The Tea Party: phoney freedom fighters

This article was published in Spiked Online 30 April 2010

The right-wing movement is outraged by excessive government - except when it is wielded by Republicans in the name of counter-terrorism.

19 April is Patriot’s Day in America, commemorated here in Boston by a re-enactment of Paul Revere’s ride and the Revolution’s first skirmish on the Lexington Green, as well as by the Boston Marathon. 19 April is also the anniversary of one of the worst domestic terror attacks in American history – the 1995 bombing of a federal office building in Oklahoma City by army veteran Timothy McVeigh.

Trained by the government he grew to hate (or scapegoat), McVeigh travelled on the fringes of homegrown, violent extremist movements, which intensified in the mid-1990s after the horribly misconceived FBI siege of a religious cult in Waco, Texas in 1993. 19 April, Patriot’s Day, is also the anniversary of the final, fatal FBI assault on the Waco compound that ended in the deaths of some 80 people, including 20 children.