Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

426 • MILITIA MOVEMENTdistinct from the regular armed forces and National Guard. Suchunits can be created and regulated by state law but many states, suchas New Hampshire, specifically prohibit privately formed militias orother associations from becoming registered as state defense forces.Therefore, under existing federal and state laws, the self-formed militiasare no more than unauthorized, autonomous, voluntary paramilitaryorganizations, and some states have declared them to be subjectto regulation while others have banned them altogether.These militias are largely autonomous and lack any hierarchicalrelationship, coordination, or working unity. On the other hand, suchmilitias can spin off “cells” of more committed extremist activists whomay strike out on their own in the name of leaderless resistance.Several explanations have been offered for the rise of the militiamovement: First, there has been a popular backlash in the westernUnited States against environmentalism and federal management ofwestern public lands impacting the livelihoods of ranchers, miners,and loggers, most of whom are white males. Second, the existence ofprior Christian patriot, tax protestor, and white supremacist groups inthe midwestern and western United States provided a cadre of likemindedpeople able to create new militia groups modeled after theseolder organizations. Third, a rise in working-class frustrations may alsobe at work: blue-collar white male workers lost 15 percent of their realincome in the period 1980–2000, while women and members of ethnicminority groups have experienced relative gains. Such white males seethemselves excluded and passed over by affirmative action laws andtheir traditional positions as heads of households weakened by lawspunishing spousal abuse and favoring divorced women in matters ofalimony, child custody disputes, and mandatory child support.Thus the militia movement may also be a reaction to a growingidentity politics in the United States in which women, ethnic groups,and specialized lifestyle groups seek empowerment of their own respectivegroups through civil advocacy and claims of past victimization.White males, who are often castigated as the victimizers of thesegroups, find the militia movement a ready-made vehicle to pursuetheir own version of identity politics. Finally, one should note thevoiced concerns of militia movement members that the FBI raids atRuby Ridge in August 1992 and Waco in April 1993, and the passageof several federal gun-control bills, presage a rise in authoritarianismon the part of the national government. While such beliefs strike