
By: Robin Murray-o'hair
Re: The Randy Weaver Story

THE RANDY WEAVER STORY: A NEW ARYAN SAGA (Part 2 of 2)

by Conrad Goeringer


     In the 1980s, they began trickling into Idaho and other
places in the Pacific Northwest. Hippies had been in the area for
years, at least the ones who hadn't traded in the love beads and
bell bottoms for teaching jobs or leather brief cases. The
"commune" experiments of the 1960s had pretty much ended, and
some aging flower children decided to settle down, farm, and give
varying degrees of "self sufficiency" a try. Idaho was a good
location, if you could survive the winters. There were only about
a million people in the whole state, a curious mixture of
gun-nuts, bikers, and Bible thumpers. Those who were there
generally left you alone.

     Another group began to move to Idaho and the rest of the
Pacific Northwest as well. Richard Butler, a right-wing
survivalist (some say neo-Nazi), was a California transplant who
bought land outside of the town of Coeur d'Alene. Butler had a
list of personal and organizational credentials on the far, far
right going back decades, from his leadership of the Christian
Defense League to his association with Wesley Swift, one of the
early formulators of what became known as Christian Identity. And
he had a unique vision; he established a compound as the base of
his Church of Jesus Christ Christian, and its political action
arm, known as Aryan Nations. The Compound soon became a magnet
for far- right survivalists and the site of annual gatherings for
a gamut of similar groups.

     In the Christian Identity demonology, the Jew was
responsible for the problems of humanity. The White race was the
Lost Tribe of biblical lore, and the Black a mongrelized mutant,
the evil spawn of intercourse between Eve and Satan (who for his
romantic interlude with the First Lady assumed the countenance of
a hairy, black ape-like paramour). History was a struggle between
the White race and the ever-scheming Jews; in these final days
foretold in the Bible, the Jew would have the United Nations
invade the American heartland to establish a dictatorship.
Armageddon would be fought not in the deserts of the Middle East,
but in the wheat fields and on the plains of the American
heartland.

     Butler and other Identity types sought to establish a
redoubt, a "Fortress Mid-Americana." That idea went back years
earlier, to the theories of a man named John Harrell, who had
founded a group known as the Christian-Patriots Defense League.
In Harrell's apocalypse, the United States would fall victim to
"subversion, nuclear blackmail, nuclear attack, invasion,
negotiated treaty, surrender, runaway inflation, famine, or a
combination of any two or more." He proposed the establishment of
a "Golden Triangle," a stronghold for "Christian patriots" once
the U.S. government had fallen. That geography encompassed all or
part of 17 states, the baseline running from Texas to northern
Florida, the sides running up to meet at the Canadian border.
About 200 miles from the center, amidst a group of four central
states, was Oklahoma City. Heartland.

     Butler and others, though, gravitated to the Pacific
Northwest. Land was cheap, and at the least the external presence
of the federal government not so obvious. By the mid-1980s the
area had become a strange mix. Writer Philip Weiss described it
when he wrote in the Jan. 8, 1995, New York Times Magazine:
"They've had ENOUGH, disgusted with taxes, metered water,
electricity, all government, radical individualists and
apocalyptic zealots carve out a last frontier in Idaho."  But in
among of the ex-hippies and retreatist individualists were some
hard cases like those who followed Butler and soaked up the
Christian Identity philosophy. Some were ready for immediate
revolution and broke off to form their own violent groups such as
The Order, linked to bank robberies and murder.  In 1993, Randy
Weaver, an ex-Green Beret, was working as a machinist in
Waterloo, Iowa. Both he and his wife Vicki immersed themselves in
religious study, particularly the peculiar theo-politics of
Christian Identity, with its vision of imminent doomsday. What to
do? In Matthew 24 there was the answer: "When ye therefore shall
see the abomination of desolation, which was spoken of by Daniel
the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him
understand:), Then let them which be Judaea flee into the
mountains."

     According to Weiss and other accounts, Randy Weaver did
just that -- flee into the mountains. They purchased land 4,000
feet up in the Selkirk Mountains, armed themselves, decided to
home-school their three kids, and use the Bible as a guide to
both present and future.

     It was biblical literalism to the max.

     According to Weiss, Weaver smeared the blood of a goat
over the front door frame in celebration of Passover. God wasn't
G-O-D (that was DOG spelled backwards, an abomination); he was
Yahweh and his son Yahshua. Sabbath ran from Thursday through
Friday night. During their menstrual periods, Vicki and the
girls, "unclean" in the eyes of their male god, had to retreat to
a shed outside.

     Although Weaver was not a cult-compound member, he and
his family drove to Butler's Aryan Nations stronghold at least
three times. By all accounts, it was a motley crew of Nazis, Ku
Klux Klan members, bikers, and zany survivalists all amidst the
backdrop of Christian Identity paranoia. The enemy -- Jews,
Illuminatii, federal government, Freemasons, Rothchild family,
depending on whose literature you grabbed - - was about to
strike. Prepare, White man. The day of tribulation is at hand.

     Randy Weaver didn't meet any Jews at Butler's encampment
--but he did meet Gus Magisono, a 245-pound biker. The two struck
a deal. Weaver desperately needed money, and Magisono needed
guns. Apparently some of the Aryan Nations types believed that
the guns were being used by street gangs (mostly to kill each
other); Weaver delivered two sawed-off pieces for a $300 advance.
Gus Magisono was really named Kenneth Fadeley, an informant for
the feds who had been arrested on weapons trafficking. The plan
was for Fadeley to entrap Weaver, and for Weaver to then
infiltrate further into the White supremacist movement. According
to Weiss and other accounts, Weaver refused.

     He didn't show up for trial either. On August 21, 1992,
federal marshals began to surround Weaver's mountain cabin;
Weaver's son Sam was killed in the initial confrontation, and on
the following day Vicki Weaver was killed by FBI sharpshooters as
she held on to their 10-month old child Elisheba. The government
then sent in a robot which "held a loudspeaker and microphone in
one claw and a shotgun in the other." Weaver refused to
negotiate.

     Then a man named Bo Gritz entered the scene. Gritz had
been a running mate for former KKK Grand Dragon David Duke in
1988 and a candidate for president in 1992 on a populist ticket.
He describes himself as a "man who makes things happen." The
52-year old Gritz was considered a leader in the right-wing
survivalist movement, a man with ties to a variety of groups --
and the type of man who could talk to Randy Weaver.

     Gritz went in accompanied by Jackie Brown, a friend of
Vicki Weaver. Randy gave her a letter signed by the family which
read in part:  "We had run smack into a ZOG (Zionist Occupation
Government/NEW WORLD ORDER) ambush . . . Samuel Hanson Weaver and
Vicki Weaver are Martyrs for Yah- Yahshua [sic] and the White
Race."

     Randy Weaver surrendered, went to trial, and beat the
feds. The government admitted staging photographic evidence of
the siege. The jury found that the feds had setup Randy Weaver
and his family.  Weiss tells the rest of the story: "Later, Janet
Reno ordered an investigation of the Justice Department's conduct
with regard to the Weavers, top to bottom. The department has had
a report in hand for some time, but has not released it. Last
month (Dec. 1994), news reports based on leaks of the 542-page
document say it is highly critical of federal officials' strategy
leading up to the shooting."

     Randy Weaver is still in Iowa and is suing the Federal
government for $52,000,000. His shootout and the death of his
wife and child  is an icon in modern survivalist/Identity
mythology.

                    An Impossible Choice

     As with the Waco shootout, one is left suspended between
two alternatives, neither of which can be fully embraced. The
Branch Davidians and White racialists of Aryan Nations/Christian
Identity constitute oppressive religious ideologies. They glorify
apocalyptic violence, submersion of individual personality,
oppression of women and children, and extreme mysticism with
often dire consequences.

     They're up against a federal government which isn't much
better, and in some respects worse. Under the banner of fighting
"domestic terrorism," government agents may do more than just
confiscate the souped-up M-16's and uzis belonging to middle-aged
weekend warriors who see themselves on a mission from god. They
may start policing the Internet, regulating free speech, going
after "fringe" movements, and harassing those who have
"unpopular" beliefs.

     It wouldn't be the first time.

     And they may bring about additional violence in the
process. By design or by mistake, the federal government has made
martyrs out of those who died in Waco, Texas, and the Weaver
family. Mao Tse Tung said that propaganda was often worth ten, a
hundred, a thousand machine guns. The "crackdown" called for by
President Clinton and, more shockingly, by liberals, may prove
Mao correct. Governmental power is not easily regulated,
especially when given to cops. It quickly spills out of its
containment, leading to abuses, secret operations and cover-ups.
Even the system of Congressional oversight which is a product of
the Watergate and FBI/COINTELPRO abuses has serious shortcomings.

     It is difficult to choose sides in this conflict
involving White racists, militias, and the "establishment"
police. Perhaps the only solution is to REDEFINE those choices,
recognizing that neither the Janet Renos nor the Randy Weavers of
our world have the answers we seek.

     And to realize that perhaps the toughest battles have to
be won not with laws or bullets, but with ideas.

                                --30--

 * WCE 2.0/2394 * Atheism makes sense for America.

