" Christian Identity Racists and Anti-Semites Find Home in the Tea Party" --Veterans Today

[Kurovski]

By David Neiwert -Nov 2010

Maybe it’s the gun-making kits that are being raffled off as door prizes. Or maybe it’s the fact that nearly everyone inside this hall at the Ravalli County Fairground is packing heat. But most of all, it’s the copy of Mein Kampf sitting there on the book table, with its black-and-white swastika, sandwiched between a survivalist how-to book on food storage and a copy of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals.

It is obvious: This is not your ordinary Tea Party gathering.

Mind you, they don’t explicitly call themselves Tea Partiers. Their official name is Celebrating Conservatism. But their mission statement is classic Tea Party — “to restore our country, counties, and cities back to the Republic and the Constitution of the United States”

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Mark Pitcavage, intelligence director for the Anti-Defamation League, has also tracked “a general growth of anti-government rage and associated conspiracy theories.” Its most mainstream expression is the Tea Party, he says, “but it has also manifested itself on the extremes by a resurgence of the militia movement, the sovereign citizen movement, other Patriot-type groups like the Oath Keepers.”

In his view, the rise of the Tea Party and the resurgence of the Patriot movement are “two sides of the same coin.”

David Barstow referenced the overlap between Tea Parties and Patriots in a widely read February 2010 New York Times article, writing that “a significant undercurrent” within the Tea Party has more in common with the Patriot movement than the Republican Party. But he failed to note a disturbing side-effect: the Patriot movement’s affiliation with the Tea Party has offered it a measure of mainstream validation. That validation has energized the movement and enabled it to recruit a new generation to “constitutionalist” Patriot-movement beliefs.

**clip**


For people like Travis McAdam, who has monitored the activities of right-wing extremists here for two decades, the talk being heard in places like Hamilton is the kind heard in the ’90s from local Patriot groups. Only now their paranoia has the Tea Party’s imprimatur.

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“In Montana, people will be upset about guns and wolves. In Arizona, it will be undocumented immigrants. In Jackson , they’ll talk about black people, immigrants, and Islam.” But regardless of how they frame the issues, he says, Patriot Groups have found in the Tea Party “an audience which they never could have gotten on their own. It gives them a mass appeal for which they’ve been longing forever.”

“It gives them traction for their agenda,” he adds. “It gives them a stamp of legitimacy. It washes away their previous sins and allows them to recreate themselves under this fresh new party banner.”



--A whole lot more...



http://www.veteranstoday.com/2010/11/23/we-are-at-war-christian-identity-racists-and-anti-semites-find-home-in-the-tea-party/

[eleny]

1. And they've pushed the Republican Party to its knees

Horrifying.

[Kurovski]

3. Here's a little more about that point...

Travis McAdam, executive director of the Montana Human Rights Network, has seen this political hardening at play here in Montana. Celebrating Conservatism’s tone and message, he notes, have changed sharply over time. “Early on, they were portraying themselves very much as just this benign group that was educating the public about the Constitution and American history,” he says. “Then months down the road, a year down the road, they’re taking out an ad in the local paper where they’re basically saying that if the government tries to restrict our access to firearms, it is our obligation to rise up and overthrow such a government. And then Mona starts to say things like, ‘You know, we’re not violent. But we could be.’”

[eleny]

13. Just an aside....

Years ago when I still lived in NYC I'd go to some gun shows in Fort Lee, NJ - across the river. I had family who were antique dealers so we'd go for the many other historical items that were sold at the shows.

At every show there were what we'd call "Nazi tables" and we'd avoid them. But they were there with their literature spread out plain as day.

Out here in Colorado we have them, too. Decades ago, Alan Berg, a radio host was murdered by a neo Nazi. Berg had one of them on his radio show. Berg was Jewish and they got into a heated discussion. The story told by his radio show host friends is that during the interview Berg unzipped his fly and under the table he took a leak on the Nazi's leg. Some time later, Berg was gunned down while approaching his house door at night. The story and the trial are legendary.

[Kurovski]

24. I remember that murder. (nt)

[MineralMan]

2. Actually, the Christian Identity movement and the Dominionist

movement are who started the Tea Party movement. This article has the order reversed, I believe.

[Kurovski]

7. And here's how the Tea party factions came to love one another.

Even the ones who aren't racist or violent. They seem accepting of them, which was a big complaint early on'

Also from the article...

Mona Docteur, a fortyish brunette dressed in a stylish black sweater and jeans, is running the show tonight. She kicks things off with a prayer, then launches into the story of her recent trip to Missoula to watch Sarah Palin speak. She says she was skeptical of Palin, but came away changed. “You know what I felt from that woman? She really is all about God and family and country.”

Docteur spoke with Palin about Celebrating Conservatism, she says, and “the thing I got from Sarah Palin was this…. We have got to get together. The divisions are exactly what the enemy wants. And maybe we don’t agree on a whole lot of things, but maybe we can agree on one or two things. How about limited government? Does everybody agree about that?” There were cheers. “OK, that’s one thing. At least we can agree on that. Can we agree on the fact that we still maybe might have our Constitution? Maybe?” More applause.

[MineralMan]

10. Exactly.

[Kurovski]

14. And remember all the teaer's who came to the party armed?

From the article...

Those involved with Celebrating Conservatism, organizers and participants alike, insist that they only bring weapons to public meetings to assert their rights as gun owners, never acknowledging that a political opponent might reasonably view their weapons as a threat. Some of them, McAdam notes, are honestly shocked at the suggestion.

“Not all of them, though,” he says. “A lot of them know perfectly well that guns intimidate people, and they bring them anyway. For exactly that reason.”

[foxfeet]

17. And they all bear close scrutiny. nt

[MineralMan]

22. More than scrutiny, I think. They need to be publicly exposed.

Blackwater is a great example of what I'm talking about. Its owner is a staunch dominionist, and Blackwater was being built up as some sort of "God's Army," using government funds to finance its growth. Fortunately, it ended up overstepping itself and getting dismantled, but it actually was a very threatening possibility that some people recognized.

The Dominionist movement, along with the Christian Identity folks need to get lots and lots of publicity and exposure, in my opinion. Their goals are stated clearly on their websites, and their associations extend into high levels of our government, in Congress and elsewhere. They have even made inroads into the military.

The problem is that they're very, very dangerous on an individual level, and taking them on in the media is not a very safe thing to do. That may well be why we don't read much about them. All one has to do, though, is visit a few of their web sites to see what it is they have in mind. It's very scary stuff. Then, when you look at the associations some people you wouldn't expect have with them, and it gets even scarier.

Sarah's one of them, although I suspect she's a tool, rather than a leader.

[foxfeet]

34. Well said.

I've been keeping an eye on them for years because I'm gay and Neo-Pagan. I'd be near the top of their list for elimination. My personal danger doesn't even begin to address the corrosive effects of their belief system on the larger culture and its institutions.

[MineralMan]

35. And I'm an atheist, so I'd be high on their list as well. Further,

I'm a vocal atheist. For my money, those two groups are the most dangerous and subversive groups in this country. They should be exposed, feared, and their organizations dismantled.

[patrice]

4. Soldiers for transnational economic royalists. Citizens' United MUST be overturned! nt

[DCKit]

5. Is the RW definition of "conservative" written down anywhere?

I'd really like to know what they believe it means.

[patrice]

8. What??? Words don't matter!!!

:sarcasm:

[Kurovski]

6. Sharron Angle's "inspiration"...

"Back in the ’90s, he recalls, the Militia of Montana paid lip service to voting, but always followed with a grim punch line: ‘When the ballot box doesn’t work, we’ll switch to the cartridge box.’”

That certainly seemed to be the sentiment this September in Hamilton.

[firehorse]

9. teaparty = anarchists

[MineralMan]

11. Oh, not really. Look up Christian Dominionism.

They don't want anarchy. They want theocracy. They don't want "Liberty." They want domination according to their particular beliefs.

[DCKit]

12. As if the Dominionists weren't terrifying enough...

I had no prior knowledge of "Christian Identity".

We are so screwn.

[firehorse]

18. I can agree with that

but I'm unclear on what they collectively actually believe in. They just seem anti everything to me more than they are for anything. When I get into arguments with libertarians, they are not for Jesus, but they are anti government even if it means an end to public schools, libraries, fire department, etc. They want to settle things with guns instead of due process. It seems like they want to live a utopian Ann Rand fantasy where its just them and two other people living "freely" off the grid in isolation away from the rest of humanity. To me, that's anarchy.

[eleny]

15. I agree

The other night I was thinking of the spectrum of political thought. There's the center and then left and right of center. Then that straight line begins to curve and meets where the anarchists are. No matter to me if they started left or right, they ended up with a belief in tearing down and chaos, imo.

My 2¢.

[MineralMan]

16. In a way, you're right. But then, where they meet, the end goals

are very different between the extreme left and right. Both want to end the current political realities, but they differ in what they want to replace those realities. At that point, they become very dissimilar.

On the right, they want a theocratical government that imposes Biblical law on everyone.
On the left, they want some sort of socialistic government of based on a pipe dream of universal consensus.

Neither can work, although the right's system could be imposed on the population for some variable period of time - until it was overthrown.

[justiceischeap]

19. Hmmm: "...But most of all, it’s the copy of Mein Kampf sitting

there on the book table, with its black-and-white swastika, sandwiched between a survivalist how-to book on food storage and a copy of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals.

Aren't these 2 books on Loughner's fav's list?

[Kurovski]

20. Yep. Alinsky and Hitler.

But don't you go saying he's a right-winger because we just ain't got no proof.

[nadinbrzezinski]

21. Yes and Alinsky is a lefty

or was...

[Kurovski]

26. Glenn Beck talks about Alinsky regularly.

He wants everyone to know what they are up against.

[nadinbrzezinski]

33. Which is funny as hell

see Congresswoman Foxx used that in the readying list to paint Mr. Laughner as a liberal commie... you get the picture.

It is another one of those... need to have it both ways.

[Kurovski]

39. Do you think the Christian Identity folks will get Sarah's use of term "Blood libel"?

I wonder. Hmmmmm

[Kurovski]

23. I posted a thread on what you pointed out.

I'm not sure why I did it, actually. :D

[Uzybone]

25. A few DUers have wondered aloud how could be more like the Tea party

They should have been pizza'd. Everyone knows what the Tea Party is all about.

[Kurovski]

27. ...

Oh! Do you mean people have been saying we should be like the Tea Party? In what way?

If you have a handy link that could be good. You can alert on them if you think that would help to get the tombstone rolling.

Uh-oh...does DU have to get rid of the tombstone image now?

[eleny]

29. Those postings have been locked

Best way to find them is to search GD or GD-P for the word "locking" and they'll turn up.

[Kurovski]

30. Uzybone will be glad to hear that.

or was it all sarcasm toward people who see possible RW elements creaking around in the killer's mind?

[eleny]

36. I think they were mostly sarcasm without the smilies

One that I saw sounded a little too serious. Good work by mods on all, imo.

[EFerrari]

28. AKA, Rick Warren's base. n/t

[Kurovski]

31. How nice that he made it to the Obama affair.

N'est pas?

[bullwinkle428]

32. Alan Grayson nailed it : "These people were wearing sheets 30 years ago"

[Odin2005]

37. Is anyone surprised?

[Kurovski]

38. For myself, I sometimes forget how bad things are.

[Monk06]

40. Very important post which provides the context to Palin's blood libel remark. She's a code talker

for the Christian Identity movement and counting on their
support in her campaign to take over the Republican Party.

Similar to how Hitler and Goebbels used Ernst Roehm and
his Freikorps thugs to eliminate all political parties
that apposed them.

One of the foundational propaganda tools of the Nazis was to
claim that they were victimized by an alien and German-hating
race. Victimization and an exclusive claim to Patriotism is the
hallmark of the extreme right.

If the Patriot movement coalesces and takes over the Republican
party America and the world will be in deep trouble.

[Kurovski]

42. We are at a critical point in our history.

Not to be overly dramatic, but things are reaching critical mass. I wish we had a media that would take the movement people seriously as to its danger.

It is not at all the same as on the left, middle, or inside-out. It stands on its own...alone.

It's really to0 late for them to come back. Obama will never reach most. No reasoning will.

[RainDog]

41. k and r n/t