DHS Report on Leftists Not Like Napolitano Report on Right-Wing Extremism

Reader Comments

Back to blog

Did anyone actually RTFR? If you had you would've noticed that it was dated 26 Jan 2009. That's a full 6 days after Obama was inaugurated.

To fully assign it to Bush appointees would be misguided, but it was too soon to have been fully Obama's administration.

It is a stark contrast to Napolitano's Right Wing Witch Hunt as it lists specific groups behind specific events on specific dates. Her department should have just released a statement to "... watch out for the bogeyman. He defends the America that he loves from all enemies, both domestic and abroad!"

Oh snap! It's a warning about grassroots movements that are fed up with Washington Elitists from both parties!!

Memo Juez of FL 3:35PM December 29, 2009

It's all a matter of perspective, to the Left, anti-abortion, anti-tax, born again christians, the Boy Scouts and any veteran that believes in what America is supposed to be is ripe to be a "right wing extremist". If these people are considered a threat to the country, what is the Nation of Islam, ACORN, or the New Black Panthers? Voting poll security?

Tinman of KS 3:42PM April 23, 2009

...a new level of control and restrictions of American citizens, specifically targeting military veterans, supports of right to live, legal immigration, and Christians. The Obama's administrations lame attempts at demonizing veterans and the conservative right could be just the start of worse things to come. My concern, as someone who is a "perfect match" for the veteran / parent-who-did-not-abort-his-children / married to a legally nationalized US Citizen / go-to-church-and-worship-God-every-Sunday type of person, is that our "type" creates such fear in the heartless-souls of the racial left, that Obama will use his absolute democratic party controlled presidential powers to institute his "National Police" (he did mention this during his campaign) to monitor and control us. Imagine this...military veterans, Christians, Right to Lifers, etc, having to registered with federal, state and local law enforcement agencies in the same manner that Level III sex offenders...the ONPF (Obama National Police Force) regularly tracking your location in the same manner that a parole officer tracks a released convict. Sounds extreme? Ask yourself this; did you ever imagine the US Govt taking over private commercial and financial institutions? Given the "excuse" of financial crisis, the Obama administration exercised power and control over private companies and citizens that no one ever expected. Now try to imagine what the Obama administration response might be to some sort of incident (they liken veterans to OK City bombing) and use that as an "excuse" to take control over veterans. Don't think it's possible? Time will tell but I for one will be watching very closely.

Navy Vet 24 of MD 8:44AM April 21, 2009

What the heck is Right Wing about the Klan? What's Right Wing about the Neo-Nazis? These, and so many others called Right Wing, are not "conservative" by any stretch of the imagination.

Unless, I suppose, you are Left Wing. In that case, I guess anything seems to be to the Right.

Richard of FL 4:57PM April 20, 2009

Reading both reports, one thing immediately lept out at me: the lop-sided use of the words "terror", "terrorist" and "terrorism".

*The report on Leftwing Extremism contains Z-E-R-O occurrences of those words.

*The report on Rightwing Extremsim contains 12 occurrences of those words.

On the right, they paint a picture of folks who want to do nothing but stockpile guns and kill as many people as possible. The DHS would have you believe that Leftwing Extremists are all pacifists and and do nothing to physcially harm people. What a crock!

Leftists in this country have included the likes of the Unabomber, Bill Ayers and the Weather Underground and the Symbionese Liberation Army to name just a few. They were all hard-core Left who killed people.

So don't give me that the reports are fair because they're anything but. The timing of this report is more than suspect and definitely reflects a political objective.

JC of GA 5:48PM April 19, 2009

The reason there's such an uproar about this report is the timing. Despite the UNBELIEVABLY biased "reporting" by the CNN, MSNBC and such, there were over a Billion people in 160-170 seperately organized protests of not just Obama's policy but the long standing Washington policy of spending and DEBT that the USA can no longer tolerate. No coincidence this report was released the same day.

Chris Petty of GA 10:27AM April 18, 2009

The right wing extremist report list 9 different incidents of radical malitia activities. It does not list specific malitia groups but you have got to be kidding me that you people are getting so worked up about this.

The republicans are making a stink and draping themselves in the flag again over NOTHING. The report doesn't characterize soldiers as terrorist. It indicates that returning soldiers can and have been recruited by these extremists.

Read the report rather than rely on the media spoon feeding you your outrage.

chuck of OR 3:09AM April 18, 2009

Dear President Obama,

In 2004, congress introduced legislation called the "End Racial Profiling Act" to stop the offensive discriminatory act of stereotyping ordinary citizens as criminals. The ACLU said this act was "a key step in the fight to ensure that no one in America is subject to law enforcement encounters based on crude bias." Now, your administration, under Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, has committed the same criminal act against our citizens, denying them equal protection and, instead, holding them under criminal suspicion because they hold a conservative political position. This action taken by your administration is offensive, un-American and has already eroded the trust between citizens, the federal government and law enforcement. It needs to be retracted and the appropriate disciplinary action needs to be taken against those who implemented this federally sanctioned discrimination. I am requesting your prompt attention to this matter.

Regards

N Waff of NY 11:28PM April 17, 2009

I'm so tired of all the media hype surrounding this story. The media (including this article) is taking things completely out of context. This document is about EXTREMISTS...the words "VIOLENCE" and EXTREMIST" are mentioned together numerous times. It is NOT about "conservatives" or protest groups. It's talking about racist groups (like the Ku Klux Klan that has conducted murders and bombings) as well as armed paramilitary groups that want to forcibly overthrow our government. This story has thrived because the media is taking sentences out of context and putting a political spin on it. People need to stop hyperventilating and put this report into the proper context.

Michael Jones of VA 9:17PM April 17, 2009

I urge anyone who is interested in this topic to skip the articles ABOUT the reports and just read the two reports and form your own view. They are both very short.

My own view, after reading both, is that the "left-wing extremism document" provides very specific information to police departments about actual hacking/cyber-attack techniques that specific organizations had adopted or were currently promoting on their websites.

The "right-wing" extremism report, by contrast, just provides a general supposition that people who belong to single issue groups (such as those who oppose abortion) may be domestic terrorists.

Personally, I do not like being labelled as someone who "may" be a domestic terrorist.

The left wing extremism document makes no such claims whatsoever about honest, law-abiding and loyal American citizens who belong to animal rights or other groups. It just focuses on specific groups that have promoted hacking.

Sean of NY 3:03PM April 17, 2009

Add Your Thoughts
Your comment will be posted immediately, unless it is spam or contains profanity. For more information, please see our Comments FAQ.

Back to blog

Peter Roff

Peter Roff

Peter Roff is a contributing editor at U.S. News & World Report. A former senior political writer for United Press International, he is currently a senior fellow at the Institute for Liberty and at Let Freedom Ring, a non-partisan public policy organization. His writing has also appeared on Fox News' Fox Forum.

advertisement

Robert Schlesinger

Get God Out of the Gay Marriage Debate

The government shouldn't tell churches who they should marry, but neither should churches tell the government which marriages it can recognize.

Mary Kate Cary

Obama Attacks as Economic Cliff Looms

The president can't afford to talk about the economy, but with a 2013 fiscal time bomb approaching, the rest of us can't afford not to.

Latest Video

advertisement