Vigilante Violence Is an American Tradition - YES! Magazine Solutions Journalism

Research suggests vigilantism doesn't arise from an absent or weak government, but rather when the very principles that make up a government and its people themselves seem to be changing.

It鈥檚 a contentious time in the U.S., with a pandemic, racial equality, police violence, and a presidential election all occupying people鈥檚 attention. Given all that stress, it can seem like people are more often.

It鈥檚 not just . In recent weeks, there have been confrontations over removing , clashes over the use of , attempts to 鈥攐谤&苍产蝉辫;鈥擝lack Lives Matter protesters, and even a renewed interest in 鈥�.鈥� Some of these events have turned and deadly.

These events show Americans moving beyond differences of opinion and free speech into private displays of force. Their participants may be trying to , or , or 鈥攅specially in light of the failures of police to provide a fair system of justice.

Attorney General William Barr has claimed, by contrast, that this vigilantism might be a if police funding is in fact slashed in communities nationwide.

As a scholar of vigilantism in U.S. history and a political scientist interested in how the state and law develop over time, , as have , that for many Americans, law and order has long been as much a private matter as something for the government to handle.

Two sparks for vigilantism

Vigilantism鈥攖he private, violent enforcement of public moral or legal standards鈥攖ends to rise in two types of situations, neither of which may be what people expect. It doesn鈥檛 come from a government being weak or absent, leaving citizens on their own, but rather when .

And it doesn鈥檛 necessarily come from situations where one ethnic or racial group clearly dominates others鈥攂ut rather in times and places where to a particular community is . Vigilantism is often about trying to establish power rather than a reflection of preexisting hierarchies.

Many Americans believe the rules of the game are changing in and have a sense of about what the nation is going to look like in the future. As and opine about the serious possibility of , the grave implications of domestic political violence loom more than at any point in the past 50 years.

These fears are reinforced by a president who seems to and among Americans, even as Black people鈥檚 voices are attracting more attention in the public and the halls of power.

Vigilantism is American law enforcement

Through U.S. history, the distinctions between vigilantism and lawful arrest and punishment have always been . Frequently, vigilantism has been used not in opposition to police efforts, but rather with their . Indeed, in some , that still .

Before police departments existed, arrests were made under traditional common law, which depended on in legally organized and serving as . Institutions such as required that non-slave owners were willing to use, or at least permit, violence to maintain White supremacy. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, private detectives and security guards also possessed similar to those of police officers.

Even the spate of 鈥溾€� laws passed in the past 15 years borders on vigilantism, giving private citizens lots of freedom about how to use force to protect themselves.

Armed civilians stand in the streets of Kenosha, Wisconsin, on August 25, 2020, during third day of protests over the shooting of Jacob Blake by police. Photo by Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images.

Vigilantism is also American culture

American vigilantism is primarily associated with the terrible of the late 19th and early 20th centuries that . But that isn鈥檛 the whole story.

Political scientist and I studied what were called 鈥�,鈥� private groups organized in the decades before the Civil War that typically promoted anti-immigrant sentiment in areas, including cities, precisely as the laws concerning the powers of local governments were rapidly changing.

In fact, though it has been most often used to try to , vigilantism鈥攊ncluding 鈥攈as also, at times, been used by disadvantaged communities for self-defense.

Take recent events in Milwaukee, for instance: A small gathering of people in a predominantly African American neighborhood of a house where two girls were believed to be held in a sex-trafficking ring. This follows a of people of color using private forces to and defend their .

Vigilantism has often abetted the worst instincts in the politics of crime in the U.S., making justice appear to depend on what the people want rather than the rule of law.

But it is also evidence of the complicated relationship between violence and justice at the core of American democracy. The founders about self-protection and community protection and believed that could be an important corrective to an unresponsive and oppressive legal system.

But allowing the majority to impose justice can have unequal effects on disadvantaged members of the nation, granting the police a mandate to act violently precisely because that seems to be .

As Americans focus on the way in which people of color, in particular, have been policed in this country, they should disentangle the damaging forms of vigilantism from a deeper notion that democracy might require ordinary citizens to rely at least partly on themselves to enforce the law.

Democracy requires Americans to somehow be vigilant over the use of force in their midst鈥攚ithout themselves becoming vigilantes.

Editor鈥檚 note: This is an updated version of an article first published July 9, 2020.

This article was originally published by . It has been published here with permission.

Jonathan Obert is an assistant professor of political science at Amherst College. His scholarship centers on American politics and state formation, with a focus on questions related to violence, coercion and conflict, and firearms.