During the Waco standoff in 1993, why did large segments of the American population rally around the leader of a doomsday cult who was sexually abusing young girls, rather than their own government?

by debaser11

maxshaferlandau

You said during, so I'll try to keep the focus as contemporary as possible to the siege. Nevertheless, I only found one opinion poll taken from before the lethal ending to the Waco Siege and that only polled Waco residents, a small and obviously not-representative sample of the US population. Further, in this series of polls, it's interesting to see how radically public opinion shifted against the government as the nineties progressed.

To clarify the "large segment" who supported David Koresh and the Branch Davidians, I found three opinion polls taken from April 1993.

70% of people polled supported the government's actions at Waco, versus 27% who opposed it according to the ABC Poll from 1993.

A poll from the New York Times found 8 out of 10 Americans believed David Koresh was responsible for the deaths at Waco.

And finally, a poll taken from the Waco Tribune Herald (footnote 5) has only fifty percent of locals supporting government action against the Branch Davidians, though 82% supported the government's ending of the siege.

As detailed in both the CBS poll and Gore Vidal's Decline and Fall of the American Empire those who opposed the actions of the FBI and ATF were largely hostile to what they perceived as government overreach. They saw the Branch Davidians as harmless, "minding their own business," and not doing anything that should provoke the violent repression meted out by the federal besiegers. The fact that it was families pitted against heavily armed troopers with armored personnel carriers and tanks made for pretty poor optics regardless of whose side one took.

The first, ostensible reason given by the Clinton Administration for infiltrating the BD Compound was to seize illegally held arms, a stick in the eye for Americans who hold the Second Amendment dear. When the agents assigned to this mission were repulsed and the situation began to heat up, George Stephanopoulos, the White House Communications Director changed the narrative to one of trying to save the children sequestered with their families. Against this claim, Pastor Robert McCurry points out that this was an illegitimate use of federal force given that child protection falls under state jurisdiction. McCurry, well attuned to the limits of legitimate force, rails against what he sees as a monstrous attack by the government against its people.

Remember, this is less than a year after the "Ruby Ridge Massacre" during which a shootout between government agents and a family fleeing the law left a US Marshal, a mother, and a son killed. That event garnered quite a bit of sympathy for the family caught in the crossfire and among certain people, predisposed them against the kind of government "repression" that occurred at Waco. Both Ruby Ridge and Waco were precipitated by Firearms charges and involvement by the ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms). Given the Second Amendment and the mythology of private gun ownership enabling the American Revolution and protecting "Liberty," the federal government's perceived use of violence to monopolize its control of domestic firearms in these two instances rattled certain segments of the population.

lazespud2

I will attempt to explain a similar situation in a broad sense, that may illuminate why puzzling public support occurs; there are a LOT of specifics to the Waco standoff that I'm obviously not addressing; I'm just showing a related example and what was learned from it. Mods; if I'm going off the rails I will not be offended if you delete my comments.

My area of study is left-wing European terrorism of the 1970s era. The dominant group active in Europe of this time was the Red Army Faction; commonly called "The Baader-Meinhof Group."

Their stated goal was to be the vanguard of a violent revolution, dedicated to retaking the German state on behalf of the people, and ushering in an era of pure socialism. Early in the history of the group they were associated with violence; the serious injury of an elderly library shot when co-leader Andreas Baader was broken out of police custody, weapons training in a Palestinian camp, shootouts with police offers.

And while this was going on, the group was pilloried, along with most leftists, by the conservative Springer Press. Founded by ~~Lord~~ Axel Springer, the Springer Press newspapers were, far and away, the most dominant news outlets in the country, surpassing 50% newspaper readership on Sunday alone. In many ways they were the 1970s German equivalent of the Rupert Murdoch's media empire, only with a much, much larger reach.

So in June of 1971 the Institut für Demoskopie Allensbach, a very well respected market research and public opinion organization, asked Germans their thoughts on the Baader-Meinhof Group.

Remember, this is a group that has injured people with guns, engaged in shootouts with German police, and spoke openly of their coming violent Revolutionary War in West Germany.

The results were remarkable. 20 percent of Germans under 30 expressed "a certain sympathy with the group," and one in ten young Germans said they'd be willing to shelter a group member for the night. If you tally up all the results, 14 percent of Germans said they'd either be willing to shelter a group member or would be willing to consider it. Essentially 8 million people out of a population of 60 million were either willing to materially support a violent group with the stated goal of revolution, or were willing to consider it.

Now one year later, after the group began their "war" in earnest, killing four US soldiers, and maiming several dozen civilians, police officers, and other soldiers over a one month period, that public support essentially ceased to exist (the entire leadership was caught over the next few weeks and imprisoned).

So what was the deal? How could so many people support this group that was so clearly embraced deadly violence? Were people truly supportive of violent revolution?

My research shows that no, people weren't necessarily supportive of violent revolution in practice. But many Germans had an extremely strong belief in Socialism. The upheavals in university campuses during the 1960s across the globe were especially notable in Germany. Students were extremely well-versed in Marxist theory. The dominant left-leaning party, the SPD, had socialist revolution a part of their party platform well into the 1950s. My point is that you had a significant part of the population where the nebulous notion of "revolution" was a vague end goal. So when this group comes along saying "we will be the vanguard of this revolution," it was easy to express a certain support of their work, despite their occasional violence. Because this portion of the population had been primed to support the vague goal of Revolution, when asked about this group that was taking baby steps trying to fight for that revolution in the real world, it would have perhaps been more a surprise had they NOT expressed support.

So my takeaway, and how I relate this to the Waco situation (though again, this is NOT my area of study), is that at the time of the Waco standoff, it essentially was a completely unknown situation to the general public prior to the initial deadly shootings that killed several ATF agents and several Branch Davidians. Much like in Germany there was a sizable portion of the US population predisposed to opposition to the US government, the ATF, the FBI, and other agencies; particularly in light of the tragic events at Ruby Ridge the year earlier. So on the news comes word of a standoff, between a group of people, several now dead, who claim they just want to be left alone, and government agents telling stories of meth labs (later shown to be false), unlawful weapons, and stories of child sexual abuse... the people inclined to support the Davidians were just as inclined to discount any information provided by the government.

Another interesting thing happened in Germany; after the bombing campaign of May 1972--their public support completely ceased. BUT... in the coming years many of their original supporters "returned to the fold" to an extent. They wouldn't publicly support violence or bombings, but their support morphed into an opposition to how the government was treated the imprisoned terrorists (and the government DID treat many of the terrorists truly terribly).

How I relate this Waco is this: during the siege it was likely VERY easy to discount anything the government was saying, if you were so inclined to disbelieve them. But certainly at some point even the most hardened of these folks likely accepted that Koresh was leading a group where he and others had engaged in sexual abuse of children. But because the government had managed to kill so many of the Davidians, and because the siege was handled so poorly, it trumped any concerns they had about sexual abuse. It's not that they were dismissive of it (though likely many did feel the accusations were made up); it's just that everything else felt so much more important to them.

I talked about this a bit more here: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/21ka7d/the_baadermeinhof_gang_what_wasis_german_public/