Far-right militias mobilise across US, ready for Trump’s call to arms

Milling among the crowd and perched on nearby vantage points, unnoticed by most mourners, were half a dozen members of an informal security force scouting for any trouble. The Virginia Kekoas is a far-right armed militia movement, whose members train in firearms, military tactics and emergency response.

“We were specifically asked to be in the crowd and watching,” said Cody Beckner, a member of the group. “Just to make sure that no one tries to do anything dumb.”

As President Donald Trump vows to crack down on the “radical left” after the killing of Kirk on 10 September, far-right militias are proving ready, willing and able to act as enforcers, raising fears that the stage is being set for an escalation in political violence.

“I’m torn to say if we’re currently in a civil war, but I wouldn’t doubt it; it’s just not gone hot yet,” said Beckner, who blamed the escalation on “leftist politicians inciting violence”.

“I don’t want violence, but at the same time, what else do we do?”

Since Kirk’s killing, extremism monitors have documented a rise in recruitment and mobilisation efforts by groups across the far-right spectrum, from libertarian militias such as the Virginia Kekoas to neo-Fascist groups such as Patriot Front.

The far-right Proud Boys group is organising a campaign identifying leftwing activists celebrating Kirk’s death, while Stewart Rhodes – former leader of the Oath Keepers militia – is reported to be restarting his group in reaction to Kirk’s killing.

“I did see at least a dozen efforts by people to start a new militia group immediately following Kirk’s assassination,” said Amy Cooter, deputy director at the Institute for Countering Digital Extremism and an expert on US militia movements.

Cooter said it was too early to tell if any of the new or reactivated groups would prove influential. But she said some movements seemed to be preparing in case of any signal from Trump they were needed, for example if he contested the results of the midterm elections next year, or in the event of large protests.

“A lot of them are ready to be called to action,” she said. “They don’t quite feel called, as of this moment, but are primed to be put into some kind of position to do so.”

Police have said that while Kirk’s alleged killer was “indoctrinated with leftist ideology”, he acted alone. But Trump and his allies have blamed rhetoric from leftwing activists and the Democratic party for fuelling hate and have deployed battle-like language. Stephen Miller, Trump’s top adviser, gave a fiery speech at Kirk’s memorial on Sunday in which he referred to “our enemies” and vowed to “defeat the forces of darkness and evil”.

Last week, Trump named antifa – a term referring to groups and individuals with an anti-fascist ideology – a domestic terror organisation, raising concerns that the president might use the designation to crack down on any opponents from the political left.

One group paying attention was the Proud Boys, a self-described “western chauvinist” far-right group that is openly anti-migrant, anti-Islam and anti-trans. They engaged in running street battles with anti-fascist activists in many US cities during the first Trump administration and the Biden administration.

“Maybe they will re-label, and start anew, and then you’ll see Proud Boys on the streets,” said Enrique Tarrio, a figurehead for the group, who had until January been serving a 22-year sentence for sedition linked to the 6 January 2021 riots at the US Capitol.

In September 2020, Trump told the group to “stand back and stand by”.

Tarrio is now coordinating an online drive to identify leftwing individuals who have celebrated Kirk’s death on social media or defended political violence. Such online vigilantism got the backing of vice-president JD Vance soon after Kirk’s death, when he said: “Call them out, and hell, call their employer.”

Which is exactly what Tarrio is doing. He said that a few hundred people in different Telegram groups were scouring the internet and had compiled a database of 300 targets. Of those, “between 90 to 110” had been fired, he claimed. Tarrio said he hoped to deploy this network against other targets such as antifa.

“There might be a world where we start pointing the individuals out, and then law enforcement goes ahead and starts investigating,” he said.

Dan Tooze, a Proud Boy based in Oregon who was involved in street battles with antifa activists in 2021, said he would go a step further: “I just want to know if I can volunteer and go clean them up. I know who they are.”

Asked what else the Proud Boys could do to support the administration, Tarrio said: “I see a lot of the guys now apply for Homeland Security, Ice specifically, and then maybe not in an official capacity, but as civilians, we could do what we can.”

Tarrio claimed that “close to a dozen” Proud Boys had applied to join Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is recruiting an extra 10,000 officers to implement Trump’s policy to detain and remove illegal migrants.

“These are the types of smears that vilify our brave Ice law enforcement and are leading to a 1,000% increase in assaults against them,” said Tricia McLaughlin, Homeland Security’s assistant secretary for public affairs. She added that Ice “only recruits patriotic professionals who respect our nation’s laws”.

Tarrio’s political adversaries also question the extent of his influence, given that many Proud Boys have distanced themselves from him. “I just see him as attention seeking,” said a spokesperson with the Miami Against Fascism organisation.

But there are genuine feelings of fear and rage on all sides of the political spectrum, and little sign that the Trump administration plans to try to diffuse the tensions.

A recent YouGov poll found that 20% of generation Z now believe political violence could be justified. Over the past three decades, the vast majority of political violence in the US has been carried out by the far-right. But new data released this week by the Center for Strategic and International Studies shows that so far in 2025 attacks by the far left outnumber those by the far right.

Cynthia Miller-Idriss, director of the Polarization and Extremism Research & Innovation Lab, warned that the battle-like language coming from leading Republicans could be read as “as a call to action and mobilise violence”, meaning the cycle of extremism continues. “As long as far-right extremism continues to rise, anti-fascism continues to rise, because that’s the whole modus operandi of anti-fascism,” she said.

Back at Virginia Beach, the vigil for Kirk ended without incident. But while Beckner said he was praying for peace, he said he would also be preparing for war. “I’m going to keep training specifically for civil unrest,” he said. “I’m not going to go out there and start a civil war, I don’t want that to happen. If civil war becomes a hot civil war, then obviously I’m going to have to respond.”

Photographs by Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times via Getty,  Images, Billy Schuerman/The Virginian-Pilot via Getty Images, Maranie Staab/AFP via Getty Images