sabotabby | Christian militia lulz!

Entry tags:

Christian militia lulz!

nihilistic_kid posted a picture. Compare these portraits to English portraits of drunkards in the Edwardian era. Also, their website must be seen to be believed. If I didn't think I'd get in trouble for it, I'd totally show it to my students when I try (in vain, I might add) to teach them why you shouldn't tile a background image and then put red type over it.

It's amusing to poke fun of them, but expect to see more of this sort of thing. American political culture has been steeping in a higher-than-usual amount of crazy for some time now, and it's just beginning to come to a head.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

ok, if we want to eliminate attacks by foreigners, then I guess it's more like

Right-wing Christian (or non-specific religion): ~200
Right-wing Islam: ~20
Left-wing (all or no religion): ~0

And yes, if you go back to the 60s and 70s, the left-wing body count goes up to maybe 20 or so. The right-wing body count would need to be adjusted upward at least as much, though. And while the left-wing groups were extremists acting against the wishes of the broader left, most of the right-wing attacks were with the active support of the local conservative establishment (police, mayors, etc.) that saw universal suffrage as a threat to their power, to be stopped by any means necessary.

Right-wing generally means in favor of a stratified society and strong support for traditional values. I'd think any Muslim advocating for redistributing the wealth of the rich and permitting lesbians to marry would be considered leftist. On the other hand, Al Qaeda supports a harsh traditional theocratic rule, more extreme but very similar to policies advocated for by the christian right in the U.S. As for stratified society, I have heard nothing in their propaganda or actions that suggests they want to lessen stratification. And their hierarchical, anti-democratic system of government would certainly cement economic stratification.

Why focus on body counts? In the U.S. bodies we take our corpses very seriously. If somebody kills somebody, it gets counted. And it's hard to argue about how severely someone was killed.

Now, vandalism, threats, waving signs, etc. That's all open to subjective interpretation and really the historical and cultural context means quite a lot. If the KKK has just brutally killed a couple voting registration activists in town and someone one night hangs a noose in the tree outside the house where you and your wife and kids live, that's a pretty serious big deal - you'll probably leave town that day. If someone emails a picture of a noose to Obama, I think we can agree it's less of a big deal.

Likewise, with animal rights activists. How many people have animal rights activists killed in the past 20 years? None. How many people have anti-abortion activists killed in the past 20 years? Nine (see wikipedia). Sure, we can quibble about how serious various death threats or rocks through windows are, and we can quibble about rock counts, but there's no way to get an objective comparison.

Bodies, on the other hand, get counted. There are nine people who had a gun pointed at them by anti-abortion activists, the killers pulled the trigger, the guns fired, the bullets ripped through them, and they ceased to live as a result.

As far as I know, and correct me if I'm wrong, but in the past 20 years in the U.S., that has never happened with an animal rights activist. And I think the same is true of Communists of various stripes. The same can't be said for neo-nazis.

And while the left-wing groups were extremists acting against the wishes of the broader left, most of the right-wing attacks were with the active support of the local conservative establishment

Would you have a citation on that?

Right-wing generally means in favor of a stratified society and strong support for traditional values.

Well, economically, right-wing means free market. You are, so to speak, alluding to the alleged fact that on Nolan's political compass players are roughly aligned along the diagonal from libertarian left to authoritarian right. Yet the totalitarian left and the libertarian right deviate from that line significantly. But okay.

I do not know of any people killed by animal rights activists, but I do not see why property damage due to eco-terrorism should be particularly difficult to estimate, or be subject to vastly divergent interpretations. The FBI estimates the costs of eco-terrorism in the five year period 2003-2008 to be about 200 million dollars (see wikipedia). If I may be allowed a moment of grim and rather irrelevant cynicism, that's significantly more than the added values of the life insurances of nine typical individuals. And we haven't counted any G20 protests and their likes yet. The Battle of Seattle alone cost taxpayers above 20 million dollars.

Financial costs of right-wing inspired property damage? I don't know, you are welcome to enlighten me. Only American Christians, conservatives or right-wingers count, because this whole discussion springs to life from what is a perceived danger coming from that direction - something the media has been munching on as of late.

"Would you have a citation on that?"

Some might attack you for your ignorance, but everyone is ignorant at various points in their lives, and I see this as a great opportunity for you to grow as a person.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyes_on_the_Prize

Rent it, watch it. Think about it. You claim to be in favor of laissez-faire - if that's the case, you should be especially interested in the horrible market distortion that was Jim Crow laws. These laws were enacted by a portion of the white ruling class and were defending bitterly. At times the violence came openly from the police at the direction of those in power, at times the police made a point of standing idly by watching the violence, and at times it happened in secret at night, with a wink and a nod.

Can you think of any cases like this involving left-wing violence:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_Rides#Mob_violence_in_Montgomery

Contrast that with liberal and even left-wing reactions to the Weatherman's Days of Rage.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Days_of_Rage

One reason to count bodies rather than property damage or even injuries is that in the case of the KKK violence in Montgomery, the victims feared for their lives afterwards and did not want to officially register their injuries or property destroyed. In the case of the vastly tamer violence from the Weatherman, "28 policemen were injured (none seriously)". But in such a situation, any bystanders would have a strong incentive to report their injuries to the police, and the police have an even stronger incentive, since they are financially compensated for even minor injuries - plus, the slightest bruise can be used by police to prove that the arrestee resisted arrest and therefore police force was justified.

Your quote about the Battle in Seattle costing $20 million dollars is ridiculous. The figure is actually "damage to commercial businesses from vandalism and lost sales has been estimated at $20 million"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WTO_Ministerial_Conference_of_1999_protest_activity#Aftermath

And of that $20 million the vast majority was lost sales. And sales were lost because shoppers didn't want to inhale teargas or risk being randomly arrested or shot with rubber bullets. You might be able to make an argument that somehow that was indirectly the fault of protestors (likewise the WTO), but you certainly wouldn't be foolish enough to claim that police teargas against leftists is an example of leftist violence.

Actual property damage was very little - a bunch of broken windows and some spray paint. By focusing on the dollar amount of the damage rather than body count, you get into a ridiculous situation where anarchists breaking one $5000 window in an unoccupied downtown store is considered equal to the KKK breaking $50 windows in all 100 houses of blacks in a small town in Mississippi trying to register to vote.

You see the problem?

Oh, yeah, rightwing property damage (looking just at the Oklahoma City bombing):
"The bomb was estimated to have caused at least $652 million worth of damage."

That doesn't include lost sales to surrounding businesses, or, you know, all the bodies.

Good stuff. I see you mostly went back to the 60's and the 70's. Is that because back in those days violence was in your opinion more equally distributed, so you are arguing a harder case? But then, you keep talking about the KKK, and it didn't do much in the past 20 years.

One thing here I will contend is your proposal that only direct property damage be counted. Police presence in Seattle was a reasonable security measure (though not all of its conduct may have been), and it came as a response to anarchist presence. The costs incurred by governmental structures are legitimately counted in the overall damage. So is damage to businesses. Of course, in the case that police reaction is unreasonable, one needn't blame demonstrators alone for it.

Regarding the wink and the nod during periods of violence, it's also a bit of a gray area - and I say that without having watched Eyes on the Prize, or knowing nearly anything about American history. Peace rides, from what I read, were intended as a "test". The line between test and provocation in such cases may be thin. In particular, I care more about actual routine (and undisputed) violence against Blacks in the south more than I do about the beating up of activists. Organized violence against Blacks is recently down from what I understand.

Shifting focus, leftie elites - academic ones in this case - in some cases do condone activism that involves riots, property damage and so on. Do you know of conservative or right-wing university professors calling for, or easily accepting, similar actions?

Having said all that, I accept that violence that is less loosely associated with extreme fractions of the general right than with their left counterparts has generally exercised more terror. Arguing that this implies that right-wingers are in general bigots and left-wingers are generally nice is left as an exercise for the propagandist. Incidentally, we happen to find ourselves in the journal of one.

I'm saying we can argue about varying amounts of damage, but it would be pointless and subjective. Regardless, by any measure, Timothy McVeigh and his friends did far more financial damage in 1995 than probably the whole history of left-wing violence in the U.S. And if we're going to count hard-to-measure indirect expenses, we need to count the impact on Oklahoma's multi-billion dollar per-year tourism industry in the aftermath of the bombing. (again, leaving aside those pesky bodies)

And why focus on 15 year old violence vs. right now? Well, it took 3 years from the moment Clinton was elected for the right-wing militia movement to really pick up steam, culminating in the Oklahoma City bomb, but preceded by steady rapid escalation and growth of right-wing violence. Look at the stats for anti-abortion murders. Nothing for years, then from 1993 to 1998, there were nine murders, and then nothing again until 2009. It's no coincidence that the murders took place during a time of heated and violent rhetoric from relatively mainstream conservatives opposing democratic presidents.

I'm sure it takes a while to organize a right-wing terrorist group to the point of being able to kill 168 people and cause hundreds of millions of dollars of destruction. Obama's only been in office a year. Even in light of current right-wing violence, Republican politicians are refusing to back away from inflammatory and violent speech. Give it a couple more years and we'll see.

As for the freedom rides, it was a test. A test to see if black people could exercise their right to register to vote. I'm not sure why you're more concerned about "routine" violence. That would seem to be apolitical, random violence as opposed to violence intended to keep blacks from being equal citizens. And, really, the political violence was "routine", though it tended to greatly increase when blacks were closer to achieving their goal (which generally was just to be able to vote, remember).

Sure, some lefist academics condone violence by people with little power. And most right-wing academics condone violence by people with a lot of power. Though both tended to support the violent riots in Iran recently.

"Arguing that this implies that right-wingers are in general bigots and left-wingers are generally nice is left as an exercise for the propagandist."

Whether they're bigots or not, right-wingers want a system where the powerful stay powerful and the powerless stay powerless. That doesn't sound very "nice" to me.

The factoid about anti-abortion murders is interesting too, thanks. As for the rest, I could argue with some of it, but frankly, I am quite satisfied with the responses that I got from you and terry_terrible by now. t_t convinced me that one of the examples used by conservatives to support claims of leftie "terrorism" was not appropriate. Your wikipedia links, along with other things, made me admit that my original argument all but lay in ruins, and that I was quite convinved that as far as acts of exercizing terror on civilians was concerned, right-wing extremists were more dangerous in America than their left-wing brothers. I'm happy now. With your factual knowledge you have solved the problem that sabotabby did not want, or perhaps could not, solve - namely, that of my ignorance in some areas of American politics and history. I thank you for taking the time to do so, and apologize in a way for the time it took you. See, the reaction I usually get in heavily politically-oriented blogs (of both orientations) for asking questions and voicing doubts is sneering, name-calling and skewing of my words or their intent. And that's when I get any reaction at all. You did little by way of expressing either of the above, so you were rather refreshing to talk to.

That I don't tend to buy simplistic arguments as the one in the final paragraph of your comment above is not really relevant to this discussion.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Christian militia lulz!

Re: Christian militia lulz!

Re: Christian militia lulz!

Re: Christian militia lulz!

Re: Christian militia lulz!

Re: Christian militia lulz!

Thank you for the music