Thread by @studentactivism

I don't understand this impulse. It's not like there are a bunch of Good Militias out there whose name is being sullied by the association of "militia" with white supremacist domestic terrorism. Why not call them militias?

https://twitter.com/davidplouffe/status/1314253179870035968

They call themselves militias. the public understands them as militias. Seems to me "militias are bad" is a much simpler project than "militias are good, actually, but something completely different than every militia you've ever heard of."

(And if that project puts a little more stink on the public perception of The Second Amendment As Currently Construed By The GOP ... oh well.)

I promise you that the Venn diagram of people who have a strong emotional attachment to the constitutional concept of a "militia" and people who approve of contemporary white supremacist militias is close enough to a single circle as to not make any practical difference.

(And yes, when I said "I don't understand this impulse," that was a bit of a rhetorical move. It's less that I don't understand its underpinnings than that I regard its underpinnings as rickety beyond the possibility of salvation.)

A lot of people responding that "militia" is generally understood to be a neutral or benign word. I'm skeptical of that, for starters—I'd love to see some polling on it—but beyond that, it seems to me that if it's true it's a problem that'll have to be resolved.

Nazis called themselves Nazis in the bad old days, and some of them still do. "Nazi" wasn't originally a term of opprobrium. But it is now, because 99% of us understand that Nazis are bad. Militias—as the term is used essentially exclusively in the contemporary US—are also bad.

So "militias are terrorist organizations" strikes me as fine, even laudatory. Absolutely call them terrorists. But "these are terrorist organizations, not militias" strikes me as entirely wrongheaded. They're terrorist organizations BECAUSE they're militias.

(I've done a little poking around, and I can't find evidence of any national polling on the question of people's associations with the word "militia" in the contemporary context, which may be part of why so many of us in this thread are going with our gut hunches.)

More useful context: An example (rare in my experience, but new to me here, so who knows?) of a contemporary-yet-venerable organization that calls itself a militia but seems to have a civic-minded identity and agenda.

https://twitter.com/WendyNYC/status/1314919078662942722

BTW, this conversation is a great example of why I get so twitchy when people say you can't discuss serious stuff on Twitter in a serious way. It's been a good conversation!

Some people pushed back against what I said, and some of what they said was convincing. Even where it wasn't, the fact that they pushed back was useful information about how people who aren't me see things.

And multiple people in replies and QTs indicated that I'd shifted *their* perspective a bit. When people tell you that nobody ever changes anybody's mind on Twitter, they're mistaken.