Gadianton Robbers

Today's Sunday School lesson had a piece on these guys. Who are they today and are they in our government? Something to think about before we vote.



Ether 8:23 thereby ye may repent of your sins, and suffer not that these murderous combinations shall get above you, which are built up to get power and gain—and the work, yea, even the work of destruction come upon you, yea, even the sword of the justice of the Eternal God shall fall upon you, to your overthrow and destruction if ye shall suffer these things to be.

24 when ye shall see these things come among you that ye shall awake to a sense of your awful situation, because of this secret combination which shall be among you



Helaman 10:18 and there began to be contentions, insomuch that they were divided against themselves and began to slay one another with the sword.





Helaman 11:1 that the contentions did increase, insomuch that there were wars throughout all the land among all the people of Nephi.



https://www.lds.org/media-library/video/2012-08-2620-secret-combinations?category=book-of-mormon/alma-helaman&lang=eng



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnx3dkCsn5E

Here you go.



http://www.vox.com/2016/4/18/11434098/alt-right-explained



At least this is one political ideology out there that fits the description of what the Gadiantons were trying to do in the BofM. Maybe in some respects they're more like the "kingmen" perhaps. What scares me about Trump is that he panders to these folks and uses a lot of the techniques of 1930s fascism. A lot of what he does is to stir up distrust in the democratic process. By saying that the only way he can lose is if there is cheating he is preparing folks to assume we need to trash the whole system and go with a dictator. He's selling himself as the "only" one who can fix our problems. That's 100% antithetical to the whole idea of Constitutional government. There is never supposed to be just one man powerful enough to fix all our problems.



This plays right into the stuff the alt-right wishes everyone else thought. He's taking their once radical fringe arguments and making them mainstream. He may just be doing it for show and personal vanity, but my fear is he's just preparing the country for the eventual idea that we need to overthrow our current system for something way more authoritarian. It just may take another few years before the next guy like him is taken more seriously.



These are the essentially the same wackos/movement that the guys responsible for the Oklahoma City bombing came from in the 90s. Before that horrific event they were involved for several years in smaller crimes like attacks on armored cars to get money and stealing weapons from army bases and such. The movement lost a lot of steam after OKC because the bombing was so shocking and horrific. That was our country's 9/11 before 9/11. But the these groups seem to be growing in influence again and have a mainstream presidential candidate to rally around now.