Will every American remember "On the 18th of April in '75, hardly a man is now alive who remembers that fateful day and year of the Midnight ride of Paul Revere." Will looking at that date strike fear in our hearts? Will we keep our children home and stay home from work ourselves? ---

Right-Wingers View McVeigh As Government 'Patsy'

Reuters, April 6, 2001

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CHICAGO - As Timothy McVeigh awaits execution, anti-government groups suspect the Oklahoma City bomber of being a brainwashed "patsy" who undermined them, not a martyr to their cause, experts who monitor the groups say.

McVeigh, 32, is scheduled to die by lethal injection at an Indiana prison on May 16 for killing 168 people with a fertilizer bomb detonated outside the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995.

"They view Timothy McVeigh as a patsy, as a sort of Lee Harvey Oswald type," said Mark Pitcavage, who tracks right-wing hate groups for the Anti-Defamation League. "Why hasn't he come clean? Because he's been brainwashed and the government wants to execute him before he can wake up."

Various conspiracy theories -- which have been investigated and officially dismissed -- hold that Oswald did not act alone in the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and some blame Kennedy opponents in government for his killing.

Extremists believe McVeigh was programmed by government agents to derail the right-wing's goal of staging a revolution by providing an excuse for a government crackdown -- which occurred after passage of an anti-terrorist law. Many right-wing groups splintered and some members were imprisoned.

McVeigh, who is considered by most experts to be a "lone wolf" adherent of right-wing philosophies, has been quoted as saying the U.S. military had implanted a computer chip in his body to control him.

As his execution date approaches, right-wing groups that distrust the mainstream media but communicate extensively through the Internet will note the attention McVeigh's execution gets and may try to attract some publicity for themselves, experts said.

But beforehand, April 19 looms as a key date for those whose cause is nothing less than the overthrow of what they view as a corrupt U.S. government.

McVeigh has been quoted as saying he chose April 19 for the bombing as revenge for the FBI raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, on that date in 1993 in which some 80 cult members died. McVeigh also carried a fake driver's license listing April 19 as his birthday.

April 19 already had significance for right-wing groups as "Patriot's Day," honoring the colonial militia that waged battles against the British during the American Revolutionary War. They renamed it "Militia Day."

Since the bombing, the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in U.S. history, the date has put authorities on alert.

"Every April 19, everyone should hold their breath," said Evan McKenzie, a political scientist at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

"(Right-wing groups) are convinced that they are in the vanguard of a revolution and the government is out to stop them because their ideas are so powerful that the people ... will rise up," McKenzie said.

He said the groups moved to protect themselves by organizing into small cells of four or five individuals, much like McVeigh and his few cohorts.

Most engage in words, not actions, though single members may spin off and wreak havoc, McKenzie said. Estimates of membership in the groups that range from tax protesters to white supremacists vary widely -- from a few thousand to hundreds of thousands, with many more sympathizers.

But just because McVeigh is reviled by many anti-government groups does not mean he will not become a martyr in death, experts said.

Abolitionist John Brown was derided as a madman by all sides of the slavery issue after his violent raid on Harper's Ferry in 1859. But after the outbreak of the Civil War, "John Brown's body" was a rallying cry for Union troops who sang about defeating slavery while marching into battle.

"The difference between a martyr and a mope is how popular the cause is after his death. As long as the right-wing vigilante movement remains marginal, McVeigh will be remembered as despicable and pathetic," said Northwestern University law professor Steven Lubet, who has written about Brown.

"He's seen not so much as a martyr but as the only witness to a government conspiracy," McKenzie added.

And Pitcavage said there was virtually no support for McVeigh among anti-government groups.

"What little support there is among the hard-core white supremacists," Pitcavage said, citing McVeigh's adherence to the racist, anti-Semitic, anti-government polemic, "The Turner Diaries." In the book, an FBI building is blown up with a fertilizer bomb, an act that sets off a revolution.

-- Anonymous, April 08, 2001