Toward An Understanding Of The Militia Movement In The U.s.

The Militia Movement is a right-wing movement made up of paramilitary groupsin the United States. It is anti-government in nature and arose following twocontroversial standoffs in the1990s. Militias claim that militia groups are sanctioned bylaw but uncontrolled by the government, and contend that they are designed to oppose atyrannical government. The movement’s ideology has led some militias to commit actsof violence which culminates in the Oklahoma City bombing. In China, hardly anythinghas been written about the Militia Movement. Meanwhile, in the U.S. of those worksthat deal with the movement, some early ones turn to one-sided, labeling it as aright-wing extremist movement, and some recent academic studies, though moreobjective, more often than not focus on a few features of the movement. This thesis,therefore, attempts a tentative panorama of the movement. To achieve this purpose, thethesis, one the one hand, dwells on the trajectory of the movement, and on the otherhand, zooms in on the movement’s major manifestations.To begin with, the thesis explores the rise of the Militia Movement. It drawshistory as a weapon for analysis, showing that the Patriot insurgency since1960s,militarization of American police and gun control, and two deadly standoffscumulatively contributed to the rise of the movement. Chapter Two is devoted to anexamination of defining features of the Militia Movement in a bid to explain why themovement is viewed as a disturbing threat to public safety. The last major part of thepaper presents the trajectory of the movement before and after the Oklahoma Citybombing and its condition in the21stcentury. It elaborates on the movement’s declineand probes into the prospects of possible resurgence of the Militia Movement or itsvariants. Finally, it is the thesis’s belief that the movement and its variants are likely tobe a permanent fixture in American life. To reduce militia activity, the federalgovernment needs to strike a balance between individual rights and public security.