" What may be most noteworthy about the march, however, is its date
— April 19...
That is the date of the first shots fired
at Lexington in the Revolutionary War. And it is also the
anniversary of the fiery end of the government siege in Waco and the 1995 Oklahoma City
bombing."
“We are in the midst of one of the most significant right-wing populist
rebellions in United States history,” Chip Berlet, a veteran analyst of the American radical
right, wrote earlier this year.
"We
see around us a series of overlapping social and political movements populated
by people [who are] angry, resentful, and full of anxiety. They are raging
against the machinery of the federal bureaucracy and liberal government
programs and policies including health care, reform of immigration and labor
laws, abortion, and gay marriage."
Sixty-one percent of Americans
believe the country is in decline, according to a recent NBC News/Wall Street
Journal poll. Just a quarter think the government can be trusted. And the anti-tax tea party movement is viewed
in much more positive terms than either the Democratic or Republican parties,
the poll found.
The signs of growing radicalization
are everywhere. Armed men have come to Obama speeches bearing signs suggesting
that the "tree of liberty" needs to be "watered" with
"the blood of tyrants."
The Conservative Political Action Conference held this February was co-sponsored by groups like the John Birch Society, which believes President Eisenhower was a Communist agent, and Oath Keepers, a Patriot outfit formed last year that suggests, in thinly veiled language, that the government has secret plans to declare martial law and intern patriotic Americans in concentration camps.
Politicians pandering to the
antigovernment right in 37 states have introduced "Tenth Amendment
Resolutions," based on the constitutional provision keeping all powers not
explicitly given to the federal government with the states.
And, at the "A Well Regulated
Militia" website, a recent discussion of how to build "clandestine
safe houses" to stay clear of the federal government included a
conversation about how mass murderers like Timothy McVeigh and Olympics bomber
Eric Rudolph were supposedly betrayed at such houses.
Doing the
Numbers
The number of hate groups in America has been going up for years, rising 54%
between 2000 and 2008 and driven largely by an angry backlash against non-white
immigration and, starting in the last year of that period, the economic
meltdown and the climb to power of an African American president.
According to the latest annual count
by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), these groups rose again slightly in
2009 — from 926 in 2008 to 932 last year — despite the demise of a key neo-Nazi
group. The American National Socialist Workers Party, which had 35 chapters in
28 states, imploded shortly after the October 2008 arrest of founder Bill White
for making
threats against his enemies.
At the same time, the number of what the SPLC designates as "nativist extremist" groups —
organizations that go beyond mere advocacy of
restrictive immigration policy to actually confront or harass suspected
immigrants — jumped from 173 groups in 2008 to 309 last year. Virtually all of
these vigilante groups have appeared since the spring of 2005.
But the most dramatic story by far has
been with the antigovernment Patriots.
The militias
and the larger Patriot movement first came to Americans’ attention in the
mid-1990s, when they appeared as an angry reaction to what was seen as a
tyrannical government bent on crushing all dissent. Sparked most dramatically
by the death of 76 Branch Davidians during a 1993 law enforcement siege in
Waco, Texas, those who joined the militias also railed against the Democratic
Clinton Administration and initiatives like gun control and environmental
regulation. Although the Patriot movement included people formerly associated
with racially based hate groups, it was above all animated by a view of the
federal government as the primary enemy, along with a fondness for
antigovernment conspiracy theories. By early this decade, the groups had
largely disappeared from public view.
But last year, as noted in the SPLC’s
August report, "The
Second Wave: Return of the Militias," a dramatic resurgence in the
Patriot movement and its paramilitary wing, the militias, began. Now, the
latest SPLC count finds that an astonishing 363 new Patriot groups appeared in
2009, with the totals going from 149 groups (including 42 militias) to 512 (127
of them militias) — a 244% jump.
That is cause for grave concern.
Individuals associated with the Patriot movement during its 1990s heyday
produced an enormous amount of violence, most dramatically the Oklahoma City
bombing that left 168 people dead.
Already there are signs of similar violence emanating from the radical right. Since the installation of Barack Obama, right-wing extremists have murdered six law enforcement officers.
Racist
skinheads and others have been arrested in alleged plots to assassinate the
nation’s first black president. One man from Brockton, Mass. — who told police
he had learned on white supremacist websites that a genocide was under way
against whites —
is charged with murdering two black people and planning to
kill as many Jews as possible on the day after Obama’s inauguration. Most
recently, a rash of individuals with antigovernment, survivalist or racist
views have been arrested in a series of bomb cases.
As the movement has exploded, so has
the reach of its ideas, aided and abetted by commentators and politicians in
the ostensible mainstream. While in the 1990s, the movement got good reviews
from a few lawmakers and talk-radio hosts, some of its central ideas today are
being plugged by people with far larger audiences like FOX News’ Glenn Beck and
U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn).
Last year also experienced levels of
cross-pollination between different sectors of the radical right not seen in
years. Nativist activists increasingly adopted the ideas of the Patriots;
racist rants against Obama and others coursed through the Patriot movement; and
conspiracy theories involving the government appeared in all kinds of
right-wing venues. A good example is the upcoming Second Amendment March in
Washington, D.C.
The website promoting the march is topped by a picture of a
colonial militiaman, and key supporters include Larry Pratt, a long-time
militia enthusiast with connections to white supremacists, and Richard Mack, a
conspiracy-mongering former sheriff associated with the Patriot group Oath
Keepers.
By Mark Potok
http://readersupportednews.com/off-site-news-section/157-civilian-security/1382-the-rising-rage-on-the-right
