Report of 'armed militia' prompts relocation of NC hurricane recovery officials | Hacker News Reader

Report of 'armed militia' prompts relocation of NC hurricane recovery officials

washingtonpost.com

24 pointswumeow32 comments

Let's not be calling these people "militias" as that word gives them a tiny veneer of legitimacy. These are armed thugs at worst and mentally ill army cosplayers at best.

Something tells me that if this were in the city instead of the countryside, and the people threatening violence were not white, they'd just be called "gangs" like usual.

What is the difference between militia/gangs/armed thugs/military? As far as I know, militias tend to be ex-military/military-affiliated people acting outside of the official arms of the government or even the law, gangs are just organized armed thugs, and the military is the armed thugs that are officially designated as being the armed thugs protecting the country.

Who cares what they're called? Feels much more important to focus on their actions and motivations, which seems to be against helping their own people.

Well, the difference between the actual military and all these other groups is that the military is organized under the Constitution (specifically Article I, Section 8), whereas the other groups are not.

There really doesn't seem to be any meaningful difference between a militia and a gang. They're exactly the same: organized for some (usually unlawful) purpose, armed, dangerous, some form of leadership, pursuing their goals through violence or threats of violence. Very little difference between the Oath Keepers and the Crips.

I dont think this samantic argument is adding anything to the convo.

> which seems to be against helping their own people.

The twist is they honestly believe they are helping their own people. They are convinced FEMA is a private police force working for Biden and FEMA's aid is rounding up republicans to put into camps and by signing up for FEMA aid, you are signing over your house and personal property.

And with social media fanning the flames, it's a very tense environment and can get bloody quite fast if two wrong groups run into each other at the worst possible time :(

Militias are legal and existentially necessary for a free state per the Second Amendment, whereas gangs and armed thugs are not.

Semantics? In terms of the way these groups are seen by the public, covered by the media and treated by the government, yes. If they're white and Republican, they're probably a militia. Otherwise they're terrorists, thugs and gangsters. If they're black, toss in "Marxists" as well.

That depends. What are they doing?

Are they stealing, looting, or racketeering? -> gang

Are they trying to protect property from these activities, or guard people as they engage in recovery activities? -> militia

Labels aside, the whole story is nonsense:

> The North Carolina National Guard told CBS News in a statement on Monday that it had "no reports of our soldiers or airmen encountering any armed militia, any threats and any type of combatants. We are continuing to serve all those counties in need of our assistance."

> ...

> "The initial report stated there was a truck load of militia that was involved," the sheriff's office said. "However, after further investigation, it was determined Parsons acted alone and there were no truck loads of militia going to Lake Lure."

So not a gang and not a militia... One guy.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fema-crews-relocate-reported-th...

NC is an open carry state and firearms are not uncommon to be seen on a normal day. In the western side of the state, you should pretty assume that every resident is armed, because it’s just the way of the area. In a disaster torn area in that part of the state you should pretty much assume that everyone is well armed, but well armed doesn’t necessary mean that they have nefarious intentions, it might just mean they are letting people with nefarious intentions know it’s probably a good idea to behave.

Who knows what the real story actually is—I don’t trust the WaPo to provide proper context here. DC culture and opinion is not Western North Carolina culture and opinion. They are writing for a wholly different audience.

I live in the US and I have a lot of active duty & ex military members in my close circle of friends. One of the consistent trends I have noticed is the significant uptick in the number of LARPing/cosplaying military videos on Youtube, i.e. tackticool dudes. I was looking the other day at buying the sport shotgun for shooting clay, went out and did some search on youtube to find out more about the rifle.... the search result brought out pages of (unrelated videos, that youtube thinks you might be interested) videos of dudes in full combat uniforms(+ med kits) shooting weapons at ranges. Why they wearing all this gear ? My friends who spent years in active war zones wear jeans and T-shirts to the shooting ranges.

To me, those Youtube videos are symptoms that some weird shit brewing in our society and this news is just flares of this symptom.

The Gun Fetish subculture in the US have been weirdos for a very long time. I bought a gun decades ago to do some pistol shooting at the range, and doing online research was just as silly/surreal back then. Pages upon pages of jacked up dudes in Oakleys advertising all sorts of security and survivalist gear. Bald eagles and American flags everywhere. People wearing belt-fed ammo and kevlar vests. It's all marketing. You've got to sell the idea that there's danger everywhere, and your small town home is under imminent threat of invasion by some enemy.

Problem now is the algorithms. You go search for reviews for a 22 caliber pistol, and after a few searches, your various feeds are filled with militias, doomsday preppers, and all the usual right-wing tomfoolery.

What I find most interesting about modern society is that every subculture has these hardcore adherents.

It's so predictable now. I was at a friend's house a month or so back. He was showing off his fancy outdoor pizza oven, in which he would be making pizza in that evening.

First thing I asked him is, "How deep in to this are you?" I immediately knew there had to be pizza oven nerds online arguing over which pizza spatula (called a peel I learned) is best, and the ongoing battle between wood purists vs metal fanatics.

He was wondering how I knew so much. If you look in to any interest or hobby, the rabbit hole is deep, and the politics and patterns are typically the same. So I'm not surprised it applies to firearms as well.

"To me, those Youtube videos are symptoms that some weird shit brewing in our society and this news is just flares of this symptom."

Yeah. This has been brewing for a long time, going at least as far back as Reagan's "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are I'm from the government, and I'm here to help." But it has become way worse in recent years, with Trump using extreme fearmongering as a political tactic, Covid radicalizing people further, and social networks creating echo chambers that drive their users literally insane.

People have been talking about FEMA death camps and similar stuff for so long that there are now people who genuinely think the government is using natural disasters as an excuse to somehow attack them (or that they create these natural disasters in the first place). Some of the people who think this are actually part of the government!

It is not surprising that there are physical threats to people who are out there trying to help.

This is absolutely bonkers. We can't continue like this as a society. Algorithm-driven social networks have made free speech an attack vector against free democracies, and if we don't figure out how to recover from this, we're screwed. But I have no idea how to even begin to fix this.

Maybe if bots continue turning social networks into dead wastelands, people will leave them and go touch grass instead of sharing crazy conspiracy theories and shrimp Jesuses on Facebook. One can hope.

> concerns over “armed militia” threatening government workers in the region

I thought the US civil war wasn't scheduled until sometime in January... Why would these militias bother rescue operations, are they potentially from somewhere else than the state being rescued? Would seem very counter-productive if not.

There are lies about FEMA taking people homes and probably all sorts of other stuff. After all the hurricane was caused by space laser wielding democrats or whatever.

We’re in deep. The government can’t even rescue people without gun toting crazies making death threats. Pizzagate and the JFK resurrection and now this stuff.

America is doing fine. /s

What is an ''x2 truck'' as described in these reports, btw?

I took it as a count, "x2" as "two" and "x3" would have been "three".

I have no idea if there actually is a "X2" truck of some sort though.

Maybe x2 is their term for a side-by-side all terrain vehicle, known in the industry as a UTV or SxS?

Insane right wing lies have convinced them that FEMA is a paramilitary organization that is abducting people or putting them into camps. This was a common conspiracy theory starting during the Obama administration that is now built on top of the various lies from Republican politicians during this latest election cycle. Apparently it's reached a critical mass and the militias feel comfortable enough in the wake of the disaster to start going after people.

You're doing a disservice by making it sound like it is a fringe or even recent idea that the government is out to get people.

"The nine most terrifying words in the English language are 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help'". - Ronald Reagan, 1986-08-12

Official Republican policy for the better part of the last half century is that government is bad and out to harm you. Sure, it's gotten more extreme in recent years, but it's been building to this for as long as I've been alive.

"The government is bad. Elect us and we'll prove it to you!"

The "funny" thing (in a bleak and dark way) is that we heard lots of FEMA conspiracies in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina (2005) right in the middle of the Bush (Republican, for those not in the US) presidency.

So, it seems FEMA is this mysterious Democratic boogeyman shadow army that also uh, transcends both Republican and Democratic administrations?

I don't recall them during Katrina, but that was before social media took off. Mainly I saw discussion about FEMA's effectiveness and "not caring about black people." During Obama's administration that quickly morphed into right wing talking points on social media about FEMA stockpiling ammo to force people into concentration camps in Texas, which were popular enough they were spouted by my mom's neighbor.

Because there is a non-zero percent of Americans who are convinced that President Biden is creating hurricanes and FEMA is his secret police. And due to a poorly understood amendment, these folks have the right to own guns.

Because they're idiots, who believe everything they're told on X about FEMA blocking the delivery of aid?

(I think it's important to point out the responsibility of X/Musk, especially given the parallels with what could happen next November or January).

There's no militia it was one guy in a truck.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fema-crews-relocate-reported-th...

Also covered here:

https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/14/us/fema-helene-north-carolina...

I scroll through TikTok a fair bit, and recently encountered a FEMA/helicopter/conspiracy/paranoia video. My hope is that it was some bot/foreign-influence content, because it is much more concerning if the deranged comments are coming from actual people.

https://archive.is/WEhyN

Trumps lies and disinfo is entertaining... but when armed gangs start attacking FEMA workers it has to stop. We need adults in charge.

There was one guy. Not a militia and not a gang.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fema-crews-relocate-reported-th...

Can anybody present a TL;DR of the specific conspiracy theories in play here?

The dominant conspiracy theory here is that the Washington Post is always accurate

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fema-crews-relocate-reported-th...

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