Christian fundamentalist assassinates doctor in culture of violence

June 2, 7:29 AMPortland Progressive ExaminerMichael Stone

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Scott Roeder, Christian fundamentalist and right wing extremist, assassinated Dr George Tiller, a controversial figure and defender of a women's right to choose. Roeder is no doubt a disturbed individual, but this episode can not be written off as a lone gun man gone mad. Indeed, in many circles Roeder is already a hero, and if not a hero at least justified in his actions.

The depravity of anti-abortion extremists is nothing new. Bombings and shootings at clinics occur on a regular basis. Such episodes serve to punctuate a constant barrage of harassment and intimidation faced by patients and staff at women's clinics across the country. There can be no doubt that such extremists encouraged the assassination of the doctor, and those same extremists will attempt to minimize or even justify the crime.

To be sure mainstream anti-abortion groups, after threatening and harassing the good doctor for decades, now offer a tepid condemnation of the assassination. Yet if one listens and looks one finds quiet signs of approval, exclamations that while the killing was wrong, Dr. Tiller deserved to die. Randall Terry, a veteran anti-abortion activist whose protests have often targeted Tiller, said this: "George Tiller was a mass murderer and we cannot stop saying that. He was an evil man — his hands were covered with blood."

Bill O'Reilly, obnoxious on purpose pundit for Fox news, is also indirectly responsible for Tiller´s assassination. O'Reilly ran the headline "Tiller the baby killer" on his show 23 times. Tiller was a constant target of the FOX bully.

O'Reilly, like Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity, represent the ignorant and highly superstitious of our country. They appeal directly to the Christian fundamentalist and right wing extremist. By invoking a belief in the supernatural and the Law of God as preempting all other natural laws, they set the stage for domestic terrorism. These right wing extremists, these Christian fundamentalists, are cut from the same cloth as the terrorists who flew planes into buildings on 9/11.

George Tiller’s death is the culmination of years of culture war propaganda, fear tactics, and Christianity gone bad. The terrorist threat posed by religious right extremists is real. A domestic terrorism report released by the Department of Homeland Security indicated, among other things, that radicals might use abortion as a justification for committing acts of domestic terrorism. Lost amid the concern about foreign terrorism is the very real presence of homegrown right-wing terrorism in our own backyard. The radical right and Christian fundamentalists must be confronted; they are a cancer on our society.