The Militias Are Part of the Plan
The violence is going to get worse, and no one in the country’s ruling party has any desire to stop it.
The vast majority of young men, at some point, will entertain violent fantasies about what they would do in a fight. In these fantasies, the cause is always just: you are the good guy with the gun, and the people you are shooting have forfeited their right to due process or existence by acts of aggression and evil.
Encouraging and planting these fantasies is how the military recruits its soldiers, how the police hire officers, how gun companies sell their wares. Our current society is almost uniquely designed to enable them, as political rhetoric and mass media consistently frame structural injustices as zero-sum battles where the other side is trying to take what is yours. In other words, if you’re looking for a fight, it’s easier than ever to find one.
Over the past two decades, the right has weaponized these violent fantasies and made them the core of its entire platform: the mid-aughts devotion to “the troops,” the post-Sandy Hook devotion to hardline second Amendment gun politics, the Trump era of violent xenophobia in immigration policy. But since, generally speaking, there are some token barriers to entry for being a cop or a soldier, the right has also created a third option: a militia.
The requirements for joining a militia are very simple: a weapon and the desire to use it. Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old who allegedly shot three people and killed two in Kenosha, Wisconsin on Tuesday night, had both. Rittenhouse described himself as a militia member and appears to have been linked to a group called the Kenosha Guard, which showed up uninvited to protests on Tuesday with the stated goal of defending property from protesters. They were received warmly by the police, and then the shooting began.
Throughout Donald Trump’s first term as president, liberals have repeatedly called on his administration and other GOP leaders to denounce militia activity and right-wing violence at protests. Republicans have overwhelmingly failed to do so, even in extreme cases like the outright white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, where Trump said there were “good people” on both sides. And still, the notion persists that these groups can be brought to bear with the right sage guidance from their chosen political wing. In a piece titled “The Violence Could Get Much Worse” for the Atlantic on Thursday, Elaine Godfrey writes:
Yet the partisan nature of these groups also means that Republican leaders can help put a stop to their vigilantism. Political violence tends to increase during election years, German said, and that’s especially true in periods when rhetoric is heated and political polarization is at record levels. A consistent message from Trump and other elected officials at both the local and national levels could help calm the turmoil.
Making this point in 2020 is absurd. Militia violence is part of the plan. The GOP does not want to put a stop to it. They want to encourage it at every turn. In many cases, the militia ideologies are supported and shared by the police, as HuffPost reported earlier today. The right wing knows this, even if liberals have convinced themselves that our institutions can still save us.
In Kenosha, the particulars of Rittenhouse’s alleged murders have made him a perfect candidate for right-wing hero-worship. According to a New York Times visual investigation, another party fired a gunshot in Rittenhouse’s vicinity before he shot his first victim, an unarmed man who was pursuing him. After Rittenhouse shot the first man, he was again pursued down the street by multiple protesters, one of whom, a medic, was also armed with a handgun. Rittenhouse was struck, knocked to the ground, and then began shooting.
There are multiple ways to see this: one, that an armed man menaced protesters until he provoked a response, panicked, shot someone, and then committed both murder and attempted murder while fleeing from citizens attempting to disarm and detain him. But the armed right already sees nothing but self-defense, an almost perfect example of the violent, righteous fantasy that so many young men with guns play out in their minds every day.
What many eventually realize, either through direct experience or the gradual tempering of age, is that these ideal situations do not exist. Violence is chaotic, messy, destructive, and confusing; no one who witnesses or takes part in it walks away unscathed. Wisconsin is an open carry state; while the majority of firepower was in the hands of the right, some protesters were armed as well. This puts the rest of us in a bind: the natural way to resist armed violence is to meet it in kind, but the societal bias toward right-wing armed groups means that any escalation only benefits their goals.
More guns at protests will inevitably mean more gun victims at protests. Until now, those victims have almost entirely been protesters — HuffPost reports that six protesters have been struck by vigilante bullets this summer, and three have died — but eventually, the right will have martyrs to add to its heroes. I don’t have an answer to this, only a warning: that Godfrey’s headline is correct, even if her solution is as much of a fantasy as the one that brought Rittenhouse to Kenosha. The violence is going to get worse, and no one in the country’s ruling party has any desire to stop it.
Photo: Facebook
We win in the long run by creating a society that doesn't value, accommodate, and incentivize Fascist power-hoarding and -wielding. A society that values and prioritizes Community wellness and success over Individual gain and triumph. The protests and the calls for Defunding and Abolishing the violence-driven carceral police state, and the conversations these are stimulating, are a real positive step in working toward that. The desire and the Will is absolutely there in the populace, but it is being purposefully, systematically derailed and hampered by the people that presently hold great power (most principally FINANCIAL power) over the masses. No species that is at the point of being relegated by Evolution simply goes away without putting up a frenzied fight.
In the immediacy, the problem, yes, is that we have in our populace a sizable element of violent, zealous extremists with whom there is no path for discussion or diplomacy, and deescalation is an impossible task. They WANT a fight to the death - they LUST for it. And to meet this challenge, there has to be some contingent of people that are willing to step forward and take that fight that cannot be avoided or escaped head-on. That doesn't, though, require EVERYONE to take up a firearm or weapon of some sort, and in fact, to try to force that position on people who are completely adverse to it is COUNTER-productive - you don't MAKE a person a fighter by just putting a weapon in their hand and saying "get in there" when they have no Will for it.
I am a person willing, practiced, and prepared to be a fighter - a shield between those who are not and these people that want to see their blood fill the streets. What people like me need is for everyone else to identify what THEIR skill and lane is, and work in THAT. The work of a Revolution is not JUST fighting, it requires an entire SUPPLY NETWORK. There needs to be medical helpers, there needs to be people that provide food and water, there needs to be people that can provide shelter to the needy, there needs to be people that can provide financial support, there needs to be people that know how to engage against the court system, there needs to be people that handle organizing, logistics, etc etc - there are SO many different angles that this problem MUST be approached from, not just ONE! But what is MOST important is that at least EVERY PERSON be willing to courageously SPEAK OUT the weariness we have all suffered under this broken system, and declare a desire to take a new, completely different approach to how we view and respond to societal ills, in ways that embrace Dignity, Empathy, Understanding, Compassion, Appreciation, Encouragement, Love. And ultimately, to withdraw their acceptance and consent for the continuance of this broken, predatory system of malice and wickedness.
Leaning into the notion of a mass firefight is playing directly into the state of affairs THEY want to fight on. WE have to create a state of affairs that their desired position is untenable, unviable, unachievable. They can't just start openly gunning people down in the streets or their homes and be able to try to lay claim to a mantle of legitimacy. Yes, I understand that the Police have been doing PRECISELY this, but that has only been possible because of State Power being willing to both fund and turn a blind eye to it as it upholds their personal positions, and we are seeing the veneer of duplicity and complicity begin to fade. We have found an opportunity to call the bluff for what it has always been and there be no more dark corners for them to hide in. A mandate to govern can only be derived from the consent of the people living under it; that consent is finally being withdrawn in masses, and accountability and change not just being asked for, but DEMANDED. "Government OF the people, BY the people, FOR the people." WE are the people that make this country what it is and what it can be - not the leach oppressors who take up and exploit the work we do to live lives the rest of us could only ever dream of.
As I said in the beginning, we are not going to get out of this until EACH person decides to start finding ways to elevate and sow into the success and well-being of the Whole more than our own tiny lives. There is SOME way in which YOU CAN get involved! THAT is the work - the DAILY work - of being part of a collective.
Nobody is helpless, and in fact, each and every person is exceedingly important and desperately needed right now.
One huge part of the gunner fantasy you mention is GEAR GEAR GEAR. The kid's wearing a 5.11 tactical shirt in the photo. His AR-15 is pretty basic, but obviously, he's been brought up in the community. So much of our gun culture points back to the military-industrial complex figuring out that it could make a pretty penny by selling tacticool garbage to individuals. Just take a look at right-wing Instagram and you'll see it: everybody wants to look like a spec ops action hero. It was only a matter of time before their warped internal psychosis started bleeding out into the real world.