Far-right terrorist gangs are all in the news these days, thanks to the recent arrests of members of The Base for planning to cause violence at the Richmond, Virginia, gun rally of Jan. 20, as well as to murder a couple believed to be antifascists in Georgia. But this is hardly the first such operation in the United States.
Their history, in fact, offers some real-life context about the nature of more recent iterations, including Atomwaffen Division and the Rise Above Movement, as well as The Base, not to mention Friday’s sentencing of would-be domestic terrorist Christopher Hasson. Gather ‘round, then, for the saga of Robert DePugh and the Minutemen—probably the progenitor of what we would now call a modern-day, far-right militant terrorist group. And like all of them, the Minutemen wrapped themselves in the flag.