Sprinzak's theory of delegitimation is a promising step toward the creation of a predictive instrument which may be applied to conditions conducive to the formation of a terrorist movement. In the presentcontext, split delegitimation offers valuable insights into the uniqueness of the phenomenon of right wing terrorism occurring in Western democracies. The following criticisms are, therefore, offered to suggest further refinement of the theory rather than to question the fundamental tenets of Sprinzak's work. The four areas of concern to be addressed below are: 1) delegitimation in the case of right wing movements in North America appears to be a reciprocal rather than a unilateral process; 2) the theory$s concentration on violence directed primarily at the "other' rather than the state underestimates the degree to which the state has lately come to be identified with the "other"; 3) the vision of the adherents' "desired world' underestimates the religiosity of the radical right in North America, and thus the distinctive chiliasm of the movement's ultimate vision; and 4) the theory may underestimate how far even a democratic state is prepared to go in suppressing right wing movements when subjected to sufficient pressure to "do something" about an unpopular subculture.
Delegitimation as a Mutual and Reciprocal Process
A central tenet of the theory of split delegitimation holds that, when the right wing oppositional group deduces that the government is unwilling or unable to act in the interests of its "true citizenry", the resulting sense of betrayal may create a crisis of confidence in the regime.This crisis of confidence is an important precondition for the transformation of a heretofore generally law abiding dissident group into a movement increasingly disrespectful of legal norms, and therefore less resistant to the adoption of violence. This observation is undoubtedly correct, but could profitably be expanded to include a process which might be called mutual delegitimation. That is, not only is the nascent dissident group engaged in a process of stripping the regime of its claim to legitimacy, but either simultaneously or more often as a precondition for the radicalization of the right wing group, the dominant culture on both state and non- state levels have anathematized the discourse of the radical right. The resulting marginalization of right wing discourse leaves the adherent with only two options; to withdraw into the milieu of the radical right, or to resort to the "propaganda of the deed" to make his beliefs felt. Here, Marty's mapping theory is of value, for it suggests in graphic terms the considerable distance from the borders of the North American cultural heartland to which the milieu of the radical right has been banished.
This virtual demonization of radical right wing discourse in America is of comparatively recent vintage. As recently as the 1920s for example, the Ku Klux Klan held considerable sway in American politics, and in fact held the reigns of government in several northern states and municipal governments.1 This tolerance for the rhetoric of the radical right came to an end in the era of Gerald L. K. Smith and his Christian Nationalist Crusade. How this came about provides some insight into the process of reciprocal delegitimation.
Gerald L. K. Smith was in the years before World War II a populist orator of the first magnitude and, as opposition to his message grew- an opposition which he identified as emanating primarily from the American Jewish community- was alongside Father Charles E. Coughlin, among the leading anti- Semites in the nation. More, Smith's crusade brought together the adherents of a number of radical right wing appeals in a coalition which, given its fractious nature, is unlikely to occur again in the Americas. At first, the organized Jewish community in the form of the American Jewish Committee (AJC) and the Anti- Defamation League of the B'nai B'rith (ADL) did little to combat the Smith phenomenon.
This would soon change. War was looming in Europe and the Depression era flourishing of populist appeals of the left and the right had yet to fade. More, Nazi Germany had strong regional pockets of North American admirers and a core of high profile propagandists in both the United States and Canada. With American engagement in the war on the side of the Great Britain and Stalin$s Russia, the interests of the American government and the Jewish organizations converged on the necessity of neutralizing the still influential voices of the radical right for whom distrust of Britain was only marginally less acute than hatred of Sovietcommunism. One symptom of this sensitivity to the voices of the radical right was the great sedition trial of 1944 in which Gerald L. K. Smith was fortunate to escape indictment.[2] Another symptom was the evolution of resolve in the Jewish community to make an example of Smith to any would- be successor to his mantle as the doyen of the racialist right.
The American Jewish Committee first focused on the activities of Gerald L. K. Smith on a formal level in May 1947 when, alarmed at the apparent success of Smith and other right wingers at linking Jews to Soviet communism, the AJC executive committee met to form a plan of attack against the Smith crusade.[3] This and subsequent meetings failed to come to an agreement on a coherent strategy, due primarily to the delicate alance of the body politic in this, the first flush of the Cold War. Soviet Jews were simply too deeply involved in the Soviet state, and ith the international communist movement as well, to risk involving a Jewish organization in the controversy.4 Making a virtue of indecision, the strategy which both the ADL and AJC eventually arrived at was termed at the time "dynamic silence." Championed by Rabbi S. A. Fineberg of the AJC, the idea was to close off all access to the public media- and thus the larger culture- to "rabble rousers" such as Smith.[5] This decision would mark the moment in time when the radical right would gradually fade from direct access to the popular media, and thus the public consciousness, leaving the 'watchdog' organizations such as the ADL and AJC in a position to assume stewardship of the public exposure of the movement.
It was not until the attempt by Smith and others to block the appointment of Anna M. Rosenberg as an Assistant Secretary of Defense in 1950 that both the American Jewish Committee and the Anti- Defamation League opened a full fledged attack on Gerald L. K. Smith by bringing charges of anti- Semitism before the United States Senate. By then, the tactics employed by the ADL and the AJC were well honed: to identify potential anti- Semites and to seek to preempt if possible, to halt if not, their activities by putting pressure on elected officials and on local and national newspapers, by printing the names of suspected anti-Semites, and by distributing 'educational' materials intended to neutralize criticism of the Jewish community. It is an interpretive role that today continues to be performed by the "watchdog" groups of which the ADL is the most influential.
Acting in a role which is strikingly reminiscent of a "high priesthood"whose self- appointed task it is to interpret the distant rumblings of the radical right wing milieu, the ADL and its numerous imitators have, through carefully nurtured connections with Congress, government agencies and the media, succeeded to a remarkable degree in banishing the adherents of right wing appeals to the margins of society. What's more, the ADL, once fastened on a target, is tenacious in its endeavors to isolate the target movement from the mainstream culture. No better example could be given of an attempt to physically isolate a perceived enemy than the 1969 effort by the ADL to prevent the building of a road at public expense linking an aging Gerald L. K. Smith's biblical theme park and annual passion play in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, with the main highway.[6]
Using tactics perfected in the 1950s, the ADL acted along two tracks: a somewhat covert press campaign which attempted to influence local and national newspapers to write in opposition to the road building effort, and a high profile campaign headed by ADL National Chairman Don Schary to appeal to government officials to intervene. Included in this latter campaign were President Richard Nixon, Secretary of Commerce Maurice Stans and Secretary of Transportation John Volpe. Smith's theme parkdid in the end get its road, but not before the ADL set out to punish any individual or company having any connection with the project.[7]
Smith himself ended his career in virtual obscurity, publishing his Cross and the Flag newsletter and putting out ever more inconsequential tracts purporting to contain "revelations" of the Jewish hand behind sex education, Capital Hill debauchery, and ad infinitum.[8]
The tactics pioneered against Smith proved so efficacious that even before the onset of the 1980s language rectification movement known somewhat derisively as "political correctness", the radical right had been all but silenced in the American public square. In Canada, the process has gone further with active prosecutions of right wing figures--holocaust revisionists in particular have fallen afoul of Canadian prosecutors if not courts of appeal. Examples of this dearth of media access were noted in the context of Christian Identity in my previous Terrorism and Political Violence article, and efforts to break through to the mainstream culture have been just as unavailing for other radical right wing ideologies. Recently however, through the medium of popular afternoon "talk shows", this wall of media silence has begun to crumble. This allows radical right wing ideologues uncensored access toa segment of the North American public for the first time in a number of years, albeit at the cost of the trivialization of their message.
The importance of this media breakthrough can not be underestimated, although what its long term implications might be are as yet unclear. The appearance of radical right wing figures on television and radio talk shows was not unprecedented, however. Suitably packaged, spokesman for far right causes have occasionally been featured on late night network television. David Duke for example, attracted the interest of right wingers beyond the borders of Louisiana through an appearance on Tom Snyder's late night show on NBC.[9] The treatment meted out to some guests on these programs by such as Denver radio talk show host Alan Berg has often been less than civil, however, and Berg's particularly egregious behavior made him an early assassination victim of the Order.
This near invisibility would change when the ratings competition among network and syndicated cable talk show hosts would bring into millions of homes across America tales of private pathology, horror stories of dysfunctional families, revelations of rampant Satanism, and at last, the political "monsters" lurking in the outlands of the radical right. One such panel, composed of adherents of the racialist right and equallyunrepresentative Black nationalists, made national news by erupting in a chair swinging fight which broke the nose of the sleaziest of this new breed of talk show hosts, Geraldo Rivera, and thus demonstrated the marketability of these prepackaged confrontations.
How manipulative these televised spectacles can be was graphically demonstrated in an edition of the Jerry Springer Show, filmed in Chicago and televised on 11 May 1993. Here too, a brief scuffle erupted among participants, although the expected ratings bonanza did not appear to materialize. The panel was composed of such radical right stalwarts as Tom and John Metzger and such self promoting non- entities as the Nazi uniformed Art Jones, National Chairman of the America First Committee who was accompanied by both of the members of that organization, similarly garbed and prominently displayed in the front row of the audience. On the other side stood Black nationalists Michael McGee and Doris Green. There was less to the confrontation than met the eye, however. Jones, a last minute addition to the spectacle, was assured a place on the panel by his willingness to follow the suggestions of the producers and "say something outrageous." When Jones protested that to do so could start a fight, he was assured that there was nothing to worry about on that score, the show would have plenty of security. Still dubious, Jones was not sufficiently incendiary on a first run through, causing the host to call a halt to filming and start again. Jones responded with a recitation of FBI crime statistics which Commander of the Black Panther Militia McGee took to imply that Black women and prostitution were synonymous and the tussle was on. This epiphany was short lived. Jones immediately apologized for the misunderstanding and shook hands with McGee. Worse, as the discussion wore tediously on, it became clear that the panel had more areas of agreement than disagreement, and indeed, the Metzgers were ultimately invited to address McGee's group- a meeting that went well according to all concerned. The duplicitous host was left to end the show with a platitudinous soliloquy to the effect that none of the guests were nice people while the mailing addresses of each participating group were flashed on the screen.[10]
The dramatic descent from the vast audiences commanded by a pre- war Gerald L. K. Smith or a Fr. Coughlin to the tawdry carnival side show that is the Jerry Springer Show speaks volumes on the reciprocal nature of delegitimation. Long before the milieu of the radical right came todespair of redeeming the American government from the perceived influence of the "other", the dominant culture- and thus the state itself--had determined that the views of the radical right were beyond the bounds of legitimate discourse in the American public square. Deprived of mainstream outlets through which to disseminate their views, banished to the margins of American culture, the racialist right had by the late 1950s turned in on itself, contriving ever more fantastic conspiratorial scenarios to explain their marginalization. From this period of isolation and savage infighting came the view that today defines the movement: that the government of the United States has been irretrievably lost as the malign "other" has come to control the apparatus of the state. This observation leads to the second criticism of Sprinzak's theory; that the conception of split delegitimation underestimates how complete is the identification of the "other" and the state in the contemporary discourse of the radical right.
The Omnipresence of ZOG
In the past, despising the evil that was around me and yet not wantingto be a martyr, I deceived myself into believing that merely by refusing to aid my enemies in their machinations would be sufficient to salve my conscience and yet not jeopardize my life. In keeping with that delusion, I tried hard to separate myself from the system so I would not be a party to its crimes. I wanted to be left alone and not forced to participate in my own destruction. Now, of course, I know better. I no longer suffer from any delusions regarding the motives, means and dedication of our enemies.
For though I stopped paying my tithes (income tax) to the satanic system, revoked my slave number (social security number), stopped working for corporations or other system creations, canceled my bank accounts and stopped accepting checks, working for cash or for barter only . . . I was not left alone. I was "criminally" investigated by the IRS in 1982- 1983. Several of my friends and associates were subpoenaed (without due process or grand jury investigation) to give information about my private, personal affairs (source of livelihood, political beliefs, etc.). This came, no doubt, from my public efforts to expose the criminal acts of the Jewish- owned Federal reserve system and its collection agency, the IRS. . . .
Thus I...have declared war on ZOG. . . .
I know that most of my people will not understand my motives nor my actions. . .yet they remain immutably worthy, necessary, and in the final analysis, inevitable. To watch my people devoured by Judaism and not resist would destroy me just as surely as ZOG's bullets and jails . . . .
I KNOW NOT WHEN I WILL DEPART FROM THIS EARTH, ONLY THAT IT WILL BE SOON. I leave with no regrets. There is nothing here to hold me. I am a stranger in my own land and to my people. Alienated from the dominate (sic) trends of judaized culture, disgusted by its commercialism, its art, its music, its politics, and above all, its hypocrisy. [David J. Moran][11]
The extended quotation above is taken from the Last Will and Testament of David J. Moran, a founding member of the Committee of the States. Moran died in a shoot- out with police on a lonely highway in rural California on 8 December 1986. Ironically, his death was on the second anniversary of the day in which Moran's hero, Robert Mathews, met a similar fate. Both died at precisely 9:00 p. m. The letter is unremarkable in the internal discourse of the radical right wing today,and was chosen for inclusion here primarily for its accessibility in a published work. Moran's themes of alienation and isolation are ubiquitous in the milieu of the contemporary radical right, but what interests us here is how complete is the identification of the state and the dominant culture with the "other". In this manichaean conception, the Zionist Occupation Government epithet is no mere rhetorical device. Like its Church of the Creator equivalent JOG (Jewish Occupation Government) or the recent contribution of Identity pastor Paul Hall, BOG (Babylonian Occupation Government), the term is evocative of the despair felt by adherents of ever being able to reverse this latest example of the Jewish theft of culture. This belief impacts strongly on the forms which violence will take, once the conclusion is reached that no other alternative is possible.
It is important to note however, that Sprinzak's observations of the rarity of violence in this milieu is borne out in North America. As in Sprinzak's theory, violence is undertaken only by splinter elements of a movement. More, the resultant terrorist groups tend to be small, autonomous, and composed of part- time revolutionaries who continue to maintain jobs and families. Operations tend to be largely focused ontargets of opportunity arrived at more as a result of an emotional outburst than a process of rational planning. Only a minority of these groups are more sophisticated, employing a rational calculus of risk to potential benefit before undertaking an operation.
There is some difficulty however, with the conception of split targeting.[12] That is, as a result of "two contemporaneous processes of delegitimation: an intense delegitimation vis- à- vis the hated non-governmental collectivity and a diluted delegitimation towards the regime," [p. 64] "the main violence. . .is expected to involve non- ruling populations, [while only] some of the heat is likely to reach political authorities." [p. 65] This observation certainly describes the random street attacks perpetrated by racist skinhead groups and the ncreasingly rare instances of Ku Klux Klan acts of local vigilantism. Yet as David Moran's statement indicates, many on the violent fringes of the movement no longer make a distinction between the government, the ominant culture, and the "other" They have in recent years become inextricably interconnected, and thus to strike at one is to strike at them all.
This powerful strain of manichaeism has led to forms of violence beyondthe vigilantism noted above. At one extreme are the confrontations between state authority and the inhabitants of isolated compounds or individual survivalists. Here, despairing of the dominant culture, groups of adherents seek to withdraw completely from the "system" and move beyond the reach of its minions. The motivations for this course of action are primarily millenarian, and by situating themselves in the most isolated pockets of rural America, there is obviously little opportunity for acts of vigilante violence directed at the now distant "other".
Apocalyptic millenarians all, bereft of the hope of supernatural rescue through the doctrine of rapture in the $soon coming$ Last Days, these isolated compounds in the 1970s and 1980s were armed camps. They were isolated only in a geographic sense, however. They maintained contacts with each other and with other appeals in the right wing milieu. Eventually, a kind ofspecialization evolved with on the one hand Richard Butler's Aryan Nations compound serving as both the annual mecca for movement gatherings and the public face of the movement, while James Ellison$s Covenant, Sword and the Arm of Lord became the movement's armorer and preferred location for training in weapons and non-conventional warfare tactics for the "serious" adventurer.
Ellison's compound provides an interesting case study in the effects of physical isolation and complete alienation from the surrounding culture. Ellison, already unstable, came to take on regal pretensions while a marked strain of antinomianism developed at the CSA compound. Violence too was not long in coming. Here, two distinct patterns emerged. On the one hand, some Order- inspired CSA adherents did undertake a spree of revolutionary violence. The most notorious of these, Richard Snell, is currently on death row in Texarcana, Texas, for the murder of a Black Arkansas state trooper during a routine traffic stop. Previous to this murder, Snell was involved in a series of terrorist acts, culminating in the murder of the owner of a pawnshop believed by Snell to be Jewish. Yet Snell and his confederates were by then acting outside of the aegis of CSA, and the pattern of their activities suggests an ultimate dream far beyond vigilantism's aim to preserve the status quo.
The primary confrontation involving the organization was not with random targets of opportunity, but rather with the state itself. It was a hopeless battle, and in April 1985 the CSA compound was surrounded andEllison and others arrested. This pattern of withdrawal, siege by government forces and a forced decision to resist or surrender is by far the dominant pattern of violence in the movement's survivalist fringe. This pattern holds true for targets as disparate as the idiosyncratic CSA or the lone figure of a Randy Weaver. In this milieu, the outside world is perceived as literally demonic, and to strike out at a Jew, a Black policeman or an FBI agent is essentially to resist the devil himself.[13]
Closer to home are instances of revolutionary violence aimed directly at the "system". IRS buildings and agents are fair game here, as are softer targets such as judges or other government officials. Here lies the dreams of Robert Mathews of the Order, whose revolutionary tactics were honed as a tax resister in the Arizona Patriots. Here too rests the core charge behind the Fort Smith conspiracy trial featuring the hapless Ellison as the star witness; conspiracy to overthrow the government of the United States! And here as well are the acts- or more precisely, threats- issued by the Committee of the States and adherents of the amorphous Posse Comitatus.
The objectives here are clearly not vigilante violence. Blacks are notattacked- they are seen as having too little intelligence or initiative to be perceived as a threat. Indeed, an early Robert Mathews directive to the Order was to eschew any racist remarks in public. Jews conversely, are seen as a threat- the hidden hand behind everything from the Civil Rights Movement to the tyranny of the state. But with the exception of a few high profile figures, individual Jews were rarely marked for death, and attacks on synagogues were seen as both futile andcounter- productive. Indeed, the Order's assassination of Alan Berg appears to have been the result of a last minute substitution for the less accessible Baron de Rothchild, Henry Kissinger, Norman Lear and the non-Jewish Morris Dees.[14]
The target here is in fact the state itself, and the tactics are indirectly borrowed from European leftist terrorists as distilled by such American imitators as the Symbionese Liberation Army and the Weather Underground. Robberies of "system targets" such as banks (and armored cars) are undertaken to finance the revolution until such time as the less risky method of counterfeiting currency can be perfected. The money is then recycled to finance other appeals in the radical right wing with the immediate objective of forging alliances and demonstratingthrough the "propaganda of the deed" that revolution is possible and that ZOG is not as all powerful as the manichaean zeitgeist of the radical right imagines. Assassination in this conception is no mere act of impulsive vigilante enforcement of threatened norms, but is rather a form of armed propaganda aimed at instilling the maximum hope in the faithful by demonstrating the vulnerability of the hated "system"
. How susceptible the milieu of the radical right is to propaganda, be it of the deed or of the pen, is of considerable interest here. Clearly, the denizens of this milieu thrilled to the Order's exploits once they could be convinced that Mathews and company were genuine revolutionaries rather than part of an elaborate government entrapment scheme. But in line with Sprinzak's observation, few were prepared to place their own lives on the line to join the revolution, and the government did not lack for self- serving prosecution witnesses at Fort Smith! More, the fictional Turner Diaries and the imaginary enforcers of the Vigilantes of Christendom would become ubiquitous on the book shelves of the faithful, but few would take the dream beyond the unfashionable literary circle which is the world or right wing newsletters into the streets of America. Thus the Turner Diaries' bitter sequel, Hunter, suggesting a return to lone wolf attacks on "system" targets.
For the considerable population of the faithful whose apocalyptic perception of contemporary American culture forces them to action but whose innate caution rules out such lone wolf adventures, other options remain. One of the more popular of these in the early 1990s is the militia movement. These growing citizen militias are strongest in several midwestern and western states. Based closely on the dreams of Robert DePugh's 1950s era Minuteman group and on the early models of William Potter Gale's California Rangers, John Harrell's Illinois-based Christian Patriots Defense League, and the Arizona Patriot group that was Robert Mathews' gateway to the revolutionary right, the citizen militias are composed of a diverse band of weekend warriors. Taking to the hills and the forests, clad in camouflage fatigues and armed with a variety of weapons, the militias diligently prepare for the day in the not too distant future when, they are certain, the government will descend to wrest from this beleaguered remnant the last of their cherished constitutional freedoms as a prelude to the imposition of an international dictatorship under the United Nations.
The various militia groups have studiously eschewed violence. Theirsis a call to vigilance and preparation for the coming time of tribulation. Yet the militia groups themselves are at best ad hoc collections of part-time enthusiasts whose backgrounds and opinions are startlingly diverse. Women, a small number of Jews, and members of racial and ethnic minorities can be counted among their number.
The loosely organized state militias communicate with each other in a variety of ways: journals and newsletters, meetings, travels of militia members from state to state, a fax network, and, most recently, a proliferation of computer BBS and mailing groups. This rapid exchange of ideas further facilitates the already marked tendency toward serial and simultaneous cross-memberships in which militia members can be affiliated with a variety of other ideological appeals across the spectrum of the radical right wing.
The militias themselves are organized on local and state levels and are structured around a core of local leaders with a fluctuating band of followers. However diverse the membership may be, there does appear to be a core of beliefs that are in keeping with the radical right's accepted orthodoxy: apocalypticism, manichaeism, and a view that the federal government has fallen under the control of a hostile conspiracybent on seizing from the dwindling ranks of true Americans the last vestiges of their constitutional liberties.
