Remember during the 2020 presidential race when Donald Trump refused to disavow right-wing violent extremists and instead told the Proud Boys to “Step aside and wait“Now we may know what you've been waiting for.
After rioters at the U.S. Capitol failed to disrupt the transfer of the presidency a few months later, and the nation turned its attention elsewhere, Cynthia Miller-Idriss of American University warned in a Interview with the New York Times:“A lot of people want to see January 6 as the end of something. I think we have to consider the possibility that this was the beginning of something.” But then there were successful lawsuits against many of the participants, people who “saw themselves as Donald Trump's Army“the prosecution said, yielding More than 1,000 convictions Since this month, there has been a growing sense that the worst of the mob violence has been left behind.
It is not like that. Recent research have shown that right-wing militias in general, and The proud boys In particular, they are reorganizing, perhaps with more followers than ever. The Proud Boys recently They marched in Springfield, Ohioafter the Trump campaign spread false claims about immigrants living there. A reporter wrote in the Nation that these groups could evolve into the American version of the violent mobs that helped bring Adolf Hitler to power in Germany and helped elevate Benito Mussolini in Italy.
It is important to understand how violent these groups are. Our research team at UC Davis has conducted a comprehensive annual study nationally representative survey on support for and willingness to engage in political violence since 2022. That year, we collected data directly from supporters of the Proud Boys and the militia movement (and six other far-right social movements and organizations). Recommendations They are amazing.
More than 40% of Proud Boys and militia supporters we surveyed thought that “having a strong leader for the United States [was] “Violence is more important than having a democracy,” and most thought the 2020 election had been stolen from Donald Trump. More than a third thought violence was justified to return Trump to the presidency in 2022. They were backing the violent overthrow of a legitimately elected government that had been in power for more than a year.
More than 40% thought armed citizens should patrol polling places, and 23% of Proud Boys and 30% of militia supporters said violence (which we define as “physical force strong enough to cause pain or injury to a person”) was usually or always justified “to prevent people who do not share my beliefs from voting.” More than 30% said violence was usually or always justified “generally…to advance an important political goal that you support.”
It gets worse. Nearly 30% of Proud Boys supporters and 45% of militia supporters expected to be armed with a gun in a future situation where they believed political violence was justified. Perhaps more troubling, nearly 20% of Proud Boys supporters and 28% of militia supporters said they were very or totally willing to kill someone to advance an important political goal.
What does this portend? One obvious possibility is that pro-Trump mobs will try to influence this year's election by intimidating voters and election officials.
It's hard to imagine candidate Trump placing limits on such activity, given his past social media posts calling for… “liberate” state capitals of their elected leaders, as well as their recent campaign plans and the Republican National Committee Deploy more than 100,000 election observers. If Trump were to lose the election, right-wing organizations could resort to violence to try to install him in the White House, but that would put them in a position where they would have to contend with the country’s formidable law enforcement capabilities and would almost certainly not succeed.
The most worrying possibility arises if Trump is elected. In that case, the Proud Boys and other right-wing extremists could become part of those law enforcement capabilities. The Washington Post reported Plans for a second Trump administration to possibly invoke the Insurrection Act on his first day in office and deploy federal law enforcement and military forces against American civilians. In war-game simulations run by the Brennan Center for Justice to test what might happen during a second Trump presidency, experts predicted that an authoritarian president would appoint members of private militias as federal marshals, one of the center’s senior advisers told me.
A President Trump might well authorize these new deputy marshals to use whatever force they deem necessary to achieve their goals. This is the man who as president in 2020 asked the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “Can’t you just shoot?” [protesters]fair Shoot them in the legs or something.?” He could make an advance offer of forgiveness for offenses committed along the way; he has already offered to Pardon the rioters of January 6And thanks to the Supreme Court's July ruling on election subversion charges against him, a President Trump would have broad immunity from prosecution for acts committed while in office.
My team's research often provides cause for optimism: the vast Most Americans reject political violence; those who support it in principle are They are largely unwilling to participate personally;and those who say they would participate are frequently willing to change their minds if urged to do so by family members or others.
But in this case, the only bright spot in our research is that supporters of the Proud Boys and the militia movement represent just over 2% of the adult population. But the United States is a big country: each percentage point represents about 2.5 million people. Imagine a few thousand of them, willing to use lethal violence to advance the goals of an authoritarian president, recently appointed to the federal security forces.
As a researcher of political violence, I am deeply concerned about this possibility. We can all participate in prevention efforts, urging those who may engage in political violence to change their minds and following the old maxim: “If you see something, say something.” But these efforts may not always be successful. As an emergency physician at a major city trauma center, I will make sure my hospital is prepared.
Garen Wintemute is a distinguished professor of emergency medicine at UC Davis and director of the university's Violence Prevention Research Program.
