This post is a summary meant to cover the in-depth work featured in the article here.
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TL;DR—Georgia Home Guard
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Written articles on MilitiaWatch
MilitiaWatch was given files from the internal and semi-public communications of a Georgia-based militia group. These files, provided to MilitiaWatch by the Atlanta Antifascists, show extremely worrying plans that may be indicative of conversations within other contemporary militia groups. This piece assesses some of this content and provides context that may be useful to those looking to assess the psychic and social environments in which militias like this seek to engage.
Unicorn Riot just hosted a leak from the III% Security Force’s Discord server, which is available to researchers here. Alongside the leak, they put out a very detailed analysis and context article that is well worth the read, too. The leaked messages cover January through April of 2021, totaling 8,358 messages.
This MilitiaWatch article, therefore, is intended to be a short companion piece to a Unicorn Riot leak and article. The group’s Discord served as a brief but important tool for the group after waves of bans and deplatforms spanning Facebook, Zello, YouTube, and more. This MilitiaWatch article serves to provide some background context but will briefly engage with the leaks further below.
After the storming of the US Capitol Building on 6 January 2021, media has been trying to figure out who the Oath Keepers are. 60 Minutes, 3 months after the riot, interviewed 4 members of a group calling themselves the “Arizona Oath Keepers”. In mid-June 2021, 60 Minutes re-aired the segment, providing the group more airtime. These Oath Keepers were four members of a Prescott, Arizona area organization known as the Yavapai County Preparedness Team.
Who are the Yavapai County Preparedness Team (YCPT)? The YCPT is an Arizona Oath Keepers chapter, previously directly part of the Stewart Rhodes-led national organization but now autonomous and independent. They still, however, call themselves Oath Keepers and use Oath Keepers iconography and ideology to describe themselves. This article explores their structure, their relationships to the right, and where it looks like they are heading.
This is a very long article, so MilitiaWatch has prepared a first “TL;DR” (too long; didn’t read) that hits at some of the core points from this investigation without the goose chases and too-in-the-weeds writing the MW audience might be accustomed to at this point. You can read that here:
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TL;DR — Why, CPT?
This article follows up a previous MilitiaWatch article on the use of Zello, a free walkie-talkie app, by the US-based armed far-right, including aggressive activists working in support of former president Donald Trump. That article with visualizations is available here:
Since that article, further investigation of right-wing militant groups’ use of Zello resulted in the direct recording of it being used at the 6 January storming of the US Capitol Building. This was then published in The Guardian. As references in that article, a list of over 800 channels was sent to Zello with a request for comment. Zello subsequently announced that they had banned 2000 militia-related channels, though they described groups’ use of the platform as “social media vanity messaging”. An On the media podcast covering this can be listened to at this link.
Georgia, like many other US states, is awash with militia groups. This can be measured by the presence of those who represent larger coalitions nationwide like the Georgia Security Force III%, the regional or nationwide calls-to-action around armed right-wing activism such as the 15 August Stone Mountain event, as well as a continuing comradery between right-wing politicians and our sizeable militia field here. In this piece, we explore relationships between a candidate for higher office and local right-wing movements and militia groups.
This piece is intended as a piece to go alongside Micah Loewinger’s co-created On the Media/MilitiaWatch radio piece covering Zello. In the radio piece, you will hear in their own voices some of the militia groups referenced in this visual article intended to accompany and expand upon that piece. You will also hear some discussion about the app’s leadership and PR response to our investigation.
Next, it is important to note that this visual accompaniment is intended only as a first look into these networks on Zello. More data work is being completed to follow this article and the audio piece it accompanies.
Micah Loewinger has experience with Zello and militia organizing directly, as he reported from a ‘command station’ for Virginia’s 20 January anti-gun regulation rally. This station, as Micah reports in the piece here, was manned by AJ Andrews of the National Patriots Coalition III% (NPC III%), a country-wide movement.
MilitiaWatch has been covering the Three Percent movement for nearly 4 years now. In that time, splinter, disintegration, and reintegration events have been plentiful as a field of highly competitive and extremely opinionated armed folks vie for influence and authority in outbursts that punctuate the seasons’ passing. A new shattering of the III% movement has led to new realignments amidst a season of great turmoil and action.
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The Uprising, The Boog, and A Shooting
Since the murder of George Floyd by the Minneapolis Police Department, every single state in the US has had a major protest in response. In some of these states, certain towns, cities, and capitals saw an escalation in tactics against the status quo.
With this action, of course, came several waves of reaction. These have included conservative and liberal media alike’s “antifa provocateur” or “outside agitator” claims, despite little evidence beyond vague gesturing from police departments and mayors that have been proven wrong time and time again. Other reactions have included those from GOP lawmakers calling for military force to be used against protesters, even earning some a platform in the Paper of Record. Yet other reactions from ostensibly the right have been those militia or militia-like groups involving themselves in or around these political happenings.