Word: berlet
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...Chip Berlet, who tracks right-wing populism for Political Research Associates, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is not alone in drawing parallels between America's patriot movement and Germany's Weimar Republic. "You see the rise of a large group of disaffected middle-class and working-class people with a strong sense of grievance," he says. "None of the major parties speak for them." If their grievances aren't resolved, he warns, they are likely to become more militant. The message from the militias is largely the same: whether it takes a whisper or a shout, we will be heard. --Reported...
Such numbers make some people nervous. "If they say they're just trying to win hearts for Jesus, fine," says Chip Berlet of the left-of-center group Political Research Associates. "But given their history, I'm looking for the other shoe to drop." He cites The Rebirth of America, a 1986 book published by the foundation and edited by DeMoss daughter Nancy Leigh DeMoss that lists the gay-rights movement, abortion and "our humanistic, secular public school system" as proof that "Americans have lost their way in part because they do not know their own Christian heritage." Given that...
Such wild allegations have proved to be an effective method of grabbing the attention of the disaffected and recruiting them into militias. Most experts agree that the groups are multiplying and their membership is expanding, though estimates vary. Chip Berlet, who studies militias for Political Research Associates, a Massachusetts think tank, says militia units exist in 30 states, including large organizations in Michigan, Montana and Ohio, and he suspects there may be units in 10 other states. Although there may be hundreds of thousands of people who identify with the patriot movement, Berlet estimates that only about 10,000 people...
When it comes to organization, however, the troops go high-tech. The militia movement, says Berlet, "is probably the first national movement organized and directed on the information highway." Patriot talk shows, such as The Informed Citizen, a half-hour program broadcast on public-access TV in Northern California, spread the word that American values are under attack from within and without. Militias also communicate via the Patriot Network, a system of linked computer bulletin boards, and through postings in news groups on the Internet. One recent posting by a group calling itself the Pennsylvania Militia, more specifically...
...Berlet counters that "if [Fulani and the NAP] are really who they say they are they'd get broad political support...instead, they're ostracized by people they purport to represent...