One year after the Oklahoma City bombing blew the lid off the paramilitary movement and its anti-Semitic undercurrents, American Jews continue to eye the militias with trepidation.
But as Jewish defense organizations work to monitor and expose the armed white dissidents who make up the militias, Jews living in the movement’s back yard say they feel no imminent threat to their security.
“I’m not very concerned about the militia movement at the present time, but that’s probably what they want us to think,” said Al Lerner, a Jewish attorney who lives in Kalispell, Mont.
To date, there have been no reports of attacks perpetrated by militia groups specifically against Jews. Nor is there evidence to suggest that Jews are living in explicit fear of these groups.
“These groups by and large do not target Jews or blacks as their prime organizing principle,” said Kenneth Stern of the American Jewish Committee, a specialist on anti-Semitism and extremism.
The movement, however, revolves around a virulently anti-government ideology that borrows from age-old anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
“The basic political premise of the militias is that found in the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion,’ but recast by most as anti-governmentalism instead of anti-Semitism,” Stern said, referring to the notorious anti-Semitic tract.
Still, with people in the leadership and ranks of militia groups who have long- standing ties to the racist movement, militia experts warn of the potential for violence against Jews.
An estimated 800 militia and militia support groups are active in at least 40 states, with between 10,000 and 40,000 members. Not all subscribe to extremist views.
Only one-quarter of the groups have racist ties, according to the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
The movement’s main breeding ground stretches from eastern Washington across the Idaho panhandle into Montana — an area of the country where fewer than 1,500 Jews account for less than 1 percent of the region’s population.
Jews living in the region say that while they remain wary of the militias’ conspiratorial ideology, they have never been individually targeted.
“I’m very concerned, but not for those of us living here,” said Billings resident Brian Schnitzer, president of the Montana Association of Jewish Communities.
“I’m very concerned about those living in larger communities. It’s much more likely that a spokesperson for a major Jewish organization would be a target than someone in Montana.”
Still, most observers remain less concerned about the threat to Jews than they are about the threat to federal officials, who have been shunned in some communities and have even been refused service in stores and threatened.
“If I were living next door to a militia and if I had to choose who to be, I’d much rather be a Jew than a federal official,” Stern said. “On the other hand, I’d prefer to be an Episcopalian.”
Although anti-Semitism is not a driving force in the movement, with the militias viewing the world through a prism of conspiracy, many observers see inherent danger.
“Whenever you’re dealing with an environment of obsessive conspiracy, we’ve found that it ultimately finds its way to focus on Jews,” said Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League.
Similar concerns prompted Dan Yurman of Idaho Falls to begin monitoring militia activities in Idaho in 1994.
As director of community relations for Temple Emanuel in Pocatello, Yurman set out to determine what kind of threat they posed to the 150 Jewish families living in the area.
“When it became clear that the Aryan Nation and other neo-Nazi groups and known extremists were involved” in the militia movement, “we began to pay attention,” Yurman said.
After monitoring the groups’ literature, media accounts and the Internet for two years without encountering any reports of anti-Semitic incidents, Yurman said, “At this time I would have to say that they do not constitute a threat. But that could change.”
Schnitzer said that while there is “no question” the militia groups are anti- Semitic, their bigotry does not necessarily fly in the face of Montana residents.
“Their worldview, their historical view is that Jews are a seed of Satan,” he said. But when they come to gun shows “they talk about government bureaucracy and taxes and the difficulty of making a living as a farmer and as a rancher.”
Lerner had a similar take, saying, “Their anti-Semitism is more a wink-wink type of thing.”
Although anti-Semitic rhetoric may be absent, Schnitzer said he had little doubt that the militias would “annihilate all Jews and people of color if they had their way.”
At the same time, he is careful not to overstate the danger they pose.
“Are they a threat to us? Without question. Do I feel physically threatened? No.”
Ultimately, it is not individuals, or even an individual community against which the militias are mobilizing.
Their approach — driven by far-flung paranoid conspiracy theories involving black helicopters and a government plot to enslave and kill loyal Americans – – constitutes a much broader assault on American democracy, militia experts say.
In addition, the militias have attempted to mainstream their message by tapping the vein of widespread discontent with government.
They have shied away from traditional hate activities and organized through issues that dovetail with mainstream concerns, finding supporters who oppose gun control, hunting laws, restrictions on land use and high taxes.
“The white hoods, the swastika — it doesn’t really cut it for America,” said Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
“It doesn’t speak to the anger that’s out there. But the trappings of patriotism — its virulent anti-government message, the notion of empowerment – – does.”
Stern, author of a new book about the militia movement titled “A Force Upon the Plain,” sums up the forces behind the militia movement by borrowing the image of “a funnel moving through space,” suggested by Ken Toole of the Montana Human Rights Network.
“At the large end are mainstream issues such as gun control, the environment, federal intrusiveness,” Stern said in recent testimony before Congress. “A little further in are the racist and conspiratorial ideas. At the small end are those who would act on their belief that they need to be at war with America.”
The militia’s anti-government message has resonated with various segments of the American population. Ideological echoes can even be heard in some quarters of Capitol Hill.
One Republican lawmaker, explaining his opposition to anti-terrorism legislation, told a colleague that he trusted the Islamic militant group Hamas more than he trusted his own government.
“One of [the] dangers that’s easily overlooked is how much of the thinking has become acceptable in popular culture,” said Steven Gardner, research director of the Portland-based Coalition for Human Dignity.
While the movement’s actual numbers remain small, its capacity for violence and terror looms large in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing. “Oklahoma City has proven that people motivated by the values and politics of the militia movement are capable of incredible violence and that if they’re willing to kill 160-odd people in Oklahoma, they’re just as willing to kill millions if given the means and opportunity,” Yurman said.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
