Thread by @latimes

The day before a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol, a band of radicals from Orange County shared a Washington, D.C. stage with the architects of the “Stop the Steal” campaign.

It marked the culmination of a year of right-wing protests.

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At a rally, one radical invoked “biblical war,” another the “shedding of blood.” A third called on those preparing to march on the Capitol the next day to let “the vipers” in Congress hear the “rage of the American people.” A fourth advocated violence.

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Three of the four Orange County radicals joined mobs storming the U.S. Capitol.

A month later, the FBI searched the homes of two of them, employing a SWAT team during the raid on one. Neither has been arrested or charged.

These affluent suburbanites illustrate the resurgence of right-wing extremism in Orange County at a time when major demographic shifts have turned the region from a deep-red bastion into a more racially and politically diverse community.

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Orange County has long been a megaphone for the extremes of conservatism, recognized by one historian as the “cutting edge” of the New Right.

But the county has experienced a remarkable demographic shift in the last two decades, that has helped tilt the area toward Democrats.

Conservative bastions like Ladera Ranch, San Clemente and Huntington Beach, are now islands surrounded by growing liberalism and racial diversity.

Such demographic shifts are the strongest predictors of increases in political extremism and hate crimes, according to experts.

Chapman University sociologist Peter Simi, who has spent two decades in the region mapping political extremism and hate, said Orange County’s far-right has moved to even more extremes.

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The result is one of the most concentrated sources of hate speech and right-wing extremism in the United States, sociologist Peter Simi said.

“There’s no doubt, Orange County is among the top of the list,” he said.

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