## From Digital Revolt to Militia Movement: The Unraveling Path of a January 6 Rioter

As online rhetoric moves closer to on-the-ground action, what does the January 6 rioter and prison-based pro-gun organiser Edward ‘Jake’ Lang’s evolution from a mere instigator to the founder of an armed national militia via a network of encrypted messages spanning the 50 states tell us about the evolution of digital technology for political mobilisation – and about the pro-gun organising of tomorrow?

**The Rise of Napalm: A Pro-Second Amendment Militia**

Few things illustrate the ongoing power of militia culture in the US as well as Lang’s creation, the North American Patriot and Liberty Militia, now known as Napalm. From his prison cell, he’s still trying to build a national militia-minded pro-gun organisation that spans the entire spectrum of American life. To that end, Lang claims he has 20,000 members in his organisation. But independent research puts that number at closer to 2,500. In any case, the organisation’s very existence reflects an important undercurrent in pro-gun sentiment that cuts across many traditional boundaries and highlights tensions in current pro-Second Amendment thinking in the US.

**Lang's Vision: A PRO-Active Stance for the 2024 Election**

Only a year before the 2024 US election, Lang’s prescient preparedness for ‘civil unrest’ indicates just how concerned gun culture is about the fairness of and outcomes from American voting. Election-related anticipation of chaos isn’t just Napalm’s, either. The view taken here isn’t just that such militias are canary in the coalmine, anticipating crisis. It’s that an increasing segment of the population is preparing to take up arms against a political outcome they don’t like. More than this, the preparedness stance is to situate the militia at the moment of claiming all-American freedoms.

**A PRO-Gun Philosophy Amidst Civil Discord**

At the centre of its philosophy is a militant pro-gun stance that Lang articulates in the very first episode of the show: ‘I come armed, all the time,’ he says to a young stranger who dares to approach him in a parking lot. ‘I have that Second Amendment thing, you know. And that’s a right. A legitimate right.’ Napalm’s pro-gun, Second Amendment culture is an aggressive one: it insists not just on the right to keep and bear arms, but on living a life that adheres to that constitutional right. It isn’t just a question of whether or not a militiaman should shoot; it’s a matter of his very identity. And pro-gun activists like those at Napalm insist on exercising their Second Amendment rights aggressively and assertively, especially in times of perceived societal crisis – whether that be following a hurricane, or a political upheaval.

**Navigating the Realities of Militia Mobilization**

Indeed, attempts to turn an online militia into a real one are beset by many difficulties, not least the problem of vetting members to ensure they aren’t infiltrated by the opposition. Lang’s insistence on a strict vetting process reflects a microcosm of the wider problems facing pro-gun militias in maintaining both coherence and security. The difficulty in converting digital energy into actual, physical activity is also telling of just how difficult it will be to realise the dream of an armed citizen network across the whole country.

**The Intersection of PRO-Gun Ideals and Anti-Government Sentiments**

It was propelled by a combination of pro-gun advocacy with an antiestablishment suspicion of government authority, one that symbolises an important crossroads in US politics, where gun ownership has been integrated into broader fears about governmental overreach. Lang’s story – tied to messages meant to promote guns and to oppose the government – exemplifies a key element of contemporary militia movements: militants have used their perceived devotion to what they view as essential American liberties as a rallying cry to their cause.

**Understanding the PRO-Gun Militia Phenomenon**

The founding of Napalm by Lang from prison illustrates the more ambitious second turn that pro-gun militias have taken – both within the context of the American body politic and in relation to their perceived role in the future of the US. These groups are no longer marginal – nor are their constructions of self and its threat from within American ‘civilisation’ simple. Rather, post-Constitution and post-riot, pro-gun militias increasingly see themselves not just as objects of political violence waged against them by the Left, but as proactive agents of national politics, and as defenders of the constitutional rights that they believe are under threat. Napalm, and the pro-gun movement it represents, highlights how, more than two centuries after its creation, the Second Amendment remains a live, malleable object in American political discourse, which has become a political banner for those people who feel left behind by contemporary political movements.

What Napalm evinces, at its most abstract, is how something that begins as a set of ideas can crystallise into a nascent militia network – a rambunctious frontier that the gun-rights movement shares with other groups trying to navigate the technological terrain of spreading and organising. As US politics broaches another round of competitive elections, the work and ideology of groups like Napalm could remain a focus for national attention, and a pressure test on what constitutes legitimate politics in the digital age.