Anti-Abortion Violence and the Right-Wing Patriot Movement

Scott Roeder, suspected in the slaying of Dr. George Tiller, and John C. Salvi III, who in 1994 killed two health workers and injured several others in a Boston anti-abortion rampage, share a connection to the right-wing Patriot movement -- a collection of groups and individuals with one foot in the anti-tax movement and another in organized White Supremacy.

This overlapping set of alliances goes back over ten years to the height of the armed citizens militia movement which emerged from the broader Patriot movement, a longstanding part of right-wing reality in the United States. Salvi, for example, trained with a militia group in Florida, and came to believe obscure economic and religious theories popular in the Patriot Movement.

At the height of Militia Movement activity in the 1990s, a number of anti-abortion militants, and conspiracy-minded activists in the Patriot and militia movements began to intersect with elements from organized White supremacist groups, says Fred Clarkson, an investigative reporter who has tracked such groups for over 20 years. In an article for Intelligence Report in 1998, Clarkson wrote:

Many in these previously separate movements agree that everything smacking of "one-worldism" -- the Olympics, the United Nations and any other global agency -- is part of a massive plot to subject Americans to tyranny. Activists in all three movements describe homosexuals as "sodomites," people who deserve capital punishment....many of those involved in these groups are bitterly attacking abortion.

The election of Barack Obama traumatized whole sections of the U.S. Right. Right-wing media demagogues have been quick to exploit this angry constituency by using rhetoric that demonizes not just Obama and the Democrats but liberal ideology itself. By using the tools of fear, irresponsible public figures are cultivating an aggressive constituency comprised of people who feel that militant action is justified, because in their view the Obama administration has shut them out of the political process.

The anti-abortion movement harbors within it a subculture of militant activists who believe the slogan, "If abortion is murder, then act like it" says Pam Chamberlain, senior researcher at PRA, "For some this means attending demonstrations or engaging in acts of civil disobedience; for others it means committing murder." Many of these activists are motivated by their religious beliefs, but there are other factors involved as well.

According to Clarkson, the "militant anti-abortion movement is driven by three different but overlapping theologies that motivate violence: Christian Reconstructionism, Christian Identity and apocalyptic Catholicism." Salvi was motivated by apocalyptic Catholicism. It is likely that Roeder was influenced by either Christian Reconstructionism, Christian Identity or some syncretic hybrid of these theological views that have spread throughout the right-wing militant milieu.

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More information on the Patriot Movement, Anti-Abortion Violence, Roeder, and Salvi

Comments

[LeftRight]

What I find interesting is something that Thom Hartmann has pointed out on his show several times. Before 1995, the rightwing militia movement was growing every year. Then in April '95 Tim McVeigh blew up the Oklahoma City Federal Building. Bill Clinton took the opportunity and showed the world how insane that movement was. Suddenly, those who weren't the true believers in the movement recognized what they were doing, and the movement collapsed!

Even since the election of Obama, it's STILL in disarray!

Think about what would have happened to the Islamic terrorist movements had bush followed in Clinton's footsteps!! That SNL opening scene with "President" Al Gore might even be valid: "Right now we're so well loved in the world that Americans can't go ANYWHERE without getting hugged!"

[Chip Berlet - Huffpost Blogger]

Hi,

I know that is a popular and widespread belief, but social scientists who study the Patriot movement generally agree that the OKC bombing and the denunciation of it by most of us did NOT in fact slow down the armed citizens militia movement. That happened several years later, due to a constellation of factors. See my study of this here: http://www.publiceye.org/magazine/v16n1/v16n1.pdf

[LeftRight]

I'm sorry, but that's not what I was saying. It wasn't the general outcry against rightwing extremism that killed the militia movement, it was the outcry on those who were PART of it!

[LMPE]

They're like a Christian version of the Taliban.