at DC's Holocaust Museum make It apparent we're entering a period
of extreme violence from the right, with a history and elements that
must be understood if we are to contain and stifle it. This essay,
from long time, distinguished journalist James Ridgeway should
be considered a fundament part of Violent Racist-Nativism, Part I.
Part II would be connecting the movement to social phenomena,
including religion, class status, etc. An element not to be ignored
is the economy. When things get real bad, as is happening here
right now, folks seriously affected are attracted to these movements.
Hitler's Fascist movement in the 20's arose out of a desperate society
ruined by defeat in WWI and terms of the Versailles Treaty, combined
with far worse elements of the same economy we are experiencing.
Our local gang phenomena has to be seen as a related alienation.
To make matters worse here, Germany had substantial progressive
movements of workers and the middle class organizing the dispossessed,
providing different views and fighting fascism directly. As of right now,
we have almost none of this. We're in a mess with genuine danger lurking.
(No, I'm not advocating a German style communist party, just stating facts.)
I will pass on broader essays as I get them. All of it is critical.
Ed
A Brief History of the Radical, Violent Right: How Racist Hate Groups Joined
Up with Abortion Terrorists
By James Ridgeway,
MotherJones.com: June 6, 2009.
Alleged murderer Scott Roeder was once a white separatist before he became
an anti-choice zealot -- many others have followed the same deadly path
The revelation that Scott Roeder, the alleged murderer of Dr. George Tiller,
belonged to an anti-government, white separatist group called the Montana
Freemen might seem like an unlikely twist. After all, such groups are
generally thought of as either indifferent to the issue of abortion or
actively enthusiastic about its potential for reducing the nonwhite
population. As it turns out, however, the journey from radical racialist to
anti-abortionist isn't as unusual as you might think.
Roeder's connections to the right-wing fringe began well over a decade ago,
according to the Kansas City Star. His ex-wife, Lindsey, said that after a
few years of marriage, Roeder became increasingly involved with the Freemen
and its anti-government ideology. "The anti-tax stuff came first, and then
it grew and grew. He became very anti-abortion.That's all he cared about is
anti-abortion. 'The church is this. God is this.' Yadda yadda." Noting that
she vehemently disagreed with her ex-husband's views, Lindsey Roeder told
the Star that he moved out in 1994. "I thought he was over the edge with
that stuff," she said. "He started falling apart. I had to protect myself
and my son."
In 1996, Roeder was arrested in Topeka after sheriff deputies stopped his
car because it had no license plate. Instead, the Star reported, "it bore a
tag declaring him a 'sovereign' and immune from state law. In the trunk,
deputies found materials that could be assembled into a bomb." Roeder was
convicted, sentenced to two years probation, and told to stay away from
far-right groups. A state appeals court subsequently overturned the
conviction.
Roeder and the Freemen belonged to a little-recognized nativist political
movement that began in the early 20th century, flared up periodically, and
then ripped through the American heartland during the farm depression of the
mid-1980s. This movement was often called "the posse," after a core group
named the Posse Comitatus. Like any political movement, it consisted of a
myriad of shifting entities that appeared and disappeared. But even though
the names of the groups often changed, they all held tightly to the notion
that the true white sovereigns, who had rightfully been given this land by
God, were being threatened by race traitors "inferior races" creeping across
the borders from Mexico and lands farther south. A favorite posse image was
a drawing of a man hanging by the neck from a tree on a hill. Below in the
distance stands a group of armed men. A sign is scrawled on the drawing. It
says "The posse."
Over the years, this movement has encompassed various remnants of the Ku
Klux Klan, what was left of Lincoln Rockwell's Nazis, the national
socialists of William Pierce, and skinheads. Sometimes, adherents of the
Posse ideology operated underground. Sometimes, they attempted to win
support via electoral politics, like the white supremacist David Duke, who
ran numerous times for statewide and national office. Terry Nichols, who
along with Timothy McVeigh carried out the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995,
dabbled with the concept of sovereign citizenship. The militia movement,
too, was an outgrowth of the posse movement. Daniel Levitas, author of a
book about the phenomenon, has described Roeder's group, the Montana
Freemen, as "the direct ideological descendants of the Posse Comitatus."
The Freemen aimed to rid the nation of "14th Amendment citizens" -- anyone
who wasn't a white Anglo Saxon directly descended from God. Nonwhites, or
"mud people," weren't really people at all, but God's failed attempts to
create Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. A bad Xerox copy, they used to
say. These beliefs derived from a school of thought known as Christian
Identity, which holds that Jews, blacks, and other minorities aren't
actually people and therefore don't deserve constitutional rights. Instead,
those rights are reserved for so-called "white Sovereigns," who aim to take
over government and run it through grand juries of the people, with laws
enforced by old-time posses.
The revelation that Scott Roeder, the alleged murderer of Dr. George Tiller,
belonged to an anti-government, white separatist group called the Montana
Freemen might seem like an unlikely twist. After all, such groups are
generally thought of as either indifferent to the issue of abortion or
actively enthusiastic about its potential for reducing the nonwhite
population. As it turns out, however, the journey from radical racialist to
anti-abortionist isn't as unusual as you might think.
Roeder's connections to the right-wing fringe began well over a decade ago,
according to the Kansas City Star. His ex-wife, Lindsey, said that after a
few years of marriage, Roeder became increasingly involved with the Freemen
and its anti-government ideology. "The anti-tax stuff came first, and then
it grew and grew. He became very anti-abortion.That's all he cared about is
anti-abortion. 'The church is this. God is this.' Yadda yadda." Noting that
she vehemently disagreed with her ex-husband's views, Lindsey Roeder told
the Star that he moved out in 1994. "I thought he was over the edge with
that stuff," she said. "He started falling apart. I had to protect myself
and my son."
In 1996, Roeder was arrested in Topeka after sheriff deputies stopped his
car because it had no license plate. Instead, the Star reported, "it bore a
tag declaring him a 'sovereign' and immune from state law. In the trunk,
deputies found materials that could be assembled into a bomb." Roeder was
convicted, sentenced to two years probation, and told to stay away from
far-right groups. A state appeals court subsequently overturned the
conviction.
Roeder and the Freemen belonged to a little-recognized nativist political
movement that began in the early 20th century, flared up periodically, and
then ripped through the American heartland during the farm depression of the
mid-1980s. This movement was often called "the posse," after a core group
named the Posse Comitatus. Like any political movement, it consisted of a
myriad of shifting entities that appeared and disappeared. But even though
the names of the groups often changed, they all held tightly to the notion
that the true white sovereigns, who had rightfully been given this land by
God, were being threatened by race traitors "inferior races" creeping across
the borders from Mexico and lands farther south. A favorite posse image was
a drawing of a man hanging by the neck from a tree on a hill. Below in the
distance stands a group of armed men. A sign is scrawled on the drawing. It
says "The posse."
Over the years, this movement has encompassed various remnants of the Ku
Klux Klan, what was left of Lincoln Rockwell's Nazis, the national
socialists of William Pierce, and skinheads. Sometimes, adherents of the
Posse ideology operated underground. Sometimes, they attempted to win
support via electoral politics, like the white supremacist David Duke, who
ran numerous times for statewide and national office. Terry Nichols, who
along with Timothy McVeigh carried out the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995,
dabbled with the concept of sovereign citizenship. The militia movement,
too, was an outgrowth of the posse movement. Daniel Levitas, author of a
book about the phenomenon, has described Roeder's group, the Montana
Freemen, as "the direct ideological descendants of the Posse Comitatus."
The Freemen aimed to rid the nation of "14th Amendment citizens" -- anyone
who wasn't a white Anglo Saxon directly descended from God. Nonwhites, or
"mud people," weren't really people at all, but God's failed attempts to
create Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. A bad Xerox copy, they used to
say. These beliefs derived from a school of thought known as Christian
Identity, which holds that Jews, blacks, and other minorities aren't
actually people and therefore don't deserve constitutional rights. Instead,
those rights are reserved for so-called "white Sovereigns," who aim to take
over government and run it through grand juries of the people, with laws
enforced by old-time posses.
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