The Vermin Have Struck Again Dehumanizing the Enemy in Post 9 11 Media Representations
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RIGHT-WING EXTREMISTS ARE A BIGGER THREAT TO AMERICA THAN ISIS
BYKURT EICHENWALD
The North Florida Survival Group teaches "patriots" of all ages to handle weapons and survive in the wild. Its goal is to defend "our Constitution against all enemy threats."BRIAN BLANCO/REUTERS
Inside a storefront Chinese restaurant in upstate New York, neon low-cal from a multicolored window sign glowed on the confront of an extremist plotting mass murder. He had been seeking bankroll for his attack and, at this small establishment in Scotia, was meeting with a man who had agreed to take office in his scheme to build a radiation device, a weapon of mass destruction that would slowly and painfully kill anyone who walked nigh it.
"Everything with respiration would be dead past forenoon,'' the man who devised the attack told his confederate in tortured English. "How much sweeter could in that location be than a big stack of smelly bodies?"
Only in that location would exist no attack. The purported accomplice at Ming'due south Flavor restaurant in June 2012 was an FBI informant, and the discussion had been recorded. In the months that followed, another man joined the plot. Finally, in June 2013, with the conspirators hard at work on their ghastly weapon, armed FBI agents swooped in, storming a warehouse in Schaghticoke and absorbing them.
Their names were Glen and Eric.
Crawford, left, and Feight, are defendant of plotting to build a radiations device that would kill Muslims, too as government officials in Albany, New York, and Washington, D.C.
Clearly, these were non the typical "Islamic terrorists" described in the boogeyman stories of American politicians who exploit fear for votes. Glendon Crawford, the industrial mechanic who conceived the plan, has all the panache of a Macy's shoe salesman; Eric Feight, a software engineer who helped build the device, looks like a less impish version of Kurt Vonnegut. Merely their harmless appearance belies their beliefs—Crawford was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, and the plot he hatched with Feight involved killing scores of Muslims, besides as officials at the governor's mansion in Albany, New York and at the White House.
They and untold thousands like them are the extremists who hibernate amid us, the correct-wing militants who, since 2002, accept killed more people in the United States than jihadis have. In that time, according to New America, a Washington recall tank, Islamists launched nine attacks that murdered 45, while the right-wing extremists struck 18 times, leaving 48 expressionless. These Americans thrive on hate and conspiracy theories, many fed to them by politicians and commentators who blithely blather nearly government concentration camps and impending martial law and plans to seize guns and other dystopian gibberish, plainly unaware there are people listening who don't know it's all lies. These extremists turn to violence—against minorities, non-Christians, abortion providers, government officials—in what they believe is a fight to salvage America. And that potential for violence is escalating every day.
"Law enforcement agencies in the Us consider anti-government violent extremists, not radicalized Muslims, to be the most severe threat of political violence that they face," the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security reported this past June, based on surveys of 382 law enforcement groups.
The problem is getting worse, although few exterior of law enforcement know it. Multiple confidential sources notified the FBI last year that militia members have been conducting surveillance on Muslim schools, customs centers and mosques in nine states for what ane informant described as "operational purposes." Informants also notified federal constabulary enforcement that Mississippi militia extremists discussed kidnapping and beheading a Muslim, then posting a video of the decapitation on the Internet. The FBI also learned that correct-wing extremists take created bogus law enforcement and diplomatic identifications, not considering these radicals want to pretend to be police and ambassadors, merely because theybelievethey hold those positions in a regime they have created within the United States.
The unusual—and often daffy—globe view of some right-fly extremists was on daily display during the January armed takeover of federal facilities at the Malheur National Wild fauna Refuge in Oregon. Expressing dismay that 2 ranchers convicted of arson were ordered to serve out the remainder of their mandatory minimum prison house sentences, members of various militia groups occupied a building at the wild animals refuge, declaring their willingness to fight the regime and, if necessary, die for their cause. They proclaimed that the federal government was tyrannical, that the Constitution is under siege.
The Malheur occupiers were belittled on late night talk shows and social media as "y'all-Qaeda" and "yee-haw-dists," but what was unfolding in Oregon wasn't funny—it was frightening. These people speak of martyrdom, bloodbaths and killings, sentiments that can be heard on any Islamist recruitment video. And when law enforcement finally took action on January 26 in a mass abort, one of the militia members, Robert "LaVoy" Finicum—who had proclaimed he would rather die than go to jail—was shot dead.
The FBI says Finicum, who had said he'd rather die than become to jail for his function in the occupation of a wildlife refuge in Oregon, was killed as he reached for a weapon during a traffic terminate.JAROD OPPERMAN/THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX
And while those correct-wing militia members were occupying federal land, other extremists around the country were difficult at work. Fliers seeking recruits for the KKK appeared on lawns and doors in Alabama, California, Georgia, New Jersey and Oklahoma. In Johannesburg, California, police discovered bombs and booby traps in the home of a man who threatened to blow upward the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and other federal buildings. In Colorado Springs, a white supremacist suspected of existence connected to the 2013 murder of Colorado'southward prison chief was shot and wounded in a firefight with police. In Lafayette, Louisiana, officials released the diary of the homo who killed two people at a picture show theater this past summer—it was filled with rage confronting the federal regime and praise for a racist killer. In Oakdale, California, 2 honey farmers were charged with fraud involving a scheme by extremists who declare they are not bound by the laws of any government. And the twenty-four hours after the starting time arrests of the Malheur occupiers, a New Hampshire man who told an FBI informant he was role of a group that wanted to bring back "the original Constitution," and had as much every bit $200,000 on hand for explosives and rockets, was taken into custody afterward he illegally purchased hand grenades.
Who are these right-wing militants? And what makes them believe Americans have to engage in armed combat with their ain government rather than vote, kill their fellow citizens rather than tolerate differences, accident up buildings rather than just get a job? Billions of words take been written and spoken on violent Islamic extremists. The time has come to do the same for the good old-fashioned Americans who may pose the greatest threat to us all.
A Fairy Tale of Violence
They aren't all similar Timothy McVeigh.
McVeigh, the infamous anti-government extremist, murdered 168 people in 1995 when he detonated a truck bomb in forepart of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Simply not all of these violent right-fly radicals agree with McVeigh'southward beliefs or take the capability to execute such a devastating attack. In fact, these militants are a surprisingly diverse lot. Experts say at that place are 3 distinct groups, including some factions that despise one some other.
Persian Gulf State of war vet McVeigh was executed in 2001 for the bomb he planted in front of a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995 that killed 168 people and injured more than than 600.JIM ARGO/THE DAILY OKLAHOMAN/AP
According to Arie Perliger, manager of terrorism studies at the Combating Terrorism Center at West Bespeak, the iii ideologies within the vehement American far-correct are racist, anti-federalist and fundamentalist. Each has subgroups—the racists include white supremacy groups such as the KKK, neo-Nazis and skinheads, which can differ in subtle ways. The anti-federalists include militias, self-defined "patriot" groups and what are so-called "sovereign citizens,'' who concur that they are legally bound simply by their personal interpretation of common constabulary and are otherwise not subject to federal, country or local laws. The fundamentalists are primarily Christian identity groups that believe the biblical war of good vs. evil is between descendants of Anglo-Saxon nations and all other ethnic groups. Tangential to the fundamentalists are the anti-abortion attackers, who also invoke religion as a foundational motive for their violence. These disparate groups of people—trigger-happy and nonviolent—pine for different versions of a highly idealized past.
The granddaddy of the iii in the United States is the racist movement, the mod iteration of which is usually traced to the germination of the KKK in 1865. The Christian Identity movement began a few decades later, with the emergence of believers who subscribed to the theology of John Wilson, a British human who argued that the lost tribes of Israel had settled in northern Europe. The anti-federalists are much younger, exploding onto the scene in the early on 1990s with prominent groups such equally the Militia of Montana and the Michigan Militia; many experts maintain that the movement was a production of the financial crisis for farms in the 1980s, rapid economical and cultural change, and the adoption of gun control and ecology protection laws. In recent years, an explosion in the number of militias has been linked by experts to the beginning of the Great Recession in December 2007 and the election of Barack Obama months after. In 2008, according to the Southern Poverty Police force Center, there were 42 militia groups; today, in that location are 276.
And although they are frequently dismissed as people with crazy beliefs, right-wing extremists often seem like the guy adjacent door. While experts say many of these individuals are paranoid and narcissistic, with strong anti-democratic tendencies, "the most common trait among terrorists is normalcy," says Perliger of West Bespeak.
What drives them, co-ordinate to studies, is non then much ideology as their social network. When friends and associates all proclaim that the regime is destroying liberty, or that all Muslims are terrorists, or that minorities are dragging down the state, the social force per unit area to conform with that opinion is intense.
Experts say the grandaddy of all modern racist violent extremist factions in the U.Southward. is the Ku Klux Klan, which was created in 1865.JOHNNY MILANO/REUTERS
Making it worse is that many of these extremists base of operations their views on falsehoods. At a 2009 speech communication in Hamilton, Montana, a militia leader told an assembled crowd, "You know how the Oxford English Lexicon definesterrorism? 'Regime by intimidation.' That is profound." Not really, because it's not true. Oxford definesterrorism as all other dictionaries do: "the utilise of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims." People setting off bombs to trigger a revolution meet this definition, while the government that clears the area later on a smash does not. But those zealots in Hamilton were told a fairy tale and believed it.
The rationales and "facts" cited by the sovereign citizens are often so convoluted that they would be funny if they didn't go people killed. The radicals base their behavior on variations of this conspiracy theory: Many years ago, some outside forcefulness infiltrated the federal government and replaced information technology with an illegitimate and tyrannical one. Then, that "illegitimate regime" enslaved all Americans by using the 14th Amendment to create "citizens of the United States" who had no rights. The sovereign citizens believe Americans are tricked into accepting their designation as citizens of the United States past carrying driver's licenses and Social Security cards, which are subconscious contracts surrendering personal sovereignty to the government. Some of these sovereign citizens won't use Zippo codes, because they think that might constitute a contract with the illegitimate federal government. Others insert punctuation, like commas or periods, to separate their start and middle names from their final name, which they consider to be their government-given name.
And they can expound on the topic for hours on end, spinning words into a convoluted kaleidoscope of claptrap. "Past metaphysical refinement, in examining one course of authorities, information technology might be correctly said that there is no such thing as a denizen of the U.s.,'' wrote Richard MacDonald, one of the prominent ideologues of the motion. "But constant usage—arising from convenience, and maybe necessity, and dating from the germination of the Confederacy—has given substantial existence to the idea which the term conveys. A citizen of any 1 of u.s.a. of the Union, is held to be, and called a citizen of the United States, although technically and abstractly there is no such thing."
Some gullible people heed to the endless flow of arguments, brindled with "freedom" and "tyranny," and come away believing they exercise non accept to pay taxes, or have coin to cover the checks they write or otherwise obey the law. As a result, lots of sovereign citizens end up under criminal investigation, leading to trials in which judges rub their temples while listening to droning about some one thousand conspiracy. Just in the worst cases, all that simpleminded gibberish drives believers to violence, peculiarly against law enforcement during traffic stops. The virtually famous of those cases: the two Arkansas police force officers killed past sovereign citizen Joseph Kane in 2010 later they pulled him over. Kane mowed them down with a variant of an AK-47.
Then there are the militia groups, whose pronounced fealty to the Constitution is exceeded only past their credible refusal to read it. They too throw out a lot of sentences with "liberty" and "tyranny" (in fact, a decent portion of sovereign citizens are as well militia members), then wave around their pocket version of the Constitution, just the Founding Fathers would be stunned to hear the mumbo jumbo mouthed by militia members about their greatest creation. Start with the obvious: The Constitution is not some philosophical tract composed with soaring words about freedom; information technology is the blueprint dictating how the American government is supposed to office, while the amendments are the enumeration of citizens' rights. The recent flurries of militia madness, with camo-clad warriors spewing angrily almost ramble freedoms, run directly counter to the words of the document those people claim to cherish.
Consider the Bundy standoff in 2014. It began when the government decided to finally accept action against Cliven Bundy, a Nevada rancher who had grazed his cattle on federal lands for two decades while refusing to pay the required fees—racking up a nib in excess of $ane one thousand thousand. When Bundy sent his cattle dorsum onto protected lands for a snack, officials with the BLM began to round them upwards. Bundy spoke publicly well-nigh this "outrage" using the words of the sovereign denizen movement, which led anti-federalist groups such equally the Oath Keepers, the White Mountain Militia and the Praetorian Guard to come running, guns drawn. In no time, Bundy the scofflaw was a hero of the militia move, as he declared he did not recognize federal authority over the land. The Constitution and freedom were at pale, he averred.
Except they weren't. In fact, the consequence beneath this battle of wills, with Bundy'south supporters proclaiming their willingness to murder federal agents if need be, is directly addressed in the Constitution. In Article 4, Section 3, Clause 2, the Constitution grants Congress total authority to make all rules and regulations for the direction of federal lands. In the early 20th century, Congress used that power to straight the executive branch to handle the operations and planning for those lands. The Legislature, of course, still retains the constitutional potency to stop the president from playing whatever role in federal land management, but information technology has not. In other words, Bundy and his supporters, by proclaiming the federal government had no authority over federal land, were spitting on the Constitution.
Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy led a tense standoff with federal authorities in 2014 because he didn't think he should take to pay for the privilege of grazing his cattle on federal land.JIM URQUHART/REUTERS
The same foolishness was behind the armed occupation at the Malheur refuge spearheaded by Bundy's sons, Ammon and Ryan. Soon after the occupation began, the effect of the ranchers who had been sent to prison for arson slipped in significance as militia members demanded that federal country exist turned over to the people and urged ranchers to tear up leases through which they pay grazing fees. Once once again, militia members claimed this was washed in the proper name of the Constitution, despite the document's words that make it articulate their beliefs are incorrect.
The Attack on Islamberg
Conspiracy gourmand Alex Jones trotted out a new theory for the listeners of his radio show on March nineteen, 2015: The federal government was preparing to invade Texas.
"This is going to exist hellish," Jones said. "Now this is only a encompass for deploying the war machine on the streets…. This is an invasion." The reason? Either an impending financial collapse or the start step in Obama'south plan to not relinquish the presidency at the end of his second term.
Message boards and other online forums for right-wing extremists exploded with the news. The military was undertaking what information technology accounted to be a training exercise, which it chosen Jade Helm 15. A map that had been printed in newspapers weeks before to inform residents about the exercise was declared to be a hush-hush record that showed the military was calling Texas and Utah enemy territory—the kind of description whatsoever reasonable person would wait for documents in this kind of preparation mission.
Over the next week, the only media to take note of the online hysteria most Jade Helm were a couple of newspapers that mercilessly ridiculed information technology. Then, on March 26, Megyn Kelly, an ballast at Fob News, introduced the offset national news story about the Jade Helm panic. "While the military says it's but preparation soldiers for the realities of war, critics say the Army is preparing for modern-twenty-four hour period martial police,'' she said.
At about that same fourth dimension, Robert Doggart, an anti-government extremist in Tennessee, was on the phone with a militia sympathizer in Texas. The two discussed Doggart'south evolving plan to launch an set on on a heavily Muslim community near Hancock, New York, chosen Islamberg. They thought martial law would exist alleged in Texas and probably Utah, and that development should play a large role in the plot.
"Nosotros'll expect on, on, what happens in Texas, and the intelligence as it comes in,'' Doggart said. "[A]south soon equally the thing in Texas and Utah happens, then you hit information technology, right then. Right then, because it will divert the unabridged federal government into 'Hey, nosotros've got a problem in this other state.'"
Doggart—an ordained Christian government minister in the Christian National Church who unsuccessfully ran for Congress in 2014 as a far-right-wing independent—bemoaned the fact that he and the 10 other members of his attack team would never be historic as heroes after their assault on Islamberg because history is all lies written by the winners. "But we're even so going to practise this affair."
All of Doggart's words were recorded. The FBI had caught wind of the Islamberg plot and had placed a wiretap on his phone days before.
Doggart was arrested on Apr ten, but no one publicly linked his plan to the Jade Captain conspiracy theory. And then some politicians started playing games once again, suggesting with winks and nods that perhaps Obamawasabout to impose martial law.
On April 28, Texas Governor Greg Abbott ordered the Texas State Guard to monitor the operation to ensure ramble rights and ceremonious liberties wouldn't be infringed. Days after, Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas appear he had asked the Pentagon about Jade Helm and been assured it was a grooming practice; all the same, he said, "I empathise the reason for business and uncertainty, because when the federal government has not demonstrated itself to be trustworthy in this administration, the natural result is that many citizens don't trust what it is saying." Republican Representative Louie Gohmert of Texas pumped the fire a little hotter, saying, "When leaders within the current assistants believe that major threats to the state include those who support the Constitution…patriotic Americans have reason to exist concerned.''
Alex Jones, center, told the listeners of his radio prove that a war machine training exercise in Texas called Jade Helm fifteen was part of a coup by Obama, who planned to stay in office beyond 2017.JIM BOURG/REUTERS
Meanwhile, in Gastonia, North Carolina, ii anti-government extremists—who had their fears near Jade Helm reinforced by the words and actions of politicians like Abbott, Cruz and Gohmert—were working to construct bombs they could use on American troops when martial law was declared. The plot was allegedly conceived by Walter Eugene Litteral, who had arranged for a pal to construct the bombs. Authorities say Litteral wanted to pack tennis balls with smokeless rifle powder and a binary explosive that can exist detonated with a gunshot; then, for added destructive power, Litteral wanted to tape nails to the outside of the balls, so he could shoot them from a distance and accident shrapnel into a passing soldier. He planned to do the same with coffee cans, which he would load with ball bearings.
As the weeks passed, the swirl of rumors about impending martial constabulary grew more intense in the extremist online forums. Regime say Litteral acquired ammunition for a .338 quotient rifle, handheld radios with throat microphones for communication, military issue Kevlar helmets, torso armor vests and textile headgear designed to expose only parts of the confront. A 3rd conspirator joined upward, agreeing to aid build pipe bombs. But the attack never took place. Someone Litteral approached for aid instead alerted the FBI, which arrested the men on August 3.
Once again, America got lucky.
At that place has been no new set on on the scale of the Oklahoma City bombing conducted past McVeigh. But that is not for lack of trying. There was the so-called "241 Plan" in 2011, which involved murdering two country officials if one militia member was killed. There was the correct-wing extremist plot in 2014 to blow up buildings and power plants in hopes of sparking a widespread defection against the regime. Another foiled set on that aforementioned year intended to assassinate police officers and blow upwards the Tremonton Police Department in Utah, once more with the expectation the public would rise up in the aftermath.
Then at that place was the Georgia militia plot—anti-government radicals planned the murder of government employees and began an effort to develop ricin, a deadly toxin, with the intent of spreading it in Washington, D.C. For months, as the FBI listened in with the help of a cooperating witness, the group talked nearly the best poisons, how to deliver them and the means to kill the nearly people. And if nothing else worked, suggested Frederick Thomas, the ringleader of the group, they could ever get back to the tried and true. "We'd have to blow the whole building, like Timothy McVeigh."
Why Wasn't Obama Arrested?
It's possible the same factors fueling the growth in right-wing extremism are what's tearing autonomously the Republican Party.
Statistics show that the violence of right-wing extremists goes up when Republicans control at least one house of Congress. The reason, according to an belittling report conducted for Due west Point, might exist "relative deprivation, which occurs when the high expectations of far-right activists during a conservative Legislature are non fulfilled." In other words, these radicals look to be ignored when Democrats are in charge, but when Republicans in ability fail to champion the extremist cause, attacking the government strikes them as the simply remaining option.
If true, the impecuniousness must exist monstrous now. Remember back: How many times have Republican politicians told their followers Obama could be impeached? How many times did they advise he was a Muslim or wasn't built-in in this country? How many times did they say he lied to encompass something upwardly in Benghazi? How many times did they say his health care policy included death panels? How many times did they say he was committing crimes or shoving through policies that would kill people?
So, in 2009, the Republicans directly—and well-nigh certainly inadvertently—identified themselves every bit aligned with the dangerous radicals. The Department of Homeland Security produced an analysis saying that violent right-wing extremists posed the greatest terrorist threat to the country—a report since proved true. Just Republicans used this to feed into another conspiracy theory, proclaiming that the Obama administration had just deemedconservatives as a terrorist threat. To those unaware of what the report actually said, information technology was more show of a coming ideological state of war. To those radicals who knew, it meant establishment Republicans agreed thatconservatives andviolent right-wing extremistsmeant the same thing. Congressional hearings ensued, and terrified bureaucrats shut downwardly the Homeland Security division that conducted the assay of right-wing extremism, just when their noesis was most needed.
Extremist acrimony increases when Republicans control at least ane business firm of Congress, perhaps mirroring the revolution of rising expectations behind the French Revolution.HAKLEY/SIPA/AP
Republicans connected their drumbeat of conspiracy theories to bring out the base, capturing the House in 2010 and the Senate in 2012. And imagine what these right-fly extremists idea. Where were the impeachment proceedings? Why wasn't Obama under arrest? The man was a murderer, a tyrant spitting on the Constitution, a fraud belongings the presidency unlawfully. In that location were simply two possible answers for the extremists: accepting that the Republicans had been lying to them, or deciding that these politicians had sold out the minute they won control.
And and then, the far-right wing—including the violent militants—has turned on the Republican Party. The institution Republicans now fumble virtually, trying to understand why their preferred candidates are being kicked bated in favor of Donald Trump, who rages about sellout politicians and makes promises to do things that radicals adore. Forums like Stormfront fulminate with praise and devotion to Trump, while all but spitting on the more than traditional candidates.
The Republicans played a dangerous game by giving acceptance to all those conspiracy theories nearly Obama, a game that made them a target of the correct-fly rage they engendered. They have been the writer of the rise of the radicals, peaceful and trigger-happy, that in turn is tearing the party apart.
Meanwhile, the right-wing extremists proceed their plotting against America.
Original à http://world wide web.newsweek.com/2016/02/12/correct-wing-extremists-militants-bigger-threat-america-isis-jihadists-422743.html
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Source: https://www.theburningplatform.com/2016/08/19/they-are-more-dangerous-to-america-than-the-jv-team/comment-page-1/
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