Southern Poverty Law Center Compiles Terrorist List of The “Radical Right”
Southern Poverty Law Center hate map.
Southern Poverty Law Center Claims Terrorists Belong To The Right
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has recently released a list of what it has named “Terror from the Right.” In the list, the SPLC labels two specific Islamic terrorist attacks as “radical right terrorist plots.”
In the one example, the SPLC includes the deadly attack on the Orlando nightclub where 49 people were killed. In another example used by the SPLC is of the Black Lives Matter-inspired attacks and murders of Officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge.
The subject responsible for the Orlando murders was Omar Mir Seddique Mateen, who entered a LGBT nightclub with an assault rifle and a pistol. Mateen killed 49 people and wounded 53 people. After a three-hour stand-off, Mateen was killed after Officers drove into the building with an armored vehicle and stun grenades. Mateen called 911 during the attack and pledged allegiance to ISIS, mentioned the Boston Marathon bombers, and demanded that U.S. bombing of Syria and Iraq stop. According to news sources, Mateen’s father said that he epressed his outrage when he saw two men kissing in Miami. Other sources claim Mateen was abusive to his wife and frequented gay bars. The FBI had interviewed Mateen in 2013 and 2014 and was said to have found no evidence of ties to terrorism.
In its list, the SPLC implied that Mateen was gay and left-wing media supported that allegation. However, news sources in June, 2016, reported that the FBI had found no evidence that Mateen was gay. Also, the SPLC failed to mention that Mateen’s father was a Clinton supporter, another reason to refute the “radical right” claim. By the SPLC reasoning, all radical islamic extremists belong to the radical-right.
In another example, an incident from October 28, 2009 was used. Luqman Ameen Abdullah, who had been identified as a member of a black militant group that was hoping to create an Islamic state within U.S. borders, was shot and killed by FBI agents at a warehouse in Dearborn, Michigan. At the time, the FBI was trying to arest Abdullah on outstanding warrants of conspiracy and weapons charges when he opened fire on them. The FBI has stated that Abdullah was promoting acts of violence against the United States.
It is even more confusing that the Southern Poverty Law Center didn’t refer to any other Islamic attacks as right-wing. And it is troubling that the SPLC includes incidents involving two executions of police officers in the summer of 2016 by Black Lives Matter-inspired gunmen. The first incident occurred in early July, 2016, when Black Lives Matter Terrorist Micah Xavier Johnson shot 12 Dallas Police Officers. Five Officers died during that attack. He then barricaded himself in a college building and told a hostage negotiator that he wanted to kill white people, “especially white officers.” Johnson died when police remotely detonated a robot bomb near him. After searching his home, Officers found bomb-making materials, rifles, ammunition, ballistic vests and a personal journal of combat tactics. Black Lives Matter has extreme-left ideology, and the fact that somebody was willing to pick up arms to commit violence for their cause does not make them right-wing.
Also, in July, 2016, just a few days after the incident in Dallas, Gavin Eugene Long executed three Baton Rouge Police Officers in a coordinated ambush. He was then shot and killed by law enforcement after a gunfight. Long was a military veteran who had changed his name to Cosmo Setepenra. He had declared himself a sovereign citizen, and was a member of the black sovereign group United Washitaw de Dugdahmoundyah Mu’ur Nation. Sovereign citizens are generally associated with the extreme-right, but the motivation behind the attack seemed to stem from the extremist-left anti-police narrative.
No other jihadis are mentioned on the Southern Poverty Law Center list and the group has not offered an explanation as to why they classify Abdullah and Matten as “right-wing terrorists.” In the list, the SPLC creates an ‘illusion’ that dozens of deaths are attributed to the ‘right’ than actually exist in reality. The reality is that there are violent extremists on both the right and the left who are willing to commit violence against innocent people for their cause.
The SPLC has not released a motive for the list.
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