Vigilante Nation

October 28, 2024
“Legions of citizen culture warriors,” from “parents’ rights”–obsessed “PTA moms” to “abortion snitches” and “DIY poll watchers,” are a modern-day threat to American democracy that has deep roots in the past, according to this eye-opening account. Law scholars Michaels (Constitutional Coup) and Noll attest that American history is full of vigilante behavior, much of it legally sanctioned, and draw links between Jim Crow-era vigilantism and modern-day white nationalist militias patrolling the southern border. They explain how the Supreme Court enshrined vigilantism’s semi-legality in a series of late-19th-century decisions that effectively “privatized” anti-Black violence, allowing individual white people to deprive Black Americans of their rights in ways that governments no longer could. Elsewhere the authors track the Republican Party’s recent slide toward vigilantism, contrasting the “beatification” of Kyle Rittenhouse following his 2020 slaying of two anti-police protesters with the party’s more mixed 1984 reception of “subway vigilante” Bernhard Goetz, who became a right-wing cause célèbre for shooting four Black teens but was denounced by Ronald Reagan. Michaels and Noll conclude by recommending that blue states go on the legal offensive, crafting laws to fight back against red state overreach. Throughout, they make chillingly clear the stakes: “With each passing campaign of harassment... the chances increase that vigilantes... will be on the inside.” It’s a stark assessment of America’s darker political currents.