Militias

Though not anti-Semitic in intent, the militia movement is nonetheless a highly significant development on the far right in the 1990s, and has become a lightning rod for anti-Semitic propaganda and agitation. Coming to public attention in early 1994, militia organizations now operate in at least 40 states, with membership totaling as much as 15,000 nationwide-more than the current number of skinheads, neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klansmen combined.

Militia groups came under intense scrutiny in the national media after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, because of accused bomber Timothy McVeigh's possible association with the Arizona Patriots, a militia-style group with a history of weapons stockpiling and anti-Semitism, and a militia group in Michigan, and because it was widely reported that he embraced the same political agenda that animates the movement.

Among McVeigh's reported inspirations for the Oklahoma City catastrophe was the neo-Nazi fantasy novel, The Turner Diaries; moreover, he and Terry Nichols-the other accused perpetrator-were devoted readers of The Spotlight, a weekly tabloid newspaper published by the Liberty Lobby, the leading anti-Semitic propaganda organization in the United States.

Additional manifestations of anti-Semitism in the militia movement can be found in a number of cases. For example, the leader of the Militia of Montana, John Trochmann, in addition to a current association with Liberty Lobby, was a 1990 speaker at an Aryan Nations event. More explicitly, Linda Thompson, a propagandist and activist in militia circles, stated last year, "it seems pretty obvious to me. . . that we've gotten so much infiltration in Secret Service and F.B.I. by Israeli Mossad that it [the FBI] is predominantly Israeli-controlled." In a subsequent Internet posting, Thompson also praised the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Furthermore, popular speakers on the militia circuit include avowed anti-Semites such as the tax protector "Red" Beckman and the conspiracy theorist Eustace Mullins.