Expert says far-right groups celebrating Capitol riot as ‘revolution’
Washington, January 11 (RHC)-- The right-wing riot at the U.S. Capitol last Wednesday -- and President Donald Trump’s acknowledgement, after weeks of disputing November’s presidential election results, that a transfer of power would occur -- has been seen by some analysts as the end of Trump’s right-wing era.
The group of rioters that breached the building in support of Trump and his false allegation that the presidential contest was stolen through voter fraud was met with widespread condemnation.
But one expert says far-right groups and white nationalists in the U.S. view the takeover of the Capitol as a new beginning to be celebrated. “White nationalists and other far-right groups are celebrating what happened at the Capitol,” Cassie Miller, a senior research analyst with the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) who tracks the far right, told Al Jazeera in an e-mail.
“They are already using images of insurrectionists in the chambers as propaganda and insisting that we’re watching the start of a revolution,” Miller said.
The far right previously saw Trump’s election in 2016 as the beginning of a revolution. Trump claimed victory to cheers from a resurgent white nationalist movement redubbed the “alt-right,” led in part by Richard Spencer’s National Policy Institute.
Spencer frequently argued publicly for white nationalism in 2017. He was sometimes joined by white nationalist Tim Gionet, known as “Baked Alaska” online, who was present at the Capitol riot. Spencer and other groups, including the Proud Boys, were instrumental in organising the “Unite the Right” rally in 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Trump famously said there were good people on “both sides” of the demonstration, which saw anti-racist Heather Heyer killed by far-right James Alex Fields Jr, who drove his car through a crowd of counter-protesters.
The deadly events caused a backlash, leading to cancelled speaking events for Spencer and other far-right figures, as well as an increasingly active “Antifa” counterprotest movement.
By 2018, the Proud Boys, who describe themselves as “Western chauvinists” who support Western culture but are considered a hate group by the SPLC, were organising protests that often turned violent across the country.
The Proud Boys promised to be at the pro-Trump January 6 rally in the US capital “in record numbers,” according to social media posts from the group’s leader, Henry “Enrique” Tarrio. Tarrio was arrested prior to the pro-Trump rally by local police and charged with a misdemeanour for burning a Black Lives Matter banner during a pro-Trump demonstration in December demonstration.
He was also charged with two felony counts of Possession of a Large Capacity Ammunition Feeding Device and ordered to leave the city ahead of the protest. Meanwhile, other far-right figures were arrested in relation to the US Capitol riot, including the founder of “Proud Boys Hawaii”, Nick Ochs, who was arrested for breaching the Capitol after he returned to Hawaii, Forbes reported.
