Sometimes I feel as if Rush Limbaugh isn't entirely to be trusted

Another day, another act of lone-wolf right-wing terror. In what is sure to a standard-issue argument from the right, Republican Party Leader Rush Limbaugh claims that the attacker was inspired by the American left. According to Limbaugh, you can make this connection because:

He hated both Bushes...he hated neocons...he hated John McCain...he hated Republicans, he hated Jews, as well. He believed in an inside job conspiracy of 9/11. This guy is a leftist, if anything...

Unfortunately for Rush, it does not take long to find von Brunn's connections to the world of right-wing extremism (emphasis mine):

(Von Brunn's) book, "Kill the Best Gentiles," is a screed against the Talmud and is dedicated to Revilo Oliver, a well-known denier of the Holocaust. Von Brunn's writings condemning "Negroes" and Jews were prolific...

...Todd Blodgett, a former Reagan White House aide who later worked with several extremist groups, met regularly with von Brunn in the 1990s and early 2000s.

"Von Brunn is obsessed with Jewish people," Blodgett said. "He had equal contempt for both Jews and blacks, but if he had to pick one group to wipe out, he'd always say it would be Jews."

Blodgett was part-owner of Resistance Records, which distributed music by white racist groups, and worked for Willis Carto, the founder of Liberty Lobby, a radical right group...

...Von Brunn apparently supported himself through much of the 1980s and '90s by distributing copies of the Spotlight, the Liberty Lobby's racist newspaper. "A lot of people like Von Brunn made some good money taking those around to senior homes, restaurants, gun shows and places like that," Blodgett said.

Unless the political scene has altered greatly, I don't believe aides to the Reagan administration, owners of white racist record companies, and frequenters of gun shows distributing racist literature are people regularly associated with the left wing, at least not since the Southern Strategy during the Nixon era.

Then there is this:

On Dec. 7, 1981, he (von Brunn) walked into the Federal Reserve headquarters on Constitution Avenue NW with a handgun and threatened to take members of the Board of Governors, including then-Chairman Paul A. Volcker, hostage.

Police said he had an 11-page document, which he characterized as an exposé of an "international bankers' conspiracy to rule all nations from one central seat of government." Court records said he intended to place them under citizens arrest and charge them with treason.

At his trial, von Brunn said that his goal was to "deport all Jews and blacks from the white nations" and that statistics on IQs of black and white Americans "proved that there is one race that is better than another." He also testified that "Jews were the greatest liars that have ever afflicted mankind."

This conspiratorial obsession with the Federal Reserve is a well known facet of right wing extremists, a much discussed and disseminated belief amongst right-wing "Patriot" groups and considered to be a key part of rule by ZOG (the so-called Zionist Occupational Government). These groups are right wing, consider themselves "real" Americans by virtue of the "organic" Constitution, and amongst other things, often believe the paper money printed by the Federal Reserve is counterfeit, part of a general belief about the sovereignty of America being usurped by outside (usually Jewish) forces long associated with the right wing in groups like the John Birch Society and the Posse Comitatus. It's the same belief system that explains the far right's obsession with leaving the United Nations, or their obsession with Mexico reconquering southwestern America.

Rush is, as usual, very careful in his choice of examples, focusing on targets-the Bushes, neocons, an inside job on 9/11-that are often associated with anger on the left, which can make his claim seem plausible on first hearing it. And that's the point-by weeding out the larger context of von Brunn's belief system and only focusing on a few disembodied, cherry-picked items, he can make it seem like this was an act of left-wing extremism, if you are inclined or wish to think it so. However, right-wing extremists were always suspicious of the internationalist Bushes, the mostly-Jewish neocons, and Israel. This by no means makes such people leftists.

Christian Terror: More Than Just Abortion Clinic Violence

Blah. Engaging any argument made by Ann Coulter seems like an exercise in futility. However, this bit from her syndicated column on June 3 extends an idea that has been floated by conservatives often, especially during the height of the Bush II years, and I suspect that over time we'll hear a similar argument from the right over and over again, so it makes sense to take it on:

Why aren't liberals rushing to assure us this time that "most pro-lifers are peaceful"? Unlike Muslims, pro-lifers actually are peaceful.
According to recent polling, a majority of Americans oppose abortion - which is consistent with liberals' hysterical refusal to allow us to vote on the subject. In a country with approximately 150 million pro-lifers, five abortionists have been killed since Roe v. Wade.
In that same 36 years, more than 49 million babies have been killed by abortionists.

Let's recap that halftime score, sports fans: 49 million to five.
Meanwhile, fewer than 2 million Muslims live in America and, while Muslims are less murderous than abortionists, I'm fairly certain they've killed more than five people in the United States in the last 36 years. For some reason, the number "3,000" keeps popping into my head.
So in a country that is more than 50 percent pro-life - and 80 percent opposed to the late-term abortions of the sort performed by Tiller - only five abortionists have been killed. And in a country that is less than 0.5 percent Muslim, several dozen Muslims have killed thousands of Americans.

Let's dissect this. Coulter is attempting to call out liberals, who she claims are quick to tell conservatives that Muslims are generally peaceful, and that terrorist attacks on their part are the acts of extremists; she wishes to know why liberals don't make the same claim about the forced-pregnancy movement. Furthermore, she claims that while a majority of Americans oppose abortion, and a very large majority oppose the kind Tiller performed, there have been only 5 deaths of doctors who perform them; while a far smaller group of Muslims living in America have killed a greater number of Americans by far.

The point of all this is to extend the idea that Islam is a religion of violence, an idea the right in America disseminated in large quantities during the height of the Bush II administration-a tool in the attempt to "other" Muslims generally. By contrast, the forced-pregnancy movement, who liberals accuse of being a domestic terrorist movement according to her, is in her estimation the very picture of peaceful protest for change, based on the fact that the forced-pregnancy movement has only murdered 5 abortion-clinic workers. And, of course, liberals are the worst of hypocrites, simply the very worst, for protecting the larger reputation of Muslims in the wake of their terrorist acts, while not doing the same for forced-pregnancy advocates in the wake of their terrorist activities.

The problem with her position is that she has singled out extremism in the name of forced pregnancy as a movement unto itself, disconnected from any larger movement of right-wing Christian extremism; while she lumps all factions and beliefs within Islam together as if it is a monolithic whole, committed in full to the extremist viewpoints of Al Quaeda, all over the Muslim world from the Middle East to Indonesia. That's obviously a false comparison. Leaving aside the mistake of putting all Muslims under one classification, abortion-clinic terrorism is part of a larger, Christianist extremist movement that has as its target not simply abortion clinics but homosexuals, the federal government, or anyone who threatens "traditional values" as they interpret them (excerpt from NPR, May 2, 1995):

LYNN NEARY: It would be wrong to say that all groups on the extreme right are influenced by religion. The right-wing militias that have sprung up around the country vary widely, but there is evidence that some of them believe that the justification for their cause can be found in The Bible, a manual for setting up militias, which is distributed by a group called the Free Militia, begins with a quote from Jesus. The first chapter outlines the biblical inspiration and authority for forming a militia.

John White [sp] is an expert in terrorism, who also teaches Christian ethics at Western Theological Seminary in Michigan.

JOHN WHITE, Christian Ethics Teacher, Western Theological Seminary of Michigan: Many times the call to religion is a call to violence because the groups are so heavily involved in ontological arguments in the sense that they claim that the deity has chosen them to represent divine will, and they're also reflective of eschatological arguments, believing that they- the end times are upon humanity, in Christian terms that Armageddon is near, and they are ready to fight the final battle of creation for- for God and for America.

This view of the state of America's increasing moral degeneracy and a belief that the nation has strayed from its God-ordained path informs this movement, regardless of the target:

LYNN NEARY: The suggestion that religious freedom was involved at Waco resonates with the extreme right, says James Davison Hunter [sp], author of Culture Wars. Hunter says the underlying political philosophy of the extreme right is a belief that the government has lost its legitimacy in part because it has forgotten its religious heritage.

JAMES DAVISON HUNTER, Author, 'Culture Wars': Corresponding to this broader political philosophy are certain religious understandings about the nature of America and its history, a kind of historical philosophy, if you will, that views America as having been at one time Christian and departing from its Christian roots.

Abortion clinic shootings are but one aspect of a larger right-wing, Christianist-based brand of terrorism. The Christianist perspective regarding the direction they see America taking is what drives people like Shelley Shannon, Paul Hill, and Scott Roeder to do what they do, just as it motivated Eric Rudolph, just as it motivated Robert "Jack" Jackson and Doug Sheets in Shelby, North Carolina. And there clearly is an overlap between the tax-protester, sovereign-citizen movement, militia movement and Christianist beliefs that has contributed to violence such as the bombing of the Murrah building in Oklahoma City.

When Tiller's shooting is put in the proper, real context of Christianist-based terror in America, the number of similar terrorist acts committed jumps considerably-certainly well over Coulter's preferred number of five. This is, of course, excluding the threats and attempts that have been thwarted, of which there are many. Muslim extremists may have killed many Americans in one fell swoop on September 11, but Christianists have certainly tried to keep up over the years, so if their numbers lag behind those of Islamic extremists, its hardly for lack of trying.

Ann Coulter is aware of all of this. Her framing of the event is simply a little trick, a way for her to portray Islam as a religion of violence, liberals as hypocrites, and anti-abortion activists as peace-loving civil protesters all at once, by whiting out the context behind the act.

The real comparison, were she to make it, might be this: Much as all of Islam should not be stained by the acts of a few fool extremists in their midst, neither should all Christians be tainted by the acts of a few fool extremists in their midst. As for the forced pregnancy movement specifically, their rhetoric has been increasingly incendiary for years, in keeping with the rhetoric and actions of Christianist extremists generally, so I have no problem whatsoever with directly linking them with domestic terrorism. The blood of George Tiller is on their hands whether they acknowledge it or not.