Mariana van Zeller

Because we're living in the most divided era of our time and there's a lot of people who you know

believe that militias are important and think that it's important that they exist.

I find them incredibly dangerous, the existence of militias outside or on the periphery of the law.

I find it incredibly dangerous.

And so when I was talking to the right-wing group, they said something.

When I started talking to left-wing group, they were giving me the exact same reasons.

I mean, it was the exact same conversation, but seen from the other side, right?

And so I said, this is exactly the same thing that the other guy said.

And they were like, yeah, we're here.

We think – and their point was that – and they don't call themselves militias, by the way, the left-wing group.

And they didn't like the fact that I called them militias.

But they were saying was that – but this is basically a group who trains for what they think is going to be an incoming possible civil war.

We talked about civil war with them.

I know.

And they said, look, minorities in this country are under attack a lot of times by these right wing militias, whether they are part of the LGBTQ community or they're, you know, black or Hispanic, they're under attack.

And it's our job to train to make sure that we protect these people that are the most vulnerable in our society.

And we have to arm up and train and be ready to fight and go after the other people if we have to.

They said they only protect themselves.

They only defend themselves, right?

But that's the exact same thing that I heard from the other side.