symbolic resistance to the waco tragedy on the internet

Symbolic Resistance to the Waco Tragedy on the InternetReview by: Mark MacWilliamsNova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions, Vol. 8, No. 3 (March 2005),pp. 59-82Published by: University of California PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/nr.2005.8.3.59 .

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Symbolic Resistance to the WacoTragedy on the Internet

Mark MacWilliams

ABSTRACT: For marginalized religious and political groups, theInternet is a powerful tool for informational and organizational pur-poses. Important examples of this are Branch Davidian and Waco-relatedwebsites. A survey of these sites shows that the controversy over what hap-pened in 1993 that led to the Waco tragedy still rages on the Internet.Despite the fact that Branch Davidian survivors, Libertarians, SecondAmendment rightists, and the militia movement have very differentpolitical, ideological, and in some cases, theological positions, theyemploy a common set of symbols to make their case—that what hap-pened at the Branch Davidians’ Mount Carmel was wrong. In particular,their websites use shared symbols to protest, effectively offering a pow-erful counter-vision in contrast to what they perceive as the promulga-tion of pernicious stereotypes and untruths about David Koresh, theBranch Davidians, and the Waco tragedy by the government and themass media.

For marginalized religious and political groups, the Internet is apowerful tool for informational and organizational purposes. As acommunications medium available to anyone with a computer

and modem, the Internet easily allows groups to explain who they are,what they believe, and why they live the way they do. Since cyberspaceis still relatively unrestricted by governmental regulations and monop-olization by giant corporate media conglomerates, marginalized groupscan take advantage of the Internet’s open access for protest and resist-ance. On their websites, they are free to challenge the negative stereo-types about them that appear in the mainstream media, and to attackthe perceived injustices against them by the powers that be.

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Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions, Volume 8, Issue 3, pages59–82, ISSN 1092-6690 (print), 1541-8480 (electronic). © 2005 by The Regents of theUniversity of California. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permissionto photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of CaliforniaPress’s Rights and Permissions website, at www.ucpress.edu/journals/rights.htm.

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The Branch Davidians and Waco-related sites on the Internet pro-vide an important example of this phenomenon. The Branch Davidiansare a splinter group of a movement originally founded by VictorHouteff, who broke from the Seventh-day Adventist Church (SDA) in1929. While the Branch Davidians share the basic beliefs of the SDAChurch on inerrancy of the Bible, certain dietary prescriptions, andfaith in the imminent return of Christ, they have several distinctivetheological doctrines and practices. Branch Davidians believe in anon-going line of prophecy based on the inspired interpretation of theBible, especially the book of Revelation. They believe that “the Lamb”mentioned in Revelation 5:2 is David Koresh (born Vernon WayneHowell, 1959–1993), the spiritual leader of the Branch Davidians from1985 to 1993. It was Koresh’s prophetic duty to open the “Seven Seals”in Revelation triggering the sequence of events to end the world as weknow it. Branch Davidian theology in the early 1990s included the beliefthat the forces of Christ would battle the anti-Christ and his minions, thegodless contemporary world identified as “Babylon.”1 In that war ofArmageddon, which Koresh taught would begin in Jerusalem in 1995,the Branch Davidians would play a major role, culminating in theirascension to heaven to be with God.2

Of course, the Branch Davidians are best known for the horrificevents that took place at Mount Carmel, their residence near Waco,Texas, from 28 February to 19 April 1993. The conflict began with aninitial shootout with agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco andFirearms (ATF), who mounted an aggressive search and seizure opera-tion at Mount Carmel that led to the deaths of six Branch Davidians andfour agents. The subsequent fifty-one-day standoff with agents of theFederal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) ended disastrously with a tank andCS gas assault and a devastating fire that destroyed the residence atMount Carmel and killed David Koresh and many of his followers.3

The incident dubbed “Waco” was a mass media event that riveted thenation. With the shocking allegations of child abuse and bizarre sexualpractices, media portrayals of David Koresh as a maniacal “cult leader,”the war-like scenes of Bradley armored fighting vehicles injecting CS gasinto the buildings, and the tragic finale of explosions and flames thatconsumed Mount Carmel, Waco was a made-for-TV event. Moreover,since it involved the questionable use of lethal force by ATF and FBIagents, it sparked several criminal, civil, and Congressional investiga-tions that made headlines: the stiff prison sentences given to eight sur-viving Branch Davidians in the criminal case,4 Congressional subcom-mittee hearings concerning possible ATF and FBI misconduct (1995),the $100 million wrongful death suit lodged against the government byBranch Davidians’ families (denied by Judge Walter Smith on 21September 2000),5 and an independent inquiry led by special counseland former Republican senator John Danforth of Missouri, whose final

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report was submitted to the deputy attorney general on 8 November2000.

The Danforth report was the official attempt to end speculation con-cerning government misconduct and obstruction of justice in the Wacotragedy. In his preface to the interim report, Danforth argued that the onlyantidote to the public perception that the government engaged in crimi-nal acts was “openness and candor.”6 Setting the record straight was badlyneeded because of the many venues available that provided inaccurate anddistorted views of Waco encouraging widespread public cynicism:

Ample forums exist to nurture our need to place blame on government.Sensational films construct dark theories out of little or no evidence andgain ready audiences for their message. Civil trial lawyers, both in thepublic and private sectors, carry the duty of zealous representation toextremes. The media, in the name of “balance,” gives [sic] equal treat-ment to both outrageous and serious claims. Congressional committeesand Special Counsels conduct their own lengthy investigations, lendingfurther credence to the idea that there are bad acts to investigate. Thereis even pressure on them to find some bad act to justify their effort andexpense. Add to all of this the longstanding public cynicism about gov-ernment and its actions, and the result is a nearly universal readiness tobelieve that the government must have done something wrong.7

In his report, Danforth completely exonerated federal law enforce-ment officials for the fire and deaths at Waco.8 Indeed, he went even fur-ther, finding it “remarkable” that there were any claims of official cul-pability given “the overwhelming evidence exonerating the governmentfrom the charges made against it, and the lack of any real evidence tosupport charges of bad acts.”9

This essay examines the communications medium that Danforthdoes not criticize in his final report. It is clear that, while the Danforthreport may have tried to put the controversy to rest, especially trying toremove Waco from mainstream television news and newspaper head-lines, the debate still rages on the Internet.10 Soon after the destructionof Mount Carmel, Waco websites began to proliferate on the Internet.Several different groups have authored websites critical of what they seeas a government and mass media whitewash of the events at MountCarmel. Some of these are Branch Davidian survivors and splintergroups. Others are Libertarians, Second Amendment rightists, andthose affiliated with the militia movement.11

My thesis is that, despite the fact that these groups have very differ-ent political, ideological, and, in some cases, theological positions, theyuse a common set of symbols to make the case that what happened atMount Carmel was wrong. In particular, Waco websites use their sharedsymbols to protest against what their owners perceive as the govern-ment’s and the mass media’s promulgation of pernicious stereotypes

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and untruths about David Koresh, the Branch Davidians, and the Wacotragedy. Waco symbols of resistance create virtual “communities ofmeaning” that continue to flourish in the cyber-world of computer-mediated communication.

WACO WEBSITES AS A MEDIUM OF RESISTANCE

Waco websites are an important example of what Hugh Urban hasdescribed as “the subversive and dissident potential inherent in all tech-nology for freedom and resistance.”12 Brenda Brasher has noted thatsocially and politically marginalized religious groups have always beenquick to exploit new forms of communication to get their message out.The classic example of this, of course, is the Protestant Reformation,when Martin Luther used the new printing press to disseminate hispamphlets in the vernacular “to wage the first print propaganda cam-paign against the prevailing religious authorities of his day.” Like theprinting press, the Internet has the power “to subvert hierarchical chan-nels of authority.”13 In the case of the Waco tragedy, as Stephen O’Learyhas recently argued, the Internet was an ideal medium for people tovent their frustration, particularly because there was no intense mediaspotlight on many of the unanswered questions, leaving the job to ordi-nary citizens who are “usually (and sometimes with justification) dis-missed as obsessive anti-government ideologues.”14

The people who upload their Waco websites are quite aware of thepower of the Internet. Their sites are alternative news and informationsources that challenge the master narratives of the dominant govern-ment and media elites.15 The author of one site, for example, LibertarianDaniel Tobias, describes himself as “a computer geek, agnostic Jew andLibertarian with some personal interest in politics, especially the politicsof ‘fringe’ groups and their battles with the ‘mainstream.’” He sees hissite and the Internet as a whole as a means to fill the gap left by main-stream communications media: “The Web lets ordinary people practiceas journalists, lets ideas out of the mainstream to be entered into themarket place of ideas.”16

Others see the Internet as less like a marketplace of ideas, and morelike a battleground on which to attack what they consider to be delib-erately deceitful and misleading propaganda. David Thibodeau, one ofthe nine Branch Davidian survivors of the fire, asserts:

I do not allow the Government to continue to control me by givingthem that power over me; they simply do not matter to me. I do getangry when I see the lies that I know are told to Americans every daythrough the sorcery of the television. As Chomsky would say, “Manu-facturing Consent!” I know these people are power hungry liars andcharlatans concerned with spinning public opinion at any expense, evenunto their very souls.17

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For a time Thibodeau used his website to host an online messageboard on Waco and to advertise his new book, A Place Called Waco: ASurvivor’s Story.18 Another example is Sharlene Shappart, a well-knownphotographer, researcher, and critic of the government’s role in theWaco tragedy who publishes her own Internet newsletter, “The WacoTragedy News,” and authors her own extensive site. The banner of herWaco website is a pastiche of the photographs of Koresh, Bradley fight-ing vehicles, and Mount Carmel in flames that the mainstream mediaused to tell the story of Waco.19 However, her caption, “Waco: What youthought you knew . . . was Wrong . . . dead [in Gothic letters] wrong!”with an image of the American flag and the Bill of Rights in one corner,highlights her intention to disturb those who access her site (see Fig. 1).On her webpage, Shappart clearly states her own rationale for using theInternet as a forum for political protest:

The reason I started making this page, is because I was just like most ofyou out there. I sat in my living room watching the home of theDavidians burn on the tv screen, and feeling complete dread . . . but likeyou probably did, I bought what the FBI and the press was saying, hook,line, and sinker. I felt bad that it came to this conclusion, but after all . . .our government and the people running it are professionals . . . I’msure everything that could have been done was done. After all it’s nottheir fault that someone inside set the fire to commit suicide. The worldis a scary place and sometimes people are insane . . . especially cults! Whoknows what they could be doing to those children! Sexual orgies. . . .chanting at midnight, maybe even reading the Bible backwards for all weknow. The word cult makes us immediately know that these people musthave been bad. After all, why would Mike Wallace or Dan Rather lie?Exposing the Truth is the press’s job. Not ours, right?

The images slowly faded . . . the reporters stopped reporting, and themisery of it all slipped from America’s mind . . . from my mind . . . andpossibly from yours. Unknowingly, officials in charge all over this coun-try, were all silently patting each other on the backs.

Time passes as time does, and it’s 6 yrs. later. The world wide webexplodes, and here I was. I don’t remember how it happened, I don’trecall the reason, but there it was. Pages and pages all about Waco.


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Fig. 1 Banner for Sharlene Shappart’s “Take a Moment to Picture This”(Image courtesy of Sharlene Shappart.)

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Shappart’s website, like many others, not only airs alternative newsbut also provides a place for organizing protest. For example, one of herpages, entitled “E-mail your Representative,” includes an interactivemap of the United States with the names and addresses of senators andmembers of Congress. Political change, she notes, starts with emailingyour elected government representatives. Shappart also includes links toformer radio talk show host Joyce Eatman’s (KVKV Christian Talk Radio1060) pages, “Lady Liberty of ‘The Liberty Hour,’” a site with resourcesfor organizing a “Waco Walk rally for freedom and justice,” ready toprint out posters, and a petition, widely circulated on the Internet, topardon the Branch Davidian prisoners.20

Unlike television, where viewers relinquish their authorial rights bybecoming the passive consumers of corporate programming, BranchDavidian survivors, their families and friends, splinter Branch Davidiangroups, Libertarians, and Second Amendment rights supporters areactivists—taking advantage of the Internet to publish news, commen-taries, and, in some cases, organizing political action committees. TheirInternet efforts counter what Michel de Certeau saw as the “rationalist,expansionist, centralized, spectacular, and clamorous production” ofmodern mass communications networks that “are becoming more andmore tightly woven, flexible, and totalitarian.”21

SYMBOLIC TACTICS OF RESISTANCE

A major objective of Waco websites is to counter what BranchDavidian survivor and now prisoner Livingstone Fagan sees as a main-stream media assault that is just as devastating as the actual “hostage res-cue” attempt by the FBI. Fagan argues that the Branch Davidians were“by courtesy of the electronic media paraded before the world, humili-ated, demonized, and lied about.”22 Several scholarly studies lend sup-port to his contention. One of these, perhaps referred to above by DavidThibodeau, is James T. Richardson’s “Manufacturing Consent aboutKoresh,” a study that draws upon Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky’s“propaganda model” to explain how mainstream media select topics, fil-ter information, frame issues, and manage the debate to create a “per-vasive anticult sentiment” among the wider public as well as govern-ment officials.23 More specifically, Richardson, Tabor and Gallagher,and others have noted that a primary cause behind the Waco tragedywas the negative caricature of “the Wackos of Waco,” which inflamedintense public antagonism against David Koresh and the BranchDavidians and directly influenced government officials’ decisions dur-ing the crisis.24

Branch Davidian, Libertarian, and militia websites rely on varioussymbolic “tactics” (borrowing de Certeau’s term) to attack the widely

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held negative stereotypes of Waco. In some cases, they adapt previouslypublished images by reinterpreting them with radically new meanings.In other cases, they upload their own disturbing images to challenge thedemonization and dehumanization of Koresh and the BranchDavidians. Waco websites use four types of images to get their messagesacross: 1) images of David Koresh as a heroic or sanctified figure; 2) imagesof the ATF and government officials as criminals; 3) images memorial-izing the Branch Davidian dead as human beings and victims; and 4)images of the newly rebuilt Mount Carmel risen from the ashes of thetragedy. All four images are transformed into symbols of resistanceagainst the negative portrayal of the Branch Davidians and David Koreshcirculating in the mainstream media and government reports.

HEROIC AND SANCTIFIED IMAGES OF DAVID KORESH

Several studies have noted how self-styled cult experts like RickRoss,25 anticult organizations like the Cult Awareness Network (CAN),and disaffected Branch Davidiandefectors like Mark Breault26 playedimportant roles in popularizing a harshly negative image of Koresh asa dangerous cult leader. Portrayed as “self-obsessed, egomaniacal,sociopathic and heartless,” Koresh was frequently characterized aseither a religious lunatic who doomed his followers to mass suicide ora con man who manipulated religion for his own bizarre personaladvantage.27

Sensationalized news stories that portrayed Koresh this way circu-lated widely on television, radio and in print media before, during, andafter the Waco tragedy. The classic example is the cover picture ofKoresh on the 15 March 1993 issue of Newsweek, with the title “Secrets ofthe Cult.” Barbara Kantrowitz opened her cover story: “He loves Godand he loves women. He has total control over the lives of his followerswho believe his message: the Apocalypse is nigh.”28 Even after the fire,frightening accounts of Koresh continued to be a staple in news andentertainment programming. This can be seen, for example, in ABC’shighly influential made-for-TV movie, In the Line of Duty: Ambush at Waco,a dramatization of the ATF raid that appeared in prime time on 23 May1993.29 What is important for our purposes is the way such examples asthe Newsweek cover and In the Line of Duty conveyed this message. TheNewsweek cover only showed the top half of Koresh’s scruffy, unshavenface, accenting his menacing stare as an all-controlling, dangerous manout to mesmerize and control the weak-minded. In In the Line of Duty,Koresh appeared the same way, “as the iconic, unintelligible demon ofdeath” who exerted total control over his gullible followers throughphysical and emotional abuse, a bizarre lifestyle, and brainwashing.30

One way this was non-verbally reinforced in the movie was by the T-shirt


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he wore, emblazoned with a large, terrifying skull.31 Such demonizingviews of Koresh came to be shared by powerful government officials likethe Democratic senator from New York, Charles E. Shumer, a key figurein the Congressional hearings and a supporter of the Danforth report,who dismissed Koresh as “a dangerous, sick man who molested children,preached violence, and led his followers into a horrible suicide.”32

Several Waco websites counter such negative stereotypes by castingKoresh in a more positive light. For example, the website of a BranchDavidian convert associated with survivor Clive Doyle’s group, PatrickO’Sullivan, attempts this. His site, “ISSOP (Imperial Space Station BBS[STAR STRUCK COMMAND] United Bunch of Planets,” includes amemorial page for David Koresh.33 Using a similar photo of Koresh dis-cussed above, he adds video clips of live flames on either side and aphoto of Koresh’s grave marker below it. Simple but effective, Sullivan’smemorial reminds the viewer that, for some, Koresh was not a con manor a demon, but a human being whose life touched many and whosedeath is still mourned by some.

Some websites offer a more ethereal image of Koresh. One of theseis Tom Cook’s “Mt. Carmel Survivors Website,” a semi-official site asso-ciated with Clive Doyle’s Branch Davidian group, which has built achapel and maintains a small museum at Mount Carmel (see Fig. 2).34

The homepage superimposes a clean-shaven, clear-eyed, well-groomedKoresh upon the cloud-filled heavens. The orb of the sun glowsbrightly from the center of his head, shining down on the world below.The words, “Teachings of the 1st Seal,” are added beneath Koresh’sface. On this site, Koresh is presented devotionally, as the inspiredprophet who has shed light on the truth of God to humanity. Just asJesus “was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand ofGod” (Mark 16:19), Koresh has been transformed into a heavenly sav-ior figure. It is precisely this religious view of Koresh that was at the

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Fig. 2 The Mt. Carmel Survivors Website Homepage(Image courtesy of Tom Cook.)

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heart of the Branch Davidian faith, which governmental officialstrivialized and ignored.35

Koresh is portrayed in a third way on a militia site, where he becomesa symbol of armed resistance to government tyranny.36 Ron Cole, a post-Waco Branch Davidian convert who left the ruins of Mount Carmelto join the militia movement, is the webmaster of “Messiah CyrusProductions.”37 As an ardent supporter of Timothy McVeigh and thefounder of the First Colorado Light Infantry militia, Cole believes armedconflict is the only alternative way to resist a government that brutallykills innocent citizens.38 On Cole’s website, Koresh appears in militarygarb as the fighter against the forces of evil. Cole’s banner, “MessiahCyrus Productions,” has a sword that pierces through the word “mes-siah,” a term in the Hebrew Bible for those who were “anointed for aspecial mission” by God. One of these was Cyrus, who was the PersianKing mentioned in Isaiah 45 as sent by God to destroy the evil empireof Babylon that had enslaved the Jews, God’s chosen people. In likemanner, Koresh, whose name is the Hebrew for Cyrus, was the new mes-siah who would lead God’s divine forces against the Babylon of today—imperial irreligious America and the materialistic West.39

Cole’s site prominently displays a picture of Koresh dressed in mili-tary fatigues and beret and holding a Minigun. Here, Koresh is not adefeated Bible-toting lunatic, but a gun-toting fighting man ready foraction to enforce his right to bear arms. He has become a prominentsymbol of armed resistance to stir revolutionary fervor among those inthe militia movement.

All these websites in their different ways create a community of mem-ory around David Koresh, who is alternately humanized, apotheosized,and militarized depending on the tactic of symbolic resistance and thepolitical, ideological, or religious views of their webmasters.

COUNTER-IMAGES OF THE ATF, AND GOVERNMENTOFFICIALS AS CRIMINALS

A second tactic is to offer counter images of the ATF and the FBI. AsConstance A. Jones and George Baker have noted, the standard massmedia portrayal of Waco was the “worst form of Manichean dualism.” Inopposition to the “cultists” who were depicted as child abusers, sexuallydeviant, and brainwashed, the FBI and ATF agents were lionized as “theprotectors of national values and morality.”40 A good example of this isthe way the ATF agents are characterized in the movie, In the Line ofDuty: Ambush at Waco. Throughout the movie, the ATF agents appear asaverage, clean-cut Americans, who love to go on picnics with their fam-ilies, but when duty calls they patriotically don their armor to defend thecountry against various low-life scum, toting assault rifles and dealingdrugs.


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Some sites question this heroic, John Wayne view of the ATF and theFBI’s role at Waco. Sharlene Shappart’s website is a classic example.41

The visitor is given a virtual tour of the assault on Mount Carmel, or “thecompound” as it was frequently described in the press. Shappart’s siteincludes photographs of the ATF agents killed during the raid, MountCarmel as seen through a sniper’s peephole, stakeout shots, and, ofcourse, several intimidating photos of the agents themselves in fullassault gear. The site tries to give a blow-by-blow account of the terrify-ing opening minutes of the raid when the ATF team attempted to forcetheir way into the residence, and it includes actual photographs of theassault and its aftermath.

Shappart’s site includes the pictures of the dead agents to exemplifytheir tragic loss because of what she sees as the unforgivable incompe-tence of their commanders. Beneath their images, she includes remarksmade by Deputy Director Bradley A. Buckles at the ATF MemorialService, National Police Week, 14 May 1997: “The very nature of ourenforcement mission has historically brought us face to face with theNation’s most violent criminals. It is, therefore, not surprising that thenumber of ATF agents who have lost their lives in the performance oftheir duties—which numbers 182—is among the highest in Federallaw enforcement.” In response, Shappart sarcastically quips: “Is it noWONDER? Sounds like ATF is its own worst violent criminal. How manyof the deaths are attributed to training exercises, lack of communica-tion, faulty equipment, INCOMPETENT Commanders, attacking peo-ple at the WRONG ADDRESS, no written raid plan or specific instructions,and FRIENDLY FIRE!?”

Shappart’s site juxtaposes frightening images of overwhelming gov-ernment military force assaulting its own citizens with pictures and com-mentary about the government’s stupidity, which resulted in its ownofficers becoming victims of what she concludes was an ill-conceived,immoral, and illegal operation.

Another website criticizing the ATF raid uses humor to get its pointacross. This is P. J. Gladnick and Brian Chin’s “The Hillary WacoProject,” an audio-visual cartoon that artfully satirizes the ATF, FBI,Hillary Clinton, and Janet Reno.42 The cartoon, which is accompaniedby an upbeat version of Nancy Sinatra’s song, “These Boots Are Madefor Walking” (the song played over FBI loud speakers during the 51-daysiege), pokes fun at the federal agents, who are caricatured as jack-booted thugs gleefully stomping on innocent human life and liberty. Inone frame (see Fig. 3), the assault on Mount Carmel has one agentquizzically wondering why the Branch Davidians are defending them-selves while the helicopters and assault rifles blaze away into the build-ing. Gladnick’s cartoon of the Waco tragedy humorously deconstructsthe official heroic image of the ATF portrayed on television and empha-sized by government officials.

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IMAGES MEMORIALIZING THE BRANCH DAVIDIAN DEAD AS VICTIMS

A third tactic is to show the hidden human side of the Waco tragedy,a view that often is ignored in the mass media. As Richardson argues:

Those associated with David Koresh at Mt. Carmel never made it into thecategory of “worthy victims.” Instead, there was an expressed ambiguityabout their status. Those living at Mt. Carmel, including even the chil-dren, were never fully humanized in the eyes of the general public. Weknew little about them as individuals, including details of their lives—their hopes and desires, their hobbies, their goals. We did not see manydepictions of them as real human beings . . . in large part because mediarepresentatives had virtually no access to those inside the besieged site.43

This dehumanization of the people inside Mount Carmel continuedeven after the fire. A good example again is the ABC movie dramatiza-tion, In the Line of Duty: Ambush at Waco. At the end of the film, severalminutes are devoted to an elegiac scene in which the defeated ATFagents sorrowfully carry their casualties from the compound. Before thefinal credits roll, smiling pictures of every dead agent appear on thescreen, with their names and ages. However, none of the Branch Davidiandead are listed. And generally, throughout the movie, when they doappear they are portrayed as “cowering zombies, powerless under thecontrol of their charismatic leader.”44 In this and other cases, the BranchDavidians are represented as non-persons, faceless and fanatical killerswho brutally ambushed the agents at “Ranch Apocalypse.”


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Fig. 3 The Hillary Waco Project(Image courtesy of P. J. Gladnick.)

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Many Waco websites resist these attempts to dehumanize the BranchDavidians. Carol Moore, whose “The Davidian Massacre Pages” is animportant Libertarian (and New Age) site, does exactly this.45 Withinher pages, which include chapters from her book, The Davidian Massacre,information on the Committee on Waco Social Justice and BranchDavidian prisoners, she adds photos of the survivors, as well as anotherdisturbing photo from the siege that did not get wide play in the press.46

It is a photograph of the residence at Mount Carmel with a sign hang-ing from the window, “Rodney King, We Understand.” Most people areunaware that the Branch Davidians were interracial and that half thepeople who died were African American, Hispanic, or Asian. The com-parison to Rodney King—whose beating on 29 April 1992 by the LosAngeles police, captured on videotape, provoked a national outcry overracism by government officials—was not lost on the Branch Davidianswithin Mount Carmel. Moore’s website draws parallels between bothcases as examples of state oppression, and suggests that Waco is not onlyabout freedom of religion but also about blatant racism.47

Other websites call attention to the dead. A shocking example isCarol Valentine’s “Waco Holocaust Electronic Museum.” The site’spolemical purpose can be gleaned from a section of her virtual museum,labeled “Death.” She begins by quoting forensic anthropologist ClydeSnow’s observation that “[t]he homicidal state shares one trait with thesolitary killer—like all murderers, it trips on its own egoism and dropsa trail of clues which, when properly collected, preserved, and analyzedare as damning as a signed confession left in the grave.”48

This is, in fact, the goal of Valentine’s site—to provide a mountain offorensic information that her analysis claims reveals a government con-spiracy of mass murder, destruction of evidence, fabrication of evidence,and perjury. The museum is organized into four sections: war, fire,death, and burial. The third room, “Death,” marked with a warningthat it is “graphic and shocking,” contains gruesome pictures of thecrime scene and autopsies of the dead Branch Davidians, including thechildren. Anyone who visits this section comes face to face with grislyphotos of corpses burned beyond recognition and the fragmentaryskeletal remains of those who died at Mount Carmel. The museumforces the viewer to face the unpleasant fact that people, includinginnocent children, died terrible deaths there. Like a three-dimensionalHolocaust Museum for the Jewish victims of Nazi atrocities in World WarII, the “Waco Holocaust Electronic Museum” creates a visual spectacleto instill a sense of moral and political outrage so that such a horror willnever happen again.

However, the most frequently chosen way to depict the humantragedy of Waco is to show the Branch Davidians themselves. This is doneby memorializing the dead online. Like Valentine’s “Waco HolocaustElectronic Museum,” these websites have their three-dimensional

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equivalents. In recent years, spontaneous memorials have become anew form of ritualization in American culture. The most notable currentexample is the Union Square memorial in New York City after 11September 2001 to remember those who died in the World TradeCenter. C. Allen Haney, Christine Leimer, and Juliann Lowery argue thatspontaneous memorials are

a public response to the unanticipated, violent deaths of people who donot fit the categories of those we expect to die, who may be engaging inroutine activities in which there is a reasonable expectation of safety, andwith whom the participants in the ritual share some common identifi-cation. This process does not replace traditional funerary rites. Instead,it emerges as an adjunct ritual that extends the opportunity for mourn-ing to individuals not conventionally included in traditional rites andcalls attention to the social and cultural threat raised by these deaths.49

Online memorials for the Branch Davidian dead display the samecharacteristics of this new type of ritual: first, their fiery deaths were vio-lent and unexpected. Many of the Branch Davidian dead were youngand “good people” who should not have died in such a way. Like themore traditional memorials, online Waco memorials are private,individualized acts of mourning open to public view, an eclectic mix oftraditional religious, secular, and personal components that are person-ally meaningful to the mourner. Moreover, like the three-dimensionalmemorials, online Waco memorials focus beyond the deceased to thesocial/cultural implications of their deaths.50 The key difference betweenonline and real life spontaneous memorials is that the while the lattertake place at the site of the death, online memorials appear virtually inthe “no place” (and “every place”) of cyberspace.51

A case in point is “Karen WMP’s” “The Waco Memorial Project,”whose page begins with the lines, “Much has been said about the eventsat Waco in 1993. Few, however, seemed to care about the individuals whodied there. The people who lived at Mt. Carmel Center had families andtalents and dreams, just like anyone else.”52 Each of the dead is given hisor her own page with relevant biographical details to give a sense of howordinarily human each of them was. Katherine Andrade’s page on thiswebsite illustrates this well (see Fig. 4). The page gives intimate personaldetails about her: birth, occupation as a financial assistant, her favoritesinger (Amy Grant), and her favorite food (“ravioli with Mom’s specialsauce”), all the little details that were personally meaningful to thosewho loved her. The paragraph below her picture, written by her mother,emphasizes the loss of a pleasant and beautiful young woman whose lifewas cut short tragically and questions how this could have happened:

Kathie was a beautiful person, inside and out. She was a researcher,wanted to know detailed information about the things that interested her.


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She loved to help her friends get over the things that were botheringthem. She cared for people and her beloved horses. I remember, whenshe was 10 or 12 years old, she wrote to President Reagan about thekilling of wild horses. He responded to her letter. Kathie was an artist;she had a natural talent for drawing. I have a few of her drawings framed.She is missed and never forgotten.

How could a country whose former president shared her distaste ofneedless cruelty toward horses kill her young daughter, whose onlycrime was following her spiritual curiosity to Mount Carmel?53

Protest against the injustice of the deaths is especially pronouncedon many of the children’s memorials. An example of this can be seen inFig. 5 from Joyce Eatman’s webpages. Here, the faces of some of the chil-dren who died in the fire are overlaid on a picture of the White Housewith the banner, “Never let them forget the faces of Waco!” The messagehere, that Waco was a criminal act that led to the slaughter of innocents,is central to this memorial. Similarly, on Carl Klang’s “Singer, Songwriter,Entertainer, America’s #1 Patriotic Singer!” website, we find a stick draw-ing of little smiling children holding hands and flowers with a smilingsun and the title, “Seventeen Little Children.”54 A list is given of seven-teen Branch Davidian children who died and their ages, followed by apage with Klang’s plaintive lyrics: “Just in case you don’t remember, let

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Fig. 4 Waco Memorial Project(Image courtesy of Karen Barouski.)

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me jog your memory. In a church they called the Waco compound,back in April ’93. Seventeen Little Children, all so helpless and so small.Died a senseless death of gas and flames—How many names can yourecall?”

By using images, music, and text, and in this particular case by post-ing a melancholy song, a community of memory is kept alive on theseand other Waco memorial websites.

IMAGES OF THE NEW MOUNT CARMEL—TRIUMPH OF GOOD OVER EVIL

Photographs of the fire that consumed Mount Carmel on 19 April1993 were ubiquitous in the mainstream press, published widely inNewsweek, U.S. News & World Report, the Chicago Tribune, and other massmedia outlets. The fiery end to the standoff between the FBI and theBranch Davidians remains the most memorable image of Waco in manypeople’s minds. Very few, however, realize that some Branch Davidianssurvived, and later returned to Mount Carmel to rebuild.55 To counterthe popular misconception that the Branch Davidians no longer exist,some Waco websites include photographs of the resurrected MountCarmel.

Sharlene Shappart’s multi-page photo-montage, “Mt. Carmel Center,Waco, Texas—April 19, 2001 Memorial,” is an important example of thistactic.56 In these pages, Shappart documents the restored chapel builtby supporters of Clive Doyle’s group after the fire. Her pictures are


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Fig. 5 Pictures of the Branch Davidian Children who died at Waco fromJoyce Eatman’s KVKV Christian Talk Radio 1060 pages(Image courtesy of Sharlene Shappart.)

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powerful testimonies that Mount Carmel remains holy ground for some.Remnants from that terrible day are still scattered over the property,powerful reminders of the death and destruction that occurred there.Here, for Branch Davidians and their supporters, Mount Carmel is likeGettysburg and other war memorials, filled with spiritual meaning.Shappart describes one of her pictures, a child’s broken bicycle with abroken doll lying upon it:

It’s a picture that speaks volumes. Even after 8 years it remained as aTRUE testament of what transpired.

A surviving piece of history that tells the tale of its owner . . . a smallfrightened little girl who succumbed to the flames and a reminder of themen who came to “save her” with tanks and poisonous gas.57

Shappart’s other photographs celebrate Mount Carmel as a place ofresurrection. In one, from her visit for the 19 April 2001 memorial,there is a pasture in springtime with wildflowers. For Shappart, the pic-ture shows that new life can rise from the ashes, and that the land, tem-porarily desecrated by bloody violence, still remains holy ground. Themost important evidence of this is the Branch Davidian chapel that hasbeen rebuilt on the original site. The chapel is a sign that David Koresh’slegacy remains despite the terrors of recent history (see Fig. 6). Her cap-tion describes the church this way: “A beautiful church rises from theashes, proving that REAL PATRIOTS helped rebuild what evil couldNOT destroy!”58

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Fig. 6 The New Mount Carmel chapel, 19 April 2001, with Alex Jonesholding up a poster with his friend(Image courtesy of Sharlene Shappart.)

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CONCLUSION

Branch Davidian and Waco websites illustrate the need to apply“social theory about community to computer-mediated communicativerelationships.”59 As cyber-sociologist Jan Fernback points out, communityis not simply a “materially determined, preexisting physical reality,”60

but is a symbolic construct. Communities share not only actual places,but also symbolic worlds where any “object, act, event, quality, or relationcan serve as a vehicle of conception.”61 Such a social/cultural system ofsymbols provides people with a sense of identity and meaning by semi-otically representing their “common interests, values, economical liveli-hood, behaviors or roles.”62 Computer-mediated communication is itselfsuch a symbolic construct, one that is electronically reproduced in thenon-place of cyberspace, but is nonetheless a gathering place for a “com-munity of meaning.”63 While people online may be disembedded fromtheir ordinary social relations in physical space, cyberspace providesthem with a new symbolically real space to communicate and communewith each other. Branch Davidian and Waco websites form a virtual com-munity organized around their shared set of Waco symbols, which arisefrom the problem of what actually happened at Mount Carmel and whoDavid Koresh and the Branch Davidians really were.

The Internet also provides a public outlet for Branch Davidian sur-vivors, and Libertarian and Second Amendment groups. It is a place forthem to resist symbolically what they see as government and mass mediadeceptions. Waco has produced a knot of tensions in American social andreligious consciousness by proving itself susceptible to multiple interpre-tations. The Waco virtual community uses its symbols to bind host andguest together within a tensive discourse that expresses its outrage overwhat happened in 1993. By using powerfully graphic symbols of the waythings were and what they should be at Mount Carmel, they can publicizetheir cause by raising troubling questions, protesting, formulating theo-logical responses, and organizing political and religious movements.

In this respect, it is interesting to reflect upon the Internet in com-parison to its mass media predecessors. Thinking about print, television,and radio of an earlier age, Michel de Certeau thought that what hecalled the “consumer-sphinx” had to devise “ruses” to resist the dan-gerously rationalized, centralized, and authoritarian tendencies of masscommunications networks and consumer culture.

whose products leave no room where consumers can mark their activity.The child still scrawls and daubs on his schoolbooks; even if he is pun-ished for this crime, he has made a space for himself and signs his exis-tence as an author on it. The television viewer cannot write anything onthe screen of his set. He has been dislodged from the product; he playsno role in its apparition. He loses his author’s rights and becomes, or so


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it seems a pure receiver, the mirror of a multiform and narcissistic actor.Pushed to the limit, he would be the image of appliances that no longerneed him in order to produce themselves, the reproduction of the“celibate machine.”64

Branch Davidian and Waco websites reveal how people have har-nessed the power of the Internet to empower themselves. They use thetechnology of computer mediated communication as a platform forsymbolic resistance. They are producers rather than alienated purereceivers. No longer does one have to scrawl one’s thoughts in the mar-gins of a book: one has a personal computer and can author e-books andwebsites. No longer must one remain a passive consumer of televisionimages: one can write on the screen, disseminating one’s message to aglobal audience. The ways in which marginalized religious and politicalgroups use the Internet to resist mass media stereotypes and get theirown message out is an important area for further research.

ENDNOTES

1 Michael D. Barkun, “Reflections after Waco: Millennialists and the State,”Christian Century 110 (1993): 599.2 James D. Tabor and Eugene V. Gallagher, Why Waco? Cults and the Battle for Reli-gious Freedom in America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 23–80.3 Approximately seventy-four Branch Davidians (including twenty-three chil-dren) died. Nine survived the fire. Of these, seven were later convicted of vol-untary manslaughter and firearms violations. See Tabor and Gallagher, WhyWaco? 3, note 9, and 214–15. To get a sense of the controversy over the exactdeath count, see Carol Valentine’s website, “Waco Holocaust Museum,”<http://www.public-action.com/SkyWriter/WacoMuseum/death/page/d_ub.html>, accessed 2 June 2003.4 Subsequently, on 9 September 2000, six of the Waco defendants had their sen-tences reduced after the United States Supreme Court ruled that Judge WalterSmith had overstepped his judicial authority by unduly increasing the time ofpunishment.5 Lee Hancock, “Judge Blames Sect for Waco Tragedy,” Dallas Morning News, 21September 2000, see CESNUR (Center for Studies on New Religions) Item23522, <http://www.cesnur.org/testi/waco121.htm>. The survivors appealedJudge Smith’s judgment on the basis of judicial prejudice, but on 14 July 2003the United States Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected their appeal withoutdissent. See Angela K. Brown, “Appeals Court Deals Blow to Davidians’ Lawsuit,”CBS.COM, 15 July 2003, <http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/07/15/national/main563337.shtml>. 6 John C. Danforth, Interim Report to the Deputy Attorney General Concerning the 1993Confrontation at the Mt. Carmel Complex, Waco, Texas (Washington, D.C.: Department

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of Justice, 21 July 2000), ii. The Interim Report is available on Frontline’s “Waco:The Inside Story” website, <http://pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/waco/timeline.html>, accessed 12 November 2004. For the final report see John C.Danforth, Final Report to the Deputy Attorney General Concerning the 1993 Con-frontation at the Mt. Carmel Complex, Waco, Texas (Washington, D.C.: Departmentof Justice, 8 November 2000). The Final Report is available at the “Waco: TheRules of Engagement” website, <http://www.waco93.com/danforth.htm> and“Carol Moore’s Waco Pages: The Davidian Massacre,” <http://www.carolmoore.net/waco/danforthreport2000.html>, accessed 5 November 2004; the report isno longer available on the United States Justice Department’s website.Danforth specifically noted a 26 August 1999 Time poll indicating that 61 per-cent of Americans believed that federal law enforcement officials started thefire at Waco. This is an interesting shift compared to a 21 April 1993 poll byUSA Today that found over 93 percent of Americans believed Koresh was atfault for Waco.7 Danforth, Interim Report, ii. Danforth is alluding here to the Oscar-nominatedand Emmy award-winning film, Waco: The Rules of Engagement, prod. Dan Gifford,William Gazecki, and Michael McNulty (Los Angeles: Fifth Estate Productions,1997), and other films produced on the case, which raised serious questionsabout the government’s role in the tragedy.8 Danforth, Interim Report, see especially page 5.9 Danforth, Interim Report, i.10 Many serious questions about the ATF and FBI’s handling of the BranchDavidians still remain. For example, why did ATF agents raid Mount Carmelinstead of waiting to arrest Koresh when he left the community? Given the factthat the ATF had an undercover agent inside Mount Carmel until just before theraid, how did they botch the operation leading to the deaths of six BranchDavidians and four ATF agents? Did the ATF use National Guard helicopters tostrafe the residence during their raid? During the FBI assault on 19 April, wasit appropriate for the FBI to fire 350 ferret rounds capable of causing seriousinjury or death? Was CS gas appropriate to use in a building in which there werechildren and elderly people? Why did FBI agents not reveal in the early investi-gations that incendiary tear gas rounds had been fired near the residence sev-eral hours before the fire? Should the FBI have used tanks to destroy sectionsof the building? Did federal agents fire into the building during the final assault?For a provocative critique of the Danforth report’s conclusions, see TimothyLynch, “No Confidence: An Unofficial Account of the Waco Incident,” CatoPolicy Analysis No. 395, 9 April 2001, 1–18, <http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-395es.html>. For a useful resource on the subsequent legal controversies, seealso “Press” on the “Waco: The Rules of Engagement” website, <http://www.waco93.com/press.htm>, accessed 4 June 2003. A detailed discussion of the technicalcontroversies over interpreting the FLIR (overflight infrared film) data on thepossibility of federal agents firing gunshots into the residence on 19 April 1993,see Ian Goddard, “The Waco FLIR Flashes,” <http://users.erols.com/igoddard/wacoflir.htm>, accessed 4 November 2004.11 For a complete survey of Waco-related sites see my chapter, “Digital Waco—Branch Davidian Virtual Communities after the Waco Tragedy,” in Religion andCyberspace, ed. Morten Thomsen Højsgaard and Margit Warburg (London:


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Routledge, forthcoming). See also Stephen O’Leary, “Waco Sites on the Web”USC Annenberg Online Journalism Review (13 October 2000, updated 4 April 2002),<http://www.ojr.org/ojr/business/1017962854.php>.12 Hugh Urban, “The Devil at Heaven’s Gate: Rethinking the Study of Religionin the Age of Cyber-Space,” Nova Religio 3, no. 2 (April 2000): 96.13 Brenda Brasher, Give Me that Online Religion (San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 2001), 39.14 Stephen O’Leary, “Waco Fire Continues to Burn on the Web,” USC AnnenbergOnline Journalism Review (13 October 2000, updated 4 April 2002), <http://www.ojr.org/ojr/ethics/1017962869.php>.15 Carol Valentine, for example, claims (somewhat tongue and cheek) that hersite, the “Waco Holocaust Electronic Museum,” <http://www.public-action.com/SkyWriter/WacoMuseum/index.html>, accessed 4 June 2003, is “pub-lished by Public Action Inc, a news and news analysis service,” and lists DCDave, God and Country, Rebellion, Real Survivalists, Final Conflict, the Feder-ation of American Scientists, and the American Academy of Religion (!) amongher various sponsors.16 Dan Tobias, personal email message dated 30 September 2001. His website,“A Brief Stop at Mount Carmel (or what’s left of it)” and “Return to Mt. Carmel,”<http://dan.tobias.name/controversies/davidian/>, accessed 4 June 2003, is aphotomontage of his visit to the rebuilt Mount Carmel in May 1995 and returnsome years later. His Waco website sums up his Libertarian worldview by “TedNelson’s Four Maxims”: “(1) Most people are fools; (2) most authority is malig-nant; (3) God does not exist; and (4) everything is wrong.” See <http://dan.tobias.name/>. In his email message to me Tobias emphasized that he has “noconnection with Waco or David Koresh, but my position is that, as wacky as theirreligious beliefs may be, the Branch Davidians had the right to peacefullypractice them. . . .” 17 David Thibodeau, personal email message dated 11 November 2001.18 David Thibodeau and Leon Whiteson, A Place Called Waco: A Survivor’s Story(New York: Public Affairs, 1999). The website was located at <http://www.aplacecalledwaco.com>, accessed 19 January 2003, now defunct.19 Sharlene Shappart, “Waco: What you thought you knew . . . Was Wrong . . .dead wrong!” <http://www.wizardsofaz.com/waco/waco.html>, accessed 2 June2003.20 Joyce Eatman, “Lady Liberty of ‘The Liberty Hour,’” <http://www.wizardsofaz.com/waco/wacowalk.html>, accessed 2 June 2003.21 Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 1984), 31.22 Livingstone Fagan’s, “Mt. Carmel: The Unseen Reality,” 1994, transcribed byMark Swett, was formerly located at Mark Swett’s “Waco Never Again” website,<http://home.maine.rr.com/waco/mcur1.html>, now defunct. Mark Swett’svaluable Branch Davidian materials are now deposited in Baylor University’sTexas Collection archive. Livingstone Fagan’s essay can be located at a websiteentitled “Mt. Carmel: The Unseen Reality,” <http://www.parascope.com/articles/1296/faganind.htm>; and Jon Mann’s website entitled “The Works of DavidKoresh and Other Branch Davidians,” <http:www.fountain.btinternet.co.uk/koresh/writings/>, both accessed 4 November 2004. Fagan, imprisoned in the

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federal penitentiary at Marion, Illinois, left Mount Carmel with Koresh’s bless-ing during the siege to serve as the external theological spokesperson of thegroup. Many of his prison writings reveal him as theologically orthodox, accept-ing Koresh as the Lamb mentioned in Revelation 6 and Koresh’s inspired inter-pretations of the Seven Seals. See Eugene V. Gallagher, “The Persistence of theMillennium: Branch Davidian Expectations of the End after Waco,” Nova Religio3, no. 2 (April 2000): 304. 23 James T. Richardson, “Manufacturing Consent about Koresh: A StructuralAnalysis of the Role of the Media in the Waco Tragedy,” in Armageddon in Waco:Critical Perspectives on the Branch Davidian Conflict, ed. Stuart A. Wright (Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1995), 155–56.24 Richardson, “Manufacturing Consent,” 155. See also Constance A. Jones andGeorge Baker, “Television and Metaphysics at Waco,” From the Ashes: Making Senseof Waco, ed. James R. Lewis (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1994),143–44; John R. Hall, “Public Narratives and the Apocalyptic Sect: FromJonestown to Mt. Carmel,” in Wright, Armageddon in Waco, 205–35; Tabor andGallagher, Why Waco? 117–46, especially 126–27.25 Tabor and Gallagher, Why Waco? 93–96. See “The Ross Institute for the Studyof Destructive Cults, Controversial Groups and Movements,” <http://www.rickross.com/>, accessed 4 August 2003.26 Tabor and Gallagher, Why Waco? 80–92.27 Tabor and Gallagher, Why Waco? 94.28 Barbara Kantrowitz, “Secrets of the Cult: The Messiah of Waco,” Newsweek, 15March 1993, 56.29 In the Line of Duty: Ambush at Waco, prod. and dir. Dick Lowry, RepublicPictures Home Video, 1993, videocassette.30 Quotation in Tabor and Gallagher, Why Waco? 126–27; see also Joel W. Martin,“Forum: Interpreting Waco,” Religion and American Culture 8 (1998): 5. 31 The movie’s video cover also borrows Newsweek’s cover idea, with a picture ofKoresh’s eyes glaring ominously above the movie title and the burning MountCarmel below. Such sensationalistic news characterizations of Koresh forced theSeventh-day Adventists to hire their own media consultant. To maintain a goodpublic image, they sought to get the message out that they had nothing to dowith the cult leader. See Ronald Lawson, “Seventh-day Adventist Responses toBranch Davidians’ Notoriety: Patterns of Diversity within a Sect ReducingTension with Society,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 34 (1995): 323–41.32 Charles E. Shumer, “Statement of Senator Charles E. Shumer, Senate JudiciaryCommittee Hearing on Senator Danforth’s Report on the Waco Siege”, 26July 2000, <http://www.senate.gov/-schumer/Schumer/Website/pressroom/press_releases/PR00241.html>, now defunct. 33 Patrick O’Sullivan, “ISSOP (Imperial Space Station BBS [STAR STRUCKCOMMAND] United Bunch of Planets,” <http://www.northwest.net/users/rorrim/>, accessed 4 June 2003.34 Tom Cook, “Mt. Carmel Survivors Website,” <http://start.at/mt.carmel>,accessed 25 October 2002; this website has moved to <http://www.anycities.com/mtcarmel>, accessed 4 November 2004. Tom Cook, a Branch Davidianconvert who knew Koresh and studied with other Branch Davidians such as


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Perry Jones, is the author of this site. Cook was not “in the message” until after1993; Mark Swett, personal email message dated 21 October 2001.35 Tabor and Gallagher, Why Waco? 21–22.36 Other sites that focus on Second Amendment issues, some with ties to the mili-tia movement, are “Global ConspiracyTM” “Revolution,” <http://boogieonline.com/revolution/firearms/enfore/waco/davidians.html>, accessed 25 October2001, now defunct; and the “Outpost of Freedom,” <http://www.outpost-of-freedom.com/wacoind.htm>, accessed 4 June 2003. The “Global Conspiracy”website has relocated to < http://www.boogieonline.com/revolution/> and hasbeen renamed “Revolution: Ammo for Freedom Fighters.” Its page entitled“Remember Waco” is located at <http://www.boogieonline.com/revolution/firearms/enforce/waco/>, accessed 4 November 2004.37 Ron Cole, “Messiah Cyrus Productions,” <http://www.cyrusproductions.com/indek.htm>, accessed 4 June 2002, now defunct.38 Cole led this organization until his arrest on federal firearms violations. Hewas paroled 24 February 2001.39 Tabor and Gallagher, Why Waco? 59–60.40 Jones and Baker, “Television and Metaphysics,” 15041 Sharlene Shappart, “Waco: What you thought you knew . . . Was Wrong . . .dead wrong!” <http://www.wizardsofaz.com/waco/waco4.html>, accessed 4 June2003.42 P. J. Gladnick and Brian Chin, “P.J.’s Comix-Political Satire about Everything,”“The Hillary Waco Project,” <http://www.pjcomix.com/waco1.html>, accessed4 June 2003. “The Hillary Waco Project” link was not working on 4 November2004; the homepage URL is <http://www.pjcomix.com/>.

P. J. Gladnick gives the following for his biography at <http://www.freerepublic.com/~pjcomix/>:

I was born in a Satellite Dish just outside of Salisbury, MD. My mother wasa Las Vegas pizza waitress and my father worked as a trucker by day and aPeople Magazine reporter by night. Currently I am storing myself in a self-storage unit. God is my co-pilot and J-Lo is my navigator. I live on a stricthealth regimen of corn nuts and polysorbate-80.

43 Richardson, “Manufacturing Consent,” 163.44 Tabor and Gallagher, Why Waco? 127.45 Carol Moore, “The Davidian Massacre Pages,” <http://www.carolmoore.net>,accessed 4 June 2003.46 The full text of her 500-page book can be downloaded from this site; CarolMoore, The Davidian Massacre: Disturbing Questions about Waco that Must BeAnswered (Franklin, Tenn.: Legacy Communications and Gun Owners Founda-tion, 1995). O’Leary cautions that while her site is a treasure trove of informa-tion on Waco, Moore’s conclusions with respect to the evidence may seem “overthe top.” The co-publisher of her book, the Gun Owners Foundation, offers aclue to her political leanings. See O’Leary, “Waco Sites on the Web.” 47 For more details on the race and ethnicity of the victims, see Carol Moore,“The List of Victims,” <http://carolmoore.net/waco/waco-victims.html>,accessed 4 June 2003.

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48 Carol Valentine, “Waco Holocaust Electronic Museum,” <http://www.dabney.com/wacomuseum/fire/fire.html>, accessed 4 June 2003.49 C. Allen Haney, Christine Leimer, and Juliann Lowery, “Spontaneous Memo-rials: Violent Death and Emerging Mourning Ritual,” Omega: Journal of Death &Dying 35 (1995): 160.50 Haney, Leimer, and Lowery, “Spontaneous Memorials,” 161.51 Even so, some sites, like Sharlene Shappart’s “Mount Carmel Center, Waco,Texas—April 19, 2001 Memorial,” <http://www.wizardsofaz.com/waco/4-19-2001.html>, tie the viewer to the original site. This page is a photomontage of amemorial service held at the Mount Carmel chapel on 19 April 2001. Her pic-ture of the actual memorial stone links her virtual site to the real-life one. See<http://www.wizardsofaz.com/waco/page1.html>, accessed 4 November 2004.52 Karen WMP, “The Waco Memorial Project,” <http://members.aol.com/karenwmp/waco/project.htm>, accessed 4 June 2003.53 Other important Internet memorial sites include Tom Cook’s “Mt. CarmelSurvivor’s Website,” <http://www.anycities.com/mtcarmel>, accessed 4 November2004; Sharlene Shappart’s “Waco: What you thought you knew . . . WasWrong . . . dead wrong!” <http://www.wizardsofaz.com/waco/waco.html>,accessed 4 June 2003; Patrick Sullivan’s page on “Michael Schroeder: A Tributefrom His Mother Sandra Connizzo,” <http://www.everett.net/users/rorrim/iss/mikes.htm>, accessed 4 June 2003, now defunct; Mark Swett’s “Waco NeverAgain,” with memorials to Steve Schneider, <http://home.maine.rr.com/waco/schneider.html>, and Waco sheriff Jack Harwell, <http://home.maine.rr.com/waco/harwell.html>, accessed 4 June 2003, now defunct.54 Carl Klang, “Singer, Songwriter, Entertainer, America’s #1 Patriotic Singer!”<http://www.klang.com/17lyrics.html>, accessed 25 October 2001, now defunct.Carl Klang, “Seventeen Little Children (Waco),” is now located at “Carl KlangMusic Ministries,” <http://www.klang.com/lyrics/17lyrics.htm>, accessed 4November 2004.55 In addition to the nine Branch Davidians who survived the fire, at least six hadbeen outside Mount Carmel on the day of the ATF operation. Thirty-five left theresidence during the standoff. See Tabor and Gallagher, Why Waco? 214, note 9.56 Shappart, “Mount Carmel Center, Waco, Texas—April 19, 2001 Memorial,”<http://www.wizardsofaz.com/waco/4-19-2001.html>, accessed 4 November2004. 57 Shappart, “Mount Carmel Center, Waco, Texas—April 19, 2001 Memorial,”<http://www.wizardsofaz.com/waco/page5.html>, accessed 4 November 2004.58 Shappart, “Mount Carmel Center, Waco, Texas—April 19, 2001 Memorial,”<http://www.wizardsofaz.com/waco/page3.html>, accessed 4 November 2004.For another example of this symbolic tactic, see radio commentator Alex Jones’pages on building the Mount Carmel chapel, <http://www.wizardsofaz.com/waco/waco5a.html>, accessed 4 June 2003. For an example of a Libertariantourist’s view of Mount Carmel, see Tobias, “A Brief Stop at Mt. Carmel,”<http://dan.tobias.name/controversies/davidian/>, accessed 4 June 2003.59 Jan Fernback, “There Is a There There: Notes toward a Definition of Cyber-community,” in Doing Internet Research: Critical Issues and Methods for Examining theNet, ed. Steven Jones (Thousand Oaks, Calif: Sage Publications, 1999), 205.


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60 Fernback, “There Is a There There,” 210. 61 Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 91.62 Fernback, “There Is a There There,” 209–10. 63 See Robert Bellah, Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in AmericanLife (New York: Harper and Row, 1985), 152–55.64 de Certeau, Practice of Everyday Life, 31.

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symbolic resistance to the waco tragedy on the internet

Documents