Anti-Government Groups Show Surge, Watchdog Warns
The nonprofit civil rights organization, which tracks the hate movement and anti-government groups, counted 512 militias and related groups in 2009, up from 149 groups the year before. And, it said, the movement has added a layer of racism largely absent a decade ago.
At the same time, the organization has observed a spike in what it calls “nativist extremist groups,” defined as those that “confront or harass suspected immigrants,” to 309 groups last year, up from 173 the year before.
Fear and frustration were the fuel, the report said.
“The anger seething across the American political landscape … goes beyond the radical right,” the report said, adding that the rage was fed by “racial changes in the population, soaring public debt and the terrible economy, the bailouts of bankers and other elites, and an array of initiatives by the relatively liberal Obama administration that are seen as ‘socialist’ or even ‘fascist.'”
“The ‘tea parties’ and similar groups that have sprung up in recent months cannot fairly be considered extremist groups,” the report said, “but they are shot through with rich veins of radical ideas, conspiracy theories and racism.”
![oath_keeper_patch](https://btx3.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/oath_keeper_patch.png?w=178&h=300)
“While in the 1990s, the movement got good reviews from a few lawmakers and talk-radio hosts, some of its central ideas today are being plugged by people with far larger audiences, like Fox News’ Glenn Beck and U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann,” Potok wrote. “Beck, for instance, re-popularized a key Patriot conspiracy theory — the charge that FEMA is secretly running concentration camps — before finally ‘debunking’ it.”
The SPLC last year reported on the resurging militia movement, which it said was propelled by conspiracy theories about pending martial law and a move by Mexico to reclaim portions of the American Southwest. With the election of Barack Obama as president, that report said, the new wave of militia activity had taken on a much more racist cast than the movement that gave rise to Timothy McVeigh’s bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995.
![Constitution Party](https://btx3.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/constitution-party.jpg?w=645)
The SPLC said it already has noticed “signs of similar violence,” including the killings of six law enforcement officers, arrests of extremists in alleged assassination plots against Obama, a shooting rampage by a white supremacist in Brockton, Mass., and the arrests of “individuals with anti-government, survivalist or racist views … in a series of bomb cases.”
nanakwame
March 3, 2010 at 1:05 PM
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_black_history_mock_party
It is going to easy to push the so-called minorities around
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btx3
March 3, 2010 at 1:43 PM
As I said before, Nana – this one lies fully at the feet of Ward Connerly.
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Constructive Feedback
March 4, 2010 at 6:33 AM
BET Uncut:
Take a look at this video:
http://withintheblackcommunity.blogspot.com/2010/02/activists-of-leisure-focus-and-fear-tea.html
Any Black person who had marched in St Augustine and told us how violent people can get has earned my respect with this warning.
For me living today – I choose to index the threat level that you are crying about against the physical assaults upon Black people which back up this concern.
Sadly Black folks are more likely to get beat down in Anacostia than they are while standing in a Tea Party protest.
In seeing this video I hope that you feel cheap.
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btx3
March 4, 2010 at 9:10 AM
I see you are still begging for that first site visitor, Porch Simian.
Try this –
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CNu
March 5, 2010 at 10:23 AM
rotflmbao…, whew!!!!
nobody, and I mean NOBODY handles booboo the fool more adroitly than BTx3.
priceless comedy gold….,
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btx3
March 5, 2010 at 10:28 AM
Having a little fun, CNu! Thanks for pinging me. Up to my eyebrows in that foreign thing, and had let something slip.
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