Salon.com > Right-wing terrorism

Radical-right wing groups reach all time high

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 16:35:00 +0000

While the more mainstream anti-government Tea Party movement faded from view as the GOP co-opted it in the past few years, the action has moved to the fringes, where the number of radical right-wing Patriot groups reached an all time high in 2012, according to a new report from the Southern Poverty Law Center. What's more, it's the fourth year in a row that the record has been broken.

Conspiracy-minded Patriot groups first entered the public consciousness in the 1990s with the rise of the militia movement, and then the Oklahoma City bombing. Now, the SPLC is warning government officials that they see eerie similarities between the current era and that leading up to the bombing.

“As in the period before the Oklahoma City bombing, we now are seeing ominous threats from those who believe that the government is poised to take their guns,” the group's president, Richard Cohen, wrote in a letter sent Tuesday to Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

Fear and loathing in campaign 2012

Sun, 28 Oct 2012 16:30:00 +0000

When I tell Republicans — and even some moderate Democrats — that I wrote a book about right-wing hatred, their response, often as not, is skeptical and disapproving. Politics is a rough game, they say. Romney might have his 47 percent, but just listen to all those class war tropes about the 1 percent you hear from the left. Sure, the far right has an unfortunate legacy of racism, sexism and homophobia, but Obama has a whole deck of race and gender cards that he plays. And anyway, the nuts are ultimately unimportant — national elections are decided in the middle.

All of that might be true, but the kind of hatred that I’m talking about goes way beyond ordinary politics and deep into the realm of abnormal psychology. In its full-blown manifestations, it is akin to what an ophidiophobe feels at the sight of a snake: visceral and existential; categorical and absolute. It turns on the gut certainty that your adversaries aren’t looking just to raise your taxes but to destroy your whole way of life: that they are not only wrongheaded, but preternaturally evil. Comparatively few people experience these feelings on a conscious level, but they lie latent in many more of us than we might suspect.

Assassins in the Army?!

Tue, 28 Aug 2012 18:00:00 +0000

Yesterday, we learned that four active-duty U.S. Army soldiers, who were hoarding weapons and ammunition, had formed an anti-government militia group. They have been charged in the deaths of two associates who they worried might tip law enforcement to their clandestine activities. This is just the latest incident in a string of violent acts spanning the past three years that illuminates a linkage between some U.S. military members and violent right-wing extremism.

In April 2012, a former U.S. Marine (now militiaman), who had been originally charged with possession of a stolen machine gun with grenade launcher, was convicted of child sex abuse. On May 2, 2012, a former U.S. Marine recruited into the white supremacist movement shot and killed himself with an assault rifle that was used earlier to murder four family members (including a 2-year-old girl) at a home in Gilbert, Ariz. That same day, a 65-year-old Army veteran from southeastern Kansas was sent to prison for possessing incendiary bombs as part of his preparation for the end of the world. Later that month, a Missouri National Guard member was exposed for providing assault rifle training to a white supremacist group in Florida, who were preparing for a “race war.” More recently, a former U.S. Army serviceman (and a self-proclaimed neo-Nazi) killed five people at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin on Aug. 5, 2012. Less than two weeks later, a former Army soldier, who embraced sovereign citizen beliefs, is reportedly involved in the ambush attacks of four sheriff’s deputies in St. Johns Parish, La.

Obama assassination plot

Tue, 28 Aug 2012 13:01:00 +0000

Obama assassination plot: The AP reports that four Army soldiers based in Georgia plotted a range of anti-government terror attacks, including a plan to kill President Obama, prosecutors said yesterday. The soldiers killed a former comrade and his girlfriend to protect the secrecy of their militia group, which had stockpiled assault weapons and bomb supplies. The group spent at least $87,000 on weapons. One of the group’s members, who financed the conspiracy, called himself “the nicest cold-blooded murderer you will ever meet.” Gawker reports he attended the Republican National Convention as a page in 2008.

Immigration sparks domestic terrorism threat

Sun, 19 Aug 2012 15:00:00 +0000

Experts who monitor domestic terrorism know that extremist movements, groups, and individuals are influenced by controversial, often polarizing, national issues. Historically, right-wing extremists have taken strong stances on the issues of gun control, the right to life (abortion debate), same-sex marriage, and multiculturalism, among a host of other national issues. The debate surrounding the topic of illegal immigration appears to have trumped all other national issues for right-wing extremists today. For the white supremacist movement, this is not a new or emerging issue.

Historians have noted a strong correlation between large migrations of foreigners to the United States and increased acts of violence against immigrants. For example, riots and violence erupted in Philadelphia in the mid-1800s following a large influx of Irish Catholic immigrants. The KKK peaked in the 1920s with approximately five million members, at the time lessening its focus on African-Americans and shifting its attention to Catholic and Jewish immigrants. In Texas, during the 1980s, a Klan group systematically harassed and attacked Vietnamese fishermen in an effort to put them out of business and drive them from the town.

Daryl Johnson: I tried to warn them

Fri, 17 Aug 2012 18:15:00 +0000

In November 2011, I read an opinion article in Michigan's Muskegon Chronicle, which was called “Upcoming Election Year Should Put Voters on Guard for False Reports.” It focused on new information related to a sensitive intelligence report from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security called “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Radicalization and Recruitment.” The editorial’s observations were of particular interest to me: As the senior domestic terrorism analyst working at DHS from 2004 to 2010, I was the primary author of the report in question.

The DHS report, released on April 7, 2009, served as a warning to law enforcement concerning the resurgence of right-wing extremism in the U.S. The report was immediately leaked by an unknown individual who obviously took offense with its findings.

Roger Hedgecock, an ultra-conservative “shock jock” based in Southern California, admitted to receiving the official intelligence report from an anonymous individual. By April 12, 2009, Hedgecock had pushed the report into the public domain using his radio program as well as an article he published in World Net Daily (a conservative “free press” media outlet based in Medford, Ore). Hedgecock wrongfully claimed the DHS report demonized veterans and classified all conservatives as potential terrorists.