Clinton finds common ground with OKC bombing, current anti-government fervor

Former President Bill Clinton said Friday that parallels exist between the mentality that inspired the 1995 bombing of an Oklahoma City federal building and today’s anti-government attitudes.

In an interview with The New York Times, Clinton specifically targeted remarks made by Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) at a Tea Party rally in Washington Thursday as problematic:

“There can be real consequences when what you say animates people who do things you would never do,” Mr. Clinton said in an interview, saying that Timothy McVeigh, who carried out the Oklahoma City bombing, and those who assisted him, “were profoundly alienated, disconnected people who bought into this militant antigovernment line.”

The former president said the potential for stirring a violent response might be even greater now with the reach of the Internet and other common ways of communication that did not exist on April 19, 1995, when the building was struck.

“Because of the Internet, there is this vast echo chamber and our advocacy reaches into corners that never would have been possible before,” said Mr. Clinton, who said political messages are now able to reach those who are both “serious and seriously disturbed.” He will be delivering the keynote address Friday at an event about the Oklahoma City attack being sponsored by the Center for American Progress Action Fund and the Democratic Leadership Council.

Mr. Clinton pointed to remarks like those made Thursday by Representative Michele Bachmann, the Minnesota Republican, who when speaking at a Tea Party rally in Washington characterized the Obama administration and Democratic Congress as “the gangster government.”

“They are not gangsters,” Mr. Clinton said. “They were elected. They are not doing anything they were not elected to do.” 

Tea Partiers held hundreds of rallies across the country on Thursday, which was Tax Day.

Clinton made his comments before appearing at a symposium about the 1995 bombing, which occurred during his first term in the White House. 

Some Democrats, as well as Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, have warned that right-wing “extremists” could engage in acts of violence as a result of strong anti-government attitudes. 

Those calls were heightened after federal authorities recently took into custody members of the Hutaree militia in several Midwestern states who were charged with conspiring to overthrow the U.S. government. 

Tea Party opponents have also pointed to reported incidents of black lawmakers being spit upon and having racial slurs hurled at them by protesters in Washington the day of the healthcare vote, but many activists and some GOP lawmakers have rejected those claims as false.

Tea Party activists and many conservatives have rejected claims that their movement could turn violent, saying that the implication comes close to treading on their free speech rights.