Extreme Prejudice

How the media misrepresent the militia movement

Mack Tanner from the July 1995 issue

(Page 3 of 7)

They were angry and strident, but these people did not sound like dangerous radicals threatening to destroy the system. I met computer programmers, owners of small businesses, professionals, writers and artists, salaried employees, and lots of retired military officers, all well established in America's middle class. "Our members are the people who have paid the price of big government but who don't get the benefits," says a leader in Michigan.

One can reasonably ask why these people don't stick to more traditional political action instead of spending so much money buying weapons and ammunition and so much time and effort preparing to fight. Part of the explanation lies in the distinction between local authorities and the federal government.

While the people joining militias hold what have long been minority views on the national level, many of them live where they are in a political majority. They help elect sheriffs, county commissioners, state legislators, and congressional representatives who share their political ideals. But their elected representatives are outvoted in state capitals, and even more often, in Washington, D.C. National leaders elected by voter majorities in faraway places impose on them laws and regulations that destroy jobs and property values while raising taxes. And, even worse, they pass laws the militia members believe unconstitutional--a category in which they include not only gun-control laws but most regulations and subsidies. This alienation is also the source of their antipathy for international organizations. People who object to politicians from New York City and Southern California telling them how to live in Montana or Michigan go ballistic at the suggestion of a new world order in which officials from China, India, and Canada will make the rules.

And when they hear politicians like Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) make rash remarks about confiscating all "assault weapons," they imagine the federal government, perhaps using foreign troops, launching an attack on them. "The day federal martial law is declared is the day the militia will deploy as an armed, fighting force ready to repel invaders, be they the federal government or foreign troops," says the Michigan-unit training officer. If that ever happens, he expects to be fighting side by side with state and local leaders he helped to elect.

Most of the time, however, the militia members aren't exactly preparing for war, though their meetings often have a survivalist air. The Michigan-unit training officer explains that his unit meets twice a week. They have an advertised meeting on Fridays where different speakers discuss and interpret events in the news. Around 100 people come out on a regular basis.

On Tuesdays, they hold an unadvertised meeting for active members and friends. "It's a core group of about 20 people," says the officer. At this meeting, members learn emergency medical treatment (taught by members of the local fire department), map reading, radio communication skills, family care, water purification, and food preparation using items that can be stored for long periods of time. Recently, he says, 40 members earned American Heart Association certification in CPR. They also go on occasional weekend training camps where they practice such field skills as camouflage, unit maneuvers, weapons safety, compass navigation, and target practice.

"We really are a bunch of Boy Scouts," he admitted when I suggested that's what it sounded like.

Like all good Boy Scouts, he insists that they obey the law. "We are not looking for confrontation. That's the last thing we want." He paused for a moment, then added, "We will fight if they push us."

It's that suggestion of armed defense that troubles critics. Sane, civilized Americans aren't supposed to mention the possibility that their government could turn violent--and certainly aren't supposed to suggest that they might take up arms against it in self-defense.

When Richard Cohen, writing about the militia movement in The Washington Post, states that "they are armed to stay armed, a tautology that apparently is the sum and substance of their ideology," he demonstrates his ignorance of the political and social culture of those who join the militias. People don't join a militia because they love guns, but because they believe that guns are necessary tools if they are to keep all the other freedoms they enjoy.

Cohen suggests that the Second Amendment "is an 18th century anachronism, incompatible with 20th and 21st century America." But militia members are looking at a 20th-century example in which a democracy devolved in less than a decade into a tyranny that first outlawed private ownership of firearms, then marched 6 million law-abiding people, beginning with its own citizens, to their death. Contrary to the portrait of them as raving anti-Semites, militia members are haunted by the same example that frightens their detractors at the Anti-Defamation League.

"My dad was on the lead tank that knocked down the gate at Dachau," says the Michigan-unit training officer. "I know what tyranny can do." (His father, he says, was an official war photographer with the 163rd Signal Corps in the 7th Army.) Militia members believe fervently in the reality of the Holocaust, they are determined that it never happen again--and they identify with the Jews.

This doesn't mean that they don't buy various conspiracy theories; many militia members do (though generally not ones with racist or anti-Semitic overtones). But the movement as a whole lacks a racist edge. In my many long conversations with activists around the country, I talked with one person--a lawyer in South Carolina--who made statements that smacked of racism. Members are often at pains to point out that their meetings include minorities. "We've got three blacks and one Muslim in our group, and we live in a part of Michigan where few minorities live," says the training officer.

James Johnson, the elected communications officer for the Unorganized Militia of Ohio, is a black utility worker who lives in inner-city Columbus. He sees federal government abuses in places like Ruby Ridge and Waco as a new phenomenon only to the extent that the targets were white. Like many militia members, he and his wife Helen are fundamentalist Christians who home school their children and see their militia work as an extension of their religious life. From their home, they put out a newsletter for militia members titled E Pluribus Unum.

Johnson describes himself "as one of a growing number of blacks who are beginning to understand that we must solve our problems on an individual and community level, not by relying on government." He believes that the right to keep and bear arms is especially important to minority groups. "I've had considerable success in recruiting other blacks into militia organizations," he says.