By Jamie York
The so-called "patriot movement" is a diverse, loose-knit group of right-wing paramilitary and Christian organizations, including armed militia units, tax protesters, anti-abortionists, white supremacists, sovereign citizens and survivalists.
While specific beliefs vary widely from group to group, the general theme of the patriot movement is that the "liberal" United States Government, no longer constrained by the U.S. Constitution, has become too centralized and authoritarian and thus exerts its regulatory authority unjustly over nearly every phase of American life.
The paramilitary militias proliferated during the early 1990s out of fear that "big government liberals" would begin confiscating their weapons and create a totalitarian "New World Order." The goal of the militias is to restore the United States Government -- and the state governments as well -- to their limited, constitutional function as representatives of the people. They believe that each individual has a right to do whatever he or she wants as long as there is no infringement on someone else's right to life, liberty and property, and they cite the Brady bill and the mishandled federal assaults on Ruby Ridge in 1992 and Waco in 1993 as evidence of the government's unlimited power over individual rights.
"May the Lord be with us and our cause," begins a statement from the Minnesota Minuteman militia. "There is a storm that is rising in America today. The time has come when we patriots must put our feet down and say no more. We must tell our would be masters that we will never bow down to tyranny. We shall be free. If the government does not abandon its attempts to enslave us, then they are forewarned. I will not bow down to tyrants. I will be free or I will die fighting." Similarly, the Virginia Citizen's militia vows to "treat all United Nations/foreign troops as invaders and their sympathizers as traitors."
Again, while specific beliefs vary widely from group to group in the patriot movement, there are some common denominators such as a dislike of liberals and an opposition to abortion, affirmative action, welfare, environmentalists, immigrants and homosexuality. Members of patriot organizations are also likely to have strong feelings in favor of the National Rifle Asscociation (NRA), the death penalty and military spending.
Not all members of the patriot movement engage in or condone hate speech, but those that do are likely to call for acts of violence and terrorism to support their cause. The White Aryan Resistance's "hate page" once displayed a cartoon drawing of a white man slugging a black man and the caption read "Believe it or not, White Man...In the long run, it costs far less to take a stand now. Get busy...Defend your way of life...or lose it." Another white supremacist group, Stormfront, says that the "white liberal elites must stop rewarding Black and brown racial aggression....The only question is how 'messy' the process of stopping these practices is going to be." One has to wonder: How could the "process" get any messier than it did in the June 7, 1998, dragging death of James Byrd, Jr., near Jasper, Texas? John William King, who was recently sentenced to death for Byrd's murder, was reportedly trying to start a white supremacist group in Jasper and wanted attention. One web site -- whitesonly.net -- even calls King a "hero" for his brutal action.
After the April 20, 1999, school shooting in Littleton, Colorado, it was discovered that the two teens responsible for leaving 15 people dead and 28 injured had been planning the attack for a year and were going to target minorities and jocks, but when the carnage began they appeared to choose their victims indiscriminately. One black student, however, was shot in the head. The two teens reportedly had a "Trenchcoat Mafia" website on which they bragged that something big was going to happen on April 20 to conincide with Hitler's birthday, but AOL took it offline shortly after the massacre.
Verbal threats and hate speech permeate much of the literature of the patriot movement. For example, the Army of God, a pro-Christian, anti-abortion group, displays photographs of bombed abortion clinics on its web site and maintains an "enemies of the unborn" list of abortion doctors and pro-choice organizations. The Army of God uses the language of hate and intolerance to declare war on all who believe that women must have access to safe, legal abortions.
Certainly, not all members of the patriot movement practice or condone domestic terrorism -- some simply want to live off the land and be left alone by the government -- but those that do condone terrorism believe their actions are justified. Not only that, but they also believe their actions have God's stamp of approval and they often cite Bible passages in an attempt to prove it. One has to wonder how long it will be before some misguided individuals explode a nuclear device in an urban area thinking it will somehow help their cause or please the gods.
The patriot movement in the United States exists today, in part because of religious indoctrination and the inflammatory rhetoric of talk-radio and right-wing politicians stumping for contributions, but also because of the television news medium. Propaganda does not rely on facts for its power, but on repetition. As terrible as militia views seem to a rational person, the mass media is a conduit that helps feed these paranoia groups, which, in turn, repeat and embellish the rants in speeches and newsletters to their members. For example, on May 7, 2000, Senator Bob Smith said that Elian Gonzalez was being drugged and called the Maryland home where he was staying with his father a "concentration camp." These charges are fiction, and Smith knows it, but he also knows that his target audience will swallow it hook, line and sinker.
In newspaper publishing, managing editors use larger type sizes in headlines to convey to the reader the relative importance of the story. In television, however, the news anchor cannot convey this to the audience, so all stories take on the same relative importance. One cannot tell the difference between, say, the latest revelation in the Clinton/Lewinsky affair and the bombing of Iraq, especially when the same stories are presented over and over by all of the networks. Such saturation coverage can bring a relatively minor incident to national attention in a very short period of time and it is easy to get caught up in the drama of the event. Multi-day events such as the Waco stand-off, the Gulf war and the Simpson trial usually get their own graphics and musical theme on the newscasts, so this further heightens the sense of importance and draws viewers -- and certainly the participants themselves -- into the drama of the event. When NATO began bombing Yugoslavia, where a relatively low-casualty civil war between the Serbs and the Albanian KLA was already in progress, the violence intensified and hundreds of thousands of refugees began leaving Kosovo, telling CNN that they were being mistreated by the Serbs. The Pentagon showed "before and after" satellite photos of supposed mass graves, but apparently there were no "during" photos available and no one in the media asked why. After hourly television reports on the "refugee crisis" began to dominate the news, the media focused exclusively on "ethnic cleansing" as the reason for the refugee crisis, rather than on International Monetary Fund policies in Yugoslavia, which largely caused the civil war in the first place.
Violence is not only a staple of the news business, but also is part of the entertainment culture in the United States. After work or school, we watch violent movies or play violent video games, then we turn on the news and we hear over and over about youth gangs, drugs, and violent crime, so it is no wonder that individuals might feel that their "freedom and liberty," their "one nation under God," their "property," is being threatened with laws such as the Brady bill. After all, how can we defend ourselves if we are not armed, if the liberal government takes our guns away or makes us install trigger locks? It should be no surprise, then, that like-minded individuals organize around their beliefs so they can properly defend their "way of life." Under the circumstances, even with all of the brutality that exists, it is a perfectly logical thing to do. The patriot movement exists because there is a perceived need for it by the participants and it will continue to exist until human society advances and the need dissipates. We have a long way to go.
It may seem odd to some that, given school shootings and the high level of violence in this world, a humanist would support the right to keep and bear arms. Well, first of all, I am a humanist, not a pacifist; I believe in the right to self-defense. If weapons are removed from even the most civil, peaceful-seeming society, then how would people protect themselves in the event that peace turned to tyrrany? In the United States, as in the majority of countries with standing armies, the function of the military and the police is to protect "private property." Unfortunately, no distinction is made between private property -- which really refers to the immense land holdings and financial interests of corporations -- and the personal property of individuals. There are many scenarios in which the military -- defending corporate property, not personal property -- could be called to action against the citizens of the United States. As long as armed organizations -- such as the police and the military -- exist in this world, then citizens need to be able to protect themselves against them.