WASHINGTON – After the 2020 presidential election, thousands of Donald Trump’s most ardent supporters heeded his call to join a “wild” protest against his defeat. In the wake of Trump’s lies about a stolen election, hundreds of them stormed the US Capitol under the banner of Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and other extremist groups and movements.

Many of these far-right networks have disbanded, disbanded or withdrawn from public view since the attack on January 6, 2021. But the specter of election-related chaos did not disappear with them. Political violence remains a persistent threat ahead of the Nov. 5 election, experts warn.

Election officials were inundated with threats, misinformation and the prospect of “election denial” organizations wreaking havoc. The FBI was investigating Monday after fires destroyed hundreds of ballots inside drop boxes in Portland, Ore., and near Vancouver, Washington.

Trump has used social media to promote violent conspiracy theories that have become staples of Republican politics. Many, including Trump himself, tried to cast the rioters in the Capitol as 1776-style patriots and political prisoners. Trump also promised to use the military to go after the “enemies within.”

Four years ago, most of Trump’s supporters in the mob had no criminal record or any group affiliation other than their shared loyalty to a president who urged them to “fight like hell.” This helps explain why it can be difficult for authorities to identify and prevent threats.

“It only takes one person to do a lot of damage,” said American University professor Kurt Braddock, who studies extremism.

Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, said the extremists she monitors don’t seem fixated on this year’s election — at least in their public online discussions. Many likely learned a lesson from the Capitol defendants who flooded social media with self-incriminating posts before, during and after the siege.

“We have no idea if anything is going on in the encrypted chats,” she added.

During this election cycle, Trump and his allies have stoked anti-LGBTQ and anti-immigrant rhetoric in a way that galvanizes extremists, experts say. After January 6th, the Proud Boys staged protests at drag queen story classes. More recently, Springfield, Ohio has been overwhelmed by fake bomb threats after Trump and running mate JD Vance amplified false and xenophobic rumors about Haitian immigrants in the city.

All kinds of far-right conspiracy theories are spreading virtually unchecked on mainstream platforms, including a firestorm of lies about the federal government’s response to hurricane-ravaged North Carolina, a swing state.

Trump and his allies often use his rallies as a platform to spew racism and xenophobia, including one Sunday at New York’s Madison Square Garden that drew comparisons to a pro-Nazi rally in 1939. Vice President Kamala Harris said that believes Trump is a fascist after his former chief of staff, John Kelly, said the former president praised Adolf Hitler while in office.

Trump was hit in the ear by gunfire during one of two assassination attempts against him this year. He accused Democrats of fostering a volatile political climate, accusing it of being a threat to democracy.

Beirich said it could be difficult for authorities to curtail election-related threats “because it can happen all over the country.” She and other experts fear extremists will try to disrupt the vote count, possibly in battleground states.

“It feels a bit like the calm before the storm,” she said.

Extremism experts are not alone in their fears: About 4 in 10 registered voters say they are “extremely” or “very” worried about violent attempts to overturn next month’s election results, according to a new Associated Press-NORC poll . Public Affairs Research Center.

Of the more than 1,500 defendants charged in the Jan. 6 attack, more than 200 have been linked to extremist groups or movements by federal authorities, according to an Associated Press review of court records.

This includes about 80 leaders, members or associates of the far-right Proud Boys and more than 30 defendants linked to the anti-government Oath Keepers. Other groups, including the Groyper movement, have had smaller numbers of followers charged in federal court.

Four years ago, Trump told the proud boys to “stand back and stand by” during his first debate against Democrat Joe Biden. Group leaders celebrated Trump’s rallying cry and eagerly joined the fray when Trump invited supporters to Washington for his “Stop the Steal” rally.

Today, some of the top leaders of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers are serving prison terms of up to 22 years for violent plots to stop the peaceful transfer of presidential power from Trump to Biden.

The imprisonment of the groups’ national leaders left a void. For the Proud Boys, that has been partially supplemented by local chapters that consider themselves autonomous and tend to promote more extreme ideologies, said Jared Holt, a senior research analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, which tracks online hate.

“Their organizational capabilities are greatly diminished from where they were in 2020,” Holt said. “There is always the possibility that, in a post-election period, these groups will suddenly find the motivation to mobilize and start showing up at events. But they’ve been pretty docile this year.”

The Oath Keepers, which Yale Law School-educated Stewart Rhodes founded in 2009, has withered since his arrest and incarceration.

“He was his baby and no one really stepped in to fill his void,” Holt said.

Dozens of rioters in the Capitol were followers of the anti-government Three Percenters movement or belonged to militia groups with names such as the Gray Ghost Partisan Rangers, the Southern Indiana Patriots and the Patriot Boys of North Texas. The government’s response on January 6 appears to have put a “huge hurdle” on the militias, Beirich said.

“I’m not going away,” she said. “It may appear elsewhere, but I have to say: the militias of the last year have been relatively inactive compared to previous eras.”

Many other rioters on January 6 were inspired by QAnon, which centered on the baseless belief that Trump was secretly fighting a Satan-worshiping cabal and child sex trafficking of prominent Democrats and Hollywood elites. The self-described “QAnon Shaman” remains one of the most recognizable figures in the uprising.

Mike Rothschild, author of “The Storm Is Upon Us: How QAnon Became a Movement, Cult, and Conspiracy Theory of Everything,” said the QAnon movement has evolved beyond its bizarre network of “riddles and codes.”

Twitter, Facebook and YouTube cracked down on QAnon after January 6, driving believers to platforms like Telegram or Trump’s Truth Social. Rothschild said many of them returned to Twitter, now called X, after Elon Musk bought it. He believes that QAnon followers remain “extremely dangerous.”

“They’ve had four years to develop their anger and resentment,” he said.