Larry McQuilliams was shot and killed by police after unleashing a campaign of violence in Austin, Texas, firing more than 100 rounds in the downtown area before making a failed attempt to burn down the Mexican Consulate. The only casualty was McQuilliams himself, who was felled by officers when he entered police headquarters…. [L]ocal authorities recently announced that he may have been motivated by religion — but not the one you might think. According to the Associated Press, police officers who searched McQuilliams’ van found a copy of “Vigilantes of Christendom,” a book connected with the Phineas Priesthood, an American white supremacist movement that claims Christian inspiration and opposes interracial intercourse, racial integration, homosexuality, and abortion. Phineas priests take their name from the biblical figure Phinehas in the book of Numbers, who is described as brutally murdering an Israelite man for having sex with a foreign woman, who he also kills.
Everyone knows that Muslims are terrorists, right? Just ask the good, God-fearing patriots of Kennesaw, Georgia, who are all over denying Muslims a place to worship…because Islam breeds terrorists, don’tchaknow? Except that there’s just one little thing wrong with that scenario: one is FAR more likely to be killed by a Christian terrorist on American soil than a radical Islamofascist.
Oh, but Christians by definition can’t be terrorists. I keep forgetting that little bit of astonishing hypocrisy detail….
While the exact reason for McQuilliams’ attack died with him, he left behind several weapons, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, and a deep and violent hatred for those who didn’t share his beliefs. That his list of targets included several churches in Austin could lead a reasonable person to conclude that McQuilliams’ mission was not about tolerance and charity…as if terrorism ever is.
“Why do we call a guy that’s got a turban on his head a terrorist but a guy out at Bundy Ranch that’s got a cowboy hat on his head a peaceful activist?”
Between 1980 and 2005, Islamic extremists were responsible for only 6% of terrorists attacks on U.S. soil. The vast majority of attacks in this country are carried out by White males, many of them in the name of their twisted, bastardized “Christian” beliefs.
The problem is that our collective denial of abject truth is what’s really putting our security at risk. The threat to America isn’t from far-flung Islamofascist Muslimaniacs like ISIS/ISIL or al-Qaeda or the Nusra Front. It’s from angry White Christian American males…yet we continue to refuse to face the truth that those who pose the biggest threat to the Homeland aren’t swarthy Brown People; they’re White folks who look a lot like you and me.
[T]here is a long history of terrorist attacks resembling McQuilliams’ rampage across Austin — where violence is carried out in the name of Christianity — in the United States and abroad. In America, the Ku Klux Klan is well-known for over a century of gruesome crimes against African Americans, Catholics, Jews, and others — all while ascribing to what they say is a Christian theology. But recent decades have also given rise to several “Christian Identity” groups, loose organizations united by a hateful understanding of faith whose members spout scripture while engaging in horrifying acts of violence. For example, various members of The Order, a militant group of largely professed Mormons whose motto was a verse from the book of Jeremiah, were convicted for murdering Jewish talk show host Alan Berg in 1984; the “Army of God”, which justifies their actions using the Bible, is responsible for bombings at several abortion clinics, attacks on gay and lesbian nightclubs, and the explosion at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia; and Scott Roeder cited the Christian faith as his motivation for killing George Tiller — a doctor who performed late-term abortions — in 2009, shooting the physician in the head at point-blank range while he was ushering at church.
There’s no credible way to claim that terrorist ideology is representative of mainstream American Christianity. There are an exceedingly small number of Whites who interpret their faith as allowing them carte blanche to kill in Jesus’ name. These reprobates are on the far outer fringes of decent society, alienated from whatever humanity they may have once possessed. The truth is that Christianity doesn’t endorse the killing of those one may deem to be apostates, or “less than,” or unworthy for whatever reason. As so frequently happens these days, those who believe in the violent resolution of theological disputes are operating from a place of twisting Christian theology to justify their hatred and desire to kill. Or they’re just distressingly mentally ill and have access to high-powered weaponry.
It’s interesting how the Mainstream Media (particularly Fox News Channel) are willing to discuss and dissect the threat of Islamic terrorism while simultaneously ignoring the much bigger threat posed by Christian terrorists. Until we get over our collective ignorance of the truth that most terrorists in the U.S. are White, and that they pose a far bigger threat than Muslims, we can never truly be safe.
Until we’re willing to recognize and talk openly and honestly about the real threat facing America- and the truth that the threat comes from within- we will remain vulnerable to Right-wing Christian hate groups.
Perhaps denial really IS more than a river in Egypt….
