Friday, October 20, 1995
TROUBLED MINDS
No guarantees when coping with irrational people
One week, two terrorist acts, two Nazi-oriented notes lauding David Koresh, the poster boy of right-wing hate groups.
Strange, isn't it, that disciples of Adolf Hitler would latch onto Koresh, who was not overtly racist? Do you suppose that the ``Sons of the Gestapo,'' who derailed an Amtrak train in Arizona, forgot that the Branch Davidians cult was open to blacks? Did the person who scrawled a swastika on a note left at a bombed-out wind-shear radar station at New York's LaGuardia Airport not recall that a black cultist was among those in the initial firefight with agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms?
But what did you expect from twisted minds -- consistency? Anyone who's capable of idolizing a child-molester/arsonist/killer is capable of anything. Ah, well. Koresh did have his redeeming features, from the extremists' point of view: loved guns, hated government, believed the world was going to hell. And, in fairness, there's not a thing unlawful about any of that. If he'd been a racist, like the other poster boy, Randy Weaver, that, too, would have been legal.
There's not even a law against believing (or saying) that in your opinion this isn't what the Founders had in mind and you don't feel obliged to obey any law you dislike.
But when you go beyond that; when you deliberately break the law and then shoot at law-enforcement agents who come to do their jobs (even if some of them do their jobs badly), your personal philosophy no longer matters. Scores of people died at Waco because Koresh fired on uniformed officers trying to serve a warrant to search for illegal weapons that he did indeed have. Would he say it was it worth it? Ask Randy Weaver if selling an illegal weapon and defying a court was worth the gunfight that cost his wife and son their lives.
We may never know the answers. But one thing we do know, from wrenching experience, is that people who claim spiritual or philosophical kinship to a Koresh or a Weaver aren't likely to behave rationally. And you do not give anyone a sporting chance to shoot you down in the line of duty.
Those who make explicit threats, have the means to carry them out, conspire to carry them out and declare war on the U.S. government should have their declarations taken seriously -- at least to the extent of being unapologetically investigated. And those who move on to action should be stopped. The outcome of the conflict may be a foregone conclusion, but if the other guy calls it a war, only a fool assumes that it isn't.
__________________________
New Man Magazine
(March / April 1997, pp. 69-72)
[...]
Ask people what they think about the growing militia movement in this country, and you'll get a variety of answers. Some individuals believe that these anti-government organizations have a long and honorable history dating back to the Revolutionary War. Others feel that the heavily armed bands of private citizens are new expressions of constitutional freedom, and should at least be respected. In reality, modern militias -- which represent the militant arm of the much broader "patriot movement" -- have complex origins that might surprise many of their supporters, especially Christians.
Another Men's Movement
Today's militia movement grew out of the August 1992 Ruby Ridge shootings involving Randy Weaver, an Idaho white supremacist charged with selling two sawed-off shotguns to undercover FBI agents. Weaver had failed to show up for a trial, which prompted authorities to conduct surveillance on his property. When the intruding lawmen were discovered, a gun battle ensued, killing Weaver's teenage son and a federal marshal. The 11-day siege that followed ended with Weaver surrendering after seeing his wife shot and killed by a federal agent. Although Weaver was eventually convicted of failing to appear in court, he was acquitted of the original weapons violation and the marshal's murder. In late October of that same year, between 150 and 175 men convened in Estes Park, Colo., to discuss how to properly respond to the Weaver killings. The meeting was reportedly a "Christian" men's conference. However, no mainstream Christian spokesperson was present. Leading the event was Pastor Pete Peters, a well-known white supremacist leader within the Christian Identity Movement (CIM). Many persons in the loosely-knit CIM have roots in the neo-Nazi community and the Ku Klux Klan. For example, two individuals attending this "Rocky Mountain Rendezvous" were former KKK Grand Dragon Louis Beam and Aryan Nations founder Richard Butler. Retired Virginia legislator Larry Pratt (Gun Owners of America director) was also there. He was one of the first individuals to publicly suggest that citizens form local, armed militias as a means of changing governmental policy.
Pratt's idea for citizens to take up arms was received well by a handful of followers, but it did not take root in the general public until after the infamous 1993 raid by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms on the Branch Davidian religious commune outside Waco, Texas. The botched mission, which was designed to apprehend the cult's leader, David Koresh, left four federal agents and several Davidians dead. The siege ended when the FBI attempted to force a Davidian surrender by demolishing the housing structure where the cultists were barricaded. The subsequent fire killed Koresh and nearly 100 of his followers. White supremacists soon began using the events at Ruby Ridge and Waco to illustrate why all citizens needed to form militias.
Private armies, they said, would eventually be the only means of protection against our tyrannical government. Many Americans agreed and started echoing the call that militias needed to be formed. After the Weaver and Davidian tragedies, additional events turned public sentiment even more against our govemment: the passage of restrictive gun-control legislation (the Brady Law and the Assault Weapons Ban); the approval of two extremely unpopular trade agreements (GATT and NAFTA); and the 1995 Mexican bailout. These hotly debated political issues were also used by white supremacists to convince hundreds of thousands of non-racists that an "out-of-control" government could only be dealt with by militias. Thus was born the militia movement.
But why would Christian Identity followers be so concerned with rights of the general populace? Something very powerful was motivating them: a specific set of beliefs about the end times involving a one-world government.
The New (Jew) World Order
CIM members claim that our federal government is Jewish controlled and will collapse just prior to an Armageddon-like race war. Out of this conflict an Aryan republic (i.e. "God's Righteous kingdom") will emerge. Persons in the CIM hold that they must violently establish this white-ruled kingdom of God. The only altemative, they say, is to live as slaves in a one-world Jewish government.
CIM followers would take over right now, if it were not for one problem: they are far outnumbered and outgunned. So for now, they just keep capitalizing on public discontent with the U.S. government. They continue to stir up anti-govemment sentiments, which has led to more anti-government organizations. Montana Human Rights Network president Ken Toole comments: "[W]ith the Brady Bill it was like someone poured jet fuel on the movement. Overnight we saw all this militia stuff bleed right out of the white supremacists -- who had been pushing the idea for years -- and engulf entire communities."
Hoping for mass appeal, CIM members have avoided discussing their more radical beliefs. Public talk of a global Jewish takeover would turn away non-racists. A change of language, therefore, has taken place. Instead of attacking Jews and blacks, the federal government and promoters of the New World Order are being targeted. Nevertheless, white supremacist literature circulating within racist circles continually refers to the New World Order as the "Jew World Order." Loretta Ross of the Center for Democratic Renewal commented during her testimony before a 1995 Senate subcommittee that white supremacists currently couch their beliefs in more acceptable terms, hiding their bigotry to a "present a sanitized image to the public and attract new recruits." This sanitized image has been most effective within the Christian community, where frustration and anger with Washington bureaucrats has been an additional motivation for joining militias.
But some Christians on the militia bandwagon have overlooked serious differences with their cohorts, as long as they are a like-minded governmentbasher. As a result, the lines are blurring between hateful racists, violent non-racists and Christians. In some cases, evangelical Christians are quoting from literature produced by well-known anti-Semites, neo-Nazis and other racists -- all in an effort to expose a government conspiracy or prove a particular eschatology.
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