After obsessing for the past year, or more, about whether or not the Obama administration will ever bring itself to utter the words “Islamic Terror” or “Radical Islam” one can only wonder when conservatives will wake up to the greater threat, that once again, is seen to be emanating from the far right. To wit: “In a survey we conducted with the Police Executive Research Forum last year of 382 law enforcement agencies, 74 percent reported anti-government extremism as one of the top three terrorist threats in their jurisdiction; 39 percent listed extremism connected with Al Qaeda or like-minded terrorist organizations. And only 3 percent identified the threat from Muslim extremists as severe, compared with 7 percent for anti-government and other forms of extremism.”
The recent racially driven terror shootings in Charleston once again bring to the fore the threat that I detailed below in “Coming Unhinged on the Far Right”. The Charleston tragedy shows that the underlying issues outlined in 2010 are still salient, relevant and no less dangerous today.
What is most interesting in the aftermath of Charleston is that even though folks on the far right, like Bill O’Rielly, admit that it was an act of terror, they cannot resist using the tragedy to promote an ongoing anti-progressive political agenda. The aftermath of the Charleston terror attack is seen by the talking heads on the far right as an opportunity for the “America haters” and “race hustlers” to launch a new round of attacks against our country. They ignore the fact that many of the alleged “America haters” and “race hustlers are merely pointing out the enduring shortcomings of race in American society and all the problems resulting there from.
A question that every American should be asking is why there are so many on the right who cannot, or will not address the issue of domestic right wing terror head on and chose instead, to try to force fit tragedy into their ongoing anti-progressive agenda and diatribe? Does anyone think that that approach is going to yield a useful outcome?
Steven J. Gulitti
6/23/2015
Sources:
The Growing Right-Wing Terror Threat; http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/16/opinion/the-other-terror-threat.html?_r=0
Charleston shooting puts focus on the rising fringe http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/245623-charleston-shooting-puts-focus-on-the-rising-fringe
Coming Unhinged on the Far Right; http://bluemassgroup.com/2010/03/coming-unhinged-on-the-far-right/
From Ferguson to Charleston and Beyond, Anguish About Race Keeps Building; http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/21/us/from-ferguson-to-charleston-and-beyond-anguish-about-race-keeps-building.html?_r=1
steven-j-gulitti says
Further evidence of what I’m talking about:
“The suspected S.C. gunman’s embrace of the Confederate flag led police to think he’d aligned with white supremacists. David Greene talks to Richard Cohen, president of the Southern Poverty Law Center.”
Narrative Change Makes White Supremacy Groups More Dangerous, Expert Says; http://www.npr.org/2015/06/24/417045112/narrative-change-makes-white-supremacy-groups-more-dangerous-expert-says
Christopher says
People are treating this as if it were news, but I distinctly recall a DoJ report from early in the Obama presidency warning of the dangers of right-wing terror groups. For reasons passing understanding many in the conservative media freaked out rather than making it very clear they don’t support such actions. It would be one thing if said media simply said we don’t have to answer for them, but many seemed to defend the extremists.
steven-j-gulitti says
These folks sought to gain from this just as Boehner and McConnell would say that they believed that Obama wasn’t a Muslim but at the same time they wouldn’t disuade their followers from believing same.
sue-kennedy says
just a few years ago Andrew Breitbart in Lexington, sponsored by our good friends at RedMassGroup:
“I always think to myself, fire the first shot. Bring it on. Because I know whose on our side. They (the liberals) know that they can only win a rhetorical and a propaganda war. They cannot win, we out number them in this country and we have the guns.”
And wasn’t it amazing that unarmed black teens strike such fear into police that they need to kill them, and this armed and dangerous, mass murdering terrorist was arrested without any shots being fired. It didn’t require them to throw him on the ground and put a knee on his neck. No punching or kicking. They stopped and bought him Burger King. Did they remove the cuffs for him to eat? He arrived at the police station alive and did not require medical attention.
sue-kennedy says
Sorry video didn’t imbed. Here’s the link: https://youtu.be/LHslkhZWzUQ
Christopher says
…that his ideas stink, but who cares when you can just shoot – so much for democracy. Besides, how many ideas have really died at the point of a gun anyway?
steven-j-gulitti says
Alabama Gov. Bentley removes Confederate flags from Capitol grounds; http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2015/06/confederate_flag_removed_from.html