Hate speech, political violence and climate change

17th May  2011

The US Department of Homeland Security monitors domestic terrorism threats and warns of a dramatic rise in “right-wing extremism” in the USA. It blames the rise of extremism on both domestic and global changes. The key domestic causes include the election of a black man to the office of president and the economic stress caused by the financial crisis. Global factors that stimulate extremism are largely to do with the relative decline of the US in relation to China and India.

The Department of Homeland Security report also points to specific shifts in patterns of thinking and organisation within the extremist community. Extremists are becoming better at recruiting, by mixing their political asks with “accusatory” language, such as blaming the recession on the Jews. They are also becoming more unreasonable and paranoid. Fox’s Glenn Beck, for example, apparently thinks the US Government is planning to allow a foreign country to invade America and enslave its white, Christian citizens.

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/2693120.html

David Neiwert is a US journalist who specialises in investigations of extremists. His 2009 book The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right explains how the conservatives got as crazy as they are and where they are headed.