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Last week we observed -- especially after the arrest of a neo-Nazi in Spokane for a planned bombing of a parade the next day -- that Bill O'Reilly owed Mark Potok a big apology for smearing him after he offered the opinion that, as domestic-terrorism threats go, the extremist right remains a much more potent problem than homegrown Islamic radicals. (OReilly repeated the smear even after the Spokane arrest.)

Of course, we knew that wasn't gonna happen. But last night on The O'Reilly Factor, we got to see the next best thing: Potok pinning O'Reilly's ears to the wall for the smear.

O'REILLY: Now a few weeks ago, Mr. Potok, you said on CNN the biggest terrorist threat is coming from the radical right community. Do you still stand by that?

MARK POTOK, SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER: That is false as I think you know. I said the biggest domestic threat to America was from domestic radical right not domestic jihadists, in other words, not home-grown American Muslims. That was twisted on your show by you.

(CROSSTALK)

O'REILLY: All right. So you -- it wasn't twisted by me -- no, no, it wasn't twisted because your statement is dubious. It wasn't well -- with all due respect because we like you as a guest -- your statement was not well put.

Let me read your exact statement ok. It's not our biggest -- this is talking about Muslim jihadists. "It's not our biggest domestic threat. I think that pretty clearly comes from the radical right in this country."

Now I'll dispute that. I think that Muslims jihadists are a much bigger threat than the radical right and the numbers back me up: Fort Hood and Fort Dick.

POTOK: Bill, can I just have one --

O'REILLY: Yes. Go ahead.

POTOK: One thing I want to say, immediately afterwards you said, Muslim terrorists or jihadists have killed tens of thousands of people all over the world. Well, that is true. I don't disagree with that at all. I certainly think that as an external matter, Al-Qaeda is far greater threat. I don't think there's much question about that. But that's not what I said.

O'REILLY: All right. I'm glad you are saying that.

In fact, it might be helpful to remember exactly what it was that Potok actually said on CNN:

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The corporate media has been doing their best lately to draw false equivalencies in their coverage of the recent spike in right wing violence in America. Grasping at any little straw, pundits like MSNBC's Pat Buchanan have even gone so far as to use the Rodney King riots to show how "the left is just as bad." Now, Newsbusters has taken things a notch lower:

Liberals in the media have been busy parading around Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center to bash the right. As befits his organization's MO, Potok, pictured right in a file photo, has done the best he can to link recently-arrested militia members to the Tea Party movement and conservatism generally.

Potok's job may have just gotten a bit harder, and the liberal media may need to find another way to discredit their political opponents. It turns out most of the militiamen were active voters, and at least one was a registered Democrat. Party registrations for the rest are not yet known.

Jacob J. Ward, 33, of Huron, Ohio, voted as a Democrat in the 2004 and 2008 primary elections. He also voted in 10 other elections since 2000. Party affiliation in Ohio is determined by which party's ballot they requested in the most recent primary election.

This amazingly bad article mercifully ends with this belly laugher:

Well that should put to rest the notion that these people were somehow affiliated with or influenced by mainstream conservatives.

Well, there you go. One of these nuts was a registered Democrat so the entire group is actually a bunch of flaming LIBS! No right wing influence here, no siree! Give me a f*&king break!

Hmmm...wasn't some big celebrity entertainer urging his Republican fans to switch parties so they could vote in Democratic primaries back in 2008? Oh yeah, that was Rush Limbaugh. Even if Ward wasn't doing Limbaugh's bidding, and was, at one time, an actual Democrat, his membership in the Hutaree tells me that his real politics had moved hard to the right.

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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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Bill O'Reilly followed up his interview with Mark Potok about the Oath Keepers with a one-on-one interview with Stewart Rhodes, the Oath Keepers' president and founder.

And give O'Reilly credit: He asked good questions and didn't let Rhodes get away with his usual justifications for their armed-to-the-teeth-and-paranoid worldview:

O'Reilly: OK, so full members in the Oath Keepers have to have a military or police background. Or firefighters. Now, I'm gonna read you something from your website. "We will not obey unconstitutional and thus illegal and immoral orders, such as orders to disarm the American people or place them under martial law."

Well, who's gonna try to disarm people and place them under martial law. I mean, why would that even be something you would be discussing?

Rhodes: Well, it happened as recently as Katrina. You probably have seen the videos there of the old lady being tackled in her kitchen, and disarmed of her revolver, and there was house-to-house searches for firearms. And you had the police chief declaring that no one would be allowed to have weapons, or he'd take all the guns. And he did.

So they disarmed Americans over some bad weather, as though the bad weather suspended the Second Amendment. So, that's the most recent example.

Sure, Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath were just "bad weather" -- such bad weather, in fact, that the levees around New Orleans broke, flooding 80 percent of the city and killing 1,464 people. Some 90 percent of the population of southeast Louisiana was evacuated. Describing this as mere "bad weather" is like describing the Haiti earthquake as "a little shaker."

This pretty much tells you all you need to know about the Oath Keepers and their grip on reality: They're unable to distinguish between "bad weather" and a devastating natural disaster and subsequent state of emergency.

O'Reilly, to his credit, pointed out that government has long been empowered to declare such emergencies in order to preserve lives and protect public safety in dire circumstances. It seems that for Rhodes and the Oath Keepers in general, no circumstances are ever dire enough to warrant such declarations.

What Rhodes didn't say, but which the Oath Keepers have made abundantly clear elsewhere, is that they believe President Obama is planning to declare a national state of emergency after the economy collapses, which they consider a sure thing.

Rhodes -- who is on the planning committee for the big Tea Party rally planned for September 11, an event his outfit is cosponsoring -- was at least forthcoming about his group's close relationship with the Tea Party movement:

Well, I've been to a lot of Tea Party events, we've spoken at quite a few of them, and I'm on the planning committee for the one on 9/11, this next September. So, the MarchOnDC.org. But, uh, we like the Tea Party movement a lot, we think it's great. It's a revitalization of our core Americanism and core constitutionalism.

In general, O'Reilly did reasonably well making clear that the Oath Keepers are a disturbing phenomenon, particularly in their emphasis on recruiting members of the military and police officers -- a fact which should ring some bells among the people who loudly denounced that DHS report for its observation that far-right extremists are working hard to recruit people with military and police backgrounds. (Ahem.)

Too bad he didn't have time to explore the matter of Charles Dyer, the onetime Oath Keepers figure arrested on charges of child rape, and the Oath Keepers's eagerness to disavow him -- in spite of the fact that Dyer had represented the Oath Keepers -- with Rhodes' blessing -- at a Tea Party on July 4 in Oklahoma. Dyer was also active in forming militias in Oklahoma.

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ABC News had a noteworthy story today on the increasing fears for President Obama's safety because of the plethora of nutcases -- many of them in fact mentally ill -- who are crawling out of the woodwork and threatening Obama and anyone associated with him:

Experts who track hate groups across the U.S. are growing increasingly concerned over violent rhetoric targeted at President Obama, especially as the debate over health care intensifies and a pattern of threats emerges.

The Secret Service is investigating a Maryland man who held a sign reading "Death to Obama" and "Death to Michelle and her two stupid kids" outside a town hall meeting this week. And in New Hampshire, another man stood across the street from a Presidential town hall with his gun on full display.

Los Angeles police officers apprehended a man Thursday after a standoff with him inside a red Volkswagen Bug car in Westwood, CA – the latest disturbing case even though officials said the man had mental problems.

"I don't think these are simply people who are mentally ill or off their rocker," Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, told ABC News of those behind the threats. "In a very real sense they represent a genuine reaction, a genuine backlash against Obama."

Experts say a sharp growth in so-called militia groups that helped spawn a wave of domestic terrorism in the 1990s – and are now using YouTube, rock music and the Internet to recruit members and spread hate and fear - shouldn't be ignored.

"It's certainly a scary time," said former FBI agent Brad Garrett, now an ABC News consultant. Garrett said the Secret Service "cannot afford to pass on anyone," and he believes "they really do fear that something could happen to [Obama]."

Garrett said statements like one recently made by controversial radio host Rush Limbaugh comparing a logo for the White House plan to a Nazi symbol "legitimizes people who are on the edge to go do something or say something."

Naturally, the right is full-throated whine about people making this very logical connection: Yesterday on his show, Glenn Beck repeated the standard whine that "left is trying to silence me." No; we just want people like Beck to live up to the immense responsibility that comes with having those powerful media megaphones they hold.

Often we hear the excuse that the problem is simply the fact that these people are mentally ill crazies who would be doing something crazy anyway.

This is, of course, a complete cop-out. It ignores, in fact, the cold reality that violence, even by the mentally ill, does not occur in a vacuum. When people become the subject of a relentless campaign of demonization -- especially by the use of grotesque smears that make them out to be monsters and provably false "facts" that have the concrete effect of unhinging people from reality -- it will only be a matter of time before the lethal violence breaks out.

And while the concern for Obama is well-placed -- he is, after all, the focus of all this hatred -- there is only a remote likelihood of anyone actually succeeding in harming him, since he is very well protected indeed. What's far more likely, in fact, is that some innocent bystanders in his vicinity will be harmed -- or, moreover, that the crazies will decide that instead of harming Obama, they will take out their hatred on his supporters.

This was the thinking, after all, of Jim David Adkisson, the Knoxville church shooter. Recall this passage in his manifesto:

This was a symbolic killing. Who I wanted to kill was every Democrat in the Senate & House, the 100 people in Bernard Goldberg's book. I'd like to kill everyone in the mainstream media. But I know those people were inaccessible to me. I couldn't get to the generals & high ranking officers of the Marxist movement so I went after the foot soldiers, the chickenshit liberals that vote in these traitorous people. Someone had to get the ball rolling. I volunteered. I hope others do the same. It's the only way we can rid America of this cancerous pestilence.

The right-wing crazies popping up almost daily, thanks to right-wing fearmongers, are very real cause for concern about Obama's safety. But we should also be concerned about our own.

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Last night, Glenn Beck and Jonah Goldberg tried an exercise similar to Rush Limbaugh's, in which they tried to construct a plausible argument that James von Brunn, the Holocaust Museum shooter, was actually a "figure of the left."

They ran through the same list: He hated Bush, he hated "neocons," may have targeted the neocon Weekly Standard too, and most of all, he hated Jews.

Somehow omitted: He also hated black people, and he especially hated Obama because he believed he was controlled by Jews. (See the note he left behind.) He also hated the Federal Reserve, taxes, the United Nations, the federal government generically, admired Hitler, urged the reciminalization of miscegenation laws, and promoted The Protocols of the Seven Elders of Zion as fact. He worked at one time for Willis Carto's right-wing publishing house, Noontide Press, and used to sell copies of Carto's house organ The Spotlight.

As Mark Potok put it to Keith Olbermann:

You know, the idea, though, that somehow, you know, this shooting at the Holocaust Museum was in any remote way an artifact of the left or Obama's fault somehow, you know—I mean, it's vile beyond words and just has no basis at all in fact of any kind.

Yep. "Vile beyond words" just about covers it. Especially when it comes to Jonah Goldberg.

Here's how he put it at NRO:

Never mind that von Brunn isn’t a member of the far right.

That is, of course, flatly, demonstrably and outrageously false. Or is Goldberg now trying to cast Willis Carto as a "man of the Left"?

Is there anyone more congenitally dishonest than Jonah Goldberg working in the right-wing media? Deeply, appallingly dishonest?

I mean, I really think Glenn Beck believes the amazingly dumb stuff that comes pouring out of his mouth. Bill O'Reilly is no doubt deeply cynical, but I think his ego keeps him from admitting to himself that he is in fact a bullying and manipulative propagandist. The rest of them -- Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin -- at some level actually really believe the garbage they emit.

Goldberg, on the other hand, comes across as someone who at a basic level realizes he's just playing semantics games as a way to manipulate the debate. Deeply cynical, in other words. Because you can't help read his book, Liberal Fascism without recognizing the profound dishonesty of the entire enterprise -- which is, namely, to declare that "fascism is a phenomenon of the Left". It's not as morally appalling as Holocaust denial, but it's close.

Because anyone with any respect for history, and especially the importance of the its details, and who has studied in any serious sense the historical events surrounding the rise of fascism in the 1918-30 period knows just how profoundly wrong, how meaningfully false, Goldberg's claim is.

Goldberg recently published a length self-defense of his book, upon its paperback publication, in National Review. I wrote a long exegesis on it for Orcinus. You can go here to read it. It's titled: "Fascism is not liberal: The profound dishonesty of Jonah Goldberg".

And you can see the same gobsmackingly deep dishonesty on full display in this exchange.

NY Times:

A decade after the Pentagon declared a zero-tolerance policy for racist hate groups, recruiting shortfalls caused by the war in Iraq have allowed "large numbers of neo-Nazis and skinhead extremists" to infiltrate the military, according to a watchdog organization. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks racist and right-wing militia groups, estimated that the numbers could run into the thousands, citing interviews with Defense Department investigators and reports and postings on racist Web sites and magazines...read on

I understand that we have a recruiting problem, but:

"Neo-Nazi groups and other extremists are joining the military in large numbers so they can get the best training in the world on weapons, combat tactics and explosives," said Mark Potok, director of the SPLC's Intelligence Project."We should consider this a major security threat, because these people are motivated by an ideology that calls for race war and revolution. Any one of them could turn out to be the next Timothy McVeigh."