political foo: Beware right-wing extremists!

[alpharaposa]

It seems the DHS has issued a report warning about possibly violent right-wing extremists who might be getting more numerous and/or violent.

The report (pdf)

A round-up of reactions from various right-wing extremists:
Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion
Michelle Malkin
The American Legion
Powerline
Mark Steyn
Jonah Goldberg

Let me repeat this paragraph from the report, defining "right-wing extremists":

Rightwing extremism in the United States can be broadly divided into those groups, movements, and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups), and those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.

So, how many potentially violent extremists do we have in the audience?

EDIT: Michelle Malkin's point about the timing of this report's release is well-taken, by the way. Tomorrow, thousands of people will be taking part in Tax Day Tea Parties across the country to protest government spending.

Comments

[eric-hinkle.livejournal.com]

It would have been easier for the guys writing that report if they just said that anyone who isn't a liberal by their own narrow definition is a murderous right-wing terrorist wacko in the making.

[zeeth_kyrah]

I'm going to read that report, I think, and find out what's really inside.

It would be easier to say who isn't dangerous than to say who is. Small children aren't dangerous, for example, just unpredictable in their movements and likely to do ignorant things (such as pick up a poisonous snake or a live grenade and play with it). Angry people can be dangerous in large groups, where mob instinct might take over (provided there is some stimulus toward action, such as being threatened by authority figures). But angry people acting on their own behalf typically get no further than tantrums and screaming fits without serious physical harm to anyone but themselves.

Still:

Hateful people are dangerous by way of toxicity: they pollute their environments no less than any other toxic substance. And they are more likely to act upon their hatreds, initiating the release of violence which can cause angry crowds to become violent mobs. Hateful people also act alone to violate others, spreading their poison any way they can.

Some people are emotionally loaded to the point of having a hair-trigger on certain issues. These people are dangerous if pushed, and violent outbursts may be sparked by mention of or action regarding their triggering issues.

Some people are just plain sociopathic; anything that doesn't directly benefit them is beneath regard, and may be acted upon in any manner which doesn't provoke threats to the few things they seek to protect (such as themselves; the threat of harm may rebuff them for a while, but they will then plot assiduously to return the threatened harm in actuality to the source of that threat). These people tend to be strongly conservative in the manner of those who view all persons as pawns in their game of power: Anything which changes the game without giving them more power is to be blocked and/or destroyed (which is, by the way, the Authoritarian Leader's model of how life is played, and pretty close to the way that corporations play politics).

"Conservatism" may be the general position of "most Americans"; but it all depends on how you define what is conservative and what is not. Basically, the people targeted in this excerpt are people who are likely to act on their beliefs using violence as their mode of expression, who have been standing under the cover of conservatism, but who are actually trending toward the reactionary. Also, more people are being pushed on issues that touch their lives directly (that is, in the wallet and in their job security) and which have been linked to particular persons, programs, and catch phrases (Obama, Democrats, the two mega-billion recovery-spending programs which are now law, control issues between government and corporations and their "dependents", "spending ourselves out of debt", and so on).

I suspect that most Americans just aren't paying attention outside of their tightly-controlled info feeds, leading to a lack of self-awareness on political issues, and thus are more easily swayed by the attractive scenes of vigorous political exposition provided by the talking heads who call themselves unbiased.

similarities to Hitler?

[collinsmom.livejournal.com]

I do not know that much about how Hitler came to power. I do know that he was elected to his post and by legislation became a dictator. He established a program for a government run youth organization. He made public propaganda reports of people who were a threat to the government. He established public opinion against the people in the population that opposed him, saying that they were a threat and he could do something about it. He even established a national church and anyone who disagreed with what they preached was a threat.

Maybe I do not know history well, but I do know that I do not like what is coming out of the current group that is in charge of our nation. The parallels, however, are scary. I have been pushed by this election and the results to be solidly Republican. If that means I am a "right-wing extremist," then so be it. I will call on God, as Stephen did, when they drag me out of the city, onto the hill and stone me to death.

Re: similarities to Hitler?

[zeeth_kyrah]

These same similarities were brought out against the Bush Presidency.

Disobey the push to agree with one party over all. By Partisanship shall this nation fall.

[prester-scott.livejournal.com]

Watch for agents provocateur at the Tea Parties.

[zeeth_kyrah]

Agents provocateur are typically found in any large gathering of protest. The question is whether anyone listens to them.

I find that people who are less self-aware tend to be more easily pushed into any kind of emotional reaction.

[prester-scott.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but it can be subtle. For instance, let's say that in that crowd full of American flags (current and historical), there's one guy with the Confederate Battle Flag. Or even the flag of Nazi Germany. Who is passing out racist literature. You get the idea. At whom do you think every media outlet's cameras will be pointed?

[zeeth_kyrah]

At the point where the wall of police in riot gear meets a single man throwing a rock and encouraging those around him to attack the police.

I don't think the media actually cares what literature someone distributes (and thus the racist literature will be a forgotten side-note in the story); it's all about the signs and flags they wave over their heads. Confederate flags are common enough in some regions; who would notice unless it was outrageous in some manner (larger than every other flag present, or displayed with an actual weapon present, or carried into an open space [which attracts attention since there are few open spaces in crowds], or some other means)?

The Nazi flag would be outrageous enough to catch some camera time; but who would bring one? Who would display it? It virtually guarantees an interview -- but it wouldn't play into the story the mainstream news media has already established, and thus would be regarded as a somewhat separate thing, an individual story as opposed to the mindset of the crowd.

[aefenglommung.livejournal.com]

Thank you for reminding me to mail tea bags off to my Elected Mobsters tomorrow.

[zeeth_kyrah]

Quoting a comment elsewhere:

"FWIW, the teabaggers put tea bags in plain envelopes with letter postage, and our machines have been shredding them right and left..."

[zeeth_kyrah]

As promised, I have read the full report as given in the link shared above.

This controversy is a tempest in a teapot; it is a lot of noise over a single footnote on page three of a ten-page report which is focused on groups which actually do have the potential to be violent, and which have been recruiting members for decades. In summary, this report describes the current issues that hate-groups and extremists are using to recruit members and polarize society, and draws parallels to this from the behavior of these violence-using and terror-causing groups and others like them in the 1990s (and somewhat before).

The excerpt which is raising such a stink has been taken out of context, and has had erroneous context added to it in order to polarize discussion and draw sympathy from people who think that they're being identified as targets in a campaign of suppression, but who are actually being sold a false impression. Go about your lives, people. The analysts who produced this paper are talking about white supremacists, racist hate-groups, and other such organized villains, not the everyday bigot we all know, and certainly not the orderly majority who worry about keeping housed and fed without trying to kill someone over it.

[stryck.livejournal.com]

The main problem with the report is that it doesn't back up its warnings with specifics. It warns against vague groups of people who might be a problem, and even admits near the beginning there's no real proof.

It's a waste of a report, but it'll be cited as if it actually meant something by people with axes to grind. The proper response is to expose it for what it is: a vague and silly indictment. That way, when somebody does try to use it to back up their assertions, it's already a known quantity.