NEWSWEEK: Right-Wing Extremists Are a Bigger Threat to America Than ISIS

[L. Coyote]

Right-Wing Extremists Are a Bigger Threat to America Than ISIS
By Kurt Eichenwald On 2/4/16

........... 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. .........

[Nye Bevan]

1. Interesting how the start date of these "studies" is always September 12, 2001. (nt)

[Initech]

2. Ammosexuals.

[UTUSN]

3. Totally excellent piece. Am sending it to the local wingnuts. Here's a different selection:

********QUOTE*******

According to Arie Perliger, director of terrorism studies at the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, the [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]three ideologies within the violent[/FONT] American far-right are [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]racist, anti-federalist and fundamentalist[/FONT]. Each has [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]subgroups[/FONT]—the [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]racists include[/FONT] white supremacy groups such as the KKK, neo-Nazis and skinheads, which can differ in subtle ways. The [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]anti-federalists include militias, self-defined “patriot” groups and what are so-called “sovereign citizens[/FONT],’’ 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—[font size=5][FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]pine for[/FONT] different versions of [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]a highly idealized past[/FONT][/font].

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 [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]explosion in[/FONT] the number of [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]militias[/FONT] has been [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]linked[/FONT] by experts [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]to[/FONT] the beginning of the Great [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]Recession[/FONT] in December 2007 [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]and the election of Barack Obama[/FONT] months later. In 2008, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, there were 42 militia groups; today, there are 276. ....

Statistics show that [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]the violence of right-wing extremists goes up when Republicans control at least one house[/FONT] 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 [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]when Republicans in power fail to champion the extremist cause, attacking the government strikes them as the only remaining option[/FONT]. ....

*********UNQUOTE*********

[L. Coyote]

4. Live online right now, these idiots are threatening Jews, Hillary, Bolsheviks, etc., ..

Last edited Fri Feb 5, 2016, 12:25 AM - Edit history (1)

and wickedness!!

Jews are a race! Jews control media ... God chosen people are Anglo-Saxon people ...

Someone just suggested dragging Hillary into and alley and .... I'm sure this broadcast is monitored.

Off Grid Mama ?@tbanks98926
If you're trolling the chat room on some whackadoodle live stream or on #zello do NOT say DILDO! You will be banned! I know! #Oregonstandoff

RR: “The lies and propaganda of Jewish Youtube is destroying the nation”

These guys make Springer look like his guests are Mensa members. #zello

#zello we are not trolls this is just cheaper than tickets to the comedy club.

[spanone]

5. K&R...

[L. Coyote]

6. How rural ‘constitutional’ peace officers are joining the war against the feds.

The rise of the Sagebrush Sheriffs
How rural ‘constitutional’ peace officers are joining the war against the feds.
Jonathan Thompson Feb. 2, 2016

..... By refusing to enforce federal and state laws that they deem unconstitutional, whether they involve BLM road closures, gun control, drug laws or bans against selling unpasteurized milk, Mack says sheriffs can lead the fight to rescue America from the “cesspool of corruption” that Washington, D.C., has become. If need be, he says, sheriffs even have the power to prevent federal and state agents from enforcing those laws, thereby nullifying federal authority. If a particular sheriff doesn’t rally to the cause, then the voters should kick him out of office. And Mack and his organization have been quietly fielding opposition candidates in many counties. In fact, he is one of the forces behind the Constitutional County Project, which aims, this year, to elect a whole slate of “constitutional” candidates to office in Navajo County, Arizona, in what amounts to a nonviolent coup d’état. “There is no solution in Washington, D.C.,” Mack told me. “If we’re going to take America back it’s going to be at the local level.”

Some Western sheriffs didn’t need Mack’s encouragement. Back in 2000, Eldredge’s predecessor, Mike Lacy, forcibly opened a road in Utah’s Canyonlands that the National Park Service had closed to protect cultural resources. A few years later, his Kane County counterpart, Sheriff Lamont Smith, went on a countywide escapade, removing more than two dozen BLM signs that indicated road closures and other restrictions on motorized travel. Mack’s movement gave these lone-wolf sheriffs a collective sense of empowerment and a rallying point.

By 2011, when Mack formally created the Constitutional Sheriffs and Police Officers Association, or CSPOA, his creed was already infiltrating Western sheriffs’ offices. That year, Josephine County, Oregon, Sheriff Gil Gilbertson started making headlines for defying (and allegedly harassing) federal land managers. Montezuma County, Colorado, Sheriff Dennis Spruell appeared on the right-wing radio show, The Political Cesspool, where he threatened to arrest federal officials who closed roads, citing his duty to defend his county “against enemies, foreign and domestic,” part of an oath undertaken by members of the U.S. armed services and now a favorite catchphrase of constitutional sheriffs. ....

ONDA ?@TheOregonDesert
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Mike Warner ?@MikeKATU 10m10 minutes ago Aloha, OR
Back home after a week in Burns. Going to miss the gorgeous sunrises #LiveOnK2 #Oregonstandoff

[Lars39]

7. These "constitutional" sheriff candidates aren't just

running for office out west. I voted against one for office in middle TN last election.

[Vinca]

8. Absolutely. And they can all be crazy and own a million guns.