Global Change, Local Angst: Class and the American Patriot Movement

Abstract

In this paper I examine the Patriot Movement, a broad, right-wing social movement in the USA that emerged in response to the economic insecurities of globalization. The purpose of this paper is to examine how the movement's class-based concerns are articulated through discourses of local sovereignty and patriotism. Because patriots' class interests are articulated through the patriot category rather than through traditional class categories, I use identity theory to analyze the movement. The movement, with its legacy of violence and its calls for local control, illustrates that the submersion of class (as a category that crosses scale) can lead to militant and particularistic responses. The couching of local power within discourses of patriotism demonstrates that such politics continue to rely on larger scales for legitimization. Reference to patriotism is, however, mostly symbolic. As such patriots ironically are unable to conceive of class positioning or their responses to it as cross local. As a case study I examine the movement in central Kentucky, and an issue around which patriots there have galvanized—calls to legalize industrial hemp. The paper concludes by arguing that the Patriot Movement illustrates the need to actively create progressive discourses to address working-class concerns.