Leftwing vs. Rightwing Extremism

The latest controversy involving the DHS report on rightwing extremism, and its resulting reaction on both sides of the political spectrum, peaked my interest enough to want to look at this issue closer. Fortunately, The Schnitt Show's website has links to not just the original pdf document on rightwing extremism, but the one on leftwing extremism issued by the very same DHS back in January.

The "key findings" shape up like this:

For the leftwingers it's "the potential for economic damage, the individually-initiated and anonymous nature of cyber attacks, and the perception that cyber attacks are nonviolent align well with the ideological beliefs, strategic objectives, and tactics of many leftwing extremists". The core source of these leftwing extremists, according to the report, are extremist elements from animal rights, environmentalist and anarchist movement groups.

For the rightwingers, it's a combination of economic and social factors, the possibility of firearm restrictions, returning military veterans, illegal immigration and an African-American president that are key indicators. The report offers up this example:

A recent example of the potential violence associated with a rise in rightwing extremism may be found in the shooting deaths of three police officers in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on 4 April 2009. The alleged gunman’s reaction reportedly was influenced by his racist ideology and belief in antigovernment conspiracy theories related to gun confiscations, citizen detention camps, and a Jewish-controlled “one world government.”

On the left side, we have:

In October 2005, animal rights extremists launched an e-mail attack against a Milwaukee, Wisconsin firm that held stock in an animal testing laboratory. The firm subsequently sold its shares in the laboratory, with losses it estimated at approximately $1.4 million.

How do I see this? Frankly, I think many on the right are somewhat exaggerating the anti-right-wing bias aspect of this. As we can see, a report was issued for leftwing extremists three months before the rightwing one came out. There's even a mention of some of these groups resorting to bombings and arson. So to point out that the leftwingers were painted out to be benign, well-meaning folks isn't completely accurate.

Where I DO think those on the right have a case to make lies in the organizations and methods the findings focus on for each group. For the left, it's primarily "non-violent" cyber attacks by fringe elements animal rights, environmentalist and anarchist groups. Sounds relatively harmless and it gives the impression that these folks live in some strange land far far away. For the right, the implication one can draw is that it's regular folks that get pushed into white supremacist and anti-government groups by a combination of economic and social factors, as well as a latent racism of sorts against President Obama. Among these regular folks: our military. In other words, it could be your neighbor next door who could decide to blow up a building. It could be that brave soldier who returns home, doesn't have a job and murders a bunch of minorities or plots to assassinate the President of the United States.

In other words, one can say the report pits leftwing nut cases targeting rich folks versus Average Joe who gets "recruited" and goes off the deep end because he has a propensity for disliking blacks and immigrants and can't find a job. While I don't totally buy into this as the intent of the reports, it's not an unreasonable conclusion to draw, IMO.

Perhaps the wording was clumsier in the rightwing report. But an honest analysis of both documents does seem to suggest a more pessimistic, threatening and downright scary scenario for the rightwing extremists, one that can come from just about anywhere and from anyone that has a beef against President Obama, whereas the leftwing report focused on specific fringe groups targeting banks and corporations using "non-violent" means.

Are the reports' conclusions based on reality of some sort? Sure (Timothy McVeigh rings a bell). But the perception that anyone could fall into the rightwing extremist trap is one that bothers me. Especially when "anyone" is either veterans or anyone not affiliated with fringe groups.