Purge your underground militias... before it's too late!
Bill Berkowitz
WorkingForChange
06.30.04
America's homegrown terrorists (Part I)
An interview with Daniel Levitas, author of The Terrorist Next Door: The Militia Movement and the Radical Right
Stephen John Jordi, an evangelical Christian accused of plotting to firebomb abortion clinics, churches, and gay bars, pleaded guilty in a Florida federal court on February 13. Jordi, a former Army Ranger, could face a prison sentence of five to 20 years and a fine of up to $250,000.
Troy Dayton Fuller, 39, of Arlington, Texas, a self-described member of the Republic of Texas militia, has been sentenced to more than 18 years in federal prison for possessing a firearm as a convicted felon, the Associated Press reported in late February.
William Krar, a 63-year-old manufacturer of gun parts and a right-wing extremist who pleaded guilty in federal court to possessing a sodium cyanide bomb, was sentenced on May 4 to more than 11 years in federal prison while his common-law wife, Judith Bruey, received nearly five years. When Krar was arrested last year in Texas, federal officials also found half a million rounds of ammunition, more than 60 pipe bombs, briefcase bombs, land mine components, a cache of deadly chemicals and a trove of neo-Nazi, antigovernment literature.
While the hunt for Osama bin Laden is being ratcheted up and President Bush's war against terrorism continues to be mainly focused on threats coming from outside the country, Atlanta-based author Daniel Levitas warns that the threat posed by homegrown terrorists should not be overlooked.
Levitas is a writer, researcher and expert on the activities of racist, anti-Semitic and neo-Nazi organizations and the author of The Terrorist Next Door: The Militia Movement and the Radical Right, (Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press, Nov. 2002, 520 pp. $16.95 paper, $27.95 cloth) recently released in paperback.
According to Levitas, who has testified for nearly two decades as an expert witness in state, federal and Canadian courts, the Krar case is probably the most dramatic example of the threat posed by domestic terrorists. James Kopp, who was found guilty in 2003 for the 1998 shooting of Dr. Barnett Slepian in Buffalo, New York, was affiliated with a shadowy underground anti-abortion network, the Army of God. Matthew Hale, leader of a white supremacist group, the World Church of the Creator, faced charges earlier this year of soliciting the murder of a federal judge. And Rafael Davila, a former Army National Guard intelligence officer from Washington State, is awaiting trial in Spokane, Washington, on espionage-related charges for allegedly stealing -- and then planning to distribute -- highly classified military documents to white supremacists in North Carolina, Texas and Georgia.
"Americans should question whether the Justice Department is making America's far-right fanatics a serious priority," Levitas told me. "And with the FBI still struggling to get up to speed on the threat posed by Islamic extremists abroad, it is questionable whether the agency has the manpower to keep tabs on our distinctly American terror cells."
Levitas' book traces the emergence of white supremacist paramilitary groups from their roots in the post-Civil War period, through the segregationist violence of the civil rights era, to the present. He also examines the early days of right-wing tax protest in the 1960s and 1970s, the farm crisis of the 1980s and the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. In addition, Levitas outlines the contemporary movement's dangerous preoccupation with biological warfare such as Anthrax.
Levitas recently spoke with me about the ideological roots of the white supremacist movement, the current state of far right and neo-Nazi organizing, the increase in anti-Semitism and anti-Arab bigotry in the wake of 9/11, and the likelihood that homegrown terrorists will strike again. Levitas' book was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award in 2002.
Bill Berkowitz: We heard a lot about the militia movement in the 1990s. How come we don't hear much about them today?
Daniel Levitas: The events of 9/11 have really overshadowed everything on the subject of terrorism, so if the story is not about fanatically violent Islamicists or the discovery of weapons of mass destruction in the desert of Iraq it is harder to focus the attention of both the media and law enforcement. Of course, there have been high-profile stories about the radical right here at home -- the arrest of alleged abortion clinic bomber Eric Rudolph is a good example -- but, by and large, there is just less interest in our American versions of Al Qaeda. Rest assured, if the arsenals attributed to right-wing extremists were found in the hands of people linked to Islamic terrorists here in the United States, we'd be hearing very often and loudly about it from the U.S. Attorney General, John Ashcroft.
BB: That's straightforward enough. But isn't it also true that the militia movement basically fell apart after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing?
DL: The militias were dealt a major setback, yes, but the movement hasn't entirely collapsed. Membership probably peaked at around 10,000 in the mid-1990s, and then fell sharply due to all the negative publicity and an extensive government crackdown after the destruction of the Murrah building. Of course, the FBI and the Justice Department had been pretty clueless about the militias before the bombing, but afterwards they put on the heat. A lot of militia followers dropped out as a result. Some of them also left the movement in fear and disgust. They signed up to fight the blue-helmeted UN invaders of the "New World Order," not kill innocent American civilians. And for many of these activists, seeing 168 corpses dragged from the rubble of the Murrah Building was enough to get them quit.
BB: Didn't the Y2K millennium scare have something to do with the decline of the militia movement, also?
DL: Yes, but it was kind of icing on the cake. The militias really took it on the chin in 1997 and 1998. Then, in the year or so leading up to Y2K, the far right went into overdrive with its predictions of domestic chaos and the end of civilization. A lot of this fear-mongering was built on the racist prejudices of those far right activists living in isolated rural communities in the Midwest and Pacific Northwest who believe that urban blacks and other minorities will come streaming out of the cities during times of chaos to wreak havoc. The militias told their followers to spend thousands of dollars on weapons and other survivalist gear to survive the coming riots. Basically, they merchandized the hell out of Y2K. But when the millennium came and went without incident, quite a few supporters felt ripped off and the militias lost further credibility and more recruits.
BB: What about the people who didn't quit the movement?
DL: They have become even more radicalized, more hard core. After all, they believe that the Clinton administration bombed the Murrah building on purpose -- and set up Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols as patsies in order to persecute the "Patriot" movement. This is the same crowd that believes that the planes used on 9/11 were remote-controlled by the Israeli Mossad and the CIA. They used the tragedy at Waco to bolster their argument. "Look," they said, "If Bill Clinton and Janet Reno could kill all those innocent Branch Davidians down in Waco, what makes you think they weren't behind the Oklahoma City bombing?" This all fit in rather nicely with fanatical gun culture and extreme religious beliefs of the radical right. After all, the Davidians were wanted on gun charges and had unconventional religious beliefs. So, for those white supremacists that worship fully automatic weapons and believe that Jews are the children of Satan, it wasn't all that difficult to convince them that the government was out to murder them, as well.
BB: Is this really a new trend? I thought that this process of radicalization began long before Oklahoma City. After all, back in 1984, there were neo-Nazi groups like the Order, whose members killed radio talk show host Alan Berg in Denver and plotted to overthrow the government.
DL: You're absolutely right, but the Oklahoma City bombing and the events of 9/11 have accelerated that process. And the seeds for the destruction of the Murrah building were planted many years earlier, in 1978, with books like the Turner Diaries by William Pierce, the founder of the neo-Nazi group, the National Alliance. As I tell the story in the book, it also was men like William Potter Gale, who founded the right-wing Posse Comitatus -- which is Latin for "Power of the County" -- back in 1971, who helped move the radical right in a more violent, revolutionary direction.
BB: What set off this process of far right radicalization?
DL: This really began as a rejection of the social progress of the 1960s, and, most importantly, as a reaction to the actions taken by the federal government and the courts to end segregation and promote civil rights, however haltingly. But you can also go back further, to, say, 1948, when President Harry Truman ended segregation in the military. Then came the Supreme Court decision outlawing segregation with the Brown decision in 1954. After that came the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. By the early 1970s, you had this growing constituency of Americans, many who had been involved in the losing fight to preserve segregation, who now began to see the federal government as more of the central enemy. The emerging antigovernment message of these groups owed a great deal to the vicious anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that had always circulated within the movement. After all, the belief in an all-powerful cabal of bloodthirsty Jews has been around for generations. It was in this environment that William Pierce and others launched a deliberate effort to refocus right-wing resentment from run-of-the-mill race hatred to a more explicitly revolutionary philosophy. Groups like the Aryan Nations in Idaho -- which is now defunct -- and the leaders of the Order did this too. They left a lot of bodies in their wake, including more than a handful of murdered law enforcement officials. After 20 years of that, it really was kind of predictable that guys like Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols were going to come along and do something as heinous as blowing up the Murrah Building.
BB: So race was a key issue in motivating people to join right wing groups and movements, but what about the economy? Most people assume that recruiting for groups like the KKK and the Militias goes best during an economic crisis. Isn't this also a driving factor?
DL: Economic issues and themes have always played a significant role in right-wing propaganda and recruitment, but people still wrongly overestimate its influence. After all, when the KKK grew to nearly four million members in the 1920s, it was a period of tremendous economic growth. And during the Great Depression that followed, many Americans turned not to right-wing social movements but in the opposite direction, joining labor unions and voting for Roosevelt. Yes, pro-Hitler demagogues got a fair amount of mileage out of the Depression, but overall the country shifted to the left. In the 1950s and '60s, when segregationists mounted their huge campaign of "Massive Resistance" to integration, the economy was booming. And when the militia movement got going in the early 1990s that also was a period of economic growth. What really drove the militias was passage of federal gun control legislation in 1993 and 1994, not fears about the economy. Of course, during the farm crisis of the 1980s, when interest rates hit double digits and farmers were filing bankruptcy in droves, the radical right had an easier time selling their conspiracy theories about "Jewish bankers." Basically, it is an oversimplification to say that hard times lead to scapegoating and bigotry.
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PART II:
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