Our new book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. Among other things, it discusses the state of the parties. The state of the GOP is not good. Trump and his minions falsely claimed that he won the election, and have kept repeating the Big Lie. And we now know how close he came to subverting the Constitution.
Domestic extremist groups ranging from the QAnon conspiracy movement and the Proud Boys to militia organizations and avowed white nationalists have re-emerged in recent months, frequently trying to effect change at the local level.
But it’s not just the strategy that has shifted. Most far-right domestic extremist movements have also adapted their infrastructure and messaging, according to a forthcoming report by the Digital Forensic Research Lab at the Atlantic Council, a nonprofit international affairs think tank.
That analysis, which tracked violent domestic extremism and political violence since Jan. 6 via news reports and known extremist networks, found that despite an initial decline, domestic extremist groups have evolved and resurfaced, encouraging local action while recruiting and spreading their messages through culture-war debates including vaccines, race and education.
“The domestic extremist landscape was battered by Jan. 6,” said Jared Holt, a resident fellow at the Digital Forensic Research Lab and author of the new report. “But extremism is dynamic and fluid. It is always trying to adapt to fit the container that it’s in.”
