NCJ Number
191374
Journal
Intelligence Report Issue: 102 Dated: Summer 2001 Pages: 6-8
Editor(s)
Mark Potok
Date Published
2001
Length
3 pages
Annotation
More than 7 years after it began, the so-called Patriot movement, characterized by gun-toting militiamen angry at the Federal Government, is a shadow of its former self.
Abstract
In its latest annual count, the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Project identified 194 antigovernment Patriot groups that were active in 2000, a decline of almost 9 percent from the previous year and the fourth consecutive decline since the Patriot movement peaked with 858 groups in 1996. People have left the militia movement for a variety of reasons. They have gone home, disillusioned and tired of waiting for the revolution that never seems to come. They have been scared off, frightened by the arrests of thousands of comrades for engaging in illegal "common-law" court tactics, weapons violations, and even terrorist plots. Further, they have, in great numbers, left the relatively nonracist Patriot world for the harder line groups that now compose most of the radical right. Racist and anti-Semitic hate groups have been growing, thanks to former militiamen and others who have joined such groups. Although the Patriot movement is not what it once was, this does not mean that radical antigovernment sentiment is going away. Antigovernment ideology has been present in the United states since its founding, and it is certain to remain a permanent fixture in the American culture; however, it is not clear at the moment what form the antigovernment extremist right will take in the decades to come. 1 figure