Just Another Isolated Incident?

The words of the Department of Homeland Security report on “Rightwing Extremism” which was released in April, the report which so incensed Republicans and the right-wing media that they demanded and received an apology from DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, are becoming more prescient every day. Just to remind you what it said: “Rightwing extremism in the United States can be broadly divided into those groups, movements, and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups), and those that are mainly anti-government, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.” Following yesterday’s shootings at the Holocaust Museum, in which a security guard was killed and two others wounded, the number of dead from what some are calling “isolated incidents” by “lone nuts” now stands at five. Three police officers in Pittsburgh, killed by Richard Poplawski because he feared President Obama was going to take his guns away. Dr. George Tiller at his church in Wichita, Kansas, murdered by anti-abortionist Scott Roeder. Stephen Johns, the guard at the museum, killed yesterday by James W. von Brunn, described by the Washington Post as; “a longtime, hard-core supremacist whose Internet writings contain extensive, poisonous ravings against Jews and African Americans.” How many more people have to die before we stop referring to these as isolated incidents and call it what it is, a pattern of domestic terrorism. Domestic terrorism fomented by the constant stream of vitriol by politicians and those in the media whose words incite the less than stable among us to act out their fear, hatred, and racism. Isolated? Listen as Shepard Smith reads a representative sampling of what he calls the “frightening” e-mails received by Fox News; [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxvunbIWNyI&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Ftpmtv.talkingpointsmemo.com%2F%3Fid%3D2706277&feature=player_embedded] Frightening indeed.