As a mob of Donald Trump’s supporters ransacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Rita Katz was sickened but not surprised. She runs a company called SITE Intelligence Group which tracks online extremism, and she’d been seeing rising chatter suggesting the Electoral College certification could turn violent, with far-right extremists discussing plans to rush police officers, bring guns to Capitol Hill and storm the chambers of Congress.
SITE sent a series of bulletins to subscribers, which include law enforcement and national security agencies around the world, but the violence caught Capitol Police and the Pentagon off guard.
Now, Katz tells POLITICO Magazine the threats in the 2024 election season are different than they were four years ago — and, in some ways, worse.
“How proactive and organized the far right has become — that is very, very alarming for me,” she said.
Katz, who spoke in her individual capacity and not on behalf of the company, warned that in addition to the threat of election-related violence, extremists were pledging to become poll watchers and intimidate even legal immigrants from voting. And all of it’s happening in an environment where Elon Musk’s X, formally known as Twitter, has dramatically pared back its content-moderation policies, allowing dangerous conspiracy theories to flourish like never before.
“You have safe havens for these communities where they become more radical,” she said, “with more conspiracy theories and more calls for violence to overthrow the government.”
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Tell me about how your group tracks extremists online.
We basically go after extremist communities by going where their followers are. We don’t go on the internet and start searching, “Hey, where can I find extremist communities?” When I started SITE as one of the founders in 2002, our methodology was always to be in the heart of extremist communities, monitoring them. And as they spread out to different platforms and other venues, then we go with them. Basically, SITE goes wherever they go.
You were early to spotlight threats from the far right in the run-up to Jan. 6. How does October of 2024 look different from October 2020?
There are very important differences: how proactive and organized the far right has become — that is very, very alarming for me. They’re being organized within the same platforms that had the preparation and organization before Jan. 6 — one of the main ones was The Donald, which changed the name to the Patriots. We see the massive swell of conspiracy theories and civil war predictions. That was before. What we’re seeing today is a very, very clear, organized, mobilized election process, similar to Stop the Steal, only it started long before.
Stop the Steal on The Donald platform started after the 2020 election. They believed that they won but something went wrong in the election and the votes were stolen. They believe that now they have to be proactive, that this process is most likely happening so they need to do everything in their power to prevent the steal again. We are seeing a massive organization similar to what we saw for Stop the Steal that is pretending to be Protect the Vote. While the Republican Party invests so much in Protect the Vote efforts, the far-right communities are very much jumping on board. They even launched their own poll watcher mobilization efforts. It’s super organized, and started months before. I think the first time we started seeing that was in March, with links to all the election centers in the country, informing them how they can join or become poll watchers. And some of them even indicated that they are actively working on that.
One other concerning element that separates this election from the last one is that Trump now has more social media platforms and other parts of Silicon Valley in his corner. These are the people who run the most profound social engineering tools humanity has ever seen — in addition to major traditional media outlets. They seem to be bending to his will, whether out of fear, agreement or simple business calculus. They know that if Trump wins, they need to kiss the ring. They know if they want to stay relevant, there is outsized risk in endorsing [Kamala] Harris. These are trademark features of fascist systems.
When people say they are signing up to be poll watchers and election observers, do you take them at their word or do you view them as just keyboard warriors?
I don’t see any reason not to believe them. They said they would be traveling to Jan. 6. They said they were going to hang [Mike] Pence. Almost everything they said happened. I don’t see a reason not to believe them. Some of them already claim they are poll watchers. They don’t have a reason in their own community, as they’re organizing each other and mobilizing each other, to lie. Could it be? Possibly it could be that some are just claiming that they are doing it. But when you say that you’re doing it, you’re just pushing other people to do the same. Even if one person is lying, others will take his word for it, and they will see no reason not to follow what the other guy is saying.
Are you seeing calls for violence and planning in the same channels and platforms?
I think we’re seeing much, much more this time. More about poll watchers and elections and fraud. And this started much earlier. Some of them really think that the election was stolen and that you can blame them because they didn’t protect the election. Because of that they are calling for much more violence. They feel that everything is done by the Democrats, their enemy. And they have no reason to believe that this election is true, and therefore we’re seeing more calls for violence. This time we see a very different social media ecosystem. Look at Twitter: Twitter is now run by Elon Musk, who made it a safe haven for the far-right community.
Conspiracy theories are celebrated on Twitter. In the previous election, Twitter was more regulated because conspiracy theories, far-right accounts were removed, especially before the election. But now it’s very different.
They are very organized on Telegram as well. You have safe havens for these communities where they become more radical, with more conspiracy theories and more calls for violence to overthrow the government.
How are the extremists you track changing their strategies and tactics?
The strategy changed — not to wait to stop the steal, not to wait until after the election, but to start long before the election, coming with a strategy in hand.
You mentioned poll watching as something that was not being discussed as much at this point in the 2020 cycle. Are there other specific actions that you’re seeing people plan or engage in that you weren’t seeing before the 2020 election?
There is a lot of intimidation of immigrants. They believe many immigrants are voting and they have no right to vote. Some of them are even talking about intimidating people on Election Day and at voting centers, to ask immigrants about whether they have the right to vote, and to prove that to them — intimidating voters.
Also there are some calls for vandalism of ballot drop-boxes. They are organizing and workshopping suggestions on how to do that.
What do you see as Donald Trump’s connection to all this?
That’s a very, very heavy question. When they hear “Stop the Steal,” they echo Trump. They echo or execute what Trump says. He is the one that gave the call for Jan. 6. He gives the tone, the rhetoric, the language to these communities. He feeds these communities. And so when he says “We have to protect the vote” and “The election was stolen,” they answer.
What are your top two or three concerns for Election Day through Inauguration?
Of course I’m worried about Election Day violence and voter intimidation. But I’m truly, truly terrified of what might happen when the winner is announced. If Harris wins, tens of millions of Americans will refuse to accept the result. And some percentage of these people will be willing to act, to carry out violence in support of their belief, especially if Donald Trump will give the signal.
And in the 2020 election, Trump did give the signal. And I don’t see any reason he will not give the signal this time. It’s actually even more important for him this time because this will be his last election, I think.
Do you worry about violence conducted by people on the other end of the spectrum if Trump wins?
Antifa and the far left, in general, is a problem, there’s no doubt. But do I worry about the Democrats carrying out violence if he wins? Much, much less to almost none, compared to what we have seen in the last few years coming from the far right and Donald Trump. It was Donald Trump who gave the green light to Jan. 6 — many of the Jan. 6 [convicts] said, specifically, this is how they saw it.
What should state and local law enforcement be doing to get ready for the election and the post-election season?
Jan. 6 wasn’t a failure of intelligence. It was a failure to act. Today, government agencies don’t want another Jan. 6. I think they are surely more proactive and are much more quick to respond if they see anything going that direction. I think they are much more prepared, in all ways, psychologically, that it might happen.
Do you expect the 2024 election process — meaning everything that happens from now through Inauguration Day — to be more or less tumultuous than 2020 was?
If Trump doesn’t accept the results, it’s hard to predict. But I don’t think it would be peaceful at all. And I think that if there are calls for violence, it might be worse than we saw before.
When you have somebody like Elon Musk who runs Twitter, if he is not going to agree with the election results… Our entire discourse and social fabric are wired to generate chaos today. And it’s going to be very difficult for law enforcement to control and fix that. After Trump tweeted “It will be wild” [about his Jan. 6 rally], at some point later his Twitter account was taken down. No one is going to take down those tweets now.
A lot of the far-right community had to move to alternative platforms like Telegram and Parler. Now Twitter is a voice for the far-right community and conspiracy theories. These communities are already radicalized and when you are putting radicalized people together, they become more radicalized when there is no moderation. And with Trump feeding these communities, it’s very difficult to predict that we’re not going to see even more violence.
