Militia

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Militia (from Latin militia, meaning military service) refers to a paramilitary group that is separate from the country's actual armed forces and acts as an organization that either complements or challenges them.

The term is usually applied to groups of civilians, created to maintain order, particularly in the event of civil unrest, or to fight. It can also refer to a private army or even the entire armed population or military of a state, which is in service for only a short time in peacetime and which can be called up to defend the homeland, such as in the American colonies before independence. Of course, militias can often go astray and become full-on (far-right) terrorist groups.

In the the former Soviet bloc and other Cold War communist countries, the militia (or militsiya) were the law enforcement organizations responsible for maintaining public order, the equivalent of the police. Militia can also be used to refer an official army reserve, such as such as in Switzerland and Canada.

Notable militia groups

• Minutemen
• Freikorps of the German Völkisch movement.
• Nationalist Heimwehr of Austria.
• Schutzstaffel
• Milice, an Vichy France collaborationist paramilitary that were opposed to French Resistance.
• Brazilian militias, which emerged in the early 80s and who are illegal mafia-like paramilitary groups, that have their roots in the death squads of the Brazilian military dictatorship in 1964.
• American militia movement