Skip to content

Michael Vavrus

Countering the Master Narrative

Menu
  • About Michael Vavrus
  • Commentaries
  • Chapters & Articles
  • Books
  • Papers
  • Workshops
Menu

“Patriots” and “Occupiers” at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge

Posted on February 10, 2016June 27, 2022 by Michael Vavrus

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)

            In case any of us missed it, four White people continue to “occupy” Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Harney County, Oregon.  This so-called “occupation” should not be confused with the Occupy Movement, which drew attention to economic inequality for 99% of population and is now connected to the rise in popularity of Bernie Sanders.

            The wildlife refuge “occupiers,” however, are very unlikely supporters of Sanders’ presidential aspirations.  Instead, these self-proclaimed “patriots” are more closely aligned with the 1% in their self-interested private goal to open up protected public lands for ranchers to graze their livestock wherever desired.  Not totally surprising, the anti-government rhetoric of the militias at Malheur can be traced to the long reach of the billionaire Koch brothers.

            For a moment, let’s consider the label “patriots”  that Malheur invaders gave themselves.  Stepping back in history – way back – maybe they are patriots in the sense that they are continuing a colonial project to remove any Native American indigenous claims to their ancestral lands. The ideology of patriotism has its origins in patriarchy and signals to male citizens to unite for the patria, or fatherland.  As one of the “occupiers” put it, “The only way to win a war is to kill enough of the enemy that they do not want to fight anymore.”  The colonial war continues for these patriots.

            As nearly anyone living in the settler colonies of the United States and Canada knows by simply looking around and noticing the near absence of any large pockets of indigenous populations, the “patriotic” colonial wars were quite effective.  Even the U.S. Senate has acknowledged this:

“Since the first European settlers arrived on this continent, Indians have lost 97 percent of their land and their population has been decimated by military assaults and fatal disease. These attacks were also designed to rob Indians of their very identity, pushing them to relinquish their language, arts and religion.”

            Canada for its part admitted last year through a Truth and Reconciliation Commission report that government and religious boarding schools for Indigenous children resulted in “cultural genocide.”

            One aspect of patriotism involves asserting imperial authority and status over other people and their lands.  Living in an empire, we can find plenty of modern examples of this kind of patriotism: military excursions into Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, and a very long list of covertly overthrown elected governments who disagree with U.S. foreign policy and the interests of the 1%.  For the armed militias at Malheur, patriotism serves as a settler-colony “just war” to defend their families from a federal government they consider illegitimate and to secure lands they believe belong to them.  

            For more than 800 years Christian doctrine proclaimed, according to British scholar Andrew Vincent, “the religious duty of citizens was to render themselves vulnerable to death for their patria.”  Maybe that is how these patriots religiously understand themselves.  As of today, the remaining four militias members have spent 40 days and 40 nights at Malheur, a figure that appears frequently in the Christian Bible to signify troubling times of hardship.

            Rather than writing off the Malheur militias as crazies, best to see them in a context of history and current anti-federal government politics.  For now, though, I’ll hold off to another day to further place this event within what the Europeans originally meant when they “discovered” a geographic location new to them, such as what is today the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

  • Fascism Is Happening and Bursting Democracy’s DamJuly 23, 2024
    Blog posted on Columbia University’s Teachers College Press site: https://www.tcpress.com/blog/fascism-happening-what-teachers/
  • Fascists Shed their Republican KKK Sheep’s Clothes – as directed by Stephen MillerJune 6, 2024
                Republicans are unhappy that a jury unanimously found their fascist leader guilty of 34 counts of fraud.  Stephen Miller, who served as a senior policy and speechwriter during Trump’s...
  • “Refuse Fascism” InterviewMay 30, 2023
    I was recently interviewed by RefuseFascism.org. Note: First 1 minute contains short clips from the full interview. Next, host Coco Das provides anti-fascist news and commentaries. At about 8 minutes...
  • A New Governing Regime: Far-Right ExtremismJuly 10, 2022
             It’s taking us far too long to recognize the ugly hand of fascism. Why, you may ask?  History demonstrates rising fascist politics from far-right movements become increasingly entrenched, operating...
  • Failed Coups & Far-Right Electoral PoliticsJune 20, 2022
    Adolph Hitler’s “behavior during imprisonment convinced the authorities that, like his political organization…he was no longer to be feared.  It is believed he will retire to private life and to...
© 2025 Michael Vavrus | Powered by Minimalist Blog WordPress Theme