Hi all,

Kevin Mathewson, a former alderman in Kenosha, Wisconsin, was a fairly well-known member of the community when he called private citizens to arms in August in response to Black Lives Matter protests in the area. Though described by The New York Times as “long a divisive figure in Kenosha,” Mathewson was neither fringey nor an outsider.

On Aug. 25, Mathewson wrote a letter to Kenosha police Chief Daniel Miskinis on Facebook: “As you know I am the commander of the Kenosha Guard, a local militia. We are mobilizing tonight and have about 3,000 RSVP’s. … I ask that you do NOT have your officers tell us to go home under threat of arrest as you have done in the past.” Miskinis did not respond to the letter, the Wisconsin Examiner reported. The Kenosha Police Department didn’t respond to my recent request for comment.

That night, Mathewson’s call to arms was answered. Mathewson had seen the property damage in Kenosha from the night before, as protests against police brutality and for racial justice in the aftermath of yet another shooting of a black man by a white police officer swelled — this time in his town. He believed the police were “outnumbered,” he wrote on Facebook, and used this to justify the action of an unauthorized private militia, the Kenosha Guard, he deemed himself commander of.

That night, a young, white man from Antioch, Illinois, shot three protesters, killing two. It is unclear whether Kyle Rittenhouse was affiliated with a militia, and Mathewson told the Wisconsin Examiner he did not know him.The next morning, the Kenosha Guard Facebook group was gone.

I think about this frequently, and more so now, as more light is shed on what, exactly, happened at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. What Mathewson did in Kenosha — mobilize a group of armed private citizens to engage in law enforcement functions outside of state or federal authority — is not a right that is protected by the Second Amendment (you can learn more about specific militia laws in this database from the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown Law). The legal militia of the United States is the National Guard, which was already activated in Kenosha and working with local law enforcement the night Mathewson decided to take matters into his own hands.

In the last six months, you’ve likely followed news like the Kenosha shootings, the plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and, of course, the insurrection at the Capitol. While these are separate events and there appears to be no indication that Mathewson participated in any of the ones that took place outside of Kenosha, what they have in common is militia activity: Mathewson and the Kenosha Guard, a militia named the Wolverine Watchmen in Michigan, and coordinated militia activity at the Washington insurrection. My colleague A.C. Thompson reported last week that eight men wearing body armor, who were captured on video Jan. 6 shuffling toward the Capitol, then later dragging a wounded comrade out of the building, were identified as members of the Oath Keepers, “a long-standing militia group that has pledged to ignite a civil war on behalf of Trump.”

Amy Cooter, a senior lecturer of sociology at Vanderbilt University, has been studying militias for more than a decade. I called her this week to help me sort out the various forms of militia activity in the last six months and to better understand differences between some of the groups, as well as similarities. She said what we’re seeing now is a unique blurring of lines among various militia groups that have historically not cooperated with each other but have increasingly been banding together with a more sustained presence since late April and May of last year, as states implemented restrictions to help contain the spread of the coronavirus. “It’s a complicated mess,” Cooter told me about sorting out recent militia activity, because many of these groups and ideologies overlap. But here’s her general breakdown:

1. The “proper” militia groups: These are groups that Cooter said have some longevity, and that regularly train with firearms, usually on private property. They may see themselves as “kind of a super citizen, last-line defenders of the country,” but in practice, these groups mostly engage in self-defense of private property or neighborhoods. The Kenosha Guard is an example of an impromptu neighborhood-watch style militia, while other militias in this category may be more localized and train as paramilitary groups.
2. Neo-Nazi, white supremacist militias: These are groups with overtly racist and white supremacist ideology and, if they join or form militias, use this as motivation for mobilizing and committing violence. An example is the White Rabbit Militia formed in central Illinois, the leader of which, along with two others, bombed a mosque in Minnesota and attempted to bomb an abortion clinic in Champaign, Illinois, in 2017.
3. Online militia groups: Cooter said that, until recently, militias such as the Oath Keepers and Three Percenters mostly interacted online and were not considered “proper militias” for that reason. However, Cooter said that both of these militias have had a sustained presence at protests since the government shutdowns in April and May of last year due to the coronavirus. These groups were also noticeable at the Jan. 6 insurrection.
4. Newer militia-type groups: These include the Proud Boys and the Boogaloo Bois. Cooter said the Proud Boys overlap with neo-Nazis and “proper” militias especially on a local level. She also notes that over the summer, there was an emerging divide between these groups and also within them about their attitudes toward policing. While members of “proper” militia groups would be more likely to possess a Blue Lives Matter flag, for example, members of the Boogaloo Bois were seen marching with Black Lives Matter protesters over the summer because their ideology is aligned with taking power away from police.

While untangling these groups can quickly get complicated, here’s what Cooter said is the defining factor across all of them: “They have in common the notion that their ideal America is already gone, and that it is their job to do something about that.” For this reason, Cooter prefers to refer to them as “nostalgia groups,” the vast majority of which are composed of white men. Because it is white men who have undeniably held the majority of power throughout American history, the notion of a simpler American past that one must fight to regain is inextricably tied to white supremacy, Cooter argues.

I asked her what she believes perpetuates that nostalgia. I’m going to leave you with her answer. While you’re reading it, I want you to think about how _you _learned about America’s past, whether in school, on field trips or on road trip pit-stops. Here it is:

“We, as a society, teach our kids in elementary school, quite literally, about the whole American myth of mostly white men founding this nation through nothing but hard work, individual efforts and, of course, firearms. And although the real story is actually more complicated than that, and not just uniformly positive, I think this becomes a big cultural reference point for a lot of people, and not just militia folks, which then becomes this idea of who we're supposed to be [as a country]. The founding fathers as these hero-type figures gets reinforced in families … it becomes part of this cultural fabric that people are embedded in. As a country, we don't do a good job of teaching ... basic education about slavery, about the Jim Crow South — serious problems in our not-so-distant past.

Many of [my students] aren’t really taught the facts about the Civil Rights movement. When we don’t understand how hard-fought and fractured that was, current events seem like even bigger outliers to them. If you have only ever heard positive presentations of that, I can kind of understand from their perspective why protests about racism are almost incomprehensible to them. They have no understanding of what it’s like to continue being on the receiving end of systematic racism, and they don’t understand why people need to protest and disrupt society.”

I’m curious to hear how that strikes you. Feel free to just reply directly to this email.

Until next week …

—Logan Jaffe

ProPublica