Vigilantes - and Who They Are

A few thoughts on what it actually means to be a vigilante.

An online friend sent me a link which included the below photo. This was quite some time ago now. Not long after I received the link, I shared it with a few other friends:

One of the friends who responded to the picture noted that an important raison d’etre for superheroes to appear at all is that the government is not doing its job, necessitating someone else step in to see justice done. Either corruption has taken hold and justice is not being done (see Batman’s Gotham, more often than not) or the government cannot handle the threat and its scope (see the Avengers vs. Loki in the original comic, then the Avengers vs. Loki and the Chitauri in the movie). Whichever casus chai leads to the protagonist’s appearance on the scene, the superhero is standing in the breach to fill the void that the government or the law has somehow left open.

My friend also noted that vigilantism is generally a response to corruption, and superheroes are typically vigilantes. When the judge lets someone who is actually guilty go free, or when the mayor pursues his political opponents while ignoring or even working with criminals, or when the mayor and the judges make up laws to benefit them and oppress others - that is when the vigilante/superhero typically arrives. At which point, of course, it only makes sense for the same corrupt elements to attack the superhero as a criminal, since he is now a threat to their power. It is this need for justice to be done and corruption to be cleared that makes superhero stories so appealing to so many in America.

Yes, we appreciate the officially sanctioned superheroes, like those seen in My Hero Academia. But due to our own history, we have a greater soft spot for the vigilante. The man who would prefer to live a normal life, yet who is called to do more. Perhaps he is summoned to do more because tragedy struck, as with Batman and Spider-Man. Maybe he must do more because warfare demands much of him, as with Captain America. It may also be due to the superhero’s realization that he cannot afford to bury his talents.

Whichever beginning point that the superhero finds himself starting from, the fact remains that he often has no official sanction for his actions early on. This includes Captain America, at least in his first film, where he goes AWOL to rescue Bucky and four hundred prisoners of HYDRA. Once he returns with his friend and the men in tow, he submits himself for disciplinary action, showing he knows that he has broken the rules and is willing to pay that price now that he knows his friend is alive. Going AWOL in the manner that he did means he was, essentially, acting as a vigilante in the middle of a war.

Even when superheroes form teams or “vigilance committees” which receive official government sanction (see the Avengers, who have a charter in the comics and likely have one in the films), eventually this official permission may be questioned. This usually occurs when the heroes are confronted with a situation or two that leads them to realize they must choose between corrupt orders or laws and doing what is right.

In my off-the-cuff reply to my friend’s point, I noted:

[This] is the balance that superheroes have to strike - and that a lot of imitators for the MCU and Marvel in general often (not always) miss. Same for imitators of DC comics… The idea is that you have either a system that's too corrupt to bother with crooks (including just executions) or that there are crooks the police and the state simply cannot bring in without specialized aid. And, as both comics [companies] have explored, you don't necessarily want that aid to be officially tied to the government in some capacity. Because the next time the government goes crooked, the heroes who were righting the system become part of the problem. Even if they don't want to be. In which case, their choices are to stay in the system...or "go rogue" and go back to being vigilantes.

It's a very, very fine balance. Even the Big Two don't always do it right. But there's a fine point of distinction between "too corrupt, need vigilantes to fix" and "need super cops who will go rogue rather than do the wrong thing if corruption sets in." And humans being humans, corruption is a generational/seasonal concern ALL THE TIME.

We recently received a non-combat example of vigilantes in action in the southeastern United States. When Hurricane Helene hit, the governor of the state of North Carolina, Roy Cooper, was nowhere to be seen. State government aid was glacially slow in coming, as was federal aid, leaving thousands of people trapped. It was a level of malfeasance the United States hadn’t seen since the fires in Lahaina, Hawaii, in 2022. As in Hawaii, North Carolina’s state government didn’t bother to step in when it was needed most to prevent further loss of life.

So civilians stepped in to do the job the government would not.

The so-called “redneck airforce” began when Adam Smith lost contact with his ex-wife and three-year-old daughter as the hurricane hit. He used his connections to get a civilian chopper to take him to find both his ex and his daughter. The two were unharmed, but with thousands of other innocents in the same situation, Mr. Smith didn’t just rescue them and leave. He remained in western North Carolina to help the survivors who weathered Hurricane Helene, the worst storm to hit the state since 1916 and very like the hurricane that hit Virginia in 1969 (that one was named Camille).

Mr. Smith was not the only “vigilante” to arrive in North Carolina and other states hit by Helene. Civilian volunteers, religious or not, were thick on the ground. The Cajun Navy - which learned lessons from Hurricane Katrina and formed in 2016, one year before lending spectacular civilian aid with Hurricane Harvey in 2017 - was on the ground in the interior South as well. The Cajun Army has since moved in for cleanup and repair work. Civilians from all over the country arrived to help, lending their time, money, skills, and effort to rescuing those who were trapped and supplying those who had nothing.

Of course, certain people couldn’t stand that, particularly if they were under contract.

But people kept coming, often doing work anonymously, and the civilian or “vigilante” response to Hurricane Helene remains one of the most inspiring real life episodes in American history. Amid great tragedy, the “vigilantes” stood up and delivered, as they are continuing to deliver throughout the devastated states. This includes delivering tiny homes to those who, for now, are still living in tents in sub-zero weather.

Why do I bring up a real life tragedy and triumph so many are still reeling from and connect it with - ugh - superheroes? Because these anonymous civilians and those who have given their names are real life superheroes. They use their “powers”/talents to help others in need. I grant that the term “vigilante” originated to describe a proactive person taking up a pseudo-law enforcement position, but given the push back that these civilian initiatives faced in North Carolina (which were largely absent in other states hit by the same hurricane) it seems to fit.

It also fits the rather broad meaning of vigilante. Per etymology online, vigilante is a Spanish term that literally means “watchman.” The English word “vigilance” also means “watchful, awake” as well as “to be strong, to be lively.” By these meanings, therefore, one could call the “West Virginia Boys” who built a road into Chimney Rock for residents to return home vigilantes because they were “lively” and “awake” enough to get the job done. These “West Virginia Boys” did this when professional companies couldn’t for fear of litigation, while the government took notes and moved on.

Adam Smith was certainly strong, watchful, and lively to go to the lengths that he did to rescue his ex-wife and young daughter. Ms. Patara - who put maintaining her own homestead on hold to help others in her native east Tennessee - also showed great vigilance or “liveliness” to help those affected by Helene. Jordan Seidhom demonstrated his watchfulness as well, taking his helicopter and his son to volunteer to ferry out people trapped in the mountains. He brought in supplies to those who decided to remain in their communities, too.

Our popular picture of a vigilante was born in the Old West, but it need not be confined to someone who enforces justice in its more familiar “negative” forms. (Negative in this case covering everything from citizen’s arrest to the proverbial “he needed killin’.”) It can extend to doing what you can for your neighbor with everything you have. We typically call this charity, a word that has been made something of a milksop term meant to cover feel-good causes that occur far away and which money will alleviate.

But charity is not, in the words of a poem whose author I can no longer recall, a simpering damsel. She is active. She is awake. She is lively.

In a word, charity is vigilant.

More than once I have seen it said that we should hold up “the heroes with medals on their chests” rather than those who play heroes on film. All due and reverent respect to the military, but even they know not all those medals were earned honestly by some of the people who wear them. A blanket statement of preference for one group over another is to miss the point.

The point is that anyone can be a hero. Patara is a heroine, having run errands even while sick to get supplies to those who needed them. Mr. Smith is a hero who went into harm’s way without official sanction, as is Mr. Seidhom. The men and women involved in both the Cajun Navy and the Cajun Army are heroes and heroines. The nuns who went into the disaster zone to do wellness checks are heroines, as are the “West Virginia Boys” who built a road in three days for the residents of Chimney Rock. Heroism comes in more than one type of package.

Heroes sometimes wear medals. Sometimes, they actually do wear capes. But many, many times, heroes and heroines wear a smile or offer a shoulder to cry on. More often than not, they also make home-cooked meals and bring supplies to help those who have nothing as well.

A friend of mine likes to say that superheroes epitomize the American desire best summed up as: “I want to help.” We all want to help, and throwing money at a situation is one way of doing it, but it is also a largely intangible manner of offering aid. Many of us want to help physically, by actually doing the work - including being the cop who saves someone. There is a reason why we have both citizen’s arrest and the second amendment on the books in the United States: as my friend has noted, we technically have a cop on every street. Because under the right conditions, every citizen can effect a citizen’s arrest, and our right to bear arms means we can enforce that arrest if threatened (say by holding a home intruder at gunpoint until the police arrive).

Charity is a motivating force and it is not meant to be restricted to money. You can be charitable with your time, your skills, or your presence, all of which are “superpowers” if used correctly and with true intent. In that respect, therefore, we ALL have the potential to be superheroes.

We are all “vigilantes” on the lookout to do good, and we must therefore be wary of being too vigilant. For the watchman who overdoes it is as bad or worse than the one who sleeps on the job.

Don’t fall asleep, but don’t overdo it either, readers. “Be watchful,” as He told us, and be ready. The opportunity to help may be closer than you think. Unless you’re awake to that fact, though, it will pass you by.

Stay awake. You never know what you will miss otherwise!