Who These are the sectors of the Right setting the cultural context and/or organizing right-wing sheriffs. Anti-immigrant Right Anti-immigrant organizations like the…

Author Q&A with Edward H. Miller

A Conspiratorial Life: Robert Welch, the John Birch Society, and the Revolution of American Conservatism, by Northeastern University professor Edward H. Miller is an engaging and penetrating…

The city of Spokane, Washington sits at the eastern edge of the state—a mountain range and a cultural world away from the Pacific coast. It looks eastward to Idaho and Montana, and south to Eastern Oregon, where far-right secessionist movements have…

Open Map Introduction to Right-Wing Sheriffs County sheriffs have featured heavily in the right-wing imagination for…

The murder of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, by Minneapolis police on May 25, 2020 marked the beginning of a dramatic surge in racial justice and politics accountability protests. The Black Lives Matter movement that was at the heart of those…

Multiracial Organizing on the Contemporary Far Right

August 4, 2018, the day of the “Gibson for Senate Freedom March,” was a balmy day in Portland, Oregon. Patriot Prayer, a group loosely associated with the Alt Right, had organized the march, calling on like-minded people to “make history today” and…

Technological tools to increase law enforcement’s surveillance capacity will be showcased at this year’s annual National Sheriffs’ Association (NSA), Education and Technology Expo from June 14-18, heightening concerns regarding law enforcement’s…

Sheriffs are elected at the county level, and in most cases operate without any direct oversight. This presents an opportunity for White nationalists and other right-wing movements, particularly …

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced a new effort in May 2019 to expand the reach of its deportation machine. ICE’s new Warrant Service Officer (WSO) program allows local police officers to effectively become federal immigration…

Q&A with the authors of Producers, Parasites, Patriots

A new book, Producers, Parasites, Patriots: Race and the New Right-Wing Politics of Precarity, offers a framework for interpreting and dismantling racist capitalist oppression without getting bogged down in this treacherous narrative of “makers and…

Although these state and federal officials tried to distance themselves from militia organizing, New Mexico’s constitutional sheriffs cumulatively have taken actions that signal that militias are welcome in the state.

In August 2018, 16 of Oregon’s 36 sheriffs signed a letter in support of ballot measure 105, the referendum in the November 6 election to repeal Oregon’s 31-year-old sanctuary law.

What Changed After Oklahoma City?

Twenty-three years ago, on April 19, 1995, Timothy McVeigh detonated a powerful homemade truck bomb in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The death toll reached 168, and about 850 were injured.

The Growing Divides in the Pepe Coalition

The relationship between the Alt Right and the Alt Light, as well as “patriot” organizations like the Oath Keepers, has often been more pragmatic than comfortable. And maintaining this coalition has not been easy, requiring compromises on language…

The Republican Party of Multnomah County, Oregon (which includes Portland) disregarded public outcry when it passed a resolution last week to allow private, paramilitary groups to provide security functions at GOP events. Chairman James Buchal said…

The U.S. Patriot Movement Today

Judging from his recent statements, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump seems to be making plans for post-election violence if he’s defeated. At the beginning of August he warned, “I’m afraid the election’s going to be rigged.”1)…

Sometimes Patriot movement groups reach out to progressive activists in an attempt to recruit them to their cause. As you would expect, they typically downplay their reactionary social views and stress the more libertarian parts of their …

“Coordination” is a process which allows state, county, and other lower-level governments to give input to federal agencies’ land use plans, in an attempt to achieve consistency. While this process is mentioned in a number of federal acts, the Hard…

Today Political Research Associates, a Massachusetts think tank that monitors right-wing movements, warned that the surprise acquittal yesterday of seven militia members on conspiracy and weapons charges in connection with their armed occupation of…

Responding to Patriot Movement claims on militias and gun rights, rural economics, the Constitution, public lands, and conspiracy theories.

Oregon Three Percenters are very active and seems to have eclipsed the Oath Keepers as the locus of Patriot movement organizing in the state.

Today Political Research Associates in partnership with Rural Organizing Project released Up in Arms: A Guide to Oregon’s Patriot Movement, a groundbreaking report and toolkit designed to support public officials and community activists under siege…

Oath Keepers chapters have been active in Oregon since the national organization was founded in 2009. However, most chapters seem to have been established since 2014 in the wake of the events at Bundy Ranch.

In the wake of the armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in January and February 2016, a slew of candidates linked to the so-called Patriot movement are running for office in Oregon, including in the upcoming May primary.

The Three Percenters (aka 3%ers, III%ers, or “Threepers”) are a Patriot movement paramilitary group that pledges armed resistance against attempts to restrict private gun ownership. Adherents and supporters have been associated with threats and acts…

Disparate Legal Treatment of Muslims and the Radical Right

In April 2014, an armed encampment formed at the Nevada cattle ranch of Cliven Bundy as news spread through militia networks about the confrontation between the 67-year-old rancher and the Bureau of Land Management. The BLM began to impound Bundy’s…

Oath Keepers is one of the largest anti-government “patriot” groups in the nation. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) includes the organization in its list of Hate and Extremist Groups and its Patriot Movement Timeline. Oath Keepers differs from…

Michael Hill, president of the theocratic, White nationalist League of the South, has been escalating his threats of violence in recent months. As PRA has previously reported, Hill has gone so far as to call for the formation of death squads to…

St. Louis County police officer Dan Page is best known for shoving CNN host Don Lemon while the journalist was covering the Michael Brown protests in Ferguson, Missouri. Page has since been suspended after video of his speech to a right-wing militia…

Founded in 1958, the John Birch Society (JBS) fiercely opposed the Civil Rights Movement during the 1960s and 1970s. Decades later, the rise of the Tea Party and the ongoing “Ron Paul Revolution” have helped the JBS make a comeback as it attracts…

Less than a month into 2014, nullification initiatives - legal theory that states can block federal laws that those states deem to be unconstitutional - are continuing to make their way through state legislatures.

Fred Clarkson and Rachel Tabachnick discuss a push for a Constitutional Convention which would strip power away from the United States and feed it to conservatives in state legislatures.

The JBS was a major force in the battle against the Civil Rights Movement, and has recently made a comeback, largely via the Tea Party movement and as part of the Ron Paul Revolution.

Behind the recent surge of nullification bills in state legislatures there is an ongoing battle for the soul of the GOP—and the future of the union itself. The nullification movement’s ideology is rooted in reverence for states’ rights and a…

The Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA) was founded o organize county sheriffs around a mission similar to Oath Keepers—that is, to refuse to enforce laws that they believe are unconstitutional.

Groups that have consciously and unconsciously adopted the countersubversion model promoted by centrist/extremist theory were quick to call for increased government power to fend off the perceived threat to law and order posed by the armed militia…

Right-Wing Anti-Environmentalism

In the last days of the 1992 presidential campaign, George Bush Sr. denounced “environmental extremists” who sought to lock up natural resources and destroy the American way of life. At the heart of this imagined green conspiracy was the “Ozone Man…