By Brigitte L. Nacos
In 1978, the founder of the Hitler-worshipping, neo-Nazi organization “National Alliance” William Pierce self-published book titled “The Turner Diaries” under the pseudonym Andrew MacDonald. For the last fifty years, the book has been the most influential how-to-do guide for violent far-right extremists. The poorly written diary of a fictious White supremacist named Earl Turner describes how members of the revolutionary “Organization” attack and eventually defeat the hostile U.S. government or what they call the “System.”
The revolutionaries’ first major target is the F.B.I. headquarters building in Washington, D.C. in order to weaken the System’s law enforcement muscle. One of Turner’s comrades drives a fertilizer truck bomb into the building. According to the diary, “approximately 700 persons were killed in the blast or subsequently died in the wreckage…” He justifies the mass killing by blaming the failure of the “System” to “preserve a White America. Before long, Earl Turner becomes a member of “The Order,” the System’s elite unit.
A few years after the “Turner Diaries” were published, Robert Matthews called his break-away group from the neo-Nazi “Aryan Nations” organization “The Order” signaling his plan to bring Earl Turner’s narrative into the real world. There were several shoot-outs between Matthew’s group and F.B.I. agents. In the early 1980s, Matthews along with Louis Beam, an Aryan Nations leader, and several other White supremacists planned the bombings of F.B.I. field offices in several cities, among them Denver, Kansas City, New Orleans, Minneapolis, and St. Louis. The F.B.I. arrested them, before they could strike.
Ten years later, Timothy McVeigh was inspired by the “Turner Diaries” to detonate a fertilizer truck bomb near the Federal Building in Oklahoma City that housed an F.B.I. field office and other federal agencies. 168 persons were killed, hundreds injured. McVeigh left no doubt that his number one target was the F.B.I. office.
For Earl Turner’s Organization, Robert Matthew’s The Order, McVeigh’s leaderless two-person cell with militia connections, and contemporary violent far-right extremists, the common denominator is propaganda to delegitimate and violence to weaken the federal government and especially the F.B.I.
This anti-government ideology was for many decades limited to fringe groups—from the Ku Klux Klan to the Patriot and Militia movements and the contemporary White nationalists.
But during the Trump presidency and thereafter the MAGA devotees in the Congress have embraced the dangerous anti-government ideology of violent far-right groups and QAnon conspiracy theorists.
During Wednesday’s hearing of the House Judiciary Committee, the Republican members led by committee chair Jim Jordan, showed this mindset, when they altered a testimony session with F.B.I. director Christopher Wray into an ugly inquisition. Wray, a life-long Republican, was appointed by then ex-president Donald Trump. As the New York Times reported, “Even though Mr. Wray sat alone at the witness table, his Republican interlocutors made it clear the entire bureau, and its 38,000 employees, was in effect on trial.”
Representative Chip Roy (R-Tex.) called the FBI “tyrannical” and Jordan cited in his opening statement a recent Louisiana Court ruling that states ludicrously, “The United States government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian Ministry of Truth” and singled out the F.B.I.
While the bomb throwing in the contentious hearing was rhetorical, it signaled a more dangerous threat than actual terrorist bombs: The extreme right MAGA faction in the GOP, among them elected members of the U.S. Congress, and presidential candidates for 2024, consider the FBI an enemy and talk about defunding the agency. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is reportedly considering the impeachment of Attorney General Merrick Garland.
These are serious threats to democracy which needs law enforcement agencies and an overall judiciary system independent of partisan manipulation.
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