Report on America’s Violent Far-Right | 307 Domestic Acts of Terror Per Year By Christians, Neo-Nazis and Right Wing Extremists

Conservatives Don’t Like This West Point Report on America’s Violent Far-Right

Reuters

Aren’t conservatives supposed to be hawkish on terror? They tend to be when it comes to foreign terrorists, but many are taking umbrage at a new West Point report on violent far-right extremists home-grown right here in the U.S. Earlier this week, the Combatting Terrorism Center (CTC) at America’s leading military academy published an extensive report on the “dramatic rise in the number of attacks and violent plots originating from individuals and groups who self-identify with the far-right of American politics.” Christian fundamentalists, Militia movement groups, Skinheads, neo-Nazis, and violent anti-abortionists were all cited in the report, titled Challengers from the Sidelines: Understanding America’s Violent Far-Right. These factions may harbor different ideological goals, but as this chart shows, they’ve all ramped up their violent tactics in trying to achieve them:

“Although in the 1990s the average number of attacks per year was 70.1, the average number of attacks per year in the first 11 years of the twenty-first century was 307.5, a rise of more than 400%,” writes Dr. Arie Perliger, Director of Terrorism Studies at the CTC.

In short, this report makes a convincing case about extremists trying to inflict harm upon innocent Americans, and it’s full of alarming data and clear policy recommendations. Conservatives love appealing to these kinds of studies when arguing that we need to get tough on terror, right? Well, not in this case. One Republican congressional staffer—who thinks only Muslims can be terrorists—told The Washington Times‘ Rowan Scarborough:

If [the Defense Department] is looking for places to cut spending, this junk study is ground zero. Shouldn’t the Combating Terrorism Center be combating radical Islam around the globe instead of perpetuating the left’s myth that right-wingers are terrorists?

The National Review‘s John Fund also wants to change the subject to terrorists in other parts of the world:

The world is beset by terrorists—witness the American hostages taken in Algeria this week—but portions of our federal government continue to obsess about alleged home-grown threats from the “far right” … My sources inside Congress tell me they continue to worry that efforts to monitor domestic Muslim extremists as well as interdiction efforts against radical Islamists crossing the U.S. border are sometimes put on the back burner. The government denies this, but it seems to me its protestations would be more persuasive if it spent less time producing half-baked warnings about the danger of “right-wing extremists.”

World Net Daily’s Michael Carl extensively quotes blogger Pamela Geller in his article on the report. “This is another appalling attempt to demonize loyal Americans and whitewash the Islamic threat,” Geller says. “West Point probably is working on orders from higher ups. Or else it has bought into the dominant PC culture.” Over at Newsmax, Christiana Lilly buries the lede—turning a story about far-right terrorists into a story about liberals:

The U.S. Military Academy at West Point released a paper calling far right groups anti-federalists while describing liberals as “future oriented,” the Washington Times reports.

And yes, you better believe Drudge sirened it:

Want to add to this story? Let us know in comments or send an email to the author at dwagner@theatlantic.com. You can share ideas for stories on the Open Wire.

Related articles

• New Study Highlights Threat From Far Right-Wing Groups In U.S. (thinkprogress.org)
• West Point: Far Right Becoming More Violent, Dangerous (alan.com)
• Conservatives Don’t Like This West Point Report on America’s Violent Far-Right. (greatriversofhope.wordpress.com)
• Conservatives Don’t Like This West Point Report on America’s Violent Far-Right (theatlanticwire.com)

Catholic Video Gives Pro-Terrorist Christian Fascist Platform To Spread Homophobia and Hate

“Reverend” Donald Spitz from the pro-terrorist anti-abortion group Army of God has been using the Catholic video-sharing site Glora.tv in order to promote his agenda of anti-abortion violence and extreme homophobia.

On Boxing Day, Spitz struck again, releasing a film onto the site repeating anti-gay sections of the bible declaring homosexuals to be “sodomites” and “worthy of death”. There is even a quotation celebrating a Jewish King who “brake down the houses of the sodomites”.

Unsurprisingly, Glora.tv has done absolutely nothing about this latest film, nor about the other (many much, much worse) films which Spitz is distributing on the site. Gloria.tv and its Catholic priest managers, Father Don Reto Nay and Father Markus Doppelbauer, are without excuse. As explained previously, I have repeatedly warned them about what is going on, and even went to the trouble of joining the site myself in order to raise awareness about how the Army of God are using the site for their own ends. The result? My account was disabled (I can no longer post messages etc.) but “Reverend” Don Spitz remains an active member.

Why are Catholics not speaking up on this? One wonders how much sympathy there is for anti-abortion terrorism within the Catholic community. I am beginning to suspect it is more significant than generally believed.

Related articles

• Reactions heated on Planned Parenthood-Komen rift (newsok.com)
• Rectal Examination Provision Proposed for Anti-Abortion Bill [Video] (inquisitr.com)
• Got Breast Cancer? You’re on Your Own (keepwomenhealthy.com)

Religious Right Pose National Security Threat

Are evangelicals a national security threat?

A new poll suggests that American Christians (unlike Muslims) are likely to put their faith before their country

By David Sirota

If you have the stomach to listen to enough right-wing talk radio, or troll enough right-wing websites, you inevitably come upon fear-mongering about the Unassimilated Muslim. Essentially, this caricature suggests that Muslims in America are more loyal to their religion than to the United States, that such allegedly traitorous loyalties prove that Muslims refuse to assimilate into our nation and that Muslims are therefore a national security threat.

Earlier this year, a Gallup poll illustrated just how apocryphal this story really is. It found that Muslim Americans are one of the most — if not the single most — loyal religious group to the United States. Now, comes the flip side from the Pew Research Center’s stunning findings about other religious groups in America (emphasis mine):

American Christians are more likely than their Western European counterparts to think of themselves first in terms of their religion rather than their nationality; 46 percent of Christians in the U.S. see themselves primarily as Christians and the same number consider themselves Americans first. In contrast, majorities of Christians in France (90 percent), Germany (70 percent), Britain (63 percent) and Spain (53 percent) identify primarily with their nationality rather than their religion. Among Christians in the U.S., white evangelicals are especially inclined to identify first with their faith; 70 percent in this group see themselves first as Christians rather than as Americans, while 22 percent say they are primarily American.

If, as Islamophobes argue, refusing to assimilate is defined as expressing loyalty to a religion before loyalty to country, then this data suggests it is evangelical Christians who are very resistant to assimilation. And yet, few would cite these findings to argue that Christians pose a serious threat to America’s national security. Why the double standard?

Because Christianity is seen as the dominant culture in America — indeed, Christianity and America are often portrayed as being nearly synonymous, meaning expressing loyalty to the former is seen as the equivalent to expressing loyalty to the latter. In this view, there is no such thing as separation between the Christian church and the American state — and every other culture and religion is expected to assimilate to Christianity. To do otherwise is to be accused of waging a “War on Christmas” — or worse, to be accused of being disloyal to America and therefore a national security threat.

Of course, a genuinely pluralistic America is one where — regardless of the religion in question — we see no conflict between loyalties to a religion and loyalties to country. In this ideal America, those who identify as Muslims first are no more or less “un-American” than Christians who do the same (personally, this is the way I see things).

But if our politics and culture are going to continue to make extrapolative judgments about citizens’ patriotic loyalties based on their religious affiliations, then such judgments should at least be universal — and not so obviously selective or brazenly xenophobic.