Oklahoma City Bombing

On April 19, 1995, Timothy McVeigh detonated a bomb in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, committing the single most destructive act of domestic terrorism in United States history (U.S. Department of Justice, 2012). The Oklahoma City bombing, and particularly McVeigh's process of radicalization, is an ideal case study for understanding how the ideology of the militia movement is conducive to domestic terrorism, because although McVeigh and his co-conspirators were not acting in the name of any particular militia group, McVeigh's stated intentions as well as his personal history prior to the bombing indicate an ideological alignment with the militia movement. The case of the Oklahoma City bombing justifies the classification of militias as terrorist or potential terrorist organizations, because it demonstrates how the extremist ideology of the militia movement encourages the radicalization of individuals, even if the larger organizations themselves...
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