Inside the Alt-Right Meltdown After Failed Capitol Putsch

Alexander Reid Ross

January 11, 2021 at 4:58 AM·8 min read

After a feverish couple of hours on Jan. 6, during which fascists on social network platforms dared to utter the word “revolution,” they came crashing down to reality—hopes ruined and friendless in the world after the deadly but ultimately fruitless attack on the U.S. Capitol. Now, with far-right groups feeling backed into a corner by the impending end of Trump’s presidency, divisions among them are becoming more palpable as a feeling of failure grows and extremists nihilistically turn away from talk of a “political solution” and towards white supremacist terror.

Cracks within the extreme right already presented themselves on the eve of the Trump putsch, when the outgoing president exhorted his supporters to march on the Capitol in an effort to intervene in the peaceful transition of power to the next democratically elected leader. Just days before Jan. 6, a story written by the alt-right podcaster Erik Striker reignited an ongoing row by accusing the occult Satanist branch of fascism of being a front for the FBI, “a psychological operation intended to demoralize activists and farm white ‘terrorists’ they can parade for an eager, anti-white media.” Not only was the satanic branch of fascism an unwitting tool, Striker claimed, it was actually a federal psyop.

Striker’s article, which was mostly sourced from a Scribd account attributed to Yahoo News, relied on what appeared to be an unclassified special analysis report by the FBI and British National Counter Terrorism Centre dated from last November, which offered a summary of the fascist cult Order of Nine Angles and its influence on terrorists. More specifically, the report called for raising awareness about the occult group—known for fusing extremist tendencies from different religions into a syncretic, ultraviolent form of fascist Satanism—and assisting “disengagement from terrorism-related activities.”

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Of particular interest to Striker was the report’s mention of the “Siege network,” a loose-knit network of channels that spread fascist propaganda on the encrypted social network Telegram. According to a Daily Beast analysis of 20 leading channels that associate with, share, and engage in the Siege network (also called “Terrorgram”), the total number of subscribers across channels amounts to more than 120,000, with an median following of around 3,000 and the most popular channel maintaining over 30,000 subscribers alone. The Siege network becomes important because it represents the legacy of recent fascist terrorists and their ideological adherence to Satanic ideology.

Striker zoomed in on the report’s mention of prior conflicts between the Order of Nine Angles and the alt-right anti-Semitic website Daily Stormer, in which the latter argued against the “Satanic doomsday cultists” gaining power in the terrorist group Atomwaffen Division. While he didn’t openly take sides in his article, it was obvious that he opposed the satanic cult. Striker also appeared to misconstrue the report’s observation that law enforcement might aid “disengagement” from cultists, claiming that the feds wanted to manipulate the cult in “a nefarious scheme to utilize Satanism in dissident groups as a means to demoralize activists, splinter groups, and cause individuals to ‘disengage.’”

To say that fascists across the Siege network did not take Striker’s article particularly well would be an understatement. Accusations of federal law enforcement collaboration echoed across a number of leading accounts within Terrorgram, as people attempting to develop political organizations were accused of providing a service to federal agents.

Some on the far right took Striker’s article in stride at first. The would-be far-right Telegram personality Brandon Martinez, who posts under the name Martinez Perspective, shared the article, saying, “The Feds are more active than ever before, infiltrating, spying, subverting. Their MO is to stir up drama/division in our ranks, playing on contentious themes like religion to do it.”

Others fought back. The Terrorgram anti-mask channel, Corona Chan, shared Martinez Perspective’s post with the aggressive commentary, “Of course religious infighting is bad but Eric Striker is against extremism altogether. Hes [sic] a grifter and a bad actor. Much like face f**ging streamers like yourself. Telegram is our turf.” Here, it appears Terrorgram provides a forum for fascists associated with satanic cults, reactionary Catholicism, and other sects to get along, unless their fascist tendency is deemed not extremist enough.

The channel Catholic Nazi was among the dissenters opposing “religious infighting” and it also slammed Ron Unz—who runs the anti-Semitic, Holocaust-denying Unz Review—for syndicating Striker’s article, highlighting a line on Unz’s Wikipedia page about his “Ukrainian-Jewish immigrant” background. Catholic Nazi’s anti-Semitic tweet was shared by more fascist channels, such as Dixie Apocalypse and BreadPilled.

While he agrees with anti-Semitism, Striker is not considered extremist enough by his detractors, because he cofounded the new National Justice Party, which appears to be an effort to draw a far-right constituency from disillusioned Trumpists together with some hard-left populists over promises of a national-socialist state. Such efforts have always been shunned by the Siege network, which hopes to dismantle the political apparatus of representative parties in a democratic system through terror attacks and race war.

In another post shared by Breadpilled, Dixie Apocalypse dug in even deeper, declaring, “Eric Striker and other movement f**s want you to join a public group to grift off of you and other naïve whites… and when these naïve whites get arrested for doing stupid public shit, Striker and the other grifting movement fags kick these naïve whites to the curb without hesitation, thought, or remorse for their own actions which got these naïve whites into trouble in the first place. Think about that.”

Even as far-right channels geared up for Jan. 6, the drama spread to a broader sectarian crisis when Terrorgram channels began pointing the finger at channels tied to the Boogaloo Boys, a memetic tendency on the far right to intensify conflict within political society in order to accelerate what they see as an inevitable second Civil War.

Responding to Striker’s article, a Boogaloo channel called Boogaloo Intel Drop supported the accusations against Order of Nine Angles. “Satanism in right wing groups has always been recognized as a fed well poisoning tactic,” the channel insisted, “and Seige [sic] was always gay, hoping you would swallow satanic f**gotry just to hear someone admit theres no political solution.”

In a rebuttal to the Boogaloos, Corona Chan fired back, “I’ve been calling out the /BMW/ channel and ‘Boogaloo Intel Drop’ as likely feds… we ban all discussion about firearms, illegal shit, or religious infighting in the chat room.” In short order, a channel appeared impersonating Boogaloo Intel Drop, attempting to doxx one of the channel’s admins and calling them “BoogaJew Boys.”

The Far Right Is Already Scheming for a Sequel to the Riot

Amid the infighting between Third Positionists, the Siege network, and Boogaloo Boys, far-right Trump supporters are increasingly moving toward revolutionary, anti-government positions. With Proud Boys chairman Enrique Tarrio facing a felony charge after police found two high-capacity magazines in his car in D.C. on Jan. 4, the most aggressive street fighters in Trump’s coalition are threatening violence not just against Washington, D.C., but against a Republican Party they feel betrayed them. In the wake of his arrest, a Telegram channel associated with Tarrio posted an angry statement from white nationalist Vincent James Foxx: “We must completely destroy the GOP.”

Growing to prominence within the Proud Boys is their own Third Positionist faction, led by a Terrorgram-promoting channel called Proud Boys: Uncensored, which railed against the GOP in a post issued on Friday that ended on an ominous note, “Here’s the point: There is no political solution.” Terrorgram channels eagerly noted that the Proud Boys are “going on the warpath,” and widely shared a survey hosted by Uncensored asking “Do you want total war?” following the failed putsch. As of time of writing, the survey had nearly 9,000 responses, 77 percent of which answered “Yes.”

With the refrain “no political solution” broadcast across the far right, even Trump’s seemingly solid leader cult, QAnon, seems shaken, as right-wingers ask if Trump’s strange concession message was part of “the Plan.” Images of Trump, depicting the president as a Jewish person stabbing a MAGA soldier in the back, ricocheted around far-right social networks as the realization of the putsch’s failure started to sink in.

Amid this chaos, the white nationalist “Groyper” movement, named after a meme variation of Pepe the Frog, has rushed into the center of the Trumpist efforts to overturn the elections in December, using the moment to gain notoriety and legitimacy on the populist right. At the heart of their push is an effort to seize the “America First” brand for a leadership of white nationalists like Foxx, Patrick Casey, and Nick Fuentes, who joined what some call the Jan. 6 “siege” against the Capitol.

With America First members featuring prominently in the so-called “Stop the Steal” efforts in D.C. and Atlanta, the Groypers hold themselves up as the new ambassadors of the far right. While Fuentes doesn’t reject political violence or organizing within political parties, he hates police and generally calls for building far-right “infrastructure.” But given ongoing splits and a recent deplatforming by Fuentes’s streaming site, Dlive, such efforts may prove an uphill struggle.

In the meantime, it appears, the broad rejection of the “political solution” and growing despair has disparate fascist and far-right groups moving toward sectarian militancy. From Jan. 5 to Jan. 8, just hours after the news of Trump’s suspension from Twitter, the 20 accounts tracked by Daily Beast on Terrorgram increased by an average of 5 percent—the highest gains coming to the nihilist Blackpilled channel (33 percent) and the Proud Boys: Uncensored (12 percent). The growth continued through the weekend, averaging 10 percent across the board, as the rump of the revolutionary faction of Trumpism continues to reconstitute in the wake of his defeat, with fresh recruits arming up and preparing to ‘take back’ the country.