Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.

For The Record  

FTR #138 The “Y2K Computer Bug” and Right-Wing Extremism

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With the com­ing of the year 2000, much atten­tion has been focused on the fail­ure of com­put­er sys­tems to rec­og­nize the dou­ble-dig­it year des­ig­na­tion “00” as 2000, rather than 1900. Numer­ous stud­ies have indi­cat­ed that seri­ous dis­rup­tion may very well result from the glitch. This pro­gram dis­cuss­es the han­dling of the issue by arch-con­ser­v­a­tive and overt­ly fas­cist ele­ments. Many of these groups and indi­vid­u­als have pre­dict­ed cat­a­stroph­ic results from and (in some cas­es) advised dead­ly vio­lent actions in response to the event. In many cas­es, sur­vival­ist and Born-again Chris­t­ian ele­ments have advised secu­ri­ty pre­cau­tions rem­i­nis­cent of the fall­out shel­ter mania of the late 1950s and ear­ly 1960s. Some overt­ly fas­cist ele­ments with­in the “Patri­ot” move­ment have advo­cat­ed that their fol­low­ers seize upon the event as the begin­ning of an apoc­a­lyp­tic race war. Oth­ers have advised that the gov­ern­ment will uti­lize the Y2K prob­lem as an excuse to impose total­i­tar­i­an rule. An FBI counter-ter­ror­ist offi­cial is quot­ed as say­ing he thinks that there prob­a­bly will be inci­dents of right-wing ter­ror in con­nec­tion with the dawn­ing of 2000. (Record­ed on 2/28/99.)

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