A new report by the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights (IREHR) says that despite all the legal troubles experienced by Ammon Bundy (that wonderfully “colorful” —if you like turd-color — instigator of the Oregon Malheur invasion) and his group, membership continues to expand (bolding mine):
Ammon Bundy far-right anti-government group rapidly expands, new report says
...The quick growth happened despite legal problems faced by some prominent People’s Rights leaders and continued even as some of the organization’s Facebook groups were removed from the social media platform.The organization has grown by roughly 53% in the past year in large part because of continued anti-public health sentiment, according to the report.
…Last year, the organization had just under22,000 members nationally, according to a report by IREHR and the Montana Human Right’s Network. Now it has grown by roughly 53%, according to the new IREHR report, with more than 33,000 members including nearly 400 official leaders in38 states.
..…“What People’s Rights does is spread really radical ideas about overturning civil rights in the United States,” Tanner said. “This is a broad-based, anti-Democratic and bigoted social movement.”
Think about 33,000 full-on “let’s overturn the government” crazies wandering the country...The full report is available here:
...the states with the ten largest memberships are Washington (6,908), Oregon (5,544), Idaho (3,133), Utah (2,348), California (1,721), Florida (1,721) Colorado (1,306), Texas (1,142), Montana (952) and Arizona (895)
...Overall, 73.59% of the growth in Area Assistants, and 70.61% of overall Assistant growth, came from the development of local leadership in 25 states that had no leaders in 2020 – 173 total local leaders. The total number added by these states included 10 Field Assistants. Conversely, 61 new Area Assistants and 10 Field Assistants were added in those states with official leaders in 2020.
The report goes into a lot of detail, so if you want to see the data, check it out. I was appalled to see there were almost 2,000 members living within 2 hours of me! Oregon is second only to Idaho in membership as a percentage of population.
It’s good to read about all their legal troubles, but the fact that the group is still growing despite all that is really worrisome. We definitely need to keep an eye on them, and I’m glad that IREHR is doing so!