The sludge of hate washes higher on our shores
By David Neiwert Friday Feb 27, 2009 3:15pm
When President Obama visited Camp Lejeune this morning, you have to wonder if this story was somewhere in the back of his mind:
A federal grand jury indicted a former Camp Lejeune Marine on Wednesday on charges that he threatened the life of Barack Obama, the U.S. Attorney's Office confirmed today.
Kody Brittingham, 20, formerly a lance corporal with 2nd Tank Battalion, 2nd Marine Division, was accused of making threats against Obama while he was president-elect, said Robin Zier, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's office for the eastern district of North Carolina.
Brittingham was arrested by the Jacksonville Police Department on breaking and entering charges in mid-December 2008.
Naval investigators discovered a journal allegedly written by Brittingham in his barracks after his arrest by civilian authorities in December. The journal contained plans on how to kill the president, as well as white supremacist material, a federal law enforcement official said.
This incident is just one of many that are bubbling up across the American landscape right now. The right-wing race haters are not only motivated and out recruiting heavily, they're getting angrier by the day, especially the more Obama successfully advances his agenda. We've been writing about this for awhile now.
CNN's Rick Sanchez had on Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center yesterday to discuss this. The main point revolved around the SPLC's annual report on the State of Hate, written by David Holthouse:
From white power skinheads decrying "President Obongo" at a racist gathering in rural Missouri, to neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klansmen hurling epithets at Latino immigrants from courthouse steps in Oklahoma, to anti-Semitic black separatists calling for death to Jews on bustling street corners in several East Coast cities, hate group activity in the U.S. was disturbing and widespread throughout 2008, as the number of hate groups operating in America continued to rise. Last year, 926 hate groups were active in the U.S., up more than 4% from 888 in 2007. That's more than a 50% increase since 2000, when there were 602 groups.
As in recent years, hate groups were animated by the national immigration debate. But two new forces also drove them in 2008: the worsening recession, and Barack Obama's successful campaign to become the nation's first black president. Officials reported that Obama had received more threats than any other presidential candidate in memory, and several white supremacists were arrested for saying they would assassinate him or allegedly plotting to do so.
At the same time, law enforcement officials reported a marked swelling of the extreme-right "sovereign citizens" movement that wreaked havoc in the 1990s with its "paper terrorism" tactics. Adherents are infamous for filing bogus property liens and orchestrating elaborate financial ripoffs.
The SPLC has an interactive map that lets you see where each of these hate groups is based and just who they are. As usual, California again leads the nation as the state with the most hate groups with 84; Florida is a distant second with 56.
Sanchez and Potok also discussed the recent case of the would-be dirty bomber in Bangor, Maine, whose plans were nipped in the bud when his angry wife shot him to death.
As always, the remarkable thing about these cases is that these would have led the broadcasts at Fox and CNN (not to mention set off weeks' worth of obsessive posts at Michelle Malkin's joint) had the suspect been Muslim, Arab, or otherwise had brown skin.
As I noted previously:
In other words, hate groups are almost certainly going to be exploiting fresh opportunities for recruitment, both ideological and actual. The stage has been set by the past decade's demographic shift, but the Bush Recession will in any event give them a big jug of gasoline for their bonfire. Obama's election will give them a figure upon whom they can focus their hate, and the immigration debate will give them an issue to recruit and organize around.
Eventually, innocent bystanders in the general public will be the ones who pay the price.
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Mike....you da damn SLOB of Bisbee.
SORRY, BUT ALL THIS 'DIRTY BOMB SHIT IS JUST THAT -- SHIT.
I am very sorry for all caps in my previous post. Can I remove it?
From birth Americans are taught that might makes right, conform,
hate the different, pick on the weak, worship the strong.
Sports, TV, advertising, movies, even holidays promote this.
There is a veterans day, but is there a Peacemakers Day? No.
Growing up the three worst insults were fag, n____r, and woman.
It's easy to laugh it's easy to hate, it takes strength to be gentle and kind.
-Morrisey
There is, and always have been, sharp divisions in this country. Someone like the Obama's are always going to inspire the hate groups, as this family is uniting people of all races, religions, and creeds, against everything they believe in. If the Secret Service could keep numbnuts safe from harm for 8 yrs. I hope and pray they do the same for our President and his family
only because nobody on the Left is as morally bankrupt as the Repug party is. Nobody on the Left would have (even though seeing him dead would have brough us joy) wanted to see Bush killed.
Actually, that's not 100% accurate, I still say I would turn out for the hanging. So I guess more of us on the Left are a little more respecful of Life, even if the being we are saving isn't exactly a respecful person.
{ Deleted, Flamebaiting and Off Topic. SiteMonitor}
but are you a troll?
Or just ignorant of world history?
Pick a leader of a major power I'll show you blood on his/her hands.
Bush makes Clinton look like Wally Cleaver by comparison.
Where I grew up those 3 words were terms of endearment amongst friends, he-he
There are people out there that hate their fellow human beings, and I HATE people like that!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6RbfaoX5Hw
Why do these white supremacist think they are above any other human being, or for that matter a snake in the grass?
They continually DRUDGE up such ridiculous ideas... and notions, sort of like the goings on at CPAC right now!
These supremacists will be pretty pissed when they get a choice between Obama and Jindal for president in 2012(well, less likely after the speech, but still possible).
If so, that's when we can challenge Jindal's citizenship. He was conceived abroad, when egg met sperm, and for right-wingers that is the moment life begins. Sounds juvenile to me, but...
I think it is important to remember that the recruiting and enlistment rules were relaxed a few years back to make it possible for people like this to join the military.
What did they expect? What did we expect?
These sick Right Wing-NutO hate groups even hate their own Mothers.
You're making me think of a former owner of Resistance Records, who was hiding the fact that his mother was a Mexican immigrant...
A Few Bad Men
...isn't that what training at our Air Force Academy is all about--intolerance toward anyone who is not a Christian?
BTW, calling this type of behavior a "hate crime" gives it too much credit. Of course these people hate--they'll proudly tell you so. These should be called--both in law and in the media--"ignorance crimes," as that's the type of thinking that leads to the malice and violence we're talking about.
you missed my county here in soouth-central illinois...
well, i guess bellville/troy is close enough for a home base...
Since you mention this, people can help ensure the hate crimes and groups in their local area are represented in intelligence gathering and such by keeping your own records of newspaper articles in your local paper discussing these things, and then mail them to the SPLC. That's how they keep on top of these things.
but, it's very underground here, though commonly acknowledged...
but i'll keep my eys open...
Yeah, I know what you mean.
If there is hate to be had out there it will be embraced by the Republican party...they already hate America, our Soldiers, our People, our Laws, Our Constitution, our Government and our Courts. it's not to surprising that they don't like Black People either.
odanny: I don't think the Secret Service would have had to many real death threats against the Shrub, as liberals normally do not produce the shithouse rat crazies that is the Repuke base. We do not blindly follow what we are told by the party or their talk-radio hate mongering cronies.
but my fear of an assassination is close to top-of-mind too often. Remembering how I felt when we lost John and Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers (not to mention the many others in other countries--Sadat, Gandhi, Bhutto, Rabin), I simply don't think I could handle another such tragedy. I really think it would be time to give up and withdraw from society.
Hannity, Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Coulter, Dobbs, Malkin, Stein, Wills, Humes, Scarborough, Cheney, Savage/weiner, Boener, Delay, Rove, Beck, Washington Times, Fox, Clearchannel. When the backlash comes it will be swift and final.
"My Karma just ran over your dogma".
A couple of weeks ago I was coming home late and switched the radio over to WJR (We're Just Republicans) and I couldn't believe the nasty invective from a certain Mark Levin.
He was saying how the country has to be taken back by whatever force necessary, that all the traitors will be dealt with, real whip it up and call out the posse stuff.
I thought it was an act but it was a nonstop barrage of hate and bitterness blaming everything but the high price of beer, wait, that too, on NonAmericans. Those being immigrants, Dems, gays, Dems, terrist lovers, Dems, nonwhites, Dems, liberal Dems, liberals in general, hippies, Dems washed or unwashed.
Scary stuff knowing the crowd he's wooing are all armed to the teeth.
in the US and Canada sadly.
U.S. to boycott UN conference on racism, say officials
http://news.sympatico.msn.cbc.ca/abc/world/co...
WTF! Eric Holder was right. :(
The United States will not attend a UN conference on racism in Geneva unless the final document produced by the summit drops references to Israel and language on the defamation of religion, U.S. officials said Friday.
simple enough... not?
Sounds like LIEberman, Kissenger, Chertoff, Bolton, Wolfawitz, got busy sandbagging US participation, to me, but who am I????? Have no $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$, so not important. Nothing to see move on.
This is the same guy that was with Sanchez on MSNBC. All the right wingers want everyone to believe that since a black man was elected President that racism is over in this country. The only thing it has done is to open up the subject that we've ignored for the past 15 years more. A person like Malkin or Steele should watch their backs. Hate is growing because of Obama's elections and they could be the next victim of this hate.
All one has to do is look at the 2008 electoral map and see that the south and upper midwest still hate the black man and any other non white person.
Holder is right. We are a nation of cowards (not all of us), when it comes to race. Mostly the right, but it's true.
Teach your children:
HATE is a bad four-letter word.
KILL is a bad four-letter word.
Fuck 'em..No bad four-letter word there.
EVIL PEOPLE FLOURISH WHEN GOOD PEOPLE DO NOTHING!
Bring out project: Fairness Doctrine!
Kinda like saying Long Island is Manhattan...
No comments section in the next topic:
"Bill O'Reilly uses Fox's recent ratings to claim America is turning against Obama"
Somebody show Amato how to use his blog.
heh...
It's a tech glitch.
Amato always has this problem. It's funny. every time he posts something the comments section is screwed up. I really find it funny. It's like me trying to figure out an iPod or something. lol
on the five o'clock news giving reports like the 'Bubba Effect' which are thinly veiled calls for insurrection.. Calling fire in a crowded theater is less dangerous.. Murdoch apologizes for the chimp cartoon but keeps vacuus insurrectionists on the air fueling mayhem.. WE should be very concerned!
How fucked up is that?
There's a reason I stay on the coast. It's a whole different place inland. Might as well be Texas or Wyoming.
Your blanket statements show me that ignorant people live on the coasts too.
The Army has always been a second chance for gang members. This includes skin heads. The vast majority of them come into the Army and either stay or go on to college. The same cannot be said of our prison system. A lot has been made of skin heads joining the Army. Well no shit; where else are they going to go to get their lives straightened out. People focus on the handful that go in bad apples and come out bad apples. All this proves is that some people are beyond help. You know; for a lot of these people the Army is the 1st chance in their lives to work with and be friends with people of color. A lot of the problem with rascism is a lack of exposure. A lot of communities are still segregated. You find towns and neighborhoods that are 90% black or 90% white. The Army drops these people into a blender and mixes them up. It's good for them.
It is going to get a lot worse before this is over. Between the racism and the delusional rightwing paranoia fed by Faux News & LimpBalls a lot more of these people are going to resort to violence. All of this actively aided and abetted by rightwing talkers agitating them to do so.
and Texas still sucks big time! I say sit and watch, listen and learn. Anybody want to become a racist (or carry on your internal desires), take in the American ideals.
Or, become your own person and resist! Power to the people!
Your problems aren't because of power mongers plundering the country and the world taking everything they can, it's that black family down the road!
God, I mean... *splutter*... what on earth goes on in the heads of these white supremacists??
a whole lot:
"duhhh...I'm unhappy...must be somebody else's fault..."
but it is really difficult to comment on the next thread.
Perhaps, impossible.
Ummm....site monitor?
Next thread is missing the "comments" whatchamacallit.
{ Got it fixed. Thank You. SiteMonitor}
how gangs have infiltrated the military in order to receive the combat training. White supremacists most likely have as well.
Or the guy just could have been a dumbass.
"California again leads the nation as the state with the most hate groups with 84; Florida is a distant second with 56." TX has 66?
Oh, Truth Critic, I could write a whole essay on this one, just through the lens of one county!
In the 1920's, Kern County's law enforcement was like putty in the KKK's hands, 50 years later, the citizens of one of its towns tried to lynch an entire team of Black basketball players, because they didn't like the outcome of a college ball game, etc. etc. etc.
Do these groups register or something? ["Hi, I'm here to register a hate group"...?????] How do they get these numbers?
Anti Defamation League, and Southern Poverty Law Center.
Both groups keep track of extremist groups.
when it comes to the issue of race. I voted for obama strictly for the reason that I didn't want to be called a racist. It's frustrating that even that doesn't prove that I'm not a racist. Is there some sort of manual on the subject.
The issue isn't race, or ethnicity, we should be banding together to show solidarity in a class struggle. There won't be peace until we live in a classless society.
"I voted for obama strictly for the reason that I didn't want to be called a racist."
Really? That strikes me as odd.
It's very sad, indeed. Pure ignorance.
what they start. If they start a civil war, they're going to wonder what hit them.
a) they're entirely outnumbered by non-Caucasians (particularly if you include central and south america. How badly would Hugo Chavez want to get in on that action?)
b) thanks to the right-wingers' pro-gun laws, legal guns have flooded the inner cities.
c) the military won't come to their rescue, as there are far more blacks and latinos in the military than whites.
It'd be like Custer's Last Stand.
Mere random jottings or rantings in a diary do not make a conspiracy.
"Sanchez and Potok also discussed the recent case of the would-be dirty bomber in Bangor, Maine, whose plans were nipped in the bud when his angry wife shot him to death."
That was in Belfast, Maine (a few blocks from my place) and the wife has pleaded temporary insanity in the case. The FBI claims the guy did not have radioactive ingredients that were sufficiently dangerous.
But the real point here is that white right wing domestic wannabe dirty bombers don't get the press interest that swarthy ones do.
Wouldn't the correct word be "terrorists"?
I'm sure we all assumed these people are out there. They're going to be out there until, odds are, Obama** turns the White House back to a white man (or woman) and, by golly, the country isn't any worse for the experience of a black president.
I suppose the Secret Service is rather low visibility and lacking in details but I'm a little surprised that their head hasn't been more of a public figure assuring the country that they realize America's history creates extra concern for security and that they are following all leads and "war gaming" with all due diligence about the contingencies that could arise. I guess they figure talking about it in vague generalities does nothing and just plants more seeds.
** And when is the spell checker this blog uses going to quit underlining "Obama"?
these wacked out Neo-Nazis and other white supremacy groups. They are just as bad if not worse than any extremist Muslim. I was at my neighborhood Kmart awhile back. While using the restroom I noticed scratched into the paint on the wall racial slurs concerning President Obama and threats on his life. Of course I alerted store management to the situation and later on emailed the FBI about it. That alone was chilling for me as I had never been so close to such threat. That's something you read about happening in other places, not your own community. In my neck of the woods we have had every color of the rainbow living and working side by side for as long as I can remember, then you see something like that. I can only imagine the fear that little community in Maine must feel after finding out some fruitcake was trying to build a dirty bomb in his basement.
That is some hairpiece. You'd need a weedwacker to get it off his head. Ha Ha.
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