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But back to Buchanan: Utilizing the prestige he had amassed as a White House staffer for two powerful Presidents, Buchanan opened his tent to an unholy alliance of anti-semitic and white nationalists on the political fringes. The extremists included William Luther Pierce, whose novel, The Turner Diaries, features the hanging of ‘race-traitors’ (like Caucasians and plantation owners who have sex with African Americans) and bodies dangling from street lamps, while armed white ‘Americans’ who all look like Chris  Evans, Austin Butler or Tatum Channing roam from house to house executing miscreants.

The Turner Diaries became a playbook for Timothy McVeigh, the white nationalist later executed for bombing the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Kansas City on April 19, 1995, killing 168 men, women, and children. McVeigh was a follower of Buchanan’s and the Spotlight, a newspaper published weekly by the Liberty Lobby, which supported segregationist Alabama Governor George Wallace and David Duke, the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, as well as Buchanan. In many respects, Buchanan was ahead of his time. His calls to fringe groups and armed extremists anticipated Trump’s calls (under Steve Bannon’s advice) to many of the same factions, which culminated in the failed insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Such groups have always existed in America and however fantasy-filled, and weapon-eroticized they may be, a number have maintained their military “readiness” awaiting a call to action by those they considered their superiors....

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an 4 25

This week, it will be 30 years since the Oklahoma bombing.

On the morning of April 19 1995, anti-government right-wing extremist Timothy McVeigh parked a Ryder truck loaded with 5,000 pounds of agricultural fertilizer and diesel fuel at the front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. At 9am, McVeigh lit two separate fuses – in case one failed. Two minutes later, the bomb exploded, killing 168 people (including 19 children) and injuring close to 700.

Today, the bombing remains the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in United States history. But in the cultural memory, Oklahoma was eclipsed by 9/11, when America – and the world – shifted their attention to the threat posed by radical Islamic extremism.

Three decades on, the bombing is back on the cultural agenda, as the right-wing extremism that drove McVeigh is on the rise.

In 2025, the threat from US-based violent extremists is believed to be “high”, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Domestic terrorist attacks and plots against government targets motivated by partisan political beliefs nearly tripled in the five years before last – compared to the previous 25 years combined.

New and recent chronicles of the Oklahoma bombing are not just a reflection on the past, but a warning about the future.

A right-wing ‘outlaw’

In his award-winning book about the bombing, Homegrown (2023), US lawyer and journalist Jeffrey Toobin writes:

In the thirty years since the Oklahoma City bombing, the country took an extraordinary journey – from nearly universal horror at the action of a right-wing extremist [McVeigh] to wide embrace of a president who reflected the bomber’s values.

Toobin draws ominous parallels between his subject’s political motivations, and the values and views of the January 6 insurrectionists.

McVeigh, a Gulf War veteran and gun-rights absolutist, always claimed he bombed the Murrah building to protest the “abuses and usurpations” of Bill Clinton’s government.

He specifically mentioned two infamous armed confrontations between extremists and the federal government. One was the 1992 standoff between FBI agents and white separatists at Ruby Ridge, which resulted in three deaths, including the killing of a 14-year-old boy. A year later, more than 75 people died in Waco, Texas, after a shootout and 51-day siege between the FBI and an apocalyptic religious sect, the Branch Davidians.

McVeigh was also mobilised by Clinton’s 1994 ban of assault weapons, which he and other conservatives believed was a violation of the Second Amendment. The assault ban was the final straw.

“When the guns are outlawed”, McVeigh wrote in a letter, “I become an outlaw.”

One of his strongest influences – and a constant companion – was The Turner Diaries, a 1978 novel sometimes referred to as “the bible of the racist right”. In it, a white nationalist destroys a FBI building in Washington with a truck bomb, and the US becomes engaged in a nuclear civil war. McVeigh read the book during his army training and sold copies at gun shows.

His embrace of violence as a justified response to political grievances is reflected in the rhetoric of Trump’s presidency, argues Toobin – most famously, Trump’s January 6 speech, when he exhorted his supporters to march on Congress and “fight like Hell”.

All the trends that McVeigh embodied – the political extremism, the obsession with gun rights, the search for like-minded allies, and above all, the embrace of violence – came together under the 45th president.

When choosing a date for the bombing, McVeigh deliberately opted for April 19: the second anniversary of Waco and the date of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, which marked the start of the American War of Independence. Like McVeigh, the rioters who stormed the Capitol saw “the rebellion” as akin to the revolutionary struggle of the Founding Fathers. They, too, believed violence was necessary to achieve their goals.

In this way, Toobin argues, McVeigh represents an early prototype of the aggrieved Trump voter. The actions of McVeigh and some Trump supporters belong to “a long tradition of gun-obsessed, antidemocratic, violence-fueled extremism”.

The only difference is, Trump’s extremist ideas have become mainstream.

McVeigh and the MAGA movement

A new docudrama, McVeigh, released last month in American cinemas, is a responsible account of McVeigh’s alienation and hostility, and a brooding rumination on the complex interaction of factors that led to his radicalization.

With great restraint, director Mike Ott avoids the sensationalism one might expect.

In McVeigh, the bombing itself is never depicted. Instead, the narrative follows the weeks leading up to the attack, slowly tracking McVeigh’s assemblage of the bomb with his accomplice, Terry Nichols, an old army friend.

Silence, in this sense, is the film’s modus operandi.

In an early scene, McVeigh (played by Alfie Allen) points a pistol at the television, miming the execution of former US Attorney General Janet Reno as she testifies at.

In the film’s closing moments, we see McVeigh in his truck on the morning of the bombing, waiting patiently for the red light to change.

McVeigh and Nichols speak in gruff monosyllables, their coded communications allowing the pair to hide “in plain sight”. This makes their plans difficult to decipher, though we know how the story ends.

The film has been criticised as a missed opportunity to critically examine the machinery that radicalised McVeigh. But the understated – and at times, excruciatingly dull – representation of events is the very point. Conspiratorial thinking is invisible, and the descent into violent extremism is marked by moments of mundane horror and aimlessness.

We can’t pinpoint the exact moment when McVeigh decides to commit to the attack, nor do we know how it could have been prevented.

But propelled by what one former mentor called his “right-wing, survivalist, paramilitary-type philosophy”, McVeigh can easily be read as a man who is trying to “make America great again”.

In this respect, the slow burn creates an ominous atmosphere as the film drifts toward its inevitable conclusion. The film subtly conveys McVeigh’s rage at the government and, in particular, his pursuit of retribution for Ruby Ridge, Waco and the assault ban, as accelerating forces.

The myth of the ‘lone wolf’

Like Homegrown, McVeigh debunks the myth McVeigh was a lone wolf.

Instead of presenting McVeigh as an eccentric oddity or a freakish outsider, the film shows how he found community in both Elohim, a small religious community with white supremacist orientations, and on the gun show circuit, where he sold books, bumper stickers, guns and ammunition.

Indeed, McVeigh shared his plans for the bombing with others. Like Terry Nichols and his brother James, McVeigh was connected to the Michigan Militia, an armed paramilitary group that advocates for armed defence against federal overreach and perceived incursions on freedom.

“McVeigh may have thought of himself as a lone wolf”, writes Jason Burke, “but he was not one.”

In Homegrown, Toobin too exposes the role of Nichols, who remains in the federal supermax prison in Colorado, serving life without parole. He also exposes Michael Fortier (another army friend of McVeigh’s) and his wife Lori, who both knew about the plot but failed to warn authorities.

Importantly, given the rise of extremist parties and movements, both Homegrown and McVeigh make clear there is no single cause of radicalisation and no single pathway to becoming a violent extremist.

Interestingly, Toobin even suggests McVeigh became an incel before the term itself existed. He argues that in the absence of social media, McVeigh used letter writing to share his extremist views and recruit prospective allies.

Like the incels of a later day, McVeigh was unable to attract the sexual interest of women and responded with rage toward them […] his resentments against Blacks (for taking his job opportunities) and women (for denying him companionship) festered and grew.

McVeigh came of age before the modern internet, but as a teen he was intrigued by its early iteration in the mid-1980s. An amateur hacker, he even broke into a defense department computer using the code name “Wanderer”. Still, he was unable to access social media and other digital technologies, which explains, in part, why he was dismissed as a lone wolf unable to find his “pack”.

“I believe there is an army out there, ready to rise up, even though I never found it”, McVeigh told his lawyers.

Toobin believes if social media existed in the early 1990s, McVeigh would have been able to galvanise the army he yearned for. “More than any other reason”, Toobin concludes, “the internet accounts for the difference between McVeigh’s lonely crusade and the thousands who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021.”

McVeigh’s legacy

McVeigh was executed by lethal injection on June 11, 2001, exactly three months before 9/11.

He never showed remorse for his actions. He believed the bombing was a justified response to the “arrogance and oppressive power” of the Clinton government, and described the children he killed as “collateral damage”.

Before he was executed, McVeigh requested his ashes be scattered over the Oklahoma City National Memorial, on the site where the Murrah building once stood.

His defence lawyer and longtime friend, Rob Nigh, talked him out of the plan: “a kind of sneering double immortality for the bombing itself and for his return to the site for eternity”. Instead, McVeigh’s remains were released to the winds in the Rocky Mountains.

The decision, as Toobin notes, was a symbolic one:

By concluding his journey in this way, McVeigh would be everywhere. Where, in a way, he remains.

Kate Cantrell, Senior Lecturer – Writing, Editing, and Publishing, *University of Southern Queensland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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8 22 an the conv

in the run-up to the U.S. midterm elections, some politicians continue to ride the wave of what's known as "Christian nationalism" in ways that are increasingly vocal and direct.

GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right Donald Trump loyalist from Georgia, told an interviewer on July 23, 2022, that the Republican Party "need[s] to be the party of nationalism. And I'm a Christian, and I say it proudly, we should be Christian nationalists."

Similarly, Rep. Lauren Boebert, a Republican from Colorado, recently said, "The church is supposed to direct the government. The government is not supposed to direct the church." Boebert called the separation of church and state "junk."

Many Christian nationalists repeat conservative activist David Barton's argument that the Founding Fathers did not intend to keep religion out of government.

As a scholar of racism and communication who has written about white nationalism during the Trump presidency, I find the amplification of Christian nationalism unsurprising. Christian nationalism is prevalent among Trump supporters, as religion scholars Andrew Whitehead and Samuel L. Perry argue in their book "Taking Back America for God."

Perry and Whitehead describe the **Christian nationalist movementas being "as ethnic and political as it is religious," noting that it relies on the assumption of white supremacy. Christian nationalism combines belief in a particular form of Christianity with nativist and populist political platforms. American Christian nationalism is a worldview based on the belief that America is superior to other countries, and that that superiority is divinely established. In this mindset, only Christians are true Americans.[real am]

Parts of the movement fit into a broader right-wing extremist history of violence, which has been on the rise over the past few decades and was particularly on display during the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021.

The vast majority of Christian nationalists never engage in violence. Nonetheless, Christian nationalist thinking suggests that unless Christians control the state, the state will suppress Christianity.

From siege to militia buildup

Violence perpetrated by Christian nationalists has manifested in two primary ways in recent decades. The first is through their involvement in militia groups; the second is seen in attacks on abortion providers.

The catalyst for the growth of militia activity among contemporary Christian nationalists stems from two events: the 1992 Ruby Ridge standoff and the 1993 siege at Waco.

At Ruby Ridge, former Army Green Beret Randy Weaver engaged federal law enforcement in an 11-day standoff at his rural Idaho cabin over charges relating to the sale of sawed-off shotguns to an ATF informant investigating Aryan Nation white supremacist militia meetings.

Weaver ascribed to the Christian Identity movement, which emphasizes adherence to Old Testament laws and white supremacy.Christian Identity members believe in the application of the death penalty for adultery and LBGTQ relationships in accordance with their reading of some biblical passages.

During the standoff, Weaver's wife and teenage son were shot and killed before he surrendered to federal authorities.

In the Waco siege a year later, cult leader David Koreshand his followers entered a standoff with federal law enforcement at the group's Texas compound, once again concerning weapons charges. After a 51-day standoff, federal law enforcement laid siege to the compound. A fire took hold at the compound in disputed circumstances, leading to the deaths of 76 people, including Koresh.

The two events spurred a nationwide militia buildup. As sociologist Erin Kania argues: "Ruby Ridge and Waco confrontations drove some citizens to strengthen their belief that the government was overstepping the parameters of its authority. … Because this view is one of the founding ideologies of the American Militia Movement, it makes sense that interest and membership in the movement would sharply increase following these standoffs between government and nonconformists."

Distrust of the government blended with strains of Christian fundamentalism have brought together two groups with formerly disparate goals.

Christian nationalism and violence

Christian fundamentalists and white supremacist militia groups both figured themselves as targeted by the government in the aftermath of the standoffs at Ruby Ridge and Waco. As scholar of religion Ann Burlein argues,"Both the Christian right and right-wing white supremacist groups aspire to overcome a culture they perceive as hostile to the white middle class, families, and heterosexuality."

Significantly, in 1995, Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and accomplice Terry Nichols cited revenge for the Waco siege as a motive for the bombing of the Alfred Murrah federal building. The terrorist act killed 168 people and injured hundreds more.

Since 1993, at least 11 people have been murdered in attacks on abortion clinics in cities across the U.S., and there have been numerous other plots.

They have involved people like the Rev. Michael Bray, who attacked multiple abortion clinics. Bray was the spokesman for Paul Hill, a Christian Identity adherent who murdered physician John Britton and his bodyguard James Barrett in 1994 outside of a Florida abortion clinic.

In yet another case, Eric Rudolph bombed the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. In his confession, he cited his opposition to abortion and anti-LGBTQ views as motivation to bomb Olympic Square.

These men cited their involvement with the Christian Identitymovement in their trials as motivation for engaging in violence.

Mainstreaming Christian nationalist ideas

The presence of Christian nationalist ideas in recent political campaigns is concerning, given its ties to violence and white supremacy.

Trump and his advisers helped to mainstream such rhetoric with events like his photo op with a Bible in Lafayette Square in Washington following the violent dispersal of protesters, and making a show of pastors laying hands on him. But that legacy continues beyond his administration.

Candidates like Doug Mastriano, the Republican gubernatorial candidate in Pennsylvania who attended the Jan. 6 Trump rally, are now using the same messages.

In some states, such as Texas and Montana, hefty funding for far-right Christian candidates has helped put Christian nationalist ideas in the mainstream.

Blending politics and religion is not necessarily a recipe for Christian nationalism, nor is Christian nationalism a recipe for political violence. At times, however, Christian nationalist ideas can serve as a prelude.

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war ~ everyone ch

BTB

...The heat brought on by the crackdown forced Beam to retire his beloved inter-Klan newsletter and survival alert. The last issue contained an essay by an unknown author – probably Beam. In it, he wrote, “The second American revolution will be a revolution of individuals, a revolution without exact precedent in recorded history. Because individuals can accomplish complex acts of resistance without peril or betrayal or even detection by the most advanced snooping devices. Missions formerly assigned to groups may be undertaken by individuals equipped to fight alone.” It would not be long before a young man named Timothy McVey would prove these words prophetic.

Chapter 6: The Perfect Soldier

[Transcriber's Note: I'm leaving out Robert & guest's off-script comments except where relevant, they will appear in brackets. Occasionally, 2-3 words were changed to better adapt speech to writing. If using in academic text please reference actual recording as there are points (specifically Robert quoting from 'American Terrorist')where proper quotation became unclear & I just went with my best guess.]

The 1988 Seditious conspiracy trial held important lessons for the chief minds behind the white supremacist movement. When they leaned into their patriotism, their love of an America that was white and Christian, but America nonetheless, they could draw significant sympathy from their fellow white men and women. Swastikas and klan robes were much less useful than tearful stories of hippie protestors spitting on flags.

The 1990s saw continuous growth in both the survivalist and the american militia movement. Neither of these things was inherently white supremacist, but Beam and his colleagues had been remarkably successful at seeding their propaganda into gun shows and conventions. As a result, the early 90s brought them a whole crop of fellow travelers: men and women who did not identify as nazis and had never held clan membership, but who were also quite capable of reading the Turner Diaries and identifying with its message.

Randy Weaveris a perfect example of this new sort of recruit. He was a former green beret, a patriot who loved his country and working with his hands. He and his wife Vicky were Christian conservatives. They fell in love with the first generation of evangelical TV preachers - men like Jerry Falwell - they also read a book called "The Late Great Planet Earth" by Hal Lindseywhich focused on using the bible to predict the near future. Lindsey's book convinced Randy and Vicky that Gog, an anti-Christian empire from the book of Ezekiel was the Soviet Union. They became more and more gone into conspiracy theories and convinced themselves that a great and firey apocalypse was imminent. I'm gonna quote next from 'American Experience' by PBS. "Concerned citizens, they set out to spread the word. They weren't able to find a church that approached these matters with what they felt was the appropriate level of seriousness, so they held their own Bible studies with like minded friends and neighbors. This sparked the attention of a local reporter who came to do a story on them. The Weavers, Walter learned, did not appreciate the results. They felt betrayed, but they'd never been more sure in their beliefs: a great conflagration was coming, and they felt increasingly unsafe in Iowa. Vicky started having visions in the bathtub - god was speaking to her - and god was telling her to go west to find for her family a mountaintop. They would be safe there."

The Weavers moved to a place that would later come to be called 'Ruby Ridge' in Idaho, not far from Richard Butler's Aryan Nations compound.Randy Weaver began to visit the compound, attending several events and beginning to make friends among the neo-nazis. The exact nature of what he believed precisely is unclear and heavily debated. It /seems/ that he identified with some aspects of Christian Identity theology, and it's safe to say he was racist by normal people standards, but it's also fair to say that Randy Weaver was not really a nazi or really an ideological white supremacist. He hung around Aryan Nations because he lived in the middle of nowhere, they were the only people to hang with, and he just didn't care about their racism. He was not the kind of man who'd have joined a group like 'The Order' BUT he would come to play an important role in the next step of the white supremacist movement.

Now, the FBI wound up wiretapping several of the fascists that Randy Weaver befriended. It was quite immediately obvious to them that Mr. Weaver had no plans to overthrow the government, spark a race war, or do anything more subversive than live off the land with his family and picnic with Nazis from time to time. In fact, when other people in these wiretapped conversations would suggest committing crimes [lynchings], Randy would say something like, "We don't really go in for that stuff."

While the feds knew that Randy Weaver wasn't really dangerous they saw him as the perfect guy to approach as an informant. He wasn't a true believer, and he was VERY poor. If they could entrap him into committing a crime, they could scare him with prison time til he agreed to wear a wire and help them catch some of the big fish in the Aryan Nations community. An undercover agent approached Randy and offered him good money to illegally saw off a couple shotguns. Now, Randy was not a believer in the legitimacy of American gun control regulations, and he needed the cash, so he gladly acquiesced and was subsequently busted for it. The feds made their offer, and Randy refused them. He was arrested on federal firearms charges and taken to jail. Randy made bail though and he fled back to Ruby Ridge and holed up with his family, and a whole bunch of guns, in the hope the federales would not follow. They did.

But the attempted arrest did not go well. A US marshal was shot dead by the Weaver clan and the authorities responded with a blizzard of indiscriminate gunfire which killed Randy's 14 year old son, the family dog, and his unarmed wife, Vicky. A standoff ensued, the law came in with helicopters, armored vehicles, and the kind of militarized police that look familiar to us now but were new and terrifying back in 1992. The media descended on Ruby Ridge too, and the assault on the Weaver family was spread virally throughout the far right. The Weavers were the perfect poster family to illustrate government overreach. Footage of black helicopters floating over Ruby Ridge, and saint-like photos of Vicky Weaver were almost tailor made to sell the idea that a new world order was coming for white christian gun-owning Americans.

Louie Beam and his fellow fascists knew a great opportunity when one came a-knockin. In 1992, while Ruby Ridge was still in the news, the leading minds of the white supremacist movement gathered in Estes Park for a summit on how, precisely, they could use this tragedy to their advantage. The Summit was convened by Pete Peters, a Christian Identity preacher from Colorado and the head of a sizeable Christian Identity church, the LaPort Church of Christ. Here's how Leonard Zeskind summarizes the proceedings in 'Blood and Politics': "For two days they met in committee, deliberated in plenary sessions, and engaged in the kind of one-on-one conversation known in the parlance of business professionals as networking. They made decisions in the name of Jesus Christ and Yahw-h, sang 'Arms for Christian Soldiers', and carried themselves in a manner of quiet resolve appropriate for their surroundings: a YMCA in a facility abutting the park. No guns were waved, and even the most heated rhetoric seemed to have the blood drained out of it." Estes Park signified a radical shift in the tactics of the white power movement. Like the 1983 Aryan Nations conference, we mostly know what was discussed at Estes park because of the things that happened after it. The nazis started reaching out to more moderate americans.

Louis Beam published an article in his magazine appropriately named 'the Seditionist' - because he'd gotten declared innocent of sedition. He called for leaderless sedition in the wake of Ruby Ridge. Big Star One, a militia with members in Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico carried out grenade launcher and mortar training exercises in rural Texas. The Montana militia published a guidebook on how to engage in domestic terrorism. In 1993 law enforcement across the nation found explosives caches meant to be used as attacks in various-- National Afro-American Museum in Ohio, and a black church in LA. None of this made the news in a big way because of something that happened in mid-1993. The siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco Texas.

The Branch Davidians were not a christian identity sect, their leader David Koresh was not affiliated with the white supremacist movement, but the ATF siege of their compound so close after Ruby Ridge was useful for Louis Beam and his congregants to propagandize around. On --1993, ATF agents attempted to serve a search warrant about sexual abuse and illegal weapons charges. People inside the compound opened fire, 4 agents and 5 Branch Davidians were killed, and the situation devolved into a bloody siege. On April 19th, the FBI, who'd taken control of the situation, launched an assault on the compound. In the ensuing melee several fires broke out and quickly swept through the structures. By the time the smoke had cleared and it was all over 53 adults and 23 children were dead.

The whole tragedy was inarguably a clusterfuck on the federal government, which of course helped groups like the fascists.

Kirk Lyons, a close friend of Louis Beam and a white supremacist militia leader himself, sent out an issue of his groups fundraising letter that featured a photo of a 14 year old girl who'd died in the Waco siege. The girl was of course, white, and the photo was captioned 'Why We Fight'. There were dozens, hundreds, and eventually thousands of pieces of similar propaganda. Gradually, day by day, and month by month, explicitly fascist and white supremacist groups began to wrap their ideological claws around the militia movement and suck in ever more patriots. British Journalist John Ronson was one of the few journalists who spent a great deal of time embedded with the fringe right during. the Michigan militia during this time had about 12,000 members which was a significant surge in the wake of Ruby Ridge and Waco. One of those members was a young desert storm veteran named Tim McVeigh.

Timothy McVeighwas born on April 23 1968. McVeigh grew up in Pendelton New York and had an early childhood that was pretty standard for the 70s and 80s. He watched 'Gumby' and 'Truth or Consequences', he played cowboys and indians or cops and robbers with other kids in the neighborhood. Tim preferred playing the good guys as he saw them, cops or cowboys, whenever possible. He was sickly and somewhat prone to accidents, hurting himself in all sorts of ways that young boys who spend a lot of time in the woods tend to do. Tim was an energetic boy and he might've been someone who'd ended up on Ritalin had he been born a decade or two later. He was constantly in trouble for minor things, but he also had a good heart, as this story from 'American Terrorist' makes clear. Tim was playing near the pond when he noticed one of the older neighborhood boys carrying a burlap sack. The sack was weighted down with rocks, curious Tim could see there was something else wriggling in the sack and he watches as the older boy pitched the sack out into the pond where it quickly sank to the bottom. "What was that?" Tim asked, running to the far shore of the pond where the neighborhood boy stood. "Those are kittens my dad had," the boy answered in a matter of fact tone, "we had to get rid of them". For Tim, who loved animals and especially kittens, the realization of what he had witnessed hit him hard. He cried about the incident for days.

[They break from script to chat, at some point Robert summarizes: "He was a sensitive kid. The story of Tim McVeigh is the story of how a young mind got enraptured with this kind of terroristic apocalyptic ideology who wouldn't have gotten caught in the first iteration of it. This is a guy who would only have been caught by the changes made to the movement's propaganda outreach after Estes Park."]

Tim fell in love with guns at an early age, his grandfather first took him shooting when he was 7, and Tim's Grandpa, Ed McVeigh, everyone said, was a stickler about firearm safety. He considered safe gun ownership to be an integral part of American citizenship. [So he likes guns, but he doesn't like killing things, he's like a target shooter and stuff] . Being small and sort of weird, Tim McVeigh was a bit of a magnet for bullies. He developed a deep hatred for bullying and a reflexive rage at the sight of anything he saw as bully behavior whether it came from an individual or an institution. Tim's parents divorced when the kids were young, his sisters chose to go live with their mother but Tim stayed with his father so that he would not have to be alone [again, sensitive kid]. After the OKC bombing, a number of pundits would try to tie his parents' divorce to his evolution as a terrorist; this would seem to be an overstatement, but he did tie his mother leaving his father to broader social trends, later stating in an interview that, "In the past 30 years because of the women's movement they've taken an influence out of the household."

When one reads about McVeigh they get the feeling that had he been born later he might've found a home within the alt-right. For one thing, he was obsessed with the Star Wars movies and identified heavily with Luke Skywalker. As the 80s rolled along and home computers started to become more common, McVeigh became one of the first generation of computer nerds. He was on the internet before basically anyone else. His handle on those early message boards was "The Wanderer". We can't know everywhere McVeigh went in the early internet, but it's unlikely to be pure coincidence that Timothy grew obsessed with survivalism and the second amendment during the years he was most involved in nascent internet culture. It's entirely possible he came across some of Louis Beam's writings during this time. We know for a fact that he fell in love with a book... 'The Turner Diaries'. He first heard about 'the Turner Diaries' from an ad in 'Soldier of Fortune' magazine. He ordered the book by mail, and fell madly in love with it. For the rest of his life he'd insist that the book's gun rights advocacy was what drew him to it, not its depiction of a genocidal worldwide race war. [and it's kinda likely he was telling the truth. again, like Randy Weaver, Tim McVeigh was a racist, but it's not his motivation.]

Post-Estes Park, the Turner Diaries remained on of the lynchpins of white supremacist recruitment in the US. Ads for it in magazines like Soldier of Fortune often posed the question "What would you do if the government comes for your guns?". None of this is to say McVeigh wasn't racist, he grew up in a place where everyone was white, at age 19 he got a job as a guard on an armored car, he later recalled his colleagues expressing casual racism towards black residents on the east side of Buffalo and eventually he adopted those beliefs and their propensity for using racial slurs. Racism was a fact of Tim's life, but again, it wasn't like the main thing for him. What was his main thing, were guns....

In Tim McVeigh, Louis Beam and his fellow fascists had found the perfect soldier, the perfect exemplar of Beam's concept of leaderless resistance. He was not a lone wolf as some foolish pretenders in journalism had named him. McVeigh was radicalized by a constellation of writers and thinkers as well as hundreds of men he had spoke with at gun shows and survivalist conventions and sitting outside the siege lines at Waco. He was radicalized by William Pierce, who wrote 'the Turner Diaries' hoping desperately that someone would do exactly what McVeigh did. McVeigh's attack prompted response from federal law enforcement, but not the one you might expect. While there were some crackdowns on militia cells and organizations, the justice department largely responded by taking a lighter hand with white supremacists and militias.

In 1996 'the Montana Freemen' wound up in a standoff with the federal government. As a group they represented a synthesis of Christian Identity and Posse Comatatus beliefs.They declared themselves independent of federal control and wound up in an 81 day standoff with law enforcement. For awhile it looked like the Freemen compound might become another Waco. But the standoff ended peacefully. Video footage of the 23 adults and 4 children surrendering showed no giant armored vehicles or military-looking police. The FBI's hostage rescue team wore sneakers and casual civilian clothing. McVeigh would go to his grave convinced that the lighter hand used on the Montana Freemen was the result of his attack on Oklahoma City... and he might have been right. According to 'American Terrorist', "Clinton R. VanZandt, the former FBI agent who'd tried without success to negotiate a peaceful end to the Waco standoff three years earlier, agreed with McVeigh, at least on that point. Retired from the FBI and working as a security consultant, VanZandt feels that the government learned a painful lesson from the OKC bombing. In VanZandt's words, 'the government realized that it must become a velvet brick, not a battering ram.' 'What an absolute classic tragedy,' VanZandt had said soon after the conflagration at Waco, 'what a total indictment of mankind's inability to communicate and relate even though we have different religious beliefs and personal philosophies.' While VanZandt condemned the OKC bombing, he felt that Waco had started a war and that McVeigh's bombing had not only been an escalation, but a turning point in the war."

My only disagreement with Mr. VanZandt is the idea that the war Mr. McVeigh wound up fighting in had started with Waco. This war had been going on much longer than that, at least as far back as the days of George Lincoln Rockwell. Timothy McVeigh may have seen himself as a patriotic american, but he fought as a soldier of the american fascist movement under generals Louis Beam and William Pierce. The failure of the federal government, and almost everyone, to see this war is one reason why things have gotten so bad in 2019 as I write this. McVeigh would be joined on down 30 years by dozens of other angry young men. Men like Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the infamous Columbine shooters. Most experts would agree that Harris was the motivating force behind the attacks, more or less pulling Klebold along with him. This is not often reported on, but Harris was obsessed with Adolf Hitler and Nazism. He wrote constantly about Nazi ideology, his hatred of free speech, the press, and his desire to see mentally defective people executed. Harris was also obsessed with Timothy McVeigh.

Dave Colon is a journalist who spent more than a decade studying the massacre.He found regular references to OKC and McVeigh in Harris's writings before the shooting. Colon writes, "In his journal, Eric would brag about topping McVeigh. Oklahoma City was a one-note performance, McVeigh set his timer and walked away. He didn't even see his spectacle unfold. Harris admired McVeigh, but desperately wanted to beat him, carrying out a larger attack, killing more people."

Eric Harris and DK did not succeed in their goal of topping McVeigh, but Harris may yet manage to beat McVeigh's 'High Score'. In the decades since the 1996 shooting at Columbine it has inspired at least 74 copycat attacks which have killed 89 people and injured 126 more. You can draw a direct line from George Lincoln Rockwell to William Pierce and Louis Beam, to Tim McVeigh, and then to Eric Harris. By the late 1990s, it was incredibly clear that leaderless resistance as a tactic was the best weapon in the white supremacist arsenal; but it would take the mass adoption of the internet and the era of the smartphone for Louis Beam's deadliest innovation to see its full potential.

Chapter 7: The Digital Reich

---

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_McVeigh

Timothy James McVeigh (April 23, 1968 – June 11, 2001) was an American domestic terrorist who carried out the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people and injured more than 680 others, and destroyed one third of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.^[5][6] The bombing was the deadliest act of terrorism in the United States prior to the September 11 attacks. It remains the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in U.S. history.

A Gulf War veteran, McVeigh sought revenge against the federal government for the 1993 Waco siege that ended in the deaths of 86 people, many of whom were children, as well as the 1992 Ruby Ridge incident and American foreign policy. He hoped to inspire a revolution against the federal government, and defended the bombing as a legitimate tactic against what he saw as a tyrannical government.^[7] He was arrested shortly after the bombing and indicted on 160 state offenses and 11 federal offenses, including the use of a weapon of mass destruction. He was found guilty on all counts in 1997 and sentenced to death.^[8]

McVeigh was executed by lethal injection on June 11, 2001, at the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana. His execution was carried out in a considerably shorter time than most inmates awaiting the death penalty. Terry Nichols and Michael Fortier were convicted as conspirators in the plot. Nichols was sentenced to eight life terms for the deaths of eight federal agents, and to 161 life terms without parole by the state of Oklahoma for the deaths of the others. Michael Fortier was sentenced to 12 years' imprisonment and has since been released. Lori Fortier was given immunity in exchange for her testimony against the others.

• Early life
• 2Military life
• 3Post-military life
  • 3.11993 Waco siege and gun shows
• 4Arizona with Fortier
• 5With Nichols, Waco siege, and radicalization
• 6Plan against federal building or individuals
• 7Oklahoma City bombing
• 8Arrest and trial
• 9Incarceration and execution
• 10Associations
• 11Religious beliefs
• 12Motivations for the bombing
• 13Accomplices
• 14See also
• 15References
• 16External links

Early life

McVeigh was born on April 23, 1968, in Lockport, New York, the only son and the second of three children of Irish Americans. In 1866, McVeigh's great-great-grandfather Edward McVeigh emigrated from Ireland and settled in Niagara County.^[9] Timothy McVeigh, his elder sister Patty and younger sister Jennifer were born to Mildred "Mickey" Noreen (née Hill) and William McVeigh.^[1] After their parents divorced when McVeigh was ten years old, he was raised by his father in Pendleton, New York.^[1][10]

McVeigh claimed to have been a target of bullying at school, and he took refuge in a fantasy world where he imagined retaliating against the bullies.^[11] At the end of his life, he stated his belief that the United States government is the ultimate bully.^[12]

Most who knew McVeigh remember him as being very shy and withdrawn, while a few described him as an outgoing and playful child who withdrew as an adolescent. He is said to have had only one girlfriend as an adolescent; he later told journalists that he did not have any idea how to impress girls.^[13]

While in high school McVeigh became interested in computers, and hacked into government computer systems on his Commodore 64 under the handle The Wanderer, taken from the song by Dion (DiMucci). In his senior year he was named "most promising computer programmer" of Starpoint Central High School,^[14] but had relatively poor grades until his 1986 graduation.^[1]

He was introduced to firearms by his grandfather. McVeigh told people of his wish to become a gun shop owner, and sometimes took firearms to school to impress his classmates. He became intensely interested in gun rights as well as the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution after he graduated from high school, and read magazines such as Soldier of Fortune. He briefly attended Bryant & Stratton College before dropping out.^[15][16] After dropping out of college, McVeigh worked as an armored car guard and was noted by co-workers as being obsessed with guns. One co-worker recalled an instance when McVeigh came to work "looking likePancho Villa" as he was wearing bandoliers.^[1]

Military life

In May 1988, at the age of 20, McVeigh enlisted in the United States Army and attended Basic Training and Advanced Individual Training at the U.S. Army Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia.^[17] While in the military, McVeigh used much of his spare time to read about firearms, sniper tactics, and explosives.^[18] McVeigh was reprimanded by the military for purchasing a "White Power" T-shirt at a Ku Klux Klan protest; they were objecting to black servicemen who wore "Black Power" T-shirts around a military installation (primarily Army).^[19]

McVeigh was a top-scoring gunner with the 25mm cannon of the Bradley Fighting Vehicles used by the 1st Infantry Division and was promoted to sergeant. After being promoted, McVeigh earned a reputation of assigning undesirable work to black servicemen and using racial slurs.^[1] He was stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas, before being deployed on Operation Desert Storm.

Speaking of his experience in Kuwait, in an interview before his execution, McVeigh said that he decapitated an Iraqi soldier with cannon fire on his first day in the war and celebrated.^{[20][page needed]} He said he was later shocked to be ordered to execute surrendering prisoners and to see carnage on the road while leaving Kuwait City after U.S. troops routed the Iraqi army. McVeigh received several service awards, including the Bronze Star Medal,^[1] National Defense Service Medal,^[21] Southwest Asia Service Medal,^[22] Army Service Ribbon,^[22] and the Kuwaiti Liberation Medal.^[21]

McVeigh aspired to join the United States Army**Special Forces(SF). After returning from the Gulf War, he entered the selection program, but washed out on the second day of the 21-day assessment and selection course for the Special Forces. McVeigh decided to leave the Army and was honorably discharged in 1991.^[23]

Post-military life

McVeigh wrote letters to local newspapers complaining about taxes:

Taxes are a joke. Regardless of what a political candidate "promises," they will increase. More taxes are always the answer to government mismanagement. They mess up. We suffer. Taxes are reaching cataclysmic levels, with no slowdown in sight. [...] Is a Civil War Imminent? Do we have to shed blood to reform the current system? I hope it doesn't come to that. But it might.^[24]

McVeigh also wrote to Representative John J. LaFalce (D–New York),^[25] complaining about the arrest of a woman for carrying mace:

It is a lie if we tell ourselves that the police can protect us everywhere at all times. Firearms restrictions are bad enough, but now a woman can't even carry Mace in her purse?^[25]

While visiting friends in Decker, Michigan, McVeigh reportedly complained that the Army had implanted a microchip into his buttocks so that the government could keep track of him.^[1] McVeigh worked long hours in a dead-end job and felt that he did not have a home. He sought romance, but his advances were rejected by a co-worker and he felt nervous around women. He believed that he brought too much pain to his loved ones.^[26] He grew angry and frustrated at his difficulties in finding a girlfriend. He took up obsessive gambling.^[27]Unable to pay gambling debts, he took a cash advance and then defaulted on his repayments. He began looking for a state so that he could live without heavy government regulation or high taxes. He became enraged when the government told him that he had been overpaid $1,058 while in the Army and he had to pay back the money. He wrote an angry letter to the government, saying:

Go ahead, take everything I own; take my dignity. Feel good as you grow fat and rich at my expense; sucking my tax dollars and property.^[28]

McVeigh introduced his sister to anti-government literature, but his father had little interest in these views. He moved out of his father's house and into an apartment that had no telephone. This made it impossible for his employer to contact him for overtime assignments. He quit the National Rifle Association (NRA), believing that it was too weak on gun rights.^[29]

1993 Waco siege and gun shows

In 1993, McVeigh drove to Waco, Texas, during the Waco siege to show his support. At the scene, he distributed pro-gun rights literature and bumper stickers bearing slogans such as, "When guns are outlawed, I will become an outlaw." He told a student reporter:

The government is afraid of the guns people have because they have to have control of the people at all times. Once you take away the guns, you can do anything to the people. You give them an inch and they take a mile. I believe we are slowly turning into a socialist government. The government is continually growing bigger and more powerful, and the people need to prepare to defend themselves against government control.^[30][31]

For the five months following the Waco siege, McVeigh worked at gun shows and handed out free cards printed up with Lon Horiuchi's name and address, "in the hope that somebody in the Patriot movement would assassinate the sharpshooter." Horiuchi is an FBI sniper and some of his official actions have drawn controversy, specifically his shooting and killing of Randy Weaver's wife while she held an infant child. McVeigh wrote hate mail to Horiuchi, suggesting that "what goes around, comes around". McVeigh later considered putting aside his plan to target the Murrah Building to target Horiuchi or a member of his family instead.^[32]

McVeigh became a fixture on the gun show circuit, traveling to forty states and visiting about eighty gun shows. He found that the further west he went, the more anti-government sentiment he encountered, at least until he got to what he called "The People's Socialist Republic of California."^[33] McVeigh sold survival items and copies of The Turner Diaries. One author said:

In the gun show culture, McVeigh found a home. Though he remained skeptical of some of the most extreme ideas being bandied around, he liked talking to people there about the United Nations, the federal government, and possible threats to American liberty.^[34]

Arizona with Fortier

McVeigh had a road atlas with hand-drawn designations of the most likely places for nuclear attacks and considered buying property in Seligman, Arizona, which he determined to be in a "nuclear-free zone." He lived with Michael Fortier in Kingman, Arizona, and the two became so close that he served as best man at Fortier's wedding. McVeigh experimented with cannabis and methamphetamineafter first researching their effects in an encyclopedia.^[35] He was never as interested in drugs as Fortier was, and one of the reasons they parted ways was McVeigh's getting tired of Fortier's drug habits.^[36]

With Nichols, Waco siege, and radicalization

In April 1993, McVeigh headed for a farm in Michigan where former roommate Terry Nichols lived. In between watching coverage of the Waco siege on TV, Nichols and his brother began teaching McVeigh how to make explosives out of readily available materials; specifically, they combined household chemicals in plastic jugs. The destruction of the Waco compound enraged McVeigh and convinced him that it was time to take action. He was particularly angered by the government's use of CS gas on women and children; he had been exposed to the gas as part of his military training and was familiar with its effects. The disappearance of certain evidence,^[37] such as the bullet-riddled steel-reinforced front door to the complex, led him to suspect a cover-up.

McVeigh's anti-government rhetoric became more radical. He began to sell Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) hats riddled with bullet holes, and a flare gun that he said could shoot down an "ATF helicopter".^[8][38] He produced videos detailing the government's actions at Waco and handed out pamphlets with titles such as "U.S. Government Initiates Open Warfare Against American People" and "Waco Shootout Evokes Memory of Warsaw '43." He began changing his answering machine greeting every couple of weeks to various quotes by Patrick Henry, such as "Give me liberty or give me death."^[39] He began experimenting with making pipe bombs and other small explosive devices. The government imposed new firearms restrictions in 1994 which McVeigh believed threatened his livelihood.^[36]

McVeigh dissociated himself from his boyhood friend Steve Hodge by sending him a 23-page farewell letter. He proclaimed his devotion to the United States Declaration of Independence, explaining in detail what each sentence meant to him. McVeigh declared that:

Those who betray or subvert the Constitution are guilty of sedition and/or treason, are domestic enemies and should and will be punished accordingly.

It also stands to reason that anyone who sympathizes with the enemy or gives aid or comfort to said enemy is likewise guilty. I have sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic and I will. And I will because not only did I swear to, but I believe in what it stands for in every bit of my heart, soul and being.

I know in my heart that I am right in my struggle, Steve. I have come to peace with myself, my God and my cause. Blood will flow in the streets, Steve. Good vs. Evil. Free Men vs. Socialist Wannabe Slaves. Pray it is not your blood, my friend.^[40]

McVeigh felt the need to personally reconnoiter sites of rumored conspiracies. He visited Area 51 in order to defy government restrictions on photography and went to Gulfport, Mississippi, to determine the veracity of rumors about United Nations operations. These turned out to be false; the Russian vehicles on the site were being configured for use in U.N.-sponsored humanitarian aid efforts. Around this time, McVeigh and Nichols began making bulk purchases of ammonium nitrate, an agricultural fertilizer, for resale tosurvivalists, since rumors were circulating that the government was preparing to ban it.^[41]

Plan against federal building or individuals

McVeigh told Fortier of his plans to blow up a federal building, but Fortier declined to participate. Fortier also told his wife about the plans.^[42] McVeigh composed two letters to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the first titled "Constitutional Defenders" and the second "ATF Read." He denounced government officials as "fascist tyrants" and "storm troopers," and warned:

ATF, all you tyrannical mother fuckers will swing in the wind one day for your treasonous actions against the Constitution of the United States. Remember the Nuremberg War Trials.^[43][2]

McVeigh also wrote a letter to recruit a customer named Steve Colbern:

A man with nothing left to lose is a very dangerous man and his energy/anger can be focused toward a common/righteous goal. What I'm asking you to do, then, is sit back and be honest with yourself. Do you have kids/wife? Would you back out at the last minute to care for the family? Are you interested in keeping your firearms for their current/future monetary value, or would you drag that '06 through rock, swamp and cactus... to get off the needed shot? In short, I'm not looking for talkers, I'm looking for fighters... And if you are a fed, think twice. Think twice about the Constitution you are supposedly enforcing (isn't "enforcing freedom" an oxymoron?) and think twice about catching us with our guard down – you will lose just like Degan did – and your family will lose.^[44]

McVeigh began announcing that he had progressed from the "propaganda" phase to the "action" phase. He wrote to his Michigan friend Gwenda Strider, "I have certain other 'militant' talents that are in short supply and greatly demanded."^[45]

McVeigh later said he considered "a campaign of individual assassination," with "eligible" targets including Attorney General Janet Reno, Judge Walter S. Smith Jr. of Federal District Court, who handled the Branch Davidian trial; and Lon Horiuchi, a member of the FBI hostage-rescue team, who shot and killed Vicki Weaver in a standoff at a remote cabin at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in 1992.^[46] He said he wanted Reno to accept "full responsibility in deed, not just words."^[47] Such an assassination seemed too difficult,^[48] and he decided that since federal agents had become soldiers, he should strike at them at their command centers.^[49] According to McVeigh's authorized biography, he decided that he could make the loudest statement by bombing a federal building. After the bombing, he was ambivalent about his act and the deaths he caused; as he said in letters to his hometown newspaper, he sometimes wished that he had carried out a series of assassinations against police and government officials instead.^[50]

Oklahoma City bombing

Main article: Oklahoma City bombing

TheAlfred P. Murrah Federal Building two days after the Oklahoma City bombing

Working at a lakeside campground near McVeigh's old Army post, he and Nichols constructed an ANFO explosive device mounted in the back of a rented Ryder truck. The bomb consisted of about 5,000 pounds (2,300 kg) of ammonium nitrate and nitromethane.

On April 19, 1995, McVeigh drove the truck to the front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building just as its offices opened for the day. Before arriving, he stopped to light a two-minute fuse. At 09:02, a large explosion destroyed the north half of the building. It killed 168 people, including nineteen children in the day care center on the second floor, and injured 684 others.^[51]

McVeigh said that he had not known that there was a daycare center on the second floor, and that he might have chosen a different target if he had known about it.^[52][53] Nichols said that he and McVeigh did know about the daycare center in the building, and that they did not care.^[54][55]

McVeigh's biographers, Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck, spoke with McVeigh in interviews totaling 75 hours. He said about the victims:

To these people in Oklahoma who have lost a loved one, I'm sorry but it happens every day. You're not the first mother to lose a kid, or the first grandparent to lose a grandson or a granddaughter. It happens every day, somewhere in the world. I'm not going to go into that courtroom, curl into a fetal ball and cry just because the victims want me to do that.

During an interview in 2000 with Ed Bradley for television news magazine 60 Minutes, Bradley asked McVeigh for his reaction to the deaths of the nineteen children. McVeigh said:

I thought it was terrible that there were children in the building.^[56]

According to the Oklahoma City Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT), more than 300 buildings in the city were damaged. More than 12,000 volunteers and rescue workers took part in the rescue, recovery and support operations following the bombing. In reference to theories that McVeigh had assistance from others, he responded with a well-known line from the film A Few Good Men, "You can't handle the truth!" He added, "Because the truth is, I blew up the Murrah Building and isn't it kind of scary that one man could wreak this kind of hell?"^[57]

Arrest and trial

....

---

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_bombing

The  Oklahoma City bombing was a domestic terrorist truck bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building^[1] in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States, on April 19, 1995. Perpetrated by American terrorists Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, the bombing happened at 9:02 am and killed at least 168 people, including many children,^[2] injured more than 680 others, and destroyed more than one third of the building, which had to be demolished.^[3] The blast destroyed or damaged 324 other buildings within a 16-block radius, shattered glass in 258 nearby buildings, and destroyed or burned 86 cars,^[4][5] causing an estimated $652 million worth of damage.^[6] Local, state, federal, and worldwide agencies engaged in extensive rescue efforts in the wake of the bombing. They and the city received substantial donations from across the country. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) activated 11 of its Urban Search and Rescue Task Forces, consisting of 665 rescue workers who assisted in rescue and recovery operations.^[7][8] Until the September 11 attacks in 2001, the Oklahoma City bombing was the deadliest terrorist attack in the history of the United States. It remains the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in U.S. history.

Within 90 minutes of the explosion, McVeigh was stopped by Oklahoma Highway Patrolman Charlie Hanger for driving without a license plate and arrested for illegal weapons possession.^[9][10] Forensic evidence quickly linked McVeigh and Nichols to the attack; Nichols was arrested,^[11] and within days, both were charged. Michael and Lori Fortier were later identified as accomplices. McVeigh, a veteran of the Gulf War and a sympathizer with the U.S. militia movement, had detonated a Ryder rental truck full of explosives he parked in front of the building. Nichols had assisted with the bomb's preparation. Motivated by his dislike for the U.S. federal government and unhappy about its handling of the Ruby Ridge incident in 1992 and the Waco siege in 1993, McVeigh timed his attack to coincide with the second anniversary of the fire that ended the siege at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas.^[12][13]

The official FBI investigation, known as "OKBOMB", involved 28,000 interviews and collecting 3.5 short tons (3,200 kg) of evidence and nearly one billion pieces of information.^[14][15][16] The bombers were tried and convicted in 1997. Sentenced to death, McVeigh was executed by lethal injection on June 11, 2001, at the U.S. federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana. Nichols was sentenced to life in prison in 2004. Michael and Lori Fortier testified against McVeigh and Nichols; Michael Fortier was sentenced to 12 years in prison for failing to warn the United States government, and Lori received immunity from prosecution in exchange for her testimony.

In response to the bombing, the U.S. Congress passed the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, which tightened the standards for habeas corpus in the United States.^[17] It also passed legislation to increase the protection around federal buildings to deter future terrorist attacks.

On April 19, 2000, the Oklahoma City National Memorial was dedicated on the site of the Murrah Federal Building, commemorating the victims of the bombing. Remembrance services are held every year on April 19, at the time of the explosion.

• Planning
  • 1.1Motive
  • 1.2Target selection
  • 1.3Gathering materials
  • 1.4Building the bomb
• 2Bombing
• 3Arrests
• 4Casualties
• 5Response and relief
  • 5.1Rescue efforts
  • 5.2Humanitarian aid
  • 5.3Federal and state government aid
  • 5.4International reaction
  • 5.5Children affected
  • 5.6Media coverage
• 6Trials and sentencing of the conspirators
  • 6.1Timothy McVeigh
  • 6.2Terry Nichols
  • 6.3Michael and Lori Fortier
  • 6.4Others
• 7Aftermath
  • 7.1Legislation
    • 7.1.1Oklahoma School Curriculum
  • 7.2Building security and construction
  • 7.3Impact according to McVeigh
  • 7.4Conspiracy theories
• 8Evacuation issues
• 9Memorial observances
  • 9.1Oklahoma City National Memorial
  • 9.2St. Joseph's Old Cathedral
  • 9.3Remembrance observance
• 10See also
• 11References
• 12Further reading
• 13External links

Planning

Motive

McVeigh and Nichols cited the federal government's actions against theBranch Davidian compound in the 1993 Waco siege (shown above) as a reason why they perpetrated the Oklahoma City bombing.

The chief conspirators, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, met in 1988 at Fort Benning during basic training for the U.S. Army.^[18] McVeigh met Michael Fortier as his Army roommate.^[19] The three shared interests in survivalism.^[20][21] They expressed anger at the federal government's handling of the 1992 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) standoff with Randy Weaver at Ruby Ridge, as well as the Waco siege, a 1993 51-day standoff between the FBI and Branch Davidian members that began with a botched Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) attempt to execute a search warrant. There was a firefight and ultimately a siege of the compound, resulting in the burning and shooting deaths of David Koresh and 75 others.^[22] In March 1993, McVeigh visited the Waco site during the standoff, and again after the siege ended.^[23] He later decided to bomb a federal building as a response to the raids and to protest what he believed to be US government efforts to restrict rights of private citizens, in particular those under the Second Amendment.^{[13][24][25][26][27]} McVeigh believed that federal agents were acting like soldiers, thus making an attack on a federal building an attack on their command centres.^[28]

Target selection

[](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Alfred_P._Murrah_Federal_Building_before_destruction.jpg)

Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building as it appeared before its destruction

McVeigh later said that he had contemplated assassinating Attorney GeneralJanet Reno, Lon Horiuchi, and others rather than attacking a building,^[25] and sometimes wished he had done so.^[29] He initially intended to destroy only a federal building, but he later decided that his message would be more powerful if many people were killed in the bombing.^[30] McVeigh's criterion for attack sites was that the target should house at least two of three federal law enforcement agencies: the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). He regarded the presence of additional law enforcement agencies, such as the Secret Service or the U.S. Marshals Service, as a bonus.^[31]

A resident of Kingman, Arizona, McVeigh considered targets in Missouri, Arizona, Texas, and Arkansas.^[31] He said in his authorized biography that he wanted to minimize non-governmental casualties, so he ruled out a 40-story building in Little Rock, Arkansas, because a florist's shop occupied space on the ground floor.^[32] In December 1994, McVeigh and Fortier visited Oklahoma City to inspect McVeigh's target: the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.^[24]

The Murrah building had been targeted in October 1983 by white supremacist group The Covenant, The Sword, and the Arm of the Lord, including founder James Ellison and Richard Snell. The group had plotted to park "a van or trailer in front of the Federal Building and blow it up with rockets detonated by a timer."^[33] After Snell's appeal for murdering two people in unrelated cases was denied, it happened that he was executed the same day as the Murrah bombing.^[34]

The nine-story building, built in 1977, was named for a federal judge and housed 14 federal agencies, including the DEA, ATF, Social Security Administration, andrecruiting offices for the Army and Marine Corps.^[35]

McVeigh chose the Murrah building because he expected its glass front to shatter under the impact of the blast. He also believed that its adjacent large, open parking lot across the street might absorb and dissipate some of the force, and protect the occupants of nearby non-federal buildings.^[32] In addition, McVeigh believed that the open space around the building would provide better photo opportunities for propaganda purposes.^[32] He planned the attack for April 19, 1995, to coincide with the 2nd anniversary of the Waco siege and the 220th anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord during the American Revolution.^[36]

Gathering materials

McVeigh and Nichols purchased or stole the materials they needed to manufacture the bomb, and stored them in rented sheds. In August 1994, McVeigh obtained nine Kinestiks from gun collector Roger E. Moore, and ignited the devices with Nichols outside Nichols's home in Herington, Kansas.^[37][38] On September 30, 1994, Nichols bought forty 50-pound (23 kg) bags of ammonium nitrate fertilizer from Mid-Kansas Coop in McPherson, Kansas, enough to fertilize 12.5 acres (5.1 hectares) of farmland at a rate of 160 pounds (73 kg) of nitrogen per acre (.4 ha), an amount commonly used for corn. Nichols bought an additional 50-pound (23 kg) bag on October 18, 1994.^[24] McVeigh approached Fortier and asked him to assist with the bombing project, but he refused.^[39][40]

McVeigh and Nichols robbed Moore in his home of $60,000 worth of guns, gold, silver, and jewels, transporting the property in the victim's van.^[39] McVeigh wrote Moore a letter in which he claimed that government agents had committed the robbery.^[41] Items stolen from Moore were later found in Nichols's home and in a storage shed he had rented.^[42][43]

In October 1994, McVeigh showed Michael and Lori Fortier a diagram he had drawn of the bomb he wanted to build.^[44] McVeigh planned to construct a bomb containing more than 5,000 pounds (2,300 kg) of ammonium nitrate fertilizer mixed with about 1,200 pounds (540 kg) of liquid nitromethane and 350 pounds (160 kg) of Tovex. Including the weight of the sixteen 55-U.S.-gallon drums in which the explosive mixture was to be packed, the bomb would have a combined weight of about 7,000 pounds (3,200 kg).^[45] McVeigh originally intended to use hydrazine rocket fuel, but it proved too expensive.^[39] During the Chief Auto Parts Nationals, a round of the NHRA Winston Drag Racing Series at the Texas Motorplex, McVeigh posed as a motorcycle racer and attempted to purchase 55-U.S.-gallon (46 imp gal; 210 L) drums of nitromethane on the pretext that he and some fellow bikers needed the fuel for racing. But there were no nitromethane-powered motorcycles at the meeting, and he did not have an NHRA competitors' license. Representative Steve LeSueur refused to sell to him because he was suspicious of McVeigh's actions and attitudes, but sales representative Tim Chambers sold him three barrels.^[46] Chambers questioned the purchase of three barrels, when typically only 1–5 gallons of nitromethane, he noted, would be purchased by a Top Fuel Harley rider, and the class was not even raced that weekend.

McVeigh rented a storage space in which he stockpiled seven crates of 18-inch-long (46 cm) Tovex sausages, 80 spools of shock tube, and 500 electric blasting caps, which he and Nichols had stolen from a Martin Marietta Aggregates quarry in Marion, Kansas. He decided not to steal any of the 40,000 pounds (18,000 kg) of ANFO (ammonium nitrate/fuel oil) he found at the scene, as he did not believe it powerful enough (he did obtain 17 bags of ANFO from another source for use in the bomb). McVeigh made a prototype bomb that was detonated in the desert to avoid detection.^[47]

Think about the people as if they were storm troopers in Star Wars. They may be individually innocent, but they are guilty because they work for the Evil Empire.

—McVeigh reflecting on the deaths of victims in the bombing^[48]

Later, speaking about the military mindset with which he went about the preparations, he said, "You learn how to handle killing in the military. I face the consequences, but you learn to accept it." He compared his actions to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, rather than the attack on Pearl Harbor, reasoning it was necessary to prevent more lives from being lost.^[48]

On April 14, 1995, McVeigh paid for a motel room at the Dreamland Motel in Junction City, Kansas.^[49] The next day he rented a 1993 Ford F-700 truck from Ryder under the name Robert D. Kling, an alias he adopted because he knew an Army soldier named Kling with whom he shared physical characteristics, and because it reminded him of the Klingon warriors of Star Trek.^[49][50][51] On April 16, 1995, he and Nichols drove to Oklahoma City, where he parked a getaway car, a yellow 1977 Mercury Marquis, several blocks from the Murrah Federal Building.^[52] The nearby Regency Towers Apartments' lobby security camera recorded images of Nichols's blue 1984 GMC pickup truck on April 16.^[53] After removing the car's license plate, he left a note covering the Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) plate that read, "Not abandoned. Please do not tow. Will move by April 23. (Needs battery & cable)."^[24][54] Both men then returned to Kansas.

Building the bomb

....

McVeigh's original plan had been to detonate the bomb at 11:00 am, but at dawn on April 19, 1995, he decided instead to destroy the building at 9:00 am.^[62] As he drove toward the Murrah Federal Building in the Ryder truck, McVeigh carried with him an envelope containing pages from The Turner Diaries – a fictional account of white supremacists who ignite a revolution by blowing up the FBI headquarters at 9:15 one morning using a truck bomb.^[24] McVeigh wore a printed T-shirt with the motto of the Commonwealth of Virginia, Sic semper tyrannis ("Thus always to tyrants", according to legend what Brutus said as he assassinated Julius Caesar, also claimed to have been shouted by John Wilkes Booth immediately after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln) and "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants" (from Thomas Jefferson).^[36] He also carried an envelope full of revolutionary materials that included a bumper sticker with the slogan, falsely attributed^[63] to Thomas Jefferson, "When the government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny." Underneath, McVeigh had written, "Maybe now, there will be liberty!" with a hand-copied quote by John Locke asserting that a man has a right to kill someone who takes away his liberty.^[24][64]

McVeigh entered Oklahoma City at 8:50 am.^[65] At 8:57 am, the Regency Towers Apartments' lobby security camera that had recorded Nichols's pickup truck three days earlier recorded the Ryder truck heading towards the Murrah Federal Building.^[66] At the same moment, McVeigh lit the five-minute fuse. Three minutes later, still a block away, he lit the two-minute fuse. He parked the Ryder truck in a drop-off zone situated under the building's day-care center, exited and locked the truck. As he headed to his getaway vehicle, he dropped the keys to the truck a few blocks away.^[67]

...

Federal agents obtained a warrant to search the house of McVeigh's father, Bill, after which they broke down the door and wired the house and telephone with listening devices.^[86] FBI investigators used the resulting information gained, along with the fake address McVeigh had been using, to begin their search for the Nichols brothers, Terry and James.^[80] On April 21, 1995, Terry Nichols learned that he was being hunted, and turned himself in.^[11]

Investigators discovered incriminating evidence at his home: ammonium nitrate and blasting caps, the electric drill used to drill out the locks at the quarry, books on bomb-making, a copy of Hunter (a 1989 novel by William Luther Pierce, the founder and chairman of the National Alliance, a white nationalist group) and a hand-drawn map of downtown Oklahoma City, on which the Murrah Building and the spot where McVeigh's getaway car was hidden were marked.^[87][88] After a nine-hour interrogation, Terry Nichols was formally held in federal custody until his trial.^[89] On April 25, 1995, James Nichols was also arrested, but he was released after 32 days due to lack of evidence.^[90] McVeigh's sister Jennifer was accused of illegally mailing bullets to McVeigh,^[91] but she was granted immunity in exchange for testifying against him.^[92]

A Jordanian-American man traveling from his home in Oklahoma City to visit family in Jordan on April 19, 1995, was also arrested, amid concern that Middle Eastern terrorists could have been behind the attack. Further investigation cleared the man of any involvement in the bombing...

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/expert-on-far-right-extremists-warns-the-kidnapping-plot-against-gretchen-whitmer-wont-be-the-last-white-nationalist-terror-threat/

Once again, the ludicrous claim that radical Islamists have the market cornered on terrorism — and that far-right white nationalists and extremist militia groups don't pose a major threat in the United States — has been exploded by the cold, hard facts. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, this week, announced that six members of a far-right militia group, the Wolverine Watchmen, had been arrested in connection with an alleged plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and possibly murder her.Kathleen Belew, a University of Chicago history professorand an expert on far-right white nationalists, has a dire warning in an op-ed for the Washington Post: the U.S. can expect similar plots in the months ahead.

Belew, author of the book "Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America," explains, "This isn't just a one-off event or the work of a few mad actors — it's part of a rising tide of white power activity, one that poses an imminent danger to American democracy. The Department of Homeland Security's threat assessment report, released earlier this week after a long wait, made that clear: white power movement violence and affiliated extremism is, by far, the greatest terrorist threat to our nation."

That isn't to say that the FBI and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security shouldn't keep a close eye on far-right Islamists like ISIS (Islamic State, Iraq and Syria). The deadliest terror attack in U.S. history, the 9/11 attacks of September 2001, was carried out by members of al-Qaeda. But the second deadliest, the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995, came from the white nationalist/white supremacist side of terrorism. And Belew points out that in 2020, white nationalist terrorism has posed a greater threat than radical Islam in the U.S.

"Not only does this kind of extremist violence outstrip any violence carried out by what President Trump has referred to as 'Antifa and the left,' but white power violence now also exceeds the threat of radical Islamist terror," Belew emphasizes. "The DHS assessment makes clear that '2019 was the most lethal year for extremism in the United States since the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995.'"

Islamophobes like Pamela Gellar and Jihad Watch's Robert B. Spencer have repeatedly made the false claim that there is something uniquely violent about Islam, which is nonsense — most Muslims don't embrace far-right jihadist ideology. And Islamophobes typically downplay the terrorist threat posed by white supremacists and white nationalists, trying to paint Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh as a "lone wolf." But as Belew stresses, the Oklahoma City attack was by no means an anomaly.

"That bombing, the largest deliberate mass casualty on mainland American soil between Pearl Harbor and 9/11, is still not well understood by Americans," Belew explains. "People still think of it as the work of lone wolves or a few bad apples. But the Oklahoma City bombing, which killed 168 people — including 19 young children — was the work of the white power movement, a coordinated social network that brought together Klansmen, neo-Nazis, skinheads, militiamen, radical tax resisters, separatists and others in outright war on the federal government. The evidence of the bombing as part of this movement is extensive and irrefutable."

Belew goes on to warn that having "studied the earlier white power movement for more than a decade," she is "very concerned that more violence is imminent."

"The evidence is there, but it's easy to overlook if you don't connect the various alarming details," Belew explains. "The attempted kidnapping of Whitmer is linked to the call to arms of the Proud Boys, the underground training of other white power groups, the militias and Boogaloo Boys on the march and the string of mass shooters motivated by this ideology."

Belew adds, "In the new Michigan case, the FBI's transcripts reveal a highly volatile set of plots that included bombings of multiple targets and a coded reference to attempted murder. In white power discourse, kidnapping people for 'trial' is often followed by references to lynching. Whitmer might easily have been assassinated by this group."

According to Belew, the COVID-19 pandemic is making white nationalists, white supremacists and white militia groups even more unhinged.

"We now encounter a new urgency among white power activists, who have capitalized upon the Trump Administration's many green lights, the anti-mask movement and the social anxieties of pandemic and racial justice protest to launch new campaigns of violence," Belew warns. "This is a movement expressly dedicated to the violent overthrow of the United States and the destruction of democracy and its institutions. We have to stand against it."

---

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ref

https://www.thedailybeast.com/what-happens-when-ex-navy-seals-go-full-qanon?ref=home

no lnx many

a man filmed leaving the area of an attempted pipe bomb attack on protesters in Portland, Oregon, was a former Navy SEAL who writes conspiracy theory-heavy social media posts decrying the left, Portland activists and news media recently reported.

But the man is just one of an eclectic mix of former SEALs apparently taken in by conspiracy theories online or citing those theories in violent writings. If acted on by highly trained ex-military elite, those paranoias have deadly potential.

Witnesses in Portland say two men threw three homemade explosives at protesters early on the morning of Aug. 8. Although no one was harmed and the men do not appear to have been filmed, citizen journalist Scott Keeler pursued a man spotted in the area and filmed his face. Activists and Oregon Public Broadcasting identified the man asLouis Garrick Fernbaugh, a former SEAL and CIA contractor. Fernbaugh, 52, has been named by police as a person of interest, but not charged with a crime.

Online, Fernbaugh has an extensive history of writing about conspiracy theories, particularly where they implicated the left. In this respect, he is part of a broader pattern of ex-SEALs, many of them with large digital followings, espousing conspiratorial ideas. They’re armed, suspicious, and in some cases, write in detail about potential plans to kill people they view as evildoers.

“People who are ex-military say, ‘I’m going to go liberate the kids.’ Is it bravado or is it a legitimate call to action?”

— Marc-André Argentino]

In particular, some ex-SEALs are promoting belief in QAnon or related theories that falsely accuse many of President Donald Trump’s opponents of being involved in Satanic pedophilia and cannibalism.

Marc-André Argentino, an associate fellow at the Global Network on Extremism & Technology,who monitors the QAnon conspiracy theory, said that theory—which has become one of the foremost in U.S. politics—has inspired an uptick in criminal acts by believers. (The Navy did not return a request for comment.)

“The violence we’ve seen has been by people without acumen and physical training,” Argentino told The Daily Beast. “Where it could get scary is with people who do have training.”

[QAnon Pushes Pedo-Ring Plots. Now They’re Stealing Kids.

RAMPING UP THE CRAZY

Will Sommer]

SEALs like Fernbaugh, who could not be reached for comment for this story, have extensive military training, and might be better equipped than the average person to build an explosive device or take up weapons. A grizzled ex-special operative with a graying beard, Fernbaugh has spent years dabbling in false conspiracy theories, some of them anti-Semitic and many targeting anti-fascists, who have been highly visible at Portland protests. (The Daily Beast did not review any posts in which he expressed affinity for QAnon.)

“George Soros is known to have paid ANTIFA to instigate rioting and create chaos that has caused millions in damage across numerous cities, but especially Portland, OR,” he wrote on Facebook in 2018, citing a conspiracy theory that falsely accuses a Jewish philanthropist of paying off protesters.

In the caption of a video on the same topic, Fernbaugh mused that “I’m surprised no one has slaughtered these sheep that have grown horns (ANTIFA),” and recent posts boasted of “infiltrating” groups of Portland anti-fascists during ongoing racial justice protests.

Fernbaugh appears to wear the same jacket in one of the videos as the man identified as him did in the footage from the aftermath of the Portland attack.He currently works selling shooting targets, including one made to look like a person dressed as a Portland anti-fascist.

Multiple people who know Fernbaugh, including a former colleague, told OPB that he was the man featured in Keeler’s video from near the scene of the explosive devices. A former law enforcement official told the publication that, based on the voice of the man in the video, they were comfortable enough in his identity that they were calling the FBI.

Meanwhile, the larger online conspiracy community is sprawling—the top QAnon groups on Facebook, alone, count more than 3 million combined members, according to an internal Facebook investigation, NBC News reported last week. These theories sometimes overlap in membership, and encompass millions of other people, spanning a range of false claims like that vaccines cause autism to the idea that the world is flat. In a group that large, some will almost inevitably be military or veterans.

But QAnon and related conspiracy theories like Pizzagate (both of which baselessly accuse Democrats of child abuse) seem to have an unusually high incidence among ex-SEALs. And some retired SEALs have been vocal in more explicit support for QAnon in particular, even if they have not been tied to the scene of alleged protest-related violence.

“If these people aren’t brought to justice, there’s gonna be some fuckin’ street justice doled out.”

— Stephen Ralston, ex-Navy SEAL

Stephen Ralston is a veteran who served on SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team One from 1990 to 1994, and SEAL Team Three from 1994 to 1998. Currently, he works as a private military contractor, according to his online bio, and has a podcast about special operations forces. On the Instagram for that podcast, and on his own Instagram feed, Ralston frequently uses QAnon hashtags, promotes Q videos, and posts about his interest in killing pedophiles. (Although opposition to pedophilia is an overwhelmingly popular sentiment across political parties, QAnon turns the concern into a bogus call to arms against Trump’s foes.)

Some of the Instagram memes specifically frame elite military as a force for “Q,” the anonymous forum poster behind the conspiracy theory. One typical example, a picture that calls special operatives “the teeth of the light,” promises that thousands of specially trained veterans are willing to use their skills if QAnon’s claims are validated. “If any of the claims prove accurate, justice will be served one way or the other,” the caption reads, in part. “We don’t forgive. We don’t forget.”

Ralston’s special forces podcast has also devoted at least one recent episode to QAnon.

“If these people aren’t brought to justice, there’s gonna be some fuckin’ street justice doled out,” he says while petting a dachshund in a teaser trailer for the episode, uploaded to Instagram.

Ralston, who has not been accused of any conspiracy-related violence, told The Daily Beast he was unsure of QAnon’s popularity with former SEALs or any other group, and declined to otherwise comment for this story.

Attacks by conspiratorial veterans have long been lethal. The 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, which killed 168 people, was carried out by veteran Tim McVeigh, who was steeped in anti-government theories and reportedly told people the Army had implanted him with a microchip. McVeigh’s own failure to join the Army’s special ops forces was reportedly a major factor in his anger, and he viewed himself as a kind of one-man operator. (“In his mind, much of his life has been one of thinking that he is in a kind of Special Forces of his own,” a law enforcement source told The Washington Post after the attack.)

Several recent violent plots associated with the anti-government Boogaloo movement have also allegedly been carried out by veterans or active service members. In May, two veterans and a current Army Reserve soldier were arrested in an alleged plot to throw explosives at a Black Lives Matter rally. That same month, a current Air Force staff sergeant was arrested for allegedly killing a federal security officer and attempting to kill another, in an apparent plot to kick off a new civil war that Boogaloo adherents believe is imminent.

QAnon has inspired its own wave of crimes, with the FBI labeling the movement as a terror threat. Some prominent QAnon personalities are not veterans, but pose as elite Defense Department operatives, including one man linked to several recent Q-inspired kidnappings, who poses as the head of the fictional Pentagon Pedophile Task Force, The Daily Beast reported.

QAnon support extends to at least one SEAL-founded company.Project Warpath is a clothing line owned by Tej Gill, a former member of SEAL Team Five who made headlines for selling “Hillary Clinton Killed My Friends” T-shirts after the deadly 2012 attack on a U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya. Project Warpath also posts QAnon content to Instagram, including a recent post falsely linking the debunked Wayfair conspiracy (a QAnon-adjacent theory that falsely claimed children were being sold inside furniture on the home decor site) to Soros and the Clintons. Gill, who has not been accused of any conspiracy-related violence, could not be reached for comment for this story.

Argentino said QAnon’s popularity with special ops veterans might initially seem perplexing. Believers claim Q is a high-level military official. But as veterans of military intelligence circles should know, Q’s muddled posts do not operate anything like military work. (One former QAnon believer whose father had worked for the CIA previously told The Daily Beast she’d abandoned the theory when she realized Q was artlessly aping military language, in a way no service member would.)

A gray-bearded SEAL Team Five veteran, [Clark] Impastato served until recently as a police officer in Phoenix, Arizona, where he fatally shot a 15-year-old accused of making a drug deal.]

Yet elements of QAnon might be alluring to veterans, Argentino noted.

“QAnon is rooted in this war narrative, in the sense that they’re in an information war against the ‘Deep State,’” he said. “Information wars are typically combined with a more physical element ... [Veterans] may want to be called upon to free the children from the pedophiles.”

Some conspiratorial ex-SEAL content is compatible with QAnon, but it’s unclear whether those former SEALs are aware of its full connotations.

One former member of the elite SEAL Team Six recently shared a post falsely linking Black Lives Matter to the Palestinian militant movement Hamas. The ex-SEAL appears to have copy-pasted the post’s caption, which was full of Q hashtags, although he did not write them himself. “Thoughts on this? I am only sharing, so don’t start throwing a tantrum,” he asked his followers.

[The Disturbing Appeal of Boogaloo Violence to Military Men

OUTSIDE AGITATORS

Kelly Weill]

Mitch Aguiar, another former member of SEAL Team Five, has since left the military and gone on to build a name for himself as an MMA fighter and a salesman of military-themed apparel. Like some of his fellow brothers-in-arms,he’s also shared conspiratorial content on his 133,000-follower Instagram, including a post about the death of a QAnon supporter, but used a “PizzaGate” hashtag.(The Pizzagate conspiracy theory, which falsely claimed prominent Democrats were engaging in sex trafficking in a D.C. pizzeria, was a predecessor to QAnon, but fell out of favor after a Pizzagater shot up the restaurant. Another man set fire to the restaurant two years later, in January 2019.)

Aguiar also commented “he’s a pedo” on a fellow ex-SEAL’s meme that falsely claimed actorTom Hanks was wearing an ankle monitor, presumably because a secret court had found him guilty of child sex-trafficking. (This did not happen.)

The fellow ex-SEAL, podcaster Clark Impastato, regularly shares QAnon-flavored conspiracy memes on his Instagram, where he has more than 87,000 followers. A gray-bearded SEAL Team Five veteran, Impastato served until recently as a police officer in Phoenix, Arizona, where he fatally shot a 15-year-old accused of making a drug deal. Although the teen was unarmed, Impastato’s use of force was found to be justified, because the teen rushed Impastato, “pulling his previously concealed hand from his waistband and forming it into a fist with a single, hooked finger extended,” as if to imply holding a gun, according to court records.

Impastato voluntarily relinquished his police certification in January 2016, after racking up multiple misconduct complaints, state records show. Among them are two civil rights misconduct complaints, which state records describe as excessive force, one of them for allegedly punching a suspect. Another misconduct complaint against Impastato is for alleged “dishonesty/false statements” during the hiring process because he “did not disclose past sales of marijuana.” It was not immediately apparent from police records whether the complaints had been substantiated by police, and Phoenix Police did not return multiple requests for comment. In an interview with a military-themed energy drink company, Impastato said he left the force to become an entrepreneur on his own beard-care line.

As protests broke out over the death of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis in late May, Impastato posted a picture of himself carrying a gun with the caption, “The current chaos makes me wish I was still in to help out. ???????? I’m with you in spirit BROTHERS and SISTERS..” He also posted several memes about killing anti-fascists, including one about the movement coming to the suburbs “so I can get a stateside kill.”

Neither Aguiar nor Impastato have been accused of conspiracy-related violence, and neither returned requests for comment for this story.

The extent of these ex-SEALs’ commitment to the QAnon cause, even when they flirt with it, isn’t always clear.

Increasingly, QAnon belief exists on a spectrum. Where once the theory appealed mostly to a core group of diehards who waited for the next “Q drop” (posts on a forum by an anonymous person claiming to be military intelligence), a diluted version of the conspiracy has reached a broader audience with less absurd claims about pedophilia.

As The New York Times noted last week, QAnon content has recently surged in popularity with a broader crowd, including those who are unaware of its core claims, because it attached itself to a campaign to “save the children.”

Well-intentioned fears can have counterproductive results. Sensationalized fears about Wayfair can obscure the reality that many (nearly half, per one study) of trafficked children are exploited by relatives. And the sudden popularity of sex-trafficking conspiracy theories has overwhelmed legitimate anti-trafficking organizations with bogus complaints. In late July, the National Human Trafficking Hotline released a statement saying “the extreme volume of these contacts has made it more difficult for the Trafficking Hotline to provide support and attention to others who are in need of help.”

Some ex-SEALs operate in the murky area of Q-ish talk about sex-trafficking, conflating real cases with bogus statistics and linking their theories to high-profile celebrities and politicians, usually on the left.

Craig Sawyer, a Texas-based former SEAL Team Six member, runs an anti-trafficking group, and produced a documentary about child sex-trafficking. The group is distinct from theories like QAnon. Some QAnon believers, including the person pretending to be a member of the fictional Pentagon Pedophile Task Force, have targeted Sawyer, falsely accusing him of trafficking. Sawyer has even been openly critical of Q on Twitter, although not of all its claims.

“I’m not big on q, mainly due to how scary some of the followers are in their cult follower tendencies of an entity they can’t vet,” he tweeted in June. “But as long as the q narrative is ‘Do your own research’ & the info is accurate, that’s a good thing.”

Nevertheless, Sawyer frequently interacts with pro-Q personalities, and shares a wealth of Q-adjacent material, including a conspiracy meme about figures like Bill Gates and George Soros pursuing a number of fantastical aims like population control and “one world government.” (He shared the meme, asking followers’ opinion on it, without explicitly endorsing it.) Sawyer, who has not been accused of conspiracy-related violence and declined to comment, shared a picture last Tuesday night of Sen. Kamala Harris posing with Soros’s son.

[Navy SEAL Promoted After Choking Green Beret to Death

WTFO

Kevin Maurer]

The post, about Harris being named Joe Biden’s vice-presidential pick, referred to a sexist conspiracy theory about her. “We now know who’s on team New World Order / Global Marxism,” Sawyer wrote. “Literally GOOD vs EVIL.”

Argentino, who recently authored a scholarly article about QAnon’s potential as a national security threat, said while most violent incidents carried out in the theory’s name were done so by people in a state of crisis, calls by military types are acting as a steady drumbeat.

“People who are ex-military say, ‘I’m going to go liberate the kids,’” he said. “Is it bravado or is it a legitimate call to action?”

For his part, Garrick Fernbaugh’s primary preoccupation has appeared to be theories about anti-fascists. But after years of posting about his interest in hurting them, someone appears to have attempted just that in Portland—while Fernbaugh was very nearby.

Approximately three weeks before the pipe bomb incident, Fernbaugh contacted Sawyer about his interest in anti-fascists. On LinkedIn, Sawyer had authored a post defending the federal agents who notoriously pulled Portland protesters into unmarked vans earlier this summer.

“I think this is actually a very calm & gracious response in the face of such destructive terrorism funded by our nation’s subversive enemies,” Sawyer wrote. “Law & order must prevail??”

Fernbaugh replied in the comments. “I infiltrated ANTIFA in downtown PDX 3 nights ago,” he wrote. “(Dudes in camo) Hit me up, I’ll throw on my Cryes [a brand of combat apparel] and give you a hand restoring law and order, then we’ll go grab a well deserved beer!”

With reporting by Adam Rawnsley

Kelly Weill

Reporter

kelly.weill@thedailybeast.com

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