Who Are the Hutaree?

The Hutaree are a Christian militia based in the Midwest, members of whom were arrested on gun charges in a series of FBI raids over the weekend. From what I could gather from their website, they expect to have to fight a long battle on Earth against the minions of The Beast, and they seem to look down on those Christians who expect Jesus to return very soon to save them from the struggle. As you will see, they are armed and to some extent trained, but they are few in number. My first impression is that they seem more organized and disciplined than the various alleged Muslim terrorist groups that have been nabbed over the past decade, but it isn't clear yet whether the government has cracked down because this group was plotting something or just because they had contraband weapons. Where they get the Hutaree name is unclear, despite inquiries on their discussion forum.

Here's a video fantasy of the Hutaree liberating a flagpole from the dreaded United Nations.

They're raising the banner of the Colonial Christian Republic. A Hutaree forum describes the CCR as something "set up for people to join as allies with us ... this way you get to keep your own unique way of doing things." In other words, it seems to be a loose affiliation of basically like-minded groups, in keeping with the presumed ideal of decentralized localism. The "Colonial" part looks strange, though; I'm not sure what they mean by that.

This news isn't likely to be a game changer for anyone. It will confirm Democrats and progressives in their fear of the militia movement. It will confirm the militias' fears of an impending, more sweeping government crackdown. It will confirm Christian extremists' fear of imminent state persecution. It will confirm Republicans' fear that the Obama administration intends to inflate the militia threat in order to discredit all dissent from the right. I'm not saying that the facts about the Hutaree will confirm all these things objectively, but simply that conspiracy-minded people will take the news as evidence justifying their suspicions about militias, the Christian right, or the government. In any event, we're likely now to learn much more about the Hutaree and the Colonial Christian Republic than anyone ever really wanted.