Anyone who thinks I am off course on the topic of right-wing extremism should consider the latest incident that was reported on the evening news. Over the weekend the FBI arrested nine members of the Hutaree Militia, located in southern Michigan, when the agency uncovered their plot to kill a policeman and then bomb his funeral so as to create the mass killing of his fellow officers. The leader of this group, David Brian Stone, believed that this act would trigger a nationwide revolt against the Federal Government by thousands of "aggrieved citizens". Stone's ex-wife said that his life had "spiraled out of control" and that he believed that this despicable act was part of some preordained plan to "defend the world against the anti-Christ."
Anyone who really thinks that there is no threat from the fanatics on the far right or who persists in trying to equate the legacy of the left with the CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER from the furthest fringes of ultra-conservative politics should wake up and smell the coffee before it's too late. Those who irresponsibly fantasize about some "citizen's revolt" aimed at toppling the current government in Washington are fooling themselves and have embarked on a reckless course of action. This ill begotten fantasy will only lead to senseless killings, including possibly their own, leaving behind in its wake a pathetic legacy of unnecessary tragedy.
Maybe its time for my fellow Americans to turn away from the extremist nonsense that passes for political commentary on the television and radio shows of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh or that which flows from the poison pens of Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter and their fellow travelers. Maybe its time to marginalize the content free cackle of people like Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and Sarah Palin when they babble on about enemies within the ranks of Senators and Congressmen or when they draw pictures of congressional districts held by Democrats overlaid by the crosshairs of a rifle scope. How often have you seen a Tea Party placard representing President Obama as the anti-Christ? Ask yourself, can you truly abide the most radical rhetoric of the Tea Party extremists who have come to drown out even the sensible people within their own ranks?
The vast majority of Americans have no desire to partake of this lunacy and the government has far more firepower than that possessed by the fanatics. Do the math on the probability of success for any kind of "citizens uprising" and you will see by intuitive deduction that this is a losing proposition, especially in a society that abhors extremist political actions and ideologies and one which would never support such a thing.
See the attached Christian Science Monitor article for more:
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Don Rich
dunniteowl
Paul J. O'Rourke
UncleChri
john blumenthal
Kanuk
Salon.com
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One of the most remarkable things about the little-noticed Jekyll Island gathering, which in some ways resembled another meeting that helped launch the militia movement of the 1990s, is how it brought together disparate elements of the radical right. It included radical tax protesters, militiamen, nativist extremists, anti-Obama "birthers," hard-line libertarians, conspiracy-minded Patriots with theories about secret government concentration camps, even a raging anti-Semite named Edgar Steele. Others, representing gun-rights absolutists and the far-right "unregistered churches" movement, were invited but sent their regrets.
According to the Jekyll Island Project website, there were many newer members of the radical right present as well. They included Robert Crooks, leader of the virulent California nativist group Mountain Minuteman, who in 2007 concocted a faked video enthusiastically depicting the killing by snipers of undocumented immigrants crossing the border. ("This video shows how to keep a Home Depot parking lot empty," Crooks wrote in a mass E-mail attached to the video.) Lt. Cmdr. Eric Cunningham was there from Oath Keepers, a Patriot group formed last year, composed of military and law enforcement officers, and given to antigovernment conspiracy theories. Also present was Edgar Steele, who represented the neo-Nazi Aryan Nations in a 2000 lawsuit brought by the Southern Poverty Law Center and has since become an ardent anti-Semite himself. (In 2002, in an essay entitled "It's the Jews, Stupid!!!", Steele wrote, "Jews are the problem. Jews have been the problem since before they saw to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.") And there was an official of Restore the Republic, the Patriot group that released a film last fall alleging that the Federal Emergency Management Agency is constructing a network of concentration camps meant for patriotic Americans.
Since the Congress
The ranks of We the People have burgeoned since the November congress, and they now include dozens of prominent radical-right figures. Among them are Orly Taitz, the California dentist on a personal jihad to prove that Obama is not a citizen; Cory Burnell, a former leader of the white supremacist League of the South and later founder of Christian Exodus, which seeks a theocratic takeover of the state of South Carolina; John Hassey, former leader of the Central Alabama Militia; Walter Burien, co-founder in the 1990s of the Arizona Sons and Daughters of Liberty militia; and Jo Ann Dingley, once a contact for the Santa Rosa County Militia and a delegate to the Third Continental Congress, a Patriot formation.
http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2010/spring/midwifing-the-militias