These armed groups are part of the “Patriot movement”
This guy Spencer Sunshine researches white supremacist groups and he has some tips for understanding the fascist uprising in Oregon.
One, it’s a land grab.
Despite the talk about supporting the Hammond family in Burns, Oregon, the takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters is actually part of a long-standing campaign by radical right-wingers to dismantle federal land ownership in the West. Some elected officials are working through mainstream channels to get lands transferred to state or county governments, or to allow them equal say over their use. But the Malheur takeover seems to be an attempt to spread a tactic of armed federal land takeovers. These armed groups are part of the “Patriot movement”—the successor to the 1990s militia movement—which has seen a rebirth since the election of Barack Obama in 2008.
Armed robbery, in other words.
They’re conspiracy nuts. Their roots are in white supremacist movements, even though most of them are not (he says) ideological white supremacists themselves.
Four, federal policies have allowed this to happen.
Although there is no written federal rule that is publicly known, those who study the radical right largely believe that the federal government has a policy not to directly confront armed right-wing groups. The disastrous handling of the Waco and Ruby Ridge sieges in the early 1990s apparently convinced the feds to take a softer approach. This seemed to have paid off when the Sovereign Citizens at the “Justus Township”surrendered peacefully in 1996. But after 9/11, even as the feds have cracked down hard on all kinds of radical political activity—for example, many eco-saboteurs who never killed or injured anyone were sentenced under terrorism laws—the radical right has received almost a complete pass.
Yeah, I’ve noticed.
The April 2014 standoff at Cliven Bundy’s Nevada ranch—when Patriot movement activists came to the aid of a radical right-wing rancher who refused to pay his fees for grazing on public land and trained rifles on federal agents—was taken as a green light for similar actions. The federal government has not prosecuted Cliven Bundy or his allies for anything that happened there. This has apparently convinced the Bundy family (three of whom reportedly are at Malheur) that the feds will acquiesce to armed takeovers.
Well EXFUCKINGACTLY. Could they please pull their heads out of their asses and stop doing that now? Could they please for instance prosecute Cliven Fucking Bundy? Do they not realize that we can see them? That we can see law enforcement come down like a ton of bricks on scary shit like a guy selling single cigarettes while black, and waving a cheerful bye-bye to Cliven Fucking Bundy?
Sorry, but this stuff gets up my nose. I think it’s wrong and evil.
Let’s get our priorities straight, Ophelia. How on earth can we be expected to enforce laws against scofflaws and arsonists when we’ve got our hands full killing black guys who sell individual cigarettes?
Started as a drive-by comment, went really long, then I cut it back…
Something left out in the linked article is the “Wise Use” movement, briefly described as a brutal pairing of exploitation of economic fear and resource extraction. Basically an earlier version of the Tea Party: faux grassroots funded by industrial concerns. When, of course, extraction ran its course (economics, ecological limits, or you’ve simply run out of easy things to strip mine), take your profits and run.
That’s Wise Use!
As an aside, coal country and the Pacific northwest are quite similar in terms of “Tea Party” reactionary politics. Extraction industries resort to increasingly brutal extraction practices (e.g. clear cutting, mountaintop removal), experience diminishing profit due to market forces (e.g. foreign wood & laminates, natural gas), then close up shop, screwing the much less mobile local population. That now-destitute populace left behind might make for bad PR? Blame the liberals! After all, the blahs are getting welfare and the mill/mine that was the primary reason for a population boom just shut down.
It’s a very neat — and very profitable — trick in use for a long, long time. We just get to see it in starker relief these days.
P.S. For some reason I think you addressed Wise Use recently, but can’t turn anything up on the Googlez. If you did, apologies.
I wonder if the feds are afraid of sparking another civil war.
At least it’d be a fairly short civil war.
Actually, blame the environmentalists (for most people, though, the Venn diagram on liberals and environmentalists is perceived as a total overlap – that’s not actually true, but that’s how people see it). When the price of tomatoes went up because of bad weather conditions? The local Subway had a sign up saying “Because of the environmentalists, tomatoes may not be available at all locations”. When the price of milk went up because of the drought, there was a sign in the local grocery store saying “Because of environmental regulations, the price of milk has increased”. In both cases, the prices went back down when conditions improved, the signs came down, no environmental regulations changed, and no one said anything. But it’s very handy, and most people around here believe it.
@iknklast: Very handy indeed.
And let’s not forget the couple, who were Bundy supporters, who went on a killing spree against cops after the stand off, thinking they could provoke some kind of uprising.
Going soft on the right-wingers, who act out of a sense of entitlement, simply confirms their sense of being powerful, special, and above the law, *which leads to further acts of violence*.