The myth of the extreme-right threat …

I heard an assertion the other day that stunned me.

Some talking head said that far-right extremist groups – such as the KKK, white supremacists, and neo-Nazis – experience their greatest growth when Republicans are in power.  They added that their numbers appear to decline when Democrats hold the reins of power.

Huh?

Now mind you, this was said with complete sincerity. The point they were trying to make was that far-right extremists feel more emboldened under Republicans.

So since we now have a Republican President, a Republican majority in Congress, and Republican domination of state governorships and legislatures, that’s supposed to explain why we’re seeing more violence from the extreme far right, more public displays of right-wing hatred and bigotry, and an increase in reported hate crimes against minorities.     

I have a different take. 

I think the perceived difference in the numbers of far-right extremist groups – and how their activities are described – under Republicans versus Democrats is largely the result of what our media choose to cover.  I also believe, and the numbers will likely bear me out, that there are not significantly more Klan members, neo-Nazis, and white supremacists in America now than ever before; if anything, there’s likely fewer. But they get more media coverage.

The question is why?       

When Democrats are in power, the media tend to dismiss the extreme right-wingers as tiny clusters of stupid, ill-informed clowns so far out of the mainstream they are a joke – which they are and have been for years. The media prefer pushing a narrative, bordering on propaganda, that the liberal progressive agenda supported by Democrats is wildly popular, here and abroad.

That narrative of how popular the progressive agenda is here and abroad is questioned if significant numbers of people show up to oppose it, as the Tea Party did and the Brexit movement in the UK did. When that happens, the media downplay the numbers of people involved and portray any opposition as from a miniscule number of angry, ill-informed, anti-progress nutjobs, as they did with the Tea Party and Brexit supporters.

Opposition becomes invisible by design.  In short, nothing to see here.       

Yet sometimes the media do too good a job of hiding the opposition. They start to believe their own propaganda that there’s really no substantial opposition to their beloved agenda. Their polls bear them out; mainly because people who distrust the media won’t answer truthfully if at all, which means others eager to be polled aren’t always representative of the whole.

Consequently, the pollsters get skewed data. And the media report that bad data as fact because it supports what they already want to believe. 

That’s a key reason why the media and Democrats were so stunned when Trump was elected over Hillary.  How could so many otherwise normal Americans – including traditional working-class Democrats – turn their backs on a clearly smarter and more enlightened Democrat?

Especially to elect an inarticulate, intellectually inferior buffoon such as Trump? 

There must have been something else, some evil force, at play. It’s not the first time they tried to find a culprit other than their own candidate’s failings. 

When G.W. Bush beat Al Gore and then John Kerry, Democrats blamed social conservatives, mainly rabid white evangelical and fundamentalist Christians.  Democrats and progressives never trust devout white Christians of any stripe, who they see as ignorant backwoods Bible thumpers opposed to “progress.” These white Christians, to Democrats and liberals, are small-minded and judgmental; they cling to such outdated concepts as “good and evil” and “right and wrong.” 

And “traditional values.” What a laugh. 

In the case of Trump, Democrats and the media believe that, in addition to the Russians – another unproven boogie man, it must have been angry, racist white men still incensed that we had elected a black President not once, but twice.

These angry white men also punished Democrats for nominating a woman – a woman, for God’s sake! – for President after Obama.  These narrow-minded white men already hated Obama’s decisions to allow in a flood of refugees from the Middle East, protect illegal immigrants already here, his push for gay marriage and gays in the military, his support for Planned Parenthood, and fostering his Justice Department’s obsession with siding with criminals over police.     

It was obvious to Democrats and their pals in the media that white male homophobic, xenophobic, sexist, racist, bigots put Trump in office. That’s the only way it could have happened.

Since Trump won, there must be a lot of them out there.  But where? And how could they be stopped before they influenced any more Americans?

They looked no further than the far right extremists.  The Klan. The neo-Nazis. The white “nationalists” and white supremacists. These are the hate-mongering enemies of progress.   

Suddenly, these extremists were everywhere.  Or so it seemed. 

But they really weren’t.

Nobody, save perhaps the Southern Poverty Law Center extortionists who make millions by manufacturing fake hate-group threats, honestly believes groups like the Klan, the neo-Nazis and white supremacists are growing in numbers.

You wouldn’t know that watching our media, however. When Trump was campaigning, the media breathlessly reported how hateful and racist his supporters were. Except they weren’t. The alleged hateful, racist signs held by Trump supporters turned out to be few and far between, and often plants by Democrat operatives. There was almost no violence at Trump rallies or assaults on minorities there either, unless you count the rare times when paid provocateurs from the left assaulted otherwise peaceful Trump supporters – and don’t be misled, that’s about the only time you saw Trump supporters fight back.

The same thing happened with the “surge” in “reported” hate crimes and racist vandalism once Trump was elected. The media were quick to blame far-right hate groups – who they claimed were Trump supporters – for the “dramatic increase” in assaults on minorities, defacing of mosques and synagogues, and other acts of bigotry and prejudice.

The media were less inclined to report the eventual truth: almost all of the reported “hate crimes” and vandalism that gained national notoriety proved bogus – done by Democrat and leftist operatives to make it appear that Trump’s words fostered attacks on minorities. The widely reported “attacks” and verbal assaults on hajib-wearing women on subways and college campuses, and on other Muslims, supposedly in the name of Trump, also were largely later debunked – most if not all never happened, but came from people seeking media attention.    

Charlottesville is the latest cause célèbre for the media and the left. There a protest against the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee spun out of control when neo-Nazis and white supremacists affiliated with the Klan clashed with counter protesters. Based on media coverage and selective video editing, one would think there were hundreds of right-wing extremists there.

The reality is that there were about 30 members of the Klan protesting, as reported by the New York Times, and perhaps a couple of dozen other right-wing extremists.  

The fighting didn’t start until the protesters against the removal of the statue peacefully concluded their rally and started to leave. That’s when the counter protesters – who did number in the hundreds, and by all accounts vastly outnumbered the motley crew of wannabe neo-Nazis, Klan folk, and white supremacists – started physically engaging with them. Violence broke out and culminated in one right-wing lunatic driving his car into a crowd, killing one of the counter protesters and injuring many others. 

That is actually what happened.  There weren’t hundreds of right-wing extremists there. It wasn’t an epic moment that showed the power and strength of the far-right extremists.   

If anything, it demonstrated once again how lame these right-wing extremists are, and how they can’t whip up more than a few dozen supporters for anything. They’re just a small number of small people who like to dress up and shout stupid things to piss off the rest of us. 

I’ve dealt with worse from the homeless beggars while going to work in Philly.    

So forget about the growing threat from right-wing extremists. It’s a media-manufactured myth. And don’t believe that “hate groups” are soaring to new highs under Trump.  They aren’t. 

Unless you want to believe the Southern Poverty Law Center – which now includes “patriot” groups opposed to illegal immigration, those who lobby for tighter border security, those in favor of maintaining the death penalty for certain crimes, and those who oppose abortion – as equivalent in hate-group status as the Ku Klux Klan or neo-Nazis.

That’s right, according to the SPLC, if you are opposed to illegal immigration, want tighter border security, believe in capital punishment for some crimes, or are pro-life, you, too, are a hate group. I’ll bet you didn’t know that.

Neither did the churches that made their list because they supported traditional marriage. 

When you include all of the above as "hate-groups" the numbers are bound to go up. But again, even with that data legerdemain, there still aren't more actual "hate groups" today.

It's a myth to scare you. And it's pure crapola.