Militia. (photo: unknown)
Right-Wing
Extremists Are a Bigger Threat to America Than ISIS
By Kurt Eichenwald, Newsweek
05 February 16
Inside
a storefront Chinese restaurant in upstate New York, neon light from a
multicolored window sign glowed on the face of an extremist plotting mass
murder. He had been seeking backing for his attack and, at this small
establishment in Scotia, was meeting with a man who had agreed to take part in
his scheme to build a radiation device, a weapon of mass destruction that would
slowly and painfully kill anyone who walked near it.
“Everything
with respiration would be dead by morning,’’ the man who devised the attack
told his confederate in tortured English. “How much sweeter could there be than
a big stack of smelly bodies?”
But
there would be no attack. The purported accomplice at Ming’s Flavor restaurant
in June 2012 was an FBI informant, and the discussion had been recorded. In the
months that followed, another man joined the plot. Finally, in June 2013, with
the conspirators hard at work on their ghastly weapon, armed FBI agents swooped
in, storming a warehouse in Schaghticoke and arresting them.
Their
names were Glen and Eric.
Clearly,
these were not the typical “Islamic terrorists” described in the boogeyman
stories of American politicians who exploit fear for votes. Glendon Crawford,
the industrial mechanic who conceived the plan, has all the panache of a Macy’s
shoe salesman; Eric Feight, a software engineer who helped build the device,
looks like a less impish version of Kurt Vonnegut. But their harmless
appearance belies their beliefs—Crawford was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, and
the plot he hatched with Feight involved killing scores of Muslims, as well as
officials at the governor’s mansion in Albany, New York and at the White House.
They
and untold thousands like them are the extremists who hide among us, the
right-wing militants who, since 2002, have killed more people in the United
States than jihadis have. In that time, according to New America, a Washington
think tank, Islamists launched nine attacks that murdered 45, while the
right-wing extremists struck 18 times, leaving 48 dead. These Americans thrive
on hate and conspiracy theories, many fed to them by politicians and
commentators who blithely blather about government concentration camps and
impending martial law and plans to seize guns and other dystopian gibberish,
apparently unaware there are people listening who don’t know it’s all lies.
These extremists turn to violence—against minorities, non-Christians, abortion
providers, government officials—in what they believe is a fight to save America.
And that potential for violence is escalating every day.
“Law
enforcement agencies in the United States consider anti-government violent
extremists, not radicalized Muslims, to be the most severe threat of political
violence that they face,” the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland
Security reported this past
June, based on surveys of 382 law enforcement groups.
The
problem is getting worse, although few outside of law enforcement know it.
Multiple confidential sources notified the FBI last year that militia members
have been conducting surveillance on Muslim schools, community centers and mosques
in nine states for what one informant described as “operational purposes.”
Informants also notified federal law enforcement that Mississippi militia
extremists discussed kidnapping and beheading a Muslim, then posting a video of
the decapitation on the Internet. The FBI also learned that right-wing
extremists have created bogus law enforcement and diplomatic identifications,
not because these radicals want to pretend to be police and ambassadors, but
because they believe they hold those positions in a government they
have created within the United States.
The
unusual—and often daffy—world view of some right-wing extremists was on daily
display during the January armed takeover of federal facilities at the Malheur
National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon. Expressing dismay that two ranchers
convicted of arson were ordered to serve out the remainder of their mandatory
minimum prison sentences, members of various militia groups occupied a building
at the wildlife refuge, declaring their willingness to fight the government
and, if necessary, die for their cause. They proclaimed that the federal
government was tyrannical, that the Constitution is under siege.
The
Malheur occupiers were belittled on late night talk shows and social media as
“y’all-Qaeda” and “yee-haw-dists,” but what was unfolding in Oregon wasn’t
funny—it was frightening. These people speak of martyrdom, bloodbaths and
killings, sentiments that can be heard on any Islamist recruitment video. And
when law enforcement finally took action on January 26 in a mass arrest, one of
the militia members, Robert “LaVoy” Finicum—who had proclaimed he would rather
die than go to jail—was shot dead.
And
while those right-wing militia members were occupying federal land, other
extremists around the country were hard at work. Fliers seeking recruits for
the KKK appeared on lawns and doors in Alabama, California, Georgia, New Jersey
and Oklahoma.
In Johannesburg, California, police discovered bombs and booby
traps in the home of a man who threatened to blow up the Bureau of Land
Management (BLM) and other federal buildings. In Colorado Springs, a white
supremacist suspected of being connected to the 2013 murder of Colorado’s
prison chief was shot and wounded in a firefight with police. In Lafayette,
Louisiana, officials released the diary of the man who killed two people at a
movie theater this past summer—it was filled with rage against the federal
government and praise for a racist killer. In Oakdale, California, two honey
farmers were charged with fraud involving a scheme by extremists who declare
they are not bound by the laws of any government. And the day after the first
arrests of the Malheur occupiers, a New Hampshire man who told an FBI informant
he was part of a group that wanted to bring back “the original Constitution,”
and had as much as $200,000 on hand for explosives and rockets, was taken into
custody after he illegally purchased hand grenades.
Who
are these right-wing militants? And what makes them believe Americans have to
engage in armed combat with their own government rather than vote, kill their
fellow citizens rather than tolerate differences, blow up buildings rather than
just get a job? Billions of words have been written and spoken on violent
Islamic extremists. The time has come to do the same for the good old-fashioned
Americans who may pose the greatest threat to us all.
A
Fairy Tale of Violence
They
aren’t all like Timothy McVeigh.
McVeigh,
the infamous anti-government extremist, murdered 168 people in 1995 when he
detonated a truck bomb in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in
Oklahoma City. But not all of these violent right-wing radicals agree with
McVeigh’s beliefs or have the capability to execute such a devastating attack.
In fact, these militants are a surprisingly diverse lot. Experts say there are
three distinct groups, including some factions that despise one another.
According
to Arie Perliger, director of terrorism studies at the Combating Terrorism
Center at West Point, the three ideologies within the violent American far-right
are racist, anti-federalist and fundamentalist. Each has subgroups—the racists
include white supremacy groups such as the KKK, neo-Nazis and skinheads, which
can differ in subtle ways. The anti-federalists include militias, self-defined
“patriot” groups and what are so-called “sovereign citizens,’’ who hold that
they are legally bound only by their personal interpretation of common law and
are otherwise not subject to federal, state or local laws. The fundamentalists
are primarily Christian identity groups that believe the biblical war of good
vs. evil is between descendants of Anglo-Saxon nations and all other ethnic
groups. Tangential to the fundamentalists are the anti-abortion attackers, who
also invoke religion as a foundational motive for their violence. These
disparate groups of people—violent and nonviolent—pine for different versions
of a highly idealized past.
The
granddaddy of the three in the United States is the racist movement, the modern
iteration of which is usually traced to the formation of the KKK in 1865. The
Christian Identity movement began a few decades later, with the emergence of
believers who subscribed to the theology of John Wilson, a British man who
argued that the lost tribes of Israel had settled in northern Europe. The anti-federalists
are much younger, exploding onto the scene in the early 1990s with prominent
groups such as the Militia of Montana and the Michigan Militia; many experts
maintain that the movement was a product of the financial crisis for farms in
the 1980s, rapid economic and cultural change, and the adoption of gun control
and environmental protection laws. In recent years, an explosion in the number
of militias has been linked by experts to the beginning of the Great Recession
in December 2007 and the election of Barack Obama months later. In 2008,
according to the Southern Poverty Law Center,
there were 42 militia groups; today, there are 276.
And
although they are frequently dismissed as people with crazy beliefs, right-wing
extremists often seem like the guy next door. While experts say many of these
individuals are paranoid and narcissistic, with strong anti-democratic
tendencies, “the most common trait among terrorists is normalcy,” says Perliger
of West Point.
What
drives them, according to studies, is not so much ideology as their social
network. When friends and associates all proclaim that the government is
destroying freedom, or that all Muslims are terrorists, or that minorities are
dragging down the country, the social pressure to conform with that opinion is
intense.
Making
it worse is that many of these extremists base their views on falsehoods. At a
2009 speech in Hamilton, Montana, a militia leader told an assembled crowd,
“You know how the Oxford English Dictionary defines terrorism?
‘Government by intimidation.’ That is profound.” Not really, because it’s not
true. Oxford defines terrorism as all other dictionaries do:
“the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims.” People
setting off bombs to trigger a revolution meet this definition, while the
government that clears the area after a blast does not. But those zealots in Hamilton
were told a fairy tale and believed it.
The
rationales and “facts” cited by the sovereign citizens are often so convoluted
that they would be funny if they didn’t get people killed. The radicals base
their beliefs on variations of this conspiracy theory: Many years ago, some
outside force infiltrated the federal government and replaced it with an
illegitimate and tyrannical one. Then, that “illegitimate government” enslaved
all Americans by using the 14th Amendment to create “citizens of the United
States” who had no rights. The sovereign citizens believe Americans are tricked
into accepting their designation as citizens of the United States by carrying
driver’s licenses and Social Security cards, which are hidden contracts
surrendering personal sovereignty to the government. Some of these sovereign
citizens won’t use ZIP codes, because they think that might constitute a
contract with the illegitimate federal government. Others insert punctuation,
like commas or periods, to separate their first and middle names from their
last name, which they consider to be their government-given name.
And
they can expound on the topic for hours on end, spinning words into a convoluted
kaleidoscope of claptrap. “By metaphysical refinement, in examining one form of
government, it might be correctly said that there is no such thing as a citizen
of the United States,’’ wrote Richard MacDonald, one of the prominent
ideologues of the movement.
“But constant usage—arising from convenience, and
perhaps necessity, and dating from the formation of the Confederacy—has given
substantial existence to the idea which the term conveys. A citizen of any one
of the States of the Union, is held to be, and called a citizen of the United
States, although technically and abstractly there is no such thing.”
Some
gullible people listen to the endless flow of arguments, peppered with
“freedom” and “tyranny,” and come away believing they do not have to pay taxes,
or have money to cover the checks they write or otherwise obey the law. As a
result, lots of sovereign citizens end up under criminal investigation, leading
to trials in which judges rub their temples while listening to droning about
some grand conspiracy. But in the worst cases, all that simpleminded gibberish
drives believers to violence, particularly against law enforcement during
traffic stops. The most famous of those cases: the two Arkansas police officers
killed by sovereign citizen Joseph Kane in 2010 after they pulled him over.
Kane mowed them down with a variant of an AK-47.
Then
there are the militia groups, whose pronounced fealty to the Constitution is
exceeded only by their apparent refusal to read it. They too throw out a lot of
sentences with “freedom” and “tyranny” (in fact, a decent portion of sovereign
citizens are also militia members), then wave around their pocket version of
the Constitution, but the Founding Fathers would be stunned to hear the mumbo
jumbo mouthed by militia members about their greatest creation. Start with the
obvious: The Constitution is not some philosophical tract composed with soaring
words about freedom; it is the blueprint dictating how the American government
is supposed to function, while the amendments are the enumeration of citizens’
rights. The recent flurries of militia madness, with camo-clad warriors spewing
angrily about constitutional freedoms, run directly counter to the words of the
document those people claim to cherish.
Consider
the Bundy standoff in 2014. It began when the government decided to finally
take action against Cliven Bundy, a Nevada rancher who had grazed his cattle on
federal lands for two decades while refusing to pay the required fees—racking
up a bill in excess of $1 million. When Bundy sent his cattle back onto
protected lands for a snack, officials with the BLM began to round them up.
Bundy spoke publicly about this “outrage” using the words of the sovereign
citizen movement, which led anti-federalist groups such as the Oath Keepers,
the White Mountain Militia and the Praetorian Guard to come running, guns
drawn. In no time, Bundy the scofflaw was a hero of the militia movement, as he
declared he did not recognize federal authority over the land. The Constitution
and freedom were at stake, he averred.
Except
they weren’t. In fact, the issue beneath this battle of wills, with Bundy’s
supporters proclaiming their willingness to murder federal agents if need be,
is directly addressed in the Constitution. In Article 4, Section 3, Clause 2,
the Constitution grants Congress full authority to make all rules and
regulations for the management of federal lands. In the early 20th century,
Congress used that power to direct the executive branch to handle the
operations and planning for those lands. The Legislature, of course, still
retains the constitutional authority to stop the president from playing any
role in federal land management, but it has not. In other words, Bundy and his
supporters, by proclaiming the federal government had no authority over federal
land, were spitting on the Constitution.
Nevada
rancher Cliven Bundy led a tense standoff with federal authorities in 2014
because he didn’t think
he should have to pay for the privilege of grazing his cattle on federal land. (photo: Jim Urquhart/Reuters)
he should have to pay for the privilege of grazing his cattle on federal land. (photo: Jim Urquhart/Reuters)
The
same foolishness was behind the armed occupation at the Malheur refuge
spearheaded by Bundy’s sons, Ammon and Ryan. Soon after the occupation began,
the issue of the ranchers who had been sent to prison for arson slipped in
significance as militia members demanded that federal land be turned over to
the people and urged ranchers to tear up leases through which they pay grazing
fees. Once again, militia members claimed this was done in the name of the Constitution,
despite the document’s words that make it clear their beliefs are wrong.
The
Assault on Islamberg
Conspiracy
gourmand Alex Jones trotted out a new theory for the listeners of his radio
show on March 19, 2015: The federal government was preparing to invade Texas.
“This
is going to be hellish," Jones said. "Now this is just a cover for
deploying the military on the streets…. This is an invasion.” The reason?
Either an impending financial collapse or the first step in Obama’s plan to not
relinquish the presidency at the end of his second term.
Message
boards and other online forums for right-wing extremists exploded with the
news. The military was undertaking what it deemed to be a training exercise,
which it called Jade Helm 15. A map that had been printed in newspapers weeks
before to inform residents about the exercise was declared to be a secret record
that showed the military was calling Texas and Utah enemy territory—the kind of
description any reasonable person would expect for documents in this kind of
training mission.
Over
the next week, the only media to take note of the online hysteria about Jade
Helm were a couple of newspapers that mercilessly ridiculed it. Then, on March
26, Megyn Kelly, an anchor at Fox News, introduced the first national news
story about the Jade Helm panic. “While the military says it's just training
soldiers for the realities of war, critics say the Army is preparing for
modern-day martial law,’’ she said.
At
about that same time, Robert Doggart, an anti-government extremist in
Tennessee, was on the phone with a militia sympathizer in Texas. The two
discussed Doggart’s evolving plan to launch an attack on a heavily Muslim
community near Hancock, New York, called Islamberg. They thought martial law
would be declared in Texas and probably Utah, and that development should play
a big role in the plot.
“We’ll
wait on, on, what happens in Texas, and the intelligence as it comes in,’’
Doggart said. “[A]s soon as the thing in Texas and Utah happens, then you hit
it, right then. Right then, because it will divert the entire federal
government into ‘Hey, we’ve got a problem in this other state.’”
Doggart—an
ordained Christian minister in the Christian National Church who unsuccessfully
ran for Congress in 2014 as a far-right-wing independent—bemoaned the fact that
he and the 10 other members of his attack team would never be celebrated as
heroes after their assault on Islamberg because history is all lies written by
the winners. “But we’re still going to do this thing.”
All of
Doggart’s words were recorded. The FBI had caught wind of the Islamberg plot
and had placed a wiretap on his phone days before.
Doggart
was arrested on April 10, but no one publicly linked his plan to the Jade Helm
conspiracy theory. And so some politicians started playing games again,
suggesting with winks and nods that perhaps Obama was about to
impose martial law.
On
April 28, Texas Governor Greg Abbott ordered the Texas State Guard to monitor
the operation to ensure constitutional rights and civil liberties wouldn’t be
infringed. Days later, Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas announced he had
asked the Pentagon about Jade Helm and been assured it was a training exercise;
still, he said, “I understand the reason for concern and uncertainty, because
when the federal government has not demonstrated itself to be trustworthy in
this administration, the natural consequence is that many citizens don't trust
what it is saying.” Republican Representative Louie Gohmert of Texas pumped the
fire a little hotter, saying, “When leaders within the current administration
believe that major threats to the country include those who support the
Constitution…patriotic Americans have reason to be concerned.’’
Meanwhile,
in Gastonia, North Carolina, two anti-government extremists—who had their fears
about Jade Helm reinforced by the words and actions of politicians like Abbott,
Cruz and Gohmert—were working to construct bombs they could use on American
troops when martial law was declared. The plot was allegedly conceived by
Walter Eugene Litteral, who had arranged for a pal to construct the bombs.
Authorities say Litteral wanted to pack tennis balls with smokeless rifle
powder and a binary explosive that can be detonated with a gunshot; then, for
added destructive power, Litteral wanted to tape nails to the outside of the
balls, so he could shoot them from a distance and blow shrapnel into a passing
soldier. He planned to do the same with coffee cans, which he would load with
ball bearings.
As the
weeks passed, the swirl of rumors about impending martial law grew more intense
in the extremist online forums. Authorities say Litteral acquired ammunition
for a .338 caliber rifle, handheld radios with throat microphones for
communication, military issue Kevlar helmets, body armor vests and cloth
headgear designed to expose only parts of the face. A third conspirator joined
up, agreeing to help build pipe bombs. But the attack never took place. Someone
Litteral approached for help instead alerted the FBI, which arrested the men on
August 3.
Once
again, America got lucky.
There
has been no new attack on the scale of the Oklahoma City bombing conducted by
McVeigh. But that is not for lack of trying. There was the so-called “241 Plan”
in 2011, which involved murdering two state officials if one militia member was
killed. There was the right-wing extremist plot in 2014 to blow up buildings
and power plants in hopes of sparking a widespread revolt against the
government. Another foiled attack that same year intended to assassinate police
officers and blow up the Tremonton Police Department in Utah, again with the
expectation the public would rise up in the aftermath.
Then
there was the Georgia militia plot—anti-government radicals planned the murder
of government employees and began an effort to develop ricin, a deadly toxin,
with the intent of spreading it in Washington, D.C. For months, as the FBI listened
in with the help of a cooperating witness, the group talked about the best
poisons, how to deliver them and the ways to kill the most people. And if
nothing else worked, suggested Frederick Thomas, the ringleader of the group,
they could always go back to the tried and true. "We'd have to blow the
whole building, like Timothy McVeigh."
Why
Wasn’t Obama Arrested?
It’s
possible the same factors fueling the growth in right-wing extremism are what’s
tearing apart the Republican Party.
Statistics
show that the violence of right-wing extremists goes up when Republicans
control at least one house of Congress. The reason, according to an analytical
report conducted for West Point, might be “relative deprivation, which occurs
when the high expectations of far-right activists during a conservative
Legislature are not fulfilled.” In other words, these radicals expect to be
ignored when Democrats are in charge, but when Republicans in power fail to
champion the extremist cause, attacking the government strikes them as the only
remaining option.
If
true, the deprivation must be monstrous now. Think back: How many times have
Republican politicians told their followers Obama could be impeached? How many
times did they suggest he was a Muslim or wasn’t born in this country? How many
times did they say he lied to cover something up in Benghazi? How many times
did they say his health care policy included death panels? How many times did
they say he was committing crimes or shoving through policies that would kill
people?
Then,
in 2009, the Republicans directly—and almost certainly inadvertently—identified
themselves as aligned with the dangerous radicals. The Department of Homeland
Security produced an analysis saying that violent right-wing extremists posed
the greatest terrorist threat to the country—a report since proved true. But
Republicans used this to feed into another conspiracy theory, proclaiming that
the Obama administration had just deemed conservatives as a
terrorist threat. To those unaware of what the report actually said, it was
more evidence of a coming ideological war. To those radicals who knew, it meant
establishment Republicans agreed that conservatives and violent
right-wing extremists meant the same thing. Congressional hearings
ensued, and terrified bureaucrats shut down the Homeland Security division that
conducted the analysis of right-wing extremism, just when their knowledge was
most needed.
Republicans
continued their drumbeat of conspiracy theories to bring out the base, capturing
the House in 2010 and the Senate in 2012. And imagine what these right-wing
extremists thought. Where were the impeachment proceedings? Why wasn’t Obama
under arrest? The man was a murderer, a tyrant spitting on the Constitution, a
fraud holding the presidency unlawfully. There were only two possible answers
for the extremists: accepting that the Republicans had been lying to them, or
deciding that these politicians had sold out the minute they won control.
And
so, the far-right wing—including the violent militants—has turned on the
Republican Party. The establishment Republicans now fumble about, trying to
understand why their preferred candidates are being kicked aside in favor of
Donald Trump, who rages about sellout politicians and makes promises to do
things that radicals adore. Forums like Stormfront fulminate with praise and
devotion to Trump, while all but spitting on the more traditional candidates.
The
Republicans played a dangerous game by giving credence to all those conspiracy
theories about Obama, a game that made them a target of the right-wing rage
they engendered. They have been the author of the rise of the radicals,
peaceful and violent, that in turn is tearing the party apart.
Meanwhile,
the right-wing extremists continue their plotting against America.
C 2015 Reader Supported News
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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