BILL BERKOWITZ FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

(Photo: Gage Skidmore)Glendon Scott Crawford had an idea about how to deal with Muslims in America; build a weapon that would irradiate as many of them as possible. Pamela Geller is a professional anti-Muslim provocateur who in the spring, held a cartoon competition in Garland, Texas, to award the best cartoon mocking the Prophet Muhammad. While most conservatives aren't talking in "final solution" terms, and are not looking to intentionally provoke violence, the mindlessness of the marginalized is seeping into the mainstream. Ideas once thought of as unsuitable for serious discussion, anti-democratic and decidedly un-American are starting to take hold with the Republican Party.

Combat the epidemic of misinformation that plagues the corporate media! Make a tax-deductible donation to Truthout and BuzzFlash today.

Months ago, Donald Trump kicked off his campaign with slanderous comments about Mexican immigrants. Those comments played well with the base, and they became standard fare at his campaign events. However, since the horrific Paris murders, Trump has seized upon new actionable targets; Muslim Americans and Muslim refugees. Now, Trump is voicing support for shuttering mosques, creating a database for monitoring all Muslims, and re-instituting waterboarding. Ben Carson has declared no Muslim is worthy of being in his cabinet, let alone being elected president. Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush have advocated accepting only Christian refugees from Syria. And, just about every Republican Party presidential candidate, more than 30 governors (the vast majority from the GOP), and key sectors of the religious right are espousing their versions of keep the Syrian refugees out of the United States.

Ideas that were thought of as fringe, anti-American and anti-democratic are leading today's political debate within the Republican Party and, they seem to be gaining traction within the body politic.

Irradiate Muslims

One of the most reprehensible of the multitude of appalling anti-Muslim plans was hatched by Glendon Scott Crawford who, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Report, called his attempted invention of a "weaponized X-ray device 'Hiroshima on a light switch,'" Crawford "described his would-be victims as 'medical waste,' and mapped out potential targets including the White House, the United Nations and the New York governor's mansion. ... [However], he was mostly interested in attacking Muslims, and actually scouted mosques and other Islamic targets in Albany and Schenectady" New York.

Crawford's plan came to a halt after a 14-month FBI sting took it down in 2013. He is now in federal custody awaiting sentencing after being "convicted of attempting to acquire and use a radiological dispersal, ... conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction, and distributing information relating to weapons of mass destruction." Crawford faces 25 years to life when he is supposed to be sentenced next month.

Crawford's partner, a fellow named Eric J. Feight, was also arrested, "pleaded guilty in June 2014 to providing material support to terrorists and agreed to testify against Crawford." Feight faces up to 15 years when he is also supposed to be sentenced sometime soon.

Apparently, according to the Intelligence Report, Crawford, an industrial mechanic at General Electric in Schenectady, "amassed what prosecutors believe was enough information about radiation to actually design the weapon, which would use an industrial x-ray as a starting point."

Crawford and Feight's plan, which sounds like it could have come from a story in an ISIS magazine -- albeit with different targets – would make most Americans recoil in horror. However, the Islamophobia behind their idea, the crafting of solutions for dealing with Muslims in America, has rapidly moved from the margins to the mainstream.

Geller's provocations

Pam Geller, the president of the American Freedom Defense Initiative, has been characterized by the SPLC as the champion of Islamophobia." Her cartoon competition resulted in two Muslim men from Arizona opening fire outside Geller's event. In late Spring, according to the Intelligence Report, Geller "tried to plaster city buses and subway trains in Washington, D.C., with ads featuring the winning drawing" from her contest. Thankfully, the city said no and banned, for the time being, all "issue-oriented advertisements from Metro stations and buses."

Trickle-down hate

The bigotry against Muslims voiced by many Republican Party politicians is incitement to such grotesque bigotry.

Joe Garofoli, a fine reporter with the San Francisco Chronicle, wrote a recent piece titled "By hyping anti-Muslim ideas, GOP has made the fringe mainstream." Garofoli wrote: "When senators, governors and moguls espouse a view, they pull it from the dark corners of culture and put a spotlight on it. That gives others permission to take their words even further."

"The problem with this is, when you start pushing into this territory, when you start demonizing a population — you're pushing the door so wide open for xenophobia and hate," Heidi Beirich, director of the Intelligence Project for the Southern Poverty Law Center, told Garofoli. "My biggest concern is that when they do these things — when they label a whole population as being connected to terrorists — it opens them up for hate crimes."