Last updated on February 8th, 2013 at 12:32 am
It is a secular humanist’s dream to live in a world where no country on Earth required a military to protect its citizens from invasion, but like most Utopian fantasies, such a world will never exist. As the leader of the free world, America has built up a huge military to protect the nation’s interests, its allies, and its way of life for its people. After the terror attacks on September 11, 2001, despite the senseless invasion of two Islamic countries, the nation is still engaged in a war to combat global terrorism to prevent Islamic extremists from planning and launching attacks on Americans at home and the nation’s interests abroad. The war on terror focuses on groups loosely affiliated with the Al Qaeda terrorist network, but it turns out that Islamic extremists do not pose the greatest threat to America according to a 2009 report by the Department of Homeland Security. The biggest threat to America, its people, and government is from domestic right-wing extremist groups that fall under the purview of the Republican Party that gives unwavering legislative support to their affiliates in religious, racist, and anti-government extremist movements.
The 2009 Homeland Security report cited the Republican Great Recession and resulting economic climate, along with the election of an African American man as President, as the primary drivers fueling the resurgence of domestic anti-American terror groups. At the time, the DHS-commissioned report drew special attention to the fact that “extremist right-wing groups posed more of a threat than Islamic extremists,” and Republicans objected loudly prompting Secretary Janet Napolitano to withdraw that report because as Americans have come to realize, Republicans cannot handle the truth. However, a new study from West Point’s Combatting Terrorism Center evaluates the risks from domestic terror groups titled “Challengers from the Sidelines: Understanding America’s Violent Far-Right,” that isolated three categories that represent the John Birch iteration and anti-American sentiment inherent in the Republican Party.
The report identified and examined the background ideologies and methods of the Racist White Supremacy Movement, Christian Fundamentalist Movement, and Anti-Federal Government Movement Americans have learned make up the core of the Republican Party’s legislative agenda that, as the report points out, poses an existential risk to the United States. What the report discovered was that each of the groups will use violence against their targets to emphasize their ideologies regardless if it is racial minorities, abortion clinics, or government agencies, and the past two years reveal their agenda and ideology is synonymous with the Republican Party.
One need look no farther than the recent Republican campaign leading up to the general election to identify the terror groups’ deep-seated ideology founded in racism, religious extremism, and anti-government agenda, and why the result of the election increased the spectre of violence and calls for race war, violence against the federal government, and attempts to impose Christianity on all facets of government and the people. It is tempting to cite the recent gun control measures as the reason for increased calls for violent intervention to transform America into a collection of theocratic Aryan states, but it is more likely the result of the American electorate rejecting the racist, extremist Christian, and anti-government agenda promised by Republican candidates from Willard Romney down to state and local level representatives identified as Republicans or teabaggers.
During the Republican presidential primary and leading right up to the general election, candidates decried President Obama’s practice of stealing money from white Americans to give to African Americans “who just want more free stuff.” Romney, particularly, utilized a Ku Klux Klan slogan and portrayed President Obama as a foreigner who did not understand what it meant to be an American, and claimed the President pacified Muslim’s and degraded Christians and their favorite nation, Israel. Nearly all Republican candidates diligently pushed extremist Christian agendas against women and gays by promising to repeal Roe v. Wade, defund Planned Parenthood, ban contraception, and criminalize same-sex marriage that are part and parcel of the fundamentalist Christian agenda. All Republicans campaigned to weaken and defund all aspects of the federal government except defense, and promised to give states sovereignty over the federal government regardless the Supremacy clause in the U.S. Constitution.
The West Point report examined the three terror groups, racists, fundamentalist Christians, and anti-federal government advocates as individual threats in their own right, but combined, they represent everything the Republican Party promised to impose on the nation if they prevailed in the general election. It is impossible to segregate the right-wing extremists into separate groups when their combined ideologies fall under the aegis of Republican dogma, and the government cannot address any of the groups’ threats without first addressing why, and where, they got the idea their extremist agenda would garner legislative support, without which they will resort to violence.
Republicans began pushing the extremists’ agenda on the first day of the 112th Congress, and if one examines every proposal and piece of legislation proposed by Republicans in Congress and state legislatures over the past two years, they will find some ideological aspect of the three extremist groups’ cited in the West Point report, and since their chance at imposing their radical agenda through Republican legislation failed in the general election, as the study clearly stated, they will use violence to achieve their aims.
Republicans cannot possibly deny their, and the three violent extremist groups, agenda are nearly identical, and to shift attention away from the GOP’s culpability, one Republican said the Combating Terrorism Center was guilty of “perpetuating the left’s myth that right-wingers are terrorists,” but since Republicans promote racial bigotry, Christian fundamentalism, and anti-federal government rhetoric and legislation, the myth is the Republican Party is not promoting domestic terrorism. The uncontestable proof is that besides pushing legislation supported by the three extremist terror groups, not one Republican has denounced calls for violence against racial minorities, women, gays, or the government because the right-wing extremists and Republican ideology are one and the same.
Born in the South, raised in the Mid-West and California for a well-rounded view of America; it doesn't look good.
Former minister, lifelong musician, Mahayana Zen-Buddhist.
- Opinion: Lock Them All Up. Trump’s DOJ Violated U.S. Law By Ignoring His Crimes - Fri, Oct 22nd, 2021
- Opinion: The House Select Committee Can Avoid the DOJ and Arrest Steve Bannon - Mon, Oct 18th, 2021
- Opinion: Steve Bannon Belongs in Prison For Planning Another Violent Coup - Wed, Oct 6th, 2021
