The enemy within

An FBI bulletin warned of far-right protests in the capitols of all 50 states beginning as soon as Sunday. Authorities beefed up security with state police and National Guard through Inuaguration Day. USA Today tracks what took place (or didn’t) in each capitol.

The few places where armed protesters appeared on Sunday, numbers were small — a few dozen Boogaloo “Bois” in Ohio and Michigan. They stood with their guns outside fortified statehouses trying to look menacing.

Of course, they seemed poseurs until enough far-right extremists arrived in numbers on Jan. 6 to sack the U.S. Capitol using whatever instruments of destruction they could get their hands on.

Oren Segal, vice president of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, told CNN, “The plots of tomorrow are literally being hatched right now.” Experts on right-wing extremism believe the potential for violence will extend long beyond Joe Biden’s inauguration on Jan. 20:

Segal calls the Capitol attack a seminal moment and says it will have a major impact, even more than the country’s historically biggest catalysts for major anti-government activity.”

It ain’t Waco, it’s not Ruby Ridge, this is bigger than that,” Segal explains comparing January 6 to past events that sparked calls to action and inspired deeper distrust and sometimes hatred against the government. “This stuff impacts more people.”

Much of the widespread animosity driving armed protests is driven by fear of change, and by white Americans’ perceived loss of power and status to a growing, diverse population. A “widespread fear and anxiety over a perceived threat to society and order,” more so than mere economic anxieties, has fed a string of moral panics in U.S. over the last half century (from “satanic ritual abuse” to QAnon).

Such conspiratorial beliefs appear absurd from the outside. But their grip was powerful enough this month for thousands of true believers in a stolen election and a “deep state” run by a cabal of cannibal pedophiles to threaten the overthrow of the U.S. government. Jan. 6 rioters included current and former members of the military and law enforcement.

Conspiracists’ numbers were sufficient last November to elect two members of Congress who openly subscribe to the baseless QAnon conspiracy. One should anticipate they will work from the inside to undermine the very government they joined.

Thus, federal officials are vetting service members assigned to provide Capitol security for the inauguration ceremony on Wednesday:

U.S. defense officials say they are worried about an insider attack or other threat from service members involved in securing President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration, prompting the FBI to vet all of the 25,000 National Guard troops coming into Washington for the event.

The massive undertaking reflects the extraordinary security concerns that have gripped Washington following the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol by pro-Trump rioters. And it underscores fears that some of the very people assigned to protect the city over the next several days could present a threat to the incoming president and other VIPs in attendance.

In the past, such concerns focused on “homegrown insurgents radicalized by al-Qaida, the Islamic State group or similar groups.” Now the worry is “supporters of President Donald Trump, far-right militants, white supremacists and other radical groups” who believe the election was stolen from Trump.

Voltaire’s admonition is still applicable: “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”