Video Recommendation, Stochastic Terror, and the objectives of the "extreme" right.

I admit to being a lurker. I have been reading DU for a decade and a half plus, and commenting for a while. I recently watched the “Miami Showband Massacre.” I wasn’t planning on focusing on this topic while I watched; I was doing some research on the 7 Years War (French and Indian War to us Americans.)

As I poked through my notes I realized that “The Troubles” had many extremely disturbing parallels to the contemporary US, particularly with respect to governmental support of right wing terrorism. Irrespective of actual government support of terror it becomes clear listening to both the protagonists (Miami Show Band members, Steven Travers and Des Lee, Royal Army members Fred Holroyd, Collin Wallace) and antagonists from the UDF (Ulster Defense Force) that the UDF expected the support of the English establishment in their acts of terror.

Two things struck me, the first was that acts of terrorism on behalf of the “status quo” are often covered up, and secondly that reactionary groups become more active when they are concerned that tacit support for their activities may be removed.

Looking back at recent history we’ve seen dramatic upswings in rightwing terror whenever Presidents were perceived as not being counted on for reliable support of right wing terror (LBJ, Clinton, Obama, we need to look at those statistics for Carter). Our current upswing in rightwing terror (we can call it white, but…. I’m white), may be due to their concerns that without decisive action in support of the full rightwing ideological panoply today, they will lose their ability to suppress “others” tomorrow.

*As a side note, genocide is probably too restrictive a phrase for a globally connected world. Most genos today would contain diverse philosophies, but the rightwing within any genos often seem more than willing to eliminate the members of the genos who are non-orthodox to the rights philosophies.