Who's Next?

 

At the US Holocaust Memorial Museum:

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

 - Pastor Martin Niemöller

This was 1930's Germany. 

This is the USA now:

Trump and his bigots continue to call Democrats socialists or communists.

The Party of Trump is as anti-union as they come.

Now women are losing their right to reproductive freedom, just as they did under Himmler's Reich Central Office for Combating Homosexuality and Abortion in 1936.

Jewish women are also being denied the right to their religious faith. Jews believe life begins at first breath, but are now being forced to live under right-wing Christian rule.

What happens when Jews are no longer allowed equal rights and their freedom of religion?

Most Republicans, white supremacists, and Nazis don’t care...

An acorn is not an oak tree. A zygote is not a person. The great majority of Americans understand this.

But the radical Right theocrats will give a cell cluster more rights than they would for women and Jews.

We can be certain the radical theocrats will not be satisfied with overturning Roe v. Wade. They've admitted it.

Authoritarians will always continue their assault on democracy and equality. They've only just begun.

Who's next on their list of targets? LGBTQ rights will be attacked. Even inter-racial marriage and the right to contraception are in their sights.

For them the First Amendment matters only in allowing their lies and hate speech. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;” not so much.

As if being massacred in Temples wasn’t enough...

The Anti-Defamation League has been documenting radical Right terrorism:

“A Dark and Constant Rage: 25 Years of Right-Wing Terrorism in the United States”

 To illustrate the threat of right-wing terrorism in the United States, the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism has compiled a list of 150 right-wing terrorist acts, attempted acts, plots and conspiracies from the past 25 years (1993-2017).  These include terrorist incidents from a wide variety of white supremacists, from neo-Nazis to Klansmen to racist skinheads, as well as incidents connected to anti-government extremists such as militia groups, sovereign citizens and tax protesters.  The list also includes incidents of anti-abortion terror as well as from other, smaller right-wing extremist movements.

Right-wing extremists annually murder a number of Americans, but only some of those murders occur in connection with terrorist acts.  There are, after all, hundreds of thousands of adherents of right-wing extremist movements in the United States and all such movements have some degree of association with criminal activity.  No one should think, therefore, that the incidents listed here represent the breadth of right-wing violence in the U.S.  But, as acts of terrorism, they do show right-wing movements at their most vicious and ambitious.

The reactionary response to the Obama presidency and rise of Trump reveal the vast breadth and depth of racist hate and extremism in our country.

This history of racist terrorism is ongoing.

“New ADL Data: Far-Right Extremists Responsible for Overwhelming Majority of Domestic Extremist-Related Murders In 2021”

 New York, NY, February 15, 2022 … Right-wing extremists were linked to at least 26 extremist-related murders in the United States in 2021 and have been responsible for 75 percent of such murders in the last ten years, according to new data from ADL (Anti-Defamation League).

According to an annual analysis of extremist fatalities by ADL Center on Extremism, domestic extremists were responsible for killing at least 29 people in the United States, in 19 separate incidents.

Murder and Extremism in 2021: Summary of Major Findings

Domestic extremists killed at least 29 people in the United States in 2021, up from the 23 murders documented in 2020, but far fewer than the killings in any of the years 2015-19 (which ranged from 45 to 78).

White supremacists killed more people in 2021 than any other type of extremist

Of the 443 people killed at the hands of extremists over the last 10 years, 333 (or 75%) were killed by right-wing extremists.

Of the 333 right-wing extremist-related killings over the last 10 years, at least 73 percent have been at the hands of white supremacists.

This is horrifying to decent Americans.

And it doesn’t even include Trump’s thousands of terrorists who tried to seize our Capitol to overturn our election.

As it is, Trump’s anti-democracy insurrectionists at the state level are rapidly seizing control of elections to deny the will of the voters.

They are fascists. Period. Or have I said that before?