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Profs and Pints DC presents: “Understanding the Militia Movement,” with Carolyn Gallaher, scholar of guerilla and paramilitary violence, professor and senior associate dean in American University’s School of International Service, and author of On the Fault Line: Race, Class, and the American Patriot Movement.
[You must show proof of vaccination to attend.]
Among those involved in the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol were members of right-wing militia groups such as the Oath Keepers and Three Percenters, who had become an increasingly vocal and intimidating force in American politics in the years leading up to the attempted insurrection.
Come gain an in-depth understanding of our nation’s militia movement and what we can expect from it down the road with Professor Carolyn Gallaher, a scholar of militias in the United States and abroad.
Her perspective is one of someone who has carried out extensive research on militias in the field—she spent a substantial amount of time with members of the Kentucky Militia movement, attending meetings during a two-year period, in writing her 2003 book On the Fault Line. For a separate book, After the Peace, she researched Loyalist paramilitaries in Northern Ireland after the 1998 peace accord. Drawing from it, she’ll offer eye-opening insights on what militia members believe and why they do what they do, illustrating her academic findings with real-life tales.
Dr. Gallaher will start by tackling basic questions such as how to define a militia, what ideologies militias hold, and how militias differ from other groups on the far right such as Neo-Nazis, Incels, and the Proud Boys.
Then she’ll ground us in the history of our nation’s various militias. She’ll look at the roles that militias played in our nation’s founding, in the American Revolution, and in the years leading up to World War II. From there, she’ll examine militias in the 1980s, 1990s, and our current century, discussing long-standing groups such as the Bundy family militias and the more-recent rise of the Oath Keepers and the Three Percenters.
From there, she’ll look at Donald Trump’s impact on the militia movement’s ideology and what this meant in the run-up to the 2020 election. Looking ahead, she’ll discuss trends in the militia movement and what we can expect from it down the road. Might they morph from anti-state militias into pro-state paramilitaries if they felt our nation had the right leader? Were they already on their way to doing so in the lead-up to last year’s events? (Advance tickets: $12. Doors: $15, or $13 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. Talk starts 30 minutes later. Please allow yourself time to place any orders and get seated and settled in. Profs and Pints will ask that you wear a mask except while seated and eating or drinking. Church Hall, where this event is being staged, follows all C.D.C. and Washington D.C. guidelines regarding public health. The venue reserves the right to modify all rules to align with current and future regulations and best practices to maintain a safe and fun environment.)
(Image: Three Percenters patrol Charlottesville’s Emancipation Park on the second day of the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally. Photo by Anthony Crider / Creative Commons.)
