I can’t find it anymore, but there was an article a long time ago that I read about how right-wing revolutions are cast as restorations whereas left-wing ones are cast as overthrows of the old order. I think that’s at the heart of why right-wing terrorists will never be subject to serious crackdowns. Conor Friedersdorf (not my fave, but in a thoughtful post) asks what will happen if the next major act of terrorism on American soil comes from a McVeigh rather than a bin Laden. Steve M’s answer:
We might have a serious counterterrorism crackdown against whites in the near future, but we absolutely won’t have a serious counterterrorism crackdown against right-wing whites. If a future large terrorist attack is conducted by a Weathermen-like group, the hammer will come down on lefties; by contrast, if the next big attack is like Oklahoma City, the reaction will be … well, like the reaction to Oklahoma City: there’ll be no crackdown on like-minded people, no significantly stepped-up surveillance, no nationwide cloud of suspicion, no wave of new laws. That’s for non-whites and lefties only.
The key factor isn’t just skin color — the ’60s and ’70s leftists who were tracked by law enforcement were mostly white. The key factor is that right-wing extremists share a lot of beliefs with the mainstream right — they’re anti-cultural elite, anti-urbane, distrustful of government, unswervingly opposed to gun control, and fed up with programs meant to help non-whites, the poor, women, and gay people. That’s the resemblance that matters in this society, not skin color; that’s why we’ll never consider a serious crackdown on right-wing extremism, however organized and violent right-wing extremist groups become. No liberal or left-centrist president would dare challenge the pro-“regular American” bias that protects right-wing extremists, and no Republican would even dream of cracking down on the far right.
There’s a big intersection between race/ethnicity and class, and for the time being keeping black people down is an important part of the conservative project, but the exact nature of which ethnic groups are good, upstanding Murkins and which are lazy, mooching, strapping young bucks is changeable. Eighty years ago, who would have guessed that Papists would become some of the most important True Keepers of the Founding Fathers’ Flame?
But some things will never change: hippies hate America and are therefore evil, patriots just wish America could be as great as it used to be (even if the way they go about expressing this wish can be lamentable). Foreigners, Muslims, and other out-groups du jour automatically qualify as hippies, while conservative white people automatically qualify as patriots.
raven
Dueling posts.
Baud
@raven:
Doug’s looking to overthrow the old order.
Hippie.
BGinCHI
I guess if they aren’t going to launder any money, Mitt’s admin might actually crack down on the skinheads and violent Jesus freaks. CREAM[itt].
BGinCHI
@efgoldman: AMU, the Fighting Fighters with Fists of Fury. Great debate team.
General Stuck
I had originally thought this violent action was more a hate crime, than political. But since we have learned this guy spent a lot of time trying to convince others of his hateful ilk to do what he ended up doing. That is political/racial motivated, and for sure an act of domestic terrorism. And no, republicans and their subliminal messaging with overtones of revolt and armed action will not be made to face any music whatsoever, not so long as the Candy Crowley’s of the world, are more interested in keeping the wingnuts fluffed for the talent show.
Shawn in ShowMe
White supremacy, how does it work?
J.W. Hamner
Would you say there was a “crackdown” on Muslims after 9/11? I mean, sure public opinion shifted deeply towards suspicion and there is a terrorist watch list and profiling and whatnot… but it’s not like the FBI started busting through the doors of Mosques and rounding everybody up. I suspect radicals of all stripes are being monitored right now by law enforcement, and a terrorist act wouldn’t really change that.
J.W. Hamner
@efgoldman:
You’ll have to be a little more specific. If you’re talking about surveillance of Muslim groups I don’t care as long as it’s legal, and would expect that the same thing happens with white supremacists and militia groups.
Frankensteinbeck
This statement should be stupid gibberish. SHOULD be, but observation shows that it is true. Us leftists have a radical secularist Islamic agenda to promote gay marriage and Sharia law, after all. To modern conservatism there really is only Us and Them.
J.W. Hamner
The difference between the response to 9/11 and Oklahoma City is the difference between the words foreign and domestic. Congress didn’t pass an AUMF against Arizona for harboring terrorists because they can’t, not because being a right wing nutjob is more acceptable… and nobody even dreams of domestic terrorism as being anything other than a law enforcement issue, and I honestly don’t see that changing. I know Glen Greenwald likes to ignore this fact, but the biggest reason why the Supreme Court didn’t slap down what the Bush administration (or Obama administration) did in regards to Gitmo and the like is the AUMF… and I just can’t see something similar being remotely plausible for an act of domestic terrorism.
J.W. Hamner
@efgoldman:
I missed the part where they busted through the door of Mosques and rounded people up. The program appears completely legal, so I confused as to why you think it counts as a “crackdown”.
Patricia Kayden
“Foreigners, Muslims, and other out-groups du jour automatically qualify as hippies, while conservative white people automatically qualify as patriots.”
Doesn’t that assume that the Righties are in complete control of determining who’s who? Where I live (Maryland), I can’t say that’s true. Thankfully, there are some truly blue states.
Nunca el Jefe
I don’t think it even has to get to the level of a violent act. Look at what happened in Greece recently; the left of any stripe can’t get any love at all. Shit, we can’t even get Republican health care plans instituted without a major freak out. We can’t have our Senate majority leader play political softball without major pant shitting. We can talk all we want about guillotines and tumbrels for economic and political reform, but that would get shut down faster than I can spell those words on my iPod.
Cargo
Right wing terrorists are always more active during Democratic presidencies. When a Republican is in office they quiet right down and go back to shooting at Mexicans.
adepsis
@J.W. Hamner:
I’m guessing you’re fine with torture and rendition as well since folks like John Yoo call them legal.
Chris
I think the main difference in how society treats them comes from who they target. The anarchist bombings of 1919 only targeted a couple dozen people and only killed about two of them – a ludicrously small number compared to what the KKK murdered on a monthly basis. But the anarchists were targeting politicians and extremely rich people, while the KKK was targeting poor people from an unpopular minority – so in the first case you got a massive overreaction and in the second case, essentially no action taken at all.
Every now and then, society spawns a group of right wing radicals who are stupid enough to behave like left wing ones in targeting the Establishment – e.g. the OAS in France – and in those cases, sure enough, the Establishment reacts just as swiftly, decisively and violently.
Chris
@General Stuck:
Hate crimes are political. If your crime is motivated even partly by your opinion of the race or religion of the person you’re targeting, how is that not political? Certainly no one would hesitate to call it “political” if it were a left wing radical attacking a banker because he’s a banker.
Someone on “Sadly, No!” once pointed out that the term “hate crime,” far from making racist criminals a special category, was actually letting them off easy: the usual term for what they’re doing is “terrorism.”
Chris
@Frankensteinbeck:
Yep and yep.
A hundred years ago, the same people were saying the same thing about how the Catholics, the Jews and the Communists were all somehow working together in some giant plot to take down All-American WASP civilization (think the Masons might have been in there too), absurdity of the premise be damned.
I’ll take “inability to handle complexity” for nine hundred dollars, Alex… with a heavy dose of navel-gazing American Exceptionalism which makes them believe that all things are defined in relation to them.
noabsolutes
I don’t think this is the line the authoritarian right is toeing. If you listen to the Limbaughs and the guys freaking out over Obama’s Kenyan anti-colonialism, ACORN, and the New Black
penisPanther nonsense, they aren’t worried that people in racial out-groups are like hippies. They’re worried that they’re nursing illegitimate grievances against good decent white Americans. It’s a very different rationale for policing, surveillance, and disenfranchisement than what leftists in predominantly-white communities and organizations face.