WASHINGTON (AP) — After the 2020 presidential election, thousands of Donald Trump’s most ardent supporters heeded his call to join a “wild” protest against his defeat. After Trump’s lies about a stolen election, hundreds of them stormed the US Capitol under the banners of the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and other extremist groups and movements.
Many of these right-wing extremist networks have disbanded, splintered or disappeared from public view since the attack on January 6, 2021. But the specter of election-related chaos has not gone away with them. Experts warn that political violence remains a persistent threat ahead of the November 5 election.
Election officials were inundated with threats, misinformation and the prospect that “election denial” organizations would wreak havoc. The FBI was investigating Monday after fires destroyed hundreds of ballots in mailboxes in Portland, Oregon, and nearby Vancouver, Washington.
Trump has used social media to spread violent conspiracy theories that have become mainstream elements of Republican politics. Many, including Trump himself, have tried to recast the Capitol rioters as 1776-style patriots and political prisoners. Trump has also vowed to exploit the military to fight “enemies from within.”
Four years ago, most Trump supporters in the mob had no criminal record or any group affiliation beyond their shared loyalty to a president who exhorted them to “fight like hell.” This explains why it can be complex for authorities to detect and respond to threats.
“It only takes one person to cause great harm,” said American university professor Kurt Braddock, who studies extremism.
Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, said the extremists she monitors don’t seem fixated on this year’s election — at least in their public chatter online. Many likely learned a lesson from the Capitol insurrection defendants, who flooded social media with self-incriminating posts before, during and after the siege.
“We have no idea if anything is going on in encrypted chats,” she added.
During this election cycle, Trump and his allies have fueled anti-LGBTQ and anti-immigration discourse in a way that has galvanized extremists, experts say. After January 6, the Proud Boys staged protests at Drag Queen Story Hours. More recently, Springfield, Ohio, was inundated with phony bomb threats after Trump and his Vice President JD Vance spread false, xenophobic rumors about Haitian immigrants in the city.
Far-right conspiracy theories of all kinds are spreading almost unhindered on mainstream platforms, including a plethora of lies about the federal government’s response to the swing state of North Carolina, which was devastated by the hurricane.
Trump and his allies often exploit his rallies as a platform to spread racism and xenophobia, including one Sunday at New York’s Madison Square Garden that drew comparisons to a pro-Nazi rally in 1939. Vice President Kamala Harris said she believes Trump is a fascist His former chief of staff John Kelly said the former president praised Adolf Hitler while in office.
Trump was hit in the ear by gunfire in one of two assassination attempts against him this year. He accused Democrats of fostering a volatile political climate by accusing him of posing a threat to democracy.
Beirich said it can be complex for authorities to contain election-related threats “because they can happen anywhere in the country.” She and other experts fear extremists will try to disrupt vote counting, possibly in battleground states.
“It feels a bit like the calm before the storm,” she said.
Extremism experts are not alone in their fears: About four in 10 registered voters say they are “extremely” or “very” worried about violent attempts to affect the results of next month’s election, according to a recent poll from The Associated Press-NORC to tilt Center for Public Affairs Research.
Of the more than 1,500 defendants charged in the Jan. 6 attack, more than 200 have been linked by federal authorities to extremist groups or movements, according to an Associated Press review of court records.
They include about 80 leaders, members or associates of the far-right Proud Boys and more than 30 defendants linked to the anti-government Oath Keepers. Other groups, including the Groyper movement, have had smaller numbers of followers charged in federal court.
Four years ago, Trump told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” during his first debate against Democrat Joe Biden. Party leaders celebrated Trump’s applause and eagerly joined the fray as Trump invited his supporters to his “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington.
Today, some of the top leaders of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers are serving prison sentences of up to 22 years for violent plots to disrupt the peaceful presidential transfer of power from Trump to Biden.
The imprisonment of the groups’ national leaders left a void. In the case of the Proud Boys, it has been partly occupied by local groups that view themselves as autonomous and tend to promote more extreme ideologies, said Jared Holt, a senior research analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, which tracks online hate.
“Their organizational skills have declined significantly compared to 2020,” Holt said. “There is always the possibility that in the post-election period these groups will suddenly find the motivation to mobilize and appear at events. But they’ve been pretty docile this year.”
The Oath Keepers, founded in 2009 by Yale Law School graduate Stewart Rhodes, have died since his arrest and imprisonment.
“It was his baby, and no one really stepped in to fill his void,” Holt said.
Dozens of rioters at the Capitol were supporters of the anti-government Three Percenters movement or belonged to militia groups with names such as the Gray Ghost Partisan Rangers, the Southern Indiana Patriots and the Patriot Boys of North Texas. The government’s response to January 6 appeared to put a “big damper” on the militias, Beirich said.
“They’re not going away,” she said. “They might pop up somewhere else, but I have to say: militias have been relatively inactive over the last year or so compared to previous times.”
Many other January 6 rioters were inspired by QAnon, which focused on the unfounded belief that Trump was secretly fighting a Satan-worshipping, child sex-trafficking cabal of prominent Democrats and Hollywood elites. The self-described “QAnon shaman” remains one of the most recognizable figures of the uprising.
Mike Rothschild, author of “The Storm Is Upon Us: How QAnon Became a Movement, Cult, and Conspiracy Theory of Everything,” said the QAnon movement has evolved beyond its bizarre web of “riddles and codes.”
Twitter, Facebook and YouTube cracked down on QAnon after January 6, driving believers to platforms like Telegram and Trump’s Truth Social. Rothschild said many of them returned to Twitter, now called X, after Elon Musk bought it. He believes QAnon followers continue to be “extremely dangerous.”
“They have had four years to build up their anger and resentment,” he said.
