For people who have been monitoring the growth and spread of right-wing extremism inside the mainstream Republican Party—manifested in the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol—the arrests that came in the aftermath of that event provided some revealing numbers. Of particular interest is the fact that the average age of the arrestees was 40 years old. That’s a surprisingly high number, particularly considering that most of the pro-Trump activists involved in violent protests of the past four years (especially the Proud Boys) have been younger men between 20 and 40 years old.
Two University of Chicago researchers, Robert Pape and Keven Ruby, led a deeper dive into the statistics arising from the arrests for The Atlantic, and confirmed the implications of that number: Namely, that the resistance to Trump’s election loss represents “a new kind of violent mass movement in which more ‘normal’ Trump supporters—middle-class and, in many cases, middle-aged people without obvious ties to the far right—joined with extremists in an attempt to overturn a presidential election.”
The team of over 20 researchers primarily examined the information on the demographics, socioeconomic traits, and militant-group affiliations of the 193 people who have been charged so far with being inside the Capitol building or with breaking through barriers to enter the Capitol grounds. It made four primary findings:
- The siege was not merely an exercise in vandalism or a disorderly protest that spiraled out of control. Rather, it was “unmistakably an act of political violence.” The people who were arrested, according to court documents that cited this motive repeatedly, did so because they “were following Trump’s orders to keep Congress from certifying Joe Biden as the presidential-election winner.”
- The vast majority of these suspects are not connected to any existing right-wing extremist organizations, including vigilante militias groups and white-nationalist street gangs such as the Oath Keepers or Proud Boys. Only one-tenth of the people arrested so far (20 of them) could be found to have such connections. The researchers found that 89% of the people arrested have no known affiliations to them.
- Compared to far-right extremists who have been arrested for their involvement in previous acts of political violence (such as the 2017 Charlottesville riots), many of the people arrested for their roles in the Capitol siege have a great deal to lose. Whereas previous extremists, the majority of whom were under 35, were frequently unemployed and none worked in white-collar occupations, 40% of the Capitol arrestees are business owners or hold white-collar jobs. Their occupations include CEOs, shop owners, doctors, lawyers, IT specialists, and accountants—and notably, only 9% are unemployed. Two-thirds of them are 35 or older.
- More than half of the insurrectionists hail from areas in which Trump supporters are in the minority; one-sixth are from counties won by Trump with less than 60 percent of the vote.
The report concluded:
What’s clear is that the Capitol riot revealed a new force in American politics—not merely a mix of right-wing organizations, but a broader mass political movement that has violence at its core and draws strength even from places where Trump supporters are in the minority.
“In addition to ‘traditional’ extremists,” observed Mark Pitcavage of the Anti-Defamation League on Twitter, “the stormers included a large mass of what could be considered Trumpist extremists, a small subgroup of Trump supporters radicalized by buying into the cult of personality around Trump and by the conspiracy theories and lies promoted over the election, the ‘deep state,’ and more—radicalized to the point of being willing to engage in large-scale mob violence.”
This shift in the composition of the crowds of pro-Trump demonstrators was something we observed occurring late in the 2020 campaign, primarily around the “Trump Train” events that began organizing in late August and September: big caravans of pickup trucks adorned with a variety of banners (American flags, yellow “Don’t Tread On Me” Gadsen flags, “Blue Lives Matter” flags, plus of course lots of Trump/Pence flags) driving through urban centers, roaring their engines, with men in the back end shooting paintball guns at pedestrians.
It was at the culmination of one such event in Portland that a member of Patriot Prayer, the far-right street-brawling group, was shot and killed by an antifascist. In its aftermath, the Oath Keepers declared “civil war” on anti-Trump demonstrators and “antifa,” and urged Trump to declare martial law.
As more of these events continued, it became clear that these rallies created an overlap between supposedly mainstream Republicans and the violent extremists who began taking to the streets to defend Trump in 2017 that extinguished whatever lines of distinction between them that might have existed previously. A September pro-Trump “Cruise Rally” in Oregon illustrated that crossover in vivid flying colors, particularly when it reached its destination: the state Capitol building in Salem.
The event, dominated by black-clad Proud Boys, began peacefully enough, but eventually turned violent when participants broke away to brutally assault a small group of counterprotesters. Speakers at the event used notably extreme rhetoric. One woman in an “Oregon Women for Trump” shirt briefly reflected on “everything we’re going through right now, the racial war, Black Lives Matter.”
The most unhinged speech, however, came from an African American named Marcus Edwards, who displayed the presence of QAnon fanatics in the crowd as he ranted: “The God's honest truth is the pedophile agenda is being normalized, it is being pushed forward, and I think these Democrat leaders who allowed this to happen need to be shot dead in the streets!”
These events weren’t simply about blurring the lines between the far right and mainstream conservatism: They were about making them disappear altogether.
Over the next several months, the radicalization of this contingent of previously mainstream Trump supporters became manifest. When a “Trump Train” caravan in Texas targeted and surrounded a Biden-Harris campaign bus en route to Austin and attempted to force it off the road. Republicans ardently defended the violent and threatening behavior. Trump himself boasted about the caravan at campaign events: “Did you see the way our people were protecting his bus yesterday? Because they’re nice. Saw his bus. They had hundreds of cars. Trump! Trump! Trump! And the American flag.”
These same forces quickly coalesced after the election into the threatening mobs who began flocking to “Stop the Steal” rallies, again commingling more traditional Republicans and far-right extremists. And they began showing up in large numbers to the pro-Trump rallies held in Washington, D.C.—first, at the large “Million MAGA March” event on November 14, which predictably turned into a violent riot on the city’s downtown streets after dark; and then at the December 13 “March for Trump” that became a pretext for the Proud Boys to terrorize Washington residents by again marching through their streets and attacking and vandalizing African-American churches.
All of these events set the stage for the January 6 insurrection. Its aftermath, as both the violence and the nature of the people who participated clearly demonstrate, almost certainly foretell a sustained, violent insurgency against not just the Biden administration but democracy itself for the foreseeable future.