Behind the masks, the real insurrectionists

One of the oft-remarked aspects of projection—especially as we’ve experienced it over the past generation in the hands of the American right, constantly proclaiming that it is “the left” that is violent, seditious, intent on imposing tyranny—is that it serves as a kind of confession. The inevitably groundless accusations and claims seem to arise from their own perverse imaginations, an assumption that of course their enemies would behave just as they would. Projection serves as a useful distraction from their own words and actions, as well as an excuse for responding with exactly the same violence and tyranny they want everyone to think emanates from their opposition.

So when the Trump administration heatedly declares the citizen resistance to their attempt to invade a liberal urban center with a lethal army that causally executes their neighbors to be a kind of “domestic terrorism,” and labels the street activists “insurrectionists,” there’s really a simple underlying reason: That’s what THEY are doing.

Those of us who covered the four years of Proud Boys/Oath Keepers/Threepers protests in liberal urban areas that preceded the Jan. 6 insurrection are already too well familiar with what we’ve all seen unfolding in Minnesota this month. As I explained at the time—when they were busy hallucinating “Anitfa buses” and “Antifa arsonists,” straight-up instances of pure projection—what we saw was this:

[F]or the past three years, busloads of right-wing thugs eager for violence from rural and exurban areas have been organizing to descend on unsuspecting liberal urban centers—primarily Portland, Seattle, and San Francisco—in order to engage in faux “protests” primarily designed to spark violence.

Their underlying violence and seditious nature finally exploded into public view on Jan. 6. Through the arrests and prosecutions that followed, we finally obtained a good look at what kind of people these are. A study conducted by the University of Chicago Project on Security and Threats subsequently identified an active American insurrectionist movement comprising some 21 million people.

These radicalized Trump followers, the study found, believe that “Use of force is justified to restore Donald J. Trump to the presidency” and that “The 2020 election was stolen, and Joe Biden is an illegitimate president.” About 63% of them believe in the Great Replacement theory, while 54% subscribe to far-right QAnon conspiracism.

The underlying numbers were disturbing. While only 8.1 percent of the population subscribed to these views, that nonetheless represents 21 million American adults. “There is remarkable consistency in the responses,” it noted. “Specifically, of the roughly one tenth of those who think force is justified to restore Trump, 90% also see Biden as illegitimate, and 68% also think force may be needed to preserve America’s traditional way of life.”

Even after the initial arrests, the study observed, those same “21 million adamant supporters of insurrection also have the dangerous potential for violent mobilization.” The narratives that fueled their radicalization—particularly the white-nationalist “Great Replacement” theory claiming that brown immigrants were being deliberately imported to displace the white population, as well as the “QAnon” conspiracy theory claiming that Democrats operate a murderous child-trafficking cabal—did not desist after the insurrection, but rather spread and continued to metastasize.

Notably, street thugs like the Proud Boys did not dissipate, but continued to organize—though more on a local level, showing up to intimidate the LGBTQ community at Pride events and drag-queen library readings. They also began wearing masks (which they had previously disdained), following the footsteps of neofascist gangs like Patriot Front.

The study concluded that “we are dealing with a mass movement with violence at its core that does not fit earlier patterns of right-wing extremism. For example, we are not dealing with disaffected and unemployed young men, but mainly highly competent, middle-aged American professionals.”

It added: “All this tells us is that the insurrectionist movement is more mainstream, cross-party, and more complex than many people might like to think, which does not bode well for the 2022 mid-term elections, or for that matter, the 2024 Presidential election.”

Perversely, the national media narrative that followed downplayed the underlying antagonism to democracy manifested in the MAGA movement and normalized Donald Trump’s continuing candidacy, enough that he was able to retake the presidency through dubious means in 2024. The Chicago study’s warning went unheeded.

Trump wasted no time reassembling his insurrectionist army—issuing mass pardons for Jan. 6 insurrectionists, after which, predictably, a number of the pardoned insurrectionists have promptly engaged in more crimes after their release. The White House also tried to turn reality on its head with a website dedicated to a baldfaced falsification of the events from that day—as well as a crystalline example of pure projection:

The Democrats masterfully reversed reality after January 6, branding peaceful patriotic protesters as “insurrectionists” and framing the event as a violent coup attempt orchestrated by Trump—despite no evidence of armed rebellion or intent to overthrow the government. In truth, it was the Democrats who staged the real insurrection by certifying a fraud-ridden election, ignoring widespread irregularities, and weaponizing federal agencies to hunt down dissenters, all while Pelosi’s own security lapses invited the chaos they later exploited to seize and consolidate power. This gaslighting narrative allowed them to persecute innocent Americans, silence opposition, and distract from their own role in undermining democracy.

Much worse, Trump in short order obtained billions in funding for ICE and began hiring large numbers of people with scant qualifications to form a private army of gun-toting thugs, people whose role would involve once again invading liberal urban centers with the intent of creating scenes of violence and, moreover, terrorizing their populations.

Their hiring criteria, Laura Jedeed recently exposed for Slate, was almost perfectly designed to overlook any background involving far-right extremism or even criminal violence—such as, say, invading the Capitol:

ICE’s recruitment push is so sloppy that the administration effectively has no idea who’s joining the agency’s ranks. We’re all, collectively, in the dark about whom the state is arming, tasking with the most sensitive of law enforcement work, and then sending into America’s streets.

Those of us who have experienced MAGA insurrectionists as Proud Boys and militiamen in the streets can readily recognize the hypermasculine, thin-skinned men hiding behind the masks as ICE agents in Minneapolis and elsewhere. The extremists who are murdering citizens and depriving them of their civil rights with smirks and threats are cut from the same cloth as the mob that invaded the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Amanda Marcotte recently ripped off the masks for Salon:

I’m far from the first observer to notice how much ICE, under the leadership of Homeland Security Secretary — and proud dog-killer — Kristi Noem, has come to resemble the Proud Boys, a neo-fascist group founded by Gavin McInnes in 2016. As Wired’s David Gilbert wrote in response to ICE’s recent invasion of Minneapolis, the reason we haven’t seen a resurgence of the Proud Boys in Trump’s second term is that the president’s “militarization” of ICE and “embrace of white nationalist rhetoric” leaves the group “without a role to play.”

But Kristi Noem hasn’t just changed the way ICE presents itself. The tactics the agency now uses and the ideas fueling its mission are eerily identical to the vision of the Proud Boys that McInnes laid out from the group’s very beginnings.

ICE’s current aesthetics owe much to the Proud Boys, from the masks they use to hide their identity and their corny but racist language about “heritage” to their attachment to the phrase “FAFO,” which is short for “eff around and find out.”

Some members of Congress—notably Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Maryland—have begun asking pointed questions about all this. Raskin recently fired off a letter to Noem and Attorney General Pam Bondi demanding to know how many Jan. 6 rioters, including those pardoned by Trump, are now working for ICE and other federal agencies.

Raskin particularly noted the case of Jared Wise, a former FBI agent who was about go on trial on charges that he urged rioters to kill law enforcement officers on Jan. 6, when he was granted clemency by Trump. When Wise was at the Capitol Jan. 6, according to his indictment, he called Capitol Police officers fighting the mob “the Gestapo” and egged on his fellow rioters: “Yeah, fuck them! Yeah, kill ‘em!” He continued: “Kill ‘em! Kill ‘em! Kill ‘em!”

Wise now works in the Justice Department under Bondi as an adviser to the Weaponization Working Group—a unit Bondi established to investigate purported instances of politically motivated prosecutions during the Biden administration. According to Raskin, he has played a central role in the firings of career prosecutors who handled to Jan. 6 cases.

Raskin also called out how ICE’s unprecedented use of masks for its agents make it possible for the potential criminals in their ranks to go unrecognized.

“Unique among all law enforcement agencies and all branches of the armed services, ICE agents conceal their identities, wearing masks and removing names from their uniforms,” wrote Raskin. “Who is hiding behind these masks? How many of them were among the violent rioters who attacked the Capitol on January 6th and were convicted of their offenses?”

Predictably, an administration mouthpiece ignored the question and retorted with yet another round of projection. “ICE officers wear face coverings for one reason: to protect themselves and their families from real-world threats fueled by thug activist intimidation campaigns,” Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security Tricia McLaughlin told CBS News. “Instead of condemning this violence and intimidation, Rep. Raskin is choosing to side with the mob, recycle false smears, and chase headlines.” She called the letter “reckless, disgusting, and unhinged.”

The much larger issue, however, is not just whether Jan. 6 criminals are filling government roles now, but whether extremists from the 21-million-strong insurrectionist movement are doing so, particularly as armed ICE agents. How many members of the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, and the III% militias are now prowling our streets and invading blue cities with guns, as they did between 2017 and 2020?

It’s become clear that the Trump administration has in fact embraced and employed a large subculture of alt-right and “Patriot” extremists both on the streets and in government offices—particularly in its communications and social-media departments. We know this from monitoring their feeds.

Exhibit A: Noem’s Department of Homeland Security recently used a song beloved by white supremacists in an ICE recruitment ad. “We’ll Have Our Home Again,” a self-pitying white-nationalist anthem that deems the existence of nonwhites a form of oppression, originated with a neo-Nazi a capella singing group in 2020.

Ryan Christopher Palmeter, a 21-year-old white supremacist who gunned down three Black people inside a Dollar General store in Jacksonville, Florida, in 2023, before killing himself, cited the opening lyrics to the song in his 27-page manifesto. A “civilized society,” he wrote, should see Black people “deported and exterminated”.

It also became a favorite singalong for Proud Boys marchers and their apologists. At a November 2020 Sacramento event that was a “Stop the Steal” warmup for Jan. 6, masked-up Proud Boys sang the song, vowing to “put ourselves on the line” to help Donald Trump steal the 2020 election.

“We’re going to be the ones to go and lead the charge to bring back America and bring back our freedom, and bring back our sovereignty, and take dominion over all evil things that are trying to destroy the people of our children,” intoned the local Proud Boys leader to applause.

That post, however, is only the tip of neofascist iceberg operating the Trump administration’s social-media accounts, particularly for Noem’s DHS and CBP and Bondi’s DOJ. The recruitment flyers promoted by DHS for ICE employees, for instance, make constant references to white-nationalist and conspiracist ideas. The SPLC explains:

DHS has since continued to post a barrage of graphics, ranging from overt nationalist and antisemitic imagery to coded racist dog whistles about the supposed loss of white American culture, in attempts to recruit people to join ICE. In one recruitment poster, published on Aug. 11, a white Uncle Sam caricature in the style of a Norman Rockwell painting stands at a crossroads of directional signs that include such phrases as “INVASION,” “CULTURAL DECLINE,” “HOMELAND” and “LAW & ORDER.” The poster includes the caption “Which way, American man?” — which appears to be a nod to the influential white nationalist text Which Way Western Man? by William Gayley Simpson. Published by an imprint associated with the neo-Nazi National Alliance, the book is a reflection and critique of society from Simpson’s travels. While critical of some aspects of society, it largely frames Western civilization as superior and veers into sexist and antisemitic commentary.

A particularly flagrant example is the flier published on Twitter by the DHS account showing an idyllic beach scene with a fancy car and the surf in the background, reading: “America After 100 Million Deportations.”

A report from the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism surveyed the multiple examples of neofascist and white-nationalist content posted to the DHS account, posts which “depict Black people trapped in ‘crystals,’ references to far-right iconography, gaming, and visual media depicting ‘fashwave’ and ‘vaporwave,’ both of which are common in extremist spaces.”

As expected, these winks and nods are celebrated in neofascist circles online: “Twitter users responding with Nazi imagery, spurring on ICE to ‘start rounding them up,’ and celebrating a post from DHS comparing migrants to mutated aliens deserving of extermination.”

It also found that the DHS and ICE recruitment have been greeted with acclaim among far-right and neo-Nazi influencers, including several Proud Boys chapters. The DHS social-media poster chimed in: A Swastika-wearing influencer named “@chaotichermes” posted: “I like the propaganda and all but let’s actually start rounding them up.” The DHS official account replied: “Working on it!” and linked to a statement touting deportation numbers.

One of the characters involved in DHS’s social-media accounts has been exposed. As Kyle Bazgo demonstrated at BlueSky, a MAGA troll named Micah Bock, who holds the position of DHS Deputy Assistant Secretary for Strategic Communications, is one of the key Twitter trolls at DHS. Bock not only follows explicitly racist neo-fascist accounts, but he apparently likes to post memes drawn from neofascist sources like Patriot Front.

Bock, the face of DHS’s campaign to root out “predators” and “restore law and order”, was himself previously convicted of sexually assaulting a teenage student when he worked as an aide for former MAGA congressman Madison Cawthorn. Posting at DHS’s Twitter account, Bock vowed that the Trump administration would hunt down and arrest “predators [who] threaten American streets” as part of a crackdown on criminal migrants.

Recent events in Minnesota have drawn out the “Great Replacement” themes, too. A recent DHS tweet responded to a post showing people arrested by ICE awaiting their deportation flights reading: “Trump has already deported enough people from Minnesota for them to lose a Congressional seat.” The DHS response: “Electoral power is being transferred from the hands of criminal illegals, back into the hands of American citizens.”

None of this should be surprising, given how many reports have exposed the sick racist culture that is radicalizing our kids and our loved ones online. But it nonetheless is shocking enough that people refuse to believe it’s actually happening. Ordinary Americans who believe in democracy have continually minimized both the nature of the neofascist threat to the nation as well as its scope. Our insistence on normalcy is killing us.

These extremists may be a relatively small minority numerically speaking, but they are lethally toxic, and their numbers are large enough and widespread enough to pose a real threat. In 2021, they were estimated to number 21 million Americans; judging from the 2024 election results, they have continued to grow.

Minnesota has exposed their smirking dismissal of civil rights and callous disregard for human life. We are already familiar with these personalities. These ICE agents—the ones who film protesters, then tell them that they’re building “a nice little database” of “domestic terrorists”; who ask Minneapolis protesters, the day after Renee Good was slain, “have y’all not learned from the past couple of days?”—are all part of the same hateful, fear-driven ideology that has been festering in the United States since the 1990s and that took power under Trump.

The whole grand political conflict we are witnessing in America is ultimately nothing more than a vast, self-mirroring game of projection, running for 30 years and longer, financed by our plutocratic overlords from the start. It would be tragically ironic for American democracy to die at the hands of a fantasy.

UPDATE: The New York Times has an authoritative deep dive out today.