Alan Berg springs to mind.
And, c’mon, Saddam?
Muslim extremists aren’t exactly what I’d call a liberal group of folks.
Medgar Evars. Harry and Harriette Moore. Vernon Dahmer. And that’s just people who were in leadership positions in the Civil Rights movement. If we include people who were killed as a result of racial/political violence who were not in leadership positions, we can throw in James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, and Viola Luizza, who were NAACP volunteers, but not leaders, and Denise McNair, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Addie Mae Collins, who were not (AFAIK) members of the NAACP, but had the misfortune to be in the 16th Street Baptist Church when it was bombed by Klansmen trying to scare off anti-segregationist protestors in Birmingham.
And Muslim extremists, as we all know, specifically want to only kill Republican Americans. They’re very careful about not killing Democratic Americans, on account of how we’re all buddy-buddy with them. :rolleyes:
There was the Greensboro Massacre in 1979 when members of the Klan attacked a labor rally, composed mostly of blacks. They killed 5 and wounded 11 more.
Hang on… I know there have been lots of racially motivated killings - especially during the civil rights movement in the 60’s and 70’s. I’m talking about major politicians - governors, presidents, senators, etc.
I just wonder how realistic it is to say that Obama has a special risk of being assassinated by crazed right-wing racists. I just don’t thnk it’s any more likely than John McCain being assassinated by a crazed anti-war zealot.
You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. “Crazed anti-war zealots?”
Who was the last black president?
The one crazy person in America who’d actually kill a black politician may well not live in a state where there’s any black people in prominent offices. Once a black man takes the presidency, he may well decide that it’s time to act. I’m not saying this is the case, but it’s a potential.
In any case, nobody cares quite as much about senators and governors as they do a president of the by-God United States.
Read this article. Is there any equivalent anti-war subculture out there advocating assasination of McCain? I don’t think so.
Oh, is that who you’re talking about? Well, when I talk about people murdered by left wing lunatics, I’m only talking about assistant file clerks working in Dayton, Ohio. And I don’t believe there are any such assassinations on record. Therefore, I win.
Are you claiming that the history of violence within anti-war movements in this country is at all comparable to the history of violence within racist movements? Because that’s a patently stupid thing to claim, by almost any measure imaginable.
Sam Stone, if the left wing is as prone to political violence as you claim, why hasn’t anyone tried to assassinate Bush yet? After all, the crazed anti-war zealots like myself hate him more than anyone.
How would this do that? Was Obama even considering him for a running mate? :eek:
No, but McCain might be.
Now, Universe…I know I haven’t been a very good pantheist, but…
I’m not trying to say the left wing is ‘prone to violence’. I was disputing the assertion that the right wing is prone to violence. There’s no pattern of right wing racists murdering black public officials. There have been a number of such officials. I just pointed out that if you wanted to draw a pattern, more assassinations have been associated with people from the left.
Now, if you want my real opinion on this, here you go: Given that the number of assassinations is so small, and none of them can be attributed to any kind of political organization, you’d have to say that the the fact that more have come from the left than the right is just chance. I’m guessing there are, at any time, hundreds of crazies in the United States who, under the right circumstances, might take a shot at a president. These crazies no doubt exist on the right and on the left, and since they’re crazy, I don’t think you can blame ideology for any of it.
I just don’t think Obama is at any more risk of assassination than is Bush or McCain, unless you include militant Islam in the mix, at which point I’d have to say Bush and McCain are currently at greater risk, if for no other reason than that they are more responsible for the Iraq war, and they are the ones who want to continue it. Since Obama wants to withdraw from Iraq, I’d say that makes him less of a target from al-Qaida. That will change if he becomes president, because I have no doubt he’ll contiue the fight against al-Qaida, at least in Afghanistan.
Except that the only person in this thread trying to limit the discussion to “public officials” is yourself. The contention in this thread that Obama is at particular risk is because he’s a high-profile, influential black man. Not that he’s a high profile, influential politician. And there is a long history in this country of politically-motivated violence by far-right racist extremists.
Sam, I’d be interested to hear your take on the links I referenced previously. Here they are again for your convenience.
Nobel Prize winner predicts Obama Assassination
“Assasinate,” “Obama” makes the top 100 list of Google searches.
Confronting assassination fears.
KKK Warns of Obama Assassination(NSFW)
You need to come down south for a little while then. i was at a party last night with a bunch of other politically aware folks of all stripes, and everybody I asked about it was worried about somebody taking a shot at Obama. In April we had the 40th anniversary commemoration of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. here in Memphis. All of the presidential candidates came except Obama. There was a minor outcry at the time, but most Memphians knew why he didn’t show and didn’t blame him one bit.
Really? Maybe, living in Appalachia, I’m just more conscious of crazy, white supremacist wingnuts. Not that there’s a ton of them around here, but there are definitely some. If I were Obama, I’d be a hell of a lot more worried about them than militant Islamic extremists.
Right. Because everyone knows those Appalachian rednecks have been running around the world murdering blacks right and left, while those extremist Muslims have been leaving the world’s political figures alone.
Maybe I’m not as up on my current events as I should, but what politicians have been assassinated by extremist Muslims lately?
Benazir Bhutto?