Militia arrests show there’s no stereotyping terrorism

Charges that nine members of a Michigan militia group were cooking up a crackpot plot to kill police officers and wage war on the United States should come as a surprise to no one. We've seen this kind of lunacy before, most tragically with the 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City.

But the scheme is a reminder that well-armed people simmering with hatred are ever present and easily stoked to violence, that they're not easily typed by race or ethnicity, and that terrorism is sometimes homegrown.

The group — which dubbed itself "Hutaree," a word it said meant "Christian warriors" — viewed local law enforcement as the "foot soldiers" of the federal government, and according to prosecutors, it planned to attack a local officer, then detonate explosives to murder those gathered for that officer's funeral. Their hope was to incite an anti-government uprising.

Doubly troubling is the fact that groups of this type appear to be proliferating for the first time in a decade.

In 2009, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks extremist groups, there was a dramatic resurgence in the "Patriot movement" and its paramilitary wing. The center counted 512 groups — more than triple the number in 2008. That includes 127 militias.

The Michigan group's website suggests it was motivated by a religious vision of apocalypse, not political concerns. But according to those who study militia groups, many are driven by a sense of losing control of the America they know. They fear the changing demographics of a nation where immigrants are growing in number, where whites are slowly losing their majority status, where middle-class jobs are threatened and where an African American is now in the White House. Recession, resentment of elites, and prolonged, vitriolic debate over such issues as health care, immigration and gay marriage can play into their fears of a conspiracy by a "new world order" to take over the USA.

Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, peripheral militia participants who were responsible for the Oklahoma City bombing, fit the mold. They killed 168 people — until 9/11 the worst act of terrorism in U.S. history.

This is not to say that such groups have a monopoly on terrorism, any more than Islamist radicals do. Five decades ago, left-wing radicals such as the Weather Underground were the culprits. They were every bit as delusional and similarly emboldened by divisive and angry national debate.

The debate, obviously, will continue. Now, as in the '60s, the country is working through difficult issues, and it is doing so in a time of economic, technological and social change unequalled since the industrial revolution.

But Monday's arrests are a warning of the violence that lingers just out of sight in such times and the need both to be on guard and to avoid fanning the fires of resentment.

Vigilance was rewarded Monday. Calming the wider anger is a tougher task.

(Hunting hate: Police on a raid in Michigan./By Madalyn Ruggiero, AP)

Posted at 12:22 AM/ET, March 31, 2010 in USA TODAY editorial

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