Next Monday, 19 April, the US Tea Party movement will hold a national day of protest against Obama’s health care reforms.
The date marks the 17th anniversary of the disastrous climax to the siege of David Koresh’s compound at Waco, Texas. It’s also the 15th anniversary of the bombing of the federal building at Oklahoma City.
What’s message are the Tea Party organisers trying to get across?
There are clear parallels to be drawn between the growing anti-Obama movement – such as the Oath Keepers group for serving and former military and police officers – and the militia movements of the mid-’90s that informed the actions of Timothy McVeigh, Terry Nichols, Michael Fortier and others.
This Observer article recalls the bombing, considers its current absence from the US media, and speaks to some of the survivors and victims.
On Monday week, 19 April, the national Tea Party protests will be held across America, venting anger at the Federal government. In Oklahoma City, however, their protest will be held four days earlier, so as not to coincide with the memorial at what was the site of the federal government building – almost an admission by the Tea Party that they are playing with fire. “They’ll say they’re coming here to protest Obama’s health care programme,” says Keith Simonds, “but that’s not what it is. They’re here to spew their hatred, vomiting their political agenda. How dare they come here?”
[Last month] nine people appeared in court in Detroit, members of an offshoot of McVeigh’s Michigan militia called Hutaree, charged with “seditious conspiracy” to kill a police officer and then bomb the funeral cortege, in order to spark insurrection akin to that sought by McVeigh. The previous week, congresswoman Louise Slaughter, who voted for President Barack Obama’s health care reform, received one of many threats of violence to elected representatives, this one pledging that snipers would “kill the children of the members who voted for health care reform”. Such language makes the blood run cold in Oklahoma; and the fact that most people in Oklahoma are deeply conservative makes the irony of both the bomb and their disgust at this language all the more cogent.
Read the full article