ProPublica reporter Joshua Kaplan joins co-hosts VV Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to discuss his recent article on the militia group American Patriots Three Percent (AP3). Kaplan discusses the group’s founder, Scot Seddon, a former Army reservist, and how he launched a movement whose members cite gun control and the “LGBTQ agenda,” among other issues, as their grievances. Kaplan also reflects on AP3’s ties to law enforcement, the military, and elected officials, as well as their calculated attempts to brand themselves. He looks at the recent history of militias in the U.S., including the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, and explains how that led to a loss of momentum in the movement, the subsequent surge in recruitment via Facebook, and the environment that enabled the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Finally, he reflects on how Donald Trump is fanning the flames of extremist groups like AP3. Kaplan reads from his article.
Watch video excerpts from our interviews on Lit Hub’s Virtual Book Channel, Fiction/Non/Fiction’s YouTube channel, and our website. This episode of the podcast was produced by Anne Kniggendorf.
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From the episode:
Whitney Terrell: Is there an American Patriots Three Percent (AP3) branch near me?
Joshua Kaplan: Yes, there was an AP3 office in Missouri. They definitely have a presence there. I’m sorry to tell you that.
WEIGHT: Okay, what struck me about this guy’s profile and a lot of the other members is that these are people who have fallen through the cracks of the economy. They end up in crappy jobs. I mean, I can understand why they’re tired and unhappy with their lives, and this militia work gives them some sort of purpose, right? They feel like they have a crappy job as a lab technician, I just got fired and now I’m driving for Uber Eats, but really I’m saving the country. Right? And it plays on this sense of personal awesomeness that in some ways allows them to survive the very mundane things that they have to do. We all have to do mundane things, but I guess some people don’t want to do that.
JK: Yes, absolutely. There are a lot of people in (these groups) who are experiencing significant economic hardship, but there is also more economic diversity than you would expect. There are a lot of really successful — and in some cases wealthy — small business owners in the group. And there are active law enforcement officers and military personnel and other government officials. And there are people who work in health care or are cybersecurity consultants and the like.
I think you hit the nail on the head though, which is that for a lot of these people, the militia is one of the most fulfilling things in their lives. It gives them a purpose, it gives them that sense of community that they’ve been looking for. I had wondered before why so many combat veterans are in groups like this. Why is that such a common thread? And when I talk to people, for a lot of them, it’s because they came home from being deployed overseas and they missed that unique camaraderie that you get from being part of a troop, on a base or in the field, and they had been trying to recreate that since they came home and found that through the militia.
WEIGHT: I think it goes without saying that using racism and trying to overthrow the government isn’t necessarily the best way to accomplish your mission. There are other, better ways. But whatever.
Not long after the January 6th riot at the Capitol, Seddon sent an audio message to his deputies that I found interesting. You quote it in your post. He says, “I hate this movement more every day and I really don’t want to be a part of it anymore,” which surprised me because I would have assumed that what happened on January 6th would be something that would rile up right-wing militia groups. Like this was the most “successful” thing a militia group has done, maybe since Timothy McVeigh blew up that building in Oklahoma. And I put the word “successful” in quotes.
JK: Right. It’s really interesting, and I think I and a lot of other people didn’t really understand this at the time, but in the months immediately following January 6, the militias as a whole were in a state of crisis. The Justice Department took this shock and fear approach to arresting participants in the insurrection. And so leaders, some of Seddon’s most prominent opponents in the militia movement, went to prison. And at the same time, there was also this intense backlash among conservatives to the insurrection, where people were kind of disgusted with the movement that they felt had sparked the storming of the Capitol.
So members of AP3 were losing friends because of their militia connections, they were losing commissions, they were afraid of being fired for being part of this group. And it was getting harder and harder to replace these people and recruit new people for a number of reasons that we could address, but there was this very real feeling and fear that they were talking about within the militia that our movement might not survive this. This might just get too intense, and this thing that we’ve dedicated our lives to for years might collapse and not really recover.
VV Ganeshananthan: From January 6th, recruitment will be really difficult, people will leave, I don’t have to worry about AP3, right?
JK: Things changed much more quickly than even the militiamen could have expected. Even they, who, as one can imagine, are inclined to bravado and megalomania, did not expect to come back so suddenly.
It might be useful to take a step back here. These people know the history of the movement really well, and they were talking about the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. In the ’90s, the modern militia movement began and had grown rapidly. A few months before the bombing, a prominent cheerleader of the militia movement was inducted as a U.S. congresswoman. But then the bombing happened and the movement fell apart and didn’t recover for over a decade. Something like that seemed very likely to happen here from both perspectives, whether you’re in a militia with guns or you’re at the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) monitoring the movement.
I think part of it is because of social media. Facebook loosened its controls on the organization of paramilitary organizations, and that allowed them to start recruiting again. Equally important, the political climate changed, which would have been unimaginable after Oklahoma City. Prominent politicians no longer referred to Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, as a persecuted patriot. He was widely condemned, and that was about a week or two after January 6, but by the summer of 2021, Trump and other prominent Republicans were calling the January 6 rioters patriots. They were no longer pariahs in mainstream conservatism.
WEIGHT: So let’s get to it, because just yesterday Donald Trump announced that he’s going to host a J6 awards gala at Bedminster Golf Club, which is the craziest and most dystopian thing I’ve ever heard him say, and I’ve heard a lot of crazy and dystopian things from him. They’re going to “honor and celebrate the rioters” – I’m reading from The Daily Beast here – “Rioters currently facing criminal charges for their alleged violent attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6. The fundraiser is intended to help cover costs and support defendants and their families with exclusive benefits and recognition.”
He’s also the lead singer of the J6 Prison Choir. He plays the song before his rallies. He claims it’s more popular than Taylor Swift. He says he’ll pardon people if he gets elected. It seems like he’s creating a quid pro quo, right? Like, “Look, vote for me, campaign to put me in office, or fight to keep me in office, because that’s the only way I’m going to save your ass. I’ll keep you out of jail, you keep me out of jail. Here we go.” It seems like an open deal.
JK: Yes, and you can see the impact of that directly within the militia. About the time he started talking like that, people started joining the militia who had never been in a militia before, but said that January 6th had inspired them, and that they had been inspired by the way that these patriots were being mistreated in the Capitol by the federal government to finally do something about it.
When you talk to experts and national security officials, they believe that Trump’s pardon of the Jan. 6 rioters if he wins the election is not just symbolic. They fear that the most extreme factions of the far right will interpret this as a political hunting license, a free pass to commit acts of violence in the name of the cause, and they may take action because they believe this type of activity is legitimized and supported by one of the most powerful men in the country.
Transcribed by Otter.ai. Condensed and edited by Vianna O’Hara.
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Joshua Kaplan
“Armed and Underground: Insights into the turbulent, secret world of an American militia”
More:
Oklahoma City Bombing • “Trump Hosts ‘J6 Awards Gala’ at His Bedminster Golf Club” by Owen Lavine | The Daily Beast • Black Klansman • Mad Max • Keith Kidwell • Oath Keepers • Southern Poverty Law Center
