Jesse Walker: The Myth of the Menacing Militias

Reason Magazine: The Myth of the Menacing Militias

By Jesse Walker

Flash back to the end of March, when the authorities hauled in nine members of the Hutaree, a Christian paramilitary group, and charged them with plotting a mass assassination of police officers. The media quickly added the arrests to the ongoing narrative of "rising right-wing violence," with the Michigan-based militants cast as the leading edge of a smoldering paramilitary threat. Newscasters and columnists touted a report by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) claiming that the number of anti-government "Patriot" organizations is skyrocketing. An "astonishing 363 new Patriot groups appeared in 2009," the center declared, "with the totals going from 149 groups (including 42 militias) to 512 (127 of them militias)—a 244% jump." If you worry about political violence, the SPLC warned, such growth "is cause for grave concern."

A month later, the Hutaree case is in a state of flux, with prosecutors appealing Judge Victoria Roberts' ruling that the accused should be released on bond while awaiting their trial. There are signs that the judge is unimpressed with the state's case, and she has stressed that prosecutors must demonstrate that the arrestees were guilty of an actual conspiracy to kill cops, not just loose talk. Even "hate-filled, venomous speech," she said, is "a right that deserves First Amendment protection."

Continued. . .