Daniel Hud

SHTF is a narrative photobook and website that bears witness to the Michigan Militia’s actions in 2020 from within. I’ve spent more than a year embedded with the men of the various militias in their trainings, events, leisure and protests. The photographs show an honest, unglamorous and often irresolute side of the men who publicly fantasize about becoming protagonists in a civil war. Each of their uniforms contains codes and symbols unique to the many movements and ideologies in which they involve themselves. In their training and outfitting they engage in a sort of Live Action Role Play that can help explain the way the individuals in these groups become immersed in fantasies that pull from political misinformation and popular fiction. The text shows the motives, anxieties and personalities that drive this movement. This work is an effort counter to their political narratives and undo the perpetual valorization of the armed vigilante that American movies and the political right has cast as the protagonist of American society. Focusing on the militias at this moment allows us to observe and interpret the effects of the ever-increasing doomsday rhetoric utilized by the American right.