Timothy Mcveigh And Donald Trump, Two Peas In An Extremist Pod

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His embrace of violence as a justified response to political grievances is reflected in the rhetoric of Trump's presidency, argues Toobin – most famously, Trump's January 6 speech , when he exhorted his supporters to march on Congress and“fight like Hell.”

The values and views that McVeigh embodied, like political extremism and gun absolutism, came together under Trump. Photo: STRF STAR MAX IPx / AAP via The Conversation

When choosing a date for the bombing, McVeigh deliberately opted for April 19: the second anniversary of Waco and the date of the Battles of Lexington and Concord , which marked the start of the American War of Independence.

Like McVeigh, the rioters who stormed the Capitol saw“the rebellion” as akin to the revolutionary struggle of the Founding Fathers. They, too, believed violence was necessary to achieve their goals.

In this way, Toobin argues, McVeigh represents an early prototype of the aggrieved Trump voter. The actions of McVeigh and some Trump supporters belong to“a long tradition of gun-obsessed, antidemocratic, violence-fueled extremism.”

The only difference is, Trump's extremist ideas have become mainstream .

McVeigh and the MAGA movement

A new docudrama, McVeigh , released last month in American cinemas, is a responsible account of McVeigh's alienation and hostility, and a brooding rumination on the complex interaction of factors that led to his radicalisation.

With great restraint, director Mike Ott avoids the sensationalism one might expect.

In McVeigh, the bombing itself is never depicted. Instead, the narrative follows the weeks leading up to the attack, slowly tracking McVeigh's assemblage of the bomb with his accomplice, Terry Nichols , an old army friend.

Silence, in this sense, is the film's modus operandi.

In an early scene, McVeigh (played by Alfie Allen) points a pistol at the television, miming the execution of former US Attorney General Janet Reno as she testifies at the Waco hearing .

In the film's closing moments, we see McVeigh in his truck on the morning of the bombing, waiting patiently for the red light to change.

McVeigh and Nichols speak in gruff monosyllables, their coded communications allowing the pair to hide“in plain sight.” This makes their plans difficult to decipher, though we know how the story ends.

Convicted Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols. Photo: Donna McWilliam / AAP via The Conversation

The film has been criticized as a missed opportunity to critically examine the machinery that radicalised McVeigh. But the understated – and at times, excruciatingly dull – representation of events is the very point. Conspiratorial thinking is invisible, and the descent into violent extremism is marked by moments of mundane horror and aimlessness.

We can't pinpoint the exact moment when McVeigh decides to commit to the attack, nor do we know how it could have been prevented.

But propelled by what one former mentor called his“right-wing, survivalist, paramilitary-type philosophy”, McVeigh can easily be read as a man who is trying to“make America great again.”

In this respect, the slow burn creates an ominous atmosphere as the film drifts toward its inevitable conclusion. The film subtly conveys McVeigh's rage at the government and, in particular, his pursuit of retribution for Ruby Ridge, Waco and the assault ban, as accelerating forces.

The myth of the 'lone wolf'

Like Homegrown, McVeigh debunks the myth McVeigh was a lone wolf.

Instead of presenting McVeigh as an eccentric oddity or a freakish outsider, the film shows how he found community in both Elohim, a small religious community with white supremacist orientations, and on the gun show circuit, where he sold books, bumper stickers, guns and ammunition.

Indeed, McVeigh shared his plans for the bombing with others. Like Terry Nichols and his brother James, McVeigh was connected to the Michigan Militia, an armed paramilitary group that advocates for armed defence against federal overreach and perceived incursions on freedom.

“McVeigh may have thought of himself as a lone wolf”, writes Jason Burke ,“but he was not one.”

In Homegrown, Toobin too exposes the role of Nichols, who remains in the federal supermax prison in Colorado, serving life without parole. He also exposes Michael Fortier (another army friend of McVeigh's) and his wife Lori, who both knew about the plot but failed to warn authorities.

Convicted Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols. Photo: Donna McWilliam / AAP via The Conversation

Importantly, given the rise of extremist parties and movements, both Homegrown and McVeigh make clear there is no single cause of radicalization and no single pathway to becoming a violent extremist.

Interestingly, Toobin even suggests McVeigh became an incel before the term itself existed. He argues that in the absence of social media, McVeigh used letter writing to share his extremist views and recruit prospective allies.

McVeigh came of age before the modern internet, but as a teen, he was intrigued by its early iteration in the mid-1980s. An amateur hacker, he even broke into a defense department computer using the code name“Wanderer.”

Still, he was unable to access social media and other digital technologies, which explains, in part, why he was dismissed as a lone wolf unable to find his“pack.”

“I believe there is an army out there, ready to rise up, even though I never found it,” McVeigh told his lawyers.