Friday July 26th, 10pm FRONTLINE: AMERICAN PATRIOT - FRONTLINE investigates how the Bundy family’s fight against the federal government invigorated armed militias and “patriot” groups — helping them grow to levels not seen in decades.
Examine the violent battle between a ranching family in the West and the federal government. See how a fight over land became deadly, invigorated a wider right-wing anti-government movement and continues to challenge prosecutors and law enforcement.
The Bundy family lead the largest armed uprising against the federal government in a generation, American Patriot is a story that eclipses their own long fight over grazing land in Nevada. It goes back to an extremist militia movement that exploded in the early 1990s, amid economic anxiety and suspicion, mainly among rural, white Americans that their own government had turned against them.
The armed “patriots” who rallied at Bunkerville were the latest incarnation of this movement, which was sparked by deadly confrontations between federal agents and civilians at Ruby Ridge, Idaho in 1992 and Waco, Texas in 1993, and led to the retaliatory bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City by Timothy McVeigh two years later.
FRONTLINE has been investigating this movement and the government’s response to it, examining court records, government documents and conducting dozens of interviews. The reporting shows how in the wake of bloody confrontations, the U.S. government altered its approach to domestic extremists, at times emboldening militias and complicating efforts to hold them to account.
