It was the day that a far-right fervour which had been fermenting for years in America spilled out into the open.
By Josie Ensor, US CORRESPONDENT, WASHINGTON 16 January 2021 • 5:35pm
A five-time Olympic swimming medalist, a stay-at-home dad, an army psyops officer and an unemployed “shaman” who lives in his mother’s basement – a motley crew of individuals who do not immediately appear to have much in common.
But a shared, extreme ideology had brought them together at the US Capitol in Washington on January 6.
It was the day that a far-right fervour which had been fermenting for years in America spilled out into the open, in one of the ugliest episodes in the country’s recent history.
The Telegraph spent the past week reviewing the dozens of criminal charges filed against those accused in the riot and speaking to their friends and family members to understand just how the more extremist fringes of US society became mainstream.
The mob was an unlikely melee of highly educated graduates, accomplished athletes, veterans and high school dropouts. Some had harboured far-right links through adulthood, others had turned to it in recent years.
The views expressed by those indicted over last Wednesday’s insurrection – laid bare in court for the first time – show sympathies to far-right causes and in many cases clear links to white extremist groups and militias.
Ashli Babbitt, who was shot dead by a Capitol Police officer as she tried to storm Congress on January 6, had been a dedicated follower of QAnon, a wild conspiracy theory that claims the president is defending the world against a Satan-worshipping paedophile cabal masterminded by Democrats.
“She was not casual about it, she was deep into it,” one friend of Ms Babbitt, an Air Force veteran from California, told The Telegraph.
“She didn’t used to be this angry, but a few years ago she started following these theories online and made friends there,” said the friend, who asked not to be named.
Her online accounts show she had voted Democrat in the past and praised former President Barack Obama as recently as 2018. But as her professional life collapsed – she left the Air Force and her small pool-service business was struggling – she became more obsessed with baseless online propaganda and ever more devoted to Mr Trump.
In the week leading up to her trip to Washington last week, friends noticed her fury had turned into excitement about a new mission – to bring down the Capitol.
Olympic gold medalist Klete Keller’s now-deleted social media feeds were filled with Donald Trump-conspiratorial rabbit holes. The 38-year-old, who had spoken on his accounts of his divorce and a period of homelessness, posted messages urging “patriots” to speak out about the “stolen election”.
Keller struggled acutely to adapt to life after swimming. “Within a matter of a few years, I went from Olympic gold medalist to husband, homeowner, guy with a series of sales jobs – life insurance, software, medical devices, financial products – and father of three, and I had a really difficult time accepting who I was without swimming in my life,” he told NBC a few years back.
“He was lost,” said Rowdy Gaines, a three-time gold medalist and friend of Keller’s. “Sometimes when you get lost, you become a follower instead of a leader,” Mr Gaines said of Keller’s apparent devotion to Mr Trump. Keller could Not be reached for comment.
The court documents also reveal a convergence of QAnon, the far-right and white supremacy.
Richard “Bigo” Barnett from Arkansas, a Trump supporter and self-described “white nationalist”, was photographed sitting in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office, his left foot propped up on a desk:
The Saturday before the riot, Barrett, a 60-year-old former firefighter, had criticised Ms Pelosi in a Facebook post for using the description “white nationalist” as a “derogatory term.”
“I am white. There is no denying that. I am a nationalist. I put my nation first. So that makes me a white nationalist,” Barnett wrote on his account before adding that people who were not nationalists should “get the f— out of our nation.”
In October, Barnett helped raise more than $1,000 for #SaveOurChildren, an anti-child-trafficking campaign. Facebook limited the use of the national campaign’s hashtag because it found that content tied to the campaign was associated with QAnon.
Barnett, who appeared in court earlier this week, could not immediately be reached for comment.
Many of the seemingly disparate individuals had communicated in online forums in the days leading up to the storming of the Capitol, joining forces last week in a dizzying alliance.
The leaders of several of these groups have been pictured over the last few years with people close to the president, including Rudy Giuliani, Mr Trump’s personal lawyer, and Roger Stone, his former political strategist.
Algorithms on social networks like Facebook “amplified the likelihood of a collision with far-Right and QAnon content and communities,” offered Shannon Foley-Martinez, a self-described former white supremacist who now works at the Polarization and Extremism Research Lab.
“It offers an explanation, validated by others, for why they have felt afraid, under threat, and separated from power they believe is rightfully theirs,” she told The Telegraph.
Many retreated even further into these online communities after losing jobs and facing isolation in the real world due to the coronavirus.
“We have long held a stereotype that the far-Right is white, rural and uneducated. That’s no longer the case,” said Colin Clarke, head of research at the Soufan Center.
Mr Trump, the presidential candidate these groups chose to champion, has played a key role in making white nationalist ideas part of the national conversation.
“The movement has diversified geographically, it has diversified demographically and socioeconomically,” said Mr Clarke.
“You have an increasing number of educated and urban people sharing these opinions. The internet has allowed people who wouldn’t normally cross paths to converge online.”
Mr Clarke, who used to study Islamist extemism, sees similarities in the “radicalisation” of the far-Right with that of jihadists.
“The profile of the far-Right rioter and that of the foreign fighters are not all that different,” he told The Telegraph. “They are looking for brotherhood, a place to belong, a way to elevate their otherwise very ordinary lives.”
Like many analysts in the field, Mr Clarke has in the last year shifted his focus from Islamist extremism to the far-Right, as the FBI declared the greatest domestic terrorist threat in America today was from the far-Right.
According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies analysis, right-wing extremists perpetrated two-thirds of the attacks and plots in the US in 2019, and more than 90 per cent between January and May, 2020.
A recent poll found that eight per cent of Americans supported the attack on the Capitol.
Mr Clarke does not believe the threat from the far-Right will go away overnight.
“Eight per cent? That might not sound like a lot but that’s millions and millions of people,” he said. “We’re in for a world of trouble.”
The internet has the power to radicalise seemingly normal people like the very unlucky Mrs Babbitt, who had an excellent job with the Air Force but had converted in only the past 2 years to QAnon. One clue is the presence of a psy-ops officer in the motley group.
QAnon is literally insane; a koran analogue that sucks in weak minded but otherwise normal people. There are two exceptionally dangerous individuals who have spent many years preparing the ground for the likes of QAnon and they are both fanatically pro-putler as well as being unbelievably stupid. Yet they have enormous followings. They are David Icke in Britain and Alex Jones in America.
Wherever conspiracy theories are rife, you will find Russian involvement. QAnon needs to be declared a terrorist organisation now!
“Russian-backed social media accounts propagated early QAnon claims as early as November or December 2017. Russian government-funded Russian state media such as RT and Sputnik have been amplifying the conspiracy theory since 2019, citing QAnon as evidence that the United States is riven by internal strife and division.”
“We have long held a stereotype that the far-Right is white, rural and uneducated. That’s no longer the case,”
No, that’s no longer the case. Like in other countries too, where liberalism has taken hold of the media, government and even our education system, many, many people in our country see the need to stand up against this scourge. The liberals call it “radicalized”. I call it a natural course to take for people who don’t want radical liberalism. I do not condone what happened at the Capitol(!), or far-right tendencies, or Nazism and nothing like Qanon either, but this development does not surprise me at all. This the storm that liberals everywhere are starting to reap after they have planted their seeds, in my opinion, of sick agendas, like multiple sexes, same-sex marriage, adoption rights for homosexuals, the invasion of other peoples into our countries, the suppression of opinions that are not liberal enough and even self-hate (the krauts have mastered the art of self-hate). Liberalism has been ongoing for years and is getting ever more radical in its own right. When the BLM riots raged across the country and spilled out into other countries, there was hardly an outcry from the leftist-liberal media. Some even welcomed it. This is self-hate in its most evil form.
It would be wise for everyone to take a breather and to try finding the golden middle of things … a balance between conservatism and liberalism. Either or, in its most pure form is simply crap!
I didn’t come here for msm. Ridiculous.
It is from a conservative site, bozo. Perhaps Sputnik or infowars will be more to your taste?
It is partially ridiculous and main stream in the sense that even the few far right wackos are tiny compared to the organized and extreme elements of the far left. But most media are too busy running around apologizing for them instead of actually considering their positions.
Which is more radical; believing a theory of Epstein-type Democrats hurting and smuggling children or far left anarchists insisting on open borders, $2,000 a month wage for doing nothing, burning businesses and killing cops?
scradgel, you’re into your normal overheated conspiracy theories. The three men at the center of the photo above are all Antifa/BLM. The Capital Police were already fighting with Antifa/BLM before Trump even finished his speech. Those people are not extreme right, you and yours have bought into the propaganda of the extreme left. The extreme right you fantasize about is almost nonexistent. People like Richard Spencer endorsed Biden. Spencer is supposedly Alt-right, and has sown is nothing like the “right.”
The people you wish to demonize as the “right” are actually of the center. the people you are admiring think the founders are Nazis. It’s shame that you won’t engage your brain and think critically.
You did not read the article dumbass. The people in the photo have already been arrested, identified and will be prosecuted. The cops know exactly who was there.