Word: movement
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Before the bombing in Oklahoma City, few Americans would have thought that either Miller or her show posed a serious threat to the civic order. Unlike many other American citizens who identify themselves as "patriots" -- an amorphous, far-right populist movement of both armed militias and unarmed groups that harbor a deep distrust of government -- Miller does not spend her weekends running around in camouflage, shooting at imagined enemies. Nor does she buy into every conspiracy theory that crackles along the patriot grapevine, like last week's alert that the Oklahoma catastrophe-which "patriots" suspect involved three bombs...
...loggers who feel besieged by environmentalists, all the underemployed who blame their plight on NAFTA and GATT -- then the count soars upwards of 12 million. "People are drawn in under this soft umbrella of anger at the government and soon taken into the more violent part of the movement if they continue to express interest," says Mary Ann Mauney of the Atlanta-based Center for Democratic Renewal, which monitors hate groups...
Unfortunately, newcomers to the movement will find few guideposts that signal, This way the true believers, that way the dangerous zealots. The ranks of the antifederalist insurgency include plenty of the former: tax protesters, home schoolers, Christian fundamentalists and well-versed Constitutionalists. But the groups also contain an insidious sprinkling of the latter, including neo-Nazis and white supremacists. What binds these diverse elements is a fervent paranoia. The most fearful patriots believe that Soviet fighter jets are on standby in Biloxi, Mississippi, that frequent flyovers by "black helicopters'' signal an imminent occupation by the armies of a one-world...
...befits these go-it-aloners, militia members favor decentralization in their own ranks. The movement has "no national structure, no central command and no central leadership, either recognized from within the movement or without," says Jonathan Mozzochi, executive director of the Coalition for Human Dignity in Oregon. Partly, he believes, this is because it is a "grass-roots upsurge," but the lack of clear structure is intentional as well...
...everybody gets lumped in," complains Dean Compton, 33, who heads an armed militia in California's Sierra Nevada foothills. In dread of just such an event, he announced the formation of a group in March called the National Alliance of Christian Militia. Compton, who claims 85% of the militia movement is Christian, says the new alliance is an attempt to distinguish their efforts from "the hate groups and the Klan...