By Brandy Zadrozny - NBC News
Federal and state security agencies in the United States are preparing for the violent demonstrations planned by conservative groups and radical extremists in Washington DC in the days leading up to Joe Biden's inauguration.
And while significant preparations have been made around Congress, in the capital, there is growing concern that all 50 Capitols across the country will also be targeted.
Many of these legislative headquarters have already been the scene of armed protests, arrests and violence.
More than a dozen online flyers are advertising pro-Trump rallies in state Capitols, according to a social media analysis by NBC News, the sister network of Noticias Telemundo.
"Freedom is a right," says one of the most popular flyers;
"Refuse to be silenced," reads another.
Facebook has been tracking many of these flyers on alternative sites popular with militia groups and QAnon supporters and preemptively blocking them, as part of its response to increasing online efforts that could trigger further violence, according to a spokesperson for the company, who asked not to be identified for security reasons.
A member of the Pennsylvania Capitol Police stands guard at the entrance to the seat of the legislature in that state, on January 13, 2021.The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP
State Capitols, long considered hangouts where activists protest and sometimes clash with counter-protesters, are under high alert.
According to
reports,
the FBI sent a memo to law enforcement agencies across the country warning of possible armed protests
in national legislative offices from next week, partly based on discussions on social networks.
These platforms have taken unprecedented steps in recent days to keep their sites free of content that could incite further violence, including suspending the President Donald Trump's Twitter and Facebook accounts.
But threats of online violence in upcoming events persist.
Now, the planning of demonstrations of this type has mostly been relegated to less popular and alternative applications, more difficult to find for other extremists, but also for law enforcement agencies and the investigators who track them.
This tracking may help stop another mass mobilization in Washington, but it is less effective with state-level extremists who now rely less on organizing and recruiting online, said Melissa Ryan, CEO of Card Strategies, a consulting firm that investigates the issue of spreading false information.
"The infrastructure in the states has been there longer than we saw in DC," Ryan said, adding that protests in the state Capitol last year demanding to reopen the economy and lift restrictions on COVID-19 were "centralized".
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"They mobilized through Facebook groups and leaned on the existing infrastructure and created these local cells that are still active," he said.
"They have not stopped."
Although it is not clear what real threat the states face, everything appears to be on high alert.
Police and National Guard personnel have already been deployed and arrests have been made at state buildings in Washington and Idaho.
The windows of the state Capitol in Wisconsin have been bricked up, and Michigan has banned firearms from being carried inside its Capitol.
[In Photos: Washington, Shielded by Military and Police to Protect Biden's Inauguration from Another Pro-Trump Violent Assault]
Apparently inspired by a gun rights rally that drew hundreds of thousands of people to the Virginia State Capitol last January, Trump supporters, some of them armed, have flooded state parliaments from Sacramento, California;
to Tallahassee, Florida, since the pandemic began, to
protest against lockdown measures aimed at reducing the spread of the coronavirus.
They have also confronted and intimidated activists who marched for the
Black Lives Matter
movement
.
In Michigan, photos from a protest in April showed armed protesters dressed in military uniforms running and occupying the Capitol in Lansing during a vote to extend COVID-19 restrictions.
Later, two men were charged with a plot to kidnap the governor, Gretchen Whitmer.
When the violent mob stormed the nation's Capitol last week, protesters who gathered at state parliaments to participate in smaller demonstrations applauded the news of the assault in DC.
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Many of the rallies that took place in the spring and summer were planned from Facebook, said Diara J. Townes, a researcher at First Draft, a nonprofit organization that tracks the spread of misinformation.
But since the deadly riot on Capitol Hill, conservative activists have started using Facebook's platform and existing groups there as a kind of bridge, sending followers to private spaces, such as encrypted apps and social media platforms specifically for radical conservatives and members. of militias.
"This way they avoid the warnings,
and that their contents are moderate,
" said Townes.
The Capitol mob has inspired far-right organizers.
Several posters that have been posted on the Boogaloo and QAnon forums and invoke Ashli Babbitt, the Air Force veteran and believer in that conspiracy theory who was shot to death during the Capitol riots while trying to enter a restricted room.
Several of the flyers calling for an event promoted under the name
March of the Million Martyrs
on the day of Biden's inauguration include illustrations by Babbitt.
Few flyers offer details about the organizers.
Several are signed by "ordinary people who are tired of being trampled on."
Some of the discussion on the Boogaloo anti-government web forums (where users create and post flyers that in a weird way talk about civil rights, women's rights, and unity)
suggests that anti-government activists could wreak havoc on Capitol Hill. state, in order to advance their agenda.
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"We saw this in the spring, the Boogaloo movement used the
Black Lives Matter
protests
as an opportunity to use the crowd as cover to attack law enforcement," said Marc-André Argentino, a researcher who tracks extremists online. and has continued their migration to other platforms after they were kicked out of mainstream platforms.
"Extremists in the mainstream are angry about what happened on January 6 and are preparing to demonstrate and protest again," Argentino said.
"Violent extremists who have been in this space for years are using this as an opportunity to recruit, reinforce their ranks, and prepare for the impact of significant government backlash, potentially starting a real violent conflict."
Most of the flyers announcing upcoming events in different states were already circulating online weeks and months before the Capitol riots.
An event scheduled for inauguration day, billed as the
Million Militia March
, for example, was first promoted in December on the Wimkin platform, a conservative alternative to Facebook.
In fact, one of the first comments on the original planner posts for this event reads: “We can't wait until 20 (January).
We have to mobilize to act on the 6th ”.
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The violence broadcast on live television during the assault on the Capitol and subsequent law enforcement response may result in fewer demonstrations and public events organized by extremists, according to Anne Berg, assistant professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania and expert in the history of Nazi Germany and extremism.
[New details of the Capitol robbery suggest more sinister intentions. The FBI warns that "extremists consider it a triumph"]
Berg drew a comparison to the
2017
Unite the Right
white supremacist rally
in Charlottesville, Virginia - the modern face of hate in the country was exposed, following the murder of a counter-protester.
“Suddenly, people start to realize, 'Oh my God, this is real.
This is really happening, '"he said." And the movement withdrew from the public sphere and was back online.
But that doesn't mean the movement has slowed down. "
"Personally, I'm less worried about the next two weeks," Berg said, "than about the next few years."