“The Blood Libel”
I’m a storyteller, I tell folktales for a living.
The Blood Libel is a kind of folklore classified by the Grimms as “Sage,” or legend. Unlike “Marchen,” or fairy tales, Sage don’t need to be very good stories to survive in oral transmission, they need only be considered true, or at least possible. Ghost sightings, UFO abductions, lovers’ leaps, George Washington’s hatchet, earwigs hatching out in the brain— these stories are rarely compelling as fiction, but as true experiences they pack a punch.
A conscientious storyteller (in my opinion) is careful when people ask “is it true?” It’s the same as when a magician gets asked “is it real?” For one thing, it’s artistic cheating to lie about this stuff; an audience is too easy to wow if they believe what they’re perceiving is part of the real world. For another, it’s a dangerous line to blur.
“Pogrom”
Incited by stories like the Blood Libel, mobs form and start killing Jews. Sometimes only a few die, though the numbers still add up, like lynchings. Sometimes it’s mass murder. Generally it’s a non-governmental activity, but sometimes police and armies may participate, especially during times of instability. In the former Russian empire, during the four years following the Russian Civil War, as many as 250,000 Jews were killed in pogroms.
We had some hope, during the early part of the last century, that blood libels and pogroms were vestiges of the past, only possible in backward countries. Then we met Hitler, and found out what can happen when such storytelling and such actions are applied in an advanced society by grandiose and cynically effective fantasists using the tools of the Industrial age.
“Baby Parts”
Conditions for Christianist terror bombings in Oklahoma and Atlanta were set by decades of Republican anti-government rhetoric, including many false stories about welfare queens, evil liberals, coddled criminals, jackbooted government thugs, super criminal black thugs, black helicopters, lazy & corrupt civil servants, etc etc.
Bill O’Reilly’s relentless fulminations against “the baby killer” set the conditions for a brave and idealistic doctor to be murdered in church.
Breitbart’s Big Lie videos targeting Acorn created a kind of (please bear with me on this) high tech pogrom against an entirely benign organization, which just happened to be the best counter we had to the Republican strategy of voter suppression.
Carly Fiorina’s twisted storytelling, Donald Trump’s calls for ethnic cleansing, and the way every one of the Republicans sitting on the debate stage have for decades accepted and promoted fantastic untruths about (among other things) Planned Parenthood, coupled with the fetishistic & paranoid gun-worship that every viable Republican has to at least pay lip-service to— these are incitements. This is getting close to crying “Fire” in a crowded theater.
Storytelling is powerful. Actions have consequences. Blood is on their hands.
