Extremism experts explain the most alarming thing about the Capitol rioters

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

Tweet text:

Seamus Hughes
@SeamusHughes
“The Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys get a lot of media coverage, understandably so, but the vast majority of them are quite typical,”

Extremism experts explain the most alarming thing about the Capitol rioters
More than 700 people have been charged for their role in the Capitol attack, Richard Hall asks experts what we know about those people.
independent.co.uk
7:56 PM · Jan 3, 2022

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/january-6-capitol-anniversary-trump-b1985102.html

*snip*

They have found that of the 704 cases currently underway, the average age of those charged is 39-years-old — 613 of whom are men. They came from 45 states — including 75 from Florida, and 63 each from Texas and Pennsylvania. Eighty-one people who have been charged so far had prior military experience, around 12 per cent of the total.

For those who track and study extremism in the United States, that such a broad range of people chose to engage in the riot in some way is concerning.

“That’s almost more alarming, because it’s not alarming,” he says. “There’s not a profile. They range from 18-81 in age. They come from 45 different states — they are all over the map. The unifying idea is that ‘we have to stop the steal’ [of the 2020 election]. But it’s kind of a hodge-podge of extremist beliefs.”

“It’s a reflection of where we are in domestic extremism in general,” he adds.

*snip*

[Walleye]

1. At least 80% of them were men it seems. So they fit some profile

[grumpyduck]

2. Yeah, they're all

fucking asshole idiots.

[Walleye]

3. I think a lot of them were taking speed, possibly steroids

[certainot]

31. while jacking off to limbaugh. oops, what will they do now....

although maybe while a lot of those sex on the wrong brainers learned on limbaugh's knee they probably moved on to less subtle racism and hate and then the russian social media ops amped up all those years of dittoheadism with social media appeals to a younger audience and especially abuse victims

[GoneOffShore]

32. That's a fairly deep dive at that link.

[certainot]

34. best explanation i've ever seen, whether as humor or real. explains authoritarian increase w/pandemi

people shut in, social distancing, frustration, etc...... and a lot more

[uponit7771]

8. 99% are white men, we should be screaming that to the hilt IMHO

[Walleye]

12. Yes. It almost goes without saying but it should be said.

Racism and misogyny are such a big element in all this. It seems to be danced all around by most who are analyzing it

[uponit7771]

13. +1, article is from the UK so I think they're missing this dynamic also; they might think there's

... a representative amount of non whites who joined the J6 group.

Damn ...

[Walleye]

16. I think there was a lot more ex-military than POC if you wanna make a profile

But I guess they can’t quite understand the fucked up white supremacists in the United States, abroad. It’s been taken it to another level here

[uponit7771]

18. +1, used to live in Germany as a child and was BLOWN AWAY on how hard Nazi's worked at ...

... making their anti Jewish laws look normal to the world during the 32? Olympics.

There were relatively few articles denouncing Germanies anti Jewish policies cause I think they couldn't believe they'd do it out in the open or it was just political rhetoric by Hitler.

I think its similar in this context; the world things the white supremacism in the US is just political rhetoric instead of something that has trickled down into even law enforcement and is actively knawing away at the country/

[Walleye]

20. Also they are operating in the open in our faces. We expect conspiracies to be secret

And we think we defeat them by exposing their secrets. They come right out and brag about it

[uponit7771]

21. YES !!!

[PatSeg]

23. I was really surprised that wasn't included

It definitely is significant.

[uponit7771]

25. I think the Independent will get a shocking earful about this point in the article and go back ...

... and look at the data and some will be afraid, rightfully so.

[PatSeg]

26. I even went to the actual article

and did a search for the word "white" and the only reference was Jenna Ryan saying she wouldn't go to prison because she was "blonde" and "white". A totally inadequate and inconclusive assessment of the people involved in the insurrection. They ignored the most glaring and consistent fact.

[modrepub]

29. "Replacement Theory"

A lot of these white males come from blue states with areas that have much higher diversity than they used to. That dovetails with a lot of RW media sites that preach "replacement theory". The concept that Democrats are trying to open the immigration flood gates to replace "white" folks with other races that are more aligned with the Democratic Party to gain power.

[uponit7771]

35. +1

[UTUSN]

4. From the link:

*****QUOTE*****

..not interesting. You’ve got construction workers and yoga instructors. They come from a cross-section of America,” ... ....

They have found that of the 704 cases currently underway, the average age of those charged is 39-years-old — 613 of whom are men. They came from 45 states — including 75 from Florida, and 63 each from Texas and Pennsylvania. Eighty-one people who have been charged so far had prior military experience, around 12 per cent of the total. ....

“If 80 per cent of them are documenting their crimes on social media, it’s not because they are bad criminals, it’s because they believe they are patriots,” he says.

One thing that does stand out in the profiles of those charged is the high number of defendants with military training — around 12 per cent of the 704 charged so far, including five active service members and at least 55 veterans. ....

*********UNQUOTE********

[Lonestarblue]

5. These extremists want a civil war because they believe they can kill all the people they hate.

Republican leaders beginning with Reagan promoted anti-government sentiment, and we are seeing the results today of people who believe that their political beliefs are the only ones allowable and violence should be used to wipe out different beliefs. The civil war is already here—it is just being waged in state legislatures to take away the rights of people who aren’t white males. Today’s Guardian has an article about our resistance to believing that the country is in danger with so many people just ignoring what is happening around them. When Republicans overthrow elections in 2022 and 2024, who will stop them? The highly partisan Supreme Court?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/04/next-us-civil-war-already-here-we-refuse-to-see-it

“The right is preparing for a breakdown of law and order, but they are also overtaking the forces of law and order. Hard right organization have now infiltrated so many police forces – the connections number in the hundreds – that they have become unreliable allies in the struggle against domestic terrorism.

Michael German, a former FBI agent who worked undercover against domestic terrorists during the 1990s, knows that the white power sympathies within police departments hamper domestic terrorism cases. “The 2015 FBI counter-terrorism guide instructs FBI agents, on white supremacist cases, to not put them on the terrorist watch list as agents normally would do,” he says. “Because the police could then look at the watchlist and determine that they are their friends.” The watchlists are among the most effective techniques of counter-terrorism, but the FBI cannot use them. The white supremacists in the United States are not a marginal force; they are inside its institutions.”

[Kid Berwyn]

27. Excellent post!

If I may add…

Why Don’t We Know Much About Right-Wing Terrorists?

Conservatives Fired The Guy Studying Them

JAMESON PARKER
AddictingInfo, JUNE 18, 2015 4:41 PM

After a mass shooting at a historically black church in Charleston, South Carolina, left nine people dead and a right-wing white supremacist arrested, the country once again faces the uneasy question of just how many so-called “home-grown” terrorists are out there – heavily armed, ideologically driven, and violent.

It’s a good question, but it may be tough to answer because for reasons that are astoundingly dimwitted, the Department of Homeland Security pushed out the guy who was in charge of watching them, and dismantled his team all the way back in 2009.

The beleaguered hero of this story is Daryl Johnson, a top government counterterrorism analyst working at Homeland Security who spent six years with the agency amassing a wealth of data on far-right extremist groups that posed various degrees of threat to citizens in the United States. In 2009, in the months after President Obama assumed office, he watched as these groups veered even further right, and began to fear that America’s first African-American president could be the catalyst of a major uptick in hate crimes and anti-government attacks.

In a landmark report released just months into Obama’s term, and now looks downright clairvoyant, Johnson made the case that radical Islam is only a small piece of the terrorism pie:

“Do not overlook other types of terrorist groups,” the report warned, noting that five purely domestic groups had considered using weapons of mass destruction in that period. Similar warnings have been issued by the two principal non-government groups that track domestic terrorism: the New York-based Anti-Defamation League and the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center.

An annual tally by the latter group of what it calls “Terror From the Right” listed 13 major incidents and arrests last year, nearly double the annual number in previous years; the group also reported the number of hate groups had topped 1,000 in 2010, for the first time in at least two decades.

In response to that report, Johnson was destroyed. It wasn’t his integrity or claims that got him in trouble, his facts were solid. Instead, it was the inconvenient truth that much of the threat comes from right-wing conservatives, and even more awkwardly, radical right-wing conservatives who say and think a lot of the same things mainstream right-wing conservatives say and think.

CONTINUED w/links...

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2015/06/18/why-dont-we-know-much-about-right-wing-terrorists-conservatives-fired-the-guy-studying-them/

That was from 2015.

Internet Archive Waybac, if link doesn’t work:

http://web.archive.org/web/20150910045015/http://www.addictinginfo.org/2015/06/18/why-dont-we-know-much-about-right-wing-terrorists-conservatives-fired-the-guy-studying-them/

[msfiddlestix]

6. Did these "Experts" even mention White Nationalism as a Primary Unifying Cause?

[uponit7771]

9. Great Minds ...

[Walleye]

14. 👆Thank you captain obvious

[uponit7771]

7. "...that such a broad range of people..." 😲😲😲 "..broad range of **WHITE** people ..."

There, fixed it for them

[JHB]

10. No "profile"? Here's one that I'm pretty sure fits...

Marinaded in right-wing propaganda from numerous conservative media outlets.

The bullshit they swallowed went through an entire "farm to fork" process. Each and every spoonful they've chowed down for years and years.

[uponit7771]

11. +1, the article is from the UK so I think they miss this dynamic happening in the US or they don't

... believe we've allowed our info mediums to become such cesspools.

[kentuck]

15. Somebody made them feel relevant.

Somebody made them feel credible.

Somebody made them feel that they were the majority in America.

Somebody stirred their anger and resentment.

I think we all know who that was?

[gratuitous]

41. Somebody paid their way

I haven't seen that addressed. Out of all of these economically anxious insurrectionists, how many of them had their transportation and lodging costs covered by someone else? Some of them were wearing custom t-shirts with the date printed on them. This wasn't some spontaneous flash mob gathering. Who planned it, got the miscreants to DC that day, and made sure they all (or almost all) got back to their comfy-cozies at the end of the day?

[malaise]

17. The experts themselves have bought into the omnipresent institutional racism

And the dominant Western philosophy of white exceptionalism and superiority.
Some are so blinded that they can’t see.

[world wide wally]

19. We absolutely must cut off the head of the snake if we are going to save the U.S.

[H2O Man]

22. Recommended.

Thank you for this!

[pecosbob]

24. The elephant in the room folks...the connection is right-wing hate radio and television

DID I NOT SAY THAT LOUDLY ENOUGH?

[fightforfreedom]

28. The internet has allowed the crazies to organize.

The internet has become a major threat. Think about it, no internet, no Trump twitter account. No internet, no Clinton private server, no Russian theft of Democrats emails, no wiki-leaks, no Trump presidency.

[Solly Mack]

30. They seem surprised at how ordinary the insurrectionists are as people. Why?

Ordinary people carried out the Holocaust. Ordinary people ignored what was happening.

Ordinary people carried out, and attended/photographed/celebrated, lynchings.

Ordinary people join white supremacist groups.

Ordinary people commit atrocities.

Just because they were truck drivers or yoga instructors, or sold real estate, and were just ordinary people doing ordinary things in their life, does not imbue them with some special protection from prejudice and hate. Nor does it hamper their ability to act on their prejudices and hate.

Maybe stop thinking of ordinary people as living a passive existence, too engrossed in their ordinary lives to act in a such a manner that could impact the larger world around them.

A lynching in a small town reverberates across the nation.

Genocide on another continent changed the world.

All involved ordinary people.

All involved ordinary people who embraced ignorance, hate, denial and absurdities.

And then acted on them.

Being interesting is not a prerequisite for causing harm.

[uponit7771]

37. They are 99% white, that's not ordinary looking at the racial make up of the US

[Solly Mack]

39. I agree. That aspect (of the total population) is a number that should and does stick out.

And while the article talks of diversity in terms of the many states, what jobs, and the varying education levels, the overwhelming whiteness of them all is the common factor - and not simply what they believe.

But in terms/context of what they were saying (in the article), by saying the people weren't interesting - and by that they mean ordinary, not notable - I don't see why they are surprised or struck by it.

A person doesn't have to be famous or extraordinary in some way to commit an atrocity or crime or to cause harm.

Groups of uninteresting, ordinary people have been committing crimes and atrocities for centuries - to include, as I mentioned in my previous post - crimes and atrocities rooted in hate.

I think sometimes people see an evil act and they want to see a monster, when the person standing there, committing the evil act, is your neighbor or your co-worker, or the delivery man.

Doesn't mean they aren't monsters. Just means some monsters are all too often the local judge or local policeman or teacher, or preacher, or the farmer down the road - monsters don't always look like the monsters of nightmares - they look like what they are - ordinary people doing horrible things.

That's what is scary. To me, anyway.

[LaMouffette]

36. I don't think it's "a reflection of where we are in domestic extremism." I think it's more

a reflection of the success Fox News, Facebook, and other rightwing propaganda organs have enjoyed in completely brainwashing their followers.

The insurrectionists who were not members of the radical militia groups, but who were, rather, the next-door-neighbor type, have been thoroughly convinced that Biden stole the election. Nothing can dissuade them from this.

They truly believed—wrongly and idiotically—that they were doing their patriotic duty by storming the Capitol.

Another coup is almost certain to happen if the rightwing media is allowed to keep spreading their bullshit and if there is no powerful anti-propaganda campaign from the middle and left to diminish their influence.

[RobinA]

38. No Profile???

I can't get the article so I didn't read it, I'm going strictly by the OP. But, no profile? Hodge podge of extremist views? How many staunch Communists were there? Many anarchists? There's a pretty clear profile from the ones I've read about. "No profile" doesn't mean "no outliers." Over a quarter of them were from three states, two of which aren't even close to the scene of the crime.

[bucolic_frolic]

40. My view - I don't buy that they are "typical" as that implies widespread and normal

They see themselves as deprived and wanting and expecting to live like TFG, but they turn their anger against the libs and taxes to pay for the social safety net, whereas libs focus on corporations/capitalism. Oppressed potential and social antagonisms are a necessary precursor to political upheaval.

I don't buy that they are "typical". Only they considered it their right to overthrow the election by force as their leader told them. Yes, millions more were outraged, were loyal MAGAts, but they were not there in Washington, AND most Americans did not fund the insurrection, it was led from the top and funded from the top cabal around TFG.

Not buying this universal generalization that that post is selling.