What we should talk about when we talk about Waco
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A week from today, it will be 30 years since 76 Branch Davidians — including two dozen children — were killed in a matter of minutes by a massive blaze that followed a brutal shootout. The end result of a 51-day standoff with federal agents in Waco, Texas, this tragic moment is where Long Lead’s latest podcast, Long Shadow: Rise of the American Far Right, begins.
In chronicling the deadly standoff, host Garrett Graff interviews Mark Potok, a journalist who covered both 1995’s Oklahoma City bombing and the 1993 siege in Waco. Potok notes that shortly after the fiery Texas tragedy, a survey said 37 percent of Americans saw the federal government as an immediate threat to their rights and liberties. By 1993's standards, that was an incredible number.
“Waco was everything the fledgling far-right movement had feared come to life: an attack on both religious freedom and gun rights,” Graff says in the podcast's first episode. As the years passed, conspiracy theories about the botched raid further whipped Americans into a collective fever dream. According to a 1999 TIME Magazine poll, 61 percent of the country believed Waco's fire had been started by the government intentionally.
Episode 1: The Spark. Listen to LONG SHADOW: RISE OF THE AMERICAN FAR RIGHT wherever you get your podcasts.
“Waco would become shorthand for a tyrannical government abusing freedom and coming for America’s guns,” says Graff. That shorthand is exactly why, last month, former president Donald Trump launched his 2024 presidential campaign there.
Trump campaigned in Waco because, as Long Shadow's second season will show, in the 30 years since the Branch Davidian siege, the concerns of the fringe have flooded the conservative mainstream. These views have filtered from white nationalist conventions to AM radiowaves to Internet message boards to Fox News. To get re-elected, the GOP front-runner needs to keep those 37 percent of fearful 1993 Americans close. He also needs the backing of the 61 percent who mistrusted the government in 1999. And most crucially, he must keep the 74 million people who voted for him in 2020 in his corner.
By connecting the dots between an array of seemingly disparate, extremist events from Ruby Ridge to January 6, Long Shadow: Rise of the American Far Right is not about Waco, specifically, nor Trump. It does explain why the former president has the support of so many Americans — some of whom may be your moderate conservative friends, opinionated relatives, patriotic neighbors, or even yourself.
In the season finale, Graff describes a crowd gathering in Washington, D.C. on January 5, 2021:
You see red hats with 'MAGA' on them, and people draped in American flags. But if you know what you’re looking for, you see other things, too: An Oath Keepers logo here, the black and gold of the Proud Boys there. Body armor, camo. You can see a dark shadow, cast from way back in time, when a few ragtag gangs of white supremacists dreamed of overthrowing the government.... They never dreamed of something like this.
This season of Long Shadow will give you the ability to better understand the American far right. And you might even learn something about your friends, relatives, and neighbors along the way.
This is a big week for Long Lead. In addition to launching the new season of Long Shadow, we’ve also received an array of honors.
In the Webby Awards, The People vs. Rubber Bullets, our most ambitious project to date, has been nominated for Best Individual Feature. We’re up against some of journalism’s heaviest hitters for that prize: ProPublica, The Washington Post, Glamour and NBC News. Querdenken Everything is also up for a Webby, this time for Best Use of Motion Graphics. In addition, both of these stories were nominated for ADC Awards — one of the design industry's highest prizes, which we won in 2022 for The Depths She’ll Reach, our profile of freediver Alenka Artnik.
We’ll find out if our nominations lead to full awards later this month, but before then, we could use your help. The Webbys have a “People’s Choice” prize which allows you to vote for winners. Right now The People vs. Rubber Bullets is in 3rd place, but it’s a tight race! Please vote (and confirm your votes in your email inbox!) for The People vs. Rubber Bullets, and ask your friends to support us, too.
Vote for The People vs. Rubber Bullets here!
Also, don’t forget to subscribe to Long Shadow. New episodes come out each week, and you can be the first to hear it by subscribing wherever you get your podcasts, including:
Long Shadow on Apple Podcasts
Again, thank you for supporting Long Lead's work. I'll be back next week to tell you about episode two, a great listen titled "The Revolution Has Begun.”
John Patrick Pullen
Founding Editor, Long Lead
PS: Though Garrett Graff’s examination of far-right extremism begins figuratively at Waco, he also reported from the site of the Branch Davidian compound for the podcast. Subscribe to Doomsday Scenario, his newsletter, to read an essay about what that consequential corner of Ameoks like today.
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