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January 7 - January 16, 2023
News articles described how McVeigh, Nichols and Fortier were part of a new generation that espoused an updated variant of much older anti-Semitic beliefs about collusion between elements within the U.S. government and the world’s elite (the Illuminati) in a secret plot to establish a world government (the New World Order) and total surveillance society. The “black helicopter crowd” believed U.N. troops would soon round up, disarm, and imprison U.S. citizens within concentration camps (often to be run by FEMA). Fancying themselves modern American Revolutionaries, some were gearing up for war
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In fact, wrote Hackworth, McVeigh is “a more subtle and intriguing figure…at once more clever and ingenious than his tabloid personality … savvy, world weary and very media wise. He was no militaristic automaton,” “didn’t seem like a baby killer” and resembled “a typical GenXer [more] than a deranged loner, much less a terrorist.”
Thus, the Dissidents were equated, symbolically, with Timothy McVeigh himself. In an ironic twist, foreshadowing many more to come, those most deeply impacted by the bombing, an act committed by a ‘crazed conspiracy theorist,’ were now themselves labeled as conspiracy theorists.
The reality is, of course, that the odds are you will be found, condemned, not only by the verdict of the jury, but by the verdict of the American people, history, your family, and that you will be executed and put to death, not with honor, but because you will be perceived as a mass murderer, a man who committed a crime greater than Lee Harvey Oswald, John Wilkes Booth, or Ted Bundy. Not only will you die, but many of the principles you believe in will, at least temporarily, be rejected by the American people and you will be seen as a fanatical, mal-adjusted misfit who brought untold
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McVeigh’s motives for cooperating with the authors are more than a bit ironic. While readers learn of his lifelong fascination with conspiracy theories, McVeigh hoped to refute the conspiracy theories surrounding the bombing (and himself), especially those propagated by his former attorney Stephen Jones. Therefore, McVeigh (and the authors) spent a considerable amount of time addressing competing accounts and theories and denying McVeigh’s documented connections to other violent extremists, the existence of JD2 (or 3 or 4) or any other related “big conspiracy.”
While incarcerated at a Federal Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado, Kaczynski met, corresponded with and became friends with Timothy McVeigh. In a number of letters to his biographers, McVeigh referred to Kaczynski as his “kindred spirit.”
The frequently suggested causes vary as much as the proposed solutions: The shooters were poorly raised. Spoiled. Abused. Suffered from a lack of attention. Craved attention. Received too much attention. Had defective genes. Defective brains. Were mentally ill without adequate access to voluntary (or involuntary) treatment and services. Were bullied. Socially alienated. Played too many video games. Watched too much television. Grew up in a sick and morally deteriorating society. Were confused and disheartened by pervasive consumerism, unable to live up to ideals largely defined by popular
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