Vigilantism - Ideologies Of Vigilante Groups
Ideologies of vigilante groups
Vigilante violence is the opposite of revolutionary violence. Revolutionaries resort to force in order to overthrow the established order and create new arrangements, whereas vigilantes unleash violence to restore order and maintain the status quo. In their manifestos, vigilance committees proclaimed that their coercive campaigns were meant to halt destabilizing trends, shore up faltering structures, revive fading traditions, and buttress existing relationships. Their actions were intended to quash challenges to local elites from either below or outside.
To legitimize their lawless deeds, vigilantes argued that their ends justified their means. In order to preserve sacred traditions, enforce conventional moral codes, and further respect for authority, "honorable red-blooded, law-abiding" citizens sometimes were compelled to impose "retaliatory justice." They portrayed themselves as acting in self-defense as they lashed out in righteous indignation against "idlers," "parasites," "intruders," "corrupters," and "predators." They filled their manifestos with appeals to natural law, patriotism, and religion. Claiming that the basic law of nature is survival, vigilante committee spokesmen asserted that a right to self-preservation took precedence over written legislation and procedural guidelines in life-and-death, kill-or-be-killed struggles. In their speeches and writings, leaders and supporters reaffirmed their faith in God and country and in the ultimate sanctity of the law. But they interpreted the democratic ideals of popular sovereignty and the right to revolution as calls to action when government officials seemed inept, corrupt, or overly tolerant of criminal behavior. In their appeals to others to join their mobilization, vigilantes invoked the cherished frontier ethics of self-reliance and of male responsibility for the wellbeing of women and children. Leading elected officials, judges, lawyers, and legal scholars accepted and defended the vigilante credo during the late 1800s and early 1900s. More concerned with suppressing disruptive behavior than with respecting due process, they granted qualified approval to vigilantism's simple, direct, swift, certain, and severe punishments as a rational response to the inadequacies, delays, and uncertainties of an allegedly "ineffectual" criminal justice process (Hofstadter and Wallace; Madison; and Brown).
The Ku Klux Klan and other "night rider" groups have been the most explicitly ideological of all vigilante groups. Since the period of Reconstruction that followed the Civil War, Klansmen have attacked "troublemakers" that they believed threatened their way of life: rebellious members of minority groups who did not accept their place in the local social order, civil rights activists, labor union organizers, recently arrived immigrants, outside agitators, and alleged subversives. Most of the victims of Klan terror have been African Americans, Catholics, and Jews.
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7 months ago
Giest
*Si vis pacem, para bellum*
(If you wish for peace, prepare for war)
9 months ago
Epsilon » ds314 ((at)) gmail dot com
Israel & Tesia -
1. Being a vigilante can be argued for both bad as well as good. For example, when governments are inable to protect their people from harm, such as some countries in Africa, viligantes are the only way to protect.
2. Israel, I was born in Israel and then moved to the US. I do believe that racism is terrible and should not exist, but paying for their terrible actions by violence (i agree with Tesia) is not the way to go.
3. If you believe that the police in your country are racists, you should file a lawsuit the orderly and respectable way, and if the policemen really are racist, you should win the lawsuit.
4. Tesia - the definition of a vigilante is someone who takes punishing a crime for justice into his/her own hands. Therefore the KKK should not be considered a vigilantee group, because they did not enforce justice but rather punish people they didn't like for minimal reason. Considering the KKK as a vigilante group is pushing the limits a bit, but it is under some definition a viglante comitee.
5. Although I contradict a few of Tesia's points, overall I do agree with Tesia's will to use ideas such as Ghandi's. Peace > War.
But finally, I hope that none of you ever are in the need to make a decision in which vigilantism is necassary.
11 months ago
Tesia » mojospace1991 ((at)) yahoo dot com
Israel - It's groups like the KKK that have brought such pain to our nation. Why then would you want to turn around and cause others pain? You claim to have had to suffer from racism, and for that I am sorry, but for change to happen, violence is not the answer. If anyone rises up against such groups in a violent manner, the desired result will not be achieved. Police do care, and they do fight for you. I don't know where you're from, but it isn't right to generalize all police as racist.
Vigilante groups, like the KKK, are only horrid scars and wounds on our nation. We can only benefit by people deciding to handle situations peacefully, otherwise, our nation - or any nation - will only fall into the ways of revenge, and our world will become a greater form of hell than it already has become.
Lets turn around from the idiotic ways of the negative vigilantes, and use ideas such as Ghandi's. He won India's independence with his methods of peace. Why can't we fight racism and other important issues in the same way?
about 1 year ago
israel "pancho" vi » sonsoftheprophets ((at)) yahoo dot com
being a vigilante is a good thing
and so called blacks and hispanics should form such groups against crime because the police don't give a damn about us.....and all racist should pay for the crime they did on the people of god the hebrew israelites....