Amid comparisons to
Ruby Ridge and Waco, anger is pervasive on the far right, but militia
leaders are mostly calling for ‘cooler heads’ to prevail.
While most of the
mainstream media and other observers of the standoff at the Malheur
National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon took a wait-and-see approach
to the arrests of eight of the militants involved – and particularly the
death of a ninth, Arizona rancher Robert “LaVoy” Finicum, who was
gunned down during the roadside confrontation just outside of Burns –
there was little doubt among militia supporters on the far right about
the meaning of it all.
The “feds” have declared war on them.
"It appears that America was fired upon by our government," one of the militants wrote on the Bundy Ranch Facebook page. "One of liberty's finest patriots is fallen. He will not go silent into eternity. Our appeal is to heaven."
“Tonight peaceful Americans were attacked on a remote road for
supporting the Constitution,” read a graphic meme accompanying the post.
“One was killed. Who are the terrorists?”
Perhaps the most striking declaration came from one of the militants still occupying the refuge, who appeared in a video
released from the compound showing the men using earth-moving machinery
to apparently dig a trench and create an earthen berm, while he and
others patrolled with their assault-style rifles and ranted at the
camera, pleading to their fellow “Patriots” to come and aid them.
“There are no laws in this United States now!” the man declared
angrily. “This is a free-for-all Armageddon. Any LEO or military or law
enforcement or feds that stand up and fuck their oath — don’t abide by
their oath — are the enemy!”
“If they stop you from getting here, kill them!”
Leading the parade of declarations that Finicum was mowed down in
cold blood by FBI agents was Michelle Fiore, the Republican legislator
from Nevada who has been a supporter of the Bundy family since their
April 2014 standoff in that state. She sent out a tweet on Tuesday night
making that very accusation, and it immediately spread like wildfire:
“My heart & prays [sic] go out to LaVoy Finicum's family he was just
murdered with his hands up in Burns OR.”
“LaVoy has left us, but his sacrifice will never be far from the lips
of those who love liberty,” read another post on the Bundy Ranch page.
“You cannot defeat us. Our blood is seed.”
Northwest “Patriot” leaders also chimed in. “It’s a dark day in
America, a dark day for liberty,” said Washington “liberty speaker”
Gavin Seim, who warned that “we stand on the brink of revolution.”
“We can no longer allow the government to murder and abuse and terrorize,” he declared in a video released Wednesday. “Will we allow this government to continue slaughtering, and to set an example that we must bow to them alone? …
“These criminals spilled the blood of patriots,” he continued. “They
declared war on law and liberty. And this has been coming for a long
time.”
“I'm beyond pissed,” declared another “Patriot” named Denise Copper
in a comment on the Bundy Ranch page. “They murdered an American. This
intimidation has strengthened my resolve. We must rise up and take our
country back, now!”
“What the government did is kill someone in order to take a rancher’s land,” wrote Facebook user Celesta Piliponis. “This is what the whole protest is all about … The BLM is doing it all over the U.S.”
“We’re having our constitutional rights stolen right out from under
us by a corrupt government because too many people are uninformed. One
day we are going to wake up and recognize we could have prevented this.”
Although Ammon Bundy’s attorney delivered a message to the men still occupying the refuge center urging them to leave, that message was greeted with skepticism. A post on the Bundy Ranch Facebook page – which was later removed – insisted instead on making a call to arms.
“From Ammon’s wife, Lisa: Ammon would not have called for the
patriots to leave,” it read. “We have lost a life but we are not backing
down. He didn’t spill his blood in vain! Hold your ground … Ranchers
come and stand! Committee of Safety come and stand! Militia come and
stand!”
Another occupier insisted that their fellow militiamen had a moral duty to come to their aid.
"You have an obligation to proceed to the Harney County Resource
Center [the occupiers’ name for the refuge center] immediately, in order
to protect the patriots still there," declared a militant named Gary
Hunt on the Operation Mutual Defense discussion board.
"If you fail to arrive, you will demonstrate by your own actions that
your previous statements to defend life, liberty, and property were
false."
“I’m putting III Percenters of Washington state on standby,” read a
Facebook post from another Northwest “Patriot.” “Prepare yourselves.
FBI, Oregon state patrol and the county sheriff ambushed their convoy.
They fired on them before they could even got stopped. They shot these
men before they could even get stopped. They shot these men with murder
in their hearts.”
However, most of the leaders of the Northwest “Patriot” contingent
were reluctant to issue any kind of clarion call, and instead counseled
caution. The Pacific Patriots Network,
one of the Bundys’ chief militia support groups, issued a statement:
“We will not pursue any action until all of the facts have been pieced
together regarding the traffic stop and the arrest of Ammon Bundy.
During this time, cooler heads must prevail. We do not wish to inflame
the current situation and will engage in open dialogue until all of the
facts have been gathered.”
Similarly, the Douglas County, Ore., chapter
of the Oath Keepers told people to stay home: “All those wishing to go
and support the Patriots in Burns, OR, are being asked to stay put
temporarily,” read their statement. “The reason for this will be given
Thursday night at the Douglas County general meeting of DC Oath
Keepers.”
And the main website of the “Three Percenter” militia movement
similarly shut down revenge talk, saying “there is no call to arms at
this time. There is no request for people to go to Oregon. The refuge
and surrounding areas are under federal control and anyone traveling
there to show support is being turned around and/or taken into custody.
Right now, we ask that all patriots see this as a victory in the sense
that there was no slaughter, like was asked, and that our demands were
met. We are not looking for ‘vengeance’ for the fallen.”
Conspiracist radio host Alex Jones,
a longtime antigovernment movement supporter who was skeptical of the
standoff from the start, wrote: “This is not our Lexington. It’s not
our Concord. It’s not the kick off of some new physical war. We’re in
an information war, we’re actually starting to win it. So the answer is
not physically to start going after the Feds, or the police, or any of
this.”
However, that did not prevent Jones from indulging in the theory that Finicum had been murdered with his hands in the air, posting an “eyewitness” account from a woman who claims to have been riding in the same car as Finicum.
Many of the “Patriots” compared the Oregon showdown with two events
that helped spur the movement into life in the 1990s: “We’ve got a third
one. There was Ruby Ridge and Waco, now there is Burns,” B.J. Soper of
the Pacific Patriots Network told Raw Story.
That view was pervasive on the far-right discussion boards, including
those at neo-Nazi websites such as Stormfront, where one of the
commenters acidly observed: “Just typical of the New World Order … the
Devil’s Government. Should be a lesson for others you can’t win in this
Empire. Randy Weaver and many others have been right over the years. All
fought the good fight and so have the militia. Should be a rally call
for our people working together for a secure future for our people.”
In case anyone there was unsure about the relevance of the showdown, a Stormfront “sustaining member” named “PrairieSister” chimed in:
“This is a direct, frontal assault on White America by the hostile,
occupation government in Washington, D.C. The authorities shoot and kill
a White man for exercising civil rights while blacks, browns and their
liberal enablers get protected and publicly lauded for exercising the
same civil rights.”
Since so much of their extremist worldview hinges on the idea that
the county sheriff is the highest authority in the land, the
“constitutionalists” who seized the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Burns, Ore., last week have been extremely vocal about their displeasure with Sheriff David Ward of Harney County.
Ward, they say, has failed in his “constitutional duty”
to defend ranchers in his county against the federal government. It’s
widely believed the sheriff is one of the chief targets of the “citizens grand jury” the Ammon Bundy-led invaders plan to convene soon.
Sheriff Glenn Palmer of Grant County, Oregon
So the militiamen recently turned to a sheriff they believed to be
more sympathetic to their cause: Glenn Palmer, the sheriff of Grant
County, which is adjacent to Harney County directly to the north.
According to Palmer,
the men showed up in the town of John Day and arranged a meeting at a
local restaurant. In the end, they failed to get what they came for
–– Palmer’s assistance.
“I had no idea who I was meeting with when we had lunch yesterday,”
he said. “I walked in, I realized who they were and I sat and listened
to them. ... They actually wanted me to come down there and make a
stand, and I said, ‘not without the sheriff’s blessing.’”
The men had reason to believe that Palmer would be sympathetic to
their cause. Palmer calls himself a “constitutional sheriff” and is not
only a member in good standing of the far-right Constitutional Sheriffs
and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA), but was named that organization’s “lawman of the year” in 2012. He also traveled to Washington, D.C., in 2014 to participate in a CSPOA-led meeting with two U.S. senators about immigration.
Palmer’s claim to fame among their ranks lies in his feud
with the U.S. Forest Service over policing powers in Grant County.
Palmer told USFS officials that their rangers only had jurisdiction in
the federal building in John Day.
And while the sheriff was unwilling to go to Harney County to help bolster the Bundys’ cause, Palmer told the East Oregonian
that while he has “a pretty good working relationship” with the
neighboring sheriff, he was also unwilling to go to Burns to support
Sheriff Ward.
“About the only thing (Ward) really told me is I’m welcome to come
down there if I would shame and humiliate them into giving up and I
said, ‘No, I won’t do that,”’ Palmer said. “I’m not in the business of
denouncing or shaming or humiliating anybody.”
Palmer described the participants in the takeover as “patriots,” and
generally spoke of the occupation in glowing terms: “I think it’s
brought some things to light that might not have otherwise got the
attention that they did. … I do believe that the resolution and solution
to the way this is going to be handled, if it’s handled properly, could
have a long-lasting effect on our county as well.”
He was also clear in his view that such an outcome would require the government to make concessions.
“I believe the government is going to have to concede to something,”
he said. “I don’t think these guys are going to give up without knowing
that they’ve done something that benefits the people of our country or
our region.”
CSPOA president Richard Mack, who participated in the rally
in Burns supporting two local ranchers whose imminent imprisonment
served as the Bundys’ excuse for the takeover later that day, initially backed away from the protest, saying the “CSPOA does not support or condone the occupation.”
But in a video released earlier this week, Mack told right-wing interviewer Joshua Cook
that while he disagreed with the takeover tactically, he fully
supported the ideology behind it, explaining that it was a logical
response to federal “tyranny.”
“The media that wants to label Ammon Bundy as a nut and extremist,
that is a lie,” he said. "I don’t agree with what Ammon’s doing, I’ve
told Ammon so. But Ammon Bundy is a friend of mine; he is a good man, he
is a good person. Anybody who knows him, they’ll tell you the same.”
Mack not only excoriated David Ward in the interview – saying “the
sheriff of Harney County should have stopped this”– he called for
sheriffs around the country to begin arresting federal officials, who he
claimed were just as guilty of arson: “Every sheriff now, in this
country, needs to start filing charges against federal officials who do
the same thing, and charge those people with domestic terrorism and
arson and put them in prison, just as they did the Hammonds.”
For his part, Ward has been clear and outspoken about the
antigovernment militiamen who have invaded his county, telling them
repeatedly that they need to pack up and “go home.”
Ward recently excoriated the Bundy group and other militiamen for the
reports of intimidating and threatening behavior that have beset
residents of Burns since even before the standoff got under way. According to Ward,
some federal employees have been harassed in town while grocery
shopping or running errands, while others have reported vehicles
following them and parking outside their homes.
"The people on the refuge – and those who they have called to our
community – obviously have no consideration for the wishes or needs of
the people of Harney County," Ward said. "If they did, they, too, would
work to bring this situation to a peaceful close."
Ward, who has weathered death threats from the militiamen’s supporters, has received the official support of the Western States Sheriffs Association, which noted in its press release
that “the WSSA does not support efforts of any individual or groups who
utilize intimidation, threats or fear in order to further an agenda.”
He also has broad support in Harney County, where local crowds gathered to discuss the standoff have made overwhelmingly clear their support
for his tough approach to the militiamen. “This county is a united
family and we don’t need people to come here from someplace else and
tell us how to live our lives,” Ward told one community gathering. They
gave him a standing ovation.
The internal dissent over the invasion of the Malheur National
Wildlife Refuge by Ammon and Ryan Bundy and a group of out-of-state
militiamen has, in fact, been very public. Indeed, the majority of
“Patriot” and “constitutionalist” organizers have adamantly denounced
the takeover and pleaded with the Bundy brothers to back off.
For their part, the Bundys and their militia cohort have been
defiant, insisting that the cause of the Hammond family – the ranchers
whose arson convictions provided the centerpiece of the original protest last Saturday that led to the takeover – is worth “taking a stand” over.
But other “Patriots” who participated in the Saturday protest
disavowed the takeover, notably the leadership of the contingent of
militiamen from the “III Percent of Idaho” organization who had traveled
from Boise to participate.
“The 3% of Idaho, 3% of Oregon, The Oregon Constitutional Guard, and
PPN organizations in no way condone nor support these actions,”
announced a press release.
“They do not mirror our vision, mission statement, or views in regards
to upholding the Constitution, The Rule of Law, or Due Process.”
Similarly, “constitutionalist” Sheriff Richard Mack – who was present at the Saturday rally as well – issued a statement denouncing the action:
“CSPOA does not support or condone the occupation by those individuals
who have taken over the Federal Wildlife building just outside Burns,
OR. With all our hearts we appeal to all those occupying the federal
facility to immediately vacate the building and to go home to their
families!”
Likewise, Stewart Rhodes, president of the Oath Keepers, the
antigovernment group that was a major participant in the Bundy Ranch
standoff in 2014, backed away from any involvement in the takeover.
“By doing this, they have given Obama the best New Years present he
could hope for – an example of militia movement/patriot aggression,
which gives up the high ground while also having the least credibility
and support from the locals possible, after lying to them, and also the
least support from the patriot community, who were also blind-sided by
Ammon and Ryan Payne,” read a statement issued by Rhodes.
Conspiracist radio host Alex Jones took that speculation to the next level,
claiming on his daily show that the Oregon standoff was actually the
work of agents provocateur who had supposedly swindled the Bundys into
taking this course of action.
“Guaranteed provocateurs are showing up and other things are
happening, the whole Soros group is saying, ‘Here are our white
terrorists, here are our cowboy-hat wearing terrorists,’ it gives them
the backdrop they need, they want to start a civil war,” he told his
national audience.
He went on: “Ladies and gentlemen, don’t let Obama be successful when
it comes to starting civil unrest and riots in this country. They will
use that as a civil emergency to bring in a type of soft martial law.”
Mike Vanderboegh, the national cofounder of the “III Percent” movement, was equally conspiratorial and vociferous at his blog:
“My initial reaction was to observe that at least afterward we’ll know
who the federal snitches are because they will be the only ones who
survive the raid to take back the building,” he wrote.
“There is nothing on the talking heads channels as yet, but by
Monday, when Obama meets with his Attorney General on the subject of
citizen disarmament, you can bet the farm that this will play right into
that narrative. Perfect timing. You’ve got to give the federal handlers
of these pukes credit. This is precisely the sort of offensive action
on the part of the ‘militia terrorists’ that they needed.”
Ammon Bundy and the militiamen accompanying him have been defiant.
One of the militia leaders, Jon Ritzheimer of Phoenix – who has been
previously involved in organizing armed anti-Muslim events at mosques around the nation – filmed a much-mocked video of himself bidding farewell to his family, which included some shots at Rhodes and the Oath Keepers.
“I am 100 percent willing to lay my life down to fight against
tyranny in this country,” a teary-eyed Ritzheimer declared. Then he
launched into a rant against what he called a “smear” campaign against
the Hammonds, saying it wasn’t true that they wanted to turn themselves
in, because they were being coerced.
He named the perpetrator: “Stewart Rhodes, the founder of Oath
Keepers, saying, ‘Well, they want to turn themselves in, so it’s, they
have their right to turn themselves in.’ By your logic, I guess we
shouldn’t offer any help to these veterans who want to commit suicide.
Just let them suck-start their 9-mil, because it’s their right.”
Ammon Bundy also issued a videotaped response to Rhodes and other critics, claiming that he had been called by God to stand up on behalf of the Hammonds:
“I have respect for Stewart Rhodes,” Bundy said. “But he does not
understand what is truly transpiring, or he has chosen to be in
opposition.”
Bundy went on to explain that he had come to envision the plan to
take over the wildlife refuge because God led him there. “And so I am
asking you to come to Harney County – to make the decision right now, of
whether this is a righteous cause or not, whether I am some crazy
person – or whether the Lord truly works through individuals to get his
purposes accomplished.
“I know that we are to stand now, and that we are to do these things
now, or we will not have anything to pass on to our children.”
So far, things haven’t devolved that far in Burns. However, no one
has spread rumors (as they did at Bundy Ranch) of an imminent drone
attack over their encampment, either – though Rhodes’ Oath Keepers website
did post a warning that “military special op assets have been assigned
for the standoff,” along with the advice to “keep women and children out
of there.”
President Obama is a secret Muslim conspiring to destroy the United States and is using the Justice Department to squelch anti-Muslim speech.
Liberals are covertly working with radical Islamists to transform the
country into a radical socialist state while Muslims are pouring over
our borders. Hillary Clinton is not only a liar and criminal, she is
likely blackmailing the FBI director and other authorities to keep out
of prison.
All these theories and many more were featured Monday at the Nevada version of the Center for Security Policy’s “National Security Action Summit”
at the International Peace Education Center in Las Vegas, a meeting
hall owned by the Unification Church. It was everything its chief
organizer, noted anti-Muslim extremist Frank Gaffney, could have hoped for.
Gaffney’s CSP has been riding high on the tidal wave of Islamophobia
he and similar anti-Muslim organizations have created, with the help of
right-wing political candidates who have legitimized their dubious and
often outrageous claims. CSP made headlines this past week when Donald
Trump, the leading Republican presidential candidate, cited dubious statistics generated by Gaffney’s group in defending his proposal for a ban on all immigration by Muslims into the United States.
Indeed, Monday’s gathering was timed and located to coincide with
Tuesday’s GOP presidential debate at the Las Vegas Hilton, the better to
attract the participation of the candidates. Gaffney’s hopes were
largely realized: Four candidates participated in the gathering, three
of them (Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina, and Ben Carson) via videotaped
messages, and one – Rick Santorum – in person. The procession
underscored the extent to which CSP’s extremism has been embraced by
ostensibly mainstream conservatives.
That extremism was on full, if not constant, display Monday. By the
end of the eight-hour conference, attendees had been treated to a
nonstop cavalcade of extremism and conspiracy.
Leading off the parade was a retired Navy admiral, James “Ace” Lyons,
who claimed that not only had President Obama “embraced” the Muslim
Brotherhood, but that its radical Islamists had infiltrated the nation’s
security agencies and the administration itself (a claim he has made previously).
Lyons frequently seized the microphone to ramble about various topics,
including gays in the military and women in combat, even at the end of
other speakers’ appearances during question-and-answer sessions.
His official speech was mostly an extended rant about Obama’s supposed Muslim affinities:
You understand that we have not
only a constitutional crisis, because our Congressional leadership
fails to understand why they were given that leadership role. It was to
stop the fundamental transformation of America – not to facilitate it.
But it was [Recep Tayyip] Erdogan, the
prime minister of Turkey, who said it best: “Islam is Islam. There are
no modifiers. Democracy is the train we ride to our ultimate objective,
which is imposing Sharia law throughout the world, and replacing our
Constitution with Sharia law.” [Note: While Erdogan did say
“There is no moderate or immoderate Islam -- Islam is Islam and that's
it,” the remark was widely interpreted as arguing against the legitimacy
of radical Islamists. Erdogan also is credited, somewhat dubiously,
with saying that “Democracy is the train we get off once we reach our
destination,” he has never said anything regarding the imposition of
Sharia law.] What else needs to be said? So here we go.
I’ve gotta say: We cannot let this stand. We have to take up and
challenge everything by this administration.
… You know, for those of you who say the
Obama administration has no policy, well let me tell you, you’re all
wrong. They have a policy, and they’ve been executing it brilliantly –
with the complicity of our Congressional leadership, and the mainstream
media. And let me tell you – any thinking American can grasp it. It’s
anti-American, anti-Western, but pro-Islam, pro-Iranian and pro-Muslim
Brotherhood.
I have to ask you: Why would an American
president embrace the Muslim Brotherhood when their creed is to destroy
America from within by our own miserable hands and replace our
constitution with Sharia law? It makes absolutely no sense.
And here is a group that has been able to
penetrate all our national-security agencies, our intelligence agencies,
and have had a massive impact on our rules of engagement, our foreign
policy. This has got to stop.
Lyons also turned his venom toward Clinton, calling her “the
pathological liar” and castigating her for her role in the so-called
Benghazi scandal, which Republicans and right-wing media generated by
claiming that Clinton had ordered American forces to “stand down” rather
than rescue the American ambassador to Libya who was killed in the
incident. Lyons claimed that “we switched sides in the war on terror, we
facilitated the Al Qaeda militia and the Muslim Brotherhood.”
Lyons also claimed that administration officials had committed crimes by lying to Congress:
“What more do you need? All of our senior leadership –
[CIA directors Leon Panetta, David Petraeus, and Michael Hayden, as well
as Gen. Martin Dempsey, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff] – all lied
before a congressional committee. They must be held responsible. Those
are felonies. You go to jail for 15 years.”
Lyons was followed by Mark Krikorian of the anti-immigrant Center for Immigration Studies, which specializes in manufacturing dubious statistics and pseudo-academic “studies” purporting to support various smear-driven claims against immigrants, and which has a history of dalliances with white nationalists.
Krikorian, whose remarks were delivered via videotape, focused on
Trump’s proposed Muslim immigration, which he dismissed as a “crude,
sledgehammer approach.” However, he also defended its legitimacy, saying
the matter was “not a constitutional issue” since “there is no right
for foreigners to come to the United States.”
He went on to explain his own proposal for dealing with Muslim immigrants:
This is purely a question of
‘is it good policy to simply keep all Muslims out of the United States,
or not?' The way it’s formulated by Mr. Trump is not good policy,
certainly not in my opinion. Because the issue is not keeping out anyone
who identifies as a Muslim, or is identified as a Muslim. Rather, the
issue is to keep out people who adhere to the political aspects of
Islam. If someone prays five times a day and fasts during Ramadan,
that’s none of anybody’s business. But, someone who supports killing
homosexuals, killing adulterers, using the law to punish blasphemers,
that sort of thing – the Sharia aspect of Islam, rather than the
strictly religious parts of it. That, we can and should exclude people
for.
And there are a number of ways we can do
it. The simplest, first thing to do is to use ideological exclusion –
that’s a provision, a concept that’s been in the law, or was in the law
for a long time, that a person who wasn’t actually a member of a
totalitarian party, isn’t actually a terrorist or using violence but
still expresses support for essentially overthrowing the Constitution or
replacing the Constitution can be kept out, should be kept out.
We changed the law after the Cold War,
thinking history had ended. We need to reinstitute that idea so that on
visa applications and what have you, we ask some very basic,
lowest-common-denominator types of questions: Do you support freedom of
speech for people, even if it insults religious sensibilities? Do you
support freedom of religion, or changing religions? And you know, some
people will lie, but we will be setting a marker, you know – these are
things that are not permitted, that Islamic supremacism has no place in
the American constitutional order or American society.
Krikorian is referring to laws passed in the 1950s during the height of anti-Communist hysteria, notably the 1950 Internal Security Act (which excluded communists, totalitarians, and fascists from immigrating) and the 1952 Walter-McCarran Act,
which further codified those exclusions. Those exclusions were largely
overturned in the Immigration Act of 1990, which limited the exclusion
of aliens to those whose "entry or proposed activities within the United
States would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy
consequences."
However, the kind of exclusion that Krikorian favors is actually present in current immigration law,
which requires that applicants be "attached to the principles of the
Constitution of the United States, and well disposed to the good order
and happiness of the same.” There also remain several ideological bars,
including “advocates of assassination, government overthrow by force,
destruction of property, and sabotage.”
Krikorian’s comparatively reasonable remarks shortly gave way to a
presentation by James Simpson, introduced by Gaffney as an
“investigative journalist” and the author of The Red-Green Axis: Refugees, Immigration, and the Agenda to Erase America, a book available for free online at CSP’s website. Simpson has previously promoted similar conspiracy theories, including one claiming that communists were behind major Latino-rights organizations.
Simpson’s latest bête noire is the U.S.’s
refugee-resettlement program, which he claimed is providing “extreme
leftists” all the pretext they need to “fundamentally transform
America.” According to Gaffney, Simpson travels the country providing
training sessions for anti-Muslim activists in communities dealing with
an influx of refugees under these programs, which are all overseen by a
nefarious United Nations and its cabal of conspirators who want to
“erase America.”
He opened his presentation by claiming a quote from a supposed 1960s
left-wing radical (actually sourced as an unnamed “SDS radical”
ostensibly quoted by right-wing pundit David Horowitz) that he claimed showed their true nature: “The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.”
What he meant was that issues
for them – and it doesn’t matter. You can pick immigration, gay rights,
welfare, civil rights, it doesn’t matter. The issue for them is only
relevant insofar as it can be used as a vehicle to advance them into
positions of power so that they can move forward with the fundamental
transformation of this country into a leftist – God knows what. Yes,
thank you – socialism.
… This is what we are up against. And the
resettlement immigration open-borders agenda is a perfect vehicle for
the Left to complete its agenda. And let’s just be clear about it. This
is not a new agenda. It’s been going on since the dawn of time. These
are simply unscrupulous people, corrupt people who are willing to use
any and every tactic to insinuate themselves into positions of power.
That’s all it is.
Socialism puts a pretty face on it – ‘We’re
here to help the little guy.’ No we’re not. We’re here to insinuate
ourselves into power, suck all resources into the federal government, so
we can redistribute to our friends and people who are gonna support us.
That’s what it’s about.
The resettlement immigration issue is
perfect for that. We’re all seeing it. It dilutes American culture by
bringing in people from all over the world of disparate cultures who
have no understanding of our Constitution, no understanding of the rule
of law, no interest in any of that, but only what American society can
provide in benefits to them.
They will not support the notion of a
constitutional Republican government. That is what is critical and
essential, that’s what has made us special, that’s what’s made us the
most prosperous nation in the world, and that’s what the Left wants to
destroy, because it’s standing in the way.
Simpson explained that the United Nations is the center of this
leftist conspiracy, working in cahoots with Islamist radicals to allow
in more extremists. Their main vehicle, he claimed, is refugee
resettlement.
As evidence of the danger, he claimed that “at least two Paris
attackers entered as refugees” (in reality, the only supposed refugee
passports found near the bodies carried of two of the ISIS terrorists
who killed 140 people in Paris in mid-November are now considered fakes).
And he touted the growing “pockets of resistance” in communities, particularly smaller rural towns such as Twin Falls, Idaho, and Duncan, S.C., where there is growing resistance (some of it led by extremist militiamen) to the possibility that refugees from Syria might be relocated in their midst.
Simpson claimed that these communities face demonization at the hands of “leftist” organizations such as the SPLC:
The resettlement agencies and
their various supporters actually went forward and created this campaign
designed specifically to oppose these pockets of resistance. And it’s
an organized nationwide campaign of vilification. Guess what? Can you
just fill in the blanks? What is anybody who opposes the out-of-control,
insane refugee resettlement program? You wanna fill in the blank?
“Racist! Bigot! Xenophobe! You’re all bad people!”
And it’s an organized effort using the
Southern Poverty Law Center and other organizations funded by George
Soros and other radical leftist organizations. They’re trying to change
the culture by changing the narrative. And it’s a massive, massive
operation.
But people are fighting back all over the
country. And we call ourselves pockets of resistance. That’s what we’re
doing. We’re resisting them.
Simpson was shortly followed by a video presentation from right-wing
stalwart Phyllis Schlafly, who has made a career out of leading a number
of arch-conservative political battles, beginning with women’s rights
and continuing with battles over gay rights and education. But it was
immigration and refugee resettlement that were her main focus Monday.
She opened with praise for Gaffney and the CPS:
The American people need
someone to alert them to the dangers to our sovereignty. … Illegal
immigration is a tremendous attack on our sovereignty. Because the
people coming in don’t necessarily want to be Americans, they don’t want
to speak English, they don’t want to adopt our ways. They want to help
Obama engage in his transformation of the United States of America. But
we think we have a perfectly wonderful country, and we want to make it
great again.
Obama seems to want to bring into our
country anybody who shows up at the border, but we need to be careful
about who we let into our country. We want people to come who love us,
who want to be Americans.
A few months ago, I wrote about the Syrian
immigrants, and they are a real danger. And it’s not only the people who
might be vetted – and I don’t think they are vetted when they come in –
but even if they were, we find that the next generation of people can
be easily radicalized. And they are a danger right in the midst of our
country.
Just before lunch, Gaffney introduced Connie Foust, the
self-proclaimed “Border Granny” who has made a career as a nativist
border watcher based in Arizona.
Foust had a long and colorful career, beginning in 2005, as one of
the leaders of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, where, as she
described for the audience she eventually became “national border
operations director for Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas.”
The MCDC, however, has been defunct since 2010, and its onetime leader, Chris Simcox, is currently awaiting trial in Phoenix
on two counts of child molestation. Nowadays, as Foust explained, she
is primarily involved with another Arizona border-watch operation called
Project Bluelight.
Project Bluelight is run by a resident of Arizona’s Altar Valley,
south of Tuscon in the desert borderlands, named Joe Adams. Adams is
something of a shadowy figure himself, with a background as a CIA
operative and drug smuggler. He was indicted in 1988 for violations of
the Neutrality Act as a result of his work helping to fund (often
through drug smuggling) and organize the right-wing Contra death squads
in Nicaragua in the 1980s, and he later became a private investigator
with ties to the Jimmy Hoffa family.
He told a reporter he was naturally attracted to the Minutemen and
first joined Chris Simcox’s Minuteman Civil Defense Corps in 2006, but
he then left (saying MCDC was “a bunch of people who want to do a good
job but don’t know what they’re doing”) to eventually form his own
offshoot, which he called Project Bluelight, suggesting that it operates
with the tacit cooperation of law enforcement (“blue light” being law
enforcement lingo for proceeding with the blessing of police).
Adams also had a yearlong, frequently contentious association with
onetime Minuteman border-watch leader Shawna Forde, whom he met when she
showed up to promote her own border-watch outfit at a Bluelight
border-watch operation. Forde was later charged and convicted
in the murders of an Arivaca, Arizona, marijuana smuggler and his
nine-year-old daughter in their home in the early morning hours of May
30, 2009, and now sits on Arizona’s Death Row. Adams sent Forde an email
breaking off their association the same day the murders took place.
During her speech, Foust described Project Bluelight as “some pretty
cool guys” and added: “These are American patriots like no other.” Then
she went on to claim that the border watchers had “assisted over the
course of these years the Department of Homeland Security, ICE and
Border Patrol in the apprehension of 10,000 persons plus. They have
seized over 200 loads of narcotics, they have rescued over 100 persons
in distress.”
“We have no interest in the worker coming over for a better life. We
have an interest in securing our border so we can all have life.”
She then went on to describe in detail how she and other border
watchers had observed Muslims coming over the border with “full beards”
and “prayer rugs,” and claimed she had the video to prove it.
The extremism and conspiracism reached a real fever pitch, however,
when right-wing pundit Wayne Allyn Root – who nowadays styles himself as
“the poor man’s Donald Trump” – took to the stage.
Root covered a range of topics. He opened up by ranting against
Obamacare, claiming that President Obama nakedly lied in his claims
while selling it to the American public. “Now, if I do that, I’m in
prison for life like Bernie Madoff,” he said. “It’s called fraud.
Someone needs to hold them accountable. Someone needs to put people in
jail.”
He called Obama the “worst gambler, degenerate gambler in history”
because he is someone who “makes bets he cannot win” and he is “betting
with your money and your children’s lives.”
Root also joined in castigating plans to bring in Syrian refugees,
and also claimed that he had eyewitness accounts of Muslims coming over
the Mexico border.
“No one gives a damn in the media, they don’t care,” he said.
Because their agenda is helping Obama, supporting Obama,
defending Obama, championing Obama, and soon it will be helping,
championing, and supporting Hillary Clinton, even though we all know in
this room that if it was a Republican guilty of everything Hillary’s
guilty of, he’d be in prison for the next 20 years. Everyone knows
that."
The crimes that Hillary Clinton has committed, no Republican on Earth
could get away with – and I’m not talking about Benghazi, I’m not
talking about the emails, I’m not talking about the secret surveillance
emails.
All I’m talking about is: Can you imagine a Republican Secretary of
State working for a Republican president starting a foundation for
charity that collects money from foreign governments by the hundreds of
millions and billions and then takes the money and hands out government
contracts to the same country that made the contribution from the State
Department? That’s not a criminal offense, that’s a hanging, treasonous
offense.
During the question-and-answer session, a member of the audience
asked Root “when we are going to nail Hillary. Is she gonna go to jail?”
Root replied that he wasn’t sure: “I don’t know if Comey, the FBI
director, is totally on the straight-and-narrow.”
“I believe we’ve got massive blackmail going on in the United States
government,” he said. “The NSA, the IRS, their goal is to find out
everything about Republicans — not everybody. Republicans.”
“They want to know everything about us, especially Republican
politicians in Washington, D.C., and then they blackmail them,” he
explained. “Is Comey susceptible to that? I have no idea, but I
certainly have my suspicions about the Supreme Court justice of the
United States voting twice for Obamacare.”
The day wrapped up with a series of appearances from GOP presidential
candidates, who themselves managed to pile on with more extremism.
That was especially the case with Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, whose
15-minute video message ran earlier in the day. Cruz also had praise for
Gaffney, who he described as a “patriot” who “has been attacked over
and over again for having the courage to stand up and speak the name
‘radical Islamic terrorism’ of the enemy that is waging jihad against
us.”
He then went on to claim that President Obama was using the
Department of Justice to “attack the First Amendment” by threatening
anyone critical of Muslims with prosecution:
It raises the specter that Americans will be labeled as
bigots if they dare utter the word “Islam” in connection with a
terrorist attack. Our president refuses to do so – in fact, he spent a
significant portion of his Sunday address as an apologist for Islam.
… And the Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, told a gathering the day
after the attacks in San Bernardino, that her department would move to
prosecute anyone whose, quote, “anti-Muslim rhetoric edged toward
violence.” As has been the case all too often in the Obama
administration, we may be facing the weaponization of one of our own
government agencies, deployed not to protect Americans, but to try to
force them to submit to the Obama administration’s code of what is and
is not acceptable speech.
The day's events ended with the Senator Rick Santorum and the
videotaped messages from fellow GOP candidates Carly Fiorina and Ben
Carson, giving Gaffney and the CSP exactly what they wanted: a stamp of approval from mainstream political leaders of all the conspiracy and extremism that came before it.
Last week, a number of
Republican presidential candidates – including Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina,
and Rick Santorum – devoted time to criticizing fellow candidate Donald
Trump for his proposal to ban all Muslim immigration into the United
States.
The “National Security Action Summit” in Las Vegas was primarily
devoted to exploring all the possible dark corners of the possibility of
a terrorist attack committed by Muslim immigrants, a constant theme of
the Center for Security Policy, the extremist anti-Muslim group run by Frank Gaffney.
This included discussions of the possibility that President Obama is
secretly a Muslim, the fear that refugees from Syria will include large
numbers of embedded terrorists and the notion that American communists
and liberals are conspiring with Muslim radicals to end democracy in the
United States. One speaker even claimed that Democratic candidate
Hillary Clinton is blackmailing people in Washington, including the
current director of the FBI, just to stay out of prison.
But the highlight of the conference was undoubtedly the guest
appearances by four presidential candidates – Cruz, Fiorina, Santorum
and Ben Carson. Santorum appeared in person, while Cruz, Fiorina and
Carson all sent recorded messages that were played for conference
attendees.
Cruz was especially effusive in his praise for Gaffney, saying he was
“a patriot, he loves this country, and he is clear-eyed about the
incredible threat of radical Islamic terrorism.”
“Frank Gaffney has been attacked over and over again for having the
courage to stand up and speak the name ‘radical Islamic terrorism’ of
the enemy that is waging jihad against us,” Cruz said, claiming that
Obama won’t use the term.
Last week, Cruz addressed Trump’s proposed ban, saying: “I disagree with that proposal. … I believe we need a plan that is focused on the direct threat."
Fiorina’s video appearance was relatively brief. She told the
audience: “I apologize that I can’t be with you today,” and then
launched into harsh criticism of Obama and Clinton, saying their
response to terrorist attacks made her “angry."
“Our most pressing national security threat is radical Islamist
terrorism around the world and here at home, both lone wolves and packs
of wolves. ISIS is an evil that must be confronted, it must be
destroyed. They are at war with us and all we represent. And so we must
wage this war and we must win.”
But last week, Fiorina had told an audience:
“Donald Trump, for example, has been saying we’re going to use a
religious test and ban people from coming into this country. … It’s a
violation of our Constitution, but it also undermines the character of
our nation. We stand for religious liberty.”
Santorum, who had been more temperate in his criticism of Trump,
appeared in person, and never addressed the issue of Muslim immigration.
He devoted most of his remarks to attacking Iran and defending Israel.
At the end of his question-and-answer session, he was asked by a black
woman to compare ISIS to American police who killed black men in
custody, and adamantly insisted that the comparison was invalid.
Gaffney praised Santorum afterward, saying he had “maintained a
perfect record” when it came to attending the “National Security
Summits” the CSP had organized in various locales around the country.
Last week, he said he disagreed with Trump’s proposed blanket ban on
Muslim, but suggested he would favor something similar, focusing the ban
on travel from nations where extremism is rampant.
“I think that there are countries where we should not be bringing in
people. Obviously, we should not be bringing in Muslims from those
countries. I am not worried about radicalized Christians from Yemen, but
I am worried about radicalized Muslims from those countries,” Santorum told a Des Moines audience.
Carson, who declined to criticize Trump’s proposal, also sent in a
video, saying, “I wish I could be there with you. It’s such an important
topic, particularly with the things that happened in France lately. And
obviously, we all need to be thinking about what kind of security can
we have at home.”
He continued: “We must recognize that we are at war. That means we
must throw all this political correctness out the window, because that
does not work when it comes to the safety of the American people. We
have to learn how to prioritize. Safety of the people should always be
right on the top shelf when it comes to our decision making.”
All of the Republican candidates are in Las Vegas today to participate in the final GOP primary debate.
[Cross-posted at Hatewatch.]
The murderous rampage by two apparently radicalized Muslims in San Bernardino, Calif., on Dec. 2
has become the latest flashpoint in the massive bonfire of Islamophobia
being whipped up by anti-Muslim extremists and their mainstream
conservative enablers in the United States.
In the week since the massacre of 14 people by Syed Farook and
Tashfeen Malik, Muslims around the country have been confronted with a
wildfire of retaliatory threats, vandalism, and attacks – even as
politicians and pundits have stoked the flames of bigotry higher.
The ugliness began almost immediately after the shootings with a
series of phoned-in and social-media threats, vandalizing attacks on
mosques, and arsons of Muslim businesses, in locations all around the
United States:
In St. Louis, Mo., a man phoned in a threat
to the local offices of the Council on American-Islamic Relations,
vowing to kill any Muslims who dared show up on his property. That man is unlikely to be charged with any crime.
In Manassas, Va., the local mosque was similarly threatened
with a phoned-in threat from a man claiming to be a member of the
extremist Jewish Defense League and vowing that his group “will do to
your people what you did to them.” “We are checking now to see if one
Jew has been shot or killed in California,” he said. “You all will be
sorry. You all will be killed.”
In Philadelphia, Pa., someone in a red pickup truck
rolled up next to a neighborhood mosque and hurled a severed pig’s head
onto the steps of the building. Security cameras caught images of the
perpetrators, but so far, investigators have had no luck tracking them
down. The act was widely denounced, including by Mayor-elect Jim Kenney,
who said: "We cannot allow hate to divide us now, in the face of
unprecedented difficulties. I ask all Philadelphians to join me in
rejecting this despicable act and supporting our Muslim neighbors.”
In Grand Forks, N.D., someone scrawled graffiti featuring a Nazi
symbol and the words “Go home” on the walls of a Somali restaurant owned
by a Muslim family. Two nights later, someone deliberately set an arson fire at the restaurant, causing an estimated $90,000 in damage.
In Twin Falls, Idaho, someone spray-painted boards
that covered the windows of the local Islamic center with the words
“Hunt Camp ?” The graffiti referred to the old Minidoka Relocation
Center in nearby Hunt, the site of the massive Japanese American
internment erected during World War II, apparently suggesting the same
fate for Magic Valley Muslims. Local police were investigating the
matter as a potential hate crime.
Graffiti at the Islamic Center in Twin Falls, ID
There has been a rash of other, mostly petty, ugliness as well: A
sixth-grade Muslim schoolgirl in Brooklyn was attacked at the school –
punched, her headscarf yanked, and called “ISIS” by classmates – but police declined to file a report in the matter. Two Muslim women were verbally assaulted by a fellow patron
at an Austin, Texas, restaurant, and then told that “nobody” cared
about them. A woman in Fort Worth, Texas, reported that an angry woman
confronted her in her car, rolling down her window and shouting at her,
before she spat on her.
The Twin Falls case provides a stark example of how extremist
anti-Muslim rhetoric trickles down to create permission for violence in
local communities. The local refugee resettlement center has in recent
months become the focus of a virulent campaign
stoked by national groups designated as anti-Muslim extremist and hate
groups by the SPLC, even attracting the high-volume participation of
armed militiamen from the antigovernment “III Percent” movement.
The spate of ugliness has wounded the Muslim community: “I think
people are upset, people are humiliated,” observed Marwan Kreidie,
director of the Arab American Development Corp., in an Associated Press
interview following the incident with the pig’s head. “We’ve never had
incidents like that – even after 9/11, we didn’t have anything like
this.
“Unfortunately, some of the rhetoric – especially coming from the
Republican candidates for president – has been atrocious. And words have
consequences.”
Indeed, the GOP presidential field – led by Donald Trump – has already played a substantial role
in whipping the embers of Islamophobia into flames in recent weeks,
aided and abetted by both right-wing and mainstream media. Much of that
focused on whether or not Muslim refugees from Syria should be welcomed,
with Trump announcing that if he were elected, “They’re going back!”
After last Wednesday’s massacre, the issue blew up altogether, with a number of politicians and pundits lining up
to declare that their fears about admitting Muslim refugees had been
proven right. At the same time, the floodgates of ugly behavior toward
Muslims appeared to open wide all across the country.
On Monday, in the wake of the San Bernardino shootings, Trump turned
the issue into a national uproar by declaring that he wanted to see all Muslim immigration into the United States shut off altogether – temporarily, he claimed, “until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on.”
"In a country that is already thick with hateful anti-Muslim
ideologues, Donald Trump may well be the person who has done more than
any other to demonize Muslims and, ultimately, to subject them to
criminal hate violence,” observed Mark Potok, the SPLC’s Intelligence
Report editor. “Words have consequences. Although the hateful comments
of Trump — not to mention those of a number of the other Republican
presidential candidates — are protected by the First Amendment, there is
little doubt that they will ultimately lead to more violence directed
at minorities. What Trump is saying is despicable, un-American and a
shameful moment for our country.”
The Republican candidates’ fearmongering, however, is only the culmination of a long-running campaign by extremist organizations to whip up fears about Muslims. A number of these groups – in particular, Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy, whose misinformation was cited by Trump
in his attempts to justify his call for a Muslim immigration ban – have
been claiming for years that all Muslims are extremists in waiting. One
of Gaffney’s acolytes, Ann Corcoran, has played a leading role in the effort to associate the refugee-resettlement programs with the ostensible threat of terrorism.
As a consequence of this rhetoric, hate crimes against Muslims
have skyrocketed in recent years, even at a time when hate crimes
against other minorities are declining. CAIR officials recently expressed concern
about the recent escalation in bias crimes: “We don’t literally have
time to issue a statement on every incident because they’re coming in so
fast and furious,” CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper said. “When the
leading Republican presidential candidate can say, ‘Bar all Muslims
coming to America’ and know he can get more support for it — it is truly
frightening.”
In the meantime, Pentagon officials explained Tuesday
that this kind of bigotry was playing directly into the hands of the
terrorists, whose whole intention is to attempt to create bigoted
attacks on Muslims in America and Europe so that those Muslims will have
an incentive to become radicalized.
“Anything that bolsters ISIL’s narrative and pits the United States
against the Muslim faith is certainly not only contrary to our values
but contrary to our national security,” Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook
told a news briefing.
Maybe it was the rain, which came down in buckets all day Sunday in Seattle.
Or maybe it was the massive crowd of over 500 people, a large number
of them black-clad and masked anarchists, waiting to greet them up in
the city’s Capitol Hill neighborhood.
Or maybe, as the white supremacists who took part in this year’s
“Martyrs [sic] Day” commemoration in western Washington tried to claim
afterward, it was all just a hoax, a massive prank meant to tweak
Seattle liberals.
Whatever the cause, the contingent of neo-Nazi skinheads who boasted
beforehand that “we will be marching through Capitol Hill in Seattle to
show these liberals, anarchists antifa and fags that we are here and
here to stay” after a day of listening to white-power bands, in reality
turned out to be complete no-shows Sunday as far as any kind of public
appearance.
The same could not be said of their opponents, who significantly
outnumbered them in any event. The anti-Nazi protesters blocked traffic
and created a scene in the neighborhood; there were reports of minor
vandalism attributed to the presence of anarchists. The black-clad and
masked young men remained in clusters around the neighborhood well after
the march, waiting for someone to show.
Organizers from the Northwest Hammerskins,
a well-known racist skinhead outfit, had posted on the
white-supremacist website Stormfront their plans for this year’s version
of “Martyrs Day,” held annually on Dec. 6, usually on Whidbey Island, to commemorate the death of Robert Mathews, leader of the neo-Nazi criminal gang The Order,
at the hands of the FBI in 1984. This year, they vowed in the posts,
they planned to hold it in the form of a white-power rock concert in the
Seattle neighborhood of Ballard, followed by a cross burning, and then a
march up to Capitol Hill.
A woman (using the nom de plume “Hardcore Honey”) associated with
Northwest skinheads posted that this year’s event would be “something
you will NOT want to miss!” She also included a poster of the planned
concert.
"Join us Sunday, Dec. 6th in Ballard,WA. We will be meeting up at an undisclosed location in Ballard …
"The event will present five white power bands including Ironwill and
Beer Hall Putsch and a couple others making their NW debuts. Comrades
and crews from across the country will be in attendance and about 300
people are to be expected for a day of comraderie, music, hailing our
heroes and good ol' goosestepping. Food and drinks will also be
provided.
"After the bands and a traditional cross burning we will be marching
through Capitol Hill in Seattle to show these liberals, anarchists
antifa and fags that we are here and here to stay.
"This will be the biggest event in NW history as of yet so let's put
the beautiful Pacific Northwest back on the map and make Robert Mathews
proud!"
That set off a flurry of activity by anti-fascists and socialists in
the region, who organized a large rally Sunday in Capitol Hill intended
to make the neo-Nazis feel unwelcome. By the time darkness had fallen on
Seattle – along with the heavy rains – a crowd estimated at over 500
had collected at Cal Anderson Park, in the heart of the district.
Capitol Hill, as the city’s most prominent gay neighborhood, also has a long and unfortunate history of attracting anti-LGBT hate-crimes from outside the area. The problem dates back to at least 1990, when a group of neo-Nazis from northern Idaho
came to Seattle intent on setting off a series of pipe bombs inside
Neighbours, a popular gay nightclub in the area (those men were arrested
before enacting their plot and wound up serving federal prison time).
Organizers of the rally included Rose City Antifa, a Portland,
Ore.-based antifascist group, who spread the word about the skinheads’
intentions through social media, using the hashtag #DefendSeattle. Soon a
number of socialist and feminist organizations, as well as some
anarchist groups, had joined in, and on Sunday, they made their numbers
known. As the evening darkened and the rain grew heavier, the crowd
headed out from the park and marched down Broadway, the main avenue on
Capitol Hill.
Many carried handmade signs: “Nazis Go Home” and “Skinhead Fascists
Not Welcome Here,” were fairly typical. A big banner read: “Smash White
Supremacy.” Some signs even had a sense of humor: “Thor Hates You,” read
one.
Chanting various anti-Nazi slogans – “Nazis are not welcome here,”
and “Nazis out, refugees in” were favorites – the crowd traveled down
about five city blocks, then circled back around to the park where the
march started, at which time police ordered them to disperse, and they
did.
A news van for KIRO-TV was vandalized by some of the masked young men
– several windows were broken in the van, and it had been tagged with
graffiti. Other graffiti had been left behind: “Fags Against Nazis” read
one tag that had been hastily painted across a stark white building
wall. And some business owners reported having their windows broken as
well.
Lol. Well I hope you nerds enjoyed the hoax
played on you by us idiot boneheads. Our memorial went off with no
problems yesterday. All you revolutionaries managed to do was to
vandalize the city you say you where defending. You've also managed to
expose yourselves and now we have lots of info on people who try
desperately too hide their identities. Places of work, your residents,
and places of leisure may no longer be a safe space. So much for
outsmarting us idiotic boneheads. Playing Che can be a lot of fun, but
it's time to realize that you really are a bunch of white nerds who live
in all white neighborhoods from middle class white families. None of
you are oppressed, unless you count your drug addiction and low iqs
oppression. Funny how you guys where at the SPD earlier before your
rally. Making sure they where there to keep you safe lol. Fight the
system man. Well thanks for the laugh, in solidarity, antifa hahaha.
In reality, the skinheads had indeed held their usual commemoration
on Whidbey Island earlier in the day Sunday, but had in fact
subsequently also gathered at a Seattle-area private residence at which a
few dozen neo-Nazis were treated to a white-power rock show by a couple
of white-power bands, according to information received by the SPLC.
The show ended in the early evening and the participants did not,
apparently, make the trek to Capitol Hill.
[Cross-posted at Hatewatch.]
The Republican presidential candidates who spent much of the past
four months roundly demonizing Planned Parenthood were scrambling over
the weekend and beyond, busily trying to distance themselves and their
rhetoric from last week's bloody shooting rampage of a North Carolina transplant in Colorado Springs, Colo., on Friday.
Carly Fiorina – whose attacks on Planned Parenthood in the wake of the release of a series of deceptively edited smear videos purporting to show officials from the organization callously selling “aborted baby parts” were credited with fueling her rise as a candidate among a crowded GOP field – called any linkage of her rhetoric to the shooting just “typical left-wing tactics.”
“This is so typical of the left to immediately begin demonizing a messenger because they don’t agree with the message,” Fiorina told Fox News’ Chris Wallace on Sunday.
Reportedly, the shooter, Robert L. Dear,
a 57-year-old transplant from Asheville, N.C., said to authorities in
interviews after he was captured that the attack was about “no more baby parts,” along with oblique references to President Obama.
Sen. Ted Cruz, who also devoted a lot of campaign airtime to attacking Planned Parenthood – at one point telling a reporter that “I have encouraged every American to watch these videos” – complained to reporters
on Sunday that "the media promptly wants to blame him on the pro-life
movement when at this point there’s very little evidence to indicate
that."
Reminded about Dear’s reported “baby parts” comment, Cruz retorted:
"It’s also been reported that he was registered as an independent and a
woman and a transgendered leftist activist. If that’s what he is, I
don’t think it’s fair to blame on the rhetoric on the left. This is a
murderer.”
He added: “We know that he was a man registered to vote as a woman.” [In reality, this claim – based on a clerical error made by county officials in Colorado – was completely untrue, though it was bandied about widely by right-wing blogs.]
Fiorina and Cruz led the charge against Planned Parenthood by
Republican candidates this summer, based on the smear videos, that
resulted in virtually every candidate calling for abolishing federal
funding for Planned Parenthood. Cruz, in fact, promised to introduce
legislation in the Senate to do just that.
At the Sept. 16 GOP presidential debate, Fiorina attacked the organization viciously:
As regards Planned Parenthood,
anyone who has watched this videotape, I dare Hillary Clinton, Barack
Obama to watch these tapes. Watch a fully formed fetus on the table, its
heart beating, its legs kicking while someone says we have to keep it
alive to harvest its brain. This is about the character of our nation,
and if we will not stand up in and force President Obama to veto this
bill, shame on us.
In reality, no such video existed among those released as part of the smear campaign, and Fiorina was never able to produce evidence that it did. Her defenders later released a video purporting to show a fetus being treated as she described, but it shortly emerged that the video was of a miscarriage, at a hospital with no affiliation with Planned Parenthood.
Now, what should we be doing?
Number one, in the course of these videos, it appears both of these
officials are admitting to multiple felonies, both federal felonies and
state and local felonies. If the Department of Justice wasn't a partisan
arm of the DNC, it should open an investigation, prosecute these
individuals and Planned Parenthood as an entity.
Thankfully, there are state and local
attorneys general and DAs that are opening investigations. We need to
prosecute Planned Parenthood, and also we need to cut off every penny of
taxpayer funding. I'm leading the fight in the Senate to do exactly
that and insure that we are not funding people who are buying and
selling body parts of unborn children in violation of federal criminal
law!
Cruz and Fiorina were hardly alone. Most of their fellow candidates joined the dogpile:
Ben Carson told an Iowa radio host that “the whole purpose” of Planned Parenthood is to “eliminate black people.”
Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida told a TV interviewer that Planned
Parenthood was in the business of “pushing people into abortions”: “If
you go to one of these centers young women are provided very few
options. In many places they’re not told anything about, for example,
adoption services that might be available to them. In essence, you come
in, and it’s already predetermined. This is the direction –– this is
what this place does. It provides abortions, and we are going to channel
you in that direction. And I just think you’ve created an industry now
–– the situation where very much you’ve created an incentive not just
for people to look forward to having more abortions, but being able to
sell that fetal tissue for purposes of making profit off of it, as
you’ve seen with some of these Planned Parenthood affiliates.” [This
claim, like many others levied against the women’s health-care provider,
is utterly false, a product of the claims of an extremist fringe group.]
Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky issued a statement: “I am more appalled
than ever by Planned Parenthood's complete disregard for the sanctity of
human life. The recent revelation that this taxpayer-funded
organization is selling body parts of the unborn further proves that
this agency deserves our scorn not our tax dollars.” He also told an interviewer: “I don’t know how they live with themselves.”
Donald Trump told interviewer Hugh Hewitt
that he would be all for Cruz’s proposal to shut down the federal
government in order to force President Obama to sign their plan to
defund Planned Parenthood: “If the Republicans stuck together you could
have done it with Obamacare also, but the Republicans decided not to
stick together and they left a few people out there like Ted Cruz. If
they had stuck together they would have won that battle. I think you
have to in this case [on Planned Parenthood] also, yes.”
The candidates having already set the bar for acceptable
mainstream attacks on Planned Parenthood, the already-extreme rhetoric
turned even more so in the hands of lesser politicians, right-wing
pundits, and far-right evangelical Christians. Rep. Trent Franks,
R-Arizona, warned that if Planned Parenthood was not defunded, America itself would collapse,
since Americans had become so “desensitized” to the “horror” of the
“abortion industry,” to “a degree that I think threatens the survival or
the necessity of the survival of America.
I don’t believe these people
for a moment, do you? In fact, we can discern upon them the spirit of
lying, the spirit of death, the spirit of murder, the spirit of greed. I
mean, whenever I look at a picture of those executives, if you look in
the spirit, at the demons inside of them, you can see the blood dripping from their fangs. These people are just evil.
Planned Parenthood has hunted
down millions and millions of little innocent babies, stuck a knife into
the uterus, cut them, pulled them out, crushed their skull with
forceps, ripped their body apart, sold their tissue, and threw them
bleeding into a trash bin.
I say, tonight, we punish Planned
Parenthood. I think it’s time that abortion doctors should have to run
and hide and be afraid for their life.
The ultimate escalation of that rhetoric into action, apparently, came in Colorado Springs, along with the spate of four arsons over a 74-day span at Planned Parenthood clinics scattered around the nation.
And despite the denials of the candidates regarding the effects of their extreme rhetoric, extremists on the right couldn’t withhold their expressions of glee on social media even after Dear murdered three people and wounded nine others.
“No sympathy for any pregnant female who was injured in the Planned
Parenthood shooting that was there to get an abortion. She deserved it,”
tweeted one “pro-life” advocate.
“Planned Parenthood shooter has done more in one day to save black
babies then #Black Lives Matter has done in last several months,”
tweeted another.
These murderous pigs at Planned
Parenthood are babykillers and they reap what they sow. In this case,
Planned Parenthood selling of aborted baby parts came back to bite them.
The New York Times on Tuesday published a story quoting anonymous sources who told their reporter that Dear had considered groups like Army of God to be “heroes.”
And at the ostensibly mainstream conservative blog sometime CNN
pundit Erick Erickson, he wrote: “Given the public light shed on the
atrocities committed by Planned Parenthood … it really should be
surprising that Americans … have not taken the law into their own
hands.”
In other words, Robert Dear’s act of domestic terrorism did not slow
down the attacks on Planned Parenthood. If anything, it seems to have
taken them to a new level of viciousness.
