I keep seeing people suggesting that Erik Prince and whatever his group is called these days being involved in the coup attempt, and while I can't say they weren't, I don't think people understand just how huge and highly organized the milita movement is in America.

Folks, the various militia groups in this country have been planning contingencies for overthrowing the government since the George H.W. Bush administration, at the latest.

Conspiracy theories about Erik Prince are a useful distraction from the milita we *know* participated.

We're talking about a movement that's been around long enough for second and even third generation participants. And that's just the part of the milita movement that I'm familiar with. I was too young in the '80s to speak to anything before that.

I've never sat down and done the reading for how we got from the Klan to people like George Lincoln Rockwell to the present, but the long and the short of it is that we've had fascist paramilitary groups in one form or another for the better part of our nation's history.

It's easier to blame the whole coup on Erik Prince than face the reality that it's our neighbors, the people work with, go to church with, chat with at charity galas, who are part of our communities. They've been plotting insurrection for decades in front of our eyes.

Also, this is why I was so insistent on the importance of using the word "militia" back when the Whitmer kidnap plot was unearthed, because replacing a very specific term with something as nebulous as "terrorists" obscures what's actually happening.

I thought at the time that the, "don't call them militia," talking point on here didn't feel organic, but was introduced by bad faith actors to obscure the bigger picture of what was happening. The events of the 6th convince me of that.

People lack the framework to understand that what they saw was an organized militia insurrection, and so they go to thinking it must be Erik Prince calling the shots. If we'd had the widespread discussion about militia in the fall, people would have recognized what happened.

Instead of people being able to do the kind of deep dives into the militia movement in the fall that would have helped the general public understand what they were watching on the 6th, we all ended up having arguments on here about why "terrorist" was the wrong word.

Milita groups were running around all over the place this spring and summer. They were at both anti-lockdown protests where they stormed state capitols, and playing soldier with police assent at BLM protests. We all saw them, the lockdown protests where essentially a trial run.

You don't need Erik Prince when so many militia groups weren't just training for years, they had practice storming government buildings this spring and summer. And they faced zero consequences for all the crimes they did during their state-level coup practice.