Blowing Smoke - Michael Wolraich [107]
The Patriot movement peaked in 1996 with 370 militia groups across the nation. From there it went into a gradual decline, dropping to 42 by 2008. But after the election of the “the slickest, most aggressive antigun White House in history,” the militias have returned with a vengeance, literally. The Southern Poverty Law Center recorded 127 Patriot militia groups in 2009, a 300 percent increase from the previous year.31
With the surge in militias has come a surge in violent threats. Obama received more death threats during the week after his election than any president-elect on record .32 Outside one of Obama’s “town hall” meetings on health care, a protester carried a loaded gun (legally) and a sign that read IT IS TIME TO WATER THE TREE OF LIBERTY! a reference to a Thomas Jefferson quote from 1787: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”cr33 Another protester, Chris Broughton, brought an AR-15 assault rifle to an Obama event in Phoenix, Arizona, and promised to “forcefully resist people imposing their will on us through the strength of the majority with a vote.” When someone asked him if he was “gonna water the tree of liberty?” he replied, “I hope not.”34 The day before, Broughton had attended a sermon in which the pastor called Obama a “socialist devil, murderer” and railed, “I’m going to pray that he dies and goes to hell.”35
After the health care bill passed, a former leader of the Alabama Constitutional Militia called for Americans to throw bricks through the windows of Democratic offices; four offices suffered shattered windows and glass doors. Ten Democratic congresspeople received death threats.36 Protesters heckled black and gay legislators with derogatory slurs, and one congressman was spat on (which is one way to water the tree of liberty).37
Some have gone beyond bricks and spittle. The first year and a half of Obama’s term featured an assortment of violent attacks from right-wing extremists: an antitax militant kamikazied his plane into an IRS office building, killing one employee; an eighty-eight-year-old white supremacist killed a security guard at the Holocaust Memorial Museum with a .22-caliber rifle; a libertarian attempted to storm the Pentagon with two 9 mm handguns, wounding two cops; and after a bloody shootout, California highway police arrested a forty-five-year-old man carrying a high-powered hunting rifle, a pistol, and a shotgun. According to police, he had hoped to incite a revolution by shooting employees of the ACLU and the Tides Foundation, a progressive nonprofit that O’Reilly and Beck have featured in their conspiracy charts.38
In April 2009, white supremacist Richard Poplawski shot and killed three Pittsburgh cops with a semiautomatic AK-47, the kind of gun that had been illegal under the assault weapons ban. According to his best friend, Poplawski feared “the Obama gun ban that’s on the way.”39 Poplawski’s Web postings indicated that he had internalized the NRA’s jackbooted thug narrative. “What happens when the [government] is the only entity with any real firepower, and they feel like trampling you?” he rhetorically asked at one discussion forum. “With what instruments will you fight the tyranny?” At another forum he commented, “A group of friends and I are considering purchasing a lot of military surplus rifles.” At a third he warned, “You know what they say about the tree of liberty.”40
David Brian Stone Sr. also hoped to feed the tree of liberty. He led a fanatical Christian militia creatively named the Hutaree.cs The Hutaree had been preparing for battle against a fearsome alliance between the Antichrist and the new world order. In March 2010, the government indicted Stone and eight other Hutareeans