The actions of the Christian militia group raided in Michigan are part of a growing trend of militant activity across the U.S. because of the weak economy and an African-American president, experts and a civil rights group said today.
Hutaree, a militia based in Lenawee County, allegedly planned an uprising against the U.S. government by plotting to murder police.
“I don’t think this is the last we’re going to see of these groups,” said Michael Barkun, a professor of political science at Syracuse University who studies religious violence and extremism. “The number of such groups has increased fairly dramatically in the last couple of years.”
The number of extremist anti-government groups and militias grew from 149 in 2008 to 512 in 2009, said Heidi Beirich, director of research at the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil groups that monitors extremism.
“That is a lot of change in a short period of time,” Beirich said.
She said factors include the poor economy and demographic changes in the country’s racial and ethnic composition — symbolized by an African American in the White House and a female House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi. Both are Democrats and seen by some as pushing for bigger government that will diminish their freedom.
“The country is becoming more diverse,” Beirich said. “Some people find it hard to handle … these are extreme stressors for people.”
Hutaree — which means “Christian warrior” — is a group based in Lenawee County that federal prosecutors describe as “an anti-government extremist organization which advocates against local, state, and federal law enforcement officials.”
The group’s members hoped that killing law enforcement would lead to “a more widespread uprising against the government,” the indictment reads.
Professor Barkun said the group is a millennialist group that “seems to be preparing for warfare in the end of times against what they see as the forces of the antichrist. They regard that struggle as imminent. …They apparently believe that the saved will have to fight through the tribulations against the forces of the antichrist.”
The group sees themselves as “being engaged in combat against the forces of evil,” he said.
To Hutaree, the antichrist is the government.
Beirich said that Hutaree was not isolated from other militias, noting that it had more than 363 friends on My Space, including militias in Ohio, Kentucky and Michigan.
“They were part of the broader militia movement,” she said.
But one militia leader in Michigan said Hutaree was not connected to them in any way, describing Hutaree as a fringe cult.
“They more closely fit the definition of a cult,” said Michael Lackomar, with the Southeastern Michigan Volunteer Militia and michiganmilitia.com. “They believe the world is about to end according to how it was written in the Bible, and their job is to stand up and clear the way for Jesus and fight along side him against the forces of darkness.”
Lackomar said, “A lot of people are upset at an ever growing government that is overreaching.”
But he added that his militia is not associated with Hutaree “in any way, shape, or form.”
He said their plans to attack law enforcement are “despicable.”
Lackomar said that during the federal raid, a member of Hutaree attempted to seek the help of another militia member associated with Lackomar’s group. But the man told the Hutaree member he should turn himself in and didn’t help him, Lackomar said.
“You got to leave. I can’t help you,” the militia member told the Hutaree member, Lackomar said.
Archive for White America
Experts: Christian militia part of growing trend! You can not blame it on a Afro American Persident: These nuts have always been lurking around!
Below is an interesting article written by Andrew M. Manis who is an associate professor of history at Macon State College in Georgia. The editorial was published in the Macon Telegraph Georgia Newspaper.
Andrew M. Manis: When Are WE Going to Get Over It?
For much of the last forty years, ever since America “fixed” its race problem in the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, we white people have been impatient with African Americans who continued to blame race for their difficulties. Often we have heard whites ask, “When are African Americans finally going to get over it?
Now I want to ask:
“When are we White Americans going to get over our ridiculous obsession with skin color?
Recent reports that “Election Spurs Hundreds’ of Race Threats, Crimes” should frighten and infuriate every one of us. Having grown up in “Bombingham,” Alabama in the 1960s, I remember overhearing an avalanche of comments about what many white classmates and their parents wanted to do to John and Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King.
Eventually, as you may recall, in all three cases, someone decided to do more than “talk the talk.”
Since our recent presidential election, to our eternal shame we are once again hearing the same reprehensible talk I remember from my boyhood.
We white people have controlled political life in the disunited colonies and United States for some 400 years on this continent.
Conservative whites have been in power 28 of the last 40 years. Even during the eight Clinton years, conservatives in Congress blocked most of his agenda and pulled him to the right. Yet never in that period did I read any headlines suggesting that anyone was calling for the assassinations of presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan, or either of the Bushes. Criticize them, yes.
Call for their impeachment, perhaps. But there were no bounties on their heads. And even when someone did try to kill Ronald Reagan, the perpetrator was non-political mental case who wanted merely to impress Jody Foster.
But elect a liberal who happens to be Black and we’re back in the sixties again. At this point in our history, we should be proud that we’ve proven what conservatives are always saying — that in America anything is possible, EVEN electing a black man as president.
But instead we now hear that school children from Maine to California are talking about wanting to “assassinate Obama.”
Fighting the urge to throw up, I can only ask, “How long?”
How long before we white people realize we can’t make our nation, much less the whole world, look like us?
How long until we white people can – once and for all – get over this hell-conceived preoccupation with skin color?
How long until we white people get over the demonic conviction that white skin makes us superior?
How long before we white people get over our bitter resentments about being demoted to the status of equality with non-whites?
How long before we get over our expectations that we should be at the head of the line merely because of our white skin?
How long until we white people end our silence and call out our peers when they share the latest racist jokes in the privacy of our white-only conversations?
I believe in free speech, but how long until we white people start making racist loudmouths as socially uncomfortable as we do flag burners?
How long until we white people will stop insisting that blacks exercise personal responsibility, build strong families, educate themselves enough to edit the Harvard Law Review, and work hard enough to become President of the United States, only to threaten to assassinate them when they do?
How long before we starting “living out the true meaning” of our creeds, both civil and religious, that all men and women are created equal and that “red and yellow, black and white” all are precious in God’s sight?
Until this past November 4, I didn’t believe this country would ever elect an African American to the presidency. I still don’t believe I’ll live long enough to see us white people get over our racism problem.
But here’s my three-point plan:
First, everyday that Barack Obama lives in the White House that Black Slaves Built, I’m going to pray that God (and the Secret Service) will protect him and his family from us white people.
Second, I’m going to report to the FBI any white person I overhear saying, in seriousness or in jest, anything of a threatening nature about President Obama.
Third, I’m going to pray to live long enough to see America surprise the world once again, when white people can “in spirit and in truth” sing of our damnable color prejudice,
“We HAVE overcome.”
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It takes a Village to protect our President!!!
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