Hi, new followers! Many of you found your way here because of my expertise on contemporary US militia groups, so a little about that:

I've historically not Tweeted much about my work for a few reasons, partly related to safety. Most US militia members are perfectly normal, law-abiding people, but some aren't, and militias can also attract cognate groups that have bigger problems in a variety of ways.

I've also not published much of my work. I was a first-gen grad student from rural East TN with little mentorship, was repeatedly told by academic presses that the interests of my study population were too "niche" to be worthwhile.

So I decided to consult some outside of academia, whose publishing system is rife with other problems anyway.

(Meanwhile, based on my supposedly-too-niche understanding, I told everyone the day after Trump declared his candidacy that he would be our next President and still find myself screaming into the void)

The way I use "militia" is a bit narrower than some folks' construction. For a variety of reasons, I separate out groups who actively advocate for firearm ownership *and* train with them.

Militias are thus largely separate from neo-nazi orgs, from border-patrolling Minutemen, and from the Proud Boys in my construction.

BUT there can be ideological and sometimes activism overlaps across these groups.

It's like when you have two trees on the same small plot of land: they are separate entities, but their roots grow in the same soil, and their branches intermingle from time to time-

-occasionally to the extent that, from a distance, you can't tell where one tree stops and another begins.

stay at home protests are one such case. Not everyone involved is part of a militia group or any other organization for that matter, but there is an opportunity for those shared aspects of ideology to sublimate into activism.

Activism meaning these protests, but, for some, also the possibility of new member / supporter recruitment.

This possibility is most dangerous with overtly racist groups. The ones holding obviously anti-Semitic signs or other regalia marking their dedication to white supremacy and trying to use this opportunity to further those racist ends.

Most militia groups in my research were no more racist than any other group of the same mostly white, male demographic, which is to say that most of their racism was of the variety that sociologists call "modern" racism, rather than overt racism.

However, we know that modern racism can both be primed and stoked by outgroup thinking during times of crisis, and that's where the danger comes in-

-when people already invested in ideas of strong individuality are encouraged to see others as the enemy, whether those others be minority groups or government actors.