Throwing Open the Green Curtain: Anti-Environmentalist Conspiracy Theories in the 1990s Militia Movement

• In Event: Fighting the Green Tyrants: Anti-Environmentalism in the Late Twentieth-Century American West

Abstract

The “Militia” or “Patriot” Movement of the 1990s is, perhaps, most widely known for its extreme anti-government sentiments and association with both white supremacist groups and the perpetrators of the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing. A further key characteristic of the movement, however, was its reliance upon conspiracy theory to justify its radical resistance to the Federal Government. A hallmark of these conspiracy theories was a firm belief in a “New World Order” that involved the corrupt government willingly handing authority to totalitarian agents of the United Nations or some other global power. Beyond these abstract warnings about federal tyranny and the threat of international forces to American sovereignty, the Militia Movement frequently turned to specifically anti-environmentalist conspiracy theories to explain the anticipated loss of American freedoms and liberties. Citing government assaults on private property for environmental protection and the danger of international treaties ostensibly seeking to respond to global environmental hazards, the Militia Movement drew support from many corners of the rural American West. This paper will seek to explain the reliance of the Militia Movement on this anti-environmentalist rhetoric in pursuing its vision of freedom as preserving resource extractivism in the American West.

Author

• Zephaniah Fleetwood, UC Davis