Introduction

It’s been 28 years since the Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people and injured hundreds more. At 9:02 a.m. on April 19th, 1995, a bomb built by Timothy McVeigh, an American domestic terrorist, exploded in front of the Alfred P. Murray Federal Building. It remains one of the deadliest acts of domestic terrorism in U.S. history. The motivations for the attack, its deleterious effects, and the longstanding impact on right-wing movements, including the January 6th insurrection, is the subject of “Homegrown: Timothy McVeigh and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism.” The book, written by journalist and lawyer Jeffrey Toobin, is based on nearly a million previously unreleased materials. Toobin joins WITHpod to discuss what often drives extremists, ominous parallels between McVeigh and more recent insurrectionists, the role of social media in the incitement of anti-government violence, and why the book is a “warning for the future.”