Summary of Homegrown by Jeffrey Toobin: Timothy McVeigh and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism

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Jeffrey Toobin's Homegrown is the definitive account of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and the legacy of Timothy McVeigh, leading to the January 6 insurrection. McVeigh was a Gulf War veteran who wanted to start a movement and cited the Declaration of Independence. He abhorred immigration and wanted women to return to traditional roles. His principles and tactics have flourished since his death in 2001, reaching an apotheosis on January 6 when hundreds of rioters stormed the Capitol.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookRix
• Release date: May 5, 2023
• ISBN: 9783755441236

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Summary of Homegrown

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Summary of Jeffrey Toobin’s Book

Timothy McVeigh and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism

GP SUMMARY

Summary of Homegrown by Jeffrey Toobin: Timothy McVeigh and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism

By GP SUMMARY© 2023, GP SUMMARY.

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This is an unofficial summary & analysis of Jeffrey Toobin’s Homegrown: Timothy McVeigh and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism designed to enrich your reading experience.

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Copyright 2023. All rights reserved.

1776

The spirit of rebellion was in the air on January 6, 2021, when Vice President Mike Pence was due to certify Joseph Biden's victory in the 2020 presidential election. The Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Alex Jones, Lauren Boebert, and Trump rallied at the Ellipse to send the same message. Timothy McVeigh, a twenty-seven-year-old man, committed the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma in response to the abuses and usurpations of the federal government. He recited the Declaration of Independence and Patrick Henry's famous speech from 1775 to explain why his actions were a direct response to the abuses and usurpations of the federal government. In the months that followed, McVeigh would return obsessively to these two events.

McVeigh's decision to bomb the Oklahoma City bombing was motivated by three powerful ideological motivations: gun rights, the Founding Fathers' approval, and the value and power of violence. The investigation was conducted by Stephen Jones' defense team, which interviewed McVeigh for dozens of hours and hired a court reporter and polygraph examiner to evaluate his state of mind. The public record is limited to what was disclosed during McVeigh's criminal trial. McVeigh is often described as a survivalist or antigovernment, but he had a different ideological profile with deep roots in American history. Timothy McVeigh was a right-wing extremist who opposed the federal government of President Bill Clinton.

He spoke calmly and openly about the need to fight back, but his bombing had a lasting legacy. Donald Trump broke the pattern of right-wing terror rising under Democratic administrations and falling during Republican ones by encouraging it. McVeigh's values, views, and tactics have endured and even flourished in the decades since his death, making the story of McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing a warning about the future.

The Blueprint

Herbert Champion Harrison immigrated to the United States in 1907 and designed a radiator with a Harrison hexagon core. He built a factory on the banks of the Erie Canal in Lockport, New York and sold 131 radiators and 2,245 the next year. In 1925, sales increased to 1,189,294 radiators. The Harrison Radiator complex comprised more than a score of buildings on 495 acres, with 6,800 employees. The McVeighs came to western New York from Ireland during the Great Famine and were farmers for generations until Bill's father, Ed McVeigh, abandoned the wheat fields for work at Harrison Radiator.

Tim McVeigh was born into a dysfunctional family in the mid-1980s and developed a consuming interest in guns. He applied for a hunting license when he was fifteen and graduated from Starpoint High School in 1986. Tim McVeigh was a survivalist who joined the National Rifle Association at a transformative moment in the politics of guns, when it became partisan and dedicated to stifling any attempts to limit gun ownership. He also tailored his media consumption to his ideological predilections, starting with American Hunter, the NRA magazine. He read The Turner Diaries, a novel by Andrew Macdonald, which told a gruesome tale of a right-wing revolution in the United States.

McVeigh's mission was to protect legacy Americans from the depredations of Blacks, Jews, and the foreign born. Earl Turner, Tim McVeigh, and George Wallace were all inspired by George Wallace's promise to keep federal power at bay. Tim's gun obsession and fixation with The Turner Diaries led him to build primitive explosives. He enrolled at Bryant & Stratton and became an armed guard for Burke Security. He was a racist by his teenage years and plowed his salary into more guns, including an AR-15 assault weapon.

He and a high school friend bought a ten-acre farm for $6,000 in an isolated part of New York State. His political views were resentful of politicians and Blacks, but his messianic streak and sense of destinies led to the horror that followed.

Kindred Spirits

Tim McVeigh joined the Army in 1988, taking advantage of his father's employee discount and buying a new car with a turbo-charged engine. He met Terry Nichols on the first day of basic training and their friendship was born in the military. This connection between right-wing extremism and the armed forces was highlighted by the January 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol. McVeigh was inclined towards extremism due to his passion for weaponry and his anger at Blacks and a government that he thought was going to take away his guns. He had no historical or legal context for his views and didn't know much American history.

Terry Nichols was born in 1955 and grew up in rural Lapeer County, Michigan. He was the third of four children of Joyce and Robert Nichols, who farmed, but their farm never produced enough money to support four children. He dropped out of college after a semester and was disfigured in a welding accident. After twenty-four years of marriage, Joyce and Robert went through a rancorous divorce, and Terry blamed his mother for the rupture. He blamed his mother for the rupture and took issue with her drinking.

Joyce purchased a 160-acre farm outside the small town of Decker, Michigan, and summoned her brother Terry to help her make it work. The farm crisis of the 1980s hit the region, and Terry fled to Colorado to make it as a real estate salesman. Lana Walsh was a neighbor who saw Terry driving a tractor and they were married in 1980. They had a son, Josh, in 1982. James was the dominant figure in the house, and as the family farm floundered, he found explanations in the right-wing conspiracy theories that had long circulated in the region.

The Nichols brothers were part of a reactionary movement in the 1980s and '90s, blaming their financial problems on international organizations, big-city bankers, and the federal government. James became an avid reader of The Spotlight, published by the Liberty Lobby, and his views aligned with those of the Founding Fathers. Terry's political views became more important, and Lana decided to try a last-ditch effort to bring him back to life. She brought him recruiting material from a local Army outpost and suggested he should enlist. Terry was thirty-three years old and had a home and a young son to support.

Terry Nichols, like Timothy McVeigh, found his way to Fort Benning for basic training. At first, the Army was all that McVeigh hoped for, but his