The Millitias
by Husayn Al Kurdy
A DOMESTIC POLITICAL MOVEMENT has joined the longtime preferred targets
from the Islamic and Arab worlds on the U.S. government list of enemies
in the days since the Oklahoma City bombing. The "Militia" movement
is one which has arisen in recent years to contest what it sees as the growth
of government power within the domestic jurisdiction of the United States
itself. Often referred to in shorthand as simply "The Militias,"
this movement consists of mostly middleclass, predominantly but not exclusively
white Americans who are more than disgruntled with what is correctly perceived
as arbitrary and even tyrannical misrule by their own government.
Spokespersons for the "Militias," who are also called "Patriots"
in some locales, cite the attack at Waco, in which government forces besieged
and assaulted the Branch Davidian religious group in Texas with over a hundred
people perishing in 1993, along with a long list of other assaults and killings,
including the siege and assault of Randy Weaver's family in Idaho, which
resulted in the killing of his wife and child, and the killing of millionaire
rancher Donald Scott in Malibu, California, in an apparent bid to seize
his property, as evidence of a government gone wild with unregulated power.
These people are pretty much actual conservative Americans who bridle at
government oppressions and control and who see themselves as the inheritors
of the American revolutionary war slogan
"Don't Tread on Me."
The Militia supporters see and fear an erosion of their rights, including
their right to keep and bear arms. Their main goal, as they see it, is the
preservation of the U.S. Constitution, which they refer to as the single
mandate of their movement. Widely portrayed as having links with white supremacist
organizations or "Nazi" type groups, many of them vigorously deny
such allegations and point to a growing number of Black participants in
the movement, including some in leadership roles. This is a loosely-federated
movement with a presence in all 50 states, in urban as well as rural areas.
Many of these folks are concerned that their children or relatives may be
forced to fight and die in some UN "peace keeping" adventure whose
goals are as remote from their interests and the actual interests of the
overwhelming majority of the American people as some of the prospective
terrains in which these operations are sure to be carried out (Middle Eastern
Asia, Africa, and Latin America). They hold the populist notion that the
people armed are not the threat that the government turns out to be to the
general welfare and even safety of the population as a whole.
"Militia" is most simply defined as any army or armed force composed
of citizens rather than professional soldiers. All armed insurgent and guerrilla
groups are forms of militia. Castro's band in the Sierra Maestra was prototypical
in this regard. Franz Fanon, the apostle of "3rd World" liberation,
saw the formation of the militia (the people armed) as being the guarantor
of people's liberation and the check to the rise of arbitrary power internally
as well as the ever-present threats emanating from what is now called the
"world community."
The rebels and "revolutionaries" now challenging the major power
internally turn out to be from the Right, insofar as the Left/Right spectrum
has any real meaning anymore. Many of those pushing for "tough"
state-sponsored measures (those at the business end of some of these initiatives
could call them "terrorist" with full justification) now include
voices from what calls itself the "Progressive Community," the
remnants of what used to be called "The Left." By cheering government
repression against their opponents, as many are now doing, they expose their
political opportunism, just as many in other political camps did on previous
occasions. The Pastor Niemoller scenario as evoked during the Hitler period
has been playing itself out. This time around, the story begins "First
they came for Randy Weaver's family and the Branch Davidians . . . ."
"Militias" historically have formed under a wide variety of circumstances.
The Deacons and the Black Panthers were formed in Black communities in the
United States largely to defend themselves from external armed forces such
as police who were (and are) seen as an occupying force hostile to the welfare
and interests of community residents.
Of course, urban gangs are a sort of "militia." The government
often tries to nullify, co-opt or destroy armed groups. Richard Nixon invited
the remnants of the legendary "Blackstone Rangers" in his drive
to destroy the Black Panther Party and other forces in the burgeoning Black
liberation movement. Much of the hullabaloo about "gangs" reflects
a concern to control and direct the violence, not allowing any armed group
to get "out of hand" anywhere, certainly not to the point of challenging
government legitimacy or jurisdiction.
The U.S. government subsidized a "militia" to assist it in suppressing
the American Indian struggle for self-determination in South Dakota. The
G.O.O.N.-"Guardians Of Oglala Nation"-led by Dick Wilson, was
the "militia" organized and sponsored by the state to wipe out
the "militia" of the AIM (American Indian Movement). Scores of
AIM supporters were butchered in the bloodbath, during the course of which
the movement was destroyed. The Black Panthers, the Brown Berets (Mexican-Chicano)
and the Young Lords (Puerto Rican) were among the many groups similarly
destroyed in the FBI COINTELPRO operations of the sixties and seventies.
Ron Karenga's "US" organization was manipulated by the government
against the Panthers. Political movements, whether or not they have some
form of "militia," are often crushed MILITARILY when they present
a POLITICAL threat to the status quo.
The Chinese "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution" involved the
engagement of numerous armed student groups. There were "Red sorts,
Black sorts, and Gray sorts," with the "great Helmsman" Chairman
Mao directing the "sorting out" process. Today's fledgling street
"gangster" would probably adapt quickly to the codes, handshakes,
hand signs and rituals which were used to "sort out" their affiliations.
As Fulang Lo, a vigorous participant in the Cultural Revolution, recounts
in her book Morning Breeze, there was even a "loyalty dance,"
which it was advisable to know how to perform. She tells us that "It
was not difficult-just stretching your hands toward the sky and then drawing
them back to your stomach to symbolize the idea that Chairman Mao was the
sun rising from the heart to the sky." A lot of "mad doggin'"
and plenty of killing went on during the Cultural Revolution. The Chinese
people suffered much then, as they have subsequently, as their government
"sorted" itself out.
The U.S. is a country in which up to a trillion dollars has been essentially
looted by private interests in the course of the Savings and Loan bankruptcies
and related events. A silenced majority with access to state-controlled
information and education is the preferred scenario for policy makers. The
attitude towards the American people on the part of ruling elites has reflected
a "mushroom-growing" policy of keeping them in the dark and covering
them with plenty of fertilizer. The big "militias" that we need
to worry about in the near and distant future are those of the government
and the corporate and financial interests it serves. On the Left, MIT Professor
Noam Chomsky identifies the current American system and the actual dictatorship
which has accompanied the rise of corporations as "a manifestation
of the same phenomena that led to fascism and bolshevism, out of the same
totalitarian soil. The others have declined or been partially destroyed.
This one is stronger than ever."
With an avalanche of repressive legislation in Congress continuing the erosion
of civil rights, it would be wise, for once, to identify just where the
real threat is located. "Left" and "Right" people would
do well to condemn government attacks against their respective opponents.
Unfortunately, much of the Left is in the thick of stirring up the government-sponsored
hysteria against the "militias." Not hanging together, we get
hanged separately. Although, like many in what is left of the "Left"
in the USA, Chomsky is not concerned with the threat of government grabbing
and regulating guns, he did sound a note of optimism for change. He identified
the present time as "an organizer's paradise," in which large
numbers of people are looking for positive answers to a broad range of social
problems, with a worsening economic situation spurring on a possible period
of intense political ferment. He went on to say that "There's no reason
for [this system] to exist. There's no limit to the changes that can be
made if people actually undertook the hard work of organizing instead of
sort of staring out in misery at what is happening." America can change
radically, in the best interests of the overwhelming majority of people
both here and around the world, of "Left," "Right,"
and all "Sorts." That is "the idea whose time has come,"
which no government, army or "militia" can defeat.
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