In April 2009 the Department of Homeland Security issued a 9 page report entitled Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment.
The report summarized a number of government intelligence assessments
and warned that a growing movement of “right wing extremist movements” posed the greatest threat of political violence and domestic terrorism 
in the United States.
As soon as the report was made public (which was not its original purpose), Republican Congressional leaders, together with a litany of conservative commentators, raised a hue and cry condemning the report, lambasting the DHS, and screaming for the heads of anyone — especially “liberals” or Democrats — who tried to engage in a serious discussion of the report’s findings.
Congressman John Boehner said the report was “offensive and unaccceptable.” Fox News insisted that the DHS owed the entire country an apology.
Sadly, none of this was the least bit surprising coming from the conservative-Republican establishment which remains anti-science, anti-evidence, anti-logic, and anti-anything-that-calls-for critical self-
assessment.
Of course, the DHS report was immediately suppressed. You probably have never heard of it. As a result, the nation never had an open public conversation about the rising terrorist threat in this country, and why it was emanating from the right-wing.
It is impossible to have a productive conversation when one side can’t stop denying the facts, as Sarah Huckabee-Sanders continues to do almost every day.
Then in 2017 the Anti-Defamation League published another study, bulging with copious evidence and citations, stating similar conclusions. A Dark & Constant Rage: 25 Years of Right-Wing Terrorism in the United States opens by stating:
“Right-wing extremists have been one of the largest and most consistent sources of domestic terror incidents in the United States for many years, a fact that has not gotten the attention it deserves.”
Facts cannot be ignored. They will eventually have their own way, whether we like it or not.
The rank cowardice displayed by the mainstream and the right-wing media guarantees that the public remains steeped in ignorance on this issue. Daily we hear the mindless, false equivalencies and bogus comparisons. Pundits insist that both sides are to blame; everyone needs to compromise; the right and the left must meet somewhere in the middle.
The Republican party moves in a more and more extremist direction, yet anyone who points this out is accused of polarizing the debate.
What absolute rubbish! It simply is not true.
The right-wing is to blame. It is a fact, plain and simple. No one benefits from a lie.
There is something about conservatism and its social, political rhetoric that, especially when taken to an extreme, becomes fertile soil for unstable people prone to violence.
We all — but especially God’s people — must be more concerned with the truth than we are with partisan defensiveness. This means being open to correction. Being willing to learn. To admit when we have been wrong.
And most of all, we must be willing to change.
Tragically, evangelical Christianity persists in unapologetically identifying itself with a right-wing political movement that has blood on its hands.
Yes, that’s right.
Congressman Boehner, Fox News, and every other conservative spokesperson who helped to muzzled the DHS warning in 2009, who plugged their ears to the ADL report in 2017, who still refuses to admit the self-evident connection between Trump’s violent rhetoric — which has repeatedly embraced and advocated more violence — and the racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant terrorism dragging itself mercilessly across our country, all have blood on their hands.
God’s people cannot be a party to any of this.
