As Trump fear-mongers, racist militia groups head to the border to make things worse – By Hunter (dailykos.com) / Nov 4 2018
Because Donald Trump’s last-ditch fearmongering has worked the far-right into a frothing panic, not that it was hard to get them there, a hoard of “militia” members are now descending on the southern border to supposedly help guard it from asylum-seekers.
For those of you blessedly unfamiliar with the American militia movement, a “militia” in modern parlance consists of groups of racist far-right would-be revolutionaries who hoard guns, ammunition, and conspiracy theories. The prevalent organizing principles are the belief that there is a perhaps-imminent need for mass murder for political purposes, either because the “government has gone too far” or because of the (now Trump-stoked) belief that “invaders” are coming from overseas to take our jobs and marry our daughters and convert us all into Muslims or Catholics or something similarly untoward. (The second feature of all far-right militias is that they consist of persons who cannot stomach actual military discipline but still like to play dress up and pretend at it.)
Our actual United States military forces are not pleased by this fully-expected development; military documents note the significant security challenges posed by having these yahoos follow them around.
The assessment estimates that 200 militia members could show up. “They operate under the guise of citizen patrols,” the report said, while warning of “incidents of unregulated militias stealing National Guard equipment during deployments.”
It’s vanishingly unlikely any of the military forces Trump has ordered to the border will ever meet an actual refugee–especially since their deployment is scheduled to end before the so-called migrant caravan shows up, if it stays together long enough to show up at all. Soldiers will, however, have to deal with armed bands of roving paranoids parking themselves nearby and possibly looking to help themselves to any unguarded military equipment.
In practice, the self-“deployment” of racist militia groups escalates the chance for violence against both migrants and locals dramatically. Multiple bands of armed groups will be wandering around the desert; inevitably, rumors will spread that “the drug cartels” or “Middle Eastern terrorists” are now secretly dressing up as members of other militia groups and crossing the border looking to murder the real militia groups, and everyone will be pointing guns at everyone else and wondering who the real patriots are and who’s secretly from the murder-cartels and it will take exactly one beer-laden idiot to send everything to hell.
Landowners appear conflicted as to what to do about it; some say the militias aren’t welcome on their land because of, ya know, that stuff I said, others are inviting them. The militia groups have themselves not always been respectful of such concerns, and that is not counting the ones who end up, for example, murdering children in home invasion robberies. It is now yet another thing our soldiers will have to deal with in what is still, transparently, an election stunt by Trump to stoke fear in the racist elements of his base.
