A note. This country has seen a rise by white supremacist. We are now seeing information of new groups that recruit aggressively and openly celebrate violence as there ammo. This this is the build up foa long time. That terrible moment. Thats probably our main objective. Something official of the cues and teeth of being a major cause of violence in the nationwide protest following the killing of george floyd. Arrested after prosecutors said he was stockpiling weapons for an attack to fuel race wars. In the u. S. Rightwing extremist willing to at least 15 mers last year. Thats a 35 increase over 2017. The 17 your faces felony homicide charges for shooting three people during tuesday nights protest in kenosha. The alleged plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer was a classic case of terrorism and violence in the country could get worse. Rising political tensions, civil unrest and foreign disinformation campaigns. U. S. Security officials are warning that violent domestic extremists pose a threat to the president ial election next month. Month. Federal Law Enforcement sources tell cnn the fbi is concerned about the possibility armed extremist might try to interfere with local vote count expect each scenario could lead to extremist violence with the possibility of deadly confrontations. Are you willing tonight to condemn White Supremacists and Militia Groups, and to say that they need to stand down and not at to the violence in the number of these cities . Stand back and stand by. Cnn has learned Law Enforcement, cities, banks, corporations are all quietly bracing for the possibility of violent clashes around and after election day fueled by extremists. We commit to making sure there is a peaceful transfer of power after the election . We will have to see what happens. With that as backdrop, i am pleased to welcome lisa hagan, a reporter for wabe in atlanta and a reporting fellow. As a fellow lisa works with my other journalists around the country reporting collaboratively as part of nprs guns in america project. Shes also a leader reporter and collison nprs limited run podcast no compromise. Lisa, thank you for joining us today. Thanks for inviting me. Of course. Its our pleasure. So for those who are in our audience who are not familiar with the podcast no compromise, could you tell us a bit about its focus, the door brothers and how theyre using social media to organize around the country . So no compromise is investigate podcast were working on is really i guess more about a movement, and entire Gun Rights Movement that we think is gaining significant in the mainstream. It is a movement that is far to the right of the nra which i think for a lot of listeners might be as shocking concept because for many years we thought of the nra in this country as pretty staunch when it comes to gun rights. We tell the story of this movement by looking at these sort of three members of it, the door brothers in a podcast. Essentially take us through the more recent rise of whats been a much older philosophy of gun rights and the constitution essentially thats been around since the 1970s or so, but what weve watched with the dorr brothers in particular and the party is at their very great adept in skilled at Facebook Live in particular which is sort of allowed for what feels like a Significant Growth in the popular of some of the messaging, like i said, has been around for many years. Hopefully thats enough of an explanation. Yeah, thats a great start for us, thank you. And undoubtedly we will come back and talk more about some of the specifics from the podcast but also from your wider reporting. First though i would like to bring sam jackson into the conversation. Hes an assistant professor in the college of Emergency Preparedness come Homeland Security and cybersecurity at the university at albany. His Research Focus on rightwing antigovernment extremism in the u. S. And he has a new book out with Cologne University press about those cubes. Im so pleased you could join us today. Thanks for inviting me. Your work has focused agreed to on one particular group, you have booked outages mentioned that the can you tell us more of about this group and the most recent activities particularly in the lead up to the upcoming election . Sure. I think one of the two prime factors of what i call the patriot Militia Movement, the second wave of that movement that started in 2008 or so. The other, action is the three tours which a lot of ways is more difficult to talk about. Its this organization that has central leadership. They have a lot of structure and then they also have eight chapters throughout what weve seen over and almost 12 years of a guest 12 years, yeah, that the has been active is a consistent perception of an impending threat coming from the federal government primarily as being this radical force that is going to come and take your guns or force you to take a vaccine or tell you how to manage your land, that government as this tyrannical forces something that americans need to be worried about and need to be preparing for. Since 2016 resealable weve seen a little bit of a pivot, oath keepers engine is quite supportive of donald trump. Many of the members are avid trump supporters. So since trump has been in office weve seen a a pivot wih the group has talked much more about black lives matter and antifa as terrorist organizations or as insurgencies within the country and have really depicted a new, almost a new context of this conflict that they perceive all the time, which is those who dissent from government are now perceived as the threat. And oath keepers and others like him are now talking about the possible need to take violence, often situated as defensive violence against these other americans who are expressing distress was a sin for opposition to government. Great. Thats really helpful overview for us, and just as with lisa expect were going to come back and talk quite a bit more about the oath keepers. But now im going to bring in our third and final panelist who is jon lewis. Hes a researcher with the George WashingtonUniversity Program on extremism where he studies extremist organizations in the u. S. As well as activities of the islamist, the Islamic State both in the u. S. And europe. Hes an investigator with the National CounterterrorismInnovation Technology and education center, and provide support for the congressional counterterrorism caucus which is the leading bipartisan voice in congress for pragmatic approaches to tackling extremism and radicalization. John, thank you so much for being here. Thank you very much for having me. So i i wonder now if you cod tell us more about the organizations that you been watching most closely, which you are seeing take most event of social media in the runup to the elections. Absolutely. Thank you. I would say that unlike what sam just described and what is this very organized oath keepers movement, one of the bigger movements we had seen in the past six, seven, eight, ten months has been the bubble movement. This is a newer touch more Online Movement that doesnt have any central organization, has very little in the way of a driving kind of ideology or ethos. Its primarily antigovernment. Its acceleration is antigovernment which at its core aims at committing violence, incited violence in hopes of bringing about a societal collapse, a the civil war, a re war, to being on which branch of this movement you want to focus on. I would say what we seen a lot in the lead up to november of what we seen a lot of especially in relation to covid19 pandemic and culminating like the restrictions is in response a lot of this uncertainty is seen a lot more mobilization, radicalization, recruitment online by this Boogaloo Movement which brings in individuals that oftentimes come from organizations like the United States are come from smaller Militia Movement already radicalize come already whether its at this up and his antisemitic xenophobic ideologies and bring that into this Boogaloo Movement that is essentially, when it is as easy to join a moment when all you have to do is throw on a hawaiian shirt and pick up an ar15, its very easy for individuals to kind of move in and out of this very disorganized movement which makes it harder to track and prevent a lot of these attacks of attempted violence weve seen. We have now heard about three different specific organizations that are organizing online. The dorr brothers which is coming in a podcast, the oath keepers and boogaloo. I wonder if we could take a step back for just a moment and provide a bit of kind of higherlevel context. I would like to hear from each of you, maybe sam, i will start with you, your thoughts about how what we are seeing online right now in the lead up to 2020 can pierce what we saw four years ago in 2016. Because i think for a lot of americans 2016 was the first time they really started paying attention or knew that the sorts of groups were beginning to organize online. I think thats right. In 2016, we we saw a pot of focus and explicit attention paid to the election and to concerns about electoral integrity, disinformation, all of these other things from various actors across the political spectrum. And we saw in particular some concerns raised by organizations like project veritas of the Democratic Party is going to engage in voter fraud or voter intimidation. Those sorts of things. Some groups in the paramilitary might come antigovernment right, whatever level you want to use for that decided theyre going to do something about it. I think there is a little bit less explicit and specific attention being paid to the election, instead of a lot of the rhetoric around the election is also caught up in covid measures, pandemic majors in the ongoing arrest of whats related to black lives matter protested antiprotest, what i have seen is more focused on the other threats, covid shutdown measures in blm who are depicted as being part of marxist or globalist or whole word of the pickney of the Global Terrorist Organization in encouraging americans to be prepared to take that defensive action that i mentioned earlier in response to these thats. Are there any other particular noteworthy trends that you would reflect on between 2016 and now . Its an interesting question especially because i am not a researcher, ive been focusing on reporting just the story for about two years, not quite looking at the same stuff, what i will say is i was aware of what the militia was doing in the area around 2016, its hard for me too say again im not an expert on a reporter on one particular story, we saw a lot in the 2016 election, trumps victory was just as much as a surprise to many people on the far right in Militia Groups as it was to people all over the country, with Hillary Clinton at the time functioned as a real serious bogeyman that you can pretty much switch out today against donald trump, here at least we are seeing lots of language around you gotta get trained for when Hillary Clinton comes and breaks in the door, and, lot is coming for your guns and what i would want to say in response and we focus on the door brothers like their certain players in a larger movement, i think what ive learned from doing our word and an oiled machine has become better and better at managing social media to be ready at any moment furthers the confusing thing that is happening and its a big example in election planing example, there always trying to get more attention and mobilize their machine that they birdied created when there is a specific example for them to pounce on, obviously elections are huge part of that and weve had a lot of chaotic news in 2020 so there are many moments, governments collapsing in our group and i will stop talking now. , i think it would be useful as we continue our conversation even to hear a bit more over the two years weve hear covered thr brothers, what you see change in how their organization has evolved over time first go to john, do you have any additional thoughts on 2016 to 2020, i know you been following a variety of organizations for quite some time, is there anything else that you would note that we might want to keep her eyes on and be thinking about different than from now. I was a broadly speaking the threat has grown a bit in these four years and is diversified a bit, online and offline, when you look at 2016 2021 of the big differences we seen this bike and offline violence that was talked about a lot in 2016 and the potential that could have but in this instance to the election in covid lockdown and other protest, and the activity with the movement and unaffiliated conspiracy driven plots. And online as well, you see facebook take a lot of action against the global movement, q, similar militia organizations that sam touched on, i think you have seen and will continue to see a lot of these groups attempt to remain active players online, facebook or through moderation efforts, they get pushed off of facebook onto some of the smaller less regulated platforms, i expect that you will see more and more of those groups of movements continue to try and remain online organized with other actors online through 2020. I think thats really important and i would love for us to return later in the discussion to think about the potential legal and policy responses including from the text platforms themselves, but i wonder if we might think a little bit or talk a little bit together about how these dynamics operate at Different Levels within the United States, i think that we often think, lets take the recent events of michigan for example. There has been a lot of focus on how rhetoric coming from the talk and specifically coming from donald trump has had a fax talk down on this sort of actions or has led these organizations to feel emboldened, but i wonder how we might think about the bottomup element of these in these organizations operating, lisa im thinking in particular about how the door brothers really are individuals, three brothers that you focus on who live in one locality, around the country and yet they operate the organization across many different state lines, how do they in particular use social media and other online environments in order to build National Movement from very specific local places. The question. I think with the door brothers in particular, we have struggled to try to understand, is the National Movement what theyre really interested in, there are lots of accusation that twirl around in particular in theyre mostly making a living off of the work that they do and so spreading out across multiple states other critics of their say basically this is about not getting caught and moving on to a place where people dont know you as well or your tactic but as for why states are in an effective level in which they can organize, i think both state and national, there is a lot of gun policy at the state level in the United States, theres a lot of discussion in media very frequently about federal gun laws and whats happening in congress, the truth is americans in all states live under the rules of their particular state legislature when it comes to gun rights, if you were actually looking to change the laws around gun policy, it is really the place you want to be working, not only that but the nra, the National Rifle association is a group that we have seen rise true tremendous political significance over the last many decades, they made some choices about how they would run the organization and some of that involved hiring an impressive ad campaign in this prep company that they hire, sorry the words are escaping me. But it put a lot of effort into branding themselves a certain way which works for quite a while to raise awareness and excitement about the organization but meanwhile local state groups were organizing and had nothing to do with the nra and thats where the door brothers and their partners in one fraction again of the no compromise movement which is one fraction of gun rights activists in america as a whole but these guys pop up in states because there is an opening, there is a vacuum of personality and leadership and we have this wonderful new tool with Facebook Live that allows people to make emotional connections about people from the comfort of their own home in the lines over and over again the help form a worldview and it feels more effective on smaller scales because it is, the fewer people youre talking to in the more personalized you can make it and it feels like people can feel connected to you, thats what i would say. That makes a great deal of sense. Are there particular ideas or issues that you think these movements resonate particularly well at the local level, or are there ultimately goals at the National Level, how did they navigate is my underlying question, how do they navigate the different dynamics and what is a complex system ultimately, political system. It is difficult to think about in a cohesive and coherent tidy way, i tend to talk about some of the actors is adopting a position of strategic ambiguity where they adopt really powerful and resignation ideas and values like tierney and liberty and selfreliance and independence in all of these sorts of things but they really define what those things mean, what is tierney, how do you know when youre facing, what are the proper bounds of liberty, are there any proper bounds of liberty, one of the strategic ambiguity does when is deployed at a National Level or National Organization or abroad Movement Like a no compromise group movement, if it allows i