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This should be of concern to everyone.
A year after President Obama’s election, hate groups are feeling bolder than they have in over a decade, and their usually insular anger is beginning to spill into the public realm. This weekend, the National Socialist Movement, a neo-Nazi organization, held rallies in Arizona and Minnesota. Those demonstrations came on the heels of similar actions in Southern California, where epithet-spewing white supremacists were forced to disband by rock-throwing counter-protesters. The upsurge in visibility is more than anecdotal—law-enforcement officials are monitoring levels of agitation among extremist groups that they say are the highest since Timothy McVeigh’s deadly attack in Oklahoma City nearly 15 years ago.
“It’s sort of a beehive now,” says James Cavanaugh, a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Cavanaugh was one of the agents at the standoff at David Koresh’s Waco, Texas, compound in 1993 (which McVeigh timed his terrorist act to commemorate, two years later, on April 19, 1995). Last October in Tennessee, Cavanaugh aided in the arrest of two white supremacists charged with plotting to assassinate Obama, and in 2007 he helped bring down members of the Alabama Free Militia, who were found with hundreds of hand- and rifle grenades and other explosives. The arrests had an unsettling familiarity. “We haven’t had that kind of activity since the 1990s,” Cavanaugh says.
“We believe there is a real resurgence,” adds Lieutenant David Hall, director of the Missouri Information Analysis Center, which tracks antigovernment extremist groups around the Midwest. “The atmosphere is ripe.”
Experts on extremist groups say that the outcries of right-wing tea-partiers, death panellers, birthers, and the like are accompanied by increased activity all along the paranoid fringe—from radical border-patrol groups to skinheads to sovereign citizens. Two camps are particularly restive: militia enthusiasts and white supremacists; their members are seething because of the persistence of two wars and the election of a black (and Democratic) president with an ambitious agenda. The previous upsurge of antigovernment activity in the 1990s—of which McVeigh’s attack marked the apex—was set off in part by a recession and the election of a liberal president.
When the left warns of the dangers inherent in the hate and intolerance emerging from right-wing media as well as Republican politicians, it is this very point they are addressing. While it might be a money-making act for lowlifes like Beck and Limbaugh and a smart political move by conservative politicians to speak of government takeovers and socialist agendas, to the deranged mind, it is all very real. They see their country in danger and feel compelled to shout louder and act more forcefully.
When Republican politicians express doubt over Obama’s birth certificate and spread lies (death panels, “pallin’ with terrorists, etc.), they empower the crazies and racists.
With less than a year into his presidency, the level of hate has reached an alarming level and the game gets more perilous with each passing day.
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Everyone should see the OKC monument.
Do you have a proposed solution Mario?
Yes he does. They all want to fan the flames of the outer fringe until restrictions on or action is taken against anyone who speaks out against their agendas.
Most of them are intellectually dishonest and they want to see radicalism mainstreamed to the point they can make it look dangerous enough that action is warranted. They are either incapable of or unwilling to confront opposing thought with dialogue. Isn’t that kinda what Hitler did to the Jews?
Meanwhile, they molly coddle Islamic Extremists and turn a blind “Politically Correct” eye as they kill innocent civilians. Then make excuses for them.
Can you image what the outcry from these hypocrites would be if this Muslim Terrorist at Ft. Hood HAD been a White Christian with any tie, however slight, to Conservative Pundits?? If instead of the Koran, his bedside table held a copy of a Beck, Savage or O’Reilly book??
I wish we could just tune out the hate mongering – ignore them. But to do so could give the false impression that they are without opposition. The answer to hate speech is counter speech. We must call for tolerance, unity, peace, and acceptance. I think it is a grave error to dismiss any group as “fringe” or without influence.
It is impossible to engage in dialog when one side is unwilling to listen to alternative views. If we are to ignore any speech, let it be those who engage in ad hominem attacks, who make sweeping generalizations about entire populations, who engage in the perpetuation of harmful stereotypes, and who promote opinion as fact.
How can we tell when a person or group is engaging in this kind of harmful speech? They usually begin a sentence with the phrase, “You people . . . .”
@Tommy – As you very well know, there is no quick fix for racist attitudes nor is there one for ignorance. A couple of hundred years if inbred bigotry is not going to change overnight.
Of immediate concern should be the politicians who flame the passions of hatred in people too ignorant to know better. It is these politicians we should call out at every opportunity.
As for the Becks and Limbaughs, again there is little we could do except call them out for what they are. But the truth is they’ll always be around. After all, the ‘Tennessean’ types need some place to turn to to feed their insatiable hunger for opinion that justifies their narrow-minded and twisted view of the world. For them, truth, honesty and integrity are not as important as knowing that they heard it on the Fox news teevee box, so it’s got to be true.
@Tennessean – you make a nice paradoxical point that i think unfortunetly defeats your own arguement.
You tell us that Mario and co are trying to fan the flames of the outer fringe and mainstream radicalism with the end game of action against it. Is his end game A War On Right Wing Hate Groups?!?!
Oh wait dont we already have one of those just under a different guise – one you seem to be a firm believer in.
@Mario: If we stand idly by & simply watch from afar this kind of behavior, with the pretense of it being a small opposing view, then we become part of the problem. As a kid in New Orleans, I was the only white person in my entire school. Later in high school, I was one of 10 white people in a student body consisting of 2,000 kids. I was not taught racism in our family so I didn’t immediately understand why I was hated. Then I started getting jumped after school on a daily basis. One day, 13 girls jumped me after school (for a dime). When people in the neighborhood saw what was happening, they locked their doors & shut their curtains, never calling the police. White people. They were now as guilty as the girls that jumped me, at least in my eyes. Only 1 person helped me. It was a girl I didn’t even know. As she walked by, without hesitation, she screamed, knocked on doors & pushed these girls off of me. The next day, she went to the Principal’s office to get them expelled. She could have been killed for doing that. She was black & she could have been ostracized by her peers at school. These days kids worry about whether they’ll be popular or not. Checking for weapons was unheard of back then, but not in my school. I know fully well, first hand how badly racism hurts. It is a parasite in society which exponentially increases if we don’t stand up against it. Ignorance, apparently is contagious. Who knew! When friends later in life found out about my experiences in school, they asked me why I didn’t become racist. The reason is obvious. I would never want another person to be hated for something so irrelevant as their skin color. Also, I met one girl that day, who stood up for me. That is what we are supposed to do when we hear about racism. We aren’t supposed to talk about hidden “agendas.” We’re supposed to do what you did Mario, & shine a light on this disease we call, racism.
while I agree with much of what you say sometimes the word racist is used to much, when a guy like Joe Wilson given his history jumps up and say you lie, there probably is some deep seated hatred there, given his support of the confederate flag, his remarks on Strom Thurmond, and what he said the NAACP should be called,but if someone like John Boehner attacks you are probably just talking policy differences.
If someone is against illegal immigration does it make them a racist? I don’t think so, I personally don’t believe in some of the more punitive measures that some on the right advocate to stop illegal immigration but to say because you are opposed that you are racist or xenophobic is disingenuous, what people are generally opposed to is being told to change because someone moves here and often does not care about learning the language or just views this country as giant ATM. and for Latino advocates to say they didn’t cross the border the border crossed them assumes they have to be at least 161 years old and were living here at the time, highly unlikely, I live in southern California and have seen the changes, there are communities here such as Maywood, and a few others where they will not enforce traffic laws or code violations due to who lives there, when you have 5 or more adults living in an apartment it is going to drive up costs because 4,5 or more can pay more than one or 2, as far as I am concerned that is discrimination, not how we should live as Americans, when jobs ask you to speak Spanish what they are saying is everyone there must speak Spanish but not everyone needs to speak English, because why would you need to speak Spanish to work in say assembly or construction. there are whole classes of jobs even if you wanted to work or needed to the racial politics make them impossible, there is a saying you cant fight the bean without fighting the burrito, I have found this to be true,
mario says, “After all, the ‘Tennessean’ types need some place to turn to to feed their insatiable hunger for opinion that justifies their narrow-minded and twisted view of the world.”
And that my friends is exactly why there is difficulty having meaningful dialogue between the differing ideologies.
@Tennessean: For once, I agree with you. There is difficulty having meaningful dialogue between the differing idologies if one of them is, “narrow-minded & has a twisted view of the world.” I can finally say, we agree on something. I’m pleased you’re coming around.
Awwww Anomaly, don’t be so hard on yourself. You’re not really THAT twisted. Just really curved and bent a lot.
@Tennessean: You sure got me there with that quick wit & intelligent response! That was almost as swift as your, “I know you are but what am I?” comment that you spam on the comments.
Why thank you, Anomaly/Chester/Anomaly.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5P5eQiKNQs