One thing I think is worth noting in the resurgence of right-wing vigilantism in the last week is that, despite it's rosy portrayal as a spontaneous grassroots phenomenon, the most significant vigilante organizations in US history have always been tools of elites. 1/

The first true vigilance committee emerged in San Francisco in response to the specter of arson and murder in San Francisco following an influx of fortune-seekers two years prior, yes, but it was local importer Samuel Brannan who led the charge to drive the marauders from town 2/

A few years later, journalist James King used San Francisco's Daily Evening Bulletin to whip the city into a "near-panic psychology" despite significantly lower crime rates, giving the newly reformed vigilance committee cover to oust the Democratic Party that ruled the city 3/

In the 1860s, journalist Robert Fisk used Montana's Helena Daily Herald in 1879 to warn of a "coterie of petty offenders" and "the horde on our borders" to create a public perception of lawlessness despite similarly low crime rates. 4/

One-off vigilantes occasionally emerge in response to actual disorder, but the largest vigilante phenomena in U.S. history were functions of *perceived* disorder, catalyzed by manipulation at the hands of local elites more than any real-life exigency 5/

The locus of manipulation may have evolved with the decentralization of modern media into conspiracy theories like QAnon and massive disinformation networks like those swirling around Trump, but the reality is the same: vigilantes are unwitting tools of the system 6/

Vigilantes ostensibly break the law in order to save it; it's an inherently conservative phenomenon. The violence from the last week is bad, and if Trump uses his Tuesday visit to Kenosha to stoke the flames, it'll only get worse 7/7