southern poverty law center special report: return of the militias

In late 1995, I heard Morris Dees speak in New York City. Dees is the co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights and social justice organization that has its roots in the early days of the US civil rights movement.

Dees was speaking about the rise of right-wing extremism in the US. The SPLC had been sounding the alarm for years about the rise of dangerous militia groups, and now, at last, the public was listening. Dees described his reaction, earlier that year, when he heard about the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City: "Where's Tim McVeigh?"

Immediately after that bombing, which killed 168 people and injured almost 700 more, US media pundits declared the incident carried all the hallmarks of Middle East terrorism. Of course once the white, homegrown McVeigh was produced as a suspect, that talk was quietly dropped and forgotten. And after September 11, 2001, Oklahoma City was itself forgotten.

While US wingnuts raise the spectre of a socialist in the White House, many of us know that the US has never been in danger of a takeover from the left, either in ideology or in practice. The real danger to US democracy has always been from the right.

The America I grew up in has an authoritarian streak as wide as the land west of the Hudson and east of Las Vegas. Its love affair with violence shocks the world on a regular basis. Its citizens are largely ignorant, and easily led. Its good people are battered and struggling, or fractured and disorganized, or overwhelmed with helplessness, or all of the above.

And it houses within its borders a small army of angry revolutionaries. Although they purport to be anti-government, they are also confused and ignorant. It's not difficult to imagine "patriot militias" being harnessed into service of something much bigger, more powerful and more dangerous than they are.

From the SPLC.




Part Two: The Second Wave

Part Three: Nativists to 'Patriots'

Did they ever go away? 75 plots, conspiracies and racist rampages since Oklahoma City

Download the report (pdf).

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