The Hostage Rescue Team (HRT) is the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) elite tactical unit. The HRT was formed to provide a full-time federal law enforcement tactical capability to respond to major terrorist incidents throughout the United States. Today, the HRT performs a number of tactical law enforcement and national security functions in high-risk environments and conditions and has deployed overseas, including with military Joint Special Operations Command units.
Elohim City is a private community in Adair County, Oklahoma, United States. The 400 acres (1.6 km2) rural retreat was founded in 1973 by Robert G. Millar, a Canadian immigrant, former Mennonite, and an important leader in America's Christian Identity movement, a theology common to an assortment of right-wing extremist groups. The community gained national attention for its ties to members of The Order in the 1980s, as well as with convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh in the 1990s.
Ruby Ridge was the site of an 11-day siege of a cabin occupied by the Weaver family in Boundary County, Idaho in August 1992. It began on August 21, when deputies of the United States Marshals Service (USMS) came to arrest Randy Weaver under a bench warrant after his failure to appear on federal firearms charges. During a surveillance operation, officer Art Roderick shot Weaver's dog, leading Weaver's son Sammy to fire at the team. Sammy was then shot and killed, causing an exchange of fire in which Weaver's friend Kevin Harris shot and killed Deputy Marshal William Francis Degan. Weaver, Harris, and members of Weaver's immediate family refused to surrender. The Hostage Rescue Team of the Federal Bureau of Investigation became involved as the siege was mounted. In the standoff, FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi shot Weaver's wife Vicki while she was holding her baby daughter - the only casualty of the siege itself. The conflict was ultimately resolved by civilian negotiators. Harris surrendered and was arrested on August 30; Weaver and his three daughters surrendered the next day.
The Michigan Militia is a paramilitary Michigan-based organization founded in 1994 by Norman Olson, a veteran of the U.S. Air Force. The group was formed in response to perceived encroachments by the federal government on the rights of citizens. It is part of the wider American militia movement.
The Waco siege, also known as the Waco massacre, was the siege by U.S. federal government and Texas state law enforcement officials of a compound belonging to the religious cult known as the Branch Davidians between February 28 and April 19, 1993. The Branch Davidians, led by David Koresh, were headquartered at Mount Carmel Center ranch in the community of Axtell, Texas, 13 miles northeast of Waco. Suspecting the group of stockpiling illegal weapons, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) obtained a search warrant for the compound and arrest warrants for Koresh and several of the group's members.
The Christian Patriot movement is a subset within the broader American Patriot movement that promotes and emphasizes Christian nationalism as their core goal and philosophy. Like the larger movement, it promotes a revisionist interpretation of American history in which the federal government has turned against the ideas of liberty and natural rights expressed in the American Revolution.
Randall Claude Weaver was an American survivalist and self-proclaimed white separatist. He was a central actor in the 1992 Ruby Ridge standoff with federal agents at his cabin near Naples, Idaho, that resulted in the deaths of his wife and son. Weaver was charged with murder, conspiracy, and assault as well as other crimes. He was acquitted of most of the charges, but was convicted of failing to appear in court on a previous weapons charge and sentenced to 18 months in prison. His family eventually received a total of $3,100,000 in compensation for the killing of his wife and son by federal agents.
The Posse Comitatus is a loosely organized American far-right populist social movement which began in the late 1960s. Its members spread a conspiracy-minded, anti-government and anti-Semitic message linked to white supremacy aiming to counter what they believe is an attack on their social and political rights as white Christians.
The Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord (CSA) was a far-right survivalist anti-government militia which advocated Christian Identity and was active in the United States during the 1970s and early 1980s. The CSA developed from a Baptist congregation, the Zarephath-Horeb Community Church, which was founded in 1971 in Pontiac, Missouri. Over time, Zarephath-Horeb evolved into an extremist militant group and it was rechristened the CSA. The group operated a large compound in northern Arkansas which was known as "the Farm".
The Northwest Territorial Imperative is a white separatist idea that has been popularized since the 1970s–80s by white nationalist, white supremacist, white separatist and neo-Nazi groups within the United States. According to it, members of these groups are encouraged to relocate to a region of the Northwestern United States—Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Western Montana—with the intention to eventually turn the region into an Aryan ethnostate. Some definitions of the project include the entire states of Montana and Wyoming, plus Northern California.
The Montana Freemen were an anti-government militant Christian Patriot group based outside the town of Jordan, Montana, United States. The members of the group referred to their land as "Justus Township" and had declared their leaders and followers "sovereign citizens" no longer under the authority of any outside government. They became the center of public attention in 1996 when they engaged in a prolonged armed standoff with agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
Mark Pitcavage is a historian and analyst of far-right wing groups. He works with the Anti-Defamation League and was the creator of the now-archived Militia Watchdog website. The site has been an archive since 2000 when Pitcavage took the position of Director of Fact Finding for the Anti-Defamation League.
In the United States, domestic terrorism is defined as terrorist acts that were carried out within the United States by U.S. citizens and/or U.S. permanent residents. As of 2021, the United States government considers white supremacists to be the top domestic terrorism threat.
Richard Wayne Snell was an American white supremacist convicted of killing two people, a black police officer and a pawn shop owner whom he mistook for a Jew, in Arkansas between November 3, 1983, and June 30, 1984. Snell was sentenced to death for one of the murders, and executed by lethal injection in 1995.
Ronald G. Cole is a figure in the American militia movement in the United States. He was the founder and leader of the Colorado Light Infantry militia groups in 1993. Cole is the author of the book Sinister Twilight, in which he attempts to explain the Branch Davidian side of the standoff with federal authorities that took place in Waco, Texas in 1993. Cole became a national anti-government figure after the events of the Waco siege.
The American militia movement is a term used by law enforcement and security analysts to refer to a number of private organizations that include paramilitary or similar elements. These groups may refer to themselves as militia, unorganized militia, and constitutional militia. While groups such as the Posse Comitatus existed as early as the 1980s, the movement gained momentum after standoffs with government agents in the early 1990s. By the mid-1990s, such groups were active in all 50 US states, with membership estimated at between 20,000 and 60,000. The movement is most closely associated with the American right-wing, though it also includes groups ranging from the far right to the far left of the political spectrum.
In the United States, the patriot movement is a term which is used to describe a conglomeration of non-unified right-wing populist and nationalist political movements, most notably far-right armed militias, sovereign citizens, and tax protesters. Ideologies held by patriot movement groups often focus on anti-government conspiracy theories, with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) describing a common belief that "government has been infiltrated and subverted" and is no longer legitimate. The movement first emerged in 1994 in response to what members saw as "violent government repression" of dissenting groups, along with increased gun control and the Clinton government.
In United States politics, the radical right is a political preference that leans towards ultraconservatism, white supremacy, or other right-wing to far-right ideologies in a hierarchical structure paired with conspiratorial rhetoric alongside traditionalist and reactionary aspirations. The term was first used by social scientists in the 1950s regarding small groups such as the John Birch Society in the United States, and since then it has been applied to similar groups worldwide. The term "radical" was applied to the groups because they sought to make fundamental changes within institutions and remove persons and institutions that threatened their values or economic interests from political life.
The Three Percenters, also styled 3 Percenters, 3%ers and III%ers, are an American and Canadian far-right anti-government militia.
Government of the United States