The dispossessed: Domestic terror and political extremism in the American heartland

Domestic terrorism in the United States is not a phenomenon limited to alien groups at odds with United States foreign policy. The country has bred its own desperate groups who see themselves as victims of political forces that are in profound conflict with traditional cultures and values of rural America. In general, the militia movement is a violent, racist, revolutionary surge aimed at creating an alternative society in which government is decentralized and kept to an absolute minimum. Its strength lies in the Midwestern heartland and in the inter‐mountain areas of western Montana and Idaho. It is also likely that some militias have ties with neo‐Nazi groups, anti‐abortion fanatics and white Christian hate mongers loosely linked with the old Ku Klux Klan. Not since the 1930's has a white supremacist group gained such prominence in American Society.