December 16, 2015 6:12 AM

North Carolina: America's #1 producer of Conservative White Christian male terrorists

Another terrorist attack. Another grim tally of the dead and wounded. Another killer full of hate, from a land that breeds such men. Like millions of migrants before him, the perpetrator crossed the border unchallenged. And like others, he struck our country without warning. Our politicians say they’ll stop these killers. They talk about building walls and vetting refugees. If we were serious, we would do it. We would seal our borders against North Carolina. North Carolina? It sounds absurd. When we think about immigration and terrorism, we think of Syria. But that’s not where our casualties are coming from…. [A] gunman killed three people and wounded nine more at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado. The suspect is white American Robert Lewis Dear. When police apprehended Dear, he uttered one telltale phrase: “no more baby parts.”…. Dear moved to Colorado last year from North Carolina, where he had been living. For two decades, the Tar Heel State has been a hotbed of religious extremism, fueled by clerics who preach holy war. The result is a stream of interstate terrorism.

If we’re to treat terrorism as a serious threat, we can’t hope to defend the Homeland by pretending the threat is anything but what it is. The truth is that the biggest threat to the Homeland comes not from wild-eyed radical Islamofascists, but from angry Conservative White Christian males. If you scroll through a list of terrorist attacks on American soil, what you’ll notice right away is a theme: the predominance of Christian names. Not that Muslims don’t carry out attacks on American soil (e.g.- San Bernardino), but Angry Conservative White Christian males far outnumber Muslims when it comes to terrorism. That’s an inconvenient truth the Far Right is loathe to acknowledge…though that refusal hardly renders the facts any less true.

Even more inconvenient is the reality that a substantial number of homegrown (i.e.- angry Conservative White Christian males) terrorists emanate from the American Taliban stronghold that is the state of North Carolina. South Carolina, not wanting to be left out of the fun, also factors into the terrorism equation, but not to the same degree as their neighbor to the north.

In 2001, Steve Anderson, another Christian Identity follower, was pulled over for a broken tail light on his way home from a white supremacist meeting in North Carolina. He pumped 20 bullets into the officer’s car and fled. Police found weapons, ammunition, and explosives in his truck and home. A year later, he was captured in the western part of the state.

In 2010, Justin Moose, an extremist from Concord, North Carolina, was arrested for plotting to blow up a Planned Parenthood clinic. Moose, who claimed to represent the Army of God, also opposed the construction of a mosque near ground zero in New York. He called himself the “Christian counterpart of Osama Bin Laden.” Eventually, Moose pleaded guilty to disseminating information on how to make and use explosive devices.

In 2014, Frazier Glenn Miller, a career anti-Semite and former grand dragon of the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, killed three people at a Jewish community center and a Jewish retirement home in Kansas. Decades ago, long before ISIS conceived of an Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, Miller devised a similar plan in the United States: an “all-white nation within the bounds of North and South Carolina.”

The above is but a sample of the hatred and murderous rage to emerge from the Tar Heel State. There’s much more, of course, but an exhaustive list is beyond my capability and desire.

As a very wise friend used to say, “‘Taint the heat; it’s the stupidity.” Anyone who claims to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ in ANY shape, manner, or form, and who defaults to violence as a matter of ideology, is in no way a Christian- just as anyone who claims the imprimatur of Allah when killing “infidels” is in no way a Muslim. Random, senseless violence is not a tenet of either religion, though their are those who (incorrectly) believe otherwise.

What’s interesting about North (and to a lesser extent, South) Carolina being the nexus of domestic terrorism it seems to be is that NO ONE, especially on the Far Right has even broached this subject. They’re quite happy to demand the exclusion of Syrian refugees- the ones allowed into the U.S. have passed a rigorous 18- to 24-month screening process- but would under no circumstances entertain the exclusion of terrorists from North or South Carolina.

If Republicans are as serious about defeating terrorism as they claim to be, there’s one question they must answer: When do will build the border wall ‘round the Carolinas?

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on December 16, 2015 6:12 AM.

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