Right-wing Terrorists

I ought to be working, but I’ll point you to one last link. Orcinus, one of my favorite bloggers out there, comments on the Congressional Quarterly article that reports that DHS has omitted right-wing domestic terrorists from its list of internal threats to the US. Orcinus makes the very good point that though these people might be dormant right now, it doesn’t make them less of a threat. A perfect example of this is the barrage of slime that came from the right wing when Judge Lefkow’s husband and mother were murdered in Chicago last month. There were plenty of fascist Americans crowing over the judge getting her “just desserts”.

The fact that the Bush Administration has completely omitted these sorts of people from its threat list, but included groups like ELF and ALF is not especially surprising. Republicans have spent years trying to conflate ELF-like direct-action groups with mainstream environmental groups like NRDC or Sierra Club. Their obvious motive is to convince Americans that environmentalism is a radical and violent ideology and should be rejected at the political and personal levels. This is total crap, of course, and driven by the extractive and polluting industries who almost uniformly support Republicans and would prefer to operate unfettered by even the limpest environmental regulations.

Likewise, the omission of right-wingers (including those driven by radical fundamentalist Christian beliefs) from the list is, as I see it, a means by which to help people forget the close ties the Republican movement has with extremists. Fact is, whether you’re talking about anti-abortionists, white supremacists or the Christian Identity movement, there are lots of folks out there who embrace violence as a political tool and who are closely aligned, if not directly affiliated, with the leadership of the Republican party.