God, guns and Hitler

By Capt. Fogg

I have certain misgivings about hate crime laws, but we're reminded this morning -- the eve of Pesach or The Passover and a week before Hitler's birthday, that people who belong to hate-based organizations and creeds, who post virulent hate messages and calls for extermination on-line, need their constitutional right to keep and bear arms infringed.

I feel quite protective of our guaranteed right to free speech and our right to think what we think, but speech that incites to violence, that creates a mortal danger to the public, is something else and that's been established for a long time. Frazier Glenn Miller is a founding member of the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and the White Patriot Party. That's not a crime, more's the pity, nor is shouting "Heil Hitler" from the back of a police car, but perhaps we ought to consider making it a felony to belong to groups who advocate murder because as far as I know, it's illegal for felons to own firearms.

I know -- penalties and restrictions don't prevent criminals and especially psychopathic criminals from committing crimes, but there's something wrong with Mr. Miller or Mr. Cross as he often calls himself, to own weapons. There's something wrong if the targets of hate groups need to arm themselves or to hire armed guards or to go about in fear because we elevate and protect a right to be armed above the right to remain alive. We shouldn't have to wait for people like that to run amok before we do anything. Threatening violence against groups or individuals should be sufficient to disarm someone.

Lest one think that being a white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant is protection and a reason not to worry, Methodists were shot in this tragedy as well.

(Cross posted at Human-Voices)

Bill O'Reilly and the rise of hate groups

By Frank Moraes 

Yesterday, Alex Seitz-Wald at Salon wrote that "Radical-Right Wing Groups Reach All Time High." It is based upon a new report by the Southern Poverty Law Center that shows that militia and "patriot" groups are at an all-time high. According to the group, this is due to "the resurgence on the down economy (hate and radicalism always tick up when things seem desperate), along with the election and reelection of Barack Obama, a push on gun control, and racial tensions over immigration and the declining power of white America." I'm sure that's true, but I think there is something else going on here.

Look at the following graph and see if you don't perceive something a little more cyclical:

I see high levels of these groups when Clinton is president, followed by low levels when Bush is president, and then an explosion under Obama. The details make it look even worse. Note that 9/11 didn't cause the number of these groups to grow. Instead, there were actually fewer groups in 2002 than there had been in 2001, after one of the worst attacks on American soil in our history. Also, there was no spike at all in 2008; we had to wait until 2009 when you know who was president. Also, as the economy has gotten better, the numbers have only climbed since 2009, which was by far the worst year. Finally: the economy was even worse in the year 2002-2004 than it was 1995-1996, and yet: no spike in these groups during the Bush years.

Read more »

Question of the Day

By Michael J.W. Stickings

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), there are now over 1,000 active hate groups in the U.S.

-- How many of them support the Republican Party, lean Republican, or are actively involved with the GOP?

As Mark Potok, the editor of the SPLC's Intelligence Report, explains:

Far-right extremists remain highly energized, even as politicians across the country co-opt many of the radical ideas and issues that are important to them. This success in having their voices heard in the political arena, where they have long occupied the fringe of conservative thought, might eventually take the wind out of their sails, but so far we're not seeing any sign of that.

Hardly surprising, what with the GOP moving further and further to the right and turning the radical right into its new mainstream as it descends deeper and deeper into extremism and madness.

Hatemongering Family Research Council designated a "hate group"

By Michael J.W. Stickings

As TPM is reporting, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has designated the Family Research Council, the high-profile conservative group that hosts the annual Value Voters Summit (a must for Republicans), a "hate group."

The SPLC profiles 18 anti-gay groups here, of which 13 will be listed as hate groups next year, up from eight. It currently identifies "932 known hate groups operating across the country."

You won't find an argument here. Anti-gay bigots belong on the list, and the Family Research Council is among the worst offenders.

And Republicans -- well, we already knew many of them were enablers of hate, if not outright purveyors of hate themselves. Now they're even more prominently on notice.

What's in a name?

By Capt. Fogg

After listening to the self-contradictory, incoherent, quasi-literate and massively hate-packed rhetoric emanating from CPAC, where we were told that the concept of progress was a Marxist idea, that Progressives wanted to progress toward Communism. Liberals were the enemy of freedom and most insane of all: "Royalists" It's hard to hold on to any hope that what's left of the American Right retains even a rudimentary grasp on reality or any commitment to any ideal in any way related to Democracy and the Rights of Man. Taxes are Communism, protection of the rights of minorities is Communism, secular democracy is communism, but collusion between corporations and government isn't, as Mussolini defined it, Fascism -- it's freedom.

A party that won a solid majority in a free election is an "insurgency." Teddy Roosevelt, his opponent Woodrow Wilson and Adam Smith are all Communists who tried to destroy us and Glenn Beck got what he calls a "free" education, not by attending any private school, but by using taxpayer funded, government owned resources at the public library. Yes those of us who have pushed through legislation that finally allowed women and minorities to vote or own property or live like free men and women are simultaneously Nazis, Bolsheviks, Trotskyites, Maoists, and yes -- Royalists. Those of us who think vast sums of corporate money are corrupting the system are any wildly preposterous political epithet that comes to mind, but also Communists, Marxists, Trotskyites and the kinky sex partners of the Taliban. That they're not calling non-Republicans Irridentists or Scrooby Separatists is only the result of their neglected education, but of course those things are only another form of Marxist Islamofascism and Trotskyite lesbo-Feminism with a bit of Royalism thrown in for flavour.

"Protect our precious Medicare?" Well that's not communism even tough it and Social Security were until the country voted for health care reform. Why? because Obama is a Fascist follower of Pol Pot, trying to corrupt our youth and a Communist, Muslim, illegal alien, soft-on-terrorism, cannibal none the less - and because any hateful insanity must be true if it vilifies Obama - he's a Royalist.

No accusation is too ludicrous whether it contradicts all the other accusations or not. It' s not important to make sense or to tell the truth; it's only important to pump up the accusations, pump up the hate.

After listening to John Yoo describe a Republican justice department according to which, an American president like the one he served has more power than any European Monarch did in the age before Democracy, including the right to wage wars, internal and foreign, suspend civil rights, amend laws, refuse to obey laws, to lie, misrepresent and fabricate and to justify any action by Presidential fiat, it's hard to believe we're not simply listening to cross talk between parallel but vastly different universes. Is it legal for the President to order that the testicles of an innocent child be crushed to make his parent talk? But of course says Professor Yoo! Do as the President says shall be the law -- but we're Royalists all the same.

It's not so much that the Republicans seem to have defined conservative values as Marxist and indeed almost everything including evil itself as its opposite, they're inventing their own paranoid psychotic reality permeated by gibbering, drooling and incoherent rage, it's that we're not in open revolt against them; that they have a huge, armed and vastly wealthy base of support.

And we just sit and listen.

(Cross posted from Human Voices)

Birthers, believers, and bananas

By Capt. Fogg

There are those -- a lot of those for whom any hint of apology for or embarrassment about the United States of its actions is treason and unforgivable. That's unforgivable and perhaps sometimes treasonous since it tends not only to reward, but promote our bad behavior.

Of course, there is no way that I can apologize to the world for the "Birther" phenomenon, its psychotic proponents and demented followers, but it's surely embarrassing to contemplate the way the world sees us, which must be very much how we would see some naked savages from Papua New Guinea who happened to have nuclear weapons they were constantly threatening us with. Pardon my unforgivable frankness, but I'm embarrassed to be an American -- once again.

Of course, it's worse in the South, the former Slave States where segregation, lynching, and Jim Crow policies were only stopped with great effort and physical force in my youth and where even NASCAR and college football take a back seat to believing as a popular sport. Believing without evidence generates disbelieving despite the evidence and so early poll data in Virginia seems to show that almost half of Virginians believe Barack Obama was born in Kenya and that the official State data showing he wasn't, was planted over 40 years earlier in the hopes that he could one day run for president:

[A] result making me want to bang my head against the table, the first round of calls for our Virginia poll this afternoon founds voters in the state almost evenly split on whether they thought the President was born in the US.

said PPP communications director Tom Jensen. I can well imagine.

Whether Public Policy Polling, which conducting this poll is or is not a good prognosticator or data gatherer, responses to their announcement at their web site were centered around personal attacks and obscene comments about the snottiness of elite liberals rather than the data or the apparent insanity and delusional condition of the Birthers. Not one of them gives a damn about facts. Not one is capable of self doubt.

Of course, believers rarely if ever choose what to believe without assistance and an examination of the obviously mental inventors of the libel such as Orly Taitz can make you want to put a noose around your neck -- or hers depending on your proclivities. If this woman gave you a used Rolls, would you even sit in it without a hazmat suit? None of the "birthers" would be imaginative enough to cook up this story, they got it the way Germany got Fascism: from a band of brownshirt organizers and disruptors and hooligans.

No problem for the bigots, for the believers, for the people who equate fact and reason, law and decency with fascism: Southern Whites, who for over 150 years have stood on their beliefs, on what they have been told by hatemongers to use against freedom for anyone but white males. No problem at all. If it feels good, believe it. If challenged by facts, slime the challengers, but never give up, never surrender, never stop hating.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

Revelations: Who are the hate groups and why we should be very afraid

By (O)CT(O)PUS

(Hate groups are everywhere. There are more of them than we think and they are more powerful than we know. And they don't just dress up in Nazi uniforms or white sheets. Some of them, some of the larger ones, are major players in Washington and around the U.S., and specifically key players in the Republican Party, where they are prominent both in the base and in the leadership. It's essential that we know who they are... and what they're up to. -- MJWS)

To more fully grasp the potential for domestic terrorism, I am posting this list of known hate groups, most operating as far-right-wing Christian ministries. If you missed Capt. Fogg's article, "Holocaust," or my post, "When 'pro-life' means pro-death," you might want to read those first.

Here is a very partial list of radical hate groups that support anti-abortion violence, anti-Semitism, homophobia, racism, sexism, white supremacy, and the overthrow of our constitutional form of government:

American Center for Law and Justice. Headed by Marion "Pat" Robertson, this group advocates the assassination of foreign leaders, the subjugation of women, and the oppression of gays.

America's Promise Ministries. An anti-Semitic group that claims white people as the "chosen ones."

Army of God. An underground network of terrorists who believe violence is an acceptable way to end abortion. In 1984, Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun received death threats by mail from this group. Several members, Eric Rudolph, James Kopp, and Clayton Waagner, are serving prison sentences for bombing, murder, and anthrax threats, respectively.

Aryan Nations. A group that advocates anti-Semitism and the murder of homosexuals.

Bill Bright, Campus Crusade for Christ. A hate group that seeks to replace the Constitution and establish their own theocracy.

Christian Association of PrimeTimers. This group scams senior citizens out of their retirement money to finance the abolition of the U.S. Constitution and the installation of a theocracy.

Chalcedon Foundation. Seeks to abolish the Constitution and install themselves as leaders of a theocracy.

Christian Coalition of America. Once headed by Ralph Reed, this anti-abortion, pro-school prayer, pro-creationism group seeks the replacement of public schools with fundamentalist Christian schools supported with tax dollars.

Christian Reconstructionism. This hate group seeks the overthrow the U.S. Constitution and the establishment of a theocracy. Advocates the execution of racial minorities and homosexuals.

Citizens for Excellence in Education. Another pro school prayer, pro creationism group that seeks the replacement of public schools with fundamentalist Christian schools paid with tax dollars.

Collegiate Network. An anti sex education group that seeks the replacement of public schools with fundamentalist Christian schools paid with tax dollars.

Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church (Ft. Lauderdale FL). Led by D. James Kennedy, this hate group advocates violence towards gays and women and seeks to establish their own brand of theocracy.

Council for Conservative Citizens. Foments racism with a special focus on anti-Semitism.

Council for National Policy. Seeks to abolish the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and impose their own theocracy.

Focus on the Family. One of the most vocal, best-known homophobic groups in America.

Jack Chick Publications. Publishes bizarre comic books that allege a world-wide conspiracy of "Satanists" and "witches" who kidnap, torture, murder, and eat babies.

Jim Wickstrom. The leader of a cult with strong ties to "Posse Comitatus," a group that blames abortions on "Jewish Doctors" who then blast aborted fetuses into outer space [not a joke!].

Ku Klux Klan. This infamous hate group has participated in anti-abortion demonstrations in Melbourne and Pensacola Florida. Perhaps an obvious point: Many terror and intimidation tactics used against abortion clinics have been borrowed from the Klan.

Landmark Legal Foundation. Advocates the replacement of public schools with fundamentalist Christian schools paid with tax dollars.

Lifeline Long Distance. Finances domestic terrorist organizations like Operation Rescue and the so-called Army of God.

Operation Rescue. A domestic terrorist organization linked to the murder of abortion providers. Currently headed by Troy Newman, a front man for Randal Terry, this group preaches hatred and the submission of women to male masters. The cult's leadership advocates the overthrow of the Constitution and the removal of women from the work force.

Parental Freedom in Education. Their goal is to replace public schools with fundamentalist Christian schools financed with tax dollars.

Pete Peters. Claims Jews are conspiring to control the world with the United Nations taking over the United States.

Policy Research Institute. Demands the creation of tax-subsidized religious schools and the replacement of all public schools with fundamentalist Christian schools.

Phineas Priesthood. Advocates the murder of mixed race couples. The "Phineas" title is used by numerous Christian hate groups in the United States.

Promise Keepers. Advocates the violent "taking back" of male dominion over women.

Rodney O. Skurdal. Advocates the removal of women from the workplace.

Stormfront White Nationalists. Last week, this online hate group praised James von Brunn, the gunman who killed a security guard at the Holocaust Museum. The scariest part: Stormfront has a huge following... estimated to be in the millions.

The Army of God. Like Operation Rescue, this is a domestic terrorist group that has claimed responsibility for several abortion clinic bombings, including the infamous double-bombing intended to murder rescue workers aiding victims of the first blast.

The Bradley Foundation. Advocates the replacement of public schools with fundamentalist Christian schools paid with tax dollars.

The Church of Jesus Christ Christian. Similar to Aryan Nations and the Ku Klux Klan, this anti-Semitic group that advocates violence.

The Heritage Foundation. Finances racist research.

The Institute for Historic Review. An anti-Semitic hate group that denies the Holocaust.

The Order. A hate group that focuses on racism and abortion.

The Sword and the Cross. An anti-Semitic hate group that operates worldwide.

Traditional Values Coalition. An anti-homosexual hate group that denies the separation between church and State.

U.S. Tax Payers Party. Supports the domestic terrorist group, Operation Rescue.

Westboro Baptist Church. Headed by Fred Phelps, this group pickets churches, schools, businesses, and military funerals to rail against homosexuality. Unbelievers are labeled as “faggots."

White Aryan Resistance. A hate group led by Tom Metzger, who advocates abortion for non-white mothers and forced birth at gun point for white mothers.

Virginia Trinitarian Pro-Nomian Alliance (VTPA). A hate group seeking to overthrow the Constitution and remove the Bill of Rights to install their own theocracy.

Source: The Skeptic Tank

When I first presented this list at The Swash Zone, several readers questioned the preponderance of Christian ministries cited above. Why were ministries engaged in so-called "good works" (i.e., James Dobson) included on the same list as rabid homophobes such as Fred Phelps?

As you can see, this website underwritten by Dobson promotes a clear anti-gay message. His opposition to all gay rights is infamous, and most mental health professionals reject his views on homosexuality (including his views on physical punishment as a means of disciplining children).

Rarely does a blogger receive a comment as dramatic, contextual, and convincing as this:

A few days ago a young man (16) killed himself because he was tired of hiding his gayness. I knew him because he mowed my yard and he mailed me a letter the day he hung himself (…) That young man was a handsome, decent intelligent young man and I will cherish his letter for the rest of my life [see comment @ 5:44 PM, June 12, 2009].

To underscore my point, the suicide rate among gay and lesbian youth is disturbing and heartbreaking: LGBT youth are two to three times more likely to commit suicide compared with other young people. Predisposing risk factors include homophobia within our culture, gender uncertainty with respect to sexual orientation, social ostracism among peers, and parental rejection. Thus, anti-homosexual attitudes of far-right-wing ministries abuse our underage and vulnerable young people struggling with issues of self-identity.

Indeed, there is a regrettable preponderance of Christian ministries cited in this post, but my intent here is not to disparage faith and good works. All too often, religious fervor degenerates into demonization, fear-mongering, scapegoating, and Apocalyptic aggression. Or, as Chip Berlet states in Toxic to Democracy: Conspiracy Theories, Demonization & Scapegoating:

People who believe conspiracist allegations sometimes act on those irrational beliefs, and this has concrete consequences in the real world. Angry allegations can quickly turn into aggression and violence targeting scapegoated groups (…) Even when conspiracist theories do not center on Jews, homosexuals, people of color, immigrants or other scapegoated groups, they still create an environment where racism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, xenophobia, homophobia, and other forms of prejudice, bigotry, and oppression can flourish [p. 47].

If faith and good works mean changing laws to deprive women of private and legitimate health-care rights, returning women to the days of back room abortion butchers, forcing them to bear dead babies against their will, forcing them to forgo life-saving chemotherapy just because they are pregnant, discriminating against our gay brothers and sisters and turning them into second-class citizens, denying any class of citizens equal protection under law, forcing school prayers on people who do not want it, using public tax money to finance private religious education, and demanding the imposition of one religious doctrine over believers and non-believers alike, then those groups on this list BELONG on this list.

(Cross-posted at The Swash Zone.)