After Waco

2,530 words

See also: “Waco: The Incident that Kickstarted the Right”

Waco: The Aftermath, which follows 2018’s miniseries Waco and was made by the same production team, is a historical-fiction miniseries that examines the cultural impact of the FBI’s calamitous 51-day siege of the Branch Davidian “compound” in Waco, Texas which ended with a raid on April 19, 1993 in which 76 civilians were killed. The miniseries has three plotlines. The first centers on the criminal trial involving Branch Davidian Clive Doyle (John Hoogenakker) and his lawyer Dan Cogdell (Giovanni Ribisi), as well as co-defendants Ruth Riddle (Kali Rocha), Livingstone Fagan (Michael Luwoye), and Paul Fatta (Nicholas Kolev). The second follows FBI hostage negotiator Gary Noesner (Michael Shannon) as he seeks to understand the rising anger on the Right in response to the raid in the mid-1990s and to prevent terrorism. The final plotline consists of grainy flashbacks showing how the Branch Davidians’ leader, David Koresh (Keenan Johnson), took over the sect in the 1980s.

On the day that the Waco siege ended in flames and tear gas, it was not immediately clear that the incident would resonate so powerfully in American culture. The public initially approved of the authorities’ show of strength, but throughout the siege voices on the American Right, as well as some white advocates, described the affair as an unnecessarily heavy-handed public relations stunt. This view later came to predominate in the national consciousness and became a new beginning for the Right. Waco and its aftermath exposed several things that hadn’t been widely noticed before, such as:

1. The Branch Davidians became emblematic of the threatened (white) American tradition. It was a brutal genocide of (mostly) whites before the term “great replacement” had been coined.
2. The response to the Branch Davidians, which had been ordered and directed from the highest levels of government, showed that the Democratic Party, which controlled both the White House and the House of Representatives at the time, was falling out of step with ordinary Americans.
3. The foolish handling of the siege by federal law enforcement revealed that the ATF and FBI were politicized agencies operating under an unprofessional culture.
4. By the early 1990s, a body of dissident Right-wing literature had developed and matured to the point that its ideas were beginning to percolate into the wider culture and inspired some to action, however ill-advised those actions turned out to be.
5. There was and is an ongoing Jewish ethnic activist response to Waco. Members of the organized Jewish community were especially hostile to the Waco survivors and those who sympathized with them in the aftermath of the catastrophe.

Waco: The Aftermath portrays alleged trends in mainstream American culture that developed in response to both Waco and the Oklahoma City bombing two years later. Its main thrust is to attempt to associate traditional white American symbols with Nazism. In one scene, for example, the Confederate flag is intermixed with the National Socialist eagle. In several other scenes, FBI informant Carol Howe (Abbey Lee) is shown wearing an ordinary cross necklace while simultaneously sporting a swastika tattoo on her arm, or wearing a Nazi shirt.

These associations are historically inaccurate. During the Second World War the American South was more hostile to the Third Reich than any other region of America prior to Pearl Harbor. Additionally, while Christianity did reconcile with National Socialism in Europe during the 1930s and ‘40s to a degree, this did not occur anywhere else. Thus, putting a cross next to a swastika is as inaccurate as calling the Confederate States of America a Nazi regime.

In showing Nazi imagery alongside American symbols such as the Confederate flag, Waco: The Aftermath is simply following the zeitgeist. All white, Western symbols are now associated with “racism” in the mainstream. This is exactly what Sam Francis predicted in the 1990s when the Confederate flag first became the target of Jewish and sub-Saharan racial activists, writing:

What the racial assault on the Confederacy and other non-Confederate symbols really shows, however, is not only the dangerous flaws of multiracialism and the inexorable logic of the racial revolution of this century but also that today regional differences among whites — like many other cultural and political differences — are no longer very relevant. It shows that Southerners and “Yankees” today face common enemies and common threats to their rights, interests, identity, and heritage as whites, and that the forces that have declared war on them and their heritage define themselves as well as their foes not in political, regional, or cultural terms but in terms of race. Whites who have been indifferent to the fate of the Confederate flag and similar symbols in the recent controversies should not be surprised, therefore, when historical symbols important to their own identity come under assault from anti-white radicals in the future.

This likewise happened in 2020 during the Summer of Floyd riots, when statues and monuments to non-Confederates, animals, colored Union troops, Christopher Columbus, and other markers of Western civilization were destroyed or vandalized.

The negatives of associating the Confederacy with Nazism are finally becoming apparent. These anti-Confederate witch hunts and politically-correct renamings of military bases have turned every Southerner, Civil War buff, and old-stock American who takes a different view of the period into a dissenter. As a result, large number of Americans have turned away from military service, among other acts of passive resistance to the establishment’s various foreign-policy endeavors.[1] 

Waco: The Aftermath also raises the idea that free speech is a threat to public safety. Agent Noesner is shocked to find that “militia” newspapers are sent by fax machine to more than 50,000 subscribers across the United States and Canada. The Turner Diaries, a fictional book by William Luther Pierce about a revolution of whites against the “civil rights” regime is also mentioned, as it provided the logistical inspiration for Timothy McVeigh (here played by Alex Breaux) to bomb the Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995. The book is at first dismissed by the FBI’s leadership given that it was already 20 years old at the time, and protected by “free speech.”

Free speech is an Anglo-American cultural principle which the Jewish political elite in the United States dislikes. The Jewish-led “Free Speech” movement in Berkeley, California which started in 1964 was merely Leftist agitation under the guise of “free speech.” None of the protestors in the Free Speech movement would have tolerated a defense of segregation or a reevaluation of the Second World War, nor do free-speech advocates protest the deplatforming of pro-white messaging today. Nor is the First Amendment’s protection absolute. The federal government can withhold legal protection from citizens who say the wrong things about its policies or the beliefs of influential people. Local governments will often allow sub-Saharans to attack whites should a sub-Saharan claim that the white made a “racist” statement, for example.

Free speech in America is a mirage. The mainstream media’s national narrative is carefully managed in such a way that pathologizes whites who speak out for their own racial interests. Any message which supports American non-interventionism, sexual restraint, white family formation, and America-first economic policies is suppressed and ignored.

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The miniseries also highlights problems within the Branch Davidian community itself, especially David Koresh’s personal flaws. While the group mostly consisted of American Majority whites who were practicing their religious beliefs according to their conscience, there were difficulties, most notably Koresh’s sexual misdeeds.

Koresh knew the Bible backwards and forwards. His interpretations of it were insightful and relevant to daily life. Many were therefore taken in by his charisma. But Koresh also had “visions from God” in which he claimed that The Almighty was compelling him to go to bed with the congregation’s young women, and was ordering the other men not to have sex at all. These sexual escapades brought the attention of law enforcement and opened the door for the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms to stage a raid as a publicity stunt.

Before Koresh became the group’s leader himself, he had been involved in several violent altercations with George Roden (Michael Vincent Berry), the son of Lois Roden (J. Smith-Cameron), who had been the Davidian community’s previous prophet. After Lois died and Koresh became the leader, George Roden made several threatening phone calls, and the police declined to protect either Koresh or the group. The police also didn’t act on a tip that George Roden had been “abusing a corpse,” namely that of his mother. George had exhumed the body to show that Koresh couldn’t raise her from the dead. This led to an ill-advised armed raid by Koresh and his followers with the aim of photographing the body so that they could then turn the photos over to the police. Koresh and the others involved in the incident were arrested, but released shortly thereafter. While part of the reason for these clashes was George Roden’s mental problems, the violence was nevertheless a harbinger of things to come.

The miniseries likewise depicts the Christian Identity community in Elohim City, Oklahoma. Elohim City is featured because Timothy McVeigh had visited the settlement prior to carrying out the Oklahoma City bombing, although no evidence was ever found — despite the FBI’s best efforts — to show that he received any support from the community. While some “false flag” conspiracy theorists point to collusion in the Elohim City investigation, it is extremely unlikely that the FBI would have allowed McVeigh to carry out the attack. It is also certain that if the FBI had come across any evidence of criminal activity at Elohim City whatsoever, they would have arrested the “white supremacists” with as much publicity as possible. As it so happens the FBI informant, Carol Howe, did indeed claim that she had warned the FBI about a truck bomb attack, but Howe’s FBI handler disputes this.

The miniseries’ portrayal of the Elohim City community is in keeping with the usual mainstream media tac of making white advocates appear to be as lowly and degenerate as possible. In one scene the community’s beliefs are outlined in a fearsome way to a poorly-dressed audience, while violent men are shown to menace the community’s other members to keep them in line.

This is not to say that the intentions behind Waco: The Aftermath are entirely subversive. The miniseries’ star, Michael Shannon, was heavily involved in its production, as well as that of the 2018 Waco miniseries, and in promotional events that were held prior to the earlier one, Shannon and his team were able to get FBI hostage negotiator Gary Noesner and Branch Davidian David Thibodeau to meet and talk together cordially. Both miniseries seek to seriously examine the viewpoints of both the FBI and the Davidians both during the siege and afterwards. Neither party is depicted as cartoon villains or heroes, and the programs are a serious attempt at national reconciliation. All American white advocates should applaud this effort.

In actuality, Timothy McVeigh was a natural outcome of several negative trends that were ongoing in the US during the 1990s, and which remain problems today. McVeigh was a decorated soldier who had served in the Persian Gulf War. But when he returned to his home in upstate New York, he was unable to get a decent job in the then recently deindustrialized Rust Belt. For a time he worked for an armored car company, becoming disillusioned with sub-Saharan behavior in inner-city Buffalo.

On top of these difficulties, McVeigh suffered a romantic failure, and then he started to drift, going on long drives across the country. He frequented gun shows and got heavily involved in the gun rights movement. McVeigh was racially aware, but white advocacy was not a major part of his ideological motivations. He was primarily concerned with an anti-government ideology that was an offshoot of the neo-liberal and libertarian ideologies which were rising to prominence in the 1990s.

McVeigh’s life was a tragedy. While he was correct to make a statement showing that the federal government had done a terrible thing in Waco, he did so by killing mid-grade government employees who had nothing to do with the siege, as well as children in a daycare center. Prior to his bombing, the Clinton administration, the Justice Department, and the FBI were under heavy scrutiny due to Waco. The attack derailed these investigation, as well as many serious pro-white efforts that were ongoing at the time.

White advocates should not emulate McVeigh. Don’t bring guns to an idea fight. Instead, we should first work to become outstanding citizens, family men, workers, and so on. If you attend church, become a deacon. If you are in a trade, become a master. If you are enlisted in the military, become a Non-Commissioned Officer before being honorably discharged. Become a federal judge, don’t stand accused before one. All white advocates should be working to be able to get involved on the inside when the next pro-white presidential administration comes along.

The miniseries’ final episode ends by cutting between the two-year memorial ceremony of the Branch Davidian massacre and McVeigh’s attack on Oklahoma City. Noesner gives an outstanding speech at the ceremony which can be summed up as a call to remind people that those on the other side of a political dispute are usually not evil. This statement is an enormous validation of those on the Right as well as white advocates. It is likewise good for white advocates to remember that not everyone wo disagrees with us politically is evil — and getting stuck in that mindset is an easy way to make a terrible mistake.

Note

[1] Ironically, Confederate Imagery was used throughout the expansion of the American Empire of Nothing. Reconciling the South with the Union was carried out in part by enlisting Southerners into the US military in great numbers. Greg Grandin wrote in his book The End of the Myth (2019) that 

American history [after the 1890 closing of the frontier] was fast turning into an endless public parade of war and more war. The sectional reconciliation that went with it meant that the “conquered banner” could fly pretty much anywhere, with little other than positive comment. It flew in every war after 1898, with “entire divisions” sewing “Confederate patches instead of Federal ones” on their uniforms. In World War II, after more than eighty days of fighting to take Okinawa, it was the first flag raised over the captured headquarters of the Japanese Imperial Army, carried into battle by a Marine captain from South Carolina.

With the Korean War, the NAACP’s journal, The Crisis, would report a staggering jump in sales of Confederate flags, from forty thousand in 1949 to sixteen million in 1950. Much of the demand was coming from soldiers overseas in Germany and Korea. The Crisis wished for the best, writing that the banner’s growing popularity had nothing to do with rising “reactionary Dixiecratism.”

“A fad,” the magazine hoped, “like carrying foxtails on cars.”

The American Empire of Nothing began to lose its persuasive power during the Vietnam War, at roughly the same time that the Confederate flag first became an issue. Dropping America’s Confederate heritage and replacing it with myths of “civil rights” heroes is part of the reason why the United States continues to lose wars.

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