Aiding Recruitment: A Comparative Case Study of Non‐State Actors in Lebanon and the United States After Disaster

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ABSTRACTObjectiveWhat do earthquakes in Syria share with wildfires in the mountain west of the United States? The article's objective is to show how disasters serve as recruiting events for anti‐government and militia movements.MethodologyThe methodology uses a comparative case study alongside discourse analysis to demonstrate how disaster response serves as a recruiting tool. The comparative approach for this paper first establishes how anti‐government movements use the provision of social services to establish trust, gain legitimacy, and recruit members. Discourse analysis analyzes texts and other media as it relates to the social and political context of a particular time and place.ResultsWe find Hezbollah and American militias are driven by different ideologies but share seven post‐disaster recruitment strategies. First, both rely structural violence to use their social programs to expand their legitimacy; second, both cooperate with the state to expand legitimacy; third, both try to persuade society of their goodness; fourth, reshaping identity expands recruitment opportunity; fifth, the state fails to deliver social programs opening an opportunity for recruitment; sixth, both actors cooperate with the state to further their ends, not just a source of legitimacy, but a process of learning for the eventual collapse of the state as per group ideology; last, both actors rely on and hope for state failure to justify existence.ConclusionWe conclude that disasters can serve as recruiting events for anti‐government and militia movements.