After a Department of Homeland Security report was leaked this week detailing the rise of right-wing extremism, conservatives rushed to express their outrage. Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) caught headlines by bucking his party to proclaim himself “dumbfounded” by the report and claimed it “raise[d] significant issues involving the privacy and civil liberties of many Americans.” However, as Greg Sargent points out, Thompson himself called for the exact same type of assessment in 2005:
But as ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee in 2005, Thompson put out a whole report calling on DHS to do more to crack down on right wing extremism. You can read the report right here.
“DHS must reassess the threat posed by right-wing domestic terrorists and revise its long term planning to address this risk,” the report warns. It adds that “the risk posed by right-wing extremists” should prompt DHS to “give higher priority to this threat.”
“There may be right-wing terrorists here in America that want to create just as spectacular a disaster as the 9/11 attacks, and we cannot fail to meet this threat,” Thompson’s report cautioned.