Hundreds of Armed Right-Wing Militia Members Take Over Federal Building

Are you insulting the man's mother? Is nothing sacred to you progressives?

Depending on how you see it, the authorities are either turning a blind, racist eye to a hostile takeover of federal property by a group of mostly white, self-styled militiamen or they’re prudently trying to stave off another Ruby Ridge, the infamous 1992 armed standoff between federal agents and right wing extremists in Idaho, which resulted in an FBI sniper killing a woman as she held her baby in her arms. Of course, if you sympathize with the militants, then this is simply the next phase of a long-running noble rebellion against the tyrannical federal government.

While the younger Bundy says he and his cohorts don’t intend to shoot anyone unless they’re fired upon first, he also says they’re fully prepared to die and have urged sympathizers across the country to join them.

Many point to the Sagebrush Rebellion, a movement during the 1970s and 1980s, as the first pushback against growing federal control of public lands. In recent years, critics say militants have been threatening government employees working on federal land from as far north as Washington to as far south as Texas. There are now thousands of acres of public land “where the federal government doesn’t dare tread, because of the threat of violence,” says Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a Birmingham, Alabama-based nonprofit that tracks extremist groups in America. “They say they want to take land back from the federal government, and that’s working, to some extent. These places are becoming essentially stateless.”

But the feds have good reason to lay low, a former Department of Justice Official tells Newsweek, on the condition of anonymity. Sending in the National Guard right now would only feed the group's claims of federal tyranny, the source says. The smart move is to let it at least appear that the sheriff is the one running the show. “The sheriff has so far been the face of law enforcement,” the source says, “as opposed to the feds coming in and saying ‘get the hell out of our building or we’re going to kill you.’ That’s really smart. It’s the right thing to do, whether it’s by accident or on purpose. It denies them the Bundy-vs.-the-Feds narrative.”...“People in the anti-government movement believe in the theory that the sheriff is the highest official in the land, and that they should only submit to county officials,” she says.

So what’s the end game? For the militants, it’s finding a way to continue taking control of public lands, both in Oregon and other states. For the government, the goal is to end the Burns standoff without killing anyone. The key, the former DOJ source says, is to paint this standoff as an unwelcome invasion of Harney County by outside forces with their own political interests.

“If you can construct that narrative,” the source says, “they lose.

I have to mail you a ten-spot for that laugh.