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Allowing the U.S. government to be held hostage by political extremists is unacceptable.

While this won’t surprise most people, it likely came as a shock to many QAnon followers. According to that movement’s expediently evolving lore, March 4 — the date on which U.S. presidents were inaugurated until the mid-1930s — was when Mr. Trump was to reclaim the presidency and resume his epic battle against Satan-worshiping, baby-eating Democrats and deep-state monsters.This drivel is absurd. It is also alarming. Violent extremists, obsessed with the symbolism of March 4, were for weeks nattering about a possible attack on Congress, according to law enforcement officials.On March 2, the F.B.I. and the Department of Homeland Security issued a joint intelligence bulletin to law enforcement agencies, warning that militia extremists might be plotting to overrun the Capitol complex and “remove Democratic lawmakers.” The details of the possible plot were hazy, but the threat unnerved enough people that House leaders canceled Thursday’s session. The voting schedule was condensed, and lawmakers left town early for the weekend.Although March 4 came and went without a bloody coup attempt — that is, without another bloody coup attempt — damage was still done. Lawmakers abandoned their workplace out of fear of politically motivated violence. This not only disrupted the people’s business. It also sent a dangerous signal that Congress can be intimidated — that the state of American government is fragile.AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOf course the safety of lawmakers and other Capitol Hill workers must be a priority. But allowing the government to be held hostage by political extremists is unacceptable.The current security threat is not expected to dissipate any time soon. If anything, the intelligence community has cautioned that the Jan. 6 siege of the Capitol may have emboldened extremists. Having sacked the Capitol, the lunatic fringe is now dreaming of a bigger, bloodier encore.

Representative Matt Gaetz, the Florida delegation’s mini-Trump, is in full froth. “Pelosi hired a bigot to hunt MAGA,” he charged last month. Last Tuesday, Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee sent a letter to the speaker, arguing that General Honoré’s criticism of the police and lawmakers was “disqualifying.” On Thursday, Tucker Carlson told viewers: “Honoré is an unhinged partisan extremist. He’s nuttier than anyone affiliated with QAnon.”

The Department of Homeland Security issued a bulletin on Wednesday warning of a continued threat from domestic violent extremists.

Federal law enforcement is on high alert Thursday in the wake of an intelligence bulletin issued earlier this week about a group of violent militia extremists having discussed plans to take control of the US Capitol and remove Democratic lawmakers on or around March 4 -- a date when some conspiracy theorists believe former President Donald Trump will be returning to the presidency.

The House changed its schedule in light of warnings from US Capitol Police, moving a vote planned for Thursday to Wednesday night to avoid being in session on March 4. The Senate is still expected to be in session debating the Covid-19 relief bill.

Those intelligence sharing and planning failures have been laid bare over the last two months in several hearings and have been a focal point of criticism from lawmakers investigating the violent attack that left several people dead.

The warning was a notable departure for a Department of Homeland Security accused of being reluctant during the Trump administration to publish intelligence reports or public warnings about the dangers posed by extremists and white supremacist groups.

“the presidential transition, as well as other perceived grievances fueled by false narratives,”

Mr. Biden’s peaceful inauguration last week could create a false sense of security because “the intent to engage in violence has not gone away” among extremists angered by the outcome of the presidential election.

President Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign has repeatedly accepted donations from well-known white supremacists, extremists

The Trump campaign, which did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment on this story, has been aware of at least some of the white supremacists’ donations, past media reports show

it is common practice for political campaigns to voluntarily forfeit donations from extremists.

Authorities in Germany are monitoring almost 500 Islamic extremists they believe pose a potential security threat, officials said Friday

three men suspected of planning to carry out an attack in the country for the Islamic State group.

While Germany hasn't suffered mass-casualty attacks by Islamic extremists of the type seen in France and Belgium over recent months, authorities say the country is a target and the risk of attacks is high.

spewing hate has a significant impact upon society. It is the equivalent of modern-day propaganda where the population is barraged with a stream of consistent messaging.  As ordinary people go about their daily lives, they are exposed repeatedly, day in and day out, to the same messages in numerous forms and by numerous people. Pretty soon, these messages begin to sink in and take effect.  The audience begins to adopt a worldview consistent with these messages, regardless of the degree of truth. 

Propaganda is powerful stuff.  Many people are susceptible to it and can be swayed by it, especially the less educated.

In America today, right-wing media is engaged in this very same activity through Fox News and extremist talk radio. 

Christopher Wray is only the eighth director to lead the FBI — and the only one whose appointment was announced on Twitter.For the past 3 1/2 years, he has been grinding through fierce criticism by former President Donald Trump. He's also guided the bureau through some wounds the FBI inflicted upon itself, including employees' text messages about political candidates in 2016, the guilty plea by an FBI lawyer for altering a document, and a watchdog report that uncovered surveillance applications filled with big mistakes.

Now the laconic Wray, 54, is opening up, ever so slightly, to address what he calls a metastasizing threat of violent domestic extremists and the sprawling investigation of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.He spoke with NPR on Thursday afternoon about the state of the bureau and how the FBI is confronting white supremacist and militia-based terrorism. He also addressed the ongoing investigation into the recent shootings in the Atlanta area.

The FBI is supporting state and local law enforcement, specifically APD, the Atlanta Police Department, and the [Cherokee County] Sheriff's Office. So we're actively involved but in a support role. And while the motive remains still under investigation at the moment, it does not appear that the motive was racially motivated.

Shortly after rampaging Trump supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, a fan of the president posted a message on the pro-Donald Trump website TheDonald.win. Inspired by the mob’s attempt to stop lawmakers from confirming President-elect Joe Biden’s electoral win, user CONN_WYNN said in an all-caps message, replete with an expletive, that it was “TIME TO LEAVE THE KEYBOARD” and “FIGHT FOR MY...COUNTRY.”

Before the Capitol attack, such a post may not have elicited a follow-up visit. But in the aftermath of the riot, which left five people dead, federal law enforcement agencies have intensified their scrutiny of extremist chatter online, activity that officials warn could be early warning signals of planned attacks around Biden’s inauguration in Washington on Jan. 20.“You don’t want to be the ones to have FBI agents knocking on your door at 6 a.m.,” Director Christopher Wray said on Thursday during a televised briefing with Vice President Mike Pence. “Anybody who plots or attempts violence in the coming week should count on a visit.”

Extremists seeking a politically motivated civil war and those seeking a race war “may exploit the aftermath of the Capitol breach by conducting attacks to destabilize and force a climactic conflict in the United States,” officials wrote in a joint bulletin issued on Wednesday by the National Counterterrorism Center and the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security and seen by Reuters

Once a cohort or society builds a hateful mindset, the hatred takes on a life of its own. Extremist ideology not only hurts a society's enemies, but also eventually attacks from within and harms the society from which it originated.

Consider how the kingdom of Saudi Arabia disseminated the Wahhabi sect's fundamentalist attitudes against Jews and Christians at home and abroad. It helped to fund the madrassas that fostered the extreme perspectives that eventually contributed to the September 11th terror attacks on New York and Washington.

The great irony is that his unbridled hatred had also prompted him to attack the Saudi kingdom, too. Bin Laden's extremist hunger was such that even the Saudi Wahhabis who helped inculcate his all-consuming intolerance could no longer prove pious enough in his eyes.

the state is looking at data from arrests and human intelligence that points to some outside influence seeking to capitalize on the situation and create unrest.

Trump and Barr have focused on Antifa, the FBI and other agencies are tracking groups from both the extremist right and left involved in the riots and attacks on police.

Those domestic extremist groups include anarchists, anti-government groups often associated with far-right extremists and white supremacy causes, and far-left extremists who identify with anti-fascist ideology.

The US Capitol is surrounded by fences and troops amid fear the January 6 riots could spark violence this weekend and leading up to Wednesday's inauguration. But experts worry the real threat may be what the attack unleashed for the long term.

In many messaging apps and boards, some are calling for a boycott of events this weekend and the inauguration. Michael Edison Hayden, the Southern Poverty Law Center senior investigative reporter and spokesperson, says high-profile names and podcasters Mike Peinovich and Nick Fuentes have told their followers not to go to rallies. The ADL says that White supremacist Peinovich, known as Mike Enoch, and the far-right Fuentes have been rallying voices of discontent for years.

They're also worried that the numbers of potentially violent extremists are growing. Social media giants banned President Donald Trump and others over fears their posts would continue to spark violence, which the experts said has led to a sympathetic and growing audience at risk of radicalization.

As Washington, D.C., and state capitals enact security measures, solo actors may pose a threat in coming weeks as extremist groups are advising followers to avoid large rallies but remain opposed to the incoming administration, according to people who track such groups.

Nonetheless, extremism watchdog groups and former law-enforcement officials say there is still a threat from lone-wolf extremists who are inspired by such groups. The far-right groups, which don’t accept the legitimacy of President-elect Joe Biden’s victory over President Trump, could become more aggressive in the coming months after security is lowered, the watchdogs and ex-officials said.

“These are people that honestly are intent on doing what it is they’re going to do under the cover of darkness. They’re going to do it in a way that people are not going to see them coming.”

They were there to "Stop the Steal" and to keep the President they revered in office, yet records show that some of the rioters who stormed the US Capitol did not vote in the very election they were protesting.

Federal authorities later identified Crowl, 50, as a member of a self-styled militia organization in his home state of Ohio and affiliated with the extremist group the Oath Keepers. His mother told CNN that he previously told her "they were going to overtake the government if they...tried to take Trump's presidency from him."

Despite these apparent pro-Trump views, a county election official in Ohio told CNN that he registered in 2013 but "never voted nor responded to any of our confirmation notices to keep him registered,

Weber, Taylor and Brimelow – all classified as “extremists” by the Southern Poverty Law Center – said Trump’s victory energised the far-right and that the movement can grow with or without White House help.

The young crowd that roared “Hail Trump” at last month’s gathering in Washington will fight for its beliefs no matter what, Brimelow said. “None of them were looking for jobs in the Trump administration. These are not party loyalists. They know they’re entirely outside the establishment consensus. And they’re used to guerrilla warfare.”

Asked about that weekend and his impact on the white supremacist movement, Trump told the New York Times: “I don’t want to energize the group, and I disavow the group ... But it’s not a group I want to energize, and if they are energized I want to look into it and find out why.”

Frustrated by the United States’ reluctance to sell Apaches, the Iraqis have turned to Russia, which delivered four MI-35 attack helicopters last month and planned to provide more than two dozen more. Meanwhile, cities and towns like Mosul, Haditha and Baquba that American forces fought to control during the 2007 and 2008 surge of American troops in Iraq have been the scene of bloody Qaeda attacks.

Using extortion and playing on Sunni grievances against Mr. Maliki’s Shiite-dominated government, the Qaeda affiliate is largely self-financing.

The terrorist group took advantage of the departure of American forces to rebuild its operations in Iraq and push into Syria.

Nazis rose to power in Germany in part because of dislocations caused by a mass-death pandemic a century ago,

the German political system reacted to the influenza pandemic that struck the world between 1918 and 1920.

A century ago, “influenza deaths themselves had a strong effect on the share of votes won by extremists, specifically the extremist national socialist party,

f the so-called Stop the Steal movement appeared to be chasing a lost cause once President Biden was inaugurated, its supporters among extremist organizations are now adopting a new agenda from the anti-vaccination campaign to try to undermine the government.

Bashing of the safety and efficacy of vaccines is occurring in chat rooms frequented by all manner of right-wing groups including the Proud Boys; the Boogaloo movement, a loose affiliation known for wanting to spark a second Civil War; and various paramilitary organizations.

One third of Republicans surveyed in a CBS News poll said that they would avoid getting vaccinated — compared with 10 percent of Democrats — and another 20 percent of Republicans said they were unsure. Other polls found similar trends.

The deadly breach at the Capitol last week will be a “significant driver of violence” for armed militia groups and racist extremists who are targeting the presidential inauguration next week, according to a joint intelligence bulletin issued by federal authorities.

The “boogaloo,” a movement that seeks to start a second civil war, and extremists aiming to trigger a race war “may exploit the aftermath of the Capitol breach by conducting attacks to destabilize and force a climactic conflict in the United States,”

The federal officials wrote that extremist groups have viewed the breach of the Capitol as a success and have been galvanized by the death of Ashli Babbitt, a QAnon follower who was shot by the police as she tried to enter the heavily protected Speaker’s Lobby, just outside the House chamber. The extremists could perceive that death as “an act of martyrdom,” according to the bulletin.

he civil war raging inside the GOP may look like a problem for the Republican Party, but it is much more. It is a flashing red light for the entire country, warning America that if it continues on this path, it will become a country without guardrails against extremist ideologies.

The First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech, and there's no prohibition against believing crazy ideas.

It's no wonder the venerable former Republican Sen. John Danforth said the GOP has become a "grotesque caricature" of what it used to be.