One of the favorite rants of those on the right, usually directed at moderate muslims, is demands that they repudiate the extremists amongst their faith, insinuating that their failure to admonish the radicals is in fact a defacto endorsement of their ideologies and actions.
Which makes the complete absence of commentary by the rightwing muckrakers regarding Chad Castagana (Technorati) extremely frightening. Castagana, in case you may not have heard, has been arrested and charged (though not as a terrorist, curiously enough) in simulated Anthrax attacks against (the wrong) Jon Stewart, Keith Olbermann, Nancy Pelosi, and Chuck Schummer. Via RadarOnline:
According to an FBI affidavit obtained by Radar, Chad Conrad Castagana, who was arrested Monday on suspicion of sending powder-filled envelopes to Keith Olbermann, Jon Stewart, Sumner Redstone, David Letterman, Pelosi, and New York Senator Charles Schumer, purchased a $15 money order made out to "Friends of Katherine Harris" last September at a Woodland Hills, Calif., post office while he was picking up the envelopes and stamps he employed to terrorize the liberal elite.
According to the affidavit, Castagana, an "average looking" 39-year-old white guy who lives with his parents in Woodland Hills, attempted to send 13 fake anthrax letters to the aforementioned victims starting in September. We say "attempted" because the first letter, which contained the message, "Do you know Alan Berg? You should. Death to demagogues," and a harmless white powder, was sent to a poor sap on the Upper West Side named Jon Stewart—but not that Jon Stewart. (Alan Berg is the Jewish talk-radio host murdered by white-supremacists in Denver in 1984.)
[...]
Here are some of Castagana's other white-powder MASH notes:
To Olbermann: "There are too many demagogues in America. All of you are poisoning the well! Time to give your kind a taste of your own medicine."
To Redstone: "Fuck You Mr Monopolist [sic]"
To Letterman: "more then one way to frag a demagogue… your kind are the real poison [sic]"
To Pelosi: "CUNTFACE. IMPEACH THIS."
Nothing from Ann Coulter. Glenn Beck. Bill O'Reilly. Michelle Malkin. Glenn Reynolds. Sean Hannity. Michael Smerconish. Michael Savage. None of them. All silent. And Michael Moore is still fat. Apparently, terrorism committed by 39-year old, unemployed, living with their parents, white Republicans is A-OK.
And if you aren't sure about whether "these people" represent a threat, well, consider this observation from a domestic terrorism expert, David Neiwert, as posted on Alternet:
[M]entally unstable types are almost always stirred up and driven to their insane acts by haters of various stripes, the kind whose voices seem each day to be growing louder in our public discourse. These cultural vampires have developed a real knack for inspiring mentally unstable people into horrific acts of violence.
Haters like the people Castagana claims as his heroes — Coulter, Malkin, Ingraham, just for starters — are constantly engaging in the worst kind of eliminationist rhetoric directed primarily at liberals. It is simply an inevitability that, when this kind of hate is broadcast to millions of people daily, some of them are eventually going to start acting it out in fashions precisely like this. And worse.
So apparently we will have to fight extremists both at home and abroad…
Tags: chadcastagana, freerepublic, keitholbermann
