sagebrush rebellion

disambig<div>see wise use</div><div>
</div><div>=<div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.kunr.org/local-stories/2022-01-07/big-lie-feeds-off-western-extremism" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">https://www.kunr.org/local-stories/2022-01-07/big-lie-feeds-off-western-extremism</a></div><div style="">...Many of the Republicans pushing Trump’s lies have close ties to anti-government extremists in the West.Accountable.US, a left-leaning watchdog group, released a <a href="https://www.accountable.us/news/report-insurrectionists-anti-conservation-movement-one-in-the-same/" class="Link" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; touch-action: manipulation;">report</a> Thursday connecting the insurrection with earlier conflicts over ranching and mining on federal lands, beginning with the <a href="https://www.hcn.org/articles/a-look-back-at-the-first-sagebrush-rebellion" class="Link" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; touch-action: manipulation;">Sagebrush Rebellion</a> of the 1970s.“The anti-public lands movement is a breeding ground for this type of animosity that helped supercharge the events of January 6 and contribute to them,” Accountable spokesperson Karl Frisch said.Frisch says far-right politicians like Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert, Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes and Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar were primed for the insurrection by their previous involvement with anti-government extremists.In December 2020, Reyes signed an amicus brief in support of a Supreme Court case <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22O155/163215/20201209144840609_2020-12-09%20-%20Texas%20v.%20Pennsylvania%20-%20Amicus%20Brief%20of%20Missouri%20et%20al.%20-%20Final%20with%20Tables.pdf" class="Link" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; touch-action: manipulation;">seeking to have votes thrown out</a> in Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. He is also the former chairman of the Rule of Law Defense Fund, one of the sponsors of the so-called <a href="https://documented.net/reporting/republican-attorneys-general-dark-money-group-organized-protest-preceding-capitol-mob-attack" class="Link" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; touch-action: manipulation;">March To Save America</a> that took place just before protesters stormed the Capitol.The fund also sponsored robocalls urging Trump supporters to “march to the Capitol building and call on Congress to stop the steal” in the days before the insurrection. After the day’s attack turned deadly, Reyes <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/news/2021/01/10/utah-ag-sean-reyes-denies/" class="Link" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; touch-action: manipulation;">sought to distance himself</a> from the group.Years earlier, as the Accountable report details, Reyes <a href="https://www.deseret.com/2014/4/8/20539077/utahns-paying-close-attention-to-dispute-between-blm-nevada-rancher" class="Link" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; touch-action: manipulation;">intervened on behalf of Cliven Bundy</a> when the government planned to auction the radical rancher’s cattle in Utah to help pay down the $1 million in grazing fees he refused to pay. Bundy and his sons gained a large following among the far-right after they organized a series of armed standoffs with federal agents in Nevada and Oregon.Frisch predicts the growth of right-wing radicalism will continue in the leadup to midterm elections later this year.“Because these two movements are so intertwined, I think we’re likely to see more of it,” he said.Meanwhile, advocates like Lyngar support abolishing the Electoral College and eliminating the filibuster, which would allow Democrats to pass federal voter protections. He told the crowd on Thursday it was up to voters to put pressure on lawmakers for those changes to be adopted....</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">ref</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.hcn.org/articles/a-look-back-at-the-first-sagebrush-rebellion">https://www.hcn.org/articles/a-look-back-at-the-first-sagebrush-rebellion</a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">2016</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style=""><p style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.7); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; font-family: Tiempos, " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" rem="rem" line-height="line-height" text-rendering="text-rendering" optimizelegibility="optimizelegibility" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" px="px">"(The) Sagebrush (Rebellion) comes into relief as what it really is — a murky fusion of idealism and greed that may not be heroic, nor righteous, nor even intelligent. Only one certainty exists — that Sagebrush is a revolt against federal authority, and that its taproot grows deep in the century’s history. Beyond this, it is incoherent. Part hypocrisy, part demagoguery, partly the honest anger of honest people, it is a movement of confusion and hysteria and terrifyingly destructive potential. What it is no one fully understands. What it will do no one can tell.”<p style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.7); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; font-family: Tiempos, " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" rem="rem" line-height="line-height" text-rendering="text-rendering" optimizelegibility="optimizelegibility" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" px="px">While that sounds like an observation from 2016, perhaps nodding toward the armed <a class="external-link" target="blank" title="" href="https://www.hcn.org/articles/oregon-occupation-at-wildlife-refuge" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; line-height: inherit;">occupation</a> of a wildlife refuge in Oregon by the radical fringe of the latest incarnation of the Sagebrush Rebellion, this passage was actually <a class="external-link" target="blank" title="" href="http://www.colorado.edu/conflict/peace/example/lammangr.htm" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; line-height: inherit;">written in 1982</a> by then-Colorado Governor Richard Lamm.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; font-family: Tiempos, " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" rem="rem" line-height="line-height" text-rendering="text-rendering" optimizelegibility="optimizelegibility" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" px="px">He referred to the first of three distinct Sagebrush Rebellions of modern times: The first flared up in the mid- to late-1970s; the second occurred in the mid-1990s; and the third began not long after President Obama was elected in 2008. Though the first rebellion had ebbed by the early 1980s, and accomplished none of its big national legislative goals, it did leave a lasting imprint on the West. Here are the big takeaways of that first wave:<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; font-family: Tiempos, " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" rem="rem" line-height="line-height" text-rendering="text-rendering" optimizelegibility="optimizelegibility" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" px="px">What sparked it: Many miners, loggers and ranchers of the West were rebelling against “federal colonialism” that came in the form of environmental laws, from the Wilderness Act to the Endangered Species Act to, especially, the Federal Land Policy Management Act. Passed in 1976, FLPMA shifted the Bureau of Land Management’s mandate from one of maximizing extraction from public lands, to preserving — at least to a limited extent — those same lands. To critics, it locked in the “absentee landlord” relationship Washington had with much of the West. To the rebels, President Jimmy Carter was an especially onerous landlord. On the one hand he tried to cut off funding to a slate of federal water projects pending throughout the West (thus depriving the region of its lifeblood), and on the other wanted to turn large portions of the region into an <a class="external-link" target="blank" title="" href="http://historytogo.utah.gov/utah_chapters/utah_today/themxmissileproject.html" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.7); box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; line-height: inherit;">MX missile launching pad</a> (cutting off other access to that land and making us a target for the Soviet Union). While Lamm wouldn’t exactly count himself as a Sagebrush Rebel, he also revolted against the federal landlord when Carter and Congress implemented an $88 billion synfuels subsidy <a class="external-link" target="blank" title="" href="http://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/document.php?id=cqresrre1979083100" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; line-height: inherit;">program</a> that led to water-guzzling, destructive <a class="external-link" target="blank" title="" href="https://www.hcn.org/blogs/goat/the-estonian-connection-or-how-i-started-worrying-about-oil-shale" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; line-height: inherit;">oil shale</a> development in the Interior West. Who were the rebels: The movement had many layers, from local politicians and entire boards of county commissioners, to state legislators and even U.S. congressmen. The leaders included San Juan County, Utah, Commissioner and uranium miner <a class="external-link" target="blank" title="" href="https://www.hcn.org/articles/is-san-juan-countys-phil-lyman-the-new-calvin-black" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; line-height: inherit;">Cal Black</a> — the model for Edward Abbey’s antagonist Bishop Love in his novel, “The Monkey Wrench Gang” — Nevada state legislator Dean Rhoads, U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch, from Utah, and a handful of other politicians, mostly from Nevada and Idaho. Hatch, Black and Sens. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., and Ted Stevens, R-Ak., headed up the League for the Advancement of States Equal Rights, or LASER, the biggest and most influential rebel organization. The Idaho-based Sagebrush Rebellion, Inc., also touted a large membership. Funding for these groups came mostly from the extractive industry; the Rebellion was hardly a pure grassroots movement. The closest analogues in today’s movement would probably be the corporate-sponsored, right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council and the <a class="external-link" target="blank" title="" href="https://www.hcn.org/articles/the-push-is-on-to-take-back-public-lands" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.7); box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; line-height: inherit;">American Lands Council</a>.<p style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.7); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; font-family: Tiempos, " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" rem="rem" line-height="line-height" text-rendering="text-rendering" optimizelegibility="optimizelegibility" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" px="px">What did they want: Quite simply, they wanted more local control over the land that surrounded them, therefore gaining more control over their own destiny. Some wanted to transfer federal lands to the state, others were okay with the land remaining under the federal umbrella, as long as they got more say in how the feds managed the land. In most cases, this would mean fewer regulations. <p style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.7); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; font-family: Tiempos, " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" rem="rem" line-height="line-height" text-rendering="text-rendering" optimizelegibility="optimizelegibility" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" px="px" /><div class="image-inline captioned" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.7); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 2rem 0px; padding: 0px; font-family: Tiempos, " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" letter-spacing="letter-spacing"><figure style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: auto; max-width: 100%; width: 1500px;"><a href="https://www.hcn.org/articles/a-look-back-at-the-first-sagebrush-rebellion/reaganrebel-png/image_view_fullscreen" data-reveal-id="image-modal" data-reveal-ajax="true" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; line-height: inherit; display: inline-block; position: relative; margin: 0px;"><img src="https://www.hcn.org/articles/a-look-back-at-the-first-sagebrush-rebellion/reaganrebel-png/image" alt="" title="Ronald Reagan supported the Sagebrush Rebels' cause, and they supported him. This appeared in High Country News in 1980. " height="1000" width="1500" rel="lightbox[article]" style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; height: auto; display: inline-block; vertical-align: middle; border: none; margin: auto; width: 721.01px; padding: 0px;" /></a><figcaption style="box-sizing: border-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-weight: 600; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.375rem; text-align: right; margin-top: 0.5rem; width: 721.01px;"><div class="caption" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Ronald Reagan supported the Sagebrush Rebels' cause, and they supported him. This appeared in High Country News in 1980.</div><div class="credit" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-weight: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">High Country News</div></figcaption></figure></div><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Tiempos, " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" background-color="background-color" rgba="rgba" />What actions did the rebels take on the ground: They sure as heck didn’t show up, armed to the teeth, and take over a federal facility, or face down federal officials with assault rifles. But there was violence, or at least threats thereof. In 1979, Black told BLM officials that he was to the point “where I’ll blow up bridges, ruins and vehicles. We’re going to start a revolution.” Black never delivered on his promises, but there was widespread vandalism of ancient Puebloan sites in Utah that appeared to be politically motivated. And in 1980, the Grand County, Utah, commissioners led a group of hundreds of locals in bulldozing a road into a Wilderness Study Area in protest of what they saw as a BLM land grab. No one was prosecuted.<br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Tiempos, " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" background-color="background-color" rgba="rgba" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Tiempos, " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" background-color="background-color" rgba="rgba" /><strong style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.7); box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit; font-family: Tiempos, " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" letter-spacing="letter-spacing">On a political level: The first Sagebrush Rebellion was mostly waged in state legislatures, where a number of bills were considered in Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Alaska, Oregon and Arizona, demanding the transfer of federal lands to the states. (Those early bills were mirrored in 2012 and 2013 in Idaho, Wyoming, Nevada, Montana and Utah). Hatch also introduced a bill in the Senate that would have allowed state land commissions to take over some 600 million acres of public lands nationwide. Meanwhile, LASER actively courted 1980 presidential candidate <a class="external-link" target="blank" title="" href="https://www.hcn.org/issues/12.24/rebels-revel-in-new-power-polish" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; line-height: inherit;" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" letter-spacing="letter-spacing">Ronald Reagan</a>, who declared himself a rebel.<br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Tiempos, " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" background-color="background-color" rgba="rgba" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Tiempos, " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" background-color="background-color" rgba="rgba" /><strong style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.7); box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit; font-family: Tiempos, " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" letter-spacing="letter-spacing">What happened: Reagan’s election, and the appointment of property-rights advocate James Watt as Secretary of Interior, defused the rebellion. Watt didn’t go for wholesale federal land transfers to the states, but he and his cohorts rolled back regulations and pledged to incorporate more local say into federal land management. There was suddenly far less to rebel against, at least for the extractive industries and their allies.<p style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.7); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; font-family: Tiempos, " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" rem="rem" line-height="line-height" text-rendering="text-rendering" optimizelegibility="optimizelegibility" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" px="px" /><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; font-family: Tiempos, " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" rem="rem" line-height="line-height" text-rendering="text-rendering" optimizelegibility="optimizelegibility" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" px="px">Meanwhile, consensus among what was left of the Rebellion fell apart. Even many of the Rebellion's leaders understood that state-level land transfer bills were symbolic and had no real legal basis, so they'd get shot down by the courts thanks to the property and supremacy clauses of the U.S. Constitution, as well as the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/220/523" title="" target="blank" class="external-link" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.7); box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; line-height: 1.875rem;">Light v. United States</a>. A congressional bill like Hatch's might make it through the courts if it passed, but the chances of that were slim to none.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; font-family: Tiempos, " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" rem="rem" line-height="line-height" text-rendering="text-rendering" optimizelegibility="optimizelegibility" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" px="px">Besides, when the costs of such transfers were revealed, they didn't seem so great. A study by the Interior Department found that states could end up losing millions of dollars if they were to similarly manage the land and reap the same revenues from it as the feds did. Also, the Payments in Lieu of Taxes program, or <a class="external-link" target="blank" title="" href="https://www.doi.gov/pilt" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.7); box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; line-height: 1.875rem;">PILT</a>, was just kicking in at that time. Under the program, the feds pay counties in order to make up for property taxes that the counties can’t collect from public lands — that money would be lost if the state took over the land. <p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; font-family: Tiempos, " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" rem="rem" line-height="line-height" text-rendering="text-rendering" optimizelegibility="optimizelegibility" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" px="px">Many ranchers and miners had second thoughts about the states taking over federal land, as well. Hardrock miners have nearly unfettered access to federal lands and have to pay no royalties for the minerals they extract. Oil and gas drillers pay low royalties, and ranchers get a prime deal for grazing on BLM lands. They were worried they’d lose those deals under state management — royalties and grazing fees for state lands can be 50 percent higher or more than for federal lands. <p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; font-family: Tiempos, " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" rem="rem" line-height="line-height" text-rendering="text-rendering" optimizelegibility="optimizelegibility" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" px="px">As governor, Lamm occasionally sided with the Rebels. But he came to see the Rebellion as a fool's errand. In “The Angry West,” he wrote: “… by asserting, even flaunting, a regional independence that never existed, the proud West becomes the foolish West. Worse, by continuing to act today as though it still has no need for the federal government, even as it continues to profit from federal largesse, it compounds its hypocrisy and undermines its credibility.”<p style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.7); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; font-family: Tiempos, " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" rem="rem" line-height="line-height" text-rendering="text-rendering" optimizelegibility="optimizelegibility" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" px="px">Aftermath: While the regional, state-level Rebellion faded after 1981, it just kept on flaring up at the local level, particularly in parts of Nevada and Utah. Black didn’t stop fighting until his death in 1990, and by then the next iteration — Sagebrush Rebellion Part II — was about to ignite.<p style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.7); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; font-family: Tiempos, " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" rem="rem" line-height="line-height" text-rendering="text-rendering" optimizelegibility="optimizelegibility" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" px="px">There has long been resentment toward the federal land agencies in the West, which gave rise to rebellions here and there prior to 1970. One of the early major <a href="http://www.foresthistory.org/Publications/Books/Origins_National_Forests/sec13.htm" title="" target="blank" class="external-link" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; line-height: inherit;">such uprising</a> was in the late 1800s, and mostly played out in Colorado. <p style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.7); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; font-family: Tiempos, " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" rem="rem" line-height="line-height" text-rendering="text-rendering" optimizelegibility="optimizelegibility" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" px="px">Jonathan Thompson is a senior editor of High Country News. <a href="https://twitter.com/jonnypeace" class="twitter-follow-button" data-show-count="false" data-size="large" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; line-height: 1.875rem;">Follow @jonnypeace</a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">ref 2</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style=""><div class="post-meta" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-transform: uppercase; margin-bottom: 0.25em; font-weight: 600;">p<a class="post-cat" href="https://www.accountable.us/news/category/press-release/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; display: inline-block; margin-right: 0.3em;">RESS RELEASE</a> // JANUARY 6, 2022</div><h1 style="background-color: rgb(251, 251, 251); box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; line-height: 1.1; overflow-wrap: break-word;">REPORT: Insurrectionists, Anti-Conservation Movement One in the Same</h1><div class="rte post-content" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 28px;">Washington, D.C. — The anti-government extremism that fueled the insurrection on January 6, 2021 aligns almost perfectly with the violent opposition to public lands conservation, a new report from the nonpartisan watchdog Accountable.US found. Anti-government extremists who want to end public ownership of land and water have infiltrated the halls of power from county commissioners all the way to the United States Congress, according to the report which can be downloaded <a href="https://act.myngp.com/el/si8-djrf7pHc9azhz4iqkFj8C5wTKXbcJeVSOpp6MY8=/jcQWqhdO1b_Q8p-eKeCHwMVCbvWw8TBLxJQ248oKhaA=" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box;">HERE</a>. Those same leaders and their allies in groups such as the Oath Keepers have been on the front lines of the attempt to overturn the 2020 Election and undermine democracy based on Donald Trump’s “Big Lie.”  <blockquote style="background-color: rgb(251, 251, 251); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5; position: relative; padding-left: 1.25em;">“It is time to call opposition to conservation what it truly is: an attack on American democracy,” said Kyle Herrig, President of Accountable.US. “The movement to end public ownership of land is almost identical to the movement to overrule the public’s right to choose who leads the country.”  </blockquote>Key findings from the report reveal the far-reaching connections between anti-public lands and anti-democracy leaders and groups:<ul style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 1.5em; margin-top: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding-left: 2.4em;"><li aria-level="1" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 0.5em;">Before the Oath Keepers tried to overturn the 2020 election, they participated in multiple armed attacks on public lands in Nevada, Oregon, and Montana. [The Atlantic, <a href="https://act.myngp.com/el/si8-djrf7pHc9azhz4iqkFj8C5wTKXbcJeVSOpp6MY8=/dj4Vi3GDnF3u1I4QlQHnyPHHFAYqKAzv-xzGXiz22R0=" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box;">09/30/20</a>; Vox, <a href="https://act.myngp.com/el/si8-djrf7pHc9azhz4iqkFj8C5wTKXbcJeVSOpp6MY8=/LGPdGU8zYDWAQBNA4BFUzZpO8sSE3YW4aOZwYDg_FCw=" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box;">11/07/16</a>; Montana Public Radio, <a href="https://act.myngp.com/el/si8-djrf7pHc9azhz4iqkFj8C5wTKXbcJeVSOpp6MY8=/78A2DychWQpiq4kAPabKV6qU7VeqjDNwPl_ULoJYOJA=" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box;">08/12/15</a>]  </li><li aria-level="1" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 0.5em;">Cliven Bundy declared “Range War” on the federal government prior and supported the forcible occupation of the capitol during the January 6 riot [Reno Gazette Journal, <a href="https://act.myngp.com/el/si8-djrf7pHc9azhz4iqkFj8C5wTKXbcJeVSOpp6MY8=/zlZHlNgJkta-SrjwGVRhAm0gLEAT6v3dKAqOw4fw1ms=" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box;">01/08/21</a>; Vox, <a href="https://act.myngp.com/el/si8-djrf7pHc9azhz4iqkFj8C5wTKXbcJeVSOpp6MY8=/A28h_SXZW7rjcE1RK07NVoaO0W-J33h2sy-0O6Vt9zQ=" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box;">05/14/15</a>].  </li><li aria-level="1" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 0.5em;">Arizona Congressman Paul Gosar encouraged lawbreaking at the January 6 insurrection and the selling off of public lands  [Business Insider, <a href="https://act.myngp.com/el/si8-djrf7pHc9azhz4iqkFj8C5wTKXbcJeVSOpp6MY8=/1WF0WdUVVYYXyWXgNNTcZ9tN1UneLHTzajVcFjKwWPY=" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box;">10/24/21</a>; Paul Gosar, D.D.S., <a href="https://act.myngp.com/el/si8-djrf7pHc9azhz4iqkFj8C5wTKXbcJeVSOpp6MY8=/03HK4PPGUD2MNxUWFHbVfBt07XrsYYXtL3Z_fJopiiI=?DocumentID=1488" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box;">07/15/16</a>].  </li><li aria-level="1" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 0.5em;">Colorado Congresswoman Lauren Boebert collaborated with extremists comparing protecting public lands to Hitler and Stalin and was reported to have been in prior contact with the organizers of the January 6 attacks.  [Washington Post, <a href="https://act.myngp.com/el/si8-djrf7pHc9azhz4iqkFj8C5wTKXbcJeVSOpp6MY8=/RmTlZifgZJK_GGMnKtOrYOBG5c7b8zCrzPcXR9XW9ac=" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box;">01/19/21</a>; Rolling Stone, <a href="https://act.myngp.com/el/si8-djrf7pHc9azhz4iqkFj8C5wTKXbcJeVSOpp6MY8=/aDgM6z5YIVTX6gtkV7-GlPIkiN7iVZlIR70YgWed6mY=" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box;">10/24/21</a>; The Guardian, <a href="https://act.myngp.com/el/si8-djrf7pHc9azhz4iqkFj8C5wTKXbcJeVSOpp6MY8=/4IFaOiit4JaENNjKVLzT10uNDtM9wbFRFXXc08N-RL8=" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box;">05/14/21</a>].  </li><li aria-level="1" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 0.5em;">Right-wing talk show host Trent Loos, who has been a leading critic of campaigns to protect nature, supported violence during the capitol riots and participated in the occupation of Malheur wildlife reserve [Facebook, <a href="https://act.myngp.com/el/si8-djrf7pHc9azhz4iqkFj8C5wTKXbcJeVSOpp6MY8=/pDQUNXMXca1rxzUtCrbUtOCdC99VQnP0bIOcb8p2yLE=" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box;">01/11/16</a>; The Oregonian, <a href="https://act.myngp.com/el/si8-djrf7pHc9azhz4iqkFj8C5wTKXbcJeVSOpp6MY8=/LLOj4vhrvY-Y-B0PSKUhx4mbFBC1yJwoMHnTXBEzSUg=" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box;">01/02/16</a>; High Plains Journal – Op Ed by Trent Loos, <a href="https://act.myngp.com/el/si8-djrf7pHc9azhz4iqkFj8C5wTKXbcJeVSOpp6MY8=/bxvFsqcI_mIDsAoTiPG2OAMxA-ikxYDhIeXv3btBGLs=" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box;">04/3/21</a>].</li></ul><a href="https://act.myngp.com/el/si8-djrf7pHc9azhz4iqkFj8C5wTKXbcJeVSOpp6MY8=/QH6uq313DFdBInkr8gZlflmA4E9rtgkahYZtIJsaa0U=" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent;">Read the full analysis. </a></div></div>=<a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/up-in-arms-new-book-2638990950.html">https://www.ecowatch.com/up-in-arms-new-book-2638990950.html</a>Tara LohanWhen armed militants with a grudge against the federal government seized the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in rural Oregon back in the winter of 2016, I remember avoiding the news coverage. Part of me wanted to know what was happening, but each report I read — as the occupation stretched from days to weeks and the destruction grew — made me so angry it was hard to keep reading.That's why I picked up John Temple's new book <a href="https://www.benbellabooks.com/shop/up-in-arms/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">Up in Arms: How the Bundy Family Hijacked Public Lands, Outfoxed the Federal Government, and Ignited America's Patriot Militia Movement</a>.I wanted to see what I'd missed. And I wanted to understand the extremist ideologies that continue to dominate many discussions in the American West.<div class="rebellt-item col1" data-id="1" data-is-image="False" data-reload-ads="false" id="rebelltitem1"><a href="https://johntemplebooks.com/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">Temple</a>, an author and journalism professor at West Virginia University's Reed College of Media, provides a page-turning account of both the 2014 standoff in Bunkerville, Nevada, that launched scofflaw rancher Cliven Bundy and his family into the national spotlight and the 2016 occupation of Malheur, led by Bundy's sons Ammon and Ryan."It's obviously an exciting story with cowboys and guns and takeovers and standoffs," Temple told me about the book. "But it sheds light on public lands issues, environmental issues, on questions about how the government should handle these situations and the urban-rural divide in this country."The book also delves into the history of the Sagebrush Rebellion, a western U.S. movement against federal ownership of public lands that ignited in the late 1970s and has continued to smolder in the decades since.The Bundys, who still subscribe to this line of thinking, refused to recognize the Bureau of Land Management's authority over the public land where they graze their cattle (or the federal government in general). That ultimately led — after 20 years of federal agencies looking the other way — to an armed standoff in which the FBI attempted to seize the rancher's cattle after years of unpaid grazing fees and mounting fines.Spoiler alert: It didn't end well for the government.Temple then chronicles the play's second act, during which the Bundy sons engineered the takeover of the federally run Malheur National Wildlife Refuge for more than a month. The pretense was defending local Oregon ranchers Dwight and Steven Hammond, who were sentenced to jail for federal land arson, but who actually eschewed the Bundys' help. The occupation turned out to be more of a publicity stunt than anything — one that ended in spectacular failure (although the Bundys insist it was a success). In the process they also trashed the refuge headquarters and racked up a $9 million tab for taxpayers.While Up in Arms gives a detailed view of the ideology that motivates the Bundys, the story is much bigger than them. It's also an exploration of the motivations of some of the most hardline anti-federal militants in the country — not just the Bundys, but the ragbag collection of so-called Patriot movement followers that flocked to their ranch, even when most of them lacked understanding of public-lands issues and the cause they were backing.In fact, Temple said, he first came to the story of the Bundys researching an unrelated project about militias. As a result there's not much in the book about the <a href="https://therevelator.org/public-lands-perils-multiple-use/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">underlying environmental issues</a> at the heart of the Bundy actions, including the impact of <a href="https://therevelator.org/cattle-public-lands/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">renegade ranching on public lands</a>.But Temple writes about the personal histories of many of the supporters who turned up for the initial showdown in Bunkerville and others who joined the occupation at Malheur. He reveals the power dynamics among different Patriot militia groups as they jockeyed for media attention and acolytes.While the Bundys honed their talking points in scores of interviews about their anti-government rhetoric and their calling from God to act on it, Temple said that most of the other Bundy supporters didn't have much political inspiration or well-formed ideologies."I think some of these folks were motivated on a very personal level where they have trouble with authority and that kind of thing," he said. "Every individual seemed to have a different set of grievances or issues that were driving them, but it coalesced around a few things: Distrust of the federal government and the feeling that the federal government was overreaching in its authority, and the Second Amendment."What could go wrong?As Temple writes, a lot went wrong on both sides of the confrontation between the government and the militias. This was on full view when the Bundys and their compatriots eventually faced their day in court.If you've ever wondered, as I did, how the leaders of an armed insurrection that occupied federal property, degraded public lands, and terrorized government workers <a href="https://therevelator.org/bundy-trial-dismissed/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">escaped punishment</a>, it's explained here in great detail. Temple writes about not just the court proceedings that followed the standoffs but the main players on the federal government's team, including FBI leadership involved in Bunkerville. A series of bumbles and missteps ultimately led to the prosecution's ultimate failure.There's no happy ending, unless you believe divine providence is shining down on the Bundy clan. But Temple's book paints a useful picture of the simmering, ongoing range war in the West and the havoc an unlikely alliance of right-wing groups can wreak when they converge.That's the most sobering part of the book: It's likely a preview of things to come.</div>Reposted with permission from our media associate <a href="https://therevelator.org/bundy-book-temple/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">The Revelator</a>.<div class="post-pager js-listicle-pager" data-async_load_parameters="platform=desktop&display_ads=1&settings=%7B%22enter_url%22%3A+false%2C+%22no_post_section%22%3A+false%2C+%22ads_breaks%22%3A+null%2C+%22prevent_last_break_repetition%22%3A+false%2C+%22use_numeration%22%3A+false%2C+%22ads_order%22%3A+%5B%5D%2C+%22pagination_order%22%3A+%5B%5D%2C+%22list_breaks%22%3A+null%2C+%22reorder_voting%22%3A+false%2C+%22cooldown_in_seconds%22%3A+null%2C+%22source%22%3A+%22post_listicle_settings%22%2C+%22next_post_url%22%3A+null%2C+%22up_down_voting%22%3A+false%2C+%22show_columns_on_mobile%22%3A+false%2C+%22numeration_sort%22%3A+-1%2C+%22use_pagination%22%3A+false%2C+%22body_text_above%22%3A+false%2C+%22use_ads%22%3A+false%2C+%22items_as_posts%22%3A+false%2C+%22multiple_answers%22%3A+false%2C+%22no_redirect%22%3A+false%2C+%22is_guest_voting_allowed%22%3A+true%2C+%22layout_type%22%3A+1%7D" data-listicle-style="" style="display: table; width: 780px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="around-the-web" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="around-the-webheadline" style="font-weight: 700; text-transform: uppercase; margin-top: 10px;">RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB</div><ul class="around-the-weblist" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; list-style: none;"><li class="around-the-webitem"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Up-Arms-Hijacked-Outfoxed-Government/dp/1946885959" class="around-the-weblink" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5; display: inline-block; margin-top: 0px !important;">Up in Arms: How the Bundy Family Hijacked Public Lands, Outfoxed ... ›</a></li></ul></div></div></div>