The militia movement is a largely American subculture consisting primarily of disaffected, rural, white, right-wing Christians who believe that the federal government's authority is either broadly abused or outright null and void, and that the American people must form armed paramilitary groups in order to stand up to Washington and make their voice heard. The movement was mostly active in the early-mid 1990s, and appears to be making a comeback in recent years following the election of Barack Obama, though it is not as powerful as it was at its peak.

They draw their name from the "well-regulated militia" clause of the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution[1]. While they are ideologically rooted on the right wing of the political spectrum, they are often distrustful of the Republican mainstream (especially the neoconservative and neoliberal wings of the party), and often base their beliefs in paleoconservatism, libertarianism, or some mixture thereof instead. The movement is heavily associated and infused with survivalist rhetoric about impending economic collapse and societal breakdown, along with conspiracy theories about the federal government, big business, gun control, and international institutions like the United Nations and the Roman Catholic Church, all wrapped up into a message of reclaiming the "real" America from these nefarious forces. While the militia movement does experience plenty of cross-pollination with white nationalists, anti-Semites, and other elements of the radical right, most observers view this as secondary to the movement's chief ideology — indeed, during the movement's height in the '90s a number of black separatist groups took up the ethos of militias[2], and today it attracts a large number of pro-Israel Christian Zionists who see the Jews as allies against the "coming global jihad". There is also the Jewish Defense League, closely ideologically associated with the deceased Meir Kahane's defunct and outlawed Kach party.

Many of these groups conversely view themselves (or frame themselves to the public) as groups of citizens organized and ready to be called on by local government when needed, and that private citizens' militias such as theirs were the "original intent" of the Founders for national defense and assistance with local law enforcement. This is a half-truth. While it is true that, historically, government agencies (from the local sheriff to the state) have called upon private citizens during times of emergency or temporarily deputized private citizens, and most state constitutions include definitions of the "unorganized militia" as all adult males (usually between a certain age range, 18 to 45) for this purpose, it is a leap of logic to conclude this sanctions the formation of private paramilitary organizations not organized by nor recognized by the government. The concept is "all adult males", not a private group of people holding decidedly fringe views proclaiming themselves "the" militia.

The movement is most heavily concentrated in rural areas, suburbia, and old Rust Belt cities in "red state" America, where it is buttressed by traditions of rural populism and (in the southern US) Confederate apologia. The politics and message of the movement tend to appeal most to those people who have been uprooted by the economic changes brought by globalization — family farmers, small business owners, blue-collar workers, "Reagan Democrats", and others in the working class and lower-middle class end of the spectrum — while at the same time masking the real causes of these changes, instead blaming their problems on liberals, foreigners, urban elites, and shadowy cabals of "globalists" and "international bankers" seeking to destroy the American way of life. These same politics also serve to repel those in the big cities, where cosmopolitanism, feminism, and multiculturalism are facts of life rather than "creeping outside forces", where the economies are driven by white-collar professional occupations (like finance, health care, and high technology), and where even conservatives tend to be more Catholic, Jewish, or libertarian than evangelical.[3]

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Militia_movement