In October 1994, six months before the bombing of an Oklahoma City federal office building killed 169 people, lawyer Morris Dees wrote to Attorney General Janet Reno, alerting her to the danger posed by right-wing militia groups, whose ranks were swelling with fanatical racists, neo-Nazis and other extremists. Dees had been monitoring violence-prone organizations for 14 years as investigator and chief trial counsel for the Klanwatch Project of the Southern Poverty Law Center based in Alabama. Written with reporter James Corcoran (whose Bitter Harvest tracked white supremacist meddling in the early 1980s farm crisis), this chilling expose gets deep inside the paranoid mentality of antigovernment hate groups, documenting the growing links among paramilitary units, white supremacists and neo-Nazis who preach armed confrontation. Dees traces Oklahoma bombing suspect Timothy McVeigh's ties to the militia and super-patriot underground, and he delineates striking parallels between the actual bombing and the fictional bombing done by McVeigh's hero in neo-Nazi William Pierce's 1978 novel, The Turner Diaries.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Every few years, Dees sums up the doings of white supremacists whom his Southern Poverty Law Center monitors and sometimes sues for civil rights infringements. This summation mainly concerns publicity-soaked cases like Ruby Ridge, Waco, and Oklahoma City. Dees also wades through the beliefs of several militantly lunatic groups, such as the Zionist Occupied Government (ZOG) signifies the federal government or that the underground book The Turner Diaries re-creates their ideal future--an America purged pure after a racial civil war. Very extreme, but some people, like the accused perpetrator of the Oklahoma City bombing, read and believe. Coinciding with the anniversary of that heinous act, Dees' review can, where interest warrants, supplement recent publications, like A Force upon the Plains by Kenneth Stern , a more fact-dense investigation of superpatriotism. Gilbert Taylor
From Kirkus Reviews
Dees, chief trial counsel of the Southern Poverty Law Center, covers much of the same territory as Kenneth Stern (The Force Upon the Plain, 1995) in uncovering the danger of America's extreme right, but he does it with greater passion, considerable narrative drama, and deeply scary inside reports from SPLC moles. Dees's (A Season for Justice, 1991) main thesis is that what were previously scattered, ideologically divided groups of right- wing extremists have now become a unified force bent on using violence to bring about white supremacist rule in the US. The dominant ideology is Christian Identity, a ``theology of hate'' whose followers are preparing for an Armageddon to overthrow the Zionist-occupied government (or ZOG). What Dees finds particularly alarming is the combustible union of hate groups, such as the Klan, with the rapidly growing (311 as of this year) and well-armed militia movements. Like Stern, Dees reviews such key events as the shoot-out at Ruby Ridge and the conflagration in Waco, and charts the growing hatred of the government that emerged in the aftermath of these events. ``It is that virulent hatred . . . that is driving the militia movement, while at the same time masking its insidious racist underpinnings,'' he declares. Interestingly, he suggests that Timothy McVeigh might have been part of a small cell in the movement's decentralized ``leaderless resistance'' network. The most revealing information comes from the spies of SPLC's Militia Task Force; this group penetrated the October 1992 conference in Estes Park, Colo., that helped unify the forces of the far right, and drawing on transcripts from the meetings, Dees offers extracts of the virulent demagoguery that was spewed there. (In a timely bit of reporting, he notes that Larry Pratt, recently forced to resign as co-chair of Pat Buchanan's presidential campaign, was present at this conference.) A convincing brief for the argument that the extreme right poses a serious, ongoing danger in this country. ($50,000 ad/promo; author tour; radio satellite tour) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
From the Publisher
On October 26, 1994, Morris Dees wrote Attorney General Janet Reno to alert her to the danger posed by the growing number of radical militia groups. He warned the Attorney General that the "mixture of armed groups and those who hate is a recipe for disaster." This was six months before the Oklahoma City bombing.
In Gathering Storm, he tells for the first time why he decided to alert the Attorney General and why the danger of serious domestic terrorism still exists.
The militia movement we saw so much about immediately after the Oklahoma City bombing was not a spontaneous grassroots uprising of men angry at big government but, as Dees shows, a well-organized effort by some of America's most dangerous far-right extremists. Its goal is to destabilize our democracy through domestic terrorism. Few are more qualified to expose the militia network and its close cousin, the Christian patriots, than Dees.
Dees points out that the Oklahoma City tragedy was not an isolated event. He connects together a series of violent acts and plans promoted by militia groups and small secret "patriot" cells since the early 1980s. Many, he says, have ties to sources of political power in state houses and in Washington. Dees names names, gives places and details events that could prove embarrassing to some.
About the Author
Morris Dees is chief trial counsel for the Southern Poverty Law Center and its Militia Task Force.
