The New York Times
Far-right groups are fragmenting in the wake of the Capitol riot
Just eight weeks after the Capitol rebellion, some of the most important groups that participated are fragmenting amid a torrent of slander and accusations. The consequences will determine the future of some of the most well-known far-right organizations and will raise the spectrum of splinter groups that could make the movement even more dangerous. “This group needs new leadership and a new direction,” the St. Louis branch of the Proud Boys recently announced on the Telegram encrypted messaging service, echoing complaints from at least six other chapters also breaking with the national organization. “The fame we achieved was not worth it.” Similar cracks have surfaced at Oath Keepers, a paramilitary group that recruits veterans, and at Groyper Army, a white nationalist organization focused on college campuses and an advocate of the false claim that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election. Subscribe to The Morning newsletter of the New York Times. The jolt is driven in part by the large number of arrests after the Capitol riot and the subsequent crackdown on law enforcement by some groups. As some members of the extreme right leave more established groups and attack on their own, it may become even more difficult to track down extremists who have become more encouraged to carry out violent attacks. “What you are seeing now is a phase of regrouping,” said Devin Burghart, who runs the Institute for Research and Education in Human Rights, a Seattle-based center that monitors far-right movements. “They are trying to reevaluate their strengths, trying to find new soldiers and trying to prepare for the next conflict.” The main leaders of the Groyper Army, Nick Fuentes and Patrick Casey, have been in a heated public dispute in the weeks since the turmoil. Casey accused Fuentes of putting followers at risk of arrest by continuing his high profile activities. Fuentes wrote in Telegram: “It is not easy, but it is important to continue to advance now more than ever”. Among the Proud Boys, a far-right fighting club that claims to uphold the values of Western civilization, recriminations have been compounded by revelations that Enrique Tarrio, the organization’s leader, has already worked as an informant for law enforcement. Despite Tarrio’s denials, the news questioned the organization’s future. “We reject and reject the proven federal informant, Enrique Tarrio, and any and all chapters that choose to associate with him,” the Alabama chapter of the Proud Boys announced on Telegram using language identical to other chapters. After the siege of the Capitol on January 6, accusations of informants and secret agents were particularly pointed out. “Traitors are everywhere, everywhere,” wrote a member of a far-right Telegram channel. The separation of the chapters accused Tarrio of leading the group through high-level confrontations with far-left protesters and for invading the Capitol. “The Proud Boys were founded to provide fraternity to the men on the right, not to shout slogans to heaven” and “to be arrested,” the St. Louis section said in its announcement. Extremist organizations tend to go through an internal upheaval after any cataclysmic event, as seen in the 2017 rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, which left a woman dead, or the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people, including 19 children . Daryl Johnson, who studied the Three Percent and other paramilitary groups, said that the current internal struggles could lead to even greater hardening and radicalization. “When these groups are interrupted by law enforcement, all they do is spread the mice,” he said. “This does not eliminate the problem of rodents.” President Joe Biden has vowed to make combating extremism a priority and Merrick Garland, his nominee for attorney general, said during Senate confirmation hearings that he promised to “do everything within the Justice Department’s reach” to stop terrorism domestic. Garland, the lead prosecutor in the Oklahoma City bombing case, also said the United States was facing “a period more dangerous than what we face in Oklahoma City” or in recent memory. More than 300 people were charged in the Capitol riot, with about 500 total cases expected. At least 26 people facing some of the most serious charges have been linked to the Oath Keepers or the Proud Boys. Most of the people in the crowd were probably not affiliated with a particular group, but radicalized enough to appear in Washington to support Trump’s false election allegation, experts said, fueling concerns about how they will channel their anger going forward. The legal consequences of the riot are also likely to push people underground. Overall, nebulous affiliations and the potential for lone criminals will make it difficult to discover planned attacks. There have already been conversations between members of paramilitary groups that invaded the Capitol over the attempt to attack him while the president speaks at a joint session of Congress, Yogananda D. Pittman, acting chief of the Capitol Police, told a House subcommittee this week. last. But even if some extremist groups are pushing for more confrontation, all kinds of supporters want to leave. North Carolina chapter president Oath Keepers, Doug Smith, announced last month that he was parting ways with the national organization. Smith did not respond to messages asking for comment, but told The News Reporter, his local newspaper in Whiteville, North Carolina, that he was embarrassed by protesters who attacked the Capitol and beat up police officers. For others, however, the riot was a resounding success, an opening shot through the law and the system. “There is a small segment that will see this as Lexington and Concord, the gunshot heard around the world, and the beginning of the sacred racial war or the downfall of our society, our government,” said Tom O’Connor, a counterterrorism expert. retired FBI who continues to train agents on the subject. Far-right groups are already gathering around opposition to the proposed changes in immigration policy and the discussion of tighter arms control under the Biden government. The number of people prone to violence is impossible to count, but experts agree that the tough political divisions have expanded the potential pool on both the right and left margins. The division of larger organizations sets the stage for small groups or lone offenders, who are more difficult to track. “It makes them more dangerous,” said JJ MacNab, an expert on paramilitary groups at the George Washington University Extremism Program. Timothy McVeigh, who was executed for the Oklahoma City bombing, did not join a paramilitary group, but still embraced the violent ideology. “Rhetoric is the fuel for those lone offenders,” said O’Connor, echoing a common concern. “My concern now is that many McVeighs are in sight.” Experts cite a variety of reasons why the propensity to violence may be worse now than in earlier times, when far-right organizations declared war on the government. The Oklahoma City attack caused a period of retreat, but the election of a black president in 2008 revived the white supremacy movement. These groups have now spent about 13 years with no sustained effort on the part of the police to fight them, experts said. Some groups that organized the far-right rally in Charlottesville in 2017 collapsed due to subsequent internal disputes and a process that threatens to bankrupt them. Others, including the Proud Boys and several paramilitary organizations, increased in size and participated in the January 6 rebellion. At the same time, extremist ideology has spread even more and much more quickly on social media, and foreign governments like Russia have worked actively to spread these thoughts to sow divisions in the United States. New threats and concerns about potential targets continue to emerge. The announcement in early February that hackers tried to poison the water supply in a small Florida town attracted the attention of Rinaldo Nazzaro, founder of a violent white supremacist group called Base. Seven Base members in three states were arrested last year on charges of planning to commit murder, kidnapping and other forms of violence to start a broader civil war that would allow the emergence of a white homeland. Nazzaro, out of reach of US security forces in Russia, wrote in Telegram that the water poisoning plan was a possible model for something bigger. The type of extremist that worries experts the most came in October, when a paramilitary cell that planned to kidnap the governor of Michigan was exposed. In a federal court in January, the FBI portrayed one of the 14 defendants, Barry G. Croft Jr., 44, as a national leader of the Three Percent, a freely allied coalition of paramilitary groups that is difficult to track because virtually anyone can claim allegiance. Croft helped build and test shrapnel bombs to target people, according to court documents, and a list of targets he posted on Facebook included threats to Trump and Barack Obama. In denying him bail, Judge Sally J. Berens cited transcripts of conversations recorded by an informant in which he threatened to injure people or blow things up. “I am going to do some of the most disgusting and unpleasant things you have ever read in the history of your life,” said the judge quoting him. This article was originally published in The New York Times. © 2021 The New York Times Company