White extremists, the prime architects of domestic terrorism
Dealing the immigrant bashing card, President Trump posed a rhetorical question about illegal border crossings to his adoring followers in Panama City, Florida, last week: "So how do you stop them?"
"Shoot them!" bellowed a voice from the audience.
The president of the United States, our enabler-in-chief, responded with a "joke:" "That's only in the Panhandle you can get away with that stuff. Only in the Panhandle."
Wasn't funny. Trump rouses the darker side of the American dream, demonizing people fleeing gang violence in Central America and once proposing that all Muslims be banned from entering America.
But if you stop and think, what -- and who -- is the source of domestic terror in the United States, a radically different picture emerges. It springs primarily from white extremists and has spread across the country, and crossed both Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
It's been a nearly quarter-century since an anti-government fanatic named Timothy McVeigh blew up the federal building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people. As we approach the nearly-25 years since then, just recently we've seen a racist teenager murder and maim at a San Diego synagogue, while a man named Brendon Harrison Tarrant shot to death 50 people at two Christchurch, New Zealand, synagogues.
His brain packed with alt-right theories, Tarrant posted his own killing spree. He had earlier ranted admiration for Trump as "a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose." He admired, as well, Anders Breivik, the Norwegian right-wing terrorist who murdered 77 people at an island camp in 2011.
"Right wing extremists were linked to at least 50 extremist-related murders in the United States in 2018, making them responsible for more deaths than in any year since 1995," the Anti-Defamation League said in a year-end report.
https://www.seattlepi.com/local/politics/article/Connelly-White-extremists-domestic-terrorism-trump-13837268.php?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailynewsletterspi&utm_term=spi
