Hatred’s Pathways

On Monday, April 19, at 9:02 in the morning, 15 years since a despicable act, the bells in the city of Oklahoma were tolling in the memory of the 19 kids and 149 adults who were all victims of a man who was proclaiming his patriotism.

The man responsible for the assault, the greatest terrorist attack against the U.S. before 9/11, was Timothy McVeigh, a young man who didn’t have to travel from outside the U.S. to bring destruction to Oklahoma. The terrorist was born in Lockport, in the state of New York. He was of a Catholic family of Irish descent. Timothy’s grandpa instilled in him a fascination for arms.

At the age of 20, Timothy enrolled in the army. On one occasion, he received a reprimand for attending a protest organized by the Ku Klux Klan, at which he was wearing a shirt proclaiming white racial supremacy. During the Gulf War, Tim was awarded the Bronze Star for his distinctive skills in the use of arms and explosives. After he left the Military, the young man kept nurturing his hatred for the federal government and, even though he had no affiliation with any group, he did have ties with the “Patriotic Movement.” The movement was determined to stimulate hatred against the federal government. McVeigh died by execution in jail in 2001. However, his death didn’t serve to deter other American citizens from the profound irrationality that characterizes the actions of the so-called “Patriotic Movement.”

This year, at the end of March, Michigan’s police detained eight men and a woman accused of conspiring to kill policemen with the intent of initiating a revolution against the federal government. The nine individuals were members of a Christian militia, called Hutaree, which operates under an obsession with the Apocalypse and today faces charges of insurrection and usage of weapons of “mass destruction.”

The phenomenon of uniformed and vehement militia groups is not new. “Strictly speaking,” said Brian Jenkins, an expert on terrorism and an adviser to the U.S. Department of State and the Church of England, “the militia is an American phenomenon with no equivalent in the rest of the world. The American psyche,” adds Jenkins, ”is framed by our origin as colonizing-explorers, advancing to the West carrying arms to protect ourselves in lands without laws. In our history, this experience is intimately tied to the constitutional right to bear arms.”

Another characteristic of this peculiar movement is its heterogeneity. According to Jenkins, “there are advocates for the right to carry arms, citizens that are rebelling against the imposition of taxes and people who see the government as an oppressive body. Some go under the name of “survivalists,” and see themselves as the last line of defense in the case of a military invasion or of a nuclear attack. There are also Fundamentalist Christians with apocalyptic and white supremacist visions, who hate minorities, immigrants, the Jews and the governments that tolerate or defend these groups, or — in the case of the Jews — the governments that work for them. There are others who are inoffensive and just like to play soldiers.”

Nevertheless, all these groups share disturbing language, which indicates a kind of delirium. They feel like they are the owners of this country, the true inheritors of the founders of the U.S. — to such an extent that their prophets designate themselves as officers in charge of obliging the rest of the population to take up their particular road of salvation.

According to data from the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization that keeps an eye on the conduct of extremist groups, the number of militias in the U.S. has tripled since the inauguration of Barack Obama.

With things this way, what is most alarming is that the non-violent conservative groups, which today are determined to increase hatred toward the federal government and against President Obama, are not admitting the danger they are causing by encouraging other pathways of hatred.

Editor’s Note: Quotations, accurately translated, could not be verified.