The Southern Poverty Law Center, which has been monitoring rightwing hate groups for 40 years, has a disturbing report out today:
Now, the latest SPLC count finds that an astonishing 363 new Patriot groups appeared in 2009, with the totals going from 149 groups (including 42 militias) to 512 (127 of them militias) — a 244% jump.
The SPLC is hardly given to hysteria. As mentioned, they've been at this game for a very long time, and the groups they monitor tend to be pretty nasty. We're talking the KKK, among others. Just last year, they warned of a resurgence in the "Patriot movement", which they defined as:
made up of paramilitary militias, tax defiers and so-called "sovereign citizens."
In that report, they correctly (in my view) identified the root cause of this resurgence:
A key difference this time is that the federal government — the entity that almost the entire radical right views as its primary enemy — is headed by a black man. That, coupled with high levels of non-white immigration and a decline in the percentage of whites overall in America, has helped to racialize the Patriot movement, which in the past was not primarily motivated by race hate.
These conclusions probably won't come as a shock to most of you, though I'll admit I was a bit surprised by their assertion that the Patriot movement wasn't previously motivated by race hate. But hey, I'm not paid to be objective about these things.
In their latest report, appropriately entitled "Rage on the Right", they soberly and accurately sum up the current political climate:
The signs of growing radicalization are everywhere. Armed men have come to Obama speeches bearing signs suggesting that the "tree of liberty" needs to be "watered" with "the blood of tyrants." The Conservative Political Action Conference held this February was co-sponsored by groups like the John Birch Society, which believes President Eisenhower was a Communist agent, and Oath Keepers, a Patriot outfit formed last year that suggests, in thinly veiled language, that the government has secret plans to declare martial law and intern patriotic Americans in concentration camps.
Again, you're probably all aware of the above. Armed men at Presidential rallies? Please tell me where you've seen that before our current President. And movies don't count.
Then they drop their bombshell, already noted above:
Now, the latest SPLC count finds that an astonishing 363 new Patriot groups appeared in 2009, with the totals going from 149 groups (including 42 militias) to 512 (127 of them militias) — a 244% jump.
That's an alarming jump in just one year. But unlike the 1990's, today's radical right movement has some very mainstream allies:
As the movement has exploded, so has the reach of its ideas, aided and abetted by commentators and politicians in the ostensible mainstream. While in the 1990s, the movement got good reviews from a few lawmakers and talk-radio hosts, some of its central ideas today are being plugged by people with far larger audiences like FOX News’ Glenn Beck and U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn). Beck, for instance, re-popularized a key Patriot conspiracy theory — the charge that FEMA is secretly running concentration camps — before finally "debunking" it.
That's an immensely popular demagogue and a United States Congresswoman, for those keeping track.
And not to be overly dramatic, but they save the most potentially disturbing news for last, noting that an upcoming "Second Amendment March" is scheduled to take place in Washington D.C. on a certain date:
What may be most noteworthy about the march, however, is its date — April 19. That is the date of the first shots fired at Lexington in the Revolutionary War. And it is also the anniversary of the fiery end of the government siege in Waco and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.
I normally don't go for the crash-of-thunder-type drama, but there's a movement afoot in this country that's pissed off, racist and armed. I'm just saying, let's pay attention.