Nevada Governor Gibbons Empowers an Extremist
I thought David Neiwert might be interested in Governor Jim Gibbons’ appointment of Tony Lesperance to head the Department of Agriculture. While for us, Lesperance’s appointment is just another in a list of Gibbons’ bone-headed appointments, to Neiwert, it signifies a departure from the normal pattern of the Republican empowerment of the far right. A freelance journalist, Neiwert makes it his business to keep track of right-wing extremist groups and has written several books including; Strawberry Days: How Internment Destroyed a Japanese American Community, Death on the Fourth of July: The Story of a Killing, a Trial, and Hate Crime in America, and In God’s Country: The Patriot Movement and the Pacific Northwest. Neiwert puts the Lesperance appointment in the appropriate perspective:
The Republican empowerment of the far right — especially the so-called “Patriot” movement folks whose anti-government extremism wreaked domestic havoc in the 1990s — has for the most part been a systemic, ideological phenomenon: adopting ideas and talking points that originate on the fringe and gradually adopting them as “mainstream” positions that help the GOP maintain a distance that allows them a kind of plausible deniability about their relationships to these factions.
Neiwert then goes on to summarize the radical nature of the appointment: “Evidently, Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons has no such compunctions.” Evidently. “…Nevada has as its agriculture chief a radical who believes in gutting the government, and who thinks a fistfight is the proper way to settle a political dispute.” And yes, there is “nothing like right-wing governance.”
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- Tony Lesperance: Team Player
- Chris Simcox’s Visit To Reno and The March of The Minutemen
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Ah. I know Mr. Lesperance well. I shouldn’t say anything more. But I will think about it and be back.
Mr. Lesperance and his crowd never do anything unless it is part of an overall scheme.
There is more here than meets the eye.