Abstract
Leader-follower and intra-group dynamics are analyzed for two large groups who participated in the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol building. Psychotic, projective and introjective defenses are seen to have increasingly developed within these groups in the months leading up to the Insurrection. These were amplified by three incendiary forces: escalating feelings of victimization, an undermining of a sense of truth and of trust in the national government, and an amplification of false messages by social media barrages. This exploration uses as data the multiple reports of journalists who witnessed the Capitol uprising or who conducted individual interviews with group members, as well as reports from the U.S. Department of Justice.