Extremist militias organize on Facebook

The WIRED Politics Lab: How militia extremists are organizing on Facebook to prepare for a general election and their own survival in the 21st century

Individuals across the US with long-standing ties to militia groups are creating networks of Facebook pages, urging others to recruit “active patriots” and attend meetups, and openly associating themselves with known militia-related sub-ideologies like that of the anti-government Three Percenter movement. They are advertising combat training and telling their followers to be prepared for whatever is to come. These groups are trying to facilitate local organizing, state by state and county by county. Their goals are vague, but many of their posts convey a general sense of urgency about the need to prepare for “war” or to “stand up” against many supposed enemies, including drag queens, immigrants, pro-Palestine college students, communists—and the US government.

Leah Feiger: Welcome to WIRED Politics Lab, a show about how tech is changing politics. I work as the senior politics editor at WIRED. Today on the show we’re talking about an exclusive WIRED story that just dropped today. It details how far-right extremist militias are organizing online, specifically on Facebook. After laying low for several years, militia extremists have been quietly reorganizing. They formed a couple hundred Facebook groups and profiles to gather local militia activity across the country. This is not allowed due to Meta’s safety standards, but these groups are talking to their followers on Facebook about preparing for the election. David Gilbert is a senior reporter at WIRED. Hey, I’m David.

Paul told WIRED that she’s been monitoring “hundreds” of militia-related groups and profiles since 2021 and has observed them growing “increasingly emboldened with more serious and coordinated organizing” in the past year.

Leah Feiger is @LeahFeiger. David Gilbert is related to DaithaiGilbert. Tess Owen is @misstessowen. Let us know at [email protected]. You can get the WIRED Politics Lab newsletter.

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Leah Feiger: We’re about to dig into a story about the author of a WIRED contributor and her expertise on extremism, disinformation, and politics. I welcome you, Tess. You’ve just spent weeks looking into how these groups are organizing on Facebook. When you first looked at this, what did you think?