·Timothy Mcveigh ·High School Shootings ·Fight Club ·Chinese
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·Timothy McVeigh ·High School Shootings ... ·Fight Club ·Chinese Exclusion ·National Bolshevism Fall 2001 number 15 $5 TREASON TO WHITENESS IS LOYALTY TO HUMANITY Race Traitor number fifteen/fall 2001 contents features JOHN GARVEY: The Life and Death of Timothy Mcveigh ..... .. 1 JAMES MURRAY: Fiction: April 19 ............................................. 9 LARA BRAVEHEART: Tim McVeigh and Me ............................. 13 John Brown and the Militia ... ............... ...... ......... ............. 18 Race Behind Bars, An Exchange .. .. ................ ...... ........... 19 RICH GIBSON: Lonely Privilege ............. .................... ........... 24 AMIRI K. BARKSDALE: Fight Club ........................................... 53 TIMOTHY MESSER-KRUSE: Crusaders and Bystanders ... ...... 91 reviews Loren Goldner, Adam Sabra ............ .... ...................... ..... 125 editors: John Garvey, Beth Henson, Noel lgnatiev contributing editors: John Bracey, Kingsley Clarke, Selwyn Cudjoe, Lorenzo Komboa Ervin, James W. Fraser, Carolyn Karcher, Robin D.G. Kelley, Louis Kushnick, Kathryne V. Lindberg, Theresa Perry, Phil Rubio, Vron Ware Race Traitor is published by The New Abolitionists, Inc. Post Office Box 499, Dorchester MA 02122 Single copies are $5 ($6 postpaid), subscriptions (four issues) are $20 individual, $40 institutions. Race Traitor is distributed by AK, DeBoer, and Desert Moon Website: http://www.racetraitor. org THE LIFE AND DEATH OF TIMOTHY MCVEIGH BY JOHN GARVEY imothy McVeigh is dead. What can we do so thathis death and the T deaths that he caused do not leave us even farther from the world that we want? I haven't been to Oklahoma City; I don't really know what it's like to visit thescene of thebombing. I don't know ifl would be more affected by the painful memories or turned offby the transfonnationof meaningfulfamily items (like a stuffedanimal) into only sentimental public tokens (like lots of stuffed animals) with no real meaning for most of the people who will look at them. But, especially since theweek s before his execution,I have been strugglingto understand the significance of his place in American history. Timothy McVeigh was an American man at war with America. By the time of thebombing, he appears to have felt no special animosity towards any of his fellow Americans other than those who worked for agencies he thought to be responsible for assaults against peoples' rights and freedoms (such as the FBI and the ATF), but he refused to accord Americans any special standing among the peoples of the world. Those of us who believe in good wars waged by the government of the United States, or probably by any government anywhere, need to pay close attention to the deeds and political vision of Timothy McVeigh. His willingness to wage war against his fellow Americans and his political justifications for his actions, meager as his own words on the topic arc, should cause the rest of us to stop and think about the ways in which this country wages war and the ways in which that war-making inevitably affects those of us unharmed by the bombs and missiles exploding on our television screens. Timothy McVeigh was not the agent of any foreign power. He bombed the federal building in Oklahoma CiLy because it housed agencies of the American government that had been responsible for crimes against Americans (specifically, the incineration of Branch Davidians at Waco, Texas and the assault on the Weaver family in Ruby Ridge, Idaho). He refusedto acknowledge anydistinction between those who gave the orders John Garvey is one of the editors of Race Traitor. The other editors wish it known that they agree with this statement. 2 RACE TRAITOR and those who just worked in those agencies. He also refused to acknowledge any distinction between those who were in that building because of their direct involvement with those agencies and those who were merely engaging in normal interactions with other federal agencies, such as those filing for Social Security benefits. Accordingto Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck, the authors of American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh & the Oklahoma CityBombing : McVeigh had considered targeting specific individuals, among them Lou Horiuchi, the FBI sharpshooter who had killed Randy Weaver's wife, Vicki, at Ruby Ridge. He considered going after a member of the sharpshooter's family, to inflict the same kind of pain the surviving Weaver's had experienced. But ultimately he decidedthat he would make theloudest statement by bombing a federal building. By destroying people who compiled a complete cross-section of federal employees, McVeigh believed that he was showing federal agents how wrong they were to attack the entire Branch Davidianfamily. In McVeigh'sopinion, every division of the federal government had at one time or another mistreated the public. Now, McVeigh decided, was the time to make them all pay. That's what happens in war. They all pay-even those whom no one believes should pay. Soldiers die and so do a lot of other people,including children, who play no active role in war-making. (From all accounts, however, Mc Veigh did not know that there was a childcare center in the building; had he known, he might have changed his plan. He had previously decided not to bomb a federal building in Little Rock, Arkansas because it had a florist shop on the ground floor.) His concern for protecting some while rather cold-bloodedly anticipating the deaths of others had a logic, albeit a very narrowly constructed one-a soldier's logic. From Michel and Herbeck: Timothy McVeigh wanted a body count-the higher the better. The federal government, he reasoned, had unlimited amounts of cash to replace buildings, but the lives of federal employeescould not be replaced. He needed to deliver a quantity of casualties the federal government would never forget. It was thesame tactic the American government used in armedinternational conflicts, when it wanted to send a message to tyrants and despots. It was the United States governmentthat had ushered in this new anything- THE LIFE AND DEATH 3 goes mentality. McVeigh believed, and he intended to show the world what it would be like to fight a war under these new rules, right in the federal government's ownbackyard. In one of his relatively few written statements, McVeigh made this connection explicit: In Oklahoma City, it was family convenience that explained the presence of a day-care center placed between street level and the law-enforcementagencies whichoccupied the upper floors of the building. Yet when the discussion shifts to Iraq, any day-care center in a government building instantly becomes "a shield." Think about that. (Actually, there is a difference here. The administration has admitted to knowledgeof the presence of children in or near Iraqi government buildings, yet they still proceed with their plans to bomb-saying they cannot be held responsible if children die. There is no such proof, however, that knowledge of the presence of children existed in relation to the Oklahoma City bombing.) When considering morality and"mens rea" (criminal intent) in light of these facts, I ask: Who are the true barbarians? TimothyMcVeigh was no "natural bornkiller." He was born in 1968 and grew up in the suburbs of Buffalo at a time when those suburbs were being drained of jobs and the predictable, tolerably miserable futures those jobs made possible. His childhood appears to have been filled with ups and downs (probably the biggest "down" being the separation and divorce of his parents), but his experiences were not so different from those of a lot of ordinary kids. His father worked for more than thirty years at Harrison Radiator, a company that provided radiators for GM cars. His grandfather had worked there too. But Tim never did. It's not clear if he could have. We shouldn't imagine that there was no way that he could have become connected with that stable world of work and weariness. Even Mc Veigh had his choices. But his world was not his father's or mother's world. Eventually, he chose the army. And by all accounts, Tim McVeigh was an excellent soldier. He was an especially excellent shot. He got scores on thegunn ery range that no one else got. (It's likely that a good part of the credit for his marksmanshiplay with the many hours he spent learning to handle guns and shoot with his grandfather.) Tim McVeigh got to use his considerable shooting skills on Iraqi 4 RACETRAITOR soldiers during the Gulf War.And at the moment when his skillbrought him praise, his stomach turned. The story's a bit long but it's worth knowing. McVeigh was assigned to a Bradley fighting vehicle under a Lieutenant Rodriguez. ...On the second day of the ground war many of the Iraqis were still surrendering, but offin the distance McVeigh' s crew spotted a dug-in enemy machine-gun nest. It was more than a mile away, but Rodriguez knew McVeigh could hit it. He gave the order to fire. Mc Veigh saw a flash of light, the apparent source of some Iraqi gunfire. He pressed his forehead against the padded viewfinder, zeroing in on the target. He knew he'd have to adjust his shot slightly to allow for themovement of the rolling Bradley. An Iraqi soldier popped his head up for a split second. From his position roughly nineteen football fields away, Mc Veigh fired, hittingthe soldier in the chest. The man's upper body exploded. "His head just disappeared ... I saw everything above the shoulders disappear, like in a red mist," McVeigh recalls. The same shot, a 25-mm high-explosive round with the power of a small grenade, killed another Iraqi soldier who was standing a few feet away from the man whom Mc Veigh was targeting. "The guy next to him just dropped," McVeigh says. "In the military,you're always supposed to stay at least five meters from anybody, at any time.