Subscribe to RSSWarning Signs, Ignored By the Right
The Right…
Fox News commentators, conservative pundits and members of the right-wing bloggerati have been hammering a Department of Homeland Security report that was released in April which warned of an increase in violence by right-wing extremists, leading the department to walk back from the report’s claims.
…is Wrong.
In just the last few days, we have seen several attacks carried out by the very right-wing extremists that Janet Napolitano warned could turn violent. First was the murder of Kansas doctor George Tiller, who was shot in church because of his commitment to performing perfectly legal late term abortions, one of the only doctors in the country to do so.
That was followed by James von Brunn’s horrific rampage at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, where von Brunn—a noted white supremacist with strong ties to the Ku Klux Klan—murdered a security guard and shot at tourists before being shot himself.
And today, news is still being pieced together about the murder of Raul Flores and his nine-year-old daughter in Arizona. One of the three people charged in the murder is Shawna Forde, the executive director of the vigilante group Minutemen American Defense.
Yet the right continues to refute the claims and warnings laid out very plainly in the DHS report. What’s more, conservatives are downplaying or outright omitting pieces of information that would seem to link all these perpetrators to right-wing extremist groups at all.
After it was revealed that von Brunn had ties to the KKK and had been connected to various other extremist groups, Fox News began to phase out the words “holocaust” and “James von Brunn,” to the point that during the entire primetime lineup on Fox News, those words were uttered all of three times. In other words, Fox News took the biggest story of the day and reduced it to a 30 second side note during their most-watched programs because it confirmed what Fox News hosts had been denying for weeks.
Fox News’ Shephard Smith was one notable exception. On his program, he cited the right’s criticism of the DHS report and conceded that the report may actually be worth exploring. Earlier in the week, Smith also noted that the emails he receives daily from viewers were growing “”more and more frightening” by the month, presumably since President Obama took office in January.
Now, groups like judicial advocacy organization People for the American Way are calling on the Department of Homeland Security to expedite their updated version of the report. But one has to wonder: if conservative groups hadn’t forced DHS to rescind the report in the first place, might some of the tragedies we have witnessed been avoided? Thanks to Limbaugh, O’Reilly, Beck, Hannity and all their supporters, we will never know.
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