Americana - Season 2009

Norman Olson is the founder of the Michigan Militia, the most famous/notorious/we-think-maybe-oldest? group of the early-90s citizens’ militia movement. If you’re too young to remember, that was this thing where guys in camouflage got together to train with their guns and guys with cameras pretended they were scary and racist.

VBS travels to Slab City, an ex-military base-cum-squatter haven in Southern California. With the help of two booze-guzzling sherpas, we traverse the Colorado desert to understand why so many call this wasteland home.

As militia membership slowly creeps back to its early 90s levels, VBS parses the rising tide of paranoia to gauge whether the New World Order is past its sell-by date or arriving right on schedule.