They're all white supremacists, man. This isn't a tyranny to them, it's exactly what they want, they want anyone who isn't white 'self deporting' in the face of cruel mistreatment, and the military and the rest of the government is deleting any mention of any historical person that isn't a white cis het male. They have never been happier.
They don't see imposing a state of fundamentalist Christian supremacy as tyranny, because their ideology is one of Christian Nationalism (which in the US is inherently white nationalism).
They see the erosion of their relevance as the tyranny they're supposed to stand up to despite it mostly being driven by cultural changes instead of government mandates. This means that the militias are meant to commit violence against civilians; they know the cops will side with them in a scrum. They're more afraid of a lesbian with blue hair than a rogue sherrif depriving them of rights.
The vast, vast majority of armed militias that are allowed to operate in the U.S. are far-right white supremacists. Mysteriously, they are allowed to operate without any issues, but any leftist militias that start to accumulate guns get a visit from the FBI or the ATF.
And they were at least fascist lite.
Now look at them crying bcs they lost their precious uniparty democracy once it started bullying them and not just the rest of the world for once.
While it is true that the majority of what people conceive of as American "militias" are reactionary, leftist community defense groups do exist. They have no where near the organizing capacity to march on DC but they can be seen protecting their local communities often under the umbrella label Antifa. Given the material conditions of the US, most of the focus is on providing marginalized groups with the skills and resources to protect themselves.
Successful millitant Leftist organizers like the Black Panther Party are stamped out by the State, leaving only far-right millitias in any real number.
I'm convinced that this is it. There's a dual track effort to defang leftists through first heavily propagandizing the success of "pure" non-violent movements by removing them from their context, then by aggressively stamping out the groups that move past that. The first part is why you see so many people saying "well, why don't we just march again and wave more signs?" The state has done a very, very, very good job of convincing people that peaceful assembly without the threat of unpeaceful assembly behind it means a goddamn thing.
Spot-on! Just look at the historical revisionism surrounding the roles of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, the US mythologizes the Civil Rights Movement and erases the more millitant actions that forced their hand. See the shunning of Nelson Mandela for appreciating the aid Fidel Castro and Cuba at large had sent, followed by the revision of Mandela himself in popular western view. It's through these distortions and bluntings of real, working class victories fought and paid in blood in ways that prevent the modern working class from following in their predecessor's footprints.
I mean, if you look back to the framing of the constitution, the idea was that a bunch of citizen militias would be kept such that if the country needed defense, they would be able to respond. This was because the new United States lacked (and politically opposed) standing armies like the one which they just fought off the continent.
Since then, the United States acquired an Army, Navy, and Air Force alongside numerous National Guard units. The theoretical need for citizen militias vanished.
The real answer to your question is that we really don’t have citizens participating in “well-regulated militias.” Not from the constitutional context, anyway.
The need for citizen militias was specifically to support regular forces but also oppose them if necessary. The idea was that citizens should always be more powerful than the government. Some people think that modern weaponry means that people could never overpower the military, but we see it all the time.
Left and fascist are opposites. Left wing organization in general does sadly require millitancy, though, whether it be for revolution or to defend against outside Capitalist powers.
94% of Militia members in the US are foaming at the mouth reactionaries if not open fascists, with many being active or former law enforcement or related to military or intelligence.
Some of those that work forces are the same that burn crosses. For the most part, it’s fascists who form these militias, and quite a few of them are cops and military from 9–5. These people are not against “tyranny,” they’re for their own fascist brand of tyranny.
If you expect your enemies to die fighting for your beliefs while you sip a latte and post memes then you're unfathomably fucking stupid. Right wingers care about stopping communism. Guess whose job it is to stop fascism?
Everytime I've seen someone an American militia discussing its purpose, defending against a tyrannical government is overwhelmingly given as the reason, from what I've seen when they are being interviewed.
It appears to me, who is not an american, that there is no other possible explanation for what's happening in that country right now. Like it's not even a debatable fact from what I'm seeing. The Dems bend over backwards and support this regime seemingly everytime they have the chance to opposite it, CR resolution as but one recent example.
So if both parties are in cahoots, and these militia are by their own words the check to this exact situation, why are they not acting? They didn't have to start with guns blazing, but I'm not seeing it hearing them in any way doing the thing they say they exist to do m
So as my post mentioned, I directed my question to those members for someone to respond. I haven't seen any comments here that claim to be from militia members.
If you expect your enemies to die fighting for your beliefs while you sip a latte and post memes then you're unfathomably fucking stupid
It's not my flight as i don't live there. I'm not at all claiming what you said and this is a disingenuous argument that tells me you didn't understand my question.
Your fundamental misunderstanding is that "militia" is a euphemism for "right wing domestic terrorist organization". You won't find them on Lemmy. There are a few small armed leftist organizations, but they wouldn't call themselves militias and their mission is defending their communities. They understand that our government has always been tyrannical and a few guys with guns will just get themselves killed.
Don't believe right wingers. (You can be forgiven for not knowing these were fringe right wing idiots. Media coverage tends to obscure that part.) They say they're against government tyranny, but really they just hate brown people. (They meant the "tyranny" of having to sit at the same lunch counter as [slurs].) They love what is going on now.
Why are foreigners who I don't understand not behaving the way I expect them to?
The two parties being in cahoots is a minority opinion and in my view little better than a conspiracy theory. The Democrats tried to impeach Trump twice, filed felony charges against him four separate times, and put a bunch of his cronies in prison. They are limited in the actions they can realistically take against him not only by a longstanding commitment to the rule of law but also by the political reality that he has a lot of supporters and they need to choose their battles carefully. It's frustrating to watch from the outside but I doubt any of us could do much better if we were in their shoes.
Militia members, being overwhelmingly right-wingers, care much more about some specific freedoms than they do about others, and those priorities are going to be different from yours. Also, as right-wingers, they naturally care much more about the freedom of themselves, their families, and their communities and allies than they do about the freedom of their enemies and people they don't know and have little in common with. They also have different ideas about what sort of government overreach constitutes a threat to America than you do, and are naturally going to be more forgiving of it when it occurs as part of advancing their values and priorities or fighting against their enemies.
And finally, you knew damn well that you weren't going to get any responses from right-wing militia members by posting on lemmy.ml, this was never intended as anything other than a circlejerk post and you're not fooling anybody.
If the anti fascists of the US actually started arming themselves en masse, I think it would be a net positive effect.
Either you have more armed anti fascists able to fight back, or the fascists panic and begin banning guns, causing the fools who follow them to actually think twice about their beliefs.
Nothing gets far right followers more riled up than someone threatening to take their firearms.
We were assured that the guns were there for protection and the many thousand child-sized coffins were just the cost of freedom; A trade-off because tyrants were lurking right outside the door.
Now a tyrant has taken over with barely any resistance and it seems that all those children died for nothing.
To be clear, authoritarianism is rampant on both sides of the aisle. The gross resistance to even basic right wing ideology is proof of that (which to be clear I'm not calling Trump basic right wing). Hell the fact you're calling for violence is more proof.
Left and right, people want to force others to believe what they believe period. If you don't agree you get attacked.
We need to stop "fighting" each other, and start listening to each other. Then, instead of fighting amongst ourselves, we can unite against the common threat. Oligarchy, and plutocracy.
Step back everyone, we've got an Enlightened Centrist here!
Don't call for violence, let's just compromise to allow a little fascism! 🤏
Nobody here is calling for purging wrong-think. There are very obvious and visible threats to our society from an enclave of people tearing it apart. You're making a strawman to conflate targeting them with targeting freedom of thought
The problem is that right wing ideology, basic or not, supports oligarchy, plutocracy, whatever you want to call it. Calling basic millitant opposition to oppressive structures an issue of "authoritarianism" and then seeking a solution somehow unburdened by the sin of needing to actually stand for itself or against the larger problem at hand is naive and idealistic.
I do agree that speaking past each other is absolutely a key problem, but speaking against opposition to right-wingers gets in the way of that message.
Or maybe the mere fact that you feel that way is more proof of my point, and why we need to fix the communication. I don't think the left and right are actually that far apart, but identity politics is a wedge movement meant to divide.
If instead we speak about actual policy, and changes we want to se, we may get more traction working together.
Also, left and right both support both oligarchy and plutocracy.
The right sets the conditions for all business to grow which results in people getting rich leaving everyone else behind to fend for themselves. The left set the conditions to decide where exorbitant about of tax dollars go which has proven time and time again to result in nepotism and gross financial mismanagement. See how those broad strokes are simply inflammatory claims?
Orwells Politics and the English Language is a must read on exactly why this kind of dialogue is exactly what they want us to be having.
Violence is not the answer though. Not yet. Uncoordinated violence would just result in thousands dead and no change. Watch Les Misérables again if you doubt me.