May 31, 2009

Where’s the Indignant Outrage Over the DHS Warning About Right-Wing Extremist Groups in the Wake of George Tiller’s Murder?

“This is particularly heart wrenching because George was shot down in his house of worship, a place of peace.”

— Family of George Tiller

So, the Department of Homeland Security’s assessment, “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment,” was dead-on — not that we ever doubted that assessment for a minute, but to hear the right-wingers themselves talk, you’d think Barack Obama was leading the DHS in some big conspiracy to attack poor, little, shat-upon conservatives who never did anything worse than vote for John McCain.

A “piece of crap report,” sputtered Michelle Malkin. A “sweeping indictment of conservatives. And the intent is clear. … My b.s. detector went off the chart, and yours will, too, if you read through the entire report — which asserts with no evidence that an unquantified ‘resurgence in rightwing extremist recruitment and radicalizations activity’ is due to home foreclosures, job losses, and… the historical presidential election.

“In Obama land, there are no coincidences. It is no coincidence that this report echoes Tea Party-bashing left-wing blogs … and demonizes the very Americans who will be protesting in the thousands on Wednesday for the nationwide Tax Day Tea Party.”

Newsbusters’ Noel Sheppard framed his own declaration as a question: “Is the Obama administration now fueling the fire of the Left’s War Against Conservative Opinion?”

And Newt Gingrich, almost certainly the GOP’s pick for 2012, tweeted: “The person who drafted the outrageous homeland security memo smearing veterans and conservatives should be fired”.

So, where’s all this self-righteous outrage now, after high-profile late-term abortion doctor George Tiller — long a target of anti-choice groups — was shot to death in the vestibule of his church this morning?

Predictably, the National Right to Life Committee was quick to issue a statement condemning the murder, claiming the group “has always been involved in peaceful, legal activities to protect human lives threatened by abortion, infanticide and euthanasia.”

We had to visit Christian Newswire to learn what Operation Rescue has to say, because the anti-choice extremist organization’s Web site is not responding — perhaps because of heavy traffic, or perhaps because someone is trying to scrub more than 1,100 pages focusing on George Tiller.

In any case, Operation Rescue is “shocked” — shocked, I tell you!

Troy Newman, President of Operation Rescue: “We are shocked at this morning’s disturbing news that Mr. Tiller was gunned down. Operation Rescue has worked for years through peaceful, legal means, and through the proper channels to see him brought to justice. We denounce vigilantism and the cowardly act that took place this morning. We pray for Mr. Tiller’s family that they will find comfort and healing that can only be found in Jesus Christ.”

Rrrrright, Troy.

Eric Robert Rudolph, the government says, bombed an abortion clinic in Birmingham, Ala., earlier this year, killing a police officer and partially blinding a nurse. Agents also want to question him about the bombings of an Atlanta area clinic and a lesbian bar, attacks which injured seven bystanders. And many suspect Rudolph of involvement in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bombing which killed one person and injured 100 others.

To many, these targets seem unrelated. But they are not.

More and more, anti-abortion extremists, white supremacist groups and the conspiracy-minded “Patriot” movement have come to share the same enemies list. Many in these previously separate movements agree that everything smacking of “one-worldism” — the Olympics, the United Nations and any other global agency — is part of a massive plot to subject Americans to tyranny.

Activists in all three movements describe homosexuals as “sodomites,” people who deserve capital punishment. And in the latest development, many of those involved in these groups are bitterly attacking abortion. …

Larry Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America, helped Operation Rescue at a time when it was facing a $50,000 fine. Pratt’s Committee to Protect the Family Foundation raised nearly $150,000 to pay Operation Rescue’s bills, without that organization ever holding the money. Pratt only halted his fundraising when a judge ruled that the foundation could be held liable for Operation Rescue’s fines.

Pratt has spoken at white supremacist gatherings and has long advocated formation of armed militias. …

These kinds of ties reflect a basic fact about all three movements: Patriots, white supremacists and anti-abortion militants are all fueled by interpretations of religion.

The militant anti-abortion movement is driven by three different but overlapping theologies that motivate violence: Christian Reconstructionism, Christian Identity and apocalyptic Catholicism. To understand this movement’s increased militancy and its goal of instituting a theocracy — a goal that by definition means ending democracy — it is necessary to examine these three ideological strands. …

The late Francis Schaeffer, a Reformed Presbyterian, also was influenced by Reconstructionism. His widely distributed books and films of the 1970s and early 1980s are generally credited with providing an important catalyst for evangelical involvement in anti-abortion politics.

Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry, a charismatic evangelical, was originally inspired by Schaeffer, although within a few years he went beyond him. In 1988, Terry was personally tutored by a leading Reconstructionist thinker, Gary North, according to the recent book Wrath of Angels: The American Abortion War, by James Risen and Judy L. Thomas.

Also in 1988, North wrote a book urging anti-abortion organizations to move beyond Schaefferism and forge a theocratic movement that might eventually force “a political and military” confrontation.

Operation Rescue’s “physical interposition” at clinics, he believed, was but the first step “in the philosophical war against political pluralism. … Christian leaders can see where these protests may be headed, even if their followers cannot: to a total confrontation with the civilization of secular humanism.”

The influence on Terry was obvious. By 1995, he was telling an Operation Rescue gathering that America must be governed by biblical law and that Christians may need to “take up the sword” and “overthrow the tyrannical regime that oppresses them.

Another Reconstructionist theorist is Rev. Michael Bray, the convicted mastermind behind a series of 1984 bombings in Maryland, Delaware and the District of Columbia. Bray’s targets included clinics, the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Abortion Federation, a trade association of abortion providers.

Following a prison term, Bray published a 1990 paper entitled “Ethics of Operation Rescue,” in which he argued that “Christians who rescue innocents from the slaughter are simply extending mercy.”

Although Bray had not yet publicly endorsed vigilante murder of abortion providers, he did offer the Reconstructionist justification for revolution under “lesser magistrates” — a doctrine under which biblical rebels need only enlist lower-level government officials in order to win divine sanction for political insurrection against government. …

The 1993 assassination of Dr. Gunn affected Bray, who described it approvingly as a “rational way of following the Operation Rescue dictum: ‘If you believe abortion is murder, then act like it.’” While most people involved in “rescue” activities stop far short of advocating murder, Bray by 1994 was arguing for the “principle of revolution” and establishing a “Christian government” in his seminal work, A Time to Kill.

Bray’s friend and fellow Reconstructionist, the former Orthodox Presbyterian minister Paul Hill, became known in this period for arguing that the killing of abortion providers was justifiable. In 1994, Hill moved from talk to action, murdering a doctor and his escort, and wounding the escort’s wife, in Pensacola, Fla. Hill, now awaiting execution, also called for armed theocratic revolution under the “lesser magistrate” doctrine. …

The influence of the Patriot movement is in some ways personified by Matt Trewhella, whose Operation Rescue faction was renamed Missionaries to the Preborn in 1990. By 1994, Trewhella had emerged as a leader in the young U.S. Taxpayers Party, along with Randall Terry and others from Operation Rescue. …

The proponents and practitioners of anti-abortion violence see themselves as engaged in a literal, and not merely rhetorical, war with the larger culture. Many of them engage in the activities of war, from the creation of military manuals to the stockpiling of supplies. They train in operations, reconnaissance and intelligence-gathering.

The most notorious form of intelligence-gathering has been of the details of the lives and personal schedules of abortion providers. In one such project, activists identified the successor to the murdered Dr. David Gunn, creating “unwanted” posters with his photo, home address and details about his vehicle.

It was this information that provided Paul Hill with the opportunity to assassinate the doctor and his escort. The details of how Dr. John Britton was identified were written up as a case study in Life Advocate magazine.

This kind of targeting of abortion providers has been routine for years, but it is growing, as evidenced by the Web site run by Georgia-based Neal Horsley. …
— Frederick Clarkson
Anti-Abortion Extremists:
‘Patriots’ and racists converge
SPLC Intelligence Report
Summer 1998

And what are the rest of the right-wing extremists who attacked Tiller all these years saying today?

Bill O’Reilly was quick in trying to cover his own culpability: “I’m entirely confident that my constant railing against this guy had nothing to do with this.”

Randall Terry himself (who, by the way, is “available for comment at 904-687-9804″) is at least being honest in his reaction to the murder of George Tiller:

George Tiller was a mass-murderer. We grieve for him that he did not have time to properly prepare his soul to face God. I am more concerned that the Obama Administration will use Tiller’s killing to intimidate pro-lifers into surrendering our most effective rhetoric and actions. Abortion is still murder. And we still must call abortion by its proper name; murder.

Those men and women who slaughter the unborn are murderers according to the Law of God. We must continue to expose them in our communities and peacefully protest them at their offices and homes, and yes, even their churches.

As for the rest of the anti-choicers who have stalked George Tiller all these years… we’re still waiting to hear from them.

See also:

Paul Jennings Hill
Conservative Babylon

Neal Horsley
Conservative Babylon

Anti-Abortion Violence: Two decades of arson, bombs and murder
SPLC Intelligence Report, Summer 1998

The Propagandist: Neal Horsley, America’s leading anti-abortion webmaster, is the profane voice of the extreme Christian right
SPLC Intelligence Report, Spring 2002

Faith-Based Killing: Come Here, Righties — We Need to Talk
Lavender Newswire, July 31, 2008

Posted by: Sapphocrat

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