Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 12/8/2009 (4066 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

WASHINGTON -- An expert in anti-government militia groups warns of another domestic terrorism attack like the bombing in Oklahoma City 14 years ago.

Angry protesters are showing up at town hall meetings across the United States, some of them saying their country is unrecognizable as they rail against illegal immigrants.

Conservative websites, and even Fox News's Glenn Beck, are drawing parallels between Barack Obama and Adolf Hitler, claiming the president's political agenda amounts to a similar brand of murderous fascism.

It's a summer of seething discontent in the United States, with a deeply polarized populace going head-to-head across an ideological divide that has found its boiling point in an unlikely issue -- public health-care insurance, something Canada and many other democracies around the world take for granted.

"None of this really has anything to do with health care," Eric Boehlert, senior fellow at Media Matters for America, a progressive media watchdog, said Wednesday.

"If there was another stimulus package, we'd be seeing the same thing from the very same people. This is just what happens to be on the table right now, but these are the teabag protesters, and they're talking about tyranny, they're talking about taxes, they're talking about their dislike of Obama. Health care is just a proxy."

One Democratic politician recently went further.

"Some of the rhetoric that we're hearing is eerily reminiscent of the kind of things that drove Tim McVeigh to bomb the federal building in Oklahoma," Brian Baird, a congressman from Washington state, said last week after cancelling his own town halls due to what he described as the "lynch mob" mentality.

Baird was roundly attacked by the right for making the comment. But a new report by the Southern Poverty Law Center says militia groups with axes to grind against the government are regrouping throughout the U.S., fuelled in part by their distaste for Obama and his policies.

The civil rights organization says that among other theories, some of the militia members -- who are opposed to paying taxes and rail against any government involvement in their lives -- are convinced there's a secret Mexican plan to reclaim the Southwest.

Bart McEntire, a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, told the law centre's researchers that militia group growth is at a 10-year high.

"All it's lacking is a spark," McEntire said in the report, adding he feared it was just a matter of time before another domestic terrorist attack happened.

Boehlert points the finger at right-wing news organizations for fuelling much of the populist rage.

"This does all tie back to the militia movement of the early 1990s, when Bill Clinton was elected," he said.

But some believe much of the anger is truly about Obama's race, with his liberal politics serving as a convenient excuse for those who resent his presidency.

"What some are calling class anger is actually anger about a black man in the White House," Toni-Michelle Travis, a professor of African-American studies at George Mason University, said Wednesday.

-- The Associated Press