It's the 25th anniversary of the tragic Oklahoma City Bombing, and we need to talk about how white nationalism, conspiracy theories, and manipulation by the GOP and NRA cause mass tragedies.

Here's what I learned researching my new book AMERICAN RULE

1/ https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/611439/american-rule-by-jared-yates-sexton/

The story of how the OKC Bombing happened is abbreviated because in America we cannot reckon with our major problems, namely the interconnected nature of white supremacy, political paranoia and manipulation, and violence as a means of maintaining white patriarchal supremacy.

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Timothy McVeigh is just treated by American history like some lone killer lashing out and that it was an isolated thing, a blip on the radar, but it is a massive moment that should make apparent the problems in America that we're still dealing with today.

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To understand what happened in OKC, we have to start at Ruby Ridge in Idaho, where the Weaver family was subject to a raid that killed a child and his mother. It was a disaster that set off a major white nationalist/militia/separatist movement that we're still dealing with.

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What you need to know about the Weavers is that they were engaged in a white supremacist Christian religion of their own making. Vicki Weaver, who was killed, was their "prophet" who created the religion from her own visions. It was apocalyptic and focused on a final battle.

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The Weavers were an offshoot of what I call The Cult of the Shining City. They read and followed the writings of a man named Hal Lindsey, who took Christian Revelation theology and inserted America, creating a new nationalistic, paranoid ideology.

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Hal Lindsey's work inspired the Weavers, but it also found purchase with Ronald Reagan, who viewed much of the Cold War through Lindsey's nationalistic Revelations/End Times lens.

The Weavers were part of that same "war."

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The Weavers were determined to have an apocalyptic showdown with the government they believed had been taken over by the New World Order, a mythical satanic conspiracy against the United States.

Unfortunately, they got their showdown and drew the government into it.

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A quick aside: globalism was constructed by Reagan and H.W. Bush, but the moment Bill Clinton took over, the New World Order conspiracy of a global conspiracy against the US was pushed by Republicans, blaming him for the global order they had put into motion.

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Religious figures involved in the Cult of the Shining City like Pat Robertson pushed hard on the New World Order conspiracy for profit and power. They framed Clinton as the head of a major conspiracy against the US and every reform he introduced as a plot against America.

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People who grew up in the 90's are familiar with the New World Order conspiracy theory and its prevalence. It told white Americans that their power was endangered by a conspiracy of foreigners, traitors, liberals, women, and vulnerable populations.

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It didn't help that there were several instances where federal response was lacking against apocalyptic sects. In Waco we watched the Branch Davidian Compound burn.

The NWO conspiracy grew with every passing tragedy and it really seemed like an invisible war was raging.

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Clinton and Janet Reno were not great at handling these crises where apocalyptics wanted a showdown with the "NWO" US government. Their failures, however, were rebranded as intentional murders and evil crackdowns.

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Crackpots like Alex Jones built conspiracy empires off framing Clinton and Reno as NWO thugs determined to destroy the country and hand it over to satanic forces. It was a time of cassettes and VHS and radio shows. It was HUGE business to push these conspiracies.

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Quickly there grew a militia/white supremacist movement that was called the Patriot Movement. It was a bunch of fascistic organizations determined to destroy the New World Order, which they believed was a plot against white supremacy.

It exploded in size and scope.

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This is where the current iteration of the NRA came from. They saw an opportunity to stoke the paranoia among the Patriot Movement for gun sales and fundraising. Wayne LaPierre started calling Clinton a Nazi and referring to the New World Order constantly.

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Following Waco, the GOP started working hand-in-hand with the NRA on fundraising and strategic efforts, using the burgeoning white supremacist, paranoid Patriot Movement as a powerful base for voting blocs and fundraising.

They also spoke constantly of the New World Order.

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The need for the GOP to become a paranoid death cult came from the fact that Bill Clinton was a center/center-right president. They had little in the way of actual legislative disagreement with him - the only way they could beat him was to frame him as a power-mad dictator.

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To further the cause of labeling Clinton as an NWO tyrant, Rush Limbaugh provided much of the fuel, saying on his massive and powerful radio show that Americans were ready to take up arms in a violent revolution.

Everywhere white supremacists turned they were hearing this.

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Now. We're about to McVeigh, but it's a mistake to think he's a lone wolf or a blip. These calls for violence and paranoia by mainstream Right Wing sources led to actual violence. Murders. Robberies. Hate crimes.

It had actual, real world consequences.

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Okay. So, McVeigh was brought into the world of the Patriot Movement, a white supremacist, paranoid separatist, militia culture, while a soldier in the First Gulf War.

He and squadmates traded gun magazines and propaganda materials that pushed this invisible NWO war.

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It's important to note that these publication and propaganda materials were FILLED with NRA ads and fundraising materials, asking readers what they were going to do when Clinton destroyed the 2nd Amendment.

The NRA and Patriot Movement were completely intertwined.

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In one of these magazines, McVeigh came across a book called "The Turner Diaries." For anyone who hasn't read this book, it's a vile thing, but is more or less the bible for the white supremacist/Neo-Nazi movement that still exists today.

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In researching AMERICAN RULE, I had to go into a special collections library to read The Turner Diaries. I was...shocked. As racist and dangerous a book as I have ever read. I mean, just literally jaw-dropping how terrible it is.

But this is where McVeigh found inspiration.

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The Turner Diaries is a novel about a future America where whites have been dominated by a globalist cabal of race traitors and minorities, a fulfillment of the New World Order conspiracy. The plot is that a man named Turner finally fights back against the NWO.

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McVeigh read the Turner Diaries, and believed he could actually be the fictional character, that if he was able to set the right signal, he could start a massive revolution by oppressed whites, especially among the Patriot Movement and Neo-Nazi groups, and change history.

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He copied a bombing in the book of a major federal building. It gives instructions on how to make a bomb, how to plant it, everything. He looked at the explosion in OKC and it looked just like the one described in the Turner Diaries.

He had brought it to life.

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When McVeigh detonated the bomb, he believed he was a soldier in the invisible war against the NWO that he had been told about over and over by racist propaganda, the Patriot Movement, the NRA, the GOP, all of it. He took this paranoid conspiracy manipulation literally.

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Now. Let's talk about the Turner Diaries. They were actually written by a white supremacist leader named William Pierce.

Pierce was one of the foremost Neo-Nazis in the country who worked to bridge the multiple Neo-Nazi groups into a massive understanding and conspiracy.

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Pierce's book was meant to create "lone wolves" who would carry out mass terrorist attacks on the United States that would build a larger movement and eventually realize the white supremacist revolution he dreamed about.

It didn't end with McVeigh.

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Pierce and other Neo-Nazi leaders in America built an actual network and it grew and grew and grew. It was largely underground until...2016.

That's when we started seeing the alt-right and other fascist organizations emerge as Donald Trump began to gain power.

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Before Pierce died in 2002, he warned that he had planted the seeds for a massive Neo-Nazi, white supremacist revolution, it was only a matter of time until it matured to a size and scope that could plunge America into a racial revolution.

Neo-Nazis believe we're there now.

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You might remember in 2016 there were tons of fascists on here talking about hanging journalists, things like "The Day of the Rope." That was the Turner Diaries.

It's still the bible for Neo-Nazis and fascists in America. And their populations are growing by the day.

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The network William Pierce built in the 1990's, the network that the NRA and GOP relied on as a political and fundraising base, has only grown since then and metastasized into an actual and thriving movement under Trumpism.

The ideas that caused the OKC Bombing still exist.

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America's complete denial of its white supremacy problem, and complete denial that we have a massive, interconnected problem with white supremacist terrorism has given these fascists cover to grow in power, scope, and membership.

Our denial grants them power.

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These "lone wolves" aren't lone wolves. When shooters like Dylann Roof and other mass killers go out and massacre minorities, they're doing so because they believe they're soldiers in an invisible war.

It's. The. Same. Invisible. War.

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Our coverage of mass shootings, fascist rallies, and things like the tragedy in Charlottesville, miss the mark because the media and many Americans are afraid to look at the entire puzzle.

The denial of white supremacy and white terrorism endangers us all.

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Following 9/11, we were told that terrorism was a giant threat. It wasn't. Not Islamic terrorism, anyway. It's always been white terrorism, and the body count and tragedies are piling up by the day.

These groups are growing but they're not being covered.

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As Americans, we have to examine our past, see the actual connections, and deal with the very real and very tragic repercussions of white supremacy. We cannot just pretend that all white supremacist killers are blips or lone wolves.

We have a massive fascism problem.

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To pretend there isn't a white terrorism problem, that it isn't all linked to white supremacy and paranoid political manipulation by the NRA/GOP and fascist leaders is a disservice to those who have died and those who lost everything.

We must see it for what it is.

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