III% United Patriots leader disowns would-be OKC bomber

An Oklahoma patriot group, as those with an anti-government agenda are often called, is distancing itself from the suspected perpetrator of last week’s thwarted Oklahoma City bank bombing.

Federal court documents showed Jerry Drake Varnell, 23, claimed his views aligned with a “III% ideology.” He was listed as a member of the III% United Patriots group from November until recently, group spokesman Dylan Hunter said.

The group cut him from both the Oklahoma state and national rosters after they’d learned he’d been charged with the attempted bombing of the BancFirst building in downtown Oklahoma City.

“His claim that he aligned with three percenter ideology is false where III% United Patriots are concerned,” Hunter said.

Varnell reportedly never attended any gatherings, meetings or trainings, Hunter said, referring to Varnell as an “inanimate object” within the organization.

Hunter said his group’s mission is to uphold the constitution, and it doesn’t condone violence.

Oklahoma has three Three Percenters groups: the III% United Patriots, American Patriots III% and The Three Percenters, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

In 2016, the group recorded 623 patriot groups across the U.S., including militias. The number is down by nearly 38 percent from the 998 reported groups in 2015.

In Oklahoma, the number decreased from 10 in 2015 to nine last year, the SPLC reports.

The groups are declining this year after surging throughout Barack Obama’s presidency.

The SPLC noted these type of groups typically increase during Democratic presidential administrations and dwindle when Republicans are in the Oval Office. Even before Donald Trump was elected, the SPLC noted the groups’ waning energy.

Although Varnell reportedly claimed the Three Percenters’ doctrine, Oklahoma FBI spokeswoman Jessica Rice said that wasn’t why the FBI began investigating him. The Oklahoma field office doesn’t track individual patriot or hate groups.

Instead, a tip from a confidential source drove the investigation, she said.

While patriot groups in Oklahoma follow the national trend, that isn’t the case for hate groups.

Hate groups in Oklahoma are trending downward as numbers nationwide are steadily increasing, according to the SPLC.

In 2016, the group identified six hate groups in Oklahoma. Of those, four were designated as black separatist groups, one was considered a neo-Nazi organization and the last — a fundamentalist Baptist church in Oklahoma City — was labeled an anti-LGBT organization.

Oklahoma is No. 34 in the number of designated hate groups. It shares that position with New Hampshire. That number is down from 2015, when the center identified 17 hate groups in the state. In 2014, the group identified 11 groups, down from 17 reported the year before.

Oklahoma’s numbers buck a nationwide trend that began in 2014, when the SPLC reported 784 groups across the country. The next year that number grew to 892, which rose by about 3 percent this year to 917.

“To some extent, these are just historical accidents. Obviously, the national trend is not going to be reflected in every state,” said Mark Potoc, an extremism expert who worked with the SPLC for 20 years.

In 2016, the biggest rise nationally was among antiMuslim groups, which increased by almost 200 percent from 2015. There was also a surge in neo-Confederate groups, the SPLC reported.

The group reports the number of hate groups — though near record-high levels — “undoubtedly understate the real level of organized hatred in America,” given the increasing number of right-wing extremists moving into virtual spaces.

Potoc believes that’s true for Oklahoma, too.

The best example of that type of extremism, Potoc said, is Dylann Roof. The 23-year-old was radicalized entirely online before he massacred nine black churchgoers at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in South Carolina in 2015.

“So I’m not sure that the (hate group) count matters as much as it did in past years,” Potoc said.

To be designated as a hate group by the SPLC, a group must have beliefs or practice that either attack or malign an entire class of people. The SPLC uses the group’s publications and websites, in addition to citizen, law enforcement and news reports, as well as field sources, the website states. The majority of Oklahoma’s hate groups are black separatist organizations. Groups with that designation are known to oppose integration, interracial marriages and want separate institutions or nations for blacks, according to the website.