Something is happening on the radical right. Even as the presidential campaign season heats up and, with it, the possibility of ridding themselves of their hated black president, extremists are ratcheting up the rhetoric of war.
Something is happening on the radical right. Even as the presidential campaign season heats up and, with it, the possibility of ridding themselves of their hated black president, extremists are ratcheting up the rhetoric of war.
The League of the South, for instance, has long been threatening a second Southern secession with the aim of creating a separate nation ruled by an âAnglo-Celticâ majority. But the talk was mainly academic, and the leagueâs political efforts never seemed to go anywhere.
Now, league president Michael Hill is telling his followers that âwe are already at warâ and urging them to buy AK-47s, hollow-point bullets and tools to derail trains. At its July conference, some 60 league members learned how to draw down on an enemy. Asked Hill: âWhat would it take to get you to fight?â
William Gheen, the leader of the nativist group Americans for Legal Immigration PAC, said this August that in order to save âwhite Americaâ from âdictator Barack Obama,â it may be necessary to engage in âextra-political activities that I canât really talk about because theyâre all illegal and violent.â
Sounding a similar note was former Fox News host Glenn Beck, who told his radio audience the same month that if Obama were to lose the 2012 election, his administration âwill try to destroy Americaâ on its way out. He said the next president would have to be willing to sacrifice his life to resist Obamaâs nefarious plans. âI firmly believe race riots are on the way,â Beck added.
Similar sentiments are emerging among many radical groups and activists. But it may be in Montana where these developments are most striking.
In this issueâs cover story, we describe how radicals of various stripes â neo-Nazis, self-described constitutionalists, antigovernment âPatriotsâ and others â are retreating to the Big Sky State, also known as âthe last, best place.â With varying emphases, many of these men and women are hunkering down for a last stand that one of them compares to the Battle of the Alamo.
âWe know thereâs a fight coming,â said Chuck Baldwin, the 2008 presidential candidate of the far-right Constitution Party who moved to the state with 18 family members a year ago. âWe know there is a line being drawn in the sand.â
In June, militia activist Dave Burgert allegedly fired shots at a Montana sheriffâs deputy before fleeing into a national forest. In September, neo-Nazi activist Karl Gharst threatened to convene a âcitizens grand juryâ to investigate âJewish criminal organizations,â including the Southern Poverty Law Center. The same month, another well-known neo-Nazi, April Gaede, told Intelligence Report writer Ryan Lenz, who tried to interview her for our Montana story, that she was getting her gun if he didnât leave immediately. Gaede has been imploring âwhite nationalistsâ to âcome homeâ to Montana, a state that is nearly 90% white and a mere 0.4% black.
A siege mentality is developing, fraught with conspiracy theories that have long animated the radical right. Baldwin says he is fervently hoping for victory, â[b]ut if not, I would rather die fighting for Freedom with liberty-loving patriots by my side than be shuttled off to some FEMA camp.â
As the war rhetoric heats up, some formerly unlikely alliances are being made. The Constitution Party and Baldwin, for instance, are not known for open racism, although Baldwin argues that leaders of the Confederacy were not racist and âthe South was right.â But Baldwinâs new Montana church, Liberty Fellowship, includes in its swelling congregation Randy Weaver, the white supremacist and occasional visitor to the Aryan Nationsâ Idaho compound who was in a famous 1992 standoff.
An enormous fury seems to be developing in other sectors of the extreme right as well. The American Family Association (AFA) is a well-known group with a $20 million budget that rails against âindecencyâ in the media and, especially, homosexuality. In recent months, after saying that Obama ânurtures a hatred for the white man,â AFAâs best-known spokesman, Bryan Fischer, suggested that welfare was incentivizing black âpeople who rut like rabbits.â
Whatâs going on with all this white-hot rhetoric?
Itâs hard to say. But it does seem possible that many of these people, like Baldwin and Fischer, sense that they are losing the big battle. Growing majorities of Americans now favor same-sex marriage and other gay rights. Neo-Nazism, neo-Confederacy and other forms of explicit white nationalism are not doing well. The Tea Parties may have offered some hope to the far right early on, but they, too, seem to be fading.
Now, with the Republican presidential debates producing no clear favorite or obviously strong candidate, many on the extreme right may be hunkering down for another four years under a relatively liberal black president. And that may be simply too much for them to bear.