Marching Into Crosshairs
As 'No Kings' rallies approach, violent rhetoric and state threats converge. Protesters, beware and prepare.
This weekend, tens of thousands of Americans plan to take to the streets in over 2,000 cities for the “No Kings” rallies mass, decentralized protests against Donald Trump’s escalating authoritarianism and his lavish, taxpayer-funded military parade in Washington, D.C.
But as the movement builds, so does the threat against it. What’s emerging is not just a story of protest and dissent, but a cautionary tale of real-time danger.
Let’s start in Brevard County, Florida, where Sheriff Wayne Ivey issued a bone-chilling statement ahead of anticipated demonstrations:
“If you throw a brick, if you throw a firebomb, if you point a gun at one of my deputies we will kill you graveyard dead.”
There was no clarification, no remorse. The sheriff broadcast this promise to the public like a campaign slogan. This is an open threat. It casts protesters not as citizens exercising their constitutional rights but as enemies to be eradicated. The threat isn’t veiled, it’s a crosshair.
Perhaps even more alarming is what’s happening beyond the sheriff’s mic, in the digital trenches of far-right extremist organizing.
According to a Wall Street Journal investigation, Proud Boys and other militant groups are openly preparing for violence in response to the “No Kings” protests. They’re not just talking, they’re mapping out plans.
One meme on Telegram reads: “Shoot a couple, the rest will go home.”
Another suggests impaling protesters as a deterrent.
A third offers gun tutorials and “riot season” shooting strategies, complete with diagrams.
These are not fringe actors. These are large networks with hundreds of thousands of followers on Telegram, X, and Truth Social. The WSJ verified that these accounts are sharing:
Protest locations
Organizer identities (names, images, employers)
Calls for armed retaliation
White nationalist propaganda about immigration
And here’s the gut punch: Some of the same memes that originated in far-right chats were amplified this week by the official White House Instagram account, retweeted by Stephen Miller, and echoed by the Department of Homeland Security.
When reporters asked about this dangerous overlap, a DHS spokesperson responded:
“Every American citizen should support federal law enforcement in their just effort to deport criminal illegal alien invaders from our country.”
This is stochastic terrorism with a federal stamp of approval. It’s an information ecosystem where vigilante fantasies, white nationalism, and executive power converge into real-world violence.
Former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, convicted for orchestrating the January 6 attack and recently pardoned by Trump, is now promoting a crypto platform called ICERAID. It offers digital rewards for snitching on undocumented immigrants. It’s border surveillance as bounty hunting, dressed up in Silicon Valley-speak.
The company’s website frames the current protests as “insurrections” and calls on citizens to “collaborate” with federal agents. This is the landscape that “No Kings” protesters are walking into.
As Kathleen Blee, a sociologist who’s tracked these movements for 40 years, put it:
“It’s by far the worst. It’s scarily the worst. It’s flashing red.”
So what should you do if you’re planning to join a protest this weekend?
Know your rights and your local laws.
Document everything, use encrypted apps, set up emergency check-ins.
Travel in groups, stay alert, and know your exits.
Avoid counter-engagement with agitators. Their goal is escalation.
Expect infiltration, online and off. Assume you’re being watched.
And above all: don’t be naive about the risks. This is not 2017. The tactics, and the stakes have evolved.
March, yes. But march with your eyes open.