The madness is beginning but make no mistake, there is method in it. Donald Trump officially kicks off his 2024 presidential campaign today in Waco, Texas, on the 30th anniversary of the destruction of the Branch Davidian compound after a 51-day standoff against the federal government. The conflict began 30 years ago on February 28, 1993. It ended in a conflagration on April 19, 1993. The March 25 anniversary date is right in the middle of what was a seminal moment in American history, symbolizing government overreach and stoking fear of the abolition of the Second Amendment, in the hearts of the right wing.
To quote political historian Heather Cox Richardson,
“Although a Republican investigation cited “overwhelming evidence” that exonerated the government of wrongdoing, right-wing talk radio hosts jumped on the events at Waco to attack the administration of Democratic president Bill Clinton. Rush Limbaugh stoked his listeners’ anger with talk of the government’s “murder” of citizens, and Alex Jones dropped out of community college to start a talk show on which he warned that the government had “murdered” the people at Waco and was about to impose martial law.
“After the Waco siege the modern militia movement took off, and Trump is clearly using the anniversary to tap into domestic violence against the government to defend him in advance of possible indictments.”
Timothy McVeigh later cited Waco as his inspiration for blowing up the government building in Oklahoma City. Ruby Ridge was the year before Waco and between the two incidents the modern militia movement was galvanized “In 1996 alone, major arrests involving multiple members of militia groups occurred in West Virginia, Georgia, Arizona, and Washington.” The movement slumped a bit during the early 2000’s then revitalized in 2009, due to Barack Obama’s election in 2008. The brainy, elegant, constitutional scholar, and Black man, never forget, scared them into wetting their pants.
Waco is the Holy Land of the militia religion, plain and simple. It all started here. The Intercept:
Waco remained central to the militant movement’s belief system when it reemerged in 2009 after Barack Obama’s election. [Mike] Vanderboegh, who’d first become a leader in the 1990s, told Churchill in an interview the historian shared with me that he believed the government had sent a message: From now on, it would be “operating by Waco rules. It’s this catch-22: ‘We will do anything that you can’t keep us from doing.’ And it told the rest of us out here, you know, we’re kind of paying attention and we’re saying, ‘We’re next year’s Davidians, or the year after that. Somebody has got to do something.’”
This created a mindset across the movement, Vanderboegh added, that “[an] attack on one is an attack on all.”
Vanderboegh went on to found the Three Percenters, one of the two largest militant organizations in the post-2009 wave, alongside [Stewart] Rhodes’s Oath Keepers. Rhodes hadn’t been involved in the movement’s earlier iteration but remembered well watching Waco play out on TV as a young libertarian working at a gun store in Nevada. He often cited a quote attributed to Vanderboegh: “No more free Wacos.”
For Rhodes, it wasn’t that the Branch Davidians or Koresh were heroes. In his telling, the story was primarily about the bad guys: the Clinton-led government and mainstream politicians and journalists who, as he saw it, “dehumanized” the hard-line Christian gun owners cordoned off in their compound. This dehumanization, he believed, helped to pave the way for the government violence that followed. He worried about a similar dynamic playing out in the political and media climate of the present day. Rhodes, who has a law degree from Yale and is of Mexican descent, seemed to sympathize with one Waco victim in particular: Douglas Wayne Martin, a Black, Harvard-educated attorney in his 40s. Martin called police when the initial ATF raid began, claiming the government had fired the first shots, and then called a city council member, asking him to contact the media. He died in the compound on April 19, along with three of his children.
In an interview in the summer of 2021, as he braced for his own possible arrest, Rhodes recounted the arsenal government forces brought in for the Waco siege and raid — armored vehicles, helicopters from the National Guard — and the violence that followed. He saw the heavy-handed government tactics at Waco as designed “to prove a point, set an example.” I asked him what point they were making. His response: “Don’t fuck with us.” On trial last fall for seditious conspiracy, Rhodes cited Waco again, saying that when he’d infamously gotten the Oath Keepers involved in the Bundy Ranch standoff with federal authorities in 2014, it was to keep the Bundy family “from being Waco’d.”
And now the plan is to keep Donald Trump from “being Waco’d.” This is the background and the blueprint, ladies and gentlemen. Although Trump’s spokespeople will acknowledge no direct link with the Branch Davidian tragedy and cite instead Waco’s “central location” as being the reason for the campaign kickoff being there, that’s a wink wink nudge nudge. The troops all know why they’re being called to that particular location. It’s a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
Trump’s guest list of acolytes at this event are Matt Gaetz, Marge Greene, Ted Nugent, Roger Williams, Mayra Flores, Mike Lindell and some local pastors.
With Trump we’ll have Waco for whackos.
After getting my degree from Carolina and deciding not to go to Duke Divinity School, mainly because I wasn’t interested in telling people what they want to hear, I lived on McCauley street with a house full of political activists. One couple met at Wounded Knee, during the standoff between the Native Americans and the FBI where a lot of shooting took place and an agent was killed. No one paid taxes. One was a radical Quaker from Philly. The woman who owned the house was the daughter of a well known Economics professor who went with Nixon to China. The Wilmington Ten visited our house as did Holly Near the singer. My ex roommate at Carolina got arrested in Russia for protesting nuclear arms. He was a radical pacifist. I fit in well with that group. After the daughter of the professor hung herself, all of us went a little more wild. I joined the Navy after living in a tobbaco barn for months doing LSD & other things. My point being I have known radicals, some of who believed the US government is an evil institution set up by the rich for the rich and using the rest of us as cannon fodder. Others would go to jail before paying taxes or picking up a gun to defend anything. I have been imprisoned as a political prisoner, so I know how fucking wrong the law can be in the wrong hands. It’s a weird experience to go to a penitentiary without ever being handcuffed or having seen the inside of a police station. It’s also weird to have the head of a parole board tell me, after fending off threats of violence for months, that I should never have been arrested. When I post about the law and government, I’ve seen and lived on the dark side. I lived long enough to know nothing will ever be perfect anywhere, but democracy, and promoting the common good is our only hope on this planet. I also know from my experience, you must meet a threat with strength. Since my childhood was a violence filled experience complete with weapons, I realized I was trained to deal with fear as long as I can remember. Fear based on a real possibility of injury or death isnt the same as fear of losing a job, or other life problems. I don’t believe in violence but I also know you can’t cower expecting mercy. I was willing to die before I allowed anyone to bully me. It shocked a lot of cons who saw me as a college boy. I’m anything but. It saved me more than once and eventually I was respected and left alone. These assholes think they’re tough and they follow a marshmallow man soft as a baby’s butt. We can’t allow them to make us afraid. We need to MAKE THEM AFRAID. Just look how weak they act when the shit hits the fan in court. We can’t tolerate nazis. The biggest mistake nice people make is thinking that trying to reason with violent thugs will turn them around. It won’t. That’s why we sent tens of thousands of boys to Normandy with guns, not pamphlets. Hitler would have conquered the world had we not mobilized and FOUGHT BACK. Believe me, I wish it were not so. Just like when I was little hearing the werewolf,(my raging father),tear up the house, and hearing my mom screaming and begging for her life. I did a lotta wishing but eventually I had to crawl from under the bed and face the monster. I fully expected to be hurt and maybe killed. I did suffer beatings but I survived and learned they were better than living in fear. That’s the one thing we cannot allow Trump, or his minions do to us. That’s a living death. We’re all gonna die. The real question is do we have the guts to live and fight for our children’s right to live. Each of us has to answer that sooner or later. Winston said in the John Wick movie, if you want peace, prepare for war. Fear, weakness, and denial won’t get us there. Fight. Fight fear. Fight apathy. Fight ignorance. Fight for your rights. Fight lies. If we don’t honor the ones who fought and died for us to be free, then we never deserved their sacrifice in the first place. Fight. This country was founded by radicals who took on the most powerful military in the world. Even with my experience, I can’t imagine the guts it took. Let’s honor them by fighting to keep this democracy alive!
Dude, I’m with you on this 100%! As for the sign featured at the beginning of this article proclaiming it’s either trump or death for them? Well, I know what I’d give them. We enjoy many freedoms in America, freedoms these people would take away and replace with oppression. If you’re not willing to fight to stop that then I don’t know what to tell you. It may never come to that, I hope it doesn’t, but these people sure seem eager for it. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst!
Waco still has Branch Davidians. And Sean Moon’s gun-worshiping cult has a place near there, too.
Better to fight for something than to live for nothing.
George S. Patton