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There are, in increasingly frightening numbers, cells of angry men in the United States preparing for combat with the U.S. government. They are usually heavily armed, blinded by an intractable hatred, often motivated by religious zeal.

They're not jihadists. They are white, right-wing Americans, nearly all with an obsessive attachment to guns, who may represent a greater danger to the lives of American civilians than international terrorists.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which has been tracking hate groups for 30 years, released its latest report on the growth of these organizations this week. Its findings were, to say the least, alarming. The center divides its subjects into militias, which are mostly groups of weekend warriors who train for combat against imaginary foes; hate groups, which target minorities; and "patriot" groups, whose beef is with the U.S. government. Patriot groups first began surfacing after the massacre of a bizarre sect by federal agents in Waco, Texas, in the early 1990s. They showed their teeth in 1995, when a patriot adherent blew up the federal building in Oklahoma City.

Since then, the patriot movement has been growing at a blistering pace, especially following the election of President Obama in 2008, according to the report. From just 149 groups in 2008, the number jumped to 512 in 2009 and has been rising sharply since. In 2012, it hit 1,360. Now that Obama is seriously pushing for tougher gun laws, further growth is a near certainty. The result? There's no knowing, but some kind of serious attack is increasingly possible.

Patriot groups are motivated by a host of anti-government attitudes, but their primary focus is guns. They are convinced that the government is out to seize their weapons, even though most legislation is focused on keeping guns out of the hands of criminals or restricting the types of weapons that can be sold. Many are also united by belief in an outlandish one-world government conspiracy theory positing that the United Nations is poised to strip away American property rights and impose socialism on us all.

What can be done to reverse this tide of belligerent ignorance? Not much. The typical patriot acts within his free-speech and 2nd Amendment rights, and in fact most patriot activity consists of venting steam by meeting with like-minded Neanderthals and firing off blog posts threatening civil war. Yet such blather tends to get under the skin of the Timothy McVeighs of the world. These groups should be closely monitored, with resources adequate to the task, even if it means shifting some homeland security money from the hunt for foreign terrorists.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-patriot-groups-sp
lc-report-20130308,0,2444361.story?track=rss

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"The establishment media wasted little time after the Southern Poverty Law Center sent a letter to the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security demanding the mailed fist of the state crack down on Americans expressing opposition to an increasingly tyrannical federal government. The rant published in the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in the country – following up on the heels of the grand lady of Mockingbird propaganda, the New York Times – doesn’t mince words:

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“They’re not jihadists. They are white, right-wing Americans, nearly all with an obsessive attachment to guns, who may represent a greater danger to the lives of American civilians than international terrorists.”

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The Southern Poverty Law Center sent a letter earlier this week to Attorney General Eric Holder and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano urging the government to establish a task force to investigate the supposed domestic terror threat posed by the likes of Alex Jones, We Are Change, Oath Keepers, the Constitution Party, the Tyranny Response Team and thousands of other Americans outside of the orbit of the establishment.

The letter sent by the president and CEO of the SPLC, J. Richard Cohen, begins by reminding Holder and Napolitano that the organization “wrote Attorney General Janet Reno about the growing threat of domestic terrorism” prior to the Oklahoma City bombing in October, 1994.

“Today, we write to express similar concerns. In the last four years, we have seen a tremendous increase in the number of conspiracy-minded, antigovernment groups as well as in the number of domestic terrorist plots.” Today’s “ominous threats,” Cohen warns, come from citizens concerned about federal government attacks on the Second Amendment. “Because of the looming dangers, we urge you to establish an interagency task force to assess the adequacy of the resources devoted to responding to the growing threat of non-Islamic domestic terrorism.”

http://www.infowars.com/splc-letter-to-holder-and-napolitano-patriot-h
ate-groups-pose-domestic-terror-threat/
http://www.infowars.com/la-times-announces-white-men-are-terrorists/

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