<p>The Aryan Republican Army (ARA) was a militant group of Aryan Nations members and Christian Identity followers who committed 22 bank robberies in the Midwest during 1994 and 1995.  They were one of many cells of violent racists that adopted the "leaderless resistance" structure advocated by KKK leader Louis Beam.  They were, by some accounts, the most paramilitary and radical neo-Nazi group in the U.S. during their two-year robbing spree.  <br /><p>The ARA was named after the Irish Republican Army, and claims to have adopted its tactics and goals from the IRA.  It is clear, however, that the ARA was a far more extreme group than its Irish role model.  The ARA's goals were nothing less than the overthrow of the U.S. government, the extermination of Jews, and the establishment of an Aryan state in North America.  Members were required to read <i>The Turner Diaries</i>, a white supremacist fantasy novel that served as the inspiration for both Timothy McVeigh and The Order.  Their main base of operations was Elohim City, an Oklahoma haven for militant racists.   Timothy McVeigh called Elohim City two weeks before the bombing, and the possibility of a connection between McVeigh and the ARA is the subject of volumes of speculation by militia-watchers and conspiracy theorists.<br /><p>The ARA's primary activities were robbing banks and stockpiling weapons and ammunition.  During a typical bank robbery, an ARA member would enter with a pipe bomb and a pistol and threaten to kill both employees and customers of the bank.  ARA members seem to have had a sick sense of whimsy.  They often committed robberies in costume, dressed as Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, ATF or FBI agents, and Middle Eastern men.  Part of the proceeds from the robberies were used to fund "White Terror Productions," a racist record label that recorded a CD dedicated to Sam and Vicki Weaver (who were killed at Ruby Ridge) and Richard Wayne Snell (a racist militant who was executed on the day of the Oklahoma City bombing for his role in an earlier plot to bomb the Alfred P. Murrah building.