Today marks the 26th anniversary of the U.S.'s worst domestic terrorist attack: the truck bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, OK. Killed in the attack were 168 people, including children in a day-care center in the building. The explosion was so powerful it destroyed or damaged 324 buildings in a 16 square block radius.
Attorney General Merrick Garland attended the 26th anniversary memorial commemoration. Garland led the investigation and prosecution of the attackers, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, while serving in the Justice Department prior to becoming a judge.
McVeigh was an early manifestation of the violent anti-Government, right-wing militia movement that accelerated in the 1990s. There's a direct line from McVeigh's terrorism to the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bombing, to the Bundy Ranch / Malheur Nature Reserve stand offs, to the Charlottesville "Unite the Right" attack, He was the forerunner of the Trumpist domestic terrorists who attacked the Capitol on January 6, seeking to violently impose their will on the majority of Americans after a fair election didn't go their way.
The right-wing attacks on Government "bureaucrats" quieted down in the immediate aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing, but are again on the rise, as marked by their attacks on the fictitious "deep state," and vile conspiracies spread by the low- IQAnon cult. In the generation that's passed, we're still dealing with right-wing domestic terrorism, more emboldened and open than ever before.
(photo: The memorial to the victims of the bombing, an empty chair for each victim. WILX)
