If you're talking about Army of God, they have nowhere near the status today of, say, the Weathermen, let alone the Red Army Faction.
AHC: Right wing terror groups in the US
- Thread starter ThePest179
- Start date
If you're talking about Army of God, they have nowhere near the status today of, say, the Weathermen, let alone the Red Army Faction.
This is exactly what kept the KKK going in the 1950s, & perhaps earlier. Local leaders in politics & business who would have seldom been caught touching a white robe or in view of flaming cross, used working class KKK members to achieve local goals. In the 1960s the FBI investigations into the KKK threatened to expose some of this and other tools were looked for.
Neither is it much different from local leaders using the Mafia or other organized crime groups as muscle to terrorize their targets into submission, or eliminate them. It is not hard to see how either of these might be the model for one or another powerful individual or group to attempt terror as a political or economic weapon.
The only time the Weathermen succeeded in killing anyone was themselves, by accident, while the Army of God succeeded in killing people far more often and repeatedly.
The Red Army Faction is also not a valid point of comparison since they were an active GERMAN organization and not an American one.
It is also worth pointing out that Timothy McVeigh, a solidly right-wing terrorist, was only beaten in his body count by 9/11 which to me says enough about the viability of right-wing and far-right terrorism compared to left-wing equivalents in the United States.
Morty Vicar
Banned
A cursory glance at this list would suggest that in the last few decades the right wing have been a lot more active than the left.
Yeah but you can increase that terrorists organisation. Say the US government shifted more to the left, legalising gay marriages earlier and allowing more abortion clinics to remain open. This would create a reaction from the right and the Army of God may just increase in numbers.
Morty Vicar
Banned
I completely disagree with the notion that christianity was non-violent, however he is basically right on the second part. According to many hadiths and even the prophet himself, not to mention most current Islamic scholars, mohammed went to war to gather converts. In what way is that not violent? And why is it Islamophobic to point that out, when most muslims will agree that Mohammed went to war? This is why I hate the term Islamophobia, it basically means nobody can criticise any aspect of Islam for fear of being labeled 'Islamophobic'. What we need to worry about is Muslimophobia, people who attack muslims, not those who attack the ideology itself.
Spare Change
Banned
The problem is there is no tradition of right wing terror in the modern United States. Almost all right wing violence is of the hands of a lone extremeist. Even the anti-arbortion killings are not conspiracies.
Since the FBI is overly whelmingly white and male, if any such terror group did exist it would be quickily infriltrated and have the book thrown at it.
There would be no academics giving it intellectual cover, no USSR giving clandestine support, no ethnic fellow travellers giving it cover. If you think White people in Idaho would just look the other way for these guys you are very wrong. The IRA did receive plenty of low level support in the USA.
The international left is simply more sypathetic for these tactics. There really is no international right.
Note it would be very easy to create such a group. First you would need somebody or some activity to fund it. A right wing American based drug cartel or have Putin, who is the only major leader who could possibly give any sort of support for such an organization give it the green light.
Then there would have to be a cause. The Ruby Ridge people believed some really vile stuff, but they just really wanted to be left alone, which is why they generated so much sympthathy. So you need a cause where people could claim the victim even as they kill hundreds.
With a POD starting in the last couple of years, the most plausible is that one of the latin drug gangs drawing members from nations like Columbia and parts of Central America where there is a tradiotion of right wing death squads start preaching a strong Catholic/Evangelical Ideology in Prison. This major gangs kills people it deems anti-Christain and also as a matter of business goes after and intimidates other competing groups like blacks.
The FBI can't infriltrate them since they didn't grow up in those neihborhoods and become a gang member at 15. Being a minority group that suffered discrimination they get a lot of syphathetic coverage. The dirty little secret is that terrorism works. So the more they kill the more mindspace the group achieves.
Since the FBI is overly whelmingly white and male, if any such terror group did exist it would be quickily infriltrated and have the book thrown at it.
There would be no academics giving it intellectual cover, no USSR giving clandestine support, no ethnic fellow travellers giving it cover. If you think White people in Idaho would just look the other way for these guys you are very wrong. The IRA did receive plenty of low level support in the USA.
The international left is simply more sypathetic for these tactics. There really is no international right.
Note it would be very easy to create such a group. First you would need somebody or some activity to fund it. A right wing American based drug cartel or have Putin, who is the only major leader who could possibly give any sort of support for such an organization give it the green light.
Then there would have to be a cause. The Ruby Ridge people believed some really vile stuff, but they just really wanted to be left alone, which is why they generated so much sympthathy. So you need a cause where people could claim the victim even as they kill hundreds.
With a POD starting in the last couple of years, the most plausible is that one of the latin drug gangs drawing members from nations like Columbia and parts of Central America where there is a tradiotion of right wing death squads start preaching a strong Catholic/Evangelical Ideology in Prison. This major gangs kills people it deems anti-Christain and also as a matter of business goes after and intimidates other competing groups like blacks.
The FBI can't infriltrate them since they didn't grow up in those neihborhoods and become a gang member at 15. Being a minority group that suffered discrimination they get a lot of syphathetic coverage. The dirty little secret is that terrorism works. So the more they kill the more mindspace the group achieves.
Lateknight
Banned
No tradition ? You know that the KKK has existed in one form or another for around 150 years right I think all together they have killed more than four thousand people.
As well as effectively overthrowing the US constituion in a region for generations
Spare Change
Banned
Look at the POD which he gives as 2008. Or even the original post which has the POD in the 1990s.
By this era the Klu Klux Klan is a spent force. I thought it was in poor taste, but at a Halloween party I was at, somebody dressed up as a Klansman because it was a very cheap, very easy to make, and very outrageous costume. Thus the Klan joins pirates and witches as people who used to be scary but now are just figures of fun.
PS the guy was Indian, which was the joke. He was born here so he wasn't clueless about who these people were.
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sturmwurst44
Banned
No, my statement reeks of historical fact.
Both the Christians and the Muslims have some violent history. However, religion plays only to rile up the uneducated in what is usually the desire to achieve political goals.
The fact remains, Christ wanted his story spread by word, Muhammad by the sword. One of the major differences between evangelicalism and fundamentalism. most Christians are evangelical but not fundamentalist. Muslims are more fundamentalist.
No, it's history -- something that most people here have some respect for.
You can draw different conclusions from historical facts, but trying to suppress factual discussion by tossing in the trusty old bias-accusation card is... disturbing.
I AGREE. Just stating this as Islamophobic without having to see historical references isn't really helpful to understand the whole Christian-Islam collision over the centuries.
ThePest179
Banned
I admit I was wrong and I conceed the point. He just came off as insensitive at first. I apologize.
Well, thanks for stopping by.
I think you should have taken a left at Albuquerque. This sort of BS doesn't play well here.
We divorce you.
To Coventry with you.
Anyone who claims:
1. Right Wing Militias are not violent because they are Christian
and
2. Talks about the blood soaked path of Islam in the 880s without the slightest trace of irony
Is both 1. Wrong and 2. Remarkably selective with the facts.
KKK is a "Christian Group". Until far too recently their main weekend activity was finding an African American doing something uppity, like walking down the street, and, if the poor soul was fortunate, beating the crap out of him. Oklahoma City was Christian Militia. The only thing different about McVeigh was that he actually had the guts to do what these groups all talk about doing. The fact that the rest of them are cowards doesn't mean his beliefs were any different.
Talking about Islam being a violent religion and not saying the exact same thing about Christianity is, to put it mildly, bullshit.
Two words: Crusades. Inquisition. Two more words Deus vult!
Recall how Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire in the course of winning a battle & war. The intramural Thirty Years War were not exactly a polite ice cream social. Despite what Christ and the Apostles preached their sucessors and history have played it differently.
Absolutely.
For that matter you don't need to go back to the 30 Years War. 1980 Northern Ireland will do just fine as an example (and that is over when the Archbishop of Rome or the Archbishop of Canterbury is the leader, the dogma are pretty much identical otherwise).
Sad but damn true in both cases. No one religion is immune from extremist interpretations.