Hate Is on the Ballot Next Week

The midterm elections are a week from today.  On the ballot are many Republican and Democrat candidates and various others.  But there is something else on the ballot: hate and division.  Sadly one parties - the GOP which I belonged to for years - is now the the party of hate while the Democrats stand for equality for all and believe that one's rights should not be dependent on one's skin color, creed or sexual orientation.  A column in the New York Times looks at this reality.  Those who claim to be decent, moral people have a hard choice to make: are they going to vote Republican out of habit and possible racial animosity or are they going to vote for decency and in the process condemn purveyors of hate towards others.  We are not talking about political differences.  We are talking about who supports morality and decency and who does not.  Sadly, a vote for any Republican candidate makes one complicit in demonizing and disseminating hate and division. It's a black and white choice.  Here are column highlights:

In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re in the midst of a wave of hate crimes. Just in the past few days, bombs were mailed to a number of prominent Democrats, plus CNN. Then, a gunman massacred 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue. Meanwhile, another gunman killed two African-Americans at a Louisville supermarket, after first trying unsuccessfully to break into a black church — if he had gotten there an hour earlier, we would probably have had another mass murder.

All of these hate crimes seem clearly linked to the climate of paranoia and racism deliberately fostered by Donald Trump and his allies in Congress and the media.

Killing black people is an old American tradition, but it is experiencing a revival in the Trump era. When the bombs were discovered, many on the right immediately claimed that they were fake news or a false flag operation by liberals. But the F.B.I. quickly tracked down the apparent source of the explosive devices: A fanatical Trump supporter, whom many are already calling the MAGABomber. His targets were people and a news organization Trump has attacked in many speeches. The man arrested at the Tree of Life synagogue has been critical of Trump, who he apparently believes isn’t anti-Semitic enough. But his rage seems to have been fueled by a conspiracy theory being systematically spread by Trump supporters — the claim that Jewish financiers are bringing brown people into America to displace whites.

This conspiracy theory is, it turns out, a staple of neo-Nazis in Europe. It’s what our own neo-Nazis — whom Trump calls “very fine people” — were talking about in Charlottesville last year, when they chanted, “Jews will not replace us.”

It’s also the barely veiled subtext of the manufactured hysteria over the caravan of would-be migrants from Central America. The fearmongers aren’t just portraying a small group of frightened, hungry people still far from the United States border as a looming invasion. They have also been systematically implying that Jews are somehow behind the whole thing. There’s a straight line from Fox News coverage of the caravan to the Tree of Life massacre.

So how are Trump apologists dealing with this ugly picture? Partly through denial, pretending not to see any link between hateful rhetoric and hate crimes. But also through attempts to spread the blame by claiming that Democrats are just as bad if not worse. Trump supporters try to kill his critics? Well, some Trump opponents have yelled at politicians in restaurants! False equivalence, portraying the parties as symmetric even when they clearly aren’t, has long been the norm among self-proclaimed centrists and some influential media figures. It’s a stance that has hugely benefited the GOP, as it has increasingly become the party of right-wing extremists.

You might have thought that the horrifying events of recent days would finally break through that norm. But you would have been wrong. Bothsidesism is, it turns out, a fanatical cult impervious to evidence.

This needs to stop, and those who keep practicing bothsidesism need to be shamed. At this point, pretending that both sides are equally to blame, or attributing political violence to spreading hatred without identifying who’s responsible for that spread, is a form of deep cowardice.

The fact is that one side of the political spectrum is peddling hatred, while the other isn’t. And refusing to point that out for fear of sounding partisan is, in effect, lending aid and comfort to the people poisoning our politics. Yes, hate is on the ballot next week.

Right-Wing Extremists Commit the Most Terror Attacks in the U.S.

In his speech last night Der Trumpenführer stated more than a dozen untruths according to Fact Check.org.  Sadly, such is the norm with the liar-in-chief.  One of his most vicious lies was the representation of immigrants as a major source of terrorism to America.  Yes, there have been a handful of large terror attacks - the World Trade Center attack on 9-11-2001 being the most spectacular.  But of the countries covered by Trump's poorly drawn immigrant ban, none were the country of origin of the mass terrorists.  The largest number to date have come from Saudi Arabia which in my view is anything but a reliable ally given its exporting of Islamic fundamentalism all over the world.  Worse yet, Trump ignored the reality that the largest number of terror attacks in America are committed by right wing extremists.  A piece in Think Progress looks at the real story on terror in America and who the terrorists are.  Here are excerpts:

During his first speech to Congress on Tuesday, President Trump falsely claimed that foreigners have committed the “vast majority” of terrorism-related offenses in the United States since the terror attacks on September 11, 2001. He used that claim to defend his support for stricter border controls.

In his speech, Trump vowed to protect the United States by demolishing the militant group ISIS. The president pointed to both domestic and international attacks as reasons for having a stringent vetting process for people entering the United States. He did not explicitly mention a “Muslim ban” on travel, but he signaled that his administration would “take new steps to keep our nation safe.”

Trump inaccurately depicted the domestic attacks as committed by people from the countries included in the Muslim ban. The Boston Marathon bombing suspects were brothers born in Kyrgyzstan and Russia who were resettled in the United States as refugees in 2001. The man involved in the San Bernardino shooting was born in Illinois, while his wife was born in Pakistan. And the September 11 hijackers were born in places not on the Trump administration’s banned countries list.

But more importantly, foreigners pose less of a threat to Americans than right-wing extremists on domestic soil. In a 2015 New York Times article, University of North Carolina Professor Charles Kurzman and Duke Professor David Schanzer found that Islam-inspired terror attacks accounted for 50 deaths since 9/11, but that “right-wing extremists averaged 337 attacks per year in the decade after 9/11, causing a total of 254 fatalities.”

Still, Trump’s administration has promised less scrutiny on white supremacy and extremism. A revised Muslim ban is also expected in the coming days.

White American Terrorism in Trump’s Heartland

One of the main theme's of Donald Trump's, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer, campaign pitches was to fan racism, xenophobia and a hatred of those white reactionary Americans deemed as "other."  The later category includes LGBT individuals, non-Christians, and, of course with skin of a different color. With Trump's election due to the failure of the Electoral College to protect the nation from a dangerous demagogue, the forces of hate within the ranks of both white supremacists and Christian extremists have been emboldened.  Even in gay friendly Key West, a gay couple was assaulted by an individual who sounds like a Southern red neck, who yelled to the victims that they were in Trump's America now.  A significant part of my client base is comprised of Indians from India who I have found to be loyal clients and wonderful people. After a hate crime motivated shooting in Kansas that left a young engineer dead, many in the Indian community in America are fearful.  Like other minorities, they fear what may be coming under the Trump/GOP agenda of diminishing the rights of those who are not white, heterosexual right wing Christians.  The Washington Post looks at the disturbing situation.  Here are highlights:

To most Americans, a shooting in Kansas last Wednesday will be remembered as just another incident of gun violence in a country where homicides are tragically commonplace and where far too many disturbed loners have ready access to firearms.

To many Indians, though, the murder of Srinivas Kuchibhotla was the harshest warning yet about the reality of President Trump’s America.

Kuchibhotla, an engineer at satellite navigation company Garmin, was having an after-work drink with his friend and colleague Alok Madasani at their regular bar in Olathe, a town 20 miles southwest of Kansas City. The duo, both Indian nationals who received master's degrees in the United States, were confronted by 51-year-old Adam Purinton, who hectored them with ethnic slurs.

"He asked us what visa are we currently on and whether we are staying here illegally," said Madasani to the New York Times. "We didn’t react. People do stupid things all the time."

But an enraged Purinton returned with a shotgun and opened fire, killing Kuchibhotla, 32, and injuring Madasani and Ian Grillot, an onlooker who intervened in defense of the Indian men. Eyewitness accounts suggest Purinton yelled at the pair to "get out of my country."

Purinton was arrested at another restaurant in Missouri after telling an employee there that he needed a place to hide because he had just shot some "Middle Easterners." News reports described Purinton as a mentally troubled man with an alcohol problem, but the racial undertones of his actions are unmissable.

The shooting led to anguish and anger both in India and among the South Asian diaspora in the United States, with many linking Kuchibhotla's senseless death to the xenophobic populism of the Trump campaign.

"There is a kind of hysteria spreading that is not good because so many of our beloved children live there," said Venu Madhav, a relative of Kuchibhotla, to India's ANI news agency.

Indians rank among the fastest-growing immigrant populations in the United States, but there are signs they could face tougher times under Trump. The White House is reportedly keen on curtailing the H-1B work visa program that has enabled tens of thousands of Indian nationals like Kuchibhotla to work for American tech companies. Trump's chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, one of the architects of the president's "America First" doctrine, previously articulated his dismay with the way in which South Asians supposedly dominate Silicon Valley.

[T]he shooting has deepened the fears of many South Asians — and other minorities living in the United States — over the racial tensions taking hold.

"The situation seems to be pretty bad after Trump took over as the U.S. president," said Kuchibhotla’s distraught father to local media in India. "I appeal to all the parents in India not to send their children to the United States in the present circumstances."

The Trump administration dismissed any suggestion of a link between the shooting, which could be justifiably defined as a terroris attack, and Trump's rhetoric.

[T]he Trump campaign rose in part through the unleashing of xenophobic passions and with the gleeful support of white nationalists. . . . But while Trump tweets incessantly about jihadist threats around the world, the White House has remained rather silent about the violence carried out by white nationalists against minorities, including a deadly attack on a mosque in Canada last month. So far, he has not tweeted anything about the Olathe shootings.

"Toxic rhetoric has contributed to scapegoating immigrants and religious minorities," said Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) in a statement on Friday in which he linked Purinton's alleged xenophobia to Trump's politics of walls and bans. 

The Fruits of Right Wing Demagoguery

One hears ad nausea about how Christofascists "hate the sin, and love the sinner" as they spew vile anti-LGBT vitriol, never giving a care about the possible violence they are inciting. Indeed, after the Pulse massacre, some "godly Christian" pastors stated that the victims got what they deserved and/or that they wished more had been killed.  Fast forward and such talk appears to have been the motivation of a would be "Christian warrior" in Las Vegas who was fortunately caught before he could put his murderous plans into action.  Every time you hear a Southern Baptist bellowing anti-LGBT statements or parasites like Tony Perkins deliberately disseminating lies and untruths, know that somewhere a would be mass killer is listening and coming to believe that murdering others is righteous.  Here are highlights from KTNV TV 13:

A 24-year-old Las Vegas man has been charged for making terrorist threats in a video that was posted on YouTube.

Las Vegas police say they were notified on July 2 by Interpol via Google about a suspicious/threatening YouTube video.

Although Google had removed the video, they were able to provide a link for a detective to watch the video.

In the video, a man named Bryce Cuellar reportedly showed off two rifles and was wearing a military flak vest and night vision goggles.

Cuellar reportedly said in the video that he is tired of the government trying to take away his First and Second Amendment rights and says that he cannot wait to use his rifle in the manner in which the founding fathers intended.

He also said that he wanted to kill "gays, faggots, lesbians and satanists" and claimed to be a Christian warrior. Cuellar also said that he is tired of America and would begin killing soon.

Police also checked his Facebook page and found posts about the Orlando shooting and posts that outlines his anti-government, sovereign citizen and militia ideologies. Police say that Cuellar has become increasingly more radical and aggressive in his videos over the past 3 years. Based on the video and statements, Cuellar was charged with terrorist threats. He was also placed on a mental health hold at the time by Clark County Detention Center staff. 13 Action News was able to find a YouTube page that appears to be connected with Cueller. The YouTube channel has almost 161,000 subscribers and the channel's videos have been viewed more than 73 million times.

Cueller is being held at CCDC on $100,000 bail. He is scheduled to be in court on Sept. 1.

161,000 subscribers - that is frightening.  Yet, GOP and Chrisofascist extremist continue to stoke the flames that can ignite someone like Cueller - usually so that they can gain votes or line their own pockets with money.

Orlando Club Shooter Identified; Texas Lt. Gov. Tweets Gays Had it Coming to Them

Mass murderer Omar Mateen

CBS News and ABC News are both reporting that the shooter in the terror attack on Club Pulse in Orando has been identified as Omar Mateen, reportedly from an Afghani immigrant family.  Also noted is that Mateen had been on the radar of federal authorities for some time.  Disturbingly, he was a licensed gun owner who seemingly got his murder weapons legally.  Sadly, in addition, one updated report suggest the death toll may now be 50, with 52 rather than the initial 42 injured.  This from ABC News:

Omar Mateen, a U.S.-born citizen, has been identified as the suspect in Sunday's mass shooting that left at least 20 dead and 42 wounded at Pulse Nightclub, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.

Mateen's parents were born in Afghanistan, and he was "on the radar" of U.S. officials for some time, but was not the target of a specific investigation, law enforcement officials told ABC News.

CBS is carrying similar information:

Sources have confirmed to CBS News that authorities are investigating whether the suspect, who has been named as Omar Mateen, had ties to Islamic terrorism. Mateen, of Port. St. Lucie, Florida, is a U.S. citizen with no apparent criminal history, according to sources.

As horrible and disgusting as all of this is, likewise frightening is the reaction of Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick posted this message to the LGBT community:

Make no mistake.   Religion and its fundamentalist followers are perhaps the greatest evil in the world.  Religion's gift to mankind is a trail of death, destruction and ruined lives over the centuries with the perpetrators of evil typically claiming to be doing "God's" or "Allah's" work.  Let burn every Bible and every Koran and obliterate every reference to them from humanity.

Trump and U.S. Extremists More Dangerous than Foreign Ones

This blog has often looked at the growing threat of domestic terror rising from right wing extremist groups, many of who label themselves as "patriots" and view themselves as "real Americans" who are pitted against those deemed "other" based on race, religious faith, sexual orientation and other differences that make them debased and/or less than   The Southern Poverty Law Center ("SPLC") has details on the growing number of such groups:

The SPLC found that the number of hate groups operating in 2015 was 14 percent higher than in 2014. Anti-government “Patriot” groups – armed militias and others animated by conspiracy theories – also grew 14 percent during the same period. . . . . Hate groups increased from 784 groups in 2014 to 892 last year. Anti-government “Patriot” groups grew from 874 in 2014 to 998.

Fueling this rise is the demagoguery of the Republican Party and, most notably, Donald Trump, who is giving legitimacy to hate groups and falsely named "patriot groups."  A piece in the Washington Post looks at this growing danger.  Here are excerpts. 

           Take America back from those who have stolen it.
           Protect America from those who want to destroy it.
           Restore the principles that these usurpers betrayed. 

These are the messages that have defined the GOP presidential race. They have been used for the past eight years to justify obstruction of the Obama administration, and are now being used to paint the democratic candidates as dangerous. In the late stages of the GOP primary as the rhetoric became increasingly xenophobic, they were applied to increasingly broad swaths of the American population as well.

Years of constant repetition by members of the GOP have given them an appearance of legitimacy, now strengthened by Donald Trump’s victory in the GOP primary contest and the party’s growing embrace of him as their standard-bearer.

Unfortunately, the Republican Party isn’t alone in using these messages.

Right-wing extremist groups use them as well, and to very specific ends: to define the conditions under which anti-government violence becomes legitimate in their world view.

I have seen rhetoric like this used to mobilize violence in countries like Iraq and Kenya.  This same dynamic, I argue, is taking shape within American society now. If it continues, it represents a greater threat than anything we face from terrorist groups outside our own borders.

The GOP has spent many years mobilizing both (sometimes tacitly and sometimes actively), in the form of anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, racist and anti-government sentiment. This strategy has secured them votes from the white, Christian, male and ideologically extreme demographic needed to offset the party’s growing distance from an increasingly diverse and progressive American society.

This has typically been done in code, a practice that’s come to be known as “dog whistle politics” – but this election has brought it into the open.

Trump has built his candidacy on the idea that America is sick, broken and misled, and “making it great again” depends on taking it back and cutting out the cancer.  His campaign rhetoric has a common thread with that of extremists. It emphasizes betrayal and theft. It tells Americans that things are bad because of it, and then points a finger and places blame.

Every violent group in history describes its own violence as the legitimate response to a threat that was forced on them.

The constantly repeated themes of theft and betrayal from the GOP suggest to the patriot militias and to supporters who feel angry and alienated that the push has already happened. Trump has on many occasions claimed that America is “lost” to the American people. Given his hostility against immigrants and Black Lives Matter protesters and short-lived nomination of a white nationalist as a delegate in California, it seems clear he means white Americans.

Recent years and the 2016 race aren’t the first time we’ve heard this kind of language from Americans within the patriot movement.

The following words were spoken by Timothy McVeigh, in an interview explaining why he destroyed the federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995.

Those who betray or subvert the Constitution are guilty of sedition and/or treason, are domestic enemies and should and will be punished accordingly. It also stands to reason that anyone who sympathizes with the enemy or gives aid or comfort to said enemy is likewise guilty.

The blame for these rifts and the likely consequences neither begin nor end with Donald Trump. He simply used an existing trend for his own gain. His praise of violence and embrace of racism and political extremism, however, goes past even what the GOP has already made commonplace.

Mainstream GOP rebuttals were too little too late. . . . this strategy for winning elections isn’t just divisive. It’s creating a risk of violence that has already outgrown the threat it’s supposed to be a shield against.

It’s left to the GOP to decide whether American security or winning an election is more important to them.

Quote of the Day: The Sickness of the Evangelical Right

A frightening image used to promote this year's Promise Keepers gathering

While the motives of the domestic terrorist who shot up the Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado Springs are still not fully clear, as the Washington Post reports, Robert Lewis Dear made statements to authorities that would indicate that he may have acted based on the false and inflammatory videos released by anti-abortion extremists this past summer.  Here are details:

The gunman suspected of storming a Planned Parenthood clinic and killing a police officer and two others used the phrase “no more baby parts’’ to explain his actions, according to a law enforcement official, a comment likely to further inflame the heated rhetoric surrounding abortion.

The attack on the clinic, allegedly by Robert Lewis Dear Jr., was “definitely politically motivated,’’ said the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is still underway. NBC News, which first reported the comment, said that Dear also mentioned President Obama in a range of statements to investigators that left his precise motivation unclear.

As much as politicians and the media refuse to admit the reality, far right evangelical Christians are becoming increasingly dangerous and extreme as they lose their ability to persecute others and the modern world and science prove the falsity of many of their cherished fairy tale beliefs.  Blogger friend Bob Felton sums up the situation well:

By any sane reckoning, the evangelical right has lost the culture war, and lost big. That doesn’t mean that the sickness has run its course, however. The cultural Christians are mostly gone, so there is nobody left in church but the crazies. What is more, frantic for revenue, the preachers give the crazies what they want. So every Sunday morning, all across the country, howling and bellowing pastors are denouncing abortion and preaching sedition. This is no joke; it’s really happening — and happening, incidentally, with a public subsidy in the form of tax protection.

We are nowhere near the end of it. Our godly neighbors, ever more marginalized and out-of-step with a world they are increasingly incompetent to live in, are a lot more dangerous than a few thousand Syrian refugees who want to get away from True Believers.

Sadly, I suspect we can expect increasing violence from the "godly folk" as their fantasy world is increasingly rejected by sane and rational people.  And don't forget the study that found that children raised in deeply religious homes were less generous and less kind than those raised in secular homes.  The myth that religion is a positive influence needs to die once and for all.  Think me harsh?  Check out the tweets gathered here that see the terror attack as a positive.

Domestic Terrorist Kills 3 at Planned Parenthood Clinic

Robert Lewis Dear

UPDATED: More information on the Planned Parenthood shooter is yet to be revealed, but the right wing outlet Redstate is already seeking to put distance between Robert Lewis Dear and right wing anti-abortion Christians.  Even if that connection is not established, from what facts about Dear that are known, he is a testament as to why we need much more restrictive gun laws in America.

The far right in America, including self-prostituting Republican presidential candidates, is obsessed with Islamic terrorists, yet a shooting spree yesterday at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs underscores once again that Americans are more likely to be killed by domestic terrorists than by followers of Islam.  Sadly, the FBI was caught off guard and was likely focused on Muslims rather than domestic extremists. The shooter, Robert Lewis Dear, age 59, was captured alive, and I - and I suspect many others - are waiting  confirmation that Planned Parenthood was the target and that Dear is a Christian extremist.  If this is confirmed, then it will confirm my repeated statements that far right Christians are dangerous.  As The Daily Beast notes, this shooting is at least the fifth high-profile crime at a Planned Parenthood clinic since the release of doctored videos by abortion opponents in July.  It certainly again confirms the desperate need for sane gun control laws in this country since Dear used an assault rifle in his attack.  No one outside of the military and law enforcement needs an assault rifle for any legitimate reason. Here are highlights from the New York Times:

COLORADO SPRINGS — A gun battle erupted inside a Planned Parenthood center here on Friday when a man armed with an assault-style rifle opened fire and began shooting at officers as they rushed to the scene. The authorities reported that three people were killed, a police officer and two civilians, and nine were wounded before the suspect finally surrendered more than five hours after the first shots were fired.

A police official in Colorado Springs, who was not authorized to speak, identified the man in custody as Robert Lewis Dear, 59. No other information about him was available.   The police did not describe the gunman’s motives.

Lieutenant Buckley said the gunman had brought several suspicious items to the clinic, and investigators were trying to determine whether they were explosives.

The shooting came at a time when Planned Parenthood has been criticized because of surreptitious videos made by anti-abortion groups of officials discussing using fetal organs for research. It transformed a shopping area near the clinic into chaos as snow fell and gunshots rang through the parking lot. Black-clad tactical officers stood guard with guns in hand, ambulances lined up and dozens of shoppers and employees were ordered to stay away from windows and lock their businesses’ doors.

Despite being at a heightened state of alert, F.B.I. officials in Washington appeared caught off guard in the hours after the shooting and said that they knew little about what occurred.

Officials from both law enforcement and Planned Parenthood said they did not know whether the group’s Colorado Springs center had been specifically targeted. But the attack carried echoes of other violent assaults on abortion providers, and it prompted the police in New York City to deploy units to Planned Parenthood clinics in the city.

Since abortion became legal nationally, with the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade in 1973, many abortion clinics and staff members across the country have been subjected to harassment including death and bomb threats, and hundreds of acts of violence including arson, bombings and assaults and eight murders, according to figures compiled by the Naral Pro-Choice America Foundation.

Bryan Hawke, 35, a chiropractor who was holed up with six others in his one-story brick-fronted chiropractic office that is across the parking lot from Planned Parenthood, said the center is the scene of near-daily protests.

Meanwhile, some far right outlets are claiming that the entire event was part of a "leftist" conspiracy.  These people are downright scary!!

The Christian Terrorist Movement No One Wants To Talk About

I've often noted the parallels between far right Christian fundamentalists who seem to hate nearly everyone and the murderous Islamic fundamentalist of ISIS.  Baptist Pastor Steven Anderson's  suggestion that all gays should be killed is a case in point.  Interestingly, as reported by Addicting Information on a flight back from a trip to Turkey Pope Francis drew a parallel between Christian Fundamentalists and Islamic terror groups such as ISIS when a reporter sought to elicit a condemnation of Islam from Francis.  Indeed, Francis retorted: “You just can’t say that, just as you can’t say that all Christians are fundamentalists. We have our share of them (fundamentalists). All religions have these little groups.”  

Pope Francis was on to something.  Sadly, here in America, most journalists and news outlets refuse to reveal to the public the truth about Christian terrorist groups.  Yet again, religion and its followers are given undeserved deference.  Think Progress looks at a frightening and growing Christian terrorist movement in America.  Here are excerpts:

Last Friday, Larry McQuilliams was shot and killed by police after unleashing a campaign of violence in Austin, Texas, firing more than 100 rounds in the downtown area before making a failed attempt to burn down the Mexican Consulate. The only casualty was McQuilliams himself, who was felled by officers when he entered police headquarters, but the death toll could have been far greater: McQuilliams, who was called a “terrorist” by Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo, had several weapons, hundreds of rounds of ammunition. . . .

While the impetus for McQuilliams’ onslaught remains unclear, local authorities recently announced that he may have been motivated by religion — but not the one you might think. According to the Associated Press, police officers who searched McQuilliams’ van found a copy of “Vigilantes of Christendom,” a book connected with the Phineas Priesthood, an American white supremacist movement that claims Christian inspiration and opposes interracial intercourse, racial integration, homosexuality, and abortion. Phineas priests take their name from the biblical figure Phinehas in the book of Numbers, who is described as brutally murdering an Israelite man for having sex with a foreign woman, who he also kills. Members of the Phineas Priesthood — which people “join” simply by adopting the views of the movement — are notoriously violent, and some adherents have been convicted of bank robberies, bombing abortion clinics, and planning to blow up government buildings. Although McQuilliams didn’t leave a letter explaining the reason for his attack, a handwritten note inside the book described him as a “priest in the fight against anti-God people.”

[H]is association with the hateful religious group highlights a very real — but often under-reported — issue: terrorism enacted in the name of Christ.

To be sure, violent extremism carried out by people claiming to be Muslim has garnered heaps of media attention in recent years, with conservative pundits such as Greta Van Susteren of Fox News often insisting that Muslim leaders publicly condemn any acts of violence perpetrated in the name of Islam (even though many already have).

But there is a long history of terrorist attacks resembling McQuilliams’ rampage across Austin — where violence is carried out in the name of Christianity — in the United States and abroad. In America, the Ku Klux Klan is well-known for over a century of gruesome crimes against African Americans, Catholics, Jews, and others — all while ascribing to what they say is a Christian theology.
[R]ecent decades have also given rise to several “Christian Identity” groups, loose organizations united by a hateful understanding of faith whose members spout scripture while engaging in horrifying acts of violence. For example, various members of The Order, a militant group of largely professed Mormons whose motto was a verse from the book of Jeremiah, were convicted for murdering Jewish talk show host Alan Berg in 1984; the “Army of God”, which justifies their actions using the Bible, is responsible for bombings at several abortion clinics, attacks on gay and lesbian nightclubs, and the explosion at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia; and Scott Roeder cited the Christian faith as his motivation for killing George Tiller — a doctor who performed late-term abortions — in 2009, shooting the physician in the head at point-blank range while he was ushering at church.

Yet unlike the accusatory responses to domestic jihadist incidents such as the Fort Hood massacre, news of McQuilliams’ possible ties to the Christian Identity movement has yet to produce a reaction among prominent conservative Christians. Greta Van Susteren, for instance, has not asked Christian leaders such as Pope Francis, Rick Warren, or Billy Graham onto her show to speak out against violence committed in name of Christ. Rather, the religious affiliation of McQuilliams, like the faith of many right-wing extremists, has largely flown under the radar, as he and others like him are far more likely to be dismissed as mentally unstable “lone wolfs” than products of extremist theologies.

McQuilliams’ attack is a stark reminder that radical theologies exist on the fringes of most religions, and that while Muslim extremism tends to make headlines, religious terrorism is by no means unique to Islam.

Las Vegas Shooters May Have Been White Supremacists

Republican officials continue to play on the racial fears of angry whites through dog whistle messaging and other inflammatory means.  Seeing what has happened to the GOP since my active involvement years ago, I have even conjectured at what point KKK robes would be distributed before local GOP committee meetings commence.  No one in the GOP seems to worry that this messaging may be the straw that breaks the camel's back as they say in the minds of disturbed individuals.  As the investigation of the Las Vegas shootings over the weekend, it is beginning to look like the shooters - who then committed suicide - may have been typical members of the GOP base white supremacists.  Here are highlights from the Washington Post:

A man and a woman who shot two police officers and then a civilian in Las Vegas on Sunday may have been white supremacists, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.

If true, the Vegas slayings would be one of several linked to hate movements.

Among recent killings: A former Ku Klux Klan “grand dragon” killed three at two Jewish facilities in a Kansas City suburb in April; a man killed six before killing himself at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin in 2012; and a man killed three officers in Pittsburgh in 2009.

The tragedy in Las Vegas unfolded Sunday afternoon as two police officers ate lunch at CiCi’s Pizza — a world away from the glitz and glamour of the Las Vegas strip.

Without warning, they were fatally shot at point-blank range by a man and a woman who then swiped the officers’ weapons, ammunition and badges, according to the Review-Journal. “This is a revolution,” one of the suspects shouted, according to witnesses.

The couple then reportedly covered the officers’ bodies with a cloth showing a Revolutionary War-era flag.

The newspaper reported it was the Gadsden flag, a yellow background with a coiled snake above the words, “Don’t tread on me.” Named for Christopher Gadsden, the Revolutionary War general who designed it, the flag has been more recently associated with the American Tea Party movement and, by some, with the Confederacy.

On Sunday night, investigators searched the married couple’s apartment, just four miles from the scene of the shooting. Police allegedly found swastika symbols and are looking into their links to the white supremacy movement, the Review-Journal reported:

Neighbor Krista Koch described them as ‘militant.’ They talked about planning to kill police officers, ‘going underground’ and not coming out until the time was right to kill.

Brandon Monroe, 22, has lived in the complex for about two weeks. He said the man who lived in the apartment that was being searched often rambled about conspiracy theories.

Military Veterans and White Supremacy

Most military veterans return to civilian life and fit in with normal society and move on with their lives in a normal fashion.  The shooter in Kansas over the past weekend was not such a veteran, however.  More frighteningly, he is not alone in his attraction to extreme white supremacy groups.  The questions become (i) why does a veteran turn to the dark side if you will and (ii) why, given Miller's history, something wasn't done to stop him long before now.  The latter question seems to stem from the reluctance of government and law enforcement officials to admit that extreme white supremacy groups and neo-Nazi groups are a serious problem.  As noted before, the outcry from Republicans killed a 2009 report on the danger that groups like those with which Miller was involved pose to the country.  A column in the New York Times looks at these questions.  Here are excerpts:

WHEN Frazier Glenn Miller shot and killed three people in Overland Park, Kan., on Sunday, he did so as a soldier of the white power movement: a groundswell that united Klansmen, neo-Nazis and other fringe elements after the Vietnam War, crested with the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995, and remains a diminished but potent threat today.

Mr. Miller, the 73-year-old man charged in the killings, had been outspoken about his hatred of Jews, blacks, Communists and immigrants, but it would be a mistake to dismiss him as a crazed outlier. The shootings were consistent with his three decades of participation in organized hate groups. His violence was framed by a clear worldview.

You can’t predict whether any one person will commit violence, but it would be hard to think of someone more befitting of law enforcement scrutiny than Mr. Miller (who also goes by the name Frazier Glenn Cross). I’ve been studying the white radical right since 2006. In my review of tens of thousands of pages of once classified federal records, as well as newly available archives of Klan and neo-Nazi publications, Mr. Miller appears as a central figure of the white power movement.

The number of Vietnam veterans in that movement was small — a tiny proportion of those who served — but Vietnam veterans forged the first links between Klansmen and Nazis since World War II. They were central in leading Klan and neo-Nazi groups past the anti-civil rights backlash of the 1960s and toward paramilitary violence. The white power movement they forged had strongholds not only in the South, but also in the Pacific Northwest, Colorado, California and Pennsylvania. Its members carried weapons like those they had used in Vietnam, and used boot-camp rhetoric to frame their pursuit of domestic enemies. They condoned violence against innocent people and, eventually, the state itself.

Before his 1979 discharge for distributing racist literature, Mr. Miller served for 20 years in the Army, including two tours in Vietnam and service as a Green Beret. Later that year he took part (but was not charged) in a deadly shooting of Communist protesters in Greensboro, N.C.

In 1980, Mr. Miller formed a Klan-affiliated organization in North Carolina that eventually was known as the White Patriot Party.

The archives also show that Mr. Miller received large sums of money from The Order, a white power group in the Pacific Northwest, to buy land and weapons to put his followers through paramilitary training. Mr. Miller’s group paid $50,000 for weapons and matériel stolen from the armory at Fort Bragg, N.C., including anti-tank rockets, mines and plastic explosives. He targeted active-duty troops for recruitment and hired them to conduct training exercises.

Mr. Miller’s downfall came after the Southern Poverty Law Center filed a lawsuit on behalf of black North Carolinians; as part of a settlement in 1985, he agreed to stop operating a paramilitary organization. In 1987, a federal judge found that Mr. Miller had violated the agreement, and barred him from contacting others in the white power movement. Outraged, and anticipating criminal charges regarding the stolen military weapons, Mr. Miller briefly went underground. 

In 2009, the Department of Homeland Security issued a nine-page report detailing the threat of domestic terrorism by the white power movement.  . . . The report singled out one factor that has fueled every surge in Ku Klux Klan membership in American history, from the 1860s to the present: war. The return of veterans from combat appears to correlate more closely with Klan membership than any other historical factor. “Military veterans facing significant challenges reintegrating into their communities could lead to the potential emergence of terrorist groups or lone wolf extremists carrying out violent attacks,” the report warned. The agency was “concerned that right-wing extremists will attempt to recruit and radicalize returning veterans in order to boost their violent capabilities.”

The report raised intense blowback from the American Legion, Fox News and conservative members of Congress.   . . . The department shelved the report, removing it from its website. The threat, however, proved real. 

Mr. Miller obviously represents an extreme, both in his politics and in his violence. A vast majority of veterans are neither violent nor mentally ill. When they turn violent, they often harm themselves, by committing suicide. But it would be irresponsible to overlook the high rates of combat trauma among the 2.4 million Americans who have served in our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the full impact of which has not yet materialized.

When we interpret shootings like the one on Sunday as acts of mad, lone-wolf gunmen, we fail to see white power as an organized — and deadly — social movement.

That Mr. Miller was able to carry out an act of domestic terror at two locations despite his history of violent behavior should alarm anyone concerned about public safety. Would he have received greater scrutiny had he been a Muslim, a foreigner, not white, not a veteran? The answer is clear, and alarming.

I would go on and argue that the separation of the white supremacy groups and far right Christian organizations - Family Research Council is a perfect example given Tony Perkins' past white supremacist ties - is far less than people want to believe.  Both types of groups preach hate - the only difference is the degree to which they have so far been willing to use violence.