This isn't going to be one of those long, scholarly diaries that better Kossacks than me write. It's more of a "hey, looky over here, this is instructive" kind of diary. Basically, I want you guys to refresh your memories about the Montana Freemen, the bunch of whiny militia-friendly losers and yahoos who got a little taste of backyard despotism and found it sweet, sweet, sweet before getting their asses handed to them by the federal government, and compare them to the current raft of despots-in-waiting the Tea Party is breeding.
Here's the link. It's a batch of entries about the Freemen on the History Commons. You can't see them all because they've all not been published yet, but there's enough to give you a good idea about how the Freemen and today's teabaggers tie together. And more is on the way.
More below the fold.
The Montana Freemen: A Primer
In the mid-1980s, a small number of disaffected Montana farmers join what became the "Montana Freemen," a loose group that share a hatred of "big guvment," taxation, liberals, people of color, and anyone else who doesn't look, think, act, and smell like themselves. One of the leaders is a guy named Ralph Clark, who headed a large family of wheat farmers. While most of the Clarks work like Trojans to keep their farms afloat, Ralph spends most of his time smoking cigarettes, watching the weeds grow, and blaming the "goddamn guvment" for his troubles. He doesn't have any problem accepting over $700,000 in government subsidies, but he has a big objection to paying any of it back, and by 1995 is 14 years in arrears and facing foreclosure.
One hundred miles south, another knot of disaffected right-wing farmers and other folks are forming the other "axis" of the Freemen. Two of their honchos are Rodney Skurdal, who fancies himself something of a warrior mystic and preaches the racist, anti-Semitic Christian Identity ideology, and LeRoy Schweitzer, who is working out the details of a massive fraud scheme designed to make Big Bucks with Lots of Government Whammies. By 1994, businesses and government offices all over the Northwest and Upper Midwest are being flooded by what disgusted locals call "LeRoy checks," huge, fraudulent "cashier's checks" drawn on fraudulent liens filed by Schweitzer, Skurdal, and their buddies on, well, just about anyone they could think of. They manage to bring in a pretty penny through their schemes.
They also begin developing an ideology about the US, cribbed from sources like Identity writings, the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion," other right-wing anti-government treatises, and their own fevered imaginations. I don't think anyone can lay out precisely what they believed -- it is tangled, self-contradictory, and largely horseshit papered in legalisms they themselves didn't understand -- but the upshot is that they consider themselves above any state or federal law and don't recognize any government authority besides the local sheriff (whom they hold in contempt). If you're familiar with the anti-government rantings of the right-wing militias, many of them hold similar views.
It doesn't take long for the two groups to begin working together.
In January 1994 an armed band of Freemen invade the Garfield County Courthouse, install themselves as the new county government (proclaiming one of their own, Richard Clark, as "the presiding judge," and begin to hand down "indictments." They threaten to try the local sheriff and execute him by hanging him from a bridge (interesting justice system they have where sentences precede trials), and after leaving the courthouse, paper the town with flyers offering $1 million bounties for the sheriff, the judge, and the county attorney. The sheriff only has two deputies, not enough to engage the Freemen, so he bides his time. He issues warrants for their arrests, but the Freemen ignore them and continue issuing threats, bogus "indictments" and a flood of other pseudo-legal documents and filings, and strut around their little area of Montana as if they are the local fiefholders. They even openly intimidate a pool of some 45 jurors who are sitting in a case against two of their members, telling them if they vote to convict, they and their families will face dire consequences.
In October 1994 and after, things begin to shift. A local prosecutor wins a conviction against one Freeman, William Stanton, for "criminal syndicalism," a law used against the Wobblies that made it a crime to defend, advocate, or set up an organization committed to the use of crime, violence, sabotage, or other unlawful means to bring about a change in the form of government or in industrial ownership or control. Local authorities thwart a plan to break Stanton out of jail and kill a raft of local law enforcement and court officials (apparently hatched in concert with the Montana Militia, whose founder, John Trochmann, is on hand for the festivities).
Skurdal declares "holy war" (jihad?!?) on the federal government and on the state of Montana.
The Freemen enjoy over a year of nearly-unrestrained actions, including the beating and robbery of two national news crews, any number of harassments and death threats towards anyone who drew their ire, the placement of bounties on people, and the flooding of the entire US West with bogus liens and fraudulent bank drafts. They forcibly occupy Clark's foreclosed ranch, rename it "Justus Township," and begin teaching seminars on how to defraud the government (and private businesses) with liens and forged checks. In November 1995, two local attorneys tell the US House that the Freemen are in "open insurrection" against America in general, and ask for federal help. Unbeknownst to the locals, the FBI has mounted an elaborate surveillance program against the Freemen.
In March 1996, the Freemen, emboldened beyond rationality, announce their plans to forcibly annex a huge swath of land in northern Montana. Some is owned by private citizens, some is government-protected grazing land, and some is owned by either the state of Montana or the federal government. The Freemen don't care, they intend to occupy the land and shoot anyone who attempts to contest their land grab. As you can imagine, this really pisses off the locals, who are sick of the lack of law enforcement intervention, and they begin planning to contest the Freemen themselves.
The FBI heads that off. On March 25, 1996, the FBI arrests three Freemen leaders -- Schweitzer, Daniel Petersen, and Lavon Hanson -- and seal off the Clark ranch. This begins an 81-day standoff.
The militias are initially outraged by the FBI's actions, predicting another Waco and Ruby Ridge, but the FBI has, very belatedly, learned its lessons from those two debacles. The FBI is quite cordial to the Freemen, allowing them some access to reporters and others, keeping a low profile (no armored vehicles, no snipers in plain view), and actually reaches out to militia groups to help them bring about a peaceful resolution. As time goes on, the militias begin to view the Freemen with disgust, and some even give grudging praise to the FBI for handling the situation with kid gloves. Some, like Bo Gritz, even advocate the FBI to just roll into the compound and wipe them out.
On June 6, 1996, the Freemen surrender peacefully. For the next several years, they act like baboons in court, cursing and screaming at court officials, thrashing and knocking over furniture, refusing to bathe or wear clean clothes, babbling long tirades about their legal superiority and their claims that the law has no jurisdiction over them, howling about the fringe on the flag and admiralty law, and so forth. Most of them receive long prison sentences for fraud, assault, death threats to an array of government officials, and the like. Some of them, like Petersen, receive more jail time for continuing their "lien fraud" schemes and bogus court filings from their jail cells.
Today's Tea Parties: The "Montana Freemen" of the 21st Century
Many of the features displayed by the Freemen are showing up in today's teabaggers, especially little pocket tyrants like Wisconsin's Scott Walker. The contempt for the law, the assumption of moral and legal superiority, the instant recourse to threats of violence (the Freemen would love to be able to have threatened local officials and citizens with the National Guard), the skewed and self-contradictory legal pronouncements (they hate the government and don't recognize its jurisdiction except when it can be used to further their own ends), the contempt for their fellow citizens and the assumption that they are superior to the common ruck, the stone-stupid ignorance and hateful racism and anti-Semitism, all of it is there.
I'm spending a lot of my time researching and documenting the Freemen and other 90s militia and anti-government movements, with the hopes of tying them to the teabaggers if I can do it honestly (no teabagger or Freemen revisionism!). We know Alaska's Joe Miller has strong ties to the Alaska militia movement, and many of those reactionary yahoos are refugees from the Michigan and Montana militias (one memorable idiot, Norm Olsen, comes to mind). So do the Palins. Glenn Beck routinely uses rhetoric and claims from the John Birch Society and other right-wing loons from that time period.
This is something we need to document further. The Southern Poverty Law Center, the Anti-Defamation League, David Neiwert and others have done a hell of a job in researching the militias and the anti-government movements, which Neiwert calls "eliminationists." I intend to go further and tie them directly to the teabaggers. When we understand them, we can better fight them, both in the press and, if need be, in the streets with peaceful, citizen-driven protests and civil disobedience.
Wanna help?