Conservatives Are the New Social Justice Crusaders

[Trigger warning for violent rhetoric, appropriation.]

After appropriating Jewish victimization via "blood libel" and "pogrom" last week, this week it appears they've moved on to appropriating language associated with Black Civil Rights in the US.

Yesterday, Pat Buchanan, signaling his disinterest in cooling the incendiary rhetoric, described President Obama's speech last week as "a fairly stern admonition, especially to the far left in this country, which has been quite frankly conducting something of a lynch mob against Glenn Beck, against Sarah Palin, against Rush Limbaugh."

Then Sarah Palin gave an interview to Sean Hannity last night, where, it is being widely reported, she said that she won't be silenced: "I will continue to speak out. ... They're not going to shut me up."

At one point in the interview (which is viewable here), she also says: "They can't make us sit down and shut up."

"Sit down and shut up" is a common enough phrase, but her they can't make us construction is evocative of the language of social justice movements, and the Civil Rights Movement in particular. That Palin chose to use these words, in this way, on Martin Luther King Day, is no coincidence.

Even as she positions herself (and conservatives) as an oppressed minority, she sneers at the idea of real social justice. Buchanan, echoing the call to regard conservatives as victims of violent oppression, mocks the truly marginalized.

I don't guess I need to point out the gall of whining about being silenced during an interview broadcast internationally, without a trace of irony, nor the historical fact that victims of actual lynch mobs and people who were told, literally, to sit down and shut up were never granted a similar platform, and not just because Fox News didn't exist.