When Norwegian terrorism suspect Anders Behring Breivik wrote that in his "manifesto," it was probably a lot truer than he realized -- for reasons that he likely hadn't considered. It's easy to look at the anti-Muslim bigotry of rightwing figures like Herman Cain and come to the conclusion that other anti-Islam nuts have "allies" in the GOP. I'm not singling Cain out here, he was just the first who came to mind. There's no shortage of others.
But the most obvious evidence isn't always the best evidence. After all, Cain isn't part of the institutional Republican Party. He's a GOP presidential candidate, sure, but he could legitimately claim the outsider label. He's a member of the party, but plays no real part in the party's structure. To that end, we have to look at people like New York Rep. Peter King to find these allies within the structural GOP.Buried within a New York Times story (about the rightwing blogosphere whining that people are "unfairly" connecting them with a killer who quoted them on a regular basis) is this bit of info:
Despite the Norway killings, Representative Peter T. King, the New York Republican who is chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said he had no plans to broaden contentious hearings about the radicalization of Muslim Americans and would hold the third one as planned on Wednesday. He said 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.
Kings argument makes absolutely no sense at all. Here I thought Norway was a foreign country. Boy, is my face red.
But behind the excuse is the reason for the excuse -- that investigating rightwing hate would be bad politics. Drag Pam Geller before the Homeland Security Committee and grill her about her radicalization of anti-Islam sentiments? Unthinkable. Like Breivik, King has an ally in Geller -- and all the other nuts who've stoked a "mosque at Ground Zero" hysteria for months and months on end. It'd mean looking into the crazies within his own party who fearmonger over a nonexistent threat of Sharia law. And it would mean angering a xenophobic Tea Party base who love the crazies and the hatebloggers. Worse, it would mean highlighting his own anti-Muslim grandstanding.
Meanwhile, avoiding bad politics means ignoring this, from the same NYT piece:
The killings in Norway "could easily happen here," said [Daryl Johnson, a Department of Homeland Security analyst]. The Hutaree, an extremist Christian militia in Michigan accused last year of plotting to kill police officers and planting bombs at their funerals, had an arsenal of weapons larger than all the Muslim plotters charged in the United States since the Sept. 11 attacks combined, he said.
We found a rightwing private army in Michigan, but it would be irresponsible of the Homeland Security Committee to investigate things like this, because it happened in the homeland. The security of the homeland is apparently not the responsibility of the Homeland Security Committee. I don't know. You figure it out. It doesn't make a damned bit of sense to me.
If one thing is clear, it's that Rep. Peter King is in violation of his oath of office -- in which he swore to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic" -- in order to avoid a politically sticky situation. We're just going to ignore domestic threats, because a bunch of whiny bloggers and poorly-informed 'baggers refuse to acknowledge that the threat even exists.
Breivik was right that anti-Islam extremists have allies in the GOP. And if those allies aren't quite willing to join in the fight, they're more than willing to look the other way.
-Wisco
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