* Introduction Fertile Ground * The Myth * Two Kinds of Anger * An Invitation to Die * Like a Disease The Seeds Of Influence * The Religion of Conspiracy * A Grain of Truth * The Root of All Evil * Original Intent The Harvest * America on Trial * Little Countries * The Road to Oklahoma City * A Thousand Days of Tribulation
Joel Dyer is a former editor of Boulder Weekly. His work has been featured in the New York Times, Utne Reader, and numerous other national magazines. He is the author of Harvest of Rage: Why Oklahoma City Is Only the Beginning.
Dyer (editor, Boulder Weekly) discusses the connection between the farm crisis of the 1980s and the rise of the antigovernment movement of the 1990s. Encouraged by the federal government to plant "fence row to fence row" during the 1970s, small farmers have since witnessed declining markets, falling prices, and the rise of multinational food companies, which brought massive foreclosures and bankruptcies among small farmers during the 1980s. This led to a rise in suicides and murders among individuals faced with the loss of their land. Other farmers turned to racist ideologies and conspiracy theories, seeing the crisis as part of a plot by Jews, international bankers, or the federal government to control the world's food supply. Dyer sees many of these same people as fueling the militia movement, harassing government officials in parts of the West, and threatening continued domestic terrorism similar to the Oklahoma City bombing. The author also blames the government for this situation, citing its lack of support for farmers, cuts in funding of rural mental health programs, and the widening distance between the heartland and Washington. This well-written book updates James Corcoran's Bitter Harvest: Gordon Kahl and the Posse Comitatis; Murder in the Heartland (LJ 4/15/90) and complements such works on the militia movement as Kenneth S. Stern's A Force on the Plain (LJ 1/96) and Richard Abanes's American Militias (Intervarsity, 1996). Recommended for all academic and public libraries.‘Stephen L. Hupp, Univ. of Pittsburgh at Johnstown Lib.
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