Saturday, November 21, 2009

The Return of the Militia - Patriots or Extremists?

100 new militia groups since Obama elected; watchdog alarmed


Some 100 new militia groups have formed since the election of President Barack Obama, says the Southern Poverty Law Center.

In a re-run of the phenomenon seen when President Bill Clinton took office, gun-rights advocates, libertarians, survivalists and others are forming militias as a symbol of their resistance to what they see as an administration that threatens to restrict their right to bear arms and expand government control over the lives of private citizens.

"The truth is that these groups are popping up like mushrooms after a spring rain," said Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a social-justice group that has been tracking the rise of militias over the past year.





SPLC Report: Return of the Militias

They're back. Almost a decade after largely disappearing from public view, right-wing militias, ideologically driven tax defiers and sovereign citizens are appearing in large numbers around the country. "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. At the same time, ostensibly mainstream politicians and media pundits have helped to spread Patriot and related propaganda, from conspiracy theories about a secret network of U.S. concentration camps to wholly unsubstantiated claims about the president's country of birth.




Please vote in our poll!
You may choose more than one answer.


I believe that the growing Militia trend

will protect my rights.

will destabilize our country.

won't have any effect.

decreases the likelihood of government intrusion.

increases the likelihood of domestic terrorism.

will protect us from foreign terrorism.

makes me feel threatened.

makes me feel safe.

is a good thing.

is a bad thing.

  

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10 comments:

J. Tyler ballance said...

The SPLC is nothing more than a group of pathological liars, whose only interest is frightening citizens into giving the SPLC money.

The SPLC tried to demonize pillars of the community, such as the United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Sons of Confederate Veterans, calling these hundred year-old, international service groups, "Neo-Confederate" in a desperate attempt to make them sound similar to "Neo-Nazi."

When that backfired, the SPLC went after the Muslim community, claiming, in McCarthyist fashion, that there were "sleeper cells" all across America.

Now that they have been proved to be shameless idiots on that score, they are back to trying to create fear over our local militias.

These militias are a positive channel within which citizens can band together for mutual defense training and for many other public service functions, including safe firearms training, EMT/Paramedic training and producing a coordinated emergency response plan. DHS is already working with many of these citizen-run groups.

Once again, the SPLC has tried to create a bogeyman, where there simply is none.

The various volunteer and service groups who have been again smeared by yet another SPLC slander, should band together and slap the SPLC with a class action law-suit, and the Department of Justice should take steps to punish the SPLC for their serial slander against these various citizen groups.

The first step that the Federal government should take should be to revoke the SPLC's tax exempt status, since they are now, nothing more than a politically motivated attack organization; just garbage that are unworthy of the public trust.

jan brady said...

Its hard for me to get riled up so much as I visit the range on Sundays as does my libby kids
It is a burden on our free society to be vigilant in regards to nut jobs. Better in then out.

Jonas said...

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.

An 88-year-old neo-Nazi killed a guard at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.

And an abortion physician in Kansas was murdered by a man steeped in the ideology of the "sovereign citizens" movement.

In February, a New York man who once declared himself a "sovereign citizen" of the "Republic of New York" and said that he enjoyed studying "the organic Constitution and the Bill of Rights" allegedly shot and killed four people. His murder case was pending at press time.

Christine said...

And don't forget about the mass killing plot carried out last July by unemployed truck driver Jim David Adkisson, who opened fire in a Unitarian church in Knoxville, Tenn., because, he said, it harbored gays and multiracial families. Armed with a shotgun, Adkisson killed two people and seriously wounded six before being tackled and held for police.

In March, law enforcement authorities released a suicide note that Adkisson, whose lawyer recently announced plans to enter a guilty plea, left in his car outside the church. In it, he describes the attack as "a hate crime," "a political protest" and "a symbolic killing."

"I'd like to encourage other like-minded people to do what I've done," he concluded. "If life ain't worth living anymore don't just kill yourself. Do something for your country before you go.
Go kill liberals."

Anonymous said...

After losing Virginia and New Jersey governors races i wonder how many more wake up calls the Democrats will get before they realize people are not happy with short term plans. When you spend almost a trillion dollars of borrowed tax payer money with the promise to keep unemployment below 8% and then it jumps to 10.2% it pisses people off.

Lowell Fulk said...

Ah, you and your lies anontomjeff.

No one has spent a trillion dollars of stimulus money.

Short term plans-lie two.

You don't even know what the plan is anontomjeff. You simply parrot what you're told, and then call anyone with a thought which calls you into doubt a party hack.

Are you still driving by my house at night trying to see in the windows?

Anonymous said...

Oh if i agreed with you Fulk i would be a free thinker wouldn't i but if i disagree im just a troll isn't that about right Fulk ? As far as me riding by your house wouldn't waste my time from what i have seen posted about your good friend Bubby it sounds more like something he would be into.

Lowell Fulk said...

I've still got what you posted about my wife and daughters anontomjeff.

And I don't mind someone disagreeing, you don't do that, you just try to disrupt. Like with your comment about Bubby...

Lowell Fulk said...

Point out anything you've opined regarding this thread...

Anonymous said...

Fulk you must be hitting the bottle you have me confused with someone else.