Saturday, February 27, 2010
Teabagger terrorism
The subject of Frank Rich's column this week is the coalescing of various strands of teabagger hate into a tapestry of terrorism similar to that of the 90's.
It is not glib or inaccurate to invoke Oklahoma City in this context, because the acrid stench of 1995 is back in the air. Two days before Stack’s suicide mission, The Times published David Barstow’s chilling, months-long investigation of the Tea Party movement. Anyone who was cognizant during the McVeigh firestorm would recognize the old warning signs re-emerging from the mists of history. The Patriot movement. “The New World Order,” with its shadowy conspiracies hatched by the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission. Sandpoint, Idaho. White supremacists. Militias.And there will always be someone who thinks he or she can control the energy of the teabagger emotions. Kerensky, Trotsky, Danton, Marat, Robespierre are names that come to mind when thinking of those in the past who thought this.
Barstow confirmed what the Southern Poverty Law Center had found in its report last year: the unhinged and sometimes armed anti-government right that was thought to have vaporized after its Oklahoma apotheosis is making a comeback. And now it is finding common cause with some elements of the diverse, far-flung and still inchoate Tea Party movement. All it takes is a few self-styled “patriots” to sow havoc.
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