Late Monday afternoon I received an email from the American Patriot Foundation informing me that Terrence Lakin, a lieutenant colonel in the US army, needed my help. It seems that Lakin had refused to obey orders unless his commander-in-chief – that would be Barack Obama – produces evidence proving he was born in the United States and is thus constitutionally qualified to serve as president. Lakin now faces a court-martial and prison.

Well, good for Lakin. What struck me about the missive, though, was not the banality of his foolish quest. Rather, it was the atmospherics surrounding the group that has taken up his cause. The American Patriot Foundation has a nice office in Washington. Its spokeswoman, Margaret Hemenway, is a former government official who has written for the Washington Times, among other publications. Its founder is a former Republican senator, Bob Smith, who told Salon that he no longer controls the group, but who pointedly declined to criticise Lakin.

In other words, Lakin's outburst of birtherism should not be seen in isolation. Instead, it's further evidence that rightwing hate, aided and abetted by leading Republicans, has gone mainstream.

The first warning came a year ago, when the department of homeland security predicted a rise in rightwing extremism fuelled by economic calamity and the election of our first black president. News of the report, and especially about a warning contained therein that military veterans might be pulled into the movement, set off criticism among conservative bloggers. Yet it proved prescient.

The most recent and oddest manifestation was last week's arrest of nine people involved in what authorities have referred to as a "Christian militia" intent on sparking revolution. But there have been other examples, each treated by the media as isolated incidents. The murder of Kansas abortion doctor George Tiller, whose killer was sentenced to life in prison last week. The pilot who crashed his plane into an Internal Revenue Service facility in Austin, Texas, in February. Protesters whipped into a frenzy during the healthcare debate who yelled racist and homophobic slurs at members of Congress, who spat upon one and who phoned in threats of violence.

According to Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Centre, the number of rightwing extremist groups has risen exponentially during the past 18 months. And in an interview with National Public Radio's On the Media last week, he was unstinting in placing at least some of the blame for that with their enablers in the Republican party and in the media. Potok said:



"I'm talking about when [Republican congresswoman] Michele Bachmann says President Obama is setting up political re-education camps all around the country, presumably to turn our children into Marxist robots. I'm talking about when Steve King, a congressman out of Iowa, says that 25 Americans every single day are either murdered or run over and killed by drunken, as he would say, 'criminal illegal aliens', or when Glenn Beck on Fox News talks about the possibility that the Federal Emergency Management Agency is running a set of secret concentration camps to intern good patriotic Americans, all of that and much more. And that is becoming quite common today."



The right is ever fond of pointing out that leftwing extremists have also been among us for lo these many years, from the Weather Underground during the Vietnam war to the 9/11 truthers of recent years. But such groups have never received an iota of support from Democrats. Indeed, when Beck, of all people, ferreted out someone who might be called a truther sympathiser last year in the Obama White House, that person lost his job immediately.

By contrast, a mainstream conservative figure like Sarah Palin posts a map on her Facebook page of Democratic congressmen she wants defeated that is festooned with gun-sight crosshairs and then hosts a Fox News special on inspirational Americans.

"At the least, the Republicans are playing footsie with extremism – while extremism seems to be spreading," writes the veteran progressive journalist David Corn.

We are living through a frightening moment in American history – the near-collapse of the economy, followed by a slow and uncertain recovery, a mountain of public debt and war seemingly without end.

A responsible political opposition would find a way to oppose Obama and the Democratic Congress while at the same time standing up to the forces of extremism. Instead, today's Republican party coddles and indulges them, hoping they'll put down their guns long enough to vote for them this November.

It's a sick and cynical game, and we can only hope it doesn't end in tragedy.