Terror: Red, White, and Blue

By Mickey Friedman
June 30, 2015

We have been relentlessly focused on Muslim Extremism ever since 9/11. It is how we view terrorism. On TV shows, on news reports, in our nightmares, the terrorists are Muslims.

Though it happened in 1995, the bombing of the Murtagh Federal Building in Oklahoma City is ancient history. That the terrorists can be white and drive pickup trucks has faded from public consciousness. That these white guys, U.S. vets, could murder 168 of their fellow Americans is almost never talked about.

I have no desire to minimize the threats posed by al Qaeda and ISIS and Muslim Extremism. Only to suggest it does us a great disservice to ignore terror that’s homegrown.

Would you be surprised if I told you there are far more incidents of domestic terrorism on our soil than terrorism sponsored by Muslim extremists? Terror brought to us by men who more resemble Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols than Osama Bin Laden.

Like the terror brought by Dylann Roof who entered an historic black church in South Carolina to start his own civil war. White and with a gun, Roof killed black people in God’s house. Because, of course, he knows black people have no God. Not really. Because he is convinced they’ve stolen our God. Like they’ve ravaged white women and pilfered our wealth and jobs only to play basketball better than us, or if they can’t do that, well then to sponge off white people and live comfortably on undeserved welfare benefits and food stamps.

So really what’s a white guy supposed to do if his government coddles its black people, which of course a government would do if it’s run by a black guy and his no-good Jewish socialist/communist allies, white traitors to their race.

Now you probably want to believe that this was a random act of mental illness. Because that’s far more comforting to believe than that for men like Roof it is always hunting season in America. And they’re not killing deer but black people.

That black Americans know this and good-hearted whites don’t is yet another chapter in our tragic history. That we have never come to terms with slavery and segregation. That we greet the notion of reparations as a pathetic joke. That the idea that we owe black people something for forcing them into medieval servitude is as unfathomable as the idea that our very identity as an exceptional America – the very best country in the world – is based on the preposterous fallacy that ours is a land of liberty and freedom for all. When, in fact, we stole this land from its Natives, then humiliated and slaughtered them. A haven? A beacon?

Domestic terror is not new. We practiced terror on Native Americans. We practiced terror on the black people we brought on the slave ships. No freedom of speech for them. Of religion. Of association. There wasn’t a slave who could opt out. “You know, Massa, this picking cotton just isn’t my thing. I’d much prefer to work in the Marketing Department.”

According to 18 U.S.C. § 2331, an essential aspect of acts of terror is that they “Appear intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;” Do you honestly think entering a preeminent house of worship and slaughtering its worshippers is not intended to intimidate other black civilian churchgoers?

The Police Executive Research Forum, a police research organization, together with The Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security, surveyed 382 law enforcement agencies last year: “74 percent reported anti-government extremism as one of the top three terrorist threats in their jurisdiction; 39 percent listed extremism connected with Al Qaeda or like-minded terrorist organizations. And only 3 percent identified the threat from Muslim extremists as severe, compared with 7 percent for anti-government and other forms of extremism.”

The Triangle Center notes: “Over the 13 years since 9/11, the U.S. government’s counterterrorism efforts have identified 109 Muslim-Americans plotting against targets in the United States … Two thirds of the domestic plots were disrupted early, with weapons or explosives provided by undercover agents or informants.”

On the other hand, in just one year, 2013, the FBI reported that of 5,922 single-bias hate crimes, 48.5 percent were motivated by racial bias. “Of the reported 3,407 single-bias hate crime offenses that were racially motivated, 66.4 percent were motivated by anti-black or African-American bias, and 21.4 percent stemmed from anti-white bias.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center reveals “there are 784 known hate groups operating across the country, including neo-Nazis, Klansmen, white nationalists, neo-Confederates, racist skinheads, black separatists, border vigilantes and others.”

The Confederate flag flies over SC, proclaiming they wished they had won the Civil War. Dylann Roof killed to make that happen.

Just as black children weren’t safe in a Birmingham church in 1963, blacks aren’t safe today in Charleston. If that’s not terrifying, what is?

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For more information:

From Charleston SC:
http://www.postandcourier.com/article/20150619/PC16/150619306

http://www.policeforum.org

http://sites.duke.edu/tcths/files/2013/06/Kurzman_Terrorism_Cases_Involving_Muslim-Americans_2014.pdf

https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/hate-crime/2012/topic-pages/incidents-and-offenses/incidentsandoffenses_final

https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2014/december/latest-hate-crime-statistics-report-released/latest-hate-crime-statistics-report-released

http://www.splcenter.org/what-we-do/hate-and-extremism

http://www.splcenter.org/hate-map