Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.

For The Record  

FTR #1003 School Shootings and Fascist Groups, Part 2

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This broad­cast was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

Intro­duc­tion: Pub­lic schools and pub­lic edu­ca­tion are, and for many years have been, the focal point of right-wing activ­i­ty. From dis­sat­is­fac­tion over man­dat­ed school deseg­re­ga­tion to oppo­si­tion to the judi­cial ban on prayer in pub­lic schools to the present-day dra­con­ian slash­ing of pub­lic edu­ca­tion budges, the right has attacked the pub­lic edu­ca­tion. At the same time, the right has pro­mot­ed the use of pub­lic funds for parochial schools and home school­ing as alter­na­tives to pub­lic edu­ca­tion.

The for­ma­tive expe­ri­ence of pub­lic school atten­dance might well be viewed as fun­da­men­tal to young peo­ples’ social­iza­tion process–learning to share, acquir­ing tol­er­ance for those of dif­fer­ent back­grounds and learn­ing the basics of civic life  in Amer­i­ca.

Pub­lic schools have also come under attack–quite literally–from armed fas­cists.

This is the sec­ond pro­gram deal­ing with school shoot­ings and the role fas­cist groups play in the devel­op­ment of such inci­dents. The broad­cast begins with a brief sum­ma­ry and recap of key points of dis­cus­sion from FTR #1002They include:

  1. Patrick Pur­dy’s appar­ent links to Aryan Nations.
  2. Pur­dy’s anti-Asian xeno­pho­bia, deem­ing that Amer­i­cans were being edged out in their own home­land.
  3. The Order’s attempts at devel­op­ing mind con­trol tech­niques.
  4. Pur­dy’s involve­ment with the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church.
  5. The pro­found effect of school shoot­ings on both par­ents and stu­dents of affect­ed insti­tu­tions. School shoot­ings fun­da­men­tal­ly under­mine peo­ples’ sense of com­fort and cre­ate an anx­i­ety con­ducive to the imple­men­ta­tion of total­i­tar­i­an­ism.
  6. The pro­vi­sion of Oliv­er North’s mar­tial law con­tin­gency plans to use para­mil­i­tary right-wingers as fed­er­al deputies.

Dis­cus­sion pro­ceeds to the Flori­da high school shoot­ing. Mort Sahl’s obser­va­tion decades ago that “A lib­er­al’s idea of courage is eat­ing at a restau­rant that has­n’t been reviewed yet” is exem­pli­fied by jour­nal­ists’ retrac­tion of the sto­ry of Park­land, Flori­da shoot­er Niko­las Cruz being affil­i­at­ed with the ROF because of what might be termed “reverse trolling.” A post on a chat group about the Cruz/ROF link was deemed to be false. Jor­dan Jereb told jour­nal­ists that Cruz was a mem­ber of his group, but that he had­n’t seen him in a long time. He has been said to be “walk­ing that back.” Just HOW does one “walk that back?” ” . . . . The ADL said ROF leader Jor­dan Jereb told them Cruz was asso­ci­at­ed with his group. Jereb, who is based in Tal­la­has­see, said Cruz was brought into the group by anoth­er mem­ber and had par­tic­i­pat­ed in one or more ROF train­ing exer­cis­es in the Tal­la­has­see area, the ADL said. . . . Jereb told the ADL that ROF had not ordered Cruz to take any such action. He told ABC News he has not spo­ken to Cruz in ‘some time’ but said ‘he knew he would get­ting this call.’ . . . .”  Jereb told the ADL that ROF had not ordered Cruz to take any such action. He told ABC News he has not spo­ken to Cruz in “some time” but said “he knew he would get­ting this call.”

Whether or not Niko­las Cruz was for­mal­ly net­work­ing with the Repub­lic of Flori­da or oth­er neo-Nazi groups, he was indeed a neo-Nazi in spir­it: It turns out that Cruz had swastikas etched onto his ammu­ni­tion mag­a­zines used dur­ing the attackThis reminds us of the jot­tings Patrick Edward Pur­dy had on his weapons and cloth­ing.

Cruz didn’t just sud­den­ly adopt a neo-Nazi world­view. He’s been stew­ing in these juices for years, and clear­ly had addi­tion­al men­tal health issues.

Sev­er­al fac­tors great­ly exac­er­bate the school shoot­ing phe­nom­e­non.

The Steam gam­ing app, a major dis­trib­u­tor for very pop­u­lar video games, has a neo-Nazi problem–neo-Nazis are using its chat room and voice-over-IP options to pro­mote their ide­ol­o­gy. Both the Dai­ly Stormer and Andrew Auern­heimer have Steam chat rooms, as does Atom­Waf­fen.

On these forums, there are 173 dif­fer­ent groups cham­pi­oning school shoot­ers, laud­ing them as heroes and set­ting the stage for future inci­dents. ” . . . . A lead­ing gam­ing app that is pop­u­lar with adher­ents of the neo-Nazi wing of the alt-right move­ment has at least 173 groups ded­i­cat­ed to the glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of school shoot­ings, accord­ing to a report pub­lished last week by Reveal News. . . .”

In addi­tion, Nazi groups are active­ly recruit­ing depressed peo­ple! ” . . . . For years, mem­bers of the alt-right have tak­en advan­tage of the internet’s most vul­ner­a­ble, turn­ing their fear and self-loathing into vit­ri­olic extrem­ism, and thanks to the movement’s recent gal­va­niza­tion, they’re only grow­ing stronger. . . . Accord­ing to Chris­t­ian Pic­ci­oli­ni, a for­mer neo-nazi who co-found­ed the peace advo­ca­cy orga­ni­za­tion, Life After Hate, these sort of recruit­ing tac­tics aren’t just com­mon, but sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly enforced. ‘[The recruiters] are active­ly look­ing for these kind of bro­ken indi­vid­u­als who they can promise accep­tance, who they can promise iden­ti­ty to,’ Pic­ci­oli­ni said in an inter­view with Sam Seder. . . .”

Although not includ­ed in the audio por­tion of the pro­gram due to the lim­i­ta­tions of time, we note that, in our opin­ion, the pres­ence of lethal, mil­i­tary-style firearms are not, by them­selves, the pri­ma­ry fac­tor in the epi­dem­ic of school shoot­ings and oth­er mass casu­al­ty firearms attacks. A would-be school shoot­er can always pur­chase a pump-action, 12-gauge shot­gun, saw it off and pre­cip­i­tate con­sid­er­able may­hem.

Many of the school shoot­ings have been per­formed by fas­cists of one stripe or anoth­er, man­i­fest­ing the type of actions advo­cat­ed by the likes of Michael Moy­ni­a­han, James Mason and their fel­low trav­el­ers. Mason and his role mod­el Charles Man­son are now viewed favor­ably by a seg­ment of the Nazi move­ment. The role of nihilist/fascist ide­ol­o­gy in moti­vat­ing some of the school shoot­ers should be fac­tored into the dis­cus­sion.

The role of the media in con­di­tion­ing young peo­ple to kill is a major focal point of the book On Killing by Lieu­tenant Colonel Dave Gross­man, who taught psy­chol­o­gy at West Point. From Ama­zon’s pro­mo­tion­al text for Gross­man­’s book: “The good news is that most sol­diers are loath to kill. But armies have devel­oped sophis­ti­cat­ed ways of over­com­ing this instinc­tive aver­sion. And con­tem­po­rary civil­ian soci­ety, par­tic­u­lar­ly the media, repli­cates the army’s con­di­tion­ing tech­niques, and, accord­ing to Lt. Col. Dave Gross­man­’s the­sis, is respon­si­ble for our ris­ing rate of mur­der among the young. Upon its ini­tial pub­li­ca­tion, ON KILLING was hailed as a land­mark study of the tech­niques the mil­i­tary uses to over­come the pow­er­ful reluc­tance to kill, of how killing affects sol­diers, and of the soci­etal impli­ca­tions of esca­lat­ing vio­lence. Now, Gross­man has updat­ed this clas­sic work to include infor­ma­tion on 21st-cen­tu­ry mil­i­tary con­flicts, recent trends in crime, sui­cide bomb­ings, school shoot­ings, and more. The result is a work cer­tain to be rel­e­vant and impor­tant for decades to come.”

Our high body-count movies and TV pro­grams, as well as point-and-shoot video games, accord­ing to Gross­man, repli­cate to a con­sid­er­able degree the audio-visu­al desen­si­ti­za­tion tech­niques used by con­tem­po­rary armies to help recruits over­came their inhi­bi­tions about killing. We sug­gest Gross­man­’s the­sis as a fac­tor in the school mas­sacres.

Pro­gram High­lights Include:

  1. The para­mil­i­tary right-wing Oath Keep­ers deploy­ment of heav­i­ly armed cadre out­side of schools.
  2. Dis­cus­sion of how the likes of Stew­art Rhodes and his Oath Keep­ers are the type of para­mil­i­tary right-wingers who would be dep­u­tized in the event of an acti­va­tion of mar­tial law con­tin­gency plans.
  3. The online dis­par­age­ment of Park­land high school stu­dents by the “Alt-Right.”
  4. The use of the C14 mili­tias in Ukraine to enforce pub­lic order in Kiev (the cap­i­tal) and 21 oth­er cities. The orga­ni­za­tion takes its name from the 14 words of David Lane, a mem­ber of the Order. One of that group’s founders was high­light­ed at the begin­ning of FTR #1002, not­ing his quest to obtain sophis­ti­cat­ed weapon­ry and to devel­op mind-con­trol tech­niques.

1. The pro­gram begins with a brief sum­ma­ry and recap of key points of dis­cus­sion from FTR #1002They include:

  1. Patrick Pur­dy’s appar­ent links to Aryan Nations.
  2. Pur­dy’s anti-Asian xeno­pho­bia, deem­ing that Amer­i­cans were being edged out in their own home­land.
  3. The Order’s attempts at devel­op­ing mind con­trol tech­niques.
  4. Pur­dy’s involve­ment with the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church.
  5. The pro­found effect of school shoot­ings on both par­ents and stu­dents of affect­ed insti­tu­tions. School shoot­ings fun­da­men­tal­ly under­mine peo­ples’ sense of com­fort and cre­ate an anx­i­ety con­ducive to the imple­men­ta­tion of total­i­tar­i­an­ism.
  6. The pro­vi­sion of Oliv­er North’s mar­tial law con­tin­gency plans to use para­mil­i­tary right-wingers as fed­er­al deputies.

2a.  In the wake of the Flori­da high school shoot­ing, an under-report­ed and sub­se­quent­ly retract­ed aspect of the killings con­cerns accused shoot­er Niko­las Cruz’s par­tic­i­pa­tion (includ­ing weapons train­ing and polit­i­cal indoc­tri­na­tion) with the Repub­lic of Flori­da. The ROF is ” . . . a white suprema­cist group . . . .” It describes itself:  “. . . .  as a ‘white civ­il rights orga­ni­za­tion fight­ing for white iden­ti­tar­i­an pol­i­tics’ and seeks to cre­ate a ‘white eth­nos­tate’ in Flori­da. . . .”

Of par­tic­u­lar inter­est in analy­sis of the Flori­da shoot­ing is the advo­ca­cy on the part of ROF leader Jor­dan Jereb for the “lone wolf/leaderless resis­tance” strat­e­gy: ” . . . . A train­ing video the group post­ed online shows mem­bers prac­tic­ing mil­i­tary maneu­vers in cam­ou­flage cloth­ing and salut­ing each oth­er, along with music with the lyric: ‘They call me Nazi / and I’m proud of it.’ In the weeks before the attack, on Gab, a social media net­work some­times used by white nation­al­ists, Jereb had recent­ly praised Nor­we­gian mass killer Anders Breivik as a ‘hero.’ He also post­ed a dia­grammed strat­e­gy for using the Repub­lic of Flori­da mili­tia to cre­ate ‘lone wolf activists.’ . . . .”

Sev­er­al con­sid­er­a­tions to be weighed in con­nec­tion with the inci­dent:

  • Whether by coin­ci­dence or design, this inci­dent has fun­da­men­tal­ly eclipsed dis­cus­sion of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s bru­tal bud­getary pro­pos­als, not unlike the fash­ion in which Stephen Pad­dock­’s gun play in Las Vegas eclipsed dis­cus­sion of the GOP tax pro­pos­als.
  • In Mis­cel­la­neous  Archive Show M55, we not­ed the Nazi and Uni­fi­ca­tion Church links of one of the pro­to­typ­i­cal school shoot­ers, Patrick Edward Pur­dy. Like Cruz, he had  links to Nazi groups and–in the Moonies–a mind con­trol cult with strong intel­li­gence and Japan­ese fas­cist links.
  • In FTR #‘s 967 and 995, we not­ed that the Nazi Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion, which also gives para­mil­i­tary instruc­tion, makes ISIS-style videos advo­cat­ing “lone wolf/leaderless resis­tance” attacks, was linked to a Flori­da Nation­al Guards­man who was plan­ning to attack a nuclear pow­er plant. Giv­en that many of the Nazi/white suprema­cist groups have fluc­tu­at­ing mem­ber­ships and often over­lap each oth­er as a result, it would not be sur­pris­ing to find that Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion and ROF have some com­mon­al­i­ty.
  • Mort Sahl’s obser­va­tion decades ago that “A lib­er­al’s idea of courage is eat­ing at a restau­rant that has­n’t been reviewed yet” is exem­pli­fied by jour­nal­ists’ retrac­tion of the sto­ry of Cruz being affil­i­at­ed with the ROF because of what might be termed “reverse trolling.” A post on a chat group about the Cruz/ROF link was deemed to be false. Jor­dan Jereb told jour­nal­ists that Cruz was a mem­ber of his group, but that he had­n’t seen him in a long time. He has been said to be “walk­ing that back.” Just HOW does one “walk that back?” ” . . . . The ADL said ROF leader Jor­dan Jereb told them Cruz was asso­ci­at­ed with his group. Jereb, who is based in Tal­la­has­see, said Cruz was brought into the group by anoth­er mem­ber and had par­tic­i­pat­ed in one or more ROF train­ing exer­cis­es in the Tal­la­has­see area, the ADL said. . . . Jereb told the ADL that ROF had not ordered Cruz to take any such action. He told ABC News he has not spo­ken to Cruz in ‘some time’ but said ‘he knew he would get­ting this call.’ . . . .”  Jereb told the ADL that ROF had not ordered Cruz to take any such action. He told ABC News he has not spo­ken to Cruz in “some time” but said “he knew he would get­ting this call.”

  “Flori­da school shoot­ing sus­pect linked to white suprema­cist group: ADL” by Aaron Kater­sky, Noor Ibrahim, Josh Mar­golin, Bri­an Epstein; ABC News; 02/15/2018

The Anti-Defama­tion League, a civ­il rights watch­dog, told ABC News they have infor­ma­tion they believe to be cred­i­ble link­ing Niko­las Cruz, the Flori­da school shoot­ing sus­pect, to a white suprema­cist group called Repub­lic of Flori­da. The ADL said ROF leader Jor­dan Jereb told them Cruz was asso­ci­at­ed with his group. Jereb, who is based in Tal­la­has­see, said Cruz was brought into the group by anoth­er mem­ber and had par­tic­i­pat­ed in one or more ROF train­ing exer­cis­es in the Tal­la­has­see area, the ADL said. Law enforce­ment offi­cials have not con­firmed the link.

ROF has most­ly young mem­bers in north and south Flori­da and describes itself as a “white civ­il rights orga­ni­za­tion fight­ing for white iden­ti­tar­i­an pol­i­tics” and seeks to cre­ate a “white eth­nos­tate” in Flori­da.

Three for­mer school­mates of Cruz told ABC News that Cruz was part of the group. They claimed he marched with the group fre­quent­ly and was often seen with Jereb, who also con­firmed to ABC News that Cruz was, at least at one point, part of that group.

Jereb told the ADL that ROF had not ordered Cruz to take any such action. He told ABC News he has not spo­ken to Cruz in “some time” but said “he knew he would get­ting this call.” He would not com­ment fur­ther but empha­sized that his group was not a ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion.

Fam­i­ly mem­bers, class­mates and for­mer friends described Cruz, a 19-year-old for­mer stu­dent, as a trou­bled teen who was large­ly alone in the world when he alleged­ly stormed through the school car­ry­ing an AR-15 rifle and mul­ti­ple mag­a­zines.

He was able to leave the school after the shoot­ing by blend­ing in with oth­er stu­dents who were try­ing to escape, but he was appre­hend­ed short­ly there­after. He has been answer­ing ques­tions from inves­ti­ga­tors work­ing on the case.

Cruz was adopt­ed as an infant, but he had been liv­ing with the fam­i­ly of a class­mate after the sud­den death of his adop­tive moth­er late last year. His adop­tive father died in 2005.

In an inter­view with ABC News’ George Stephanopou­los, an attor­ney for the fam­i­ly that had tak­en Cruz in for the past few months said Cruz was “depressed” fol­low­ing his mother’s death but he had been going to ther­a­py.

The fam­i­ly is still “shocked,” he said, that Cruz would alleged­ly engage in mass vio­lence.

“They indi­cat­ed they saw noth­ing like this com­ing,” Lewis said. “They nev­er saw any anger, no bad feel­ings about the school.”

They were aware that Cruz was in pos­ses­sion of a mil­i­tary-style assault weapon, he said, which two law enforce­ment offi­cials tell ABC News was legal­ly pur­chased by Cruz with­in the past year from a fed­er­al­ly licensed deal­er. They insist­ed that it be locked in a safe.

“He brought it into the home and it was in a locked gun safe,” Lewis said. “That was the con­di­tion when he came into their home that the gun was locked away.”

Cruz’s for­mer class­mates, how­ev­er, were less sur­prised.

A stu­dent who told ABC News that he par­tic­i­pat­ed in Junior ROTC with Cruz described him as a “psy­cho.” Cruz was a well-known weapons enthu­si­ast, the stu­dent said, who once tried to sell knives to a class­mate.

Anoth­er stu­dent told ABC News that before Cruz was expelled from the school he was barred from car­ry­ing a back­pack on cam­pus. The class­mate said the rule was put in place after the school found bul­let cas­ings in his bag after a fight with anoth­er stu­dent.

One stu­dent said Cruz even once threat­ened to “shoot up” the school.

“About a year ago I saw him upset in the morn­ing,” stu­dent Brent Black told ABC News. “And I was like, ‘yo what’s wrong with you?’ And he was like ‘umm, don’t know.’ And I was like ‘what’s up with you?’ He’s like ‘I swear to God I’ll shoot up this school.’ And then I was like ‘watch what you’re say­ing around me,’ and then I just left him after that. He came up to me lat­er on the day and apol­o­gized for what he said.”

On Thurs­day, the FBI issued a state­ment say­ing that it was alert­ed in 2017 to a threat on YouTube by some­one who said “I am going to be a school shoot­er.”

“In Sep­tem­ber 2017, the FBI received infor­ma­tion about a com­ment made on a YouTube chan­nel. The com­ment said, “I’m going to be a pro­fes­sion­al school shoot­er.” No oth­er infor­ma­tion was includ­ed in the com­ment which would indi­cate a par­tic­u­lar time, loca­tion, or the true iden­ti­ty of the per­son who post­ed the com­ment. The FBI con­duct­ed data­base reviews and oth­er checks, but was unable to fur­ther iden­ti­fy the per­son who post­ed the com­ment.”

Accord­ing to Broward Coun­ty Sher­iff Scott Israel, inves­ti­ga­tors have already found some “dis­turb­ing” con­tent on social media that could have pro­vid­ed warn­ing signs.

“We have already begun to dis­sect his web­sites and things on social media that he was on, and some of the things that have come to mind are very, very dis­turb­ing,” Israel said.

The pho­tos post­ed on an Insta­gram account law enforce­ment sources tell ABC News belongs to the sus­pect­ed shoot­er shows a young man dis­play­ing an arse­nal of weapons.

2b. More about the Repub­lic of Flori­da:

 “Attor­ney: Flori­da shoot­ing sus­pect is ‘sad, mourn­ful, remorse­ful’ and ‘a bro­ken human being’” by Matt Pearce, Mol­ly Hen­nessy-Fiske and Jen­ny Jarvie; The Los Ange­les Times; 02/15/2018

The expelled stu­dent accused of killing 17 peo­ple at his for­mer South Flori­da high school is “sad, mourn­ful, remorse­ful” and “he’s just a bro­ken human being,” one of his attor­neys told reporters Thurs­day.

After a judge ordered Niko­las Cruz, 19, held with­out bond as he faces 17 counts of pre­med­i­tat­ed mur­der, defense attor­ney Melis­sa McNeil said that Cruz was “ful­ly aware of what is going on,” but had a trou­bled back­ground and lit­tle per­son­al sup­port in his life before the attack.

Cruz appeared via video, in an orange jump­suit and with his head slight­ly bowed, for an ini­tial Broward Coun­ty court hear­ing Thurs­day.

Mean­while, inves­ti­ga­tors were scour­ing Cruz’s social media posts for pos­si­ble motives or warn­ing signs of the attack. Sev­er­al social media accounts bear­ing Cruz’s name revealed a young man fas­ci­nat­ed by guns who appeared to sig­nal his inten­tions to attack a school long before the event.

Nine months ago, a YouTube user with the han­dle “niko­las cruz” post­ed a com­ment on a Dis­cov­ery UK doc­u­men­tary about the gun­man in the 1966 Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas shoot­ing that read, “I am going to what he did.”

Oth­er past com­ments by YouTube users with Cruz’s name report­ed­ly includ­ed one remark in Sep­tem­ber, say­ing: “Im going to be a pro­fes­sion­al school shoot­er.” At a news brief­ing in Flori­da, Robert Lasky, the FBI spe­cial agent in charge, con­firmed that the FBI had inves­ti­gat­ed that com­ment. But he said the agency couldn’t iden­ti­fy the per­son in ques­tion.

In anoth­er post on Insta­gram, where he post­ed pho­tos of him­self in masks and with guns, Cruz wrote anti-Mus­lim slurs and appar­ent­ly mocked the Islam­ic phrase “Allahu Akbar,” which means God is great­est.

Con­fu­sion also swirled after the leader of a white nation­al­ist mili­tia said that Cruz had trained with his armed group, a claim that drew wide atten­tion but could not be imme­di­ate­ly ver­i­fied.

The leader of the Repub­lic of Flori­da mili­tia, Jor­dan Jereb, told researchers at the Anti-Defama­tion League that Cruz had been “brought up” into the group by one of its mem­bers, the ADL said in a blog post. ABC News also claimed to have spo­ken to three peo­ple who ver­i­fied Cruz’s mem­ber­ship, but some white nation­al­ists expressed con­cern that the news out­let may have been tar­get­ed by a coor­di­nat­ed hoax.

The Repub­lic of Flori­da calls itself “a white civ­il rights orga­ni­za­tion fight­ing for white iden­ti­tar­i­an pol­i­tics” on its web­site, adding that its “cur­rent short-term goals are to occu­py urban areas to recruit sub­ur­ban young whites” in pur­suit of “the ulti­mate cre­ation of a white eth­nos­tate.”

A train­ing video the group post­ed online shows mem­bers prac­tic­ing mil­i­tary maneu­vers in cam­ou­flage cloth­ing and salut­ing each oth­er, along with music with the lyric: “They call me Nazi / and I’m proud of it.”

In the weeks before the attack, on Gab, a social media net­work some­times used by white nation­al­ists, Jereb had recent­ly praised Nor­we­gian mass killer Anders Breivik as a “hero.” He also post­ed a dia­grammed strat­e­gy for using the Repub­lic of Flori­da mili­tia to cre­ate “lone wolf activists.”

Jereb lat­er told the Asso­ci­at­ed Press that he didn’t know Cruz per­son­al­ly and that the group had no knowl­edge of his plans for the vio­lent attack. “He act­ed on his own behalf of what he just did, and he’s sole­ly respon­si­ble for what he just did,” Jereb said.

2c. Here’s some addi­tion­al evi­dence  that, whether or not Niko­las Cruz was for­mal­ly net­work­ing with the Repub­lic of Flori­da or oth­er neo-Nazi groups, he was indeed a neo-Nazi in spir­it: It turns out that Cruz had swastikas etched onto his ammu­ni­tion mag­a­zines used dur­ing the attackThis reminds us of the jot­tings Patrick Edward Pur­dy had on his weapons and cloth­ing.

“Shoot­ing sus­pect Niko­las Cruz had swastikas on ammu­ni­tion mag­a­zines”; CBS News; 02/27/2018

Flori­da school shoot­ing sus­pect Niko­las Cruz had swastikas ammu­ni­tion mag­a­zines he brought into Mar­jo­ry Stone­man Dou­glas High School on Feb. 14, a fed­er­al law enforce­ment source with direct knowl­edge of the inves­ti­ga­tion told CBS News on Tues­day. Cruz has been charged with 17 counts of pre­med­i­tat­ed mur­der.

Cruz had 180 rounds of ammu­ni­tion left, a source con­firmed to CBS News.

Sources told CBS News that Cruz broke a third-floor win­dow, pos­si­bly to fire upon peo­ple from above. Sources say he tried to cre­ate a “sniper’s nest” by shoot­ing out the win­dow, fir­ing 16 rounds into the glass, CBS News cor­re­spon­dent Manuel Bojorquez reports. But the hur­ri­cane-proof glass appeared to have stopped it from shat­ter­ing, Bojorquez reports.

Inves­ti­ga­tors believe the sus­pect tried to reload, but after chang­ing mag­a­zine clips, his gun may have jammed, Bojorquez adds. Cruz then alleged­ly put down his weapon and left the build­ing, blend­ing in with oth­er stu­dents.

Police said Cruz told them he had “brought addi­tion­al loaded mag­a­zines to the school cam­pus and kept them hid­den in a back­pack until he got on cam­pus to begin his assault.”

Cruz is accused of open­ing fire at the high school in Park­land, Flori­da, on Valentine’s Day, killing 17 peo­ple and wound­ing 15 oth­ers. On Feb. 15, inves­ti­ga­tors said Cruz told them that as stu­dents began to flee, he decid­ed to dis­card his AR-15 rifle and a vest he was wear­ing so he could blend in with the crowd. Police recov­ered the rifle and the vest.

It’s still unclear why the sus­pect stopped shoot­ing.

Since the mas­sacre, dis­turb­ing details of Cruz’s past have come to light. While the motive remains unclear, a YouTube com­men­ta­tor with his name post­ed on a video: “I’m going to be a pro­fes­sion­al school shoot­er.”

Cruz was trans­ferred to a school with pro­grams for emo­tion­al­ly and dis­abled stu­dents when he was in eighth grade but want­ed to be main­streamed back into his home school, Broward Coun­ty School Super­in­ten­dent Robert Run­cie said Tues­day.

The Flori­da Depart­ment of Chil­dren and Fam­i­lies inves­ti­gat­ed Cruz in 2016, and police records show deputies went to his home more than three dozen times. Start­ing in Jan­u­ary 2016, Cruz was allowed to spend half his day at the alter­na­tive school and half at Stone­man Dou­glas to ease him into the less-struc­tured envi­ron­ment.

In August 2016, he start­ed back at Stone­man Dou­glas, but “the sit­u­a­tion had dete­ri­o­rat­ed” by Novem­ber, Run­cie said. That’s when Cruz, who had turned 18 in Sep­tem­ber 2016, refused the men­tal health ser­vices offered by the school. Run­cie said Cruz had the sup­port of his moth­er.

He remained at the school until Feb­ru­ary 2017, when school offi­cials final­ly decid­ed to remove him after unspec­i­fied behav­ior issues. He was told his only option was an alter­na­tive school.

Jor­dan Jereb, the leader of white nation­al­ist group Repub­lic of Flori­da, had ini­tial­ly claimed Cruz was a mem­ber of his group but lat­er walked back the claim and local law enforce­ment said there was no proof that Cruz and Jereb ever met.

2d. Cruz didn’t just sud­den­ly adopt a neo-Nazi world­view. He’s been stew­ing in these juices for years, and clear­ly had addi­tion­al men­tal health issues–the“Alt-Right” Nazi groups specif­i­cal­ly tar­get depressed peo­ple to take advan­tage of their dis­or­ders.

“Niko­las Cruz Was a Racist. Does That Make His Attack Ter­ror­ism?” by Dean Obei­dal­lah; The Dai­ly Beast; 03/01/2018.

On Tues­day, we learned a new, bone-chill­ing fact about the Park­land, Flori­da high school gun­man Niko­las Cruz that should’ve made nation­al head­lines but didn’t. That new devel­op­ment was that Cruz had etched swastikas on the ammu­ni­tion mag­a­zines he car­ried on the day he com­mit­ted his bru­tal mas­sacre that took 17 lives.

When I first heard of this devel­op­ment, my jaw dropped for two rea­sons. First, does any­one actu­al­ly believe if Cruz had etched the words “Allah Akbar” on his gun mag­a­zines we wouldn’t have heard about that for near­ly two weeks after the attack? No way. I can assure you that infor­ma­tion would’ve been made pub­lic, inten­tion­al­ly or by way of a leak. And then Don­ald Trump would almost cer­tain­ly have pounced–without wait­ing for addi­tion­al evidence–to label this an Islam­ic ter­ror attack and try to use it to fur­ther his own polit­i­cal agen­da.

But what also was shock­ing is that despite this new piece of evi­dence, togeth­er with Cruz’s known his­to­ry of hate direct­ed at peo­ple of col­or and Jews, we aren’t see­ing a fuller dis­cus­sion in the media about whether this shoot­ing was inspired by Cruz’s appar­ent white suprema­cist ide­ol­o­gy.

As CNN had report­ed with­in days of the Feb­ru­ary 14 attack, Cruz had in the past spewed vile com­ments in a pri­vate Insta­gram cha­t­room where he shared his hatred of “jews, ni**ers, immi­grants.” Cruz also wrote about killing Mex­i­cans and hat­ing black peo­ple sim­ply because of their skin col­or and he slammed Jews because in his twist­ed view they want­ed to destroy the world.

And Cruz’s white suprema­cist views also made their way from the online world to the real world. One of Cruz’s class­mates report­ed­ly told a social work­er that Cruz had drawn a swasti­ka on his book back next to the words “I hate ni***rs.” He also shared with oth­er stu­dents his “hat­ing on” Islam and slam­ming all Mus­lims as “ter­ror­ists and bombers.” And Cruz was also seen wear­ing a Trump MAGA hat when he was enrolled in school well before the attack.

While ini­tial reports that Cruz was actu­al­ly a mem­ber of a white suprema­cist group proved to be unfound­ed, there’s no dis­put­ing Cruz’s doc­u­ment­ed his­to­ry of spew­ing despi­ca­ble views that line up with the white nation­al­ist ide­ol­o­gy. But still, giv­en all that we’ve now learned, the ques­tion I have is: How much more evi­dence do we need before we dis­cuss in earnest whether Cruz’s white suprema­cist views played a role in this attack?!

True, there’s no evi­dence that Cruz tar­get­ed any spe­cif­ic group of peo­ple dur­ing his ram­page. But then again, ISIS-inspired ter­ror­ists who have com­mit­ted acts of ter­ror on U.S. soil, such as the man who inten­tion­al­ly drove a truck on a New York City pedes­tri­an walk­way in 2017 that killed eight, didn’t tar­get any spe­cif­ic race or reli­gion. He and oth­ers like him com­mit­ted acts of ter­ror in fur­ther­ance of their sick, per­vert­ed ideology—to spread ter­ror.

And the swastikas on Cruz’s gun mag­a­zines take on a greater sig­nif­i­cance when you exam­ine the shoot­ing itself. Of the 17 peo­ple Cruz killed, at least five were Jew­ish. (Some reports note it could be six.) Even more dis­turb­ing is that Cruz had report­ed­ly shot bul­lets into a Holo­caust his­to­ry class that killed two of those stu­dents. Did Cruz inten­tion­al­ly tar­get that class since he had for­mer­ly been a stu­dent at the school? We don’t know but giv­en Cruz’s his­to­ry this is cer­tain­ly a fair ques­tion. And since he’s that rare mass-shoot­er who’s still alive, I pre­sume he’ll be asked.

In fact, the ques­tion of whether Cruz’s gun mas­sacre was an anti-Semit­ic attack inspired by a white suprema­cist ide­ol­o­gy was raised in an op-edin the lib­er­al Israeli news­pa­per Ha’aretz even before we learned about the swastikas on Cruz’s gun mag­a­zines. There, the writer not­ed that Cruz had expressed views “that Jews were part of a con­spir­a­cy to unseat white peo­ple from pow­er and destroy the world.”In response to that arti­cle, the writer was sub­ject­ed to an avalanche of vile anti-Semit­ic barbs.

Giv­en these new­ly revealed swastikas, it’s long over­due that we have that con­ver­sa­tion about whether Cruz was more than a trou­bled youth.And to be clear, Cruz was trou­bled. He had been repeat­ed­ly dis­ci­plined at school for dis­turb­ing behav­ior and for a peri­od of time was placed in a spe­cial school for kids with emo­tion­al and behav­ior issues. On social media, he even wrote about his dream of becom­ing a “pro­fes­sion­al school shoot­er.” But when he was eval­u­at­ed in 2016 by a men­tal health pro­fes­sion­al, he was deter­mined to be sta­ble and not in need of being invol­un­tar­i­ly com­mit­ted to a men­tal health insti­tu­tion.

So why does it mat­ter if we raise the ques­tion of whether Cruz’s attack was inspired by his appar­ent white suprema­cist ide­ol­o­gy? For two rea­sons.

First and fore­most, it may save lives. We have seen a spike in the time of Trump of white suprema­cist vio­lence and activ­i­ties. As the Anti-Defama­tion League recent­ly doc­u­ment­ed, there were 34 extrem­ist-relat­ed deaths on U.S. soil in 2017. A major­i­ty of those, 18, were caused by white suprema­cists, while nine were caused by Islam­ic extrem­ists.

Sec­ond­ly, we need to end the media’s hypocrisy on this issue. If Cruz had been Mus­lim, we know from recent his­to­ry that the media would’ve labeled this a ter­ror­ist attack with­out the in-depth analy­sis into the terrorist’s men­tal health. But if the killer is white, the media and many in our nation pre­fer to believe the per­son is men­tal­ly ill and try to avoid label­ing him a ter­ror­ist. Just look at the case of Dylann Roof, who lit­er­al­ly stat­ed he had exe­cut­ed nine African Amer­i­cans because he want­ed to start a “race war,” yet few in the media referred to him as a ter­ror­ist..

In time we may learn the exact rea­son why Cruz com­mit­ted his ram­page. Per­haps it was tru­ly the act of a clin­i­cal­ly insane indi­vid­ual? Or maybe it was inspired by his white suprema­cist ide­ol­o­gy? But giv­en the evi­dence we have about Cruz togeth­er with the recent spike in white suprema­cist attacks on U.S. soil, it’s time we dis­cuss whether Cruz’s ram­page was a white suprema­cist ter­ror­ist attack. That’s the only way we can counter this grow­ing threat.

3. The Steam gam­ing app, a major dis­trib­u­tor for very pop­u­lar video games, has a neo-Nazi problem–neo-Nazis are using its chat room and voice-over-IP options to pro­mote their ide­ol­o­gy. Both the Dai­ly Stormer and Andrew Auern­heimer have Steam chat rooms, as does Atom­Waf­fen.

There’s also an over­lap­ping prob­lem with Steam chat forums that glo­ri­fy school shoot­ers. 173 such groups glo­ri­fy­ing school shoot­ings accord­ing to one count.

Steam isn’t the only pop­u­lar gam­ing app that this neo-Nazi prob­lem. Dis­cord, anoth­er very pop­u­lar app for gamers, also appears to have a num­ber of chat rooms run by neo-Nazis. The Ger­man­ic Recon­quista group of Ger­man neo-Nazis who were train­ing peo­ple how to game Youtube’s algo­rithms did that train­ing using Dis­cord. And, again, Steam and Dis­cord are both quite pop­u­lar.

The 173+ pop­u­lar video game chat forums on Steam that glo­ri­fy school shoot­ers are def­i­nite­ly part of the school shoot­ing prob­lem.

“Neo-Nazis, ‘Future School Shoot­ers’ Using Lead­ing Gam­ing App to Post Hate­ful Con­tent in Hun­dreds of Groups: Report” by Michael Edi­son Hay­den; Newsweek; 03/17/2018

A lead­ing gam­ing app that is pop­u­lar with adher­ents of the neo-Nazi wing of the alt-right move­ment has at least 173 groups ded­i­cat­ed to the glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of school shoot­ings, accord­ing to a report pub­lished last week by Reveal News. Sep­a­rate­ly, dozens of neo-Nazi groups have cul­ti­vat­ed active com­mu­ni­ties on the app.

The report notes that these Steam groups—which typ­i­cal­ly have between 30 and 200 active mem­bers—glo­ri­fy men like 22-year-old Elliot Rodger, who killed six peo­ple and injured over a dozen oth­ers in the vicin­i­ty of the cam­pus of Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, San­ta Bar­bara, before com­mit­ting sui­cide in 2014.

Rodger was a vir­u­lent misog­y­nist and want­ed to pun­ish women for reject­ing him. Oth­er shoot­ers, like Seung-Hui Cho, the Vir­ginia Tech senior who killed 32 peo­ple in 2007, are also hailed in these Steam groups. The groups have names like “School Shoot­ers Are Heroes” and “Shoot Up a School.” Some of them allude to “future” school shoot­ings yet to take place and are filled with racist lan­guage.

The link between vio­lence and the scat­tered cul­ture of inter­net Nazism has received greater scruti­ny in recent weeks, fol­low­ing a CBS News report that sus­pect­ed Park­land, Flori­da, mass shoot­er Niko­las Cruz alleged­ly pos­sessed gun mag­a­zines engraved with swastikas. Gam­ing apps like Steam have become increas­ing­ly pop­u­lar with­in that com­mu­ni­ty.

One exam­ple of neo-Nazis using Steam is Andrew “Weev” Auern­heimer, who han­dles the tech­ni­cal side of the white suprema­cist troll web­site Dai­ly Stormer, and sev­er­al months ago appeared to threat­en to “slaugh­ter” Jew­ish chil­dren in retal­i­a­tion for his web­site being tak­en offline. Auern­heimer appears to have a group on the app, which dis­cuss­es games in the con­text of whether they por­tray Adolf Hitler in a favor­able light. The broad­er com­mu­ni­ty of Dai­ly Stormer also appears to have an active com­mu­ni­ty on Steam called “Storm Sect” with rough­ly 200 mem­bers.

Oth­er neo-Nazi groups on Steam have more overt­ly hate­ful and vio­lent names like “Fag Lynch Squad,” which depicts shad­owy fig­ures hang­ing limply from noos­es in its pro­file pic­ture. Atom­Waf­fen Divi­sion, a neo-Nazi group linked to a num­ber of mur­ders, had its com­mu­ni­ty on Steam removed ear­li­er this month, Reveal News report­ed.

Angela Nagle, a left­ist writer, demon­strat­ed links between the ori­gins of the alt-right and gam­ing cul­ture in her book Kill All Normies: Online Cul­ture Wars From 4Chan And Tum­blr To Trump And The Alt-Right. The ven­er­a­tion of school shoot­ers and oth­er killers is sim­i­lar­ly linked.

It is not only on Steam where neo-Nazis have found a plat­form with­in the gam­ing world. Dis­cord, anoth­er gam­ing app, was instru­men­tal to young neo-Nazis in plan­ning the Unite the Right event that took place in Char­lottesville, Vir­ginia, last August, which led to the death of counter-pro­test­er Heather Hey­er. Dis­cord has made efforts to remove vio­lent and far-right con­tent from its app fol­low­ing reports of the ral­ly, but new groups con­tin­ue to pop up on that plat­form.

Uni­corn Riot, a vol­un­teer media col­lec­tive, pub­lished record­ings and mes­sages this week that appeared to reveal inter­nal plan­ning dis­cus­sions from the young white suprema­cist group Patri­ot Front, which were ini­tial­ly host­ed on Dis­cord. Patri­ot Front splin­tered from Van­guard Amer­i­ca, the group in which the man accused of killing Hey­er alleged­ly marched dur­ing the protests in Char­lottesville.

Dis­cord told Newsweek in a state­ment that the com­pa­ny is still try­ing to purge groups like Patri­ot Front from its app.

“Dis­cord has a Terms of Ser­vice and Com­mu­ni­ty Guide­lines that we ask all of our com­mu­ni­ties and users to adhere to. These specif­i­cal­ly pro­hib­it harass­ment, threat­en­ing mes­sages, or calls to vio­lence,” a spokesper­son said, not­ing that the group recent­ly removed sev­er­al offend­ing servers. “Though we do not read people’s pri­vate mes­sages, we do inves­ti­gate and take imme­di­ate appro­pri­ate action against any report­ed Terms of Ser­vice vio­la­tion by a serv­er or user.”

4a. Over­lap­ping the use of gam­ing chat forums to recruit depressed peo­ple.

“The Alt-right is recruit­ing depressed peo­ple” by Paris Mar­tineau; The Out­line; 02/26/2018

A video on YouTube enti­tled “Advice For Peo­ple With Depres­sion” has over half a mil­lion views. The title is gener­ic enough, and to the unsus­pect­ing view­er, lec­tur­er Jor­dan Peter­son could even look legit­i­mate or knowl­edgable — a quick Google search will reveal that he even spoke at Har­vard once. But as the video wears on, Peter­son argues that men are depressed and frus­trat­ed because they don’t have a high­er call­ing like women (who, accord­ing to Peter­son, are bio­log­i­cal­ly required to have and take care of infants). This leaves weak men seek­ing “impul­sive, low-class plea­sure,” he argues. Upon first glance he cer­tain­ly doesn’t seem like a dar­ling of the alt-right, but he is.

Type “depres­sion” or “depressed” into YouTube and it won’t be long until you stum­ble upon a suit-clad white suprema­cist giv­ing a lec­ture on self-empow­er­ment. They’re every­where. For years, mem­bers of the alt-right have tak­en advan­tage of the internet’s most vul­ner­a­ble, turn­ing their fear and self-loathing into vit­ri­olic extrem­ism, and thanks to the movement’s recent gal­va­niza­tion, they’re only grow­ing stronger.

“I still won­der, how could I have been so stu­pid?” writes Red­dit user u/pdesperaux, in a post detail­ing how he was acci­den­tal­ly seduced by the alt-right. “I was part of a cult. I know cults and I know brain­wash­ing, I have researched them exten­sive­ly, you’d think I would have noticed, right? Wrong. These are the same tac­tics that Sci­en­tol­ogy and ISIS use and I fell for them like a chump.”

“NOBODY is talk­ing about how the online depres­sion com­mu­ni­ty has been infil­trat­ed by alt-right recruiters delib­er­ate­ly prey­ing on the vul­ner­a­ble,” writes Twit­ter user @MrHappyDieHappy in a thread on the issue. “There NEED to be pub­lic warn­ings about this. ‘Online pals’ have attempt­ed to groom me mul­ti­ple times when at my absolute low­est.”

“You know your life is use­less and mean­ing­less,” Peter­son says in his “Advice” video, turn­ing towards the view­er, “you’re full of self-con­tempt and nihilism.” He doesn’t fol­low all of this rous­ing self-hatred with an answer, but rather mere­ly teas­es at one. “[You] have had enough of that,” he says to a class­room full of men. “Rights, rights, rights, rights…”

Peterson’s alt-light mes­sag­ing quick­ly takes a dark­er turn. Fin­ish that video and YouTube will queue up “Jor­dan Peter­son – Don’t Be The Nice Guy” (1.3 mil­lion views), and “Jor­dan Peter­son – The Trag­ic Sto­ry of the Man-Child” (over 853,000 views), both of which are prac­ti­cal­ly right out of the redpill/incel hand­book.

The com­mon rail­road stages of ‘help­ful’ link­ing to ‘moti­va­tion­al speak­ers’ goes ‘Jor­dan Peter­son —> Ste­fan Molyneux —> Mil­len­ni­al Woes,” writes @MrHappyDieHappy. “The first is charis­mat­ic and not as harm­ful, but his per­sua­sive­ness leaves peo­ple open for the next two, who are frankly evil and dumb.” Molyneux, an anar­cho-cap­i­tal­ist who pro­motes sci­en­tif­ic racism and eugen­ics, has grown wild­ly pop­u­lar amongst the alt-right as of late. His videos — which argue, among oth­er things, that rape is a “moral right” — are often used to help tran­si­tion vul­ner­a­ble young men into the vit­ri­olic and racist core of the alt-right.

Though it may seem like a huge ide­o­log­i­cal leap, it makes sense, in a way. For some dis­il­lu­sioned and hope­less­ly con­fused young men, the alt-right offers two things they feel a seri­ous lack of in the throes of depres­sion: accep­tance and com­mu­ni­ty. These primer videos and their asso­ci­at­ed “sup­port” groups do a shock­ing­ly good job of acknowl­edg­ing the valid­i­ty of the depressed man’s exis­tence — some­thing men don’t often feel they expe­ri­ence — and cap­i­tal­ize on that good will by gal­va­niz­ing their mem­bers into a plan of action (which gen­er­al­ly involves fight­ing against some group or class of peo­ple des­ig­nat­ed as “the ene­my”). These sort of move­ments allot the depressed per­son a form of agency which they may nev­er have expe­ri­enced before. And whether it’s ground­ed in real­i­ty or not, that’s an addict­ing feel­ing.

Accord­ing to Chris­t­ian Pic­ci­oli­ni, a for­mer neo-nazi who co-found­ed the peace advo­ca­cy orga­ni­za­tion, Life After Hate, these sort of recruit­ing tac­tics aren’t just com­mon, but sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly enforced. “[The recruiters] are active­ly look­ing for these kind of bro­ken indi­vid­u­als who they can promise accep­tance, who they can promise iden­ti­ty to,” Pic­ci­oli­ni said in an inter­view with Sam Seder. “Because in real life, per­haps these peo­ple are social­ly awk­ward — they’re not fit­ting in; they may be bul­lied — and they’re des­per­ate­ly look­ing for some­thing. And the ide­ol­o­gy and the dog­ma are not what dri­ve peo­ple to this extrem­ism, it’s in fact, I think, a bro­ken search for that accep­tance and that pur­pose and com­mu­ni­ty.”

Some of the most tox­ic unof­fi­cial alt-right com­mu­ni­ties online have oper­at­ed on this prin­ci­ple. r/Incels (which is now banned, thank­ful­ly), began as a place for the “invol­un­tar­i­ly celi­bate” to com­mis­er­ate, but quick­ly became the place for extreme misog­y­nists to gath­er and blame their prob­lems on women and minori­ties. “Men going their own way,” (MGTOW) was ini­tial­ly a space for men to com­mune and pro­tect their sov­er­eign­ty as dudes “above all else,” it devolved into an infi­nite­ly racist and misog­y­nis­tic hell­hole. Sim­i­lar fates have befall­en r/Redpill, r/MensRights, and count­less oth­ers. Com­mis­er­a­tion begets com­mu­ni­ty begets a vul­ner­a­ble trend towards group­think.

While it’s easy to iso­late pure­ly hate­ful con­tent, the type that preys upon the dis­en­fran­chised and uses much more insid­i­ous meth­ods to bring them into the fold is much more dif­fi­cult to man­age on expan­sive plat­forms like YouTube. Par­tic­u­lar­ly because the mes­sage being sent isn’t one of obvi­ous in-your-face hate speech, or some­thing so obvi­ous­ly objec­tion­able, but rather more of a slow burn. It’s not the sort of thing you can train algo­rithms to spot — or at least, not yet — mak­ing the issue of con­tain­ment that much hard­er to address.

4b. Fur­ther mud­dy­ing the inves­tiga­tive waters is the fact that the Flori­da high school stu­dents who protest­ed the ready avail­abil­i­ty of assault weapons have been tar­get­ed by right-wing com­men­ta­tors and inter­net forums.

“How Park­land Teens Became Vil­lains on the Right-Wing Inter­net” by Abby Ohlheis­er; Wash­ing­ton Post; 2/27/2018.

Less than a week after 17 peo­ple died in Park­land, Fla., right-wing provo­ca­teur Dinesh D’Souza began taunt­ing some of the teenage sur­vivors of the mas­sacre. “Worst news since their par­ents told them to get sum­mer jobs,” he tweet­ed on Feb. 20, com­ment­ing on a pho­to show­ing Park­land sur­vivors cry­ing as state leg­is­la­tors vot­ed down a bill to ban mil­i­tary-style weapons.

D’Souza wrote anoth­er tweet, “Adults, 1, kids 0.” Com­bined, the two tweets have more than 25,000 likes and 8,000 retweets.

Now, five weeks after the Park­land school shoot­ing, D’Souza’s tweets seem almost quaint. As Emma González, David Hogg and the oth­er Park­land teens fight­ing for gun con­trol have become viral lib­er­al heroes, the teens are vil­lains on the right-wing Inter­net and fair game for the mock­ery and attacks that this group usu­al­ly reserves for its adult ene­mies.

That infamy reached a wider audi­ence this past week­end around the time of their March for Our Lives protest, when a doc­tored image that showed González rip­ping up a copy of the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion (she actu­al­ly ripped up a gun tar­get) went mild­ly viral on the Trump-sup­port­ing parts of the Inter­net, defend­ed as “satire” by those who shared it

Here’s a look back at how the Park­land stu­dent activists became such a tar­get:

Day 1: Con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists

The first to tar­get the Park­land stu­dents were the con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists. When a mass shoot­ing like Park­land hap­pens, con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists begin to search for signs of a false flag — proof that the shoot­ing was actu­al­ly staged and/or car­ried out for polit­i­cal rea­sons — pret­ty much right away. They’re fol­low­ing what online trolling expert Whit­ney Phillips calls a “tragedy script”: The estab­lish­ment is try­ing to take away your guns, they’ll use mass shoot­ings to do that, and here are the tricks they use to manip­u­late the pub­lic. Any­thing irreg­u­lar becomes con­spir­a­cy fod­der.

An anony­mous 8chan user told the fringe chat board to look for “cri­sis actors” just 47 min­utes after the shoot­ing hap­pened. And if closed chat rooms and fringey boards such as 8chan, 4chan and some sub­red­dits on Red­dit are where con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists coor­di­nate, then Twit­ter is where those con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries — and the harass­ment that comes with them — are per­formed for the pub­lic. With­in hours, anony­mous Twit­ter users were in the men­tions of stu­dents tweet­ing from their class­rooms dur­ing the shoot­ing, accus­ing them of being part of the con­spir­a­cy.

One Twit­ter thread, made just after mid­night on the night of the attack, claimed to con­tain “Bomb­shell” infor­ma­tion about Park­land. @Magapill (an account once approv­ing­ly retweet­ed by Pres­i­dent Trump) shared a video inter­view with a stu­dent that has become the basis of a debunked Park­land con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry. The thread was retweet­ed more than 3,000 times.

All this hap­pened before the Park­land stu­dents call­ing for gun con­trol began their ascent to viral iconog­ra­phy. When they emerged, the cam­paign to dis­cred­it and debunk the Park­land stu­dents expand­ed. . . .

 5a. The Oath Keep­ers, a right-wing para­mil­i­tary group, are advo­cat­ing to func­tion as armed sen­tinels at pub­lic schools.

“Armed Extrem­ist Mili­tias Want to Patrol Schools After the Park­land Shoot­ing” by Jer­ry Ian­nel­li; The Mia­mi New Times.; 02/27/2018

After the school mas­sacre in Park­land two weeks ago, Mark Cow­an, a griz­zled man in Fort Wayne, Indi­ana, began stand­ing out­side the town’s North Side High School. With a hand­gun. And an AR-15 in his car.

As a local TV sta­tion report­ed last Fri­day, Cow­an is one of 100 heav­i­ly armed, ide­o­log­i­cal­ly extreme “Oath Keep­ers” who have com­mit­ted to “stand­ing guard” out­side Indi­ana schools to stop events like the Stone­man Dou­glas shoot­ing from hap­pen­ing. The Oath Keep­ers are a fringe right-wing para­mil­i­tary group made up of for­mer vet­er­ans and law enforce­ment offi­cers who believe in “defend­ing the Con­sti­tu­tion” against per­ceived threats, which basi­cal­ly just means “gun-con­trol laws.”

This unfor­tu­nate­ly might be a pre­view of what’s in store for our dystopi­an future: As the hate-track­ing South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter (SPLC) not­ed yes­ter­day, Oath Keep­er founder Stew­art Rhodes this week instruct­ed group mem­bers to stand watch out­side schools, and the group held a webi­nar last night encour­ag­ing mem­bers to “stand guard” out­side ran­dom schools across the nation. The group’s Flori­da chap­ter is also encour­ag­ing local mem­bers to patrol out­side schools around the Sun­shine State.

“We will dis­cuss what you can and must do to fix this prob­lem effec­tive­ly in your com­mu­ni­ty and counter this blood­thirsty and cal­cu­lat­ed con­spir­a­cy to aid and abet mass mur­der,” the webinar’s announce­ment page reads. “The time to step up and answer the call is now. And the time to dig in our heels and take a firm ‘three per­center’ type stand against any fur­ther restric­tion on our right to keep and bear arms is now.”

 

The term “three per­center” refers to a dis­cred­it­ed the­o­ry that only 3 per­cent of America’s pop­u­la­tion rose up to fight the British Army in the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary War. The “Three Per­centers” is a sep­a­rate mili­tia close­ly aligned with Oath Keep­ers.

Though mem­bers repeat­ed­ly deny they sup­port out­right white nation­al­ism and are instead just hard-core lib­er­tar­i­ans, the mili­tias are often allied with white suprema­cists and tend to appear at the same ral­lies and events. SPLC notes the group oper­ates on “a set of base­less con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries about the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment work­ing to destroy the lib­er­ties of Amer­i­cans” and showed up with all-white, armed groups dur­ing protests in Fer­gu­son, Mis­souri, “to pro­tect white busi­ness­es against black pro­test­ers.”

Rhodes, the group’s founder, believes immi­grants are inten­tion­al­ly cross­ing the U.S.-Mexico bor­der as part of a “Com­mu­nist sub­ver­sive inva­sion” of the Unit­ed States. He also believes Black Lives Mat­ter and immi­grant- rights groups are also part of a secret Marx­ist takeover of Amer­i­ca. Oath Keep­ers were also heav­i­ly involved in Cliv­en Bundy’s 2017 armed insur­rec­tion against the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment in the Neva­da desert.

The groups also rose in pop­u­lar­i­ty as a reac­tion to Barack Obama’s pres­i­den­cy. You’re free to guess why. In light of his polit­i­cal lean­ings, it appears Niko­las Cruz was far like­li­er to have been an Oath Keep­er sym­pa­thiz­er than an antag­o­nist.

The Oath Keep­ers and Three Per­centers, for exam­ple, sent oper­a­tives to the Unite the Right neo-Nazi ral­ly in Char­lottesville, Vir­ginia, last year. Because they’re made up of fringe ex-mil­i­tary types, they seem as like­ly to fight off a per­ceived armed threat as they are to get pissed off and shoot a kid because his Lil Uzi Vert T‑shirt resem­bled Mumia Abu-Jamal. The Oath Keep­ers have repeat­ed­ly prop­a­gat­ed a claim that “all fed­er­al gun con­trol is unlaw­ful,” which is patent­ly and prov­ably false. Cow­an, the so-called guard stand­ing at North Side High in Fort Wayne, has mis­de­meanor bat­tery con­vic­tions in his past, and school reps say they don’t think his pres­ence makes any­one safer, espe­cial­ly because the cam­pus already has an offi­cial armed guard.

“We under­stand he has a right to be out there, as he is not on our prop­er­ty,” a school dis­trict spokesper­son told the Indi­ana TV sta­tion, “but we do not believe it adds to the safe­ty of our stu­dents. At North Side, as at all of our schools, we have secu­ri­ty pro­ce­dures in place. In addi­tion, at North Side, we have armed police offi­cers in the build­ing every day.”

It’s easy to see how the pres­ence of a ran­dom, heav­i­ly armed con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist could make a school-shoot­ing sit­u­a­tion worse. An Oath Keep­er might sprint into a school after hear­ing gun­shots and, say, rid­dle the wrong kid with rifle bul­lets. An arriv­ing SWAT team would be forced to deploy resources to appre­hend both a school shoot­er and an Oath Keep­er, because both peo­ple would be inside the school armed with weapons and it would be impos­si­ble to tell who’s shoot­ing whom or why.

Nat­u­ral­ly, the Oath Keep­ers also sup­port Florida’s pro­posed plans to arm teach­ers and place armed guards in schools, which passed through com­mit­tee last night and awaits a floor vote in both cham­bers of the state Leg­is­la­ture.

Such is the qual­i­ty of polit­i­cal dis­course in Flori­da in 2018: Rather than make it more dif­fi­cult for peo­ple like Cruz to buy AR-15 rifles, the Sun­shine State will instead train gym teach­ers with acute osteoarthri­tis how to mow down stu­dents with a Desert Eagle, while armed vets who fear a com­ing race war will stand out­side with assault rifles. Feel safer?

5b. Giv­en the high like­li­hood that schools and neigh­bor­hoods won’t want a heav­i­ly armed far-right indi­vid­ual hang­ing around their neigh­bor­hood schools, what does Stew­art Rhodes sug­gest his group do if their armed pres­ence isn’t want­ed? Just ignore them and do it any­way because it’s legal:

“Oath Keep­ers Want To Sta­tion Vol­un­teer Armed Guards Out­side Schools” by Alle­gra Kirk­land; Talk­ing Points Memo; 02/26/2018

Imag­ine if every school cam­pus in the Unit­ed States had its own vol­un­teer secu­ri­ty offi­cer: a for­mer police offi­cer or mil­i­tary vet­er­an equipped with an assault rifle.

That’s the dream of Oath Keep­ers founder Stew­art Rhodes.

In the wake of the Feb­ru­ary 14 mas­sacre at a Park­land, Flori­da high school, Rhodes is call­ing on mem­bers of his far-right anti-gov­ern­ment mili­tia group to serve as unpaid and unac­count­able armed school guards — whether teach­ers and stu­dents like the idea or not.

One Indi­ana Oath Keep­er has already deployed to a local school, even though the school dis­trict says there’s no need for him to be there.

Rhodes wants the mil­i­tary and police vet­er­ans who make up Oath Keep­ers’ mem­ber­ship to vol­un­teer for unpaid, rotat­ing shifts at schools of all lev­els, and col­leges, through­out the coun­try. He and two oth­er rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the fringe mili­tia com­mu­ni­ty will hold a webi­nar Mon­day night where they plan to encour­age Oath Keep­ers to sta­tion them­selves at schools “to pro­tect the chil­dren against mass mur­der, and to help train the teach­ers and staff.”

“I think it’s essen­tial,” Rhodes told TPM in a Mon­day phone call. “It’s part of our respon­si­bil­i­ty to do what we can.”

“And what we can do is be out­side of schools so that we’re clos­er if an attack hap­pens, or when one hap­pens,” Rhodes con­tin­ued. “We’ll be there to be a fast response.”

Oath Keep­ers came to promi­nence as part of the surge of right-wing extrem­ism that marked the ear­ly years of the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion. At the group’s core are efforts to stoke fear around out­landish con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries — that the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment will dis­arm all cit­i­zens, impose mar­tial law, and round Amer­i­cans up into deten­tion camps, among oth­er sce­nar­ios.

Rhodes, a Yale Law School grad­u­ate, has referred to Hillary Clin­ton as “Herr Hitlery,” and “the dom­i­na­trix-in-chief,” and has said John McCain should be tried for trea­son and then “hung by the neck until dead.”

The group’s push for vig­i­lante school secu­ri­ty offi­cers comes in the midst of a fraught nation­al debate over how to curb school shoot­ings like the one in Park­land that left 14 stu­dents and 3 staffers dead. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, the NRA and some GOP law­mak­ers all have sug­gest­ed arm­ing teach­ers who have firearms train­ing, as a way to deter would-be school shoot­ers — an idea Rhodes said he sup­ports. But since train­ing teach­ers will take time, he argues, it makes sense to use Oath Keep­ers vol­un­teers in the inter­im.

The Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of School Resource Offi­cers and many school shoot­ing sur­vivors, includ­ing those from Park­land, stren­u­ous­ly oppose plans to arm teach­ers. Teach­ers may not feel safe wield­ing arms; stu­dents could get ahold of the weapons or get caught in cross­fire; law enforce­ment could mis­take an armed teacher or oth­er non-uni­formed school staffer for an assailant. The prospect of some­thing going wrong seems even high­er with non-vet­ted, non-pro­fes­sion­al mem­bers of a con­spir­a­to­r­i­al mili­tia group vol­un­teer­ing ser­vices that schools did not ask for.

Rhodes’ response? “Tough.”

“If they don’t like it, too bad,” Rhodes said. “We’re not there to make peo­ple feel warm and fuzzy; we’re there to stop mur­ders.”

“What I tell our peo­ple is don’t ask for per­mis­sion,” Rhodes con­tin­ued. “Let ‘em know what you’re doing and be as friend­ly as you can. But this is the real­i­ty we’re in right now.”

“Most schools have this retard­ed no-guns pol­i­cy,” Rhodes added, call­ing such mea­sures, “‘Alice in Won­der­land,’ upside-down think­ing.”

To avoid con­fu­sion, mem­bers will be asked to wear a “long-range iden­ti­fi­er” like a sash or orange vest, as well as a “close-range iden­ti­fi­er” one that copy­cats can­not imi­tate, Rhodes said. Before show­ing up, they’ll be asked to pro­vide police with copies of their dri­vers’ licens­es, descrip­tions of their out­fits and descrip­tions of their vehi­cles and license plates.

Mark Cow­an, an Indi­ana-based mem­ber of the Oath Keep­ers and an Army vet­er­an, has since Fri­day post­ed him­self out­side North Side High School in Fort Wayne, wear­ing an Oath Keep­ers base­ball hat and car­ry­ing a hand­gun and an AR-15.

“If some­body comes to this school or anoth­er school where we’re at, that school shoot­er is going to know, we’re not going to play games,” Cow­an told local sta­tion WPTA. “You come to kill our kids, you’re dead.”

In oth­er inter­views with local media, Cow­an has said he is com­ply­ing with state law by park­ing his car just off of school grounds, and that he plans to remain there until the school, which already has an armed resource offi­cer, intro­duces addi­tion­al safe­ty mea­sures.

Accord­ing to local news reports, Cow­an was arrest­ed last year in con­nec­tion with a fight that involved his use of a dead­ly weapon, and plead­ed guilty plea to a count of mis­de­meanor bat­tery. He told WPTA that the inci­dent involved his effort to pro­tect two of his grand­chil­dren, who were attacked by anoth­er man. The guilty plea does not pre­vent him from car­ry­ing a firearm under Indi­ana law.

TPM was not imme­di­ate­ly able to reach Cow­an. But Bryan Humes, a spokesper­son for the Oath Keep­ers’ Indi­ana chap­ter, told TPM in a Mon­day phone call that Cow­an is serv­ing as “anoth­er set of eyes and ears” for North Side, which has some 1,800 stu­dents, and that oth­er mem­bers of the group are inter­est­ed in tak­ing up sim­i­lar posts.

“We’re just a lit­tle con­cerned that one offi­cer, with the size of the build­ing and the num­ber of peo­ple, may not quite be ade­quate as far as being able to keep an eye on every­thing,” Humes said.

“He had a cou­ple of stu­dents Fri­day come out from school dur­ing class and thank him for being out there,” Humes added. “He’s also had a cou­ple of the local police and sheriff’s offi­cers stop by and thank him for being out there.”

Cap­tain Steve Stone of the Allen Coun­ty Sheriff’s Depart­ment told TPM that Cow­an noti­fied him he would be sta­tioned out­side of North Side, and that he per­son­al­ly spread the mes­sage to the rest of the depart­ment. Stone declined to offer the department’s stance on the Oath Keep­ers’ pres­ence, not­ing that Cow­an is “not break­ing the law.”

“I can’t speak on behalf of the depart­ment on the department’s view of hav­ing civil­ians like the Oath Keep­ers doing that, unfor­tu­nate­ly,” Stone said, say­ing Sher­iff David Glad­ieux was unavail­able. “I can’t give you my per­son­al opin­ion on whether it’s good or not.”

6a. For peo­ple who think the notion of para­mil­i­tary right-wingers being dep­u­tized as part of a mar­tial law con­tin­gency plan, note what is hap­pen­ing in Ukraine.

Here’s anoth­er piece by Josh Cohen – a for­mer USAID project offi­cer for the for­mer Sovi­et Union who does a decent job of call­ing out the neo-Nazi threat to Ukraine – on the grow­ing ‘law enforce­ment’ role the neo-Nazi mili­tias are assum­ing.

The Kiev city gov­ern­ment recent­ly signed an agree­ment giv­ing C14 – the mili­tia lit­er­al­ly named after the white suprema­cist ’14 words’ slo­gan – the right to estab­lish a “munic­i­pal guard” to patrol the streets there. ” . . . . But con­nec­tions between law enforce­ment agen­cies and extrem­ists give Ukraine’s West­ern allies ample rea­son for con­cern. C14 and Kiev’s city gov­ern­ment recent­ly signed an agree­ment allow­ing C14 to estab­lish a “munic­i­pal guard” to patrol the streets; three such mili­tia-run guard forces are already reg­is­tered in Kiev, and at least 21 oper­ate in oth­er cities. . . .”

They’re also crack­ing down on polit­i­cal activists such as LGBT and anti-war pro­po­nents.

As the arti­cle also notes, while the far-right may not be win­ning at the bal­lot box, they have pow­er­ful polit­i­cal pro­tec­tion, because of the close rela­tion­ship between Inte­ri­or Min­is­ter Arsen Avakov and fig­ures like Azov leader Andriy Bilet­sky and Sergei Korotkykh, an Azov vet­er­an who is now a high-rank­ing police offi­cial.

Avakov’s Peo­ples’ Par­ty is the main part­ner in the par­lia­men­tary coali­tion led by Poroshenko’s Bloc. Should Petro Poroshenko decid­ed to chal­lenge Avakov and, as a result, the grow­ing role of these neo-Nazi mili­tias, his gov­ern­ing coali­tion might col­lapse. And that’s all part of why Ukraine’s neo-Nazi prob­lem isn’t just a prob­lem of pop­u­lar sup­port for the neo-Nazi mili­tias, although the lev­el of pop­u­lar sup­port they enjoy is still dis­turbing­ly high.

“Com­men­tary: Ukraine’s neo-Nazi prob­lem” by Josh Cohen; Reuters; 03/19/2018

As Ukraine’s strug­gle against Rus­sia and its prox­ies con­tin­ues, Kiev must also con­tend with a grow­ing prob­lem behind the front lines: far-right vig­i­lantes who are will­ing to use intim­i­da­tion and even vio­lence to advance their agen­das, and who often do so with the tac­it approval of law enforce­ment agen­cies.

A Jan­u­ary 28 demon­stra­tion, in Kiev, by 600 mem­bers of the so-called “Nation­al Mili­tia,” a new­ly-formed ultra­na­tion­al­ist group that vows “to use force to estab­lish order,” illus­trates this threat. While the group’s Kiev launch was peace­ful, Nation­al Mili­tia mem­bers in bal­a­clavas stormed a city coun­cil meet­ing in the cen­tral Ukrain­ian town of Cherkasy the fol­low­ing day, skir­mish­ing with deputies and forc­ing them to pass a new bud­get.

Many of the Nation­al Militia’s mem­bers come from the Azov move­ment, one of the 30-odd pri­vate­ly-fund­ed “vol­un­teer bat­tal­ions” that, in the ear­ly days of the war, helped the reg­u­lar army to defend Ukrain­ian ter­ri­to­ry against Russia’s sep­a­ratist prox­ies. Although Azov usesNazi-era sym­bol­ism and recruitsneo-Nazis intoits ranks, a recent arti­cle in For­eign Affairs down­played any risks the group might pose, point­ing out that, like oth­er vol­un­teer mili­tias, Azov has been “reined in” through its inte­gra­tion into Ukraine’s armed forces. While it’s true that pri­vate mili­tias no longer rule the bat­tle­front, it’s the home front that Kiev needs to wor­ry about now.

When Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin’s seizure of Crimea four years ago first exposed the decrepit con­di­tion of Ukraine’s armed forces, right-wing mili­tias such as Azov and Right Sec­tor stepped into the breach, fend­ingoff the Russ­ian-backed sep­a­ratists while Ukraine’s reg­u­lar mil­i­tary regrouped. Though, as a result, many Ukraini­ans con­tin­ue to regard the mili­tias with grat­i­tude and admi­ra­tion, the more extreme among these groups pro­mote an intol­er­ant and illib­er­al ide­ol­o­gy that will endan­ger Ukraine in the long term. Since the Crimean cri­sis, the mili­tias have been for­mal­ly inte­grat­ed into Ukraine’s armed forces, but some have resist­ed full inte­gra­tion: Azov, for exam­ple, runs its own children’s train­ing camp, and the careers sec­tion instructs recruits who wish to trans­fer to Azov from a reg­u­lar mil­i­tary unit.

Accord­ing to Free­dom House’s Ukraine project direc­tor Matthew Schaaf, “numer­ous orga­nized rad­i­cal right-wing groups exist in Ukraine, and while the vol­un­teer bat­tal­ions may have been offi­cial­ly inte­grat­ed into state struc­tures, some of them have since spun off polit­i­cal and non-prof­it struc­tures to imple­ment their vision.”Schaaf not­ed that “an increase in patri­ot­ic dis­course sup­port­ing Ukraine in its con­flict with Rus­sia has coin­cid­ed with an appar­ent increase in both pub­lic hate speech, some­times by pub­lic offi­cials and mag­ni­fied by the media, as well as vio­lence towards vul­ner­a­ble groups such as the LGBT com­mu­ni­ty,” an obser­va­tion that is sup­port­ed by a recent Coun­cil of Europe study.

In recent months, Ukraine has expe­ri­enced a wave of unchecked vig­i­lan­tism. Insti­tute Respub­li­ca, a local pro-democ­ra­cy NGO, report­ed that activists are fre­quent­ly harassed by vig­i­lantes when hold­ing legal meet­ings or ral­lies relat­ed to polit­i­cal­ly-con­tro­ver­sial posi­tions, such as the pro­mo­tion of LGBT rights or oppo­si­tion to the war. Azov and oth­er mili­tias have attacked anti-fas­cist demon­stra­tions, city coun­cil meet­ings, media out­letsart exhi­bi­tionsfor­eign stu­dents and Roma. Pro­gres­sive activists describe a new cli­mate of fear that they say has been inten­si­fy­ing ever since last year’s near-fatal stab­bing of anti-war activist Stas Ser­hiyenko, which is believed to have been per­pe­trat­ed by an extrem­ist group named C14 (the name refers to a 14-word slo­gan pop­u­lar among white suprema­cists). Bru­tal attacks this month on Inter­na­tion­al Women’s Day march­es in sev­er­al Ukrain­ian cities prompt­ed an unusu­al­ly force­ful state­ment from Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al, which warned that “the Ukrain­ian state is rapid­ly los­ing its monop­oly on vio­lence.”

Ukraine is not the only coun­try that must con­tend with a resur­gent far right. But Kiev’s recent efforts to incor­po­rate inde­pen­dent armed groups into its reg­u­lar armed forces, as well as a con­tin­u­ing nation­al sense of indebt­ed­ness to the mili­tias for their defense of the home­land, make address­ing the ultra­na­tion­al­ist threat con­sid­er­ably more com­pli­cat­ed than it is else­where. Accord­ing to Schaaf and the Insti­tute Respub­li­ca, Ukrain­ian extrem­ists are rarely pun­ished for acts of vio­lence. In some cas­es — such as C14’s Jan­u­ary attack on a remem­brance gath­er­ingfor two mur­dered jour­nal­ists — police actu­al­ly detain peace­ful demon­stra­tors instead.

To be clear, the Kremlin’s claims that Ukraine is a hor­nets’ nest of fas­cists are false: far-right par­ties per­formed poor­ly in Ukraine’s last par­lia­men­tary elec­tions, and Ukraini­ans react­edwith alarm to the Nation­al Militia’s demon­stra­tion in Kiev. But con­nec­tions between law enforce­ment agen­cies and extrem­ists give Ukraine’s West­ern allies ample rea­son for con­cern. C14 and Kiev’s city gov­ern­ment recent­ly signed an agree­ment allow­ing C14 to estab­lish a “munic­i­pal guard” to patrol the streets; three such mili­tia-run guard forces are already reg­is­tered in Kiev, and at least 21 oper­ate in oth­er cities.

In an ide­al world, Pres­i­dent Petro Poroshenko would purge the police and the inte­ri­or min­istry of far-right sym­pa­thiz­ers, includ­ing Inte­ri­or Min­is­ter Arsen Avakov, who has close ties to Azov leader Andriy Bilet­sky, as well as Sergei Korotkykh, an Azov vet­er­anwho is now a high-rank­ing police offi­cial. But Poroshenko would risk major reper­cus­sions if he did so; Avakov is his chief polit­i­cal rival, and the min­istry he runs con­trols the police, the Nation­al Guard and sev­er­al for­mer mili­tias.

As one Ukrain­ian ana­lyst not­edin Decem­ber, con­trol of these forces make Avakov extreme­ly pow­er­ful and Poroshenko’s pres­i­den­cy might not be strong enough to with­stand the kind of direct con­fronta­tion with Avakov that an attempt to oust him or to strike at his pow­er base could well pro­duce. Poroshenko has endured fre­quent ver­bal threats, includ­ing calls for rev­o­lu­tion, from ultra­na­tion­al­ist groups, so he may believe that he needs Avakov to keep them in check.

Avakov’s Peo­ples’ Par­ty sta­tus as the main part­ner in Ukraine’s par­lia­men­tary coali­tion increas­es Avakov’s lever­age over Poroshenko’s Bloc. An attempt to fire Avakov could imper­il Poroshenko’s slim leg­isla­tive major­i­ty, and lead to ear­ly par­lia­men­tary elec­tions. Giv­en Poroshenko’s cur­rent unpop­u­lar­i­ty, this is a sce­nario he will like­ly try to avoid.

Despite his weak posi­tion, Poroshenko still has some options for reduc­ing the threat from the far right. Though Avakov con­trols the Ukraine’s police and Nation­al Guard, Poroshenko still com­mands Ukraine’s secu­ri­ty and intel­li­gence ser­vices, the SBU, and could instruct the agency to cut its ties with C14 and oth­er extrem­ist groups. Poroshenko should also express pub­lic sup­port for mar­gin­al­ized groups like the Roma and LGBT com­mu­ni­ties, and affirm his com­mit­ment to pro­tect­ing their rights.

West­ern diplo­mats and human rights orga­ni­za­tions must urge Ukraine’s gov­ern­ment to uphold the rule of law and to stop allow­ing the far right to act with impuni­ty. Inter­na­tion­al donors can help by fund­ing more ini­tia­tives like the Unit­ed States Agency for Inter­na­tion­al Development’s projects sup­port­ing train­ing for Ukrain­ian lawyers and human rights defend­ers, and improv­ing equi­table access to the judi­cial sys­tem for mar­gin­al­ized com­mu­ni­ties. . . .

 

Discussion

11 comments for “FTR #1003 School Shootings and Fascist Groups, Part 2”

  1. This arti­cle shows a recent sniper, Rex Whit­man Har­bour, who shot 3 peo­ple, fol­lowed the pat­tern of Nazi Lead­er­less resis­tance. Mr. Har­bour admired Park­land Flori­da shoot­er, Nicholas Cruz. Har­bour’s Face­book pro­file also shows that he liked numer­ous his­tor­i­cal pho­tos of Ger­man Nazis, includ­ing offi­cers of the Panz­er­waffe and Luft­waffe. He post­ed a com­ment on a pho­to of Nazi tank com­man­der Kurt Knis­pel, who destroyed 168 Allied tanks, stat­ing “Great work! Long live Ger­many!”.

    The scari­est part of this Nazi link got almost no press cov­er­age. Is there an orga­ni­za­tion which is able to keep this out of the main­stream news?

    https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2018/05/07/georgia-sniper-appeared-fascinated-nazis?utm_campaign=180510%20eNews&utm_medium=email&utm_source=EOACLK

    Geor­gia sniper appeared fas­ci­nat­ed with Nazis

    May 07, 2018
    Bill Mor­lin and Nick R. Mar­tin

    A Geor­gia free­way sniper, who appar­ent­ly idol­ized a Flori­da mass shoot­er, also appeared fas­ci­nat­ed with Ger­man Nazis and their World War II mil­i­tary machine.

    Rex Whit­mire Har­bour, 26, died of a self-inflict­ed gun­shot wound after fir­ing at sev­en vehi­cles, wound­ing three peo­ple, on Fri­day along a state high­way in Gainesville, Geor­gia.

    Hall Coun­ty Sher­iff Ger­ald Couch said inves­ti­ga­tors lat­er searched Harbour’s home in Snel­lville, Geor­gia, and “dis­cov­ered a man­i­festo” stat­ing his admi­ra­tion for Niko­las Cruz, accused of fatal­ly shoot­ing 17 peo­ple in Feb­ru­ary at Mar­jo­ry Stone­man Dou­glas High School in Flori­da.

    “We found hand­writ­ten doc­u­ments writ­ten by Mr. Har­bour and they were very dis­turb­ing,” the sher­iff told reporters. “He indi­cat­ed that he idol­ized the [Park­land] mass shoot­er,” call­ing him a hero who inspired Har­bour and gave him “courage and con­fi­dence.”

    “The remain­der of the doc­u­ments that I saw are very hate-filled in that regard,” Couch said. “It appeared that he was tar­get­ing all Amer­i­cans. Why? That I don’t know.”

    Author­i­ties haven’t specif­i­cal­ly men­tioned Harbour’s Face­book page, which shows he liked mul­ti­ple pages set up in hon­or of Ger­man Nazis and one titled “Lovers of the Ger­man mil­i­tary forces 1933–1945.” The oth­er pages he liked includ­ed a range of musi­cians and celebri­ties as well as mul­ti­ple pages ded­i­cat­ed to “Amer­i­can Sniper” Chris Kyle and his wid­ow, Taya Kyle.

    Harbour’s Face­book pro­file also shows that he liked numer­ous his­tor­i­cal pho­tos of Ger­man Nazis, includ­ing offi­cers of the Panz­er­waffe and Luft­waffe.

    One of the pho­tos Har­bour liked on Face­book depicts Nazi leader Her­mann Göring and his pet lion, while anoth­er is of Mar­garete “Gretl” Braun, Adolf Hitler’s sis­ter-in-law and part of the Nazi inner cir­cle.

    Har­bour also post­ed a pub­lic com­ment on a pho­to of Nazi tank com­man­der Kurt Knis­pel, who was cred­it­ed with destroy­ing 168 Allied tanks, writ­ing: “Great work! Long live Ger­many!”

    After the high­way shoot­ing, inves­ti­ga­tors retrieved a trail cam­era show­ing Har­bour tak­ing a posi­tion in a wood­en area adjoin­ing the south­bound side of the high­way where the shoot­ings occurred, the Atlanta Jour­nal-Con­sti­tu­tion report­ed.

    At least 17 shell cas­ings were recov­ered, author­i­ties said.

    As deputies respond­ed to the scene, Har­bour fled in a Buick that came to a stop in a road­way medi­an where he shot him­self. In the vehi­cle, inves­ti­ga­tors found three 9mm hand­guns, a 12-gauge shot­gun and more than 3,400 rounds of ammu­ni­tion.

    HERE IS ANOTHER ARTICLE FROM the Asso­ci­at­ed Press ON THIS: It reveals not only that writ­ings sug­gest he viewed Flori­da sus­pect Niko­las Cruz as a “hero” who gave him “courage and con­fi­dence,” accord­ing to the Hall Count, Geor­gia sher­iff said. but also that “He had the weapons, the ammu­ni­tion and obvi­ous­ly the will to inflict a lot of harm and a lot of hate.”

    https://www.apnews.com/e0538bf801164cdba77eb3f5f9214fed/Sheriff:-Highway-sniper-%22idolized%22-school-shooting-suspect

    May 5, 2018

    Sher­iff: High­way sniper idol­ized school shoot­ing sus­pect

    GAINESVILLE, Ga. (AP) — A sniper who killed him­self after fir­ing on cars and injur­ing peo­ple on a Geor­gia high­way idol­ized the Park­land, Flori­da school shoot­ing sus­pect, a sher­iff said Sat­ur­day.

    A sher­iff says 26-year-old land­scap­er Rex Whit­mire Har­bour of Snel­lville, fired at least 17 times and hit at least sev­en vehi­cles trav­el­ing north­bound on Geor­gia 365 out­side Atlanta around noon on Fri­day. Two peo­ple were wound­ed and a third was hurt by bro­ken glass. None of their injuries were life-threat­en­ing.

    Hall Coun­ty Sher­iff Ger­ald Couch told a news con­fer­ence that a deputy chased after a sus­pi­cious car pulling out of a wood­ed area adja­cent the high­way on Fri­day. He said the sus­pect shot him­self in the head, and his car rolled to a stop. Har­bour lat­er died at Grady Memo­r­i­al Hos­pi­tal.

    Couch said inves­ti­ga­tors found three 9mm hand­guns, a 12-gauge shot­gun, a BB-gun, and more than 3,400 rounds of ammu­ni­tion inside his vehi­cle. Then they searched Harbour’s home, where he lived with his par­ents, and found “hate-filled” hand­writ­ten doc­u­ments.

    WSB-TV Atlanta report­ed that the sher­iff said Harbour’s moth­er told inves­ti­ga­tors her son was mild-man­nered and qui­et. But the writ­ings sug­gest he viewed Flori­da sus­pect Niko­las Cruz as a “hero” who gave him “courage and con­fi­dence,” the sher­iff said.

    “What his moti­va­tion was oth­er than just hate, we don’t know at this time,” Couch said. State inves­ti­ga­tors and the FBI turned up no crim­i­nal his­to­ry. “He had the weapons, the ammu­ni­tion and obvi­ous­ly the will to inflict a lot of harm and a lot of hate.”

    Posted by Mary Benton | May 10, 2018, 3:58 pm
  2. This arti­cle hints at a com­mon theme among the alt-right relat­ing to these increas­ing­ly com­mon mass shoot­ings. The inci­dents start by hav­ing online pro­pa­gan­da tar­get white men between about 14 and 30 who are under­em­ployed and frus­trat­ed with their lives:

    https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/nekvg8/why-do-young-alt-right-white-men-keep-killing-people-online-radicalization

    The Ter­ri­fy­ing Trend of White Men Rad­i­cal­ized Online Becom­ing IRL Ter­ror­ists

    It’s no acci­dent that young white guys with a fond­ness for the dark­est part of the Inter­net are descend­ing into far-right vio­lence.

    David Nei­w­ert
    May 17 2018, 11:01am
    vice.com

    The inci­dents keep pil­ing up, like the crest­ing wave of an incom­ing tide.

    A young, self-described “sov­er­eign cit­i­zen” is impli­cat­ed in a mass shoot­ing at a Waf­fle House in Ten­nessee that kills four non­white cus­tomers. An “invol­un­tary celi­bate,” or incel, is arrest­ed over a Toron­to van attack that kills ten peo­ple. A young, appar­ent neo-Nazi involved in an online fas­cist group is arrest­ed in Illi­nois with a large cache of weapons. Anoth­er young man in Geor­gia, who report­ed­ly “idol­ized” the teenag­er who killed 17 peo­ple at a high school in Park­land, Flori­da, opens fire on cars on a Geor­gia free­way, injur­ing two peo­ple before shoot­ing him­self.

    These inci­dents, all from with­in the past month or so, have vari­ables, of course. Besides the set­tings, meth­ods of vio­lence, and kinds of weapon­ry used, dis­tinct agen­das seem to have under­gird­ed them. But they all appear to gen­er­al­ly fall under the far-right ide­o­log­i­cal umbrel­la.

    They also have some­thing impor­tant in com­mon: They were all com­mit­ted by young white men who had appar­ent­ly been rad­i­cal­ized online.

    That’s no acci­dent. The surge of rad­i­cal-right orga­niz­ing by the most­ly online alt right in recent years has, in fact, been con­scious­ly direct­ed at pre­cise­ly that demo­graph­ic: white men between about 14 and 30, under­em­ployed and frus­trat­ed with their lives. This rad­i­cal­iza­tion, in and of itself, is not break­ing news. What does seem nov­el to me, as a long­time observ­er of far-right orga­niz­ing, is that the vio­lence that always lurked under the sur­face of such rhetoric is now increas­ing­ly man­i­fest­ing itself in extreme acts of lone-wolf aggres­sion.

    The details of some of the moti­va­tions involved in recent inci­dents have not been entire­ly set­tled. 29-year-old Travis Reink­ing, the man accused in the Waf­fle House case, claimed a back­ground of at least mar­gin­al involve­ment in the far-right sov­er­eign-cit­i­zens’ move­ment. But it’s not at all clear that ide­ol­o­gy inspired him to act out mur­der­ous­ly, even if the fact that the dead were all black or His­pan­ic rais­es the dis­tinct like­li­hood of a racial moti­va­tion in that crime. Reink­ing awaits tri­al in Ten­nessee.

    It’s also not clear what it means that Rex Whit­mire Har­bour, the 26-year-old accused of open­ing fire on pass­ing cars on a Geor­gia free­way, ven­er­at­ed Park­land sus­pect Niko­las Cruz and left-behind a “hate-filled” mes­sage. Still, latch­ing onto a noto­ri­ous alleged mass shoot­er who report­ed­ly had swastikas engraved on his ammo clips fits the gen­er­al pat­tern here, as does Har­bour’s appar­ent fas­ci­na­tion with his­tor­i­cal fig­ures from Nazi Ger­many.

    Mean­while, because of social-media mes­sages and oth­er evi­dence, it’s fair­ly clear that accused Toron­to van attack­er Alek Minass­ian, 25, was enraged by his lack of roman­tic suc­cess with women. He post­ed sym­pa­thet­i­cal­ly about incels like him­self, and wrote warm­ly of Elliot Rodger, the 22-year-old who in May 2014 car­ried out a mass shoot­ing in Isla Vista, Cal­i­for­nia, that left sev­en dead (includ­ing him­self) and more wound­ed after express­ing sim­i­lar­ly deranged ideas about sex. Then there’s 19-year-old Jakub Zak of Illi­nois, who stands accused of stock­pil­ing weapons ille­gal­ly as part of his fas­cist ideology—he was report­ed­ly an active mem­ber of Patri­ot Front, an online hate group—and may have been involved in a num­ber of oth­er crimes as well.

    Again, the behav­ioral pat­tern we’ve seen inten­si­fy in recent weeks is not a brand new one. The mod­ern arche­type may have been set back in 2015 by Dylann Roof, the then-21-year-old South Car­oli­na white man who walked into a black church in Charleston and mur­dered nine con­gre­gants. The root­less Roof, offi­cial­ly unaf­fil­i­at­ed with any hate or extrem­ist groups but a par­tic­i­pant in their online activ­i­ty, seems to have been dri­ven to seem­ing­ly ran­dom vio­lence at least in part by his absorp­tion in con­spir­a­cy and online forums and chat rooms ded­i­cat­ed to hate­ful ide­olo­gies.

    Since then, at least 27 peo­ple were mur­dered and 52 more injured in attacks by most­ly young men linked to the alt right and its online rad­i­cal­iza­tion process before the inci­dents of the past month. They includ­ed a con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist who alleged­ly stabbed his father to death at the height of an argu­ment that appears to have been about Piz­za­gate, a Mary­land stu­dent who alleged­ly stabbed a black man to death after he refused to move out of his way, and a Port­land drifter accused of stab­bing two com­muters to death when they attempt­ed to shut down his anti-Mus­lim tirade.

    Some inci­dents, includ­ing the Park­land shoot­ing itself, remain fuzzy. On social media, Cruz was seem­ing­ly obsessed with vio­lence, guns, and race, once post­ing on Insta­gram that “I hate Jews, nig­gers and immi­grants.” It remains unclear to what extent that hatred fueled the shoot­ing ram­page. Like­wise, the motives and inten­tions of a young white man who acci­den­tal­ly blew him­self up while mak­ing bombs at his Beaver Dam, Wis­con­sin, home, remain under offi­cial wraps for now.

    Even so, the mech­a­nism for this kind of rad­i­cal­iza­tion is uni­form: Dis­af­fect­ed young men are recruit­ed by overt appeals to their egos and desire to appear hero­ic. The appeals often employ trans­gres­sive rhetoric, with every­thing from racist humor to threats of vio­lence, mak­ing par­tic­i­pants feel that they’re being edgy and dark. The main fod­der for their evolv­ing world­view, how­ev­er, is con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries.

    These the­o­ries all tell the same larg­er nar­ra­tive: That the world is secret­ly run by a nefar­i­ous cabal of glob­al­ists (who just hap­pen to be Jew­ish), and that they employ an end­less cat­a­log of dirty tricks and “false flags” to ensure the world doesn’t know about their manip­u­la­tions, the whole point of which ulti­mate­ly is the enslave­ment of mankind. Each day’s news events can thus be inter­pret­ed through the up-is-down prism this world­view impos­es, ensur­ing that every nation­al tragedy or mass shoot­ing is soon enmeshed in a web of the­o­ries about its real pur­pose.

    The pre­cise far-right cause in ques­tion often seems less impor­tant than the broad­er resort to inflict­ing harm.

    “Glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of vio­lence gen­er­al­ly among the estranged is its own ide­ol­o­gy,” said Bri­an Levin, direc­tor of the Cen­ter for the Study of Hate and Extrem­ism at Cal State Uni­ver­si­ty in San Bernardi­no. “So, peo­ple with amor­phous or off­beat philoso­phies often embrace vio­lence as an ide­ol­o­gy, not just a method. And they’re com­fort­able with dove­tail­ing philoso­phies.”

    This rad­i­cal­iza­tion appears to be spread­ing like kudzu: A young Mon­tre­al alt-right activist was recent­ly out­ed by stu­dent jour­nal­ists as one of the lead­ing pro­pa­gan­dists in the online neo-Nazi forums Iron March, work­ing to sig­nal-boost racist groups like Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion. Along sim­i­lar lines, ProP­ub­li­ca recent­ly exposed the mem­ber­ship of some Atom­waf­fen activists among the ranks of active-duty Amer­i­can mil­i­tary.

    The tar­get demo­graph­ic for online far-right rad­i­cal­iza­tion could not be more clear. As Andrew Anglin, pub­lish­er and founder of the neo-Nazi site the Dai­ly Stormer, put it this Jan­u­ary, “My site is main­ly designed to tar­get chil­dren.” Like­wise, at the annu­al white-nation­al­ist Amer­i­can Renais­sance con­fer­ence in Ten­nessee last month, long­time suprema­cists bragged of their recruit­ment efforts among younger peo­ple: “Amer­i­can Renais­sance atten­dees are now younger and more even­ly divid­ed among the sex­es than in the past” one speak­er not­ed, before gush­ing over the white-nation­al­ist col­lege cam­pus group Iden­ti­ty Evropa.

    When Amer­i­cans have talked about online rad­i­cal­iza­tion in the recent past, most of us tend­ed to think of it in terms of rad­i­cal Islamists from groups such as Islam­ic State, who have been known to lever­age the tech­nol­o­gy to their advan­tage, par­tic­u­lar­ly social media. But a study by ter­ror­ism expert J.M. Berg­er pub­lished way back in 2016 found that white nation­al­ists were far out­strip­ping their Islamist coun­ter­parts: “On Twit­ter, ISIS’s pre­ferred social plat­form, Amer­i­can white nation­al­ist move­ments have seen their fol­low­ers grow by more than 600 per­cent since 2012. Today, they out­per­form ISIS in near­ly every social met­ric, from fol­low­er counts to tweets per day.”

    Hei­di Beirich, direc­tor of the Intel­li­gence Project at the South­ern Pover­ty Law Center—the watch­dog group with which I am affiliated—told me it “is def­i­nite­ly the case” that the vio­lence SPLC has long warned against and care­ful­ly tracked is increas­ing­ly man­i­fest­ing itself right now.

    “Online rad­i­cal­iza­tion seems to be speed­ing up, with young men, par­tic­u­lar­ly white men, div­ing into extrem­ist ide­olo­gies quick­er and quick­er,” she said, adding, “the result seems to be more vio­lence, as these exam­ples indi­cate. It is a seri­ous prob­lem and we don’t seem to have any real solu­tions for it. These cas­es also show that an era of vio­lence brought on by the Inter­net is indeed upon us, with no end in sight.”

    Yet the response to the string of acts has been strange­ly mut­ed in the main­stream media, espe­cial­ly on cable news, where most dis­cus­sions of the events have focused on issues around gun vio­lence, or on the par­tic­u­lars of the nox­ious incel phe­nom­e­non. The online-rad­i­cal­iza­tion thread that con­nects all these sto­ries togeth­er is the goril­la that every­one tip­toes around in the room—and one Amer­i­ca ignores at its own per­il.

    Sign up for our newslet­ter to get the best of VICE deliv­ered to your inbox dai­ly.

    Fol­low David Nei­w­ert on Twit­ter.

    Posted by Mary Benton | May 19, 2018, 8:15 pm
  3. With a mass shoot­ing seem­ing­ly every week in Amer­i­ca, here’s a pair of arti­cles remind­ing us that vio­lent far right extrem­ist ide­olo­gies real­ly should be seen as one of the key fac­tors dri­ving this phe­nom­e­na. It’s sort of a ‘well, duh’ kind of point. But since there does­n’t appear to be much recog­ni­tion that these mass shoot­ers have almost always been found to have immersed them­selves in one form or extrem­ist far right ide­ol­o­gy or anoth­er, it’s an impor­tant ‘well, duh’ point.

    So here’s the first sto­ry remind­ing us on this: the release of ~1,200 pages of doc­u­ments relat­ed to the Las Vegas shoot­ing is giv­ing us a bet­ter idea of what may have moti­vat­ed Stephen Pad­dock. Sur­prise! Pad­dock appears to be a sov­er­eign cit­i­zen who was super freaked out about gov­ern­ment hur­ri­cane aid was a pre­lude to set­ting up FEMA camps and seiz­ing guns and he talked about the need to ‘wake up’ the Amer­i­can peo­ple. And while we don’t have infor­ma­tion explic­it­ly say­ing that he did these shoot­ings in order to car­ry out some sort of sov­er­eign cit­i­zen goal, it’s hard to imag­ine such views did­n’t play a role in his deci­sion to gun down a crowd of peo­ple:

    The Guardian

    New doc­u­ments sug­gest Las Vegas shoot­er was con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist – what we know

    In the doc­u­ments, those who encoun­tered gun­man Stephen Pad­dock say he expressed con­spir­a­to­r­i­al, anti-gov­ern­ment beliefs char­ac­ter­is­tic of the far right

    Jason Wil­son
    Sat 19 May 2018 06.00 EDT
    Last mod­i­fied on Sat 19 May 2018 06.02 EDT

    What’s the lat­est devel­op­ment in the Stephen Pad­dock sto­ry?

    Stephen Pad­dock was the gun­man who killed 58 peo­ple and wound­ed hun­dreds more last Octo­ber, when he opened fire from the win­dow of his room at the Man­dalay hotel on the Las Vegas Strip.

    Yes­ter­day, fol­low­ing legal action from news orga­ni­za­tions, the Las Vegas police depart­ment released a trove of doc­u­ments on the inves­ti­ga­tion, includ­ing state­ments from wit­ness­es and vic­tims.

    What did the doc­u­ment release tell us?

    Most­ly the doc­u­ments con­tain har­row­ing accounts from vic­tims of Stephen Paddock’s shoot­ing spree. There is also an inter­view with Paddock’s wife. As police said in the press con­fer­ence announc­ing the release, there is noth­ing defin­i­tive in the mate­r­i­al about Paddock’s motives for the mas­sacre.

    But tan­ta­liz­ing­ly, peo­ple who encoun­tered Pad­dock before his shoot­ing say that he expressed con­spir­a­to­r­i­al, anti-gov­ern­ment beliefs, which are char­ac­ter­is­tic of the far right.

    In a hand­writ­ten state­ment, one woman says she sat near Pad­dock in a din­er just a few days before the shoot­ing, while out with her son. She said she heard him and a com­pan­ion dis­cussing the 25th anniver­sary of the Ruby Ridge stand­off and the Waco siege. (Each of these inci­dents became touch­stones for a ris­ing anti-gov­ern­ment mili­tia move­ment in the 1990s.)

    She says she heard him and his com­pan­ion say­ing that court­room flags with gold­en fringes are not real flags. The belief that gold-fringed flags are those of a for­eign juris­dic­tion, or “admi­ral­ty flags”, is char­ac­ter­is­tic of so-called “sov­er­eign cit­i­zens”, who believe, among oth­er things, that the cur­rent US gov­ern­ment, and its laws, are ille­git­i­mate.

    “At the time,” her state­ment says, “I thought, ‘Strange guys’ and want­ed to leave.”

    Anoth­er man, him­self cur­rent­ly in jail, says he met Pad­dock three weeks before the shoot­ing for an abortive firearms trans­ac­tion, in the carpark of a Bass Pro Shop. The man was sell­ing schemat­ic dia­grams for an auto sear, a device that would con­vert semi-auto­mat­ic weapons to full auto­mat­ic fire. Pad­dock asked him to make the device for him, and the man refused.

    At this point Pad­dock launched into a rant about “anti-gov­ern­ment stuff … Fema camps”. Pad­dock said that the evac­u­a­tion of peo­ple by the Fed­er­al Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency (Fema) after Hur­ri­cane Kat­ri­na was a a “dry run for law enforce­ment and mil­i­tary to start kickin’ down doors and ... con­fis­cat­ing guns”.

    “Some­body has to wake up the Amer­i­can pub­lic and get them to arm them­selves,” the man says Pad­dock told him. “Some­times sac­ri­fices have to be made.”

    Why would some­one be wor­ried about Fema camps? Isn’t Fema there to help in emer­gen­cies?

    Yes, but for decades Fema has been incor­po­rat­ed into con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries pro­mul­gat­ed by the anti-gov­ern­ment far right.

    Some con­spir­a­cy-mind­ed Amer­i­cans believe that Fema’s emer­gency mis­sion is a cov­er sto­ry. The real pur­pose of the agency is to build and main­tain con­cen­tra­tion camps, which will house dis­si­dent “patri­ots” after a dec­la­ra­tion of mar­tial law. The sup­po­si­tion is that the US gov­ern­ment will turn on its cit­i­zens under the direc­tion of the “New World Order”.

    This sounds implau­si­ble. Where did this idea come from?

    The short answer is that it has been a sta­ple of the rad­i­cal right for per­haps three decades.

    The first ver­sion of the Fema camp con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry was in the newslet­ters of the far right “Posse Comi­ta­tus” move­ment in the ear­ly 1980s. It was an update, or an adap­ta­tion, of the fears of for­eign sub­ver­sion that have ani­mat­ed the Amer­i­can pop­ulist right since the high tide of nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry nativism.

    Posse Comi­ta­tus, active espe­cial­ly in west­ern states from the late 1960s, believed that the US was con­trolled by a Jew­ish con­spir­a­cy, which it referred to as ZOG (Zion­ist Occu­pa­tion Gov­ern­ment). It also pro­mot­ed “Chris­t­ian iden­ti­ty” the­ol­o­gy, which held that the white race was the lost tribe of Israel, and that Jews were in league with Satan. At some point, they thought, America’s imposter gov­ern­ment would round up and imprison white men.

    Apart from devel­op­ing anti-gov­ern­ment beliefs, Posse Comitatus’s crank legal the­o­ries laid the ground­work for a still-flour­ish­ing “sov­er­eign cit­i­zen” move­ment.

    But the FEMA the­o­ry real­ly took off dur­ing the rise of the mili­tia move­ment in the 1990s. Move­ment entre­pre­neurs like John Trochmann of the Mili­tia of Mon­tana elab­o­rat­ed the sto­ry in newslet­ters and in his infa­mous “Blue Book”, which was filled with pic­tures alleged­ly show­ing camps, trains loaded with Russ­ian tanks and the arrival of “black heli­copters” in prepa­ra­tion for the sup­pos­ed­ly immi­nent New World Order takeover.

    Trochmann and oth­ers also claimed to have pic­tures of the facil­i­ties which would be used as con­cen­tra­tion camps. These turned out to be army train­ing grounds, fed­er­al pris­ons or as-yet unoc­cu­pied bases.

    These the­o­ries were nev­er­the­less preva­lent in a move­ment that some schol­ars say had up to 5 mil­lion sym­pa­thiz­ers at its height. Tim­o­thy McVeigh, who killed 168 peo­ple when he bombed a fed­er­al build­ing in 1995, also emerged from this anti-gov­ern­ment milieu.

    Okay, but the mili­tia move­ment fad­ed away. Why are peo­ple still talk­ing about this?

    While the mili­tia move­ment declined (or at least went under­ground) in the years fol­low­ing McVeigh’s bomb­ing, the Fema con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry has been kept alive by some very can­ny entre­pre­neurs in rightwing media.

    Glenn Beck might have endeav­ored to go legit since he start­ed his own media com­pa­ny, but back in his black­board days at Fox News, he ped­dled all man­ner of con­spir­a­cy think­ing. In 2009, at the height of the Tea Par­ty surge, he broached the top­ic on Fox & Friends, giv­ing it more main­stream expo­sure than it had ever had.

    But the most con­sis­tent and unapolo­getic sup­port­er of the the­o­ry is Alex Jones, who has built a career – and a grow­ing media empire – on push­ing the idea that a glob­al elite is sub­vert­ing US sov­er­eign­ty. Jones has been talk­ing about Fema camps since he got his start on cable access TV in the 1990s.

    These are just the high pro­file exam­ples. The flour­ish­ing con­spir­a­cy com­mu­ni­ty on plat­forms like YouTube and Red­dit pro­duces copi­ous mate­r­i­al “prov­ing” the Fema camp the­o­ry.

    ...

    So what does this mean for the Pad­dock inves­ti­ga­tion?

    Police are not jump­ing to any con­clu­sions about Paddock’s motives, and nor should we. But it is strik­ing that there is evi­dence that he, like so many mass shoot­ers, may have nur­tured the ideas of the con­spir­a­cy-mind­ed far right.

    Often such beliefs are viewed as harm­less, and increas­ing­ly they have been nor­mal­ized by the suc­cess of fig­ures like Alex Jones. But we need to start tak­ing seri­ous­ly the pos­si­bil­i­ty that they rad­i­cal­ize some peo­ple towards vio­lence.

    ———-

    “New doc­u­ments sug­gest Las Vegas shoot­er was con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist – what we know” by Jason Wil­son; The Guardian; 05/19/2018

    “But tan­ta­liz­ing­ly, peo­ple who encoun­tered Pad­dock before his shoot­ing say that he expressed con­spir­a­to­r­i­al, anti-gov­ern­ment beliefs, which are char­ac­ter­is­tic of the far right.”

    Yep, Pad­dock was rant­i­ng like an over caf­feinat­ed Alex Jones fan in the peri­od lead­ing up to the shoot­ing. One woman claims to have wit­nessed him and com­pan­ion dis­cussing the 25th anniver­sary of the Ruby Ridge stand­off and the Waco siege just days before the mass shoot­ing. And while Waco and Ruby Ridge are pret­ty stan­dard top­ics for right-wingers to rant about, she also report­ed­ly heard him talk about how court­room flags with gold­en fringes aren’t real flags. And when some­one who obsess about Waco and Ruby Ridge also hap­pens to obsess about the valid­i­ty of flag designs, they’re prob­a­bly a sov­er­eign cit­i­zen:

    ...
    In a hand­writ­ten state­ment, one woman says she sat near Pad­dock in a din­er just a few days before the shoot­ing, while out with her son. She said she heard him and a com­pan­ion dis­cussing the 25th anniver­sary of the Ruby Ridge stand­off and the Waco siege. (Each of these inci­dents became touch­stones for a ris­ing anti-gov­ern­ment mili­tia move­ment in the 1990s.)

    She says she heard him and his com­pan­ion say­ing that court­room flags with gold­en fringes are not real flags. The belief that gold-fringed flags are those of a for­eign juris­dic­tion, or “admi­ral­ty flags”, is char­ac­ter­is­tic of so-called “sov­er­eign cit­i­zens”, who believe, among oth­er things, that the cur­rent US gov­ern­ment, and its laws, are ille­git­i­mate.

    “At the time,” her state­ment says, “I thought, ‘Strange guys’ and want­ed to leave.”
    ...

    And then there’s the tes­ti­mo­ny from a man who alleged­ly met Pad­dock just three weeks before the shoot­ing. The man was sell­ing schemat­ics for a device that would turn semi-auto­mat­ic weapons into ful­ly auto­mat­ic ones. Pad­dock want­ed him to build the device, the man refused, and the sale nev­er hap­pened. But accord­ing to this man, Pad­dock was rant­i­ng about FEMA and how Hur­ri­cane Kat­ri­na was a “dry run for law enforce­ment and mil­i­tary to start kickin’ down doors and ... con­fis­cat­ing guns”. Omi­nous­ly and iron­i­cal­ly, Pad­dock report­ed­ly told the man, “some­body has to wake up the Amer­i­can pub­lic and get them to arm them­selves”:

    ...
    Anoth­er man, him­self cur­rent­ly in jail, says he met Pad­dock three weeks before the shoot­ing for an abortive firearms trans­ac­tion, in the carpark of a Bass Pro Shop. The man was sell­ing schemat­ic dia­grams for an auto sear, a device that would con­vert semi-auto­mat­ic weapons to full auto­mat­ic fire. Pad­dock asked him to make the device for him, and the man refused.

    At this point Pad­dock launched into a rant about “anti-gov­ern­ment stuff … Fema camps”. Pad­dock said that the evac­u­a­tion of peo­ple by the Fed­er­al Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency (Fema) after Hur­ri­cane Kat­ri­na was a a “dry run for law enforce­ment and mil­i­tary to start kickin’ down doors and ... con­fis­cat­ing guns”.

    “Some­body has to wake up the Amer­i­can pub­lic and get them to arm them­selves,” the man says Pad­dock told him. “Some­times sac­ri­fices have to be made.”
    ...

    So is it pos­si­ble Pad­dock planned his attack as some sort of bizarre attempt to ‘wake up’ the Amer­i­can peo­ple? And yes, shoot­ing up a crowd of peo­ple does­n’t seem like the best way to ‘wake Amer­i­cans up’ and get them to arm them­selves in antic­i­pa­tion of a gov­ern­ment gun grab. But don’t for­get that there are few things that help the far right recruit bet­ter in the US than fears of a big gun grab by the gov­ern­ment. So one of the most dia­bol­i­cal­ly effec­tive­ly strate­gies the far right can employ is to encour­age enough mass shoot­ings that the pub­lic calls for ban­ning guns grows to the point where your typ­i­cal gun nut can be eas­i­ly rad­i­cal­ized.

    That’s just one of the ways far right vio­lent ide­olo­gies can make mass shoot­ings more like­ly: they’re the kinds of ide­olo­gies that are more than hap­py to encour­age ‘lone wolf’ attacks as part of a gen­er­al ‘strat­e­gy of ten­sion’ frame­work. Use domes­tic ter­ror to break down civic norms, cre­ate des­per­ata­tion, and make a far right vio­lent takeover more like­ly.

    If turns out Pad­dack was indeed a sov­er­eign cit­i­zen there’s still the ques­tion of whether or not he had out­side help or encour­age­ment. And even if he did plan and exe­cute this attack on his own there’s the ques­tion of whether or not he was inspired by a par­tic­u­lar fig­ure or move­ment. Some­thing put this mass shoot­ing attack idea in his head and plant­i­ng vio­lent ideas in peo­ple’s heads is sort of a far right spe­cial­i­ty.

    Now let’s take a look at the signs of far right influ­ence in anoth­er recent US mass shoot­ing: the San­ta Fe high school attack. The gun­man, Dim­itrios Pagourtzis, was a stu­dent at the school and it was his own art class that he shot up. It’s also been learned that his first vic­tim was a girl who rebuffed his romances. So there’s cer­tain­ly a very per­son­al ele­ment in terms of the motive for the shoot­ing. But as we should expect at this point, it turns out Pagourtzis’s social media accounts show signs of far right influ­ence:

    The Dai­ly Beast

    Dim­itrios Pagourtzis, Texas Shoot­ing Sus­pect, Post­ed Neo-Nazi Imagery Online
    Before alleged­ly killing at least eight peo­ple, he appar­ent­ly post­ed online images of a Nazi medal, a musi­cian favored by the alt-right, and a ‘born to kill’ T‑shirt.

    Kel­ly Weill
    Kate Briquelet
    05.18.18 1:14 PM ET

    Dim­itrios Pagourtzis, the sus­pect­ed gun­man who opened fire at a Texas high school on Fri­day morn­ing, appar­ent­ly post­ed pho­tos of neo-Nazi iconog­ra­phy online, accord­ing to social media accounts flagged by class­mates and reviewed by The Dai­ly Beast.

    Pagourtzis, 17, was booked into Galve­ston Coun­ty Jail for cap­i­tal mur­der on Fri­day. He alleged­ly killed 10 peo­ple at San­ta Fe High School, where he was a stu­dent. Explo­sive devices were left inside the school near Hous­ton, author­i­ties said. Pagourtzis report­ed­ly had an assault-style rifle, shot­gun, and pis­tol.

    Texas Gov. Greg Abbott told reporters that Pagourtzis said in jour­nals he want­ed to kill him­self after the shoot­ing. Instead, he sur­ren­dered to police.

    Pagourtzis told an inves­ti­ga­tor “he did not shoot stu­dents he did like so he could have his sto­ry told,” accord­ing to court papers.

    Before his arrest was announced, two San­ta Fe stu­dents also told The Dai­ly Beast that Pagourtzis was the gun­man and they con­firmed a Face­book account with Pagourtzis’ name belonged to him. Attempts by The Dai­ly Beast to reach Pagourtzis’ fam­i­ly were unsuc­cess­ful.

    On April 30, Pagourtzis appar­ent­ly post­ed a T‑shirt with “born to kill” print­ed on the front, boast­ing that it was cus­tom-made.

    That same day, Pagourtzis post­ed mul­ti­ple pic­tures of a duster jack­et embla­zoned with a vari­ety of sym­bols includ­ing the Iron Cross, a Ger­man mil­i­tary award last giv­en by the Nazis, and oth­er pins. He said he equat­ed the Iron Cross with “brav­ery.” Pagourtzis said a ham­mer and sick­le meant “rebel­lion,” a ris­ing sun meant “kamikaze tac­tics,” and a baphomet meant “evil.”

    Rey Mon­temay­or III, a senior who said he played foot­ball with Pagourtzis con­firmed the Face­book account to be the accused shooter’s.

    “I played foot­ball with him for three years,” Mon­temay­or said. “Peo­ple on the news said he was bul­lied a lot. I nev­er seen him being bul­lied. I nev­er bul­lied him. He was cool to me. I lift­ed with him a cou­ple of times.”

    Mon­temay­or said that when he was with Pagourtzis, “he was a real­ly cool guy.” He said they played foot­ball togeth­er first semester.“He was qui­et. He did keep to him­self. That’s pret­ty much it,” Mon­temay­or told The Dai­ly Beast, adding that he nev­er thought Pagourtzis would shoot up their school.“I know he was qui­et and every­thing but any con­ver­sa­tions we had in the lock­er room or in the field or after games, he nev­er struck me as that per­son.”

    Can­di Thur­man, a junior at the school, also told The Dai­ly Beast that Pagourtzis wore a coat sim­i­lar to the one post­ed to his Face­book page.

    “The sketchy thing is, he wore a full-on black trench coat to school every day,” Thur­man said, adding she hadn’t had a class with him since eighth grade. Mon­temay­or said that in ret­ro­spect, Pagourtzis’ trench coat was odd.

    “Why would you wear a trench coat when it’s 100 degrees out­side? When he first start­ed wear­ing that trench coat, it was dur­ing the win­ter.” But in the hot­ter months, Pagourtzis didn’t take it off.

    Pagourtzis began wear­ing the coat at the begin­ning of the year.

    “It’s like 90 degrees out­side and this guy is still wear­ing a trench coat,” Thur­man said. “It should have been not­ed. That’s a red flag right there.”

    Oth­er images on Pagourtzis’ now-delet­ed Face­book page sug­gest a pos­si­ble inter­est in white suprema­cist groups. Pagourtzis uploaded a num­ber of T‑shirts that fea­ture Vapor­wave-style designs. Vapor­wave, a music and design move­ment, has spawned a relat­ed move­ment called Fash­wave, which bor­rows the same aes­thet­ic but applies them to neo-Nazi sub­jects.

    Pagourtzis’ Face­book head­er image was the cov­er of an album by musi­cian Per­tur­ba­tor. Perturbator’s music has been co-opt­ed by mem­bers of the Fash­wave move­ment, Buz­zFeed pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed. Neo-Nazi web­site The Dai­ly Stormer fre­quent­ly includes Perturbator’s music in “Fash­wave Fri­days” posts.

    ...

    A still-live Insta­gram with Pagourtzis’ name has posts from April 24 show­ing an arcade-style game fea­tur­ing a sniper rifle and anoth­er with a gun and knife on a bed­spread cap­tioned: “Hi fuc kers.”

    ———-

    “Dim­itrios Pagourtzis, Texas Shoot­ing Sus­pect, Post­ed Neo-Nazi Imagery Online” by Kel­ly Weill and Kate Briquelet; The Dai­ly Beast; 05/18/2018

    “Dim­itrios Pagourtzis, the sus­pect­ed gun­man who opened fire at a Texas high school on Fri­day morn­ing, appar­ent­ly post­ed pho­tos of neo-Nazi iconog­ra­phy online, accord­ing to social media accounts flagged by class­mates and reviewed by The Dai­ly Beast.

    It’s become part of the Amer­i­can post-shoot­ing rit­u­al: first there’s a scram­ble to dis­cov­er the iden­ti­ty of the shoot­er. Then there’s a scram­ble to search their social media pres­ence get clues about their pol­i­tics. And while there is the rare left-winger involved with these kinds of attacks, like James Hodgkin­son, it’s near­ly always some­one with a his­to­ry of express­ing very right-wing views on social media.

    Some­times they’re out­right neo-Nazis, but not always. In this case we find Pagourtzis open­ly embrac­ing Pres­i­dent Trump, NRA spokesper­son Dana Loesch, and Fox News which mere­ly points towards very con­ser­v­a­tive views but not nec­es­sar­i­ly neo-Nazi views.

    But then there’s his pho­to of a jack­et he put up on Insta­gram in recent weeks. The jack­et con­tained five pins and he lists in the cap­tion of the pho­to what each pin rep­re­sents:
    Ham­mer and Sick­le = Rebel­lion
    Ris­ing Sun = Kamikaze Tac­tics
    Iron Cross = Brav­ery
    Baphomet = Evil
    Cthul­hu = Pow­er

    The Iron Cross is an obvi­ous pos­si­ble neo-Nazi sym­bol. And while many of latched onto the Ham­mer and Sick­le to sug­gest that he actu­al­ly held left-wing views, that’s the kind of assess­ment that ignores vir­tu­al­ly all of the oth­er indi­ca­tions of polit­i­cal views we have about the guy. Is the guy with an Iron Cross and Ham­mer and Sick­le, and who also hap­pens to be a big Trump/NRA/Fox News fan, more like­ly to be right-wing or left-wing? Hmmm...:

    ...
    On April 30, Pagourtzis appar­ent­ly post­ed a T‑shirt with “born to kill” print­ed on the front, boast­ing that it was cus­tom-made.

    That same day, Pagourtzis post­ed mul­ti­ple pic­tures of a duster jack­et embla­zoned with a vari­ety of sym­bols includ­ing the Iron Cross, a Ger­man mil­i­tary award last giv­en by the Nazis, and oth­er pins. He said he equat­ed the Iron Cross with “brav­ery.” Pagourtzis said a ham­mer and sick­le meant “rebel­lion,” a ris­ing sun meant “kamikaze tac­tics,” and a baphomet meant “evil.”
    ...

    And the chaot­ic nature of the pins Pagourtzis select­ed for that jack­et poten­tial­ly relates to the sec­ond big indi­ca­tion of pos­si­ble far right influ­ences: Pagourtzis Face­book page con­tained a num­ber of T‑shirts that fea­ture Vapor­wave-style designs. And his Face­book page head­er image was the cov­er of a Vapor­wave album by musi­cian Per­tur­ba­tor.

    So why is Vapor­wave con­sid­ered to be a pos­si­ble sign of neo-Nazi influ­ences? Because it’s a style of music that’s been embraced by the Alt Right, spawn­ing oth­er sub­gen­res like “Fash­wave” and “Trump­wave”. And the musi­cian Pagourtzis hap­pens to have as his Face­book head­er image, Per­tur­ba­tor, has specif­i­cal­ly been embraced by sites like The Dai­ly Stormer:

    ...
    Oth­er images on Pagourtzis’ now-delet­ed Face­book page sug­gest a pos­si­ble inter­est in white suprema­cist groups. Pagourtzis uploaded a num­ber of T‑shirts that fea­ture Vapor­wave-style designs. Vapor­wave, a music and design move­ment, has spawned a relat­ed move­ment called Fash­wave, which bor­rows the same aes­thet­ic but applies them to neo-Nazi sub­jects.

    Pagourtzis’ Face­book head­er image was the cov­er of an album by musi­cian Per­tur­ba­tor. Perturbator’s music has been co-opt­ed by mem­bers of the Fash­wave move­ment, Buz­zFeed pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed. Neo-Nazi web­site The Dai­ly Stormer fre­quent­ly includes Perturbator’s music in “Fash­wave Fri­days” posts.
    ...

    As we can see, while being a fan of Per­tur­ba­tor does­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly mean you’re a fol­low­er of white suprema­cist media, it’s cer­tain­ly a sign you might fol­low white suprema­cist media, espe­cial­ly if you’re exhibit­ing lots of oth­er signs like Pagourtzis.

    So it looks we can prob­a­bly safe­ly con­clude that far right extrem­ism like­ly played a role in two more of the recent US mass shoot­ings. As will almost cer­tain­ly be the case in future shoot­ings. Duh.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | May 22, 2018, 4:23 pm
  4. Now that the man behind the recent wave of mail bomb­ings, Cesar Say­oc, has been arrest­ed and iden­ti­fied, we’re in the ‘who was he and why did he do this?’ phase of pub­lic analy­sis. And while much atten­tion has under­stand­ably fall­en on Say­oc’s insane pro-Trump white van — cov­ered in win­dow decals that look like a snap­shot of right-wing, pro-Trump twit­ter post­ings — much less atten­tion has been giv­en to the fact that Say­oc appeared to be an ardent white suprema­cist and admir­er of Adolf Hitler:

    Boston Globe

    Mass. native who super­vised Cesar Say­oc in Fla.: ‘He spewed such garbage’

    By Dan­ny McDon­ald Globe Staff
    Octo­ber 27, 2018

    The Mass­a­chu­setts native who hired Cesar Say­oc, the man who was charged in a nation­wide mail-bomb scare Fri­day, to deliv­er piz­zas in Flori­da described him as racist, homo­pho­bic, and anti-Semit­ic.

    In a phone inter­view with the Globe Fri­day night, Debra Gureghi­an said Say­oc worked as a deliv­ery dri­ver at New Riv­er Piz­za & Fresh Kitchen in Fort Laud­erdale for more than a year. He quit in Jan­u­ary, she said.

    Gureghi­an, a 59-year-old who grew up on Cape Cod, attend­ed Barn­sta­ble High School, and lived in Water­town before she moved to Flori­da to care for her ail­ing moth­er six years ago, said Say­oc would spew “anti-gay, anti-black, anti-Jew­ish” rhetoric “every­day.”

    Gureghi­an said he told her that because she is a les­bian she is “deformed” and that she should be “put on an island with all the oth­er gay peo­ple and burned.”

    “He spewed such garbage, it was so vile,” said Gureghi­an, who works as the restaurant’s gen­er­al man­ag­er. “There’s so much hatred today.”

    ...

    Say­oc, who has a long crim­i­nal his­to­ry, was charged Fri­day in the nation­wide mail-bomb scare tar­get­ing promi­nent Democ­rats who have trad­ed crit­i­cism with Pres­i­dent Trump. The crim­i­nal com­plaint charges Say­oc with ille­gal­ly mail­ing explo­sives, ille­gal­ly trans­port­ing explo­sives across state lines, mak­ing threats against for­mer pres­i­dents, assault­ing fed­er­al offi­cers and threat­en­ing inter­state com­merce.

    He used the same white van that was promi­nent­ly fea­tured in nation­al news broad­casts and splashed on news sites on Fri­day to deliv­er piz­zas, she said. The van was adorned with “a bil­lion stick­ers,” she said. She said at times there were KKK stick­ers and at least one stick­er with a bulls­eye over a pho­to of Hillary Clin­ton on the vehi­cle. Say­oc, she said, “loved Adolph Hitler.”

    “If you didn’t fit his pro­file, you should go to an island and the island should be oblit­er­at­ed,” said Gureghi­an, who worked in a civil­ian role for the Mass­a­chu­setts State Police for 23 years before mov­ing to Flori­da..

    Despite Sayoc’s big­ot­ed world­view, Gureghi­an described him as a depend­able work­er, a reli­able dri­ver who was very clean.

    She said she was shocked to hear of Friday’s news.

    “I’m absolute­ly floored,” said Gureghi­an. “Nev­er in a mil­lion years did I think some­thing like this could hap­pen.”

    ———–

    “Mass. native who super­vised Cesar Say­oc in Fla.: ‘He spewed such garbage’” by Dan­ny McDon­ald; Boston Globe; 10/27/2018

    “Gureghi­an, a 59-year-old who grew up on Cape Cod, attend­ed Barn­sta­ble High School, and lived in Water­town before she moved to Flori­da to care for her ail­ing moth­er six years ago, said Say­oc would spew “anti-gay, anti-black, anti-Jew­ish” rhetoric “every­day.”

    Nazi-like rhetoric. Every sin­gle day. That’s how his for­mer man­ag­er at New Riv­er Piz­za & Fresh Kitchen in Fort Laud­erdale described her expe­ri­ences with him. He even told her, his man­ag­er, that she should be “put on an island with all the oth­er gay peo­ple and burned” because she’s a les­bian:

    ...
    Gureghi­an said he told her that because she is a les­bian she is “deformed” and that she should be “put on an island with all the oth­er gay peo­ple and burned.”

    “He spewed such garbage, it was so vile,” said Gureghi­an, who works as the restaurant’s gen­er­al man­ag­er. “There’s so much hatred today.”
    ...

    She also reports that Say­oc at times had KKK stick­ers on his van and appeared to legit­i­mate­ly believe that any­one who did­n’t fit his pro­file should be mass exter­mi­nat­ed. So of course he would talk about his live of Hitler:

    ...
    He used the same white van that was promi­nent­ly fea­tured in nation­al news broad­casts and splashed on news sites on Fri­day to deliv­er piz­zas, she said. The van was adorned with “a bil­lion stick­ers,” she said. She said at times there were KKK stick­ers and at least one stick­er with a bulls­eye over a pho­to of Hillary Clin­ton on the vehi­cle. Say­oc, she said, “loved Adolph Hitler.”

    “If you didn’t fit his pro­file, you should go to an island and the island should be oblit­er­at­ed,” said Gureghi­an, who worked in a civil­ian role for the Mass­a­chu­setts State Police for 23 years before mov­ing to Flori­da..
    ...

    And note the peri­od of time when Say­oc was work­ing there: He quit in Jan­u­ary of this year and worked there for more than a year. So it sounds like this cov­ers 2017 and part of 2016:

    ...
    In a phone inter­view with the Globe Fri­day night, Debra Gureghi­an said Say­oc worked as a deliv­ery dri­ver at New Riv­er Piz­za & Fresh Kitchen in Fort Laud­erdale for more than a year. He quit in Jan­u­ary, she said.
    ...

    So Say­oc as been a Hitler lover since at least some time in 2016 based on the tes­ti­mo­ny of his for­mer boss. But as we’ll see in the fol­low­ing arti­cle, it sounds like he was already basi­cal­ly a Nazi by 2015. That’s accord­ing to his for­mer col­lege soc­cer team bud­dies who met him dur­ing a din­ner that year hon­or­ing their old coach. When they met him, Say­oc was already rant­i­ng like a Nazi and already heav­i­ly pro-Trump:

    The New York Times

    Cesar Say­oc, Mail Bomb­ing Sus­pect, Found an Iden­ti­ty in Polit­i­cal Rage and Resent­ment

    By Jack Healy, Julie Turke­witz and Richard A. Oppel Jr.
    Oct. 27, 2018

    AVENTURA, Fla. — Cesar Say­oc Jr. was a volatile nobody des­per­ate to become a some­body.

    He styled him­self as a body­builder, entre­pre­neur, mem­ber of the Semi­nole tribe and exot­ic-dance pro­mot­er in the sta­tus-hun­gry beach­front world of South Flori­da. In real­i­ty, Mr. Say­oc, a fer­vent sup­port­er of Pres­i­dent Trump who has been charged with mail­ing pipe bombs to promi­nent Democ­rats, was a bank­rupt lon­er who spewed anger and spent years liv­ing in and out of a van, accord­ing to court doc­u­ments and inter­views with peo­ple who knew him.

    He went on racist, anti-gay tirades at the Fort Laud­erdale piz­za shop where he worked as a night-shift deliv­ery­man in 2017, telling his man­ag­er, a les­bian, that she and oth­er gay peo­ple along with Democ­rats should all be put onto an island and then “nuked.” At a reunion event in 2015 with his col­lege soc­cer team, he brow­beat for­mer team mem­bers with racist, sex­ist con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries.

    And when Mr. Sayoc’s moth­er and sis­ters urged him to seek men­tal-health treat­ment, he furi­ous­ly repelled their efforts and told his moth­er he hat­ed her, said Ronald Lowy, a lawyer for the fam­i­ly who also rep­re­sent­ed Mr. Say­oc in a 2002 case in which he threat­ened to bomb an elec­tric com­pa­ny dur­ing a dis­pute over a bill. He refused to even lis­ten when his moth­er remind­ed Mr. Say­oc that he was Fil­ipino and Ital­ian, not Semi­nole, Mr. Lowy said.

    “He had tremen­dous anger slow­ly boil­ing up, and resent­ment, and felt ‘less than,’” Mr. Lowy said. “He lacked an iden­ti­ty. He cre­at­ed a per­sona.”

    When they first met, Mr. Lowy said, Mr. Say­oc brought in a scrap­book filled with notes and pho­tographs he had col­lect­ed from wrestlers, body­builders and strip­pers, table scraps from a world that he idol­ized.

    “He comes across like a 15-year-old,” Mr. Lowy said. “He has a total lack of matu­ri­ty.”

    Mr. Lowy said that Mr. Sayoc’s fam­i­ly mem­bers were Democ­rats and that Mr. Say­oc seemed to have no out­spo­ken par­ti­san views dur­ing the 2002 case. But he said that Mr. Trump’s angry rhetoric and his appeals to the “for­got­ten man and woman” dur­ing the 2016 cam­paign seemed to strike a deep chord with Mr. Say­oc, whose father had aban­doned the fam­i­ly when he was a child.

    “He was look­ing for some type of parental fig­ure and being a lon­er, being an out­cast, being the kind of per­son Trump speaks to, I think he was attract­ed to Trump as a father fig­ure,” Mr. Lowy said.

    Mr. Say­oc reg­is­tered as a Repub­li­can and post­ed pho­tographs of him­self wear­ing a “Make Amer­i­ca Great Again Hat” at one of Mr. Trump’s ral­lies.

    On Twit­ter and Face­book, he railed against for­mer Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma and Oprah Win­frey with mis­spelled racial epi­thets, threat­ened for­mer Vice Pres­i­dent Joseph R. Biden Jr. and praised Pres­i­dent Trump and con­ser­v­a­tive caus­es. His social-media feeds were an elec­tron­ic ver­sion of the white van cart­ed away by law-enforce­ment offi­cials on Fri­day morn­ing, which was cov­ered in stick­ers prais­ing Mr. Trump, con­demn­ing lib­er­als and putting cross hairs over an image of Hillary Clin­ton.

    While Mr. Sayoc’s sis­ters are suc­cess­ful and his moth­er ran her own cos­met­ics busi­ness, Mr. Say­oc bumped between jobs, arrests, apart­ments and his van. He once lived in a com­fort­able neigh­bor­hood of sin­gle-sto­ry homes in the Coral Ridge Isles neigh­bor­hood of Fort Laud­erdale, but lost the home in a 2009 fore­clo­sure.

    He had a long record of shoplift­ing and theft charges. Once he was arrest­ed while car­ry­ing $19,000 worth of cash.

    In May 2015, he told the police that some­one had bro­ken into his van while he was work­ing out at LA Fit­ness — where he had been show­er­ing — and stole about $45,000 worth of suits and cos­tumes he need­ed for his busi­ness. It is unclear whether he actu­al­ly had any­thing worth that much in the van, or whether he was mak­ing the report as pre­text to make a false insur­ance claim.

    Even then, he had an affin­i­ty for Mr. Trump: The Broward Sheriff’s Office report notes that of the 139 pieces he said were tak­en, 11 were the president’s cloth­ing brand.

    Scott B. Saul, a defense lawyer who rep­re­sent­ed Mr. Say­oc when he want­ed to loosen the terms of his pro­ba­tion sev­er­al years ago, said Mr. Sayoc’s behav­ior sug­gest­ed some­thing was amiss, recount­ing that “he came across pas­sive, and with a sense of inse­cu­ri­ty.”

    “He appeared to be his own island,” he said.

    ...

    “He loved Adolf Hitler; he talked about Adolf Hitler a lot,” said Debra Gureghi­an, 56, a man­ag­er at the Fort Laud­erdale piz­za shop where Mr. Say­oc worked for about a year in 2017. “He would say, ‘I like his pol­i­tics, we should have more peo­ple like him.’”

    Mr. Say­oc went on para­noid, racist screeds, say­ing that blacks and His­pan­ics were tak­ing over the world. He referred to Mr. Oba­ma with a racist slur and said he was not a cit­i­zen. Years before he ran for office, Mr. Trump false­ly claimed Mr. Oba­ma was not an Amer­i­can cit­i­zen.

    Ms. Gureghi­an was famil­iar with Mr. Sayoc’s white van, but she was not sure if he was liv­ing in it. Once when it was rain­ing, she accept­ed his offer to dri­ve her home although she was ner­vous, unsure if she was safe.

    Tere­sa Palmer, 48, anoth­er man­ag­er, said that she also recalled the van, and that Mr. Say­oc would say “nasty things” about minori­ties. She remem­bered him men­tion­ing Mr. Trump, but only recalled him say­ing that Mr. Trump made a “great” pres­i­dent. Mr. Say­oc left the piz­za shop in Jan­u­ary, telling col­leagues he was going to work in long-haul truck­ing.

    When Mr. Say­oc showed up to a din­ner in 2015 hon­or­ing his soc­cer coach from Bre­vard Col­lege in North Car­oli­na, oth­er team mem­bers said they were glad to see him.

    But they said he quick­ly made clear he was a fanat­i­cal sup­port­er of Mr. Trump, and bom­bard­ed them with racist and misog­y­nist con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries.

    “He was like, ‘Amer­i­ca needs to be made great again, and I’m work­ing on the upcom­ing pres­i­den­tial cam­paign to make sure we get the right peo­ple in office,’” said Eddie Tad­lock, who was at the event. Mr. Tad­lock said the polit­i­cal invec­tive was clear­ly out of place at an event where for­mer team­mates were reliv­ing their glo­ry days on the soc­cer pitch.

    “It was hate­ful stuff,” Mr. Tad­lock said. “It didn’t resem­ble any­thing log­i­cal. He was say­ing things like, ‘Build a wall to keep all the Mex­i­cans out,’ and it imme­di­ate­ly turned me off.”

    “If you want to have a dia­logue about pol­i­tics and pol­i­cy, there’s a way to go about it, but the way he took the con­ver­sa­tion was com­plete­ly off course,” he added.

    A few days lat­er, Mr. Say­oc sent Mr. Tad­lock a friend­ly con­grat­u­la­to­ry mes­sage on Face­book, but soon start­ed bar­rag­ing Mr. Tad­lock with sex­ist, racist mes­sages that were “off-the-charts crazy” and said that Mr. Trump would be the sav­ior of the Unit­ed States.

    “I mean, I’m African-Amer­i­can, and he’s send­ing me racist stuff? And sex­ist stuff, and misog­y­nis­tic stuff — you name it. He was say­ing Trump is going to be ‘The God­fa­ther’ who cor­rects all of it, and I was like, ‘You’re out of your freak­ing mind.’ I unfriend­ed him imme­di­ate­ly.”

    ———-

    “Cesar Say­oc, Mail Bomb­ing Sus­pect, Found an Iden­ti­ty in Polit­i­cal Rage and Resent­ment” by Jack Healy, Julie Turke­witz and Richard A. Oppel Jr.; The New York Times; 10/27/2018

    “He went on racist, anti-gay tirades at the Fort Laud­erdale piz­za shop where he worked as a night-shift deliv­ery­man in 2017, telling his man­ag­er, a les­bian, that she and oth­er gay peo­ple along with Democ­rats should all be put onto an island and then “nuked.” At a reunion event in 2015 with his col­lege soc­cer team, he brow­beat for­mer team mem­bers with racist, sex­ist con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries.”

    So while Say­oc was clear­ly an neo-Nazi by 2016–2017, based on the tes­ti­mo­ny of his for­mer piz­za deliv­ery man­ag­er, it sounds like he was already a rad­i­cal­ized racists and vir­u­lent Trump sup­port­er by 2015 when he showed up at a din­ner hon­or­ing his col­lege soc­cer coach and harangued every­one with pro-Trump racist tirades. He also told them he was work­ing on the Trump cam­paign. It would be inter­est­ing to know more about that claim:

    ...
    When Mr. Say­oc showed up to a din­ner in 2015 hon­or­ing his soc­cer coach from Bre­vard Col­lege in North Car­oli­na, oth­er team mem­bers said they were glad to see him.

    But they said he quick­ly made clear he was a fanat­i­cal sup­port­er of Mr. Trump, and bom­bard­ed them with racist and misog­y­nist con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries.

    “He was like, ‘Amer­i­ca needs to be made great again, and I’m work­ing on the upcom­ing pres­i­den­tial cam­paign to make sure we get the right peo­ple in office,’” said Eddie Tad­lock, who was at the event. Mr. Tad­lock said the polit­i­cal invec­tive was clear­ly out of place at an event where for­mer team­mates were reliv­ing their glo­ry days on the soc­cer pitch.

    ...

    A few days lat­er, Mr. Say­oc sent Mr. Tad­lock a friend­ly con­grat­u­la­to­ry mes­sage on Face­book, but soon start­ed bar­rag­ing Mr. Tad­lock with sex­ist, racist mes­sages that were “off-the-charts crazy” and said that Mr. Trump would be the sav­ior of the Unit­ed States.

    “I mean, I’m African-Amer­i­can, and he’s send­ing me racist stuff? And sex­ist stuff, and misog­y­nis­tic stuff — you name it. He was say­ing Trump is going to be ‘The God­fa­ther’ who cor­rects all of it, and I was like, ‘You’re out of your freak­ing mind.’ I unfriend­ed him imme­di­ate­ly.”
    ...

    It’s worth not­ing it appears that Say­oc was a big Trump fan before Trump even announced his pres­i­den­tial bid in June of 2015. As police records show, in May of 2015, Say­oc filed a police report about an alleged theft from his van. Of the 139 pieces of cloth­ing he said were tak­en, 11 were Trump-brand cloth­ing:

    ...
    In May 2015, he told the police that some­one had bro­ken into his van while he was work­ing out at LA Fit­ness — where he had been show­er­ing — and stole about $45,000 worth of suits and cos­tumes he need­ed for his busi­ness. It is unclear whether he actu­al­ly had any­thing worth that much in the van, or whether he was mak­ing the report as pre­text to make a false insur­ance claim.

    Even then, he had an affin­i­ty for Mr. Trump: The Broward Sheriff’s Office report notes that of the 139 pieces he said were tak­en, 11 were the president’s cloth­ing brand.
    ...

    It’s also worth not­ing that a sec­ond man­ag­er, Tere­sa Palmer, at his piz­za deliv­ery job wit­nessed reg­u­lar racist screeds from Say­oc too. And Say­oc’s para­noia includ­ed a belief that blacks and His­pan­ics are tak­ing over the world. Keep in mind that this bomb­ing cam­paign start­ed after Trump and the GOP made ‘the car­a­van’ from Cen­tral Amer­i­ca a cen­tral theme of their mid-term cam­paign­ing and con­tin­u­al­ly pro­mot­ed the con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry that George Soros and the Democ­rats were behind the car­a­van as part of a larg­er plot to bring in as many non-whites as pos­si­ble into the US to vote ille­gal­ly. In oth­er words, Say­oc’s fears that ‘blacks and His­pan­ics are tak­ing over the world’ was the meme du jour of Trump and the GOP when he car­ried out his bomb­ing cam­paign:

    ...
    “He loved Adolf Hitler; he talked about Adolf Hitler a lot,” said Debra Gureghi­an, 56, a man­ag­er at the Fort Laud­erdale piz­za shop where Mr. Say­oc worked for about a year in 2017. “He would say, ‘I like his pol­i­tics, we should have more peo­ple like him.’”

    Mr. Say­oc went on para­noid, racist screeds, say­ing that blacks and His­pan­ics were tak­ing over the world. He referred to Mr. Oba­ma with a racist slur and said he was not a cit­i­zen. Years before he ran for office, Mr. Trump false­ly claimed Mr. Oba­ma was not an Amer­i­can cit­i­zen.

    Ms. Gureghi­an was famil­iar with Mr. Sayoc’s white van, but she was not sure if he was liv­ing in it. Once when it was rain­ing, she accept­ed his offer to dri­ve her home although she was ner­vous, unsure if she was safe.

    Tere­sa Palmer, 48, anoth­er man­ag­er, said that she also recalled the van, and that Mr. Say­oc would say “nasty things” about minori­ties. She remem­bered him men­tion­ing Mr. Trump, but only recalled him say­ing that Mr. Trump made a “great” pres­i­dent. Mr. Say­oc left the piz­za shop in Jan­u­ary, telling col­leagues he was going to work in long-haul truck­ing.
    ...

    So Say­oc appears to fit the pro­file of the men­tal­ly unhinged indi­vid­ual who is bare­ly able to con­tain his Nazi-like world­view. A half Fil­ipino white suprema­cist who claimed to be a mem­ber of the Semi­nole tribe (even though he had no ties to them). So it should come as no sur­prise that he was seen by his for­mer lawyer — who rep­re­sent­ed him in 2002 after Say­oc made a bomb threat — as some­one with seri­ous emo­tion­al issues and an iden­ti­ty cri­sis. An iden­ti­ty cri­sis that mor­phed into a Nazi super-Trump fan iden­ti­ty:

    ...
    And when Mr. Sayoc’s moth­er and sis­ters urged him to seek men­tal-health treat­ment, he furi­ous­ly repelled their efforts and told his moth­er he hat­ed her, said Ronald Lowy, a lawyer for the fam­i­ly who also rep­re­sent­ed Mr. Say­oc in a 2002 case in which he threat­ened to bomb an elec­tric com­pa­ny dur­ing a dis­pute over a bill. He refused to even lis­ten when his moth­er remind­ed Mr. Say­oc that he was Fil­ipino and Ital­ian, not Semi­nole, Mr. Lowy said.

    “He had tremen­dous anger slow­ly boil­ing up, and resent­ment, and felt ‘less than,’” Mr. Lowy said. “He lacked an iden­ti­ty. He cre­at­ed a per­sona.”

    When they first met, Mr. Lowy said, Mr. Say­oc brought in a scrap­book filled with notes and pho­tographs he had col­lect­ed from wrestlers, body­builders and strip­pers, table scraps from a world that he idol­ized.

    “He comes across like a 15-year-old,” Mr. Lowy said. “He has a total lack of matu­ri­ty.”

    Mr. Lowy said that Mr. Sayoc’s fam­i­ly mem­bers were Democ­rats and that Mr. Say­oc seemed to have no out­spo­ken par­ti­san views dur­ing the 2002 case. But he said that Mr. Trump’s angry rhetoric and his appeals to the “for­got­ten man and woman” dur­ing the 2016 cam­paign seemed to strike a deep chord with Mr. Say­oc, whose father had aban­doned the fam­i­ly when he was a child.

    “He was look­ing for some type of parental fig­ure and being a lon­er, being an out­cast, being the kind of per­son Trump speaks to, I think he was attract­ed to Trump as a father fig­ure,” Mr. Lowy said.
    ...

    Anoth­er impor­tant aspect of Say­oc’s life is that, as the fol­low­ing arti­cle describes, he social media pro­file took a rad­i­cal turn after Trump announced his pres­i­den­tial can­di­da­cy. Before that it was most­ly benign con­tent like a cook­ing recipes. So while it appears that Say­oc was a Trump fan before Trump announced his can­di­da­cy (based on the Trump-brand cloth­ing he report­ed stolen), it’s not actu­al­ly clear that he was an out­right neo-Nazi before Trump’s run. He cer­tain­ly had emo­tion­al and anger issues before that, but we don’t know yet if he was already indoc­tri­nat­ed into neo-Nazi ide­ol­o­gy before that or if this came after he got heav­i­ly involved in pro­mot­ing Trump’s cam­paign.

    As the fol­low­ing arti­cle also notes, Say­oc was bank­rupt and liv­ing with his moth­er as of 2012. As we saw in the pre­vi­ous arti­cle, he lost his house in 2009. And he appeared to be liv­ing in his van for an extend­ed peri­od of time while liv­ing in Flori­da. So in addi­tion to hav­ing some sort of iden­ti­ty issues that he filled with Nazi beliefs and a wor­ship of Don­ald Trump, Say­oc also may have felt he had lit­tle to lose, which would have made him the per­fect can­di­date for a ter­ror cam­paign like this:

    The New York Times

    Liv­ing in a Van Plas­tered With Hate, Bomb­ing Sus­pect Was Filled With Right-Wing Rage

    By Patri­cia Mazzei, Nick Madi­gan and Frances Rob­les
    Oct. 26, 2018

    AVENTURA, Fla. — On Twit­ter, Cesar Say­oc Jr. lashed out at immi­grants, gun con­trol advo­cates, and promi­nent Demo­c­ra­t­ic politi­cians. On Face­book, he mis­spelled a racial epi­thet, direct­ing it at the likes of Oprah Win­frey and for­mer Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma.

    With fury in his fin­gers, he shared inflam­ma­to­ry news sto­ries from Bre­it­bart, hard-edge videos from Fox News, and angry posts from pages like “Hand­cuffs for Hillary.” He tweet­ed a threat to for­mer Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden. And he post­ed pho­tographs of him­self wear­ing a red “Make Amer­i­ca Great Again” hat at one of Pres­i­dent Trump’s cam­paign ral­lies.

    After a fren­zied nation­wide search for the per­son who sent 13 makeshift bombs to some of Mr. Trump’s most promi­nent crit­ics, Mr. Say­oc, 56, was arrest­ed Fri­day morn­ing in Plan­ta­tion, Fla., at an Auto­Zone car parts shop. Author­i­ties released a pho­to­graph of a man with a buzz cut and a mouth that drooped toward a frown. They hauled away a white van plas­tered with bom­bas­tic stick­ers express­ing sup­port for Mr. Trump and ani­mos­i­ty toward those who clashed with him.

    “Dis­hon­est Media,” read one on the van’s back right win­dow. “CNN Sucks.” Cross hairs appeared on a pho­to­graph of one of the lib­er­al com­men­ta­tors at the net­work, which received more than one pack­age from Mr. Say­oc at its offices in New York.

    Records show he was a reg­is­tered Repub­li­can; friends said he once danced as a male strip­per. He also had a lengthy crim­i­nal his­to­ry — he was once accused of threat­en­ing to use a bomb against a cus­tomer ser­vice rep­re­sen­ta­tive — and led a life filled with fail­ure. Well into mid­dle age, he was liv­ing with his moth­er with no fur­ni­ture, accord­ing to 2012 bank­rupt­cy records, and he appeared to have been liv­ing most recent­ly out of his van.

    Fed­er­al offi­cials said Fri­day they were still explor­ing ques­tions of motive. “He appears to be a par­ti­san,” Attor­ney Gen­er­al Jeff Ses­sions said at an after­noon news con­fer­ence announc­ing Mr. Sayoc’s arrest, “but that will be deter­mined by the facts as the case goes for­ward.”

    And so, even as the details of a grim and bit­ter life began to emerge Fri­day, a shak­en coun­try was left to pon­der what could have prompt­ed some­one full of polit­i­cal griev­ances to man­u­fac­ture a slew of impro­vised explo­sive devices.

    ...

    On Mon­day, law enforce­ment offi­cials dis­cov­ered the first pack­age linked to Mr. Say­oc at a pri­vate home out­side New York City that belongs to George Soros, the bil­lion­aire phil­an­thropist. Days lat­er, Mr. Say­oc would post tweets that tar­get­ed Mr. Soros and oth­ers, accord­ing to the crim­i­nal com­plaint.

    Mr. Sayoc’s posts on var­i­ous social media accounts in 2015 showed an obses­sion with work­outs and night life pro­mo­tion, with lit­tle to no polit­i­cal con­tent. But his more recent posts are full of polit­i­cal rage. His Face­book account, wide­ly pored over after media reports of his arrest, sud­den­ly dis­ap­peared on Fri­day.

    “We have found and imme­di­ate­ly removed the suspect’s accounts on Face­book and Insta­gram,” Face­book said in a state­ment. “We will also con­tin­ue to remove con­tent that prais­es or sup­ports the bomb­ing attempt or the sus­pect as soon as we’re aware.”

    Much remains opaque about Mr. Say­oc. Some of his social media posts seemed to sug­gest he was part of the Semi­nole tribe in Flori­da. But Lenny Altieri, a rel­a­tive, said that Mr. Sayoc’s father was from the Philip­pines and his moth­er was from Brook­lyn. He was raised by grand­par­ents after hav­ing prob­lems with his moth­er, Mr. Altieri said.

    Mr. Say­oc had short stints in col­lege as a young man, and had a pas­sion for soc­cer, reflect­ed in numer­ous soc­cer-themed mes­sages on the van. He attend­ed Bre­vard Col­lege, a small, Methodist-affil­i­at­ed lib­er­al arts col­lege in West­ern North Car­oli­na, for a year begin­ning in the fall of 1980 and played on the soc­cer team but did not grad­u­ate, accord­ing to a spokes­woman. He also attend­ed Uni­ver­si­ty of North Car­oli­na at Char­lotte for one year start­ing in 1983, an offi­cial there said.

    Back in Flori­da, Mr. Altieri said, Mr. Say­oc was obsessed with body­build­ing and worked as a male strip­per. He also worked as a man­ag­er for trav­el­ing “male revue shows,” said Rachel Hum­berg­er, the wife of one of Mr. Sayoc’s busi­ness part­ners.

    Ms. Hum­berg­er said that Mr. Say­oc seemed like a friend­ly man, based on the short inter­ac­tions she had with him, and described the shows as “Mag­ic Mike style,” a ref­er­ence to a 2012 movie about male strip­pers, “Mag­ic Mike.”

    More recent­ly, she said Mr. Say­oc had been talk­ing to her hus­band about start­ing a new busi­ness: fish farms.

    Mr. Altieri said that Mr. Say­oc at one point had “a lot of mon­ey, but lost most of it.” He did not elab­o­rate on how Mr. Say­oc had acquired it.

    Mr. Say­oc amassed a lengthy crim­i­nal record, dat­ing back to 1991, which includes felony theft, drug charges and fraud, pub­lic records show.

    In August 2002, Mr. Say­oc, in a dis­pute with a pow­er com­pa­ny over a bill, was accused of threat­en­ing to blow up the com­pa­ny. Mr. Say­oc was on the phone with the cus­tomer ser­vice rep­re­sen­ta­tive and “was upset over an amount that he was being billed for,” accord­ing to records released by the Mia­mi-Dade State Attorney’s Office. He “then stat­ed that he didn’t deserve it and that he was going to blow up” the util­i­ty.

    The cus­tomer ser­vice rep­re­sen­ta­tive pressed an emer­gency but­ton, which began record­ing the con­ver­sa­tion. Mr. Say­oc stat­ed that what he planned would be worse “than 9/11” and that he planned to blow the agent’s head off, accord­ing to the records.

    When the agent said Mr. Say­oc did not want to be mak­ing such threats, pros­e­cu­tors said he had replied “that he doesn’t make threats, he makes promis­es.” Mr. Say­oc lat­er described his remarks as noth­ing more than a joke.

    In June 2012, Mr. Say­oc filed for per­son­al bank­rupt­cy, list­ing assets of $4,175 and lia­bil­i­ties of $21,109.

    “Lives w/mom,” a hand­writ­ten note on the peti­tion said. “Has no fur­ni­ture.”

    A lat­er place of res­i­dence was the white van, which he often parked out­side an aging strip mall in Aven­tu­ra, Fla., that hous­es an LA Fit­ness, a Jew­ish mar­ket, a bak­ery and a post office.

    Manuel Pra­do, a 56-year-old hair­dress­er in a salon at the mall, Shoppes at the Water­ways, said he had seen Mr. Say­oc for the past sev­er­al years liv­ing in the white van with dis­tinc­tive stick­ers.

    “I knew right away it was him when I saw the pic­tures of the van today in the news,” Mr. Pra­do said Fri­day after­noon. “That van was his home. It was real­ly smelly when he had the door open and you walked by. It was hor­ri­ble. He might dri­ve off and run an errand or some­thing, but every morn­ing that van was there in the park­ing lot.”

    Mr. Pra­do, a hair­dress­er for 17 years, said he also saw Mr. Say­oc fre­quent­ly at LA Fit­ness, a large club imme­di­ate­ly west of the shop­ping mall. “He would pre­tend to exer­cise — I think he just went there to take show­ers,” Mr. Pra­do said. “He’d some­times use a bicy­cle in the gym. I assume he was a mem­ber because they’re very strict about that.”

    ...

    ———-

    “Liv­ing in a Van Plas­tered With Hate, Bomb­ing Sus­pect Was Filled With Right-Wing Rage” by Patri­cia Mazzei, Nick Madi­gan and Frances Rob­les; The New York Times; 10/26/2018

    “Records show he was a reg­is­tered Repub­li­can; friends said he once danced as a male strip­per. He also had a lengthy crim­i­nal his­to­ry — he was once accused of threat­en­ing to use a bomb against a cus­tomer ser­vice rep­re­sen­ta­tive — and led a life filled with fail­ure. Well into mid­dle age, he was liv­ing with his moth­er with no fur­ni­ture, accord­ing to 2012 bank­rupt­cy records, and he appeared to have been liv­ing most recent­ly out of his van.

    So Say­oc expe­ri­enced fore­clo­sure, bank­rupt­cy, and home­less­ness in recent years. But his trou­bles start­ed long before that. One per­son claims Say­oc had “a lot of mon­ey” at some point, but lost most of it. It’s unclear how much he had or how it was lost, but keep in mind in 2009 fore­clo­sure so it’s pos­si­ble he lost quite a bit as a result of the 2008 finan­cial cri­sis. Of course, giv­en his crim­i­nal record, it’s also pos­si­ble he acquired “a lot of mon­ey” through crim­i­nal activ­i­ty. Either way, he was already a deeply trou­bled indi­vid­ual years ago, as the 2002 bomb threat case — a bomb threat made about an elec­tric­i­ty bill — makes clear:

    ...
    Mr. Altieri said that Mr. Say­oc at one point had “a lot of mon­ey, but lost most of it.” He did not elab­o­rate on how Mr. Say­oc had acquired it.

    Mr. Say­oc amassed a lengthy crim­i­nal record, dat­ing back to 1991, which includes felony theft, drug charges and fraud, pub­lic records show.

    In August 2002, Mr. Say­oc, in a dis­pute with a pow­er com­pa­ny over a bill, was accused of threat­en­ing to blow up the com­pa­ny. Mr. Say­oc was on the phone with the cus­tomer ser­vice rep­re­sen­ta­tive and “was upset over an amount that he was being billed for,” accord­ing to records released by the Mia­mi-Dade State Attorney’s Office. He “then stat­ed that he didn’t deserve it and that he was going to blow up” the util­i­ty.

    The cus­tomer ser­vice rep­re­sen­ta­tive pressed an emer­gency but­ton, which began record­ing the con­ver­sa­tion. Mr. Say­oc stat­ed that what he planned would be worse “than 9/11” and that he planned to blow the agent’s head off, accord­ing to the records.

    When the agent said Mr. Say­oc did not want to be mak­ing such threats, pros­e­cu­tors said he had replied “that he doesn’t make threats, he makes promis­es.” Mr. Say­oc lat­er described his remarks as noth­ing more than a joke.
    ...

    So as of 2002, Say­oc was clear­ly a deeply trou­bled indi­vid­ual. Then thre’s a peri­od of his life where we don’t have much infor­ma­tion. Was this the peri­od when Say­oc made “a lot of mon­ey” and then lost it? We don’t know. But by 2012, Say­oc filed for bank­rupt­cy and in recent years was liv­ing in his van:

    ...
    In June 2012, Mr. Say­oc filed for per­son­al bank­rupt­cy, list­ing assets of $4,175 and lia­bil­i­ties of $21,109.

    “Lives w/mom,” a hand­writ­ten note on the peti­tion said. “Has no fur­ni­ture.”

    A lat­er place of res­i­dence was the white van, which he often parked out­side an aging strip mall in Aven­tu­ra, Fla., that hous­es an LA Fit­ness, a Jew­ish mar­ket, a bak­ery and a post office.

    Manuel Pra­do, a 56-year-old hair­dress­er in a salon at the mall, Shoppes at the Water­ways, said he had seen Mr. Say­oc for the past sev­er­al years liv­ing in the white van with dis­tinc­tive stick­ers.
    ...

    So Say­oc fits a now famil­iar pro­file of indi­vid­u­als who end up com­mit­ting these kinds of seem­ing­ly ‘lone wolf’ act. A pro­file of a mid­dle-aged man who has been hit with one blow after anoth­er — a bank­rupt­cy, lost home, inse­cure employ­ment — and becomes angry and rad­i­cal­ized, latch­es onto white suprema­cy, and final­ly lash­es out vio­lent­ly. Although he does­n’t fit the pro­file in one key aspect. He was half Fil­ipino, and appeared to have com­plete­ly made up an iden­ti­ty as a mem­ber of the Semi­nole tribe in Flori­da:

    ...
    Much remains opaque about Mr. Say­oc. Some of his social media posts seemed to sug­gest he was part of the Semi­nole tribe in Flori­da. But Lenny Altieri, a rel­a­tive, said that Mr. Sayoc’s father was from the Philip­pines and his moth­er was from Brook­lyn. He was raised by grand­par­ents after hav­ing prob­lems with his moth­er, Mr. Altieri said.
    ...

    And we still don’t know when exact­ly he adopt the ‘I love Hitler’ world­view. Was it pre-Trump or post-Trump? That remains unclear, but based on his social media con­tent in 2015 it appears that had no real polit­i­cal inter­est. It’s only the more recent social media con­tent where the right-wing polit­i­cal nar­ra­tives start­ed show­ing up:

    ...
    On Mon­day, law enforce­ment offi­cials dis­cov­ered the first pack­age linked to Mr. Say­oc at a pri­vate home out­side New York City that belongs to George Soros, the bil­lion­aire phil­an­thropist. Days lat­er, Mr. Say­oc would post tweets that tar­get­ed Mr. Soros and oth­ers, accord­ing to the crim­i­nal com­plaint.

    Mr. Sayoc’s posts on var­i­ous social media accounts in 2015 showed an obses­sion with work­outs and night life pro­mo­tion, with lit­tle to no polit­i­cal con­tent. But his more recent posts are full of polit­i­cal rage. His Face­book account, wide­ly pored over after media reports of his arrest, sud­den­ly dis­ap­peared on Fri­day.

    “We have found and imme­di­ate­ly removed the suspect’s accounts on Face­book and Insta­gram,” Face­book said in a state­ment. “We will also con­tin­ue to remove con­tent that prais­es or sup­ports the bomb­ing attempt or the sus­pect as soon as we’re aware.”
    ...

    Still, as we saw in the pre­vi­ous arti­cle, he was ful­ly immersed in the far right con­spir­a­to­r­i­al world­view at some point in 2015 based on the tes­ti­monies of his soc­cer team­mates. So if he was­n’t already rad­i­cal­ized before Trump start­ed his cam­paign he must have got­ten rad­i­cal­ized real­ly fast.

    So, all in all, we appear to have anoth­er domes­tic ter­ror cam­paign from anoth­er white suprema­cist, albeit a some­what atyp­i­cal white suprema­cist. And while there’s no indi­ca­tion that he worked with some­one else in this bomb­ing cam­paign, we can’t ignore the fact that Say­oc was clear­ly enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly immers­ing him­self in the world of pro-Trump activism and that’s a world filled with orga­nized white suprema­cists.

    Recall what was saw above: Say­oc told his soc­cer team­mates in 2015 that he was work­ing on the Trump cam­paign. Was he doing this inde­pen­dent­ly? Was his pro-Trump van his idea of work­ing on the cam­paign? We don’t know, but we do know from all the pic­tures he post­ed of him­self attend­ing Trump events that he was min­gling in that crowd. Say­oc even showed up on tv at a Trump ral­ly in Mel­bourne, Flori­da, in 2017 hold­ing up a big anti-CNN sign.

    So Say­oc could have eas­i­ly spent the last three years heav­i­ly net­work­ing with peo­ple from that ‘pro-Trump’ crowd. Might any of those peo­ple have been white suprema­cists? Was Say­oc, who appeared to be seek­ing out some sort of group to belong to, qui­et­ly recruit­ed? Keep in mind that, as a half-Fil­ipino white suprema­cist, Say­oc would have prob­a­bly been seen as a pret­ty hot com­mod­i­ty from the white suprema­cist stand­point. Just imag­ine what a bunch of neo-Nazis would think if they came across some­one like Say­oc, espe­cial­ly after they learn he’s high­ly impres­sion­able and lives in a van. He would have been the per­fect ‘lone wolf’ for use by orga­nized white suprema­cists!.

    And then there’s the fact that he did­n’t have a house to con­struct those bombs. So where did he make them? Did he have help? Those ques­tions remain com­plete­ly unan­swered at this point but it’s hard to see any rea­son to assume at this point that he was work­ing alone.

    It’s also worth recall­ing the par­al­lels to Nicholas Cruz, the Flori­da-based teenag­er who shot up Park­land High School and who hap­pened to be part Jew­ish and His­pan­ic and who also appeared to have seri­ous iden­ti­ty issues. The bizarre sit­u­a­tion where a bunch of neo-Nazi trolls ‘tricked’ the media into think­ing Cruz was affil­i­at­ed with the Flori­da-based neo-Nazi group, the Repub­lic of Flori­da, only to have the ‘hoax’ rapid­ly dis­cov­ered. And recall how that ‘hoax’ appeared to have been designed to be rapid­ly dis­cov­ered and how it all appeared to be a kind of pre­emp­tive ‘hoax’ designed to dis­cred­it the the­o­ry that Cruz was indeed prompt­ed to car­ry out his attack by the neo-Nazis he was net­work­ing with.

    In all, the case of Niko­las Cruz had the look a staged ‘lone wolf’ attack with a planned dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paign designed to throw the pub­lic off the trail of inves­ti­gat­ing Cruz’s ties to orga­nized white suprema­cist ter­ror groups. Might the case of Cesar Say­oc be sim­i­lar? Might the same Flori­da-based neo-Nazi be involved? Those are all ques­tions that have yet to be answered so let’s hope they’re at least being asked by inves­ti­ga­tors.

    Beyond all the ques­tions about what pre­cise­ly moti­vat­ed Say­oc to do what he did, there’s the over­ar­ch­ing issue of the unde­ni­able fact that that Say­oc’s attacks took place in the con­text of a hard right anti-immi­grant turn by the GOP in the final weeks of this cam­paign focused on pro­mot­ing con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries alleg­ing Democ­rats and George Soros are financ­ing the Cen­tral Amer­i­can migrants car­a­van for the pur­pose of ‘[insert white suprema­cy con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry here]’. Trump and the GOP has made a slight­ly toned down ver­sion of the clas­sic neo-Nazi meme — that Democ­rats are try­ing to bring non-whites into the US as part of some sort of dia­bol­i­cal ‘glob­al­ist’ plot against white Amer­i­cans — a cen­tral part of their mid-term slo­ga­neer­ing in these final weeks.

    And before Say­oc was caught and iden­ti­fied, the GOP was aggres­sive­ly pro­mot­ing the idea that it was all a false flag hoax car­ried out by the left. Trump even pro­mot­ed that meme in a treat less than an hour before Say­oc was appre­hend­ed, which is high­ly sus­pi­cious tim­ing giv­en the fact that he almost assured­ly would have known about the arrest (and Say­oc’s obvi­ous pro-Trump fanati­cism) before the arrest was made. At 10:19 am EST Fri­day morn­ing, short­ly before the arrest, Trump tweet­ed out: “Repub­li­cans are doing so well in ear­ly vot­ing, and at the polls, and now this “Bomb” stuff hap­pens and the momen­tum great­ly slows — news not talk­ing pol­i­tics. Very unfor­tu­nate, what is going on. Repub­li­cans, go out and vote! It was the just lat­est tweet from a promi­nent con­ser­v­a­tive hint­ing at the idea that the “bomb stuff” was part of a plot against the GOP and designed to dis­tract from ‘the car­a­van’:

    The Guardian

    High-pro­file con­ser­v­a­tives claim mail bombs are an attack by the left

    Ann Coul­ter and Rush Lim­baugh have sug­gest­ed Democ­rats sent pack­ages to elic­it sym­pa­thy ahead of midterms

    Jason Wil­son in Port­land, Ore­gon
    Fri 26 Oct 2018 10.11 EDT
    Last mod­i­fied on Fri 26 Oct 2018 12.03 EDT

    A range of high-pro­file con­ser­v­a­tives have embraced a con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry that mail bombs sent to lib­er­al pub­lic fig­ures are a “false flag” attack by left­wingers. Many have also claimed that the attacks are intend­ed to elic­it sym­pa­thy for Democ­rats ahead of the loom­ing midterm elec­tions.

    Author­i­ties are yet to iden­ti­fy a sus­pect or motive in the bomb­ings, which have seen 12 pipe bombs sent to a range of fig­ures from for­mer pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma to Bill and Hillary Clin­ton to financier George Soros and even to the out-spo­ken actor Robert De Niro. All the sus­pects have one thing in com­mon: they have been tar­gets of Don­ald Trump’s ire.

    Nev­er­the­less, with­out evi­dence, a num­ber of osten­si­bly main­stream con­ser­v­a­tives joined more overt­ly con­spir­acist out­lets in either express­ing skep­ti­cism that con­ser­v­a­tives would dam­age their own cause, or mak­ing out­right accu­sa­tions that the left are orches­trat­ing the bomb­ing cam­paign in order to sab­o­tage Repub­li­cans.

    In a now-delet­ed tweet, on Thurs­day Fox Busi­ness TV host Lou Dobbs wrote: “Fake News – Fake Bombs. Who could pos­si­bly ben­e­fit by so much fak­ery?” Dobbs has a close rela­tion­ship with Trump and the two report­ed­ly speak fre­quent­ly on the phone.

    Else­where on Fox, three guest ana­lysts sug­gest­ed that the bombs were “false flag” attacks.

    Also on Thurs­day, the president’s son, Don­ald Trump Jr, liked a tweet which read in part: “FAKE BOMBS MADE TO SCARE AND PICK UP BLUE SYMPATHY VOTE.” In the past he has liked tweets ques­tion­ing whether the Park­land sur­vivor David Hogg was actu­al­ly present at the Flori­da school shoot­ing that led him to become gun con­trol cam­paign­er.

    On Wednes­day, after a caller said the bomb plot didn’t “pass the smell test”, the lead­ing talk radio host Rush Lim­baugh asked rhetor­i­cal­ly: “Would it make a lot of sense for a Demo­c­rat oper­a­tive or Demo­c­rat-incul­cat­ed lunatic to do it? Because things are not work­ing out the way they thought.”

    His fel­low rightwing broad­cast­er, Michael Sav­age, opined the same day that there was a “high prob­a­bil­i­ty that the whole thing had been set up as a false flag to gain sym­pa­thy for the Democ­rats”, and to dis­tract from the so-called “car­a­van” of migrants cur­rent­ly in south­ern Mex­i­co.

    The far-right and anti-immi­grant media per­son­al­i­ty Ann Coul­ter, mean­while, claimed on Wednes­day that the “bombs are a lib­er­al tac­tic”. The con­ser­v­a­tive author and film-mak­er Dinesh D’Souza, whose recent work has drawn par­al­lels between Democ­rats and Nazis, tweet­ed: “I hear the FBI squeezed lemon juice on the sus­pi­cious pack­ages and a very faint let­ter­ing revealed a sin­gle word: DEMOCRATS.”

    Those fur­ther down the con­ser­v­a­tive media peck­ing order were also on mes­sage with “false flag” alle­ga­tions.

    The Trump-aligned pod­cast­er and social media star Bill Mitchell described the bombs as “Soros astro-turf­ing”, refer­ring to the bil­lion­aire phil­an­thropist (and mag­net for con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists) who was the first tar­get of the bomb­ing cam­paign. He added that the attacks were “Pure BS”.

    Rightwing car­toon­ist Ben Gar­ri­son drew a car­toon enti­tled Rais­ing a false flag, fea­tur­ing Hillary Clin­ton, CNN media reporter Bri­an Stel­ter, and for­mer CIA direc­tor John Bren­nan – all bomb­ing tar­gets – rais­ing a flag shaped like a mail bomb. Under­neath the flag, he has George Soros exclaim­ing: “See? We’re vic­tims of Trump’s hate!”

    ...

    On Wednes­day, just hours after mul­ti­ple bombs had arrived at the homes of for­mer pub­lic offi­cials and the offices of media com­pa­nies, Jones alleged that the bombs had been plant­ed by left­ist antifas­cist or “antifa groups”, in order to “smear con­ser­v­a­tives who sup­port Pres­i­dent Trump”.

    ———-

    “High-pro­file con­ser­v­a­tives claim mail bombs are an attack by the left” by Jason Wil­son; The Guardian; 10/26/2018

    “Nev­er­the­less, with­out evi­dence, a num­ber of osten­si­bly main­stream con­ser­v­a­tives joined more overt­ly con­spir­acist out­lets in either express­ing skep­ti­cism that con­ser­v­a­tives would dam­age their own cause, or mak­ing out­right accu­sa­tions that the left are orches­trat­ing the bomb­ing cam­paign in order to sab­o­tage Repub­li­cans.”

    Yep, before Say­oc was arrest­ed and iden­ti­fied, the idea that the bomb­ings were a left-wing false flag was the right-wing medi­a’s ral­ly­ing cry. Even Don­ald Trump, Jr. got in on it:

    ...
    In a now-delet­ed tweet, on Thurs­day Fox Busi­ness TV host Lou Dobbs wrote: “Fake News – Fake Bombs. Who could pos­si­bly ben­e­fit by so much fak­ery?” Dobbs has a close rela­tion­ship with Trump and the two report­ed­ly speak fre­quent­ly on the phone.

    Else­where on Fox, three guest ana­lysts sug­gest­ed that the bombs were “false flag” attacks.

    Also on Thurs­day, the president’s son, Don­ald Trump Jr, liked a tweet which read in part: “FAKE BOMBS MADE TO SCARE AND PICK UP BLUE SYMPATHY VOTE.” In the past he has liked tweets ques­tion­ing whether the Park­land sur­vivor David Hogg was actu­al­ly present at the Flori­da school shoot­ing that led him to become gun con­trol cam­paign­er.
    ...

    Michael Sav­age includ­ed the cit­ed used the­o­ry that it was all designed to dis­tract from ‘the car­a­van’, which tied in the bomb­ing ‘false flag’ meme with the ‘George Soros and the Democ­rats are pay­ing for the car­a­van’ meme that the right-wing had already been aggres­sive­ly pro­mot­ing:

    ...
    On Wednes­day, after a caller said the bomb plot didn’t “pass the smell test”, the lead­ing talk radio host Rush Lim­baugh asked rhetor­i­cal­ly: “Would it make a lot of sense for a Demo­c­rat oper­a­tive or Demo­c­rat-incul­cat­ed lunatic to do it? Because things are not work­ing out the way they thought.”

    His fel­low rightwing broad­cast­er, Michael Sav­age, opined the same day that there was a “high prob­a­bil­i­ty that the whole thing had been set up as a false flag to gain sym­pa­thy for the Democ­rats”, and to dis­tract from the so-called “car­a­van” of migrants cur­rent­ly in south­ern Mex­i­co.

    The far-right and anti-immi­grant media per­son­al­i­ty Ann Coul­ter, mean­while, claimed on Wednes­day that the “bombs are a lib­er­al tac­tic”. The con­ser­v­a­tive author and film-mak­er Dinesh D’Souza, whose recent work has drawn par­al­lels between Democ­rats and Nazis, tweet­ed: “I hear the FBI squeezed lemon juice on the sus­pi­cious pack­ages and a very faint let­ter­ing revealed a sin­gle word: DEMOCRATS.”
    ...

    And per­haps most impor­tant­ly, that col­lec­tive right-wing response was pre­dictable: the main­stream right-wing media will now pre­dictably treat any and all far right ter­ror attack as a ‘false flag’ until it’s con­clu­sive­ly proven oth­er­wise. We also can’t ignore the fact that Trump him­self was blam­ing the media and ‘fake news’ for these attacks. And it’s hard to think of a media envi­ron­ment that could do more to encour­age far right domes­tic ter­ror attacks than a media that will treat those attacks on left-wing false flags and hoax­es and blame the vic­tims.

    And, of course, even after Say­oc was appre­hend­ed and iden­ti­fied, Trump dou­bled down on the rhetoric and the argu­ment that this was actu­al­ly all the medi­a’s fault:

    Talk­ing Points Memo

    Trump Threat­ens To ‘Tone It Up’ Since Media Has Been So Unfair To GOP

    by David Tain­tor
    Octo­ber 26, 2018 5:00 pm

    Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump on Fri­day crit­i­cized the media for being “unbe­liev­ably unfair to Repub­li­cans,” say­ing that he could “tone it up” because of that treat­ment.

    “Well I think I’ve been toned down, if you want to know the truth. I could real­ly tone it up because, as you know, the media’s been extreme­ly unfair to me and the Repub­li­can Par­ty,” Trump said hours after the FBI arrest­ed a sus­pect in con­nec­tion to the mailed pipe bombs sent to promi­nent Democ­rats and CNN this week.

    Trump says he could “tone it up” because the media has been so unfair to Repub­li­cans pic.twitter.com/AyD3Q7qq0l

    — TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) Octo­ber 26, 2018

    ———-

    “Trump Threat­ens To ‘Tone It Up’ Since Media Has Been So Unfair To GOP” by David Tain­tor; Talk­ing Points Memo; 10/26/2018

    ““Well I think I’ve been toned down, if you want to know the truth. I could real­ly tone it up because, as you know, the media’s been extreme­ly unfair to me and the Repub­li­can Par­ty,” Trump said hours after the FBI arrest­ed a sus­pect in con­nec­tion to the mailed pipe bombs sent to promi­nent Democ­rats and CNN this week.”

    So giv­en that we’re deal­ing with bomb threat ter­ror cam­paign by a man who appeared to have a seri­ous iden­ti­ty dis­or­der and in search of some sort of group to belong to, and giv­en that the right-wing has ful­ly embraced far right dis­in­for­ma­tion as a ral­ly­ing cry, with worth recall­ing the insights into far right thought pro­vid­ed by the ‘Alt Right’ neo-Nazi writer Cur­tis Yarvin, a.k.a. Men­cius Mold­bug. As Mold­bug once wrote, “To believe in non­sense is an unforge­able [sic] demon­stra­tion of loy­al­ty. It serves as a polit­i­cal uni­form. And if you have a uni­form, you have an army.” In oth­er words, pub­licly par­rot­ing dis­in­for­ma­tion is how mem­bers of the far right make their trib­al alle­giance known. It’s an act of group bond­ing that simul­ta­ne­ous­ly bonds the group to the dis­in­for­ma­tion. It’s part of what makes the Big Lie durable:

    Politi­co

    What Steve Ban­non Wants You to Read

    Pres­i­dent Trump’s strate­gic advis­er is ele­vat­ing a once-obscure net­work of polit­i­cal thinkers.

    By ELIANA JOHNSON and ELI STOKOLS

    Feb­ru­ary 07, 2017

    The first weeks of the Trump pres­i­den­cy have brought as much focus on the White House’s chief strate­gist, Steve Ban­non, as on the new pres­i­dent him­self. But if Ban­non has been the dri­ving force behind the fren­zy of activ­i­ty in the White House, less atten­tion has been paid to the net­work of polit­i­cal philoso­phers who have shaped his think­ing and who now enjoy a direct line to the White House.

    They are not main­stream thinkers, but their writ­ings help to explain the com­mo­tion that has defined the Trump administration’s ear­ly days. They include a Lebanese-Amer­i­can author known for his the­o­ries about hard-to-pre­dict events; an obscure Sil­i­con Val­ley com­put­er sci­en­tist whose online polit­i­cal tracts her­ald a “Dark Enlight­en­ment”; and a for­mer Wall Street exec­u­tive who urged Don­ald Trump’s elec­tion in anony­mous man­i­festos by liken­ing the tra­jec­to­ry of the coun­try to that of a hijacked airplane—and who now works for the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil.

    Ban­non, described by one asso­ciate as “the most well-read per­son in Wash­ing­ton,” is known for rec­om­mend­ing books to col­leagues and friends, accord­ing to mul­ti­ple peo­ple who have worked along­side him. He is a vora­cious read­er who devours works of his­to­ry and polit­i­cal the­o­ry “in like an hour,” said a for­mer asso­ciate whom Ban­non urged to read Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. “He’s like the Rain Man of nation­al­ism.”

    But, said the source, who request­ed anonymi­ty to speak can­did­ly about Ban­non, “There are some things he’s only going to share with peo­ple who he’s tight with and who he trusts.”

    Bannon’s read­ings tend to have one thing in com­mon: the view that tech­nocrats have put West­ern civ­i­liza­tion on a down­ward tra­jec­to­ry and that only a shock to the sys­tem can reverse its decline. And they tend to have a dark, apoc­a­lyp­tic tone that at times echoes Bannon’s own pub­lic remarks over the years—a sense that human­i­ty is at a hinge point in his­to­ry. His ascen­dant pres­ence in the West Wing is giv­ing once-obscure intel­lec­tu­als unex­pect­ed influ­ence over the high­est ech­e­lons of gov­ern­ment.

    ...

    Trump’s first two weeks in office have pro­duced a dizzy­ing blur of activ­i­ty. But the pres­i­dent has also need­less­ly sparked con­tro­ver­sy, argu­ing, for exam­ple, that his inau­gu­ra­tion crowd was the biggest ever and that mil­lions of peo­ple vot­ed ille­gal­ly in last November’s elec­tion, leav­ing even sea­soned polit­i­cal observers befud­dled.

    Before he emerged on the polit­i­cal scene, an obscure Sil­i­con Val­ley com­put­er pro­gram­mer with ties to Trump backer and Pay­Pal co-founder Peter Thiel was explain­ing his behav­ior. Cur­tis Yarvin, the self-pro­claimed “neo­re­ac­tionary” who blogs under the name “Men­cius Mold­bug,” attract­ed a fol­low­ing in 2008 when he pub­lished a wordy trea­tise assert­ing, among oth­er things, that “non­sense is a more effec­tive orga­niz­ing tool than the truth.” When the orga­niz­er of a com­put­er sci­ence con­fer­ence can­celed Yarvin’s appear­ance fol­low­ing an out­cry over his blog­ging under his nom de web, Ban­non took note: Bre­it­bart News decried the act of cen­sor­ship in an arti­cle about the programmer-blogger’s dis­missal.

    Moldbug’s dense, dis­cur­sive mus­ings on history—“What’s so bad about the Nazis?” he asks in one 2008 post that con­demns the Holo­caust but ques­tions the moral supe­ri­or­i­ty of the Allies—include a belief in the util­i­ty of spread­ing mis­in­for­ma­tion that now looks like a tem­plate for Trump’s approach to truth. “To believe in non­sense is an unforge­able [sic] demon­stra­tion of loy­al­ty. It serves as a polit­i­cal uni­form. And if you have a uni­form, you have an army,” he writes in a May 2008 post.

    In one Jan­u­ary 2008 post, titled “How I stopped believ­ing in democ­ra­cy,” he decries the “George­town­ist world­view” of elites like the late diplo­mat George Ken­nan. Moldbug’s writ­ings, com­ing amid the fail­ure of the U.S. state-build­ing project in Iraq, are hard to parse clear­ly and are open to mul­ti­ple inter­pre­ta­tions, but the author seems aware that his views are provoca­tive. “It’s been a while since I post­ed any­thing real­ly con­tro­ver­sial and offen­sive here,” he begins in a July 25, 2007, post explain­ing why he asso­ciates democ­ra­cy with “war, tyran­ny, destruc­tion and pover­ty.”

    Mold­bug, who does not do inter­views and could not be reached for this sto­ry, has report­ed­ly opened up a line to the White House, com­mu­ni­cat­ing with Ban­non and his aides through an inter­me­di­ary, accord­ing to a source. Yarvin said he has nev­er spo­ken with Ban­non. Dur­ing the tran­si­tion, he made clear his deep skep­ti­cism that the Rus­sians were behind the hack­ing of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Com­mit­tee, the source said—a mes­sage that Trump him­self reit­er­at­ed sev­er­al times.

    ...

    ———-

    “What Steve Ban­non Wants You to Read” by ELIANA JOHNSON and ELI STOKOLS; Politi­co; 02/07/2017

    Before he emerged on the polit­i­cal scene, an obscure Sil­i­con Val­ley com­put­er pro­gram­mer with ties to Trump backer and Pay­Pal co-founder Peter Thiel was explain­ing his behav­ior. Cur­tis Yarvin, the self-pro­claimed “neo­re­ac­tionary” who blogs under the name “Men­cius Mold­bug,” attract­ed a fol­low­ing in 2008 when he pub­lished a wordy trea­tise assert­ing, among oth­er things, that “non­sense is a more effec­tive orga­niz­ing tool than the truth.” When the orga­niz­er of a com­put­er sci­ence con­fer­ence can­celed Yarvin’s appear­ance fol­low­ing an out­cry over his blog­ging under his nom de web, Ban­non took note: Bre­it­bart News decried the act of cen­sor­ship in an arti­cle about the programmer-blogger’s dis­missal.”

    That’s right, Yarvin/Moldbug also hap­pens to be an asso­ciate of major Sil­i­con Val­ley Trump-backer Peter Thiel. And he’s open­ly writ­ten about the pow­er of dis­in­for­ma­tion as a kind of group loy­al­ty pledge. By open­ly embrac­ing non­sense, one can make their loy­al­ty clear to the group putting out this non­sense. Dis­in­for­ma­tion as a uni­form. And when you have enough peo­ple mak­ing that loy­al­ty pledge you have an army. And army of non­sense that is, nonethe­less, still an army:

    ...
    Moldbug’s dense, dis­cur­sive mus­ings on history—“What’s so bad about the Nazis?” he asks in one 2008 post that con­demns the Holo­caust but ques­tions the moral supe­ri­or­i­ty of the Allies—include a belief in the util­i­ty of spread­ing mis­in­for­ma­tion that now looks like a tem­plate for Trump’s approach to truth. “To believe in non­sense is an unforge­able [sic] demon­stra­tion of loy­al­ty. It serves as a polit­i­cal uni­form. And if you have a uni­form, you have an army,” he writes in a May 2008 post.
    ...

    So we find our­selves in a sit­u­a­tion where the right-wing response to far right ter­ror is pre­dictably to label it a left-wing false flag or hoax. And that’s hap­pen­ing in the larg­er con­text of the main­stream­ing of far right thought in gen­er­al. So we have to ask: is there’s a con­scious strat­e­gy at work here were far right attacks are cap­i­tal­ized upon by the far right using dis­in­for­ma­tion. In oth­er words, is pro­mo­tion of ‘false flag! Hoax!’ memes one of the goals of these kinds of ter­ror attacks? A strat­e­gy that revolves around cycle of ‘vio­lence + post-vio­lence dis­in­for­ma­tion’ where the dis­in­for­ma­tion is lit­er­al­ly intend­ed as a divide and con­quer tac­tic that forms its own infor­mal army?

    In oth­er words, just as Say­oc appears to have been seek­ing some kind of white suprema­cist approval with his actions, are the right-wing dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paigns also inten­tion­al­ly pro­mot­ing dis­in­for­ma­tion because it’s know that con­ser­v­a­tives want to stay in good stand­ing with ‘the tribe’ and will pas­sive­ly adopt what­ev­er dis­in­for­ma­tion is put out that ‘their side’ as part of some sort human instinct to show group loy­al­ty? It’s a ques­tion we have to ask, espe­cial­ly as Pres­i­dent Trump threat­ens to “tone up” his rhetoric. Because that’s not just a threat to make the Big Lie even big­ger. It’s also a threat to make the army of peo­ple who now reflex­ive­ly accept that Big Lie world­view as an act of trib­al loy­al­ty even more loy­al. Even more loy­al to Trump and the ever-grow­ing Big Lie.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | October 27, 2018, 4:03 pm
  5. Here’s a series of arti­cles that under­scores why online video game plat­forms like Steam have become pop­u­lar recruit­ment tools for neo-Nazis and oth­er extrem­ist move­ments:

    First, recall that we’ve already seen reports about how Steam’s chat forums were being used by neo-Nazis like Andrew Auern­heimer and Atom­waf­fen to recruit and one report about 173 dif­fer­ent chat rooms where school shoot­ings were being glo­ri­fied and pro­mot­ed. Also recall how a num­ber of neo-Nazi groups open­ly pro­mote ‘eth­nos­tate gang rapes’ as part of their vision/sales pitch for a neo-Nazi future.

    Recent­ly, Steam found itself in a rather uncom­fort­able posi­tion caused by the com­pa­ny’s vague and lax pol­i­cy regard­ing what con­sti­tutes inad­mis­si­ble gam­ing con­tent and a game devel­op­er who decid­ed to make what might be con­sid­ered the most moral­ly objec­tion­able game ever cre­at­ed. The game, ‘Rape Day’, has a tar­get mar­ket of the ‘four per cent of the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion [who] are sociopaths’ and would enjoy play­ing a ‘men­ac­ing ser­i­al killer rapist dur­ing a zom­bie apoc­a­lypse’. That’s the descrip­tion pro­vid­ed by the game’s sole devel­op­er, who goes by the name “Desk Plant”. The game is lit­er­al­ly a ‘visu­al nov­el’ (sort of like a “choose you own adven­ture” video game) that puts the play­ing in con­trol of a rapist sociopath dur­ing a zom­bie apoc­a­lypse. So it’s more of a direct cel­e­bra­tion of ‘Incel’ cul­ture than neo-Nazi cul­ture, but giv­en the fre­quent cel­e­bra­tion of rape in neo-Nazi cul­ture it’s fair to see this game as a cel­e­bra­tion of both. And in a more gen­er­al sense it’s a cel­e­bra­tion of sociopa­thy, which is exact­ly how the design­er por­trays it.

    Despite that con­tent, ‘Rape Day’ man­aged to be adver­tised on Steam for weeks before its release. But it was put under a review process by Steam fol­low­ing a wave of com­plaints. Now, one would imag­ine that a game of this nature would­n’t pos­si­bly pass Steam’s review process, but it turns out that Steam’s pol­i­cy is to only bans games that are ille­gal or inten­tion­al ‘trolling’ and it was appar­ent­ly unclear if Rape Day vio­lat­ed those rules. Yes, the ques­tion of whether or not Steam, one of the most pop­u­lar gam­ing plat­forms on the plan­et, would allow a game made by a sociopath for oth­er sociopaths so they could vir­tu­al­ly indulge in socio­path­ic ram­pages was an open ques­tion that Steam recent­ly had to answer:

    Dai­ly Mail

    ‘Rape Day’ com­put­er game where play­ers sex­u­al­ly assault and mur­der women amidst scenes of necrophil­ia and incest sparks out­rage

    * Devel­op­er claims game is aimed at ‘four per cent of sociopaths in the pop­u­la­tion’
    * It lets play­ers con­trol a men­ac­ing ser­i­al killer rapist dur­ing a zom­bie apoc­a­lypse
    * Gam­ing plat­form Steam review­ing game to see if it breach­es its code of con­duct
    * But Steam has a ‘any­thing goes’ pol­i­cy and only bans ‘ille­gal’ or ‘trolling’ con­tent

    By Con­nor Boyd
    Pub­lished: 07:18 EST, 5 March 2019 | Updat­ed: 04:05 EST, 6 March 2019

    A new PC game that lets play­ers rape and kill women as they progress through its sto­ry of ‘vio­lence, sex­u­al assault, necrophil­ia and incest’ is due to be released this month despite out­rage.

    The devel­op­er of ‘Rape Day’ claims the game is aimed at the ‘four per cent of the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion [who] are sociopaths’ and would enjoy play­ing a ‘men­ac­ing ser­i­al killer rapist dur­ing a zom­bie apoc­a­lypse’.

    Desk Plant, the one-man devel­op­er, even brags about its twist­ed sto­ry line in the descrip­tion on gam­ing plat­form Steam.

    It wrote: ‘Annoy, mur­der and rape women as you con­tin­ue the sto­ry. It’s a dan­ger­ous world with no laws. The zom­bies enjoy eat­ing the flesh off warm humans and bru­tal­ly rap­ing them but you are the most dan­ger­ous rapist in town.’

    In a grue­some screen­shot uploaded to Twit­ter, one scene showed the main char­ac­ter forc­ing a pis­tol into a young wom­an’s mouth with the sub­ti­tles: ‘I could blow your brains out and f*** your tight lit­tle p****right here.’

    The game also includ­ed a dis­turb­ing scene of a zom­bie drown­ing a baby before ‘mash­ing it up into pulp’.

    Steam has put the game under review after being inun­dat­ed with com­plaints fol­low­ing its release on Feb­ru­ary 19.

    The ‘visu­al nov­el’ — a genre where play­ers change the plot based on their deci­sions — is cur­rent­ly unavail­able to down­load while the gam­ing plat­form decides if it breach­es its poli­cies.

    Steam strict­ly only bans games that are ille­gal or inten­tion­al ‘trolling’. It’s unclear whether the game con­sti­tutes trolling under Steam’s rule.

    ...

    Ques­tions are now being asked as to how a game titled ‘Rape Day’ with such a brazen descrip­tion made it onto Steam in the first place.

    Accord­ing to devel­op­er guide­lines, a game must pass through a ‘brief review process’ before it can go live.

    But there is no sug­ges­tion that con­tent is reviewed as part of the process.

    In a FAQ, the devel­op­er said: ‘If peo­ple want my game to not exist... their best offense in my opin­ion would be to not talk about me, and not give me free press.

    ‘If both my game is banned and I am banned, then I will ensure that a con­tent plat­form for all kinds of legal, qual­i­ty porn games exist.’

    ———-

    “ ‘Rape Day’ com­put­er game where play­ers sex­u­al­ly assault and mur­der women amidst scenes of necrophil­ia and incest sparks out­rage” by Con­nor Boyd; Dai­ly Mail; 03/05/2019

    “The devel­op­er of ‘Rape Day’ claims the game is aimed at the ‘four per cent of the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion [who] are sociopaths’ and would enjoy play­ing a ‘men­ac­ing ser­i­al killer rapist dur­ing a zom­bie apoc­a­lypse’.”

    A game by a sociopath for sociopaths. And it was appar­ent­ly on the verge of being approved for sale on the Steam plat­form with­out any mean­ing­ful review of the con­tent. It was only the out­cry of users that actu­al­ly trig­gered a review and even at that point it was still unclear if the game vio­lat­ed Steam’s rules which only ban ille­gal con­tent of “inten­tion­al trolling”:

    ...
    Steam has put the game under review after being inun­dat­ed with com­plaints fol­low­ing its release on Feb­ru­ary 19.

    The ‘visu­al nov­el’ — a genre where play­ers change the plot based on their deci­sions — is cur­rent­ly unavail­able to down­load while the gam­ing plat­form decides if it breach­es its poli­cies.

    Steam strict­ly only bans games that are ille­gal or inten­tion­al ‘trolling’. It’s unclear whether the game con­sti­tutes trolling under Steam’s rule.

    ...

    Ques­tions are now being asked as to how a game titled ‘Rape Day’ with such a brazen descrip­tion made it onto Steam in the first place.

    Accord­ing to devel­op­er guide­lines, a game must pass through a ‘brief review process’ before it can go live.

    But there is no sug­ges­tion that con­tent is reviewed as part of the process.
    ...

    So did Steam end up allow­ing ‘Rape Day’ to be sold on its plat­form? For­tu­nate­ly no, Steam pulled the game, but only after thou­sands of peo­ple signed a Change.org peti­tion call­ing for the game’s removal. But this deci­sion did­n’t appear to come with any sort of change or clar­i­fi­ca­tion of Steam’s poli­cies. The com­pa­ny stat­ed that “We sim­ply have to wait and see what comes to us via Steam Direct. We then have to make a judge­ment call about any risk it puts to Valve, our devel­op­er part­ners, or our cus­tomers. After sig­nif­i­cant fact-find­ing and dis­cus­sion, we think ‘Rape Day’ pos­es unknown costs and risks and there­fore won’t be on Steam,” adding, “We respect devel­op­ers’ desire to express them­selves, and the pur­pose of Steam is to help devel­op­ers find an audi­ence, but this devel­op­er has cho­sen con­tent mat­ter and a way of rep­re­sent­ing it that makes it very dif­fi­cult for us to help them do that.” So Steam’s offi­cial pol­i­cy for this kind of con­tent appears to be, ‘not this time, but we’ll see in the future!’:

    The Dai­ly Beast

    ‘Rape Day’ Game Where You Play as a ‘Dan­ger­ous Rapist’ Pulled After Back­lash

    The gam­ing plat­form Steam had adver­tised the con­tro­ver­sial title for weeks—much like Active Shoot­er, a school-shoot­ing game that was pulled fol­low­ing a sim­i­lar out­cry.

    Amy Zim­mer­man
    03.08.19 1:43 AM ET

    After a wave of social media back­lash, Steam, the pop­u­lar gam­ing plat­form, has announced that it will not be dis­trib­ut­ing a con­tro­ver­sial game called “Rape Day.”

    Pri­or to this lat­est state­ment on the Steam Blog, the pre­view page for “Rape Day” had been up and run­ning on the site for weeks. The pre-release page teased a “choose your own adven­ture visu­al nov­el” in which play­ers can “con­trol the choic­es of a men­ac­ing ser­i­al killer rapist dur­ing a zom­bie apoc­a­lypse.” The dis­turb­ing, since-delet­ed list­ing, which was report­ed­ly hid­den from reg­u­lar search results due to its sex­u­al­ly explic­it nature, offered a mature con­tent warn­ing for sex­u­al assault, necrophil­ia, and incest, to name just a few.

    ...

    Nat­u­ral­ly, “Rape Day” sparked con­tro­ver­sy in the lead-up to its doomed debut. A recent Change.org peti­tion addressed to the CEO of Valve Cor­po­ra­tion, which oper­ates Steam, called on the plat­form to stop “Rape Day” before it start­ed. “Rape is not a game and the mak­ers of this should not be allowed to make mon­ey pro­mot­ing the rape and killing of women,” the writer of the peti­tion urged.

    The cre­ator of the game has respond­ed to the peti­tion, as well as to oth­er cov­er­age of “Rape Day” and its back­lash, with: “lol.”

    As Busi­ness Insid­er not­ed before the game was offi­cial­ly pulled, “‘Rape Day’ puts Steam in a com­pro­mis­ing posi­tion; the game unapolo­get­i­cal­ly glo­ri­fies rape, and has lit­tle to offer in terms of actu­al game­play. Even if Steam isn’t pro­mot­ing the game, it would prof­it from every sale. While Steam has been reluc­tant to restrict con­tent on the grounds of free speech, there’s not much moral wig­gle room left in this sit­u­a­tion.”

    Two days and over 3,000 sup­port­ers lat­er, the Change.org peti­tion was updat­ed with a “vic­to­ry” bul­letin, link­ing to Steam’s recent announce­ment.

    This isn’t the first time Steam has been crit­i­cized for what Poly­gon has deemed its “hands-off approach to game cura­tion.” In May 2018, the plat­form weath­ered a sim­i­lar con­tro­ver­sy with “Active Shoot­er,” a school shoot­ing sim­u­la­tion game that saw its immi­nent release can­celled after intense back­lash; par­ents of school shoot­ing vic­tims were among the many out­raged. In an email state­ment, Valve’s Doug Lom­bar­di told The New York Times that “Active Shoot­er” “was a troll, designed to do noth­ing but gen­er­ate out­rage and cause con­flict through its exis­tence.”

    A sub­se­quent Steam blog post, dat­ed June 2018, attempt­ed to clar­i­fy the platform’s poli­cies, but ulti­mate­ly failed to pro­vide much clar­i­ty. “We’ve decid­ed that the right approach is to allow every­thing onto the Steam Store, except for things that we decide are ille­gal, or straight up trolling,” the post con­cludes. “As we men­tioned ear­li­er, laws vary around the world, so we’re going to need to han­dle this on a case-by-case basis. As a result, we will almost cer­tain­ly con­tin­ue to strug­gle with this one for a while. Our cur­rent think­ing is that we’re going to push devel­op­ers to fur­ther dis­close any poten­tial­ly prob­lem­at­ic con­tent in their games dur­ing the sub­mis­sion process.”

    At anoth­er point in the blog post, Valve empha­sized that, “If you’re a devel­op­er of offen­sive games, this isn’t us sid­ing with you against all the peo­ple you’re offending…Offending some­one shouldn’t take away your game’s voice. We believe you should be able to express your­self like every­one else, and to find oth­ers who want to play your game.”

    The devel­op­er of “Rape Day,” who goes by Desk Plant, wrote on their web­site that, “My game was prop­er­ly marked as adult and with a thor­ough descrip­tion of all of the poten­tial­ly offen­sive con­tent before the com­ing soon page went live on Steam.” PC Gamer report­ed that, “Valve’s out­line of the Steam Store page review process indi­cates that all list­ings are man­u­al­ly approved by Valve before they appear in the store.”

    ...

    In an email state­ment to The Dai­ly Beast, Desk Plant claimed that Steam’s deci­sion not to dis­trib­ute was dic­tat­ed by pub­lic opin­ion, as opposed to any sort of set pro­to­col. “I don’t think Steam has put much thought into their poli­cies and val­ues,” the game cre­ator wrote. “They have become a reac­tionary com­pa­ny that con­tin­u­al­ly changes its poli­cies based on exter­nal pres­sure and even lie about what they will do in the future, such as when they said they would not be the ‘taste police.’

    “I’m all for rules and lim­its,” the “Rape Day” devel­op­er con­tin­ued, “but a well thought out long term strat­e­gy might be a good idea for Steam to con­sid­er com­ing up with.”

    In their offi­cial state­ment on the game, the Steam team appeared to own this “reac­tionary” label, writ­ing, “We sim­ply have to wait and see what comes to us via Steam Direct. We then have to make a judge­ment call about any risk it puts to Valve, our devel­op­er part­ners, or our cus­tomers. After sig­nif­i­cant fact-find­ing and dis­cus­sion, we think ‘Rape Day’ pos­es unknown costs and risks and there­fore won’t be on Steam.”

    They added, “We respect devel­op­ers’ desire to express them­selves, and the pur­pose of Steam is to help devel­op­ers find an audi­ence, but this devel­op­er has cho­sen con­tent mat­ter and a way of rep­re­sent­ing it that makes it very dif­fi­cult for us to help them do that.”

    ———-

    “‘Rape Day’ Game Where You Play as a ‘Dan­ger­ous Rapist’ Pulled After Back­lash” by Amy Zim­mer­man; The Dai­ly Beast; 03/08/2019

    “As Busi­ness Insid­er not­ed before the game was offi­cial­ly pulled, “‘Rape Day’ puts Steam in a com­pro­mis­ing posi­tion; the game unapolo­get­i­cal­ly glo­ri­fies rape, and has lit­tle to offer in terms of actu­al game­play. Even if Steam isn’t pro­mot­ing the game, it would prof­it from every sale. While Steam has been reluc­tant to restrict con­tent on the grounds of free speech, there’s not much moral wig­gle room left in this sit­u­a­tion.”

    Yep, there was­n’t much moral wig­gle room left for Steam in this sit­u­a­tion. Even if the com­pa­ny tries to claim “free speech!”, the ‘free speech’ in ‘Rape Day’ is also ‘speech’ that Steam would be prof­it­ing from since it takes a cut of the sales. But it appears to the grow­ing back­lash was the ulti­mate fac­tor that deter­mined Steam’s actions:

    ...
    Nat­u­ral­ly, “Rape Day” sparked con­tro­ver­sy in the lead-up to its doomed debut. A recent Change.org peti­tion addressed to the CEO of Valve Cor­po­ra­tion, which oper­ates Steam, called on the plat­form to stop “Rape Day” before it start­ed. “Rape is not a game and the mak­ers of this should not be allowed to make mon­ey pro­mot­ing the rape and killing of women,” the writer of the peti­tion urged.

    The cre­ator of the game has respond­ed to the peti­tion, as well as to oth­er cov­er­age of “Rape Day” and its back­lash, with: “lol.”

    ...

    Two days and over 3,000 sup­port­ers lat­er, the Change.org peti­tion was updat­ed with a “vic­to­ry” bul­letin, link­ing to Steam’s recent announce­ment.
    ...

    And as the arti­cle notes, Steam ran into a sim­i­lar moral morass back in May of 2018 when the “Active Shoot­er” video game sim­u­lat­ing a school shoot­ing was about to be released until the back­lash forced Steam to pull the game. And it was in response to the Active Shoot­er con­tro­ver­sy that Steam attempt­ed to clar­i­fy its poli­cies with the dec­la­ra­tion that “We’ve decid­ed that the right approach is to allow every­thing onto the Steam Store, except for things that we decide are ille­gal, or straight up trolling”, along with the warn­ing that the com­pa­ny will con­tin­ue to han­dle this issue on a case-by-case basis. So the pol­i­cy that almost got ‘Rape Day’ approved for Steam until the back­lash is the same pol­i­cy that Steam artic­u­lat­ed in response to the ‘Active Shoot­er’ out­cry:

    ...
    This isn’t the first time Steam has been crit­i­cized for what Poly­gon has deemed its “hands-off approach to game cura­tion.” In May 2018, the plat­form weath­ered a sim­i­lar con­tro­ver­sy with “Active Shoot­er,” a school shoot­ing sim­u­la­tion game that saw its immi­nent release can­celled after intense back­lash; par­ents of school shoot­ing vic­tims were among the many out­raged. In an email state­ment, Valve’s Doug Lom­bar­di told The New York Times that “Active Shoot­er” “was a troll, designed to do noth­ing but gen­er­ate out­rage and cause con­flict through its exis­tence.”

    A sub­se­quent Steam blog post, dat­ed June 2018, attempt­ed to clar­i­fy the platform’s poli­cies, but ulti­mate­ly failed to pro­vide much clar­i­ty. “We’ve decid­ed that the right approach is to allow every­thing onto the Steam Store, except for things that we decide are ille­gal, or straight up trolling,” the post con­cludes. “As we men­tioned ear­li­er, laws vary around the world, so we’re going to need to han­dle this on a case-by-case basis. As a result, we will almost cer­tain­ly con­tin­ue to strug­gle with this one for a while. Our cur­rent think­ing is that we’re going to push devel­op­ers to fur­ther dis­close any poten­tial­ly prob­lem­at­ic con­tent in their games dur­ing the sub­mis­sion process.”

    At anoth­er point in the blog post, Valve empha­sized that, “If you’re a devel­op­er of offen­sive games, this isn’t us sid­ing with you against all the peo­ple you’re offending…Offending some­one shouldn’t take away your game’s voice. We believe you should be able to express your­self like every­one else, and to find oth­ers who want to play your game.”
    ...

    And now, in response to pulling ‘Rape Day’, Steam essen­tial­ly dou­ble-down on the pol­i­cy they state in June: the com­pa­ny reit­er­at­ed that it takes these things on a case-by-case basis, stat­ing, “We sim­ply have to wait and see what comes to us via Steam Direct. We then have to make a judge­ment call about any risk it puts to Valve, our devel­op­er part­ners, or our cus­tomers. After sig­nif­i­cant fact-find­ing and dis­cus­sion, we think ‘Rape Day’ pos­es unknown costs and risks and there­fore won’t be on Steam”:

    ...
    In their offi­cial state­ment on the game, the Steam team appeared to own this “reac­tionary” label, writ­ing, “We sim­ply have to wait and see what comes to us via Steam Direct. We then have to make a judge­ment call about any risk it puts to Valve, our devel­op­er part­ners, or our cus­tomers. After sig­nif­i­cant fact-find­ing and dis­cus­sion, we think ‘Rape Day’ pos­es unknown costs and risks and there­fore won’t be on Steam.”

    They added, “We respect devel­op­ers’ desire to express them­selves, and the pur­pose of Steam is to help devel­op­ers find an audi­ence, but this devel­op­er has cho­sen con­tent mat­ter and a way of rep­re­sent­ing it that makes it very dif­fi­cult for us to help them do that.”
    ...

    And that’s why we prob­a­bly should expect a lot more ‘games’ of this nature: the offi­cial Steam pol­i­cy is basi­cal­ly, ‘as long as it’s not overt­ly ille­gal or overt trolling, we’ll see.’ And those appear to be the sole guide­lines for devel­op­ers. Make your grotesque game and we’ll see if it gets approved.

    So it’s a pret­ty bad sign that Steam appar­ent­ly does­n’t review the con­tent of games unless there’s some sort of pub­lic out­cry. And this is on top of Steam’s forums get­ting used to as neo-Nazi recruit­ment tools. But regard­ing the use of the chat forums, in fair­ness it’s impor­tant to note the scale of the chal­lenge of mod­er­at­ing them. As the fol­low­ing arti­cle describes, Steam alone has about 130 mil­lion active play­ers:

    Nation­al Pub­lic Radio

    Right-Wing Hate Groups Are Recruit­ing Video Gamers

    Anya Kamenetz
    Novem­ber 5, 2018 10:37 AM ET

    John, a father of two in Col­orado, had no idea what his 15-year-old son had got­ten into, until one night last year when John walked into his home office. We’re not using his last name to pro­tect his son’s pri­va­cy.

    John saw a large pile of papers face­down next to his print­er. He turned them over and found a copy of a noto­ri­ous neo-Nazi pro­pa­gan­da book. “It’s ‘the white cul­ture’s in trou­ble, we are under attack by Jews, blacks, every oth­er minor­i­ty.’ It was scary. It was absolute­ly fright­en­ing to even see that in my house. I was shak­ing, like, ‘What in the world is this and why is it in my house?’ ”

    John con­front­ed his son angri­ly.

    “I was through the roof.” And then, “I went back into my room. I was cry­ing. I felt like a fail­ure that a child that I had raised would be remote­ly inter­est­ed in that sort of stuff.”

    Almost every teen plays video games — 97 per­cent of boys, accord­ing to the Pew Research Cen­ter, and 83 per­cent of girls.

    Increas­ing­ly, these games are played online, with strangers. And experts say that while it’s by no means com­mon, online games — and the asso­ci­at­ed chat rooms, livestreams and oth­er chan­nels — have become one avenue for recruit­ment by right-wing extrem­ist groups.

    At the time, John’s son liked play­ing first-per­son shoot­er games, like Coun­ter­strike: Glob­al Offen­sive. Games like these are mul­ti­play­er — you must form teams with friends or strangers. You can chat in the game, over voice or text, or in sep­a­rate chat rooms. Some of these are host­ed by sites like Dis­cord that make it easy for any­one to cre­ate a pri­vate chat.

    John knew his son was spend­ing time play­ing video games and chat­ting either out loud or over text, but there were no obvi­ous red flags.

    “There was­n’t any­thing obvi­ous to me at first because it’s com­mon. This is the norm for kids. Instead of hang­ing out at the dri­ve-in they’re all online,” he said.

    Yet it’s exact­ly this way, John says, that his son start­ed hang­ing out with avowed white suprema­cists.

    These peo­ple became his son’s friends. They talked to him about prob­lems he was hav­ing at school, and sug­gest­ed some of his African-Amer­i­can class­mates as scape­goats. They also keyed into his inter­est in his­to­ry, espe­cial­ly mil­i­tary his­to­ry, and in Nordic mythol­o­gy. Above all, they offered him mem­ber­ship in a hier­ar­chy: whites against oth­ers.

    “He start­ed to feel like he was in on some­thing. He was now in the in crowd with these guys. It pro­vid­ed some struc­ture and iden­ti­ty that he was search­ing for at the time.”

    John learned his son had been drawn into con­ver­sa­tion with at least one group that the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter calls a Nazi ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion. He searched online for help and found a man named Chris­t­ian Pic­ci­oli­ni.

    Pic­ci­oli­ni runs the Free Rad­i­cals project, which he calls “a glob­al pre­ven­tion net­work for extrem­ism.” He’s a reformed skin­head him­self.

    “Thir­ty years ago, when I was involved in the white suprema­cist move­ment, it was very much a face to face inter­ac­tion,” he says. “You know, you had to meet some­body to be recruit­ed, or you had a pam­phlet or a fly­er put on your car.”

    But today, he says, it’s much more com­mon for extrem­ists to ini­tial­ly reach out online. And that includes over kids’ head­sets dur­ing video games. Pic­ci­oli­ni describes the process: “Well typ­i­cal­ly, they’ll start out with drop­ping slurs about dif­fer­ent races or reli­gions and kind of test the waters ... Once they sense that they’ve got their hooks in them they ramp it up, and then they start send­ing pro­pa­gan­da, links to oth­er sites, or they start talk­ing about these old kind of racist anti-Semit­ic tropes.”

    That’s also what Joan Dono­van has seen. She is the media manip­u­la­tion research lead at Data and Soci­ety, a research insti­tute, and she has been fol­low­ing white suprema­cists online for years. She says they’ve been high­ly inno­v­a­tive in using new online spaces, like mes­sage boards in the ’90s, for recruit­ment.

    “I saw how these groups com­mu­ni­cat­ed and spread out to oth­er spaces online with the intent of not telling peo­ple specif­i­cal­ly that they were white suprema­cists, but they were real­ly try­ing to fig­ure out what young men were angry about and how they could lever­age that to bring about a broad-based social move­ment.”

    And vio­lent first-per­son shoot­er games, she says, are one place to find angry young men. She calls “gam­ing cul­ture” “one of the spaces of recruit­ment that must be addressed.”

    Dono­van says that recruit­ment, and even the plan­ning of harass­ment cam­paigns, hap­pens not only dur­ing in-game chat, but dur­ing livestream­ing of game play on plat­forms like Twitch and YouTube.

    For exam­ple, there’s a fea­ture on YouTube called Super Chat, where fans can offer cash tips while gamers are play­ing.

    “Peo­ple will donate 14 dol­lars and 88 cents, which is a ref­er­ence to ... a white nation­al­ist slo­gan, as well as 88, which is most com­mon­ly found in prison tat­toos, for Heil Hitler,” Dono­van said.

    Game-relat­ed Red­dit threads and chat sites like Dis­cord also host sim­i­lar con­ver­sa­tions. Last year, a non­prof­it media col­lec­tive called Uni­corn Riot pub­lished chat logs from Dis­cord in which known white suprema­cists planned aspects of the Char­lottesville “Unite The Right” ral­ly.

    Video games are a hun­dred bil­lion dol­lar indus­try.

    What are com­pa­nies’ respon­si­bil­i­ties to ensure that young peo­ple won’t encounter hate groups? We reached out to sev­er­al game and chat com­pa­nies for com­ment. Riot Games not­ed in a state­ment that it relies on vol­un­teers to mod­er­ate game-relat­ed chats. And Dis­cord, the cha­t­room site, for­ward­ed a state­ment from the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter, prais­ing it for recent­ly ban­ning sev­er­al far-right extrem­ist com­mu­ni­ties.

    Greg Boyd, who rep­re­sents video game com­pa­nies for the law firm Frank­furt Kur­nit, says “tox­ic” behav­ior includ­ing hate speech, to say noth­ing of recruit­ment, is a key indus­try con­cern and a fre­quent top­ic of con­ver­sa­tion. “If they could find it all they would get rid of it ASAP.”

    But it’s a daunt­ing tech­ni­cal chal­lenge. The three biggest video game plat­forms — Microsoft, PlaySta­tion and Steam — host 48 mil­lion, 70 mil­lion and 130 mil­lion month­ly active play­ers respec­tive­ly, Boyd says. “That’s the pop­u­la­tions of Spain, France and Rus­sia. And then imag­ine that you’re mon­i­tor­ing all of their text chat ... all of their voice chat, in lit­er­al­ly every lan­guage, dialect, and sub­di­alect spo­ken in the world.”

    In the absence of suf­fi­cient resources for mod­er­a­tion, most game plat­forms rely on play­ers to mon­i­tor and report each oth­er.

    Pic­ci­oli­ni com­pares the com­pa­nies to land­lords with dis­rup­tive ten­ants “dis­rupt­ing or dam­ag­ing the build­ing or threat­en­ing the oth­er ten­ants. You know, they would take action.”

    ...

    ———-

    “Right-Wing Hate Groups Are Recruit­ing Video Gamers” by Anya Kamenetz; Nation­al Pub­lic Radio; 11/05/2018

    But it’s a daunt­ing tech­ni­cal chal­lenge. The three biggest video game plat­forms — Microsoft, PlaySta­tion and Steam — host 48 mil­lion, 70 mil­lion and 130 mil­lion month­ly active play­ers respec­tive­ly, Boyd says. “That’s the pop­u­la­tions of Spain, France and Rus­sia. And then imag­ine that you’re mon­i­tor­ing all of their text chat ... all of their voice chat, in lit­er­al­ly every lan­guage, dialect, and sub­di­alect spo­ken in the world.””

    So we have to acknowl­edge that extreme tech­ni­cal chal­lenge fac­ing Steam and all of the oth­er pop­u­lar gam­ing plat­forms: mon­i­tor­ing the chats of 130 mil­lion active users, tak­ing place in lit­er­al­ly every lan­guage, and detect­ing the kind of often sub­tle recruit­ment tac­tics of neo-Nazis and oth­er extrem­ists is basi­cal­ly impos­si­ble at this point. In the future you could imag­ine some sort of AI han­dling a lot of this mon­i­tor­ing, but for now, it’s basi­cal­ly up to self-mod­er­a­tion and users report­ing abus­es.

    At the same time, we have to acknowl­edge that it’s a lot eas­i­er to review the con­tent of games than it hun­dreds of mil­lions of chats and the fact of the mat­ter is that Steam almost allowed ‘Rape Day’ to go on sale and only appeared to even both­er review­ing the con­tent of the game fol­low­ing the user out­cry. So, yes, Steam has some enor­mous tech­ni­cal chal­lenges it faces if it’s going to do any­thing mean­ing­ful about its chat forums become extrem­ist recruit­ment plat­forms. But Steam had far few­er tech­ni­cal chal­lenges regard­ing the pre­ven­tion of an Incel video game and still almost failed spec­tac­u­lar­ly. If there had­n’t been that pub­lic out­cry it’s hard to see what oth­er­wise would have stopped this game from going on sale. So there are clear­ly oth­er issues, in addi­tion to the tech­ni­cal chal­lenges, fuel­ing this sit­u­a­tion on one of those issues appears to be Steam’s ‘any­thing goes (until there’s a pub­lic out­cry)’ pol­i­cy.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | March 13, 2019, 1:50 pm
  6. This next arti­cle talks about how a far right net­work called the Patri­ot Front is made up of non vio­lent peo­ple typ­i­cal­ly unat­tached, but angry males in their mid-twen­ties that may have been from blue-col­lar back­grounds that are white col­lar tech-geeks and sym­pa­thize with right wing ter­ror­ism. It is cur­rent­ly believed to have around 300 mem­bers and grow­ing. They spread far right pro­pa­gan­da a nation over­run by immi­grants and a world con­trolled by Jews and oth­er elites; they dream of a white eth­no-state to restore Amer­i­ca. They avoid talk­ing about guns or vio­lence online, but engage in a mix of van­dal­ism and intim­i­da­tion to fos­ter anx­i­ety. They may also wear masks in pub­lic and com­mu­ni­cate secret­ly. Mussolini’s “The Doc­trine of Fas­cism” is required read­ing for mem­bers. They reg­is­ter

    The leader of the group Thomas Rousseau, 20, was in Char­lottesville in 2017, march­ing in the “Unite the Right” ral­ly as a mem­ber of Van­guard Amer­i­ca. The Anti-Defama­tion League calls Van­guard Amer­i­ca a neo-Nazi group formed in 2016 that, like Patri­ot Front after it, was chiefly engaged in spread­ing pro­pa­gan­da.  Rousseau start­ed Patri­ot Front as an alter­na­tive that would embrace more home­grown sym­bols — the flag, the bald eagle and patri­ot­ic lan­guage, espous­ing white suprema­cist patri­ot­ic hate that are used to intim­i­date their tar­gets. Rousseau wrote ““The ene­my can­not attack you if they do not know who you are,”

    The Patri­ot front is a non-vio­lent polit­i­cal pro­pa­gan­da net­work unlike RAM or Atom Waf­fent who are vio­lent neo-Nazi type orga­ni­za­tions. Kind of like Sinn Fein was (in that case for the IRA).

    Patri­ot Front mem­ber, Jof­fre Cross, was arrest­ed on gun charges in Hous­ton. Cross is a reg­u­lar par­tic­i­pant on the Russ­ian social media plat­form VK, whose terms of ser­vice about extrem­ist con­tent are not strict­ly enforced. His posts are rife with Nazi videos, Holo­caust denial mate­r­i­al and white suprema­cists beat­ing pro­test­ers.

    This net­work reminds me of a ver­sion ot the domes­tic patri­ot net­works coopt­ed by the Nazis dur­ing WWII that John Roy Carl­son wrote about in his book “Under Cov­er”.

    https://www.propublica.org/article/they-are-racist-some-of-them-have-guns-inside-the-white-supremacist-group-hiding-in-plain-sight

    They Are Racist; Some of Them Have Guns. Inside the White Suprema­cist Group Hid­ing in Plain Sight.
    Patri­ot Front is per­haps the most active white suprema­cist group in the nation. ProP­ub­li­ca explores its ori­gins, secret com­mu­ni­ca­tions, his­to­ry of arrests and out­size aims for an all-white Amer­i­ca.
    by Car­ol Scha­ef­fer and Fritz Zim­mer­mann, spe­cial to ProP­ub­li­ca Nov. 8, 5 a.m. EST

    In the hours after the slaugh­ter in El Paso, Texas, on Aug. 3, a final toll emerged: 22 dead, most of them Lati­nos, some Mex­i­can nation­als. A por­trait of the gun­man accused of killing them soon took shape: a 21-year-old from a sub­urb of Dal­las who had been rad­i­cal­ized as a white suprema­cist online and who saw immi­grants as a threat to the future of white Amer­i­ca.

    While much of the coun­try react­ed with a weary sense of sor­row and out­rage, word of the mass killing was processed dif­fer­ent­ly by mem­bers of Patri­ot Front, one of the more promi­nent white suprema­cist groups in the U.S.

    In secret chat forums, some Patri­ot Front mem­bers embraced the spir­it of the anti-immi­grant man­i­festo left behind by the accused gun­man. Oth­ers float­ed false con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries: the CIA was behind the mur­ders; the accused killer was actu­al­ly Jew­ish. Still oth­er mem­bers cau­tioned that the group had its own “loose can­nons” to wor­ry about. It would be a bad look if the next mass mur­der­er was one of their own.

    But there was lit­tle, if any, regret over the loss of life.
    “It shouldn’t be hard to believe that the group fac­ing the harsh­est oppres­sion from our rul­ing elite are pro­duc­ing shoot­ers,” one Patri­ot Front mem­ber wrote. “White men are being slow­ly destroyed in a way cal­cu­lat­ed to pro­duce resent­ment and a sense of help­less­ness. Of course, some of them decide to lash out.”

    Sev­er­al Patri­ot Front mem­bers alert­ed oth­ers to the need to be care­ful, for the killings in El Paso would like­ly make the group a tar­get of the FBI.

    “Watch your backs out there,” one wrote.

    Patri­ot Front was formed in the after­math of the dead­ly “Unite the Right” ral­ly in Char­lottesville, Vir­ginia, in 2017. While many on America’s far-right cheered the ral­ly, its vio­lence struck oth­ers as a pub­lic-rela­tions deba­cle for the white nation­al­ist brand that was sure to attract greater over­sight by law enforce­ment.

    Patri­ot Front aspired to help chart a new way for­ward: spread pro­pa­gan­da espous­ing its ver­sion of a nascent Amer­i­can fas­cism; qui­et­ly recruit new mem­bers wor­ried about a nation over­run by immi­grants and a world con­trolled by Jews; avoid talk­ing about guns or vio­lence online, but engage in a mix of van­dal­ism and intim­i­da­tion to fos­ter anx­i­ety; wear masks in pub­lic and com­mu­ni­cate secret­ly.

    “The orga­ni­za­tion is not about its mem­bers,” the group’s leader, Thomas Rousseau, once wrote to its mem­bers in the secret chats. “It is about its goals. Each per­son behind the mask is just anoth­er awok­en mem­ber of the nation, who could be any­one who’s had enough.”

    ProP­ub­li­ca spent sev­er­al months exam­in­ing the make­up and oper­a­tions of Patri­ot Front, which records sug­gest num­bers about 300 mem­bers.

    While the group is care­ful not to talk about guns online, two mem­bers in the last year have been arrest­ed with arse­nals of ille­gal­ly owned high-pow­ered rifles and oth­er weapons. While many of the group’s pro­pa­gan­da “actions” are legal exer­cis­es of free speech, its mem­bers have been arrest­ed in Boston and Den­ver in recent months for acts of van­dal­ism. In Boston, three mem­bers engaged in a night­time pro­pa­gan­da effort last win­ter were arrest­ed on sus­pi­cion of weapons pos­ses­sion and assault­ing a police offi­cer. What the group touts as polit­i­cal protests have felt to those tar­get­ed like acts of men­ace, as was the case in San Anto­nio, Texas, last year when Patri­ot Front mem­bers filmed them­selves trash­ing an encamp­ment of immi­gra­tion activists.

    One per­son whose estab­lish­ment was tar­get­ed by Patri­ot Front in recent months spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, fear­ing the group’s return.

    “Ordi­nar­i­ly would you call the police if some­body put a big stick­er on your door? No,” the per­son said. “How­ev­er, once you find out what this is all about, and who is involved, and what they are pro­mot­ing? Then, yeah, now we are in hate speech space.”

    To the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter, Patri­ot Front is a white hate group and a gen­uine crim­i­nal threat. To some of the more avowed­ly vio­lent neo-Nazi groups in the U.S., Patri­ot Front is a laugh­able col­lec­tion of clowns and cow­ards, con­tent to chat online and put up stick­ers while a race war awaits.

    But for law enforce­ment, gaug­ing how seri­ous a threat Patri­ot Front might pose is dif­fi­cult. Patri­ot Front shares qual­i­ties both with groups engaged in real domes­tic ter­ror­ism and with fringe polit­i­cal groups.

    Asked about the group, the FBI issued a state­ment that reflect­ed these com­plex­i­ties and the lim­i­ta­tions they place on police agen­cies.

    “When it comes to domes­tic ter­ror­ism, our inves­ti­ga­tions focus sole­ly on the crim­i­nal activ­i­ty of indi­vid­u­als — regard­less of group mem­ber­ship — that appears to be intend­ed to intim­i­date or coerce the civil­ian pop­u­la­tion or influ­ence the pol­i­cy of the gov­ern­ment by intim­i­da­tion or coer­cion. We would encour­age you to keep in mind that mem­ber­ship in groups which espouse domes­tic extrem­ist ide­ol­o­gy is not ille­gal in and of itself — no mat­ter how offen­sive their views might be to the major­i­ty of soci­ety.”

    Rousseau, a Boy Scout and high school jour­nal­ist before he found­ed Patri­ot Front, has much the same pro­file as the accused gun­man in El Paso, Patrick Cru­sius: both grew up in mid­dle-class sub­urbs of Dal­las — Cru­sius in Allen, Rousseau 35 miles away in Grapevine; both were seen as unre­mark­able teenagers before being incul­cat­ed in their racist ide­ol­o­gy online; both talk of a desire to reclaim Amer­i­ca for “true” or “pure” patri­ots; both regard immi­grants as a poi­so­nous and present dan­ger.

    In the days after the ram­page in El Paso, Rousseau told his mem­bers in the secret chats that such acts of whole­sale vio­lence were not for him. While fas­cist caus­es like Patri­ot Front’s could sur­vive the blow­back from such killings, he said, real suc­cess for the group would come from spread­ing its ide­ol­o­gy and increas­ing its num­bers. Of the alleged El Paso shoot­er, Rousseau wrote in a chat, “He’d have made more progress toward his goals by swal­low­ing the first round in his mag­a­zine instead.”

    In the months of chats obtained by ProP­ub­li­ca, Rousseau is by turns ama­teur philoso­pher and his­to­ri­an, as well as the group’s sole spokesman and its online police­man. He warns mem­bers that they will be kicked out if they don’t stay busy — past­ing up fly­ers and con­duct­ing ban­ner drops, join­ing street actions and post­ing reg­u­lar­ly in the chat forums. He has put togeth­er a secu­ri­ty guide to help Patri­ot Front mem­bers stay anony­mous. He wax­es admir­ing­ly about cer­tain far-right groups in Europe, and he sees them as a mod­el for how to become more seri­ous polit­i­cal play­ers in the years ahead. He has the secret chats rou­tine­ly delet­ed, and he tells mem­bers to avoid ever writ­ing or say­ing any­thing that might lat­er be of inter­est to a pros­e­cu­tor.

    “It should be known,” he wrote to mem­bers recent­ly, “that polit­i­cal dis­si­dents are sub­ject to unjust scruti­ny.”

    Pete Simi, a pro­fes­sor at Chap­man Uni­ver­si­ty in Cal­i­for­nia and an expert on white suprema­cists in the U.S., said Rousseau’s stew­ard­ship of Patri­ot Front is deeply famil­iar.

    “It is very com­mon for the lead­er­ship of these groups to dis­qual­i­fy vio­lence, while doing things that are encour­ag­ing vio­lence,” Simi said. “It is part of their strat­e­gy to avoid lia­bil­i­ty, while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly pro­mot­ing hate. When they say they are not vio­lent, this is a lie. They are pro­mot­ing vio­lence by their goals.”

    “Thomas’ Biggest Fear Is Some­one Doing Some­thing Crazy”
    To gain an under­stand­ing of Patri­ot Front — its ori­gins and ambi­tions, both the care­ful talk and the crim­i­nal behav­ior of its mem­bers — ProP­ub­li­ca exam­ined hun­dreds of online post­ings, inter­viewed a per­son who infil­trat­ed the group, obtained police records, reviewed its leader’s pub­lic state­ments online and in a vari­ety of far-right pod­casts, col­lect­ed video mate­r­i­al record­ed both by the group and mem­bers of the pub­lic, and trav­eled to the homes of its founder and two of the mem­bers who had recent­ly been arrest­ed.

    The per­son who infil­trat­ed Patri­ot Front in recent years — post­ing in the group’s chats and accom­pa­ny­ing it in its pro­pa­gan­da actions — sketched out a por­trait of its mem­bers, which appear to be exclu­sive­ly male:
    They come from sev­en or eight region­al “net­works,” and the vast major­i­ty of them are recruit­ed online; the typ­i­cal mem­ber is around 25 years old and can be from blue-col­lar back­grounds or be work­ing as “white-col­lar tech geeks”; many of them are gamers; few have wives or girl­friends; they can look like “the nerdy boys that sit next to you in high school,” but they clear­ly sym­pa­thize with “right-wing ter­ror­ism.”

    The per­son who infil­trat­ed Patri­ot Front said he applied for mem­ber­ship on the group’s web­site — the one with the mis­sion state­ment writ­ten by Rousseau. Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy was dead. The gov­ern­ment had been tak­en over by Jews and oth­er “elites.” Land claimed by descen­dants of the country’s orig­i­nal white set­tlers had been sur­ren­dered to immi­grants of col­or. The dream was of a white eth­nos­tate, in which all that was good and true and pio­neer­ing about the Amer­i­ca of long ago could be restored.

    The per­son who gained entrance to the group said Rousseau was one of three Patri­ot Front mem­bers who inter­viewed him on the tele­phone when he applied. He was asked to explain his polit­i­cal evo­lu­tion, to say which polit­i­cal fig­ures he hat­ed and admired most, to state the cir­cum­stances in which the use of vio­lence would be OK and to artic­u­late the great­est threat to Amer­i­ca. He was told Mussolini’s “The Doc­trine of Fas­cism” would be required read­ing.

    The chats reviewed by ProP­ub­li­ca show Rousseau spends lots of time online press­ing mem­bers to take part in tar­get­ing streets, parks and col­leges with the group’s pro­pa­gan­da. He and oth­ers delight in see­ing their actions reflect­ed in the SPLC’s nation­wide map record­ing acts of hate and in the media. Last spring, the group tried to stage protests in front of the Amer­i­can Israel Pub­lic Affairs Committee’s offices in mul­ti­ple cities, includ­ing New York.

    “One minute of action is bet­ter than 10,000 books on ide­ol­o­gy,” Rousseau told his mem­bers.

    Rousseau, still a teen when he found­ed Patri­ot Front, makes clear in the secret chats reviewed by ProP­ub­li­ca that he is in charge, though he’s hap­py to go with­out a for­mal title.

    “The title com­man­der gives me bad flash­backs,” he wrote in a chat once. “If I absolute­ly had to have a title, it would prob­a­bly be gen­er­al direc­tor. But my name works just fine for now.”

    The chats show some mem­bers regard Rousseau as a dis­ci­plined and effec­tive spokesman for the group, and they appear to heed his repeat­ed scold­ings about pre­serv­ing their anonymi­ty.

    “The ene­my can­not attack you if they do not know who you are,” Rousseau wrote.

    Using the pseu­do­nym Samuel, a mem­ber from New York expand­ed on the idea in response.

    “I would say the biggest accom­plish­ment of mask­ing up is obfus­cat­ing our total num­bers,” he wrote. “We can make them feel as if there are thou­sands of us when it’s only a few hun­dred, and we could be any­one and no one. Next time they are at the CVS and see a white kid with a neat hair­cut, it could be us. Fear of the unknown is the great­est fear of all.”

    Rousseau, when he isn’t crit­i­ciz­ing mem­bers who vio­late the ban on talk­ing about guns or vio­lence, can often be found polic­ing the group’s ide­o­log­i­cal think­ing. Nazism, how­ev­er pop­u­lar among mem­bers, can’t now be the goal, Rousseau said.

    “This is not Ger­many, this is not the 1930s,” he chas­tised. “Get a grip on the fact that we’re activists, not re-enac­tors try­ing to scratch some self-indul­gent itch for a polit­i­cal fan­ta­sy.”

    Rousseau con­ducts his online lead­er­ship from the home he shares with his divorced father in Grapevine, a large­ly white, solid­ly mid­dle-class city between Dal­las and Fort Worth. ProP­ub­li­ca went to see Rousseau there this sum­mer, and we found the shades drawn in every win­dow and a rust­ing boat filled with fall­en leaves on the prop­er­ty.
    Rousseau came to the door, but he closed it quick­ly and would not talk. The fol­low­ing day, the red sports car in the dri­ve­way had been reparked, mak­ing it hard to see the lone license plate on its rear end.

    Inter­views with peo­ple in and around Grapevine — those who went to school with Rousseau, those who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Boy Scouts with him, a man who dat­ed his moth­er — pro­duced a unan­i­mous sense of sur­prise that he’d start­ed an orga­ni­za­tion com­mit­ted to an all-white Amer­i­ca.

    He’d mixed eas­i­ly with the diverse array of stu­dents at his high school, and while he was against gay mar­riage, he was regard­ed more as a nice, con­ser­v­a­tive boy than a threat. He wore his hair long, in braids or a bun, and was obsessed with work­ing out and the state of his physique.
    At the stu­dent news­pa­per, he wasn’t regard­ed as an impres­sive writer, but he won a nation­al award for edi­to­r­i­al car­toon­ing. Class­mates saw him as a lazy stu­dent and a bit of a lon­er, but he had a knack for argu­ment and a stub­born streak about nev­er being wrong. The school had its share of racial inci­dents, but he was nev­er involved and wasn’t seen as con­don­ing them.

    When Don­ald Trump was elect­ed pres­i­dent, some senior boys at the school made a show of chant­i­ng, “Build a wall.” Rousseau, for his part, was cer­tain­ly an ardent Trump sup­port­er — he wore a Make Amer­i­ca Great Again hat and car­ried a Trump lunch­box. But his enthu­si­asm wasn’t seen as men­ac­ing.

    “He seemed Repub­li­can, but he didn’t seem crazy, said one fel­low stu­dent.

    To some­one who was with him in Boy Scouts, Rousseau seemed seri­ous about the orga­ni­za­tion, and he was elect­ed patrol leader. At the same time, Rousseau could be dif­fi­cult with adults, devel­op­ing what the per­son called an “author­i­tar­i­an defi­ance.”

    “I’m sad­dened,” the per­son said of Rousseau’s embrace of white suprema­cy.

    Simi, the pro­fes­sor at Chap­man Uni­ver­si­ty, said enough research exists on mod­ern-day white suprema­cists to devel­op a pro­file: young men, iso­lat­ed and angry in some way despite their rel­a­tive­ly priv­i­leged upbring­ing in mid­dle class or afflu­ent cir­cum­stances, and vul­ner­a­ble to invi­ta­tions to join up with oth­ers with sim­i­lar griev­ances.
    In years past, Simi said, groups like Patri­ot Front used to recruit poten­tial new mem­bers by wait­ing out­side schools for the last chil­dren to leave, the lon­ers wan­der­ing off long after the final bell. Now such groups don’t have to work so hard to find tar­gets. They have the inter­net, Simi said.

    “It is a cen­tral aspect of these groups to take the frus­tra­tion and anger and com­bine it with the spe­cial feel­ing and insights of being part of a group,” he said.

    Rousseau, then just 18, was in Char­lottesville in 2017, march­ing in the “Unite the Right” ral­ly as a mem­ber of Van­guard Amer­i­ca. The Anti-Defama­tion League calls Van­guard Amer­i­ca a neo-Nazi group formed in 2016 that, like Patri­ot Front after it, was chiefly engaged in spread­ing pro­pa­gan­da. James Fields, the white suprema­cist con­vict­ed of mur­der­ing a young pro­test­er at the Char­lottesville event, was pho­tographed there car­ry­ing a Van­guard Amer­i­ca shield, though he was not a mem­ber of the group.

    Van­guard Amer­i­ca splin­tered after the deba­cle in Vir­ginia. Some want­ed to aban­don efforts to dis­guise their Nazi lean­ings and sim­ply be brazen in their pub­lic look and vio­lent aims. Rousseau took a dif­fer­ent tack, and he start­ed Patri­ot Front as an osten­si­bly more strate­gic, savvy, care­ful alter­na­tive. It would embrace more home­grown sym­bols — the flag, the bald eagle and patri­ot­ic lan­guage. Such shifts might attract a wider mem­ber­ship.

    “I did go to Char­lottesville. Some bad activism there,” Rousseau wrote in one of the secret chats. “I’ve done my part to learn from my mis­takes.”

    While Rousseau pub­licly and in the chats reviewed by ProP­ub­li­ca dis­avows vio­lence, some Patri­ot Front mem­bers have shown sup­port for a white suprema­cist group that embraces it: the Rise Above Move­ment. Eight RAM mem­bers have been arrest­ed on charges relat­ed to vio­lence in Char­lottesville and in Cal­i­for­nia.
    “Got­ta love RAM,” a Ten­nessee mem­ber said in the chats. “I hope they see us as 100 per­cent allies.”

    In the chat logs, a Patri­ot Front mem­ber from Texas pro­vides a list of address­es for 11 peo­ple in prison or under house arrest, refer­ring to them as “POWs.” The list includes four mem­bers of RAM, numer­ous men arrest­ed for vio­lence in Char­lottesville includ­ing Fields, and an impris­oned white suprema­cist in Cal­i­for­nia. The Tex­an urged Patri­ot Front mem­bers to write to the pris­on­ers and pro­vid­ed links to send some pris­on­ers mon­ey direct­ly. He also list­ed a dona­tion link for a fund tied to Augus­tus Sol Invic­tus, a lawyer known for defend­ing white suprema­cists.

    Lat­er in the chats, a mem­ber from New York shared a link to a white suprema­cist online fundrais­er, say­ing pro­ceeds would be giv­en to a legal fund for RAM. He then chimed in that near­ly $2,000 had been donat­ed. “When they crack down we dou­ble down and become stronger,” he said. “Hail Vic­to­ry!”

    Observers of white hate groups cred­it Rousseau as a tal­ent­ed in-fight­er, and they por­tray his break­away from Van­guard Amer­i­ca as a shrewd coup.

    Accord­ing to the per­son who infil­trat­ed Patri­ot Front, Rousseau wor­ries great­ly about his mem­bers mak­ing the worst strate­gic mis­take: car­ry­ing out an act of ter­ri­ble vio­lence. It would end his group, he has said.
    “Thomas’ biggest fear is some­one doing some­thing crazy,” said the per­son who infil­trat­ed Patri­ot Front.

    “We Are Reg­u­lar Peo­ple”
    Jakub Zak was in bed in the Chica­go sub­urb of Ver­non Hills when police, accom­pa­nied by his father, shook him awake. The police had been told that Zak, 19, was a mem­ber of Patri­ot Front, and that he might have a stash of ille­gal guns.

    “He appeared ner­vous and tried to cov­er a few items on his bed as he put on his blue jeans,” police records say.
    The police, though, had a clear view of what couldn’t be hid­den: a gun safe meant for rifles, as well as mag­a­zines of ammu­ni­tion on the bed­room floor.

    Zak asked his father to make the police leave. His father would not.

    “I advised Jakub that we would like for him to be coop­er­a­tive, and explained to him coop­er­a­tion goes a long way,” one detec­tive wrote in a for­mal report, dat­ed April 2018. “I explained to him the deci­sion is for him to make, and he should think what is best for him.”

    Zak spoke with his father and then offered the code for the safe. If there were guns in the house, the police wrote, Zak’s father want­ed them out.

    The police found a loaded 9 mm pis­tol and then, in a sec­ond safe, four more guns, includ­ing three high-pow­ered semi­au­to­mat­ic rifles. The police records show Zak’s only con­cern was whether he could get his case for car­ry­ing the guns back after their con­fis­ca­tion.

    It is unclear when or how Zak joined Patri­ot Front. The ini­tial tip sent to law enforce­ment iden­ti­fied him as a mem­ber, one who often post­ed in the secret chats under the pseu­do­nym “Hus­sar.” Post­ings under that name — por­tions of which were first pub­lished by Uni­corn Riot, a media orga­ni­za­tion — sug­gest Zak was a fre­quent par­tic­i­pant in the group’s pro­pa­gan­da efforts in the streets.
    Online, Zak post­ed a mix of Patri­ot Front slo­gans and images — “Amer­i­ca: Rev­o­lu­tion is tra­di­tion”; “Deport them all.” But there was also much more explic­it­ly vio­lent mate­r­i­al: a young black man lying prone on the street and about to be stomped; a Glock pis­tol.

    Zak, who had no pri­or crim­i­nal record, ulti­mate­ly plead­ed guilty to a mis­de­meanor gun pos­ses­sion charge and was sen­tenced to pro­ba­tion. Whether local police referred his case, and his affil­i­a­tion with Patri­ot Front, to any oth­er law enforce­ment agency is unclear.

    But the basic facts of Zak’s case amount to one of the hard-to-iden­ti­fy, hard-to-quan­ti­fy, hard-to-assess threats in the U.S. today: an enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly racist young man exposed to a steady diet of like-mind­ed white suprema­cists, who doesn’t find it ter­ri­bly hard to get his hands on dan­ger­ous weapons. Cru­sius, the accused El Paso killer, had no pri­or record; he lived with his grand­par­ents; his moth­er is report­ed to have anony­mous­ly called law enforce­ment, wor­ried once her son had bought a gun, even if it was legal; the par­ents of a class­mate of Cru­sius’ told a local news orga­ni­za­tion in Dal­las that their son had been encour­aged by Cru­sius to join him in a white suprema­cist group.
    In a brief inter­view at their home in Ver­non Hills, Zak’s par­ents would not let him be inter­viewed.

    “There is noth­ing to talk about,” his moth­er said, claim­ing he was not a mem­ber of any white hate group. “He is going through rough times, and he is in a bet­ter place now. I don’t want to start any­thing. He is get­ting his life togeth­er and plan­ning [for] the future.”

    “We are reg­u­lar peo­ple,” his father added.

    Con­cerns about how effec­tive­ly fed­er­al author­i­ties have been in thwart­ing the threat of white suprema­cists extends back years, cov­er­ing both Demo­c­ra­t­ic and Repub­li­can admin­is­tra­tions. In recent months, though, there has been a series of arrests sug­gest­ing that fed­er­al and local author­i­ties are being more aggres­sive.

    In a recent report, the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty took care to restate the bal­ance law enforce­ment has to strike.

    “The Depart­ment must take care, while address­ing the scourge of vio­lence, to avoid stig­ma­tiz­ing pop­u­la­tions, infring­ing on con­sti­tu­tion­al rights, or attempt­ing to police what Amer­i­cans should think,” the report said.
    Last Feb­ru­ary, a Patri­ot Front mem­ber, Jof­fre Cross, was arrest­ed on gun charges in Hous­ton. At a prob­a­ble cause hear­ing, author­i­ties said they got on to Cross through phone records belong­ing to a white suprema­cist in Texas who was con­vict­ed on assault charges this year.

    Cross, 33, fits what experts see as anoth­er famil­iar pro­file for poten­tial­ly vio­lent white suprema­cists: a for­mer Army sol­dier whose asso­ci­a­tion with white suprema­cists dates back to his active-duty days. Dis­af­fect­ed for­mer sol­diers are a prime recruit­ing tar­get for white hate groups, prized for their gun and bomb train­ing and their pos­si­ble access to weapons. Cross, while on active duty, was con­vict­ed on drug charges and impris­oned for five years. As part of the inves­ti­ga­tion, the author­i­ties devel­oped infor­ma­tion that he was eager to secure weapons for white suprema­cist groups.

    Cross, who has plead­ed not guilty, was charged with felony weapons pos­ses­sion after police found guns and body armor in his home.

    “If you don’t know me,” Cross once post­ed on Insta­gram, “con­sid­er this your trig­ger warn­ing.” Cross and his attor­ney did not respond to a request for com­ment.

    Cross is a reg­u­lar par­tic­i­pant on the Russ­ian social media plat­form VK, whose terms of ser­vice about extrem­ist con­tent are not strict­ly enforced. His posts are rife with Nazi videos, Holo­caust denial mate­r­i­al and white suprema­cists beat­ing pro­test­ers.

    One post reads: “Help more bees; plant more trees; save the seas; shoot refugees.”

    In the Patri­ot Front chats, Cross con­tin­ued to post even after his arrest.

    “We have to build a foun­da­tion that can weath­er any storm, any­thing they throw at us,” he wrote last April. “We just have to keep push­ing.”

    “In the Aggre­gate They Are Dis­turb­ing”
    It was the Sun­day of Memo­r­i­al Day week­end 2019 when 20 or so masked mem­bers of Patri­ot Front made their way onto a cor­ner of the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Car­oli­na in Chapel Hill. They set off flares and smoke devices, deliv­ered a short speech using a mega­phone and fled. The police report said it last­ed all of three min­utes.

    Blake­ly Lord, a high school Eng­lish teacher, man­aged to cap­ture the inci­dent on video. In brief, she called the episode “pro­found­ly dis­turb­ing.”

    “I chose to film because you feel help­less,” Lord said. “I’m a dumpy mid­dle-aged Eng­lish teacher. I’m not going to get out my sword and face them down.”

    She added, “I do think it’s a nar­ra­tive peo­ple need to be think­ing about: these lit­tle inci­dents may seem unim­por­tant, but in the aggre­gate they are dis­turb­ing.”

    Such dis­tur­bances — masked flash mobs, defac­ing prop­er­ty, dis­trib­ut­ing pro­pa­gan­da — are the day-to-day work of Patri­ot Front. Scream­ing out­side an anar­chist book fair in Texas. Plas­ter­ing stick­ers across mul­ti­ple store fronts on a busy block in Den­ver. Parad­ing with flares at night in a pub­lic park in Boston. Post­ing an “Amer­i­ca First” stick­er at a gay pride cen­ter in Ver­mont. All in the last year.

    Mem­bers give one anoth­er tips about where to place posters and stick­ers legal­ly, and they urge one anoth­er to wear gloves to avoid leav­ing fin­ger­prints. But in prac­tice, Patri­ot Front mem­bers fre­quent­ly tar­get store­fronts or places of wor­ship, which is van­dal­ism. Addi­tion­al­ly, many col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties, anoth­er favorite tar­get for pos­ter­ing, pro­hib­it fly­ers from non­stu­dent groups. White suprema­cists see cam­pus­es as a strate­gic loca­tion for fly­er­ing: a place to recruit poten­tial mem­bers while attract­ing press cov­er­age to ampli­fy their pro­pa­gan­da.

    In Colum­bus, Geor­gia, three months ago, two Patri­ot Front mem­bers post­ed fly­ers on and around a local syn­a­gogue, Tem­ple Israel. “Reclaim Amer­i­ca,” read one. “Life, lib­er­ty and the pur­suit of vic­to­ry,” read anoth­er. And the address of Patri­ot Front’s web­site was print­ed at the bot­tom of the fly­ers. The temple’s lead­er­ship became aware of Patri­ot Front’s his­to­ry and said it was clear the syn­a­gogue and its mem­bers were tar­get­ed because of their faith.

    “To me, the sin­is­ter aspect is this par­tic­u­lar group dis­guis­es them­selves as patri­ots, Tiffany Bro­da, the temple’s pres­i­dent, told the Ledger-Enquir­er last July. “Yet they are a hate group, a nation­al­ly rec­og­nized hate group. And though we don’t want to give them pub­lic­i­ty, we think that it’s impor­tant to bring this out of the shad­ows.”

    “Jews have been a part of Colum­bus almost since the found­ing of our city, which is almost 200 years ago,” Rab­bi Beth Schwartz added. “We will remain vig­i­lant as a con­gre­ga­tion, vig­i­lant as a Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty. We don’t hide our heads in fear.”

    Patri­ot Front mem­bers make clear in their chats that such actions — almost always record­ed by one of the masked mem­bers — have mul­ti­ple aims: to fright­en, to pro­vide mate­r­i­al for their own pro­pa­gan­da efforts on social media, and to recruit. The dri­ve to recruit might help explain why col­lege cam­pus­es are Patri­ot Front’s most com­mon tar­gets.
    Late last month, Patri­ot Front launched what it claimed were coor­di­nat­ed actions to dis­trib­ute fly­ers and stick­ers and posters at more than 100 cam­pus­es across the coun­try. The group post­ed on Twit­ter what it said was evi­dence of suc­cess at 90 schools.

    Michael Load­en­thal, a vis­it­ing pro­fes­sor of soci­ol­o­gy at Mia­mi Uni­ver­si­ty in Ohio, said Patri­ot Front had recent­ly been tar­get­ing the school.

    “Fas­cists hav­ing a pub­lic pres­ence is orga­niz­ing; this is recruit­ment,” Load­en­thal said, adding that the sim­ple idea that “white suprema­cists are indi­vid­u­al­ly rad­i­cal­ized peo­ple in their base­ment at home is wrong.”

    “They are a net­work,” he said. “No par­tic­u­lar node is dan­ger­ous until they are.”

    Simi, the pro­fes­sor in Cal­i­for­nia, said Patri­ot Front had hit the cam­pus of Chap­man Uni­ver­si­ty three times in a sin­gle month recent­ly. The school, he said, had set up a per­ma­nent con­fer­ence deal­ing with the nation’s south­ern bor­der, and Patri­ot Front had sin­gled out post­ed mate­ri­als relat­ed to the con­fer­ence to be defaced or cov­ered up.

    “Peo­ple on the cam­pus get intim­i­dat­ed,” Simi said.
    He said the school had to add secu­ri­ty cam­eras and police pro­tec­tion.

    “This is part of their strat­e­gy,” Simi said of Patri­ot Front. “These are things they want to hap­pen.”

    Thalia Beaty and Lucas Wal­dron con­tributed to this report.

    Posted by Mary Benton | November 9, 2019, 10:07 am
  7. It’s offi­cial. Civ­il War 2 start­ed. At least that’s accord­ing to mili­tia groups like the Oath Keep­ers who have already announced the start of a shoot­ing war fol­low­ing the death of Aaron “Jay” Daniel­son, a far right counter-pro­tes­tor in Port­land who was shot by a man who claims on social media to be “100% Antifa!”. That’s the trig­ger for civ­il war: a far right pro­test­er gets shot by a self-declared Antifa mem­ber. It’s the kind of dec­la­ra­tion that would be com­i­cal if the US did­n’t have a pres­i­dent who was rely­ing on run­ning a Hel­ter Skel­ter race war cam­paign as his core reelec­tion strat­e­gy.

    Now, as we’re going to see, the self-declared “100% Antifa!” mem­ber man who shot Daniel­son, Michael For­est Rei­noehl, appears to be one of those fig­ures who had no appar­ent polit­i­cal activ­i­ty until just a few months ago when the George Floyd protests erupt­ed in Port­land. At least that’s what we can infer from his Insta­gram page, where there were no pub­licly avail­able polit­i­cal posts at all until June 3rd of 2020:

    * On May 30th there’s a post on Michael Rei­noehl’s Insta­gram page where he dri­ves past a Port­land protest with a large object lit on fire in the street with the cap­tion “Omg”.

    * The next Insta­gram post is the first polit­i­cal pub­lic post in his entire time­line (pub­licly avail­able as of 09/01/2020). The June 3 post is a pho­to of what appears to be a pro­test­er face­off with Port­land police at night with the cap­tion: “It might be time to take A New Per­spec­tive on things. Things are bad right now and they can only get worse. But that is how a rad­i­cal change comes about. Hope­ful­ly if we do it right the peo­ple will pre­vail and in turn Com­mon Sense will save our plan­et.”

    * The post where Rei­noehl declares him­self to be “100% ANTIFA” is from June 16, with the cap­tion: “Every Rev­o­lu­tion needs peo­ple that are will­ing and ready to fight. There are so many of us pro­test­ers that are just protest­ing with­out a clue of where that will lead. That’s just the begin­ning that’s where the fight starts. If that’s as far as you can take it thank you for your par­tic­i­pa­tion but please stand aside and sup­port the ones that are will­ing to fight. I am 100% ANTIFA all the way! I am will­ing to fight for my broth­ers and sis­ters! Even if some of them are too igno­rant to real­ize what antifa tru­ly stands for. We do not want vio­lence but we will not run from it either! If the police con­tin­ue to pick on and beat up inno­cent cit­i­zens that are peace­ful­ly voic­ing their objec­tions, it must be met with equal force! We are cur­rent­ly liv­ing through a cru­cial point in Human­i­ties evo­lu­tion. We tru­ly have an oppor­tu­ni­ty right now to fix every­thing. But it will be a fight like no oth­er! It will be a war and like all wars there will be casu­al­ties. I was in the army and I hat­ed it. I did not feel like fight­ing for them would ever be a good cause. Today’s pro­test­ers and antifa are my broth­ers in arms. This is a Cause to fight for This tru­ly is fight­ing for my coun­try! I have chil­dren that need to live in a world run by Com­mon Sense and human decen­cy. And I will do any­thing to make sure that hap­pens. Now is the time to change the course of human­i­ty. If we fold now just because they show some Force we will be lost for anoth­er hun­dred years. And I don’t think the plan­et will let us live that long if we don’t straight­en sh it up. Please be safe strong and Unit­ed. I love you all??????
    #Antifa #blak­lives­mat­ter #fuc kthe­p­o­lice

    So the guy who fired the shot that groups like the Oath Keep­ers are now declar­ing to be the shots that start­ed Civ­il War 2.0 is a guy who declared him­self to be “100% ANTIFA” around two weeks after he first starts get­ting polit­i­cal. There he was on Insta­gram pre­dict­ing a war and casu­al­ties two weeks after his “New Per­spec­tive” of June 3. And giv­en the exten­sive evi­dence of far right infil­tra­tion of these protests we have to ask: is this guy even a left-winger? Oth­er than his his sud­den Insta­gram epiphany that start­ed on June 3 of this year there’s no indi­ca­tion at all that the guy had any left-lean­ing polit­i­cal incli­na­tions at all, at least on his Insta­gram account. His Face­book page sim­i­lar­ly has basi­cal­ly no pub­licly avail­able polit­i­cal con­tent.

    But there’s anoth­er poten­tial­ly very sig­nif­i­cant indi­ca­tion that Rei­noehl only recent­ly acquired a keep polit­i­cal inter­est: footage from ear­li­er in the night Daniel­son was shot includes some­one who looks like Rei­noehl with a large tat­too on the right side of his neck. Ear­li­er pho­tos of Rei­noehl show him with a large Black Pow­er fist tat­too in that loca­tion on the right side of his neck. A tat­too he already had dur­ing a July 27 inter­view of Rei­noehl with Bloomberg News. Dur­ing this inter­view he brings up the top­ic of the far right send­ing peo­ple into the protests to start fights and dis­rupt the move­ment. So that rais­es the obvi­ous ques­tion of when he actu­al­ly got this tat­too, and if we look at his Face­book and Insta­gram pho­tos there are no pho­tos at all where he has a notice­able tat­too on the right side of his neck. Is the large Black Pow­er Fist tat­too a very recent addi­tion to Rei­noehl’s neck? That seems like an eas­i­ly answered ques­tion. And a pret­ty rel­e­vant ques­tion giv­en that Rei­noehl appar­ent­ly start­ed Civ­il War 2.0:

    Talk­ing Points Memo
    News

    With Itchy Trig­ger Fin­gers, Some Right Wingers Pre­dict The Next Civ­il War Has Final­ly Arrived

    By Matt Shuham
    Sep­tem­ber 1, 2020 11:07 a.m.

    The first shots in the sec­ond Amer­i­can civ­il war have been fired — at least, accord­ing to some right-wing groups that have sought to use recent shoot­ing deaths dur­ing protests across the coun­try as a call to arms.

    After three peo­ple were killed dur­ing protests in Kenosha, Wis­con­sin and Port­land, Ore­gon in recent days, right-wing groups that have made a habit of show­ing up armed to protest are fore­cast­ing a larg­er, more vio­lent strug­gle. Experts told TPM that was pur­pose­ful.

    “The first shot has been fired broth­er,” said Stew­art Rhodes, founder of the armed anti-gov­ern­ment group Oath Keep­ers, in a tweet Sun­day. “Civ­il war is here, right now. We’ll give Trump one last chance to declare this a Marx­ist insur­rec­tion & sup­press it as his duty demands. If he fails to do HIS duty, we will do OURS.”

    Rhodes was refer­ring to the killing of Aaron Daniel­son in Port­land on Sat­ur­day. Daniel­son was affil­i­at­ed with a right-wing group known for street brawl­ing, Patri­ot Prayer, whose mem­bers had joined a car­a­van of trucks that made a route through Port­land ear­li­er in the day, many armed with pep­per spray and paint­ball guns.

    Just a few days ear­li­er, two pro­test­ers in Kenosha, Wis­con­sin — Antho­ny Huber and Joseph Rosen­baum — were alleged­ly killed by the 17-year-old Trump sup­port­er Kyle Rit­ten­house. Rit­ten­house has been charged with homi­cide. No one has been charged in the Port­land killing yet, but The Ore­gon­ian report­ed that a self-iden­ti­fied anti-fas­cist pro­test­er was under inves­ti­ga­tion.

    The Oath Keep­ers’ tweets went beyond their nor­mal schtick, said Sam Jack­son, an assis­tant pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Albany and author of a new book about the group.

    For years, Oath Keep­ers lead­er­ship has spec­u­lat­ed about poten­tial armed con­flict: In 2015, for exam­ple, mem­bers of the group claimed that the “Jade Helm” mil­i­tary train­ing exer­cise was a front for mar­tial law. And last year, Rhodes said Democ­rats’ impeach­ment inves­ti­ga­tion of Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump marked “the verge of a HOT civ­il war.” But these con­flicts, of course, nev­er mate­ri­al­ized.

    “They’ve iden­ti­fied the start of a civ­il war over and over again,” Jack­son said. “The iden­ti­fi­ca­tion or antic­i­pa­tion of a civ­il war is con­sis­tent.”

    “What’s dif­fer­ent now is they’re point­ing to a par­tic­u­lar act of vio­lence from the peo­ple that they’ve iden­ti­fied as the oth­er side — the ene­my com­bat­ants in the civ­il war,” he added. “What’s dif­fer­ent now is they’re not just antic­i­pat­ing that it’s going to hap­pen soon — they’re rhetor­i­cal­ly posi­tion­ing that it has begun.”

    The Oath Keep­ers mes­sage was part of a wave of omi­nous fore­casts from right-wing vig­i­lantes in recent days.

    “This is the inflec­tion point. This is where the pen­du­lum swings back in the oth­er direc­tion,” Chris Hill, leader of the armed group called Geor­gia Secu­ri­ty Force III%, said in a video last week, refer­ring to the Kenosha shoot­ing. He added, “There’s going to be an esca­la­tion in this con­flict that we have — that is now, it is here, it is spread­ing, it is going to get crazy. It’s already crazy, but now there’s a body count.”

    Hill saved his pitch for the end. If view­ers didn’t join a mili­tia soon, he said, “your coun­try is going to be shat­tered glass and fuc king rub­ble… But if you are inter­est­ed, hit me up!”

    Geor­gia Secu­ri­ty Force III% and oth­ers recent­ly faced off against some anti-Con­fed­er­ate mon­u­ment activists at Stone Moun­tain in Geor­gia. Fights broke out at the scene and, at one point, both sides had hands on their firearms, feet away from each oth­er.

    Hill’s attempt to recruit off of the unrest is a nat­ur­al part of lead­ing an armed vig­i­lante group. Jack­son recalled that in 2015, after a gun­man killed five ser­vice­mem­bers in attacks at a recruit­ing cen­ter and a Naval Reserve cen­ter in Chat­tanooga, Oath Keep­ers launched an effort that the group called “Oper­a­tion Pro­tect the Pro­tec­tors.” It was a form of net­work­ing: Armed cit­i­zens, some of whom hadn’t before been affil­i­at­ed with the Oath Keep­ers, stood out­side of recruit­ing cen­ters in a show of force.

    Nowa­days, the right-wing pres­ence dur­ing upris­ings across the coun­try serves to “rad­i­cal­ize” poten­tial vig­i­lantes, said Daryl John­son, a for­mer Home­land Secu­ri­ty ana­lyst.

    “Now, with the booga­loo move­ment and with these mili­tias going into these [instances of] civ­il unrest, it kind of rein­forces to them this notion that soci­ety is on the brink of a civ­il war,” he said. “And it serves as a rad­i­cal­iza­tion facil­i­ta­tor, much like a for­eign fight­er going over to a con­flict zone rein­forc­ing their ver­sion of the world.”

    The armed groups aren’t act­ing alone. Main­stream con­ser­v­a­tive media and polit­i­cal fig­ures have cre­at­ed a bogey­man out of antifa and Black Lives Mat­ter — con­ve­nient domes­tic “oth­ers” that serve as scape­goats.esi­dent him­self on Mon­day referred to peo­ple “on the streets” and “in the dark shad­ows” that were con­trol­ling Joe Biden. Sep­a­rate­ly, he said vague­ly that the depart­ments of Jus­tice and Home­land Secu­ri­ty would be “announc­ing a joint oper­a­tion cen­ter to inves­ti­gate the vio­lent, left-wing civ­il unrest.”

    Once upon a time, when Barack Oba­ma was pres­i­dent, the Oath Keep­ers might’ve been up in arms about that sort of asser­tion of exec­u­tive pow­er. But things have changed. Stew­art Rhodes, asked Mon­day what he thought Trump should do about America’s sup­posed new civ­il war, told the jour­nal­ist Casey Michel, “he should declare a nation­wide insur­rec­tion to be in effect and call all of the Nation­al Guard units into fed­er­al ser­vice, under his com­mand, and use them to sup­press the insur­rec­tion in the streets.”

    A mem­ber of Patri­ot Prayer who claimed to have been with Daniel­son when he was killed — and whose sto­ry Oath Keep­ers retweet­ed — was asked a sim­i­lar ques­tion this week­end: What should Trump do?

    “Send troops,” the man said. “Send troops.”

    Much of the amped up rhetoric about crest­ing vio­lence is just pro­jec­tion: The right blames the left for vio­lence to jus­ti­fy its own.

    In recent years, accord­ing to a recent report on tac­tics of the racist “alt-right” pub­lished by the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter, “Some mem­bers of the rad­i­cal right real­ized that, even while claim­ing to be vic­tims of lib­er­al over­reach, they could cap­i­tal­ize on their own vio­lent acts. Video of a dra­mat­ic punch could go viral, mak­ing heroes out of the movement’s street war­riors and recruit­ing peo­ple to the cause.”

    One of the report’s authors, Howard Graves, told TPM that “the far-right has demon­strat­ed that it is will­ing and able to esca­late at a quick­er rate, and that’s real­ly where we see the biggest poten­tial for vio­lence.”

    ...

    ————

    “With Itchy Trig­ger Fin­gers, Some Right Wingers Pre­dict The Next Civ­il War Has Final­ly Arrived” by Matt Shuham; Talk­ing Points Memo; 09/01/2020

    ““The first shot has been fired broth­er,” said Stew­art Rhodes, founder of the armed anti-gov­ern­ment group Oath Keep­ers, in a tweet Sun­day. “Civ­il war is here, right now. We’ll give Trump one last chance to declare this a Marx­ist insur­rec­tion & sup­press it as his duty demands. If he fails to do HIS duty, we will do OURS.”

    And now the Oath Keep­ers are issu­ing ulti­ma­tums to Pres­i­dent Trump: declare the protests an insur­rec­tion and call in the mil­i­tary to sup­press it or Stew­art Rhodes and the Oath Keep­ers will do it them­selves. And while pre­dic­tions of civ­il war are noth­ing new for these groups, the dec­la­ra­tion that a par­tic­u­lar event has already start­ed the civ­il war is new:

    ...
    Rhodes was refer­ring to the killing of Aaron Daniel­son in Port­land on Sat­ur­day. Daniel­son was affil­i­at­ed with a right-wing group known for street brawl­ing, Patri­ot Prayer, whose mem­bers had joined a car­a­van of trucks that made a route through Port­land ear­li­er in the day, many armed with pep­per spray and paint­ball guns.

    ...

    The Oath Keep­ers’ tweets went beyond their nor­mal schtick, said Sam Jack­son, an assis­tant pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Albany and author of a new book about the group.

    For years, Oath Keep­ers lead­er­ship has spec­u­lat­ed about poten­tial armed con­flict: In 2015, for exam­ple, mem­bers of the group claimed that the “Jade Helm” mil­i­tary train­ing exer­cise was a front for mar­tial law. And last year, Rhodes said Democ­rats’ impeach­ment inves­ti­ga­tion of Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump marked “the verge of a HOT civ­il war.” But these con­flicts, of course, nev­er mate­ri­al­ized.

    “They’ve iden­ti­fied the start of a civ­il war over and over again,” Jack­son said. “The iden­ti­fi­ca­tion or antic­i­pa­tion of a civ­il war is con­sis­tent.”

    “What’s dif­fer­ent now is they’re point­ing to a par­tic­u­lar act of vio­lence from the peo­ple that they’ve iden­ti­fied as the oth­er side — the ene­my com­bat­ants in the civ­il war,” he added. “What’s dif­fer­ent now is they’re not just antic­i­pat­ing that it’s going to hap­pen soon — they’re rhetor­i­cal­ly posi­tion­ing that it has begun.”

    ...

    Once upon a time, when Barack Oba­ma was pres­i­dent, the Oath Keep­ers might’ve been up in arms about that sort of asser­tion of exec­u­tive pow­er. But things have changed. Stew­art Rhodes, asked Mon­day what he thought Trump should do about America’s sup­posed new civ­il war, told the jour­nal­ist Casey Michel, “he should declare a nation­wide insur­rec­tion to be in effect and call all of the Nation­al Guard units into fed­er­al ser­vice, under his com­mand, and use them to sup­press the insur­rec­tion in the streets.”
    ...

    Ok, now here’s a cou­ple of arti­cle decrib­ing the sus­pect in the Port­land shoot­ing, Michael For­est Rei­noehl, and how he has been post­ing on social media about the Black Lives Mat­ter protests since late June. While the arti­cle does­n’t men­tion it, it’s impor­tant to keep in mind that vir­tu­al­ly all of his post pri­or to June of this year were apo­lit­i­cal in nature. The arti­cle men­tions Rei­noehl was charged with resist­ing arrest at a July protest and was also charged with reck­less dri­ving after he was caught drag rac­ing with his 17-year old son on June 8. Recall that he had his “New Per­spec­tives” post on June 3 and his “I’m 100% ANTIFA” post on June 16. So he man­aged to fit in some father/son drag rac­ing qual­i­ty time in between that new per­spec­tive and his pledge to fight and due for Antifa. And as the arti­cle notes, it’s video images of the fatal shoot­ing where a tall, thin white man in a hat and white tube socks runs from the scene. Oth­er screen­shots from the day show a sim­i­lar­ly dressed man who appears to be Rei­noehl with a large fist tat­too on his neck. So as we can see, there’s pret­ty strong visu­al evi­dence that Rei­noehl was the shoot­er. What’s lack­ing at this point is any evi­dence that he had any inter­est in BLM or Antifa more than a few months:

    The Oregonian/Oregon Live

    Man under inves­ti­ga­tion in fatal shoot­ing of right-wing demon­stra­tor in Port­land was out­side mayor’s con­do night before with daugh­ter

    Max­ine Bern­stein
    Updat­ed Aug 31, 2020; Post­ed Aug 31, 2020

    A 48-year-old man who was accused of car­ry­ing a loaded gun at an ear­li­er down­town Port­land protest is under inves­ti­ga­tion in the fatal shoot­ing Sat­ur­day night of a right-wing demon­stra­tor after a pro-Trump ral­ly.

    Michael For­est Rei­noehl calls him­self an anti-fas­cist and has post­ed videos and pho­tos of demon­stra­tions he attend­ed since late June, accom­pa­nied by the hash­tags #black­lives­mat­ter, #anew­na­tion and #bre­on­natay­lor.

    Rei­noehl was raised in Sandy and has had recent address­es in North­east Port­land, Gre­sham and Clacka­mas. He described him­self on social media and in a video inter­view with Bloomberg Quick­Take News as a pro­fes­sion­al snow­board­er and con­trac­tor who has for­mer mil­i­tary expe­ri­ence but “hat­ed” his time in the army.

    Sources famil­iar with the case but not autho­rized to speak said police are inves­ti­gat­ing Rei­noehl. A fam­i­ly mem­ber also iden­ti­fied him as a man cap­tured in pho­tos and video seen leav­ing the shoot­ing scene short­ly before 9 p.m. Sat­ur­day.

    Aaron Daniel­son, a sup­port­er of the con­ser­v­a­tive group Patri­ot Prayer, was shot in the chest and died in the street. It was soon after most cars in a car­a­van of sup­port­ers of Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump had left the city’s down­town streets.

    Reinoehl’s posts indi­cate he attend­ed many protests in Port­land that began three months ago after the death of George Floyd in Min­neapo­lis under the knee of a police offi­cer.

    On July 5 at one of the demon­stra­tions, Rei­noehl was cit­ed at 2:10 a.m. in the 700 block of South­west Main Street on alle­ga­tions of pos­sess­ing a loaded gun in a pub­lic place, resist­ing arrest and inter­fer­ing with police

    He was giv­en a date to appear in court lat­er that month, but the alle­ga­tions were dropped on July 30 with a “no com­plaint,” accord­ing to court records. The doc­u­ments don’t indi­cate why pros­e­cu­tors decid­ed not to pur­sue the accu­sa­tions. Rei­noehl spent no time behind bars.

    Brent Weis­berg, a spokesman for Mult­nom­ah Coun­ty Dis­trict Attor­ney Mike Schmidt, said the office is still review­ing that July case involv­ing Rei­noehl.

    Schmidt ear­li­er Sun­day decried the dead­ly vio­lence. He took office on Aug. 1 and quick­ly announced that he wouldn’t pur­sue low-lev­el charges against demon­stra­tors, such as inter­fer­ing with police or resist­ing arrest. He wasn’t dis­trict attor­ney when the office han­dled Reinoehl’s gun case.

    Video images of the fatal shoot­ing cap­tured a tall, thin white man in a hat and white tube socks run­ning from the scene at South­west Third Avenue and Alder Street around 8:45 p.m. Screen­shots zeroed in a tat­too of a fist on the man’s neck.

    The grainy video and oth­er pho­tos, togeth­er with wit­ness state­ments from live stream­er Justin Dun­lap, sug­gest the vic­tim may have used some type of mace or pep­per spray and then col­lapsed after gun­shots ring out.

    Reinoehl’s 36-year-old sis­ter said she was awak­ened just before 8 a.m. Sun­day by a threat­en­ing phone call from some­one who told her that “our whole fam­i­ly was in dan­ger unless we turned him over.”

    “That’s how I found out,” that her broth­er was alleged­ly involved, she told The Oregonian/OregonLive.

    She called Sandy police to report the threat, she said. Once she looked online and saw screen­shots of her brother’s pho­to, she said she called Port­land detec­tives.

    “We reached out to police and con­firmed that we rec­og­nized Michael in the screen­shots,” she said. She asked that her name not be used because of the threats.

    Michael Rei­noehl has been estranged from the fam­i­ly – includ­ing her, their par­ents and a younger broth­er – for at least three years, his sis­ter said.

    “On the one hand, this whole thing sur­pris­es the day­lights out of us, because we always thought he is a lot of bark, not a lot of bite,” she said. “But he’s also been very impul­sive and irra­tional.”

    Rei­noehl has stolen their mother’s seizure med­ica­tion and owes a lot of debt, often giv­ing his rel­a­tives’ address­es as his own to avoid respon­si­bil­i­ty, she said.

    He has a son and daugh­ter and is split from their moth­er, she said.

    “I have friends, fam­i­ly and loved ones on both sides of the con­flict,” Reinoehl’s sis­ter said. “Vio­lence begets vio­lence and hatred begets hatred. This is not the solu­tion. My heart goes out to the vic­tim. It always has, before I even knew my broth­er was involved.”

    Rei­noehl is also want­ed on a fail­ure to appear war­rant in a June 8 speed rac­ing case in Bak­er Coun­ty in east­ern Ore­gon. He and his 17-year-old son were rac­ing in two dif­fer­ent cars at speeds of up to 111 mph head­ing east on Inter­state 84 after mid­night near North Pow­der, accord­ing to state police.

    Michael Rei­noehl faces alle­ga­tions includ­ing dri­ving under the influ­ence of a con­trolled sub­stance, reck­less­ly endan­ger­ing anoth­er, unlaw­ful pos­ses­sion of a gun and dri­ving while sus­pend­ed and unin­sured.

    He was stopped dri­ving a 2005 Cadil­lac STS with his 11-year-old daugh­ter as a pas­sen­ger, police said. Inside the car, police said they found mar­i­jua­na, “uniden­ti­fied pre­scrip­tion pills” and a loaded Glock pis­tol for which Rei­noehl didn’t have a con­cealed hand­gun license.

    Short­ly after that, Rei­noehl began post­ing about the protests in Port­land.

    On June 16, he wrote, “Every Rev­o­lu­tion needs peo­ple that are will­ing and ready to fight. There are so many of us pro­test­ers that are just protest­ing with­out a clue of where that will lead. That’s just the begin­ning that’s that where the fight starts. If that’s as far as you can take it thank you for your par­tic­i­pa­tion but please stand aside and sup­port the ones that are will­ing to fight. I am 100 % ANTIFA all the way! I am will­ing to fight for my broth­ers and sis­ters! ... We do not want vio­lence but we will not run from it either! ... Today’s pro­test­ers and antifa are my broth­ers in arms.”

    On the Bloomberg video post­ed July 27, Rei­noehl said he had been shot and turns to the cam­era to show a bloody ban­dage on his right arm. He claimed he inter­vened in an ear­li­er fight between a man with a gun and Black youths.

    He said on the video that he’d been “work­ing secu­ri­ty and try­ing to keep pro­tect­ed” some­one in the crowd when he got shot as he tried to wres­tle a gun away from the man harass­ing the kids. He didn’t say where that it hap­pened. The account couldn’t be imme­di­ate­ly con­firmed.

    On July 2, Rei­noehl wrote on Insta­gram, “We will not stop until there is change. Now more than ever we need to join togeth­er. Join the cause sup­port the peo­ple that are will­ing to take a rub­ber bul­let. Give them sup­plies food water Med­ical any­thing that can help. Bring bal­loons and paint for paint bal­loons. #blak­lives­mat­ter #bre­on­natay­lor.”

    His social media pages also are filled with videos and pho­tos of him snow­board­ing at Mt. Hood Mead­ows, some­times with his dog Ezo accom­pa­ny­ing him.

    In a Feb­ru­ary Face­book post, Michael Rei­noehl wrote that “it can be hard and con­fus­ing at times liv­ing in a world con­sumed by indi­vid­u­al­i­ty.”

    “When as beings we tru­ly are con­nect­ed to every­thing in the uni­ver­si­ty and Beyond. Some of us feel trapped in a shell sur­round­ed and con­trolled by indi­vid­u­als that have no clue,” he says in the post. “Or even worse refuse to accept the truth because they would have to give up their con­trol. For those of you who know and feel the same as I do know this. Our time here is short, always stay true to what you know. And know that you are here to help the inno­cent ones who do not know. Be that bright light to the ones who are lost. And as you like your own way hope­ful­ly some will fol­low. #love #loveev­ery­thing #loveev­ery­one.”

    In one post, he shared a video of peo­ple burn­ing a “Trump 2020” flag out­side the Mult­nom­ah Coun­ty Jus­tice Cen­ter steps ear­li­er this sum­mer. A post from Novem­ber 2015 shows a Trump face paint­ed on the wall of a restroom with a uri­nal in place of the mouth. Anoth­er post shows a poster of Malala Yousafzai with the quote: “With guns you can kill ter­ror­ists. With edu­ca­tion, you can kill ter­ror­ism.”

    Oth­er posts appear to be tied to the Free Thought Project, which bills itself on its web­site as a “hub for Free Think­ing con­ver­sa­tions about the pro­mo­tion of lib­er­ty and the daunt­ing task of gov­ern­ment account­abil­i­ty.”

    Oth­er posts dis­play pic­tures of his fam­i­ly, friends and his dog and describe him seek­ing work clean­ing gut­ters to make extra mon­ey. In a 2018 post, he says he works for a com­pa­ny that remod­els hous­es. His Face­book page says he stud­ied tele­vi­sion pro­duc­tion at Mt. Hood Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege.

    ...

    ———-

    “Man under inves­ti­ga­tion in fatal shoot­ing of right-wing demon­stra­tor in Port­land was out­side mayor’s con­do night before with daugh­ter” by Max­ine Bern­stein; The Oregonian/Oregon Live; 08/31/2020

    “Rei­noehl was raised in Sandy and has had recent address­es in North­east Port­land, Gre­sham and Clacka­mas. He described him­self on social media and in a video inter­view with Bloomberg Quick­Take News as a pro­fes­sion­al snow­board­er and con­trac­tor who has for­mer mil­i­tary expe­ri­ence but “hat­ed” his time in the army.”

    A pro­fes­sion­al snow­board­er with mil­i­tary expe­ri­ence who is also a very active pro­test­er in the Port­land area. That appears to be the pro­file of Michael For­est Rei­noehl but it leaves open the ques­tion of how long he’s been an active pro­test­er and based on his social media con­tent it looks like it start­ed in June. Days after he was arrest­ed for drag rac­ing with his son is when he made his “100% ANTIFA” post:

    ...
    Michael For­est Rei­noehl calls him­self an anti-fas­cist and has post­ed videos and pho­tos of demon­stra­tions he attend­ed since late June, accom­pa­nied by the hash­tags #black­lives­mat­ter, #anew­na­tion and #bre­on­natay­lor.

    ...

    Reinoehl’s posts indi­cate he attend­ed many protests in Port­land that began three months ago after the death of George Floyd in Min­neapo­lis under the knee of a police offi­cer.

    On July 5 at one of the demon­stra­tions, Rei­noehl was cit­ed at 2:10 a.m. in the 700 block of South­west Main Street on alle­ga­tions of pos­sess­ing a loaded gun in a pub­lic place, resist­ing arrest and inter­fer­ing with police

    He was giv­en a date to appear in court lat­er that month, but the alle­ga­tions were dropped on July 30 with a “no com­plaint,” accord­ing to court records. The doc­u­ments don’t indi­cate why pros­e­cu­tors decid­ed not to pur­sue the accu­sa­tions. Rei­noehl spent no time behind bars.

    ...

    Rei­noehl is also want­ed on a fail­ure to appear war­rant in a June 8 speed rac­ing case in Bak­er Coun­ty in east­ern Ore­gon. He and his 17-year-old son were rac­ing in two dif­fer­ent cars at speeds of up to 111 mph head­ing east on Inter­state 84 after mid­night near North Pow­der, accord­ing to state police.

    Michael Rei­noehl faces alle­ga­tions includ­ing dri­ving under the influ­ence of a con­trolled sub­stance, reck­less­ly endan­ger­ing anoth­er, unlaw­ful pos­ses­sion of a gun and dri­ving while sus­pend­ed and unin­sured.

    He was stopped dri­ving a 2005 Cadil­lac STS with his 11-year-old daugh­ter as a pas­sen­ger, police said. Inside the car, police said they found mar­i­jua­na, “uniden­ti­fied pre­scrip­tion pills” and a loaded Glock pis­tol for which Rei­noehl didn’t have a con­cealed hand­gun license.

    Short­ly after that, Rei­noehl began post­ing about the protests in Port­land.

    On June 16, he wrote, “Every Rev­o­lu­tion needs peo­ple that are will­ing and ready to fight. There are so many of us pro­test­ers that are just protest­ing with­out a clue of where that will lead. That’s just the begin­ning that’s that where the fight starts. If that’s as far as you can take it thank you for your par­tic­i­pa­tion but please stand aside and sup­port the ones that are will­ing to fight. I am 100 % ANTIFA all the way! I am will­ing to fight for my broth­ers and sis­ters! ... We do not want vio­lence but we will not run from it either! ... Today’s pro­test­ers and antifa are my broth­ers in arms.
    ...

    And then there’s the mys­tery of fist tat­too on his neck used to iden­ti­fy him as the shoot­er. It’s a tat­too that does­n’t show up any­one on his Face­book or Insta­gram social media pages. How new is this tat­too?

    ...
    Video images of the fatal shoot­ing cap­tured a tall, thin white man in a hat and white tube socks run­ning from the scene at South­west Third Avenue and Alder Street around 8:45 p.m. Screen­shots zeroed in a tat­too of a fist on the man’s neck.

    The grainy video and oth­er pho­tos, togeth­er with wit­ness state­ments from live stream­er Justin Dun­lap, sug­gest the vic­tim may have used some type of mace or pep­per spray and then col­lapsed after gun­shots ring out.
    ...

    And regard­ing some of the old­er Face­book posts dis­cov­ered that are being exam­ined to get a hint of the guy’s pol­i­tics, note in between the post from Novem­ber 23, 2015 show­ing a Trump face paint­ed on the wall of restroom with a uri­nal in place of the mouth and anoth­er post the next day show­ing a poster of Malala Yousafzai, there’s a post from the far right Young Amer­i­cans for Lib­er­ty Face­book page. And the Free Thought Project, from which he post­ed a lot of con­tent, is basi­cal­ly a lib­er­tar­i­an anar­chist project. The point being that his pol­i­tics remain ambigu­ous based sole­ly on the scant avail­able evi­dence from the guy’s social media post­ings:

    ...
    In one post, he shared a video of peo­ple burn­ing a “Trump 2020” flag out­side the Mult­nom­ah Coun­ty Jus­tice Cen­ter steps ear­li­er this sum­mer. A post from Novem­ber 2015 shows a Trump face paint­ed on the wall of a restroom with a uri­nal in place of the mouth. Anoth­er post shows a poster of Malala Yousafzai with the quote: “With guns you can kill ter­ror­ists. With edu­ca­tion, you can kill ter­ror­ism.”

    Oth­er posts appear to be tied to the Free Thought Project, which bills itself on its web­site as a “hub for Free Think­ing con­ver­sa­tions about the pro­mo­tion of lib­er­ty and the daunt­ing task of gov­ern­ment account­abil­i­ty.”
    ...

    So was Civ­il War 2.0 just start­ed this week by the actions of a man who appar­ent­ly just became “100% ANTIFA” a few months ago and had no appar­ent his­to­ry of polit­i­cal activism before this? If we leave the deci­sion up to groups like the Oath Keep­ers then, yes, that’s what just hap­pened. Of course, if we leave the deci­sion of when and where Civ­il War 2.0 starts to groups like the Oath Keep­ers we would col­lec­tive­ly have to be gullible fools. And that’s real­ly the answer to the ques­tion of whether or not the shoot­ing of Aaron Daniel­son by Michael Rei­noehl start­ed Civ­il War 2.0: it depends on how gullible we all are, which means the answer is a sol­id ‘maybe’...

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | September 1, 2020, 3:30 pm
  8. Fol­low­ing up on the sto­ry of the two heav­i­ly armed men from Col­orado who were arrest­ed in Port Pana­ma City, Flori­da, a cou­ple of days ago after ran­dom­ly fir­ing on cars and telling police that “it was time to go to war”, first note that a sus­pect was arrest­ed in con­nec­tion with the mur­der of a nurse in Nashville that the pair were sus­pect­ed of car­ry­ing out so it’s unlike­ly they were involved with that mur­der.

    We still have no infor­ma­tion on the motive of the two men, Duane Lee Storey and Cody Sean Brels­ford, for why they start­ed fir­ing seem­ing­ly ran­dom­ly on cars north of Port Pana­ma City oth­er than the report that Storey told inves­ti­ga­tors that “it was time to go to war”. Although the fact that they did this dur­ing the week that fig­ures like Steve Ban­non were warn­ing that patri­ots would need to be will­ing to die for a sec­ond Trump term sug­gests these are far right extrem­ists upset over the elec­tion results.

    But there’s anoth­er piece of infor­ma­tion implic­it­ly in this sto­ry: the loca­tion where they decid­ed to make their ini­tial stand­off. It was report­ed­ly at the inter­sec­tion of State 20 and State 79 in Ebro, Flori­da, just north of Port Pana­ma City. They parked right in the mid­dle of that inter­sec­tion and then fired on two approach­ing vehi­cles before head­ing south to Port Pana­ma City where they were arrest­ed. So why there? Why did they dri­ve all the way from Col­orado and decide to park in the mid­dle of that inter­sec­tion and just start open­ing fire on ran­dom vehi­cles. It’s an act that’s even more baf­fling if they weren’t involved with the mur­der of the nurse in Nashville because it’s even more ran­dom.

    So it’s worth not­ing some­thing about that region of Flori­da: that’s just out­side the the home turf of the Repub­lic of Flori­da (ROF) neo-Nazi group, which is based in Tal­la­has­see. Erbo is less than a two hour dri­ve West of Tal­la­has­see. And as we saw with the case of Niko­las Cruz and the Park­land school shoot­ing, strong evi­dence point­ed in the direc­tion of Cruz hav­ing been pushed to car­ry­ing out the shoot­ing by the ROF leader Jor­dan Jereb. In addi­tion, we also saw how Jereb had been post­ing strate­gies for using the ROF to cre­ate ‘lone wolf activists’.

    We have two appar­ent ‘lone wolf activist’ dri­ving all the way from Col­orado to Erbo, Flori­da, just west of the ROF head­quar­ters in Tal­la­has­see. And it’s in Erbo that they decide to open fire on ran­dom cars and after they’re arrest­ed they tell police that “now is the time to go to war”. Might there be an ROF con­nec­tion to this case? Were these two head­ing to that region with the expec­ta­tion of meet­ing up with a larg­er ROF group? Were they told by the ROF that the ‘war’ was start­ing at that date and loca­tion? In oth­er words, did these two ‘lone wolves’ think they were act­ing in con­cert with a larg­er move­ment at that time?

    Don’t for­get that, should there ever be a “Day X” in Amer­i­ca, it’s going to involve a large of far right indi­vid­u­als all inde­pen­dent­ly going a mas­sive mur­der spree simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, so learn­ing about the tech­niques that can be used to moti­vate indi­vid­u­als to descend on a loca­tion at a par­tic­u­lar time and just start indis­crim­i­nate­ly killing peo­ple is the kind of thing the far right would be extreme­ly inter­est­ed in refin­ing. Has the ROF fig­ured out how to rad­i­cal­ize peo­ple remote­ly and were these two part of some sort of neo-Nazi ‘lone wolf acti­va­tion and coor­di­na­tion’ test? These are the kinds of ques­tions we have to hope inves­ti­ga­tors are ask­ing.

    Along those lines, here’s a sto­ry about anoth­er appar­ent ‘lone wolf’ act. This time it was at the Spokane Coun­ty Demo­c­ra­t­ic head­quar­ters in Wash­ing­ton State. A 45 year old man, Peter Yea­ger, walked into the build and announced he had a bomb. He then report­ed­ly hand­ed the indi­vid­u­als in the build­ing copies of a man­i­festo and asked them to read it. The man­i­festo does­n’t appear to have been post­ed online any­where. Yea­ger man­aged to start a small fire in the build­ing but that’s it. He did­n’t resist arrest and claims he want­ed to burn the build­ing down but did­n’t want to harm any­one.

    What did Yea­ger’s man­i­festo say? We only have snip­pets avail­able, but inter­est­ing­ly, while Yea­ger claims to be a ‘lone wolf’ act­ing com­plete­ly along, the man­i­festo uses the lan­guage “we” quite a bit with state­ments like “We will con­tin­ue domes­tic oper­a­tions.” The man­i­festo also states that while Yea­ger has “pro­found respect for the grass­roots move­ments of both the Demo­c­ra­t­ic and Repub­li­can par­ties,” that he and oth­ers would con­tin­ue attacks against their “rul­ing elite as they exist in their cur­rent form.” It’s the kind of lan­guage that sug­gests Yea­ger might be a QAnon adher­ent. It’s the sec­ond inci­dent in a week in the US where a ‘lone wolf’ domes­tic ter­ror attack includes hints of a larg­er net­work at work:

    Inlan­der

    A bomb threat, a fire and a “man­i­festo”: Spokane Coun­ty Demo­c­ra­t­ic vol­un­teers were afraid some­thing like this would hap­pen

    By Daniel Wal­ters
    Decem­ber 09, 2020

    Vol­un­teers with the Spokane Coun­ty Democ­rats — at least some of them — have long been afraid that their activism would make them the tar­gets of an extrem­ist attack.

    This morn­ing it felt like their fears may have been real­ized.

    “All I can con­firm is the man walked into the [build­ing] and said he had a bomb,” says Spokane Police Depart­ment spokes­woman Julie Humphreys. “He was able to some­how detain one or more employ­ees or vol­un­teers.”

    That build­ing, says Nicole Bish­op, chair of the Spokane Coun­ty Democ­rats, is the Team­ster’s union hall where the local Democ­rats’ offices are head­quar­tered.

    “He hand­ed a doc­u­ment to one of our vol­un­teers,” Bish­op says.

    “He said, ‘I want you to read this,” that vol­un­teer, 78-year-old Shirley Gross­man, told KHQ news. “I tried to read it and my mind was not work­ing very well obvi­ous­ly. It said some­thing about the Demo­c­ra­t­ic and Repub­li­can Par­ty and more stuff. He said, ‘do you under­stand what this says?’ And I said ‘No, I can’t get it.’ He took the paper back and said, ‘Is there any­body else there?’ ”

    The device did not appear to have suc­cess­ful­ly det­o­nat­ed, but police spokesman Ter­ry Pre­uninger says that the sus­pec­t’s actions did appear to ignite a small fire that fiz­zled by the time the fire depart­ment arrived.

    He also says the sus­pect did “detain one male employ­ee for a short time” but that the sus­pect sur­ren­dered peace­ful­ly when police arrived.

    So far, though, the police depart­ment has declined to reveal any­thing more, includ­ing the name of the sus­pect or whether they believe he inten­tion­al­ly tar­get­ed the Democ­rats, the Team­sters or anoth­er group with offices in the build­ing.

    “Our vol­un­teers are under­stand­ably shak­en up,” Bish­op says. “[But] every­one is safe. Our vol­un­teers are safe. Every­one is safe­ly evac­u­at­ed.”

    Last year, a heat­ed inter­nal bat­tle broke out among the Democ­rats over whether to pass a res­o­lu­tion con­demn­ing spe­cif­ic far-right, white suprema­cist or extrem­ist groups. While many in the par­ty saw the res­o­lu­tion as a moral imper­a­tive, sev­er­al vol­un­teers in lead­er­ship wor­ried it could put their lives in dan­ger.

    “My back is to the front door of the office,” Mary Winkes, the par­ty’s for­mer state com­mit­tee­woman, told the Inlan­der ear­li­er this year. “And I did­n’t want the Proud Boys or some­body else bust­ing in and shoot­ing me because they were men­tioned in some res­o­lu­tion.”

    But Bish­op does­n’t believe today’s scare was relat­ed to any­thing spe­cif­ic to actions from the local par­ty at this point.

    “Because of COVID, our par­ty has been fair­ly qui­et,” Bish­op says.

    It’s far more like­ly, she says, that if there’s a polit­i­cal con­nec­tion, it’s relat­ed to the con­tentious nation­al elec­tion.

    “This may have hap­pened regard­less,” Bish­op says. “I don’t know if that’s an indi­ca­tion that we need to shy away from nam­ing hate groups or mili­tia groups, because they’re clear­ly active regard­less.”

    Lorilee Gill, who had spent five years vol­un­teer­ing as the par­ty’s direc­tor of oper­a­tions, says that the poten­tial threat of vio­lence is always some­thing that their vol­un­teers have to face, espe­cial­ly around elec­tion time.

    The same thing was true when the Democ­rats were in their old offices on Third Avenue, she says.

    “We’ve had times where we have to lock the doors and turn the lights off and tell the vol­un­teers, ‘You’re not to sit out on the front desk,’ ” Gill says. “I’ve been down there at mid­night doing PDC report­ing, and I’d had some­one in the park­ing lot flash­ing their highs at me.... Doing my civic duty should not be putting you in jeop­ardy. It should not be putting me in har­m’s way.”

    These con­cerns became a part of vol­un­teer train­ing, she says.

    “ ‘What should you do?’ ” Gill says. “How can you get out of here if some­one comes in the front of the build­ing? ... Where do you meet? Pick the phone up, dial 911 and tell me if there’s an emer­gency.”

    ...

    This isn’t the only appar­ent recent bomb-relat­ed inci­dent in Spokane. Thanks­giv­ing week, a man named Jer­main Wake­field called 911 and false­ly claimed that he had placed mul­ti­ple bombs at the local Planned Par­ent­hood office, just two blocks away from the Demo­c­ra­t­ic head­quar­ters.

    Paul Dil­lon, spokesman for Planned Par­ent­hood of Greater Wash­ing­ton and North Ida­ho, says in today’s case, the sus­pect seems to have been more orga­nized than the per­son who threat­ened them.

    “Obvi­ous­ly the media atten­tion that was giv­en to the bomb threat, we cer­tain­ly wor­ry about copy cats, that being a fac­tor,” Dil­lon says.

    Nation­al fig­ures on both sides of the polit­i­cal aisle have been hor­ri­fied by the way that Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump and oth­er right-wing fig­ures have been stok­ing extrem­ism with their wild claims of a stolen elec­tion.

    “When the pres­i­dent and var­i­ous promi­nent Repub­li­cans are out telling peo­ple the elec­tion is stolen, var­i­ous peo­ple are com­mit­ting trea­son, and the peo­ple need to rise up — some crazy MF’er is going to do it even­tu­al­ly,” writes Erick Erick­son, a right-wing Geor­gia-based talk show host who vot­ed for Trump this year.

    “I think the per­son that called in the bomb threat was on a down­ward spi­ral,” Dil­lon says. “You can’t sep­a­rate the rhetoric from these acts. You are del­uged with the dis­tor­tion and con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries. And some­thing snaps and that’s what caus­es peo­ple to car­ry out these destruc­tive acts. You hit a break­ing point.”

    It’s far too soon to know the moti­va­tion of the sus­pect.

    After Ari­zon­a’s U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Gif­fords’ was shot by a gun­man, some observers blamed over-the-top nation­al rhetoric from Repub­li­cans. But an inves­ti­ga­tion found that the gun­man, who suf­fered from para­noid schiz­o­phre­nia, had been obsessed with Gif­fords for years and lit­tle evi­dence tied his actions to the nation­al rhetoric.

    Still, the Inland North­west has a grim his­to­ry of extrem­ist bomb­ings, car­ried out by white suprema­cist groups like The Order. His­tor­i­cal­ly, extrem­ists have det­o­nat­ed bombs at Spokane City Hall, a local bank branch, and a Planned Par­ent­hood clin­ic. In 2011, an extrem­ist tried to blow up a back­pack bomb made of gun-pow­der, fish­ing weights and rat poi­son at a Mar­tin Luther King Jr. parade.

    ...

    ———-

    “A bomb threat, a fire and a “man­i­festo”: Spokane Coun­ty Demo­c­ra­t­ic vol­un­teers were afraid some­thing like this would hap­pen” by Daniel Wal­ters; Inlan­der; 12/09/2020

    ““He said, ‘I want you to read this,” that vol­un­teer, 78-year-old Shirley Gross­man, told KHQ news. “I tried to read it and my mind was not work­ing very well obvi­ous­ly. It said some­thing about the Demo­c­ra­t­ic and Repub­li­can Par­ty and more stuff. He said, ‘do you under­stand what this says?’ And I said ‘No, I can’t get it.’ He took the paper back and said, ‘Is there any­body else there?’ ””

    Hand­ing your vic­tim a hard copy of your man­i­festo. That’s sur­pris­ing­ly old school. But that’s appar­ent­ly what hap­pened. A man­i­festo where Yea­ger claimed to have no griev­ances against the grass­roots mem­bers of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic and Repub­li­can par­ty but deep griev­ances against the ‘elites’ in those par­ties. So he is at least attempt­ing to cre­ate a ‘non-par­ti­san’ veneer to his act. A non-par­ti­san lone wolf. And yet his man­i­festo includes repeat­ed ref­er­ences to “we”, sug­gest­ing that even if he real­ly is act­ing as a long wolf he’s act­ing in con­cert with a larg­er move­ment

    The Spokesman-Review

    Police say sus­pect­ed arson­ist at coun­ty Demo­c­ra­t­ic HQ was after ‘elites,’ but real­i­ty didn’t match up

    By Mag­gie Quin­lan
    UPDATED: Thu., Dec. 10, 2020

    The man who police say claimed to have a bomb and then lit a sub­stan­tial fire at the Spokane Coun­ty Demo­c­ra­t­ic head­quar­ters was after “elites” of any polit­i­cal par­ty, he told inves­ti­ga­tors, accord­ing to a Spokane Police Depart­ment news release.

    The peo­ple he actu­al­ly encoun­tered includ­ed a woman in her sec­ond day as a local Demo­c­ra­t­ic vol­un­teer and a mem­ber of the local truck Team­sters union.

    Peter Yea­ger, 45, of Grand Coulee, was arrest­ed on sus­pi­cion of first-degree arson, although Spokane Police Chief Craig Mei­dl said detec­tives are pur­su­ing oth­er charges.

    At the local Democ­rats’ office, Yea­ger told sev­er­al vol­un­teers he had a bomb and one vol­un­teer saw wires com­ing from his back­pack, said Spokane Coun­ty Democ­rats chair Nicole Bish­op.

    Police deter­mined Yeager’s back­pack did not have a bomb but con­tained gaso­line and oil used to start the fire, accord­ing the news release.

    That fire caused “tens of thou­sands” of dol­lars in dam­age, Mei­dl said. The FBI and Home­land Secu­ri­ty are aid­ing in the inves­ti­ga­tion.

    Yea­ger told inves­ti­ga­tors he does not align with any polit­i­cal par­ty and was not tar­get­ing Democ­rats, Mei­dl said. Yea­ger told police he is an Iraqi war vet­er­an and suf­fers from PTSD.

    The sus­pect­ed arson­ist described him­self as a “lone wolf,” Mei­dl said, although his man­i­festo promised, “We will con­tin­ue domes­tic oper­a­tions.”

    Mei­dl said detec­tives don’t take Yeager’s self-descrip­tion at face val­ue, and will con­tin­ue to see if he real­ly act­ed alone or was a “cog in a larg­er machine.”

    Yea­ger told detec­tives he used a Google search to find a polit­i­cal office and the Demo­c­ra­t­ic office was the clos­est to him. He assumed the near­est Repub­li­can head­quar­ters would be in Ida­ho, the release said.

    Jor­dan Kuhn said instead of a Demo­c­ra­t­ic leader, it was his father, a mem­ber of the local Team­sters labor union and a “strong con­ser­v­a­tive,” who Yea­ger “held hostage” in a room for about 15 min­utes.

    As a for­mer marine and cor­rec­tions offi­cer, Kuhn’s dad is “hard­wired to face dan­ger rather than run away,” Kuhn said.

    “He just did it with­out think­ing,” Kuhn said of his father.

    Mei­dl said Kuhn’s father went into a room with Yea­ger vol­un­tar­i­ly after a Demo­c­ra­t­ic vol­un­teer said “there’s a man in our office with a bomb.”

    Kuhn said his father want­ed to keep the suspect’s atten­tion while some of the women from the local Democ­rats ran out of the build­ing.

    “We have to flesh out what hap­pened while the man was there,” Mei­dl said. “Was his per­cep­tion that he wasn’t free to leave? Even then, there might not be any­thing that ris­es to the lev­el of a crim­i­nal charge.”

    Kuhn said his dad tried to “talk the guy down” and con­nect with him over their respec­tive time in the armed forces. Kuhn said when the sus­pect was briefly dis­tract­ed, his dad took the oppor­tu­ni­ty to “bolt” out the door.

    In a Democ­rats meet­ing Wednes­day, Bish­op point­ed out the for­mer cor­rec­tions officer’s hero­ism in dis­tract­ing and calm­ing the sus­pect­ed arson­ist.

    Bish­op also said she believed the threat and arson was like­ly influ­enced by vio­lent dis­course in the nation.

    “It’s not just about the vio­lent rhetoric,” state Sen. Andy Bil­lig said. “It’s about the peo­ple who are silent.”

    Bil­lig point­ed to region­al polit­i­cal lead­ers.

    Rep. Cathy McMor­ris Rodgers said in a state­ment Wednes­day evening that “no one should be tar­get­ed with vio­lence because of their polit­i­cal beliefs.”

    May­or Nadine Wood­ward failed to release a state­ment on Wednes­day, call­ing the inci­dent a mat­ter for law enforce­ment.

    In a joint state­ment issue on Thurs­day, Wood­ward and Mei­dl wrote: “Threats, intim­i­da­tion, and vio­lence will nev­er be tol­er­at­ed in our com­mu­ni­ty, espe­cial­ly in an attempt to ter­ror­ize the com­mu­ni­ty into mak­ing sys­tem change.”

    In his man­i­festo, Yea­ger wrote that he had “pro­found respect for the grass­roots move­ments of both the Demo­c­ra­t­ic and Repub­li­can par­ties,” but that he and oth­ers would con­tin­ue attacks against their “rul­ing elite as they exist in their cur­rent form.”

    Mei­dl said he’s con­cerned about more polit­i­cal­ly dri­ven vio­lence in the com­ing months.

    “I think law enforce­ment across the nation is con­cerned with where we’re at across the nation,” Mei­dl said. “There’s a feel­ing that the vio­lence peo­ple now think is accept­able to push their agen­das is at a lev­el most of us have nev­er seen before.”

    Mei­dl point­ed out that men­tal health cri­sis calls in Spokane are up about four to five times com­pared with last year. He attrib­uted this to a com­bi­na­tion of the pan­dem­ic, reces­sion, iso­la­tion and polit­i­cal divi­sion.

    ...

    Yea­ger also told inves­ti­ga­tors he had been think­ing about doing some­thing rad­i­cal for a long time, accord­ing to the news release.

    He told police his plan was to burn down the build­ing but not to hurt any­one, and said he tried to get every­one out of the build­ing before start­ing the fire, Mei­dl said.

    ...

    ———–

    “Police say sus­pect­ed arson­ist at coun­ty Demo­c­ra­t­ic HQ was after ‘elites,’ but real­i­ty didn’t match up” by Mag­gie Quin­lan; The Spokesman-Review; 12/10/2020

    “The sus­pect­ed arson­ist described him­self as a “lone wolf,” Mei­dl said, although his man­i­festo promised, “We will con­tin­ue domes­tic oper­a­tions.”

    A ‘lone wolf’ mak­ing promis­es that “we” will con­tin­ue domes­tic oper­a­tions. Was he just engaged in rhetor­i­cal self-aggran­dize­ment? Was he act­ing alone but per­haps express­ing the sen­ti­ments of a group he’s involved with? QAnon per­haps? We don’t know, but he promised the attacks would con­tin­ue against the Demo­c­ra­t­ic and Repub­li­can Par­ty “rul­ing elite as they exist in their cur­rent form”:

    ...
    In his man­i­festo, Yea­ger wrote that he had “pro­found respect for the grass­roots move­ments of both the Demo­c­ra­t­ic and Repub­li­can par­ties,” but that he and oth­ers would con­tin­ue attacks against their “rul­ing elite as they exist in their cur­rent form.”
    ...

    Keep in mind that, for a large num­ber of die-hard Trump sup­port­ers, the rage against the Repub­li­can Par­ty ‘elites’ is par­tic­u­lar­ly acute right now fol­low­ing the grow­ing attacks by Pres­i­dent Trump on Repub­li­can offi­cials who don’t com­plete­ly back his attempts to over­turn the elec­tion results. In oth­er words, any­one claim­ing to be enraged against Demo­c­ra­t­ic and Repub­li­can ‘elites’ right now is some­one repeat­ing stan­dard pro-Trump talk­ing points.

    But, for now, we don’t know what exact­ly drove Yea­ger to do this and whether or not he was act­ing as part of a larg­er group. Just as we don’t know if Storey and Brels­ford are in con­tact with the ROF or some oth­er group. But there’s no deny­ing the real­i­ty that this is a peri­od when ‘lone wolf’ attacks against soci­ety and civ­il war are increas­ing­ly main­stream ideas in the Right. And there’s also no deny­ing the real­i­ty that Pres­i­dent Trump’s 2020 loss and claims of a stolen elec­tion are the per­fect spark to ignite a wave of ‘lone wolf’ attack for years to come. It’s part of what makes assess­ing this sit­u­a­tion so tricky: while there’s plen­ty of evi­dence hint­ing at these ‘lone wolf’ attacks being part of broad­er move­ments, the cur­rent rhetor­i­cal cli­mate in the US is so extreme on the Right that we don’t need to nec­es­sar­i­ly assume groups like ROF are secret­ly rad­i­cal­iz­ing peo­ple online. The main­stream con­ser­v­a­tive media and right-wing politi­cians are car­ry­ing out that rad­i­cal­iza­tion right in pub­lic.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | December 11, 2020, 4:29 pm
  9. @Pterrafractyl–

    It is worth keep­ing in mind that Nazi ide­o­logues see any­thing that will dis­rupt the “sys­tem” and kill those who are doing work ben­e­fi­cial to it as worth­while.

    Some things–killing a nurse, shoot­ing up a school–might not make cohe­sive ide­o­log­i­cal sense to an out­sider, but might be seen as valu­able by some­one seek­ing to over­throw a “sys­tem” they see as ZOG–“Zionist Occu­pa­tion Gov­ern­ment.”

    Gods of the Blood: The Pagan Revival and White Sep­a­ratism by Mat­tias Gardell; Duke Uni­ver­si­ty Press [SC]; Copy­right 2003 by Duke Uni­ver­si­ty Press; ISBN 0–8223-3071–7; pp. 200–201.

    . . . . Endors­ing Beam’s lead­er­less strat­e­gy, [David] Lane argued for tac­ti­cal sep­a­ra­tion between an open pro­pa­gan­da arm and an under­ground para­mil­i­tary arm termed WOTAN (Will of the Aryan Nation). The func­tion of the overt wing is to “counter sys­tem spon­sored pro­pa­gan­da, to edu­cate the Folk, to pro­vide a man pool from which the covert or mil­i­tary arm can be [recruit­ed] . . . and build a rev­o­lu­tion­ary men­tal­i­ty” (David Lane 1994a, 26). Since the open racial pro­pa­gan­dist “will be under scruti­ny,” Lane empha­sized that the cadres involved need to “oper­ate with­in the [legal] para­me­ters” and keep “rigid­ly sep­a­rat­ed” from the mil­i­tary under­ground. The WOTAN para­mil­i­tary “must oper­ate in small, autonomous cells, the small­er, the bet­ter, even one man alone,” and it was “incum­bent” that no “sys­tem atten­tion” was to be drawn “to the overt cadres” (ibid., 27). The aim of the mil­i­tary under­ground was, Lane ham­mered down, to “has­ten the demise of the sys­tem before it total­ly destroys our gene pool” (26). Rev­o­lu­tion­ary activ­i­ty meant uti­liz­ing “fire, bombs, guns, ter­ror, dis­rup­tion and destruc­tion. Weak points in the infra­struc­ture of an indus­tri­al­ized soci­ety are pri­ma­ry tar­gets. What­ev­er and who­ev­er per­form valu­able ser­vice for the sys­tem is [sic] tar­gets, human or oth­er­wise. Spe­cial atten­tion and mer­ci­less ter­ror are vis­it­ed upon those White men who com­mit race trea­son.” (27). 11

    Lane was aware of, but indif­fer­ent to, the pos­si­bil­i­ty that his mes­sage might con­tribute to inspir­ing a lone wolf with a war­rior com­plex to com­mit an act of blind ter­ror along the lines of the Okla­homa City bomb­ing, which count­ed fif­teen chil­dren among the vic­tims killed. “There are only those who are for our cause and those who are our ene­mies . . . the mass­es are self­ish, greedy ass­es. They have always been and they always will be.” . . .

    In that same vein, keep in mind the 3rd Reich vet­er­ans and sec­ond and third gen­er­a­tion Nazis involved with the Al Taqwa milieu and 9/11. “The Turn­er Diaries” fore­shad­ow very direct­ly the events of 9/11.

    FTR #456 details these con­nec­tions:

    Al Taqwa’s Youssef Nada helped key axis spy Haj Amin Al-Husseini–the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem–escape from Ger­many at the end of World War II.

    “Islamism, Fas­cism and Ter­ror­ism (Part II)” by Marc Erik­son; Asia Times; 11/5/2002; p. 2.

    . . . . Anoth­er val­ued World War II Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor was Youssef Nada, cur­rent board chair­man of al-Taqwa (Nada Man­age­ment), the Lugano, Switzer­land, Liecht­en­stein, and Bahamas-based finan­cial ser­vices out­fit accused by the US Trea­sury Depart­ment of mon­ey laun­der­ing for and financ­ing of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qae­da. As a young man, he had joined the armed branch of the secret appa­ra­tus’ (al-jihaz al-sir­ri) of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and then was recruit­ed by Ger­man mil­i­tary intel­li­gence. When Grand Mufti el-Hus­sei­ni had to flee Ger­many in 1945 as the Nazi defeat loomed, Nada report­ed­ly was instru­men­tal in arrang­ing the escape via Switzer­land back to Egypt and even­tu­al­ly Pales­tine, where el-Hus­sei­ni resur­faced in 1946. . . .

    12. Next, the pro­gram reviews a speech made by William Pierce 1998, the pro­gram sets forth the Nation­al Alliance leader’s eerie fore­shad­ow­ing of the events of 9/11. (Pierce is the author of The Turn­er Diaries and Serpent’s Walk.) Pierce spoke of Osama bin Laden attack­ing tall build­ings, such as the World Trade Cen­ter, and the com­ing of bio-ter­ror­ism to the U.S. This is but one indi­ca­tion that the rela­tion­ship between Islamists and neo-Nazis sought by Huber had become a reality—whether or not Huber was the one who cement­ed its gen­e­sis. Note that the Nation­al Alliance and the Ger­man NPD (with which Huber is affil­i­at­ed) are very close.

    “Neo-Nazis and 9/11” by Jack McCarthy; Coun­ter­punch; 10/29/2001.

    Upon perus­ing his speech­es from 1998–99, I dis­cov­ered that Pierce, who heads the so-called ‘Nation­al Alliance,’ did indeed utter some most inter­est­ing (pre‑9/11—if not prophetic—remarks about Osama bin Laden and bio-ter­ror­ism. The run­ning theme in Pierce’s com­men­taries is—to para­phrase his hero Hitler—that Osama Bin Laden’s warn­ing to Amer­i­ca is ‘I Am Com­ing.’ And so is bio-ter­ror­ism.

    In one chill­ing com­men­tary Pierce, (after not­ing that Bin Laden and the rest of the lost gen­er­a­tion of angry Moslem youth had it with their par­ents’ com­pro­mis­es and were hell bent on revenge against infi­del Amer­i­ca) issued this stark, prophet­ic warn­ing in a 1998 radio address titled, ‘Stay Out of Tall Build­ings.’ ‘New York­ers who work in tall office build­ings any­thing close to the size of the World Trade Cen­ter might con­sid­er wear­ing hard hats . . .’ Pierce warned. . . . [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s].

    13. Next, review­ing pre­vi­ous infor­ma­tion, the broad­cast high­lights the sim­i­lar­i­ty between the events of 9/11 and the con­clud­ing episode of The Turn­er Diaries—the blue­print for Tim­o­thy McVeigh and com­pa­ny, as well as the Nazi ter­ror group The Order. That Nazi tract (authored by the above-men­tioned William Pierce) con­cludes with a low-lev­el sui­cide aer­i­al attack against the Pen­ta­gon.

    It is worth not­ing that The Turn­er Diaries fea­tures the cli­mac­tic attack on the Pen­ta­gon as occur­ring on Novem­ber 9th. That date had great sig­nif­i­cance for the Nazis. The Ger­man sailors’ rebel­lion that pre­cip­i­tat­ed the advent of the Weimar Repub­lic so hat­ed by the Nazis began on 11/9. Attempt­ing to roll back the Weimar rev­o­lu­tion, the Nazis launched the ill-fat­ed Beer Hall Putsch on that date, as well. Die Krys­tall­nacht (the Night of Glass pogrom) of 1938 was launched on that date also. Inter­est­ing­ly, the Berlin Wall came down on Novem­ber 9. A Ger­man (or oth­er Euro­pean) would write the date Novem­ber 9 as—9/11!

    The Turn­er Diaries; “Andrew Mac­don­ald;” Bar­ri­cade Books, Inc. [SC] 1996; Copy­right 1978, 1980 William Pierce; ISBN 1–56980-086–3; p. 201.

    . . . . I con­ferred pri­vate­ly with Major Williams of the Wash­ing­ton Field Com­mand for more than an hour on the prob­lem of attack­ing the Pen­ta­gon. The military’s oth­er major com­mand cen­ters were either knocked out on Sep­tem­ber 8 or sub­se­quent­ly con­sol­i­dat­ed with the Pen­ta­gon, which the top brass appar­ent­ly regards as impreg­nable. And it damned near is. We went over every pos­si­bil­i­ty we could think of, and we came up with no real­ly con­vinc­ing plan—except, per­haps one. That is to make an air deliv­ery of a bomb.

    In the mas­sive ring of defens­es around the Pen­ta­gon there is a great deal of anti-air­craft fire­pow­er, but we decid­ed that a small plane, fly­ing just above the ground, might be able to get through the three-mile gaunt­let with one of our 60-kilo­ton war­heads. One fac­tor in favor of such an attempt is that we have nev­er before used air­craft in such a way, and we might hope to catch the anti-air­craft crews off their guard.

    Although the mil­i­tary is guard­ing all civ­il air­fields, it just hap­pens that we have an old crop duster stashed in a barn only a few miles from here. My imme­di­ate assign­ment is to pre­pare a detailed plan for an aer­i­al attack on the Pen­ta­gon by next Mon­day. We must make a final deci­sion at the time and then act with­out fur­ther delay.

    Novem­ber 9, 1993. It’s still three hours until first light, and all sys­tems are ‘go.’ I’ll use the time to write a few pages—my last diary entry. Then it’s a one-way trip to the Pen­ta­gon for me. The war­head is strapped into the front seat of the old Stear­man and rigged to det­o­nate either on impact or when I flip a switch in the back seat. Hope­ful­ly, I’ll be able to mange a low-lev­el air burst direct­ly over the cen­ter of the Pen­ta­gon. Fail­ing that, I’ll at least try to fly as close as I can before I’m shot down.

    Thus end Earl Turner’s diaries, as unpre­ten­tious­ly as they began. His final mis­sion was suc­cess­ful, of course, as we all are remind­ed each year on Novem­ber 9—our tra­di­tion­al Day of the Mar­tyrs. . . .

    14. A Ger­man paper on the neo-Naz­i/Is­lamist con­nec­tion dis­cuss­es dia­logue writ­ten by Pierce in The Turn­er Diaries. The pro­tag­o­nist of this book (express­ing the views of William Pierce, the book’s author) rants about his desire to see the “100 floors of the sky­scraper fall.” Recall that—as seen above—the book also has a scene eeri­ly like the attack on the Pen­ta­gon and that Pierce him­self fore­shad­owed the attacks in a 1998 radio broad­cast.

    “The Unholy Alliance Between the Swasti­ka and the Cres­cent, Part I—Neo Nazis and Fun­da­men­tal­ist Islam” by Anton Maegerle; 12/12/2001; p. 2.

    . . . . 47 years lat­er the Hitler wor­ship­per William Pierce (born 1933) tells in his right-wing ter­ror­ist nov­el “The Turn­er Diaries” of a right-wing extrem­ist Kamikaze-ing an air­plane into the Pen­ta­gon. In an apoc­a­lyp­tic scene Pierce rejoic­es over the destruc­tion of the cen­ter of the world cap­i­tal-con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed, Jew­ish-dom­i­nat­ed New York. The neo-Nazi, writ­ing under the alias Andrew Mac­Don­ald, says he desires to see the ‘100 floors of the sky­scraper’ fall. Pierce’s book [The Turn­er Diaries] is a utopi­an fan­ta­sy, pro­mot­ed as a neo-nazi Bible world-wide, as the pub­li­ca­tion of the diaries of the US-Amer­i­can right-wing extrem­ist Earl Turn­er found in the years 2091 dur­ing exca­va­tions of the ruins of Wash­ing­ton, 100 years after the nation­al rev­o­lu­tion of 1991–93. . . .

    15. Next, the pro­gram reviews infor­ma­tion sup­ple­ment­ing the exam­i­na­tion of neo-Nazi con­nec­tions to the events of 9/11. Specif­i­cal­ly, the pro­gram fur­thers some details con­nec­tion­ing the 1993 World Trade Cen­ter bomb­ing, the Okla­homa City bomb­ing, and 9/11. Andreas Strass­meir, the alleged mas­ter­mind of the OKC bomb­ing and Tim­o­thy McVeigh’s alleged supe­ri­or in the oper­a­tional aspects of the attack is alleged in a 5/10/1995 FBI mem­o­ran­dum to have sought the pur­chase of a Boe­ing 747 from Lufthansa. The pos­si­bil­i­ty that this may be an indi­ca­tion that neo-Nazis and Islamists were coop­er­a­tive­ly plot­ting attacks like 9/11 in the mid-1990’s is not one to be too read­i­ly dis­missed.

    “Al Qaeda’s Neo-Nazi Con­nec­tions” by William Grim; The Jew­ish Press. 

    . . . Extrem­ists resid­ing at Elo­him City received mil­i­tary-style train­ing from a num­ber of sources. One of the train­ers there was Andreas Carl Strass­meir of Ger­many, a neo-Nazi and the son of Guenter Strass­meir, a chief aide of dis­graced for­mer Ger­man chan­cel­lor Hel­mut Kohl. The elder Strass­meir is wide­ly regard­ed as the archi­tect of Kohl’s reuni­fi­ca­tion plan that merged the for­mer East Ger­many with the Fed­er­al Repub­lic in 1991. And Guenter’s father was one of the orig­i­nal mem­bers of the Nazi Par­ty in the ear­ly 1920s. Andreas Strass­meir is impor­tant to this sto­ry because he not only became a close friend and con­fi­dant of Tim­o­thy McVeigh, but also because he is regard­ed by many inves­ti­ga­tors as John Doe #2, the unknown per­son assist­ing McVeigh and Ter­ry Nichols at the scene of the Okla­homa City bomb­ing who was seen by a num­ber of eye­wit­ness­es. In addi­tion to train­ing var­i­ous neo-Nazi and mili­tia groups, Strass­meir was involved in a num­ber of very curi­ous activ­i­ties. Accord­ing to an FBI report dat­ed May 10, 1995, ‘Addi­tion­al doc­u­ments reveal that at one time Strass­meir was attempt­ing to pur­chase a 747 air­craft from Lufthansa; how­ev­er, the rea­son for the pur­chase is not reflect­ed in the doc­u­ments.’ In 1995 it would not have been unrea­son­able for an FBI inves­ti­ga­tor to give Strassmeir’s abort­ed air­lin­er pur­chase mere­ly pass­ing notice. In light of 9/11, how­ev­er, it gives one pause and rais­es the real pos­si­bil­i­ty that 9/11 type attacks were being planned as far back as 1995 by insid­ers in the neo-Naz­i/Is­lam­ic ter­ror­ist net­work. . . .

    Best,

    Dave Emory

    Posted by Dave Emory | December 11, 2020, 5:38 pm
  10. There’s a new piece in Wired about anoth­er cor­ner of the inter­net that was warped into a far right rad­i­cal­iza­tion tool tar­get­ing kids:

    It turns out the wild­ly pop­u­lar Roblox game — a game that allows large num­bers of users to col­lec­tive­ly cre­ate any Lego-like world they want — isn’t lim­it­ed to cre­at­ing light-heart­ed fun fan­ta­sy worlds. It can also be used to cre­ate dig­i­tal fas­cist dystopias. Fas­cist enclaves where vol­un­tary slav­ery is the norm and degen­er­a­cy laws against things like fem­i­nism and homo­sex­u­al­i­ty are the enforced. That’s the sto­ry sur­round­ing a Roblox play­er, known as Mal­colm, who man­aged to cul­ti­vate a loy­al fol­low­ing of play­ers who helped him build mul­ti­ple fas­cist king­doms, the largest of which was a kind of Rome-based fas­cist hier­ar­chy. Mal­colm was known to fre­quent­ly make Holo­caust jokes and was, him­self, appar­ent­ly rad­i­cal­ized on the 4Chan mes­sage board. Accord­ing to for­mer high-rank­ing mem­bers, Mal­colm would ask them to read SS man­u­al and lis­ten to a far right pod­cast about a school shoot­er. One for­mer mem­ber, Chip, even start­ed an Ein­satz­grup­pen divi­sion, know­ing it would please Mal­colm. This dig­i­tal Rome even had its own Sen­ate and accord­ing to esti­mates around a third of the 200 peo­ple run­ning the Sen­ate were fas­cists in real life. Final­ly, while it sounds like this par­tic­u­lar dig­i­tal fas­cist king­dom fiz­zled out on its own around 5 years ago and Roblox is doing a bet­ter job of polic­ing its con­tent, the game is still being used as a rad­i­cal­iza­tion plat­form. Plus, it also sounds like a lot of the more rad­i­cal­ized mem­bers of groups like the noto­ri­ous /pol/ forum on 4Chan are for­mer fol­low­ers of Mal­colm and con­tin­ue to thank him for ‘red-pilling’ them years ago with a dig­i­tal taste of fas­cism:

    Wired

    How Roblox Became a Play­ground for Vir­tu­al Fas­cists
    Thou­sands of play­ers flocked to a dig­i­tal world filled with dra­con­ian rules, slav­ery, and anti-Semitism—and test­ed how far “just a game” can go.

    Cecil­ia D’Anas­ta­sio
    06.10.2021 06:00 AM

    Fer­gu­son, a mid­dle school­er in Ontario, Cana­da, had been tap­ping out the same four-let­ter sequence on his key­board for hours.

    W, A, S, D.

    W, A, S, D.

    He was steer­ing his dig­i­tal avatar, a Lego-man-like mil­i­tary grunt, in laps around a futur­is­tic air­field. Although his fin­gers ached, he would glad­ly have gone on for hours more. Every key­stroke brought the 11-year-old clos­er to his goal: scal­ing the ranks of a group in the video game Roblox.

    The group had rules. Strict rules. Play­ers dressed as pilots and marines went around bark­ing out orders in lit­tle speech bub­bles. When Fer­gu­son wasn’t run­ning laps, he was doing drills or scal­ing walls—boot camp stuff. The only three words he could say dur­ing train­ing were “YES,” “NO,” and “SIR.” And “SIR” gen­er­al­ly applied to one per­son, Mal­colm, the dom­i­neer­ing ado­les­cent who ruled the group. “His thing was the winky face,” Fer­gu­son says. “He was charm­ing. He was fun­ny. He always had a response; it was instant. He was a dick.”

    At the time, in 2009, Roblox was just over two years old, but sev­er­al mil­lion peo­ple—most of them kids and teens—were already play­ing it. The game isn’t real­ly a game; it is a hub of inter­con­nect­ed vir­tu­al worlds, more like a sprawl­ing mall video arcade than a stand-alone Street Fight­er II machine. Roblox gives play­ers a sim­ple set of tools to cre­ate any envi­ron­ment they want, from Naru­to’s ani­me vil­lage to a high school for mer­maids to Some­where, Wales. Play­ers have built games about bee­keep­ing, man­ag­ing a theme park, flip­ping piz­zas, shov­el­ing snow, using a pub­lic bath­room, and fling­ing them­selves down stair­cas­es. They have also built spaces to hang out and role-play dif­fer­ent char­ac­ters and scenarios—rushing a soror­i­ty, polic­ing Wash­ing­ton, DC.

    Fer­gu­son was attract­ed to the more orga­nized, mil­i­taris­tic role-plays. (Now 23, he asked that I refer to him only by his online name. He says he hears it more often than his giv­en name; also, he doesn’t want to be doxed.) Grow­ing up, he says, he was an annoy­ing kid. He was checked out of school, had no hob­bies or goals or friends. “Lit­er­al­ly, like, zero,” he says. Self-­es­teem issues and social anx­i­ety made him list­less, hard to relate to. It didn’t mat­ter. When he got home from school every day, he’d load up Roblox. There, he says, “I could be king of the fuc king world.”

    Or at least the king’s errand boy. In that ear­ly group he was in with Mal­colm—a role-play based on the sci-fi mil­i­tary game Halo—Fer­gu­son proved his loy­al­ty, drill after drill, lap after lap. Mal­colm (not his real name) didn’t demand con­trol; he sim­ply behaved with the total assur­ance that he would always have it. “It very much was like being in a small mil­i­tary team,” Fer­gu­son says. “You val­ue that person’s opin­ion. You strive to do the best. You have to con­stant­ly check up to their stan­dards.” Even­tu­al­ly, Fer­gu­son became one of Malcolm’s trust­ed lieu­tenants.

    To grow their influ­ence, the boys would invade oth­er groups, charg­ing in as Mal­colm shout­ed the lyrics to Sys­tem of a Down’s “Chop Suey!” over Skype. They fun­neled new fol­low­ers into their own role-plays—one based on Star Wars, where they were the Sith; anoth­er based on Viet­nam, where they were the Amer­i­cans; and one based on World War II, where they were the Nazis.

    Fer­gu­son says that Malcolm’s inter­est in Nazism began with his dis­cov­ery of the edgelord mes­sag­ing board 4chan. From there, he start­ed fix­at­ing on anti-­Se­mit­ic memes and inver­sions of his­to­ry. He built a Ger­man vil­lage where they could host reenactments—capture the flag, but with guns and SS uni­forms. Malcolm’s title would be Führer.

    Fer­gu­son describes him­self as an “anar­chist shi thead.” At first, this sen­si­bil­i­ty expressed itself as irrev­er­ence. Then it became cru­el­ty. He had final­ly found his com­mu­ni­ty and estab­lished some author­i­ty with­in it. He didn’t mind punch­ing down to fit in. At the same time, he believed that Mal­colm was attract­ed to con­trar­i­an­ism, not out-and-out fas­cism. He says he chafed at Malcolm’s “oven talk,” the anti-Semit­ic jokes he made over late-night voice calls. Malcolm’s favorite refrain was “muh 6 mil­lion,” a mock­ing ref­er­ence to the vic­tims of the Holo­caust. “It was at a point in the inter­net where it’s like, OK, does he mean it?” Fer­gu­son recalls. “He can’t mean it, right? Like, he’d be crazy.” (Mal­colm says it was “a lit­tle bit of typ­i­cal trolling, noth­ing too seri­ous.”)

    In 2014, accord­ing to Fer­gu­son, Mal­colm watched HBO’s Rome, which depicts the Roman Republic’s vio­lent (and appar­ent­ly very raunchy) trans­for­ma­tion into an empire. Inspired, he told Fer­gu­son they would be swap­ping their uni­forms for togas. Togeth­er, they forged Malcolm’s proud­est achieve­ment with­in ­Roblox—a group called the Sen­ate and Peo­ple of Rome. The name con­jured high-mind­ed ideals of rep­re­sen­ta­tive democ­ra­cy, but this was a true fas­cist state, com­plete with shock troops, ­slav­ery, and degen­er­a­cy laws. Mal­colm took the title ­Your­Caesar. In 2015, at the height of the group’s pop­u­lar­i­ty, he and Fer­gu­son claim, they and their red-pilled enforcers held sway over some 20,000 play­ers.

    Roblox is no longer the light­ly policed sand­box it once was. The com­pa­ny that owns it went pub­lic in March and is val­ued at $55 bil­lion. Tens of mil­lions of peo­ple play the game dai­ly, thanks in part to a recent pan­dem­ic surge. It has stronger mod­er­a­tion poli­cies, enforced by a team of humans and AIs: You can’t call peo­ple your slaves. You can’t have swastikas. In fact, you can’t have any Ger­man regalia at all from between 1939 and 1945.

    Still, present-day Roblox isn’t all mer­maids and piz­zaio­los. Three for­mer mem­bers of the Sen­ate and Peo­ple of Rome say the game still has a prob­lem with far-right extrem­ists. In ear­ly May, the asso­ciate direc­tor of the Anti-­Defama­tion League’s Cen­ter for Tech­nol­o­gy and Soci­ety, Daniel Kel­ley, found two Roblox re-cre­ations of the Christchurch mosque shoot­ing. (They have since been tak­en down.) And there are still Nazi role-plays. One, called Inns­bruck Bor­der Sim­u­la­tor, received more than a mil­lion vis­its between mid-2019 and late May or ear­ly June of this year, when—not long after I asked a ques­tion about it—Roblox removed it.

    But how do these com­mu­ni­ties shape who young play­ers become? Dun­geons & Drag­ons was sup­pos­ed­ly going to turn kids into dev­il wor­ship­pers. Call of Duty was going to make them fer­al warhounds. “It’s the same thing you see in rela­tion to alt-right recruit­ment,” says Rachel Kow­ert, the direc­tor of research at Take This, a non­prof­it that sup­ports the men­tal health of game devel­op­ers and play­ers. “‘And they play video games’ or ‘And this hap­pened in video games.’” It’s hard­er to pin down because. “There’s a line of research talk­ing about how games are social­ly rein­forc­ing,” she says. “There’s this process of oth­er­ing in some games, us ver­sus them. All of these things do seem to make a cock­tail that would be prime for peo­ple to recruit to extreme caus­es. But whether it does or not is a total­ly dif­fer­ent ques­tion. Because nobody knows.”

    Fer­gu­son, who today claims he is pen­i­tent for his role in the Sen­ate and Peo­ple of Rome, says he wants peo­ple to know about it, to make sense of it, to learn some­thing, and hope­ful­ly, even­tu­al­ly, make it stop. They just have to get it first. “I say, ‘Oh, when I was a kid, I start­ed play­ing this game. Sud­den­ly, I’m hang­ing out with Nazis, learn­ing how to build a repub­lic on the back of slav­ery,’” he says. “But no one under­stands how. ‘It’s just a game.’”

    Ear­li­er this year, Fer­gu­son took me to Rome. Or rather, he took me to a dusty, far-flung Roman out­post called Parthia, which, for com­plex rea­sons involv­ing a cat­fish and some stolen source code, is the most Mal­colm ever got around to build­ing. My avatar mate­ri­al­ized beyond the settlement’s walls, beside some con­crete store­hous­es. The label “Out­sider” appeared next to my user­name. Fer­gu­son was pac­ing toward me in a cow­boy hat with antlers, and I hopped over a line of wood­en looms to meet him.

    The area appeared desert­ed. On a typ­i­cal day in 2014 or 2015, he explained over Dis­cord voice chat, this was where “ran­dom chil­dren” would craft weapons and tools. He ges­tured toward some stone bar­racks in the dis­tance. “Over there,” he said, “there would be legionar­ies watch­ing the bar­bar­ians and prac­tic­ing for­ma­tions.” A bar­bar­ian was any play­er who hadn’t yet been admit­ted into Parthia’s rigid hier­ar­chy. Inside the out­post, the rank­ings got more granular—commoner, for­eign­er, ser­vant, patri­cian, legionary, com­man­der, sen­a­tor, mag­is­trate.

    Fer­gu­son, whose title was aedile, was in charge of the mar­kets and the slaves. “They’re not tech­ni­cal­ly slaves,” he explained. “They’re, in a sense, sub­mit­ting their free will to par­tic­i­pate in a sys­tem where they’re told every­thing to do.” (W, A, S, D.) Slaves could earn their cit­i­zen­ship over time, either through ser­vice or by sign­ing up to be glad­i­a­tors. When a Roblox employ­ee vis­it­ed the group once, he says, Fer­gu­son helped stage a bat­tle between two slaves in the amphithe­ater.

    ...

    Anoth­er of Malcolm’s for­mer fol­low­ers, a play­er I’ll call Chip, joined when he was 14. He says he liked the struc­tured social inter­ac­tions, the def­i­nite ranks, how know­able it all was. “I’ve always been the kind of gamer who prefers a seri­ous envi­ron­ment,” he says. As a mid­dle school­er in Texas, he felt like a com­put­er miss­ing part of its code—never quite sure “how to be nor­mal, how to inter­act with peo­ple, how to not be weird.”

    Parthi­an soci­ety was a prod­uct of Malcolm’s increas­ing­ly big­ot­ed pol­i­tics and his fierce need for con­trol, three for­mer mem­bers say. The outpost’s laws clas­si­fied sup­port for race-mix­ing, fem­i­nism, and gay peo­ple as “degen­er­a­cy.” They also required one play­er in the group, who is Jew­ish in real life, to wear “the Judea tunic or be arrest­ed on sight.” Inside Parthia, vig­iles patrolled the streets. We’d be stopped, Fer­gu­son said, for hav­ing the wrong skin tone. (My avatar’s skin was olive.) The play­ers vot­ed over­whelm­ing­ly to allow Mal­colm to exe­cute whomev­er he want­ed.

    We approached Parthia’s gate, which was on the oth­er side of a wood­en bridge. Fer­gu­son faced me and stuck his hand out. “If you’re an out­sider, they’d go like this to you,” he said, block­ing my avatar’s path. A bub­ble with the words “Out­siders not allowed” appeared above his head. The gate itself was closed, so Fer­gu­son and I took turns dou­ble-jump­ing off each other’s heads to scale the wall. On the oth­er side, I got my first glimpse inside Parthia.

    Fer­gu­son and Mal­colm had talked a tal­ent­ed ­Roblox archi­tect into design­ing it. Every­thing was big, big, big—columned pub­lic build­ings, loom­ing aque­ducts, a mud-brown sprawl of rec­tan­gu­lar build­ings stocked with end­less tiny rooms. After a brief tour, we ascend­ed a lad­der into a half-dome cupo­la. “If you had wealth or a name, you were stand­ing here,” Fer­gu­son said. “You’re sup­posed to be admir­ing your­self, your suc­cess, and look­ing down on the bar­bar­ians.” Romans would hang out, talk, col­lect social sta­tus, and, in Ferguson’s words, “smell their own farts all day.”

    One of the most exclu­sive cliques in Parthia was the Prae­to­ri­an Guard, Malcolm’s per­son­al army. Accord­ing to sev­er­al for­mer mem­bers, he some­times asked high-rank­ing mem­bers to read SS man­u­als and lis­ten to a far-right pod­cast about a school shoot­er. (“Sim­ple friend­ly ban­ter among friends,” Mal­colm says.) Chip start­ed an Ein­satz­grup­pen divi­sion, a ref­er­ence to the Nazis’ mobile death squads—partly because he thought it would get laughs, he says, and part­ly to please the cae­sar. In one case, memo­ri­al­ized on YouTube, Malcolm’s hench­men exe­cut­ed some­one for say­ing they didn’t “care about” the architect’s girl­friend, Cleopa­tra. Chip still thinks that, for a lot of peo­ple, fas­cism start­ed as a joke. “Until one day it’s not iron­ic to them,” he says. “One day they are argu­ing and ful­ly believe what they’re say­ing.”

    When it comes to Malcolm’s fas­cist lean­ings, Chip says, “On the stand, under oath, I would say yes, I believe he actu­al­ly thought these things.” Mal­colm, who says he is “just a lib­er­tar­i­an on the books,” dis­agrees. “It’s always been just trolling or role-­play­ing,” he says. “I’m just a his­to­ry buff. I don’t care for the appli­ca­tion of any of it in a real-world set­ting.”

    Chip and Fer­gu­son esti­mate that a third of the 200 play­ers who ran the Sen­ate and Peo­ple of Rome—most of them young adults—were IRL fas­cists. Enforc­ing the group’s dra­con­ian rules was “a game-play func­tion to them,” Fer­gu­son says. In oth­er words, they enjoyed it.

    Here is one vision of how far-right recruit­ment is sup­posed to work: Bob­by queues up for a Fort­nite match and gets paired with big, bad skin­head Ryland. Ryland has between two and 20 min­utes to make his pitch to Bob­by over voice or text chat before ene­my play­er Sal­ly shot­guns them both in the face. If Ryland’s vibe is intrigu­ing, maybe Bob­by accepts his Fort­nite friend request; they catch some more games and con­tin­ue their friend­ship on Dis­cord. Over time, weeks or months, Ryland nor­mal­izes extrem­ist ide­ol­o­gy for Bob­by, and even­tu­al­ly the kid becomes rad­i­cal­ized.

    Or, just as like­ly: Bob­by thinks that guy is wack and sucks at Fort­nite, and he doesn’t accept Ryland’s friend request. Next game, he’ll go for the shot­gun.

    Rad­i­cal recruit­ment in games is a tricky sub­ject to study. For one thing, all the use­ful data on Ryland and Bob­by is locked away in pri­vate cor­po­rate data­bas­es. Also, this is an ill­ness with a bewil­der­ing array of caus­es. In March, the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty host­ed a dig­i­tal forum called Tar­get­ed Vio­lence and Ter­ror­ism Pre­ven­tion in Online Gam­ing and Esports Engage­ment, designed to high­light how “vio­lent extrem­ists mali­cious­ly manip­u­late the online gam­ing envi­ron­ment to recruit and rad­i­cal­ize.” The ADL’s Daniel Kel­ley, who gave a keynote address, struck a more cau­tious note than the event’s name would sug­gest. He point­ed to the New Zealand government’s offi­cial report on the Christchurch mosque attack. The shoot­er played games, yes. But he also used Face­book and Red­dit and 4chan and 8chan, and he told the Kiwi author­i­ties that YouTube was, as the report put it, a “sig­nif­i­cant source of infor­ma­tion and inspi­ra­tion.”

    Ear­li­er this year, I asked Rabindra Ratan, an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of media and infor­ma­tion at Michi­gan State Uni­ver­si­ty, what the lat­est research said about far-right recruit­ment in games. Curi­ous him­self, he put it to Games­Net­work, a list­serv he’s on that goes out to some 2,000 game schol­ars and researchers.

    Respons­es trick­led in. A cou­ple of schol­ars point­ed to the ADL’s sur­vey on harass­ment and racism in online games, in which near­ly a quar­ter of adult gamers said they’d been exposed to talk of white suprema­cy while play­ing. Oth­ers not­ed the exis­tence of alt-right mes­sag­ing boards for gamers, the deep links between edgelord inter­net cul­ture and white suprema­cy, and the pop­u­lar­i­ty of Felix “PewDiePie” Kjell­berg, a gam­ing YouTu­ber who has made sev­er­al anti-Semit­ic jokes to his audi­ence. When one design­er ques­tioned the idea that rad­i­cal­iza­tion in games is wide­spread, some­one else shot them down: “I think it’s a dan­ger­ous mis­take to dis­miss rad­i­cal­iza­tion in gam­ing com­mu­ni­ties and cul­ture as mere­ly ‘urban leg­end,’” they wrote.

    ...

    In the very broad­est sense, the qual­i­ties asso­ci­at­ed with gamers—young, white, male, mid­dle class-ish, outsider—overlap with the qual­i­ties asso­ci­at­ed with peo­ple who might be can­di­dates for rad­i­cal­iza­tion. Of course, most of the near­ly 3 bil­lion peo­ple who play games don’t fit that stereo­type. The word “gamer” sum­mons these qual­i­ties because, for a long time, this was the con­sumer class that cor­po­ra­tions like Nin­ten­do mar­ket­ed to. Over the decades, that con­sumer class became a pas­sion­ate, even obses­sive cul­tur­al fac­tion. And in 2014, with the Gamer­gate con­tro­ver­sy, a sex­ist harass­ment cam­paign found­ed on a lie, parts of it cur­dled into a reac­tionary iden­ti­ty. Right-wing provo­ca­teurs such as Milo Yiannopou­los spurred it on, see­ing in the “frus­trat­ed male stereo­type” a chance to trans­form resent­ment into cul­tur­al pow­er. Gam­ing and gamer cul­ture belonged to a par­tic­u­lar type of per­son, and that type of per­son was under attack, Gamergate’s adher­ents held. “Social jus­tice war­riors” were para­chut­ing into their games to change their cul­ture. Nongamers, or gamers who didn’t resem­ble them, became “normies,” “e‑girls,” “Chads,” “NPCs” (non-playable char­ac­ters).

    “It’s a good tar­get audi­ence, most­ly male, that’s often been very sus­cep­ti­ble to rad­i­cal­iza­tion,” says Julia Ebn­er, a coun­tert­er­ror­ism expert for the Unit­ed Nations. Ebn­er has gone under­cov­er in a num­ber of extrem­ist groups, both online and offline, includ­ing jihadists, neo-­Nazis, and an antifem­i­nist col­lec­tive. She watched as sub­cul­tures that grew out of 4chan—initially trolling, not explic­it­ly political—slowly became more polit­i­cal, and then rad­i­cal. Grad­u­al­ly, inher­ent­ly extrem­ist con­tent cam­ou­flaged as satire became nor­mal­ized. Then it became real. The vec­tors, she says, were peo­ple like Mal­colm.

    “Recruit­ment” isn’t always the right word, Ebn­er told me. Some­times “groom­ing” is a bet­ter descrip­tor. “It’s often not real­ly clear to the peo­ple who are recruit­ed what they’re actu­al­ly recruit­ed into,” she says.

    Ebn­er does not believe that video games are rad­i­cal­iz­ing peo­ple on any large scale. But she has seen extrem­ists use gam­i­fi­ca­tion or video games as a method of recruit­ment, part­ly because of those qual­i­ties asso­ci­at­ed with capital‑G gamers. “There is a big lone­li­ness issue in parts of the gam­ing com­mu­ni­ty,” she says. “And there’s also a cer­tain desire for excite­ment, for enter­tain­ment.”

    Ebn­er argues that there should be more inter­ven­tion pro­grams tar­get­ing fringe com­mu­ni­ties on the inter­net, staffed by trained psy­chol­o­gists and recov­ered extrem­ists. But first, she says, soci­ety needs to change the way it talks about far-right recruit­ment and gam­ing. Peo­ple write off entire com­mu­ni­ties as being “com­plete­ly extrem­ist, being alt, being rad­i­cal,” she says. But extrem­ists “lure indi­vid­u­als from those sub­cul­tures into their polit­i­cal net­works.” It’s a com­plex, dif­fuse prob­lem, and the con­ver­sa­tion about it, she says, “isn’t nuanced enough.”

    The Sen­ate and Peo­ple of Rome fell in 2015. It wasn’t sacked by Lego-man Visig­oths or brought down by the par­a­sitic forces of degen­er­a­cy. What hap­pened was that Parthia’s archi­tect fell in love with Cleopa­tra, whom he mar­ried in-game and gave his login cre­den­tials. But Cleopa­tra turned out to be a cat­fish, and the dude behind the account leaked Parthia’s source code. Any­one could copy Malcolm’s empire and rule over it them­selves. The increas­ing­ly para­noid cae­sar began exil­ing play­ers. He tried to forge a new fas­cist dystopia, but the attempt fiz­zled. Rome was dead. By 2016, he and Fer­gu­son had stopped spend­ing time in the same groups.

    A year after that, though, 4chan users on the infa­mous /pol/ board would rem­i­nisce about the Sen­ate and Peo­ple of Rome in its heydey. /Pol/, short for “polit­i­cal­ly incor­rect,” is infa­mous specif­i­cal­ly for hate speech and polit­i­cal trolling, and as an engine of extrem­ism. One per­son wrote that most of the high-rank­ing mem­bers of Parthia were “/pol/tards”—frequent com­menters on the board. User after user thanked Mal­colm for red-pilling them. One said that after “sim­u­lat­ing life under Fas­cism” as a 14-year-old, he had since become even “more sup­port­ive” of it. (Mal­colm says that his “cult of per­son­al­i­ty is strict­ly built off of trolls.”)

    After the Unite the Right ral­ly in Char­lottesville, Vir­ginia, in 2017, the left-wing activist col­lec­tive Uni­corn Riot obtained hun­dreds of thou­sands of mes­sages from white suprema­cist Dis­cord servers. They sug­gest­ed that com­mu­ni­ties like Parthia exist­ed else­where in Roblox. In a /pol/ gam­ing serv­er, a user named Lazia Cus wel­comed new arrivals. “Cur­rent­ly,” they wrote, “we have start­ed a ‘Red­pill’ the Youth project which is going on in ‘Roblox.’ We’ve cre­at­ed a clan in which we will oper­ate Raids/Defences and expand on this project into oth­er plat­forms.” (The clan was a “futur­is­tic Roman legion,” though not nec­es­sar­i­ly mod­eled after Malcolm’s Rome or one of its many off­shoots.)

    Fer­gu­son still isn’t sure whether he par­tic­i­pat­ed in a fas­cist recruit­ment cam­paign. It was a role-play. Sure, the struc­ture of the Sen­ate and Peo­ple of Rome nor­mal­ized and even gam­i­fied fas­cism. And there were peo­ple like Mal­colm who brow­beat kids into adopt­ing extrem­ist beliefs. “I’ve nev­er inter­act­ed with peo­ple who were like, ‘OK, we’re going to make more neo-­Nazis,’” he says. “But I feel like it’s inevitable. It’s indi­rect.” Fer­gu­son point­ed out a Roblox role-play of the US-Mex­i­co bor­der in which play­ers are Bor­der Patrol agents. Near­ly 1.1 mil­lion peo­ple had vis­it­ed the game. “It’s not racial­ly moti­vat­ed,” Fer­gu­son says, drip­ping with irony. “They’re just pre­tend­ing to be a law enforce­ment agency that has a long his­to­ry of extreme­ly racist and xeno­pho­bic ten­den­cies.” (A Roblox spokesper­son said the com­pa­ny reviews “every sin­gle image, audio file, and video before it is uploaded.”)

    Mem­bers of Malcolm’s Prae­to­ri­an Guard have gone on to join the mil­i­tary and the TSA and to become police offi­cers, or what Fer­gu­son calls “actu­al Nazis.” Mal­colm him­self now owns a Star Wars role-play group with 16,000 mem­bers. To become cit­i­zens, play­ers must fol­low the group’s social media accounts. “Hail the Empire,” one winky-faced com­menter wrote.

    Ear­li­er this year, back in Roblox, Fer­gu­son took me to the Group Recruit­ing Plaza. Booths manned by avatars lined the perime­ter. Next to a Star Wars group was a red, white, and blue booth and a beard­ed man in a suit. The poste­r above him fea­tured a Con­fed­er­ate flag. It read:

    (Were not racist, were just a war group) 5th Texas Infantry Reg­i­ment, Con­fed­er­ate States. We’re at war with a USA Group.

    A Dis­cord han­dle appeared below.

    When I approached, the avatar behind the booth explained to me that they role-play the Con­fed­er­a­cy.

    “Why does your sign say ‘We’re not racist’?” I asked.

    “It’s just South­ern pride, and a war group,” he respond­ed. A human-sized scor­pi­on walked through me. A boxy gen­tle­man with avi­a­tors and a blue Napoleon jack­et came over to offer sup­port to his friend in the suit.

    “But how is that not racist?” I asked. The booth oper­a­tor hopped over the counter and stood in front of me. “You can’t call a nation racist,” he respond­ed. “That’s just unfair.”

    Fer­gu­son and I decamped to anoth­er role-play: Wash­ing­ton, Dis­trict of Colum­bia. The serv­er was near­ly full, 60 play­ers. I spawned inch­es from the Nation­al World War II Memo­r­i­al hon­or­ing Amer­i­can troops. “Vis­i­tor” appeared above my avatar’s head. Fer­gu­son was sit­ting in a police car. The offi­cer had a gun on him. “You should hop in,” Fer­gu­son said.

    On our way to fed­er­al prison, Fer­gu­son explained that, like the Sen­ate and Peo­ple of Rome, this role-play had a strict hierarchy—senators, FBI and NSA agents, and so on. We exit­ed the car as it did a midair triple-­flip beside a mob of peo­ple just stand­ing around talk­ing. As I was escort­ed in, a Depart­ment of Jus­tice offi­cial with bead­ed hair asked a man in a head­scarf what he thought about Black Lives Mat­ter. We were forced into an inter­ro­ga­tion room. The inter­roga­tor, our dri­ver, jumped on the table. He demand­ed to know what race we were. Wash­ing­ton, DC, was appar­ent­ly at war with South Korea.

    In his real life these days, Fer­gu­son trav­els around Ontario, some­times liv­ing with his dad, some­times liv­ing else­where, pick­ing up man­u­al labor jobs when he can. He has taught infil­tra­tion meth­ods to the youth, he says, so they can inves­ti­gate Roblox groups for extrem­ist behav­ior. They then report the groups or take them over. And for years, he has been grow­ing his own online group, the Cult, which he calls “a fam­i­ly of friends to pro­tect younger people”—particularly over Roblox. Right now, mem­bers of the Cult pay him between $100 and $1,000 a month for his efforts. He says he’s clos­er to them than to his fam­i­ly.

    Fer­gu­son is sor­ry, he says, for his role in con­nect­ing so many peo­ple to Mal­colm, and for his own big­otry. The Cult’s val­ues are the antithe­sis of all of that, he says. He made his fol­low­ers read “Desider­a­ta,” a prose poem by the Amer­i­can writer Max Ehrmann about how to be “kind, nur­tur­ing souls.” Right now he’s on a farm, grow­ing arugu­la, he says. He hopes to one day buy a plot of land and till it with the Cult’s most ded­i­cat­ed mem­bers. At some point, he says, he had a real­iza­tion: “If we took all of what we did online and slow­ly shift­ed it toward real life, we’d nev­er be alone.”

    —————

    “How Roblox Became a Play­ground for Vir­tu­al Fas­cists” by Cecil­ia D’Anas­ta­sio; Wired; 06/10/2021

    “At the time, in 2009, Roblox was just over two years old, but sev­er­al mil­lion peo­ple—most of them kids and teens—were already play­ing it. The game isn’t real­ly a game; it is a hub of inter­con­nect­ed vir­tu­al worlds, more like a sprawl­ing mall video arcade than a stand-alone Street Fight­er II machine. Roblox gives play­ers a sim­ple set of tools to cre­ate any envi­ron­ment they want, from Naru­to’s ani­me vil­lage to a high school for mer­maids to Some­where, Wales. Play­ers have built games about bee­keep­ing, man­ag­ing a theme park, flip­ping piz­zas, shov­el­ing snow, using a pub­lic bath­room, and fling­ing them­selves down stair­cas­es. They have also built spaces to hang out and role-play dif­fer­ent char­ac­ters and scenarios—rushing a soror­i­ty, polic­ing Wash­ing­ton, DC.”

    Roblox isn’t real­ly a game. It’s a hub of inter­con­nect­ed vir­tu­al worlds. Any­thing you can imag­ine. Includ­ing fas­cist dystopias. A plat­form for cre­at­ing vir­tu­al cults of vir­tu­al per­son­al­i­ties. Some­times vir­tu­al fas­cist per­son­al­i­ties. Anony­mous peo­ple inter­act­ing with anony­mous peo­ple in an act of vir­tu­al role-play­ing. You aren’t just talk­ing. You’re act­ing out. It’s the per­fect plat­form for rad­i­cal­iza­tion. Espe­cial­ly when a large por­tion of the peo­ple run­ning it are real life fas­cists:

    ...
    Fer­gu­son describes him­self as an “anar­chist shi thead.” At first, this sen­si­bil­i­ty expressed itself as irrev­er­ence. Then it became cru­el­ty. He had final­ly found his com­mu­ni­ty and estab­lished some author­i­ty with­in it. He didn’t mind punch­ing down to fit in. At the same time, he believed that Mal­colm was attract­ed to con­trar­i­an­ism, not out-and-out fas­cism. He says he chafed at Malcolm’s “oven talk,” the anti-Semit­ic jokes he made over late-night voice calls. Malcolm’s favorite refrain was “muh 6 mil­lion,” a mock­ing ref­er­ence to the vic­tims of the Holo­caust. “It was at a point in the inter­net where it’s like, OK, does he mean it?” Fer­gu­son recalls. “He can’t mean it, right? Like, he’d be crazy.” (Mal­colm says it was “a lit­tle bit of typ­i­cal trolling, noth­ing too seri­ous.”)

    In 2014, accord­ing to Fer­gu­son, Mal­colm watched HBO’s Rome, which depicts the Roman Republic’s vio­lent (and appar­ent­ly very raunchy) trans­for­ma­tion into an empire. Inspired, he told Fer­gu­son they would be swap­ping their uni­forms for togas. Togeth­er, they forged Malcolm’s proud­est achieve­ment with­in ­Roblox—a group called the Sen­ate and Peo­ple of Rome. The name con­jured high-mind­ed ideals of rep­re­sen­ta­tive democ­ra­cy, but this was a true fas­cist state, com­plete with shock troops, ­slav­ery, and degen­er­a­cy laws. Mal­colm took the title ­Your­Caesar. In 2015, at the height of the group’s pop­u­lar­i­ty, he and Fer­gu­son claim, they and their red-pilled enforcers held sway over some 20,000 play­ers.

    ...

    Fer­gu­son, whose title was aedile, was in charge of the mar­kets and the slaves. “They’re not tech­ni­cal­ly slaves,” he explained. “They’re, in a sense, sub­mit­ting their free will to par­tic­i­pate in a sys­tem where they’re told every­thing to do.” (W, A, S, D.) Slaves could earn their cit­i­zen­ship over time, either through ser­vice or by sign­ing up to be glad­i­a­tors. When a Roblox employ­ee vis­it­ed the group once, he says, Fer­gu­son helped stage a bat­tle between two slaves in the amphithe­ater.

    ...

    Anoth­er of Malcolm’s for­mer fol­low­ers, a play­er I’ll call Chip, joined when he was 14. He says he liked the struc­tured social inter­ac­tions, the def­i­nite ranks, how know­able it all was. “I’ve always been the kind of gamer who prefers a seri­ous envi­ron­ment,” he says. As a mid­dle school­er in Texas, he felt like a com­put­er miss­ing part of its code—never quite sure “how to be nor­mal, how to inter­act with peo­ple, how to not be weird.”

    Parthi­an soci­ety was a prod­uct of Malcolm’s increas­ing­ly big­ot­ed pol­i­tics and his fierce need for con­trol, three for­mer mem­bers say. The outpost’s laws clas­si­fied sup­port for race-mix­ing, fem­i­nism, and gay peo­ple as “degen­er­a­cy.” They also required one play­er in the group, who is Jew­ish in real life, to wear “the Judea tunic or be arrest­ed on sight.” Inside Parthia, vig­iles patrolled the streets. We’d be stopped, Fer­gu­son said, for hav­ing the wrong skin tone. (My avatar’s skin was olive.) The play­ers vot­ed over­whelm­ing­ly to allow Mal­colm to exe­cute whomev­er he want­ed.

    ...

    One of the most exclu­sive cliques in Parthia was the Prae­to­ri­an Guard, Malcolm’s per­son­al army. Accord­ing to sev­er­al for­mer mem­bers, he some­times asked high-rank­ing mem­bers to read SS man­u­als and lis­ten to a far-right pod­cast about a school shoot­er. (“Sim­ple friend­ly ban­ter among friends,” Mal­colm says.) Chip start­ed an Ein­satz­grup­pen divi­sion, a ref­er­ence to the Nazis’ mobile death squads—partly because he thought it would get laughs, he says, and part­ly to please the cae­sar. In one case, memo­ri­al­ized on YouTube, Malcolm’s hench­men exe­cut­ed some­one for say­ing they didn’t “care about” the architect’s girl­friend, Cleopa­tra. Chip still thinks that, for a lot of peo­ple, fas­cism start­ed as a joke. “Until one day it’s not iron­ic to them,” he says. “One day they are argu­ing and ful­ly believe what they’re say­ing.”

    When it comes to Malcolm’s fas­cist lean­ings, Chip says, “On the stand, under oath, I would say yes, I believe he actu­al­ly thought these things.” Mal­colm, who says he is “just a lib­er­tar­i­an on the books,” dis­agrees. “It’s always been just trolling or role-­play­ing,” he says. “I’m just a his­to­ry buff. I don’t care for the appli­ca­tion of any of it in a real-world set­ting.”

    Chip and Fer­gu­son esti­mate that a third of the 200 play­ers who ran the Sen­ate and Peo­ple of Rome—most of them young adults—were IRL fas­cists. Enforc­ing the group’s dra­con­ian rules was “a game-play func­tion to them,” Fer­gu­son says. In oth­er words, they enjoyed it.
    ...

    In a tes­ta­ment to poten­cy of inter­net in gen­er­al as a rad­i­cal­iza­tion tool, we find how Mal­com was report­ed­ly orig­i­nal­ly rad­i­cal­ized on 4Chan, the same forum his rad­i­cal­ized Roblox play­ers end­ed up after the fall of Parthia. And on 4Chan’s /pol/ forum, we can find ref­er­ences to new­er Roblox sim­u­la­tions of life under fas­cism. This is still hap­pen­ing:

    ...
    Fer­gu­son says that Malcolm’s inter­est in Nazism began with his dis­cov­ery of the edgelord mes­sag­ing board 4chan. From there, he start­ed fix­at­ing on anti-­Se­mit­ic memes and inver­sions of his­to­ry. He built a Ger­man vil­lage where they could host reenactments—capture the flag, but with guns and SS uni­forms. Malcolm’s title would be Führer.

    ...

    The Sen­ate and Peo­ple of Rome fell in 2015. It wasn’t sacked by Lego-man Visig­oths or brought down by the par­a­sitic forces of degen­er­a­cy. What hap­pened was that Parthia’s archi­tect fell in love with Cleopa­tra, whom he mar­ried in-game and gave his login cre­den­tials. But Cleopa­tra turned out to be a cat­fish, and the dude behind the account leaked Parthia’s source code. Any­one could copy Malcolm’s empire and rule over it them­selves. The increas­ing­ly para­noid cae­sar began exil­ing play­ers. He tried to forge a new fas­cist dystopia, but the attempt fiz­zled. Rome was dead. By 2016, he and Fer­gu­son had stopped spend­ing time in the same groups.

    A year after that, though, 4chan users on the infa­mous /pol/ board would rem­i­nisce about the Sen­ate and Peo­ple of Rome in its heydey. /Pol/, short for “polit­i­cal­ly incor­rect,” is infa­mous specif­i­cal­ly for hate speech and polit­i­cal trolling, and as an engine of extrem­ism. One per­son wrote that most of the high-rank­ing mem­bers of Parthia were “/pol/tards”—frequent com­menters on the board. User after user thanked Mal­colm for red-pilling them. One said that after “sim­u­lat­ing life under Fas­cism” as a 14-year-old, he had since become even “more sup­port­ive” of it. (Mal­colm says that his “cult of per­son­al­i­ty is strict­ly built off of trolls.”)

    After the Unite the Right ral­ly in Char­lottesville, Vir­ginia, in 2017, the left-wing activist col­lec­tive Uni­corn Riot obtained hun­dreds of thou­sands of mes­sages from white suprema­cist Dis­cord servers. They sug­gest­ed that com­mu­ni­ties like Parthia exist­ed else­where in Roblox. In a /pol/ gam­ing serv­er, a user named Lazia Cus wel­comed new arrivals. “Cur­rent­ly,” they wrote, “we have start­ed a ‘Red­pill’ the Youth project which is going on in ‘Roblox.’ We’ve cre­at­ed a clan in which we will oper­ate Raids/Defences and expand on this project into oth­er plat­forms.” (The clan was a “futur­is­tic Roman legion,” though not nec­es­sar­i­ly mod­eled after Malcolm’s Rome or one of its many off­shoots.)
    ...

    Keep in mind that Roblox is still, at the end of the day, a very prim­i­tive sim­u­la­tion envi­ron­ment. It’s pow­er­ful, but still just Lego-like worlds. And that means these fas­cist sim­u­la­tions are still just like a vague abstrac­tion of what a fas­cist world might be like. Future gen­er­a­tions of sim­u­la­tion tech­nol­o­gy isn’t going to be lim­it­ed. That’s part of the sig­nif­i­cance of this sto­ry. It’s not just the sto­ry about how Roblox was suc­cess­ful­ly turned into a fas­cism indoc­tri­na­tion plat­form. It’s also a warn­ing about how seduc­tive these sim­u­la­tion plat­forms are going to be when the sim­u­la­tion is more than just fas­cist Legos.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | June 12, 2021, 4:01 pm
  11. It’s had all the now-stan­dard hall­marks of an “accel­er­a­tionist” pub­lic slaugh­ter. With one notable excep­tion: the Nazi gun­man has a His­pan­ic name. That’s the nag­ging detail that is already serv­ing as a trolling excuse for fig­ures like Mar­jorie Tay­lor Greene to declare that only “dumb white peo­ple” could believe that a non-white per­son would car­ry out that attack in the name of white suprema­cy. Nev­er mind the attack­er’s Nazi tat­toos. Or the “Right Wing Death Squad” (RWDS) patch on his out­fit. A man named Mauri­cio Gar­cia sim­ply could­n’t be a white suprema­cist Nazi mur­der­er in MTG’s mind. Or at least that’s the troll­ish response she’s decid­ed to go with. Maybe she believes it, maybe not. That’s kind of beside the point for trolls. But giv­en that MTG’s ‘no his­pan­ic Nazis’ meme seems to have already per­me­at­ed the right-wing nar­ra­tives around this attack, here’s a set of arti­cles that’s a reminder that two of the biggest white suprema­cist groups in con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­ca are lead by men with His­pan­ic names: Nick Fuentes of the pro-Trump Amer­i­ca First move­ment and Enrique Tar­rio of the Proud Boys.

    Yes, two of Amer­i­ca’s lead­ing white nation­al­ist lead­ers are His­pan­ic. It’s a reflec­tion of the neb­u­lous nature of ‘race’ and what defines ‘white­ness’. But also a reflec­tion of the demo­graph­ic changes in the mod­ern US. There are sim­ply A LOT of His­pan­ics who find white nation­al­ist memes appeal­ing, espe­cial­ly if adopt­ing them acts as a kind of ‘white­ness’ ID card. In oth­er words, while His­pan­ic neo-Nazis like Gar­cia might be atyp­i­cal, we should expect them to be increas­ing­ly typ­i­cal as white nation­al­ism con­tin­ues to be cement itself as the default con­ser­v­a­tive ide­ol­o­gy in the US. Nazi His­pan­ics are real, whether non-His­pan­ic white nation­al­ists like MTG like it or not:

    Asso­ci­at­ed Press

    Posts show mall gun­man researched attack, had Nazi tat­toos

    By JAKE BLEIBERG, GENE JOHNSON and LOLITA C. BALDOR
    Mon­day May 8, 2023 20:15:31 CST

    DALLAS (AP) — The man accused of killing eight peo­ple and wound­ing sev­er­al oth­ers in a mass shoot­ing at a sub­ur­ban Dal­las shop­ping mall researched when it was busiest and post­ed pho­tos on social media in mid-April of a store near where he ulti­mate­ly start­ed his attack.

    The posts by Mauri­cio Gar­cia on a Russ­ian social net­work­ing site sug­gest the 33-year-old had been plan­ning the attack for weeks before he stepped out of a sil­ver sedan and opened fire Sat­ur­day. Among the dead were two ele­men­tary school-age sis­ters, a cou­ple and their 3‑year-old son, and a secu­ri­ty guard.

    Garcia’s online activ­i­ty also betrayed a fas­ci­na­tion with white suprema­cy and mass shoot­ings, which he described as sport. Pho­tos he post­ed showed large Nazi tat­toos on his arm and tor­so, includ­ing a swasti­ka and the SS light­ning bolt logo of Hitler’s para­mil­i­tary forces.

    Oth­er posts indi­cat­ed Gar­cia had researched when the Allen Pre­mi­um Out­lets in Allen, one of the Dallas-area’s most diverse sub­urbs, would be the busiest — Sat­ur­day after­noons, the time he car­ried out the mas­sacre, which end­ed when police shot and killed him.

    The online activ­i­ty con­tributed to an emerg­ing pic­ture of the gun­man Mon­day. He was dis­charged from the Army in 2008 because of men­tal health issues and appar­ent­ly had been work­ing as a secu­ri­ty guard, accord­ing to neigh­bors and an Army offi­cial.

    Aric Tol­er, direc­tor of train­ing and research at the inter­na­tion­al research col­lec­tive bellingcat.com, said he iden­ti­fied Garcia’s pro­file on the site OK.RU by search­ing for active accounts with his birth­date locat­ed in the U.S. The AP inde­pen­dent­ly ver­i­fied the account, which also fea­tured an image of a traf­fic tick­et with Garcia’s name and birth­date as well as paper­work from a motel where he stayed before the shoot­ing.

    Fed­er­al agents inves­ti­gat­ing what moti­vat­ed the shoot­ing have also reviewed the online posts, accord­ing to a fed­er­al law enforce­ment offi­cial who could not dis­cuss details of the inves­ti­ga­tion pub­licly and spoke to the AP on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty.

    The offi­cial also said Gar­cia had a patch on his chest when police killed him that read “RWDS,” an acronym for the phrase “Right Wing Death Squad,” pop­u­lar among right-wing extrem­ists and white suprema­cy groups.

    Inves­ti­ga­tors have also inter­viewed fam­i­ly mem­bers and asso­ciates of Gar­cia to ask about his ide­o­log­i­cal beliefs and are exam­in­ing his finan­cial records and oth­er elec­tron­ic media, the offi­cial said.

    Gar­cia joined the Army in 2008 but was ter­mi­nat­ed three months lat­er with­out com­plet­ing his ini­tial train­ing, U.S. Army spokes­woman Heather J. Hagan said.

    Accord­ing to an Army offi­cial who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to dis­cuss per­son­nel issues, he was kicked out due to men­tal health issues.

    Gar­cia received an “unchar­ac­ter­ized” dis­charge, which is com­mon for recruits who don’t make it through train­ing or the first 180 days, accord­ing to a defense offi­cial who also spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to dis­cuss per­son­nel issues. That type of dis­charge — which is not dis­hon­or­able — would not set off red flags or require any reports to law enforce­ment.

    On the Dal­las block where Gar­cia lived at a fam­i­ly home until recent­ly, neigh­bors said they thought he worked as a secu­ri­ty guard but they weren’t sure where. The com­pa­ny that man­ages the mall where the attack hap­pened didn’t imme­di­ate­ly reply to mes­sages seek­ing fur­ther infor­ma­tion.

    ...

    The shoot­ing was the lat­est attack to con­tribute to the unprece­dent­ed pace of mass killings this year in the U.S. Just over a week before, five peo­ple were fatal­ly shot in Cleve­land, Texas, after a neigh­bor asked a man to stop fir­ing his weapon while a baby slept, author­i­ties said.

    ...

    Allen, which is home to about 105,000 peo­ple, is among the Dal­las-Fort Worth area’s diverse sub­urbs. The area saw the largest Asian Amer­i­can growth rate of any major U.S. metro area, accord­ing to U.S. Cen­sus fig­ures. Those sta­tis­tics show that Allen’s pop­u­la­tion is about 19% Asian, 10% Black and 11% His­pan­ic.

    Allen also is con­nect­ed to anoth­er of Texas’ recent mass shoot­ings. Patrick Cru­sius lived there in 2019 before he post­ed a racist screed online warn­ing of a “His­pan­ic inva­sion” and drove to El Paso, where he opened fire at a Wal­mart, killing 23. Cru­sius, 24, plead­ed guilty to fed­er­al hate crime and weapons charges in Feb­ru­ary.

    ———–

    “Posts show mall gun­man researched attack, had Nazi tat­toos” By JAKE BLEIBERG, GENE JOHNSON and LOLITA C. BALDOR; Asso­ci­at­ed Press; 05/08/2023

    “Garcia’s online activ­i­ty also betrayed a fas­ci­na­tion with white suprema­cy and mass shoot­ings, which he described as sport. Pho­tos he post­ed showed large Nazi tat­toos on his arm and tor­so, includ­ing a swasti­ka and the SS light­ning bolt logo of Hitler’s para­mil­i­tary forces.”

    The guy who shot up a mall in one of the most diverse sub­urbs of Dal­las was­n’t hid­ing his Nazi sym­pa­thies. Imag­ine that! And if his tat­too weren’t clear enough, the “RWDW” patch was there to clar­i­fy:

    ...
    The offi­cial also said Gar­cia had a patch on his chest when police killed him that read “RWDS,” an acronym for the phrase “Right Wing Death Squad,” pop­u­lar among right-wing extrem­ists and white suprema­cy groups.

    Inves­ti­ga­tors have also inter­viewed fam­i­ly mem­bers and asso­ciates of Gar­cia to ask about his ide­o­log­i­cal beliefs and are exam­in­ing his finan­cial records and oth­er elec­tron­ic media, the offi­cial said.

    ...

    Allen, which is home to about 105,000 peo­ple, is among the Dal­las-Fort Worth area’s diverse sub­urbs. The area saw the largest Asian Amer­i­can growth rate of any major U.S. metro area, accord­ing to U.S. Cen­sus fig­ures. Those sta­tis­tics show that Allen’s pop­u­la­tion is about 19% Asian, 10% Black and 11% His­pan­ic.
    ...

    It has all the clas­sic hall­marks of an “accel­er­a­tionist” Atom­waf­fen-style inspired attack on a minor­i­ty com­mu­ni­ty, much like Patrick Cru­sius’s 2019 attack on an El Paso mall. But there one twist that appears to have fig­ures like Mar­jorie Tay­lor Greene already denounc­ing those who view this is a white suprema­cist attack as “dumb white peo­ple”: the shoot­er had a His­pan­ic name. So giv­en all the appar­ent con­fu­sion elicit­ed by some­one simul­ta­ne­ous­ly hold­ing white suprema­cist views while being His­pan­ic, here’s a reminder that two of the lead­ing far right fig­ures in the US today asso­ci­at­ed with white nation­al­ist move­ments are also His­pan­ic: Nick Fuentes and Enrique Tar­rio:

    The Wash­ing­ton Post

    Why non-White peo­ple might advo­cate white suprema­cy

    Analy­sis by Philip Bump
    Nation­al colum­nist
    May 8, 2023 at 2:48 p.m. EDT

    Police have iden­ti­fied the man who shot and killed at least eight peo­ple at an out­let mall in Allen, Tex., over the week­end as 33-year-old Mauri­cio Gar­cia.

    Gar­cia was killed at the scene, mean­ing that efforts to deter­mine the moti­va­tion for his actions are slow­er to emerge. On Sun­day, The Wash­ing­ton Post report­ed that, among oth­er pos­si­ble moti­va­tions, author­i­ties were exam­in­ing whether Gar­cia was moti­vat­ed by white-suprema­cist or neo-Nazi beliefs. Social media posts linked to Gar­cia rein­force this idea.

    For many peo­ple, this idea trig­gered an imme­di­ate neg­a­tive reac­tion: How could some­one with the name “Mauri­cio Gar­cia” — a His­pan­ic name — be a white suprema­cist? In some quar­ters, that The Post was offer­ing such a pos­si­bil­i­ty was some­how demon­stra­tive of this newspaper’s pur­port­ed inter­est in ele­vat­ing unsup­port­ed racial claims.

    In real­i­ty, the idea that some­one named Gar­cia might be sym­pa­thet­ic to white-suprema­cist views is unex­pect­ed but not inex­plic­a­ble. The Post has pre­vi­ous­ly explored the ways in which non-White Amer­i­cans at times ally with extrem­ists who would seem to be their nat­ur­al ene­mies. But the point can be made suc­cinct­ly by con­sid­er­ing two things: “White” is not as hard and fast a racial cat­e­go­ry as many assume, and “white suprema­cy” is about pow­er as much as it is about race.

    ‘White’ is often mal­leable

    Par­tic­u­lar­ly for most White peo­ple, “White” isn’t com­pli­cat­ed. The racial iden­ti­ty is a mix of skin col­or and her­itage and seems con­crete. For most White peo­ple, in fact, “being white is hav­ing the choice of attend­ing to or ignor­ing one’s own white­ness,” as Robert W. Ter­ry wrote in 1981. “To be white in Amer­i­ca is not to have to think about it.”

    Terry’s quote was a use­ful frame­work as I was explor­ing America’s racial his­to­ry and trends for my recent book “The After­math.” For those in the cat­e­go­ry of “White” as it is cur­rent­ly under­stood, the idea that “White” is hazi­ly bound­ed seems ridicu­lous or oppor­tunis­tic.

    But there’s lots of evi­dence to the con­trary. For exam­ple, the Cen­sus Bureau made a sim­ple data-col­lec­tion change between its 2010 and 2020 sur­veys, increas­ing the amount of vol­un­teered racial infor­ma­tion it processed from respon­dents. That helped con­tribute to a huge surge in the num­ber of Amer­i­cans who iden­ti­fy as “White and some oth­er race” — in part because the coun­try has got­ten more diverse but in part sim­ply because we’re doing a bet­ter job record­ing this data.

    It’s use­ful to con­sid­er the his­to­ry of being White in Amer­i­ca. A cen­tu­ry ago, immi­grants from Italy and Greece were con­sid­ered infe­ri­or to the major­i­ty-White pop­u­la­tion in the Unit­ed States, even if they had white skin. As his­to­ri­an David Roedi­ger wrote in his book “Col­ored White”: “When Greeks suf­fered as vic­tims of an Oma­ha ‘race’ riot in 1909, and when eleven Ital­ians died at the hands of lynch­ers in Louisiana in 1891, their less-than-white racial sta­tus mat­tered along­side their nation­al­i­ties.”

    His­pan­ic Amer­i­cans often find them­selves at the blur­ry edges of White­ness. How His­pan­ic Amer­i­cans are con­sid­ered by oth­ers is often cen­tered on skin col­or but also con­text: where and how that con­sid­er­a­tion is tak­ing place. But self-iden­ti­fi­ca­tion is also com­plex. Pew Research Cen­ter found that His­pan­ic iden­ti­ty fades over time in the Unit­ed States, for exam­ple.

    In writ­ing my book, I also came across a 2008 paper from Tanya Golash-Boza and William Dar­i­ty that point­ed to a use­ful exper­i­ment under­tak­en in 1989. His­pan­ic par­tic­i­pants in the sur­vey were asked to iden­ti­fy their race: White, Black or some­thing else. At the same time, the per­son con­duct­ing the sur­vey record­ed their own obser­va­tions about the respon­dents’ skin col­or.

    The result, as seen in this chart from the book, was that even among the dark­est-skinned respon­dents, iden­ti­fi­ca­tion as “White” was more com­mon than iden­ti­fi­ca­tion as “Black.”

    There are a lot of things that might explain such respons­es, but the broad­er point is clear: Racial iden­ti­ty and expect­ed race often don’t align. Anoth­er exper­i­ment con­duct­ed by the Cen­sus Bureau found that neigh­bors of mixed-race Amer­i­cans were often more like­ly to iden­ti­fy those Amer­i­cans as Black or His­pan­ic than did the mixed-race peo­ple them­selves.

    All of this nuance about race, though, assumes that the “white suprema­cism” is per­haps exclu­sive­ly about racial bound­aries. But it often isn’t.

    White suprema­cy is also about pow­er

    One of the most promi­nent adher­ents of white suprema­cy in the Unit­ed States at the moment is the right-wing agi­ta­tor Nick Fuentes. For­mer pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump earned days of neg­a­tive press after Fuentes joined him and the musi­cian Ye for din­ner at Mar-a-Lago.. The last name “Fuentes” is His­pan­ic, as is Fuentes’s fam­i­ly back­ground.

    Or con­sid­er the Proud Boys, head­ed by Enrique Tar­rio, son of immi­grants from Cuba. The group insists that its activism is not about race, but, instead, about “West­ern chau­vin­ism.” That’s spin: If you are biased in favor of “the West,” whom are you biased against? When for­mer Iowa con­gress­man Steve King ® said he was defend­ing West­ern civ­i­liza­tion, his expla­na­tion was use­ful­ly con­tex­tu­al­ized as being a short­hand for white­ness.

    What Fuentes and Tar­rio advo­cate is not that His­pan­ics should be sub­ju­gat­ed to White Amer­i­cans. Instead, it’s often about bol­ster­ing struc­tures of pow­er that large­ly ben­e­fit Whites. It’s also about dom­i­nance, of course, often man­i­fest­ed as anti­semitism (as Fuentes embraces) or hos­til­i­ty to immi­gra­tion. White suprema­cy is often root­ed in per­son­al inse­cu­ri­ty.

    ...

    We don’t yet know specif­i­cal­ly what drove Gar­cia to gun down shop­pers in Texas on Sat­ur­day. But we do know that it is not at all impos­si­ble for some­one with a His­pan­ic name to embrace white-suprema­cist rhetoric.

    ————

    “Why non-White peo­ple might advo­cate white suprema­cy” by Philip Bump; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 05/08/2023

    “In real­i­ty, the idea that some­one named Gar­cia might be sym­pa­thet­ic to white-suprema­cist views is unex­pect­ed but not inex­plic­a­ble. The Post has pre­vi­ous­ly explored the ways in which non-White Amer­i­cans at times ally with extrem­ists who would seem to be their nat­ur­al ene­mies. But the point can be made suc­cinct­ly by con­sid­er­ing two things: “White” is not as hard and fast a racial cat­e­go­ry as many assume, and “white suprema­cy” is about pow­er as much as it is about race.

    White suprema­cy isn’t exclu­sive­ly for peo­ple with Anglo Sax­on names. It’s a lot more flu­id then that, hence fig­ures like Nick Fuentes and Enrique Tar­rio and the promi­nent lead­er­ship roles they’ve played:

    ...
    One of the most promi­nent adher­ents of white suprema­cy in the Unit­ed States at the moment is the right-wing agi­ta­tor Nick Fuentes. For­mer pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump earned days of neg­a­tive press after Fuentes joined him and the musi­cian Ye for din­ner at Mar-a-Lago.. The last name “Fuentes” is His­pan­ic, as is Fuentes’s fam­i­ly back­ground.

    Or con­sid­er the Proud Boys, head­ed by Enrique Tar­rio, son of immi­grants from Cuba. The group insists that its activism is not about race, but, instead, about “West­ern chau­vin­ism.” That’s spin: If you are biased in favor of “the West,” whom are you biased against? When for­mer Iowa con­gress­man Steve King ® said he was defend­ing West­ern civ­i­liza­tion, his expla­na­tion was use­ful­ly con­tex­tu­al­ized as being a short­hand for white­ness.

    What Fuentes and Tar­rio advo­cate is not that His­pan­ics should be sub­ju­gat­ed to White Amer­i­cans. Instead, it’s often about bol­ster­ing struc­tures of pow­er that large­ly ben­e­fit Whites. It’s also about dom­i­nance, of course, often man­i­fest­ed as anti­semitism (as Fuentes embraces) or hos­til­i­ty to immi­gra­tion. White suprema­cy is often root­ed in per­son­al inse­cu­ri­ty.
    ...

    And Fuentes and Tar­rio aren’t sim­ply lead­ers of their respec­tive white nation­al­ist groups. They are at this point part and par­cel of the polit­i­cal ecosys­tem around the con­tem­po­rary GOP, in both cas­es after play­ing lead­ing roles in the lead up to the Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol insur­rec­tion. As we ase, Nick Fuentes was lit­er­al­ly invit­ed to dine with Trump at Mar-a-Lago as part of his work on Kanye West­’s 2024 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign. And as the fol­low­ing arti­cle describes, Proud Boys leader Enrique Tar­rio has more or less infused his orga­ni­za­tion into the Flori­da GOP since Jan 6:

    Key Bis­cayne Inde­pen­dent

    Tar­rio, Miami’s Proud Boy, nor­mal­ized white suprema­cist group with­in coun­ty GOP

    By John Pacen­ti
    May 8, 2023

    For­mer Proud Boy chair­man Enrique Tar­rio, con­vict­ed of sedi­tion last week for the Jan. 6 Capi­tol insur­rec­tion, left his mark local­ly and nation­al­ly, main­stream­ing the white suprema­cist group with­in the Repub­li­can Par­ty.

    Proud Boys occu­pied five seats on the Mia­mi-Dade County’s GOP’s 2021–2022 exec­u­tive com­mit­tee. Fol­low­ing the Jan. 6 riots, Tar­rio was invit­ed to speak to the Boca Raton Region­al Repub­li­can Club.

    After his con­vic­tion, social media was flood­ed with pre­vi­ous pho­tos of Tar­rio with nation­al GOP lead­ers: Don­ald J. Trump Jr.; Sarah Huck­abee Sanders, who is now gov­er­nor of Arkansas; Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas; and Sen. Rick Scott of Flori­da.

    Tar­rio inte­grat­ed the Proud Boys agen­da with Chris­t­ian nation­al­ists that now occu­py posi­tions on school boards, coun­ty com­mis­sions, the state Leg­is­la­ture and arguably the Flori­da governor’s man­sion, activists who have inves­ti­gat­ed the Proud Boys told The Key Bis­cayne Inde­pen­dent.

    Both groups oppose crit­i­cal race the­o­ry, abor­tion access for women, LGBTQ rights, restric­tion of assault weapons and any­thing they see that resem­bles “woke.”

    “The prob­lem is that they are tol­er­at­ed with­in the Mia­mi-Dade Repub­li­can Par­ty and with­in the Repub­li­can Par­ty of Flori­da. They are allowed at their events,” said Thomas Kennedy, a Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Com­mit­tee mem­ber and activist.

    Key Bis­cayne is not immune.

    For­mer Gen. Michael Fly­nn, a white Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist and QAnon con­spir­a­to­ri­al­ist who served in the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, has embraced the Proud Boys. Dur­ing Key Biscayne’s last elec­tion, a far-right group tied to Fly­nn tar­get­ed Vil­lage coun­cil can­di­date Oscar Sardiñas.

    Before that, fol­low­ing a Vil­lage Coun­cil meet­ing in July 2021, coun­cil mem­bers asked a police pres­ence be added to future meet­ings after vit­ri­olic pub­lic com­ment – includ­ing one speak­er who derid­ed the “deep state” and expressed sym­pa­thy with those arrest­ed for the Jan. 6 riot.

    Across the bridge in Mia­mi, though, Tarrio’s name became tar­nished when it was revealed he worked as a fed­er­al infor­mant before he came to fame, rat­ting out fel­low pet­ty crim­i­nals. The Mia­mi Proud Boys split into fac­tions, named “Vice City” and “Vil­lain City.”

    “Although he is some­what of a retard, we don’t feel that this type of pun­ish­ment is war­rant­ed for what he did,” Vice City tweet­ed after the con­vic­tion. “This coun­try is lost,” Vil­lian City respond­ed.

    Andy Camp­bell, a senior edi­tor at Huff­in­g­ton Post, wrote “We are Proud Boys: How a Right-wing Street Gang Ush­ered in a New Era of Amer­i­can Extrem­ism.”

    In an inter­view four months ago with The Major­i­ty Report, Camp­bell said it was Tar­rio who after the dead­ly Unite the Right ral­ly in Char­lottesville, Va., decid­ed to align with like-mind­ed forces in the GOP.

    “Through Enrique, they did absolute­ly that and now they are cel­e­brat­ed in their polit­i­cal vio­lence,” he said. “This has been a real evo­lu­tion.”

    ...

    Tar­rio wasn’t there, though. He had been arrest­ed two days pri­or for alleged­ly burn­ing a Black Lives Mat­ter ban­ner tak­en from a Black church dur­ing anoth­er protest. He was sen­tenced to five months for that crime and then was indict­ed – and now con­vict­ed – of sedi­tion for his role in plan­ning the Jan. 6 riot.

    Defend­ers of Tar­rio often say he can’t be a white nation­al­ist because he is of Cuban descent. But the rise of white nation­al­ism among His­pan­ics has been well doc­u­ment­ed. Mauri­cio Gar­cia, who police say killed eight – includ­ing chil­dren – at a Texas shop­ping mall on Sat­ur­day was also His­pan­ic and wore a RWDS patch or Right Wing Death Squad – the same patch worn by Proud Boys and sold by the group.

    Mia­mi Against Fas­cism, an activist group, spoke to the Key Bis­cayne Inde­pen­dent about Tar­rio. The spokesman asked not to be iden­ti­fied out of fear of vio­lent retal­i­a­tion against him for the work of the orga­ni­za­tion. The New York Times cred­it­ed Mia­mi Against Fas­cism with uncov­er­ing how The Proud Boys infil­trat­ed the Mia­mi-Dade Repub­li­can Par­ty in a sto­ry last Octo­ber.

    “In their rhetoric, they align them­selves with the grow­ing idea of Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism,” the spokesman said. “And all of that has kind of brought togeth­er many dif­fer­ent forces who pre­vi­ous­ly were very dif­fer­ent polit­i­cal­ly.”

    When a trio of “anti-woke” GOP can­di­dates endorsed by Gov. Ron DeSan­tis and the far-right group Moms for Lib­er­ty won seats on the Sara­so­ta school board; they cel­e­brat­ed with mem­bers of the Proud Boys.

    Broward Coun­ty School Board mem­ber Bren­da Fam spoke at a anti-LGBTQ ral­ly, where uni­formed mem­bers of the Proud Boys were in atten­dance.

    The Mia­mi Against Fas­cism spokesman said that while it appears the local chap­ters of the Proud Boys are some­what in dis­ar­ray, he expects the group as a whole to remain active in Repub­li­can cir­cles.

    “Will the local GOP reject their role in some kind of defin­i­tive way? There is no indi­ca­tion that they will,” he said.

    ————

    “Tar­rio, Miami’s Proud Boy, nor­mal­ized white suprema­cist group with­in coun­ty GOP” By John Pacen­ti; Key Bis­cayne Inde­pen­dent; 05/08/2023

    “Tar­rio inte­grat­ed the Proud Boys agen­da with Chris­t­ian nation­al­ists that now occu­py posi­tions on school boards, coun­ty com­mis­sions, the state Leg­is­la­ture and arguably the Flori­da governor’s man­sion, activists who have inves­ti­gat­ed the Proud Boys told The Key Bis­cayne Inde­pen­dent.”

    The Proud Boys may not have suc­ceed­ed in keep­ing Trump in the White House, but that clear­ly has­n’t stopped them from mak­ing fur­ther inroads into the GOP main­stream. A main­stream­ing process that appears to have accel­er­at­ed since Jan 6, with Tar­rio being invit­ed to speak to the Boca Raton Region­al Repub­li­can Club. We even find the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy (CNP)‘s Moms for Lib­er­ty work­ing direct­ly with the Proud Boys these days. Tar­rio isn’t just a Cuban Amer­i­can leader of a white nation­al­ist group. He’s the Cuban Amer­i­can leader of a main­stream white nation­al­ist group with major polit­i­cal clout:

    ...
    Proud Boys occu­pied five seats on the Mia­mi-Dade County’s GOP’s 2021–2022 exec­u­tive com­mit­tee. Fol­low­ing the Jan. 6 riots, Tar­rio was invit­ed to speak to the Boca Raton Region­al Repub­li­can Club.

    After his con­vic­tion, social media was flood­ed with pre­vi­ous pho­tos of Tar­rio with nation­al GOP lead­ers: Don­ald J. Trump Jr.; Sarah Huck­abee Sanders, who is now gov­er­nor of Arkansas; Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas; and Sen. Rick Scott of Flori­da.

    ...

    Both groups oppose crit­i­cal race the­o­ry, abor­tion access for women, LGBTQ rights, restric­tion of assault weapons and any­thing they see that resem­bles “woke.”

    “The prob­lem is that they are tol­er­at­ed with­in the Mia­mi-Dade Repub­li­can Par­ty and with­in the Repub­li­can Par­ty of Flori­da. They are allowed at their events,” said Thomas Kennedy, a Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Com­mit­tee mem­ber and activist.

    Key Bis­cayne is not immune.

    ...

    Mia­mi Against Fas­cism, an activist group, spoke to the Key Bis­cayne Inde­pen­dent about Tar­rio. The spokesman asked not to be iden­ti­fied out of fear of vio­lent retal­i­a­tion against him for the work of the orga­ni­za­tion. The New York Times cred­it­ed Mia­mi Against Fas­cism with uncov­er­ing how The Proud Boys infil­trat­ed the Mia­mi-Dade Repub­li­can Par­ty in a sto­ry last Octo­ber.

    “In their rhetoric, they align them­selves with the grow­ing idea of Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism,” the spokesman said. “And all of that has kind of brought togeth­er many dif­fer­ent forces who pre­vi­ous­ly were very dif­fer­ent polit­i­cal­ly.”

    When a trio of “anti-woke” GOP can­di­dates endorsed by Gov. Ron DeSan­tis and the far-right group Moms for Lib­er­ty won seats on the Sara­so­ta school board; they cel­e­brat­ed with mem­bers of the Proud Boys.

    Broward Coun­ty School Board mem­ber Bren­da Fam spoke at a anti-LGBTQ ral­ly, where uni­formed mem­bers of the Proud Boys were in atten­dance.

    The Mia­mi Against Fas­cism spokesman said that while it appears the local chap­ters of the Proud Boys are some­what in dis­ar­ray, he expects the group as a whole to remain active in Repub­li­can cir­cles.

    “Will the local GOP reject their role in some kind of defin­i­tive way? There is no indi­ca­tion that they will,” he said.
    ...

    And what to we find as part of the Proud Boys cho­sen set of sym­bols? The same “RWDS” patch found on the body of Mauri­cio Gar­cia. You have to won­der if Tar­rio was a direct inspi­ra­tion at this point:

    ...
    Defend­ers of Tar­rio often say he can’t be a white nation­al­ist because he is of Cuban descent. But the rise of white nation­al­ism among His­pan­ics has been well doc­u­ment­ed. Mauri­cio Gar­cia, who police say killed eight – includ­ing chil­dren – at a Texas shop­ping mall on Sat­ur­day was also His­pan­ic and wore a RWDS patch or Right Wing Death Squad – the same patch worn by Proud Boys and sold by the group.
    ...

    We’ll see what addi­tion­al details inves­ti­ga­tors dis­cov­er in terms of the shooter’s motives. But he was­n’t exact­ly hid­ing them. The guy was on a sui­ci­dal racist ram­page. A ram­page dri­ven, in part, by a seething anger at non-whites but also dri­ven by an appar­ent self-iden­ti­ty as an aggriev­ed white man. A self-iden­ti­ty that Gar­cia did­n’t have to get val­i­dat­ed by his fel­low white nation­al­ists before head­ing off to slaugh­ter their shared per­ceived ene­mies.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | May 9, 2023, 4:50 pm

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