Right-Wing Extremism on the Rise

So, here I sit, a Bible believing Christian who abhors the fact that a million innocent, unborn children are being slaughtered in the United States every year. I am also guilty of thinking that many of our problems and economic woes are because we have 12 million illegal immigrants in this country. Many of these illegals hate America and are dedicated to bringing us down. It doesn't seem to matter that the word "illegal" means that these people are here illegally and against the law. What good are laws if our government does nothing to uphold them? Well, we'll just pass some more laws. Only this time we will make it illegal to be against anything that we feel might be immoral or against common sense. And we'll call these "hate crimes". Yessir, before long you'll be hauled off to jail because you spoke out against anything that the left-wing liberals hold dear. Don't even think it because the "Thought Police" are being given the legal means to silence us. You can bet that this will be one law that will be upheld.

If others expound hate more than Susan Thistlethwaite does on the "On Faith" pages of The Washington Post, I haven't run across them yet. But it's okay for her because she's a left-winger who rightfully hates us right-wing terrorists. My opinion of her? She's such a jerk that even the jerks call her a jerk. Forgive me, Lord, but I didn't call her a fool. "........but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire." (Matthew 5:22)

Hmmm, al Qaeda, left-wing or right-wing or simply good Muslims following the dictates of one warmongering, womanizing, hallucinating, long-dead Arab???

Ditto for Hamas???

Err, CCNL, none of those "Left-wing hate groups" are really much of either. Or exactly any kind of major force in society.

Certainly nothing you can point at and say 'Look at the mess they've put us in.'

I mean... Seriously?

Whatever else you may say about these folks, I'm not seeing the mess. Or a connection to much. For the most part they may as well exist in a vacuum.

Lets use the despicable crimes to silence Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly and the rest of the conservative news analysts...who uniformly condemned these crimes. Wouldn't that be great.

But let's also outlaw Islam for the murder of the soldier of in Arkansas. The leaders of Islam have been totally silent on that crime. Check out the CAIR website...nothing, nada, zip.

Ms Thistlewaite is an anti-American hypocrite, because free speech and free press are the only things between us and tyranny, and she would like to use the despicable crimes of LONE criminals to do away with our freedoms.

"As for "left-wing hate groups", name one"

How about more than one??

http://newark.osu.edu/gbourne/1399/OPOTA%20curriculum,%20%20power%20point%20slides,%20%20hate%20crimes%20Au03.pdf

1. The Communist Party
2. The World Workers' Party
3. The Black Panthers
4. PETA?

Like Tim McVeigh who said that "science is my religion", and the school shooters who think they are the "natural selectors" and those who burn conservative Christian churches who thinks Christianity is distasteful, Von Brunn too is an EVOLUTIONIST who think that because of evolution, he belongs to a superior race.

Almost all left wingnuts are atheist evolutionist so stop tagging Von Brunn as a creation of the religious right wing coz the guy clearly belongs to the left wing atheist evolutionists crowd dressed or presented as a right wing lunatic by the same left wing idiotic crowd.

Open your eyes and STOP SPREADING YOUR STUPIDITY. This is one good example that stupidity is self-destructive but the left wing lunatics don't see the mess they create.

Brunn was an equal opportunity hater. Just because he was going to target the Weekly Standard (because he felt that the neo-cons were doing the bidding of AIPAC and the Israelis) doesn't mean that he didn't target liberal targets as well. He viewed all of his targets, on any side of the political spectrum, as doing the bidding of "the Jews".

I have no problem, generally speaking, with the right wing. While in many cases I disagree with them, excellent ideas come from all sides and an informed, civilized, respectful dialog is always a good thing. The conservative lunatic fringe, however, does nothing but spew undilluted hate and fear - xenophobia dressed up as patriotism. It sickens me, and it is absolutely a crying shame that the right has allowed hate-mongering cowards like O'Reilly, Beck and Hannity to take over as their spokesmen. I look forward to the day when Republicans toss those blights on humankind out on their ears, take back their party and rejoin the country's serious political discourse. Excellent article, Susan, with excellent points. Thank you.

I have never seen nor heard Michael Moore advocate violence against anyone.

As for "left-wing hate groups", name one.

Wow. Give the story another couple of hours and it comes out that the shooter was anti-Bush, anti-McCain, anti-Bill O'Reilly, anti-neoconservative, and had on him the address for the Weekly Standard (a conservative publication).
CARE TO RETRACT SUSAN? Care to say that the shooter had more traits of a LEFT-WING extremist than a right-wing one? I can't imagine you would have a problem with this considering the information that appears to support he was left-wing, while still developing, is far more than you had to go on when you called him right-wing.
Either way, I don't really care. Words are words, actions are actions, and willpower is willpower. I want to thank you for the opportunity to shed light on what is clearly your anti-right agenda.

Susan,

If you want to stop extremism, start with yourself. You are far too reckless when you insinuate that conservatives endorse hate or violence as a solution to anything. Liberals hate too! I guess they just have better reasons.

Greenpeace co-founder Paul Watson has loaded ships with concrete and used them to ram and sink ships at sea. I guess the whales are more important than the human crews of these ships.

In 2004, liberal protesters stormed the Bush reelection office in Gainesville, Florida. They justified ramming the head of one of the GOP workers into an office door by blaming Bush. In Madison that same year, someone used grass killer to burn an 8-foot-by-8-foot swastika into the lawn that displayed a Bush-Cheney re-election sign. A lot of liberals don’t consider assault or vandalism to be ‘real’ crimes so long as you invoke the name ‘Bush’. It’s not violence; suddenly it’s free speech!

Lyndon Johnson, perhaps the most liberal President of the Twentieth Century, escalated the Vietnam conflict into a War that killed hundreds of thousands. Nixon, the egomaniacal conservative, ended the war.

And stop blaming Rush Limbaugh. He is not a political leader; he plays one on the radio. Rush Limbaugh is a shock jock and he’s not any more outrageous than Bill Maher or Michael Moore, who are both more than willing to play fast-and-loose with the facts in order to provoke an emotional reaction in their left-leaning audiences.

Crazy people will take from any ideology that suits them. I hope you will be more balanced in your future arguments.

Words have consequences. Just ask a Rwandan. Listening to conservative talkers like O'Reilly, Coulter, Limbaugh, Hannity, etc. who go just to the edge of inciting violence will inevitably cause the mentally unbalanced to cross that line. Same with reading hate websites on the Internet. The guy that shot up the Unitarian Church, the kid that shot 3 cops in Pittsburgh, Scott Roeder, the guy that killed the 2 servicemen in Little Rock, and Von Brunn were all fed the message that "justifiable homicide" is necessary. So they picked up guns and did just that. And yes, I'm lumping the Little Rock guy in there even though he wasn't listening to conservative talkers. He listened to Islamist hate speech, and did the same thing as Von Brunn did.

What I see in Von Brunn - other than someone that looks like some of my German relatives - is the toxic legacy of the German-American Bund. The Bund was started by the Nazis back in the 1930's to reach out to German-Americans to gain their sympathy. They had summer camps for kids and everything. I'll bet if you dig a little deeper into this guy's background, you'll find that he attended one of those camps. (BTW, my grandfather was never a member.

I can guarentee this man had nothing to do with the "right-wing", whatever your definition. True conservatives have always been supportive of the Jews and Israel. There the ones who support Israel in their fight against anti-Semites. They are not against the Holocaust.

It is amazing the willful ignorance of those who wish to decry their oppenent. You might want to figure out what you are against first.

This has nothing to do with gun laws. This has everything to do with religion. Stop with the gun law stuff. I have a gun and use it for sport shooting and self defense. It is locked away and kept safe at all times. There are many, many Americans that do the same. This is about religious hatred and bigotry. I hope the doctor that helps Von Brunn survive his injuries is Jewish. I hope his court appointed lawyer is Jewish. I hope the judge is Jewish. And I hope that the guards at his prison are Jewish. This guy is a piece of dirt and is in no way different from the doctor-killing psycho out in Kansas.

Hey Susan,

You, like so many others in the media, called the murderer right-wing, as if it's self-evident. You gave no justification for why he would be right-wing yet based your story on that premise. You cite the DHS report's description of what constitutes a right-wing extremist group (e.g. they hate) as some sort of proof. This is so weak it's contemptible. It is not self-evident and if you're basing it on his white supremacist or anti-semitic views, then you obviously are unfit to write this or any column. I know facts are an inconvenience and reason is a burden, but you should at least make an attempt to utilize them when writing on a site like this.

Vopn Brunn learned his anti-semitism from the same source as Hitler: Christianity.

As usual the insular, intellectually inbred Liberals fail to see exactly how isolated the extremist haters like Brunn are. Every time they pop up on highly conservative internet forums dedicated to the right to keep and bear arms they are flamed out. Nobody outside of their miserable tiny community will even talk to them.

Some observers have said that Brunn was despondent, discouraged with the collapse of his anti-semitic movement. My own experience with them bears that out.

Trying to smear every pro-gun rights conservative with charges of hatred and fascism is just a tactic to those who prefer to ignore the haters in their own ideological corner, a category which has extended even to the level of late night talk show hosts.

If we are to rid the world of terrorism, we need to work on stopping it here at home, especially giving our home-grown terrorists the firearms with which to carry out their infantile, deadly fantasies.

One racist was quoted in the Post as saying "This gives the responsible white supremacist community a bad name." WHAT "responsible" racists is he talking about?

Volkmare:
"change right to left, and you have got nothing new. just look at the trouble we are in because of the rise of the left wing hate groupes"

Like who? "Rise of" entails recent, so who are these dangerous murdering lefties and why have I not heard anything about them?

Whats not new is armed loons reaping havoc. Again, no debate about sensible gun regulation and clear proof that arming everyone doesnt mean less death as professed by the NRA and other "pro-life" gun toting GOPers.

So dont be shocked when people r killed, right or left.

change right to left, and you have got nothing new.
just look at the trouble we are in because of the rise of the left wing hate groupes.

mark
always seek the truth

Growing up in Detroit in 60's, riots, assassinations, the vietnam war, Nixon, etc the difference today seems to that the rightwing extremists have an extremely powerful media at their disposal (EIB, ClearChannel, Murdoch, Fox, etc). Radio, TV, News, and a well coordinated internet presence. This makes it much easier to cajole and convince the already paranoid right that white men in particular are under attack from every instituion in the world. In as much as this is a particularly well-armed, fanatical, delusional, paranoid segment of the population, we can certainly expect more, much more.

Time to join hands and say *no* to these guys, yet?