http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/i ... e-militiasIn 1910, prominent bankers and government officials convened a secret meeting on a stunning South Georgia key known as Jekyll Island. Gathering at a place that was once a haven for French privateers and, later, a playground for the rich of the Gilded Age, the group devised the plans that would result, three years later, in the creation of the Federal Reserve System, America's central bank.
Almost exactly a century later, in May 2009, some 30 "freedom keepers" — men who, like most members of the radical right, despise the Fed and see it as part of a plot to exploit American citizens — came together at the scene of the "crime" to wash away its sins. Meeting in the Federal Reserve Room of the luxurious Jekyll Island Club, they held an elaborate ceremony meant to symbolically "supplant the secretive deliberations" of 1910. Hoisted over the club as they met was the Gadsden Flag, with its coiled snake and cantankerous slogan, "Don't Tread on Me."
Convened by long-time radical tax protester Bob Schulz, who has been attacking the Fed and the Internal Revenue Service for decades, this remarkable gathering appears to have played a key role in launching the current resurgence of militias and the larger antigovernment "Patriot" movement. Less than five months into the Obama Administration, the Jekyll Island conclave warned of "increasing national instability," worried about a coming "New World Order," denounced secret schemes to merge Canada, Mexico and the United States, and furiously attacked the new president's "socialized" policies and failure to end illegal immigration.
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Robert L. Schulz is no stranger to the radical right. For decades, he has battled the federal government over his right to sell products claiming that the income tax is illegal and Americans need not pay it. He has been behind more than 100 court actions and petitions claiming government malfeasance and seeking various forms of redress. He has run full-page ads in national newspapers calling attention to his groundless theories.
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Since 2008, Schulz also has become a vocal "birther," one of those who, against all the evidence, claim President Obama is not a U.S. citizen. In two full-page ads in the Chicago Tribune that year, Schulz demanded that Obama either bring him proof that he is "a natural born citizen" or be called out as a "usurper" to whom the armed forces "would be under no obligation to remain obedient."
But it was only last year that Schulz began to play a key role in building a larger movement, one with concerns that went far beyond challenging the legality of taxes and Obama's holding the office of president. At Jekyll Island, there were long hours spent discussing a list of alleged ongoing constitutional violations that will soon "collapse the Republic." The dark talk focused on fears of illegal surveillance, gun-control laws, "transportation choke points," sustainable development, and "individual and state sovereignty." And there was angry talk, of course, about taxes and "unconstitutional fiat currency," meaning, in English, the U.S. dollar.
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Schulz has also been reaching out to other antigovernment groups. In October, his WTP held a joint event with the Oath Keepers, which suggests on its website that government roundups and concentration camps are imminent dangers. The event in Chatham, N.Y., was dedicated to helping Americans become "aware of the threats to their individual freedoms and liberties, as well as to their nation's sovereignty."
By last November, the American radical right was growing increasingly agitated. Patriot groups, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center's count, had exploded over the prior year. The "tea parties," while not strictly speaking extremist groups, were shot through with radical ideas and conspiracy theories. Nativist groups were booming. And anger at Obama, even in the political mainstream, was swelling, fueled by accusations of creeping socialism.
It was a good time, in other words, for Bob Schulz.
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The ranks of We the People have burgeoned since the November congress, and they now include dozens of prominent radical-right figures. Among them are Orly Taitz, the California dentist on a personal jihad to prove that Obama is not a citizen; Cory Burnell, a former leader of the white supremacist League of the South and later founder of Christian Exodus, which seeks a theocratic takeover of the state of South Carolina; John Hassey, former leader of the Central Alabama Militia; Walter Burien, co-founder in the 1990s of the Arizona Sons and Daughters of Liberty militia; and Jo Ann Dingley, once a contact for the Santa Rosa County Militia and a delegate to the Third Continental Congress, a Patriot formation.
With this swelling of the WTP rolls have come people with reported criminal histories. (Each of the people named below did not respond to E-mails seeking comment; details of their histories come from press reports). Among them:
Wayne Gunwall, who in the 1990s traveled around the country helping groups set up common-law courts. He was sentenced to 15 months in prison in 1997 for conspiring to impede and harass Internal Revenue Service agents.
Arthur Hollowell, a "sovereign citizen" who in 1982 was convicted of forgery charges and then was a fugitive for years. He was eventually sentenced to a year in federal prison in 1997 after pleading guilty to running a scam, called the Northwest Community Exchange, to hide millions of dollars from the Internal Revenue Service. In the 1990s, Hollowell was tied to the Citizens Bar Association, which urged tax resistance and was reportedly anti-Semitic.
Robert B. Beale, convicted of tax evasion in 2008 after two years on the run.
And David Eugene Landess, who accepted a plea bargain in 2009 on felony charges of attempting to evade taxes over several years.
It's not clear what role Bob Schulz and We the People will play in the coming months and years. What is certain is that they have had a key, and little-noticed, part in the dramatic expansion of the radical right over the last year. [ . . . ]
-----from "Midwifing the Militias," by Heidi Beirich, Southern Poverty Law Center, with contributions by Janet Smith
