Are far-right groups taking over small-town America?

Sasha Abramsky, author of “Chaos Comes Calling: The Battle Against the Far-Right Takeover of Small-Town America,” discusses his new book as he investigates the growing extremism in the U.S.

In his book, Abramsky narrates the parallel stories of two pivotal communities: Shasta County, California, and Sequim, Washington.

These communities, home to alliances of QAnon followers, anti-vaxxers, Christian nationalists, and far-right militia supporters, were not just denying elections but also attempting to control the local governments, according to Abramsky.

ABC News sat down with Abramsky as he discussed more on what is happening in small town America.

ABC NEWS: In a new ABC News Ipsos poll out today, 17% of adults polled said they are not prepared to accept the outcome of November’s presidential election, and twice that number — 34% — still don’t believe President Biden legitimately won in 2020. Many members of groups like the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys also sought to deny the 2020 results, which ultimately led to the shocking events of January 6.

In his new book, “Chaos Comes Calling,” Sasha Abramsky, a correspondent for The Nation magazine, tells the parallel stories of two communities: Shasta County, California, and Sequim, Washington, where alliances of QAnoners, anti-vaxxers, Christian nationalists and far-right militia supporters sought not just to deny elections, but to actually control the local governments.

Sasha joins us now. Sasha, thank you so much for joining us here on ABC News Live. Many local officials during the pandemic had to first fend off COVID deniers and then election deniers. Did you see any of that in Shasta County, California, and Sequim, Washington? Is that why you focused on those cities?

ABRAMSKY: Absolutely. What happened in Sequim was a mayor, William Armacost, got elected explicitly on a QAnon platform, and he began using official radio broadcasts and official city time to basically promote QAnon and to oppose public health officials to oppose the idea of vaccines, to oppose the idea of mask mandates, and so on. The same thing happened in Shasta County, but in an even more extreme way.

In Shasta County, which has long been a Republican stronghold, the moderate Republican chairman of the Board of Supervisors, a man called Leonard Moti, was driven out in a recall election, basically by people who were siding with the most extreme anti-vaxxers, the most extreme people against public health mandates. And what happened in both of those places were very, very real on-the-ground consequences.

Both of the public health officials in those two counties had lynch mobs outside their offices, people calling for them to be hung, young men in pickup trucks patrolling their neighborhoods, looking for them at night to attack them. These are public officials trying to keep the community safe. But with this sort of informal backing of this political alliance of extremists, you ended up seeing these public health officials basically fearful for their lives.

ABC NEWS: Yeah, it was certainly a dangerous time. Sequim, Washington, though, ultimately returned to a more rational form of governance. What went right there?

ABRAMSKY: Yeah, what went right was a whole bunch of people, not just left wingers, not just liberals, but a whole bunch of people on all sides of the political spectrum looked at the chaos and they said, look, this just isn’t going to hold any more. We elect local government, we elect mayors, we elect county board of supervisors to get the job done, to keep road potholes filled, to make sure that kids have after-school programs, just basic things to keep community functioning.

And so a cross-ideological alliance formed. It was called the Sequim Good Governance League. And they basically said, look, we’ve become a laughingstock. This is so dysfunctional. We got to find a way around it. And they fielded the candidates. They fielded the candidates under the good Governance League mandate, and they fielded them for the mayor, for the city council, for local school boards and so on. And over two election cycles, the Sequim Good Governor’s League essentially recaptured the leave us a local government.

ABC NEWS: You spoke with a lot of members of these groups, like the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys. You did a lot of research on this, of course, and also spoke with people who are part of those that subscribe to right-wing ideologies. So what does the public still not understand about what motivates them? 

ABRAMSKY: You know, I spend a lot of time. I spent nearly two years on this book, and one thing I didn’t want to do was caricature people. Because people have viewpoints. You’ve got to understand where those ideologies come from and where those worldviews come from. They’ve been told by Trump, it’s my way or the highway. They’ve been told by Trump if they lose an election it’s because the election has been stolen.

And because there’s this sort of multifarious conspiracy against them, and one of the problems we have is not just an American problem, it’s a global problem at the moment, is that the way we absorb news has been fractured. We used to have newspapers that we trusted, but nobody reads newspapers anymore. We used to have sort of big networks, TV networks that we trusted. Well, an increasing number of people instead turned to these very ideological cable channels, or they turned to social media for rumors.

They get their news from Facebook or from X, or from TikTok, or from any of these other social media sites that don’t really vet for accuracy. And I think that’s a huge problem.

And unless we find a way A: to reestablish media literacy and B: to hold social media companies accountable when they spread deliberate and, oftentimes, violent disinformation, where it’s going to be harder and harder and harder for democracy to function because democracy relies on information.

ABC NEWS: Absolutely. So much to dive into, especially looking at the past four to eight years. And you do that in your book, looking into right-wing media, specifically social media, and of course, what’s stoking political divisions and conspiracies.

Thank you so much for your time, Sasha. Really appreciate it. Sasha Abramsky’s new book, “Chaos Comes Calling: The Battle Against the Far-Right Takeover of Small-Town America,” will be released this coming Tuesday [Sept. 3].