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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   2941 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 25, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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So, I'm old enough to remember, back in the Clinton years, the media scaremongering about "right-wing militia groups." Well, it's my understanding that this is entirely fake; right-wing militias don't actually exist, and every group that is purported to be one is actually either:

  • A small group of aging, out-of-shape men who get together a couple times a year to fire off some guns and drink some beer (more the latter than the former)
  • A Fed honeypot operation.

But, I've had some people, including a couple on this forum, assure me that I'm wrong and that "real" right-wing militias actually exist.

So, assuming they're correct, how does one find one of these groups?

Edit: so I note that /u/hydroacetylene was the only one who actually tried to answer the question (even if the example he gives is a Fed honeypot) rather than handwave at groups past, or opine about what "real" means in this context — and that answer was: you don't find them, they find you.

Define “real”. I mean a militia group did manage to blow up a federal building in the late 1990s.

But I think when asking whether a social movement is “real” I tend to think in terms of organizational effectiveness. Can they actually do any effective disruptive force type things? Can they project actual force beyond their home territory? Hell, can they effectively defend their home territory? And in that sense, while these groups exist and are armed, the most that these grouhave done in the last 10 years is marching around in business casual clothes and shouting into bullhorns. I’d suggest with sufficient time and pressure these militias could become more effective. It’s rather anecdotal, but the online portion of these groups on YouTube seem to be concerned with professionalizing the movement, incorporating the types of training that the actual military uses and trying to purge the ranks of beer drinking larpers. Whether this is actually happening, I don’t know because I’m not in a militia. But this is now at least being talked about.

Define “real”.

I mean, actually a militia, and actually a group. As you note, they don't seem to be very fitting of the former, fiven the emphasis you note on trying to fix it, and I'd argue McVeigh and his accomplices failed to meet the latter.

But none of this actually answers the question of how one finds these groups. You mention the "online portion of these groups on YouTube" — any examples? (Though, if they're on YouTube, the odds of being riddled with Feds is pretty much near 1.)

I mean I’m not interested in them except as I’m interested in knowing what they’re doing and they occasionally pop up in my feed. I’m not sure how one finds these groups, but they exist. But the point remains — marching about on the streets of a city in golf shirts and khaki pants is not a very useful metric for effectiveness. LARPing in the woods with camo and paint guns isn’t a good measure either. Both groups undoubtedly call themselves militias, but it’s completely unclear that they meet standards of effectiveness that would make them operationally effective in doing anything other than varying forms of acting tough and scaring liberals who are generally frightened of pseudo-military groups prancing about in uniforms with guns.

Again, keep in mind that for all the posturing, the marching, the calls for civil war or unrest, and claims that the government was stolen, these groups haven’t really done anything. And up until they decided that they should start making their members ruck in the rain or cold to purge themselves of unserious people, it’s was perfectly reasonable to assume they have no intention of a serious armed conflict. They’re only now doing this, and the idea that they’re all going to seriously purge their ranks this way seems odd, as they haven’t so far, and it seems that it hadn’t organically occurred to them that war isn’t like LARPing in the woods.

I’m not super worried.

People conflate 'the whole thing from conception is a fed honeypot' with 'it's a big group and a few of the members are informants'. The two are very different! In most cases the existence of the group is organic and the members and leadership really believe in it, but since they flirt with political violence law enforcement is interested in watching them.

In most cases the existence of the group is organic and the members and leadership really believe in it

That's not an answer to how one finds such a group, then.

Check out The Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord (CSA). They were quite real and, by all accounts, a genuine threat.

A rhyming name? Shit, I'm in.

The Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord (CSA) was a far-right survivalist anti-government militia which advocated Christian Identity and was active in the United States during the 1970s and early 1980s. Christian Identity is an interpretation of Christianity which advocates the belief that only Celtic and Germanic peoples, such as the Anglo-Saxon, Nordic nations, or people of the Aryan race and people of kindred blood, are the descendants of the ancient Israelites and are therefore God's "chosen people".

What the fuck is it with random groups claiming to be descendents of the Hebrews with no evidence beyond neener-neener-neener?

"Scratch-made" is an excellent marketing term if you're looking for restaurant patrons, not so much if you're looking for new religious followers. Social proof is a big psychological deal, and nobody wants to leave their millions-strong religion to follow something some guy pulled out of nowhere. But if you reinterpret an existing religion then you've got a chance. People get to believe they still share the old truths of those millions of people in the old religion, and they've got new truths on top of that too!

The trouble is that those "old truths" are all still written down somewhere, and the farther your "new truths" diverge from them, the trickier everything gets to reconcile. "The first books of our religion are about how God was super focused on one coalition of tribes in the Middle East" and "The modern factor differentiating our religion is that we're super special for being from a different racial cluster centered thousands of miles away" are an especially tough combo unless you can strike out "different" ... but in any case "God handled a tiny fraction of the Iron Age personally and was hands-off with the rest" is the sort of plot hook that really calls out to be picked up, and "we're not part of 'the rest' is a satisfying-feeling resolution. Human psychology is so self-centered that you can get away with "God is super invested in our tiny group" to people for whom "God is super invested in someone else's tiny group" would be literally unbelievable.

The oath keepers certainly exist, and my impression is that they're invitation only. Most right wing militias are probably like that.

Seems a bit like a fed Honeypot category? Thought their head guy was an informant? I may just be misremembering.

The oath keepers have definitely engaged in non-fed sanctioned activities and attempted basic opsec from the feds on those activities(I think their J6 group had emailed pictures of cursive to each other)- they’ve also definitely had members turned states witness upon arrest.

Right wing militias as popularly conceived/portrayed in the media are mostly fictition.

This does not mean that there are no "right wing militias".

This does not mean that there are no "right wing militias".

So, again, how do you find one, then?

The same way you find a speak-easy, by knowing who to ask.

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