From a March 1999 Editorial by Tom Metzger, White Aryan Resistance leader:
"Other than suicide missions, little can be accomplished at this time. Small
cells and lone wolves are the only practical methodology at this time; great
bodies evolve from small cells. The most fearsome pack of wolves are a
collection of cells. The future is moving quickly toward us. Power is moving
toward us also. By jettisoning unwise and un-needed weight, and by being in
great shape with strong will, I see little reason why our forces cannot be
ready to grab the brass ring of power at a critical juncture in the
not-too-distant future. Good Hunting."
Sermon
Tomorrow is Yom Kippur, holiest day of the Jewish calendar. Beginning with Rosh Hashanah at sundown last Friday night and culminating in a day of fasting beginning at sundown tonight, Jews around the world will reconcile their failures of word and deed and their transgressions against each other and their God hoping to have their name inscribed in the Book of Life for another year. For them, it is a yearly ritual of purification and renewal facilitating the expiation of sin arising from their imperfect attempts to live moral, ethical and religiously observant lives. The higher the religious standard one holds, the greater the likelihood one will fall short of one's religious commitment. This ritual allows them to make peace with the past and rededicate themselves to their religious covenant with God each year.
The solemn and healing work of these Days of Awe, as they are called, are clouded this year by the August shootings at the North Valley Jewish Community Center in Granada Hills in Southern California and the killing of a Filipino American mail carrier by Buford Furrow.
Violence against Jews and Jewish organizations is one of the evil manifestations of historic Roman, Greek and later Christian oppression. Over the last several thousand years, resisting this kind of oppression has been woven into the fabric of Jewish identity. Yet each new act of violence brings forth fear that the future will be worse than the present. Buford Furrow is known to be a member of the Aryan Nations, a group that believes Jews descend from Satan, blacks from animals, and that members of both groups should be killed.
My sermon title in part comes from this morning's centering. Rather than building a subversive hierarchically controlled organizations to accomplish their goals, groups like the Aryan Nations, the Neo-Nazis, the anti-abortion organizations, and the militias are splitting into two groups. Borrowing from communist strategies and terrorist tactics such as those used by Sein Fein and the IRA, violence based groups are dividing themselves into two organizations, the public organized group and many small leaderless resistance cells as small as one person. There is no direct communication between the public group and the cell except what is shared publicly. Thus the cells act on their own to accomplish the agenda of the public group but without direction in choosing their targets and tactics. If terror is the goal, there is no point in controlling how it is carried out. If a cell is compromised, it has no impact on the parent organization nor other cells since they have no connection or even knowledge of each other. As Louis Beam points out in his essay, Leaderless Resistance, which has become the lead organizing strategy for this kind of activity, hierarchical or pyramid organizations can be easily compromised through infiltration and disruption. Leaderless resistance is the most effective way to spread terror, the most covert way for the wolves to stalk the lambs, lambs like the innocent children in the day care center sacrificed on the altar of hate.
What is being advocated by these hate groups is really domestic terrorism. This kind of terrorism isn't new and unlikely to go away. Domestic terrorism has had a long history in this country both on the right and on the left. In fact it is the shadow side of our national identity. Terrorism was an integral part of our secession from British rule.
In our early nationhood, you might recall learning in school about Shay's Rebellion, a people's revolt in Western Massachusetts. Daniel Shay led a revolt against heavy land and poll taxes, the high cost of lawsuits, high salaries of state officials, oppressive court decisions, and dictatorial rulings of the state senate in 1786. Sound familiar in today's hate rhetoric?
Racist groups go back to the early 1800s under names like Anti-Illuminism, Know Nothing Party and American Protectionist Association. It is easy to forget the anti-Catholic feelings during the Irish and German immigration waves of the middle 1800's. The second emergence of the Ku Klux Klan was in 1920 and most of us are familiar with the John Birch Society formed in 1958. Aryan Nations was formed after the demise of the third incarnation of the KKK in 1972.
While racist terrorism has a long history in our national memory, some of the current terrorist organizations have emerged more recently. The one that we have been fighting the last 25 years are the anti-abortion groups who started their activities after the Roe v. Wade decision by the Supreme Court. The shootings of doctors, the bombing of clinics, the harassment of workers and patients, illegal picketing and attempts at infiltration has become part of a dual effort of public organizing and protest paired with underground terrorist cells. Believing in theocratic rather than democratic origins of law and lacking the ability to tolerate different views, they seek to accomplish their task of closing every abortion clinic by whatever means legal or illegal.
Probably the most dangerous revolutionary organization is the Patriot and militia movements. Their roots are in McCarthyism and anti-Communism that came to an abrupt end with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Ending the threat of Communism didn't bring an end to all our troubles and the scapegoat changed from a foreign enemy to a domestic one: the Federal Government. The Patriot and militia movement are, in large part, a response to increased governmental control of our lives. Their rise coincides with the end of Reagan's reign of anti-Federalism and the election of Clinton.
It is important to understand the Patriot movement because it is at the center of the cross-section of interests of all these terrorist groups. While their avowed goals are to defend the constitution, the Bill of Rights, and state sovereignty, their interests often intersect with undemocratic movements who also rail against Federal policy and thus give them aid and support. Racist groups are limited by civil rights regulations. Anti-abortionists are thwarted by a Supreme Court decision. The ranchers, miners and the loggers in the West must deal with the EPA. All perceive themselves in some way as being maginalized by an unholy force with it's headquarters in Washington D.C.
I've been reading the literature and propaganda from these groups this week trying to better understand them. In their anger I read a fear of the tremendous changes that will be required of us as we enter this new millenium. The racists fear becoming a minority race in this country and the loss of status and power for workers due to Globalization and the information revolution. The property rights advocates fear the restrictions on individual freedom that will come from beginning to protect our ecosphere by moving toward a sustainable economy. The anti-abortionists fear a pluralistic world that permits people with deeply conflicting fundamental beliefs to live and act differently and be protected by the government.
What these groups reject, world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all, respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part, a free and responsible search for truth and meaning, and the inherent worth and dignity of each individual, we have made the foundation of our Unitarian Universalist Association. If we hold these values dearly, we must find an effective way to respond to that which threatens them.
In a free society, responding to potentially dangerous terrorist elements is difficult, especially if they split into public organization and underground cells. The internet has greatly enhanced the ability of these organizations and cells to network and share information without direct contact. To limit the public group's inflammatory rhetoric means to abridge the First Amendment. Yet that rhetoric stirs mentally unbalanced people like Buford Furrow into action. Furrow, a stranger passing through an undistinguished life, found meaning associating with a white supremacist group. The most alienated of our society recruited by these groups may be the ones of which we have the most to fear.
There are at least two ways we must respond to the anti-democratic terrorist forces of hate in our midst. The first comes from an excellent analysis I found Titled "Right Wing Terrorism and Weapons of Mass Destruction: Motives, Strategies and Movements" written Paul de Armond of the Public Good Project[1].
De Armond shows that the federal government's efforts to suppress this kind of terrorism has only inflamed it. Little has done as much for their cause than killing Randy Weaver's family at Ruby Ridge or the flaming deaths of the Branch Davidians in Waco. A non-provocative policy is essential. Because the Federal government is the source of their fury, it must take a secondary role.
De Armond suggests a novel approach to domestic terrorism. I quote:
Models based on criminal justice, political negotiation and military security have been of limited use. The key strength of right-wing domestic terrorists has been their ability to adapt to and exploit counter-terrorist policies. The most promising new initiatives will be based on the public health model and analogous to successful programs which reduce the harm due to epidemics of contagious disease, drug use, domestic violence.
The key components to this approach are:
Some of this can be done by government but most of this must be done by non-governmental organizations. De Armond argues small locally based human rights groups, churches and pro-democracy groups must lead the way because organizational inertia and administrative restraints constrain their roles. Our congregation can serve in this role by supporting groups like the Interfaith Alliance and participating in its activities. I invite you to join me at an Anti-Hate Rally sponsored by the Fellowship of Reconciliation and the Interfaith Alliance on Monday, October 11th , at St. Rose. I invite you to join me at a noon rally this Tuesday on the Capital steps to advocate for closing the School of the Americas. I invite you to join me in supporting legislation in Congress making hate crimes a federal offense and reduce the risk of jury nullification. These are all small steps we can take that will make a positive difference to bolster our public health and thus reduce all forms of terrorism.
The second response I want to mention this morning is a personal one. We all have a ethical responsibility to root out the sources of hate we find within us. I know when I read about the anti-abortionists and their reign of terror at clinics, I feel the desire to wage a campaign of counter-terrorism against Operation Rescue and people like Paul Hill who killed the doctor and Unitarian Universalist escort in Florida. I doubt if I'm alone in my feelings. We must guard well our responses to what we witness and hear about, seeking responses that offer the opportunity reconciliation rather than retribution. When we objectify our enemies, we lose a channel of communication and a path to resolution. If ever the abortion debate will be resolved, it will come by way of words rather than war. How can we ever hope to move toward world peace when we can't make peace with our neighbor?
The decision we must make is to renounce force as the primary way, even the secondary way to resolve our problems. I think it is unrealistic to renounce all force but its use must be narrowly proscribed. Each of us working to learn practical, realistic alternatives to violence and using them with our opponents will do a great deal to change this world for the better and reduce terrorism.
This renunciation of harming and reconciliation with one's neighbor are an integral part of Yom Kippur. May we join with Jews around the world to make amends as best we can for the harm we have done and the transgressions of our values and begin again anew, rededicated to love and justice for all.
Let us hold to the vision set forth in Isaiah that reconciliation is possible and that "the wolf and the lamb shall feed together (65:24)"
Copyright (c) 1999 by Rev. Samuel A. Trumbore. All rights reserved.
[1] For full text see http://www.nwcitizen.com/publicgood/reports/wmdbrief.pdf