The right-wing Oregon occupiers have a martyr now, and that should worry everyone

[struggle4progress]

By David Neiwert
February 10 at 10:47 AM

... It has become starkly clear: LaVoy Finicum is the latest in a long line of right-wing martyrs.

That outcome, no doubt, was exactly what the FBI was hoping to avoid when, two days after the shooting, the agency released video of the shooting and the circumstances before and after it happened. Officials knew all too well, of course, that already a panoply of conspiracy theories and wild speculation — all of it pointing the finger at federal authorities as out-of-control bullies — was brewing.

But they should have known better: The patriot movement would never let a good martyr go to waste. For the antigovernment movement, an embrace of martyrdom isn’t a bug, it’s a feature, an essential element of what makes such extremist belief systems tick. Born out of the whitewashed remnants of the radical racist-right movements of the 1960s and ’70s — particularly the viciously anti-Semitic and racist Posse Comitatus movement, which then morphed into the “militia movement” of the 1990s and provided the structural framework for most of today’s claims by so-called “constitutionalists” and “Patriots” — this movement has a long history of attracting violent actors who are willing both to kill and be killed in the name of their extreme worldview.

For the rest of us, the emergence of a new martyr for their cause should be reason for serious concern — if not outright alarm ...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/02/10/the-right-wing-oregon-occupiers-have-a-martyr-now-and-that-should-worry-everyone/

[99th_Monkey]

1. Just to be clear, the armed insurrectionists are out-of-state interlopers, NOT Oregonians.

And we do NOT want them here, unless they are behind bars where they richly
deserve to be.

Thank goodness they've just arrested Clive Bundy, when he tried coming to Oregon
to join the last 4 hold-outs.

[bemildred]

2. It should worry them, I'm not planning to provoke the government. nt

[ffr]

3. If anything, the RWer's should be concerned they're getting all this attention

with their names and addresses posted for the world to see. Might as well put a scarlet let of them to wear around their necks.

The name Bundy is now synonymous with nut case whiny freeloader. Warning flags go up whenever I hear the name. Wouldn't do business with any of them. Would openly discourage others from doing business with them or associating with them or being seen in the same park as them. If they thought they were isolated then, they're more so now.

And like all military wannabe types, they seem to have the common issue of getting into trouble with other gun toting idiots like them. Sooner or later one of those guns goes off.