© Saul Loeb/Getty ImagesTrump supporters wear military-style apparel as they walk around inside the Capitol during the January 6 riot. Saul Loeb/Getty Images
- Far-right groups are splintering following the Capitol riot, analysts told The New York Times.
- Some may form new groups to launch new violent attacks, they said.
- Extremist groups including the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers were involved in the Capitol attack.
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Far-right groups are splintering in the wake of the Capitol riot but will likely regroup into new organizations, extremism analysts say.
Experts spoke to The New York Times about the phenomenon, citing discord within the groups in the aftermath of the attack on January 6.
According to posts on the encrypted messaging app Telegram, where many far right groups coalesced after being ousted from mainstream platforms, extremist groups are riven by paranoia and internal disputes in the wake of the riots.
Insider reported in February that the Proud Boys, a right-wing "male chauvinist" street gang, had been beset by infighting following the revelation that Enrique Tarrio, one of its leaders, had been a longtime FBI informant.
"What you are seeing right now is a regrouping phase," Devin Burghart, who runs the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, told The New York Times. "They are trying to reassess their strengths, trying to find new foot soldiers and trying to prepare for the next conflict."
Other groups, including the Oath Keepers, a far-right so-called militia, and the Groyper Army, a white nationalist youth group, have also fractured as they come under pressure from law enforcement, according to the Times report.
In the wake of the January 6 riot, law enforcement agencies have arrested members of the groups involved in the chaos that engulfed the Capitol.
However experts are warning that new groups will likely form after the post-Capitol riot chaos, or that radicalized individuals could commit acts of violence alone.
"There is a small segment that is going to see this as Lexington and Concord, the shot heard around the world, and the beginning of either the racial holy war or the fall of our society, of our government," Tom O'Connor, a retired FBI counterterrorism specialist, told the Times.
Lexington and Concord were the Massachusetts settlements where the first shots were fired in the American Revolutionary War.