Conservatives Branding Themselves "Right-Wing Extremists"

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It’s clear that in the last few months, conservatives have rediscovered the political and rhetorical advantages to depicting themselves as a downtrodden but courageous army, holding their own against an overwhelming onslaught of the mild liberalism they like to call “socialist.” But in fact, the DHS report does not even include the word ”conservative.” It’s clearly not about rank-and-file conservatives, or even hard-core, Red State, tax-cutting, gun-toting, Obama-hating conservatives. So it’s strange how ready conservatives seem to be to identify with, rather than separate themselves from, the people the report is about: organized, militant groups on the far right.

In a lot of ways, the DHS report laid itself open to just this kind of response. It’s a stupid, ill-timed, and, worst of all, useless report, so vague  that it ends up saying nothing that could be helpful to law enforcement, its supposed audience. Why wouldn’t the report talk about what groups exist where, and in what numbers, who they are and what they do? (The Southern Poverty Law Center has this kind of information on its web site, available for public viewing.) Instead, the report focuses on what these extremists believe and how they seem to be interpreting current events—which is also a dangerous approach from a civil liberties point of view, since it fails to clearly separate Constitutionally protected thought  from criminal action. 

I’ve been covering racist far right movements in America (and they are virtually all deeply racist and anti-Semitic, even if that isn’t their main thrust) for more than 30 years; I’ve spent time at their gatherings and  talked to their members and leaders; and I’ve produced a book and a film on the subject.  There may be a margin of crossover between the far right and the right, especially on hot-button issues like immigration and gun control. But still, these are not ordinary church-picnic or Sarah-Palin-rally conservatives. They include the Ku Klux Klans, Aryan Republican Army, and various other neo-Nazis and white supremacist groups, as well as the Posse Comitatus, Militias, and others who deny the authority of the federal government. Various members or fellow travelers of these groups have committed bank robberies, assaults, and murders, and were implicated in the worst terrorist act on American soil before 9/11, the Oklahoma City bombing. (And in my experience, these groups have usually gotten too little attention from law enforcement, not too much.)

These groups have seen periodic resurgences–in the 1960s in response to the Civil Rights Movement, in the 1980s during the farm crisis, and in the 1990s in the form of the anti-government militia movement, with its links to the Oklahoma City bombing. They then pretty much faded from view, replaced by the focus on Islamic terrorism. Yet remnants of the movement have clearly survived, regrouped, and in some cases expanded. Most prominently, these elements are present on the most violent end of the anti-immigrant vigilante movement, committing drive-by shootings of Mexican labourers. Some are part of biker gangs, including the Sons of Silence, who were implicated in a threat against Obama at the Democratic convention in Denver. Others are scattered around doing their own thing: picking fights in bars, beating up gay men or “foreigners.” And when I traveled across country last fall, covering the presidential election for the Guardian, I encountered neo-Nazis who saw the election of Barack Obama as the greatest recruiting tool they’d ever had.

Do the Tea Party attendees really want to paint themselves with the same brush as guys like this, just in order to get some victim cred?