Extremists
In: FP, Heft 196
ISSN: 0015-7228
As the US economy has struggled back to life, its woes have emerged as a unifying theme among Americans on the fringe. The right-skewing Patriot movement may not share social values with left-leaning anarchists, but both groups point to and fixate on the same economic stories: bank insolvency, currency devaluation, derivatives fraud, total-collapse scenarios, the perniciousness of the Federal Reserve, and the need to return to a gold standard. Extremists in America are reading the same economic headlines and pondering the same potential tipping points. The trend toward reality-based conspiracies extends well beyond economics, but since 2008, the financial crisis and ongoing recession have provided copious grist for the mill, reinforcing the crucial expectation shared by most domestic extremists: America's imminent downfall. American extremists of every stripe are increasingly following the same headlines and hearing the same alarm bells, most visibly in the economic realm, but also in stories of mass shootings, government surveillance, and civil liberties. Some might be tempted to take action. Adapted from the source document.