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Notes -
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.
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.
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