When Right-Wing Extremism Moves Mainstream

[cali]

March 25, 2010


Michelle Leland/SPLC

Mark Potok is the editor of the investigative journal Intelligence Report. Previously he spent almost 20 years as a reporter at USA Today and The Miami Herald.
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March 25, 2010

Last May, about 30 people gathered at a resort in Jekyll Island, Ga., for a series of discussions about "increasing national instability" and President Obama's "socialized" policies.

The island was chosen for symbolic reasons — the initial discussions about creating a Federal Reserve were held there in 1910 — and the attendees met to formulate a plan for bringing their own radical organizations together.

"One of the interesting things about the meeting is how nondenominational it was," says Mark Potok. "There were Holocaust deniers there. There were anti-Semites. There were also people who have none of those feelings, who are all about the idea that the federal income tax is unconstitutional — people from the old militia movements and so on."


Potok is the director of publications and information for the Southern Poverty Law Center. The group's latest Intelligence Report, "Rage on the Right," documents the growth in the number of hate and extremist groups — and how their rhetoric is increasingly entering the mainstream.

In an interview with Fresh Air host Terry Gross, Potok explains that the meetings that took place on Jekyll Island were significant because they helped relaunch the anti-government "Patriot" movement.

"I think it was very important in bringing people together from various sectors of the radical right," Potok says. "I should say that the very same thing happened before the militia movement burst onto the scene in the 1990s. ... Back then, an important idea was to basically de-emphasize the racism in the movement in order to get more mainstream support. I think that did not happen this time. And I think that's partially because the issue of race is really very important right now."

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http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124906766&ft=1&f=100

[chill_wind]

1. Thanks. It's a long but good read. Here's his cautious bit about April 19.

GROSS: Now, there is a demonstration scheduled for April 19th in Washington. It's a Second Amendment march. What is this march about?

Mr. POTOK: Well, just what it says. I mean it is a kind of hardline dont-mess-with-our-guns march. It's an odd thing in the sense that the Obama administration has really never threatened to pass gun control and it seems very clear that there's no interest at all in trying to do that. You know, but what's remarkable about the - so it's a bit remarkable in the first place that the demonstration is happening at all.

It's being planned on a very wide scale. You know, also I think needs to be said about it is that there are now people out there who are very strongly advocating that people come armed to this demonstration as much as they can do that legally. You know, in addition we see all kinds of groups like militia groups and so on saying we're going too.

You know, I'm not suggesting that this is a militia event, but certainly those people will be there, I think in very large numbers. It seems to me the final thing to say about this is, of course, the organizers say we are doing this on April 19th because that is the day that the first shots were fired in Lexington in the Revolutionary War, which is true. At the same time, I think it's very worth remembering that that is also the day that Timothy McVeigh blew up the Murrah building in Oklahoma City, leaving 168 people dead.

You know, so I think the organizers would angrily reject the idea that somehow they're celebrating what McVeigh did - the murder of those people - and I'm sure they're not. But the reality is, is that, you know, it serves as a reminder of where some of these kinds of angry, angry ideas can lead.

[maddezmom]

2. just read that and posted in E&O

:kick: and rec'd