United States - Right Wing Groups

There is a movement afoot in America, distrust of big government and a need to push back. There are two dispossessed groups in America. The first is the large groups of racial minorities who live in the inner cities; the other is the much larger group of whites who for whatever reason cannot avail themselves of the American Dream. Most of these folks are content to listen to Rush Limbaugh and throw empty beer cans at Bill Clinton on TV. Others gather together and create groups that commiserate and plot. Few ever do anything meaningful, but they do exist.

Luckily, none of the right wing whacko groups are under the players sections. Although the names sound interesting, even a brief review of their political agenda or beliefs will convince you that many of these folks aren't firing on all cylinders. Most groups are poorly financed, loosely organized, like guns, think small, have few members, drink a lot of beer, live in the woods and usually have a pot-bellied leader who likes to go by a goofy name as exalted something or grand poobah.

The guys who do decide to get violent practice a pattern of violence similar to the "calendar terrorism" we saw executed by the leftist groups of the 1970s, when attacks coincided with specific historical events. Their MO is mostly bomb attacks. Explosives-related arrests accounted for 22 percent of criminal incidents involving extremists in a two-year period ending in December 1996. The bombmakers rely heavily on the Anarchist's Cookbook (http://www.murzik.com/book) for their lethal recipes. None have graduated to building nuclear devices (http://www.pal.xgw.fi/hew).

The 1997 number of incidents of political violence is expected to eclipse the previous high of 44 in 1995.