Threat Perception

Below I wrote a post about how America’s militias fall into an ideological “gray zone” in the eyes of the federal security apparatus. Richard Evans’ The Coming of the Third Reich provides another example of how a heavily-armed radical group can be seen as unsavory but tolerable; there is a deep ideological basis to threat perception. On Eugen von Knilling and his Bavarian People’s Party in Bavaria:
“As many moderate conservatives were to do later on, Knilling and his allies felt that the Nazis were a threat, and disliked their violence, but considered that their heart was in the right place and their idealism only needed to be used in a more productive and healthy way. So they, too, were relatively tolerant of the Nazis’ activities.” (pp. 189-190).