American Doom
American Doom
Right-wing militias are gathering for war if they lose in November
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Right-wing militias are gathering for war if they lose in November

Frequent references to a "Shit hits the fan (SHTF)" event to come... Joint field training exercises... Facebook standing idly by as online radicalization continues...
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Today on the American Doom podcast I’m speaking with Katie Paul of the Tech Transparency Project (TTP). Katie has been looking into militia groups online over the past four years, and she’s found a lot of right-wing clamoring for political violence — some of which has ramped up in recent months as platforms like Facebook have taken their hands off the reins of content moderation. 

Her work is a troubling signifier of bad times to come, something that readers of this newsletter are very familiar with. In one video Katie shared with American Doom, what looks like hundreds of armed men gathered for a field training exercise. The caption for the video reads “Now is the time to join a MF’n Militia. Not a political party.” And just in case you were at all unclear on the group’s intent, the video further proclaims that “We came into this world screaming covered in blood and will be leaving the same way. No Retreat No Surrender.”

So that’s what some right-wing Americans are doing in preparation for November’s election. Luckily, folks like Paul are doing the crucial work of raising alarm about groups like the ones she tracks for TTP. We can only hope that law enforcement is doing the same. 

In this episode of the American Doom podcast, Katie and I discuss what the groups she’s tracking want, what they’re planning to do if they don’t get it, and just how many of them there are who make their presence known online. It’s impossible to know the true number of Americans who are planning for political violence if they don’t get their way in November, but Katie is just about the only person I know trying to figure that out.

Listen to this episode of the American Doom podcast here, or on Apple or Spotify podcasts, and subscribe to our newsletter for as little as $5 a month to support our work exposing election deniers, right-wing extremists and other threats to democracy.

Discussion about this podcast

American Doom
American Doom
I’m Justin Glawe, writer and journalist, and I’ve spent my career chronicling the violence, unrest and chaos of American life. On this podcast, I’ll discuss the events roiling this complex and troubling country, and speak with some of the people trying to make sense of the madness that pervades our world. This is American Doom.