Each April 19, we remember the 168 lives stolen in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing—children, parents, public servants, neighbors. Many believed that serving their community, especially through government, was a way to build a more welcoming society. Thirty years later, we still haven’t reckoned with what that attack revealed. It showed us who gets targeted when democracy is under fire, and whose very existence becomes a threat.
Timothy McVeigh didn’t choose the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building at random. He targeted the federal government not because it was bloated or inefficient but because, in the eyes of many influential far-right leaders, it had become a symbol of racial progress and multiracial belonging.
This didn’t start in 1995. The long arc of America’s white nationalist movement reveals a clear emergence after the victories of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. For generations, the federal government had been a protector and enforcer of segregation. But with the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, and the rise of Black public workers, the government began to be seen, however unevenly, as a tool for multiracial justice and belonging. That was a turning point. The far right didn’t just mourn the loss of white dominance. They recalibrated. The new enemy wasn’t just Black America. It was the federal government itself.
McVeigh’s rage was rooted in a toxic mix of anti-government paranoia and white nationalist fantasies. But he didn’t invent them. His beliefs were shaped by a growing white nationalist movement that painted Black Americans as undeserving, the federal government as traitorous, and multiracial democracy as an existential threat.
That movement never went away. Today, those influences are no longer operating on the fringes. It’s woven into the politics of the current Presidential administration. Under Donald Trump, these ideas influence policy. Federal agencies are hollowed out. Programs for equity in education, housing, health, and the environment now gutted. Career staff sidelined or targeted.
We witness a concerted anti-government campaign that seems to punish Black federal workers, especially those in civil rights, education, and public health. The federal workforce—one of the few places Black Americans have carved out stable careers and a foothold in governance—is once again cast as a threat. Many non-Black federal workers have found themselves to be victims as well. That’s the thing about anti-Blackness: it doesn’t only harm Black people. It defines who is allowed to belong. In this worldview, anyone who believes government can serve all of us—regardless of race, gender, or faith—now becomes suspect.
I’ve seen the photos of those killed. And while comprehensive demographic data isn’t widely available, Black Americans were disproportionately among those pictured. That context matters. Of the 168 people killed in Oklahoma City, 99 were federal employees. Many who chose public service did not out of convenience, but because it was one of the few institutions where their work could drive fairness and opportunity.
That truth is rarely acknowledged. Too often, attacks on “the government” are portrayed as abstract—as if they don’t have human consequences. But when the government is attacked, it is often Black and brown bodies that bear the brunt. That was true in Oklahoma City. It remains true today. The Murrah Building wasn’t just a federal facility. It was a physical symbol of multiracial governance. That’s what made it a target.
I know this not just from research, but from being there. I sat in the courtroom during McVeigh’s trial. I watched as the legal system tried to account for the violence. The evidence was clear. But the ideology behind it wasn’t named. No one wanted to talk about the centuries of anti-Blackness, the coded antisemitism, the conspiracies casting government as a puppet of racial “others.” McVeigh wasn’t seen as part of a movement but an aberration. But I knew better. And we should all know better now.
He was part of a broader ecosystem. One that labeled the federal government a “Zionist Occupied Government.” One that framed Black public servants as undeserving. One that saw multiracial democracy not as progress—but as a threat. And that ecosystem is alive today.
It shows up in calls to dismantle America’s commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. In the growing legislative attacks on civil rights enforcement. In lawsuits against public health. In schoolbook bans and “anti-woke” executive orders. It shows up when politicians tell their base that public workers are the enemy—and when those public institutions cave to the intimidation.
Still, we’re told these are lone and isolated moments. But I’ve spent my life studying these movements. These wolves run in packs. They recruit. They strategize. And they believe they are soldiers in a war against a government that includes the people they fear most.
In 1992, white supremacist and emerging white nationalist leaders gathered in Estes Park, Colorado, for what became known as the Rocky Mountain Rendezvous. Among them were Louis Beam, Richard Butler, and Pete Peters—three influential figures in the modern white nationalist movement.
Each of them, in their writings and public speeches, explicitly framed the federal government as the enemy—not simply because of its scope, but because it had become, in their eyes, the enforcer of multiracial democracy and Jewish control. Beam popularized the strategy of “leaderless resistance,” warning followers that the government served the interests of a so-called Zionist Occupational Government (ZOG).
Butler, founder of the Aryan Nations, called for a whites-only homeland and viewed the government as racially compromised and illegitimate. Peters, a Christian Identity pastor, preached that Jews were imposters and that the U.S. government was their puppet. What united these men was a shared ideology: that the federal government had become a gateway to racial integration, equity, and pluralism.
The message of that gathering was chillingly clear. First, you dismantle the federal government. The phrase I’ve used to capture their consensus: first, we deal with the federal government, then we deal with the question of the Jews.
That logic hasn’t disappeared. It’s evolved.
Steve Bannon, former White House Chief Strategist and one of the architects of Trumpism, once said: “I’m a Leninist. Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down and destroy all of today’s establishment.”
At first glance, “today’s establishment” sounds like classic anti-elite rhetoric. But in the context of Bannon’s ideology—and the far-right playbook he helped shape—it’s a dog whistle. “Today’s establishment” is code for a federal government reshaped by the Civil Rights Movement.
It means the multiracial workforce. The civil rights lawyers. The environmental scientists. The women at the helm of federal agencies. The queer public health leaders. The Black and brown bureaucrats who, by their very presence, reflect a democracy that no longer centers whiteness.
When Bannon speaks of “crashing down” the state, it’s not bureaucracy he’s targeting—it’s the very infrastructure of belonging that generations fought to build.
In 2024, Donald Trump said, “We have two enemies. We have the outside enemy, and then we have the enemy from within… They’re very dangerous.”
The overlap between that coded authoritarianism and explicit white nationalism isn’t an accident. It’s an unavoidable straight line.
Because racial authoritarianism in America can’t succeed without dismantling the very institutions designed to ensure equal opportunity, racial equity, and democratic participation. You can’t have strongman politics and multiracial governance at the same time. One must go.
So, what do we do with the memory of April 19, 1995?
We stop treating it like a singular tragedy. We must recognize it as a signal flare. It warns us about the deep roots of anti-Blackness, the backlash to civil rights, and the rise of authoritarianism.
And we fight back by defending the people and institutions that hold democracy together. The schoolteacher in Tulsa. The city data analyst in Atlanta. The immigrant military family in rural Minnesota. The trans Latina health worker in Los Angeles. The Black librarian mother in Baton Rouge. All of us have a stake in what comes next.
Let us honor those lost in Oklahoma City not just with silence, but with resolve. Courage to name the threat. Courage to defend public service. Courage to build a democracy that is more inclusive, more resilient, and more rooted in justice than the one McVeigh tried to destroy.
Because memory alone is not enough. Action is what the moment demands.
Eric K. Ward is Executive Vice President of Race Forward, a senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center, and producer of the documentary, “White With Fear.”
SEE ALSO:
Donald Trump Wants To Send Americans To Foreign Prisons
South Africa’s New Special Envoy To The US Called Trump A Racist, Homophobic Narcissist
The Oklahoma City Bombing Was a Warning. Thirty Years Later, We’re Still Ignoring It
was originally published on
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