History
Some date the movement back to the 1950s. The reformist wing of the patriot movement is considered to have begun in 1958 with the formation of the John Birch Society and opposition to communism, the United Nations and the civil rights movement. An insurgent wing has been traced in origins to the Liberty Lobby active in the 1950s with promotion of themes of White supremacy and antisemitism.
In the early 1990s, the patriot movement saw a surge of growth spurred by the confrontations at Ruby Ridge and Waco. The 1995 Oklahoma City bombing was carried out by two patriot movement members, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. During the 1990s the movement organized using "gun shows and the Internet". The movement was highly active in the mid-1990s, and at a peak in 1996 contained around 800 separate groups. It saw decline in the late 1990s
In 2009, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) expressed concern about a resurgent patriot movement, and the United States Department of Homeland Security issued a report warning of heightened "Rightwing Extremism". The SPLC attributed this growth to "an angry backlash against non-white immigration and ... the economic meltdown and the climb to power of an African American president." It reported that the number of patriot groups grew from 149 in 2008, to 824 in 2010 and 1,274 in 2011. The SPLC found that while "there are many people" in the patriot movement "that aren't engaged in illegal activity,” the "normalizing of conspiracy theories"—such as the belief that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is building concentration camps; rumors of covert plans by Mexico to repatriate parts of the Southwest; and concerns about Muslim Sharia law becoming part of the US court system—has played into the growth of the groups.
An extremist member of the patriot movement carried out the 2009 anti-abortion murder of George Tiller, and some extremists within the movement also have expressed support for Joseph Stack's 2010 plane crash into an Internal Revenue Service office.
Read more about this topic: Patriot Movement
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Every member of the family of the future will be a producer of some kind and in some degree. The only one who will have the right of exemption will be the mother ...”
—Ruth C. D. Havens, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 13, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“Don’t give your opinions about Art and the Purpose of Life. They are of little interest and, anyway, you can’t express them. Don’t analyse yourself. Give the relevant facts and let your readers make their own judgments. Stick to your story. It is not the most important subject in history but it is one about which you are uniquely qualified to speak.”
—Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966)
“A poet’s object is not to tell what actually happened but what could or would happen either probably or inevitably.... For this reason poetry is something more scientific and serious than history, because poetry tends to give general truths while history gives particular facts.”
—Aristotle (384–323 B.C.)