[117241] in Cypherpunks
IP: Armed and ready for the new year
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Robert Hettinga)
Sun Aug 29 15:58:49 1999
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Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 08:47:41 -0400
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From: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
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From: "Dan S" <ds1999@crosswinds.net>
To: "IP" <ignition-point@precision-d.com>
Subject: IP: Armed and ready for the new year
Date: Sat, 28 Aug 1999 14:11:32 -0400
Sender: owner-ignition-point@precision-d.com
Reply-To: "Dan S" <ds1999@crosswinds.net>
http://www.post-gazette.com/columnists/19990828rroddy1.asp
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Armed and ready for the new year
Saturday, August 28, 1999
By Dennis Roddy
The Northern Michigan Regional Militia Wolf Pack -- not to be confused with
the Northern Michigan Regional Militia Men and Boys Choir -- gathers this
weekend for another round of specialized instruction on how to live a feral
existence.
In addition to teaching members to corner, stomp and skin wild game, this
month's training, says the official announcement, "will emphasize ambush,
concealment and sniper skills."
My sniper skills are not all they could be, so I called Norman Olson, the
pistol-toting minister who heads the militia, and asked why he thought I
should sharpen them.
"To stay alive," Olson said. "We're looking at a revolution breaking out in
America within the next year, triggered by Y2K." I felt like a fool. I'd
forgotten that the minute my ATM card was no good, I was supposed to shoot
someone through the head and melt into the underbrush.
Olson is a millennialist. He believes that, once the clock turns over to
triple-zeroes this New Year's Day, computers will crash, transportation and
power grids will implode, and Bill Clinton will use the moment to seize
absolute power. The militia will take to the woods. The populace will sit
frightened and hungry in darkest winter while New World Order troops seal
off the streets.
"Is this," I asked, "going to affect the NBA season?"
"Of course it will," Olson said. "Basketballs are imported from China."
The Wolf Pack is Olson's second militia. He helped found the Michigan
Militia in the early 1990s and fell out with his old comrades over his
theory that the Oklahoma City bombing was the work of the Japanese. He
doesn't miss the old crowd.
"It's too moderate anyway," he said. "They don't believe in violence to
promote one's political position. Extreme politics is war."
After a year in which extreme politics was sex, this new paradigm doesn't
feel as unsettling as it ought. Truth to tell, it is a bit familiar.
Some of the underlying theory of Olson's millennial apocalypse sounds like
stuff I heard from the left in the 1960s. What, if anything, were these
back-to-the-farm communes and the Weather Underground if not the left's
version of survivalists and militias?
With this much in mind, Olson last year tried to prove his openness by
traveling to Detroit to urge the remnants of the Black Panthers to come on
up for training. So far, they haven't shown.
"It's very difficult to get a bunch of black guys to come up into Northern
Michigan and train in the woods with a bunch of white guys with guns," he
said.
That is not say outreach isn't taking place. He has already trained an Arab
family in guerrilla warfare. Michael Moore, the television host who gained
fame for stalking the chairman of General Motors for a bitterly funny
documentary, took Olson to Disney World for a day's merriment.
One guy's coming this weekend in a wheelchair.
"Nobody else will take him," Olson said.
Michigan has laws against paramilitary training, but Olson doubts law
enforcement agents are keen to raid a compound filled with alienated guys
with guns. Anyway, he says he has invited state and local lawmen to attend,
to give some realism to the camouflage and escape portion of the lesson.
They declined. No worry. He figures at least two of his trainees will be
undercover federal agents.
"You don't have to invite the feds formally," he said. "They always come
over."
--
Dan S
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-----------------
Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
