COMMENT
Comment The Far Right Is Upon Us All editors have a story that got away, the one they wish they'd published in time. So it is with us. The first thing we thought of when we heard about the...
...Beriet and Lyons provide a detailed analysis of the social, political, and economic origins of the militia nation...
...The militias are now only the most violent reflection of the backlash against the social-liberation movements of the 1960s and 1970s," Beriet and Lyons note...
...Clinton rushed to reassure the nation that he's tougher than the militia nuts...
...Covert Action Information Bulletin published a prescient story in its spring issue entitled, "Angry White Guys with Guns: The Rise of the Militias," which came out weeks before the Oklahoma City bombing...
...As Ivins shows, people understand this, and resent this, and they are right to do so...
...That was the first question put to the President in the wake of the tragedy in Oklahoma...
...But it's not just the NRA...
...The NRA has been fueling the conspiracy theories of the far right, and it is responsible for the flood of dangerous arms that is drowning this country...
...But the Iranians didn't do it...
...And he denounced the Patriot movement as unpatriotic...
...Lo and behold, it was a white supremacist, Timothy McVeigh, who has emerged as the chief suspect...
...Jim Hoagland of The Washington Post suggested that the bombing was connected to Middle Eastern terrorists and represented "the dangers that Americans face from their collective involvement in the world...
...We need to defend a positive role for government...
...In perhaps the understatement of the year, The New York Times said he "apparently disliked black people...
...Beriet himself had warned the readers of The Progressive about the far right in the cover story of our October 1994 issue, "The Right Rides High...
...That kind of clears your head.' —Ross Perot The Clinton Administration's proposals are particularly ominous given the history of abuses by the FBI, as people on the left know only too well...
...I shudder to imagine what would have happened to Arab and Muslim immigrants in this country" had Clinton's bill been law when the bomb went off in Oklahoma, James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, told The Washington Post...
...Even the director of the FBI, Louis Freeh, told Congress that his agency doesn't need all of the broader powers to investigate Americans that President Clinton is proposing...
...He would go to their meetings, read their literature, and write letters espousing their ideas to local newspapers...
...And we need to protect our civil liberties...
...Despite the absurd claim by Oliver Revell, the retired FBI official who said on Face the Nation that the FBI can't even compile newspaper clippings on potential terrorists, the FBI has ample powers...
...Who is Timothy McVeigh, after all, other than the poster boy for beleaguered white males...
...He was absolutely right that "they leave the impression, by their very words, that violence is acceptable...
...when it expands its role, they lose their faith in it and view it as some Jewish or foreign conspiracy...
...The Iraqis didn't do it...
...Instead of addressing the sickness in our culture that spawned the Oklahoma City bombing, Clinton took the easy route, calling for the death penalty and cracking down on civil liberties...
...Increased police powers and surveillance will only escalate the standoff between the government and the fanatical armed right...
...it was just vicious, bigoted ru-mor-mongering...
...The authors had sent us a first draft, which we sent back, and they were in the process of revising it when the terrible explosion went off...
...We need to decry violence in all its forms...
...In that same issue, Loretta J. Ross pointed up the links between the anti-abortion fanatics and white supremacists, who, she said, "are working together toward a common vision of a white, Christian, American revolution...
...As anyone in the panhandle can tell you, those brush fires have a way of getting out of control...
...Despite their criticism of government authority, however, the militias can hardly be considered civil libertarians in the traditional sense...
...The Muslims didn't do it...
...it's the military, too...
...In some of the most irresponsible media coverage in recent memory, the networks ran with stories implicating Arabs or Islamic fundamentalists or Middle Eastern terrorists...
...The rest of the media were lost...
...They despise any act by federal departments, such as the Environmental Protection Agency, that asserts a public claim to a public resource—like wetlands...
...There were other Cassandras calling...
...We're at the point where even the most brutal excess by 'peace officers' sets millions to cheering...
...In a sense, they have become the armed wing of the anti-big-government crowd...
...The major ultraconservative organizations and dogmatic religious and political movements pose a grave threat to democracy in America," he warned, and he cited "the militant, overtly racist far right that includes the white supremacists, Ku Klux Klan, skinheads, neo-Nazis, and armed rightwing revolutionaries...
...it is a breeding ground for homegrown terrorists...
...It warned that "an armed confrontation between the government and the militia members seems increasingly likely...
...Americans were in a xenophobic frenzy, demanding on talk radio that we bomb the Iranians or the Iraqis or whoever it was that did the deed...
...What could be more chilling than homegrown terrorism...
...McVeigh was especially proud of shooting an Iraqi soldier in the head from 1,100 meters...
...As a result, the FBI is allowed to use informers and infiltrate domestic groups, collect clippings and other publicly available information on groups not under investigation, and conduct investigations based only on public statements advocating crime or violence...
...The Oklahoma City bombing was 'a Rembrandt, a masterpiece of science and art put together.' —Bo Gritz, one of the leaders of the far right So these hate groups were not unknown to us, or to our readers, or to the readers of other alternative magazines...
...But how was Clinton's speech received by the pundits...
...soldiers have been participating off-base with militia members...
...McVeigh served in George Bush's war against Iraq as a former Desert Storm Bradley Vehicle gunner (the Bradley Vehicles, you'll remember, were responsible for burying thousands of Iraqi soldiers alive during Bush's "turkey shoot...
...The Oklahoma action was more 'payback' than an act of terrorism...
...That's why we've put together this special issue...
...This will feed the paranoia of rightwing militia groups, and it will dangerously diminish the freedom of all Americans...
...And he and thousands of others like him are buffeted along in their bigotries by the talk-radio hosts of hatred...
...Meanwhile, the erosion of our civil liberties is a danger to us all...
...In the 1980s, the FBI conducted a massive spying campaign against members of CISPES (Citizens in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador)—a campaign that Comment was a national disgrace when it was finally made public...
...He called them "niggers," and when he became sergeant, he made the African Americans in his unit do all the menial tasks...
...He had weapons all over his house, and he would constantly clean them, The Times reported...
...Bill Clinton was absolutely right to denounce them...
...To his credit, Clinton continued to condemn hate radio, especially G. Gordon Liddy...
...In 1983, the Reagan Administration relaxed many restrictions on domestic spying...
...As Congress debates the Counterterrorism Act, the opinion pages are full of cliches about "balancing" increased safety with increased police powers, and about the "tradeoffs" between a free society and a secure one...
...Since late last year, Beriet and Lyons had been trying to interest us in a story on the dangers of the far-right militias...
...That same photo, taken by Bruce Giffin, appeared in The New York Times's "Week in Review" section after the bombing...
...He is not an isolated individual, a random kook who just snapped...
...But he didn't get at the roots of the militia's support—especially their racist appeals...
...For the first time in his Presidency, he began to exercise real moral leadership when he excoriated these "purveyors of hatred and division" whose "loud and angry" words have polluted the airwaves...
...But the very issue rightwing militia types like Timothy McVeigh have rallied around is the government's use of excessive force...
...And what a piece of work is he...
...Furthermore, the bill would allow for summary deportation of immigrants suspected of terrorist ties...
...In part, the militias are responding to inexcusable acts of violence by the armed agents of our government, most notably at Waco...
...Along with economic dislocation, it is the wave of social reaction that these militias are riding...
...And it is a tantrum against the government...
...We don't need an O.J...
...This is a very dangerous time...
...But most of his plan is a simple-minded and dangerous assault on civil liberties...
...We must not allow politics to drag us into endless quibbling" over the Counterterrorism Act, he told reporters in the Rose Garden...
...Waving at the possibility that the deed might have been done by Waco avengers, The Journal said, "The more chilling possibility is that this was a foreign-initiated affair...
...The militia movement is also a salute to our culture of guns, violence, and militarism...
...As Anthony Lewis pointed out in The New York Times, if the Clinton bill had been law before the end of South African apartheid, any American who gave $10 at an anti-apartheid event connected to the African National Congress would have been a criminal...
...There is a resurgence of white-supremacist feeling right now, and we need to confront it head on...
...What will the government do to protect us from terrorism...
...And many Senators acknowledged that even these new broader powers couldn't have prevented a terrorist attack like the one in Oklahoma City...
...The guy is a gun nut...
...In their mind, the government exists to protect private property...
...Our society does not produce a Timothy McVeigh, or a rightwing militia movement, out of nowhere...
...The Covert Action article contained an arresting photo of a smiling girl at a Michigan Militia rally holding a sign that said, Janet Reno Makes the Reason for the Second Amendment Deathly Clear...
...They trashed it...
...The cycle continues...
...Why "more chilling...
...We need to demand a just economy...
...Even now, after the Oklahoma City bombing, the NRA still is calling for a repeal of the ban on assault weapons...
...The first thing we thought of when we heard about the Oklahoma City bombing was, "It's those Waco avengers that Chip Beriet and Matthew N. Lyons were warning us about...
...the answer is a more just society...
...Those of us on the left are faced with a daunting task, and we have no magic solution to offer...
...trial...
...The military is a magnet for the Tim McVeighs in our society...
...One refugee from Iraq had a miscarriage after someone in a passing car threw an object that shattered her living-room window...
...The Southern Poverty Law Center, the Center for Democratic Renewal, Political Research Associates, Planned Parenthood, Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, and the Anti-Defamation League of B'Nai B'rith had been ringing the alarm bells, as had many local anti-racism groups, but hardly anyone seemed to be listening...
...The militias represent a smoldering rightwing populism—with real and imagined grievances stoked by a politics of resentment and scapegoating—just a demagogue away from kindling an American fascist movement," wrote author Daniel Junas...
...How many innocent people in our community would have been rounded up...
...He is a product of our culture of violence, our culture of guns, our culture of white supremacy...
...William Safire, George Will, John McLaughlin, even Jack Germond cried foul, claiming Clinton was using the Oklahoma tragedy for crass political purposes...
...Their beef against government is much fatter...
...Barely hedging, A.M...
...And the same old "terrorist experts" were trotted out to offer their authoritative theories as to why the bombers were probably Middle Eastern...
...Now the government is promising to re-arm...
...This reckless speculation that Middle Eastern terrorists were responsible for the bombing had predictably damaging consequences...
...More surveillance, more wiretapping, and relaxing the ban on military intervention in civilian law-enforcement are among his proposals...
...This is the soil of populism, and we can plant left-wing crops in this soil, or we can leave it to the far right to sow their seeds of destruction...
...Molly Ivins also points to the economic roots: wages have stagnated or fallen for millions of Americans over the last twenty years, and the economy is beyond their control...
...McVeigh was in the army for about two and a half years, and he was said to be a perfect soldier—except for one thing: he couldn't get along with African Americans...
...And the FBI could investigate anyone who went to a fundraising event for a foreign group the President termed terrorist...
...But now it's time to throw caution to the winds, Clinton says...
...He is proposing to expand the powers of the FBI...
...Arab Americans and Muslim Americans across the country, and particularly in Oklahoma, were harassed: they suffered name-calling and death threats and vandalism...
...The violence at Oklahoma City was a fanatical response to the government's violence at Waco, which Clinton to this day defends...
...We must not dawdle or delay...
...Clinton is stepping up efforts to pass his Omnibus Counterterrorism Act, which he first introduced months before the bombing...
...The militia movement now is like a brush fire on a hot summer day, atop a high and dry mountain ridge on the Idaho panhandle...
...As we said in these pages after the Waco tragedy: "We have allowed our national zeal for law and order to carry us beyond the bounds of reason...
...He was a militia man, through and through...
...Their members do not rally to the side of other victims of governmental repression...
...First, we need to understand the roots of the militia's appeal...
...McVeigh was so racist he was ultimately reprimanded for his treatment of the black soldiers in his unit...
...But the rest of that massive profile by Robert McFadden on May 4 demonstrates that McVeigh was racist to the core...
...Do progressives have an answer...
...The government is now hatching its own enemies...
...And they remained lost immediately after the bombing...
...Rosenthal of The New York Times wrote: "Whatever we are doing to destroy Mideast terrorism, the chief terrorist threat against Americans, has not been working...
...In the last few years, he caught up with the rightwing militia movements that have mushroomed all across this country...
...The newspaper columnists didn't bother to wait for the facts before they reached their conclusions, either...
...The growth of the armed far right in America—the closest approximation of native fascism yet to surface—is underestimated at our peril...
...We have armed services that glorify killing, that reward the sharpshooter who can blow someone's head off from 1,100 meters...
...The Arabs didn't do it...
...We need to denounce bigotry everywhere—in our homes, in our workplaces, in our schools, and in our communities...
...What, then, do we do about the real threat that these rightwing militias pose...
...Civil-rights activists, members of the Black Panther Party, members of the American Indian Movement, people who opposed the Vietnam War, and those accused of having communist sympathies were the victims of illegal surveillance, blackmail, and sting operations throughout the 1960s and 1970s, during J. Edgar Hoover's infamous counterintelligence program, COINTELPRO...
...There is none...
...He subscribed to Soldier of Fortune, and he was an NRA member until he got angry because he felt they weren't doing enough to defend the right to bear assault weapons...
...There was absolutely no factual basis for these reports...
...Under the Counterterrorism Act, the President could designate any foreign organization as a terrorist group, and it would become a crime to give money to any one of these groups, even if the money went to peaceful activities...
...White man, you have the greatest reason in history to kill.' —Tom Metzger, of White Aryan Resistance And when our elected officials play footsie with the militias, as Ross notes in her article, they need to be held accountable by the media and by the voters...
...How could he when just a month before Oklahoma City, he went on record sympathizing with beleaguered white males and their resentment of welfare and affirmative action...
...Before the bombing, only Keith Schneider of The New York Times and Phillip Weiss of the Times Magazine gave the hate groups any significant coverage...
...As June Jordan and Loretta J. Ross point out, we are living in the land of white supremacy, and we need to get at this problem that is still tearing the country apart 130 years after the end of the Civil War...
...Theirs is a "temper tantrum" of white, Christian males...
...It is being fueled not just by the haters on talk radio but by the opportunistic politicians who are playing with fire when they stir up resentment around issues like affirmative action, welfare, and immigration...
...Some of Clinton's proposals make sense—limiting the availability of chemical explosives and making it possible to track the materials that go into bombs...
...In other words, Congress should act quickly to cast our civil liberties aside...
...But the answer is not a more oppressive government...
...After the Oklahoma City bombing, news reports said that U.S...
...These folks need to be tried, sentenced, and executed pretty fast...
...But we must stand up for certain basic truths...
...The Wall Street Journal in its first editorial noted that three men of "Middle Eastern extraction" had been arrested in Oklahoma...
Vol. 59 • June 1995 • No. 6
