25 years later, standoff at Ruby Ridge inspires militia groups

Associated Press

SPOKANE, WASH.

It’s been a quarter-century since a standoff in the mountains of northern Idaho left a 14-year-old boy, his mother and a federal agent dead and sparked an expansion of radical right-wing groups in the United States that continues today.

The gunfight at Ruby Ridge occurred when agents approached Randy Weaver’s property near the Canadian border looking for a place to arrest the military veteran on gun charges. They had been investigating him for possible ties to white supremacist and anti-government groups.

Weaver, his daughters and a friend holed up in the family’s cabin for 11 days before surrendering Aug. 31, 1992.

Twenty-five years later, here’s a look some of the standoff’s lingering effects:

ANTI-GOVERNMENT INSPIRATION

“Ruby Ridge continues to be an inspiration for the rise in extreme anti-government politics,” said Ryan Lenz of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks and studies radical groups.

The number of far-right, anti-government militia groups grew dramatically after the election of Barack Obama, the country’s first black president, Lenz said.

Such groups historically drop off when a Republican becomes president, Lenz said. Instead, they burst into the public arena with the election of President Donald Trump.

That led to the recent violent conflict between white supremacists and their opponents in Charlottesville, Va., and disputes over Confederate monuments.

WACO, OKLAHOMA CITY

A few months after Ruby Ridge, federal agents laid siege to the Waco, Texas, compound of the Branch Davidians, a religious sect. An assault was launched, and a fire destroyed the compound and killed more than 70 people.

Timothy McVeigh cited both Ruby Ridge and Waco as motivators when he bombed the federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995.

TRUMP’S ELECTION

Today, experts believe anti-government activities are growing across the U.S., fed in part by Trump’s election, said Bill Morlin, who covered Ruby Ridge as a newspaper reporter and now writes for the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The issue, experts say, is that Trump has been slow to condemn white supremacists and distance himself from hate.

A TURNING POINT

Author Jess Walter was a newspaper reporter in Spokane who covered the Idaho standoff and then wrote what’s considered a definitive book about it called “Ruby Ridge.”

In a recent article for The Spokesman-Review newspaper, Walter said Ruby Ridge brought together divisive themes of race, religion, guns, law enforcement and Western mythology. “Twenty-five years later, we have certainly picked our sides,” he wrote.