'The American Taliban'

Bill Berkowitz at Alternet has a nice, in-depth interview with my friend and colleague Daniel Levitas. Much of the material will be familiar to regular readers of Orcinus -- especially the points regarding the Texas cyanide bomb case -- but Levitas provides a level of detail that I don't often reach.

Of particular note was this passage:

What was the reaction of these groups to 9/11?

A number of neo-Nazi groups were tremendously animated: They praised the terrorists of Al Qaeda, even though they denounced them in racist terms because they were Arabs. "We may not want them marrying our daughters. But anyone who is willing to fly a plane into a building to kill Jews is alright by me," said one of the leaders of the National Alliance. "My only concern is that we Aryans didn't do this and that the rag-heads are ahead of us on the Lone Wolf point scale," said another. These folks call themselves 'patriots' and defenders of the constitution, but some of them are just as theologically committed to murder as the most violent fanatics of radical Islam. Based on what we've seen post 9/11, we cannot afford to be concerned about terrorism as simply a "foreign" phenomenon. From the earliest days of the Ku Klux Klan, domestic hate groups have been all too eager to perpetrate terrorism against their fellow Americans.

Levitas also has an important note about the tide of racial and religious bigotry that is rising somewhat apart from the usual white-supremacist factions:

What concerns me most is the rising level of prejudice and bigotry in American society, and these attitudes have penetrated well beyond the confines of the far right. More specifically, we're experiencing rising anti-Semitism, skyrocketing anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bigotry, heightened hostility toward foreigners and immigrants and persistently high levels of racism. In short, these trends don't bode well for the fabric of a democracy ostensibly devoted to protecting civil rights and liberties. Of course it is easy to point to the bombers and shooters of the radical right and identify them as the problem. And they certainly pose a threat and a challenge. In the end, however, their actions basically require a law enforcement response, and there is not a whole lot that everyday citizens can do to counteract the hard core criminality of domestic right-wing terrorists.

Danny's book, The Terrorist Next Door, is a terrific read. You can get it through his Web site or the usual sources.