A truck packed with a huge home-made
bomb exploded outside the Oklahoma City Federal Building just past 9 AM on April 19, 1995.
The building was shattered and 168 people were killed - included 19 children in the
building's day care center. It was the worst terrorist act ever committed on American
soil, and the bombers have been identified
as adherents of Patriot ideology. While many Patriots and militia groups have
disavowed the bombing, it focused national attention on far-right ideology and the rise of
citizen militias.
Conspiratorial ideology has a long history in America, going back to Colonial times. The main purveyors of such ideology in our own times - the John Birch Society, and the Liberty Lobby - have been around since the 1950s. But the apparently widespread phenomenon of armed far-right militants forming private armies for the purpose of combatting the tyranny of the federal government is relatively new.
In recent years, several events combined to create fertile ground for anti-government ideology: the Weaver shootings at Ruby Ridge, Idaho; the disastrous Waco seige; and new federal gun control legislation. Patriots feared that these events heralded the beginning of government efforts to disarm the people, destroy any resistance and impose tyranny by force. One of the first militias, the Militia of Montana (MOM), formed in February, 1994. Robert Fletcher of MOM explains its purpose as follows:
The concern of the Patriots [is] the loss of the Constitution of the United States. ...We do not target the government. We target unconstitutional pigs that may be in our government (quoted in Stern, 1996: 67)
Militias place much stock in the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, which says: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed". Militia members interpret this as Consitutional authority for them to own military-type firearms, and to organize and train as a citizens' military force. They see themselves as the spiritual descendants of the minutemen, ready to take up arms and fight the enemies of liberty on short notice. As MOM explains it, the militia is the citizens' guardian of freedom, the only force capable of protecting the people from a tyrannical government:
"To balance the military power of the nation with the might of the militia will put at odds any scheme by government officials to use the force of the government against the people. Therefore, when the codes and statutes are unjust for the majority of the people, the people will rightly revolt and the government will have to acquiesce without a shot being fired, because the militia stands vigilant in carrying out the will of the people in defense of rights, liberty, and freedom. The purpose of government is to protect the rights of the people, when it does not accomplish this, the militia is the crusader who steps forward, and upon it rests the mantle of the rights of the people" (MOM literature, quoted in Stern, 1996: 75-6).
For militia members and their sympathizers, then, gun control takes on a special
significance. As they see it, military-style weapons are essential for them to fulfill
their constitutional role.
When the
government limits their liberty to own and use firearms, it reduces their ability to
resist tyranny and so moves us all one step closer to slavery. Disarmament is a necessary
prelude to the pacification and subordination of a once free people and, since Patriots
generally believe that this is indeed the ultimate goal of the elite conspirators, it
seems to follow that elites will enforce gun control as part of their agenda of
domination. An armed citizen militia may be all that stands between us and the dreaded New
World Order. And, of course, it stands to reason that the conspirators will try to crush
such resistance, so Patriots and milita members expect to be the targets of federal
agencies like the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), whom they depict as the
storm troopers of the New World Order.
Some observers fear that militas are
being used by white supremacist groups as a vehicle for
propagating their ideology among those disgruntled with the federal government. By the
time of the Oklahoma City bombing (April, 1995), there were militia groups in at least 36
states. In the peak year of 1996, the Southern Poverty Law Center identified 370
armed militias and 858 Patriot groups active nationwide. By 1998, however, the number of
militias had fallen to 171, and patriot groups to 435.
For more information on militias, and links to militia web sites, click here 
.
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