Chino Valley, AZ — Jim Arroyo arrived for our assembly at Lucy’s Bar and Grill—dwelling of the “finest badass burger on the town”—carrying an Oath Keepers hoodie, a baseball hat, and a bracelet. He’s a brief, stocky man with a white beard, who walks with a stick. He had a pistol strapped to his waist and was accompanied by his spouse, Janet.
The 2 run the Yavapai County Preparedness Group, a company spin-off of the Oath Keepers militia that they fashioned within the aftermath of January 6, 2021.
Arroyo tells me he’s been prepping the members of his group for civil warfare following the election. (He claims membership exceeds 1,000; WIRED was unable to independently affirm this. The Rumble channel for his group has practically 350 subscribers.)
“The election can definitely set off a civil warfare, no totally different than it occurred in any variety of nations world wide,” Arroyo says over pastrami on rye, fries, a aspect of horsey sauce, and occasional. “I am coaching individuals to outlive a civil warfare, to get out of the way in which, to remain dwelling, keep off the grid, have sufficient provides.”
The couple is satisfied that there’s a grand conspiracy to stop Trump from changing into president once more. “They need to take him out in order that he can’t get again within the White Home,” says Jim Arroyo. WIRED spoke to the Arroyos on the eve of the election to get perception into how he views the potential for violence within the days to come back, how he’ll react, and who he thinks will hearth the primary pictures.
Paramilitary teams have lengthy leveraged fantasies about impending pure disasters or home conflicts to provoke their members. Arroyo and his spouse say they prepare members for all types of occasions, similar to financial collapse, assaults on {the electrical} grid, civil unrest and World Battle 3. However the deal with civil warfare by paramilitary and anti-government teams has been notably intense this 12 months main as much as the election. A latest intelligence memo reported by WIRED warned that civil warfare rhetoric on-line was radicalizing people towards violence.
Within the aftermath of January 6, for which dozens of Oath Keepers, together with founder Stewart Rhodes, had been arrested, the paramilitary motion scrambled to distance itself from the stigma of the occasion—even the phrase “militia.” The Oath Keepers, as soon as probably the most distinguished militia group within the US, primarily collapsed. In keeping with the Southern Poverty Regulation Heart, the variety of chapters dropped from 70 in 2020 to only 5 in 2020.
Arroyo, like many others within the paramilitary motion in search of to distance themselves from the stigma of January 6, supplied a sanitized view of the Yavapai County Preparedness Group. “We’re an academic group,” he says.
Arroyo broke ties with the principle Oath Keepers group and fashioned “The Oath Keepers of Yavapai County,” an impartial group underneath the umbrella of the Yavapai County Preparedness Group, a company nonprofit Arroyo based over a decade in the past. “It’s all the identical primary program,” Arroyo mentioned. It additionally consists of the Lions of Liberty, the group’s political arm, which deliberate poll drop field stakeouts in the course of the 2022 midterms however agreed to face down their operations earlier than election day following a authorized problem.