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If attacked, they would use force to defend themselves, they said.

The FBI is leading the response to the occupation and their officers are trying not to provoke the rifle-toting men.

The agency said it was seeking "to bring a peaceful resolution to the situation".

If your imagination is kicking and yelling at the absurdity of the unlikely scenario, this story is, of course, slightly factually incorrect.

For "US citizens of Muslim background" read instead "white right-wing militiamen" - but all else in the account remains true.

A flurry of outrage and biting satire has erupted on social media over the double-standards and rampant hypocrisy swirling around this armed occupation of US government buildings and surrounding land.

Many wondered if the armed protesters were black or Muslim whether US law enforcement agencies would take a "let's wait it out" approach.

Others pointed fingers at the mainstream media for the relatively benign and low-level of coverage.

The absence of the term "terrorist" was for some particularly galling as it was seemingly absent merely because the protesters were white.

But the internet's most biting tongues turned on the "militiamen" themselves.

As over the name by which the armed group should be referred, social media leapt in with its own suggestions.

Users targeted the militiamen as slightly unfit American red-neck country bumpkins and self-aggrandising amateurs whose grandiose aims were slightly mismatched by their seizure of a remote visitors' centre.

By Monday night,  and were already favourite terms.

But seemed to top the lot.