Bill Berkowitz for BuzzFlash: Ammon Bundy’s "People’s Rights," a Growing Group of Far Right Armed Foot Soldiers
February 15, 2021
Ammon Bundy is starting a new paramilitary national movement. (DonkeyHotey)
By Bill Berkowitz
He’s not someone you would readily recognize, but he’s becoming a significant player in the crowded field of armed white supremacists and COVID-19 deniers. In late January, Ammon Bundy led a militia group called Patriot’s Rights in an effort to remove Gayle Meyer, a 74-year-old women from The Legacy Salmon Creek Medical Center in Vancouver, Washington. Bundy’s group had been called by Meyer’s daughter Satin, “an anti-mask activist licensed as her caregiver, [who] had summoned the demonstrators, foot soldiers in a rapidly expanding network called People’s Rights,” The Los Angeles Times’ Richard Read reported.
According to The Seattle Times, the Sheriff's Office said in a statement Saturday that the patient … had refused a COVID test and had been "placed in 24-hour quarantine for protection while receiving medical treatment." In a video, “people in the crowd said the patient was being treated with fluids and prescribed antibiotics for a urinary tract infection. They said the patient had had a brain tumor and was easily confused and needed support from her daughter, who they said held medical power of attorney.
“The Sheriff's Office stated that the patient told a deputy earlier Friday ‘that she wished to remain in the hospital in order to receive treatment,’ but at nearly 8 p.m. requested to leave. She was released about 45 minutes later and the crowd dissipated, according to the Sheriff's Office.
“United Neighbors to Defend Their Families, Faith, Freedom and Future,” reads the masthead at the Bundy-founded People’s Rights website. “With the tap of a thumb on a smartphone, members can call a militia like they’d call an Uber and stage a protest within minutes,” Read wrote.
Ammon Bundy, the leader of Patriot’s Rights is the son of Cliven Bundy, who became a hero to extreme libertarians in the West when he stopped paying grazing fees in 1993, claiming that his family had ancestral rights to run its cattle on public land and that the government’s ownership claims violated the Constitution.
According to The Los Angeles Times’ Read, “ the organization has attracted tens of thousands of members and sponsored more than 50 demonstrations across the country, dispatching gun-toting activists to the homes of politicians, health agency managers and even a police officer who had arrested a protester.“
Read added that: “Experts who track extremists say that the network has significant overlap with white supremacist groups and other far-right organizations and that it has whipped up paranoia and rage, risking lives of hospital workers, health officers, politicians and others in the crosshairs.“
In 2016, Ammon Bundy led an armed 41-day standoff against federal agents at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Eastern Oregon; a jury acquitted him. The following year, a judge in Nevada declared a mistrial in a separate case involving an armed standoff near the family's Nevada ranch.
Devin Burghart, executive director of the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, told The Los Angeles Times’ Read that “We have the potential for multiple Malheurs in multiple states, in that at any moment they could bring hardened far-right activists, often heavily armed, into any one event.”
A report by IREHR and the Montana Human Rights Network titled “Ammon’s Army: Inside the Far Right “People’s Rights Network,” found that the group has grown significantly over the past several months, and may have as many as 20,000 members across the country.
“Ammon’s Army” revealed that, “The leadership of the People’s Rights network has remained hidden, locked away inside a new online platform away from public scrutiny, until now. Under the People’s Rights banner, Bundy has assembled a team of 153 ‘assistants’ in sixteen states.”
The report names all 153 of those activists and examines their backgrounds–including extensive far-right activism by many area assistants. Though the national and state leadership is still dominated by men, this report also documents how People’s Rights has a majority of women in local leadership positions—“a first for modern far-right networks”
The IREHR/MHRN study points out that “Instead of a more traditional ‘anti-government’ narrative, People’s Rights leaders have expressed a desire for governmental power to be used to protect the ‘righteous’ against ‘wicked’ liberals, antifa, Black Lives Matter activists, and others. Several People’s Rights leaders are running for elected office—to become the government. Absent that sort of intervention, leaders have proposed a type of armed enclave-style ‘neighborhood’ nationalism, where ‘righteous‘ neighbors stand against the ‘wicked.’ People’s Rights leaders have often defined the ‘wicked’ using far-right conspiracism, racism, anti-Semitism, anti-indigenous, and anti-transgender sentiment.”
In August 2020, Ammon Bundy was “arrested for a second time in two days at the Idaho State Capitol. … less than 24 hours after he was hauled out of the building Tuesday and charged with trespassing and resisting and obstructing officers,” NPR reported. Bundy was opposing any legislation related to the coronavirus. “At times,“ according to the NPR report “far-right demonstrators, some armed and unmasked, pushed past state troopers to enter a legislative chamber.”
NPR reported that, “Bundy and other members of the far-right Patriot Movement have been protesting various coronavirus-related health measures — such as mask mandates — across the Northwest since the pandemic began in March. Extremist group monitors have said the virus has breathed new life into their cause that had been dying down in some parts of the country. In Idaho, several elected leaders have enthusiastically supported Bundy and his followers.”
People’s Rights rose out of the COVID-19 pandemic, but the Ammon Bundy-founded group’s tentacles reach deep into conspiracist circles. Bundy, who became a local household name after the standoff at his father’s ranch, and again in early 2016, has, according to Harrison Berry’s late-January report in the Boise Weekly, “disavowed the militia movement and been vocal in his support of the Black Lives Matter movement on the grounds that he believes law enforcement is far more dangerous than BLM. His opposition to public health mandates during the coronavirus pandemic have aroused public ire: In 2020, he compared those mandates to the Holocaust.”
Currently, People’s Rights appears to be experiencing quite a growth spurt. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, several People’s Rights members “are running for office in an attempt to ‘become’ the government.” Stay tuned.
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