As the OKC anniversary reminds us, America's right-wing mental degenerates stand proudly with the world's most extreme mental degenerates

You notice that right-wingers, confirmed apologists for right-wing degeneracy, react violently any time there's a hint of public discussion of its virulence and scope. You have to figure it hits too close to home. For the record, no, it wasn't "Islamic terrorists" who bombed the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City on this day in 1995; it was our very own native right-wing goonybirds.

"The biggest question that continues to hang over the Oklahoma City bombing is whether McVeigh was freelancing -- or whether he was part of a broader conspiracy that extended beyond Nichols. For all their painstaking research, [Andrew] Gumbel and[Roger] Charles can never quite answer this question."

-- Michael Isikoff, in "Oklahoma City Bombing’s
Unanswered Questions in New Book," on The Daily Beast

by Ken

That's what I remember most about the event of April 19, 1995 -- beyond the carnage itself, I mean. That while the Right-Wing Noise Machine was able to wallow in its fond fantasy of Islamic terrorists finding their way to Oklahoma City, it was the only thing that was talked about, but as soon as we found out who seemed actually responsible, which is to say crackpots nurtured in the bosom of the right-wing extremist movements, the "discussion" basically went silent. Ideological imbeciles who as recently as hours before had been screaming at the top of their lungs -- and at the limit, I'm afraid, of their flatline-zero functional intelligences -- for bloody vengeance, absolutely lost interest.

It wasn't an aberration, of course, the Oklahoma City bombing. It was simply the philosophy of 21st-century "conservatism," a philosophy that might best be described with the Click-and-Clack phrase as "unencumbered by the thought process," acted out to its fullest degree. And as a new book on the bombing reminds us, we still don't know the extent of the link between bomber Timothy McVeigh and his bomb-building accomplice Terry Nichols and the armed-and-dangerous right-wing movements.

Michael Isikoff has a highly recommended piece on The Daily Beast, "Oklahoma City Bombing’s Unanswered Questions in New Book," based on that new book: Oklahoma City: What the Investigators Missed -- and Why It Still Matters, by Andrew Gumbel and Roger Charles.

"A RESURGENT MOVEMENT OF LOOSELY CONNECTED
EXTREMIST HATE GROUPS, CHRISTIAN IDENTITY
FANATICS, AND GUN-TOTING MILITIA MEMBERS"

We'll never know how long our authorities would have continued pursuing those dastardly Islamic terrorists if "a sharp-eyed Oklahoma state trooper named Charlie Hanger" hadn't seen and pulled over "a beat-up Mercury Marquis with no license plates cruising down a highway headed to Kansas," driven by "a fresh-faced Army vet" -- who proceeded to pull a gun on him!

"The feds," says Isikoff, "certainly had legitimate reason to be worried about Islamic extremists in the mid-1990's."

But there was an equally menacing threat that was being largely ignored by federal law enforcement, a resurgent movement of loosely connected extremist hate groups, Christian Identity fanatics, and gun-toting militia members, all convinced that American liberty was in grave peril.

As Gumbel and Charles amply document, U.S. law enforcement had plenty of warning signals that these groups were planning violent attacks—and even that the Murrah Building itself might well be one of the targets.

There were even, as Isikoff points out, warnings from the right-wing crazies that there would be fireworks on April 19, the anniversary of the carnage at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, a date that live in infamy for confirmed right-wing mental degenerates -- and many right-wing ideologues who pretend not to be mental degenerates -- who are unable or unwilling to grasp the screamingly obvious fact that the root cause of the Waco horror was out-of-control right-wing degeneracy.

The Waco anniversary, Isikoff, notes, "had become a rallying cry for the far right, but for reasons ranging from bureaucratic rivalries to political timidity, few in Washington were paying any attention."

FBI, MEET ATF.
ATF, MEET THE FBI.

Actually, I guess the problem isn't that they don't know each other, but that they do. At the top of the list of "bureaucratic rivalries" is the "virtual war" between ATF (the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms) and the FBI. "The two agencies barely talked," says Isikoff, "much less shared intelligence about the radical right." And apparently both agencies had potentially important information and what Isikoff described as "a resurgent movement of loosely connected extremist hate groups, Christian Identity fanatics, and gun-toting militia members, all convinced that American liberty was in grave peril."

Specifically, both ATF and the FBI had information about sinister goings-on at Elohim City," a cultish compound of racist oddballs in the remote hills of eastern Oklahoma City whose leader, Robert 'Grandpa" Millar,' had been [white-supremacist convicted double murderer Richard Wayne] Snell's 'spiritual adviser.'" Snell is Richard Wayne Snell, a white-supremacist mastermind and then on Death Row in Arkansas for a double murderer, scheduled to be executed on (when else?) April 19. Snell and assorted disciples of his had all sorts of ties to the right-wing crackpot groups

We know that Timothy McVeigh knew Andreas Strassmeir ("one of the more intriguing stealth characters in this tale"), grandson of a founder of the Nazi Party who at the time was chief of security at Elohim City. We know that Strassmeir had given McVeigh his business card and phone number "and invited him to stop by anytime." We also know, from McVeigh's phone calling card, that he called Elohim City on April 5.

THOU SHALT NOT SPEAK ILL OF RIGHT-WING
CRACKPOTS -- OR PREPARE TO PAY THE PRICE

You might think that at least after the fact, if not before, considering the assorted other information both ATF and the FBI had coming out of Elohim City and other right-wing hotbeds, some relevant law-enforcement authority would have had some some questions to ask, independently if not cooperatively (an apparent impossibility!). Apparently if you think that, though, you're wrong. All we have is unanswered questions about possible links between these shadowy sweethearts and the events of April 19, 1995.

You may wonder, why is that? Isikoff cites one really big reason.

Especially after Waco, the political risks of delving too deeply into the radical right were too great. "Everybody just walked in fear of domestic-terrorism cases," Horace Mewborn, another former [FBI] official told the authors. "They were positive they were going to blow up in their face."

In the years since Oklahoma City and especially after Barack Obama's election, the radical race hatred and anti-government paranoia that infused McVeigh continues to thrive—on Internet chat rooms, in militia hideouts, and at obscure rural compounds like the one that was at Elohim City. Three years ago, a Homeland Security intelligence analyst wrote a scary report warning that right-wing extremist groups were making a comeback and needed to be more closely tracked.

Conservative critics in Congress were outraged, accusing Homeland Security of preparing to monitor American citizens exercising their constitutional rights. Homeland Security scrapped the report and the analyst, Daryl Johnson, soon left his job, only to pop up in the news again last year when a demented anti-Muslim fanatic in Norway blew up government buildings and shot scores of children at a Labor Party youth camp. It was the worst act of terrorism in a Western country in recent years. Such killings "could easily happen here," Johnson told reporters.

Isikoff notes in closing: "As Gumbel and Charles remind us, they already have."

HOW DO YOU TELL FAR-RIGHT CRACKPOTS
FROM SO-CALLED "MAINSTREAM" REPUBLICANS?

This is not a riddle; it's a question, based on the American Right's descent deeper and deeper into its hermetically sealed world of paranoia, lies, and delusion, generously laced with anything from willingness to eagerness for violence, all backed by massive funding from super-rich right-wing magnates who have learned how to wildly compound their fortunes by harnessing the thug power of the foot soldiers and fellow travelers of the Sociopathic Right.

As is true with almost everything that concerns the modern American Right, a double standard is not merely tolerated but celebrated:

* When it comes to people even slightly left of center on the modern-day political spectrum (in which Hitler, for example, is a "socialist"), any indication, even the slightest and least significant, of speech or behavior that deviates from right-wing orthodoxy, whether real or made up, is treated with full blast from the Right-Wing Noise Machine as a clear and present danger to the Republic.

* Whereas it's considered a blood libel against patriotic Americans to cast aspersions on -- or, often, even to mention -- actual documented speech and behavior by people associated with right-wing causes, no matter how extreme.

Bear in mind that it has become less and less possible to separate the most extreme right-wing crackpots and causes from what now passes for "mainstream" Republicanism. Hell, more and more of the far-right-wing crackpots are now certified GOP political officeholders.

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Re. the horror in Norway: Do right-wingers have contact of any sort with reality?

"Anders Behring Breivik from the video he posted on YouTube before his shooting spree": caption for the photo accompanying the Telegraph's Sunday-datelined report, "Norway killings: Breivik posted hate-filled video on YouTube hours before attacks"

by Ken

Further to Howie's overnight post ("Who Blew Up Oslo? A Right-Wing Terrorist, Of Course"), I've wondered occasionally what happens when right-wingers, who have now given their brains over entirely to whacked-out delusion, are forced into contact with actual reality -- or, alternatively, how it happens that it never seems to happen.

It's an especially pertinent question now while the sociopathic mental cases now infesting the houses of Congress and statehouses all over the country, flouting the muscle of their ignorance and total disconnect from reality, are insisting on remaking the country in the image of their mental deformity.

And here once again we have it. If at any time a prick of reality should force its way into their murky consciousness, they either pretend it never happened, make up an even nuttier story than their now-discredited one, or just change the subject.

In my post last night I began by passing as quickly as I could over the Norwegian horror. And I freely own that I was eager for a change of subject. The difference is that my flight from reality wasn't aimed at denying that reality.

You'd think that even the most minimal sense of decency would have encouraged people to keep their traps shut, beyond expressing horror and sympathy for the victims. I mean, at least until we had actual information. But no, there were the brain-deads of the Right braying about Muslim extremism. Shades of Oklahoma City. Or the Tucson shootings.

These days, however, the right-wing mindset has now evolved so harmoniously into terrorist mode that the chances have become ever greater that the reality will turn out to be what it apparently has turned out to be in the case of Norway's home-grown right-wing loon. Which I'm guessing will mean that the Right's interest will vanish, just as it did when the Oklahoma City bomber turned out to be a home-grown American right-wing nutjob. The story that had to that point enflamed the right-wing flamers suddenly disappeared -- except for the occasional superwacko who just went right on trumpeting his delusions.

Ditto with the Tucson shootings. Everybody with a working brain quickly came to understand that the pathetic delusionary responsible was another pure-bred product of the climate of right-wing hate and ignorance and psychosis. And the more sensible of the nutjobs understood that their most sensible course was just to shut the hell up and let the thing go away. But since there isn't that much sense among the nuts, the impulse to belligerence quickly returned, and the talking no-brainers demanded to know how anyone could make a political thing of this, and it's all the liberals' fault anyway.

Of course if one of these shooters turned out to be the left-wing terrorist of the nutjobs' dreams, we would never hear the end of it, in accordance with the principle of our old game of If the Shoe Was on the Other Foot.


UPDATE: A Few Words From Political Terrorism Expert Dave Neiwert

This evening Dave posted about Breivik's obsession with "Cultural Marxism."

The picture that's emerging is of an ordinary right-wing man stoked into anger by theories about "Cultural Marxism" that originated on the anti-Semitic far right but have in recent years been spreading into more mainstream venues, promoted by the likes of Andrew Breitbart, among others.

...Based on online posts apparently by Anders Behring Breivik circulated in Norway, the alleged terrorist opposed multiculturalism and Muslim immigrants in Norway. Breivik championed opposition to "Cultural Marxism," a right-wing antisemitic concept developed primarily by William Lind of the US-based Free Congress Foundation, but also the Lyndon LaRouche network.

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Is Rupert Murdoch trying to make us feel better about newspapers' steady slide into extinction?

by Ken

I guess working for Rupert Murdoch means never having to say you're sorry -- unless maybe you do something that causes the boss to lose a chunk o' cash.

Now trust me, I fret over this Yankee season. I wish it were harder to count the number of times I've gotten home late and tuned into a game in progress, only to find the Yanks down by, say, six runs, at a time when even a one-run deficit is generally hard for them to make up.

I can even see how, under normal circumstances, the "RIP" gravestone could have been a clever way to put a punctuation mark on this disappointing season. But if there's one day when, unfortunately, you can't do it, it's when your other major story is about a lunatic walking into Arkansas Democratic Party headquarters and shooting the state party chairman.

I notice that, according to the Washington Post website, that paper's story on the Arkansas shooting was tucked away on page A4. Of course, the New York Post's front-page placement may have had something to do with its deck for the story: "Clinton friend killed." Are we to guess that if the late Bill Gwatney hadn't been "a close friend of Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton," as he's described in the story lead, his murder wouldn't have been front-page material?

With regard to the assassin's motive, we still have no more than a clue -- that he had just been fired from his job at a Target store (and not, as was being speculated yesterday in the wake of the shooting, at one of the car dealerships owned by the victim), for writing graffiti on a store wall. Naturally the fact that the guy sought out the chairman of his state Democratic Party, coming two and a half weeks after the Knoxville, Tennessee, Unitarian church shoot-up by a certified right-wing loonie apparently expressly set on murdering liberals, has a lot of us wondering if there isn't something more important about Bill Gwatney's identity than that he was "a close friend of Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton."

Are we in fact witnessing the opening rounds of a reign of violence by the brain-challenged subjects/objects/victims of the Right-Wing Noise Machine? Of course we don't know much yet about the Arkansas loony. And since he was shot dead by police returning his fire after what seems to have been a pretty wild car chase, we're not going to find out any more from him.

But the right-wing loons don't seem to have had any trouble connecting the dots. Yesterday the wingnuttiest of the blogging wingnuts were in full preemptive damage-control screech over the way we liberals were bound to exploit this latest episode. Incredibly, there were even "aren't we victims?" references to the Oklahoma City bombing, despite the facts that:

* the immediate, no-facts-based assumption by both the Right-Wing Noise Machine and its fraternal affiliate, the American Infotainment Media, was that the bombing was the work of Arabs;

* the crime was in fact perpetrated by certified American far-right-wing loonies;

* and those same media halfwits managed to fail to impress upon the country the essential connection that the bombing was in fact the work of authentic home-grown right-wing domestic terrorists.

Michelle Malkin, that useless pile of puke who seems not to have a sane or decent cell in her diseased brain, and whose only reason for drawing breath appears to be to spew lies and delusions sufficiently vast, vicious, and hate-fomenting to produce a climate of murderous rage, responded in classic Malkin-esque form yesterday, as reported by our pal Gavin M at Sadly, No:

Somebody sent me an email blaming my so-called 'hate' for this horrible act of violence against a Democrat Party liberal. Here is that person's full name and unredacted email address.

(Gavin presented this as "Shorter Michelle Malkin: I shot the Arkansas Democrat Party chairman.")

I think back to when the American Orthodox rabbis of the extreme right produced a months-long drumbeat of incitement to the assassination of Israeli Prime Minster Yitzhak Rabin, including providing biblical and talmudic justifications, even mandates, for Rabin's murder, and then threw up their hands in innocent amazement that anyone should point at them when the prime minister was assassinated by one of their faithfully ultra-Orthdox crazies. (Seen here: the Mount Herzl graves of Leah and Yitzhak Rabin.)

To return to the NYP, I can see that the sports guys who dreamed up their "RIP" for the Yankee season, complete with artwork, were so pleased with their cleverness that they just couldn't let it go. I'm sorry for them that its intended publication happened to coincide with the story of a real-life assassination. But, as they say, them's the breaks. I'm not sure how much it would have helped to move the Yankee story to the tabloid paper's back cover, which is always devoted to sports anyway -- the two covers, after all, are not only physically on the same sheet of newsprint but in effect a "set."

To be sure, there are a lot of fans who live and die with the ups and downs of the Yankees' season. Nevertheless, it's just a game. A jobless crazy man taking out his craziness on a political leader -- that's something else.

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