Post-Hutaree: How Glenn Beck and Fox News spread the militia message (Eric Boehlert)

[swag]

http://mediamatters.org/columns/201004060005

Reading last week's disturbing news accounts about the Midwestern arrest of nine alleged members of a Christian militia known as the Hutaree, a group whose members were reportedly planning to kill cops in order to spark a wider, armed revolt against the U.S. government, I noticed this nugget :

FBI agents moved quickly against Hutaree because its members were planning an attack sometime in April, prosecutors said.

My hunch is the self-described "warriors" of the Hutaree probably circled April 19 on their calendars for any cop-killing fantasy they might have planned to pull off. Why April 19? That was the day, 17 years ago, when the FBI staged its final failed assault on cult leader David Koresh's heavily armed compound in Waco, Texas. It was on April 19, 1993, following a 51-day siege, that Koresh's fanatical followers, rather than surrendering to authorities, staged mass suicides (and, in some cases, executions) as the compound burned to the ground.

Precisely two years later, on April 19, 1995, right-wing zealot Timothy McVeigh commemorated the Waco inferno by declaring war on the federal government and blowing up his rented Ryder truck outside of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City. McVeigh's act of far-right radical terrorism sheared the north side off the Murrah Building, killing 168 people and injuring hundreds more. ("I reached the decision to go on the offensive -- to put a check on government abuse of power," McVeigh later wrote.)

April 19 remains an almost mythical date among dedicated government haters. It's a date that lives in infamy as proof of the dark consequences of when a tyrannical government (run by Democrats) turns on its own.

. . . much more

[Bitwit1234]

1. April 19th was chosen as a memorial

in the first place because it was Hitler's birthday. Many of the radicals personally chose this date. AND it is sickening that the media refuses to report this. So who's the Nazi.

[guruoo]

2. Wikipedia has April 20th...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler

[benEzra]

3. April 19th is the anniversary of the "shot heard 'round the world"

on April 19th, 1775, a date celebrated in New England as Patriot's Day until it was changed to the third Monday in April. My wife is from Massachusetts and grew up in Maine, and it is a big deal up there (or at least it used to be).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battles_of_Lexington_and_Concord
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriots%27_Day

If these clowns viewed themselves as "patriots" and as the idealogical heirs of the Minutemen in their own minds, that's probably a red-letter day in their minds.

[underpants]

4. That used to the the third party of the Koresh-OKC- story

now it is the Waco-OKC story and they don't mention that anymore