I wonder how soon the “explosive device” found in a backpack on Monday, along the Martin Luther King Jr. Parade route in Spokane, one which the FBI now informs us could have resulted in multiple casualties had it gone off as intended, will be blamed on “leftist” terrorists or “leftist” hate speech by those on the right?
A “potentially deadly” explosive device that could have caused severe casualties was found along the intended route of a Martin Luther King Day march in Spokane, Wash., half an hour before the event was to begin, the FBI said Tuesday. […]
The device inside “clearly would have had the potential to inflict multiple casualties, injury and death, to humans,” [FBI agent Frank] Harrill said in an interview Tuesday. He declined to describe the device. […]
No one has claimed responsibility or offered a motive, Harrill said. But he called the connection with the King Day march “inescapable.”
“We’re treating this as an act of domestic terrorism,” he said.
The LA Times article goes on to refer to the many instances of white supremacist activity in the Spokane area. Here’s the AP You Tube video regarding the bomb:
Its instructive to note that only ten months ago a similar bomb was discovered outside the Federal Courthouse in Spokane.
At a time of heightened concerns over threats to government officials, federal authorities in Spokane kept quiet about the discovery of a bomb found alongside the Thomas S. Foley U.S. Courthouse last week.
They acknowledged the investigation Wednesday, however, after the latest edition of Newsweek magazine disclosed the March 28 discovery as part of an article examining increasing anti-government threats and violence spreading across the nation.
According to the Thomas Clouse of the Spokane-Spokeman Review, interviewed by Rachel Maddow, the device had a remote control device, had shrapnel, and was place against a brick wall to ensure the force of the blast would be ditrected outward towar the marchers.
It goes without saying that parades in honor of Martin Luther King Day often have a large number of African American participants. It’s hard to imagine that “liberals” would target African Americans, but I’m sure someone on the right, whether a politician, a blogger or a political talk show host or pundit will find some excuse to point the finger away from themselves, just as they have consistently done each time a violent act motivated by violent right wing extremist rhetoric has occurred ( a good reference list of both calls for violence by right wing extremists in politics and the media, and the associated violent acts that were perpetrated against Democrats, liberals, etc. can be found here: Link).
Still, as David Niewert points out at Crooks and Liars, the likely response by the right wing echo chamber is that this bomb is just another “isolated incident” with no connection to the violent rhetoric employed by Tea Party activists, Conservative TV and radio talk show hosts (Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity, O’Reilly and the usual suspects), and Republican politicians ranging from John “[Democrat Rep. Driehaus] may be a dead man” Boehner to Sarah“Don;t retreat-reload!” Palin, Michelle “Armed and Dangerous” Bachmann to Sharron “Second Amendment Remedies” Angle.
These are, after all the same people who claim the “hard left” distorted the radical right ideology of Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City Bomber, back in 1995:
“At a time like this, it is terrible that we do have to think about politics, but no matter what the shooter’s motivations were, the left is going to blame this on the Tea Party movement,” Mr. Phillips, from Tea Party Nation, said on his Web site.
“While we need to take a moment to extend our sympathies to the families of those who died, we cannot allow the hard left to do what it tried to do in 1995 after the Oklahoma City bombing,” he wrote. “Within the entire political spectrum, there are extremists, both on the left and the right. Violence of this nature should be decried by everyone and not used for political gain.”
Who knew that people who accurately reported on Tim McVeigh’s association with the radical right and their ideas, the same ideas that many current Republican Party political figures are currently loudly proclaiming, are members of some nebulous “hard left” who are out to get the Tea Party 15 years later. I never knew that I was a member of the “hard left” (funny but all I see these days is evidence of a soft, meek and timid left), but according to Mr. Phillips anyone who claims Tim McVeigh’s actions were influenced by extreme right wing beliefs is a “hard leftist.” Of course Mr. Phillips and hos coterie of paranoid followers are just ordinary “Real Americans” with normal, everyday political beliefs, and not members of the “hard right” at all. Funny how that works.
The people who marched in Spokane on Monday to celebrate the life and ideals of Martin Luther King Jr., an advocate of non-violence, were very lucky on Monday not to be the victims of violence directed at them by a domestic terrorist (as the FBI, not me, labels the bomb suspect). Regrettably the same cannot be said for the people who went to a Safeway in Tuscon to hear their Congresswoman speak earlier this month.
That’s the trouble with luck. You never know when its going to be “good” or “bad.” What we can predict, with a fair amount of certainty based on recent events over the last three years, is that as long as the Right continues to demonize minorities, liberals and even scientists and uses language that subtly and often not so subtly calls for violence to be used against these individuals, the more incidents like the Tucson Massacre and the attempoted bombing in Spokane will continue to occur.