DHS concerned about violence by "rightwing extremists" including groups opposed to immigration

[IMPORTANT UPDATE BELOW]

Excerpts from an April 7 report from the Department of Homeland Security entitled "Right-wing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment" is available here. While the DHS should be keeping track of those groups that are actually violent, as we know that occasionally crosses the line. And, that's affected both rightwing and leftwing groups. And, the current administration's view of "hate" is almost certainly more in line with the far-left than with an objective definition.

The full report says:

The DHS/Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) has no specific information that domestic rightwing* terrorists are currently planning acts of violence, but rightwing extremists may be gaining new recruits by playing on their fears about several emergent issues. The economic downturn and the election of the first African American president present unique drivers for rightwing radicalization and recruitment.

The asterix makes the following definition:

Rightwing extremism in the United States can be broadly divided into those groups, movements, and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups), and those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.

As anyone familiar with this topic knows, many far-left groups are rather generous in their definition of "hate". For instance, ThinkProgress defines Rush Limbaugh as "hate radio". The DHS under Janet Napolitano probably won't be quite as broad, but probably will come close. The DHS probably isn't including all groups opposed to immigration in general or to massive/illegal immigration under the "hate" banner, but no doubt they could be "informed" by the far-left. In fact, they also say this:

DHS/I&A notes that prominent civil rights organizations have observed an increase in anti-Hispanic crimes over the past five years.

Those prominent groups no doubt include the extremist-funding, racist-awarding racial power group the National Council of La Raza and the Southern Poverty Law Center. Among many other things, the latter group misled about hate crime statistics.

The report ends with this:

DHS/I&A will be working with its state and local partners over the next several months to ascertain with greater regional specificity the rise in rightwing extremist activity in the United States, with a particular emphasis on the political, economic, and social factors that drive rightwing extremist radicalization.

IMPORTANT UPDATE: (Rephrasing earlier comments) The smoking gun in this report is the "past five years" quote above, since that's directly parroting the SPLC report previously linked above. In other words, it's clear that the DHS is basing their report in part on the misleading statements from the far-left SPLC. The question becomes how much of the rest of the report is actually the result of the author being an uncritical supporter of the SPLC and their goals and to what extent the federal government is going to in effect act as the enforcement wing of the SPLC. That would be a good thing for a reporter to look into.

UPDATE 2: The report also says this:

Rightwing extremists were concerned during the 1990s with the perception that illegal immigrants were taking away American jobs through their willingness to work at significantly lower wages. They also opposed free trade agreements, arguing that these arrangements resulted in Americans losing jobs to countries such as Mexico.

Now, take a look at the "Civil Rights Act of 2008", which was co-sponsored by Barack Obama and several other major Dem senators. Quoting the Dem bill (not rightwing extremists), it says:

"[Employers being able to hire illegal aliens] undermine[s] the living standards and working conditions of all Americans... ...The unintended creation of an economic inducement for employers to exploit undocumented immigrant workers gives those employers an unfair competitive advantage over employers that treat workers lawfully and fairly."

Note also that, in order to make his base happy, Obama pretended to want to renegotiate NAFTA; he later admitted that he'd been misleading about his true position on NAFTA.

Mon, 04/13/2009 - 12:34 · · Importance: 10