The decision by the jury of seven men and fivewomen in Denver to end Timothy McVeigh's life by lethal injection and the consequent reopening of the debate on capital punishment in the United States has hardly been surprising. The Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 did, after all, take the lives of 168 people and seriously injure and mutilate hundreds more. The extent of the casualties was enough to shock the world but as news filtered through that this was an act of homegrown terrorism and not the work of foreign extremists, the trauma and the insecurity experienced by Americans increased. An entire nation felt it had been attacked from inside.
Officially the death sentence passed on McVeigh was for the murder of those who died in Oklahoma; unofficially it could be considered an attempt to excise a malignant growth which American people had discovered in their society. How effective the surgery will be remains to be seen. The "militia movement" which had flourished until the bombing had already lost much of its popularity among rightwing extremists long before the jury delivered its verdict on Friday. Many who had espoused the idea of armed independence from government, had moved on to the latest fad: the "Common Law groups which nowadays choke up the courts with eccentric law suits.
The very name McVeigh became a liability to the "militias". Even those whose minds had been invaded by the most absurd of conspiracy theories about the United Nations preparing, forcibly, to invade and control the United States, were astute enough to realise that the foul deed done in Oklahoma was damaging to their "cause". If the lethal chemical is eventually administered to McVeigh - and it could be some years before a final decision is taken - it is most unlikely that he will become a martyred hero to those extremists whose goal he shared. He is more likely to be seen by them as a traitor.
Here the conspiracy theory mentality comes into play again. Hints from McVeigh's lawyer that the whole truth did not come in the trial have served only to increase speculation on the part of those who support what remains of the "militias". Increasingly those who dwell on the outskirts of reality are coming to the paranoid belief that McVeigh was assisted by US government agents in carrying out the bombing in order to disparage the extreme right. Already the more bizarre sites on the Internet are sprouting with "alternative theories" on the bombing which attempt to implicate the government.
Every society produces its quota of unstable fanatics. There are more in the United States than in most countries simply because there are more people in the United States than in most countries. In the US, however, the potential for people of this nature to arm themselves is greater than elsewhere. The eventual injection of a lethal substance into the veins of Timothy McVeigh will do nothing to change that fact.