Violence and conspiracies Trump fueled will remain when he’s gone

The pro-Trump groups that sacked the Capitol on Jan. 6 pose such a threat to the inauguration on Jan. 20 that 20,000 heavily armed

U.S. soldiers are now protecting the building and surroundings, more than twice the total in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. But the threat won’t end on Jan. 20, either.

Thanks to Trump, an array of armed white supremacist militias, conspiracy cults like QAnon, anti-government “Patriot” movements, neo-Nazis and garden-variety MAGA boosters have found common cause. The president’s Big Lie about a stolen election, which he, along with most GOP legislators, still clings to, has confirmed their belief that the government has betrayed them.

MAGA housewives have been brought together with gun-toting militiamen by Stop the Steal rallies. Ordinary folks have been radicalized by social media and presidential incitement. They consider the Capitol assault a symbolic victory.

Once unique for its democracy, the United States is now unique for a homegrown American terrorist movement whose members believe they are pro-Trump patriots. Even if Trump is convicted of incitement against the U.S. government by the Senate, Americans will still have to combat the movement he inspired.

“The whole idea that this is just a bunch of survivalists in the woods is wrong,” says Jason Stanley, author of “How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them.” “This is far more than the Proud Boys or your neighbor down the street. The far right has massively expanded its base. The people involved are not just previous extremists.”

Organizations that track right-wing extremists have been warning for years that this danger has been growing during the Trump presidency. The Anti-Defamation League reported last year that 38 of 42 extremist-related murders were committed by individuals subscribing to far-right ideologies, including white supremacy. The last five years, the ADL reports, include four of the deadliest years on record for extremist murders.

And among the many scary incidents committed by pro-Trumpers, the armed assault on the Michigan Capitol and threat to kidnap the state’s governor stand out as resembling a dry run for the U.S. Capitol attack.

Watching the groups attacking the Capitol, busy taking selfies, it was easy to underestimate them. But that would be a mistake. Movements like the Boogaloo Bois, who want to incite a civil war, or the Three Percenters, who see themselves as revolutionary patriots fighting government tyranny, are a present danger. So are the anti-government Oath Keepers, who seek to recruit ex-military and police officers. And so are the Proud Boys whom Trump famously told to “stand by.”

And so is the QAnon cult, which believes Trump was meant to overthrow a dark government conspiracy, including Democratic Party pedophiles who dismember children. Ashli Babbit, the woman who was killed by Capitol Police, was a QAnon believer and is now regarded as a martyr. Trump has praised QAnon — because they support him.

Yet before Jan. 6, too many dismissed these groups because they didn’t resemble the organized militias used by autocrats in illiberal democracies.

In India, for example, Prime Minister Narendra Modi promotes the idea of Hindutva — that India should be a “Hindu nation” despite its large Muslim minority. Modi belongs to the RSS, a Hindu nationalist paramilitary group, which has advanced this idea with violence. Modi was accused himself of organizing a pogrom against Muslims in 2002 in Gujarat.

Nor has Trump organized murderous vigilante squads of the kind that operate in Brazil, with outspoken sympathy from President Jair Bolsonaro.

Mercifully, violent far-right militias in America have not been granted such overt backing. But make no mistake, violent U.S. militias have taken inspiration from four years of anti-immigrant rhetoric and racist winks from the White House.

So it is essential to understand how Trump and social media created a unique American terrorist movement — a movement whose members believe they are patriots doing God’s work while backing Trump.

And it is essential to root out movement members, and white supremacists, from the police and armed forces, as Germany is doing with its military. America can learn from Germany’s response.

Instead, Trump’s Big Lie about a stolen election still feeds those anti-government groups, wearing down the barriers between everyday MAGA boosters and the violent and crazily conspiracy-minded. “If the president promotes that message, it makes it not extreme,” says Stanley. “Republicans have to have a zero tolerance policy for the Big Lie.”

Of course, that is not happening. Trump will cling to that lie when he leaves office, and few Republicans have called him out.

The good news is that federal authorities are now condemning right-wing extremism as the biggest internal threat to U.S. security, and warning that the “shared false narrative of a stolen election” increases that threat.

“But the damage has been done. The lies have been spread,” says Oren Segal, vice president of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism. So the question is how to repudiate them.

Convicting Trump would be a start, if enough Republicans had the guts to repudiate his election fictions. Otherwise, the violent far-right American militia movement will have another victory to cheer.