Breitbart calls for Tea Party to begin civil war: “Fire the first shot”

Andrew Breitbart calls for violence against liberals, claiming that the military will back Tea Partiers like himself if they manage to incite an honest-to-goodness shooting war, not just an information war:

“I’m under attack all the time. They call me gay, there are death threats… There are times where I’m not thinking as clearly as I should, and in those unclear moments, I always think to myself, ‘Fire the first shot.’ Bring it on. Because I know who’s on our side. They can only win a rhetorical and propaganda war. They cannot win. We outnumber them in this country, and we have the guns… I’m not kidding. They talk a mean game, but they will not cross that line because they know what they’re dealing with.

Then he claimed that some senior military officials have personally assured him that they’ll join the right wing in a civil war.

“And I have people who come up to me in the military, major named people in the military, who grab me and they go, ‘Thank you for what you’re doing, we’ve got your back.’

And yet, during the Bush era, disagreeing with the President was an act of treason. Calling for violence is, I expect, fine! Just fine!

{advertisement}
Breitbart calls for Tea Party to begin civil war: “Fire the first shot”
{advertisement}

9 thoughts on “Breitbart calls for Tea Party to begin civil war: “Fire the first shot”

  1. 1

    What an absolutely insane bit of reporting. The headline makes it sound, purposefully, I’m sure, like Breitbart is calling on people in the tea party to fire the first shot.
    The actual quote is, “They call me gay, there are death threats… There are times where I’m not thinking as clearly as I should, and in those unclear moments, I always think to myself, ‘Fire the first shot.’ Bring it on.”
    So clearly he’s saying that sometimes he thinks it would be okay if the liberals bashing him fired the first shot.

  2. 2

    Clearly it’s impossible for a liberal to fire the first literal shot, since THEY “have the guns” in his scenario. The “fire the first shot” is up for interpretation, frankly — yes it can go either way, but I strongly suspect he meant it the way I interpreted it because of who he claims has the guns. But if someone were to do something that seems to them like a “shot” to the Tea Partiers, then we have a real civil war on our hands regardless, don’t we?

    The fact that he claims military folks “have his back” and the fact that he’s claiming to have the numbers to easily crush liberals should it come to actual blows, both of which taken together, suggests that he’s engaging in fantasizing about being in a civil war. It’s sabre-rattling. And ambiguous sabre-rattling like this could very well be interpreted by lunatics the same way I and addictinginfo interpreted it.

  3. 3

    I was going to point out something similar to the first commentor. Breitbart is daring liberals to take the first shot so that the Tea Party would be justified in mowing all the liberals down afterwards. Still a noxious idea. And I believe one of the military gentlemen blogging here on FB already addressed the assertion that the military would back ultra-conservatives as a lovely piece of reality-free rhetoric (stating that most of the rank and file would be far more likely to show up on the liberal side).

  4. 5

    “Breitbart calls for Tea Party to begin civil war”. No he didn’t.

    “Breitbart calls for violence against liberals”. No, he didn’t.

    This is a pretty sloppy effort Jason. Fox calibre, not FTB.

  5. 6

    Nathair: assume for a moment, as I do, that “fire the first shot” was him telling himself that they should do so first, because the liberals “will not cross that line” because we “know who’s on [their] side” and they “have the guns”.

    Changes the whole meaning of the quote, doesn’t it?

  6. 7

    My dad has said almost this exact same thing. I still think that the majority of people with guns, whether conservative or not, are not ready to start shooting people – even liberals. And the military would end up about as split as the rest of the country.

    Oh yes, lets fantasize about civil war 2.0….

    This whole thing just gave me the shivers.

  7. 8

    The actual quote is, “They call me gay, there are death threats… There are times where I’m not thinking as clearly as I should, and in those unclear moments, I always think to myself, ‘Fire the first shot.’ Bring it on.”
    So clearly he’s saying that sometimes he thinks it would be okay if the liberals bashing him fired the first shot. paraphrasing something his father told him: “son, if you’ve got to fight, make sure you get in the first punch. Don’t hold back.”

    FIFY

    In other words, the best defense is a good offense.

    It’s impossible for me to hear Breitbart ranting about his guns and think he’s trying to calm himself down by telling himself to wait for the opposition to shoot first in order to give him the honorable response of shooting back. No way.

    He’s trying to psych himself up to use his guns (or rather, trying to psych up deluded TeaBaggers to use their guns against Breitbart’s enemies) The thing stopping him right now is those clear moments when he remembers there’s still a police force and justice system which he will have to face if he starts shooting. When he refers to unclear moments, he’s talking about his own delusion that he should shoot first and then get away with it because he’s on the right side. He knows, at some level, that his thoughts are deranged.

    If someone else really does start the right-wing civil war, you know where Breitbart will be. Safely in the rear, and loudly proclaiming that he deserves all the credit.

Comments are closed.