Randi Rhodes Forums

I'm excerpting several conclusions from this section of the report. For the evidence for those conclusions, read the report. It's too long for me to repost in its entirety here.

http://www.irehr.org/issue-areas/tea-pa ... ia-impulse

This section of the Special Report compiles opinion polling data, documents significant examples of racist vitriol on the part of Tea Party leaders, shows incidents where well-known anti-Semites and white supremacists have been given a platform by Tea Partiers, and analyzes the attempt by white nationalist organizations to find new recruits in Tea Party ranks.

[snip]

Nevertheless, Confederate battle flags, signs that read “America is a Christian nation,” and racist caricatures of President Obama have been an undeniable presence at Tea Party events in both local communities and in Washington, D.C. The venom (and spittle) directed at African-American Congressmen during the health care debate carried an unmistakably racist message. It is not the contention of this report that all Tea Partiers are consciously racist. The evidence presented, however, speaks for itself.

[snip]

Tea Party leaders have promoted and provided a platform to known racists and anti-Semites on multiple occasions...

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Soon after the first set of April 15, 2009 events, Tea Party protests attracted members of white nationalist organizations and networks...

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Other signs of the militia impulse include the omnipresence of Richard Mack at Tea Party-related events--not just those of the Tea Party Patriots mentioned earlier.

A former Graham County, Arizona sheriff (1987-1997), Mack first became prominent in 1995, after he sued the federal government over enforcement of the Brady Bill. During the mid-1990s, he became a popular speaker on the militia circuit. Indeed, he spent so much time outside his own county, that he was defeated in a primary election in 1996 and lost his office. Mack wrote, or co-authored, two books during that period, arguing militia-style that, “proponents of the New World Order are entrenched and moving forward aggressively with their plan.”

[snip]

Both polling data and observable evidence point to the fact that Tea Party attendees and their supporters are mostly white. Significantly, these white Tea Partiers show noticeably different attitudes than those of white people generally, particularly in regards to racially charged issues. Tea Partiers are more likely than white people generally to believe that “too much” has been made of the problems facing black people: 52% to 39%.

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No common ground with these fucks. None at all.

http://www.clevescene.com/scene-and-hea ... chard-mack

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Barstow makes much of the individuals — many of them new to political activism — who are providing the foot soliders and, in some cases, leadership for these factions. Understandably, he only scratches the surface of the tea party ideology and its origins: "[T]he Tea Party movement that has less in common with the Republican Party than with the Patriot movement, a brand of politics historically associated with libertarians, militia groups, anti-immigration advocates and those who argue for the abolition of the Federal Reserve."

But real understanding of the tea-partiers must begin with the much older and even more fractious Patriot movement, and perhaps no one better exemplifies the connection between past and present than the Arizona man making several appearances in Ohio next month, Sherriff Richard Mack. From the NYT article:

By inviting Richard Mack to speak at their first event, leaders of Friends for Liberty were trying to attract militia support. They knew Mr. Mack had many militia fans, and not simply because he had helped Randy Weaver write a book about Ruby Ridge. As a sheriff in Arizona, Mr. Mack had sued the Clinton administration over the Brady gun control law, which resulted in a Supreme Court ruling that the law violated state sovereignty by requiring local officials to conduct background checks on gun buyers.

Mr. Mack was selling Cadillacs in Arizona, his political career seemingly over, when Mr. Obama was elected. Disheartened by the results, he wrote a 50-page booklet branding the federal government “the greatest threat we face.” The booklet argued that only local sheriffs supported by citizen militias could save the nation from “utter despotism.” He titled his booklet “The County Sheriff: America’s Last Hope,” offered it for sale on his Web site and returned to selling cars.

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The sheriff figured prominently in the ideology of Posse Comitatus, the granddaddy of many groups of the 1970s through the ’90s, some religious, some racist and/or anti-Semitic, some obsessed with conspiracy theories, but all sharing the conviction that federal government is at least a potential enemy.

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So it was fitting that would-be revolutionary Mack lent his Patriot-circles credibility to the Oath Keepers, founded last year by 44-year-old Constitutional lawyer and former Congressman Ron Paul aide Stewart Rhodes, whose politics shatter the myth that Ivy League schools (Rhodes attended Yale) produce pointy-headed liberals...

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Mack was in the crowd that day, probably because Rhodes' "movement" keeps alive the fever dreams of Mack's old friends the militia men who trained in the woods during the Clinton administration. Thanks to Glenn Beck and others, many tea party members and sympathizers are convinced that President Obama plans to ship political opponents to concentration camps. When that or some other abuse of power occurs, the Oath Keepers will be ready...

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Richard Mack is the face of the Tea Party.

IRHER were the consultants with the NAACP that did Tea Party Nationalism (I believe this page is talking about that report.)

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010 ... tea-party/

Yeah, the Tea Party is just...what's that thing John Wayne was in?
Oh yeah, the John Birch Society! Redux!

They are George Wallace standing in the door of the school!

It's their last stand.

And we know history.
It ends well (or at least better).

Irish President Michael D Higgins.

The FBI again thwarts its own Terror plot

getting some highly organized and skilled help in the narratives and myths.

++++

The Anti-Government 'Patriot' Movement Is Exploding in Size and Reach
Hate groups of all kinds are climbing in numbers, but the swelling of the Patriot movement since late 2008 has been astounding.

http://www.alternet.org/rights/154615/t ... and_reach/

The radical right grew explosively in 2011, the third such dramatic expansion in as many years. The growth was fueled by superheated fears generated by economic dislocation, a proliferation of demonizing conspiracy theories, the changing racial makeup of America, and the prospect of four more years under a black president who many on the far right view as an enemy to their country.

The number of hate groups counted by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) last year reached a total of 1,018, up slightly from the year before but continuing a trend of significant growth that is now more than a decade old. The truly stunning growth came in the antigovernment “Patriot” movement — conspiracy-minded groups that see the federal government as their primary enemy.

The Patriot movement first emerged in 1994, a response to what was seen as violent government repression of dissident groups at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in 1992 and near Waco, Texas, in 1993, along with anger at gun control and the Democratic Clinton Administration in general. It peaked in 1996, a year after the Oklahoma City bombing, with 858 groups, then began to fade. By the turn of the millennium, the Patriot movement was reduced to fewer than 150 relatively inactive groups.

But the movement came roaring back beginning in late 2008, just as the economy went south with the subprime collapse and, more importantly, as Barack Obama appeared on the political scene as the Democratic nominee and, ultimately, the president-elect. Even as most of the nation cheered the election of the first black president that November, an angry backlash developed that included several plots to murder Obama. Many Americans, infused with populist fury over bank and auto bailouts and a feeling that they had lost their country, joined Patriot groups.

The swelling of the Patriot movement since that time has been astounding. From 149 groups in 2008, the number of Patriot organizations skyrocketed to 512 in 2009, shot up again in 2010 to 824, and then, last year, jumped to 1,274. That works out to a staggering 755% growth in the three years ending last Dec. 31. Last year’s total was more than 400 groups higher than the prior all-time high, in 1996.

Meanwhile, the SPLC counted 1,018 hate groups operating in the United States last year, up from 1,002 in 2010. That was the latest in a string of annual increases going all the way back to 2000, when there were 602 hate groups. The long-running rise seemed for most of that time to be a product of hate groups’ very successful exploitation of the issue of non-white immigration. Obama’s election and the crashing economy have played a key role in the last three years.

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http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/201 ... -continues



An enormous surge in the number of groups that "see the federal government as their primary enemy" and in some cases have militias as their "armed wings" continues, the Southern Poverty Law Center reports today.

According to the civil rights organization's researchers, the rapid growth in such "Patriot movement" groups, which began when Barack Obama ran for president in 2008, has mushroomed since. They estimate there are now nearly 10 times more Patriot and militia organizations — 1,274 in all — in the U.S.

Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the law center, told us this morning that Obama's candidacy and election has fueled the growth in groups that believe the federal government will "impose martial law ... confiscate guns ... open concentration camps run by FEMA ... and force the U.S. to become a socialist state."

"It's a conspiracy-driven movement," he added.

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http://www.oldstuff4saleshop.com/?p=3290

Republicans looking to harness the grassroots energy of the Tea Party movement are playing with a raging fire. And after reading yesterday’s exhaustive New York Times story on the “loose alliances of protesters” gathered under the Tea Party umbrella, I’m urging Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele and anyone else who claims leadership in the GOP to denounce the radical elements of the Tea Party movement. If not, they better be ready to explain their troubling embrace if (pray not when) these paranoid, self-appointed protectors of the constitution turn their considerable anger into deadly action.

We’ve been down this road before. In the 1990s, there was lots of talk about the excesses of government power, a U.N.-run New World Order and black helicopters on which the federal government would swoop in to take away Americans’ freedom and money. Two deadly confrontations with federal authorities — in Ruby Ridge, Idaho (1992) with white supremacist Randy Weaver and in Waco, Texas (1993) — stoked the conspiracy theories that fueled the animus within the militia movement. The distrust and seething hatred of the federal government took murderous form on April 19, 1995, when Timothy McVeigh with an assist from Terry Nichols used the Waco anniversary to detonate a 4,800-pound truck bomb, destroying the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City and killing 168 people and injuring 500 others.

That anger is back.

The Times story shows how those in the Tea Party movement concerned about runaway deficits and bailouts of banks and automakers are attracting the likes of the Oath Keepers. These “Guardians of the Republic” are members of the military and law enforcement officials who fear a dictatorship and proclaim that their “oath is to the Constitution, not to the politicians….” In “The Second Wave: Return of the Militias,” the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) brands the group “a particularly worrisome example of the Patriot revival.” Oh, when was Oath Keepers formed? April 19, 2009. The same day the Revolutionary War began in 1775. The same day the Branch Davidian compound burned to the ground in 1993. The same day as the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995.

“What we’re seeing is tremendously similar to what we saw in the 1990′s,” said Mark Potok of the SPLC when I spoke with him yesterday. “The movement is shot through with the conspiracy theories and fears of the militia movement.” He was quick to note that not everyone in the Tea Party movement subscribed to the radical and extremist views espoused by some of the groups in that decentralized coalition. But, Potok said, “There is no question that ideas from the Patriot movement have been adopted by the Tea Party movement.”

According to Potok, a report from SPLC due out this month will show “a record number of hate groups” and “a true explosion of anti-government and Patriot groups.” A Department of Homeland Security report last year warned, “Despite similarities to the climate of the 1990s, the threat posed by lone wolves and small terrorist cells is more pronounced than in past years.” It went on to say, “In addition, the historical election of an African American president and the prospect of policy changes are proving to be a driving force for right-wing extremist recruitment and radicalization.”

Thomas Jefferson once said, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” A provocative statement, to be sure. That’s why there was great concern when William Kostic appeared outside a health-care forum hosted by President Obama last August in New Hampshire with a gun strapped to his leg and carrying a sign that read, “It Is Time to Water the Tree of Liberty.” That makes for great political theater. But Jefferson’s words adorned the back of McVeigh’s t-shirt the day he committed the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil (before Sept. 11, 2001).

Republican leaders winked and nodded at the anti-government paranoia of the militia movement back then. They must not repeat that mistake this time. There are legitimate concerns being expressed by many in the Tea Party movement. But the GOP should not let its quest for returning to the majority stop them from forcefully condemning the radical forces taking hold on its right flank.

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Reminds me of the woman at the gun range with Sanitorium, feeling very comfortable to joke that they should pretend the target is Obama....she felt that her comment was so acceptable, she would say it in front of one of the largest groups of media in the world which is what follows presidential candidates.

tells me something real big

Just a sidebar - in an LAT story today by the reporter accompanying Santorum's campaign, it seems many of his SUPPORTERS in Louisiana are calling him "Sanitorium," because they think that's his name, or it's their pronunciation of his name.

As in "I sure like that Sanitorium, and I'm gonna support him!"

Great, then my work is done here