The UFC event at the White House was the perfect target for a terrorist attack: America’s elite gathered for hours around a small outdoor octagon. A chaotic, crowded city center. Lots of cops and soldiers, sure – but there’s little protection against a fast, deadly drone. As I sat at the event last weekend, I half expected something to go wrong. We seemed like living targets in a country that was heating up with political violence at every corner.
Earlier this week, the FBI said it had foiled just such a plot. On Tuesday, the Justice Department charged five people with various offenses related to a planned attack on the UFC event. Secret Service agents said the plot could be ongoing and that other suspects could still be at large – but FBI Director Kash Patel rushed forward and announced the arrests without their knowledge.
Federal authorities accuse at least five men of planning to attack the UFC event at the White House with a combination of explosives-laden drones and rifles – setting up shooting positions in downtown Washington, DC, to target fleeing civilians. It is unclear whether the suspects would actually have been able to carry out such a plan. But the political moment that drove them to such an extreme violent fantasy is very real – according to an extremism expert. And the next plot to use drones and explosives against a political target could be far less botched.
Drones as a new threat
“Mass shootings will always be part of mass violence in the United States — but the drone element is coming,” Joshua Fisher-Birch, a researcher at the Counter Extremism Project, tells ROLLING STONE. Fisher-Birch specializes in monitoring and analyzing online posts by extremists, evaluating trends and predicting where violence might come from next.
Justice Department documents describe a 19-year-old named Tycen Proper as one of the group’s key members, who had amassed weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition. Proper and the more “serious” members of the group shifted their communications to an encrypted messaging app, through which they discussed an attack with explosives-laden drones and the establishment of sniper positions near the event. According to ESPN, Proper was hospitalized on June 10, a few days before the event, after his mother called the police out of concern for him. Other suspected members of the group, including Californians Bryan Roa and Michael Thomas, were arrested after the Justice Department searched their homes on June 13. Fox News reported that another alleged member, Abraham Alvarez, was a foreign citizen and a beneficiary of the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
The biggest open question in the investigation is what exactly motivated the men to act – or at least to try. Some of the case’s most revealing details come from an interview investigators conducted with Proper’s mother, who initially reported her son out of concern for him. According to court documents, she said her son “expressed ultra-religious and anti-government views, citing specific abuses such as government corruption, the handling of the Epstein files, data centers that deprive communities of water, and other government actions.”
Anti-Semitism as a unifying element
Other evidence suggests even darker motives. According to The Washington Post, investigators were also informed by family members that Proper had posted anti-Semitic comments online. His co-conspirators shared similar views, spread common conspiracy theories about Jewish influence in the American government and, in some cases, praised Adolf Hitler.
Right-wing extremist, anti-government ideas exist in many different currents and varieties. Fisher-Birch says, as far as he can tell, the UFC plot does not have all the hallmarks of an “accelerationist” plan – that is, one planned by forces aimed at the total collapse of state and society.
“The ideology itself is a little fuzzy at this point,” Fisher-Birch says. “I see a mixture of different narratives.”
Trump’s war and its consequences
Anti-Semitism, says Fisher-Birch, appears to be one of the unifying elements among those involved in the current plot. Trump’s war on Iran has further fueled anti-Israel sentiment in the US and further radicalized extremist movements and conspiracy theorists – groups that have long tried to link widespread anti-Semitic worldviews with the US political relationship with Israel.
“Much of this is based on decades of conspiracy theories surrounding what is perceived as the stripping of the sovereignty of the American people,” Fisher-Birch said.
These extremists are not directly affiliated with a mainstream political movement – but for those on the right-wing edge of the spectrum, Trump’s presidency is a deeply polarizing era.
“Zion Don” and the feeling of betrayal
“There’s this aspect of betrayal because people have said, ‘We thought Donald Trump was going to stand up for the white men in this country, and he didn’t – he sold us out to the Jews,'” Fisher-Birch says. “The term they use for it is ‘Zion Don’.”
Still, Fisher-Birch admits, “If Democrats were in power, they would serve some of these narratives the same way — just with slightly different terminology.”
The failed plot is, in other words, a significant data point in what could become a devastating trend in American politics. Social polarization and a confluence of conspiracy theories surrounding many intersecting aspects of American life—anti-Semitism, foreign policy, data centers, economics, immigration—provide domestic terrorists with countless opportunities to recruit and mobilize followers. The choice of weapons is also important: The USA has not yet experienced a serious domestic terrorist attack using commercially available small drones – but that is almost certainly only a matter of time. The Guardian reported last year that more domestic extremist groups were considering using drones to carry out planned attacks.
Drones as a weapon of the future
“Extremist groups that want to commit violence will always look for ways to increase their lethality,” Fisher-Birch said. “Can you only imagine the headlines a drone attack would make?”
And while the UFC plot may not be linked to explicitly accelerationist thought, Fisher-Birch emphasizes that accelerationist philosophies will not disappear – even after the end of the Trump administration – because such movements recruit best in times of liberal governments.
The plot against the UFC White House event may have been foiled, but the conditions that spawned it remain.