Patriot Movement

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Betsy Ross flag

The Patriot Movement is a collective movement of the extreme right in the USA . It is also known as the antigovernment movement .

development

Some observers see the origins of the Patriot Movement in the 1950s. The more liberal wing of the movement is seen in connection with the John Birch Society , founded in 1958 . Society is strictly anti - communist and sees tendencies to be combated in the United Nations as well as in the US civil rights movement .

In the early 1990s, the movement hoped for a surge in growth due to confrontations between separatist groups and federal authorities in Ruby Ridge and Waco (Davidian sect). The storming of the Davidian sect was reinterpreted as an attack by the government on unpleasant, freedom-loving Americans and portrayed accordingly in videos. The 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing was perpetrated by Patriot Movement members Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols . The movement was most active in the mid-1990s and reached its peak in 1996 with around 800 groups across the US.

William L. Pierce , author of the Turner Diaries and founder of the National Alliance , encouraged his followers in 1995 to get involved in the militia movement and to spread the thoughts of the far-right organization there.

The movement had almost disappeared by the turn of the millennium. Since 2008, the movement has been on the rise again thanks to changing demographics in the USA, increased immigration, the financial crisis from 2007 and the election of Barack Obama as the first African-American president.

For 2011, the Southern Poverty Law Center documented 1,274 anti-government groups , of which 334 were militias.

Militias

Militias have a long tradition in the USA. Initially, they formed to defend farmers against Native Americans . The constitution fathers saw in standing armies, as they were common in Europe , the great danger that the army could turn against its own people. In the Second Amendment to the American Constitution, they included the concept of a well regulated milita . This led to the establishment of the federally organized US National Guard and the State Guard of the States.

Independently of this, numerous militias formed from armed civilians in the 1990s. The militia movement in the United States is closely related to the rally movement of the Patriot Movement. The militias are mostly based on the same anti-government to anti-government attitudes and question the legitimacy and constitutional loyalty of the federal authorities.

Program

The ideology of the Patriot Movement is not uniform. As a common denominator, all members have a critical or even fundamentally negative attitude towards state institutions and the government of the USA. In most cases, they see them as too "liberal". Some observers refer to the Patriot Movement as “paleo-conservatism”.

The strengthened tea party movement represents similar arch-conservative attitudes as the Patriot Movement. Mostly, the views of Christian neo-fundamentalists are also shared. It represents an anti- subversive form of the agrarian utopian ideology of Thomas Jefferson , writes Michael Hochgeschwender.

The movement is strongly associated and influenced by a “survivalist” rhetoric. She expects a social and economic collapse in the USA in the near future and underpins the scenario with conspiracy theories, fear of gun control and international institutions such as the United Nations, the Roman Catholic Church and, in part, the "Jewish World Conspiracy".

There are close ties to nationalists, anti-Semites and other right-wing extremists. In some cases, however, this took a back seat, and during the high phase of the movement in the mid-1990s there were isolated militia groups with black Americans. Also pro-Israeli Christian Zionists , who see the Jews as a bulwark against a coming “global jihad ”, and activists of the Jewish Defense League are in some cases connected to the Patriot Movement.

The movement uses the Betsy Ross flag, which, according to a controversial tradition, is said to have been the first US flag, to show its adherence to what it believes to be “original American values”.

Christian fundamentalism

Radical rejection of abortions and the advancement of literal biblical values ​​according to evangelical interpretation are predominant in the movement. Followers of the Christian Identity Movement also share the values ​​of the Movement. This heterogeneous right-wing extremist social movement is based on Christian fundamentalism on anti-Semitism, racism and also on conspiracy theories. The followers of the Patriots also often see the Anglo-Saxon or Nordic "race" to which the followers belong as God's "chosen people", to whom "the Jews" are compared as alleged descendants and servants of Satan .

conspiracy theories

An essential part of the ideological background of the movement is fed by partly very crude conspiracy theories. The aim of the central government in Washington is therefore almost always to abolish self-determination and “betray” the USA.

In Agenda 21 , the non-binding UN sustainability goals since Rio are defined 92nd The implementation plan for the USA is entitled "Natural resource aspects of sustainable development in the United States of America" ​​and highlights various aspects of nature use and environmental protection (water, forest, land use, fisheries, etc.) in the USA. According to a conspiracy theory of the right in the USA, there is a socialist world conspiracy behind it, which is to begin with the establishment of small local protected areas . The aim is to take over the private lands of the white farmers and push them into the cities. In particularly crude excesses, it is feared that the government wants to separate right-wing farmers in the cities, prohibit them from owning weapons and eventually intern them in urban concentration camps in order to then allow the UN (or, alternatively, the People's Republic of China ) to invade the USA. A new world order (“ New World Order ”), possibly due to a seizure of power by the UN, is often feared.

Other popular theories are that the government was involved in the Oklahoma City bombing itself, as well as the assassination of John F. Kennedy . Various theories about the background to 9/11 are spread by representatives of the movement, as well as about the rampage at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012.

Land use conflicts and rural-urban divide

According to the Washington Times , the federal government owns over 50 percent of the land area in the western United States ; of the total US area, the federal government manages 27.6 percent of the territory of the United States. This goes back to the United States Constitution , in Article 4, paragraph 4, Congress is given the opportunity to "hunt the state" on any land that is not privately owned. Based on this idea, after the "Enable act", unused land for which there is no deed of ownership will be administered by the federal government. The federal government is tasked with making the best use of the land for the American community. In practice, most of the areas are administered by the US Bureau of Land Management and partially managed by the US Fishery and Wildlife Service , which makes the areas accessible to the public. 84.9 percent of the state of Nevada is state land; in Oregon it is 52.9 percent. Many rangers use the public land, for example, to raise cattle and conclude contracts with federal authorities. Conflicts often arise when federal authorities unilaterally terminate customary legal uses.

The peasants adhering to the Patriot Movement do not see Congress and the federal government as their legitimate representative, and thus also do not see the federal authorities as a legitimate executive . They demand that the public land be made available to the citizens, and by that mean non-regulation by the federal government. Conservationists and citizens interested in nature see this as a de facto privatization of the country.

In the course of the occupation of a federal building in the Malheur Nature Park in Oregon in January 2016 by a group called “Citizens for Constitutional Freedom”, it became clear once again that the Patriot Movement was also being constituted along the urban-rural divide in the USA. While a multicultural society is sometimes a reality in the cities, white farmers in the Midwest and other rural parts of the USA feel “left behind”. John Freemuth of Boise State University in Idaho told the Washington Post in 2016 that the "Westerners" often feel that their values ​​and concerns don't matter to the "townspeople".

Groups and people

Famous personalities
  • Mark Koernke has been one of the most effective propagandists for the Patriot Movement since the early 1990s. He became known from a combination of shortwave radio broadcasts, widely used videotapes, and lectures. Trained rhetorically, he spreads his conspiracy theories of the " New World Order ", the takeover of the USA by the UN and the necessary resistance against the government authorities.
  • Robert G. Millar , was a Canadian immigrant and former Mennonite who bought property in the mountains of eastern Oklahoma in 1973 and founded " Elohim City " there. Supporters of the “ Christian Identity Movement ” live in the settlement. Four members of the Aryan Republican Army who raided banks in the 1990s lived in Elohim City. Even Timothy McVeigh had links to "Elohim City."
  • Cliven Bundy is a rancher from southwest Nevada who has been in dispute with federal agencies over the use of public land for his cattle since 1993. In 2013 there was a "standoff" in which allied rangers and the USFWS faced each other. In 2016 two of his sons and an armed militia group occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge .
Groups associated with the Patriot Movement that have become public
Flag of the 3% United Patriots
  • Militia of Montana ( MOM ) is considered the "mother of all militias".
  • Americans for Legal Immigration PAC (Led by William Gheen)
  • Hutaree , religious fanatical terrorist group who are preparing for "end-time battles " andwho thought Javier Solana was the Antichrist.
  • " The Oath Keepers " founded in March 2009 by the politician Stewart Rhodes in Lexington Massachusetts . The group is made up of former government officials and former US military personnel who believe the government is unconstitutional. The group has chapters in many states.
  • The " 3% United Patriots " were founded in 2014 by Mike Morris and Mitch Nerem in Colorado. The group sees itself as a decentralized US-wide network of "patriots" and avoids a visible management structure.

Known actions

  • On April 19, 1995, two supporters of the Patriot Movement, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, committed one of the worst terrorist attacks in United States history . They detonated a truck loaded with explosives in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. 168 people were killed. The eight-story building was the seat of several federal government agencies . There was also a kindergarten on the first floor.
  • The extremist member Scott P. Roeder of the Patriot Movement murdered the doctor George Tiller in 2009 . Tiller campaigned for the right to abortion and continued to do so after the 21st week.
  • After the African American student Michael Brown was shot dead in Ferguson in August 2014, riots broke out in the city for weeks. The "Oath Keepers" Militia moved up with a group in the city in November 2014 and, according to their own statements, wanted to protect buildings from looting and the population from the police. Finally, the police ordered members of the group to move from their positions on the roofs of various buildings and threatened them with arrest for acting without authorization with long guns .
  • On January 3, 2016 , the armed group "Citizens for Constitutional Freedom" around Ammon Bundy occupied the conservation center of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge ( Oregon ) in protest against the imprisonment of two farmers.

Publications

Movies
  • Blood in the face from 1991 gives an insight into the thoughts of the right-wing American scene with a strong reference to the Christian Identity movement.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Lou Michel: American Terrorist , 2001.
  2. ↑ SPLC: The Patriotic Movement Timeline , accessed January 15, 2016
  3. ^ The Patriot Movement Timeline - Southern Poverty Law Center
  4. ↑ Thomas Grummke: Right-wing extremism in the USA , p. 146 ff.
  5. ↑ Michael Hochgeschwender: American Religion: Evangelicalism, Pentecostalism and Fundamentalism . Verlag der Weltreligionen, Frankfurt, M. and Leipzig 2007, p. 198
  6. ↑ 5 Things You Need to Know About Oregon's Patriot Movement ( Memento of the original from January 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / usuncut.com
  7. ^ Washington Times: Utah to seize own land from government, challenge federal dominance of Western states , accessed January 18, 2016
  8. ↑ a b c Oregon: Militia members do not want to give up occupation - USA - derStandard.at
  9. ↑ - ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / archive.adl.org
  10. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVrecoDzgZY
  11. ^ Thomas Grumke : Right-wing extremism in the USA . Leske and Budrich, Opladen 2001, ISBN 3-8100-2868-1 , p. 149 .
  12. ↑ http://www.williamgheen.com/
  13. ↑ http://www.rop.org/patriot-movement-paramilitaries-in-oregon/
  14. ↑ Daily mail: Ferguson police shut down armed 'Oath Keeper' vigilantes guarding rooftops of besieged town, accessed January 15, 2016 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2855736/Ferguson-police-shut- armed-Oath-Keeper-vigilantes-guarding-rooftops.html # ixzz3xJQSspsZ