Ask a Democrat about Merrick Garland, and they will likely mutter something impolite. But, for a brief moment, Joe Biden’s attorney general could trumpet a monumental achievement. In the course of prosecuting the perpetrators of January 6, he dismantled the nation’s two most potent right-wing paramilitary groups, the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers. The groups fell into disarray, their finances collapsed, and local chapters folded. By convicting the leadership of these groups and dozens of their rank and file, Garland extricated a seditious menace from American politics.
That accomplishment lasted until the second day of Donald Trump’s presidency. With his signature, Trump freed Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the Oath Keepers, and Enrique Tarrio, the head of the Proud Boys, from prison. Using his most expansive presidential powers, Trump resurrected these moribund organizations. Perhaps some members of these groups will never return, having been chastened by their brush with the raw end of federal power. But by excusing their most egregious offense, Trump has effectively legalized their presence—and validated the most ominous worries about his symbiotic relationship with them.
Back in 2020, Trump famously intimated an alliance with the Proud Boys in his instruction to them, delivered when he was asked during a debate with Biden whether he would condemn nationalist and paramilitary groups: “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by,” he replied. That phrase implied that he, in fact, was the group’s ultimate commander. And a few months later, on January 6, that phrase felt like more than just a clumsy answer to a moderator’s question. The Proud Boys, clad in orange beanies, led the assault on the Capitol that day. And in the months that followed, as investigators pieced together a narrative of the insurrection, they often presented circumstantial evidence raising the possibility that the group had coordinated its assault with the Trump White House.
Those suggestions of a shared plot were never substantiated. But the Oath Keepers, at least, believed that they were working at the president’s behest. On January 6, as a member of the group admitted to prosecutors, the Oath Keepers kept a cache of arms across the Potomac in a Virginia hotel room, to be deployed in the event that Trump signaled for help.
The president didn’t give that signal, and he may never issue an official instruction to these paramilitaries. But he might not need to, because his pardons have earned him their undying allegiance. “Trump literally gave me my life back,” Tarrio told Alex Jones. Trump’s devotion to the paramilitaries—and to the destruction of their common enemies—binds them tightly together. It’s a swerve in the arc of the history of these groups: The Oath Keepers began as a militia committed to subverting government, but now the group might become something closer to an arm of it.
This relationship raises questions: What happens the next time Trump explicitly announces that one of his enemies deserves to die? What if Trump describes a group as a threat to his own security or to the American way of life? How will these militias respond? In the not-so-distant past, Latin American organizations with similar pedigrees furtively fulfilled the darkest wishes of right-wing leaders. (Two years ago, the deputy chief of a Colombian militia confessed to a litany of assassinations that he had committed on the state’s behalf during that country’s long civil war, as well as torture, sexual assault, and the massacre of unarmed civilians.)
With their powerful patron and newfound freedom, the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys stand poised to assert themselves as they never have before. Because they have no immediate reason to fear the Justice Department or the FBI, they have the latitude to move out from the shadows. Some examples from the past suggest their future: During the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, they frequently made unwelcome appearances at marches carrying assault rifles, with the clear intent of intimidation. Intimidation is, after all, a tactic they share with the Trump administration, and it might be used to squelch the sources of resistance that hindered his first term.
Donald Trump didn’t just grant clemency to individuals; he exonerated their method, which substitutes fists and guns for persuasion and argument. These groups seek to impose their will on society through force. That is the very nature of paramilitary organizations, which mimic trappings of the police and army in order to become unaccountable, private versions of them, forces loyal not to a constitution but to a strongman. They are antidemocratic entities in service of antidemocratic ends. Now those entities and their approach have the blessing, and perhaps even the patronage, of the president of the United States.
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