Laura Barrón-López:
And, Seamus, broadening this out, as Kathleen said, this is — the Proud Boys are a part of a much larger movement, are also a part of this web of increased threats.
You and researchers at your university have compiled data that shows that, in the last 10 years, there have been more than 540 federal arrest for people who violently threatened public officials. Roughly 45 percent of those are ideological, often anti-government or racist in nature; 84 percent were for threats against election officials, candidates, lawmakers, law enforcement, and military.
Seamus, when you look at all of these threats — all of these arrests that your researchers have compiled, along with these sentences that we have seen in relation to the January 6 insurrection, do you have any hope that recruitment or — that recruitment will die down for such extremist groups or that people will stop believing in these conspiracies and ideologies?
Seamus Hughes, University of Nebraska Omaha: So, unfortunately, so, the trend line tells us no, right?
So if you look at domestic terrorism arrests in the last few years, the FBI was investigating 850 people three years ago. Now they're investigating 2,700. If you look at the trend lines of people who have been arrested for arrested for arrests against — threats against public officials, that's going much, much higher.
And so, no, I don't think necessarily arrests are going to stop this. It's going to be a larger issue on how to address this, but it's important for us as society to put a finger on the scale and say, this is unacceptable. We can't allow this happening.
And so, of course, some people will know, you can't arrest your way out of this problem, but it is a first start for it.
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