Rage on the Right: The American Militia Movement from Ruby Ridge to the Trump Presidency [Hardcover ed.] 1538115719, 9781538115718

Citation preview

 

SECOND EDITION

The American Militia Movement from Ruby Ridge to the Trump Presidency

LANE CROTHERS

Illinois State University

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

 

Executive Editor: Traci Crowell Assistant Editor: Mary Malley Senior Marketing Manager: Amy Whitaker Interior Designer: Ilze Lemesis Credits and acknowledgments for material borrowed from other sources, and reproduced with permission, appear on the appropriate page within the text. Published by Rowman & Littlefield An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com 6 Tinworth Street, London SE11 5AL, United Kingdom Copyright © 2019 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. First Edition © 2004 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Crothers, Lane, author. Title: Rage on the right : the American militia movement from Ruby Ridge to the Trump presidency / Lane Crothers, Illinois State University. Description: Second edition. | Lanham : Rowman & Littlefield, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018048757 (print) | LCCN 2018054909 (ebook) | ISBN 9781538115732 (ebook) | ISBN 9781538115718 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781538115831 (pbk. : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Militia movements—United States. | Right-wing extremists—United States. Classification: LCC HN90.R3 (ebook) | LCC HN90.R3 C77 2019 (print) | DDC 303.48/40973—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018048757

∞ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/ NISO Z39.48-1992. Printed in the United States of America

For Austin and Gigi—­ That we do better for your future

 

Contents Acknowledgments vi About the Author  vii

Introduction to the Second Edition  1 Why a Second Edition?  3 Understanding Right-­Wing Populist Social Movements  4 A Note on Terminology  7 A Note on Methods  9 Plan of the Book  10

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The Foundations of the Militia Movement and the Alt-­Right  13 Political Culture, Ideology, and Myth in Political Life  14 A Brief History of Right-­Wing Populism in the United States  24 Myth, Ideology, and Culture in Popular Culture: The Patriot and Red Dawn 28 Conclusion 31

2

The Rise of the Militia Movement in the 1990s  34 The Siege at Ruby Ridge  34 The Fire in Waco  47 The Militia Wave of the 1990s  58 Conclusion 70

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The Oklahoma City Bombing and the Decline of the 1990s Militia  76 Coming to Oklahoma City  76 The Aftermaths of Oklahoma City—­First Responses  80 The Decline of the 1990s Militia Movement  88 Conclusion 104

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Contents

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The Revival of the Militia Movement in the 2010s  109 The New Media Environment and the Rise of the Militia and the Alt-­Right  110 The Iraq War and the Fraying of American Political Discourse  118 The Financial Crisis of 2008 and the Politics of Resentment  119 Mobilizing Anti-­Government Activism in the United States after 2008  121 The New Militia  128 The Militia and the Bundy Family  137 Conclusion 144

5

Donald Trump and the Alt-­Right  148 The Rise of the Alt-­Right  148 The Rise of the Alt-­Right in the Age of Trump  158 Donald Trump and the Alt-­Right  163 The Aftermath of Charlottesville and the Decline of the Alt-­Right  177 Conclusion 180

Epilogue: A Struggle for the American Soul  186 Index 190

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Acknowledgments

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o book is the result of a single person’s work. I appreciate the opportunity to offer brief thanks to those who made this book possible. First, thanks are due to my editors at Rowman & Littlefield. I have had a long and productive friendship with Susan McEachern, and she deserves thanks for facilitating the creation of this book. So, too, do her colleagues who have shaped this book: Traci Crowell and Mary Malley. I also owe thanks to my colleague and great friend Dr. Manfred Steger. We began talking about the ideas that shaped both this book and its first edition long ago and will continue to address them long into the future. His generosity and insight have been inspirations across the many years I have been exploring the hard right in American politics. Dr. Lori Riverstone-­Newell stopped by my office several years ago and casually asked, while we were talking about our research plans, if I didn’t think it was time to do a second edition of this book. I hadn’t thought about it much before she asked this question, but I never really stopped thinking about it after she asked. I don’t know if this was what she expected when she asked, but then again, I don’t know if this is what I expected, either. You never know where inspiration is going to come from. For this, and much else, I say thanks to you as well. I also want to reiterate a thank-­you I offered in the first edition of this book. Dr. Richard Pride of Vanderbilt University made this book possible without having any idea he had done so. I was an unhappy, disaffected graduate student (not all that rare a phenomenon) uncertain as to whether to continue graduate school or not when he took time to talk to me, engage with me, and to introduce me to a way of understanding political and social life that I continue to explore today. I don’t know what path I would have walked had I not stopped by his office in the summer of 1987, or if he hadn’t been there. But I did, and he was. And here we are. Finally, I owe more to my family than I can say. Their support, and their willingness to let me focus on the book even when they might have preferred my time and attention, has made this possible. That they also teased and played and forced me to move out of the world of the radical right also kept me sane and offered relief from what is sometimes a hard and burdensome topic. My thanks to Martha, Austin, and Gigi for everything. As I have said in the acknowledgments of other books, the life of an academic is a privileged one. We get to think about what we like to think about, and write about what we want to write about, and teach about what we like to teach about. There are many people who never get the same chance. I am grateful for this opportunity every day. This book has been made better by all of these contributions—­and many more. Its strengths belong to you all. Its mistakes, of course, are mine alone. Thanks to you all.

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About the Author

L

ane Crothers is professor of politics and government at Illinois State University. He is author or coauthor of more than 20 journal articles and nine books, and he serves as the Managing Editor of the international journal, Populism. From August 2015 to May 2016 Professor Crothers held the Fulbright Bicentennial Chair in American Studies in the Department of World Cultures at the University of Helsinki in Helsinki, Finland. From September 2007 to February 2008 he served as the Eccles Centre Visiting Professor in North American Studies at the British Library in London, UK.

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Introduction to the Second Edition

R

“

age” is a powerful word. To say that someone is in a rage is to imply that he or she is experiencing an emotion that is exceptional, even out of ­control—­a passionate, intense expression of frustration and aggression. To say someone is feeling enraged or is “in a rage” is to say that his or her actions are in a unique category; that however justified the person in the rage-­ state feels in their behavior, to an outside observer it is clear that they are, in fact, behaving excessively, often dangerously, to both themselves and to those around them. Rage is frighteningly irrational both in the circumstances that call it forth and in the targets against which it lashes out. To title a book Rage on the Right, then, is to make a number of implicit assumptions that ought to be addressed clearly and directly. The first of these, obviously, is that at least someone or some groups on what is generally recognized as the political “right” in the United States are, in fact, enraged—­that they have a profound fear and/­or hatred of others in the political system. By extension, it is to assert that this emotion is irrational, out of all proportion to the actual facts of what is going on in contemporary society. After all, you can be called “paranoid” only if no one is out to get you. If someone is out to get you, you’re not paranoid. You’re paying attention. As would be expected, given its title, this book will offer an array of evidence demonstrating the appropriateness of the word “rage” in the context of at least parts of the right wing of American political life today, parts generally labeled the “alt-­right” and the militia. This is, admittedly, a polyglot group. Some members of militia and alt-­right groups are traditional conservatives who have become

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disenchanted with the Republican Party. Others are aggrieved citizens who claim the right to band together to protect their vision of how life in the United States should work. Yet others are avowed neo-­Nazis and white supremacists. Taken together, such groups do not necessarily represent the whole of the political right in contemporary America, but they nonetheless have come to play an outsized role in US politics today. Their members, their ideas, and their strategies have had a profound influence across the American political spectrum, a fact that is perhaps most evident in the amount of attention President Donald Trump accords to both alt-­right ideas and to alt-­right political leaders (to be discussed in chapter 5). There are a great many angry people populating the right wing of American politics today, and their rage has swept through the American political system like a hurricane. Alt-­right and militia activists do more than just diagnose social ills, however. They also ascribe blame to those they consider responsible for creating and exacerbating these problems. For alt-­righters, problems like crime, or illegal immigration, or global economic competition are the result of policies and programs actively promoted by liberals and progressives. Liberals and progressives are believed to be working to undermine the “American way” in favor of some cosmopolitan, “politically correct,” diverse future. As a consequence, alt-­righters often view liberals and progressives as contemptible. Militia and alt-­right activists often describe the political left using terms like “communist,” “socialist,” “statist,” “progressive,” “neoliberal,” or “globalist.” Society, from the alt-­right point of view, is arranged into “Americans” and “traitors”—­and one needs to be on the right side of that divide to be a “real American.” Yet, as will be seen throughout this book, the alt-­right’s anger seems wildly out of proportion to the ills evident in American society today. As will be seen, alt-­right and militia activists have developed elaborate narratives justifying their ideas and values that are, in fact, little more than an exercise in thinking in alternate realities. For example, some militia and alt-­right activists believe that crime is rampant in America and that undocumented immigrants are leading vast drug gangs bent on upending American security and liberty. Meanwhile, during the 2016 presidential campaign it became an article of faith among some members of the American hard right that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, along with her campaign manager, operated a brothel engaged in child prostitution. This brothel was supposedly hidden behind a pizza parlor in Washington, DC. (The falsehood of these claims, and others, will be addressed later in this book.) No matter how passionately some believer believes such stories, they are not true, and extreme reactions to them are utterly nonsensical. The rage alt-­ right and militia proponents express, then, is out of all balance with the realities of the contemporary world. It is, of course, possible to believe that liberals and progressives are wrong-­ headed and politically mistaken without also believing that they are actively engaged in a plot to destroy the United States. One does not have to believe that the Democratic party’s nominee for the presidency of the United States ran a child prostitution ring from a pizza parlor in order to oppose her candidacy. Indeed, it is the extremism of the pizza parlor conspiracy claim (or others, like

 

Why a Second Edition?

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one rumor that President Obama, despite all evidence to the contrary, had a secret plan to take away all Americans’ guns) that explains why this book uses the word “rage” to characterize the alt-­right and militia movements in America today. However, whether they have good reason to be or not, as a practical matter large numbers of Americans on the political right are enraged at what they see as wrong with American society and American politics. This book seeks to understand why they are enraged, why their rage takes the form it does, and what effects it is likely to have in the political system going forward.

Why a Second Edition? In 2002, as I was finishing the work that eventually appeared as the first edition of Rage on the Right, the extreme right wing of the American political spectrum was fairly quiet. The broad movement of citizens who either actively or indirectly supported violent resistance to what supporters saw as the abuse of federal government power by federal government agents that flared up in the 1990s was largely over. To be sure, it was still possible to find radical spokespersons claiming that lots of Americans stood ready to challenge the US government at any time; however, the main force of the movement was exhausted. Consequently, the first edition of this work served as a diagnostic tool as much as a descriptive one: it explored where such groups had come from; what had motivated them; and what had led to their significant, if not total, decline. Yet even as the first edition surveyed the submergence of the radical right into the deep recesses of American political life, it acknowledged that the circumstances, ideas, values, and practices that had made it possible for the 1990s militia movement to arise as a powerful force in American political life had not gone away just because the movement was in decline. It noted that the 1990s militia movement drew life from deeply embedded values and myths central to American political culture and political history. Accordingly, the first edition insisted that there was reason to suppose that the militia movement (and any allied groups) might reemerge in the future. “Only in recognizing that the militia are, in fact, as ‘American as apple pie,’ ” I wrote in the epilogue to the first edition, “can we understand where the movement comes from, why it took the shape it did, and whether or not it, or another version of it, can be expected to reemerge in the United States.” Sixteen years later even a casual review of American politics suggests that the extreme right wing is back, and with a vengeance. A broad array of groups and movements have found both participants and sympathizers—­some active, some indirect—­who hold a variety of anti-­government, anti-­authority views. The Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA), the Oath Keepers, the Three Percenters Movement, the Arizona Minutemen, and many others offer arguments that require—­or seem to require—­private citizens to prepare or actually take arms against what movement members see as abuses by federal government officials. Indeed, unlike their 1990s militia forebears, many of these groups today are openly racist, ethnocentric, and anti-­Semitic. This is a dramatic shift from the 1990s and requires examination.

 

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In addition, contemporary right-­wing groups have found an unlikely supporter, or at least sympathizer, at the very top of American government: Donald Trump, the president of the United States. As will be discussed in chapter 5, throughout his presidential campaign and into his presidency itself President Trump has articulated themes, used rhetoric, and engaged in inflammatory speech that touches on and reinforces the aggressively antifederal government, racist, and violent values the far right embraces. This norm-­breaking behavior has the potential to remake the rules for what are normal and acceptable American political ideas and behaviors. Accordingly, it is a good time to revisit Rage on the Right and to update it for contemporary times. Anyone familiar with the earlier edition of the book should see its backbone throughout this one; however, just like the movement has changed, the second edition of this work has evolved to try to address the “new” extreme right in American politics. That movement is, indeed, as American as apple pie—­whether Americans wish that were the case or not. It is, therefore, an enduring feature of American political life. It will engage our attention as long as American politics exist. The following chapters examine the rise, fall, and reemergence of the militia/­ alt-­right movement from the 1990s through 2018. They explore the diverse ways contemporary right-­wing social movements have used American history, culture, ideology, and social and economic context to build themselves into a potent force in American political life. They address the persistence of right-­wing social movements in the United States and assess the breadth and appeal of the resurgence of right-­wing populism since the election of Barack Obama as president in 2008. In so doing they look to explain both the potential impact and the likely persistence of such movements into the future. As noted earlier, such movements are neither new nor likely to go away. They need to be understood as a core component of American political life whether one sympathizes with their goals and ideals or not.

Understanding Right-­Wing Populist Social Movements As was the case with the first edition of this book, this new version of Rage on the Right takes the position that the modern militia and alt-­right movement(s) can best be understood as culturally embedded, right-­wing, populist social movements. As will be seen, examining these groups from this perspective offers numerous advantages and allows a careful unpacking of members’ motives, actions, rhetoric, and behaviors. These theoretical underpinnings require brief attention if the structure underlying the analysis is to be clear.

Understanding Social Movements To call a group a social movement is to argue that it has a form and purpose that is somehow different from other political organizations like political parties or interest groups. While there are a wide variety of definitions of what social

 

Understanding Right-­Wing Populist Social Movements

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movements are, each typically holds that social movements are made up of people who hold grievances against the political system (often political elites or the informal codes that shape social rank and power). They come together and establish at least a limited sense of shared identity as member of a group, and they act toward goals that members believe are likely to change the political and social conditions that are the source of members’ grievances. (Whether change is actually possible as a result of the use of some tactics is not the point, here. Rather, members imagine the endeavor will lead to change and act based on that belief.) Groups can be well organized or loosely affiliated; they can have broad goals or narrow ones; they can seek reform or revolution. In any case, a social movement can be seen to exist when an aggrieved group of people establish common cause to change their conditions using tactics and strategies that make sense to them in the moment of action. Approaching right-­wing groups as a social movement draws our attention to a number of questions that need to be addressed in any study of a social movement.1 It is necessary to explore what the group’s grievances are, obviously—­ and to do so in terms sympathetic to those who share that point of view. After all, unless one engages the nature of a movement’s concerns, the meaning and motivational effect of those grievances cannot be understood. Likewise, attention needs to be paid both to the tools the group uses to motivate sympathizers and to the ways the group mobilizes people who might have a vague interest in the movement to actually leave their homes, invest their time, and perhaps face legal or social reproach by joining the social movement and protesting against existing norms, laws, and practices. Such tools can include rhetoric, ideology, social solidarity, and cultural routines like displays of patriotism or the invocation of ritualized texts. The ways that previous movements worked for change in their own time can likewise provide lessons about strategies and tactics that might be more—­or less—­effective. They can also include accidental or incidental resources such as what can happen if a government loses political legitimacy if it fails to respond to a great crisis in a timely and effective manner. It is also necessary to explore the movement’s goals. What are its ends? Are these changes revolutionary or evolutionary? Are they transformative of social and political relations, or are they reinforcing? Evolutionary, pattern-­reinforcing demands are, for example, almost certainly easier for a political and social system to accommodate than are radical, revolutionary ones. Understanding Right-­Wing Social Movements  To call a social movement “right wing” is to link the group and its members to a repertoire of ideas, values, rituals, and norms that tend to value social stability; the maintenance of historical power relationships; and the valorization of traditional social practices like patriotism, religion, family, and legacy over other ideas.2 These values and ideas are usually termed “conservative” in American politics. Political liberals or progressives, for example, review the historical racism of American society and identify areas where further change is necessary—­change that often requires government action. In contrast, people on the political right usually insist that change, if it comes, must be slow and voluntary. Or, on another issue, a political progressive

 

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might examine inequities in, say, the vast wealth held by the Walton family (the owners of Walmart) contrasted with the significant poverty of many Walmart employees and conclude that taxes or other changes in the social system might be needed to level this imbalance. People on the political right are more likely to argue that the Waltons earned their money through their own hard work, and so deserve to keep their money without being heavily taxed. Similar contrasts can be found on issues like the appropriate limits (or not) on gun ownership in America, the role of government in supporting the poor, or any of hundreds of other issues in the United States. To say someone is “right wing,” however, is to go further than simply saying one is conservative. “Right wing” is typically associated with people who are unwilling—­or extremely reluctant—­to compromise their ideas and values. “Right-­wing” people tend to be political extremists. (Extremists exist on the political left as well, but they are not the focus of this book.) Extremists generally reject an idea that is the core assumption of most political systems: that it is better to make a compromise with one’s political opponents, thereby getting at least some of what one wants, than it is to demand everything one wants—­or else. For radicals, compromise appears to require the corruption of one’s core values. Compromise, which is both an inevitable part of the democracy and a primary feature of the constitutional system of checks and balances in the United States, is consequently understood to be a political evil. Accepting less than 100 percent of what one wants is to make a deal that violates one’s understanding of right and wrong. Just as it is impossible to murder someone “a little bit,” it is impossible to compromise one’s position without giving in to political evil. Right-­wing activists, then, are nontraditional political actors: they make demands in the political system but cannot consent to limiting their demands in the name of political stability or agreement. Rather, in an effort to get what they want at all costs, such people deny or undermine the legitimacy of people who do not share a right-­wing perspective. Understanding Right-­Wing Populism  Populism, the third dimension of the movement(s) under study here, refers to a particular style or approach to political life.3 For populists, the political problems of the moment are almost always the result of some elite group’s conscious strategy. The “people” are good; however, the community is seen to be in trouble because elites are working to promote their own values, not the authentic needs and ideas of the people they are supposed to serve. Populists exist on both the political left and the political right. That is, the populist critique of society’s ills can be made by people who believe in liberal/­ progressive values and goals as well as conservative ones. Populists, for example, can argue that the rich and powerful are manipulating the political system in favor of conservative policies. Meanwhile, conservatives can insist that society is controlled by elites, but that those elites are working to advance a liberal political and social agenda. Populism, then, is a mode of expression as much as an explicit political agenda. It is a way of protesting the alleged failure of society to respond to the demands of its citizens whatever those demands are.

 

A Note on Terminology

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Populists are particularly motivated by emotion—­often rage. If someone or some group is responsible for the problems that society endures, then those people must be beaten, destroyed, driven out of the community. Otherwise the true, authentic, “good” people can never live in peace and justice. In addition, society must be “restored” to its former greatness: the cumulative effects of bad elite policies can be rectified only by purging the system of their rancid effects. The community must be cleansed—­otherwise it cannot be its true self. Right-­wing populist groups differ from other types of populist movements for a number of reasons. First, they usually support what is called “exclusionary nativism.” They desire to protect and insulate “native,” “authentic” people from “others,” often foreigners. Second, this exclusionary nativism also implies a racialized understanding of national identity: the “true” people are seen to be members of one racial or ethnic group. Cultural and racial others are claimed to be a dangerous threat to the “real” people. Third, given that global trade and cultural interaction can bring outside ideas and competition to communities and so can undermine existing social and political norms, right-­wing populists usually insist that international trade is to be avoided, or at least managed. Fourth, right-­ wing populist movements are prone to nostalgia. They imagine an idealized past when society lived as it no longer does. They also seek to restore the community to that once and future time. Fifth, and finally, right-­wing populist movements are prone to conspiracism, the sense that the current, corrupt state of affairs is the result of a conscious plan led by actual people who intend to harm “real” people. As is discussed throughout this book, the militia and the alt-­right offer culturally embedded, ideologically distinct, and mythically framed political programs to people in the United States. (Similar groups offer related agendas across the world today.) They derive from common roots, but they have grown into separate branches of right-­wing populism. Understanding this movement—­and its complexity—­is key to assessing the groups as they act in American politics today. To define the alt-­right and the militia as right-­wing populist social movements, then, is to view these groups through several lenses that allow for their careful examination. It is to say that there is a group of affiliated people on the conservative side of the American political spectrum who are uncompromising in their political demands. In addition, it is to hold that these people are furious at the wrongs they see in American society, particularly those wrongs they blame on elites, foreigners, and cultural shifts that they insist have undermined the real, authentic America. As will be discussed throughout this book, right-­wing populists have built an active movement in the United States that has affected and is likely to continue to affect American politics well into the future.

A Note on Terminology One of the most significant problems in writing this book has been deciding what, exactly, to label the groups it analyzes. Labels have power. It is one thing to describe oneself as “pro-­life,” for example, and another to be described as “anti-­c hoice.” Conversely, to be “pro-­c hoice” is not the same thing as

 

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“pro-­abortion”—­certainly not according to people who hold one set of opinions versus the other in the charged atmosphere of abortion politics in America. Labeling suggests bias of one form or another, and there is no easy way to avoid this accusation. For this study, the political conundrum at hand is this: many people view labels like “right wing” to be a political slur. The term “right wing” can, in some cases, suggest arch conservatism: the unbending defense of an established way of life. It can also suggest a willingness to use political violence to protect and advance a political agenda. Most damningly, it can suggest that the person or group espousing a “right-­wing” point of view has beliefs similar to or sympathetic with Fascism and Nazism, two of the ideological forces that launched World War II and the Holocaust. Moreover, the right wing of American politics is not monolithic. It consists of a wide variety of actors, policies, and groupings, not all of them consistent with one another. Paleo libertarians, for example, have different attitudes about race, drug use, and the application of government power to enforce the law than do American Nazis—­and both paleo libertarians and American Nazis view life differently than do “preppers” (people planning for the end of civilization, a time they expect to arrive in the near future). As will be discussed in chapter 2, 1990s militia groups insisted they were not racist; as will be seen in chapter 4, contemporary militia groups seem more willing to assert their racial biases than their 1990s’ predecessors were. Disentangling these various threads while creating a convenient label to address the right-­wing populist social movement groups in the United States is a daunting task. Understanding far-right groups in US politics has been made even harder in recent years as many arch conservatives have taken to describing themselves as “alt-­right.” This term, popularized by conservative media pundits and movement leaders like Richard Spencer and Steven Bannon (discussed in chapter 5), is seen to be both relatively neutral—­it’s “alt,” not “right wing,”—­and to distinguish these activists and their supporters from more traditional conservative groups like the Republican Party. They have, accordingly, worked hard to get analysts, journalists, and ordinary citizens to use the term “alt-­right” instead of “right wing” or even “radical right” when referring to militia and similar groups. For critics of the term “alt-­right,” the neutrality of the phrase is the problem with it. Critics argue that whether or not “alt-­right” activists wish to publicly admit it, their ideas, rhetoric, and even political actions mimic and promote Fascist and Nazi ideology. Likewise, as Charles Lockhart recently reminded me, the term “alt” is German and literally translates as “old.” In calling themselves the “alt-­right,” then, the advocates of the term are making an explicit connection between their current movement and that of Nazi Germany. As a consequence of these public, factual connections between the new and the old right, critics of the term “alt-­right” insist that using it obscures the Fascistic and anti-­ Semitic aspects of the alt-­right political agenda. They worry that the alt-­right label obscures the frightening dimensions of alt-­right ideology, making it easier for alt-­right ideas to flourish. They also fear that the alt-­right term makes it easier for the alt-­right movement to win new supporters.

 

A Note on Methods

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There is no correct way to resolve these arguments. Any choice will inevitably disappoint some people while angering others. “Right wing” and “radical right” are, indeed, politically loaded; meanwhile, “alt-­right” assuredly obscures the most uncomfortable dimensions of rightist political thought and activities. As a practical matter, this book “solves” this problem by using most of the terms fairly interchangeably and exploring the dimensions of alt-­right ideology as fully and comprehensively as they can be. It uses the alt-­right label to describe an array of groups on the populist right of the American political spectrum. Where appropriate, it will distinguish militia groups from those that focus on political advocacy of white supremacy and white nationalism. In general, however, the analysis presented in this book assumes that the groups on the far right of American politics need to be considered together if they and their significance are to be understood. The phenomenon of right-­wing populism is complex. So are the politics that surround it. The lived experience of politics is that groups and ideas and policies run together, one informing and shaping the other in an organic, evolutionary way. Hence this book offers a broad view of the groups in the alt-­right. The reader will have to decide whether, in the end, this solution helps to obfuscate or reveal the reality of American politics today.

A Note on Methods This project offers an ethnographic, interpretive examination of the alt-­right and militia movements in the broader context of American culture. Ethnography is an approach aimed at understanding how individuals perceive the world. Its focus is on how individuals explain events to themselves and how they justify their actions in terms of their own values and ideals. As a consequence, its analytic purpose is to recognize the systems of meaning in which individuals live. Questions like “What do people say they believe?” and “How do individuals legitimize their actions and behaviors in their own lives?” are the analytic lenses through which individuals and groups are studied.4 In particular, this project focuses on several related questions: (1) How do alt-­ right groups explain their ideas, ideals, and programs? (2) How do militia members and alt-­right activists define their enemies? And (3) what is the relationship between the ideas, ideals, and values alt-­right members espouse and the values contained in American political culture? The purpose of focusing on these questions is to expose the interaction between alt-­right and militia self-­presentations and American political culture. In explaining their ideas and programs, alt-­right and militia groups can draw on values inherent to American political culture. In defining their enemies, such groups articulate a particular version of “the good life” that contrasts with some “wrong” alternative. Combined, these questions provide insight into the cultural values that shape alt-­right group formation, values, actions, and long-­term influence. In order to do ethnographic research, it is necessary to gain access to information about individuals’ beliefs and values. The primary source of information gathered for the first edition of this book was the Internet. Militia groups in the 1990s had a substantial presence online. Their sites typically explained what

 

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the group believed, what activities they thought were justified and why, and offered commentaries on government and other “mainstream” groups’ actions that the group found troublesome. They were, in short, exactly the kinds of self-­presentational material that make it possible to carry forward ethnographic analysis. As such, alt-­right sites provided a treasure-­trove of information waiting to be mined. In addition to Internet sources, the first edition relied on media and other accounts of group activities. Journalistic approaches provided a good day-­to-­ day record of what group members did. They also offered an up-­to-­the-­minute record of what members said about why they undertook the actions they did. Accordingly, a survey of major newspapers—­for example, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and the Chicago Tribune—­was conducted for the dates of major alt-­right events like Randy Weaver’s mountaintop stand and Timothy McVeigh’s destruction of the Murrah Federal Office Building (discussed in chapters 2 and 3 of this book). The focus was not on the commentary such sources provide on the events; rather, it was used to gather first-­person statements from group members and self-­identified supporters about why they undertook such actions and how they justified these behaviors to themselves. Newsmagazines like Time and Newsweek were also covered for similar information. Similar strategies were used in this second edition, particularly for recently created groups (e.g., the Three Percenters and the Oath Keepers). Internet sources are significantly more accessible than they were fifteen years ago, and group members are much more aware of the ways the Internet makes it possible for them to spread their views and recruit new members than their forebears were fifteen years ago. Likewise, news coverage of events like the Cliven Bundy standoff (discussed in chapter 4) in Nevada in 2014 is broadly available. However, many of the Internet sources used for the first edition are no longer available. For example, many of the webpages of militia groups in the 1990s no longer exist. Those websites were shut down, and the groups they served have faded away. Many were not archived. Unfortunately, this problem cannot be overcome easily. Where it arises in this second edition, the text will make it clear that it is summarizing information previously available at a given site. Summary will, to the fullest extent possible, substitute for direct quotes in these cases.

Plan of the Book Anyone familiar with the first edition of this book will be struck by the scope of the changes in this second edition—­changes that include adding sixteen years’ worth of material to the text, of course. But the changes are more extensive than that. The core of the first edition remains present in the second, but it is otherwise a new book. For example, the new chapter 1 condenses significant materials from the first edition’s chapters 1 and 2, and part of old chapter 3, into a discussion of the conditions and ideas in which the militia movement of the 1990s arose. The revised chapter explores the nature of American political culture as a source of the militia

 

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movement. It examines the militia myth in American history and offers a brief history of right-­wing movements in America. The goal is to establish a cultural-­ historical context to interpret the rise and actions of later movements, whether those of the 1990s, or of the 2010s. The chapter reviews the cultural and ideological foundations of that movement, seeking to establish both continuities and breaks with successor, contemporary movements. Revised chapter 2 condenses chapters 4 and 5 of the original text into one chapter exploring the cases of the Randy Weaver standoff at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and the fire at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. These were the events that crystallized the formation of an inchoate militia movement into “the militia movement.” As such, they deserve close analysis. However, given that the 1990s movement was relatively short-­lived, the discussion of the effects of these events on the militia movement can be combined usefully. This analysis then grounds a discussion of the rise of the militia from 1993 forward. The new chapter 3 examines the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, by Timothy McVeigh on April 19, 1995. That event remains the central event of the 1990s-­era militia movement. Chapter 3 also traces the decline of the militia movement in the years following the Murrah bombing. Chapter 4 is new to this edition. It focuses on groups like the CSPOA, the Arizona Minutemen, the Oath Keepers, the Three Percenters, and others that formed the new militia of the 2010s. It also analyzes the Cliven Bundy standoff in Nevada in 2014 and the Malheur Refuge Standoff in Oregon in 2016 (also led by a Bundy family member, Cliven’s son, Ammon.) It addresses the role that issues like immigration, globalization, and racial tensions associated with the Obama presidency, among others, played in sparking the reemergence and the expansion of right-­wing militias in the United States. The influence of the Tea Party and the Birther movement in shaping the new militia movement is also analyzed. The chapter shows that the rise of right-­wing populism after President Trump’s election was not a random event, but rather, the ground was well prepared at the moment of Trump’s victory. Chapter 5 is likewise new to this edition. It examines the norm-­shattering candidacy and presidency of Donald Trump, paying particular attention to the interaction of his rhetoric with the assertion of both white supremacist and more recognizably “militia” groups. As chapter 5 will show, the efforts the 1990s-­era militias made to separate themselves from their white supremacist and survivalist roots have not been sustained by the alt-­right groups of the 2010s. Accordingly, the analysis offered in the first edition of this book—­analysis that sought to segregate racially motivated groups from the 1990s militia, which claimed to not be racist—­makes no sense today. The Trump presidency has proved empowering to the militia/­alt-­right; on the other hand, it has also stimulated a substantial counter-­campaign among Americans opposed to and offended by the overt racism of contemporary actors on the hard right. Finally, the second edition, like the first before it, concludes with an epilogue that explores various paths the militia/­alt-­right might take in the near future. Such movements are a recurrent feature of American political life; however, they

 

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have waxed and waned across American history. Which paths are more likely given the analysis offered in chapters 4 and 5? It is to this question that the epilogue will turn, however incompletely it answers this important query.

Notes

1



2



3



4

The following discussion derives from a number of sources, including: Donatella della Porta and Mario Diani, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Social Movements (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015); Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly, Dynamics of Contention (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Macur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965); Charles Tilly, Stories, Identities, and Political Change (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002); Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics, 3rd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Catherine Corrigal-­Brown, Patterns of Protest: Trajectories of Participation in Social Movements (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012); David A. Snow, Sarah A. Soule, and Hanspieter Kriesi, eds., The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004). The following discussion derives from a number of sources, including: Norberto Bobbio and Allan Cameron, Left and Right: The Significance of a Political Distinction (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996); J. E. Goldthorpe, An Introduction to Sociology, 3rd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); Chip Berlet and Matthew N. Lyons, Right-­Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort (New York: Guilford Press, 2000); T. Alexander Smith and Raymond Tatalovich, Cultures at War: Moral Conflicts in Western Democracies (Toronto: Broadview Press, Ltd., 2003). The following discussion derives from multiple sources, including: Ruth Wodak, The Politics of Fear: Analyzing Right-­Wing Popular Discourse (Los Angeles: Sage, 2015); Frank Mols and Jolanda Jetten, “Explaining the Appeal of Populist Right‐Wing Parties in Times of Economic Prosperity,” Political Psychology 37, no. 2 (2016): 275–92; Cas Mudde, “Introduction to the Populist Radical Right,” in The Populist Radical Right: A Reader, ed. Cas Mudde (New York: Routledge, 2016), 1–10; Hans‐Georg Betz and Carol Johnson, “Against the Current—­Stemming the Tide: The Nostalgic Ideology of the Contemporary Radical Populist Right,” Journal of Political Ideologies 9, no. 3 (2006): 311–37; Berlet and Lyons, Right-­Wing Populism in America; Ben Stanley, “The Thin Ideology of Populism,” Journal of Political Ideologies13, no. 1 (2008): 95–110; Cas Mudde and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser, Populism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017); Daniele Albertazzi and Duncan McDonnell, Populists in Power (London: Routledge, 2015). Cf. Michael Burawoy et al., Ethnography Unbound (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991); Margot Ely et al., Doing Qualitative Research (New York: Falmer Press, 1991); Robert C. Euler, Ethnographic Methodology (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1967); Robert C. Prus, Subcultural Mosaics and Intersubjective Realities (Albany: SUNY Press, 1997).

 

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1

W

hen Timothy McVeigh lit the fuse that fired the bomb that destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, on April 19, 1995, most Americans asked, “Why?” “Why,” people wondered, “would anyone do such a thing?” More recently, on August 12, 2017, in Charlottesville, Virginia, a twenty-­ year-­old alt-­right activist drove his car into a crowd of liberal, progressive protestors. The victims were there to express their support for the removal from public land in Charlottesville of a statue commemorating Confederate Civil War general Robert E. Lee. James Fields’s car struck and killed a thirty-­two-­year-­old woman named Heather Heyer. As with the Oklahoma City bombing, people expressed dismay about this terrible crime, asking, “what could make someone so angry he would kill someone over a statue?” This book sets out to answer the question of what inspired these—­and many other—­horrible acts. While the details of the answers will be developed in the chapters that follow, an outline of the answer can be sketched here as an introduction and a prologue. Oklahoma City and a host of other less-­destructive but similarly violent events are linked not by a common organization but by ideology and culture. There is a social movement in the United States today that is grounded in the ideals, values, and rituals of American political culture and is motivated by an ideology of fear and hate. Members of this movement—­both activists and sympathizers, some open and others latent—­believe the government of the United States has been completely corrupted. They believe that the goals and purposes

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of the American experiment have been undermined by groups and actors whose values and ideals are, from an archconservative point of view, un-­American, antithetical to how American life ought to be lived. Regardless of the particular claims any set of movement members might make, however, each group agrees that some left-­wing “other” has perverted American government and American values. Alt-­righters, for example, regularly claim that leftist conspirators of some form or another are promoting corrupt and evil policies like gun control, abandoning the gold standard, or advocacy of women’s and minority rights. Meanwhile, militia groups have generally tried to avoid explicitly racist language while still making the case that the power of the federal government has grown to levels that threaten American freedom. Both regularly claim that armed resistance provides the only way to secure liberty for all Americans now and in the future. Both groups regularly insist that America must be “taken back” from those who seek to harm it. Only then can America truly be great again. There are obviously many dimensions to this outline. Two in particular deserve a brief introduction here. First, as will be explored in more detail in this chapter and the next, it should be admitted that at least some of what the far right argues about the nature of the American founding is true. The American colonies were, to some degree, settled by people who were trying to escape what they saw as tyranny in an effort to achieve their individual rights. The settler’s story has become a central theme in American political culture. Thus, the far right’s complaint that contemporary American policies have tended to concentrate power in governing officials rather than leaving it with private individuals has “traction”: it expresses values, ideals, and perceptions that, however much they may be distorted and misremembered by contemporary actors, “make sense” in American political life. It is this cultural resonance that in part explains the enduring power of movements like the militia and the alt-­right in American politics. Second, the far right is virtually unique in contemporary American politics because its ideology justifies and encourages violence. Far-right thought legitimates the use of force to promote and defend alt-­right and militia worldviews. As will be seen, this, too, is informed by their vision of American political culture and history. Thus, not only do militia members and other right-­wing group adherents tell a story that has meaning in the context of American political culture, but they also tell it in a way that promotes extremism. Their actions, then, may encompass more than conventional political activities like voting, interest group membership, and media relations. They may also be deadly.

Political Culture, Ideology, and Myth in Political Life The rest of this chapter lays out the theoretical foundations on which this study rests. It focuses on three concepts that are central to the work’s approach: culture, ideology, and myth. Interacting as a system, culture provides the vessel in which all possible ideas, attitudes, values, and actions that make sense in a given community are held. Ideologies shape cultural raw materials into specific forms.

 

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Myths imbue these particular ideological constructions with a sacred, enduring significance. Thus, the chapter explores key dimensions of American political culture that are relevant for understanding modern far-right movements and highlight the ideological constructions from which they draw their mythologized inspiration.

Why Political Culture Matters Political culture can be conceived of as a set (or, for that matter, sets) of relatively shared ideas, ideals, concepts, stories, and myths that orient citizens within their political systems and that explain how and why people act as they do within a given polity. Viewed this way, a political culture delimits what are political issues and what are not, establishes what kinds of actions are appropriate and what kinds are not, and shapes the universe of the possible in a given polity.1 For any society, then, political culture provides community members with a means of communication that Marc Howard Ross has called “intersubjective”: the group recognizes various words, concepts, and behaviors both as “political” and as having a relatively shared meaning within the political culture.2 Political culture constitutes the broad array of options, questions, and attitudes that groups of people in specific societies accept as politically relevant and meaningful. It also defines other ideas, goals, and actions as inappropriate or nonpolitical as it delimits the ideas or actions that the community does not recognize as political or meaningful. As outlined here, political culture operates as a result of several, often unexamined, dimensions of human life that need to be made explicit. First among these assumptions is nothing is given. Nothing has an obvious meaning and significance in and of itself. It is only through association and interaction with others that terms, concepts, or actions become meaningful. By way of illustration, consider the handshake. Upon meeting another person, most Americans will extend their right hand in an attempt to shake the other person’s right hand. This action is so common that it is remarkable only if it is not immediately reciprocated. That is, handshakes are so expected in normal conduct that it is only their absence that really draws attention to the artificiality and yet profound significance of this symbolic gesture. After all, what is there in the grasping of two hands that makes it a valuable act? And why the right hand? Is there any reason that humans might not use some other mechanism to exchange greetings? The answer to all of these questions, of course, is that nothing makes the handshake meaningful except that people who believe it to be significant believe it to be significant. A handshake is a symbol of friendliness, respect, and trust because that is what people who shake each other’s hands believe it to mean. By contrast, the failure to shake hands when another expects it is an insult only because either the recipient, the community, or even the person who refuses to shake hands believes it to be an insult. Regardless of the artificiality of the symbolic insult of not shaking hands when a handshake is expected, it needs to be recognized that the failure to shake hands is an insult nonetheless. Humans do not, as a practical matter,

 

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intellectualize gestures and decide that, since the handshake is a social construct, its absence has no meaning. Instead, symbols, ideas, stories, myths, and concepts are norms that orient understanding and motivate action. Thus, a second assumption embedded in the definition of culture offered earlier is human beings make sense of their world in symbolic, referential terms. Just as nothing is given, it is only through understanding the contextual meanings of gestures, words, concepts, and symbols that humans can make sense of the world they interact with. Returning again to the handshake, once a human understands that an extended right hand is an invitation/­expectation to extend his or her own right hand, that person both has a guide to personal action and a baseline from which to anticipate the actions of others: once I extend my right hand, I expect the other person will extend his or hers. If the person extends his or her hand, I can then assume the person holds a particular set of attitudes and values, at least to the degree that I can assume the person understands the rituals of polite greeting in my culture. By contrast, if they fail to extend their hand, I can just as easily make a different set of assumptions about their ignorance, their rudeness, or both. The contextual meanings and patterns of action associated with gestures, symbols, concepts, and ideas provide tools through which humans can understand what is going on and can orient themselves for action and interaction. Humans do not only use cultural norms to orient action, of course. They also use culture to evaluate the experiences they have. Hence, a third assumption embedded in the definition of culture is that human beings understand life and orient their actions through symbolic, referential terms that contain embedded evaluative criteria by which appropriate action can be judged. Despite the artificiality of specific cultural constructions, individual political cultures contain evaluative criteria through which its members interpret right and wrong. The refusal to shake hands, for example, is likely to be considered inappropriate because it is a behavioral signal of attitudes and ideas that people who believe in the importance of shaking hands find objectionable. More broadly, any socially constructed term, concept, act, or symbol is embedded in complex patterns of evaluation. For those sharing similar understandings of what certain behaviors and attitudes mean, then, there will also be a shared interpretation of whether given acts or statements are appropriate or not. The point that contextually constructed terms and symbols are bound up in concepts of evaluation leads to a fourth dimension of the definition of culture offered earlier: sanctions are associated with particular understandings of appropriate and inappropriate conduct and attitudes. Within their limits specific cultures provide clues for appropriate action and establish standards by which individuals can justify and legitimate their actions and ideas—­including the imposition of sanctions on social deviants. Humans do not simply evaluate behaviors or ideas as right or wrong and then move on with their lives. Rather, as part of the general process of socialization, human beings sanction those who deviate from what is normal, expected, and generally held to be appropriate. Such sanctions can range across a spectrum of alternatives: people can face verbal reproaches, social ostracism, or even the death penalty if they transgress shared understandings of appropriate conduct. To violate local norms, then, can mean facing the wrath of the community.

 

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The broad range of possible ways culture frames meaning and identity for human beings leads to a fifth dimension of culture: there is a virtually infinite variety of meanings, behavioral assumptions, and evaluative standards that can be associated with specific gestures, concepts, terms, symbols, ideas, or acts. It does not follow that, because one community views extending the right hand to be a symbol of openness and friendship, all communities will do so. Instead, particular groups and communities may share relatively similar understandings of the meaning and appropriateness of a range of ideas, attitudes, behaviors, concepts, symbols, and gestures. Such groups can be said to share a culture. Groups that ascribe different meanings and evaluative standards to the range of human activities constitute different cultures. The potential variation, at least theoretically, is infinite. This possibly endless variety in cultures is perhaps best demonstrated by discussing basic human needs that would seem to transcend culture. Everyone, for example, needs to eat. Thus, all living people get hungry. Yet whatever the biological basis of hunger is, different groups and communities have wildly divergent ideas about how it is appropriate to satisfy that need. Some groups think nothing of eating beef; others find such behavior to be disgusting. Adherents of some cultures fry and eat maggots as the norm; adherents of other cultures cannot conceive the circumstance that would lead a person to eat bugs. Accordingly, the sixth dimension of the definition of culture offered earlier is: cultures shape what is admitted as an appropriate question, choice, or act in a particular group, and so shape the kinds of issues that concern the group and motivate it to action. Human experience demonstrates that people will go hungry rather than eat a convenient product considered appropriate for consumption in some cultures but excluded in their own, for example. Even starving persons may reject meat in a vegetarian culture, for example, and cannibalism is taboo almost everywhere. This is true because the culture defines what is and is not a food product as such. A product not on the cultural checklist of appropriate foods is, essentially, inedible because it is conceived to be inevitable. For social movements, culture can be seen to matter in multiple ways. For example, movements develop cultures that can either assist the movement in achieving its goals or undermine it—­cultures that can, and likely will, reflect aspects of the larger culture. In addition, existing cultural stories, norms, and mores can provide material for social movement formation—­for example, new groups of people can adopt established ideas (like a demand for political equality) and insist that the new group (say, African Americans) deserves to be included in the community that enjoys political equality. Extant cultural practices, like using religiously inspired music to advance a political agenda, can likewise shape how and why movements form. Collectively, political culture provides a repository of values, attitudes, and tactics that movements can use to both attract members and try to win changes in the political system.

American Political Culture This book does not explore social movements in the abstract, of course, any more than it examines political culture as a concept. Rather, it makes specific claims about one set of social movements—­the militia in the 1990s, and the

 

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renewed militia and the alt-­right in the 2010s—­in one country—­the United States. Accordingly, it needs to address the intersection of American political culture and the movements of the far right in US political life. Notably, any foray into the question of a nation’s “culture” is a journey into dangerous territory. Challenges to specific arguments can be raised from a host of perspectives. One can claim, for example, that a particular interpretation is empirically inaccurate. Also, cultural analyses are often attacked as ahistorical: specific cultural claims are believed to inappropriately use current ideas to evaluate past practices. Similarly, cultural studies are regularly accused of insensitivity to the dynamics of gender, race, ethnicity, region, and other subcultural forces in a particular community—­or all of these in any combination. Such concerns are particularly acute in the American case given the complexity of its political, economic, and social systems. However, even accounting for the numerous concerns that can challenge cultural analyses, there is a general consensus that American political culture embodies an array of concepts, ideals, norms, and rituals that shape political life in the United States in observable and important ways. Key Dimensions of American Political Culture for the Militia Movement  The analysis offered here of the relationship among political culture and the contemporary militia and alt-­right movement(s) rests on Ross’s notion of “public culture.”3 The concept of public culture holds that there are common terms of reference, symbols, and ideologies within which different groups and individuals press their claims for power, policy, and identity within specific political societies. We need not know what every citizen of a community wants, or desires, or believes, to understand a community’s culture. Rather, we can examine the rituals, norms, beliefs, and practices of a given community as sources of meaning and identity. Different people may have alternative understandings of what a specific concept means, but they each use the term to advance their political agenda. Some people might adopt positions consistent with what political philosopher Isaiah Berlin famously referred to as “negative freedom,” for example. For Berlin, “negative freedom” means freedom from most government rules and constraints. A political agenda grounded on the notion of negative freedom would likely promote limited taxation, a limited welfare state, and as little government regulation as is feasible. Other people in the same political system might insist that true freedom requires what Berlin referred to as “positive freedom,” however. The notion of positive freedom suggests that no one can truly be free until his or her basic needs have been provided for. People who take this position usually argue that government ought to tax members of the community to provide basic goods and services to those who cannot acquire the necessities of life for themselves. In either case, “freedom” is a core political value for the society, albeit one that can be used to promote a variety of political ideas and programs. Public culture is framed, among other places, in public documents, speeches, and campaigns, and political symbols referred to by others as they promote their agendas. For the United States, documents like the Declaration of Independence,

 

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the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the Emancipation Proclamation and Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, Franklin Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms” speech, Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” and his “I Have a Dream Speech” function as sources of the public culture. While this is by no means an exhaustive list of the foci of American public culture, these artifacts, and many others, provide an evocative repository of the kinds of values, ideas, and norms that shape American cultural life. These documents, and the public cultural symbols they contain, build shared terms that different groups and individuals use to press for their goals even if their specific agendas are widely divergent. A review of US public culture establishes several factors as significant in American society.4 One of these is the liberal character of American public life. Liberalism, at least in its philosophical sense, is at the core of the American experience. Americans value political equality, the sense that everyone is entitled to equal political rights, as opposed to social or economic equality. They advocate individualism, the idea that individuals have rights that should be protected by government, even as most individuals are expected to be responsible for their own decisions and their own fate. Other ideas—­like representative democracy (in which citizens elect others to represent them in government, with the expectation that those elected will promote the interests and values of their constituents across local, state, and national governments), tolerance (the idea that since individuals have rights and responsibilities, and those rights and responsibilities are the most important part of the political and social system, everyone has to let everyone else practice their values in order to preserve the opportunity for themselves), and capitalism (understood as an economic system in which individuals buy, sell, and trade goods and services with the intention of making a profit determined largely by market forces of supply and demand that establish who gets what, when, and for how much)—­feature as core elements of America’s public culture. Americans are also typically overtly patriotic, regularly espousing the virtues of American political and social life far more actively than members of many other societies do. Collectively, this liberal American political culture is often termed “civic,” meaning that it recognizes the need for government, but it expects government to be limited in scope, and that the rights of the individual should be protected and advanced in the political system. In addition to its liberalism, American political culture is remarkable for its exceptionalism. American public culture is exceptionalist in the sense that it is linked to a religious, proselytizing “urge.” Thus, Americans tend to believe in two related ideas: first, that everyone, regardless of race, religion, creed, or national origin, has “unalienable Rights”; and second, that Americans have a “mission”—­in the religious sense of the word—­to spread the fruits of liberty around the world. It is not enough to believe in liberty in American public culture. Instead, one must achieve it, both for oneself and for the rest of the world. The source of this missionary zeal is complex but can be outlined briefly. The religious founding of many of the early European colonies on the North American continent encouraged many Protestant sects to view themselves as working in a “New World” to make whatever kind of society they wished free

 

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from the limitations of the old, corrupted order. America would be a “shining city on a hill”—­the new Eden. (These sects established the rhetorical terms and style that many generations of succeeding immigrants used as they pressed their interests.) Once those Protestant religious sects lost much of their influence in New England, the “mission” to create a new Jerusalem was updated: first to tame a continent while “civilizing” Native American populations (Manifest Destiny); later to remake nature and order it as desired (the scientific and technological revolutions); and ultimately, in the twentieth century, to “save” the world for democracy (World Wars I and II, as well as the Cold War). Cumulatively, such factors created a frame or rhetoric in which political actions in America are often discussed in terms more commonly associated with religion than politics: political leaders, movements, and activists regularly find themselves described as sinners or saved, good or evil, punished or punishing. American politics often turns moralistic as one group insists that its side is true, right, and “American,” while opponents are evil people working to destroy the nation. Together, liberalism and exceptionalism create a context in which Americans, in making public appeals for public support for public policies, can find the kinds of intersubjective understandings that make political life possible. While specific appeals may shade the terms of reference differently, casting them in different lights and illuminating different features, the underlying structure of the appeals, if they are to be successful, must be framed in terms of the common, public culture. Importantly, these pillars of American political culture are not neutral, available to adherents of any political ideology for equal use. Rather, they tend to promote a politics of self-­reliance, action, and responsibility. Americans interpret liberalism and exceptionalism in ways that generally favor conservative models of individual responsibility, personal morality, and the potential for individual actions to change society. For example, Americans are generally more opposed to taxes, even in return for substantial welfare and other social benefits, than are most Europeans. Similarly, Americans impose much harsher penalties for individuals’ illegal drug use than do most European nations. Both of these policies can be seen as manifestations of the underlying American cultural predisposition to emphasize personal responsibility for one’s own well-­being. Thus, as will be seen throughout this work, the militia and alt-­right movements have had fertile ground in which to grow in the United States.

Why Ideology Matters Ideology can be defined as “a value system or belief system accepted as fact or truth by some group. It is composed of sets of attitudes towards the various institutions and processes of society. An ideology provides the believer with a picture of the world both as it is and as it should be, and, in doing so, organizes the tremendous complexity of the world into something fairly simple and understandable.” Put another way, ideology is “an agenda of things to discuss, questions to ask, hypotheses to make. We should be able to use it when considering the interaction between ideas and politics, especially systems of ideas that make

 

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claims, whether justificatory or hortatory.”5 Whereas political culture is the vessel of all possible political goals, ideals, and values, ideologies take the raw material of political culture and construct it into specific forms that define what concepts mean, what actions ought to be taken, and how individuals ought to behave. In other words, ideologies emerge in cultural contexts to turn potential actions and programs into actual ones. Numerous dimensions of this definition deserve careful consideration. For example, ideologies necessarily simplify reality.6 They link the abstract to the concrete. To take a case described earlier, the concept of “liberty” is a broad one. A specific ideology, however, may define “liberty” as “freedom from government interference in all areas of life,” whereas a separate ideology may define it as “freedom of the individual from the fear of hunger, cold, and other human problems.” Within a specific ideology, the concept means what the ideology holds, thus linking the ideational to the concrete. Ideologies also embody power relationships. They establish certain patterns of policies, programs, ideas, and interests as appropriate and proper while denigrating others. To study ideology, then, is to assess which power interests are being promoted by the ideology’s concepts, and which are being limited. Ideology performs these roles through three processes that Paul Ricoeur has labeled distortion, legitimation, and integration.7 “Distortion” means that the particular ways ideas, beliefs, values, and attitudes combine in specific ideologies inevitably distort reality. No ideology describes truth; rather, ideologies link condensed, composed, and simplified versions of experience into coherent wholes available for humans to use to organize their lives. As such, all political ideologies are distorted. They are untrue at some fundamental level. Indeed, this inevitable distortion provides fodder for endless debates, challenges, and vitality in political life. Legitimation, for Ricoeur, describes the terms in which the appropriateness of obedience and opposition are made clear to both leader and follower. Thus, ideology may enhance authority or may undermine it in favor of some countervailing force or position. Ideologies necessarily describe the way(s) some actors or institutions in society ought to have authority over others. They also frame the rhetoric by which authority might be challenged. Importantly, it is the ideology, not some objective or structural force, that establishes the legitimacy of particular political relationships. That is, there is no objective, inevitable reason why some person or group or idea or institution holds authority in a specific community. Rather, taking and keeping power is a continuous process of claiming power, consolidating authority, and facing challenges to one’s status. Any particular way of life emerges as a result of a political struggle among competing ideologies grounded in their cultural contexts. Ideologies contend for dominance in a perpetual quest for the authority to set the rules by which society will operate. Finally, according to Ricoeur, ideology performs the function of integration. Integration in this sense means that it provides a means by which individuals and groups establish, protect, and preserve their social identities. “We” believe this, an ideology establishes; “they” believe something else. Thus, the particular

 

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distortions of specific ideologies are linked to legitimation values of right and wrong to construct “our” group as right and decent and “their” group as wrong in an integrated whole. It is important to note that “ideology,” in the academic sense of the term, is not used to denigrate an opponent’s point of view as “false.” Instead, it is used to describe particular relationships of terms, concepts, attitudes, and beliefs. Ideologies, thus, can differ; but everyone has one, and everyone interprets the political world through the particular constructions of ideas and meanings that are incorporated in the ideologies they accept. Indeed, everyone requires an ideology: it is precisely because ideologies take complex terms and concepts like freedom and equality and imbue them with an empirical content—­that is, equality of opportunity and not equality of outcome; freedom from government pressure and not freedom in the form of government provision of the basic needs of life, and so on—­that political life becomes manageable. Additionally, ideologies make it possible to make assumptions about others’ attitudes, beliefs, and likely behaviors even as they provide evaluative criteria through which individuals can quickly decide to support or oppose specific political programs and policies. They provide guides for action defining what kinds of steps can and should be taken (or not) in specific contexts. And, perhaps most importantly, ideologies provide standards by which one can legitimate one’s own political preferences. Accordingly, it is crucial to understand any group or individual’s ideology if the goal is to recognize what motivates the group to act, or what shape any political action is likely to take. Further, it is important to recognize that the terms and values of any group’s ideology are meaningful to its members no matter how absurd they may seem to outsiders. Whether outsiders believe and are likely to act on the terms of the group’s ideology is not the point. Rather, what matters is that members of the group take their ideology seriously. Adherents use it to evaluate the politics they experience and establish the kinds of actions they will or will not take. Members of the group legitimate their choices in terms of their ideologies.

The Power of Myth A final foundation for the analysis offered in this book lies in the concept of myth. Myths are powerful narratives that both structure and provide meaning to our lives. Although myths are often—­unfortunately—­conceptualized as fictional stories with some moral lesson, this perception misses the depth of importance myths play in human life. Myths promote the extension of one’s private point of view to the community at large as a moral duty.8 As Henry Tudor has noted, a myth is an interpretation of reality, whether fictionalized or not, that the myth-­maker (and believer) takes to be fact. Myths, then, are true not because they are factual, but because they are believed to be true by their adherents. In addition, myths have structure: they have protagonists who experience beginnings, middles, and ends. Political myths, as a subset of myths in general,

 

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often focus on how the community came into being and how participants in that society ought to act. Mythic protagonists serve as models of ideal public action, at least for the members of the group who believe in the myth and its teachings. Myths and their heroes thereby place a particular community in an ongoing dramatic struggle which, the lesson explains, the community can win if they follow the model of the hero. Myths also provide a way that different members of large groups can recognize themselves as members of a common community, as an “us” versus whatever “them” is challenging “our” way of life. They teach their followers about the values, goals, and rituals that define one group as distinct from another. Importantly, the narrative is public: everyone familiar with the terms of the myth can see for themselves who the heroes are in their community—­heroes are those who enact the myth. They can also see who isn’t a hero: pretty much everyone else. Myths thereby take the stuff of culture and the logic of ideology and shape them into a founding, sustaining narrative of a public, communal, proper way of life for an entire society. The myth of the hero can serve as one example of the way myths function in the communities they inhabit. The hero’s journey, as Joseph Campbell has explained, is inevitably a struggle against multiple challenges, enemies, and even self-­doubts. Despite these obstacles, however, the hero is able to achieve his—­ almost always his—­goals and “save” the community. In fact, the difficulty of the challenge is the cause and the proof of the hero’s own greatness. The hero myth is more than just a narrative, however. It is also a model for action. Anyone might be a hero: the path to heroism is laid out in the narrative of the myth. An individual simply has to follow the terms of the myth, face a series of challenges bravely and squarely, and defy the pressures and forces that seek to deter the hero’s quest. The myth assigns participants to various roles, each of which is imbued with a set of expectations for attitude, behavior, and motivation. As the term “hero” suggests, myths, like cultures and ideologies, imbue their characters with moral and ethical places in society. To be a hero, after all, is generally understood to be a good thing. To be a coward or a toady or a traitor isn’t. To be a hero is to be above others, morally and ethically. It is to take responsibility to protect and save the community. To not be a hero is to be less than a hero. It is to not care or to not try to save the weak and the defenseless against the threats they face. It is possible, of course, for heroes to fail, just as it is possible for non-­heroes to discover their inner strength and become more than they were. But such changes are rare. The hero story has a structure, and each of the actors expects the other to behave in fixed ways according to their natures. As will be seen, both the militia and the alt-­right present mythic versions of their ideals and goals. They regularly claim to be enacting or restoring key American myths, offering narratives of their actions that seek to link their individual lives to community values and aspirations. Both groups imbue the ordinary stuff of daily life, ranging from child-­rearing to business affairs to political in-fighting, with moral depth and consequence for everyone in society. Their mythic stories amplify what might otherwise be seen as simple political disputes. Their myths insist that their opponents are not just seeking a different set of

 

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policies; rather, they are threatening all that is right, true, and proper. Such mythic constructions push members of these social movements to act in ways that fulfill the hero’s promise to save society from the evils it faces. In working for their political goals, far-right activists imagine they are reenacting the hero’s journey—­if only in their own minds. Militia and alt-­right groups, then, often insist politics is a clash of Titans, a struggle for the soul of the American community. As a consequence, political conflicts between the far right and the rest of society are deeply passionate—­even rage-­filled. Compromise can be difficult when one side—­or the other, or both—­claims that its political enemies are bent on the destruction of the “American” way of life.

A Brief History of Right-­Wing Populism in the United States Right-­wing populist movements have existed throughout American history. Some of these operated much as militias do today: their members insisted that the group was a volunteer defense force protecting the community from various threats. Others were explicitly racist, seeking to assert and maintain white dominance of US society. (Prior to the American Revolution, for example, slave patrols consisting of slave owners and overseers regularly patrolled slave-­holding regions, seeking to repress any slave rebellion or to capture any escaped slaves.) Contemporary right-­wing populist movements draw on ideas and practices that have developed across American history. Understanding these groups today, then, requires an understanding of how their values and attitudes are situated in American political life. Berlet and Lyons argue that the Jacksonian era (1820s–1850s) constitutes the first example of rightist populism in post-­Revolution U.S. political history.9 Jacksonian populists worked to break the power monopoly held by bankers and other powerful interest groups mostly based in the East Coast US states. Their efforts to change American society resulted in the expansion of the right to vote to most adult white males—­which by today’s standards is not very broad but was a dramatic expansion of the franchise for the period. Perhaps most importantly, Jacksonian era populists regularly used the rhetoric of elite scapegoating to advance their agenda: Jackson’s supporters insisted that “elites” were manipulating the political and economic system against the interests and desires of “the people.” That claim—­that “they” (the elite) are harming “us” (the people)—­has become a core dimension of populist movements of both the left and the right ever since. Later right-­wing populist groups incorporated new ideas into the pantheon of “right wing populist” ideology. The first Ku Klux Klan, organized in Pulaksi, Tennessee, in 1865 or 1866, presented itself as a militia operating to defend the community against criminal violence. Importantly, Klan members insisted that any African Americans who exercised authority or took property constituted a threat to the “proper” social order. Klan members rode across the countryside threatening, intimidating, and committing brutal violence against former slaves and others who Klansmen felt were threatening their way of life. In so doing,

 

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Klansmen sought to reimpose racial segregation in the aftermath of the US Civil War. For the Klan, claiming the status of a militia allowed them to borrow the memory of the American Revolution and bend it to their racist agenda.10 In the decades that followed the Civil War, other racist and ethnocentric right-­wing populist movements rose in the United States. Whether it was the anti-­Chinese movement of the late nineteenth century or the imposition of temperance and associated values on central and South European immigrants at the turn of the twentieth century, various groups promoted views that scapegoated often powerless groups while seeking to impose “right” values on them. When post-­Darwinian ideas of “race suicide” were introduced to American politics during the Progressive Era, for example, leaders such as Theodore Roosevelt worried that if racial integration went too far, white people might lose their strength and capacity to rule the world. The notion that an alien “other” was threatening the (white) American way was thus well entrenched in US society by end of the nineteenth century. In the twentieth century, right-­wing populist groups emerged that emphasized anti-­Communist, anti-­immigrant, pro-­fascist, and anti–civil rights values. As Fascists took power in Germany and Italy in the 1920s and 1930s, for example, American right-­wing populists dreamed that the United States might undergo a similar transformation in patriotism, capitalist growth, and racial pride. In this vision, “real”—­usually white, natural born—­Americans would rally together to assert their national and racial pride and defend their worldview against all challengers. In fact, groups like the American Legion promoted proto-­Fascist views that linked the importance of white racial supremacy and military preparedness to claims that Jews and Communists were working to undermine traditional “American” values. The Second Ku Klux Klan was founded in 1915 as an anti-­ immigrant group as well as a racist one: it advocated against immigrants, Jews, Communists, and any group not white, Protestant, and of north European heritage. During the same period, the radio priest Father Coughlin, who began his career as a political liberal, combined anti-­Semitism with anti-­unionism to build a model of a corporatist state in which all members participated and kept their “place.” Groups like the Liberty League argued that Jews and Communists were responsible for the Great Depression. America First, an anti-­interventionist movement that delayed the entry of the United States into World War II, was grounded on right-­wing populist thought: America First activists insisted that the United States must stay out of the war because it was only by defending properly “American” values at home that the nation could avoid being corrupted by alien cultures. Even individual citizens got involved in the campaign to keep the United States free of what they saw as improper “foreign,” “alien,” values. Henry Ford, the founder of the Ford Motor Company, whose Model T car put America on wheels, used his immense wealth to promote “American” values and to scapegoat those he believed undermined the American way of life. For example, Ford required the Dearborn Independent, a newspaper he owned, to publish articles derived from a book titled The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The Protocols were forged sometime in the late 1800s or early 1900s. They purport to describe the

 

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complex conspiratorial relationships by which Jews actually control all of the world’s major institutions and nations. The Protocols have featured in anti-­Semitic campaigns ever since they were published. Ford insisted that excerpts from The Protocols be published as a series of articles in the Dearborn Independent under the title The International Jew. The paper sold over 500,000 copies in the 1920s. Meanwhile, Ford ordered his factories to socialize workers into proper “American” attitudes: foreign-­born workers in his factories were taught English and forced to learn “American” political values and “American” social norms in Ford-­r un schools. Such actions, he thought, were crucial to defending “America” from its potential demise. The Cold War and the competition between the West and the Soviet bloc provided the next impetus for right-­wing populism in the United States. American society during the period was rocked by what is now known as the “Red Scare”—­a time when many Americans feared that Communists might be working to harm the United States, others feared that efforts to investigate Communist infiltration were subverting American liberty, and yet other Americans feared both at the same time. Groups like the John Birch Society and the Liberty Lobby exploited this atmosphere of fear to concoct various conspiracy theories “proving” that leftists were in league with the Soviet Union in a plot to destroy America. Birchers, for example, believed that large US corporations were controlled by Communists. This conspiracy was aimed at destroying the natural liberty that the pioneer lifestyle had created among early Americans. Instead of individuals doing for themselves, Birchers insisted, business and intellectual elites were creating a world in which Americans would be dependent on and controlled by the wealthy and powerful—­especially those who were financed by international capital. (“International capital” is an anti-­Semitic code phrase among many right-­wing activists: since Jews are alleged to control the international banking system, “international capital” is a coded way of claiming Jews are manipulating the banking system for their own benefit.) The Liberty Lobby argued, too, that Jews were part of the global conspiracy to rob Americans of their freedom by allowing massive corporations controlled by international capital to control Americans’ lives. This claim, of course, was consistent with Henry Ford’s understanding of the power of Jews as expressed in the Protocols. Such attitudes were broadly shared across US society in this period. Starting in the 1970s, innovative elements derived from fundamentalist and evangelical Christianity emerged in right-­wing populist thought. Reacting to the rise of secular humanist politics in the 1960s and 1970s that had led to policies like ending prayer in school and the constitutional protection of the right to choose abortion, evangelical and fundamentalist Christians became active in politics and worked to advance their political agenda. They combined several dimensions of “old” right thought with religious zeal as they advanced their program. Evangelicals reinterpreted established claims that Jews and Communists were out to dominate and distort American culture. They insisted that such efforts were part of an explicitly secular effort to undermine America’s true, Christian heritage. Some radical strains of Christian theology, such as Christian Identity and Catholic Marianism, went so far as to argue that whites are God’s chosen people, that Jews are the agents of Satan, and that an international conspiracy of

 

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Jews and others was actively attempting to destroy white Christians on behalf of the Antichrist. The Christian Right also introduced apocalypticism and millennialism to right-­ wing populist ideologies. Millennialism refers to the end times—­the time when the Antichrist is to rise, according to Christian doctrine, and Armageddon—­the Apocalypse—­is to occur. Armageddon is a good thing, according to Christians, since it heralds the return of Christ and His kingdom on Earth. Christians differ, however, as to whether Christ will return only after Armageddon (post-­ millennialists) or will return only when Christians have acted to establish and enforce Christ’s law on Earth (pre-­millennialists). Pre-­millennialists insist that Christian values must be imposed on the world at large since such imposition is actually an act of love—­by establishing Christian law in practice, pre-­millennialists insist that they are helping sinners enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Another development that deserves discussion in this survey is the role that survivalist and white supremacist thought began to play in right-­wing populist ideology in the 1970s and 1980s. In this period, these two groups took many elements from both old and new right thought, added materials relevant to contemporary politics, and formed a new branch of right-­wing populism in the United States. Survivalists, for example, took the raw materials of the period and created an apocalyptic vision of the nation’s likely future that clearly related to that of the Christian millennialists. Survivalists looked at the many problems facing Americans in the period (fuel shortages, increased crime, and concerns about nuclear war, among others) and imagined that ordinary social order was on the verge of collapse. Smart people, survivalists insisted, needed to figure out how to survive the dystopic world that was coming. White supremacists, meanwhile, surveyed the same landscape but drew different conclusions about the American future. For supremacists, the causes of the ills facing the United States were obvious. Supremacists claimed that minorities—­ mostly African Americans, but immigrants and Jews too—­had caused the surge of crime and drugs and violence that rocked America’s cities in the 1960s and 1970s. In addition, they claimed that the government was a co-­conspirator in destroying the racial and political superiority of “real”—­white—­Americans. After all, government allowed immigrants to enter the country, thereby weakening the power of white people. In addition, white supremacists insisted that government support for the civil rights of minority persons—­enshrined in laws like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965—­was making the nation weaker by harming white power. Thus, supremacists insisted that the only way to restore American greatness was to return to an America in which racial segregation and white dominance were restored. As the following chapters demonstrate, the broad range of ideas, attitudes, values, and agendas espoused by right-­wing populist movements has been continuously mixed and remixed to sustain new movements seeking different goals. Some tend to avoid explicit racism, sexism, or anti-­immigration attitudes in their rhetoric (militia groups), while others are open about their white supremacism (the alt-­right). In either case, right-­wing populism drives the movement. The particular nature of 1990s militia ideology will be addressed in the next chapter. (The alt-­right will be addressed in chapter 5.) As will be seen, the 1990s

 

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militia attempted to build an ideology that elided the most exclusionary, reactionary parts of historical right-­wing populism in favor of a more inclusive, politically appealing vision of still-­conservative American future. The 1990s militia tried to avoid racial and religious exclusivism in its rhetoric as it worked to build a new, broad-­based right-­wing movement in the United States. The movement’s failure to persuade Americans at large that their allegedly non-­threatening, 1990s version of right-­wing populism was the new, permanent face of the far right of American politics is at least part of the reason the movement was in decline when the first edition of Rage on the Right appeared. As chapters 4 and 5 demonstrate, however, decline was not destruction. The alt-­right resurged in the 2010s, on terms similar to those that shape the rise of the 1990s—­but that also responded to the social and political conditions of the latter period.

Myth, Ideology, and Culture in Popular Culture: The Patriot and Red Dawn Taken together, the interaction of myth, ideology, and culture can be seen to frame and profoundly influence the formation, actions, and future course of the militia movement and the alt-­right. Militia and alt-­right ideology takes these resources and shapes them into a form that establishes meaning for movement members. Then, specific myths of American political life imbue the movement with a model for action that inspires confidence in their ultimate success. To illustrate one way the militia myth, in particular, was informed by and became deeply ingrained in American political culture, this section offers an extended analysis of two movies: The Patriot (Sony Pictures, USA, 2000) and Red Dawn (United Artists, 1984). These films offer contemporary representations of heroic militiamen seeking to save the nation from an oppressive, and incredibly powerful, foe. As such, they re-­center the myth of the militia for modern audiences.11

The Patriot Starring Mel Gibson, the Academy Award–winning actor and director of Braveheart, The Patriot loosely integrates events from the lives of Revolutionary War figures Francis Marion and Daniel Morgan. The film chronicles the events that lead a reluctant citizen-­farmer to join the fight against the British invasion of South Carolina during the American Revolution. It shows the hero—­Gibson, playing a character named Benjamin Martin—­begin as an opponent of fighting a war against the British. After one of his sons is murdered by a British officer, however, Martin organizes a militia unit. He becomes the unit’s leader and uses his skills to harass and then defeat British forces as they advance through the South. He also witnesses the British surrender at Yorktown before returning home to his former life. As it unfolds, the film articulates a version of American history and culture that is central to the modern militia movement’s identity and self-­asserted legitimacy. Accordingly, the movie serves as a useful place from which to suggest the continuing power of the militia myth in American political life. As the film

 

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opens, Benjamin Martin is a member of the South Carolina legislature debating whether to send troops to join George Washington’s forces in the North. Despite (or perhaps because of) his prior military experience in the French and Indian Wars, Martin is a strong opponent of joining the fighting. He reminds his fellow legislators that the war will be fought among their homes and families and that it will be impossible for them to protect their children from the sights and sounds of violence. Instead, he advocates negotiation and peace. Despite the passion of his appeal, he loses. Once the legislative session is over, Martin emerges from the state house to find that his oldest son has joined the force South Carolina is forming to send north. While Martin is initially opposed to his son’s choice, eventually he accepts it and returns home to his plantation. By implication, he will not bother the British so long as the British do not bother him. When the British invade South Carolina, however, Martin’s non-­interference policy is shattered. Martin’s oldest son is wounded in a battle near the family homestead and stumbles home for care. Dozens of other wounded American soldiers also make their way to Martin’s plantation. When British forces occupy the plantation, their commander, Colonel Tavington, orders that all American prisoners be killed. He also commands that Martin’s oldest son be taken prisoner and hanged as a spy. Finally, Tavington insists that Martin’s plantation be burned. In the ensuing clamor Colonel Tavington murders one of Martin’s younger sons. After this atrocity, Martin becomes a warrior again. Catching up with the British troops who arrested his son, Martin makes use of the skills he had learned in the past and, with the help of his sons, kills all the British soldiers and rescues his oldest son. This killing is brutal, involving not only muskets but also axes and knives. It is also, the film makes clear, justified. It is the only way to save a wrongly accused man. Now a confirmed partisan, Martin organizes a militia that hides in the swamps of coastal South Carolina and makes highly successful hit-­and-­r un raids against British units and supply lines. Martin’s militia is mostly composed of farmers who, like Martin, would have preferred to be left alone but who were swept up in the fighting as British forces abused their rights and liberties. One is a slave who ultimately hopes to win his freedom. Another is a local preacher who insists God wants the Revolution to succeed, thereby advancing human freedom. As fierce and as angry as these men are, then, the film clearly depicts them as justified in their rage. Such men are not killing for killing’s sake. Instead, they are honorable, righteous men motivated to act in defense of their values and freedoms. The militia is shown to play a key role in defeating the British during their campaign in North Carolina. When militia troops retreat in chaos during a battle, British troops chase them. The militia, however, is leading the British into a trap. Once the militia retreats over the crest of a hill, regular American Army troops ambush the British and destroy them. The militia thereby defeats the British Army—­supposedly the strongest, best-­equipped army in the world. Once the British surrender at Yorktown, under Martin’s watchful gaze, he returns home to rebuild his life—­a life, it is clear, he would never have left had

 

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the British simply left him alone. Arriving back in South Carolina, he finds his old militia compatriots, including the now-­freed former slave, working to rebuild his house. One informs him that they knew they had to start rebuilding the country somewhere; his house seemed like a good place to start. The war, then, is over. Martin can let go of his rage and make a new life and family, free from the brutalities of an oppressive government. There are a number of dimensions of The Patriot that express values, attitudes, and beliefs that appeal to and inspire members of the modern militia movement. Martin’s heroic motives, for example, are exemplary. He wishes only to be left alone. He has no political ambition. He seeks to harm no one. Instead, if he is allowed to farm his land, he will interfere with no one else’s life. It is only after his simple life is disrupted by an aggressive, immoral, irredeemable government agent (Colonel Tavington) that Martin becomes enraged. Then, once the source of the rage is gone, Martin cares only about returning home and going about his business independent of others’ actions. His choices are shown to be pragmatic, appropriate, and moral. As such, he is the archetypal individualist—­a man interested only in pursuing his personal goals, with no desire to impose his preferences on others. Contemporary militia advocates also draw lessons from the tactics the militia in The Patriot use to defeat the British. In the film, when American militia troops confront well-­disciplined, experienced British forces in open battle, they nearly always lose. When properly used, however, the militia is a powerful and effective force. This means that when militia forces are expected to line up and fight a disciplined, powerful enemy like the British Army, they fail. But when they are unleashed to harass enemy lines of communication and supply, the militia is very effective. Even the mighty British Army cannot handle the militia when it operates as a guerrilla force. The militia, then, can counter, frustrate, and challenge the power of even the world’s most powerful military. Cumulatively, The Patriot takes the liberalism and exceptionalism of American political culture and rearticulates the revolutionary myth of the militia. Martin as mythic hero—­and thus as a cultural example of ideal behavior and values—­is an individualist and a democrat. He believes in the power of hard work and individual morality. His courage provides a foundation around which his community organizes for action. He has a vision of the proper structure of society and is willing to act aggressively, even rage-­fully, in order to defend and construct his preferred way of life. Then, at the height of his power, his innate goodness and trustworthiness demonstrate themselves and he goes home, leaving behind the trappings of power he accepted only as a necessity. He will again be that which he apparently always wanted to be: an American icon.

Red Dawn Red Dawn updates the militia myth to contemporary circumstances. It tells the story of a group of high school students who form a militia to fight against Soviet and Cuban forces that suddenly invade the United States. Like The Patriot, it offers a vision of committed, passionate, even enraged citizens who apply their creativity and their knowledge of the local area to defeat a vastly superior enemy.

 

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As Red Dawn opens, it shows what appears to be a typical American school day: students arrive for class, teachers teach, and people go about their daily lives. It is clear that tensions have been escalating between the United States and its Cold War enemy, the Soviet Union, but there is no reason to suspect a war is about to start. Suddenly, however, paratroopers descend on the town. The Soviets have successfully launched a surprise attack on the United States, and the small town of Calumet, Colorado, becomes one of the hotspots of the new war. As Soviet and Cuban forces land in Calumet, a group of students led by Patrick Swayze race to escape into the nearby mountains. They gather their friends and as much gear as they can and race into the hills to flee the occupation of their town. While many of their friends and family are captured and imprisoned, the small band of friends—­many of whom had played on the high school football team—­form a militia named for their high school mascot: the Wolverines. As a militia, the Wolverines undertake numerous hit-­and-­r un raids against the forces occupying their community. These raids make it hard for Soviet and Cuban forces to operate effectively, particularly in rural and mountainous areas. In time, they rescue an American fighter pilot who has been shot down in combat with Soviet aircraft. The pilot explains the broader shape of the war to the Wolverines, informing them that many cities in the United States had been obliterated as the war began, but that attacks by militia units like the Wolverines all around the United States were hurting the Soviets and helping American forces fight back against their enemies. In time, most of the Wolverines are killed—­some in direct combat with Soviet forces, and others after they are betrayed by traitors. However, two of their members eventually manage to sneak into territory controlled by American forces. As the film ends, the Americans are victorious. The audience sees a plaque placed near the Wolverines’ camp that reads, “In the early days of World War III, guerrillas—­mostly children—­placed the names of their lost upon this rock. They fought here alone and gave up their lives, so ‘that this nation shall not perish from the earth.’ ” Like the heroes of The Patriot, the Wolverines reenact the militia myth for a modern audience. Their patriotic motives and their creative tactics make it possible for them to defeat—­or at least hinder—­the operations of the mighty Soviet military. The group survives betrayal and hardship and wins despite being badly outgunned and profoundly under-­supplied. Their heroism is literally monumental: they stand as a testament to what Americans can do in the face of daunting odds—­if they just have the courage of their convictions.

Conclusion The militia myth makes sense in the context of American political culture. It is constructed in and shaped by terms and values inherent within the broader context of US political culture. It promotes an understanding of what it means to be a “good” American that, as the succeeding chapters of this book will make clear, can be deployed by militia and alt-­right activists to legitimate their activities. Since contemporary militia and alt-­right members believe these “right” values

 

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to be under assault from other parts of the political system, they emphasize the use of violence to protect and promote their ideas and values. Ultimately, the existence and activities of the modern American militia movement and alt-­right are signs that the American Revolution is not over. Its values, or at least a version of its values, remain points of pride, contention, and action for many Americans. While the 1990s militia movement was short-­lived, it served as the foundation for a second militia movement that arose in the 2010s. It also shaped the rise of the alt-­right during the same period. It is for this reason that the rest of this book examines how and why this revolutionary story has influenced and will continue to influence American politics for years to come.

Notes

1



2



3 4

The following discussion of culture derives from multiple sources, including: Mary Douglas, Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology (London: Barrie and Rockliff, 1970); Michael Thompson, Richard Ellis, and Aaron Wildavsky, Cultural Theory (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1990); Mary Douglas, In the Active Voice (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982); Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973); Paul Hopper, Understanding Cultural Globalization (Malden, MA: Polity, 2007); Jan Nederveen Pieterse, Globalization and Culture: Global Mélange, 3rd ed. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015); Lane Crothers, Globalization and American Popular Culture, 4th ed. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017); Marwan M. Kraidy, Hybridity, or the Cultural Logic of Globalization (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2005). Marc Howard Ross, “Culture and Identity in Comparative Political Analysis,” in Comparative Politics: Rationality, Culture, and Structure, ed. Mark Lichbach and A. S. Zuckerman (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 42–80. Ross, “Culture and Identity.” The following discussion rests on a number of works. For fuller discussion, see John Kenneth White, The Values Divide: American Politics and Culture in Transition (New York: Chatham House, 2003); John W. Kingdon, America the Unusual (New York: Worth, 1999); Daniel Judah Elazar, American Federalism: A View from the States, 3rd ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1984); Daniel Judah Elazar, The American Mosaic: The Impact of Space, Time, and Culture on American Politics (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1994); Richard Ellis, American Political Cultures (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1955); Richard Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It (New York: Vintage, 1974); Samuel P. Huntington, American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1981); Frederick Jackson Turner, The Frontier in American History (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1962); and Aaron Wildavsky, The Rise of Radical Egalitarianism (Washington, DC: American University Press, 1991); Daniel J. Boorstin, The Genius of American Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953); James Davison Hunter, Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America (New York: Basic Books, 1991); Seymour Martin Lipset, American Exceptionalism: A Double-­Edged Sword (New York: Norton, 1996); Charles Lockhart, The Roots of American Exceptionalism: Institutions, Culture, and Politics (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003); Deborah L. Madsen, American Exceptionalism (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1998); Robert N. Bellah, Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and Steven Tipton, Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (New York: Harper and Row, 1985); Lawrence H. Fuchs, The American Kaleidoscope: Race, Ethnicity, and the Civic Culture (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1990); Philip Gleason and Kenneth L. Karst, Belonging to America: Equal Citizenship and the Constitution (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989); Anne Norton, Alternative Americas: A Reading of Antebellum Political Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986); Rogers Smith, “Beyond Tocqueville, Myrdal and Hartz: The Multiple Traditions in America,” American Political Science Review 87: 549–66.

 

Notes

5



6



7



8



9

10

11

33

Lyman Tower Sargent, Contemporary Political Ideologies: A Comparative Analysis, 11th ed. (New York: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1999), 3. The following discussion derives from a number of sources, including: Terry Eagleton, Ideology: An Introduction (London: Verso, 2007); Charles Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004); Manfred Steger, The Rise of the Global Imaginary: Political Ideologies from the French Revolution to the Global War on Terror (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); Óscar Garcia Agustin, Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society, and Culture (Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2015); Terrell Carver, “Ideology: The Career of a Concept,” in Ideals and Ideologies: A Reader, ed. T. Ball and R. Dagger (New York: Longman, 1998), 9. Paul Ricoeur, Lecture on Ideology and Utopia. Edited by G. Taylor (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986). Unless otherwise noted, all discussion of these concepts is from this source. The following discussion derives from numerous sources, including: Alan Dundes, Sacred Narrative: Narratives in the Theory of Myth (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984); Thomas J. Sienkewicz, Theories of Myth: An Annotated Bibliography (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 1997); Robert Alan Segal, Myth: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); Laurence Coupe, Myths (New York: Routledge, 1997); Claude Lévi-­Strauss, Myth and Meaning (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978); Clyde Kluckhohn, “Myths and Rituals: A General Theory,” Harvard Theological Review 35 (1942): 45–79; Alan Dundes, Folklore Matters (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1989). Chip Berlet and Matthew Lyons, Right-­Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort (New York: Guilford Press, 2000). Some early militias were founded as slave patrols—­that is, groups of vigilantes who worked to capture escaped slaves or who mobilized when slaves rebelled against enslavement. Cf. Sally E. Hadden, Slave Patrols: Law and Violence in Virginia and the Carolinas (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001). There is no equivalent film that offers a heroic version of the alt-­right in the United States. William Pierce’s racist book, The Turner Diaries (1978), is often cited as a core text for racists in the United States. Similarly, the early film Birth of a Nation (1915), which was based on Thomas Dixon’s book, The Klansman, presents a heroic Klansman saving the South from rampaging ex-­slaves. In light of contemporary values and ideals, neither is likely to be remade for a modern audience in their original form, however.

 

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T

he militia movement of the 1990s rose in reaction to two politically and socially jarring events. The first was the standoff between federal agents and Randy Weaver and his family on Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in August 1992. The second was the April 1993 destruction of the David Koresh-­led Branch Davidian religious compound in Waco, Texas, following a fifty-­one-­day siege. Ideologues and organizers of what came to be called the militia movement used these events as justifications for creating and expanding a new militia in America, one separate from government control and oversight precisely because it was intended to check and limit the power of the federal government. In the case of the militia, events preceded the formation of both its organizational and its ideological structures. Militia organizers responded to events as they unfolded, building an ideology and an organization without a coherent plan. These activists linked the myth of the revolutionary militia to values embedded in American political culture to legitimate both their ideas and their actions. This chapter addresses the events militia leaders used to build their movement. It examines the events in and of themselves and then explores the way(s) various groups and activists used the details of what happened at Ruby Ridge and at Waco to create the 1990s militia movement.

The Siege at Ruby Ridge If there is any irony in the events that took place on Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in August 1992, at least some of it must lie in the fact that neither Randy Weaver,

34

 

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his family members, nor those of his friends who became the central actors in the Siege at Ruby Ridge were members of the militia movement in America. Indeed, they could not have been: the militia movement did not yet exist when the events described in this section unfolded. Moreover, even had it existed, they would not have been members: their philosophies and attitudes about the proper way to live one’s life were fundamentally inconsistent with the ideas and values of the 1990s militia movement. However, the Weavers’ actions, and those of various federal government agencies like the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), set in motion a chain of reactions that led to the formation of the 1990s militia movement.

Randy Weaver’s Path to Ruby Ridge Randy Weaver did not seek to become a hero to anti-­government activists around the United States. Nor did he imagine his story would become a founding seed of a new militia movement. Weaver, who grew up in Iowa, went through Special Forces training in the US Army during the Vietnam War, although he never served in the war there. After leaving the army, he got a job working for John Deere in Cedar Falls, Iowa. He married Vicki Jordinson in 1971. They had three children by 1982, and while friends and neighbors were aware that they held deeply conservative political values, there was nothing particularly distinctive about their politics or their lifestyle at that point.1 Certainly nothing about them suggested they would either get into a prominent dispute with the federal government or become symbols around which a nationwide social movement would form. If any single event can be seen to have led the Weavers down a new path of conservative Christianity and explicit racism—­the values that would lead them to Idaho—­Vicki’s reading of Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth in 1978 is the most likely candidate.2 Lindsey’s book tells an apocalyptic story of the forces of good fighting the forces of evil in a great religious struggle. The forces of evil are represented by foreigners, especially those of color, as well as Communists and Jews who refused to accept Jesus as Messiah. In the book, the forces of good are Christian literalists who accept God’s word as the absolute law governing their lives. At the end of Lindsey’s book, Earth is consumed in apocalyptic fire, true believers are raptured to heaven, and Christ returns to establish a new Garden of Paradise on Earth.3 Although Randy and Vicki Weaver had both expressed racially biased opinions prior to reading Lindsey’s work, they adopted more extreme positions regarding race and religion after 1978. They became what they called “Legalists”: people who took the Bible literally. They rid their house of photographs on the grounds that pictures are graven images. They insisted that a one-­world government was growing in power, largely because computers were spreading everywhere. They insisted that the new one-­world government would be led by the Antichrist. They also stopped celebrating Christmas on grounds that it was a pagan holiday. Meanwhile, Randy began denying the Holocaust and came to believe that a conspiracy of Free Masons had made it possible for

 

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groups like the Illuminati, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Trilateral Commission to take control of the US government on behalf of Jewish servants of the Antichrist. Randy then began espousing his views at work, where he had risen to a supervisory position. This brought him into conflict with both his employees and his supervisors. Their demands that he cease proselytizing at work informed his growing sense that Iowa was no longer a safe and comfortable home for him and his family. His sense that the end times foreseen in the Bible were approaching added to his discomfort with his Iowa home. The Weavers left Iowa in 1983. They intended to move to Montana, where they thought they would find freedom to practice their religion as they wished.4 Unable to find affordable land there, the Weavers crossed the border into northern Idaho. They felt comfortable in that area, where the peaks were jagged and the neighbors were distant—­and almost entirely white. They bought land on Ruby Ridge in September 1983. They moved into a self-­built cabin there in March 1984. The family’s new home lacked amenities considered standard for most Americans: electricity, indoor plumbing, and other facilities. From all accounts the Weavers were happy there, however.5 The Weaver’s physical isolation from mainstream American society was mirrored by an increasing ideological distance as well. Attitudes they rarely expressed in Iowa found voice in Idaho. Weaver—­fatefully, it turned out—­began attending meetings of the Aryan Nations, a white supremacist group prominent in northern Idaho. He also openly declared his ideological extremism: for example, in 1989 Randy was pictured wearing a T-­shirt with the slogan “Just Say No—­To ZOG.” (ZOG stands for “Zionist Occupied Government.”) As Weaver’s racism and anti-­Semitism grew, so did his connection to the religious movement known as Christian Identity. 6 Christian Identity preaches that Jews are the children of Satan, while white people—­generally understood as people of north European heritage—­are the true Israelites, the real chosen of God. Accordingly, the coming Armageddon would restore whites to their proper place at God’s right hand in the Garden of Paradise. The final battle would pit God-­fearing, literalist whites against Communists, Asians, Africans, Jews, and any white person who failed to follow God’s law. Linked to the politics espoused by the Aryan Nations, Christian Identity served to confirm for Weaver that his racism was ordained by God. In 1989, Weaver ran afoul of federal law enforcement officials. He sold two shotguns to a man he had met at an Aryan Nations meeting. The person to whom Weaver sold the guns was a federal informant. The informant had asked Weaver to illegally shorten the shotguns, which Weaver did before he delivered the weapons to the buyer. In January 1991, Weaver was arrested for the sale of the illegally altered shotguns. Weaver was arraigned and released on a bond secured by his Ruby Ridge property the next day. Weaver later became convinced that if he was convicted, he would lose his land.7 No one knew it, yet, but the seeds of what is now known simply as “Ruby Ridge” had been sown. Upon his return to Ruby Ridge, Weaver and his family made the decision that they would not leave their mountain again. Accordingly, Weaver ignored a court summons that mistakenly ordered him to report for trial on March 20 even though his actual trial date was February 19. In March 1991, prosecutors added

 

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a charge of failure to appear in court to the previous indictment charging Weaver with selling sawed-­off shotguns.8 The Weavers remained on their property for over a year. US marshals, and some of Weaver’s friends, made occasional efforts to convince Weaver to surrender; all were unsuccessful. Meanwhile, the Weavers’ fourth child, Elisheba, was born in October 1991 on the Ruby Ridge property.9 Weaver was effectively self-­imprisoned. In March 1992 Weaver’s story became national news. Several newspapers, including the New York Times, discovered Weaver’s defiance of the federal government and reported on it. In response, the agencies involved in trying to arrest Weaver—­primarily the US marshals and the ATF—­held a meeting in March 1992 at which they decided to intensify their efforts to capture him. They initiated Operation Northern Exposure—­a surveillance operation focused on Weaver’s Ruby Ridge compound and named for a popular television series filmed in the Cascades-­mountain town of Roslyn, Washington. The idea was to observe Weaver’s patterns and routines before drafting a plan to arrest Weaver that entailed the least risk to his family and to the agents involved. By April, Marshals and ATF agents had placed surveillance cameras around Weaver’s home, and ATF agents and US marshals regularly patrolled Weaver’s land. They also established and repeatedly manned observation posts overlooking the Ruby Ridge compound from neighboring properties. Additionally, the FBI’s elite Hostage Rescue Team (HRT) was integrated into the planning process for Weaver’s eventual capture.10 These operations were remarkably successful and led to the government learning a great deal about Weaver’s lifestyle. Moreover, it helped the investigating agents become convinced of Weaver’s irreconcilable hostility to their work. Weaver and his family never left the house unarmed, for example. In addition, one government surveillance camera was stolen; its remains were found on Weaver’s property after the standoff. Family members were often recorded shouting angry statements at the agents they presumed were watching them. When several agents of the ATF walked onto Weaver’s land before dawn on August 21, 1992, then, they were both well armed and concerned about Weaver’s potential for violence. However, such operations had become routine, and there is little credible evidence that the agents expected a confrontation that day. Eleven Days on Ruby Ridge  The basic outline of events that occurred on Ruby Ridge from August 21 to 31, 1992, is easy to describe. In the predawn hours of August 21, 1992, six US marshals hiked onto Randy Weaver’s property. They went there as part of the long-­term surveillance operation that had been watching Weaver’s actions for several months. Once on Weaver’s property, the six marshals split into two groups of three at “the Y,” a spot where the long driveway to Weaver’s home split off from the main road. Three agents moved to an established surveillance post that was not on Weaver’s land but that had a good view of his home. The other three crept close to the Weaver home for more direct observations. Finished with their work by late morning, the three agents who had been engaged in close-­in observations of the Weaver household were walking down the dirt driveway leading from Weaver’s

 

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home when Weaver, his son Sammy, and a family friend named Kevin Harris, who had lived with the Weavers on and off since 1984, left the family home carrying rifles. They were following the Weavers’ dog, Striker, who appeared to be following a scent. Sammy raced straight downhill after the dog. Kevin Harris gave chase, and Weaver followed more slowly using the main access road.11 Lower on the mountain, the three US marshals heard Striker’s baying bark get closer and knew they were in trouble. They began running down the hill; however, at one point in their retreat they realized they had to cross a clearing that afforded anyone higher on the hill a clear chance to shoot at them. Thus, rather than retreat into an open field, they took cover among some nearby trees and hoped the dog or the family would not notice them. The tactic failed. As the Weaver’s dog neared their impromptu hiding place, one agent, Arthur Roderick, decided that he should shoot Striker in order to protect his fellow agents. Another, William Degan, emerged from behind a tree and confronted Randy Weaver—­either by identifying himself as a US marshal or not, depending on which account of the story one believes. As Weaver turned and ran back up the hill, Kevin Harris fired on Degan, hitting him in the chest. Degan died a few minutes later, but only after firing seven shots of his own. Sammy, angered at Striker’s death, cursed the agents, but responded to his father’s call to come back up the hill. As he ran back toward the cabin, he was struck by a bullet from Marshal Degan’s gun and killed—­a fact that federal agents did not know until August 24. When Kevin Harris finally rejoined Randy Weaver and the Weaver family at their cabin, he informed them that Sammy was dead.12 These events unfolded very quickly. The firefight was over in minutes. Indeed, at least part of the ensuing confusion about who did what, who shot first, and so on, can be easily attributed to the chaos of these few minutes. However, no one at the headquarters of the Marshal’s Service, the FBI, or the ATF had any way to know what had really happened on Ruby Ridge. Rather than remaining at their observation post and reporting what was happening at the Weaver cabin, the second group of agents sent to observe Weaver on August 21 left their posts and walked to find a telephone when the violence broke out. They then placed a 9-­1-­1 call in which they told authorities that shots had been fired and that a federal officer had been shot and killed. In the confusion, command personnel believed that there was an active gun battle on Ruby Ridge. Other events reinforced this belief. For example, Marshal Degan’s colleagues had not come down the mountain after the firefight. They had preferred to try to carry Degan’s body back to their vehicles but were unable to do because a sudden rainstorm had made conditions too difficult for them to transport his lifeless body. Under the circumstances, they stayed with their fellow agent’s body while awaiting support. Commanders on the scene, however, thought the marshals were under continuous fire during the long period from when the firefight began to the time an Idaho State Police team went up the hill to assist in extracting Degan’s body.13 As the US marshals lay in the woods waiting for help on August 21, Richard Rogers, commander of the FBI’s HRT, was in transit from Washington, DC, to Idaho. He ordered his team to join him there. Believing the Weavers to constitute a serious and immediate threat to all officers they came into contact with, Rogers revised the FBI’s rules of engagement governing the use of deadly force while en

 

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route to Ruby Ridge. Rogers drafted rules that allowed FBI agents to shoot any armed person in the Weaver compound on the grounds that their being armed constituted an immediate threat to the life of all federal agents. This differed from the usual rules—­normally, deadly force was to be used only to protect the life of a fellow officer or a civilian. Tentatively approved by Rogers’s supervisor, Larry Potts, these rules were ultimately revised to allow and encourage federal officers to shoot and kill armed adults in the Weaver compound on sight after the FBI had made a surrender demand of Weaver; prior to this demand, the rules allowed the shooting of any armed adult male. (These final rules were never approved by Rogers’s supervisors, who never saw the final draft before it was posted.)14 Around 6 p.m. on August 22, FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi saw two men and one woman leave the Weaver cabin and head for a nearby shed. (The shed contained Sammy Weaver’s body, which the Weavers and Kevin Harris had moved during the hours after the firefight.) As Randy Weaver approached the shed, Horiuchi fired at him, wounding Weaver in the right arm. As the three people rushed back to the cabin, Horiuchi aimed another shot. He thought he was aiming at the same person he had hit before, but in fact he was aiming at Kevin Harris running back to the cabin. Horiuchi led the fleeing man enough to compensate for his speed and the wind conditions and fired just as the man dove into the cabin’s front door. He later told his supervisors he thought he had hit and probably killed this second suspect.15

The last photograph of Vicki Weaver taken from a US Marshals Service surveillance outpost, August 21, 1992. Court files, US v. Weaver in Walter “Ruby Ridge” Regan 2002

 

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He did not. Instead, his second shot penetrated the door of the Weaver home and shattered Vicki Weaver’s head. She died instantly. Shrapnel from the same bullet hit Kevin Harris in the arm and chest, severely wounding him. Weaver returned to his cabin without further injury. An hour later the first FBI attempt at negotiation began. A telephone was dropped in front of the door of the Weaver cabin by a robot controlled from an armored personnel carrier. FBI negotiators called Weaver by megaphone and asked him to pick it up. When he didn’t, agents repeatedly called the phone to let the device ring in the dirt.16 No one answered. Given Weaver’s anti-­government ideas, tensions on Ruby Ridge escalated rapidly. While FBI negotiators called the Weavers repeatedly, no response came from the family. Armored personnel carriers were stationed around the perimeter of Weaver’s home. A microphone hidden in the telephone picked up muted sounds from the Weaver household. Searchlights were turned onto the Weaver home as loudspeakers asked Vicki to send her children out so they could be properly fed. Although agents did not know that Vicki Weaver was dead, the Weaver family believed that the FBI knew it had killed Vicki. Thus, the family reacted to these messages as evidence of the cruelty and viciousness of the government agents who were seemingly taunting them. The Weavers became convinced that the federal government intended to kill them. At the same time there was a great deal of commotion at the bottom of the hill. Federal agents had established a road block to prevent anyone from attempting to assist the Weavers. This barrier became a rallying point for skinheads, white supremacists, anti-­government activists, and anyone else in the area with an axe to grind against the federal government. These activists began a ten-­day vigil in which Weaver supporters threatened agents, accused authorities of being “Baby Killers,” and vented their rage against what they saw as an inappropriate intrusion of the federal government into the life of a small mountain community and one of its families.17 The barricade also became ground zero for a large contingent of television, newspaper, and magazine reporters who, in the absence of any news from the mountain itself, interviewed protestors and took pictures of the growing contingent of federal agents, helicopters, and armored vehicles that were descending on Ruby Ridge. Weaver’s story was thus carried to the nation even as he remained silent on top of his hill. The first significant development in the standoff came on August 24, when, in an effort to improve their view of Weaver’s home, the FBI decided to move the shed near Weaver’s home. Several agents entered the building (having come to the site in armored personnel carriers) and found Sammy Weaver’s body wrapped up in a sheet. They immediately understood why Randy Weaver’s family had been so reluctant to respond to their efforts to start negotiations. After removing Sammy’s body, FBI agents using loudspeakers asked Weaver to pick up the phone and provide any instructions for his care. Even though Weaver did not answer, the FBI’s tone toward the family became more sympathetic and understanding after August 24.18 However much the FBI’s rhetoric toward the Weavers softened after the discovery of Sammy’s body, the outpouring of rage among the protestors at

 

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the bottom of the mountain escalated. What had been alleged—­that the FBI were child killers—­was proved to be true. Once the news of Sammy’s death was reported, children appeared at the barricade bearing hand-­lettered signs asking: “whose child was next?” The point was clear: that the federal government might do the same thing to other children that it had done to Sammy Weaver. Over the next few years, this powerful image, of federal agents threatening the lives of children, would become a legitimating and motivating symbol of the growing militia movement. The next major development in the standoff came on August 26 when Bo Gritz, a former colonel in the US Army’s Special Forces, and a leader of the white supremacist movement in the United States, arrived at the road block and offered his services as negotiator. Gritz claimed to remember Weaver from the 1960s, and Weaver, who had by this point engaged in several shouting matches with FBI negotiators, agreed to let Gritz come up to the cabin. Gritz made his first trip up to Ruby Ridge on Friday, August 29.19 It was on this initial visit that Gritz, and subsequently the FBI and the nation at large, learned that Vicki Weaver was dead. The reaction among the crowd of protestors stationed around the roadblock was angry and aggressive. More protestors arrived, and tensions there increased dramatically. The situation there seemed to be getting out of control.20 Facing the reality of what one of its agents had done by killing Vicki Weaver, and confronting a hostile and growing crowd of protestors, FBI negotiators became convinced that the standoff needed to be ended quickly. Agents decided that the longer they stayed in northern Idaho, the more explosive the situation would become. This analysis was confirmed when agents stopped and arrested a group of skinheads carrying weapons who were trying to get through the FBI’s roadblock in an effort to help the Weavers: the FBI feared more extremists would be coming to Weaver’s aid. Gritz agreed with the FBI’s analysis but explained that Sara, not Randy, was really the force holding the family together in the cabin. Sara would be the one who required convincing if the standoff were to end peacefully. Gritz asked for another chance to negotiate. The FBI agreed. The standoff ended almost as quickly as it began. Gritz convinced Randy and Sara that if Kevin Harris died—­his health had deteriorated badly as a result of the wounds he had received when Vicki Weaver was killed—­Randy would be charged with murder for failing to let Harris leave the cabin. On August 30, Harris left the cabin, was arrested, and was taken for medical treatment before being placed in jail.21 Later that same day Gritz convinced the family that it was time to have Vicki’s body removed from the house, where it had lain under the kitchen table since August 22. Vicki’s body was also taken out of the cabin and turned over to the FBI on August 30.22 With Vicki’s body removed, the symbolic rallying point that had kept the family together was gone. Randy Weaver’s wound was very painful, and he badly needed medical treatment. When Gritz returned to the cabin on August 31, the family was responsive to his promise that the children would not be sent to foster care if Weaver surrendered that day. Instead, they would be allowed to live with relatives. Gritz had also received a promise from prominent defense attorney

 

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Gerry Spence that he would represent Weaver if Weaver left the cabin peacefully. Weaver agreed, and shortly after noon on August 31, Randy Weaver walked out of his mountaintop home and submitted himself for arrest. The standoff was over.23

Making the Militia I—­First Steps The standoff at Ruby Ridge ended up playing a central, if unintended, role in the creation of the 1990s militia movement. It did so for at least three reasons. These are, first, the way the courts dealt with Randy Weaver and his compatriots; second, the way the court of public opinion came to understand the (in)appropriateness of the government’s actions; and third, the way that proto-­militia activists used the events at Ruby Ridge to build the militia movement in the United States. The Aftermath and the Weavers  Randy Weaver and Kevin Harris were ultimately charged with ten crimes. These included conspiracy in creating the standoff, illegally shortening a shotgun, failure to appear on the original trial date, the murder of William Degan, firing at a US helicopter, and harboring Randy ­Weaver—­a known fugitive. Other charges included violating terms of Weaver’s bond release and using a weapon in the commission of a crime. At trial, their defense attorneys, Gerry Spence (Weaver) and David Nevin (Harris), worked to poke holes in the government’s case. For example, they mused about how Weaver and Harris could have conspired to force agents of the federal government to come to Weaver’s land, surround it, and engage in an eleven-­day standoff, all while hiding Randy Weaver and Kevin Harris in Weaver’s cabin. Spence and Nevin also understood that the Idaho jury was likely to be filled with citizens largely sympathetic to the idea that the federal government should not interfere with the actions of private citizens regardless of their beliefs. Thus, Spence and Nevin avoided discussing the Weaver family’s radical religious views and instead focused their defense on the idea that the federal government had illegally intruded on a private citizen’s property, had illegally entrapped the citizen into selling an illegal weapon, and had generally abused its authority. Whereas the prosecutors focused on the evils of Randy Weaver’s ideology, particularly emphasizing an alleged link between his ideology and his violent actions, the defense made Weaver the victim. That both Sammy Weaver and Vicki Weaver had died because they had been shot by government agents made their defense strategy all the more persuasive.24 The defense case was built on more than just getting the jury to believe that the government had gone “too far” in its efforts to arrest Randy Weaver, however. The defense also developed a theory to explain the federal government’s actions. Weaver’s attorneys insisted that the government had engaged in an active conspiracy against Randy Weaver, one that led to a cover-­up of government mistakes and abuses. The attorneys asked questions about the weapons the agents were carrying on the day of the confrontation with the Weaver family. Why, the attorneys questioned, were the agents carrying silenced machine

 

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guns if they were not planning a major confrontation with the family? Spence and Nevin also wondered why, as some testimony alleged, the three agents who had been doing close surveillance of the Weaver home had tossed stones at the Weaver cabin during their surveillance of it. The implication was clear: the agents were not engaged in a mundane, relaxing activity on an ordinary day. Rather, they were trying to attract the attention of one of Weaver’s dogs, thus initiating a confrontation that would allow them to use deadly force against Weaver. Similarly, in response to testimony that someone in the Weaver home had shot at an FBI helicopter—­the reason Lon Horiuchi gave for firing at Randy Weaver and Kevin Harris on August 22—­the attorneys focused on the fact that no such shots were ever fired. Rather, they argued that Horiuchi’s claim that he was using force to defend FBI agents on the helicopter was nothing more than a lie intended to cover up his illegal action. Spence and Nevin paid particularly close attention to a sketch Lon Horiuchi made of what he saw as he fired into the Weaver cabin. In his official statement, Horiuchi claimed that he did not see anyone inside the Weaver cabin when he fired. However, on September 1, 1992, Horiuchi had drawn a sketch of the door of the Weaver cabin as he saw it when he fired—­a picture that showed the tops of two heads showing in the window. These heads, the attorneys insisted, had to have been those of Vicki Weaver and her child. The attorneys thus insisted that Horiuchi had lied under oath as part of the conspiracy they alleged the government had concocted against their client.25 In the end, the jury found Kevin Harris not guilty of all counts he faced—­ including, on grounds of self-­d efense, the murder of US marshal William Degan.26 (Harris was indicted for the murder of Marshal Degan in state court in 1997; this charge was dismissed by a higher court on grounds of double jeopardy.)27 Of the ten counts he faced, the jury found Randy Weaver guilty only of failure to appear. It found him innocent of the original weapons charge—­the one that started the chain of events that led to the standoff. In October 1993, Weaver was sentenced to eighteen months in jail and given a $10,000 fine. Having already served fourteen months, he was released on December 17, 1993, after a supporter paid his fine.28 He returned to Iowa and filed a wrongful death civil suit against the US government. It was settled in April 1995 for $3.1 million: $1 million for each of the Weaver girls, and $100,000 for Weaver himself.29 Whatever the jury’s decision, for many people who would become militia activists and sympathizers, Horiuchi’s statements, in combination with the other issues Spence and Nevin raised, proved that the government had to be hiding something. They established a context for future clashes between the federal government and right-­wing activists of various types. The conspiracy theory laid out in Weaver’s trial formed the foundation on which millions of Americans who were already inclined to believe in government’s malfeasance could build a case against the government that validated their paranoia. Indeed, the skillful way Spence, Nevin, and the other defense attorneys kept the intensity of Weaver’s racist religious beliefs out of the trial informed the myth that the Weavers were innocent people brutalized by a rampaging government. They became Everyman. Their fate could become anyone’s. Thus, people who might

 

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have been horrified by the federal government’s actions at Ruby Ridge but who might also have been alienated by Weaver’s racist, misogynistic religious ideology did not have to confront that dimension of Weaver’s life. Instead, people could draw whatever conclusions they wished from the story of the Weaver family’s confrontation with the federal government. For militia activists, in the case of Randy Weaver the US government took the role of King George’s oppressive army; Weaver became the hero-­farmer harmed only because he desired to live free of government harassment. As such, his story could be used to ground a new movement that, ironically, Weaver himself did not support. The Aftermath and the FBI  The events at Ruby Ridge also had effects on the FBI—­effects that mostly served the interests of conspiracy theorists. For example, several investigations were launched into the FBI’s actions in Idaho. One was conducted by the FBI itself and focused specifically on the process by which the rules of engagement were rewritten and implemented during the standoff. This investigation found, and several courts later agreed, that these rules were violations of Weaver’s constitutional rights and should never have been issued. The investigation also demonstrated that inadequate systems of communication and control existed between Washington, DC, and commanders in the field.30 This report might have been viewed as a serious attempt of a federal agency to recognize the mistakes it had made, of course. Similarly, its recommendations and findings—­that no FBI officer should be allowed to develop independent rules of engagement on site, and that several agents involved in standoff ought to be reprimanded or demoted—­might have been viewed as a serious attempt to fix a troubled system. The FBI, however, classified this report and resisted releasing it even to Congress. Anti-­government conspiracy theorists made much of this secrecy. They insisted that the report was really a cover-­up of the FBI’s mistakes in Idaho. This perception was reinforced when FBI director Louis Freeh promoted the supervisor of the Ruby Ridge incident, Larry Potts, to the second-­ ranking position in the FBI: permanent deputy director. Many other agents involved in the standoff at Ruby Ridge received light, if any, punishment.31 The perception that the FBI was engaged in a cover-­up was furthered in 1995 during a congressional investigation of the events at Ruby Ridge. Journalistic inquiries into the incident added to the sense that the FBI was lying about its mistakes in Idaho. These reviews revealed a number of mistakes, lies, and active attempts by agents to cover up what had occurred in Idaho. For example, in the hours after Lon Horiuchi shot Kevin Harris and Vicki Weaver, the snipers who had been deployed around the Weaver home were recalled and left to sit together without supervision. Conspiracy theorists asserted that the agents must have shaped their stories to fit a common narrative during their unmonitored time together. Additionally, another FBI agent, Michael Kahoe, pled guilty to obstructing justice after he destroyed a report in which Horiuchi had recorded his actions on August 22.32 Lon Horiuchi’s actions at Ruby Ridge drew extensive attention from hardright activists seeking proof that the federal government was plotting to destroy the freedoms of right-­wing, gun loving Americans. His claim that he shot only

 

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because he saw someone on the ground fire at a hovering FBI helicopter was one area of scrutiny. No one ever shot at that helicopter, meaning that Horiuchi fired his weapon in violation of the FBI’s normal rules of engagement when he first shot Randy Weaver. He was not defending agents in imminent danger. Moreover, Horiuchi’s claim that his shooting of Vicki Weaver was accidental was repeatedly challenged, first by those who claimed that she was fully visible in the doorway of the Weaver cabin, and second by those who argued that since the FBI allegedly had a prior report in which Vicki was alleged to be the moral leader of the family, her death must have been an intentional effort to break the family’s will.33 For anti-­government activists, Horiuchi became the living face of the federal government’s malevolence. For conspiracists, Horiuchi became the public symbol of the federal government’s oppressive evil. From their perspective, Horiuchi was a camouflage-­wearing, sophisticated gun-­toting, highly trained representative of the evil federal government who used his power to murder an innocent person. In fact, Horiuchi was subsequently charged with murder, a rare event for a government agent acting in accord with duly issued orders. After years of indictments, court appeals, and a change in Boundary County, Idaho, prosecutors, all charges against Horiuchi were finally dropped in June 2001.34 In the end, the image of the FBI was profoundly tarnished. The image of the heroic “G-­man” stopping Communists and criminals from ravaging America was replaced with what the National Rifle Association (NRA) vice president Wayne LaPierre later called government’s “jack-­booted thugs.” For those Americans who believed that government was dangerous to liberty, Ruby Ridge was proof. The militia would form as a modern version of the ancient myth that citizen soldiers could defend freedom against an abusive government. The Aftermath and the Militia Movement  The mistakes, lies, and cover-­ups of FBI misdeeds, combined with the skillful way Weaver’s lawyers and supporters stripped the most unpopular components of his ideology out of his story and instead cast Weaver in the role of the innocent victim of a government conspiracy, created a political space in which the modern militia could form. This political opportunity was taken by a group of entrepreneurial activists who founded the modern militia movement on October 23, 1992. On that day, Pete Peters, a leader of the Christian Identity movement, convened a meeting of other right-­ wing leaders to develop a response to the incident at Ruby Ridge. The gathering was attended by diverse representatives from the radical right in American politics, including members of the Ku Klux Klan, the Aryan Nations, and Gun Owners of America leader Larry Pratt. Held in Estes Park, Colorado, the meeting led to the creation of a common narrative in which the events at Ruby Ridge were presented and justified. This frame de-­emphasized Weaver’s racism and anti-­Semitism in favor of a more neutral, anti-­government rhetoric. One of the organizers of the meeting, Louis Beam, argued that the Weavers should be represented as victims of “the tender mercies of a government gone mad.”35 Attendees were encouraged to scrub racist language from their rhetoric in favor of terms that would be more popular in mainstream society.36

 

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Behind the scenes, however, the Estes Park attendees were explicit about the radicalism of their politics. According to anti-­extremist group activist Morris Dees, the head of the Southern Poverty Law Center, Louis Beam gave a vitriol-­ laced speech aimed squarely at the evils of the federal government: “I warn you calmly, coldly, and without reservation that over the next ten years you will come to hate the government more than anything in your life. . . . The federal government in north Idaho has demonstrated brutally, horribly, and with great terror how it will enforce its claim that we are religious fanatics and enemies of the state.”37 Beam further called on those attending the conference to organize to fight the government—­just like their militia forebears: We bear the torch of light, of justice, of liberty, and we will be heard. . . . We will not yield this country to the forces of darkness, oppression, and tyranny. . . . So if you believe in the truth, if you believe in justice, then join with us. We are marching to the beat of the same drum. The beat of that drum, like those heard at Valley Forge and at Gettysburg, has called good men everywhere to action.38

The movement, then, would focus on the victimization of innocent citizens by an abusive government. It would convert horror at what happened to the ­Weavers—­at least what the movement insisted happened to the Weavers—­into resistance to the authority of the national government. In addition to providing a common ideological core around which groups might form, the Estes Park meeting led to the creation of a new type of political protest organization in the United States. Larry Pratt reportedly called for the abandonment of traditional lobbying techniques and conventional political action in favor of the forming of small, armed militias that could directly resist government’s illegal actions.39 Louis Beam explained the concept of “leaderless resistance,” a practice borrowed from the French resistance of World War II. In a system of leaderless resistance, there is no central figure who organizes actions among various groups. Rather, each group, or cell, is free to choose whatever targets of opportunity present themselves. They are also able to attack any post or position however they might wish. They do not require permission from a leader or committee. That way, other resistance groups can keep operating even if one of their allied cells is exposed or captured: no one in the compromised group has knowledge of the plans of other groups. Beam noted that in such a system the militia need not be a highly organized, bureaucratized structure. Instead, multiple cells might form, and if the government were to destroy one, its members could not betray the members of other militia groups.40 The ideological and organizational innovations offered in the Colorado meeting laid the groundwork for the new militia movement. The narrative of events at Ruby Ridge and the lessons drawn from them by these militia activists grounded a movement in which hundreds of thousands of Americans came to support the militia movement without feeling themselves to be racists, wackos, or crazies. After all, it was the federal government that, by its own admission, had shot and killed an unarmed woman; it was (allegedly) the federal government that had lured a dog and a boy into a trap on their own land; it was the federal government that had (perhaps) entrapped Randy Weaver into selling

 

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illegal weapons in the first place. By obscuring the racism and anti-­Semitism of Weaver’s ideology, the Estes Park meeting created a template that groups could use to draw support from the general community. To be in the militia, then, was to be part of an organization dedicated to saving America from its abusive government, not to support the hate crimes of a few hard-­right isolationists. The militia was coming to save America. Again.

The Fire in Waco By themselves, the events in Ruby Ridge might not have stimulated the formation of the modern militia movement. Controversial as it was, Ruby Ridge was only one incident. However, soon after the standoff at Ruby Ridge, the federal government got into a confrontation with another group of religious separatists—­the Branch Davidians based in Waco, Texas. The Davidians, it turns out, were—­like the Weavers—­neither a militia group (since the militia didn’t exist yet) nor militia sympathizers. Their dogma did not line up with the emerging militia point of view. Nor did the Davidians believe in similar ideas to the Weavers: the Branch Davidian compound—­known as Mt. Carmel—­was home to a multiethnic, racially diverse, multinational group of people. However, as happened with the Weavers at Ruby Ridge, the activists who created the 1990s militia movement used the events in Waco, Texas, from February to April 1993 as fuel to drive the making and growth of their movement.

The Davidians in Waco The Branch Davidians are an offshoot of Seventh-­day Adventism. Adventism, founded in 1818 by William Miller, holds that the current generation of people are living in the “end times”—­that period of time just before Christ’s tumultuous return to Earth heralded by the Battle of Armageddon and the rise of a new Eden. In addition, Adventism insists that the Bible is a living book that requires that a series of living prophets interpret it for each new era. Adventists believe that prophecy itself makes things happen: prophets do not just tell the future. Instead, the act of interpretation is necessary to make specific predictions come true at specific times. Additionally, Adventists believe that 144,000 “branches”—­ individuals who properly understand the Bible and God’s message—­will serve at Christ’s right hand when the new Garden of Paradise is created after Christ returns to Earth.41 David Koresh, born Vernon Howell in 1959, took over the Branch Davidians in 1989. He preached that he, not the historical Jesus Christ, was the Lamb of God who could open the Seven Seals of prophecy contained in the Book of Revelations. He claimed that the entire Bible constituted the Seven Seals, and that he was the final prophet who would interpret them and thereby cause the Second Coming. He insisted that the term “Christ” was a title, not a condition, and so he could be the new Christ. And, perhaps most importantly in light of the coming events, he taught that resistance to evil was required by the Bible: fighting Satan’s work was a necessary precondition for the establishment of God’s rule on Earth.42 As such, his ideology was tightly linked to pre-­millenialist

 

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Christianity, a tradition that holds that human beings must actively work to create the conditions that will allow for Christ’s Second Coming. However odd these beliefs may be to many Christians, or to the Davidians’ neighbors in Waco, nothing about these doctrines would likely have ever brought Koresh and his group to the attention of federal authorities. Lots of people believe lots of things in the United States without running afoul of federal law enforcement agencies. Other aspects of Koresh’s teaching and leadership did bring the Davidians into conflict with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) in the early 1990s, however. First, while Koresh banned both marriage and sexual activity at Mt. Carmel, he himself married several women, including several girls who had not yet reached Texas’s age of consent. Polygamy is a crime, of course, and although the parents of the underage girls he married gave their consent to their daughters’ marriages, their consent did not change the law that any sexual conduct with the girls was child abuse. Koresh fathered several children with multiple wives during his time as leader of the Branch Davidians.43 This behavior led authorities to open an investigation into Koresh’s life. Additionally, the Branch Davidians made money to support their ministry by selling guns, gun modification kits, and survivalist gear at gun shows around the United States. They also sold dried foodstuffs and a David Koresh-­branded line of camouflage clothing. As a consequence, they often stored weapons on their land—­r eportedly quite large number of weapons. The group was also believed to have purchased and installed a number of kits designed to convert semi-­automatic weapons to fully automatic ones.44 Possession of such converted weapons is a crime in the United States, as is their sale. In light of this information, the ATF opened another investigation of the Davidians. Although Koresh’s teachings and lifestyle were unconventional, he and the Branch Davidians were generally well-­r egarded by their neighbors in Waco, Texas. Neither Koresh’s polygamy with underage females nor his group’s activities on the gun circuit led to the ostracism of the Branch Davidians in the Waco community. Indeed, despite Koresh’s polygamy with underage girls and the Davidians’ pro-­gun activities, the Davidians might have continued living under Koresh’s leadership well into the future without ever coming into serious conflict with federal law enforcement agencies. In January 1992, however, an Australian television program broadcast a lurid documentary that focused on Koresh’s sexual practices and religious extremism. This story increased pressure on federal authorities to act against Koresh and his group. In response, ATF sent an undercover agent to join the Davidians inside Mt. Carmel.45 The Raid  Once they gathered enough information to substantiate a warrant, the ATF launched Operation Trojan Horse at 9:48 a.m. on Sunday, February 28, 1993.46 Using the same strategy employed by the Greeks who attacked Troy as told in Homer’s Odyssey, the ATF intended to surprise the Davidians and capture Koresh quickly, before the Davidians would be able to respond effectively. Several dozen ATF agents would be hidden in cattle trucks that would pull up close to the Mt. Carmel buildings as if lost. Then, when the Branch Davidians least

 

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expected it, the agents would rush from the trucks, execute a “dynamic assault” on the property, and arrest Koresh.47 Nothing went as planned. In large measure, the plan’s failure was attributable to a simple flaw: the Branch Davidians were aware that the raid was coming. They also knew the time it was scheduled. Figuring out that a raid was coming had not been difficult. In the days prior to the first assault on the Mt. Carmel compound, for example, Waco’s hotels were filled with heavily armed ATF agents. It was clear they were not there on vacation or at a conference. On the morning of February 28th, the day Trojan Horse was scheduled, a television reporter stopped a local postman and asked for directions to Mt. Carmel. In the course of their conversation, the reporter told the mailman that a raid was being launched on Mt. Carmel later that morning. The mailman was a Branch Davidian; he immediately returned to the compound to warn Koresh. Finally, helicopters began circling the property at 9:30 a.m. in anticipation of the coming operation.48 The Davidians, whose doctrine taught that agents of Satan were seeking to destroy Koresh and his message, and who believed that resistance to evil was required if Christ was to return to Earth, obviously understood that a battle was coming. They prepared accordingly. Once he recognized what was about to happen, Koresh confronted the ATF’s undercover operative inside Mt. Carmel, an agent named Robert Rodriguez. (The Davidians had learned Rodriguez was a federal agent soon after he joined the Davidians inside Mt. Carmel.) Koresh told Rodriguez that he knew the assault was coming and implored Rodriguez to leave the compound to try to stop the attack. Rodriguez informed his superiors of Koresh’s foreknowledge an hour before the raid began. In a move that would later fuel many conspiracy theories, the ATF leadership’s response to the news that their raid had been exposed was to have it go forward, but to accelerate its timing.49 Thus a raid premised on secrecy, speed, and surprise was allowed to take place even after its targets announced their knowledge of the coming assault. The ATF force was simply ordered to get to the Davidian compound faster. For conspiracy theorists, this served as proof that the raid was deadly in its intent: if the ATF only wanted to arrest Koresh, they insist, the ATF would not have risked an assault once the element of surprise was lost. Getting fired upon by a prepared resistance, however, gave the ATF the right to use deadly force. As the raid began, David Koresh opened the door of Mt. Carmel and called out to the agents to stop their attack. Agents fired at him, and he went back inside and shut the door. Other agents then climbed onto lower parts of the building in an effort to break into the compound. Gunfire poured into and out of the building for several hours, ultimately killing four ATF agents and six Branch Davidians. An additional twenty federal officers and four Davidians were wounded—­Koresh among them. A cease fire was arranged by noon.50 Fifty-­One Days in Waco  On March 1, the FBI took over control of the scene at Mt. Carmel. Among other units it deployed was its Hostage Rescue Team (HRT)—­the same team that had been sent to Ruby Ridge, despite the fact that,

 

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as in Idaho, no one in the Mt. Carmel compound was a hostage. Special Agent-­ in-­Charge Jeff Jamar asserted that the FBI would wait for the Branch Davidians to come out no matter how long they stayed in their compound. However, as had been the case in Idaho, the HRT had a strong anti-­negotiation bias: the HRT’s organizational mission was focused on actively rescuing people, not waiting for negotiations to play out.51 In contrast with Randy Weaver, David Koresh proved very willing to talk to the FBI’s negotiators. In the early days of the standoff he spent hours discoursing on his theories of biblical interpretation. He also opined about the prophetic role he would play in the coming days. FBI negotiators eventually grew tired of Koresh’s long orations, referring to them as “Bible babble.”52 In retrospect it is clear that the FBI’s negotiators and Koresh had profoundly different expectations for these negotiations. For the FBI, the conversations were an opportunity to try to persuade members of Koresh’s community to leave Mt. Carmel. Negotiators also hoped to convince Koresh to surrender. For Koresh, by contrast, the phone calls were a chance to spread his understanding of biblical truth to the world. These competing purposes drove much of the ensuing conflict—­to deadly effect. One such tension between the FBI’s goals and Koresh’s manifested itself early in the standoff. Koresh promised to surrender if he was allowed to broadcast a message on the Christian Broadcasting Network. This request was granted. However, on March 2 Koresh reneged on his promise. He claimed that God had told him to wait. FBI negotiators took Koresh’s change of heart as proof that Koresh was a charlatan hiding behind religious robes. Meanwhile, Koresh saw the FBI’s failure to recognize the legitimacy of his position as the Lamb of God as proof that he could not trust the agency to carry out its promises to him.53 As time passed, the FBI’s tactics hardened. Several of the mothers at Mt. Carmel had stopped lactating on the day ATF agents had originally raided the compound, for example. Their children needed milk. The Branch Davidians gave the FBI $1,000 to pay their bills and to buy milk for the children who needed it. The FBI’s negotiators treated the fact that there were vulnerable, hungry children in Mt. Carmel as a tool they could use to try to convince the Davidians to allow some of their children to leave the compound in a milk-­for-­children exchange. The Davidians considered the FBI’s ploy to be a betrayal, a hard-­ hearted, cynical plot by agents of a manipulative, untrustworthy government. Their concerns deepened when they learned that some children who had left the house earlier in the standoff were not sent to live with relatives as promised, nor were they being fed according to the strict dietary protocols that Koresh demanded. Negotiations soured on both sides.54 Shortly after the milk-­for-­children fiasco, the FBI cut off communications from the Mt. Carmel to the outside world. This angered Koresh, who had conducted multiple interviews with various press sources to spread his vision of the coming Armageddon. In addition, the agency sent military-­style armored vehicles to patrol the grounds of Mt. Carmel, and, in an aggressive act of psychological warfare, turned brilliant white spotlights onto the compound twenty-­four hours a day. Additionally, FBI loudspeakers began blasting annoying, aggravating

 

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sounds at high volume at the Davidian compound. Among other noises, these tapes included sounds of rabbits being slaughtered.55 The goal was to make life in Mt. Carmel so unbearable that its residents would give up without resistance. As should have been anticipated by anyone familiar with Koresh’s religious values, these attempts to pressure the Branch Davidians to leave the compound served only to enhance their conviction that the end times were near. However, the FBI had no religious experts to assist it in the negotiations. Several academic specialists in millenialist religions offered their help to the FBI in interpreting Koresh’s “Bible babble,” but the FBI mostly refused their assistance. Instead, the government’s negotiators relied on analyses offered by anti-­cult activists and other criminal psychologists. Those experts agreed that Koresh was a thuggish cult leader hiding behind religious rhetoric. Accordingly, when Koresh made a promise to leave Mt. Carmel as soon as he had finished a commentary on the Seven Seals, the FBI assumed that the promise was just another ploy. Koresh’s original promise to leave after broadcasting his message on CBN was taken as proof of his fundamental untrustworthiness.56 In late March, the FBI began to plan another assault to arrest Koresh and anyone who had been involved in the original firefight. One part of the plan, agreed to by US attorney general Janet Reno, was to use CS gas in an effort to force the Davidians to leave their home. CS gas burns skin on contact and causes mucous membranes to swell; nausea is a common side effect. The FBI knew that the Davidians had stockpiled gas masks but also knew that the Davidians did not have gas masks suitable for children since no company made masks small enough for children to wear. The FBI’s plan was to insert CS gas into the compound and hope that when the children started to suffer from the effects of the gas, their mothers would escape the building with their kids. Attorney General Reno and FBI director William Sessions approved the FBI’s planned assault. Later investigations showed they were never informed that CS gas was flammable, nor were they told that the gas was not approved for use inside buildings. Neither official was informed of Koresh’s surrender offer, either. However, they agreed to let the plan go forward. It was scheduled for April 19, 1993.57 April 19 is a significant day in American history. On April 19, 1775, local volunteers responded to Paul Revere’s midnight ride and attacked a column of British troops trying to seize stockpiles of weapons in the Massachusetts towns of Lexington and Concord. That running gun battle had set the American Revolution in motion. On April 19, 1995, 220 years later, Timothy McVeigh destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, as an act of vengeance for the FBI assault on Mt. Carmel on April 19, 1993. The FBI’s assault on the Branch Davidian compound began at 5:59 a.m. FBI negotiators called the Branch Davidians at that time, demanded their surrender, and informed them that a tank was going to inject tear gas into the compound. They explained that the tank’s action was not actually an assault since it was not going to enter the building. (The Davidians, of course, rejected that claim.) At 6:04 a.m., a specially equipped armored vehicle began to knock holes in the walls of the Mt. Carmel Center. As planned, it injected CS gas into the building.

 

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It punched holes and deployed the nausea gas in several places throughout the complex.58 Inside the compound, the Davidians had been expecting an assault for some time. Many of the men armed themselves, put on gas masks and prepared to fight. Most of the women and children retreated to a safe room in the middle of the home. The idea was to hide there until the battle was over. Mt. Carmel, however, was a dry, plywood building in the middle of a wind-­ swept prairie. It was, essentially, kindling. At 11:42, an FBI observational airplane using forward looking infrared radar (FLIR) saw the flicker of a fire in one corner of the building. By 12:07, three more fires were detected.59 The flames quickly consumed the building. With temperatures reaching 2000 degrees, the complex burned to the ground in about twenty-­five minutes.60 The FBI called for fire trucks at 12:12 p.m. By 12:22, two engines had arrived. They were not allowed to pass the FBI checkpoint until 12:37. That was five minutes after an agent on scene had informed his superiors in Washington, DC, that the building had been fully destroyed.61 Nine Branch Davidians survived the inferno. They escaped as the fire consumed the building. However, at least seventy-­five Davidians were killed. (Since no one knew exactly how many people were in the building, no one knows exactly how many died. Estimates range as high as eighty-­six.) Some appear to have been asphyxiated, some burned to death, and several others died of gunshot wounds—­including Koresh. Children were not exempt from the horror: some were crushed as they huddled under wet blankets for protection. Others choked to death in the smoke. Several were shot. One was stabbed to death.62 The confrontation in Waco was over.

The Branch Davidian compound outside Waco, Texas, is engulfed in flames during an FBI attack on April 19, 1993, after a three-­month siege. Walter Oleksy/­Alamy Stock Photo

 

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Making the Militia II—­After Waco As was the case with Randy Weaver’s standoff in Idaho, the events that occurred in Waco were used by militia activists to legitimate and promote the new militia movement. While the ATF raid, FBI negotiation, and final assault on the compound had immediate effects for the Branch Davidians, their families, and the agencies involved, their broadest effects were manifested in the rapid spread of the modern militia movement throughout most of the United States. The Aftermath and the Branch Davidians  Eleven surviving members of Koresh’s group, some of whom had left the compound before the final fire, were charged with murder, attempted murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and possession of illegal firearms—­specifically, forty-­eight machine guns and other destructive devices like hand grenades. They were tried in federal court since the officers killed in the February 28th raid had been US agents. As the prosecution had done in Idaho, the Waco prosecution tried to prove that simply by going to Mt. Carmel, Koresh’s followers had engaged in a conspiracy to kill federal agents. The number of weapons owned by the Branch Davidians was used as proof that the group was armed and looking for a fight.63 In contrast with the defense strategy in Idaho, the defense in the Waco case did not articulate an elaborate conspiracy theory to justify their clients’ actions. Such theories did emerge later as the result of the efforts of militia and other anti-­government leaders. Instead, the Davidian’s attorneys appealed to Texans’ sense that gun ownership was natural and expected. The defense claimed that the Davidians’ guns were actually an investment, not a sign that Koresh’s followers were preparing for a war against the government: testimony was offered that the guns had increased in value over time. Defense lawyers also insisted that, under Texas law, if law enforcement authorities use unreasonable force in making an arrest, citizens have the right to self-­defense. Thus, even though the Texas law did not apply in federal court, the defense was able to introduce the idea that the original ATF raid had been improper. Any subsequent violence against the government, then, was justified.64 The discomfort that many Americans felt about the government’s actions at Waco was evident when a controversy involving a Texas-­based interest group called the Fully Informed Jury Association (FIJA) erupted during the trial. The judge in the Davidian case sealed the names of the jury pool, and FIJA protested. As an organization, FIJA holds that juries have the right to nullify government acts and laws if the jury finds the government to have behaved improperly. The group demanded the opportunity to mail information about nullification to the jurors in the Davidian case. When the judge refused, FIJA members conducted daily protests outside the courthouse.65 In the end, the jury rejected the prosecution’s case. The Davidians were found not guilty of most of the serious charges—­murder, conspiracy, attempted murder, and the like. A few were convicted of possessing illegal weapons, others were found to be in violation of immigration law, and some were convicted of involuntary manslaughter.66 Compared to the possible verdicts, the jury’s decision was seen as a repudiation of the government’s case.

 

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The jury’s verdict did not stand, however. The judge set it aside on grounds that jurors had failed to follow his instructions. One charge, for example, was possession of illegal firearms in the commission of a crime. Thus, the judge reasoned, being guilty of possessing the weapons meant that the Branch Davidians were also guilty of committing a crime. Similarly, he reasoned that simply by acquiring the weapons in the first place the Davidians had engaged in a conspiracy to commit a crime. As a consequence of such analysis, he sentenced five Davidians to forty-­year terms, and three others to twenty, fifteen, and five-­year sentences, respectively. Three were freed. In addition, each of the convicted Davidians was ordered to pay $1.2 million in restitution to the FBI and the ATF.67 Today, several groups of Branch Davidians live on or near the Mt. Carmel grounds and contend for leadership of the group. One has run tours of the bulldozed facility. Otherwise, the group has largely disappeared. 68 However, their justification for their actions—­that they were innocent gun collectors who had the right to practice their religion free from government interference but who were brutalized by a corrupt government anyway—­later became a self-­evident truth for many Americans. As had happened with Randy Weaver, the extremism of their religious practice, Koresh’s polygamy with underage girls, and their active membership in the gun rights community was obscured by the horrors they faced at the end of the Waco standoff. What was left was a story that, in combination with the evident errors of the ATF and the FBI, became a foundation of the militia movement. The Aftermath for the FBI and ATF  Their role in overseeing two major tragedies in nine months opened both the ATF and the FBI to public scrutiny and review. Both the Treasury Department—­home of ATF—­and the Justice Department—­home of the FBI—­prepared special after-­action reports on the incidents. Congressional inquiries followed in 1995, with Waco being investigated even before Ruby Ridge. The Treasury Department and Justice Department reports came to remarkably similar conclusions. In the case of the disaster in Waco, both basically cleared their agencies of causing the terrible series of events that culminated in the fire. The Treasury report found ATF guilty only of mismanaging the original raid. It also revealed that some of its agents had tried to cover up their mistakes. The Justice Department found that the FBI did not violate any of its rules or procedures in either the negotiations with the Branch Davidians or during its final assault on the compound. Justice merely pointed to a lack of coordination between the negotiating and tactical units at Waco as the most serious flaw in the FBI’s operations.69 The congressional investigation was much harsher. Questions were asked, particularly by Republicans on the committee, about whether the government had abused its authority in attacking people just because they had offbeat religious ideas and happened to own guns. Moreover, congressional investigators exposed significant holes in the FBI’s story about what had happened in Waco. They found that evidence had been destroyed or was missing. They

 

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also highlighted the seriousness of the tensions between the strategies and tactics favored by the FBI’s negotiating team and the on-­scene, proactive tactics employed by the HRT as it used armored vehicles to destroy Davidian property in the weeks before the final assault. (The details of the missing evidence will be addressed in the next section of this chapter.) Investigators also found that crucial evidence, such as the fact that the FBI had recorded the events of April 19, 1993, from a FLIR-­equipped aircraft, had been hidden and was only discovered when a witness was forced to offer sworn testimony. Even then, the tapes were not released to the public. The fact that the FBI used pyrotechnic tear gas grenades capable of starting fires during the raid was hidden for years.70 The reputation of the FBI, and particularly of its HRT, took a serious hit in the aftermath of these events. Richard Rogers, commander of the HRT, was removed from his position in June 1993.71 The FBI’s begrudging release of evidence like the FLIR tape and its belated disclosure that its agents had used tear gas grenades on April 19 caused the incident to remain alive in the minds of anti-­government ideologues. As a result, in September 1999 Attorney General Janet Reno appointed former senator John Danforth as independent prosecutor to investigate the government’s actions at Waco, including allegations that FBI agents shot at Branch Davidians during the fire. (This part of the conspiracy theory will also be addressed in the next section of this chapter.) Danforth’s report, released in July 2000, concluded that the government had done nothing wrong. By that time, however, the image of federal agents burning down Mt. Carmel and abusing their authority was already well established in American public opinion. Indeed, Danforth’s own report noted that 61 percent of Americans believed that the government started the fire at Mt. Carmel.72 Eventually, the FBI developed new strategies for dealing with extreme religious or ideological groups. These were grounded on a “negotiate-­for-­as-­long-­ as-­it-­takes” model. Indeed, one of the ironies of the subsequent growth in the militia movement was that it came even as the FBI largely abandoned the confrontational style of law enforcement that had led to the catastrophes in Idaho and in Texas. But in the short term, the FBI and ATF actions in Waco provided millions of people sympathetic to the emerging militia movement with proof that their fears of an abusive federal government were well founded. The Aftermath and the Militia Movement  The militia response to the events at Waco began even as the standoff was under way. Linda Thompson, an Indianapolis attorney and self-­appointed popularizer of militia values, sent a fax to sympathetic people in the name of the “Unorganized Militia.” In it she asked militia members to assemble in Waco “with long arms, vehicles (including tracked and armored), aircraft, and any available gear for inspection for fitness and use in a well-­regulated militia, at 9:00 a.m. on Saturday, April 3, 1993.”73 While few militia members actually responded—­Thompson’s former boss, patriot leader Gary Hunt, sent out a counter-­fax requesting that everyone stay home—­74 the process of turning Koresh into a militia hero had begun. Timothy McVeigh was among the militia sympathizers who responded to Thompson’s call.

 

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Thompson was a central player in constructing the myth of Waco. She produced two videotapes about the events at Mt. Carmel: Waco: The Big Lie, and Waco: The Big Lie Continues. These videotapes defined many of the points that anti-­government advocates would later insist were the truth about the Branch Davidian siege. One of the claims made in Waco: The Big Lie, for example, was that the armored vehicles that inserted CS gas into the Mt. Carmel compound actually spewed fire from their turrets, rather than just gas. Thus, the film insists that the federal government intended to kill the Davidians—­especially the children. Waco: The Big Lie Continues doubled down on the “the government planned it” claims made in the first film. Among other claims, The Big Lie Continues reported on the existence of an alleged government memo that outlined plans to deliberately attack churches across the United States. Without evidence, the film further claims that there was a gap in news coverage of the final raid. According to the film, that gap was deliberate: the missing tape allegedly contained proof of government wrongdoing. And, perhaps most remarkably, the tape insists that three of the four agents killed in the initial February 28th raid on Mt. Carmel had been bodyguards for President Clinton. The video claims that these men were shot through the head, at close range, “professional execution style” by other government agents.75 While the motives for these supposed murders is left unexplained, the implication is clear: Clinton had something to hide. A longer video released in 1997, Waco: The Rules of Engagement, makes similar claims to Thompson’s, but with more evidence. The film is an exercise in obscuring any flaws at Mt. Carmel while highlighting the failures and brutalities of the federal agents at the scene. The religious extremism of the Branch Davidians is completely downplayed, for example, as is any reference to Koresh’s “Bible babble.” Instead, the video shows those parts of the Koresh-­FBI negotiations in which Koresh complains about the government assaulting his house. (The FBI taped those conversations as they occurred.) Of particular emphasis are conversations in which Koresh and his supporters allege that gunfire came from the helicopters circling Mt. Carmel during the initial raid. Extensive use is made of a videotape the Branch Davidians made of themselves during the standoff. It shows the Davidians to be decent, caring people committed to their values and their leader. The program also presents extensive footage, recorded by the FLIR aircraft, of the final assault. It argues that FBI agents had fired at Davidians trying to escape the fire; presumably, the agents did this in order to force the Davidians to remain in the burning building and die. (Militia activists were quick to note that one of the HRT snipers in position around the Branch Davidian compound on April 19 was Lon Horiuchi.) The tape also alleges that ATF agents shot at Davidians from helicopters during the initial February raid. The video insists that such indiscriminate killing proves the government was cruelly indifferent to the lives of its citizens.76 In the aftermath of Waco, conspiracy theorists identified other events they believed justified the creation of a militia to resist a predatory government. These included: •

Three days after the fire, state troopers in Texas arrested reporters with the Associated Press and the Houston Chronicle and seized film they had shot of the burned compound.

 

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Texas Rangers were not allowed onto the Mt. Carmel property until after federal agents had completed their investigation. The Branch Davidian compound was bulldozed just days after the fire. This was ostensibly done so that the Texas Department of Health could begin to clean up the property; however, the department did no work on the grounds of Mt. Carmel for a year after the bulldozers cleared the site. A safe found on site with $50,000 in cash and precious metals was signed over to the FBI by Texas authorities; neither the safe nor the money ever appeared in FBI evidence lockers. Autopsies were performed quickly and carelessly. In one case, a fifty-­year-­old woman was identified as a ten-­year-­old girl. Koresh’s finished commentary on the Seven Seals was withheld for months. The FLIR tapes were withheld for years, and only one tape has ever been released even though anti-­government activists insist there “must have” been more. The FLIR video is alleged to show a second airplane operating at lower altitude over the compound. Neither the existence of that airplane nor any tapes or evidence it collected has ever been admitted by the FBI. A television camera with a long-­range lens filmed what appeared to be an HRT member filming the final operation; that tape, if it exists, was not released. The ATF began a shooting review thirty-­six hours after its February raid; the person directing the review was ordered to stop his investigation on the grounds that it might produce Brady material—­that is, material helpful to the defense that the prosecution is obliged to turn over. HRT’s actions in bulldozing and running over cars and other property on the Branch Davidian compound is alleged to have destroyed evidence from which bullet trajectories and other information injurious to the government might have been collected. A Branch Davidian posted to an outbuilding on the property on the morning of February 28th is alleged to have been assassinated by government agents. Killed March 1st, Mike Schroeder was pictured after his death wearing a blue wool watch cap. This cap, which might have contained gunpowder and other evidence if he had been shot at close range as in an execution, disappeared before his autopsy. Half of the front door of the main building at Mt. Carmel—­the right side of a two-­door entry—­disappeared. ATF alleged that Koresh and his supporters fired through this door as the ATF launched its original raid. Anti-­ government actors insisted the right side of the door proved that ATF agents fired first. Tapes of the final hours of the Branch Davidians made by the eleven listening devices positioned around Mt. Carmel were allegedly altered to imply the Davidians had started the fire. Only one supposed machine gun in the Davidian arsenal was ever examined by experts. The defense was not allowed to have its own experts test the weapon.

 

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Surviving Branch Davidians and supporters insisted that holes in the roof of Mt. Carmel were made by gunfire from the helicopters circling the property on the morning of February 28th.77

Such claims formed the core of the “the federal government meant to do it” myth about Waco. In this myth Koresh and the Branch Davidians were innocent, God-­fearing, ordinary citizens victimized by the evil forces of an oppressive, corrupted government. Thus, as had happened in the case of Randy Weaver, any mistakes, errors, or crimes that Koresh and his followers made were obscured or eliminated from the public memory of the fire at Waco. Instead, an alternative story was created, one that could galvanize sympathetic Americans to join the developing militia movement. Creative story-­telling, entrepreneurial group leaders, government mistakes, and prominent mainstream political and cultural leaders combined to make Waco the symbol of everything dangerous about government. As such, it would make obvious the necessity of creating a citizen militia.

The Militia Wave of the 1990s For the nascent militia movement, the events in Waco served as all the proof of the evil intentions of the federal government supporters would ever need. Already disposed to believe the worst of government and embedded in a culture that insisted on the rights of the individual—­especially gun-­owning individuals—­ against the machinations of the government, the dual events of Ruby Ridge and Waco galvanized anti-government activists around the United States. The movement exploded. As should be clear from the discussions of the events in Ruby Ridge and Waco, there was much ad hoc and contingent about the emergence of the militia in the 1990s. Neither the militia as an entity nor the particular terms of its ideology were systematically planned and then introduced for political debate. Rather, events happened; people responded; a movement arose.

Organizing the Militia The Militia of Montana (MOM) was the first militia to form in the aftermath of the Waco disaster. Founded in February 1994 by the Trochmann family—­several of whom had been friends with Randy Weaver before his standoff with the government in Idaho—­MOM was based in the small town of Noxon, Montana. Angered by the government’s actions at Ruby Ridge, and using rhetoric clearly informed by the revolutionary myth of the militia, John Trochmann asserted that “next time, we’ll throw up fifteen hundred militia on a moment’s notice in a circle of protection.” And if there was gunfire, Trochmann further asserted, harking back to the Revolution, “it will be the shot heard ‘round the world.’”78 In addition to being first, MOM was significant because Trochmann and his allies essentially franchised the idea of organizing militia groups. For $75, MOM sold a “Blue Book” that summarized militia doctrine and articulated the conspiracy theories core to the movement. It also developed and marketed a militia manual that included sections on how to organize, lead, arm, train, and

 

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explain the legal rights of militia groups. MOM sold a manual on how to escape from a concentration camp as well. (MOM members insisted camps being built around the nation for the imprisonment of God-­fearing, gun-­owning Americans everywhere.) In addition, they sold a series of conspiracy theory videotapes, one of which, America in Crisis, featured Helen Chenoweth, a former conservative lobbyist who had recently been elected to the US Congress from Idaho. On it, she claimed that environmental policies sponsored in Washington were destroying property rights in favor of the interests of a Shadow Government that was really controlling American life.79 The core market for MOM’s message was gun owners fearful of government regulation of their weapons. This choice to emphasize gun rights was a brilliant political strategy. John Trochmann himself was a white supremacist who had met Randy Weaver through his association with the Aryan Nations.80 In its public literature, however, MOM downplayed the racial components of its founder’s ideology. Instead, it emphasized more politically palatable positions. Trochmann insisted, for example, “The security of a free state is not found in the citizens having guns in the closet. It is found in the citizenry being trained, prepared, organized, equipped and lead [sic] properly so that if the government uses its force against the citizens, the people can respond with a superior amount of firearms, and appropriately defend their rights.”81 The tactic of linking freedom to gun ownership and militia readiness proved highly successful. Thousands of people joined or connected with militia groups. In 1995, for example, Bob Fletcher, spokesman for MOM, claimed that the group’s communication network could send messages to 500,000 people in thirty minutes. (This was 1995, of course.) Further, the group claimed it sent out 200 packets about how to create one’s own militia every week.82 What began in Montana soon spread nationwide. By 1995, militia groups were operating in at least thirty-­six states.83 Stevens County, Washington, had two.84 Most were small, but one, the Michigan Militia, founded in April 1994, became as important in the militia movement as MOM. Its leaders, Ray Southwell and the Reverend Norman Olson, articulated the same government conspiracy and gun ownership rights theories that were common to militia ideology (discussed later in this chapter). Southwell, Olson, and their friend, Ken Adams, were active in promoting the militia. They appeared on daytime talk show superstar Phil Donahue’s television talk show to expound their beliefs, for example. As Ray Southwell put it on the Donahue show: “I’m afraid . . . at some point the government will cross the line and it will be neighbor coming to the aid of neighbor. Just like at Lexington and Concord. . . . There is one last hope to avoid armed confrontation, and that’s if our state governments rise up and tell our federal government to back off. If the state does not rise up . . . the American people will.”85 This message of noble Americans resisting evil just as their forefathers had in 1775 resonated in a culture educated in the militia myth and convinced of the importance of guns in the American life. By late 1994, Southwell’s group claimed it had branches in sixty-­three of Michigan’s eighty-­three counties. It further claimed to have 10,000 active members.86

 

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Other militias proliferated throughout the post-­Waco period. The North American Volunteer Militia, which was based in Indiana, also had members in Montana. They regularly threatened county and state officials with violence if those agents made rulings or interpretations that violated the group’s sense of what was or was not constitutional. The Montana Freemen, a constitutionalist group with ideas similar to the militia, threatened to try a judge who was hearing a case involving a traffic violation in a “common law” court run by the Freemen themselves. The judge took these threats seriously and sent her family out of town during the trial. She also received a briefing from local law enforcement officials about where she and her children should hide in the event her home was fired on by Freemen activists.87 (The Freemen’s ultimate standoff with the federal government will be addressed later in this book.) A brief chronicle of militia activities in the year following Waco suggests how many Americans rallied to the militia cause: •

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In the summer of 1994, 300 people in Catron County, New Mexico—­a community with only 2,500 residents—­formed a militia to stop the federal government from enforcing regulations limiting cattle grazing on federal lands. In response, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) ordered its agents to travel in pairs and decided not to attempt to enforce the new regulations. In 1995, BLM extended its travel in pairs order and recommended that all its employees in the West do so.88 Linda Thompson, whose tapes Waco: The Big Lie and Waco: The Big Lie Continues had done much to popularize anti-­government conspiracies regarding events at the Branch Davidian compound, styled herself the “ ‘Acting Adjutant General’ of the Unorganized Militia of the United States.” She called on the militia to arrest Congress on September 19, 1994. Charges ranged from continuing the US participation in the Federal Reserve system to passing the Fourteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Amendments to the Constitution. Congress members were to be tried in citizens’ courts. The event was ultimately canceled after substantial discussion among militia groups.89 Jim Rodgers, a militia leader in California, urged his group’s members to attend local county board meetings to intimidate officials into complying with the group’s wishes: “They’re going to assume someone in the back has a rope.”90 A leader of a North Carolina militia known as the Citizens for the Reinstatement of Constitutionalist Government called on its members to stockpile what he called the “Four B’s—­Bibles, bullets, bandages, and beans”—­as part of the group’s efforts to stop the Shadow Government.91 The Florida State Militia published a pamphlet for distribution to its 500 members that encouraged recipients to stockpile ammunition because the federal government was said to be planning to remove ammunition from the market.92 Two Minnesota Patriot’s Council members were convicted in 1995 of a plan to murder law enforcement figures and federal agents with ricin, a powerful poison.93

 

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The militia even found support in the federal government itself. Representative Helen Chenoweth, a conservative swept into office as part of the Republican Party takeover of the US House of Representatives in the 1994 elections that followed Ruby Ridge and Waco, claimed, on the floor of the House: “Mr. Speaker, the issue of how our Government is maltreating its citizens while ignoring the effects of its own unjust actions is very much on the minds of millions of Americans.”94 Senator Larry Craig (R-­ID) made a similar, if less melodramatic, point when he noted: The virtual exoneration of the two defendants [Randy Weaver and Kevin Harris] was seen as proof that the Federal Government had acted improperly. Fairly or unfairly, the public expected the Government’s law enforcement experts to be just that—­experts. Even one misstep would have raised questions. The cumulative effect of these blunders was devastating with public opinion in my State. Not only did they diminish the value of the physical evidence and the credibility of the law enforcement testimony, but they strengthened the popular notion of the case as an example of powerful, corrupt Government pursuing vulnerable citizens and trying to cover up its own misdeeds.95

By the mid-­1990s, then, the militia had an organizational life, a coterie of dedicated members and sympathizers, and the ear and alliance of senior government officials. It was emerging as a significant force in American politics. The twenty-­four months that passed between the destruction of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, and the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, constituted the golden era of the militia movement. As will be discussed in the next chapter, while Timothy McVeigh’s horrific act did not lead to an immediate reduction in militia group formation and activity, it was a factor that set the decline of the movement in motion. But in 1994 and early 1995, those people convinced of the veniality of the federal government believed that they had found a legal, constitutional, American way of stopping the government’s growing repression: the militia. Ideology  Even as the militia developed an organizational structure in real time, as events unfolded, it also created an ideological architecture to explain its existence, to justify its actions, and to create a common agenda for political action. As was the case with the emergence of the militia as an organization, the development of militia ideology was not so much planned as reactive. Some militia activists joined the movement with preexisting ideas and experiences that they sought to integrate into militia mythology. Others had to suppress their racist or misogynistic impulses to fit the militia model. The broad parameters of militia ideology developed in the tension among unfolding events and the goals and values of the leaders who helped frame the militia movement in the first place. At least five themes can be seen to have emerged in 1990s militia ideology. The first focused on the legitimacy of the militia itself. A second claim was that the US federal government was abusing its proper, highly limited, powers. A third theme emphasized the rights and powers of individuals in political affairs. The fourth explored the power and significance of armed resistance in American political history. A fifth plank advocated for the legitimacy and even the necessity of violence in response to government agents who had abused their powers.

 

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The Legitimacy of the Militia  As was discussed in chapter 1, Ricoeur argued that ideology serves to legitimate one’s own worldview. Thus, while ideologies necessarily distort reality, they also offer terms by which their adherents can recognize the appropriateness of their point of view. In militia ideology, the legitimation function was evident in militia members’ insistence on the legality of their operations and the justice of their goals. Militia sites insisted that contemporary militias, organized by private citizens and operating without formal government sanction, were legal and important. This argument rested on two core claims: an interpretation of the Bill of Rights (particularly the Second Amendment) and an analysis of US law as it related to the concept of militias. The constitutional argument rested on an “original intent” understanding of the place of the militia in US life. “Opponents of the individual right to keep and bear arms have greatly misunderstood the initial clause of the Second Amendment,” one site explained. For many in our time, it is inconceivable to think of anything being well-­ regulated without a law mandating the regulation and a bureaucracy to conduct the regulation. In the 18th century, the word regulation did not at all require government involvement. The actions of the American colonists make it plain that a well-­regulated militia was well-­rehearsed and well-­drilled without the control of the government.96

Or, as another site explained, “What the Second Amendment also does is recognize the right, power and duty of able-­bodied persons (originally males, but now females also) to organize into militias and defend the state.”97 “ ‘A well regulated Militia’ does not refer to the regular army. ‘A well regulated Militia’ is a well-­ organized citizens’ army, not a well-­controlled ‘standing army.’ ”98 Militia ideology also legitimized the power of gun-­owning private citizens against any other authority. Militia ideology insisted that militias were the ultimate line of defense for American freedom against a tyrannical government. As the North Carolina Citizen Militia explained: The primary purpose of the North Carolina unorganized, or reserve militia . . . is to defend the Constitution of the State of North Carolina and the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Further, it is to uphold and guarantee all Constitutional guarantees as documented by the Bill of Rights to ensure that all citizens regardless of race, color, religion, sex or national origin retain the inalienable rights and opportunities established by the Founding Fathers of this great nation.99

Or, as another site put it, “MILITIAS ARE NOT ANTI-­GOVERNMENT. . . . MILITIA MEMBERS ARE NOT CRIMINALS. . . . MILITIA MEMBERS ARE NOT EXTREMISTS. . . . No militia participated in the siege at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in 1992. . . . No Militia set fire to any religious group’s communal home in Waco, Texas, in 1993.” Instead, “the Militia seeks to preserve and practice . . . rights and liberties.”100 Other sites mirrored this language: “The Free Militia’s ‘agenda’ is the Bill of Rights. Our purpose is solely to defend these rights for ourselves and our neighbors.”101 “The People, as the militia have the

 

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right to fight, if necessary, oppressive government, to prevent the usurpation of the Constitution (the supreme law of the land), by anyone, including the federal government.”102 And finally, as an example, “Like it or not, the only reason a civilian or unorganized militia exists is in order to keep government in check in order that the government may remain in the hand of the people.”103 In the end, then, militia thinkers claimed that legitimate power rested in the hands of ordinary, gun-­owning citizens, not in the federal government. The militia was, therefore, legitimate. Indeed, it had to be if America was to survive. Corruption, the Shadow Government, and the Conspiracy to Destroy America  Another claim commonly expressed in militia thought built on the right-­wing populist insistence that the ills of society are inevitably caused by conspiracies of elites bent on hurting regular people. For the militia, this elite cabal went by names like the “Shadow Government” or the “New World Order.” (As will be discussed in chapter 5, President Donald Trump made a similar claim after his 2016 election with his critique of what he called the “Deep State” that he and his supporters claimed was controlling American politics.) Militia ideologues claimed that a Shadow Government had corrupted the government of the United States. As members and leaders explained in websites and interviews, “The Constitution that has protected our rights and liberties for more than 200 years is now in greater danger of being overthrown than at any time in our history.” But it was not “Drug lords. . . . Terrorists. . . . Hungry hordes of foreigners. . . . Economic or ecological collapse. . . . Nuclear proliferation” or “Space aliens” that was the source of this threat to American governance. Instead, it was government itself: “We have the evidence that for more than 60 years much of the legislation that has been passed, and much of what officials have done, is in substantial violation of the Constitution. Federal and State governments, especially the Federal, have assumed powers that have no foundation whatsoever in any of the provisions of the Constitution.”104 According to militia theorists, the Shadow Government took control of society by occupying key positions throughout government, the economy, and public life. “Shadow control . . . consists largely of the placement of shadow agents in key positions in all of the institutions that are to be controlled.” These included significant executive, legislative, and judicial branch positions, the staffs who supported these positions, the intelligence agencies, military services, the Internal Revenue Service, police departments, and major corporations, especially banks, as well as insurance agencies, public utilities, and credit bureaus. It also included major media outlets (both print and broadcast), communications networks like telephone and satellite services, organized crime, educational institutions, especially higher education, public interest groups focusing on civil rights, gender rights, and labor issues, international organizations like the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, and NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and select foreign governments. Cumulatively, the Shadow Government was claimed to “bring most of the assets and revenues of the economy under the control of fewer and fewer people.”105 With such power, relatively few leaders could manipulate hundreds of millions of people in ways

 

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that undermined individual rights in favor of the new oligarchy. Militia ideology thereby insisted that the federal government—­and pretty much anyone who worked with it or supported it in any way—­had become the enemy of the “real” American people. According to the militia, the subversion of the “real” government of the United States by the Shadow Government meant that most laws and policies enacted since the Civil War were problematic at best, and outright unconstitutional at worst.106 For example, militia members claimed that the Fourteenth Amendment, which extended federal civil rights protections to cover citizens in the states, was an abusive overreach of federal authority. So, too, were the creation of the income tax in the Sixteenth Amendment, the formation of the Federal Reserve Bank in the early 1900s, and most of the policies and programs associated with the New Deal (programs like Social Security and various protections for workers). Other recent developments, like the growth of the nation’s spy agencies and the military services after World War II, were also seen as cases of the federal government taking too much power. Meanwhile, the rise of a centralized national media controlled by only a few major corporations allegedly gave the agents of the Shadow Government unprecedented opportunities to expand the powers of the national government. So did policies like civil rights enforcement. Our government has adopted its own policy in complete disregard to our Constitution and Bill of Rights that government is to be served by the people, rather than the government serving the people. The Government has assumed the role of a dictatorship, telling the people only what the bureaucracy thinks the people need to know. We have become a controlled society. Every aspect of our lives fall under government control media: radio, television, newspapers, education, food, religion, medicine, health, utilities, industry, commerce, finance, insurance, standing armies, law enforcement, courts, and taxes. We have been conditioned to accept the socialist principles of communism fed to us by the federal government, which now enshrines our local churches, school boards, city governments, county and state governments.107

For militia activists and their supporters no policy exemplified federal government abuse of authority more than gun control. The militia theory of the legality of gun ownership centers on a creative interpretation of the Second Amendment to the US Constitution. Militia members insist that gun rights are absolute: “Rights are God-­given and governments are formed to protect rights, not to grant them or take them away.” Consequently, “the right to bear arms is not something that the government can legitimately legislate away through gun regulation, registration, licensing, taxation, or prohibition.”108 Rather, the right to keep and bear arms is absolute, and nothing, such as the Second Amendment’s introductory clause, “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state,” can limit one’s right to own a gun: Infringe means to encroach upon and does not necessarily mean to totally do away with. There are many ways that the right to keep and bear arms can be infringed: regulation limits gun ownership by controlling the production and sales of firearms. Licensing means that an individual is permitted to own or

 

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carry weapons. Registration means that an individual’s possession of a particular weapon with a serial number is recorded. (Gun businesses are regulated, gun owners are licensed, and guns themselves are registered.) Taxation restricts gun ownership, particularly among the poor, by increasing the cost. Prohibition is either an outright ban of gun possession or the limitation of guns that can be bought.109

The right to own guns, then, was fundamental. No government action could legally interfere with this right. This dry, dispassionate accounting of the militia position on the rights of gun ownership in America does not really capture the intensity with which militia members advocated those rights, however. Nor does it capture the passion with which members express their hatred of government action they see as limiting their gun rights. Militia members asserted their gun rights and insisted on the necessity of armed resistance against a predatory government with an irrational passion. Militia websites and commentators, for example, often ranted that government officials were on the verge of taking away Americans’ guns. Should this happen, these leaders insisted, then Americans would be unable to defend themselves against their hateful, vicious government. Indeed, many militia sites made claims similar to, or in fact directly linked with, a website titled “Gun Control and the First Million Mom March.” This site presented rhetorically inflammatory language that claimed to expose what had really happened in various societies that banned gun ownership. The website claimed that gun control preceded the Holocaust, Stalin’s massacres in the Soviet Union, and other examples of genocide worldwide. “All You Squeamish Bleeding Hearts—­Pay Attention!!!!” the site raged. “Puke or pee in your pants if you must, but Pay Attention!!!!” This demand accompanied pictures, ostensibly from German sources, of naked men and women waiting to be slaughtered in the Holocaust. The caption describing these pictures read: “Their disarmed husbands were sent to Nazi labor camps. Then these terrified moms, many holding babies, were forced to wait in line before being slaughtered by German soldiers and Ukrainian collaborators.” Lest readers miss the point, the caption continued: “On May 14, 2000, the so-­called ‘Million Moms’ marched to stop civilians from owning guns. Here’s what happens when they get their wish.” The site then showed Holocaust victims in a mass grave. “These moms paid the price for gun control,” the caption concluded. Other links explored the dire consequences of gun control in the cases of government-­led genocides or brutalities in countries like Turkey, China, Guatemala, and Cambodia.110 This sense that the government is coming to get you now explains the prominence of Ruby Ridge and Waco in militia thought. Given that the US government has been occupied, taken over by stealth by agents of the New World Order, any historical confidence one might have that the US government would not usually seek to slaughter or imprison its citizens is obviously foolish. Rather, citizens must defend themselves by any and all means, including taking up arms against their own government. Nothing less would help them protect themselves or their families—­and nothing less would restore American democracy to its constitutionally mandated form.

 

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Limits on the Federal Government: Sovereign Citizens and Constitutional Intent  Another common focus of 1990s militia thought was the concept of the sovereign citizen. Sovereign citizens were—­allegedly—­people whose forebears entered into the social contract that created the US Constitution: “The Republic has Citizens of its own called American Nationals. Those are the Sovereign Citizens who qualify as such by being Members of the Posterity referred to in the Preamble and can only be the Natural Born or Naturalized White Inhabitants of each state whose forefathers delegated by solemn agreement certain powers to the Congress of the ‘United States.’ ”111 Militia ideologists insisted that sovereign citizens held a unique position in American politics. Sovereign citizens were thought to retain the right to decide when and if a federal law violated their rights. They held this right because their forbears had been citizens of the states that decided to create a national government with limited powers in the first place. Accordingly, they, as sovereign citizens were not actually required to follow the laws of the national government—­at least, not always. Instead, sovereign citizens had the right to decide for themselves if specific federal laws violated the sovereign citizen’s understanding of the deal their ancestors made in creating the federal government. In other words, if a particular sovereign citizen believed that a specific federal law constituted an unjust burden on the citizen’s rights, then the citizen’s interpretation of the law was superior to the federal government’s rules because the citizen, not the federal government, was “sovereign.” The federal government only had authority in territories it directly controlled—­places like the District of Columbia. Alternatively, federal agents were believed to have power over people, like African Americans, who became citizens of the United States through federal action—­e.g., the passage of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the US Constitution. The “posterity” of those who created the Constitution, however, must be left alone by the federal government since they remained sovereign citizens. Militia ideology also insisted that Constitution granted the federal government a very limited role in the lives of American citizens. Focusing extensive attention on the Tenth Amendment, which states “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited to it by the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people,” militia groups offered very simplistic analyses of constitutional interpretation, reinterpretation, original intent, and authority. For the militia, no judicial interpretation or constitutional amendment that violated the original intent of the founders (as the militia understood it) could be legitimate even if it was passed through the legal procedures required to take such actions: In Article V there is the right to amend but not to make new. It would not be an amendment to abolish the Constitution and adopt the Communist Manifesto or the laws of another country. An amendment has to be germane to the instrument; it must be something already in the Constitution or it fails the test of an amendment. . . . What this means is, no one can alter the 10th Amendment nor twist it to suit their own purpose, nor can the federal government constitutionally and legally do anything which is not in its delegated powers.112

Thus, whether passed by constitutional amendment or legal interpretation, policies like the income tax, federal enforcement of civil rights law, the abandonment

 

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of the gold standard, or other “modern” government programs like welfare and Social Security were seen as unconstitutional because they violated the intent of the Founders—­as determined by today’s militia. “No governing body or majority can amend or legislate away the unalienable rights of the people in any case without the original intent of the founders,” one militia site put it, “who themselves broke from a government that was involved in the same, being stimulated in the hearts, minds and actions of the liberty loving segments of the citizenry.”113 According to the militia, then, it is not the national government, or the state governments, or the Supreme Court, or political practice, or any other force that determines the proper limit on federal government authority over the lives of private citizens. It is sovereign citizens who, as the posterity of the original makers of the Constitution’s governing contract, get to decide what is and is not appropriate government action. Moreover, anything that these sovereign citizens decide is inappropriate, ipso facto, wrong, unconstitutional, and corrupt—­an assault on the fundamental values of the nation. As was discussed earlier, such beliefs help explain the importance of guns in militia thought: militia members insisted that individuals had the right of self-­defense if they were attacked, even by law enforcement officers. Moreover, militia members insisted that in defending themselves they were defending the true, righteous United States as well. They were, at least as they saw it, the hero-­citizens of the American Revolution updated to modern times. The Right and Effectiveness of Armed Resistance  Militia activists also insisted that modern militias could challenge the power of the national government. Militia leaders made this argument by offering a misreading of the American Revolution that offered an optimistic interpretation of the role that the modern militia was expected to play in political life. In a fundamental misreading of the history of the Revolution, for example, one site insisted: When the Reverend Josiah Clark met the British forces at Lexington on April 19, 1775, he was serving as the elected commander of a well-­regulated militia. He had well-­regulated his men many a Sunday afternoon following church services. The British had made the importation of powder (semi-­automatic rifles?) illegal and General Gage had sent his men to confiscate colonial stockpiles, along with other war material such as muskets and food stores. . . . The militias of the communities outside of Boston had been alerted from Boston the night of April 18. Paul Revere was one of these messengers, although he was captured before he got very far. The British were defeated rather soundly by the militia at Lexington and the other companies that came from surrounding areas answering the call.114

Or, as another site explained, “Do we believe Paul Revere’s militia unit was part of the organized government of his time? We think not! It was clear to the early patriots that the militia was independent of the organized government and made up of the people who stood ready to repel a tyrannical government from denying the rights of liberty under the Constitution.” “Furthermore,” this same site

 

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continued, “the founders of our government believed that power should remain in the hands of the people to stop the usurpation of power of government. For this expressed reason, they believed in the militia system where all citizens should keep and bear arms.”115 One did not need to be part of a formally organized militia to be a legitimate militia, then. Instead, one’s intent to challenge illegitimate authority established the group’s status as a legitimate militia. What worked for the founders would work today, contemporary militia members continued. In the “Can we win an armed conflict?” subsection of a longer document, one militia text evoked the language of radical Republican political theory as it laid out a strategy for militia action that mirrored the logic of guerrilla warfare: Suppose you join us. Suppose we mobilize. Can we win? The enemy police and military forces under the control of a growing autocratic government will have and wield great might. . . . But we can win! Initially, the potential enemy will be greater in numbers, have superior firepower, better training, more equipment, and closer coordination. But we have three things in our favor that they do not have: the people, our own advantages, and a cause.116

The people, for example, owned “between 100 and 200 million firearms in the hands of private citizens of this country . . . who, almost by definition, would side with the Constitution rather than the government in a struggle.” Indeed, even police and military forces would join the crusade since they “love their personal liberties.” “So it would not be long until we are the ones with superior numbers and perhaps even superior firepower,” the document asserted. Thus, militia ideologues insisted that their members would build on their advantages—­resources like support in the community, fighters who were motivated by passion for liberty, and superior knowledge of the area of conflict—­to build a militia force that could be highly effective in a real conflict. Ultimately, they insisted that the cause for which their militias would fight—­freedom and liberty—­would guarantee the superior performance of militia warriors: “But while the patriot will not desire to risk or sacrifice his life in vain, he ‘has’ to fight to win. He will be willing to go beyond the call of duty because he is energized by an idea, not by self-­preservation or selfish ambition.”117 As another writer vividly insisted: “Let me give a VERY powerful fact that every high ranking officer knows . . . in 400 years of recorded military history NEVER has a corrupt government defeated an indigenous guerilla force. In a nut shell, what that means is that the power rests with the people!”118 This militia vision of the militia’s role in the American Revolution is not, as it happens, shared by most historians of that era. Nor, for that matter, was it shared by George Washington himself: he was very skeptical of the militia’s discipline and its ability to sustain operations in the brutal, face-­to-­face slugfests typical of eighteenth-­century warfare. But as the discussion of the militia myth in chapter 1 demonstrates, the facts of the case hardly mattered to 1990s militia theorists. Instead, what mattered to militia ideologues was the heroic role the militia was seen to have played during the Revolution. Accordingly, it did not actually matter to contemporary militia activists that the militia didn’t win the American Revolution. It only mattered that the militia offered a culturally resonant model

 

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of a small, independent group of selfless citizens who beat a vastly superior, organized government force. What was claimed to have worked then was expected to work now. The militia myth, then, was more an organizational tool than a strategic one: if militia could retell the ancient revolutionary myth of the militia compellingly enough, it could encourage citizens today to join a modern revolution against the federal government. Militia Ideology and Racial, Ethnic, and Gender Minorities  One area where militia thought deviated from much of right-­wing populist thinking was its insistence that militia members were not racists or sexists. The Missouri 51st Militia, for example, claimed that “under no circumstances will the Missouri 51st Militia tolerate any criminal behavior or racism.”119 Other militia sites made similar ethical statements. However, these sentiments ran in tension with militia insistence on the existence of categories of citizens like “sovereign citizens” of white males whose forebears created the Constitution, who enjoyed special rights in the political system. They also challenged the political reality that many avowed racists used advocacy of states’ rights, as well as the assertion of “strict constructionist” and “original intent” standards of interpreting the Constitution, to argue against civil rights laws that forced state and local governments to ensure women and minorities enjoyed basic rights like suffrage, equal opportunity for work, and a decent education. How, then, could militia thinkers “square the circle” and insist the militia was not racist even as their ideology promoted racist constructs like the notion of the sovereign citizen? Put simply, militia ideologues tried to obscure the tensions that made militia activism appear racially motivated. One strategy involved obfuscating the racial components of the sovereign citizen concept. Thus, militia thinkers insisted that all citizens have rights guaranteed by the Constitution but followed up saying that only certain citizens were sovereign. Only sovereign citizens had the right to assess, consent, or nullify government’s actions. Thus, if an African American disagreed with an action of the federal government, he or she had no right to reject the decision because the national government had originally guaranteed that person’s citizenship through the Fourteenth Amendment. Those people whose forebears made the social contract that became the Constitution, by contrast, were in a position to evaluate and accept or reject a federal policy since their rights are protected by the original social contract that no government can alter. In militia ideology, then, the differential application of rights was not racist. It was constitutional. (Militia ideologues did not address the question of why a constitutional rule could not also be racist or sexist.) Militia activists insisted that this system guaranteed everyone equal rights in practice. African Americans, women, and other minorities had the same right to free speech as sovereign citizens. All that differed was where the final authority to judge the limits of rights lay. For the militia, the ultimate authority to set the limits for government regulation sat with the sovereign citizen, whose actions in defense of human liberty would bring benefits and protections to everyone, including minorities. Thus, militia members insisted, they were not racist. Indeed, they were the nation’s truest defenders.

 

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Like their Revolutionary ancestors, then, militia members mythologized themselves as benevolent hero-­warriors motivated by patriotism and human rights to make—­o r restore—­A merica into its ideal form. They saw themselves as all the more heroic because they were willing to use guns while facing threats of death from a manipulative, evil government. Militia ideology encouraged its adherents to adopt a righteous rage directed at the evil of the Shadow Government and intended to purify the nation as a whole. Rage was, in other words, both justified and purgative. Accordingly, militia ideology promoted an activist, violent agenda as a means of redeeming the nation and saving it for restoration to greatness in the future. The terms of that ideology drew life from the cultural values embedded in American political culture. Their ideas, and the ways these ideas linked to those of the polity at large, had the potential to shape the politics of the United States well beyond the 1990s.

Conclusion The events in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and Waco, Texas, were shaped by entrepreneurial militia movement leaders, as well as other cultural and political figures, into a narrative that resonated with many Americans. Militia activists insisted that government was corrupted by agents of the New World Order and could not be trusted. Militia members and sympathizers took the federal government’s efforts to pass laws on issues like gun control as proof that the government intended to destroy the liberty of people like the Weaver family and David Koresh and his followers. Militia leaders claimed that the raids at Ruby Ridge and at Waco had been undertaken in order to enforce gun laws, proving that any gun control was but a first step to federal control of everything. (Just as had happened in Nazi Germany, militia websites insisted.) Since government was evil and afraid of guns, it was obvious that only armed resistance to government’s actions could save American freedom. And as the examples of Lexington and Concord were alleged to prove, Americans had used guns to defeat a powerful enemy before. Join us, came the militia call, and save America again. Militia leaders and sympathizers, then, insisted that they and their supporters were real, patriotic Americans precisely because they were gun-­wielding people who resisted any restrictions on their rights—­in any circumstance. Everyone else—­for example, anyone who failed to see that individual freedoms were being eroded by federal government action—­was putting America’s future at risk. Militia members were true Americans whose actions and beliefs supported liberty in the United States. They were the real heroes, the real patriots who would fight the agents of a corrupt government. It is up to us as individuals to save America, militia ideology thus insisted. “We” did it before, and “we” can do it again. Consequently, the movement’s ideology encouraged other citizens sympathetic to the myth of the revolutionary militia to join the contemporary movement’s ranks.

 

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This mythic self-­construction was most clear when members or ideologues defined themselves as ordinary people acting in heroic defense of the “real” America. As a California militia site explained on a link titled “Who We Are”: Contrary to what you may have read in the newspapers, or heard on the radio, or even seen on the television news, we are not a group of “goose stepping” anti-­Semitic racists with single digit IQ’s. And in spite of what the government, and its lackeys in the media would have you believe, we are not a bunch of mad bombers. We are not out to destroy the government. We are hoping to restore it. Our members represent every racial group, every major religion, and both sexes. Many of our members are college graduates, and a substantial number possess advanced degrees, while others lack a high school diploma. Most of our people are veterans and many have actual combat experience. From professionals to laborers, and teachers to law enforcement officers, we have come together because we have something in common, something that transcends race, or religion, or sex. We love America. We know where she’s been, and we fear where she’s heading. We are graybeards who remember the cops that walked a beat in our neighborhoods, and who knocked on the door when they wanted to talk to us. We are young blacks who tremble at the sight of a police car in their rear view mirror. We are lawyers who still choke up when we read the Constitution, and we are factory workers and house-­wives who refuse to believe that sacred document, the Constitution, has become obsolete. We are ordinary people who have done an extraordinary thing. We have read the writing on the wall, and we have said no. We have read the writing and said “Hell no!” “Hell no, I’m not giving up my country,” and “Hell no, I’m not giving up America,” not to the socialists, and not to the United Nations, not without a fight! And we pray. And our prayer is that somehow those who would take away our liberty, that those who have placed themselves above our Constitution and the supreme law of the land will read the writing on the walls, and give America back to us before it’s too late. But most of all, we are Patriots, sworn to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America against all enemies foreign and domestic. So who are we? We are your neighbor, your secretary, your doctor, the mechanic who fixed your car, and yes, maybe even the face that stares at you from the mirror every morning. We are Americans.120

To be a good American, then, was to be an active militia member willing to sacrifice all for the good of the nation. Anything less made one an agent of the evil that occupied America’s government, an evil that was working to destroy American freedom. Real Americans—­those who believed in individual rights and who feared excessive government—­had to join the militia.

Notes

1

The basic facts of the Weaver standoff are well known today. The timeline offered here derives from Jess Walter, Every Knee Shall Bow: The Truth and Tragedy of Ruby Ridge and the Randy Weaver Family (New York: HarperPaperbacks, 1995): 22–45. For a fuller examination of the

 

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2 3

4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

37 38 39 40 41

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Ruby Ridge standoff, see “The federal raid on Ruby Ridge, ID”: hearings before the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology, and Government Information of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, 104th Congress, September 1997; Ark Media Production, “Ruby Ridge,” The American Experience, Barak Goodman and Emily Singer Chapman, producers, 2017. Walter, Every Knee, 30–33. Hal Lindsey with C. C. Carlson, The Late Great Planet Earth (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1970). Walter, Every Knee, 30–46. Walter, Every Knee, 48–55. Walter, Every Knee, 95–96. Walter, Every Knee, 120–22. Walter, Every Knee, 123–24. Walter, Every Knee, 138–44. Walter, Every Knee, 145–52. Walter, Every Knee, 164. Walter, Every Knee, 166–71. Walter, Every Knee, 171–74. Walter, Every Knee, 177–89. Walter, Every Knee, 191–95. Walter, Every Knee, 200–201. Walter, Every Knee, 212. Walter, Every Knee, 207–8. Walter, Every Knee, 228–31. Walter, Every Knee, 231–33. Walter, Every Knee, 233–36. Walter, Every Knee, 237. Walter, Every Knee, 239–43. Walter, Every Knee, 275–312; see also Gerry Spence, From Freedom to Slavery: The Rebirth of Tyranny in America (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1993), 13–48. Spence, From Freedom, 13–48; Walter, Every Knee, 320–44. Walter, Every Knee, 357. “Judge: Kevin Harris Can’t Be Tried Again,” Idaho Statesman, October 3, 1997, A1. Walter, Every Knee, 357–66. Walter, Every Knee, 368. Walter, Every Knee, 371–72. Walter, Every Knee, 371. Henry Weinstein, “Court Blasts FBI Actions at Ruby Ridge,” Los Angeles Times, September 26, 1997, 1. Cf., Spence, From Freedom, 13–48. The Pantagraph, June 15, 2001, A11. http://­www.splcenter.org/­intelligenceproject/­ip_4m1.html, originally accessed May 9, 2000. Page no longer exists. http://­www.splcenter.org/­intelligenceproject/­ip_4m1.html, originally accessed May 9, 2000. Page no longer exists. See also Kenneth Stern, A Force upon the Plain (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), 35–37. Morris Dees, Gathering Storm: America’s Militia Threat (New York: HarperCollins, 1996), 1. Dees, Gathering Storm, 2. Dees, Gathering Storm, 54–55; Stern, Force, 36. Stern, Force, 36. James D. Tabor and Eugene V. Gallagher, Why Waco? Cults and the Battle for Religious Freedom in America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), pp. 44–49. Like the events at Ruby Ridge, the timeline of events at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, is now well known. Useful sources include cesnur.org, “Final report to the Deputy Attorney General concerning the 1993 confrontation at the Mt. Carmel Complex, Waco Texas,” by John C. Danforth, special counsel. Issued November 8, 2000, accessed August 14, 2018; Alex Hannaford, “The Standoff in Waco,” The Texas Observer, April 18, 2013, https://­w ww.texasobserver.

 

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57 58 59 60 61 62

63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85

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org/­the-­standoff-­in-­waco, accessed August 14, 2018; Sarah Childress, “10 Things You May Not Know about Waco,” PBS, February 28, 2018, https://­www.pbs.org/­wgbh/­frontline/­article/­ 10-­things-­you-­may-­not-­know-­about-­waco, accessed August 14, 2018. Tabor, Why Waco?, 49–56. Tabor, Why Waco?, 84–85. Tabor, Why Waco?, 100–101. David B. Kopel and Paul H. Blackman, No More Wacos: What’s Wrong with Federal Law Enforcement and How to Fix It (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1997), 48–64. Kopel, No More Wacos, 99. Kopel, No More Wacos, 96. Kopel, No More Wacos, 96–100. Kopel, No More Wacos, 96–100. Tabor, Why Waco?, 2–3. Tabor, Why Waco?, 3–6. Kopel, No More Wacos, 133–48. Kopel, No More Wacos, 133. Kopel, No More Wacos, 133–34. Kopel, No More Wacos, 134–37. Tabor, Why Waco?, 13–14; Report to the Deputy Attorney General on the Events at Waco, Texas, February 28 to April 19, 1993, Redacted Version. Department of Justice, October 8, 1993, 158–202. Kopel, No More Wacos, 154–57. Kopel, No More Wacos, 161. Kopel, No More Wacos, 198. Kopel, No More Wacos, 203. Dirk Johnson, “Last Hours in Waco,” New York Times, April 26, 1993, A1. Adam Lusher, “Waco: How a 51-­Day Standoff between a Christian Cult and the FBI Left More Than 80 Dead and Divided America,” The Independent, January 26, 2018, https://­www.inde pendent.co.uk/­news/­world/­americas/­waco-­tv-­series-­siege-­truth-­what-­really-­happened-­david-­ koresh-­branch-­davidians-­cult-­fbi-­paramount-­a8179936.html, accessed August 14, 2018. Dick J. Reavis, The Ashes of Waco: An Investigation (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1995), 281–300. Reavis, Ashes, 281–300. Reavis, Ashes, 282–83. Reavis, Ashes, 296–97. Reavis, Ashes, 298–99. Kopel, No More Wacos, 268–69. Kopel, No More Wacos, 232–36. Kopel, No More Wacos, 250–64. Kopel, No More Wacos, 236. Interim Report to the Deputy Attorney General Concerning the 1993 Confrontation at the Mt. Carmel Complex, Waco, Texas, Special Counsel John C. Danforth, July 21, 2000. Stern, Force, 61. Stern, Force, 61. Stern, Force, 61–63. Waco: The Rules of Engagement, produced by William Gazecki, Dan Gifford, and Michael McNulty, 1997. Kopel, No More Wacos, 225–91. Stern, Force, 68. Stern, Force, 77–78. Stern, Force, 68–70 Stern, Force, 71. Stern, Force, 67. Stern, Force, 96. Stern, Force, 83. Stern, Force, 98.

 

74 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103

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Stern, Force, 97. Stern, Force, 80–81. Stern, Force, 122–23. Stern, Force, 133–34. Stern, Force, 135. Stern, Force, 135. Stern, Force, 135. Stern, Force, 135. Congressional Record, March 6, 1996. Congressional Record, September 27, 1994. Originally accessed at: http://­www.frii.com/­~gosplow/­liberty.html, June 20, 2001. Site no longer exists. Constitution Society, “Legal Theory of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms,” http://­www.consti tution.org/­leglrkba.txt, accessed August 15, 2018. Originally accessed at: http://­www.ifas.org/­library/­militia/­1-­3.html, June 20, 2001. Site no longer exists. Originally accessed at: http://­www.netpath.net/­~jeffr/­nccm.htm, June 20, 2001. Site no longer exists. Originally accessed at: http://­w ww.indianamilitia.homestead.com/­d eclaration2001.html, June 20, 2001. Site no longer exists. Originally accessed at: http://­www.ifas.org/­library/­militia/­2-­1.html, June 20, 2001. Site no longer exists. Originally accessed at: http://­www.netpath.net/­~jeffr/­milorg.htm, June 20, 2001. Site no longer exists. Originally accessed at: http://­www.mainemilitia.homestead.com/­files/­MILITIAMANUAL1. htm, June 20, 2001. Other similar statements were found at: www.mo51st.org/­bylaws1.htm, June 20, 2001; and http://­www.brinkster.com/­ivcm/­goal.hrm, June 20, 2001. Sites no longer exist. Originally accessed at: http://­www.constitution.org/­comperil.htm; May 1, 1998. Site no longer exists. Originally accessed at: http://­www.constitution.org/­comperil.htm; May 1, 1998. Site no longer exists. The scope of this conspiracy was seen as so vast and expressed itself in so many dimensions of militia thought that there was no way to present every argument militia groups made in relation to the conspiracy. The following sites were used for understanding the dimensions of the conspiracy as alleged by the militia. (Note: unless otherwise indicated, the sites or the pages indicated no longer exist.) http://­www.the-­oil-­patch.com/­archive/­wakefield.html, June 19, 2001; http://­ www.civil-­liberties.com, “A Fairy Tale of Taxation,” June 20, 2001; http://­www.civil-­liberties. com, “Is the Income Tax Legally Enforced?,” June 20, 2001; http://­www.civil-­liberties.com, “For What Purposes Can the Federal Government Tax the People?,” June 20, 2001; http://­ www.civil-­liberties.com, “How and Why the Federal Government Legislates Outside the Constitutional Limitation,” June 20, 2001; http://­www.the-­oil-­patch.com/­archive/­unfraud.html, June 19, 2001; http://­w ww.the-­o il-­p atch.com/­a rchive/­m illeniumsummit.html, June 19, 2001; http://­www.jbs.org/­un/­un12.htm, June 20, 2001; http://­www.the-­oil-­patch.com/­ archive/­federal-­reserve.html, June 19, 2001; http://­www.the-­oil-­patch.com/­links-­fed-­res.html, June 19, 2001; http://­www.civil-­liberties.com, “A Time Line of the National Bank,” June 20, 2001; http://­www.ptialaska.net/­~swampy/­banks/­federal_reserve.txt, June 20, 2001; http://­ www.the-­oil-­patch.com/­archive/­power.html, June 19, 2001; http://­www.amendment_13.org, June 19, 2001; http://­www.civil-­liberties.com, “The Missing 13th Amendment: Old Conspiracy or New Conspiracy?,” June 20, 2001; http://­indianamilitia.homestead.com/­declaration2001. html, June 20, 2001; http://­www.ifas.org/­library/­militia/­1-­4.html, June 20, 2001; http://­ www.the-­oil-­patch.com/­archive/­10thAmendment.html, June 19, 2001. See also: Constitution Society, “Intent of the Fourteenth Amendment Was to Protect All Rights,” http://­www.con

 

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109

110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120

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stitution.org/­col/­intent_14th.txt, accessed August 15, 2018; Harry V. Martin, “FEMA—­The Secret Government,” http://­www.sonic.net/­sentinel/­gvcon6.html, accessed August 15, 2018. Originally accessed at: http://­www.the-­oil-­patch.com/­archive/­reclaimus.html, June 19, 2001. Site no longer exists. Originally accessed at: http://­www.ifas.org/­library/­militia/­1-­3.html, June 20, 2001. Site no longer exists. See Constitution Society, “Legal Theory of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms,” http://­www.constitution.org/­leglrkba.htm, accessed August 16, 2018, for a similar argument copyrighted in 1994. Originally accessed at: http://­www.ifas.org/­library/­militia/­1-­3.html, June 20, 2001. Site no longer exists. See Constitution Society, “Legal Theory of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms,” for a similar argument. Originally accessed at: http://­www.barefootsworld.net/­1stmillionmom.html, June 19, 2001. Site no longer exists. http://­www.civil-­liberties.com/­pages/­usax3.html, “United States vs. United States vs. United States of America,” accessed August 16, 2018. Originally accessed at: http://­www.the-­oil-­patch.com/­archive/­10thAmendment.html, June 19, 2001. Site no longer exists. Originally accessed at: http://­www.PetitionOnline.com/­usdeclar/­petition.html, June 20, 2001. Site no longer exists. Originally accessed at: http://­www.frii.com/­gosplow/­liberty.html, June 20, 2001. Site no longer exists. Originally accessed at: http://­www.mainemilitia.homestead.com/­files/­MILITIAMANUAL1. htm, June 20, 2001. Site no longer exists. Originally accessed at: www.ifas.org/­library/­militia/­2-­1html, June 20, 2001. Site no longer exists. Originally accessed at: http://­www.ifas.org/­library/­militia/­2-­1html, June 20, 2001. Site no longer exists. Originally accessed at: http://­www.theofficenet.com/­~redorman/­pagepm.htm, June 20, 2001. Site no longer exists. Originally accessed at: http://­www.theofficenet.com/­~redorman/­pagepm.htm, June 20, 2001. Site no longer exists. Originally accessed at: http://­geocities.com/­CapitolHill/­Congress/­2608/­whoarewe.htm, June 20, 2001. Site no longer exists.

 

3

The Oklahoma City Bombing and the Decline of the 1990s Militia

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hile no one knew it when it happened, the high-­water mark of the anti-­government militia movement in the 1990s came at 9:02 a.m. on April 19, 1995. At that time, a Ryder rental truck carrying 5,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate fertilizer mixed with diesel fuel exploded, shearing the face off the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The bomb tore the center of the building down as well. One hundred and sixty-­ eight people were killed. Nineteen were children, most of whom were playing in the childcare facility housed in the building. The decline of the movement after the Oklahoma City bombing was not immediate, nor was it wholly a matter of revulsion against what was, until September 11, 2001, the deadliest act of terrorism in the history of the United States. Instead, the militia lost support over the next several years, finally fading away after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. Post-­9/­11, Americans felt a surge of national patriotism mixed with worry about terrorism, conditions that made the militia’s anti-­government, violent resistance message unpopular.

Coming to Oklahoma City When Timothy McVeigh lit the fuse that led to the bomb that destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, his action was a foreseeable consequence of a toxic mix of militia ideology and mythology—­ particularly among its most enraged sympathizers. McVeigh and his fellow conspirators took an action that combined racism with extreme anti-­government

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paranoia, an action that “made sense” both to them and to many others on the far right of American politics. Although most militia groups publicly disavowed both the bombing and McVeigh, the ideology and anger described in chapter 2 informed McVeigh’s terrible violence. Like both Randy Weaver and David Koresh before him, Timothy McVeigh was not a member of a militia group. But his ideas and attitudes fell within the broad parameters of the militia movement in the United States. Timothy McVeigh was born April 23, 1968, in upstate New York. He was a personable, engaged child, active in school with many friends. He was a good student who paid attention in class. He had a good attendance record. Those who knew him in his youth saw him as a talented person who was not quite living up to his potential.1 Yet school never really interested McVeigh. After his high school graduation in 1986 he did not go to college. Instead, what fascinated the young Timothy McVeigh was guns. He received his first rifle at thirteen and his first shotgun at fifteen. Unlike many of his peers, however, McVeigh did not hunt. Instead, he preferred target practice. In 1988, bored and with little ambition, McVeigh enlisted in the army. In his early time in the service he seemed to find the focus his life had previously lacked. He became an exemplary soldier. He worked harder, trained more seriously, kept his weapon and clothing cleaner, and lived more ascetically than any other soldier in his unit. When his fellow soldiers went off base to bars and strip clubs, McVeigh stayed on base, worked out, and saved his money.2 At least one element of army life bothered McVeigh, however. He did not like the fact that the army was racially integrated. Indeed, the US Army has been called the most successfully racially integrated institution in all of American life: people of all races, religions, ethnic backgrounds, genders, and political opinions serve together in units that work to fulfill their missions no matter who is assigned to do them. McVeigh, however, was a racist—­a fact he might even not have been fully aware of until he joined the army and worked with African Americans in large numbers for the first time. After all, rural, upstate New York was almost exclusively white, and McVeigh had little experience in diverse environments prior to enlisting. After joining the racially integrated, ethnically diverse army, McVeigh reacted in racial terms: he made numerous racist comments during his time in service, even after he was promoted to sergeant for his high-­quality work.3 McVeigh expressed increasingly virulent anti-­government ideas as his time in the service lengthened. At first, McVeigh expressed his anti-­government attitudes mostly in relation to the issue of gun control. Like many rural, gun-­owning people, McVeigh rejected gun control legislation as a violation of the Second Amendment to the US Constitution. Over time, however, McVeigh expressed opposition to an array of government efforts to secure civil rights for African Americans and other minorities. For McVeigh, such policies amounted to government support for racial homogenization—­forced race mixing that McVeigh believed would lead to the destruction of white people and white culture. Thus, even as he excelled at his job McVeigh grew isolated from his fellow soldiers. He

 

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rejected the institutional values that made the army effective and came to hate the policies of the government that created and funded the army despite the fact that he was serving in the army with great success. McVeigh’s two best friends in the service were Terry Nichols and Michael Fortier. McVeigh met Nichols in basic training. Nichols, who had been raised on a farm in rural Michigan before graduating high school in 1973 and knocking around at a number of odd jobs before joining the army, became an older brother to McVeigh. They spent hours together during the slack periods of basic training. Likewise, they kept company when they were assigned to the same base after graduating from basic training. Each reinforced the other’s racism during their long conversations.4 McVeigh became friends with Michael Fortier when both McVeigh and Nichols were posted to Ft. Riley, Kansas. A friendly, likable person, Fortier had been raised in northern Arizona before graduating high school in 1987. He, too, was a racist, and found kindred spirits in Nichols and McVeigh. They spent hours together during their time at Ft. Riley.5 McVeigh’s racism moved from being a preference to a life calling when, during his time in the army, someone gave him a copy of The Turner Diaries. The Turner Diaries, written by white supremacist leader William Pierce under the pseudonym “Andrew MacDonald,” tells the story of a white nationalist rebellion against the government of the United States. The book opens as the US government passes the Cohen Act, a law intended to eliminate all private gun ownership in the United States. Passage of the Cohen Act stimulates a group of white, race-­loving Americans concerned for their freedom to start a rebellion against the federal government. As part of this rebellion, race-­loving whites launch a guerrilla campaign of terror and violence to destabilize the national government. The terrorist acts they undertake include the use of a truck bomb to destroy FBI headquarters in Washington, DC. The bomb is made of diesel fuel mixed with fertilizer. Ultimately, the heroic white supremacists gain control of the US nuclear arsenal. They use it to launch a genocidal assault that purges the world of “inferior” races. The world is thereby saved for white people.6 McVeigh promoted The Turner Diaries every chance he could. He urged fellow soldiers to read the book. Once he left the army, McVeigh traveled the gun show circuit selling it below cost in order to promote its message.7 He became a proponent of guns, racism, and hatred of the federal government. In contrast with Randy Weaver and David Koresh, much of McVeigh’s ideology corresponded closely with the values associated with the then-­developing militia movement. Like the militia, McVeigh saw guns as crucial tools for protecting Americans’ liberty in the face of an abusive federal government. Accordingly, his ideas, while outside the mainstream of American political culture and practice, were nonetheless in line with right-­wing populist interpretations of political morality in the United States. Of course, in 1989 McVeigh could not have called himself a militiaman since, as a practical matter, the movement had not yet formed. But people like McVeigh, sharing his racist, pro-­g un and anti-­ government attitudes, created the militia movement just a few years later. After returning from service in the United States’ first war against Iraq (1990–1991), McVeigh began to drift. He re-­e nlisted but isolated himself

 

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physically from most of his fellow soldiers by living with a series of friends and acquaintances off base. He was so unsatisfied with army life that he finally filed for a discharge and left the service in January 1992. Moving home for a period, he worked through a series of relatively unskilled jobs. He joined the New York National Guard. He also began to claim that the federal government kept track of his location through a computer chip it had implanted in his buttocks when he was in the army. He quit the National Rifle Association (NRA) because he decided the organization was not aggressive enough in protecting Americans’ gun rights. He became obsessed with gun control and with anti-­government conspiracies. He grew increasingly isolated from mainstream society and had only limited contact with his family. In 1992 McVeigh moved to Michigan to live with Terry Nichols. It was there that he watched, with growing rage, the government standoff with and final surrender of Randy Weaver and his family in Ruby Ridge, Idaho. McVeigh, already convinced of government’s evil, had his beliefs confirmed during the Weaver operation.8 He became totally invested in the Weaver myth—­that government agents were solely to blame for attacking an innocent man and his family living lives of quiet solitude while practicing their religion and owning lots of guns. For McVeigh, if the Weavers could be the target of government oppression, anyone could be. In the aftermath of Ruby Ridge, McVeigh contacted many of the militia groups that began to form across the United States. Drifting again, McVeigh stayed with friends or, for brief periods, in places he rented. His circle of friends and acquaintances were mostly members of the militia and/­or racist undergrounds in American life.9 For McVeigh, what Ruby Ridge began, Waco finished. The government raids and ultimate destruction of the Mt. Carmel complex in early 1993 was all the proof of government’s evil that McVeigh would ever need. He visited Waco during the standoff and was videotaped at Mt. Carmel by a film crew shooting a documentary made during the siege. He visited Waco again after the fire had destroyed the Branch Davidian compound.10 He came to believe that something had to be done to stop such abuses from ever happening again. The rough outline of what grew into the conspiracy to destroy the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, was established sometime in 1993. Early that year, McVeigh visited Michael Fortier in Kingman, Arizona.11 McVeigh spent most of the next two years in and around the Kingman area, although he never really stopped drifting. Final planning for the bombing of the Murrah building began in December 1994. It was then that McVeigh began placing bulk orders for ammonium nitrate, a fertilizer that, when mixed with the sufficient amounts of diesel fuel and ignited, can make a powerful explosive. These bulk purchases were stored in various facilities waiting for use. In addition, McVeigh and Fortier visited the Murrah building over Christmas to scout their target.12 So why the Alfred P. Murrah building? In The Turner Diaries, FBI headquarters in Washington, DC, is the target that gets destroyed, and indeed gets destroyed fairly early in the book. Given that McVeigh was fixated on The Turner Diaries, some conspiracy theorists later argued that McVeigh could not have

 

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committed the Murrah operation. They insist that he would have duplicated the actions of his hero and destroyed FBI headquarters instead. However, FBI headquarters was far too heavily guarded to be attacked successfully. Additionally, McVeigh believed that the FBI office that led the Waco assault was housed in the Murrah building. He also believed that the spokesperson for the ATF office that had directed operations in Waco was based there as well. (The FBI office had, in fact, been moved since the Waco fire, and at the time of the bombing the spokesperson for ATF during the Waco disaster no longer worked in the Murrah building.) McVeigh and his fellow conspirators believed the facility to be a highly vulnerable, highly symbolic target.13 Unfortunately for the victims of the attack, it is possible to design and build a remarkably powerful bomb using relatively ordinary materials. McVeigh mixed ammonium nitrate and diesel fuel in large blue barrels and loaded them into the back of a Ryder rental truck. They created a blast capable of shattering a nine-­ story building in seconds.14 At 8:30 a.m. on April 19, 1995, McVeigh asked a passerby for directions to a street corner near the Murrah building. At 8:40 a.m., a parking enforcement officer in Oklahoma City saw a bright yellow truck near the property. At 8:55 a.m., three people saw a man fitting McVeigh’s description standing next to a rental truck. At 9:00 a.m., a driver had to hit his brakes to avoid hitting McVeigh as he jaywalked across 5th Street in downtown Oklahoma City, abandoning the bomb to do its work. At 9:02 a.m., the bomb exploded, ripping the face off the building and killing 168 men, women, and children. 15 Timothy McVeigh had taken his revenge against the government he hated. Ironically, he also began the process of undermining the 1990s militia movement.

The Aftermaths of Oklahoma City—­ First Responses Perhaps the most surprising after effect of the bombing of the Murrah building in Oklahoma City was how little immediate effect it had on the militia movement. In the initial hours after the attack, many—­if not most—­Americans expected that the bombing must have been the work of foreign terrorists. Even after McVeigh was arrested, however, militia activities continued, and many sympathizers retained their loyalties to the movement. In order to explore this point, this section examines the aftermath for the participants, the affected communities, and the broader militia movement. As will be seen, and as is further discussed later in this chapter, there was not a linear relationship between the bombing in Oklahoma City and the decline of the militia movement.

The Aftermath for Timothy McVeigh and the Other Conspirators In the immediate aftermath of the bombing, national attention focused on likely suspects. A consensus rapidly formed that this attack must have been the act of Middle East terrorists. As a consequence of this assumption, the FBI threw out

 

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a substantial dragnet that ensnared an innocent Palestinian man waiting for an international flight at the Detroit airport. His bags were searched in Detroit, and then were searched again when they made it to Rome. Meanwhile, he was searched and questioned first in Detroit, and for a second time on arriving in London, where he had flown after missing his original flight.16 For many Americans, it seemed impossible that an American—­especially a white person—­could commit such a horrible crime. Meanwhile, McVeigh was sitting in an Oklahoma jail, waiting for a bail hearing. Entirely by coincidence, an Oklahoma state trooper stopped Timothy McVeigh for speeding and driving a vehicle without license tags even as the national manhunt for a foreign terrorist was under way. As McVeigh was leaning over to give the officer his driver’s license, the trooper noticed a bulge under his jacket. He ordered McVeigh to exit the car and to remove his coat. McVeigh warned the trooper he had a gun. The officer then arrested McVeigh for speeding, driving without tags, driving without insurance, possession of an illegal weapon, and transporting an illegal weapon. McVeigh was arrested just one hour and seventeen minutes after his bomb destroyed the Murrah building.17 He was taken to the Noble County, Oklahoma, jail.18 Tellingly, the driver’s license McVeigh gave the state trooper listed a false birthday: April 19, 1972.19 That date—­April 19—­was as central to McVeigh’s thinking as it is in militia ideology. In addition to memorializing the events at Lexington and Concord in 1775—­and those in Waco in 1993—­the particular April 19th of 1995 was significant to Timothy McVeigh for two additional reasons. First, it was National Militia Day, as every April 19 since 1993 had been. Second, on April 19, 1995, a white supremacist named Richard Snell was scheduled to be executed by the state of Arkansas. Snell had been convicted of murdering two men: a white male he thought was Jewish; and an Arkansas state trooper who was African American.20 McVeigh’s role in the Murrah building bombing was exposed after police found an intact axle in the wreckage of the Ryder truck he used to transport the bomb. Its vehicle identification number was still legible. With this information, the FBI was able to trace where the vehicle was rented and to whom it was rented. The name on the rental was Robert Kling, one of McVeigh’s aliases. Once they knew who they were looking for, the FBI conducted a computer search to see if they could find their suspect. A report came back that he was in jail in Perry, Oklahoma. In fact, McVeigh was due to appear before a judge to arrange bail only a few minutes after the FBI search found McVeigh in the Noble County jail. Once agents arrived in Perry, their interview with McVeigh did not mirror the stereotypical “third degree” of interrogation depicted in many movies and television shows. Instead, agents simply asked McVeigh if he knew why they were interviewing him. They offered no context or information. Without any further prompting, McVeigh replied, “Yes. That thing in Oklahoma City, I guess.”21 All that remained for the FBI was to define the dimensions of the conspiracy. What remained for the American people was the struggle to understand “why?” McVeigh was convicted of murder on June 2, 1997. He was sentenced to death and transferred to federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana. After his appeal

 

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for a new trial was denied, he was executed on June 11, 2001, the first federal prisoner to be put to death since 1963.22 McVeigh’s fellow conspirators also faced justice. Michael Fortier agreed to testify against Timothy McVeigh in exchange for avoiding the death penalty. His testimony was central to the prosecution’s case. Fortier pled guilty to charges of failing to warn authorities about the plot, lying to the FBI, and transporting stolen weapons. Originally sentenced to twelve years in prison, his sentence was overturned when a federal judge ruled that his punishment was based on federal rules governing first-­degree murder when the appropriate guidelines were those associated with involuntary manslaughter. He was released from prison in 2006 for time served.23 The case involving Terry Nichols was more complicated and more bitter. McVeigh and Nichols had had a falling-­out before the bombing; however, Nichols faced trial as a co-­conspirator. Tried in federal court, the jury found him guilty of involuntary manslaughter and of conspiracy to bomb the Murrah building. It did not find him guilty of either first-­or second-­degree murder, however.24 He was subsequently sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole, a sentence that angered many people in Oklahoma. In March 1999, Oklahoma County district attorney Bob Macy filed 161 first-­degree murder charges against Nichols and promised to seek the death penalty. This led to a series of court battles over possible venues for the trial. Meanwhile, Nichols offered to end his appeals of his federal sentence in return for avoiding trial in state court.25 In the end, Nichols was convicted of 161 counts of murder by the state of Oklahoma in 2004. He was sentenced to 161 consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole. 26 He is currently imprisoned in the federal supermax facility in Florence, Colorado.

The Aftermath and the FBI For the FBI, Oklahoma City did not end the agency’s troubled reputation. Congress’s investigations of the Ruby Ridge and Waco tragedies were under way even as the Oklahoma City bombing happened, keeping news of these terrible events on the front pages of America’s newspapers. Further, questions emerged regarding the agency’s alleged mishandling of Oklahoma City crime scene evidence, particularly at its forensics laboratory. Later, the FBI was found to have failed to disclose 3,500 pages of documents relevant to Timothy McVeigh’s trial. Each of these errors added to the perception among many Americans that the agency was either incompetent or hostile, or both. This was especially true for those Americans already convinced of the agency’s vicious intent. The questions raised about the FBI’s mishandling of the cases involving Randy Weaver and David Koresh, as well as the conspiracy theories that hit the agency during the trials related to those two incidents, caused the FBI to lose much of the political reputation it had enjoyed as a crime-­busting organization that captured mafia bosses and Soviet spies. Ironically, however, this image of the agency as a civil liberties-­abusing threat to American freedom was, by the time of Oklahoma City, largely inaccurate, at least in terms of the agency’s response to the militia movement. As the cases of the Montana Freemen and Republic of Texas will be shown to demonstrate later in this chapter, after Waco the FBI abandoned its aggressive, confrontational

 

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style when encountering militia and related groups. Instead, the agency learned to take group motivation and ideology seriously. It also decided it needed to isolate violent groups from their bases of local support. It also decided not to treat confrontations with militia groups as hostage situations. Finally, it undertook systematic efforts to gain intelligence about militia groups across the United States. As is discussed later, these strategies served to prevent many future incidences of militia violence. They also led to the destruction of several militia organizations. The disasters in Idaho and Texas led to changes in approach that made the FBI very successful at dealing with the militia in the years that followed those tragedies. At the time of the bombing in Oklahoma City, however, the FBI’s reputation was troubled at best. The Aftermath and the Militia Movement  The months leading up to the Murrah building’s destruction were tense ones in the militia movement. Early in 1995, for example, Montana militia leader Calvin Greenup asked militia volunteers to come to his property to shoot down any government helicopters he feared were scheduled to deploy federal agents coming to arrest him.27 John Trochmann of the Militia of Montana was arrested at a Montana courthouse with guns, armor piercing bullets, and other weapons.28 The office of the Toiyabe National Forest Service in Nevada was bombed.29 Meanwhile, the U.S. Marshals Service informed John Bohlman, the county attorney for Musselshell County, Montana, that a group of militiamen were coming from Oregon to Montana to protest Trochmann’s arraignment. They apparently planned to kidnap and perhaps hang the judge overseeing the case.30 As had happened in both Idaho and Texas, the events in Oklahoma City led to the rise and spread of a number of conspiracy theories about who was responsible for the bombing and why they did it. Most fed off the cultural assumption that government was an evil, oppressive force that had to be resisted if liberty and freedom for the individual were to be saved. For example, one theory alleged that the bombing was sponsored by, or at least had the tacit consent of, President Clinton. Its actual aim, the theory held, was to kill a former Clinton Secret Service bodyguard who, along with an ATF agent killed in Waco, “knew too much” about various crimes President Clinton and his wife, Hillary, were alleged to have committed.31 In fact, the violence in Waco and in Oklahoma City did lead to the deaths of four people who had worked closely with President Clinton while he served either as governor or as president. For militia conspiracists, this fact was taken as proof that those with power would do anything to protect and extend their positions. The deaths “proved”—­for the militia, anyway—­that Clinton had had people killed in order to silence potential witnesses.32 Mark Koernke of the Michigan Militia was the first militia leader to claim that the Oklahoma City bombing was a crime committed by the federal government. Just hours after the bombing, Koernke insisted: Of course, we all know that two years ago on the nineteenth of April there was the final destruction of the Waco church and home. . . . Many of you are glued to your radios or are watching television to observe what happened in Oklahoma City today. . . . [This] is yet another foot-­stomp on the part of the New World Order crowd to manipulate the population. . . .

 

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For those of you who are skeptical . . . these people have butchered our cities. They have killed whole population groups. They are greedy. They are power-­ mongers. And they EAT THEIR YOUNG! So, for those of you who don’t think that there is a little bit of manipulation involved here—­this is a propaganda campaign, and FEMA [the Federal Emergency Management Agency], as we expected, is right in the middle of it.33

Similarly, Linda Thompson, who as recently as March 1995 had rejected the idea that the federal government was about to launch a series of raids against the militia, argued that “I genuinely believe the government did this bombing. . . . I mean, who’s got a track record of killing innocent children?” Bo Gritz, the white supremacist who had negotiated an end to the standoff at Ruby Ridge, alleged that the bombing had to be an act of government since, Gritz insisted, the bombing was clearly well-­planned, well-­executed, and had used a sophisticated device.34 While some militia leaders resisted the urge to blame the government, others asserted that some government—­whether the US government or a foreign one—­ was involved in the attacks. For example, Norman Olson and Ray Southwell of the Michigan Militia insisted that the attack was planned by the Japanese government as an act of revenge for alleged American involvement in a terrorist gas attack on the Tokyo subway system. (Both Olson and Southwell later resigned from the Michigan Militia when their allegations were refuted. Olson started another group and claimed that the Michigan Militia was no longer radical enough to be true to its values.35) A right-­wing group led by Lyndon Larouche, a regular contender for the US presidency and the leader of a conspiracy-­fueled political movement, claimed that the attack had been plotted by the British government.36 Another militia flyer insisted that “Clinton Ordered Oklahoma Bombing” on behalf of the Jewish conspiracy to control the world. With the help of his two co-­conspirators, Attorney General Janet Reno, the cigar-­ smoking “butch” lesbian who owns 47 pet peacocks, ALL named “Horace,” and the Communist-­Jew FBI Director Louis Freeh (appointed the day BEFORE the suspicious death of Clinton crony Vince Foster), Clinton used Jewish CIA agents who had infiltrated certain patriotic militia organizations to orchestrate and carry out this murderous crime.37

One thing was clear to the militia, then: the bombing was not their fault. Instead, it was an excuse that was likely to be used by a corrupt system to once again assault American lives and freedoms. Other theories held that the United Nations was involved. Supposedly, the bombing was part of a plan to destabilize the United States. In the ensuing chaos, the United Nations would take over the United States. Yet another theory held that two bombs were used to destroy the building. Evidence for this point was adduced from a seismograph taken by an office of the US Geological Survey that showed two tremors rocked the area around the Murrah building.38 The fact that the second tremor was likely caused by the building collapsing was irrelevant to conspiracy theorists. Primed to believe that the government was evil, any evidence would be used to prove the case.

 

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A final theory insisted that the government blew up the Murrah building in order to frame the militia. In what is now referred by anti-­g overnment activists as a “false flag” operation (discussed in more detail in chapter 5), this conspiracy theory claimed that the federal government destroyed one of its own buildings, killing 168 people it either employed or who were children, to create an excuse to destroy the militia movement. In this version of events McVeigh was a patsy, a fall guy for the government’s nefarious plan. Indeed, he was every bit as much a victim of Oklahoma City as were those who had been murdered there. For the militia, then, the conclusion was obvious: gun ownership, militia training, and an ideology of hate were the only reasonable responses when facing a government that would kill children. The militia movement seemed even more important if American freedoms were to be protected. McVeigh’s attorneys worked hard to establish McVeigh’s innocence by articulating a number of conspiracy theories. These were quickly taken up and expanded upon by right-­w ing anti-­g overnment activists. For example, McVeigh’s attorney, Stephen Jones, insisted that McVeigh was not guilty of the bombing. After all, Jones noted, millions of people distrusted government—­a distrust that made sense in the aftermath of Ruby Ridge and Waco—­but distrust hardly constituted a motive. He derided Michael Fortier’s testimony, noting that Fortier had a reason to lie about McVeigh’s role since his testimony would get him a reduced sentence. Jones also emphasized that Fortier was, at the time of the bombing, a heavy drug user. Jones further complained about the government’s failure to find “John Doe #2,” a person who was alleged to have rented the Ryder truck with McVeigh. (Prosecutors insisted that John Doe #2 had visited the truck rental place a day after McVeigh picked the truck he had rented. Prosecutors claimed that the clerk who reported McVeigh as accompanied by another man had made a mistake.) The possible existence of a John Doe #2 meant, Jones insisted, that there was a broader conspiracy involved in the attack—­one that did not include McVeigh. He then pointed to what he claimed was a lack of forensic evidence against McVeigh: Jones insisted that the FBI’s crime lab found few traces of fertilizer or other bomb-­making substances in McVeigh’s clothes or hair. Thus, Jones concluded, McVeigh was not involved, and the government had focused on the young anti-­government activist as a convenient fall guy for its case.39 The circumstances surrounding McVeigh’s execution only added to many militia members’ conspiracy claims. McVeigh’s scheduled execution date was delayed, for example, when the FBI revealed that it had found 3,500 pages of documents related to the investigation of the Murrah bombing that it had never turned over to McVeigh’s defense. While no evidence was found in any of these documents that suggested McVeigh was innocent—­and he himself insisted on his guilt—­the fact that the papers had never been disclosed lent credence to those conspiracy theorists who argued that the FBI would do anything it had to do in its relentless effort to destroy American liberties. Suggestions that the trial might be reopened were quieted only when McVeigh chose to forego all appeals on his behalf.

 

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Tellingly, millions of Americans found these theories of the bombing persuasive, or at least plausible. Some groups did cease operations after the bombing, and many sympathizers pulled back from the open support of militia values. But the movement did not collapse after the bombing in Oklahoma City. While many Americans today might prefer to believe that the shock and horror of the events at Oklahoma City led to the quick demise of the militia movement, this is not what happened. Instead, the movement actually sustained itself for at least two years after Oklahoma City. Numerous militias continued to operate after the attack on the Murrah building. At the end of 1997 U.S. News and World Reports chronicled militia actions, as well as those of associated groups like the Patriot and Common Law movements, after the Oklahoma City bombing. In November 1995, for example, the leader of an Oklahoma militia was arrested while making bombs and planning to attack civil rights centers, abortion clinics, welfare processing centers, and even gay bars. From April through July 1996, a group calling itself the Phineas Priests robbed several banks and bombed the offices of the Spokesman Review newspaper in Spokane, Washington. Members of the Viper Militia, active in Arizona, were arrested in July 1996 for possession of 300 pounds of ammonium nitrate—­the fertilizer Timothy McVeigh used to destroy the Murrah building. They were also charged with the illegal possession of automatic weapons as well as blasting caps. In October 1996, agents arrested members of the Mountaineer Militia in Clarksburg, West Virginia. They were allegedly planning to destroy the FBI’s fingerprint facility in that state. The group possessed sufficient quantities of TNT, grenades, and the plastic explosive known as C-­4 to make the threat credible. A militia member in Kalamazoo, Michigan, was arrested in March 1997 for providing an undercover informant with eleven pipe bombs as part of a plan to destroy local government offices, nearby armories, and a television station. Yuba City, California, was hit the following month by a blast that led police to an apparent militia storehouse containing 550 pounds of a gelatin form of dynamite known as Petrogel. In addition, a number of anti-­government activists decided to attack Fort Hood, Texas, as part of a plot to stop the United Nations from, as the activists believed, organizing a coup aimed at overthrowing the government of the United States. The attack was planned for July 4; however, the group’s members were arrested, and their machine guns and pipe bombs were confiscated before the attack could begin.40 At the time of the US News report, there were more than 900 domestic terrorism cases open in the United States, compared to only 100 in 1995.41 There were other examples of the continuing impact of the militia in the late 1990s. In 1997, for example, many federal and state workers indicated that they no longer felt safe trying to enforce laws and regulations across much of the West. Agents reported being shot at both when they were in their vehicles and when they patrolled on foot in the regions they administered. Tax collectors reported they could not safely do their jobs in some areas of the United States. Even firefighters expressed concern about having their helicopters shot down if they attempted to fly over a militia member’s property while fighting

 

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a fire. 42 In addition, evidence emerged that, mirroring Timothy McVeigh’s efforts, other militia associates were working to recruit members who were on active duty in the US military. According to a confidential survey of 17,080 soldiers, 3.5 percent claimed to have been contacted by members of extremist organizations; 7.1 percent claimed to know a soldier who was a member of a right-­wing group.43 The year 1998 saw its share of militia-­related violence as well. In March, for example, a southern Illinois–based organization known as “The New Order” was broken up when several of its members were arrested for planning both to blow up a number of buildings and to commit murder. Morris Dees, leader of the SPLC, was on the group’s target list. The group intended to destroy the offices of the SPLC as well as the headquarters of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. In an unrelated plot also planned for March 1998, members of southwestern Michigan’s North American Militia were arrested for planning to destroy several federal buildings and to murder numerous federal agents.44 The number of militia and patriot groups actually increased between 1995 and 1997, with 1996 being the year of greatest growth. By 1997, there were active militia movements in all fifty states.45 Moreover, the groups and members that remained were, in the words of the SPLC’s Intelligence Report, “harder.”46 By this, the report meant that militia activists who had remained in the movement after Oklahoma City seemed more willing to use violence against their supposed enemies than they had been two years previously. Even though Oklahoma City had diminished some public sympathy for the movement, the bombing did not cause the collapse of the militia movement in the United States. Instead, the movement continued to grow in the years following the attack on the Murrah building.

The Aftermath and Oklahoma City There was an aftermath of Timothy McVeigh’s terrible act for the people of Oklahoma City as well. Until September 11, 2001, the citizens of Oklahoma City were the victims of the worst act of terrorism in the history of the United States. As happened in New York and Washington, DC, in the aftermath of the tragedy of 9/­11, the site of the Murrah building quickly became a shrine. People left offerings of pictures, memorabilia, and white and yellow ribbons to commemorate those who had died. On May 25, 1995, explosives were used to bring the remaining parts of the building to the ground.47 On April 19, 2000, five years to the day after the bombing, the site became a formal memorial to the victims of the attack. The memorial features 168 stone and frosted glass chairs facing a reflecting pond. Each chair represents a victim of the blast of April 19, 1995. Their bases light up at night. In addition, a large, free-­standing wall at one end of the memorial records the time 9:01, one minute before the bomb went off. Another, at the other end of the memorial, records 9:03—­one minute after everything changed in Oklahoma City, and for the militia movement as well.

 

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Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum, dedicated to victims of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building bombing. Stephen Saks Photography/­Alamy Stock Photo

The Decline of the 1990s Militia Movement After about 1998 or so, the modern American militia movement began to decline. As Kenneth Stern has noted, some militia members left the movement in immediate reaction to the Murrah building bombing. Two groups, for example, shut down operations on April 19, 1995. Other organizations recast themselves as political action groups rather than as armed militias. Some established closer relationships with openly racist groups.48 Cumulatively, the number of militia and related groups declined from their peak of over 800 in 1995–1996 to 194 in 2000. Of these, only seventy-­two fit the model of the militia explored in chapters 2 and 3. 49 Born in anger after Ruby Ridge and Waco, the movement expressed its rage in the inferno in Oklahoma City. Like all fires, however, it consumed itself, leaving little more than embers, remnants that might flare up again if more fuel is added, but that might go out if left alone. This section identifies four major factors that shaped the decline of the militia movement in the 1990s. The first is the fact that the extremism of hard-­ core militia activists alienated many potential sympathizers. The second is the way that government actions undermined militia group recruitment and operations, driving them underground. The third is the success that the movement had in achieving several of their key goals, especially in preventing the passage of new gun control laws. Fourth, many militia principles and policy goals ended up being absorbed into the political program of the Republican Party, especially in the American West. Combined, these factors shaped the decline of the militia movement in the late 1990s.

 

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Extremism and the Isolation of the Militia Movement in the Late 1990s It is clear that at least part of the reason for the militia movement’s decline in the 1990s lies in its extremism. The hateful ideology and enraged actions of many militia members, leaders, and groups served to alienate these organizations from the American mainstream over time. The decline in public support for the militia occurred slowly. As was discussed earlier, the movement continued to grow for at least two years after the destruction of the Murrah building. This growth, however, did not necessarily reflect a nationwide surge in support for militia groups and militia activities. Instead, it appears to have been the result of a dramatic polarization of opinion about the militia in the United States. Those Americans on the extreme right of the political spectrum saw Ruby Ridge, Waco, and Oklahoma City as reasons to join or engage with militia groups. However, less ideological conservatives—­ along with most other Americans—­recoiled from the movement in shock and horror after April 19, 1995. Over time, this polarization led to the marginalization of the movement, prompting its decline. Opinion polls focused on public perceptions of terrorism certainly support the claim that most Americans came to view the militia movement and other right-­wing populist groups in the 1990s as a threat. (Note: the polls discussed in this chapter were taken before the attacks on the World Trade Centers and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, happened. They focused on domestic rather than international terrorism.) Polls consistently demonstrated that Americans became more worried about being victimized by terrorism, feared being in public places more, and considered themselves less likely to be safe at work in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing. Polls showed that Americans who believed terrorism was among the most important, most serious issues facing the United States increased from as few as 33 percent in March 1993 to as many as 90 percent in August 1996.50 Similarly, in May 1995, only a month after the attack in Oklahoma, 25 percent of Americans worried about themselves, family members, or friends being a victim of terrorism; three years later, in August 1998, that number had risen to 32 percent.51 The workplace, too, was increasingly perceived as a place of danger: where only 12 percent of Americans considered their place of business to be potentially dangerous in March 1993, 57 percent did in August 1998.52 Increased concern with terrorism was linked to decreased confidence in the ability of the government to prevent terror attacks in the United States. As many as 64 percent of Americans had a great deal of confidence or a good amount of confidence in the government’s capacity to prevent terrorist attacks before Timothy McVeigh committed his horrible crime. That number fell to as low as 33 percent by August 1996.53 When asked, in April 1995, if there was anything that the US government could do to prevent future acts of terrorism, only 45 percent thought preventative action was possible. A year later, in July 1996, only 49 percent were hopeful.54 Meanwhile, from 1995 to 1997, more Americans worried about domestic terrorist groups than foreign-­based ones.55 Clearly, for those Americans not inclined to support the militia movement, its extremism

 

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and propensity to violence were frightening. In such conditions, the decline in public support for extremist ideas was not surprising. The bombing in Oklahoma City was not the only source of public concern about the militia movement’s extremism. As the list of militia and militia-­related activities in the aftermath of the bombing presented earlier in this chapter suggests, there were many active, violent groups and individuals pursuing the militia agenda through the period 1995–1997. Perhaps the most aggressive and dangerous of these groups was an organization calling itself the Viper Militia. Active in Arizona in the late 1990s, the Vipers were actually thrown out of the Militia of Arizona because of their extremism. Viper members practiced using explosives, openly discussed the vulnerabilities of several federal buildings, suggested procedures for destroying each of them, and advocated “OPLAN American Viper”—­a plan to use guerrilla war tactics against invading troops or agents of the federal government. OPLAN American Viper outlined plans to deploy assassination teams, snipers, and biological and chemical warfare as part of a war the group imagined was looming with the federal government. In 1996, twelve members of the group were arrested and indicted on weapons charges. Six others were charged with conspiracy to distribute bombs to promote civil disorder. News reports noted that one member had a personal collection of ninety-­five guns. Another owned a .30 caliber machine gun he took to bed at night and called “Shirley.”56 The actions of such groups contributed to public concerns about the extremism of the militia. Meanwhile, other activists in the movement underwent a process of purging and transformation inside their groups. Some groups softened their rhetoric after Oklahoma City, while others became more extreme. For example, John Trochmann, the leader of Militia of Montana, de-­emphasized the military war games his organization had previously practiced and instead offered his group as a resource that could educate others about the militia cause. He began speaking at high schools, among other venues, in an effort to shape public opinion rather than planning confrontations with the federal government. Similarly, after Oklahoma City leaders of the Michigan Militia focused their efforts on building new political institutions that they hoped could deal with the problems that would arise when, as the group predicted, the US government collapsed in the near future. They insisted that if the group undertook any military training, it was a minor part of the group’s activities rather than a core purpose.57 The remnants of militia groups often became more extreme, however. Even as the core of the Michigan Militia moved to soften its image, opponents of this change demanded increased radicalism from the movement. Norman Olson, the original founder of the Michigan Militia who was forced from office when he accused the Japanese government of being responsible for the Oklahoma City bombing, rejected the transformation of his former organization into a more mainstream institution. “I’ve been trying to influence the militia in Michigan to be bold, to be decisive and stand their ground,” Olson insisted. “The militia is getting more fierce and more angry as the days go by. I think they’ve broken free of the ‘adopt-­a-­highway’ and ‘hug-­a-­tree’ philosophy.”58 Anyone needing proof that the militia had grown too extreme needed only to consider statements made by people like Olson to find their proof.

 

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Cumulatively, public support for the militia was undermined by a combination of group in-­fighting, the exposing of group plots to commit violence, and testimonials of militia members that admitted the groups’ propensity to violence. Many militia sympathizers, scanning the intragroup fighting and extremism rife in many militia groups after Oklahoma City, decided that however attractive militia organizations were in theory, they left much to be desired as actual sources of resistance to federal power. Many Americans, even those inclined to support militia ideology and militia mythology, turned away from the militia movement at this time.

State Action and the Decline of the Militia Movement Extremism is only part of the story of the decline of the 1990s militia movement, however. Another factor in the movement’s decline was the way the federal government, especially the FBI and the courts, reacted to militia activities in the late 1990s. A combination of improved investigatory work, more measured responses to confrontations, and innovative legal strategies worked to undermine both the rhetorical appeal and the resources of various right-­wing groups, including the militia. As a consequence, by the end of the 1990s many potential movement supporters had nowhere to turn: numerous militia and extremist organizations had been broken up, and the actions of the FBI no longer seemed to inspire much paranoia or hate, even among people who had or might have supported the militia just a few years before. In the aftermath of Oklahoma City, for example, the FBI began to investigate and target right-­wing groups more aggressively. After the bombing, the Justice Department formed an Executive Working Group on Domestic Terrorism that met every two weeks. In these meetings members shared information and planned strategy for combating home-­grown violence. In addition, rather than investigating militia crimes after the fact, the FBI turned toward a strategy of active infiltration of militia groups with the aim of stopping attacks before they happened. Such investigations were buttressed when, in 1996, Congress passed the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act. This law enhanced the government’s ability to install wiretaps, check mail, and monitor the movement of products like ammonium nitrate. The FBI subsequently increased its use of informants and wiretaps against right-­wing extremist organizations. It also monitored gun and munition sales and created special identification pellets that could be inserted into bags of ammonium nitrate fertilizer so that law enforcement agencies could track where the fertilizer was bought if it was later used in a crime.59 State police organizations also refocused their investigations on militia groups. State and federal agencies began to share their intelligence more effectively. Both state and federal agencies began paying greater attention to militia groups after the Murrah bombing. Cumulatively, this combination of federal, state, and local police work made substantial progress against the militia movement. It became increasingly difficult for even hard-­core activists to plan and carry out violent acts, if for no other reason than the plotters could not be sure whether one of their members was

 

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an informant or not. Tighter controls on the distribution, purchase, and use of ammonium nitrate fertilizer limited the ability of militia groups to plan follow-­up acts of terrorism to Oklahoma City. In these changed circumstances, many members quit established militia groups, and new members stopped joining organizations in large numbers. The change in government responses to the militia movement entailed more than direct police work, however. In the aftermath of Waco, the FBI undertook a systematic review of its tactics and strategies in confrontations with armed, ideologically passionate groups. This review led to a dramatic change of tactics when the FBI confronted extremist groups. The FBI stopped treating group leaders as criminals, for example. It also recognized that group members were not innocent victims needing to be freed from a hostage situation. Instead, when it engaged in confrontations with right-­wing groups after Waco, FBI strategy shifted to negotiation, patience, and the isolation of the group from its supporters in the local community. Two major post-­Waco events demonstrated the FBI’s new, more patient strategy in dealing with the militia and associated groups. One was a standoff with the Freemen of Montana in the spring of 1996. The second was a confrontation with the secessionists of the Republic of Texas in the spring of 1997. The Freemen standoff lasted for eighty-­one days starting in March 1996—­ including the infamous date of April 19. In contrast with Ruby Ridge and Waco, it ended peaceably, with the active help of other right-­wing organizations. The Freemen were followers of the common law movement, a right-­wing populist movement that insists, among other things, that no political authority above the level of county sheriff has the right to enforce any law in a given community. They were also followers of the sovereign citizen doctrine. It was this last belief that led the group to its confrontation with the FBI starting in March. The group had been a nuisance in Montana for years before its standoff with the FBI began. Believing themselves to be sovereign citizens not subject to the laws of the United States, the Freemen wrote millions of dollars in bank drafts and other bogus checks on the basis of liens they filed against local and state officials. (The Freemen would sue a local government official for a large amount of money, and then would write checks secured by the funds they claimed they would generate when they won their lawsuits at some point in the future.) They often tried to pay off loans, usually on their farms, with these counterfeit funds. They also threatened local judges, especially those overseeing foreclosure cases involving Freemen-­owned farms. In addition, the Freemen put $1 million bounties on the heads of a Montana County sheriff as well as the local county attorney. They had been thorns in the sides of local law enforcement officials for years prior to their eventual confrontation with the FBI in 1996. The Freemen’s battle with the FBI began when one Freeman faced foreclosure proceedings on his ranch near Jordan, Montana. Other Freemen rushed to prevent the foreclosure sale, eventually barricading themselves onto the foreclosed property. They renamed the ranch “Justus Township” and declared it to be a sovereign territory not answerable to the laws or jurisdiction of the United States.60 In contrast with Ruby Ridge and Waco, the FBI moved slowly in handling the Freemen. The Clark Ranch, where the standoff occurred, covered nearly

 

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1,000 acres, and FBI leaders decided that the crisis would be resolved best through negotiations. Moreover, the FBI took the position that the Freemen were effectively contained so long as they remained on their property.61 There was, in other words, no reason to take aggressive steps to end the confrontation. This was a significant change from the agency’s earlier responses to both Ruby Ridge and Waco. There was yet another significant difference in the FBI’s approach to the Freemen confrontation compared to the previous tragedies in Texas and Idaho. Where the FBI had generally ignored the advice of religion experts in their negotiations with David Koresh and the Branch Davidians, the agency actively sought the advice, help, and intervention of numerous right-­wing leaders to bring an end to the Montana crisis. Agents called on Bo Gritz, the former army officer who had finally brought Randy Weaver off his mountain in 1992, as well as Jack McLamb, a former Phoenix police officer who recruited police personnel to join the patriot movement, to talk to the Freemen. The FBI also invited Colorado State senator Charles Duke, a prominent supporter of militia and common law groups, to try to work out a deal with the Freemen.62 Although none of these leaders were able to work effectively with the Freemen, another group, CAUSE, a legal firm that defends white supremacists and other right-­wing group members accused of crimes, had more success. CAUSE leaders were brought to Montana at the federal government’s expense, and a CAUSE-­sponsored proposal put in motion the plan that eventually ended the standoff. A CAUSE leader suggested that the FBI take one of the leaders of the encircled Freemen to meet with the group’s leader, LeRoy Schweitzer, who was in jail in Billings, Montana. FBI officials initially reacted in surprise—­“Let me get this straight,” one agent asked. “You want us to take a man who is technically under arrest, fly him in an FBI plane to a jail we hope to see him incarcerated in, bring him home and then put him under siege again?” However surprising the request might have been, the FBI agreed to the proposal. It achieved its intended purpose: after the meeting, Schweitzer wrote a note encouraging his followers to submit to arrest. After Schweitzer’s note was delivered to the Freemen in Justus Township, the end of the standoff came quickly. Fearing that the FBI would destroy any document the Freemen provided as evidence in their upcoming trials, the Freemen demanded that they be allowed to turn over their records to a Montana state legislator rather than directly to the FBI. The agency agreed, and the standoff ended in June 1996.63 No one was hurt or killed in what was the longest standoff in US law enforcement history. The FBI’s confrontation with the members of the Republic of Texas took a similar, if shorter, course. The Republic of Texas’s confrontation with the government began on April 27, 1997. In response to the arrest of one of their members, three Republic activists captured two local people and held them as hostages. The group then declared war on the United States.64 The Republic was led by its self-­styled ambassador, Richard McLaren. It was based in the rural, west Texas community of Fort Davis. Although the group had only 20 active members, as many as 800 people claimed citizenship in the Republic.65

 

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Like the Freemen, members of the Republic of Texas insisted that they were not subject to the authority of the federal government because Texas had never legally joined the United States. (Explaining why Republic members believed this is, fortunately, beyond the scope of this book.) Thus, they claimed, they were not obliged to pay any federal taxes.66 As they had with the Freemen in Montana, the FBI responded carefully. Agents relied on negotiations rather than force to achieve an end to the standoff. Early on in the confrontation, for example, the FBI agreed to what they termed a “prisoner exchange” and released the Republic member whose arrest had led Republic activists to kidnap two local citizens. In return, their captors freed the two citizen hostages they had seized at the start of the confrontation. In addition, authorities flattered McLaren and his followers, referring to their negotiations as diplomacy and calling McLaren’s compound an embassy. Agents agreed that McLaren and his followers could file any petition they desired with a federal court—­a right any citizen holds, but a concession that was important for the Republic leader. The FBI also agreed that McLaren could petition the United Nations for support—­yet another opportunity anyone has, but that buttressed Republic members’ sense of independence and importance. Finally, in an attempt to end the confrontation peacefully, negotiators targeted their appeals at McLaren’s wife, hoping that if she could be convinced to leave the Republic compound, her husband would follow. She left at 11 a.m., Saturday, May 3. McLaren followed five hours later.67 Notably the only violence that occurred during this standoff happened when two group members tried to leave the Republic’s compound. They were confronted by agents from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. One Republic activist was killed when a gun battle broke out between the two Republic members and Texas law enforcement authorities as Texas officials tried to arrest the Republic militants.68 The crisis was otherwise resolved peaceably. The incidents in Montana and Texas were not the only ones in which law enforcement demonstrated a new ethic of restraint when confronting extremist groups. In September 1997, for example, a Roby, Illinois, woman who had been ordered to undergo a court-­mandated psychiatric evaluation barricaded herself in her house with a twelve-­gauge shotgun after confronting the police officer who came to escort her to her appointment. Despite efforts of local militia groups to construct the following standoff as “Roby Ridge,” the incident was resolved peacefully after police cut off electricity and gas services to her home and waited her out.69 That same month, a white supremacist wanted on a weapons charge barricaded himself into his property in rural La Verkin, Utah.70 Rather than raid the fugitive’s home, St. George, Utah, police acted on a tip that the suspect was concealed in a nearby apartment, and when the man emerged from his hiding place, they blocked his car and arrested him peacefully.71 Similarly, in 1999 it was revealed that the Clinton administration had canceled a planned raid to break up a logging protest in Oregon in 1996 for fear that protestors would be hurt. Clinton administration officials worried that, in the context of the fervent antigovernment passions of the time, another confrontation with right-­wing activists would deepen anti-­government sentiments in the region.72

 

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Given this new, negotiate first strategy when confronting extremist groups, even militia members started to urge patience when their allies came into conflict with federal agencies. For example, Bradford Metcalf, a militia member from Michigan who was arrested and tried for planning to blow up several federal buildings, told co-­defendant Kenneth Carter, “I really hope everybody keeps their cool.” He hoped this was the case, he said, perhaps surprisingly, “because I want to clean these guys’ clocks in the courtroom.”73 Such a statement only made sense if Metcalf believed he could get a fair trial from the government—­a sentiment that earlier militia protestors would likely never have endorsed in the early years of the militia movement. The change in government tactics in confrontations with right-­wing groups undermined militia clams that the federal government was engaged in a systematic, coordinated effort to destroy its citizens’ rights. Whereas Ruby Ridge and Waco provided militia conspiracy theorists with the raw materials they needed to build their narratives about an evil federal government working to destroy innocent gun owners’ lives, the standoffs with the Freemen and the Republic of Texas suggested that the anti-­government conspiracy theories spun by right-­ wing populist groups in the later 1990s were overblown. A central premise of militia ideology was challenged, if not refuted. The combination of enhanced police work, changed tactics, and the use of civil court cases to undermine the organizational capacity of right-­wing groups had a powerful effect on the militia movement. In an era of increased surveillance and more active arrests of militia and other right-­wing activists, membership in a militia group became dangerous for potential members. Since leaders of militia and other groups could face legal action if their followers broke the law, leadership became as dangerous as followership. Much of the decline of the militia movement can be accounted for as a result of this new matrix of government action.

The Success of the Movement: Gun Control As was shown in chapter 2, for the militia, no issue was a more important symbol of the federal government’s evil than gun control was. Militia activists insisted that the federal government was planning to take Americans’ guns away so that people could no longer defend themselves and their loved ones from the coming government-­planned and -­led genocide. Gun control was step one in a plot to destroy Americans’ freedom—­and freedom for everyone else in the world as well. For the militia, the 1993 Brady Bill was proof of government’s anti-­gun agenda. The Brady Bill contained numerous provisions that conservatives in general, and militia activists in particular, despised. Among these were: (1) waiting periods between the purchase of a gun and the buyer’s right to take it home, leaving a time in which background checks of the purchaser could be conducted; and (2) the requirement that background checks be conducted on anyone buying a gun in order to reduce the chances that someone could buy a weapon who wasn’t legally allowed to do so. A related bill, the Federal Assault Weapons Ban, passed in 1994, placed additional restrictions on the purchase of military-­style

 

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assault weapons. These were also unpopular with militia activists. Even though most Americans supported the limits on gun ownership enshrined in these two bills, militia and other pro-­gun activists hated these laws. After the Brady Bill and the Federal Assault Weapons Ban passed into law, militia and other groups opposed to gun control began an aggressive campaign to overturn existing gun laws. They also sought to prevent any new legislation from either being passed or, even better from their point of view, ever introduced for consideration at all. The National Rifle Association (NRA) led this campaign, a campaign whose terms were set in a fund-­raising letter that NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre sent out to the organization’s members. This letter used militia rhetoric and strong anti-­government attitudes to draw a metaphorical line in the sand against further gun control in the United States. In the letter, LaPierre insisted, “It doesn’t matter to them [pro-­gun control activists] that the Brady Law has become one more tool that government agents are using to deny the Constitutional rights of law-­abiding citizens. It doesn’t matter to them that the semi-­auto ban gives jack-­booted government thugs more power to take away our Constitutional rights, break in our doors, destroy our property, and even injure or kill us.”74 “President Clinton’s army of anti-­gun government agents continues to intimidate and harass law-­abiding citizens,” LaPierre snarled. “In Clinton’s administration, if you have a badge, you have the government’s go-­ahead to harass, intimidate, even murder law-­abiding citizens. Randy Weaver at Ruby Ridge . . . Waco and the Branch Davidians. . . . Not too long ago, it was unthinkable for Federal agents wearing nazi bucket helmets and black storm trooper uniforms to attack law-­abiding citizens.” Like militia members, LaPierre linked the NRA’s battle against the “anti-­gunners” to the battle for American liberty itself, claiming that the NRA’s members and their allies in the militia were in a position today to achieve what the militia had achieved during the American Revolution: America’s gun owners will only be the first to lose their freedoms. If we lose the right to keep and bear arms, then the right to free speech, free practice of religion, and every other freedom in the Bill of Rights are sure to follow. . . . This, the battle we’re fighting today, is a battle to retake the most precious, most sacred ground on earth. This is a battle for freedom.

Today’s political struggles over gun control were, LaPierre thus insisted, just a contemporary version of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, the “shots heard ‘round the world” that sparked the American Revolution. The NRA’s campaign proved powerfully effective, in large measure because of an important, but often unrecognized, feature of the American political system: small groups of highly mobilized people who focus on one or two key issues to the exclusion of nearly every other concern can become a formidable electoral force. The reason for this derives from the fact that some groups of voters are strongly motivated to vote, while others are not. In addition, some groups of voters tend to vote based on a candidate’s position on a single issue, while other groups make their vote choice based on an array of issues that a candidate

 

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supports. When a group of voters is highly motivated and is laser-­focused on one issue in political life, it can meaningfully shape the outcome of an election. On matters of gun control, for example, most Americans favor laws that would restrict individuals’ rights to own military-­style assault rifles. Similarly, proposals to require checks of mental health records before allowing someone to buy a gun enjoy broad support among the American people. However, as a practical matter the gun control issue is not important enough for most Americans to drive their vote choice. Other concerns, like education and taxes, have greater importance for these voters. This means that most Americans do not vote as a unified bloc on the issue of gun control. Lots of Americans may support stricter gun control laws, but they will vote for someone who opposes gun restrictions if the candidate has a position on a different issue—­school zoning, for example—­ that the voter considers more important than gun control. Such voters are motivated to choose a particular candidate within a matrix of multiple and competing interests. By contrast, voters who support gun rights often support candidates only if they favor fewer restrictions on gun ownership. Moreover, they will actively oppose pro-­gun control candidates even when those candidates support many of the same positions as do voters who support gun rights. Gun rights voters, then, are often single-­issue voters: they do not choose candidates based on a spectrum of issues, but rather will support candidates with whom they have deep disagreements if those candidates favor gun rights. In other words, pro-­control voters regularly vote for anti-­control candidates if anti-­control candidates support policies like lower taxes or more military spending that pro-­control voters also support. Gun rights voters, however, will vote against candidates with whom they share many positions if that candidate also supports greater controls on gun ownership. The phenomenon of single-­issue voting leaves elected officials with an uncomfortable political choice: candidates can promote gun control laws that majorities of Americans say they favor, but those officials have no guarantee that voters who support gun limits will vote for pro-­control candidates. Meanwhile, gun rights advocates will both turn up at the polls and then vote for a gun rights candidate. They will also turn up and vote against a pro-­control candidate. Many candidates facing this political reality end up taking political positions that favor the interests of passionate single-­issue voters rather than those of vaguely interested majorities. In this way, mobilized minorities—­like those who support the rights of gun owners—­often succeed in achieving their goals in the US political system even when a majority of voters say they want different policies. This pattern of mobilized minorities holding disproportionate influence in the political system is reinforced by the United States’ federal form of government. Political contests in the United States occur at the national, state, and local levels. As it happens, militia members and their supporters generally live in rural, relatively isolated communities across the United States. Gun rights are typically held to be very important in such communities. Moreover, given the small populations of many congressional districts in rural states, or of the states themselves, it is relatively easy for very small groups of voters to have an outsized influence

 

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in an election. For example, Wyoming, the least-­populated state in the United States (and one in which gun rights are passionately held and defended), has only 580,000 residents.75 Approximately 240,000 Wyoming citizens voted in the presidential election of 2016.76 By contrast, California—­the United States’ most populous state—­has 39.5 million residents.77 More than 14.5 million Californians voted in the 2016 presidential contest.78 As a practical matter it is easier for a small group to influence elections in a state like Wyoming (where guns are popular) than it is for a small group to change elections in a state like California (where voters mostly favor limits on gun ownership). Campaigns like the one implemented by the NRA took effective advantage of this aspect of American politics and successfully elected gun rights candidates to office across the American West and South. Once elected, they blocked the passage of new gun restrictions in the United States. Militia groups and their allies also fought gun control in the courts. Starting in the later 1990s, militia activists and other groups, like the NRA, went to court to overturn laws passed in several cities across the United States that offered an innovative, creative way to try to limit gun ownership in their communities. These laws held that gun manufacturers were liable if a gun was used in the commission of a crime. (Such laws mirrored the strategy that organizations like the SPLC had used to bankrupt several racist groups around the United States in the 1990s. The most public of these bankruptcies involved the Aryan Nations of Bonner’s Ferry, Idaho—­the group that Randy Weaver had joined after moving to Ruby Ridge.) Empowered by these laws, individuals and communities around the United States began to sue gun manufacturers. The purpose of these lawsuits was to control guns not by banning them, but by bankrupting the companies that produced them.79 Gun rights activists fought these lawsuits with all their power. In particular, they worked with allies in the state legislatures of several US states. They lobbied for the passage of laws that made it illegal for cities to sue gun manufacturers. (Cities derive their political authority from the laws of the states they are in, meaning that state laws can shape or limit what laws a city passes.) The gun rights lobby scored a major victory in 2001. That year, the US Supreme Court let stand a lower court ruling that the State of Louisiana had the power to ban the city of New Orleans from suing gun manufacturers. By implication, legislatures in other states were confirmed in their power to pass laws barring their cities from filing lawsuits against gun makers. Congress reinforced this position in 2005 when it passed the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. As of 2017, the latest year for which data is available, thirty-­four states had passed laws granting immunity to gun makers, protecting them from liability if their products were used in the commission of crimes.80 Taken together, the legal and political strategies employed by gun rights activists, including many militia groups, proved to be highly effective. The clearest evidence for the power of the gun rights campaign can be found in one fact: the federal government has passed no significant gun control legislation since 1994—­the same year the militia began its mass mobilization in American political life. In fact, when the Federal Assault Weapons Ban legislation came up for reauthorization in 2004, Congress refused to reauthorize it. Thus, since 2004 it

 

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has been increasingly easy for people to buy military-­style assault weapons in the United States. Moreover, in 2008 the US Supreme Court ruled, in District of Columbia v. Heller, that American citizens have a constitutional right to own firearms whether or not they are the member of an organized militia. By 2008, then, the militia and their gun rights advocating allies had won the fight over guns in America. Nothing—­not public opinion supporting greater limits on guns nor a record of horrific school and workplace mass murders since 2004—­has changed the political fact that gun rights advocates control the debate about gun control and seem likely to continue with this position for the foreseeable future. Whether or not the militia movement caused the victory of gun rights in the United States, it is clear that the success of the anti-­control lobby significantly undermined the relevancy of the militia. As was the case with the change in federal government actions toward right-­wing groups after Waco, the failure of every proposed piece of federal legislation seeking to regulate either the number or the types of guns Americans might own has knocked down one of the pillars on which the militia’s identity rested. It became increasingly difficult for militia leaders to argue that the federal government was plotting to take away Americans’ guns when the government itself continually defeated gun control legislation—­indeed, when the federal government dramatically loosened controls on gun ownership in the United States. In the end, then, the success of the gun rights lobby made the militia seem unnecessary. Having lost a central pillar of its appeal, the militia went into decline.

Cooptation and the Militia A final reason for the decline of the militia movement in the late 1990s was the cooptation of many of its core issues and ideological values by mainstream political forces. By the end of the 1990s, in contrast with the early years of the decade, anti-­government activists had a means to influence the federal government through traditional political activities like voting, lobbying, and media agenda setting. In this changed political context, support for the militia declined. The logic of cooptation is grounded in the structure of American elections. As was discussed earlier in this chapter, since elections are won by gaining the support of pluralities of voters in particular districts or states, highly mobilized groups that deliver a significant number of votes at crucial times can have a disproportionate influence on a particular campaign. This is particularly true in less-­ populated areas in which a few hundred votes can make a profound difference in the outcome of an election. This pattern of small, mobilized groups swaying elections can do more than shape who wins or loses a particular race, however. It can also lead to the formation of new political parties. Alternatively, it can force established political parties and other political actors to reshape their policy agendas to meet the demands of the passionate, if small, group. The way political parties and other officials can change their agendas is simple to describe. Political parties, for example, are made up of people—­ some elected, some not—­who agree to work together to try to win elections

 

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and manage government. They cooperate for many reasons: if they win power, after all, they can pass laws that favor their preferred ideas and values. However, in order to win elections parties and their candidates have to gain the support of enough voters to win political office. This is why candidates campaign on a range of issues and assert that they share values with “the people”: such appeals are intended to give voters a reason to support the candidate. Similarly, political parties offer party platforms—­broad statements of the ideas, policy proposals, and values the party will support if its members win power. The party platform is another way voters can know if the party—­and its candidates—­wants what voters want. As was noted in the introduction to this book, social movements rise in part because some Americans are no longer happy with, or can no longer tolerate, the existing state of affairs. Social movements seek to change things their members and sympathizers find unacceptable. As a consequence, social movements almost always challenge established political relationships. They do not want to support traditional political parties or the candidates those parties nominate. Movement activists want to disrupt and transform the relationships that parties, interest groups, and political officials rely on as they carry out the ordinary business of governing. This desire to alter existing rules and policies leads many social movement activists to seek, or even to form, their own political parties. Others try to take power as so-­called independents unbeholden to any established group. Yet others try to win power within a particular political party, forcing it to change its platform by changing the people who run the party as well as the policies the party advocates. All three strategies are aimed at the same goal: to break up the old order and replace it with a political system that reflects the goals the social movement wishes to achieve. Political parties and other politically powerful actors, such as interest groups and elected officials, often respond to social movements by trying to accommodate, or coopt, the social movement’s goals into those offered by the established political group. This effort makes straightforward political sense: as was discussed earlier, if a candidate or party can get a passionate, mobilized group, however small, to support its cause, then that party or candidate is far more likely to win elections. Alternatively, if the candidate or party fails to win the support of a passionately engaged group, even a small one, it has a harder hill to climb to have any chance at taking power. Therefore, parties and other political actors regularly adapt their platforms in an effort to win the support of new political groups with new demands. They offer messages and proposals that seek to give people supporting new groups and new leaders a reason to join the established party or organization. In other words, they try to coopt new ideas and new people into the existing institutions of society. This push for cooptation, in turn, leaves supporters and potential allies of an emerging social movement with a choice. Activists can decide to either work with or join an established institution with a long history of winning office and implementing policies that also now seems to represent their personal values, or they can continue to support the social movement group that may be about to

 

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lose members and has only limited prospects for victory. In such circumstances, it is common for social movement activists to shift their allegiance and abandon the new movement. Meanwhile, established party or officials often adopt many, if not all, of the movement’s goals as their own. Over time, the policy and ideological positions of established institutions can thereby change to meet the demands of a new political era. The groundwork for the cooptation of much of the militia movement into the Republican Party was laid by Republicans from Western states. Helen Chenoweth (R-­ID), among others, used her position in Congress to advocate positions favored by the militia. For example, in 1995 she sponsored legislation that would have required federal authorities to gain permission from county law enforcement agents, particularly sheriffs, before conducting searches, making arrests, or undertaking any federal law enforcement action whether or not the action was ordered by a federal warrant. Chenoweth argued that “they [federal agents] shouldn’t be armed unless they are deputized by the local sheriff.” This stunning reversal of the Constitution’s supremacy clause was strongly favored by common law and militia groups who insisted that the highest level of legitimate law enforcement power in the United States was the county’s sheriff. Her bill, which ultimately failed, was cosponsored by numerous, mostly Western, Republicans: Steve Stockman (Texas), Roscoe Bartlett (Maryland), Wes Cooley (Oregon), John Doolittle (California), John Hostetter (Indiana), Jack Metcalf (Washington), and Linda Smith (Washington).81 Chenoweth’s ideas extended beyond reversing Article VI of the US Constitution. She, like many militia leaders, claimed that the federal government was engaged in a conspiracy against Americans and their guns. Among other allegations, Chenoweth insisted that the US Fish and Wildlife Agency was using “armed agency officials and helicopters” to enforce the Endangered Species Act. Additionally, she claimed that the Endangered Species Act (and similar federal laws) was illegal because it violated the Idaho State Constitution. Militia groups found Chenoweth’s rhetoric, and her ideas, appealing. For example, MOM sold a tape of one of Chenoweth’s speeches—­made in 1993, before she was elected to Congress—­in which she fumed, “We are in a day and an age now when we are facing an unlawful government from time to time.” Environmentalists, she claimed, were a “Communist threat” to the United States, and she insisted that endangered species legislation would cause a “breakdown in state sovereignty and possibly [lead] to One World Government.”82 Even Chenoweth’s reaction to the bombing in Oklahoma City expressed a pro-­militia bias. After the Murrah building was destroyed, Chenoweth noted, “I don’t think violent acts like that can be condoned and must be punished. While we can never condone this, we still must begin to look at the public policies that may be pushing people too far. . . . I’m not opposed to the concept of a militia, because I think people ought to be able to protect themselves, and I think it was a concept embraced by our founding fathers.”83 Chenoweth thus argued that while McVeigh went too far, the underlying logic of the militia movement was correct: the federal government had grown abusive of liberty and needed to be resisted.

 

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There were other pro-­militia politicians active in Washington, DC, in the 1990s. Steve Stockman (R-­TX), one of the cosponsors of Chenoweth’s county sheriff’s bill, had militia members as active supporters of his successful 1994 bid for office. Joe Knollenberg (R-­MI) campaigned with Michigan Militia members at a rally of anti-gun control activists.84 In a letter that might have been dismissed as the delusions of militia extremists had it not been signed by Republican senator from Idaho Larry Craig and Republican North Carolina senator Lauch Faircloth, the two US senators asked Attorney General Janet Reno whether rumors that federal military agencies were training law enforcement authorities in military tactics were true or not.85 Militia ideology was thus featured in the rhetoric of Republican leaders from across the United States. While Chenoweth’s—­or Stockman’s or Knollenberg’s—­significance for the militia movement can be overstated, their presence in Washington, DC, was an important step in the cooptation of militia principles by conservative political forces. After the election of 1994, when Chenoweth and other militia sympathizers were elected to Congress, it became possible for militia members and sympathizers to vote for or otherwise support federal officials who appealed to the militia cause. Unconventional political action could be replaced by conventional political participation. A second strategy by which the Republican Party coopted the militia was the party’s decision, after the passage of gun control legislation in 1993 and 1994, to oppose further limitations on gun rights. As a result of NRA lobbying, fund-­raising, and political mobilization, as well as that of other anti-gun control groups, many, if not most, Republican candidates for federal office in the 1990s ran on an anti-­gun control agenda. In fact, during the 2000 presidential election, an NRA official claimed that if George W. Bush were elected president, the NRA would have a presence in the Oval Office itself. As a consequence, by 2000 those voters who were motivated by militia-­like attitudes on the question of gun control had an option that militia activists had lacked just a few years earlier: they could vote for candidates who supported their values who were also established leaders likely to win office and pass laws to support their agenda. The Republican Party further signaled its anti-­government sentiments in the hearings it led into the government’s (mis)deeds in Ruby Ridge and Waco. The House and Senate hearings about these incidents quickly evolved into partisan squabbles in which Democrats attempted to exonerate President Clinton, Attorney General Janet Reno, and other federal law enforcement officials even as Republicans painted the Weavers and the Branch Davidians as ordinary people victimized by an oppressive government. Militia members and sympathizers were given a platform to express their ideas. Again, potential militia supporters were presented with an apparently sympathetic alternative to militia membership: they could support the Republican Party and achieve similar goals within the regular political system. Conservative talk radio and other media outlets also offered a platform for the expressions of militia ideas and values in the 1990s. In 1994, for example, conservative icon and radio host Rush Limbaugh said, on air, “The second violent American revolution is just about—­I got my fingers about a quarter of an

 

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inch apart—­is just about that far away. Because these people are sick and tired of a bunch of bureaucrats in Washington driving into town and telling them what they can and can’t do with their land.”86 Similarly, Watergate-­figure-­turned-­talk-­ show-­host G. Gordon Liddy ranted some strikingly dark, violent rhetoric on his radio show when he gave advice to any of his listeners who might want to use deadly force against federal agents enforcing the law: “You got a big target there . . . says ATF. Don’t shoot at them because they got a vest on underneath that. Head shots. Head shots. . . . Kill the sons of bitches.” He went on to say: You have every right to fear your government. Look at what the brutal thugs of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms do, smashing into homes, shooting as they come in, killing people. When they don’t do that, they trash the home, steal the money from the people who have never been accused of a crime, take their possessions, stomp the cat to death on the way out, then threaten the wife that if she talks about it, that they’ll be back, and they’re federal agents—­they can do anything they want to. That’s the kind of people we’re talking about here, the kind of people that take a pregnant woman and smash her against a concrete wall—­that’s the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms—­so she loses her baby. You’d better be afraid of ‘em!87

By signaling—­and encouraging—­a conservative turn in the electorate, talk radio hosts provided further evidence to Republican Party leaders that it was important to reach out to the hard right if they were going to maintain, much less expand, the party’s electoral base. This signaling worked. In 1995, the sitting Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich, offered rhetoric that any militia activist would have found appealing when he insisted that President Bill Clinton and his supporters were “the enemies of normal Americans.” Gingrich claimed that the Democratic Party’s leadership “despises the values of the American people” because it supported a “multicultural nihilistic hedonism” ultimately motivated by the idea that “the government should control everything.”88 Gingrich, of course, cannot be dismissed as a “fringe” candidate isolated from the political mainstream. In 1994, he used his position as House Minority Whip to implement an electoral strategy that brought the Republican Party to majority control of the House of Representatives for the first time in forty years. His plan also made him Speaker of the House. He was the center of Republican power at the time, and his rhetoric offered militia members and sympathizers reasons to support the Republican Party. We believe in your values, Gingrich asserted, so we deserve of your support. Given his position, this claim was credible. Additional evidence for the close linkage between the militia movement and at least some elements of the Republican Party can be seen in the role Larry Pratt played in conservative talk show host Pat Buchanan’s campaign for the 1996 Republican Party nomination for president of the United States. Buchanan had risen to prominence in the Republican Party as the result of his insurgent campaign for the 1992 Republican Party nomination. During that effort, Buchanan attacked President Bush as insufficiently conservative. Buchanan’s criticisms

 

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worked to undermine Bush’s prospects for reelection by demobilizing conservative support for his candidacy. In 1996, Buchanan named Pratt co-­chair of his presidential campaign. Pratt, notably, was active among militia and other far-right groups. In addition to having participated in broadcasts that advanced Christian Identity and other racist principles earlier in the 1990s,89 Pratt had been a leader of the October 1992 meeting in Estes Park, Colorado, that followed the Ruby Ridge incident and set in motion the organization of the militia movement.90 He was one of the leading advocates for creating militias nationwide. Pratt was also founder of Gun Owners of America, a group that criticized the NRA for being too moderate on the issue of gun control.91 Pratt argued that armed civilian patrols ought to be empowered to maintain law and order in their communities. As he put it, “It is time that the United States return to reliance on an armed people.”92 “There is no acceptable alternative,” he continued. Pratt further insisted that the bombing on Oklahoma City was really evidence of the federal government’s loathesomeness: “Whoever did that in Oklahoma City,” Pratt opined, “had descended to the level of the FBI.”93 In addition, he served as contributing editor to the 50 States Constitutionalist, a magazine advocating common law and militia ideas.94 In other words, Pratt was a militia activist co-­chairing a campaign for the nomination of the Republican Party for president of the United States. When controversy about Pratt’s past surfaced during the election, Buchanan defended his pick: “All I know is Larry Pratt of the Gun Owners of America has been a loyal early supporter of mine when no one else did [sic].”95 Buchanan continued by insisting that Pratt was being “smeared” by “dogs” because he was a “devout Christian.”96 For Buchanan, all that mattered about Pratt was his ideological and personal connection to Buchanan’s campaign. Pratt’s position as an anti-government radical was praiseworthy, not problematic, at least from Buchanan’s point of view. Pratt was eventually forced to take a leave of absence from the Buchanan campaign.97 However, his presence in the campaign at all serves as evidence of the degree to which at least the conservative wing of the Republican Party had moved to coopt the militia movement. Militia members and sympathizers had moved from the fringes to the mainstream. They were understood to constitute a powerful block of voters that might help a campaign win a nomination—­and perhaps the presidency itself. Likewise, militia members and sympathizers could look at the Buchanan candidacy and recognize that they had an electoral alternative through which to advance their political values. Traditional political acts—­ voting, in this case—­had become a way for militia activists to promote their political platform.

Conclusion The decline of the militia movement had no single cause. Cooptation undermined the militia movement’s political logic: people who had had no mainstream way to express their political desires in the early 1990s had a seat at the

 

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table of Republican Party politics by the end of that decade. In addition, the growing extremism of many militia activists after the Murrah building bombing drove many potential members, as well as numerous sympathizers, away from the movement. Changed government responses to militia activity both undermined the militia’s claim that government was likely to abuse Americans’ rights and put existing militia members in the spotlight of federal criminal investigations. And as the militia achieved some of its core goals, particularly in relation to gun rights, activists and allies saw fewer reasons to engage in militia activities or to use militia rhetoric in their daily political lives. By the late 1990s, the militia was in serious decline. Fewer people were showing up at militia events, recruiting seminars, and even militia–government confrontations. However, as will be seen in the next chapter, the movement did not die in the late 1990s/­early 2000s. The cultural, mythical, and ideological factors that shaped its rise did not change, even after 9/­11. They remained as potential sources of kindling to relight the passions of the militia, or similar groups, in the post-­9/­11 era. Thus, the movement did not burn out even as most Americans rallied in support of their government in the months and years after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. Rather, the militia movement was like embers in a campfire. They were waiting to flare up again if the right fuel was added to the coals left over from the militia flame.

Notes

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2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

Brandon M. Stickney, All American Monster: The Unauthorized Biography of Timothy McVeigh (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1996), 51–74. The following biography draws heavily on All American Monster, as well as on Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck, American terrorist : Timothy McVeigh & the Oklahoma City Bombing (New York: Regan Books, 2001). Stickney, All American Monster, 94–107. Stickney, All American Monster, 102–7. Stickney, All American Monster, 90–101. Stickney, All American Monster, 90–95. MacDonald, Andrew, The Turner Diaries (Arlington, VA: National Vanguard Books, 1978). Stickney, All American Monster, 159. Stickney, All American Monster, 145–49. Stickney, All American Monster, 150–53. Stickney, All American Monster, 155. Stickney, All American Monster, 151. Stickney, All American Monster, 167. Stickney, All American Monster, 31. Mark S. Hamm, Apocalypse in Oklahoma: Waco and Ruby Ridge Revenged (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1997), 42. Stickney, All American Monster, 184–85. Hamm, Apocalypse in Oklahoma, 56–69. Stickney, All American Monster, 36. Stickney, All American Monster, 50, 64. Stickney, All American Monster, 26. Stickney, All American Monster, 25. Stickney, All American Monster, 177. Christopher S. Wren, “McVeigh Is Executed for Oklahoma City Bombing,” New York Times, June 11, 2001, https://­www.nytimes.com/­2001/­06/­11/­national/­mcveigh-­is-­executed-­for-­ oklahoma-­city-­bombing.html, accessed August 16, 2018.

 

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23 “Sentence Overturned in Oklahoma City Bombing,” New York Times, July 1, 1999, A14. 24 Jo Thomas, “The Bombing Verdict: The Overview; Nichols Convicted of Plot and Manslaughter Counts but Not of Actual Bombing,” New York Times, December 24, 1997, A1. 25 “Nichols Offer to Waive Appeals in Oklahoma City Bombing,” New York Times, September 5, 2001. 26 “Apologetic Nichols Is Sentenced to Life for Oklahoma Bombing,” New York Times, https://­ www.nytimes.com/­2004/­08/­10/­us/­apologetic-­nichols-­is-­sentenced-­to-­life-­for-­oklahoma-­ bombing.html, accessed August 16, 2018. 27 David Foster, “Gun-­Packing Militias Make Stand in Montana, LA Times, April 16, 1995, http://­ articles.latimes.com/­1995-­04-­16/­news/­mn-­55173_1_armed-­citizenry, accessed August 17, 2018. 28 Bill Morlin, “Gun-­Toting Radicals Busted in Montana. Local Authorities Say Group Planned to Abduct Judge,” Spokesman Review, March 8, 1995, http://­www.spokesman.com/­stories/­ 1995/­mar/­08/­gun-­toting-­radicals-­busted-­in-­montana-­local/­, accessed August 17, 2018. 29 Kenneth B. Noble, “U.S. Studies Wave of Violence in Nevada,” New York Times, https://­ www.nytimes.com/­1995/­12/­22/­us/­us-­studies-­wave-­of-­violence-­in-­nevada.html, accessed August 17, 2018. 30 “US Domestic Terrorism: Montana Militia,” http://­www.historycommons.org/­timeline.jsp? timeline=us_domestic_terrorism_tmln&haitian_elite_2021_organizations=us_domestic_terror ism_tmln_montana_militia, accessed August 17, 2018. 31 Among their other alleged crimes, the Clintons were accused of having ordered the murder of their long-­time friend, and later White House aide, Vince Foster. Foster in fact killed himself in 1993. 32 Stickney, All American Monster, 265. 33 Stern, Force, 203–4. 34 Stern, Force, 203–4. 35 Stern, Force, 203–4. 36 Stern, Force, 206. 37 Stern, Force, 204 38 Stickney, All American Monster, 266. 39 Stickney, All American Monster, 273–92. 40 Richard Gage, “The Record since Oklahoma City,” U.S. News and World Reports, December 29, 1997/­January 5, 1998, 24. 41 David E. Kaplan and Mike Tharp, “Terrorism Threats at Home,” U.S. News and World Reports, December 29, 1997/­January 5, 1998, 23–27. 42 “The Militia Threat,” New York Times, June 14, 1997, A20. 43 Philip Shenon, “Militias Aim to Lure Elite Army Troops, U.S. Generals Fear,” New York Times, March 22, 1996, A1, A22. 44 Joel Dyer, Harvest of Rage: Why Oklahoma City Is Only the Beginning (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1998, 279–80). 45 Mike Tharp and William J. Holstein, “Mainstreaming the Militia,” U.S. News and World Report, April 21, 1997, 24–37. 46 Originally accessed at: Southern Poverty Law Center, “The Patriot Movement: Fewer, but Harder, Patriot Groups in 1997,” Intelligence Report, Spring 1998, http://­www.splcenter.org/­ intelligenceproject/­ip-­4fl.html, May 9, 2000. Page no longer exists. 47 Stickney, All American Monster, 234. 48 Stern, Force, 209. 49 Originally accessed at: Southern Poverty Law Center, Intelligence Project, “Active ‘Patriot’ Groups in the U.S. in 2000,” http://­www.splcenter.org/­intelligenceproject/­ip-­index.html, October 12, 2001; and Southern Poverty Law Center, Intelligence Project, http://­www.splcen ter.org/­intelligenceproject/­ip-­index.html, October 12, 2001. Page no longer exists. 50 Carol W. Lewis, “The Terror That Failed: Public Opinion in the Aftermath of the Bombing in Oklahoma City,” Public Administration Review 60 (May/­June 2000): 206. 51 Lewis, “Terror That Failed,” 205. 52 Lewis, “Terror That Failed,” 205.

 

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53 Lynn M. Kuzma, “The Polls—­Trends: Terrorism in the United States,” Public Opinion Quarterly 64, 101. 54 Kuzma, “The Polls,” 102. 55 Kuzma, “The Polls,” 102. 56 Patricia King, “ ‘Vipers’ in the ‘Burbs,” Newsweek, July 15, 1996, 20–23. 57 Thomas J. Watts, “Militias Growing, But There Are Changes,” San Diego Union Tribune, December 20, 1996, A30. 58 “Militia Extremists Challenge Leadership,” Detroit News, March 4, 1998. 59 Daniel Klaidman and Michael Isikoff, “The Feds’ Quiet War,” Newsweek, April 22, 1996, 47. 60 Richard Lacayo, “State of Siege,” Time, April 8, 1996, 24–27. 61 Mike Tharp and Gordon Witkin, “A Showdown in Montana,” U.S. News and World Reports, April 8, 1996, 28–29. 62 Louis Sahagun and Richard A. Serrano, “FBI Found Rightists Key to Ending Montana Standoff,” Los Angeles Times, June 15, 1996, A1. 63 Sahagun and Serrano, “ FBI,” A1; James L. Pate, “Big Sky Surrender,” Soldier of Fortune, September 1996, 54–57, 70–71. 64 “The Alamo, Again” Economist, May 3, 1997, 25. 65 “The Alamo,” Economist, 25. 66 “The Alamo,” Economist, 25. 67 “The Alamo,” Economist, 25.; Susana Hayward, “One Death Only Blot On Siege’s Aftermath,” San Antonio Express, May 6, 1997, A1; Allan Turner, “Authorities Urge Waiting in West Texas Standoff,” Denver Rocky Mountain News, A2. 68 Hayward, “One Death,” A1. 69 Joe Mahr, “Standoff Continues in Roby,” Copley News Service, September 26, 1997. 70 Christopher Smith, “Ruby Ridge, Utah?,” Salt Lake Tribune, September 14, 1997, A1. 71 Ben Winslow, “No Waco as St. George Police Wait Out, Arrest Bangerter,” Salt Lake Tribune, May 21, 1998, D6. 72 “Plans Dropped to Break Up Logging Protest on Orders from White House,” Associated Press, October 13, 1999. 73 “Militia Member Vetoed Violence,” Detroit News, November 11, 1998. 74 “Letter from the National Rifle Association,” https://­www.documentcloud.org/­documents/­ 2104973-­nra-­1995-­04-­13-­letter-­from-­vp-­wayne-­lapierre.html, accessed August 17, 2018. All quotes of the letter are from this source. 75 http://­worldpopulationreview.com/­states/­wyoming-­population, accessed August 17, 2018. 76 “Wyoming Results,” https://­w ww.nytimes.com/­e lections/­r esults/­w yoming, accessed August 17, 2018. 77 http://­worldpopulationreview.com/­states/­california-­population, accessed August 17, 2018. 78 “California Results,” https://­w ww.nytimes.com/­e lections/­r esults/­c alifornia, accessed August 17, 2018. 79 Sharon Walsh, “Gunmakers Up in Arms Over HUD Plan to Sue Them,” The Washington Post, December 9, 1999, p. A02. 80 Gifford Law Center, “Gun Industry Immunity,” http://­lawcenter.giffords.org/­gun-­laws/­policy-­ areas/­other-­laws-­policies/­gun-­industry-­immunity, accessed August 17, 2018. 81 Stern, Force, 213. 82 Stern, Force, 213–24. 83 Stern, Force, 214. 84 Howard Fineman, “Friendly Fire,” Newsweek, May 8, 1995, 36–38. 85 Joseph P. Shapiro, “An Epidemic of Fear and Loathing,” U.S. News and World Report, May 8, 1995, 37–45. 86 Stern, Force, 222. 87 Stern, Force, 222. Emphasis in original. 88 TRB, “Did Newt Do It?,” New Republic, May 15, 1995, 44. 89 “Who Is Larry Pratt?” New Republic, March 11, 1996, 9. 90 Morris Dees, Gathering Storm (New York: Harper Collins, 1996), 49. 91 Dees, Gathering Storm, 49, 52–56.

 

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“Who Is Larry Pratt?,” New Republic, 9. “Who Is Larry Pratt?,” New Republic, 9. James Ridgeway, “Pratt Poison,” Village Voice 41, March 5, 1996, 23. “Who Is Larry Pratt?,” New Republic, 9. “Who Is Larry Pratt?,” New Republic, 9. “Who Is Larry Pratt?,” New Republic, 9.

 

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I

n 2002, when the first edition of Rage on the Right appeared, there was no way to know whether, or when, something like the 1990s militia movement might reemerge in the United States. In the aftermath of the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, public opinion quickly shifted from mass fear that the federal government was too strong to a demand that the government be made powerful enough to protect what the George W. Bush administration called the American “homeland.” Fear of the terrorist group al-­Qaeda, led by former US partner Osama bin Laden, dominated Americans’ attention in the years after the September 11 attacks. So, eventually, did the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein, which the Bush administration insisted was inclined to distribute weapons of mass destruction, whether chemical, biological, or even nuclear, to terrorist groups to use against the United States and its allies. These concerns led the United States to enter into two initially popular wars: against al-­Q aeda in Afghanistan in October 2001, and against Iraq, starting in March 2003. Even militia activists and sympathizers turned their attention to these new international enemies, rallying around the flag to support a massive buildup of federal government power in the face of what was seen as an existential threat to American survival from foreign terrorists and their allies. Yet as the first edition of this book noted, the cultural, mythical, and ideological foundations on which the 1990s militia movement was built did not go away just because terrorists espousing fundamentalist Islamic rhetoric used stolen airliners to destroy the World Trade Centers in New York, to damage the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, and to attempt to destroy either the White House or the

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Capitol building in Washington, DC. The United States was founded by people who were deeply skeptical of centralized government authority, and the political culture they built has promoted limited, constrained government for over 200 years. Such embedded attitudes are hard to change. They were always likely to reassert themselves. In the end, the militia reemerged in the United States less than ten years after 9/­11. It arose in the context of a changed media environment and was influenced by the formation of two proto-­militia groups, the Tea Party and the Birthers. Unlike their predecessors in the 1990s militia movement, the fuel for this second movement was not derived from specific, actual events like the twin disasters in Idaho and Texas. Rather, in barely more than five years after 9/­11, the media environment that developed in the United States after 2001 promoted the rise of angry, anti-­government groups in the country at large. Such groups formed in reaction to at least two other events as well: lingering frustration over America’s failed war in Iraq; and the financial crisis of 2008. Some of these groups became the new militia. Others, discussed in chapter 5, became known as the alt-­right.

The New Media Environment and the Rise of the Militia and the Alt-­Right To make the case that a new media environment shaped the rise of the second militia movement in the United States, it is necessary to have a sense of how the media used to work in America. Since this discussion is focused on political and social events, the media to be explored is largely what is called “news,” which has usually been seen as a general accounting of the major issues or occurrences of the day. On occasion news media also offers more developed, analytical pieces on broader trends and patterns in the community. For most of the latter half of the twentieth century, news reporting was shaped by several, interactive forces. For example, news organizations at least attempted to present information in a relatively objective way: obvious political bias was supposed to be avoided, and the facts of a particular story were supposed to be demonstrated through eyewitness accounts, documentary evidence, or other forms of fact-­checked, recognized proof. In addition to its evidence-­based attempt at objectivity, however imperfectly achieved, the news environment in the United States was also commercial. Most major news outlets in America existed to make money for their owners and stockholders. Just as grocery stores make money by selling groceries, and coffee shops make money by selling coffee, news organizations “sell” news reporting to viewers and readers and listeners. That is, news organizations offer information to users who then are usually exposed to advertising in return for access to the news content. There are, to be sure, exceptions to this model—­there are nonprofit news sources in the United States, for example. However, nonprofit media is only a small portion of the news industry in the United States. Instead, most media outlets seek to make profit by connecting audiences to advertisers on whatever medium the news content is presented—­for example, in newsprint, on a television screen, or at a website.

 

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From the 1950s, when television broadcasting first became widespread in the United States, into the 1990s, national television news was controlled by three networks: ABC, CBS, and NBC. Indeed, for most of those years national television news broadcasting was dominated by one broadcast among all others: the CBS Nightly News and its public face, Walter Cronkite. (Cronkite was so popular a figure he came to be called “Uncle Walter.”)1 Meanwhile, local newspapers tended to be monopolies within their communities or, at worst, faced only one competitor newspaper per town. Local radio and television stations, likewise, faced limited competition, but such stations enjoyed monopoly use of their broadcast frequencies, and few markets were saturated with local broadcast radio and television stations. In such circumstances, one might own a television or radio station and lose money, and one’s newspaper might go out of business. But such bankruptcies were rare, and news programmers understood that whatever they presented as “news” would likely generate profits. Other forces shaped “old” media in ways that no longer apply today. For example, until 1987 broadcast media (radio and television) operated under a rule known as the Fairness Doctrine. The Fairness Doctrine, first established in 1949, required radio and television stations to cover both sides (or several sides, for more complicated stories) of an issue. Newspapers, notably, were free to cover the same issues from a partisan point of view, but broadcast networks were expected to be relatively objective and balanced in their coverage of newsworthy items. Accordingly, broadcast news programs were usually moderate in tone. They generally tried to represent the reality that different people had different points of view on complex and sometimes controversial issues. The Fairness Doctrine was so ingrained in news reporters’ professional identities that most television news programs, as well as nationally prominent radio news broadcasts, continued to follow the ideals of the Fairness Doctrine even after it was repealed in 1987. An additional feature of the “old” media environment that shaped the way news used to be presented to the American audience derived from the comparative difficulty of establishing a news organization in the first place. Buying a television or radio station is expensive. Owning a newspaper is likewise costly. Staffs have to be paid; reporters have to be supported not only in salary but in travel and investigation expenses (if needed); ink and paper (for newspapers) and electricity and licenses and maintenance (for radio and television stations) have to be paid for. As a consequence, there were relatively few media sources in any community in the United States. There were not many places one could go to get one’s message out, nor did individuals face much difficulty in deciding which organizations they could turn to in order to learn what was going on in their communities. The few news organizations that existed in a local area were, by default, the gatekeepers of information in their localities. The financial stability, Fairness Doctrine regulations, and comparative lack of competition that characterized the old media environment in the United States combined to reward news organizations for their factual accuracy, careful reporting, and moderation in partisan point of view. The relatively limited number of news outlets also assured that most news was generated and presented by

 

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credentialed professionals—­people whose expertise was collecting, assessing, and framing the news in ways that fit established professional and social norms. Items and events that these professionals decided did not meet standards of newsworthy events—­oftentimes, issues related to race and ethnicity and gender and class—­got left out of the nation’s discourse. But the issues that were covered were usually analyzed seriously and thoughtfully. The news was by no means perfect, but it was considered and careful, at least most of the time. The era in which a few news outlets that could earn profits because of their near-­monopoly dominance of regional and national news no longer exists. Nor is it necessarily the case today that trained professionals discover and present a chronicle of events of the day in a measured, fact-­checked, Fairness Doctrine-­ informed way. Instead, a new, extraordinarily competitive media ecosystem has grown in recent years. It is highly partisan and is dominated by snap judgments and the rush to publish in order to get in front of a story as fast as possible. As will be seen, it was this new media environment that encouraged the rise of the militia and the alt-­right in the 2010s. If any single event can be seen to have shattered the old media system in America, ushering in the new media era, it was the founding, in October 1996, of the FOX network as a challenger to ABC, CBS, and NBC. Coming just a year and a half after the destruction of the Murrah building in Oklahoma City, FOX was the first new national broadcast network established in the United States in decades. As part of its operations it established a news division, FOX News. FOX News was created with an explicit partisan bias. Its director, Roger Ailes, was a longtime Republican activist who wanted a news network to counter what he and many other conservatives believed was a profound liberal bias on the part of the existing broadcast news networks. Hence, when the new FOX network adopted the phrase “Fair and Balanced” as its motto, the claim of being “fair and balanced” did not refer to the programming offered on FOX News. Rather, FOX News insisted its intent was to balance the broad media environment against what FOX directors claimed was a liberal bias of the dominant national news organizations in the United States. FOX News thereby became an advocate of Republican and conservative ideas. It served as a platform on which conservatives could present their programs. It also offered a way for conservatives to present their critiques of liberal points of view. Notably, the “old” media was already in serious decline when FOX News arrived on the nation’s television screens in 1996—­just as the militia movement had exploded into the nation’s consciousness. The traditional news and television networks were already under significant economic pressure by 1996. For at least the ten years prior to FOX’s start, broadcast television had seen declining viewership and declining revenues as cable networks grew in number and popularity. Cable television, which had scarcely existed in the 1970s, had grown rapidly throughout the 1980s to compete with broadcast networks. Its success put financial pressure on ABC, CBS, and NBC to cut costs, including costs in their news divisions. Meanwhile, the Cable News Network (CNN), founded in 1980, proved itself to be an effective alternative to the mainstream news organizations. At the start of the Persian Gulf War against Iraq in 1991, for example,

 

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CNN was the only American network that had reporters in Baghdad as American bombs began to fall on that city on the war’s opening night. CNN vaulted to most-­watched news network almost instantly. The notion that ABC, CBS, and NBC were the nation’s news gatekeepers of information was thus shown to be false as new competitors with alternative points of view emerged on the media landscape. Broadcast media was not the only news source to see significant changes in the 1990s and after. The Internet saw stunning growth from the mid-­1990s. As was discussed in chapter 2, the 1990s militia made effective use of the Internet of their era in building communities, identifying sympathizers, and mobilizing people to action. But nothing available to activists in the 1990s could have prepared them for the profusion of web-­based technologies and platforms that would arise by 2018. Google, for example, is today one of the world’s largest corporations. Its dominance of the Internet search market has caused it to have unprecedented influence in connecting the world online. Platforms like Facebook and computer companies like Apple have likewise leveraged their global presence to dominate various forms of communication—­including, in some cases, the news reports that were once the purview of mainstream broadcast networks and newspapers. Yet Google did not exist until 1998. Facebook, which if its users were considered citizens would be by far and away the most populous country in the world, with some 2.23 billion unique users per month, launched as a way for male Harvard University students to rate the relative attractiveness of female Harvard students in 2004. It was opened to general users only in 2006. 2 The closest thing anyone in the world had to what today we refer to as a “smartphone” before Apple released the iPhone in 2007 was a Blackberry. (This means that the smartphone is approximately like six years younger than the American war in Afghanistan.) Yet as of 2018 there were an estimated 4.57 billon mobile phone users worldwide, each of whom relies on vast wireless mobile networks and Wi-­Fi systems to deliver content to their devices.3 (Note that this number does not include other connected devices like tablets and laptops.) Meanwhile, the emergence of services like Weebly (and Tumblr and Reddit and many others) has made it relatively easy for almost anyone to create a web page, a blog, or other Internet presence. The profusion of cable networks has combined with the explosion of Internet resources to establish a staggeringly competitive media environment. With so much competition, and with access to competitive sources as easy as changing a television channel with the remote control held in your hands or flicking a tab on a smartphone, anyone can quickly and easily shift his or her attention at any time to any number of alternative sources of information and entertainment. This fact has powerfully affected the economic foundation of the new media economy. After all, broadcasters, publishers, and websites still make money by linking advertisers to users, presenting ads that people who view content on the media source might click on and engage with. But with so much competition, getting users to come to a particular website, or newspaper, or broadcast venue is difficult. Getting them to stay is perhaps even harder: once they’ve seen what they came to see, why should they remain on the site? Media producers have

 

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to work extremely hard to make their materials appealing and engaging in this hypercompetitive environment. This competitive media ecosystem has encouraged specialization among news and information providers. FOX News has proved to be a template or a model for how news works in this changed environment. Whereas “old” media sought to offer a balanced chronicle of the major events of the day (at least as the old media gatekeepers understood the major events of the day), much of the current mediaverse engages in what is called “narrowcasting.” News networks, radio programs, newspapers, and especially websites present very partisan, very biased points of view that do not seek to persuade or inform. Rather, they seek to reinforce their users’ points of view. They compliment their followers for their wisdom for being on the right side of a political debate and regularly mock alternative ideas—­and the people who hold those “wrong” views. The idea is to capture the attention of the outlet’s core audience for an extended period, thereby ensuring lots of people watch the advertising that serves as the profit-­making center of a news outlet’s operation. This model has proved highly successful for FOX News. Its programs consistently rate as the most popular among news networks, and its information is considered the most trusted by its viewers. However, its viewership is highly skewed ideologically: it is the most-­trusted site for conservatives, who flock to FOX News at much higher rates, than liberals and progressives, who patronize more liberal sources like MSNBC. Thus, FOX News’ trustworthiness reputation is actually a consequence of its partisan bias: it attracts conservative viewers who prefer its avowedly conservative programming—­programming that viewers then trust because it reinforces their conservative point of view.4 Notably, social media platforms like Facebook, Google, and others have reinforced and even augmented FOX’s “give them what they want” business model. The core idea behind Facebook’s profit seeking strategy, for example, is that one is more likely to like things that one’s friends (and their friends) like, and so you are more likely to click on a page or item that a friend (or a friend of a friend) clicked on or liked. This means that Facebook or Google or any other social media outlet is desperately trying to put things in front of users’ eyes that it thinks the user is already likely to agree with or be attracted to. Social media platforms are not trying to show citizens what they might need to know to be informed citizens. Instead, social media outlets are trying to show people what they might be attracted to, so they will click on the link, see an ad, and give up more personal data about themselves so social media algorithms can refine their understanding of what they should show users to get users to click on the links social media show them. The rise of the new media in America is the result of more than just increased competition, however. Another factor that created the new environment in which news media operates was the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987. With the Fairness Doctrine’s repeal, television and radio broadcast news were freed to offer explicitly partisan content. In general, television news broadcasts maintained the norm of objectivity in the first years after the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine. FOX News was the first television network to offer an openly

 

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partisan agenda when it was launched in 1996. Radio, however, rushed to fill airtime with partisan news and partisan commentary. This was particularly true for AM radio. Most of the explicitly partisan programming offered on AM radio was avowedly conservative. For example, the most successful AM talk show host, Rush Limbaugh, oversaw an aggressively partisan radio show that eventually reached across the United States. No longer constrained to apparent objectivity by federal regulations, AM radio plunged into the advocacy and promotion of conservative ideology and support for Republican politics and politicians. (It was as host of one of these AM broadcasts G. Gordon Liddy offered his infamous advice, discussed in the last chapter, about how that militia and other anti-­ government activists should aim to kill federal agents.) Meanwhile, the cost and difficulty of creating a “news” channel dropped dramatically as the digital revolution transformed global society. Anyone with an Internet connection could offer thoughts, opinions, and pictures and videos to the world at large. One no longer needed a broadcast license or the infrastructure associated with radio, television, or newspapers to be a “newsmaker.” A vast network of right-­wing websites have been created during the digital, Internet era. (There is a spectrum of left-­wing Internet media that performs the same function for leftist radicals in the United States, but it is not relevant to this book.) Some of these, such as Breitbart, have become clearinghouses for a broad range of militia, anti-­government, and even explicitly racist and white nationalist, anti-­immigrant rhetoric and advocacy. Others, such as Infowars, run by Alex Jones, have become out and out purveyors of conspiracy, claiming that every event in the United States that might reflect poorly on conservatives must be the result of a government plot known as a “false flag” operation, all while insisting that federal agents are on the verge of seizing all Americans’ guns, or that they are preparing to undertake mass arrests of US citizens as part of a United Nations–led plan to compel conservatives to undergo political reeducations at specially organized camps across the United States. (Breitbart and Infowars are discussed in chapter 5.) Even as it has become easier to create outlets for partisan political points of view passed off as “news,” there has been a profusion of outright faked news. As a consequence, many people today insist that some or other piece of news must have been faked. Such claims are particularly common when the report in question might harm a person’s reputation or might undermine their political agenda. Public concerns about fake news are legitimate. Although fakery and hoaxes have always bedeviled human life, as a practical matter the technology of deception has gotten significantly better in recent years. We can assess, test, frame, and reframe ideas, images, colors, smells, sounds, and pretty much every other sensory information in ways that soothe, alter, and befuddle the imperfect human mind. In the age of focus groups, aroma-­infused shopping centers, and color-­adjusted lighting schemes that can make even unappetizing items look appealing (or vice versa), it has become almost impossible—­or perhaps actually ­impossible—­to separate that which is authentic from that which is managed, massaged, and mediated.

 

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Take, for example, what Auto-­Tune can do to us. Auto-­Tune is a music processing program that can take a voice of almost any quality and adjust it to sound at a desired frequency. (It can, of course, also reverse that process.) It—­ or, rather, the computer, at some editor’s orders—­can take something off-­key, even ghastly, and turn it into an approximation of actual music. In other words, it makes music where none existed before. And the listener, of course, may never know. Likewise, the rise of Photoshop (and similar digital manipulation software) has reshaped what we know and how we “know” it. Like any good magician, the wizards behind digital manipulation software understand that one of the silliest statements ever made is “seeing is believing.” In a digital universe, you can be made to see whatever the photo editors want you to see. Put another way, George Orwell was completely and utterly wrong when, in 1984, he imagined it would take armies of workers to make and unmake history to fit the needs of the regime. In fact, all one needs today to accomplish Orwell’s vision is to use a “search and replace” command. People don’t even really need to wait for “facts” to happen that they then alter. They can just invent whatever they need to make their point and then publish it online, sometimes even on Wikipedia—­all at the speed of Google. The simple technological fact, then, is that if someone wants to deceive a viewer—­or a listener, for that matter—­if someone wants to fake the moon landing or wants to fake looking presidential, the technical ability exists to do it, and to do it well. One simply cannot believe what one sees anymore. Or, as Abraham Lincoln is alleged to have said, in a humorous Internet quote that gets to this point quite nicely, “The problem with quotes on the internet is that it is hard to verify their authenticity.” The ease with which we can be deceived has, in turn, led to the assertion that any piece of unpopular, damaging, or harmful “news” is, in fact, “fake.” That is, if it appears a piece of information undermines or challenges one’s political point of view, it has become increasingly common for partisans whose ideas or goals are facing criticism to assert that the damning piece of evidence is faked, and thus should be ignored rather than respected. The reality that things can be faked has fed the allegation that things are actually faked even when the events and issues at hand factually happened. This new media environment does not favor or incentivize careful reporting, fact checking, or nuance. Rather, it rewards speed: whoever gets the “news” out first may draw more attention than any other source. It also rewards melodrama: headlines have evolved into “clickbait” designed to lure viewers into a story using whatever scary, lurid, or overwrought phrases manage to get someone’s attention in a hypercompetitive media environment. Indeed, headlines themselves are part of the hyperbole and manipulation: various headlines can be tested in real time, and webmasters can assess which combination of words and phrases draws the most attention to a particular story. Information, however imperfectly collected, is updated continuously to keep the audience’s attention at any cost. Analysis of news events is made to fit the character limits of a tweet and a smartphone screen. Partisan news sells, so partisan news became the new

 

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normal. The norms and standards of the old media environment were replaced by a new, instantaneous, hyper-­politicized media order. Perhaps no other platform quite captures the ethos of the new media system like Twitter. Twitter was founded in 2006 as a tool through which people could share brief thoughts, quips, or other material of interest. (The discussion of Twitter here is not meant to be exhaustive. There has been an eruption of social media platforms through which people can express their opinions in the last decade. The analysis of Twitter developed in this section is intended to expose the ways social media have not lived up to their potential as news sources. It is not just a discussion of Twitter.) Posts were originally limited to 140 total characters, although that boundary was later expanded to 280 characters. The brevity of Twitter’s posts, combined with the ubiquity of modern, Internet-­ connected smartphones, led to Twitter’s rapid expansion. Ordinary people could easily offer their thoughts on the issues of the day. Indeed, in some cases Twitter served as a real-­time news service as people tweeted about the events they were experiencing, often in times of crisis. The platform also became a commonly used channel for news organizations and other political figures to promote their stories and their agendas. To some degree, Twitter offered the prospect of a democratic news service, one in which access to the means of distributing ­information—­of any type—­would be reduced to almost zero. Everyone everywhere might participate in the life of the nation, all for the entry price of a cell phone contract. Twitter, however popular it became, suffered from at least three structural flaws that led it to lose some of its luster over time—­at least as a positive political force. First, the 140-­character limit made it impossible to offer any nuanced, historically or otherwise-­grounded analysis of an issue. All a tweet could really do was offer a simplistic opinion about a political event or person. Moreover, drawing attention to any particular post was hard: the cacophony of tweets in the Twitterverse encouraged users to think of clever, attention-­grabbing ways of expressing their ideas, not thoughtful ones. If an idea couldn’t be reduced to a catchy tweet, then it was unlikely to garner many views, and so would be ignored. Second, just as was the case in the rest of the new media ecosystem, dramatic, angry, fear-­mongering tweets often drew more attention than did positive or thoughtful ones. Since revenue is derived from attention, the financial incentive of the platform was clear. In a system predicated on gaining page views, one needed to get mean to get heard. Unfortunately, the same push toward negative, mean, even hate-­filled tweets also applied to the replies that Twitter allowed to be posted to a particular tweet. It became commonplace for people who disagreed with a post to reply in savage, brutal terms—­at times, issuing threats of bodily harm to the person who wrote the original tweet. Seeming armies of Internet trolls could descend on a surprised Twitter user and gang up to abuse a tweeter. The so-­called Gamergate controversy and the treatment of NBC Saturday Night Live performer Leslie Jones stand as just two of many examples of such Twitter cruelty.5 Twitter, then, became more than a means to decenter the making and reporting of political news away from the news elites toward the broad population. It also became another toxic stream flowing into the modern media ecosystem.

 

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It rewarded dramatic, often false or abusive, posts that promised little more than punchy headlines backed up by statements that reinforced their readers’ political biases. It regularly fed users’ worst instincts about politics rather than offering the information people would need to make informed and thoughtful judgments about the political system and those who seek to lead it. So whether it is because we are being actively deceived in an overly complex mediaverse or are willing participants in systems of deception that we enjoy more than the so-­called real world (or some combination of both), the new media ecosystem supports a world in which it is increasingly impossible to know what is real and what is fake. It also has promoted conditions in which it is hard to distinguish that which is to be respected and trusted from that which is to be challenged and rejected. Media, and technology, and personal choices have combined to build a world in which it is as easy to make up preferred truths as it is to demonstrate actual ones. Put another way, if Daniel Patrick Moynihan was right, and “everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts,” the problem with the new mediaverse is that it has become increasingly difficult to figure out what counts as a fact in the first place.

The Iraq War and the Fraying of American Political Discourse The years just before the new militia and the alt-­right became active in American political life were riven by more than just a new media culture that favored snap judgments and vitriolic tweets. Although politics inevitably involves tense and often angry interactions as people contend for the power to shape the nation’s course, the later years of the Bush administration were particularly angry. In significant measure this was due to public anger and frustration about the aftermath of the American invasion and occupation of Iraq starting in 2003. At least since 2006, in fact, the nation had split on the question of whether the 2003 invasion of Iraq had been the right thing to do. The Iraq War, which had initially been very popular as Americans rallied to oppose the regime of Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, had not gone well once US combat forces destroyed Iraq’s military and occupied Baghdad, Iraq’s capital. Almost immediately after the end of major US combat operations, Baghdad and many other Iraqi cities were hit by periods of mass looting as Iraqis freed from the Hussein dictatorship exploited postwar chaos and looted government offices for computers and furniture and televisions. American troops, meanwhile, almost always stood by and watched the looting happen, demonstrating that they were not really in charge of security in postwar Iraq. In the ensuing chaos and period of lawlessness, a guerrilla opposition force rose in Iraq and began a campaign of terror attacks against US and allied targets. It also sought to terrorize any Iraqis who might help American forces. Finally, resistance fighters also settled old feuds as a civil war broke out in Iraq among different groups seeking to advance their religious and other interests in their communities. By 2006, most liberals and progressives in the United States, many of whom had supported President Bush’s call to invade Iraq because they believed Iraq

 

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had weapons of mass destruction it might share with terrorist groups, had mostly come to believe the war was a mistake and that President Bush had lied or otherwise manipulated the truth to get Americans to support the war. Liberals and progressives wanted US troops to leave Iraq. They also wanted the United States to acknowledge its mistake in invading the country in the first place. In contrast, conservatives insisted the war was justified and regularly questioned the patriotism and decency of those liberals and progressives who doubted the need for the United States to invade and then remain in Iraq. Importantly, although it is common to describe these liberal-­conservative exchanges as “debates,” that word misses the vitriol and anger that characterized confrontations between pro-­and antiwar forces in the United States during this period. People who defended the Bush administration’s choice to go to war in Iraq did more than insist the war had been both necessary and a success. They also questioned the patriotism and public mindedness of anyone who thought the war had been a mistake. Liberals and progressives, meanwhile, often dismissed those who supported the war as puppets or pawns of the Bush administration. War supporters were accused of being people who were not smart enough to see the obvious wrongness of their beliefs. Moreover, all of these “debates” occurred within the new media environment—­meaning that outrageous accusations often drew the most views (the currency of the attention economy) even as nuanced analysis and fact-­checked reporting was obscured behind a barrage of tweets and blog posts and Internet memes that reduced complex political questions to the tribal truth that “we” believe one thing and “they” believe another—­that we are right while they are wrong. In such an environment, trust in government, which had skyrocketed after 9/­11, began to erode.

The Financial Crisis of 2008 and the Politics of Resentment As if a new media ecosystem and a deeply controversial, apparently failed war weren’t enough to roil American politics at the end of the George W. Bush administration, 2008 saw another crisis that eroded public trust in that nation’s institutions: the financial crisis now known as the Great Recession. The economic collapse of 2008 was a long time coming, but when it arrived it exploded like a summer storm. It intensified many debates in American political life—­debates that, like the one about the Iraq War, were filtered through and exacerbated by the new media ecosystem. The rough outline of the 2008 financial crisis can be sketched briefly. After many years in which major banks and investment firms earned enormous amounts of money by making increasingly risky investments in the housing market, housing prices began to decline. Large numbers of people, including many who would not have been granted mortgages just a few years earlier, began to default on their house payments. As homeowners stopped paying their loans and tried to sell their homes to pay off their debts, there were many more homes for sale than there were buyers. This fact depressed house prices, making it that much harder for struggling homeowners to sell their homes and escape the loans

 

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they could no longer afford. The housing market was in freefall by the summer of 2008. The decline in house prices might have been good news for prospective home buyers, of course: it made the cost of entering the housing market go down. However, many of the risky investments the major banks had entered into in the years prior to the 2008 financial crisis depended on constantly increasing home prices if they were to pay off. Thus, as housing prices fell the banks’ investments failed and their profits disappeared. As profits eroded, banks found it difficult to issue new lines of credit, even to deserving clients. Cumulatively, these problems (and others) led to a virtual freeze in credit markets in the United States. It also brought the US economy to the verge of collapse. Of course, if the US economy were to collapse, it would take much of the world economy with it. This was a truly global crisis. In response to an impending global economic collapse, the administration of US president George W. Bush sought to support the major banks and investment firms based in the United States with federal aid. While the administration did not support this idea immediately—­after all, if a company makes bad decisions, most people believe that it ought to go out of business—­the Bush administration (and its successor, the Obama administration) came to understand the major banks as “too big to fail.” They decided that the banks were so central to the US and global economy that if they were allowed to collapse, the economic fallout would be disastrous. So, in October 2008, just a few weeks before the presidential election that would bring Barack Obama to the presidency, President Bush signed a bailout and support package for the banks known as the Toxic Asset Relief Program (TARP). Its value exceeded $800 billion. Put another way, largely because he felt he had no alternative, President Bush pledged over $800 billion in money from US taxpayers to the major banks that caused the economic crisis. All taxpayers got in return was the hope that the economy would not collapse into a second Great Depression. In the near term, this bailout was not popular, but it was not profoundly controversial either. It happened fairly quickly and seemed necessary. Americans swallowed and hoped the worst had passed. The election of Barack Obama as president, however, saw debate about the bailout intensify. Obama, of course, was the first African American elected president of the United States. He was also the first liberal Democrat elected since Lyndon Johnson in 1964. As a liberal, Obama came to office with a view of government that directly challenged the conservative Republican vision that had dominated Washington since Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980. Obama, for example, believed that the federal government had a role to play in trying to deliver healthcare to all Americans. He believed that the federal government should stimulate the creation of jobs through infrastructure spending, and he believed that the American automobile giants General Motors (GM) and Chrysler should be helped in their efforts to survive the aftereffects of the 2008 financial crisis. If those companies went out of business, Obama worried that hundreds of thousands of Americans would lose their jobs. As a consequence, President Obama thought it was proper for the federal government to assist GM

 

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and Chrysler, thereby saving those jobs. In other words, Obama offered a more activist, expansionist vision of the role of the federal government in the United States than any of his recent predecessors had. His plans therefore, drew significant opposition from conservatives across the United States. The fact that he was African American only intensified this opposition, as will be discussed in the next section of this chapter. The changed media environment, lingering frustration over the Iraq War, and resentment of the bank bailouts during the 2008 financial crisis provided a powerful context for the reemergence of the militia and the alt-­right. Anger and frustration about the Iraq War and the American economy were filtered through the changed norms and standards—­or lack thereof—­of the new media in a way that offered militia and alt-­right activists both someone to blame for the crises they faced and a way to organize to try to change politics toward the agenda they wanted pursued.

Mobilizing Anti-­Government Activism in the United States after 2008 The two groups discussed in this section, the Tea Party and the Birthers, can be seen as proto-­militias and proto-­alt-­right groups. They adopted many ideas and attitudes common to the 1990s militia. They also expressed many values in common with previous generations of white supremacist groups, particularly in terms of believing in government conspiracies aimed at harming “real” Americans—­ especially white Americans. Each exploited the new media ecosystem to build a broad following. Each also offered a new way to promote an anti-­government agenda in the American political system. To be clear, although these groups arose at the same time, there is no evidence that they emerged as the result of an orchestrated, coherent plan. Rather, things happened; political leaders responded; and activists formed the Tea Party and the Birthers—­groups that, in turn, fueled the rise of ever more extreme anti-­ government groups. Millions of Americans responded, and a new militia movement was born. So was the alt-­right.

The Rise of the Tea Party The Tea Party emerged on the American political scene like lava erupting from a volcano. It was sudden and powerful, and changed the American political landscape as it advanced. The Tea Party self-­consciously presented itself as a revolutionary movement. Tea Party activists emphasized their anti-­government radicalism in the name of their movement and the costumes they adopted to define themselves as members of it. The Tea Party name, after all, evoked the October 1773 event, the Boston Tea Party, in which costumed American patriots dumped tea off British ships anchored in Boston harbor as part of an anti-­tax and anti-­British protest. Like those protestors, the contemporary Tea Party was protesting taxes—­the name stood for Taxed Enough Already. And just as those revolutionary activists had

 

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worn costumes—­Native American garb—­the new Tea Party celebrated their participation in the movement by adopting Revolutionary War–­style military uniforms as their costumes of choice when attending rallies, speaking for change, and engaging in similar political activities. In other words, the Tea Party presented itself as an actual, revolutionary militia that intended to stop an abusive central government (American, this time) from harming regular citizens and favoring a powerful, illegitimate elite. If the Tea Party movement can be said to have a beginning, it would be February 19, 2009. On that day, just a month after Barack Obama came to office, CNBC business commentator Rick Santelli offered a now-­famous (or perhaps infamous) rant on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Responding to a discussion about the Obama administration’s proposal to promote mortgage modifications as a tool to deal with the financial crisis, Santelli opined, “The new administration is big on computers and technology. How about this, Mr. President and new administration. Why don’t you put up a website to have people vote on the internet as a referendum to see if we really want to subsidize the losers’ mortgages?” He then turned to the traders on the floor behind him and asked, “How many people want to pay for your neighbor’s mortgages that has an extra bathroom and can’t pay their bills?” After hearing their cries of “no, no!” Santelli continued, saying, “It’s time for another tea party. . . . What we are doing in this country will make Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin roll over in their graves.”6 Santelli identified at least two causes of the financial crisis during his rant. The first was the many people who, taking advantage of the opportunities offered to them by bankers who were making generous home loans during the period of promiscuous bank lending that led up to the financial crisis, bought more expensive houses than they might otherwise have been able to afford. Their greed and stupidity, Santelli insisted, had created a housing bubble as prices went up faster than people’s incomes, setting up a situation in which the housing bubble would inevitably pop, and home prices would inevitably decline. Frenzied home buying by irresponsible individuals had thus caused the financial crisis, at least according to Rick Santelli. Santelli offered a second target of blame in his rant as well: government regulators. In Santelli’s take—­and in many other analysts’ minds as well—­the frenzy of home buying that led to the financial collapse of 2008 occurred because government encouraged banks to lend too much money to too many people who simply should never have been able to get a home mortgage in the first place. Government subsidies underlay the mortgage industry, Santelli pointed out. Therefore, government was to blame for the economic woes of the period. Notably, the new media ecosystem shaped the Tea Party’s rise. Whereas the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s had used the infrastructure and networks created by African American churches in the American South to support their struggle for freedom, the Tea Party grew in the Internet era. Websites, blogs, and partisan news sources like FOX News promoted the Tea Party’s ideas and goals in a twenty-­four-­hour news cycle that was both unrelenting and that rewarded catchy, aggressive anecdotes of “makers” versus “takers.” Thus, even though it is possible to discern a political agenda for Tea Party activists, much of

 

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the movement was motivated by the toxic stew of endless Internet memes, snap news stories, and the rush to grab viewers’ attention that shapes the way much contemporary media works in the United States. The agenda put forward by Tea Party activists, then, was rarely presented in a systematic, carefully articulated way. Its members and supporters did not offer a specific political plan as part of a broad political agenda. Tea partiers did not seek to work out a deal in the political system that allowed people to get some, but not all, of what they wanted. Instead, the Tea Party wanted to disrupt politics as usual and thereby to remake the American political order. For Tea Party activists, what needed disrupting was an alleged conspiracy among corporate and banking elites who worked as bedfellows with Washington power-­brokers, particularly Democrats. Tea partiers argued that the housing and banking policies that were the cause of the Great Recession were the result of Democratic Party–sponsored policies. Accordingly, Tea Party rhetoric came to emphasize that “they”—­Democrats and those Republicans who supported Democratic housing and banking policies—­were giving “our” money to undeserving “takers.” (Tea partiers dismissively referred to Republicans they found insufficiently conservative as RINOs: Republicans in Name Only.) Such takers included both the bankers who wrecked the financial system but who were now receiving undeserved bailouts paid for by American taxpayers, and the allegedly fiscally irresponsible homeowners who had purchased houses they couldn’t afford. In time, tea partiers came to argue that anyone receiving government benefits of almost any kind, but especially those benefits traditionally thought of as welfare (food and housing subsidies, for example), was a “taker” who should not receive public support. Even when the Tea Party undertook fairly conventional political actions—­ for example, participating in elections, seeking to elect preferred candidates to office—­its members usually resisted traditional forms of political compromise to influence power. Rather, Tea Party activists sought to overthrow traditional practices as they pushed their populist, anti-­government agenda. Rather than accepting the need to vote for established politicians that tea partiers believed were RINOs, then, party members supported challengers to mainstream Republicans they found to be insufficiently conservative—­even some with long-­established credentials. Utah senator Robert Bennett, Indiana senator Richard Lugar, and incumbent House Majority Whip Eric Cantor (the second leading Republican in the US House of Representatives) all lost primary elections to Tea Party–affiliated or sponsored candidates, for example. Moreover, once they were elected, Tea Party–affiliated officials regularly refused to compromise on complex policies like the debt ceiling, an issue that requires congressional action to ensure the US government continues to pay its bills on time. For most established politicians, the debt ceiling is an area in which political ideology is set aside in favor of acting to protect the financial well-­being of the United States. Tea Party activists and leaders, however, refused to compromise on such issues, insisting that their ideological agenda was more important than the United States’ financial obligations. In support of their agenda, Tea Party activists forced the federal government to shut down all but its most essential functions on several occasions.

 

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To be fair, the Tea Party never adopted other tactics that were once common among the 1990s militias. Rather than retreat into rural compounds and starting to build military-­style militia forces capable of challenging the federal government with force of arms, for example, the Tea Party’s members sought formal political power through a takeover of the Republican Party. However, it shared many of the same goals with the 1990s militia. Like its 1990s-­era predecessor, the Tea Party made extraordinary efforts to present its ideas and goals in non-­racist, non-­ethnocentric terms. And, importantly, it succeeded in ways the 1990s militia failed: as political scientists Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann found, the Tea Party was a central force pulling the Republican Party toward increasingly conservative political positions during the early years of the 2010s.7 The Tea Party was the 1990s militia with (mostly) symbolic guns. It also was the augur of more extreme movements to come.

The Birther Movement Like the Tea Party movement, the Birther movement grew into a powerful political presence within the new media system in the United States. It arose based on rumors that Barack Obama, a US senator from Illinois who sought the 2008 Democratic Party nomination for president, was not a natural born citizen of the United States, and so was not eligible to serve as president. The “natural born citizen” clause of the US Constitution, in Article II Section 1, requires that “No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President.” While the specific meaning of this clause has never been fully determined in law, the general consensus among legal scholars and political analysts is that the rule was intended to prevent people born as citizens of other countries from becoming president of the United States. However, the clause does not explicitly define “natural born” citizenship. Did it mean that everyone born in the United States is automatically a US citizen—­ so-­called birthright citizenship? (Later, the Fourteenth Amendment formally established this principle in the Constitution when it was passed in 1868.) What about people born outside the United States but who have one or more parents who are US citizens? Little consideration was paid in the past to the possibility that Americans might be born to US parents living outside the United States. The “natural born citizen” clause of the Constitution situation simply does not address such a case. It is, as a consequence, one of many sections of the US Constitution whose meaning is not precisely defined. As it happens, the 2008 presidential election featured two candidates who either were, or were alleged to have been, born outside the United States. One, John McCain, won the Republican Party nomination for president that year. The other, Barack Obama, won the Democratic Party nomination. McCain, as it happened, was indisputably born in Panama. He was the son of the US Navy Admiral who was commanding the Panama Canal Zone at the time. (The zone was, at the time of McCain’s birth, controlled by the United States.) Notably, Senator McCain’s Panamanian birth stoked no controversy during the 2008

 

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campaign: the Panama Canal Zone, as a US-­governed area, was deemed to meet the Fourteenth Amendment’s requirement, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” In addition, both of John McCain’s parents were US citizens at the time of his birth. No one questioned his right to run for president. Barack Obama, meanwhile, was born in Hawaii, the son of an American woman and a Kenyan man also named Barack Obama. However, starting during the Democratic primaries and then continuing through much of his presidency, rumors persisted that he had actually been born in Kenya. It is not at all clear that Obama would have been ineligible to run for president even had he been born in Kenya, of course: his mother was a US citizen, and under the laws of the time the younger Barack Obama was born he would have been eligible for US citizenship on the strength of his mother’s status as a US citizen. Whatever the law, however, many Americans came to believe that Obama was ineligible to run for or serve as president on the grounds that he was from Kenya, not the United States. Right-­wing media, as well as FOX News, rapidly picked up the rumor of Obama’s Kenyan birth, repeating the claims of birthers like Orly Taitz, a dentist, lawyer, and real estate agent originally from the region of the former Soviet Union that is today the nation of Moldova. Taitz filed multiple lawsuits claiming that Senator Obama was ineligible to run for or serve as president since he was not a natural born citizen. She became a regular guest on a wide variety of news programs. She was ultimately fined $20,000 for legal misconduct for filing multiple, false lawsuits, but that legal judgment was irrelevant to her co-­believers.8 They saw Barack Obama as an illegal, even evil, presence in the presidency, and in the new media system they found endless confirmation of their faith across the Internet and on television and talk radio. The Birther movement, as it came to be called, consisted of those Americans who persisted in believing that President Obama was not the legitimate president of the United States—­regardless of substantial evidence to the contrary. Thus, even when President Obama released his birth certificate showing that he was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1961, birthers insisted the certificate was faked. They then demanded to see what they termed his “long form” birth ­certificate—­a document that is a slightly longer version of the basic Hawaiian birth certificate he had already released. Other birthers insisted that there were witnesses to Obama’s Kenyan birth and that their testimony was being suppressed as part of a conspiracy to protect Obama’s presidency. Yet others claimed that the birth notice published in a Honolulu paper after Obama was born was actually placed from Kenya as part of a plan to hide Obama’s true birth place. 9 Another birther, a doctor in the US Army named Lt. Col. Terry Lakin, refused to deploy as ordered to Afghanistan on grounds that President Obama was not the legitimate commander in chief of the US armed forces and so had no right to order Lakin to Afghanistan.10 The Birther movement was linked to more allegations about President Obama than just the physical location of his birth, however. It also touched on assumptions that are common in the United States, assumptions that are deeply

 

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embedded in the country’s long history of racism and racial bias. For example, President Obama faced demands that he reveal not just his birth certificate, but his college and high school transcripts as well. The demand was grounded on the all-­too-­common belief among many Americans that, as an African American, President Obama had not earned admission to Columbia University (where he got his undergraduate degree) or Harvard University (where he got his law degree). Instead, the implication was that he had been admitted to those institutions unfairly, as a result of a controversial policy aimed at overcoming past discrimination known as affirmative action. Similarly, race-­grounded critics insisted that President Obama could not have written his popular book, Dreams from My Father. Instead, they alleged that a white man President Obama was acquainted with, Bill Ayers, must have written it instead.11 Obama’s status as both an African American and the son of an African man thus served as fodder for those Americans who insisted that Obama was somehow not a “real” American. An additional element of the Birther movement derived from some birthers’ insistence that President Obama is Muslim. Constitutionally, of course, this is not a problem: Article VI of the US Constitution directly states that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” As a legal matter, any president might be of whatever religious background he or she professes. However, as a practical matter all US presidents have been Christians, at least in their general religious sentiments, and in the aftermath of the terror attacks of 9/­11 many Americans came to view Muslims, even Muslims serving in the US military, with attitudes ranging from skepticism to outright hostility. In this context, to assert that someone was Muslim could be seen as an attack on that person: Muslims were seen by many Americans to practice a faith that ran counter to most legal, cultural, and social “American” values. This, certainly, was the intent of a woman who attended a rally for Republican presidential candidate John McCain in 2008, when she said, of then-­candidate Obama (and substituting the word, “Arab” for “Muslim”), “I can’t trust Obama. I have read about him, and he’s not, he’s not—­he’s an Arab.”12 To his credit, Senator McCain rebuked the woman for her openly biased statement, defending Barack Obama as a good family man. But the implication of the comment, which drew broad applause, was clear: something was wrong with Barack Obama, and electing him risked putting an alien, illegitimate leader in the White House. Although the Birther movement failed to prove anything other than what President Obama claimed was true about his birth (he was born in Hawaii, and so was a natural born citizen eligible to be president of the United States), the birther campaign was highly effective at sowing the seeds of doubt in many Americans’ minds about Obama’s legitimacy in office. The endless blog posts, news appearances, and twenty-­four-­hour political coverage of the birther issue on news outlets like FOX News created an environment in which people who were inclined to be skeptical of Barack Obama as president latched onto whatever information they could find that confirmed their reasons for disliking him. This confirmation bias was evident in April 2011, even after President Obama released his birth certificate. In a poll taken at that time, 45 percent of Republicans

 

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indicated that they believed Obama was not a natural born citizen of the United States. Another 22 percent indicated they weren’t sure of his birth having taken place in Hawaii.13 Thus 67 percent—­fully two-­thirds—­of Republicans surveyed doubted President Obama’s citizenship status even after he demonstrated he had been born in Hawaii. (Donald Trump’s central role in the Birther movement will be discussed in chapter 5.) At first glance, there may seem nothing “militia” or alt-­right about the Birther movement. Birthers did not take up arms, or threaten to do so, to make their point. However, at least two features of birtherism make it an important element in the development of the later militia movement and its companion movement, the alt-­right. The first of these was the movement’s effort to delegitimate the Obama presidency. Birthers did not merely object to President Obama’s policies, implementation strategies, or personnel choices. They did not argue that the United States had lost its leadership position in matters of foreign policy, or that the globalization of the US economy had gone too far, imperiling American jobs held by people with relatively low skills or who could be replaced by cheaper labor overseas. Instead, the birthers offered a fundamental critique of the Obama presidency as such. If Obama was Kenyan, the argument went, he could not serve as president and needed to be removed from office. Indeed, if Barack Obama was Kenyan, the United States was being led by an immigrant usurper. As such, the Obama rule was akin to King George’s: it had been imposed by agents of the central government through coercive power. It was not the result of the collective consent of the American people as mediated through a legitimate presidential election. The Birther movement also matters because it can be seen to have re-­infused a racial, ethnic, and even religious dimension to right-­wing thought and activism in the United States. Unlike the Tea Party, which, like its 1990s predecessor generally adopted a non-­racial tone (to varying effect) in promoting its activities, birthers were more likely to admit a racial or ethnocentric motivation for their actions. In the Birther narrative, Obama’s presidency was suspect not only because he was (allegedly) Kenyan but also because he was (again, allegedly) Muslim. This introduction of racial and religious themes into anti-­O bama activism offered a preview of the rise of the alt-­r ight and anti-­ immigrant movements that emerged at the time of the 2016 presidential election. They mark an important shift in tone, tactics, and targets from the 1990s militia movement. The Tea Party and the Birther movement provided a context in which millions of Americans stirred their discomfort and unhappiness with the federal government’s policies, taxes, and actions into a frothy mix of anger and frustration. This mixture circulated in the new media environment, whether in large organizations like FOX News or in the seemingly endlessly proliferating number of ultra-­right-­wing websites, in a self-­reinforcing set of truisms. In this froth, claims that the federal government was failing to enforce immigration in an effort to undermine “traditional” America in favor of nonwhite immigrants, or that federal agents were soon to enforce a ban on all guns in America, were established as common knowledge.

 

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The New Militia Combined, the churn of the new media, combined with mobilizations of right-­ wing anger like those manifested in the Tea Party and Birther movements, produced a new militia movement in the years following Barack Obama’s election as president of the United States. Once Obama took office, the new militia erupted in the United States. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), as of October 2018 there were 954 such groups operating around America. Every state had at least one; Pennsylvania had thirty-­six. Not every one of these groups was necessarily large or active, but at least according the SPLC’s definition of such groups, they were active and significant enough to merit notice.14 As a practical matter it is not possible to disentangle and discuss every new militia group that arose from 2008 to the present. There are too many of them, and in any case most of them share similar core ideas and values. Indeed, many are the equivalent of religious sects: once-­large groups fractured for some combination of often minor doctrinal differences as well as personality clashes. Little is to be gained from a comprehensive survey in such circumstances. Instead, the rest of this chapter explores the ideas, values, and actions of particularly important militia groups and affiliates in the 2010s. This, in turn, will provide a context for the discussion of the rise of the alt-­right to be addressed in chapter 5.

The Arizona Minutemen The Arizona Minutemen pre-­dated both the Tea Party and the Birthers. This militia stands as a transition institution from the 1990s-­style militia to more contemporary groups. The Minutemen’s successors grew, however, in the context of the Tea Party and Birther movements, which is why it is addressed here. The Arizona Minutemen evoked the era of the revolutionary militia in both their name and their actions. The term “minutemen,” after all, is directly borrowed from those early Revolutionary fighters who responded to the British effort to capture weapons American militia forces had accumulated in both Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts. It was the Massachusetts militia—­the Minutemen available at a minute’s notice to respond to crises—­who fought the rolling battle on the road from Lexington to Concord that started the American Revolution on April 19, 1775. Unlike their revolutionary namesakes, however, the Arizona Minutemen did not fight a British Army planning to take weapons storehouses. Instead, in a move that can be seen to later inform Donald Trump’s anti-­immigrant rhetoric during his presidential campaign in 2015–2016 (addressed in detail in the next chapter), the Arizona Minutemen focused on border security. Starting in 2004, the Minutemen, along with a companion group that formed in California, began recruiting volunteers who agreed to patrol the US-­Mexico border in the style of law enforcement agents. They sought to stop cross-­border immigration by undocumented people trying to enter the United States illegally. Heavily armed, the Minutemen insisted that if the federal government was not able to protect the US border from such illegal immigration, they, as private citizens, would do it. Minutemen intended to deter illegal immigration either by arresting

 

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and detaining any immigrants they discovered sneaking across the border, or by removing caches of water, maps, or other supplies that various humanitarian agencies left in the desert for use by immigrants entering the country illegally. For the Minutemen, the goal was to increase the risks of an illegal journey into the United States to the point that it simply no longer made sense to try to cross into the United States. The border would thus be “secured.”15 While some conservative political leaders praised the Minutemen—­California governor and former action star Arnold Schwarzenegger praised their work, for example16—­the Minutemen were controversial from the beginning. Part of the reason they were controversial lay in their assertion that private citizens could, or should, arm themselves like highly trained government officials and seek to enforce laws they were neither empowered nor trained to administer. Police officers and other law enforcement officials operate under legal strictures, after all. They are taught both their powers and the limits of their powers. They are supposed to be held accountable for their mistakes. They are, put another way, part of a system of justice. Their actions are supposed to be constrained by policies and procedures that empower them to enforce the law but also make them subject to the law’s dictates if they abuse their authority. No such system of defined and organized limits accompanies private citizens wielding weapons in an attempt—­real or fantastical—­to enforce the law. Heavily armed, unsupervised persons might do almost anything—­particularly in the isolated outlands of the Arizona desert. Unsupervised, they were free to justify any actions they took using whatever stories they wished to tell. The Minutemen, in other words, were vigilantes—­private citizens taking the law into their own hands. The Minutemen faced criticisms as a result of their activities. One Minuteman was photographed mocking a detainee rather than treating the person with dignity, for example; others made fake videos in which they appeared to kill two immigrants.17 Such unprofessional behaviors put the Minutemen in the awkward position of appearing to be cruel vigilantes rather than the public-­minded citizen volunteers they claimed they were. More importantly, perhaps, the Minutemen posed a question for American society that no one intended to ask, but one that needed to get answered in any case. This question was: should illegal migrants be treated as criminals breaking the law or as human beings risking their lives for a better life in the United States, albeit illegally? Put a somewhat different way, should any immigrants discovered in the desert be treated with dignity and respect, given shelter and medical care, and otherwise accorded decent treatment while awaiting deportation to Mexico, or were they to be seen as hardened criminals bent on harming the United States by stealing jobs or committing crimes once they arrived? For human rights activists and other progressive-­minded Americans, what mattered about the migrants moving across the Arizona and California deserts was their humanity: they needed to be cared for after capture regardless of the legality or illegality of their immigration. (US criminal procedure requires just treatment of suspects as well.) For many militia members and sympathizers, however, the most important thing about illegal immigrants was that they were breaking the law: they were coming

 

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into the United States illegally, and so deserved punishment. One version of this sentiment could be paraphrased, “if illegal migrants don’t want to be treated harshly, they shouldn’t break the law and try to sneak into the United States. If they try to come to the US illegally, they deserve what they get.” This “punish first” attitude rests on a long history of racism and ethnocentrism that has shaped how many Americans feel toward Mexicans and others from Latin and South America. Americans have had an extended history of discrimination against peoples from south of the US border and have developed a long list of derogatory terms associated with such persons. Thus, Mexicans can be “wetbacks,” implying they entered the United States by swimming across the Rio Grande River on the Texas/­US border. Hispanics more broadly find themselves referred to with the sneer, “spic.” Puerto Ricans—­who are US citizens—­ are meanwhile known as Sorta Ricans or New Yoricans. Latinos find themselves subject to legal harassment in the form of identity and citizenship checks; even native-­born people of Latin and South American heritage are subject to being told to “go back to where they came from.” As a consequence, the question posed by the Minutemen’s activities—­h ow to treat illegal migrants?—­w as answered in a political debate that was preloaded against undocumented immigrants. Many Americans were already biased against such migrants and did not view them as human beings deserving respect and assistance when they were stopped from entering the country illegally. Given this context, it should not have been surprising that the Arizona Minutemen attracted volunteers from groups whose members expressed explicit racist and ethnocentric attitudes. The SPLC identified neo-­N azi and white supremacist volunteers among those patrolling the California and Arizona borders, for example. In fact, in 2008 the Minutemen’s founder, Jim Gilchrist, confirmed these criticisms when he commented that the movement he had led had become unduly attractive to racists and ethnophobes. “There’s all kinds of organizations that have spawned from the Minuteman Project and I have to say, some of the people who have gotten into this movement have sinister intentions,” Gilchrist said. He continued, “I have found, after four years in this movement . . . I very well may have been fighting for people with less character and less integrity than the ‘open border fanatics’ I have been fighting against. . . . And that is a phenomenal indictment of something I have created.”18 It is impossible, of course, for the leader of any social movement or group to completely control their membership or their message. People with agendas different from a movement’s founder can find inspiration in one set of ideas and actions and take them in directions not anticipated by the group or person who initiated the activity. Importantly, however, the original set of ideas and values advanced by the Arizona Minutemen touched on, drew life from, and obviously appealed to racial and ethnic animus even when Gilchrist controlled the group. Moreover, it is, as a practical matter, easier to encourage people to volunteer to serve in harsh, difficult conditions like those of the American desert southwest if the volunteers are strongly motivated. One way to develop passionate motivations in others is by appealing to fear-­inducing attitudes like racial hatred, ethnocentrism, and anti-­immigrant bias, of course. Thus, Jim Gilchrist may truly not have

 

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intended for the Arizona Minutemen to have treated illegal migrants harshly or with racial hatred, but it is not surprising that it happened in the real world. By 2012, the Arizona Minutemen were largely a spent force. The group fractured as various members broke away and formed their own organizations. One branch robbed banks to pay for its operations and was eliminated when its leaders were imprisoned. Another leader faced legal troubles when he was charged with child molestation. There was also the simple problem that volunteering to serve in the Southwest desert meant suffering through brutally high temperatures and uncomfortable conditions all for the “privilege” of maybe—­maybe—­confronting an illegal migrant in the Arizona desert. In time, the Arizona Minutemen became irrelevant as a political force on the US-­Mexican border.19

The Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association The CSPOA movement is a relatively recent addition to the pantheon of far-right groups in American politics, and on its face, its members are not obvious candidates for discussion in a study of anti-­government militias. Sheriffs and police officers, after all, are public employees. They are paid by taxpayers just like the president of the United States and members of the US Congress are. They are public employees, and so make non-­obvious recruits for an anti-­government militia. Their status as public employees has not deterred the group’s growth as an antifederal government organization, however. First recognized by the SPLC in 2009, the CSPOA movement derives from the previously mentioned interpretation of British common law that insists that sheriffs are the highest legitimate law enforcement authority in any county. Similar to the Patriot and Sovereign Citizens movements described in chapter 2, the Sheriff’s movement insists that the law enforcement powers of the federal government are quite limited. As a consequence, the group argues that the powers of the national government are highly constrained. As the CSPOA puts it, “The undersigned do hereby resolve that any Federal officer, agent, or employee, regardless of supposed congressional authorization, is required to obey and observe limitations consisting of the enumerated powers as detailed within Article 1 Section 8 of the US Constitution and the Bill Of Rights.” Naturally, the sheriffs and local peace officers see themselves as the legitimate interpreter of when the federal government has exceeded its authority: the undersigned Sheriffs, Peace Officers, Public Servants and citizens, do hereby denounce any acts or agencies which promote the aforementioned practices. All actions by the Federal Government and its agents will conform strictly and implicitly with the principles expressed within the United States Constitution, Declaration of Independence, and the Bill of Rights. There is no greater obligation or responsibility of any government officer than to protect the rights of the people. Thus, any conduct contrary to the United States Constitution, Declaration of Independence, or the Bill of Rights will be dealt with as criminal activity.20

The CSPOA demands that federal government limit illegal immigration; that the federal government dramatically scale back its management of lands it

 

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owns, mostly in the American West; that the federal government end or reduce civil asset forfeiture programs in which alleged criminals’ property is seized and sold before the accused ever has a trial to determine his or her guilt; and that rather than discouraging gun ownership, the federal government should work to ensure that everyone who has the right to own a gun does, in fact, own one.21 Notably, all but one of these policies would require a substantial reduction in the scope and power of federal authority, and as a practical matter law enforcement in much of the United States would be shouldered at the local level—­as the CSPOA insists it once was, and should be again. The only CSPOA demand that would increase federal authority is border and immigration control: by requiring the federal government to increase its presence along the border, the CSPOA’s policy proposals acknowledge the leading role the federal government plays in controlling the nation’s boundaries. Otherwise, the sheriffs want the federal government out of their communities as fully as possible. In 2016, over 400 sheriffs and other peace officers signed the CSPOA manifesto. CSPOA leader Richard Mack, a former sheriff in Arizona, claimed the group had more than 5,000 members nationwide. To the degree that these officials shared a common ideology or agenda, it focused on the sheriffs’ perceived right to control law enforcement in their counties. For example, Cameron Noel, the sheriff of Beaver County, Utah, insisted, “I am the only elected official in my county that performs law enforcement functions.” The federal government, the BLM [Bureau of Land Management], the Forest Service, the FBI, the DEA, any of those guys, they’re not elected. . . . Those other entities, they answer to me. If they want to come in here and perform functions, I’m not saying that I’m always going to prevent them from doing that. I work hand in hand with the federal government on a lot of different issues and things, but they’re going to check with me before they do anything.

Similarly, Hinsdale County, Colorado, sheriff Ronald Bruce claimed that he had the final authority to decide if federal agents could seize a resident’s weapons: “But if it’s somebody that I can see no discernible reason for their firearms to be seized except that the federal government is overreaching, then I will stand shoulder to shoulder with my constituents and fight that . . . if it means resisting with force, then we’ll resist with force.” Such sentiments are central to Sheriff ideology. Likewise, the Sheriffs emphasize local control of property use rather than federal regulation of public land.22 Two nationally prominent sheriff members of the CSPOA movement are former Milwaukee, Wisconsin, sheriff David Clarke, Jr., and former Maricopa, Arizona, sheriff Joe Arpaio. Because they are particularly high-­profile members of the group, Arpaio and Clarke have drawn substantial attention to the CSPOA cause. Clarke, for example, was considered for a position as assistant secretary for Homeland Security in the Trump administration before withdrawing as a consequence of his relationship with organizations like the CSPOA.23 Arpaio, who spent twenty-­four years as sheriff of Maricopa County and who became a symbol of harsh treatment of offenders in his jurisdiction, lost his last reelection campaign after he was convicted of multiple civil rights violations against prisoners in

 

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the jails he administered. A prominent Obama birther, Arpaio received a pardon for his crimes in 2017 from President Donald Trump. He subsequently entered the Republican Party primary to become a US senator from Arizona but lost that race in 2018.24 Importantly, unlike many other militia groups, the CSPOA is in a position to take meaningful action, whether in defiance of federal orders or in support of other antifederal government groups and organizations. Put another way, the Constitutional Sheriffs are legally empowered law enforcement officers. They might abuse their authority, of course, but they have the legitimate right to enforce the law in the United States, at least in their jurisdictions. As such, they are in a position to augment or undermine the operations of other militia groups that act in their jurisdictions. The Sheriffs also provide intellectual and practical legitimation to militia group ideology. After all, militia groups usually insist that the federal government has exceeded its constitutional authority. This claim is confirmed in the Sheriffs’ manifesto. Moreover, many militia groups explicitly argue that the highest legal authority in any community is the local sheriff, thereby integrating CSPOA ideology into their own. Thus, when militia groups decide to resist federal law enforcement, they can claim CSPOA legal authority for their antifederal activism. Again, it doesn’t matter very much if the militia group is actually justified in its antifederal activities. Instead, the militia group can appeal to CSPOA ideology, and to CSPOA activists or sympathetic sheriffs, in advancing its agenda. The CSPOA thereby enhances the militia movement’s legitimacy and appeal as it insists on its own autonomy from federal authority and oversight. The Oath Keepers  The Oath Keepers are a group of current and former military veterans and law enforcement officials who have pledged to keep their oaths to defend the US Constitution “against all enemies, foreign and domestic” even after they leave those jobs. Founded in 2009—­immediately after Barack Obama’s election as president—­by former US Army paratrooper and Yale-­trained attorney Stewart Rhodes, the Oath Keepers insist that they “will not obey unconstitutional orders, such as orders to disarm the American people, to conduct warrantless searches, or to detain Americans as ‘enemy combatants’ in violation of their ancient right to jury trial.”25 As such, the Oath Keepers are a civilian version of the CSPOA: they insist that they will enforce the “true” laws of the United States (as the Oath Keepers understand them), but will do so even if they lack specific law enforcement duties and responsibilities. Their oaths to the Constitution as former soldiers and law enforcement officers are seen as binding in perpetuity. There is nothing inherently wrong with democratic citizens taking responsibility for ensuring the safety of their nation or their communities, of course. Military and law enforcement careers, after all, are not momentary hobbies, and the notion that citizens ought to engage in political discussion and action, whether through voting or volunteerism, is at the heart of any democracy’s civic life. However, the Oath Keepers offer a narrative of civic danger that places it squarely in alliance with other antifederal government groups. Like other such groups, Oath Keepers regularly imagine that agents of the federal government

 

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are engaged in efforts to confiscate law-­abiding Americans’ guns, private property, and other goods. Oath Keepers, like the CSPOA and activists like those in the Sovereign Citizens movement, claim the right to determine for themselves the legality of federal government laws. Some Oath Keepers, in fact, insist that the federal courts do not have the right to determine the constitutionality of various government laws and rules—­at least not when those decisions contravene what Oath Keepers believe was the Constitution’s true, original intent. 26 Consequently, the Oath Keepers are less of a police or military reserve force than a potential source of challenge to federal authority that Oath Keepers believe has gone awry. This position, as critic of the federal government rather than sworn supporters of it, can be seen in several elements of Oath Keeper ideology and practice. For example, the group’s founder, Stewart Rhodes, used his former position as the “Enemy at the Gate” columnist for SWAT Magazine to publish anti-­ government diatribes. In one column, in April 2008, Rhodes fantasized: Imagine that Herr Hitlery [Hillary Clinton] is sworn in as president in 2009. After a conveniently timed “domestic terrorism” incident (just a coincidence, of course) . . . she promptly crams a United Nations mandated total ban on the private possession of firearms. . . . But Hitlery goes further, proclaiming a national emergency and declaring the entire militia movement (and anyone else Morris Dees labels “extremists”) to be “enemy combatants.” . . . Hitlery declares that such citizens are subject to secret military detention without jury trial, “enhanced” interrogation techniques, and trial before a military tribunal hand-­picked by the dominatrix-­in-­chief herself. Hitlery then orders police, National Guard troops and active military to go house-­to-­house to disarm the American people and “black-­bag” those on a list of “known terrorists,” with orders to shoot all resisters.27

Later, in November 2012, Rhodes predicted the end of American freedom. Rhodes insisted Americans’ liberty was in peril because they had stopped electing leaders who would defend Americans’ rights fully and unapologetically. “The Republic is on the verge of destruction,” Rhodes claimed, “precisely because Republicans have chosen the lesser of two evils (the lesser of two oath breakers) in each election.” “When you take a slightly reduced dose of poison, say 80% poison instead of 100%,” he continued, “you are still poisoning yourself, and you will still die. This Republic has been subjected to a reduced dose of poison over and over, for decades, and is now about to die.”28 A month later, Rhodes clarified what defending freedom really entailed. Freedom rested on protecting gun rights. “It is the height of Orwellian perversion of language and logic to say that disarming you of the most effective arms for combat that you still have is somehow not really disarming you, because you still have hunting rifles and shotguns.” Rhodes claimed. “And you can bet that if you let them take away your military semi-­autos, next on their list will be bolt action rifles, which they will call ‘sniper rifles’ (and By God, that is certainly what they are good for!).”29 After a gunman attacked the Pulse nightclub in Miami, killing forty-­nine people in June 2016, Rhodes made it clear that he believed that the attack was

 

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part of an orchestrated government plan to sow chaos in the United States. The government’s intent was to transfer political power from people who support groups like the Oath Keepers to left-­wing groups and organizations. This wave of Islamist terror attacks will be part of a “perfect storm” of intentionally orchestrated “Cloward-­Piven” chaos—­inducing economic devastation, social and political disruption and violence, and the use of intentionally undefended borders and mass illegal and “refugee” immigration as weapons of destabilization (and to provide cover for and facilitate more violence and terrorism by multiple proxy agents of the elites, including the cartels, gangs, well funded Marxist and racist agitators—­such as La Raza and Black Lives Matter—­and radical Islamist cells and individuals).30

Individuals are, of course, entitled to their own opinions in the United States, and however radical Stewart Rhodes’s opinions are, they would not be of significant interest if they were not attached to a set of actions or supporters prepared to act on them. At its height, the Oath Keepers claimed to have 30,000 members, but that number cannot be confirmed. In 2013, however, the national Oath Keepers organization created “Civilian Preservation Militias,” later renamed “Civilian Preparedness Teams.” Rhodes was explicit as to the intent of these teams, explaining on the God and Guns podcast, “We want to see a restoration of the militia in this country. We think a good first step is to have the veterans stand up in every community and go help form and train neighborhood watches, to get the people to take back into their own hands their own personal self-­defense and security.”31 Oath Keeper Civilian Preservation Teams have played active roles in numerous standoffs between right-­wing activists of various groups and the federal government over the past several years. In August 2014, for example, Oath Keepers went to Ferguson, Missouri, during the outbreak of violence there after an African American man named Michael Brown was killed by local police. Oath Keepers stationed themselves on rooftops of local businesses, claiming they were there to protect those businesses against looting or arson. In 2015 Oath Keepers mobilized to support two men, Rick Barclay and George Backes, who were accused of operating an illegal mine on federal land in Oregon. Seven hundred Oath Keepers and other militia activists responded, creating an armed camp on federal land to prevent federal agents from arresting the accused miners. That same year the Oath Keepers made a similar call for support for a miner in Montana. In both 2014 and 2016 the Oath Keepers played small roles in standoffs between the federal government and members of the Bundy family—­discussed in detail in the next section of this chapter. Oath Keepers even mobilized as poll watchers in 2016, seeking to ensure that the election would not be “stolen” from Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.32 And in 2018 Oath Keepers responded to the aftermath of a rash of mass shootings at schools around the United States with a call to send armed civilians—­themselves—­to America’s schools to serve as security against further attacks.33 (This last plan did not generate much support.) Oath Keepers also found support at elite levels of American politics. While not formally a member of the group himself, former Milwaukee, Wisconsin, sheriff David Clarke, Jr., has expressed opinions deeply sympathetic with the

 

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movement’s ideals and goals. Clarke accepted a “leadership award” from the New York chapter of the Oath Keepers and urged its members to be proud of the fact that the SPLC had declared it to be a radical anti-­government group.34 It is hard, of course, to know exactly how many Oath Keepers might be willing to give up their regular lives at any particular moment and to respond to a call to fight or resist an allegedly misbehaving federal government. In some cases, as with the miners in Oregon, the Oath Keepers and their allies clearly influenced the result in a way the militia preferred. In the Oregon case, after the militia arrived to defend the miners’ land, the miners kept operating their unlicensed mine.35 In other cases, such as the call to defend America’s schools, the Oath Keepers have had little influence on the events of the day. The record in two cases to be examined in detail in the next unit of this chapter, the Bundy standoffs in Nevada and Oregon, placed the Oath Keepers wildly out of step with their fellow activists. They were, as a consequence, largely irrelevant to the outcome of those events. In any case, what is clear with respect to the Oath Keepers is that they constitute a large, potentially mobilizable group of trained people who might become a significant source of resistance to federal government authority. Their status as (mostly) former military and law enforcement agents means that they are substantially more prepared than untrained citizens are to engage in organized, significant actions aimed at slowing or preventing federal officials from enforcing federal laws. The Oath Keepers may not constitute an army of resistance at this time, but they certainly form the foundation on which such a force might be organized. Their connections to elite levels of political authority likewise provide the group with potential influence beyond its nominal size. The Oath Keepers seem well positioned to become an influential force in American life. The Three Percenters  The Three Percenters, while small compared to the Oath Keepers and the CSPOA, are worth paying attention to if only for their attempt to answer a question that often arises in discussions of anti-­government militia movements. This question is, “how can anyone possibly believe he or she could actually resist the power of the federal government if that government set out to destroy the militia?” This question bears attention simply because the distance between the power that the militias claim they have and the actual power of the weapons the government has is vast. Militia activists insist that citizen volunteers armed with weapons accessible to ordinary citizens can hold off a pervasive, powerful, but ultimately flawed national government. Meanwhile, the US government owns massive numbers of drones, aircraft, tanks, rockets, and all the other tools of modern, twenty-first-century war. Automatic or semi-­automatic weapons—­the choice of many militia groups—­may be powerful in relation to the weapons most civilians keep at home, but they are barely annoyances to modern military forces. (Red Dawn, discussed in chapter 1, makes this point: it shows a Soviet soldier removing a rifle from the hand of a dead rancher as the camera pans back to view the bumper sticker on the dead man’s truck: “You Can Have My Gun When You Pry It from My Cold, Dead Hand.”) Accordingly, any belief that a group

 

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of amateur militia men and women are capable of significant resistance to US armed power seems silly. The answer the Three Percenters offer to this question is, in effect, “We did it before, so we’ll do it again.” Three Percenters claim that only about 3 percent of the US population served in either the army or the militia during the American Revolution. Thus, Three Percenters insist that in the American Revolution a small group of poorly trained, poorly equipped soldiers held off and then defeated the armed forces of the world’s greatest empire. Using hit-­and-­run tactics that took advantage of local knowledge of geography, militia and other forces survived, outlasted, and finally beat a much larger, much better equipped, much better trained military force. The Revolution thereby succeeded against daunting odds, Three Percenters claim. So, too, can a new American resistance.36 As a practical matter, there is much wrong with this analysis. British forces were never particularly large in the United States, and for reasons of supply and tactics they were concentrated in the major cities of the Atlantic coast. Moreover, whatever the ultimate power of the British Empire was on a global scale, there was little disparity in the power of British weapons and American ones during the war: with the exception of cannons on ships, which could fire only at coastal targets, the British possessed no weapons significantly different in power or range than American weapons. They certainly did not possess the kind of weapons the US government has today, such as flights of heavy bombers that are capable of destroying entire cities even without nuclear warheads. In any case, whatever advantages the British had when fighting the Americans were largely erased when France moved to support the American revolutionaries. The French brought both an army and the French navy to the American cause. In addition, more than 3 percent of US people engaged in resistance to British rule during the Revolution.37 Whether the Three Percenters are good at interpreting historical evidence is not the issue under study here, however. Rather, the narrative they present offers a vision of a path through which a new “Evil Empire”—­the US federal government—­might be beaten. And, to be fair, both history and popular culture offer similar tales. What, after all, is the ultimate moral of the cultural megahit Star Wars if not that a ragged group of plucky resistance fighters can overcome impossible odds and defeat a galactic empire that possesses an actual planet killing weapon? Leaving fantasy behind, it is an historical fact that even though the United States sent millions of troops and rained innumerable tons of bombs on North Vietnam as part of its war effort there in the 1960s and 1970s, American power failed to prevent the North Vietnamese from winning the war and unifying their country under Communist rule. (Of course, much, much more than 3 percent of North Vietnam’s population was engaged in the effort to defeat American forces there.) Three Percenters find these narratives compelling proof that great powers can be defeated by small bands of committed resistance fighters.

The Militia and the Bundy Family So far, the analysis of the apparently resurgent militia has left open the possibility that such groups are engaged in a fundamentally rhetorical exercise—­that they

 

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are just making inflammatory claims that, for all of their drama, present little cause for concern for the broader community. Ideas and attitudes, after all, are not inherently criminal in the United States. Unless ideas lead to actions, society usually doesn’t have much to worry about. This section offers brief discussions of how resurgent militia activism has shaped at least two confrontations between militia sympathizers and the federal government. As it happens, both involve members of the Bundy family: Cliven, the father, who had a standoff with the federal government in Nevada in 2014, and Ammon, his son, who led an occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge complex in Oregon in 2016. Their actions, and reactions to these events around the United States, offer a template for future militia activities—­ particularly in the American West.

Cliven Bundy in Bunkerville, Nevada The story of Cliven Bundy’s 2014 standoff with the federal government derives from the outsized presence of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and similar agencies in the life of the American West. BLM manages approximately 10 percent of all the land area of the United States, most of it in the western United States and Alaska. BLM also manages 30 percent of the mineral-­ producing lands of the United States.38 (Other federal agencies, ranging from the US Department of Defense through the National Park Service and the US Forest Service, own a lot of Western land in addition to the land BLM owns.) Much of this land is inaccessible and uninhabited; use of it for various purposes is licensed by BLM (or any department that owns land) for private use by individuals or businesses. For example, much of the land owned by the National Forest Service (NFS) is licensed for logging in the United States: in exchange for a licensing fee, individuals and corporations are allowed to enter national forests to extract trees according to the license’s terms. BLM and other agencies offer similar licenses regulating mining and ranching. In this way, the agency that owns the land attempts to manage the resource in a sustainable way even as it promotes economic development in a region. This licensing arrangement has been the source of substantial conflict over the decades precisely because BLM and other federal agencies own so much land in the American West. The core of the enduring tensions lies in the answer to an often-­unasked question: who will do a better job managing publicly owned land? The government, or private business? Advocates of public ownership insist that government will be a better steward of the resources on a given piece of property because government agents have no incentive to exploit the resource. Government bureaucrats, for example, get the same salary whether 50 trees are harvested from a hillside, or if 5,000 trees are logged. Thus, the government employee is free to assess the real, sustained capacity of a piece of land to undergo logging—­or mining, or grazing of cattle, and so on. The government agent is a neutral expert interested only in the health of the land, not the financial wealth to be extracted from it as quickly as possible.

 

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Those who prefer private management offer a very different answer to the question, “who will manage the land better?” For these advocates, private individuals and/­or the companies they work for have a stronger incentive to treat the land well than any government official does. After all, the rancher or logger lives in the community and draws their living from the land. Accordingly, individuals and locals are to be trusted more than dispassionate government agents. Advocates of local control also insist that government regularly underestimates the carrying capacity of the land it manages—­in other words, they argue that the land can be used more aggressively than the government allows, to greater personal or corporate profit. This “dispassionate expert” versus “self-­interested steward” debate is unresolvable. Each argument comes with its own self-­justification: government agents usually like their jobs and want to feel important and valued; meanwhile, private businesses seek to maximize profit and regularly claim that their profit seeking will compel them to manage a resource in a sustainable way. No point of evidence is likely to persuade a person holding one of these points of view to accept the other. Militia activists have adopted the rhetoric of private use of land as part of their agenda. From the militia’s point of view, the power of the federal government to regulate land use is just another expression of federal government power. Thus, people who want the federal government to have less power in general also want it to have less power to regulate land use. Financial incentives only deepen this anti-­government argument: not only does the federal government have less power when land is managed privately, but local activists can make more money if land is privately owned and used in profitable activities. Cliven Bundy entered the national debate about the power of the federal government in March 2014. That month, the BLM announced it was closing an area called the Bunkerville Allotment, a region of Clark County, Nevada, northeast of Las Vegas, to cattle grazing. Bundy used the area for ranching his cow herd.39 However, while Bundy came to national attention in March 2014, he had been in a dispute with the BLM over these lands for more than twenty years by the time BLM announced it was closing his grazing allotment. In 1993, Bundy refused to renew his permit to graze cattle on BLM-­owned land. He claimed that changes to grazing policies were unfair and injurious to his operations. He also insisted that the federal government had no right to own or manage land in the state of Nevada and thus that he had no obligation to pay BLM a grazing fee. Bundy then continued to graze his cattle on land he refused to pay to use. In fact, he left his cattle on the Bunkerville Allotment even after a court ordered him to stop grazing operations in 1998.40 From 1998 to 2013 there was an effective pause in tensions between BLM and Cliven Bundy, not because Bundy complied with various orders demanding he stop grazing, but because the government made no serious efforts to implement its orders against him or his grazing operation. He kept grazing his cattle for free, and the government kept not doing anything about it. In 2013, however, another federal judge ordered that Bundy stop trespassing on BLM

 

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land—­in effect banning him from managing his cattle herd. Then, on April 5, 2014, the BLM began the operation it announced in March: the capturing, impounding, and removal of so-­called “trespass cattle.”41 In addition to seizing at least 100 of Bundy’s cattle, federal authorities arrested Bundy’s son, Dave, when he refused to leave the BLM-­closed lands. In response, on April 6 Cliven Bundy posted a message on a website he ran about his ranch, “They have my cattle and now they have one of my boys. Range War begins tomorrow.” Three days later, on April 9, Bundy’s son Ammon kicked a law enforcement dog and was tasered three times. Tensions escalated rapidly.42 As these events were unfolding, many Bundy family members, as well as activists in the re-­emerging national anti-­government movement, began arriving in southeast Nevada. They intended to form a human protection shield around Bundy’s cattle. Dozens of armed civilians initiated a standoff with federal agents, seeming to re-­create the explosive checkpoints at Ruby Ridge and Waco. However, rather than confronting the human shield, federal agents negotiated with the Bundys through the auspices of Clark County sheriff Doug Gillespie. By April 12, a settlement to end the standoff had been agreed to and the protests broke up peacefully.43 Bundy continued to graze his cattle on BLM without paying licensing fees. In February 2016 he was arrested at the Portland, Oregon, airport while he was traveling to support his son, Ammon, during the occupation of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge (to be discussed in the next section of this book). Cliven was charged with conspiracy, assault on a federal officer with a deadly weapon, carrying a firearm while committing a crime, extortion, and obstruction of justice.

A militia volunteer calling herself “Mayhem” participates in an armed standoff with federal authorities seeking to remove Cliven Bundy’s cattle from the Bunkerville Allotment in Nevada, April 2014. ZUMA Press, Inc./­Alamy Stock Photo

 

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Those charges were dropped in December 2016 when the trial judge found extensive prosecutorial and investigatory misconduct in the Bundy case. In fact, in January 2018 federal court judge Gloria Navarro ordered all charges against Bundy dropped “with prejudice,” meaning that it would be very difficult for the government to charge Bundy for any crime related to the April 2014 standoff in Nevada.44 Cliven Bundy won his private conflict with BLM.

Ammon Bundy and the Standoff at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge A second significant recent clash between the federal government and militia activists occurred in January–February 2016: the standoff at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon. This standoff, like the one two years earlier in Nevada, also involved a member of the Bundy family—­Cliven Bundy’s son, Ammon. This confrontation, which lasted for forty-­one days, highlighted both the potential strength of the militia movement and significant tensions within it. On its face, the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge was not a likely site for any conflict at all. Located in eastern Oregon, the refuge is in a county that, while among the largest by land area in the United States, has barely 7,700 residents. Cattle outnumber people by a 14:1 ratio.45 In an e-­mail communication with the author, a Malheur Refuge official indicated that the facility receives only 27,000 visitors a year. (For comparison, Yellowstone National Park has more than 3.4 million visitors every year—­an average of more than 65,000 visitors a week.)46 However, while the refuge is inconvenient for most Americans to visit, it is an important resting place for migrating animals and birds. It is also a habitat for many fish species. It was set aside by President Theodore Roosevelt as a protected place in 1908, and then was promptly forgotten by most Americans—­ until 2016. The events that eventually led to the confrontation among militia groups and the federal government at a rural federal outpost in eastern Oregon actually occurred in 2001—­although no action was taken on the underlying issue until 2012. In 2012, two men, Dwight Hammond, a seventy-­three-­year-­old rancher from Burns, Oregon, and his forty-­six-­year-­old son, Steven, were convicted of separate incidents of arson that they had allegedly committed in 2001 and 2006. In those two years, they burned some public land adjacent to their ranch after becoming frustrated that their request for permits to undertake controlled burns on their land were ignored or delayed. They were convicted of arson in 2012. Dwight Hammond received a sentence of three months; Steven received a year and a day as his term. Prosecutors appealed the sentences to the US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The 9th Circuit ruled that the sentences were too lenient and ordered the Hammonds resentenced. In October 2015, both Hammonds received five-­year sentences.47 Meanwhile, various anti-­government activist groups began organizing a protest of what they considered an abuse of government power in the Hammond case. For protestors, both the sentence and the law were unjust: the sentences were seen as too severe, and the law under which they had been convicted was

 

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seen as an illegitimate use of federal power to regulate what should have been private or locally controlled land.48 Activists began arriving in Burns in mid-­December 2015. On January 2, 2016, emotions came to a head. At least 300 anti-­government activists marched through Burns to protest the Hammonds’ sentences. (Notably, the Hammonds did not support this protest and urged its participants to return to their homes.) A smaller group of activists made their way to the nearby Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, which was about thirty miles from Burns. They took control of the facility as a symbol of their belief that it and similar facilities were illegal.49 Understanding the events of the standoff at Malheur Refuge between January 2, when the takeover began, and February 11, when the last of four remaining holdouts finally left the site, is complicated. Unlike the events in Waco, or at Ruby Ridge, diverse actors with competing agendas intermixed and converged during the Malheur standoff. Some elements of the militia movement refused to engage at Malheur at all. Rather than offer a blow-­by-­blow accounting of what happened in Malheur, then, this analysis highlights crucial issues and assesses why they mattered in the context of the rise of the contemporary militia movement. At least four groups can be seen to have influenced the outcome in eastern Oregon. First, of course, were the people who occupied the refuge. Their demands were relatively simple: on January 5, Ammon Bundy declared the occupation would end when the facility was turned over to local control, or when the local community decided the occupiers were no longer welcome. The second group was a nationwide network of supporters who were mobilized to come to Oregon to participate in anti-­government activities there. The third consisted of militia activists who opposed the Malheur occupation. The fourth, and final influence was the government itself. Its actions significantly structured the way events unfolded from January–February 2016. Support for the protestors waxed and waned as events unfolded at the refuge. While the number of occupiers who initiated the standoff was quite small, three weeks later estimates placed the number of protestors at over three dozen. Moreover, activists poured into the Burns and Malheur regions planning further action to protest what they saw as federal government overreach. The government, meanwhile, largely stood back and observed the militia. Agents surrounded the Malheur Refuge but did not engage in the kinds of psychological warfare or hostage negotiation tactics that they had deployed in the disasters in Ruby Ridge and Waco. In fact, Malheur protestors were allowed to come and go as they pleased. Activists regularly left Malheur for meetings with supporters and sympathizers throughout the area. Local law enforcement officials repeatedly called for the occupation to end, and even some militia groups announced their opposition to the Malheur operation. One counter-­protest occurred when local environmentalists reacted to reports that the Malheur occupation was damaging parts of the refuge that served as habitats for endangered flora and fauna. Another took place when representatives of a local Native American tribe worried that sacred sites protected on the refuge’s grounds were at risk of damage as the occupation persisted.

 

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On January 26, several protestors involved in the Malheur occupation confronted FBI and Oregon State police officers at a roadblock near Burns. Robert “LaVoy” Finicum, one of the Malheur occupiers, drove his car through the police line and was shot and killed after he got out of his vehicle after crashing into a snowbank. Five other activists, including Ammon Bundy, were arrested. The next day, Ammon Bundy asked the remaining Malheur protestors to leave the facility. Activists began departing soon thereafter. By the 28th only four protestors remained at the refuge.50 The four holdouts lasted another fourteen days. Tensions waxed and waned through this period: Ammon Bundy, for example, changed his message on February 4 and insisted that all federal officials had to leave eastern Oregon before peace would be restored. On February 8 Bundy expanded his demands and insisted that the governors and elected officials of eight states needed to act to defend their citizens from federal overreach: “This is a call to action for any elected representative in Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Wyoming, Utah, Arizona, the state of Washington and Ohio,” Bundy said. “You have constituents in federal custody. Please visit and contact them to voice your support for free speech, the right to assemble and civil disobedience.”51 Apparently responding to this call, or at least to its import, Grant County, Oregon, sheriff Glenn Palmer announced on February 9 that he had not been at the meeting where the plan to stop protest leaders had been created, nor had he been at what he termed the “ambush site.” (Palmer is a Constitutional Sheriff.) 52 However, despite these inflammatory statements, the final four occupiers left the refuge on February 11 as FBI agents slowly advanced on the facility. The occupation was over. Much as had happened in the Cliven Bundy case two years earlier, the end of the occupation was not the end of the event. Legal proceedings ensued, and while a number of the Malheur Refuge occupiers pled guilty, Ammon Bundy and six others were acquitted by a jury of their peers of charges ranging from conspiracy, theft, and various weapons charges.53 Thus, while Bundy’s guilt was unchallengeable—­he had clearly occupied a federal building for a sustained period, much of it on television—­the Bundy jury appears to have engaged in what is called “jury nullification.” Jury nullification occurs when jurors decide that even if the person is technically guilty of a particular crime, the crime of which he or she is accused is not, from the jurors’ points of view, particularly bothersome or criminal. In other words, the person is guilty of something the juror doesn’t really think ought to be illegal in the first place. Accordingly, a not guilty verdict is a morally correct decision even if not a legally correct one. Subsequently, President Donald Trump pardoned both Darrell and Steven Hammond, the ranchers whose original sentences for arson had precipitated the Malheur Wildlife Refuge occupation. They were pardoned in July 2018.54 Also, in July 2018, an FBI agent and member of the agency’s Hostage Rescue Team who was accused of lying about the circumstances of LaVoy Finicum’s death went on trial in Portland, Oregon.55 He was acquitted in August. As with the Nevada case, then, the Oregon standoff showed militia activists a path to success. The occupation of the Malheur Refuge was not and is not likely

 

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to bring about a fundamental transformation of US society in a great revolution of militia forces, of course. That said, individual militia members and groups do not need to lead a revolution. They only need to find a way to promote their agenda in the United States despite the relative difference in power between the government and the militia activists. As had happened in the Nevada standoff, the results in Oregon demonstrated that it was possible for a militia group to defeat the federal government despite all of the federal government’s power. The outcome of the Malheur Refuge case suggests that, for all intents and purposes, the occupation of a federal building is legal so long as the jury that tries those who undertake such an occupation thinks that the occupiers should not have been charged with a crime. The same might well be true across the gamut of issues the militia professes. Like his father before him, Ammon Bundy won his standoff with the federal government.

Conclusion The militia movement that rose in the 2010s was different from its predecessor in many ways. It was a better fit for contemporary times: the later militia movement was organized online and drew life from the diverse array of conspiracy theorizing and political resentments that grew in the United States just a few years after 9/­11. The new militia was, in other words, more virtual than the 1990s militia had been: groups didn’t really meet, or train, or operate like typical social movements. Rather, they came together around crises to converge on spots where it seemed that some private citizen was being abused by agents of the tyrannical US government. Yet despite the differences among the old and the new militias, they shared a similar antipathy to the power of the federal government. They believed in the importance of gun ownership, not just as a matter of personal defense against crime, or as a tool for hunting, but as a military weapon to be used in resistance to abuses of federal government power. Moreover, like their 1990s militia compatriots, militia activists in the 2010s generally avoided racial terms or racial bias in their rhetoric. (Birthers were an exception to this norm. The effects of their racial animus will be addressed in the next chapter.) Despite the mass mobilization of American public opinion in favor of national government power and national government authority that followed the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, the militia movement reemerged as a significant force in American politics just ten years after seeming to fade out of existence. The cultural foundations on which the movement rested—­the skepticism of centralized political power, the belief in the power of guns to secure individual liberty, the certainty that the national government was engaged in a conspiracy on behalf of some shadowy power to destroy the “real” United States in favor of undeserving, un-­American people—­proved too strong a pull for many Americans to resist. In fact, even as this book is going to press, representatives of the Texas Minutemen have announced plans to go to the US-­Mexico border to serve as civilian defenders of border security—­just as the Arizona Minutemen had done.56 The lure of the militia remains strong.

 

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“Walter Cronkite,” The Week, July 23, 2009, https://­theweek.com/­articles/­503383/­walter-­ cronkite, accessed August 9, 2018. Sarah Phillips, “A Brief History of Facebook,” The Guardian, July 25, 2007, https://­www. theguardian.com/­t echnology/­2 007/­j ul/­2 5/­m edia.newmedia, accessed August  9, 2018; “Number of Monthly Active Facebook Users Worldwide as of 2nd Quarter 2018 (in Millions),” statista.com, https://­www.statista.com/­statistics/­264810/­number-­of-­monthly-­active-­facebook-­ users-­worldwide, accessed August 9, 2018. “Number of Mobile Phone Users Worldwide from 2015 to 2020 (in Billions),” statista.com, https://­w ww.statista.com/­s tatistics/­2 74774/­f orecast-­o f-­m obile-­p hone-­u sers-­w orldwide, accessed August 9, 2018. Philip Bump, “Eric Trump Celebrates Ratings News That Is Inextricable from Partisan Politics,” The Washington Post, March 5, 2018, https://­www.washingtonpost.com/­news/­politics/­wp/­ 2018/­03/­05/­eric-­trump-­celebrates-­ratings-­news-­that-­is-­inextricable-­from-­partisan-­politics/ ?utm_term=.5c7587b10d9b, accessed August 9, 2018. Caitlin Dewey, “The Only Guide to Gamergate You Will Ever Need to Read,” The Washington Post, October 14, 2014, https://­www.washingtonpost.com/­news/­the-­intersect/­wp/­2014/­ 10/­14/­the-­only-­guide-­to-­gamergate-­you-­will-­ever-­need-­to-­read/­?utm_term=.a2a544f2fa4c, accessed August 9, 2018; Hilary Weaver, “Twitter Bans Conservative Blogger Who Led Online Abuse of Leslie Jones [Updated],” Vanity Fair, July 19, 2016, https://­www.vanityfair.com/­ style/­2016/­07/­leslie-­jones-­exposes-­twitter, accessed August 9, 2018. YouTube, “Rick Santelli and the ‘Rant of the Year,’ ” https://­youtu.be/­bEZB4taSEoA, accessed August 9, 2018. Thomas E. Mann and Norman Ornstein, It’s Even Worse Than It Looks (New York: Basic Books, 2012). Frank Moore, “Judge Smacks Down ‘Birther’ Orly Taitz for Abusing Court,” National Public Radio, October 14, 2009, https://­www.npr.org/­sections/­thetwo-­way/­2009/­10/­judge_ smacks_down_birther_orly.html, accessed August 9, 2018. Mark Niesse, “Obama’s Isle Birth Is Easily Verified, But Few Check,” Honolulu Star Advertiser, April 23, 2011, http://­www.staradvertiser.com/­2011/­04/­23/­breaking-­news/­obamas-­isle-­ birth-­is-­easily-­verified-­but-­few-­check, accessed August 9, 2018. NBC News, “Army Officer Won’t Accept Obama as Chief,” April 13, 2010, http://­www.nbc news.com/­id/­36478557/­ns/­us_news-­life/­t/­army-­officer-­wont-­accept-­obama-­chief/­#.Wqwim JPwb2I, accessed August 9, 2018. David Remnick, “Trump, Birtherism, and Race-­B aiting, The New Yorker, April 27, 2011, https://­www.newyorker.com/­news/­news-­desk/­trump-­birtherism-­and-­race-­baiting, accessed August 9, 2018. Lisa Marie Segarra, “Watch John McCain Strongly Defend Barack Obama during the 2008 Campaign,” Time.com, July 20, 2017, http://­time.com/­4866404/­john-­mccain-­barack-­obama-­ arab-­cancer, accessed August 9, 2018. Niesse, “Obama’s Isle Birth.” https://­www.splcenter.org/­hate-­map?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIj86kw-­Lg3AIVw7XACh2pXwu VEAAYASAAEgI8yPD_BwE, accessed August 9, 2018. Southern Poverty Law Center, “Minutemen, Other Anti-­Immigrant Militia Groups Stake Out Arizona Border,” June 27, 2005, https://­www.splcenter.org/­fighting-­hate/­intelligence-­report/­ 2005/­m inutemen-­o ther-­a nti-­i mmigrant-­m ilitia-­g roups-­s take-­o ut-­a rizona-­b order, accessed August 9, 2018. Dan Glaister, “Schwarzenegger Backs Minutemen,” The Guardian, May 1, 2005, https://­www. theguardian.com/­world/­2005/­may/­02/­usa.mexico, accessed August 9, 2018. Tim Murphy, “The Meltdown of the Anti-­Immigration Minuteman Militia,” Mother Jones, August 4, 2014, https://­www.motherjones.com/­politics/­2014/­08/­minuteman-­movement-­ border-­crisis-­simcox, accessed August 9, 2018. Amy Taxin, “Minutemen Leader Laments Path of Anti-­Illegal Immigration Groups,” Orange County Register, June 25, 2008, https://­www.ocregister.com/­2008/­06/­25/­minutemen-­leader-­ laments-­path-­of-­anti-­illegal-­immigration-­groups, accessed August 9, 2018.

 

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Murphy, “The Meltdown.” http://­cspoa.org/­2014-­resolution, accessed August 9, 2018. http://­cspoa.org/­sop, accessed August 9, 2018. Southern Poverty Law Center, “A Radical and Growing Organization of ‘Constitutional Sheriffs’ Is Promoting Defiance of Federal Laws It Doesn’t Like,” https://­www.splcenter.org/­fighting-­ hate/­intelligence-­report/­2016/­line-­sand, accessed August 9, 2018. Abby Phillip, “Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke Rescinds Acceptance of Homeland Security Post,” June 17, 2017, https://­www.washingtonpost.com/­news/­post-­politics/­wp/­2017/­06/­ 17/­milwaukee-­sheriff-­david-­clarke-­rescinds-­acceptance-­of-­homeland-­security-­post/­?utm_term=. f8ce90598411, accessed August 9, 2018. Robert L. Tsai, “The Troubling Sheriffs’ Movement That Joe Arpaio Supports,” Politico.com, September 1, 2017, https://­www.politico.com/­magazine/­story/­2017/­09/­01/­joe-­arpaio-­ pardon-­sheriffs-­movement-­215566, accessed August 9, 2018. https://­oathkeepers.org/­about, accessed August 9, 2018. Tenth Amendment Center, “The Myth of Marbury v Madison,” https://­tenthamendmentcenter. com/­2015/­03/­08/­the-­myth-­of-­marbury-­v-­madison, accessed August 9, 2018. Southern Poverty Law Center, “Oath Keepers,” https://­www.splcenter.org/­fighting-­hate/­ extremist-­files/­group/­oath-­keepers, accessed August 9, 2018. SPLC, “Oath Keepers.” SPLC, “Oath Keepers.” SPLC, “Oath Keepers.” The “Cloward-­Piven” chaos discussed in the quote refers to the work of two American academics, Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, who study the causes and effects of inequality in American society. SPLC, “Oath Keepers.” SPLC, “Oath Keepers.” Marwa Eltagouri, “A Militia Group Hopes It Can Stop Shootings by Posting Armed Volunteers Outside Each School,” The Washington Post, February 27, 2018, https://­www.washingtonpost. com/­news/­post-­nation/­wp/­2018/­02/­27/­a-­citizen-­militia-­hopes-­it-­can-­stop-­shootings-­by-­ posting-­armed-­volunteers-­outside-­each-­school/­?utm_term=.a6aa5d96a114, accessed August 9, 2018. Sam Kestenbaum, “Pro-­Trump Sheriff with Ties to Militia May Be Joining Homeland Security,” https://­forward.com/­news/­breaking-­news/­372485/­pro-­trump-­sheriff-­with-­ties-­to-­militia-­ may-­be-­joining-­homeland-­security, May 19, 2017, accessed August 9, 2018. James Pogue, “The Oath Keepers Are Ready for War with the Federal Government,” Vice.com, September 13, 2015, https://­www.vice.com/­en_us/­article/­exq8en/­miner-­threat-­0000747-­ v22n9, accessed August 9, 2018. https://­www.thethreepercenters.org/­about-­us, accessed August 9, 2018. Robert Allison, The American Revolution: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 79. https://­www.blm.gov/­about/­what-­we-­manage, accessed August 9, 2018. Jaime Fuller, “The Long Fight between the Bundys and the Federal Government, from 1989 to Today,” The Washington Post, January 4, 2016, https://­www.washingtonpost.com/­news/­ the-­fix/­wp/­2014/­04/­15/­everything-­you-­need-­to-­know-­about-­the-­long-­fight-­between-­cliven-­ bundy-­and-­the-­federal-­government/­?utm_term=.498db296ea67, accessed August 9, 2018. Fuller, “The Long Fight.” Fuller, “The Long Fight.” Fuller, “The Long Fight.” Fuller, “The Long Fight”; Matt Ford, “The Irony of Cliven Bundy’s Unconstitutional Stand,” The Atlantic, April 14, 2014, https://­www.theatlantic.com/­politics/­archive/­2014/­04/­the-­ irony-­of-­cliven-­bundys-­unconstitutional-­stand/­360587, accessed August 9, 2018. Kirk Siegler and Colin Dwyer, “Judge Dismisses Federal Case against Cliven Bundy and Sons, Bars Retrial,” NPR.com, January 8, 2018, https://­www.npr.org/­sections/­thetwo-­way/­2018/­ 01/­08/­576502739/­judge-­dismisses-­federal-­case-­against-­cliven-­bundy-­and-­sons-­bars-­r etrial, accessed August 9, 2018.

 

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45 Noelle Crombie, “Where Is Burns? Harney County Home to More Cattle Than People,” The Oregonian, February 22, 2016, https://­www.oregonlive.com/­pacific-­northwest-­news/­index. ssf/­2016/­01/­where_is_burns_harney_county_h.html, accessed August 10, 2018. 46 Jennifer Errick, “Park Service Releases Most-­V isited National Park Data for 2012,” National Parks Conservation Association, April 3, 2013, https://­www.npca.org/­articles/­202-­park-­ service-­releases-­most-­visited-­national-­park-­data-­for-­2012, accessed August 10, 2018. 47 Eileen Sullivan and Julie Turkewitz, “Trump Pardons Oregon Ranchers Whose Case Inspired Wildlife Refuge Takeover,” New York Times, July 10, 2018, https://­www.nytimes.com/­2018/­ 07/­10/­us/­politics/­trump-­pardon-­hammond-­oregon.html, accessed August 10, 2018. 48 The Oregonian, “Oregon Standoff Timeline: 41 Days of the Malheur Refuge Occupation and the Aftermath,” February 15, 2017, https://­www.oregonlive.com/­portland/­index.ssf/­2017/­02/­ oregon_standoff_timeline_41_da.html, accessed August 10, 2018. 49 The Oregonian, “Oregon Standoff Timeline.” 50 The Oregonian, “Oregon Standoff Timeline.” 51 Maxine Bernstein, “Ammon Bundy Issues New Statement from Jail: Urges Elected Officials to Support Their Imprisoned Constituents,” The Oregonian, February 28, 2017, https://­www.oreg onlive.com/­oregon-­standoff/­2016/­02/­ammon_bundy_issues_new_stateme.html, accessed August 10, 2018. 52 Les Zaitz, “Sheriff Glenn Palmer Makes His Own Rules in Grant County,” The Oregonian, August 20, 2016, https://­www.oregonlive.com/­oregon-­standoff/­2016/­08/­sheriff_glenn_ palmer_makes_his.html. 53 Leah Sottile, “Jury Acquits Ammon Bundy, Six Others for Standoff at Oregon Wildlife Refuge,” The Washington Post, October 27, 2016, https://­www.washingtonpost.com/­news/­post-­nation/­ wp/­2016/­10/­27/­jury-­acquits-­leaders-­of-­armed-­takeover-­of-­the-­oregon-­wildlife-­r efuge-­of-­ federal-­conspiracy-­charges/­?utm_term=.50dc343f993a, accessed August 10, 2018. 54 Sullivan and Turkewitz, “Trump Pardons Oregon Ranchers.” 55 Merrit Kennedy, “FBI Agent Heads to Trial, Accused of Lying about Deadly Malheur Shooting,” NPR, July 24, 2018, https://­www.npr.org/­2018/­07/­24/­631782390/­indicted-­fbi-­agent-­ heads-­to-­trial-­accused-­of-­lying-­about-­deadly-­malheur-­shooting, accessed August 10, 2018. 56 Mary Lee Grant and Nick Miroff, “U.S. Militia Groups Head to Border, Stirred by Trump’s Call to Arms,” Washington Post, November 3, 2018, https://­www.washingtonpost.com/­world/­ national-­security/­us-­militia-­groups-­head-­to-­border-­stirred-­by-­trumps-­call-­to-­arms/­2018/­11/­ 03/­f f96826c-­decf-­11e8-­b3f0-­62607289efee_story.html?utm_term=.d62f7ccc4d0e, accessed November 6, 2018.

 

5

Donald Trump and the Alt-­Right

T

he term “alt-­right” refers to an agglomeration of disparate groups that share a relatively common racist, anti-­immigrant, populist ideology. As was noted in the preface to this book, the term is somewhat problematic since it was chosen by the groups themselves in an effort to avoid being labeled based on their racist and ethno-­nationalist values. However, for lack of a better term, the phrase alt-­right has entered public discourse to describe such groups and their politics. This chapter explores the conditions that fueled the rise of the alt-­right in the United States. It also addresses the particular path the alt-­right took to political prominence. The alt-­right rose in a particular context, a context that can be seen to have shaped its form and its goals. Additionally, this chapter explores the ways that Donald Trump’s pre-­ political career, campaign for president, and presidency intersected with alt-­right principles and alt-­right political goals. It addresses the short-­term collapse of the alt-­right movement in the aftermath of a set of rallies both for and against the alt-­right in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017. The alt-­right remains a potent force in American political life even as it has become less open in its political activities since 2017.

The Rise of the Alt-­Right White supremacy and anti-­immigrant views are, of course, not new in the United States. In addition to the nation’s long history of slavery and segregation, many

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Americans have opposed large-­scale immigration into the United States. (The irony that people who are themselves mostly the descendants of people who were immigrants, but who now oppose immigration, is a commonly noted point in political debate in the United States.) In the 1840s, for example, a political party, the Know Nothings, was founded in an effort to stop the immigration of Irish and German Catholics to the United States. (The Know Nothings were an explicitly anti-­Catholic party.) Later, in the 1880s the United States passed legislation that excluded Chinese people from entering the United States. That legislation, renewed and updated several times, effectively stopped all legal Chinese immigration to the United States until 1943.1 Meanwhile, the Ku Klux Klan, which had been formed after the US Civil War to reinforce white racial dominance in the American South but which fell apart in the 1880s, formed again after World War I to oppose immigration into the United States as well as to promote racial segregation across the nation. Likewise, as was addressed in the discussion of Randy Weaver and the standoff at Ruby Ridge in chapter 2, white supremacist ideas permeated the survivalist movement that swept America in the 1970s in the aftermath of the social and political chaos of the 1960s. Since the 1970s, however, white supremacists have generally attempted to operate in ways that de-­emphasized the racist core of their beliefs. In part, this was the result of a shift in government and other group operations intended to undermine racist hate organizations in the United States. The FBI, for example, had for much of its history emphasized its anti-­Communist and organized crime-­busting programs. It rarely investigated or prosecuted crimes involving the abuse of the rights of minority people. (For example, the FBI spent many more resources on investigating reports that the civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., was a Communist than it invested in exploring the many threats on his life.)2 It shifted focus to groups like the KKK in the 1970s. Similarly, groups like Morris Dees’s Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) used the legal system to hinder racist organizations, most famously driving the Aryan Nations to shut down operations by bankrupting the group. Starting in the 1970s it became harder—­and politically and legally riskier—­to be an open racist in the United States. Open expressions of racist sentiments declined for other reasons as well. One had to do with cultural changes in the United States. Starting in the 1980s it became increasingly rare for most people to openly use racial and ethnic slurs that had once been commonplace. A vast range of racially and ethnically derogatory rhetoric was deemed inappropriate for expression in public. Terms like “wops” disappeared to be replaced with the hyphenated form “Italian-­A merican.” “Spics” dropped out of regular usage in favor of “Hispanic,” and many other racially denigrating phrases and terms passed out of wide usage. So, too, did language that treated women as second-class citizens. Additionally, culturally insensitive artifacts like lawn jockeys and characters like L’il Black Sambo went into the nation’s trash heaps as people came to recognize that such items were icons of a racist, unfortunate national shame. The United States appeared, at least, to be shedding its racist, misogynist, and ethnocentric past, however imperfectly. This shedding made it increasingly difficult for racist and misogynist people to openly profess their ideas.

 

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As it became less common for people to openly avow their racial bias, those persons who still held such attitudes figured out new ways to express their opinions without facing significant social reproach. Most often, they used coded language that on the surface seemed to mean something perfectly benign, but that offered room for interpretation such that people with racist or other unpopular attitudes could use the term to promote various forms of bias. In US elections, for example, phrases like “law and order” and “inner city” became common. While there is nothing inherently racist in either term, or with policies like hiring police officers to protect communities from crime, these terms emerged in a context where the inner cities of many US cities had increasingly become populated by African Americans and other minorities. Whites who had once lived in the cities had, to a substantial extent, moved into suburbs around cities in a process known as “white flight.” Moreover, during the social and political protests of the 1960s era, there had been extensive riots in the central areas of many of the nation’s largest cities. Under the circumstances, terms like “inner city” and “law and order” came to be used by many Americans as code phrases that referred to social problems, like crime or poverty, that they associated with African Americans. In turn, then, a call for “law and order” and “peace and stability”—­ inherently laudable concepts on their own—­inevitably meant promoting policies that would lead to imprisoning or otherwise abusing the rights of many African Americans. Similar coded language applied to immigrants and members of ethnic and religious minorities. Biased people used this indirect language to promote their goals without appearing to be racist, ethnocentric, or misogynist. Biased people thus advanced a racist agenda without admitting their secret attitudes. Indeed, since it is possible to believe in law and order and other values without being a racist, such terms served to insulate racists from the charge of being racists: there is no practical way to know if someone wants more police and tougher crime policies, many of which disproportionately affect African American communities, because of racist or other, more fair-­minded, reasons. This change toward a de-­racialized, less ethnocentric, less openly bigoted public rhetoric in the United States was the context in which the militia movement arose in the 1990s. This new discursive environment shaped the way that early leaders of that movement tried to suppress or obscure the racially biased attitudes that were common among members of the far right in American politics. As was discussed in chapter 2, their goal was to develop a rhetorical strategy that they hoped would appeal to people who would not otherwise associate with an openly racist group. As described in chapter 3, that movement eventually broke down, but it did appeal to many Americans across the nation. As such, it provided a template for the resurgence of the contemporary militia movement as described in chapter 4.

Organizing the Alt-­Right after 2000 Unlike in the 1990s, however, the contemporary militia movement described in chapter 4 grew alongside an openly racist set of groups collectively labeled the “alt-­right.” Like the new militia movement, the alt-­right relied on the connective

 

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power of the Internet to build its membership. The Internet reduced what economists refer to as opportunity costs—­the energy, and money, and psychological energy it takes to meet people, establish connections, and mobilize action among groups of people. After all, it is much easier to create an Internet site and draw attention from people across the nation—­or even the world—­than it is to actually contact and bond with even a relatively few people in one’s own community. Likewise, if someone is advocating unpopular or socially shameful ideas, it is easier to create an avatar and at least attempt to hide one’s identity on the Internet than it is to publicly admit one’s position in direct, face-­to-­face communication. Those who respond can likewise try to avoid public reproach for their attitudes by burying their identity behind a veil of digital anonymity. For racists, misogynists, and ethnophobes, then, the Internet is as welcoming as it is for pornography users or anyone else seeking insulation from social shaming: it provides a comparatively safe haven for expressing ideas while attracting like-­minded people to causes or ideas that are otherwise generally shunned. The alt-­right is diverse and disparate. There is no central organization or primary leader akin to the pope of the Roman Catholic Church or, more relevantly, the president of the United States. Rather, the movement has emerged as a mix of individuals, crucial websites, and important blogs and publishers. Key opinion leaders include Richard Spencer, Jared Taylor, Greg Johnson, and Milo Yiannopoulos. Blogs and publishers like Breitbart.com, 4chan, American Renaissance as well as social media platforms like Twitter and Reddit have played important roles in the movement’s growth. The conspiracy-­mongering multimedia site Infowars is likewise a critical source of alt-­right motivation and ideas. To understand the alt-­right, then, it is necessary to explore its many faces. If the alt-­right can be said to have a founder or a leader, that person would be Richard Spencer. 3 Spencer coined the term “alt-­right” in 2008. Spencer, who had worked for American Conservative magazine until he was fired for his extreme political views, moved on to become director of both the National Policy Institute, an alt-­right think tank, and Washington Summit Publishers, an outlet for white nationalist literature. These platforms, and other outlets like Radix Journal, provided Spencer with multiple opportunities to promote his ideas and his vision of a white nationalist America. (The broad ideology of the alt-­right will be addressed in the next section of this chapter.) He has served as a central representative of the movement for almost a decade. Spencer is by no means the only figure promoting the alt-­right. If Spencer is considered the founder of the alt-­right (which, again, is not a formal organization, and so has no actual leader), its court jester and taunter-­in-­chief would be Milo Yiannopoulos.4 Yiannopoulos is in many ways an outlier within the alt-­right community: he is British, openly gay, and has a Jewish grandmother. Moreover, Yiannopoulos rejects the label “alt-­right.” However, he is considered to have been a leading figure in the rise of the movement, in large measure because of his willingness to speak his mind about highly controversial topics. Yiannopoulos has attacked both Islam and atheism aggressively, for example, and has mocked both advocates of social justice and people engaging in what critics refer to as “political correctness.” (The concept of political correctness will be discussed in

 

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the next section of this chapter.) He has promoted anti-­Semitic ideas that have been used, historically, to justify mass slaughter of Jews: “The Jews run all the banks,” Yiannopoulos once commented. “Well, we do. The Jews run the media. Well, we do. You know, I mean they’re right about all that stuff.”5 Similarly, he has insisted, “Hillary Clinton is funded by people who murder homosexuals.”6 Such comments cannot be dismissed as casual: his willingness to violate the norms of contemporary society has proved to be a key attraction for people associated with the alt-­right. Milo Yiannopoulos began his career as an alt-­right icon while working for Breitbart.com. Breitbart.com began as a fairly straight news website, albeit one with a conservative political bent. The site, founded in 2005 by its namesake, Andrew Breitbart, originally aggregated news articles created by other sources. In other words, it provided links to stories published on an array of networks and websites. It offered conservative commentary and advocated for conservative ideas. It was by no means a traditional, objective news agency, but it was generally not openly racist or anti-­immigrant in its editorial position. After Andrew Breitbart died in 2011, however, Breitbart.com took an explicit turn to the alt-­right. It adopted right-­wing populist positions opposing immigration and criticizing racial diversity in favor of a white-­dominated United States. In 2014, a Pew Research Center poll found that 3 percent of respondents got their weekly news from Breitbart.com; of those, 79 percent reported they held extremely conservative political values.7 In 2016 its new leader, Steve Bannon, declared that the site would serve as the “platform of the alt-­right.”8 Numerous other news-­oriented social media sites, like Reddit, Twitter, and 4chan, offered users the chance to promote their opinions and find allies online. In addition, the alt-­right developed an entire digital architecture of outlets for its message. Alt-­right sites include Gab, an alternative to Twitter, WrongThink (a replacement for Facebook), the video site, PewTube, and Voat (a mirror of Reddit). Other services include Infogalactic as an alternative to Wikipedia and GoyFundMe—­a site claiming to be like Kickstarter but, with the use of the term “Goy,” one that openly expresses its anti-­Semitism. White supremacists can even join WASP.love, a dating site for white nationalists.9 These sites provide those Americans who hold racist, sexist, and anti-­immigrant values a relatively simple, accessible way to amplify their private thoughts through the networking power of the Internet. These platforms, among others, have made it possible for people who would otherwise have had a difficult time finding like-­minded allies to come together and promote their ideas. To take just one of numerous possible examples, consider Andrew Anglin’s site, The Daily Stormer (TDS). The Daily Stormer is by no means the most virulent, most hate-­filled of the various alt-­right pages on the Internet. It is, however, one of the more prominent. Anglin, who was born in Ohio in 1984, started TDS in 2013 as a successor site to his previous platform, Total Fascist. 10 It is deliberately outrageous. Anglin, for example, is a Holocaust denier who insists that the Nazi state led by Adolf Hitler did not kill 6 million Jews in Europe during World War II. Instead, he hails Adolf Hitler as a savior of the white race. TDS also promotes misogyny: Anglin insists women are biologically inferior to

 

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men. Immigrants are likewise inferior to white people—­at least, nonwhite immigrants are. TDS, in other words, advocates for white nationalism against any point of view or historical interpretation that might make whites feel guilty about their past, or that might seek to moderate white racial attitudes toward inclusion and diversity. Anglin also mobilizes what he calls his Troll Army to send harassing e-­mails and other communications to any journalist or political leader who he sees as threatening or challenging his agenda.11 Anglin thereby offers his enraged followers a way to expand their influence well beyond the limits they would have faced prior to the Internet era. The nature of TDS’s advocacy can be explored in a brief review of the headlines on the site on a day picked at random, a day in which there were no particularly significant events relevant to the alt-­right that might have directed its “coverage” of American political and social life. On May 22, 2018, the site’s articles included, as only a partial list: • • • • • • • • •

“White South Africans are Being Openly Genocided—­And No Country But Australia is Offering Them Refuge”; “Whiny Jihadi Propaganda Video Goes Viral: Wtf am I Watching?”; “Negress Doctor Recorded Rap Music Videos During Surgery—­It’s Their Culture”; “Virulent Rat Kikes Celebrate Ken Livingstone Resigning from Labor”; “We Wuz Prancez: Al Sharpton Says Mulatto Meghan Means the End of White Supremacy”; “Will the Texas Shooting Cause Women to Reconsider the Systematic Abuse of Men?”; “Pillars of Eternity II is Infested with Social Justice Propaganda”; “UN Migration Master Says Race Replacement Isn’t Simply Inevitable—­It’s Necessary”; and “The Daily Stormer is being sued by Jewish terrorists. In order to survive, we need shekels. Send BTC or XMR. This site will be shut down if we don’t win this.”12

As will be discussed later in this chapter, such open racism, ethnocentrism, anti-­ immigrant attitudes, and religiously bigoted language are common on TDS and similar sites. So, too, is the sense of victimhood and marginalization evident in the last bullet item. Conspiracy websites have likewise played a crucial role in shaping the rise of the alt-­right in the United States. Alex Jones’s Infowars offers a useful example of the way that sources that allegedly present “news” in fact serve only to fuel right-­wing paranoia and propaganda. Infowars is a purveyor of what is now termed “fake news,” meaning it presents stories that are utterly fabricated works of fiction.13 This stands in tension with partisan news, where actual facts about things that really occurred are interpreted in ways that reinforce one’s political bias. In the case of fake news, the events being reported never happened. The stories being told belong in the fiction section of a bookstore. However, they are presented in the guise of facts.

 

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Infowars regularly offers the “false flag” trope as an explanation for various events, for example. The term draws life from a tactic that was used by naval vessels approaching each other for possible combat in the days when ships were powered by sails: since there was no easy way to tell if an approaching ship was friendly or hostile, one vessel sometimes flew a flag from whatever nation it was at war with, appearing, as a consequence, to be a member of the enemy fleet rather than its own. Then, when the ships neared each other, the vessel flying the false flag would reveal its true flag—­its true colors—­and fire at the other, unprepared ship. For Infowars and others on the alt-­right, the concept of the “false flag” has evolved into the claim that whenever anything potentially damaging to conservative values and conservative policies happens, the troubling event never—­ever—­ actually reflects the failure of conservative values or conservative policies. Rather, whatever happened—­a mass shooting, a bombing, an economic crisis, you name it—­only took place as the result of a plot perpetrated by some other group—­often the government. The intent of the plot is always to make conservatives, especially the alt-­right, look bad. When a gunman entered an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012, for example, he used various guns to kill twenty children and six adults. A vigorous national debate ensued about the weapons the murderer used, especially his AR-­15, a civilian version of the rifle used by US troops in combat. Many Americans insisted that the attack proved that new laws restricting Americans’ rights to own certain kinds of weapons should be passed. Conservatives, by contrast, typically argued that people, not guns, were the problem. Infowars went much further and insisted that the murders were faked in front of a special effects green screen and were intended to undermine gun owners’ rights.14 The site made similar claims after shootings at a school in Parkland, Florida.15 Infowars also heavily promoted the Pizzagate controversy during the 2016 presidential election.16 Numerous alt-­right sources claimed, late in that campaign, that an investigation into the e-­mails of John Podesta, who served as campaign manager for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, proved that Clinton and Podesta were operating a child prostitution ring out of Comet Ping Pong, a pizzeria in Washington, DC. Conspiracists claimed that the FBI had confirmed the story. Alt-­right media platforms like Infowars aggressively promoted this allegation. Such a story would seem improbable beyond belief for most people; however, Comet Ping Pong and nearby pizza parlors received hundreds of threats of violence against the facility and its employees. In fact, a man named Edgar Welch, a twenty-­e ight-­y ear-­o ld from Salisbury, North Carolina, entered Comet Ping Pong in December 2016—­after the election had concluded—­and demanded to see the child prostitutes allegedly harbored there. When he was rebuffed, he fired three shots from his AR-­15 into the building’s ceiling.17 Right-­wing conspiracy news sites like Infowars had turned an obvious falsehood into an actionable truth, at least for activists of the alt-­right. Such websites, persons, and social media have combined to create an alt-­ right subculture shared among many Americans. The SPLC reports that the alt-­ right has grown significantly during the past several years. It found 954 active hate groups in the United States in 2017, up from 457 twenty years earlier. It

 

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also found a 22 percent increase in hate groups just in 2017 alone, although it did report that there were almost sixty fewer KKK groups active in the United States in 2017 compared to 2016, a decline of nearly 50 percent among active KKK groups. By 2017, hate organizations were present in every US state.18

Alt-­Right Ideology The groups collectively labeled the “alt-­right” are not a monolith. There is no organization or figure who can claim to set doctrine for the alt-­right movement; the groups express a diversity of thoughts and perspectives. A core set of relatively shared beliefs can be seen as broadly shared on the alt-­right, however: a set of beliefs that is best understood as a form of right-­wing populism. At the heart of alt-­right ideology is the insistence that the United States is and ought to be a white nation, both demographically and culturally. Alt-­right activists insist that the United States was settled by people from north Europe, and that those people established a cultural identity that is innate to white people. The nation, as a consequence, cannot be both “America” and “diverse.” America must be white if it is to be America.19 This core faith has a number of implications for alt-­right thought. One is the insistence on white pride. Alt-­rightists argue that white people should be—­ must be—­proud of their racial identity. White pride, according to many on the alt-­right, is not a code term for “racist.” Rather, it is a sign that people recognize the contributions of “their” people to the American experiment. The notion of white pride is, according to alt-­right advocates, nothing more than a means of motivating white people to promote their interests in politics and society. If there can be Black Pride and Latino Pride and Gay Pride, alt-­righters insist that there ought to be White Pride as well. In fact, they argue that there has to be a white pride movement if America is to survive. Notably, some alt-­righters try to obscure their racial bias behind neutral language. This is evident in “The Fourteen Words,” a shibboleth for the alt-­right that defines the racialist part of the movement in allegedly non-­racist terms. The Fourteen Words are just that: fourteen words that encapsulate the logic of the contemporary white nationalist movement: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.”20 On simple review, there is nothing inherently racist in this sentence: it neither states the superiority of white people nor insists on the separation or elimination of other races. However, most members of the alt-­right movement believe African Americans and members of other races are intellectually, morally, and culturally inferior to whites. As a consequence, most alt-­rightists have no commitment to notions of democracy, civil rights, or other features of political life usually taken for granted by most Americans. Rather, they insist that racial minorities can and must be repressed to protect white values and white culture. Moreover, alt-­rightists play off the long-­established fear of the “angry black man” to portray African Americans as not just inferior, but as active threats—­a criminal class intent on harming whites. Under such circumstances, alt-­righters claim, any action taken by whites is not racist, it’s self-­defense.

 

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Whatever de-­racialized, supposedly tolerant claims white nationalists make, their rhetoric inevitably promotes divisive, exclusionary policies. For example, it is not a particularly large leap to shift thinking from “America is a white nation” to “America is a nation for whites.” For those who hold alt-­right attitudes, then, nonwhite immigrants become obvious targets of their ire. After all, if the United States is to remain white, then nonwhite immigrants need to be excluded from entering the United States. Existing immigrants might also need to be removed or forced out—­even if they immigrated legally. Such exclusionism is, from the alt-­right point of view, the only way to protect “American” culture and society from corruption by inferior peoples and inferior cultures. Alt-­right America, then, is not likely to be a place where all groups can be happy and assertive of their group’s contribution to the American pastiche. Rather, nonwhite people will need to get out, and others will never be allowed in. Issues of gender similarly reinforce alt-­right theories of the social dominance of white men. As might be expected in a movement largely dominated by young men connecting through social networks rather than by means of face-­to-­face contact, the movement embodies toxic masculinity: a form of masculinity that valorizes violence and dominance, both of other men and of women. “Real men” are aggressive and domineering, seeking to control and manipulate others to their will. Women are often viewed as passive beings whose role is to support and reward powerful men—­especially sexually. Toxic masculinity is evident in the headline from TDS listed earlier: “Will the Texas Shooting Cause Women to Reconsider the Systematic Abuse of Men?” For Andrew Anglin at TDS, when a deranged man entered a high school in Austin, Texas, in May 2018 and killed ten people, one of whom was a woman he had hoped to have a relationship with but who rejected the murderer’s advances, it was the killer who was the wronged party: the female did not play her part and respond to the shooter’s desire in a way that flattered the man who eventually murdered her.21 The sense of white male victimhood Anglin demonstrated in the Texas shooter case is a central element of alt-­right ideology. For alt-­righters, white people, especially white men, are facing threats from multiple directions. Immigrants, minorities, many women, and those white people who refuse to express pride in and defend their race and culture are working together to destroy the United States from within. Their failure to support white dominance, particularly the power of white men, is seen as the reason the United States is losing power in both international and domestic affairs. Accordingly, white people who reject the alt-­right’s agenda are called “race traitors” by alt-­right activists. From the alt-­ right point of view, the worst thing to be in America today is a white man. The victimization of white men is made worse, alt-­righters claim, by the social norm they denigrate as “political correctness.” Political correctness refers to efforts people make to avoid offending or upsetting anyone on the basis of their race, religion, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or other social characteristic. It is linked, logically, to the cultural shift that took place in the United States in the decades after World War II: the cultural transition away from using mean-­spirited, insulting language when referring to various groups or people in society toward using more nuanced, respectful language.

 

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Although many Americans have come to agree that the shift in public rhetoric from insulting and abusive language toward accepting and tolerant terminology has been good for the United States, others insist that efforts to moderate political discussions have gone too far. For these Americans, efforts to avoid offending anyone have made it very hard to express any opinion at all, particularly if the opinion touches on something potentially controversial. They insist that “political correctness” is really about liberals and progressives trying to impose their opinions and their attitudes on everyone else. In other words, while some Americans recognize the use of sensitive, non-­derogatory language as a straightforward way to be polite to people with a diverse array of backgrounds, others insist that being forced to use such terminology is really a political power grab by which progressives, women, and minorities are working to undermine conservatives’ power—­particularly the power of white men. Alt-­right activists are particularly angry about political correctness. For the alt-­right, political correctness is yet another conspiracy aimed at preventing people from being able to speak the truth—­albeit a truth that will make some people uncomfortable or that might offend some other persons. For example, alt-­right activists insist that political correctness would make it hard (or impossible) for people to tell the “truth” that, as they see it, white people should assert pride in their race, or that Islam promotes terrorism in the way that other religions do not. Wherever it appears, then, political correctness is a plot to force white people to deny their racial identity and other forms of their superiority. Political correctness will thereby cause the long-­term erosion of the relative position of white people in society, away from preeminence toward subservience. One term commonly tossed around alt-­right websites and blogs encapsulates the racialized, gendered, toxically masculine, political resentment-­filled, and politically correct-­obsessed rhetoric that dominates alt-­right thought: “cuckservative.” The word’s etymology is a combination of “conservative” mixed with two dimensions of the concept of the cuckold. Cuckold has long meant a man whose wife was cheating on him sexually. More recently, a genre of pornography has emerged in which race is an explicit element: white men are seen to watch African American men have sex with their (supposed) wives. To be a cuckservative, then, is to be a whimpering, simpering waste of maleness who is such a failure at everything—­including sexually satisfying his wife—­that she humiliates him by having sex with a black man while her husband watches. Cuckservatives don’t have “the balls” to do what needs to be done in any aspect of life, whether in bed or in politics. Real men, by contrast, do. Alt-­right ideology thus mixes principles of white racial supremacy, anti-­ immigrant bias, assertive male dominance, and the victimization of white people generally, and white men particularly, to create a zero-­sum worldview in which any advantage or success gained by minorities and women necessarily erodes the position of white men in American society. Anyone who refuses to advocate for white pride and white nationalism is a threat to all white people everywhere. Anyone who is unwilling to fight to defend white power is an agent of white destruction. America is in a racial and cultural war, and, at least according to the alt-­right, white people are losing.

 

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The Rise of the Alt-­Right in the Age of Trump The alt-­right exploded into public consciousness in the same period of Donald Trump’s improbable victory in the presidential election. As of February 2017, for example, within three months of Trump’s election, and barely a month after he took office, the SPLC chronicled 1,372 acts of hate and bias in the United States. It reported 346 cases of anti-­immigrant bias, as well as 260 acts targeting African Americans. One hundred and thirty-­six swastikas were painted or applied to synagogues, graves, and other structures; there were 136 reports of bias against LGBTQ people as well. About 127 hate acts were aimed at Muslims, while 116 were targeted against Jews. At least eighty-­seven pro-­white nationalist/­supremacist acts were detailed. Two hundred and forty-­four of these incidents took place at K-­12 schools; another 233 occurred at businesses and 219 were on university campuses. One hundred and thirteen happened at places of worship.22 As examples, the SPLC noted fifty-­seven bomb threats against Jewish community centers in twenty-­four states. Sixteen mosques were targeted as well, and one, in Davis, California, was vandalized. There were at least eighty-­five cases of “flyering,” meaning that hate-­promoting fliers were plastered in public places, mostly on college campuses. (College campuses have drawn the particular ire of many right-­wing groups since universities are often seen as hotbeds of political correctness and liberal indoctrination.) A group called “Identity Evropa” pasted a flyer announcing “Equality is a False God” on the door of an office owned by a Muslim dentist; in New Hampshire, another group posted flyers claiming a “White Genocide” was coming. The flyers were posted on the doors of an elementary/­middle school.23 More broadly, the social taboo against expressing racist, sexist, anti-­ immigrant, and religiously bigoted ideas seems to have broken down recently, at least for some people. This change should not be surprising: as Stephen Utych has found, when leaders dehumanize, belittle, or demean groups like immigrants, some citizens tend to view the attacked group as less deserving of respect or the protection of their rights.24 In addition, Crandall, Miller and White have found that when particular groups were attacked by Donald Trump, public opinion about those groups declined.25 (The ways Donald Trump has, as a candidate, an activist, and as president drawn on and promoted alt-­right ideology and leaders will be discussed later in this chapter.) Notably, White and Crandall found that the more racial prejudice one expressed in public opinion surveys, the more likely the respondent was to claim that their bigoted speech was protected as free speech.26 Rather than feeling the need to moderate their speech to smooth social interactions in a complex, diverse society, then, those holding right-­wing beliefs have seemingly grown more willing to express racist, sexist, ethnocentric, and religiously bigoted rhetoric in recent years. Another measure of the growing influence of the alt-­right in the United States is the surprising number of candidates running for seats in the US Congress who are avowed racists. In Illinois, for example, a man named Arthur Jones won the Republican nomination for Congress from the 3rd Congressional District. Jones is a member of the American Nazi Party who denies that the Holocaust

 

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happened.27 While he lost in a district that leans heavily to the Democrats, his victory in the Republican primary demonstrated the way that a small group of motivated voters—­in this case, American Nazis—­can shape politics if less-­ engaged citizens fail to participate. In Virginia, meanwhile, the Republican candidate for the US Senate, Corey Stewart, is a neo-­Confederate who advocates for traditional Southern values and a return to the social order that existed before the Civil War—­including white supremacy. (Stewart was vigorously endorsed by Donald Trump, although he lost the general election in November.) In Wisconsin, Paul Nehlen, a white supremacist who was barred from using Gab, the alt-­right Twitter, for his extreme views, ran for the Republican nomination to fill the seat of retiring Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. He came in third in the primary. The Republican candidate for Congress from the 11th District of California, John Fitzgerald, regularly appears on neo-­Nazi podcasts. He is a Holocaust denier who argues that efforts to increase tolerance and diversity in the United States are actually plots led by Jews to undermine America.28 He, too, lost the general election, but his nomination was surprising nonetheless. The presence of such candidates as representatives of the Republican Party has posed a significant dilemma for mainstream Republican strategists who want to maintain control of the House of Representatives and the Senate but who worry that these racist candidates will both alienate voters and harm the long-­ term ability of the Republican Party to win elections in an increasingly diverse United States. They are concerned, in other words, that the alt-­right’s growing influence may, in time, undermine the Republican Party as an institution.

Two Days in Charlottesville The resurgent alt-­right reached the apex of its influence, at least in recent times, on two days in August 2017. On the 11th and 12th of August, white supremacists led by Richard Spencer rallied in Charlottesville, Virginia, to protest the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee, commander of Confederate forces during the US Civil War, from a city park. Statues of leaders of the Confederacy had long stood as a symbol of white supremacy and white dominance in the South. They also served as memorials to the sacrifices of many Southern soldiers during the Civil War. As a consequence, the existence of these statues—­and of a companion symbol, the Confederate battle flag, which adorned many Southern states’ official flags—­was inevitably politically charged: support for the statue (or flag) implied support for the existing social order of white dominance, while opposition to Confederate flags and statues implied a desire to upend the old way in favor of a tolerant, egalitarian present. Demands to remove Confederate statues and flags, then, have been met by counter-­protests insisting that nothing should be changed. Thus, when the leaders of the city of Charlottesville decided to remove the Robert E. Lee statue, they were, whether they wanted it or not, entering a politically fraught debate that had been raging across the United States for years. The planned removal of the statue served as a rallying point for partisans of both pro-­ and anti-­Confederate protestors. Additionally, as Charlottesville is the home of

 

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the University of Virginia, it was a prime target for alt-­right activists convinced that universities are propaganda engines for progressive ideas. The university was also a ready source of counter-­protestors who would likely support removing Lee’s statue. Conflict in Charlottesville was not inevitable by any means. But it was not surprising, either. The alt-­right forces gathered in Charlottesville on August 11. After nightfall, a group of about 250 alt-­right protestors met in Nameless Field, an area behind Memorial Gymnasium on the campus of the University of Virginia. They were wearing the unofficial uniform of the alt-­right, khaki pants and white polo shirts. They were also carrying tiki torches, historically associated with Hawaiian luaus but in this case repurposed to evoke the burning torches that were a feature of Nazi rallies in Hitler’s Germany before World War II. Once assembled, they marched onto the heart of the campus of the University of Virginia, the Lawn, and converged on a statute of Thomas Jefferson, the University’s founder. As they marched, they chanted slogans long associated with white supremacy movements worldwide: “Blood and soil!”; “You will not replace us!”; and “Jews will not replace us!”29 Once they assembled at Jefferson’s statue, the alt-­right activists met a group of progressive counter-­protestors. The alt-­right activists started yelling “white lives matter,” mocking the broadly supported “Black Lives Matter” movement that protests police violence against African Americans. Some of the white nationalists began making monkey sounds while taunting African American students counter-­protesting the white supremacist’s rally. Punches, pushes, and shoves followed. Only one police officer was present to try to keep peace during this exchange. The rally then broke up in chaos.30

White nationalists confront police and protestors in Charlottesville, Virginia, August 2017. ­Pacific Press/­Alamy Stock Photo

 

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A second rally was planned for the next day, August 12. This protest was scheduled from noon until five, but alt-­right activists started to gather early in the morning. So, too, did counter-­protestors. By 9:30 a.m., a group of clergy opposing the alt-­right forces began singing “This Little Light of Mine.” Nearby white nationalists responded, shouting, “Our blood! Our soil!” As this exchange was going on, a group of more than thirty self-­styled, and well-­armed, militia members placed themselves between the groups of protestors to “keep the peace.” As more protestors and counter-­protestors filed into Emancipation Park and nearby Market St., chants of “Fuck you, Nazis” were met with “Fuck you, fuckers,” in reply. Tensions were high and escalating.31 About 11 a.m., what had been tensions turned into open violence. White supremacists carrying shields and sticks launched themselves into a group of counter-­protestors. Riot control chemicals were sprayed in the air, and balloons filled with ink and other substances were lobbed at one side from the other. Bottles and rocks flew back and forth as well. Police finally moved to quell the fighting at 11:22 a.m. when the rallies were declared an unlawful assembly.32 As the fighting ended the white nationalists worked their way from Emancipation Park to another rallying point, McIntire Park, which was about a mile away. Tensions appeared to be easing. However, things got much worse at 1:14 p.m. when James Alex Field, Jr., a twenty-­year-­old man from Ohio who had been active in the white nationalist movement, drove his Dodge Charger into a crowd of people protesting the alt-­right rally. He killed a thirty-­two-­year-­old woman, Heather Heyer, and wounded nineteen others as he smashed into the crowd.33 As horrifying and shocking as these events were, public dismay grew exponentially when President Trump offered a response to the events in Charlottesville that seemed remarkably respectful of the white supremacist protestors. Typically, presidents respond to moments of national shock and tragedy with statements aimed at reassuring citizens that order and normal life will be restored quickly. Presidents also usually speak out against acts that are obviously motivated by hate and bias—­in other words, they restate the humane sentiment that the United States is a diverse, complex society, and that if it is to succeed it needs to promote tolerance and respect for others even when they disagree with one another. Indeed, former president Barack Obama issued such a statement in the aftermath of Charlottesville despite the fact that he was no longer president. Obama tweeted, “No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion.” His tweet was accompanied by a picture of him with his jacket held casually over his shoulder as he talked to a racially mixed group of four very young children as they stood at an open window.34 Similarly, former president George H. W. Bush and his son, former president George W. Bush, issued a joint statement, saying, “America must always reject racial bigotry, anti-­Semitism, and hatred in all forms.” “As we pray for Charlottesville,” they continued, “we are all reminded of the fundamental truths recorded by that city’s most prominent citizen in the Declaration of Independence: we are all created equal and endowed by our Creator with unalienable rights.” President Trump chose to offer a very different response to the events in Charlottesville. His first comments after the violence suggested that he would

 

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adopt the standard presidential response to moments of crisis, “We condemn in the strongest possible terms,” he said, “this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence.” However, rather than ending his sentence at “violence,” Trump continued, noting that the violence, hatred, and bigotry had been, “on many sides. On many sides.” “It’s been going on for a long time in our country,” Trump continued. “Not Donald Trump, not Barack Obama. This has been going on for a long, long time.”35 This statement was widely criticized as being too sympathetic to the alt-­right activists, as well as being too critical of counter-­protestors who had been the victims of a savage attack. Moreover, in deviating from the standard role presidents usually play after tragedies—­the role enacted by presidents Obama and the two Bushes—­Trump appeared to express sympathy for the alt-­right rally-­goers. Accordingly, Trump’s failure to condemn the alt-­right protestors was widely seen as an endorsement of them. Faced with this backlash, President Trump’s advisers pushed him to offer a more conciliatory statement, one less sympathetic to the alt-­right. On Monday, August 14, President Trump made a more typical presidential statement after events like Charlottesville. “Racism is evil,” Trump said, “And those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the K.K.K., neo-­Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.” He continued: “To anyone who acted criminally in this weekend’s racist violence, you will be held fully accountable. Justice will be delivered.” Finally, he insisted, “As I have said many times before, no matter the color of our skin, we all live under the same laws. We all salute the same great flag, and we are all made by the same almighty God. We must love each other, show affection for each other and unite together in condemnation of hatred, bigotry and violence.”36 Trump seemed to quickly change his mind about how best to respond to the events in Charlottesville, however. In part this was a response to what Trump saw as unfair criticism he faced. When his updated remarks about the Charlottesville riots were criticized as an obviously minimal effort to recover from a political gaffe, Trump tweeted, “Made additional remarks on Charlottesville and realize once again that the #Fake News Media will never be satisfied . . . truly bad people!”37 By Tuesday, August 15, Trump’s anger and frustration with his critics manifested itself in ways that reinforced his first response to Charlottesville. “I’ve condemned neo-­Nazis. I’ve condemned many different groups,” Trump insisted. “But not all of those people were neo-­Nazis, believe me,” he continued. “You had many people in that group other than neo-­Nazis and white nationalists. The press has treated them absolutely unfairly.” He then commented, “You also had some very fine people on both sides.”38 Trump insisted on the moral equivalence and accountability of both sides for the violence throughout August 15. He also tweaked the alleged political correctness of the “fake news” that would not tell people the truth: “I think there is blame on both sides,” Trump claimed. “You had a group on one side that was bad. You had a group on the other side that was also very violent. Nobody wants to say that. I’ll say it right now.” “What about the alt-­left that came charging at,

 

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as you say, at the alt-­right?” he asked. “Do they have any semblance of guilt?”39 The alt-­left activists (as Trump styled them) included some people who were “very, very violent,” Trump claimed.40 Trump also argued that the alt-­left should not have been present in Charlottesville at all—­or, at least, that their cause was unjust. Trump insisted there was no reason to remove the Robert E. Lee statue in the first place. Instead, Trump drew a clear parallel between the slave owners who helped found the United States (Thomas Jefferson and George Washington foremost among them) with slave owners, like Robert E. Lee, who fought to perpetuate slavery in the nation. “Many of those people were there to protest the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee,” Trump said. “So this week, it is Robert E. Lee. I noticed that Stonewall Jackson is coming down. I wonder, is it George Washington next week? And is it Thomas Jefferson the week after? You know, you really do have to ask yourself, where does it stop?”41 Whatever Donald Trump’s intentions in offering such an alt-­right friendly take on the events in Charlottesville were, the alt-­right certainly claimed it as a victory for their cause. For example, alt-­right leader Richard Spencer noted, in response to Trump’s comments criticizing the alt-­right in Charlottesville, “The statement today was more ‘kumbaya’ nonsense. He sounded like a Sunday school teacher.” “I don’t think that Donald Trump is a dumb person,” Spencer commented. “Only a dumb person would take those lines seriously.”42 Spencer’s skepticism was rewarded in the Tuesday statement: former Grand Wizard of the KKK David Duke tweeted, after Trump’s comments suggesting the alt-­righters were victims of assaults perpetrated by leftist radicals, “Thank you President Trump for your honesty & courage to tell the truth about #Charlottesville.”43 For white nationalists, in any case, the conclusion was obvious: they had an ally in the White House. His name was Donald Trump. For a moment, in any case, the alt-­right seemed ascendant in America.

Donald Trump and the Alt-­Right The alt-­right’s faith that Donald Trump was an ally was grounded on more than just his reaction to the events in Charlottesville. Rather, there was significant evidence available to them—­and any other observer—­that Donald Trump might support alt-­right values and alt-­right policies. For example, Trump had a long history of engagement with political issues even before he ran for president. He had a record of promoting ideas and policies popular on the alt-­right. He also brought alt-­right activists into his campaign and his presidency. Finally, his rhetorical style adopted numerous elements in common use on the alt-­right. The alt-­right and the Trump presidency turned out to be at least coincidental allies—­ and perhaps deliberate ones.

Donald Trump’s Pre-­Presidential Political Career Donald Trump is the first person in American history to become president of the United States despite having no previous elected or appointed political or military experience. He is, consequently, the first elected president whose only

 

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career had been as a businessperson. Trump, of course, trumpeted this fact, insisting that his success outside of politics both taught him how to get things done and left him free of entangling political commitments and loyalties. Moreover, Trump claimed that his personal fortune would make it possible for him to govern without worrying about needing to satisfy the demands of wealthy donors or other influential groups. He insisted that conventional politicians were too embedded in the existing political system to effectively challenge established norms and policies. He, in contrast, could be an agent of change who would fix America’s problems—­especially on behalf of people who had been left behind by thirty years of social and economic change. Trump claimed, in other words, that he offered a unique combination of personal and professional accomplishment that would translate from the business world to the political one. Yet the notion that Donald Trump was a pure political outsider, not beholden to either ideology or party, is too simple an explanation of his pre-­ presidential political life and agenda. Trump, who had been a registered Democrat, a registered Republican, and a registered Independent prior to running for the Republican nomination for president in 2015–2016, had regularly inserted himself into controversial political issues in the years before he became a candidate for president. Two cases in which Trump got involved in national political issues are particularly illustrative of his style of political engagement. They bear close examination. The first is his response to an event now known as the Central Park Five case. The other is his role in the Birther movement that sought to strip Barack Obama of the presidency on grounds that he was not a natural born citizen of the United States. Donald Trump and the Central Park Five  The basic facts of the case of the “Central Park Five,” are both simple and horrifying.44 On the evening of April 19, 1989, a twenty-­eight-­year-­old white woman named Trisha Meili went jogging in Central Park in New York City. During her run, she was savagely attacked, beaten, raped, and left in a coma. The New York City police quickly identified five suspects: four African American males and a Hispanic male. Two of them were fourteen at the time of the assault, two more were fifteen, and one was sixteen. The horror of this event captivated people around the United States. It was covered, aggressively, in news media across the nation. The attack on Trisha Meili was quickly termed a case of “wilding.” Wilding was a term invented to capture the savageness of attacks conducted by groups of young males. The concept built on established racial biases to represent minority males as particularly prone to crazed lawlessness. Thus, when the attack on Trisha Meili was called wilding, the alleged perpetrators were being accused of more than just committing a horrific crime. They were also being set up as symbols of America’s broader racial and crime crises: the Central Park Five came to represent many people’s racially motivated fears that young black men were on the verge of brutalizing all of society, not just one innocent victim. Moreover, the fact that five young minority males were accused of committing a savage crime led many Americans to insist that the youths had to be guilty because, as people might say under their breaths,

 

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that’s how “those people” are. The crime was thus notable not only for its horror, but also because it seemed to prove that New York City was profoundly dysfunctional, unable to deal with its crime, drugs, and violence problems. People around the United States insisted that the perpetrators deserved neither sympathy nor leniency when they were finally punished for their horrific acts. Four of the Central Park Five signed confessions under intense police interrogation. Their stories differed, and each accused another of actually committing the rape, but a consensus quickly emerged that the attack had to have been carried out by this group of young, out-­of-­control, savage, almost subhuman people. Once convicted, they were sentenced to prison terms ranging from five to fifteen years. One of the teenagers was tried and sentenced as an adult. Two weeks after the attack, Donald Trump inserted himself into the public debate about the case. Trump spent $85,000 to take out full-­page advertisements in four New York newspapers, including the New York Times. Under the headline (in large type) “Bring Back the Death Penalty . . . Bring Back Our Police,” Trump angrily insisted that the direst punishments ought to be meted out to the young men. He demanded that the Central Park Five should be executed even though New York did not allow the death penalty at that time. “I want to hate these muggers and murderers,” he roared. “They should be forced to suffer and, when they kill, they should be executed for their crimes. They must serve as examples so that others will think long and hard before committing a crime or an act of violence.”45 “I want to hate these murderers and I always will,” Trump continued. “I am not looking to psychoanalyze them or understand them, I am looking to punish them. If the punishment is strong, the attacks on innocent people will stop.” “I recently watched a newscast trying to explain ‘the anger in these young men’,” Trump continued. “I no longer want to understand their anger. I want them to understand our anger. I want them to be afraid.” He concluded, saying, “How can our great society tolerate the continued brutalization of its citizens by crazed misfits? Criminals must be told that their CIVIL LIBERTIES END WHEN AN ATTACK ON OUR SAFETY BEGINS!”46 In and of itself, of course, Donald Trump’s interest and willingness to insert himself into the debate about the Central Park Five has no particular meaning or significance. People are entitled to their opinions, and if they have enough money to buy advertisements in national newspapers to promulgate those opinions, they are free to do so. However, in 2002 the Central Park Five were completely exonerated. A convicted serial rapist and murderer named Matias Reyes, who was already serving a life sentence for his other crimes, admitted to having committed the Central Park rape. DNA found at the crime scene, when reexamined, showed that only Reyes’s DNA was on the victim. The Central Park Five were released and eventually won a settlement with the city of New York for $41 million for their wrongful convictions and imprisonments. Donald Trump, however, did not back down from his previous position. He insisted that the Central Park Five had confessed—­ignoring the fact that their confessions had been coerced. “They admitted they were guilty,” Trump claimed. “The police doing the original investigation say they were guilty. The fact that that case was settled with so much evidence against them is outrageous.”47 He

 

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noted that they must have been guilty because, “These young men do not exactly have the pasts of angels.”48 Finally, he mocked the settlement itself, arguing, “Forty million dollars is a lot of money for the taxpayers of New York to pay when we are already the highest taxed city and state in the country. The recipients must be laughing out loud at the stupidity of the city.”49 This foray into New York politics was tinged with elements that would shape Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign (discussed later in this chapter). He made aggressive claims in the face of incomplete or even incorrect information. He exploited and inflamed sensitive racial tensions and presented himself as a voice of “the people”—­in this case the people who were tired of New York City’s then-­ rampant crime. He insisted that “their” laws and “their” policies were the cause of society’s ills—­in other words, that elites were at the heart of society’s problems. And he refused to change his position even in the face of contradictory evidence. Meanwhile, his reputation and his media presence only grew larger and larger. Donald Trump and the Birther Movement  Engaging with painful and difficult matters of crime and race in a blunt and populist style proved to be an effective political strategy for Donald Trump—­one he would replicate in his role in the Birther movement. Trump encouraged, if he did not directly lead, the Birther movement. Trump leveraged his wealth and celebrity into an unofficial position as chief critic/­interrogator of President Obama’s citizenship. In March 2011, for example, Trump went on the ABC show, The View, and asked, “Why doesn’t he show his birth certificate?” After making a demand to see President Obama’s birth certificate on FOX News, Trump went on NBC and asserted, “I’m starting to think that he was not born here.”50 Similarly, in April 2011 Trump claimed, in an interview with NBC Today show host Meredith Vieira, that he had dispatched numerous researchers to Hawaii to investigate the circumstances of President Obama’s birth. “I have people that actually have been studying it and they cannot believe what they’re finding,” Trump said.51 Trump also asked Joseph Farah to explore the prospect of sending private investigators to Hawaii to expose the Obama birth conspiracy. (Farah was a conspiracist whose right-­wing website, WorldNetDaily, promoted stories claiming, among other things, that soybeans cause homosexuality and that “cultural Marxists” were trying to destroy the United States.) While there is no evidence Trump ever hired investigators to go to Hawaii, he did claim to have done so, insisting, “They cannot believe what they are finding,” on The View.52 Trump never released any findings. However, under Trump’s pressure, the Obama administration did something it had claimed it did not need to do: it released Obama’s so-­called long form birth certificate, a slightly more substantial document including a few more details of Obama’s birth than were revealed on the “Certificate of Live Birth” the Obama campaign had released in 2008. Unsurprisingly, it confirmed that Obama was a natural born citizen, and the Birther movement basically lost steam after Obama released the document. In fact, it appeared that Birtherism had been utterly discredited when, in a speech to the White House Correspondent’s dinner on May 1, 2011, President

 

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Obama skewered the Birther movement and publicly mocked Donald Trump—­ with Trump in the audience. At one point in his speech, for example, President Obama claimed, “But no one is happier, no one is prouder, to put this birth certificate matter to rest than ‘the Donald.’ And that’s because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter: Like, did we fake the moon landing?”53 A former adviser to Donald Trump, Omarosa Manigault, has claimed that the humiliation Trump suffered that night cemented his decision to run for president in the future.54 As had happened with the Central Park Five, however, merely being wrong did not stop Donald Trump from hammering at the Birther nail. In 2012, on at least two occasions Trump went on the relatively new social media platform, Twitter, to claim that Obama’s birth certificate was, or likely was, fake. The next year he restated his uncertainty about the certificate’s authenticity, and then indulged in a bit of conspiracy-­mongering by commenting, again on Twitter, “How amazing, the State Health Director who verified copies of Obama’s ‘birth certificate’ died in plane crash today. All others lived.” As Trump would have it, then, people working for Barack Obama—­perhaps even government agents—­ might have committed murder to defend the lie of Obama’s birth. Trump did state, in 2016, that he thought Obama was a citizen; however, Trump also insisted that Obama was the founder of the terrorist group ISIS—­a radical Muslim group engaged at the time in a campaign of horrific and savage violence across western Iraq and eastern Syria.55 Even as late as 2017 Trump reportedly questioned Obama’s citizenship in conversations with other elected officials.56 In all, ABC News found sixty-­seven instances of Donald Trump tweeting about President Obama’s citizenship.57 Like with the Central Park Five case, Donald Trump’s engagement in the Obama birth certificate controversy touched on sensitive racial and religious issues. He insisted that political and social elites were engaged in numerous conspiracies to protect the president and, by extension, to harm “regular folks.” He also presented himself as a savior, a warrior figure fighting to defeat the “bad guys” in the name of truth, justice, and the American way. And, when his claims were proved wrong, he reasserted them again and again, using his celebrity as a shield against serious challenge. It was classic right-­wing populism—­a populism that would find itself in close alliance with the emerging alt-­right in American political life. The Alt-­Right and Donald Trump’s Presidential Campaign  Donald Trump announced his candidacy for president of the United States on June 16, 2015. The scene was, for those familiar with Donald Trump’s career, classic Trump: he and his wife, Melania, descended an escalator into the lobby of Trump Tower, the Manhattan skyscraper that, when Trump built it, had established his reputation as a major player in the real estate market in New York City. The building’s foyer glinted with gold decorations that shimmered in the bright lights of the television cameras covering the announcement. Likewise, Melania Trump’s vivid white dress radiated in Trump Tower’s grand entry hall. Together, Trump and his wife seemed like royals in their palace, people of great wealth and privilege

 

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deigning to visit with “the people.” Donald Trump, who had always cultivated his image as a wealthy and successful man, appeared in exactly that role as he and his wife rode the escalator into Trump Tower’s lobby. At first, Trump’s campaign was met with skepticism—­even derision. He was, as was noted earlier, utterly lacking in political experience. He also had no network of national political supporters and no natural constituency within the Republican Party. Indeed, he had not even been a Republican for the whole of his political life. Finally, his status as a real estate developer and television celebrity seemed to be at odds with his political ambitions: “You’re Fired,” his iconic phrase on his program The Apprentice, offered little in the way of a political agenda or ideology on which he could ground a credible presidential campaign. The odds were against Trump’s candidacy, particularly as, at first, he was only one candidate among a host of experienced, nationally prominent Republican competitors. In the end, however, Trump won the Republican nomination in a walkover. He formally accepted the nomination at the Republican National Convention on July 21, 2016. He was elected president on November 8, 2016, capping a stunning rise to the highest political office in the United States. Along the path to that victory, his campaign touched on and mobilized the energies of the alt-­right. Trump’s remarkable rise to the presidency formally began with the speech he made after descending the glittering escalator into the lobby of Trump Tower. From the beginning of his announcement speech, Trump made it clear that his was going to be a very different kind of campaign. Whereas most candidates introduce themselves to the country by imagining a hopeful future for the nation under the candidate’s leadership, Trump evinced a darker vision of the American present. Once he began to speak, Trump seemed to morph from being a successful real estate developer and celebrity into an angry, fear-­mongering torchbearer of a populist crusade to, as his campaign slogan would put it, “Make America Great Again.” Instead of confirming his celebrity or offering a glimpse of the lifestyles of the rich and famous, Trump outlined an approach to politics that confirmed the biases and fears of those Americans who believed the political system was rigged against them. In so doing, Donald Trump empowered what came to be known as the alt-­right in the United States. By the fourth paragraph of his announcement speech, for example, Trump made it clear he was going to reshape the US relationship both with foreign countries and with those who emigrated from them to the United States. “Our country is in serious trouble,” Trump commented. “We don’t have victories anymore. We used to have victories, but we don’t have them. When was the last time anybody saw us beating, let’s say, China in a trade deal? They kill us.” He followed, in paragraph five, insisting that Japan, too, was a threat to US interests and values: “When did we beat Japan at anything? They send their cars over by the millions, and what do we do? When was the last time you saw a Chevrolet in Tokyo? It doesn’t exist, folks. They beat us all the time.” Two paragraphs later, Trump insisted, “The U.S. has become a dumping ground for everybody else’s problems.”58 Trump saved special attention for Mexico and Mexicans. “When do we beat Mexico at the border?” Trump asked. “They’re laughing at us, at our stupidity. And now they are beating us economically. They are not our friend, believe me. But they’re killing us economically.” But more, Trump claimed, “When

 

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Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” Nor was Mexico the only source of threat, Trump argued. “It’s coming from more than Mexico. It’s coming from all over South and Latin America, and it’s coming probably—­probably—­from the Middle East. But we don’t know. Because we have no protection and we have no competence, we don’t know what’s happening. And it’s got to stop and it’s got to stop fast.” Thus, Trump continued, “I would build a great wall, and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me, and I’ll build them very inexpensively, I will build a great, great wall on our southern border. And I will have Mexico pay for that wall.”59 Trump described other threats to the American future as well. He claimed China was a currency manipulator whose policies “are ripping us.” The government of the United States was, Trump insisted, fundamentally incompetent and had helped other countries more than it had helped regular Americans: “We have people that are stupid. We have people that aren’t smart. And we have people that are controlled by special interests. And it’s just not going to work.” “We have losers,” Trump continued. “We have losers. We have people that don’t have it. We have people that are morally corrupt. We have people that are selling this country down the drain.” Trump also argued that President Obama was a golf-­obsessed incompetent who needed to be driven from office as soon as possible. Trump further insisted that Obamacare, President Obama’s signature policy expanding healthcare coverage for millions of Americans, was a disaster. Trump similarly claimed that federal education policy was utterly misguided. He also asserted that economic globalization made it too easy for corporations to leave the United States, moving the jobs of people once employed in the United States to other countries. Nor was that all: Trump roared that gun control was dangerous, insisted that the military wasn’t getting the resources it needed, and sneered that people who claimed to be experts on various issues usually created rules that actually made problems worse. 60 In sum, Trump offered a dizzying narrative in which the people who had held power in the United States in the past had systematically abused their power even as they had passed laws and policies that undermined the American future. Indeed, in Trump’s view US political leaders had been more concerned about helping immigrants and foreigners than they were about improving the lives of the American people. Trump’s announcement speech also exposed the toxic masculinity that would suffuse his entire campaign. While much was made, in ensuing months, of Trump referring to fellow Republican candidates Senator Marco Rubio (R-­FL) as “Little Marco,” and former Florida governor Jeb Bush as “Low Energy Jeb Bush,” these later insults were previewed in his announcement speech. Trump began his campaign by mocking and demeaning his competition’s leadership abilities and intelligence: “But all of these politicians that I’m running against now, they’re trying to disassociate,” Trump claimed: I mean, you looked at [former Florida Governor Jeb] Bush, it took him five days to answer the question on Iraq. He couldn’t answer the question. He didn’t know. I said, “Is he intelligent?”

 

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Then I looked at Rubio. He was unable to answer the question, is Iraq a good thing or bad thing? He didn’t know. He couldn’t answer the question. How are these people gonna lead us? How are we gonna—­how are we gonna go back and make it great again? We can’t. They don’t have a clue. They can’t lead us. They can’t. They can’t even answer simple questions. It was terrible.61

In just his announcement speech, then, Trump touched on a laundry list of issues and attitudes tightly linked with the concerns many alt-­right activists favor. He attacked immigrants, elites, foreign countries, and the economic system. He imagined an America under assault from a wide variety of threats and insisted that various forces were actively seeking to harm ordinary Americans on behalf of unseen masters. He also claimed that he alone was the only person smart enough and strong enough to roll back the tides of change and “Make America Great Again.” The themes evident in his announcement speech became commonplace in his campaign. For example, Trump was incredibly sensitive to any perceived slight that might diminish his manliness or authority. This was perhaps most apparent during the “small hands” kerfuffle during the Republican primary season. At some point during the campaign, some of Donald Trump’s critics responded to his aggressiveness and assertiveness—­his Alpha Dog demeanor, as it were—­by implying that he had smaller than normal hands. This claim, of course, was a joke: for some reason many people believe—­or tease—­that the size of a man’s hands is somehow related to the size of his penis. By joking that Trump had substantially smaller than average hands, critics were implying that Trump’s penis was inordinately small. Such mockery is fairly standard stuff during a campaign: candidates receive criticism for not just their ideas, but for their clothing options, their hair styles, and their demeanor as well. (Female candidates, in particular, face extensive criticisms of those choices, along with many others as well.) Most professional politicians learn to shrug such taunts off as the cost of public life. In fact, many politicians learn that making fun of oneself is a way they can establish friendly relationships with the people they represent. Trump, however, felt compelled to respond to the small hands jibe. He was unwilling to let anyone demean or undermine his “manliness” on any variable of any kind. He therefore directly addressed the claim about his hand size during a March 2016 Republican presidential debate. “I have to say this, he hit my hands,” Trump commented. “Nobody has ever hit my hands. I’ve never heard of this one. Look at those hands. Are they small hands? And he referred to my hands if they’re small, something else must be small. I guarantee you there’s no problem. I guarantee you.”62 Trump repeated the themes in which he introduced his candidacy throughout his campaign. His use of the social messaging platform Twitter was particularly effective: Trump would blast out tweets that dominated news cycle after news cycle, ultimately obscuring the messages that the campaigns of his Republican opponents were sending to appeal for votes during the primaries. (One estimate claimed that Trump received $2 billion in free media coverage during the primaries as his outrageous-­but-­attention catching claims drew news source after news source to rebroadcast his message.)63 He insisted that Mexico would pay for the

 

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wall dividing it from the United States, for example. He repeatedly claimed that elites were destroying the economy. He roared that Obamacare was a disaster, and that liberals were promoting illegal immigration in an effort to replace “real” Americans with illegal aliens. He also insisted that the crime rate in the United States was skyrocketing—­often because of horrible crimes supposedly committed by immigrants who had come to the United States illegally. He and his staff insisted that his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, deserved to be put in jail for having had a private e-­mail server during her time as secretary of state under President Obama. He also demanded that she be investigated for her role in failing to prevent the murder of four American diplomats in Benghazi, Libya, and referred to Secretary Clinton as “such a nasty woman” in an October 2016 debate. (His assertion that Hillary Clinton was a “nasty woman” came almost two weeks after a recording was released in which Trump was heard to have said, in 2005, that he could grab women “by the pussy” and they would let him get away with it because he was a celebrity. Trump dismissed this tape as a private conversation among men engaged in “locker room talk.”) Additionally, Trump regularly claimed that Muslims posed a special threat to American security, and so insisted that he would ban immigration from many Islamic countries when he became president. For the purposes of the analysis offered in this book, it doesn’t matter if Donald Trump is a racist or a sexist or an ethnophobe in his private heart. Instead, what matters here is the degree to which alt-­right activists and supporters believed Trump to be an ally in advancing their political agenda. This, in turn, has to be diagnosed with an assessment of what issues Trump campaigned on. It also must consider questions of his style and personal demeanor—­e.g., toxic masculinity, victimization, and the like. It can also be explored by examining the people who directly worked for his campaign. It turns out that there are many reasons to believe that Trump and his campaign made deliberate outreach to the alt-­right as he moved toward the Republican nomination and the presidency itself. Trump’s long engagement with fraught political issues like the fate of the Central Park Five, or the Birther issue of the Obama years, offers one piece of evidence that Trump sympathizes with or is comfortable promoting issues that are popular among alt-­righters. Whether it was those two cases, or the anti-­immigration, anti-­globalization positions he took during the campaign, or his apparent support for the alt-­right protestors in Charlottesville, Trump has consistently taken political stands that touch on or exploit racial fears and tensions. His words usually offered support for those white people who were fearful of racial, ethnic, and religious minorities. This was true before he became a candidate for president, and it continued to be true after he became president of the United States. Given his stated positions as a citizen, a candidate, and a president, then, it is a simple matter for racial, ethnic, religious, and even misogynist bigots to connect their goals and ideas to those advanced in the Trump campaign. Similarly, the presence of Steve Bannon as Donald Trump’s campaign manager suggests a deliberate outreach to the alt-­r ight. Bannon was not Trump’s first or even his second campaign manager; however, he was Trump’s

 

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last campaign manager—­the one who led the campaign to victory. Bannon’s previous job was as the editor/­m anager of Breitbart.com, the website discussed earlier in this chapter that became a central hub of the alt-­right. Bannon changed Breitbart from a relatively ordinary conservative news platform to a white nationalist one after he took over managing the site. After this change, Breitbart published articles opposing free trade agreements (contradicting a standard plank of the conservative Republican election platform). It also editorialized against allowing Muslim and other immigrants into the United States on the grounds that such people might undermine the relative power of white people. The Bannon-­led Breitbart also insisted that the mainstream media was politically biased against Trump, insisting that mainstream news organizations inevitably purveyed “fake news” aimed at harming Trump’s candidacy. All of these issues, of course, were both central to the campaign and key elements of alt-­right ideology. Trump also appealed for support on Alex Jones’s Infowars, the conspiracy website that helped empower the rise of the alt-­right, during his campaign. In December 2015—­in the midst of his primary campaign—­Trump appeared by video call as a guest on Infowars for a thirty-­three-­minute interview with Jones. In addition, Trump’s son, Donald Trump, Jr., promoted several Infowars “stories” on his social media feeds. So did several Trump campaign staffers. Meanwhile, Jones co-­hosted a pro-­Trump rally at the Republican National Convention in 2016 with Trump’s longtime friend and political adviser, Roger Cohen. (Cohen claims that it was he who convinced Trump to run for president in the first place.) Moreover, in his tweets and interviews Trump regularly advanced theories and arguments first addressed on Infowars. In particular, after Jones claimed that Hillary Clinton was deathly ill and so was medically unfit to be president, Trump began making similar comments on the campaign trail. Jones similarly insisted that, after Clinton suffered a concussion in a fall in 2012, she suffered a persistent brain injury that made her behave in bizarre ways. Trump referred to that rumor on the stump as well. Even Alex Jones was surprised at the degree to which the conspiracies he advanced seemed to shape Trump’s narrative, saying, in August 2016: “It is surreal to talk about issues here on air, and then word-­for-­ word hear Trump say it two days later.”64 Trump’s campaign, then, built on themes popular not just among mainstream conservatives, but among members of the alt-­right as well. His rhetorical style mixed male dominance on one hand—­the infamous “pussy grabbing” quote, or the mockery of both his male and his female challengers—­with a sense of being victimized by the “fake news.” He offered a narrative in which inner-­ city—­African American, in other words—­crime was out of control while the African American president played golf and did nothing. He insisted that both Muslim immigrants and Mexican ones were engaged in an effort to destroy “real America” with their criminal, terrorist way of life. He promised, in his nomination acceptance address, that America was broken, but “I, alone, can fix it.” Donald Trump may or may not have been an alt-­right activist, but he established a campaign that made it straightforward for alt-­right believers to recognize Trump as their friend and ally.

 

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The Trump Presidency and the Alt-­Right Trump’s relationship with the alt-­right continued after he was elected president. In part, this relationship resulted from Trump’s policy agenda, much of which continued to dovetail with that of many alt-­right activists. It was also sustained by Trump’s rhetoric, some of which asserted the moral equivalence of alt-­right protestors with other activists who promote racial integration and economic opportunity for everyone. Finally, it persisted as a result of Trump’s narrative style—­for example, his self-­reported claim to be a victim of a mainstream society that sought to mock and humiliate him at every turn. As president, Trump pushed a policy agenda closely in line with alt-­right ideas, an agenda that generally did not reflect conservative Republican perspectives on political issues. On January 27, 2017, for example, just a week after becoming president, Trump signed an executive order banning travel from seven predominantly Muslim countries: Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen. Travel from Syria was banned indefinitely; travel from the other six nations was banned for ninety days. This was consistent with Trump’s campaign pledges to keep potentially violent Muslims out of the country. However, although Trump insisted that his ban was a matter of national security, a court found that it was religiously motivated and thus was an unconstitutional use of presidential authority.65 For alt-­right activists, however, any evidence of religious bigotry coming from the president of the United States was a good thing because it suggested that Donald Trump sympathized with their views. This policy is popular among alt-­right activists and has encouraged them to support Trump’s presidency.66 Similarly, Trump has continued to promote the building of a border wall with Mexico even as the likelihood of Mexico paying for it has fallen to zero. (Former Mexican president Vincente Fox famously claimed, when asked about Trump’s claim that Mexico would pay for the border wall, “We will never, never, never pay for that wall,” in a CBS interview.)67 Trump, however, continued to promote the wall. He has, among other actions, insisted that he would sign an immigration reform law only if Congress authorized the United States to construct the wall—­out of US funds. He also enforced a policy of separating children of immigrants arrested at the US border from their parents, apparently as part of a political strategy to compel his opponents to allow the wall to be built. Limiting immigration is central to the alt-­right’s agenda, of course, and Trump’s actions on immigration have encouraged alt-­right activists and sympathizers to support him in office.68 Another Trump policy that has been popular on the alt-­right constitutes a break from traditional Republican, conservative orthodoxy: his opposition to free trade agreements among the United States and its allies. For over thirty years, Republicans have held that free trade is a vital part of US economic prosperity. The argument is that we are all better off when nations produce items they can make cheaply or at high levels of quality. Free trade is supposed to guarantee a competitive global market that holds down prices as much as possible while improving quality and access to various products. Sometimes, of course, workers in one country might be displaced when the goods and services they

 

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provide are produced more cheaply somewhere else, but despite these problems, free trade proponents insist that society will be better off in a free trade regime than it would be in a less free system. Trump, however, is not a free trader. He campaigned for office opposing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), an expansive trade treaty implemented in 1993 that created common market rules among Canada, Mexico, and the United States. He also opposed the Trans-­Pacific Partnership (TPP), an agreement made in 2016 among twelve Pacific-­bordering nations to create NAFTA-­like economic trade rules across a vast scope of the planet. As was clear in his campaign speeches suggesting China and other nations were “ripping” the United States (discussed earlier), Trump also claimed that international trade agreements were harmful to the United States and should be renegotiated or withdrawn. Such trade rules were particularly hard on blue-­collar factory workers, Trump insisted. Trump has thus systematically advocated for US economic nationalism and self-­reliance—­just as many on the alt-­right do. Trump has also advocated reducing the United States’ diplomatic and military alliances with nations around the world—­another break with Republican and conservative orthodoxy that is supported by alt-­right, “America first” nationalists. Since the end of World War II, the United States has maintained a consistent, active engagement on both security and diplomatic issues with its allies around the world. The United States has defined itself as a defender and leader of the so-­ called free world. It has also advocated for democracy and human rights in places still struggling with dictatorship and oppression. The United States’ actions have not always lived up to its rhetoric, to be sure, but the consensus among American policy makers has been that the world is a better and safer place when the United States is an actively engaged participant in world affairs than it is when the United States refuses to participate in world affairs. Most American allies agree. Trump has challenged this consensus. One of the bedrock alliances of US foreign policy, for example, is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the military and economic alliance established between the United States and eleven of its allies in Western Europe and Canada after World War II. (It has since expanded to include twenty-­nine countries across Western and Central Europe and North America.) At the heart of the NATO alliance is a mutual defense pact in which any member state is obliged to come to the assistance of any other member that is attacked. This principle is understood to be necessary for any defense agreement to operate: if countries can pick and choose the allies they will defend, then no alliance can serve as a deterrent to attack. (Notably, NATO’s mutual defense clause has only ever been implemented once: America’s allies rallied to defend the United States after the terror attacks of 9/­11.) Yet in a June 2017 speech to NATO officials, Trump personally deleted a portion of his speech that directly reaffirmed the United States’ commitment to Article V of the NATO treaty—­the section that pledges mutual defense among all members. In fact, Trump deleted the section after copies had been circulated to attendees. He did not even tell his own staff that he had excised the text. Although Trump eventually reaffirmed the US commitment to NATO in full, no one in his administration and no one among the United States’ strongest allies had the

 

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slightest sense that he was considering withdrawing from the mutual defense commitment on which NATO was founded.69 The NATO case is only one example of the willingness Trump has shown to pull back from the United States’ traditional position as global economic and political leader. As of February 2018, Trump had not appointed, and the Senate had not confirmed, US ambassadors to 41 of 188 countries around the world. At that time, the United States lacked chief diplomats in countries like South Korea, Germany, Egypt, and Turkey.70 Former secretary of state Rex Tillerson, whose previous job had been as CEO of the giant oil company Exxon/­Mobil, led a reorganization of the State Department that led to substantial cuts in budgets and staff.71 Meanwhile, in 2016 Trump startled the world by suggesting that it would be acceptable for both Japan and South Korea to develop their own nuclear weapons. His suggestion ran counter to decades of US policy that aimed to prevent nations that did not already possess nuclear weapons from developing them—­a policy known as nuclear non-­proliferation.72 Trump’s ideas may, of course, be right. It might be better for the United States to reduce its role in global affairs. That is a political matter that only time will resolve. What is striking, however, is the degree to which Trump has been willing to break with US foreign policy traditions that are embedded in Republican doctrine, not just in the ideology of liberal Democrats. In pulling back from world politics, Trump is enacting policies widely supported on the populist alt-­right. For alt-­righters, then, Trump is a political ally whether he intends to be or not. In addition, Trump’s rhetorical style resonates with his alt-­right supporters. In both his campaign and his presidency, Trump has continuously claimed to be a victim—­o f the media, of an unfair investigation into his campaign, of his financial dealings, and of the government itself. Trump presents himself as a victim in many ways. For example, he regularly claims that any news coverage, reporting, or analysis that offers anything but glowing statements of his success or character constitutes an attack on his competence or his manhood. He has repeatedly insisted that not only did he win the Electoral College, but that he won, or would have won, the popular vote for president as well—­if the 3 million extra votes for Hillary Clinton that he alleges were cast by illegal aliens were discounted. Likewise, he has claimed time and again that the crowd that watched him take the oath of office was the largest such audience in American history, and when it was shown—­easily—­that his claim was wrong, Trump reasserted his success and insisted that in fact checking his boast the media was creating “fake news” designed to make him look bad. He has also dismissed any poll result that showed him to be in any way an unpopular president: such reports, Trump thundered, were total nonsense. As recently as July 24, 2018, Trump demanded, “Just stick with us, don’t believe the crap you see from these people, the fake news,” Mr. Trump said as the crowd erupted in boos. He later added: “Just remember, what you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.”73 Regardless of the report, if it challenged his sense of accomplishment or dignity, Trump responded as if he was being attacked personally.

 

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Unsurprisingly, President Trump also reacted aggressively to more serious issues related to his administration. Two interrelated investigations drew much of his ire: the role the FBI played in examining possible connections between Trump campaign officials and agents of Russia seeking to influence the 2016 presidential election, and the probe led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller into the same issue. No one would expect President Trump to be happy or excited about any examination of his administration, of course, but Trump has been strident in his conviction that the examination of his campaign is a personal assault—­the “greatest witch hunt in American history!” as he put it on Twitter. Although Special Counsel Mueller’s inquiry has, as of the writing, led to the indictment of thirty-­two people and three corporations, and has produced six guilty pleas,74 Trump continues to insist that the basis for the investigation—­apparent efforts among members of the Trump campaign, including Trump’s son, Donald, Jr., to collude with Russian hackers to subvert the US presidential election—­is phony: “The Russia-­Trump collusion story is a total hoax,” Trump claimed in one representative tweet on May 8, 2017, “When will this taxpayer funded charade end?”75 Trump offered a similar narrative about the FBI’s investigation into his campaign. When he discovered—­along with the rest of America—­that there was an FBI informant in the Trump campaign leaking information about suspected collusion between members of the Trump campaign and agents of the Russian government, Trump insisted that any investigation into his campaign was an unprecedented assault on American freedom: “They go after Phony Collusion with Russia,” Trump tweeted, “a made up Scam, and end up getting caught in a major SPY scandal the likes of which this country may never have seen before! What goes around, comes around!”76 Rather than let this apparent affront pass, Trump ordered the Department of Justice to investigate the FBI’s investigation of his campaign: “I hereby demand,” Trump tweeted, “and will do so officially tomorrow, that the Department of Justice look into whether or not the FBI/­ DOJ infiltrated or surveilled the Trump Campaign for Political Purposes—­ and if any such demands or requests were made by people within the Obama Administration!”77 Trump also insists that the government itself is opposed to his presidency. In Trump’s narrative, government’s permanent bureaucracy—­the people who work for the federal government regardless of who is president, and who do jobs that require expertise rather than political loyalty—­are engaged in systematic efforts to thwart Trump’s agenda. Whether it is Justice Department officials who support the investigation into alleged collusion with Russia, or scientists in the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) who release reports about global climate change despite Trump’s insistence that any alleged changes in Earth’s climate are a Chinese-­fabricated hoax, Trump and his allies regularly insist that the federal government is staffed by people who work to actively subvert the president’s plans. Thus, he insists that government is really run by a conspiracy of permanent bureaucrats known as the “Deep State,” not the elected officials in Congress and the White House.78 What the militia of the 1990s called the Shadow Government or the New World Order, President Trump and his allies now describe as the Deep State.

 

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Trump’s sense of victimhood empowers another theme of his rhetoric: his regular use of belittling and mocking language to describe those people and groups he dislikes. For example, in April 2018, an investigation by the New York Times found that President Trump had attacked, mocked, or denigrated 459 people, places, or things since becoming president.79 Trump’s allies and supporters, of course, consider such terms as proof that he is “authentic.” They insist that such language proves that he is unafraid to challenge the politically correct rules imposed on America by liberals and progressives working to trample freedom in the United States. In contrast, his opponents find his language to be a dangerous violation of norms of civility. In any case, Trump regularly uses harsh language to illustrate his power and dominance over his political opponents. For alt-­righters, Trump’s language is both empowering and energizing.80 As one T-­shirt worn at the 2016 Republican National Convention put it, “Trump 2016: Fuck Your Feelings.”81 Thus, even though he believes himself to be the unfair target of government investigations, Trump also insists that he is fighting back against his enemies—­enemies he claims he shares with “regular” Americans. Taken as a whole, then, President Trump has led an administration in which both policy and rhetoric have corresponded, at least some of the time, more closely with the goals of the alt-­right than with the traditions of Republican conservatism. His economic nationalism and foreign policy isolationism stand at odds with long-­established Republican positions on both the economy and the proper role of the United States in the world. His sense of victimization and his pattern of lashing out at his critics is more typical of bloggers than of experienced politicians. In challenging established norms of political communication, Trump appeals to disaffected people who believe that American society and culture do not value their points of view or experiences. His administration has thereby empowered the alt-­right cause in ways no modern administration has ever done before.

The Aftermath of Charlottesville and the Decline of the Alt-­Right Ironically, the alt-­right movement began to weaken as the Trump administration aged despite the presence of people friendly to its goals in the White House. At least in the short run, the months following the Charlottesville violence were ones of retreat and retrenchment for the alt-­right. The first prominent alt-­r ighter to fall from power in the aftermath of Charlottesville was Steve Bannon, the campaign strategist who had made Breitbart.com “the darling of the alt-­r ight,” and who led the Trump campaign to victory. Bannon was fired on August 17, just a week after the events in Charlottesville. Bannon had, reportedly, been in a precarious position even before the Charlottesville clash, but after it his position became untenable. In particular, John Kelly, President Trump’s chief of staff, sought to impose a more orderly command structure on the White House, avoiding incendiary comments and reinforcing more traditional standards of presidential leadership. Bannon, who pushed Trump toward the political extreme, was not someone Kelly wanted

 

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around the president. A major voice for the alt-­right in the administration was thus pushed out within a week of Charlottesville.82 Bannon’s Breitbart also declined in readers and visitors after the violence in Charlottesville shocked the nation. From October 2017 to February 2018 the site lost half its number of unique monthly visitors (a common measure of how much attention is being paid to an Internet site). Visitors declined on other measures as well: comparing January 2017 with January 2018, and February 2017 with February 2018, overall visits were down by 50 percent. February 2018 also saw the fewest visitors to the site since before Donald Trump announced his candidacy in 2015.83 Individual participants in the Charlottesville rally also faced legal and social consequences for their overt hate and acts of violence. As could be expected, James Fields, the man who drove his car into the crowd of protestors opposing the alt-­right march in Charlottesville, was charged with first-­degree murder. He faces trial in November 2018.84 In addition, in a case mirroring the strategy the SPLC used to break up the Aryan Nations in the 1990s, a group of nine Charlottesville victims of alt-­right violence sued the organizers of the Charlottesville protests on grounds that those activists had engaged in a criminal conspiracy to commit violence in Charlottesville.85 Sines v. Kessler is currently working its way through the court system.86 Alt-­right leaders like Richard Spencer found chilly receptions when they sought audiences after Charlottesville. Spencer, who had already been punched in the face by a protestor in January 2017, found it much harder to build support for his cause in the months after the violence in Charlottesville. In March 2018, for example, Spencer organized a meeting at Michigan State University. Fewer than forty people attended Spencer’s talk. The event drew hundreds of counter-­ protestors, however. These counter-­protestors managed to prevent members of the white nationalist Traditionalist Workers Party (TWP) from attending Spencer’s event.87 (The TWP, one of the largest white pride political parties in the United States, subsequently disintegrated as its leader was caught in a tawdry, tabloid-­esque sex scandal with his mother-­in-­law.)88 Spencer, meanwhile, has been barred from entering twenty-­six European countries because of his political views.89 His prominence has garnered him only notoriety, not influence, in the months since the violence in Charlottesville. Spencer, notably, is one of the named defendants in Sines v. Kessler. He and other alt-­right leaders have referred to lawsuits like Sines v. Kessler as “lawfare,” or “warfare by legal means.”90 In fact, Spencer has gone on YouTube to ask supporters for donations so he can hire an attorney and mount a full defense of his actions. Whether one approves of the tactic or not, it is clear that such lawsuits have hurt the alt-­right cause in the United States—­as their proponents hoped would happen. Andrew Anglin, whose “The Daily Stormer” website has been one of the anchors of the alt-­right, is also facing a lawsuit. Tanya Gersh, who is represented by the SPLC, sued Anglin for harassment when he allegedly encouraged his followers to harass Gersh after Gersh had a dispute with Richard Spencer’s mother.

 

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Gersh alleges that Anglin mobilized his followers as Internet trolls—­people who use social media to harass and demean others.91 That case, too, is working through the court system, but if Gersh is successful, the judgment she receives will add another strategy to the repertoire of options that legal activists can use to erode the influence of the alt-­right in the United States. In an effort to dissuade anyone from joining alt-­right groups or participating in alt-­right activities, opponents of the alt-­right have also publicly identified members of white nationalist groups who are not leaders in the movement. One alt-­right rally participant in Charlottesville, for example, was quickly identified as a twenty-­year-­old student at the University of Nevada. Peter Cvjetanovic had been prominent during the initial, Friday night march as a result of perhaps the most-­known photo taken during the rally—­a photo showing him screaming, his face evidently contorted by hate.92 Once he was identified, a campus petition circulated asking that he be banned from the university. Similarly, a student at Oregon State University who was a member of student government was exposed as a white nationalist when he was accused of vandalizing cars owned by people protesting the alt-­right. 93 As the alt-­right grew in influence, then, it also drew greater attention to itself, and activists who had previously hidden behind a veil of digital anonymity were confronted by social reproach as their alt-­right sympathies were exposed to public view. A group called Unicorn Riot has also undertaken cyber operations against alt-­r ight activists. The group has obtained the logs of servers used to organize rallies like the one in Charlottesville. It has provided those logs to the media and to lawyers leading the lawsuit against the alt-­right leaders of the Charlottesville protests. Even online, then, it has become increasingly difficult for alt-­righters to protect their anonymity as they promote alt-­right political activity.94 In addition, YouTube has moved to ban hate speech from its service and has implemented policies allowing it to assess whether posts violate its terms of use. Twitter has banned alt-­right accounts completely. Facebook, too, has worked to eliminate hate speech from its platform. Perhaps the most prominent site removed from these social media platforms has been Alex Jones’s Infowars, which was ordered off these sites in August 2018. Whether one thinks that such tactics are laudable or that they are a violation of others’ free speech rights, they appear to have played a role in raising what economists call the “opportunity costs” associated with participating in alt-­right activism. It is much less likely after Charlottesville that any advocate of white nationalism, or any sympathizer with those views, can express his or her sentiments anonymously. As a result, the alt-­right has become much less prominent since the Charlottesville riots. Ironically, a rally that was intended to promote alt-­right ideals and goals by protesting the removal of a Confederate statue in Charlottesville, Virginia, led the movement to lose supporters. It also led to the rise of a counter-­movement dedicated to destroying the alt-­right in the United States. Meanwhile, the alt-­right movement has gone from surging to beleaguered—­despite its ally (or sympathizer) in the White House.

 

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Conclusion The alt-­right is not new in the United States. Racism, ethnocentrism, and the mobilization of political power to advantage white people in the US political system have all been central features of the American history since the first European settlers landed in the Western Hemisphere. The contemporary alt-­right movement is just the latest version of an old story. That said, it is also true that over the past fifty years or so, US society has made significant efforts to purge itself of the racist, misogynist, and ethnically biased rules and norms that seemed to run in contradiction to the Declaration of Independence’s promise that “All men—­[all people]—­are created equal.” Discriminatory laws and abusive rhetoric have been reshaped in ways that have allowed more people to fully explore their hopes and dreams in the American community. Nothing is perfect—­nothing ever is. But the United States that exists today is quite different from the United States that once was, at least in terms of being open to many different types of people and many different ways of approaching what it means to be an American. Such changes have become deeply embedded in American life, and when the alt-­right aggressively transgressed these new norms of racial, ethnic, and gender equality in the United States (by chanting openly racist slogans, for example), many Americans recoiled from the alt-­right’s extremism. Consequently, the fact that the alt-­right has declined in recent months should not surprise anyone. Yet, as the election of Donald Trump suggests, and as the precipitous rise and sharp decline of the alt-­right movement shows, the changes that the United States has made in the past fifty years are still a work in progress. Even as many people have found greater freedom to express their religious and cultural and lifestyle distinctiveness in American society, many other Americans have grown resentful and fearful of these changes. Change is rarely easy, and cultural and political change is especially hard. Some Americans today believe that the country is changing in ways that will destroy their vision of what it means to be an American in the first place. Such people have formed the core of the alt-­right movement in the United States. Those motivated by their belief in the racial and cultural superiority of white people have found an ally—­or at least a sympathizer—­in Donald Trump. He has a long record of promoting ideas and attitudes that reflect white nationalist ideas and has a rhetorical style that identifies himself as a victim of the same forces that many alt-­righters insist are unfairly targeting them. In addition, as this book is going to press it appears that President Trump is poised to cancel an Obama-­ era program that provided federal grants to organizations combatting right-­wing violence in the United States.95 Trump’s statements, actions, and policy positions empowered the alt-­right throughout his campaign and presidency. The movement is likely to find inspiration in the Trump presidency however long it lasts. The conditions that led to the rise of the alt-­right have not gone away. It does not follow that the alt-­right’s contemporary decline is a permanent one. So long as some Americans espouse alt-­right values, the movement will persist. If alt-­right activists continue to find allies in the political system, their influence will likely grow. The alt-­right has not yet left the American political stage.

 

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In 1943, Chinese immigration to the United States was capped at 105 per year. “Immigration to the United States, 1789–1930,” Harvard University Library Open Collections Program, http://­ ocp.hul.harvard.edu/­immigration/­exclusion.html, accessed August 7, 2018. Cf., Tim Weiner, Enemies: A History of the FBI (New York: Random House, 2012). The discussion of Richard Spencer is derived from multiple sources, including: Graeme Wood, “His Kampf,” The Atlantic, June 2017, https://­www.theatlantic.com/­magazine/­archive/­2017/­06/­his-­ kampf/­524505, accessed August 7, 2018; John Harkinson, “Meet the White Nationalist Trying to Ride the Trump Train to Lasting Power,” Mother Jones, October 27, 2016, https://­www.mother jones.com/­politics/­2016/­10/­richard-­spencer-­trump-­alt-­right-­white-­nationalist, accessed August 7, 2018; “Richard Bertrand Spencer,” Southern Poverty Law Center, https://­www.splcenter.org/­ fighting-­hate/­extremist-­files/­individual/­richard-­bertrand-­spencer-­0, accessed August 7, 2018. The discussion of Milo Yiannopoulos is derived from multiple sources, including: Dorian Lynskey, “The Rise and Fall of Milo Yiannopoulos—­How a Shallow Actor Played the Bad Guy for Money,” The Guardian, February 21, 2017, https://­www.theguardian.com/­world/­2017/­feb/­21/­milo-­ yiannopoulos-­rise-­and-­fall-­shallow-­actor-­bad-­guy-­hate-­speech, accessed August 7, 2018; and Joel Stein, “Milo Yiannopoulos Is the Pretty, Monstrous Face of the Alt-­Right,” Bloomberg News, https://­ www.bloomberg.com/­features/­2016-­america-­divided/­milo-­yiannopoulos, accessed August 7, 2018. David Folkenflick, “Milo Yiannopoulos Resigns from Breitbart after Underage Sex Comments,” https://­www.npr.org/­2017/­02/­21/­516488427/­milo-­yiannopoulos-­resigns-­from-­breitbart-­ after-­underage-­sex-­comments, accessed August 7, 2018. Frank Scheck, “Critic’s Notebook: Milo Yiannopoulos Comes across Like a Teddy Bear on His ‘Real Time with Bill Maher’ Appearance,” https://­w ww.hollywoodreporter.com/­ news/­critics-­notebook-­milo-­yiannopoulos-­comes-­like-­a-­teddy-­bear-­his-­r eal-­time-­bill-­maher-­ appearance-­977553, accessed August 7, 2018. “Where News Audiences Fit on the Political Spectrum,” http://­w ww.journalism.org/­ interactives/­media-­polarization/­outlet/­breitbart, accessed August 7, 2018. Wil S. Hylton, “Down the Breitbart Hole,” https://­w ww.nytimes.com/­2 017/­0 8/­1 6/­ magazine/­breitbart-­alt-­right-­steve-­bannon.html, accessed August 7, 2018. Kevin Roose, “The ‘Alt-­Right’ Created a Parallel Internet. It’s a Holy Mess,” https://­www. cnbc.com/­2017/­12/­11/­the-­alt-­right-­created-­a-­parallel-­internet-­its-­a-­holy-­mess.html, accessed August 7, 2018. The discussion of Andrew Anglin is derived from multiple sources, including: Luke O’Brien, “The Making of an American Nazi,” The Atlantic, December 2017, https://­www.theatlantic.com/­ magazine/­archive/­2017/­12/­the-­making-­of-­an-­american-­nazi/­544119, accessed August 7, 2018; Joel Oliphint and Andy Downing, “The White Nationalist from Worthington,” http://­ www.columbusalive.com/­e ntertainment/­2 0170208/­w hite-­n ationalist-­f rom-­w orthington, accessed August 7, 2018; “Andrew Anglin,” Southern Poverty Law Center, https://­www.splcen ter.org/­fighting-­hate/­extremist-­files/­individual/­andrew-­anglin, accessed August 7, 2018; and a review of The Daily Stormer, https://­dailystormer.name, multiple dates. Luke O’Brien, “The Making of an American Nazi”; Sara Sidner and Mallory Simon, “Neo-­Nazi Site Founder Says ‘Troll Storm’ Is Protected Speech, Wants Lawsuit Dismissed,” https://­www.cnn. com/­2017/­12/­03/­us/­daily-­stormer-­troll-­storm-­lawsuit/­index.html, accessed August 7, 2018. https://­dailystormer.name, accessed May 22, 2018. Eric Killelea, “Alex Jones’ Mis-­Infowars: 7 Bat-­Sh*t Conspiracy Theories,” Rolling Stone, February 21, 2017, https://­www.rollingstone.com/­culture/­culture-­lists/­alex-­jones-­mis-­infowars-­ 7-­b at-­s ht-­c onspiracy-­t heories-­1 95468/­s atanists-­a re-­t aking-­o ver-­a merica-­1 16484, accessed August 7, 2018. Jonathan Tilove, “Sandy Hook Victim’s Parents, Targeted by ‘InfoWars’ Host, Are Suing,” August 2, 2018, https://­www.seattletimes.com/­nation-­world/­nation/­suit-­against-­alex-­jones-­ by-­slain-­childs-­parents-­in-­court, accessed August 7, 2018. Abby Ohlheiser, “How Alex Jones Turned the Parkland Shooting into a Week-­Long News Cycle about Himself,” Washington Post, March 6, 2018, https://­www.washingtonpost.com/­news/­ the-­intersect/­wp/­2018/­03/­06/­how-­alex-­jones-­turned-­the-­parkland-­shooting-­into-­a-­week-­ long-­news-­cycle-­about-­himself/­?utm_term=.7294bb122ab0, accessed August 7, 2018.

 

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16 James Doubek, “Conspiracy Theorist Alex Jones Apologizes for Promoting ‘Pizzagate,’ ” March 26, 2017, https://­www.npr.org/­sections/­thetwo-­way/­2017/­03/­26/­521545788/­ conspiracy-­theorist-­alex-­jones-­apologizes-­for-­promoting-­pizzagate, accessed August 7, 2018. 17 Marc Fisher, John Woodrow Cox, and Peter Hermann, “Pizzagate: From Rumor, to Hashtag, to Gunfire in D.C.,” The Washington Post, December 6, 2016, https://­www.washingtonpost. com/­local/­pizzagate-­from-­r umor-­to-­hashtag-­to-­gunfire-­in-­dc/­2016/­12/­06/­4c7def50-­bbd4-­ 11e6-­94ac-­3d324840106c_story.html?utm_term=.7aa45dd17a6a, accessed August 7, 2018. 18 “Hate Groups,” Southern Poverty Law Center, https://­www.splcenter.org/­hate-­map, accessed August 7, 2018. Note: Some of the groups the SPLC lists are left-­wing organizations, and there is some controversy about how the SPLC decides one groups is a hate group or not. Such arguments describe marginal cases, however. The core of hate groups is not in significant doubt. 19 The discussion of alt-­right ideology derives from multiple sources, including: “Alt-­Right,” Southern Poverty Law Center, https://­www.splcenter.org/­fighting-­hate/­extremist-­files/­ideology/­ alt-­right, accessed August 7, 2018; George Hawley, Making Sense of the Alt-­Right (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017); David Neiwert, Alt-­America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump (London: Verso Books, 2017). 20 Anti-­D efamation League, “14 Words,” https://­w ww.adl.org/­e ducation/­r eferences/­h ate-­ symbols/­14-­words#.VfCCOM5Z9pk, accessed August 7, 2018. 21 Andrew Anglin, “Will the Texas Shooting Cause Women to Reconsider the Systematic Abuse of Men,” The Daily Stormer, https://­dailystormer.name/­will-­the-­texas-­shooting-­cause-­women-­to-­ reconsider-­the-­systematic-­abuse-­of-­men, accessed May 23, 2018. 22 Southern Poverty Law Center, “Post-­Election Bias Incidents up to 1,372,” https://­www. splcenter.org/­hatewatch/­2017/­02/­10/­post-­election-­bias-­incidents-­1372-­new-­collaboration-­ propublica, accessed August 7, 2018. 23 SPLC, “Post-­Election Bias.” 24 Stephen M. Utych, “How Dehumanization Influences Attitudes toward Immigrants,” Political Research Quarterly 71, no. 2 (2017): 440–52. 25 Christian S. Crandall, Jason M. Miller, and Mark H. White, II, ‘Changing Norms Following the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election the Trump Effect on Prejudice,” Social Psychology and Personality Science 9, no. 2 (2018): 186–92. 26 Mark H. White II and Christian S. Crandall, “Freedom of Racist Speech: Ego and Expressive Threats.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 113, no. 3 (2017): 413–29. 27 Jane Coaston, “Self-­Described Nazis and White Supremacists Are Running as Republicans across the Country. The GOP Is Terrified,” Vox.com, https://­www.vox.com/­2018/­7/­9/­17525860/­ nazis-­r ussell-­walker-­arthur-­jones-­republicans-­illinois-­north-­carolina-­virginia, accessed August 7, 2018. 28 Coaston, “Self-­Described Nazis and White Supremacists.” 29 Joe Heim, “Recounting a Day of Rage, Hate, Violence and Death,” The Washington Post, August 14, 2017, https://­www.washingtonpost.com/­graphics/­2017/­local/­charlottesville-­ timeline/­?utm_term=.a7f71bd49dba, accessed August 7, 2018. 30 Helm, “Recounting a Day.” 31 Helm, “Recounting a Day.” 32 Helm, “Recounting a Day.” 33 Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Brian M. Rosenthal, “Man Charged after White Nationalist Rally in Charlottesville Ends in Deadly Violence,” New York Times, August 12, 2017, https://­www.nytimes. com/­2017/­08/­12/­us/­charlottesville-­protest-­white-­nationalist.html, accessed August 7, 2018. 34 Laurel Wamsley, “Quoting Mandela, Obama’s Tweet after Charlottesville Is the Most-­Liked Ever,” National Public Radio, August 16, 2017, https://­www.npr.org/­sections/­thetwo-­way/­ 2017/­08/­16/­543882516/­obama-­s-­tweet-­after-­charlottesville-­is-­the-­most-­liked-­tweet-­ever, accessed August 7, 2018. 35 Chris Cillizza, “Donald Trump’s Incredibly Unpresidential Statement on Charlottesville,” CNN. com, August 13, 2017, https://­www.cnn.com/­2017/­08/­12/­politics/­trump-­charlottesville-­ statement/­index.html, accessed August 7, 2018. 36 Glenn Thrush, “New Outcry as Trump Rebukes Charlottesville Racists 2 Days Later,” New York Times, August 14, 2017, https://­www.nytimes.com/­2017/­08/­14/­us/­politics/­trump-­ charlottesville-­protest.html, accessed August 7, 2018.

 

Notes

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37 Thrush, “New Outcry.” 38 Rosie Gray, “Trump Defends White-­Nationalist Protesters: ‘Some Very Fine People on Both Sides,’ ” The Atlantic, August 15, 2017, https://­www.theatlantic.com/­politics/­archive/­2017/­ 08/­trump-­defends-­white-­nationalist-­protesters-­some-­very-­fine-­people-­on-­both-­sides/­537012, accessed August 7, 2018. 39 Gray, “Trump Defends White-­Nationalist Protestors.” 40 Michael D. Shear and Maggie Haberman, “Trump Defends Initial Remarks on Charlottesville; Again Blames ‘Both Sides,’ ” New York Times, August 15, 2017, https://­www.nytimes.com/­ 2017/­08/­15/­us/­politics/­trump-­press-­conference-­charlottesville.html, accessed August 7, 2018. 41 Shear and Haberman, “Trump Defends Initial Remarks.” 42 Thrush, “New Outcry.” 43 Shear and Habermas, “Trump Defends Initial Remarks.” 44 The discussion of the details of the Central Park Five case derives from numerous sources, including: Amy Davidson Sorkin, “Donald Trump and the Central Park Five,” The New Yorker, June 23, 2014, https://­www.newyorker.com/­news/­amy-­davidson/­donald-­trump-­and-­the-­ central-­park-­five, accessed August 7, 2018; Chris Smith, “Central Park Revisited,” New York Magazine, http://­nymag.com/­nymetro/­news/­crimelaw/­features/­n_7836, accessed August 7, 2018; Sarah Burns, The Central Park Five (New York: Vintage Books, 2012). 45 Oliver Laughland, “Donald Trump and the Central Park Five: The Racially Charged Rise of a Demagogue,” The Guardian, February 17, 2016, https://­www.theguardian.com/­us-­news/­ 2016/­feb/­17/­central-­park-­five-­donald-­trump-­jogger-­rape-­case-­new-­york, accessed August 7, 2018. 46 Matt Ford, “Donald Trump’s Racially Charged Advocacy of the Death Penalty,” The Atlantic, December 18, 2015, https://­www.theatlantic.com/­politics/­archive/­2015/­12/­donald-­trump-­ death-­penalty/­420069, accessed August 7, 2018. 47 Sarah Burns, “Why Trump Doubled Down on the Central Park Five,” New York Times, October 16, 2016, https://­www.nytimes.com/­2016/­10/­18/­opinion/­why-­trump-­doubled-­down-­ on-­the-­central-­park-­five.html, accessed August 7, 2018. 48 Ford, “Donald Trump’s Racially Charged Advocacy of the Death Penalty.” 49 Ford, “Donald Trump’s Racially Charged Advocacy of the Death Penalty.” 50 Ashley Parker and Steve Eder, “Inside the Six Weeks Donald Trump Was a Nonstop ‘Birther,’ ” New York Times, July 2, 2016, https://­www.nytimes.com/­2016/­07/­03/­us/­politics/­donald-­ trump-­birther-­obama.html, accessed August 7, 2018. 51 Mollie Reilly, “There’s Still No Evidence That Trump Sent Investigators to Hawaii to Dig up Dirt on Obama,” The Huffington Post, September 16, 2016, https://­www.huffingtonpost.com/­ entry/­donald-­trump-­hawaii-­investigators_us_57dc3bffe4b04a1497b46da1, accessed August 9, 2018. 52 Parker and Eder, “Inside the Six Weeks.” 53 C-­S PAN: President Obama at the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Dinner, YouTube, https://­youtu.be/­n9mzJhvC-­8E, accessed August 7, 2018. 54 PBS Frontline, “The Choice 2016,” https://­w ww.pbs.org/­w gbh/­f rontline/­f ilm/­t he-­ choice-­2016, accessed August 7, 2018. 55 Alana Abramson, “How Donald Trump Perpetuated the ‘Birther’ Movement for Years,” ABC News, September 16, 2016, https://­abcnews.go.com/­Politics/­donald-­trump-­perpetuated-­ birther-­movement-­years/­story?id=42138176, accessed August 7, 2018. 56 German Lopez, “Trump Is Still Reportedly Pushing His Racist ‘Birther’ Conspiracy Theory about Obama,” Vox.com, November 29, 2017, https://­www.vox.com/­policy-­and-­politics/­ 2017/­11/­29/­16713664/­trump-­obama-­birth-­certificate, accessed August 7, 2018. 57 Ryan Struyk, “67 Times Donald Trump Tweeted about the ‘Birther’ Movement,” ABC News, September 16, 2016, https://­a bcnews.go.com/­P olitics/­6 7-­t imes-­d onald-­t rump-­t weeted-­ birther-­movement/­story?id=42145590, accessed August 7, 2018. 58 http://­time.com/­3923128/­donald-­trump-­announcement-­speech, accessed August 7, 2018. 59 http://­time.com/­3923128/­donald-­trump-­announcement-­speech, accessed August 7, 2018. 60 http://­time.com/­3923128/­donald-­trump-­announcement-­speech, accessed August 7, 2018. 61 http://­time.com/­3923128/­donald-­trump-­announcement-­speech, accessed August 7, 2018.

 

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62 Nick Gass, “Trump on Small Hands: ‘I Guarantee You There’s No Problem’,” Politico.com, March 3, 2016, https://­www.politico.com/­blogs/­2016-­gop-­primary-­live-­updates-­and-­results/­ 2016/­03/­donald-­trump-­small-­hands-­220223, accessed August 7, 2018. 63 Nicholas Confessore and Karen Yourish, “$2 Billion Worth of Free Media for Donald Trump,” New York Times, March  15, 2016, https://­w ww.nytimes.com/­2 016/­0 3/­1 6/­u pshot/­ measuring-­donald-­trumps-­mammoth-­advantage-­in-­free-­media.html, accessed August 7, 2018. 64 Tim Murphy, “How Donald Trump Became Conspiracy Theorist in Chief,” Mother Jones, November/­D ecember  2016, https://­w ww.motherjones.com/­p olitics/­2 016/­1 0/­t rump-­ infowars-­alex-­jones-­clinton-­conspiracy-­theories, accessed August 7, 2018. 65 Steve Almasy and Darran Simon, “A Timeline of President Trump’s Travel Bans,” CNN.com, March 30, 2017, https://­www.cnn.com/­2017/­02/­10/­us/­trump-­travel-­ban-­timeline/­index. html, accessed August 7, 2018. 66 Taylor Hosking, “The Rise of the Alt-­Right,” The Atlantic, December 28, 2017, https://­www. theatlantic.com/­politics/­archive/­2017/­12/­alt-­right/­549242, accessed August 7, 2018; Stephen Utych, “How Dehumanization Influences Attitudes toward Immigrants,” Political Research Quarterly 71, no. 2 (2018): 440–52; Crandall, Miller, and White II, “Changing Norms.” 67 Blair Guild, “Former Mexican President Vicente Fox: ‘We Will Never, Never, Never Pay for That Wall,’  ” CBS News, January 24, 2018, https://­www.cbsnews.com/­news/­vicente-­fox-­former-­ mexican-­president-­border-­wall-­cbsn-­red-­and-­blue, accessed August 7, 2018; YouTube, “Vicente Fox Stuns FBN Anchor: ‘I’m Not Going to Pay for That F*cking Wall,’ ” https://­www.youtube. com/­watch?v=lm89Jjxj7QI, accessed August 7, 2018. 68 Crandall, Miller, and White II, “Changing Norms.” 69 Susan B. Glasser, “Trump National Security Team Blindsided by NATO Speech,” Politico.com, June 5, 2017, https://­www.politico.com/­magazine/­story/­2017/­06/­05/­trump-­nato-­speech-­ national-­security-­team-­215227, accessed August 7, 2018. 70 Oren Dorell, “South Korea, Germany, Egypt: These Are among 41 Countries That Don’t Have a U.S. Ambassador,” USA Today, February 27, 2018, https://­www.usatoday.com/­story/­news/ ­ world/­2 018/­0 2/­2 7/­h elp-­w anted-­4 1-­a mbassador-­p osts-­s till-­v acant/­3 56373002, accessed August 7, 2018. 71 Editorial Board, “Take the State Department off the Chopping Block,” Bloomberg News, February 16, 2018, https://­www.bloomberg.com/­view/­articles/­2018-­02-­16/­trump-­s-­deep-­cuts-­to-­ state-­department-­budget-­hurt-­diplomacy, accessed August 7, 2018. 72 Tom LoBianco, “Trump Flip-­Flops on Japan Nukes,” CNN.com, June 2, 2016, https://­www. cnn.com/­2016/­06/­02/­politics/­donald-­trump-­nuclear-­weapons-­japan/­index.html, accessed August 7, 2018. 73 Kimberley Richards, “Trump’s Latest Speech Compared to ‘1984’: ‘What You’re Seeing and What You’re Reading Is Not What’s Happening,’ ” The Independent, July 25, 2018, https://­ www.independent.co.uk/­news/­world/­americas/­us-­politics/­trump-­speech-­fake-­news-­1984-­ orwell-­kansas-­a8463471.html, accessed August 7, 2018. 74 Andrew Prokop, “All of Robert Mueller’s Indictments and Plea Deals in the Russia Investigation So Far,” Vox.com, July 13, 2018, https://­www.vox.com/­policy-­and-­politics/­2018/­2/­20/­ 17031772/­mueller-­indictments-­grand-­jury, accessed August 7, 2018. 75 Mallory Shelbourne, “Trump: Russia Collusion Story ‘a Total Hoax,’ ” The Hill, May 8, 2017, http://­thehill.com/­homenews/­administration/­332458-­trump-­r ussia-­collusion-­story-­a-­total-­ hoax, accessed August 7, 2018. 76 Adam Edelman, “ ‘Spygate’: Trump Ramps Up Attacks on FBI, Russia Probe,” NBC News, May 23, 2018, https://­www.nbcnews.com/­politics/­donald-­trump/­spygate-­trump-­ramps-­ attacks-­fbi-­russia-­probe-­n876711, accessed August 7, 2018. 77 Brent D. Griffiths, “Trump Demands DOJ Look into Whether FBI ‘Infiltrated or Surveilled’ His Campaign,” Politico.com, May 20, 2018, https://­www.politico.com/­story/­2018/­05/­20/­ trump-­times-­foreign-­meddling-­prince-­598061, accessed August 7, 2018. 78 Glenn Garvin, “Is the Deep State Real—­And Is It Really at War with Donald Trump?,” Miami Herald, February  2, 2018, https://­w ww.miamiherald.com/­n ews/­p olitics-­g overnment/­ article198038824.html, accessed August 7, 2018. 79 Jasmine C. Lee and Kevin Quealy, “The 487 People, Places and Things Donald Trump Has Insulted on Twitter: A Complete List,” New York Times, July 10, 2018, https://­www.nytimes.com/­interactive/­ 2016/­01/­28/­upshot/­donald-­trump-­twitter-­insults.html, accessed August 7, 2018.

 

Notes

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80 Crandall, Miller, and White II, “Changing Norms”; Lucian Gideon Conway, Meredith A. Repke, and Shannon C. Houck, “Donald Trump as a Cultural Revolt against Perceived Communication Restriction: Priming Political Correctness Norms Causes More Trump Support,” Journal of Social and Political Psychology 5 (2017): 1, https://­jspp.psychopen.eu/­article/­view/­732, accessed August 7, 2018. 81 https://­4.bp.blogspot.com/­-­GQOu2tIwBAk/­WaboNY57oII/­AAAAAAAAyJE/­9iMBt1JZ GcUIMX5XS2VvBYoaJqUCFgQYACLcBGAs/­s 1600/­t rump_feelings_tshirts.jpg, accessed August 7, 2018. 82 Jeremy Diamond, Kaitlan Collins, and Elizabeth Landers, “Trump’s Chief Strategist Steve Bannon Fired,” CNN.com, August 19, 2017, https://­www.cnn.com/­2017/­08/­18/­politics/­steve-­ bannon-­white-­house/­index.html, accessed August 7, 2018. 83 Mark Moore, “Readership Plummets for Alt-­R ight Breitbart without Bannon,” New York Post, March 21, 2018, https://­nypost.com/­2018/­03/­21/­readership-­plummets-­for-­alt-­right-­ breitbart-­without-­bannon, accessed August 7, 2018. 84 “James Alex Fields Set for Three-­Week Trial in Charlottesville in November,” Richmond Times-­ Dispatch, January 3, 2018, https://­www.richmond.com/­news/­virginia/­james-­alex-­fields-­set-­ for-­three-­week-­trial-­in-­charlottesville/­article_f1f55d42-­22fe-­5e9f-­9143-­86ff812f8f0a.html, accessed August 8, 2018. 85 Alan Feuer, “Planners of Deadly Charlottesville Rally Are Tested in Court,” New York Times, February 12, 2018, https://­www.nytimes.com/­2018/­02/­12/­us/­charlottesville-­lawsuit-­far-­ right-­heather-­heyer.html, accessed August 8, 2018. 86 https://­www.courtlistener.com/­docket/­6168921/­sines-­v-­kessler/­?filed_after=&filed_before=& entry_gte=&entry_lte=&order_by=desc, accessed August 8, 2018. 87 R. J. Wolcott, “White Nationalist Richard Spencer Blames Violent Protesters for Small Crowd at MSU,” Lansing State Journal, March 5, 2018, https://­www.lansingstatejournal.com/­story/­ news/­local/­2018/­03/­05/­richard-­spencer-­michigan-­state/­397727002, accessed August 8, 2018. 88 Brett Barrouquere and Rachel Janik, “TWP Chief Matthew Heimbach Arrested for Battery after Affair with Top Spokesman’s Wife,” Southern Poverty Law Center, March 13, 2018, https://­ www.splcenter.org/­hatewatch/­2018/­03/­13/­twp-­chief-­matthew-­heimbach-­arrested-­battery-­ after-­affair-­top-­spokesmans-­wife, accessed August 8, 2018. 89 Maya Oppenheim, “White Supremacist Richard Spencer ‘Banned from 26 European Countries,’ ” The Independent, November 23, 2017, https://­www.independent.co.uk/­news/­world/­americas/­ richard-­spencer-­ban-­european-­countries-­alt-­right-­white-­supremacist-­neo-­nazi-­eu-­a8071971. html, accessed August 8, 2018. 90 Jared Holt, “Richard Spencer Is Begging for Money to Fight Lawsuit against Him,” Right Wing Watch, April 27, 2018, http://­www.rightwingwatch.org/­post/­richard-­spencer-­is-­begging-­for-­ money-­to-­fight-­lawsuit-­against-­him, accessed August 8, 2018. 91 Al Jazeera News, “Lawsuit against US Neo-­Nazi Andrew Anglin to Move Forward,” March 22, 2018, https://­w ww.aljazeera.com/­n ews/­2 018/­0 3/­l awsuit-­n eo-­n azi-­a ndrew-­a nglin-­ move-­180322151837162.html, accessed August 8, 2018. 92 Jason Del Rey, “Twitter Users Are Revealing the Identities of Charlottesville White Supremacist Protestors,” Recode.net, August 13, 2017, https://­www.recode.net/­2017/­8/­13/­16140614/­ charlottesville-­protestor-­identities-­twitter-­yesyoureracist-­white-­nationalists, accessed August 8, 2018. 93 Shane Dixon Kavanaugh, “White Nationalist Views, Arrest of OSU Student Government Rep Spark Outrage,” The Oregonian, January 23, 2018, https://­w ww.oregonlive.com/­p acific-­ northwest-­n ews/­i ndex.ssf/­2 018/­0 1/­o su_student_government_members.html, accessed August 8, 2018. 94 Jason Wilson, “The Alt-­Right Is in Decline. Has Antifascist Activism Worked?,” The Guardian, March 19, 2018, https://­www.theguardian.com/­world/­2018/­mar/­19/­the-­alt-­right-­is-­in-­ decline-­has-­antifa-­activism-­worked, accessed August 8, 2018. 95 Laura Strickler, “Trump Admin Will Apparently Not Renew Program to Fight Domestic Terror,” October 31, 2018, https://­www.nbcnews.com/­politics/­national-­security/­trump-­admin-­will-­ apparently-­not-­renew-­program-­fight-­domestic-­terror-­n926361, accessed November 7, 2018.

 

Epilogue A Struggle for the American Soul

T

o state that the alt-­right has declined as the Trump presidency has evolved is not to suggest that it, or the broader anti-­government right-­wing movement in the United States at large, is either going away or is finished. After all, the politics of a given point in time may favor or hinder right-­wing movements in the United States; the particular ups and downs of any particular moment should be assessed in the context of the period in which groups rise and fall in the political system. The elements shaping American populist waves—­anti-­immigration sentiments, the insistence that a progressive elite is systematically working to undermine American values in favor of un-­American ideas and principles, and so on—­are far too embedded in the fabric of American political life to simply disappear. Whatever the immediate travails of specific right-­wing populist groups, whether we call them the militia or the alt-­right, and whatever success progressive movements have in opposing right-­wing populist groups’ political agendas, neither the alt-­right nor the militia should be counted out. As long as Americans believe that individuals are responsible for their own lives while the government should largely stay out of what is dismissively called “welfare,” as long as Americans believe that individuals owning guns can prevent tyranny and that “they” are out to harm “us,” then a space for right-­wing social movements will exist in the American political pantheon. Moreover, as long as political leaders can try to organize groups of people for political advantage, alt-­right and militia activists will find allies in government through which they can try to promote their policies. Such mobilization is embedded in the DNA of democracy. It cannot be excised without damaging the political system itself.

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On July 28, 2018, the Washington Post published a story that offers a useful way to think about the deeply embedded nature of right-­wing, especially white nationalist, populism in the United States. The story examines life in the small town of Ulysses, Pennsylvania. Ulysses is a rural town near the New York state line, due north of State College, Pennsylvania, the home of Pennsylvania State University. It has only 650 residents. However, for many years Ulysses has had a large and active neo-­Nazi population. (Ulysses is not the only such town in the United States, to be sure.) In the middle of the first decade of the 2000s, for example, Ulysses hosted the World Aryan Congress, a meeting of neo-­Nazis, skin heads, and members of the Ku Klux Klan. One home in town is dedicated to the memory of Adolf Hitler; its owner, Daniel Burnside, proudly displays the US flag in front of his home side by side with a Nazi flag. His yard features numerous swastikas on display.1 As is to be expected, town life in Ulysses inevitably touches on the appropriateness of displaying Nazi paraphernalia—­and of advocating white supremacy. Burnside, of course, sees nothing wrong with his activities and insists that he is merely promoting white pride, not advocating racism or a new Holocaust. “I do fundraisers for American Legion with my artwork,” Burnside noted. “Boys and Girls Clubs, regardless of race or ethnicity, I do fundraisers. . . . The only way I can help white people is by helping everyone.” Many in the community seem comfortable with Burnside’s presence—­and the presence of those who sympathize with Burnside’s values. One Army veteran offered a straightforward free speech defense of Burnside’s activities, noting: “World War II was a totally different time period. It’s part of history. He can do what he wants. . . . Everyone has their own thing.” Meanwhile, city council president Roy Hunt suggested that the town was tolerant of Burnside because they knew him to be a good person: “We’re a laid-­back town,” Hunt said, “and we’re going to be nice to everybody.” “I’ve known Danny for 20 years,” Hunt continued. “If you were in town and you walked around with him, you’re right, he’ll be welcome in every store. . . . If you’re nice, people will be nice to you 98 percent of the time.” “If he were to put something up that said kill all members of a race,” Hunt concluded, “in my opinion that would be crossing the line, but he doesn’t have that sign up.” Despite Roy Hunt’s unconcerned reaction to Daniel Burnside’s open neo-­ Nazism, others saw reasons to be worried about the ways white supremacist values had infiltrated Ulysses’s daily life. For example, two months before the 2016 presidential election, the local KKK set up a “24 hour Klan Line” to provide information and support to Klan supporters. The Klan also sent informational flyers and snack treats to hundreds of local homes. One flyer had the message, “You can sleep tonight knowing the Klan is awake.” In addition, the Klan published advertisements in a local paper, saying, “God bless the KKK.” Just two weeks later, two local neo-­Nazi groups held a “white unity meeting” in Ulysses. More recently, a member of the neo-­Nazi Aryan Strike Force with a terminal illness was arrested, along with several other group members, for plotting a suicide bombing in which the terminally ill man’s oxygen tank was to be used to hide a bomb. The plan was to attack an anti-­racism rally.

 

188

Epilogue

Unsurprisingly, some Ulysses residents were skeptical of Daniel Burnside’s politics—­and of the values his supporters express. Belinda Empson, a retired waitress, noted, “My grandson is 8 years old and he’s already asking about the Nazi flags. And I don’t want to explain to my grandson what it means, what they’re about. We should have settled this stuff years ago.” Shashena and Joe Loeschner explained that they had been confronted for their mixed-­race relationship at a local restaurant in Ulysses, and had had their photo published on VK, a Russian social media site. They had also found KKK literature in their door and had seen men drive by their home while making gun shapes with their hands. They felt compelled to move from the area entirely. William Fish, a seventy-­two-­year-­old carpenter, offered a theory of life in Ulysses that summarizes the conundrum of militia and alt-­right activities in the United States as a whole. “We’re not a racist town,” Fish said, “but there are people who will turn a blind eye when they see racism happening. That’s why we have this history.” With William Fish’s insight in mind, there is no reason to doubt Roy Hunt’s sincerity when he claimed that Daniel Burnside was a nice guy who would be nice to anyone who was nice to him. After all, Roy Hunt is not, never has been, and likely never will be a target of either Daniel Burnside’s racism or his anti-­Semitism. Likewise, it is possible to take at his word the army veteran who insisted that Burnside was simply exercising his free speech rights. That veteran probably had nothing to fear from, nor has he ever likely faced, the negative consequences of the kind of racist, anti-­Semitic, and anti-­immigrant rhetoric espoused by Burnside—­or by members of the Aryan Strike Force, or by the Ku Klux Klan, or by activists in the National Socialist Movement. Accordingly, he—­ like Roy Hunt—­does not see the outsized presence of these right-­wing populist groups as a concern for their community. By contrast, people like the Loeschners have experienced racism directly. They have lived with people who used the concept of free speech to obscure hatred and threats. Similarly, William Fish and Belinda Empson have proved to be more sensitive to the ways that racist rhetoric intimidates people like the Loeschners. They are consequently embarrassed for the community at large. For these Ulysses residents, then, change is necessary. They sense that the community needs to reflect the values of a diverse, complex nation that is fully integrated into the world around it. The struggle over race, ethnicity, religion, and other values in Ulysses mirrors the one ongoing in the United States—­the one that has been the focus of this book. Many Americans fantasize about the restoration of an idealized America of the past, one where white people were unchallenged in their dominance and where the United States was wealthy, safe, and secure. Indeed, for such people those variables are intricately intertwined: the wealth and safety and security they seek are inextricably linked to white dominance of American politics, society, and culture. The nation cannot have one. It has to have them all. Such persons form the core of the militia and alt-­right movements. They also remain steadfast in their support for Donald Trump’s political ambitions. This book, of course, has not offered a comprehensive taxonomy of all the varieties of groups in America that share some version of the white dominant,

 

Notes

189

anti-­immigrant, economically robust, anti-­elite ideology that connects right-­ wing populist groups to each other. Rather, it has sought to explore the way that two such groups—­the militia and the alt-­right—­emerged, evolved, eroded, and then exploded again into American political life. It has situated these two groups in cultural, ideological, and mythological contexts that were shown to shape how the groups rose and fell and rose again. It has examined where these groups succeeded and where they failed. It has offered an analysis of how they found allies in the political system. It has also discussed the ways that those who oppose the militia and the alt-­right have worked to limit and roll back the power of right-­ wing populism in the United States. In the end, it is clear that, whether the group under study is militia or alt-­right, right-­wing populist groups emerge from the American milieu. They draw life, power, and influence from the distinctively American character of the nation’s political identity. Understanding their place as an inevitable part of our politics requires us to be critical of our assumptions about what is or is not “normal” in US society. It also requires us to be vigilant to the ways American ideals can be exploited for divisive, anti-­democratic ends. In the end, American democracy will survive only if we choose to keep it alive. There is no “them” who will arrive at the last second to save us from our foibles and follies. Rather, it is our duty, and our opportunity, to make the American future live up to the American promise. The persistence of the militia and the alt-­right demonstrates this will not be easy. Nothing important ever is.

Note

1

Gabriel Pogrund, “How White Supremacists Split a Quiet Rust Belt Town,” The Washington Post, July 28, 2018, https://­www.washingtonpost.com/­politics/­how-­white-­supremacists-­split-­ a-­quiet-­r ust-­belt-­town/­2018/­07/­28/­15a7e414-­85df-­11e8-­8f6c-­46cb43e3f306_story.html? utm_term=.2b32b694e8af, accessed August 8, 2018. All citations and quotes about Ulysses are from this source.

 

Index ABC, 111 – 13, 166 – 67 Adams, Ken, 59 African Americans, 17, 24, 27, 66, 69, 77, 81, 120 – 22, 126, 135, 150, 155, 157, 158, 160, 164, 172 aftermaths of Oklahoma City, 80 – 88; FBI, 82 – 87; and militia movement, 83 – 87; for Timothy McVeigh and the other conspirators, 80 – 82 Ailes, Roger, 112 Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, Oklahoma City, 11, 13, 51, 61, 76, 79, 88. See also Oklahoma City bombing al-Qaeda, 109 alt-right: aftermath of Charlottesville and decline of, 177 – 79; and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, 167 – 72; new media environment and, 110 – 18; organizing after 2000, 150 – 55; rise in the age of Trump, 158 – 63; rise of, 148 – 57; Trump and, 163 – 77; two days in Charlottesville, 159 – 63 alt-right ideology, 155 – 57 America First movement, 25 America in Crisis, 59 American Conservative magazine, 151 American Nazi Party, 158 American Nazis, 8, 159 American political culture, 17 – 20; exceptionalism and, 19, 30; key dimensions for militia movement, 18 – 20; liberal, 19, 30; values inherent to, 9 American political discourse: Iraq War and fraying of, 118 – 19 American Renaissance, 151 American Revolution, 24, 25, 28, 32, 51, 67, 96, 137 Anglin, Andrew, 152 – 53, 156, 178 – 79

190

anti-government activism: Birther movement, 124 – 27; rise of Tea Party in, 121 – 24; in the United States after 2008, 121 – 27 anti-Semitism, 25, 36, 45, 47, 152, 161, 188 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, 91 anti-unionism, 25 apocalypticism, 27 Apple, 113 The Apprentice, 168 Arizona Minutemen, 3, 128 – 31 armed resistance: power and significance of, 61; right and effectiveness of, 67 – 69 Arpaio, Joe, 132 Aryan Nations of Bonner’s Ferry, Idaho, 36, 45, 59, 98, 149, 178 Associated Press, 56 atheism, 151 Auto-Tune (music processing program), 116 Ayers, Bill, 126 Backes, George, 135 Bannon, Steve, 8, 171 – 72, 177 Barclay, Rick, 135 Bartlett, Roscoe, 101 Battle of Armageddon, 47 Battle of Concord, 96 Battle of Lexington, 96 Beam, Louis, 45 – 46 Bennett, Robert, 123 Berlet, Chip, 24 Berlin, Isaiah, 18 Bible, 35 – 36, 47 Bill of Rights, 19, 62, 131 bin Laden, Osama, 109 Birther movement, 124 – 27; Donald Trump and, 166 – 67; new militia movement and, 11 Birthers, 110, 121, 125 – 28 Blackberry, 113 “Black Lives Matter” movement, 160 Bohlman, John, 83

Book of Revelations, 47 Brady Bill, 95 – 96 Branch Davidians, 47; aftermath and, 53 – 54; FBI’s assault on, 51 – 52; religious extremism of, 56; Republicans on, 102; Seventh-day Adventism and, 47 – 48 Braveheart, 28 Breitbart, Andrew, 115, 152 Breitbart.com, 151, 152 British Army, 29 – 30, 128 British Empire, 137 Brown, Michael, 135 Bruce, Ronald, 132 Buchanan, Pat, 103 – 4 Bundy, Ammon, 11, 138, 140 – 44 Bundy, Cliven, 138 – 41 Bundy family: Cliven Bundy in Bunkerville, Nevada, 138 – 41; militia and, 137 – 44; and standoff at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, 141 – 44 Bunkerville Allotment, 139 Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), 35, 48; aftermath for, 54 – 55; Davidians and, 48 – 50, 53 – 57 Bureau of Land Management (BLM), 60, 138 Burnside, Daniel, 187 – 88 Bush, George H. W., 161 Bush, George W., 102 – 3, 109, 118 – 20, 161 Bush, Jeb, 169 Cable News Network (CNN), 112 Campbell, Joseph, 23 Cantor, Eric, 123 capitalism, 19 Carter, Kenneth, 95 Catholic Marianism, 26 CAUSE (legal firm), 93 CBS, 111 – 13, 173 Charlottesville, Virginia: aftermath of, 177 – 79; altright and, 159 – 63; conflict in, 160 – 63

Index Chenoweth, Helen, 59, 61, 101 Chicago Mercantile Exchange, 122 Chicago Tribune, 10 Christian Broadcasting Network, 50 Christian Identity movement, 26, 36, 45 Christian millennialists, 27 Christian Right, 27 Christian theology, 26 Chrysler, 120 – 21 citizens: law-abiding, 96; “natural born,” 124; sovereign, 66 – 67 Citizens for the Reinstatement of Constitutionalist Government, 60 “Civilian Preparedness Teams,” 135. See also Oath Keeper Civilian Preservation Teams “Civilian Preservation Militias,” 135 Civil Rights Act of 1964, 27 Civil War, 25, 64, 149, 159 Clarke, David, Jr., 132, 135 – 36 Clinton, Bill, 56, 83 – 84, 94, 96, 102 – 3 Clinton, Hillary, 2, 83, 154, 171 – 73 Cliven Bundy standoff in Bunkerville, Nevada, 138 – 41 Cohen, Roger, 172 Cohen Act, 78 Cold War, 20, 26, 31 Columbia University, 126 Communists, 25 – 26, 35 – 36, 45 Confederate Civil War, 13 conspiracy, to destroy America, 63 – 65 Constitution, US. See US Constitution constitutional intent, 66 – 67 Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA), 3, 131 – 37 Cooley, Wes, 101 cooptation: groundwork for, 101; logic of, 99; and the militia, 99 – 104 corruption, 63 – 65 Craig, Larry, 61, 102 Cronkite, Walter, 111

“cultural Marxists,” 166 culture: American political (see American political culture); in popular culture, 28 – 31 Cvjetanovic, Peter, 179 The Daily Stormer (TDS) website, 152, 178 Danforth, John, 55 Davidians in Waco, 47 – 52; fifty-one days in Waco, 49 – 52; raid, 48 – 49 Dearborn Independent, 25 – 26 Declaration of Independence, 18, 161, 180 Dees, Morris, 46, 87, 149 Degan, William, 38, 42 District of Columbia v. Heller, 99 Donahue, Phil, 59 Doolittle, John, 101 Dreams from My Father (Obama), 126 Duke, Charles, 93 Duke, David, 163 Emancipation Proclamation, 19 Empson, Belinda, 188 Endangered Species Act, 101 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 176 ethnic minorities, and militia ideology, 69 – 70 evangelical Christianity, 26 exclusionary nativism, 7 Executive Working Group on Domestic Terrorism, 91 extremism: ideological, 36; and the isolation of militia movement in 1990s, 89 – 91; religious, 48, 56 Exxon/Mobil, 175 Facebook, 113, 152, 179 Faircloth, Lauch, 102 Fairness Doctrine, 111 – 12, 114 “fake news,” 162, 172, 175 Farah, Joseph, 166 Fascism, 8 Federal Assault Weapons Ban, 95 – 96 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 35; aftermath and, 44 – 45; aftermath for, 54 – 55; and aftermaths of Oklahoma City, 82 – 87; elite Hostage Rescue Team (HRT), 37

191

federal government: abusive, 78; limits on, 66 – 67; power of, 14, 34; right-wing activists and, 43 Federal Reserve Bank, 64 Federal Reserve system, 60 Field, James Alex, Jr., 161 Fields, James, 13 50 States Constitutionalist, 104 financial crisis of 2008: bank bailouts during, 121; and politics of resentment, 119 – 21. See also Great Recession Finicum, Robert “LaVoy,” 143 fire in Waco, Texas, 47 – 58; Davidians in Waco, 47 – 52; making the militia II, 53 – 58 Fish, William, 188 Fitzgerald, John, 159 Fletcher, Bob, 59 Florida State Militia, 60 Ford, Henry, 25 Ford Motor Company, 25 Fortier, Michael, 78, 82 4chan, 151, 152 Fourteenth Amendment, 60, 64, 69, 74, 124 – 25 Fox, Vincente, 173 FOX News, 112, 114, 122 Franklin, Benjamin, 122 freedom: negative, 18; positive, 18 Free Masons, 35 free trade, 173 – 74 Fully Informed Jury Association (FIJA), 53 Gab (alt-right site), 152, 159 gender minorities, and militia ideology, 69 – 70 General Motors (GM), 120 Gersh, Tanya, 178 – 79 Gibson, Mel, 28 Gilchrist, Jim, 130 Gillespie, Doug, 140 Gingrich, Newt, 103 Google, 113 – 14, 116 GoyFundMe, 152 Great Depression, 25, 120 Great Recession, 119, 123. See also financial crisis of 2008 Greenup, Calvin, 83 Gritz, Bo, 41, 84, 93

192

Index

gun control: Gun Owners of America and, 45, 104; McVeigh and, 77 – 78; militia movement in 1990s, 95 – 99; ‘Million Moms’ and, 65; Trump and, 169 “Gun Control and the First Million Mom March,” 65 Gun Owners of America, 45, 104 gun rights activists, 98 Hammond, Dwight, 141 – 43 Hammond, Steven, 141 – 43 Harris, Kevin, 38, 39 Harvard University, 113, 126 Heyer, Heather, 13, 161 Hitler, Adolf, 152, 160, 187 Holocaust, 8, 35, 65, 152, 158, 159 Homer, 48 Horiuchi, Lon, 39, 43 Hostage Rescue Team (HRT), 37 – 38, 49 – 50, 55 – 57 Hostetter, John, 101 Houston Chronicle, 56 Howell, Vernon. See Koresh, David Hunt, Gary, 55 Hunt, Roy, 187 – 88 Hussein, Saddam, 109, 118 Idaho State Constitution, 101 “Identity Evropa,” 158 ideological extremism, 36. See also extremism ideology, 14 – 24; alt-right, 155 – 57; defined, 20; importance of, 20 – 22; in popular culture, 28 – 31 Infogalactic, 152 Infowars, 115, 151, 153 – 54, 172, 179 Intelligence Report (SPLC), 87 intent, constitutional, 66 – 67 Internal Revenue Service, 63 The International Jew, 26 International Monetary Fund, 63 Iraq War, 119, 121; and fraying of American political discourse, 118 – 19 ISIS, 167 Islam, 151, 157 isolation of militia movement in 1990s, 89 – 91 Jacksonian era, 24 Jamar, Jeff, 50

Jefferson, Thomas, 122, 160, 163 Jesus Christ, 27, 35, 47, 49 Jews, 25 – 27, 35 – 36, 152, 158 – 60 John Birch Society, 26 Johnson, Greg, 151 Johnson, Lyndon, 120 Jones, Alex, 115, 153, 172 Jones, Arthur, 158 Jones, Leslie, 117 Jones, Stephen, 85 Jordinson, Vicki, 35 “jury nullification,” 143 Justice Department, 54, 91, 176 Kahoe, Michael, 44 Kelly, John, 177 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 149; “I Have a Dream Speech,” 19; “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” 19 Kling, Robert, 81 Knollenberg, Joe, 102 Know Nothings, 149 Koernke, Mark, 83 Koresh, David, 47 Ku Klux Klan (KKK), 24, 45, 149, 155, 163, 187 – 88 Lakin, Terry, 125 LaPierre, Wayne, 45, 96 Larouche, Lyndon, 84 The Late Great Planet Earth (Lindsey), 35 Lee, Robert E., 13, 159, 163 legitimacy, of militia, 62 – 63 LGBTQ people, 158 liberalism, 19 – 20, 30 Liberty League, 25 Liberty Lobby, 26 Liddy, G. Gordon, 103, 115 Limbaugh, Rush, 102, 115 Lincoln, Abraham, 116; Second Inaugural Address, 19 Lindsey, Hal, 35 Lockhart, Charles, 8 Los Angeles Times, 10 Lugar, Richard, 123 Lyons, Matthew, 24 Mack, Richard, 132 Macy, Bob, 82 “Make America Great Again,” 169 – 70 Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, 138, 141 – 44 Manifest Destiny, 20

Manigault, Omarosa, 167 Mann, Thomas, 124 Marion, Francis, 28 McCain, John, 124 McLamb, Jack, 93 McLaren, Richard, 93 McVeigh, Timothy, 10, 51; and aftermaths of Oklahoma City, 80 – 82; Oklahoma City bombing and, 13, 76 – 105 Meili, Trisha, 164 Metcalf, Bradford, 95 Metcalf, Jack, 101 Michigan State University, 178 militia: Ammon Bundy and standoff at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, 141 – 44; Cliven Bundy in Bunkerville, Nevada, 138 – 41; conspiracy to destroy America and, 63 – 65; corruption and, 63 – 65; ideology, 61; legitimacy of, 62 – 63; limits on federal government, 66 – 67; organizing, 58 – 70; and racial, ethnic, and gender minorities, 69 – 70; right and effectiveness of armed resistance, 67 – 69; shadow government and, 63 – 65; sovereign citizens and constitutional intent, 66 – 67 militia movement, 1990s, 58 – 70; aftermath and, 45 – 47, 55 – 58; and aftermaths of Oklahoma City, 83 – 87; cooptation and, 99 – 104; decline of, 88 – 104; extremism and isolation of, 89 – 91; gun control, 95 – 99; key dimensions of American political culture for, 18 – 20; organizing the militia, 58 – 70; state action and decline of, 91 – 95; success of, 95 – 99 Militia of Montana (MOM), 58, 83, 90 millennialism, 27 Miller, William, 47 ‘Million Moms,’ 65 Minnesota Patriot’s Council, 60 minorities: ethnic, 69 – 70; gender, 69 – 70; racial, 69 – 70

Index Missouri 51st Militia, 69 Model T car, 25 Montana Freemen, 60, 82 Morgan, Daniel, 28 Mountaineer Militia, 86 Moynihan, Daniel Patrick, 118 MSNBC, 114 Mueller, Robert, 176 “multicultural nihilistic hedonism,” 103 myths: political, 14 – 24; in political life, 14 – 24; in popular culture, 28 – 31; power of, 22 – 24 National Forest Service (NFS), 138 National Park Service, 138 National Policy Institute, 151 National Rifle Association (NRA), 45, 79, 96, 98, 102, 104 National Socialist Movement, 188 Navarro, Gloria, 141 Nazi Germany, 8, 70 Nazi labor camps, 65 Nazi paraphernalia, 187 Nazism, 8 NBC, 111 – 13, 117, 166 “negative freedom,” 18. See also freedom Nehlen, Paul, 159 neo-Nazi Aryan Strike Force, 187 – 88 neo-Nazis, 2, 162, 187 neo-Nazism, 187 Nevin, David, 42 New Deal, 64 new media environment: altright and, 110 – 18; rise of second militia movement and, 110 – 18 new militia, 128 – 37; Arizona Minutemen, 128 – 31; Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, 131 – 37 Newsweek, 10 New World Order, 65, 70, 176 New York Times, 10, 37, 165, 177 Nichols, Terry, 78, 79 1984 (Orwell), 116 Noel, Cameron, 132 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), 174 North American Militia, 87

North American Volunteer Militia, 60 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 63, 174 – 75 North Carolina Citizen Militia, 62 Northern European heritage, 36 Oath Keeper Civilian Preservation Teams, 135 Oath Keepers, 3, 10, 133 – 36 Obama, Barack, 3, 4, 120, 122 Obamacare, 169, 171 Odyssey (Homer), 48 Oklahoma City bombing, 13, 76 – 105, 89; aftermath and, 87 – 88; aftermaths of, 80 – 88; coming to, 76 – 80; and decline of 1990s militia movement, 88 – 104 Olson, Norman, 59, 84 Operation Northern Exposure, 37 Operation Trojan Horse, 48 – 49 “OPLAN American Viper,” 90 Ornstein, Norman, 124 Orwell, George, 116 paleo libertarians, 8 Palmer, Glenn, 143 Panama Canal Zone, 124 – 25 The Patriot, 28 – 30 Patriot and Common Law movements, 86 Pennsylvania State University, 187 Persian Gulf War, 112 Peters, Pete, 45 Pew Research Center, 152 PewTube, 152 Photoshop (digital manipulation software), 116 Pierce, William, 78 Podesta, John, 154 “political correctness,” 156 political culture, 14 – 24; American (see American political culture); importance of, 15 – 17; individual, 16 political life, myth in, 14 – 24 political myths, 14 – 24 politics of resentment, and financial crisis of 2008, 119 – 21 polygamy, 48

193

popular culture: culture in, 28 – 31; ideology in, 28 – 31; myth in, 28 – 31 populism, right-wing, 4, 6 – 7 “positive freedom,” 18. See also freedom Potts, Larry, 39 power of myth, 22 – 24 Pratt, Larry, 45, 103 pre-millenialist Christianity, 47 – 48 Progressive Era, 25 Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, 98 The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, 25 – 26 “race suicide,” 25 racial bigotry, 161 racial minorities, and militia ideology, 69 – 70 racism, 126; explicit, 27, 35; overt, 11; “punish first” attitude and, 130 Radix Journal, 151 Reagan, Ronald, 120 Red Dawn, 28, 30 – 31 Reddit, 113, 151, 152 “Red Scare,” 26 religious extremism, 48, 56. See also extremism Reno, Janet, 51, 55, 102 representative democracy, 19 Republican National Convention, 168, 172, 177 Republican Party, 2, 8, 61, 88, 101 Revere, Paul, 51 Revolutionary War, 28 Reyes, Matias, 165 Rhodes, Stewart, 133, 134 Ricoeur, Paul, 21, 62 right, and effectiveness of armed resistance, 67 – 69 right-wing populism, 4, 6 – 7; history of, 24 – 28; understanding, 6 – 7; in the United States, 24 – 28 “right wing populist” ideology, 24 right-wing social movements: contemporary, 4; understanding, 5 – 6 Roderick, Arthur, 38 Rodgers, Jim, 60 Rodriguez, Robert, 49 Rogers, Richard, 38 – 39, 55 Roman Catholic Church, 151

194

Index

Roosevelt, Franklin: “Four Freedoms” speech, 19 Roosevelt, Theodore, 25, 141 Ross, Marc Howard, 15 Rubio, Marco, 169 Ruby Ridge, Idaho: aftermath and the FBI, 44 – 45; aftermath and the militia movement, 45 – 47; aftermath and the Weavers, 42 – 44; eleven days on, 37 – 42; Randy Weaver’s path to, 35 – 42 Ryan, Paul, 159 Santelli, Rick, 122 Schroeder, Mike, 57 Schwarzenegger, Arnold, 129 Schweitzer, LeRoy, 93 Second Amendment, 62, 64, 77 Second Coming, 47 – 48 second militia movement, 32, 110 – 18 September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, 76, 87, 89, 109, 144 Sessions, William, 51 Seven Seals of prophecy, 47 Seventeenth Amendment, 60 Seventh-day Adventism, 47 shadow government, 63 – 65 siege at Ruby Ridge, 34 – 47; making the militia I, 42 – 47; Randy Weaver’s path to Ruby Ridge, 35 – 42 Simon Wiesenthal Center, 87 Sines v. Kessler, 178 Sixteenth Amendment, 60, 64 Smith, Linda, 101 social movements: right-wing, 5 – 6; understanding, 4 – 7 Social Security, 64, 67 Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), 46, 87, 98, 128, 130 – 31, 136, 149, 154, 158, 178 Southwell, Ray, 59, 84 sovereign citizens, 66 – 67 Sovereign Citizens movement, 134 Spence, Gerry, 42 – 43 Spencer, Richard, 8, 151, 159, 163, 178 Spokesman Review, 86 Star Wars, 137

state action, and decline of militia movement, 91 – 95 Stern, Kenneth, 88 Stewart, Corey, 159 Stockman, Steve, 101, 102 SWAT Magazine, 134 Taitz, Orly, 125 Taylor, Jared, 151 Tea Party, 110, 121; conventional political actions and, 123; new media ecosystem and, 122 – 23; as revolutionary movement, 121; rise of, 121 – 24 Tenth Amendment, 66 terrorism, 76, 86 – 87, 89, 91 – 92, 157 Texas Department of Criminal Justice, 94 Texas Department of Health, 57 Texas Rangers, 57 Thompson, Linda, 55, 60, 84 Three Percenters Movement, 3, 10, 136 – 37 Tillerson, Rex, 175 Time, 10 Toiyabe National Forest Service, Nevada, 83 Total Fascist, 152 Toxic Asset Relief Program (TARP), 120 toxic masculinity, 156 Traditionalist Workers Party (TWP), 178 Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), 174 Treasury Department, 54 Trochmann, John, 58, 59, 83, 90 Trump, Donald, 2, 63, 127; and the alt-right, 163 – 77; and Birther Movement, 166 – 67; and the Central Park Five, 164 – 66; pre-presidential political career of, 163 – 72; presidential campaign, 167 – 72; rise of alt-right in the age of, 158 – 63; two days in Charlottesville and, 159 – 63 Trump, Donald, Jr., 172, 176 Trump, Melania, 167 Tudor, Henry, 22

Tumblr, 113 The Turner Diaries (Pierce), 78 Twitter, 117, 151, 152, 179 Unicorn Riot, 179 United Nations, 63 United States: alt-right ideology, 155 – 57; antigovernment activism after 2008 in, 121 – 27; Birther movement, 124 – 27; conspiracy to destroy, 63 – 65; organizing alt-right after 2000, 150 – 55; rightwing populism in, 24 – 28; rise of the Tea Party in, 121 – 24 University of Virginia, 160 US Army, 35; Special Forces, 41 US Civil War. See Civil War US Congress, 59, 131 US Constitution, 19, 60, 63 – 64, 66 – 69, 77, 101, 124, 126, 131, 133 US Department of Defense, 138 US Fish and Wildlife Agency, 101 US Forest Service, 138 US Geological Survey, 84 US House of Representatives, 61, 103, 123, 159 US Marshals Service, 83 US News and World Reports, 86 Utych, Stephen, 158 Vieira, Meredith, 166 Vietnam War, 35 The View, 166 Viper Militia, 86, 90 Voat, 152 Voting Rights Act of 1965, 27 Waco: The Big Lie, 56, 60 Waco: The Big Lie Continues, 56, 60 Waco: The Rules of Engagement, 56 Walmart, 6 Walton family, 6 Washington, George, 29, 68, 163 Washington Post, 187 Washington Summit Publishers, 151

Index WASP.love, 152 Weaver, Randy, 10, 34, 42 – 44; on Holocaust, 35 – 36; path to Ruby Ridge, 35 – 42 Weaver, Sammy, 38 – 42 Weaver, Vicki, 40 Weebly, 113 Welch, Edgar, 154 “white flight,” 150

white nationalism, 9, 153, 157, 179 white supremacists, 2, 11, 27, 36, 40 – 41, 59, 78, 93 – 94, 149, 152 Wikipedia, 116 World Aryan Congress, 187 WorldNetDaily, 166 World Trade Centers, 89, 109

195

World War I, 20, 149 World War II, 8, 20, 25, 46, 64, 152, 156, 160, 174 WrongThink, 152 Yellowstone National Park, 141 Yiannopoulos, Milo, 151 – 52 YouTube, 178 – 79