The Greater Threat: Christian Extremism From Timothy McVeigh to Anders Breivik

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/07/25-2

Timothy McVeigh, meet Anders Behring Breivik.

Those two jihadists—two right-wing reactionaries, two terrorists, two anti-government white supremacists, two Christians—have a lot in common, down to the way the massacres they carried out were first mistaken for the work of Islamists by an American press rich in zealotry of its own. And they have a lot more in common with the fundamentalist politicians and ideologues among us who pretend to have nothing to do with the demons they inspire.

After the Oklahoma City bombing in April 1995, speculation flew on television news stations about Arab terrorists seen in the vicinity of the federal building. The thought that a home-grown, Midwestern Army veteran of the first Gulf war could possibly murder 168 people, including 19 children at a day care center, seemed as foreign as those Islamic lands that were then inspiring so much of bigotry’s latest American mutant. McVeigh turned out to be as all-American as he could possibly be, with extras. His paradoxical worship of the Second Amendment was the faith that fueled his hatred of a government he felt had betrayed American ideals by enabling what he called “Socialist wannabe slaves.” His idealism of a golden-age white America was the Christian translation of al-Qaeda’s idealized caliphate.

It became quickly evident that the bombing in Oslo and the massacre on Utoya Island on Friday had been carried out by Anders Breivik, who surrendered to police 40 minutes after beginning his killing spree on the island. Yet the Wall Street Journal ran an editorial on Saturday putting the blame for the attack on Islamist extremists, because “in jihadist eyes,” the paper said, “it will forever remain guilty of being what it is: a liberal nation committed to freedom of speech and conscience, equality between the sexes, representative democracy and every other freedom that still defines the West."

More at the link --

the surface for quite some time now. However, when economies are weak, things like this rise to the surface.

The economy is worse in Europe than in the US and I fear that there are rough times ahead.

He's right wing scum.

K & R - good article

He's insane. They all are. They think they are part of God's army to take over world. Their idiots all of them. People keep saying we should be tolerant of their beliefs. I say fuck tolerance. They are a danger to society.

But talk like that is verboten among good progressives, so I'll just let Mr. Tristam have his say.

I have never, not once, read anything about McVeigh's motivations being specifically Christian in nature. He was a right-wing anti-government militia-wannabe blowhard who obsessed over black helicopters and Area 51 and the government taking his guns away. He was motivated to act by Waco, not something he imagined from the Bible. He was a precursor to the Tea Party and wore a t-shirt on April 19 with the Tree of Liberty Jefferson quote. His motivations were political through-and-through - nothing "Christian" even by his own admission. This is a stupid, false meme and it needs to stop because it makes us look as kneejerk as the RWers who assume every non-white terrorist is "Muslim" whether they are or aren't.