The Secret Rulers of the World - The Legend of Ruby Ridge
49:33 - 1 year ago
The Legend of Ruby Ridge
S1E1 Aired date: Sun, Apr 29, 2001
Jon Ronson meets with Randy Weaver and daughter Rachel, two surviving members of the Weaver family. The film shows previously unseen archive footage to describe the life of a family who claim to have moved to a cabin in Ruby Ridge, Idaho to live peacefully, and escape what they saw as the tyrannical elite of international bankers bent on enslaving the world. Ronson also explains how the Weaver family's conspiracy theories became a shocking tragedy when the American Government killed two of the family members, their dog, and shot and wounded Kevin Harris, whom the Weaver family considered their son. Ronson explores the unsympathetic media response to the killings and how this incident might have influenced the siege at Waco, the Oklahoma City bombing and the growth of the America militia movement.
Ruby Ridge was the site of a violent confrontation and siege in northern Idaho in 1992. It involved Randy Weaver, his family, Weaver's friend Kevin Harris, and agents of the United States Marshals Service and Federal Bureau of Investigation. Randy Weaver, a former Iowa factory worker and U.S. Army Green Beret, moved his family to northern Idaho during the 1980s in order to "home-school his children and escape what he and his wife Vicki saw as a corrupted world." Vicki, the religious leader of the family, believed that the apocalypse was imminent and had dreams of her family surviving the apocalypse in a remote mountainous area. They bought twenty acres of land on Ruby Ridge in 1983 and began building a cabin. The Weaver property was located in northern Idaho in Boundary County, on a hillside on Ruby Creek opposite Caribou Ridge near Naples.
In 1984, Randy Weaver and neighbor Terry Kinnison had a dispute over a $3,000 land deal. (Kinnison subsequently lost the lawsuit and was ordered to pay Weaver an additional $2,100 in court costs and damages.) Kinnison wrote letters to the FBI, Secret Service, and county sheriff alleging Weaver had threatened to kill the Pope, the President, and the governor of Idaho. In January 1985, the FBI and the Secret Service started an investigation. In February, Randy and Vicki Weaver met with two FBI agents, two Secret Service agents, and the Boundary County sheriff and his chief investigator and were interviewed for hours. While the Secret Service was told that Weaver was a member of the Aryan Nations and that he had a large weapons cache at his residence, Weaver denied the allegations and no charges were filed.
The investigation noted Weaver associated with Frank Kumnick who was known to associate with members of the Aryan Nations. Weaver told the investigators that neither he nor Kumnick were members of Aryan Nations, and described Kumnick as "associated with the Covenant, Sword and Arm of the Lord." On February 28, 1985 Randy and Vicki Weaver filed an affidavit with the county courthouse alleging that their personal enemies were plotting to provoke the FBI into attacking and killing the Weaver family. On May 6, 1985 Randy and Vicki Weaver sent a letter to President Ronald Reagan claiming that Weaver's enemies may have sent the President a threatening letter under a forged signature. No evidence of a threatening letter has surfaced; however, the 1985 letter of apology was cited by the prosecutor in 1992 as Overt Act 7 of the Weaver family conspiracy against the federal government.
Plot: Jon Ronson follows David Icke as he promotes his theory that "the elite are genetically descended from a race of 12 foot, blood drinking, shape shifting lizards". During the film Icke is accused in Canada of antisemitism. Ronson questions whether Icke literally means lizards, as he steadfastly maintains, or whether the reptilians are a coded reference to Jews, which Icke denies adamantly. At the end of the documentary, it is shown that one of the members of the Anarchist organization who is used as a main presenter of the idea that David Icke is an anti-Semite finally reads the book written by David and admits himself that David Icke obviously means Reptiles and can't justly be claimed as an anti-Semite.
>
