If All Else Fails

About If All Else Fails

Far-right extremism is thriving in small, rural communities across the country, gaining the support of mainstream voters and local law enforcement. In this podcast from North Country Public Radio, reporters Emily Russell and Zach Hirsch investigate extremist groups and militia movements in northern New York State, why they’re drawing support, and what kinds of threats they pose at a pivotal moment for democracy in the United States. This story is part of a series on far-right extremism called ‘If All Else Fails.’

All episodes available now at NCPR.

This story is part of a podcast on far-right extremism called ‘If All Else Fails.’

Emily Russell and Zach Hirsch

On a winter night in early 2021, James Bonet got off work late. He was a shift manager at Five Guys in Saratoga Springs, New York.

Usually, Bonet would drive home and get some sleep. But on that night he had a decision to make: Either go home, or drive several hours overnight to Washington, D.C.

“I was teeter-tottering, I’m like, ‘Am I? - nah, I shouldn’t, it’s a long drive,’” said Bonet. “And then I’m like, ‘You know what? [...] You only live once. Let’s experience this bitch,’ essentially.”

Bonet was convinced that the 2020 election had been stolen from President Donald Trump. Trump was scheduled to give a speech the next day, on Jan. 6, and Bonet wanted to be there. He wanted answers.

“He’s our commander-in-chief and he takes an oath to protect the Constitution,” said Bonet. “So when we have a serious matter like that, I think it’s important for anyone to listen to the commander-in-chief and what he has to say. Because he’s probably going to say some things that are important.”

In this series, we’ve described far-right groups and militias that are active in Upstate New York, and police who are tied to those groups. But not everyone is part of a group or holds a position of power. Far more Americans who have aligned with the far-right are like Bonet - people who spend hours online going down conspiratorial rabbit holes, embracing false claims about the government or elections, and sometimes acting on those beliefs.

Bonet arrived in D.C. on the morning of Jan. 6. He took a nap in his car and then made his way towards the Ellipse, in front of the White House. Trump began his speech around noon.

“We’re gathered together in the heart of our nation’s capital for one very, very basic and simple reason. To save our democracy,” Trump said to a crowd of thousands of his supporters, including Bonet. He listened as the president said again and again that the election had been stolen - which was a lie.

A lot of Trump’s false claims had already fallen apart in court. Even his own team had debunked some of them. But the president refused to give in. “We will never concede. It doesn’t happen. You don’t concede when there’s theft involved,” said Trump.

“Something’s wrong here,” Trump continued. “Something’s really wrong. Can’t have happened. And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” Bonet’s attorney would later argue in court that that particular statement incited Bonet and many others to act in Trump’s defense.

“Everyone was heading down to the Capitol, so I’m like, ‘You know what, I’m going to head down and just see what’s up,’” Bonet said. “[The Capitol] was just surrounded by so many people.”

“They were like throwing tear gas at us and things like that,” he added.

We interviewed Bonet outside his home in Glens Falls in September 2023. Bonet told us he thought he was joining a peaceful protest. He was wearing a beanie and a tie-dye hoodie. He wasn’t armed, Bonet added later in a follow-up conversation.

Others in the crowd were wearing tactical vests and ballistic helmets. Some people had Confederate flags and Q-Anon flags. And some were armed with pepper spray, baseball bats, and stun guns. They were all headed for the Capitol.

In the crowd that day were members of far-right groups like the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, who have a history of violence. In a hotel nearby, members of the Oath Keepers were on standby with a huge cache of weapons.

Jan. 6 was the biggest attack on the U.S. Capitol since the 1800s, and Bonet was part of it - he went into the building. But he said just got swept up in the action. “It kind of just - happened, essentially. I wasn’t trying to overthrow anything. The fact that the cops let us in,” said Bonet.

We pushed back on his claim and told him the cops tried to stop people from entering the building. “No, they didn’t. Like I said, you weren’t there, you know what I mean?” Bonet replied. Many police officers abandoned their posts and barricades because they were outnumbered and overwhelmed, according to PolitiFact.

He turned himself in three weeks after Jan. 6. Some of his coworkers had reported him to the FBI. Bonet pleaded guilty to illegally entering the Capitol and ultimately served 72 days in federal prison.

We weren’t sure what to expect from our interview with Bonet. We read the documents from his trial, and at least on paper, it seemed like he had regrets about Jan. 6, like his experience was a wake-up call. But that wasn’t the case. Bonet sees what he did on Jan. 6 as his patriotic duty - he compared himself to the founding fathers during the American Revolution. And today, Bonet is still convinced there’s a corrupt deep state pulling the strings and that the 2020 election was stolen.

We pushed back on those claims and told him the election was not stolen. But Bonet had explanations for everything.

“You’re also looking on Google, right, that hides their search results too,” said Bonet. “Listen, when the truth comes out - I’m just saying, like, you’re gonna be like, ‘How did you know?’ I know because I looked into it.”

James Bonet believed in a lie and went to prison for it. We wanted to know how someone goes down a rabbit hole and emerges fully convinced of false conspiracies. And what the danger is, knowing there are so many people like him - people who vote on things that just aren’t true, and may act when called upon.

A political and personal journey

On Bonet’s porch in Glens Falls, we went back to the beginning, back to when he first became politically active. “I guess I always leaned left. I was like a Bernie bro and then, I don’t know, just a bunch of stuff happened,” said Bonet.

“I used to be 300 pounds, so like I lost weight, I lost a bunch of weight and I realized that like, what they’re telling you what to eat is pretty much BS. So, I figured if they’re lying to you about what you’re eating, then what else are they lying to you about? It just led me down this rabbit hole,” Bonet said.

Bonet’s weight loss journey was the start of his transformation and his shift away from trusting mainstream science, the government, and the media. He said he started listening to a lot of podcasts.

“There’s a lot of people that are speaking out that just get censored. You just gotta know where to go.”

Bonet started listening to shows like the X22 Report, Tin Foil Hat, and Nino’s Corner, all of which embrace conspiracy theories.

The ‘Big Lie’

When we interviewed Bonet, we were clear with him that we would be fact checking his claims. We asked him if he was open to our skepticism. “Heck yeah, I am. Of course I am,” Bonet replied.

When it came to the 2020 election, Donald Trump losing to Joe Biden just didn’t add up for Bonet. “Being in January 6th and being there - there was a lot of people like me, that, we know the election was stolen,” he said, but that claim relied on pro-Trump conspiracy theories that have been widely debunked.

“You look at Pennsylvania, more dead people voted in Pennsylvania than that are buried in Gettysburg,” Bonet said, referring to a claim that tens of thousands of dead people voted in Pennsylvania. State election officials found no evidence of that.

“You look at 2000 Mules and things like that that’s happened - like, there are irregularities in the election,” he said, in reference to a conspiracy film that claimed to show widespread voter fraud but was also lacking in evidence.

“All of these conspiracy theories went viral on social media and all of them are very easily refutable,” said Pete Kurtz-Glovas, from the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab at American University, which focuses on preventing violent extremism.

Throughout our interview with Bonet, he bounced around a lot and it was hard to keep up. Kurtz-Glovas said that’s how many conspiracy theorists talk. “It is very common for people who hold these beliefs to overwhelm the listener or the person that they’re talking to, with data points, with ‘facts,’ and with evidence that they have spent hours absorbing,” Kurtz-Glovas said.

People consumed a lot more of that kind of content during the pandemic. Many were stuck at home, and many turned to podcasters and YouTubers for company. At the same time, the 2020 presidential campaign was underway. Donald Trump was saying for months that everything was rigged against him. When he lost the election, people wanted answers.

Far-right talk show hosts said they had those answers – they claimed to know what really happened.

“One of the classic tropes here is this idea of secret knowledge,” Kurtz-Glovas said. “‘Look, you’re not going to get this from anybody else because they’re all lying to you, but I have this little piece of information that’s going to blow your mind.’ And the reason why that attracts people is because it’s compelling. It’s exciting to hear that what you know is wrong. And you’re about to learn the truth about something.”

How some conspiracies start and grow

Some conspiracy theories do have a kernel of truth in them, like the idea of economic inequality.

Bonet brought up the economy a handful of times in our interview. “Everything’s based on fraud, like our economic system, that’s a ponzi scheme and is literally based on fraud,” said Bonet.

Economic inequality is fertile ground for conspiracies and in the U.S., the gap between the rich and poor keeps growing. Many people are struggling, and it’s not a huge leap for people to feel like the economy is rigged against them, says Kathryn Olmsted, a professor at the University of California, Davis who studies the history of conspiracy theories.

“A lot of ordinary people, working-class Americans, have experienced economic downturns. They look for reasons, for people to blame,” said Olmsted. “And yes, it’s not crazy to think that the U.S. economy and government are not responsive to them.”

But Olmsted said some people then take a huge leap – from legitimate frustration and anger into the world of elaborate plots, complete with all kinds of characters, cover-ups, and scapegoats.

Olmsted said conspiracy theories played a key role in the Jan. 6 attack on the US Capitol, with so many of Trump’s supporters believing in the former president’s lies about the election.

“They thought it was their duty as citizens to stop the [vote] count,” said Olmsted. “You can’t understand that moment without understanding conspiracy theories.”

How security agencies track extremism

The internet has played a key role in the spread of conspiracy theories and far-right ideologies. It’s impossible to track all that online activity, but state and federal security agencies say it is a top priority.

“We look at online extremist activity every month,” said Jackie Bray, commissioner of New York’s Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services.

“New York State - this is not where you wanna be in the top - but New York State ranks in the top five of online extremist activity almost every month,” said Bray.

She defined that activity as “engagement with those [extremist] groups, engagement with those posts. How much chatter, how much commenting, do extremist posts get on any given week, on any given month.”

But chatter and commenting are free speech, protected by the First Amendment. So, agencies are on the lookout for when that speech crosses a line and turns into action, or the threat of action.

“The biggest thing that we’re looking at, is if somebody’s intending to commit violence or criminal activity,” said Charles Keller, a special agent with the FBI based in Albany. “If someone’s looking to do harm, and/or cause chaos, like a threat to national security related to pushing their ideology, that’s where it crosses the line.”

Keller supervises the Joint Terrorism Task Force that covers Upstate New York and Vermont. He said here, and across the country, online activity can be toxic and can inspire action.

“They vent online, and they vent together in groups, and it’s kind of the echo chamber, where they continue to hear the same thing being relayed back to them by the same people that have the same beliefs, and then they want to do something about it.”

Reflecting on Jan. 6

On Jan. 6, 2021, thousands of people from all around the country formed a mob, broke into a federal building, and violently tried to overturn a presidential election. The events of that day made it clear that if enough people believe in the same lie and get behind the same goal, suddenly there’s a real threat. Even people like James Bonet, who are usually on the sidelines, joined in the action that day.

Bonet posted a lot of his experience on social media that day. In one video, before he went into the Capitol, a large group of people are singing the national anthem, reflecting the sense of patriotism in the crowd.

When Bonet got inside the Capitol, he wrote, “we made it in the building bitches! We’re taking it back!” He was in the building for 17 minutes and filmed himself smoking a joint in the office of Jeff Merkley, a Democratic senator from Oregon.

He said, sure, he “probably shouldn’t have” walked into the Capitol on that day. In fact, he was committing a federal crime.

“Listen, hindsight’s 20/20, okay? When I went in there, yeah, I may have said some stupid – stupid stuff,” said Bonet.

He regrets embarrassing his parents, but sitting on his porch years later, he said he didn’t pose a real threat. “I wasn’t trying to overthrow the government with what, a joint? That doesn’t make any sense, do you know what I mean? I wasn’t trying to overthrow anything.”

But Bonet was part of a group that delayed the certification of a presidential election for hours. Some members of Congress hid in their offices, others were evacuated. Rioters smashed windows and broke through doors. Someone built a noose. People were calling for members of Congress and the Vice President to be executed, some chanting “hang Mike Pence.” Four people in the crowd died that day, and several others died after.

Bonet said true patriots like him were just protesting peacefully. He believes anyone who was violent was only trying to make Trump supporters look bad.

“They don’t even look like Americans,” he said. “They look – they literally look like they went to the Halloween store and were like, ‘Let me look like a patriot.’ They didn’t look like real Americans. They look, honestly, like FBI.”

Asked for evidence to support that claim, Bonet said, “No, it’s just what my instinct tells me, and I trust my instinct.”

But that’s another conspiracy theory that went viral online. The head of the FBI described that theory as “ludicrous.” A congressional investigation and hundreds of prosecutions found no evidence that the FBI or far-left groups orchestrated the attack.

More than a thousand people were arrested for participating in Jan. 6, including dozens of New Yorkers - people from Watertown, Buffalo, Rochester, Long Island and New York City. Hundreds of people ended up with prison time nationwide, including Bonet. He was originally charged with a felony, but he took a deal and pleaded guilty to Unlawful Entry in a Restricted Building, a misdemeanor.

The mindset of a patriot

Bonet said his sentence came as a surprise and going to prison “was scary.” But he went in thinking of himself as a patriot.

“During the American Revolutionary War, some of our founding fathers were imprisoned,” said Bonet. “And I thought, if they could survive that, then I could survive three months or 72 days in prison. So that was my mentality going through it.”

We asked Bonet if he regrets being part of the Jan. 6 insurrection.

“I wouldn’t even call it - I’m not going to call it an insurrection or give it power like that. But, no I don’t,” he said.

Federal officials say more than a hundred police officers were injured by the mob on Jan. 6, some of them seriously injured. The mob also attacked reporters and photographers, and again, there were threats to assassinate Vice President Pence and other politicians.

Bonet said for him, the experience and going to prison for it, was worth it. “If you look at the things that have happened to me after, my life has gotten better,” Bonet said.

He started taking courses at the local college, getting into jiu-jitsu and writing poetry. And Bonet decided what he wants to do with his life. He wants to be a constitutional lawyer, and maybe even run for governor someday. Bonet said it’s all been a learning experience.

Today, Bonet seems even deeper in his beliefs about the 2020 election. Pete Kurtz-Glovas from American University said it makes sense that Bonet would double down on them since his conviction.

“If he gives up those beliefs, then maybe it was all for nothing. But if he holds onto them then he can remain part of this grand narrative that these conspiracy theories kind of construct around us,” Kurtz-Glovas said.

Looking ahead to 2024

Bonet is even more interested in politics now and has been thinking a lot about what needs to happen next for the country. “I think right now we’re going through a process of a deep cleaning,” said Bonet, “and I think through the other side of it, it’s going to be awesome. I think there’s going to be a time where we’re all going to win and we’re not going to stop winning.”

We asked Bonet what he means by a “deep cleaning.”

“Just like all the corruption’s being exposed,” Bonet replied, “and then from there we had to just work our way through that through voting, people getting involved through grassroots movements and things like that,” he said. “We, the people, will take it back peacefully through voting and everything like that.”

Bonet also said that the United States needs to “hit rock bottom,” and that the country needs to have a “near-death experience” before things get any better.

Even if Bonet views that as a peaceful process, many people are worried that that’s not the reality – that another Jan. 6 could happen, that people who are radicalized and believe in far-right conspiracy theories will form another mob and commit more violence. Or that political violence could unfold in some other way.

“I’m really concerned that we could have an authoritarian takeover in the United States,” said Kathryn Olmsted from UC Davis. “I’m worried that if Trump is elected, he could decide that he was not going to leave office. If he isn’t elected, there could be, again, some sort of violent reaction. I’m worried about that every single day.”

Political observers say there are some glimmers of hope, such as the 2022 midterm elections. Many feared widespread political violence and disruption, but that didn’t happen.

New York’s homeland security commissioner Jackie Bray said she has confidence in the electoral system, but is disheartened by the deep distrust some people have in that system.

“Obviously the fact that we even have to have this conversation in this country, in this day, is heartbreaking and is designed by people who would prefer autocratic and authoritarian government to suppress our vote,” said Bray, “and I think New Yorkers won’t let that happen and I’m confident that our elections will be safe this year.”

But, nationwide, there is no doubt that a lot of people are worried about what the future holds.

Despite the criminal and civil court cases he’s facing, Donald Trump, the leading Republican candidate for president, has talked about punishing his enemies and joked about being a dictator.

While powerful figures like Trump are driving the narrative, experts say people like James Bonet also play a critical role. They’re shaping and in some ways threatening the American political system: not only believing in lies, but voting and acting on them.

For that reason, we asked Bonet what he thinks will happen in the United States, and his outlook was dystopian. He predicted an internet blackout and a military takeover during an election. After all that, he thinks Trump will win, which will incite a third world war.

It was clear that Bonet’s reality has been shaped by the media he’s consumed over the last few years, and that media has changed how he sees the world. At the start of our interview, Bonet told us that he went down a rabbit hole.

So, at the end, we asked him a bigger question about his reality – whether he’d considered that he might be wrong, that he has been manipulated.

“Yeah, I have,” Bonet replied. “I mean, if I’m wrong, I’m wrong, but that doesn’t stop the fact that this whole journey has led me to what I want to do with my life. And I just continue on that path.”

Bonet repeated that sentiment throughout the interview. “If I’m wrong, I’m wrong, I’ll admit it,” he said in another moment. “But I don’t necessarily think I’m wrong.”

This reporting is part of a podcast on far-right extremism in Upstate New York called ‘If All Else Fails.’ The show received grant support from Grist and the Center for Rural Strategies.