Inscrutable Writing
by digby
This article in Politico is intriguing, although it’s hard to know if it has any bearing on what happened yesterday:
Jared Lee Loughner’s rants about grammar and mind control track closely to the writings of a conspiracy theorist who believes that is how the government controls the populace, one leading group says – and the man tells POLITICO he agrees with some of Loughner’s statements.The far-right activist, David Wynn Miller, said in a telephone interview that he didn’t know Loughner, but agreed with his statement in a YouTube video that “the government is implying mind control and brainwash on the people by controlling grammar.” …
Mark Potok, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, first mentioned Miller during an appearance Saturday on MSNBC’s “Countdown with Keith Olbermann.” “The idea weirdly enough of controlling grammar, of somehow the government using grammar to control the people is an idea that exists on the radical right. There’s a particular person, a man named David Wynn Miller who has plugged this idea for years,” Potok said. Miller “claims to have invented truth language,” Potok said in an interview with POLITICO. “His idea is that if you only use the correct grammar and punctuation, you can throw off the shackles of the tyrannical government.” Potok said Loughner appeared “practically illiterate and quite mentally ill,” but his statements and the books he has cited suggest a “pretty strong anti-government, conspiracy-oriented threat.” “It seems he is getting some of his key ideas from David Wynn Miller,” he said.
What’s intriguing about it is that when you read the writings of David Wynn Miller, you would come to the conclusion that he is severely mentally disordered if you didn’t know that he was speaking in his own “code”:
FOR THE PEOPLE OF THE WRONG-SYNTAX-COMMUNICATION-TEACHINGS ARE WITH THE CLAIM OF THE TEACHINGS WITH THE LODIO-CONTRACT-VOID = AILING BY THE RULING-CLASS, GOV, KING, QUEEN, JUDGE, ATTORNEY, LAWYER, TEACHER, PRIEST, DOCTOR AND [PEOPLE JUST DO NOT KNOW!!!] OF EVERY-NATION ON EARTH WITH THE SLAVERY OF THE PEOPLE WITH THE CONTROL OF THE LICENSING-USURY AND TAXATION OF THE WATER, AIR, EARTH AND FIRE.[7]
Who knows if Loughner’s disordered writings were influenced b ythat. It’s probably a coincidence that he was dwelling on grammar and punctuation. (He was obsessed with “literacy” whatever he meant by that.) But it’s interesting that this guy comes from the far right “sovereignty” movement and speaks in similar weird terms that you would think are nonsensical unless you know that it’s a coded language.
Meanwhile, back in the states:
Showing no sign of tamping down on divisive political rhetoric in the wake of the shooting of 20 people that left six dead in Tuscon Saturday, the Tea Party Nation group e-mailed its members Sunday warning them they would be called upon to fight leftists in the days ahead and defend their movement. TPN founder Judson Phillips, in an article linked off the e-mail “The shooting of Gabrielle Giffords and the left’s attack on the Tea Party movement,” described the shooter as “a leftist lunatic” and Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik as a “leftist sheriff” who “was one of the first to start in on the liberal attack.” Phillips urged tea party supporters to blame liberals for the attack on centrist Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona, who was shot through the head and is now fighting for her life, as a means of defending the tea party movement’s recent electoral gains. “The hard left is going to try and silence the Tea Party movement by blaming us for this,” he wrote. Clinton used the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing to “blame conservative talk radio, especially Rush Limbaugh” and “The tactic worked then, backing conservatives off and possibly helping to ensure a second Clinton term.” “The left is coming and will hit us hard on this. We need to push back harder with the simple truth. The shooter was a liberal lunatic. Emphasis on both words,” he wrote.
Good of him to write it down. Just so we know.
.