Patriot movementThey’re Not All Racist Nut Jobs – and 4 Other Observations about the Patriot Militia Movement

By Hollee S. Temple and John Temple

Published 23 October 2019

The so-called patriot movement is grabbing headlines once again, as its members pledge to protect Trump supporters at the president’s campaign rallies across the country. The patriot movement is a fragmented and fractious coalition of groups that distrust the federal government. Members believe the government is impeding their rights and liberties – but the movement is not monolithic, and it less black and white. Despite public perceptions, few members of the various appeared to be mentally ill or outwardly racist. Instead, their grievances and principles stem from a range of motivations, personal circumstances and political philosophies.

The so-called patriot movement is grabbing headlines once again, as its members pledge to protect Trump supporters at the president’s campaign rallies across the country.

For the past three years, we have studied the rise of the patriots while reporting, writing and editing a nonfiction book, Up In Arms: How the Bundy Family Hijacked Public Lands, Outfoxed the Federal Government and Ignited America’s Patriot Militia Movement.

The patriot movement is a fragmented and fractious coalition of groups that distrust the federal government. Members believe the government is impeding their “land rights, gun rights, freedom of speech and other liberties.”

As the book took shape and we talked about our reporting with friends and colleagues, most were dismissive of the people at the center of the story: Cliven and Ammon Bundy.

The Bundys are Mormon ranchers who became the movement’s guiding lights after the 2014 standoff at Bundy Ranch and 2016 occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. Our friends and colleagues saw the Bundys and their supporters as “racist nut jobs” and nothing more. As reporter Kevin Sullivan wrote in a 2016 story for the Washington Post, law enforcement agrees with this assessment, calling the patriots “dangerous, delusional and sometimes violent.”

While these descriptors certainly fit individual patriots, our take on the movement is less black and white. Here’s what we learned:

1. The so-called “patriot movement,” also known as the “patriot militia movement,” isn’t really a movement and is not made up entirely of militia members.
While movements are usually associated with a specific ideology or shared purpose, that’s not quite the case with the patriots. They are motivated by a varied and sometimes conflicting array of issues. Many focus on gun rights and immigration; others get riled up about privacy, taxes or government overreach. They disagree often and are united only by a general resentment of the federal government.

Even the patriots’ chosen name reflects the disjointed nature of their union. Because some anti-government groups were (and continue to be) associated with racist and anti-Semitic causes or violence, leaders adopted the “patriot” name for public relations purposes in the 1990s.

And many who identify as patriots support but do not officially belong to militias, which are organized paramilitary groups that believe they are the last line of defense against an overreaching federal government.