{pic by Aper3Caper}

When the outbreak of swine flu in Mexico made its way into the United States, the demagogues of the Nativist Right instinctively knew who was to blame: undocumented immigrants. Michelle Malkin was content to remind everyone how she’s been warning “for years about the spread of contagious diseases from around the world into the U.S. as a result of uncontrolled immigration.” But Michael Savage and Neal Boortz took a detour into the delusional, suggesting that perhaps “Islamic radicals” were using infected Mexican immigrants as biological weapons against the United States.

Of course, none of these astute commentators had even a shred of evidence to back up their claims, but who needs evidence when you’re a devotee of faith-based conservative beliefs that don’t require facts? Apparently, undocumented Mexicans are traveling as far afield as Germany, Israel, and New Zealand—since the outbreak has reached those countries as well. And it must be a coincidence that so many of the people around the world who have contracted the disease thus far just happened to visit Mexico recently.

Unfortunately, there is one very dangerous man in America with a badge and a gun who is taking the warnings of Malkin, Savage, and Boortz seriously: Joe Arpaio, the publicity-hungry sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona. With his typically self-serving sense of hysteria, Arpaio proclaims in a press release that “over 90% of all illegal aliens arrested” by his officers “come from areas south of Mexico City where the swine flu has already killed nearly 150 people,” and that, “in order to better protect his deputies,” he “will supply hundreds of protective gear kits and will strongly recommend that his 750 deputies use face masks and gloves in the field when they encounter and arrest illegal immigrants coming in from Mexico.”

Arpaio is a true champion of public health—those pesky investigations into his department’s lax crime-fighting efforts, excessive over-time costs, and systematic violations of civil rights notwithstanding. If there’s one man in America who can round up undocumented swine-flu viruses and send them back where they belong, it’s Joe Arpaio. Then he can bask in the glow of a live interview by Michael Savage and recount the harrowing tale of how he foiled al Qaeda’s plot to unleash viral suicide bombers upon an unsuspecting American public.

{pic by Tabitha & Simon Chasing the Dream}

Conservatives nationwide, led by the Know Nothings of Fox News, continue to deny that there are actually right-wing terrorist groups in the United States, or that these groups place a premium on the recruitment of new members with military experience. But to anyone who has actually studied the issue even a little bit, this is old news. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), for instance, has painstakingly cataloged 926 active hate groups in the United States as of 2008. The vast majority of these groups are driven by racist and conspiratorial right-wing ideologies that call for the violent overthrow of the U.S. government and the murder or expulsion from the country of non-whites and non-Christians. SPLC has also documented the presence of white supremacists in the U.S. military, and the presence of military veterans in white-supremacist groups.

However, conservatives tend to ignore anything the SPLC says because it is a “liberal” organization—which means, presumably, that all of the police reports, news accounts, court transcripts, and interviews upon which it relies are part of a Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy to defame conservatives. Similarly, the recent report from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Rightwing Extremism, which has produced so much self-righteous howling among conservative commentators, has been dismissed as an unconscionable partisan attack on mainstream conservatives and veterans by the duplicitous Obama administration.

So, let us turn to a source that conservatives will have more difficulty dismissing on the basis of perceived political bias: the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) under the administration of George W. Bush—a man once beloved by conservatives more than Almighty God Himself. The report in question, White Supremacist Recruitment of Military Personnel since 9/11, was issued by the FBI on July 7, 2008, and contains the following tidbits with regard to groups such as the National Alliance, National Socialist Movement {Nazis}, Aryan Nations, Ku Klux Klan, and Skinheads:

“Military experience—ranging from failure at basic training to success in special operations forces—is found throughout the white supremacist extremist movement. FBI reporting indicates extremist leaders have historically favored recruiting active and former military personnel for their knowledge of firearms, explosives, and tactical skills and their access to weapons and intelligence in preparation for an anticipated war against the federal government, Jews, and people of color. FBI cases also document instances of active duty military personnel having volunteered their professional resources to white supremacist causes.”

“Some veterans of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have joined the extremist movement. ”

“Post-9/11 activities by current or former military personnel involved in the extremist movement span the range of activities engaged in by their extremist compatriots who lack military experience, and include weapons violations, physical violence, paramilitary training, intelligence collection, drug violations, fraud, threats, and arson.”

“Most extremist groups have some members with military experience, and those with military experience often hold positions of authority within the groups to which they belong.”

Are most military veterans white supremacists? Of course not. Nor do most white supremacists have military training. But that’s not the point. The point is that if “mainstream” conservative commentators and their unthinking followers would remove their red, white, and blue blinders long enough, they might be able to see the obvious.

{pic by matthewfilipowicz}

In what is proving to be a very surreal case of showing one’s true colors, right-wing pundits are rushing to the defense of right-wing terrorist groups. The cause of this conservative outrage is a recent report from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) which notes that white-supremacist militias and assorted other “rightwing extremists may be gaining new recruits by playing on their fears about several emergent issues”—namely, the presence of a black man in the White House, the current economic recession, and the political possibility of gun-control and immigration-reform legislation at some point in the relatively near future. Right-wing Jaw Flappers are irate over this simple statement of fact because their ratings and livelihoods depend on stoking public fears over the very same issues that right-wing extremist groups use to recruit new members. Thus, perennial blow-hards like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Michelle Malkin are claiming that the DHS report is really an attack on run-of-the mill conservatives who simply hate foreigners, horde weapons, and anxiously await the End Times.

The reaction of these Paleolithic pundits illustrates the obvious fact that their ideologies, like those of the terrorist groups they are defending, are based on little more than hate. The pundits have been issuing shrill warnings for months that the Obama administration is on the verge of rounding up all the guns, forcing U.S. citizens into FEMA prison camps, and turning the United States into some sort of Communist-Socialist-Fascist state. It is this sort of delusional rhetoric that is fueling the proliferation of hate groups in the United States—not to mention the psychotic fantasies of “lone gunmen” like Pittsburgh cop-shooter Richard Poplawski (who, apparently, took the warnings of Glenn Beck a little too seriously). This doesn’t mean that the pundits are directly responsible for the violence of their faithful followers, of course…just that they are all in bed together.

{pic by escapedtowisconsin}

The Washington Post has pointed to the sorry state of the U.S. economy as a major psychological factor underlying the homicidal shooting sprees unleashed by various unhinged gun nuts around the country over the past month. Binghamton shooter Jiverly Wong, for instance, apparently was upset about losing his job when he burst into the American Civic Association and murdered 13 people on April 3. And Pittsburgh shooter Richard Poplawski had voiced concerns about the impact of the economy’s collapse on the ability of the police to protect society, and then proceeded to murder three police officers summoned to his mother’s home on April 4 by a 911 call related to a dispute the two were having over a dog urinating in the house.

However, as Eric Boehlert notes for Media Matters, some of our more prominent mass murderers of late have also been psychotically nourished by the kinds of right-wing conspiracy theories that circulate constantly in venues like Fox News. Poplawski, for example, was stockpiling weapons on the assumption that the Obama administration was well on its way to implementing a gun ban—a fabrication that is a favorite of far-right demagogue Glenn Beck. Similarly, Jim Adkisson—who shot up the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville on July 28, 2008—was a big fan of pathological liars like Michael Savage, Sean Hannity, and Bill O’Reilly; all of whom spin endless yarns about the impending collapse of Western Civilization at the hands of godless, gun-shy Liberals.

Of course, Glenn Beck is no more to blame for the Pittsburgh shootings than Marilyn Manson is to blame for the Columbine massacre because shooters Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris liked his songs. But it is worth noting that Right-Wing Tongue Waggers—who are fond of blaming rock music, television, and video games for so many of society’s ills—accept not even a modicum of responsibility when one of their well-armed and ill-informed admirers actually takes their rhetoric seriously and goes on a murderous rampage.