Patriot Movement AZ & AZ Patriots

Antigovernment Movement

"The Intelligence Project identified 488 extreme antigovernment groups that were active in 2021, down from 566 in 2020. Of these groups, 92 were militias, 75 sovereign citizen, three constitutional sheriff, and 52 conspiracy propagandist groups. The number of antigovernment groups peaked in the 2010s and has declined since, but the current decrease in organized group numbers is not reflective of a lack of broad support or activity. In 2021, the conspiratorial and permanently dubious view of government was pervasive, as evidence by the movement’s popularity on such issues as COVID-19 regulations, local school curriculum, the “Big Lie” voter fraud, border security and various technological advances such as 5G cell service. Antigovernment imagery, such as the Gadsden flag and the Three Percenter logo, was commonly displayed by adherents across the country. Antigovernment groups were linked up with other hard-right groups in 2021, as they often targeted the same marginalized communities and engaged in actual or threats of political violence.

The Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and attempt to stop the democratic transfer of power through the formalized counting of electoral votes was the most public moment for the antigovernment movement since the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. Of the over 700 people charged with offenses ranging from trespassing to seditious conspiracy for the actions on Jan. 6, at least 25 were members of identified antigovernment organizations.

Faced with greater scrutiny and deplatforming, antigovernment groups reorganized and were dispersed in communities focused on localized activities – a mainstay tactic of the antigovernment movement. Some local chapters of national organizations disbanded or unaffiliated, including chapters of Oath Keepers, the American Patriots Three Percent, III% United Patriots, the Three Percenters/III%ers, and the State of Jefferson Formation.

Ammon Bundy’s People’s Rights activists held a variety of small-scale demonstrations for individual grievances and organized a series of stunts disobeying COVID-19 public health measures, one resulting in Bundy’s arrest, throughout 2021.

In the Southwest, militias and other extremists set up camps in the desert engaging in vigilante activities including harassing migrants and humanitarian aid groups and coordinating with border patrol agents.

Conspiracy propagandists, including the John Birch Society, found a niche audience with COVID-19 vaccine skeptics, using existing antigovernment mistrust and a historical relationship with the natural-health sector to push the conspiracies around population and government control. Likewise, constitutional sheriff organizations promoted COVID-19 conspiracy theories and refused to enforce health guidelines enacted by their lawmakers. Some of these sheriffs teamed up at events alongside QAnon adherents, antisemites and sovereign citizens."

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