Southern Poverty Law Center: The Year in Hate & Extremism, 2010

The Year in Hate & Extremism, 2010
by Mark Potok
Southern Poverty Law Center

For the second year in a row, the radical right in America expanded explosively in 2010, driven by resentment over the changing racial demographics of the country, frustration over the government’s handling of the economy, and the mainstreaming of conspiracy theories and other demonizing propaganda aimed at various minorities. For many on the radical right, anger is focusing on President Obama, who is seen as embodying everything that’s wrong with the country.

Hate groups topped 1,000 for the first time since the Southern Poverty Law Center began counting such groups in the 1980s. Anti-immigrant vigilante groups, despite having some of the political wind taken out of their sails by the adoption of hard-line anti-immigration laws around the country, continued to rise slowly. But by far the most dramatic growth came in the antigovernment “Patriot” movement — conspiracy-minded organizations that see the federal government as their primary enemy — which gained more than 300 new groups, a jump of over 60%.

Taken together, these three strands of the radical right — the hatemongers, the nativists and the antigovernment zealots — increased from 1,753 groups in 2009 to 2,145 in 2010, a 22% rise. That followed a 2008-2009 increase of 40%.

What may be most remarkable is that this growth of right-wing extremism came even as politicians around the country, blown by gusts from the Tea Parties and other conservative formations, tacked hard to the right, co-opting many of the issues important to extremists. Last April, for instance, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed S.B. 1070, the harshest anti-immigrant law in memory, setting off a tsunami of proposals for similar laws across the country. Continuing growth of the radical right could be curtailed as a result of this shift, especially since Republicans, many of them highly conservative, recaptured the U.S. House last fall.

But despite those historic Republican gains, the early signs suggest that even as the more mainstream political right strengthens, the radical right has remained highly energized. In an 11-day period this January, a neo-Nazi was arrested headed for the Arizona border with a dozen homemade grenades; a terrorist bomb attack on a Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade in Spokane, Wash., was averted after police dismantled a sophisticated anti-personnel weapon; and a man who officials said had a long history of antigovernment activities was arrested outside a packed mosque in Dearborn, Mich., and charged with possessing explosives with unlawful intent. That’s in addition, the same month, to the shooting of U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona, an attack that left six dead and may have had a political dimension.

It’s also clear that other kinds of radical activity are on the rise. Since the murder last May 20 of two West Memphis, Ark., police officers by two members of the so-called “sovereign citizens” movement, police from around the country have contacted the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) to report what one detective in Kentucky described as a “dramatic increase” in sovereign activity. Sovereign citizens, who, like militias, are part of the larger Patriot movement, believe that the federal government has no right to tax or regulate them and, as a result, often come into conflict with police and tax authorities. Another sign of their increased activity came early this year, when the Treasury Department, in a report assessing what the IRS faces in 2011, said its biggest challenge will be the “attacks and threats against IRS employees and facilities [that] have risen steadily in recent years.”

To Read the Rest of the Report, To Access Specific Analysis of Groups and View Charts

Martin Smith: The Rise of the Right in Europe

[Contemporary mapping of right-wing and fascist movements in Europe]

The Rise of the Right in Europe
by Martin Smith
We Are Many
Socialism 2010 (Chicago)

To Listen to the Presentation

The Right-Wing Guide to the Popular Uprisings in the Middle East

Gawker's detailed breakdown of the distortions, fantasies and propaganda

Deepa Kumar: The Rise of Anti-Muslim Hate

The rise of anti-Muslim hate
By Deepa Kumar
International Socialist Review

FROM ATTACKS at mosques and mobilizations against proposed mosque sites, to physical attacks on Muslims and Koran burnings, racism in the United States against Muslims and Arabs has reached new heights in recent months.

At the center of this storm has been the proposal to build an Islamic community center called Cordoba House—recently renamed Park51—two blocks from “Ground Zero,” the site of the World Trade Center towers destroyed on September 11, 2001. What began as a fairly non-controversial project, and one moreover that had the support of Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other New York City politicians, turned into a grave affront to the victims of 9/11 within a matter of a few months.

The effort to brand the center as the “victory mosque” was led by far right-wing groups associated with the Tea Party movement. These forces along with sections of the Republican Party were so successful in setting the terms of debate that anywhere between 541 and 682 percent of Americans expressed opposition to the project at its proposed location.

The speed at which the campaign against the project was able to shift public opinion—in spite of the fact that the current building, the former site of a Burlington Coat Factory, has been used as a Muslim prayer center for two years, and is located two and a half long Manhattan blocks from the site of the Twin Towers, in a neighborhood which includes a strip club and an off-track betting office—is a strong indication of how politicians, the media, and popular culture have successfully demonized Muslims in the United States over the past several years.

Cordoba House: The beginnings

In 2009, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, who has served as a cleric in the downtown Manhattan area for over a quarter century, proposed the construction of a community center modeled on the Jewish Community Center in Manhattan and the 92nd Street Y. The goal of the center was to promote greater understanding of the Muslim community.
The name “Cordoba House” refers to the city of Cordoba in Spain, which during Europe’s “Dark Ages” was a leading cultural center of the Muslim empire that ruled the Iberian penninsula. Cordoba represented not only a high point of intellectual development, but also marked a period of peaceful co-existence among Muslims, Christians, and Jews.

Imam Rauf, who positions himself as a “moderate Muslim” (he gave training speeches for the FBI and the State Department after 9/11), envisioned a community center with recreation facilities like a swimming pool, basketball court, gym, a culinary school, art studios, a child care center, and badly needed prayer space for the Muslim community in downtown Manhattan. His vision was to enable people of all faiths to interact.

The project was so non-threatening that even Mayor Bloomberg gave his support to it, and when the controversy hit, defended it in a speech delivered on August 3 with the Statue of Liberty in the background.3 When the New York Times ran a front-page story in December 2009, the overall tone was positive. The Times quoted Feisal saying, “We want to push back against the extremists.”4 A mother of a 9/11 victim also publicly backed the Islamic center.5

The project was even applauded by right-wing Fox anchor Laura Ingraham. While Ingraham, in an interview with Cordoba House co-founder Daisy Khan in December 2009, could barely hold back her anti-Muslim prejudices, arguing that Muslim majority countries from Saudi Arabia to Lebanon are intolerant toward Christians, she nevertheless gave her support to Khan, saying, “I can’t find many people who really have a problem with it.… I like what you’re trying to do.”6

On May 6, 2010, the New York City Community Board voted unanimously to approve the project.

Enter Stop Islamization of America

As Salon reporter Justin Elliott has documented, the Cordoba House project did not begin to become controversial until May 2010.

In response to the Community Board’s decision, Pamela Geller, a right-wing blogger, posted an entry titled, “Monster Mosque Pushes Ahead in Shadow of World Trade Center Islamic Death and Destruction.” In it, she wrote, “This is Islamic domination and expansionism. The location is no accident. Just as Al-Aqsa was built on top of the Temple in Jerusalem.” The next day her group, Stop Islamization of America (SIOA), launched “Campaign Offensive: Stop the 911 Mosque!”7

Stop Islamization of America, premised on the notion that Muslims are conspiring to take over the United States, called a protest for May 29 against what Geller called the “911 Monster Mosque.”

Geller is a fan of far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders (and the feeling is mutual, given his glowing blurb for the book she co-authored on the Obama presidency), and an admirer of open fascists and street gangs such as the English Defense League that routinely attack Muslims and immigrants. She once claimed that Black South Africans were launching a “genocide” against whites.8 A staunch Zionist, in an Israeli column she calls the term “Palestinian” “fallacious,” and she exhorted Israelis to, “Stand loud and proud. Give up nothing. Turn over not a pebble. For every rocket fired, drop a MOAB. Take back Gaza. Secure Judea and Samaria.”9

Subsequently, the New York Post ran articles that extensively quoted Geller and her vitriolic rhetoric. One article claimed falsely that Cordoba House’s opening date was set for September 11, 2011. This was the moment, Elliott suggests, when this story spread like wildfire, gaining media attention not only on Fox and other conservative outlets, but also the mainstream media.

Barton Gellman: The Secret World of Extreme Militias

The Secret World of Extreme Militias
By Barton Gellman
Time Magazine

Camouflaged and silent, the assault team inched toward a walled stone compound for more than five hours, belly-crawling the last 200 yards. The target was an old state prison in eastern Ohio, and every handpicked member of Red Team 2 knew what was at stake: The year is 2014, and a new breed of neo-Islamic terrorism is rampant in Michigan, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio... The current White House Administration is pro-Muslim and has ordered a stand-down against Islamic groups. The mission: Destroy the terrorist command post — or die trying. The fighters must go in "sterile"—without name tags or other identifying insignia—as a deniable covert force. "Anyone who is caught or captured cannot expect extraction," the briefing officer said.

At nightfall the raiders launched their attack. Short, sharp bursts from their M-16s cut down the perimeter guards. Once past the rear gate, the raiders fanned out and emptied clip after clip in a barrage of diversionary fire. As defenders rushed to repel the small team, the main assault force struck from the opposite flank. Red Team 1 burst through a chain-link fence, enveloping the defense in lethal cross fire. The shooting was over in minutes. Thick grenade smoke bloomed over the command post. The defenders were routed, headquarters ablaze.

This August weekend of grueling mock combat, which left some of the men prostrate and bloody-booted, capped a yearlong training regimen of the Ohio Defense Force, a private militia that claims 300 active members statewide. The fighters shot blanks, the better to learn to maneuver in squads, but they buy live ammunition in bulk. Their training—no game, they stress—expends thousands of rounds a year from a bring-your-own armory of deer rifles, assault weapons and, when the owner turns up, a belt-fed M-60 machine gun. The militia trains for ambushes, sniper missions, close-quarters battle and other infantry staples.

What distinguishes groups like this one from a shooting club or re-enactment society is the prospect of actual bloodshed, which many Ohio Defense Force members see as real. Their unit seal depicts a man with a musket and tricorn hat, over the motto "Today's Minutemen." The symbol invites a question, Who are today's redcoats? On that point, the group takes no official position, but many of those interviewed over two days of recent training in and around the abandoned Roseville State Prison near Zanesville voiced grim suspicions about President Obama and the federal government in general.

"I don't know who the redcoats are," says Brian Vandersall, 37, who designed the exercise and tried to tamp down talk of politics among the men. "It could be U.N. troops. It could be federal troops. It could be Blackwater, which was used in Katrina. It could be Mexican troops who are crossing the border."

Or it could be, as it was for this year's exercise, an Islamic army marauding unchecked because a hypothetical pro-Muslim President has ordered U.S. forces to leave them alone. But as the drill played out, the designated opponents bore little resemblance to terrorists. The scenario described them as a platoon-size unit, in uniform, with "military-grade hardware, communications, encryption capability and vehicle support." The militia was training for combat against the spitting image of a tactical force from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), FBI or National Guard. "Whoever they are," Vandersall says, "we have to be ready."

As militias go, the Ohio Defense Force is on the moderate side. Scores of armed antigovernment groups, some of them far more radical, have formed or been revived during the Obama years, according to law-enforcement agencies and outside watchdogs. A six-month TIME investigation reveals that recruiting, planning, training and explicit calls for a shooting war are on the rise, as are criminal investigations by the FBI and state authorities. Readier for bloodshed than at any time since at least the confrontations in the 1990s in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and Waco, Texas, the radical right has raised the threat level against the President and other government targets. With violence already up on a modest scale, FBI, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and state agencies point to two main dangers of a mass-casualty attack: that a group of armed radicals will strike out in perceived self-defense, or that a lone wolf, trained and indoctrinated for war, will grow tired of waiting. Even the most outspoken militia commanders worry about the latter scenario. Kevin Terrell, a self-described colonel who founded a group of "freedom fighters" in Kentucky and predicts war with "the jackbooted thugs" of Washington within a year, says he has to fend off hotheads who call him a "keyboard commando." Some are ejected from his group, he says, and others are willing to wait a little longer. "You have to have the right fuel-air mixture, the piston has to be in the right position, the spark has to be perfectly timed," he says. "The day will come—sooner than later."

Twisted Patriots

Within a complex web of ideologies, most of today's armed radicals are linked by self-described Patriot beliefs, which emphasize resistance to tyranny by force of arms and reject the idea that elections can fix what ails the country. Among the most common convictions is that the Second Amendment—the right to keep and bear arms—is the Constitution's cornerstone, because only a well-armed populace can enforce its rights. Any form of gun regulation, therefore, is a sure sign of intent to crush other freedoms. The federal government is often said in militia circles to have made wholesale seizures of power, at times by subterfuge. A leading grievance holds that the 16th Amendment, which authorizes the federal income tax, was ratified through fraud.

To Read the Rest of the Article

Stephen Salisbury: Extremist Killing Is as American as Apple Pie -- Murders Grow on the Far Right Four Decades After Martin Luther King

Extremist Killing Is as American as Apple Pie: Murders Grow on the Far Right Four Decades After Martin Luther King
By Stephan Salisbury
TomDispatch

...

White Men Are Never Labeled Terrorists

That leads to a common thread among these murderous incidents. None has been labeled the work of terrorists by authorities or the media. All involved white men, most of whom -- like Jared Loughner in Tucson -- have been deemed troubled or disturbed by authorities and various media outlets. Even Jim David Adkisson, the unemployed truck driver who attacked the Knoxville church because he believed it was “a cult” and a haven for Democrats and secular liberals, has not been characterized as a political terrorist. Adkisson was a fan of the writings and shows of right-wing media personalities Bill O'Reilly, Michael Savage, and Sean Hannity, according to authorities who searched his residence after the 2008 shootings. However, his primary motivation, according to those same authorities, was the imminent loss of food stamps and inability to find a job.

Joseph Stack, who flew his plane into the Austin IRS building in an eerie echo of the 9/11 attacks, is also not a terrorist -- just a plain old suicide. The Maine dirty-bomb maker, who amassed quantities of hydrogen peroxide, uranium, thorium, lithium metal, thermite, aluminum powder, beryllium, boron, black iron oxide, and magnesium ribbon, a terrorist? No, just a “disturbed individual.”

Arizona, of course, has seen a lot of extremist political activity in recent years. In fact, even as Jared Loughner was gunning down 20 people inside the Safeway on North Oracle Road on January 8th, the murder trial of Shawna Forde, head of the anti-immigrant Minutemen American Defense group, was getting underway in nearby Pima County Superior Court. Forde and two associates have been charged with the shooting death of a man, the wounding of his wife, and the killing of the couple’s nine-year-old daughter during a June 2009 robbery aimed at funding her extremist political activities.

These are America’s killing fields, coast to coast, yet the commentary and debate in the wake of the Gabrielle Giffords shooting revolves around political rhetoric in Washington. Both sides need to tone it down, we’re told. There have been endless discussions on television and radio, newspaper commentary and Internet postings all focused on the issue of overheated political talk -- as if Jared Loughner somehow leaped full-grown from the forehead of Glenn Beck.

Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck did not send Jared Loughner out to kill, even if their extreme lock-and-load rhetoric -- Beck, brandishing a baseball bat, has warned his viewers to watch out during the next “killing spree” -- has helped legitimate such talk. What they have certainly done is help create an inspirational environment where it is perfectly normal for Tea Party extremists to attend political rallies while packing pistols. Indeed, packing pistols is the point, isn’t it?

That said, conservative columnist David Brooks, in an astonishingly superficial argument, wrote in the New York Times that those who drag politics into public debate over the killing of political figures and government officials are leveling “vicious charges” and lack empathy for the mentally ill. Brooks gravely wagged his finger at those -- he singled out MSNBC commentator Keith Olberman, former Senator Gary Hart, and Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas -- who have argued that violent rhetoric from the Tea Party and Sarah Palin set the table for the Tucson shootings. (Of course Congresswoman Giffords herself chastised Palin for putting her district in the now-infamous gun-sight crosshairs. Does Brooks include her, too, in excoriating “vicious charges made by people who claimed to be criticizing viciousness”?)

How sugary is Brooks’ argument? Compare it to what he wrote following the shooting rampage that took place at Fort Hood in November 2009. In that murderous incident, Major Nidal Malik Hasan was ultimately charged with killing 13 and wounding over 30. Hasan, a Muslim psychiatrist, was clearly disturbed by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (he was about to be deployed to the latter) and his deteriorating mental state had been a concern to officials at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences.

That was before Hasan snapped. Despite documented psychiatric worries, the issue of terrorism quickly dominated public discussion of Hasan’s act.

At the time, Brooks derided talk of Hasan’s mental state and characterized those who brought it up as casting “a shroud of political correctness” over the Hasan “narrative.”

“The conversation in the first few days after the massacre was well intentioned, but it suggested a willful flight from reality,” Brooks intoned. “It ignored the fact that the war narrative of the struggle against Islam is the central feature of American foreign policy. It ignored the fact that this narrative can be embraced by a self-radicalizing individual in the U.S. as much as by groups in Tehran, Gaza or Kandahar.”

So much for “vicious charges” and empathy. They are apparently reserved for young white males in Tucson; Muslims need not apply.

Meanwhile, the bodies are piling up in Arizona and Tennessee, Kansas and Pennsylvania. The Homeland Security Department issued a lonely cautionary report in 2009 on the rising tide of right-wing extremism; it was loudly hooted down by right-wing radio celebrities like Rush Limbaugh and Internet pundits like Michelle Malkin. The killings and the attacks went on.

Now, we have arrived at another Martin Luther King Day, the birthday of a man gunned down by a right-wing extremist more than 40 years ago and, while we talk endlessly about rhetoric, we have done a remarkable job of ignoring the growing pile of bodies. The murderous right wing is still with us. The racists and the skinheads and the neo-Nazis are still here. Sales of Glock semi-automatic guns are skyrocketing in the wake of Tucson. The growing piles of bodies is real evidence of growing extremist activity. What could be plainer or starker?

Congressman Peter King, the New York Republican who now heads the House Homeland Security Committee, is planning to hold hearings on Muslim radicalization in America when the new Congress convenes. Muslims, he said in the wake of the Tucson killings, are recruited by "foreign" terrorists, while Loughner is just a "deranged" American, the latest in a long line of deranged Americans.

What place is this? Where are we now?

To Read the Entire Essay

David Dayen: Right Wing Hopping Mad Over Culture of Violence They Have Wrought

Right Wing Hopping Mad Over Culture of Violence They Have Wrought
By: David Dayen
Firedoglake

Right now, the public isn’t ready to believe an argument that Jared Loughner was motivated by right-wing rhetoric. Fortunately, nobody has said that, because it’s the wrong claim to make. Nobody has claimed that crosshairs on a map or talk of “Second Amendment remedies” is specifically to blame (some on the right have blamed heavy metal music and a skull in his backyard, and that’s just as silly). The main claim is that the toxic stew of noxious rhetoric, particularly in Loughner’s home district and home state of Arizona, creates an environment that amps up a lunatic fringe. Loughner couldn’t help but trip over that, and indeed his writings do have a cockeyed resonance to some of the really far-right groups like Posse Comitatus and the Patriot movement. That doesn’t make those practitioners of angry rhetoric culpable, but it sure doesn’t mean what they’re doing helped, either.

But even if you throw all of that away – and mind you, I think Loughner bears more resemblance to a Dylan Klebold, Eric Harris and Cho Seung-Hui than anyone else – I don’t think that the trend on the right is particularly deniable. Consider that, in the wake of the shooting, the feds arrested someone threatening Sen. Michael Bennet, Rep. Danny Davis received an email over the weekend saying he was next, and a leader of the Minutemen responded to the Tucson shooting by writing “Too bad Traitor Raul Grijalva wasn’t with her! He won’t be missed!” All three of these politicians are Democrats.

When Clarence Dupnik gained national attention by spotlighting the role of violent rhetoric (“We have become the mecca for prejudice and bigotry”… “pretty soon we’re not going to be able to find reasonable, decent people willing to subject themselves to serve in public office”), he didn’t actually mention any political party or movement in his statement. The fact that conservatives moved swiftly to marginalize and demonize him and his words, that was a tell. They didn’t like what Dupnik said because they’re afraid people would get the idea that he’s right. And right-wing talk radio hosts, for whom bile and anger is the coin of the realm, they felt the need to rebut Dupnik right away:

Phone calls poured in to stations across the dial to denounce Sheriff Clarence W. Dupnik of Pima County, who said at a news conference over the weekend that Arizona had become “the mecca for prejudice and bigotry” and that local TV and radio hosts should do some “soul-searching.”

The radio hosts struck a defensive, even embattled tone at times on Monday. They said Saturday’s shooting had nothing to do with either their broadcasts or the state’s tense political environment; they read e-mails over the air that were critical of their political stances, and some spoke about death threats they had received.

All agreed that Sheriff Dupnik had embarrassed Arizona and unfairly denigrated talk radio by linking it with the shooting.

This sounds like one of those polls on the Ed Schultz show that miraculously gets 98% of the vote. Of course the radio hosts and call-in guests agreed. They’d have to reassess themselves and their career choices if they didn’t.

To Read the Rest of the Commentary

Mark Potok: Hatewatch’s 4th Annual Smackdown Awards

The Last Word: Hatewatch’s 4th Annual Smackdown Awards
by Mark Potok
Southern Poverty Law Center

A skirt-chasing neo-Nazi huffs about the sexual mores of “the Jews.” An infamous Fox News personality predicts that one quarter of Americans will be starving come New Year’s Day. A Southern heritage group initiates a festive commemoration of the war that left more Americans dead than any other. A woman who took a walking tour of Auschwitz six decades after the Nazis ran it describes it as a luxurious and friendly work camp. All ’round, it’s been quite a year on the domestic radical right, and our intrepid staffers have had quite a time keeping up with it all. But as we do every year, we’ve hiked up our pants, put on our wading boots, and plunged into the sewers in an effort to bring you a hair-raising assortment of the very worst of the radical right in 2010. Here, with apologies to Keith Olbermann, is a countdown of the list dredged up by Hatewatch’s 4th Annual Smackdown Awards Committee:

To Read the List

Daniel Ellsberg's Letter to Amazon After They Removed Wikileaks From Their Servers

From Daniel Ellsberg's letter to Amazon:

I’m disgusted by Amazon’s cowardice and servility in abruptly terminating its hosting of the Wikileaks website, in the face of threats from Senator Joe Lieberman and other Congressional right-wingers. I want no further association with any company that encourages legislative and executive officials to aspire to China’s control of information and deterrence of whistle-blowing.

For the last several years, I’ve been spending over $100 a month on new and used books from Amazon. That’s over. I have contacted Customer Service to ask Amazon to terminate immediately my membership in Amazon Prime and my Amazon credit card and account, to delete my contact and credit information from their files and to send me no more notices.

I understand that many other regular customers feel as I do and are responding the same way. Good: the broader and more immediate the boycott, the better.I hope that these others encourage their contact lists to do likewise and to let Amazon know exactly why they’re shifting their business. I’ve asked friends today to suggest alternatives. I’ve removed all links to Amazon from my site, and I’ll be exploring service from Powell’s Books, IndieBound, Biblio and others.

So far Amazon has spared itself the further embarrassment of trying to explain its action openly. This would be a good time for Amazon insiders who know and perhaps can document the political pressures that were brought to bear—and the details of the hasty kowtowing by their bosses—to leak that information. They can send it to Wikileaks (now on servers outside the US), to mainstream journalists or bloggers, or perhaps to a site like antiwar.com, which has now appropriately ended its book-purchasing association with Amazon and called a boycott.

Link to the Full Letter

Adil E. Shamoo: If Israel Wants Peace...

If Israel Wants Peace...
By Adil E. Shamoo
Foreign Policy in Focus

The current right-wing government of Israel wants to negotiate with the Palestinians for their independent state as much as China wants to negotiate with Taiwan for its independent state. I have very little faith that this Israeli government will negotiate in earnest with the Palestinians. Netanyahu wants to negotiate for the sake of negotiation.

Writing in a New York Times op-ed, Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren bemoans how the Palestinians have not recognized Israel as a Jewish state for 62 years. For 62 years, I did not know or hear that the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state was an issue for the Palestinian to address. More importantly, everyone in the world, including the Palestinians, knows full well that Israel is a Jewish state. So the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state is, in reality, a done deal. However, no one in the world, including the United States - Israel’s strongest ally – has recognized Israel as a Jewish state either. There is as much a chance of Israel becoming a non-Jewish state as Saudi Arabia becoming a non-Muslim state. Adding the Jewish-state recognition will add nothing to the security of Israel and the region, but Ambassador Oren knows that already.

Israel’s right-wing governments and their neo-conservative supporters have used other excuses to postpone negotiations with the Palestinians. We remember the line that “peace in Jerusalem goes through Baghdad.” More recently, it’s “peace goes through Tehran” because Iran has nuclear weapons – never mind Israel has nuclear weapons and not Iran.

Yes, the Palestinian leadership outright rejected the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state. The Palestinian Authority countered the Netanyahu proposal with its own clever proposal. The Palestinians would recognize Israel as a Jewish state if Israel agreed to go back to 1967 borders, freeze all settlement building, and give them East Jerusalem as their capital. This proves that both sides are intractable.

The crux of Israel’s security problem is that for 62 years, Israelis enjoyed higher standards of living than Palestinians within and outside of the 1967 borders. Israel has treated the 1.5 million Israeli-Arabs as second-class citizens. Palestinians in West Bank and Gaza have lived in poverty, with a high unemployment rate, and under threat of expulsion (or have been actually expelled). Israel has beaten the Palestinians to a pulp with a 100-to-one kill ratio. The Palestinians have never given up. One would think Israel’s government would have learned its lessons and looked for more peaceful alternatives.

If Israel really wants peace, why have they not negotiated a two-state solution with the most ardent peacemaker, pro-American and anti-Hamas leader – Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), the president of the Palestinian Authority? If Israel really wants peace, they should deal with a man who is willing to do it. For all of his life, and especially in the last six years, President Abbas has demonstrated his willingness to be a peacemaker. He will accept any semblance of a state for Palestinians. When Abbas came to power in 2004, he immediately declared that war with Israel was over and denounced terrorism. He not only made pronouncements but followed up with actions. He fired anyone who disagreed with him. He accepted training of his security forces by the United States. During Israel’s conflicts with Hamas, he used his security forces to clamp down on any pro-Hamas demonstration by West Bank residents.

To Read the Rest of the Essay

John Hamilton: Progressive Hunter -- Byron Williams' Jailhouse Confession

"Progressive Hunter"
Jailhouse Confession: How the right-wing media and Glenn Beck's chalkboard drove Byron Williams to plot assassination
by John Hamilton
Media Matters

Byron Williams, a 45-year-old ex-felon, exploded onto the national stage in the early morning hours of July 18.

According to a police investigation, Williams opened fire on California Highway Patrol officers who had stopped him on an Oakland freeway for driving erratically. For 12 frantic minutes, Williams traded shots with the police, employing three firearms and a small arsenal of ammunition, including armor-piercing rounds fired from a .308-caliber rifle.

When the smoke cleared, Williams surrendered; the ballistic body armor he was wearing had saved his life. Miraculously, only two of the 10 CHP officers involved in the shootout were injured.

In an affidavit, an Oakland police investigator reported that during an interview at the hospital, Williams "stated that his intention was to start a revolution by traveling to San Francisco and killing people of importance at the Tides Foundation and the ACLU."

Fifteen years after militia-movement-inspired bombers killed 168 people in the Oklahoma City federal building, right-wing domestic terror plots are a fact of life in America. Since 2008, violent extremists -- many of whom subscribe to the hate speech and conspiratorial fantasies of the conservative media -- have murdered churchgoers in Knoxville, police officers in Pittsburgh, and an abortion provider in Wichita.

Conspiracy theory-fueled extremism has long been a reaction to progressive government in the United States. Half a century ago, historian Richard Hofstadter wrote that right-wing thought had come to be dominated by the belief that Communist agents had infiltrated all levels of American government and society. The right, he explained, had identified a "sustained conspiracy, running over more than a generation, and reaching its climax in Roosevelt's New Deal, to undermine free capitalism, to bring the economy under the direction of the federal government, and to pave the way for socialism or communism."

In a 2009 report, the Southern Poverty Law Center found that the anti-government militia movement -- which had risen to prominence during the Clinton administration and faded away during the Bush years -- has returned. According to the SPLC, the anti-government resurgence has been buttressed by paranoid rhetoric from public officials like Republican Congresswoman Michele Bachmann and media figures like Fox News' Glenn Beck.

To Read the Rest of the Article

Allison Kilkenny: It’s not racism when we say and do racist things

It’s not racism when we say and do racist things
by Allison Kilkenny
Unreported

...

The defacto leadership of the Republican Party has been – for many months now – the extreme right fringe. The RNC has done nothing to control the violent, racist rhetoric sputtering from its base. In fact, GOP leaders have been completely silent while media personalities – the unceremonious leaders of the party – like Rush and Beck continue their rich tradition of being disgusting racists.

Then, when racism erupted during the Park 51 controversy, Republican politicians clutched their fans and pretended to act appalled. As though there could have been any other possible outcome after months of Republicans encouraging the most fearful, primal responses from their frenzied mob.

Geller, Limbaugh, and Beck have successfully combined hatred of Muslims with hatred of the others (blacks, Latinos, feminists, gays – you know, the fake Americans). Without the presence of adult supervision, they have coaxed their listeners and viewers into accepting that Barack Obama is a creepy foreigner who is not to be trusted. It’s okay. You don’t hate him because he’s black. You hate him because you know he’s inauthentic. You’re just perceptive! And then one morning, we all woke up and found out one in five Americans think Obama is a Muslim.

Not only do they think he’s a Muslim, but apparently they’ve been harboring latent hostility toward Muslims since 9/11. The extreme right has lassoed that hatred into a movement to reject anyone and anything that isn’t white and Christian. At one of the Park 51 protests, two Egyptian Christian men were harassed by the mob. “Go home!” someone yelled. “Get out!” another chimed in. It didn’t matter that the men were Christian. They have dark skin, and so they are part of the others.

In another protest, Kenny, a union carpenter, who happens to be black, is screamed at as he walks through a Park 51 protest. The crowd has mistaken him for a Muslim because Kenny made the mistake of WWB (Walking While Black).

Defenders of the Park 51 protesters claim that not all of their members are racist. Of course not. In any bigoted movement, I’m sure you can find at least a handful of individuals who really believe what they’re doing will protect the motherland, and they don’t have anything personally against _____, but maybe if ______ just tried a little harder to assimilate, this wouldn’t be a problem at all. And then there are the people protesting ______ because their granddaddy hated _____, and their daddy hated ____, and now they’ve taken taken up the mantle of hating _____ because it’s something of a family tradition, but they would never hurt a _____, or anything, and to tell you the truth, they once worked a job with a _____, and he was a nice enough guy.

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Democracy Now: "Tea Party in Sonora" -- Ken Silverstein of Harper’s Says Arizona is Laboratory for Radical GOP Policies

"Tea Party in Sonora": Ken Silverstein of Harper’s Says Arizona is Laboratory for Radical GOP Policies
Democracy Now

A new article by Harper’s Magazine Washington editor Ken Silverstein argues that Arizona has become a laboratory not just for immigration policy, but a broad range of issues. It’s a place, he writes, where the Tea Party is arguably the ruling party, and should the Republicans retake nationwide power, "the country might start to resemble the right-wing desert that Arizona has become."

To Watch/Listen/Read and to Access Silverstein's Article

Tell Somebody: Free Press' Tim Karr - FCC's Ominous Intentions?; Mary Lindsay -- history leading up to the right wing activist Supreme Court's recent

Free Press' Tim Karr - FCC's Ominous Intentions?
Tell Somebody (KKFI: Kansas City)

Tim Karr, Campaign Director for Free Press and SaveTheInternet.com responds to the Kansas City Star's editorial on Net Neutrality headlined as FCC"s ominous intimidation imperils free growth of the Internet.

Also, Kansas City Activist Mary Lindsay gives some of the history leading up to the right wing activist Supreme Court's recent Citizens United v FEC decision.

To Listen to the Episode

Steven Erlanger: Racial Tinge Stains World Cup Exit in France

Racial Tinge Stains World Cup Exit in France
By STEVEN ERLANGER
The New York Times

After France was booted from this year’s World Cup on Tuesday without winning a match — amid scenes of selfishness, indifference and indiscipline — the French news media piled on about the humiliation to the country and the misbehavior of its players. There were calls for a complete restructuring of the French team: its management, its method for choosing players, its training.

But there is a more troubling aspect to the reaction to the defeat, which has focused on lack of patriotism, shared values and national honor on a team with many members who are black or brown and descended from immigrants.

The philosopher Alain Finkielkraut, who has often criticized the failures of French assimilation, compared the players to youths rioting in the banlieues, France’s suburban ghettos. “We now have proof that the French team is not a team at all, but a gang of hooligans that knows only the morals of the mafia,” he said in a radio interview.

While most politicians have talked carefully of values and patriotism, rather than immigration and race, some legislators blasted the players as “scum,” “little troublemakers” and “guys with chickpeas in their heads instead of a brain,” according to news reports.

Fadela Amara, the junior minister for the racially charged suburbs who was born to Algerian parents, warned on Tuesday that the reaction to the team’s loss had become racially charged.

“There is a tendency to ethnicize what has happened,” she told a gathering of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s governing party, according to news reports. “Everyone condemns the lower-class neighborhoods. People doubt that those of immigrant backgrounds are capable of respecting the nation.”

She criticized Mr. Sarkozy’s handling of a debate on “national identity,” warning that “all democrats and all republicans will be lost” in this ethnically tinged criticism about Les Bleus, the French team. “We’re building a highway for the National Front,” she said, in a reference to the far-right, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim party founded by Jean-Marie Le Pen.

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Chris Hedges: The Christian Fascists Are Growing Stronger

(We definitely should make these distinctions, as we do when discussing the extremes of any group. However, it also seems we should be aware of the ways the pulpit is being hijacked in more mainstream churches to preach forms of hatred and discrimination--whether implicitly or explicitly.

As an anarchist/atheist, I’m still an avid reader of Sojourners, listener to APM: Speaking of Faith, fan of Cornel West’s integration of liberation theology/Marxist historicism, and a student of many faiths [and a firm believer that religion, politics and philosophies are all essentially faith-based]. I value religions for their deep insights into the human condition and their continuing efforts to explore the unimaginable. My problem with the current fundamentalist/evangelical movement in the US is their totalizing vision that eliminates any deviation from their cultural scripts and their aggressive attempt to rewrite history, laws and consciousnesses. I have nothing against religion, instead my problem is with intolerance, violence and hatred, in actions, representations and words, no matter the source.

I have the same problem with people who should be my allies, but instead are controlling, abusive and dismissive. Atheists like Hichens who are arrogant enough to believe their own perspective is not faith-based, socialists who believe they need to eliminate en-masse those who stand in the way of revolutionary change, anarchists who mistakenly believe anarchism is a philosophy of selfish individualism, etc… I simply expect “progressive” Christians to do the same with their extremists (and I am grateful that this is what Hedges has done, he has applied the insights of War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning to the current discourses of all-out spiritual war coming from right-leaning Christian communities in the USA].

I was raised, for a time, as a kid in fundamentalist Christian communities. For them it is often a matter of simplistic right or wrong, you are with us or you are against us, you are a part of the elect saved or condemned heathen, … this is easily translated into whatever I do for my faith is right, because God is on my side and those I act against are “evil.” That troubles me…

Just a reminder “14 Characteristics of Fascism”)

The Christian Fascists Are Growing Stronger
By Chris Hedges
TruthDig

Tens of millions of Americans, lumped into a diffuse and fractious movement known as the Christian right, have begun to dismantle the intellectual and scientific rigor of the Enlightenment. They are creating a theocratic state based on “biblical law,” and shutting out all those they define as the enemy. This movement, veering closer and closer to traditional fascism, seeks to force a recalcitrant world to submit before an imperial America. It champions the eradication of social deviants, beginning with homosexuals, and moving on to immigrants, secular humanists, feminists, Jews, Muslims and those they dismiss as “nominal Christians”—meaning Christians who do not embrace their perverted and heretical interpretation of the Bible. Those who defy the mass movement are condemned as posing a threat to the health and hygiene of the country and the family. All will be purged.

The followers of deviant faiths, from Judaism to Islam, must be converted or repressed. The deviant media, the deviant public schools, the deviant entertainment industry, the deviant secular humanist government and judiciary and the deviant churches will be reformed or closed. There will be a relentless promotion of Christian “values,” already under way on Christian radio and television and in Christian schools, as information and facts are replaced with overt forms of indoctrination. The march toward this terrifying dystopia has begun. It is taking place on the streets of Arizona, on cable news channels, at tea party rallies, in the Texas public schools, among militia members and within a Republican Party that is being hijacked by this lunatic fringe.

Elizabeth Dilling, who wrote “The Red Network” and was a Nazi sympathizer, is touted as required reading by trash-talk television hosts like Glenn Beck. Thomas Jefferson, who favored separation of church and state, is ignored in Christian schools and soon will be ignored in Texas public school textbooks. The Christian right hails the “significant contributions” of the Confederacy. Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who led the anti-communist witch hunts of the 1950s, has been rehabilitated, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is defined as part of the worldwide battle against Islamic terror. Legislation like the new Jim Crow laws of Arizona is being considered by 17 other states.

The rise of this Christian fascism, a rise we ignore at our peril, is being fueled by an ineffectual and bankrupt liberal class that has proved to be unable to roll back surging unemployment, protect us from speculators on Wall Street, or save our dispossessed working class from foreclosures, bankruptcies and misery. The liberal class has proved useless in combating the largest environmental disaster in our history, ending costly and futile imperial wars or stopping the corporate plundering of the nation. And the gutlessness of the liberal class has left it, and the values it represents, reviled and hated.

The Democrats have refused to repeal the gross violations of international and domestic law codified by the Bush administration. This means that Christian fascists who achieve power will have the “legal” tools to spy on, arrest, deny habeas corpus to, and torture or assassinate American citizens—as does the Obama administration.

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On the Media: All the Rage; Who You Calling Terrorist

On the Media (NPR)

All the Rage

The arrest of members of a so-called Christian right-wing militia last [month] capped a week of anger and violence that ricocheted around U.S. politics. Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which recently published a census of such groups, discusses the alarming rise of U.S. hate groups and the rhetoric that feeds them.

To Listen to the Episode

Who You Calling Terrorist?



The press have mostly referred to the Hutaree members as militiamen, but the label "terrorist" could apply as well. Daniel Levitas, an expert on homegrown terrorist groups, says that there's a double standard regarding which groups get the label.

To Listen to the Episode