Militias Are Recruiting Off of the Trump Shooting

Militia and anti-government groups across the United States are using the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump as an opportunity to organize, recruit, and train.

“An attack on President Trump was an attack on us, people like us—like-minded American patriots,” says Scot Seddon, the Pennsylvania-based founder of The American Patriots Three Percenters (APIII), in a video posted to TikTok on Sunday. APIII is a decentralized militia network with chapters across the US. “There comes a point in time where everybody in this group needs to start being accountable for what they’re doing to help grow the organization and building a network of like minded people in their area. Because they’re coming for us.”

Seddon goes on in the video to say that he’s looking at coordinating a meeting with other militias around Pennsylvania. “This is not going to just go away. We need to become fuckin’ strong, fuckin’ lions,” says Seddon. “Start reaching out to individuals in your state that are trustworthy, that have the like minded vision of local strong communities, to hold down the fort, just in case [of] war, or for when shit hits the fan.”

In the aftermath of the shooting at Trump’s campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania—which left the former president wounded in his ear, one person dead, and two people injured—incendiary rhetoric and calls for retaliatory violence exploded online.

Katie Paul, director of the Tech Transparency Project, says that this type of rhetoric has been pretty commonplace in online spaces since 2020, especially since January 6. But she’s particularly concerned about the heightened rhetoric in tandem with aggressive recruitment efforts by militia groups, who, historically, have opportunistically pounced on moments of national chaos to encourage organizing and training. Paul says the confluence of militia activity and heightened rhetoric could inspire “individuals who are susceptible to online influence and acceleration” who “could be triggered to act on their own.” She also sees militias’ emphasis on organization over knee-jerk calls for retaliatory violence as a sign that the movement is focused on long-term goals and growth.

In the past year, APIII has made a significant recruitment push across major social media platforms, such as Facebook, X, TikTok, and even NextDoor, according to research from the Tech Transparency Project shared exclusively with WIRED. Despite featuring Three Percenter in their name, a clear nod to the militia movement, APIII touts a disclaimer on their website, insisting that they are not a militia. That’s in line with the broader trend seen since January 6, 2021, when paramilitary activists scrambled to distance themselves from the militia movement implicated in the Capitol riot.

But increasingly, groups like APIII have been trying to rebuild the militia movement from the ground up, urging people to get organized in their communities. According to Seddon, APIII and the Light Foot Militia, another decentralized paramilitary group with chapters nationwide, have been coordinating closely. Last month, a video circulated on TikTok and Facebook purporting to show a training meet-up with APIII and Lightfoot in an undisclosed location. About 100 heavily armed men and women in fatigues are shown standing in formation. Text over the video reads: “Now is the time to join a MF’in Militia, Not a Political Party,” and “we came into this world screaming covered in blood and will be leaving the same way. No retreat no surrender.”