Militias and conspiracy culture

Due to its roots in American anti-federalism and its heavy use of revolutionary war imagery, the sovereign citizens movement remained a US-based subculture until recently. It has eventually spread to Canada, where it has claimed to have more than 30,000 adherents, and to the UK and Europe. Proponents outside the US tend to call themselves “Freemen on the Land”. A tragicomic example was when Calgary retiree Camille Sokol discovered to her horror that her new tenant was a self-declared “Freeman on the land” who promptly declared her house an embassy and went on to fortify it, claiming that since he had “manumitted” himself from the government, Canadian law did no longer apply to him.

Even Norway has seen a somewhat bizarre case, with a former student of Princess Märtha’s New Age-style “Angel school” attempting to give up her Norwegian citizenship, claiming that her social security number was a straw identity used by the state to borrow money.

The militia movement
Early 1994 was a busy time for John Trochmann. Trochmann, a self-proclaimed “free white Christian man, Republic of Montana State Citizen” who asserted that he had never “knowingly been a citizen of the United States”, crisscrossed Montana speaking about of an upcoming invasion by United Nations troops in black helicopters. According to Trochmann, the American government had long abandoned the interest of the American people, rendering the individual states defenceless, and was now in the process of disarming the people in order to establish a sinister “New World Order”. He believed American soldiers were already being trained for “special operations” in which they would be arresting civilians. The only remedy was to establish a citizens’ militia, which according to Trochmann was a right guaranteed by the Constitution as a bulwark against a tyrannical government. Trochmann would himself set an example by establishing the Militia of Montana the same year.

The last photograph of Vicki Weaver before she was killed by an FBI sniper 22 Aug. 1992 in the Ruby Ridge standoff. It was taken by US Marshall Service surveillance on the morning of 21 Aug. and was evidence at the subsequent trial. (Photo: USMS. In public domain).

Three incidents were crucial in the growth of the militia movement in the early 1990s. The first was the shootout at Ruby Ridge, in which the Weaver family attempted to hold off local and federal police in a remote cabin on top of Ruby Ridge, Idaho. Randy and Vicki Weaver were Christian Identity believers with a firm belief that the Biblical end-times were near at hand. Randy, a military veteran, got in trouble with the authorities when he attempted to sell two sawed-off shotguns to a government informant and subsequently refused both to appear in court and to become an informant. Randy, Vicki, their four children and a family friend withdrew to the cabin, leading to a full siege in which Vicki and their teenage son Sammy lost their lives. The trial of Randy Weaver attracted national attention among right-wing extremists and everyone else with a skeptical view of the government, especially because Weaver’s lawyer choose to downplay the white supremacist element and present the Weavers as “white separatists” who simply wanted to be left alone.

The Mount Carmel Center in Waco, Texas, in flames on April 19, 1993. Photo: FBI. In public domain.

The second incident was the death of 82 members of the Branch Davidian congregation on April 19, 1993. The charismatic David Koresh (born Vernon Howell) led an offshoot of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church based in a compound at Waco, Texas. The congregation aroused the interest of the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) when the bureau received reports of weapon deliverances to the sect’s compound. Like Randy Weaver, the Branch Davidians refused to cooperate, leading to a 51-day siege that ended in tragedy when FBI agents finally assaulted the compound. During the assault, the compound caught fire. Responsibility is still being debated. In any case, 76 persons lost their lives at Waco, including 17 children.

If Ruby Ridge helped launch the militia movement, Waco provided it with scores of martyrs, as the assault was perceived as an attack on both religious freedom and the constitutional right to bear arms. Even as the siege unfolded, it attracted national and international attention because cable news broadcasters provided continuous coverage of the events. Amongst the spectators and protestors drawn to the site were several well-known right-wing extremists as well as a young man named Alex Jones, who would eventually become a guru to many conspiracy theorists, and a recently discharged soldier called Timothy McVeigh.

The third event was the passage of federal gun-control legislation in 1993 and 1994, which established a five-day waiting period to purchase a handgun and limited the sale of various types of assault rifles. Both restrictions were both considered part of a “government conspiracy” to disarm the American people and ultimately to abolish the Second Amendment right to bear arms.

John Trochmann’s Militia of Montana was one of the first militia groups to organize as a response to the perceived threat. October 22, 1994, approximately 160 men from various right-wing organizations gathered for what was dubbed “The Rocky Mountain Rendezvous”. At the summit, various racist “revolutionaries” spoke of New World Order conspiracies, tax resistance, the need for armed militias and – more disturbingly – the possibility of “leaderless resistance” in order to overthrow the government and bring about a white Christian republic.

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