A documentary on the Capitol riot

Mehdi Hasan has a documentar report on the Capitol insurrection of three weeks ago, Capitol Crimes: Inside the Insurrection 01/28/2021:

Dave Neiwert gives us an idea of the direction far-right terrorism will go over the next few months (Far right reeling from Capitol siege consequences, so it returns to ‘leaderless resistance’ tactics Daily Kos 01/27/2021):

Radical-right organizing works in cycles: There’s an initial buildup and recruitment phase, followed by preplanned direct action in escalating levels of violence, eventually resulting in an explosion of public violence that exposes them both to public approbation and prosecution by authorities. These bursts of violence tend to scatter their forces as they dissolve into factional squabbling. At this point, they begin to reorganize under a “leaderless resistance” strategy deploying small action cells and “lone wolf” terrorists, and begin rebuilding. Lather, rinse, repeat.

The most recent far-right explosion of violence—the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol—has had its predictable effect, particularly due to the stern law-enforcement response involving multiple arrests of participants as well as the subsequent bans on their presence in social media, dispersing their organizers and followers to the far dark reaches of the internet and inspiring internecine warfare. Moreover, as Ben Makuch reports for Vice, white-supremacist ideologues are now responding by preparing a fresh round of domestic terrorism deploying both paramilitary “action squads” and unaffiliated extremists capable of extreme violence.

He goes on to explain how this approach reinforces the media narrative of rightwing terrorist acts as being "isolated incidents," when often they are very much part of a broader network of fanaticism and hatred. When in reality, when the media report "that such events are committed by 'lone wolves,' without any recognition that such a designation actually indicates the opposite of an 'isolated' event."

Part of the larger political environment for the radical right is the Christian Right movement. While most of their leaders and ministers don't directly promote violence, they often do promote an apocalyptic attitude toward polices (the claimed war on Christianity), an anti-science bias (creationism), and general moral fanaticism, especially around abortion. And the obscure theology of Christian Reconstruction has played a major role in the formation of today's Radical Right.

As Chrissy Stroop notes (Where Were They Radicalized? Religion Dispatches 01/19/2021):

As I like to say, however, the Christian Right has been doing “alternative facts” since before it was cool. It would be remiss of us to approach the “where were they radicalized” question without addressing how the Christian schooling and homeschooling movement, along with many white churches and other evangelical, LDS, and ‘trad’ Catholic institutions, fostered the subcultures that created the demand for hyper-partisan “news” outlets like Fox News.

Any serious answer to the question of radicalization will have to address Christian nationalism’s own longstanding (dis)information and political ecosystem, taking into account the feedback loops between it; overt white supremacist and right-wing extremist groups; elite right-wing lobbies like the Council for National Policy; digital technology; and the rise of talk radio and right-wing cable “news.”