Fred Kaplan writes:

The most striking thing about the six domestic terrorists arrested on Thursday for conspiring to kidnap the governor of Michigan isn’t that they actually took steps to carry out their plot—though that is unusual and frightening (most groups of this ilk talk big but do little). More, it’s what the gang reveals about the steep rise in American militia activity this year.

Some of these groups—including this one, which, had it succeeded, would have been the season’s most brazenly violent—seem to be inspired not by white supremacist ideology or left/right partisanship, but rather by an off-the-cliff radical variant of a feeling deeply rooted in American culture: fear and hatred of government.

The 15-page FBI affidavit against the terrorists—who called their group the Wolverine Watchmen—contains verbatim excerpts of conversations, which were recorded by two informants and two FBI infiltrators. (The two informants—neither of whom knew that the other was an informant—were members of the group who got spooked by talk of committing violence, went to law enforcement, and agreed to wear wires while attending meetings.) At least in the passages cited in the affidavit, there are no racist remarks or references to President Donald Trump’s rhetoric. [Continue reading…]