On a recent road trip with my rescue dog, Schuyler, I stopped for the night in Oklahoma City. My car needed charging, I needed a break from driving and I wanted to visit a site that had haunted me for most of my life.

The bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City was the first major news story I personally remember occurring. The bombing resulted in the deaths of 168 people, 19 of whom were children in daycare.

I still remember seeing footage of the bomb going off and a cloud of debris overtaking terrified people who fled, screaming. 

What had just happened? Which way should they run? What about all the people inside?

That moment is frozen at the Gates of Time, a part of the Oklahoma City National Memorial representing how much changed in the 120 seconds between 9:01 and 9:03 AM. The bomb went off at 9:02. 

When Schuyler and I approached the memorial, I was overtaken by the fence, a simple chain-link remnant of what had surrounded the building prior to April 19, 1995. People directly affected by the carnage had left so many letters, cards, flowers and gifts in the immediate aftermath that the fence turned into a makeshift memorial, as often happens at sites where this kind of brutality occurs.

Nearly 30 years later, the original fence is still preserved as part of the memorial that commemorates the people murdered that day and the shattering of a community by collective trauma. Those who lost loved ones continue to visit the fence to leave letters, photographs, flowers and even toys for the toddlers in the daycare who died before they were old enough to hold a crayon.

I was glad I had come there with Schuyler. Sometimes you need your dog. 

The story of Identity theology is the story of national trauma and the Oklahoma City bombing is part of that narrative. Though FBI agents initially suspected Muslim extremists were behind the catastrophe, the perpetrator was actually a white supremacist.

The bombing was an effort to fulfill the goals of Identity, including victory in an end-times race war where the white people would topple the Zionist Occupied Government.

The concept of “Zionist Occupied Government” (ZOG) begins with the centuries-old anti-semitic trope that insists a secret cabal of Jews is controlling world events.

With the publication of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in the early 1920s, the belief in a secret cabal turned into a kind of paranoia that gripped much of Europe and the United States.

Henry Ford, the automobile mogul who transformed manufacturing with the invention of the assembly line, published a series of articles based heavily on “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” in the Dearborn Independent, a newspaper he owned. In the 1920s, he compiled the articles into a series of books called “The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem” and distributed it across the country.

By 1921, the New York Times had already debunked “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” as a conspiracy-laden forgery, but the damage was done. The second iteration of the Ku Klux Klan was entering its heyday and “The Protocols” had come to be considered as gospel truth. 

Identity theology began to coalesce into a coherent ideology in the post-World War II years, and the belief in a secret cabal of Jews running the American government became a core belief. Identity is severely anti-semitic, so much so that followers do not believe Jews are even human but are rather the literal descendants of Satan.

“Zionist Occupied Government” (ZOG) captured these beliefs by claiming, in a manner drawn straight from “The Protocols” and Ford’s writings, that the American government is illegitimate and being run by a secret cabal of Jewish conspirators.

To be clear, ZOG is not a belief held by Palestinians who challenge the legitimacy of the Israeli government. It is a belief held by white supremacists in America who uncritically accept the claims put forth in “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” and claim that America’s government— not just Israel’s— is being run by Jews. 

The term “Zionist Occupied Government” was in full use by the 1970s and provided a central element to the apocalyptic white-supremacist novel, “The Turner Diaries.” The book is not explicitly Identity— white supremacists from different strands, such as the Posse Comitatus, have lauded it as much as Identity followers— but it is entirely compatible with Identity beliefs.

The novel details an end-times race war to abolish ZOG and establish a white ethnostate, a critical component of Identity theology. In the story, the American government is referred to as “the System” and is run by Jews— a conspiracy that perfectly mirrors “The Protocols.” The novel’s “hero” is an underground militant named Earl Turner who dies in a suicide mission by flying a crop duster loaded with a nuclear warhead into the Pentagon.

In the years since its 1978 publication, “The Turner Diaries” has attained quasi-scriptural status among Identity followers. In the 1980s, two Identity-based groups— The Covenant, Sword, and Arm of the Lord (CSA) and the Aryan Nations— made plans to bomb the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. If the perpetrators should die in the process, they would be martyrs, just like their fictional hero in “The Turner Diaries.”

In March of 1993, a veteran of the Persian Gulf War traveled to Waco, Texas to watch the American government continue what would be a 51-day standoff against the Branch Davidian cult. He had read “The Turner Diaries” so many times that it informed virtually everything about how he saw the world.

The next month, as fire consumed the cult compound and killed everyone inside, white supremacists across the country felt justified in their belief that ZOG was out to destroy citizens and had to be dismantled. Exactly two years later, on April 19, 1995, the veteran who had watched the showdown parked a truck containing a fertilizer bomb outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. Out of respect for those he killed, I will not mention his name.

When agents captured him, he had on him a copy of “The Turner Diaries.” This act of terror that killed 168 people was, to the perpetrator, revenge against an illegitimate government that would surround and murder a group of civilians. 

But the bomber did not destroy a “Zionist Occupied Government.” ZOG is not real. 

It is nothing more than a conspiracy theory based on unsubstantiated anti-semitic tropes that have been present since at least the 1700s. You cannot destroy something that is not real, only murder innocent civilians, including a group of children in daycare.

The fence at the National Memorial remembers those children and everyone else who died or was permanently transformed by trauma that day. But the conspiracy theory lives on, increasingly in the mainstream, spouted by talking heads on Fox News and even by elected members of Congress.

The belief that the current government is illegitimate has surged in recent years, particularly with the “Stop the Steal” conspiracy that culminated on January 6. And many people connected with this movement— both Identity-minded white supremacists and sympathetic evangelicals who have been radicalized—promise not to view the upcoming election as legitimate unless Donald Trump wins.

Stay tuned. History just may repeat itself.

 

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