The recent convictions of the Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes and Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio has raised questions about the future of both extremist groups and what role they may or not play in the future path of violent extremism in the US.
Researchers who monitor American far-right organizations said the Oath Keepers have in effect been decimated, with only a handful of chapters remaining, while the Proud Boys are ramping up efforts to protest at LGBTQ events and taking cues from larger national conservative conversations about hostility to transgender rights.
“The impact of criminal litigation, really any litigation, legal accountability has been quite different [for both groups],” said Rachel Carroll Rivas, deputy director of research and analysis for the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). “So I don’t know that the solution for all groups engaged in violence and conspiracy are going to have the same outcome from the same accountability measure.”
Carroll Rivas said since the arrests of Rhodes and other Oath Keepers’ members, it only took about five months for the group to go from nearly 100 chapters to just a handful remaining active. “I can tell you I don’t see as many Oath Keeper bumper stickers around,” she reported.
The Oath Keepers, Carroll Rivas explained, were structured with their leader, Stewart Rhodes, assuming all the primary roles. Carroll Rivas describes Rhodes’s conviction and potential 25-year prison sentence as cutting off the “head of the dragon” and undermining the group’s strategy of recruiting law enforcement, military veterans, and public officials.
They were “quasi-following some of the rules” with a legal structure and non-profit status, Carroll Rivas said, and their strategy focused on a purposeful recruitment of “people who are respected members of society” in a greater attempt to wield power. Oath Keeper members joined something they didn’t necessarily believe would participate in unacceptable activities, let alone anything criminal, she explained.
“When something happens like January 6, when things get out of hand, it pushes the everyday membership away from the organization itself, not from its beliefs, but it definitely pushed them away from the Oath Keepers’ name.”
Experts are most worried about the splintering of the far right when it comes to people who then act alone or in small groups unaffiliated to anyone else: a phenomenon that is extremely hard for law enforcement to track and infiltrate.
There’s a “steady drumbeat” of people not trusting the government, engaging in conspiracy theories and grievances, and encouraging people to arm themselves, said Oren Segal, vice-president of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, and a world of people online that share that view. That means there are alternatives to the Oath Keepers for people still wanting to be engaged in far-right activities.
“Will those people look elsewhere for more extreme, like-minded groups or will they lay low? It remains to be seen,” said Segal
Today, extremists “can choose their own adventure”, pulling bits of ideology from white supremacy and anti-government groups. As a result, Segal said: “There is a lot more opportunity to create strains of anti-government theory that will animate people into action and it’s much harder to track.”
Worryingly, researchers are finding it difficult to know when a potential extremist is moving from rhetoric to action. “When the language of extremism is so similar to general public discussion, it’s more difficult to know where the next attack is coming from,” Segal said.
But the Proud Boys, unlike the Oath Keepers, have not splintered.
In the wake of Tarrio’s conviction, the Proud Boys are ramping up their activity, and trying to disrupt LGBTQ+ events, such as protesting at drag queen story hours. The Proud Boys, which have many local chapters throughout the country and decentralized leadership, have realized they don’t need to travel thousands of miles and can “shift the social norm in their backyard”, said Segal.
He added: “They glom on to a contentious public issue in order to try to attract people.” Segal argued that the Proud Boys were doubling down in their attempts to target the LGBTQ+ events because of the “the baseless narrative that LGBTQ community are grooming children”.
Unlike the Oath Keepers, which had a specific anti-government ideology, Segal explained the Proud Boys were taking strains from different ideologies, such as the rise of Christian nationalism and opposition to what they view as the radical left.
The Proud Boys are also not the only extremist group that is targeting the LGBTQ+ community, Segal said. White supremacists with a history of violence are engaging in it almost weekly. Segal called it a “toxic combination” of groups with a history of violence and hateful ideology, saying it was the “challenge of our time” to mitigate that threat.
Researchers expressed concerns about Proud Boys’ actions in the aftermath of January 6 and Tarrio’s conviction because of their long record of engaging in violence.
“Part of their ethos, part of the attraction to others is that they are shamelessly militant,” said Segal. Violent extremes and grievances against the government are here to stay, he explained, saying the question is how the US can minimize their impact. “Accountability is part of that despite how it’s spun,” he argued.
America is “not the healthiest democracy right now”, Segal explained. “How do you win hearts and minds in this country? There is no fairytale ending to an insurrection.”
• This article was amended on 14 May 2023 to correct the spelling of Oren Segal’s name.
