The future of the anti-government militia movement is uncertain after the violent insurrection at the Capitol and former President Donald Trump’s departure from office.
WHEN U.S. CAPITOL Police became aware of a "possible plot to breach the Capitol by an identified militia group" on Thursday – the day on which some on the far right believe former President Donald Trump will return to power – they took no chances.
Capitol Police beefed up security around the complex and reached out to other law enforcement agencies and the National Guard, and the House canceled its session Thursday. One Republican lawmaker even pleaded with Trump to tell the unidentified group to stand down.
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After being caught unprepared on Jan. 6, when Trump supporters and far-right extremists – including militia members – overpowered police and stormed the Capitol building, authorities couldn't afford to dismiss any threat.
They're also on high alert for future plots. The acting chief of the Capitol Police told lawmakers last week that security measures implemented after the violent Jan. 6 insurrection should stay in place at least through President Joe Biden's as-yet-unplanned address to Congress because members of militia groups have targeted that event and said the want to "blow up the Capitol and kill as many members as possible."
It's not clear which groups are involved in the threats, but the heightened responses indicate that authorities are considering – in a way they perhaps did not before Jan. 6 – the threat of serious right-wing and militia violence going forward.
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And the increased scrutiny comes at a pivotal moment for right wing, anti-government militias in particular.
After ballooning under President Barack Obama, the modern militia movement and its ideology morphed as members latched on to Trump. Now, with Trump out of office and renewed attention from law enforcement in the wake of the Capitol riot, the militia movement is once again in flux, its future – and the ongoing threat it poses – uncertain.
Experts say it's too soon to know if the movement will grow, as it did in 2008 in reaction to the election of a Democratic president, or if it will be hampered by negative publicity, social media restrictions and increased attention from authorities.
"What's the calculus? How do all these factors play out?" says Mark Pitcavage, senior research fellow at the Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism. "Will there actually be a militia resurgence in the near to medium future? And if so, will it be a small one or will it be a larger one? We just don't know at this point."
The modern militia movement is a far-right extremist phenomenon that includes large umbrella groups like the Oath Keepers and the Three Percenters as well as smaller, more local organizations. The groups are anti-government, fervently pro-Second Amendment and tend to engage with government conspiracy theories. Members often see themselves as patriots who act in defense of the Constitution – a belief that can drive extremist action. While some militia members espouse racist and xenophobic beliefs, the movement is distinct from other, more recently formed far-right militant groups like the Proud Boys.
The Justice Department has indicted nine people connected to Oath Keepers for conspiring together to plan their actions during the storming of the Capitol, accusing them of preparing months in advance and coordinating travel to Washington.
Those nine were almost certainly not the only militia members present that day, though it's unclear just how many were at the Capitol. FBI Director Christopher Wray told lawmakers that those who participated in the upheaval included white supremacists and elements of violent, extremist militia groups – a bucket that includes factions like the "Western chauvinist" Proud Boys as well as factions of the anti-government militia movement.
Their involvement capped nearly a year of increasingly prominent and violent activity around the country by groups connected to the militia movement. Militia groups, many armed, showed up to demonstrations against coronavirus restrictions and counter-protested at racial justice protests over the summer, purporting to police them – a mission that in one case turned deadly. In the fall, a group of militia members was arrested for plotting to kidnap and potentially kill the governor of Michigan.
It's too soon to know whether the attack on the Capitol will inspire more violent militia activity or if the negative attention will suppress recruiting in the short term – or both. Investigations by law enforcement could also prompt militia groups to lay low, particularly if those investigations expand.
The movement and its groups have been "largely shaken, not by the Jan. 6 event itself, but by the response and backlash to it," Pitcavage says. "The militia movement right now is looking over its back."
Response has varied. One large group, the Three Percenter Originals – one of many individual factions under the Three Percenter umbrella – decided to completely disband in the wake of the riot.
"After much deliberation and discussion, the National Council has determined that with all of the negative light being cast, from either members of other 'Three Percenter' groups or the movement in general, we must dissolve this organization effective immediately," the group said in a statement. "The DC riots and Capitol breach has hurt the patriot movement drastically and as a result brought an end to our organization."
Leaders of groups like the Oath Keepers, however, have been more defiant.
Pitcavage likens the current scrutiny of the groups right now to the negative attention they received from the public and law enforcement after the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, during the movement's early years.
Photos: Insurrection, Impeachment, Inauguration
WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 18: On the East Front steps of the U.S. Capitol, lined by Honor Guard, lawmakers' staff and Sergeant at Arms staff run through the movements during rehearsal for the inaugural ceremony for President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris on January 18, 2021 in Washington, DC. The inauguration will take place on January 20. (Photo by Melina Mara-Pool/Getty Images)
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It began in the 1990s, prompted by the election of President Bill Clinton and the now-infamous government standoffs at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and Waco, Texas, before declining steeply in the early 2000s. The election of Obama in 2008 – an event that inspired intense anger on the far right – coupled with the economic downturn of the late 2000s resulted in a recruiting boom, and the movement swelled once more.
Trump's election proved to be a pivotal moment. Until 2016, these militia groups viewed the federal government as the enemy. But members saw Trump as anti-establishment and sympathetic to their own anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim views, and they rallied around him – support that was inherently at odds with their anti-government ideology. Militias focused instead on opposing state governments and left-leaning groups like Black Lives Matter.
With Trump out of the White House and Biden – a Democrat who has been a player in the established political apparatus for decades – in office, that central tension is gone, meaning that they could once again use anger directed at the federal government to recruit, energize and grow the movement.
We could see "a gradual return to what we saw in the movement under the Obama years, where there's more direct opposition to the government. And there's not this contradiction, if you will, of, 'We hate the government, but our guy leads the government,'" says Sam Jackson, an assistant professor in the College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security and Cybersecurity at the University at Albany.
That could prove especially true if the Biden administration pushes to make certain policy changes – namely enhanced gun laws, Jackson says.
While Biden's presidency could bolster the movement, it's currently lacking a key recruiting and organizing tool: social media. Major social media sites cracked down last year on militia-related posts and activity. Facebook alone removed thousands of pages related to "militarized social movements," including militia groups and the QAnon conspiracy movement, after implementing new restrictions on groups that discuss violence. Facebook also sought to remove groups that promoted "stop the steal" demonstrations.
Though militia members have other options, like right-wing social media platforms Gab and Parler, the crackdown by Facebook and Twitter will hinder the groups' ability to reach the general public and drum up tangential support from people who are not interested in joining militias but who may be sympathetic to their aims.
"I think that incidental exposure is a really important part of, not necessarily formal recruitment to the group or formal mobile mobilization into support, but a more abstract and fluid type of support where someone might mirror the rhetoric of organizations or abstractly say, yeah, go get 'em, when people are talking about engaging in armed insurrection or whatever the case may be," Jackson says.
Federal investigations, too, could have a dampening effect, particularly if the probes started in the wake of the riot expand into groups and issues not directly tied to the Jan. 6 attack.
And Trump, though he's out of office, could have an outsized effect on the direction of the movement, which is still largely supportive of him.
"To some extent, what Trump and his circle do might shape what anti-government extremists do – whether they continue to sort of mobilize behind him or if there's just a very much a return to a withdrawal from institutional politics – if you like, a version of radical libertarianism," Jackson says.
Trump, for his part, is not backing down from his claims that he won the election – claims that inflamed and emboldened those in the militia movement, as well as others.
"The election was rigged," Trump said Sunday during a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference.
"Do you miss me yet?" he asked the crowd.
Claire Hansen, Staff Writer
Claire Hansen is a staff writer who covers immigration, gun policy and marijuana policy, as ... READ MORE
Tags: Donald Trump, Joe Biden, national security, gun control and gun rights