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Right-Wing Neocrusading Terror Continues, in Illinois

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Siege of Tripoli Painting (1289)Terror is kind of a strange thing. Most Americans tend to think of it as mostly a phenomenon of militant Islamism. After all, just in the US since 2015, we’ve dealt with attacks in Chattanooga, San Bernardino, Orlando, Ohio State Univ., and Lower Manhattan. Those are in addition to attacks in Paris, London, Manchester in the UK, and Barcelona, among many other places in the world.

Unfortunately, while militant Islamism has killed many, it’s not the only source of terrorism within the US. We also have Right-wing terrorists. Yes, Right-wing, and very often, Christian. Examples of this within the same timeframe occurred in Colorado Springs and Charlottesville, in addition to other random attacks I’ve commented on previously.

This is something that Americans just don’t want to talk about and don’t want to admit exists … but it does. An example of this phenomenon was in the news recently. As the Chicago Tribune reports, three Illinois men were charged with bombing a mosque and trying to bomb a clinic (Archive.Is cached article):

Federal authorities on Tuesday charged three men from rural central Illinois with the bombing of a Minnesota mosque last year and said one of the suspects told an investigator the goal of the attack was to “scare” Muslims out of the United States.

A statement from the U.S. attorney’s office in Springfield, Illinois, says the men also are suspected in the attempted bombing of an abortion clinic. The Dar Al-Farooq Islamic Center in Bloomington, Minnesota, was bombed just before morning prayers on Aug. 5, causing a fire and extensive damage although no one was injured or killed. And there was an attempted bombing of the Champaign, Illinois, Women’s Health Practice on Nov. 7.

One of these cretins had planned to try building the Groper-in-Chief’s wall along the Mexican border and had engaged in assorted other kinds of Right-wing crankery. Note that this effort to drive Muslims out of the country aligns with a concerted Religious Right campaign I’ve called “the Great Neocrusade”; an effort to eradicate Islam from the country. These folk plan to get around Muslims’ Constitutional religious-freedom rights by insisting Islam isn’t really a religion, it’s a political philosophy, and therefore can be outlawed. (Yes, even though the Constitution doesn’t allow outlawing political views, either.)

The reality is that terror has more than one cause. Militant Islamist terror is a problem, to be sure, and one I’ve never ignored, but it’s not the only source of terror in the US. The Right has been guilty of it as well. By some counts, white native Americans are more likely to be terrorists than Muslims (cached). And beyond even them, Americans are more likely to fall prey to plain, old-fashioned, garden-variety sociopaths. Americans need a better perspective on the problem, if they’re to solve it. The first thing they need to do is dispense with their Christian tribal view that Christians can’t be terrorists … because all too often, they’re more than capable of it.

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons.


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