ABSTRACT
The militia movement began to appear in the United States in early 1994, following the formation of the Militia of Montana and the Michigan Militia in February and April of that year. It grew extremely rapidly. In June 1995 the Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC) “Militia Task Force” reported the existence of “[a]t least 224 militias and their support groups” in “39 states,” and by 1996 this had increased to “441 armed militias in all 50 states.”1 It is important to stress, however, that what emerged was not a “movement” in the conventional sense. There were no national leaders directing militia affairs, for example, nor even a national organization to which all militia members belonged. To understand the militia movement we are better to see it as a diverse, decentralized, and, to a large extent, localized collection of groups and individuals with certain shared concerns.
