Reports of proto-genocide in South Sudan, Al Qaeda fighters creating the makings of civil war, and Tea Party factions pulling apart the fabric of the Republican party bring my attention to the repercussions of extreme factions given too much power. In South Sudan, ethnic tensions lie along political lines, and the barely held peace is undone. Countrymen are killing countrymen based on ethnicity and politics. In Iraq, armed men shout about defending the people from the government, while limiting the rights of people, particularly women. In the US, the Tea Party (and Christian extremists) is destabilizing the Republican Party, and in many ways the country as a whole, by insisting on access to military weapons, limiting the access of women to modern medicine, and eroding educational standards. While it is anathema to constructive discourse to vilify those with opposing views by rash comparison to notorious groups, the politics and rhetoric of extremism forms a pattern that cannot be dealt with logically. It seems increasingly so that there is shockingly little difference between the political tactics of the Tea Party and extremists like Al Qaeda.
The Tea Party has no official religion, but certainly Christianity is to the Tea Party what Islam is to Al Qaeda. One philosophy unites the members of each group, and the more extreme the interpretation of their respective holy texts, the tighter the bond. I acknowledge that there may be many Tea Party members who regard themselves as non-fundamentalists, but when the moral compass of an organization aligns to the guidance of hate-filled religious teachers of the Jerry Falwell kind, an exclusive fundamentalism reveals itself at the heart of the organization. This type of religious zeal lends itself to the xenophobia that these extremist groups rely upon to perpetuate their agenda.
In Iraq, Al Qaeda fighters align themselves with the religious sect that is not in power. In South Sudan, ethnicity fuels the political hate. The xenophobia that fuels these conflicts is key: keep the good life for us, not them, is the sentiment. In the United States, the propaganda of the extreme right dictate the closing of borders and limiting the abilities of immigrants and foreigners to enjoy the American Dream. Admittedly, new immigrants have been excluded from the American Dream by the immigrants of decades past. However, when Facebook memes that tout closing borders are proliferated by those who fail to consider the patriotic diversity that drives their nation, the extremism of the Tea Party is advanced by thoughtless repetition. Unfortunately, Tea Party xenophobia does not stop at policy, but extends to violence.
When a Wisconsin Sikh temple was the target of a mass shooting, most Americans were outraged. Paul Ryan sponsored a house bill that condemned the acts. Americans are quick to condemn violence, but in the matter of preventing violence, the Tea Party lacks enthusiasm. Ryan’s bill merely sought to condemn the act, not limit access to the legally-purchased, 19-round ammunition magazines that were used to kill the Sikhs and shoot a responding police officer 15 times. The Tea Party is not a white supremacist organization, but it can be accused of using xenophobia on the national political spectrum to encourage xenophobia in smaller, more extreme communities. Given the hate crimes perpetrated by well-armed xenophobes in the United States, is it unreasonable to think that should a second civil war ever begin, that Muslims, Latinos, Blacks, the LGBT community, or minority immigrant communities would be some of the first to be targeted? Would that be American genocide?
No political movement is free from violence. Governments of the extreme left have committed heinous atrocities along with their extreme right brethren. "Grassroots" political organizations, left and right, have committed acts of violence. Yet, the modern extreme right, including incarnations that preceded or feed off the Tea Party movement have committed some of the most striking acts of American terrorism. In 1995 the Murrah Federal building in Oklahoma City was bombed by those sympathetic to the Militia Movement. While the Militia Movement is not the Tea Party, Timothy McVeigh's political view certainly sound at home among those of the Tea Party. Consider these quotes compiled on Wikipedia:
"Taxes are a joke. Regardless of what a political candidate "promises," they will increase. More taxes are always the answer to government mismanagement."
"The government is afraid of the guns people have because they have to have control of the people at all times. Once you take away the guns, you can do anything to the people. You give them an inch and they take a mile. I believe we are slowly turning into a socialist government. The government is continually growing bigger and more powerful and the people need to prepare to defend themselves against government control."
Mistrust of government, the desire for low taxes, and the idea of gun-rights are not in themselves vehicles of terrorism. However, when combined with xenophobia, the "government," and the "socialists" (liberals?) become them, the enemy. “The right to bear arms,” whatever that legally means, provides extremists a way to hide their desire to destabilize society behind a veil of constitutional legitimacy. Literal interpretations of the constitution equate military weapons to black powder muskets, a weapon with limited applications in mass shootings. A nation armed with tools (e.g., hunting rifles), may suffer heart-wrenching gun violence, but will not face the destabilizing, daily terror of military weapons in the hands of the disaffected.
This is not a conspiracy. Violence is not a plan being delivered by a secret movement. Violence is the result of mass-produced, widely available weapons. The concept that the availability of weapons produces violence is not new, nor secular. In the Bible, Isaiah 2:3-4 encourages swords to plowshares, spears to pruning hooks, and discourages war. The Bible passage, like the Second Amendment, is not entirely clear in its fullest meaning, but tools for farming seem more important than tools for defense. In the Bill of Rights, what threat is perceived that requires defense? Is it foreign nations? The central government? Each other? With widely available weapons, threats are shrouded by irrational fears. Daily gun violence is terrorism inflicted on the American public by gun lobbyists to justify more guns. The central government’s mission to provide medical care to the sick, the poor, and the meek is a perceived threat that should be met with, according to some associated with the Tea Party, a military coup. Yet, a military coup is probably the threat James Madison envisioned coming from the central government when he penned the Second Amendment, as the constitution specifically forbids the presence of a standing army. With the current (unconstitutional) military being the largest part of government, and more powerful than something like the next ten most powerful militaries combined, the threat of a foreign power is moot. In essence, it seems that the Second Amendment is held in greater esteem than the Bible to defend against the gun violence that the defense of the Second Amendment has created!
The violence perpetuated by the extreme right is not a Tea Party tradition, but is condoned by their rhetoric and actions. When Sarah Palin used a political graphic that used gun scope cross hairs to identify democrat-held districts, she was condoning violence, though not intentionally. When Alaskan separatists (to potentially include Todd Palin) argue for the right to own military-style weapons, they are, inadvertently, condoning violence against the government. It was, in fact, separatism over states’ rights that led to the civil war (which was also drawn along racial lines). Violence, then, is tied to Tea Party thinking; this includes mass shootings that kill children.
Real violence spilling from rhetoric is a tragedy that is preventable. First, though, we must answer a question. Where and how does rhetoric escalate, or not, to violence? In a New York Times magazine piece, it was implied that John McCain is tired of discussing the selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate. That political move, however misguided, may have been the point where the Tea Party seceded from the Republican Party. It legitimized the extremist fringe on the national scale. I, like McCain, am tired of talking about Palin, but I think that was a pivotal point that should be understood. If we can understand an event that put extremists in a position of power in the country, can we understand the circumstances that will legitimate violence and war as a political party?
I am not proposing that we currently sit on the eve of war. Instead, I am proposing that the Tea Party, in an uniquely American way, represents much of the extremism seen in Al Qaeda, and that fuels conflicts of genocide. I am proposing that we need to analyze and understand when violent rhetoric becomes violence. How do we know that when Charlton Heston said, "...from my cold dead hands," it was not a call to arms for felons barred from owning weapons? We learn these things through law enforcement actions. After the shooting in Newtown, Wayne LaPierre called for a vast increase in the size of government to protect schools from the guns that his organization defend. It is through increasing the size of government, and decreasing liberty, that Americans seek to live with military weapons in their daily lives. To my mind, the NSA spying on telephones is the product of Americans making access to deadly weapons a “right” of greater importance than food for hungry children (e.g., reducing funding for food stamps).
Unfortunately, the NSA was caught protecting us from ourselves, and the Tea Party is responding with vehement small government rhetoric, pitting the citizen against the government: us versus them. Meanwhile, a rebel in Fallujah takes the stage to proclaim his protection of Iraqis from their government.
