In fact, the feds had besieged Ruby Ridge in the first place due to Randy Weaver's far-right connections. They wanted to flip him as an informant on the Aryan Nations [0], a white nationalist group with ties to deadly terror cells like The Order [1]. To this end, they threatened him with the weapons charge that led to the the siege at Ruby Ridge, and ultimately to the shooting deaths of Samuel and Vicky Weaver. So far-right terror was taken seriously pre-OKC, but afterwards it was taken very seriously.

The 2017 PBS documentary "Oklahoma City" was my intro to this subject matter [2]. Excellent film, gripping presentation.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_Ridge#Development

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Order_(white_supremacist_g...

[2] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/oklahoma-c...

Another way of looking at it is that the federal government entrapped Randy Weaver on weapons charges when he didn’t want to do their leg work, and when he didn’t show up to court, they killed his entire family.

In other words, taking terrorism “seriously” sometimes is done in ways that involve killing innocent people and inciting more blowback in the long run.

Yep, Ruby Ridge and Waco were fiascos which led directly to the bombing of the Murrah Building. McVeigh explicitly called out those events as his motivation for the bombing.

The lessons learned were apparent in the government’s approach to the 2016 wildlife refuge standoff. Rather than dash in guns-blazing, the government simply established a perimeter and waited for the occupiers to run out of Clif Bars. Took the ringleaders into custody with a minimum of force when they attempted to leave. Of the 30-40 occupiers, only one was shot as he reached for his gun. No law enforcement officers were harmed. World of difference compared to Waco, where 4 ATF officers and 82 Branch Davidians were killed.

>and when he didn’t show up to court, they killed his entire family.

This is true, but it misses the nuance that the letter ordering him to attend court had the wrong date listed on it. Makes the assault on the family even more egregious.

They took far right terrorism seriously in the 1870s. They more or less stamped out the (original) KKK while simultaneously giving the south the requisite autonomy to enact Jim Crow. Obviously Jim Crow doesn't square with our modern view but at the time the lack of some systemic way to keep the black people down was a serious grievance that a lot of people had. The government cracked down on the extremists who were starting to get off the porch while simultaneously extending an olive branch to the people who sympathized with them (and throwing black people under the bus in the process).

The same thing happened in the civil rights era. When it looked like things might get serious the .gov caved to the MLK types to prevent the Malcom X types from gaining further sympathy from the masses.

Fast forward to the 1990s and you get the ATF trilogy. Of course the magnitude of the problem was smaller than the KKK so the reaction and adjustments were smaller. On one hand the FBI cracked down on all the extremist groups (cue jokes about how the modern KKK is just a recreation club for FBI agents) but at the same time you'll notice that when the Bundy Ranch rolled around the feds didn't just shoot everyone and botch the thing as they would had they let historical precedent be their guide. Same pattern. Crackdown on the extremists while avoiding pissing off the moderate sympathizers.

Likewise hundreds of cities are reconsidering how they allocate law enforcement and social services resources after the events of this summer while also (recently, like past month) starting to crack down on protests to prevent them from getting fiery. Same pattern.

The overarching theme is pretty clear. The government never takes people's grievances seriously until there's a "real" threat of extremists getting off the porch and causing serious problems with a large body of sympathizers to back them up.

In light of that it'll be interesting to see what if any long term changes come out of the whole capitol thing.

> he government never takes people's grievances seriously until there's a "real" threat of extremists getting off the porch

I haven't noticed any gay-marriage terrorists on their porches, and yet here we are. Women-for-equal-pay have not been observed cleaning and oiling their rifles menacingly, and yet the law was mended in their favor. And I don't think Irish or Jewish terrorism was a problem in the US, but their persecution has ended all the same. You're only looking at things that became explosive, so quite naturally you will not find things that were resolved peacefully and/or timely. They still exist though, in fact they may be dominant.

It's a great comment otherwise, I enjoyed the trip down the memory lane. Looking forward to seeing you again.

> I don’t think Irish or Jewish terrorism was a problem in the US

Both international terrorism (directed at the UK, but sometimes involving direct conflict with the US military) and organized crime-linked terrorism were very big things associated with the Irish in America in the 19th C.

And, on the Jewish side, more recently, Meir Kahane’s Jewish Defense League was a real thing.

All of the examples you gave are of non-terroristic means of attempting to achieve the goals of a cause, where the groups involved generally lack violent extremists.

GP's point was about how they believe federal law enforcement has reacted to groups that necessarily included violent extremists, as those were the pawns for bargain to offer the opposition while reducing harm to the moderate sympathizers.

Yours appears to be a strawman argument.

Allowing the riots to continue unabated over the summer was a serious mistake. It fed a perception that political violence and intimidation was a viable means to get what you want.

A take like this represents a woeful ignorance of American history.

* See the Columbine shootings and the frantic finger pointing at video games, Satanism, and bullying, all to avoid facing the fact that what happened could be most easily slotted into the legacy of white dude rage in America.*

There was no racial element to the Columbine shooting, at all. Racializing it as “white dude rage” is inflammatory and disgusting.

What happened at Columbine was the logical conclusion to the upholding of an American ethos that affirms a privilege to arms and violence as a valid response to grievance, which is itself rooted in our history of (race-based) slavery. More directly, the Columbine shooters were influenced by Timothy McVeigh and the militia movement, who was and which were explicitly white supremacist.

What's disgusting is that this keeps happening, and that white Americans are so married to this ethos that they'll sacrifice their children to maintain it, and that people like you would rather flag and dismiss a post pointing out this dynamic than introspect. What's inflammatory is this purposeful and obstinate denial, while all the world watches in pity.

It seems to me that the unpleasant, but unavoidable conclusion is that a significant fraction of the citizenry is sympathetic to the far right domestic terrorists.

Edit: If you think this is untrue, you have an extremely narrow filter bubble.