Gathering Storm: America's Militia Threat. - book reviews

Reason, August-Sept, 1996 by David B. Kopel

Adam Parfrey, author of an October 1994 story about the militia movement in The Village Voice, became an instant militia "expert" after the April 1995 bombing in Oklahoma City. Major news organizations contacted him, seeking a quote linking the militias to the bombing. When he suggested there was no connection, reporters quickly lost interest. The mainstream media's combination of certitude and ignorance was summed up by a statement from a Washington Post researcher who talked to Parfrey: "The militias - whoever the fuck they are - are a ticking time bomb composed of paranoid lunatics."

Many Americans, including many journalists who have written about militias, have never met an actual militia member, just as most militia members have never met an actual international banker. In a condition of ignorance, it is possible for militia members to believe dark tales of an international banking conspiracy that would be laughable to a person who knew international bankers from meeting them at Manhattan cocktail parties. Conversely, well-educated Americans who know all about international banking, but nothing about living on a farm in Idaho, may fall for stupendous exaggerations about evil militia conspiracies. Much of what Americans "know" about militias is based on uncritical media repetition of statements from activists who demonstrate that the militia movement does not have a monopoly on paranoia and misinformation.

This problem is illustrated by a pair of books published shortly before the first anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing: Gathering Storm: America's Militia Threat, by Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center, and A Force upon the Plain: The American Militia Movement and the Politics of Hate, by Kenneth Stern of the American Jewish Committee. "The very future of the United States is at risk, because of treason in our midst," warns a militiaman quoted by Dees. The quote captures the apocalyptic exaggeration of some militia leaders, but Dees himself is hardly less alarmist. He opens his book with a paraphrase of the Gettysburg Address, observing that "we are engaged in a great civil war" and wondering "whether [our] nation...can long endure." Dees continues: "Unless checked," the militia movement "could lead to widespread devastation or ruin."

The mastermind of the militia movement, according to Dees, is Ku Klux Klan leader Louis Beam, Professor Moriarty to Dees's Sherlock Holmes. After the federal assault on Idaho separatist Randy Weaver and his family in 1992, Dees claims, Beam and a few other racists used the fear created by the incident to build the militia movement. (Beam and Dees are not the central characters of Stern's book, but Stern does write that "[t]he most significant precursor of the militias was the Ku Klux Klan.") Although even Dees's statistics show that most militias are not run by racists, he considers non-racist militia members dupes of Beam et al.

Unlike the Southern Poverty Law Center, I do not have "dossiers" on thousands of suspected militia members and "militia sympathizers." Nor do I have a staff of 10 people devoted to collecting information on militias, or infiltrators placed in the militia movement. So there is a great deal of material in Dees's book, and Stern's as well, that I cannot authoritatively refute. Neither book has footnotes, which makes verification of the claims all the more difficult. Still, some of the charges are clearly false, while others consist of speculation or facts presented out of context.

"Conspiracy reeks throughout this bloody murder," announced racist preacher Pete Peters after the deaths of Randy Weaver's son and wife at Ruby Ridge, Idaho. Dees and Stern believe the same about Oklahoma City. At an Estes Park, Colorado, meeting following the Weaver incident, Dees reports, "Plans were laid for a citizens' militia movement like none this country has known. It's a movement that has already led to the most destructive act of terrorism in our nation's history." Similar claims pervade the direct-mail fundraising campaign run by Dees's organization. "Patriot Underground Strikes in '95" is the headline for a special year-end report from the Southern Poverty Law Center; right below the headline are pictures of the Arizona train derailment and the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City. There is no suspect in the Arizona train derailment, let alone a "patriot" movement suspect. Nor has anyone in the patriot movement been implicated in the Oklahoma City bombing. For that matter, there is no sinister patriot "underground." The patriot movement - made up of nativist grassroots citizens groups that are highly suspicious of federal power and international finance - has public meetings, advertises in newspapers, and communicates through newspapers and talk radio - not exactly the tools of an underground.

Yet Dees and Stern build their books around the claim that the militia/patriot movements are unindicted co-conspirators in the Oklahoma City murders. The link between accused bomber Timothy McVeigh and the militia movement is based mainly on two pieces of information: First, he and his friend Terry Nichols attended two Militia of Michigan meetings - which, significantly, they were told to leave because they were advocating violence. Second, allegedly Mark Koernke, a short-wave radio personality who runs a mail-order business that sells militia gear, was seen with someone who looks like McVeigh. In addition, a Michigan talk show host supposedly said (he denies it) that the host's Rolodex listed McVeigh as a contact for Koernke. This evidence does not come remotely close to showing that militia members encouraged McVeigh to do anything illegal, let alone to perpetrate one of the most vicious mass murders in history.