The same day that shooters reportedly motivated by far-right conspiracy theories killed three people in Las Vegas, conservative pundit Horace Cooper appeared on WorldNetDaily’s Radio America to claim that far-right violence is a “complete and total bogeyman.”
Cooper spoke to host Greg Corombos about Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to relaunch the Domestic Terrorism Executive Committee in the wake of incidents such as the anti-Semitic shooting in Kansas City and the attack on a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin.
He claimed that any focus on far-right violence is really “an attempt to marginalize” opponents of the Obama administration, remarks reminiscent of the right-wing smear campaign to discredit a Department of Homeland Security report [PDF] on domestic extremism.
Cooper is affiliated with several conservative groups including Project 21, the American Civil Rights Union and the National Center for Public Policy Research and was implicated in the Jack Abramoff scandal. He pleaded guilty to falsifying documents while serving as an official in the Bush administration.
Cooper: To shift the resources away from the threat that’s real to this theoretical problem is I think harmful to the safety of Americans and is more about a political agenda than it is in protecting Americans.
Corombos: What do you ultimately think that agenda is?
Cooper: It appears that there’s an attempt to marginalize people who hold views that are sharply different from those of the administration and much of the establishment.
…
Cooper: We’re particularly bothered by the mixing together so-called domestic insurrectionists and racists. There is simply no anti-black or anti-minority underground movement in America that is threatening in any way the stability of our government, the stability of our local governments, that is just a complete and total bogeyman.
