However, these groups provide an organizing framework that many potentially violent actors may use in the coming weeks. Large, cross-state, right-wing militia movements 4 Local chapters or local community militias are not represented here. Name Type Est. They operate with some level of structure, schedule, and strategy and engage in a number of different types of activities.
While these groups often define their operations in terms of defense of the public and protecting businesses, they are almost always aligned towards a particular political view. From this standpoint, through which they often see police and the US military as allies, their implicit goals overlap with preserving the long-term dominant culture of the US, largely perceived as traditionally pro-white and patriarchal systems of production and governance.
Many of these groups claim to be always ready and always watching, yet exhibit a pattern of activation in reaction to calls for justice or equity for non-white Americans.
The map below denotes states in which the activities of these groups have been detected in recent months. This moment was seized upon by Michael Brian Vanderboegh, who led the Sons of Liberty militia in the s and co-founded the armed Three Percent movement in amidst a rising current of Tea Party nationalism. Most members are actively pro-Trump. They are especially present in Georgia, where over a quarter of all activity involving these groups is reported.
In some cases they have been present at protests without engaging. In other cases they have directly intervened in demonstrations, both with and without the use of violence. In addition to involvement in demonstrations, a number of training exercises have been reported across Georgia, Maryland, and Illinois. The group concentrates on recruiting active and retired officers from both the police forces and the armed forces of the United States Anti-Defamation League, 18 September The Oath Keepers have a history of conspiratorial and highly aggressive reaction to currents in US politics.
However, in the immediate contemporary, the Oath Keepers have once again taken a more hardline right-wing stance. News, 10 September The Oath Keepers have been active in Kentucky and Texas since the start of the summer.
The majority of their activity has been in support of law enforcement in the form of presence at, yet not direct engagement in, protests.
Taylor, a year old Black woman and paramedic, was killed by police last March during a botched raid on her apartment New York Times, 1 September In Texas, the Oath Keepers have been more directly engaged in demonstrations. In late July, in Weatherford, outside of Fort Worth, members of the Oath Keepers were present in support of pro-statue demonstrators, who had shown up to counter groups calling for the removal of a Confederate monument located at the county courthouse grounds.
The rally was counter to a concurrent rally showing solidarity for protesters in Portland who had been in a standoff with federal agents for over a week and to register new Democratic voters. As such, Democratic congressional candidate Hank Gilbert was also present and slotted to speak. Three people were reportedly injured, though no arrests were reported. One of those injured was a top aide for Gilbert; Gilbert noted that he had asked law enforcement to become involved and to allow for their scheduled demonstration, but to no avail Washington Post, 27 August More recently, the Oath Keepers have held recruitment events in Texas, including in Houston.
They place less emphasis on a national leadership structure, yet maintain a national-level identity aesthetically and in their operations.
Each of the 86 identified chapters of LFM has its own particular political and social character, with some of the chapters taking a more anti-left or anti-BLM stance than others, but the LFM claims to remain focused on security and observation operations rather than gathering to demonstrate themselves. Prior to their presence on the ground for this event, they claim to have coordinated with local police, which was not always the case for other groups that travelled to Charlottesville.
Some of the larger chapters of the LFM, like the Pennsylvania Light Foot Militia MilitiaWatch, 24 March , have seen staffing changes since Charlottesville and the previous de facto leader of the group has since disassociated with the movement. The majority of their activity has involved the group being present at, yet not directly engaging in, protests.
In addition to presence at protests, the group — especially the Kootenai County division in northern Idaho — has also engaged in public meetings for field exercises or shooting practice at gun ranges. The Civilian Defense Force CDF and American Contingency AmCon groups are recently formed armed right-wing activist brands or formation patterns that combine a central national command with highly-devolved local, state, and regional commands.
These are grouped together because they both represent the same current within the armed right of the US, and in many cases draw from the same pool of recruits likely with much overlap between members. Both the CDF and AmCon rely heavily on shared branding and fairly broad ideological framing of active conservative involvement in response to anti-police and pro-BLM protests. The CDF maintains a much smaller presence and relies primarily on gathering intelligence on protest events happening around the country.
Right-wing street movements represent the bulk of recorded direct, personal violence from both this summer and previous years. These movements are highly masculine, often staffed by a younger core membership, and participate in spectacular violence while running savvy public relations campaigns to a press corps that often does not understand their real goals. Many members of these movements revel at the idea of brawling in the street and have expressly indicated that they enjoy fighting with groups like Antifa, for whom many of these organizations were formed to provoke.
In order to remain publicly acceptable, these groups will often describe themselves either in many layers of irony or as something they are not, such as a solely Christian or conservative movement. Leading groups in this category include the Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer.
The Proud Boys are a fascist youth movement oriented towards street-fighting. The Proud Boys are evolving into a more militant organization. Groups of young men increasingly show up to Proud Boys events with rifles and plate carriers.
The Proud Boys have been active in events across at least 11 states, including Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Oregon, since the start of the summer. They have been present, yet not engaged, in protests, though have also intervened in demonstrations, both with and without the use of violence. Patriot Prayer is a right-wing Christian street movement organized to actively confront leftist street movements on the American West Coast.
Patriot Prayer has been active exclusively in the Pacific Northwest since the start of the summer, with activity centered in Oregon and Washington. The group has engaged in demonstrations, both peaceful and violent. During that rally, the combined militia groups used pepper spray and shot paintball guns at counter-demonstrators rallying in support of the BLM movement and against police brutality, as well as at journalists. They also intentionally drove their trucks through crowds of counter-demonstrators who had tried to block the streets NBC, 30 August While Patriot Prayer has remained fairly quiet in recent weeks following the Portland shooting, its members are likely still energized from the summer of activity in the Pacific Northwest.
Devolved right-wing libertarian groups are often among the most difficult to track despite holding perhaps the most aggressive end goals. These groups are highly primed for a civil conflict they believe is likely to break out in the future, though many have extremely different views on the subject. These groups mostly operate in terms of hyper-local cells and short-range networks, but should also be considered highly responsive to news and current events.
The Boogaloo Bois are the adherents to a diverse set of neo-dadaist armed aesthetics and modalities aimed at setting off or preparing for the second American Civil War. They regard the likelihood of another war as inevitable. Some Boogaloo Bois are explicitly right-wing while others have attempted to infiltrate and use BLM protests as a way to accelerate the political situation towards mass violence.
Some Boogaloo Bois have also positioned themselves as pro-BLM or in support of anti-fascist protest movements. However, some of these same individuals have also been documented expressing far-right racist views, for example, expressing support for white nationalist dream-state Rhodesia or in sharing neo-Nazi irony memes online Bellingcat, 27 May It is also the case that some police departments, such as that of Newport News, Virginia, have sought to get along with and make concessions to local Boogaloo cells.
The Boogaloo Bois have been active across at least 11 states since the start of the summer. Given their non-cohesive nature, their activities span different regions of the country.
In addition to demonstrations, the Boogaloo Bois have also engaged in armed clashes with law enforcement, in line with their stated agenda of police opposition. In late May, for example, two alleged members of the Boogaloo Bois fired from a vehicle on federal officers working security at a protest associated with the BLM movement in Oakland, California, killing one and injuring a second. The following week, an armed clash ensued between police and a Boogaloo Bois member in Santa Cruz, California, where a police officer was shot dead.
During that same time period, at least three members of the Boogaloo Bois were arrested in Las Vegas, Nevada when they arrived at a demonstration associated with the BLM movement armed with weapons and Molotov cocktails, with alleged intentions to escalate the situation by attacking people. Their involvement in demonstrations was further thrust into the limelight around the events that unfolded in Kenosha, Wisconsin in late August.
On the night of 25 August, about 1, demonstrators gathered outside the courthouse in support of the BLM movement and to protest the shooting of Jacob Blake by police days earlier. Given that much of their current work is in preparation for activation rather than to protest in the street, they have only appeared in ACLED data in three states this summer.
In August, protesters led by Ammon Bundy held demonstrations for multiple days in a row in Boise, Idaho to demand an end to coronavirus mask mandates, the lifting of the current state of emergency, and to oppose a proposal that would limit the civil liability for businesses, schools, and governments. The special legislative session in the statehouse was interrupted when a glass door was shattered and armed protesters rushed into the gallery.
On the second day of the special legislative session, when the protesters showed up again, Ammon Bundy, amongst others, was arrested. Bundy was also arrested the following day when he and his followers showed up yet again to the special legislative session.
Earlier that month, Bundy, alongside Shawna Cox, another libertarian activist, led a protest against the mandatory use of face coverings in response to the coronavirus pandemic in Orem, Utah, outside Provo. While militia activity has been reported in at least 34 states and Washington, DC since late May , there are specific locations at heightened risk of militia activity during the upcoming election period and its immediate aftermath.
These assessments are made based on trends in the data and information collected by ACLED and MilitiaWatch, as well as by taking into account a variety of drivers and barriers to militia activity. For example, locations that have seen substantial engagement in anti-coronavirus lockdown protests are at heightened risk. This stems from the direct link between state authority and the imposition of such restrictions, which challenges the ideals of many of the groups introduced above.
These protests also serve as crucial network-building events for right-wing activists to re-activate for other protests and counter-demonstrations. Protests organized by and around BLM, or places where anti-BLM activists may fear Antifa activity, are also at a heightened risk of militia activity. Soon that crowd doubled, thanks to protestors wrapping up their Black Lives Matter demonstration nearby. The talk was followed by a breakout session where attendees discussed specific ways they could reduce their reliance on the police in their everyday lives.
As the event concluded, attendees began filing out of the amphitheater in front of the courthouse, grabbing 8 to Abolition handouts on their way out. Maxwell was pleased to see some of them sticking around afterwards to ask questions.
Following the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police in late May, protests against police brutality continue to take place around the world, most recently focused on ongoing stand-offs in Portland, Oregon. In what some call the largest movement in U. While it is attracting growing interest from younger activists in the community, groups like the John Brown Gun Club have been advocating for the abolition of police and other forms of systemic injustice since its inception.
Unlike most left-leaning groups, though, gun ownership is central to its strategy. Rothschild wrote an article last year on the Redneck Revolt, a national network of armed, anti-fascist groups. The coalition itself was started in , but after a brief hiatus reformed in by members of community defense groups in Kansas and Colorado.
A hallmark of the Redneck Revolt and its branches is the use of firearms to support those principles. That sentiment may be relevant now more than ever. During the first six months of the year, an estimated 10 million firearms were sold in this country. About 3. Note: Includes background checks for handguns, long guns, mixed transactions and other gun-related equipment.
While most of its projects are centered around advocating for marginalized communities, the club offers community range days at a local conservation area. Dirk Burhans has been a member of the club for two years. He said the range days are a great way to learn firearm safety in a welcoming, inclusive environment.
And while the pandemic has interrupted range days for now, Burhans is looking to potentially work with another armed, leftist group in the area on firearm training. Brooke Wylie, the head of security for the Gender Justice League in charge of overseeing the person security detail for the event, did some research on the club.
She told them the event had a policy of having no open carry that is, no visible weapon , which they were fine with. She accepted their offer. Police were also present, but many marginalized groups do not trust them to provide protection at public events, especially when far-right groups are involved.
Each member showed up with a concealed handgun. This scenario — in which armed community groups are working together to patrol a Pride event and protect it from other malicious and potentially armed groups — is becoming more and more common. There are more guns than people in America — approximately million in a country of million people. An average of 34, people died each year from firearms; in , of those deaths were the result of police shootings. And the memory of the Pulse nightclub shooting in , when 49 people were killed at a mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Florida, is still hanging heavily over the LGBTQ community.
Throughout the day, Puget Sound members stood watch oversections of the park, staying connected via walkie-talkies. We want to build relationships with people in our community, we want to appear approachable.
While the group has not used deadly force, a former member of the group, Willem Van Spronsen, recently made headlines when he was killed by police after trying to set fire to Ice vehicles in a parking lot outside the Northwest Detention Center In Tacoma, Washington, a private immigration detainment facility. Many of the cookout attendees owned guns, and had considered bringing them today — but ultimately they had decided to come unarmed, in the interest of keeping the event family-friendly. Redneck Revolt began in as an offshoot of the John Brown Gun Club, a firearms training project originally based in Kansas.
Many Tea Party activists were fellow working-class people who had endured significant hardships as a result of the economic crisis which, in his eyes, had been caused by the very wealthy.
By supporting economically conservative politicians, Strano thought, they would only be further manipulated to benefit the already rich. Now, eight years later, more than 20 Redneck Revolt branches have sprouted across the US; the groups range widely in size, some with only a handful of members.
Max Neely is a member of the Mason-Dixon branch, which encompasses central Pennsylvania as well as his native western Maryland. The group draws a great deal of inspiration from the Young Patriots Organization , a s-era activist group consisting primarily of white working-class Appalachians and southerners. The group opposed racism and worked closely with the Black Panthers, but they did make use of the Confederate flag in their recruiting.
Thurman explained that it was used only strategically, to start conversations with poor white people who might identify with the symbol. In the same way that the Young Patriots once used the Confederate flag, Redneck Revolt seeks to employ another emblem of rural America: guns. Redneck Revolt groups work on providing an explicitly anti-racist presence in rural areas, and focus particularly on gun shows.
Many members are from places where guns are relatively normalized, and Neely wants Redneck Revolt to serve as a viable alternative for people who might otherwise join the growing right-wing militia movement. Since the Ruby Ridge siege , the US has witnessed an increase in anti-government paramilitary organizations. Oath Keepers, for example, is a militia group that strives to defend the US constitution, which the group believes is under threat by its own government.
But groups like Oath Keepers have much in common with far leftists: concerns about the infringement of human rights, objections to mass surveillance and the ever reauthorized Patriot Act, anger at the continued struggles of the working poor.
Our basic message is: guns are fine, but racism is not. But there are other rightwing groups around — the explicitly racist kind. Pikeville is a small Kentucky town deep in the heart of Appalachia. It has no major airport or interstate, a population of less than 10, and an abundance of idyllic mountain scenery. Mining has long been the major industry here, though Pikeville also attracts tourism: mid-April draws over , visitors to the annual Hillbilly Days festival , a celebration of Appalachian culture and music.
Pike County — chronically impoverished, overwhelmingly white — is seen as a fertile setting for spreading their ideology. The city of Pikeville itself has actually experienced some growth in the past few years, but the greater area is struggling.
Citing this figure, Heimbach hoped to develop existing pro-Trump sentiments into full-blown national socialism.
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