Election threats persist four years after far-right extremists stormed the US Capitol

WASHINGTON – Following the 2020 presidential election, thousands of Donald Trump’s most ardent supporters have heeded his call to join a “wild” protest against his defeat. Following Trump’s lies about a stolen election, hundreds of them stormed the US Capitol under the banner of the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and other extremist groups and movements.

Many of these far-right networks have dissolved, splintered or disappeared from public view since the attack of January 6, 2021. But the specter of election-related chaos has not gone away with them. Political violence remains a persistent threat ahead of the November 5 elections, experts warn.

Election officials have been inundated with threats, disinformation and the prospect of “election denial organizations” wreaking havoc. The FBI was investigating Monday after fires destroyed hundreds of ballots in drop boxes in Portland, Oregon, and nearby Vancouver, Washington.

Trump has used social media to promote violent conspiracy theories that have become mainstream features 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 use the military to pursue “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 urged them to “fight like hell.” That helps explain why it can be difficult for authorities to identify and deter threats.

“It only takes one person to do a lot of damage,” said Kurt Braddock, a professor at American University 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 not in their public conversations online. Many likely learned a lesson from the Capitol riot 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 stoked anti-LGBTQ and anti-immigrant discourse in ways that embolden extremists, experts say. After January 6, the Proud Boys organized protests during drag queen story hours. More recently, Springfield, Ohio, was inundated with false bomb threats after Trump and running mate JD Vance amplified false, xenophobic rumors about Haitian immigrants in the city.

All kinds of far-right conspiracy theories are spreading almost unchecked on mainstream platforms, including a series of lies about the federal government’s response to hurricane-ravaged North Carolina, a swing state.

Trump and his allies often use 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 1939 pro-Nazi rally. Vice President Kamala Harris said she believes Trump is a fascist after 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 during one of two assassination attempts against him this year. He has accused Democrats of fostering an unstable political environment by accusing him of being a threat to democracy.

Beirich said it could be difficult for authorities to curb election-related threats “because this could happen across the country.” She and other experts fear extremists will try to disrupt the counting of ballots, possibly in battleground states.

“It feels a bit like the calm before the storm,” she says.

Extremism experts are hardly alone in their fears: About 4 in 10 registered voters say they are “extremely” or “very” concerned about violent attempts to overturn the results of next month’s election, according to a new poll conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Of the more than 1,500 suspects 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 court investigation.

This includes approximately 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 seen smaller numbers of followers charged in federal court.

Four years ago, Trump told the Proud Boys to “stand back” during his first debate against Democrat Joe Biden. Group leaders celebrated Trump’s shout and eagerly joined the fray as Trump invited supporters to Washington for his “Stop the Steal” rally.

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 stop the peaceful transfer of presidential power from Trump to Biden.

The imprisonment of the groups’ national leaders left a void. For the Proud Boys, this was partly filled by local chapters that consider themselves 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 capabilities are greatly reduced from where they were in 2020,” Holt said. “There is always the possibility that in the post-election period these groups will suddenly find the motivation to mobilize and show up at events. But they have been quite docile this year.”

The Oath Keepers, which Yale Law School-educated Stewart Rhodes founded in 2009, has withered since his arrest and incarceration.

“It was his baby, and no one really filled his void,” Holt said.

Dozens of Capitol rioters were followers of the anti-government Three Percenters movement or belonged to militia groups with names like the Gray Ghost Partisan Rangers, the Southern Indiana Patriots and the Patriot Boys of North Texas. The government’s response on January 6 appears to have put a “huge damper” on the militias, Beirich said.

“They don’t disappear,” she said. “Maybe they’ll pop up somewhere else, but I have to say, militias have been relatively inactive over the past year compared to previous eras.”

Many other January 6 rioters were inspired by QAnon, which centered on the baseless belief that Trump was secretly fighting a Satan-worshipping cabal of prominent Democrats and Hollywood elites that trafficked child sex. The self-described “QAnon Shaman” remains one of the most recognizable figures from the riot.

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 tackled QAnon after January 6, driving believers to platforms like Telegram or Trump’s Truth Social. Rothschild said many of them flocked back to Twitter, now called X, after Elon Musk bought it. He believes QAnon adherents remain “extremely dangerous.”

“They’ve had four years to build up their anger and resentment,” he said.