On the anniversary of the OKC bombing.
Why itÂ’s time to take domestic terrorism seriously
Why it's time to take domestic terrorism seriously | MSNBC
A 2006-2007 survey of state police agencies sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), for example, found that more states reported the presence of far-right anti-government, neo-Nazi and racist skinhead groups than Islamic extremists. Since the time of that survey, our tracking shows that the number of far-right anti-government groups has exploded, and the number of neo-Nazi and racist skinhead groups has remained at an extraordinarily high level.
Another DHS-sponsored study in 2011 found that criminal violence was associated with a significant percentage of hate groups. And a study last year by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point found that right-wing violence between 2000 and 2011 surpassed that of the 1990s by a factor of four.
Some background on the wing nuts
The American Right demeans racial minorities for playing the victim’s role, but today’s Tea Party is draped in “victimhood,” claiming to be the target of an African-American president and feeling threatened by the nation’s demographic shift. But racist fears have always had a home on the Right.
The anger of Southern whites was taken out primarily on the modern Democratic Party, which had led the fight for civil rights. Opportunistic Republicans, such as Richard Nixon, fashioned a “Southern strategy” using racial code words to appeal to Southern whites and turned the region from solidly Democratic to predominantly Republican as it is today.
Southern white anger was also reflected in the prevalence of the Confederate battle flag on pickup trucks and in store windows. Gradually, however, the American Right retreated from outright support of racial segregation. The growing public revulsion over the “Stars and Bars” as a symbol of racism also forced the Right to make a stylistic adjustment as well.
To this day, much of the American Right has refused to come to grips with the idea of non-whites holding U.S. citizenship. And, there is now a palpable fear that the demographics of democracy might finally eradicate white supremacy in the United States. It is that last-ditch fight for white dominance – as much as anything else – that is driving today’s Tea Party.