IT was going to be another Oklahoma, an attack on the scale of the 1995 bombing of a federal building by Timothy McVeigh in which 168 people were killed. Except this time, the target was an apartment complex and mosque that housed hundreds of Muslim Somali immigrants in Garden City, Kansas.

Had the FBI not arrested these right-wing terrorists, who called themselves the ‘Crusaders’, the attack would have taken place on Nov 9, the day after the American presidential elections.

The choice of date was intended to ‘wake people up’ in the words of ringleader Patrick Eugene Stein, who had earlier ranted against Hillary Clinton, saying: “angry that we allow one of the most corrupt, deceitful, lying, caniving [sic], treasonist [sic], on the planet to run for president…elections are rigged by the elitist sic.”

There are some 1,000 anti-government groups active in the US.

The rigging mantra is a familiar refrain among Trump supporters who are taking their cue from Donald himself. That, coupled with the xenophobia that Trump has effectively mainstreamed, means that the far-right hails Trump as their candidate of choice. 

Stein and McVeigh shared a distrust of the federal government, something they have in common with the various ‘anti-government’ groups in the US.

While the election of Barack Obama was seen by many as a victory over racism, for these forces it was a call to arms with recruitment spiking to levels not seen in decades. This is the fringe where conspiracy theories about Obama being a secret Muslim out to impose Sharia in the US are taken as fact and immigration is seen as a vast conspiracy to destroy White America. Add to this the Black Lives Matter movement, immigration — both legal and otherwise — and there is plenty of fuel for this fire.

According to the SPLC, a watchdog group for right-wing extremism, there are currently some 1,000 anti-government groups active in the US, of which 276 are militias with a fondness for military organisation and weaponry.

There are groups like the Oath Keepers — serving and former military and law-enforcement officials who have pledged to disobey any federal order they deem to be in violation of the US constitution. Then there are the Three Percenters, who take their name from the belief that just 3pc of American colonists were responsible for overthrowing the British in the Revolutionary War, and that it will take 3pc of today’s Americans to bring about the “restoration of the Founders’ Republic”. While this group’s raison d’être is also to “defend the constitution”, they now participate in armed protests outside mosques and Islamic centres.

Indeed, while Jews, blacks, liberals and Mexicans remain perennial targets, Islamo­phobia is increasingly a uniting force among these disparate groups, and this is evidenced by the increasing vitriol directed at American Muslims and, in fact, rising attacks perpetrated on them.

Then there are the Lone Wolves like Dylan Storm Roof who killed nine people at a black church in Charleston, and recently a Los Angeles man — Mark Feigin — was arrested for making terrorist threats to the Islamic Centre of Southern California. When police searched his home, they found at least nine guns and over 250 pounds of ammunition. Both Roof and Feigin avidly consumed the same right-wing online propaganda that defines this movement.

A piece by journalist Shane Bauer, who went undercover and joined a group called the California State Militia makes for fascinating reading. Here heavily armed militia members, some of them former US military personnel, set up a military-style base in Arizona twice a year for the purpose of training, networking and “hunting Mexicans”.

The merits of various types of automatic wea­pons and body armour are discussed over camp fires. Most meals are also cooked in bacon grease or pork to keep ‘Muslim infiltrators’ at bay. When stopped by police while in full combat gear, the all-white militia members are let off with the police officer thanking them for their good work in catching illegal Mexican immigrants.

The attitude of law-enforcement towards these groups is mixed; thanks to loopholes in US law, militia activity is not illegal unless it “crosses the line into inciting violence or civil unrest”. Even then and despite many warnings from the FBI that right-wing groups pose a domestic threat to the US, the attitude seems lackadaisical. Members of the Oregon militia, for example, were recently found not guilty for their armed occupation of federal land and Feigin, who planned to attack the Islamic centre in California, was released on bail.

Now, the prospect of Hillary Clinton’s election — seen by these groups as engineered by the US establishment — has become another recruiting slogan for them and watchdogs fear it could lead to further rise in support for the anti-government movement. Coupled with demographic shifts and an economic downturn in the American heartland, one may have the makings of a perfect storm.

The writer is a journalist.

Twitter: @zarrarkhuhro

Published in Dawn, October 31st, 2016