Protests raised militias’ profiles
Paramilitary movement in recent years is much more “aggressive” than what state has seen in the past
Before Robert Gieswein donned goggles, grabbed a baseball bat and stormed the U.S. Capitol, he posed for photos across Colorado flashing a hand sign associated with an extremist militia ideology that he and hundreds of other Coloradans buy into.
The far-right militia movement has gained visibility in Colorado over the past year after its members appeared at protests across the state.
Men wearing patches for the Three Percenter movement as well as identifiers of other farright groups appeared at Black Lives Matter protests in Denver last summer. Dozens of men in military-style gear provided security for a Jan. 6 rally at the Colorado Capitol for people who believe, without evidence, that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election.
In 2019, Three Percenter militia members guarded a rally against Colorado’s red flag law, at which state lawmakers spoke. And political candidates have aligned themselves with militias, including newly elected U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, who declared, “I am the militia.”
“In the last year we have seen a rise of the paramilitary movement in a way that is much more aggressive that what we’d seen in Colorado previously,” said Eric Ward, executive director of the Western States Center, which works to address white nationalism and other extremism in the American West.
But militias are not new to Colorado. A 1994 Anti-Defamation League report on militias in the state said several were operating along the Front Range, including in Lakewood, Boulder and Fort Collins. Some of the report echoes current trends in militias and noted that one group was selling a videotape called “The New World Order, Communist groups supported by Hillary Clinton.”
It’s hard to know how many people are involved in far-right militias in Colorado. Thousands have joined social media groups for Three Percenters in Colorado, although it’s unclear how many of those people do more than post online. One extremist expert put the number of people affiliated with the militia movement across the country at “tens of thousands.”
Last year brought a perfect
storm of conditions for militias to thrive, extremism experts said. The pandemic led to government-imposed restrictions, which play into far-right conspiracies. Misinformation swirled and was amplified by government officials, including Trump. People became more anxious and isolated.
Federal agents investigating the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 now have focused attention on farright extremist groups, including the Three Percenters and the Oath Keepers, another anti-government militia, according to comments made by Michael Sherwin, the acting U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, after filing criminal charges against Gieswein and others.
“2020 was really just the perfect breeding ground,” said Rachel Nielsen, executive director of the Colorado Resilience Collaborative, which combats targeted violence and extremism. “Add into it a president who was cheering (extremism) on and misinformation, we have things like QAnon spring up, which is delusional.”
Organizing online
Online chat boards for militia members show a few groups across Colorado recruiting as well as dozens of people looking for groups to join. There is no unified, specific purpose among the groups and posters, some of whom advocate violence.
The Three Percenter movement — the ideology Gieswein allegedly identified with — is one of the more prominent militia movements in Colorado and across the country. Three Percenters see themselves as defenders of the country against government tyranny — especially gun regulations — and the Anti-Defamation League describes them as far-right, antigovernmental extremists.
“A pithy way to describe the militia movement is libertarianism plus guns plus conspiracies,” said Mark Pitcavage, senior research fellow at the Anti-Defamation League and an expert on extremism.
There are thousands of people who identify with the militia ideology but may not join a group or take part in any activities beyond the Internet, he said. The emergence of the Three Percenter concept in 2008 allowed people to claim part of the militia movement without having to do anything, Pitcavage said. It was an easy-to-digest version of the militia ideology — although it is based on an inaccurate portrayal of the American Revolution.
“As a concept, anybody could declare themselves a Three Percenter,” he said.
If formed, militia groups are fairly small, made up of eight to 24 men, and are located in rural, suburban and urban areas, Pitcavage said.
Some Colorado groups have online applications to fill out.
One Three Percenter group’s application includes questions like whether the applicant has worked in the military or law enforcement, whether they can legally own a gun and why they want to join. Several groups explicitly state they are not racist or
anti-Semitic and do not condone illegal acts.
“If you are training and participating in paramilitary exercises in order to overthrow a democracy or a government that is transparent and accountable, that is political extremism,” Ward said. “If you are training to use violence in order to drive policy decisions and how democracy works, that is political extremism as well.”
“At the end of the day the outcome is violence”
It’s not exactly clear, however, what many Colorado groups’ immediate goals are.
One man posted in a chat board claiming to be an Oath Keeper and wanting to form a militia group on the Western Slope. In an interview with The Denver Post, he cited the need for a militia because of the threat of “antifa” and the government, but he said he wasn’t sure what the group’s goals would be if he formed one.
“I have no idea,” he said, declining to give his name.
It’s unclear how organized Gieswein’s alleged paramilitary training group, the Woodland Wild Dogs, was before his arrest.
“Never heard of it,” Teller County sheriff’s Cmdr. Greg Couch said of the group.
Gieswein had been seen at various community events carrying a rifle, but he never acted in a threatening manner, Couch said.
Stephen Hall, a reporter at the Ark Valley Voice, a news outlet covering Chaffee County, started researching local militia groups earlier last year. In one of the Colorado Three Percenter Facebook groups he monitored, which has since been deleted, people posted anti-Semitic messages as well as threats of violence to “leftys” and government officials. Hall watched as the posts in the groups became more dangerous as racial justice protests continued across the country. “Their rhetoric started getting way more violent, their threats started getting more violent,”
Hall said.
Photos showed Three Percenter groups running exercises at the Chaffee County public gun range. But the broader community in Chaffee County has not done much about the groups, Hall said, and he doesn’t think the lack of resistance is unique to his area.
“The apathy toward this is systemic and problematic in any community, particularly in our state,” he said.
Tough conversations
The reasons people join militia groups vary, experts say. Some people are looking for a sense of belonging. Others might feel anxious about a perceived lack of power as other demographics begin to make up for decades of exclusion. Some may join a militia group to learn survival or self-defense tactics but soon become drawn into the conspiracies and more dangerous purposes, Ward said.
But the reason a person joins a militia is less important than the effect of their joining, which gives credence and power to the movement as a whole, Ward said. “At the end of the day, the outcome is violence,” he said, referring to the U.S. Capitol riot.
It’s hard to specify why Colorado has had a persistent militia presence, Ward said. Factors could include a “live and let live” attitude and a lack of concern on the part of law enforcement and political leaders about the groups, he said.
The state’s largely white population also might “signal to these groups there is more of an acceptance than there really is,” he said.
The Colorado Resilience Collaborative, based at the University of Denver, aims to disrupt extremism by giving communities the resource and skills to have difficult conversations. Too often, people will try to lecture someone out of extreme beliefs or simply say nothing, said Nielsen, the group’s director.
‘People don’t know what to do with this,” she said. “This is not a call to the cops, not a call to the mental health hospital.”
The center offers a phone line (303-871-3042) that people can call for help navigating conversations with people who are radicalizing. Nielsen encouraged people to speak up and not just brush off concerning comments or behaviors.
“If it’s on your mind, there’s probably something there,” she said. “It’s better to have the conversation and find out otherwise.”