The leftist Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is worried that non-violent conservative opposition to big government will lead to violence, and has produced an enemies list that includes much of the freedom movement.
“Fifteen years after the Oklahoma City bombing, the United States is experiencing an antigovernment climate remarkably similar to the atmosphere that preceded the attack,” the SPLC reported at a symposium keynoted by former President Bill Clinton April 16. But now it’s worse, they say:
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Unlike the 1990s, however, mainstream commentators and politicians are pouring fuel on the fire with heated antigovernment rhetoric and outrageous conspiracy theories, such as the suggestion that the president is creating "death panels" or that undocumented immigrants are responsible for a rash of leprosy cases in the United States. "It just stokes the fire and I don’t see anything that’s moving us toward any kind of calming down," said SPLC Intelligence Project Director Mark Potok.
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A big part of SPLC alarm response is a new enemies list of sorts, a catalog of people and organizations the Montgomery, Alabama-based organization doesn’t like. The SPLC list of 36 enemies “at the heart of the resurgent movement” opposing big government includes a mix of perfectly reasonable people along with some who have fallen for quirky but harmless conspiracy theories, as well as what the SPLC calls their “enablers”: Fox News Contributor Judge Andrew Napolitano and Congressmen Ron Paul, Michele Bachmann, and Paul Broun. Among those who have made the list are The New American’s publisher John McManus, TNA contributor Chuck Baldwin, Gun Owners of America chairman Larry Pratt, WorldNetDaily founder Joe Farah, radio talk-show host Alex Jones, and constitutionalist author Edwin Vieira, Jr. The list includes birthers, truthers, militia members, and other people the SPLC calls political heretics, but not one of which the SPLC accuses of advocating violence or law-breaking. The SPLC attacks many constitutionalist organizations, from the John Birch Society to the Oathkeepers to the Three Percenters:
Although the resurgence of the so-called Patriots — people who generally believe that the federal government is an evil entity that is engaged in a secret conspiracy to impose martial law, herd those who resist into concentration camps, and force the United States into a socialistic "New World Order" — also has been propelled by people who were key players in the first wave of the Patriot movement in the mid—1990s, there are also a large number of new players. What follows are profiles of 36 individuals at the heart of the resurgent movement.
