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Lisa Ann Pierce, W A M M
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Since September 11, 2001, there has been little public discussion about the 1995 bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City. There has been little acknowledgement that, prior to 2001, the single most deadly act of terrorism on American soil was an act of domestic terrorism carried out by a right-wing extremist. Nonetheless, it remains true that the far-right wing of American politics—in particular, the militia and white supremacy movements—has historically been the primary purveyor of terrorism in America.
The Ku Klux Klan, once the most prominent terrorist organization in America, emerged in the South in 1886 as a response to Reconstruction (post-Civil War policies that extended the rights of newly freed African Americans). Six students who were former Confederate officers formed a sort of fraternity. They entertained themselves in part by disguising themselves and riding at night on horseback. When they learned that they were striking fear into the hearts of former slaves, they seized the idea and formed an organization whose mission was to oppose social change and whose tactics were terror and violence. Many of the early members of the Klan were Confederate veterans, and the first Grand Wizard was a former Confederate general.
Later, in the years following World War I, the Klan’s membership soared to exceed 100,000. After years of falling membership, the Klan used World War I and the related wave of immigration as a recruiting opportunity, rallying disaffected whites to the cause of defending the “home front” from “alien enemies, slackers, idlers, strike leaders, and immoral women.” Of course, their ongoing enmity of people of color, Catholics, and Jews continued unabated. (More recent targets of the far right have also included abortion providers and gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people.)
Throughout the Klan’s history, their membership and organization has varied widely, ebbing and flowing with changes in American society and in the quality of their own leadership. At present, the Klan is largely dispersed and disorganized on the national level, as are the militias, the Aryan Nation, and the Christian Identity movement. Significant incidents of violence continue to occur on the local level, but currently there exists no successful national structure on the far right.
Of course, there is much cause for concern even beyond local events of violence. Two significant areas of concern include the attraction of youth to white supremacy movements and the racist border patrol movement in the Southwest.
Youth and White Supremacy
In recent years, far right extremists have used music as a recruiting tool among young people. There are at least three record labels that publish various genres of white supremacy rock. Concerts and music festivals are used for the dissemination of hateful rhetoric.
Sometimes, however, adult organizations do not have to be involved in order for youth to organize their own white supremacy groups. In the last year, news emerged of a Las Vegas-based gang known as the 311 Boyz. According to witnesses, “311” refers to the Ku Klux Klan, since “K” is the eleventh letter in the alphabet. Members of the group were middle- to upper-income white youth from suburban Las Vegas. The group formed primarily around beer bashes, but their interests quickly escalated to the videotaping of violent fights.
Some of the 311 Boyz wear iron cross or “311” tattoos. Despite their symbolic references to white supremacy, however, the violence of the 311 Boyz seems to have been reckless, disorganized, and often focused inward toward other gang members. This is not to downplay the significance of their acts of violence, following which nine members face charges of attempted murder. After all, the original KKK also started as something of a young, affluent white men’s social clique.
Racism on the Border
Another emerging trend among right-wing extremists is the vigilante border patrol movement in the Southwest. Organizations like the American Border Patrol, Conchise County Concerned Citizens, Ranch Rescue, and Civil Homeland Defense actively spew anti-Hispanic rhetoric as they organize armed vigilantes to hunt illegal immigrants, capture, and hold them until turning them over to U.S. Border Patrol agents.
In the meantime, at least nine immigrants have turned up dead in a 20-mile area in Maricopa County, Arizona, since March, 2002. The murders remain unsolved.
The border vigilantes prey on the fears of U.S. citizens following September 11, 2001. They speak of illegal immigration as “invasion” and invoke their rights to self-defense against this “threat.” Like the Klan in the World War I era, they use the excuse and language of war to justify acts of racist hatred under the thin veil of anti-immigration politics.
Chris Simcox, the leader of Civil Homeland Defense, has urged citizens to show the “inept HomeLand [sic] Security Department a thing or two about how to protect national security and the sovereignty of our Democratic Republic.” After two Ranch Rescue volunteers were arrested in March, 2003, for allegedly detaining two Salvadoran men and beating one with a pistol, Jack Foote, a former U.S. Army officer and founder of Ranch Rescue, referred to the county sheriff and district attorney as the “Texas Taliban.”
Two Kinds of Right-Wing Extremism
Our Administration’s post-9/11 policies and rhetoric seem to provide a jumping-off place for some right-wing extremists. For example, the rhetoric of the Bush Administration and the rhetoric of the extreme right wing—while quite distinct—collude in interesting ways. I have read statements by both that were anti-immigrant and xenophobic. I have read statements by both that were extreme (e.g. “You’re either with us or against us”). I have read statements by both that evoke an apocalyptic image of war without end. And I have read statements by both that justify armed, vigilante-like behavior as necessary for the defense of the nation.
Of course, the two groups are also quite different from one another, especially in the Administration’s interest in restricting civil rights in the name of the “war on terror,” and the far right wing’s concomitant fear of government power.
Meanwhile, while right-wing extremists attempt to ride a wave of fear in our nation, the Bush Administration pours money into efforts to “defend” the nation from nonviolent protesters. The Department of Homeland Defense offers grants to local law enforcement, such as the city of Miami, which used a multi-million dollar grant to attack and disperse protesters at the FTAA meetings in November. Congress allocated some of the Homeland Defense funds in the $87 billion bill sold to the American people as necessary funding for the reconstruction of Iraq.
As our nation engages in this so-called “war on terror,” we would do well to remember that world opinion is shaped both by how our nation treats the people of the world and the people within our own boundaries. I yearn for a day when we attack terror by acting with justice and addressing the realities of the disaffected before they resort to hatred and violence.
Sources for this article include the Anti-Defamation League (www.adl.org) and the Las Vegas Review-Journal. |
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Word Up!
“During times of war, hatred becomes quite respectable, even though it has to masquerade often under the guise of patriotism.”
—Howard Thurman
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© 2004 Women Against Military Madness. All rights reserved.
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