New York, NY, June 19, 1995...The militia movement continues to grow, even in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing, a new national survey by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) reported today. ADL, first to document the dangerous threat of the militias in its October 1994 report, Armed and Dangerous: Militias Take Aim at the Federal Government, cites 40 states with current militia activity in its new report, Beyond the Bombing: The Militia Menace Grows.

"While we tracked a disturbing growth of militia groups between October and April, we were especially distressed to discover the movement continued to grow even after the devastation in Oklahoma City," said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director. "As long as there are people willing to actively buy into the incendiary, paranoid propaganda of extremist militia leaders, we must take them seriously and remain alert to the threats they pose."

According to Beyond the Bombing, militia membership has climbed to about 15,000, partly due to an effective communication system. "The tools of today's technology -- fax networks, computer bulletin boards and the Internet -- are being utilized to promote their conspiratorial, anti-government, anti-gun control, and sometimes anti-Semitic message," said Foxman. In addition, many of the movement's themes have been given wide play in The Spotlight, the anti-Semitic Liberty Lobby's weekly organ, which has a circulation of approximately 100,000. Militia groups also rely on traditional means for recruitment such as mailings and the dissemination of materials at rallies and gun shows.

California now has approximately 35 militia groups operating throughout the state, "apparently having benefitted from a large amount of publicity the movement has received in recent weeks," the report states. Other states where militia activity has increased are Michigan, Georgia, Alabama, Arizona, New Hampshire, and Missouri. ADL reports a decline in activity since the Oklahoma City bombing in Ohio, Indiana and Colorado. For some groups around the country, a factor in their decline has been the belief that the federal government engineered the bombing, and is now poised to take extreme measures to destroy the militia movement, as was the rationale for disbanding the Northwest Oregon Regional Militia.

The state-by-state summary of militia activity in Beyond the Bombing is a supplement to information contained in Armed and Dangerous. Since the bombing and the national attention paid to the militia movements, ADL has also issued The ADL Anti-Paramilitary Training Statute: A Response to Domestic Terrorism; Paranoia as Patriotism: Far Right Influences on the Militia Movement, and William L. Pierce: Novelist of Hate.

EDITORS NOTE; All ADL reports are available on-line on NEXIS, search code USNWR and on request from the ADL. For interviews with ADL experts contact the ADL Public Relations Department.

The Anti-Defamation League, founded in 1913, is the world's leading organization fighting anti-Semitism through programs and services that counteract hatred, prejudice and bigotry.