Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 06:39 pm
Throughout the overly long and ridiculously drawn out two-year presidential campaign for the 2016 general election, the one defining universal trait among Republicans is their habit of spreading hate against Americans. Republicans know their base, and they are well aware that it is filled with low-intellect religious Americans who are generally well-armed and actively looking for someone, or some innocent group, to attack. It is true that Republicans are not calling on their supporters to kill other Americans in the media, but their use of vitriol and lies is accomplishing that goal all the same.
Stochastic terrorism is defined as using of mass communications to stir up random lone individuals to carry out desired violent terrorist acts that are statistically predictable, but individually unpredictable. Translation; Republicans know that with enough incitement, no small number of their supporters will commit an act of terror, they are just not sure who will do the killing. By now, only evangelical fanatics and Republicans are unaware that the reason America is now a structurally violent society is because evangelical fanatics and Republicans spend the majority of their time inciting “random lone individuals to carry out desired violent terrorist acts” against Americans. And as the past few years have demonstrated, they are always the Americans the GOP and religious right regard as “undesirables.”
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Although Republicans, and all of their conservative iterations, have always singled out one group or another as undesirables as the focus of their hate, since the election of Barack Obama they have greatly expanded their “undesirable” list. It is important to note that according to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), “official hate groups are those that have beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics.”
Using that definition, it is more than safe to say that the Republican Party and its various cohorts are officially a hate group. And, instead of attacking one entire class of people, they have focused on every segment of the population save the very rich and the very religious, if the very religious are evangelical fanatics. It does not matter if it is the poor, women, the LGBT community, liberals, atheists, immigrants, Muslims, veterans, Hispanic or African Americans, Republicans have used the media to incite rage and hate against them all.
Republicans claim the source of the problem is secularism, liberals, President Obama, humanistic activists, women, immigrants and minorities who make themselves the target of hate and violence just by existing in “white Christian America.” Over the past few months, at least, Republicans have abandoned their typical dog whistles for blatant calls to action, and offer tacit approval when their followers commit acts of violence and terror against other Americans.
For example, after two men beat a homeless Hispanic man half-to-death, instead of a harsh condemnation Donald Trump tacitly approved by saying his “followers are passionate and just want America to be great again.” Trump followed that abominable approval with praise for his followers for beating and kicking a BlackLivesMatter protestor in Alabama. Trump said, “He should have been roughed up. It was disgusting what he was doing.” What the man was doing was exercising his 1st Amendment right while being black; in many Republican minds that constitutionally-protected right “was disgusting” simply because the American citizen exercising it was not white.
Trump is certainly not alone in inciting terror. A day before the conservative hater stormed the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood and murdered three innocent Americans, evangelical freak-of-nature and Cuban-Canadian immigrant Ted Cruz boasted that he had won the unwavering endorsement of an evangelical fanatic that called for the execution of women’s healthcare providers. The man Cruz gloated over was Troy Newman who wrote that it is every Christian’s “responsibility rightly involves executing abortionists for their crimes;” the crime of performing a legal medical procedure. Newman also harshly criticized the conviction of Paul Hill for murdering a Florida abortion doctor arguing that “there was no justice because the court prevented him from presenting the legal defense of justifiable defensive action.”
Cruz has also won the ringing endorsement of evangelical zealots calling for the government to begin, forthwith, executing homosexuals according to Old Testament dictates. The justification, like Republican haters calling for abortion providers’ murders, for calling for executing LGBT people is the religious rights’ belief that the Christian bible, and not the U.S. Constitution, is the law of the land and Republicans have spent no small amount of time incrementally making that false belief a reality; it is why they are not demanding their followers dial back their religion-inspired hate.
After the Colorado Springs massacre, Baptist preacher Mike Huckabee said unnecessary deaths are bad, but he couched that remark by claiming Planned Parenthood is responsible for unnecessary fetal deaths. For the thousandth time, the Christian bible’s god said that until a fetus exits the womb and ‘breathes air’ it is NOT a living being. But telling the truth according to the book the religious right claims gives them god-authority to murder abortion providers is as much an abomination to evangelicals as practicing Jesus’ teachings.
The list of demographics that Republicans hate, and have whipped their base to frenzied rage to take action against, is exhaustive. Republicans have used fear and hatred to target the poor regardless of race, minorities, environmentalists, immigrants, liberals, women, scientists, gays, non-Christians, workers and anyone who does not support the religious conservative and corporate agenda. Unfortunately, the Republicans’ “stochastic terrorism” is not only responsible for transforming America into a nation resembling sectarian Iraq, they have Americans’ blood on their hands and instead of dialing back their incitement, they are on the verge of turning their supporters on the rest of the country.
There are some pundits, and Republicans for that matter, who claim they are not responsible for the so-called “lone wolves” committing murder, mayhem, and acts of terror. However, whether officially, or just in passing, the national GOP refuses to condemn fear and hate mongering that has led to terrorism against American citizens and it is why the Republican Party is without a doubt a certifiable hate group and now is the time for the SPLC to make it official.
Audio engineer and instructor for SAE. Writes op/ed commentary supporting Secular Humanist causes, and exposing suppression of women, the poor, and minorities. An advocate for freedom of religion and particularly, freedom of NO religion.
Born in the South, raised in the Mid-West and California for a well-rounded view of America; it doesn’t look good.
Former minister, lifelong musician, Mahayana Zen-Buddhist.
