The snake eats its own tail

An about-face on the far right

The scene: Northern Idaho, 50 miles from the Canadian border

The time: August 1992

The backstory: Anti-government, Christian separatist Randy Weaver had not shown up for a court appearance related to charges that he’d sold two sawed-off shotguns to someone he didn’t know was a federal informant.

The action: Federal agents surround Weaver’s home in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, using troops, tanks, and various military weaponry to roust him and bring him to justice.

The repercussions:

• An eleven-day standoff in which Weaver’s wife, his 14-year-old son, and a federal agent are killed

• An investigation into the actions of federal agencies and officials, resulting in dismissals and in a de-escalation training program for law enforcement

• An upsurge in the number of right-wing, white-supremacist, anti-government groups and individual actors

Anti-government separatists were not a new thing in 1992. Their accusations about government interference with the integrity and rights of individual citizens spawned white supremacist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and the Aryan Nation. What was new was the response of law enforcement that led to the fiasco that was Ruby Ridge. The violence of this response gave a powerful impetus to militaristic, anti-government attitudes, leading to the creation of more of these factions. It could be said that things rose to a frenzied peak on January 6, 2021, with the massive and violent protest by far-right reactionaries in Washington, D.C. after the election of President Joe Biden.

The messages: The government and law enforcement agencies are overstepping their bounds. The people want to be left alone. Government is evil.

Author Jess Walter (Ruby Ridge, originally entitled Every Knee Shall Bow) sees how the ethos of the Weavers became mainstream for the Republican party. It follows upon the Reagan-era belief that “the government is the problem.” That the government was out to get them is the primary common conspiracy that makes up the foundation of the various movements.

The January 6 threat of hanging then-Vice President Mike Pence looks now to have marked some kind of turning point. Pence was known for his extreme Christianity, and (as comedian Billy Crystal once put it) “he looks like one of those guys who chased the Von Trapp family into the Alps.”

But the turning point seems to have turned in on itself. Because now we have a government with a majority of legislators willing to take a far-right extremist stance not terribly unlike the militant insurgents and reactionaries, led by a Republican (in name, at least) president who says he will send federal troops and state-controlled National Guard members into U.S. cities to “solve crime problems.”

The Ouroboros of the Far Right

Image: Gustavo Rezende, Pixabay

Ryan Lenz of the Southern Poverty Law Center tells us that historically, there is an upsurge in the number of anti-government militant groups after democrats such as Barak Obama are elected president. Given the white-supremacist philosophy of most of these separatists, this is not surprising. Lenz adds that the intensity and number of these groups tends to diminish with the election of a Republican president. But with the election of Trump, the numbers climbed instead of diminishing. Looking at the January 6 insurrection, his second term is apparently even more encouraging to these groups.

Do those who sympathize or even empathize with the Weavers and their ilk not see that the threat running through the current law enforcement takeover is the same threat they’ve sworn and even died to prevent? Have they changed their tune so much that they now stand in favor of government takeover of public citizenry?

So much for individual rights. So much for integrity.

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I’m an inveterate observer of human nature, writing stories about understanding and connecting with each other. My primary goal is furthering acceptance of people who appear to be different from “us,” whoever that “us” might be. Check out my books on my website.