Posted on 03/05/2019 6:21:14 AM PST by Ennis85
From an op-ed piece in Monday’s Roanoke (Virginia) Times:
Last month, federal agents in Maryland arrested a United States Coast Guard officer and said he was plotting to assassinate Democratic members of Congress, prominent television journalists and others. The officer, Lt. Christopher Hasson, apparently inspired by a right-wing Norwegian terrorist who slaughtered 77 people in 2011, stockpiled firearms and ammunition and researched locations around Washington to launch his attacks, according to investigators. Fortunately, the F.B.I. arrested him before he could act.
When news came of Hasson’s arrest, President Trump– who has no problems expressing the fiercest outrage at Democrats and even Republicans who oppose him– could only bring himself to call it “a shame” and a “very sad thing.” We don’t have to guess the difference in his reaction if, say, a Muslim had been arrested for plotting to assassinate Republicans.
This frightening case is just one of several recent reminders that white supremacy and far-right extremism are among the greatest domestic-security threats facing the United States.
In 2017, hate crimes, generally defined as criminal acts motivated by the victim’s race, ethnicity, religion, or gender, increased by about 17 percent nationally, to 7,175 from 6,121 (the number of police agencies reporting crimes also rose, by about 6 percent); in my state, Virginia, they were up by nearly 50 percent, to 202 from 137.
Killings committed by individuals and groups associated with far-right extremist groups have risen significantly. Seventy-one percent of the 387 “extremist related fatalities in the United States” from 2008 to 2017 were committed by members of far-right and white-supremacist groups, according the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism. Islamic extremists were responsible for 26 percent.
The rising scourge of domestic hate has been underscored by particularly heinous acts in the past few years. In 2015, an avowed white supremacist murdered nine black congregants at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Last year in Kentucky, a white man with a history of making racist remarks was charged with shooting and killing two African-Americans in their 60s at a grocery store after trying to enter a nearby black church. Several months ago, an assailant shouting anti-Semitic slurs stormed the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh with a semiautomatic rifle and murdered 11 people.
Virginia, too, has experienced extremist violence. In August 2017, several hundred people — mainly young white men heavily influenced by white-nationalist propaganda — converged on Charlottesville, ostensibly to protest the possible removal of Confederate monuments from public parks. Among other odious acts, these “Unite the Right” protesters marched with lighted torches on the campus of the University of Virginia. They chanted “Jews will not replace us!” before attacking a small group of students and counter-protesters at the base of a statue of Thomas Jefferson.
The following day, some of these Unite the Right enthusiasts attacked and injured counter-protesters in Charlottesville. Their violence culminated when a white supremacist from Ohio drove his car into a crowd of people, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring about 30 others.
You may recall that Trump remarked afterwards— to the disgust of even many Republicans– that there “were very fine people on both sides.”
In 2009, Congress took an important step in arming federal investigators to deal with hate crimes by passing the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr., Hate Crimes Prevention Act. This law makes it possible to prosecute as hate crimes violent acts committed against victims because of their race, color, national origin, religion, gender, gender identity or disability. The law provides stringent maximum penalties, including life imprisonment, if someone is killed during a hate crime.
The Hate Crimes Prevention Act was approved by Congress and signed by then-President Obama despite the opposition of most Republicans in the House and Senate.
But the author of the op-ed believes the current law doesn’t go far enough.
Given these limitations, elected officials should consider providing law enforcement with additional tools. At the federal level, this could include a domestic-terrorism statute that would allow for the terrorism prosecution of people who commit acts of violence, threats and other criminal activities aimed at intimidating or coercing civilians.
The Trump administration has proposed no such law. After the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre in October, Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee called on the Republican chair to hold an emergency hearing on white supremacist- and antisemitic-inspired violence in the US. No such hearing was ever scheduled. One of the many good things about Democrats reclaiming a majority in the House in the 2018 elections is that perhaps such a hearing will finally be held.
What makes this op-ed remarkable is that it was written by Thomas Cullen, US Attorney for the Western District of Virginia, who was nominated to that position by President Trump in 2018, and who would have no apparent political motive for exaggerating the threat posed by far-right extremism.
I wonder if this genius had anything to say about the shooting of Steve Scalise et al?
Keep t up tommy boy.........
I guess you can leave it to a Democrat "journalist" to get it backwards. This threat is almost zero while the Antifa threat has is much, much larger.
The rising scourge of domestic hate...
Like beating the #### out of any MAGA hat wearer of any age??
By people who supposedly ARENT mentally ill like that psycho who killed 9 black folks in a church. Though I don’t care if he’s locked away in a basement just big enough to fit his frame for life.
I was watching the news for 10 seconds this morning (all I could stomach). Some morons lined up beer cups to the shape of a Swastika. Terrible and stupid yes. A crime? No.
Sorry to my Jewish friends but it’s just not a crime.
Neither is lining up the letters “WOP” with beer cups. (Although in today’s America, they might be crimes, I don’t know).
DROP KICKING a person TWICE is a crime!!!
Beat old men who wear MAGA clothes IS A CRIME!!
Ah, though I will fight the good fight and not give up I get solace in my now deceased Sicilian grandmother’s simple but somehow comforting words.
“Ah, in 50 years none of this will matter.”
Perhaps that wasn’t 100 percent true but she was a religious person and part of the message is we will in the end answer to something much larger than this rock.
But while we breathe, we fight.
I hate Thought Police as much as Illinois Nazis.
This continued misrepresentation of Trump’s comments really chaps my butt. There WERE fine people on both sides. He was talking about the people who there to support southern heritage, NOT the hate mongers. FU liberal liar shi’ite holes!
“Some morons lined up beer cups to the shape of a Swastika.”
Another symbol of “progressive” hate.
I think it was college kids and it wouldn’t shock me if there were conservatives in the mix.
To me that is more ignorance and youthful stupidity than hate.
how em some pics and videos of the holocaust and 95 percent will hate what they did.
BUT BEATING MAGA hat wearing folks is FAR MORE dangerous.
Just like BEATING some old Jewish folks would be a lot worse than doing something stupid with cups.
We can TEACH about how horrific the holocaust was.
How do we teach teens that beat old people because of a hat why they were wrong?
"Careful, or some souls will escape HELL."
The “far right” and the Left are joined at the hip as both believe the same basic propositions about race and ethnicity — essentially that these are of preeminent importance to determine who someone is, can be or even should be — they just employ these propositions differently: working corruptions of blood towards different groups and bestowing heroic / victim status upon different groups.
It is no coincidence that as Social Justice Warriors have risen on the Left that what they deem the far right has become more vocal too. These two feed each other, encourage each other that they are needed more to confront those other nitwits, and generally fester faster when the other is reputed to be about.
There is a difference of course: the “far right” has no real friends and no tall grass to hide in, something very distinct from so many on the Left — including unrepentant domestic terrorists lest we forget. The “far right” have no political power and no safe spaces. The “far right” is a yapping schnauzer, whose every cumulative or asserted misdeed is carefully tallied, scrutinized and punished if possible and yet even then these SJWs are increasingly so desperate for hate crimes that they have to fake them.
The “far right” is in short relatively tiny.
The Left that no longer considers communism / socialism, killing babies in the last days of the pregnancy, is having problems saying what sex people are and all kinds of stuff like that there is huge.
I forgot “to be extreme” in that last sentence.
“Harry’s Place”.....Seriously???
You beat me to it. Why would I want to even give it a click by reading it? Not going to get my blood pressure up over it. Though, given the DemocRats tendency to project, I will watch my back.
Lies by ommision are still lies
Thousands of black on black murders, many islamic terrorist attacks and one white guy.
Typical leftist fear mongering while ignoring the real threats.
JoMa
Ah, its the Clinton years all over again. If Hillary was in charge me thinks we would have a few more Ruby Ridges, and this author would be elated by that.
Another deep state never-Trumper.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.