The real danger of right-wing extremists

Posted: June 01, 2009

© 2009


Author's note: Although I wrote the following article two weeks ago for the June edition of Whistleblower (titled "DON'T TREAD ON ME," for release later this week), the murder of Wichita abortionist George Tiller, M.D., makes its message especially urgent.

There's only one thing that could seriously, perhaps fatally, derail all the principled, well-intentioned, patriotic efforts currently taking place to rein in the shocking and unconstitutional power-grabbing by Barack Obama and the Democrat-controlled Congress. And that would be for elements on the Right to turn to violence.

Such a turn of events would do much more than validate all the government's warnings about "right-wing extremists." It would signal an immediate change of law, culture and public policy that would result in vastly increased government control over our lives and vastly diminished constitutional rights for citizens. For this very reason, we must realize that leftist leaders secretly would relish an eruption of violence on the Right.

This is nothing new. Abortion rights activists derive tremendous public relations value when an abortion clinic is bombed. So even though anti-abortion violence is extremely rare and is utterly repudiated by every pro-life organization and leader, abortion activists nevertheless love to paint pro-lifers as "violence-prone." Why? Because abortion-clinic violence helps their cause. It elicits sympathy toward them, anger toward the anti-abortion side, and a powerful push for new laws benefitting the abortion camp.

Of course, the classic example of a leader exploiting an attack on the establishment – an attack he himself almost surely instigated – is the Reichstag fire. No sooner was Berlin's parliament building mysteriously torched in 1933 than Adolf Hitler moved with lightning speed to annihilate individual rights and ruthlessly consolidate his power. Here's how Jacob Hornberger, founder of the libertarian Future of Freedom Foundation, retells this famous story:
On January 30, 1933, President Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler chancellor of Germany. Although the National Socialists never captured more than 37 percent of the national vote, and even though they still held a minority of cabinet posts and fewer than 50 percent of the seats in the Reichstag, Hitler and the Nazis set out to consolidate their power. With Hitler as chancellor, that proved to be a fairly easy task.

On February 27, Hitler was enjoying supper at the Goebbels home when the telephone rang with an emergency message: "The Reichstag is on fire!" Hitler and Goebbels rushed to the fire, where they encountered Hermann Goering, who would later become Hitler's air minister. Goering was shouting at the top of his lungs, "This is the beginning of the Communist revolution! We must not wait a minute. We will show no mercy. Every Communist official must be shot, where he is found. Every Communist deputy must this very day be strung up."

The day after the fire, the Prussian government announced that it had found communist publications stating: "Government buildings, museums, mansions and essential plants were to be burned down. … Women and children were to be sent in front of terrorist groups. … The burning of the Reichstag was to be the signal for a bloody insurrection and civil war. … It has been ascertained that today was to have seen throughout Germany terrorist acts against individual persons, against private property, and against the life and limb of the peaceful population, and also the beginning of general civil war."

So how was Goering so certain that the fire had been set by communist terrorists? Arrested on the spot was a Dutch communist named Marinus van der Lubbe. Most historians now believe that van der Lubbe was actually duped by the Nazis into setting the fire and probably was even assisted by them, without his realizing it.

Why would Hitler and his associates turn a blind eye to an impending terrorist attack on their national congressional building or actually assist with such a horrific deed? Because they knew what government officials have known throughout history – that during extreme national emergencies, people are most scared and thus much more willing to surrender their liberties in return for "security." And that's exactly what happened during the Reichstag terrorist crisis.

Indeed, Hitler is reported to have described the Reichstag fire as a beacon from heaven, telling a news reporter at the scene: "You are now witnessing the beginning of a great epoch in German history. ... This fire is the beginning."

The "great epoch" started the next day, Feb. 28, 1933, when Hitler demanded an emergency decree to deal with the "crisis," which he persuaded the aged President Hinderburg to sign, "for the Protection of the people and the State."

Here's what the decree stated, according to HistoryPlace.com: "Restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press; on the rights of assembly and association; and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications and warrants for house searches, orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed."

Thus, in this age of rebellion against tyrannical government, in the form of tea parties, demonstrations, "9-12ers," the state sovereignty movement of legislators across the country and all the other inspiring ways Americans are working to preserve liberty and goodness in this land, understand a few of things.

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First: The people you're opposing are not the enemy – they are fellow Americans. But they're not "connected up" to the same conscience, the same common sense, the same normal sensibilities that you are. Whatever strange influences have shaped their lives and twisted their thinking, at this moment they: 1) think wrong is right and right is wrong, 2) are intent on imposing their destructive agenda on America, and 3) regard you as potentially dangerous. Here's how Lt. Col. Oliver North, as true-blue an American as you're ever likely to meet, put it recently:
According to the U.S. government, I am an extremist.

I am a Christian and meet regularly with other Christians to study God's word. My faith convinces me the prophesies in the Holy Bible are true. I believe in the sanctity of human life, oppose abortion and want to preserve marriage as the union of a man and a woman.

I am a veteran with skills and knowledge derived from military training and combat. I own several firearms, frequently shoot them, buy ammunition and consider efforts to infringe on my Second Amendment rights to be wrong and unconstitutional.

I fervently support the sovereignty of the United States, am deeply concerned about our economy, increasingly higher taxes, illegal immigration, soaring unemployment and actions by our government that will bury my children beneath a mountain of debt.

Apparently, all this makes me a "right-wing extremist." At least that's what it says in the April 7, 2009 "assessment" issued by the Office of Intelligence and Analysis at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The nine-page report, titled, "Right-wing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment," is full of warnings about American citizens who share any of my background or subscribe to the beliefs above. It is one of the most alarming documents produced by our government that I have ever read.

Second: Understand that the government is serious about "right-wingers" being a threat. Weeks before the Department of Homeland Security released its much-maligned report warning that pro-lifers, Second Amendment proponents, Ron Paul supporters and even military vets returning from war could be dangerous "right-wing extremists" – meaning domestic terrorists – the FBI launched a national operation targeting white supremacists and "militia/sovereign-citizen extremist groups," including military veterans back from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Named Operation Vigilant Eagle, the initiative was outlined in February, two months prior to DHS's April 7 memo, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The FBI's focus on veterans started in December, after Barack Obama's election to the presidency. A Feb. 23 draft memo from FBI domestic counterterrorism leaders, obtained by the Journal, cited an "increase in recruitment, threatening communications and weapons procurement by white supremacy extremist and militia/sovereign-citizen extremist groups."

Third and by far the most important: The quickest road to tyranny would be for angry "right-wing extremists" to commit acts of terrorism or murder – like the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City – in the name of freedom. That is exactly what today's would-be totalitarians would secretly value, as it would justify their crackdown on conservative groups across the board – Christian, patriotic, gun-rights, pro-life, sovereignty and so on.

Timothy McVeigh, who supposedly thought he was advancing a patriotic rebellion against oppressive government, achieved precisely the opposite. He discredited everything he thought he was fighting for and caused many to regard "right-wing patriots" and "militia types" as domestic terrorists.

In fact, the biggest reason President Bill Clinton was asleep at the switch with regard to Islamic terrorism, allowing Osama bin Laden to slip through his fingers even when the terror kingpin was offered on a silver platter, is because it served Clinton's leftist agenda to obsess over "right-wing" extremist organizations rather than the very real threat of radical Islam. Thus, despite all the intel available then on bin Laden, Clinton disastrously focused the FBI on "right-wing hate groups" rather than task it with chasing down the many credible leads we had on al-Qaida terror plots against the United States.

The same thing is happening today, with the government preoccupied with anger on the Right – which it is causing by its continual usurpation of power constitutionally reserved to the states or the people – while still treading too lightly when it comes to militant Islamists within the United States.

If you think Obama has moved quickly since Inauguration Day to implement his European-socialist agenda for America, you ain't seen nothin' yet. If angry, would-be "patriots" engage in violence against the U.S. government such as occurred in Oklahoma City, the changes will make your head spin, as government suppresses freedom of speech, of the press, of the right to keep and bear arms, of the right to assemble, and more, all "for the protection of the people and the state."

It's a very real temptation. Think of it: As government excesses and corruption become ever more brazen, with "hate crimes" laws effectively criminalizing the Bible and kindergartners brainwashed with radical "gay rights" propaganda, with America's currency being continually devalued and entire industries taken over by the federal government, pretty soon some group may decide it can't take it anymore. Its members might become so enraged that they conclude it's time to start the next armed revolution. Seeing their nation being raped and envisioning no solution other than violence, they delude themselves that they're the modern counterparts of America's revolutionary founders. Making explosives and conspiring in secret – all the while quoting Jefferson to each other about "watering the tree of liberty" from time to time with "the blood of patriots and tyrants" – they murder some federal judges or blow up a government office building in an attempt to fight back. In reality, all they succeed in doing is murdering and maiming a bunch of their fellow Americans (or, as McVeigh did in Oklahoma City, massacring a room full of toddlers in daycare – which he later coldly termed "collateral damage").

And what would follow? A massive official crackdown on "domestic terrorists" and a severe assault on freedom in America.

Amazing what hatred can accomplish, isn't it? Exactly the opposite of what was supposedly intended. The "dark side of the force" is very clever.

As the blood-drenched, vengeance-driven French Revolution proved, when "patriots" are full of hate, they're no better than the corrupt government they're rebelling against – and maybe worse. Therefore, whether their uprising succeeds or fails, either way they usher in a new "reign of terror."





David Kupelian is vice president and managing editor of WorldNetDaily.com and Whistleblower magazine, and author of the best-selling book, "The Marketing of Evil: How Radicals, Elitists, and Pseudo-Experts Sell Us Corruption Disguised as Freedom." He is a dynamic speaker and has been featured on Fox News, MSNBC, CBN and many other media outlets.