2004/09/01 by Chip Berlet · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #American Constitutional Law and Politics
paper · doi:10.1177/009430610403300506
openalex publication_date 2004/09/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2025/11/06
mered starting in the early 1990s, burst into public awareness after the 1995 Oklahoma City (OKC) bombing, and now has largely seen its members seep back into the various conservative, libertarian, xenophobic, and racist movements from which it mobilized recruits. The many autonomous militia groups emerged as an armed wing of the broader patriot movement: an umbrella term to describe a range of right-wing organizations and political tendencies that share a distrust of big government, a fear of impending tyranny, and a suspicion that secret conspiracies manipulate political and economic life in the United States. All of the books reviewed contain pieces of a puzzle that when assembled reveal a great deal about the militia movement; and if the authors sometimes disagree, the quality of the work moves our understanding forward nonetheless.