The Oak Creek Massacre and Political Ideologies

Bob Belvedere has an interesting post, "Sikh Shooting: Don’t Buy The Leftist Lies."

Read it all at the link. I wouldn't go quite that far to say that fascism is entirely a left-wing phenomenon, and it's not true that totalitarianism is entirely found on the left of the spectrum. It would require a book-length exegesis to square the point, although Bob's right to push back against the mainstream progressive meme that  the "neo-Nazis" are associated with conservative politics. They aren't. (Speaking of books, Robert Paxton's got one of the best volumes on this, The Anatomy of Fascism.)

That said, Jonathan Capehart needs a smack over the head, the idiot. At WaPo, "Sikh temple shooting: A ‘lone wolf’ in Wisconsin":

The Department of Homeland Security warned us about the likes of Wade Michael Page, the alleged gunman who killed six people at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisc.

In an April 2009 report , entitled, “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment,” DHS warned that “lone wolves . . . embracing violent right-wing extremist ideology are the most dangerous domestic terrorism threat in the United States.” It went on to say that “white supremacist lone wolves pose the most significant domestic terrorist threat because of their low profile and autonomy — separate from any formalized group — which hampers warning efforts.” And it noted that military expertise and knowledge made lone wolves especially dangerous.

WaPo even embeds the report at that piece. And that trash report was widely condemned at the time, as bad research and abject political trash. Notice how it's sure coming in handy now.

FLASHBACK: From Michelle, "Confirmed: The Obama DHS hit job on conservatives is real":

I have covered DHS for many years and am quite familiar with past assessments they and the FBI have done on animal rights terrorists and environmental terrorists. But those past reports have always been very specific in identifying the exact groups, causes, and targets of domestic terrorism, i.e., the ALF, ELF, and Stop Huntingdon wackos who have engaged in physical harassment, arson, vandalism, and worse against pharmaceutical companies, farms, labs, and university researchers.

By contrast, the piece of crap report issued on April 7 is a sweeping indictment of conservatives. And the intent is clear. As the two spokespeople I talked with on the phone today made clear: They both pinpointed the recent “economic downturn” and the “general state of the economy” for stoking “rightwing extremism.” One of the spokespeople said he was told that the report has been in the works for a year. 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 (check this one out comparing the Tea Party movement to the Weather Underground!) and demonizes the very Americans who will be protesting in the thousands on Wednesday for the nationwide Tax Day Tea Party.

The issue isn't so much that there's are far-right reactionary ideologies. It's the double standard that progressives employ to destroy the American right by falsely equating libertarian-conservatives with the 20th century racist ideologies of pre-WWII Europe.