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…