In Oklahoma, the 1995 bombing offers lessons -- and warnings -- for today's fight against extremism

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Hannah Allam
@HannahAllam
Fran Ferrari was on a work call when the bomb exploded. She awoke to a nightmare of blood and rubble. 26 years later, she’s fearful again: “Maybe people’s definition of domestic terrorism is after it happens, but I define it when you see the seeds.”

In Oklahoma, the 1995 bombing offers lessons — and warnings — for today’s fight against extremism
While Republican leaders focus on “both sides,” many Oklahomans are alarmed to see terrorist Timothy McVeigh’s far-right ideology spread in the state he attacked.
washingtonpost.com
3:27 AM · Jun 22, 2021

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/oklahoma-city-bombing-legacy-domestic-terrorism/2021/06/21/7bf6e218-c7a1-11eb-93fa-9053a95eb9f2_story.html

OKLAHOMA CITY — Most years, the flashbacks start in April, images of blood and brick that return Fran Ferrari to the morning when she was nearly killed in the Oklahoma City bombing.

This year, however, Ferrari’s memories arrived early when she heard glass shatter during news coverage of the Jan. 6 mob attack on the U.S. Capitol. The noise instantly took her back to the rubble of her downtown office in 1995. The rioters yelling on TV sounded to Ferrari like an alarm bell, a warning that the deadly extremism that upended her life had resurged.

“All those faces. All I think is that it’s a bunch of Timothy McVeighs and his buddies,” said Ferrari, 66. “Maybe people’s definition of domestic terrorism is after it happens, but I define it when you see the seeds.”

Those “seeds” Ferrari saw at the Capitol are finding fertile ground in Oklahoma, where politics can be more powerful than memory. Domestic terrorism analysts trace a straight line from the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building to the Jan. 6 breach — two history-making attacks fueled by anti-government, conspiratorial thinking. Yet in the same city where McVeigh detonated a nearly 5,000-pound bomb, killing 168 people and wounding hundreds more, top Republican leaders are reluctant to acknowledge far-right extremism, much less take meaningful steps to address it.

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