Joshua Kaplan on AP3 and the Future of American Militias

ProPublica reporter Joshua Kaplan joins co-hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to discuss his recent article on militia group American Patriots Three Percent, or AP3. Kaplan talks about group founder Scot Seddon, a former Army reservist, and how he created a movement whose members number gun control and the “LGBTQ agenda” among 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 considers 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 for the movement, the subsequent rise of recruiting via Facebook, and the environment that allowed for the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Finally, he reflects on how Donald Trump fans the flames of extremist groups like AP3. Kaplan reads from his article.

Check out video excerpts from our interviews at 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) chapter near me?

Joshua Kaplan: There has been an AP3 chapter in Missouri, yes. They definitely have a presence out there. I’m sorry to inform you.

WT: Okay, what I noticed from the profile of this guy and many other members is that they’re people who have fallen between the cracks of the economy. They end up with crappy jobs. I mean, I can understand why they would be tired and unhappy with their lives, and this militia work gives them a kind of purpose, right? It makes them feel like, okay, yes, I have a crappy job as a lab technician, and I just got fired, and now I’m driving for Uber Eats, but really, what I’m doing is saving the country. Right? And it plays into that sense of personal grandiosity that allows them, in a way, to survive the sort of very mundane things that they’re having to do. All of us have to do mundane things, but some people don’t want to, I guess. 

JK: Yeah, absolutely. There are a lot of people in [these groups] with significant economic hardship, but there’s also more diversity economically than you might expect. There’s plenty of really quite successful—and in some cases wealthy—small business owners in the group. And there’s active duty law enforcement and military and other government officials. And there’s people who work in health care or who are consultants for cyber security and whatnot. 

I think even with that, you’ve hit the nail right on the head, where, for a lot of these people, the militia is one of the most fulfilling things in their lives. And it gives them a sense of purpose, it gives them the sense of community that they’ve been searching for. Something I’d wondered previously is, you know, why are there so many military veterans in groups like this? Why is that such a through-line? And talking to people, for a lot of them, it was that they got home from service overseas and missed that unique camaraderie of being with a squad, staying on a base or out in the field, and they had been trying to replicate that ever since they got home and found something like that through the militia. 

WT: I think it goes without saying that finding mission through racism and wanting to overthrow the government isn’t really the best way. There are other better ways. But, anyway. 

Not long after the January 6 riot at the Capitol, Seddon sent an audio message to his deputies, right, which I thought was interesting. You quote it in your piece. 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 6 would be something that would excite right wing militia groups. Like, this is the most “successful” thing that any militia group has done, maybe since Timothy McVeigh blew up that building in Oklahoma. And I am putting quotes around the word successful. 

JK: Right. It’s really interesting, and I don’t think I and many other people really appreciated this at the time, but in the months right after January 6, militias as a whole were in a state of crisis. The Department of Justice took this shock and awe approach to arresting participants in the riot. And so leaders, some of Seddon’s most prominent counterparts in the militia movement, were going to prison. And also, at the same time, there was just this intense backlash, including amongst conservatives, over the riot, where people were kind of disgusted by the movement that they thought had sparked the storming of the Capitol. 

So members of AP3 were losing friends over their militia ties, they were losing business, they were fearing being fired from their jobs because they were part of this group. And it was becoming a lot harder to replace those people and to recruit for a variety of reasons that we could get into, but there was this very real feeling and fear that they talked about inside the militia that, you know, our movement might not be able to survive this. This may just be too intense, and this cause we’ve dedicated years and years of our life to might fold and not really be able to recover.

V.V. Ganeshananthan: So January 6, recruitment gets really hard, people are leaving, I don’t have to worry about AP3, yeah?

JK: Things turned around a lot faster than even people in the militia could have expected. Even they who, I think, as you could imagine, tend to bravado and grandiosity, did not anticipate they’d kind of come roaring back in the way they did. 

It might be useful to step back here. These guys, they really know their history of the movement, and they were talking about the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. The ’90s are really when the modern militia movement started, and had been growing 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 crumbled, and it didn’t recover for more than a decade. Something like that, from both perspectives, whether you’re inside a militia with your guns, or if you’re at the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) watching the movement, it seemed very possible that something like that would happen here. 

I think part of this is social media. Facebook loosened its controls on paramilitary organizing, and that allowed them to start getting recruits again. Just as important, there was a change in the political climate that would have been unimaginable after Oklahoma City. Prominent politicians were not calling Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, a patriot who was being persecuted. He was universally condemned, and that was the case for about maybe a week or two after January 6, but by the time you get to summer 2021, Trump and other prominent Republicans are describing the January 6 rioters as patriots. They no longer were pariahs within mainstream conservatism.

WT: So let’s go to that, because just yesterday, Donald Trump announced that he’s hosting a J6 awards gala at the Bedminster Golf Club, which is the most insane, dystopian thing I think I’ve heard from him, and I’ve heard a lot of insane and dystopian things from him. They’re going “to honor and celebrate the rioters” — I’m reading from The Daily Beast here — “rioters currently being prosecuted for their alleged violent assault on the U.S. Capitol building on January 6. The fundraiser is to help cover the cost and support defendants and their families with exclusive benefits and recognition.” 

He also does the J6 prison choir. He plays the song before his rallies. He claims that it’s more popular than Taylor Swift. He says he’s going to pardon people if he gets elected. It seems just like he’s creating a quid pro quo, right? Like: Look, vote for me, work to get me in office, or fight to keep me in office, because that’s the only way I’ll save your ass. I’ll keep you out of prison, you guys keep me out of prison. Let’s go. It seems like an open deal.

JK: Yeah, and you can see the ramifications of that inside the militia in a very direct cause kind of way where, around when he starts talking like this, you start having people joining the militia who had never been in a militia before, but say that they were inspired by January 6, and that they were inspired by how those patriots at the Capitol were being mistreated by the federal government to, finally, do something about this. 

When you talk to experts and national security officials, they think that the stakes of Trump, if he wins, pardoning January 6 rioters, is not just symbolic. They are worried that if he follows through on that promise and pardons the people who assaulted police officers like he said he would, the most extreme factions of the far right will interpret that as a political hunting license, as a get-out-of-jail-free card for committing violence for the cause, and may take action because they feel that sort of activity has been given legitimacy and support from one of the most powerful people in the country.

Transcribed by Otter.ai. Condensed and edited by Vianna O’Hara. 

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Joshua Kaplan

“Armed and Underground: Inside the Turbulent, Secret World of an American Militia”

Others:

Oklahoma City Bombing • “Trump to Host ‘The J6 Awards Gala’ at His Bedminster Golf Club” by Owen Lavine | The Daily Beast • BlacKkKlansman • Mad Max • Keith Kidwell • Oath Keepers • Southern Poverty Law Center