Militants, Tea Party and Republicans Battle against Immigration, Health Reform and Obama

by Moses Apsan, Esq.

It seems that after a year of increasing aggressive populist rage over immigration, the economy, and opposition to Obama and his administration, verbal protest took a hard turn last week, when FBI agents arrested nine alleged members of a Michigan-based Christian militia group, called Hutaree who are charged with plotting an attack against law enforcement officers and inciting a right-wing uprising against the U.S. government.

It's almost inevitable that something like this would happen following the republican parties enchantment with the extremism on the Right.  Some observers have opined that that the GOP and the Tea Party/militia crowd are just two peas of the same political movement pod, one within and the other without the system.  Both groups work towards the same goal; a re-establishment of Republican control of government.

Some observers view the Tea Party movement as a series of nationally coordinated protests, which are intended to disrupt the equilibrium of this country, cause confusion and create problems for the Obama democratic administration. Although they appropriated the name tea party in order to evoke sentimental feelings for the American Revolution, this group is far from the patriotic Boston tea party members, who were fighting against “Taxation without Representation” and for their independence.  Today’s Tea Party Movement work towards another goal: to methodically disrupt our country and its government.

Look at the facts.  During 2009, Tea party protests have been held on days important to Americans, days that have special meaning. Instead showing their patriotism , they chose disrupt national event.  These were their protests for 2009:

A protest on April 15, 2009 which coincided with the annual deadline for submitting tax returns, known as Tax Day, A protest on July 4, 2009: which coincide with one of our most patriotic day, Independence Day, A protest on September 12, 2009 which coincides with the anniversary of the day after the September 11 attacks.  In 2010 most Tea Party activities have been focused on opposing the efforts (supported by the Obama Administration) to enact a broad program of changes to the health care and health insurance industries, and on recruiting, nominating, and supporting candidates for upcoming state and national elections.

It seems that although these groups try to give the appearance of patriotism, they are far from patriots; all they accomplish is to disrupt American traditions and to denigrate our elected officials.

According to MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann on Countdown “If racism is not the whole of the Tea Party, it is in its heart, along with blind hatred, a total disinterest in the welfare of others, and a full-flowered, self-rationalizing refusal to accept the outcomes of elections, or the reality of democracy, or the narrowness of their minds and the equal narrowness of their public support.”

The Washington Post’s Colbert I. King  in his column stated “The angry faces at Tea Party rallies are eerily familiar. They resemble faces of protesters lining the street at the University of Alabama in 1956 as Autherine Lucy, the school’s first black student, bravely tried to walk to class. Those same jeering faces could be seen gathered around the Arkansas National Guard troopers who blocked nine black children from entering Little Rock’s Central High School in 1957.”

“There’s nothing entertaining about watching goons hurl venomous slurs at congressmen like the civil rights hero John Lewis and the openly gay Barney Frank....How curious that a mob fond of likening President Obama to Hitler knows so little about history that it doesn’t recognize its own small-scale mimicry of Kristallnacht.”
— New York Times columnist Frank Rich,

Even though the mounting presence of political violence, the Republicans appear set in their resolve to encourage as much disruption as possible between now and the November elections with hopes that they can win back the House and Senate and then further defuse Obama.
 
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which records hate groups across the U.S, between 2000 and 2008 following years of moderate growth, the militia movement suddenly exploded in 2009.  The SPLC counted a total of 369 new groups that had come into existence since the election of Barack Obama as president.  Is this increase in violent anti-American groups a coincidence?

In its annual Intelligence Report, the center noted the resurrection of radical right militias as cause for solemn concern. "Individuals associated with the Patriot movement during its 1990s heyday produced an enormous amount of violence, most dramatically the Oklahoma City bombing that left 168 people dead," it said. Following Mr. Obama's election, the report notes plots against the president's life by racist skinheads and the case of a Massachusetts man accused of "murdering two black people and planning to kill as many Jews as possible" as support of the premise that the hazard from such hate groups is on the upswing.
 
The scare tactics clearly fuels conspiracy theories peddled by right-wing news commentators that creates more confusion and uncertainty about the future. Fury over the high unemployment, bank bailouts, foreclosures and immigration, together with end of the world religious ideologies such as promoted by the Hutaree, have united to create a unstable mix of dissatisfaction and bitterness that can seep in and slowly destroy the fabric of our great country.