Sunday, April 11, 2010

You ain't gonna believe this. But, then again, it is merely the worst attack of the collectivist conflation ass-hats so far, so maybe you will.

Why does this brown-scare stuff sound like the doppelganger of the way Newsweek wrote up Huey P. Newton in the '60s. "Look out, progressive metrosexual big government nanny state man! White gun nuts are gonna get yo momma!" Only thing is, Stewart Rhodes is also descended from Mexican farmworkers with a little Apache thrown in. Inconvenient facts get ignored, I guess. Sheesh. Here. Read it yourself and puke.

Mike
III

Hate.


Antigovernment extremists are on the rise—and on the march.


By Evan Thomas and Eve Conant | NEWSWEEK

Published Apr 9, 2010

From the magazine issue dated Apr 19, 2010

Stewart Rhodes does not seem like an extremist. He is a graduate of Yale Law School and a former U.S. Army paratrooper and congressional staffer. He is not at all secretive. In February he was sitting at a table at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at a fancy downtown hotel in Washington, handing out fliers and selling T shirts for his organization, the Oath Keepers. Rhodes says he has 6,000 dues-paying members, active and retired police and military, who promise never to take orders to disarm U.S. citizens or herd them into concentration camps. Rhodes told a NEWSWEEK reporter, "We're not a militia." Oath Keepers do not run around the woods on the weekend shooting weapons or threatening the violent overthrow of the government. Their oath is to uphold the Constitution and defend the American people from dictatorship.

But by conjuring up the specter of revolution—or counterrevolution—is Rhodes adding to the threat of real violence? Oath Keepers are "a particularly worrisome example of the 'patriot' revival," according to Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which monitors hate speech and extremist organizations. "Patriot" groups—described by the SPLC as outfits "that see the federal government as part of a plot to impose 'one-world government' on liberty-loving Americans"—are "roaring back" after years out of the limelight, according to Potok. Notorious in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, the patriot groups seemed to fade away under the shadow of 9/11, but hard times and the nation's first African-American president seem to have brought about a revival—from 149 groups in 2008 to 512 (127 of them militias) in 2009, according to the SPLC.

It is easy to exaggerate the numbers of these groups or the threat they pose, especially if you are an organization, like the SPLC, dedicated to exposing such things. Extremist outfits have come and gone over the years. With their preening and prancing about in Nazi garb or white robes, skinheads and white supremacists are often more about showing off than committing acts of violence. Law-enforcement experts worry more about "lone wolves," disturbed loners with military training, like Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, than they do about loudmouth militia groups. But the feds and local authorities will be watching closely on April 19, when the Oath Keepers mark their first anniversary and join a Second Amendment March on Washington to celebrate the right to bear arms. The Oath Keepers say they are commemorating the first shots of the Revolutionary War fired at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, but April 19 is also the anniversary of the end of the FBI siege at Waco, Texas, in 1993, as well as the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

This is a season, or perhaps an era, when politics seem more intense than usual, and the domestic extremist threat seems more real. Partisan disputes are rarely pretty, but lately they have taken a particularly ugly, menacing turn. Last week the FBI arrested individuals for making death threats against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Patty Murray of Washington for their votes on health-care reform. A series of expletive-strewn voice-mail messages left for Senator Murray were particularly creepy: "You're gonna have a target on your back for the rest of your life," the caller warned. "How long do you think you can hide?"

Senate Sergeant at Arms Terrance W. Gainer said last week that serious threats to members of Congress had nearly tripled, from 15 in the last three months of 2009 to 42 in the first quarter of 2010, with most of them coming in March during the height of the health-care debate. Some of the calls and e-mails were "very vicious" and included threats to members' homes and families. "You had people saying, 'I'm going to get your kids, I'm going to get your wife,' " says Gainer. "It was very disturbing to members."

After the health-reform vote, a tea-party activist in Lynchburg, Va., posted an address for Rep. Tom Perriello on his blog and encouraged readers to "drop by" and express their anger over Perriello's vote for the bill. The blogger got the address wrong. Perriello's brother returned home that day to find that someone had cut the line to a -propane-gas tank behind his home. The fact that haters are sometimes incompetent renders them only marginally less frightening. Some threats come from people who are truly unhinged. Federal authorities have charged a man with multiple-personality disorder with threatening in a YouTube video to kill Rep. Eric Cantor; the suspect is not competent to stand trial.

Economic distress and social change make for fear, and fear makes for anger, now and always. Night riders terrorized the defenseless after the Civil War. During the Great Depression, two demagogues in particular whipped up conspiracy theories against Jewish bankers and the rich elites to arouse angry mass movements. Huey Long, governor of Louisiana, later a U.S. senator who wanted to soak the rich, and Father Charles Coughlin, an anti-Semitic Catholic priest whose radio show reached 40 million people, seemed a political threat to FDR, until Long was assassinated and Coughlin became increasingly unhinged.

"There was a lot of hatred in the 1930s," says Alan Brinkley, the Columbia University historian and expert on populist movements. But the currentsurge of fear and loathing toward Obama is "scary," he says. "There's a big dose of race behind the real crazies, the ones who take their guns to public meetings. I can't see this happening if McCain were president, or [any] white male." (Secret Service spokespeople reported spikes in threats against Obama after his election and inauguration, but they've also said the president generally receives about the same number of threats as did Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. They've declined to comment on whether there's been a spike in threats related to health-care reform.)

Fear of "the other" has long fueled hate crimes, from the torture and lynchings by the Ku Klux Klan beginning in the late 1800s, to the violence of the 1950s and '60s, to the virulent anti-immigrant groups today. In 2008 the Census Bureau announced that whites will make up only half the U.S. population in 2050. "That was a big deal," says the SPLC's Potok. In recent years white-power groups mushroomed and the Klan reversed declining membership.

The Internet has made it easy to express hatred, and may act as a kind of safety valve. But the Internet can also abet twisted minds with vitriol and practical tips, like how to make a bomb.

Middle-aged guys sitting around their basements fantasizing are one thing; addled war veterans with weapons training are another. Timothy McVeigh was a Gulf War veteran who read white-supremacist literature and the sort of books that predict a takeover by one-world government agents flying black helicopters. He has, or had, some potential heirs apparent in a recently indicted group called the Hutaree, a Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio-based militia. According to the Hutaree Web site, the group ranked its followers with weird sci-fi titles like "Radok" and "Arkon." The Hutaree militiamen speculate that the Antichrist is Javier Solana, a former NATO secretary-general and senior official of the European Union. The evidence? "There is a virtual media blackout on this man," writes John Reynolds, author of a screed on Solana and the Antichrist on the Hutaree Web site. "I see Jacques Chirac and Silvio Burlusconi [sic], Tony Blair, and Prince Charles on the TV all of the time, yet not a word one regarding Solana. Why not?" ("Mr. Solana has now retired and is an elderly private gentleman. This is quite insane," says a spokesman for the European Union's Washington diplomatic mission.)

The rambling rants of the Hutaree might seem funny, in a sick sort of way, but they are far from harmless. The FBI busted nine members last month for allegedly plotting to trigger an "uprising" against the government by assassinating a local police officer and then ambushing colleagues who attended the funeral by blowing up improvised explosive devices. They may have had some professional instruction: one of the men in the group, Michael Meeks, is a Persian Gulf War veteran who served four years in the Marines and was a decorated rifle expert, according to Marine Corps records. Another member, Kristopher Sickles, is an Army vet (discharged "under other than honorable conditions," according to prosecutors). William Swor, the lawyer for Hutaree leader David Brian Stone, says there is no evidence the group was doing anything other than exercising its First Amendment rights.

The Internet offers a dark social network for militiamen and real soldiers. A July 2008 FBI intelligence report by the bureau's counterterrorism division warned that white-supremacist leaders were encouraging followers to "infiltrate the military as 'ghost skins' in order to recruit and receive training for the benefit of the extremist movement." (The report said the hate-group leaders were especially interested in planting moles without any documented history with neo-Nazi groups or "overt racist insignia such as tattoos" so they could more easily slip by military recruiters. The FBI identified 203 people with confirmed or claimed military service who were active in ex-tremist groups. On the NewSaxon.org Web site for white supremacists, a blogger called "shadowman" posted a photo of a U.S. Army enlisted man in camouflage carrying a weapon with the boast "i am a professional killer?.?.?.?a soldier born of war." The Defense Department has long had a "zero tolerance" policy for membership in extremist groups, but last November the Pentagon quietly tightened its regulations governing such activity, a Pentagon official confirmed to newsweek. Not only are service members barred from "active participation" in such groups, they also may not "actively advocate supremacist doctrine, ideology, or causes," according to a copy of the Pentagon regulation.

It is hard to know how much such grim fantasies are stirred by the steady stream of conspiracy theories pushed by talk-radio hosts. Rush Limbaugh talks about the Democrats planning to "kill you" with health-care reform and suggests (agreeing with black Muslim minister Louis Farrakhan, of all people) that it "seems perfectly within the realm of reality" that the H1N1 vaccine was "developed to kill people." Like many talk-show hosts, he uses martial language to rouse the faithful: "The enemy camp is the White House right now," he says. Former Alaska governor turned media star Sarah Palin posted on her Facebook page a list of House Democrats who voted for health-care reform with crosshairs aimed at their home districts, while tweeting to her followers, "Don't Retreat, Instead—RELOAD!" She strongly denied any intent to incite violence. Other conservative talkers insist their foes are preparing violent attacks on them. Glenn Beck of Fox News is the master purveyor of this particular brand of sly paranoia. He suggests that he will be the victim of violence. "I'd better start wearing a [bulletproof] vest" to guard against White House attacks, he says, and warns that the Democrats will sic goons on him to break his kneecaps. Some talk-show hosts see the risk of going too far. Bill O'Reilly, the top-rated talker on Fox News, interviewed Stewart Rhodes of the Oath Keepers in February and treated him coolly. After the interview O'Reilly said to his audience, "We have a system to uphold the Constitution. It is called the judicial branch. The Supreme Court. The Oath Keepers are not the system." Wise words, but it's a sign of disturbing times that O'Reilly felt required to say them.

With Michael Isikoff, Mark Hosenball, Katie Connolly, and Daniel Stone in Washington

29 comments:

Anonymous said...

sounds like SPLC needs a few bricks through their windows

Taylor H said...

"The Oath Keepers are not part of that system." Yeah they are, they fought all the wars so you could denounce them once they got back home and now they have to fix it because you would rather have a TV show than side with the people!

Justin said...

Tories.

If someone brings the tar, I (and my chickens) will be more than happy to supply the feathers.

Justin
III

Anonymous said...

The Oath Keepers have ALWAYS been the system and STILL are THE system. That is the point. Just because there are those who do not uphold their oath and are in a position of Responsibility and Trust to do so and DO NOT UPHOLD THEIR OATH does not mean there are not those of us out there who REMAIN and will be faithful to their oath and WILL UPHOLD that OATH and Replace the former! I am pissed off and tired of these "Chicken Dick's" so if my sentence structure along with my grammar do not make you warm and fuzzy......well, Go fuck yourself!

Love you 2!

Chris
III

Justin said...

Not part of the system? O'Reilly amazes me with his lack of understanding.

The checks and balances exist to save us the trouble of fixing these things ourselves. The SCOTUS -IS NOT- the final arbiter of what constitutes "the consent of the governed", or even what is right or wrong. We are. The people.

Oath Keepers and 3% ers are "extremists"???

Oh come on. Wake up. The founding fathers make us ALL look like a bunch of grannies. These people need to study the Revolution from the British perspective to get an idea of how "extremist" our forefathers were. The quickest way to be seen as a threat to the statist/collectivist is to mouth the words of Patrick Henry or Jefferson.

This O'Reilly guy is a collaborator. Nothing more.

Justin
III

Spirit of '76 said...

Well, their psychological projections should confirm one salient, if often ignored point:

While the so-called "radical right" really is not racist, THEY ARE and for some reason, they seek to destroy the straight, white, Christian man. Lord knows the mere sight of one throws these people into apoplexy (as my dear departed mother was fond of saying).

dennis308 said...

Maybe the number of Anti-Government Militias are rising because we have a Anti-American Administration and Legislation in Washington, don't ya think.
And further more Oath Keepers are NOT any kind of Militia,These are Men and Women who have,and do on a day to day basis defend the rights of ASSWIPES like this Shit for Brains writer/publisher to Spew forth such B/S.
Instead of thanking these people for the duties that they perform this Ass Hole has the nerve to criticise.
Well I for One want to say thank you to the Oath Keepers that came before me for protecting U.S. AGAINST ALL ENEMIES BOTH FORINGE AND DOMESTIC!!! EMPASIS ON DOMESTIC!!!
And Mark Potok you sir, can Kiss My Ass !!! even though You are Not worthy of such exalted endevors.

dennis
III
O/K

johnnyreb said...

They're desperate, and scared to death.

Good.

They should be.


Richard
III

Anonymous said...

The only racism I see is from the Affirmative Action programs and minority business quotas. And pro-Costitutional groups are now racist hate groups? Well, I'll have to see for myself on the 19th! See y'all then!

Anonymous said...

Is it just me or is media becoming more "North Korean" daily? Completely internalize that beyond the context of politics.

"We're lying to you, and you know they are lies, but you believe them anyway."

Brutus said...

...

Our cause is just. Our union is perfect. Our internal resources are great, and, if necessary, foreign assistance is undoubtedly attainable.—We gratefully acknowledge, as signal instances of the Divine favour towards us, that his Providence would not permit us to be called into this severe controversy, until we were grown up to our present strength, had been previously exercised in warlike operation, and possessed of the means of defending ourselves. With hearts fortified with these animating reflections, we most solemnly, before God and the world, declare, that, exerting the utmost energy of those powers, which our beneficent Creator hath graciously bestowed upon us, the arms we have been compelled by our enemies to assume, we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverence, employ for the preservation of our liberties; being with one mind resolved to die freemen rather than to live slaves.

Lest this declaration should disquiet the minds of our friends and fellow-subjects in any part of the empire, we assure them that we mean not to dissolve that union which has so long and so happily subsisted between us, and which we sincerely wish to see restored.—Necessity has not yet driven us into that desperate measure, or induced us to excite any other nation to war against them.—We have not raised armies with ambitious designs of separating from Great-Britain, and establishing independent states. We fight not for glory or for conquest. We exhibit to mankind the remarkable spectacle of a people attacked by unprovoked enemies, without any imputation or even suspicion of offence. They boast of their privileges and civilization, and yet proffer no milder conditions than servitude or death.

In our own native land, in defence of the freedom that is our birthright, and which we ever enjoyed till the late violation of it—for the protection of our property, acquired solely by the honest industry of our fore-fathers and ourselves, against violence actually offered, we have taken up arms. We shall lay them down when hostilities shall cease on the part of the aggressors, and all danger of their being renewed shall be removed, and not before.

With an humble confidence in the mercies of the supreme and impartial Judge and Ruler of the Universe, we most devoutly implore his divine goodness to protect us happily through this great conflict, to dispose our adversaries to reconciliation on reasonable terms, and thereby to relieve the empire from the calamities of civil war.

Setting Forth the Causes and Necessity of Their Taking Up Arms

Happy D said...

"There's a big dose of race behind the real crazies, the ones who take their guns to public meetings."

Ever since a Black man carried a gun at an Arizona protest. The party that brought us the Ku Klux Klan has been in an Insane panic.

They even reported that he was White!?

Perhaps what they are afraid of is that Black people may hold a grudge for all that Murder and Terrorism the Democrats inflicted on them? If so they need desperately to deflect it somehow.

As for the professional race baiters Evan Thomas and Eve Conant at NEWSWEEK. If I suggested what should be done with America's Paul Joseph Goebbels "Big Lie" Media types. Mike would rightly not put up this post.

But maybe they have some windows?

Anonymous said...

So, Mark Potok doesn't like patriots? What, is he descended from Benedict Arnold? (Actually, I think Potol descended from the hindquarters of an ape!)

You know, if the damned socialists in charge don't want to feel threatened, then they should stop threatening ordinary, everyday Americans!

chicopanther

Gaviota said...

"And Mark Potok you sir, can Kiss My Ass !!! even though You are Not worthy of such exalted endevors."

To paraphrase a line from the movie Tom Horn with Steve McQueen:

Mark Potok would have to stand on his sister's shoulders to kiss an Oathkeeper's ass.

Anonymous said...

O'Reilly is playing one side of the issue and Beck the other. They are talking heads. They are voices of propaganda. They are bullshit artists. They are cowardly word slingers. We do not give a shit about their words.

Should we be forced to defend our Republic with arms, these two will be cowering behind their desks, sitting in puddles of piss.

Let them fear what they do not understand. We are everywhere.

Fear is the passion of slaves.
~Patrick Henry~

God save our Republic!

patrickhenry3

Μολὼν λαβέ
III

aughtsix said...

Won't somebody, please! open the ball?

I am mortally tired of these liars and their hatred of my America. Since I do not wish my mortality to be terminated by mere fatigue, and since I am the mortal enemy of those who would destroy this Nation...

Won't somebody open the ball?

Robert "Barry Likes My Kneepads" Gibbs said...

PATRICK wrote

"Should we be forced to defend our Republic with arms, these two will be cowering behind their desks, sitting in puddles of piss."

You may be a day late on that thought; the way that both Beck and O'Reilly, the douchebag brothers, sometimes get a silent smirk during a pause in their rants, they may be quietly pissing or crapping their silk boxers just for a moment's amusement.

Rick said...

Perhaps someone should ask Eve, the co-author if she is a prostitute? She has all the equipment of one.

Angel_of_DOG said...

So if your willing to carry a gun publicly... then you must be a raaaacist? Where o Where can I get me some of those stickers?

Oh .. allow me to introduce myself. This TerribleTroy from over at the Rott.

Dan Galena said...

Where the hell can we buy some of those "advertised" stickers ?

There'd be more of them around the country if someone would post an address for purchasing them.

Vendor for stickers please ?

Anonymous said...

Unfortunately, we the people canNOT rely on the Supreme Court to rule according to the constitution. They have proven their inability to do that over and over again. We the People canNOT rely on the ballot box because it has been shown time and time again to have been compromised. We the People canNOT rely on the soap box because, as we recently experienced, the Congress and the current occupier of the Oval Office ignores the will of the majority of the People!

So, we the people canNOT rely on the jury box, the ballot box nor the soap box. That only leaves one box upon which We the People can truly rely.

Just sayin'

aughtsix said...

Hey, Troy! Jon the Hunter (aughtsix) here. 'Bout time you showed up. You're a ready made Irregular!

As for the stickers, email Mike for the template, get some Avery paper (sticker paper for your printer) no. 5264, six stickers per 81/2x11 sheet, and get to printin' and stickin'!

DB said...

These are masters double speak. They didn't accuse the Oath Keepers of actually being nazis or racist and yet they did. I hate when I read something then have to wipe all the shit off my monitor.



III

Anonymous said...

Typical leftist propaganda tricks from the SPLC. They are running scared. The SPLC is a joke.

Haywood
III

TJP said...

"Unfortunately, we the people canNOT rely on the Supreme Court to rule according to the constitution."

Why would they? We have no rulers in this country.

Right?

straightarrow said...

I'm sorry, but I don't understand the hatred of Glenn Beck. O'Reilly I understand, but Beck?

Anonymous said...

TJP: Are you trying to be funny or are you just downright ignorant?

Ever heard of the "rule of law"?

When courts issue decisions they're routinely referred to as "rulings."

If you're trying to be funny, fine.

If you're just plain ignorant, I hope this helps.

Toastrider said...

I don't know what it is with O'Reilly. It's like he wants to be a conservative, then he opens his mouth and out comes idiocy.

I stopped watching or listening to him after he blathered on a couple years ago about how the Internet needed filters against uploaded content. My email to him: 'Congratulations, that's the same thing Hillary Clinton espouses.'

Sad.

Justin said...

I just can't get over the term "ass-hat".

I don't even know what it means, but the term seems to fit whenever you use it, Mike.

Etymology, please? ;-)

Justin
III