On this day of remembrance of a legacy of inclusion, of reaching out and building coalitions across divisions of race and class it is equally important to pause and take notice of a swelling wave of resistance to those efforts building across the country. After nearly a decade of waning popularity and prominence, the militia movement is undergoing a revival, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The SPLC attributes the surge in militia recruitment and activity to the election of President Obama. The extreme right has always seen the federal government as the primary threat to individual freedom and now that the face of the federal government is a black man (and, it should be noted, so is the face of the Department of Justice, the “enforcement” arm of federal policy), racial animus has been injected into a movement that, historically, was not principally motivated by racial hate as opposed to a generalized xenophobia. Add on fears on the far right about the consequences of Latino immigration and you have the making for some dangerous times. As noted by the SPLC:
“Most of these recent murders and plots seem to have been at least partially prompted by Obama’s election. One man ‘very upset’ with the election of America’s first black president was building a radioactive ‘dirty bomb’; another, a Marine, was planning to assassinate Obama, as were two racist skinheads in Tennessee; still another angry at the election and said to be interested in joining a militia killed two sheriff’s deputies in Florida. A man in Pittsburgh who feared Jews and gun confiscations murdered three police officers. Near Boston, a white man angered by the alleged ‘genocide’ of his race shot to death two African immigrants and intended to murder as many Jews as possible. An 88-year-old neo-Nazi killed a guard at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. And an abortion physician in Kansas was murdered by a man steeped in the ideology of the ‘sovereign citizens’ movement.”
Even the murder of Dr. Tiller can be attributed, in some sense, to a growing acceptance of violence as a means to a political ends. And the truly frightening part is the extent to which this sentiment has gone mainstream. We are witnessing this play out with the birther and teaparty movements as the far right makes a stab at becoming the base of the Republican party. Under the asupices of fighting back against an overly-intrusive federal government 10th Amedment resolutions have been introduced in a handful of states and representatives like Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) continues to push talking points of reeducation camps and calls to boycott the census.
This country has come miles since the marches on Montgomery, but as illustrated by the work of the dedicated people at the SPLC, we still have miles to go. Perhaps then a more fiting tribute to the work of Martin Luther King Jr. would be to support, in whatever ways possible, the work and the goals of social justice organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center. Without them we could witness the undoing of King’s legacy and a reversal of decades of racial and social progress.
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