DEWEY-HUMBOLDT, Ariz. — The meeting of 19 or so Arizonans in a squat Baptist church to discuss their preparedness for society’s possible collapse was just one event in Mike Fendt’s weekly schedule.
In that first week of October, he had decorated a road-facing trailer near his home north of Phoenix with posters supporting former President Donald Trump. On the weekend, he tentatively planned to shoot at targets in the high desert with a local militia group.
Fendt, who is about 60, is a member of the Dewey-Humboldt prepper group, based outside of Prescott, Arizona. For the weekly Thursday gathering of “preppers,” he wore a MAGA Strong shirt that featured Trump pumping his fist in the air after he was grazed by a would-be assassin’s bullet during a July rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
With a 9 mm pistol made by Turkish company Tisas strapped to his hip, Fendt listened as Josh Rozum, a co-leader of the preppers, guided the group in prayer. Rozum asked for God’s help in navigating ongoing natural and human-made crises: Hurricane Helene; a dock strike on the East and West coasts; and the conflict in Israel, the Gaza Strip and Lebanon. And he included one event that had yet to happen: the presidential election. They wanted things to go smoothly.
The violent rhetoric and misinformation that has increasingly fueled political discourse has become so embedded in society that some Americans ask when — not if — another Jan. 6, 2021-like riot at the Capitol will happen. At one extreme, the Proud Boys, a far-right organization that was instrumental in the Capitol attack, have been organizing to question the credibility of the presidential election, interfere with voting and potentially disrupt the outcome, a New York Times analysis found.
The tension is palpable in Arizona. A postal collection box containing ballots was recently set on fire, and a Democratic Party field office was shot multiple times.
Fendt, who used to work with a leasing company in California but now bounces between Michigan and Arizona, plans to add some friction to Election Day by driving with his girlfriend to Phoenix, the state capital, about 75 miles south of Prescott. “Phoenix is a hateful place,” Fendt said, referring to Democratic voters there.
His truck, he said, would brandish Trump flags. Although he seems to enjoy poking Democrats, Fendt made it clear, politely but firmly, that he had no plans for any type of violent activity.
‘Know how to fight back’
The Dewey preppers group is based in Yavapai County, a Republican bastion among rugged wilderness and sprawling public land in the deserts and valleys north of Phoenix.
The group, which has scheduled upcoming Thursday meetings on topics including candle-making, knot-tying, food preservation and “redneck engineering,” has an unusual connection to the potential for electoral turmoil as ballots are cast and the outcome unfolds.
On its face, the preppers primarily trade tips on preparing for the worst, such as the breakdown of society or a foreign invasion. “Whoever comes over the hill,” Rozum said, describing what they could one day face.
But some of the members, like Fendt, are Trump supporters who also participate in militia and well-armed neighborhood patrols in the county, the kind that have formed across the United States in recent years, experts say.
Fendt is a member of the Yavapai County Preparedness Team, which is an outgrowth of the Oath Keepers, an anti-government militia that was also involved in the attack on the Capitol.
The preparedness team, led by Jim Arroyo, an Army veteran, started with a handful of people in 2014, according to the group’s website, and now has more than 100 participants spread across the county. One arm of the team is devoted to security, which the website stresses is for training as a unit. “You need to know how to fight back as a team and how to form up a neighborhood watch to protect yourselves and each other,” the site says.
The Yavapai County Preparedness Team and the Dewey preppers share communication plans, such as radio channels, kept in reference binders.
In 2022, the Yavapai County Preparedness Team, Arroyo and other groups were sued by the League of Women Voters, which accused them of “an escalating scheme of voter intimidation and harassment in Arizona,” which included disinformation, intimidating voters at ballot drop boxes and “baselessly accusing them — either directly or indirectly — of committing voter fraud.” The case was dismissed after the group pledged to stand down their operations.
For the past several years, Arizona has been a center of efforts by national right-wing activists intent on disrupting voting as a means of preserving election integrity and has been inundated with false claims circulated by local politicians.
“I’m concerned about violence no matter which way the election goes,” said state Sen. Ken Bennett, a Republican.
‘There’s two Americas’
On Friday, the day after the Dewey preppers met, Fendt, unarmed, stood on a street corner near the Yavapai County courthouse in Prescott, a roughly 25-minute drive from Dewey-Humboldt, with his gigantic Trump 2024 flag.
It had become a weekly tradition. Fendt and a handful of people — from the anti-government groups and random MAGA supporters — gathered to wave pro-Trump flags from 5 to 7 p.m. each Friday. It was less about trying to sway voters — Prescott is a heavily Republican town — than about showing another way of planting their own flag.
A 64-year-old woman named Caroline, who declined to give her last name, told a passerby that the election was their last chance. She did not explain further but wore a sign draped around her neck that read “Trump = World Peace” and “Democrats = World War III.”
After a group of college-age men and women walked by yelling expletives at the flag bearers, Fendt chuckled that he and his group were “triggering the libs.” Caroline said the people walking were all brainwashed by mainstream media.
Fendt said quietly that he used to think another civil war was possible but then stopped, leaving the thought unfinished. A man on an aging, deafening motorcycle pulled up and wanted his picture taken next to Caroline’s World War III poster and the Trump flags.
“It seems like there’s two Americas now,” Fendt said, before walking into the frame.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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