A group of heavily armed anti-government militia members, having taken over several government buildings, are currently destroying archaeological sites of critical importance and build their own infrastructure in defiance of the laws of the land.  They have released video footage the artifacts and sites being removed, and a new road being built in their stead. The road traverses archaeological sites that are significant to the local nations of that area. Is this the handiwork of the Islamic State (IS) fanatical militia group? Actually, it is – the responsibility belongs to Vanilla ISIS, the white anti-government ultra-right militia that has taken over the Malheur Wildlife Refuge.

The indigenous nations, the Burns Paiute Tribe, have strongly protested to the federal government, but thus far no action has been taken to preserve the lands and sites that are sacred to that nation. A number of endangered species live in the areas occupied by the ultra-rightist groups, and one of their members addressed concerns about the status of those species by stating on social media that: “You know how many endangered species we’re dealing with on our ranch right now? Zero, because it doesn’t matter any more”.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with ridiculing these ultra-right fanatics, and indeed they deserve derision for their sheer ignorance. In this case of armed rebellion by a group of gun-crazed fanatics, violent suppression by the forces of the state will only result in more bloodshed and suffering, producing martyrs for their distorted ’cause’, and legitimising the use of state violence when attacking the force of the Labour Left, the African American and minority communities. The federal authorities, namely the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) did respond with lethal force in 1993, when suppressing the fundamentalist and apocalyptic-seeking evangelical cult, the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas. Memories of that fatal engagement still inform ultra-right groups until today. Currently, there are negotiations between the FBI and the rightist militants of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge to end the standoff.

The reasons for the appeal of such groups, and the spread of their ideology, need to be found in the generalised decay of the capitalist system itself and the rightward trajectory of the mainstream political parties. Ideas such as those advocated by Vanilla ISIS do not spring up out of nowhere – they are both a symptom and a disease. As Eric Ruder explained in his article ‘Patriots versus the State?’ for the Socialist Worker online magazine:

The double standard applied to the Oregon protesters is absolutely a reflection of the racism embedded in U.S. law enforcement at all levels. But perhaps even more crucial to explaining the authorities’ polite and patient treatment of the protesters is not their whiteness, but their “right-ness”–that is, the reactionary political views they share with an influential wing of the Republican Party.

The American ultra-right, a nebulous movement with sometimes conflicting ideas, has grown and flourished in a larger political climate of hysteria and bigotry. The New Yorker magazine published an analysis of the revival of far-right groups and ideologies in its January 2016 issue. Entitled ‘The Far-Right Revival: A Thirty Year War?’ the author, Evan Osnos, traces the support of ultra-rightist groups and racist ideology back to support from the mainstream political parties in the United States. The politics of resentment, the portrayal of minority groups as privileged layers increasing their share of the ‘national pie’, drives this layer of political dissonance. Donald Trump, the bigoted, loud-mouthed presidential candidate, is just the latest figure providing a lightning rod to attract the so-called ‘white nationalist’ groupings into a coherent force.

The major political parties have provided a springboard to take radical right ideas into the mainstream. Donald Trump, the most bombastic and media-savvy of the Republican candidates, has built his political career on racism, targeting Hispanic immigrants, appealing to the most belligerent sentiments when it comes to foreign policy, and in December 2015 announced his intention to shut down all Muslim immigration to the United States. Tapping into a long and deep vein of Islamophobia in the United States, that was only the latest in a long series of semi-fascistic proposals from the rightist candidate. Trump is the loudest, but he is hardly alone in his political proposals. The Socialist Workers magazine published an insightful article regarding the support Trump is receiving, entitled ‘Why does anyone support this racist asshole?’ A perfectly valid question. While Trump is the one that garners the most media attention, his campaign has served as a springboard for racist ideas to gain a wide audience. But he is not so far outside the mainstream. As Elizabeth Schulte, the author of the article explained:

Trump may not be a fascist, but he is providing a space for racist lies and far-right ideas to flourish–and for marginalized individuals to become emboldened to take action on these ideas.

Wildly dangerous and not so far-outside the mainstream

The sub-heading above comes from an article by the always perceptive Glenn Greenwald, who wrote that while Trump’s proposal to ban all Muslim immigration is dangerous and leans towards proto-fascism, it is not so far outside the mainstream of political discourse. Trump’s role is poisonous, not so much because of his candidacy per se, but because his rantings help to normalise the expression of racial hatred. He is definitely not some aberration, but the ugliest, vilest expression of racist and semi-fascistic undercurrents in the US ruling class. Republican candidate Ben Carson, the gentle fanatic, suggested during a Republican presidential candidate debate that no Muslim should ever be allowed to become president of the United States, a proposal that openly defies the US constitution and its prohibition of religious tests for political office. Carson’s opposition to a Muslim assuming political office amounts to a complete rejection of the US constitution’s strict separation of church and state, something that a political candidate should know.

Senator Ted Cruz, no stranger to making fundamentalist statements himself, suggested that only Christian refugees from Syria should be allowed into the United States, because Muslims are more likely to commit terroristic acts. This will come as a surprise to the many victims of terrorism in Ireland, Oklahoma City and Charleston, as well as to the thousands of Iraqi and Syrian Muslim victims of ISIS attacks. In many ways, Cruz is more dangerous than Trump – the latter has no coherent ideology to speak of, except making money and bullying bigotry.

Cruz is the fanatical believer, a Christian first and an American second. Cruz said as much in an interview – one wonders about the reaction of the corporate media if a Muslim had made an equivalent statement regarding their faith. In every debate between the various Republican candidates, each tries to outdo the other in terms of their willingness to carpet-bomb other countries and place America on a war footing. Each candidate attempts to surpass the other in their belligerence and use of force – even though the proposals from the Republican candidates amount to war crimes. Trump, Cruz, Carson, Bush – all the candidates expressed their approval of policies that involve drone strikes, carpet bombing, and waterboarding. So Trump, while being the loudest and most bombastic of the lot, is in good company. Trump is not a fascist, but he is providing a pole of attraction for those with fascistic ideas; he presents himself as the populist outsider, the ‘anti-establishment’ candidate who will stand up for the average American.

Let’s not allow the Democrats an easy-ride – in fact, since 2001, with the ‘war on terror’ and the eruption of American militarism on a global scale, the hysteria regarding Islam and Muslim immigration has reached unprecedented levels, under the tutelage of Democrat politicians. Hillary Clinton made no secret of her intention to ‘obliterate Iran’, and proudly states that the Iranian people regard her as an enemy. The Obama administration escalated and refined the use of lethal drone strikes that started under the Bush-Cheney regime. Obama is responsible for unleashing militarist violence in the Middle East, devastating entire countries and creating an outward surge of refugees. Democrat Mayor of Virginia, David Bowers, spoke approvingly about the mass internment of Japanese-Americans during World War Two, and suggesting that this example could be applied to the refugees of today. The unleashing of such racist sentiment is itself an indication of the putrefaction of capitalist society, increasingly based upon financial swindling, asset bubbles, looting public money for private profit, and war drives overseas.

Symptom, not the disease

Hamid Dabashi, Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, wrote a thoughtful column about the Trump issue in Common Dreams magazine. Entitled ‘Trump is a symptom not the disease’, Dabashi makes the point that semi-fascistic egomaniacs like Trump are only the latest symptom of a diseased political culture. As he explains in his article;

Trump’s call to ban Muslims from entering the US, or his earlier remark to single out and profile Muslims, or his fellow Republican candidate Ben Carson stating point blank that no Muslim should ever become president, are only the most obnoxious versions of a much more deeply rooted bigotry and racism against Muslims that has been dominant in the US for a very long time, but particularly since 9/11.

In a system which originates in the mass murder of indigenous people and the theft of their land, the Islamic and Arab communities, with their South Asian counterparts, are the latest scapegoats in a system of racial discrimination. The incessant demonisation and singling out of the Islamic community as uniquely violent and treacherous, is part of a recycled paranoia that serves the political purpose of generating domestic support for imperial wars of conquest overseas. This toxic rhetoric does not just dissipate into thin air – it has real-life consequences, namely, the explosion of violence directed at the Muslim community inside the United States. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has studiously documented the rise of horrific attacks on mosques, Islamic community places and the Muslim people themselves. Ibrahim Hooper, communications director for CAIR, denounced the atmosphere of hysteria and fear in the immediate aftermath of the Paris and San Bernardino attacks, stating “I have never seen it like this, not even after 9/11.” The American Anti-Arab Discrimination Committee reported that their work has increased exponentially, with complaints of harassment and bullying, and discrimination at the workplace for anyone of ‘brown appearance’.

During a drive to war, the ruling class encourages the growth of the most racist and belligerent social sentiments. The war on terror has created a domestic environment where racist appeals are increasingly normalised and regarded as part of the mainstream. As social and economic inequality increases – and it has consistently under Obama – social discontent increases, looking for an outlet. Ultra rightist groups exploit such grievances, and channel that resentment into attacks on ethnic and religious minorities, as well as those aspects of government that serve social needs. There is a constant and increasing flow of money for military purposes, all the while social programmes are being curtailed. While programs such as food stamps and Medicaid face cutbacks, the US military is salivating at the prospect of further increases to its budget, receiving more funding than the rest of the ten largest militaries in the world combined. Meanwhile, homelessness in the United States is reaching epidemic proportions.

Malheur belongs to the indigenous nations

According to the ultra-rightist militia that seized the Malheur Wildlife Refuge, their goal is to restore sovereignty over the land to its rightful owners and oppose federal government tyranny. If that is the case, then we should expect them to relinquish control of that land to the indigenous nation, the Paiute nation, from whom the rapacious US federal government stole the land that now constitutes Oregon back in the 19th century. The post-US civil war administration implemented a policy of encroachment and settler expansion into Paiute territory, and forcibly enslaved the recalcitrant native American peoples.

Indeed, the state of Oregon itself was founded as a white settler utopia, deliberately excluding the indigenous people and people of colour. This is not to single out Oregon as a uniquely racist, segregated state – white America began as a segregated society – but that the land of Oregon has always been regarded as a resource to be exploited, whether it be by logging, mining or agribusiness companies. African Americans were excluded from living and working in Oregon. It is no surprise that the Ku Klux Klan had one of its largest branches in that state.

However, capitalist expansion proceeded apace in the years after the end of the civil war. The role of the federal authorities, while arbitrating between the competing interests and factions of the business community, played its main role of facilitating the rapid expansion of capitalist industry in the hitherto unconquered American West. This meant the ongoing theft of native American land, and the exclusion of indigenous people. Land, water, animal life, forests, mining, railways – everything was open to industrial exploitation. In fact, successive federal governments have been the staunchest allies of the big corporations, opening up public land for privatisation and enabling laws to facilitate profitable expansion.

The ultra-right militia are hardly defending sovereignty, but occupying indigenous American territory. As the Paiute community have stated, the armed militia have no right to the land, or its resource and archaeologically significant artifacts. These lands should be placed under the guardianship of the traditional owners. That is a positive place to start.

Imagine a bearded, heavily armed man, appearing on a television broadcast, speaking on behalf of a heavily-armed militia group that has just occupied several government buildings. He vows to not only occupy the existing ground which his group has seized, but calls upon like-minded individuals to join his movement in a crusade against the tyranny of the US government. The appeals to people of similar mind go out through social media, and the militia group gains publicity for their cause. The bearded man, brandishing a gun, pledges to fight off all attempts by the federal government to subdue him and his group. There is however, one catch – the armed man in the video is not Muslim, but a white American ultra-rightist advocate, Ammon Bundy, son of Cliven Bundy and wealthy cattle rancher in Oregon.

Having seized government buildings and property in Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, Bundy’s movement, the Citizens for Constitutional Freedom, has protested what they see as the tyranny of the federal government – in this case, the Bureau of Land Management. While the immediate cause for this armed sedition is the reimprisonment of two ranchers, Dwight and Steve Hammond, on arson charges, the roots of the Oregon crisis go much deeper. The Oregon cattle ranchers rail against the oppression of the federal government, and refuse to pay minimal taxes for the land on which their cattle grazes. Before getting to the wider political and social issues raised by the Oregon standoff, let us make a number of initial observations.

Government support

The Bundys themselves, being cattle ranchers in Oregon, are recipients of various forms of government support which enables them to maintain their wealth. The hypocrisy of claiming to be a victim of government tyranny, all the while parasitising the various state-supported programs that make possible the acquisition of wealth from cattle ranching, are plain to see. Amanda Girard, writes in an article called “5 Taxpayer Handouts the Bundys Receive While Railing Against Government “Tyranny”, elaborates five ways the Bundys are generously supported by government assistance. For instance, she writes that:

The US government charges 93 percent less for cattle grazing than private landowners

One of the biggest gripes from cattle ranchers like Cliven Bundy and other Western cattlemen is that the federal government is bleeding ranchers dry with overpriced cattle grazing fees. But the opposite is true — in 2012, it cost roughly $1.35 a month for each cow to graze on federal land, as opposed to the average $20 per month charged by private landowners for cattle grazing.

The fact above alone is enough to expose the hypocrisy of the cattle ranchers’ incessant claims of government oppression by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Girard lists other ways the Bundys receive state support which can be read in her article.

Domestic terrorism

Numerous writers and journalists have pointed out the stark contrast between the softly-softly approach of the federal authorities towards this particular act of armed sedition, and the heavy-handed, militarised response of the federal government towards those of African-American and Muslim background who have carried out protests against the repressive nature of state authorities. Indeed, the introductory paragraph of the current article was taken from a thoughtful and evocative piece by Wahajat Ali, writing in The Guardian that “If the Oregon militiamen were Muslim or black, they’d probably be dead by now”. The initial description of a bearded and armed fanatic making pronouncements on social media for the violent overthrow of the federal government immediately bring to mind the usual context in this era of the ‘war on terror’ – the Muslim enemy, the bearded extremist religious leaders from the Islamic community, or one of many other ubiquitous images of a so-called radicalised Muslim expressing hateful rhetoric. As Ali explains in his article:

Of course they’re not “terrorists”: Bundy and his followers are just your average angry white “freedom fighters”, who use weapons and ammunition to protect the US constitution and American values from the government and other Americans who want them to abide by federal laws like everyone else.

But if Bundy and his followers were like the 38% of Americans who aren’t white, people across America wouldn’t be watching this surreal, dangerous episode unfold and wondering what they could do to be labeled a “militia” when occupying a federal area with guns instead of “terrorists”, “thugs”, “extremists” or “gangs”.

Ali makes the compelling case that extremism comes in different forms, colours and varieties, and racial profiling does nothing to make the country safer, but only to whip up hysteria based on simplistic stereotypes. It is also easy to see the hypocrisy of the corporate-media in the way they have reported on this Oregon standoff, and the kid-gloves with which the Oregon ultra-right fanatics have been handled by the authorities, even though they are openly brandishing their weapons. As one Sikh lawyer and human rights activist Arjun Sethi, stated in a tweet published in the Common Dreams magazine:

No National Guard. No discussion of terrorism. No police violence. No television news coverage. They must be white. #OregonUnderAttack

11:00 AM – 4 Jan 2016

A world of difference

One cannot imagine the authorities taking such a muted approach to the protests by Black Lives Matter activists, or towards members of the Islamic community who are routinely smeared as terrorist sympathisers in the wake of domestic shootings. The relative inaction of law enforcement institutions, and the reticence of the media to describe the Oregon militia men as terrorists, stands in stark contrast to a similar episode of armed sedition – the 1967 Black Panther occupation of the California State Capitol building. To be sure, there is a world of difference between the former Black Panther Party and the ultra-rightist militias. The Black Panthers, established primarily as a defensive response to police racism, integrated themselves into their local communities, fought for different reasons to the ultra-right militia, and achieved vastly different goals.

In the 1960s, the Black Panthers utilised the existing laws of the state to police their own communities, protect African Americans against abuses by the police force, and carried their arms openly in full compliance with the law at the time. A California congressman, Don Mulford, promoted a change in the California law to ban the open-carry laws of the state – with the support of the National Rifle Association (NRA) and then California governor, Ronald Reagan. Apparently the open-carry law, allowing citizens to lawfully possess weapons did not apply to African American ‘good guys’.

In protest against this Mulford Law, 30 Black Panther activists entered the State Capitol building. They entered the building lawfully, lodged their complaints, and left the building without incident. The response of the authorities was to crack down on the Black Panthers, using infiltration, police violence, and a media scare campaign. The Black Panthers were routinely slandered as a bunch of mindless thugs, intent on accruing personal wealth and motivated by greed rather than a particular ideology. The FBI launched a full-scale counter operation to break up and suppress the Black Panthers. Named Cointelpro – the Counter Intelligence Program – the authorities used their available and overwhelming resources to violently suppress the Black Panthers and deliver a telling strike against rising black nationalism. Black civil rights groups were discredited, disrupted and broken down.

The next episode

This episode demonstrates the vastly different approaches that the authorities take with regard to race. Intersecting with race, the Oregon standoff highlights how the capitalist state treats the land and resources it occupies. It is no secret that large energy multinationals are viewing public lands as a resource to be exploited. The Oregon militia and associated cattle ranchers are the products of the seizure and privatisation of public lands, and the use of those natural resources for private profit. The festering hypocrisy of the Oregon militia – that cattle ranchers decrying the tyranny of big government are the beneficiaries of government subsidies – is not the only issue here. The government certainly provides the water, fences, roads, infrastructure and amenities upon which the ranchers wealth depends, that much is true. However, the federal government has also provided for the profits of agribusiness, mining, logging and commercial interests on land that is traditionally owned by the First Nations of the Americas, the indigenous people. The sovereignty of the indigenous nations has been undermined, their land stolen, the Paiute Nation forcibly removed to make way for the private control of public lands.

In times of economic crisis, with masses of people alienated from a decaying capitalist system, the appeal of ultra-right groups comes into focus. The proliferation of right-wing militias comes at a time when the federal government is working for a minority group – the ultra-wealthy one percent. The super-wealthy class at the top of the financial aristocracy has not only preserved its wealth, but has been handed billions in handouts over the course of the last six-seven years in the form of quantitative easing. Meanwhile, the working conditions and living standards of the vast majority have plummeted.

With the active suppression of popular forms of protest, the grievances of the population can be directed, rather than upwards against the ruling class, but outwards against racial and ethnic minority groups. Posing as victims of government tyranny, the right-wing domestic terrorist militias express their outrage precisely at those institutions of government that protect public and social services – the health care, education, and environmental arms of the state.

These issues, and the political appeal of ultra-right groups and their ability to reach a wider audience, are subjects to be explored in the next article. Stay tuned.

The Washington Post published an article in mid-October 2015, stating that the American government’s Department of Justice (DOJ) is finally redressing the growing terrorism problem inside the United States – no, not the much-hyped and exaggerated threat from the Islamist camp, but the real and growing menace of ultra-right terrorism. The DOJ announced the creation of a new position, reporting to Assistant Attorney General John P. Carlin, to identify, combat and prosecute domestic terrorism, emanating from white supremacist, patriot militia and anti-federalist groups. The article by Ellen Nakashima, entitled ‘Domestic extremists have killed more Americans than jihadists since 9/11. How the government is responding’, elaborates on measures by the DOJ to stem the tide of ultra-rightist violence that has taken more lives than self-proclaimed Islamist groups since the September 11 attacks.

Preoccupation with the Islamic community

The main preoccupation of the United States law enforcement authorities, and the corporate-media, has been the threat (real or imagined) of Islamist groups, mislabeled ‘jihadist’, since the terrible atrocity of September 11. There is extensive, interminable discussion about the ideology of Islamism, analysis by reams of experts about what is contained in the pages of the Quran, whether that text endorses violence, bombings, killings, beheadings, suicide assassinations, female genital mutilation – the list of crimes is seemingly endless. There are intimations that the wider Muslim community, sharing the basic theological tenets of the Quran and Hadith, are a sympathetic reservoir of passive support for extremist and radicalising elements. There are calls by political leaders for further surveillance, monitoring and intelligence-gathering of the Islamic community.

Politicians of all stripes demand that the Islamic community denounce terrorism, investigate the mosques and whether they are incubators of ‘radicalisation’ – and even the latter term is open to debate. Images of ISIS abound in the media, this group seemingly epitomising the Islamist extremism that we are meant to be afraid of – even though the case can be made that it is a serious mistake to blame Islam for the rise of gangterish militias like ISIS. The latter is an inevitable product of the policies that US and Saudi imperialism have pursued in the Arab world, and indeed the ruling circles of the United States have a long and sordid history in deliberately cultivating the most fanatical segments of Islamic and Arab countries as political allies. Be that as it may, the US government’s single-minded focus on Islamic radicalism has meant that the increasing and violent attacks by ultra-rightist terrorist groups has gone largely overlooked. Hopefully, this imbalance will change, because the targets of ultra-rightist violence are not only government officials and law enforcement authorities, but members of ethnic and religious minority communities.

Ultra right extremists, motivated by a combination of ideologies involving white supremacy, Christian identity and patriot sovereign citizen federalism, have plotted and carried out attacks against the Islamic community, Muslim religious institutions, and persons of ‘Middle Eastern appearance’, whatever the latter phrase may mean. In the wake of the Boston marathon bombings in 2013, the entire Islamic community in Boston has been subjected to greater intrusive surveillance, entrapment operations and suffered a new wave of hostility and racial attacks.

It is not just the Muslim community that is facing increased animosity; the old anti-immigrant canard, the Latin American ‘brown’ menace, has been resurrected by leading Republican presidential candidates (most notably but not exclusively by Donald Trump) to whip up obnoxious bigotry against Mexican and Latino migrants. To be sure, the noxious rantings of a buffoonish, ignorant braggart hardly qualify as a terrorist threat – but when such a repulsive ideology is promoted by leading politicians of a major political party, such messages reach an audience of millions, and create a groundswell of ethnic hatred in which localised racial attacks on minority groups becomes possible.

New domestic terrorism counsel

Assistant Attorney General John Carlin, when announcing the new position of domestic terrorism counsel, elaborated the scope and operation of the new position, and he explained the rationale behind this new role:

The domestic terrorism counsel is one of the ways the Justice Department is responding to extremists in the United States. Mr. Carlin explained that although threats from Al Qaeda and ISIL are a danger in the United States, more people have died in attacks by domestic extremists harboring anti-government views, racism, bigotry, anarchy and other hateful beliefs. He cited examples such as the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and the recent mass shooting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in South Carolina.

The study of domestic extremism is hardly new; in 2014, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists summarised the findings of a 2009 report issued by the US Department of Homeland Security’s Homeland Environment Threat Analysis Division. The article in the bulletin, entitled ‘Looking clearly at right-wing terrorism’, examined the expanding activities of ultra-right movements and the political climate that routinely discounts the threat posed by right-wing extremist groups. Charles P. Blair, the article’s author, explained that:

In the five years following the report’s release, far-right extremists have also plotted against and, at times, successfully attacked a wide-range of additional targets, including government buildings and leaders, law enforcement personnel, polling stations, courthouses and judges, a Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade, anti-racist gatherings, a Mexican consulate, synagogues and other Jewish institutions, mosques, a Sikh temple, African-Americans and other minorities, and interracial couples and families.

Interestingly, Blair notes that the foot-soldiers of the ultra-right, whether they be from white supremacist or patriot militia backgrounds, are more likely than potential Islamically-inspired militants to use unconventional weapons, chemical or biological – weapons that cause mass casualties and maximum disruption. The use of such weapons indicates not only a psychopathic disregard for human life, but the intent to make a political statement, and maximise the propaganda-utility of such attacks for the underlying ideology of ultra-rightist violence.

The American ultra-rightist political landscape

West Point Military Academy’s Combating Terrorism Centre issued a report in November 2012 called ‘Challengers from the Sidelines: Understanding America’s Violent Far Right’. This report provides the best, accurate synopsis of the political landscape inhabited by the ultra-right. There are three broad, interconnected strands of political ideology that can be classed as the ultra-right.

The first and best known is the white supremacist and racist movement. Traditionally this space has been occupied by the Ku Klux Klan, and similar homegrown segregationist militias. This has broadened out to include neo-Nazi types, national alliance skinhead groups and white supremacist militias that intermingle American white racism with concepts of cultural superiority, and intend to enforce racial-cultural hierarchy over what they see as the threat from immigrant and minority communities. Rejecting any foreign influences in the culture and economy of American life, they are most likely to attack individuals from racial and religious minority groups, religious institutions and community centres that involve non-Anglo Saxon migrants.

The second, and less-well known, strand in the ultra-right comprises the libertarian anti-federalist movement, which views government intrusion as the main crime in American society. Believing that the American government is rapidly descending into a tyrannical dictatorship, the anti-federalist movement portrays itself as the true defenders of the original liberties and values enshrined in the US constitution. Challenging the legitimacy and credibility of all American government institutions, the patriot and sovereign citizen militias constitute an armed ideological opponent of the US government.

The rationale behind these militias is multi-varied, but they share a common distrust of what they see as an American government hijacked by special interest groups, a purported New World Order (NWO) that has not only corrupted the American government, but intends to absorb it into the control of the United Nations, the international banking cartels, or some other shadowy international cabal. Alex Jones is the most outspoken and media-savvy exponent of this anti-federalist, libertarian and conspiracy-peddling ideology. Actually, the case can be made that there is nothing but a new world disorder, and that the US ruling class is the most lawless brigand in this international disorder, but that is a separate debate.

The third and final category in ultra-rightist ideology is the Christian Identity movement, a fusion of Christian supremacist thinking with racialism. A multi-faceted social layer, the Christian identity groups maintain the ultimate sovereignty of Christian doctrine, inspired by what they believe is the literal inerrancy of Biblical scripture. They maintain a particular interpretation of religious texts in which the Anglo Saxon race is considered the chosen people, the lost tribe of ancient Israel, regarding modern Europeans, and Anglo Saxons in particular, of being biologically descended from the biblical tribes of Israel that were subsequently scattered by succeeding invasions of Hittites, Assyrians and Babylonians. The Anglo Saxon settlement of the American continent has resurrected the lost tribe, and they are engaged in a religious-racial war with the non-Anglo communities, starting with the indigenous Americans and expanding to include the migrant communities in the United States. Advocating a theology of hate, violence carried out by Christian supremacist groups normally targets members of ethnic minorities and non-Christian denominations.

The above summary is meant to provide a basic ideological framework, and of course individuals and groups do not come in neat, organised packages. There is cross-over and intermingling between the three tendencies of ultra-rightist ideology identified above. And it is no secret that the Republican party, and its political strategists, pander to such sentiments hoping to convert them into electoral success. The main point is that no individual’s actions or ideology can be considered in isolation from the wider political climate from which they emerge.

The DOJ and law enforcement authorities will certainly prosecute the individuals that engage in acts of ultra-rightist violence, but that on its own is not enough. It is time to confront the message of hate, xenophobia and desperation that leads individuals and groups to carry out violent acts of hatred. Bigotry and racial extremism can only thrive in a political and economic system which is in an advanced stage of decay and terminal crisis. As the capitalist system lurches from crisis to crisis, and more people face impoverishment, it is high time to recognise that there is a minority that is a huge threat to our safety and existence – but it is not welfare recipients, migrants, Muslims, Latinos, single mothers, indigenous people, or any other favourite target of the ultra-right. It is the ultra-wealthy one percent, the top one percent that owns more than half of the world’s wealth, while the majority of the world’s population struggle to make ends meet in this global wealth pyramid.

We can start by heeding the words of the late Eugene V. Debs, American socialist and labour activist, who said:

I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence.

In the spirit of giving credit where it is due, even to ideological opponents, it is with considerable respect that we must state that the New York Slimes, the loyal lapdog of the US imperial empire, finally got something right. In June 2015, the august newspaper of American ruling class expansionism published an article called ‘The Growing Right-Wing Terror Threat”, which elaborated upon the threat posed by the politically active ultra-right. Written by Charles Kurzman and David Schanzer, the opinion piece elaborates on the numerous studies and data sets aggregated by academic institutions and think tanks across the country that highlight the mortal danger of far-right terroristic violence. While the headlines of major newspapers and media channels are dominated by hyperbole regarding terrorism from Islamist-inspired individuals, the writers go on to state that:

But headlines can mislead. The main terrorist threat in the United States is not from violent Muslim extremists, but from right-wing extremists. Just ask the police.

It is easy to find stories that regale the public with the threats (real or imagined) from groups that proclaim themselves Islamist-oriented. Since the ‘war on terror’ and the September 11 attacks, public anxiety about such movements has reached incredible levels, and almost every discussion in the corporate media about terrorism immediately focuses on the issue of Islam, the Islamic ideology, and the presence of the Muslim community as an allegedly stealthy reservoir of support for terrorist activities. Blame for attacks by Islamist individuals warrant apportioning onto the entire Islamic community.

However, the New York Times writers, summarising the findings of numerous studies into the subject of terrorism, state otherwise:

Despite public anxiety about extremists inspired by Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, the number of violent plots by such individuals has remained very low. Since 9/11, an average of nine American Muslims per year have been involved in an average of six terrorism-related plots against targets in the United States. Most were disrupted, but the 20 plots that were carried out accounted for 50 fatalities over the past 13 and a half years.

In contrast, right-wing extremists averaged 337 attacks per year in the decade after 9/11, causing a total of 254 fatalities, according to a study by Arie Perliger, a professor at the United States Military Academy’s Combating Terrorism Center. The toll has increased since the study was released in 2012.

In June 2015, a young gunman Dylann Roof, shot dead nine people of African American descent in the Emanuel African Methodist Church in Charleston, South Carolina. He was attending a bible study group and prayer service, when he took out an automatic weapon, opening fire, and killing nine persons including the senior pastor and state senator the late Clementa C Pinckney. Roof, the shooter shouted racial slogans, declaring that African Americans were destroying his white kinfolk.

He deliberately spared the life of one person so that she could bear witness to the attack. Roof hoped that the living witness would explain to the wider world his motivations for the shooting. His decision to kill was motivated by his desire to stop black people taking over the country, as he saw it. After his arrest, he stated to police that his intention was to ignite a racial war. The facts of the mass murder are well established.

In the immediate aftermath of the killing, there was an intense debate among politicians, media commentators and the corporate media about whether the mass murder at Charleston constituted an act of domestic terrorism, a hate crime, or both. The governor of South Carolina, Nikki Haley, in speaking about the atrocity, stated that she cannot and never will understand what motivates someone to enter a holy place of worship and kill.

Well, it is true that the motivations driving the perpetrator in each and every case of murder are complex and multifarious. In the more recent case of the Chattanooga shooting, involving the death of four US marines, there was never any doubt that this act constitutes a case of terrorism, especially given the fact that the shooter’s name is something like Mohammed Yousuf Abdulazeez. In this case, the shooting is immediately categorised and understood as terrorism. However, when a white mass murderer is arrested by police, he is provided with a hamburger meal, and a bullet-proof vest for his protection should he be the target of vigilante violence.

Let us help Governor Haley understand the motivations of Dylann Roof by having a closer look at his picture – on his jacket, he is wearing two flags, one of the previous apartheid South African regime, the other the flag of the white supremacist state of Rhodesia, as Zimbabwe was previously known. Indeed, Roof’s own web page, in which he elaborated his melange of white racist and sovereign-citizen-militia ideas as a manifesto, described himself as the ‘last Rhodesian’. Roof never made any secret of his ultra-rightist political motivations.

As Eugene Puryear, author of the article “Charleston Massacre: Yet another terrorist act against Blacks in America” explains it, the reason for the obfuscation of this issue as an expression of ultra-rightist terrorism is clear:

The establishment in capitalist America is fearful of revealing the depth of racist oppression that continues to exist. Particularly in South Carolina, a state run by hard-core Tea Party types with a deep strain of racism that involves quite a bit of Confederate boosterism.

The leaders of South Carolina, then, will be loathe to admit their own complicity in not only the terrorism of the past but its glorification in the here and now.

The Confederate flag – the long reach of the US civil war

South Carolina, one of the states involved in the Confederacy’s secessionist war of the 1860s, has a long history of deep-seated racism. South Carolina’s government, in 1961, raised the Confederate flag atop the state government headquarters as a direct response to the rise of the black American civil rights movement and racial desegregation. South Carolina state authorities resisted desegregation for as long as they could, and the ubiquity of the Confederate, slave-owners flag throughout the southern states is astounding: it can be seen on licence plates, coffee mugs, articles of clothing, and body tattoos. Roof was not unaware of this cultural and historical context.

Indeed, April this year marks the 150th anniversary of the end of the US civil war. In the wake of the Charleston shooting, there is renewed interest in the legacy of that war, and the question of racism in American society has taken on political urgency. Roof chose the target that he did, not out of sheer coincidence, but for specific political reasons. Barry Sheppard, long-time socialist and anti-racist activist in the United States penned a thoughtful article called “Racist Charleston massacre has clear political roots”. In it, Sheppard states that:

Roof’s choice of the Emanuel African Methodist Church as the scene of his terrorist attack was also political. It is one of the oldest Black churches in the South, having been established as a refuge for slaves in the early 1800s. Ever since, it has played an important role in the fight for Black rights, including up to the present.

One of the founders of the church was a former slave, Denmark Vesey, who had been able to buy his freedom from his owner. Vesey was the main leader of a planned armed slave revolt in 1822.

South Carolina, being one of the defeated states after the civil war, has a long history of terrorist violence against black Americans. In the immediate aftermath of the US civil war, when the slave-owning class and its economic base were smashed, South Carolina witnessed a white supremacist backlash against Reconstruction, with newly-formed racist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan launching an underground war of terror to sabotage any attempts at racially integrating the political and economic structures of the state.

Eric Foner, professor of history at Columbia University and an expert on race relations in the US, wrote that South Carolina authorities resisted the federal government’s Reconstruction programme tooth and nail, and appealed to white resentment against black ‘encroachments’. This generated an interpretation of US civil war and reconstruction history where whites were the aggrieved party, facing a hostile takeover by the formerly subservient African Americans. Roof’s exclamation that ‘you are taking over the country’ has historical resonances that derive from this interpretation of white ‘victimhood’. Southern ‘victimhood’ provides an outlet for the Dylann Roofs of the world to vent their racial hatred wrapped in the mantle of purported injustice.

When elaborating his reasons for committing the crime, Roof provided his own perverse fascination with a mythologised history of the Confederate white-supremacist political platform, drawing from the reservoir of the ‘lost cause of the South’. The slave-owning Confederacy is not just a long-defeated historical artifact, but lives and breathes through its lineage with racist terrorism aimed at the African American community.

The Confederate flag was finally lowered from South Carolina’s state house in July 2015, after a concerted campaign by political and community figures across a wide spectrum of American society. As Monica Moorehead, activist and writer for the Workers World party stated in her article “Who gets credit for removing Confederate flag?”:

Finally. The profoundly offensive, pro-slavery Confederate flag no longer flies high in front of the State House grounds in Columbia, the capitol of South Carolina. It was taken down on July 10, 43 years after it was first hoisted in a ceremony “officially” marking the centennial of the start of the U.S. Civil War.

It is unfortunate that is took the Charleston shooting, a terrorist tragedy, to finally achieve even this limited step, but a forward step it is for race relations in the United States. It required a mass outpouring of public justifiable outrage after the Charleston mass murders for the political establishment to remove this symbol of slavery and racism.

However, consider the following: the US military still has major bases named after Confederate slave-owning military figures. In the Workers World online magazine, Sara Flounders lists the following symbols of US military domination honouring the slave-owning officers:

Fort Hood, Texas, is the largest military base in the U.S., named after a Confederate general, John Bell Hood.

Fort Rucker, Ala., named for Confederate Col. Edmund W. Rucker, is where all of the Army’s aviation training has taken place since 1973.

Fort Bragg, N.C., named to honor Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg, is home to the 82nd Airborne Division and Special Operations Command Center.

Fort Benning, Ga., named for Confederate Brig. Gen. Henry L. Benning, is home to the formerly named School of the Americas, which provides military training tactics of torture, assassination and subversion for Latin American military officers.

Fort Gordon, Ga., is home to the U.S. Army Signal Corp and the former base of a military police school. The base is named after Confederate Lt. Gen. John Brown Gordon, head of the Ku Klux Klan in Georgia. Gordon was a vicious segregationist who fought Black Reconstruction following the U.S. Civil War with racist terror.

This issue goes deeper than just names and symbols. The Confederate influence in the US military goes beyond symbolic honours. While after the US civil war, little united North and South, and the Confederate cause was defeated, there was one area where the white separatist cause could find reconciliation and acceptance; the pacification of the indigenous American nations and the emergence of American imperialism.

How and why that happened will be the subject of the next article – part two.

Summing up Part One

The Charleston shooting was a wake-up call not just about the issue of racism in the United States, but also about an equally important trend – the resurgence of ultra-right terrorism. Dylann Roof’s political motivations were the product of a very fertile soil – the continuing presence of not only a white supremacist political platform in American society, but the growth of the ultra-right and its propensity for violence against minority groups. As Brendan McQuade, a visiting assistant professor in international studies at DePaul University states in his essay for Counterpunch online magazine, the reanimation of the Ku Klux Klan, the Sovereign Citizens and patriot militia groups, the John Birch Society and its influence in the ultra-right libertarian Tea Party, point to the need for a serious examination of the visceral racism and white supremacy that is built into the social and economic roots of the capitalist system. If an anti-racist alternative is too limited or weakened, there will be a steady stream of willing recruits, the Dylann Roofs of future generations.