There is a threat facing the United States that many people don’t realize exists. It is a vicious threat that claims the lives of innocent people, and leads to massive amounts of destruction in our country. That threat is right wing extremism. The most dangerous thing about that threat is that many media corporations do not address its existence, and some even work to propagate it. There have been more terrorist attacks launched by Right Wing extremists than any other ideology, and yet few seem to be willing to call it what it is.

Last Friday night a gunman entered a Planned Parenthood Clinic in Colorado Springs and killed three people, including a police officer. During the attack he is confirmed to have shouted “No more baby parts,” in reference to the falsified footage a pro-life group took inside a Planned Parenthood Clinic earlier this year. Four Officers were also injured in the gun battle.

On April 19^th, 1995 a bomb was detonated in the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. This attack caused the death of 168 people and the injury of 680 others. This attack was motivated by the attackers disliking of the Waco Siege and the Standoff at Ruby Ridge. Both of these incidents occurred after the Federal Government attempted to execute search warrants and thus were fired upon. In both of these incidents multiple officers and combatants were killed.

On June 17^th, 2015 a shooter entered the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church and killed nine people and injuring one more. The shooter was apprehended the following day, and later confirmed that he attacked the historically black church in hopes to incite a race war. The shooter was a white man who was only 21.

In 2014 rancher Cliven Bundy was charged with over $1,000,000 in fines for grazing his cattle on land that the Federal Government owned. Instead of paying the fines, Bundy and a number of militia from the surrounding area barricaded themselves and planned to kill any federal troops who attempted to enforce the law on Bundy. The Federal Government, wanting to avoid a deadly gun battle, declined to push for Bundy’s arrest and he and his supporters remain on his Nevada ranch to this day.

These acts of violence, intimidation, and destruction are acts of terrorism. Robert Lewis Dear, Timothy McVeigh, Dylan Roof, and Cliven Bundy are all terrorists. They were all white American citizens. And they were all inspired by an extreme and perverted form of the conservative ideology. Dear was inspired by rhetoric that Planned Parenthood was an evil organization that sold baby parts, even though this was proven false. McVeigh was inspired by rhetoric that the second amendment trumps all other Federal Laws, and that the federal government has no right to enforce anything. Roof was inspired by racist rhetoric in the media. Bundy was inspired by the ideology that state laws trump all Federal law, and is reported saying that in his eyes the Federal Government doesn’t exist.

Conservative ideology doesn’t always promote violence outright, but we can’t keep pretending that it can’t. All ideologies, be them political or religious, can inspire terrorism and radicalism.  It’s up to the moderates of an ideology to denounce acts of terror like this, and to fight against the radicalization of their ideology. As of the writing of this article very few republican presidential candidates have come out and strongly denounced the actions of Friday night, and those that have keep reiterating the false information that inspired this attack. It is time that conservatives in America fight back for the sole of their movement.