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Terror Attacks by Christians (Read 4951 times)
mothra
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Terror Attacks by Christians
Apr 9th, 2015 at 4:47pm
 
10 of the Worst Terror Attacks by Extreme Christians and Far-Right White Men
Most of the terrorist activity in the U.S. in recent years has come not from Muslims, but from radical Christianists, white supremacists and far-right militia groups.
By Alex Henderson / AlterNet


From Fox News to the Weekly Standard, neoconservatives have tried to paint terrorism as a largely or exclusively Islamic phenomenon. Their message of Islamophobia has been repeated many times since the George W. Bush era: Islam is inherently violent, Christianity is inherently peaceful, and there is no such thing as a Christian terrorist or a white male terrorist. But the facts don’t bear that out. Far-right white male radicals and extreme Christianists are every bit as capable of acts of terrorism as radical Islamists, and to pretend that such terrorists don’t exist does the public a huge disservice. Dzhokhar Anzorovich Tsarnaev and the late Tamerlan Anzorovich Tsarnaev (the Chechen brothers suspected in the Boston Marathon bombing of April 15, 2013) are both considered white and appear to have been motivated in part by radical Islam. And many terrorist attacks in the United States have been carried out by people who were neither Muslims nor dark-skinned.

When white males of the far right carry out violent attacks, neocons and Republicans typically describe them as lone-wolf extremists rather than people who are part of terrorist networks or well-organized terrorist movements. Yet many of the terrorist attacks in the United States have been carried out by people who had long histories of networking with other terrorists. In fact, most of the terrorist activity occurring in the United States in recent years has not come from Muslims, but from a combination of radical Christianists, white supremacists and far-right militia groups.

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Re: Terror Attacks by Christians
Reply #1 - Apr 9th, 2015 at 4:50pm
 
Below are 10 of the worst examples of non-Islamic terrorism that have occurred in the United States in the last 30 years.

1. Wisconsin Sikh Temple massacre, Aug. 5, 2012. The virulent, neocon-fueled Islamophobia that has plagued post-9/11 America has not only posed a threat to Muslims, it has had deadly consequences for people of other faiths, including Sikhs. Sikhs are not Muslims; the traditional Sikh attire, including their turbans, is different from traditional Sunni, Shiite or Sufi attire. But to a racist, a bearded Sikh looks like a Muslim. Only four days after 9/11, Balbir Singh Sodhi, a Sikh immigrant from India who owned a gas station in Mesa, Arizona, was murdered by Frank Silva Roque, a racist who obviously mistook him for a Muslim.

But Sodhi’s murder was not the last example of anti-Sikh violence in post-9/11 America. On Aug. 5, 2012, white supremacist Wade Michael Page used a semiautomatic weapon to murder six people during an attack on a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. Page’s connection to the white supremacist movement was well-documented: he had been a member of the neo-Nazi rock bands End Empathy and Definite Hate. Attorney General Eric Holder described the attack as “an act of terrorism, an act of hatred.” It was good to see the nation’s top cop acknowledge that terrorist acts can, in fact, involve white males murdering people of color.


2. The murder of Dr. George Tiller, May 31, 2009. Imagine that a physician had been the victim of an attempted assassination by an Islamic jihadist in 1993, and received numerous death threats from al-Qaeda after that, before being murdered by an al-Qaeda member. Neocons, Fox News and the Christian Right would have had a field day. A physician was the victim of a terrorist killing that day, but neither the terrorist nor the people who inflamed the terrorist were Muslims. Dr. George Tiller, who was shot and killed by anti-abortion terrorist Scott Roeder on May 31, 2009, was a victim of Christian Right terrorism, not al-Qaeda.

Tiller had a long history of being targeted for violence by Christian Right terrorists. In 1986, his clinic was firebombed. Then, in 1993, Tiller was shot five times by female Christian Right terrorist Shelly Shannon (now serving time in a federal prison) but survived that attack. Given that Tiller had been the victim of an attempted murder and received countless death threats after that, Fox News would have done well to avoid fanning the flames of unrest. Instead, Bill O’Reilly repeatedly referred to him as “Tiller the baby killer." When Roeder murdered Tiller, O’Reilly condemned the attack but did so in a way that was lukewarm at best.

Keith Olbermann called O’Reilly out and denounced him as a “facilitator for domestic terrorism” and a “blindly irresponsible man.” And Crazy for Godauthor Frank Schaffer, who was formerly a figure on the Christian Right but has since become critical of that movement, asserted that the Christian Right’s extreme anti-abortion rhetoric “helped create the climate that made this murder likely to happen.” Neocon Ann Coulter, meanwhile, viewed Tiller’s murder as a source of comic relief, telling O’Reilly, “I don't really like to think of it as a murder. It was terminating Tiller in the 203rd trimester.” The Republican/neocon double standard when it comes to terrorism is obvious. At Fox News and AM neocon talk radio, Islamic terrorism is a source of nonstop fear-mongering, while Christian Right terrorism gets a pass.
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Re: Terror Attacks by Christians
Reply #2 - Apr 9th, 2015 at 4:52pm
 
3. Knoxville Unitarian Universalist Church shooting, July 27, 2008. On July 27, 2008, Christian Right sympathizer Jim David Adkisson walked into the Knoxville Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee during a children’s play and began shooting people at random. Two were killed, while seven others were injured but survived. Adkisson said he was motivated by a hatred of liberals, Democrats and gays, and he considered neocon Bernard Goldberg’s book, 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America, his political manifesto. Adkisson (who pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree murder and is now serving life in prison without parole) was vehemently anti-abortion, but apparently committing an act of terrorism during a children’s play was good ol’ Republican family values. While Adkisson’s act of terrorism was reported on Fox News, it didn't get the round-the-clock coverage an act of Islamic terrorism would have garnered.


4. The murder of Dr. John Britton, July 29, 1994. To hear the Christian Right tell it, there is no such thing as Christian terrorism. Tell that to the victims of the Army of God, a loose network of radical Christianists with a long history of terrorist attacks on abortion providers. One Christian Right terrorist with ties to the Army of God was Paul Jennings Hill, who was executed by lethal injection on Sept. 3, 2003 for the murders of abortion doctor John Britton and his bodyguard James Barrett. Hill shot both of them in cold blood and expressed no remorse whatsoever; he insisted he was doing’s God’s work and has been exalted as a martyr by the Army of God.

5. The Centennial Olympic Park bombing, July 27, 1996. Paul Jennings Hill is hardly the only Christian terrorist who has been praised by the Army of God; that organization has also praised Eric Rudolph, who is serving life without parole for a long list of terrorist attacks committed in the name of Christianity. Rudolph is best known for carrying out the Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta during the 1996 Summer Olympics—a blast that killed spectator Alice Hawthorne and wounded 111 others. Hawthorne wasn’t the only person Rudolph murdered: his bombing of an abortion clinic in Birmingham, Alabama in 1998 caused the death of Robert Sanderson (a Birmingham police officer and part-time security guard) and caused nurse Emily Lyons to lose an eye.

Rudolph’s other acts of Christian terrorism include bombing the Otherwise Lounge (a lesbian bar in Atlanta) in 1997 and an abortion clinic in an Atlanta suburb in 1997. Rudolph was no lone wolf: he was part of a terrorist movement that encouraged his violence. And the Army of God continues to exalt Rudolph as a brave Christian who is doing God’s work.

6. The murder of Barnett Slepian byJames Charles Kopp, Oct. 23, 1998. Like Paul Jennings Hill, Eric Rudolph and Scott Roeder, James Charles Kopp is a radical Christian terrorist who has been exalted as a hero by the Army of God. On Oct. 23, 1998 Kopp fired a single shot into the Amherst, NY home of Barnett Slepian (a doctor who performed abortions), mortally wounding him. Slepian died an hour later. Kopp later claimed he only meant to wound Slepian, not kill him. But Judge Michael D'Amico of Erin County, NY said that the killing was clearly premeditated and sentenced Kopp to 25 years to life. Kopp is a suspect in other anti-abortion terrorist attacks, including the non-fatal shootings of three doctors in Canada, though it appears unlikely that Kopp will be extradited to Canada to face any charges.
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Re: Terror Attacks by Christians
Reply #3 - Apr 9th, 2015 at 4:54pm
 
7. Planned Parenthood bombing, Brookline, Massachusetts, 1994. Seldom has the term “Christian terrorist” been used in connection with John C. Salvi on AM talk radio or at Fox News, but it’s a term that easily applies to him. In 1994, the radical anti-abortionist and Army of God member attacked a Planned Parenthood clinic in Brookline, Massachusetts, shooting and killing receptionists Shannon Lowney and Lee Ann Nichols and wounding several others. Salvi was found dead in his prison cell in 1996, and his death was ruled a suicide. The Army of God has exalted Salvi as a Christian martyr and described Lowney and Nichols not as victims of domestic terrorism, but as infidels who got what they deserved. The Rev. Donald Spitz, a Christianist and Army of God supporter who is so extreme that even the radical anti-abortion group Operation Rescue disassociated itself from him, has praised Salvi as well.


8. Suicide attack on IRS building in Austin, Texas, Feb. 18, 2010. When Joseph Stack flew a plane into the Echelon office complex (where an IRS office was located), Fox News’ coverage of the incident was calm and matter-of-fact. Republican Rep. Steve King of Iowa seemed to find the attack amusing and joked that it could have been avoided if the federal government had followed his advice and abolished the IRS. Nonetheless, there were two fatalities: Stack and IRS employee Vernon Hunter. Stack left behind a rambling suicide note outlining his reasons for the attack, which included a disdain for the IRS as well as total disgust with health insurance companies and bank bailouts. Some of the most insightful coverage of the incident came from Noam Chomsky, who said that while Stack had some legitimate grievances—millions of Americans shared his outrage over bank bailouts and the practices of health insurance companies—the way he expressed them was absolutely wrong.


9. The murder of Alan Berg, June 18, 1984. One of the most absurd claims some Republicans have made about white supremacists is that they are liberals and progressives. That claim is especially ludicrous in light of the terrorist killing of liberal Denver-based talk show host Alan Berg, a critic of white supremacists who was killed with an automatic weapon on June 18, 1984. The killing was linked to members of the Order, a white supremacist group that had marked Berg for death. Order members David Lane (a former Ku Klux Klan member who had also been active in the Aryan Nations) and Bruce Pierce were both convicted in federal court on charges of racketeering, conspiracy and violating Berg’s civil rights and given what amounted to life sentences.

Robert Matthews, who founded the Order, got that name from a fictional group in white supremacist William Luther Pierce’s anti-Semitic 1978 novel, The Turner Diaries—a book Timothy McVeigh was quite fond of. The novel’s fictional account of the destruction of a government building has been described as the inspiration for the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995.
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Re: Terror Attacks by Christians
Reply #4 - Apr 9th, 2015 at 4:56pm
 
10. Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing, April 19, 1995. Neocons and Republicans grow angry and uncomfortable whenever Timothy McVeigh is cited as an example of a non-Islamic terrorist. Pointing out that a non-Muslim white male carried out an attack as vicious and deadly as the Oklahoma City bombing doesn’t fit into their narrative that only Muslims and people of color are capable of carrying out terrorist attacks. Neocons will claim that bringing up McVeigh’s name during a discussion of terrorism is a “red herring” that distracts us from fighting radical Islamists, but that downplays the cruel, destructive nature of the attack.

Prior to the al-Qaeda attacks of 9/11, the Oklahoma City bombing McVeigh orchestrated was the most deadly terrorist attack in U.S. history: 168 people were killed and more than 600 were injured. When McVeigh used a rented truck filled with explosives to blow up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, his goal was to kill as many people as possible. McVeigh was motivated by an extreme hatred for the U.S. government and saw the attack as revenge for the Ruby Ridge incident of 1992 and the Waco Siege in 1993. He had white supremacist leanings as well (when he was in the U.S. Army, McVeigh was reprimanded for wearing a “white power” T-shirt he had bought at a KKK demonstration). McVeigh was executed on June 11, 2001. He should have served life without parole instead, as a living reminder of the type of viciousness the extreme right is capable of.


http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/10-worst-terror-attacks-extreme-chri...
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Re: Terror Attacks by Christians
Reply #5 - Apr 9th, 2015 at 5:36pm
 
Most unfair, Mothra. Those groups are just doing the right thing by defending the freeeedoms of decent white people everywhere.

If the Muslims are doing less terrorism, it’s thanks to lovers of demokracy like this.

If it wasn’t for the Muslims, groups like this wouldn’t need to defend our rich legacy of freeeedom and demokracy.

We blame Muslims. Ban them.
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Re: Terror Attacks by Christians
Reply #6 - Apr 17th, 2015 at 9:17am
 
...
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Re: Terror Attacks by Christians
Reply #7 - Apr 17th, 2015 at 10:30am
 
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Re: Terror Attacks by Christians
Reply #8 - Apr 17th, 2015 at 12:44pm
 
I think the point is that as many batshit crazy Muslims exist, they're equalled by batshit crazy Christians.


Its not a religion that causes the issue, its fundamentalism
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In a time of universal deceit — telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

No evidence whatsoever it can be attributed to George Orwell or Eric Arthur Blair (in fact the same guy)
 
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Soren
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Re: Terror Attacks by Christians
Reply #9 - Apr 17th, 2015 at 1:57pm
 
Prime Minister for Canyons wrote on Apr 17th, 2015 at 12:44pm:
I think the point is that as many batshit crazy Muslims exist, they're equalled by batshit crazy Christians.


Its not a religion that causes the issue, its fundamentalism



SO the Muslims were exactly as crazy and dangerous as the Christians they threw overboard.


Your take mindless refuge in equivalence.
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mothra
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Re: Terror Attacks by Christians
Reply #10 - Apr 17th, 2015 at 2:34pm
 
Soren wrote on Apr 17th, 2015 at 1:57pm:
Prime Minister for Canyons wrote on Apr 17th, 2015 at 12:44pm:
I think the point is that as many batshit crazy Muslims exist, they're equalled by batshit crazy Christians.


Its not a religion that causes the issue, its fundamentalism



SO the Muslims were exactly as crazy and dangerous as the Christians they threw overboard.


Your take mindless refuge in equivalence.



Soren, what is it you don't understand about bad behaviour spanning demographics?
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Re: Terror Attacks by Christians
Reply #11 - Apr 17th, 2015 at 3:22pm
 
mothra wrote on Apr 17th, 2015 at 2:34pm:
Soren wrote on Apr 17th, 2015 at 1:57pm:
Prime Minister for Canyons wrote on Apr 17th, 2015 at 12:44pm:
I think the point is that as many batshit crazy Muslims exist, they're equalled by batshit crazy Christians.


Its not a religion that causes the issue, its fundamentalism



SO the Muslims were exactly as crazy and dangerous as the Christians they threw overboard.


Your take mindless refuge in equivalence.



Soren, what is it you don't understand about bad behaviour spanning demographics?



Behaving badly while allahu akhbaring is confined to a pretty narrow demographic.


SHow me the news on Christian refugees throwing Muslims overboard and you may have a point. Until then you don't. 


You numpties want to maintain BOTH that Mohammed and sons are different ("Muslim community) AND that they are no different ("Aussies fight for ISIS").



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« Last Edit: Apr 17th, 2015 at 3:30pm by Soren »  
 
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mothra
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Re: Terror Attacks by Christians
Reply #12 - Apr 17th, 2015 at 3:27pm
 
Soren wrote on Apr 17th, 2015 at 3:22pm:
mothra wrote on Apr 17th, 2015 at 2:34pm:
Soren wrote on Apr 17th, 2015 at 1:57pm:
Prime Minister for Canyons wrote on Apr 17th, 2015 at 12:44pm:
I think the point is that as many batshit crazy Muslims exist, they're equalled by batshit crazy Christians.


Its not a religion that causes the issue, its fundamentalism



SO the Muslims were exactly as crazy and dangerous as the Christians they threw overboard.


Your take mindless refuge in equivalence.



Soren, what is it you don't understand about bad behaviour spanning demographics?

SHow me the news on Christian refugees throwing Muslims overboard and you may have a point. Until then you don't.




Does it have to specifically involve somebody being thrown overboard? Or will this do?

"They brought in the bodies one by one, laying them down on a white sheet concealed behind a flimsy black curtain. Among them was a man, probably in his 20s, his head twisted leftward, the skull dented on one side and cracked open on the other. The others also had fatal head injuries that stained the sheet crimson. The first flies began settling on the five corpses.

In the courtyard outside, voices were raised in anger and bewilderment. Mothers in pink and purple hijabs sobbed and wailed and a middle-aged man, possibly unused to naked shows of emotion, sat and gently wept. Finally the iron gate of the mosque was thrown open and the mourners surged forward to gaze at the dead. An imam, donning a plastic smock over his white robe, prepared to wash them while another man began cutting cotton shrouds for the day's burials.

The macabre scene in an area known as PK5 has become almost commonplace in Bangui, the humid and decaying capital of the Central African Republic (CAR), where Muslims are under siege. It has also been played out in towns and villages in the west of the country, redrawing the demographic map.

Muslims came here to trade in the early 19th century and made up 15% of the CAR's population a year ago, but since then untold thousands have been killed or displaced or have fled to neighbouring countries. The UN said last week that while 130,000 to 145,000 Muslims normally lived in the capital, Bangui, the population had been reduced to around 10,000 in December and now stood at just 900.

Amnesty International has called it "ethnic cleansing" and warned of a "Muslim exodus of historic proportions".

As Africa prepares to mark next month's 20th anniversaries of the Rwandan genocide and the end of South African apartheid, what is happening in this long-neglected state is a reminder that forgiveness and reconciliation are easy words but hewn from rock over generations. Christian militias freely admit that theirs is an exercise in vengeance, an eye for an eye, and they will not stop until they have "cleaned" the country of Muslims. On Monday, UN human rights investigators in CAR announced they would investigate reports of genocide."


http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/10/central-african-republic-christian-...


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Re: Terror Attacks by Christians
Reply #13 - Apr 17th, 2015 at 3:45pm
 
Ah thats an easy one - muslims, you see started it - therefore christian acts are excused.

Soren don't bother replying, I'll cover your points:

- everywhere Islam goes there is conflict
- Islam is inherently domineering and incompatible with all other cultures
- There is no contemporary international 'hot spot' that Islam hasn't had a hand in
- Islam will simply always cause suffering and misery - absolutely, never ever on stilts.
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A resident Islam critic who claims to represent western values said:
Quote:
Outlawing the enemy's uniform - hijab, islamic beard - is not depriving one's own people of their freedoms.
 
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Re: Terror Attacks by Christians
Reply #14 - Apr 17th, 2015 at 3:49pm
 
So just in case you didn't catch the essential point mothra - muslims are condemned either way by the following logic:

- they either perpetrate the violence
- or if they are the victims, they caused it anyway - guilty
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A resident Islam critic who claims to represent western values said:
Quote:
Outlawing the enemy's uniform - hijab, islamic beard - is not depriving one's own people of their freedoms.
 
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