We already know that the recent spate of far-right attacks on local government entities—particularly school boards, health districts, and various county commissions and city councils—involving threats and intimidation from aggravated right-wing activists, with accompanying violence, is being orchestrated by a handful of extremist groups operating primarily on social media, using such names as Parents Defending Education and No Left Turn in Education.
Among these groups, one in particular stands out for its ever-expanding reach and its worrisome spread around the nation: Ammon Bundy’s “People’s Rights” network. A fresh report from the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights (IREHR) details how the organization has grown by over 50% in the past year, expanding from 13 to 38 states. And its purpose—to serve as a nexus for recruitment and radicalization into far-right patriot-movement ideology—continues to operate largely under the radar.
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The study, which springboards from IREHR’s original 2020 report on what it calls “Ammon’s Army,” presents data showing how the People’s Rights, originally built largely on Facebook, expanded its national membership from 21,851 to 33,431 in the past year, an increase of 53%. The dedicated activists on the list with key on-the-ground roles as “assistants” grew from 153 to 398, a 160% increase.
The report includes detailed interactive maps that enable readers to examine the network’s reach in their own home areas. It also demonstrates how People’s Rights has expanded its reach into Canada, and charts how the organization has expanded its leadership roles for key members.
According to the data, Bundy’s network is primarily expanding its reach in the West, the region with far and away the largest numbers of both members and “assistants” (some 24,000 of them in 2021). Indeed, some 72% of its members reside in the West; the region also has the highest per capita membership, with 12.82 times the members-per-10,000 count of the Northeast and 7.74 and 7.26 times that of the Midwest and South, respectively.
However, the organization also grew by 39.17% in the South.
“The states with the ten largest memberships are Washington (6,908), Oregon (5,544), Idaho (3,133), Utah (2,348), California (1,721), Florida (1,721) Colorado (1,306), Texas (1,142), Montana (952) and Arizona (895),” the report states.
And while the main focus of the network has involved organizing resistance to COVID-19 health restrictions, that is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the range of right-wing politics it encompasses. The pandemic, as it is, has primarily served as a recruitment tool for drawing people into its large alternative universe of extremist beliefs and conspiracy theories.
“The People's Rights network's COVID denial activism is not just about masks, mandates, or misinformation,” Devin Burghart, IREHR’s executive director, explained to Daily Kos. “Rather, COVID denial is used by the People’s Rights network as an entry point to draw people onto a quickly moving radicalization conveyor belt. While COVID denial activism has been the largest source of new recruits, it is far from the only area that the People’s Rights network is involved. For instance, in the Klamath River Basin, the group used last summer’s drought to threaten an armed standoff over water. During Bundy’s tour through Utah earlier this spring, in addition to COVID denial, presentation themes included food supply and federal land use. Militant on-the-ground activism is the most prominent factor driving the growth in recruits.
“Once involved with the group,” he continued, “though they might have joined to protest pandemic restrictions, recruits are immediately inundated with the far-right ideology, including the ‘constitutionalism’ of figures like KrisAnne Hall and the middle American neighborhood nationalism of Ammon Bundy. At local meetings and online, recruits are exposed to a myriad of conspiracy theories beyond COVID denialism. Attacks on democracy and democratic institutions, political violence, and talk of a second Civil War have become disturbingly common topics inside the People’s Rights network.”
The group’s initial spread on Facebook was temporarily stunted by the platform’s decision to ban COVID denialism, though in fact “People’s Rights maintains a presence on Facebook through posts on members’ personal pages and People’s Rights activists and supporters’ participation in other COVID denial Facebook groups.” Undeterred, the network moved its recruitment and organization efforts to an internal text network, as well as such chat platforms as Telegram, Mewe, and Wimkin.
The Washington State chapter of People’s Rights operates a Telegram channel with 1,359 subscribers and an active chat group of 558 members. In Florida, People’s Rights activist Chris Nelson has 1,377 subscribers to his Telegram channel. Activists also communicate through the network’s website, as well as using Slack and more traditional forms of technology, including telephones, walkie-talkies, and Ham radios.
For his part, Bundy complained afterwards that the report actually undercounted the People’s Rights membership. He told the Associated Press that the network now had over 62,000 members.
“The IREHR report is drastically inaccurate. Not sure where they pulled their info from,” Bundy wrote in an email. “I’m glad they under reported so the FBI does not think we are too much of a threat to ‘democracy,’” Bundy wrote. “If we keep growing the way we are the FBI may get jealous and throw me in jail for no reason again.”
But in fact, IREHR’s researchers admitted as much when they published the study, noting that they took a conservative approach to counting membership. Its methodology information notes: “There are likely individuals in the People’s Rights network overall membership not assigned to a state or area, but that data was not available to IREHR researchers.”
“The data was collected a bit ago, and there are undoubtedly people that don't have an assigned area,” Burghart told Daily Kos. “Unfortunately, those numbers aren't available to anyone but Bundy. If he wants to make that info publicly available, we'd be more than happy to revise our figures. Until then, it's the most accurate estimate of membership data available.”
Burghart also noted that Bundy—who is currently running for Idaho governor—may have admitted to campaign-law violations with his remarks to AP. “The quotes are an admission that Bundy is still running the organization while in the midst of a gubernatorial primary,” he observed. “The admission poses serious questions about the co-mingling of the campaign and the organization that the Idaho secretary of state might want to explore.”
“I think the report underestimates their overall strength, because they’ve also built out alliances with a range of groups, from the tea party to the Proud Boys and anti-vax groups,” Chuck Tanner, IREHR’s research director, told AP. “In certain places they are able to mobilize at levels that make an impact on policy.”
The central fact, as he explained, is that the organization is rapidly expanding its reach in an increasingly radicalized American right. “What People’s Rights does is spread really radical ideas about overturning civil rights in the United States,” Tanner said. “This is a broad-based, antidemocratic and bigoted social movement.”
Among these groups, one in particular stands out for its ever-expanding reach and its worrisome spread around the nation: Ammon Bundy’s “People’s Rights” network. A fresh report from the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights (IREHR) details how the organization has grown by over 50% in the past year, expanding from 13 to 38 states. And its purpose—to serve as a nexus for recruitment and radicalization into far-right patriot-movement ideology—continues to operate largely under the radar.
YouTube Video
The study, which springboards from IREHR’s original 2020 report on what it calls “Ammon’s Army,” presents data showing how the People’s Rights, originally built largely on Facebook, expanded its national membership from 21,851 to 33,431 in the past year, an increase of 53%. The dedicated activists on the list with key on-the-ground roles as “assistants” grew from 153 to 398, a 160% increase.
The report includes detailed interactive maps that enable readers to examine the network’s reach in their own home areas. It also demonstrates how People’s Rights has expanded its reach into Canada, and charts how the organization has expanded its leadership roles for key members.
According to the data, Bundy’s network is primarily expanding its reach in the West, the region with far and away the largest numbers of both members and “assistants” (some 24,000 of them in 2021). Indeed, some 72% of its members reside in the West; the region also has the highest per capita membership, with 12.82 times the members-per-10,000 count of the Northeast and 7.74 and 7.26 times that of the Midwest and South, respectively.
However, the organization also grew by 39.17% in the South.
“The states with the ten largest memberships are Washington (6,908), Oregon (5,544), Idaho (3,133), Utah (2,348), California (1,721), Florida (1,721) Colorado (1,306), Texas (1,142), Montana (952) and Arizona (895),” the report states.
And while the main focus of the network has involved organizing resistance to COVID-19 health restrictions, that is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the range of right-wing politics it encompasses. The pandemic, as it is, has primarily served as a recruitment tool for drawing people into its large alternative universe of extremist beliefs and conspiracy theories.
“The People's Rights network's COVID denial activism is not just about masks, mandates, or misinformation,” Devin Burghart, IREHR’s executive director, explained to Daily Kos. “Rather, COVID denial is used by the People’s Rights network as an entry point to draw people onto a quickly moving radicalization conveyor belt. While COVID denial activism has been the largest source of new recruits, it is far from the only area that the People’s Rights network is involved. For instance, in the Klamath River Basin, the group used last summer’s drought to threaten an armed standoff over water. During Bundy’s tour through Utah earlier this spring, in addition to COVID denial, presentation themes included food supply and federal land use. Militant on-the-ground activism is the most prominent factor driving the growth in recruits.
“Once involved with the group,” he continued, “though they might have joined to protest pandemic restrictions, recruits are immediately inundated with the far-right ideology, including the ‘constitutionalism’ of figures like KrisAnne Hall and the middle American neighborhood nationalism of Ammon Bundy. At local meetings and online, recruits are exposed to a myriad of conspiracy theories beyond COVID denialism. Attacks on democracy and democratic institutions, political violence, and talk of a second Civil War have become disturbingly common topics inside the People’s Rights network.”
The group’s initial spread on Facebook was temporarily stunted by the platform’s decision to ban COVID denialism, though in fact “People’s Rights maintains a presence on Facebook through posts on members’ personal pages and People’s Rights activists and supporters’ participation in other COVID denial Facebook groups.” Undeterred, the network moved its recruitment and organization efforts to an internal text network, as well as such chat platforms as Telegram, Mewe, and Wimkin.
The Washington State chapter of People’s Rights operates a Telegram channel with 1,359 subscribers and an active chat group of 558 members. In Florida, People’s Rights activist Chris Nelson has 1,377 subscribers to his Telegram channel. Activists also communicate through the network’s website, as well as using Slack and more traditional forms of technology, including telephones, walkie-talkies, and Ham radios.
For his part, Bundy complained afterwards that the report actually undercounted the People’s Rights membership. He told the Associated Press that the network now had over 62,000 members.
“The IREHR report is drastically inaccurate. Not sure where they pulled their info from,” Bundy wrote in an email. “I’m glad they under reported so the FBI does not think we are too much of a threat to ‘democracy,’” Bundy wrote. “If we keep growing the way we are the FBI may get jealous and throw me in jail for no reason again.”
But in fact, IREHR’s researchers admitted as much when they published the study, noting that they took a conservative approach to counting membership. Its methodology information notes: “There are likely individuals in the People’s Rights network overall membership not assigned to a state or area, but that data was not available to IREHR researchers.”
“The data was collected a bit ago, and there are undoubtedly people that don't have an assigned area,” Burghart told Daily Kos. “Unfortunately, those numbers aren't available to anyone but Bundy. If he wants to make that info publicly available, we'd be more than happy to revise our figures. Until then, it's the most accurate estimate of membership data available.”
Burghart also noted that Bundy—who is currently running for Idaho governor—may have admitted to campaign-law violations with his remarks to AP. “The quotes are an admission that Bundy is still running the organization while in the midst of a gubernatorial primary,” he observed. “The admission poses serious questions about the co-mingling of the campaign and the organization that the Idaho secretary of state might want to explore.”
“I think the report underestimates their overall strength, because they’ve also built out alliances with a range of groups, from the tea party to the Proud Boys and anti-vax groups,” Chuck Tanner, IREHR’s research director, told AP. “In certain places they are able to mobilize at levels that make an impact on policy.”
The central fact, as he explained, is that the organization is rapidly expanding its reach in an increasingly radicalized American right. “What People’s Rights does is spread really radical ideas about overturning civil rights in the United States,” Tanner said. “This is a broad-based, antidemocratic and bigoted social movement.”