From the United States comes troubling news from the US Southern Poverty Law Center, a valiant organisation opposed to racism, homophobia and the US far right. There have been some worrying developments amongst the anti-Obama movement in the United States.

I’ve seen the same before, in New Zealand’s own political past, during the Muldoon era of the seventies and early eighties, and the Christian Right backlash against homosexual law reform and improved abortion access in the mid-to-late eighties. At that time, human rights and civil liberties reached their nadir in this country, then rebounded under Lange. Due to Muldoon, there was a mushrooming of far right organisations- the League of Rights, Integrity Centre, Zenith Applied Philosophy, Tax Reduction Integrity Movement and Sunday Club, all of which had overlapping membership amongst themselves and the Christian Right of the eighties. Bear in mind that the League was a virulently anti-Semitic and racist group that had been investigated during the Second World War for Nazi and Axis sympathies in Australia. As a consequence of pandering to these extremists after homosexual law reform, the National Party lost any hope of winning urban liberal electoral seats in 1987 and lost its second consecutive election, only winning a single seat off the Lange-led Labour administration. Unfortunately, New Zealand First exploited “Rob’s Mob” to gain electoral traction and as David Garrett’s latest sterilisation outburst demonstrates, ACT is still divided between pragmatic libertarians and troglodyte populist social conservative interlopers.

In the United Kingdom, Thatcher’s tenure led to the poll tax backlash of the nineties, after which the Conservative Party descended into fratricidal internal conflict. After losing to Blair in 1997, the Tories have taken thirteen years to resolve their factionalism and repudiate their residual extremists, although some would argue that this process is still not complete.

And the United States? In prior Gaynz.Com Politics and Religion articles, I’ve referred to the “Tea Party” movement of libertarians and Republican hypocrites who happily supported Bush’s stimulus packages but now round on Obama, accusing the latter of rampant “statism” and did little to stop his predecessor’s sad legacy of economic mismanagement. As the Center notes too, though, there are other fellow travellers. The armed “militia” anti-government movement has begun resurgence, and harbours avowed and unreconstructed violent white supremacists, extreme elements of the firearms ownership lobby, fanatical anti-abortionists and sinister anti-immigrant vigilante group members. Some even deny that Barack Obama has US citizenship! They are aided and abetted by their own pack of croney advocacy pseudo-journalist conservative ideologues at FoxNews, WorldNetDaily, NewsMax and other palsied organs of ill professional repute. Could all this culminate in an assassination attempt against the forty-fourth US President?

As for the US Christian Right, demagogues like elderly Pat Robertson, a former Republican presidential candidate and televangelist and veteran Californian homophobe Louis Sheldon are often users of analogous conspiracist rhetoric. Thus far, US Christian Right terrorism has been restricted to the wilder fringes of the US anti-abortion movement. However, one such figure, anti-abortion terrorist Eric Rudolph, also bombed an Atlanta lesbian bar at the same time he was attacking local abortion clinics. Is direct US antigay terrorism so unthinkable?

Free speech is one thing, but actual advocacy of violent intimidation and threats of ‘retribution’ are incitements to antisocial and criminal activities and cross the line. Do anti-Obama extremists and the US Christian Right have any conscience or scruples about encouraging or condoning the use of violent force against their own democratically elected government? And how advanced is the fascist and white supremacist canker within anti-Obama circles within that country? Why aren’t any of them opposing it? And as if to emphasise the latent extremism within the Tea Party adherents, several participants launched racist and homophobic diatribes at three African-American Democrat Congresspeople and gay MHR Barney Frank during the fiery healthcare funding debate earlier this week…

Postscript: As if by unpleasant coincidence, antiabortion ‘justifiable homicide’ stalker website creator Neil Horseley threatened Elton John over the latter’s silly comments about Jesus as a ’super-intelligent gay man”. He’s now in police custody.

Postscript II: Reportedly, the Hutaree fundamentalist militia group was apprehended before it could kill a law enforcement official and attack police detachments at their funeral, the BBC reports. The Hutara militia were based in Indiana, Michigan and Idaho, basing their terrorist philosophy on paranoid premillenarian apocalyptic  fundamentalist beliefs…

Postscript III: Meanwhile, utter sock con lunatics have taken over Texas’ Education Board, rewriting history so that opposition to slavery is de-emphasised, as is the American Civil War, pro-slavery leaders are lauded, Thomas Jefferson receives short shrift because he supported church/state seperation, the Israel/Palestinian debate is primarily due to “Islamic fundamentalism”…and other peculiarities. Reportedly, California is about to ban use the socially conservative and ideologically pure textbooks. Shades of the equally reprehensible Exclusive Brethren school that sacked a teacher for covering Shakespeare’s King Lear in class…

Recommended:

Southern Poverty Law Center: Rage on the Right: http://www.SPLCenter.org

BBC News: Hutaree Militia:  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8593975.stm

Chris McGreal: “Evangelicals rewrite Texas Curriculum” Sydney Morning Herald: 19.05.2010: http://www.smh.com.au/world/evangelicals-rewrite-texan-curriculum-20100518-vcax.html