How Southern politicians hamstrung the fight against right-wing domestic terror
21st August 2019 · 0 Comments
By Greg Huffman
Contributing Writer
(Special from Facing South) — Back in April 2009, an internal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) report on political violence by radicalized right-wing groups and individuals operating in the U.S. was leaked to a conservative radio host in California. Driven by coverage from WorldNetDaily, a right-wing website that promotes false conspiracy theories, news of the leak went viral in the newly ascendant tea party circles.
The report, titled “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment,” was a joint project between DHS and the FBI as part of a law enforcement training module on domestic terrorism that was created in 2007 under the Bush administration.
Given the recent violence linked to white-supremacist ideology, including the mass shootings on July 28 at a garlic festival in California and on Aug. 3 at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, the report is eerily prophetic.
DHS laid out the increase in violent white-supremacist and other extremist groups driven by conspiracy theories. The report also discussed the role of economic hardship and global trade on demographic groups susceptible to recruitment, the danger of domestic terror groups recruiting members of the armed forces, and the burgeoning role of social media being used for indoctrination and propaganda.
The report noted risk factors for domestic terrorism including the election of the first Black president and the Great Recession. It also cited the tendency of domestic terrorists to use divisive issues like abortion as recruitment tools, and it devoted an entire section to illegal immigration as a motivating factor for right-wing extremists. In addition, DHS called out the rising risk of “lone wolf” and small cell attacks that come with little to no warning but with great violence.
What was the reaction to the report? Congressional Republicans, driven by conservative media, had a proverbial cow. As did the exploding tea party movement.
GOP members of Congress immediately accused federal law enforcement of taking part in a political witch hunt. They distorted, mischaracterized and misquoted parts of the report that discussed the recruitment of veterans into radical movements, accusing DHS and the Obama administration of being unpatriotic and smearing veterans. They complained that DHS was calling core Republican tenets, like opposition to abortion, “terrorist” ideology — never mind that the report addressed only illegal activity and the risk thereof.
And members of Congress from Southern states — some of which have since experienced attacks by domestic right-wing extremists — played key roles in shutting down action in response to the report.
Terror denialists
Backed by fellow Republican lawmakers including Reps. Michael McCaul of Texas and Gus Bilirakis of Florida, Peter King of New York, then the ranking minority member of the House Homeland Security Committee, promptly called for hearings to investigate DHS and the report. All three men continue to serve in the House today and were among the lawmakers who last month voted against a House resolution to condemn President Trump’s use of racist language. Responding to the El Paso massacre, McCaul tweeted that he was “overwhelmed with grief” and would “continue to monitor the situation.”
Soon after the DHS report came to light, House Republicans took to the floor to attack the agency and the document. They were led by Rep. John Carter, a Texas Republican and a key figure in the racist “birther” movement that sought to cast doubt on President Obama’s U.S. citizenship. Carter decried the report as slurring the U.S. armed forces:
One of the things they tell us in this report is very sad in light of what our Army has been going through, which is to watch out for returning, disgruntled military veterans coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan in that they have the potential to be right-wing terrorists.
In doing so, Carter ignored previous domestic terror attacks involving white-supremacist U.S. veterans, such as the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that killed more than 160 people and wounded almost 700 others; the 1995 murder of a Black couple in Fayetteville, North Carolina, by neo-Nazi members of the 82nd Airborne, a crime that revealed a violent white supremacist cell operating out of nearby Fort Bragg; and the 2008 attack on a Unitarian Universalist congregation in Knoxville, Tennessee, in which two people were killed and six wounded. He also ignored the 2006 findings of Pentagon investigators that hundreds, possibly thousands, of active-duty service members belonged to violent white supremacist organizations.
Carter, who continues to represent Texas in the House, at the time was joined in condemning the report on the House floor by Rep. Virginia Foxx, a Republican who continues to represent North Carolina. After a rambling statement regarding states rights and the 10th Amendment, Foxx — ignoring a history of terrorist attacks against U.S. abortion clinics and providers — said:
There is also not a shred of evidence anywhere to back up the claim made here that pro-life Americans who hold deeply rooted beliefs in the immorality of abortion are a threat to our Homeland Security.
On May 31, 2009, only several weeks after Foxx made those remarks on the House floor, Dr. George Tiller, an abortion provider, was assassinated in Kansas by an anti-abortion extremist. Tiller was murdered while worshipping at church.
Foxx has proven less than eager to speak out about right-wing extremist violence. In fact, the Winston-Salem Journal recently called her out for her silence in the wake of the El Paso massacre. Carter has also refrained from tweeting or releasing a formal statement about the shooting.
Among the other Southern lawmakers who took to the House floor to attack the DHS report were Texas Republicans Kevin Brady and Michael Burgess. They also decried the report’s mention of military veterans. Brady said the focus needed to be on the “real terrorists,” by which he apparently meant Muslims:
It seems to me we have got the gun pointed at ourselves when we really ought to be, again, protecting this country against the real terrorists who threaten our way of life, not those inside who are trying to preserve it.
Questioned recently by a reporter in the wake of the El Paso massacre, Brady said he was “horrified” and cited a need to “go deeper than just a bumper sticker issue,” adding: “This one is going to take real thought and real action.” Meanwhile, Burgess appeared on Fox News to praise Trump’s statement about the recent shootings and his mention of temporary gun-violence protective orders, adding that he thought part of the tragedy of the situation was that some House members were reluctant to give the president a political win.
Fox News also served as a platform for GOP lawmakers to denounce the DHS report back in 2009. For example, former Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas complained to the outlet that DHS was profiling Americans based solely on their political ideology, while Florida’s Bilirakis appeared on Fox to demand that DHS apologize for insinuating veterans would commit acts of terror.
The DHS report faced attacks in the U.S. Senate as well.
This article originally published in the August 19, 2019 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
