The Context of the “Crusaders”: Religious Diversity,Anti-Muslim Christianity, and Political Terrorism in Garden City, Kansas, 2016

This presentation examines local and national contexts of an attempted bombing in a diverse town in western Kansas just before the 2016 presidential election. The would-be bombers, calling themselves “the Crusaders,” targeted Somali refugees who worked in Garden City’s meatpacking plants in a plan modeled after the Oklahoma City bombing. Arguing that their efforts were response to candidate Donald Trump’s call for patriots to defend their homeland, they attempted to appeal to jurors’ sense that everyday people should be applauded—or at least forgiven—for caring about the threat at Muslim immigrants played to national security. This presentation examines the larger context of their planned attack, including Garden City’s history as a place that both welcomes and exploits refugees from US foreign wars, from the Vietnam War to the War on Terror, and larger anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim policies, rhetoric, and religious teachings circulating in western Kansas and other rural areas.