Going To Extremes: The Obama Era's Top Ten Anti-Government Flare-Ups
The charges filed this week against nine members of the Hutaree Christian militia group have re-focused attention on the resurgence over the last year or so of the broader militia movement.The complete list of "values" Republicans are at the link.
That resurgence has been driven in part, say experts, by the election of President Obama. But during the Obama era, threats of anti-government violence -- and even the real thing -- have become more widespread.
1. The Hutaree: Nine members of the Christian militia group, which says it's preparing for the arrival of the Anti-Christ, were charged this week with plotting to kill law enforcement and "oppose by force the authority of the U.S. government." The Feds acted after one member posted online that the group was "ready for war."
5. John Patrick Bedell: He traveled from California in February, to shoot two Pentagon police officers before being mortally wounded himself. In an online video manifesto posted in 2006, Bedell had railed against the government's ability to "confiscate the resources of their citizens to fund schemes that need only be justified by lies and deception."
With the passage of health care reform which will save hundreds of thousands of American lives there was a spike in violence, but it started before that with the mere election of a Democrat to the presidency, From Republican Rhetoric to Right-Wing Terror
Disturbingly, the paranoia in action of Pittsburgh cop killer Richard Poplawski is hardly an isolated episode. As I've suggested previously, whether concerning guns, abortion, gay Americans, immigration or judicial appointments, the line connecting the rhetoric of the Republican Party and the mainstream conservative movement behind it to right-wing terror is a very short one.More documentation at the link.
Pro-Gun and Anti-Government
Two other recent cases shed light on the phenomenon of right-wing terror. In a little noticed story, white supremacist James Cummings murdered by his wife last December in Maine had been assembling materials to manufacture a "dirty bomb." And in Tennessee, a follower not of Hitler but conservative hate merchant Bernard Goldberg cited the author's writings as justification for his July shooting at a Unitarian church. In his suicide note, the shooter James Adkisson informed Americans his was a "hate crime" against "damn left-wing liberals":
"This was a symbolic killing. Who I wanted to kill was every Democrat in the Senate & House, the 100 people in Bernard Goldberg's book. I'd like to kill everyone in the mainstream media. But I know those people were inaccessible to me. I couldn't get to the generals & high ranking officers of the Marxist movement so I went after the foot soldiers, the chickenshit liberals that vote in these traitorous people. Someone had to get the ball rolling. I volunteered. I hope others do the same. It's the only way we can rid America of this cancerous pestilence."
Like Poplawski, while Cummings and Adkisson may have existed on the fringes of the conservative movement, some of their rhetoric parrots the words of mainstream Republican politicians and right-wing pundits.
Back to just after the passage of HCR, Vandals hit at least five Dem offices nationwide, threaten to ‘assassinate’ children of pro-reform lawmakers.
Right Wing Reacts With Rage: Health Care Will ‘Do More Damage Than 9/11,’ ‘Freedom Has Been Assaulted’
In the course of the health care debate, right-wing pundits and politicians regularly made use of inflammatory rhetoric to fearmonger about the consequences of passing reform legislation. Now, following the historic vote by the House of Representatives last night that will extend health insurance coverage to tens of millions of Americans, conservative talkers have exploded with rage.
