Aberration in the Heartland of the Real: The Secret Lives of Timothy McVeigh

by Wendy S. Painting

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 with the government. The events at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in 1992 and Waco, Texas, in 1993, as well as the passage of the Brady Bill, catalyzed both the mobilization and alliance of these disparate groups and individuals.