Remember Jayna Davis? Of course you don’t. She was the Oklahoma City reporter who delighted right-wing conspiracy nuts by claiming she found “evidence” that Saddam Hussein, one of his henchmen—Hussain Al-Hussaini—and an Al-Qaeda hit squad teamed-up to help Timothy McVeigh blow-up the Murrah Federal Building. She also wrote a best-selling book—“The Third Terrorist”—which claimed to detail the whole sordid plot. Two problems with the book, well, actually three—or four or five or six: Davis claims that “dozens of witnesses” say that they saw McVeigh “colluding” with Iraqi soldiers—or rather “foreign-looking” people—in the months before the bombing. The only physical “evidence” to back-up this assertion is a grainy video camera capture, supposedly of Al-Hussaini (who was in the news briefly when it was discovered he was one of the homeless men who was arrested for fighting another homeless man in a Boston suburb last March), but frankly looks like a curly-haired white man. Except for a rogue CIA agent or two interviewed on Fox News, federal intelligence agents have called these claims preposterous. Davis’ “evidence” also takes grand leaps of imagination when she tries to draw links from Terry Nichols’ Filipino wife to Muslim “terrorists” in her homeland. Filipino wife-Muslim terrorists. It makes perfect sense! The 1993 World Trade Center bombing mastermind Ramzi Yousef used a rented Ryder van to carry the explosives—and McVeigh used a rented Ryder van as well. See? An Al-Qaeda link! Isn’t it obvious?
As we might recall, in the days following the OKC bombing, there was widespread belief that the perpetrators were Muslim, and there were numerous reported attacks on Muslims in the country. Although Bill Clinton cautioned against jumping to conclusions before all the evidence was in, later—after all the “evidence” was in—he and the Republican Congress passed a counterterrorism bill that essentially ignored domestic terrorists like McVeigh but focused on Mideast threats. We can all say in hindsight after 9-11 this was the proper focus—although something obviously failed in the translation to the Bush administration—it was symptomatic of the country seeking out foreign scapegoats instead of looking inward. So it is with most of the people who take Davis’ book seriously, who are almost exclusively of the right-wing extremist, Islamophobe stripe; I did find one commentator, however, who decided that the credibility of the author was in question because she never took into consideration McVeigh’s ties to white supremacist groups, for which there is ample evidence. When Steve Jones, McVeigh’s first attorney, said "They (the FBI) short-circuited the search for the truth. I don't doubt Tim's role in the conspiracy. But I think he clearly aggrandized his role, enlarged it, to cover for others who were involved" he wasn’t referring to Al-Qaeda or Saddam Hussein. He was referring to McVeigh’s proven links to the white supremacist compound at Elohim City.
For example, an Associated Press story reported that “hotel receipts, a speeding ticket, prisoner interviews, informant reports and phone records” showed that McVeigh was in contact with members of the compound shortly before the bombing, and that they knew of his plan. A federal agent wrote a memo stating that "It is suspected that members of Elohim City are involved either directly or indirectly through conspiracy”—including as a violent bank robbing gang that McVeigh was involved in for at least one robbery, to help fund their plots. According to the AP story, “The FBI teletype revealed that the gang members who were present when McVeigh called were familiar with explosives and had made a videotape three months before McVeigh struck vowing a war against the federal government and promising a ‘courthouse massacre’"—the courthouse referenced was likely the federal courthouse directly opposite the Murrah Federal Building. It was also reported that an informant claimed that members of Elohim City were “discussing bombing a federal building in Oklahoma” and based on this information “the FBI specifically had worries such an attack could occur April 19”—the very day of the bombing. Yet even armed with this knowledge, the FBI took no added measures to secure suspected targets. After the bombing, Carol Howe, the informant, was sent back to the compound to glean additional information; she reported that one member discussed concocting alibis for the day of the bombing; the same person also discussed the bomb McVeigh used, claiming that he had constructed another fertilizer bomb before the attack for testing. Yet despite all of this evidence, the FBI—in an apparent attempt to minimize the depth of responsibility—focused only on those people who could be most directly linked to the bombing. Still, while white supremacist ties to McVeigh are clear, the FBI did not find any credible evidence to suggest that McVeigh had any contact with Muslim terrorists.
Why do I bring-up this old news? Because like the initial reaction to the OKC bombing and the nature of right-wing comment since, the massacres perpetrated by Anders Behring Breivik--who killed 77 people in two separate attacks in Norway--the first,and second, reaction by the right runs as far from the truth as is possible. The assumption immediately after news of the attacks on an Oslo government building and the massacre of young people taking part in an island retreat was that this was the act of Muslim terrorists. Naturally, Fox News took the lead in putting the cart before the horse; Laura Ingraham, filling in on The O’Reilly Factor, proclaimed to the two-thirds of cable news viewers that "In the 'Back of the Book' segment tonight, two deadly terror attacks in Norway, in what appears to be the work, once again, of Muslim extremists" juxtaposed with images of 9-11. Although the segment had been pre-recorded so that the Fox crew responsible could get out early for the weekend, what was inexcusable was the assumption before the facts were in that the perpetrators were Muslims.
Of course, the blogosphere was going wild; on a website called “Legal Insurrection,” Cornell University law professor William Jacobson posted
“No one expected the barbarians to hit Norway. No one, that is, except the people of Norway. And among those there is one woman named Hege Storhaug who anticipated it most clearly and cruelly. Her thoughts on the subject are frighteningly prescient. Storhaug begins this piece with a bit of optimism, crediting Germany’s Merkel and France’s Sarkozy with standing up to the catastrophe of multiculturalism”:
“Europe is finally waking up to the threat posed by decades of policies which preached tolerance, yet bred the exact opposite: an intolerance by many immigrants, particularly Islamists, for the values of their new homelands.”
I sent the professor an email on the Cornell website asking him if he had any further comments; naturally he didn’t respond. On the History Channel website, there were comments like “the only things in Norway, besides the blond haired, blue eyed Norwegians, who have been historically against violence of that nature, are, gasp!, the Islamofascist immigrants into Norway and they wouldn't be capable of such a thing, would they?” and "If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck my friend." Another person observed that “It certainly wasn't planned and carried out by Republicans. They're usually too busy putting food on the table, roofs over their heads, clothes on the kids backs and shoes on their feet after they've finished paying their taxes, to have much time left over for manufacturing and planting bombs this size or setting up the massacre of a bunch of kids at a kids camp. Didn't planting bombs and killing police use to be one of Bill Ayer's specialties? And just who might Bill Ayers be a friend of?”
Well, just to put things in their proper perspective, except for the townhouse explosion that killed three of its own members, no one was ever killed as a result of the Weather Underground’s activities, or at least was ever proven; all of their bombings were staged to avoid casualties—exactly the opposite of the intentions of the right-wing terrorists we have recently seen in action. In this country, we’ve seen the arrest of white supremacist militia members in Michigan plotting to kill police officers, and in Norway suddenly we discover that it was a blonde, blue-eyed man of right-wing extremist and fundamentalist Christian leanings who carried out the attacks. By all appearances, Breivik is neither mad nor insane; he was simply doing what he felt he had to do to stop the “onslaught” of “multiculturalism”—that is, “conservative” Islam, the “crimes” of which in his manifesto he likened to that of the Nazis, a rather curious comparison and suggests he draws a distinction between “conservatives” and the “right.”
Although Breivik quoted freely from American Islamophobes like Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller, the right quickly distanced itself from him. While those on the left wring their hands in shame whenever even the taint of crime with a left-wing slant is suggested, when horrific actions by those of the political and social right are committed, the right goes to the furthest reaches of the universe to deny any taint of culpability; the right’s utter lack of a sense of responsibility—due in no small part to its pig-headed insistence on confrontation rather than compromise—merely guarantees the probability that such acts will occur in the future.
Simon Maloy at Mediamatters, meanwhile, reported how right-wing commentators all over the country, rather than engage in sobering reflection, were trying to spin the story as best they could, comparing Breveik to a “jihadist.” An Adrew Breitbart website mendaciously proclaimed that “This Norwegian terrorist was not a Christian or a conservative. He acted contrary to the teachings of the Bible and conservatives from Burke to Madison. He was instead a jihadist, blinded by an ideology who resorted to violence rather than engaging in a public debate of ideas. He was a coward who planted bombs and killed innocent people. For him, violence was the only answer. He claimed to be fighting jihadists...but he actually became one. He didn't kill one islamist [sic] terrorist with his actions-only innocent Norwegians. Change the location, and he acted like so many jihadists in the Middle East. He became one of them.”
Apparently you are an accepted member of the right-wing extremist and Christian fundamentalist tribe until you actually act on the hate rhetoric they engage in, and then you are hypocritically disavowed. It would be useful to observe that Breivik didn’t just kill random people; the victims were members of a youth organization associated with the liberal Labor Party. Meanwhile, CNN’s Erick Erickson—who initially assumed it was a Muslim attack, but felt perfectly justified in the assumption because
“First, those of us on the right who point out the now fairly common ties between terrorists and Islam do so largely because the secular left has become willfully naive. The fact of the matter is violence and Islam may not be very common among American Muslims, but internationally it is extremely common and can fairly well be considered mainstream within much of Islam. Read Andy McCarthy if you suffer on the delusion that it is not mainstream…With Christians, it is rather rare to see a self-described Christian engage in heinous terrorist acts. In fact, in as much as there is an Arab Street filled with Muslims more often than not cheering on the latest terrorist act of radical Islamists, you will be very hard pressed to find a Christian who does not condemn the act regardless of the faith of the person doing the killing…Over the next week, assuming the budget fight in Washington doesn't over shadow it, you can expect lots more gloating that the guy in Norway described himself as a conservative Christian. Never mind that a conservative Christian would not do what the guy did. The left, however, will not be persuaded otherwise. They are of this world and this world is all that matters until the last day.”
So much for CNN’s claim that “news” matters. White supremacist and neo-Nazi groups all profess to be “Christian” organizations, and Timothy McVeigh was certainly exposed to Christian Identity “theology”; I’m also certain that Sean Hannity, Robert Spencer, Pamela Geller, Glenn Beck, Peter King, Michelle Bachmann and all those other Muslim-baiters also regard themselves as “Christian.” Erickson seems to be walking on hot coals, trying to differentiate between Christians and what he presumably means “true” Christians. It’s odd how many of these “conservatives” speak like moderates after the shameful truth is exposed. Since Breivik targeted youth of the liberal Labor Party, he was trying to make a “political” statement, essentially accusing the Labor Party of being too tolerant and “blind” to the “danger” of Muslim terrorism. No one on the left is “gloating” over this massacre, but they do want the right to demonstrate some amount of accountability. But the right has never shown itself to be populated by anything other than cowardly hypocrites; the failure of self-examination has not only crippled Congress, but apparently simple human decency. "There was a shooting at a political camp, which sounds a little like, you know, the Hitler Youth or whatever. I mean, who does a camp for kids that's all about politics? Disturbing," exclaimed Beck on the Norwegian youths who were killed.
So while the right is trying to sanitize its cesspool of hate rhetoric, The New York Times reported that Norwegian intelligence agencies were aware that the “biggest threat” of terrorist activities on its soil was from homegrown extremists, but intelligence reports purposely chose to emphasize “the dangers of radical Islam.” That is not to say that radical Islam is not a danger, but it is too easy to focus on the Islamists and not to confront nationalism, nativism and xenophobia within one’s own society. When a segment of society chooses to focus on the faults of dark-skinned “others” rather than its own, the rhetoric of hate only increases the feeling of national paranoia and fear—and we are supposed to be “surprised” when on occasion someone feels that the hate talk isn’t quite leading to the “resolution” of the “problem” hoped for? Instead of the O’Reillys, Hannitys, Limbaughs, Bachmanns and Palins of the world toning down their hate rhetoric (if we had Britain’s public airwaves laws, Hannity and Limbaugh would be working in the sewers instead of contributing to them), they first deny all, and continue on as if nothing bad ever happened.
Will the Norwegian attack open many eyes here, unlike the OKC bombing, the Holocaust museum attack by a white supremacist two years ago, the Austin IRS building suicide plane attack by an anti-government fanatic last year, and the Tucson massacre this year, perpetrated by a man influenced by the racist, anti-Semitic and anti-immigrant extremist rhetoric of the American Renaissance? The Associated Press reported, to no surprise to anyone, that in the wake of the Norwegian attacks New York Republican and Islamophobe Peter King “said he had no plans to broaden contentious hearings about the radicalization of Muslim Americans” and “his committee focused on terrorist threats with foreign ties and suggested that the Judiciary Committee might be more appropriate for looking at non-Muslim threats.” Oh really? As we may recall, a Department of Homeland Security report on rightwing extremist threats was met with outrage from Republicans and the right-wing media; DHS director Janet Napolitano, like a sniveling coward, withdrew the report and apologized for even suggesting such a thing. According to the same AP story, Daryl Johnson, who authored the report, said that after he left DHS in 2010, “the number of analysts assigned to non-Islamic militancy of all kinds was reduced to two from six” and compared to that, “30 analysts worked on Islamic radicalism when he was there.”
Anders Romarheim, of the Norwegian Institute for Defense Studies, said after the massacre in his country "With 9/11 in America, people could ask, 'Who are they?' and could pour their rage out on someone else. But we can't disavow this person; he's one of us. That's a sobering thought." But as might be expected, the Norwegian massacre and what it means will quickly fade from the collective memory in this country. What will not fade is nativism, racism and xenophobia. Fox News and right-wing media will continue spreading hate as they have before, unapologetically and as strenuously as before. And when another massacre from a person influenced by right-wing hate occurs, his aiders and abettors will of course deny all and call him a “madman.”
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