The villains in The Movie of Tom Clancy's The Sum of All Fears were changed from Islamic radicals to neo-Nazi militia members, as the producers didn't want to inflame racial tensions so soon after 9/11.
The bad guys in the 1998 Steven Seagal film The Patriot (in which Seagal plays an immunologist!).
A right wing militia group is one of the one the bad guys in Blues Brothers 2000 (more or less filling the role the neo-Nazis played in the original film).
The novel the film is based on makes clear that the government survived and was restoring basic order until the militias broke its back, resulting in the hellhole the story takes place in.
The antagonists in The Postman, which takes place in a United States that collapsed after a civil war.
Von Jackson and his border vigilantes in Machete, even though they're secretly patsies to a Mexican drug lord.
When a news report claims that the events of the film are the result of a CIA bioweapon test gone wrong, a group of obvious militia types with " I Knew It!!" expressions are seen loading an arsenal of weaponry in their garage.
The 2000 movie Militia features a fascist militia stealing anthrax missiles.
Is frequently used as a Strawman Political.Ĭompare and contrast Red Scare, The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized, Yellow Peril and Malcolm Xerox. Usually a variant of the Corrupt Hick, but played as a serious villain instead of comic relief. Once again, debate rages as to whether or not they are just patriotic Americans concerned about the direction their country is going in, violent extremists who desire to overthrow the government, or simply a disparate collection of far-right fringe groups. Most of this has been attributed to a bad economy, the election of a black, Democratic President and anger over health care reform and immigration. Militias died down after the surge in patriotism that accompanied 9/11 (although some of the more radical groups contended that the whole thing was an inside job), as well as Clinton's replacement with a right-wing president, but the last couple of years have seen militia membership surge to levels not seen since The Nineties. The truth about them is a bit more complicated see the Analysis page for more. While the militia movement has antecedents going back decades (many militias themselves claim the "Minutemen" of The American Revolution as spiritual predecessors), most of these characters appeared during The Nineties in American media, particularly after the Ruby Ridge incident, the Waco Siege and the Oklahoma City bombing, which involved government confrontations with supposed Real Life versions of these characters. At the end, if they are convicted or punished, there is a typically an unsettling We Are Everywhere. When they are caught, like their communist brethren, they typically claim to be prisoners of war and appeal to the Geneva Convention, which the prosecutors have to work to shoot down. The methods the fanatics use are typically brazen violence and terrorism, with the government and visible minorities being the primary targets. The villains are members of an underground extremist militia which believes that The Government is going to declare martial law, seize everybody's guns, cede national sovereignty to the United Nations to form a One World Order, implant everyone with microchips to make it easier to track them, and start sending "patriots" like them to prison camps any day now - but not on their watch! Particularly unsympathetic examples will have them displaying neo-Nazi sympathies and blaming minorities for all of their country's problems.