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Nostalgia, Nationalism, and the US Militia Movement is an accessible primer on the contemporary US militia movement. Exploring the complicated history of militias in the United States, starting with the Revolutionary War period, this book leverages unique data from ethnographic fieldwork, in-depth interviews, and previously unseen archival materials from militia founder Norm Olson to detail the modern movement's origin and trajectory through the attempted insurrection of January 6th and beyond. This book uses the lenses of nostalgia and settler colonialism to explain militia members' actions and beliefs, including their understandings of both nationalism and masculinity. This approach situates militias ina broader political landscape and explains how and why they will continue to be relevant actors in American politics. A general audience will find this book approachable, and it will be of particular interest to people studying militias or other social movement organizations whose vision of an ideal nation rests on a nostalgic image of the past and potentially encourages political violence.

American Extremism explains how at the heart of the politics practiced by the militia movement is an attempt to define the nature of 'Americanism', and shows how militia members employ the myths, metaphors and perceived historical lessons of the American Revolution, the constitutional settlement and America's frontier experience to do so. Mulloy argues that militia members' search for the 'authority of history' leads them to a position best characterized as 'ahistorical historicism', in which political interests in the present are given greater weight than the demands of a historicall.

The militia movement is a right-wing movement that arose following controversial standoffs in the 1990s. It inherited paramilitary traditions of earlier groups, especially the conspiratorial, antigovernment Posse Comitatus. The militia movement claims that militia movement claims that militia groups are sanctioned by law but uncontrolled by government; in fact, they are designed to oppose a tyrannical government. Adherents believe that behind the "tyranny" is a left-wing, globalist conspiracy known as the New World Order. The movement's ideology has led some adherents to commit criminal acts, including stockpiling illegal weapons and explosives and plotting to destroy buildings or assassinate public officials, as well as lesser confrontations.