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“This Was Really Big”: Far-Right Extremist Groups Use Capitol Attack to Recruit New Members(Will Carless, USA Today)
Wednesday’s mob insurrection at the Capitol building in Washington, D.C., is unlikely to be the last violent action from far-right extremists, who may also be using the week’s extraordinary events to recruit members for a swelling coalition around outgoing president Donald Trump, according to experts on extremism.
While this week’s attack was extraordinary in it’s brazenness, it was also a wake-up call to federal and local law enforcement that threats from far-right Trump supporters should be taken very seriously over the last two weeks of Trump’s presidency and beyond, said Mary McCord, legal director at the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.

What Happened at the Capitol “Was Domestic Terrorism,” Lawmakers and Experts Say(Meryl Kornfield, Washington Post)
After supporters of President Trump descended on the U.S. Capitol building, hoping to stop the counting of electoral college votes, lawmakers and experts alike repeated a phrase to describe the violent mob: “domestic terrorists.”
“What happened today was domestic terrorism,” GOP spokesman Michael Ahrens tweeted.
National security experts agreed with that assessment, comparing the aggressive takeover of the federal landmark to the FBI’s definition of domestic terrorism: “Violent, criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups to further ideological goals stemming from domestic influences, such as those of a political, religious, social, racial, or environmental nature.”

The Far Right Told Us What It Had Planned. We Didn’t Listen.(Seyward Darby, New York Times)
Wednesday wasn’t Trumpism’s “last gasp.” It was the manifestation of a long-held fantasy. And most perpetrators walked away, uncuffed, to fight another day.

Insurrection Fueled by Conspiracy Groups, Extremists and Fringe Movements(Casey Tolan, Rob Kuznia and Bob Ortega, CNN)
The mob of Trump supporters who stormed the US Capitol on Wednesday included conspiracy theorists linked to QAnon and the Proud Boys — two right-wing extremist factions that President Donald Trump repeatedly refused to condemn during his election campaign last year.
The insurrection at the heart of America’s democracy, egged on by Trump’s rhetoric, represented a stunning show of force for the fringe movements and their adherents. Four people were left dead during the mayhem, according to the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police Department, including one woman shot by a U.S. Capitol Police officer and three other people who had medical emergencies.

FBI: ‘No Indication’ That Antifa Was Involved in Storming of U.S. Capitol (Brittany Bernstein, National Review)
The Federal Bureau of Investigation said Friday that there was “no indication” that members of Antifa had gone undercover as pro-Trump supporters to spark chaos during Wednesday’s storming of the U.S. Capitol by defenders of the president.
In response to a question about whether such an effort had taken place, as some Republican lawmakers had suggested, Assistant Director Steven D’Antuono told reporters, “We have no indication of that, at this time.”  
Representatives Matt Gaetz (R., Fla.), Mo Brooks (R., Ala.) and Paul Gosar (R., Ariz.) all alleged that left-wing anarchists had posed as Trump supporters to create trouble on Wednesday as Congress met to count electoral votes after President Trump’s “Save America” rally.

The Fantasy-Industrial Complex Gave Us the Capitol Hill Insurrection (Sean Illing, Vox)
This is America’s brain on misinformation.

The DC Mobs Could Become a Mythologized Recruitment Tool (Emma Grey Ellis, Wired)
Wednesday’s riot in Washington was the result of conspiracy theories, anti-government sentiment, and online extremism—and it could start a movement.