Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, April 20, 1993 TAG: 9304200087
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GARY BLONSTON KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long
Branch Davidians, MOVE, the People's Temple, Aryan Nations - the names and the beliefs have been wildly different, but the fates of those who followed them eerily the same. They have died at the hands of law enforcement officers, or they have died by their own hands before anyone could tear down the little worlds that were their refuge.
Moved by the power of a charismatic leader, by love of God, by hatred of humanity and sometimes all at once, they have died just as so many of them predicted they would, as if there were no other way out.
Here is how familiar it has become:
"It is only logical to assume that my days on this planet are rapidly drawing to a close. I will leave knowing I have made the ultimate sacrifice to secure the future of my children."
Race-hater and Christian fundamentalist Robert Jay Mathews wrote those words not long before he engaged police in a shootout near Seattle. He died, as he expected, when the house where he was hiding was ignited by a flare that police said they fired to illuminate the area. Like the compound in Waco, the house burned to the ground.
That happened in 1984. A year later in Philadelphia, when a tiny blackcult called MOVE barricaded itself in a private home, police dropped a bomb on the house, ostensibly to open a hole in the roof for a tear-gas assault. That house and 60 others burned, and 11 people died.
There might be no greater challenge to public authorities than armed, defiant, tight-knit groups that break the law, particularly those who believe that the country is being destroyed, or those who believe the end, the apocalypse, the millennium is near.
"Anything that smacks of confrontation provokes violence," says Syracuse University political scientist Michael Barkin, who has studied these crises, "because such individuals maintain that their world will end in some sort of conflagration or battle. When heavily armed authorities move in, they see it as confirmation of their prediction.
"Such groups see themselves in confrontation with an evil force. The presumption is that they are in a non-negotiable situation. They see themselves as participants in a final battle."
Historian Charles Strozier of the City University of New York, who is writing a book on the apocalyptic movement, suggests there is an especially strong tendency to violence among people who share the specific religious beliefs that were held by David Koresh, head of the Waco Branch Davidians.
In the arena of opinion about Jesus Christ's Second Coming, there is disagreement about whether that fundamental event of Christian theology will occur before the world has undergone a predicted age of horrendous tribulation, or whether it will occur amid the tribulation, or afterward - "mid-trib" or "post-trib," in scholarly shorthand.
Strozier argues that people who believe in the mid- or post-tribulation return are drawn to that fearsome conclusion because of their own fascination with violence.
"Koresh [was] mid-trib," Strozier says, "and the guys in Idaho [where pockets of far-right Christian fundamentalism occasionally have turned violent] want to fight it out with Uzis."
Strozier's first reaction to news of the fire in Waco was outrage at the "stupidity" of those who conducted the raid:
"They created Armageddon. Here they've got a cult that lives Armageddon, lives the end-time and fears it . . . and they are attacked by people who then get enraged because they aren't giving in.
"This was literally the Apocalypse. The imagery of that is astounding. It's the final battle."
In Pocatello, Idaho, sociologist James Aho, who has studied the right-wing groups around him, shares Strozier's view that such groups should be treated with much greater care than they have been in the most lethal of these situations.
"People have to be very careful with these kinds of people to avoid that self-fulfilling prophecy," Aho says.
Aho notes ominously that the year 2000 will mark the end of the second millennium - the second thousand-year period since the beginning of the Christian calendar and a moment of great portent for those who believe in the millennial theory of Christ's return.
Says Aho: "There possibly are going to be more and more of these kinds of scenarios."
The most dramatic case in modern memory occurred in Jonestown in 1978, when more than 900 people committed mass suicide at the urging of the Rev. Jim Jones, after his followers shot and killed five outsiders, including Rep. Leo Ryan of California.
Today, Ryan's daughter, Patricia, is president of the Cult Awareness Network. She sees the Waco incident not just as a warning to law enforcement authorities. As she fights the influence of cult leaders, she reads the Waco tragedy as yet another warning for all the country not to believe too readily or too well when someone seems to have all the answers.
"The people in this country are very naive," she says. "You have to be suspicious of everyone."
by CNB