A vigilante is someone who takes enforcement of law or moral code into his or her own hands. The term vigilante stems from the name "Vigiles Urbani" given to the nightwatchmen of Ancient Rome who were tasked with fighting fires and keeping a lookout for runaway slaves and burglars. In modern Western society, the term is frequently applied to those citizens who "take the law into their own hands," meting out "frontier justice" when they perceive that the actions of established authorities are insufficient. Vigilantism is sometimes vilified when it gives way to criminal behavior on the part of the vigilante.

Vigilantism has existed in some form for as long as there have been societies with weak law enforcement. In some cases, like Neo-Nazis or the Sombra Negra discussed below, the desire to impose the groups own values on individuals in society leads to vigilantism. In the United States in the first half of the nineteenth century, vigilantism took the form of lynch mobs. More recent examples of criminal vigilantism include the Neo-Nazis and other hate groups.

Examples of vigilantism

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• Early American west. Although in most contexts the term vigilante is pejorative, in many instances throughout history when criminals either owned or intimidated the law, where officials were corrupt or where there was no established law it became necessary for private citizens to step in and fill the gap.

• On August 26 2005, in Bellingham, Washington, ex-convict Michael Mullen posed as an FBI agent and entered the home of Victor Vasquez, James Russell, and Hank Eisses, on the pretext of warning the three former sex offenders of acts of vigilantism; after grilling the men about their crimes, he shot and killed Eisses and Vasquez. Both men had no history of repeat offense, had been served and were not perceived as a threat by neighbors, therapists, or parole officers, which gives some credence to the belief that vigilantes may be acting in haste or are ill-informed when they take action, or are acting based on personal conviction or emotion rather than a reasonable concern for maintaining order in society (in this example, Mullen had been sexually abused as a child and admitted that this fueled his desire to punish sex offenders).

• Sombra Negra or "Black Shadow," a group of vigilantes, mostly retired police officers and military personnel in El Salvador, whose sole duty is to cleanse the country of "impure" social elements. They specifically target the MS-13 gang, and have a reputation for being extremely violent.

• Bernhard Goetz, a man who shot four young men on a New York City subway in 1984 when he thought they were going to mug him. They all survived, but one of the men was paralyzed for life. Goetz was cleared of all charges except possession of an unlicensed handgun.

• Ranch Rescue, a organization that is in the SW US that ranchers call upon to forcibly remove illegal aliens, squatters off of their property. This organization is still functioning.

Examples

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Films

• Dirty Harry (1971)
• Coffy (1973)
• Death Wish (1974)
• Taxi Driver (1976)
• The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)
• Mad Max (1979)
• Vigilante (1983)
• Falling Down (1993)
• The Boondock Saints (1999)
• Payback (1999)
• Shaft (1971 and 2000)
• Walking Tall (1973 and 2004)
• The Punisher (1989 and 2004)
• Batman (1989)
• Man on Fire (2004)
• Batman Begins (2005)
• The Devil's Rejects (2005)
• Sin City (2005)
• V for Vendetta (2006)
• 24 (TV series)-Jack Bauer (2001-2009)
• "Daredevil" (2003)

Literature

• Without Remorse and The Teeth of the Tiger by Tom Clancy. Without Remorse is explicitly about an ex-US Navy SEAL murdering a gang of drug dealers, while The Teeth of the Tiger concerns an intelligence agency which operates outside the US constitution, and has a special action group which assassinates enemies of the United States.

Vigilantes in comic books

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Vigilantism is the basic concept from which many contemporary fictions are derived, including stories published in dime novels and comic books. Many of the heroes of pulp fiction, such as Doc Savage and The Shadow, and comic book superheroes such as Batman and Daredevil have at various times been considered to be vigilantes due to their actions being self-motivated, and while generally aimed at the "good" result of bringing evil-doers to justice, being done outside the scope of what is permitted under the law. In fact, virtually any super-hero, even Superman, Captain America, and any other respected super-hero may be considered a vigilante if he or she is not acting under the direct authority of a law enforcement agency or other government body. An extreme of the vigilante-type superhero is Marvel Comics' character The Punisher, who uses flagrantly illegal methods such as mass murder and torture to fight criminals. Another key example is Watchmen, a DC Comics limited series of the late 1980s written by Alan Moore, in which superheroes are portrayed by society and government as illegal vigilantes. Also of note is the DC comic book character of the 1980s, himself named Vigilante, a district attorney who "took the law into his own hands" in a disguise when the justice system failed to bring the wrongdoers to account.

See also

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• anti-hero
• Bald Knobbers
• Hysteria
• Pixelante
• San Francisco Vigilance Movement
• lynching

Law enforcement | Vigilantes

Selbstjustiz | Vigilant