The Evolving Tactics & Outlook of Right-Wing Extremists Online
Extremists online view January 6th as a pivotal moment, and they are adjusting tactics in the face of renewed scrutiny from law enforcement
Donald Trump’s political movement has always been a sanctuary for fringe racists, white supremacists of every kind, and ultra-nationalist extremists on the far right of American politics. Federal law enforcement officials were reportedly unsurprised to learn that hundreds of people on the Terrorist Screening Database participated in the attack on the Capitol, as they had come from a Trump rally. I spent some time in their natural habitats on the web learning about their reactions to the events of January 6th, their current modus operandi, and to better understand their evolving outlook for the future.
Tactical adjustments
The first thing to understand about extremists online is they’re not going anywhere. They are technologically savvy, and they’ve ensured durability of their ideas and their movement in numerous and effective ways. Their websites backups have backups, and they are actively dispersing themselves across the internet as widely and deeply as possible.
Extremists show awareness that they are now being surveilled following the attack on the Capitol, and they are actively working to thwart penetration by law enforcement.
They’re literate in the art of clandestinely operating online using TOR, or The Onion Router. This is the same software used to anonymously buy and sell drugs and weapons with cryptocurrencies on the dark web, used because it protects against the revealing of IP addresses, and thus conceals the user’s identity. Unsurprisingly, they’ve also incorporated Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies into their operations, ensuring that untraceable money flows from sympathetic wallets to activists on the frontline.
This is a thoroughly modern cohort, many of whom grew up online, and they understand how to effectively leverage the internet to recruit, spread glossy propaganda, and appeal to potential new members. Extremists show awareness that they are now being surveilled following the attack on the Capitol, and they are actively working to thwart penetration by law enforcement. They’ve incorporated a layered system to protect their communications. More sensitive topics, such as conversations about acquiring weapons, are more deeply secured into restricted-access networks and with end-to-end encryption software like Telegram. These tactics, familiar to any ISIS recruiter or Hezbollah financier, are now being widely employed by right-wing extremists in the United States.
Facebook and Twitter have recently cracked down, de-platforming Trump and working harder to rid their networks of right-wing extremists. Unfortunately, they were allowed to gather in the relative open online and unrestricted for years, and they’ve established real-world contacts that won’t be easily undone. Many of them were in the process of migrating to Parler, but that will be more difficult now that both Amazon and Apple have removed the app from their hosting services. Still, as I quickly found, there is no shortage of places to congregate. The tech crackdown seems to have accelerated an exodus from more mainstream networks into the more opaque and anonymous outskirts of the internet, further reducing extremist’s visibility to researchers and law enforcement.
There is a common language spoken by the hard-right on the internet. There is ‘MSM’ and ‘4th branch’, signifiers denoting the mainstream media and its perceived domination of American politics by shadowy leftist forces, often using stale but durable tropes about Jewish control of the media. These extremists seem unwilling or unable to recognize that Fox News, an enduring ally of the president, is as mainstream media as it gets, being the most-watched news channel in the country. Conspiracy theories and theorists proliferate, and Trump’s fiction regarding a stolen election riddled with fraud is everywhere, and functions as a kind of organizing principle among groups on the far-right online.
There was broad defense of the mob that attacked the Capitol, and they worked to romanticize and justify the assault as a patriotic and righteous undertaking.
I spent time examining websites even farther down the ideological rabbit hole, including Rise Again Movement (RAM), a California based white nationalist group that frequently collaborates with European Neo-fascists and white nationalist groups in Bulgaria, France, Ukraine, and elsewhere. I also spent time on American Renaissance, a popular white nationalist online newsletter and aggregator.
Assault on the Capitol
RAM and American Renaissance both issued statements about January 6th that contained many of the same themes I found elsewhere across the pro-Trump, right-wing online ecosystem. Both understood January 6th to be a kind of turning point, and even a pivotal moment in what they understood to be the broader racial and political awakening that was the Trump presidency. They lionized Ashli Babbit, who has become a kind of martyr to the movement after she was shot and killed by Capitol Police as she was trying to enter the Capitol.
There were frequent comparisons drawn between the insurrection and the Black Lives Matter and other racial justice protests of last summer. This was a constant theme throughout, from relatively moderate pro-Trump discussion boards to the more fervent white nationalist gathering spots. They dismissed George Floyd’s death as a “fentanyl overdose” and decried the resulting protests as illegitimate and illegal. There was broad defense of the mob that attacked the Capitol, and they worked to romanticize and justify the assault as a patriotic and righteous undertaking.
Notably, both RAM and American Renaissance included recognition that January 6th would spur federal investigations that would result in raids and arrests. RAM issued messages of encouragement and support for those arrested, and urged those sent to prison to “use the time wisely for working out, reading, and becoming racially conscious.” American Renaissance’s founder and chief ideologist Jared Taylor wrote a long post about domestic terrorism laws, and the ramifications of the attack on domestic dissident white nationalists. Predictably, a common refrain was that BLM and Antifa deserved more scrutiny from law enforcement, while arguing the assault on the Capitol was simply a legitimate expression of free speech.
The January 6th attack was lauded across the right-wing internet. They felt the assault to be a singular accomplishment, one that deserved praise for its bravery and show of political strength. The movement is increasingly diffuse online, even as it is deriving significant energy from what it views as a collective moment of success. The Biden administration has its work cut out for them, as federal law enforcement will need to begin to more aggressively monitor and disrupt online networks before they result in real-world political violence. After years of dismissing warnings of the danger of domestic white extremist groups at the DOJ during the Trump administration, there is now a moment of reckoning across government. As a national security threat, the problem of violent right-wing extremist terror is now front and center as a clear and present danger, and the nation waits for inauguration day from under its darkening shadow.
