Growing up in eastern Washington, I remember seeing militia recruitment and meeting postings on the poster boards outside stores. Mid 80s. Share a border with Idaho, home of Hayden Lake and the Aryan nation. What i never remember seeing in my life is skinheads or organized white supremacy. Although knowing now how the feds operate, i question if any of it is or was organic. Case in point-
From 1991 to 1993, the FBI conducted an ambitious infiltration program code-named PATCON, short for Patriot Conspiracy. “Patriot” is an umbrella label for a loosely defined movement of antigovernment, racist, anti-Semitic, and/or Christian extremists. The PATCON program is documented in extraordinary detail in thousands of pages of FBI records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. Interviews with people involved on both sides of the infiltration supplement this information.
PATCON consisted primarily of three FBI undercover agents posing as members of a fictional extremist group called the Veterans Aryan Movement. Three Patriot groups were the primary targets of PATCON – Civilian Materiel Assistance, the Texas Light Infantry, and the American Pistol and Rifle Association. PATCON agents roved the country for more than two years collecting intelligence on these and other Patriot organizations and on dozens of individuals, investigating leads on plots from the planned murder of federal agents to armed raids on nuclear power plants to a new American Revolution.
Despite spending hundreds of thousands of dollars and logging uncounted man-hours, PATCON and related investigations produced negligible results in terms of serious criminal convictions. Instead, PATCON became an intelligence tool, predicated on a series of suspected crimes, most of which were discussed but never committed.
en.wikipedia.org
