Republican Tea Party Organization Reports Death Threats

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
August 27, 2010

Corporate media generated and whipped up hysteria and hatred directed at the Tea Party movement has resulted in death threats, according to GOP Majority Leader Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks. Adam Brandon told U.S.News & World Report that Armey and his organization received dozens threatening and harassing phone calls and emails.

	FreedomWorks, funded in part by the neocon Richard Mellon Scaife, is the establishment’s answer to the Libertarian Tea Party movement.

FreedomWorks is the establishment’s answer to the grassroots Tea Party movement. Republicans Jack Kemp and Bill Bennett also work for the organization. It is funded in part by the notorious neocon foundation run by Richard Mellon Scaife. During his career as a member of the House of Representatives, Dick Armey voted as a mainline Republican. Following his vote for the Iraq invasion, the Texas Republican admitted he had been “bullshitted” by then vice president Dick Cheney.

Recordings played for U.S.News & World Report’s “Washington Whispers” Paul Bedard contain direct threats. “You guys better watch it,” one caller threatens. “Now, we are going to destroy and obliterate Rush [Limbaugh] and Sean Hannity,” says another. “Those two guys are dead.”

Democrats claimed they received death threats and were victims of vandalism following their votes for Obama’s health care bill. On March 24, Democrat House majority leader Steny Hoyersaid at least 10 House members had raised concerns about their personal security. The FBI and police investigated the threats, according to Reuters.

Republican whip Eric Cantor told reporters on March 25 that he had also been the subject of threats and that a shot was fired through a window of his campaign office in Richmond, Virginia. “It is reckless to use these incidents as media vehicles for political gain,” said Cantor, criticizing Democrats for exploiting the alleged threats and vandalism.

House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn went on MSNBC on March 25 and characterized the obscene phones calls and emails as domestic terrorism. Clyburn said people are getting “signals” from Republicans on how to behave and that lawmakers need to “disown” the activity before it gets out of control. He suggested his colleagues were culpable. “If we participate in it, either from the balcony or on the floor of the House, you are aiding and abetting this kind of terrorism, really,” Clyburn said.

Clyburn and Missouri Democrat Emanuel Cleaver said Tea Party activists had spit on them and hurled racial epithets as Democrat lawmakers walked to the Capitol to cast a vote on Obama’s authoritarian health care bill. Numerous videos of the alleged assault reveal nothing of the sort occurred.

According to Douglas J. Hagmann of the Northeast Intelligence Network, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security created a watch list containing names of individuals associated with the pro-life and Tea Party movement following accusations made by Democrats. The individuals, according to Hagmann’s sources, “are considered a threat to domestic security, continuity of government operations, and to the lives of lawmakers and their families.”

Hagmann said lawmakers were “exploring the application of the Patriot Act against any right-wing individual or group that poses a danger to government operations.”

On March 30, Fox News insinuated that readers of Infowars.com were responsible for threatening lawmakers. “Hundreds of comments were posted in response to an incendiary story on infowars.com, the radical far-right Web site owned by radio host Alex Jones. The story, entitled, ‘The Cost Of Defying Obamacare: $2,250 a Month And IRS Goons Pointing Guns At Your Family,’ focused on the ‘increasing militarization of the IRS’ and its expansion of powers under the new health care law,” Jana Winter wrote.

Claims by Democrats and Republicans of violence add fuel to the corporate media generated campaign to portray opposition to the policies of Obama and the federal government as radical and representing a potential threat to national security.

The GOP hijacked Tea Party has reinvigorated the false right-left paradigm with its accusations of violence. Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity are establishment figures and are not the voice of change.

FreedomWorks, run in part by money provided by the neocon Richard Mellon Scaife, does not represent the Tea Party movement. The original Libertarian Tea Party movement was hijacked by establishment Republicans and is now a device designed to derail the movement and turn it into a cheer-leading section for the Republican party as the government prepares for the mid-term elections.

Kurt Nimmo edits Infowars.com. He is the author of Another Day in the Empire: Life In Neoconservative America.