The horse's mouth - militia

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Mon Jun 8 08:25:44 PDT 1998


I have the following comments re. your paper on militia ideology:

1. The paper presents the ideology of the leaders but does not assess to what extent that ideology is reflected in the views of common members;

2. The paper does not systematically examine the recruitment strategy used by the militia movements; specifically the issue worth examining here is to what extent that recruitment depends on appeal of the movement's ideology (as voiced by tge leaders) and to what extent it uses social links (acquiantances, dfriewnds, family members); there is extensive empirical literature on movement recruitment stressing the importance of social ties over ideologcal congruence (cites available).

3. The existence of splinter groups mentioned in the papper suggest to me that ideological principles may not be as important as personal alleginace to the leaders - and the dominance of personal ties over ideology in this type of movement;

4. The movement's ideology appears to be very non-descript; it essentially voices nondescript dissatisfaction with the status quo without focusing on specific elements of that status quo that need a change, and it does not describe any specific goal to be attained other than the participation in the movement's activities.

5. That ideological non-description and vagueness (characteristic of populist right-wing movements) might be opportunistic strategy used by the leaders to attract a broad support base; that, in turn, implies that at least some of those who join militias could very well join a left-leaning movement if they came to contact with it. The problem with left-wing movements is, however, that it is concentrated mainly in the academia and has very few personal links to people who are likely to join militias.

Regards,

Wojtek Sokolowski



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