Inside America’s political battleground - BBC Trending podcast, BBC World Service

January 6th 2021 was one of the most dramatic  moments in recent American history. Supporters of Donald Trump stormed Congress in a  bid to keep their man in power. And the consequences continue to reverberate today… A jury in the US finds members of the Proud Boys group guilty of seditious conspiracy. But the man who has been given the longest sentence for his part in the riot wasn’t even in  Washington that day. Enrique Tarrio was the leader of a far-right group called the Proud Boys. No

body will understand the Proud Boys until you’re in it. I think it’s a regular group of  men that are just tired of being trampled on. I’m Mike Wendling and in this week’s episode  of Trending’s Extreme series, we’ll hear extracts from exclusive interviews with Tarrio -  including from behind prison bars - as we take a look at the extremes of American politics. From this point forward enough is enough. Force will be met with force. We’ll hear from others who belong to extreme political grou

ps, and  look at how they rally, recruit, and spread their messages on social media. Even social media is becoming quite polarised, and quite political, and I think that's  something that we're going to see a lot more of. This call is from a correctional facility  and is subject to monitoring and recording. Hello. Hey. Hey, how's it going? Oh, hey. I first started speaking to Enrique Tarrio  back in early 2020. I was covering people on the far right and the far left and spent  some time with a

nti-fascist protesters, and then with militia groups. but there was this  one group, the Proud Boys, they were starting to pop up in headlines and newspaper reports. And  every time there were TV reports about protests, it was something about the Proud Boys, and  I kept hearing this name Enrique Tarrio. So how have you been feeling since the sentencing? I mean, I think I'm still like, it's  unrealistic to me. That number’s just ridiculous. I'm sorry for what those people  went through, but I'm n

ot responsible. Last month Enrique Tarrio  was sentenced to 22 years in prison for his role in the riot  in Washington on January 6th 2021. And the reporter he’s talking to is Maxine Hughes, one of our colleagues who’s been covering  extremist groups for nearly a decade. She’s had a front row seat as Donald  Trump’s presidency divided the country, embedding with some of the leading figures  on the violent fringes of US politics. Ladies and gentlemen repeat after me. I am a  Western chauvinist. I

am a Western chauvinist. The Proud Boys were one of the main far-right  groups present at the Capitol riot and, until recently, Tarrio was their leader. We’re all Proud Boys. We’re all Proud Boys. They’re a club that began in the white-hot  heat of the 2016 presidential election - the one that Donald Trump actually won. Since then,  they’ve become known for their street violence, their heavy drinking, and their hatred of  left wingers. They claim to be upholding traditional values and they call

themselves  freedom-loving ‘Western chauvinists.’ Last month Maxine and I were in the  courthouse when Tarrio received that 22 year sentence for his role in the Capitol riot. During his sentencing hearing we  watched as he said he felt ‘shame’ and admitted that even before January  6th he had doubts about the so-called ‘Big Lie’ - Donald Trump’s claim  that the 2020 election was stolen. Yet it was that claim that prompted people to  storm the Capitol, and Tarrio has been named as one of the mai

n instigators. What do we know  about this man and what led him to this point? When you get to know about this guy, you learn  that he's an Afro-Cuban who's grown up in Miami, he still has family in Cuba and strong  links there. He didn't ever look like the other far-right leaders. Tarrio initially told me  that his raison d’etre was about stopping Antifa, which is a leaderless far-left protest  movement who often counter and clash with far-right groups both online and offline. The Proud Boys fe

lt that America was under attack,  that it was under attack from the far left, from socialism, from communism, and  that they had to get out and defend it. And when I spoke to Tarrio about Antifa  in 2020 he compared the movement to domestic terrorism - which is an accusation  I’m sure they would strongly reject. I believe Antifa does have the right to free  speech. I’d be contradicting my own views by saying that they don’t. I think they do need  a voice in this conversation. I think every Amer

ican needs a voice in this conversation, but  the line is very simple where we draw it. It’s violence. Acts of vandalism, burning down private  businesses, shooting people in the street. That’s terrorism, what you’re trying to do. You’re trying  to enact political change through violence, acts of violence. That’s exactly what terrorism is. I was sitting with him a few years ago in Florida. And this was at a point where he had said  he was going to stand back from the Proud Boys, and he wanted

to go into mainstream politics.  But he was never really able to do it in the way that he really maybe wanted to.  And he’d taken this route that had led him to this path of extremism. Nobody will understand the Proud Boys until you’re in it for a good amount of time and  start understanding what it is. I think it’s a regular group of men that are just tired of being  trampled on. They feel like they were forgotten. And once he got a taste for it, that was it. He kept just going  further and

further down this hole. Well I think all of us are  silenced for the most part. The media is never going to portray us properly. “The media is never going to portray us  properly” - it’s a complaint you hear often from groups and individuals on both  the far left and right. Groups that often claim to represent the mainstream of American  politics. And sure, things like “traditional values” or “anti-fascism” can seem like  common-sense political views. But there is one thing that marks these grou

ps out from the  mainstream - their willingness to use violence. While Tarrio insisted the Proud Boys  were just a ‘regular group of men’ who drew the line at acts of violence,  in places such as Portland, Oregon, demonstrations involving the Proud Boys would  frequently descend into brawls and beatings. That’s not to suggest that the Proud Boys were the  sole instigators of violence at these events. But according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event  Data Project, in the year the Capitol wa

s stormed, 2021, nearly a quarter of all demonstrations  attended by the Proud Boys included violence. These men may have felt forgotten,  but their activities garnered enough attention to warrant a mention by Joe Biden and  Donald Trump during a presidential debate in 2020 in a response to a question about  white supremacist and militia groups. Proud Boys, stand back and stand  by, but I’ll tell you what. Before the debate stage mention, we had  22,000 Proud Boys worldwide. And it's not hard to

see that our numbers  have been doubled since then. From my conversations with Enrique Tario, I’m not sure whether he truly believed  the election was stolen or that it was possible for it to be stolen. But the majority  of the group he was leading did believe that, and I think he felt pressure to stick to the  narrative. I think he was in a position where he had no other choice in a way - and Donald  Trump kept reinforcing this line too of course. Tarrio himself wasn’t actually in Washington 

DC on January 6th - he’d been arrested and ordered to leave the city two days before.  But prosecutors used messages he posted on Telegram and another social network, Parler,  to argue that he both planned the Proud Boys operation and encouraged people to join  in the violent assault on the Capitol. A group Tarrio set up on Telegram  was called “the Ministry of Self Defence”. On the day of the riot Tarrio  wrote: ‘make no mistake, we did this.’ At the trial of Tarrio and four other Proud Boys  e

arlier this year, prosecutors introduced into evidence an enormous stash of messages  demonstrating how they planned to show up in Washington, and talked for weeks about  violence and civil war. Tarrio was convicted of a number of felony crimes including seditious  conspiracy, a charge just short of treason. And while messages were instrumental  in the prosecution of Tarrio, Proud Boy chapters around the US show no sign  of slowing down their online activities. On Telegram there are at least 36

different US  Proud Boy chapters. That’s not the full picture, because some chapters aren’t active on  the platform and other channels may be private. But the ones we can see have a  total of tens of thousands of followers. We looked through some of the  recent messages across these groups, and found posts in support of the Proud  Boys being sentenced for the Capitol riot, calls to free them and descriptions  of them as “political prisoners”. When I spoke to Tarrio recently from prison, he was p

retty clear that whilst he was  sorry for what had happened at the riots, because he wasn’t present in Wahsington DC that  day, he won’t apologise for his role in it, he says he didn’t do it. I think that what his  sentencing shows is, regardless of whether he was there on the day or not, activity online  can have offline, real-world consequences. And the ongoing investigations into the  events of January 6th aren’t contained to what happened on the day of January 6th, but  events both offline a

nd online around it. In the call I had with Tarrio from prison, he  made an allegation that prosecutors and the FBI offered him leniency if he would help  them prove that he communicated indirectly with President Trump during the build up to the  attack. This wasn’t the first time he’s claimed this either - the Washington Post and New York  Times have also recently reported this claim. They wanted to offer me a plea. Oh, I see. But what did they offer you? They didn't tell me because I didn't  v

erify their version of the story. What's their version of the story? They wanted me to confirm that I was communicating  with the president through three degrees of separation of people. Somehow we're communicating  together to coordinate whatever the **** it is that happened at the Capitol. Again, it sounds  like a cool Tom Clancy novel, but it's not true. Trump says he didn’t know who  Tarrio was until recently. I contacted the US Department of  Justice about this claim and they told me they a

ren’t able to  comment on ongoing matters. I also contacted Tarrio’s lawyer to ask  if he could corroborate the story. His lawyer said that he could confirm  that this meeting did take place, but he wasn’t able to comment  on what was said in the meeting. We do know from court records that  Tarrio was offered a plea deal, but Trump wasn’t mentioned in the official  documents. And if the former president did come up, maybe it was just an example of  prosecutors pushing for more information. But i

t certainly suits the narrative  Donald Trump is trying to build that he is the victim of a witch hunt… is that why  Tarrio is so keen to tell reporters about it? We’ve heard how social media was instrumental in  helping Tarrio and others plan the Capitol attack, and we’ve seen how social media  helps glue together and galvanise different Proud Boy chapters, even  as their leaders face long prison sentences and Donald Trump faces  his own laundry list of legal woes. But what about the role socia

l media  could play in not only facilitating the organising of violence but also in enabling  the recruitment of people to extreme groups on either side of the political spectrum - and  pushing their views and actions even further? As well as the Proud Boys, Maxine also  followed other organizations operating at the extremes of US politics - a movement  called the three percenters on the right, and a loose collection of anti-fascist “Antifa”  activists on the left – both of which were actively i

nvolved in organising and recruiting  on social media. And both sides are armed. The militia itself is a well-armed populous.  We’re citizens, you know, one. Two, we have the right to bear arms, so you bring those two  components together and that is the militia. Chris Hill was the leader of the Three Percent  militia in Georgia - the name of the movement, which includes many disparate groups,  refers to a shaky historical theory, that just three percent of the  population of the American coloni

es actively resisted British rule during the  Revolutionary War in the 18th century. At one point, Chris Hill was a pretty popular  guy who was getting large groups of people to give up their free time, dress up  in military gear and spend weekends in the forest training for what they  thought was going to be a civil war. We have treason happening in the United States of  America, so I want my country back. We will defend ourselves in our communities and our fellow  Americans from what we see is

a communist you know act of terrorism being perpetrated on the  people from these left leaning organisations. Chris Hill was prolific on Facebook at one time,  back in 2019 and 2020 - it was what Chris Hill was using to get his message out and recruit people.  And I think it was successful in reaching a wider more mainstream audience. I was there in a  forest in Georgia at one of their training weekends back in 2020 and there were several  new members who had come along who said they’d seen the

postings on Facebook and decided  to join. But Chris Hill became increasingly concerned about using Facebook so he started to  demand the group stop using Facebook messenger to discuss plans for protests, and move to  what they deemed would be safer platforms. While Chris was initially using social  media to bring members into the fold of the Three Percenters, on the other side of  the political spectrum social media videos of George Floyd protests were prompting a  woman named Emily to become

more involved in the political activism of Antifa. Antifa are against oppression. That’s why Antifa are involved in the Black Lives  Matter movement. It’s kind of interesting to watch the way my own views of it have changed. I  remember saying the words ‘I’m not a crazy person’ because of the way the media has decided to spin  Antifa or the way it has been spun in the past. Emily is from Portland and she’s always been  very left-wing. She started to adopt Antifa as an identity for herself and

she got more and  more involved. It just completely took over her life to the point she lost her job. And she  herself describes herself as being radicalised. When I am not there, I feel  like I'm letting my people down. And if something were to happen to  somebody that I love, and I wasn't there, that would be heartbreaking. On nights off,  I think we all do it, just like furiously scrolling through social media or watching live  streams to make sure that our friends are safe. As Emily and Chri

s traveled further  down their social media rabbit holes, being fed content confirming their  realities and feeding their frustrations, it would only be a matter of time before  clashes between their respective groups came to a head - as we saw in August 2020  at a protest that took place in Georgia. Atlanta Antifa, we got your banner.  We’re gonna meet you August 15th, Stone Mountain Georgia. You’re traitors to the  constitution, you’re traitors to our way of life, and from this point forward e

nough is  enough. Force will be met with force. I think for me the scariest experience that  I had was when there was a protest at Stone Mountain in Georgia. It was militia groups there  mostly the Three Percenters against the far left anti-fascist protesters. And both groups on that  day were armed. And we got to a point where they were close and started shouting at each other,  hurling insults at each other. And at one point, somebody from the left side pulled a gun out.  He didn't point it, b

ut he did pull it out in quite a threatening way. As soon as he did  that, all of the militia lifted their guns, and these are, you know, AR rifles. And there we  are standing right in the middle of both sides. I think largely a lot of anger is because  people feel that they're not heard. Hi Chris, it’s Emily. How are you? Chris. Nice to meet you. Likewise. Shall we? So just the day after these Stone  Mountain protests in Georgia, you decided to bring Chris and  Emily together. Tell me about the

backstory of getting them to meet  and what happened when they did? I think that came from these comments  that both sides would say they don't want to talk, they don't want to communicate,  they just want to protest. They just wanted to fight. And both sides would say that  about each other. And so I thought, well, let's try to get them together,  and get them to communicate. A while back, you were talking about, you  know, anti-fascists arming themselves, and that you took issue with that. Wh

at makes  that different from you and your militia? They're arming themselves because they want  to shoot people that don't agree with them. As someone that's close with  the anti-fascist movement, I would express to you that it's about  protection. You know, we see how heavily the right has armed themselves. How is that not  supposed to want us to arm ourselves as well? Well, yeah, I feel like from that  one point of view, then yeah, you will use the second amendment to defend  the voice of the

people. But those two voices are totally different. And it comes down  to this, which side is going to uphold and defend the Constitution from all enemies,  foreign and domestic? Which one is going to try to tear the country down and bring  about some sort of socialist, communist, Marxist anarchy utopia, governing system? You’re  trying to change our constitutional republic. They were able to have a reasonable discussion.  I think they both obviously, were aware of the cameras on them and so th

ey didn't want to come  off as the more unreasonable one. But essentially, I think they both wanted the dialogue. I  think that they both went into it knowing that they couldn't change each other's  mind, but they still wanted to be heard. I hope that this conversation maybe helped  you to understand that we're not terrorists, and to maybe humanise anti-fascism. Understood and I’d reciprocate. I would hope  that out of this conversation you would see that, you know, a constitutional militia  is

not a racist organisation. There's obviously a big election  coming up next year in the United States. You've seen these people up  close at various extremes. What kinds of roles do you think they might play  as America chooses its next president? I think the next few months are going  to be very interesting. You do have a bit of a split with Republicans now because  you have the very far right, you have MAGA, and then you have the kind of more old guard  Republicans who wouldn't necessarily go

out on the streets and defend Donald Trump. And that  to me is almost more dangerous in a way because it kind of ignites and allows the more niche  extreme groups to be able to organise as they feel like they're really fighting the fight. I  think we saw that with the Proud Boys. They felt like they were defending patriotism, they were  fighting for Donald Trump. And when Donald Trump didn't win the election, they felt they had to  get out there and try and do something about that. And how do yo

u think they’ll use social  media to continue to advance their agendas? I think what is really interesting to me is that,  just like the media, social media in America is now very partisan and polarised. So you have  people on the right who will probably go to Telegram and obviously, they go to truth social  to talk to Trump fans, and then you'll have more people on the left who may still be on Twitter,  for example. So even social media is becoming politicised and I think there's something  tha

t we're going to see a lot more of. Let’s remember that both the far left and the far right  mobilised because of Donald Trump’s presidency, and with Trump running again, that could  easily mean the potential of more civil unrest. That’s it for this episode of  Trending, thanks for listening, I’m Mike Wendling and my thanks to Maxine Hughes  for bringing us this story and to our producer Kayleen Devlin and our editor Flora Carmichael. If you want to get in touch with your thoughts on this or any

of our other programmes you  can email me michael.wendling@bbc.co.uk