Richard Schmidt.

It was mere days ago that we learned that the Tiny Dictator and Crew plan to stop looking into domestic terrorism and white supremacist factions here in uStates. Then Madame Alternative Facts started lying her ass off about a terrorist action which never took place, then the Tiny Dictator himself lied left, right, up and down about terrorist acts happening and being ignored. That they have been repeatedly refuted, and proven to be lying should go without saying. There’s an absolute insistence on viewing terrorism as an outside, other thing, something which could never, ever be domestic in nature. It’s bullshit on a mean scale, but it’s being poured out at such a rate, people are getting buried by it. Naturally, all the fascists and nazis are thrilled by this insistence and consequent validation. (See the linked post for more.)

As Madame Alternative Facts will not shut the fuck up, and keeps spraying shit in everyone’s faces, let’s take a look at a terrorist action which was averted. The catch was accidental, the feds had been chasing down counterfeit sports jerseys and caps, and what they found was eye-opening, to say the least.

The year was 2012. The place was Bowling Green, Ohio. A federal raid had uncovered what the authorities feared were the makings of a massacre. There were 18 firearms, among them two AR–15 assault rifles, an AR–10 assault rifle and a Remington Model 700 sniper rifle. There was body armor, too, and the authorities counted some 40,000 rounds of ammunition. An extremist had been arrested, and prosecutors suspected that he had been aiming to carry out a wide assortment of killings.

“This defendant, quite simply, was a well-funded, well-armed and focused one-man army of racial and religious hate,” prosecutors said in a court filing.

The man arrested and charged was Richard Schmidt, a middle-aged owner of a sports-memorabilia business at a mall in town. Prosecutors would later call him a white supremacist. His planned targets, federal authorities said, had been African-Americans and Jews. They’d found a list with the names and addresses of those to be assassinated, including the leaders of NAACP chapters in Michigan and Ohio.

It was widely agreed upon, that here was a man who should not have been allowed a single gun, or even a single bullet. No one knew just how he managed to amass such an arsenal, especially as Schmidt was a convicted felon (manslaughter), who was barred by law from owning any firearm. Gosh, that worked well, didn’t it?

But Schmidt wound up being sentenced to less than six years in prison, after a federal judge said prosecutors had failed to adequately establish that he was a political terrorist, and he is scheduled for release in February 2018. The foiling of what the government worried was a credible plan for mass murder gained little national attention.

Everyone feeling comforted by the fact this man will soon be out of prison? Anyone want to say it’s okay, because he’s white, he couldn’t possibly be a terrorist? That Americans just can’t be terrorists?

For some concerned about America’s vulnerability to terrorism, the very real, mostly forgotten case of Richard Schmidt in Bowling Green, Ohio, deserves an important place in any debate about what is real and what is fake, what gets reported on by the news media and what doesn’t. Those deeply worried about domestic far-right terrorism believe United States authorities, across many administrations, have regularly underplayed the threat, and that the media has repeatedly underreported it. Perhaps we have become trapped in one view of what constitutes the terrorist threat, and as the case of Schmidt shows, that’s a problem.

Oh it’s a problem, alright, and this is not the first time the government has tossed away and hushed up reports on domestic terrorism. The prime directive seems to be “if we ignore it, it will disappear.” That’s magical thinking on a high level, and there’s no question we will pay for it. Memories are short for most people, and even one of the Tiny Dictator’s minions recently said that the Oklahoma bombing didn’t count, because too long ago. People should be questioning why that is never the case with outside terrorism. Nazism, white nationalism, white supremacy, whatever moniker you assign, is on the rise once again, and they are feeling proud, strong, and validated by the current government, which refuses to face reality. How many people will have to die in order to force a reality check? I don’t want to be one of them. I don’t want anyone to be one of them. Unfortunately, this sort of dedicated ignorance always has a very high cost.

The full article is in-depth, lots of links, highly recommended.