Here’s a very good piece by Deborah Rudacille (author of The Scalpel and the Butterfly and The Riddle of Gender) on the DHS “right wing extremism” report, and the absurd over-reaction from conservative bloggers and politicians, featuring some words from yours truly: Fables of the Reconstruction.

The report is a straightforward assessment of a potential threat to national security, saying that, “Rightwing extremists have capitalized on the election of the first African-American president, and are focusing their efforts to recruit new members, mobilize existing supporters and broaden their scope and appeal through propaganda.”

Of greatest concern to law enforcement officials is “the high volume of purchases and stockpiling of weapons and ammunition by rightwing extremists” and the possibility that the groups may try to recruit disaffected military veterans for their weapons expertise.

Conservative pundits, radio hosts and bloggers immediately accused the DHS of criminalizing dissent, creating such a ruckus that even some of their allies became exasperated.

“I read the report and didn’t see anything objectionable in it,” said Charles Johnson, co-founder of Pajamas Media and creator of the blog Little Green Footballs. “All groups need to denounce those kind of activities.”

Conservative critics of the report “are acting as if they’ve adopted the mantle of right-wing extremism,” Johnson said. “How self-defeating is that?”

The furious right-wing reaction to the report is especially hard to understand given the evidence that some of these extremists are already acting on their beliefs. …

Daniel Knight Hayden, 52, was arrested by FBI agents before he was able to carry out his plan to start a war against the U.S. government with a massacre on the steps of the Oklahoma City Capitol Building during one of the tea party tax protests on April 15.

According to an article in Wired, “Hayden’s  MySpace page is a breathtaking gallery of right wing memes about the ‘New World Order,’ gun control as Nazi fascism, and Barack Obama’s covert use of television hypnosis, among many others.”

Hayden’s MySpace page is still up and includes a link to a video of radio host and “documentarian” Alex Jones, whom Charles Johnson calls “an all-purpose conspiracy guy” and the source of many of the less rational anti-Obama stories which find their way onto conservative radio shows, cable TV and blogs. Poplawski, too, was a fan of Jones.

The “conspiracy madness” that started filtering into the media last year has become even more troubling since the election of President Obama, Johnson says. “Scarcely a day goes by that some crazy story doesn’t come out. People who swallow these theories refuse to hear, or deny or ignore evidence to the contrary.” The latest story making the rounds is that swine flu is a government plot.

People who should know better spread such misinformation, Johnson says, because “they treat politics as sports. You have to stick to your team no matter what and always bash the other guy no matter what.”

Read the whole thing…