Archive for the ‘Timothy McVeigh’ Category

Rise of Far Right Extremism In America

Posted: September 9, 2012 in 9/11, American Fascism, American Fascists, American Politics, American Right, American Taliban, Birther Crazies, Birther Kooks, Birtherism, Birthers, Tea Baggers, Tea Party, Tea Party Racism, Tea Party Racists, Timothy McVeigh, US Extremists, White Supremacists, Wingnuts
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Sikh worshippers in Wisconsin raise an American flag before a service commemorating the victims of a mass shooting. A gunman who identified himself as a white supremacist went on a rampage during a Sikh service at Oak Creek, killing six people.

Sikh worshippers in Wisconsin raise an American flag before a service commemorating the victims of a mass shooting. A gunman who identified himself as a white supremacist went on a rampage during a Sikh service at Oak Creek, killing six people.

AP

Rise of far right in US aided by ‘perfect storm’

WASHINGTON // Heated political rhetoric, economic hardships, changing demographics, anti-Islamic fervour and the first African-American president have all contributed to a “perfect storm” for the proliferation of extremist groups in America that some civil-rights groups are warning could become more violent.

The past two months have seen at least a dozen violent incidents involving religious establishments across America, including the massacre of six worshippers at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Most of the other incidents involved mosques and Islamic institutions. A mosque in Missouri was burnt to the ground, shots were fired at an Islamic school in Illinois and six other Islamic institutions were targeted in apparent acts of vandalism.

An Arab Christian church in Dearborn, Michigan, a Jewish holocaust memorial in New York and a synagogue in Florida were also vandalised.

If those acts suggest actions of the extreme political right, violence has also gone the other way. Last Wednesday, a man opened fire inside the Washington, DC, headquarters of a Christian conservative group, reportedly upset at its opposition to same-sex unions. A security guard was wounded.

Some fear more violence. Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a civil-rights group that tracks extremists in America, said the Milwaukee killings did not surprise observers, who had been expecting some kind of copy-cat attempt after the shootings and bombings in Norway last July when Anders Breivik killed 77 people.

“I think we are at a very dangerous moment. There’s a kind of perfect storm of factors favouring the development of [extremist] groups and accompanying domestic terrorism.”

The SPLC has documented a nearly 70 per cent increase in the number of American extremist groups since 2000 and an “extraordinary” expansion – from 149 in late 2008 to 1,274 in 2011 – of so-called patriot movements, often loosely aligned anti-government groups that sometimes form armed militias.

Patriot militants were behind a string of domestic terrorism plots in the 1990s, including the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people.

The expansion coincides with the term of Barack Obama, the first African-American in the White House, but it is not necessarily a classic racist reaction, Mr Potok said. Rather, America’s First Family is visceral evidence of the fact that the country’s demographics are changing – 2011 was the first year in the United States in which non-white birth rates exceeded white birth rates, according to the US Census Bureau.

“Every white supremacist in America knows the census bureau has predicted that non-Hispanic whites will lose their majority in America by the year 2050.”

America’s slow recovery from its worst economic downturn since the depression of the 1930s and rhetoric that previously belonged on the fringe gaining more traction have also provided fertile ground for extremists, Frank Meeink, a former neo-Nazi and author of a memoir, The Autobiography of a Recovering Skinhead, said in a recent interview.

Mr Meeink joined skinhead gangs in the late 1980s. He said he sees many parallels between now and when Bill Clinton, another socially progressive Dempcratic president on civil-rights issues, took office in 1993 during an economic slump.

The difference, he said, is that rhetoric that used to belong to neo-Nazi groups has become more mainstream and is particularly evident in the language of the Christian Right and the Tea Party, where, he said, some of his former associates had ended up.

“The new lingo is calling everything ‘socialist’.And it’s almost the same as how neo-Nazis used to talk about Jews taking over the government.”

Adding fuel to the situation is the fact that unrestrained political rhetoric is seemingly becoming increasingly common in public places.

In New York City, for instance, posters citing “19,250 deadly Islamic attacks since 9/11/01. It’s not Islamophobia, it’s Islamorealism” went up last Friday and will be visible for another three weeks.

Buses in San Francisco bear posters proclaiming: “In a war between the civilised man and the savage, support the civilised man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad”.

Both are paid for by the American Freedom Defence Initiative, run by Pamela Geller, best known for her role in the “Ground Zero Mosque” controversy in 2010 and part of a coterie of what Mr Potok described as “professional Islamophobes and the politicians willing to shill for them”.

The controversy over plans for an Islamic centre near the site of the World Trade Center in 2010 ushered in a year when anti-Sharia legislation began to appear in state legislatures across the country and congressional hearings into the “radicalisation” of America’s Muslims – which took place in early 2011 – were announced.

The same year also saw a 50 per cent spike in anti-Muslim hate crimes, according to FBI statistics, bucking a steady decline since 2002 when passions had settled after the attacks of September 11.

Robert Sellers, a professor at the Logsdon school of theology in Texas, warned of a “culture of Islamophobia” at the annual Baptist World Congress in late July.

“I trust that none of us wishes to sin against our neighbours by spreading fear and stereotypes,” Mr Sellers said, according to the Baptist Center’s Ethics Daily website.

Extreme rhetoric has an effect, Mr Potok said.

“When people make completely unsubstantiated and incredibly demonising statements about entire groups of people, they can’t be surprised when those people are subjected to criminal attacks

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Right Wing Catholic Terrorism in America | Catholic Fascist Timothy McVeigh | Religious Terrorists

Posted: May 11, 2012 in Catholic Terrorism, Right Wing Terrorism, Timothy McVeigh
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Remembering Right Wing Terrorism: The Oklahoma City Bombing 4/19/1995
Right Wing Catholic Terrorism in America | Catholic Fascist Timothy McVeigh | Religious Terrorists
Via Justin “Filthy Liberal Scum” Rosario

Today is the anniversary of the largest act of domestic terrorism in United States history, the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995. 168 people were killed, including 19 children. Now here’s the part we’re not supposed to talk about: the bombing was carried out by right-wing extremists during a time of overheated right-wing rhetoric. Today’s right-wing rhetoric makes the 90s look like water cooler gossip. But making that comparison is frowned upon.

Why is that? Why aren’t we supposed to talk about it? Because it’s “politicizing a tragedy?” Because Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols were “lone wolves” and the whole thing is just an “isolated incident?” That’s all bullshit. The nature of the attack was explicitly political. McVeigh was motivated by his far right ideology and a deep hatred of the government. Specifically, a Democratically led government. He felt that the debacles at Waco and Ruby Ridge were the beginnings of the much dreaded “government takeover” that paranoid militia groups have been preparing for. While Ruby Ridge was a legitimate mess and possible overreaction by the government, Waco was not.

David Koresh was your run-of-the-mill cult leader: charismatic, intelligent, narcissistic and completely amoral. He demanded that he be the one to impregnate his female followers and did not blink at statutory rape. Of course, he was the prophet and the messiah so why should he? This is who McVeigh was “defending;” a megalomaniac that raped little girls.

Still, this was perfectly acceptable if it meant “freedom” from the oppressive government.

Just to be clear (something the right does not enjoy when it comes to this topic) McVeigh was, without a shred of doubt, a right-wing extremist. When captured, he had pages of The Turner Diaries on his person. The Turner Diaries are an infamous right-wing, white supremacist (yes, that was redundant) novel about overthrowing the US government and the start of a race war that ends with the extermination of Jews and all non-whites. He was sympathetic to, if not an actual member of, the militia movement. The same militia movement that swelled during the Clinton years, fueled by conspiracies of black helicopters coming to kill or capture anyone that President Clinton wanted silenced. The same movement that went quiet during the Bush years even though we were “under attack” at all times from secret terrorist cells that were plotting our destruction. The same movement that wasn’t afraid of a Republican president trashing the Constitution with the Patriot Act but was simply terrified of a Democratic president who happened to be black (his skin color couldn’t possibly have had anything to do with it). The militia movement is undeniably fueled by right-wing hate and fear and it, in turn, influenced McVeigh.

Are you starting to understand why the right doesn’t want to talk about this?

There have been dozens of acts and attempted acts of right-wing violence in just the past three years as the right wing has ratcheted up their eliminationist rhetoric to an insane degree. The same message is repeated over and over and over: “It’s us or them. We’re at war. Get ready for violence, the liberals are coming.” Several massacres have been averted, some of them by chance but it’s just a matter of time until one slips through. In their paranoid fantasies of “taking their country back,” it doesn’t matter who gets hurt because they believe they’re at war. When asked about the death of children, some of them infants, McVeigh had this to say:

“I didn’t define the rules of engagement in this conflict. The rules, if not written down, are defined by the aggressor. It was brutal, no holds barred. Women and kids were killed at Waco and Ruby Ridge. You put back in [the government's] faces exactly what they’re giving out.”

This is the result of the rights’ violent rhetoric and we should never let them forget, no matter how hard they try, that this is what they stand for:

This is Baylee Almon. She had just celebrated her first birthday the day before she was murdered by Timothy McVeigh. She died shortly after this picture was taken. When you listen to Ted Nugent declare that he will be dead or in jail if Obama gets re-elected, when you read about Wayne LaPierre, vice president of the NRA, insist that Obama is secretly preparing to steal everyone’s guns, when you hear every other pundit on Fox News compare liberals to Nazis, they do not represent patriotism or freedom or American values. They represent a baby dying as she is pulled from the wreckage of right-wing terrorism.

Take a moment to remind a conservative what today is and ask them if they’re OK with it. After all, the Tea Party’s favorite slogan is “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants.” Timothy McVeigh was wearing that slogan on a t-shirt the day he murdered Baylee Almon, 18 other children and 147 other people. I think they should be reminded of that fact.

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