Sure, it’s a little ironic at the moment, given that more blacks have hunted down police officers than whites of late. But one can hardly say that TIME Magazine is wrong to say that right wing groups pose a serious hypothetical threat to the police of the USA. Or rather, to the police who don’t already belong to or sympathize with them.
Time Magazine warned of a growing threat to cops nationwide in September 2010. The nationally renowned publication argued that sinister individuals would launch targeted attacks against police officers and even ambush them in their patrol cars.
Time alerted readers that these groups and individuals have a disturbing hatred of cops and that there was a real threat of “lone-wolf” attacks.
Who are these groups that present such a threat to police? Right-wing militias, according to Time.
In a lengthy six-page article entitled “The Secret World of Extremist Militias,” then-Time Contributing Editor-at-Large Barton Gellman made the case that America should be deeply worried about private citizens forming militias.
“Scores of armed antigovernment groups, some of them far more radical, have formed or been revived during the Obama years, according to law-enforcement agencies and outside watchdogs. A six-month TIME investigation reveals that recruiting, planning, training and explicit calls for a shooting war are on the rise, as are criminal investigations by the FBI and state authorities. Readier for bloodshed than at any time since at least the confrontations in the 1990s in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and Waco, Texas, the radical right has raised the threat level against the President and other government targets,” the article says.
Of course, this is hardly news. I’d be more impressed with TIME’s analysis if they had mentioned any actual numbers or focused on the threat being posed by those within the police ranks. After all, as we’ve learned everywhere from India to Afghanistan and Iraq, penetrating the police and the federal agencies has been found to be the most effective tactic for 4GW forces.
Instead, I find it morbidly amusing that in the middle of a global economic downturn, with the world gearing up for a whole series of shooting wars and Americans openly arming to defend themselves against a corrupt federal government, the left-liberals at TIME concluded that the time was just right to score some rhetorical points against the right wing.