Trump revitalizing militia organizations has echoes of the KKK’s resurgence in the 1920s
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Trump has “brought back two organizations that have extremely long track records of violence” with his mass pardoning of January 6 rioters, say experts. Donald Trump’s mass pardon of 1,500 January 6 participants, including the leaders of the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys, has reinvigorated a weakened U.S. militia movement and empowered white supremacists, experts have warned.
![[U.S. Representative Lauren Boebert (R-CO) speaks to the media as people gather outside of the DC Central Detention Facility, after Trump made a sweeping pardon of nearly everyone charged in the January 6, 2021 attack.]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/01/21/21/44/SEI236854817.jpeg)
Dr. Heidi Beirich, the co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, said Trump “brought back two organizations that have extremely long track records of violence” and likened the current moment to the reemergence of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s.
![[Rioters at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington.]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/04/03/16/Capitol_Riot_Sentencing_67040.jpg)
“By letting violent white supremacists and militia types who engaged in this activity out of prison he has emboldened those movements, made them more powerful, and given them the sanction of the highest office,” she told The Independent. And Trump’s pardoning of those charged in the Capitol attack, including 169 people who’d pled guilty to assaulting police, helps create a loyal group of armed followers eager to do his bidding over the next four years.
![[People hold placards as they gather outside the DC Central Detention Facility, commonly known as the DC Jail, in anticipation of a potential pardon by U.S. President Donald Trump for individuals convicted in connection with the January 6, 2021 attack on the United States Capitol, in Washington, DC, USA, 20 January 2025.]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/01/21/01/SEI236755312.jpg)
“If Trump wanted to mobilize them, he could,” Beirich said. “They are now very much allied with Trump because he fulfilled his promise, and they think their vision of society is coming to be.”. After initially condemning the violence at the Capitol, Trump reversed course in the years that followed and now refers to it as a “day of love.” In announcing his pardons, he called the jailed rioters “hostages.”.
