Extremist groups are growing in Missouri, aiming at school boards and voting rights

As the anniversary of the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol rolls around, we must do more than remember the horror of that day that almost toppled our democratic promise.

A congressional committee is still trying to decide how much blame should rest at our former president’s doorstep. As time passes by, the hope of finding true justice in this instance starts to evaporate. More than 700 people have been charged for their roles in crashing into the halls of Congress. Many pleaded guilty. But the serious conspiracy cases against members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers are still a way off. A voting rights bill may or may not eventually get passed. There is no guarantee, however, that what happened once will not happen again.

We, the people of this great land, are the only hope for a guarantee. It will depend on us.

We cannot just blame the former president and forget that a movement of people decided to do his bidding. Donald Trump did not break down windows to get in Congress. Our neighbors did. And the movement that produced Jan. 6 is stronger than ever before in contemporary times. Yes, the Oath Keepers militias have lost members during the last year. Yes, the Proud Boys’ national leadership has abdicated its control of the organization. And yes, a recent trial in Charlottesville, Virginia has badly wounded the national socialist (read neo-Nazi) and southern secessionist wings of the movement, saddling them with hundred of thousands of dollars in debt.

But the People’s Rights Network, which began as two dozen on the Idaho border in April 2020, had grown quickly to more than 33,400 by last December. In our own state of Missouri, the group has garnered more than 350 members. They are recruiting women and putting them to state and regional tasks. They did not do this by waving assault rifles in the air, or by training people to blow up federal buildings. They did it by gluing themselves to the wider battle over masks and vaccines that is raking our country. They opposed masks and vaccines. They are running for local office in states across the country. And they are so successful that the Proud Boys and others have adopted their strategies.

In my own 40-plus years of researching, writing about and opposing modern white supremacist movements, I have been part of organizations that sued the Invisible Empire Klan, spent two years training 1,500 farm and rural leaders from Ohio to Wyoming and from North Dakota to Texas, opposed militia organizing before and after the Oklahoma City bombing, and attempted to rein in the white power skinhead music subculture as it crossed international borders. Today, we will have to do all of this and more.

To prevent this movement from growing, we must challenge it in every way we can. At school board meetings, we must defend teaching the honest history of racism, regardless of whether opponents falsely call it “critical race theory.” We must remind people that we depend on others for food and clothing, and that we must protect the others from the coronavirus, just as we protect ourselves. We have to defend masks and vaccines. We must win the battle over voting rights, and not let them shut us down like the Jim Crowers before them. And we must make private armies illegal in fact, not just on the books.

We must first stop their growth. Then we can further isolate the problem, and time will put them out of commission. If we don’t take the trouble to stop them, they will stop our promise of democracy. No fooling.