Patriot games - Freedom Rally of Patriot-movement groups

It was business as usual at the Fourth of July weekend Freedom Rally of Patriot-movement groups from Northern and Southern California. About 200 mostly middle-aged men and married couples spent two days at San Jose's Hyatt Hotel--swapping IRS war stories, alternative health tips, and some of the most virulent racist and anti-Semitic literature I've seen in more than a decade of monitoring the right.

Three years ago, I attended a nearly identical gathering sponsored by the same group, and there were a lot of familiar faces. The Free Enterprise Society, founded in 1979 to provide unofficial legal advice to tax dodgers of the far right, provides an annual forum for a loose network of racist preachers, conspiracy mongers, and militia men. They came from up and down the state and from as far away as Colorado, Montana, Oklahoma, and Missouri.

There was one African American in the crowd and at least one other Jew besides myself. My WASPish, bearded, ponytailed partner was among about a dozen long-haired guys. The Patriots dressed in a mix of cheap suits, shorts, and T-shirts. The shirts on one pair of burly Patriots had a modified Budweiser logo advertising JESUS CHRIST THE KING OF KINGS. Other shirts read: FIGHT CRIME--SHOOT BACK, FORGET THE ALAMO--REMEMBER WACO, and WILL WORK FOR FREEDOM. The women, few in number, were nondescript. One wore her American flag lapel pin upside down.

The price per couple at the door was forty-five "federal reserve notes" or f.r.n.'s. The Patriots hate the U.S. paper-money system, but until we return to gold and silver, they will accept the green stuff. Cash only, no questions asked, no name tags except for those worn by speakers and exhibitors. Unlike the Christian-right gatherings I frequently attend, the Patriot events are not places where one easily strikes up conversations with strangers. Scribbling too many notes, too fast, on a legal pad, I drew some uncomfortable glances from the tight-lipped and paranoid.

Two months after the Oklahoma City bombing threw a spotlight on the armed wing of the Patriot movement, the incident has not thinned the Patriots' ranks or toned down their rhetoric. If anything, these folks have added the arrest of Timothy McVeigh to their store of beefs against the government. Speakers and leafletters were united in their claim that the Feds bombed their own building to justify a crackdown on Patriots.

The mainstream media and the general public have only recently discovered the militia movement. But among those assembled at the Freedom Rally were people who have spent more than fifteen years organizing within earlier streams of the far right, particularly the violent Posse Comitatus tax resisters and the whitesupremacist Christian Identity churches.

These two overlapping networks grew out of the failed segregationist movement of the 1950s and 1960s. After the racist right's heyday during the 1968 George Wallace Presidential campaign, the movement floundered and split into innumerable sects. It never regained its massive influence at the ballot box. A remnant of the segregationist movement degenerated into small groups of gun-toting survivalists, including those who waged terror campaigns under the banner of the Aryan Nations in the 1980s.

Old Patriots don't die. They just change uniforms. Small groups with names like the Free Enterprise Society, the Freemen Educational Association, the National Commodity and Barter Association, the Second Amendment Committee, the American Pistol and Rifle Association, and, literally, hundreds of others, have been around for years, tilling and fertilizing the soil out of which the armed militias have recently sprung. Observers of the right are currently debating the extent to which the new militia groups are dominated by old-fashioned Klansmen and jew-haters. We have a long way to go to arrive at accurate data on the numbers of active militia members, let alone a full picture of their beliefs and motivations. It is clear, though, that the militias are like fish swimming in a big blue Patriot sea.

The Freedom Rally opened with everyone singing "The Star Spangled Banner." Montana tax resister Red Beckman then read every single word of the Declaration of Independence. John Voss reported the latest in the saga of the National Commodity and Barter Association, which was founded in 1979 by a Posse Comitatus leader. The goal was a network of interest-free banks through which Patriots could store their assets in the form of gold and silver coins. The IRS sees the NCBA as an illegal scheme by which Patriots hide their assets from tax collectors.

Next up was Eugene Schroeder, introduced as a founder of the American Agriculture Movement. Actually, the AAM was a farmers' organization that was infiltrated and taken over by Schroeder and other Posse Comitatus supporters in the early 1980s. Posse leaders were then trying to recruit and train displaced farmers for armed confrontations with federal agents. All over the Midwest, the Posse tried to convince troubled farmers that Jewish bankers, not a recessionary economy, were responsible for farm foreclosures.

From the Hyatt podium, Schroeder sang a different tune. He said nothing about Jews or farmers. He now lectures on how, beginning during the Depression, the Roosevelt Administration invoked emergency constitutional powers to set up a secret government dictatorship.

The most popular speaker was Pastor Everett Sileven from the Faith Baptist Church in Houston, Missouri. Years ago, while pastoring in Nebraska, Sileven became a Patriot-movement folk hero when he went to jail rather than submit his church elementary school to state certification. Sileven came to San Jose to speak about the need for churches to become "unregistered" and truly free by rescinding their 501(c)(3) tax status.

Sileven's literature table was stocked with tapes and pamphlets on the evils of "race-mixing." I bought a pamphlet that opened: THE SIN FOR WHICH GOD WILL KILL: INTER-RACIAL FORNICATION BY COPULATION AND REPRODUCTION.

At the lunch break I chatted with the pastor about the theology he calls "Christian Israelism." Sileven acknowledged that he is an Identity Christian but he says he avoids the term "Identity" because it has become a derogatory "government and media" label. He explained to me that the ten lost tribes of Israel, described in the Old Testament, migrated and became the Anglo-Saxon people. That does not mean that all Anglo-Saxons are saved. But he said that "in the Kingdom"--code for the theocracy his brand of Christians plans to establish one day--only people of the white race will hold leadership positions. He assured me that other races won't be killed but will be allowed to live "in the Kingdom," if they obey "the Law."

In his talk on "unregistered churches," Sileven made references to his Christian Israelism. He also denounced churches that won't preach against the "wickedness" of "the American monetary system, the income tax, race-mixing and multiculturalism, government schools, sodomy, women's lib, and the United Nations." The Patriots shouted Amens and Hallelujahs and gave the pastor a standing ovation.

Next came five-minute pitches from each of the exhibitors. The most bizarre was Godfrey Lehman, a regular in California tax-protester circles. Lehman is an elderly Jewish man from San Francisco. His mission in life is to reform the jury system, and to do so he networks with the Free Enterprise Society. Lehman used his time on stage to announce an upcoming meeting for a new militia group in--of all places--Berkeley, California.

At this and other Patriot meetings, there was a gap between the content of formal, on-the-record presentations and the materials spread out on the literature tables. There was literature on how to "protect one's assets" by setting up offshore trusts. There was information on how to file a form with one's county-recorder's office declaring oneself to be a "state citizen" and, therefore, exempt from federal taxes. At one table, a woman sold high-priced bottles of an "instant-energy" liquid containing caffeine, along with Militia of Montana literature packets. There were guerrilla-warfare training manuals and a directory of 1,800 Patriot-movement organizations.

There was also a large quantity of racist and anti-Semitic literature. Floyd Wright, an accountant and real-estate broker from Grass Valley, California, pushed The Controversy of Zion, a thick volume on how Jews have controlled "government, large industries, banks, the media, etc." since the days of the Pharisees.

At another table, Patriots lined up by the dozens to buy back issues of Jubilee, a twenty-four-page bimonthly tabloid which touts itself as "America's most popular Christian Patriot publication." (In one past issue of Jubilee, an Identity preacher advocated stoning unbelievers to death.) Recent issues of Jubilee have reported on militia meetings and the latest theories about an "ADL/Reno Witch Hunt" to frame Patriots for the Oklahoma City bombing. The paper is riddled with references to the "Jewish-controlled media" and swipes at "Kosher-conservative talk-show host Rush Limbaugh." Items advertised include a "Hitler on Tape" series--English translations set with Third Reich music so you can "hear the truth for yourself."

Two tables down, there was an outfit called Dynamics of Human Behavior. Here exhibitor Madelyn Burley-Allen shared her table with Richard Charles, who ran as a write-in candidate for Congress from the Bay Area last year, and whose business card had a Klan logo on it. From Burley-Allen I bought the latest issue of the Christian Defense League Report and read a long diatribe about how "Jews now have special rights in the United States that others do not have."

She gave me a free copy of the Sons of Liberty fifty-page book list. Most of the books were about Jews but there was also a short section on Race and Civilization. Titles included Proof of Negro Inferiority, which, the catalogue said, distinguishes "differences in brain size between the races, compares white and nonwhite skeletons, and compares Negroes to gorillas."

Copies of the CDL Report and this book catalogue were stacked on the table. But I watched Burley-Allen play a cute game of hide-and-seek with part of her merchandise. She kept a notebook over the word "Jew" on the cover of The Biological Jew, by Eustace Millins. This is a classic tract comparing Jews to parasites. Only when I asked to read something else on the table was she obliged to move the notebook and reveal the pamphlet's full title. It was like some sort of pornography shop where the vendor keeps the truly vile stuff behind the counter for special customers.

From the podium the Freedom Rally organizers urged everyone to shop at the tables. The overt display of hate literature raises the question of whether everyone in the Patriot movement agrees with the racist and anti-Semitic themes. There is no way to know for sure. But no one at the rally raised an eyebrow about the hatemongering exhibitors, or about the Posse Comitatus veterans who spoke. There is anecdotal evidence that this is standard fare at militia movement gatherings, and it's no surprise. The far-right political culture is steeped in hatred of designated enemies. It does not matter if all the Patriots are racists. Their intolerance for agencies of the federal government seems to be matched by their tolerance for neo-Nazis in the Patriot coalition. This coziness with virulent racism and anti-Semitism is not something to be taken lightly.

That's why I disagree with some progressives who see the anti-government militias as allies, or at least recruiting grounds, of the left. The argument is that the far right includes many who, though misguided in some of their targets, at least understand that the real enemy is the capitalist state.

This argument might have some merit were it not based on false assumptions. The most obvious fallacy is the monolithic notion of "the people" versus "the government." Anyone who thinks that "the masses" are uniformly noble, or that they always act in the interest of fellow citizens, has only to study Germany in the 1930s and Chile in the 1970s. Our own history includes plenty of cases when white, working-class Klansmen terrorized African Americans as well as progressive white workers. And they did so not just because they saw racist and anti-labor activity as pertinent to their own narrow self-interests.

When progressives hear some of our own best pundits say that the Patriots are our allies because they, too, are anti-government, we have to ask what it means to be anti-government. We oppose the ways in which agencies of the state serve to maintain wealth and power concentrated in the hands of the few, with deadly results for the majority. We oppose a corporate-controlled electoral system that effectively disenfranchises most people in this country.

But the Patriot response, over many decades and not just since Oklahoma City, has not been to try to figure out how we can all work together to redistribute wealth and power equitably. Their conspiracy theories are not just a temporary diversion; they are a reactionary substitute for accurate and principled analysis of the relationships between government and economic elites.

On the issue of taxes, the contrast between the far right and the left is revealing. Progressives oppose the government's failure to tax corporations for their fair share, but progressives believe that the costs of collective goods--roads, hospitals, schools, etc.--ought to be shared. In ten years of monitoring rightwing tax-protest groups, I have never heard them discuss the disproportionate tax burden shouldered by the poor. Nor is opposition to corporate tax evasion part of the Patriots' repertoire. The Patriots want to avoid paying for services they routinely use, like everyone else, while they cast the income tax as part of a plot by Jewish bankers to control world finance.

Rightwing conspiracy theory is antithetical to the left's opposition to entrenched power. Progressives oppose bad policies and out-of-control agencies. Rightwing Patriots target entire races of people and small cliques of purported evil-doers.

To position oneself as an ally of the militias is to give credence to the dangerous ideas of the broader Patriot movement. Those ideas are not just loony but scary: they are loaded and aimed at real people.

Are the Patriots more dangerous now than they were before? Yes and no. The numbers at the Freedom Rally were no greater than they were three years ago. Most of the speakers and organizers have been around for years. Most of these people have dropped out of electoral politics or vote for tiny parties such as the American Independent Party and the U.S. Taxpayers Party. But then, those who spent a full weekend and plenty of cash to attend the Freedom Rally represent the hard core, those already so convinced that they bat not one eyelash at the neo-Nazis in their midst.

What ought to worry us now are reports that the militia groups are drawing thousands of newcomers. Surely some of the new recruits are people who, in another era, might have joined a progressive party or social movement. The weakness of the organized left has, by default, created greater recruitment opportunities for the conspiracist right. People look for answers to their problems and fears, and a bad explanation is better than none.

The rise of these private armies--if we are to believe the estimates of tens of thousands of militia members--signals an unprecedented expansion of the Patriot movement. Growth emboldens such a movement to shift from rhetoric to dangerous action. The danger is not just to government agencies but to environmentalists, civil-rights activists, women's health-care workers, and anyone else who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The most striking thing about the Fourth of July Freedom Rally was what went unsaid. No one was willing to examine even the unintended consequences of arming and training, en masse, for violent confrontations. No one was willing to take responsibility for the loose cannons among the ranks. Only a few short months after the atrocity of Oklahoma City, the Patriots would not even pause to consider the deadly possibilities of marching toward doomsday.

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