Michael Brian Vanderboegh (23 July 1952-10 August 2016) was an American gun rights activist, journalist, author, and blogger who founded the Three Percenters in 2008.
Biography[]
Michael Brian Vanderboegh was born in St. Joseph, Michigan in 1952. He was a member of Students for a Democratic Society and the Socialist Workers Party as a youth before abandoning leftism and politics in 1977 after reading about libertarianism and reading The Road to Serfdom. He settled in Alabama in 1985 and became a gun rights activist, author, citizen journalist, historian, and amateur archaeologist, cofounding the La Grange Living History Association, the "1st Alabama Union Cavalry Company C" reenactment unit, and becoming active in local historical preservation efforts. After the 1996 Oklahoma City bombing, he began spreading anti-government conspiracy theories. In 2008, he cofounded the Three Percenters to oppose governmental interference in local affairs, and he took part in the illegal smuggling of firearms across state lines. His obituary stated that he had been an enemy of "collectivism of all kinds", President Bill Clinton, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Anti-Defamation League, Rachel Maddow of MSNBC, the Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations, the ATF, and the FBI. He died of cancer in 2016.