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When protests break out in the United States, armed groups often emerge, citing the long history of civilian militias. These once played a central role in the establishment of a state, but later also in the application of slavery.
Militiamen participate in a demonstration in Richmond, Virginia, on January 20, 2020.
Everything went well in Denver. After a police officer thanked the newcomers for their support, the police chief made it clear that no outside help was needed to maintain order. And so members of a self-proclaimed militia returned home. The growing presence of such groups, almost exclusively male, predominantly white and practically always admirers of President Trump, as alleged supporters of law enforcement officers during the demonstrations has raised concern in the United States. The most tragic event so far in this context was the deaths of two protesters in Kenosha. The course of events is still unclear, but the 17-year-old shooter is said to have described himself as a member of the military.
Ready to fight immediately in case of crisis
The public image of these people as gun fanatics and racists may be true in some, perhaps numerous cases. However, members of the military often see themselves as patriots who follow the example of their predecessors and are prepared for their country in the event of a crisis. In fact, the term militia has a long tradition in the United States, often noble from a point of view that has been passed down today for many years. What cannot be overlooked, however, is the trend for militias to have made headlines in the recent past as lawbreakers rather than law enforcement.
From the point of view of today’s military members, their raison d’être is enshrined in the Second Amendment to the Constitution, which is sacred to all American gun owners. The Second Amendment stipulates that the right of citizens to bear arms must not be affected, and this right is linked to the existence of well regulated militia. In the year of ratification, 1791, not only was the army small; a standing army was seen as a threat to democracy. And today two arguments of the constitutional fathers find the undivided approval of the militiamen: that the rights of the member states must be guaranteed against the central authority and precautions must be taken against the tyranny of the government.
It can be argued that the United States would not exist as it is without a militia system. English settlers in the coastal region of North America in the 17th and 18th centuries, like their French neighbors in the north and the Spanish in the south, established vigilante groups with all men who could use weapons, from young people to old people. , in order to turn the sprawling settlements against the natives. to protect. From today’s perspective, at least officially, this is no longer considered a glory, as such militias played an essential role in the annihilation and displacement of indigenous peoples.
The militia system established by the British between Boston and Savannah eventually fought back against the London government. After years of latent differences between the homeland and the 13 colonies in North America, they were members of the militia who, on the morning of April 19, 1775 near Lexington and Concord, not far from Boston, opposed the troops. British and the proverbial. Shots heard around the world fired. It was the beginning of the American War of Independence (until 1783). The memorial in Lexington for one of them Minuteman, a citizen who is ready to fight in a matter of minutes is probably an icon and inspiration to all members of today’s military.
Monument to one Minuteman, a citizen ready to fight in minutes, in Lexington, Massachusetts.
Of all people, the victorious general in this war and the first president of the United States, George Washington, was concerned about armed citizens who took their rights into their own hands. In western Pennsylvania, violence erupted in the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794 when protesting a popular drink tax. The protesting farmers formed a militia of around 500 men who, among other things, took action against the property that looked like a stronghold of the local tax official. Since the army was only rudimentary, President Washington had no choice but to mobilize militias from various member states and send around 13,000 of these civilian soldiers against the rebels. The uprising quickly collapsed.
In the southern United States, militias took on a very special task: hunting runaway slaves. It wasn’t just the so-called slave patrols, that patrolled larger cities and rural roads. Units could also be mobilized quickly if slaves had escaped from a plantation. It was not uncommon for these gunmen to hunt down fugitives even in what appeared to be the “safe” territory of the slave-free northern states; the legal situation was on the part of the hunters. Of course, one could run into another hostile militia: the one made up of abolitionists, the opponents of slavery. After the end of the Civil War in 1865 and the abolition of slavery, the concept of self-defense groups in the South took on a new guise, one of the most daunting and shameful in American history. The hooded Ku Klux Klan tried to save the ideas and racist brutality of the defunct confederation in a new era.
Violations of the law up to terrorism
With the rise of the United States to a world power, there was less and less room in the state power structure for a militia made up of military amateurs, regardless of goodwill and patriotism. Since the National Defense Act of 1916, the place provided by the legislature to volunteer citizens, able to arm themselves and who can quickly mobilize, has been the National Guard, which is organized at the level of the member states and is subordinate to the respective governor. in normal times. Since then, the term militia has become increasingly private, often ideologically influenced.
In the recent past, these militias have attracted attention primarily through legally controversial, sometimes unconstitutional, activities or through violations of the law, including terrorism. The worst incident was the Oklahoma City bombing in April 1995, which killed at least 168 people. The two perpetrators declared themselves sympathetic to the militia movement and stated that they saw a threat to a particularly valued part of the constitution in the administration of President Bill Clinton: the Second Amendment. They had put aside their last scruples due to action by federal authorities against another variant of the militia, the armed fanatics of the Rama Davidiana sect in Waco two years earlier, which ended in a fiasco with 86 dead.
Observers, who cannot avoid the impression that militias under Democratic presidents are particularly aggressive, should see confirmation in the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon in January 2016. The perpetrators, some as right-wing extremists and some, like militiamen, wanted to demonstrate for the conversion of federally owned land into farmland. The nearly six-week siege by police units ended without bloodshed. The president at that time was Barack Obama.
The highest office of state is playing an important role in the thinking of many Americans these weeks, including those who are organized into militias. The left is drawing a possibly exaggerated and unrealistic view of horror that after a narrow electoral defeat, President Trump could try to continue to rule with the support of armed private armies. The more than three hundred year history of the militias in the United States would be expanded to include its most ignominious chapter.
