okla bomb murrah
===
pete smothered
...
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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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 movement**as 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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In recent days, the media has turned its attention to Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas -- not for her troubling ties to right-wing extremist groups, but for her bizarre demand for an apology from the woman who accused her husband of sexual harassment more than a decade ago. Yet Mrs. Thomas' Tea Party think tank, Liberty Central, promotes the causes of groups that take pride in intolerance, including one right-wing Catholic group, Tradition, Family and Property, whose founder declared the Spanish Inquisition "the most beautiful page in the history of the Church."
Earlier this year, AlterNet reported onLiberty Central's embrace of Gun Owners of America, whose president, Larry Pratt -- guru to the militia movement -- unapologetically addressed a rally of white supremacists in 1992, and more recently told attendees of a gun owners' rally in Washington, D.C., that they are "at war" with the federal government.We also looked at Liberty Central's relationship with the Missouri Sovereignty Project, which threatens armed insurrection against the government. Since then, Thomas has added to the "Friends of Liberty Central" page on her think tank's Web site a plug for Tradition, Family and Property, a virulently anti-gay, anti-woman, anti-democratic Catholic group founded in 1960 in opposition to Brazilian land reform.
TFP has long enjoyed ties to the far right in American politics, including the International Freedom Foundation, which existed primarily as an American front group for the apartheid regime in South Africa during the Reagan years, according to researcher Richard Bartholomew, and was once led by convicted felon and former lobbyist Jack Abramoff. But TFP is better known for its role in promoting and supporting authoritarian regimes in South America. Here's Bartholomew:
TFP played a role in the 1964 coup in Brazil, and in Uruguay it allegedly received explosives from the Brazilian military attaché that were used to attack communist installations. The editor of TFP's Chilean magazine, Jaime Guzmán, became chief ideologist for General Pinochet's regime.
If TFP's activities on behalf of torturers and anti-democratic forces weren't enough to give one pause, there's its status as a cult. TFP is an all-male organization that finds its recruits among adolescent boys, whom it trains in the use of the combat regalia of the Middle Ages -- maces, crossbows, and the like -- according to the late Penny Lernoux's 1989 book,People of God: The Struggle for World Catholicism. The medieval games in which the boys partake are so brutal, Lernoux reported, that one recruit told her his arm had been broken three times in the exercises.
The medieval games continue today. Last July, TFP sponsored a 10-day "Call to Chivalry" camp in rural Louisiana, where, according to the group's Web site, boys and young men took part:
Some new skills were learned such as medieval spear throwing and archery. Mock sword battles with padded weapons were a great success as were paintball wars in the thick tropical-looking forest surrounding the property. An exhausting hike in the Tunica Hills Park taught a poignant lesson of endurance.
At the time Lernoux was reporting, recruits were taught to worship not only the Blessed Virgin Mary, the holiest woman in Catholicism, but also the flesh-and-blood mother of TFP founder Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, whom he referred to as Santa Monica. Oliveira, who died in 1995, loved the Spanish Inquisition, he wrote, "because, while it went on, the Catholic Church managed to cleanse itself of heretics." (Never mind that many of those so-called heretics were Jews who wanted nothing more than to practice their own faith, or people whose politics were inconvenient to the Spanish throne.)
I first learned of the American branch of TFP by stumbling upon one of their demonstrations in midtown Manhattan in the late 1980s, when thegroup was coddled by the late Archbishop John Cardinal O'Connor.They often assembled on the sidewalk near St. Patrick's Cathedral on Fifth Avenue, decked out in red polyester sashes emblazoned with a yellow lion. Their big issue at that moment was the criminalization of flag desecration, which was a lure for collecting names and addresses on petition forms. I remember feeling disconcerted by their need to videotape each interaction they had with those they were trying to attract.
The group remains active in New York, though its red-sashed members are as likely to be seen in lower Manhattan than around the cathedral.
The Catholic crusades against the Muslim world are viewed as a time of glory by the devotees of TFP. Roberto de Mattei, who wrote a friendly biography of Oliveira and is said to be close to TFP, presented his revisionist history of the crusades at a 2006 conference at the Regina Apostolorum Pontifical University in Rome. TFP is expressing its embrace of the medieval crusades in the chorus of intolerance raised against the Parc51 Islamic cultural center planned for lower Manhattan, dispatching student volunteers to a September protest at the site where the World Trade Center once stood. (TFP video here.)
TFP maintains a presence on the campuses of U.S. Catholic colleges, and currently sponsors a petition drive to purge them of LGBT rights groups. It describes a Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v. Texas, the suit that struck down anti-sodomy laws, as America's "Moral 9/11." Clarence Thomas, incidentally, joined Antonin Scalia's dissent in that case, which accused the court's majority of having "largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda."
Related stories:
Group Allied With Ginni Thomas' Think Tank Threatens Armed Insurrection
Will Clarence Thomas' Wife Demand Apology From Latest Accuser? (It's His Ex-Girlfriend)
Virginia "Ginni" Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, has a new job, running a think-tank she founded to appeal to Tea Party supporters. Liberty Central, according to Kenneth P. Vogel, writing in Politico, "appears to be positioning itself as ahybrid think tank/advocacy group/campaign arm for the tea party movement."
Thomas herself explained it this way to Human Events magazine, Vogel reports:
“I’m getting to know the Tea Party groups and the new citizen activists,” Thomas told:{ Human Events:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}: late last month. “What I think I can bring to the table is a connective (t)issue between the new people and the old people.”
On the Liberty Central Web site, visitors are urged to sign a "pledge to activism" that states the organization's commitment to small government, saying, in part:
In an effort to hold their government accountable to its constitutional limitations,many Americans have voiced their opposition to a “Big Government” agenda through protests and election upsets only to be blatantly ignored by many elected representatives,
Therefore, I pledge to be more informed and more active, and encourage others to do likewise, in order to maximize my impact and influence in preserving, protecting andpromoting liberty, freedom, and limited Constitutional government in America.
Call it the Great Convergence, this coming together of old-guard groups and extremists under the Tea Party brand -- something perhaps that only someone close to a major power center in the U.S. government could pull off. Unlike grassroots Tea Party organizations that struggle for donations, Thomas got off to a quick start last year with two large donations, according to Politico -- one for $50,000 and another for $500,000 -- whose sources the group declines to disclose. (One imagines that for certain players on the legislative field -- especially those signing on to cases that might come before the high court -- saying "I gave at the office" to the spouse of a sitting justice might not come so easily.)
AlterNet took a spin through Thomas' Web site, to see if we could get a sense of who might be showing her some love. What we found was a cadre of groups listed as "friends" -- ranging from the typical Tea Party Inc. types, such as FreedomWorks, to the downright radical, like Gun Owners of America, led by executive director Larry Pratt.
In our ongoing chronicle of right-wing events, we last left Larry Pratt at the 2nd Amendment March on Washington, where he appeared to be calling for war against the U.S. government. The 2nd Amendment March wasn't really a march at all, but a rally on the grounds of the Washington monument of some 2,000 gun owners that took place April 19 -- the 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma Citybombing by self-styled militiaman Timothy McVeigh. (The bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah federal office building took the lives of 168 innocents, including 19 children under the age of six.)
When Pratt took the stage on the grounds of the Washington monument about 15 years later, he could barely contain his ire for former President Bill Clinton, who was in office at the time of McVeigh's act of mass murder. On the day of the rally, Clinton published an op-ed that seemed to be aimed at the gun owners convening on the Mall in which he urged readers not to forget that McVeigh's act was born of the belief that government is the enemy. "[W]e must all assume responsibility for our words and actionsbeforethey enter a vast echo chamber and reach those both serious and delirious, connected and unhinged," he wrote.
At the gun rally, Pratt expressed his displeasure at Clinton's admonition, and at the attendance of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano at an Oklahoma City ceremony commemorating the lives lost in the bombing. "I look around: it's so good to see all these terrorists out here," Pratt said to the gun activists. "Janet Napolitano, she figured, as governor of Arizona, that we didn't have a border problem, but she knows who the real enemy is. Ha, ha, ha, ha.[HIM/THEM? WHY?] And Bill Clinton's been runnin' cover for her, too. Watch out how you guys speak out there, you know, words can have consequences.
"Remember Oklahoma City?" Pratt continued. "Yeah, I do. And I also remember the Waco barbecue that your attorney general gave us. Thanks a lot...We're in a war. The other side knows they're at war, because they started it. They're comin' for our freedom, for our money, for our kids, for our property. They're comin' for everything because they're a bunch of socialists."
Is Larry Pratt's anti-government "war" the sort of activism that Ginni Thomas, CEO of Liberty Central and wife of a member of the high court, would condone? [YOU BETCHA]
It is highly unlikely that Pratt's bitter rhetoric is a secret to Ginni Thomas. Pratt is no stranger to controversy. He's an unabashed supporter of the militia movement; his1990 book, Armed People Victorious,is viewed by many in the movement as an inspirational text.
In 1996, Pratt was forced to resign his role as an adviser to Pat Buchanan's presidential campaign when it was revealed that, in 1992, he addressed a gathering of white supremacists in Estes, Colorado. Included on the roster of speakers that day were neo-Nazis and militia advocates, including Louis Beam, a former Texas Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan who had taken his cause over to the Aryan Nation organization. The meeting had been called by Pete Peters, then leader of the Christian Identitymovement, whose theology states that black people are subhuman and Jews are the spawn of Satan.
Pratt came to make clear his advocacy for unfettered gun rights. "The Second Amendment ain't about duck hunting," he told the crowd, according reporter Leonard Zeskind, reporting in *Rolling Stone*. Pratt explained that he bought his first gun during the 1968 riots that engulfed Washington, D.C., in the wake of the killing of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. "If they'd had that assault rifle, so-called, for sale, and I'd seen that big old magazine there at the time, that's exactly what I would have bought," Pratt said, according to Rolling Stone.
Pratt represents a kind of pivot point between the right-wing extreme and the right-wing establishment. While Pratt is cozy with Howard Phillips, the Christian Reconstructionist founder of the Constitution Party, he's also friendly with former House Majority Leader Richard Armey, the chairman of FreedomWorks, the kingpin of Tea Party Inc. astroturf groups. Armey once served on the advisory board of the now-defunct Family Foundation, an organization founded by Pratt, that housed an anti-immigrant group, English First (which still exists).
Ginni Thomas worked as an aide to Armey when he served in Congress in the GOP leadership, according to Politico. Today, Armey chairs FreedomWorks, the powerful Washington, D.C., organization that helped organize last summer's disruptions of town-hall meetings conducted by members of Congress about health care reform legislation.FreedomWorks also sponsored the stage program at the conclusion of last fall's 912 march on Washington, and an anti-health care rally on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol last spring. Ginni Thomas also worked with FreedomWorks President Matt Kibbe when both were on staff at the anti-regulatory lobbying group, the Chamber of Commerce.Like FreedomWorks, in last month's GOP primary runoff for Utah's U.S. Senate seat, Thomas' Liberty Central endorsed Tea Party candidate Mike Lee (the only candidate Liberty Central has endorsed so far).
Gun Owners of America is hardly the only eyebrow-raising friend listed on Liberty Central's Web site -- just the most extreme. Also nestled amid the group of 32 largely establishment outfits such as the Hudson Institute and the National Taxpayers Union, is Concerned Women for America, which has been on an anti-gay tear for the last two decades, and ParcBench.com, which currently features a post alleging that President Barack Obama committed treason when he presided over a session of the U.N. Security Council last fall --and that his administration won't prosecute violations of voting laws committed when white people are the victims.
Gun Owners of America frequently participates in lawsuits headed for the high court, and its attorney, William J. Olson, testified against the nomination of Elena Kagan to the bench of the high court at last week's Senate hearings. Likewise, Concerned Women for America also features an anti-Kagan post on the front page of its Web site. Not that people aren't entitled to their opinions, but it seems a bit untoward that the spouse of a sitting justice is running an organization that forges alliances with groups arrayed against her husband's next new colleague.
But more disturbing than that is the fact that Ginni Thomas, who shares her life with one of the most powerful men in the United States government, should use her social standing to recruit people to rage against the government in the company of the likes of Larry Pratt.
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."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_bombing
The Oklahoma City bombing was a domestic terrorist bomb attack on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. Carried out by Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, the bombing killed 168 people[1] and injured more than 680 others.[2] The blast destroyed or damaged 324 buildings within a 16-block radius, destroyed or burned 86 cars, and shattered glass in 258 nearby buildings,[3][4] causing an estimated $652 million worth of damage.[5] Extensive rescue efforts were undertaken by local, state, federal, and worldwide agencies in the wake of the bombing, and substantial donations were received from across the country. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) activated eleven of its Urban Search and Rescue Task Forces, consisting of 665 rescue workers who assisted in rescue and recovery operations.[6][7]
Within 90 minutes of the explosion, McVeigh was stopped by Oklahoma State Trooper Charlie Hanger for driving without a license plate and arrested for illegal weapons possession.[8][9] Forensic evidence quickly linked McVeigh and Nichols to the attack; Nichols was arrested,[10] and within days both were charged. Michael and Lori Fortier were later identified as accomplices. McVeigh, a U.S. militia movement sympathizer who was a Gulf War veteran, had detonated a Ryder rental truck full of explosives parked in front of the building. McVeigh's co-conspirator, Nichols, had assisted in the bomb preparation. Motivated by his hatred of the federal government and angered by its handling of the 1993 Waco siege and the Ruby Ridge incident in 1992, McVeigh timed his attack to coincide with the second anniversary of the deadly fire that ended the siege at Waco.[11][12]
The official investigation, known as "OKBOMB", saw FBI agents conduct 28,000 interviews, amass 3.5 short tons (3.2 tonnes) of evidence, and collect nearly one billion pieces of information.[13][14][15] The bombers were tried and convicted in 1997. McVeigh was executed by lethal injection on June 11, 2001, and Nichols was sentenced to life in prison in 2004. Michael and Lori Fortier testified against McVeigh and Nichols; Michael 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.
As a result of 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,[16] as well as legislation designed 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. Annual remembrance services are held at the same time of day as the explosion occurred. It was the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil until the September 11th attacks and still remains the deadliest domestic terrorism incident in United States history.
Contents
Planning
Motivation
The chief conspirators, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, met in 1988 at Fort Benning during basic training for the U.S. Army.[17] Michael Fortier, McVeigh's accomplice, was his Army roommate.[18] The three shared interests in survivalism.[19][20] 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 which began with a botched ATF attempt to execute a search warrant leading to a fire fight (it is unknown whether ATF agents or Branch Davidians fired the first shot) and ended with the burning and shooting deaths of David Koresh and 75 others.[21] In March 1993, McVeigh visited the Waco site during the standoff, and then again after its conclusion.[22] McVeigh later decided to bomb a federal building as a response to the raids.[12][23][24][25]
Target selection
McVeigh later claimed he had contemplated the assassinations of Attorney General Janet Reno, Lon Horiuchi, and others in preference to attacking a building,[24] and after the bombing he said that he sometimes wished he had carried out a series of assassinations instead.[26] He initially intended only to destroy a federal building, but he later decided that his message would be better received if many people were killed in the bombing.[27] McVeigh's criterion for potential attack sites was that the target should house at least two of three federal law enforcement agencies: the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), or 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.[28]
https://www.ozy.com/true-and-stories/flashback-podcast-timothy-mcveigh-henry-ford-oklahoma-city/318598/
no lnx pix many
TRUE STORIES
‘FLASHBACK’ LECTURE NOTES: HOW HENRY FORD INSPIRED THE OKLAHOMA CITY BOMBING
By Sean Braswell
WHY YOU SHOULD CARE
Because the mass production of hate has disastrous consequences.
Flashback: Podcast host and OZY's resident historian Sean Braswell explores unintended consequences. Listen here.
In episode one of Flashback, a new podcast from OZY, I’ll tell you a cautionary tale from history about hate, free speech and giving a big platform to little men.
Timothy McVeigh Escorted from Courthouse
On April 19th, 1995, a fuel-and-fertilizer truck bomb exploded in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168. Right: FBI agents and police officers escort bombing suspect Timothy McVeigh from the Noble County Courthouse.
SOURCE GETTY
Twenty-five years ago, a Gulf War veteran named Timothy McVeigh parked a truck with a fertilizer bomb in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City. The bombing was the worst domestic terror attack ever on American soil, killing 168 people, including 19 children. But, as you’ll learn in episode one, the chain of events — and the propagation of hate — that led up to the event in Oklahoma City began 75 years earlier with the legendary automaker, industrialist and propagandist Henry Ford.
McVeigh''s Last Written Statement
A copy of McVeigh”s final written statement, containing the 1875 poem by William Ernest Henley “Invictus.”
SOURCE GETTY
This week on Flashback, we discuss how hate speech is something that can be mass-produced, and with disastrous consequences. You can listen here, and then dig deeper into the story with my Lecture Notes below.
FORD AND HITLER
One thing we’ll learn this week is Ford’s somewhat shocking role as a purveyor and publisher of anti-Semitic propaganda. And Victoria Woeste, author of Henry Ford’s War on Jews and the Legal Battle Against Hate Speech, explains the impact that Ford’s book The International Jew had on some very influential anti-Semites: Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Listen to the extra footage of our interview from the cutting-room floor by clicking below:
FROM THE ARCHIVES
‘Zero tolerance for people who like to dress up in uniforms’: William Luther Pierce, author of The Turner Diaries, the book that inspired Timothy McVeigh, did not take kindly to the hate groups that undermined what he considered his more mainstream white supremacy. Here’s an excerpt from a speech that Pierce gave on that topic to a gathering of the neo-Nazi National Alliance in 2002 shortly before his death.
DIG DEEPER
Have you read about Ford … lately? There’s so much more to the famous automaker than meets the eye. Here are a couple more intriguing stories on OZY about the “people’s tycoon.”
The Astonishing Ignorance of Henry Ford: A century ago, Ford sued the Chicago Tribune for calling him an “ignorant idealist.” His eight days on the witness stand permanently dispelled the idea that the industrialist was anything else.
When One of the Richest Men in the World Tried to Stop a War: One of the reasons the Chicago Tribune called Ford an ignorant idealist was because of the time in 1915 that he tried to use privately funded diplomacy — in the form of a “Peace Ship” — to end World War I. Spoiler alert: It didn’t work.
ONE MORE CRAZY THING
It took almost two years for Ford to announce an end to the 90-part anti-Semitic series he had started publishing in his newspaper in 1920. What made him stop the series? A change of heart? Probably not. Concern about his reputation? Unlikely.
One explanation for what finally stayed Ford’s hand comes from American novelist Upton Sinclair, who wrote a biographical novel of Ford in 1937, The Flivver King. In it, he describes the actions of a Jewish Hollywood movie producer named William Fox. Outraged by Ford’s anti-Semitic articles, Fox sent Ford a telegram informing him of Fox’s newest film project:
“[Fox] had instructed his hundreds of cameramen all over the country to get news of accidents involving Ford cars, and to get pictures of the wrecks with full details, how many people were killed, how many dependents were left and so on. They were getting experts to swear what defects in each car had caused the accident.”
The producer threatened to send clips of the film to theater owners across the country to play in their newsreels. On hearing this, Sinclair writes, “Ford immediately sent word back to [Fox] that he had decided to stop the attacks upon the Jews.”
Sean BraswellSean Braswell
MAY 5, 2020
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