Trump supporters trying to make America Great Again
Federal investigators said Friday they stopped a domestic terrorism plot by a militia group that planned to detonate bombs at a Garden City apartment complex where a number of Somalis live.
Three southwest Kansas men were arrested and charged in federal court with domestic terrorism, Acting U.S. Attorney Tom Beall said at a news conference in downtown Wichita.
The three are suspected of conspiring to set off a bomb where about 120 people — including many Muslim immigrants from Somalia — live and worship, Beall said.
An apartment at the complex also serves as a mosque, officials said.
Curtis Allen, 49; Gavin Wright, 49; and Patrick Stein, 47, were arrested in Liberal, Kan., on Friday morning, Beall said. Allen and Wright are Liberal residents; Stein lives in Wright, a small town just east of Dodge City.
...
The men are members of a small militia group that call themselves the Crusaders, Beall said. The bombing was scheduled for Nov. 9 so as to not affect the general election.
“It is very concerning and very disheartening,” Hussam Madi, spokesman for the Islamic Society of Wichita, said of the planned attack.
“I thank God that they were able to be caught before anything can happen. We don’t need such actions here within our community and within our country.”
The Kansas City Star notes that there were 794 hate groups in spring of 2015 that operated across the US. In the past 18 months that number has risen to 892, an 11% increase.
Gee, I wonder who has been spewing racist hate for the past 18 months that might have encouraged these groups to expand and become more active?
While we had hate groups and attempted bombings in the past, Donald J. Trump’s encouragement of them and his unsubtle cues about which groups they should be terrorizing, has almost certainly made the problem worse.
That’s right. I’m saying Trump’s call to prevent Muslims from coming to the US or his tagging of Latinos as a criminal element function to single them out for violence at the hands of the white extremists. Trump is a more subtle and canny Anwar al-Awlaki of the American far right.
Of course we will be spared all the cliches about terrorism in the case of these men, since although they are terrorists if what is alleged of them is true, they are white. So no one will ask if they are self-radicalized, or if they were influenced by radicals when they visited home, and no one will suggest that their family members should be watched closely or expelled from the United States.
Source: juancole.com