Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Bigotry Against White Supremacists

After the news today that Kevin William Harpham has been arrested in conjunction with a plot to detonate an explosive device along the route of a Martin Luther King, Jr. Day parade route in Spokane, I've seen quite a bit of bigotry directed at innocent white supremacists. As of now there's no evidence that Harpham was working with any sort of group. Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center even points out that,
it is "extremely unlikely" the attempted bombing was carried out by a group. ..."What we see are lone wolf attacks," Potok said, possibly with one or two confederates.
The vast majority of white supremacists do not commit acts of terrorism. Sure they have an ideology that's out of the mainstream and repulsive to most Americans, but only a few of them actually resort to terrorist violence. We shouldn't jump to the conclusion that white supremacist ideology is connected to terrorism. That's horribly unfair to the majority of law-abiding white supremacists. Why should we single them out for surveillance and special attention just because of the actions of a few extremists?

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