==================================================================
The BIRCH BARK BBS / 414-242-5070
==================================================================

THE NEW AMERICAN -- May 29, 1995
Copyright 1995 -- American Opinion Publishing, Incorporated P.O.
Box 8040, Appleton, WI  54913

==================================================================

ARTICLE: Nation
TITLE: A Post-Oklahoma Kristallnacht
AUTHOR: William Norman Grigg

==================================================================

It is part of the genius of a great leader to make adversaries of
different fields appear as always belonging to one category.... [A]
number of different internal enemies must always be regarded as one
in such a way that in the opinion of the mass ... the war is being
waged against one enemy alone.

Thus wrote Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf, explaining the rhetorical
strategy his party used to beguile the German public into
supporting the National Socialist movement. Seeking political
advantage in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing, Bill
Clinton has displayed a similar gift for ideological reductionism,
consolidating his political opponents on the right into "one enemy
alone."

This campaign began during an April 24th speech in Milwaukee, in
which Mr. Clinton denounced "purveyors of hatred and division, the
promoters of paranoia.... They spread hate. They leave the
impression ... by their very words, that violence is acceptable."
By denouncing "some of the things that are regularly said over the
airwaves in America today," Mr. Clinton artlessly sought to impugn
conservative talk radio as an accomplice in the terrorist attack.

The President revisited this theme during an April 30th speech in
New York City's Waldorf Astoria. Citing the Oklahoma City bombing
as an attack by "the forces of organized evil," Mr. Clinton
generously allowed that his conservative political opponents were
not directly responsible for the carnage. However, he insisted,
"they do practice and they do preach violence against those who are
of a different color, a different background, or who worship a
different God. They do feed on fear and uncertainty. They do
promote paranoia. In the name of freedom of speech, they have
abandoned the responsibility that democratic freedoms impose on all
of us...."

Mr. Clinton's rhetorical net drew indiscriminately from every kind,
gathering peaceful, principled critics of the federal government
together with terrorists and child-killers:

"Many of these people attack our government and the citizens who
work for it who actually guarantee the freedoms they abuse. In the
name of building for a better future they would relive the most
destructive chapters of evil.... They can certainly snuff out
innocent lives and sow fear in our hearts. They are indifferent to
the slaughter of children. They threaten our freedoms and our way
of life, and we must stop them."

In a May 1st speech in Washington, DC before leaders of EMILY's
List, a radical feminist group, the President once more ruminated
on the subject of "the forces of organized evil," and again
associated critics of federal usurpation with the specific
individuals responsible for the bombing: "...  we must also stand
up against those who say that somehow this is all right, this is
somehow a political act -- people who say, I love my country but I
hate my government. These people, who do they think they are,
saying that their government has stamped out human freedom?"

Displaying the cravenness which is his most recognizable trait, Mr.
Clinton has declined specifically to identify "these people." As
liberal columnist Charles Krauthammer has observed, the President
has "repeatedly charged dark and unseen forces, a shadowy unnamed
'they,' with spreading paranoia -- a classic of the very paranoid
style of politics Clinton is ostensibly decrying."

The President was certainly secure in the knowledge that the
Establishment media cartel would do the dirty work of defaming
specific targets -- and such has indeed been the case.

"Right-Wing Conspiracy"

As the investigation into the Oklahoma atrocity proceeds,
journalists and commentators who habitually deride "conspiracy
theories" are embracing a conspiracy theory of their own -- namely,
that the bombing was the work of a secret network of stealthy and
cunning "right-wing extremists." Timothy McVeigh, the only
individual charged in the bombing thus far, has been described as
an "anti-government extremist" with "links" to the militia movement
-- and, by derivation, to the larger conservative movement. McVeigh
himself has been silent regarding his political views. What little
is known of his otherwise tacit convictions has been culled from
letters he wrote to congressmen and to the editor of a New York
newspaper, as well as from the hearsay reminiscences of McVeigh's
acquaintances. It is known that McVeigh was in loose orbit around
various militia groups but apparently was never formally affiliated
with any of them.

Nevertheless, federal authorities have proceeded on the premise
that McVeigh's actions were part of a "right-wing conspiracy" whose
reach may extend to those who had no direct role in the atrocity --
and the major media has eagerly followed the federal government's
lead.

"Conspiracy of Militias Suspected in Bombing: Right-Wingers who
Incite Violence," blared a front-page headline in the April 25th
San Francisco Examiner. The story blessed with that singularly
tendentious title reported: "Investigators ... believe [the
bombing] may be the result of a wide conspiracy peopled by right-
wing militia members who incited violence and carnage." According
to the report, "The possible existence of a conspiracy brought
suggestions that the government will bring broad racketeering laws
to bear on leaders of various right-wing militia groups." One
federal investigator in Oklahoma City remarked, "This could go all
over the country.... There are so many who incited so many people
here."

The possible use of RICO actions against "right-wing extremists" is
but one possible enrichment of federal power to persecute political
critics. Representative Andrew Jacobs (D-IN) has renewed the call
for enactment of the so-called "Fairness Doctrine," a policy
employed by leftists in the early 1960s for the admitted purpose of
squelching conservative talk radio. Jacobs connects the Oklahoma
tragedy with Francisco Duran's assault on the White House, and
asserts that both of these acts indict talk radio: "Use right-wing
monopoly airwaves to preach hatred and character assassination
against the President, and watch the bullets fly at the White House
from unstable listeners...."

"Criminal" Conservatism

Mr. Clinton's opportunistic invocation of "these people" was still
fresh when New York Times editorial page editor A.M. Rosenthal
decreed that all Americans have a patriotic duty to execrate the
"extremists" in our midst. "As for those Americans who make a good
business of spreading paranoia, they know what hatred can do,"
proclaimed Rosenthal. "Americans who refuse to recognize the
President's right and duty to expose hate peddling are themselves
abandoning a critical moral battlefield. If there is another
Oklahoma, they will not have to tell themselves that they did it.
No, but they will have to ask themselves what they did to prevent
it."

The April 24th Wall Street Journal placed critics of federal
usurpation along the same continuum with those responsible for the
bombing: "By launching an extreme attack against the government,
the truck bombers who blew the side off the Oklahoma City federal
building could cause others to rethink their own, less-radical
attacks." From the perspective promoted by the Establishment,
peaceful conservative activism differs from mass murder in degree,
not in kind.

Furthermore, the New York Times hastened to depict the "right-wing
conspiracy" as a global menace. In its April 24th issue, the
flagship periodical of the Establishment carried an op-ed column by
Ingo Hasselbach entitled "Extremism: A Global Network," in which
the author -- an erstwhile neo-Nazi gangster -- opined, "In my
opinion, the leaders of the Michigan Militia and other such groups
cannot dodge a larger moral responsibility [for the bombing],
whether or not they are legally to blame." This is because, in
Hasselbach's view, "Extremist groups in America and in Europe
create a climate" in which violent acts occur.

The concept of guilt by climatological metaphor has been peddled by
pundits too numerous to mention. Additionally, some have extended
the libel to include a pat reference to "angry white men" -- the
controlled media's preferred stereotype for conservatives of all
races and both genders. This invocation of race and class
resentment has been used by the Wall Street Journal, syndicated
columnists Carl Rowan and Juan Williams, and numerous others.

Furthermore, terms such as "pathological," "virulent," and
"violent" have been used to describe "conservative extremists"
critical of the government. The facile phrase, "what the late
historian Richard Hofstadter called 'the paranoid style in American
politics,'" has been deployed countless times by writers whose
acquaintance with the volume extends only to title and author. The
use of this therapeutic vocabulary suggests, in Soviet fashion,
that "extreme" critics of the government are literally sick and
must be "cured" of their political views. Perhaps the definitive
example of this approach can be found in Time magazine's May 8th
profile of right-wing "extremists," which bore the title: "Enemies
of the State."

Such was the ideological flavor of post-bombing "news" coverage
that it left no room on the left for the communist People's Weekly
World. The April 29th edition of the Communist Party tabloid simply
recycled potted phrases about the "virulently racist roots of the
heinous massacre," the "incitements to violence" which are
supposedly common on conservative talk radio, and the dangers of
"rightist hate rhetoric."

Brzezinski's Dichotomy

Shortly after the Oklahoma City bombing, the editorial board of the
Christian Science Monitor received a briefing on the dangers of
"right-wing extremism" from Zbigniew Brzezinski, a Trilateral
Commission heavyweight who is a pillar of the Establishment.
Brzezinski was asked if conservative activism had created a
"climate for the Oklahoma bombing." He replied, "I don't see how
you can even remotely relate the conservative rhetoric to anything
like this. Gingrich and Dole talk about fundamental changes of
values."

However, this selective exculpation of the "right" was used by
Brzezinski for the purpose of focusing on a more specific "enemy":

"...  there is an absolute dividing line between what [the
Republican leaders] are saying and those much further to the right,
who really feel that the American government has been taken over by
some kind of conspiracy and that a struggle for freedom now is
underway which entitles them to commit these acts. We really are
talking about the lunatic fringe. And I think there is an enormous
gap between the conservative rhetoric and these lunatic fringe
groups."

In this fashion, career politicians like Dole and Gingrich --
opportunists whose careers are unblemished by resolute
statesmanship -- represent the limits of acceptable "conservatism."
Beyond them, according to Brzezinski, lies the "lunatic fringe,"
composed of those who not only talk about but seek fundamental
change and are allegedly willing to commit terrorist acts in
pursuit of that change.

This is not to say that Brzezinski uniformly condemns those who
would use violence to bring about change. Prompted to give his
"global view" of terrorism, he stated, "There is a greater
propensity in the extreme right toward individual violence than on
the extreme left. The extreme left can be very brutal, of course,
but it tends to be guided by some sort of an ideology, some sort of
a systematic concept as to how to rebuild society -- first
undermine it then rebuild it."

As Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser, Brzezinski helped to
craft policies which facilitated such violent restructuring of Iran
and Nicaragua, and the diplomatic recognition of the incomparably
blood-stained Red Chinese regime. He has also written that Marxism
offers "the best available insight into contemporary reality," and
that America is undergoing a crisis of "obsolescence." Thus it is
not surprising that Brzezinski offered only qualified criticism of
left-wing terrorists, while categorically denouncing "right-wing"
terrorists.

A similar dichotomy has been evident in the media's treatment of
the "Unabomb" murders. "Unabomb" is an eco-terrorist group
responsible for 16 bombings over the past 17 years. Five days after
the Oklahoma City bombing, Unabomb, a self-described violent
conspiracy, claimed its latest victim: Gilbert B. Murray of the
California Forestry Association. Murray had been selected for
assassination because of his work as a lobbyist for the timber
industry. The San Francisco Examiner observes that Murray's
organization "has been in the forefront to temper the federal
Endangered Species Act...." Accordingly, Murray was executed for
his crimes against Gaia.

In a letter published by the New York Times, Unabomb declared that
it seeks "the destruction of the worldwide industrial system" and
it believes that "the time is ripe for the presentation of anti-
industrial ideas." Employing the same logic the major media has
applied to the Oklahoma City bombing, could it not be said that the
rabid, anti-capitalist, anti-property rights environmentalist
agenda promoted by the Clinton Administration has "created a
climate" in which Unabomb feels free to kill with impunity?

The Clinton Administration has not seen fit to declare an armistice
in its war against "eco-criminals." Four days after the latest
Unabomb attack, Vice President Al Gore visited the Presidio
military base, the future site of a federally funded "sustainable
development" project, where he denounced the GOP-led Congress as
"the worst anti-environment Congress in the history of the nation"
and declared that it was in thrall to "extremist right-wing
groups." If Unabomb strikes again, will Al Gore be held morally
liable?

There is reason to believe that the Oklahoma City tragedy will be
used as a pretext for political persecution. Columnist Frank Rich
of the New York Times, whose beat deals almost exclusively with the
"religious right," sees in the Oklahoma bombing a pretext for a
full-scale federal crusade against the "far right." Reciting a
theme from the Planned Parenthood breviary, Rich writes that there
is a "demonstrable link between anti-abortion extremists and a
growing militia movement" and reports, "Since the Oklahoma bombing,
Federal law enforcement officials have been in constant touch with
Planned Parenthood...."

Scant weeks before the bombing, Rich had written several columns
condemning "paranoid conspiracy theories" about a UN-directed new
world order. With quicksilver hypocrisy, Rich has now embraced a
grand conspiracy theory of his own: "It's not yet known whether
[the] evidence will connect a specific militia or far-right group
to the Oklahoma tragedy. What is clear is how extensively the
nation's far-right factions are interconnected, forming a political
network that often publicly espouses the same ideology as the
terrorists in our midst...." Rich insists that "even when all the
Oklahoma City bombing suspects are arrested, the investigation will
have only just begun."

An American Kristallnacht?

The opportunistic use of Oklahoma City suggests a troubling
historical parallel. In Paris on November 7, 1938, a frantic Jewish
refugee named Herschel Grynszpan shot and killed a minor German
diplomat named Ernst von Rath. Grynszpan's target was Count
Johannes von Welczeck, the German ambassador; the assassination was
supposedly intended as retaliation for the imprisonment of
Grynszpan's family in a concentration camp. Ironically, at the time
of his death von Rath was under investigation for his alleged
opposition to the anti-Semitic policies of the National Socialist
government.

Grynszpan's act gave Germany's National Socialist regime a pretext
to carry out its planned anti-Semitic purge. The night of November
9-10, 1938, is remembered in history as Kristallnacht, or the
"Night of Shattered Glass." Jewish-owned shops in Berlin were
vandalized, synagogues were torched, and scores of harmless people
were killed or injured as Nazi-orchestrated mobs vented their
"spontaneous" outrage for the murder of von Rath. The carnival of
destruction was engineered by Nazi propaganda maestro Joseph
Goebbels, who also used the Nazi-controlled press to rile the
public against the "menace" in its midst.

As Reverend George Schenk points out, prior to Kristallnacht "Nazi
propaganda had accused the German Jews of waging a 'hate campaign'"
against the National Socialist government. Early in the National
Socialist period, Brown Shirt leader Ernst Roehm frequently
attacked "published bigotry," particularly that emanating from
conservative Christian opponents of the regime. Criticism of the
National Socialist regime, which had been muted at best before
Kristallnacht, was redefined afterwards as sympathy with Jews and
other "criminal elements."

A similar dynamic is apparent in post-bombing commentary regarding
the Waco holocaust. Because McVeigh was reportedly agitated about
the federal assault upon the Branch Davidians, and because the
bombing occurred on the second anniversary of the Waco outrage,
sympathy for the victims of that attack has been depicted as a
symptom of "extremism" rather than an understandable human reaction
to religious persecution. Unlike habitual criminal Rodney King,
whose videotaped arrest was elevated as a symbolic indictment of
police brutality, the tranquil Branch Davidians have not been
identified as a worthy object of public concern.

In a moment of supreme hypocrisy during his EMILY's List speech,
President Clinton declared: "We can't condemn one act of violence
and condone another. That would be like trying to put out a fire by
just watering one room and leaving the others to burn." Yet just
days earlier Mr. Clinton himself arrogantly dismissed criticism of
the federal government's behavior during the Waco siege during an
interview on 60 Minutes.

Mr. Clinton, who now insists that words can "give the impression
that violence is acceptable," displayed no such concern in the
immediate aftermath of the Waco holocaust. On April 20, 1993, even
as the embers of the Branch Davidian "compound" yet smoldered, Bill
Clinton saw fit to depict the slaughter of the relatively harmless
eccentrics as an object lesson to religious "fanatics": "I hope
very much that others who will be tempted to join cults and to
become involved with people like Koresh will be deterred by the
horrible scenes they have seen over the last seven weeks.... There
is, unfortunately, a rise in this sort of fanaticism all across the
world. And we may have to confront it again."

The suggestion that Attorney General Janet Reno should resign as a
result of the bloody debacle provoked this display of refined,
compassionate humanitarianism from Mr. Clinton: "I was, frankly,
'surprised' would be a mild word, that anyone would suggest that
the Attorney General should resign because some religious fanatics
murdered themselves."

Personal Observation

In a little-noticed but significant essay, Rowland Nethaway, senior
editor of the Waco Tribune-Herald, pointed out that the arrogant
indifference to individual rights and the public interest typified
by Mr. Clinton's remarks was manifest by the federal authorities
who conducted the Waco raid. Nethaway yields to no one in his
disdain for "right-wing fanatics," but -- unlike most American
journalists -- he had the unwanted opportunity to deal with the
feds firsthand. He recalls: "As the siege became a routine of daily
press briefings, it was evident that the ATF officials only
inflamed their critics. They responded to legitimate criticism from
responsible sources with ridicule and sarcasm. And they lied. ATF
officials lied to reporters and the American public. And it was
obvious."

Nethaway suggests that any indictment of those responsible for
"inciting" the Oklahoma City bombing should include the federal
agencies responsible for the Waco atrocity: "...  when government
officials lie and cover up, they make critics where there are none.
And they further destabilize the already unbalanced among us."

END

==================================================================

THE NEW AMERICAN -- May 29, 1995
Copyright 1995 -- American Opinion Publishing, Incorporated P.O.
Box 8040, Appleton, WI  54913

SUBSCRIPTIONS: $39.00/year (26 issues)

WRITTEN PERMISSION FOR REPOSTING REQUIRED: Released for
informational purposes to allow individual file transfer and non-
commercial mail-list transfer only. All other copyright privileges
are reserved. Address reposting requests to <birch@athenet.net> or
the above address.

==================================================================