I think conservatives are justifiably upset by the Department of Homeland Security’s recent report on right-wing domestic terrorism. It’s not that I find the idea of violent extremism totally implausible (I don’t!), I just think that releasing something like this in the midst of a tumultuous political climate is unnecessarily provocative, particularly when the report itself includes no hard evidence on increasingly violent right-wing extremism.
Dave Weigel counters by noting that gun sales are up, the woefully schizophrenic Tea Party movement has self-consciously appropriated the language of revolution and, oh yeah, he went to a really scary gun show the other week. This is all true, though gun ownership is hardly concrete evidence of an impending insurrection, and revolutionary imagery is not exactly unknown in American politics. The Ron Paulites and the antiwar Left, for example, are no strangers to revolutionary chic, but aside from a few odious restrictions of political expression, I don’t recall anyone labeling them a threat to civil order.
“I don’t recall anyone labeling them a threat to civil order.” And yet police infiltrated numerous peaceful anti-war groups across the country over the last 8 years, in addition to anti-death penalty groups, and currently, protest organizers in Minnesota (the RNC 8) are being prosecuted under the state’s Patriot Act as terrorists.Report
d.eris –
I was going to challenge your comment, but then I caught this entry from Glenn Greenwald. Proves your point rather nicely:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/04/14/surveillance/
That said, I think my larger concerns are still valid.Report
In the end, usually, these sorts of things die out when people get bored, or find employment again…Report
E.D.,
The assumption is that the Big O’s policies will result in job opportunities for the unwashed. We’ll have to wait and see on that one.Report
Will, agreed.Report