From bigxc@prairienet.orgSun Feb  5 08:04:31 1995
Date: Mon, 30 Jan 95 11:40:27 CST
From: Brian Redman <bigxc@prairienet.org>
To: Multiple recipients of list <conspire@prairienet.org>
Subject: Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 3 Num. 71


              Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 3  Num. 71
             ======================================
                    ("Quid coniuratio est?")
 
 
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"American movement" -- of arms and ideology
[From *USA Today*, Jan. 30, 1995, p. 7A]
 
(Spurred on by the fiery disaster in Waco, America's militia 
movement is growing, armed and -- some say -- dangerous.)
 
Militias stepping out from shadows
==================================
By Mark Potok
 
(Dallas) -- Men train in the pre-dawn darkness of a field north 
of here, dummy weapons in hand.
 
Others study military medicine west of Fort Worth or practice 
shooting skills and survival exercises outside San Antonio.
 
A movement is growing in this state and the nation -- a rising of 
thousands of people inflamed by often-bizarre ideologies that 
call for forming armed volunteer militias to save the United 
States from fascism.
 
"The militia movement," says Texas organizer Jon Roland, "is a 
good-government movement with guns."
 
And that's the theme that increasingly is alarming state and 
federal law enforcement officials, who, after years of dismissing 
them, are beginning to take militias seriously.
 
In the past six months, militias -- many called to arms by the 
government's deadly standoff two years ago with Branch Davidians 
near Waco -- have appeared in at least 24 states, drawing up to 
50,000 members.
 
            -+- Grim warnings of a showdown -+-
 
Claiming that criminal elements have taken over much of the 
federal government, most militia leaders have avoided calls for 
an armed uprising but darkly warn they may one day have to shoot.
 
"There is one last hope to avoid armed confrontation, and that's 
if our state governments rise up and tell our federal government 
to back off," says Ray Southwell, chief of staff for the 
commander of the Northern Michigan Regional Militia. "If the 
state does not rise up... the American people will."
 
Talk like that -- along with the boasts of many militia leaders 
of secret units of police and military -- deeply concerns 
observers.
 
Although federal officials will not publicly discuss any 
investigations, a 10-page intelligence brief by federal Bureau of 
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms recently was circulated to several 
police departments. It warned that militiamen are "extremely 
paramilitary, anti-ATF and literal interpreters of the 
Constitution" who may be breaking gun laws. {1}.
 
That would not come as a surprise to Michigan officials.
 
"We've got such an insurgency here," says Fowlerville, Mich., 
Police Chief Gary Krause after the arrest of three camouflaged 
militia members in a car full of semiautomatic weapons, gas 
masks, night-vision devices and 700 rounds of ammunition, some of 
it armor-piercing. "There's a very high potential of something 
disastrous happening."
 
                -+- A wake-up call in Waco -+-
 
The idea of militias, drawn from earlier groups like Posse 
Comitatus and Aryan Nations {2}, took root again in 1992 when an 
FBI sniper killed the wife of an Idaho separatist.
 
But it was Waco that really got the movement going. Many militia 
members saw the 52-day standoff and fiery disaster that ended it 
as proof that the federal government would stop at nothing to 
crush resistance.
 
"We see Waco as a centralization of power; the federal government 
coming into all areas of our lives," says Norm Olson, commander 
of the Northern Michigan Regional Militia. "The militia movement 
in America is the biggest thing since the Revolution."
 
"Waco was the second shot heard 'round the world," {3} says 
Russell Smith, Dallas commander of the Texas Constitutional 
Militia, now organized in almost 20 counties. "It woke us up to a 
very corrupt beast."
 
          -+- An "internationalist" conspiracy -+-
 
The ideologies driving the militias are complicated, often 
incredible, sometimes racist and almost always paranoid. {4}. 
Among a host of conspiracy theories is this scenario:
 
 * The federal government has been hijacked by sinister forces -- 
a dozen or more banking families -- that have orchestrated the 
seizure of states' rights and the buildup of an 
"internationalist" U.S. government.
 
 * The plan, militiamen say, is to manufacture an economic 
collapse to invite in United Nations troops on a "humanitarian" 
mission.
 
 * Then, guided by secret markings on the back of road signs, the 
U.N. troops will disarm regular Americans.
 
 * The outcome: A weak and disarmed America becomes part of the 
bankers' "one-world government," organized to make serfs of the 
world's peoples and enrich bankers.
 
 
"Fantasies," says Faith Elliot of the Council on Foreign 
Relations, whose members are supposed to be part of the plot.
 
And Mark Briskman, Dallas director for the Anti-Defamation League 
of B'nai B'rith, dismisses that kind of talk as so much recycled 
anti-Semitic vitriol.
 
So it has been, in the past, difficult for many people to take 
this sort of thing too seriously. But given the almost fanatical 
devotion of some militia members -- and because they are well- 
armed -- disbelief is now tempered by concern.
 
"People are genuinely arming themselves and getting ready for 
combat," warns Fred Clarkson of Planned Parenthood of America's 
Public Policy Institute. "So it's inevitable some combat will 
actually take place." {5}.
 
            -+- This is an American movement -+-
 
Critics say that in addition to arms, many militias are well- 
stocked with leaders known to be white supremacists.
 
Mike Reynolds, editorial director for the Southern Poverty Law 
Center's *Klanwatch* publication, says he and many in law 
enforcement believe a national militia strategy was laid out at 
an October 1992 meeting in Estes Park, Colo.
 
About 150 members of the Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations, Posse 
Comitatus and Christian Identity met to discuss militias.
 
Such accusations infuriate many militiamen and their leaders, who 
deny any racism and insist their movement will remain legal.
 
"The majority are absolutely opposed to any racial hate groups," 
says Ann Utterback, Comal County commander for the Texas 
Constitutional Militia, which recently held a "muster" of 500 
people at the Alamo. "We totally reject Nazis, KKK, Aryan 
Nations. This is an American movement."
 
National militia leader Linda Thompson, founder of the 
Unorganized Militia of the United States, denies being racist, 
anti-Semitic or "right wing." If there are such elements in the 
movement, she says, they are "government plants" wrecking the 
work she started.
 
Then she accuses many of her fellow militia leaders, along with 
the reporter interviewing her, of being agents for the ADL [Anti- 
Defamation League] -- which battles anti-Semitism.
 
Chip Berlet, analyst with Political Research Associates of 
Cambridge, Mass., which monitors far-right movements, says it is 
"intellectually dishonest" to label the entire movement racist. 
Rather, he says, the underlying themes are anti-government, anti- 
gun control and conspiratorial.
 
"There are more people in the movement uncomfortable with anti- 
Semitism and white supremacy," he says. "But that may change."
 
 +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +
 
[CN -- This is one of several related articles. See *USA Today* 
for the other articles.]
 
[CN -- I have been informed that Bo Gritz will be featured on the 
ABC show "Day One" this Thursday, Feb. 2, 1995.]
 
-------------------------<< Notes >>-----------------------------
{1} "...literal interpreters of the Constitution..." Is there 
some other way to interpret the Constitution?
{2} "The idea of militias, drawn from earlier groups like Posse 
Comitatus and Aryan Nations..." Drawn from the U.S. Constitution, 
the supreme law of the land.
{3} "Waco was the second shot heard 'round the world..." The 
original "shot heard round the world" occurred at (I believe) 
Lexington, New Hampshire in 1775 and marked the beginning of the 
American Revolutionary War (a.k.a. the American War for 
Independence).
{4} "...sometimes racist and almost always paranoid." Everything 
I have heard indicates that all races, creeds, and religions are 
welcome to join the various militias. Is there any of the 
militias that excludes members based on race, creed or religion? 
I haven't heard of any. As to "...almost always paranoid..." -- 
"Paranoid", a.k.a. "crazy" a.k.a. "non-approved thought".
{5} "...so it's inevitable some combat will actually take place." 
I find that statement ominous. Whether or not combat takes place 
depends on the feds. The militias are in a purely defensive 
posture.
 
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Aperi os tuum muto, et causis omnium filiorum qui pertranseunt.
Aperi os tuum, decerne quod justum est, et judica inopem et 
  pauperem.                    -- Liber Proverbiorum  XXXI: 8-9 

 Brian Francis Redman    bigxc@prairienet.org    "The Big C"
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    Coming to you from Illinois -- "The Land of Skolnick"        
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