Upon Obama's victory they made some important observations following up on recent intelligence they've published:
In all the euphoria after the election of Barack Obama, it is tempting to see the era of overt racism in the United States as past, a dead letter that has no relevance in a country that has finally overcome its ugly history. But sadly, that would be a mistake. Obama’s election reflects the fact that the country has made enormous progress in the area of race relations and is likely to propel it to even greater heights. But progress is never a straight line. There is always the danger of a backlash.
Even before the campaign was over, racial rage, clearly driven by fear of a black man in the White House, began to break out around the country. Effigies of Obama appeared hanging from nooses on university campuses. Angry supporters of John McCain and Sarah Palin shouted “Kill him!” at a campaign rally and even screamed “nigger” at a black cameraman, telling him, “Sit down, boy!” The head of the Hillsborough County, Fla., Republican Party sent an E-mail warning members of “the threat” of “carloads of black Obama supporters coming from the inner city to cast their votes.” A reporter who has covered every presidential election since 1980 told me he had never seen such fury. Similar scenes were reported nationwide.
Naturally, the rage also engulfed the radical right. Thom Robb, an Arkansas Klan leader, described for a reporter the “race war” he sees developing “between our people, who I see as the rightful owners and leaders of this great country, and their people, the blacks.” In Tennessee, two neo-Nazi skinheads went further, allegedly planning to murder black schoolchildren, shoot and behead other African Americans, and assassinate Obama. They were arrested two weeks before the election.
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“Historically, when times get tough in our nation, that’s how movements like ours gain a foothold,” Jeff Schoep, the leader of the National Socialist Movement, a neo-Nazi group with 73 chapters in 34 states, told USA Today. “When the economy suffers, people are looking for answers. … We are the answer for white people.”
Unfortunately, Schoep is right. And the economic meltdown set in motion by the subprime crisis is not the only reason. Indeed, there seems to be a kind of perfect storm brewing of factors favoring the growth of hate and hate groups.
(...)
David Duke, the former Klan leader and convicted felon who is the closest thing the radical right has to an intellectual leader these days, believes this could all work to his benefit. In an essay this summer, the neo-Nazi ideologue argued that an Obama victory would serve as a “visual aid” to white Americans, provoking a backlash that Duke believes will “result in a dramatic increase in our ranks.”
An observation the group has yet to make is a parallel to the early and mid 90s. You will remember (if you have an historical memory longer than the last news cycle, almost unheard of in our postmodern dystopia) that in 1992 the right and far right raised questions about Bill Clinton's patriotism, suggesting that his Rhodes Scholar-era trip to the Soviet Union was actually based on his recruitment to the KGB. I suppose they were all proven right when Clinton transitioned the country to Marxist-Leninism, eh comrades, eh? They also painted him as a hippie flower child leftist who would take away everyone's guns, throw open the prison doors and outlaw straight sex. They worked themselves up into a lather.
The right wing ignored what actually happened--Clinton did all of the things Reagan and Bush wanted to do but could never get away with: ending welfare, gutting our financial regulatory apparatus, passing the Effective Death Penalty Act, etc. They ignored it and further stoked their fevered followers until right wing true believers across the country were organizing militias, stockpiling arms and preparing for partisan warfare. The climax of this inanity was the tragedy of Oklahoma City when 168 people were killed by men who believed they were doing the righteous work of liberty--a belief fertilized by Clinton hate and the right wing media circus that shat it out.
Now we have a Black man with a funny name on his way to the White House, and for months the right wing has suggested that he is a "secret Muslim" dedicated to the most dangerous political interpretations of that faith. They also believe him to be a Marxist, a traitor and an election theif (all the malarkey about ACORN suggests this). All this to say that the rhetoric surrounding Obama makes that against Clinton seem rather tepid. Add his race to the mix, and the far right will have even hotter flames firing than those that led to OKC in 1995.
Finally, many of the retrogrades who went away for 10-15 years in the aftermath of that conglagration for criminal conspiracy, weapons violations and other such charges are getting out of prison. They are leaving their cages more bitter, more organized and with internet communications that have proven to be invaluable to terrorist and revolutionary organizations around the globe.
All this to say, we are entering a dangerous time. Clinton only made things worse by massacring the Branch Davidians, creating gun-toting martyrs and a casus belli for the far right. Obama is unlikely to be presented with an opportunity for such a crime, and I frankly believe that his temperament would make such a repeat less likely. But the elevation of a Black man to the White House could be enough in its own right. I fear that Oklahoma City will be seen at the end of Obama's years in office as only the first in a series of spectacular tin-pot fascist crimes. Here's hoping the SPLC and I are both way off base.
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