Who are the Three Percenters, the armed group Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear called out?
On May 2nd, a couple hundred people gathered outside the Kentucky Capitol to protest the restrictions Gov. Andy Beshear put in place to stem the spread of COVID-19. Around 20 minutes before the speaking was scheduled to begin, a group of about 20 men and women, dressed in camouflage with long guns draped over their shoulders and walkie-talkes attached to their hips, huddled underneath a couple of trees.
Some had bullet-proof vests, one had a helmet, all of them wore an orange arm band that held a piece of paper that said “Security” and had the roman numeral three underneath.
They were part of a group, or rather, a coalition of groups, called the Three Percenters.
Nearly a month later, a man wearing a similar arm-band put a rope around the neck of a dummy with Beshear’s face on it, looped the rope around a tree, and hanged Beshear in effigy on the Capitol grounds. On the back of the dummy were the words sic semper tyrannis, a latin phrase for “thus always to tyrants.”
On Tuesday, Beshear stood in the Capitol and denounced the “radical militia group” who stepped onto the porch of the governors mansion, openly carrying guns and called for him to come outside before hanging an effigy of him.
“This small group, of way less than three percent, is trying to bully everyone else into what they want us to do,” Beshear said. “I will not be afraid, I will not be bullied and I will not back down.”
According to the Sons of Liberty Three Percenters KY/IN, there are about 40 groups of Three Percenters in Kentucky.
There were three different groups who were doing “security for the speakers and attendees” at Sunday’s Second Amendment rally, according to the Sons of Liberty Group, which exchanged Facebook messages with the Lexington Herald-Leader. The group said they knew the people responsible for the hanging, but that they were “KY 3%” and not part of the Sons of Liberty.
“We only worked security for the speakers and attendees,” the group said. “We had already started leaving when the event took place.”
The Three Percenters — Original also denied they were involved in the display.
A man named Terry Bush was identified in photographs of the display by Reuters and the Courier Journal. On Tuesday, Neil Huffman Auto Group fired Bush from their Frankfort location, according to Boxcar Public Relations. On Facebook, Bush lists himself as the President of the Kentucky 3Percenters Inc. He lists his wife as Patsy Kays Bush, who identifies herself as the Secretary of the Kentucky 3Percenters Inc.
A woman by the same name and with the same title told the Courier Journal that the effigy was not her group’s idea and that her husband only helped hang it.
Neither Terry Bush nor Patsy Bush responded to Facebook messages from the Herald-Leader requesting comment.
Who are the three percenters?
According to the Anti-Defamation League, the Three Percenters were founded in 2008. They call themselves the three percenters because of a faulty historical claim that only three percent of the American colonists served in the continental army in the American Revolution. Both the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center list them as an anti-government group and militia.
Several of the groups deny being militias and anti-government. In the bylaws of the Three Percenters — Original, which were published in 2016, the group says they are not a militia and not anti-government, but that they are pro-government so long as it abides by the constitution and “doesn’t overstep its bounds.” The bylaws say they want to use “failsafes” put in place by the founders to “rein in overreaching government and push back against tyranny.”
“We do not seek to incite a revolution. However, we will defend ourselves when necessary,” the bylaws say. “We are not here to create violence. Violence should always be a last resort and even then should only be defensive in nature.”
Carolyn Gallaher, a professor at American University who studies right wing extremism in the United States and has studied the militia movement in Kentucky, said there’s really not a national militia group because their philosophy is rooted in local sovereignty.
“There isn’t one Three Percenters group,” Gallaher said. “I think of it as franchising without paying.”
Three Percenters — Original appears to be the most organized of the groups. They allow people to download and use their logo and have national officers, regional officers, state officers and “zone” or local level officers. The group said on their Facebook page that Bush “isn’t in our organization, nor ever was.”
Gallaher said she believes there’s some desire for it to be a national militia, but that there’s really no one at the top who is calling the shots for all of the groups.
“There’s not a whole lot of macro-level organization,” Gallaher said. “We’re actually kind of lucky the far-right doesn’t really get along.”
Other versions of the group, such as the Sons of Liberty, appear to abide by the same core values. In a Facebook post explaining who they are and pushing back against the “lies of the main stream media,” they say “they are everywhere, they are bankers, lawyers, teachers, police officers, judges, construction workers, men, husbands, brothers, sons, wives, mothers, daughters, and every single American who believes in Liberty, Life and the Pursuit of Happiness. We are ordinary everyday people who do not wish for war nor do we provoke it, but if war must come ‘It Will Be Welcomed.’”
What do they do?
According to the Three Percenters — Original, the groups have county-level meetings either weekly, biweekly or monthly and state meetings annually. One does not have to attend the meeting to be a member, but they should be active on the group’s Facebook page or forum.
Most of the Facebook posts on public Three Percenter pages seem to be right-wing memes. The most recent posts on the Three Percenters — Original Facebook page has been spreading conspiracy theories about mail-in voting. On the Sons of Liberty Facebook page, one of the more recent posts is a repurposed Family Circus comic that says “He said ‘new normal,’ so I knocked him on his little commie ass.”
Gallaher said the groups are organized, but “they’re not necessarily working every day as militia members.”
There are photos and videos of some of the groups doing various military-style training exercises. One video, from a Mississippi chapter of Three Percenters — Original, shows men in camouflage shooting in a dirt lot and is overlayed with soft-metal music.
The group also encourages all members to recruit people to the organization but discourages “loose cannons that are wanting to start a ‘Hard Power’ Revolution.”
Chapters of the group have also done “security” at events. In 2017, there were some groups of Three Percenters at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, but the chapters were eventually given a “stand down” order and encouraged not to attend white supremacist rallies.
“They see themselves as offering a service that either the state isn’t providing or that they feel they could provide better,” Gallaher said about the group serving as security.
Lately, there has been an activist bent to some of the chapters. In Kentucky, they’ve shown up to the May 2nd Freedom Rally and Sunday’s Second Amendment rally, where they were advocating for loosening the restrictions put in place to stem the spread of the coronavirus and fewer restrictions on guns (Kentuckians can already carry a gun openly or concealed without a permit).
They are typically armed and dressed in camouflage.
“They’ve been allowed to do this and they’re armed and they’re acting like a police force and no one has reined them in,” Gallaher said.
At the end of the Three Percenters — Original bylaws, they sign off with three words: Sic semper tyrannis.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article misspelled the Latin phrase sic semper tyrannis.
This story was originally published May 27, 2020 at 4:21 PM.
