In a remote meadow in northern Michigan, inside a large tent heated by a wood stove, 50 white men dressed in combat gear and wielding rifles talk about the insanity of the outside world. The men, civilians all, see threats everywhere. There are reports of foreign soldiers hiding in salt mines under Detroit, some of the men say. Others speak of secret markings on highway signs meant to guide conquering armies. The men's voices subside as "General" Norman Olson, a Baptist minister, gun-shop owner and militia leader, enters the tent. He tells the men they are the shock troops of a movement that's sweeping America, that the "end times" are coming, and civil wars are two years away. "People think we are the ones who bring fear because we have guns," Olson says. "But we are really an expression of fear."
In dozens of states, loosely organized paramilitary groups composed primarily of white men are signing up new members, stockpiling weapons and preparing for the worst. The groups, all privately run, tend to classify themselves as "citizen militias." They are the armed, militarized edge of a broader group of disgruntled citizenry that go by the label of "patriots." The members of the larger patriot movement are usually family men and women who feel strangled by the economy, abandoned by the government and have a distrust for those in power that goes well beyond that of the typical angry voter. Patriots join the militias out of fear and frustration. Says Jim Barnett, leader of a Florida militia: "The low-life scum that are supposedly representing us in Washington, D.C., don't care about the people back home anymore. We're grasping at straws here trying to figure out what we can do to get representation, and this is our answer."
Patriots claim to be motivated differently from other fringe groups that have sprung up in America and taken up arms. The Ku Klux Klan, for example -- born as a social club and quickly evolving into a militia, recruiting members through appeals to patriotism -- still thrives on hatred of blacks, Jews, Roman Catholics and foreigners. The moribund Posse Comitatus, a militant group based in the Farm Belt, wanted to wipe out the tax collectors. The patriots, by contrast, have a more generalized fear of Big Government, which they say is rapidly robbing individuals of their inalienable rights, chief among them the right to bear arms. Patriots were particularly enraged when Congress passed a crime bill last August that banned assault weapons. Complains Henry McClain, the leader of another Florida militia unit: "The Federal Government has taken it upon themselves to regulate everything you can think or touch or smell."
Patriots also fear that foreign powers, working through organizations like the United Nations and treaties like the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, are eroding the power of America as a sovereign nation. On a home video promoting patriot ideas, a man who gives his name only as Mark from Michigan says he fears that America will be subsumed into "one big, fuzzy, warm planet where nobody has any borders." Samuel Sherwood, head of the United States Militia Association in Blackfoot, Idaho, tells followers, absurdly, that the Clinton Administration is planning to import 100,000 Chinese policemen to take guns away from Americans.