Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

504 • THE ORDERORDEN particularly targeted members of the Christian DemocraticParty and politically moderate rural mayors. Guerrillas of the People’sLiberation Forces, which in 1980 formed an antigovernment leftistguerrilla front known as the Farabundo Martí Liberation Front(FMLN), undertook an insurgency in 1978 during which they beganto kill known ORDEN members.In November 1979, following the coup that overthrew PresidentCarlos Humberto Romero, ORDEN was officially disbanded; however,many members of El Salvador’s military and security forcescontinued to collaborate with members of the banned organization,and rightist death squad activities increased and grew more brutaluntil January 1981, when the defeat of the FMLN’s “final offensive”brought a subsidence in the cycles of violence. The violence was directednot simply at FMLN guerrillas but also at government workersseeking to implement agrarian land reforms.Although ORDEN itself officially ceased to exist, it supplied recruitsto the White Warriors’ Union founded in 1977 by a protégéof Medrano, Roberto D’Aubuisson, who later led the rightist RepublicanNational Alliance Party (ARENA), also suspected of sponsoringdeath squad activities. On 23 March 1985, General Medranowas killed by assassins belonging to the Clara Elizabeth RamírezFront, a renegade FMLN splinter group.THE ORDER. The Order was a nonstate U.S. white supremacistparamilitary group with the aim of overthrowing the U.S. government,which it called the Zionist Occupation Government (ZOG).The Order was one of several white racist groups affiliated withthe Aryan Nations led by Richard Butler, himself a minister of theIdentity Christianity movement. The group was headquartered inMetaline Falls, Washington, and numbered around 24 known members.The Order was also known among its members as the BruderSchweigen, while it identified its territorial domain around the MetalineFalls area as the “white American bastion.”The Order was founded in 1983 by Robert Mathews (1953–1984),a right-wing enthusiast and organizer, who patterned the group on afictional group of the same name found in the Turner Diaries, a novelabout an apocalyptic race war in a future America. The group sought tofinance the various right-wing organizations associated with the AryanNations through counterfeiting operations and robberies of banks and