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Here's a classic example of the way far-right hate groups have been moving into our mainstream discourse, being legitimized by a clueless and culpable mainstream media.

Tucson's NBC News affiliate -- KVOA-TV, Channel 4 -- ran this interesting segment the other day on a new/old technology to catch border crossers. The most interesting thing about it, though, was their chief source for the story: American Border Patrol's Glenn Spencer:

HEREFORD - Most people agree we need to secure the border, right? The issue is, how do we know when the border is secure? How do we measure that? The American Border Patrol, a non-governmental organization that monitors the border, thinks an old technology may hold the new answer.

They're called geophones, basically, a magnet inside of a coil. But they can sense the smallest vibrations, like someone walking across the border. American Border Patrol installed the system on their ranch to test its effectiveness.

"And it works. It's been here for 11 months underground, working. And it counts everybody who crosses," said Glenn Spencer, American Border Patrol.

The sensors pick people up at 600 feet, but can start to analyze it better and tell if it's human from 300 feet.

"Showing in Google Earth where on the border the detection and the alert happened," said Spencer.

Notice anything missing from this story? Well, how about even the slightest mention of the fact that Spencer runs one of the most notorious anti-immigrant hate groups in the country?

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Back in August of last year, Sheriff Joe Arpaio and the folks from Tea Party Nation exercised their inner Nativists by holding a big rally near the border in Cochise County. What was little noted at the time was where the rally was held: On Glenn Spencer's ranch. The same ranch where, a year before, Minuteman leader Shawna Forde had been arrested for the murders of a nine-year-old girl and her father.

David Holthouse at Media Matters has the whole story -- including the big picture:

Grinning on the sidelines behind mirrored sunglasses was Glenn Spencer, the leader of the border vigilante group American Border Patrol and the owner of the Tea Party Nation rally site.

Spencer's founding of American Border Patrol in 2002 pre-dated the first Minuteman "civilian border patrols" by three years. Before his ranchland became a Tea Party rallying point it served as both meeting grounds and temporary housing for high-ranking members of various border vigilante factions. Minuteman American Defense leader Shawna Forde lived on the property in an RV owned by Spencer in the summer of 2008.

Over the past two years, more than a dozen former border vigilante leaders have taken on key roles in the Tea Party movement. Some, like Spencer, continue to maintain their hard-core nativist personas. Others have sought to separate themselves from their Minuteman identities in pursuit of mainstream political legitimacy.

Spencer's border-watching activities well predated 2002; he was actively organizing such vigilante action back in the early 1990s, when his American Patrol outfit was a player in the Patriot/militia movement, and his vicious rhetoric earned his organization a hate-group designation by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Spencer is no bit player in the Nativist movement. He has, in fact, been the wellspring of many of the most cherished lies about immigrants, Latinos and the immigrant-rights movement over the years, including the time he spread false rumors that immigrants were carrying the Ebola virus into the USA. Spencer is the original source of the false claim that MEChA is a racist organization, as well as the accompanying phony Reconquista! conspiracy theory.

Above all, Spencer was one of the first people organizing vigilante border patrols -- serving in many ways as the original inspiration for the Minuteman movement, and he indeed continued to play a major leadership role in the movement until its sudden demise at the hands of Shawna Forde. Her conviction in February for the murders in Arivaca signalled the death knell for a movement already on its last legs, splintering into renegade subgroups like Forde's with no accountability, no restraints, and no conscience.

These border watch groups don't call themselves "Minutemen" anymore. Now they use newer, Tea Party-friendly monikers with lots of Patriotic references.

As Holthouse explains:

"The Forde killings really made the whole movement sordid and these guys [Minuteman leaders] needed to find somewhere else for their ambitions," said Heidi Beirich, co-director of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Project, which tracks extremist groups. "Rebranding themselves as Tea Party figures is their effort to stay relevant. They saw the rising populism as a good thing to latch onto, so they just toned down their anti-immigrant messaging a bit and synced themselves with the larger Tea Party agenda."

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Credit: Coeur d'Alene Press

If you want some insight into the culture behind the Spokane MLK Day parade bomb attack, read this fascinating bit of self-confession

I want to formally apologize for the image of hate that I helped bring upon this decent community. I could tell you I was ordered to do what I did and that I was young and dumb, manipulated and lied to, but it doesn't change the fact that it was still me. I wish I could take it back.

You don't have to forgive me and I don't blame you if you don't, but I need you, Coeur d'Alene, to know that I and so many before and after me are wrong. Hate is pointless, destructive to everyone involved, selfish, childish, and cowardly.

I'm sorry.

My name is Zach Beck and this is my story.

I was led to believe that without the white race, civilization as we know it would cease to exist. That the white race is the race of God and therefore it is the duty of the white race to bring forth His will, law, and word on Earth as it is in Heaven. That all non-whites are inferior to the white race and are subjected to our will, God's will. The proof of this? The Holy Bible. This is just a small piece of the foundation of the "white power" movement. I've spent the last 10 years eating, sleeping, talking, walking, thinking and believing this lie.

I was wrong.

I thought this was particularly noteworthy:

I grew up in California and Arizona playing an array of sports. While most kids tried to decide which party they wanted to go to that weekend, I was trying to decide between USC and UCLA. The first concert I attended was the Grateful Dead. My hair was long, my shirts were tie-dyed, and my friends were of every color and background. I dated girls of every race and lost my virginity to a black girl.

Two years later, he was a hardcore neo-Nazi and Aryan Brother. I remember seeing Beck in 2001 accompanying Richard Butler at the court hearings in Coeur d'Alene ordering the Aryan Nations compound be turned over, after the AN lost the property in a lawsuit over an assault by AN thugs. He was awfully baby-faced then, and I remember wondering how young guys like that got recruited into hate groups like the AN.

I also remember, incidentally, that Richard Butler periodically issued stern denunciations of violence as a tactic too.

The Zach Beck story is a reminder, perhaps, that young men can be extremely volatile at that age, especially when it comes to political ideology. People who know, say, a pot-smoking leftie in 2007 might be shocked at the wingnutty, paranoid young man they would encounter in 2011.

Just sayin'.

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Well, the talkers at Fox, along with the rest of the right-wing propaganda machine, just can't stop talking about that Department of Homeland Security bulletin about the potential threat of right-wing domestic terrorism. Which means, as always, that they are spreading the bullmanure far and wide.

Of course, what they're doing in the process is essentially substantiating one of the central theses of my book The Eliminationists -- namely, that the gravitational effect of the extremist right on mainstream conservatism in recent years has pulled conservatism even farther right, to the point that the differences between them are rapidly vanishing. Hey, if they want to make my point for me, I'm all too happy to let them.

Now, here are the main talking points raised by Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, and their guests about the DHS bulletin:

-- Beck says the report specifically singled out veterans and targeted them for investigation of possible far-right extremism.

-- Byron York says the report really was based on nothing but speculation, since in its opening lines it explains there is no evidence of specific plots yet.

-- York adds that the similar report on left-wing terrorists named specific groups, while the right-wing report was more amorphous (and thus had less "meat on its bones") since it did not list any specific groups.

-- Col. Ralph Peters (last seen attacking President Obama for his "weakness" on the Somali pirates just before Obama's order freed that ship captain) says this report is the product of military-hating "Hollywood" people in the new Obama administration.

-- O'Reilly says the report was "unnecessary," cooked up by a bevy of myopic "far left" liberals freshly ensconced in their DHS offices.

-- O'Reilly tells Beck that these liberals' myopia leads them to ignore Al Qaeda while pinning the terrorism label on ordinary conservatives. (He echoes Pat Robertson in this claim.)

All of it, of course, is wrong. Complete, freshly laid, unfettered bullmanure.

OK, I'm going to walk quickly through these backwards, since the first talking point is the most pervasive and most in need of addressing:

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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.

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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.

Has anyone else noticed how little coverage the skinhead plot to assassinate Obama has been given?

Eric Ward has noticed:

While the public, political pundits, and even some law enforcement officials have been quick to downplay the actions of Cowart and Schlesselman using words such as “unlikely,” “unsophisticated,” and “bizarre”, these individuals are making a case for who they believe is an American. I can’t help but think back to 2006 when seven men who thought they were working with al-Qaida (but in actuality an FBI informant) were arrested in a plot against Chicago’s Sears Tower.

I can’t help but to ask if Coward and Schlesselman had been self-proclaimed Muslims would these same political pundits and law enforcement officials find themselves so blasé? Would the public write it off as “stupid kids who weren’t serious?”

Doubtful.

I know the looming election has sucked all the oxygen out of the newsroom. And it's true that the plot -- they wanted to kill 102 black people, 14 of them by decapitation, before they culminated their spree with a frontal attack on Obama -- more resembled a dumb fantasy out of a bad action flick than anything likely ever to become a reality.

But that's what anyone who might've stumbled onto Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols prior to April 19, 1995, likely would have concluded too. And the fact is, these guys were serious, they were heavily armed, and they took concrete steps to begin making their fantasy into a reality.

No, they almost certainly would never have reached Barack Obama. But would they have been capable of killing large numbers of black people before the law caught up with them. Just like the three men caught in Denver before the Democratic National Convention, they weren't likely at all to succeed but they almost certainly would have killed innocent members of the public along the way.

And unlike the Denver tweakers, these two young men not only appeared much more capable and competent, but also much more motivated. After all, they were entrenched in the skinhead scene and heavily involved in the white-nationalist movement that inspired them.

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[Full disclosure: I write for the SPLC's blog, Hatewatch.]

When right-wingers got wind of the fact that the Southern Poverty Law Center had designated a number of Religious Right organizations who specialize in rhetorically bashing gays and lesbians as hate groups, they and their allies on the Right came more or less unglued.

Now, rather than face up to the substance of the accusations, they're choosing to demonize the SPLC and their critics. Par for the course for this crowd.

What was especially noteworthy about the SPLC report was that it zeroed in on the fundamental falsity of the material attacking people in the LGBT community that these so-called "Christian" organizations distribute maliciously and knowingly. That is, they are lying baldfacedly, and they frankly seem not to care. Evidently, that 9th Commandment about bearing false witness and all that is now a disposable rule.

Jeremy Hooper noted that the Family Research Council -- one of the largest of the groups named -- launched a counteroffensive called "Stop Hating/Start Debating," with a press release that begins thus:

The surest sign one is losing a debate is to resort to character assassination. The Southern Poverty Law Center, a liberal fundraising machine whose tactics have been condemned by observers across the political spectrum, is doing just that.

The hypocrisy, of course, is not just a laughable bug, but a definitive feature of these groups. Alvin McEwen at Pam's House Blend enumerates just how many ways the FRC's opening salvo is a farce.

Their political friends leapt into action too. Cliff Kincaid called the SPLC's hate-group designation a "racket" by conniving liberals. And Peter LaBarbera at Americans for Truth About Homosexuality -- also one of the designated groups -- complained that the SPLC never seems to pick on mean gay groups that fight back against the fundamentalist assault. Meanwhile, of course, he doubles down by claiming that all the lies against LGBT folks enumerated by the SPLC are in fact actually true. Uh-huh.

Perhaps the funniest attack came from Ed Meese at CNS News:

Former Attorney General Edwin Meese says it is “despicable” for the Southern Poverty Law Center to classify the Family Research Council and a dozen other top conservative organizations as “hate groups” similar to the Ku Klux Klan.

“I think it’s ridiculous,” Meese told CNSNews.com about the list published by the SPLC. “I know about seven or eight of those groups. I know the people very well. I know the groups very well, I’ve worked with them over the years, and I think it actually undermines the credibility of the Southern Poverty Law Center to make such a statement.”

Last week, the Southern Policy Law Center announced that it was going to classify the Family Research Council and 12 other organizations as “hate groups” because of their positions on homosexuality.

Among the groups being designated by the SPLC are the American Family Association, Concerned Women for America, the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission, Coral Ridge Ministries, Family Research Institute, Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, Illinois Family Institute, Liberty Counsel, MassResistance, National Organization for Marriage and the Traditional Values Coalition.

The SPLC said these organizations will be named to its "hate group" watch list.

But Meese said the Southern Poverty Law Center had cited no evidence whatsoever to show that the FRC or the other major pro-family conservative organizations were hate groups.

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They're crawling out from under the rocks everywhere. In Missouri, white supremacist Glenn Miller has declared his candidacy for the United States Senate, vowing to "reach every nook and cranny in the state" in his quest for votes and launching a new campaign web site at the URL whty.org. His opponents include Roy Blunt and Robin Carnahan, and his last try got him around 40 votes or so, but hey, any excuse to spread a little hate among friends, right?

Miller isn't your ordinary run-of-the-mill Klansman either. From Southern Poverty Law Center, 2004:

One of the first white supremacists to use paramilitary tactics with his North Carolina-based hate group — the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, which later morphed into the White Patriot Party — Glenn Miller went on the lam in 1986 after mailing a letter to 5,000 people calling for "total war" against the feds, blacks and Jews.

Miller had also violated a court order, stemming from a lawsuit filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center, prohibiting him from continuing to operate a paramilitary organization. After a nationwide manhunt, authorities tear-gassed him out of a mobile home in Ozark, Mo.

But Miller served only three years in prison, largely because he testified against 14 leading white supremacists in a 1988 Arkansas sedition trial. Among other things, Miller told the court that the late Order founder Robert Mathews had given him $200,000 in stolen money to finance the White Patriot Party.

To kick off his campaign, he's running a series of vile anti-Semitic ads hosted on the white supremacist site Vanguard News Network.

This is what happens when the dog whistle sounds among the wingnut contingent. Sure, they're not all racists, but they know how to stir up the ones who are violent, evil and malevolent.

I'm amazed Miller is qualified to be a candidate for the Senate. Doesn't a felony conviction disqualify him?

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(h/t Heather for the video)

C&Lers know that I've had a history with the odious Mark Williams over the years. He once sent out an email claiming that we were trying to hurt his dog to drum up support for his failing radio show.

With no where to go he turned to the tea party movement and now is leading one of those buses that drives around screaming about death panels and calling Obama an Indonesian Muslim turned welfare thug and a racist in chief' who is taking away our freedoms and whatnot. Dylan had him come on the air following Mark Potok of the SPLC, who issued a new extremism report that says hate groups have exploded in 2009. Dylan wanted to know from Williams why they tolerate hate groups becoming part of the tea party movement.

Mark, how do you draw the bright line between the very admirable and understandable principles that are advocated by so many....and the more radical views and hide if you will inside the tea party umbrella?

Williams: That's real simple. There's wingnuts and there's normal people...

Ratigan: It's not that simple...

{}

What confuses me about the tea party, is the tea parties willingness to accept the wingnuts as you put it

Williams: So it's our fault that they are nuts?

Ratigan: You have not shamed them Mark....Do you accept racists and Nazis in the tea parties?

Williams: Here at Sacramento...

Ratigan: I'm asking you a question my man, do you want to have a conversation or do you want to come on my TV show and do a commercial for yourself?

Ratigan walks off camera.

Williams: I'm answering the question. We have a women here from a local NBC affiliate who after an anti-Semitic rant at Sac State was promoted from reporter to anchor does that make NBC, does that make you an anti-Semitic?

Ratigan: Mark, do I run NBC? Are you a guest on my show? Do you have any intention of answering any of my questions because I don't want to continue to fool with this. You're wasting valuable oxygen. Can we please cut off this man's microphone, He has no interest in answering my questions, Mark a pleasure. Actually not really a pleasure. It was offensive, you're offensive. Your treatment of my show as a vehicle to spread your propaganda, ignore my questions, offensive and an indication of what is wrong with the dialogue in this country. Period. Not to mention that a group that would accept Nazis and racists.

The comedy started as soon as Williams tried to separate himself from wingnuts. Mark is never on to answer any question and Dylan got a taste of what an idiot this man is. Williams will never be able to justify the Radical-hate filled-Patriot-racist-right wing elements that make up the tea parties.

FOX News and movement conservatism reached out to the outer fringes of Planet Wingnuttia to build the tea party movement. Obviously not everyone is part of the Patriot movement that has joined in, but a large segment of these haters do inhabit there and have found a nice new home to be very open with their beliefs. They certainly carry enough signs around at their tea party events to let the world know what and who they are.

Ratigan gets mad props for dislodging Williams from his show. Yes, it's unfortunate that he gets asked to come on many cable news shows, but this is the best possible treatment. It's too bad that not enough Villagers take the few minutes to understand the teabaggers. They are merely an extension of the movement conservatives of the 80's only they didn't have a the media infrastructure that they do know.

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Max Blumenthal just posted his video from his weekend at CPAC. Max used to be able to go to these things and post some great guerrilla videos, but nowadays they all know what he looks like and he attracts a crowd of camera-carrying wingers.

He also manages anyway to elicit some prime goofiness when Hannah Giles, the woman who posed as a prostitute in James O'Keefe's ACORN videos, defends O'Keefe when Blumenthal asks why O'Keefe and Breitbart falsely pretended that he had worn an outlandish "pimp" outfit into those ACORN sessions (he hadn't). Blumenthal wonders why O'Keefe was putting on this "minstrel show", and Giles responded:

Giles: But James is a man. He couldn't have a menstrual cycle.

Then a right-wing kook tried to argue that the Black Congressional Caucus was an innately racist organization since it excludes whites. Nevermind that the difference between minority civil-rights organizations and white supremacists is that one is about defending people's civil rights, the other is about taking them away. Minority caucuses, unlike white-supremacist organization, are not about demonizing and belittling and disenfranchising other people. Equating minority caucuses with hate groups is the height of wingnuttery.

But the best was reserved for Breitbart, who wouldn't even deign to engage Blumenthal in a reasoned debate over the facts of the matter involving Max's on-point reportage about O'Keefe's dalliance with white supremacist Jared Taylor.

All Breitbart could manage was rage and spittle:

Breitbart: You're ridiculous. You are a joke. You are a despicable human being -- the lowest life form that I have ever seen. Your entire job is trying to destroy people with Alinsky tactics.

Explain to me what your political philosophy that you have, other than this nihilist --

Blumenthal: Did you want me to finish what I was gonna say, which is that --?

Breitbart: Not particularly, you've already said it.

Blumenthal: Well, then, do you have anything -- do you have any more insults?

Breitbart: You try to destroy people. I don't care -- yes, absolutely. I could go on for a year. You're disgusting.

I cannot believe that you're fighting your father's battles. I can't believe what you did to Christopher Hitchens, you are -- you have been programmed by some ungodly creature to be this character of hatred.

Blumenthal: So the --

Breitbart: Accusing a person of racism is the worst thing that you can do to someone.

Blumenthal: So you're defending Jared Taylor?

Breitbart: I'm not at all! Of course I'm not!

Blumenthal: Sounds like you're defending Jared Taylor.

Breitbart: No it isn't! No, you --

Blumenthal: John Derbyshire?

Breitbart: What do you mean? -- What are you talking about?

Blumenthal: I don't know. I mean, this is an event with two people who believe that whites are genetically superior. And Marcus Epstein planned it --

Breitbart: Kevin Martin was there debating at the Georgetown Law Center! You think -- this smearing tactic --

Blumenthal: Kevin Martin ended the event with his arm around Jared Taylor. He's from a total -- a front, a front group, he's from a front group that defends white nationalists.

Breitbart: Make your case. Make your case.

Blumenthal: I made my case.

Breitbart: This isn't a case, that's guilt by association, you punk.

Blumenthal: Why are you so angry?

Breitbart: Because you're a punk you destroy people.

Blumenthal: Your face is trembling.

Breitbart: Because you try to destroy people's lives through innuendo!

Blumenthal: I'm not calling any names.

Breitbart: Innuendo! We're done with you! Innuendo! Innuendo! In order to destroy people's lives! You're the most despicable life form I've ever seen!

[Applause]

Yeah, that's right: Andrew Breitbart has the chutzpah to accuse someone else of indulging in "innuendo" in order to "destroy people."

And what Blumenthal reported wasn't "guilt by association", which by definition involves irrelevant associations; whereas these associations are entirely relevant, since they speak directly to O'Keefe's motives and his ideology. Guys like Breitbart love to shout "guilt by association!" whenever they're called out for playing footsie with white supremacists, but they have no idea what it really means.

All in all, it's quite the hilarious spectacle. Somehow, Jonah Goldberg's description of Breitbart as a "crack addict on ten espressos" sounds about right, if understated.