Vigilantes

"There is no precedent for what happened."--a newscaster

What happened is that on January 6, 2021, several thousand vigilantes stormed the American capitol and fought with the police. 

In 1864 vigilantes in Montana lynched Sheriff Henry Plummer. For a hundred years after the Civil War, white vigilantes tortured, mutilated, burned and lynched black people at will. 

Vigilantes are groups of men formed to attack genuine or imaginary threats to their privileges. A recent example was an organization of armed volunteers that operated on the border with Mexico, where they illegally captured people crossing into the United States. ( The Border Control cooperated with them.) 

In Michigan last year vigilantes took control of the state capitol and planned to capture, try and execute the governor of the state. 

Vigilante groups sometimes form in places where the criminal justice system is seen as weak or corrupt. Vigilantes believe strongly that they are preventing or punishing crimes, and sometimes they are. But often the vigilantes are committing crimes ranging from assault to murder.

A good film on the topic is "The Ox-Bow Incident" (1942). A powerful short story is Nathaniel Hawthorne's "My Kinsman, Major Molineux," set in 1732.