A man I did not recognize reached under his seat, pulled out a hangman's noose and shook it in my face, and said, 'This is a message for you.' Immediately afterwards, another man I did not recognize approached me. He leaned toward me and he said, 'We have a militia of 10,000 and if we can't beat you at the ballot box, we'll beat you with a bullet.'
This is the testimony of Ellen Gray at a hearing on the American militia movement chaired by then Representative Charles Schumer. Without giving temporal context, this is something I would not be surprised to hear at a Tea Party, although Ellen Gray’s remarks are from a series of hearings held after the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City.
The call of the Tea Party Movement is one of a citizen’s army which—hypothetically—mirrors the War for Independence, but more precisely emulates the rise of the American militia movement during the 1990s. When Normal Olsen of the Michigan Militia was interviewed by the Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism after the bombing in Oklahoma City, he used the air time to forward his own conspiracy theories about the attack, claiming that if it was not carried out by the government, the faceless They would certainly use it to curb Second Amendment freedoms. Linda Thompson, of the Unorganized Militia of Ohio also advanced this claim, suggesting the United States government, after all, possessed “the track record for killing children,” referencing the deaths of children in a day care center in the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, and no doubt the deaths at the Branch Dividian compound. (Wright 210)
Many militia leaders during these hearings appeared to testify in full, modified battle dress uniforms or camouflage. At first I wondered why and realized they truly believed they were at war and attending a Senate hearing in Washington DC was the absolute mouth of the beast, the center of the very corruption they claimed to rally against. Tea Partiers view the government as similarly corrupt, a vehicle for liberty and freedom they believe has abandoned them more with every email forward, every talk show segment, and every chalkboard conspiracy they are exposed to. The imagery is distressingly similar and their heroes, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Anne Coulter, and others hate machines function as agents of disinformation and thus, conspiracy.
The Second Amendment Rally will be held on the day the “shot heard ‘round the world” was fired. This is also the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing which was carried out on that day specifically to commemorate both the siege of the Branch Dividian compound in Waco, Texas, as well as the Battle of Lexington. At least one user on the Second Amendment Rally’s forums mentioned this, and that April 19th is one day before the anniversary of the Columbine shootings. The response to this user’s understandable discomfort at the associations with April 19th was dismissive, suggesting an armed faculty would have prevented Columbine and this was all the more reason to hold a rally. Like those who testified during the 1990s, Tea Partiers and others are raging against a perceived corruption, but where’s the anger at Henry Paulson? Where's the rage at those who have actively contributed to the erosion of the so-called American Dream?
And, like 9/11 Truthers, who borrow the word “truth” in an attempt to bolster their view, Tea Partiers invoke a very specific notion of patriotism, one which does not take into account that only about a third of colonists were Patriots, another third were Loyalists, and the final third were simply unaffected by whichever faction held power as they were indentured servants, slaves, or the poor. Currently, Tea Partiers represent only 13% of the population which makes them fringe at best, but they are somewhat active as incondite has documented. Tea Partiers, and their occasional calls for civil war—or is it like the War for Independence, or perhaps like fighting National Socialism; they never can seem to make up their minds as far as historical analogy goes—remind me of John Higham’s critique of consensus historians during the late 1950s.
“Hofstadter and others who posited political conflict as psychological pathology ‘substituted a schism in the soul for a schism in society,” and either refused to see it or trivialized conflict by describing it as a ‘psychological adjustment to institutional change.” (Fenster 42)
In the case of Tea Partiers, Hofstadter might be right. We’ve heard about irrational Facebook meltdowns, infighting in families, seen the effects of repetition of lies and the flat out hatred spewed by those who serve to profit from right-wing disinformation campaigns.. Strange how it was not a terrorist attack, fear of Y2K or even pre-millennial dispensationalists which triggered a tremendous rise in ammunition sales and gun purchases, but the election of a brilliant man who happened to be African American to executive office.
One concern I’ve encountered when analyzing the kind of rhetoric found in the 9/11 Truth Movement, American militias or Tea Partiers—all of which, at their most frayed and unraveled fringes, share airtime with Holocaust deniers and fascists—is the tendency of the analyst to give too much credence to what are ultimately fringe movements and not widespread populist cries for justice. Is a man dressed up like a colonist with a hand lettered sign “fringe”? Is Scott Roeder? Are they organized or the aggregate actions of disaffected loners. What if one of them is another McVeigh?
In order to respond appropriately we have to determine if it is as Hofstadter might claim, a mere adjustment period or if the anger of disenfranchised Tea Partiers will coalesce into something more sinister than the isolated brick, gunshot, or cut gas line.
Some consulted works, both are available in limited form on Google Books. Critique and suggestions always welcome:
Conspiracy Theories: Secrecy and Power in American Culture. Mark Fenster
Patriots, politics, and the Oklahoma City bombing. Stuart A. Wright