We label acts as terrorism and then we sort of adopt that same label to describe people who commit those acts. SAM JACKSON Because of how language works. And while it may be true that some of these actors, like those who are accused in Michigan in this plot to kidnap the governor, while it may be true that they think of themselves as trying to enforce the law, I think that vigilante maybe gives a little bit too much credence to that. Posse's taking it upon themselves to enforce the law. SAM JACKSON When I think of vigilante's, I think of Wild West Frontier Towns. I think it's reasonable for the media and for other observers to use labels that these types of actors create for themselves as long as the use of those labels comes with an explanation of what they mean and how they're being used.īOB GARFIELD On the other hand, there are other words that do convey so much more. SAM JACKSON I don't know if I would go that far. Did the press just get suckered into accepting this constitutionally memorialized term? These are people who have adopted the label of militia pointing back to those founding documents in order to legitimize their paramilitary activity.īOB GARFIELD Yeah, they called themselves militias. Isn't that these are unregulated paramilitaries, not only independent of government, but often hostile to government. Over the course of a number of decades, what was originally described as the militia through a series of incremental changes in law became the National Guard.īOB GARFIELD But what has sprung up over the past 30 or 40 years. And the federal government had the authority under certain conditions to temporarily take control of those militia units.īOB GARFIELD Kind of like what is now the Army National Guard. And then there would be this militia force, which was organized by the states. SAM JACKSON It seems that those who wrote the Constitution had this clear idea that there would be a standing military. University at Albany Professor Sam Jackson, who studies antigovernment extremism, agrees that whatever the Wolverine Watchmen are, it sure isn't the militias our founders envisioned in the Constitution. They're not militias, she tweeted this week, they're domestic terrorists, endangering and intimidating their fellow Americans. And that term has taken hold in the media, too. What these locked and loaded paramilitaries called themselves is militias. The language we use to put a name to the various activities and pathologies on the violent far-right. But first, let's consider yet a third kind of connection. In a moment, we will look at how these groups themselves connect to fellow travelers and just among themselves. This week, secret tapes surfaced of a neo-Nazi group calling itself The Base planning recruitment of current and former military, all with dog whistles, retweets and sometimes direct incitement from the president. Alleged teen shooter Kyle Rittenhouse unaffiliated but taking up arms with militiamen in Kenosha, Wisconsin. The neo-Nazi Atomwaffen Division now rebranded as the National Socialist Order linked to five murders. Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer Militia inciting violence in Portland. īOB GARFIELD That was Whitmer, and yes, there has been action. Hate groups heard the president's words not as a rebuke, but as a rallying cry, as a call to action. WHITMER Stand back and stand by, he told them. With 14 so-called militiamen charged within the past two weeks in a kidnap plot against Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, it has not been difficult to make certain critical connections. BROOKE GLADSTONE This is On the Media, I'm Brooke Gladstone.īOB GARFIELD And Bob Garfield.
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