Link Militia joins up with FBI to fight anarchy

Tom Rhodes
Michigan

THE commander of America's most powerful militia jumped out of the door half-naked, brandishing a revolver, as I approached his Michigan home.

A decorated Vietnam veteran, Lynn VanHuizen, 53, is not a man prone to petty fears; but he is terrified of what the millennium may bring - above all, unwelcome guests.

"Sorry about that," he said putting the weapon back inside his trouser band. "You can't be too careful these days."

For the leader of the Michigan Militia Corps Wolverines, a 15,000-strong volunteer army, 2000 - and in particular Y2K, the millennium bug that may cripple computers around the globe - is more than just a glitch in the system. He and his militiamen believe it could lead to civil war in America.

Their fears are so great that militia leaders are co-operating with their traditional enemy, the FBI, to try to prevent renegade hate groups from launching a racist war and terrorist attacks during any chaos that the bug may unleash.

For months, the militiamen have been stockpiling weapons and burying them at strategic locations in readiness. They are leading local efforts to prepare the community for food shortages, for power blackouts and other imponderables.

VanHuizen has built a barn on his property to store bottled foods. He has power generators. He is installing tanks for petrol and diesel and he has dug a new well. His fields are planted with vegetables and fruit, and his pens are filled with livestock. He has enough supplies for at least three months and is prepared to feed anyone sympathetic to the cause.

"I've even got animals set aside for the National Guard, depending on which side of the fence they fall," said "the General", as he is known.

The theories of the militia may sound deeply paranoid, but they are gaining credence. A group that once relied on veterans and farmers to swell its ranks can now count teachers, Buddhists, an Amish family and a member of Mensa among its number.

According to the militia commanders, everything may start to falter on September 9 when the computers of the global positioning system, the international satellite-controlled compass system for aircraft and ships, will be confronted by the date 9/9/99, causing it to malfunction.

By the end of the year, they predict, the inflated American economy could be in tatters, electricity grids and communications systems will not be working, and supermarkets will be unable to stock their shelves. People will panic, and there will be riots. President Bill Clinton will declare martial law, giving him the right to seize all weapons owned by civilians. In the worst-case scenario, United Nations troops will be called in to enforce the peace.

For the Michigan militia and similar volunteer forces, the UN represents multinational corporate interests that threaten American sovereignty. This "new world order", they say, endangers citizens' rights under the constitution, specifically the right to bear arms.

"Y2K provides a chance for the new world order to take over - that must not happen in America," said D J Breton, a former Green Beret. "We will not shoot the first round but we will exercise our constitutional rights to defend our families."

Breton acts as the militia's state training officer for its nine divisions. His brigades, he says, are ready for anything. He teaches guerrilla warfare, how to set an ambush, the benefits of camouflage and how to kill a man instantly in complete silence. The militiamen also take first aid and nutrition classes, and are well versed in survival tactics and psychological warfare.

Breton advises new members on their equipment, including uniforms and weapons. On exercises he tends to carry an AK-47 assault rifle with a 100-round drum, almost 500 spare rounds, a semi-automatic pistol and a hunting knife.

The original purpose of the militias was to defend the rights of citizens against all enemies, both foreign and domestic. Most saw their main active service against an overweening crown during the war of independence. The slogan "no taxation without representation" is now used against Washington.

The militias won many recruits in the wake of two specific incidents involving federal agents. At Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in 1992, Randy Weaver, a white separatist and anti-federalist, engaged in a stand-off with FBI agents that ended in a gunfight. His wife and son were killed. A year later, in Waco, Texas, 80 people, including 18 children, died in a conflagration following the government siege at the compound owned by the Branch Davidians, a separatist sect.

Incensed by what they viewed as government aggression, volunteers joined the ranks of the militias and other "patriot" groups. But when a vast fertiliser bomb was subsequently detonated outside federal government offices in Oklahoma City, killing 168, and two militia supporters, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, were convicted, the group saw a dramatic fall in membership.

"We were made out to be something we are not," said Tom Wayne, the militia's executive officer, whose wife left him as a result of Oklahoma. "It was a very bad time for us."

A far more frightening collection of individuals has since filled the vacuum, however: the racist and anti-semitic zealots of the so-called "Christian Identity", who include members of the Aryan Nations, neo-Nazi skinheads and a virulent offshoot of the Ku Klux Klan.

At a recent meeting in Missouri, Robert McCurry, an Identity "minister", declared a state of emergency. "I want to tell you that war rages in America. The enemy is not coming, the enemy is here," he said. "God has ordained that his people be a warring people. Lord of Hosts means lord of a mass of people organised for war."

It was a member of Aryan Nations - Buford Furrow, 37, an unemployed mechanic - who wounded five people last week in a Los Angeles Jewish community centre and murdered a Filipino postal worker - a "non-white target of opportunity" - as he fled police.

Such racism angers the Michigan men. "I would never have thought that this country could become a centre for ethnic cleansing," said the silver-haired VanHuizen, as he sat in the gun shop he owns at Muskegan on the shores of Lake Michigan. "I think we will be forced to take these groups out - to kill them, if necessary."

He and his senior commanders have received regular death threats from Christian Identity members in Michigan since the militia last year purged its ranks, court-martialling those associated with white supremacy. As many as 300 left to join more radical groups.

"We're very careful about who joins," said Wayne. "Some of these people just want a war."

The FBI has begun to recognise that these new groups pose a far greater threat than the traditional anti-government militias that they have been monitoring so rigorously. And federal agents have been reaching out to groups such as the Michigan militia to enlist their help in averting acts of violence.

It is a large step for these militiamen to begin to trust federal agents who have spent so many years staking out their homes, tapping their telephones and harassing their families. But their conviction in an impending catastrophe brought on by the millennium and the fear that it will provide an opportunity for the rise of renegade hate groups have made them unusual bedfellows, united in the defence of traditional liberties.

"We have no qualms in working with the government against Christian Identity," said VanHuizen. "We've all got to survive to make sure these crazies don't. It's a question of good and evil."

-- lisa (lisa@work.now), August 16, 1999

Answers

Possibly Arlin is handy and can comment?

-- Lisa (lisa@work.now), August 16, 1999.

The whole thing's a mess isn't it Lisa?

*Big Sigh*

Community/neighborhood co-operation... not disintigration... is what works... in times of local crisis.

I do hope more people "get" that notion... soon.

Diane, a pacifist

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), August 16, 1999.

Diane

I dunno...some of these folks are in it precisely to crash the system...a once in a lifetime opportunity.

-- K. Stevens (kstevens@It's ALL going away in January.com), August 16, 1999.

Pardon me but what's all the moaning about? If militas and the FBI can put aside mutual mistrust and work together to nail some racists thugs I can't help but take it as a ray of hope.

Or is it just wildly optimistic me?

Keep your...

-- eyes_open (best@wishes.net), August 16, 1999.

Ahhhh, a breath of hope. More stories like this, and even I might join a militia.

My reading of the words of the founders of this country, is that the "well armed militia" is to exist as an ancillary force to the government, not to serve as a potential source of insurgency.

This is a tough thing for me to write, considering the stand I've taken on gun-toters, but my hat's off to VanHuizen for his tough stand against hate groups.

-- Boknon (bok0non@my-Deja.com), August 16, 1999.

I'm very pleased by this development.

-- lisa (lisa@work.now), August 16, 1999.

I'll pass this on to Arlin for his comment here. Now you know why Arlin was accused on this forum of BEING an FBI agent. Not so, never was so. What he was/is is anti-racist. And pro constitutional government in the simple old-fashioned sense of the word as per our founders.

The fears expressed here about race war are legitimate. Consider how real they must be for this cooperation to be taking place at all.

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), August 16, 1999.

For Newbie reference, many of the "optimist" posters here believe that most of we "pessimists" here actually want to facilitate TEOTWAWKI.. in the following thread, about halfway down, is some literature where some crazies actually do want the end of the world. These are the types MM is helping the FBI track down.

old thread on this board

-- lisa (lisa@work.now), August 16, 1999.

Hi Folks,

I whole-heartedly support this stand on the part of the MM. I'd point out in passing that a number of other units, including 1 Alabama Cavalry Regt and the 51st MO have held policies rejecting the racist nonsense of the white supremacists for a while now. Indeed it only makes sense. If the militias are in fact to protect their communities, it is incumbent on us all to stand firmly against the hate-filled, racist, unconstitutional, and entirely un-American efforts of groups such as the klan, "aryan nations", "national front" and the identity cultists; as well as all others who seek to promulgate their racist agendas through force and violence.

As Constitutionalists we have and will continue to support and defend the rights of ALL of the members of our communities.

Arlin H. Adams

-- Arlin H. Adams (ahadams@ix.netcom.com), August 16, 1999.

here's something sort of tangental, but seems to relate to this thread.

-Arlin

---------------------------------------------------------------------- "Hanoi Tom" Hayden's Hypocrisy by Mike Vanderboegh 13 August 1999

(Author's note: The Hayden anti-militia opinion piece referred to below (which first appeared in the LA Times) was reprinted in my local newspaper, The Birmingham News, on 13 August, under the headline "Militia(ous) Acts". My thanks to Carolyn Hart for forwarding it to me via email. My response begins below.)

The lights were out on the porch of the house where the visiting "political extremist" from out-of-state rested from his labors of the day. Undercover agents of the state police had faithfully reported that he had been been stirring up the racial passions of crowds of citizens in this formerly sleepy little town. The sheriff of the county wanted to arrest him. And there were citizens who felt threatened enough by his mere presence to want him dead.

Yet even though local law enforcement officers cruised past the house with orders to arrest him if he showed himself, they dared not disturb his sleep. For there on the porch, betrayed by the occasional flare of a burning cigarette, sat members of the local militia who had sworn to die rather than let the "racial rabble rouser" be taken by law officers. Their semi-automatic military rifles and carbines with large capacity magazines could be plainly seen in the pale moonlight. No one doubted they would use them in defense of their leader.

Idaho, last year? Illinois, 1999? No, Mississippi, 1965.

The local militia was an organization called the Deacons for Defense and Justice. Many a proponent of non-violent civil rights actions owed his sleep and his life to the plain threat of defensive violence that the Deacons represented. Many a southern sheriff at the time owed his job, if not his personal allegiance, to the Ku Klux Klan. The Deacons were a strictly defensive formation, but by providing a countervailing force against a perverted justice system, they acted in the finest traditions of the armed citizenry as the ultimate guarantors of liberty in America. Somewhere, the Founding Fathers were smiling.

Flash forward thirty-four years. Today, former Civil Rights movement supporter California State Senator Tom Hayden has seized the opportunity of neo-Nazi Buford Furrow's LA shooting spree to push for more legislation restricting the free exercise of arms. Complimenting the calls of his left-wing comrades for universal gun registration or even confiscation, the ex-husband of "Hanoi Jane" Fonda wants an anti- militia law which would effectively outlaw self-defense organizations such as the Deacons for Defense and Justice. It seems that Hayden no longer trusts the militia.

His proposed law would also force citizens to disclose to the government so-called "weapons arsenals." The definition of a "weapons arsenal" in the proposal is a little vague, making one law-abiding citizen's antique gun collection a law enforcement bureaucrat's "maddog militia arsenal." I'm sure the Klan would have liked to know where the Deacons kept their weapons, too.

All of which highlights both the irony and the rank hypocrisy of former "progressives" such as Tom Hayden and Bill Clinton changing their minds about guns in the hands of "the great unwashed" once they have their own elitist fingers upon the levers of the government they formerly distrusted. The pliable "principles" of a former Students for a Democratic Society leftist like Hayden may be expected, but what of the recent decision by the NAACP to sue gun manufacturers and to back gun control legislation?

Is their sense of history so non-existent that they do not know the racist roots of gun control in this country? Do they not recall that America's first gun control laws were designed to keep guns out of the hands of their own disenfranchised emancipated slave ancestors?

Do they not remember that the 1968 Gun Control Act (which was patterned after the Nazi gun laws of Hitler's Germany) was passed by a coalition of Democrats and Republicans mostly out fears that militant black citizens like the Black Panther Party were taking their Second Amendment rights too seriously by parading with their firearms on the steps of the California State House? Do they not care that the so-called "Saturday Night Special" pistols they seek to ban because they are "cheap and easily available" may be the only handguns poor inner-city and rural black women can afford to provide a minimum defense against rape or robbery?

Of course, their positions are taken out of arrogance not ignorance. Access of the citizenry to firearms is about the fundamental power relationships of a political system. Those who trust the government, distrust an armed citizenry. Those who distrust their government, trust the armed citizenry. Now that the "outs" are "in", why should they act any differently than their white racist predecessors who feared tangling with the Deacons? That their "principles" are of the phase-of-the- moon type can be proven merely by considering how they would feel about citizen's militias for self-defense in the unlikely event that former Nazi David Duke were to become President. Why Charlie Schumer would join Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership!

The Anti-Federalist Founders were wiser than they knew when they insisted upon the Bill of Rights as a prerequisite for adoption of the whole constitutional package. They trusted the armed citizenry as guarantors of their own liberty. They trusted the militia.

Hayden and his gun control cronies portray today's constitutional militias which organized spontaneously in the aftermath of the Ruby Ridge murders, the Waco massacre and subsequent Clintonian gun control legislation as being allies of mad racist groups such as Buford Furrow's Aryan Nations. Demonization of militias may help Hayden pass his legislation, but the truth is that America's constitutional militias that "Hanoi Tom" wishes to put out of business are made up of law-abiding citizens who believe that the God-given liberties codified in the Constitution extend to all Americans, regardless of race, creed, color or religion.

Indeed, Aryan Nation's founder Richard Butler told journalist Jonathan Karl that the Constitutional Militias are made up of people who are "white on the outside, black on the inside, with a Jewish brain." That we despise Butler and his ilk even more than they despise us has gone unnoticed by the media. Are they merely lazy, or are they selling something?

In fact, Furrow's shooting spree, which has spurred calls for gun confiscation and repressive legislation like Hayden's, can be seen as fitting into a long-time neo-Nazi strategy. The Nazis believe that if they can spur the government into confiscating heretofore law-abiding citizens' guns, it will start a civil war that they think they can ultimately win.

Of course, exaggerated claims by scare-mongering professional fund raisers like Morris Dees aside, the Nazis know better than anyone their pitifully small numbers. They still hold their conventions in phone booths, and their dreams of Blackshirts holding sway on the streets of America are merely the methamphetamine flashbacks of the lumpenproletariat petty drug dealers they are. Only spectacular media events like Furrow's rampage allows them to assume potency, and that only with the willing cooperation of a credulous and gun-control obsessed media. Dragon-slayers need dragons if they are to persuade the villagers to pay them for the privilege of obeying their commands, even if the reptilian shadows must be amplified with digitally remastered dragon's breath and mirrors.

The final irony is that the Clintons, Renos, Haydens, Schumers and Feinsteins of the Gun Control Uber Alles Crowd should find such common ground with their alleged enemies the Nazis on gun confiscation. The former are pushing for it because they believe the American armed citizenry will in the end give up their guns if commanded in the right tone of voice, and the latter are salivating for it because, as wrong as the Nazis are about everything else, they know that America's gun owners will fight to retain the free exercise of arms. In fact, they are counting on the chaos such a civil war would bring. Of course the Nazis should be careful what they wish for, they might get more chaos than they bargained for.

So here we stand, refusing to compromise our free exercise of arms any further. We, the heretofore law-abiding armed citizenry, about to have the line of the law drawn behind us, making us outlaws and criminals in our own land. The NRA and the Republicans have sold us out, giving to the government in the present "Republican" legislative package the right to control the legal, private sale of arms-- something not even King George III was tyrannical enough to try. Extrapolating from their own cowardice, the gun controllers like "Hanoi Tom" think we'll roll over without firing a shot, and the Nazis can't wait for us to start shooting. Now what's a free American who intends to remain free supposed to do?

I'm not sure how this will end. But I expect that someday soon I'll be sitting on a front porch, maybe my own, in the pale moonlight. Just me and a couple million or so of my friends. And if some of Bill Clinton's and Tom Hayden's friends drive by in the night with evil on their mind, I hope they take a leaf from the Klan and keep on driving. But however it turns out, I know that somewhere those Deacons for Defense and Justice who have crossed over to join the Founding Fathers will be standing shoulder to shoulder with them, and they'll all be smiling. For they have always trusted the militia as the final guarantor of liberty. And we will not let them down.

-- Mike Vanderboegh Alabama Gun Owners/1 ACR P.O. Box 926 Pinson, AL 35126 jdtimes@juno.com

On Thu, 12 Aug 1999 16:04:18 -0700 cdhart@laurie.net (Carolyn Hart) writes: This is the same Tom Hayden who advocated violence for his causes about 30 years ago, and he was married to Jane Fonda for a time-- Carolyn

Source: LA Times Published: 8/12/99 Author: TOM HAYDEN Posted on 08/12/1999 07:31:53 PDT by dirtboy

These crimes are not the work of just a maladjusted few; appoint a task force to focus on ways to deal with rogue militias.

When violence is attributed to black or Latino street gang members, the authorities react with strike teams, increased expenditures for law enforcement, roundups of parole violators, as well as programs directed at prevention. So why the failure to similarly respond to the violence that arises from white male "Christian" hate groups in America?

In the wake of the Granada Hills shooting and similar tragedies, the governor or attorney general should appoint an official task force to recommend effective approaches to combating right-wing hate groups, paramilitaries and militias.

According to Kenneth Stern, the American Jewish Committee's expert on hate groups, there has been a "lackluster local law enforcement response to the militias [because] of the willingness of many to write off militia activities as nuttiness or 'isolated incidents.' "

The immediate tragedy this week at the Jewish community center in Granada Hills is about virulent anti-Semitism, coming weeks after the synagogue burnings in Sacramento. At other times the violence is connected to racism or hatred of women, homophobia, even anti-environmentalism.

It is a dangerous denial to believe that these acts of violence are nothing more than the work of deranged and isolated individuals. Of course, there is no single conspiracy linking them. But there are supremacist ideologies, networks and armed groups that together create an atmosphere that stimulates and condones these violent eruptions.

There are 224 militia groups in America, according to a 1995 survey, 35 of them in California. But their reach is broader. In 1994, the National Rifle Assn. stated that while they were not creating militia groups, neither would they "contemplate discouraging the exercise of [this] constitutional right." For legal reasons, supremacist groups consciously practice "leaderless resistance," in which apparenty isolated acts of mayhem fulfill a larger agenda.

So intense are the simmering crevices beneath the benign surface of America that there is no center, no common understanding of reality. Most whites and blacks held utterly different understandings of the O.J. Simpson verdict. The all-white militias believe that they, not racial minorities, are the victims of economic downsizing and political correctness. While a large American majority supports gun control, the militia viewpoint is that gun control is the first step toward military occupation by either the federal government or the United Nations.

We need stronger steps to deter violence, such as a law enforcement task force on militias. But we must ask how this loss of trust in common ground could happen in a democracy with a free media and public education system. A task force should consider the following actions:

* Enact a law, as proposed by the Anti-Defamation League, banning paramilitary training of militias that advocate supremacist ideologies or taking up arms against the state. Such laws against private armies existed in 24 states by 1995--not including California--but there have been no prosecutions since the mid-1980s.

* Enact local or state ordinances requiring the disclosure of weapons arsenals owned by individuals. This was proposed after the 1997 North Hollywood shootout, only to die in Sacramento.

* Toughen programs to train law enforcement and administrators generally in understanding, detecting and deterring hate crimes and militias. Currently the required training is minimal.

* Review proposed "tolerance curricula" for their effectiveness in public schools and other civic institutions and consider mandating such an educational requirement.

* Assess whether it was coincidental that militias and hate groups surged in the 1990-95 period when economic downsizing was ripping through the industrial economy long dominated by white males. If so, what policies are needed to provide a sense of economic security for all during the transition to a multicultural society?

* Review whether television and films contribute in any way to the atmosphere of division, resentment and violence in our society, and what might be encouraged to promote public tolerance of diversity.

It is time to look in the mirror, not the other way.

State Sen. Tom Hayden Is a Democrat Representing Parts of West Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley

-- Arlin H. Adams (ahadams@ix.netcom.com), August 16, 1999.

This is very encouraging. Living with Richard Butler and his Aryan Nations practically in my backyard, the thought of them exploiting any potential disruptions in emergency services as a result of Y2K has been quite a concern to me.

-- RUOK (RUOK@yesiam.com), August 16, 1999.