"I love my country but I fear my government," one bumper sticker proclaimed in the 1990s. A small North Carolina group of "Christian" constitutional literalists proposed to "resist the coming New World Order" by "removing treasonous politicians and corrupt judges." As today, they feared a liberal "tyrant" in the White House. At a gun rights rally in Michigan in 1995, a T-shirt called President Clinton a "Socialist-Marxist Comma-Nazi" ...
Folks, we're witnessing a militia rerun. Except this time, thanks to the likes of Beck and Fox News, the unwanted repeat is being broadcast nationwide.
Actually, today's hysterical warnings are probably even more extreme than the last time a Democrat sat in the Oval Office. What's disturbing is that instead of having to trade copies of The Turner Diaries, relying on grassroots fax networks, or traveling to gun shows to hear that kind of incendiary insurrectionist rhetoric (i.e. the president must be stopped!), haters can just turn on the highest-rated cable news channel.
In a way, I wonder why militiamen bother to form groups anymore if Fox News is willing to embrace and broadcast their fervent, anti-government New World Order rants on a daily basis? The militia flourished on the fringes in the 1990s, in part, because those on the far-right felt like their government-hating message was being ignored. But today it's celebrated and broadcast nationally. Talkers like Beck have trumped the militia movement. They've completely co-opted the message and made the groups increasingly irrelevant as Fox News cuts out the middleman -- the militia groups -- and hijacks their insurrectionist, government-hating rhetoric.
Don't think there's a larger connection? Just look at the initial reaction when news broke about the Hutaree arrests. The knee-jerk response from some right-wing bloggers to either defend the militia members, or at least raise all kinds of doubts and partisan suspicions about the law enforcement raids, told us all we needed to know about where their true allegiances lie. Meaning, conservative voices immediately telegraphed their support from the persecuted militiamen and clearly suggested they were being used as pawns in an Obama government abuse of power.
Blogger Pamela Geller complained that the FBI raids were "nuts." Glenn Beck's radio guest host Chris Baker decried the Hutaree arrests as "nothing more than attack on faith and free speech." And Washington Times columnist and frequent Fox News talker Monica Crowley likened Hutaree members to proud patriots, as she squarely placed the blame on the government for squelching the militia's right to dissent:
The Democrats handle dissent by isolating it, smearing it and delegitimizing it in order to crush it. The warning should be clear: If you have small-government, traditional values, you may be considered by your own leadership to be an enemy of the state.
Keep in mind that both Geller and Crowley conveniently forgot to inform readers that the militia members had been arraigned on charges of plotting to kill cops. Apparently that fact no longer moves the needle in today's right-wing media, which has severed its traditional ties with the law-and-order movement and instead today pledges its allegiance to whoever hates the government -- and Democrats -- the most.
Other conservative media voices rushed in to downplay the Hutaree news last week. At Lucianne Goldberg's site, the wannabe cop killers were portrayed as "dimwits that [sic] couldn't recognize a decent deer hunt." A New York Post editorial dismissed the armed Christian "warriors" as "a few guys in the woods with guns." And when not mocking the FBI's raid and raising doubts about the need for arrests, the right-wing blog Confederate Yankee referred to the Hutaree not as an anti-government militia group, but as a religious "cult." (Nice try.)
Still others took a third path, suggesting politics were behind the militia crackdown. For instance, this was what Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds instinctively wrote about the Hutaree raid:
THE TIMING APPEARS CONVENIENT
Reynolds, along with other right-wing bloggers, suggested the arrests were politically motivated; that the raid was perhaps part of a government-wide conspiracy to spotlight conservatives in a negative light and stymie dissent. Rather than immediately denouncing anti-government extremists who may have been plotting to kill cops, Reynolds played up the partisan angle, suggesting the timing of the raid was a bit too "convenient." (Of course it was
convenient, but not in the way Reynolds meant: The FBI claimed the extremists were poised to strike this month, so naturally that wanted to act before then.)
And oh, by the way, at Tea Party Patriots: Official Home of the American Tea Party Movement, this was the headline that immediately went up after the first bulletins about the militia raids were posted:
That's right, some Tea Party leaders instinctively tagged the Hutaree compound as one of their own as it came under attack from federal law enforcement officials. And can you blame them? Today's right-wing, Obama-hating rhetoric -- as amplified by Glenn Beck and much of the GOP Noise Machine -- is indistinguishable from the militia message.
That frightening kinship is obvious for everyone to see and hear.(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
