Radical-Right Wing Groups
Reach all Time High
There are now more conspiracy-minded Patriot groups than at the height of the militia movement in the 1990s
By Alex Seitz-Wald -
Wednesday, Mar 6, 2013 11:35 AM EST
(Credit: Reuters/Brian Blanco)
While the more mainstream anti-government Tea Party movement faded from view as the GOP co-opted it in the past few years, the action has moved to
the fringes, where the number of radical right-wing Patriot groups reached an all time high in 2012, according to a new report from the Southern Poverty Law Center.
What’s more, it’s the fourth year in a row that the record has been broken.
Conspiracy-minded
Patriot groups first entered the public consciousness in the 1990s with
the rise of the militia movement, and then the Oklahoma City bombing.
Now, the SPLC is warning government officials that they see eerie
similarities between the current era and that leading up to the bombing.
“As
in the period before the Oklahoma City bombing, we now are seeing
ominous threats from those who believe that the government is poised to
take their guns,” the group’s president, Richard Cohen, wrote in a letter sent Tuesday to Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.
The
number of Patriot groups peaked after the bombing in 1996 at 858,
before falling off steeply and remaining low under George W. Bush.
However, since the election of Barack Obama, the number of groups
tracked by the SPLC has skyrocketed and continued to climb.
Last
year, the SPLC found 1,360 Patriot groups in the country — up more than
500 over the ’96 peak — including 321 militia groups.
Meanwhile,the number of hate groups the group tracks — which includes some arguably mainstream conservative groups like the Family Research Council, in addition to more radical groups like white supremacists — remained over 1,000.
The SPLC blames the resurgence on the down
economy (hate and radicalism always tick up when things seem desperate), along with the election and reelection of Barack Obama, a push on gun control, and racial tensions over immigration and the declining power of white America.
“Another factor driving the expansion of the radical right over the last decade or so has been the mainstreaming of formerly marginal conspiracy theories,” notes senior fellow Mark Potock. Indeed, one needs only watch Fox News for an hour or read a Dick Morris column to see that. And conspiracy theorizing seems to have reached new heights recently.
But the people in the federal government responsible for stopping it are poorly equipped to deal with the threat. In part, that’s because
Republican lawmakers, stoked by the Tea Party, neutered a Department of Homeland Security task force that was supposed to track homegrown radical groups. After a conservative uproar over a leaked
report that warned about the rise of right-wing radical groups in the wake of Obama’s election, DHS relented. It repudiated the paper and
dissolved the group responsible for it.
“DHS is scoffing at the mission of doing domestic counter-terrorism, as is Congress,” Daryl Johnson, the man who led that task force, told Wired last year.
“There’ve been no hearings about the rising white supremacist threat, but there’s been a long list of attacks over the last few years. But they still hold hearings about Muslim extremism. It’s out of balance.”
-
*
SOME INTERESTING COMMENTS...
And the Injuns! Don't forget how scared we were of them redskins! Until we wiped 'em all out, anyway. Now we expect them to parade around beneath the Stars and Stripes and forget how soldiers flying that flag massacred their ancestors.
And we're still a teensy bit scared of the redcoats. And the French, we must be terrorized by the French by the way we've demonized them.
*
Our institutions and many of our elites have been telling the masses to cower and wet themselves for more than 10 years now.
There has always been a strong implicit message of fear in America. In a lot of ways its a fear based society. Our economy might even collapse without it. Its not hard to figure out why this is happening. Whats especially strange is why they are so scared of the non threatening and oblivious or even embracing that which really is a danger.
*
It's been going on a lot longer than 10 years, it is more like 20 years or more. I remember the early 90's when these fear mongers started taking over and all the conspiracies they sucked out of their thumbs over Clinton!!! The reason they investigated Clinton and wasted millions of dollars doing it. It bought on Waco, Ruby Ridge and Oklahoma City! That's when a lot of us former Republicans began seeing them for what they were and refused to ever vote for one again. Such rhetoric needs to come with a warning label on it.
*
In fairness, it's been going on pretty much since the country's inception - highlighted by the Southern white man's living in constant terror of the black men they enslaved seeking retribution.
Which naturally explains why we're such a fear-soaked, gun-soaked country.
If you've never seen Bowling For Columbine, I cannot recommend it highly enough. Michael Moore humorously (yet with deadly accuracy) explains the point I made in an animated segment concerning US History vis-a-vis fear & guns..
*
Remember in the lead-up to the Iraq War — the worst foreign policy blunder in US history — when republicans were all a'prattle about the word "appeasement," back before they even knew what it meant? Here's one such republican in action. Good times!
Now, we've got an actual dangerous example of appeasement right in front of us. The government, afraid of offending republicans, have chosen to turn a blind eye towards the militant wing of the most serious threat the country has faced since WW2 — the modern GOP.
*
*
"Iraq War — the worse worst foreign policy blunder in US history--"
Vietnam was a disaster of biblical proportions.
20 years.
Almost 60,000 US soldiers killed.
Around 3 million non-US killed.
*
READ MORE HERE:
http://www.salon.com/2013/03/06/radical_right_wing_groups_reach_all_time_high/
No comments:
Post a Comment