There were two terrorist attacks in America over the weekend, but don’t expect the mainstream media to call them that. On Friday, 48-year-old Georgia resident Dennis Marx was scheduled to appear at the Forsyth County Courthouse in Cumming, Georgia, to face charges on 11 different felony counts.
Forsyth arrived at the courthouse on-time, but while in his truck, he threw “homemade spike strips” onto the road, and tried to run over a policeman. After police opened fire on him, Forsyth began shooting at them from his truck, and proceeded to throw tear gas grenades, smoke grenades, and pepper spray grenades at them. After a three minute long firefight, a SWAT team surrounded Marx, ultimately killing him.
Meanwhile, yesterday in Las Vegas, an armed couple screaming about “revolution” opened fire and killed two Las Vegas policemen inside of a local pizza joint. After shooting and killing Officer Alyn Beck and Officer Igor Soldo, the couple took their weapons and covered their bodies with the Gadsden Flag, a yellow banner with contains a coiled snake around the words, “Don’t tread on me.” The flag is named for Christopher Gadsden, the Revolutionary War general who designed it. It’s also a very popular symbol with the Tea Party movement.
After killing the police officers, the couple then fled to a local Wal-Mart, where they killed an innocent bystander, before ultimately taking their own lives in an apparent murder-suicide. According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, neighbors said the couple often spoke about mistrust for and killing of police officers, and “going underground” until the time was right. Neighbors also told the Review-Journal that the husband claimed he had been kicked off the Bundy Ranch during the protests there last month.
And back in April, Frazier Glenn Miller, a well-known right-wing extremist and member of the KKK, shoot and killed 14-year-old boy and his grandfather at a Jewish Community Center near Kansas City. Miller then drove to a Jewish retirement home, and killed another person. As police arrested him, Miller screamed out “Heil Hitler.”
Frazier Glenn Miller, Dennis Marx and the Las Vegas shooters were right-wing extremists and domestic terrorists. It’s that simple. Unfortunately, the media refuses to acknowledge right-wing extremism and domestic terrorism in our country, even though they pose a bigger threat to our national security than jihadists and Islamic extremists.
According to the New America Foundation, as of April of this year, 21 people had been killed in the United States in attacks motivated by Islamic extremism since 9/11. Meanwhile, 34 people had been killed by right-wing extremist attacks during the same time period.
The fact is, right-wing extremism is on the rise, it’s dangerous, and it’s now a major terrorist force in America. Right-wing extremist and militia groups aren’t the fringe groups they used to be - now Fox so-called News makes members of these groups like the ones who showed up at the Bundy Ranch into media stars and heroes. But while the facts speak for themselves, the mainstream media (CNN, MSNBC, FOX, The New York Times etc…) refuses to acknowledge the truth.
Can you imagine how outraged the media would be right now if Dennis Marx had been a 48-year-old brown Muslim guy? Fox So-Called News would be calling for heads to roll if the Las Vegas shooters had been a Muslim couple. And, news coverage would’ve been wall-to-wall if Frazier Glenn Miller had screamed out “Allah Akbar” instead of “Heil Hitler.” Instead, you have Conservative pundits like Sean Hannity running around, arguably egging on right-wing extremists.
In the nearly 13 years since 9/11, al Qaeda has not successfully pulled off another terrorist attack on U.S. soil. But right-wing extremists have. The first step to solving a problem is always being able to admit that you have it. It’s time for the media to start calling attacks like those in Las Vegas, Cumming, Georgia, and Kansas City what they are: right-wing-extremist-fueled terrorist attacks.
