The New Rebranded American Militia Movement Building Clout and Profit on Social Media
A little over one week after the United States and Israel launched their war against Iran, U.S. Air Force veteran Eric Roscher uploaded a YouTube video centered on what he calls “very real concerns about terrorist sleeper cells and domestic threats” inside the United States.
Titled Credible DOMESTIC Threat? FBI Warns of Attack—Drills/Considerations for the Prepared Citizen, the video was produced by Roscher’s Florida-based company Barrel and Hatchet. The organization runs military-style training courses, sells branded apparel and tactical gear, and produces regular online content for its audience. In the clip, Roscher and his colleagues advise viewers to carry “extra ammo magazines” and a “truck gun,” while urging them to stay constantly alert to potential danger. Toward the end of the video, Roscher showcases a tactical vest available for purchase from one of the content’s sponsors.
The video, which is enrolled in YouTube’s monetization program and runs eight separate ad breaks, has accumulated more than 110,000 views to date. YouTube did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
While Barrel and Hatchet is not classified as an official militia, the company and Roscher are core players in a broad rebranding of the entire U.S. militia movement. Today’s iteration focuses far less on high-profile public confrontations at events like drag queen story hours, and far more on selling high-end weapons, rugged masculine apparel, and maintaining polished, curated Instagram feeds to attract new followers.
Influencers like Roscher produce professionally edited, slick content that is shared widely across militia networks on platforms such as Instagram. The content serves a dual purpose: promoting the movement’s ideology, and, critically, driving traffic to the influencers’ own online stores and paid training programs. In turn, local militia groups mimic Roscher’s model, posting their own photos and clips of weekend training exercises in rural woodlands, close-up shots of their camouflage gear and rifles, and slow-motion footage of live-fire drills. This back-and-forth exchange between local groups and the influencers/veterans they emulate marks a new era of American militia activity, where growing a social media following and earning online clout matters just as much as being able to hit a target from 300 yards away.
Roscher and these modern militia groups, which carry names like River Valley Minutemen and Mountain State Contingency Group, frame themselves as community-focused emergency response organizations that help ordinary citizens prepare to “weather the storm” — no matter what form that storm takes, or where it originates. They leverage real-world events like the war with Iran and ICE raids targeting immigrant communities to stoke public fear, then use that fear to recruit new members to their networks.
These influencers have filled a major gap in the shifting U.S. militia landscape, which has changed dramatically in recent years. After the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys largely collapsed in the wake of criminal prosecutions tied to the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, these new actors stepped into the resulting power vacuum. What emerged is a decentralized network of local groups and individual supporters who carry forward the ideology of the older movement, albeit through smaller, community-focused organizing.
“What used to be a national movement, led by large groups like the Oath Keepers and Three Percenters, has really shifted back to its local and regional roots,” says Travis McAdam, a senior analyst with the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) who tracks militias and anti-government extremist groups. “A lot of them have worked hard to reframe themselves as auxiliary emergency preparedness groups, and have put significant effort into reforming their reputation after January 6, now portraying themselves as ‘we’re just here to help our community.’”
This is a new era of militia recruitment and influence — and it is playing out right in the social media feeds of ordinary Americans.
The Militia Business
Dirty Civilian is a Tennessee-based influencer collective that describes itself as “prepared citizens inspiring and informing capable men to build strong families and resilient communities” ready to “weather the storms ahead.” The group never explicitly defines what these storms are, but in one Sunday YouTube video, Dirty Civilian outlined a scenario where a band of vigilantes takes it upon themselves to assassinate a person they believe is a pedophile.
The Dirty Civilian channel has nearly 750,000 subscribers, and the monetized video gained more than 100,000 views on YouTube in its first 24 hours. Multiple militia groups reposted the clip to their Instagram accounts shortly after it went live.
“It's almost like a tutorial or something,” one viewer commented under the video. “Food for thought at least.” Another commenter, using the acronym MAP for “minor-attracted person” (a term some online communities use to refer to pedophiles), wrote: “A show that could inspire the targeting of MAPs? FANTASTIC.”
Dirty Civilian also runs a Patreon with more than 420 members paying $5 per month for exclusive content, plus an online store where it sells branded merch and survival gear. The group did not respond to a request for comment.
These widespread online stores, while not a new innovation, are a core part of the militia influencer business ecosystem. “The founders and cofounders of these groups end up having a side hustle where they source gear and sell it to followers to make money,” says McAdam. “In some other cases, an actual legitimate small business is set up. In some cases, there’s a grift to it.”
What makes these militia-aligned influencers unique, however, is a growing distinct aesthetic that blends military culture with Instagram-friendly curation. “I've seen them get into long, repetitive debates over the right type of camo to use. Painting their guns to match their outfit. It's extremely aesthetic-focused, which also makes perfect sense for a recruitment strategy built on the internet. It needs to grab people’s attention,” Calum Farley, a research analyst at the SPLC’s Intelligence Project, tells WIRED.
A core part of the appeal of groups like Barrel and Hatchet and Dirty Civilian is that they are almost always led by military veterans, a credential that builds trust with followers. “All these guys worship American special forces,” Barrett Gay, a researcher with the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, tells WIRED. “So much of the expensive gear they're using is just because they saw a picture of a guy using it in Afghanistan or Iraq. So they think they have to use it too.”
The highly curated aesthetic of many of these groups reminds Gay of the Boogaloo Bois, a far-right militia movement that rose to prominence in 2020. “It's very similar aesthetically,” Gay says. “It's that same hyper-specific interest in gear and weapon systems.”
Both the influencers and the militias they inspire claim to be focused on preparedness and civic duty. But in reality, their core activities have not changed. “There hasn't been any change in the way they train and how they're preparing,” says McAdam. “You can tell a lot by what type of training a group is doing. And these guys aren't trying to figure out how to fill sandbags and stack them faster to prevent flooding. They're not out there training with chainsaws to be efficient at cutting and moving debris after a storm. They're still doing the same paramilitary training that they've always done.”
The Texas State Militia similarly claims to be serving its “community and teaching Texans the importance of self-reliance.” The group has also stated: “Our team stands ready to assist law enforcement and other entities when necessary.” It recently posted an AI-generated recruitment video on Facebook searching for a drone operator to join its team. The video lists topics covered in basic training for new applicants, with “weapons/tactics” ranked as the top item.
Militias and influencers have also leveraged widespread anti-immigrant anger across the U.S. to their advantage.
In January, a member of the American Patriots militia group on Facebook — whose profile picture reads “I love ICE raids” — shared a comment which read: “Personally I think we should put together militia’s [sic] to protect ICE.” The post was shared with WIRED by the Tech Transparency Project, a nonprofit that works to hold online platforms accountable for harmful content.
While some militia groups have urged their supporters to align with ICE, the deployment of ICE agents for raids has in many cases led to a surge of new recruits joining local groups.
Aaron Alexander, who runs the Florida Militia Coalition, tells WIRED that many new members of his group have been radicalized by recent ICE raids. “Whether it’s from the perspective of the U.S. government finally enforcing and going after immigration law breakers, or from the perspective of people seeing the show of force the government can deploy, it’s a stark reminder of the government’s raw strength,” Alexander says. He shared one text exchange with a new recruit who appears to reference the ICE raids as his reason for wanting to join. Alexander responded with a screenshot of Alex Garland’s film Civil War.
The new groups have also worked to structure their organizations on formal legal footing. The Texas State Militia, for example, has set up a nonprofit arm called Viking Tactical which provides “militia-style firearm training.” Last week, the River Valley Minutemen, a militia based in the Ohio River Valley, announced on its Instagram page that it had “officially filed for our 501c(4) non-profit status.” This designation allows the group to engage in political lobbying and does not require it to disclose its funding sources publicly.
“Blazing a new trail for the rest of us to follow, awesome stuff,” a supporter wrote in response to the announcement.
Recruitment and advertising for these groups still takes place on mainstream social media platforms. While platforms like Facebook purged militia groups from their networks in 2020, pushing activity to fringe platforms like Telegram and limiting their ability to organize and recruit new members, that landscape has shifted completely. In recent years, as social media companies have scaled back content moderation efforts, militias have returned to mainstream user feeds; WIRED reported last year that dozens of groups were openly recruiting new members on Facebook.
In recent months, militias have continued using Facebook to recruit new members, in many cases framing their groups as a casual “community” or “tribe” to attract followers. In one case, identified by the Tech Transparency Project and reviewed by WIRED, the Texas State Militia paid Facebook to run a promotional ad for the group on December 31, 2025.
Meta did not respond to a request for comment. When WIRED flagged more than 100 militia groups organizing on Facebook in 2024, Meta said it was “removing the groups and accounts that violate our policies,” adding: “This is an adversarial space, where actors constantly try to find new ways around our policies, which is why we keep investing heavily in people, technology, research, and partnerships to keep our platforms safe.”
The large national militia groups of five years ago may be gone for now. But for anyone interested in emulating their ideology, the next group is just one click away.
This is an edition of the Inner Loop newsletter. Read previous newsletters here.
