Friday A/V Club: NBC's Infamous Insta-Movie About Waco

Reason Magazine ^ | January 8, 2016 | Jesse Walker

[OddLane]

The events now unfolding at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge have been compared and contrasted many times with the 1993 siege in Waco. Here is one significant difference: It's not nearly as hard to find different perspectives on the Oregon conflict. From the most high-minded political essays to the dumbest Facebook memes, the debate over the Oregon occupation has been open to a wide range of ideas about the case that set off the conflict, the goals of the people involved, and how the government ought to react. Six days into this saga, I've seen a lot of bloodthirsty garbage, but I've seen a lot of pushback against that too.

After a week of the Waco story, by contrast, the mass media were virtually unanimous in presenting the Branch Davidians as a dangerous cult that needed to be contained. Over the course of the stand-off and right afterward, rival narratives would begin to emerge, initially in the alternative media and eventually in mainstream venues. But you'd have to wait til well after the lethal fire that ended the siege before the critical voices were more than a small minority.