Radical white terrorism in America
A white man who operated an alt.right racist Facebook group tried to run over several dozen liberals, some of them disabled, with his motorcycle last week in San Francisco. The intended victims were protesting the Republican healthcare bill; some of them were laying in the street in a “die-in” when the terrorist attempted to ram into them.
Fortunately, no one was injured in the attack, and witnesses detained the suspect, whom the San Francisco Chronicle identified as Jeffrey Dillon, a city resident. Police arrived almost immediately and arrested him.
The Chronicle reported that Dillon was the “administrator of a Facebook group called The White Privilege Club.” I found this link to a similarly-named group, with a logo at the top that shows the torso of a white man who appears to be Dillon, shown grinning in this photo when he was arrested.
Photo: Raw Story via Facebook
Dillon’s intended victims were at their rally in downtown San Francisco when Dillon, driving a BMW motorcycle, “turned the wrong way on the one-way street and drove toward the[m],” according to the Chronicle. One witness said, “He was revving and revving, he was gunning it, aiming at people.” Another said Dillon yelled, “If you want to go to the hospital, here you go.”
Dillon is one of a growing number of angry white people, mainly men, who are resorting to threats and physical violence against those they perceive as their enemies. Their attacks range from assaults by roving gangs of white youth on homeless men, to the recent attack on a gay man in Washington, D.C., by four young white men who chanted “Trump America” as they beat him up and called him “Snowflake”, to February’s vandalizing of a Chicago synagogue with swastikas.
For more stark, violent examples of the threats of these white nationalists, check out this comment string at Breitbart about the Johnny Depp “assassinate the president” remark; the string is filled with profanity, homophobia and generalized rage, some of it directed against me. It makes me wonder how many of these angry white men are just waiting for the opportunity to take their guns and start killing.
The rightwing media is not reporting on this movement. But, as the Huffington Post recently reported, “When it comes to domestic terrorism in America…[f]ar-right extremists are behind far more plots and attacks than Islamist extremists.” The terrorists may be white supremacists, militias, neo-nazis, border-control freaks, Christian warriors, so-called “sovereign citizens”, anti-government radicals like the Bundys, or simply mentally ill individuals with no connection to any organized movement; what they have in common is that they are mostly white Christian males.
Had the San Francisco motorcycle attacker been a Muslim, the rightwing media would be screaming bloody murder. Fox News’ rabid commentators would demand immediate passage of Trump’s Muslim ban and accuse Democrats of inciting violence. The Wall Street Journal’s op-ed writers would once again recycle their anti-Muslim screeds, while Tea Party politicians would be reminding voters that only the Republican Party can protect them. The neanderthals at Breitbart would be howling about “Killary” and “Obummer” letting sleeper cells into the country. And Trump, of course, would be busy on Twitter. But of Jeffrey Dillon’s shocking attack, I haven’t seen or heard a word, nor do I expect to, on Fox or in the Wall Street Journal or any other bastion of the tea party. There is a conspiracy of silence in rightwing media circles about this internal threat, and it’s not hard to figure out why they don’t want to talk about it.
Look: We have a real problem with radical white terrorists. They’ve always been around, but they’re feeling more empowered than ever because their Inciter-in-Chief, with his wink, wink, nod, nod dog whistles giving them tacit permission to act out their fantasies, is now President of the United States of America. There is, in fact, plenty of evidence that radical white terrorists have been emboldened by the 45th president. “White supremacists celebrate reports that Trump will dial down scrutiny,” the liberal website ThinkProgress reported, quoting the leader of the neo-nazi organization, The Daily Stormer* (which calls itself “a Republican website”): “Donald Trump wants to remove us from undue federal scrutiny by removing ‘white supremacists’ from the definition of ‘extremism.’ Yes, this is real life: Donald Trump is setting us free.”
Free at last! Thank Trump almighty. As Adolf Hitler unleashed the meanest, most thuggish instincts in Germans, Donald J. Trump is giving a similar go-ahead to his base. Hitler destroyed his country and half the planet. What will be Trump’s legacy?
*The Daily Stormer takes its name from Der Stürmer, the leading Nazi newspaper, whose publisher, Hitler’s friend Julius Streicher, was hanged for war crimes at Nuremberg.
“The rightwing media is not reporting on this movement.”
And it’s not just the right wing media. I hadn’t read about any of this; except here.
Bob Rossi, There seem to be so many of these white terrorist attacks that they’ve become only local stories. But really, can you imagine the outrage by Republican congressmen if a Muslim had done something like this? They’d be parading in front of the cameras on the steps of the Capitol, and pontificating on fox “news” about the danger.