Armed and dangerous: the threat of the "patriot militias."(Cover Story)

I would argue that there are at least three ways in which the various patriot militias can be categorized as an arm of the extreme right. The first is the use of intimidation and violence by members of these militias against local, state, and federal officials (especially women). In the June 7, 1995, New York Times, columnist Bob Herbert reported a seizure by federal agents of a computer disk, the contents of which were to be published by a Virginia militia group in its newsletter. The text read in part:

Hit and run tactics will be our method of fighting.... we will destroy targets such as telephone relay centers, bridges, fuel storage tanks, communications towers, radio stations, airports, etc.... Human targets will be engaged when it is beneficial to the cause to eliminate particular individuals who oppose us (troops, police, political figures, snitches, etc.).

A second reason to categorize the militia movement as an arm of the extreme right is its connection with racist or white supremacist groups, anti-abortion terrorists, and various other extremists. Marc Cooper, writing in the Nation about the Montana Militia (which he describes as "in many ways, the Mother of all militias"), reports that "at a closed-door meeting in the Rocky Mountains in October 1992 some 174 hard-right activists were brought together by the explicitly racist Christian Identity minister Pete Peters." One result of that meeting was the formation of the United Citizens for Justice, "led by former Texas Klan leader Louis Beam." Other leaders of the group included several members of the Montana Militia, including John Trochman, who founded the group with his nephew Randy and who is described by Cooper as "a participant in Aryan Nations' activities." There are numerous other connections between the militias and right-wing extremist groups such as the anti-environmental Wise Use movement, the Counties Movement, and neo-Nazi organizations.

A third reason to categorize the militias as an arm of the extreme right is their connection to certain "Christian" organizations and leaders. These include the Christian Reconstructionists, who advocate death for abortionists, homosexuals, and others; Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue, who has been supporting the growth of local militias; and Pat Robertson, whose book The New World Order sounds the alarm against the United Nations, an integral part of the militias' antagonism to the U. S. government. For both Robertson and the militias, the New World Order and the United Nations have replaced communism as the demonic ideological threat to American nationalism.

Like their allies in the Christian right, the militias are anti-abortion, anti-homosexual, and tend to accept fundamentalist, white-supremacist, and anti-Semitic theology, as well as the subordination of women. There is also an overlap between the militias and other groups influential with right-wing leaders in Congress, such as the National Rifle Association, whose interpretation of the Second Amendment's reference to "the right to bear arms" and "militias" is an important underpinning of the militia movement.

The Anti-Abortion Connection

Leaders of the violent wing of the anti-abortion movement are now related not only to other extreme right-wing movements but to armed militias. The Reverend Matthew Trewhella, leader of the new U.S. Taxpayers Party, has caned for church-based paramilitary training. In a speech to the Wisconsin state convention of USTP before the Oklahoma City bombing, he said: "We should do what thousands of people across this nation are doing. We should be forming militias.... Churches can form `militia days' and teach their men how to fight."

Trewhella, whose congregation is primarily composed of people calling themselves Missionaries to the Preborn (formerly a branch of Operation Rescue), told the USTP convention that his Mercy Seat Christian Church in Milwaukee holds classes for its members on "the use of firearms and...how to be a good shot." Trewhella's language also matches that of the militias. He denounced the "traitors in Congress" and others in the federal government as "low-life swine" and "totalitarian dogs" who "want to see our country overthrown, and we have a duty to oppose these dogs."

Randall Terry has also advocated the use of violence. In his book The Sword: The Blessing of Righteous Government and the Overthrow of Tyrants, he presents his vision of a theocratic revolution. In a April 10, 1995, meeting in Kenner, Louisiana, sponsored by Operation Rescue, he said: "There is going to be war." Christians may be called upon to "take up the sword" in order "to overthrow the tyrannical regime that oppresses them."

Terry also promoted his new Christian Leadership Institute, which he called a "Christian retreat for male leaders" that will generate "fierce, militant, unmerciful warriors." It would train leaders "to rebuild America's power bases on the foundation of the Ten Commandments," which means "a culture based on biblical law." His theocratic state would abolish public schools (because they usurp "parental guidance"), property taxes (which are the basis for financing public education), and prisons (which he would replace with "biblical slavery," public floggings, and the execution by stoning of rebellious teenagers).

According to Terry, leadership is "defined as the ability to get people to do things they don't want to do" He also said of his Christian Leadership Institute: "We'll be talking about not how to recapture government schools but how to utterly eliminate them." His faculty includes his pastor, the Reverend Daniel J. Little; leaders of the radical right U.S. Taxpayers Party; Joseph J. Slovenec (who got 28,000 votes in a third-party effort fort to become a US. senator from Ohio in the last election); and Howard Phillips, who founded USTP in 1990.

Another anti-abortionist terrorist is convicted clinic bomber, the Reverend Michael Bray, who interprets "the biblical doctrine of revolution" in A Time to Kill, published by Advocates for Life Publications. He points to scriptural evidence, such as Samson's "one man guerrilla war against the Philistine government" and the "posse of men" led by Gideon, who overthrew the pagan Midianite government.

Another extremist anti-abortion group is Human Life International with 84 branches in 56 countries. The HLI supports the efforts of Operation Rescue, and its leader, Father Paul Marx, has been accused of anti-Semitism after having charged the Jews with not only condoning but more or less leading "the greatest holocaust of all time: the war on unborn babies." Marx has also opposed the rights of women, gays and lesbians, Muslims, and people with AIDS.

Even many prominent Catholics have recognized the inherent danger of such extremist groups as the HLI. In a Catholic News Service report for March 6, 1995, Monsignor George G. Higgins called the HLI "a divisive force within the pro-life movement" and the Catholic church.

The HLI's featured speaker at its 1994 world conference was Randall Terry, who received standing ovations when he challenged his audience to rise up and make America a "Christian nation under biblical law."

These various terrorist anti-abortion groups are involved with each other and are also related, through USTP, to other right-wing groups and to the militia movement. The USTP of Wisconsin, for example, is distributing a field manual, Principles Justifying the Arming and Organizing of a Militia. In it are such passages as:

Eight men make an effective house assault team. While four men give suppressive fire, the other four can advance on and enter a house or small building. Once inside, two men may enter and clear rooms while the other two provide security in the hallway or open areas....

Combat cells provide the patrolling and fighting capability of the Free Militia. Each cell consists of about eight able-bodied "minutemen" with its own leader, communications, rendezvous points, staging areas and standing orders. They execute the orders of their command and do all their own training within the combat cell itself. They are the "arms" of the Free Militia.

Turning a Blind Eve

There has been a reluctance on the part of right-wing law-makers in Congress to curb right-wing extremists such as the militias. Republicans in Congress have held hearings on both Waco and the Randy Weaver incident but, as of this writing, have refused to conduct extensive hearings on the militia movement. The events at both Waco and Ruby Ridge have become a rallying cry for the militias because they illustrate government violence against citizens because of their ownership and collection of arms.

The reluctance to deal with right-wing militants is also evident dent in government agencies like the FBI. During congressional hearings following the Oklahoma City bombing, FBI director Louis Freeh alleged that the FBI had not investigated or engaged in surveillance of the various militias because they had not been violent or broken the law. Freeh said, as reported in the May 3, 1995, Washington Post: "For two decades, the FBI has been at an extreme disadvantage with regard to domestic groups that advocate violence. We have no intelligence or background information on them until their violent talk becomes deadly action."

Yet for years the FBI has collected "intelligence" or background information on nonviolent groups which are either centrist or left of center. In 1994, the Center for Constitutional Rights requested data under the Freedom of Information Act on 15 organizations, including ACT UP, Clergy and Laity Concerned, and Jewish and pacifist organizations. The CCR received information from the FBI concerning six of these 15 groups.

ACT UP, a relatively recent organization, has a file of 199 pages; the American Jewish Committee and the American Jewish Congress each have about 1,000 pages. The International Ladies Garment Workers Union totals 5,600 pages. However, of the 15 groups, the only organization committed in policy and practice to nonviolence since its origin in 1915 - the Fellowship of Reconciliation - has the largest file with 11,000 pages, according to the May 16, 1995, New York Times.

The New York FBI office claims that most of the files were gathered years before their guidelines were revised in 1976 and 1983. However, a reply to a 1991 FOIA request filed by the FOR revealed that the FBI file then contained 9,200 pages. Thus, the FBI has added 1,800 pages on the FOR in the past five years.

In short, the FBI winks at armed and dangerous right-wing groups and keeps under surveillance nonviolent centrist and left-wing groups which have never been a threat to anyone. No wonder that the FBI was caught flatfooted following the Oklahoma City bombing, because it had not been collecting information on potentially violent right-wing groups such as the various so-called patriot militias.

The Republican-controlled House and Senate are similarly unlikely to conduct public hearings that would expose Republican extremist fringe groups like the militias, Operation Rescue, and a host of other anti-abortion and gun-toting groups which have advocated or engaged in violence. In the June 7, 1995, New York Times, Bob Herbert wrote: "Mr. Gingrich is blocking the kind of Congressional inquiry that would throw a badly needed spotlight on paramilitary activity in this country."

After a perfunctory Senate subcommittee hearing on June 15, 1995, which gave militia leaders the opportunity to assert that they are "law-abiding, God-fearing Americans" who pose no threat to anyone, seven House Democrats held an informal hearing on July 11. At the hearing, federal, state, and county agents described the threats to their lives they had received as they attempted to enforce the law. One county recorder in Stanislaus, California, said that, after she told a local man she lacked the authority to dismiss a tax lien against him, she found a pipe bomb under her car.

Lest anyone think that the militia movement is confined to Montana or Michigan or is chiefly an isolated phenomenon, it is important to note that militias exist in numerous communities, even though in some their membership is small. For example, the Kansas City Star listed Kansas and Missouri militias both in major cities (such as Topeka, Kansas City, St. Joseph, Springfield, and St. Louis) and in rural areas.

One of the major aims of the militia movement (as well as the NRA, Christian Coalition, and allied groups) is to elect public officials. One of those - Republican Helen Chenoweth of Idaho, who was elected to Congress with the help of the Idaho Militia - now openly espouses her organization's cause in Congress. This is not merely a movement of gun-nuts running around in the woods on weekends in camouflage uniforms. It is a dangerous movement, even though there undoubtedly are some (or many) in it who would not by themselves endanger the lives of others.

John M. Swomley is professor emeritus at the St. Paul School of Theology in Kansas City, Missouri. He serves on the national board of the American Civil Liberties Union, chairing its church-state committee.