Patriots, Politics, and the Oklahoma City Bombing

This book explores an escalating spiral of tension between the Patriot movement and the state leading up to the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995.

Stuart A. Wright (Author)

9780521694193, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 11 June 2007

256 pages, 8 tables
22.8 x 15.5 x 1.5 cm, 0.38 kg

"In our post 9/11 world it is too easy to forget that there is a significant, armed, militant, domestic anti-government movement -- one that is also willing to use terrorist tactics. Wright's book is a useful and intellectually engaging reminder. Wright weaves together a nuanced story of how the anti-communism of the '50s, resistance to the civil rights movements of the '60s, the anti-tax backlash of the '70s, and the farm crisis of the '80s combined with a burgeoning "gun culture" to produce a movement that conceives of itself as at war with its own government in order to save its nation. This movement's ideology has been abetted and facilitated by a federal government that has "declared war" on drugs, crime, and terrorism, militarized the police, and expanded the domestic role of the military. Those interested in the far right, Patriot movement militias, and issues of terrorism in the contemporary world should not miss this book."
Rhys H. Williams, University of Cincinnati, Editor, Cultural Wars in American Politics

This book explores social movements by analyzing an escalating spiral of tension between the Patriot movement and the state centered on the mutual framing of conflict as 'warfare'. By examining the social construction of 'warfare' as a principal script or frame defining the movement-state dynamic, Stuart A. Wright explains how this highly charged confluence of a war narrative engendered a kind of symbiosis leading to the escalation of a mutual threat that culminated in the Oklahoma City bombing. Wright offers a unique perspective on the events leading up to the bombing because he served as a consultant to Timothy McVeigh's defense team for eighteen months and draws on primary data based on face-to-face interviews with McVeigh. The book contends that McVeigh was firmly entrenched in the Patriot movement and was part of a network of 'warrior cells' that planned and implemented the bombing.

1. Codicil to a Patriot profile
2. Patriots, political process, and social movements
3. Historical context of Patriot insurgency
4. The farm crisis, threat attribution, and Patriot mobilization
5. State mobilization: building the trajectory of contention
6. The gun rights network and nascent Patriots: rise of a threat spiral
7. Movement-state attributions of war: Ruby Ridge and Waco
8. Patriot insurgency and the Oklahoma City bombing
9. Patriot movement demobilization and decline.

Subject Areas: Political activism [JPW], Political structure & processes [JPH], Comparative politics [JPB]