Book dossier

Harvest of rage

by Joel Dyer

Timothy McVeigh is not alone. The 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City killed 168 innocent people and shattered the complacency of a nation. But this event, horrible as it was, may well be only the beginning of an unprecedented wave of terror in America. This is the chilling conclusion reached by Joel Dyer in Harvest of Rage, the first book to explore the surprisingly deep rural roots of today's growing and increasingly deadly antigovernment movement. Harvest of Rage explains why many otherwise decent people have joined an "alternate America" that seems to defy rational comprehension - until you begin to see the grains of truth that reside in the big lies of the radical antigovernment movement. Dyer shows us the complex arguments that antigovernment proponents use to justify their actions. Based on unprecedented and often intimate interviews with the leaders and the food soldiers of these groups, his research reveals a complicated and often contradictory amalgam of politically and religiously based forces. Some, like the Republic of Texas, have already "seceded" from the United States and declared war on the U.S. government. Others have set up a secret system of courts, supposedly based in Anglo-Saxon common law, that judges and sentences perceived enemies. Meanwhile, armed militias and independent terrorist cells stand ready to carry out those sentences, including the death penalty. As the year 2000 approaches, many of these groups share a growing millennial fervor, a sense that they are in a state of war with the U.S. government and that an all-out confrontation must take place in the next three years. In this warped world, Oklahoma City truly is just the beginning. And until we come to understand that, until we begin to address the true underlying causes of America's confrontation with domestic terror, we are doomed to continue to reap what has been sown: a Harvest of Rage.