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In January, the feds unveiled charges against more than 175 people in the #Capitol siege. We reviewed all of them, and this is what we found: a couple organized groups, and a mass of angry people united by a belief in the lie of a stolen election. 1/ https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/02/04/us/capitol-arrests.html
Extremism expert @milleridriss told me the arrests so far reveal "a spectrum of planned and spontaneous violence." On one end you have Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. Next, you have people like Michael Foy, accused of bringing a hockey stick to a protest and beating an officer. 2/
You also have people who didn't likely plan to be violent but picked up a fire extinguisher and threw it. And then you have the largest group of those charged so far: people who disrupted Congress or trespassed but aren't charged with violence or property crime. 3/
This isn't to excuse people who went into the Capitol or say they were innocents caught up in a mob. But the dynamic is important for what it says about current extremist tactics and future acts. It's easier to disrupt organized groups than "lone wolves" or spontaneous actors. 4/
It could be that there is strategic use by smaller groups of large, radicalized but disorganized crowds. Something similar may have happened in Germany last year, when a far-right core tried to storm the Reichstag amid a broader protest. Via @kbennhold 5/ https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/31/world/europe/reichstag-germany-neonazi-coronavirus.html
There's lots to unpack here, and we'll look at more in the coming weeks. It was wonderful to work with this fab team. @gr_ashford @DeniseDSLu @haeyoun @eleanor_lutz @alex_leedsmatts @karenyourish @SeamusHughes @trbrtc @_stella_cooper @CoraEngelbrecht @btdecker.
