*Ø* Terrorism "as American as apple pie"

The following are just a few grabs from 'Homegrown terrorists', a fascinating online documentary. What I found particularly interesting is the assertion that the potential for domestic terrorism in the USA is so great but the administration works hard to keep the focus on foreign Muslims.

I also learned that after right-wing Americans did the Oklahoma bombing, vigilantes started attacking Middle Easterners, whom they apparently blamed.

Steve Rendall: G. Gordon Liddy has a national show in the United States. He’s heard on I believe more than 200 stations across the country, and at this time he was instructing his listeners on how to shoot federal agents. He said, ‘Don’t shoot for the letters across the chest, they’ve got bulletproof vests on, head shots, head shots, kill the sons of bitches’. And he did it not once, but several times. He was instructing his listeners on how to kill federal agents.

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In April 2003, John Ashcroft’s Justice Department disrupted what appears to have been a horrifying terrorist plot. In the small town of Noonday, Texas, FBI agents discovered a weapons cache containing fully-automatic machine guns, remote controlled explosive devices disguised as briefcases, 60 pipe bombs, and the chemical weapon for a cyanide bomb big enough to kill everyone in a 30,000 square foot building. Strangely though, the Attorney-General didn’t call a press conference to announce the discovery of the weapons cache, or the arrest of William Krar, it’s owner. He didn’t even issue a press release. This was, to say the least, out of character. José Padilla, the accused Dirty Bomber, didn’t have any bomb-making material, or even a plausible way to acquire such material, yet Mr Ashcroft put him on the front pages around the world. Mr Krar was caught with an actual chemical bomb, yet Mr Ashcroft acted as if nothing had happened.

Incidentally, if Mr Ashcroft’s intention was to keep the case low profile, the media have been highly co-operative. To this day, the Noonday conspiracy has received little national coverage. Yet, it’s hard to believe that William Krar wouldn’t have become a household name if he had been a Muslim, or even a Leftist.

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Chip Berlet: The fact is that domestic terrorism is as American as apple pie. You could argue that the revolution was a form of domestic terrorism which was victorious, and it rewrote history to make us the revolutionaries who threw off the burden of Britain ...

Helen Thomas: Even if that balance isn’t a prime concern for George W. Bush, the Oklahoma City bombing casts a long, awful shadow.

Mark Potok: I was in Oklahoma, I got there about an hour-and-a-half after the building was bombed, and it was still on fire. And I was a reporter for 20 years, and I never covered a story that was so really awful. It did completely change the landscape, because of course it’s worth remembering that the immediate reaction of Americans from so-called ‘experts’ to law enforcement, to radio commentators and news people, was that this had to be Islamic. And I remember very clearly that on the very first day there was a mob in northern Oklahoma that gathered around the home and apartment where an Iranian woman was living, and started stoning the apartment. The woman was I think about 7 and a half months pregnant, and miscarried.
Source: Background Briefing
Streaming audio