Monday, August 10, 2009

The old one-two

I've written before in depth about the split among the loose "bundle" of bottom-up anti-democratic movements throughout North America, particularly the United States, but a clear shift appears to be happening: the race-based communalists are facing growing heat from the mainstream, a very reasonable result given their overt violence and general disregard for their appearance within the media, and perhaps more fundamentally their inability to radically differentiate themselves from earlier race-based politics (Classical Fascism, any one?).

So, I think we can consider the Birthers and their even more radical splinters that haven't seen as much media exposure as in retreat. The partial media blackout on right wing terrorism has kept many of the less savory events involving them outside of the public eye or reduced their impact (most notably, James F. Lindsay's insanity, Richard Poplawski's rampage, the James von Brunn attack, and the mess surrounding James G. Cummings).

Alternatively, we have to wonder if we're too late to stall even this movement. Our own government is now party to this, specifically the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE), which has essentially transformed sections of our border with Mexico into a police state. A culture where being non-white, speaking a language other than English in public, and similar racially-charged non-criminal acts have become suspect, sparking a complex spectrum spanning from the ICE, official government agents ignoring our own laws, into non-governmental organizations involved in this mess and rouge individuals attempting to appease both groups resorting to unspeakable acts.

Nonetheless, the mainstream seems to be catching on, albeit slowly, to the kind of insanity going on here. PACs aiming at reform of this situation are developing, in a large part because of the spots of this movement that are showing through the media giants' mysterious silence.

Meanwhile, something entirely different appears to be happening to the religious counterparts. Coverage of the Dominionists and the Dispensationalists has been practically nonexistent on the major stations since the election last November (and it only came up then in relation to Sarah Palin's ties to the Assemblies of God and Robert Muthee, and that was incredibly spotty in coverage). An optimist might conclude that this is because the religious communalists aren't as violent or well-organized or widespread; that we've lucked out with one branch of this macro-movement self-destructing while the other never took off.

Realists, however, will notice a similar pattern of individuals within the movement radicalized into violence (as the Tiller Murder and others as recently as less than a week ago), a similar development of cult-like phenomena en masse, ridiculous visions of their own in-group's infallibility, and the same transmission of fringe ideology into the mainstream. In spite of all this, where is the equivalent media attention on these self-proclaimed defenders of virtue?

And yes, just as coverage began to surface of the ICE's routine abuses, Eric Prince, founder and head of XE, originally called Blackwater, has been found to have given out orders, which were followed, to murder members of the organization suspected of acting as informants to the federal government about official misconduct. Incited by Prince, a number of murders of Iraqi civilians drive soldiers, trapped between a failing public system and corrupt private system, to tell the government of the wrongs done by themselves or their company. This only prompted Prince to push XE into a deadly spiral of growing body counts.

Who would have thought? A mercenary organization permeated with a neo-crusader mentality developing murderous intent and becoming corruptly dangerous.

We need to bring the second movement out of the shadows, because it's just as big and just as dangerous as its more illuminated cousin.

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