Right-Wing Militia Fanatic/Analysis: Difference between revisions

The militia movement claimed these events, as well as such things as [[American Gun Politics|the Assault Weapons Ban and the Brady Bill]], as supposed proof that the government was an [[Always ChaoticExclusively Evil]] force that wanted to destroy their way of life. Militia membership reached its peak in 1996, three years after Waco, though it would decline after that due to a confluence of reasons. The big one was perceived violence within the movement scaring away the more moderate members -- in addition to Oklahoma City, groups like the Montana Freemen and the Republic of Texas (a secessionist group claiming that the US had never legally annexed Texas) gave the movement plenty of bad press through their confrontations with law enforcement, as did "lone nuts" like Eric Rudolph (who bombed two abortion clinics, a [[Where Everybody Knows Your Flame|gay bar]] and the 1996 [[Atlanta]] [[Olympic Games|Olympics]]) and the Unabomber (mistakenly believed to be a right-wing militant until he published his anti-technology manifesto). The movement was hammered further by the failure of the [[You Can Panic Now|much-feared]] [[Millennium Bug|Y2K bug]] to amount to much, the election of [[George W. Bush]] restoring conservatives to political power, and finally, the 9/11 attacks which split the movement into two factions -- one which believed that 9/11 was [[False-Flag Operation|an inside job]], and another that [[Patriotic Fervor|reaffirmed their patriotism]] and supported [[The War on Terror]].