What do Keith Olbermann, Senator Charles Schumer, Jon Stewart, Nancy Pelosi, David Letterman, The New York Times, former President Bill Clinton hundreds of abortion providers, US Supreme Court Justices and now John Edwards all have in common? They’ve all been victims of domestic terror attacks attacks:
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. Mar 15, 2007 (AP)— The campaign headquarters of Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards reopened Thursday after authorities determined the white substance found in an envelope wasn’t dangerous, campaign officials said.
Edwards said a letter in the envelope contained “some negative comments” and powder spilled out of the envelope, but he didn’t elaborate on what the letter said or its possible source.
“It’s like any high-profile presidential campaign, you’re going to encounter threats and these kinds of instances,” Edwards said during a conference call before a scheduled speech at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire.
(cont.)
Actually, I beg to differ with Mr. Edwards. I know he is trying downplay this incident, for obvious reasons, but this isn’t something that is likely to happen to just “any high profile presidential campaign.” Only to Democrats, or to those in the media (i.e., Olbermann, Stewart, Letterman, The New York Times) who are seen to be sympathetic to liberals. In short, when was the last time you heard of a story involving “white powder” being delivered in the mail to a prominent Republican or conservative?
Can’t think of any? Neither could I. The last incident I could find on a “white powder” mailing to any Republicans was this story in 2003 when Tom DeLay and 3 Republican senators. Though, on one occasion, a Republican state lawmaker apparently faked an “anthrax attack” on his own office in order to intimidate a witness against him on charges he illegally used of his legislative staff to work on his election campaign:
State Rep. Jeff Habay, a Republican lawmaker from Allegheny County elected to a sixth term in November, was charged Wednesday with making up a story that he had received a suspicious white powder in the mail. The envelope, which contained baking soda, had a return address for constituent George Radich.
Radich and four others had asked for a court audit of Habay’s political action committee. Shortly after Radich and the others filed the request, Habay’s campaign treasurer, Melissa Farabaugh told the legislator, “It’s too bad they (the Radiches) can’t be audited,” according to the affidavit dated Wednesday.
“I have something better planned for them,” Habay responded, according to the affidavit.
Habay is already awaiting trial on charges that he illegally used his staff to campaign on state time. He was charged Wednesday with 20 new counts as a result of the latest complaint, including a felony charge of possessing or using a facsimile weapon of mass destruction, criminal mischief, harassment and retaliation against a witness.
In other words, we have the wonderful example of a Republican politician creating a phony terrorist attack against himself in order to discredit a political opponent. Shades of L’Affaire Plame, oui? Maybe that’s where he got the idea. Don’t argue your innocence, but rather get revenge against those who have exposed your own criminality.
Last year, Habay was fined $13,000 by the State Ethics Commission for using his state-paid office employees to organize political fund-raisers, process political mailings, solicit donations, build election signs and collect signatures on nominating petitions. He also is awaiting trial on criminal charges filed by the state attorney general’s office for theft of services for the same incidents.
In a new case filed this week by the Allegheny County district attorney’s office, Habay faces 20 charges. They include conflict of interest and theft of services for continuing to use state employees for personal or campaign work, falsely accusing a political enemy of mailing him a letter with a potentially dangerous white powder, and retaliating against political enemies by distributing packets of information about them on cars at Indiana Township Community Day and at their places of employment. […]
Both sets of charges stem from Habay’s troubles with the same set of opponents. Problems began in 2000 after Habay fired staffer Rebecca Radich, who then blew the whistle on the use of state employees for campaign work. Radich and the family of Dan Anderson also called for an audit of Habay’s campaign fund, which found irregularities, but no criminal activity.
The new charges say Habay retaliated against Radich, her husband, George, and the Andersons for prompting investigations of his activities.
This is the right wing mindset these days. Call it the scorched earth policy of personal destruction, if you will. Or maybe its a revised version of “The Chicago Way” as proclaimed by Sean Connery’s character Malone in The Untouchables:
“He sends one of yours to hospital, you send one of his to the morgue! That’s the Chicago way!”
Whether it’s discrediting Joe Wilson by outing his wife’s CIA status, the firing of US attorneys who don’t get with the program, a hoax to retaliate against an accuser, the eliminationist rhetoric of right wing talk show hosts and conservative pundits like Ann Coulter (I know — she’s only joking, right?) or the actions of deranged wingnut camp followers like Chad Castagna who send “white powder” letters to put a scare into Democrats and media personalities perceived as being too critical of President Bush, a common thread runs through all the acts. It is the motive for these acts which they all have in common: to intimidate and silence anyone who speaks against the politics and policies of the radical right, the dominant faction within the Republican party, and within much of the corporate media.
I expect that we shall see more of such extremist venom in the weeks and months ahead. The right has begun to lose its hold on power, both political power with the loss of Congress, and media power, as evidenced by the rise of Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Keith Olbermann and — yes — Al Gore, whose own media campaign to combat global warming has been a valuable example of how to push progressive ideals and goals into the mainstream media infotainment machine.
Republicans and conservatives have no other “strategery” to win the hearts and minds of the American public, other than vicious personal and slanderous attacks against liberals and progressive leaders, attacks that will often wander into the realm of hate speech and eliminationist rhetoric. It’s been their principal weapon against their political opponents for the last 3 decades. Demonization, vilification and intimidation. As their tired verbal tactics become less and less effective, expect them to ratchet up the rhetoric even more, to the extent that many of them may call for their followers to pursue a more “forceful approach” to silencing the left, such as Coulter did not so long ago when she was heckled. Indeed, as Mike Stark demonstrated last year, asking a Republican politician uncomfortable questions can get a violent response from his entourage:
A Democratic activist who verbally confronted U.S. Sen. George Allen at a campaign rally in Charlottesville yesterday was shoved, put into a headlock and thrown against a window by three men wearing Allen stickers, according to a widely disseminated video of the incident.
W. Michael Stark, who identified himself in an e-mail after the incident as a University of Virginia law student, yelled a question at Allen (R) about whether he had ever spit on his first wife, an unsubstantiated charge that has been circulating on liberal blogs on the Internet. Allen supporters hauled him away from the senator as television cameras rolled.
“I demand that Senator Allen fire the staffers who beat up a constituent attempting to use his constitutional right to petition his government,” Stark wrote in an e-mail.
Charlottesville Police Lt. Gary Pleasants said Stark reported the incident yesterday and indicated that he wanted to press assault charges against the men. Pleasants said police are investigating and trying to determine the names of the Allen staffers involved.
Sadly, I fear that incidents of such assaults, verbal and physical, will only escalate, both in their intensity and in their frequency. In the past, most radical right wing conservatives have contented themselves with faux terror tactics (like the “white powder” mailings), but not all. Some have taken their “outrage at liberals to the next level:
A discussion of recent threats to judges’ safety, at a bar association conference in suburban Dallas last week, became startlingly specific when Sandra Day O’Connor, the retired Supreme Court justice, recounted that each justice had received in the mail ”a wonderful package of home-baked cookies” that contained ”enough poison to kill the entire membership of the court.”
Against abortion clinics and gays:
Two attacks involved women’s clinics: one in the Atlanta, Georgia, suburb of Sandy Springs in January 1997; the other in Birmingham, Alabama in January 1998.
Six people were wounded in the Sandy Springs blast.
Off-duty policeman Robert “Sandy Sanderson,” 35, was killed, and 41-year-old nurse Emily Lyons lost an eye and suffered other injuries, in the Birmingham blast. […]
Rudolph also bombed a lesbian nightclub in Atlanta in February 1997, an attack in which five people were wounded.
Against the federal government and racial minorities:
In the 10 years since the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing killed 168 people, roughly 60 right-wing terrorist plots have been uncovered in the United States, according to an upcoming report by the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project. The plots, all foiled by law enforcement, reportedly included violent plans by antigovernment militia groups, racist skinhead organizations, and Ku Klux Klan members to use various types of chemical bombs and other weapons. […]
Some of the more recent right-wing terror plots listed in the Intelligence Project report include:
* May 20, 2005: Two New Jersey men, Craig Orler and Gabriel Garafa, who allegedly belong to neo-Nazi and skinhead groups, were charged with illegally selling to police informants guns and 60 pounds of urea to use in a bomb.
* Oct. 25, 2004: FBI agents in Tennessee arrested Demetrius “Van” Crocker after he allegedly tried to purchase ingredients for deadly sarin nerve gas and C-4 plastic explosives from an undercover agent. Crocker, who was involved with white supremacist groups, was charged with trying to get explosives to destroy a building and faces more than 20 years in prison.
* April 10, 2003: The FBI raided the home of William Krar, of Noonday, Texas, and discovered an arsenal of more than 500,000 rounds of ammunition, 65 pipe bombs and remote control briefcase bombs, and almost 2 pounds of sodium cyanide, enough to make a bomb that could kill everyone in a large building. Krar, reportedly associated with white supremacist groups, was sentenced to 11 years in prison for possession of a chemical weapon.
Does anyone doubt that the “lunatic fringe” of the right is extremely volatile and dangerous, and far more likely to act out their fantasies of violence and murder against their enemies than anyone on the left? As the political tide turns more and more against them, what do you think they are likely to do? The extreme rhetoric promoted by the movers and shakers of the conservative movement, the Rush Limbaughs, Glen Becks, Ann Coulters, Frank Gaffneys, et alia, is the driving force behind the rage which sparks these violent and potentially deadly outbusts of right wing terrorism. As David Niewert at Orcinus has so well chronicled, it is the violence ridden messages of these demagogues on the right, given a platform and promoted by our corporate media, which enables this sort of behavior. By tapping into the anger and frustration of so many of their listeners and readers, they give legitimacy to the most rancid and vile beliefs: racist, homophobic and anti-liberal manifestos which embolden the most deranged and violent prone to turn those hateful words into deeds.
This is a real and present danger, not some paranoid fever dream such as the red scares of the 50’s and 60’s. The rise in right wing violence over the last 20 years is a known fact. A powder keg of outrage has been manufactured by the spinmeisters and propagandists of the right. Another terrorist attack, or natural disaster, or even a severe economic downturn, could be the event which lights the fuse. God only knows what would happen next.