Since Monday’s bombing, the media has filled the air with reports and rumors and it has increasingly become more and more of a fiasco. Several times now “sources” have either indicated a person was a suspect or made claims that have proven to be completely false.
Along with this has come another issue that seems to pop up every time a shocking and violent event occurs in the United States. The media immediately begins to build a case against the infamous ring-wing extremists and nut jobs. Just to give you one example, when the Aurora movie theater shooting happened, the news media “broke” the story that the shooter was actually a “ring-wing” Tea Party member. Turns out the guy’s only crime was sharing a name with the shooter. The Boston bombing has proved no different.
In the hours after the bombing, several media outlets and analysts made an early and uneducated indictment against ring-wing extremists. Peter Bergen, national security analyst for CNN, made several claims in the first couple hours after the bombing. The first time Bergen simply threw out ring-wing extremists as one of the usual suspects. This is not terrible in itself but what Bergen came up with next shows him to be a typical media hack. Bergen suggests again that it could be a ring-wing extremist group because of the small scope of the attack. He then mentions other bombing attempts by al Qaeda and then goes on to comment that we have seen ring-wing extremist attacks recently as well. He then references a failed attack on an MLK parade in Oregon.
The funny thing is there was a failed attack on an MLK parade in 2010, however it had no connection to a ring-wing anti-government group. The would-be bomber, Kevin Harpham, confessed and was sentenced to thirty-two years in prison. Harpham also admitted to belonging to a Neo-Nazi group and stated that the bombing was in protest to multiculturalism in America.
Just to be clear, the last bona fide ring-wing terrorist bombing took place in 1996 in Atlanta or a year before the Backstreet Boys would have their first hit single. This bombing was committed by Erich Rudolph to protest the governments abortion agenda. So let’s be clear about what exactly a ring-wing extremist is. These domestic bombers almost never target innocent civilians, more than anything else they target government buildings and operations.
Counterterrorism expert Phillip Mudd speculated that if ring-wing extremists carried out this attack he would not be surprised due to the fact that these groups are growing in strength and numbers in recent years. Actually I struggle to remember the last time I heard about the infamous anti-government groups carrying out any kind of attack. The left feels the need to overstate these groups’ abilities in order to continue to have a “boogie man” to blame when things like this happen. This is a similar tactic to the one used by the left when they assert that the Ku Klux Klan is in fact alive and well. These groups are almost non-existent. Does this mean that they aren’t out there? Absolutely not, any one person can pull off this type of attack, but it is irresponsible and corrupt journalism to point to these groups without any reason except to press your political point.
No comments:
Post a Comment