If Republican leaders, including Trump, don’t intend that to be the effect of their words, there’s a simple remedy: They could denounce violence in all its forms - including the violence of Trump supporters on Jan. “Some people’s response to those messages is not ‘I should go vote.’ It’s ‘I should pick up my gun and head for the nearest federal building.’” “We have people with massive megaphones saying we need to do something to stop a corrupt FBI, or an Internal Revenue Service that’s about to send 87,000 armed agents into your homes,” said Lewis, referring to the plan to hire 87,000 IRS employees, most of whom will not be enforcement agents. Now add one more phenomenon, something scholars call “stochastic terrorism”: seemingly random, lone-wolf attacks inspired by the statements of leaders like Trump. Terrorism scholars say the extremist right is surviving not on the strength of its organizations but on a powerful narrative that appeals to millions of discontented conservatives.Ī key part of that narrative is the conviction, fed by Trump and his allies, that Democrats stole the 2020 election and will continue using illegitimate means to prevent conservatives from winning. Other polls have suggested even larger numbers. … The militias are only the most visible part.”īased on public opinion surveys, about 18 million Americans believe violence is justified to restore Trump to the White House, Pape estimates. It was a larger movement that includes many mainstream Trump supporters too. 6 happen was not Oath Keepers or Proud Boys. 6 defendants were not militia members,” he said. “It’s a mistake to focus on the militias,” said Robert Pape of the University of Chicago, who has studied the Jan. “They keep adding new chapters … and their agenda has diversified they’re showing up at school board meetings and campaigning on LGBTQ issues.” “Their leadership has been decimated, but we’ve seen increased activity at a local level,” Oren Segal of the Anti-Defamation League told me. The Proud Boys aren’t shrinking they appear to be expanding. #Free bingo blitz credits no surveys 2020 trialTheir brand has become toxic.”īut the prosecutions haven’t put a perceptible dent in the larger phenomenon of right-wing extremism, an ecosystem that includes white supremacists, antigovernment militants and many (but far from all) supporters of former President Trump.įor example, the Proud Boys, another militia whose leader, Enrique Tarrio, and four lieutenants are scheduled to go on trial on similar charges in December. “Members have distanced themselves from the leadership. “As an organization, the Oath Keepers have lost a lot of steam from this,” said Jon Lewis, a terrorism scholar at George Washington University. The defendants aren’t accused of committing violent acts but of organizing the squad that did.Īnd it may have crippled the Oath Keepers, a 13-year-old militia recruited largely from military veterans and law enforcement officers that styled itself as the armed vanguard of the militant right. equivalent of a domestic terrorism law, a charge that dates back to the Civil War. It’s a rare use of “seditious conspiracy,” the U.S. It’s the highest-profile prosecution so far in the Justice Department’s massive Jan. The trial, the first of several planned for ringleaders of the insurrection, has high stakes. “We aren’t getting through this without a civil war,” Rhodes told his followers in a text message, according to his indictment. Prosecutors said Rhodes and others planned the assault on the Capitol, ordered their troops to bring “zombie killer tomahawks” and other weapons and stockpiled guns in hotels in case the battle escalated. The defendants, including Stewart Rhodes, the Yale-educated lawyer who founded the group, were charged with “seditious conspiracy”: plotting to attack the federal government by force to prevent Congress from certifying the 2020 presidential election. 6, 2021, went on trial last week in Washington. Five leaders of the Oath Keepers, a right-wing militia that played a leading role in storming the Capitol on Jan.
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