Right wing extremists praising terrorist attack

[spike]

Joe Stack Hailed as Hero in American 'Patriot' Resurgence

Expert: Online Cheers for Joe Stack Reflect Growing Anti-Government Movement


Most were shocked by the charred scene of Joe Stack's kamikaze attack on a Texas IRS office, but for an alarmingly growing number of Americans Stack is a hero.

The Web was studded with praise for Stack almost immediately after his plane slammed into the Austin office complex Thursday morning. The admiring salutes appearing on sites ranging from Facebook to the pages of extremist groups reflect what experts say is an "explosive growth" in the anti-government patriot movement.

"Extremist groups are already aligning behind [Joe Stack], beginning to talk about him as a hero," said Mark Potok, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center which studies American militia and hate groups. "The growth of those groups has been astounding."

Stack's suicide note, an angry rant against the IRS and the government which was posted online the morning of his death, got around 20 million hits before it was taken down at the request of the FBI, according to Alex Melen, president and founder of T35, the network service provider for the Web site where the note was posted.

Melen, 25, said within minutes of taking the note down, the company was "bombarded" with around 3,000 e-mails demanding Stack's words be reposted. Some of the e-mails contained personal threats against Melen.

"What's funny is most people were pretty much praising him," Melen told ABC News.

Bob Schulz, founder of the anti-government We the People Foundation, said that while he only advocates non-violent means of protest, he can understand Stack's motives and said it is a reflection of a movement unlike any he's ever seen.

"There's a huge patriot movement," Schulz said. "I've been doing this kind of work for 30 years. Never have I seen the likes of what's going on now. It's delightful."

The anti-government movement gathered strength during the early 1990s, resulting in several high profile stand-offs with the FBI. Anti-government militias trained in the woods and prepared for a confrontation with the U.S. The militia movement peaked in 1995 when Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols bombed the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people.

The anti-government movement became dormant until the mid-2000s. Potok said a militia and extreme anti-government movement, fueled initially by anti-immigration sentiment, is back in a big way, especially since President Obama took office.

According to an April 2009 report by the Department of Homeland Security, the current anti-government climate "parallels" what federal officials saw in the 1990s.

"Rightwing extremists have capitalized on the election of the first African American president, and are focusing their efforts to recruit new members, mobilize existing supporters, and broaden their scope and appeal through propoganda, but they have not yet turned to attack planning," the report said.

For many, Obama's election was a near perfect storm of disappointments, Potok said.

"The longer term thing goes back seven or eight years due to immigration," Potok said citing the surge of border patrol militias like the Minutemen. "But Obama's election, which is in a way related to the non-white immigration issue, was representative proof that this country is irreversibly changing demographically. Then the economy has played a role and things have gotten worse and worse."

The result is what Potok referred to as a "broad-based, right-wing populist rebellion," generally short of violent extremism.

http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/patriot-movement-calling-joe-stack-hero/story?id=9889443

 

[spike]

"This was quite heroic," said a member of Stormfront.org, a white supremacist Web site. "There is a gradual awakening underway."

Again the Stormfronters line up with the right wing radicals.

 

[spike]

Islam...the two-headed dragon. There is the normal folks who just want to get on with their life. Then there's the radicals. Obvious seperation. Except when acts, that should merit public outrage, don't. They're met with silence, or worse, acts that put them on the same side as the radicals.

Factually incorrect. Acts by muslim radicals are routinely met with public outrage by other muslims. This has been pointed out many times. For some reason this unquestionable fact is routinely ignored.

http://islam.about.com/cs/currentevents/a/9_11statements.htm

I didn't see too many people dancing in the street when the IRS building got hit. Many wondered what took so long but nobody cheered it.

Factually incorrect. Many people cheered it (see above). Many people also cheered the terrorist who killed the abortion doc.

 

[valkyrie]

I work pretty close to that building. It was a mess. We drove by right after lunch to see how fucked up that building was. What we saw shocked us. I'm so surprised that only 2 people died.

Not sure why he set his house on fire with his wife and daughter in the house. I read the manifesto before they took it down from the website. It read something like this...
I tried to use a loop hole that lets religious organizations get away with not paying taxes and got busted and had to pay taxes plus fees and interest which emptied my little nest egg. I also moved from California to Austin, Texas and found that I could only make 1/3 of what I made in California. [He fails to mention that Austin is also cheaper to live in than California.] I am angry because rules should not apply to me.

That pretty much sums it up.

 

[Gotholic]

spike, have you seen America: Freedom to Fascism?

I think you should watch it if you have not, and post your thoughts!

 

[MrBishop]

I'm not horribly surprised that the anti-gvt right wingnuts waved rah-rah the moment that they heard that it was an IRS building that got hit.