COMMENTARY

COMMENTARY | Perils of Public Service: Oklahoma City Bombing Omens Gathering Again

Jeff Ruch

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In April 1995, right-wing extremists detonated a massive homemade bomb at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people and injuring hundreds more, making it one of the deadliest acts of domestic terrorism in U.S. history.

In the months leading up to that cataclysmic event, anti-federal rhetoric on the right had proliferated, with even senior Republican members of Congress referring to federal agents as “jack-booted thugs.” Many believe that this rhetoric helped legitimize the idea of violence against federal workers.

Today, we see a recurrence of this anti-government rhetoric, with frequent charges of a shadowy “Deep State” and talk of hit lists of officials labeled “enemies of the people.” In this vein, vice-presidential candidate JD Vance threatens to summarily fire thousands of civil servants for their perceived disloyalty on day one if he and Donald Trump are elected.

This anti-government rancor even extends into areas previously off-limits to such criticism. For example, Donald Trump attacked Federal Emergency Management Agency operations in the Carolinas after a recent hurricane. This broadside was followed by the arrest of an armed man threatening FEMA emergency response workers.

So, it is not surprising in this increasingly hothouse atmosphere that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has issued new safety guidance for all its employees. This guidance “to protect against potential violent behavior against employees in the field” advises EPA employees, among other precautions, to –

In short, EPA employees are told to act as if they are in hostile territory with an official warning that there is reason to believe they may be targeted for anti-government violence when they are in the field working to protect public health and the environment.

As in the mid-90s, these anti-government sentiments are running rampant, but today, these paranoid fantasies are fed by ever-growing doses of misinformation pumped into ever-present social media. Unless this socially toxic mixture is checked, the fear is that it may well again lead to a major tragedy on the scale of the Oklahoma City bombing. We should all resolve that this history should never be repeated.


Jeff Ruch is the former Executive Director of PEER and now serves as its Pacific Director. 

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