The Insurrection Was a Giant Recruitment Exercise for Extremists
The Mother Jones Podcast
Mother Jones
4.5 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 2 June 2021
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The deadly insurrection at the US Capitol wasn’t the start of something, nor was it the end. What happened on January 6 had been planned for weeks, and the ideology behind it, brewing for years. That day’s chaos was the moment in which a dangerous mix of far-right factions came together in a way that won’t be disentangled anytime soon.
Even now, nearly five months later, there’s still so much to process and still so many questions to answer (especially as Republicans work to forget the deadly attack ever happened). So at Mother Jones, we’re continuing to unpack what led to that day and what has followed.
In last week’s episode of the Mother Jones Podcast, we brought you the story of an unlikely insurrectionist: Dr. Simone Gold, a Stanford-educated lawyer and emergency room physician who ended up on an FBI most wanted poster. And this week, with the help of Mother Jones disinformation reporter Ali Breland, we explore the historical foundations of modern political fringe movements, like QAnon, and consider how they are the outgrowth of paranoid conspiracy-mongering politics that have taken root across the US over the last century.
We hear from a former Oath Keeper about why he joined and later left the extremist militia. We meet one of the overlooked characters who poured gasoline onto the fire leading up to the insurrection, someone whose online popularity with Gen Z extremists reveals why it is not necessarily the generation that will save us. Plus, we talk to experts about what’s ahead and how we may not know how widespread extremist groups actually are.
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Mother Jones podcast. I'm Fernanda Tavari, sitting in for our host, The One and Only, Demila King. |
| 0:17.0 | Last week, we brought you the story of an unlikely insurrectionist who was quickly radicalized, |
| 0:22.0 | in what her story tells us about the current state of extremism. |
| 0:26.0 | Today, you'll hear from the radicalizers. |
| 0:31.0 | Despite the GOP's efforts to try to forget that the January 6th attack on the Capitol ever happened, |
| 0:37.0 | almost five months later, there is still much to talk about. |
| 0:40.0 | So time for a trip back in history to understand how extremism has played out over the decades. |
| 0:46.0 | Maybe taking a step back and seeing how this sort of thing is cyclical. |
| 0:50.0 | You'll also meet an overlooked character who poured gasoline on the fire leading up to the insurrection. |
| 0:57.0 | The idea that conservatism is like a thing for old white men. |
| 1:00.0 | I mean, that narrative is like literally coming apart at the seams. |
| 1:03.0 | Plus, what's ahead? |
| 1:05.0 | I don't think anybody anywhere is keeping an accurate count of exactly how big this is. |
| 1:10.0 | All this and a lot more. So stick around. |
| 1:16.0 | Ali Breland is a misinformation reporter and expert on all things at the intersection of tech and politics for Mother Jones. |
| 1:22.0 | Hi, Ali. |
| 1:23.0 | Hi, Fernanda. |
| 1:25.0 | And you're going to help take us through this episode, starting with a recent conversation that you had with an Oathkeeper or a former one rather, right? |
| 1:33.0 | Yeah, I spoke with a member of the Oathkeepers who left the organization in 2014. |
| 1:40.0 | For some background, the Oathkeepers are a right-wing militia group that formed in 2009 after Obama's victory. |
| 1:47.0 | They've become one of the largest extremist groups in the country. |
| 1:51.0 | They're pretty conspiratorial. They had strong representation at the Capitol riots. |
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