Does anyone else find it peculiar that so many seemingly respectable conservatives felt interpellated by the recent report on domestic terrorism by right wing extremist groups from the Department of Homeland Security? The web site, New American, was in high dudgeon over what they called the "New DHS Domestic Terrorism Report" that allegedly "Targets Millions of Americans." This is the problem with paranoia – you refuse to recognize that you are paranoid, and anyone who points the fact out to you is obviously just part of the conspiracy. They described DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano as "unleashing the dogs of war against [President Obama’s] political opposition at home: Americans alarmed by his radical policies on gun control, abortion, illegal aliens, nationalizing the economy, and more." One suspects these millions of Americans are not among the 69,498,216, or 52.87% of voters who voted for Obama in the 2008 presidential election. "Dogs of war" indeed. Let’s plop these folks down in Fallujah so they can find out what the real dogs of war are like.
Why do these folks feel that a report on the possibility of domestic terrorism could be aimed at them? Hmmm... kinda makes you wonder. The report itself points to the shooting deaths of three police officers in Pittsburgh on April 4, 2009. This, of course, was before someone shot an abortionist to death in his own church (good Christian, no doubt – what caliber does Jesus pack?) and a white supremacist killed a security guard at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. Let us not forget that virulent anti-semitism has a long and sorry history in the United States along with other forms of racism.
Even that bastion of objectivity, Fox News, ran a report in which the reporter suggested that the attack at the Holocaust Museum might give cause to revisit the DHS report and take it more seriously, that is, without giving in to the squeals of apparently respectable conservatives who think it’s all part of the liberal (too bad the communists aren’t around to be a good bogey man anymore) conspiracy.
Because it really is preposterous to suggest that anyone in the Obama administration has a plot to deprive American citizens of their civil liberties. Obama has followed the Bush administration more closely than I would like on some points, such as claiming "state secrets" as the cheap excuse for refusing to submit certain documents in a law suit, but overall he shows none of the power-mad disregard for constitutional restraints on federal power of the Cheney/Bush administration (see earlier post on Cheney as would-be dictator).
It is entirely plausible, however, that conservatives in the United States would use violence to advance their political agenda. They have done so repeatedly throughout American history, starting with slavery and the various wars to eliminate unwanted Native Americans, continuing through the use of lynchings as a means of controlling African Americans through intimidation, then the various murders committed by defenders of segregation – four little black girls killed in a church bombing in Birmingham (more good Christians, no doubt), the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., among others – Dan White crawling through the window at San Francisco city hall to assassinate Mayor George Moscone and openly gay Supervisor Harvey Milk ten years after King, then fast forward to the Oklahoma City bombing, the bombing of the Alabama abortion clinic that left a nurse there horribly disfigured, and now three police officers, one abortionist, and one security guard within three months of 2009.
And they wonder why those of us who are not paranoid conservatives are worried?
The DHS report emphasizes the problem of lone wolf attacks, which are the hardest to prevent because lone wolves don’t discuss their plans with anyone, thus minimizing the chances for law enforcement officers to hear of and disrupt their attacks. Of course, everyone at Operation Rescue is shocked, shocked at the murder of an abortionist, but the fact is that the killer had contact with the organization and, of course, he picked his target based on long-standing Operation Rescue priorities for protesting.
The simple fact is that even respectable conservatives feed these people’s imaginations with their constant peddling of conspiracy theories. It’s no different from the fact that heterosexual supremacists attack queers because they hear from good Christians over and over that all queers are evil. You say something like that often enough, and the more suggestible corner of the population will start to act on your words.