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Proud Boy Christopher Worrell will be taken to Washington, D.C., and remain in custody until his trial, a judge ruledin response to charges against himlinked to the Jan. 6 Capitol riots.

Chief Judge Beryl A. Howell, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, said that the evidence against Worrell, 49, of East Naples,met the government criteria for denying bond. She said her decision included Worrelldispersing pepper spray gel on officers, his level of preparation, his history of intimidating and threatening behavior and his refusal to comply with FBI orders.

"The weight of evidence is strong here and favors detention," she said.

More: New attorney retained for East Naples man arrested in connection to Capitol riots

More: East Naples man arrested for involvement in Capitol riot believed to be 'Proud Boy'

Christopher Worrell of East Naples at the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, a photo included in an FBI statement of facts a federal magistrate signed March 10, 2021.(Photo: Photo courtesy of the FBI)

Howell ordered Worrell transferred from Tampa to a Washington, D.C., holding facility until trial. His next court appointment is at 10 a.m. April 8, unless he is indicted before that, she said.

John Pierce, former attorney for Kyle Rittenhouse, is representing Worrell. Rittenhouse was charged after he fatally shot two men with an AR-15-style rifle on Aug. 25, the third night of protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

Pierce cited riots around the country, including the one in Wisconsin,as reason why Worrell was wearing a tactical vest, carried pepper spray gel and had an ear piece to communicate with people the government identified as other Proud Boys.

The prosecution had said the evidence shows that Worell and other Proud Boys listened to the president before walking to the Capitol.

The judge didn't buy Worrell's reasoning for his preparation.

"We have marches all the time in Washington, D.C.," she said. "This is not a march. This is a mob of assault on the Capitol,not following directions of police and breaking police lines. This was not a protest march. And if the defendant thoughtthat 's what he was doing and not understanding why hes sitting there, that gives me pause."

FBI agents arrested Worrell on March 12, at the home he shares with his girlfriend, Trish Priller, an executive assistant for the Naples Daily News. Worrell was taken to Tampa, where he's spent the last week, held without bond.

Prosecutors revealed Friday that Worrell was not at his home during the raid, saying he was 3 hours away camping. He was immediately contacted and instructed to turn himself in at the nearest FBI office.

They said Worrell instead told them that he would meet them at his home. The lawyers said he was emotional, they didn't know what he planned or where he was specifically and he had access to a cell phone for at least two hours past what an arrested person would normally have.

"He had three hours to think on his drive," prosecutors said.

Howell later cited the exchange and a 2009 arrest for impersonating an officer as a reason to deny Worrell bail. Court documents indicate he saw a woman drive through a yellow light, flashed a badge at her, and yelled at her. She called police, who found a badge, guns, handcuffs and a heavy duty flashlight in his front seat. He is not an officer.

Howell said that history, coupled with the FBI arrest, is a significant "backdrop" to imposing his own authority to the point of breaking the law."

She also questioned both attorneys about the significance of Worrell, pictured with Proud Boys, flashing an "OK" sign,which has gained ground as a White Power symbol. Two photos show Worrell with his thumb and index finger making the shape of an "O" or a "P" and three fingers forming a "W", standing for White Power.

As of Feb. 3, at least a half dozen people charged for their involvement in the Capitol riots were linked to the Proud Boys,an extremist group with ties to white nationalism.

White Boys adamantly deny any connection to the racist 'alt-right.'

Worrell's statement to the FBI in late January, included "the Proud Boys were not a racist white supremacist group like the media tries to portray."

Howell said because Worrell used the hand sign, she wasn't convinced of his statement.

Authorities investigating the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol say two extremist groups that traveled to Washington along with thousands of other Trump supporters weren't whipped into an impulsive frenzy by President Donald Trump. (March 10) AP Domestic

Previously: Prosecution: East Naples man sprayed pepper spray toward law enforcement officers at Capitol riot

More: Naples man among those arrested in Washington D.C. after violent Capitol siege

Howell questioned the government lawyers extensively on whether the pepper spray gel could be considered a dangerous weapon.

The prosecuting attorney explained the gel is "67 times more powerful than hot sauce," that the brand used was "double the average strength of other pepper sprays" and had better stopping power.

While Pierce told Howell that Worrell didn't intentionally spray officers, telling him that he was spraying another person in the mob who attacked older women, she pointed out that photos of the incident that Capitol police offers were in the line of the spray; and the defense did not provide anything different.She questioned why he wouldn't let police handle the incident and said it appeared that the police were his target.

By spraying the gel, a half-dozen officers broke the line to seek water to wash their eyes. That police line was joining another line closer to the building, where the mob broke through and into the Capitol.

The FBI received a tip that Worrellparticipated in the riots on Jan. 6 from someone who knows him, according to the prosecution.

While he was being arrested, Worrell told law enforcement that he knew the tipster, and he also said he knew the Twitter user who posted pictures of him at the capital.

Howell said that when Worrell told agents that when he caught up to the Twitter user,the FBI would be coming for him again."

"That's bold intimations of threats and thatraises a witness intimidation concern," Howell said, adding it figured into her decision to not grant bond..

As far as the government is aware, Worrell did not enter the U.S. Capitol building.

"Yes, he was definitely on the grounds, he felt that was his right," Pierce said. "But he loves his country, he was absolutely adamant that neither him norany of the friends that he was with enter any federal building."

The judge wasnot swayed.

"He understands my skepticism about him saying he was emphatically not going into Capitol building because he went into a restricted area, he was not following police commands and, as part of this crowd, mob, he was trying to stopthewhole reason they were there was to stop the count of electoral college votes. Why was he even there then?"

Worrell faces fivecharges connected to the Jan. 6 riot, according to the latest document filed by the prosecution:

Knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority while carrying a dangerous weapon

Knowingly engaging in disorderly or disruptive conduct in any restricted building or grounds while a dangerous weapon

Knowingly engaging in an act of physical violence in any restricted building or grounds while a dangerous weapon

Violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol Grounds

Obstruction of Justice/Congress

Naples Daily News reporter Jake Allen contributed to this report.

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D.C. Judge orders East Naples man with Proud Boys ties to remain jailed through trial - Naples Daily News

For decades, Jewish leaders have said the main fight against anti-Semitism should be a fight against unfair criticism of Israel. The Anti-Defamation League, which was started after the lynching of a Jewish man in Georgia in 1913, spends increasing amounts of time on dubious projects to defend the Israel state. Other Jewish organizations use their political capital trying to ban Americans from boycotting Israeli institutions that are assisting in Israeli government repression.

All the while anti-Jewish racists in this country are coming out of their holes and striking, They started using triple parenthesis to mean Jew on Twitter and their messages were retweeted literally billions of times. They marched in Charlottesville screaming, Jews will not replace us. An immigrant-hating man massacred 11 Jews at a temple in Pittsburgh. Anti-Jew hate appeared in QAnon and from the Proud Boys. Trump flirted with them, retweeting their venom, and at the same time pretending not to know them.

Yet whats the burning issue for our Jewish establishment leaders? Its a campaign to force a definition of anti-Semitism onto world governments to protect Israels government from criticism. It came from an organization representing governments and Holocaust scholars called the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, or IHRA. The group was created to expose those who would disguise their hatred of Jews by doubting the reality or the extent of the Holocaust. That effort is undoubtedly worthwhile.

But in 2016 the group came out with a Working Definition of anti-Semitism complete with examples, and many of the examples had to do with Israel. Supposedly anti-Semitism included targeting the state of Israel, saying that Israel was a racist endeavor, applying double standards to Israel, and comparing things the Israeli state has done with things German Nazis had done. Human rights supporters including organizations like the (120-year-old Jewish group) the Workmens Circle, and Jewish Voice for Peace and If Not Now took exception. Nevertheless, the definition/examples were adopted by the British government and it became the subject of one of Trumps executive orders.

All the while the far right was organizing. On Jan. 6, its followers exploded in attempted insurrection. That one of the rioters wore a Camp Auschwitz shirt seemed to bother none of them.

Something is really wrong with the conventional wisdom on how to oppose anti-Semitism. Even some establishment figures are realizing it. The Israeli paper Haaretz on Feb. 21 interviewed leading Holocaust scholar Professor Deborah Lipstadt who said if you look at the IHRA definition, You wont find right-wing anti-Semitism there; you wont find Pittsburgh there; you wont find Poway there; you wont find Halle, Germany, there; you wont find what we saw from some of the groups on January 6 at the Capitol there.

Yet the establishment continues on as if nothing was happening. There is a post in the State Department called Special Envoy to Combat and Monitor Anti-Semitism. The media is speculating that the Biden administration will give it to Abraham Foxman, who led the ADL for decades. What a mistake!

In 1993 it came out that the ADL had run for years a vast spying operation on Arab-Americans, African-Americans, Native Americans and left-wing groups. Foxman defended the program vehemently. Ten years ago Foxman had the ADL oppose the building of the Park-51 Islamic Center in Manhattan because it supposedly was too close to the site where al-Qaeda destroyed the World Trade Center. Worse than all this is the ongoing ADL-sponsored police exchange programs with Israel. Through it police, ICE, border patrol and FBI from the U.S. mix with soldiers, police, border agents, etc. from Israel. Jewish Voice for Peace which opposes the program, says worst practices are shared to promote and extend discriminatory and repressive policing in both countries. The police exchange is another Foxman program.

A new approach is needed, one that realizes what our grandparents knew, that hatred of Jews mostly comes from the far right, from fascists, white nationalists, alt-right or whatever they call themselves. We need leaders who realize that the fight against anti-Semitism is a fight against all racism and not an effort to advance Jewish nationalism. We need a special envoy, a Jew or non-Jew, whose record reflects that understanding.

Stanley Heller is executive director of the Middle East Crisis Committee and a member of Jewish Voice for Peace. He can be reached at mail@thestruggle.org.

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Opinion: We're fighting anti-Semitism the wrong way - The Wilton Bulletin

Gianluca Stringhini practically saw this coming. His lab had been studying hate speech and other malicious activity on social media platforms for several years, when they detected a spike last March in the use of words like Chinese and virus.

Stringhini, a BU College of Engineering assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, Chen Ling (ENG24), a PhD candidate in his lab who came to BU from her native Shanghai in 2019, and an international team of researchers from the United States, China, Italy, Germany, Cyprus, and Iran, sifted large-scale data sets from Twitter and the alt-right fringe network 4chans Politically Incorrect board, called /pol/, from November 1, 2019, through March 22, 2020. They reported an explosion of Sinophobiaanti-Chinese slurs, threats, and conspiracy theoriesas the pandemic spread from China to other countries.

Researchers tracked a shift on Twitter to posts blaming China for the pandemic, while on /pol/, known for polarizing hate speech and where people can post anonymously, the shift was toward the use of more and new Sinophobic slurs.

In April 2020, Stringhini and the other researchers issued their findings in a preliminary e-preprint as a call to action, warning that the online anti-Asian rhetoric evolving around the pandemic could possibly lead to hate attacks in the real world and most certainly harm international relations.

Its now a year later, and with the Asian community grieving and fearful over the March 16 shooting deaths of six Asian women in Atlanta, Stringhinis and Lings study appears prescient. They are preparing to present their teams findings at Aprils annual Web Conference, the top academic conference for web-related research.

Hate crimes increased 149 percent for people in the US Asian community from 2019 to 2020, according to preliminary data gathered from 16 major cities by the California State University Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, in a study released this month. The first spike occurred in March and April 2020 amid a rise in COVID cases and negative stereotyping of Asians. The number of Anti-Asian hate crimes reported in Boston went from 6 in 2019 to 14 last year. Hate crimes in the United States decreased 7 percent overall, a decline that could likely be attributed to the pandemic-imposed drop in social interaction in public spaces, according to the study.

BU Today talked in separate conversations with Stringhini and Ling, who brings a background in psychology to her research, about the rise of Sinophobia online.

Q&AWith Gianluca Stringhini and Chen Ling

Gianluca Stringhini: Our results indicate that the explosion of the pandemic corresponded to a rise in Sinophobia on social media. We not only observe an increase in the use of anti-Asian slurs on Twitter and /pol/, but we also see the emergence of new, COVID-inspired slurs. We also find that the word Chinese started being used in similar contexts to the word virus as lockdowns started.

We focused on Twitter and /pol/ to be able to draw comparisons between a general purpose social network and a more polarized and hateful one. We find a clear increase in the occurrence of Sinophobic slurs on /pol/ after the beginning of the pandemic, when the lockdown was announced in Wuhan on January 23, 2020, and it kept increasing as the pandemic started hitting homefor example, when Lombardy started their lockdown in March. We also observe spikes in the use of certain Sinophobic slurs both on /pol/ and Twitter right after notable events, like President Trump referring to COVID-19 as the China virus. Although we didnt measure this, I expect similar trends to hold for other social media services.

Trumps actions definitely had an impact on anti-Asian rhetoric online. Anecdotally, we saw something similar after the Muslim ban. The issue with Trumps account was kind of unique, because Twitter hesitated to enforce its code of conduct on that account until after the Capitol insurrection, and this allowed some of Trumps behaviors that would have not been tolerated in the accounts of other Twitter users to go uncensored.

Generally speaking, the trends on the two platforms show similarities: at first they were considering COVID as a Chinese problem that did not affect the Western world and later shifted to blaming China for the pandemic. However, /pol/ is quite a different community than Twitter, and it is not surprising that they started creating new slurs as time went by.

Stringhini: Online hate emerges in various contexts. One project we are working on is related to COVID misinformation, and as part of that project we are observing several misinformation narratives that we may consider racist, blaming Chinese people for the pandemic and speculating that the virus is an actual bioweapon designed to attack the Western world.I think the online racism that we observe is a symptom of broader problems in our society which manifest with physical violence. The online and offline world are linked. Although it might look like online racism is more widespread because we are more likely to stumble upon it when reading the comment section of news articles, for example, it is actually a problem affecting people in their in-person interactions.

Stringhini: My biggest concern is the rise in physical violence against Asian people. It is unclear how much online hate results in physical violence, but racist rhetoric online for sure helps set the climate for escalations. The killings in Atlanta are a sad example of this escalation.

Stringhini: The two kinds of hate go together: while our study focused on measuring Sinophobic rhetoric in general, it is reasonable to expect that many individuals have been targeted by anti-Asian racism as well. The racist activity that we observed is filled with stereotypes, and while focused on China, it ended up affecting Asian people in general.

Stringhini: I think its a mixture; /pol/ is generally a racist place and casual slurs are commonplace. At the same time, this emergence of Sinophobic rhetoric can be explained by the theory of defensive denial, in which the virus was seen as a problem of China at first, and did not affect the United States. Later, the emerging pandemic was blamed on China, which fueled more racist rhetoric.

I think that conspiracy theories on the fact that the virus was engineered in China go hand in hand with blaming Chinese people for the pandemic.

Chen Ling: When people are anonymous online, theyll say things more emotionally. They use it to express their anger, the fear of the pandemic. In psychology, its called scapegoating. People need to find a scapegoat. They did this to the Chinese even before the pandemic. But COVID-19 was like a trigger. It allows people to express their fear and anger in wordslike a swordand put them online. I think deep down they feel quite vulnerable.

We want to know why people are doing thistheir motivations. People have different coping methods when they are under pressure. There is content moderation on some mainstream platforms, like Twitter, to lead people to a healthier coping method. But on the fringe communities, especially 4chan, people say whatever they want. I believe there are a lot of people who are having a hard time in their lives because of the pandemic, and they transfer it into hate speech, to scapegoating Asians for losing their jobs, maybe, or for not being able to see their families because of social distancing. They find people online to share their fears and anger with.

Stringhini: I think that the administration having a clear anti-racist stance is good, but I doubt that this will have a positive effect on communities that are already hateful and polarized. Online moderation could help.

Stringhini: I think it is important for institutions to take a clear stance against Sinophobia and show support to their members of Asian descent. The goal of our work is mainly to raise awareness about the problem, but more effective online moderation could help curb the problem.I think that each and every one of us must work towards making every member of the BU community welcome. Local support by peers can help in putting casual hate received online into context, and help people deal with it. We also must denounce any sign of racism that we may spot in our community.

Stringhini: My research has always been focused on protecting people online. After witnessing a rise of hate speech in the past years, I decided to focus on ways we can make the Web a safer place for everyone.

I think there is a serious risk for researchers in this space to feel overwhelmed and fall into rabbit holes, and this can have serious effects on their mental health. I think that people working on these kinds of projects should constantly check on each other and talk about particularly disturbing content that they might encounter. Taking breaks is also very important. With my collaborators, we joke that we should take a break every couple of hours to go watch videos of kittens on YouTube, but thats actually very good advice.

I am always concerned about the mental well-being of students working on these topics. We are trying to develop best practices about thisbeing open about problems and talking about it and taking breaks.

Ling: Professor Stringhini makes sure we feel comfortable. I am prepared for this because this is the research I do. I want to know how people think this way instead of that way and what makes them think this way or that way.

There is a social psychology book, The Nature of Prejudice [published in 1954 by Harvard psychologist Gordon Allport, translated by Ling into Mandarin], which was developed from the fact of the victimization of Jews during World War II. It emphasizes the importance of such hate speech research. If we pay no attention to such behavior online, the situation will get worse quickly. And there will be physical attacks in real life.

If we do not prevent this kind of hate speech, things will escalate.

When I was reading those posts on 4chan and Twitter, it was like PTSD. I was in Manhattan in December, 2019, before the pandemic and I was walking to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was cold and windy. There were not many people on the street. This young boy shouted something at me. I dont remember what he said, it was something about I should go back to my country. I was so afraid. I kept walking to the museum.

I still remember that feeling. I never think I will be unwelcome by any people. In Shanghai, I can go anywhere I want. In America, people are always so nice to me. I heard about racism in America, but this was the first time I was confronted by this thing.

Nothing like that has happened to me since then, or in Boston. I dont go out much because of the pandemic. Im afraid of the cold. My parents tell me not to go outside around the time of the presidential election. It was chaotic. And I know these days there are attacks against Asian people. I see it on the news. I know that other minorities in the U.S. have more or less experienced this feeling that I do.

I feel sad about the attacks in Atlanta. I read President Browns letter about it. It is inspiring. Things will get better if we keep working to make our world a better place.

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BU Researchers Warned of Online Surge of Anti-Asian Attacks a Year Ago - BU Today

From 2019 to 2020, the Anti-Defamation League tracked 193 incidents of hate, extremism and anti-Semitism in Connecticut, ranging from a July 2020 murder in Hartford in which the accused, Jerry David Thompson, claimed to belong toan extremist movement thatbelieves the government has no authority, to putting up fliers and disseminating propaganda.

Last year, ADL reported the highest level of white supremacist propagandacirculated in the U.S. in at least a decade, and reader Gary Trahan asked ifthere are active white supremacist or domestic extremist groups in the region and Connecticut. That question received the most votes in the latest round ofThe Day's CuriousCT feature.

The "biggest perpetrator" of propaganda distribution in Connecticut is the alt-right group Patriot Front,said Steve Ginsburg, director of the ADL's Connecticut office. In one incident reported by ADL on Dec. 31, 2020, Patriot Front distributed propaganda in Jewett City that read: "One nation against invasion," "America is not for sale," "Not stolen conquered" and "Life of our nation. Liberty of our people. Victory of the American spirit."

Ginsburg said the ADL also has reported activities by Connecticut members of the Three Percenters and Oath Keepers, both anti-government extremist groups thatare part of the militia movement.

Earlier this year, a group that identified itself as the far-right, male-only extremist group the Proud Boys attempted to donate more than 500 pounds of food to the nonprofit Hands On Hartford.

Related story: Sub base hits pause to talk about extremism in the ranks

ADL determines someone as "actively" involved in a hate group if they spread the group's ideology or help recruit new members, among other actions. While historically these groups convened in person, "now we are at a point where they can be sitting in basements and identifying themselves as part of these groups," Ginsburg said.

That makes it difficult"to know real total numbers," he said.

The actions taken by these groups and their members are not always violent, Ginsburg said, though those are the incidents ADL is most concerned about. Being active could mean planning a "banner drop" over a highway or a peaceful protest, he said.

"Our main point of concern is violence across the spectrum," Ginsburg said. "Most of the violence comes from white supremacist and what is called right-wing ideology."

Hate crimes in the U.S. rose to the highest level in more than a decade, the Federal Bureau of Investigation reported last year.

The FBI also has seen a rise in domestic extremism nationwide in recent years, said Supervisory Special Agent Marcus Clark with the agency's New Haven division.

"On the domestic terrorism side, there's been anevolution away from the large group conspiracies that people often think of toward more of a lone offender attack without any clear affiliation to a group," Clark said."That makes it more difficult for us toidentifyand disrupt."

The agency relies on its partners, including state and local law enforcement agencies, and even nongovernment organizations and community groups, to help share information about suspected domestic extremists.

The internet and social media have helped to radicalize domestic terrorists, Clark said, given the speed and reach with which their messages and ideology can be disseminated online.

In Connecticut, Senate Democrats are seeking to create a new department within the state police focused on combating hate crimes and violent right-wing extremism.

Some of the perpetrators, but not all,involved in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol are accused of having ties to or expressing support for hate groups and antigovernment militias.

Ginsburg contrasted those involved in the Jan. 6 attack with participants in the "Unite the Right" rally that occurred in August 2017 in Charlottesville, Va., which was "almost purely a convening of extremists."

"That's what it was marketed as. That's who it appealed to," he said. "Even before they started marching, ADL shared with law enforcement half the people who were coming because we knew them because we follow these extremist groups."

ADL's investigators knew only a "small portion" of those involved in the Capitol attack, he said.

"A lot of them are not extremists. The question is: Did January 6 start a new type of extremist ideology called 'I'm just going to believe in Donald Trump'?" Ginsburg said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

j.bergman@theday.com

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Are there active hate groups in Connecticut? - News from southeastern Connecticut - theday.com

As the U.S. grapples with domestic extremism in the wake of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, warnings about more violence are coming from the FBI Director Chris Wray and others. The Conversation asked Matthew Valasik, a sociologist at Louisiana State University, and Shannon E. Reid, a criminologist at the University of North Carolina Charlotte, to explain what right-wing extremist groups in the U.S. are doing. The scholars are co-authors of Alt-Right Gangs: A Hazy Shade of White, published in September 2020; they track the activities of far-right groups like the Proud Boys.What are U.S. extremist groups doing since the Jan. 6 riot?Local chapters of the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Groypers and others are breaking away from their groups national figureheads. For instance, some local Proud Boys chapters have been explicitly cutting ties with national leader Enrique Tarrio, the groups chairman.Tarrio was arrested on federal weapons charges in the days before the insurrection, but he has also been revealed as a longtime FBI informant. He reportedly aided authorities in a variety of criminal cases, including those involving drug sales, gambling and human smuggling though he has not yet been connected with cases against Proud Boys members.When a leader of a far-right group or street gang leaves, regardless of the reason, it is common for a struggle to emerge among remaining members who seek to consolidate power. That can result in violence spilling over into the community as groups attempt to reshape themselves.While some of the splinter Proud Boys chapters will likely maintain the Proud Boys brand, at least for the time being, others may evolve and become more radicalized. The Base, a neo-Nazi terror group, has recruited from among the ranks of Proud Boys. As the Proud Boys sheds affiliates, it would not be surprising for those with more enthusiasm about hateful activism to seek out more extreme groups. Less committed groups will wither away.How does that response compare with what happened after 2017s Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville?Neither the Capitol insurrection nor the Charlottesville rally produced the response from mainstream America that far-right groups had hoped for. Rather than rising up in a groundswell of support, most Americans were appalled some so much that they have abandoned the Republican Party.Additionally, right-wingers have been hit hard by the post-insurrection actions by large technology companies like Facebook, Twitter, Apple, Google and Amazon. They took down far-right group members accounts and removed right-wing social media platforms, including permanently blacklisting Donald Trumps Twitter account and temporarily blocking all traffic to Parler, a conservative social media platform. Those steps are more significant than earlier moderation and algorithm changes those companies had undertaken in previous efforts to curb online extremism.Another major difference is the lack of regret. Nobody on the right wanted to be associated with Charlottesville after it happened. Figureheads of the far right who had initially promoted that rally saw the negative public reaction and distanced themselves, even condemning the Unite the Right rally.After the insurrection at the Capitol, their response was different. They did not split and blame other right-wing groups. Instead, conservative and extreme-right circles have united behind a false claim that they did nothing wrong, and alleged, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that left-wing activists assaulted the Capitol while disguised as right-wingers.Are extremist groups attracting new members?Some members have left extremist groups in the wake of the Jan. 6 violence. The members who remain, and the new members they are attracting, are increasing the radicalization of far-right groups. As the less committed members abandon these far-right groups, only the more devout remain. Such a shift is going to alter the subculture of these groups, driving them farther to the right. We expect this polarization will only accelerate the reactionary behaviors and extremist tendencies of these far-right groups.Right-wing pundits and conservative media are continuing to stoke fears about the Biden administration. We and other observers of right-wing groups expect that extremists will come to see the events of Jan. 6 as just the opening skirmish in a modern civil war. We anticipate they will continue to seek an end to American democracy and the beginning of a new society free or even purged of groups the right wing fears, including immigrants, Jewish people, nonwhites, LGBTQ people and those who value multiculturalism.We expect that these groups will continue to shift more and more to the extreme right, posing risks for acts of violence both large and small.Have far-right extremists views toward the police changed?With a Democratic administration and attorney general, the far right will no longer view federal law enforcement agencies as friendly, the way they did under the Trump administration. Rather, they view the police as the enemy.Even before Joe Biden took office and the Republicans officially lost control of the U.S. Senate, the Capitol riot showed this divide between right-wing extremists and police. A Capitol Police officer was assaulted with a flagpole bearing an American flag, and some members of the mob were police officers and military personnel. Many more were military veterans.Its not clear what this different view of law enforcement means for police officers, active-duty military and veterans who are members of right-wing groups. But we anticipate that only those who are most zealously committed to far-right causes will remain active. That, in turn, will push those groups even farther to the extreme right.Has anything changed for militias since Biden has become president?In 2009, the Department of Homeland Security issued a report warning about the growing membership in far-right groups, including their active recruitment of military veterans. Shortly after the report was released, Republicans in Congress pushed for the report to be retracted and for dramatically reducing the federal effort to monitor far-right groups in the U.S. This permissive atmosphere allowed far-right groups to grow and spread nationwide.The Trump administration further served far-right groups by failing to pay out federal grants for grassroots counterviolence programs, by refusing to help local law enforcement agencies with equipment or training to deal with these groups, and by routinely downplaying the violence perpetrated by these white power groups. Essentially, far-right groups were unpoliced for the past decade or more.But that approach has ended. Merrick Garlands appointment as Bidens attorney general is a big signal: In his career at the Department of Justice before becoming a federal judge, Garland supervised the investigations of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bombing.These were two of the most noteworthy acts of far-right domestic terrorism in the nations history. Garland has said that he will make fighting right-wing violence and attacks on democracy major priorities of his tenure at the head of the Justice Department.In January, Canada designated the Proud Boys and other right-wing groups as terrorist organizations, which puts pressure on U.S. law enforcement to reconsider how they evaluate, investigate and prosecute these extremist groups. Beyond law enforcements treating these far-right groups like street gangs, there are also laws in place to combat violence associated with domestic terrorism.It appears that U.S. prosecutors may finally begin to take seriously the violent actions of Proud Boys, especially as more and more members are being charged with coordinating the breach of the U.S. Capitol Building.But as police power comes to bear on these violent right-wing groups, many of their members remain at least as radicalized as they were on Jan. 6 if not more so. Some may feel that more extreme measures are needed to resist the Biden administration.The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.

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Commentary: After the insurrection, America's far-right groups get more extreme - pressherald.com