Good reportage about a manifestly creepy community. And it's odd to consider how much of the same groupthink you saw in Marblehead was in play in the isolated desert communities in Southern CA where I came of age. We were aerospace- and defense-contract funded for the most part, and the church youth groups were used as both adolescent babysitters and cultural-indoctrination centers. There were even a few apocalyptic militia-heads, although their communication was via mimeo handouts and the membership topped out at eleven or twelve guys, some only available if the wife wasn't using the family station wagon. (The Internet simply made an already-existing problem worse, and adequate monitoring proposals aren't yet anywhere in sight that I'm aware of. One would think that 6 January 2021 would've accelerated such a needed process.)
I think there is active resistance to appropriate monitoring because of cultural inertia that holds right wing militias as being on 'the side of America' and therefore at least not godless communist antigovernment terrorists.
Your militia and youth indoctrination experiences are very very relevant. The maximum active size of a militia cell seems to still top out at around 12 in my personal experience, with a larger and looser sphere of part time associates on the fringes and in support, they are now just confederated into larger networks.
The church groups that feed into the kind of thinking that promotes doomer mindsets and apocalypse militarism thrive in isolated communities where the church youth group is the only game in town for connecting young people in an environment other than drinking or smoking in the woods or under a bridge. One useful way to strike at these places being funnels for indoctrination would just be to fund secular after-school activities and rec centers.
Good reportage about a manifestly creepy community. And it's odd to consider how much of the same groupthink you saw in Marblehead was in play in the isolated desert communities in Southern CA where I came of age. We were aerospace- and defense-contract funded for the most part, and the church youth groups were used as both adolescent babysitters and cultural-indoctrination centers. There were even a few apocalyptic militia-heads, although their communication was via mimeo handouts and the membership topped out at eleven or twelve guys, some only available if the wife wasn't using the family station wagon. (The Internet simply made an already-existing problem worse, and adequate monitoring proposals aren't yet anywhere in sight that I'm aware of. One would think that 6 January 2021 would've accelerated such a needed process.)
I think there is active resistance to appropriate monitoring because of cultural inertia that holds right wing militias as being on 'the side of America' and therefore at least not godless communist antigovernment terrorists.
Your militia and youth indoctrination experiences are very very relevant. The maximum active size of a militia cell seems to still top out at around 12 in my personal experience, with a larger and looser sphere of part time associates on the fringes and in support, they are now just confederated into larger networks.
The church groups that feed into the kind of thinking that promotes doomer mindsets and apocalypse militarism thrive in isolated communities where the church youth group is the only game in town for connecting young people in an environment other than drinking or smoking in the woods or under a bridge. One useful way to strike at these places being funnels for indoctrination would just be to fund secular after-school activities and rec centers.