Militia Movement ‘a Shadow’ of Its Past, Study Finds

Five years after it reached a peak, the antigovernment militia movement has dwindled in numbers to “a shadow of its former self,” according to a study released Tuesday.

As convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy J. McVeigh, one of its principal figures, faces execution next week, the militia or so-called patriot movement had by last year steadily declined to 194 identifiable groups, the Southern Poverty Law Center found.

The center said in a 65-page report that the conservative militia movement, which began developing in the early 1990s, reached a peak of 858 groups in 1996. Last year’s total represented a 9% decline from the previous year, its fourth consecutive annual drop, the report said.

“People have left the militia movement for a variety of reasons,” said Mark Potok, editor of the law center’s intelligence project, which published the study. “They have gone home, disillusioned and tired of waiting for the revolution that never seems to come.”

In other cases, Potok said, some members “have been scared off, frightened by the arrests of thousands of comrades for engaging in illegal weapon violations and even terrorist plots.

“And they have, in great numbers, left the relatively nonracist ‘patriot’ world for the harder-line groups that now make up most of the radical right.”

John Trochmann, a Militia of Montana leader who once claimed a following in the thousands, said Tuesday that he agrees the movement’s numbers have dwindled. “We’re not the organized, stand-up public movement we once were.”

But Trochmann said in an interview that many members “have gone underground due to harassment and scrutiny from the mainstream media. We’re spreading out into more of mainstream society.”

Trochmann, who once sold survivalist goods and military manuals, which he said would be vital when forces of the “new world order” came calling, said many “underground” militia members now have joined the military services or local law enforcement agencies.

“But they have to keep it quiet,” he said. “Members of the military pay a much larger penalty for belonging [to militia groups]. Some have told us that their ties to us resulted in their discharges.”

Although he keeps a low profile today, Trochmann offered in 1995 to help FBI officials in Montana talk “freeman” leader LeRoy Schweizer into surrendering on outstanding federal charges. An FBI standoff with the freeman militia ended without violence.

The nonprofit Southern Poverty Law Center, based in Montgomery, Ala., monitors the activities of hate groups and antigovernment organizations.

Joe Roy, who compiled the center’s study, said militia activity “continues at a low level [and] is running out of steam.” At the same time, however, “racist and anti-Semitic hate groups have been growing, thanks to former militiamen and others who have joined up.”

Officials at the center said it would be a mistake to ignore the ultraconservative movement, despite its dwindling numbers.

“It would be easy to dismiss the patriot movement, with its outlandish conspiracy theories and childish fascination with guns, as a collection of . . . people lacking basic reasoning skills whose arguments were naive at best,” the report said.

“But that would be too easy. In fact, America’s militiamen embodied real grievances and fears.”

The report declared that “in many ways the movement [represents] an alienated and distrustful response to a rapidly changing world--a rejection of the vision of the post-Communist world that was summarized in then-President George Bush’s ‘New World Order’ speech in 1990.”

In response to that speech, many Americans were reluctant to endorse the convergence of economies, races and cultures that globalism signifies, the report said. Instead, they saw it as threatening to rob the country of its independence and cultural values, jeopardizing farmers, industrial workers and others economically.

Discussing other events that contributed to the early 1990s movement, the report said many citizens, particularly in the West and Midwest, “resented attempts to impose gun control; in fact, few actions helped spur the militia movement more than the 1993 Brady [handgun] bill.

“They were also deeply angered by international trade agreements that seemed to be facilitating the transfer of jobs from America to cheap Third World labor markets.”

The center reported that two other watershed events infuriated militia leaders and helped them enlist thousands of members: the August 1992 FBI siege at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and the conflagration that ended the federal siege of the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, in April 1993. To militia members, “the two events seemed to show how the federal government treated dissenters,” the study declared.