From Fox News to the Weekly Standard, neoconservatives have
tried to paint terrorism as a largely or exclusively Islamic phenomenon.
Their message of Islamophobia has been repeated many times since the
George W. Bush era: Islam is inherently violent, Christianity is
inherently peaceful, and there is no such thing as a Christian terrorist
or a white male terrorist. But the facts don’t bear that out. Far-right
white male radicals and extreme Christianists are every bit as capable
of acts of terrorism as radical Islamists, and to pretend that such
terrorists don’t exist does the public a huge disservice. Dzhokhar
Anzorovich Tsarnaev and the late Tamerlan Anzorovich Tsarnaev (the
Chechen brothers suspected in the Boston Marathon bombing of April 15,
2013) are both considered white and appear to have been motivated in
part by radical Islam. And many terrorist attacks in the United States
have been carried out by people who were neither Muslims nor
dark-skinned.
When white males of the far right carry
out violent attacks, neocons and Republicans typically describe them as
lone-wolf extremists rather than people who are part of terrorist
networks or well-organized terrorist movements. Yet many of the
terrorist attacks in the United States have been carried out by people
who had long histories of networking with other terrorists. In fact,
most of the terrorist activity occurring in the United States in recent
years has not come from Muslims, but from a combination of radical
Christianists, white supremacists and far-right militia groups.
Below are 10 of the worst examples of non-Islamic terrorism that have occurred in the United States in the last 30 years.
1. Wisconsin Sikh Temple massacre, Aug. 5, 2012.
The virulent, neocon-fueled Islamophobia that has plagued post-9/11
America has not only posed a threat to Muslims, it has had deadly
consequences for people of other faiths, including Sikhs. Sikhs are not
Muslims; the traditional Sikh attire, including their turbans, is
different from traditional Sunni, Shiite or Sufi attire. But to a
racist, a bearded Sikh looks like a Muslim. Only four days after 9/11,
Balbir Singh Sodhi, a Sikh immigrant from India who owned a gas station
in Mesa, Arizona, was murdered by
Frank Silva Roque, a racist who
obviously mistook him for a Muslim.
But Sodhi’s murder was not the
last example of anti-Sikh violence in post-9/11 America.
On Aug. 5,
2012, white supremacist
Wade Michael Page used a semiautomatic weapon to
murder six people during an attack on a Sikh temple in
Oak Creek,
Wisconsin. Page’s connection to the white supremacist movement was
well-documented: he had been a member of the neo-Nazi rock bands End
Empathy and Definite Hate. Attorney General
Eric Holder described the
attack as “an act of terrorism, an act of hatred.” It was good to see
the nation’s top cop acknowledge that terrorist acts can, in fact,
involve white males murdering people of color.
2. The murder of Dr. George Tiller, May 31, 2009.
Imagine that a physician had been the victim of an attempted
assassination by an Islamic jihadist in 1993, and received numerous
death threats from al-Qaeda after that, before being murdered by an
al-Qaeda member. Neocons, Fox News and the Christian Right would have
had a field day. A physician
was the victim of a terrorist
killing that day, but neither the terrorist nor the people who inflamed
the terrorist were Muslims.
Dr. George Tiller, who was shot and killed
by anti-abortion terrorist
Scott Roeder on
May 31, 2009, was a victim of
Christian Right terrorism, not al-Qaeda.
Tiller had a long
history of being targeted for violence by Christian Right terrorists. In
1986, his clinic was firebombed. Then, in
1993, Tiller was shot five
times by female Christian Right terrorist
Shelly Shannon (now serving
time in a federal prison) but survived that attack. Given that
Tiller
had been the victim of an attempted murder and received countless death
threats after that, Fox News would have done well to avoid fanning the
flames of unrest. Instead,
Bill O’Reilly repeatedly referred to him as
“Tiller the baby killer." When
Roeder murdered
Tiller, O’Reilly
condemned the attack but did so in a way that was lukewarm at best.
Keith
Olbermann called
O’Reilly out and denounced him as a
“facilitator for
domestic terrorism” and a
“blindly irresponsible man.” And
Crazy for God author
Frank Schaffer, who was formerly a figure on the Christian Right but
has since become critical of that movement, asserted that the Christian
Right’s extreme anti-abortion rhetoric
“helped create the climate that
made this murder likely to happen.” Neocon
Ann Coulter, meanwhile,
viewed
Tiller’s murder as a source of comic relief, telling
O’Reilly, “
I don't really like to think of it as a murder.
It was terminating
Tiller in the
203rd trimester.” The
Republican/neocon double standard when it comes to terrorism is obvious.
At Fox News and AM neocon talk radio, Islamic terrorism is a source of
nonstop fear-mongering, while Christian Right terrorism gets a pass.
4. The murder of Dr. John Britton, July 29, 1994.
To hear the
Christian Right tell it, there is no such thing as
Christian terrorism. Tell that to the victims of the
Army of God, a
loose network of radical Christianists with a long history of terrorist
attacks on abortion providers. One Christian Right terrorist with ties
to the Army of God was
Paul Jennings Hill, who was executed by lethal
injection on
Sept. 3, 2003 for the murders of abortion doctor
John
Britton and his bodyguard
James Barrett. Hill shot both of them in cold
blood and expressed no remorse whatsoever; he insisted he was doing’s
God’s work and has been exalted as a martyr by the
Army of God.
5. The Centennial Olympic Park bombing, July 27, 1996.
Paul Jennings Hill is hardly the only Christian terrorist who has been
praised by the Army of God; that organization has also praised
Eric
Rudolph, who is serving life without parole for a long list of terrorist
attacks committed in the name of Christianity.
Rudolph is best known
for carrying out the Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta during the
1996
Summer Olympics—a blast that killed spectator
Alice Hawthorne and
wounded
111 others.
Hawthorne wasn’t the only person
Rudolph murdered:
his bombing of an abortion clinic in
Birmingham, Alabama in
1998 caused
the death of
Robert Sanderson (a Birmingham police officer and part-time
security guard) and caused nurse
Emily Lyons to lose an eye.
Rudolph’s
other acts of Christian terrorism include bombing the Otherwise Lounge
(a lesbian bar in Atlanta) in
1997 and an abortion clinic in an Atlanta
suburb in
1997.
Rudolph was no lone wolf: he was part of a terrorist
movement that encouraged his violence. And the Army of God continues to
exalt
Rudolph as a brave Christian who is doing God’s work.
6. The murder of Barnett Slepian by James Charles Kopp, Oct. 23, 1998.
Like
Paul Jennings Hill, Eric Rudolph and
Scott Roeder, James Charles
Kopp is a radical Christian terrorist who has been exalted as a hero by
the Army of God. On
Oct. 23, 1998 Kopp fired a single shot into the
Amherst, NY home of
Barnett Slepian (a doctor who performed abortions),
mortally wounding him.
Slepian died an hour later.
Kopp later claimed he
only meant to wound
Slepian, not kill him. But
Judge Michael D'Amico of
Erin County, NY said that the killing was clearly premeditated and
sentenced
Kopp to
25 years to life.
Kopp is a suspect in other
anti-abortion terrorist attacks, including the non-fatal shootings of
three doctors in Canada, though it appears unlikely that
Kopp will be
extradited to
Canada to face any charges.
7. Planned Parenthood bombing, Brookline, Massachusetts, 1994.
Seldom has the term
“Christian terrorist” been used in connection with
John C. Salvi on AM talk radio or at Fox News, but it’s a term that
easily applies to him. In
1994, the radical anti-abortionist and Army of
God member attacked a Planned Parenthood clinic in Brookline,
Massachusetts, shooting and killing receptionists
Shannon Lowney and
Lee
Ann Nichols and wounding several others.
Salvi was found dead in his
prison cell in
1996, and his death was ruled a suicide. The Army of God
has exalted
Salvi as a Christian martyr and described
Lowney and
Nichols
not as victims of domestic terrorism, but as infidels who got what they
deserved. The
Rev. Donald Spitz, a Christianist and Army of God
supporter who is so extreme that even the radical anti-abortion group
Operation Rescue disassociated itself from him, has praised
Salvi as
well.
8. Suicide attack on IRS building in Austin, Texas, Feb. 18, 2010.
When
Joseph Stack flew a plane into the
Echelon office complex (where
an IRS office was located), Fox News’ coverage of the incident was calm
and matter-of-fact. Republican Rep.
Steve King of Iowa seemed to find
the attack amusing and joked that it could have been avoided if the
federal government had followed his advice and abolished the IRS.
Nonetheless, there were two fatalities:
Stack and IRS employee
Vernon
Hunter.
Stack left behind a rambling suicide note outlining his reasons
for the attack, which included a disdain for the IRS as well as total
disgust with health insurance companies and bank bailouts. Some of the
most insightful coverage of the incident came from
Noam Chomsky, who
said that while
Stack had some legitimate grievances—millions of
Americans shared his outrage over bank bailouts and the practices of
health insurance companies—the way he expressed them was absolutely
wrong.
9. The murder of Alan Berg, June 18, 1984.
One of the most absurd claims some Republicans have made about white
supremacists is that they are liberals and progressives. That claim is
especially ludicrous in light of the terrorist killing of liberal
Denver-based talk show host
Alan Berg, a critic of white supremacists
who was killed with an automatic weapon on
June 18, 1984. The killing
was linked to members of the Order, a white supremacist group that had
marked Berg for death. Order members
David Lane (a former
Ku Klux Klan
member who had also been active in the Aryan Nations) and
Bruce Pierce
were both convicted in federal court on charges of racketeering,
conspiracy and violating
Berg’s civil rights and given what amounted to
life sentences.
Robert Matthews, who founded the Order, got that
name from a fictional group in white supremacist
William Luther Pierce’s
anti-Semitic
1978 novel,
The Turner Diaries—a book
Timothy
McVeigh was quite fond of. The novel’s fictional account of the
destruction of a government building has been described as the
inspiration for the
Oklahoma City bombing of
1995.
10. Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing, April 19, 1995.
Neocons and Republicans grow angry and uncomfortable whenever
Timothy
McVeigh is cited as an example of a non-Islamic terrorist. Pointing out
that a non-Muslim white male carried out an attack as vicious and deadly
as the
Oklahoma City bombing doesn’t fit into their narrative that only
Muslims and people of color are capable of carrying out terrorist
attacks. Neocons will claim that bringing up
McVeigh’s name during a
discussion of terrorism is a
“red herring” that distracts us from
fighting radical Islamists, but that downplays the cruel, destructive
nature of the attack.
Prior to the al-Qaeda attacks of 9/11, the
Oklahoma City bombing
McVeigh orchestrated was the most deadly terrorist
attack in U.S. history:
168 people were killed and more than
600 were
injured. When
McVeigh used a rented truck filled with explosives to blow
up the
Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, his goal was to kill as many
people as possible.
McVeigh was motivated by an extreme hatred for the
U.S. government and saw the attack as revenge for the
Ruby Ridge
incident of
1992 and the
Waco Siege in
1993. He had white supremacist
leanings as well (when he was in the U.S. Army,
McVeigh was reprimanded
for wearing a
“white power” T-shirt he had bought at a
KKK
demonstration).
McVeigh was executed on
June 11, 2001. He should have
served life without parole instead, as a living reminder of the type of
viciousness the extreme right is capable of.
Alex Henderson's
work has appeared in the L.A. Weekly, Billboard, Spin, Creem, the
Pasadena Weekly and many other publications. Follow him on Twitter
@alexvhenderson.
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