The New York Times
Far-right groups splinter in Wake of the Capitol Riot
Just eight weeks after the Capitol riots, some of the most prominent groups that took part broke amid a deluge of backstabbers and finger pointing. The dropout will determine the future of some of the most sincere far-right organizations and increase 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 about the encrypted messaging service Telegram. This reflects denials by at least six other chapters that also break with the national organization. “The fame we achieved was not worth it.” Similar rifts have emerged in the Oath Keepers, a paramilitary group recruiting veterans, and the Groyper Army, a white nationalist organization focused on university campuses and an outspoken supporter of the false claim that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election won it. Sign up for The Morning Newsletter of the New York Times The upheaval is driven in part by the large number of arrests in the aftermath of the riot in the Capitol and the subsequent repression of some groups by law enforcement. As some members of the far-right group leave more established groups and strike on their own, it may become even more difficult to track down extremists who are more encouraged to carry out violent attacks. “What you’re seeing right now is a regrouping phase,” said Devin Burghart, who runs the Institute for Human Rights Research and Education, a center in Seattle that monitors far-right movements. “They are trying to reevaluate their strengths, trying to find new infantry and trying to prepare them for the next conflict.” The top leaders of the Groyper Army, Nick Fuentes and Patrick Casey, have been in a bitter public dispute in recent weeks since the riot. Casey accused Fuentes of endangering followers for continued sensational activity. Fuentes wrote on Telegram: “It is not easy, but it is important to present more now than ever.” Among the Proud Boys, a far-right fighting club that claims to defend the values of Western civilization, the accusations have been exacerbated by revelations that Enrique Tarrio, the organization’s leader, once worked as a law enforcement informant. Despite Tarrio’s denial, the news has cast doubt on the organization’s future. “We reject and reject the tried and tested federal informant, Enrique Tarrio, and all chapters that prefer to associate with him,” the Alabama chapter of the Proud Boys announced on Telegram, using the same language as other chapters. Following the siege of the Capitol on January 6, allegations were made about informants and secret agents. “Traitors are everywhere, everywhere,” one participant wrote on a far-right Telegram channel. The chapters that break away accuse Tarrio of leading the group astray with sensational clashes with left-wing protesters and storming the Capitol. “The Proud Boys were founded to offer brotherhood to men on the right, not to shout slogans against heaven” and “to be arrested,” the St. Louis chapter said in its announcement. Extremist organizations tend to experience internal upheavals after any catastrophic event, as seen in the case of the 2017 rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, which killed one woman, or the bombing in Oklahoma City in 1995, which killed 168 people, including 19 children, killed. Daryl Johnson, who studied the Three Percenters and other paramilitary groups, said the current fighting could lead to further hardening and radicalization. “When law enforcement disrupts these groups, it’s just scattering the rats,” he said. “It does not get rid of the rodent problem.” President Joe Biden has vowed to make the fight against extremism a priority and Merrick Garland, his nominee as attorney general, said during his Senate confirmation hearings that he promised to “do everything in the power of the Department of Justice “to stop domestic terrorism. Garland, the chief prosecutor in the Oklahoma City bombing case, also said the United States is facing a “more dangerous period than we have faced in Oklahoma City” or in recent memory. More than 300 people were charged in the Capitol riot, with about 500 cases expected in total. At least 26 people facing the most serious accusations have been linked to the Oath Guards or the Proud Sons. Most of the people in the crowd were probably not affiliated with any particular group, yet radical enough to turn up in Washington to support Trump’s fake election, experts said they were concerned about how they would channel their anger forward . The legal consequences of the riots are also likely to push people underground. In general, the hazy connections and the potential for lone offenders will make it harder to detect planned attacks. There have been conversations among members of paramilitary groups who stormed the Capitol over the attempt to attack it while the president was addressing a joint session of Congress, Yogananda D. Pittman, acting chief of the Capitol police, week told a subcommittee of the House. But even though some extremist groups are pushing for more confrontation, all kinds of supporters want it out. The president of the chapter of the Oath Keepers in North Carolina, Doug Smith, announced last month that he was going to separate from the national organization. Smith did not respond to comments, but told The News Reporter, his local newspaper in Whiteville, North Carolina, that he was ashamed of protesters who attacked the Capitol and beat police officers. For others, however, the riot was a tremendous success, an opening shot over the arches of the law and the institution. “There’s a small segment that’s going to see it as Lexington and Concord, the shot being heard around the world, and the beginning of the racial-holy war or the fall of our society, of our government,” said Tom O ‘ Connor said. , a retired FBI terrorist specialist who is still training agents on the subject. Far-right groups are already facing proposed changes to immigration policy and the discussion of stricter gun control under Biden’s government. The number of people prone to violence is impossible to count, but experts agree that harsh political divisions have widened the potential pool on both the right and left. The fragmentation of larger organizations is the scene for small groups or lone offenders, which can be more difficult to detect. “It makes them more dangerous,” said JJ MacNab, an expert on paramilitary groups at George Washington University’s extremism program. Timothy McVeigh, who was executed for the Oklahoma City bombing, did not join a paramilitary group but still accepted the violent ideology. “The rhetoric is a fuel for the one-time offenders,” O’Connor said. “My concern now is that there are a lot of McVeighs in the offing.” Experts cite various reasons why the propensity for violence may now be worse than in earlier times when far-right organizations declared war on the government. The attack in Oklahoma City caused a period of retreat, but the election of a black president in 2008 aroused white supremacy. These groups have now experienced about 13 years without any sustained effort by law enforcement to counter it, experts said. Some groups that organized the far-right rally in Charlottesville in 2017 have fallen apart over the ensuing internal dispute and a lawsuit that threatens to bankrupt them. Others, including the Proud Boys and various paramilitary organizations, grew larger and took part in the January 6 riot. At the same time, extremist ideology was spreading more and more rapidly on social media, and foreign governments such as Russia were actively working to spread such thoughts to sow division within the United States. New threats and concerns about potential targets continue to emerge. The announcement in early February that hackers wanted to poison the water supply in a small town in Florida caught the attention of Rinaldo Nazzaro, the founder of a violent white supremacist group called the Base. Seven members of the base in three states were assembled last year on charges of murder, kidnapping and other violence to incite a wider civil war that would give rise to a white homeland. Nazzaro, out of reach of U.S. law enforcement in Russia, wrote on Telegram that the plot of water poisoning is a possible pattern for something bigger. The kind of extremists that worry experts most appeared in October when a paramilitary cell planning to kidnap the governor of Michigan was exposed. In federal court in January, the FBI portrayed one of the 14 accused, Barry G. Croft Jr., 44, as a national leader of the Three Percenters, a loose coalition of paramilitary groups that is difficult to track down because virtually anyone can demand fidelity. Croft, according to court documents, helped build and test grenade bombs to target people, and a hit list he posted on Facebook included threats to Trump and Barack Obama. Judge Sally J. Berens denied bail and quoted from transcripts of conversations recorded by an informant in which he threatened to hurt people or blow things up. “I’m going to do some of the dirtiest, most disgusting things you’ve ever read about in the history of your life,” the judge quoted him as saying. This article originally appeared in The New York Times. © 2021 The New York Times Company