Word: militiaization
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...threats everywhere. There are reports of foreign soldiers hiding in salt mines under Detroit, some of the men say. Others speak of secret markings on highway signs meant to guide conquering armies. The men's voices subside as "General" Norman Olson, a Baptist minister, gun-shop owner and militia leader, enters the tent. He tells the men they are the shock troops of a movement that's sweeping America, that the "end times" are coming, and civil wars are two years away. "People think we are the ones who bring fear because we have guns," Olson says...
...dozens of states, loosely organized paramilitary groups composed primarily of white men are signing up new members, stockpiling weapons and preparing for the worst. The groups, all privately run, tend to classify themselves as "citizen militias." They are the armed, militarized edge of a broader group of disgruntled citizenry that go by the label of "patriots." The members of the larger patriot movement are usually family men and women who feel strangled by the economy, abandoned by the government and have a distrust for those in power that goes well beyond that of the typical angry voter. Patriots join...
Patriots claim to be motivated differently from other fringe groups that have sprung up in America and taken up arms. The Ku Klux Klan, for example -- born as a social club and quickly evolving into a militia, recruiting members through appeals to patriotism -- still thrives on hatred of blacks, Jews, Roman Catholics and foreigners. The moribund Posse Comitatus, a militant group based in the Farm Belt, wanted to wipe out the tax collectors. The patriots, by contrast, have a more generalized fear of Big Government, which they say is rapidly robbing individuals of their inalienable rights, chief among them...
...America as a sovereign nation. On a home video promoting patriot ideas, a man who gives his name only as Mark from Michigan says he fears that America will be subsumed into "one big, fuzzy, warm planet where nobody has any borders." Samuel Sherwood, head of the United States Militia Association in Blackfoot, Idaho, tells followers, absurdly, that the Clinton Administration is planning to import 100,000 Chinese policemen to take guns away from Americans...
Such wild allegations have proved to be an effective method of grabbing the attention of the disaffected and recruiting them into militias. Most experts agree that the groups are multiplying and their membership is expanding, though estimates vary. Chip Berlet, who studies militias for Political Research Associates, a Massachusetts think tank, says militia units exist in 30 states, including large organizations in Michigan, Montana and Ohio, and he suspects there may be units in 10 other states. Although there may be hundreds of thousands of people who identify with the patriot movement, Berlet estimates that only about 10,000 people...