Re: And show me one [militia] that rejoices in OKC.
Frankly, did you expect militia rednecks filming themselves jumping up and down in their compounds on hearing of the OKC bloodshed? Brash maybe... but not foolhardy. The closest thing I can adduce is racist whites rejoicing in the New Orleans tragedy. Granted, it's a different matter but I'm sure you'll agree with me that it's more or less the same people:
Message 21722037
Re: As I understand it, "terrorists" usually belong to organisations. Individuals don't operate on their own as anarchists would. In the organisation there is a hierarchy of command -- orders come from somewhere and others have to obey them.
Usually but not always, that is, not those engaged in "leaderless resistance"....
Lone wolves
Solitary threats harder to hunt
By Henry Schuster
CNN
Tuesday, February 1, 2005 Posted: 11:38 AM EST (1638 GMT)
Editor's Note: Henry Schuster, a senior producer in CNN's Investigative Unit, has been covering terrorism for more than a decade. Each week in "Tracking Terror," he reports on the people and organizations driving international and domestic terrorism and efforts to combat those. He is the author of the forthcoming book, "Hunting Eric Rudolph."
(CNN) -- Wolves run in packs. They hunt that way. They live that way. The lone wolf is the exception. When it comes to the world of domestic terrorism that might not be the case.
Who are we referring to when we talk about a lone wolf domestic terrorist? Someone who operates alone or with the help of one or two other people.
Someone like Tim McVeigh, who carried out the Oklahoma City bombing.
Later this spring, the U.S. government will try to prove in court that Eric Rudolph was another such lone wolf, as he faces his first trial in a string of bombings in Birmingham and Atlanta, including the one during the 1996 Olympics.
We in the media have tended to place more attention on international than domestic terrorism since September 11. But the threat hasn't gone away.
The FBI still tracks it. So do the folks at places like the Southern Poverty Law Center, where Mark Potok works as director of the organization's Intelligence Project.
His message is blunt: "It's not only Osama bin Laden out there, it is not only people with turbans who are capable of blowing you and your family up. It's Americans, people who are your neighbors, capable of doing things like this."
Need any convincing? Here are a few items you may have missed since 9/11:
# William Krar now sits in a federal prison, convicted of possessing sodium cyanide. Investigators say they discovered evidence of militia ties when they seized his belongings.
# Stephen Jordi has been sentenced to five years in federal prison plus five years probation, busted after he boasted of plans to firebomb abortion clinics and to become the next Eric Rudolph. The government wants to increase his sentence using the Patriot Act, according to his attorney.
# Sean Gillespie faces federal charges in Oklahoma City, of all places, for allegedly firebombing a synagogue there. The government says he boasted of plans to commit more violent acts.
Then, of course, there is the anthrax killer, the one who began terrorizing America a month after September 11.
Ask Potok and the folks at the SPLC and they will tell you they believe the anthrax killer is a lone wolf -- and probably not an Islamic terrorist, despite the letters that were sent in late 2001 containing the anthrax, which seemed to signal this was an al Qaeda-style attack. Potok and company base this belief in part on how the killer has gone quiet since the flurry of letters in late 2001 -- and that there have been no claims by international terror groups.
You might be noticing the pattern by now. Lone wolves are typically Americans with an extremist agenda, usually anti-government. They are certainly not the only domestic terrorists (we'll deal with the animal rights and eco-terrorists at a later date), but they are scary nonetheless.
By the way, those on the extremist fringe don't call themselves lone wolves. They like to use the term "leaderless resistance," which was coined by a guy from Texas named Louis Beam, a former Aryan Nation and Ku Klux Klan militia leader who has since advocated a more independent approach.
Beam's idea was that groups could be penetrated by government agents, so it was better and more effective to act for the cause by going it alone or trusting only a couple of your closest friends.
That seems to have been the course of action Tim McVeigh took.
Why might we now be seeing more of this leaderless resistance, these lone wolves?
Some of it, ironically, comes from success. The largest extremist groups, including the National Alliance and the Aryan Nation, have collapsed, according to both the SPLC and FBI, and their members drifted from membership in groups.
This happened as some of their older leaders, including William Pierce (the man who wrote the book that inspired Tim McVeigh) of the National Alliance, died off and a younger generation fought amongst itself.
But when the groups go away, it makes it harder for the FBI and groups like SPLC to track the threats. FBI officials who oversee domestic terrorism investigations say lone wolves are a top priority.
They can point to results -- including the arrests and convictions of Krar and Jordi, for example.
Precisely because they are lone wolves, it is hard to quantify the threat or how it compares to that from al Qaeda.
Still, Mark Potok believes the lone wolf isn't going away.
"Luckily for all us, at least to this point they have not been as sophisticated or as well organized as al Qaeda."
That, of course, excludes Oklahoma City, which showed just how dangerous a lone wolf could be.
And the problem is, in the world of counterterrorism, lone wolves are harder to hunt.
cnn.com
Re: As I have mentioned before, in general terms, I do not understand what is in the mind of a terrorist -- what he, as an individual, hopes to achieve by a dastardly act on unknown, innocent people?
You should order a copy of the Turner Diaries(*) --clue:
MILITIA MOVEMENT IDEAS SEEP INTO THE MAINSTREAM
(Article in 2/7/97 Christian Science Monitor by Brad Knickerbocker)
Bombings. Bank robberies. Plots to destroy government property. Illegal weapons stashed away. In recent months a series of criminal activities has been connected to armed militias around the country.
In pennsylvania last week, five white supremacists, members of the self-styled "Aryan Republican Army," were indicted for robbing seven banks in the Midwest.
Three northern Idaho men with white-supremacist ties go on trial in Spokane, Washington, next week for robbing banks and bombing an abortion clinic and newspaper office there. They are also being investigated in connection with the Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta last summer.
While the recent bombings at a courthouse and bank in Vallejo, California, are now thought to have been part of a drug case, officials believe other recent bombings in California may have antigovernment militia ties.
But behind the events themselves are trends more important than the sum of the activities.
"If you only see the individual events and don't see the pattern, then you're missing the story," says Chip Berlet, a specialist in right-wing extremist groups with Political Research Associates in Cambridge, Mass.
Militia-type thinking is working its way into general thought and culture, says Mr. Berlet, particularly as we approach the millenium.
Standard fare on TV; conspiracy thinking, antigovernment beliefs, and "millennialist expectations" -- foundations of militia philosophy -- are now being raised and discussed everywhere from Pat Robertson's 700 Club television program to lawsuits pushing "county supremacy" in the rural West to such popular TV shows as Millenium," "Dark Skies," and "The X-Files." and similar programs.
"The militia movement is mainstreaming itself," warns Berlet. "It's moving into a serious long-term presence."
A guide to right wing extremism published by the Anti-defamation League of B'nai B'rith (ADL) last November notes "an intensified suspicion and hostility toward government among the general population...a troubling aspect of {which} is the rhetorical support that extremists have received from the mainstream."
While hard to gauge, the number of Americans who count themselves militia members (as many as 60,000) or are at least politically disgruntled and have militia leanings (some 5 million) appears to have remained stable since the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City two years ago.
But the ADL notes a solidification in militia membership, due in part to the decline of such groups as the Ku Klux Klan.
"In little more than two years, militias have come to outnumber the membership of the KKK, the neo-Nazis, the racist skinheads, and other hate groups combined," warns the ADL.
"The growth of the militia movement, however, does not mean that these traditional hate groups are no longer active," adds the ADL. "Rather it signifies the reconfiguration of traditional hate group activities or passions in response to trends within the broader culture."
One of those trends was seen at the Spokane Convention Center last weekend, where Self-sufficiency and Preparedness Expo drew hundreds of true-believers and the curious. Anti-government seminars were featured, and there were booths sponsored by militia groups and purveyors of survivalist gear. It was one of several similar events held around the country recently, mainly in the West.
THWARTING ILLEGAL ACTIVITIES
While these events may concern some observers, others note that law-enforcement efforts have, on several recent occasions, thwarted the illegal activities of antigovernment extremists.
Armed militia members conspiring to engage in domestic terrorism have been stopped before they could carry out their plans in Arizona and Georgia. The FBI successfully waited out the "freemen" holed up on Montana last summer.
"If I had to characterize it right now, I'd say we're in the 'Empire Strikes Back' phase," says Mark Pitcavage, an expert on the history of militias in America who is based in Columbus, Ohio.
"There have been a number of successful arrests, prosecutions, and people pleading guilty," says Mr. Pitcavage, who recently began working with a Justice Department program training state and local law-enforcement officials about domestic terrorism. "A lot of things are starting to click."
Pitcavage is also dubious about assertions that militia-type thinking is becoming more generally accepted.
"I personally don't see this moving into the mainstream," he says. "On a certain level, all Americans love conspiracies -- the Kennedy assassination, UFO coverups. You do not have to be a right wing extremist to think that {White House aide} Vincent Foster did not commit suicide."
EXTREMISTS' TEXTBOOK
But some experts say the movement as a whole is moving to the right and becoming more dangerous. Recent bombings seem to pattern the fictional account of a fascist takeover of the government and then destruction of jews and people of color as presented in "The Turner Diaries," by William Pierce.
The novel has become a kind of textbook for some antigovernment radicals, particularly those with racist ideas. Timothy McVeigh, one of the men charged with bombing the federal building in Oklahoma City, reportedly urged his army friends to read "The Turner Diaries."
"That book is really coming true, whether it's being used as a model or whether it was prescient," says Mary Rupert, a conflict-resolution expert whose recent work on fascism soon will be published by George Mason University.
Berlet of Political Research Associates predicts that as the millennium approaches, more conspiracy allegations of the type espoused by the most radical militia members will emerge. In particular, these will accompany warnings about the Biblicly-prophesied "end times."
"That's part of what's called 'millennialist expectation'...concern with a new world order or one-world government or the rise of powerful elites," says Berlet, who adds that the search for scapegoats (typically non-christians and nonwhites) also fits "the old claims that an anti-christ will arise in the 'end times.'"
Mark Thomas, one of the Pennsylvania men charged in the Midwest bank robberies and a follower of the racist Christian Identity movement, has an Internet site in which he warns: "White man, this is your final call: There is nowhere else to run or hide. Either fight, die or prepare to turn your daughters over to the mongrelized descendants of dusky two-legged beasts. The choice is yours."
afn.org
(*) rotten.com |
