Onward White Christian Terrorists

By Sikivu Hutchinson

In yet another act of domestic terror against a family planning facility, a Planned Parenthood clinic in Wisconsin was fire-bombed recently.  The attack comes on the heels of the bombing of a Pensacola, Florida clinic in January.  Although no one was injured in the attack, the fascist demonization of Planned Parenthood by inciters like Rick Santorum continues to put women’s lives in the line of fire; in an era of vanishing clinics and mounting violence. 

In honor of Abortion Providers’ Day last month I visited a family planning clinic after participating in an abortion rights protest.  The head doctor on staff lamented how few of his colleagues had been trained to perform abortions. Volunteer patient escorts helped protect the tucked away strip mall facility from violent interlopers.  The scene was a vivid reminder of the atrocity of the assassination of Kansas abortion provider Dr. George Tiller in 2009.    

Tiller was murdered in cold blood in his church by former Montana freemen and Army of God member Scott Roeder, who said he was just following God’s law. At Tiller’s funeral anti-abortion protesters wielded signs proclaiming “God sent the shooter.” His murder was the culmination of years of attempted murders, death threats, bombings and arson attacks waged against abortion providers by white Christian terrorists. While law-abiding Muslim Americans continue to be profiled and surveilled, white Christian terrorists are handled cautiously.  Historically the feds have always reserved their most savage, concerted “counter-terrorist” campaigns for radical activists of color.  From 1956 to 1971 J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI launched its notorious Cointelpro “counter-intelligence” operation targeting radical groups in the U.S.  The operation systematically co-opted, jailed, and murdered activists of color in organizations like the Black Panther Party, the US Organization, the American Indian Movement, and the liberal Southern Christian Leadership Conference.  Hoover relentlessly smeared these groups as domestic terrorists. The fire-bombing of a Wisconsin Planned Parenthood clinic is a potent reminder of how white Christian terrorism gets a pass in the mainstream media.  

Yet white militants who invoke Christian fundamentalism to justify their barbaric acts against women and their allies are still dismissed in the mainstream as aberrations.  Writing for the Southern Poverty Law Center back in 1998, Frederick Clarkson pinpointed the alignment of anti-abortion terrorism, white supremacist activism, and the far right militia movement.  Like the perennial black male inner city perp, the profiles of anti-abortion terrorists are always the same—“disaffected” white middle aged males, drunk with anti-government militia and/or a fundamentalist ethos steeped in the bloody retribution of the Old Testament. Clearly black men running around bombing abortion clinics or plotting to kill abortion doctors would get no farther than the nearest county jail cell.  And as the lynch mob justice meted out to Trayvon Martin, Kendrick McDade, and scores of other people of color demonstrates the threat of “savage” black criminality—particularly vis-à-vis white lives in the heartland or in gated communities—is the only national scourge that must be contained by any means necessary.    

 

 

 

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Onward White Christian Terrorists
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11 thoughts on “Onward White Christian Terrorists

  1. F
    1

    The aberrations like Waco and Ruby Ridge, while handled in the standard atrocious fashion, made the news in a big way.

    The constant endemic mistreatment of non-white groups or individuals is barely noted. Whether or not they are even joined to a particular organization or cause.

    I won’t even try to imagine what would happen if a largish group of Black folks bought some land, built a “compound”, and exercised their second amendment rights like some crazy white people do. They wouldn’t even have to express any anti-government sentiments, or “different” beliefs or worldviews to get nuked from orbit.

    Meanwhile, the white Christian terrorist guerrilla actions are treated like regular local police crimes.

    1. 1.1

      You’re absolutely dead on. Ruby Ridge and Waco were treated like national tragedies, majorly hyped in the mainstream media and evoked as cautionary tales for the evils of “jack-booted” big govt. “terrorism”. Black anti-govt militias in the mold of Montana freemen, Michigan Miitia, Hutaree, etc.? An oxymoron.

      1. F

        Never mind the presidential candidates we’ve had in the previous and current election cycles who had advocated their home states seceding from the Union…

    2. 1.2

      “I won’t even try to imagine what would happen if a largish group of Black folks bought some land, built a “compound”, and exercised their second amendment rights like some crazy white people do” you can say that again!

    3. 1.3

      Actually, that’s kind of what happened in Eatonton Ga, When Malachi York and the Nuwabians established a compound on 476 acres in Putnam County. Of course their issue was first amendment-religious freedom. York is currently serving a 135 year sentance for molestation charges based mainly on charges elicited by the Sheriff from disaffected members of the group(many of whom have recanted-claiming duress).

      I suppose sedition, succession and race war take a back seat in level of importance to a preacher claiming white people are satsn’s seed in terms of national security.

  2. 2

    To update the Wisconsin PP bombing, it appears the perp is a habitual criminal and drug abuser, not even particularly religious. No particular motive has been established as yet but he is being areigned in Federal court. It appears on the surface at this time he did it for grins and giggles.

    1. 2.1

      There is some speculation that the Grady may have been hired to do the job. Time will tell on that one and as these things go we will probably have to wait months before we find out any of the details on this.

      If he was hired by Mitt Romney it will be years before we get the details.

  3. 3

    Yeah, and that guy who tried to fly a plane into the IRS! He was a devout Christian and white. Why didn’t his terrorist attack against the USA drive people into a flurry of white Christian terrorist paranoia?

  4. 4

    I won’t even try to imagine what would happen if…

    …and then you went and imagined some self-serving scenario.

    Try reading the latest Pharyngula article on abortion, and see what happens there to people who propose extreme situations without a scrap of real-life evidence that such things happen, while cheerily guessing what the outcome might be if they did.

    What are we here, fricking christians?

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