A good companion book to David Neiwert's book on the Patriot Movement (though I've never asked him what he thinks of it) is Rural Radicals by Catherine McNicol Stock. While I tend to agree with the review that pops up on the amazon page that her link between radicalism and vigilantism is a bit strained, it is still an interesting (and fairly brief) look at a vigilantism throughout American history.
It seems relevant now because I do noticing an increasing tolerance - and advocacy of - vigiliante justice by My Fellow Americans. G.C. Cabot points us to this example by Ricky West who wishes the white supremacists who assaulted John Walker would go ahead and finish the job. I'm continually amazed at how often the strong "law and order" types are also prone to adovcating the antithesis of law and order - lawless "citizen justice."
I'm no gun control nut, but I definitely think we'd be better off if, say, half of the guns owned by private citizens in this country randomly disappeared overnight. That isn't going to happen, and I'm not saying we should go take them away, but the idea of citizens-with-guns as a crime deterrent scares the hell out of me. There is a very blury line between legitimate self-defense and vigilante justice, and while there are legal definitions of appropriate force, we're largely talking about "he-said/he-said" cases of private confrontations without witnesses. The legitimization of the use of potentially deadly force by normal folks, in which the presumption of the legal innocence of the one using it would largely depend on the usual things - you know, the socio-economic status of the "attacker" and "victim" - opens the door to a world in which each man is judge, jury, and executioner with an inappropriate degree of oversight from the real legal system.
In any case, while we all at times have our private thoughts about person X having a little "accident" on the grounds that they're bad and they would deserve it, that's a far cry from actually advocating for extra-legal "justice." I see more and more approval for such actions, which combined with advocacy of "official" extra-legal justice (such as Gitmo and torture), tells me that there is increasing contempt to for the system and institutions which are the foundations of our society and that which we are supposed to be defending.
Scary stuff.
