Jay wrote:
>
>If this is suggestive of a cultural-historical-developmental
>view of socialization into institutions and alienated participation
>in activity, it might also be a piece of the puzzle Peter
>Smagorinsky posed about militias. While I have no doubt that
>many members are the dupes of people entraining their labor
>into smaller-scale institutions (militia groups), and some of
>the leaders are just driven power the need for more power (i.e.
>by fear and insecurity), and the followers by a different
>need for security (a leader to take responsibility for me),
>still I suspect there is a core of truth to their ideology.
>They oppose the alienated political forms of our largest-scale
>institutions (the US government), which they see as tyranical
>because it cannot operate on a human scale, cannot engage with
>us as real people, human to human, cannot be trusted therefore.
I must disagree on this issue with Jay. I think that the militia groups'
hatred of government does not have anything to do with their opposition to
alienated political forms, and that alienation as an effect of social
relations and processes is at the stake in the ideology of these groups. The
core of their ideology was and is pure racism, hatred and intolerance of
other ideologies and people.
For instance, in the same issue "False Patriots" which Peter quoted, one
finds, among other things the following:
>>>
But no one on the extremist right hates the federal government with the
fervor of those who follow the "Israel Message" of Christian Identity - the
belief that white people are true Israelites, and that the blacks are
subhuman and Jews are "the children of Satan".
Identity is a post-millennial religion, meaning that in order for the Second
Coming to occur, God's law on Earth must first be established through a
great battle, Armageddon. It declares Amreica to be the New Jerusalem and
holds that the Constitution was given to the White Christian Founding
Fathers by God. Disciples believe that only the Articles of Confederation,
the original Constitution and the first ten amendments (The Bill of Rights)
are valid God-given law.
For Identity followers, only white Christian men are "true sovereign
citizens" of the Republic. Other Americans are not true citizens, but
"Fourteenth Amendment citizens," the creation of an illegitimate government.
The radical religious right also uses ideology to justify violence. Rev.
W.N. Otwell, a radical fundamentalist minister with ties to Identity, runs a
well-armed compund in East Texas. At a recent Identity gathering, Otwell
spoke of the Oklahoma City bombing and its Biblical context: "You go look in
the Old Testament. God didn't mind killing a bunch of women and kids. God
talks about slaughter. Don't leave one suckling. Don't leave no babies.
Don't leave nothing. Kill them. Destroy them."
<<<
I am sorry for the lenght of the quotation. However, although this may sound
as the most extreme position, this kind of ideology is widespread among the
Patriots, and is their justification for arming themselves. Not because
government represents an alienating and an alienated institution, but becaus
the US government tolerates "others" as legitimate citizens. Their defence
of the right to bear arms amendment is purely functional and opportunist.
Jay further writes:
>I really don't doubt they are right in this, and a part of me
>agrees with the authors of the US constitution that the right
>to keep and bear arms (i.e. to defend yourself against a
>tyrannical government, not to shoot deer or chase trespassers)
>really is important. Of course the technologies of force have
>changed a lot since 1790, and political will more than force
>of arms is at stake in confrontations between modern governments
>and their people. The farmer with his rifle is now more a
>romantic symbol than a real bulwark against tyrrany. But still,
>there is a certain symbolic value, in the eyes of a government,
>of an armed populace, a prickly populace, touchy about our
>liberties.
>
>So I don't wonder too much how someone could develop into a
>militia member or sympathizer. They are a reaction-formation,
>as most modern social movements are, created by the ever-
>increasing scale of modern institutional alienatingness. They
>focus on the biggest target, and their suspicions may be
>misplaced this year, but may not be misplaced in all years.
Again, I have to disagree with Jay. The militias' ideology is not a product
od a reaction-formation, and their movement is not a modern social movement.
This kind of hatred and extremism has been know thorughout the history, one
doesn't have to look hard for the examples, Inquisition being just one of
the more known ones, Nazism (which some of the militia groups openly adopt)
is another.
Judging groups and cultures, of course is a very complex endeavor and in the
rest of his posting (which I don't quote here) Jay has attempted to give a
broad direction one might want to adopt in doing so.
I will not try to do it here, but I just want to mention some things that
have always struck me when thinking about these and similar groups and group
beliefs.
One thing that stucks me about extreme beliefs of any sort is a struggle of
those who hold them not to face reality and not to let anyone under their
control face reality. This is the case with Patriot groups also: they don't
allow their children to be exposed to any other belief, or to know anyone
from other groups, so the children are schooled at home. They don't want any
speck of doubt to challenge their belief system.
Moreover, their beliefs, whether religious or racist are based on stories
which are either unverifiable or are forbiden to test (testing would
presuppose doubt!!) Therefore, anything or anybody who in any way may be a
threat to the purity of the belief is immediately proclaimed evil, a child
of Satan, etc. In other words, the value system of these groups is binomial:
Yes or No, Good or Evil, Black and White, You are either With us, or Against
us - and there may not be anything in between.
Third, groups formed on such beliefs usually define themselves not just by
positive values, but spend a lot more time negatively defining other groups,
i.e. their Identity is based more on the negative description of other
people or beliefs, which they find threatening, than on really developing
the positive values of their own group. In other words: the binding force
for such groups is not love or other positive emotions, but hatred and
anger. In that sense, I could agree with Jay that they are a
reaction-formation. If on an individual level one might speak of paranoia as
a mental disorder, on the social level, I think, one might speak of a group
paranoia.
Now, one might say that I am negatively biased in my judgments, but I think
that the three observations I mentioned above are not judgmental but
descriptive. However, even without passing a moral judgment, one has to
wonder what does it mean to personal development to grow in a culture which:
1. Is based on detachment from reality
2. has a binomial system of values (good/evil); and
3. spends enormous amount of time negatively defining Others, much more that
the engaging in positive Self definition.
I apologize for the length of this posting.
Ana
_________________________________________________________________________
Dr. Ana Marjanovic-Shane
151 W. Tulpehocken St. Office of Mental Health and
Philadelphia, PA 19144 Mental Retardation
(215) 843-2909 [voice] 1101 Market St. 7th Floor
(215) 843-2288 [fax] Philadelphia, PA 19107
(215) 685-4767 [v]
(215) 685-5581 [fax]
E-mail: pshane who-is-at andromeda.rutgers.edu
http://www.geocities.com./Athens/2255/index.html
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