The Roots of the Modern-Day Militia Movement

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By Newsweek Editors

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The resurgent militia movement is tied to anger at illegal immigration, economic malaise, and the election of an African-American president. But its growth is also a matter of old-fashioned organizing. During the Clinton era, the anti-government furor that peaked with the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 began with a meeting of radical leaders in Estes Park, Colo., in 1992. At this gathering—now called the Rocky Mountain Rendezvous—a cross section of extremist groups put aside doctrinal differences to focus on a common enemy: the federal government, which, in their minds, overtaxed, wrongfully imprisoned, even murdered its citizens.

Today's militias have eerily similar roots, right down to a summit that helped midwife a shared ideology. In May 2009 about 30 self-described "freedom keepers" caucused on Georgia's Jekyll Island, where they mapped out "action plans" for a larger movement—one that would confront not only taxes but an array of issues that threaten to "collapse the Republic." What followed was their "Continental Congress" in Illinois—an 11-day assembly that aligned a broad section of the radical right. Next month, on the anniversary of Oklahoma City, thousands of the newly united will march in Washington, D.C., for gun rights.

The recent Pentagon shooter, IRS plane bomber, and others are examples of lone wolves who have picked up on the movement's rhetoric. More, it seems, will slide into violence. But perhaps most troubling of all, their ideas cannot be suppressed, or their actions curtailed, lest authorities fuel the very fire they'd like to extinguish.

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