Keywords: Timothy McVeigh, Oklahoma City Bombing, Terrorism, Biography
Title: American Terrorist
Author/Artist: Lou Michel and Dan herbeck
Publisher: HarperCollins
Media: Book
Reviewer: Pan
Michel and Herbert's American Terrorist represents the nearest we'll ever get to an authorised biography of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. As the authors make clear, McVeigh made himself available to them to the extent that the resulting book presents a picture of him that is more sympathetic than in many of the other accounts which have appeared, both before and after the execution.
The authors, both God-loving Christians, attempt to find the truth of what made McVeigh tick. To this end they describe his childhood and family background in some detail, trying to figure out where this clean-cut all-American boy went so badly wrong. McVeigh really was the nice kid next door, as they make clear repeatedly. He was no loner, no screwed up loser with a chip on his shoulder. He did well at school, had lots of friends, worked at flipping burgers like so many other teenagers…His background is solidly white, working class and Catholic. So what went wrong?
There are two key issues here, deeply intertwined and central to much of the American far-Right: race and guns. Of these two issues Michel and Herbert concentrate most of their attention on guns and gun-control, possibly the one strand that unites the entire spectrum of US right-wing thought, from Republicans to Christian fundamentalists to neo-Nazis.
McVeigh, apparently while still in his teens, became convinced that the Federal government was plotting to bring in gun-control, an essential first step in disarming the population. Why should the Feds disarm the population? To bring in a One World/United Nations/New World Order/Zionist dictatorship, of course.
This paranoia about gun control was directly linked to the race issue in The Turner Diaries by notorious neo-Nazi William Pierce. It was this book that captured McVeigh's imagination like no other. The book tells the story of a war between Aryans and their racial enemies - blacks, browns, Jews - and includes scenes where race traitors are hanged from the lamp posts. It's a Nazi fantasy story writ large, yet the authors of American Terrorist calmly accept McVeigh's explanation that he didn't really appreciate the racist nature of the story. Instead it was the focus on the struggle against the Federal government that drew his attention.
This is not the only instance where the authors go easy on McVeigh's views on race. For example we are seriously meant to believe that his membership of the Ku Klux Klan was a silly mistake. There are similar explanations of a number of other incidents - including several episodes of racist behaviour in the Army.
McVeigh's experiences in the army are explored, including his tour of duty in the Gulf War. His disillusion is described, and there's some inkling of his sympathy for the Iraqi population. However the contradiction between his service in the army - the Federal government's biggest stick with which to attack its enemies - and his anti-government views is not explored in any great depth.
His departure from the army and subsequent immersion in the gun culture of far-Right activism is also described, though there is little hard fact about some of the organisations he had contact with. The Waco siege is described as a turning point - as far as McVeigh was concerned it marked the watershed, the time for words had ended.
The deed that eventually followed was, of course, the Oklahoma City bombing. This is described in some detail, but the story as re-told here is a neat and tidy tale with few loose ends. Evidence of conspiracy is either ignored or rubbished. The official story stands: McVeigh did the deed with an unwilling Terry Nichols and Michael Fortier. This is how McVeigh wanted to be portrayed: a patriot, a hero fighting for a cause he felt was just. The 168 deaths he caused were collateral damage, no different to the deaths of civilians in the US bombing of Serbia, Iraq or Afghanistan.
The real extent of McVeigh's racism is glossed over or at least never explored in any real depth. The authors seem to want to present McVeigh as sincere but misguided. In their eyes he was a young man led astray, particularly by the malign influence of The Turner Diaries.
At no point are questions raised either with McVeigh's account of his story, or with those factors of his environment that caused him to take the road he did. Why is that men like McVeigh express their hatred of the State in terms that are racist and right-wing? It is a question one is bound to ask, but it never surfaces here at all.
It is ironic that the system that McVeigh hated also gave him the training and the example of slaughtering civilians. It is ironic that he turned his weapons on a system that taught him so well. Perhaps the lesson here is the simplest of all: As ye sow, so shall ye reap.
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