America’s Right-wing Extremists

The average American—if there is such a thing—may lean toward the blue Democrat or red Republican views about a lot of things: military spending, school textbook materials, abortion rights, equality of women and men, or the past and future of affirmative action. Their views may be kept private, stated mildly in ordinary conversation, or loudly shouted in public protests. But there has always been another mean, dangerous group of right-wing extremists who have always gathered the world’s attention.

The whites who wiped out Native American tribes and the three waves of the Ku Klux Klan—the first beginning in 1866 and the third active into the 1960s—are among the most widely known. But in the 1970s and 1980s a group called the Aryan Nations moved from Southern California to northern Idaho where they terrorized local people with hate crimes. In 1992, a member of that group refused to surrender to the FBI on a weapons charge and his wife and son died in the resulting confrontation.

Following the 1993 government raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, right-wing hatred of the FBI and the whole federal government grew. As a result, we now have groups like the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys, and other paramilitary groups including those that participated in the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

These groups include Christian nationalists, white supremacists, the sovereign citizen movement, and individuals who commit hate crimes. Their targets vary: women in general, proponents of abortion rights, people of color, certain politicians, police, affirmative action as a whole, and people who publish textbooks they disagree with. These groups make America hard to endure.

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