Wherever the blame eventually comes to rest for the bombing in Oklahoma City, the fact that it took place at a federal building on the second anniversary of the Branch Davidian massacre in Waco, Texas, and just 12 hours before the execution of a notorious Oklahoma white supremacist, puts a strong spotlight on a wide array of groups who have used these incidents as a rallying cry against the national government.
While strong anti-federal rhetoric can be heard from all points of the political spectrum, splinter groups of the far right have given it a particularly violent spin, from white supremacist organizations like the Ku Klux Klan and the White Aryan Resistance that preach about revolution and a race war to militiamen who say the federal government is making war against its people and only an armed citizenry can keep it in check.Waco has been a rallying point for these groups. "No More Wacos" rallies were held Wednesday in Washington, D.C., and near the site of the sect's Mount Carmel compound in Texas. In recent months, the slogan also has been used by a variety of splinter groups to spark interest in town meetings throughout Montana and the Mountain West.
The fiery end to the Branch Davidian standoff is cited by extremist groups like the Militia of Montana as proof that the federal government is making war against its people. Similar rhetorical points have been made about the FBI shootout in Idaho that killed the wife and child of white separatist Randy Weaver.
And then there is the execution of Richard Wayne Snell, 64, who had become something of a martyr-in-waiting for the white extremists. Snell was a longtime white supremacist who killed a Texarkana, Ark., pawn broker in 1983 and a black Arkansas state trooper in 1984.
Snell was from Muse, Okla., about 180 miles southeast of Oklahoma City. He was one of 13 white supremacists acquitted on federal charges of sedition after a 1988 trial in Fort Smith, Ark., and was also acquitted of conspiring to kill a federal judge.
His appeals exhausted, Snell was executed by lethal injection Wednesday night under especially tight security at the state prison in Varner, Ark.
Whether a far-right extremist is responsible is a matter of speculation; Attorney General Janet Reno earlier this week refused to discuss the link between the bombing and the second anniversary of Waco. And experts warn that most of far right's violent confrontations with law enforcement have involved gunplay, not explosives.
But the extremists' animosity toward the federal government is one of their strongest tenets.
"Almost across the board, they hate the federal government," said Danny Welch, chief investigator of KlanWatch, an investigative arm of the Southern Poverty Law Center of Montgomery, Ala., a civil rights watchdog group.
"They hold them responsible for Waco, the Weaver shooting, the Snell execution. They've used Weaver, they've used Waco, they've used Snell to make the federal government to be the bad guys. Above race, above ethnicity, the rhetoric has been "There's going to be a day of reckoning with the federal government.' "
In fact, Welch says hatred of the federal government is the central, unifying issue for these groups. While militiamen, the freeman movement and neo-Nazi groups like Aryan Nation differ on issues like race, they share an apocalyptic world view that envisions armed conflict with the federal government.
For example, white supremacist groups refer to the federal branch as the Zionist Occupation Government, or ZOG, and say it is controlled by a cabal of inter-na-tion-al-ists and Jewish bankers. And followers of these groups avidly read a book called "The Turner Diaries," a novel about an armed revolt by white citizens that features the bombing of power stations and federal office buildings, the poisoning of reservoirs and the robbery of banks to fund other violent acts.
The militia movement, active from Montana to Georgia, advocates an armed citizenry, ready to resist the federal government. Their followers believe the national government is under control of the United Nations and that foreign troops are training and caching weapons on American soil, preparing for an invasion.
"They're an extreme expression of that anti-federal sentiment that's been expressed by a broad band of the public," said Thomas Halpern, a chief investigator for the Anti-Defamation League of the B'nai B'rith.
"But they go beyond what the ordinary citizen does when he thumbs his nose at the tax man. They say it's time to head for the hills, stock up on weapons and ammunition and wait for the inevitable war with the federal government."