DALLAS — Flames were still shooting from the building when the suicide pilot who crashed his plane into the IRS office in Austin was being hailed in some corners as a hero who struck a courageous blow against the tyranny of the U.S. tax code.
While most Americans surely see Joseph Stack as an angry, misguided man whose final act was repugnant, his suicide mission has clearly tapped a vein of rage among anti-tax, anti-government extremists.
The way they see it, “he did the ultimate flipping of the bird to the man,” said JJ MacNab, a Maryland-based insurance analyst who is writing a book about tax protesters. “He stuck it to the man, and they love that.”
It is not surprising Stack would be portrayed as a hero on fringe websites such as , a forum for white supremacists. But admirers also are expressing their appreciation on mainstream sites such as Facebook, where a fan page supporting some of the things he said in his six-page manifesto had more than 2,000 members Monday.
Stack, 53, left behind a rambling, 3,000-word screed in which he ranted about his financial reverses, his difficulty finding work in Austin and his hatred of big business. Mostly, though, he focused on his clashes with the IRS, including one after he failed to file a tax return because he said he had no income. Stack traced his problems to a 1986 change in the tax code affecting software contractors like him.
In Texas, Republican gubernatorial candidate Debra Medina told a San Antonio radio station last week she did not sympathize with Stack but that his act reflected “the hopelessness many in our society feel.”
“There is a sense in all of our country that we are not on the right path,” she said.
Asked if she considered her father a hero, Stack’s adult daughter, Samantha Dawn Bell, said during a telephone interview broadcast Monday on ABC’s “Good Morning America”: “Yes. Because now maybe people will listen.” But she stressed that his actions were “inappropriate.”
But later, in an interview with The Associated Press in Norway, where she lives, she said she does not consider her father a hero. She said she understands her father’s animosity toward a “faulty” and “unbalanced” American tax system. But she said he should have found “a completely different way” to address it.
“Write letters — that’s what he should have done, rather than actually doing what he did,” she said.
The family of Vernon Hunter — the longtime IRS employee, Vietnam veteran and father of six who was killed in the attack — rejected any suggestion Stack was a hero. “People say (Stack) is a patriot. What’s he a patriot for? He hasn’t served the country,” said Hunter’s son, Ken.
