Vigilantism against Migrants and Minorities

1 VIGILANTISM AGAINST MIGRANTS AND MINORITIES Concepts and goals of current research Miroslav Mareš and Tore Bjørgo This introduction chapter discuss various definitions, typologies and theories of vigilantism. It also presents the comparative research design of the present study, which contains case studies from seventeen countries across the world. Why research vigilantism against migrants and minorities? Vigilantism – generally understood as taking the law into your own hands without any legal authority – has long historical traditions. This phenomenon plays an important role in the modern world as well – in many different varieties. Some forms of vigilantism target (alleged or real) criminals or deviants within the community – whether that is punishment beatings and “knee-cappings” of offenders by paramilitaries in Northern Ireland (Silke 2007), “necklacing” of criminals in black townships in South Africa (Kučera and Mareš 2015) or “Sharia patrols” in Iran or some predominantly Muslim neighbourhoods in East London (Rubin 2001; Sinclair 2013). The case studies in this volume, however, specifically address out-group vigilantism, directed against migrants and minorities considered to represent an external crime threat to the community. Such vigilante activities target entire categories of “others” – ethnic minorities and/or migrants – often under the pretence of controlling their alleged criminality or norm-breaking. Ku Klux Klan lynchings of blacks in the United States in the recent past, contemporary street patrols against alleged criminal migrants in cities in Western Europe and Canada, self-proclaimed border guards on the borders to Mexico and Turkey, lynchings of Muslims by Hindu cow protection groups in India, lethal attacks on migrants and homosexuals in Russia, or party militias against alleged Roma criminals in Central Europe – these are examples of such vigilante activities. This modern wave of vigilantism directed against migrants and minorities 2 Miroslav Mareš and Tore Bjørgo in countries all over the world has triggered our interest into the recent developments of this phenomenon. A large part of such recent vigilante activities is connected with extreme right politics and xenophobic sentiments.1 However, to what extent and how specific cases are related to right-wing extremism is an empirical question to be investigated. Some of the phenomena we describe in this volume might also be studied from different perspectives: e.g. as cases of hate crime, racist violence or rightwing extremist terrorism (Bjørgo and Witte 1993; Bowling 1998; Levin & McDevitt 1993; Hall 2013; Ravndal 2017). These phenomena partially overlap with vigilantism against migrants and minorities, but only partially (see Figure 1.1 on page 00). These alternative perspectives would have covered some of the cases and events we focus on here, but left others out of the picture. By choosing to see the phenomena through the lens of vigilantism we can perceive some features and connections which would not appear through these alternative perspectives. In this study, we will address the following questions, making use of our comparative perspective on a broad range of cases:  How do these vigilante activists operate, and how are they organized? Can we develop a typology of modus operandi? FIGURE 1.1 The relationship between hate crime, right-wing terrorism and vigilantism against migrants and minorities. Concepts and goals of current research 3     What are the reasons, goals or purposes of this form of vigilante activism? We will explore official justifications, internal group strategies, as well as individual motivations. Under what kinds of circumstances do these vigilante activities emerge, flourish or fail? What are the facilitating and mitigating – or permissive and repressive – factors? What are the vigilante groups’ relationships with the police, other authorities and political parties, and how does it influence the group and its activities? How can our empirical material and findings contribute to the broader academic discussion on the phenomenon of vigilantism? One of the ambitions of this project has been to gather comparable data on a broad variety of cases of vigilantism against migrants and minorities and analyse the empirical patterns comparatively by addressing a number of relevant dimensions. This will enable us to identify and explain similarities and variation across cases. We have managed to establish a strong international team of experts who have produced case studies from different countries and contexts, collecting comparable data on the same set of issues. Conceptualizing vigilantism Various authors in the field are defining vigilantism rather differently, emphasising diverse aspects and criteria. The etymological root of the word “vigilantism” is in the Latin word “vigil”, which means “watchful” or “alert” (Osborne 2005: 39). Vigiles (“Cohortes Vigilum”) served as firemen patrols and also as municipal police during night hours in the ancient Rome. They belonged under the governmental structures at that time (Cartwright 2016). The current use of the terms vigilante or vigilantism has its roots in the Spanish word “vigilante”. It means “watchman”, “guard”, “guardian” or “regulator” (Kirschner 2011: 572). The modern term “vigilantism” – in contrast to the ancient historical legacy – is dominantly connected with non-governmental actors. These actors are active in the enforcement of subjectively perceived “law and order” and they act autonomously from governmental power. Eduardo Moncanda defines vigilantism as “the collective use or threat of extra-legal violence in response to an alleged criminal act” (Moncanda 2017: 408). However, the exact concept and definition of vigilantism is still being discussed among various scholars. For example, this above-mentioned Moncanda’s definition does not include the element of nonstate actors (the extra-legal police violence can then be subsumed under this definition). Moncanda also understands vigilantism as a group activity (Moncanda 2017: 408). However, some individuals can do vigilante activities without engagement in an organizational structure. Although we do not have any examples of that in our volume, some lone actor terrorists do have a dimension of vigilantism behind their violent activities.2 4 Miroslav Mareš and Tore Bjørgo We can sum up these approaches in the working “traditional” definition of vigilantism, which we define as “the use of extra-legal enforcement of a particular conception of justice or a threat or intention to use such enforcement, carried out by informal actors, with the purpose to protect subjectively perceived ‘law and order’”. The frequently used criteria of vigilantism were elaborated by Les Johnston (1996). He identified six main elements of this phenomenon. According to Johnston: (1) it involves planning and premeditation by those engaging in it; (2) its participants are private citizens whose engagement is voluntary; (3) it is a form of ‘autonomous citizenship’ and, as such, constitutes a social movement; (4) it uses or threatens the use of force; (5) it arises when an established order is under threat from the transgression, the potential transgression, or the imputed transgression of institutionalized norms; (6) it aims to control crime or other social infractions by offering assurances (or ‘guarantees’) of security both to participants and to others (Johnston 1996: 220) The condition of using extra-legal force – or at least an explicit or implicit threat of the use of such force – is a challenge to researching extreme right vigilantism in the modern world. Due to legal conditions in democratic countries the official goals of vigilante groupings are usually declared to be within the borders of legality, despite the fact that the real intention of vigilante activists might well be to make use of extra-legal force. Many recent groups that we consider as vigilante in our volume do not act against the law of the countries in which they operate, and they avoid the actual use of violence (although they do display a capacity for violence). Some of them even declare readiness to cooperate with law enforcement agencies, rescue services or military forces. On the other hand, they were established autonomously with the intention to demonstrate their capability to act besides the present governmental agencies. Even if they sometimes declare that they want to be part of the governmental security systems, they do not want to lose their organizational independence. In fact, they understand themselves as a challenge to present security policy and they often struggle to use their capability in the security field for propagandist and other political issues (mobilization of new supporters, strengthening of recent ties in their collective, to show their capability to act for domestic or foreign allies etc.). The identification of real goals can be difficult; however, it’s an important part of the current research. Our re-conceptualization of vigilantism also requires dropping the criterion of clear extra-legal activity by vigilantes (despite the fact that in many cases also current vigilantes break the law). We substitute this condition with the element Concepts and goals of current research 5 of public performance of their own capabilities for violence to counter activities and groups of people that are perceived as social anomalies by vigilantes. They want to win sympathy and support from the part of the public who are inclined to share their opinions and attitudes. The fifth of Johnson’s element is related to the threat from transgression is not necessary in some cases of vigilantism. The threat may not be real, but to a certain category of people it is perceived or constructed as a threat to the social order. However, how broadly the group is perceived in the community as a threat seems to be an important variable for the growth and success of vigilante groups. Our re-conceptualization of vigilantism is also generally still based on Johnson’s definition and criteria discussed above, however, with some significant changes. Our core definition of vigilantism refers to organized civilians acting in a policing role without any legal authorization, using or displaying a capacity for violence, claiming that the police (or other homeland security agencies) are either unable or unwilling to handle a perceived crime problem. However, there are several border cases that may stretch or challenge the definition, such as unorganized mobs and lynchings, or individual vigilantism and lone actor terrorists. There are also some vigilante groups that are tacitly tolerated by the police or other authorities. Some organizations (in particular militias) are doing vigilante patrols or other crime-fighting activities as a minor side task. Moreover, some citizen patrol groups are declaring themselves as non-violent but may still appear rather intimidating. However, vigilantism is not a black or white phenomenon. With a core definition of vigilantism, it is to be expected that there will be a number of cases in the grey area. Specific vigilante activities should be analysed within a time and context related framework. The use of vigilantism can be temporarily limited, real goals of some groups can be hidden (they can declare only goals without threat of the use of force, but they can intend to use it), or a mixed form of activities can be found (for example, an interconnection between vigilante groupings and private security companies in some countries). Vigilantism can also be understood as an instrument to weaken the enemies in civic and ethnic conflicts and it can serve as a training activity for paramilitary groups. Moreover, in some cases it can be supported by external actors (including hostile states) with the goal to weaken the state authorities. In this sense can it be subsumed under hybrid campaigns or hybrid warfare (Mareš 2017b). There are several theories for explaining vigilantism. David Kowalewski identified two main theories – the “frontier” theory (represented by Richard Brown and Roger McGrath) and the “counter-movement” theory (represented by Kowalewski himself). The frontier theory is inspired by the experience of the “Wild West” and it tries to explain vigilantism as a reaction to the lack of “law and order” governmental authorities. The “counter-movement” theory explains vigilantism as a reaction to the rise of deviancy (mostly growing crime or perception of crime) in society. Vigilantes struggle to keep their life environment and life-style (Kowalewski 2002: 427–429). 6 Miroslav Mareš and Tore Bjørgo We also want to explore the various reasons, drivers or goals behind vigilante activities – from an actor-oriented point of view. We suggest the following types:    External justifications present the official mission of the group towards the public, the media and authorities: to protect the community against certain crime threats that the police and other authorities do not have the capacity (or will) to handle alone. These justifications are tailored to resonate with widely held concerns in society (e.g. on crime or migration) and issues high on the news media’s agenda. Vigilante groups claim to represent the interests of society in order to control crime or other social anomies. Group strategies are the internal reasoning for why leaders believe it will serve the interests of the group to engage in vigilante activities, typically to attract media attention and public support, promote the organization and mobilize new members, to maintain group cohesion, or to undermine the legitimacy of the government. It can also serve as a training activity for paramilitary groups. These reasons are not meant for public consumption. Individual motivations are the drivers behind individual participation in vigilante activities and groups. Such motivations may have to do with a desire to improve one’s personal identity and status, in particular by individuals who have a tarnished reputation as trouble-makers or criminals. Others may be attracted by the militarism or belonging to a strong group. These individual motivations are usually not fit to be publicized, as they may undermine the official justification. However, some participants may also be driven by motives that are congruent with the official mission of the group. In the concluding chapter we will discuss to what extent these three types of reasons are matching our empirical cases. In our volume we are dealing with vigilantism against migrants and minorities. This is a specific segment of vigilantism (besides religious vigilantism against deviants in their communities, antifascist vigilantism against fascist groups etc.). We have a broad range of cases from Western and Eastern Europe, North America, Israel/Palestine and India. In all cases included in this book we can identify the declared goal of protecting society or the community against groups and behaviour that are – at least from the point of view of vigilantes – considered unacceptable. An anomic behaviour (mostly crime or breaking the moral norms of majority) is usually connected with specific groups of people – immigrants, ethnic or religious minorities etc. Usually vigilantes claim to protect the traditional societal order (as exemplified by the cases of Hindu vigilantes in India and anti-homosexual vigilantes in Russia, see chapters by Ahuja and Laryš, both in this volume). However, some contemporary vigilantes imagine themselves as protectors of certain liberal Western values as well (mostly in protection of women’s rights against Muslims). A specific case is Jewish vigilantes Concepts and goals of current research 7 on the occupied territories who defend the territory to which they claim national ownership (see Gazit in this volume). The protected community is usually the traditional major nation state (see Koehler’s chapter on Germany in this volume), however, it can also be only a local community or a region. The protected object is often used in the name of some groups, as in the case of Britain First! (see Ralph-Morrow in this volume). The pannational and “civilization” arguments are also used, as an example of the “Defend Europe” by a multinational crew of European Identitarian shows. Even if vigilantes do not consider the whole target group as “criminal” or “problematic”, they use racial, ethnic or religious profiling in their activities. In many cases they want to protect their “own” community not only against “extraneous” entities, but also against their supporters, for example, Russian vigilante terrorists targeted also officials who helped migrants from Caucasus and Central Asia (see chapter by Martin Laryš). These “extraneous entities” are mostly accused of criminal behaviour (for example, the frequently used term “Gypsy crime” in Central Europe by local vigilantes), which is sometimes specified (“against the rape culture”), or of non-respect to other norms of the majority society (rejection of handshake etc.). They justify their engagement with the argument that the government is not able to solve pressing problems by its own means and institutions. We can find various relations to governmental institutions – from cooperative approach (attempts of cooperation of some chapters of the Soldiers of Odin with local police) to hostility against the state (as in the case of some US militias). Some vigilantes want to fully substitute the police – as members of one Slovak group claimed, for example – while others want to improve the security situation alongside with the regular law enforcement agencies (which are to be informed in case the vigilantes observe criminal behaviour), as Nordic chapters of the Soldiers of Odin (see chapters in this volume). Vigilantism is in many countries an important part of the national history – as is the case with the Ku Klux Klan in the United States or Hindu vigilantism in India. Current vigilantes in such countries continuously follow their predecessors. In some regions – as in East and Central Europe – the historical legacies of vigilantes from the interwar and war period (used mostly against political opponents and Jews at that time) were transferred into new forms of traditional style party militias vigilantism, aimed mostly against Roma and migrants (the Protection Corps of the Workers’ Party in the Czech Republic, for example). The wave of military trained paramilitaries in Central and Eastern Europe and street patrols in Western Europe seems to be a new phenomenon, mainly emerging as a reaction to the migration crisis. Formations without deeper ideological backgrounds were established during this crisis. They did not use (or avoided) national legacies of right-wing extremism. This is the case with some of the street patrols (e.g. the Soldiers of Odin in some countries) and parts of the Identitarian movement. Rejection of perceived Islamization (specifically counter-Jihadism) and migration are the most important ideas of their 8 Miroslav Mareš and Tore Bjørgo program. On the other hand, at least some vigilantes used the traditions of national fascism (as CasaPound in Italy) or they used ideologies which were not dominant in the national history (as vigilante neo-Nazi terrorists in Russia). Many national right-wing ideologies are in the background of various vigilante groups (as Kahanism in Israel, Hungarism in Hungary, German National Socialism etc.). A mixture of right-wing nationalist and religious beliefs is typical of Israeli or Hindu vigilantes. Traditional “white supremacism” is propagated by the Ku Klux Klan. Vigilantism and interconnected phenomena Vigilantism is or can be interconnected with various other forms of activities. In the tradition of US history, lynching is a specific phenomenon which frequently accompanied vigilantism. It is named after Charles Lynch, who was the head of an irregular court in Virginia in the second half of the eighteenth century (Page 1901). However, lynching as an act is typical of many historical and contemporary societies in the world. Manfred Berg and Simon Wendt define in their study about the international dimension of this phenomenon lynching as “extralegal punishment, usually entailing death or severe physical harm, perpetrated by groups claiming to represent the will of the larger community” (Berg and Wendt 2011: 5). From a different perspective, vigilantism can be seen as a form of “informal policing” where they claim a role in maintaining law and the social order. Research on policing emphasizes the distinction between the police as an institution and policing as an activity or process (del Barrio Romero et al. 2009). Policing in this broad sense can be carried out by organizations other than the public police, such as private security companies and various forms of voluntary policing, some of which may be sanctioned by the police. Vigilantism may then be seen as civilians acting in a police role without any legal authority or any sanctioning by the state (Button 2002). In this perspective, such vigilantism may challenge one of the fundamental characteristics of statehood – that the state is able to maintain a monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force (Weber 1922). One example of this is the Danish “DanerVærn” (literally, “Protect Danes”) which emerged in 2014. In its manifest, it provides an archetypal justification for vigilantism: DanerVærn is a civil rights and vigilante group established in the recognition that the Danish state is no longer living up to its first and primary duty: to protect its citizens. According to “the social contract”, we renounce our right to weapons and self-defense, in exchange of the state protecting us. The state has broken that contract. […] We are free people; it is any free people’s right to defend ourselves. The state has the necessary means to do so. If the state does not defend us, we will defend ourselves, with all necessary means … If the state withdraws, we step forward; if the state steps forward, we will withdraw. (DanerVærn manifest, 2014)3 Concepts and goals of current research 9 DanerVærn also argues in its bylaws that they are not political group – a rather paradoxical claim given that their statement above represents a fundamental challenge to the defining character of the state: the monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force. Apart from its grandiose rhetoric, DanerVærn did not do much in terms of actual vigilante activities, and therefore did not justify a separate case study in this volume.4 However, the degree to which vigilante groups are challenging the state’s monopoly of violence may vary considerably. Whereas some vigilante groups operate more or less in defiance of the police and state institutions (e.g. some fascist and Nazi vigilantes), most groups seek some kind of tacit or explicit acceptance by the police or other state agencies or from politicians (Kučera 2017: 18–19; Button 2002). In fact, many of the current extreme right vigilante groupings try to cooperate with governmental authorities, although they also want to keep their autonomy. Another overlap can be found between vigilantes and militias. The term militia is used in various meanings. For example, it was used as the name of regular police forces in some former Eastern bloc countries (including the Soviet Union), or it was used to label paramilitary units of political parties (Capoccia 2005: 60). Recently the term “militia” is frequently used in conflict research. Sabine C. Carey and Neil J. Mitchell define militias within the context of counterinsurgency campaigns and civil wars as “armed groups linked to the government and separate from the regular forces” (Carey and Mitchell 2016). In specific situations, militias in this sense can be involved also in policing activities. In cases where they claim they are in an autonomous position towards the government, they can be labelled as vigilante militia units. Some militia movements are in direct opposition to the government, such as parts of the modern militia movement in the USA, claiming that the federal government has been taken over by “the New World Order” or the “Zionist Occupation Government” (Barkun 1998: 58–61). The term “paramilitarism” is in many cases used for designation of the same actors as the term “vigilantism”, for example, in case of the Hungarian Guard (Stojarová 2012: 265, 277). However, the term covers a very broad spectrum of cases. Governmental, semi-governmental as well as non-governmental actors are labelled as paramilitaries. Scobell and Hammitt categorize paramilitary groups according to their dependent, semi-autonomous and autonomous position towards the state as well as according to their loyalty, semi-loyalty and disloyalty to the regime (Scobell and Hammitt 1998: 222). In our concept, paramilitary units are focused on armed conflicts (as auxiliary forces in regular wars, as insurgency or counterinsurgency units or as symmetric armed forces in civil wars) (Mareš 2012a: 9–54). We define paramilitarism as a collective activity, organized in a hierarchic structure, which aims at participation in internal or international armed conflicts (including preparedness in such conflicts), where the strength and firepower of the paramilitary forces is significantly lower than the strength and firepower of the main armed forces. Paramilitary units are uniformed or they have clear insignia. They are established on non-commercial bases. Paramilitary units can be used (but not necessarily!) also for policing purposes. If they have an 10 Miroslav Mareš and Tore Bjørgo independent, non-governmental character, their activity can be labelled as vigilantism. Vigilante and paramilitary activities can be used in militarist propaganda. In the contemporary era, militarism serves in propaganda of the extreme right as a contra-factor to the alleged “decadency” and weakness of liberal democracies. Modern armies are rejected as being instruments of globalized power structures without real impact on national interests (professional soldiers are often criticized as puppets, mercenaries etc.). For example, in Central and Eastern Europe, rejection of the NATO policy has a specific dimension in many countries. Several pro-Kremlin paramilitary and vigilante groupings were established during the Ukrainian crisis. Non-state paramilitary formations, organized mostly by extreme right structures, are propagated as an alternative to regular armies (Potočňák and Vicenová 2015). They also try to appeal to and recruit military veterans and even recent professional soldiers as members (Nečej and Stojar and 2013: 30–32). In some modern conflicts (former Yugoslavia, Caucasus, Ukraine etc.) non-state or quasi-state paramilitary formations played an important role. This fact served as a model for other paramilitary and militia groupings, and such formations can later be involved in vigilante struggle. An interconnection with the military re-enactment scene and with the so-called survivalist or military prepper scene is typical of some of their activists (Mareš 2016). They organize military trainings (also with military equipment) and try to be ready for future military conflicts. In some Central European countries (the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria) paramilitary units have been involved in ethnic riots (mostly anti-Romani) (Mareš 2012b). Vigilantism can be interconnected with terrorism as well. A widely used definition of terrorism is that it refers to violence – or the threat of violence – used and directed in the pursuit of – or in the service of – a political aim (Hoffman 2006). Terrorism can be divided into state and non-state forms. In case of non-state forms we can distinguish between insurgent and vigilante terrorism (Schmid 2011). In contrast to insurgent terrorism, vigilante terrorism makes use of terrorist methods to uphold a certain social or political order. Vigilante terrorism protects the identity of the “own threatened group” against “the others”. These “others” are perceived as a deviant and/or criminal threat (Waldmann 1998: 92–94). It is important to mention that only some varieties of vigilante activities can be subsumed under terrorism, however, most of the various patrols, crime control activities at local level etc. do not qualify as terrorist (Schmid, Jongman, Stohl and Fleming 1988: 46). Vigilante violence against migrants and minorities is also partially overlapping with hate crime. The overlap is only partial, as vigilantism includes a dimension of informal policing or street justice against groups of people accused of involvement in crime – a dimension that is not present in most incidents of hate crime. There are also many vigilante activities that cannot be labelled as hate crimes, simply because no crimes are necessarily committed. Most of the vigilante militias, border patrols or street patrols described in this volume did not commit violent or other Concepts and goals of current research 11 criminal acts as part of their vigilante activities, even if there was often a lot of hatred and prejudices behind their vigilante activities. Hate crime is commonly defined as “criminal acts committed with a bias motive” (OSCE 2009: 16) or as “a criminal act that is motivated, at least in part, by the group affiliation of the victim” (Gerstenfeld 2011: 11). Other definitions emphasize that it is crimes motivated by hatred towards specific groups (Hall 2013). Thus, violence against certain categories of people just because they allegedly take our jobs or belong to an inferior race is definitely hate crime or bias crime, but it is not vigilante violence unless the justification for violence is a claim that the victim category is connected to crime. However, vigilante violence may also be justified by claims that the targeted group is threatening the established social or moral order, which for example was a justification for the widespread violence against homosexuals in Russia (see Laryš in this volume). This is a dimension Barbara Perry (2001) brings into her conceptualization of hate crime: Hate crime involves acts of violence and intimidation, usually directed towards already stigmatised and marginalised groups. As such it is a mechanism of power and oppression, intended to reaffirm the precarious hierarchies that characterise a given social order. It attempts to re-create simultaneously the threatened (real or imagined) hegemony of the perpetrator’s group and the “appropriate” subordinate identity of the victim’s group. (Perry 2001: 10) As we will come back to in the following empirical chapter and the comparative analysis at the end, some of the vigilante violence described in this volume has this dimension of keeping minorities down in their subordinate place or frighten them from challenging the social or moral order. A typology of vigilantism Vigilantism can be categorized according to various criteria. In their classical typology, Jon Rosenbaum and Peter Sederberg divided vigilantism in relation to the intended purposes of vigilante actions. They identified: 1. 2. 3. Crime control vigilantism “directed against people believed to be committing acts proscribed by the formal legal system”; Social group control vigilantism as “establishment violence directed against groups that are competing for, or advocating a redistribution of, values within the system can be considered social group control vigilantism”; Regime control vigilantism as “the use of violence by established groups to preserve the status quo at times when the formal system of rule enforcement is viewed as ineffective or irrelevant” (Rosenbaum and Sederberg 1974: 548–556). 12 Miroslav Mareš and Tore Bjørgo The first two categories are the most relevant here. The intensity and brutality of used violence (or the potential to such violence) can be another criterion of typology (Kowalewski 2002: 434). The armed or non-armed character of vigilantes can be interconnected with this issue. Vigilantism can be divided according to the dominancy of violent activity in comparison with other forms of activities (for example, military training or patrolling). In this sense we can identify “single-issue” vigilante groups, dominancy of vigilantism in the activities of some groups or subsidiarity or even random vigilantism in comparison with other activities. “Single issue” vigilantism means that the group provides vigilante activities only (as the Minutemen Project in the USA). Dominancy of vigilantism is characterized by a majority of vigilante activities in comparison with other activities. The Hungarian Guard provides a contrasting example, as it was active besides vigilantism also in the cultural and in the military sphere. Subsidiary or random vigilantism is yet an opposite case; for example, the rare vigilante activities of Slovak Conscripts as they are dominantly focused on military combat. For the Nordic Resistance Movement in Sweden, vigilante patrols are also a minor part of their activities (Gardell, this volume). Categories of high primacy (“vigilantism is both necessary and sufficient for sustaining the organization that carries”), medium primacy (“vigilantism may be a necessary condition but is not sufficient for an organization’s survival”) and low primacy of vigilantism (“vigilantism can be one among a plurality of organizational activities”) were presented by Moncanda. These categories are related to the level of importance of vigilantism for survival of certain groups as organized structures (Moncanda 2017: 414–115). With respect to the duration of vigilante activities or organizations we can identify long-term (years), mid-term (months) and short-term (weeks, days, or even single-case vigilantism). The political background of vigilante activists must be taken into account, which is a main theme of our book. Some vigilantes maintain that they are not motivated politically; their main goal is to eliminate crime (Schmid, Jongman, Stohl and Flemming 1988: 46). However, claiming that the authorities are not fulfilling their duty to protect the citizens is nevertheless challenging the monopoly of the state on crime prevention, and holds an implicit political agenda. Moreover, a large part of vigilantes operate with some form of explicit political goals. These “political vigilantes” can be divided according to their specific ideological (for example, extreme right vigilantism or anti-fascist vigilantism) or religious (for, example, Islamist vigilantism) background. The typology elaborated by Marx and Archer can be used for understanding the relations between vigilantes and the police or other governmental security forces. Their main criteria are encouragement or non-interference on the one hand, and opposition or suppression on the other hand. This typology is based on research of the US self-defence groups at the turn 1960s/1970s. Marx and Archer stated that these groups were different from traditional vigilantism, because “they have not killed or taken the law into their own hands” (Marx and Archer 1971: 53). Our view of vigilantism is wider in this book. However, a potential collaboration of Concepts and goals of current research 13 vigilantes with the police and or other security forces is based on the informal or unofficial base in this concept, because in case of formalization and official recognition of such collaboration these groups lose their vigilante character (they can be labelled as voluntary auxiliary forces etc.). Some “real” vigilante groups can hide their real goals (see above) and can declare their willingness to cooperate with the police for tactical reasons. In contrast, in some societies traditional violent vigilantism can be supported or tolerated by official security forces. Police officers may turn a blind eye or even take an active part in vigilante activities in their free-time.5 With respect to these facts we can take over Marx’s and Archers’s scheme for the purpose of this book and we can divide vigilante groups into: 1. 2. 3. 4. Vigilante groups supplemented and encouraged by the police and/or other governmental security forces (these groups try to cooperate with the police or other governmental security forces and they are from their side unofficially respected as partners); Vigilante groups supplemental and opposed by the police and/or other governmental security forces (these groups try to cooperate with the police or other governmental security forces, however, they are rejected by them); Vigilante groups that are adversarial and encouraged by the police and/or other governmental security forces (they do not want to cooperate with the police or with other security forces, but they are tolerated or even encouraged by them); Vigilante groups that are adversarial and opposed by police and/or other governmental security forces (they do not want to cooperate with the police or with other security forces, they are not respected and are rejected by them) (Marx and Archer 1971: 59–61). In specific cases vigilantes can use violence against the police, mostly if the police are understood as an ally of groups which are targeted by vigilantes (for example, if the police protect targeted ethnic minorities). Regarding the typology above it is important to mention that the police staff can be divided in opinion over whether and how intensively to cooperate with vigilantes. In specific cases some police forces (for example, the municipal police) can be more open to such cooperation than other forces (for example, the state police). For the purposes of this categorization, the police staff is defined as officers acting as representatives of their own institution. Policemen acting in their free-time for vigilante purposes are not considered as governmental representatives. Vigilantism can be categorized with respect to the environment and the regime in which vigilante activities are carried out. In relation to the conflict situation we can see vigilantism in pre-conflict, conflict and post-conflict situations (Häggqvist 2017). From the point of view of regime stability vigilantism can be carried out in stabile or unstable regimes. According to the character of the regime we can identify vigilantism in nondemocratic regimes (authoritarian or totalitarian), transitional regimes and democratic regimes (Kučera and Mareš 2015). 14 Miroslav Mareš and Tore Bjørgo The division into local, regional, national and transnational vigilantism can be used for understanding the geographical scope of vigilante activities. This scope can be related to the organization and the structures of vigilante groups (including the use of specific names as a franchise – as the spread of “Soldiers of Odin”) or to the spread of inspiration on tactical/operational level (for example, patrolling in Roma settlements). With regard to the general dimension of vigilante activities we can identify conventional or traditional vigilantism, carried out in rural or urban milieus, usually in public areas (patrolling, “hunting” enemies etc.). Recently, “cyber-vigilantism” (or internet-vigilantism) is on the rise, carried out in cyber space (Smallridge, Wagner and Crowl 2016; Trottier 2017), such as hacking of Jihadist accounts and websites by the Anonymous and various anti-Islamist hackers (Drmola 2017). In this volume we are dealing only with conventional vigilantism, despite the fact that extreme right cyber-vigilantism (mostly anti-Islamic) can also be found. The most unconventional case is the maritime border patrol organized by an Identitarian group that crowd-funded and rented a ship to patrol the Mediterranean Sea against migrant boats (see Gattinara’s chapter on France in this volume). The spectrum of vigilantism in contemporary world A broad spectrum of varieties of vigilantism can be found in the contemporary world (Abrahams 1998). In some countries and regions deep traditions of vigilantism and several historical waves can be found, for example, in the United States where vigilantism is a dominant theme in many (if not most) Hollywood movies as well as in the gun culture. In other regions current vigilantism is caused by recent development without historical legacies. If we take into account the geopolitical character and ideological background, we can identify several most important categories of current vigilantism. It is important to mention that in this chapter we present only a basic overview of this phenomenon. In the recent era of powerful drug cartels, vigilante groups fighting these cartels are popular in many countries of Latin America and in the Caribbean (Layton, Rodríguez, Moseley and Zizumbo-Colunga 2014: 99–101). Vigilante activities are very strong also in a large part of the so called Third world, especially in subSaharan Africa. According to Thomas G. Kirsch and Tilo Grätz, vigilante actions here often have a “breathtakingly blunt, brutal message” (Kirsch and Grätz 2010: 2). Vigilantism is here sometimes carried out by long-lasting, formalized groups. Probably the most famous are the Nigerian Bakassi boys in Nigeria (Smith 2004). Various vigilantes are active also in Southeast Asia and on the Indian subcontinent. Recently, religious background has played an important role in vigilante activities. In India it is connected mostly with Hindu dogmatic religious extreme rightist ideology (Ajuha and Prakash 2017, Ajuha in this volume). In Southeast Asia, vigilante Buddhism is on the march (Lehr 2017). In many Muslim countries, Islamic vigilantism has been on the rise in the last decades, for example in Iran (Rubin 2001), in Indonesia (Tyson 2013) or in South Africa, where the famous group Concepts and goals of current research 15 People Against Gangsterism and Drugs (PAGAD), founded in 1996, is operating (Monaghan 2004). Several cases of Islamic vigilantism in Western countries attracted public and media attention, such as the case of Sharia patrols in London in 2013–2014 (Sinclair 2013) or the so called Sharia police in Germany in 2014 (Mareš and Veselý 2015). This form of Islamic vigilantism is probably inspired by the governmental or semi-governmental “religious police” or by religious militias in Islamic states or terrorist proto-states (such as the Islamic State in Iraq and Levant). Extreme right politics is interconnected with vigilantism aimed mostly at ethnic and religious minorities (however, also at the LGBT community or homeless people) in numerous European and North American countries. Recently, vigilante activities are justified mostly as a reaction to the migration crisis. In some countries, extreme right vigilantism is caused by a specific domestic situation, as exemplified by the loyalist vigilantism in Northern Ireland (Silke 2007) or the Jewish extreme right vigilantism in the Israeli-occupied West Bank (Gazit 2015, this volume). Extreme right violence aimed at ethnic and religious minorities led to the creation of vigilante formations consisting of members of these minority communities. In the 1990s, Jewish self-defence groups were organized, in several East and Central European countries Romani home guards protected their communities during anti-Gypsy riots (Mareš 2012b: 294–295). According to some scholars, the anti-fascist activities of the Antifa and similar groups have a vigilante character, because they chase Nazi groups off the streets, punish them by using (sometimes) brutal violence, and in some cases enforce anti-racist and anti-Fascist law when the state authorities are allegedly nonactive against right-wing extremist violence and propaganda (Kučera 2010). Vigilantism and the extreme right Our book deals with vigilantism against migrants and minorities, which in most cases is connected with the extreme right. Conceptualizing extreme right politics poses a difficult challenge (Rydgren 2018). Several key terms (such as the extreme right, far right, right-wing extremism, right wing radicalism, and right-wing populism) are given different meanings by different scholars. Moreover, these terms are also often used synonymously. Various scholars use diverse terms in various meanings or – on the contrary – they use various terms synonymously (as the extreme right, far right, right-wing extremism, right wing radicalism and rightwing populism). This situation causes definitional confusion. Attempts to define the extreme right are often connected only with specific actors, for example with political parties (Mudde 2000) or with violent and terrorist groups (Holbrook and Taylor 2013). In this book we were inspired by some of the above mentioned authors (mostly by Cas Mudde) and we define the far right as a part of the political spectrum where the ideological core is based on intolerant nationalism, nativism and demands for strict “law and order” policy in the fields which are important for maintaining the 16 Miroslav Mareš and Tore Bjørgo preferred governmental order (usually on a separate territory, in a national state or in a pan-national entity). Under the broad label of the far right, a distinction is commonly made between the extreme right and the radical right. Right-wing extremist groups usually accept or even condone violence. They also reject the values of a democratic constitutional state. Between the extreme right and the traditional right is a field which can be labelled as radical right, and which is populated mainly by right-wing populist parties and some anti-immigration organizations. These parties and groups operate within the framework of democracy but they also share some of the outlook of the extreme right in terms of nationalism, nativism and demands for strict “law and order” policy. Vigilante movements tend to emerge within or in the vicinity of right-wing extremist movements but depending on their views on violence and democracy, they may also be closer to the radical right, seeking – and sometimes receiving – political support from these right-wing populist parties. We can identify several ideological sub-categories of the extreme-right. In a simplified way it can be: 1. 2. 3. 4. Authoritarian conservatism (based on traditional anti-egalitarian societal concepts, it can be interconnected with religious dogmas); Fascism/neo-fascism + Nazism/neo-Nazism (based in extreme right politics from the first half of the 20st century and its ideological innovation); “New right”, “Identitarianism” or “Alt-right” (its part, based on ideologically adrift politics rooted in post-material conflicts in modern societies) (Bötticher and Mareš 2012) White supremacy, claiming that the white race has a natural right to dominate other races, represented by e.g. the Ku Klux Klan and similar openly racist movements. Vigilantism is historically and ideologically an expression and instrument of a part of extreme right politics. The struggle for “law and order” and the proclaimed protection of the own nation or a pan-national group or race is a common justification for the use of vigilantism. Vigilantism is typically connected more to the first two above mentioned categories (including vigilantes in South Africa in late era of the apartheid, see Haysom 1986). However, recently also groupings belonging modern extreme “New Right” or “Identitarian” movements are sometimes involved in vigilante activities as well (e.g. the maritime patrols against migrants on the Mediterranean, organized by identitarians, see Gattinara in this volume). White supremacy groups like the Klan have also been behind highly violent vigilante activities (see Blee and Latif, this volume). Vigilantism is used by various extreme right actors. It can be connected with political parties, mostly with party militias (such as the Hungarian Guard and Jobbik). Paramilitary groups with military training can be used for vigilante purposes (as the Slovak recruits). Organizations from the milieu of social movements or subcultures can organize vigilante activities (for example, the National Radical Concepts and goals of current research 17 Camp in Poland). There exist various forms of “single-issue” vigilante groups (for example, some chapters of the Soldiers of Odin and the Les Calaisiens en Colère) with no or limited links to the far right (Bjørgo and Gjelsvik; and Castelli Gattinara on France, both in this volume). Right-wing extremist individuals or groups can also be involved in vigilante terrorist activities (as the Ku Klux Klan). Regarding the last point, vigilante terrorism is one of the categories of rightwing extremist terrorism from the typology by Ehud Sprinzak (besides revolutionary terrorism, reactive terrorism, racist terrorism, millenarian terrorism and youth counterculture terrorism). Sprinzak stated: “Vigilante terror is used by individuals and groups who believe that the government does not adequately protect them from violent groups or individuals and that they must protect themselves” (Sprinzak 1995: 29). Several significant waves of extreme right vigilantism can be found in modern history. The rise of Ku Klux Klan in the late 1860s was repeated in several later eras of the Klan’s development (Blee and Latif in this volume). Paramilitaries and party militias operated after the First World War in Europe (Gerwarth, Horne 2013) and in the 1920s and the 1930s they were involved in political fights during the era of the rise of fascism. Latin American extreme right “death squads” and other groupings were used against leftist activists and criminals in the second half of the twentieth century (Huggins 1991: 2–5). In the 1990s a part of racist subcultures (mostly racist skinheads) created vigilante structures in Western democracies and in the post-communist area (Mareš 2012b: 287). In Central and Eastern Europe a new generation of extreme right vigilantes was inspired by the Hungarian Guard in the late 2000s and early 2010s. At the same time vigilantism was connected with the reaction to growing migration in Western democracies (some militias in the US, neo-fascist patrols in Italy etc.). A recent wave of vigilantism in Europe and in the USA is closely linked to the migration crisis in the mid of the second decade of the twenty first century. Of course, also many specific national variants of vigilantism arose in the past decades. The recent state of vigilantism – most of which is connected with the extreme right – is the object of our research in this monography. A research guide for collecting comparable data on vigilantism In order to systematically and comparatively study the phenomenon of vigilantism against migrants and minorities and address the research questions listed in the opening section, it is necessary to collect comparable data from a wide range of cases from a number of different national contexts. In order to achieve this, we have brought together a strong group of scholars who have in-depth knowledge about such vigilante groups, movements and activities in their countries of expertise. We have found a combination of cases that represent a large variation within this broad phenomenon. This means that the units of analysis may range from broad social movements like the Ku Klux Klan to small informal groups, or to tightly organized militias. Some of the chapters focus on one specific group or organization, whereas other chapters describe several groups within the same 18 Miroslav Mareš and Tore Bjørgo country, because they are variations over the same theme, or represent important differences. We have also been interested in following the transnational diffusion of movements and styles, for example how the Hungarian Guard inspired similar paramilitary group in other parts of Central and Eastern Europe, or how the Soldiers of Odin street patrols spread rapidly from Finland to many other countries within weeks, but developed in very different directions in different settings. Although we asked our chapter authors to collect data about the same set of questions (see below), it would not be realistic to request that they should make use of identical methods for data collection. Collecting such data is complicated and access to the groups vary a lot. Some researchers were able to interview leaders and do participant observation of patrols or other group activities, whereas this methodology would be impossible or too dangerous in other cases. However, in most cases other forms of primary data were available, such as online discussion forums, video footage, police or court documents, or secondary data like media reports or historical accounts. Most authors used a combination of data sources, primary as well as secondary. In order to provide data that are as comparable as possible, we have asked our authors to collect information about the same set of questions for all the case studies:       What is the political, social and economic context (who is in government, level of trust in society or to government institutions, situation regarding minorities, migrants, unemployment, etc.)? What is the stated purpose and justification for the vigilante group? Why do they claim they are needed? Which values or interests do they claim to defend? Who or what is the threat? Is this a new or an old movement or mode of operation in this country? Do they have an explicit or implicit ideology (e.g. nationalism, fascism, National Socialism, white supremacy, counter-Jihadism, or identitarianism)? How are they organized? Are vigilante activities organized top-down (e.g. by political parties) or bottom-up? Who are the participants? Numbers of active participants and supporters? What characterize them in terms of demographics, political/extremist background, criminal record, etc. What are they actually doing? How do they operate? Do they patrol or guard certain areas or facilities? Are they armed? Do they operate openly or covertly? Do they wear any kind of uniforms? If so, how does the police and other authorities respond to that? Do they make use of violence, force or intimidation? If so, who is targeted? Do they carry out any good-will activities to improve their image? What do they communicate verbally and visually (e.g. through symbols, uniforms, processions, etc.)? Is what they say verbally in accordance with what they communicate visually or do physically? What is their relationship to political parties, the police, other public agencies (e.g. municipalities, military, border guards, etc.), the news media, political Concepts and goals of current research 19   opponents, and different segments of the population (including targeted minorities)? How much support and resistance do they meet, and how much leeway do they have in their operation? Is group participation stigmatized? How does this influence who becomes active participants? Is the environment permissive or repressive of vigilante groups and activities? Are the vigilante group’s activities mainly online or offline? Which role does social media play for the activities of the group? Are they modelled on similar or like-minded groups abroad? Do they have actual links with these groups? Providing that the case studies will cover all these aspects, it will enable us to carry out comparative analysis along several dimensions. This will be the task of the final, comparative chapters of this volume. Introducing the case studies The following section will present briefly the 17 case studies in this volume. They are ordered roughly according to a typology we develop in the concluding chapter, starting with the more violent cases of vigilante movements (terrorism, lynchings and pogroms), then describing paramilitary groups, border patrols and street patrols. However, some of the country chapters include groups of different types, for example Hungary, which has harboured terrorist groups as well as militias and street patrols. The classic case of vigilantism in general and vigilante terrorism in particular is the American Ku Klux Klan movement, which for more than a century spread fear among blacks, Jews and other minorities, as well as among some of those who stood up against them. Kathleen Blee and Mehr Latif’s chapter, “Ku Klux Klan: Vigilantism against blacks, immigrants and other minorities” describe the four major distinct eras of the Ku Klux Klan. The first Klan originated in the aftermath of the Civil War in the 1870s when the blacks’ emancipation from slavery was the main issue. The second era occurred in inter-war period in the 1920s, when high rates of immigrants from Europa was on the agenda. The third era was in the 1950s–1960s, where the KKK used violence and threats to fight the civil rights movement and other challenges against racial segregation and white supremacy, and the fourth was during the 1970s until the 2000s when the Klan allied with other far-right groups in an attempt to maintain white dominance in America. The support for the Klan and the methods they used varied considerably through these four eras, as the context changed significantly. One of the main findings is that the Klan could only continue their campaigns of terror for as long as they could operate relatively freely without interference (or even with the blessing) of the local sheriff, judge, pastor and mayor. When the general social and political environment was no longer as permissive with their racism and violence, and repressive forces from law enforcement and NGOs put heavy pressure on them, and Ku Klux Klan fell apart or became severely restricted in what they could do. 20 Miroslav Mareš and Tore Bjørgo Nir Gazit’s chapter, “Jewish vigilantism in the West Bank”, points to a similar theme. He describes how Jewish settlers in the occupied territories could continue to harass and terrorize Palestinian inhabitants for as long as the Israeli military and government did not strike down on their vigilante activities. There were different types of vigilante groups in the occupied territories, varying both on their level of organization and their relationship with the Israeli authorities. The most organized and institutionalized are the settlements’ defence squads, which are organized, trained and armed by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) as emergency response teams in case of Palestinian attacks, and usually commanded by former IDF officers. While these groups are the most passive in their interaction with the Palestinians they often initiate violent friction by creating informal roadblocks and direct clashes with Palestinian shepherds and peasants. The second type of vigilantes is of those who belong to radical right groups or remaining factions of right-wing groups that were banned in the past. These groups are founded on Jewish supremacy ideas, radical anti-Arab sentiments, and racism. The less organized groups of Jewish vigilantes are religious-nationalist teenagers and young adults who establish outposts without a formal authorization from the Israeli government. They claim the Palestinians are “raping the Holy Land”, and thus must be expelled. These groups are mostly made up of marginal young people, some of them teenagers. They are the most active in initiating anti-Palestinian violent attacks and in violent clashes with the Israeli security forces in the occupied territories. Gazit argues that the ambiguity surrounding the formal status of the Israeli state in the occupied territories creates a governmental void. This void is filled by greater freedom of action of the settlers, who, in effect, act as informal agents of the state, behaving as vigilantes and taking the law into their own hands (Gazit, this volume). Juhi Ahuja’s chapter “Protecting holy cows: Hindu vigilantism against Muslims in India” describes a series of violent attacks and lynchings of Muslims allegedly involved in slaughtering cows and trading beef in India. Such “cow vigilantism” is the policing of behaviour by Hindu nationalists against non-Hindus (mostly Muslims) in the name of protecting cows, which they consider sacred in Hindu religion. The slaughtering of cows is banned in most – but not all – Indian states, but beef trade is nevertheless a major industry. Hindu radicals take it upon themselves to enforce by violent means the ban on slaughtering cows and transporting and trading cow meat as a religious duty. Ahuja argues that the increase in such cow vigilantism must be seen in the context of the rising influence of Hindutva, a Hindu ethno-religious and nationalist movement that has gained political power in modern India, and a growing inter-religious and inter-caste intolerance. The cow vigilantes act on the basis of a perception (real or imagined) that non-Hindus are a threat to their religio-cultural identity if they breach their established norm of protecting cows. Such cow vigilantism is also a way to establish Hindu dominance over minority groups. Chapter 5, “Violent attacks on migrants and minorities in the Russian Federation” by Martin Laryš describes how more than 600 people, mostly labour migrants from the Muslim regions of Caucasus and Central Asia as well as homosexuals, Concepts and goals of current research 21 have been killed and several thousands have been injured by nationalists and neoNazis in Russia during a 17-year period. Although many of these murders can more appropriately be characterized as hate crimes or right-wing terrorism, a large proportion of the violence and killings have strong aspects of vigilantism to them. The perpetrators, mostly neo-Nazi skinheads and militant nationalists, often justified their violence as a way to defend the Russian people against rapists and criminal migrants. Homosexuals were also attacked in order to defend the moral order of society from delinquents subverting Russia’s traditional values. For a long time, the police turned a blind eye on these lethal vigilante activities until a significant change in governmental policy repressed these movements and put a number of leaders in prison. This led to a sharp decrease in vigilante activities and violence from late 2013 onwards. Daniel Koehler’s overview of “Anti-immigration militias and vigilante groups in Germany” shows that although military sports groups (“Wehrsportgruppen”) and groups of citizens defending their cities (“Bürgerwehren”) have long traditions in Germany, it was only recently that these terms took on a vigilante dimension. Anti-immigrant violence and pogrom-like attacks have also been rife in Germany but only in a few cases has this violence had a distinct vigilante character. However, in recent years, a number of vigilante groups were formed and acts of vigilante violence were committed as a response to criminal acts (allegedly or actually) committed by immigrants. The sexual assaults on German women by mostly North-African migrants during the New Year celebration in Cologne 2015/16 and the passive police response became a watershed event, releasing a wave of vigilante movements in Germany (and beyond) against so-called “rapefugees”. Some of these went in the direction of terrorist attacks on the homes of migrants. Yet, most of these movements remained in the social media only. Groups that started to function as a militia or alternative policing and committed criminal acts quickly became targeted by the authorities. However, lack of public trust in the police and other authorities creates an opportunity for right-wing extremist movements to mobilize on the claimed incompetence of the authorities, promoting vigilantism as an alternative. A country with deep legacies of vigilantism is described and analysed in the chapter “Vigilante militias and activities against Roma and migrants in Hungary”, written by Szilveszter Póczik and Eszter Sárik. The authors explain the traditions of fascist and nationalist vigilantism and their impact on the recent right-wing extremist scene. In August 2007, the Jobbik Party (Movement for a Better Hungary) founded the “Hungarian Guard Association for Protection of Traditions and Culture”. This group won huge attention and it caused a rise of popularity of the Jobbik. It organized vigilante patrols and marches in Roma communities against alleged “Gypsy Crime”. After its ban in 2009, several successor groups were established. These groups were fuelled by the migration wave of 2015–2017. However, they play a much more symbolic than effective role in the (anti)migration politics through marches, anti-Muslim protest and publication (Póczik and Sárik, this volume). The chapter also discusses a vigilante terrorist racist killer 22 Miroslav Mareš and Tore Bjørgo commando that was active in 2008–2009, killing six Roma people (and injuring many others). As in other East and Central European countries, we can see the dominance of anti-Roma vigilantism, enhanced by anti-Migrant vigilantism during the crisis in 2015 and later. Miroslav Mareš and Daniel Milo deal with “Vigilantism against migrants and minorities in Slovakia and in the Czech Republic”. The two former parts of the Czechoslovak federation have different traditions of vigilantism. However, after the fall of communism right-wing extremist militias as well as (mostly antiRoma) skinhead racist groups were established in both countries. They justified their hate crimes by reference to alleged “ethnic crime” of the attacked minorities. Party militias are typical in both countries. The activities of the train patrols of the People´s Party Our Slovakia (ĽSNS) ‒ focused mostly on Gypsy crime ‒ had a specific impact on the popularity of this party. Paramilitary groups are involved in anti-migrant patrols and in protection the borders. The Slovak Recruits are one of the strongest non-state paramilitary organizations in the region. Pro-Russian sympathy is typical of many vigilantes in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Vigilantes from both countries cooperate closely. The chapter “Vigilantism against ethnic minorities and migrants in Bulgaria”, by Nadya Stoynova and Rositsa Dzhekova, analyses the rise of various formations in the country a, which is located on the “Balkan migration route” and has significant Roma minority. This migration route provides the reason for the most recent manifestation of vigilantism in the country, namely anti-migrant patrols and arrests at the Bulgarian-Turkish border. Nevertheless, ad-hoc and less organized manifestations of vigilantism, predominantly against the Roma, have been observed prior to the migrant crisis. The wider political context is crucial in understanding the phenomenon in Bulgaria, as vigilantism should be considered as a phenomenon emerging in the context of the political, societal and economic crisis in the country during the post-communist period of the nineties and its lingering implications (Stoynova and Dzhekova in this volume). The recent wave of anti-immigrant vigilante groups is also analysed within the context of a persistent “systematic crisis feeling”, which remains endemic in the country and which was exacerbated by the scale and intensity of the crisis. Anti-migration patrols are the topic of the chapter “The Minutemen: Patrolling and performativity along the U.S. / Mexican border” by Harel Shapira. Analysing the Minutemen paramilitary border patrol, he is struck by what he describes as the “militarized masculinity” within the context of “performed patriotism”. The US government campaign to militarize the border, starting in the 1990s as a “new strategy to deter illegal immigration” (Shapira, this volume), is an important factor behind the establishing of anti-immigrant vigilante border groups. Shapira researched almost 200 Minutemen and he found out that they were composed of predominantly elderly white men who were almost exclusively military veterans. His study shows that a main motivation for the participants was that the Minutemen border patrols offered them an opportunity to relive their military past. Concepts and goals of current research 23 The dominant role of a political party in vigilante activities is analysed in the chapter “Vigilantism in Greece: The case of the Golden Dawn” by Christos Vrakopoulos and Daphne Halikiopoulou. They explain the political, social and economic environment of modern Greek vigilantism and many aspects of the party Golden Dawn. An analysis of the relations between this party and political groups and public agencies is a valuable part of this study. They stated: “Police officers tend to be Golden Dawn supporters and constituencies with high numbers of police voters tend to turn around higher Golden Dawn results” (Vrakopoulos and Halikiopoulou, in this volume). They also deal with far right vigilante activities beyond the Golden Dawn. The groups (such as Cryptheia) are responsible for violent anti-Immigrant attacks. The most common form of vigilante activities in our collection of case studies is varieties of vigilante street patrols. These groups claim to prevent crime and deter criminals by patrolling alleged crime-infested streets or public transportation, thereby providing safety to ordinary citizens. These street patrols generally avoid the actual use of violence but they do display a capacity for violence by a show of strength, allegedly to enhance their crime deterring impact. Some of these street patrols are organized from below by concerned citizens but more commonly they are organized top-down by far-right organizations and parties. One example of the latter is analysed by Pietro Castelli Gattinara in his chapter on “Forza Nuova and the Security Walks: Squadrismo and Neo-Fascist Vigilantism in Italy”. This extreme right party have organized “security walks” as one of their main activities. FN militants claim that they take the responsibility of patrolling local areas that are considered dangerous, thus serving a function that the decaying Italian state is unable – or unwilling – to fulfil. Vigilantism is thus framed not only as a response to criminality brought about by immigration, but also as a reaction to the inefficiency of state authorities. Security walks are also used as a recruitment strategy for the party by inviting concerned locals to join their patrols. Pietro Castelli Gattinara’s other chapter, “Beyond the hand of the state: Vigilantism against migrants and minorities in France”, analyses two varieties of vigilante activities, one bottom-up initiative and one top-down. The former, calling themselves “Les Calaisiens en Colère” (The Angry People of Calais, LCC) emerged as a response to the large numbers of refugees that had gathered in the vicinity of Calais (“the Jungle”) and the crime and disorder problems that accompanied this large mass of people. The LCC, which carried out nightly street patrols, claimed to be entirely non-political and non-violent. The top-down variety was a range of vigilante activities organized by the Identitarians, a far right nativist movement. They set up a number of “anti-scum” patrols in streets and public transport as well as other actions aimed at convincing the French people to “defend themselves” against insecurity caused by migrants. A special case of vigilante border patrol was the “Defend Europe” campaign, where Identitarian activists used webbased crowd funding to rent a ship that would patrol the Mediterranean Sea to dissuade illegal migration to Europe, in particular to expose the human smugglers and the NGOs helping migrants to reach Europe. Although the sea patrol did not 24 Miroslav Mareš and Tore Bjørgo stop any migrants, it was mainly a media stunt to influence policy, and it probably had some impact in Italian politics in particular. The chapter by Elizabeth Ralph-Morrow on “Vigilantism in the United Kingdom: Britain First and ‘Operation Fightback’” describes Britain First as a fringe farright political party that carried out “mosque invasions” and “Christian patrols” in Muslim-dominated urban areas. The first “Christian patrols” started in 2014 as a response to a “Muslim patrol” video on YouTube, which featured three men who sought to enforce Sharia law in East London. Britain First patrols invaded several mosques and behaved in calculated insulting ways (drinking alcohol, refusing to take off shoes, alleging that Mohammed was a false prophet, etc.) to provoke and intimidate the congregation. Britain First’s vigilante activities are characterized by making veiled threats, and do not involve actual use of violence. This threat is particularly conveyed through the organization’s emphasis on militarism, wearing uniforms, and claiming that its activities are akin to those of a soldier at war. Although some of Britain First’s vigilante activities are in response to alleged crimes such as immigrant “grooming gangs” (that had sexually abused large numbers of children). At other times the group is apparently acting mainly in response to the “Muslim occupation” of parts of British cities. Britain First activities were widely condemned and numerous criminal sanctions were also imposed on the group’s leaders, including imprisonment for harassment and other charges, as well as bans to enter parts of specific cities or any mosque in England and Wales, or encouraging other persons to do so. However, in filming and uploading videos of its vigilante activities, Britain First have managed to promote the “Christian patrols” and “mosque invasions2 carried out by a handful of Britain First members to an audience of millions, and even receiving endorsement from president Donald Trump. The most striking example of a trans-national vigilante movement is the Soldiers of Odin, which started in Finland in late 2015, and boosted by the stories about widespread sexual harassment during New Year’s celebration in Cologne, spread to more than 20 countries within a few months. This phenomenon is analysed by Tommi Kotonen in his study of “The Soldiers of Odin in Finland: From a local movement to international franchise”. The Soldiers of Odin (SOO) described itself as “a patriotic street patrol organization, which opposes harmful immigration, Islamization, EU and globalization”. The members patrol on the streets especially late at night in order to protect people from violent behaviour and inform the police when something happens, emphasizing that they act as a non-violent preventive force. A main reason for the sudden international success of the Soldiers of Odin was its style – a black hoodie or sweater with a logo of a Viking-like god with the national flag as a beard, resembling the symbols (“colours”) of outlaw MC clubs. As the Soldiers of Odin movement rapidly spread internationally, the original Finnish organization tried to maintain a certain control (and also get some incomes) by establishing a Soldiers of Odin World Wide leadership group and demanding that national chapters had to abide by the bylaws of the original Finnish SOO. However, case studies of Soldiers of Odin in Canada, Norway and Sweden shows that the various national chapters soon went their own ways. Concepts and goals of current research 25 Tore Bjørgo and Ingvild Magnæs Gjelsvik’s chapter “Sheep in wolf’s clothing? The taming of the Soldiers of Odin in Norway” analyses the rapid growth and the disintegration of the SOO in Norway. The Norwegian chapter gradually broke away from the Finnish mother chapter and later also with SOO World Wide, mainly because the SOO Norway leadership was uncomfortable with the increasingly right-wing extremist and anti-Islam profile of the mother organization. One main reason for this appears to be that the Norwegian SOO leaders and much of the membership had a different agenda than anti-immigration and anti-Islam activism. A large proportion of the members and leaders were young men known in their communities as petty criminals and troublemakers, and they saw SOO’s street patrols as an opportunity to make up for their past and improve their tarnished identity and reputation. Any association with right-wing extremism or violent vigilantism would undermine that effort of identity change, making the SOO Norway strive hard to distance themselves from this. However, the police did not want to cooperate with Soldiers of Odin, and eventually banned the use of hoodies with SOO symbols during street walks, claiming that such uniforms would represent a breach of the police monopoly of patrolling streets to maintain public safety. Partly due to this ban on uniforms, in combination with internal conflicts over the high proportion of leaders and members with a criminal past within the organization, SOO Norway closed down after about a year of activity. The chapter on “Soldiers of Odin in Canada: The failure of a transnational ideology” by Emil Archambault and Yannick Veilleux-Lepage describes how the Soldiers of Odin in Canada were marred by numerous breakups, internecine conflicts, and divisions, and analyse why this became so. More so than SOO elsewhere, the Canadian SOO combined vigilante street patrols with community building efforts and charity actions. They claimed, according to the SOO Canada bylaws, to exist because the higher authorities failed the Canadian citizens by the allowing of illegal aliens into the country, and their community minded activities were part of an effort to divert resources back to deserving Canadians and away from immigrants. Although all the activities of SOO Canada were within an anti-immigrant, xenophobic paradigm, several splits occurred over the ties to the Finnish mother organization and its anti-immigration and racist image, as well as over the priorities between vigilante patrolling and community building activities. There were also tensions between a strictly Canadian nationalist focus and the transnational “European” orientation of SOO Finland and World Wide. Soldiers of Odin was only one among several varieties of “Pop-up vigilantism and fascist patrols in Sweden”, as analysed by Mattias Gardell. He describes a surge of radical nationalist vigilantism between 2013 and 2017, fed by moral panic on migrant crime, no-go zones and alleged “rape jihad” of white Swedish women. The calls to vigilantism appears to have fizzled out for now, with the far-right turning its attention to other projects. Gardell describes four categories of vigilante activism: (1) Sweden’s Citizens Militia emerged as a response to riots against police brutality in a stigmatized underclass suburb. The inner circle all had criminal records and links to radical nationalist groups. The loose group was involved in 26 Miroslav Mareš and Tore Bjørgo several violent episodes. (2) Soldiers of Odin had a rapid growth but soon declined. They were ridiculed and met resistance from the police, local residents, Anti-fa and an outlaw biker gang, as well as embarrassing media exposure on the extremist ties, criminal records and violent behaviour of SOO members. (3) Gardet and several other autonomous vigilante groups also had a rapid growth in 2016 before they disappeared. (4) The patrols of the Nordic Resistance Movement (NRM), a panNordic National Socialist organization, is probably the most organized and potentially most durable form of vigilante patrols in Sweden. They are disciplined and trained in knife fighting and other paramilitary activities. However, non-sanctioned violence is forbidden – except for self-defence (although the threshold for what is considered provocation is very low). NRM has engaged in numerous vigilante patrols in Sweden and Finland but this remains a limited part of the organization’s activity. Gardell argues that vigilante activities in Sweden was mainly a ritual performance, either to promote the organization behind it, or to articulate the participants’ white Swedish masculinity, and define public space as a white space. In the concluding chapter, the editors will make use of the rich empirical data from the 17 case studies for comparative analysis of the research questions raised earlier in this introduction chapter. Notes 1 There have also been cases of left-wing vigilantism, for example the “Lenin-boys” during the Commune of 1919 in Hungary, terrorizing the so called “bourgeois” middle classes. More recent examples of left-wing vigilantism are Antifa groups that surveilled and beat up people they considered to be fascists, and could be called upon if people observed neo-Nazis in their community. However, vigilantism from the far left is far less common than vigilantism from the far right. 2 The racist serial killer in Malmö, Peter Mangs, performed several of his attacks in ways that made the police believe this was violence among criminal immigrant gangs (Gardell 2015). 3 The DanerVærn web page, (www.danervern.net) is no longer available. 4 DanerVærn is not included in our sample of case studies. This Danish vigilante group was established in 2014. A main activity has been to protect bridges crossing highways, due to a rumor that some refugees had thrown stones on cars from such bridges. It has also done some street and border patrolling. In an interview, the leader stated: “Staten har et voldsmonopol. Vi udfordrer det Monopol” (“The state has a monopoly on violence. We challenge that monopoly”). Jyllandsposten 02.01.2016. The DanerVærn home page has been closed down but they do maintain a Facebook group with very limited activity. 5 That police officers may turn a blind eye to vigilantism or even be deeply involved is exemplified by several vigilante organizations in Latin America in the 1950s and 1960s. Besides police officers also military officers took part in these organizations in their free time (Sprinzak 1995: 30–31). References Abrahams, Ray G. (1998). Vigilante citizens: Vigilantism and the state. Cambridge: Polity Press. Ajuha, Juhi and Pravin Prakash (2017). Cow vigilantism in India: Modi’s dilemma or legacy? Singapore: Nanyang Technological University. Retrieved 31 January 2018 from, https:// www.rsis.edu.sg/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/CO17131.pdf. Concepts and goals of current research 27 Barkun, Michael (1998). Conspiracy theories as stigmatised knowledge: The basis for a New Age racism? In: Jeffrey Kaplan and Tore Bjørgo (eds), Nation and race: The developing EuroAmerican racist subculture (pp. 58–72). Boston: Northeastern University Press. Berg, Manferd and Simon Wendt (2011). Introduction: Lynching from an international perspective. In Manfred Berg and Simon Wendt (eds), Globalizing lynching history: vigilantism and extralegal punishment from an international perspective (pp. 1–18). New York: Palgrave MacMillan. Bjørgo, Tore, and Rob Witte (eds, 1993). Racist violence in Europe. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Bowling, Ben (1998). Violent racism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Button, Mark (2002). Voluntary policing. In Mark Button, Private policing (pp. 83–95). London: Willan. Bötticher, Astrid and Miroslav Mareš (2012). Extremismus. Theorien – konzepte – formen. München: Oldenbourg Verlag. Capoccia, Giovanni (2005). Defending democracy. Reactions to extremism in interwar Europe. Baltimore and London: The John Hopkins University Press. Carey, Sabine C. and Neil J. Mitchell (2016). “Pro-government militias and conflict”. In William R. Thompson, Oxford research encyclopedia of politics. doi: doi:10.1093/acrefore/ 9780190228637.013.33. Cartwright, Mark (2016). Vigiles. In Ancient History Encyclopedia. Retrieved 31 January 2018 from https://www.ancient.eu/Vigiles/. del Barrio Romero, F.; T. Bjørgo; H.-G. Jaschke; C. Kwanten; R.I. Mowby and M. Pagon (2009). Police science perspectives: Towards a European approach. Extended expert report. Frankfurt: Verlag für Polizeiwissenschaft. Drmola, Jakub (2017). Kybernetická bezpečnost. Systémový model protidžihádistického vigilantismu (dissertation thesis). Brno: Masarykova univerzita. Retrieved 2 February 2018from https:// is.muni.cz/th/171810/fss_d/. Gardell, Mattias (2015). Raskrigaren: Seriemördaren Peter Mangs. Stockholm: Leopard förlag. Gazit, Nir (2015). State-sponsored vigilantism: Jewish settlers’ violence in the occupied Palestinian territories. Sociology, 49(3), 438–454. Gerstenfeld, Phyllis B. (2011). Hate crimes: Causes, controls, and controversies. Thousand Oaks, New Delhi: Sage. Gerwarth, Robert and John Horne (2013). Paramilitarism in Europe after the Great War: An Introduction. In Robert Gerwarth and John Horne (eds), War in peace. Paramilitary violence in Europe after the Great War (pp. 1–18). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Häggqvist, Linn (2017). “Taking the law into your own hands”. Violent vigilantism in post-war societies (Master’s thesis). Uppsala: Uppsala University. Retrieved 4 February 2018from http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1113108/FULLTEXT01.pdf. Hall, Nathan (2013). Hate crime. London and New York: Routledge (2nd edition). Haysom, N. Mabangalala (1986). The rise of right-wing vigilantes in South Africa. London: Catholic Institute for International Relations. Hoffman, Bruce (2006). Inside terrorism. New York: Columbia University Press. Holbrook, Donald and Max Taylor (2013). Introduction. In Max Taylor, P.M. Currie and Donald Holbrook (eds), Extreme right wing political violence and terrorism (pp. 1–13). London, New Delhi, New York, Sydney: Bloomsbury. Huggins, Martha K. (1991). Introduction. Vigilantism and the state. A look south and north. In Martha K. Huggins (ed.), Vigilantism and the state in modern Latin America. Essays on extra-legal violence (pp. 1–18). New York: Praeger Publishers. Johnston, Les (1996). What is vigilantism? The British Journal of Criminology, 36(2), 220–236. 28 Miroslav Mareš and Tore Bjørgo Kirsch, Thomas G. and Tilo Grätz (2010). Vigilantism. State ontologies & encompassment. An introductory essay. In Thomas G. Kirsch and Tilo Grätz (eds), Domesticating vigilantism in Africa (pp. 1–24). Woodbridge: James Currey. Kirschner, Andrea (2011). Putting out the fire with gasoline? Violence control in “fragile” states: A study of vigilantism in Nigeria. In Wilhelm Heitmeyer, Heinz Gerhard Haupt, Stefan Malthaner and Andrea Kirschner (eds), Control of violence: Historical and international perspectives on violence in modern societies (pp. 536–569). New York: Springer. Kowalewski, David (2002). Vigilantismus. In Wilhelm Heitmeyer and John Hagan (eds), Internationales Handbuch der Gewaltforschung (pp. 426–440). Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag. Kučera, Michal (2010). Antifašistická akce optikou teorie vigilantismu. In Ivo Svoboda (ed.), Politický extremismus a terorismus jako ohrožení vnitřní bezpečnosti státu? (pp. 26–38). Brno: Unverzita obrany. Kučera, Michal (2017). Informal policing v ČR: možnosti institucionalizace neformálních občanských iniciativ (dissertation thesis). Brno: Fakulta sociálních studií Masarykovy univerzity. Retrieved 3 February 2018 from https://is.muni.cz/th/182226/fss_d/. Kučera, Michal and Miroslav Mareš (2015). Vigilantism during democratic transition. Policing and Society, 25(2), 170–187. Lehr, Peter (2017). Militant Buddhism is on the march in South-East Asia – where did it come from? The Conversation, Retrieved 3 February 2018 from http://theconversation.com/milita nt-buddhism-is-on-the-march-in-south-east-asia-where-did-it-come-from-86632. Levin, Jack, and Jack McDevitt (1993). Hate crimes: The rising tide of bigotry and bloodshed. New York: Plenum Press. Layton, Matthew, Mariana Rodríguez, Mason Moseley and Daniel Zizumbo-Colunga (2014). Citizen security, evaluations of the state, and policy preferences. In Elizabeth J. Zechmeister (ed.), The political culture of democracy in the Americas, 2014: Democratic governance across 10 years of the Americas barometer (pp. 73–116). Nashville: Vanderbilt University, Retrieved 3 February 2018 from https://www.vanderbilt.edu/lapop/ab2014/AB2014_ Comparative_Report_English_V3_revised_011315_W.pdf. Mareš, Miroslav (2012a). Paramilitarismus v České republice. Brno: Centrum pro studium demokracie a kultury. Mareš, Miroslav (2012b). Vigilantism against Roma in East Central Europe. In Uwe Backes and Patrick Moreau (eds), The extreme right in Europe. Current trends and perspectives (pp. 281–296). Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Mareš, Miroslav (2016). From subcultural groupings to actors of hybrid warfare: Current trends in conflicts in Eastern Europe. Vojenské rozhledy, 15 (special issue), 123–133, Retrieved from http://www.vojenskerozhledy.cz/en/kategorie-clanku/ozbrojene-kon flikty/cesti-bojovnici. Mareš, Miroslav (2017a). Gegenwärtige rechtsextremistische Radikalisierung in Ostmitteleuropa aus Sicht der terroristischer Bedrohung. In Stefan Hansen and Joachim Krause (eds), Jahrbuch terrorismus 2015/2016 (pp. 79–94). Berlin and Toronto: Verlag Barbara Budrich. Mareš, Miroslav (2017b). Strategic impact of East Central European extreme right vigilantes: From subcultural fringes to instruments of hybrid warfare. Paper presented at the ECPR General Conference, Oslo, 6–9 September 2017 in the panel Vigilantism Against Migrants and Minorities (Section Right Wing Extremism Beyond Party Politics). Retrieved 9 January 2018 from https://ecpr.eu/Filestore/PaperProposal/3ca1881d-02fb-4eab-b9e5-c097cafabd1b.pdf Mareš, Miroslav and Adam Veselý (2015). Sharia – Police v Německu: islamistický vigilantismus a nástroj propagandy. Bezpečnostní teorie a praxe, 21(2), 43–54. Marx, Gary T. and Dane Archer (1971). Citizen involvement in the law enforcement process: The case of community police patrols. American Behavioral Scientist, 15(1), 52–72. Concepts and goals of current research 29 Monaghan, Rachel (2004). “One merchant, one bullet”: The rise and fall of PAGAD. Low Intensity Conflict & Law Enforcement, 12(1), 1–19. Moncanda, Eduardo (2017). Varieties of vigilantism: Conceptual discord, meaning and strategies. Global Crime, 18(4), 403–423. Mudde, Cas (2000). The ideology of extreme right. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Nečej, Elemír and Richard Stojar (2013). Extremism vs. Armed Forces and Military Veterans in Slovakia and Czech Republic. Bratislava: Centre for European and North Atlantic Affairs. Osborne, Elizabeth (2005). Latin and Greek Roots. A study of world families. Clayton, DE: Prestwick House. OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (2009): Hate crime laws – A practical guide. Warsaw: OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) (author: Jernow Allison). Page, Walker Thomas (1901). The real judge Lynch. The Atlantic Monthly, 88(530), December 2001, 720–743. Perry, Barbera (2001). In the name of hate: Understanding hate crimes. London: Routledge. Potočňák, Adam and Radka Vicenová (2015). Introduction. In Adam Potočňák and Radka Vicenová (eds), Radicals in uniforms: Case studies of Austria, Czech Republic, Germany, Poland and Slovakia (pp. 6–7). Bratislava: Centre for European and North Atlantic Affairs. Ravndal, Jacob Aasland (2016). Right-wing terrorism and violence in Western Europe: Introducing the RTV dataset. Perspectives on Terrorism, 10(3), 2–15. Ravndal, Jacob Aasland (2017). Explaining right-wing terrorism and violence in Western Europe: Grievances, opportunities and polarisation. European Journal of Political Research, 57(4): 845–866. doi: doi:10.1111/1475–6765.12254. Rosenbaum, Jon and Peter C. Sederberg (1974). Vigilantism. An analysis of establishment violence. Comparative Politics, 6(4), 541–570. Rubin, M. (2001). Into the shadows: Radical vigilantes in Khatami’s Iran. Washington, DC: Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Rydgren, Jens (2018). The radical right: An introduction. In Jens Rydgren (ed.), The Oxford handbook of the radical right (pp. 1–13). New York: Oxford University Press. Schmid, Alex P. (2012). The revised academic consensus definition of terrorism. Perspectives on Terrorism, 6(2), 158–159. Schmid, Alex P. (ed.) (2011). The Routledge handbook on terrorism research. London / New York: Routledge. Schmid, Alex P., Albert J. Jongman, Michael Stohl and Peter A. Flemming (1988). Terrorism and related concepts: Typologies. In Alex P. Schmid and Albert J. Jongman (eds), Political terrorism. A new guide to actors, authors, concepts, data bases, theories & literature (pp. 39–59). New Brunswick, New Jersey, London: Transaction Publishers. Scobell, Andrew and Brad Hammitt (1998). Goons, gunmen, and gendarmerie. Toward a reconceptualization of paramilitary formations. Journal of Political and Military Sociology, 26(2), 213–227. Silke, Andrew (2007). Ragged justice. Loyalist vigilantism in Northern Ireland. Terrorism and Political Violence, 11(3), 1–31. Sinclair, Kirstine (2013). Muslim street patrols in London. Odense: Center for Mellemøststudier. Retrieved 4 February 2018 from https://www.sdu.dk/en/om_sdu/institutter_centre/c_m ellemoest. Smallridge, Joshua, Wagner, Philip, Crowl, Justin N. (2016). Understanding cyber-vigilantism. A conceptual framework. Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Criminology, 8(1), 57–70. Smith, Daniel Jordan (2004). The Bakassi Boys: Vigilantism, violence, and political imagination in Nigeria. Cultural Anthropology, 19(3), 429–455. 30 Miroslav Mareš and Tore Bjørgo Sprinzak, Ehud (1995). Right-wing terrorism in a comparative perspective: The case of split delegitimization. Terrorism and Political Violence, 7(1), 17–43. Stojarová, Věra (2012). Paramilitary structures in Eastern Europe. In Uwe Backes and Patrick Moreau (eds), The extreme right in Europe. Current trends and perspectives (pp. 265–279). Götttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Trottier, Daniel (2017). Digital vigilantism as weaponisation of visibility. Philosophy & Technology, 30(1), 55–72. Tyson, Adam (2013). Vigilantism and violence in decentralized Indonesia. The case of Lombok. Critical Asian Studies, 45(2), 201–230. Waldmann, Peter (1998). Terrorismus. Provokation der Macht. München: Gerling Akademie Verlag. Weber, Max (1922) Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Tübingen: Mohr.