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Expect there will be a lot of controversy emerging about whether or not the ABQ shooter was a member of the "NM Civil Guard" militia. I'm sure details will emerge, but here's the thing about the contemporary paramilitary right: "membership" is almost a meaningless category 1/
Borrowing this term from historian Robert Churchill, but many of these groups function like "paramilitary flash mobs." Wouldn't be surprised if they disavow this guy but when you've got an amorphous group of folks putting out calls online to show up armed to "defend heritage" 2/
This is what happens. Can't let the paramilitary right off the hook just because this guy wasn't in this that or the other facebook group. Thinking of this movement as made up primarily of discrete units with membership lists is as big a fallacy as imagining Antifa that way. 3/
The threat is much more protean. As long as the act of "armed (counter)protest" is normalized, this is going to happen. It's a miracle it didn't devolve into a melee. Needs to be a coordinated focus on driving the paramilitary right off the streets. 4/
As @lindsayli has brilliantly argued, the distinction between brandishing and bearing firearms is mutable and politicized. These armed performances are coercive, and more and more of them will end with this kind of violence if it continues to be tolerated. 5/
