White House Rebuffed DHS Attempts by to Combat Domestic Terrorism

Despite requests from local politicians that he stay away, Donald Trump traveled to both Dayton, Ohio - which he referred to as Toledo earlier in the week - and El Paso, Texas, today.  White House officials claimed the trips were to "honor victims" and to praise first responders even thought Trump in typical fashion ended up attacking opponents and Democrats and never once apologized for his own incendiary language that was paraphrased by the El Paso shooter. Thankfully, many protesters came out to oppose Trump's visit although one would never know this if they only watched Trump TV, a/k/a Fox News where Tucker Carlson called "white supremacy a "hoax."  As CNN is reporting, for over a year, the Trump?pence regime has blocked Department of Homeland Security efforts to beef up efforts to counter domestic terrorism, most of which involved some form of white supremacy. One should never be duped by Trump's disingenuous and insincere remarks about the latest mass shootings.  His regime has encouraged white supremacist violence and blocked efforts to stop it.  Here are highlights from CNN:

White House officials rebuffed efforts by their colleagues at the Department of Homeland Security for more than a year to make combating domestic terror threats, such as those from white supremacists, a greater priority as specifically spelled out in the National Counterterrorism Strategy, current and former senior administration officials as well as other sources close to the Trump administration tell CNN.

"Homeland Security officials battled the White House for more than a year to get them to focus more on domestic terrorism," one senior source close to the Trump administration tells CNN. "The White House wanted to focus only on the jihadist threat which, while serious, ignored the reality that racial supremacist violence was rising fast here at home. They had major ideological blinders on."
 "Ultimately the White House just added one paragraph about domestic terrorism as a throw-away line," a senior source involved in the discussion told CNN. That paragraph mentions "other forms of violent extremism, such as racially motivated extremism, animal rights extremism, environmental extremism, sovereign citizen extremism, and militia extremism." It made no mention of white supremacists. (A separate paragraph in the report mentions investigating domestic terrorists with connections to overseas terrorists, but that does not seem to be a reference to white supremacists.)

The document mentions that domestic terrorism is on the rise, but the subject is only briefly addressed, all the more stark given that FBI Director Christopher Wray's July testimony that there have been almost as many domestic terror arrests in the first three quarters of the fiscal year -- about 100 -- as there have been arrests connected to international terror. Wray noted that the majority of the domestic terrorism cases were motivated by some version of white supremacist violence, adding that the FBI takes the threat "extremely seriously."
 Said a current senior Trump administration official, "DHS is surging resources to the [domestic terrorism] issue, but they're behind the curve because of lack of support from the White House.

Critics of President Donald Trup hit out at the White House's lack of support for the department's attempts at combating domestic terrorism, including multiple Democratic presidential candidates. "People are getting killed, and this President is turning a blind eye to America's national security threats," said California Sen. Kamala Harris on Twitter. Former Rep. Beto O'Rourke, another presidential candidate, who is from El Paso, tweeted, "Despite the evidence, despite the threat to our country that domestic terrorism poses, this president did nothing. He made us less safe." Why the White House pushed back so much is a matter of some debate. The former senior administration official noted that the White House, specifically the President, has a problem criticizing white supremacy, and says he "didn't have expectation they would get behind it" -- the brief mention of domestic terrorism as a threat in the National Counterterrorism Strategy -- "because the preponderance of it involves white supremacy and that's not something this administration is comfortable speaking out against, until the other day by the President and even that was pretty hedged."

The senior source close to the Trump administration acknowledged the President's reluctance to criticize white supremacists was part of "an overlay" of all these discussions.  "You know it will trigger the boss," the source said. "Instinctively you know he's going to be averse to mentioning that."
 During the lengthy back and forth, the senior source tells CNN, one White House official proposed that the National Counterterrorism Strategy focus radical Islamists and foreign drug dealers, since that would please the President.   "But those things don't go together," the source recalled. "That was part of the warped worldview they had there."

Like it or not, everything Trump - and Pence - does involves the issue of skin color.  If the terrorists are white, expect the White House to block responsible actions to counter the threat to the general population.  Why?  Because a large segment of Trump's base is comprised of white supremacists. 

Law Enforcement Has Ignored the Treat of Right Wing Extremists

Over the last two weeks America has seen high visibility attempted bombings and attacks by white wing extremists, the most recent being against a yoga studio which claimed two lives and left more wounded.  While these actions have garnered national media attention, many more such attacks fail to get national attention or get white washed - no pun intended - because the perpetrators are white.    Indeed, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies do not even have accurate numbers on such attacks since they fail to be labeled as hate crimes, that title being focused nearly exclusively on attacks by those of Middle Eastern descent or non-whites.  Why?  Chalk it up to politics where officials - especially Republicans intent on coddling their increasingly extreme base - are reluctant to face the reality that domestic terror by whites is a growing problem.  Indeed, it has exploded under the Trump/Pence regime which has legitimized white rage and perceived loss of white privilege.  Obviously, for the safety of everyday Americans, this failure to face reality needs to cease.  A very lengthy piece in the New York Times Magazine looks at the problem.  Here are highlights (read the entire piece - it won't leave you feeling safe):

White supremacists and other far-right extremists have killed far more people since Sept. 11, 2001, than any other category of domestic extremist. The Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism has reported that 71 percent of the extremist-related fatalities in the United States between 2008 and 2017 were committed by members of the far right or white-supremacist movements. Islamic extremists were responsible for just 26 percent. Data compiled by the University of Maryland’s Global Terrorism Database shows that the number of terror-related incidents has more than tripled in the United States since 2013, and the number of those killed has quadrupled. In 2017, there were 65 incidents totaling 95 deaths. In a recent analysis of the data by the news site Quartz, roughly 60 percent of those incidents were driven by racist, anti-Muslim, anti-Semitic, antigovernment or other right-wing ideologies. Left-wing ideologies, like radical environmentalism, were responsible for 11 attacks. Muslim extremists committed just seven attacks.

These statistics belie the strident rhetoric around “foreign-born” terrorists that the Trump administration has used to drive its anti-immigration agenda. They also raise questions about the United States’ counterterrorism strategy, which for nearly two decades has been focused almost exclusively on American and foreign-born jihadists, overshadowing right-wing extremism as a legitimate national-security threat. According to a recent report by the nonpartisan Stimson Center, between 2002 and 2017, the United States spent $2.8 trillion — 16 percent of the overall federal budget — on counterterrorism. Terrorist attacks by Muslim extremists killed 100 people in the United States during that time. Between 2008 and 2017, domestic extremists killed 387 in the United States, according to the 2018 Anti-Defamation League report.

“We’re actually seeing all the same phenomena of what was happening with groups like ISIS, same tactics, but no one talks about it because it’s far-right extremism,” says the national-security strategist P. W. Singer, a senior fellow at the New America think tank. During the first year of the Trump administration, Singer and several other analysts met with a group of senior administration officials about building a counterterrorism strategy that encompassed a wider range of threats. “They only wanted to talk about Muslim extremism,” he says. But even before the Trump administration, he says, “we willingly turned the other way on white supremacy because there were real political costs to talking about white supremacy.”

In March 2018, a 20-year-old white evangelical Christian named Mark Anthony Conditt laid a series of homemade I.E.D.s around Austin, Tex., in largely minority communities. The bombs killed two African-Americans and injured at least four others over the course of several weeks, terrorizing the city, yet the local authorities preferred to describe Conditt, who committed suicide, as a “very challenged young man.”

[A]nother white man, 28-year-old Benjamin Morrow, blew himself up in his apartment in Beaver Dam, Wis., while apparently constructing a bomb. Federal investigators said Morrow’s apartment doubled as a “homemade explosives laboratory.” There was a trove of white-supremacist literature in Morrow’s home, according to the F.B.I. But local cops, citing Morrow’s clean-cut demeanor and standout record as a quality-control manager at a local food-processing plant, made sure to note that just because he had this material didn’t mean he was a white supremacist.

[A] report released on Oct. 31 by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School . . . . calls out the Justice Department for its “blind spot” when it comes to domestic terrorism and hate crimes, which Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein conceded earlier in the week. During a conference on Oct. 29, Rosenstein said that according to the latest F.B.I. crime report, “88 percent of agencies that provide hate-crimes data to the F.B.I. reported zero hate crimes in 2016.” The Justice Department was reviewing the accuracy of the reports, he noted. “Simply because hate crimes are not reported does not mean they are not happening.”

In 2016, the latest full year of data available from the F.B.I., more than 6,100 hate-crime incidents were reported, 4,270 of them crimes against people (as opposed to, say, defacing property). And yet only 27 federal hate-crime defendants were prosecuted that year. “The F.B.I. knows how many bank robberies there were last year,” says Michael German, an author of the Brennan Center report and a former F.B.I. agent, “but it doesn’t know how many white supremacists attacked people, how many they injured or killed.”

More concerning to German, though, is that law enforcement seems uninterested in policing the violent far right. During the first year after Donald Trump’s election, protests and riots erupted across the country, often involving men with criminal histories who, by definition, were on the law-enforcement radar.

During the so-called Battle of Berkeley in March 2017, for instance, a far-right agitator named Kyle Chapman became a hero to the alt-right after he reportedly pummeled an anti-fascist counterprotester with a billy club. Chapman was a 41-year-old who had two previous felony convictions. He proceeded to travel around the country, engaging in violence at other protests, now under the online moniker Based Stickman — a cheerful reference to the Berkeley attacks.

Chapman was one of a number of known white supremacists to align with the Proud Boys, a nationalist men’s movement founded in 2016 by the anti-immigrant “Western chauvinist” Gavin McInnes, a founder of Vice Media. There was also the Rise Above Movement (RAM), an alt-right group composed largely of ex-cons, many with ties to Southern California’s racist skinhead movement. Over the past two years, each group engaged in violent confrontations with their ideological enemies — a lengthy list including African-Americans, Jews, Muslims, nonwhite immigrants, members of the L.G.B.T. community and the progressive left — and generally escaped punishment.

[A]fter a pressure campaign on social media, the New York Police Department arrested and charged six members of the Proud Boys in connection with an assault after a speech by McInnes at a Republican club in Manhattan on Oct. 12. On his podcast, McInnes noted that he has “a lot of support” in the N.Y.P.D. (The police commissioner denies this.)

“This is what public demonstration looks like in an era when white nationalism isn’t on the fringes, but on the inside of the political mainstream,” says Brian Levin, a former New York City police officer who now leads the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University-San Bernardino. During the run-up to some of last year’s major events in places like Charlottesville or Berkeley, he notes, “there was an unending stream of violent themed chatter and an almost choreographed exchange of web threats between antagonists across wide geographic expanses” that earned barely a nod from law enforcement.

The F.B.I. said in a statement: “The F.B.I. does not and cannot police ideologies under the First Amendment.” But looking at prosecutions, German says, “it’s clear that many of the people targeted for investigation for allegedly supporting the Islamic State were initially identified because of something they said online.”

There are serious civil liberties concerns with any broad surveillance of social media, German says. What’s also true, he notes, is that the volume of white-supremacist-related content is overwhelmingly high. “There are relatively few Americans voicing their support for ISIS online. But there are millions of racists, anti-Semites, Islamophobes, homophobes and xenophobes who engage in eliminationist rhetoric about the communities of people they fear and hate every day on social media and radio talk shows. Even if the F.B.I. wanted to monitor this hate speech, they wouldn’t have the resources, or any way to distinguish between those who talk and those who act.” 

Levin believes that the Justice Department could be more flexible in pursuing these groups without violating First Amendment concerns. Just as they do with ISIS supporters, law-enforcement agencies would be within their legal rights to monitor, analyze and share any of the publicly available intelligence on white supremacists or hate groups that suggests violent confrontations. “The problem is not that we rightly scrutinize violent Salafist extremism,” Levin says, “but that we do so while materially ignoring domestic white nationalists or those on their fringes who also represent a violent threat.”

In March 2009, Johnson says he and a few colleagues from the F.B.I. briefed Napolitano on their findings, theorizing that heightened stress because of the continuing financial crisis, coupled with the election of the first black president, created a “unique driver” for individual radicalization and antigovernment and white-supremacist recruitment. . . . A few days later, the Department of Homeland Security released its report, “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment,” which was distributed across the government and local law-enforcement agencies.

By the next day, news of a “chilling” report from the department was making its way through far-right message boards and the blogosphere, where it was picked apart by conspiracy sites like Infowars, which deemed it evidence of a deep-state plot. More mainstream right-wing pundits like Michelle Malkin considered it, in Malkin’s words, an “Obama D.H.S. hit job” on conservatives.

Congressional Republicans, answering to a nascent Tea Party movement and the American Legion, soon took issue with the label “right-wing extremism,” which John Boehner, then minority leader of the House, charged was being used by the Department of Homeland Security “to describe American citizens who disagree with the direction Washington Democrats are taking our nation.” . . . . Several G.O.P. lawmakers called for Napolitano’s resignation, as well as that of Johnson, who, in their view, equated conservatives with terrorists.

[T]he political firestorm over “right-wing extremism” had caused such an uproar that the Department of Homeland Security ultimately avoided using ideological terminology like “right-wing.” A few weeks after the report was released, Napolitano formally apologized to veterans, and after intense pressure from veterans’ groups, the department withdrew the report.

At the same time, most of the work exclusively focused on domestic extremism stopped at the Department of Homeland Security. “I blame an entire political apparatus led by Republicans that made calling something ‘right-wing extremism’ a political statement,” says Kayyem, who notes the paradox of G.O.P. leaders’ attacking Democrats for refusing to use the phrase “radical Islamic extremism.” “They’d say if you can’t say it, you can’t fight it,” she says. “But it cuts both ways. If you’re not allowed to say that white supremacy is a form of radicalization, then how are you going to stop it?”

In the months following Donald Trump’s inauguration, security analysts noted with increasing alarm what seemed to be a systematic erosion of the Department of Homeland Security’s analytic and operational capabilities with regard to countering violent extremism. It began with the appointment of a new national-security team. Like their counterparts now running immigration policy, the team came from the fringe of conservative politics, some of them with connections to Islamophobic think tanks and organizations like ACT for America or the Center for Security Policy, whose founder, Frank Gaffney, was Washington’s most prominent peddler of anti-Muslim conspiracy theories.

A surreal scene, replicated in nearly every department and agency, soon began to play out inside the Department of Homeland Security. George Selim, a longtime national-security expert in both the Bush and Obama administrations who headed the Office of Community Partnerships, which worked with local government and civic groups on C.V.E. efforts, noted that as the months passed, “it was clear that there were fewer and fewer of the career civil servants at the table for critical policy decisions.” Some political appointees seemed to have virtually no experience with the issues they had been tapped to advise on.

“But who’s responsible for keeping track of these alt-right guys in Houston? Nobody. For me the question is, well, how come? If you want to look at these guys as terrorists — which I think it is when they’re firing guns out of cars at protesters,” he noted, “then the question remains: Who or what will prevent him from committing more crimes? And, from my chair, nobody,” Phanco said. “Nobody’s watching it, nobody’s tracking it. And that’s what’s got me scared.”

Trump's Psychology Of Hate Has Unleashed Violence

In the wake of the arrest of the MAGA Bomber a Neo-Nazi interrupted services at a synagogue in Pittsburgh and killed 11 worshipers.  Reportedly the shooter - yet another angry white male - shouted all Jews must die.  The trigger for the slaughter?  Anti-Semitic hatred, of course, but per the shooters online rants, also anger at Jewish charities aiding refugees who the shooter deemed as invaders of "his country."  One doesn't have to ponder long before realizing the shooter was perhaps emboldened by the worse immigrant/refugee hater of them all, the occupant of the White House.  Specifically, the Pittsburgh shooter blamed Jews for aiding the immigrant caravan about which Trump has been lying for days.Attempted political assassinations of individuals demonized by Trump and a mass shooting of a members of a religious minority targeted seemingly for aiding refugees - a favored target of Der Trumpenführer -all in one week.  Try as Trump and his bigotry filled supporters might to shirk any responsibility, only the delusional do not to see any correlation between violent rhetoric from the White House and the actions of those who feel their actions have been legitimized.   A piece in Forbes by a clinical psychologist lays out why Trump cannot disclaim responsibility.  Here are excerpts:  

Make no mistake, President Trump is responsible for the MAGABomber. Not directly like he told him to do it. But still fully responsible. I write that knowing that doing so increases the chances that the next Trumpian stirred-up by [Trump’s] the president’s unprecedented incendiary rhetoric who happens upon my writing might try to hurt me. And I know that because that’s just how the psychology of hate works.

Trump has, intentionally or not, hit a trifecta of hate that foments terrorism, in this case domestic terrorism. At rallies and speeches his incendiary eloquence identifies opponents as enemies then motivates hatred and sanctions violence against them. Facts no longer matter. Nor do values shared with those he sees as horrible, terrible people. What matters is that it’s us versus them. And we can’t let them win. Never apologize, never back down.

The trifecta is important, central in fact. . . . when right wing apologists start defending President Trump, as they will, by pointing to sharply critical things people like Maxine Waters or Bernie Sanders may have said they will be missing the point. And if they’ve read this piece they will be willfully trying to deceive. The psychology of hate shows you need Trump’s trifecta to be responsible. So let’s look closer. 

For a leader to be responsible for the terrorism he incites they first have to identify opponents and critics as an enemy, an other. They are not just reasonable adversaries, a loyal opposition. They are a hostile enemy. And President Trump amply checks this box. Whether it’s the fact-based press, oppressed people of color, “globalists” (usually an anti-semitic code word), Hilary or Democrats in general, Trump brands critics and opponents as an enemy other, not “one of us.” 

Second is taking these outsiders and making them objects of hatred, people against whom rage should be directed. It’s not enough to scorn, ridicule or shame them. They deserve your rage. And first as a candidate and now as president, Trump has shown a remarkable talent for making people feel good about hating others. . . . . If you need evidence look no further than things like the naked fury directed towards the press at his rallies or the gleeful foot-stomping chants to imprison a political opponent. 

Third is where most enlightened leaders stop:  sanctioning violence. After creating a sense of belonging to a special group by emotionally positioning himself as an object of identification—be like me if you also want to be a rich pussy-grabber who only wins and never loses—Trump then takes the next step to license violence. In one infamous example he fully supported a rageful supporter sucker-punching a protester. An early version as president was his tepid response to Heather Heyer’s murder by a supporter in Charlottesville in 2017. Just a few days ago was a rally where he endorsed a congressman who had attacked a reporter saying “Any guy who can do a body slam … he’s my guy.”

Like in the myth of Pandora who released evil out in the world, the fires of hate are hard to extinguish. . . . . By leading with this trifecta of hate, President Trump is responsible for the pipe bombs sent by a supporter. Yes, early reports clearly show the MAGABomber was vulnerable to these messages of hate. But if someone throws a lit match into a vat of gasoline, they should not be surprised at the resulting fire. And they should be held responsible

A President Who Condones Political Violence

In a piece in The Atlantic, former Republican David Frum looks at the irresponsible and dangerous behavior of Der Trumpenführer who has openly encouraged violence at campaign rallies and through his constant demonizing of the .mainstream news media - which has mere reported the truth about Trump, his cronies and the cesspool elements of his party  - and numerous Democrats and Trump critics who not surprisingly were targeted by Cesar Sayoc, a/k/a the "MAGA Bomber."  When asked if he would tone down his inflammatory rhetoric, Trump - always the malignant narcissist - shockingly said he might "tone it up."  Trump's rhetoric and the behavior of his supporters continues to careen towards political violence and one can only assume that Trump condones what is happening.  Decent, responsible Americans should be appalled.  Hopefully they get out and vote on November 6, 2018, and give Democrats control of at least the House of Representatives, if not the Senate as well.  Trump must be contained.  Here are column excerpts:

Bombs are sent through the mail to CNN, George Soros, James Clapper, former President Barack Obama, and other persons targeted by President Donald Trump for vilification and abuse. A theory begins to circulate on the far edges of the right that the bombs are a “false flag” intended to discredit the president and his party. The theory rapidly moves from the edge to the center.  There the theory lingers, even as police apprehend a suspect and tow away a van festooned with pro-Trump stickers.

On the afternoon of October 25, the false-flag theory gained a respectful hearing from The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway, a Fox News contributor and one of the president’s most outspoken defenders on TV and social media, who in a tweet compared the current incident to the anthrax attacks in the fall of 2001

That same afternoon, a tweet from an anonymous account that alleged “FAKE BOMBS MADE TO SCARE AND PICK UP BLUE SYMPATHY VOTE” gained a “like” from Donald Trump Jr.

And at 10:37 a.m. on October 26, the false-flag theory was winkingly endorsed on Twitter by [Trump] the president himself: Republicans are doing so well in early voting, and at the polls, and now this “Bomb” stuff happens and the momentum greatly slows - news not talking politics. Very unfortunate, what is going on. Republicans, go out and vote!

It’s striking that [Trump] the president has not offered a word of sympathy for any of the targets of the bombs. After all, even if the “false flag” theory were true to any degree, the people targeted were indeed targeted.

[Trump] The President did offer a generalized, perfunctory condemnation of political violence at a rally in Wisconsin on October 24, calling the bombs “an attack on democracy itself” and urging “all sides to come together in peace and harmony.” Yet even within those apparently scripted remarks, he could not refrain from an attack on the media institutions that had been targeted by the bomber: The media also has a responsibility to set a civil tone and to stop the endless hostility and constant negative and oftentimes false attacks and stories.

Later in the rally, in apparently unscripted remarks, he added an extra gibe all his own: The media, he said, “can’t take a joke.”

When people talk about Trump condoning and inviting political violence, his behavior over the past 48 hours—and that of his followers—is exactly what they have in mind: the utter lack of sympathy for those attacked or threatened; the readiness to blame victims of terrorism for being terrorized; the determination to exonerate the president of any consequences for his own wild behavior; the indulgence of wild conspiracy theories as a means to achieve that exoneration, piped directly into the Oval Office from the furthest extremes of American life.

Only eight days ago, Trump praised a Republican member of Congress who physically attacked a reporter without provocation and then lied to the police about the attack. Today, Trump claims that there’s a conspiracy to blame him for bombs mailed to CNN and other people he has abused. And this claim is not Trump’s alone; it is echoed by many of the apologists and defenders of his government. Democracy has a rule, an absolute prohibition on the use or threat of violence to coerce political ends. Trump is walking the road away from democracy, and he is not walking alone.

Read histories of Hitler's rise to power in Germany - the parallels are terrifying.

Radical Islamists and the American Far Right: Cousins of the Terrorist Kind

I have long maintained that both American right wing extremism and Islamic terrorism ultimately stem from largely the same source: religion.  Religion and modernity that threaten the simplistic house of cards fantasy worlds that both American born Christian extremists - be they KKK members or members of "patriot groups" - and fundamentalist Muslims live in.  To both groups, those who are different or who reject their beliefs are mortal enemies.  While the violence of Islamic extremists gets far more media coverage, the reality is that "real American" and "godly Christian" extremists pose a real risk to the general public and the LGBT community since religion labels us as "other" in the minds of the weak minded and mentally challenged.  An essay I came across looks at the parallels between the two extremist/would be terrorist groups.  Here are excerpts:

The gay community in Los Angeles, seemingly, got very lucky last weekend. Especially compared to their counterparts in Orlando. A 21-year-old Indiana man with a car full of guns and bomb-making chemicals was arrested by Santa Monica police Saturday. He told police he was going to the Los Angeles gay-pride parade later that day, but didn’t say what he had in mind.

In the car was an astonishing arsenal: a loaded AR-15 assault rifle rigged to allow 60 shots to be fired without pausing, two other loaded rifles, a stun gun, a hunting knife, loads of ammunition, and a trunkful of chemicals mixed and ready to explode as a car bomb. It soon emerged that the man – James Wesley Howell of Charlestown – had a history of violent confrontations and gun-related criminal charges, and was fleeing charges of child molestation when he left Indiana. The situation spoke ominously of an imminent domestic-terrorism attack – especially in light of the massacre that had occurred at the gay nightclub Pulse in Orlando late Saturday. However, since none of his arsenal was used and no violence committed, Howell was only charged with a variety of felonies related to bomb and gun possession. The parade went off without notable incident, though anti-gay protesters were present and visible. The outcome stood in stark contrast to what occurred that same evening at Pulse, . . . The Orlando massacre sparked an Islamophobic backlash, with some radicalscalling for the immediate deportation of all Muslims from the United States and arming U.S. citizens in response. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump used the occasion to declare himself “right” for his earlier declarations about Muslims, and doubled down by reiterating his earlier call for Muslims to be banned from entering the United States. He also suggested that President Obama might be secretly conspiring on behalf of the terrorists. In the meantime, reporting on the potential terrorist attack on the Los Angeles gay-pride event was subdued, since whatever Howell had been planning was diverted when police pulled him over in a traffic stop and found the arsenal. It was further complicated by the eventual discovery that Howell was himself bisexual, and his friends and family indicated he had no known animus toward gays and lesbians.  In a similar vein, it soon emerged that Mateen had actually frequented Pulse and had advertised on gay hookup forums, . . .
 The ongoing questions about the motivations of both Mateen and Howell made murky at best any public understanding of the two incidents – which were seemingly unconnected, especially when it came to the specific motives and backgrounds of the actors involved. One seemed clearly inspired by Islamist anti-western rhetoric, while the other seemed at most fueled by the typical far-right-wing loathing of gays with an added twist of self-loathing. Yet they were in fact deeply connected by the simple reality that both represented acts of domestic terrorism directed at LGBT targets, and both occurred on the same evening, separated only by a few hours. And coming to terms with these acts – both in a realistic sense and with the hope of taking action that actually prevents them from bubbling up in the first place – requires understanding them as closely related, two aspects of the same vicious and hateful coin: right-wing extremism. The murders, and the near-miss, this weekend were not, of course, the first time that gay and lesbian establishments have been the targets of terrorist acts. Indeed, this sort of violence is hauntingly familiar to anyone who has tracked the history of hate crimes and other vicious acts that have been the horrifying reality for most members of the LGBT community for the past half-century and longer.  Until recent years, the violence has emanated primarily from two sources: hate groups, particularly neo-Nazi and skinhead groups as well as various Klan organizations, all of whom have placed the LGBT community as one of their most loathed targets; and far-right evangelical Christians, particularly those who claim that the Bible demands the death penalty for homosexuality, and the radicals who act on those beliefs.

Prior to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, most Americans readily thought of radicals like Rudolph and his far-right cohort, Timothy McVeigh, as the terrorists they clearly were. After 9/11, however, the picture became increasingly muddled, as public and law-enforcement officials, as well as the media, increasingly focused on the image of terrorism as emanating solely from turbaned, Arabic-speaking radicals inspired by extreme Islamic fundamentalism, or Islamism, as it’s popularly known. It’s also worth recalling that the American far right – particularly the neo-Nazis and white supremacists who are among the most vicious homophobes most often associated with hate crimes and terrorist anti-LGBT violence – openly celebrated those Islamist attacks on Americans back in 2001, just as they recently celebrated the Orlando massacre. (Wrote Andrew Anglin, editor of the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer: “From the bottom of my heart, and on behalf of all neo-Nazi White supremacists, I want to offer a sincere ‘thank you’ to Omar.") That is because even though the nominal wellsprings of their ideology may differ widely – i.e., either white-supremacist/neo-Nazi ideology or far-right Christianist ideology, or extreme Islamic fundamentalism – the cores of their respective appeals, as well as the psychological profiles of the people they attract as followers, is remarkably similar in nature as well as outcomes. They have the same enemies, and the same targets, because they think and behave in remarkably similar ways.

In the end, both a religious and cultural variations of right-wing extremism. And what they share in common is much more substantial than the differences of their nominal religions. As Joshua Holland recently observed, in an ironic kind of twist, the absolutism associated with the most fanatical expressions of their respective religions, which in turn induces them to denounce “unbelievers” of other faiths, is something they all share: “The details differ, but the defining characteristic of all right-wing religionists is an abiding contempt for religious pluralism. They deny the legitimacy of other faiths. All conservative religious traditions are hostile toward gays and lesbians and those who reject traditional gender roles. Most embrace religious nationalism and reject multiculturalism.” They also share a fundamentalist approach to their belief systems, insisting on the inerrancy whatever their founding scriptures might be – in the case of Islamists, the Koran; of extremist Christians, the Bible; of far-right “Patriot” militiamen, the Constitution of the United States; of neo-Nazis, Hitler’s Mein Kampf as well as a handful of other works that have scriptural import for them. . . . . They all insist that only their interpretation is the correct one. [F]undamentalism is natural byproduct of modern life, representing the needs of the people who are left behind by modernity – economically, culturally, socially, and spiritually. This applies equally to other kinds of fundamentalism, such as the bizarre interpretation of American law and the nature of government that arises in the worldview of right-wing American “constitutionalists.” The terrorists who are produced by these belief systems are all deeply alienated from modern society, and their violence is always directed at the goal of returning society to its “traditional” values.

To fundamentalists and other right-wing True Believers, multiculturalism is an abomination, since the notion of the legitimacy of other religions or belief systems is nonexistent for them. It’s their way or the highway – though only the most nakedly racist among them admit that their hostility to multiculturalism naturally defaults back to a race-based system of white supremacy. In the end, this means that, for the radicals inclined to act out their beliefs violently, the targets of their hatred and violence often are the same. Right-wing extremists almost universally direct their terrorism at the representatives of modernism and multiculturalism in their own minds: democratic institutions and governments, liberals, LGBT folk, various racial and ethnic minorities (especially Jews). [R]adical Islam is a kind of right-wing extremism, and has much more in common with American Klansmen and “Patriots” than any of them are willing to acknowledge. . . . . This is important to place in the larger context of domestic terrorism: As a study I have recently completed of American domestic terrorism between 2008 and the present (to be published later this summer through the Center for Investigative Reporting) demonstrates, American right-wing extremists committed acts of terrorism in the United States at more than twice the rate of domestic Islamist extremists in that time period, with more than double the casualties. 

These recent events have all underscored not just the importance of coming to terms with domestic terrorism of all kinds, but of recognizing that Islamist and American right-wing extremist terrorism are very closely related, and often target the very same vulnerable people – as well as understanding that, over those past eight years, American right-wing extremist terrorists (nearly all of whom are white) have been even more dramatically increasing the levels of lethal violence in the country. To understand terrorism, we first have to shed our great national blind spot regarding who commits it – namely, the racial one.

Terrorism Suspected in Mass Shooting at Orlando Gay Club

This morning LGBT Americans woke up to a grim reminder that there are many who hate us and wish us dead.  Overnight a gunman killed "approximately 20" people at Pulse Orlando, a gay dance club that was having a Hispanic themed event.  Once again we see an assault style weapon used - a type of weapon now law abiding citizen ought to be allowed to own.  The FBI is investigating the massacre as a possible act of terrorism and one news release indicated that some are investigating the shooters possible ties to radical Islam.  Whether an Islamic terrorist or someone with Christofascist leanings, the message to be taken is that religion is a pervasive evil in the world based on unsubstantiated myths or, in the case of Islam, the writings of a an individual who would likely be classified as mentally by modern mental health individuals. Here are highlights from the Miami Herald:    

Police say approximately 20 people have been killed inside a Florida nightclub, and at least 42 were wounded.

Orlando Police Chief John Mina says authorities have not determined an exact number of people killed, but that "approximately 20" have died.

An FBI spokesman says the mass shooting is being investigated as an act of terrorism. He says authorities are looking into whether this was an act of domestic or international terror, and if the shooter was a lone wolf.

Mina says the shooter was armed with an assault-type rifle, a handgun and some type of suspicious device. Police had said previously on Twitter that there was a "controlled explosion" at the scene of the shooting at Pulse Orlando. Mina says that noise was caused by a device intended to distract the shooter.

We need strict gun control laws and an end to religion.

Rick Perry: Charleston Massacre An 'Accident' Due To Drugs, Manipulated By Obama To Ban Guns

The sickness of the far right continues to be demonstrated by the unbelievable thinks being said by Republicans and others to avoid admitting that the mass murders in Charleston were a racially motivated act of domestic terrorism.   It seems that any and every excuse is more acceptable than admitting reality - and the responsibility of the GOP's dog whistle racism and refusal to pass laws that would lessen the insane number of guns in the hands of those who do not need to have them.  As Barack Obama noted, no other advanced nation has the gun carnage that is the norm in America.  Exemplifying the right's batshitery, Rick Perry (there REALLY must be something in Texas' water) described the murders as an "accident" fueled by drugs that Barack Obama has manipulated.  True to form, Perry later claimed he had "misspoken."  Meanwhile, Charles Cotton, a longtime board member of the National Rifle Association, blamed the deaths on one of the victims for opposing concealed carry laws.  Right Wing Watch looks at Perry's lunatic comments:

In an interview today with Steve Malzberg of Newsmax, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry described the mass shooting at an African American church in Charleston earlier this week as an “accident” that was possibly caused by the over-prescription of medication.   A Perry campaign aide now says that the former governor misspoke in the interview when he used the word “accident.” 

Perry and Malzberg kicked off the discussion of the shooting by attacking President Obama for mentioning the failure to pass gun reform. Perry, a GOP presidential candidate, said that the president is trying to “take the guns out of the hands of everyone in this country.”

“This is the MO of this administration, any time there is an accident like this — the president is clear, he doesn’t like for Americans to have guns and so he uses every opportunity, this being another one, to basically go parrot that message,” Perry said.

Instead of talking about guns, Perry said, we should be talking about prescription drugs.  . . . He added that while the shooting was “a crime of hate,” he didn’t know if it should be called a terrorist attack.

As for Cotton's batshitery,  here are excerpts from Mother Jones:

Gun rights activists have been out in force since the massacre at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, once again blaming the slaughter on so-called gun-free zones, and claiming that an armed citizen could have otherwise stopped the attack. It's an argument that the gun lobby has used for many years, but on Thursday afternoon it was marked by a brazen new low with comments from Charles Cotton, a longtime board member of the National Rifle Association. Cotton wrote on a Texas gun-rights forum that slain pastor and South Carolina state Sen. Clementa Pinckney was responsible for the murders of his congregants because of his opposition to looser concealed-carry laws.

"Eight of his church members, who might be alive if he had expressly allowed members to carry handguns in church, are dead," Cotton said. "Innocent people died because of his political position on the issue."

No one who has watched the horror unfold in Charleston doubts that the killer's motivation was infused with racial hatred. And to suggest that gun restrictions were the root cause of the bloodbath isn't just callous—it's also plain wrong.

As Mother Jones has previously reported, there has never been any evidence that mass shooters picked their targets based on gun regulations; to the contrary, data from scores of cases shows perpetrators had other specific motivations for where they attacked, including racial hatred. The idea that armed citizens stop crimes in the United States has also been wildly exaggerated by the gun lobby, as a new study based on federal data reaffirms.

Cotton's comments have since been deleted from TexasCHLforum.com, where he is listed as a site administrator. He did not reply to a request for further comment. In a statement on Friday to Politico, the NRA distanced itself from Cotton's rhetoric, saying individual board members "do not have the authority to speak for the NRA."

Why the Right Doesn't Want to Call Charleston an Act of Terrorism

Had the murders in Charleston the night before last been committed by a Muslim, Fox News and other right wing outlets would have been screaming about terrorist attacks to the high heavens.  However, since the apparent shooter was white, there is either silence from these mouth pieces or attempts to dissemble and avoid calling Dylann Storm Roof what he is - a domestic terrorist.  Be he mentally imbalanced or not, his actions were certainly no more insane than that of Islamic suicide bombers.  The real issue is that the right doesn't want to admit that their ideology encourages extremist to commit acts of violence and fans hatred.  A piece in the New York Times looks at this hesitancy to admit that acts of terrorism are committed by right wing Americans.  Another looks at Roof's growing adherence to white supremacy views.   Here are highlights from the former:

The massacre of nine African-Americans in Charleston has been classified as a possible hate crime, apparently carried out by a 21-year-old white man who once wore an apartheid badge and other symbols of white supremacy. But many civil rights advocates are asking why the attack has not officially been called terrorism.

Against the backdrop of rising worries about violent Muslim extremism in the United States, advocates see hypocrisy in the way the attack and the man under arrest in the shooting have been described by law enforcement officials and the news media.

Assaults like the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013 and the attack on an anti-Islamic gathering in Garland, Tex., last month have been widely portrayed as acts of terrorism carried out by Islamic extremists. Critics say, however, that assaults against African-Americans and Muslim Americans are rarely if ever called terrorism.

Moreover, they argue, assailants who are white are far less likely to be described by the authorities as terrorists.

“We have been conditioned to accept that if the violence is committed by a Muslim, then it is terrorism,” Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a civil rights advocacy group in Washington, said Thursday in a telephone interview.

“If the same violence is committed by a white supremacist or apartheid sympathizer and is not a Muslim, we start to look for excuses — he might be insane, maybe he was pushed too hard,” Mr. Awad said.

“We have a man who intentionally went to a black church, had animus toward black people and assassinated an elected official and eight other people,” he said. “It seems he was motivated by a desire to terrorize and kill black people.”

Webster’s New World College Dictionary defines terrorism as “the use of force or threats to demoralize, intimidate and subjugate, especially such use as a political weapon or policy.”

Civil rights advocates said the Charleston attack not only fit the dictionary definition of terrorism but reflected a history of attempts by the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups to terrorize African-Americans.

“The first antiterrorism law in U.S. history was the Klan Control Act, so really, this has been the definition of terrorism,” William Jelani Cobb, a writer and director of the Africana Studies Institute at the University of Connecticut, said in a Twitter post.

Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, a venerable civil rights group, said the Charleston massacre looked like terrorism to him.

“While the terrorist label is often applied to attacks, plots and conspiracies carried out on behalf of designated terrorist organizations such as ISIS and Al Qaeda, politically motivated violence is not the sole domain of supporters of designated terrorist groups,” Mr. Foxman said in a statement.

Expect more dissembling from the right as it tries to dodge the consequences of its own rhetoric.