(Originally published at the Daily Censored for Project Censored).
Don’t look now, but the radical right-wing is planning an attack on your life. In fact, they are planning multiple attacks on U.S. government employees and liberal groups. And if you get caught in their cross-hairs, well you are just collateral damage.
That’s right, while all the attention is being made of Herman Cane’s sexual harassment cases and Occupy Wall Street violence (mostly coming from the police), right-wing extremists groups continue to plan assaults on U.S. courthouses and other government buildings, along with a host of liberal organizations that have only, in reality, a peripheral influence in American politics.
This week, four men from Georgia briefly made national headlines. This time, not because they executed Troy Davis, a black man who may have been innocent. Rather, because federal and state officials arrested more angry white men plotting to blow up U.S. government buildings.
According to an Associated Press article published in the Wall Street Journal, four members of a fringe Georgia militia group were arrested and charged with attempting to attain unregistered explosive devices and manufacturing ricin h, a deadly biological toxin. Government arrest records claim Frederick Thomas, 73; Dan Roberts, 67; Ray Adams, 65; and Samuel Crump, 68 had been plotting, along with an undercover agent, the assassinations of several undisclosed individuals in order to undermine the government. One member, Thomas, was recorded openly talking about “taken out” U.S. citizens. During one road trip to Atlanta, Thomas announced to the undercover agent, “We’d have to blow the whole building, like Timothy McVeigh.”
However, this is not an isolated incident. Just a few days earlier, the Associated Press reported on the conviction of another right-wing extremist from Georgia that was convicted in a Tennessee on federal firearms charges. Apparently, Darren Wesley Huff, 41, and fellow nut-wing “birther” concocted a plan to take over a Tennessee courthouse in order to force President Obama out of office. Huff is now facing up to five years in prison.
This is not just a Georgia phenomena, nor is it a recent event. I have been publishing articles on the rise of right-wing hate groups and extreme elements of the Tea Party for several years. I’ve also written about a follower of Glenn Beck that was intercepted by the California Highway Patrol, and ended up in a shooting-out on the freeway, not far from my home. Apparently Bryan William, 45, was headed to the liberal Tides Foundation and the local branch of the ACLU to massacre as many liberals as possible. According to his mother, Williams was “angry at leftwing politicians,” and ”the way congress was railroading through all these left-wing agenda items.” Janice Williams went on, “eventually, I think we’re going to be caught up in a revolution.” But she said she had told her son many times that “he didn’t have to be on the front lines.”
Yet, many right-wing extremists have decided they now want to be on the front lines of what they have called the “second American revolution.” One Tea Party supporter/Alabama militia leader/Minute Man advocate/Fox News personality is Mike Vanderboegh. In the past, Vanderboegh has recommended to his followers to throw bricks into the office windows of Democrat Party members. Vanderboegh recommend this strategy back in 2006 during the immigration debate and then again in 2009 during the heath care debate.
Vanderboegh has moved on to being a novelist. His book, ”Absolved”, is the story of a group of men who form an underground militia after being subjected to “tyranny” and “slavery” by a mass of morally depraved left-wing thugs, that control the federal, state, and local government, and impose draconian gun control laws and gay marriage on Americans, in complete violation of the U.S. Constitution and the God. In chapter two, Vanderboegh describes those that opposed the left-wing thugs:
“They believed in God, this half of America, and it was the God of Abraham and Isaac, of Moses and David. They didn’t think that God was dead or irrelevant as many of their opponents did. They believed that almost 50 million abortions was state-sanctioned mass murder that put the German Nazis to shame. They believed that the Old and New Testaments were pretty explicit that homosexuality was an abomination, and they were universally certain that the federal government didn’t have the right to prohibit either their public prayers or the display of the Ten Commandments. Nor, come to that, could it lawfully demand that their sons’ Boy Scout troop leader be a member of the North American Man-Boy Love Association.”
Vanderboegh claims his book is “fictional but true” and describes the novel as ”a combination field manual, technical manual and call to arms for my beloved gunnies of the armed citizenry.” Vanderboegh takes the title of his book from a John Locke quote:
“Whenever the legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience.”
Like Vanderbeogh, many right-wing extremists believe Obamacare, which is helping to provided health care to millions of uninsured Americans, is somehow the equivalent to modern day slavery? And many of them, also members of militia groups, have been reading Vanderboegh’s “fictional but true” novel and covertly planning their assaults on Americans. According to MediaMatters.org, at least one of the four militia members from Georgia, Fredrick Thomas, had referred to Vanderbeogh’s novel as a field manual for their attempt at provoking a second American revolution. Media Matters quotes from the legal complaint:
“THOMAS also explained to the others present that he intended to model their actions on the plot of an online novel called Absolved. The plot of Absolved involves small groups of citizens attacking United States federal law enforcement representatives and federal judges. THOMAS expressed his belief that they should consider a number of assassinations on various government officials, and he particularly expressed a desire to kill Department of Justice (DOJ) and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) employees.”
This week’s arrest of the four right-wingers in Georgia is just the latest in what has been become an horrific string of mostly thwarted attacks on U.S. citizens. In a recent, under reported story, on October 24, 2011, at 4:00 a.m, while nearly everyone was asleep, the Portland Maine’s Occupy Wall Street encampment was hit with a chemical bomb that failed to go off. According to witness, the bomb landed in the communal kitchen area. However, the detonator didn’t go off properly, and so, “There was no fire . . . We had a good 20 feet of thick smoke rolling out from under the table,” Portland’s Chief of Police, Michael Sauschuck said, “This is certainly a very serious incident…somebody could have been seriously hurt and we’re treating it as such.” Other witnesses said just before the bombing they saw a silver car circling around and the passengers shouting, “Get a Job" and "You Communist.”
Sadly, as long as Fox News, right-wing talk radio, and bloggers promote asshat’s like Vanderboegh, the more likely we will see radical domestic terrorist attacks on American citizens. Yet, the right-wing continues to promote violent attacks on the U.S. government and the left-wing. The U.S. Constitution protects free-speech, to a limit. As we all know, you can’t falsely shout “fire” in a crowded theater. Nor, can one openly incite violence. Vanderboegh openly attempts to straddle the fence between inciting violence and protected free-speech. And as far as I am concerned, folks like Vanderbeogh should be relegated to obscurity, not promoted on Fox News.
Yes, the right-wing is actively planning to attack American’s. And as long as Fox News and right-wing talk radio continues to promote violent rhetoric, the greater American’s are in danger. The question is, when will American conservatives and Republicans say to their own kin, “enough is enough”?