What it is; why it happens; what it looks like; who might do it.

Vigilantism.

Just mentioning it can illicit a wide range of opinions and emotional responses, from excitement to disapproval, from pride to shame, and everything in between. It can be viewed as a tool to enhance and enforce law and order, but it can also be seen to usurp and undermine the very laws that underpin civilized society. It can even be regarded as a tool of revenge and personal vendetta.

The word alone provokes varied imagery to appear in the mind: of outlaws and masked bandits, of nightriders and caped crusaders, and of braying mobs, wielding pitchforks and nooses, all determined to carry out their own version of law and judgement. I’m guessing it would be a fair claim for me to make that most of these remind you of a film or TV show you’ve seen; more recently, vigilantism has become synonymous with superheroes, who fight baddies and save the world from destruction, all the while wearing some supertight spandex. Quite evocative imagery to say the least!

But what is vigilantism?

At its very core vigilantism is the taking of the law into one’s own hands, either by a group or an individual, primarily due to the absence of law and order or its perceived failings and inadequacies: to affect justice, according to one’s own sense of right and wrong.

You can likely already see that it’s a highly subjective and controversial matter, and incredibly ambiguous in its very nature; indeed, its employment by both the Ku Klux Klan and Black Panther Party in America not only emphasises this ambiguity, but also alludes to the various social themes that underpin its use, such as race, class, religion and politics.

So why does it appear?

Esteemed historian Richard Maxwell Brown (1984) writes a lot about violence and vigilantism in America. He’s one of my favourites so you’ll hear about his on-point ideas a fair bit in my writing. Brown supposes that vigilantism arises against a backdrop of specific social conditions that may involve one or more of the following:

• Times of great social upheaval and change;
• High and persistent levels of crime;
• Absent or ineffectual law enforcement;
• Perceived injustices.

I know: this might seem like a lot of conditions, and I bet you’re thinking, well isn’t that everything, everywhere, all the time?? Voila, here are some examples of how this might play out.

1. Expansion into the American West from the early 1800s onwards saw a shift from urbanisation into the wilderness, with harshness and brutality characterising frontier towns – they didn’t call it the Wild West for nothing! The region was sorely lacking in formal governmental organisation and social structures, which hadn’t been able to keep pace with the movement West. Add to this roaming bandits, untamed land with insanely harsh weather conditions and often little to no proper shelter, and clashes with Native Americans; law keepers and courts were often far behind and sometimes took months to reach outposts and little towns, so irregular and criminal behaviour was incredibly hard to keep in check. These conditions meant that pioneers often had to find their own often swift ways to deal with crime and criminals, anti-social behaviour and ne’er-do-wells, so vigilance committees and mobs were deemed a suitable response.
2. France suffered centuries of holy wars, religious strife and political turmoil from the early to mid twentieth century – and that’s putting it lightly – all of which were further compounded by tensions with the Catholic church and a series of religious mandates forbidding certain religions from being practiced. Inevitably, vulnerable groups in society – more specifically those deemed a threat to the established order – became targets of the church and state, and the 1500s to late 1600s saw an increase in witch trials across the country. Perceived crimes of witchcraft against a backdrop of changing social norms for women (and of course, some male victims) led to them being targeted by self-styled ‘Witchfinders’ who developed and meted out their own tests, trails and punishments for those accused, who often became the victims of horrific torture and experiments before meeting equally horrific deaths. Compounding this further, it became easy for the slighted or scared to point the finger: Indeed, witch hunting fever gripped the whole of Europe and the American colonies for several generations. Louis XIV eventually prohibited the practice in France in 1682 (and this was even before the whole Salem thing kicked off) and religious tolerance (kind of sort of, comparatively speaking) become more commonplace.
3. Local authorities were unable to stop/unwilling to intervene in intensifying activities from organised crime cartels who were murdering, kidnapping and extorting avocado farmers in the western state of Michoacan, Mexico in the mid 2010s. Civilians were getting desperate, as their livelihoods, land and loved ones were regularly targeted and were often used as pawns between warring cartels. People from across the state joined forces to create an armed vigilante militia, who eventually managed to force the dominant cartel from the state. Now, armed vigilante militias in Mexico are numerous and continue to lend their services to small defenceless towns and regions when the need arises. Some have even taken on corrupt law and government officials in defence of their rights, lives and communities.

So what is this all for?

Historically and I guess traditionally speaking, vigilantism has largely been used to instil civilised values of life, property, and law and order, and to defend against apparent attacks on established values and ways of life. Take for instance the South Carolina Regulators in Revolutionary-era America, who formed in response to a massive rise in crime and little to no law enforcement in the region. Their primary motivation was to maintain the social hierarchy and to preserve their own social status, but also to regain a sense of social order and calm whilst driving away or rounding up criminal gangs. Vigilantism has, however, also been used for transformative purposes and to force social change, such as by the Black Panther Party in the 1960s. This was a social movement which primarily aimed to counter police violence and the social and economic inequalities faced by African American people in America; significantly, they aligned with non-racist progressive whites and other people of colour, challenging not only police brutality and white racism, but also capitalist and elitist African Americans who they saw to also be exploiting the working classes, particularly African Americans. Amongst their wide range of social functions, activism and defence tactics, the Black Panthers deployed armed citizen patrols to protect citizens and police the police, quite literally taking the law into their own hands to uphold it and promote significantly progressive social change (You might suddenly be struck by the similarities and divergences of different social movements and their overlaps and ambiguities, but don’t worry – I deal with these in another post.).

You can see already see from all of this that vigilantism is often carried out by groups of people. These groups generally form from across the three primary class tiers of society, who come together for a common cause or purpose, the duration of which can vary depending on that cause or purpose (again, I get into these models more fully in another post). I’m sure you’ve likely seen those old black and white Westerns, where townsfolk band together to form a mob and track down a wayward bandit: when the bandit is caught, the mob disperses and go back to their lives, happy that the law has been upheld, justice served and the social order restored. Others form and continue their activity over a period of time due to the nature or prevalence of the crime they attempt to combat: during the lockdown years of COVID in the UK, there was a significant rise in cyber-vigilantism for ‘paedophile hunting’ purposes. Groups like the Guardians of the North, who formed in 2021 in direct response to an increase in sex offenders attempting to use the internet to contact minors, quite literally attempt to track down paedophiles by posing as children in chat forums, amongst other activities designed to expose online predators, arranging stings or turning evidence over to the police. You can see here how vigilantism, whilst often at odds with the primacy of law and order, can also be seen to supplement and even support it (just WAIT for my post on Real Life Superheroes. Oh yes.).

It’s not all about them groups though. Vigilantism is also carried out by individuals acting alone, though this form more commonly occurs when that individual has been affected personally by crime or injustice; individual vigilantism is thus more likely to be motivated by revenge. In Germany in 1981, mother Marianne Bachmeier shot dead her daughter’s murderer; several years later, father Gary Plauché shot dead his son’s rapist on live television in Louisiana, US, 1984. You can see from the above examples, that individual vigilantism is often incredibly emotional, highly personal, and often motivated by incredible grief and pain. It’s not all revenge-based, though: sometimes individual vigilantism can be a seemingly spur-of-the-moment, quick response event, such as for the purpose of self defence. That same year of 1984 for instance, Bernard Goetz shot four African American youths on the New York subway, after they allegedly attempted to rob him. I am sure that the element of race likely won’t escape your attention here, and nor should it; Goetz fled the scene and upon his capture over a week later, faced several charges, including attempted murder and assault. The trial split the city and even though most charges were dropped, testimonies indicated that Goetz’s actions were likely premeditated and motivated by racial prejudices. More recently, young African American Trayvon Martin was shot dead in a Florida suburb in 2012 by George Zimmerman, a neighbourhood watch volunteer. Zimmerman had reported what he called suspicious activity to the police, and ignored their instructions not to follow Martin, fatally shooting the young, unarmed male to death. The case exposed deep racial tensions and prejudices, and injustices in Florida’s state judicial processes – Zimmerman cited self-defence and because there was no evidence to counter this, he was acquitted of manslaughter charges, causing an outpouring of grief and rage across the nation and spurring the formation of the Black Lives Matter movement.

As I’m sure you can see, vigilantism is a hotbed of controversy and ambiguity and has vast implications beyond it’s obvious initial interpretation and application. But we are not afraid to go there! After all, awareness leads to change. In this post I have introduced you the basics of vigilantism: what it is, why it appears, what it looks like, and who might do it. I’ve even given you a couple of examples to pique your interest and lift the lid on its scope.

Trust me when I say that this is just the beginning.

Further reading:

A Strain of Violence: Historical Studies of American Violence and Vigilantism by Richard Maxwell Brown (1975: Oxford University Press)

© Dr Madeleine Smith (2024)