The Rise Of Right-Wing Militias: “Revolution Is Brewing!”

Posted by | August 12, 2009 18:58 | Filed under: Top Stories


The Southern Poverty Law Center is seeing a surge in the anti-government militia movement.  The report put out by the SPLC has some startling information.

 

“Paper terrorism” — the use of property liens and citizens’ “courts” to harass enemies — is on the rise. And once-popular militia conspiracy theories are making the rounds again, this time accompanied by nativist theories about secret Mexican plans to “reconquer” the American Southwest. One law enforcement agency has found 50 new militia training groups — one of them made up of present and former police officers and soldiers. Authorities around the country are reporting a worrying uptick in Patriot activities and propaganda. “This is the most significant growth we’ve seen in 10 to 12 years,” says one. “All it’s lacking is a spark. I think it’s only a matter of time before you see threats and violence.”

 

A key difference this time is that the federal government — the entity that almost the entire radical right views as its primary enemy — is headed by a black man. That, coupled with high levels of non-white immigration and a decline in the percentage of whites overall in America, has helped to racialize the Patriot movement, which in the past was not primarily motivated by race hate. One result has been a remarkable rash of domestic terror incidents since the presidential campaign, most of them related to anger over the election of Barack Obama.

 

Some of the players in this movement are detailed by the SPLC’s Larry Keller.


In Pensacola, Fla., retired FBI agent Ted Gunderson (r) tells a gathering of antigovernment “Patriots” that the federal government has set up 1,000 internment camps across the country and is storing 30,000 guillotines and a half-million caskets in Atlanta. They’re there for the day the government finally declares martial law and moves in to round up or kill American dissenters, he says. “They’re going to keep track of all of us, folks,” Gunderson warns.

 

Outside Atlanta, a so-called “American Grand Jury” issues an “indictment” of Barack Obama for fraud and treason because, the panel concludes, he wasn’t born in the United States and is illegally occupying the office of president. Other sham “grand juries” around the country follow suit.

 

Men in camouflage outfits gather in woods to practice paramilitary skills, sure in their belief that our government is headed toward an ideology they can’t withstand.  Adding to the concerns that didn’t exist during the last rise in the militia movement is that the government is no longer white.


Most of these recent murders and plots seem to have been at least partially prompted by Obama’s election. One man “very upset” with the election of America’s first black president was building a radioactive “dirty bomb”; another, a Marine, was planning to assassinate Obama, as were two racist skinheads in Tennessee; still another angry at the election and said to be interested in joining a militia killed two sheriff’s deputies in Florida. A man in Pittsburgh who feared Jews and gun confiscations murdered three police officers. Near Boston, a white man angered by the alleged “genocide” of his race shot to death two African immigrants and intended to murder as many Jews as possible.

 

One group is called “Oath Keepers,” a paramilitary organization that fears we’ll soon be a dictatorship.


“We will not fear our government; they will fear us,” one man, who appeared to be on active duty in the Army, said in an angry video sent to the Oath Keepers blog. In another video at the site, a man who said he was a former Army paratrooper in Afghanistan and Iraq described President Obama as “an enemy of the state,” adding, “I would rather die than be a slave to my government.” The Oath Keepers site soon began hawking T-shirts with slogans like “I’m a Right Wing Extremist and Damn Proud of It!”


Jeff Schwilk (right), head of the San Diego Minutemen, has announced the formation of the “Patriot Coalition,” 23 groups coming together “to fight the growing threats to our region.”  But where the original Minutemen were concerned about illegal border crossings, these groups focus on threats both foreign and domestic.  Schwilk declares, “Revolution is brewing!”

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Copyright 2009 Liberaland
By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.

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