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

For The Record  

FTR #1011 Miscellaneous Articles and Updates

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

Intro­duc­tion: This broad­cast updates and high­lights pre­vi­ous top­ics of dis­cus­sion, focus­ing large­ly on online/Alt-Right/­Nazi fas­cism and some of the malev­o­lent com­mu­ni­ties that coa­lesce around var­i­ous ide­o­log­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tions of that phe­nom­e­non.

There has been lit­tle pub­lic recog­ni­tion that many of the mass shoot­ers whose activ­i­ties have dom­i­nat­ed much of the news cycle in recent years,have been immersed in one form or extrem­ist far right ide­ol­o­gy or anoth­er.

The release of ~1,200 pages of doc­u­ments relat­ed to the Las Vegas shoot­ing reveals that Stephen Pad­dock appears to have been “a sov­er­eign cit­i­zen.” . . . . In the doc­u­ments, those who encoun­tered gun­man Stephen Pad­dock say he expressed con­spir­a­to­r­i­al, anti-gov­ern­ment beliefs char­ac­ter­is­tic of the far right . . . . But tan­ta­liz­ing­ly, peo­ple who encoun­tered Pad­dock before his shoot­ing say that he expressed con­spir­a­to­r­i­al, anti-gov­ern­ment beliefs, which are char­ac­ter­is­tic of the far right. . . .”

Pad­dock­’s actions are not unex­pect­ed for some­one with his ide­o­log­i­cal mind­set: ” . . . . In sur­veys con­duct­ed in 2014 and 2015, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of US law-enforce­ment ranked the risk of ter­ror­ism from the sov­er­eign-cit­i­zen move­ment high­er than the risk from Islam­ic extrem­ism.”

Naz­i/alt-right cul­ture was a pri­ma­ry influ­ence on accused San­ta Fe (Texas) gun­man Dim­itrios Pagourtzis. ” . . . . 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. . . . 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. . . . .”

Ini­tial press reports about the San­ta Fe shoot­ing dis­cuss pos­si­ble accom­plices of Pagourtzis. Was he part of a group of some kind? “. . . . On Fri­day, author­i­ties intend­ed to ques­tion two oth­er peo­ple: One was at the scene and had “sus­pi­cious reac­tions,” accord­ing to the gov­er­nor, and anoth­er had drawn the scruti­ny of inves­ti­ga­tors. . . .”

Pagourtzis, as we saw above, had tak­en to wear­ing a trench coat, even in 90 degree weath­er. Press reports have described him as a “copy-cat” killer, hav­ing imi­tat­ed Dylan Kle­bold and Eric Har­ris of Columbine shoot­ing fame. (Pagourtzis was too young to have mem­o­ries of the inci­dent, though he may well have absorbed infor­ma­tion about the Columbine per­pe­tra­tors.)

The media have, for the most part, not men­tioned that Har­ris and Kle­bold were heav­i­ly influ­enced by Nazi cul­ture. . . . . Nine­teen days before they were to grad­u­ate, Har­ris and Kle­bold seemed insep­a­ra­ble and trou­ble­some. In Columbine’s hall­ways, they spoke bro­ken Ger­man and referred often to ‘4–20,’ Hitler’s birth­day and the day they chose for their assault. . . . Some Columbine stu­dents said the vio­lent side of Har­ris and Kle­bold became more obvi­ous in recent months. They became obses­sive­ly inter­est­ed in World War II, Nazi imagery, Adolf Hitler. John House, 17, a Columbine senior, told reporters that when he went bowl­ing with Kle­bold, ‘when he would do some­thing good, he would shout ‘Heil Hitler’ and throw up his hand. It just made every­one mad.’ . . . .”

In FTR #995, we exam­ined the Atom­waf­fen Neo-Nazi group. Atom­waf­fen mem­ber Andrew Oneschuk was about to join Ukraine’s neo-Nazi Azov Bat­tal­ion. ” . . . . . . . Andrew, who was one-eighth Ukrain­ian, took to the cause, chat­ting with fight­ers and their allies. He began for­mu­lat­ing a plan to join the Azov Bat­tal­ion, a noto­ri­ous­ly bru­tal band of inter­na­tion­al fight­ers help­ing in the resis­tance against the Rus­sians. . . . Andrew took it fur­ther, even­tu­al­ly adopt­ing the online han­dle “Borovikov,” after a famous Russ­ian neo-Nazi gang leader. That spring, he hung an SS flag in his bed­room as well as a giant swasti­ka. . . .”

Online net­work­ing between resent­ful, sex-deprived men who call them­selves “incels” (a con­trac­tion of  “invol­un­tary celi­bates”) over­lap Naz­i/Alt-Right ele­ments. The ide­o­log­i­cal col­li­sion of the online “incels” and the #MeToo move­ment may well gen­er­ate some tru­ly patho­log­i­cal vio­lence. . . . . The alt-right, right-wing pop­ulism, men’s rights groups and a renewed white suprema­cist move­ment have cap­i­tal­ized on many white men’s feel­ing of loss in recent years. The groups vary in how they diag­nose society’s ills and whom they blame, but they pro­vide a sense of mean­ing and place for their fol­low­ers. And as dif­fer­ent extrem­ist groups con­nect online, they draw on one another’s mem­ber­ship bases, tac­tics and world­views, allow­ing mem­ber­ship in one group to become a gate­way to oth­er extrem­ist ide­olo­gies as well. Today, for exam­ple, posts on Incel.me, an incel forum, debate join­ing forces with the alt-right and argue that Jews are to blame for incels’ oppres­sion. On one thread, users fan­ta­sized that if they were dic­ta­tors, they would not only cre­ate harems and enslave women, but also ‘gas the Jews.’ . . . . By divid­ing the world into us-ver­sus-them and describ­ing vast injus­tice at the hands of the sup­pos­ed­ly pow­er­ful, these groups, experts say, can prime adher­ents for vio­lence. . . .”

Incel cul­ture is metas­ta­siz­ing into “lone-wolf”/leaderless resis­tance ter­ror­ism. ” . . . . In 2014, a gam­ing award cer­e­mo­ny set to hon­or the fem­i­nist crit­ic Ani­ta Sar­keesian received a bomb threat; an anony­mous harass­er threat­ened to det­o­nate a device unless her award was rescind­ed. Before Milo Yiannopou­los was a well-known alt-right fig­ure, fem­i­nists knew him as one of the pri­ma­ry archi­tects of Gamer­gate, a move­ment of young men who harassed and threat­ened women in the videogam­ing indus­try. Two fans of Mr. Yiannopou­los were charged with shoot­ing a pro­test­er out­side of one of his speech­es. . . .”

Nazi killer Anders Breivik embod­ied the over­lap between Alt-Right white suprema­cy and insti­tu­tion­al­ized misog­y­ny: ” . . . . On July 22, Breivik slaugh­tered 77 of his coun­try­men, most of them teenagers, in Oslo and at a sum­mer camp on the island of Utøya, because he thought they or their par­ents were the kinds of ‘polit­i­cal­ly cor­rect’ lib­er­als who were enabling Mus­lim immi­gra­tion. But Breivik was almost as vol­u­ble on the sub­jects of fem­i­nism, the fam­i­ly, and fathers’ rights as he was on Islam. ‘The most direct threat to the fam­i­ly is ‘divorce on demand,’ ’ he wrote in the man­i­festo he post­ed just before he began his dead­ly spree. ‘The sys­tem must be reformed so that the father will be award­ed cus­tody rights by default.’ The manos­phere lit up. Said one approv­ing poster at The Spear­head, an online men’s rights mag­a­zine for the ‘defense of our­selves, our fam­i­lies and our fel­low men’: ‘What could be more ‘an eye for an eye’ than to kill the chil­dren of those who were so will­ing to destroy men’s fam­i­lies and destroy the home­land of men?’ . . . .”

The “psy­cho-polit­i­cal” polar­iza­tion of the #MeToo move­ment and the “incels” misog­y­nist com­mu­ni­ty holds dev­as­tat­ing poten­tial.

Pro­gram High­lights Include:

  • Jour­nal­ist Ronan Far­row’s author­ship of the New York­er arti­cle that took down Har­vey Wein­stein. (For more dis­cus­sion of the #MeToo Move­ment and weaponized fem­i­nism, see FTR #‘s 998, 999, 1000, 1001.)
  • Far­row’s State Depart­ment work sug­ges­tive of involve­ment with the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty.  “. . . .  Post-law school: Lands a job at the State Depart­ment, as a spe­cial advi­sor focus­ing on con­flict in Afghanistan and Pak­istan. . . .”
  • Far­row’s co-author­ship of the New York­er arti­cle that took down for­mer New York Attor­ney Gen­er­al Eric Schnei­der­man, a major Trump neme­sis, who was also crit­i­ciz­ing and inves­ti­gat­ing oth­er indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions asso­ci­at­ed with the Trump/GOP pow­er elite.  “. . . . Schnei­der­man had already been declared ‘the man the banks fear most’ by the lib­er­al mag­a­zine ‘The Amer­i­can Prospect.’ . . . . In the days since Novem­ber 9, Schnei­der­man fired off a let­ter warn­ing Trump not to drop White House sup­port of Obama’s Clean Pow­er Plan, intro­duced a bill in the state Leg­is­la­ture to give New York­ers cost-free con­tra­cep­tion if the Afford­able Care Act is dis­man­tled, threat­ened to sue after Trump froze EPA fund­ing of clean air and water pro­grams, and joined a law­suit that argues that Trump’s exec­u­tive order on immi­gra­tion is not just uncon­sti­tu­tion­al and un-Amer­i­can, but it brings pro­found harm to the res­i­dents of New York State. . . . He’s on the oppo­site side of the Clean Pow­er Plan fight from Okla­homa Attor­ney Gen­er­al Scott Pruitt, since named head of the EPA, and who Schnei­der­man labeled a ‘dan­ger­ous and unqual­i­fied choice.’ . . . . ”
  • Schnei­der­man was also inves­ti­gat­ing the pow­er­ful, well-con­nect­ed NXIVM cult, one of whose asso­ciates was Roger Stone, the long-time Trump/GOP dirty trick­ster who sig­naled the #MeToo take­down of Sen­a­tor Al Franken.

1a. There has been lit­tle pub­lic recog­ni­tion that many of the mass shoot­ers whose activ­i­ties have dom­i­nat­ed much of the news cycle in recent years,have been immersed in one form or extrem­ist far right ide­ol­o­gy or anoth­er.

The release of ~1,200 pages of doc­u­ments relat­ed to the Las Vegas shoot­ing reveals that Stephen Pad­dock appears to have been “a sov­er­eign cit­i­zen.”

“New Doc­u­ments Sug­gest Las Vegas Shoot­er Was Con­spir­a­cy The­o­rist – What We Know” by Jason Wil­son; The Guardian; 5/19/2018.

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

. . . . 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. . . . .

1b. Note that mem­bers of the sov­er­eign cit­i­zen move­ment are seen as domes­tic ter­ror­ists:

“Sov­er­eign Cit­i­zen Move­ment;” wikipedia.org

. . . . Many mem­bers of the sov­er­eign cit­i­zen move­ment believe that the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment is ille­git­i­mate.[11] JJ Mac­Nab, who writes for Forbes about anti-gov­ern­ment extrem­ism, has described the sov­er­eign-cit­i­zen move­ment as con­sist­ing of indi­vid­u­als who believe that the coun­ty sher­iff is the most pow­er­ful law-enforce­ment offi­cer in the coun­try, with author­i­ty supe­ri­or to that of any fed­er­al agent, elect­ed offi­cial, or local law-enforce­ment offi­cial.[12] This belief comes from the move­men­t’s ori­gins in the white-extrem­ist group Posse Comi­ta­tus.[13][cita­tion need­ed]

The Fed­er­al Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion (FBI) clas­si­fies some sov­er­eign cit­i­zens (“sov­er­eign cit­i­zen extrem­ists”) as domes­tic ter­ror­ists.[14] In 2010 the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter (SPLC) esti­mat­ed that approx­i­mate­ly 100,000 Amer­i­cans were “hard-core sov­er­eign believ­ers”, with anoth­er 200,000 “just start­ing out by test­ing sov­er­eign tech­niques for resist­ing every­thing from speed­ing tick­ets to drug charges”.[15]

In sur­veys con­duct­ed in 2014 and 2015, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of US law-enforce­ment ranked the risk of ter­ror­ism from the sov­er­eign-cit­i­zen move­ment high­er than the risk from Islam­ic extrem­ism. 

2a. Naz­i/alt-right cul­ture was a pri­ma­ry influ­ence on accused San­ta Fe (Texas) gun­man Dim­itrios Pagourtzis.

“Dim­itrios Pagourtzis, Texas Shoot­ing Sus­pect, Post­ed Neo-Nazi Imagery Online” by Kathy Weill; The Dai­ly Beast; 5/18/2018.

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.

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. . . .

. . . . 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.” . . . .

. . . . “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. . . .

2b. Ini­tial press reports about the San­ta Fe shoot­ing dis­cuss pos­si­ble accom­plices of Pagourtzis. Was he part of a group of some kind?

“Look­ing for Motives in a Shoot­ing Sus­pect Whose Past Is a ‘Pret­ty Clean Slate” by Julie Turke­witz and Jess Bid­good; The New York Times; 5/19/2018; p. A12 [West­ern Edi­tion].

 . . . . By Fri­day after­noon, the sus­pect was in cus­tody at the Galve­ston Coun­ty jail, where he is being held for cap­i­tal mur­der. Fed­er­al author­i­ties are seek­ing search war­rants to find explo­sive devices at two res­i­dences. . . . Police said the gun­man brought sev­er­al of these devices into the school. It was unclear whether any went off. . . .

. . . . On Fri­day, author­i­ties intend­ed to ques­tion two oth­er peo­ple: One was at the scene and had “sus­pi­cious reac­tions,” accord­ing to the gov­er­nor, and anoth­er had drawn the scruti­ny of inves­ti­ga­tors. . . .

3. Pagourtzis, as we saw above, had tak­en to wear­ing a trench coat, even in 90 degree weath­er. Press reports have described him as a “copy-cat” killer, hav­ing imi­tat­ed Dylan Kle­bold and Eric Har­ris of Columbine shoot­ing fame. (Pagourtzis was too young to have mem­o­ries of the inci­dent, though he may well have absorbed infor­ma­tion about the Columbine per­pe­tra­tors.)

The media, for the most part, have not men­tioned that Har­ris and Kle­bold were heav­i­ly influ­enced by Nazi cul­ture.

“Shoot­ing Pair Mixed Fan­ta­sy, Real­i­ty” by Paul Dug­gan, Michael D. Shear and Marc Fish­er; Wash­ing­ton Post; 4/22/1999.

They hat­ed jocks, admired Nazis and scorned nor­mal­cy. They fan­cied them­selves devo­tees of the Goth­ic sub­cul­ture, even though they thrilled to the vio­lence denounced by much of that fan­ta­sy world. They were white suprema­cists, but loved music by anti-racist rock bands.

Eric Har­ris and Dylan Kle­bold were bright young men who became social out­casts at their sub­ur­ban Den­ver high school, and then built their own inter­nal soci­ety by pluck­ing strands from the pop whirl­wind of cyber­space and fan­ta­sy games, the sound­track of Amer­i­can youth, and a nether­world that glam­or­izes Nazi sym­bols and ter­ror­ist vio­lence. . . .

.  . . . An ini­tial sketch of Har­ris and Kle­bold and the Trench­coat Mafia to which they claimed mem­ber­ship emerged yes­ter­day from inter­views with friends, fel­low stu­dents and neigh­bors, and from police and school offi­cials. If the boys left behind any detailed expla­na­tion of their hor­rif­ic final cries, no one has found it yet. . . .

. . . . Nine­teen days before they were to grad­u­ate, Har­ris and Kle­bold seemed insep­a­ra­ble and trou­ble­some. In Columbine’s hall­ways, they spoke bro­ken Ger­man and referred often to “4–20,” Hitler’s birth­day and the day they chose for their assault. . . .

. . . . Some Columbine stu­dents said the vio­lent side of Har­ris and Kle­bold became more obvi­ous in recent months. They became obses­sive­ly inter­est­ed in World War II, Nazi imagery, Adolf Hitler.

John House, 17, a Columbine senior, told reporters that when he went bowl­ing with Kle­bold, “when he would do some­thing good, he would shout ‘Heil Hitler’ and throw up his hand. It just made every­one mad.” . . . .

4. In FTR #995, we exam­ined the Atom­waf­fen Neo-Nazi group. Atom­waf­fen mem­ber Andrew Oneschuk was about to join Ukraine’s neo-Nazi Azov Bat­tal­ion.

“All-Amer­i­can Nazis” by Janet Reit­man; Rolling Stone; 05/02/2018

How a sense­less dou­ble mur­der in Flori­da exposed the rise of an orga­nized fas­cist youth move­ment in the Unit­ed States

Andrew Oneschuk and Jere­my Him­mel­man had been liv­ing in Tam­pa, Flori­da, for two weeks when, on Fri­day, May 19th, 2017, their room­mate Devon Arthurs picked up an AK-47 rifle and shot them at close range. Oneschuk had just turned 18. Him­mel­man was 22. They’d been stay­ing in a lush gat­ed com­mu­ni­ty near the Uni­ver­si­ty of South Flori­da, in a two-bed­room, ter­ra-cot­ta con­do rent­ed by their fourth room­mate, 21-year-old Bran­don Rus­sell, a rich kid from the Bahamas who worked at a gun shop and served in the Flori­da Nation­al Guard. Oneschuk, a prep-school dropout, was hop­ing to become a Navy SEAL. Him­mel­man also con­sid­ered the mil­i­tary, though he was more of a drifter. Eigh­teen-year-old Arthurs, a pale, freck­led kid who some­times called him­self “Khalid,” was unem­ployed and spent most of his time play­ing video games. All four had met one anoth­er online, in forums and chat rooms pop­u­lar with the more extreme seg­ment of the so-called alt-right. . . .

. . . . Increas­ing­ly, Andrew obsessed over issues like cli­mate change and the Syr­i­an refugee cri­sis. He’d also embraced an apoc­a­lyp­tic and con­spir­a­to­r­i­al world­view in which West­ern civ­i­liza­tion was doomed, and he, a white male, was a vic­tim. He was amazed at his par­ents’ com­pla­cen­cy. Didn’t they real­ize blacks were respon­si­ble for 80 per­cent of the crime in Amer­i­ca? he’d false­ly claim, using sta­tis­tics that seemed drawn from nowhere. “Amer­i­ca is shit,” he said. “My gen­er­a­tion is fail­ing.” . . . .

. . . . Andrew, who was one-eighth Ukrain­ian, took to the cause, chat­ting with fight­ers and their allies. He began for­mu­lat­ing a plan to join the Azov Bat­tal­ion, a noto­ri­ous­ly bru­tal band of inter­na­tion­al fight­ers help­ing in the resis­tance against the Rus­sians. In Jan­u­ary 2015, Andrew bought a fake pass­port and a one-way tick­et to Kiev. The day before he was set to leave, hav­ing packed his camp­ing gear and arranged for a lim­ou­sine to Logan Air­port, he casu­al­ly told his moth­er on the way home from school, “I think I’m going to go to Ukraine.” . . . . 

Emi­ly had been con­cerned when Andrew went through his Ger­man-army phase, though some of her friends told her that they’d also thought the SS was cool when they were younger. “I don’t think they under­stood they were actu­al­ly bad guys,” says Emi­ly. “It’s more like the bad guys in Indi­ana Jones with the cool car.” But Andrew took it fur­ther, even­tu­al­ly adopt­ing the online han­dle “Borovikov,” after a famous Russ­ian neo-Nazi gang leader. That spring, he hung an SS flag in his bed­room as well as a giant swasti­ka. . . . 

5. Online net­work­ing between resent­ful, sex-deprived men who call them­selves “incels” (a con­trac­tion of  “invol­un­tary celi­bates”) over­lap Naz­i/Alt-Right ele­ments. The ide­o­log­i­cal col­li­sion of the online “incels” and the #MeToo move­ment may well gen­er­ate some tru­ly patho­log­i­cal vio­lence.

” ‘Incels’ Aren’t Alone In Online Har­vest­ing of Men’s Sense of Loss” by Aman­da Taub; The New York Times; 5/11/2018; p. A5 [West­ern Edi­tion].

. . . . . ‘Aggriev­ed Enti­tle­ment’

For white men across the West­ern world, spe­cial rights and priv­i­leges once came as a birthright. Even those who lacked wealth or pow­er were assured a sta­tus above women and minori­ties.

Though they still enjoy pref­er­en­tial sta­tus in vir­tu­al­ly every realm, from the board­room to the cour­t­house, social forces like the Me Too move­ment are chal­leng­ing that sta­tus. To some, any steps toward equal­i­ty, how­ev­er mod­est, feel like a threat.

“There’s just this sense that ‘we used to be in charge, and now we’re not the only ones in charge, so we’ve been attacked,’” said Lil­liana Mason, a Uni­ver­si­ty of Mary­land social sci­en­tist who stud­ies group iden­ti­ty and pol­i­tics.

“If you have a sense that you’re owed, that your deserved sta­tus is being threat­ened, then you start to fight for it,” Ms. Mason said.

Often that takes the form of lash­ing out at mem­bers of what­ev­er social group dared to chal­lenge the estab­lished hier­ar­chy.

“You’d think that young men would be treat­ed nice­ly by soci­ety because we are the builders and pro­tec­tors of civ­i­liza­tion,” wrote a user named connorWM1996 on r/MGTOW, a Red­dit mes­sage board for men try­ing to escape what they see as oppres­sion by female-dom­i­nat­ed soci­ety. “But no of course not. We are treat­ed like idiots who aren’t good for any­thing.”

Some of these men may go in search of more extreme ide­olo­gies that make sense of their feel­ings of anger and loss, and seem to pro­vide a solu­tion. Oth­ers mere­ly stum­ble into them.

“Plen­ty of peo­ple feel like they don’t have sta­tus and don’t revolt about it,” Ms. Mason said. “But the peo­ple who do revolt are peo­ple who feel that they are owed sta­tus, and they’re not being giv­en the sta­tus that tra­di­tion­al soci­ety should give them.”

The incel move­ment tells its adher­ents that society’s rules are engi­neered to unfair­ly deprive them of sex. That world­view lets them see them­selves as both vic­tims, made lone­ly by a vast con­spir­a­cy, and as supe­ri­or, for their unique under­stand­ing of the truth.

Greasing Extremism’s Rails

Extrem­ism has always exist­ed, but until recent­ly its spread was lim­it­ed. To begin with, there was the basic chal­lenge to any col­lec­tive action: how to find and gath­er like-mind­ed peo­ple dis­persed across great dis­tances. Beyond that, there was the social stig­ma against any ideas per­ceived as out­side the mainstream.Social media has low­ered both of those bar­ri­ers.

Now, men look­ing for a way to explain — and jus­ti­fy — their anger need only a few clicks to encounter entire com­mu­ni­ties built up around promis­es to restore male pow­er and con­trol. In the past, those might have been rel­e­gat­ed to a few bars or liv­ing rooms, but now they exist in dark­er cor­ners of some of the most pop­u­lar social net­work­ing sites. . . .

. . . . The alt-right, right-wing pop­ulism, men’s rights groups and a renewed white suprema­cist move­ment have cap­i­tal­ized on many white men’s feel­ing of loss in recent years. The groups vary in how they diag­nose society’s ills and whom they blame, but they pro­vide a sense of mean­ing and place for their fol­low­ers.

And as dif­fer­ent extrem­ist groups con­nect online, they draw on one another’s mem­ber­ship bases, tac­tics and world­views, allow­ing mem­ber­ship in one group to become a gate­way to oth­er extrem­ist ide­olo­gies as well.

Today, for exam­ple, posts on Incel.me, an incel forum, debate join­ing forces with the alt-right and argue that Jews are to blame for incels’ oppres­sion. On one thread, users fan­ta­sized that if they were dic­ta­tors, they would not only cre­ate harems and enslave women, but also “gas the Jews.”

By divid­ing the world into us-ver­sus-them and describ­ing vast injus­tice at the hands of the sup­pos­ed­ly pow­er­ful, these groups, experts say, can prime adher­ents for vio­lence. . . .

6. Incel cul­ture is metas­ta­siz­ing into “lone-wolf”/leaderless resis­tance ter­ror­ism.

“When Misog­y­nists Become Ter­ror­ists” by Jes­si­ca Valen­ti; The New York Times; 4/26/2018.

. . . . Lat­er, after Mr. Rodger’s 140-page man­i­festo was released — out­lin­ing his fury over still being a “kiss­less vir­gin” — his name became syn­ony­mous on misog­y­nist forums with revenge on women who reject men. Chris Harp­er-Mer­cer, who shot and killed nine peo­ple at Umpqua Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege in Ore­gon in 2015, men­tioned Mr. Rodger by name in a man­i­festo he wrote in which he com­plained about being 26 years old with “no girl­friend, a vir­gin.”

And now, in the after­math of the attack in Toron­to, men on incel com­mu­ni­ties are hail­ing the killer as a “new saint,” with com­menters chang­ing their avatars to Mr. Minassian’s pic­ture in trib­ute.

Fem­i­nists have been warn­ing against these online hate groups and their propen­si­ty for real-life vio­lence for over a decade. I know because I’m one of the peo­ple who has been issu­ing increas­ing­ly dire warn­ings. After I start­ed a fem­i­nist blog in 2004, I became a tar­get of men’s‑rights groups who were angry with women about every­thing from cus­tody bat­tles to the false notion that most women lie about rape. In 2011, I had to flee my house with my young daugh­ter on the advice of law enforce­ment, because one of these groups put me on a “reg­istry” of women to tar­get.

I was far from the only one. In 2014, a gam­ing award cer­e­mo­ny set to hon­or the fem­i­nist crit­ic Ani­ta Sar­keesian received a bomb threat; an anony­mous harass­er threat­ened to det­o­nate a device unless her award was rescind­ed. Before Milo Yiannopou­los was a well-known alt-right fig­ure, fem­i­nists knew him as one of the pri­ma­ry archi­tects of Gamer­gate, a move­ment of young men who harassed and threat­ened women in the videogam­ing indus­try. Two fans of Mr. Yiannopou­los were charged with shoot­ing a pro­test­er out­side of one of his speech­es.

Part of the prob­lem is that Amer­i­can cul­ture still large­ly sees men’s sex­ism as some­thing innate rather than deviant. And in a world where sex­ism is deemed nat­ur­al, the misog­y­nist ten­den­cies of mass shoot­ers become after­thoughts rather than pre­dictable and stark warn­ings.

The truth is that in addi­tion to not pro­tect­ing women, we are fail­ing boys: fail­ing to raise them to believe they can be men with­out inflict­ing pain on oth­ers, fail­ing to teach them that they are not enti­tled to women’s sex­u­al atten­tion and fail­ing to allow them an out­let for under­stand­able human fear and foibles that will not label them “weak” or unwor­thy.

Not every attack is pre­ventable, but the misog­y­ny that dri­ves them is. To stop all of this, we must trust women when they point out that receiv­ing streams of death threats on Twit­ter is not nor­mal and that online com­mu­ni­ties strate­giz­ing about how to rape women are much more than just idle chat­ter. There is no rea­son anoth­er mas­sacre should hap­pen.

7. Nazi killer Anders Breivik embod­ied the over­lap between Alt-Right white suprema­cy and insti­tu­tion­al­ized misog­y­ny:

“Lead­er’s Sui­cide Brings Atten­tion to Men’s Rights Move­ment” by Arthur Gold­wag; Intel­li­gence Report [South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter]; 3/1/2012.

A lit­tle-noticed sui­cide last year focused atten­tion on the hard-lined fringe of the men’s right move­ment. It’s not a pret­ty pic­ture.

After 10 years of cus­tody bat­tles, court-ordered coun­sel­ing and immi­nent impris­on­ment for non-pay­ment of child sup­port, Thomas James Ball, a leader of the Worces­ter branch of the Mass­a­chu­setts-based Father­hood Coali­tion, had reached his lim­it. On June 15, 2011, he doused him­self with gaso­line and set him­self on fire just out­side the Cheshire Coun­ty, N.H., Cour­t­house. He was dead with­in min­utes.

In a lengthy “Last State­ment,” which arrived posthu­mous­ly at the Keene Sen­tinel, Tom Ball told his sto­ry. All he had done, he said, was smack his 4‑year-old daugh­ter and bloody her mouth after she licked his hand as he was putting her to bed. Fem­i­nist-craft­ed anti-domes­tic vio­lence leg­is­la­tion did the rest. “Twen­ty-five years ago,” he wrote, “the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment declared war on men. It is time to see how com­mit­ted they are to their cause. It is time, boys, to give them a taste of war.” Call­ing for all-out insur­rec­tion, he offered tips on mak­ing Molo­tov cock­tails and urged his read­ers to use them against cour­t­hous­es and police sta­tions. “There will be some casu­al­ties in this war,” he pre­dict­ed. “Some killed, some wound­ed, some cap­tured. Some of them will be theirs. Some of the casu­al­ties will be ours.”

For peo­ple who asso­ciate the men’s and fathers’ rights move­ments with New Age drum cir­cles in the woods, the feroc­i­ty of Ball’s rhetoric, the hor­ror of his act, and, in par­tic­u­lar, the wide­spread and bla­tant­ly misog­y­nis­tic reac­tion to it may come as some­thing of a rev­e­la­tion. When the fem­i­nist Aman­da Mar­cotte, a bête noire of the men’s rights move­ment, remarked that “set­ting your­self on fire is an extreme­ly effec­tive tool if your goal is to make your ex-wife’s life a liv­ing hell,” a poster at the blog Misandry.com went bal­lis­tic. “Talk about the pot call­ing the ket­tle black,” he raged. “She is evil and such a vile evil that she is a dis­ease that needs to be cut out of the human [con­scious­ness] just like the rest of the fem­anazi ass harpies.”

Ball’s sui­cide brought atten­tion to an under­world of misog­y­nists, woman-haters whose fury goes well beyond crit­i­cism of the fam­i­ly court sys­tem, domes­tic vio­lence laws, and false rape accu­sa­tions. There are lit­er­al­ly hun­dreds of web­sites, blogs and forums devot­ed to attack­ing vir­tu­al­ly all women (or, at least, West­ern­ized ones) — the so-called “manos­phere,” which now also includes a trib­ute page for Tom Ball (“He Died For Our Chil­dren”). While some of them voice legit­i­mate and some­times dis­turb­ing com­plaints about the treat­ment of men, what is most remark­able is the misog­y­nis­tic tone that per­vades so many. Women are rou­tine­ly maligned as sluts, gold-dig­gers, temptress­es and worse; over­ly sym­pa­thet­ic men are dubbed “mang­i­nas”; and police and oth­er offi­cials are called their armed enablers. Even Ball — who did not direct­ly blame his ex-wife for his trou­bles, but instead depict­ed her and their three chil­dren as co-vic­tims of the author­i­ties — vil­i­fied “man-hat­ing fem­i­nists” as evil destroy­ers of all that is good.

This kind of woman-hatred is increas­ing­ly vis­i­ble in most West­ern soci­eties, and it tends to be allied with oth­er anti-mod­ern emo­tions — oppo­si­tion to same-sex mar­riage, to non-Chris­t­ian immi­gra­tion, to women in the work­place, and even, in some cas­es, to the advance­ment of African Amer­i­cans. Just a few weeks after Ball’s death, while scorch marks were still vis­i­ble on the side­walk in Keene, N.H., that was made clear once more by a Nor­we­gian named Anders Behring Breivik.

On July 22, Breivik slaugh­tered 77 of his coun­try­men, most of them teenagers, in Oslo and at a sum­mer camp on the island of Utøya, because he thought they or their par­ents were the kinds of “polit­i­cal­ly cor­rect” lib­er­als who were enabling Mus­lim immi­gra­tion. But Breivik was almost as vol­u­ble on the sub­jects of fem­i­nism, the fam­i­ly, and fathers’ rights as he was on Islam. “The most direct threat to the fam­i­ly is ‘divorce on demand,’” he wrote in the man­i­festo he post­ed just before he began his dead­ly spree. “The sys­tem must be reformed so that the father will be award­ed cus­tody rights by default.”

The manos­phere lit up. Said one approv­ing poster at The Spear­head, an online men’s rights mag­a­zine for the “defense of our­selves, our fam­i­lies and our fel­low men”: “What could be more ‘an eye for an eye’ than to kill the chil­dren of those who were so will­ing to destroy men’s fam­i­lies and destroy the home­land of men?”

‘The Home­land of Men’

The men’s rights move­ment, also referred to as the fathers’ rights move­ment, is made up of a num­ber of dis­parate, often over­lap­ping, types of groups and indi­vid­u­als. Some most cer­tain­ly do have legit­i­mate griev­ances, hav­ing endured prison, impov­er­ish­ment or heartrend­ing sep­a­ra­tions from gen­uine­ly loved chil­dren.

Joce­lyn Crow­ley, a Rut­gers polit­i­cal sci­en­tist and the author of Defi­ant Dads: Fathers’ Rights Activists in Amer­i­ca, says that most men who join real (as opposed to vir­tu­al) men’s rights groups aren’t seek­ing to attack the fam­i­ly court sys­tem so much as they are sim­ply strug­gling to nav­i­gate it. What they talk most about when they meet face to face, she says, are strate­gies to deal with their ex-part­ners and have bet­ter rela­tion­ships with their chil­dren.

But Mol­ly Dragiewicz, a crim­i­nol­o­gist at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ontario Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy and the author of Equal­i­ty With a Vengeance: Men’s Rights Groups, Bat­tered Women, and Antifem­i­nist Back­lash, argues that cas­es in which fathers are bad­ly treat­ed by courts and oth­er offi­cials are not remote­ly the norm. The small per­cent­age of divorces that end up in lit­i­ga­tion are dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly those where abuse and oth­er issues make joint cus­tody a dubi­ous propo­si­tion. Even when a woman can sat­is­fac­to­ri­ly doc­u­ment her ex-husband’s abuse, Dragiewicz says, she is no more like­ly to receive full cus­tody of her chil­dren than if she couldn’t.

The men’s move­ment also includes mail-order-bride shop­pers, unre­gen­er­ate bat­ter­ers, and wannabe pick­up artists who are eager to learn the secrets of “game”—the psy­cho­log­i­cal tricks that sup­pos­ed­ly make it easy to seduce women. George Sodi­ni, who con­fid­ed his seething rage at women to his blog before shoot­ing 12 women, three of them fatal­ly, was one of the lat­ter. Before his 2009 mur­der spree at a Pitts­burgh-area gym, he was a stu­dent — though clear­ly not a very apt one — of R. Don Steele, the author of How to Date Young Women: For Men Over 35. “I dress good, am clean-shaven, bathe, touch of cologne — yet 30 mil­lion women reject­ed me over an 18 or 25-year peri­od,” Sodi­ni wrote with the kind of pathos pre­sum­ably typ­i­cal of Steele’s read­ers.

Some take an inor­di­nate inter­est in extreme­ly young women, or fetishize what they see as the ultra-fem­i­nine (read: docile) char­ac­ter­is­tics of South Amer­i­can and Asian women. Oth­ers, who have inter­nal­ized Chris­t­ian “head­ship” doc­trine, are des­per­ate­ly seek­ing the “sub­mis­sive” women such doc­trine cel­e­brates. Still oth­ers are sim­ply sex­u­al­ly awk­ward, and non­plussed and befud­dled by society’s chang­ing mores. The com­mon denom­i­na­tor is their resent­ment of fem­i­nism and of females in gen­er­al.

“It’s iron­ic,” the fem­i­nist writer Aman­da Mar­cotte observes. “These [misog­y­nist Web] sites owe their exis­tence to feminism’s suc­cess­es. At some point in the last cou­ple of years, the zeit­geist hit a tip­ping point where female pow­er — Hillary Clinton’s, Rachel Maddow’s, even Sarah Palin’s — stopped being ques­tioned. Being sex­ist has become less accept­able than it used to be. This makes some men par­tic­u­lar­ly anx­ious.” At the same time, of course, domes­tic vio­lence and sex crimes are much more like­ly to be pros­e­cut­ed than they were even a decade ago. Shel­ters, social ser­vices and legal aid are more avail­able to most bat­tered women than in the past.

But some experts argue that men’s rights groups have been remark­ably suc­cess­ful. The groups, says Rita Smith, direc­tor of the Nation­al Coali­tion Against Domes­tic Vio­lence, “have tak­en over the way courts deal with cus­tody issues, par­tic­u­lar­ly when there are alle­ga­tions of abuse,” large­ly by con­vinc­ing them that there is such a thing as “Parental Alien­ation Syn­drome” (PAS). (PAS is a sup­posed clin­i­cal dis­or­der in which a child com­pul­sive­ly belit­tles one par­ent due to indoc­tri­na­tion by the oth­er — fre­quent­ly lev­el­ing false alle­ga­tions of abuse. It is not rec­og­nized as a clin­i­cal dis­or­der by either the Amer­i­can Psy­chi­atric Asso­ci­a­tion or the World Health Orga­ni­za­tion.) Cit­ing stud­ies that show that false domes­tic abuse accu­sa­tions against men are far less com­mon than men’s groups and PAS enthu­si­asts claim, Smith says the groups nev­er­the­less have “been able to get cus­tody eval­u­a­tors, medi­a­tors, guardians ad litem and child pro­tec­tive ser­vice work­ers to believe that women and chil­dren lie about abuse.”

Threats and Abuse

One kind of abuse that is unde­ni­able is the vil­i­fi­ca­tion of indi­vid­ual women on cer­tain men’s group web­sites. The best exam­ple of that may be Reg­is­ter-Her, a reg­istry of women who “have caused sig­nif­i­cant harm to inno­cent indi­vid­u­als either by the direct action of crimes like rape, assault, child molesta­tion and mur­der, or by the false accu­sa­tion of crimes against oth­ers.” The site was set up by Paul Elam, the blog­ger behind A Voice for Men, less than two weeks after Ball’s sui­cide. “If Mary Jane Rot­ten­crotch decides to false­ly accuse her hus­band of domes­tic vio­lence in order to get the upper hand in a divorce,” Elam boast­ed on his Inter­net radio show, “we can pub­lish all her per­son­al infor­ma­tion on the web­site, includ­ing her name, address, phone num­ber … even her routes to and from work.”

Under a head­line read­ing, “Why are these women not in prison?” the site fea­tures pho­tos and infor­ma­tion about some 250 alleged male­fac­tors, includ­ing noto­ri­ous women like Lore­na Bob­bitt and Tonya Hard­ing, although Elam hasn’t made good on his threat to pub­lish home address­es or phone num­bers. Many of those list­ed received prison sen­tences for var­i­ous crimes, but large num­bers were acquit­ted in court, while oth­ers were nev­er accused of any law­break­ing. A well-known fem­i­nist, for exam­ple, is list­ed for “anti-male big­otry,” which is com­pared to racism.

Elam’s site can be fright­en­ing to its tar­gets. In one case, he offered a cash reward to the first read­er to fer­ret out a pseu­do­ny­mous fem­i­nist blogger’s real name. In anoth­er, Elam sin­gled out a part-time blog­ger at ChicagoNow who describes her­self as a “veg­e­tar­i­an park activist with two baby girls.” The woman’s mis­take was to write about her dis­com­fort with male adults help­ing female tod­dlers in the bath­room at her daughter’s preschool. The blog­ger con­ced­ed that she was being sex­ist, but wrote that “I’d rather be wrong than find out if I’m right.”

After the woman was list­ed, she was wide­ly attacked on men’s move­ment sites. “I don’t always use the word ‘cunt’ to describe a woman,” one poster raged, “but when I do it’s because of rea­sons like these.” Shocked, the “Mom­my blog­ger” took down her orig­i­nal post and apol­o­gized for her “demo­niza­tion of men.”

It wasn’t enough. “You tar­get­ed fathers, and just fathers,” Elam rebuked her. “It strikes me that you have nev­er real­ly been held to account for any of your actions in life. It is quite like­ly that the con­cept of com­plete, self­less account­abil­i­ty is just com­plete­ly for­eign to you.” Over at the Red­dit Mens Rights forum, anoth­er poster fumed: “This entire episode should be a warn­ing to all those male hat­ing fem­i­nists out there who believe that they are safe scream­ing their hate mes­sages on the web. Final­ly, they are held account­able for their hate mes­sages and final­ly the rest of the world will find out exact­ly what type of depraved peo­ple they real­ly are.”

“I don’t know if Thomas James Ball ever vis­it­ed this site,” Elam wrote on his blog when he start­ed Reg­is­ter-Her. “What I do believe is, though, that he, if con­vinced to stay alive, would have been a hell of a sol­dier in this war.”

Sol­diers in the War

The first shots in this so-called war on fem­i­nism were fired 22 years before Tom Ball’s sui­cide. On Dec. 6, 1989, Marc Lépine, a trou­bled 25-year-old com­put­er stu­dent, strolled into the Ecole Poly­tech­nique in Mon­tre­al, Cana­da, car­ry­ing a Ruger Mini-14 semi-auto­mat­ic rifle and a hunt­ing knife. He walked into a class­room, ordered the men to leave, and lined the women up against a wall.

“I am fight­ing fem­i­nism,” he announced before open­ing fire. “You’re women, you’re going to be engi­neers. You’re all a bunch of fem­i­nists. I hate fem­i­nists.”

By the time he turned the gun on him­self, 14 women were dead and 10 were wound­ed; four men were hurt as well. The sui­cide note in Lépine’s pock­et con­tained a list of 19 “rad­i­cal fem­i­nists” he hoped to kill, and this: “I have decid­ed to send the fem­i­nists, who have always ruined my life, to their Mak­er. … They want to keep the advan­tages of women … while seiz­ing for them­selves those of men.”

Today, that kind of rage is often direct­ed at all women, not only per­ceived fem­i­nists. “Women don’t need the pow­ers-that-be to get them to hate and use men,” the blog­ger Alcuin wrote recent­ly. “They have always used men; maybe they have always hat­ed us too.” Added anoth­er blog­ger, Angry Har­ry: “There are now, lit­er­al­ly, bil­lions of dol­lars, numer­ous empires, and mil­lions of jobs that depend on the pub­lic swal­low­ing the idea that women need to be defend­ed from men.”

“A word to the wise,” offered the blog­ger known as Rebuk­ing Fem­i­nism. “The ani­mals women have become want one thing, resources and genes. … See them as the ani­mals they have become and plan … accord­ing­ly.”

And many are quick to endorse vio­lence against women. “There are women, and plen­ty of them, for which [sic] a sol­id ass kick­ing would be the least they deserve,” Paul Elam wrote in an essay with the provoca­tive title, “When is it OK to Punch Your Wife?” “The real ques­tion here is not whether these women deserve the busi­ness end of a right hook, they obvi­ous­ly do, and some of them deserve one hard enough to leave them in an uncon­scious, innocu­ous pile on the ground if it serves to pro­tect the inno­cent from immi­nent harm. The real ques­tion is whether men deserve to be able to phys­i­cal­ly defend them­selves from assault … from a woman.”

For some, it’s more than just talk. In 2006, Dar­ren Mack, a mem­ber of a fathers’ rights group in Reno, Nev., stabbed his estranged wife to death and then shot and wound­ed the fam­i­ly court judge who was han­dling his divorce.

That kind of vio­lence con­tin­ues right up to the present.

In Seal Beach, Calif. last Oct. 12, a day after Scott Evans Dekraai and his ex-wife had been in court to fight over cus­tody of their 8‑year-old son (Dekraai had 56% cus­tody but want­ed full cus­tody and “final deci­sion mak­ing author­i­ty” on mat­ters of the child’s edu­ca­tion and med­ical treat­ment), Dekraai walked into the hair salon where his ex-wife worked armed with three hand­guns. There, he alleged­ly shot sev­en women, six of them fatal­ly; he also is accused of killing two men — the salon’s own­er, as he attempt­ed to flee, and a man in a car out­side.

8a. Ronan Far­row wrote the New York­er piece that launched the Har­vey Wein­stein take­down.

From  Aggres­sive Over­tures to Sex­u­al Aggres­sion: Har­vey Weinstein’s Accusers Tell Their Sto­ries” by Ronan Far­row; The New York­er; 10/23/2017.

8b. An impor­tant detail about Ronan Far­row, who played a fun­da­men­tal role in break­ing the Har­vey Wein­stein case, con­cerns his back­ground in the State Depart­ment, spe­cial­iz­ing in Afghanistan and Pak­istan. Far­row is the son of Mia Far­row and Woody Allen.  ” . . . .  Post-law school: Lands a job at the State Depart­ment, as a spe­cial advi­sor focus­ing on con­flict in Afghanistan and Pak­istan. . . .”

Far­row’s back­ground strong­ly sug­gests intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty involve­ment.

“Ronan Far­row: From State Depart­ment to Twit­ter Leg­end to MSNBC Host (a Time­line)” by Emi­ly Yahr; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 2/24/2014.

 . . . .  Post-law school: Lands a job at the State Depart­ment, as a spe­cial advi­sor focus­ing on con­flict in Afghanistan and Pak­istan. . . .

8c. Far­row con­tin­ued his work for State in 2011. ” . . . . 2011: Starts work­ing along­side Hillary Clin­ton with a lengthy title: Spe­cial Advi­sor to the Sec­re­tary of State for Glob­al Youth Issues and direc­tor of the State Department’s Glob­al Youth Issues office. . . .”

Har­vey Wein­stein was a major donor to the Democ­rats, includ­ing Hillary Clin­ton. Might Far­row have been doing oppo­si­tion research on Clin­ton while  work­ing for her State Depart­ment?

“Ronan Far­row: From State Depart­ment to Twit­ter Leg­end to MSNBC Host (a Time­line)” by Emi­ly Yahr; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 2/24/2014.

. . . . 2011: Starts work­ing along­side Hillary Clin­ton with a lengthy title: Spe­cial Advi­sor to the Sec­re­tary of State for Glob­al Youth Issues and direc­tor of the State Department’s Glob­al Youth Issues office. . . .

8d. Far­row also co-wrote the New York­er arti­cle that took down New York Attor­ney Gen­er­al Eric Schnei­der­man, a major Trump oppo­nent who presided over the law­suit against Trump Uni­ver­si­ty.

“Four Women Accuse New York’s Attor­ney Gen­er­al of Phys­i­cal Abuse” by Ronan Far­row and Jane May­er; The New York­er; 5/7/2018.

8e. Schnei­der­man was active­ly going after oth­er mem­bers of the oli­garchy as well.

“Will This Man Take Down Don­ald Trump?” by David Freed­lan­der; Politi­co; 2/3/2017.

. . . . Schnei­der­man took up the state’s exist­ing case against Trump University—New York want­ed the school to drop the “uni­ver­si­ty” from its name, since it was not char­tered as an insti­tu­tion of high­er learn­ing and lacked a license to offer instruction—and as he pur­sued it over the next five years, he became the tar­get of a relent­less series of per­son­al attacks from the Trump camp. Trump filed an ethics com­plaint alleg­ing that Schnei­der­man offered to drop the suit in exchange for dona­tions; he went on tele­vi­sion to denounce Schnei­der­man as a hack and a light­weight, and said he was wast­ing mil­lions of tax­pay­er dol­lars when he should have been going after Wall Street. (Nev­er mind that Schnei­der­man had already been declared “the man the banks fear most” by the lib­er­al mag­a­zine “The Amer­i­can Prospect.”) “The whole scorched-earth strat­e­gy towards those who would chal­lenge him, we got a pre­view of,” says Schnei­der­man.

The Trump Uni­ver­si­ty suit even­tu­al­ly was set­tled for $25 mil­lion days after the elec­tion, despite the then president-elect’s repeat­ed pledges nev­er to set­tle. Schnei­der­man could have left it at that. But Schnei­der­man has let it be known that Trump is still in his crosshairs. In the days since Novem­ber 9, Schnei­der­man fired off a let­ter warn­ing Trump not to drop White House sup­port of Obama’s Clean Pow­er Plan, intro­duced a bill in the state Leg­is­la­ture to give New York­ers cost-free con­tra­cep­tion if the Afford­able Care Act is dis­man­tled, threat­ened to sue after Trump froze EPA fund­ing of clean air and water pro­grams, and joined a law­suit that argues that Trump’s exec­u­tive order on immi­gra­tion is not just uncon­sti­tu­tion­al and un-Amer­i­can, but it brings pro­found harm to the res­i­dents of New York State.

He has a record of going not only after Trump, but going after peo­ple now in Trump­world. He’s on the oppo­site side of the Clean Pow­er Plan fight from Okla­homa Attor­ney Gen­er­al Scott Pruitt, since named head of the EPA, and who Schnei­der­man labeled a “dan­ger­ous and unqual­i­fied choice.” He’s gone after Rex Tiller­son, who as CEO of Exxon­Mo­bil defend­ed his com­pa­ny from a Schnei­der­man inves­ti­ga­tion; since the elec­tion he’s begun inves­ti­gat­ing a reverse-mort­gage busi­ness once led by Steven Mnuchin, the nom­i­nee to be the next Trea­sury sec­re­tary. . . .

8f. Pri­or to his pro­fes­sion­al demise, Schnei­der­man was inves­ti­gat­ing the NXIVM cult, with its many con­nec­tions to pow­er­ful peo­ple, includ­ing Trump/GOP dirty trick­ster Roger Stone, who sig­naled the #MeToo take­down of Sen­a­tor Al Franken. Might he have been linked to the take­down of Schnei­der­man?

“Faces of NXIVM: An Alleged Cult’s Inner Cir­cle and Beyond” by Joyce Bas­sett; Time­sUnion; 4/24/2018.

. . . The Times Union report­ed on March 25 that New York Attor­ney Gen­er­al Eric Schnei­der­man’s office was con­duct­ing a sep­a­rate inves­ti­ga­tion of a non­prof­it foun­da­tion asso­ci­at­ed with NXIVM that alleged­ly spon­sored brain-activ­i­ty and oth­er human behav­ioral stud­ies with­out any appar­ent over­sight, accord­ing to court records. That inves­ti­ga­tion has been sus­pend­ed due to the fed­er­al crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion, offi­cials said. . . .

. . . . The for-prof­it cor­po­ra­tion NXIVM is based on a self-improve­ment cur­ricu­lum called “Ratio­nal Inquiry.” Oth­er high-pro­file names — includ­ing Repub­li­can cam­paign strate­gist and self-described polit­i­cal “dirty trick­ster” Roger Stone. . . .  have tak­en NXIVM’s exec­u­tive suc­cess cours­es or were found to have ties to the orga­ni­za­tion, accord­ing to Times Union report­ing. . . .

Discussion

33 comments for “FTR #1011 Miscellaneous Articles and Updates”

  1. Well look at that: It turns out the guy charged with inten­tion­al­ly start­ing the mas­sive “Holy Fire” wild­fire on the Cleve­land Nation­al For­est in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia last week is a self-declared sov­er­eign cit­i­zen. Sur­prise!:

    Kansas City Star

    Man accused of ignit­ing CA wild­fire is sov­er­eign cit­i­zen with pos­si­ble KS con­nec­tion

    By Judy L. Thomas

    August 13, 2018 09:49 AM
    Updat­ed

    The man accused of set­ting the South­ern Cal­i­for­nia fire last week that has scorched thou­sands of acres of nation­al for­est is a sov­er­eign cit­i­zen who appears to have a Kansas con­nec­tion.

    For­rest Gor­don Clark has described him­self on social media as an “inter­im con­gress­man for Repub­lic for Kansas” and has been involved in an orga­ni­za­tion that believes the U.S. gov­ern­ment is not legit­i­mate, accord­ing to J.J. Mac­Nab, an expert on anti-gov­ern­ment extrem­ists.

    Clark, 51, was arrest­ed Aug. 7 and is charged with aggra­vat­ed arson, arson of inhab­it­ed prop­er­ty, arson of for­est, mak­ing crim­i­nal threats and resist­ing arrest. He is being held on $1 mil­lion bond and faces a life sen­tence if con­vict­ed.

    The blaze, called Holy Fire, start­ed Aug. 6 in Holy Jim Canyon. It has burned more than 22,000 acres of Cleve­land Nation­al For­est and forced tens of thou­sands of res­i­dents to flee their homes, mak­ing it one of the most destruc­tive wild­fires of 2018. As of Sun­day night, the fire was about 52 per­cent con­tained.

    The area’s vol­un­teer fire chief said that the week before the fire start­ed, Clark had sent him text mes­sages threat­en­ing to start a fire and that Clark had run scream­ing through the area. He’d also been involved in a long­stand­ing feud with a neigh­bor and oth­er cab­in own­ers in the area, the fire chief said.

    Mac­Nab exam­ined eight years of Clark’s social media posts and deter­mined he’d been pro­mot­ing sov­er­eign cit­i­zen argu­ments since at least 2010.

    Sov­er­eign cit­i­zens say the gov­ern­ment is cor­rupt and out of con­trol, so they do not rec­og­nize local, state or fed­er­al author­i­ty or tax sys­tems. Not all are vio­lent, but in recent years the FBI and oth­er gov­ern­ment agen­cies have come to con­sid­er them a top domes­tic ter­ror­ism threat.

    Mac­Nab, a fel­low with the Pro­gram on Extrem­ism at George Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty, said that in 2010, Clark was active in the Restore Amer­i­ca Plan, which she said lat­er became the Repub­lic for the unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca (RuSA). The RuSA, she said, is an alter­na­tive-gov­ern­ment orga­ni­za­tion that believes the real U.S. gov­ern­ment ceased to exist in 1871 and that an “imposter” or “de fac­to” gov­ern­ment has been in pow­er ever since.

    To rem­e­dy this sit­u­a­tion, Mac­Nab said, RuSA cre­at­ed a sub­sti­tute gov­ern­ment and is wait­ing until the cur­rent gov­ern­ment col­laps­es so it can step in and take con­trol.

    Clark was such an enthu­si­as­tic sup­port­er of the RuSA, Mac­Nab said, that in 2010 he trav­eled to the first real gath­er­ing of the group in Col­orado. His Face­book page con­tains a pho­to of a grin­ning Clark wear­ing a shirt with a large sun­flower on it and a nametag that says, “For­rest Clark Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Kansas.”

    In a notice dat­ed Sept. 16, 2011, and post­ed on his Face­book page, Clark says “I Am A Sov­er­eign Man” and calls him­self a “Kansas free state — Inter­im Rep­re­sen­ta­tive” and “DeJure grand Juror in ser­vice for the Lord, you, our repub­lic, our nation.”

    In anoth­er post, he describes him­self as “a gen­er­al contractor/builder, a med­ical mis­sion­ary, and a inter­im con­gress­man for Repub­lic for Kansas, try­ing to save Amer­i­ca for those who are wor­thy & take the time to learn of free­dom. Free­dom is not free.”

    It’s unclear why Clark was rep­re­sent­ing Kansas in the alter­na­tive-gov­ern­ment orga­ni­za­tion. Online search­es show he has lived in Ohio and Cal­i­for­nia.

    ...

    His Face­book posts include push­ing such con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries as 9/11 was an inside job and insist­ing the FBI has mur­dered wit­ness­es in the 2017 Las Vegas sniper shoot­ing that killed 58. The site also con­tains posts about cannabis, reli­gion and numer­ous close-up pho­tos of what he says is skin can­cer on his face and leg. It also sug­gests that he was involved in a dis­pute with a neigh­bor who he says was cook­ing meth.

    “Based on his social media pages,” Mac­Nab said in a Twit­ter post, “Clark is a sov­er­eign cit­i­zen who believes in just about every kooky con­spir­a­cy out there, includ­ing QAnon, Piz­za­gate, Jade Helm 15, flat earth the­o­ries, NESARA, Jesuit con­ser­van­cies, shape-shift­ing lizard over­lords. You name it, he believes it.”

    Clark appears to have a his­to­ry of finan­cial and per­son­al trou­bles, accord­ing to the Palm Springs Desert Sun. In addi­tion to mul­ti­ple cred­it card col­lec­tion cas­es, he was a defen­dant in a civ­il breach of con­tract case, accused of defraud­ing an employ­er of about $85,000. The law­suit claimed that Clark and his co-work­ers were paid for land­scap­ing work that his com­pa­ny nev­er com­plet­ed, the Desert Sun said.

    ...

    ———-

    “Man accused of ignit­ing CA wild­fire is sov­er­eign cit­i­zen with pos­si­ble KS con­nec­tion” by Judy L. Thomas; Kansas City Star; 08/13/2018

    “For­rest Gor­don Clark has described him­self on social media as an “inter­im con­gress­man for Repub­lic for Kansas” and has been involved in an orga­ni­za­tion that believes the U.S. gov­ern­ment is not legit­i­mate, accord­ing to J.J. Mac­Nab, an expert on anti-gov­ern­ment extrem­ists.”

    Yep, the guy who start­ed the fire is a self-declared con­gress­man for one of the many fake gov­ern­ments the sov­er­eigns set up. In par­tic­u­lar, Clark appears to be part of the “Restore Amer­i­ca Plan” alter­na­tive gov­ern­ment. Clark was even at its first gath­er­ing in 2010:

    ...
    Mac­Nab exam­ined eight years of Clark’s social media posts and deter­mined he’d been pro­mot­ing sov­er­eign cit­i­zen argu­ments since at least 2010.

    Sov­er­eign cit­i­zens say the gov­ern­ment is cor­rupt and out of con­trol, so they do not rec­og­nize local, state or fed­er­al author­i­ty or tax sys­tems. Not all are vio­lent, but in recent years the FBI and oth­er gov­ern­ment agen­cies have come to con­sid­er them a top domes­tic ter­ror­ism threat.

    Mac­Nab, a fel­low with the Pro­gram on Extrem­ism at George Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty, said that in 2010, Clark was active in the Restore Amer­i­ca Plan, which she said lat­er became the Repub­lic for the unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca (RuSA). The RuSA, she said, is an alter­na­tive-gov­ern­ment orga­ni­za­tion that believes the real U.S. gov­ern­ment ceased to exist in 1871 and that an “imposter” or “de fac­to” gov­ern­ment has been in pow­er ever since.

    To rem­e­dy this sit­u­a­tion, Mac­Nab said, RuSA cre­at­ed a sub­sti­tute gov­ern­ment and is wait­ing until the cur­rent gov­ern­ment col­laps­es so it can step in and take con­trol.

    Clark was such an enthu­si­as­tic sup­port­er of the RuSA, Mac­Nab said, that in 2010 he trav­eled to the first real gath­er­ing of the group in Col­orado. His Face­book page con­tains a pho­to of a grin­ning Clark wear­ing a shirt with a large sun­flower on it and a nametag that says, “For­rest Clark Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Kansas.”

    In a notice dat­ed Sept. 16, 2011, and post­ed on his Face­book page, Clark says “I Am A Sov­er­eign Man” and calls him­self a “Kansas free state — Inter­im Rep­re­sen­ta­tive” and “DeJure grand Juror in ser­vice for the Lord, you, our repub­lic, our nation.”

    In anoth­er post, he describes him­self as “a gen­er­al contractor/builder, a med­ical mis­sion­ary, and a inter­im con­gress­man for Repub­lic for Kansas, try­ing to save Amer­i­ca for those who are wor­thy & take the time to learn of free­dom. Free­dom is not free.”

    It’s unclear why Clark was rep­re­sent­ing Kansas in the alter­na­tive-gov­ern­ment orga­ni­za­tion. Online search­es show he has lived in Ohio and Cal­i­for­nia.
    ...

    And while the pre­cise motive for set­ting this fire isn’t quite clear, the fact that Clark actu­al­ly sent a text mes­sages to the area’s vol­un­teer fire chief the week before the fires start­ed threat­en­ing to start a fire makes it pret­ty clear that he want­ed to get caught (or was just out of his mind):

    ...
    Clark, 51, was arrest­ed Aug. 7 and is charged with aggra­vat­ed arson, arson of inhab­it­ed prop­er­ty, arson of for­est, mak­ing crim­i­nal threats and resist­ing arrest. He is being held on $1 mil­lion bond and faces a life sen­tence if con­vict­ed.

    The blaze, called Holy Fire, start­ed Aug. 6 in Holy Jim Canyon. It has burned more than 22,000 acres of Cleve­land Nation­al For­est and forced tens of thou­sands of res­i­dents to flee their homes, mak­ing it one of the most destruc­tive wild­fires of 2018. As of Sun­day night, the fire was about 52 per­cent con­tained.

    The area’s vol­un­teer fire chief said that the week before the fire start­ed, Clark had sent him text mes­sages threat­en­ing to start a fire and that Clark had run scream­ing through the area. He’d also been involved in a long­stand­ing feud with a neigh­bor and oth­er cab­in own­ers in the area, the fire chief said.
    ...

    And when try­ing to deter­mine a motive, it’s worth not­ing that, as is typ­i­cal­ly the case with sov­er­eign cit­i­zens, Clark’s beliefs went includ­ed just about any whacky con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry out there, includ­ing the QAnon/Pizzagate hoax. He is also con­vinced that the FBI mur­dered wit­ness­es to the 2017 Las Vegas domes­tic ter­ror attack by Stephen Pad­dock:

    ...
    His Face­book posts include push­ing such con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries as 9/11 was an inside job and insist­ing the FBI has mur­dered wit­ness­es in the 2017 Las Vegas sniper shoot­ing that killed 58. The site also con­tains posts about cannabis, reli­gion and numer­ous close-up pho­tos of what he says is skin can­cer on his face and leg. It also sug­gests that he was involved in a dis­pute with a neigh­bor who he says was cook­ing meth.

    “Based on his social media pages,” Mac­Nab said in a Twit­ter post, “Clark is a sov­er­eign cit­i­zen who believes in just about every kooky con­spir­a­cy out there, includ­ing QAnon, Piz­za­gate, Jade Helm 15, flat earth the­o­ries, NESARA, Jesuit con­ser­van­cies, shape-shift­ing lizard over­lords. You name it, he believes it.”

    Clark appears to have a his­to­ry of finan­cial and per­son­al trou­bles, accord­ing to the Palm Springs Desert Sun. In addi­tion to mul­ti­ple cred­it card col­lec­tion cas­es, he was a defen­dant in a civ­il breach of con­tract case, accused of defraud­ing an employ­er of about $85,000. The law­suit claimed that Clark and his co-work­ers were paid for land­scap­ing work that his com­pa­ny nev­er com­plet­ed, the Desert Sun said.
    ...

    Once again, don’t for­get that Stephen Pad­dock, him­self, appears to have been a sov­er­eign cit­i­zen who was ter­ri­fied of gov­ern­ment FEMA camps and was con­vinced that “some­body has to wake up the Amer­i­can pub­lic and get them to arm them­selves”.

    So, as with the case of Stephen Pad­dock, we once again are fac­ing an act by a sov­er­eign cit­i­zen that could be the action of a lunatic but also fits the pro­file of the far right strat­e­gy of ‘lead­er­less resis­tance’ and cal­cu­lat­ed ran­dom acts of domes­tic ter­ror.

    It’s one of the sig­na­ture char­ac­ter­is­tics of the sov­er­eign move­ment: the mem­bers are so overt­ly detached from real­i­ty that it’s hard to deter­mine if there’s any strat­e­gy behind their seem­ing­ly ran­dom and insane acts of vio­lence or this just the man­i­fes­ta­tion of the insan­i­ty that infests the move­ment.

    It’s also a good time to recall that one of the key strate­gies of far right orga­ni­za­tions for seiz­ing pow­er is to cre­ate one hor­ri­ble event after anoth­er for the pur­pose of effec­tive­ly dri­ving a soci­ety insane and tak­ing advan­tage of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties that col­lec­tive insan­i­ty cre­ates. It’s some­thing that’s going to be increas­ing­ly impor­tant to keep in mind as the sov­er­eigns and oth­er far right indi­vid­u­als con­tin­ue their domes­tic ter­ror cam­paigns: their overt insan­i­ty is intend­ed to be infec­tious. Maybe bul­lets are intend­ed to be the infec­tious vec­tors or maybe fire. Either way, the vio­lence and may­hem is meant to spread. It’s the under­ly­ing method to the mad­ness.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | August 13, 2018, 11:25 am
  2. It looks like the FBI inves­ti­ga­tion into the motive behind Stephen Pad­dock­’s mas­sacre in Las Vegas is offi­cial­ly end­ed with a “we have no idea what his motives were” con­clu­sion. The FBI did con­clude that Pad­dock was like­ly seek­ing some form of infamy and may have been inspire to fol­low in foot­steps of his bank rob­ber father. But beyond that, the FBI found no indi­ca­tion of par­tic­u­lar motive and con­clud­ed that the gun­man was not direct­ed or inspired by any group and was not seek­ing to fur­ther any agen­da.

    This con­clu­sion of no inspi­ra­tion by any group or agen­da of course is com­plete­ly con­tra­dict­ed by the wit­ness­es who claim to have over­heard Pad­dock in the days before the shoot­ing express­ing views in line with the Sov­er­eign Cit­i­zens. Recall the account of a woman claimed she sat near Pad­dock in a din­er days before the attack where he talked about with a com­pan­ion about the 25th anniver­sary of the Ruby Ridge stand­off and the Waco siege and heard him and his com­pan­ion say­ing that court­room flags with gold­en fringes are not real flags, in keep­ing with the Sov­er­eign Cit­i­zen belief that gold-fringed flags are those of a for­eign juris­dic­tion, or “admi­ral­ty flags”. And recall the accounts of a man who claimed he Pad­dock tried to buy from him a device that would con­vert semi-auto­mat­ic rifles to ful­ly auto­mat­ic weapons. The man claimed that Pad­dock launched into a rant about “anti-gov­ern­ment stuff … Fema camps”. The man claims that Pad­dock told him 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”. And he says Pad­dock told him, “Some­body has to wake up the Amer­i­can pub­lic and get them to arm themselves...Sometimes sac­ri­fices have to be made.”

    So not only are there mul­ti­ple inde­pen­dent accounts that point strong­ly towards Pad­dock being a fol­low­er of Sov­er­eign Cit­i­zen ide­olo­gies, but if that account about Pad­dock say­ing “Some­body has to wake up the Amer­i­can pub­lic and get them to arm themselves...Sometimes sac­ri­fices have to be made” is accu­rate, that strong­ly implies that Pad­dock would want to car­ry­ing out his polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed attack while hid­ing his polit­i­cal motive. After all, if some­one who is con­cerned about the gov­ern­ment con­fis­cat­ing guns and wants to “wake up the Amer­i­can pub­lic and get them to arm them­selves” pro­ceeds to car­ry out a mass slaugh­ter of the nature Pad­dock did (where he was found sur­round­ed by an arse­nal of guns in his hotel room), there is one very twist­ed obvi­ous log­ic behind that kind of ter­ror­ism: car­ry­ing out an unprece­dent­ed mas­sacre in order to prompt a wave of gov­ern­ment gun con­fis­ca­tions with the hope of see­ing the Amer­i­can far right back­lash.

    In oth­er words, based on the cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence, it looks like Pad­dock was mak­ing the bet that if he car­ried out an attack so hor­rif­ic that the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment could­n’t resist some degree of gun con­fis­ca­tions, the mass armed insur­rec­tion that the Amer­i­can far right has long pined for would final­ly hap­pen in response. And if that was indeed Pad­dock­’s plan, of course he would­n’t want to make his ide­ol­o­gy clear. So based on the cir­cum­stan­tial pub­licly avail­able evi­dence, not only does it look like Pad­dock had a polit­i­cal motive inspired by Sov­er­eign Cit­i­zen beliefs but he also had a motive to hide those beliefs and for some rea­son the FBI has a motive to ignore this in its final report

    Asso­ci­at­ed Press

    FBI finds no spe­cif­ic motive in Vegas attack that killed 58

    By KEN RITTER and MICHAEL BALSAMO
    1/29/2019

    LAS VEGAS (AP) — The high-stakes gam­bler respon­si­ble for the dead­liest mass shoot­ing in mod­ern U.S. his­to­ry sought noto­ri­ety in the attack but left his spe­cif­ic motive a mys­tery, the FBI said Tues­day as it con­clud­ed the inves­ti­ga­tion of the 2017 mas­sacre that killed 58 coun­try music fans.

    While the agency found no “sin­gle or clear moti­vat­ing fac­tor” to explain to explain why Stephen Pad­dock opened fire from his suite in a high-rise casi­no hotel, Pad­dock may have been seek­ing to fol­low in his father’s crim­i­nal foot­steps, the FBI said.

    “It wasn’t about MGM, Man­dalay Bay or a spe­cif­ic casi­no or venue,” Aaron Rouse, the agent in charge of the FBI’s Las Vegas office, told The Asso­ci­at­ed Press. “It was all about doing the max­i­mum amount of dam­age and him obtain­ing some form of infamy.”

    Paddock’s phys­i­cal and men­tal health was declin­ing. The 64-year-old’s wealth had dimin­ished, and he strug­gled with aging, fed­er­al agents said. The find­ings were con­tained in a long-await­ed report com­piled by the FBI’s Behav­ior Analy­sis Unit, a group of experts who spent months exam­in­ing sev­er­al fac­tors that might have led to the ram­page.

    “This report comes as close to under­stand­ing the why as we’re ever going to get,” Rouse said.

    Pad­dock, who act­ed alone, fatal­ly shot him­self as police closed in. Almost 900 peo­ple were hurt dur­ing the Oct. 1, 2017, attack on an out­door con­cert.

    The gun­man was inspired in part by his father’s rep­u­ta­tion as a bank rob­ber who was once on the FBI’s most want­ed list, the report said. In many ways, he was sim­i­lar to oth­er active shoot­ers the FBI has stud­ied — moti­vat­ed by a com­plex merg­ing of devel­op­ment issues, stress and inter­per­son­al rela­tion­ships.

    His “deci­sion to mur­der peo­ple while they were being enter­tained was con­sis­tent with his per­son­al­i­ty,” the report said.

    The gun­man was not direct­ed or inspired by any group and was not seek­ing to fur­ther any agen­da. He did not leave a man­i­festo or sui­cide note, and fed­er­al agents believe he had planned to fatal­ly shoot him­self after the attack, accord­ing to the report.

    Kim­ber­ly King, who along with her hus­band was hurt at the con­cert, said Pad­dock was “just a sick per­son.” She doesn’t care why he car­ried out the attack.

    “How did he get the chance to do it? That’s what upsets me the most,” the Las Vegas woman said. “How could this have hap­pened and how could we have let this hap­pen?”

    Pad­dock was a retired postal ser­vice work­er, accoun­tant and real estate investor who owned rental prop­er­ties and homes in Reno and in a retire­ment com­mu­ni­ty more than an hour’s dri­ve from Las Vegas. He also held a pri­vate pilot’s license and liked to gam­ble tens of thou­sands of dol­lars at a time play­ing video pok­er.

    His younger broth­er, Eric Pad­dock, called him the “king of micro-aggres­sion” — nar­cis­sis­tic, detail-ori­ent­ed and maybe bored enough with life to plan an attack that would make him famous. His ex-wife told inves­ti­ga­tors that he grew up with a sin­gle mom in a finan­cial­ly unsta­ble home and he felt a need to be self-reliant.

    Police char­ac­ter­ized him as a lon­er with no reli­gious or polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tions who began stock­pil­ing weapons about a year before the attack. He spent more than $1.5 mil­lion in the two years before the shoot­ing and dis­tanced him­self from his girl­friend and fam­i­ly.

    He sent his girl­friend, Mar­ilou Dan­ley, to vis­it her fam­i­ly in the Philip­pines two weeks before the attack and wired her $150,000 while she was there. Dan­ley, a for­mer casi­no work­er in Reno, returned to the U.S. after the shoot­ing and told author­i­ties that Pad­dock had com­plained that he was sick and that doc­tors told him he had a “chem­i­cal imbal­ance” and could not cure him.

    Dan­ley, who is Catholic, told inves­ti­ga­tors that Pad­dock often told her, “Your God doesn’t love me.”

    A Reno car sales­man told police that in the months before the shoot­ing Pad­dock told him he was depressed and had rela­tion­ship trou­bles. Paddock’s doc­tor offered him anti­de­pres­sants, but told inves­ti­ga­tors that Pad­dock would only accept a pre­scrip­tion for anx­i­ety med­ica­tion.

    Paddock’s gam­bling habits made him a sought-after casi­no patron. Man­dalay Bay employ­ees read­i­ly let him use a ser­vice ele­va­tor to take mul­ti­ple suit­cas­es to the $590-per-night suite he had been pro­vid­ed for free. Author­i­ties said he asked for the room, which had a com­mand­ing view of the Strip and the Route 91 Har­vest Fes­ti­val con­cert grounds across the street.

    The night of the mas­sacre, Pad­dock used assault-style rifles to fire more than 1,000 rounds in 11 min­utes into the crowd of 22,000 music fans. Most of the rifles were fit­ted with rapid-fire “bump stock” devices and high-capac­i­ty mag­a­zines. Some had bipod braces and scopes. Author­i­ties said Paddock’s guns had been legal­ly pur­chased.

    Las Vegas police closed their inves­ti­ga­tion last August, and Clark Coun­ty Sher­iff Joe Lom­bar­do declared the police work com­plete after hun­dreds of inter­views and thou­sands of hours of inves­tiga­tive work. Lom­bar­do vowed nev­er to speak Paddock’s name again in pub­lic. A Las Vegas police spokesman declined to com­ment on the FBI’s report.

    A sep­a­rate report made pub­lic in August involv­ing the Fed­er­al Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency found that com­mu­ni­ca­tions were snarled dur­ing and after the shoot­ing. It said police, fire and med­ical respon­ders were over­whelmed by 911 calls, false reports of oth­er shoot­ings at Las Vegas casi­nos and the num­ber of vic­tims.

    ...

    He left behind noth­ing that offered an expla­na­tion.

    “He act­ed alone. He com­mit­ted a heinous act. He died by his own hand,” Rouse said. “If he want­ed to leave a mes­sage, he would have left a mes­sage. Bot­tom line is he didn’t want peo­ple to know.”

    ———

    “FBI finds no spe­cif­ic motive in Vegas attack that killed 58” by KEN RITTER and MICHAEL BALSAMO; Asso­ci­at­ed Press; 1/29/2019

    The gun­man was not direct­ed or inspired by any group and was not seek­ing to fur­ther any agen­da.” He did not leave a man­i­festo or sui­cide note, and fed­er­al agents believe he had planned to fatal­ly shoot him­self after the attack, accord­ing to the report.

    Pad­dock was­n’t direct­ed or inspired by any group and was­n’t seek­ing to fur­ther any agen­da. Those were the final find­ings of the FBI, which appears to com­plete­ly ignore the wit­ness­es accounts that point towards a heav­i­ly rad­i­cal­ized and deeply polit­i­cal indi­vid­ual who want­ed to “wake up” Amer­i­ca about the threat of gov­ern­ment gun seizures.

    The Las Vegas police also con­clud­ed that Pad­dock was a lon­er with no reli­gious or polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tions:

    ...
    Police char­ac­ter­ized him as a lon­er with no reli­gious or polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tions who began stock­pil­ing weapons about a year before the attack. He spent more than $1.5 mil­lion in the two years before the shoot­ing and dis­tanced him­self from his girl­friend and fam­i­ly.
    ...

    So we’ll see what, if any, addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion is even­tu­al­ly dis­cov­ered about Pad­dock, his pol­i­tics, and motive behind the attack. It’s hard to imag­ine that the FBI’s final report is real­ly going to be the final exam­i­na­tion of this case, espe­cial­ly giv­en the “we have no idea” nature of their con­clu­sions. But for now, for what­ev­er rea­son, Pad­dock­’s rad­i­cal­ized polit­i­cal beliefs appear to be such a sen­si­tive sub­ject by inves­ti­ga­tors that they’re act­ing like he did­n’t have any.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | January 30, 2019, 2:42 pm
  3. Oh look, anoth­er Amer­i­can neo-Nazi domes­tic ter­ror­ist: a lieu­tenant in the US Coast Guard, Christophe Has­son, was arrest­ed for plot­ting to a mass ter­ror cam­paign mod­eled after Anders Breivik’s man­i­festo, with the idea of spark­ing a domes­tic con­flict for the pur­pose of cre­at­ing a white home­land. In addi­tion to find­ing a stock­pile of guns, Has­son appeared to have an inter­est in bio­log­i­cal weapons and tar­get­ing the US food sup­ply. In a 2017 let­ter, Has­son wrote, “I think a plague would be most suc­cess­ful but how do I acquire the needed/Spanish flu, bot­u­lism, anthrax not sure yet but will find some­thing.” He also said in the let­ter that he would start with the bio­log­i­cal attacks tar­get­ing the food sup­ply and then would begin a “bombing/sniper cam­paign.”

    There’s a par­al­lel with the bizarre case of Cesar Say­oc, the Trump super-fan who mailed fake pipe-bombs to a Demo­c­ra­t­ic politi­cians and media per­son­al­i­ties: In addi­tion to being a big Trump fan, Has­son had a long assas­si­na­tion tar­get list of a num­ber of Demo­c­ra­t­ic politi­cians and left-lean­ing cable news per­son­al­i­ties like Chris Hayes and Don Lemon. His web search his­to­ry indi­cates that he’s done a num­ber of search­es about the kind of phys­i­cal pro­tec­tion these indi­vid­u­als have and their home address­es. So the guy was very inter­est­ed in caus­ing both mass casu­al­ties but also tar­get­ed killings. The par­tic­u­lar hit list inves­ti­ga­tors found was appar­ent­ly cre­at­ed on Jan­u­ary 19th of this year.

    There’s also a big par­al­lel with what appears to have been Stephen Pad­dock­’s motive for the Las Vegas mas­sacre: com­mit­ting a hor­rif­ic crime for the pur­pose of trig­ger­ing a gov­ern­ment crack­down that will fuel a ‘white back­lash’ and hope­ful­ly trig­ger a civ­il war. Recall how Pad­dock was over­heard by mul­ti­ple wit­ness­es short­ly before the Vegas attack using sov­er­eign cit­i­zen ter­mi­nol­o­gy, rant­i­ng about ‘FEMA camps’, and say­ing things like “Some­body has to wake up the Amer­i­can pub­lic and get them to arm themselves...Sometimes sac­ri­fices have to be made.” In the case of Has­son, he wrote that the “liberalist/globalist ide­ol­o­gy is destroy­ing tra­di­tion­al peo­ples (espe­cial­ly) white,” amd, “No way to coun­ter­act with­out vio­lence. It should push for more crack down bring­ing more peo­ple to our side. Much blood will have to be spilled to get whitey off the couch. For some no amount of blood will be enough. They will die as will the trai­tors who active­ly work toward our demise. Look­ing to Rus­sia with hope­ful eyes or any land that despis­es the west’s lib­er­al­ism. Exclud­ing, of course, the Mus­lim scum. Who right­ful­ly despite the west’s lib­er­al degen­er­a­cy.”

    Has­son wrote about his plans to increase the planned unrest by tar­get­ing both law enforce­ment and pro­tes­tors: “Dur­ing unrest tar­get both sides to increase ten­sion...In oth­er words pro­voke gov/police to over react which should help to esca­late vio­lence. BLM protests or oth­er left crap would be ide­al to incite to vio­lence.” He also wrote, “Food/fuel may be the key, if I can dis­rupt two or three weeks. When (peo­ple) start to loot steal protest dress as cop and shoot them. Burn down Apt com­plex, bar the doors first. Ther­mite on gas sta­tion tank.

    It’s also note­wor­thy that Has­son wrote a let­ter in Sep­tem­ber of 2017 to some­one described as a “known Amer­i­can neo-Nazi leader” where he express­es his desires to do some­thing to spark the fight for a white home­land. The let­ter was appar­ent­ly sent sev­en weeks after the Char­lottesville “Unite the Right” neo-Nazi march. The Vegas shoot­ing was on Octo­ber 1, 2017, which is right around sev­en weeks after Char­lottesville. So right around the same time Pad­dock com­mits the Vegas mas­sacre, Has­son is writ­ing to an Amer­i­can neo-Nazi leader about his desires to more or less do the same thing, but on an even larg­er scale.

    So Has­son was explic­it­ly plan­ning on doing some­thing that would bring a “crack down” of some sort that would bring “more peo­ple to our side” because “Much blood will have to be spilled to get whitey off the couch.” And he had a long list of left-wing assas­si­na­tion tar­gets and want­ed to become the Amer­i­can Anders Breivik. So it sounds like, once again, we have an Amer­i­can neo-Nazi domes­tic ter­ror plot designed to cat­alyze a “crack down” (like­ly gun con­trol leg­is­la­tion) that will “get whitey off the couch”. But in this case, the ‘get­ting whitey off the couch’ plans involve biowar­fare:

    Heavy.com

    Christo­pher Has­son: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know

    By Tom Cleary
    Updat­ed Feb 20, 2019 at 7:01pm

    A 49-year-old active duty U.S. Coast Guard lieu­tenant arrest­ed on gun and drug charges has been accused by fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors of being a “domes­tic ter­ror­ist, bent on com­mit­ting acts dan­ger­ous to human life that are intend­ed to affect gov­ern­men­tal con­duct.” In a court fil­ing, pros­e­cu­tors showed the lieu­tenant was inspired by far-right Nor­we­gian ter­ror­ist Anders Breivik has cor­re­spond­ed with known white suprema­cists and iden­ti­fied him­self as a “white nation­al­ist” who has advo­cat­ed for “focused vio­lence” in order to estab­lish a “white home­land.”

    Christo­pher Has­son, of Sil­ver Spring, Mary­land, was charged with pos­ses­sion of firearms and ammu­ni­tion by an unlaw­ful user or addict of con­trolled sub­stances, and with pos­ses­sion of tra­madol, but pros­e­cu­tors in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Dis­trict of Mary­land called those alleged offens­es the “prover­bial tip of the ice­berg.”

    In a chill­ing court doc­u­ment, fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors explain how Has­son appeared to be research­ing the Nor­we­gian ter­ror­ist, study­ing the mass killer’s man­i­festo and gath­er­ing weapons, ammu­ni­tion and oth­er sup­plies with the inten­tion of car­ry­ing out a sim­i­lar attack in the Unit­ed States in an effort to become the Amer­i­can Anders Breivik. The Nor­we­gian killed 77 peo­ple in his 2011 attack. Pros­e­cu­tors did not reveal if Has­son had a spe­cif­ic date in mind for an attack and also didn’t say how he was dis­cov­ered.

    Pros­e­cu­tors said in court doc­u­ments that Has­son stock­piled weapons and was plan­ning a domes­tic ter­ror attack tar­get­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic politi­cians and jour­nal­ists. He wrote in a let­ter to a Neo-Nazi leader that he had been dream­ing of ways to “kill almost every last per­son on earth,” pros­e­cu­tors said. Assis­tant U.S. Attor­ney Thomas Wis­dom wrote, “the defen­dant intends to mur­der inno­cent civil­ians on a scale rarely seen in this coun­try.”

    The case was first uncov­ered by Sea­mus Hugh­es, a for­mer Sen­ate coun­tert­er­ror­ism advi­sor who now works with the George Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty Pro­gram on Extrem­ism, which pro­vides “analy­sis and pol­i­cy solu­tions on rad­i­cal­iza­tion, ter­ror­ism and extrem­ism.” You can learn more about the GWUPoE and Hugh­es’ work here.. Hugh­es, the program’s deputy direc­tor, has revealed details on sev­er­al cas­es involv­ing Amer­i­can extrem­ism and ter­ror­ism cas­es, often find­ing the infor­ma­tion in fed­er­al court doc­u­ments before the media.

    Has­son remains in fed­er­al cus­tody and has been held on a tem­po­rary deten­tion order since his arrest on Feb­ru­ary 15. The explo­sive details found by Hugh­es and the Pro­gram on Extrem­ism were detailed in a motion by fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors for ask­ing the judge to con­tin­ue Hasson’s deten­tion pri­or to tri­al.

    U.S. Attor­ney for the Dis­trict of Mary­land Robert Hur and his office have declined fur­ther com­ment on the case beyond con­firm­ing Hasson’s arrest. The FBI has also not com­ment­ed fur­ther. It is not clear if Has­son has hired an attor­ney who could speak on his behalf and his wife and oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers did not imme­di­ate­ly return requests for com­ment from Heavy.

    Has­son is a sup­port­er of Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump and wrote that “liberalist/globalist ide­ol­o­gy is destroy­ing tra­di­tion­al peo­ples (espe­cial­ly) white,” accord­ing to pros­e­cu­tors. Has­son added, “No way to coun­ter­act with­out vio­lence. It should push for more crack down bring­ing more peo­ple to our side. Much blood will have to be spilled to get whitey off the couch. For some no amount of blood will be enough. They will die as will the trai­tors who active­ly work toward our demise. Look­ing to Rus­sia with hope­ful eyes or any land that despis­es the west’s lib­er­al­ism. Exclud­ing, of course, the Mus­lim scum. Who right­ful­ly despite the west’s lib­er­al degen­er­a­cy.”

    Pros­e­cu­tors said Has­son had also “con­duct­ed online search­es” for “pro-Russ­ian, neo-fas­cist and neo-Nazi lit­er­a­ture,” and made “thou­sands of vis­its,” to sites with that infor­ma­tion.

    Here’s what you need to know about Lt. Christo­pher Has­son:

    1. Has­son Has Worked at the Coast Guard Head­quar­ters in D.C. Since 2016 & Served in the Marines From 1988 to 1993

    Lieu­tenant Christo­pher Paul Has­son has been sta­tioned at the U.S. Coast Guard Head­quar­ters in Wash­ing­ton D.C. since 2016, accord­ing to court doc­u­ments. He was pro­mot­ed to lieu­tenant in June 2016, records show. He was com­mis­sioned into the Coast Guard on June 1, 2012.

    Accord­ing to court doc­u­ments, Has­son worked in “Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Cut­ter Acqui­si­tion.”

    Fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors said Has­son served in the U.S. Marine Corps from 1988 to 1993 and was in the Army Nation­al Guard for two years in the mid-1990s.

    Pros­e­cu­tors have not said what led to the inves­ti­ga­tion into Has­son on the drug and gun charges.

    Has­son is mar­ried and has chil­dren, includ­ing a son who also served in the Marine Corps, accord­ing to social media pro­files. He has pre­vi­ous­ly lived in Cal­i­for­nia, Vir­ginia, South Car­oli­na, Neva­da, Ari­zona, North Car­oli­na, New Jer­sey and has been in Sil­ver Spring, Mary­land, since 2017.

    A crim­i­nal com­plaint was filed against Has­son on Feb­ru­ary 14, 2019, along with an affi­davit from FBI Spe­cial Agent Alexan­dria Thoman. The case was sealed until Hasson’s arrest on Feb­ru­ary 15.

    Thoman obtained emails in which Has­son wrote about own­ing and try­ing to buy guns, along with talk­ing about going to gun ranges and shoot­ing clubs in Mary­land and Vir­ginia, includ­ing the “NRA Range” at the Nation­al Rifle Asso­ci­a­tion head­quar­ters in Vir­ginia. He bought guns at the NRA range, accord­ing to court doc­u­ments.

    Thoman wrote in her affi­davit that Has­son had been buy­ing Tra­madol, a pre­scrip­tion painkiller, from an uniden­ti­fied per­son like­ly locat­ed in Mex­i­co, since Octo­ber 2016. The drugs were being sent from loca­tions in Cal­i­for­nia to address­es in Mary­land and North Car­oli­na, includ­ing Hasson’s home.

    “Oth­er evi­dence sug­gests that Has­son is a user, rather than a dis­trib­u­tor, of the Tra­madol her pur­chas­es,” Thoman wrote.

    You can read the full crim­i­nal com­plaint below or or here:
    [see crim­i­nal com­plaint]

    2. Pros­e­cu­tors Say Has­son Wrote in a Let­ter, ‘Send Me Your Vio­lence So I May Unleash It Onto Their Heads … Guide My Hate to Make a Last­ing Impres­sion on the World’

    LT. Christo­pher Has­son wrote a draft let­ter to a well known Amer­i­can neo nazi advo­cat­ing for a white state. pic.twitter.com/WhUlcnBFJQ

    — Sea­mus Hugh­es (@SeamusHughes) Feb­ru­ary 20, 2019

    Pros­e­cu­tors said in court doc­u­ments that Has­son appeared to have been study­ing the 1,500-page man­i­festo writ­ten by Anders Behring Breivik pri­or to his attacks in Nor­way. Breivik killed eight peo­ple in a bomb­ing in Oslo before fatal­ly shoot­ing 69 peo­ple on the island of Utoya.

    Breivik had embraced “cru­sad­er nation­al­ism,” which he believed would coun­ter­act the “Islamiza­tion” of Europe, and believed Europe was being destroyed by “cul­tur­al Marx­ism and polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness,” accord­ing to pros­e­cu­tors. Pros­e­cu­tors said Has­son was fol­low­ing Breivik’s manifesto’s instruc­tions to amass firearms, food, dis­guis­es and sur­vival sup­plies.

    He had also searched in recent weeks for, “what if Trump ille­gal­ly impeached,” “best place in DC to see con­gress peo­ple,” “where in dc to [sic] con­gress live,” “civ­il war if trump impeached,” and “social democ­rats usa.”

    In Sep­tem­ber 2017, he wrote a let­ter direct­ed to a “known Amer­i­can neo-Nazi leader,” pros­e­cu­tors said. He iden­ti­fied him­self as a white nation­al­ist for more than 30 years. The let­ter was sent sev­en weeks after the Char­lottesville ral­ly:

    In the let­ter, he said he has “been a skin­head,” before his time in the mil­i­tary. He wrote, that he ful­ly sup­ports a “white home­land.”

    “I nev­er saw a rea­son for mass protest or wear­ing uni­forms march­ing around pro­vok­ing peo­ple with swastikas etc.,” Has­son wrote. “I was and am a man of action you can­not change minds protest­ing like that. How­ev­er you can make change with a lit­tle focused vio­lence.”

    You can read the full let­ter below:

    I am writ­ing you regards to your ideas behind North West migra­tion. To date I have read most of your books and briefly looked at your web­site. I am a long time White Nation­al­ist, hav­ing been a skin­head 30 plus years ago before my time in the mil­i­tary. I have served in 3 branch­es cur­rent­ly serv­ing as an Offi­cer (nev­er attend­ed col­lege) with 2 years till I hit manda­to­ry retire­ment at 30. . . While I ful­ly sup­port the idea of a white home­land, my friends who still play at being a skin­head at 40 plus years old say that you are an infor­mant. That is nei­ther here nor there it is not an accu­sa­tion the per­son who told me this served a 12 year prison sen­tence and nev­er rat­ted me out so I will not dis­pute him nor will I accuse you. I nev­er saw a rea­son for mass protest or wear­ing uni­forms march­ing around pro­vok­ing peo­ple with swastikas etc. I was and am a man of action you can­not change minds protest­ing like that. How­ev­er you can make change with a lit­tle focused vio­lence. . . The gov­ern­ment has expert­ly infil­trat­ed and destroyed from with­in most if not all Pro White orga­ni­za­tions. . . . We need a white home­land as Europe seems lost. How long we can hold out there and pre­vent nig­ger­iza­tion of the North­west until whites wake up on their own or are forcibly made to make a deci­sion whether to roll over and die or to stand up remains to be seen. But I know a few younger ones that are tired of wait­ing and I feel we need them to reset­tle and build a com­mu­ni­ty before they throw their life away with some des­per­ate mea­sure like shoot­ing up a mosque in an area that doesn’t want us. They need a Home­land to fight for as Amer­i­ca has turned its back on them. I know more than a few that went this path and it’s a f*cking waste.

    In a let­ter writ­ten in 2017 recov­ered from his email drafts, Has­son wrote, “Please send me your vio­lence that I may unleash it onto their heads … Guide my hate to make a last­ing impres­sion on this world.”

    It is not clear who the let­ter was meant to be sent to. It was addressed,” dear friends, maybe that’s a bit of a mis­nomer. Acquain­tances more like­ly.”

    In court doc­u­ments, pros­e­cu­tors said Has­son wrote in the 2017 let­ter that he was think­ing about bio­log­i­cal attacks and tar­get­ing food sup­plies.

    He wrote, “I think a plague would be most suc­cess­ful but how do I acquire the needed/Spanish flu, bot­u­lism, anthrax not sure yet but will find some­thing.”

    He said he would start with the bio­log­i­cal attacks tar­get­ing the food sup­ply and then would begin a “bombing/sniper cam­paign.”

    Has­son wrote, “What can I do, I will not do nothing…It seems inevitable that we are doomed. I don’t think I can cause com­plete destruc­tion on my own, how­ev­er if I could enlist the unwit­ting help of anoth­er power/country would be best. Who and how to pro­voke???”

    He also list­ed things he want­ed to accom­plish in the next four years, includ­ing, get­ting out of debt, buy­ing a van to con­vert it to diesel, buy land for fam­i­ly out west or in the North Car­oli­na moun­tains.”

    “Dur­ing unrest tar­get both sides to increase ten­sion,” he wrote. “In oth­er words pro­voke gov/police to over react which should help to esca­late vio­lence. BLM protests or oth­er left crap would be ide­al to incite to vio­lence.”

    You can read the motion for a deten­tion order below:
    [see motion for deten­tion]

    3. Has­son Had a List of Tar­gets Includ­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic Con­gres­sion­al Lead­ers & Media Per­son­al­i­ties & Searched for the ‘Best Place in DC to See Con­gress Peo­ple’ & Are Supreme Court Jus­tices Pro­tect­ed’

    Christo­pher Has­son had a list of poten­tial tar­gets that was sim­i­lar to Anders Breivik’s list of trai­tors. The spread­sheet found by fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors includ­ed sev­er­al promi­nent Demo­c­ra­t­ic mem­bers of Con­gress and media per­son­al­i­ties.

    Pros­e­cu­tors said he built the list while “review­ing the MSNBC, CNN and Fox News web­sites,” as well as oth­er web­sites, on his work com­put­er. It was cre­at­ed on Jan­u­ary 19.

    The list includ­ed:

    -“Joey,” who pros­e­cu­tors said is believed to be MSNBC’s Joe Scar­bor­ough

    – MSNBC’s Chris Hayes

    – “pelosi,” pre­sum­ably House Speak­er Nan­cy Pelosi

    – “Sen Blu­men Jew,” who pros­e­cu­tors believe to be U.S. Sen­a­tor Richard Blu­men­thal of Con­necti­cut.

    – “Sen kaine,” believed to be U.S. Sen­a­tor Tim Kaine of Vir­ginia

    – “Shumer,” pre­sumed to be U.S. Sen­a­tor Chuck Schumer of New York

    – CNN’s Don Lemon

    – “gilli­bran,” pre­sum­ably U.S. Sen­a­tor Kirsten Gilli­brand

    – “poca war­ren,” pre­sum­ably U.S. Sen­a­tor Eliz­a­beth War­ren of Mass­a­chu­setts

    – “cortez,” believed to be Rep. Alexan­dria Oca­sio-Cortez of New York

    – “book­er,” believed to be U.S. Sen­a­tor Cory Book­er of New Jer­sey

    – For­mer U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke, of Texas

    – U.S. Rep. Max­ine Waters, of Cal­i­for­nia

    – U.S. Rep. Sheila Jack­son, of Texas

    – “iihan omar,” pre­sumed to be U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, of Min­neso­ta

    – CNN’s Chris Cuo­mo

    – Demo­c­ra­t­ic Social­ists of Amer­i­ca

    – CNN’s Van Jones

    – “podes­ta,” pre­sumed to be for­mer Hillary Clin­ton cam­paign chair­man John Podes­ta

    Accord­ing to pros­e­cu­tors, the list is “con­sis­tent with the direc­tions in the Breivik man­i­festo,” which divid­ed tar­gets into cat­e­gories A, B or C:

    This clas­si­fi­ca­tion sys­tem is used to iden­ti­fy var­i­ous indi­vid­ual cul­tur­al Marxist/multiculturalist trai­tors. The inten­tion of the sys­tem is to eas­i­er iden­ti­fy pri­or­i­ty tar­gets and will also serve as the foun­da­tion for the future ‘Nurem­berg tri­als’ once the Euro­pean cul­tur­al con­ser­v­a­tives reassert polit­i­cal and mil­i­tary con­trol of any giv­en coun­try. Any cat­e­go­ry A, B or C trai­tor is an indi­vid­ual who has delib­er­ate­ly used his or her influ­ence in a way which makes him or her indi­rect­ly or direct­ly guilty of the charges spec­i­fied in this doc­u­ment: 1–8. Many of these indi­vid­u­als will attempt to claim ‘igno­rance’ of the crimes they are accused of

    Accord­ing to Breivik’s sys­tem, cat­e­go­ry A was the “most influ­en­tial and high pro­file trai­tors,” includ­ing polit­i­cal lead­ers, media lead­ers and cul­tur­al lead­ers.

    Has­son had searched for “most lib­er­al sen­a­tors,” “do sen­a­tors have [secret ser­vice] pro­tec­tion,” and searched for Scar­bor­ough after see­ing a head­line in which the MSNBC host claimed Trump to be “the worst ever” pres­i­dent. He also looked up where the host’s show, “Morn­ing Joe,” is filmed, along with his home, pros­e­cu­tors said.

    Has­son made many anti-Semit­ic remarks in emails obtained by the FBI, includ­ing writ­ing, “I don’t know if there tru­ly is a ‘con­spir­a­cy’ of ((((Peo­ple)))) out to destroy me and mine, but there is an attack none the less. For that rea­son I will strike, I can’t just strike to wound I must find a way to deliv­er a blow that can­not be shak­en off. Maybe many blows that will cause the need­ed tur­moil.”

    The “(((Peo­ple)))” is a cod­ed ref­er­ence to Jew­ish peo­ple.

    4. Police Seized 15 Firearms, Includ­ing Long Guns & Rifles, From Hasson’s Home Along With More Than 1,000 Rounds of Ammu­ni­tion, Nar­cotics & What Appeared to Be Human Growth Hor­mones

    Accord­ing to court doc­u­ments, inves­ti­ga­tors seized 15 firearms, includ­ing long guns and rifles, from Christo­pher Hasson’s home in Sil­ver Spring, Mary­land. They also seized more than 1,000 rounds of ammu­ni­tion. And pros­e­cu­tors said he made near­ly two dozen pur­chas­es of firearms or relat­ed equip­ment over the last two years.

    Police also seized nar­cotics, includ­ing the pre­scrip­tion painkiller Tra­madol, along with what appeared to be vials of human growth hor­mones and syn­thet­ic urine that can be used to bypass ran­dom drug screen­ings, accord­ing to court doc­u­ments.

    The FBI affi­davit states that Has­son made two pur­chas­es from “Alter­na­tive Lifestyle” in 2018 for “Gold­en Flask Syn­thet­ic Urine,” and “The Clean Kit,” which inves­ti­ga­tors said are used to avoid a pos­i­tive uri­nal­y­sis test. The FBI said Has­son would be sub­ject to ran­dom tests as part of his job. He had one such test in Jan­u­ary 2018 and test­ed neg­a­tive for drugs.

    Accord­ing to court doc­u­ments, Tra­madol pills were also found at Hasson’s desk at the Coast Guard head­quar­ters in D.C., hid­den inside a bot­tle labeled “Fish Flox.”

    He wrote about drug use in a let­ter uncov­ered by inves­ti­ga­tors, say­ing he need­ed to “come off TDL [Tra­madol], clear my head.” He said he want­ed to “move to friend­ly area and start to orga­nize. Get lead­er­ship with­in the com­mu­ni­ty, sher­iff, city man­ag­er, may­or, lawyer? Not sure but start now. Be ready.”

    Accord­ing to pros­e­cu­tors, Anders Breivik used nar­cotics and steroids pri­or to his 2011 attack because he believed it height­ened his abil­i­ties. On Jan­u­ary 3, 2019, Has­son searched Breivik’s man­i­festo for “steroids,” and read his diary entry on the top­ic, pros­e­cu­tors said.

    Has­son encour­aged recip­i­ents of his let­ter to “stock­pile” in five loca­tions, pack­ing food, guns, cloth­ing, gear,” while learn­ing basic chem­istry. “[Buy] land put 3 home sand mul­ti­ple hides. Have way to get out and start hit­ting back.”

    He also cit­ed Eric Rudolph, the Olympic Park Bomber, as an inspi­ra­tion.

    He wrote, “Food/fuel may be the key, if I can dis­rupt two or three weeks. When (peo­ple) start to loot steal protest dress as cop and shoot them. Burn down Apt com­plex, bar the doors first. Ther­mite on gas sta­tion tank.”

    5. Has­son Is Sched­uled for a Deten­tion Hear­ing in Fed­er­al Court on Thurs­day

    Lieu­tenant Christo­pher Has­son is sched­uled to appear in court on Thurs­day, Feb­ru­ary 21, accord­ing to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. His hear­ing is sched­uled for 1 p.m. in the U.S. Dis­trict Court in Mary­land before U.S. Mag­is­trate Judge Charles B. Day.

    ...

    ———–

    “Christo­pher Has­son: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know” by Tom Cleary; Heavy.com; 02/20/2019

    In a chill­ing court doc­u­ment, fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors explain how Has­son appeared to be research­ing the Nor­we­gian ter­ror­ist, study­ing the mass killer’s man­i­festo and gath­er­ing weapons, ammu­ni­tion and oth­er sup­plies with the inten­tion of car­ry­ing out a sim­i­lar attack in the Unit­ed States in an effort to become the Amer­i­can Anders Breivik. The Nor­we­gian killed 77 peo­ple in his 2011 attack. Pros­e­cu­tors did not reveal if Has­son had a spe­cif­ic date in mind for an attack and also didn’t say how he was dis­cov­ered.”

    An aspir­ing Amer­i­can Anders Breivik. That appears to be the pri­ma­ry tem­plate Christo­pher Has­son was work­ing off of in his plans to “kill almost every last per­son on earth.” And cen­tral to his strat­e­gy is to com­mit a ter­ror cam­paign that will pro­voke a gov­ern­ment response which will “get whitey off the couch” and spark the kind of civ­il war that can exploit­ed by the neo-Nazis to cre­ate a new ‘white home­land’. It also sounds quite a bit like Stephen Pad­dock­’s motive:

    ...
    Pros­e­cu­tors said in court doc­u­ments that Has­son stock­piled weapons and was plan­ning a domes­tic ter­ror attack tar­get­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic politi­cians and jour­nal­ists. He wrote in a let­ter to a Neo-Nazi leader that he had been dream­ing of ways to “kill almost every last per­son on earth,” pros­e­cu­tors said. Assis­tant U.S. Attor­ney Thomas Wis­dom wrote, “the defen­dant intends to mur­der inno­cent civil­ians on a scale rarely seen in this coun­try.”

    ...

    Has­son is a sup­port­er of Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump and wrote that “liberalist/globalist ide­ol­o­gy is destroy­ing tra­di­tion­al peo­ples (espe­cial­ly) white,” accord­ing to pros­e­cu­tors. Has­son added, “No way to coun­ter­act with­out vio­lence. It should push for more crack down bring­ing more peo­ple to our side. Much blood will have to be spilled to get whitey off the couch. For some no amount of blood will be enough. They will die as will the trai­tors who active­ly work toward our demise. Look­ing to Rus­sia with hope­ful eyes or any land that despis­es the west’s lib­er­al­ism. Exclud­ing, of course, the Mus­lim scum. Who right­ful­ly despite the west’s lib­er­al degen­er­a­cy.”

    Pros­e­cu­tors said Has­son had also “con­duct­ed online search­es” for “pro-Russ­ian, neo-fas­cist and neo-Nazi lit­er­a­ture,” and made “thou­sands of vis­its,” to sites with that infor­ma­tion.

    ...

    Pros­e­cu­tors said in court doc­u­ments that Has­son appeared to have been study­ing the 1,500-page man­i­festo writ­ten by Anders Behring Breivik pri­or to his attacks in Nor­way. Breivik killed eight peo­ple in a bomb­ing in Oslo before fatal­ly shoot­ing 69 peo­ple on the island of Utoya.

    Breivik had embraced “cru­sad­er nation­al­ism,” which he believed would coun­ter­act the “Islamiza­tion” of Europe, and believed Europe was being destroyed by “cul­tur­al Marx­ism and polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness,” accord­ing to pros­e­cu­tors. Pros­e­cu­tors said Has­son was fol­low­ing Breivik’s manifesto’s instruc­tions to amass firearms, food, dis­guis­es and sur­vival sup­plies.

    He had also searched in recent weeks for, “what if Trump ille­gal­ly impeached,” “best place in DC to see con­gress peo­ple,” “where in dc to [sic] con­gress live,” “civ­il war if trump impeached,” and “social democ­rats usa.”
    ...

    Inter­est­ing­ly, it was in Sep­tem­ber 2017, sev­en weeks after the Char­lottesville ral­ly (so right before the Stephen Pad­dock Vegas mas­sacre of Octo­ber 1, 2017), Has­son sends a let­ter to an Amer­i­can neo-Nazi leader explain­ing how he was a skin­head before join­ing the mil­i­tary and his desire to use “focused vio­lence” to “change minds” in the pur­suit of a white home­land:

    ...
    In Sep­tem­ber 2017, he wrote a let­ter direct­ed to a “known Amer­i­can neo-Nazi leader,” pros­e­cu­tors said. He iden­ti­fied him­self as a white nation­al­ist for more than 30 years. The let­ter was sent sev­en weeks after the Char­lottesville ral­ly:

    In the let­ter, he said he has “been a skin­head,” before his time in the mil­i­tary. He wrote, that he ful­ly sup­ports a “white home­land.”

    “I nev­er saw a rea­son for mass protest or wear­ing uni­forms march­ing around pro­vok­ing peo­ple with swastikas etc.,” Has­son wrote. “I was and am a man of action you can­not change minds protest­ing like that. How­ev­er you can make change with a lit­tle focused vio­lence.”
    ...

    He also wrote anoth­er let­ter in Sep­tem­ber 2017 to unknown recip­i­ents about his use bio­log­i­cal war­fare and tar­get the food sup­plies before start­ing a bombing/sniper cam­paign that would tar­get both law enforce­ment and pro­tes­tors for the pur­pose of incit­ing gen­er­al vio­lence:

    ...
    In court doc­u­ments, pros­e­cu­tors said Has­son wrote in the 2017 let­ter that he was think­ing about bio­log­i­cal attacks and tar­get­ing food sup­plies.

    He wrote, “I think a plague would be most suc­cess­ful but how do I acquire the needed/Spanish flu, bot­u­lism, anthrax not sure yet but will find some­thing.”

    He said he would start with the bio­log­i­cal attacks tar­get­ing the food sup­ply and then would begin a “bombing/sniper cam­paign.”

    Has­son wrote, “What can I do, I will not do nothing…It seems inevitable that we are doomed. I don’t think I can cause com­plete destruc­tion on my own, how­ev­er if I could enlist the unwit­ting help of anoth­er power/country would be best. Who and how to pro­voke???”

    He also list­ed things he want­ed to accom­plish in the next four years, includ­ing, get­ting out of debt, buy­ing a van to con­vert it to diesel, buy land for fam­i­ly out west or in the North Car­oli­na moun­tains.”

    “Dur­ing unrest tar­get both sides to increase ten­sion,” he wrote. “In oth­er words pro­voke gov/police to over react which should help to esca­late vio­lence. BLM protests or oth­er left crap would be ide­al to incite to vio­lence.”

    ...

    Has­son encour­aged recip­i­ents of his let­ter to “stock­pile” in five loca­tions, pack­ing food, guns, cloth­ing, gear,” while learn­ing basic chem­istry. “[Buy] land put 3 home sand mul­ti­ple hides. Have way to get out and start hit­ting back.”

    He also cit­ed Eric Rudolph, the Olympic Park Bomber, as an inspi­ra­tion.

    He wrote, “Food/fuel may be the key, if I can dis­rupt two or three weeks. When (peo­ple) start to loot steal protest dress as cop and shoot them. Burn down Apt com­plex, bar the doors first. Ther­mite on gas sta­tion tank.”
    ...

    Then there’s his long left-lean­ing assas­si­na­tion tar­get list. It was appar­ent­ly cre­at­ed on Jan­u­ary 19th, under­scor­ing that this plan was active­ly being worked on by Has­son very recent­ly:

    ...
    3. Has­son Had a List of Tar­gets Includ­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic Con­gres­sion­al Lead­ers & Media Per­son­al­i­ties & Searched for the ‘Best Place in DC to See Con­gress Peo­ple’ & Are Supreme Court Jus­tices Pro­tect­ed’

    Christo­pher Has­son had a list of poten­tial tar­gets that was sim­i­lar to Anders Breivik’s list of trai­tors. The spread­sheet found by fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors includ­ed sev­er­al promi­nent Demo­c­ra­t­ic mem­bers of Con­gress and media per­son­al­i­ties.

    Pros­e­cu­tors said he built the list while “review­ing the MSNBC, CNN and Fox News web­sites,” as well as oth­er web­sites, on his work com­put­er. It was cre­at­ed on Jan­u­ary 19.

    ...

    Accord­ing to pros­e­cu­tors, the list is “con­sis­tent with the direc­tions in the Breivik man­i­festo,” which divid­ed tar­gets into cat­e­gories A, B or C:

    This clas­si­fi­ca­tion sys­tem is used to iden­ti­fy var­i­ous indi­vid­ual cul­tur­al Marxist/multiculturalist trai­tors. The inten­tion of the sys­tem is to eas­i­er iden­ti­fy pri­or­i­ty tar­gets and will also serve as the foun­da­tion for the future ‘Nurem­berg tri­als’ once the Euro­pean cul­tur­al con­ser­v­a­tives reassert polit­i­cal and mil­i­tary con­trol of any giv­en coun­try. Any cat­e­go­ry A, B or C trai­tor is an indi­vid­ual who has delib­er­ate­ly used his or her influ­ence in a way which makes hm or her indi­rect­ly or direct­ly guilty of the charges spec­i­fied in this doc­u­ment: 1–8. Many of these indi­vid­u­als will attempt to claim ‘igno­rance’ of the crimes they are accused of

    Accord­ing to Breivik’s sys­tem, cat­e­go­ry A was the “most influ­en­tial and high pro­file trai­tors,” includ­ing polit­i­cal lead­ers, media lead­ers and cul­tur­al lead­ers.

    Has­son had searched for “most lib­er­al sen­a­tors,” “do sen­a­tors have [secret ser­vice] pro­tec­tion,” and searched for Scar­bor­ough after see­ing a head­line in which the MSNBC host claimed Trump to be “the worst ever” pres­i­dent. He also looked up where the host’s show, “Morn­ing Joe,” is filmed, along with his home, pros­e­cu­tors said.
    ...

    And, of course, there’s the anti-Semi­tism:

    ...
    Has­son made many anti-Semit­ic remarks in emails obtained by the FBI, includ­ing writ­ing, “I don’t know if there tru­ly is a ‘con­spir­a­cy’ of ((((Peo­ple)))) out to destroy me and mine, but there is an attack none the less. For that rea­son I will strike, I can’t just strike to wound I must find a way to deliv­er a blow that can­not be shak­en off. Maybe many blows that will cause the need­ed tur­moil.”

    The “(((Peo­ple)))” is a cod­ed ref­er­ence to Jew­ish peo­ple.
    ...

    It’s also note­wor­thy that Has­son worked at the Coast Guard’s DC head­quar­ters since 2016. Before that he was in the Marines and Nation­al Guard. So despite being a skin­head before join­ing the mil­i­tary he man­aged to join three dif­fer­ent branch­es and end­ed up at the Coast Guard’s DC head­quar­ters. It high­lights how far up the chain of com­mand a mur­der­ous neo-Nazi can appar­ent­ly get with­out peo­ple notic­ing:

    ...
    1. Has­son Has Worked at the Coast Guard Head­quar­ters in D.C. Since 2016 & Served in the Marines From 1988 to 1993

    Lieu­tenant Christo­pher Paul Has­son has been sta­tioned at the U.S. Coast Guard Head­quar­ters in Wash­ing­ton D.C. since 2016, accord­ing to court doc­u­ments. He was pro­mot­ed to lieu­tenant in June 2016, records show. He was com­mis­sioned into the Coast Guard on June 1, 2012.

    Accord­ing to court doc­u­ments, Has­son worked in “Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Cut­ter Acqui­si­tion.”

    Fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors said Has­son served in the U.S. Marine Corps from 1988 to 1993 and was in the Army Nation­al Guard for two years in the mid-1990s.
    ...

    So we’re see­ing shades of quite a few past neo-Nazi ter­ror­ist plots in Has­son’s scheme, which is no sur­prise giv­en that he appears to have been inspired by a num­ber of dif­fer­ent neo-Nazi ter­ror­ists. And the com­mon theme is a des­per­ate desire to strate­gi­cal­ly inflict vio­lence for the pur­pose of caus­ing more vio­lence and gen­er­al may­hem for the ulti­mate pur­pose of facil­i­tat­ing some sort of neo-Nazi rev­o­lu­tion and an even­tu­al ‘white home­land’. And for the goal of killing off almost every­one on earth. It’s a reminder that when you hear neo-Nazis express a desire for a ‘white home­land’, the home­land they invari­ably have in mind is the entire plan­et and it will be achieved by killing off vir­tu­al­ly every­one else.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | February 21, 2019, 3:26 pm
  4. In light of the recent­ly dis­cov­ered neo-Nazi plot by US coast guard lieu­tenant Christo­pher Has­son to car­ry out some sort of series of mass ter­ror attacks designed to kill as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble and inspired by the “lead­er­less resis­tance” mod­el and the fact that Stephen Pad­dock­’s attack on Las Vegas appears to have fol­low­ing the same “lead­er­less resis­tance” mod­el, here’s an arti­cle that reminds us that “lead­er­less resis­tance” is becom­ing increas­ing­ly pop­u­lar on the far right, which each new attack inspir­ing future attacks. Which is, of course, exact­ly how the strat­e­gy is sup­posed to work.

    And it also makes a point that’s going to have grim fas­ci­nat­ing polit­i­cal reper­cus­sions over the next cou­ple of years as the calls for impeach­ing Pres­i­dent Trump increase: the fact that the Trump admin­is­tra­tion is so friend­ly to the neo-Nazis actu­al­ly fuels this lead­er­less resis­tance strat­e­gy in two key ways. First, the overt sym­pa­thy the Trump admin­is­tra­tion has for the far right sends the sig­nal that the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment won’t be crack­ing down on the move­ments if they act. Sec­ond­ly, the neo-Nazis are sym­pa­thet­ic for Trump and so the per­se­cu­tion nar­ra­tive Trump has cre­at­ed for him­self where every­thing is a ‘witch hunt’ by the deep state out to get him can actu­al­ly fuel some of this neo-Nazi vio­lence, either because the neo-Nazis legit­i­mate­ly want revenge or because they sim­ply feel the polit­i­cal cli­mate would make it a great recruit­ment oppor­tu­ni­ty. Has­son, for instance, was a major Trump fan and had been doing online search­es for terms like “civ­il war if trump impeached” in the weeks before his arrest. And that rais­es the ques­tion of whether or not the US is in store for a wave of neo-Nazi domes­tic ter­ror attacks should the inves­ti­ga­tions into Trump start lead­ing towards impeach­ment:

    The Guardian

    The neo-Nazi plot against Amer­i­ca is much big­ger than we real­ize

    Lt Christo­pher Has­son is the prod­uct of tra­di­tions in white suprema­cist cir­cles, and experts say there are ‘thou­sands like him’

    Vegas Tenold

    Sun 3 Mar 2019 00.00 EST
    Last mod­i­fied on Mon 4 Mar 2019 04.41 EST

    In the ear­ly sum­mer of 2017, US coast guard lieu­tenant Christo­pher Has­son had an idea. He had been try­ing to fig­ure out an effec­tive way of killing bil­lions of peo­ple – “almost every last per­son on Earth” – but found him­self com­ing up against the daunt­ing logis­tics of such a task.

    He sus­pect­ed “a plague would be most suc­cess­ful”, but didn’t know how to get his hands on enough Span­ish flu, bot­u­lism or anthrax. His idea, he wrote in a draft email from 2 June of that year, would be to “start with bio­log­i­cal attacks fol­lowed by attack on food sup­ply”. He acknowl­edged the plan need­ed more research.

    While hor­ri­fy­ing in their ambi­tion, Hasson’s plans, gleaned from email drafts, are scat­ter­brained and bear the hall­marks of a per­son still try­ing to fig­ure things out. His ten­ta­tive plans, out­lined most­ly in emails to him­self, were thwart­ed when he was arrest­ed last month on firearms and drugs charges and inves­ti­ga­tors dis­cov­ered his inner life as a neo-Nazi and his plans for mass mur­der – along with a huge cache of weapons and a hit list of promi­nent Democ­rats and media fig­ures.

    What is clear, how­ev­er, is that Has­son was inspired by oth­ers who came before him, and that he is like­ly very far from alone.

    Has­son is the prod­uct of both estab­lished tra­di­tions with­in white suprema­cist cir­cles as well as new devel­op­ments. He was at once inspired by old ideas and deter­mined to go beyond them to cre­ate more hav­oc than any who had come before him.

    The year and a half since the Unite the Right far-right ral­ly in Char­lottesville, Vir­ginia, end­ed in may­hem, the death of a pro­test­er and polit­i­cal tur­moil, has been a rough time for the pub­lic fac­ing and osten­si­bly polit­i­cal arm of the white suprema­cist move­ment in Amer­i­ca. Those who marched in Char­lottesville have to a large degree retreat­ed, flee­ing law­suits, doxxing and per­son­al scan­dal. Still, while pub­lic march­es appear to be few­er and few­er, the peri­od since Char­lottesville has also been marred by indi­vid­ual episodes of extreme vio­lence, sug­gest­ing that the wave of white suprema­cy that seemed to crest in Char­lottesville is not so much reced­ing as just chang­ing in nature.

    “I think what we’re start­ing to see now is peo­ple becom­ing more dis­heart­ened and dis­con­nect­ed from main­stream pol­i­tics,” said Kee­gan Han­kes.

    Han­kes is a researcher at the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter mon­i­tor­ing group, and he says they have been fol­low­ing a spike in far-right vio­lence. “We believe we can expect more vio­lence as peo­ple become increas­ing­ly frus­trat­ed and unmoored,” he said.

    Increased vio­lence from far-right activists at a time when the admin­is­tra­tion is friend­lier toward their goals is not with­out his­tor­i­cal prece­dent, said the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go his­to­ri­an Kath­leen Belew, the author of Bring the War Home: the White Pow­er Move­ment and Para­mil­i­tary Amer­i­ca. Belew explained that the far right’s affin­i­ty for Don­ald Trump might mean more vio­lence dur­ing his time in the White House, not less.

    “The last time the move­ment under­went a major rev­o­lu­tion­ary turn was under the Rea­gan admin­is­tra­tion, dur­ing a moment of sup­pos­ed­ly friend­ly state pow­er,” she said.

    “That means that what­ev­er peo­ple think about the Trump administration’s reluc­tance to dis­avow cer­tain types of white pow­er orga­niz­ing, this is not a moment when we’d expect to see hap­pi­ness in the fringe. We’re talk­ing about a move­ment in which many activists want the over­throw of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, the rein­state­ment of slav­ery, the geno­cide of all peo­ple of col­or and a white home­land. These aren’t things that can be pur­sued polit­i­cal­ly, even with a sym­pa­thet­ic admin­is­tra­tion.

    A report pub­lished by the Anti-Defama­tion League (ADL) in Jan­u­ary sup­ports Belew and Han­kes’ asser­tions. Accord­ing to the study, every sin­gle extrem­ist mur­der in the US in 2018 had links to far-right ide­ol­o­gy, mak­ing it one of the dead­liest years in recent his­to­ry. While some of these links were ten­u­ous – the shoot­er behind the mas­sacre at Mar­jo­ry Stone­man Dou­glas school had no direct con­tact with extrem­ist groups but had been known to make racist, white suprema­cist state­ments – the num­bers paint a pic­ture of a move­ment that is find­ing new, vio­lent out­lets for its extrem­ism. Some of the inci­dents – such as a mass shoot­ing at a Pitts­burgh syn­a­gogue – sent shock­waves through the whole coun­try.

    “It’s clear­ly gath­er­ing steam,” said JM Berg­er, an expert on extrem­ism and research schol­ar at Vox-Pol. “Suc­cess breeds suc­cess, and we’re see­ing peo­ple oper­a­tional­ize the self-edu­ca­tion process. Peo­ple are begin­ning to under­stand that they can emu­late the actions of some­one who went before them to work out what­ev­er they want to work out.”

    Accord­ing to doc­u­ments filed in the inves­ti­ga­tion of Has­son, he was not only inspired by ter­ror­ists who came before him – he is deeply influ­enced by Nor­we­gian mass-mur­der­er Anders Behring Breivikbut also dri­ven by a loathing for what he per­ceives as Trump’s ene­mies as well as a para­noid fear that Trump will be removed from pow­er.

    This cer­tain­ty that evil forces are work­ing against Trump has become preva­lent with­in the far right, breed­ing con­spir­a­cies such as QAnon, which posits Trump is fight­ing a “deep state” con­spir­a­cy that seeks to thwart his patri­ot­ic agen­da. As such, Trump plays a dual role with­in the world of rightwing vio­lence: while a “sym­pa­thet­ic” admin­is­tra­tion can spur a rise in vio­lence, the per­ceived per­se­cu­tion of Trump – in large part an image cre­at­ed by the pres­i­dent him­self – can fuel the para­noid and vio­lent fan­tasies of peo­ple like Has­son.

    Both ideas can breed vio­lence, espe­cial­ly if Trump is defeat­ed in the 2020 elec­tions.

    “What we’ve seen in the Trump-era is that a lot of the peo­ple on the fringes see oppor­tu­ni­ties for polit­i­cal engage­ment where they didn’t see it before,” said Berg­er. “The ques­tion is: what hap­pens when that win­dow clos­es?”

    Cou­pled with increased frus­tra­tion by the lim­i­ta­tions of polit­i­cal engage­ment comes the rise of more ter­ror­is­tic groups such as Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion, a mil­i­tant neo-Nazi group linked to sev­er­al mur­ders. They and oth­ers have brought a less hier­ar­chi­cal and more dis­or­der­ly struc­ture to white suprema­cist activism, which makes them both hard­er to track and to con­trol. Known as “lead­er­less resis­tance”, it has been a tac­tic of white suprema­cists for decades and lead to events such as the 1995 Okla­homa City bomb­ing, but has been made expo­nen­tial­ly eas­i­er by the inter­net.

    “Lead­er­less resis­tance total­ly changes recruit­ment strat­e­gy,” said Belew.

    “No longer is the move­ment try­ing to gen­er­ate a mass protest of uni­formed mem­bers. This move­ment isn’t inter­est­ed in a crowd but in a ded­i­cat­ed cell of 12 peo­ple that are going to devote their lives to guer­ril­la war­fare.”

    His­tor­i­cal­ly the strat­e­gy of lead­er­less resis­tance was once con­fined to the extreme fringes of the white pow­er move­ment, attract­ing ter­ror­ists such as Okla­homa City bomber Tim­o­thy McVeigh, Breivik, Charleston church shoot­er Dylann Roof and oth­ers, but recent­ly parts of the move­ment who have been con­sid­ered mod­er­ate have also embraced the idea.

    “Lead­er­less resis­tance is becom­ing ubiq­ui­tous on the far right,” says Han­kes. “Nor­mal­ly these things come from the extreme parts of the move­ment and the fact that it is show­ing up else­where shows how deep set these ideas are and how dis­il­lu­sioned the move­ment is with the White House.”

    ...

    Michael Ger­man, a for­mer FBI agent who went under­cov­er with white suprema­cist groups in the 1990s and who now works as a fel­low at the Bren­nan Cen­ter for Jus­tice, agreed. “We real­ly don’t know much about [Has­son], since there is very lit­tle in the pub­lic record. The key will be if he had co-con­spir­a­tors or asso­ci­a­tions with peo­ple out­side and if they were aware of his inten­tions,” he said.

    Still, Ger­man was not sur­prised by Hasson’s plot or that he had been con­coct­ing it while on active duty. “We know that there’s sig­nif­i­cant ille­gal activ­i­ty hap­pen­ing that the gov­ern­ment needs to be aware of, the prob­lem is that the gov­ern­ment isn’t col­lect­ing infor­ma­tion about it in a way that lets us assess how wide­spread the prob­lem is. The FBI has had con­cerns about white suprema­cist activ­i­ty with­in the mil­i­tary and law enforce­ment for a long time, but there’s lit­tle evi­dence of inves­ti­ga­tions into it.

    What remains an almost cer­tain­ty is that Has­son is not alone in his desire to com­mit atroc­i­ties for white suprema­cist objec­tives. Oth­ers are still out there: armed, dan­ger­ous and plot­ting. Some will like­ly turn their thoughts into actions.

    “My guess is that there are thou­sands like him,” said Belew. “These peo­ple are ide­o­log­i­cal­ly con­nect­ed and prepar­ing sim­i­lar acts of vio­lence.”

    ———-

    “The neo-Nazi plot against Amer­i­ca is much big­ger than we real­ize” by Vegas Tenold; The Guardian; 03/03/2019

    “The year and a half since the Unite the Right far-right ral­ly in Char­lottesville, Vir­ginia, end­ed in may­hem, the death of a pro­test­er and polit­i­cal tur­moil, has been a rough time for the pub­lic fac­ing and osten­si­bly polit­i­cal arm of the white suprema­cist move­ment in Amer­i­ca. Those who marched in Char­lottesville have to a large degree retreat­ed, flee­ing law­suits, doxxing and per­son­al scan­dal. Still, while pub­lic march­es appear to be few­er and few­er, the peri­od since Char­lottesville has also been marred by indi­vid­ual episodes of extreme vio­lence, sug­gest­ing that the wave of white suprema­cy that seemed to crest in Char­lottesville is not so much reced­ing as just chang­ing in nature.

    It’s a ghast­ly pos­si­bil­i­ty: the polit­i­cal fail­ure of Char­lottesville, which was sup­posed to be a kind of ‘com­ing out’ moment for the far right, was fol­lowed by a peri­od of extreme vio­lence by indi­vid­u­als, sug­gest­ing that we’re see­ing a change in tac­tics. The hope that Trump would main­stream the neo-Nazis (instead of just play­ing foot­sie with them in pub­lic) dis­si­pat­ed and now the far right is more vio­lent than it has been in years, despite hav­ing one of the most sym­pa­thet­ic admin­is­tra­tions they could have hoped for. The far right’s affin­i­ty for Trump appears to be fuel­ing vio­lence, which is not unprece­dent­ed. It’s what hap­pened under Rea­gan:

    ...
    Increased vio­lence from far-right activists at a time when the admin­is­tra­tion is friend­lier toward their goals is not with­out his­tor­i­cal prece­dent, said the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go his­to­ri­an Kath­leen Belew, the author of Bring the War Home: the White Pow­er Move­ment and Para­mil­i­tary Amer­i­ca. Belew explained that the far right’s affin­i­ty for Don­ald Trump might mean more vio­lence dur­ing his time in the White House, not less.

    “The last time the move­ment under­went a major rev­o­lu­tion­ary turn was under the Rea­gan admin­is­tra­tion, dur­ing a moment of sup­pos­ed­ly friend­ly state pow­er,” she said.

    “That means that what­ev­er peo­ple think about the Trump administration’s reluc­tance to dis­avow cer­tain types of white pow­er orga­niz­ing, this is not a moment when we’d expect to see hap­pi­ness in the fringe. We’re talk­ing about a move­ment in which many activists want the over­throw of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, the rein­state­ment of slav­ery, the geno­cide of all peo­ple of col­or and a white home­land. These aren’t things that can be pur­sued polit­i­cal­ly, even with a sym­pa­thet­ic admin­is­tra­tion.
    ...

    And that affin­i­ty for Trump appears to be mak­ing the neo-Nazis espe­cial­ly vio­lent in response to the threat of remov­ing Trump from office. Or the threat of Trump sim­ply not win­ning reelec­tion in 2020:

    ...
    Accord­ing to doc­u­ments filed in the inves­ti­ga­tion of Has­son, he was not only inspired by ter­ror­ists who came before him – he is deeply influ­enced by Nor­we­gian mass-mur­der­er Anders Behring Breivikbut also dri­ven by a loathing for what he per­ceives as Trump’s ene­mies as well as a para­noid fear that Trump will be removed from pow­er.

    This cer­tain­ty that evil forces are work­ing against Trump has become preva­lent with­in the far right, breed­ing con­spir­a­cies such as QAnon, which posits Trump is fight­ing a “deep state” con­spir­a­cy that seeks to thwart his patri­ot­ic agen­da. As such, Trump plays a dual role with­in the world of rightwing vio­lence: while a “sym­pa­thet­ic” admin­is­tra­tion can spur a rise in vio­lence, the per­ceived per­se­cu­tion of Trump – in large part an image cre­at­ed by the pres­i­dent him­self – can fuel the para­noid and vio­lent fan­tasies of peo­ple like Has­son.

    Both ideas can breed vio­lence, espe­cial­ly if Trump is defeat­ed in the 2020 elec­tions.

    “What we’ve seen in the Trump-era is that a lot of the peo­ple on the fringes see oppor­tu­ni­ties for polit­i­cal engage­ment where they didn’t see it before,” said Berg­er. “The ques­tion is: what hap­pens when that win­dow clos­es?”
    ...

    And then there’s the fact that neo-Nazi groups ded­i­cat­ed to ter­ror­ist “lead­er­less resis­tance” and mass casu­al­ty attacks already exist, like Attomwaf­fen:

    ...
    Cou­pled with increased frus­tra­tion by the lim­i­ta­tions of polit­i­cal engage­ment comes the rise of more ter­ror­is­tic groups such as Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion, a mil­i­tant neo-Nazi group linked to sev­er­al mur­ders. They and oth­ers have brought a less hier­ar­chi­cal and more dis­or­der­ly struc­ture to white suprema­cist activism, which makes them both hard­er to track and to con­trol. Known as “lead­er­less resis­tance”, it has been a tac­tic of white suprema­cists for decades and lead to events such as the 1995 Okla­homa City bomb­ing, but has been made expo­nen­tial­ly eas­i­er by the inter­net.

    “Lead­er­less resis­tance total­ly changes recruit­ment strat­e­gy,” said Belew.

    “No longer is the move­ment try­ing to gen­er­ate a mass protest of uni­formed mem­bers. This move­ment isn’t inter­est­ed in a crowd but in a ded­i­cat­ed cell of 12 peo­ple that are going to devote their lives to guer­ril­la war­fare.”
    ...

    And accord­ing to Kee­gan Han­kes, of the SPLC, the ideas of lead­er­less resis­tance have become ubiq­ui­tous on the far right. Even the ‘mod­er­ate’ parts of the far right are embrac­ing the idea. And that means the poten­tial pool of can­di­dates for the kind of sui­cide ter­ror attacks that Has­son was plot­ting and Pad­dock car­ried out is prob­a­bly a lot big­ger than it used to be:

    ...
    His­tor­i­cal­ly the strat­e­gy of lead­er­less resis­tance was once con­fined to the extreme fringes of the white pow­er move­ment, attract­ing ter­ror­ists such as Okla­homa City bomber Tim­o­thy McVeigh, Breivik, Charleston church shoot­er Dylann Roof and oth­ers, but recent­ly parts of the move­ment who have been con­sid­ered mod­er­ate have also embraced the idea.

    “Lead­er­less resis­tance is becom­ing ubiq­ui­tous on the far right,” says Han­kes. “Nor­mal­ly these things come from the extreme parts of the move­ment and the fact that it is show­ing up else­where shows how deep set these ideas are and how dis­il­lu­sioned the move­ment is with the White House.”

    ...

    What remains an almost cer­tain­ty is that Has­son is not alone in his desire to com­mit atroc­i­ties for white suprema­cist objec­tives. Oth­ers are still out there: armed, dan­ger­ous and plot­ting. Some will like­ly turn their thoughts into actions.

    “My guess is that there are thou­sands like him,” said Belew. “These peo­ple are ide­o­log­i­cal­ly con­nect­ed and prepar­ing sim­i­lar acts of vio­lence.”

    So that’s all some­thing to keep in mind as we enter into the pos­si­ble impeach­ment phase of the Trump era. The US obvi­ous­ly can’t allow the threat of neo-Nazi vio­lence to effec­tive­ly black­mail the nation into not impeach­ing a pres­i­dent who should be removed from office, but it does­n’t hurt to be aware of the fact that most ‘deplorable’ ele­ments of Trump’s base hap­pen to be neo-Nazis who increas­ing­ly fol­low the ‘leader resis­tance’ domes­tic ter­ror mod­el and gen­er­al­ly view Trump as their dear leader.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | March 4, 2019, 4:58 pm
  5. The white suprema­cist strat­e­gy ‘lead­er­less resis­tance’ involv­ing the mass slaugh­ter of civil­ians made its way to New Zealand yes­ter­day with the twin ter­ror attacks on two mosques, killing at least 49 peo­ple and injur­ing dozens of oth­ers. And, sur­prise!, it appears that the attack­er was inspired by Anders Breivik. That’s accord­ing to his man­i­festo the 28 year old Aus­tralian born attack­er, Bren­ton Tar­rant, put online just before the attack. He also livestreamed the attack on Face­book, adopt­ing an ISIS-style approach of using the griz­zly images of the attack to essen­tial­ly cel­e­brate and pro­mote it to his tar­get audi­ence of fel­low white suprema­cists.

    It’s also worth not­ing that, at this time, it’s still not entire­ly clear if Tar­rant was work­ing alone or had help and police have not yet said if he was respon­si­ble for the shoot­ing at both mosques. So it’s pos­si­ble this was done by neo-Nazi team and Tar­rant is essen­tial­ly play­ing a role as the ‘lone gun­man’. Two oth­er armed peo­ple were arrest­ed but the nature of their involve­ment remains a mys­tery.

    Tar­ran­t’s man­i­festo large­ly echoes the same ‘whites are being replaced by non-whites’ argu­ments found in Breiviks’ man­i­festo and most white nation­al­ist con­tent these days. Tar­rant stat­ed the intent of the attack was to intim­i­date Mus­lims and gen­er­al and make them less inclined to immi­grate to West­ern nations. He also framed it as revenge for Mus­lim ter­ror attacks in Europe, with a spe­cif­ic ref­er­ence to a 2017 attack in Stock­holm. Inter­est­ing­ly, Tar­ran­t’s man­i­festo also claims that he got approval for the attack from the same “Knights Tem­plar” group that Breivik also claimed he was in con­tact with.

    Tar­rant describes him­self as a white nation­al­ist and fas­cist and cov­ered his rifle with Nazi sym­bol­ism (like a “14”). His man­i­festo includ­ed a “black sun”. In keep­ing with a theme we see over and over with these ‘lead­er­less resis­tance’ attacks, Tar­rant claims that one of the goals of the attack was to fur­ther polar­ize and desta­bi­lize the West with the hope of spark­ing a civ­il war in the Unit­ed States that will result in a sep­a­rate eth­nos­tates:

    Asso­ci­at­ed Press

    Mosque shoot­er a white suprema­cist angry at immi­grants

    By KRISTEN GELINEAU
    03/15/2019

    SYDNEY (AP) — The gun­man behind at least one of the mosque shoot­ings in New Zealand that left 49 peo­ple dead on Fri­day tried to make a few things clear in the man­i­festo he left behind: He is a 28-year-old Aus­tralian white nation­al­ist who hates immi­grants. He was angry about attacks in Europe that were per­pe­trat­ed by Mus­lims. He want­ed revenge, and he want­ed to cre­ate fear.

    He also, quite clear­ly, want­ed atten­tion.

    Though he claimed not to cov­et fame, the gun­man — whose name was not imme­di­ate­ly released by police — left behind a 74-page doc­u­ment post­ed on social media under the name Bren­ton Tar­rant in which he said he hoped to sur­vive the attack to bet­ter spread his views in the media.

    He also livestreamed to the world in graph­ic detail his assault on the wor­ship­pers at Christchurch’s Al Noor Mosque.

    That ram­page killed at least 41 peo­ple, while an attack on a sec­ond mosque in the city not long after killed sev­er­al more. Police did not say whether the same per­son was respon­si­ble for both shoot­ings.

    While his man­i­festo and video were an obvi­ous and con­temp­tu­ous ploy for infamy, they do con­tain impor­tant clues for a pub­lic try­ing to under­stand why any­one would tar­get dozens of inno­cent peo­ple who were sim­ply spend­ing an after­noon engaged in prayer.

    There could be no more per­plex­ing a set­ting for a mass slaugh­ter than New Zealand, a nation so placid and so iso­lat­ed from the mass shoot­ings that plague the U.S. that police offi­cers rarely car­ry guns.

    Yet the gun­man him­self high­light­ed New Zealand’s remote­ness as a rea­son he chose it. He wrote that an attack in New Zealand would show that no place on earth was safe and that even a coun­try as far away as New Zealand is sub­ject to mass immi­gra­tion.

    He said he grew up in a work­ing-class Aus­tralian fam­i­ly, had a typ­i­cal child­hood and was a poor stu­dent. A woman who said she was a col­league of his when he worked as a per­son­al train­er in the Aus­tralian city of Grafton said she was shocked by the alle­ga­tions against him.

    ...

    The ram­bling man­i­festo is filled with con­fus­ing and seem­ing­ly con­tra­dic­to­ry asser­tions about his beliefs.

    Beyond his white nation­al­is­tic views, he claimed to be an envi­ron­men­tal­ist and said he is a fas­cist who believes Chi­na is the nation that most aligns with his polit­i­cal and social val­ues. He said he has con­tempt for the wealth­i­est 1 per­cent. And he sin­gled out Amer­i­can con­ser­v­a­tive com­men­ta­tor Can­dace Owens as the per­son who had influ­enced him the most, while say­ing “the extreme actions she calls for are too much, even for my tastes.”

    In a tweet, Owens respond­ed by say­ing that if the media por­trayed her as the inspi­ra­tion for the attack, it had bet­ter hire lawyers.

    The man­i­festo also includ­ed a sin­gle ref­er­ence to Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump in which the author asked and answered the ques­tion of whether he was a Trump sup­port­er: “As a sym­bol of renewed white iden­ti­ty and com­mon pur­pose? Sure. As a pol­i­cy mak­er and leader? Dear god no.”

    Through­out the man­i­festo, the theme he returns to most often is con­flict between peo­ple of Euro­pean descent and Mus­lims, often fram­ing it in terms of the Cru­sades.

    Among his hate-filled state­ments is a claim that he was moti­vat­ed toward vio­lence by an episode that occurred in 2017 while he was tour­ing through West­ern Europe. That was when an Uzbek man drove a truck into a crowd of peo­ple in Stock­holm, killing five.

    He said his desire for vio­lence grew when he arrived in France, where he said he was offend­ed by the sight of immi­grants in the cities and towns he vis­it­ed.

    Three months ago, he said, he start­ed plan­ning to tar­get Christchurch. He said he has donat­ed to many nation­al­ist groups, but claimed not to be a direct mem­ber of any orga­ni­za­tion. How­ev­er, he admit­ted con­tacts with an anti-immi­gra­tion group called the reborn Knights Tem­plar and said he got the approval of Anders Breivik for the attack, a claim that has not been ver­i­fied.

    Breivik is a right-wing Nor­we­gian extrem­ist who killed 77 peo­ple in Oslo and a near­by island in 2011. Breivik’s lawyer Oeystein Stor­rvik told Norway’s VG news­pa­per that his client, who is in prison, has “very lim­it­ed con­tacts with the sur­round­ing world, so it seems very unlike­ly that he has had con­tact” with the New Zealand gun­man.

    The gun­man ram­bled on about the sup­posed aims for the attack, which includ­ed reduc­ing immi­gra­tion by intim­i­dat­ing immi­grants and dri­ving a wedge between NATO and the Turk­ish peo­ple. He also said he hoped to fur­ther polar­ize and desta­bi­lize the West, and spark a civ­il war in the Unit­ed States that would ulti­mate­ly result in a sep­a­ra­tion of races. The attack has had the oppo­site impact, with con­dem­na­tion of the blood­shed pour­ing in from all quar­ters of the globe, and calls for uni­ty against hatred and vio­lence.

    The gun­man used var­i­ous hate sym­bols asso­ci­at­ed with the Nazis and white suprema­cy. For instance, the num­ber 14 is seen on his rifle, a pos­si­ble ref­er­ence to the “14 Words,” a white suprema­cist slo­gan attrib­uted in part to Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf,” accord­ing to the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter. He also used the sym­bol of the Schwarze Sonne, or black sun, which “has become syn­ony­mous with myr­i­ad far-right groups who traf­fic in neo-Nazi,” accord­ing to the cen­ter.

    His vic­tims, he wrote, were cho­sen because he saw them as invaders who would replace the white race. He pre­dict­ed he would feel no remorse for their deaths. And in the video he livestreamed of his shoot­ing, no remorse can be seen or heard as he sprays ter­ri­fied wor­ship­pers with bul­lets again and again, some­times fir­ing at peo­ple he has already cut down.

    ...

    ———-

    “Mosque shoot­er a white suprema­cist angry at immi­grants” by KRISTEN GELINEAU; Asso­ci­at­ed Press; 03/15/2019

    “The gun­man ram­bled on about the sup­posed aims for the attack, which includ­ed reduc­ing immi­gra­tion by intim­i­dat­ing immi­grants and dri­ving a wedge between NATO and the Turk­ish peo­ple. He also said he hoped to fur­ther polar­ize and desta­bi­lize the West, and spark a civ­il war in the Unit­ed States that would ulti­mate­ly result in a sep­a­ra­tion of races. The attack has had the oppo­site impact, with con­dem­na­tion of the blood­shed pour­ing in from all quar­ters of the globe, and calls for uni­ty against hatred and vio­lence.”

    Neo-nazi ter­ror attacks intend­ed to pro­voke back­lash­es and spark civ­il wars. It’s an increas­ing­ly promi­nent theme in the age of Trump. So it’s par­tic­u­lar­ly appro­pri­ate that Tar­rant specif­i­cal­ly named Trump as “a sym­bol of renewed white iden­ti­ty and com­mon pur­pose”:

    ...
    The ram­bling man­i­festo is filled with con­fus­ing and seem­ing­ly con­tra­dic­to­ry asser­tions about his beliefs.

    Beyond his white nation­al­is­tic views, he claimed to be an envi­ron­men­tal­ist and said he is a fas­cist who believes Chi­na is the nation that most aligns with his polit­i­cal and social val­ues. He said he has con­tempt for the wealth­i­est 1 per­cent. And he sin­gled out Amer­i­can con­ser­v­a­tive com­men­ta­tor Can­dace Owens as the per­son who had influ­enced him the most, while say­ing “the extreme actions she calls for are too much, even for my tastes.”

    In a tweet, Owens respond­ed by say­ing that if the media por­trayed her as the inspi­ra­tion for the attack, it had bet­ter hire lawyers.

    The man­i­festo also includ­ed a sin­gle ref­er­ence to Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump in which the author asked and answered the ques­tion of whether he was a Trump sup­port­er: “As a sym­bol of renewed white iden­ti­ty and com­mon pur­pose? Sure. As a pol­i­cy mak­er and leader? Dear god no.”

    ...

    The gun­man used var­i­ous hate sym­bols asso­ci­at­ed with the Nazis and white suprema­cy. For instance, the num­ber 14 is seen on his rifle, a pos­si­ble ref­er­ence to the “14 Words,” a white suprema­cist slo­gan attrib­uted in part to Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf,” accord­ing to the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter. He also used the sym­bol of the Schwarze Sonne, or black sun, which “has become syn­ony­mous with myr­i­ad far-right groups who traf­fic in neo-Nazi,” accord­ing to the cen­ter.
    ...

    But it appears to be Anders Breivik in par­tic­u­lar who most direct­ly inspired the attack. And he even claimed to be in con­tact with the same Knights Tem­plar orga­ni­za­tion Breivik also claimed to have been in con­tact with before his ter­ror­ist attack in Oslo:

    ...
    Through­out the man­i­festo, the theme he returns to most often is con­flict between peo­ple of Euro­pean descent and Mus­lims, often fram­ing it in terms of the Cru­sades.

    Among his hate-filled state­ments is a claim that he was moti­vat­ed toward vio­lence by an episode that occurred in 2017 while he was tour­ing through West­ern Europe. That was when an Uzbek man drove a truck into a crowd of peo­ple in Stock­holm, killing five.

    He said his desire for vio­lence grew when he arrived in France, where he said he was offend­ed by the sight of immi­grants in the cities and towns he vis­it­ed.

    Three months ago, he said, he start­ed plan­ning to tar­get Christchurch. He said he has donat­ed to many nation­al­ist groups, but claimed not to be a direct mem­ber of any orga­ni­za­tion. How­ev­er, he admit­ted con­tacts with an anti-immi­gra­tion group called the reborn Knights Tem­plar and said he got the approval of Anders Breivik for the attack, a claim that has not been ver­i­fied.

    Breivik is a right-wing Nor­we­gian extrem­ist who killed 77 peo­ple in Oslo and a near­by island in 2011. Breivik’s lawyer Oeystein Stor­rvik told Norway’s VG news­pa­per that his client, who is in prison, has “very lim­it­ed con­tacts with the sur­round­ing world, so it seems very unlike­ly that he has had con­tact” with the New Zealand gun­man.
    ...

    So it will be quite inter­est­ing to see what help Tar­rant actu­al­ly had. Espe­cial­ly since two oth­er peo­ple were arrest­ed at the scene of the crime and were armed and police have yet to deter­mine whether or not Tar­rant was respon­si­ble for both mosque attacks:

    ...
    That ram­page killed at least 41 peo­ple, while an attack on a sec­ond mosque in the city not long after killed sev­er­al more. Police did not say whether the same per­son was respon­si­ble for both shoot­ings.

    While his man­i­festo and video were an obvi­ous and con­temp­tu­ous ploy for infamy, they do con­tain impor­tant clues for a pub­lic try­ing to under­stand why any­one would tar­get dozens of inno­cent peo­ple who were sim­ply spend­ing an after­noon engaged in prayer.
    ...

    So there’s an abun­dance of over­lap with past neo-Nazi ter­ror attacks. Which, of course, is by design since the ‘lead­er­less resis­tance’ ter­ror par­a­digm is intend­ed to inspire copy­cats. It’s part of what makes the stream­ing video of the attack so dis­turb­ing: it’s exact­ly the kind of con­tent that the most socio­path­ic mem­bers of soci­ety will grav­i­tate towards and that is the tar­get audi­ence for neo-Nazi recruit­ment.

    And as the fol­low­ing piece by Josh Mar­shall reminds us, the gen­er­al world­view expressed by Tar­rant in his man­i­festo — a fix­a­tion on ‘white geno­cide’, ‘replace­ment’, and hys­te­ria over non-white immi­gra­tion — are now basi­cal­ly main­stream ideas for the con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­can right-wing:

    Talk­ing Points Memo
    Edi­tor’s Brief

    Vio­lent Far-Right White Rad­i­cal­ism

    Josh Mar­shall
    03.15.19. 11:38 am

    We’re dig­ging into the details of this hor­rif­ic mas­sacre that unfold­ed overnight (US time) in New Zealand. There is a 74 page man­i­festo in which the alleged killer described his aims, moti­va­tions, etc. There are some odd­i­ties to the doc­u­ment in that it com­bines explic­it dec­la­ra­tions of sup­port for some of the most noto­ri­ous racist, anti-immi­grant mur­der­ers of the ear­ly 21st cen­tu­ry. It is also filled with some of what we might com­mon­ly on social media call trolling, sar­cas­ti­cal­ly or provoca­tive­ly over­stat­ed com­ments. We shouldn’t see this as in con­flict. It’s a mode of expres­sion deeply root­ed in the sub­cul­ture. But I want to take some time to describe how deeply tied this killer’s world­view, pol­i­tics and aims are root­ed in the right­ist anti-immi­grant pol­i­tics which are now main­streamed in the Unit­ed States

    This shoot­er is some­one who is immersed in the great arc of anti-immi­grant, racist hyper-nation­al­ist dis­course and para­mil­i­tary vio­lence rang­ing from the right­ist par­ties of Europe, var­i­ous mass mur­der­ers like Nor­we­gian ter­ror­ist Anders Breivik to the white suprema­cist and neo-Nazi sub­cul­ture we have come to know so well in the US. Char­lottesville, Pitts­burgh, Charleston. Dylann Roof’s mas­sacre gets explic­it ref­er­ence as an inspi­ra­tion and antecedent for this mas­sacre.

    The lan­guage of ‘replace­ment’ is the cen­ter­piece – the idea that white Chris­tians with low birthrates are being replaced by non-white immi­grants with high­er birthrates. This is lit­er­al­ly the lan­guage of Steve King. He’s allud­ed to it and dis­cussed it numer­ous times, both explic­it­ly and implic­it­ly. He dis­cussed it at length in this inter­view with a far-right news­pa­per in Aus­tria. Oth­er far-right Repub­li­can office­hold­ers do the same.

    If you look at the Pitts­burgh syn­a­gogue mas­sacre shoot­er, he was of course attack­ing Jews. But his actu­al the­o­ry (not his alone of course but the one he embraced) was that Jews were a non-Chris­t­ian force orga­niz­ing the impor­ta­tion of non-white immi­grants into the Unit­ed States. He focused in the imme­di­ate sense on the car­a­vans the right wing media was then whip­ping up hys­te­ria about and con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries about George Soros fund­ing them. But the con­cept is wide­spread. Jews want to destroy “white civ­i­liza­tion” and they are doing so by import­ing immi­grants of col­or to over­whelm native whites with high­er birthrates.

    Anti-Semit­ic attacks were a major part of the Char­lottesville ‘Unite The Right’ march. But we should remem­ber that it was anti-Semi­tism inter­wo­ven with ‘Great Replace­men­tism’. Remem­ber the chant at Char­lottesville: “Jews will not replace us“.

    ...

    ———-

    “Vio­lent Far-Right White Rad­i­cal­ism” by Josh Mar­shall; Talk­ing Points Memo; 03/15/2019

    “We’re dig­ging into the details of this hor­rif­ic mas­sacre that unfold­ed overnight (US time) in New Zealand. There is a 74 page man­i­festo in which the alleged killer described his aims, moti­va­tions, etc. There are some odd­i­ties to the doc­u­ment in that it com­bines explic­it dec­la­ra­tions of sup­port for some of the most noto­ri­ous racist, anti-immi­grant mur­der­ers of the ear­ly 21st cen­tu­ry. It is also filled with some of what we might com­mon­ly on social media call trolling, sar­cas­ti­cal­ly or provoca­tive­ly over­stat­ed com­ments. We shouldn’t see this as in con­flict. It’s a mode of expres­sion deeply root­ed in the sub­cul­ture. But I want to take some time to describe how deeply tied this killer’s world­view, pol­i­tics and aims are root­ed in the right­ist anti-immi­grant pol­i­tics which are now main­streamed in the Unit­ed States

    Whether it’s the Unite the Right march in Char­lottesville, Dylan Roof’s mas­sacre, the slaugh­ter in Pitts­burgh, the far right hys­te­ria over ‘white geno­cide’ and ‘replace­ment’ is one of the defin­ing fea­tures of today’s Amer­i­can far right. And that includes far right Repub­li­cans in con­gress like Steve King:

    ...
    The lan­guage of ‘replace­ment’ is the cen­ter­piece – the idea that white Chris­tians with low birthrates are being replaced by non-white immi­grants with high­er birthrates. This is lit­er­al­ly the lan­guage of Steve King. He’s allud­ed to it and dis­cussed it numer­ous times, both explic­it­ly and implic­it­ly. He dis­cussed it at length in this inter­view with a far-right news­pa­per in Aus­tria. Oth­er far-right Repub­li­can office­hold­ers do the same.
    ...

    So, with all that in mind, check out the response Pres­i­dent Trump had to a ques­tion about the attacks and his views on the dan­gers of white nation­al­ism: Trump is, of course, not very con­cerned about it because “I think it’s a small group of peo­ple that have very, very seri­ous prob­lems”:

    Talk­ing Points Memo
    Edi­tor’s Blog

    Look at the Exact Words

    By Josh Mar­shall
    March 15, 2019 4:50 pm

    I felt it was impor­tant to tran­scribe Pres­i­dent Trump’s exact words in which he dis­miss­es the prob­lem of “white nation­al­ism” and sug­gests it’s unclear whether the Christchurch gun­man is even part of the white nation­al­ist or suprema­cist move­ment.

    REPORTER: “Do you see today white nation­al­ism as a ris­ing threat around the world?”

    TRUMP: “I don’t real­ly. I think it’s a small group of peo­ple that have very, very seri­ous prob­lems. I guess if you look at what hap­pened in New Zealand per­haps that’s the case. I don’t know enough about it yet. They’re just learn­ing about the per­son and the peo­ple involved. But it’s cer­tain­ly a ter­ri­ble thing, a ter­ri­ble thing.”

    ...

    ———-

    “Look at the Exact Words” by Josh Mar­shall; Talk­ing Points Memo; 03/15/2019

    ““I don’t real­ly. I think it’s a small group of peo­ple that have very, very seri­ous prob­lems. I guess if you look at what hap­pened in New Zealand per­haps that’s the case. I don’t know enough about it yet. They’re just learn­ing about the per­son and the peo­ple involved. But it’s cer­tain­ly a ter­ri­ble thing, a ter­ri­ble thing.””

    It’s just a small group of peo­ple. Right.

    And notice how Trump says “they’re just learn­ing about the per­son and the peo­ple involved” which implic­it­ly leaves open the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the Tar­rant and his pos­si­ble accom­plices aren’t actu­al­ly neo-Nazis. And, lo and behold, that is exact­ly the the­o­ry being pushed by Rush Lim­baugh. Accord­ing to Lim­baugh, the shoot­er is a “left­ist who writes the man­i­festo and then goes out and per­forms the deed pur­pose­ly to smear his polit­i­cal ene­mies, know­ing he’s going to get shot in the process”:

    Talk­ing Points Memo
    News

    Lim­baugh Stokes Con­spir­a­cy That NZ Killer Is Left­ist Out To Smear ‘Ene­mies’

    By Sum­mer Con­cep­cion
    March 15, 2019 2:33 pm

    Radio host Rush Lim­baugh weighed in on the New Zealand mosque attacks Fri­day by sug­gest­ing that the Aus­tralian man alleged­ly behind them — whose man­i­festo out­lined his white suprema­cist world­view — is a left­ist out to smear his “polit­i­cal ene­mies.”

    Cit­ing how “crazy” the left is, Lim­baugh added that there is an “ongo­ing the­o­ry” that the shoot­er is a “left­ist who writes the man­i­festo and then goes out and per­forms the deed pur­pose­ly to smear his polit­i­cal ene­mies, know­ing he’s going to get shot in the process.”

    “If that’s exact­ly what the guy is try­ing to do then he’s hit a home run, because right there on Fox News: ‘Shoot­er is an admit­ted white nation­al­ist who hates immi­grants,’” Lim­baugh said.

    Lim­baugh also dis­missed the idea that there is “far more crazed right-wing ter­ror­ism in Amer­i­ca than there is any oth­er kind,” call­ing the claim “noth­ing more than a media nar­ra­tive man­u­fac­tured out of whole cloth.”

    “You real­ize you’re going to face a whole day of Don­ald Trump being blamed for it, or you being blamed for it, or things you believe in being blamed for it,” Lim­baugh said.

    ...

    ———-

    “Lim­baugh Stokes Con­spir­a­cy That NZ Killer Is Left­ist Out To Smear ‘Ene­mies’” by Sum­mer Con­cep­cion; Talk­ing Points Memo; 03/15/2019

    “Cit­ing how “crazy” the left is, Lim­baugh added that there is an “ongo­ing the­o­ry” that the shoot­er is a “left­ist who writes the man­i­festo and then goes out and per­forms the deed pur­pose­ly to smear his polit­i­cal ene­mies, know­ing he’s going to get shot in the process.”

    Keep in mind that a cen­tral part of the strat­e­gy employed by Tar­rant, Roof, and the rest of these neo-Nazi ter­ror­ists is to car­ry out an attack that is so hor­rif­ic that it pro­vokes some sort of back­lash like new gun con­trol laws. And then that back­lash is sup­posed to cat­alyze a far right counter-back­lash of whites lead­ing to a civ­il war. And a key ingre­di­ent for that counter-back­lash is the sense that the ini­tial back­lash is unjus­ti­fied and tar­get­ing white con­ser­v­a­tives. So by push­ing the meme that this attack was actu­al­ly part of some sort of dia­bol­i­cal left-wing attack designed to smear right-wingers, Lim­baugh is actu­al­ly play­ing a crit­i­cal role in this entire ‘lead­er­less resis­tance-to-civ­il-war’ strat­e­gy.

    So as we can see, the peo­ple behind the attack in New Zealand intend­ed to be part of a glob­al neo-Nazi disinformation/propaganda cam­paign intend­ed to divide the West and spark civ­il wars. And with­in that broad­er disinformation/propaganda cam­paign and they have A LOT of glob­al accom­plices.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | March 15, 2019, 1:47 pm
  6. Here’s a pair of sto­ries that should be viewed in the con­text of the much larg­er sto­ry of the sys­tem­at­ic man­ner US law enforce­ment down­plays the domes­tic ter­ror threats pre­sent­ed by the US far right:

    First, here’s a sto­ry from back in Novem­ber about a Wash­ing­ton State elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tive, Matt Shea, who was found to be dis­trib­ut­ing a rather dis­turb­ing man­u­al. It was a four-page doc­u­ment out­lin­ing the “Bib­li­cal Basis for War”, and includes a point-by-point descrip­tion of how a Chris­t­ian theoc­ra­cy could be estab­lished by wag­ing a hypo­thet­i­cal holy war. Oh, and Shea has been reelect­ed four times:

    Talk­ing Points Memo
    Muck­rak­er

    State Rep’s Out­line For Killing Non-Believ­ers In Holy War Is Referred To FBI

    By Josh Koven­sky
    Novem­ber 2, 2018 11:31 am

    A Wash­ing­ton state law­mak­er who moon­lights as a wannabe theo­crat has stum­bled into FBI scruti­ny over a how-to guide he wrote on killing non-believ­ers and estab­lish­ing a Chris­t­ian theoc­ra­cy.

    Five-term Wash­ing­ton state Rep. Matt Shea has been cir­cu­lat­ing a man­u­al for holy war in the Unit­ed States, the Seat­tle Times report­ed.

    The four-page doc­u­ment, titled “Bib­li­cal Basis for War,” goes point-by-point over how a Chris­t­ian theo­crat­ic move­ment could – and should – exter­mi­nate its oppo­si­tion in a bat­tle to win a hypo­thet­i­cal holy war.

    At the out­set, Shea’s holy army would issue terms of sur­ren­der to its ene­mies. The demands include “stop all abor­tions,” “no same-sex mar­riage,” “no idol­a­try or occultism,” “no com­mu­nism,” and “must obey Bib­li­cal law.”

    If the rest of the coun­try refus­es to “yield” to these terms, the doc­u­ment advo­cates a final solu­tion: “kill all males.”

    ...

    Under “Things for a Holy Army,” Shea remem­bers to include “Circumcision/Saved,” after Sacrifice/Worship/Prayer.

    Ref­er­enc­ing the last Civ­il War, Shea writes in the holy war how-to-man­u­al that “war is not waged against nations but against man (no scorched earth or Sherman’s march to the sea).”

    The doc­u­ment was leaked to the press by a local lib­er­tar­i­an activist named Tan­ner Rowe, who in a Face­book video called the plan “theo­crat­ic bull­shit.”

    Shea replied to Rowe and the Seat­tle Times in a Face­book video of his own, furi­ous­ly claim­ing that he wasn’t angry over the inci­dent while show­ing off his his­tor­i­cal knowl­edge by claim­ing that the Mayflower com­pact was “a covenant with God to advance Chris­tian­i­ty.”

    “The counter-state is work­ing over­time,” he said, adding that “there are two main counter-states in Amer­i­ca: Marx­ists and Islamists.”

    He went on to crit­i­cize a recent Rolling Stone pro­file of him as an exam­ple of a “Maoist insur­gency mod­el.”

    “In fact, I’ve been want­i­ng to do this video for a long time,” Shea said, repeat­ing angri­ly that he wasn’t upset. “Yes­ter­day, the Rolling Stone [sic] post­ed an 8,000 word arti­cle that was essen­tial­ly a slan­der smear piece – a hit piece – against me.”

    The Rolling Stone arti­cle – pub­lished last week – details Shea’s fan­ta­sy of cre­at­ing a “51st state” with free­dom for guns and rule by God. The sto­ry goes into depth on Shea’s ties to local white nation­al­ist move­ments

    Shea has used his time online to pro­mote far-right con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries, includ­ing the idea that glob­al warm­ing is a con­spir­a­cy to “manip­u­late the pub­lic mind.”

    He also fre­quent­ly met with and sup­port­ed ranch­er Cliv­en Bundy’s upris­ing against the Bureau of Land Man­age­ment, which he oppos­es for the despot­ic act of charg­ing fees for graz­ing on fed­er­al­ly main­tained land.

    The holy war man­u­al made its way to Spokane Coun­ty Sher­iff Ozzie Kne­zovich.

    “I gave it straight to the FBI,” Kne­zovich told the Seat­tle Times.

    ———-

    “State Rep’s Out­line For Killing Non-Believ­ers In Holy War Is Referred To FBI” by Josh Koven­sky; Talk­ing Points Memo; 11/02/2018

    Five-term Wash­ing­ton state Rep. Matt Shea has been cir­cu­lat­ing a man­u­al for holy war in the Unit­ed States, the Seat­tle Times report­ed.”

    A five-term state rep­re­sen­ta­tive was dis­trib­ut­ing this man­u­al. A man­u­al that advo­cat­ed killing all males who don’t sub­mit to Shea’s planned Bib­li­cal theoc­ra­cy:

    ...
    The four-page doc­u­ment, titled “Bib­li­cal Basis for War,” goes point-by-point over how a Chris­t­ian theo­crat­ic move­ment could – and should – exter­mi­nate its oppo­si­tion in a bat­tle to win a hypo­thet­i­cal holy war.

    At the out­set, Shea’s holy army would issue terms of sur­ren­der to its ene­mies. The demands include “stop all abor­tions,” “no same-sex mar­riage,” “no idol­a­try or occultism,” “no com­mu­nism,” and “must obey Bib­li­cal law.”

    If the rest of the coun­try refus­es to “yield” to these terms, the doc­u­ment advo­cates a final solu­tion: “kill all males.”
    ...

    And Shea does­n’t just have ties to white nation­al­ists. He’s also a big Cliv­en Bundy fan. Of course:

    ...
    The Rolling Stone arti­cle – pub­lished last week – details Shea’s fan­ta­sy of cre­at­ing a “51st state” with free­dom for guns and rule by God. The sto­ry goes into depth on Shea’s ties to local white nation­al­ist move­ments

    Shea has used his time online to pro­mote far-right con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries, includ­ing the idea that glob­al warm­ing is a con­spir­a­cy to “manip­u­late the pub­lic mind.”

    He also fre­quent­ly met with and sup­port­ed ranch­er Cliv­en Bundy’s upris­ing against the Bureau of Land Man­age­ment, which he oppos­es for the despot­ic act of charg­ing fees for graz­ing on fed­er­al­ly main­tained land.

    The holy war man­u­al made its way to Spokane Coun­ty Sher­iff Ozzie Kne­zovich.

    “I gave it straight to the FBI,” Kne­zovich told the Seat­tle Times.
    ...

    And note how Shea did­n’t appear to refute any of the con­tent of this how-to man­u­al after it was leaked. He dou­bled-down:

    ...
    The doc­u­ment was leaked to the press by a local lib­er­tar­i­an activist named Tan­ner Rowe, who in a Face­book video called the plan “theo­crat­ic bull­shit.”

    Shea replied to Rowe and the Seat­tle Times in a Face­book video of his own, furi­ous­ly claim­ing that he wasn’t angry over the inci­dent while show­ing off his his­tor­i­cal knowl­edge by claim­ing that the Mayflower com­pact was “a covenant with God to advance Chris­tian­i­ty.”

    “The counter-state is work­ing over­time,” he said, adding that “there are two main counter-states in Amer­i­ca: Marx­ists and Islamists.”

    He went on to crit­i­cize a recent Rolling Stone pro­file of him as an exam­ple of a “Maoist insur­gency mod­el.”

    “In fact, I’ve been want­i­ng to do this video for a long time,” Shea said, repeat­ing angri­ly that he wasn’t upset. “Yes­ter­day, the Rolling Stone [sic] post­ed an 8,000 word arti­cle that was essen­tial­ly a slan­der smear piece – a hit piece – against me.”
    ...

    So that all got referred to the FBI, where is was pre­sum­ably it was con­sid­ered just harm­less puffery by a bunch of harm­less good ‘ol boys.

    And here’s an update on the kinds of activ­i­ties Rep. Shea has been up to with three fel­low far right schemers: accord­ing to leaked chats between Shea and a group of asso­ciates, they were seri­ous­ly plot­ting survielling, harass­ing, and vio­lent­ly attack­ing mem­bers of Antifa. This was appar­ent­ly all prompt­ed by the right-wing hoax about ‘Antifa super­sol­diers’ plan­ning vio­lent attacks Novem­ber 4th, 2017. Recall how even DHS appeared to be tak­en in by this bla­tant hoax. Shea and his asso­ciates also took this seri­ous­ly, or at least pre­tend­ed to. And in their antic­i­pa­tion of this antifa super­sol­dier attack they planned on con­duct­ing psy-ops that includ­ed stalk­ing the homes, cars, work­places, and even child day­care loca­tions of local Antifa mem­bers. The schem­ing went beyond survielling to talk of actu­al vio­lence and wag­ing some sort of false flag psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare oper­a­tion using the sym­bols of Russ­ian anti-com­mu­nist groups as a way of spread­ing para­noia:

    The Guardian

    Repub­li­can dis­cussed vio­lent attacks and sur­veil­lance with rightwingers

    Wash­ing­ton state rep­re­sen­ta­tive Matt Shea exchanged mes­sages with far-right fig­ures, chat records obtained by the Guardian reveal

    Jason Wil­son

    Sat 20 Apr 2019 02.00 EDT
    Last mod­i­fied on Sat 20 Apr 2019 02.02 EDT

    A Wash­ing­ton state Repub­li­can politi­cian took part in pri­vate dis­cus­sions with rightwing fig­ures about car­ry­ing out sur­veil­lance, “psy­ops” and even vio­lent attacks on per­ceived polit­i­cal ene­mies, accord­ing to chat records obtained by the Guardian.

    State rep­re­sen­ta­tive Matt Shea, who rep­re­sents Spokane Val­ley in the Wash­ing­ton state house, par­tic­i­pat­ed in the chats with three oth­er men. All of the men used screen alias­es – Shea’s was “Verum Bel­la­tor”, Latin for true war­rior. The Guardian con­firmed the iden­ti­ty of those in the chat by cross-check­ing phone num­bers attached to the Sig­nal accounts.

    The group includ­ed Jack Robert­son, who broad­casts a far-right radio show, Radio Free Redoubt, under the alias “John Jacob Schmidt”. The chat also includ­ed Antho­ny Bosworth, whose his­to­ry includes a pub­lic alter­ca­tion with his own daugh­ter and bring­ing guns to a court house. Bosworth par­tic­i­pat­ed in the 2016 occu­pa­tion of the Mal­heur nation­al wildlife refuge, report­ed­ly at Shea’s request.

    The name of anoth­er par­tic­i­pant, who pro­vid­ed the chat records to the Guardian, has been with­held due to con­cerns about per­son­al safe­ty.

    The chats on the mes­sag­ing app Sig­nal took place in the days lead­ing up to a sup­posed “Antifa revolt” on 4 Novem­ber 2017. Through­out late Octo­ber, far-right media out­lets had been stok­ing fears of polit­i­cal con­flict on the basis of planned peace­ful protests by a small left­ist group.

    The men pro­posed to con­front left­ists – whom they repeat­ed­ly refer to as “com­mu­nists” and “Antifa” – with a suite of tac­tics, includ­ing vio­lence.

    Antho­ny Bosworth

    When we locate antifa mem­bers we can con­front their par­ents their work­places their land­lords. We can hit them in there safe spaces
    Oct 29, 2017 5:22PM

    This should become a Pure psy­ops oper­a­tion
    Oct 29, 2017 5:23PM

    If we can catch a few of them alone and work him over a lit­tle bit
    Oct 29, 2017 5:25PM

    Oth­er acts of extreme vio­lence were also sug­gest­ed. When a spe­cif­ic female Spokane res­i­dent was nom­i­nat­ed for sur­veil­lance in the chat group, Robert­son sug­gest­ed:

    Jack Robert­son

    Fist full of hair, and face slam, to a Jer­sey bar­ri­er. Treat em like com­mu­nist rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies. Then shave her bald with a K‑Bar USMC field knife.
    Nov 3, 2017 11:32PM

    Would make good attach­ment points for hoist­ing com­mu­nists up flag poles. Espe­cial­ly the ones with nip­ple rings
    Nov 4, 2017 9:48PM

    But… if you cinch up zip ties enough, you don’t even NEED nip­ple rings for hoist­ing.
    Nov 4, 2017 9:52PM

    Apart from vio­lence, the men exten­sive­ly dis­cussed tac­tics of sur­veil­lance and intim­i­da­tion.

    Antho­ny Bosworth

    Anoth­er use­ful tac­tic is locat­ing the provo­ca­teurs lead­ers in the mouth pieces and then tar­get­ing there safe spaces while they’re out on the streets riot­ing
    Nov 3, 2017 1:35PM

    Jack Robert­son

    Yes. Homes, cars, work­places, etc.
    Nov 3, 2017 5:51PM

    Child’s day­care loca­tion.
    Nov 3, 2017 5:51PM

    Shea, the elect­ed Repub­li­can leg­is­la­tor, did not demur from any of these sug­ges­tions. He also appeared will­ing to par­tic­i­pate direct­ly in sur­veil­lance of activists.

    In response to a request in the chat for back­ground checks on Spokane res­i­dents, Shea vol­un­teered to help, going on to name three indi­vid­u­als – includ­ing an orga­niz­er for the lib­er­al group Indi­vis­i­ble, and a col­lege pro­fes­sor.

    Matt Shea

    Ok. What BG checks need to be done. Give me the list.
    Nov 6, 2017 9:49PM

    All I have sev­er­al names that have come up... Any info out there?
    Nov 6, 2017 2:54PM

    The men talked about the broad out­lines of what they appeared to con­sid­er to be a loom­ing civ­il war. They also dis­cussed using sym­bols from what they under­stood to be Russ­ian anti-com­mu­nist groups as a way of spread­ing para­noia among their adver­saries.

    The group talked about mak­ing stick­ers and cards using skull and cross­bones images from post-rev­o­lu­tion­ary Russ­ian nation­al­ist groups. After post­ing an image of a white army sol­dier hold­ing such a ban­ner, Bosworth remarked:

    Antho­ny Bosworth

    When we locate their homes we can tag the side­walks and their mail­box­es with the sym­bol
    Oct 29, 2017 5:20PM

    Leave the sym­bol as a call­ing card
    Oct 29, 2017 5:20PM

    We can waste their resources and make them Tar­get some­thing that does­n’t exist
    Oct 29, 2017 5:21PM

    When the left­ist revolt failed to mate­ri­al­ize, Shea did not rethink his con­spir­a­to­r­i­al views and instead blamed the weath­er.

    Matt Shea

    Noth­ing ruins a good com­mu­nist rev­o­lu­tion like snow. Snowflakes afraid of snowflakes
    Nov 6, 2017 9:49PM

    Shea, a six-term leg­is­la­tor and mil­i­tary vet­er­an, came to inter­na­tion­al atten­tion in 2018 after a doc­u­ment he authored sur­faced lay­ing out a“bib­li­cal basis for war”, which appeared to be a plan for an apoc­a­lyp­tic bat­tle with peo­ple who prac­ticed “same sex mar­riage” and “abor­tion”, and instruct­ed: “If they do not yield, kill all males.”

    Shea denied that the doc­u­ment meant what it appeared to say.

    At that time, Shea lost donors, and he was stripped of his role as chair of the Repub­li­can cau­cus – though he was serv­ing in this posi­tion at the time of the leaked chat.

    But Shea has since regrouped, intro­duc­ing bills to crim­i­nal­ize abor­tion and roll back gun laws, which oth­er Repub­li­cans in Wash­ing­ton have sup­port­ed. He has also con­tin­ued push­ing a plan for east­ern Wash­ing­ton to secede and recon­sti­tute as Lib­er­ty State. Robert­son has also been a key archi­tect of this cam­paign, and he and Shea have been reg­u­lar guests on each other’s broad­casts.

    Shea has long pro­mot­ed con­spir­a­to­r­i­al views about the coop­er­a­tion of left­ists and Mus­lims in cre­at­ing “counter-states” in the US. He has asso­ci­at­ed with con­spir­a­cy-mind­ed far-right groups, and lat­er this month will emcee a din­ner for the anti-com­mu­nist John Birch soci­ety in Couer D’Alene, Ida­ho.

    In a tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion with the Guardian, Robert­son said: “I remem­ber a dis­cus­sion in response to Indi­vis­i­ble and Antifa groups that were plan­ning to take to the streets,” but “I don’t recall the details”.

    He denied sur­veilling his polit­i­cal oppo­nents, but added: “If some­one is in my com­mu­ni­ty and they are threat­en­ing vio­lence, I want to know more about them. That just makes sense.”

    He also claimed that the appar­ent threats of vio­lence were not authen­tic.

    “A lot of peo­ple in pri­vate con­ver­sa­tions say things tongue in cheek about what they would like to see hap­pen to these peo­ple, but that is not set­ting a pol­i­cy or estab­lish­ing a pro­to­col for peo­ple to car­ry things out.”

    Some of Shea’s most promi­nent crit­ics have been polit­i­cal con­ser­v­a­tives. Spokane county’s Repub­li­can sher­iff, Ozzie Kne­zovich, has repeat­ed­ly crit­i­cized Shea’s far-right ties.

    “It’s part and par­cel of what this group has been say­ing for years. I think if a state rep­re­sen­ta­tive is con­don­ing vio­lence against his con­stituents then that per­son needs to be removed from office, and I hope the vot­ers will do that at the next elec­tion.

    “Matt Shea is a poor rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the Repub­li­can par­ty. Extrem­ism on both sides is tear­ing this coun­try apart,” Kne­zovich added.

    Asked if the peo­ple around Shea were dan­ger­ous, Kne­zovich said: “Yes.”

    The West­ern States Cen­ter, a pro­gres­sive orga­ni­za­tion, has also pre­vi­ous­ly crit­i­cized Shea. Its exec­u­tive direc­tor, Eric Ward, said via email: “The vio­lent extrem­ism that Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Matt Shea espous­es is a clear threat to our demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions and has no place in main­stream polit­i­cal dis­course.

    “We call on Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty lead­ers to cen­sure Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Shea if these alle­ga­tions are true.”

    ...

    After the Guardian con­tact­ed Robert­son and Shea for com­ment Robert­son spoke on Thurs­day night on the Spokane Chris­t­ian radio sta­tion on which he and Shea broad­cast week­ly pro­grams.

    In a ram­bling broad­cast, Robert­son con­firmed the exis­tence of the chats, called the Guardian a “pro­pa­gan­dist”, read bib­li­cal accounts of war and fol­lowed with: “If it comes time for war and it’s forced upon you, do you not want a leader who is going to sur­round him­self with war­riors? I do.

    “There was talk about doing sur­veil­lance on some of these Antifa peo­ple. Not sur­veil­lance but just start copy­ing and past­ing their com­ments, keep­ing track of who’s who, keep track of where they live, where they work, but that nev­er came to fruition,” he added.

    ———-

    “Repub­li­can dis­cussed vio­lent attacks and sur­veil­lance with rightwingers” by Jason Wil­son; The Guardian; 04/20/2019

    The men talked about the broad out­lines of what they appeared to con­sid­er to be a loom­ing civ­il war. They also dis­cussed using sym­bols from what they under­stood to be Russ­ian anti-com­mu­nist groups as a way of spread­ing para­noia among their adver­saries.”

    A loom­ing civ­il war. That’s how Shea and his co-con­spir­a­tors appeared to inter­pret the inter­net joke about an “Antifa revolt” on Novem­ber 4th. And note how one of the four co-con­spir­a­tors, Antho­ny Bosworth, par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Bundy stand­off at Mal­heur nation­al wildlife refuge appar­ent­ly at Shea’s request. So Shea is quite active in the area of stok­ing armed insur­rec­tions:

    ...
    The group includ­ed Jack Robert­son, who broad­casts a far-right radio show, Radio Free Redoubt, under the alias “John Jacob Schmidt”. The chat also includ­ed Antho­ny Bosworth, whose his­to­ry includes a pub­lic alter­ca­tion with his own daugh­ter and bring­ing guns to a court house. Bosworth par­tic­i­pat­ed in the 2016 occu­pa­tion of the Mal­heur nation­al wildlife refuge, report­ed­ly at Shea’s request.

    The name of anoth­er par­tic­i­pant, who pro­vid­ed the chat records to the Guardian, has been with­held due to con­cerns about per­son­al safe­ty.

    The chats on the mes­sag­ing app Sig­nal took place in the days lead­ing up to a sup­posed “Antifa revolt” on 4 Novem­ber 2017. Through­out late Octo­ber, far-right media out­lets had been stok­ing fears of polit­i­cal con­flict on the basis of planned peace­ful protests by a small left­ist group.
    ...

    And in addi­tion to ideas like stalk­ing their tar­gets’ chil­dren’s day­care cen­ters there were a num­ber of sug­ges­tions of vio­lence. And Shea nev­er protest­ed:

    ...
    The men pro­posed to con­front left­ists – whom they repeat­ed­ly refer to as “com­mu­nists” and “Antifa” – with a suite of tac­tics, includ­ing vio­lence.

    Antho­ny Bosworth

    When we locate antifa mem­bers we can con­front their par­ents their work­places their land­lords. We can hit them in there safe spaces
    Oct 29, 2017 5:22PM

    This should become a Pure psy­ops oper­a­tion
    Oct 29, 2017 5:23PM

    If we can catch a few of them alone and work him over a lit­tle bit
    Oct 29, 2017 5:25PM

    Oth­er acts of extreme vio­lence were also sug­gest­ed. When a spe­cif­ic female Spokane res­i­dent was nom­i­nat­ed for sur­veil­lance in the chat group, Robert­son sug­gest­ed:

    Jack Robert­son

    Fist full of hair, and face slam, to a Jer­sey bar­ri­er. Treat em like com­mu­nist rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies. Then shave her bald with a K‑Bar USMC field knife.
    Nov 3, 2017 11:32PM

    Would make good attach­ment points for hoist­ing com­mu­nists up flag poles. Espe­cial­ly the ones with nip­ple rings
    Nov 4, 2017 9:48PM

    But… if you cinch up zip ties enough, you don’t even NEED nip­ple rings for hoist­ing.
    Nov 4, 2017 9:52PM

    Apart from vio­lence, the men exten­sive­ly dis­cussed tac­tics of sur­veil­lance and intim­i­da­tion.

    Antho­ny Bosworth

    Anoth­er use­ful tac­tic is locat­ing the provo­ca­teurs lead­ers in the mouth pieces and then tar­get­ing there safe spaces while they’re out on the streets riot­ing
    Nov 3, 2017 1:35PM

    Jack Robert­son

    Yes. Homes, cars, work­places, etc.
    Nov 3, 2017 5:51PM

    Child’s day­care loca­tion.
    Nov 3, 2017 5:51PM

    Shea, the elect­ed Repub­li­can leg­is­la­tor, did not demur from any of these sug­ges­tions. He also appeared will­ing to par­tic­i­pate direct­ly in sur­veil­lance of activists.
    ...

    The plans also includ­ed using the sym­bols of a Russ­ian anti-com­mu­nist group to sow para­noia. Keep in mind, if they had pulled this part off it’s entire­ly pos­si­ble we would have seen a nation­al freak­out over Rus­sia anti-com­mu­nist groups oper­at­ing in the US:

    ...
    The group talked about mak­ing stick­ers and cards using skull and cross­bones images from post-rev­o­lu­tion­ary Russ­ian nation­al­ist groups. After post­ing an image of a white army sol­dier hold­ing such a ban­ner, Bosworth remarked:

    Antho­ny Bosworth

    When we locate their homes we can tag the side­walks and their mail­box­es with the sym­bol
    Oct 29, 2017 5:20PM

    Leave the sym­bol as a call­ing card
    Oct 29, 2017 5:20PM

    We can waste their resources and make them Tar­get some­thing that does­n’t exist
    Oct 29, 2017 5:21PM

    ...

    And note how, despite FBI inves­ti­ga­tion into Shea’s dis­tri­b­u­tion of the holy war pam­phlet back in Novem­ber, that does­n’t appear to have had any reper­cus­sions for Shea in the Wash­ing­ton state leg­is­la­ture oth­er than los­ing some donors. He’s still a rep­re­sen­ta­tive in good stand­ing and intro­duced bills that get Repub­li­can sup­port:

    ...
    Shea, a six-term leg­is­la­tor and mil­i­tary vet­er­an, came to inter­na­tion­al atten­tion in 2018 after a doc­u­ment he authored sur­faced lay­ing out a“bib­li­cal basis for war”, which appeared to be a plan for an apoc­a­lyp­tic bat­tle with peo­ple who prac­ticed “same sex mar­riage” and “abor­tion”, and instruct­ed: “If they do not yield, kill all males.”

    Shea denied that the doc­u­ment meant what it appeared to say.

    At that time, Shea lost donors, and he was stripped of his role as chair of the Repub­li­can cau­cus – though he was serv­ing in this posi­tion at the time of the leaked chat.

    But Shea has since regrouped, intro­duc­ing bills to crim­i­nal­ize abor­tion and roll back gun laws, which oth­er Repub­li­cans in Wash­ing­ton have sup­port­ed. He has also con­tin­ued push­ing a plan for east­ern Wash­ing­ton to secede and recon­sti­tute as Lib­er­ty State. Robert­son has also been a key archi­tect of this cam­paign, and he and Shea have been reg­u­lar guests on each other’s broad­casts.
    ...

    While Shea denies there were any real plans for vio­lence, the Repub­li­can sher­iff of Spokane coun­ty comes right out and calls Shea’s asso­ciates dan­ger­ous. And when one of the co-con­spir­a­tor, Jack Robert­son, is asked about the leak­ing of these plans, he makes a ref­er­ence to want­i­ng a war­rior leader if you’re head­ing into war, which isn’t a very com­pelling denial of the charges:

    ...
    He also claimed that the appar­ent threats of vio­lence were not authen­tic.

    “A lot of peo­ple in pri­vate con­ver­sa­tions say things tongue in cheek about what they would like to see hap­pen to these peo­ple, but that is not set­ting a pol­i­cy or estab­lish­ing a pro­to­col for peo­ple to car­ry things out.”

    Some of Shea’s most promi­nent crit­ics have been polit­i­cal con­ser­v­a­tives. Spokane county’s Repub­li­can sher­iff, Ozzie Kne­zovich, has repeat­ed­ly crit­i­cized Shea’s far-right ties.

    “It’s part and par­cel of what this group has been say­ing for years. I think if a state rep­re­sen­ta­tive is con­don­ing vio­lence against his con­stituents then that per­son needs to be removed from office, and I hope the vot­ers will do that at the next elec­tion.

    “Matt Shea is a poor rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the Repub­li­can par­ty. Extrem­ism on both sides is tear­ing this coun­try apart,” Kne­zovich added.

    Asked if the peo­ple around Shea were dan­ger­ous, Kne­zovich said: “Yes.”

    ...

    After the Guardian con­tact­ed Robert­son and Shea for com­ment Robert­son spoke on Thurs­day night on the Spokane Chris­t­ian radio sta­tion on which he and Shea broad­cast week­ly pro­grams.

    In a ram­bling broad­cast, Robert­son con­firmed the exis­tence of the chats, called the Guardian a “pro­pa­gan­dist”, read bib­li­cal accounts of war and fol­lowed with: “If it comes time for war and it’s forced upon you, do you not want a leader who is going to sur­round him­self with war­riors? I do.
    ...

    So that’s anoth­er exam­ple of the kind of far right domes­tic ter­ror threat that the FBI and DHS appar­ent­ly view as not a real threat.

    And in relat­ed news, remem­ber Christo­pher Has­son, the neo-Nazi mem­ber of the Coast Guard who was found plot­ting mass ter­ror attacks and a list of tar­gets? Yeah, it turns out the gov­ern­ment has­n’t actu­al­ly charged Has­son with any ter­ror-relat­ed charges so his pub­lic defend­er is try­ing to get him released. Yep.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | April 22, 2019, 12:30 pm
  7. Here’s a fol­lowup on the sto­ry of Matt Shea, the far right Wash­ing­ton State rep­re­sen­ta­tive who pub­lished a man­u­al on wag­ing Bib­li­cal Holy war and was dis­cov­ered to have tak­en part in a chat group where they plot­ted survielling, harass­ing, and poten­tial­ly assault­ing antifa mem­bers: Shea con­tin­ues to issue no denials that he took part in the plot but asserts that he per­son­al­ly nev­er advo­cat­ed vio­lence and was just try­ing to pro­tect his com­mu­ni­ty from dan­ger­ous antifa mem­bers.

    Now Shea is try­ing to dis­cred­it Jason Wil­son, the author of the Guardian arti­cle that revealed Shea’s secret plot. What is Shea doing to dis­cred­it Wil­son? By link­ing to an arti­cle crit­i­cal of Wil­son from the Aus­tralian web­site XYZ.net.au. Oh, and it turns out XYZ is white nation­al­ist web­site:

    The Spokesman-Review

    Rep. Matt Shea links to white nation­al­ist web­site, defends run­ning back­ground checks on polit­i­cal oppo­nents

    By Chad Sokol
    Wed., April 24, 2019, 6:43 a.m.

    Fum­ing after a new round of head­lines about his inter­ac­tions with far-right activists, state Rep. Matt Shea direct­ed his 4,600 Face­book fol­low­ers to an obscure Aus­tralian web­site that traf­fics in white nation­al­ist memes and Holo­caust revi­sion­ism.

    Specif­i­cal­ly, the Spokane Val­ley leg­is­la­tor shared a link to an arti­cle on XYZ.net.au that attempts to dis­cred­it Guardian jour­nal­ist Jason Wil­son, who revealed on Sat­ur­day that Shea took part in a 2017 text chat that dis­cussed attack­ing and spy­ing on polit­i­cal ene­mies.

    It’s unclear if Shea vis­its the site reg­u­lar­ly. He doesn’t appear to have shared any XYZ arti­cles before Mon­day night, and he didn’t respond to mul­ti­ple mes­sages seek­ing com­ment on Tues­day, in keep­ing with his usu­al prac­tice of ignor­ing media inquiries.

    XYZ is akin to a slight­ly more extreme Aus­tralian ver­sion of Bre­it­bart News that reg­u­lar­ly takes aim at main­stream out­lets such as the Guardian and the Aus­tralian Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion.

    “They’re a white nation­al­ist source, and that’s a new lev­el for Shea,” said Jac Archer, the vice chair of the Spokane Coun­ty Democ­rats and a mem­ber of Spokane Com­mu­ni­ty Against Racism. “And I think it rais­es the ques­tion: Is this reg­u­lar read­ing mate­r­i­al for Shea? Is he get­ting sent this stuff and not vet­ting it?”

    If Shea had scrolled through the XYZ home­page, he might have spot­ted an arti­cle that men­tions “how the can­cer­ous sys­tem is crack­ing down on White Nation­al­ism.”

    Or he might have noticed this head­line: “Alt-Christ: The emerg­ing Chris­t­ian revolt against Satan­ic globo­ho­mo dis­or­der.”

    That post cit­ed a tweet by Mike Cer­novich, an alt-right provo­ca­teur who pro­mot­ed the hoax known as Piz­za­gate, which result­ed in gun­fire at a Wash­ing­ton, D.C., piz­za par­lor.

    If Shea had clicked around to see some old­er XYZ con­tent, he might have found numer­ous anti-Semit­ic ref­er­ences to the financier George Soros.

    Or he might have come across a review of a book titled “The Myth of Ger­man Vil­lainy,” which pur­ports to “destroy the offi­cial nar­ra­tive” of the Holo­caust and ques­tions the inno­cence of mil­lions of mur­dered Jews.

    Shea ear­li­er this month vot­ed for a new law encour­ag­ing Holo­caust edu­ca­tion in pub­lic schools.

    In an April 12 speech on the House floor, Shea said teach­ing about the Holo­caust “is not just about the Jew­ish peo­ple. It’s about all peo­ple, of every eth­nic­i­ty and every reli­gion. When human beings do that to one anoth­er, nobody wins, and we allow it to hap­pen, we allow evil into the world. And we can stand here on this floor today and say that the Holo­caust was evil.”

    How­ev­er, Shea has been accused of reli­gious big­otry before, includ­ing when he found­ed a local chap­ter of the anti-Mus­lim group ACT for Amer­i­ca.

    The arti­cle that Shea shared Mon­day was pub­lished in Jan­u­ary 2018 and makes a num­ber of exag­ger­at­ed claims and ten­u­ous con­nec­tions to paint Wil­son, the Guardian writer, as an anar­chist sym­pa­thiz­er.

    It wasn’t the first time XYZ had com­plained about Wil­son, an Aus­tralia native liv­ing in Port­land who has report­ed exten­sive­ly on polit­i­cal extrem­ism in both coun­tries.

    In his Face­book post Mon­day night, Shea called the Guardian sto­ry “an extreme­ly mis­lead­ing hit-piece.”

    But nei­ther he nor two oth­er men who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the 2017 group chat, Antho­ny Bosworth and Jack Robert­son, have dis­put­ed any fac­tu­al details of the sto­ry, which was based on copies of the chat obtained from an anony­mous source.

    Accord­ing to the Guardian, Bosworth, who took part in the 2016 armed occu­pa­tion of an Ore­gon wildlife refuge, talked of con­fronting antifa, or anti-fas­cists, in their homes and work­places.

    Robert­son, who hosts the show Radio Free Redoubt using the pseu­do­nym John Jacob Schmidt, added child day care cen­ters to the list of sug­gest­ed tar­gets, and described assault­ing a woman by slam­ming her face into a traf­fic bar­ri­er.

    There was no indi­ca­tion that Shea made threats of vio­lence him­self, though he did not attempt to dis­suade the oth­ers. At one point, the Guardian report­ed, he vol­un­teered to run “BG checks” on at least three indi­vid­u­als, includ­ing a col­lege pro­fes­sor and an orga­niz­er for Indi­vis­i­ble, a local lib­er­al group.

    In Monday’s Face­book post, Shea wrote: “Of course I have done back­ground checks to pro­tect my fam­i­ly and my com­mu­ni­ty, but that was only in response to threats already com­ing from the left. I will con­tin­ue to fight to pro­tect the Con­sti­tu­tion, my fam­i­ly, and my com­mu­ni­ty. I will not back down. I will not quit. I will not give in. Ever.”

    Mean­while on Tues­day, the Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty and the West­ern States Cen­ter, a pro­gres­sive group based in Port­land, con­tin­ued call­ing for Shea to be expelled from the GOP cau­cus.

    ...

    On Tues­day, House Repub­li­can Leader J.T. Wilcox, of Yelm, said he had talked to Shea about the 2017 mes­sages and was aware of the web­site that Shea had shared on Face­book. But Wilcox said he had no imme­di­ate plans to expel Shea from the cau­cus.

    “He can link to what­ev­er he wants,” Wilcox said. “Every­body has their own Face­book page.”

    Rebekah Mason, a Demo­c­ra­t­ic orga­niz­er in the 4th Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict that Shea rep­re­sents, said the shar­ing of racist pro­pa­gan­da can’t go unchal­lenged.

    “It’s embar­rass­ing to have an elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tive who throws around con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries and racism like that,” Mason said. “When you’re an elect­ed offi­cial, you have to be held account­able, and that includes social media posts.”

    As of Mon­day evening, the post remained on Shea’s Face­book page.

    ———-

    “Rep. Matt Shea links to white nation­al­ist web­site, defends run­ning back­ground checks on polit­i­cal oppo­nents” by Chad Sokol; The Spokesman-Review; 04/24/2019

    “XYZ is akin to a slight­ly more extreme Aus­tralian ver­sion of Bre­it­bart News that reg­u­lar­ly takes aim at main­stream out­lets such as the Guardian and the Aus­tralian Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion.”

    A slight­ly more extreme Aus­tralian ver­sion of Bre­it­bart News. In oth­er words, the kind of site that laments oppo­si­tion to White Nation­al­ism and ques­tions the Holo­caust. That’s the site that wrote the arti­cle Shea used to defend him­self:

    ...
    “They’re a white nation­al­ist source, and that’s a new lev­el for Shea,” said Jac Archer, the vice chair of the Spokane Coun­ty Democ­rats and a mem­ber of Spokane Com­mu­ni­ty Against Racism. “And I think it rais­es the ques­tion: Is this reg­u­lar read­ing mate­r­i­al for Shea? Is he get­ting sent this stuff and not vet­ting it?”

    If Shea had scrolled through the XYZ home­page, he might have spot­ted an arti­cle that men­tions “how the can­cer­ous sys­tem is crack­ing down on White Nation­al­ism.”

    Or he might have noticed this head­line: “Alt-Christ: The emerg­ing Chris­t­ian revolt against Satan­ic globo­ho­mo dis­or­der.”

    That post cit­ed a tweet by Mike Cer­novich, an alt-right provo­ca­teur who pro­mot­ed the hoax known as Piz­za­gate, which result­ed in gun­fire at a Wash­ing­ton, D.C., piz­za par­lor.

    If Shea had clicked around to see some old­er XYZ con­tent, he might have found numer­ous anti-Semit­ic ref­er­ences to the financier George Soros.

    Or he might have come across a review of a book titled “The Myth of Ger­man Vil­lainy,” which pur­ports to “destroy the offi­cial nar­ra­tive” of the Holo­caust and ques­tions the inno­cence of mil­lions of mur­dered Jews.
    ...

    And, again, note how Shea con­tin­ues to not dis­pute any of the facts regard­ing his par­tic­i­pa­tion in the chat group where they plot­ting their spying/psyop/violence cam­paign against antifa mem­bers:

    ...
    The arti­cle that Shea shared Mon­day was pub­lished in Jan­u­ary 2018 and makes a num­ber of exag­ger­at­ed claims and ten­u­ous con­nec­tions to paint Wil­son, the Guardian writer, as an anar­chist sym­pa­thiz­er.

    It wasn’t the first time XYZ had com­plained about Wil­son, an Aus­tralia native liv­ing in Port­land who has report­ed exten­sive­ly on polit­i­cal extrem­ism in both coun­tries.

    In his Face­book post Mon­day night, Shea called the Guardian sto­ry “an extreme­ly mis­lead­ing hit-piece.”

    But nei­ther he nor two oth­er men who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the 2017 group chat, Antho­ny Bosworth and Jack Robert­son, have dis­put­ed any fac­tu­al details of the sto­ry, which was based on copies of the chat obtained from an anony­mous source.

    Accord­ing to the Guardian, Bosworth, who took part in the 2016 armed occu­pa­tion of an Ore­gon wildlife refuge, talked of con­fronting antifa, or anti-fas­cists, in their homes and work­places.

    Robert­son, who hosts the show Radio Free Redoubt using the pseu­do­nym John Jacob Schmidt, added child day care cen­ters to the list of sug­gest­ed tar­gets, and described assault­ing a woman by slam­ming her face into a traf­fic bar­ri­er.

    There was no indi­ca­tion that Shea made threats of vio­lence him­self, though he did not attempt to dis­suade the oth­ers. At one point, the Guardian report­ed, he vol­un­teered to run “BG checks” on at least three indi­vid­u­als, includ­ing a col­lege pro­fes­sor and an orga­niz­er for Indi­vis­i­ble, a local lib­er­al group.
    ...

    And note the Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­cans’ response to Shea’s link­ing to a white nation­al­ist web­site to defend him­self against accu­sa­tions that he’s a white nation­al­ist: House minor­i­ty leader J.T. Wilcox explains he talked to Shea about it and that was it. As Wilcox put it, “He can link to what­ev­er he wants...Everybody has their own Face­book page”. In oth­er words, it’s no big deal:

    ...
    Mean­while on Tues­day, the Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty and the West­ern States Cen­ter, a pro­gres­sive group based in Port­land, con­tin­ued call­ing for Shea to be expelled from the GOP cau­cus.

    ...

    On Tues­day, House Repub­li­can Leader J.T. Wilcox, of Yelm, said he had talked to Shea about the 2017 mes­sages and was aware of the web­site that Shea had shared on Face­book. But Wilcox said he had no imme­di­ate plans to expel Shea from the cau­cus.

    “He can link to what­ev­er he wants,” Wilcox said. “Every­body has their own Face­book page.”
    ...

    So it appears the Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­cans have a bit of a ‘Steve King’ prob­lem on their hands. Recall how Iowa Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Steve King has been open­ly flirt­ing with white nation­al­ism for years with­out any sort of rebuke from his Repub­li­can col­leagues. King’s antics kept get­ting more and more overt until he final­ly crossed some sort of white-suprema­cist-love thresh­old that even the GOP could no longer ignore when he ques­tioned whey terms like “white suprema­cy” and “white nation­al­ism” are con­sid­ered neg­a­tive now. But even though King was stripped of his com­mit­tee assign­ments after all that, the GOP still has­n’t kicked him out of the par­ty.

    Will Matt Shea ever final­ly cross the kind of line that gets him seri­ous­ly rebuked by his fel­low Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­cans? We’ll see, but at this point it’s clear that dis­trib­ut­ing a man­u­al on wag­ing Holy War and engag­ing in a secret far right plot to stalk, harass, and beat up antifa mem­bers does­n’t actu­al­ly cross that line for Wash­ing­ton State’s GOP.

    And in relat­ed news, Steve King just claimed that the expe­ri­ence of being stripped of his com­mit­tee assign­ments gave him insight into how Jesus felt after get­ting cru­ci­fied.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | April 24, 2019, 2:22 pm
  8. Here’s a pro­found­ly dis­turb­ing update to the case of Christo­pher Has­son, the neo-Nazi Coast Guard offi­cer who was caught stock­pil­ing weapons, com­piled a hit-list of promi­nent left-wing media per­son­al­i­ties and politi­cians, and report­ed­ly dreams of killing off almost every­one on the plan­et using bio­log­i­cal weapons:

    For starters, the guy was just ordered to be released on bail, albeit under super­vi­sion. This is due to the fact that pros­e­cu­tors have yet to bring ter­ror­ism charges against him. He was called a “domes­tic ter­ror­ist” in the ini­tial court fil­ings but he did­n’t face actu­al ter­ror­ism charges. When Has­son was detained in Feb­ru­ary the judge agreed to keep Has­son in cus­tody but said he was will­ing to revis­it his deci­sion if pros­e­cu­tors didn’t bring more seri­ous charges with­in two weeks. Those new charges had­n’t hap­pened and Has­son’s defense attor­ney has been push­ing to get him released from cus­tody while await­ing tri­al. Has­son’s attor­ney also wrote in a court fil­ing last week that pros­e­cu­tors recent­ly dis­closed that they don’t expect to seek any addi­tion­al charges. So it remains to be seen if ter­ror­ism charges, or any­thing more than the exist­ing weapons and drug pos­ses­sion charges, will be brought for­ward but in a new court fil­ing this week pros­e­cu­tors urged the judge to keep him in cus­tody pend­ing tri­al on firearms and weapons charges and the judge clear­ly dis­agreed.

    The sec­ond high­ly dis­turb­ing update to this case is in the new court fil­ing pros­e­cu­tors issued they made a chill­ing alle­ga­tion: Has­san planned on assas­si­nat­ing Supreme Court jus­tices. Specif­i­cal­ly, Has­son did an inter­net search for ‘are supreme court jus­tices pro­tect­ed’ about two weeks before he searched for the home address­es of two Supreme Court jus­tices “with­in min­utes before and after search­ing firearm sales web­sites.” Pros­e­cu­tors also note he was in ille­gal pos­ses­sion of unreg­is­tered and unmarked silencers. So the neo-Nazi Coast Guard lieu­tenant who appears to have been plot­ting a tar­get­ed assas­si­na­tion cam­paign with the goal of trig­ger­ing a race war and mass mur­der on a much larg­er scale just got release on bail.

    First, here’s an arti­cle about the new court fil­ing that men­tions Has­son’s plans for assas­si­nat­ing Supreme Court jus­tices, his pos­ses­sion of silencers, and the then-ongo­ing fight for Has­son’s release due to a lack of ter­ror­ism charges:

    Asso­ci­at­ed Press

    Feds: Coast Guard offi­cer tar­get­ed Supreme Court jus­tices

    By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN
    04/24/2019

    ROCKVILLE, Md. (AP) — A Coast Guard lieu­tenant accused of stock­pil­ing guns and com­pil­ing a hit list of promi­nent Democ­rats and net­work TV jour­nal­ists looked at oth­er tar­gets: two Supreme Court jus­tices and two exec­u­tives of social media com­pa­nies, accord­ing to fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors.

    Those new alle­ga­tions are con­tained in a court fil­ing Tues­day in which pros­e­cu­tors urge a mag­is­trate judge to keep Christo­pher Has­son, 49, detained in cus­tody pend­ing tri­al on firearms and weapons charges.

    The fil­ing doesn’t name the two jus­tices and two com­pa­ny exec­u­tives but says Has­son searched online for their home address­es in March 2018, with­in min­utes before and after search­ing firearm sales web­sites.

    “The defen­dant con­duct­ed an inter­net search for ‘are supreme court jus­tices pro­tect­ed’ approx­i­mate­ly two weeks pri­or to search­ing for the home address­es of the two Supreme Court jus­tices,” Assis­tant U.S. Attor­ney Thomas Win­dom wrote in a foot­note.

    Has­son, who is due back in court Thurs­day for a deten­tion hear­ing, is renew­ing his request to be released from cus­tody while await­ing tri­al. A lawyer who rep­re­sent­ed Has­son at a Feb. 21 deten­tion hear­ing accused pros­e­cu­tors of mak­ing inflam­ma­to­ry accu­sa­tions against Has­son with­out pro­vid­ing evi­dence to back them up.

    Pros­e­cu­tors haven’t charged him with any ter­ror­ism-relat­ed offens­es since his Feb. 15 arrest and sub­se­quent indict­ment in Mary­land. Hasson’s attor­ney, Liz Oyer, wrote in a court fil­ing last week that pros­e­cu­tors recent­ly dis­closed that they don’t expect to seek any addi­tion­al charges.

    ...

    In a Feb­ru­ary court fil­ing, pros­e­cu­tors called Has­son a “domes­tic ter­ror­ist” and said he “intends to mur­der inno­cent civil­ians on a scale rarely seen in this coun­try.” They also said he is a self-described white nation­al­ist who espoused extrem­ist views for years and draft­ed an email in which he said he was “dream­ing of a way to kill almost every last per­son on the earth.”

    Hasson’s inter­net search his­to­ry “lays bare his views on race, which in turn inform his crim­i­nal con­duct,” Win­dom wrote.

    In Novem­ber 2017, accord­ing to the pros­e­cu­tor, Has­son searched for “please god let there be a race war.” And the defen­dant did an inter­net search for guns with a search term that used a racial slur for blacks in March 2018 before vis­it­ing firearm sales web­sites.

    Pros­e­cu­tors have said Has­son appeared to be plan­ning attacks inspired by the man­i­festo of Anders Behring Breivik, the Nor­we­gian right-wing extrem­ist who killed 77 peo­ple in a 2011 bomb-and-shoot­ing ram­page. Win­dom said “it can­not go unno­ticed” that the ter­ror­ist who per­pe­trat­ed the dead­ly New Zealand mosque attacks in March also was a “devo­tee” of Breivik.

    In 2017, Has­son sent him­self a draft let­ter he had writ­ten to a neo-Nazi leader and “iden­ti­fied him­self as a White Nation­al­ist for over 30 years and advo­cat­ed for ‘focused vio­lence’ in order to estab­lish a white home­land,” pros­e­cu­tors said.

    That let­ter also refers to “Mis­souri,” a per­son with whom Has­son has a “long his­to­ry,” Win­dom wrote. In 1995, accord­ing to fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors, Has­son and “Mis­souri” went to a home in Hamp­ton, Vir­ginia, where the home­own­er arrived by car and asked them why they were there. The vic­tim iden­ti­fied Has­son and Mis­souri as “skin­heads.”

    “Mis­souri,” wear­ing a black jack­et with Swasti­ka patch­es, aimed a hand­gun at the victim’s face and pulled the trig­ger, accord­ing to a police report cit­ed by pros­e­cu­tors. When the gun didn’t fire, “Mis­souri” beat the vic­tim with it.

    “Chris Has­son was stand­ing there with the sus­pect when this occurred,” Win­dom wrote.

    Inves­ti­ga­tors found 15 guns, includ­ing sev­en rifles, and over 1,000 rounds of ammu­ni­tion at Hasson’s base­ment apart­ment in Sil­ver Spring, Mary­land, pros­e­cu­tors said. Hasson’s Feb. 27 indict­ment also accus­es him of ille­gal pos­ses­sion of tra­madol, an opi­oid painkiller.

    Pros­e­cu­tors claim Has­son drew up what appeared to be a com­put­er-spread­sheet hit list that includ­ed House Speak­er Nan­cy Pelosi, Sen­ate Demo­c­ra­t­ic Leader Chuck Schumer and pres­i­den­tial hope­fuls Sens. Kirsten Gilli­brand, Eliz­a­beth War­ren, Cory Book­er and Kamala Har­ris. Sev­er­al net­work TV jour­nal­ists — MSNBC’s Chris Hayes and Joe Scar­bor­ough and CNN’s Chris Cuo­mo and Van Jones — also were men­tioned.

    Dur­ing the Feb­ru­ary deten­tion hear­ing, U.S. Mag­is­trate Judge Charles Day agreed to keep Has­son held in cus­tody but said he was will­ing to revis­it his deci­sion if pros­e­cu­tors didn’t bring more seri­ous charges with­in two weeks.

    Has­son plead­ed not guilty last month to charges of ille­gal pos­ses­sion of firearm silencers, pos­ses­sion of firearms by a drug addict and unlaw­ful user, and pos­ses­sion of a con­trolled sub­stance. He faces a max­i­mum of 31 years in prison if con­vict­ed of all four counts in his indict­ment.

    “The silencers serve one pur­pose: to mur­der qui­et­ly. The defen­dant intend­ed to do so on a mass scale, and his deten­tion has thwart­ed his unlaw­ful desire,” Win­dom wrote.

    Has­son, a for­mer Marine, worked at Coast Guard head­quar­ters in Wash­ing­ton on a pro­gram to acquire advanced new cut­ters for the agency. A Coast Guard spokesman has said Has­son will remain on active duty until the case against him is resolved.

    ———-

    “Feds: Coast Guard offi­cer tar­get­ed Supreme Court jus­tices” by MICHAEL KUNZELMAN; Asso­ci­at­ed Press; 04/24/2019

    “Dur­ing the Feb­ru­ary deten­tion hear­ing, U.S. Mag­is­trate Judge Charles Day agreed to keep Has­son held in cus­tody but said he was will­ing to revis­it his deci­sion if pros­e­cu­tors didn’t bring more seri­ous charges with­in two weeks.

    All they need­ed to do was bring ter­ror­ism charges to pre­vent Has­son from being released pend­ing tri­al. But some­how, despite the abun­dance of evi­dence, those charges were nev­er brought for­ward. And accord­ing to Has­son’s attor­ney, the pros­e­cu­tors told her last week that there were be no addi­tion­al charges beyond the exist­ing weapons and drug charges. Pros­e­cu­tors did label Has­son a “domes­tic ter­ror­ist” in their Feb­ru­ary court fil­ing but nev­er actu­al­ly charged him with plot­ting ter­ror:

    ...
    Has­son, who is due back in court Thurs­day for a deten­tion hear­ing, is renew­ing his request to be released from cus­tody while await­ing tri­al. A lawyer who rep­re­sent­ed Has­son at a Feb. 21 deten­tion hear­ing accused pros­e­cu­tors of mak­ing inflam­ma­to­ry accu­sa­tions against Has­son with­out pro­vid­ing evi­dence to back them up.

    Pros­e­cu­tors haven’t charged him with any ter­ror­ism-relat­ed offens­es since his Feb. 15 arrest and sub­se­quent indict­ment in Mary­land. Hasson’s attor­ney, Liz Oyer, wrote in a court fil­ing last week that pros­e­cu­tors recent­ly dis­closed that they don’t expect to seek any addi­tion­al charges.

    ...

    In a Feb­ru­ary court fil­ing, pros­e­cu­tors called Has­son a “domes­tic ter­ror­ist” and said he “intends to mur­der inno­cent civil­ians on a scale rarely seen in this coun­try.” They also said he is a self-described white nation­al­ist who espoused extrem­ist views for years and draft­ed an email in which he said he was “dream­ing of a way to kill almost every last per­son on the earth.”
    ...

    And this lack of ter­ror charges took place despite the fact that Has­son’s search his­to­ry demon­strates an inter­est in assas­si­nat­ing two Supreme Court jus­tices:

    ...
    The fil­ing doesn’t name the two jus­tices and two com­pa­ny exec­u­tives but says Has­son searched online for their home address­es in March 2018, with­in min­utes before and after search­ing firearm sales web­sites.

    “The defen­dant con­duct­ed an inter­net search for ‘are supreme court jus­tices pro­tect­ed’ approx­i­mate­ly two weeks pri­or to search­ing for the home address­es of the two Supreme Court jus­tices,” Assis­tant U.S. Attor­ney Thomas Win­dom wrote in a foot­note.
    ...

    And then there’s the fact that Has­son sent him­self a draft of let­ter he was send­ing to a neo-Nazi leader were Has­son advo­cat­ed for “focused vio­lence”, which is exact­ly what assas­si­nat­ing Supreme Court jus­tices should be con­sid­ered: strate­gic focused neo-Nazi vio­lence:

    ...
    Hasson’s inter­net search his­to­ry “lays bare his views on race, which in turn inform his crim­i­nal con­duct,” Win­dom wrote.

    In Novem­ber 2017, accord­ing to the pros­e­cu­tor, Has­son searched for “please god let there be a race war.” And the defen­dant did an inter­net search for guns with a search term that used a racial slur for blacks in March 2018 before vis­it­ing firearm sales web­sites.

    Pros­e­cu­tors have said Has­son appeared to be plan­ning attacks inspired by the man­i­festo of Anders Behring Breivik, the Nor­we­gian right-wing extrem­ist who killed 77 peo­ple in a 2011 bomb-and-shoot­ing ram­page. Win­dom said “it can­not go unno­ticed” that the ter­ror­ist who per­pe­trat­ed the dead­ly New Zealand mosque attacks in March also was a “devo­tee” of Breivik.

    In 2017, Has­son sent him­self a draft let­ter he had writ­ten to a neo-Nazi leader and “iden­ti­fied him­self as a White Nation­al­ist for over 30 years and advo­cat­ed for ‘focused vio­lence’ in order to estab­lish a white home­land,” pros­e­cu­tors said.

    ...

    Now we’re learn­ing that he head ille­gal silencers too:

    ...
    Has­son plead­ed not guilty last month to charges of ille­gal pos­ses­sion of firearm silencers, pos­ses­sion of firearms by a drug addict and unlaw­ful user, and pos­ses­sion of a con­trolled sub­stance. He faces a max­i­mum of 31 years in prison if con­vict­ed of all four counts in his indict­ment.

    “The silencers serve one pur­pose: to mur­der qui­et­ly. The defen­dant intend­ed to do so on a mass scale, and his deten­tion has thwart­ed his unlaw­ful desire,” Win­dom wrote.
    ...

    And none of that was enough to keep Has­son detained because he was nev­er actu­al­ly charged with any ter­ror­ism-relat­ed offens­es:

    Asso­ci­at­ed Press

    Release approved for Coast Guard offi­cer accused of ter­ror

    By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN
    4/25/2019

    GREENBELT, Md. (AP) — A fed­er­al mag­is­trate says a Coast Guard lieu­tenant accused of being a domes­tic ter­ror­ist is enti­tled to be released from cus­tody before his tri­al.

    U.S. Mag­is­trate Judge Charles Day not­ed on Thurs­day that 50-year-old Christo­pher Has­son hasn’t been charged with any ter­ror­ism relat­ed offens­es. Has­son was arrest­ed Feb. 15 and is await­ing tri­al on firearms and drug charges. Pros­e­cu­tors say he cre­at­ed a hit list of promi­nent Democ­rats, two Supreme Court jus­tices, net­work TV jour­nal­ists and social media com­pa­ny exec­u­tives.

    Day says he still has “grave con­cerns” about Has­son based on infor­ma­tion pros­e­cu­tors have pre­sent­ed. The mag­is­trate says Has­son is “going to have to have a whole lot of super­vi­sion.”

    Day didn’t order Has­son to be imme­di­ate­ly released. The mag­is­trate gave Hasson’s defense attor­ney a few days to arrange con­di­tions of release that would be accept­able to the court.

    ———-

    “Release approved for Coast Guard offi­cer accused of ter­ror” by MICHAEL KUNZELMAN; Asso­ci­at­ed Press; 4/25/2019

    U.S. Mag­is­trate Judge Charles Day not­ed on Thurs­day that 50-year-old Christo­pher Has­son hasn’t been charged with any ter­ror­ism relat­ed offens­es. Has­son was arrest­ed Feb. 15 and is await­ing tri­al on firearms and drug charges. Pros­e­cu­tors say he cre­at­ed a hit list of promi­nent Democ­rats, two Supreme Court jus­tices, net­work TV jour­nal­ists and social media com­pa­ny exec­u­tives.”

    So it’s going to be quite inter­est­ing to see what the con­di­tions are for Has­son’s even­tu­al release. What’s the safe and appro­pri­ate way to release some­one who was plot­ting both mass casu­al­ty ter­ror attacks and tar­get­ed assas­si­na­tions? We’ll see what the court decides.

    It’s also worth ask­ing the ques­tion of what would have hap­pened to Has­son if he was­n’t fac­ing gun and drug charges? What if his guns were all legal and he did­n’t have all that ille­gal tra­madol. Would he be fac­ing any charges at all at this point?

    Final­ly, it’s worth ask­ing the ques­tion of what kind of con­sti­tu­tion­al cri­sis could be sparked if a neo-Nazi kills off one of the left-lean­ing Supreme Court jus­tices only to have Pres­i­dent Trump — a pres­i­dent who has made stok­ing sto­chas­tic white nation­al­ist ter­ror one of his spe­cial­ties — nom­i­nates anoth­er far right nut job as a replace­ment. What kind of dam­age what that do to the long-term cred­i­bil­i­ty of the court? Let’s hope that ques­tion remains a hypo­thet­i­cal. Espe­cial­ly now that the US gov­ern­ment just sent a sig­nal to every neo-Nazi in the US that they’ll get kid glove treat­ment. Or, rather, anoth­er sig­nal to every neo-Nazi in the US that they’ll get kid glove treat­ment.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | April 25, 2019, 1:52 pm
  9. Oh look, anoth­er neo-Nazi was caught prepar­ing a series of domes­tic ter­ror attacks. This time in Las Vegas. Again.

    First, recall that mul­ti­ple wit­ness­es recount­ed Steven Pad­dock express­ing far right ‘sov­er­eign cit­i­zen’ views before his attack on a Las Vegas and rant­ed about how “Some­body has to wake up the Amer­i­can pub­lic and get them to arm them­selves,” and “Some­times sac­ri­fices have to be made.” So this lat­est report of a new­ly dis­cov­ered neo-Nazi ter­ror attack on Las Vegas is real­ly the dis­cov­ery of a fol­lowup neo-Nazi attack on Vegas fol­low­ing Pad­dock­’s attack, despite the fact that there appears to be a deep offi­cial reluc­tance to acknowl­edge that Pad­dock was a far right domes­tic ter­ror­ist.

    The new­ly dis­cov­ered planned attack involves a 23 year old man, Conor Climo, found to be using encrypt­ed mes­sag­ing apps to com­mu­ni­cate with var­i­ous neo-Nazis to plan attacks on sny­a­gogues and an gay bar in the Las Vegas area. The spe­cif­ic neo-Nazi group was the Feuerkrieg Divi­sion, an off­shoot of Atom­waf­fen. Climo was briefly in the news in 2016 after he was found to be patrolling his neigh­bor­hood with an AR-style rifle. He stopped the armed patrols fol­low­ing the media expo­sure.

    Climo report­ed­ly used Dis­cord for his encrypt­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Recall how Dis­cord has been exten­sive used by neo-Nazis includ­ing plan­ning the August 2017 Unite the Right march in Char­lottesville, VA.

    The FBI was tipped off about these com­mu­ni­ca­tions with Feuerkrieg Divi­sion from an FBI source in April of this year. Climo dis­cussed a plan to burn down a Vegas-area syn­a­gogue on May 10 with the source. 13 days lat­er, the FBI’s own under­cov­er employ­ee began chat­ting with Climo. When the FBI raid­ed Climo’s home a few days ago they found the com­po­nents for build­ing a bomb, includ­ing ther­mite. Dur­ing the raid, Climo report­ed­ly told the FBI he start­ed com­mu­ni­cat­ing with the neo-Nazis in late 2017. So his com­mu­ni­ca­tions with fel­low neo-Nazis went on for a near­ly a year and a half.

    Climo also told agents that dur­ing this time he attempt­ed to recruit a home­less per­son to help him sur­veil a syn­a­gogue, which did­n’t pan out. That appar­ent­ly start­ed in Octo­ber of 2017. Recall that Pad­dock­’s attack was on Octo­ber 1, 2017. So right after Pad­dock­’s attack, this neo-Nazi starts recruit­ing home­less peo­ple for his own attack.

    His envi­sioned attack on the LGBTQ bar was­n’t just a ‘lone wolf’ attack. He want­ed mul­ti­ple teams of neo-Nazis to oper­ate all at once. So Climo was inter­est­ed in drop­ping the ‘lone wolf’ pre­tense gen­er­al­ly favored by the neo-Nazis.

    Climo also told agents that he even­tu­al­ly left the Feuerkrieg Divi­sion because he was bored with the lack of action. Yep, an Atom­waf­fen off­shoot was­n’t extreme enough for the guy:

    The Dai­ly Beast

    Las Vegas White Suprema­cist Arrest­ed After Threat­en­ing to Attack Syn­a­gogue, LGBTQ Bar: DOJ
    Secu­ri­ty guard Conor Climo, who was found with bomb-mak­ing mate­ri­als in his home, pro­fessed his hatred online for African-Amer­i­cans, Jews, and gay peo­ple, fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors said.

    Dani­ka Fears
    Break­ing News Edi­tor
    Pub­lished 08.09.19 8:52PM ET

    Las Vegas secu­ri­ty guard who dis­cussed attacks on a syn­a­gogue and gay bar has been arrest­ed after author­i­ties found bomb-mak­ing mate­ri­als inside his home, fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors announced Fri­day.

    Conor Climo, 23, was charged with one count of pos­ses­sion of an unreg­is­tered firearm, which fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors described as “the com­po­nent parts of a destruc­tive device.”

    He alleged­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ed with mem­bers of a neo-Nazi group and told law enforce­ment that he’s con­sid­ered “var­i­ous” ways to attack Jew­ish peo­ple over the past two years, includ­ing a plan to “mobi­lize an eight man sniper pla­toon to con­duct a shoot­ing attack on Jew­ish peo­ple either at a Las Vegas syn­a­gogue or any oth­er area of oppor­tu­ni­ty.”

    ...

    In May, Climo talked about “set­ting fire to a syn­a­gogue and mak­ing Molo­tov cock­tails and urea nitrate impro­vised explo­sive devices” dur­ing an online con­ver­sa­tion with an under­cov­er agent, accord­ing to a crim­i­nal com­plaint.

    “Climo stat­ed that in Octo­ber 2017, he tried to recruit a home­less per­son to con­duct sur­veil­lance on a Las Vegas area syn­a­gogue, but ulti­mate­ly failed,” the com­plaint states.

    On August 8, author­i­ties searched Climo’s home, find­ing an AR-15 rifle, bolt action rifle, bomb-mak­ing mate­ri­als, and a jour­nal in his room with a hand-drawn pic­ture of an attack on a Las Vegas bar that he thought was fre­quent­ed by gay peo­ple, pros­e­cu­tors said.

    Dur­ing the search, Climo alleged­ly told a law-enforce­ment offi­cer that he began com­mu­ni­cat­ing with mem­bers of the neo-Nazi group the Feuerkrieg Divi­sion using the encrypt­ed chat plat­form Dis­cord at the end of 2017.

    He said he “want­ed to be a part of FKD because he want­ed to do some­thing ‘gen­er­al­ly dif­fer­ent’ relat­ed to his hatred of African-Amer­i­cans, Jews, and Homo­sex­u­als,” accord­ing to the com­plaint.

    “Climo fur­ther dis­cussed draw­ing a plan and design­ing a bomb he intend­ed to build to assist in a race war on behalf of FKD,” the court papers state.

    The 23-year-old alleged­ly said that he left the neo-Nazi group after becom­ing “bored” with “their inac­tion.” He told author­i­ties that around the same time that he was active with the Feuerkrieg Divi­sion, he recruit­ed a home­less per­son to help him car­ry out sur­veil­lance on a syn­a­gogue that he was plot­ting to attack, the com­plaint says.

    Ulti­mate­ly, that plan “did not come to fruition because he need­ed more time to cre­ate a bet­ter method of attack,” he alleged­ly said.

    ———-

    “Las Vegas White Suprema­cist Arrest­ed After Threat­en­ing to Attack Syn­a­gogue, LGBTQ Bar: DOJ” by Dani­ka Fears; The Dai­ly Beast; 08/09/2019

    “Dur­ing the search, Climo alleged­ly told a law-enforce­ment offi­cer that he began com­mu­ni­cat­ing with mem­bers of the neo-Nazi group the Feuerkrieg Divi­sion using the encrypt­ed chat plat­form Dis­cord at the end of 2017.

    So Climo basi­cal­ly joined the Feuerkrieg Divi­sion at the end of 2017, but then left because he was “bored” with “their inac­tion”:

    ...
    He said he “want­ed to be a part of FKD because he want­ed to do some­thing ‘gen­er­al­ly dif­fer­ent’ relat­ed to his hatred of African-Amer­i­cans, Jews, and Homo­sex­u­als,” accord­ing to the com­plaint.

    “Climo fur­ther dis­cussed draw­ing a plan and design­ing a bomb he intend­ed to build to assist in a race war on behalf of FKD,” the court papers state.

    The 23-year-old alleged­ly said that he left the neo-Nazi group after becom­ing “bored” with “their inac­tion.” He told author­i­ties that around the same time that he was active with the Feuerkrieg Divi­sion, he recruit­ed a home­less per­son to help him car­ry out sur­veil­lance on a syn­a­gogue that he was plot­ting to attack, the com­plaint says.

    Ulti­mate­ly, that plan “did not come to fruition because he need­ed more time to cre­ate a bet­ter method of attack,” he alleged­ly said.
    ...

    And accord­ing to the fol­low­ing arti­cle, when the FBI raid­ed his home, they did­n’t sim­ply find the cir­cuit­ry that could be used to build a bomb. They found ther­mite. Recall how inves­ti­ga­tors found radioac­tive mate­ri­als and explo­sives at the apart­ment of the Atom­waf­fen cell in Flori­da that was plan­ning an attack on a nuclear pow­er plant. So this is the sec­ond Atom­waf­fen-affil­i­at­ed group found to be plan­ning a ter­ror attack and in pos­ses­sion of with explo­sives:

    ABC News

    Las Vegas neo-Nazi charged with plot to bomb gay club, syn­a­gogue

    By Mark Osborne
    Aug 10, 2019, 1:48 AM ET

    The FBI arrest­ed and charged an alleged Las Vegas neo-Nazi with plot­ting to bomb a syn­a­gogue and gay club in the city on Thurs­day.

    Conor Climo, 23, who worked as a secu­ri­ty guard, alleged­ly was found to be in pos­ses­sion of bomb-mak­ing mate­ri­als and was “com­mu­ni­cat­ing with indi­vid­u­als who iden­ti­fied with a white suprema­cist extrem­ist orga­ni­za­tion using the Nation­al Social­ist Move­ment to pro­mote their ide­ol­o­gy,” accord­ing to the FBI.

    The Las Vegas Joint Ter­ror­ism Task Force began inves­ti­gat­ing Climo in April, accord­ing to the crim­i­nal com­plaint, after it learned he was com­mu­ni­cat­ing with Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion, a white suprema­cist neo-Nazi group.

    “AWD encour­ages attacks on the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, includ­ing crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture, minori­ties, homo­sex­u­als, and Jews,” the com­plaint states. “AWD works to recruit like-mind­ed mem­bers to the orga­ni­za­tion, train them in mil­i­tary tac­tics, hand to hand com­bat, bomb mak­ing, and oth­er tech­niques in prepa­ra­tion for an ‘ulti­mate and uncom­pro­mis­ing vic­to­ry’ in a race war.”

    The FBI used a con­fi­den­tial infor­mant to begin dis­cussing weapons and explo­sives on an encrypt­ed chat app and even­tu­al­ly quot­ed Climo “reg­u­lar­ly us[ing] deroga­to­ry racial, anti-Semit­ic, and homo­sex­u­al slurs.”

    He also dis­cussed a plan to burn down a Las Vegas-area syn­a­gogue on May 10, the com­plaint says. Then, 13 days lat­er, the FBI began using their own under­cov­er employ­ee to talk online with Climo, dur­ing which he dis­cussed build­ing explo­sives and being “more inter­est­ed in action than online s—.”

    In late June and ear­ly July, Climo dis­cussed prepar­ing for an attack and doing sur­veil­lance “in great detail” of a bar on Fre­mont Street in down­town Las Vegas he claimed “catered to homo­sex­u­als.”

    The com­plaint also makes men­tion of Climo’s Quo­ra account, a ques­tion-and-answer social media site, where he once quot­ed Adolf Hitler in dis­cussing the “down­sides of mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism.”

    The FBI exe­cut­ed a search war­rant at his home on Aug. 8 and found ther­mite, sul­fu­ric acid, a sol­der­ing iron, cir­cuit boards and oth­er bomb-mak­ing com­po­nents, accord­ing to the com­plaint.

    He was arrest­ed and admit­ted to agents he hat­ed “African-Amer­i­cans, Jews, and Homo­sex­u­als” and was plan­ning on build­ing an impro­vised explo­sive device.

    “Threats of vio­lence moti­vat­ed by hate and intend­ed to intim­i­date or coerce our faith-based and LGBTQ com­mu­ni­ties have no place in this Coun­try,” U.S. Attor­ney for the Dis­trict of Neva­da Nicholas A. Tru­tanich said in a state­ment. “Law enforce­ment in Neva­da remains deter­mined to use the full weight of our inves­tiga­tive resources to pre­vent bias-moti­vat­ed vio­lence before it hap­pens. I com­mend our part­ners who iden­ti­fied the threat and took swift and appro­pri­ate action to ensure jus­tice and pro­tect the com­mu­ni­ty.”

    Author­i­ties also found a sketch out­lin­ing two “infantry squads” attack­ing the Fre­mont Street bar with firearms, the com­plaint says.

    ...

    ———-

    “Las Vegas neo-Nazi charged with plot to bomb gay club, syn­a­gogue” by Mark Osborne; ABC News; 08/10/2019

    “The FBI exe­cut­ed a search war­rant at his home on Aug. 8 and found ther­mite, sul­fu­ric acid, a sol­der­ing iron, cir­cuit boards and oth­er bomb-mak­ing com­po­nents, accord­ing to the com­plaint.”

    It sounds like there were a lot more than just hype behind Climo’s plans.

    It’s also worth not­ing that the con­fi­den­tial FBI infor­mant and the FBI’s own under­cov­er agents were appar­ent­ly on this Dis­cord chat ser­vice. So you have to won­der whether or not these kinds of sto­ries about the FBI infil­trat­ing these encrypt­ed groups will have much of an impact the will­ing­ness of neo-Nazi groups to use these plat­forms to remote­ly com­mu­ni­cate and coor­di­nate. At the same time, the fact that Climo was appar­ent­ly in con­tact with this Atom­waf­fen off­shoot and plan­ning var­i­ous attacks for a year and a half before this FBI infor­mant tipped off the FBI about his plans demon­strates the util­i­ty of these plat­forms for ter­ror­ists even know­ing they might be infil­trat­ed:

    ...
    The FBI used a con­fi­den­tial infor­mant to begin dis­cussing weapons and explo­sives on an encrypt­ed chat app and even­tu­al­ly quot­ed Climo “reg­u­lar­ly us[ing] deroga­to­ry racial, anti-Semit­ic, and homo­sex­u­al slurs.”

    He also dis­cussed a plan to burn down a Las Vegas-area syn­a­gogue on May 10, the com­plaint says. Then, 13 days lat­er, the FBI began using their own under­cov­er employ­ee to talk online with Climo, dur­ing which he dis­cussed build­ing explo­sives and being “more inter­est­ed in action than online s—.”
    ...

    Final­ly, here’s an arti­cle from May of 2018 that points to anoth­er way Climo may have been in con­tact with Atom­waf­fen affil­i­ates: author­i­ties learned about an Atom­waf­fen train­ing camp that had been oper­at­ing in South­ern Neva­da ear­li­er in 2018. The group spent a cou­ple of days camp­ing in rur­al Nye Coun­ty, train­ing with weapons and mak­ing pro­pa­gan­da videos to recruit more mem­bers:

    Fox5

    Inves­ti­gat­ing a hate group prepar­ing for a ‘race war’ in South­ern Neva­da

    Writ­ten by Kath­leen Jacob
    Post­ed May 7, 2018

    A vio­lent hate group held a train­ing camp out­side of Pahrump ear­li­er this year. The group is called Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion and they’re a small white suprema­cist group that claims to be prepar­ing for a race war.

    Law enforce­ment said the group spent a cou­ple of days camp­ing in rur­al Nye Coun­ty, train­ing with weapons and mak­ing pro­pa­gan­da videos to recruit more mem­bers.

    Police have con­nect­ed this group to at least five mur­ders around the coun­try. The group is not very large. The Anti-Defama­tion League esti­mat­ed they have about 20 dif­fer­ent cells in the U.S., includ­ing a small one in Neva­da.

    Robert Futrell is the chair of UNLV’s soci­ol­o­gy depart­ment. He also co-authored the book “Amer­i­can Swasti­ka: Inside the White Pow­er Move­men­t’s Hid­den Spaces of Hate.”

    “Atom­waf­fen is Ger­man for ‘nuclear weapon’ or ‘to go nuclear,’” Dr. Futrell explained. “They are one of many neo-Nazi groups that have formed since the 1980s. They’re par­tic­u­lar­ly on the extrem­ist side. They fol­low writ­ings of James Mason, who, in the 1970s, was part of the Amer­i­can Nazi Par­ty.”

    He said the group idol­izes peo­ple like Charles Man­son, Tim­o­thy McVeigh and Dylan Roof.

    “They advo­cat­ed for lead­er­less resis­tance, anti-gov­ern­ment atti­tude, estab­lish­ment of a fas­cist state,” Dr. Futrell said.

    He said Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion, like many oth­er cur­rent day white suprema­cist groups, are less up front about who they are.

    “White suprema­cists; they car­ry a stig­ma in wider soci­ety and lead­ers have, over the last two decades, talked about grow­ing hair out if you’re neo-Nazi, skin head, cov­er­ing up tat­toos, get­ting edu­ca­tion, get­ting good jobs, infil­trat­ing insti­tu­tions, not being out about who one is,” Dr. Futrell said.

    He said they oper­ate large­ly under­ground and talk about grand plans of destroy­ing infra­struc­ture and gov­ern­ment.

    “They con­nect on the inter­net, they con­nect across states, they have ways they con­nect face-to-face in local­i­ties of course, but their main pub­lic face was YouTube and the pro­pa­gan­da videos, they also start­ed leaflet­ing at var­i­ous col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties,” Dr. Futrell said.

    He said “hate camps,” like one that took place in rur­al Nye Coun­ty, are a way for the group to bond. He said what draws peo­ple to join groups like this, in part, is the need for belong­ing.

    ...

    The Nye Coun­ty Sher­if­f’s Office said they became aware of the train­ing camp that took place after the fact. They said they got no calls from civil­ians about the group and law enforce­ment had no run-ins with them.

    One of the mem­bers had a mem­ber­ship at Front Sight, which is a firearms train­ing insti­tute in Pahrump. The own­er said as soon as he found out about the man’s affil­i­a­tion with the group, his mem­ber­ship was revoked for life.

    ...

    ———-

    “Inves­ti­gat­ing a hate group prepar­ing for a ‘race war’ in South­ern Neva­da” by Kath­leen Jacob; Fox5; 05/07/2018

    “Law enforce­ment said the group spent a cou­ple of days camp­ing in rur­al Nye Coun­ty, train­ing with weapons and mak­ing pro­pa­gan­da videos to recruit more mem­bers.”

    Did Climo make any trips out to those Atom­waf­fen train­ing camps in Las Vegas area last year? At that point we don’t know. But, again, he did­n’t actu­al­ly need to meet them in per­son. That’s what the inter­net is for these days: Cat videos and neo-Nazis pro­pa­gan­da.

    So Las Vegas just avoid­ed anoth­er domes­tic ter­ror attack by a neo-Nazi, mak­ing this a great time for author­i­ties and the media to final­ly acknowl­edge that Stephen Pad­dock was a far right domes­tic ter­ror­ist. Or we can just wait for the next neo-Nazi plot against Las Vegas to final­ly acknowl­edge that.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | August 10, 2019, 4:16 pm
  10. A woman, Michelle Kolts, was arrest­ed in Flori­da today after her par­ents noti­fied author­i­ties that she had two dozen pipe bombs in her room. It sounds like she’s a white suprema­cist. Sur­prise! A num­ber of books relat­ed to domes­tic ter­ror­ism and mur­der were found in her home, includ­ing “The Turn­er Diaries”, along with an “aston­ish­ing” num­ber of weapons.

    This was­n’t the first time author­i­ties got a tip about Kolts. In August of 2018, a book pub­lish­er raised con­cerns about Kolts order mul­ti­ple ter­ror­ist man­i­festos. Accord­ing the Hills­bor­ough Coun­ty Sher­iff, Kolts had become “con­sumed” with the Columbine mas­sacre and the Okla­homa City bomb­ing:

    Heavy.com

    Michelle Kolts: Woman Had 24 Pipe Bombs, ‘Con­sumed by Columbine,’ Cops Say

    By Paul Far­rell
    Updat­ed Oct 4, 2019 at 1:55pm

    Michelle Kolts is the Flori­da woman who is accused of build­ing and pos­sess­ing 24 pipe bombs that could have claimed “sig­nif­i­cant lives” and done “cat­a­stroph­ic dam­age,” the Hills­bor­ough Coun­ty Sheriff’s Office has said. Kolts, 27, is a res­i­dent of Wimau­ma, Flori­da, a com­mu­ni­ty just south of Tam­pa.

    Online records show that Kolts was arrest­ed at her job. Kolts was then tak­en to her home where she admit­ted to mak­ing the bombs, accord­ing to Hills­bor­ough Coun­ty Sher­iff Chad Chro­nis­ter. Her home is locat­ed along the 5000 block of Jagged Cloud Dri­ve. Kolts was tak­en into cus­tody just before mid­night on Octo­ber 3. Those records show that Kolts is being held on a bond of $180,000. Among her pos­ses­sions was a copy of the white suprema­cist book, “The Turn­er Diaries.”

    ...

    1. The Amount of Weapon­ry Recov­ered at Kolts’ Home Was ‘Aston­ish­ing,’ the Sher­iff Said

    In a press con­fer­ence announc­ing Kolts’ arrest, Hills­bor­ough Coun­ty Sher­iff Chad Chro­nis­ter said Kolts’ par­ents found pipe bombs in their daughter’s room. Chro­nis­ter said that Kolts’ par­ents called the police imme­di­ate­ly. The sher­iff described the num­ber of weapons recov­ered at the home as “aston­ish­ing.” The sher­iff said that books regard­ing domes­tic ter­ror­ism and mur­der were found at the home. Kolts is suf­fer­ing from men­tal ill­ness and is “a lit­tle bit on the autism spec­trum,” accord­ing to the sher­iff. The sus­pect did not have a spe­cif­ic list of peo­ple to harm or places to attack, the sher­iff also said.

    2. Kolts Was ‘Con­sumed’ by the Columbine Shoot­ing & the Okla­homa City Bomb­ing

    The sher­iff told the media that offi­cers received a call about Kolts in August 2018 after a pub­lish­er raised con­cerns about Kolts’ order­ing mul­ti­ple ter­ror­ist and murderer’s man­i­fests. The sher­iff said that Kolts had become “con­sumed” with the Columbine High School mas­sacre and the Okla­homa City bomb­ing.

    The sheriff’s office lat­er tweet­ed pho­tos show­ing a bow-and-arrow, mul­ti­ple hand­guns and long guns, knives and an axe, all of which inves­ti­ga­tors say was found in Kolts’ home.

    ...

    ———-

    “Michelle Kolts: Woman Had 24 Pipe Bombs, ‘Con­sumed by Columbine,’ Cops Say” by Paul Far­rell; Heavy.com
    ; 10/04/2019

    Online records show that Kolts was arrest­ed at her job. Kolts was then tak­en to her home where she admit­ted to mak­ing the bombs, accord­ing to Hills­bor­ough Coun­ty Sher­iff Chad Chro­nis­ter. Her home is locat­ed along the 5000 block of Jagged Cloud Dri­ve. Kolts was tak­en into cus­tody just before mid­night on Octo­ber 3. Those records show that Kolts is being held on a bond of $180,000. Among her pos­ses­sions was a copy of the white suprema­cist book, “The Turn­er Diaries.”

    Yeah, find­ing pipe bombs and copies of the The Turn­er Diaries in some­one’s home is a pret­ty big red flag right. And as the fol­low­ing arti­cle describes, these pipe bombs were clear­ly built for max­i­mum casu­al­ties, con­tain­ing nails and metal­lic pel­lets. The arti­cle states she had “dozens of books and DVDs about mur­der, mass killing, domes­tic ter­ror­ism and bomb mak­ing,” and describes the par­tic­u­lar books she ordered last year that cause a pub­lish­er to noti­fy author­i­ties: books on bomb-mak­ing instruc­tions. She was inter­viewed by author­i­ties at the time and said she did­n’t intend on harm­ing any­one, so she was deemed not to be a threat to her­self or any­one else:

    CNN

    A Flori­da woman made dozens of pipe bombs and intend­ed to hurt peo­ple, sher­iff says

    By Dakin Andone,
    Updat­ed 2:13 PM ET, Fri Octo­ber 4, 2019

    (CNN)A Flori­da woman has been arrest­ed for alleged­ly mak­ing two dozen pipe bombs with the intent of using them to hurt peo­ple, the Hills­bor­ough Coun­ty Sher­iff said Fri­day.

    Michelle Kolts, 27, faces 24 counts of mak­ing a destruc­tive device with intent to harm, Sher­iff Chad Chro­nis­ter told reporters in a news con­fer­ence.

    It was Kolts’ par­ents who noti­fied deputies Thurs­day evening after they dis­cov­ered “what appeared to be a sig­nif­i­cant amount of pipe bombs, oth­er bomb-mak­ing mate­ri­als and numer­ous weapons” in her bed­room, Chro­nis­ter said.

    A bomb squad respond­ed and ren­dered the home safe, the sher­iff said. Each pipe bomb con­tained nails, metal­lic pel­lets or a com­bi­na­tion of both, he said. It would have tak­en “less than 60 sec­onds per device to add the pow­der and fuse mate­ri­als she already pos­sessed to det­o­nate each bomb.”

    Inves­ti­ga­tors also found smoke­less pis­tol pow­der, 23 knives, nunchucks and “dozens of books and DVDs about mur­der, mass killing, domes­tic ter­ror­ism and bomb mak­ing,” Chro­nis­ter said.

    Kolts admit­ted to mak­ing the devices and told detec­tives they were meant to hurt peo­ple, although inves­ti­ga­tors did not find evi­dence of any con­crete plans to use the bombs, the sher­iff said.

    The only pri­or con­tact author­i­ties had with Kolts occurred last August, Chro­nis­ter said, when an online print­ing com­pa­ny said she ordered anar­chist and bomb-mak­ing instruc­tions. She dis­played an “infat­u­a­tion” with mass killings like the Columbine shoot­ing and the Okla­homa City bomb­ing, he said.

    At the time, Kolts said she did not intend to harm any­one. Author­i­ties ulti­mate­ly did not feel she was a threat to her­self or any­one else, Chro­nis­ter said.

    The sher­iff com­mend­ed Kolts’ par­ents for call­ing author­i­ties.

    “Her par­ents did exact­ly what we ask peo­ple to do: If you see some­thing sus­pi­cious, please say some­thing,” Chro­nis­ter said.

    “Who knows the amount of harm that could’ve been done or how many lives could have been lost,” he said, “had these par­ents not found the courage to call the sher­if­f’s office and seek help.”

    ...

    ———-

    “A Flori­da woman made dozens of pipe bombs and intend­ed to hurt peo­ple, sher­iff says” by Dakin Andone; CNN; 10/04/2019

    “A bomb squad respond­ed and ren­dered the home safe, the sher­iff said. Each pipe bomb con­tained nails, metal­lic pel­lets or a com­bi­na­tion of both, he said. It would have tak­en “less than 60 sec­onds per device to add the pow­der and fuse mate­ri­als she already pos­sessed to det­o­nate each bomb.”

    All of the mate­ri­als required to det­o­nate these bombs were in her pos­ses­sion, includ­ing the pow­der and fuse mate­ri­als. That’s how close she poten­tial­ly was to using these things. And she even admit­ted to detec­tive they were meant to hurt peo­ple (which is kind of unde­ni­able but she admit­ted it). So she appears to have had the intent to use them.

    And note that, while the con­tent she ordered from the online pub­lish­er last year is described as “anar­chist and bomb-mak­ing instruc­tions”, keep in mind that anar­chist books (like the Anar­chist Cook­book) are a known place white suprema­cists can go to learn how to make all sorts of bombs and oth­er lethal devices. So the fact that she was order­ing con­tent that could be described as ‘anar­chist’ prob­a­bly isn’t real­ly indica­tive of her polit­i­cal lean­ings:

    ...
    Inves­ti­ga­tors also found smoke­less pis­tol pow­der, 23 knives, nunchucks and “dozens of books and DVDs about mur­der, mass killing, domes­tic ter­ror­ism and bomb mak­ing,” Chro­nis­ter said.

    ...

    The only pri­or con­tact author­i­ties had with Kolts occurred last August, Chro­nis­ter said, when an online print­ing com­pa­ny said she ordered anar­chist and bomb-mak­ing instruc­tions. She dis­played an “infat­u­a­tion” with mass killings like the Columbine shoot­ing and the Okla­homa City bomb­ing, he said.

    At the time, Kolts said she did not intend to harm any­one. Author­i­ties ulti­mate­ly did not feel she was a threat to her­self or any­one else, Chro­nis­ter said.
    ...

    The fact that she was infat­u­at­ed with the Columbine shoot­ing and the Okla­homa City bomb­ing (both car­ried out by far right ide­o­logues) and pos­sessed a copy of The Turn­er Diaries is, on the oth­er hand, much more indica­tive of her polit­i­cal lean­ings. Nazi lean­ings in this case.

    At this point there’s no infor­ma­tion on whether or not Kolts was in con­tact with oth­er extrem­ists, but it’s worth recall­ing the numer­ous Flori­da-based instances of far right ter­ror­ism in recent years. Hills­bor­ough Coun­ty, where Kolts lived, is where Tam­pa is locat­ed. Tam­pa also hap­pens to be the loca­tion of Atom­waf­fen cell that was dis­cov­ered after Devon Arthurs killed his roommates/cellmates and told author­i­ties he did it because they were plan­ning on attack­ing a nuclear pow­er plant in order to cause a melt­down (with the long-term goal of set­ting up a Fourth Reich in Flori­da). Might Kolts have been in con­tact with Atom­waf­fen affil­i­ates in the area? Then there was the Park­land school shoot­ing car­ried about by Nicholas Cruz and the strange trolling of jour­nal­ists con­duct­ed imme­di­ate­ly after the attack that appeared to be designed to pre­emp­tive­ly dis­cred­it Cruz’s asso­ci­a­tions with the “Repub­lic of Flori­da” neo-Nazi mili­tia. But we also can’t for­get that, in the age of strong­ly encrypt­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tions apps and the explo­sion of online neo-Nazi recruit­ment activ­i­ty, there’s no rea­son to assume Kolts was nec­es­sar­i­ly net­work with local neo-Nazis.

    At the same time, 24 pipe bombs seems like a lot of bombs for one per­son to plan to use. And that rais­es anoth­er ques­tion: was Kolts mak­ing these bombs on behalf of a larg­er domes­tic ter­ror­ist net­work? Per­haps, but let’s also recall the Flori­da-based Trump super-fan Cesar Say­oc, who was arrest­ed and con­vict­ed for send­ing non-func­tion­ing pipebombs to Demo­c­ra­t­ic law­mak­ers and cable news chan­nels. So it’s pos­si­ble Kolts was plan­ning a sim­i­lar mail pipe bomb cam­paign, but this time with ful­ly func­tion­ing bombs.

    We’ll see what, if any, addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion is learned about who Kolts was, what her moti­va­tions were, and who she may have been inter­act­ing with when for­mu­lat­ing these plans. But at this point, giv­en the exten­sive and grow­ing under­ground net­work­ing of extrem­ists, it would be pret­ty sur­pris­ing if she was actu­al­ly work­ing alone.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | October 4, 2019, 11:54 am
  11. Here’s an arti­cle that high­lights the increas­ing­ly ISIS-like nature of white suprema­cists move­ments in the inter­net age: CNN has an inter­view of sev­er­al for­mer female mem­bers of the ‘Alt Right’ group Iden­ti­ty Evropa , one the key groups behind the 2017 Char­lottesville, Vir­ginia, neo-Nazi march. Iden­ti­ty Evropa has since rebrand­ed itself as the Amer­i­can Iden­ti­ty Move­ment. But the piece is about much more than just the expe­ri­ence of mem­bers of Iden­ti­ty Europa since it describes how they would net­work and par­ty with with all sorts of dif­fer­ent fig­ures from across the ‘Alt Right’ move­ment includ­ing lead­ers like Richard Spencer. Much of what they describe is exact­ly what one would expect for women in a hyper-misog­y­nis­tic move­ment in terms of the sec­ond-class sta­tus of the women in the move­ment. Like how the women were often the ones with jobs finan­cial­ly sup­port­ing their neo-Nazi boyfriends who would spend their days mak­ing pod­casts talk­ing about how women should­n’t have jobs. The piece describes how these move­ments ‘joke’ about how white women are ruin­ing West­ern civ­i­liza­tion through promis­cu­ity and vot­ing for lib­er­als and the only way to save it is to impose a kind of neo-Nazi Sharia law on women and treat them like prop­er­ty. But it’s not real­ly a joke for these move­ments. They real­ly believe this and these views appear to have been large­ly inter­nal­ized by the inter­viewed women when they were mem­bers of the group.

    Inter­est­ing­ly, the arti­cle makes the case that today’s white suprema­cists move­ments are even more misog­y­nis­tic than in the past, in large part because today’s Nazi move­ments are so heav­i­ly ide­o­log­i­cal­ly over­lap­ping and recruit­ing from the Incel move­ment.

    So that’s anoth­er ‘achieve­ment’ for today’s white suprema­cist move­ments: it’s more misog­y­nis­tic than ever thanks to all the Incels:

    CNN

    She went from a lib­er­al non-vot­er to burn­ing books with white suprema­cists. Here’s why she final­ly left the move­ment

    By Elle Reeve,
    Updat­ed 2:22 PM ET, Thu Octo­ber 31, 2019

    (CNN)In May 2017, Saman­tha went to a book burn­ing in upstate New York. She had entered the inner cir­cle of the mod­ern white pow­er move­ment called the alt-right, and it was the moment its activists see in ret­ro­spect as the peak of its pow­er.

    The home was clas­si­cal­ly sub­ur­ban, with a pic­nic table and a fire pit in the back­yard. The atmos­phere was like a fam­i­ly bar­be­cue, but she felt an air of inten­si­ty. They stood around the fire and cheered as books were tossed into the flames. Some gave Nazi salutes. Saman­tha did, too.

    “It’s all so sur­re­al,” Saman­tha says now. “You’re lit­er­al­ly stand­ing there, going, ‘I’m at a book burn­ing at some­one’s house. Like, there are fam­i­lies that live next door. There’s prob­a­bly a nice per­son who lives across the street, and I’m burn­ing books about Jew­ish peo­ple.’ ... It does­n’t even feel like it’s wrong or right. It just feels unre­al.”

    At the time, she texted a friend that it was the best week­end of her life.

    It had tak­en Saman­tha six months to go from a vague­ly lib­er­al non-vot­er to what she calls “a pro­duc­tive racist.” She is one of very few women who joined the alt-right, and an even small­er num­ber who left and are will­ing to talk about it. Her sto­ry helps explain what draws peo­ple into this move­ment, and the misog­y­ny that dri­ves it.

    In the fall of 2016, Saman­tha’s indie-rock-lov­ing boyfriend changed. He start­ed lift­ing weights and mak­ing jokes she did­n’t under­stand. When she final­ly Googled them, she dis­cov­ered they were based on an elab­o­rate, vio­lent, white suprema­cist fan­ta­sy called the “Day of the Rope,” in which peo­ple of col­or, Jews, gays and the “race trai­tors” who helped them, are mur­dered.

    “I could­n’t believe it,” Saman­tha said. “We both knew so many peo­ple that fit that descrip­tion.” Her boyfriend reas­sured her they were just jokes. But then, she says, he looked her in the eye and said that he was a fas­cist, and that he could­n’t be with any­one who was­n’t.

    She start­ed research­ing the alt-right — a move­ment that shaped old white suprema­cist ideas into iron­ic memes that spread online to a very young audi­ence. The grotesque jokes on image­boards such as 4chan and 8chan were not her scene.

    But she found some­thing appeal­ing in the white pow­er activists who pre­sent­ed them­selves as intel­lec­tu­als, like Richard Spencer and Jared Tay­lor. Just a few weeks after her first online search, she became a dues-pay­ing mem­ber of a white pow­er fra­ter­ni­ty called Iden­ti­ty Evropa.

    That took her into the orga­ni­za­tion’s cha­t­rooms on Dis­cord, where some mem­bers spread sim­i­lar mes­sages to the ones that had shocked her not long before. “Like it starts as a joke where you laugh ner­vous­ly. Then you kind of stop laugh­ing, ’cause you’re used to it,” she said. “And then you start to post it your­self, because you want to be a part of that. And it’s this real­ly quick, quick descen­sion into that.”

    Saman­tha, now 29, was open about her past in her inter­views with CNN, but asked that her last name not be used to pro­tect her and her fam­i­ly from pos­si­ble vio­lence or ret­ri­bu­tion. She now rejects white suprema­cy, and has joined Life After Hate, an orga­ni­za­tion that helps peo­ple leave hate groups.

    CNN knows the iden­ti­ties of the men Saman­tha and oth­er women we spoke to had close rela­tion­ships with. We have ver­i­fied their real names, loca­tions and, in one case, crim­i­nal records through con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous mes­sages and pub­lic records. The women asked us not to use their names, because they’re afraid of those men and their fol­low­ers.

    Saman­tha has spo­ken out before. In 2018, she con­tact­ed Andrew Marantz, who was work­ing on a book about social media and extrem­ism that pub­lished this fall as “Anti-Social.” Marantz lat­er reached out to me, and sug­gest­ed I talk to Saman­tha. He gave me the iPhone she’d used dur­ing her time in the alt right. The screen was shat­tered. I had it fixed and began look­ing through it.

    Saman­tha’s iPhone opens up the hid­den world inside the white pow­er move­ment, frozen in time in 2017.

    And once Saman­tha was in, she was all the way in. She became an inter­view­er for Iden­ti­ty Evropa, test­ing whether new appli­cants were flu­ent in white pow­er ide­ol­o­gy and screen­ing out Jews and peo­ple of col­or. She told her­self that she was­n’t racist, just “pro-white.” She rose in the orga­ni­za­tion past her boyfriend, and they broke up. She was named wom­en’s coor­di­na­tor for IE, and ran a wom­en’s cha­t­room, an essen­tial orga­niz­ing tool in a move­ment that’s almost entire­ly online.

    Saman­tha changed her look and her demeanor. She bought dress­es with full skirts and nipped-in waists, clothes with which she want­ed to project an “all-Amer­i­can, del­i­cate sex­u­al­i­ty.” Saman­tha said, “I want­ed to be more fem­i­nine, I want­ed to be more desir­able, I want­ed to be more appre­ci­at­ed, I want­ed to feel smart. So I just played into these roles. And the stan­dards for how women are treat­ed in there are pret­ty low, so I was able to lean into that and make that work for me.

    A pho­to from that time shows Saman­tha smil­ing demure­ly in a white dress, flanked by five white men, four of them wear­ing white polos with the Iden­ti­ty Evropa logo.

    It was mid-May 2017, and Saman­tha had helped plan a protest now known with­in the white pow­er move­ment as “Char­lottesville 1.0.” Dur­ing the day, a few dozen pro­test­ers gave speech­es by the Robert E Lee memo­r­i­al in the Vir­ginia city. At night, they stood and chant­ed with tiki torch­es.

    Saman­tha had picked the rur­al rental where she and oth­er IE mem­bers stayed. It was a cab­in on a win­ery, with two bed­rooms and a deck with an extra din­ing area. “I thought it would be fun­ny if [anti-fas­cist activists] want­ed to chase us out of town... you know like, ‘Oh these big scary Nazis retreat­ed to a vine­yard.’ I thought it would be pro­found­ly iron­ic.”

    There was­n’t much inter­est from the main­stream media, or vio­lence at the ral­ly. But the images the ral­ly­go­ers post­ed on social media were dra­mat­ic, and they inspired the Unite the Right ral­ly now often referred to as “Char­lottesville” three months lat­er, where a coun­ter­pro­test­er was killed and two state troop­ers patrolling near the site of clash­es died in a heli­copter crash.

    “After that I was in,” she says. “I was in the move­ment. It felt so good to be an activist, to be in the move­ment.”

    A cou­ple weeks after the gath­er­ing in May, she was tak­en to the book-burn­ing by a ris­ing leader with­in Iden­ti­ty Evropa who was try­ing to impress her by intro­duc­ing her to white suprema­cist “celebri­ties.”

    The par­ty was host­ed by men asso­ci­at­ed with The Right Stuff, a group that makes pod­casts that are some­thing like dri­ve-time radio shows obsessed with race sci­ence. It was attend­ed by Richard Spencer, who gained nation­al noto­ri­ety when he declared “Hail Trump” to a crowd doing Nazi salutes short­ly after the 2016 elec­tion. There was an array of oth­er men most peo­ple have nev­er heard of but who are famous in the racist pod­cast­ing world. Saman­tha filmed one of them throw­ing a book into the fire.

    Spencer told CNN: “I don’t remem­ber the event.” He added: “I’ve been to lots of par­ties and seen plen­ty of wild stuff.” When CNN talked to The Right Stuff’s Mike “Enoch” Peinovich, he declined to com­ment on the book burn­ing.

    “The peo­ple that you hear on the pod­casts, and peo­ple that you see mak­ing the speech­es, and going on dif­fer­ent news shows, are show­ing up at these par­ties. So you feel like you’re meet­ing a rock star,” Saman­tha said. “It also encour­ages you to stay, incen­tivizes you to stick around. You could be the next big name in the move­ment if you meet the right per­son.”

    Even as Saman­tha thought she was ris­ing through the ranks, she was aware of a meme known as white sharia, a misog­y­nis­tic twist on Mus­lim reli­gious code. The “joke” is that white women are ruin­ing West­ern civ­i­liza­tion through promis­cu­ity and vot­ing for lib­er­als, so the only way to save it is to impose Sharia law on women and, in the suprema­cists’ twist­ed view of Sharia, treat them like prop­er­ty.

    A fly­er at the book-burn­ing said “WHITE SHARIA ZONE. THOTS MUST WEAR HIJAB AT ALL TIMES.” (A “thot” is slang racists have enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly ripped from hip-hop; it means “that ho over there,” or a woman who seeks atten­tion through her sex­u­al­i­ty.) Saman­tha took a pic­ture of it. She is hold­ing it with French-man­i­cured fin­ger­nails.

    Short­ly after the par­ty, one of sev­er­al that sum­mer, Saman­tha’s new boyfriend was doxxed. His per­son­al infor­ma­tion was pub­lished online and he was afraid anti-fas­cist activists would come to his house, so Saman­tha offered to let him crash at her place. He nev­er left.

    She worked long hours to sup­port him, and the rela­tion­ship soured. They broke up pri­vate­ly, but she agreed to pre­tend to be his girl­friend pub­licly. And she was still work­ing for IE, grow­ing wom­en’s mem­ber­ship from a hand­ful to about 50, as the over­all ranks swelled to 1,000, she said.

    In the chat rooms, her pro­tégées sig­naled they were hap­py.

    One wrote, “I final­ly got over the whole woman issue. Cause I was real sen­si­tive guys come across kind of mean on pod­casts or twit­ter ... But IRL all super nice. So there is a social media brava­do I don’t get but learned to accept.” Anoth­er said, “Yeah, ini­tial­ly it was the whole white sharia, women are prop­er­ty, women aren’t peo­ple, etc. that real­ly got to me. I’ve met a few men that are hard­core white sharia/women should­n’t be intel­lec­tu­al, but they are the minor­i­ty of men I know.”

    In pri­vate, they texted her about the men who harassed or abused them.

    Saman­tha was get­ting frus­trat­ed and bored. She vent­ed to an IE leader that she was doing the work a male inter­view­er was get­ting cred­it for.

    “I know that I’ll nev­er be in lead­er­ship like that because I’m a woman. So if I do it behind the scenes with some­one else’s voice, that’s fine,” she told him.

    As oth­ers pre­pared to head back to Char­lottesville, Saman­tha’s com­mit­ment was crack­ing. She watched as an old­er woman, who was estab­lished in the move­ment, posed a hypo­thet­i­cal dur­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with a white man who did­n’t know they were white suprema­cists.

    She asked him to imag­ine a house was on fire and 10 peo­ple were inside, five of them black and five white. He could only save five. Would­n’t he save the white peo­ple first? The man said he would save whomev­er he could reach. Saman­tha thought, ‘That’s what I would do, too.’ But she did­n’t say any­thing. “I felt like most of the time I was in there, I was wait­ing for some­one else to say, ‘We know this is all bullsh*t, right?’ ”

    Oth­er women who had spent time with Iden­ti­ty Evropa told CNN the vio­lence at Char­lottesville hor­ri­fied them and drove them away, but Saman­tha’s break­ing point came that Octo­ber, when her grand­moth­er died.

    She felt ashamed that her grand­moth­er could not be proud of her. She quit IE a few weeks lat­er. She says her ex threat­ened her — say­ing in the good ole days she would have left the move­ment “in a body bag.” She says she was remind­ed she could hold “a lot of Nazi semen” and make many Nazi babies. Despite those threats, she left.

    Iden­ti­ty Evropa has since rebrand­ed as the Amer­i­can Iden­ti­ty Move­ment, to dis­tance itself from the alt-right. When asked for com­ment about the claims about IE mem­bers, AIM pres­i­dent Patrick Casey said he is “unaware of any­one being coerced to stay in the orga­ni­za­tion.”

    The group pro­motes itself as “iden­ti­tar­i­an,” that white peo­ple should pre­serve their racial and cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty. It is respon­si­ble for more than a third of white suprema­cist pro­pa­gan­da post­ed on col­lege cam­pus­es in the 2018–19 aca­d­e­m­ic year, accord­ing to a tal­ly from the Anti-Defama­tion League (ADL), which tracks and cam­paigns against hate.

    The Amer­i­can Iden­ti­ty Move­ment says it pro­hibits vio­lence and ille­gal activ­i­ty.

    By Decem­ber 2017, Saman­tha says she quit all the chat rooms. She lived in a cab­in in the woods for some time, and slow­ly came to terms with what she’d done. She even­tu­al­ly stopped mak­ing excus­es and real­ized she had active­ly pro­mot­ed racism. She says, “I was def­i­nite­ly a bad per­son, for a while.”

    CNN spoke to two oth­er women who, like Saman­tha, spent about a year in the alt-right before quit­ting, unable to take the abuse any­more and fear­ing for their safe­ty. They now reject their old beliefs. One had become inter­est­ed in the move­ment after watch­ing a speech Spencer gave at Texas A&M in late 2016.

    “I was­n’t even a racist yet. I thought he made a real­ly good argu­ment for fam­i­lies,” she told CNN, request­ing anonymi­ty because she fears vio­lence. “He’s good at mak­ing it sound legit­i­mate.” She liked “the fam­i­ly secu­ri­ty, the promise of... what­ev­er they’re promis­ing. Safe­ty. It’s very appeal­ing.”

    This woman also joined IE and began dat­ing a man she met in the move­ment. Her boyfriend’s view, she says, was, “ ‘Women deserve to be sub­ju­gat­ed. Women deserve to be humil­i­at­ed. Women deserve to be raped. Women deserve to be impreg­nat­ed.’ It was­n’t a joke. ... I can’t believe I sup­port­ed that stuff.”

    She explains, “I thought I was trash, so I did­n’t mind when they talked about women being dogs, worth­less. Even though I was the one dri­ving them around, pay­ing for stuff.”

    She says that she and Saman­tha fit a famil­iar pat­tern with­in the alt-right. “Like 70 per­cent of the time, the women earn the mon­ey and the men do pod­casts. And they do pod­casts about how women should­n’t have jobs.”

    She broke away only after the rela­tion­ship end­ed. “I was so wrong,” she said. “I would talk to younger women about how this was a great way to be fam­i­ly-ori­ent­ed, and joke about white sharia. I thought we were there to serve men. I thought we were stu­pid. I did­n’t look in the mir­ror to see what was real.”

    A third woman, who was inter­viewed for Iden­ti­ty Evropa by Saman­tha, took on some of the coun­sel­ing roles Saman­tha left behind when she quit. It was then that she saw the harm being done to the psy­che of oth­er women. “There was one par­tic­u­lar girl that would call me at all hours of the day when she had pan­ic attacks from all the ver­bal abuse in her rela­tion­ship. She had­n’t eat­en in days,” she told CNN, ask­ing for anonymi­ty to avoid any reprisals.

    Even­tu­al­ly, she said she sent a res­ig­na­tion let­ter to IE. “It was uncon­scionable for me to jus­ti­fy cre­at­ing manip­u­la­tive con­tent to draw young women into an orga­ni­za­tion where they were going to alien­ate them­selves from friends and fam­i­ly and open them­selves up to preda­to­ry men,” she said.

    The alt-right is far more hos­tile to women than pre­vi­ous iter­a­tions of the white suprema­cy move­ment, Jes­si­ca Reaves, a researcher for the ADL, told CNN.

    The alt-right emerged from the same parts of the inter­net as vio­lent­ly misog­y­nist groups like incels, or invol­un­tar­i­ly celi­bate men. She says, “I don’t think it’s even pos­si­ble to have an alt-right move­ment with­out the under­ly­ing misog­y­ny.”

    Women recruiters in these move­ments are caught in a “real­ly tox­ic stew of misog­y­ny and self-loathing,” Reaves says. But at the same time, they’re moral­ly impli­cat­ed.

    “They are bring­ing women into a move­ment that is at its heart, fun­da­men­tal­ly misog­y­nis­tic, which is dan­ger­ous in and of itself, but they’re also bring­ing women in who are sup­port­ing a move­ment that is, you know, geared toward the anni­hi­la­tion of non-white peo­ple, or the very least the seg­re­ga­tion of white peo­ple from non-white peo­ple,” Reaves said. “I think that’s some­thing that they’re going to have to reck­on with.”

    Saman­tha and her for­mer IE friend both say the alt-right was like a cult, in that it sep­a­rat­ed peo­ple from their fam­i­lies and friends and demand­ed total ide­o­log­i­cal adher­ence.

    “Like any cult, they want to expose you to as much as they can, but not so much you just turn away,” the woman said. The one dif­fer­ence is that there’s no sin­gle leader who dic­tates the cul­ture and doc­trine. Instead that’s cre­at­ed and enforced by large­ly anony­mous peo­ple on mes­sage boards and in chat rooms, each one try­ing to one-up the oth­ers by post­ing more clev­er­ly racist and cru­el jokes.

    ...

    ———–

    “She went from a lib­er­al non-vot­er to burn­ing books with white suprema­cists. Here’s why she final­ly left the move­ment” by Elle Reeve; CNN; 10/31/2019

    “Saman­tha changed her look and her demeanor. She bought dress­es with full skirts and nipped-in waists, clothes with which she want­ed to project an “all-Amer­i­can, del­i­cate sex­u­al­i­ty.” Saman­tha said, “I want­ed to be more fem­i­nine, I want­ed to be more desir­able, I want­ed to be more appre­ci­at­ed, I want­ed to feel smart. So I just played into these roles. And the stan­dards for how women are treat­ed in there are pret­ty low, so I was able to lean into that and make that work for me.””

    Saman­tha was ‘lean­ing into’ being a sub­ju­gat­ed female Nazi. It’s not the kind of thing one nor­mal­ly hears about women ‘lean­ing into’ but that’s how ‘Saman­tha’ viewed it at the time. The low stan­dards for the treat­ment of women was an oppor­tu­ni­ty she could embrace to iron­i­cal­ly rise through the ranks. But no mat­ter how high she rose, it was ris­ing through the ranks of an orga­ni­za­tion that want­ed to treat her and oth­er women as prop­er­ty. The ‘joke’ was that a Nazi ‘Sharia’ law need­ed to be imposed on women, except it’s not a joke. And when she left, she was met with death threats and a reminder that she was viewed as lit­tle more than a Nazi-baby-mak­ing machine:

    ...
    Even as Saman­tha thought she was ris­ing through the ranks, she was aware of a meme known as white sharia, a misog­y­nis­tic twist on Mus­lim reli­gious code. The “joke” is that white women are ruin­ing West­ern civ­i­liza­tion through promis­cu­ity and vot­ing for lib­er­als, so the only way to save it is to impose Sharia law on women and, in the suprema­cists’ twist­ed view of Sharia, treat them like prop­er­ty.

    A fly­er at the book-burn­ing said “WHITE SHARIA ZONE. THOTS MUST WEAR HIJAB AT ALL TIMES.” (A “thot” is slang racists have enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly ripped from hip-hop; it means “that ho over there,” or a woman who seeks atten­tion through her sex­u­al­i­ty.) Saman­tha took a pic­ture of it. She is hold­ing it with French-man­i­cured fin­ger­nails.

    ...

    Oth­er women who had spent time with Iden­ti­ty Evropa told CNN the vio­lence at Char­lottesville hor­ri­fied them and drove them away, but Saman­tha’s break­ing point came that Octo­ber, when her grand­moth­er died.

    She felt ashamed that her grand­moth­er could not be proud of her. She quit IE a few weeks lat­er. She says her ex threat­ened her — say­ing in the good ole days she would have left the move­ment “in a body bag.” She says she was remind­ed she could hold “a lot of Nazi semen” and make many Nazi babies. Despite those threats, she left.
    ...

    But it’s not just that the women are treat­ed like chat­tel in these move­ments. They’re also often the ones who actu­al­ly have jobs and earn an income for their Nazi boyfriends who feel women deserve to be humil­i­at­ed and raped. As she put it, “Like 70 per­cent of the time, the women earn the mon­ey and the men do pod­casts. And they do pod­casts about how women should­n’t have jobs”. And as all of the inter­viewed women described, they real­ly did inter­nal­ize these views at the time. They put up with being treat­ed like trash because thought they were trash:

    ...
    CNN spoke to two oth­er women who, like Saman­tha, spent about a year in the alt-right before quit­ting, unable to take the abuse any­more and fear­ing for their safe­ty. They now reject their old beliefs. One had become inter­est­ed in the move­ment after watch­ing a speech Spencer gave at Texas A&M in late 2016.

    “I was­n’t even a racist yet. I thought he made a real­ly good argu­ment for fam­i­lies,” she told CNN, request­ing anonymi­ty because she fears vio­lence. “He’s good at mak­ing it sound legit­i­mate.” She liked “the fam­i­ly secu­ri­ty, the promise of... what­ev­er they’re promis­ing. Safe­ty. It’s very appeal­ing.”

    This woman also joined IE and began dat­ing a man she met in the move­ment. Her boyfriend’s view, she says, was, “ ‘Women deserve to be sub­ju­gat­ed. Women deserve to be humil­i­at­ed. Women deserve to be raped. Women deserve to be impreg­nat­ed.’ It was­n’t a joke. ... I can’t believe I sup­port­ed that stuff.”

    She explains, “I thought I was trash, so I did­n’t mind when they talked about women being dogs, worth­less. Even though I was the one dri­ving them around, pay­ing for stuff.”

    She says that she and Saman­tha fit a famil­iar pat­tern with­in the alt-right. “Like 70 per­cent of the time, the women earn the mon­ey and the men do pod­casts. And they do pod­casts about how women should­n’t have jobs.”

    She broke away only after the rela­tion­ship end­ed. “I was so wrong,” she said. “I would talk to younger women about how this was a great way to be fam­i­ly-ori­ent­ed, and joke about white sharia. I thought we were there to serve men. I thought we were stu­pid. I did­n’t look in the mir­ror to see what was real.”
    ...

    As Jes­si­ca Reaves of the ADL observes, today’s ‘Alt Right’ neo-Nazis are far more hos­tile to women than white suprema­cist move­ments of the past, in part because it’s so heav­i­ly influ­enced by the “Incels”. It’s why the jokes about “white sharia” and treat­ing women like prop­er­ty aren’t jokes. The Incels strong­ly believe this stuff and they are some of the prime recruit­ment tar­gets for white suprema­cist groups. The extreme misog­y­ny is now at the core of mod­ern day white suprema­cy:

    ...
    The alt-right is far more hos­tile to women than pre­vi­ous iter­a­tions of the white suprema­cy move­ment, Jes­si­ca Reaves, a researcher for the ADL, told CNN.

    The alt-right emerged from the same parts of the inter­net as vio­lent­ly misog­y­nist groups like incels, or invol­un­tar­i­ly celi­bate men. She says, “I don’t think it’s even pos­si­ble to have an alt-right move­ment with­out the under­ly­ing misog­y­ny.”

    Women recruiters in these move­ments are caught in a “real­ly tox­ic stew of misog­y­ny and self-loathing,” Reaves says. But at the same time, they’re moral­ly impli­cat­ed.

    “They are bring­ing women into a move­ment that is at its heart, fun­da­men­tal­ly misog­y­nis­tic, which is dan­ger­ous in and of itself, but they’re also bring­ing women in who are sup­port­ing a move­ment that is, you know, geared toward the anni­hi­la­tion of non-white peo­ple, or the very least the seg­re­ga­tion of white peo­ple from non-white peo­ple,” Reaves said. “I think that’s some­thing that they’re going to have to reck­on with.”
    ...

    As we can see, today’s “white suprema­cy” move­ments are bet­ter described as “white male incel suprema­cy” move­ments. Sure, far right move­ments have almost always been misog­y­nis­tic and viewed women as ves­sels for mak­ing white babies. But thanks to all the Incels, today’s white suprema­cists have achieved unprece­dent­ed lev­els of hyper-misog­y­ny that typ­i­cal­ly reserved for groups like ISIS.

    So if any­one is still try­ing to fig­ure out what cos­tume to wear for Hal­loween this year, keep in mind that the pop­u­lar “Hand­maid­’s Tale” cos­tume from last year dou­bles as a female ‘Alt Right’ cos­tume. There’s some cos­tume reuse poten­tial there.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | October 31, 2019, 1:05 pm
  12. Now that an impeach­ment inquiry over #UkraineGate is offi­cial­ly mov­ing for­ward in the US House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives fol­low­ing yesterday’s large­ly par­ty-line vote – a vote where none of the Repub­li­cans vot­ed in sup­port of the inquiry – at the same time the 2020 elec­tion cycle is gath­er­ing steam, it’s pret­ty clear that the extreme and dan­ger­ous nature of the Repub­li­can Par­ty is only going to get more extreme an dan­ger­ous over the nev­er year and will like­ly include many more right-wing threats of a civ­il war. Repub­li­can con­gress­man Louie Gohmert exlic­it­ly invoked the specter of a civ­il war on the House floor in response to the vote and as Char­lie Pierce points out, this kind of rhetoric is like­ly to become a key defense of Pres­i­dent Trump sim­ply because there aren’t real­ly any good defens­es for Trump based on the facts of the case. As more and more facts come out regard­ing the Trump/Giuliani fias­co in Ukraine, por­tray­ing the entire inquiry as a coup and threat­en­ing civ­il war is going to be the only defense left. As a con­se­quence, it seems that one of the defin­ing fea­tures of con­tem­po­rary US pol­i­tics – sto­chas­tic right-wing ‘lone wolf’ domes­tic ter­ror­ism encour­aged by extrem­ist rhetoric Trump and the right-wing media com­plex spe­cial­ize in that encour­ages indi­vid­u­als to com­mit acts of polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed vio­lence – is only going to grow over the next year.

    And don’t for­get that the sto­chas­tic ‘lone wolf’ right-wing ter­ror­ism that’s going to take place in response to the impeach­ment pro­ceed­ings is also part of that ‘civ­il war’ defense of Trump. It’s a threat in the form of indi­vid­ual acts of domes­tic ter­ror that promise more and worse to come. In oth­er words, there is going to be a per­verse incen­tive to pro­voke right-wing domes­tic ter­ror in response to the impeach­ment dri­ve and then blame the vio­lence on the impeach­ment.

    With that chill­ing con­text in mind, here’s a reminder that the kind of ‘micro-tar­get­ing’ the Trump cam­paign uti­lized in 2016 via com­pa­nies like Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca is going to be the per­fect tool for tar­get­ing and encour­ag­ing exact­ly the kind of unsta­ble indi­vid­u­als who are most inclined to com­mit those acts of ‘lone wolf’ ter­ror. As Newsweek recent­ly report­ed, Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca whis­tle-blow­er Christo­pher Wylie recent­ly made a dis­turb­ing admis­sion about the nature of the micro-tar­get­ing they were engaged in dur­ing the 2016 elec­tion cycle: Steve Ban­non was using Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca to specif­i­cal­ly iden­ti­fy and tar­get “incels”, a core com­po­nent of the mod­ern ‘Alt Right’ that has spawned a num­ber of domes­tic ter­ror attacks, because they are “easy to manip­u­late”.

    Yep, manip­u­lat­ing the “incels” with micro-tar­get­ed ads designed to pro­voke emo­tions. The Trump cam­paign already has expe­ri­ence with this. And that’s why it’s going to be impor­tant to keep in mind that the upcom­ing sto­chas­tic ter­ror isn’t just going to be inflamed by the words of pub­lic fig­ures like Pres­i­dent Trump. Online adver­tis­ing, which is about to kick into over­drive for 2020, can also play a role in pro­vok­ing ‘lone wolf’ sto­chas­tic vio­lence:

    Newsweek

    Steve Ban­non Tar­get­ed ‘Incels’ Because They Are ‘Easy to Manip­u­late,’ Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca Whistle­blow­er Says

    By Tareq Had­dad On 10/29/19 at 10:21 AM EDT

    For­mer White House Chief Strate­gist Steve Ban­non tar­get­ed “incels”—supposedly invol­un­tar­i­ly celi­bate men—because they were eas­i­er to manip­u­late with con­spir­a­to­r­i­al think­ing, Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca whistle­blow­er Christo­pher Wylie has said.

    The for­mer Bre­it­bart edi­tor enlist­ed the ser­vices of Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca to drum up fringe vot­ers from swing states such as Ohio, Wis­con­sin and Penn­syl­va­nia for Don­ald Trump’s 2016 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign.

    ...

    His whistle­blow­ing revealed that Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca har­vest­ed the pro­files of 50 mil­lion Face­book users and how that data was used along­side pub­licly avail­able vot­er records to iden­ti­fy peo­ple more like­ly to vote for the Trump cam­paign.

    Of those, Wylie said Ban­non tar­get­ed the men who calls them­selves “incels”—also refer­ring to them as “unmar­ried straight white dudes who couldn’t get laid.”

    At a talk at the Emmanuel Cen­tre in Lon­don on Mon­day, he said that Ban­non viewed them as easy vic­tims for manip­u­la­tion as they were “lack­ing eco­nom­ic oppor­tu­ni­ties” and were more prone to “con­spir­a­to­r­i­al think­ing.”

    Wylie made sim­i­lar com­ments to Aman­pour and Com­pa­ny, also on Mon­day, while on a media tour pro­mot­ing his new book.

    “When you look at the types of peo­ple that [Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca] were tar­get­ing, it wasn’t every­body they were try­ing to engage with,” he said.

    “It was very much in the mar­gins and in the fringes of soci­ety to bring and recruit peo­ple who would oth­er­wise not nec­es­sar­i­ly engage in con­ven­tion­al pol­i­tics, but would engage with par­tic­u­lar kinds of ideas that [Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca] pro­mot­ed online.

    “That can make an impact. If you get an extra one per­cent, an extra two per cent, in that swing state and you win that swing state, that might mean you win the pres­i­den­cy.”

    Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca uti­lized the “Big 5” per­son­al­i­ty mod­el to iden­ti­fy which on-the-fence swing vot­ers could be manip­u­lat­ed.

    The model—which rates indi­vid­u­als on open­ness, con­sci­en­tious­ness, extra­ver­sion, agree­able­ness and neuroticism—has long been iden­ti­fied by polit­i­cal sci­en­tists as an accu­rate indi­ca­tor for polit­i­cal lean­ing.

    Lib­er­als and left-lean­ing indi­vid­u­als tend to score high­er in open­ness for exam­ple, where­as Con­ser­v­a­tives and right-lean­ing indi­vid­u­als tend to poss­es high­er lev­els of con­sci­en­tious­ness.

    Hav­ing such data at the fin­ger­tips of Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca meant they could send deeply tai­lored polit­i­cal mes­sages and only to those whose tem­pera­ment they knew might favor Trump.

    “Imag­ine we are on a blind date,” Wylie said at the talk, report­ed the Lon­don Evening Stan­dard. “We’ve nev­er met before and I start telling you how much I love your favorite musi­cians, how I watch the same TV as you do, etc.

    “You real­ize the rea­son I’m so per­fect for you is because I spent the last two years going through your pho­to albums, read­ing your text mes­sages and talk­ing to your friends. Face­book is that stalk­er.”

    ———-

    “Steve Ban­non Tar­get­ed ‘Incels’ Because They Are ‘Easy to Manip­u­late,’ Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca Whistle­blow­er Says” by Tareq Had­dad; Newsweek; 10/29/2019

    “At a talk at the Emmanuel Cen­tre in Lon­don on Mon­day, he said that Ban­non viewed them as easy vic­tims for manip­u­la­tion as they were “lack­ing eco­nom­ic oppor­tu­ni­ties” and were more prone to “con­spir­a­to­r­i­al think­ing.”

    Easy vic­tims for manip­u­la­tion and prone to “con­spir­a­to­r­i­al think­ing”. That sounds like incels. And while the ‘manip­u­la­tion’ in 2016 may have been in the form of try­ing to get the incels to reg­is­ter to vote for Don­ald Trump, there’s no rea­son to assume the manip­u­la­tion is going to be lim­it­ed to that goal in 2020, espe­cial­ly with an impeach­ment inquiry tak­ing place. As the GOP has already made clear, they’re going to be wag­ing a griev­ance and rage-based cam­paign head­ing into 2020. It’s the per­fect recipe for giv­ing polit­i­cal cov­er to the kind of mes­sag­ing that can incite angry unsta­ble indi­vid­u­als like incels to acts of vio­lence:

    ...
    “When you look at the types of peo­ple that [Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca] were tar­get­ing, it wasn’t every­body they were try­ing to engage with,” he said.

    “It was very much in the mar­gins and in the fringes of soci­ety to bring and recruit peo­ple who would oth­er­wise not nec­es­sar­i­ly engage in con­ven­tion­al pol­i­tics, but would engage with par­tic­u­lar kinds of ideas that [Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca] pro­mot­ed online.
    ...

    Also keep in mind that this kind of extrem­ist micro-tar­get­ing doesn’t need to be lim­it­ed to incels and doesn’t need to be done by a polit­i­cal cam­paign. Any group with the required resources – like large data­bas­es of detailed pro­files on vot­ers – can poten­tial­ly tar­get the kind of peo­ple prone to the unhinged garbage con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries that are wild­ly pop­u­lar on the right-wing these days. For instance, what about all the eas­i­ly manip­u­lat­ed QAnon folks? You can be sure they’re going to be get­ting tai­lored messages...messages about how the impeach­ment dri­ve is all an attempt to stop Trump from expos­ing evil Satan­ic pedophile elites run­ning the world.

    So we’ll see how many impeach­ment-relat­ed acts of domes­tic ter­ror take place over the next year but it seems like­ly we’ll at least see a few as long as threat­en­ing civ­il war remains a core GOP defense of Trump. We won’t know whether or not it was words of Trump or some right-wing pun­dit that trig­gered it or inflam­ma­to­ry online ads inten­tion­al­ly micro-tar­get­ed at psy­cho­log­i­cal vul­ner­a­ble indi­vid­u­als. That’s how sto­chas­tic ter­ror works. We can’t iden­ti­fy a sin­gle direct source. But it seems like a good bet that the most unhinged indi­vid­u­als the right-wing can iden­ti­fy are going to be micro-tar­get­ed with the most inflam­ma­to­ry mes­sag­ing because, as Christo­pher Wylie reminds us, that’s lit­er­al­ly how Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca oper­at­ed. Find the psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly vul­ner­a­ble and trig­ger them. It’s Steve Ban­non’s play­book.

    Anoth­er thing to keep in mind is that the micro-tar­get­ing does­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly have to hap­pen via social media plat­forms like Face­book. Recall how researchers found 173 online gam­ing cha­t­rooms on the wild­ly pop­u­lar gam­ing plat­form Steam where neo-Nazis were pump­ing out con­tent glo­ri­fy­ing school shoot­ers and encour­ag­ing gamers to shoot up their own schools. Online gam­ing plat­forms, which are inher­ent­ly dif­fi­cult to mod­er­ate due to the large num­ber of sep­a­rate chat ses­sions and the wide range of lan­guages used, are clear­ly a very use­ful medi­um for con­duct­ing a sto­chas­tic ter­ror cam­paign. Well, as the fol­low­ing arti­cle from 2017 reminds us, it was when Steve Ban­non was try­ing to build a busi­ness in online gam­ing mar­kets that he real­ized the polit­i­cal poten­tial of “root­less white males” via online gam­ing plat­forms (a descrip­tion that sounds very sim­i­lar to Wylie’s descrip­tion of Ban­non’s tar­get ‘incel’ demo­graph­ic). IGE — the online busi­ness he start­ed where Chi­nese play­ers were paid to play World of War­craft to col­lect items in the game that could be sold for real mon­ey online — was­n’t a suc­cess but that expe­ri­ence appears to have been crit­i­cal for devel­op­ing Ban­non’s under­stand­ing how online com­mu­ni­ties dom­i­nat­ed by young males could be chan­neled into what would become the ‘Alt Right’.

    As the arti­cle notes, when Ban­non took over Bre­it­bart in 2012, he hired the ‘Alt Right’ icon Milo Yiannopou­los to be the tech­nol­o­gy reporter. Yiannopou­los end­ed up ded­i­cat­ing much of that tech­nol­o­gy cov­er­age to cul­tur­al issues like ‘Gamer­gate’. Gamer­gate — the vir­u­lent male-dom­i­nat­ed back­lash to fem­i­nist cri­tiques about the fre­quent­ly misog­y­nis­tic por­tray­al of women in videogames that blew up in 2014 — in turn end­ed up cre­at­ing the kind of online cul­tur­al zeit­geist with­in the gam­ing com­mu­ni­ty, where fem­i­nism was por­trayed as some sort of exis­ten­tial threat to males, that effec­tive­ly infused the online gam­ing cul­ture with both ‘incel’ and neo-Nazi memes and led to rise of the ‘Alt Right’ troll cul­ture where misog­y­ny and neo-Nazi went main­stream online. Gamegate was a proto-‘Alt Right’ phe­nom­e­na. So one of the roles Steve Ban­non played in the rise of the ‘Alt Right’ was the role he first played in cul­ti­vat­ing the rise of the ‘incel’ cul­ture through the pro­mo­tion of Gamer­gate.

    In oth­er words, Steven Ban­non real­ly does have the pulse of the ‘incel’ com­mu­ni­ty. He helped build it. And he rec­og­nizes the impor­tance of online gam­ing cha­t­rooms in prop­a­gat­ing it. So when it comes to uti­liz­ing these plat­forms for spread­ing the kind of memes that fuel sto­chas­tic ter­ror, Ban­non was a trail­blaz­er:

    USA TODAY

    Steve Ban­non learned to har­ness troll army from ‘World of War­craft’

    Mike Snider
    Pub­lished 7:26 p.m. ET Jul. 18, 2017 | Updat­ed 7:28 p.m. ET Jul. 18, 2017

    Before Steve Ban­non over­saw the con­ser­v­a­tive Bre­it­bart News Net­work and, sub­se­quent­ly, joined then-can­di­date Don­ald Trump’s cam­paign, the chief polit­i­cal strate­gist became a play­er in Hol­ly­wood and ... World of War­craft.

    Ban­non’s migra­tion from banker at Gold­man Sachs to his cur­rent post in Trump’s inner cir­cle is chron­i­cled in the new book Devil’s Bar­gain: Steve Ban­non, Don­ald Trump, and the Storm­ing of the Pres­i­den­cy, out Tues­day, by Joshua Green, a reporter with Bloomberg Busi­ness­week.

    In 2005, Ban­non secured $60 mil­lion in fund­ing from Gold­man Sachs and oth­er investors for Inter­net Gam­ing Enter­tain­ment, a Hong Kong-based com­pa­ny. IGE did not make games, but instead employed “low-wage Chi­nese work­ers” to play online mul­ti­play­er game World of War­craft and earn in-game gold that could be trad­ed for vir­tu­al goods, which in turn could be resold to play­ers of the huge­ly pop­u­lar PC game for real mon­ey, Green writes. At the time, the game pub­lished by Bliz­zard Enter­tain­ment, had about 10 mil­lion sub­scribers.

    ...

    Even­tu­al­ly, Bliz­zard shut down accounts used by vir­tu­al “gold farm­ers” and IGE became the tar­get of a class-action suit by a play­er who said the com­pa­ny’s prac­tices were “sub­stan­tial­ly impair­ing” play­ers’ enjoy­ment of the game.

    Ban­non took con­trol of the com­pa­ny from Brock Pierce, a child actor who appeared in The Mighty Ducks films and, accord­ing to Inter­net Movie Data­base, was a con­sul­tant on an episode of HBO series Sil­i­con Val­ley.

    Even though the busi­ness plan was a flop, Ban­non became intrigued by the game’s online com­mu­ni­ty dynam­ics. In describ­ing gamers, Ban­non said, “These guys, these root­less white males, had mon­ster pow­er. ... It was the pre-red­dit. It’s the same guys on (one of a trio of online mes­sage boards owned by IGE) Thot­tbot who were [lat­er] on red­dit” and oth­er online mes­sage boards where the alt-right flour­ished, Ban­non said.

    Green pos­tu­lates that Ban­non’s time at IGE was “one that intro­duced him to a hid­den world, bur­rowed deep into his psy­che, and pro­vid­ed a kind of con­cep­tu­al frame­work that he would lat­er draw on to build up the audi­ence for Bre­it­bart News, and then to help mar­shal the online armies of trolls and activists that over­ran nation­al politi­cians and helped give rise to Don­ald Trump,” Green writes.

    After tak­ing over in 2012 at the Bre­it­bart News Net­work — it was found­ed five years ear­li­er by Andrew Bre­it­bart, who died in 2012 — Ban­non recruit­ed Milo Yiannopou­los to han­dle tech­nol­o­gy cov­er­age.

    Like Andrew Bre­it­bart, Yiannopou­los “just had that ‘it’ fac­tor,” Ban­non says in the book. “The dif­fer­ence was, Andrew had a very strong moral uni­verse, and Milo is an amoral nihilist.”

    Yiannopou­los devot­ed much of Bretibart’s tech cov­er­age to cul­tur­al issues, par­tic­u­lar­ly Gamer­gate, a long-run­ning online argu­ment over gam­ing cul­ture that peaked in 2014. And that helped fuel an online alt-right move­ment sparked by Bre­it­bart News.

    “I real­ized Milo could con­nect with these kids right away,” Ban­non told Green. “You can acti­vate that army. They come in through Gamer­gate or what­ev­er and then get turned onto pol­i­tics and Trump.”.

    ———-

    “Steve Ban­non learned to har­ness troll army from ‘World of War­craft’ ” by Mike Snider; USA TODAY; 07/18/2017

    ““I real­ized Milo could con­nect with these kids right away,” Ban­non told Green. “You can acti­vate that army. They come in through Gamer­gate or what­ev­er and then get turned onto pol­i­tics and Trump.”

    A polit­i­cal army. That’s how Ban­non saw the online ‘root­less white male’ dom­i­nat­ed gamer com­mu­ni­ty after his expe­ri­ence with IGE. And then he took over Bre­it­bart, helped turn ‘Gamer­gate’ into a major right-wing cul­tur­al issue, and helped turn that army of gamers into a ‘Alt Right’ troll army ready to wage online meme wars for Trump and oth­er far right politi­cians. Neo-Nazi incels were lit­er­al­ly Ban­non’s vision and he helped make it a real­i­ty:

    ...
    Even though the busi­ness plan was a flop, Ban­non became intrigued by the game’s online com­mu­ni­ty dynam­ics. In describ­ing gamers, Ban­non said, “These guys, these root­less white males, had mon­ster pow­er. ... It was the pre-red­dit. It’s the same guys on (one of a trio of online mes­sage boards owned by IGE) Thot­tbot who were [lat­er] on red­dit” and oth­er online mes­sage boards where the alt-right flour­ished, Ban­non said.

    Green pos­tu­lates that Ban­non’s time at IGE was “one that intro­duced him to a hid­den world, bur­rowed deep into his psy­che, and pro­vid­ed a kind of con­cep­tu­al frame­work that he would lat­er draw on to build up the audi­ence for Bre­it­bart News, and then to help mar­shal the online armies of trolls and activists that over­ran nation­al politi­cians and helped give rise to Don­ald Trump,” Green writes.

    After tak­ing over in 2012 at the Bre­it­bart News Net­work — it was found­ed five years ear­li­er by Andrew Bre­it­bart, who died in 2012 — Ban­non recruit­ed Milo Yiannopou­los to han­dle tech­nol­o­gy cov­er­age.

    ...

    Yiannopou­los devot­ed much of Bretibart’s tech cov­er­age to cul­tur­al issues, par­tic­u­lar­ly Gamer­gate, a long-run­ning online argu­ment over gam­ing cul­ture that peaked in 2014. And that helped fuel an online alt-right move­ment sparked by Bre­it­bart News.
    ...

    As we can see, when Steve Ban­non was hav­ing Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca tar­get the ‘sin­gle root­less white male’ demo­graph­ic for a cam­paign of pro-Trump con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries in 2016, this was mere­ly the lat­est iter­a­tion of his direct tar­get­ing of this demo­graph­ic.

    So as sto­chas­tic ter­ror threats increas­ing­ly become the GOP’s last line of defense of Pres­i­dent Trump in the #UkraineGate impeach­ment pro­ceed­ings, it’s going to be impor­tant to keep in mind that if the far right oli­garchy back­ing Trump decides to trig­ger some incels and oth­er mem­bers of the ‘Alt Right’ into car­ry­ing out vio­lence as a dead­ly act of polit­i­cal the­ater to demon­strate the ‘anger’ over Trump’s impeach­ment, Steve Ban­non is more than capa­ble of mak­ing that hap­pen. He is the incel whis­per­er.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | November 2, 2019, 2:27 pm
  13. It sounds like Atom­waf­fen has some com­pe­ti­tion in the cat­e­go­ry of ‘cra­zi­est neo-Nazi group’: sev­en mem­bers of a rel­a­tive­ly new neo-Nazi out­fit, called “The Base”, were arrest­ed in recent days. Three mem­bers of the group were arrest­ed for plot­ting the mur­der of a cou­ple in Geor­gia who are mem­bers of Antifa. Anoth­er three were arrest­ed for plot­ting a series of vio­lent attacks at a recent pro-gun-rights ral­ly in Vir­ginia this week. A sev­enth mem­ber was arrest­ed in Wis­con­sin as part of this nation­wide arrest of Base mem­bers. He was charged with van­dal­iz­ing a syn­a­gogue in Racine with Nazi imagery back in Sep­tem­ber.

    The planned attacks in Vir­ginia were intend­ed to spark a civ­il war. How were they plan­ning on spark­ing a civ­il war with a neo-Nazi attack? By ambush­ing unsus­pect­ing civil­ians and police offi­cers. They also had plans to poi­son water sup­plies and derail trains. The idea appears to be to cre­ate as much chaos as pos­si­ble in the hopes that the sit­u­a­tion spi­rals out of con­trol. As a fur­ther sign of their ambi­tions, they also had food reserves packed that they thought could last for months. As we should expect for a group with plans like this, The Base is described as an “accel­er­a­tionist” neo-Nazi group, mean­ing they intend on using acts of vio­lence and ter­ror­ism to active­ly desta­bi­lize soci­ety in the hopes of spark­ing a civ­il war and fur­ther­ing their ambi­tions for a white eth­nos­tate. In oth­er words, they’re the kind of group that wor­ships the most vio­lent neo-Nazi fig­ures like James Mason and Charles Man­son.

    As the fol­low­ing arti­cle describes, one of the mem­bers of the group that was plan­ning attacks at the gun ral­ly, Bri­an Mark Lem­ley Jr., was a “cav­al­ry scout” in the U.S. Army. Anoth­er mem­ber, Patrik Jor­dan Math­ews, is a for­mer com­bat engi­neer in Cana­di­an Armed Forces reservist. So this was a group with real mil­i­tary train­ing. As the sec­ond arti­cle below describes, Math­ews and Lem­ley actu­al­ly built a ful­ly-auto­mat­ic assault rifle from part.

    The third mem­ber of this group, William Garfield Bil­brough IV, has repeat­ed­ly expressed an inter­est in trav­el­ing to Ukraine to fight along­side “nation­al­ists” for sev­er­al months accord­ing to pros­e­cu­tors. Yep, there’s a Ukrain­ian angle to this neo-Nazi sto­ry as we should expect at this point. It’s anoth­er sign of the wild suc­cess Ukraine’s neo-Nazis, in par­tic­u­lar the Azov move­ment, have had in turn­ing Ukraine into a glob­al hub of neo-Nazi activ­i­ty.

    Pros­e­cu­tors tell us that these mem­bers would com­mu­ni­cate with each oth­er on a mem­bers-only encrypt­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tion app, where they described plans of mount­ing a ter­ror­ist cam­paign that asked mem­bers to form three-man “Trou­ble Trio” cells. So these two groups of three neo-Nazis was pre­sum­ably a reflec­tion of that three-man ter­ror­ist-cell struc­ture. But it does­n’t sound like they were intent on remain­ing anony­mous to each oth­er. The three mem­bers arrest­ed for the mur­der plot in Geor­gia, Luke Austin Lane, Michael Hel­ter­brand, and Jacob Kader­li, were report­ed­ly also in con­tact with Math­ews and they had plans to estab­lish and par­tic­i­pate in para­mil­i­tary train­ing camps (some­thing we’ve seen with Atom­waf­fen’s “hate camps”). As a sign of the “accel­er­a­tionst” nature of this group that’s reflect­ed in the plans to spark a war with a ter­ror attack at the gun ral­ly, one of the posts in the chat group includ­ed the call to use ter­ror­ism as the start of an insur­gency, say­ing, “No need to wait until all con­di­tions for rev­o­lu­tion exist — guer­ril­la insur­rec­tion can cre­ate them. Insur­gency begins as a ter­ror­ist cam­paign.” The post was accom­pa­nied by an image of an armed per­son watch­ing an explo­sion.

    Ok, here’s the first arti­cle describ­ing the arrest of Math­ews, Lem­ley, and Bil­brough and their plans to spark a civ­il war at the Vir­ginia gun ral­ly this week by killing civil­ians and police offi­cers:

    Asso­ci­at­ed Press

    Doc­u­ments: Extrem­ist group want­ed ral­ly to start civ­il war

    By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN
    Tues Jan 21, 2020, 3:37:35 PM CST

    COLLEGE PARK, Md. (AP) — A hid­den cam­era cap­tured mem­bers of a white suprema­cist group express­ing hope that vio­lence at a gun rights ral­ly in Vir­ginia this week could start a civ­il war, fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors said in a court fil­ing Tues­day.

    For­mer Cana­di­an Armed Forces reservist Patrik Jor­dan Math­ews also video­taped him­self advo­cat­ing for killing peo­ple, poi­son­ing water sup­plies and derail­ing trains, a pros­e­cu­tor wrote in urg­ing a judge in Mary­land to keep Math­ews and two oth­er mem­bers of The Base detained in fed­er­al cus­tody.

    But the 27-year-old Cana­di­an nation­al didn’t know inves­ti­ga­tors were watch­ing and lis­ten­ing when he and two oth­er group mem­bers talked about attend­ing the Rich­mond ral­ly in the days lead­ing up to Monday’s event, which attract­ed tens of thou­sands of peo­ple and end­ed peace­ful­ly.

    Last month, a closed-cir­cuit tele­vi­sion cam­era and micro­phone installed by inves­ti­ga­tors in a Delaware home cap­tured Math­ews talk­ing about the Vir­ginia ral­ly as a “bound­less” oppor­tu­ni­ty.

    “And the thing is you’ve got tons of guys who ... should be rad­i­cal­ized enough to know that all you got­ta do is start mak­ing things go wrong and if Vir­ginia can spi­ral out to (exple­tive) full blown civ­il war,” he said.

    Math­ews and fel­low group mem­ber Bri­an Mark Lem­ley Jr., 33, of Elk­ton, Mary­land, dis­cussed the plan­ning of vio­lence at the Rich­mond ral­ly, accord­ing to pros­e­cu­tors. Lem­ley talked about using a ther­mal imag­ing scope affixed to his rifle to ambush unsus­pect­ing civil­ians and police offi­cers, pros­e­cu­tors said.

    “I need to claim my first vic­tim,” Lem­ley said on Dec. 23, accord­ing to Tuesday’s deten­tion memo.

    “We could essen­tial­ly like be lit­er­al­ly hunt­ing peo­ple,” Math­ews said, accord­ing to pros­e­cu­tors. “You could pro­vide over­watch while I get close to do what needs to be done to cer­tain things.”

    Lem­ley talked about ambush­ing a police offi­cer to steal the officer’s weapons and tac­ti­cal gear, say­ing, “If there’s like a PoPo cruis­er parked on the street and he doesn’t have back­up, I can exe­cute him at a whim and just take his stuff,” accord­ing to pros­e­cu­tors.

    FBI agents arrest­ed Math­ews, Lem­ley and William Garfield Bil­brough IV, 19, of Den­ton, Mary­land last Thurs­day as part of a broad­er inves­ti­ga­tion of The Base. Author­i­ties in Geor­gia and Wis­con­sin also arrest­ed four oth­er men linked to the group.

    Deten­tion hear­ings for Math­ews and Bil­brough are sched­uled for Wednes­day at the fed­er­al cour­t­house in Green­belt, Mary­land. Their attor­neys didn’t imme­di­ate­ly respond to the memo filed Tues­day by Assis­tant U.S. Attor­ney Thomas Win­dom.

    Math­ews and Lem­ley are charged with trans­port­ing a firearm and ammu­ni­tion with intent to com­mit a felony. Bil­brough is charged with “trans­port­ing and har­bor­ing aliens.”

    ...

    Math­ews, who was a com­bat engi­neer in the Cana­di­an Army Reserve, ille­gal­ly crossed the U.S. bor­der near Min­neso­ta in August after report­ing by the Win­nipeg Free Press led to his iden­ti­fi­ca­tion as a mem­ber of The Base.

    Inves­ti­ga­tors believe Bil­brough and Lem­ley, who was a “cav­al­ry scout” in the U.S. Army, drove from Mary­land to Michi­gan to pick up Math­ews and bring him to the Mid-Atlantic region, author­i­ties said.

    On Jan. 5, Math­ews and Lem­ley returned to the Delaware home from a gun range in Mary­land and began pack­ing rations and oth­er mate­r­i­al that inves­ti­ga­tors believe they planned to use dur­ing and after the Vir­ginia ral­ly, court doc­u­ments said.

    They packed con­tain­ers with food and sup­plies before Math­ews remarked about need­ing to bring a gas mask, inves­ti­ga­tors said. Lem­ley also said he thought they’d have food to last between three and five months and that it “might be enough til the war is over,” accord­ing to the fil­ing.

    Lem­ley had also dis­cussed load­ing the truck “for the war,” the doc­u­ments said. Author­i­ties said Lem­ley had also bought a 4‑foot (1‑meter) met­al anten­na to attach to his truck to get a bet­ter radio sig­nal to com­mu­ni­cate after any Vir­ginia con­fronta­tions.

    A day before their arrests, Lem­ley told Math­ews that “there can­not be no trust among a group of mur­der­ers,” the deten­tion memo says.

    “I can­not trust you to keep my mur­der­ing secrets. Not under threat of 30 years in jail and tor­ture. Why should I trust you?” Lem­ley asked.

    “You real­ize that they’re just going to call us ter­ror­ists,” Math­ews said min­utes lat­er.

    As fed­er­al agents moved in to arrest Lem­ley and Matthews on Thurs­day, the men smashed cell­phones and dropped the pieces in a toi­let, a pros­e­cu­tor said.

    Bil­brough was arrest­ed in Mary­land. Pros­e­cu­tors say Bil­brough has repeat­ed­ly expressed an inter­est in trav­el­ing to Ukraine to fight along­side “nation­al­ists” for sev­er­al months.

    U.S. and Cana­di­an author­i­ties had been search­ing for Math­ews after his truck was found in Sep­tem­ber near the bor­der between the two coun­tries. The Cana­di­an military’s intel­li­gence unit was inves­ti­gat­ing Math­ews for “pos­si­ble racist extrem­ist activ­i­ties” for sev­er­al months, accord­ing to the Cana­di­an Depart­ment of Nation­al Defence.

    The Anti-Defama­tion League said mem­bers of The Base and oth­er white suprema­cist groups have fre­quent­ly post­ed online mes­sages advo­cat­ing for “accel­er­a­tionism,” a fringe phi­los­o­phy in which far-right extrem­ists “have assigned to their desire to has­ten the col­lapse of soci­ety as we know it.”

    Last Fri­day, Geor­gia author­i­ties announced that they arrest­ed three mem­bers of The Base on charges they con­spired to kill mem­bers of a mil­i­tant anti-fas­cist group. The arrests came after an under­cov­er FBI agent infil­trat­ed the group and par­tic­i­pat­ed in shoot­ing drills in the moun­tains of north­ern Geor­gia, accord­ing to a police affi­davit.

    Sep­a­rate­ly last Fri­day, the Jus­tice Depart­ment charged a Wis­con­sin man who they say was also a mem­ber of The Base. That man is accused of spray- paint­ing swastikas, the group’s sym­bol and anti-Semit­ic words on a syn­a­gogue in Racine, Wis­con­sin , in Sep­tem­ber.

    ———–

    “Doc­u­ments: Extrem­ist group want­ed ral­ly to start civ­il war” by MICHAEL KUNZELMAN; Asso­ci­at­ed Press; 01/21/2020

    “Last month, a closed-cir­cuit tele­vi­sion cam­era and micro­phone installed by inves­ti­ga­tors in a Delaware home cap­tured Math­ews talk­ing about the Vir­ginia ral­ly as a “bound­less” oppor­tu­ni­ty.”

    A “bound­less oppor­tu­ni­ty” for ter­ror. That’s lit­er­al­ly how this “Trou­ble Trio” of Math­ews, Lem­ley, and Bil­brough viewed the gun rights ral­ly. But they were just talk­ing about shoot­ing unsus­pect­ing civil­ians and police. They were also talk­ing about poi­son­ing water sup­plies and derail­ing trains. Their scheme also rais­es the ques­tion of whether or not they were plan­ning on shoot­ing the anti-gun activists or the pro-gun activists, or both? But they weren’t plan­ning on a sui­cide attack where the iden­ti­ty of the attack­ers would be soon dis­cov­ered. They were pack­ing food sup­plies that were would last for months sug­gest­ing they want­ed this to be an anony­mous attack. So were they plan­ning on hop­ing the attack would be blamed on Antifa mem­bers? That part of this plan still needs to be clar­i­fied:

    ...
    For­mer Cana­di­an Armed Forces reservist Patrik Jor­dan Math­ews also video­taped him­self advo­cat­ing for killing peo­ple, poi­son­ing water sup­plies and derail­ing trains, a pros­e­cu­tor wrote in urg­ing a judge in Mary­land to keep Math­ews and two oth­er mem­bers of The Base detained in fed­er­al cus­tody.

    But the 27-year-old Cana­di­an nation­al didn’t know inves­ti­ga­tors were watch­ing and lis­ten­ing when he and two oth­er group mem­bers talked about attend­ing the Rich­mond ral­ly in the days lead­ing up to Monday’s event, which attract­ed tens of thou­sands of peo­ple and end­ed peace­ful­ly.

    ...

    “And the thing is you’ve got tons of guys who ... should be rad­i­cal­ized enough to know that all you got­ta do is start mak­ing things go wrong and if Vir­ginia can spi­ral out to (exple­tive) full blown civ­il war,” he said.

    Math­ews and fel­low group mem­ber Bri­an Mark Lem­ley Jr., 33, of Elk­ton, Mary­land, dis­cussed the plan­ning of vio­lence at the Rich­mond ral­ly, accord­ing to pros­e­cu­tors. Lem­ley talked about using a ther­mal imag­ing scope affixed to his rifle to ambush unsus­pect­ing civil­ians and police offi­cers, pros­e­cu­tors said.

    “I need to claim my first vic­tim,” Lem­ley said on Dec. 23, accord­ing to Tuesday’s deten­tion memo.

    “We could essen­tial­ly like be lit­er­al­ly hunt­ing peo­ple,” Math­ews said, accord­ing to pros­e­cu­tors. “You could pro­vide over­watch while I get close to do what needs to be done to cer­tain things.”

    Lem­ley talked about ambush­ing a police offi­cer to steal the officer’s weapons and tac­ti­cal gear, say­ing, “If there’s like a PoPo cruis­er parked on the street and he doesn’t have back­up, I can exe­cute him at a whim and just take his stuff,” accord­ing to pros­e­cu­tors.

    ...

    They packed con­tain­ers with food and sup­plies before Math­ews remarked about need­ing to bring a gas mask, inves­ti­ga­tors said. Lem­ley also said he thought they’d have food to last between three and five months and that it “might be enough til the war is over,” accord­ing to the fil­ing.

    Lem­ley had also dis­cussed load­ing the truck “for the war,” the doc­u­ments said. Author­i­ties said Lem­ley had also bought a 4‑foot (1‑meter) met­al anten­na to attach to his truck to get a bet­ter radio sig­nal to com­mu­ni­cate after any Vir­ginia con­fronta­tions.
    ...

    And while two out of the three mem­bers of this ter­ror­ist cell already had mil­i­tary train­ing, the third one with­out mil­i­tary train­ing repeat­ed­ly expressed a desire to trav­el to Ukraine and pre­sum­ably gain com­bat expe­ri­ence by join­ing one of the neo-Nazis mili­tias:

    ...
    Math­ews, who was a com­bat engi­neer in the Cana­di­an Army Reserve, ille­gal­ly crossed the U.S. bor­der near Min­neso­ta in August after report­ing by the Win­nipeg Free Press led to his iden­ti­fi­ca­tion as a mem­ber of The Base.

    Inves­ti­ga­tors believe Bil­brough and Lem­ley, who was a “cav­al­ry scout” in the U.S. Army, drove from Mary­land to Michi­gan to pick up Math­ews and bring him to the Mid-Atlantic region, author­i­ties said.

    ...

    Bil­brough was arrest­ed in Mary­land. Pros­e­cu­tors say Bil­brough has repeat­ed­ly expressed an inter­est in trav­el­ing to Ukraine to fight along­side “nation­al­ists” for sev­er­al months.
    ...

    Ok, now here’s an arti­cle that describes the arrest of three Base mem­bers in Geor­gia over their planned mur­der of an Antifa cou­ple. The arti­cle men­tions how The Base appears to have been found­ed in July of 2018 for the pur­pose of recruit­ing racists for a “vio­lent insur­gency” against minori­ties and the US gov­ern­ment. The group com­mu­ni­cates over an encrypt­ed app, where mem­bers dis­cuss their plans of mount­ing a ter­ror­ist cam­paign using three-man “Trou­ble Trio” cells. The arti­cle also men­tions plans for cre­at­ing para­mil­i­tary train­ing camps and men­tions how Lem­ley and Math­ews built their own ful­ly-auto­mat­ic assault rifle. But they don’t appear to be plan­ning ter­ror attacks that direct­ly get attrib­uted to the group. Instead, group lead­ers encour­age mem­bers to remain covert and split the group into region­al chap­ters for secu­ri­ty and fos­tered an amount of auton­o­my in order to have “plau­si­ble deni­a­bil­i­ty” for its actions, accord­ing to pros­e­cu­tors. But the lead­ers still encour­age mem­bers to com­mit ter­ror­ist acts even if they don’t feel like all the con­di­tions for a “rev­o­lu­tion” cur­rent­ly exist. The way they describe it, the ter­ror­ism will cre­ate those rev­o­lu­tion­ary con­di­tions:

    Rome News-Tri­bune

    UPDATE: Affi­davit links for­mer Cana­di­an army extrem­ist to local white nation­al­ist group, tar­get of mur­der plot was Bar­tow Coun­ty cou­ple

    By John Bai­ley
    Jan 17, 2020

    A for­mer Cana­di­an mil­i­tary engi­neer who had dis­ap­peared after reports came out of his neo-Nazi con­nec­tions made trips to Sil­ver Creek to meet and train with oth­er mem­bers of a white nation­al­ist gang.

    Patrik Jor­dan Math­ews had entered the U.S. ille­gal­ly and, accord­ing to an affi­davit unsealed on Fri­day, had been par­tic­i­pat­ing in para­mil­i­tary train­ing with oth­er mem­bers of The Base.

    Jor­dan, along with three oth­er mem­bers of the group, were arrest­ed in Mary­land on Thurs­day. A day ear­li­er, three North Geor­gia men who were also report­ed­ly involved in the same gang were picked up here.

    Luke Austin Lane, 22, of 550 John Ingram Road in Sil­ver Creek; Michael Hel­ter­brand, 25, of Dal­ton; and Jacob Kader­li, 19, of Dac­u­la, were arrest­ed on charges of crim­i­nal attempt to com­mit mur­der and par­tic­i­pat­ing in a crim­i­nal gang.

    Accord­ing to the court doc­u­ment:

    The plan was to kill what the group iden­ti­fied as two high-rank­ing Antifa mem­bers who are mar­ried and live in Bar­tow Coun­ty. The cou­ple had an affil­i­a­tion with a group called the Atlanta Antifacists and were cho­sen because the cou­ple had no known con­nec­tion to The Base gang.

    The Base and its ter­ror­ist ide­ol­o­gy is appar­ent­ly what brought the three Geor­gia men in con­tact with Math­ews as well as oth­ers.

    The affi­davit describes The Base as a “white racial­ly moti­vat­ed vio­lent extrem­ist group.” It says those arrest­ed plot­ted to incite a race war and then estab­lish a “white eth­no-state.” The group was found­ed in July 2018 to orga­nize and recruit racists for a “vio­lent insur­gency” against the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment as well as non-white groups.

    Con­ver­sa­tions on a mem­bers-only encrypt­ed mes­sen­ger appli­ca­tion describe plans of mount­ing a ter­ror­ist cam­paign that asked mem­bers to form three-man “Trou­ble Trio” cells.

    Mem­bers of the group met online in encrypt­ed chat rooms to dis­cuss recruit­ment and plan vio­lent acts against minori­ties and rival groups — in this case, Antifa. They also worked out plans to estab­lish and par­tic­i­pate in para­mil­i­tary train­ing camps.

    Group mem­bers used the encrypt­ed chat rooms to dis­cuss how they should react if police showed up with war­rants, often stat­ing they’d not be tak­en alive. They also voiced sup­port for a man who mur­dered 11 peo­ple in a mass shoot­ing at Tree of Life syn­a­gogue in Pitts­burgh, Penn­syl­va­nia, in 2018.

    Lead­ers of the group cau­tioned mem­bers to be covert and pro­mot­ed ter­ror­ist strikes.

    “No need to wait until all con­di­tions for rev­o­lu­tion exist — guer­ril­la insur­rec­tion can cre­ate them. Insur­gency begins as a ter­ror­ist cam­paign,” read one post, which was accom­pa­nied by an image of a armed per­son watch­ing an explo­sion.

    The gang orga­nized into region­al chap­ters for secu­ri­ty and fos­tered an amount of auton­o­my in order to have “plau­si­ble deni­a­bil­i­ty” for its actions, the affi­davit stat­ed.

    Pre­vi­ous­ly post­ed on Jan. 16:

    A Sil­ver Creek man linked to the white nation­al­ist ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion The Base was arrest­ed the day before three men from the same group were tak­en into cus­tody by the FBI in Mary­land.

    Accord­ing to arrest war­rants obtained from the Floyd Coun­ty Jail, Luke Austin Lane, 22, of 550 John Ingram Road in Sil­ver Creek, was arrest­ed Wednes­day by the Floyd Coun­ty Police Depart­ment on charges of con­spir­a­cy to com­mit mur­der and par­tic­i­pa­tion in a crim­i­nal gang.

    The war­rant for crim­i­nal gang par­tic­i­pa­tion stat­ed Lane was asso­ci­at­ed with The Base when he con­spired to com­mit mur­der between Aug. 2, 2019, and Jan. 14.

    Two oth­er North Geor­gia men were arrest­ed for their part in the plot.

    Michael Hel­ter­brand, 25, of Dal­ton, and Jacob Kader­li, 19, of Dac­u­la, were also arrest­ed.

    Hel­ter­brand was in the Whit­field Coun­ty Jail with a hold on him for Floyd Coun­ty. Kader­li was trans­ferred Thurs­day to Floyd Coun­ty from the Gwin­nett Coun­ty Jail.

    ...

    The Anti-Defama­tion League said mem­bers of The Base and oth­er white suprema­cist groups have fre­quent­ly post­ed online mes­sages advo­cat­ing for “accel­er­a­tionism,” a fringe phi­los­o­phy in which far-right extrem­ists “have assigned to their desire to has­ten the col­lapse of soci­ety as we know it.”

    “The term is wide­ly used by those on the fringes of the move­ment, who employ it open­ly and enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly on main­stream plat­forms, as well as in the shad­ows of pri­vate, encrypt­ed chat rooms,” the ADL says.

    The arrest appears to be in con­cert with the arrest of three oth­er men in Mary­land — includ­ing a for­mer Cana­di­an Armed Forces reservist who was in the coun­try ille­gal­ly, Patrik Jor­dan Math­ews. In addi­tion, Math­ews had report­ed­ly made trips to Geor­gia to train with mem­bers of the group, the New York Times report­ed.

    Math­ews and two oth­er men who are mem­bers of The Base were arrest­ed on fed­er­al charges in a crim­i­nal com­plaint unsealed in Mary­land, accord­ing to a Jus­tice Depart­ment news release.

    Tuesday’s com­plaint charges Math­ews, 27, and Bri­an Mark Lem­ley Jr., 33, of Elk­ton, Mary­land, with trans­port­ing a firearm and ammu­ni­tion with intent to com­mit a felony. William Garfield Bil­brough IV, 19, of Den­ton, Mary­land, is charged with “ trans­port­ing and har­bor­ing aliens.”

    The three men were believed to be plan­ning to attend the pro-gun ral­ly planned for Mon­day in Rich­mond, accord­ing to a law enforce­ment offi­cial who spoke to The Asso­ci­at­ed Press on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to dis­cuss an active inves­ti­ga­tion.

    In encrypt­ed chat rooms, mem­bers of The Base have dis­cussed com­mit­ting acts of vio­lence against blacks and Jews, ways to make impro­vised explo­sive devices, their mil­i­tary-style train­ing camps and their desire to cre­ate a white “eth­no-state,” accord­ing to an FBI agent’s affi­davit.

    Math­ews and Lem­ley were arrest­ed in Delaware and Bil­brough was arrest­ed in Mary­land, accord­ing to Mar­cia Mur­phy, a spokes­woman for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Mary­land. All three men were mak­ing ini­tial court appear­ances Thurs­day after­noon in Green­belt, Mary­land.

    ...

    U.S. and Cana­di­an author­i­ties had been search­ing for Math­ews after his truck was found in Sep­tem­ber near the bor­der between the two coun­tries. He was last seen by fam­i­ly mem­bers in Beause­jour, north­east of Win­nipeg, on Aug. 24, accord­ing to the Roy­al Cana­di­an Mount­ed Police.

    The Cana­di­an military’s intel­li­gence unit was inves­ti­gat­ing Math­ews for “pos­si­ble racist extrem­ist activ­i­ties” for sev­er­al months, accord­ing to the Cana­di­an Depart­ment of Nation­al Defense.

    Author­i­ties say Lem­ley and Math­ews built an assault rifle using sev­er­al parts, includ­ing an upper-receiv­er that Lem­ley had ordered and shipped to a Mary­land home. In Decem­ber, the three men gath­ered at an apart­ment that Lem­ley and Math­ews rent­ed in Delaware, where they dis­cussed The Base and its activ­i­ties and mem­bers, passed around the assault file and tried to make the drug DMT, a hal­lu­cino­gen, accord­ing to court papers.

    A few days lat­er, Lem­ley and Math­ews bought 150 rounds of ammu­ni­tion and paper shoot­ing tar­gets and Lem­ley was spot­ted by an FBI agent at a gun range in Mary­land. Court papers say fed­er­al agents heard the gun fir­ing in rapid suc­ces­sion and author­i­ties allege that Lem­ley lat­er told Math­ews: “Oh oops, it looks like I acci­den­tal­ly made a machine gun.”

    Fed­er­al agents appeared to be track­ing the men’s move­ments and set up a sta­tion­ary cam­era near the gun range, which cap­tured video of Math­ews shoot­ing the gun there on Jan. 5. Court doc­u­ments say Lem­ley had also ordered 1,500 rounds of ammu­ni­tion and he and Math­ews vis­it­ed the gun range as recent­ly as Sat­ur­day.

    Lem­ley also is charged with trans­port­ing a machine gun and “dis­pos­ing of a firearm and ammu­ni­tion to an alien unlaw­ful­ly present in the Unit­ed States.”

    ———–

    “UPDATE: Affi­davit links for­mer Cana­di­an army extrem­ist to local white nation­al­ist group, tar­get of mur­der plot was Bar­tow Coun­ty cou­ple” by John Bai­ley; Rome News-Tri­bune; 01/17/2020

    “The affi­davit describes The Base as a “white racial­ly moti­vat­ed vio­lent extrem­ist group.” It says those arrest­ed plot­ted to incite a race war and then estab­lish a “white eth­no-state.” The group was found­ed in July 2018 to orga­nize and recruit racists for a “vio­lent insur­gency” against the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment as well as non-white groups.

    The Base was found­ed in July of 2018 and here we are in Jan­u­ary of 2020 with the arrest of mul­ti­ple groups active­ly plan­ning vio­lent attacks. In the case of the Vir­ginia gun ral­ly the intend­ed vic­tims were going to be ran­dom­ly select­ed, but with the mem­bers arrest­ed in Geor­gia the attacks were specif­i­cal­ly tar­get­ing Antifa mem­bers:

    ...
    Luke Austin Lane, 22, of 550 John Ingram Road in Sil­ver Creek; Michael Hel­ter­brand, 25, of Dal­ton; and Jacob Kader­li, 19, of Dac­u­la, were arrest­ed on charges of crim­i­nal attempt to com­mit mur­der and par­tic­i­pat­ing in a crim­i­nal gang.

    Accord­ing to the court doc­u­ment:

    The plan was to kill what the group iden­ti­fied as two high-rank­ing Antifa mem­bers who are mar­ried and live in Bar­tow Coun­ty. The cou­ple had an affil­i­a­tion with a group called the Atlanta Antifacists and were cho­sen because the cou­ple had no known con­nec­tion to The Base gang.

    The Base and its ter­ror­ist ide­ol­o­gy is appar­ent­ly what brought the three Geor­gia men in con­tact with Math­ews as well as oth­ers.
    ...

    And the arrest of these two groups of three mem­bers appears to be a reflec­tion of struc­ture of this group, where mem­bers are com­mu­ni­cate over encrypt­ed apps but are asked to form “Trou­ble Trios” for car­ry­ing out actu­al ter­ror­ism, which helps the group main­tain “plau­si­ble deni­a­bil­i­ty”:

    ...
    Con­ver­sa­tions on a mem­bers-only encrypt­ed mes­sen­ger appli­ca­tion describe plans of mount­ing a ter­ror­ist cam­paign that asked mem­bers to form three-man “Trou­ble Trio” cells.

    Mem­bers of the group met online in encrypt­ed chat rooms to dis­cuss recruit­ment and plan vio­lent acts against minori­ties and rival groups — in this case, Antifa. They also worked out plans to estab­lish and par­tic­i­pate in para­mil­i­tary train­ing camps.

    Group mem­bers used the encrypt­ed chat rooms to dis­cuss how they should react if police showed up with war­rants, often stat­ing they’d not be tak­en alive. They also voiced sup­port for a man who mur­dered 11 peo­ple in a mass shoot­ing at Tree of Life syn­a­gogue in Pitts­burgh, Penn­syl­va­nia, in 2018.

    Lead­ers of the group cau­tioned mem­bers to be covert and pro­mot­ed ter­ror­ist strikes.

    “No need to wait until all con­di­tions for rev­o­lu­tion exist — guer­ril­la insur­rec­tion can cre­ate them. Insur­gency begins as a ter­ror­ist cam­paign,” read one post, which was accom­pa­nied by an image of a armed per­son watch­ing an explo­sion.

    The gang orga­nized into region­al chap­ters for secu­ri­ty and fos­tered an amount of auton­o­my in order to have “plau­si­ble deni­a­bil­i­ty” for its actions, the affi­davit stat­ed.
    ...

    And at least in the case of the “Trou­ble Trios” tar­get­ing the Vir­ginia gun ral­ly, they had the kind of mil­i­tary train­ing that left them capa­ble of build­ing impro­vised explo­sive devices and ful­ly auto­mat­ic machine guns:

    ...
    In encrypt­ed chat rooms, mem­bers of The Base have dis­cussed com­mit­ting acts of vio­lence against blacks and Jews, ways to make impro­vised explo­sive devices, their mil­i­tary-style train­ing camps and their desire to cre­ate a white “eth­no-state,” accord­ing to an FBI agent’s affi­davit.

    ...

    Author­i­ties say Lem­ley and Math­ews built an assault rifle using sev­er­al parts, includ­ing an upper-receiv­er that Lem­ley had ordered and shipped to a Mary­land home. In Decem­ber, the three men gath­ered at an apart­ment that Lem­ley and Math­ews rent­ed in Delaware, where they dis­cussed The Base and its activ­i­ties and mem­bers, passed around the assault file and tried to make the drug DMT, a hal­lu­cino­gen, accord­ing to court papers.

    A few days lat­er, Lem­ley and Math­ews bought 150 rounds of ammu­ni­tion and paper shoot­ing tar­gets and Lem­ley was spot­ted by an FBI agent at a gun range in Mary­land. Court papers say fed­er­al agents heard the gun fir­ing in rapid suc­ces­sion and author­i­ties allege that Lem­ley lat­er told Math­ews: “Oh oops, it looks like I acci­den­tal­ly made a machine gun.”

    Fed­er­al agents appeared to be track­ing the men’s move­ments and set up a sta­tion­ary cam­era near the gun range, which cap­tured video of Math­ews shoot­ing the gun there on Jan. 5. Court doc­u­ments say Lem­ley had also ordered 1,500 rounds of ammu­ni­tion and he and Math­ews vis­it­ed the gun range as recent­ly as Sat­ur­day.
    ...

    So as we can see, Atom­waf­fen real­ly has com­pe­ti­tion. Because The Base sure sounds A LOT like Atom­waf­fen. You have to won­der how much over­lap there is between the groups’ mem­ber­ship. Giv­en the com­part­men­tal­ized nature of the mem­ber­ship and the fact that the groups are both active­ly recruit­ing the most vio­lence-prone Nazis they can find.

    It also worth not­ing that since Math­ews entered the US ille­gal­ly he’s tech­ni­cal­ly an “ille­gal immi­grant,” arguably mak­ing him the most dan­ger­ous ille­gal alien in the US. It’s more than a lit­tle iron­ic giv­en the far right fix­a­tion on the dan­gers of ille­gal immi­gra­tion. It’s going to be grim­ly inter­est­ing to see how much atten­tion Fox News pays to this par­tic­u­lar sto­ry about an extreme­ly dan­ger­ous ille­gal immi­grant ter­ror­ist.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | January 22, 2020, 2:52 pm
  14. As fears of the spread of the coro­n­avirus inside pris­ons con­tin­ues to grow, the release of the low­est risk pris­on­ers is an obvi­ous solu­tion an an long-over­due solu­tion in many cas­es giv­en the gross over-incar­cer­a­tion of Amer­i­can soci­ety. Release of non-vio­lent pris­on­ers who prob­a­bly should­n’t have ever been in prison in the first could be one of the few pos­i­tive out­comes of the pan­dem­ic. With that in mind, here’s a pair of arti­cles about the release of a pris­on­er in response to the virus who is one of the last peo­ple on the plan­et who should be released from prison. That would be the release of Augus­tus Sol Invic­tus, the Satanist neo-Nazi who has the dis­tinc­tion of writ­ing the first draft of the so-called “Char­lottesville State­ment” for the 2017 “Unite the Right” ral­ly.

    First, recall how Invic­tus was arrest­ed in Jan­u­ary of this year for kid­nap­ping his wife at gun­point and forced her to dri­ve to Flori­da with him. Well, he’s been sit­ting in prison since his arrest. And despite being turned down in his pri­or attempts to be released on bail — with the judge call­ing him a flight risk and threat to pub­lic safe­ty — the judge had a sig­nif­i­cant change of heart in light of the coro­n­avirus out­break. Now he’s out and about, with no require­ments that he wear an ankle mon­i­tor or keep in con­tact with law enforce­ment. He only needs to return to York Coun­ty, SC, for court appear­ances. That’s it. Oth­er­wise he’s allowed to wan­der around frat­er­nize with his Atom­waf­fen Nazi ter­ror­ist bud­dies.

    Not that jail pre­vent­ed him from com­mu­ni­cat­ing with Atom­waf­fen. It turns out Invic­tus was reg­u­lar­ly updat­ing his web­site while in jail. He even post­ed images of his court hear­ings. This is a good time to recall how neo-Nazis — in par­tic­u­lar the “accel­er­a­tionist” neo-Nazis like Atom­waf­fen — have already been found to be excit­ed about using COVID-19 as a means of accel­er­at­ing the col­lapse of soci­ety. And one of the lead­ers of the “accel­er­a­tionist” Nazis — some­one who open­ly advo­cates for an armed Nazi insur­rec­tion — was allowed to com­mu­ni­cate with his fel­low accel­er­a­tionists from jail and has now been released:

    The Infor­mant

    South Car­oli­na shock
    A white South Car­oli­na judge has ordered white nation­al­ist Augus­tus Invic­tus to be released from jail.

    Nick R. Mar­tin
    Apr 1, 2020

    In a stun­ning rever­sal, a white South Car­oli­na judge has ordered white nation­al­ist Augus­tus Sol Invic­tus to be freed from jail as soon as today.

    Six­teenth Cir­cuit Court Judge Daniel Hall (pic­tured above) pre­vi­ous­ly ordered Invic­tus to be held behind bars while await­ing tri­al, say­ing the racist fig­ure who has ties to neo-Nazi groups like Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion posed a dan­ger to the com­mu­ni­ty. But Hall appar­ent­ly had a change of heart on Tues­day, issu­ing a writ­ten order say­ing Invic­tus would be allowed to go free if he post­ed a $10,000 bond.

    The order is set to go into effect at noon ET today.

    Invic­tus is charged with domes­tic vio­lence and using a gun in com­mis­sion of a crime. He alleged­ly choked his wife and held a gun to her head dur­ing a domes­tic dis­pute in Decem­ber. He was also orig­i­nal­ly charged with kid­nap­ping, but Hall threw out that count a few weeks ago. Invic­tus has plead­ed not guilty to the remain­ing charges.

    Dur­ing a hear­ing in Feb­ru­ary, his wife, Anna Invic­tus, read a state­ment mak­ing it clear she was afraid of what he might do if released.

    “I implore you, I beg you, I plead with you, your hon­or, to keep him safe­ly behind bars so me and my chil­dren and the oth­ers who have helped me escape him do not fear for our lives,” she said. “Augus­tus is not the stereo­typ­i­cal drunk­en wife beat­er. His cal­cu­lat­ed, vio­lent, manip­u­la­tive inten­tions deserve spe­cial con­sid­er­a­tion.”

    She also men­tioned that her hus­band had stud­ied the late racist cult leader Charles Man­son, whose fol­low­ers mur­dered sev­er­al peo­ple in the 1960s. Man­son is looked up to by a sub­set of neo-Nazis who advo­cate for mass shoot­ings and ter­ror attacks to bring about the col­lapse of mod­ern civ­i­liza­tion.

    At the time of the hear­ing, the judge sided with the wife’s pleas and kept Augus­tus Invic­tus behind bars.

    But last week, with the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic grip­ping the world, numer­ous defen­dants in York and Union coun­ties in South Car­oli­na were giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to ask for release from cus­tody yet again. Invic­tus and his attor­ney latched onto the chance.

    In the order, Hall didn’t explain the rea­sons for his rever­sal or even men­tion the coro­n­avirus. He only repeat­ed the facts of the case and said he con­sid­ered those as well as the law when mak­ing his deci­sion.

    Hall is a for­mer defense attor­ney who has drawn unusu­al­ly pub­lic crit­i­cism from local law enforce­ment in South Car­oli­na for his lenien­cy in crim­i­nal cas­es.

    In 2017, the NBC-affil­i­at­ed TV sta­tion in near­by Char­lotte, North Car­oli­na, aired a report look­ing at the judge’s record and said it “uncov­ered a pat­tern that has many in our area dis­turbed and call­ing for change.”

    The sta­tion talked to Union Coun­ty Sher­iff David Tay­lor, who was open­ly angry about some of the lenient sen­tences Hall had hand­ed down.

    “The inmates in my jail know when he’s com­ing and they line up to plead guilty in front of him because they know he’s going to give light sen­tences,” Tay­lor told the sta­tion.

    The report men­tioned that South Car­oli­na is one of only two states where the leg­is­la­ture, not the pub­lic, elects judges. A 2015 report by the Rock Hill Her­ald not­ed that Hall ran for a judge­ship three times pre­vi­ous­ly and lost before final­ly win­ning a seat on the bench in 2014.

    Hall’s order on Tues­day requires Invic­tus to have no con­tact with his wife and to imme­di­ate­ly leave York Coun­ty upon his release.

    ...

    The judge did not order Invic­tus to wear an ankle mon­i­tor or keep in con­tact with law enforce­ment. Hall only required Invic­tus to return to York Coun­ty for court appear­ances.

    ———–

    “South Car­oli­na shock” by Nick R. Mar­tin; The Infor­mant; 04/01/2020

    The judge did not order Invic­tus to wear an ankle mon­i­tor or keep in con­tact with law enforce­ment. Hall only required Invic­tus to return to York Coun­ty for court appear­ances.”

    Not even an ankle mon­i­tor. Just let him wan­der around and meet up with his Atom­waf­fen friends so they can talk about their shared wor­ship of Charles Man­son and plot mass death and destruc­tion and trust that he’ll show up again for his court hear­ing. That’s what just hap­pened:

    ...
    Six­teenth Cir­cuit Court Judge Daniel Hall (pic­tured above) pre­vi­ous­ly ordered Invic­tus to be held behind bars while await­ing tri­al, say­ing the racist fig­ure who has ties to neo-Nazi groups like Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion posed a dan­ger to the com­mu­ni­ty. But Hall appar­ent­ly had a change of heart on Tues­day, issu­ing a writ­ten order say­ing Invic­tus would be allowed to go free if he post­ed a $10,000 bond.

    ...

    “I implore you, I beg you, I plead with you, your hon­or, to keep him safe­ly behind bars so me and my chil­dren and the oth­ers who have helped me escape him do not fear for our lives,” she said. “Augus­tus is not the stereo­typ­i­cal drunk­en wife beat­er. His cal­cu­lat­ed, vio­lent, manip­u­la­tive inten­tions deserve spe­cial con­sid­er­a­tion.”

    She also men­tioned that her hus­band had stud­ied the late racist cult leader Charles Man­son, whose fol­low­ers mur­dered sev­er­al peo­ple in the 1960s. Man­son is looked up to by a sub­set of neo-Nazis who advo­cate for mass shoot­ings and ter­ror attacks to bring about the col­lapse of mod­ern civ­i­liza­tion.

    ...

    In the order, Hall didn’t explain the rea­sons for his rever­sal or even men­tion the coro­n­avirus. He only repeat­ed the facts of the case and said he con­sid­ered those as well as the law when mak­ing his deci­sion.
    ...

    But as the fol­low­ing arti­cle describes, it’s not like Invic­tus was­n’t able to com­mu­ni­cate with his fel­low Nazis while he was sit­ting in jail. He was lit­er­al­ly doc­u­ment­ing his court case on his own web­site. Accord­ing to 16th Cir­cuit Solic­i­tor Jen­ny Desch when she was argu­ing against his release, Invic­tus has been mak­ing social media post­ings about his treat­ment in jail and he’s been try­ing to cir­cum­vent jail offi­cials’ abil­i­ty to see the mes­sages he’s been send­ing out to “fol­low­ers” by claim­ing the com­mu­ni­ca­tions were attor­ney-client priv­i­lege. So he has­n’t just been open­ly talk­ing to his fol­low­ers on his web­site and social media post­ings. He’s also appar­ent­ly been try­ing to send secret mes­sages via his lawyer, which is a pret­ty dead­ly sit­u­a­tion as we’ve seen with cas­es like Matthew Hale send­ing mes­sages to his Nazi fol­low­ers to kill a judge’s fam­i­ly. But now that’s he’s been released there’s no more need for these sur­rep­ti­tious forms of com­mu­ni­ca­tion with his Nazi fol­low­ers. He can just go talk them in per­son:

    The Her­ald

    Will coro­n­avirus threat mean bail for white nation­al­ist in York Coun­ty SC jail?

    BY ANDREW DYS
    MARCH 27, 2020 02:11 PM, UPDATED APRIL 01, 2020 08:25 AM

    The only court hear­ings in York Coun­ty, S.C., the past two weeks amid the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic have involved inmates in jail await­ing tri­al.

    ...

    Invic­tus, 36, is a for­mer U.S. Sen­ate can­di­date with ties to the alt-right and white nation­al­ist move­ment and the dead­ly Char­lottesville ral­ly of 2017.

    South Car­oli­na Cir­cuit Court Judge Dan Hall lis­tened to argu­ments, said he would take the issue under advise­ment, and issue a writ­ten order next week.

    Hall also is the judge who said in Feb­ru­ary that Invic­tus was a threat to pub­lic safe­ty and a flight risk. Hall denied bond at that hear­ing.

    But that was before coro­n­avirus con­cerns and tri­als that have been post­poned because of the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic.

    Invic­tus, a lawyer, is a for­mer U.S.. sen­ate can­di­date from Flori­da who police have said in court has made online post­ings about vio­lence and over­throw­ing Amer­i­can insti­tu­tions. Invic­tus’ Twit­ter social media page states he is a can­di­date for pres­i­dent.

    Invic­tus has issued social media post­ings about his treat­ment by author­i­ties since being jailed in York Coun­ty for more than two months, 16th Cir­cuit Solic­i­tor Jen­ny Desch said in court Fri­day. Invic­tus also has tried to cir­cum­vent jail offi­cials abil­i­ty to see cor­re­spon­dence that Invic­tus has sent out to “fol­low­ers” of his pol­i­tics by claim­ing the com­mu­ni­ca­tions were attor­ney-client priv­i­lege, Desch said.

    “The defen­dant con­tin­ues to pub­lish infor­ma­tion from jail,” Desch said. “He is using this oppor­tu­ni­ty to spread infor­ma­tion. The vic­tim is in fear of pres­sure from the out­side.”

    Invic­tus has a dis­re­gard for peo­ple involved in the case and remains dan­ger­ous, Desch said.

    Invic­tus was arrest­ed In Flori­da on Dec. 30 on charges that includ­ed kid­nap­ping based on a Dec. 12 inci­dent in Rock Hill. Invic­tus was extra­dit­ed back to South Car­oli­na where he has been jailed with­out bond. The kid­nap­ping charge was dis­missed last month by a dif­fer­ent judge.

    Desch said in court Fri­day Invic­tus choked and held a gun to his wife’s head dur­ing the Dec. 12 inci­dent. The Her­ald is not nam­ing the wife.

    Desch said in court Invic­tus forced his wife to dri­ve to Flori­da after she was beat­en. Invic­tus still had the gun dur­ing the dri­ve, accord­ing to pros­e­cu­tors.

    Invic­tus said after his Decem­ber arrest in a pre­vi­ous court hear­ing he is inno­cent and will be cleared of all charges.

    His lawyer, 16th Cir­cuit assis­tant pub­lic defend­er Jeff Zuschke, said in court Fri­day that Invic­tus does oper­ate an “alt-right news site” and has updat­ed that site while in jail.

    “He does have some fol­low­ers,” Zuschke said in court. “He has pub­lished his views in a three-part series.”

    Although the name of the web site was not named in court, the web site https://therevolutionaryconservative.com has pub­lished InvIn­vic­tus’ state­ments while jailed. The site also has pub­lished pho­tos of pre­vi­ous Invic­tus court hear­ings.

    Zuschke said Invic­tus has rights as an Amer­i­can cit­i­zen who has not been con­vict­ed of any crime.

    Each case over the past two weeks that has been heard in York Coun­ty court was con­sid­ered an emer­gency hear­ing due to fears that a high num­ber of jail inmates could be dan­ger­ous if the virus and Covid-19 infec­tions hits the jail pop­u­la­tion, court offi­cials told The Her­ald ear­li­er this week.

    There have been no coro­n­avirus cas­es report­ed at the jail, York Coun­ty offi­cials said.

    Zuschke said in court Fri­day he asked for the hear­ing because of coro­n­avirus con­cerns at the jail.

    “He deserves a bond,” Zuschke said. ‘He denies these charges and says he is inno­cent and wants a tri­al to show it.”

    Invicv­tus was present in court Fri­day but did not speak oth­er than to iden­ti­fy a time­line for the judge about when he was arrest­ed in Decem­ber in Flori­da. He has been in jail in York Coun­ty since ear­ly Jan­u­ary.

    Invic­tus faces as much as 20 years in prison if con­vict­ed of the domes­tic vio­lence charge and five years on the gun charge under South Car­oli­na law.

    No tri­al date has been set because of coro­n­avirus effects on court sched­ul­ing, court tes­ti­mo­ny showed Fri­day.

    ‘UNITE THE RIGHT’ RALLY SPEAKER

    Invic­tus spoke at the August 2017 Unite the Right ral­ly in Char­lottesville, Va. One woman was killed and sev­er­al peo­ple were hurt when James Fields rammed his car into a crowd.

    Invic­tus has acknowl­edged that he is friends with white suprema­cists and, though he denied his affil­i­a­tion then, was praised and cred­it­ed by white nation­al­ist leader Richard Spencer as writ­ing the first draft of the Char­lottesville state­ment, accord­ing to the Mia­mi Her­ald.

    Invic­tus ran for Sen­ate in Flori­da in 2016 as a lib­er­tar­i­an.

    Now an Orlan­do, Fla.-area attor­ney, Invic­tus runs The Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Con­ser­v­a­tive, a web­site mar­ket­ed as an alter­na­tive to con­ser­v­a­tive media that “play the vic­tim” and calls for a vio­lent upris­ing, the Mia­mi Her­ald report­ed.

    ...

    ———–

    “Will coro­n­avirus threat mean bail for white nation­al­ist in York Coun­ty SC jail?” by ANDREW DYS; The Her­ald; 03/27/2020

    “Invic­tus has issued social media post­ings about his treat­ment by author­i­ties since being jailed in York Coun­ty for more than two months, 16th Cir­cuit Solic­i­tor Jen­ny Desch said in court Fri­day. Invic­tus also has tried to cir­cum­vent jail offi­cials abil­i­ty to see cor­re­spon­dence that Invic­tus has sent out to “fol­low­ers” of his pol­i­tics by claim­ing the com­mu­ni­ca­tions were attor­ney-client priv­i­lege, Desch said.

    Mes­sages were being sent through lawyer his “fol­low­ers” and he tried to keep it secret by claim­ing attor­ney-client priv­i­lege. That’s more than a lit­tle alarm­ing. And note how his attor­ney does­n’t dis­pute that he “does have some fol­low­ers.” that he’s been com­mu­ni­cat­ing with online. On a web­site that advo­cates for a vio­lent Nazi upris­ing:

    ...
    His lawyer, 16th Cir­cuit assis­tant pub­lic defend­er Jeff Zuschke, said in court Fri­day that Invic­tus does oper­ate an “alt-right news site” and has updat­ed that site while in jail.

    “He does have some fol­low­ers,” Zuschke said in court. “He has pub­lished his views in a three-part series.”

    Although the name of the web site was not named in court, the web site https://therevolutionaryconservative.com has pub­lished InvIn­vic­tus’ state­ments while jailed. The site also has pub­lished pho­tos of pre­vi­ous Invic­tus court hear­ings.

    Zuschke said Invic­tus has rights as an Amer­i­can cit­i­zen who has not been con­vict­ed of any crime.

    ...

    Now an Orlan­do, Fla.-area attor­ney, Invic­tus runs The Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Con­ser­v­a­tive, a web­site mar­ket­ed as an alter­na­tive to con­ser­v­a­tive media that “play the vic­tim” and calls for a vio­lent upris­ing, the Mia­mi Her­ald report­ed.
    ...

    And now Augus­tus Sol Invic­tus — the Satan­ic Nazi who authored the orig­i­nal “Unite the Right” state­ment intend­ed to uni­fy the far right right — is back out on the streets and free to net­work with his fel­low Man­son wor­shipers and scheme how they can best exploit the viral pan­dem­ic to accel­er­ate the col­lapse of soci­ety. It was­n’t the best exam­ple of how to do ear­ly pris­on­er releas­es in response to a pan­dem­ic. Per­haps even the worst exam­ple.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | April 9, 2020, 3:06 pm
  15. Here’s an update on the inves­ti­ga­tion into the Oper­a­tion “Lights Out”, the ‘accel­er­a­tionist’ white suprema­cists plot to take down the US elec­tri­cal grid. A plot that was ini­tial­ly planned for 2024 but was going to be moved up in the event of a Trump loss in 2020:

    First, we’re learn­ing that the pre­vi­ous affi­davit that revealed this inves­ti­ga­tion was unsealed by mis­take last week along with a search war­rant appli­ca­tion, so this is a sto­ry that was nev­er intend­ed to be pub­lic. Relat­ed to this is the fact that the indi­vid­u­als under inves­ti­ga­tion haven’t actu­al­ly been charged with any crimes yet. Yep. They’re just walk­ing around.

    We’re learn­ing more about how US author­i­ties learned about the plot. It appar­ent­ly was dis­cov­ered when a Cana­di­an man attempt­ed to cross the US bor­der. When asked about his busi­ness he said he was vis­it­ing the then-17 year old in Ohio. Bor­der agents then dis­cov­ered Nazi and white suprema­cists images on his phone.

    Regard­ing the plot, we’re told that the plan­ning began in fall of 2019, when the then-17-year old involved in the plot intro­duced to more than a dozen peo­ple the idea of sav­ing mon­ey to buy a ranch where they could par­tic­i­pate in mil­i­tary train­ing. The teen want­ed the group to be “oper­a­tional” (capa­ble of vio­lence and activism) by 2024. But it sounds like the plans for “Lights Out” was shared with a small­er group of peo­ple. They were going to form an 18 per­son unit called “The Front” to attack elec­tri­cal sub­sta­tions and the time­line for that plan had already been moved up to the sum­mer of 2020. So the US was poten­tial­ly months away from a major neo-Nazi-cre­at­ed black­out across regions of the US:

    Asso­ci­at­ed Press

    FBI: White suprema­cists plot­ted attack on US pow­er grid

    By AMY FORLITI
    Tues­day Dec 22, 2020 16:00:39 CST

    MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — White suprema­cists plot­ted to attack pow­er sta­tions in the south­east­ern U.S., and an Ohio teenag­er who alleged­ly shared the plan said he want­ed the group to be “oper­a­tional” on a fast-tracked time­line if Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump were to lose his re-elec­tion bid, the FBI alleges in an affi­davit that was mis­tak­en­ly unsealed.

    The teen was in a text group with more than a dozen peo­ple in the fall of 2019 when he intro­duced the idea of sav­ing mon­ey to buy a ranch where they could par­tic­i­pate in mil­i­tant train­ing, accord­ing to the affi­davit, which was filed under seal along with a search war­rant appli­ca­tion in Wisconsin’s East­ern U.S. Dis­trict Court in March. The doc­u­ments were inad­ver­tent­ly unsealed last week before the mis­take was dis­cov­ered and they were quick­ly sealed again.

    The teenag­er want­ed the group to be “oper­a­tional” by the 2024 elec­tion because he believed it was like­ly a Demo­c­rat would win, but “the time­line for being oper­a­tional would accel­er­ate if Pres­i­dent Trump lost the 2020 elec­tion,” accord­ing to the affi­davit. An infor­mant told inves­ti­ga­tors that the teen “def­i­nite­ly want­ed to be oper­a­tional for vio­lence, but also activism.”

    The Ohio teen, who was 17 at the time, also shared plans with a small­er group about a plot to cre­ate a pow­er out­age by shoot­ing rifle rounds into pow­er sta­tions in the south­east­ern U.S. The teen called the plot “Light’s Out” and there were plans to car­ry it out in the sum­mer of 2021, the affi­davit states.

    One group mem­ber, a Texas native who was a Pur­due Uni­ver­si­ty stu­dent at the time, alleged­ly sent the infor­mant a text say­ing “leav­ing the pow­er off would wake peo­ple up to the harsh real­i­ty of life by wreak­ing hav­oc across the nation.”

    The affi­davit iden­ti­fies three peo­ple by name and ref­er­ences oth­ers who were alleged­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ing with or part of the group. The Asso­ci­at­ed Press is not nam­ing any of the indi­vid­u­als because charges have not been pub­licly filed.

    ...

    Fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors in Ohio are tak­ing the lead on the case. Jen­nifer Thorn­ton, a spokes­woman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the South­ern Dis­trict of Ohio, said she couldn’t pro­vide addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion because the inves­ti­ga­tion is ongo­ing, but “we want to empha­size that there is no immi­nent pub­lic safe­ty threat relat­ed to this mat­ter.”

    The affi­davit details an inves­ti­ga­tion into group mem­bers, who alleged­ly share white suprema­cist ide­ol­o­gy. The doc­u­ment out­lines how they com­mu­ni­cat­ed over encrypt­ed mes­sag­ing appli­ca­tions before three of them even­tu­al­ly met up in per­son. They also alleged­ly shared rec­om­mend­ed read­ing on white suprema­cist lit­er­a­ture, required a “uni­form” to sym­bol­ize their com­mit­ment and talked about mak­ing weapons. The affi­davit says the Ohio teen put Nazi flags in his room, but his moth­er told him to take them down.

    Some group mem­bers also indi­cat­ed that they were pre­pared to die for their beliefs. One man from Oshkosh, Wis­con­sin, alleged­ly told the Ohio teen: “I can say with absolute cer­tain­ty that I will die for this effort. I swear it on my life.” The teen replied: “I can say the same,” the court doc­u­ments state.

    Accord­ing to the affi­davit, the Wis­con­sin man also told an under­cov­er FBI employ­ee in Feb­ru­ary that the group was inter­est­ed in tak­ing “direct action” against the sys­tem and said, “If you tru­ly want a fas­cist soci­ety I will put in the effort to work with you but recruit­ment is long and not going to be easy.”

    He then out­lined a “rad­i­cal­iza­tion” process to instill a “rev­o­lu­tion­ary mind­set” which end­ed with recruits prov­ing they are more than just talk. He alleged­ly wrote that if it seemed too tough, “I rec­om­mend leav­ing now, we are extreme­ly seri­ous about our goals and ambi­tions.”

    The affi­davit says the Ohio teen also spoke numer­ous times about cre­at­ing Nazi mil­i­tant cells around the coun­try like those of the neo-Nazi net­work the Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion.

    Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion mem­bers have pro­mot­ed “accel­er­a­tionism,” a fringe phi­los­o­phy espous­ing mass vio­lence to fuel society’s col­lapse. More than a dozen peo­ple linked to the group or an off­shoot called the Feuerkrieg Divi­sion have been charged with seri­ous crimes in recent years.

    This inves­ti­ga­tion appar­ent­ly began after a fourth man, from Cana­da, was stopped while try­ing to enter the U.S. The man told bor­der agents that he was going to vis­it the Ohio teen, whom he had recent­ly met over an encrypt­ed app, accord­ing to the affi­davit. Agents found Nazi and white suprema­cist images on his phone.

    ———–

    “FBI: White suprema­cists plot­ted attack on US pow­er grid” by AMY FORLITI; Asso­ci­at­ed Press; 12/22/2020

    “The Ohio teen, who was 17 at the time, also shared plans with a small­er group about a plot to cre­ate a pow­er out­age by shoot­ing rifle rounds into pow­er sta­tions in the south­east­ern U.S. The teen called the plot “Light’s Out” and there were plans to car­ry it out in the sum­mer of 2021, the affi­davit states.”

    They talked about Oper­a­tion “Light’s Out”, recruit­ed for it, and even met in per­son, with a tar­get date of the sum­mer of 2021. As the fol­low­ing arti­cle describes, they also shared infor­ma­tion about bomb-mak­ing and mil­i­tary oper­a­tions online. And in Feb­ru­ary of 2020, when three of plot­ters met in per­son while under sur­veil­lance, the group was thought to be trans­port­ing parts to build untrace­able assault rifles. So there’s no short­age of crimes to poten­tial­ly charge this group with. And yet, as the fol­low­ing arti­cle describes, none of the plot­ter have actu­al­ly been arrest­ed or charged with crimes. The inves­ti­ga­tion is described as ongo­ing:

    The Dai­ly Beast

    White Suprema­cists Dis­cussed Shoot­ing Up Pow­er Grids, Form­ing ‘Fas­cist Soci­ety’: FBI
    ALARMING

    Arya Hod­jat
    Cheat Sheet/Breaking News Intern

    Alli­son Quinn
    News Edi­tor

    Pub­lished Dec. 22, 2020 11:05PM ET

    A group of white suprema­cists raised alarm bells with the FBI by dis­cussing ways to attack the country’s pow­er grid in the event Pres­i­dent Trump were to lose re-elec­tion, accord­ing to a mis­tak­en­ly unsealed search war­rant affi­davit obtained by the Mil­wau­kee Jour­nal-Sen­tinel.

    The three men—described as a 17-year-old from Ohio, a stu­dent at Pur­due Uni­ver­si­ty, and a Wis­con­sin man—are said to have wound up on the FBI’s radar in late 2019 after a rifle-tot­ing Cana­di­an with “Nazi” and “white pow­er” imagery on his phone was stopped from enter­ing the U.S.

    The Cana­di­an man report­ed­ly pro­ceed­ed to tell U.S. bor­der agents he was try­ing to vis­it the Ohio teenag­er, whom he’d met and been com­mu­ni­cat­ing with over an encrypt­ed app. In light of some of the con­tent on the Canadian’s phone—including a dis­cus­sion about tak­ing out stu­dent loans to facil­i­tate some “off the grid” training—his plans raised red flags with fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tors, who began look­ing into the group with whom he’d been chat­ting.

    It was not imme­di­ate­ly clear if fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tors believed the men were like­ly to car­ry out any of the schemes they dis­cussed. The details laid out in the affi­davit paint a pic­ture of a rag­tag group of men from dif­fer­ent back­grounds fan­ta­siz­ing about out­landish schemes to, as one of them alleged­ly put it, “wreak hav­oc” across the coun­try.

    An infor­mant is said to have tipped inves­ti­ga­tors off to infor­ma­tion about bomb-mak­ing and mil­i­tary oper­a­tions shared by the Ohio teenag­er online. Accord­ing to the infor­mant, the teen had sug­gest­ed a mis­sion he dubbed “Lights Out,” where­in they would form a group of 18 peo­ple called “The Front” and shoot up elec­tri­cal sub­sta­tions.

    The teen’s moth­er is also said to have forced him to take down sev­er­al Nazi flags he had in his room, and the affi­davit described him as talk­ing about cre­at­ing Nazi cells across the coun­try, sim­i­lar to the neo-Nazi Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion.

    A cou­ple months after the group alleged­ly began dis­cussing their “Lights Out” plans, oth­er peo­ple were report­ed­ly recruit­ed on online mes­sag­ing boards, where the rhetoric veered off into the extreme: “Mar­tyr­dom is the path to Val­hal­la,” one of the men under FBI scruti­ny alleged­ly wrote.

    “If you tru­ly want a fas­cist soci­ety I will put in the effort to work with you but recruit­ment is long and not going to be easy,” the man alleged­ly told an infor­mant he believed was a poten­tial recruit.

    In Feb­ru­ary, the Ohio teen is said to have met up with the two oth­er mem­bers of the group while fed­er­al agents sur­veilled their every move. The group was thought to be trans­port­ing parts to build untrace­able assault rifles, and when police stopped their vehi­cle, they spot­ted parts for an AR-15, two mag­a­zines and ammu­ni­tion, and a Nazi flag, accord­ing to the Jour­nal Sen­tinel.

    The teen report­ed­ly got thrown out of his house lat­er that same month and wound up in Ten­nessee. There, police report­ed­ly con­fis­cat­ed an AR-15 part from him when he was arrest­ed for tres­pass­ing at a Home Depot.

    It remains unclear if the group met up again or con­tin­ued to dis­cuss what author­i­ties dubbed “white suprema­cist extrem­ist” plots.

    The search war­rant affi­davit was filed in March, short­ly after the teen’s trip to Ten­nessee.

    The affi­davit was mis­tak­en­ly unsealed ear­li­er this month, and has since been resealed, accord­ing to a spokesper­son for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the East­ern Dis­trict of Wis­con­sin, which includ­ed it in their fil­ing for a search war­rant in the case.

    None of the three men named in the affi­davit have been charged with a crime, and the inves­ti­ga­tion is said to be ongo­ing.

    Jen­nifer Thorn­ton, a spokesper­son for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the South­ern Dis­trict of Ohio, which is over­see­ing the case, told the Jour­nal-Sen­tinel that there was “no immi­nent pub­lic safe­ty threat relat­ed to this mat­ter.”

    The affi­davit list­ed con­spir­a­cy, solic­i­ta­tion to com­mit a vio­lent crime, dis­tri­b­u­tion of infor­ma­tion relat­ing to explo­sives, destruc­tion of an ener­gy facil­i­ty, and pro­vid­ing mate­r­i­al sup­port to ter­ror­ists as poten­tial crimes being inves­ti­gat­ed, the Jour­nal-Sen­tinel wrote.

    ...

    ———-

    “White Suprema­cists Dis­cussed Shoot­ing Up Pow­er Grids, Form­ing ‘Fas­cist Soci­ety’: FBI” by Arya Hod­jat and Alli­son Quinn; The Dai­ly Beast; 12/22/2020

    “An infor­mant is said to have tipped inves­ti­ga­tors off to infor­ma­tion about bomb-mak­ing and mil­i­tary oper­a­tions shared by the Ohio teenag­er online. Accord­ing to the infor­mant, the teen had sug­gest­ed a mis­sion he dubbed “Lights Out,” where­in they would form a group of 18 peo­ple called “The Front” and shoot up elec­tri­cal sub­sta­tions.”

    It’s a plot so inspired by white suprema­cist lit­er­a­ture that even the select­ed num­ber of peo­ple in “The Front” was 18, a neo-Nazi numero­log­i­cal sym­bol.

    But the group has­n’t been plot­ting entire­ly in secret. There’s clear­ly an infor­mant and author­i­ties already con­duct­ed sur­veil­lance on a meet­ing between three of the plot­ters in Feb­ru­ary. And yet no one has been charged yet. The inves­ti­ga­tion is ongo­ing. And when the Ohio teen — who appears to be the dri­ving force behind this — gets kicked out of his house he ends up in Ten­nessee, where he is lat­er arrest­ed tres­pass­ing with an AR15 part. So these guys are free and mov­ing about in the US:

    ...
    In Feb­ru­ary, the Ohio teen is said to have met up with the two oth­er mem­bers of the group while fed­er­al agents sur­veilled their every move. The group was thought to be trans­port­ing parts to build untrace­able assault rifles, and when police stopped their vehi­cle, they spot­ted parts for an AR-15, two mag­a­zines and ammu­ni­tion, and a Nazi flag, accord­ing to the Jour­nal Sen­tinel.

    The teen report­ed­ly got thrown out of his house lat­er that same month and wound up in Ten­nessee. There, police report­ed­ly con­fis­cat­ed an AR-15 part from him when he was arrest­ed for tres­pass­ing at a Home Depot.

    It remains unclear if the group met up again or con­tin­ued to dis­cuss what author­i­ties dubbed “white suprema­cist extrem­ist” plots.

    The search war­rant affi­davit was filed in March, short­ly after the teen’s trip to Ten­nessee.

    The affi­davit was mis­tak­en­ly unsealed ear­li­er this month, and has since been resealed, accord­ing to a spokesper­son for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the East­ern Dis­trict of Wis­con­sin, which includ­ed it in their fil­ing for a search war­rant in the case.

    None of the three men named in the affi­davit have been charged with a crime, and the inves­ti­ga­tion is said to be ongo­ing.

    ...

    The affi­davit list­ed con­spir­a­cy, solic­i­ta­tion to com­mit a vio­lent crime, dis­tri­b­u­tion of infor­ma­tion relat­ing to explo­sives, destruc­tion of an ener­gy facil­i­ty, and pro­vid­ing mate­r­i­al sup­port to ter­ror­ists as poten­tial crimes being inves­ti­gat­ed, the Jour­nal-Sen­tinel wrote.
    ...

    The list of poten­tial crimes includes con­spir­a­cy, solic­i­ta­tion to com­mit a vio­lent crime, dis­tri­b­u­tion of infor­ma­tion relat­ing to explo­sives, destruc­tion of an ener­gy facil­i­ty, and pro­vid­ing mate­r­i­al sup­port to ter­ror­ists. But no actu­al ter­ror­ism charges. It’s a reminder that the US does­n’t actu­al­ly have law cov­er­ing domes­tic ter­ror­ism.

    So we’ll see what, if any, crimes this group is even­tu­al­ly charged with. We’ll also see if the charges are lim­it­ed to the three core plot­ters or if any of the oth­er more than dozen peo­ple involved end up fac­ing charges too. Or maybe not see because it will be too dark after the mas­sive black­outs.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | December 23, 2020, 4:31 pm
  16. Explo­sion in Nashville that dam­aged dozens of build­ings is believed to be an inten­tion­al act

    By Dakin Andone and Hol­lie Sil­ver­man, CNN
    Updat­ed 2:15 PM ET, Fri Decem­ber 25, 2020

    https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/25/us/nashville-explosion/index.html

    Posted by Roberto Maldonado | December 25, 2020, 11:28 am
  17. Here’s a sto­ry out of Aspen, Col­orado, over the week­end that dis­turbing­ly relates to “Oper­a­tion Black Out”, the recent­ly uncov­ered white suprema­cist plot to cause a region­al black­out in the US via simul­ta­ne­ous attacks on the US elec­tri­cal grid’s crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture:

    The nat­ur­al gas infra­struc­ture of Aspen was van­dal­ized over the hol­i­day week­end in what is described as an inten­tion­al dis­rup­tion of ser­vice, result­ing in the thou­sands of homes going with­out heat or hot water dur­ing one of the busiest times of the year for the tourist des­ti­na­tion. It’s worth keep­ing in mind that tam­per­ing with the nat­ur­al gas sys­tem could end up being a lot more dead­ly than sim­ply cut­ting off ser­vice. Here’s the part that is eeri­ly sim­i­lar to the neo-Nazi infra­struc­ture plots: the nat­ur­al gas ser­vice was dis­rupt­ed at three dif­fer­ent loca­tions at rough­ly the same time.

    So a group of peo­ple was clear­ly behind this. And this group decid­ed to leave a ‘clue’ of sorts at one of the three loca­tions, leav­ing an “Earth First!” mes­sage scrawled on one of the pipes. There’s no indi­ca­tion from any­one asso­ci­at­ed with the “Earth First!” eco-extrem­ist orga­ni­za­tion that the group was behind it. We are told, how­ev­er, that who­ev­er car­ried this out had to have some famil­iar­i­ty with the sys­tem. So just as we’re learn­ing about an inves­ti­ga­tion into a white suprema­cist plot to car­ry out simul­ta­ne­ous attacks on US crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture, we have what almost seems like a nui­sance attack on the nat­ur­al gas infra­struc­ture of Aspen with a mes­sage left behind draw­ing atten­tion to “Earth First!”. Are we look­ing at a neo-Nazi tri­al run of some sort?:

    The Aspen Times

    FBI help­ing with inves­ti­ga­tion into Aspen-area nat­ur­al gas out­age
    Black Hill Ener­gy “hope­ful“ to begin relights for res­i­den­tial cus­tomers by Mon­day evening

    Jason Aus­lan­der
    12/28/2020

    The name of a rad­i­cal envi­ron­men­tal advo­ca­cy orga­ni­za­tion was scrawled Sat­ur­day on a pipe at a nat­ur­al gas pump­ing sta­tion near Aspen that was van­dal­ized, Aspen police said Mon­day.

    It was not clear Mon­day whether mem­bers of the “Earth First!” group were involved in the inten­tion­al dis­rup­tion of gas ser­vice to the Aspen area — which result­ed in thou­sands of peo­ple liv­ing with­out heat or hot water — but the name was found at one of three Black Hills Ener­gy sites van­dal­ized, said Bill Linn, Aspen assis­tant police chief.

    “They would have had to have some famil­iar­i­ty with the sys­tem” to pull off the sab­o­tage, Linn said. “They tam­pered with flow lines. They turned off gas lines.”

    Emails sent Mon­day to the Earth First! orga­ni­za­tion seek­ing com­ment were not imme­di­ate­ly returned. Linn said police have not received any com­mu­ni­ca­tion from Earth First! tak­ing cred­it for the gas line inci­dents.

    Mean­while, weath­er, tem­per­a­tures and deep snow slowed Black Hills Ener­gy employ­ees, who had to vis­it each of approx­i­mate­ly 3,500 affect­ed nat­ur­al gas meters and turn them off, Black Hills spokes­woman Car­ly West said Mon­day morn­ing.

    But at about 2:30 p.m., tech­ni­cians from Black Hills Ener­gy had only turned off 1,000 gas meters and had 2,500 more to go, said Vance Crock­er, vice pres­i­dent of oper­a­tions.

    Black Hills has about 150 tech­ni­cians in Aspen to help rem­e­dy the prob­lem, Crock­er said Mon­day night dur­ing a com­mu­ni­ty meet­ing. Some are from oth­er ener­gy com­pa­nies such as Xcel, Site­wise, Q3 and Mears, and those com­pa­nies also helped get 4,000 heaters in place, he said.

    “We’re hope­ful that by late after­noon (or) ear­ly evening, we will have all the meters shut off,” he said dur­ing a news con­fer­ence Mon­day. Relight­ing of the indi­vid­ual pilot lights could begin Mon­day night, he said, once the sys­tem is test­ed and pres­sur­ized.

    “Where we’re at right now, by this evening, mid-to-late evening we think we’re going to be done with the actu­al purg­ing and pres­sur­iz­ing the sys­tem then we can go back and begin the relight­ing process,” Crock­er said at the com­mu­ni­ty meet­ing, adding, “The relight­ing process will begin very late tonight and con­tin­ue into the ear­ly-morn­ing hours and into Tues­day.”

    The company’s time­line for relight­ing 3,500 indi­vid­ual pilot lights said they will go until 11 p.m. Mon­day and then will con­tin­ue Tues­day start­ing at 5 a.m., accord­ing to a Pitkin Alert. A res­i­dent over the age of 18 must be present for tech­ni­cians to relight the pilots.

    West encour­aged home­own­ers to help tech­ni­cians by using a broom or their hands to uncov­er gas meters. Do not use hard or sharp objects to clear away snow from the meters.

    Cus­tomers may smell a faint nat­ur­al gas due to the con­trolled release dur­ing the purg­ing of the lines, offi­cials said Mon­day.

    That is nor­mal and is step one in the mul­ti-step process, Crock­er said Mon­day night, and remind­ed cus­tomers that they should not attempt to relight appli­ances on their own.

    The time­line to relight pilots, how­ev­er, may be affect­ed by a snow­storm fore­cast to hit the Aspen area, fol­lowed by tem­per­a­tures expect­ed in the mid-to-low 20s on Tues­day and Wednes­day.

    Also, West said the relight­ing will start Tues­day but might not get to all the cus­tomers. She said Mon­day night that in the first wave of tech­ni­cians going door to door about 50% to 60% of cus­tomer will be home and have ser­vice restored. Those not home will get a door tag with infor­ma­tion on set­ting up a time for a tech­ni­cian to return.

    “The best case, we’ll have the major­i­ty of the relights in the first pass through with tech­ni­cians,” West said. “My expec­ta­tion is that the bulk of our cus­tomers will have gas restored after that first pass.”

    ...

    No one has been report­ed injured because of the gas out­age, and out­reach is being con­duct­ed to vul­ner­a­ble cit­i­zens, Linn said.

    At Monday’s vir­tu­al news con­fer­ence, Linn said the sit­u­a­tion with the gas lines first came to Black Hills’ atten­tion about 8:30 p.m. Sat­ur­day when the com­pa­ny was noti­fied there was no gas pres­sure at a loca­tion in Aspen. Then, just before 11 p.m., a city res­i­dent called police to report hear­ing “uncom­mon sounds” from a nat­ur­al gas sta­tion near the resident’s home.

    “They said it might be a gas leak,” Linn said.

    Aspen police offi­cers respond­ed to the loca­tion along with Black Hills employ­ees and “rec­og­nized it had been phys­i­cal­ly tam­pered with,” he said. Not long after, Pitkin Coun­ty sheriff’s deputies respond­ed to a call at a nat­ur­al gas sta­tion out­side the city lim­its in the coun­ty. Details about that inci­dent were not avail­able Mon­day, though Linn said the “Earth First!” graf­fi­ti was writ­ten on a pipe at the sta­tion in the coun­ty.

    A total of three loca­tions were van­dal­ized, one in the city and two in the coun­ty, Linn said. At two loca­tions, the gas valves were not locat­ed in build­ings, while the third was housed inside a build­ing that was bur­glar­ized, he said. All had “secu­ri­ty mea­sures” in place that were tam­pered with.

    “Locks were defeat­ed,” Linn said.

    All three loca­tions were hit around the same time, he said, though it was not clear Mon­day how many peo­ple were involved or why Aspen was tar­get­ed. Any­one with infor­ma­tion about the van­dal­ism should call the Aspen Police Depart­ment at 970–920-5400 and fol­low the prompts to report it.

    Black Hills tech­ni­cians were ini­tial­ly able to turn the gas valves back on Sat­ur­day night, but some res­i­dences had trou­ble reviv­ing gas ser­vice, he said. Black Hills offi­cials then deter­mined Sun­day night that the sys­tem had to be shut down man­u­al­ly house by house, test­ed and re-pres­sur­ized and then man­u­al­ly, house by house reboot­ed again, he said.

    Police and deputies were able to gath­er phys­i­cal evi­dence from the scenes, includ­ing at least one set of foot­prints in the snow lead­ing up to one loca­tion, Linn said. Cam­eras were not installed at the three loca­tions.

    The FBI, which has a crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture depart­ment, was work­ing with local detec­tives on the inci­dents, Linn said. In addi­tion, local detec­tives are work­ing with state law enforce­ment offi­cials to look back and see if there were any clues left before the gas dis­rup­tion indi­cat­ing it was going to hap­pen.

    The fact that a per­son or per­sons struck more than one gas trans­fer site appears to point to an inten­tion­al attack on just the city of Aspen dur­ing what is tra­di­tion­al­ly the busiest week of the year.

    “It’s almost, to me, an act of ter­ror­ism,” said Pitkin Coun­ty Com­mis­sion­er Pat­ti Clap­per, who was with­out heat Mon­day at her Smug­gler Moun­tain-area home. “It’s try­ing to destroy a moun­tain com­mu­ni­ty at the height of the hol­i­day sea­son. This wasn’t a nation­al gas glitch. This was a pur­pose­ful act.

    “Some­one is look­ing to make a state­ment of some kind.”

    Pitkin Coun­ty Sher­iff Joe DiS­al­vo said Mon­day he didn’t think the dis­rup­tion of gas ser­vice was an attack.

    “I know that word has been thrown around a lot,” he said. “It’s not a word I would use.”

    Instead, he char­ac­ter­ized it as “an inten­tion­al act” to dis­rupt gas ser­vice to Aspen.

    Pitkin Coun­ty Man­ag­er Jon Pea­cock also said Mon­day he wasn’t ready to char­ac­ter­ize the gas out­age as an “attack” because it need­ed more inves­ti­ga­tion. How­ev­er, if it was van­dal­ism, the con­se­quences — whether inten­tion­al or unin­ten­tion­al — were hurt­ing peo­ple and busi­ness­es already reel­ing from the effects of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

    “This is hav­ing a major impact on people’s lives,” Pea­cock said. “If it was an inten­tion­al act — that’s unbe­liev­able.”

    ...

    ———–

    “FBI help­ing with inves­ti­ga­tion into Aspen-area nat­ur­al gas out­age” by Jason Aus­lan­der; The Aspen Times; 12/28/2020

    All three loca­tions were hit around the same time, he said, though it was not clear Mon­day how many peo­ple were involved or why Aspen was tar­get­ed. Any­one with infor­ma­tion about the van­dal­ism should call the Aspen Police Depart­ment at 970–920-5400 and fol­low the prompts to report it.”

    Unless we’re look­ing a sin­gle very speedy sabo­teur, this is a plot that would pre­sum­ably involve at least three peo­ple. And while this is being described by author­i­ties as pri­mar­i­ly “van­dal­ism”, it’s clear­ly more than just van­dal­ism. Flow lines were tam­pered with and gas lines were turned off, and one res­i­dent report­ed hear­ing “uncom­mon sounds” from a nat­ur­al gas sta­tion. Some­one who knew what they were doing was behind this:

    ...
    It was not clear Mon­day whether mem­bers of the “Earth First!” group were involved in the inten­tion­al dis­rup­tion of gas ser­vice to the Aspen area — which result­ed in thou­sands of peo­ple liv­ing with­out heat or hot water — but the name was found at one of three Black Hills Ener­gy sites van­dal­ized, said Bill Linn, Aspen assis­tant police chief.

    “They would have had to have some famil­iar­i­ty with the sys­tem” to pull off the sab­o­tage, Linn said. “They tam­pered with flow lines. They turned off gas lines.”

    ...

    At Monday’s vir­tu­al news con­fer­ence, Linn said the sit­u­a­tion with the gas lines first came to Black Hills’ atten­tion about 8:30 p.m. Sat­ur­day when the com­pa­ny was noti­fied there was no gas pres­sure at a loca­tion in Aspen. Then, just before 11 p.m., a city res­i­dent called police to report hear­ing “uncom­mon sounds” from a nat­ur­al gas sta­tion near the resident’s home.

    “They said it might be a gas leak,” Linn said.

    Aspen police offi­cers respond­ed to the loca­tion along with Black Hills employ­ees and “rec­og­nized it had been phys­i­cal­ly tam­pered with,” he said. Not long after, Pitkin Coun­ty sheriff’s deputies respond­ed to a call at a nat­ur­al gas sta­tion out­side the city lim­its in the coun­ty. Details about that inci­dent were not avail­able Mon­day, though Linn said the “Earth First!” graf­fi­ti was writ­ten on a pipe at the sta­tion in the coun­ty.

    A total of three loca­tions were van­dal­ized, one in the city and two in the coun­ty, Linn said. At two loca­tions, the gas valves were not locat­ed in build­ings, while the third was housed inside a build­ing that was bur­glar­ized, he said. All had “secu­ri­ty mea­sures” in place that were tam­pered with.

    “Locks were defeat­ed,” Linn said.
    ...

    And giv­en that they are leav­ing ‘clues’ that it was “Earth First!” behind it, we can rea­son­ably spec­u­late that who­ev­er did this prob­a­bly does­n’t have warm feel­ings towards left-wingers and envi­ron­men­tal­ists.

    It’s also worth recall­ing that “Oper­a­tion Lights Out” plot appeared to specif­i­cal­ly tar­get the elec­tri­cal grid in Col­orado Springs. Might this have been the some of the same indi­vid­u­als? We don’t know, but the whole sto­ry is a reminder that the crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture avail­able for attack by the far right includes the high­ly explo­sive nat­ur­al gas infra­struc­ture. It’s also a reminder that when “Oper­a­tion Lights Out” or some­thing sim­i­lar is even­tu­al­ly car­ried out, we prob­a­bly should­n’t be too sur­prised if “Earth First!” is giv­en cred­it.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | December 29, 2020, 5:36 pm
  18. @Pterrafractyl–

    With the Nashville bomb­ing as back­ground, it looks as though the Trumpian “Serpten­t’s Acce­la­ra­tionist” agen­da is under way.

    Keep up the great work!

    Best,

    Dave

    Posted by Dave Emory | December 29, 2020, 6:05 pm
  19. @Dave: Regard­ing the Nashville Christ­mas day bomb­ing, here’s some­thing worth not­ing about the AT&T build­ing that appears to have been the tar­get of the attack: That build­ing is report­ed­ly unusu­al­ly resis­tant to exact­ly that kind of bomb attack. The build­ing was built by AT&T dur­ing its 20th cen­tu­ry monop­oly hey­day with thick con­crete intend­ed to with­stand large explo­sions and oth­er attacks. As a result, we’re told that the build­ing real­ly did work as designed and pro­tect­ed much of the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions equip­ment inside. So if Warn­er real­ly was tar­get­ing the AT&T build­ing as many sus­pect, it was­n’t near­ly as dam­ag­ing as intend­ed which is pret­ty remark­able giv­en the scale of the dam­age:

    The Wall Street Jour­nal

    Nashville Bomb­ing Motive Under Inves­ti­ga­tion
    Agen­cies are fol­low­ing up on a num­ber of leads, includ­ing that suspect’s father worked at AT&T

    By Erin Ail­worth and Zusha Elin­son
    Updat­ed Dec. 28, 2020 7:08 pm ET

    Offi­cials inves­ti­gat­ing the Christ­mas bomb­ing in Nashville, Tenn., were pur­su­ing mul­ti­ple leads Mon­day on deceased sus­pect Antho­ny Warner’s motive, includ­ing a con­nec­tion involv­ing his father, as new infor­ma­tion came to light about why he trans­ferred prop­er­ty to a Los Ange­les woman last month.

    Mr. Warn­er, 63 years old, blew up an RV in front of an AT&T facil­i­ty in down­town Nashville on Christ­mas morn­ing, killing him­self and injur­ing three oth­ers.

    David Rausch, direc­tor of the Ten­nessee Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion, said his agency and oth­ers were fol­low­ing up on a num­ber of leads, includ­ing that Mr. Warner’s father worked for AT&T.

    On Nov. 25, Mr. Warn­er trans­ferred own­er­ship of his home in the Nashville sub­urb of Anti­och to Michelle Swing, a 29-year-old enter­tain­ment exec­u­tive who lives in L.A., accord­ing to pub­lic records.

    Ms. Swing told inves­ti­ga­tors that she thought he gave it to her because her moth­er had a pri­or roman­tic rela­tion­ship with Mr. Warn­er, accord­ing to a law-enforce­ment offi­cial briefed on the inves­ti­ga­tion.

    Nei­ther Ms. Swing nor her moth­er, Luz Swing, returned calls seek­ing com­ment.

    Mr. Warn­er also gave Ms. Swing a Nashville prop­er­ty in 2019 that his moth­er lived in, accord­ing to court doc­u­ments. A deed shows Ms. Swing trans­ferred the home back to Mr. Warner’s moth­er last year after a legal fight.

    In addi­tion to the prop­er­ties, Mr. Warn­er also gave Ms. Swing some cash and a com­put­er, the law-enforce­ment offi­cial said.

    Ms. Swing, who works at con­cert pro­mo­tion com­pa­ny AEG Live, was one of mul­ti­ple peo­ple who helped inves­ti­ga­tors iden­ti­fy Mr. Warn­er as the bomber after the blast, the offi­cial said.

    The bomb­ing occurred around 6:30 a.m. on Christ­mas morn­ing when an RV blar­ing a warn­ing explod­ed out­side an AT&T switch­ing facil­i­ty, dam­ag­ing at least 41 build­ings, one of which was destroyed.

    The explo­sion knocked out phone and inter­net ser­vice in much of Ten­nessee, Ken­tucky and North­ern Alaba­ma. On Mon­day, some in Nashville were still deal­ing with those out­ages.

    The AT&T switch­ing cen­ter is one of sev­er­al such facil­i­ties through­out the coun­try that were unique­ly designed to with­stand the force unleashed by the Nashville explo­sion, accord­ing to Ed Amoroso, a retired AT&T chief secu­ri­ty offi­cer who now teach­es at New York Uni­ver­si­ty.

    Many of these struc­tures were built in cities’ urban cores dur­ing the orig­i­nal AT&T’s 20th-cen­tu­ry hey­day, when the gov­ern­ment-pro­tect­ed monop­oly could afford to con­struct thick, elab­o­rate struc­tures designed to resist bombs and oth­er attacks.

    “It’s what was built in an era when there wasn’t a lot of com­pe­ti­tion,” he said.

    The Nashville struc­ture worked as intend­ed by shield­ing most of the equip­ment inside it from dam­age. AT&T said it took longer than usu­al to restore pow­er to the facil­i­ty after back­up gen­er­a­tors failed. Inter­fer­ence from a water main, fire­fight­ers dous­ing the build­ing and inves­ti­ga­tors scour­ing the crime scene also slowed repair crews’ work, the com­pa­ny said.

    Ear­li­er Mon­day, the TBI released a crim­i­nal his­to­ry for Mr. Warn­er that includ­ed a sin­gle arrest in 1978 by the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Nashville Police Depart­ment for pos­ses­sion of mar­i­jua­na for resale.

    Mr. Rausch said tips from the pub­lic were key to iden­ti­fy­ing Mr. Warn­er as the sus­pect­ed bomber. One tip in par­tic­u­lar, he said, gave inves­ti­ga­tors a name and led them to places to search for foren­sic evi­dence to match to tis­sue found at the site of the bomb­ing. That tis­sue was ana­lyzed by foren­sic sci­en­tists at the TBI, as well as at a Fed­er­al Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion lab at Quan­ti­co, Va.

    “We col­lect­ed gloves and a hat from a vehi­cle that was owned by the sub­ject and so that’s how our com­par­i­son was done,” Mr. Rausch said.

    ...

    Tele­phone switch­es start­ed grow­ing small­er after the 1980s, leav­ing many tow­ers with sev­er­al floors of unused space. The cell­phone car­ri­ers that descend­ed from the old AT&T start­ed fill­ing that excess space with routers and oth­er gear to serve their wire­less cus­tomers.

    “You have all these emp­ty places and they’re con­ve­nient­ly locat­ed,” Mr. Amoroso said. “Had those build­ings not exist­ed, would you still build them for 5G? Prob­a­bly not. But they’re still there, so you use them.”

    ———-

    “Nashville Bomb­ing Motive Under Inves­ti­ga­tion” by Erin Ail­worth and Zusha Elin­son; The Wall Street Jour­nal; 12/28/2020

    The AT&T switch­ing cen­ter is one of sev­er­al such facil­i­ties through­out the coun­try that were unique­ly designed to with­stand the force unleashed by the Nashville explo­sion, accord­ing to Ed Amoroso, a retired AT&T chief secu­ri­ty offi­cer who now teach­es at New York Uni­ver­si­ty.”

    It’s weird to think that AT&T got lucky with this bomb­ing, but in the fact that Antho­ny Quinn Warn­er seem­ing­ly tar­get­ed one of AT&T’s bomb-resis­tant build­ings indi­cates it could have eas­i­ly been a lot worse for AT&T, with most of the equip­ment inside the build­ing report­ed­ly shield­ed from the blast:

    ...
    Many of these struc­tures were built in cities’ urban cores dur­ing the orig­i­nal AT&T’s 20th-cen­tu­ry hey­day, when the gov­ern­ment-pro­tect­ed monop­oly could afford to con­struct thick, elab­o­rate struc­tures designed to resist bombs and oth­er attacks.

    “It’s what was built in an era when there wasn’t a lot of com­pe­ti­tion,” he said.

    The Nashville struc­ture worked as intend­ed by shield­ing most of the equip­ment inside it from dam­age. AT&T said it took longer than usu­al to restore pow­er to the facil­i­ty after back­up gen­er­a­tors failed. Inter­fer­ence from a water main, fire­fight­ers dous­ing the build­ing and inves­ti­ga­tors scour­ing the crime scene also slowed repair crews’ work, the com­pa­ny said.
    ...

    Now, at this point we still don’t know what the motive was for the bomb­ing and whether or not the AT&T build­ing was nec­es­sar­i­ly the tar­get. But based on reports about Warn­er’s his­to­ry and inter­ests, the sus­pi­cions that he may have tar­get­ed the AT&T build­ing due to one or more of the many far right con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries involv­ing 5G wire­less tech­nol­o­gy — the­o­ries that have been ram­pant dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic — may be cor­rect. Because it sounds like Warn­er was inter­est­ed in clas­sic “Illu­mi­nati” high-weird­ness con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries like the idea that shape-shift­ing lizard peo­ple are run­ning the world. And he was appar­ent­ly inter­est­ed enough in these top­ics that he is believed to have spent time hunt­ing for alien life forms in state park.

    We’re also get­ting more infor­ma­tion on Warn­er’s bomb-mak­ing back­ground. It turns out the police were con­tact­ed and warned about Warn­er con­struct­ing bombs in his RV back in 2019. This came about when Warn­er’s girl­friend at the time, Pamela Per­ry, con­tact­ed a local Repub­li­can attor­ney, Ray Throck­mor­ton. Throck­mor­ton had pre­vi­ous­ly rep­re­sent­ed both Per­ry and Warn­er. Throck­mor­ton con­tact­ed the police let­ting them know Per­ry was dis­traught and threat­en­ing to kill her­self and that she also feared Warn­er would harm her. Throck­mor­ton then told the police that Warn­er “talks about the mil­i­tary and bomb-mak­ing.” When police arrived at Warn­er’s home, Per­ry told the police that Warn­er was build­ing bombs in his RV. But it sounds like the RV was nev­er searched and that was the end of the sto­ry. Until Christ­mas Day, of course. So while we don’t have reports yet that Warn­er had mil­i­tary expe­ri­ence and train­ing, it sounds like he had a fas­ci­na­tion with the mil­i­tary and clear­ly had spent some time devel­op­ing his bomb-build­ing skills:

    ABC News

    Nashville bomb­ing sus­pect pos­si­bly inter­est­ed in var­i­ous con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries: Sources
    A 2019 police report said a woman claimed Warn­er was build­ing bombs in his RV

    By Mered­ith Deliso and Jack Date
    Decem­ber 29, 2020, 10:54 PM

    Author­i­ties are explor­ing evi­dence that Nashville, Ten­nessee, bomb­ing sus­pect Antho­ny Quinn Warn­er was inter­est­ed in var­i­ous con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries, sources famil­iar with the inves­ti­ga­tion told ABC News.

    The the­o­ries include ones involv­ing “lizard peo­ple” — a belief that shape-shift­ing rep­til­ian crea­tures appear in human form and are bent on world dom­i­na­tion.

    Warn­er, 63, of Anti­och, Ten­nessee, is also believed to have spent time hunt­ing for alien life forms in a near­by state park, sources said.

    Some writ­ings found by inves­ti­ga­tors believed to be asso­ci­at­ed with Warn­er, who was killed in the Christ­mas Day RV explo­sion, con­tain ram­blings about assort­ed con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries, sources said.

    Mul­ti­ple law enforce­ment sources also told ABC News ear­li­er this week that inves­ti­ga­tors looked at whether Warn­er had para­noia about 5G cel­lu­lar tech­nol­o­gy.

    It is unclear if any of these beliefs or behav­iors are con­nect­ed to the explo­sion, which dam­aged dozens of build­ings on Sec­ond Avenue in down­town Nashville and sent three peo­ple to the hos­pi­tal with minor injuries. The RV was parked out­side an AT&T trans­mis­sion build­ing, which was also dam­aged.

    Warn­er was iden­ti­fied Sun­day after inves­ti­ga­tors matched tis­sue found at the blast to DNA from gloves and a hat inside a car the sus­pect owned, an offi­cial said.

    Law enforce­ment sources con­firm to ABC News that Nashville police were told in 2019 that Warn­er was build­ing bombs in his RV.

    Accord­ing to a Metro Nashville Police Depart­ment report dat­ed Aug. 21, 2019, and obtained by ABC News, a woman told police her boyfriend, Warn­er, was “build­ing bombs in the RV trail­er at his res­i­dence.”

    An attor­ney present when police arrived last year, Ray­mond T. Throck­mor­ton III, told author­i­ties he rep­re­sent­ed both the woman and Warn­er said that he “talks about the mil­i­tary and bomb-mak­ing.”

    Police vis­it­ed Warner’s res­i­dence and “knocked on the door but did not receive an answer,” accord­ing to the report. They also “observed that there was a trail­er in the back yard, but the yard was fenced off and police could not see inside the RV,” the report said.

    A Metro Nashville Police Depart­ment inves­ti­ga­tor fol­lowed up with the FBI to see if they had any addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion relat­ed to Warn­er, the report said.

    The FBI, in a state­ment pro­vid­ed to ABC News, said it “received a request from the Metro Nashville Police Depart­ment to check our hold­ings on Antho­ny Warn­er and sub­se­quent­ly found no records at all. Addi­tion­al­ly, the FBI facil­i­tat­ed a Depart­ment of Defense inquiry on Warn­er at the request of the Metro Nashville Police Depart­ment, which was also neg­a­tive.”

    Inves­ti­ga­tors are now con­tin­u­ing to ana­lyze chem­i­cal residue from the scene of last week’s explo­sion and are work­ing to nar­row down the chem­i­cals that were like­ly used to make the explo­sive device.

    They are also look­ing into how the sus­pect alleged­ly acquired the bomb-mak­ing mate­ri­als to ensure there were no accom­plices.

    Sources told ABC News that receipts and cred­it card account infor­ma­tion indi­cates Warn­er alleged­ly pur­chased items that could be used to con­struct a bomb, though they cau­tioned that cer­tain com­mon chem­i­cals have uses that could have noth­ing to do with bomb-mak­ing. Author­i­ties are sort­ing through Warn­er’s recent pur­chas­es to deter­mine whether those items were alleged­ly used in the device or had some oth­er pur­pose, sources said.

    The FBI and the U.S. Depart­ment of Jus­tice’s Bureau of Alco­hol, Tobac­co, Firearms and Explo­sives are lead­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion. As of Tues­day after­noon, their response teams had inves­ti­gat­ed near­ly half of the crime scene and hoped to com­plete it by Fri­day at the lat­est, the FBI said in a state­ment.

    ...

    ———-

    “Nashville bomb­ing sus­pect pos­si­bly inter­est­ed in var­i­ous con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries: Sources” by Mered­ith Deliso and Jack Date; ABC News; 12/29/2020

    “Some writ­ings found by inves­ti­ga­tors believed to be asso­ci­at­ed with Warn­er, who was killed in the Christ­mas Day RV explo­sion, con­tain ram­blings about assort­ed con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries, sources said.”

    What types of con­spir­a­cy ram­blings of Warn­er did inves­ti­ga­tors find? We don’t know, but Warn­er was appar­ent­ly into alien hunt­ing so that gives us an idea of where his head was at. And while we are told inves­ti­ga­tors have looked into whether or not Warn­er had an inter­est in 5G tech­nol­o­gy, we aren’t told if he real­ly was focused on the 5G con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries. Although it would­n’t be a stretch giv­en the alien inter­est:

    ...
    The the­o­ries include ones involv­ing “lizard peo­ple” — a belief that shape-shift­ing rep­til­ian crea­tures appear in human form and are bent on world dom­i­na­tion.

    Warn­er, 63, of Anti­och, Ten­nessee, is also believed to have spent time hunt­ing for alien life forms in a near­by state park, sources said.

    ...

    Mul­ti­ple law enforce­ment sources also told ABC News ear­li­er this week that inves­ti­ga­tors looked at whether Warn­er had para­noia about 5G cel­lu­lar tech­nol­o­gy.

    It is unclear if any of these beliefs or behav­iors are con­nect­ed to the explo­sion, which dam­aged dozens of build­ings on Sec­ond Avenue in down­town Nashville and sent three peo­ple to the hos­pi­tal with minor injuries. The RV was parked out­side an AT&T trans­mis­sion build­ing, which was also dam­aged.
    ...

    And we know he’s been work­ing on this bomb since at least August of 2019. So he pre­sum­ably was­n’t dri­ven pri­mar­i­ly by COVID-relat­ed con­spir­a­cies since COVID-19 was­n’t an issue in August of 2019. But it’s cer­tain­ly pos­si­ble COVID-relat­ed con­spir­a­cies pushed Warn­er over the line from just build­ing the bomb to actu­al­ly using it:

    ...
    Law enforce­ment sources con­firm to ABC News that Nashville police were told in 2019 that Warn­er was build­ing bombs in his RV.

    Accord­ing to a Metro Nashville Police Depart­ment report dat­ed Aug. 21, 2019, and obtained by ABC News, a woman told police her boyfriend, Warn­er, was “build­ing bombs in the RV trail­er at his res­i­dence.”

    An attor­ney present when police arrived last year, Ray­mond T. Throck­mor­ton III, told author­i­ties he rep­re­sent­ed both the woman and Warn­er said that he “talks about the mil­i­tary and bomb-mak­ing.”
    ...

    Final­ly, here’s a look at how the far right is respond­ing to the Nashville bomb­ing. In par­tic­u­lar, the QAnon move­ment, which has proved itself capa­ble of con­tort­ing vir­tu­al­ly any sit­u­a­tion to fit its nar­ra­tive. As we should expect, the respons­es range from ques­tion­ing Warn­er’s iden­ti­ty and whether or not it was all a giant hoax, to cel­e­brat­ing the bomb­ing. Lin Wood, the attor­ney who has been lead­ing the legal quest to over­turn the 2020 elec­tion based on alle­ga­tions of mas­sive vot­er fraud, has already come out ques­tion­ing whether or not the RV was the source of the explo­sion at all. Inter­est­ing­ly, there’s one fig­ure who we would expect to say some­thing about the bomb­ing who has said noth­ing at all so far: Pres­i­dent Trump. It’s been a non-response response from Trump ever since the bomb­ing. So at the same time the QAnon move­ment is torn over whether or not to dis­miss the bomb­ing as a gov­ern­ment false flag attack or embrace Warn­er as one of their own, Pres­i­dent Trump is remain­ing odd­ly silent and there­fore ambigu­ous­ly sup­port­ive of all of the spec­u­la­tion:

    The Dai­ly Beast

    Con­spir­a­cy The­o­rists Race to Defend Nashville Bomber Antho­ny Quinn Warn­er

    Kel­ly Weill
    Reporter

    Updat­ed Dec. 28, 2020 8:04PM ET
    Pub­lished Dec. 28, 2020 4:46PM ET

    No soon­er had Antho­ny Quinn Warn­er been named as a per­son of inter­est in an appar­ent Christ­mas Day sui­cide bomb­ing in Nashville, Ten­nessee, than con­spir­a­to­r­i­al cir­cles began cast­ing doubt on his iden­ti­ty, or else applaud­ing his actions.

    Warn­er, 63, is accused of set­ting off a bomb in down­town Nashville ear­ly Christ­mas morn­ing, dam­ag­ing more than 40 busi­ness­es, killing him­self, and injur­ing sev­er­al oth­ers. Inves­ti­ga­tors have not yet iden­ti­fied a motive for the attack. Nev­er­the­less, a cer­tain pro-Trump seg­ment appears to have tak­en up the bomber’s side, with anoth­er Ten­nessee man alleged­ly attempt­ing a sim­i­lar threat—albeit with­out any actu­al explosives—on Sun­day.

    Offi­cials have not announced Warner’s pos­si­ble motives, or whether the inci­dent is being treat­ed as an act of ter­ror. Ear­ly reports sug­gest the FBI is inves­ti­gat­ing whether Warn­er (who law enforce­ment offi­cials say set off the bomb from a recre­ation­al vehi­cle out­side an AT&T build­ing) was influ­enced by con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries about 5G tech­nol­o­gy. A real­tor who worked with Warn­er who was ques­tioned by the FBI told Nashville’s WSMV that agents asked about Warner’s inter­est in the tech­nol­o­gy, but that they did not know whether he held any such beliefs.

    Even before those poten­tial motives came to light, how­ev­er, some con­spir­a­cy move­ments were already look­ing to exon­er­ate Warn­er. Moments after his name emerged in con­nec­tion with the case, sub­scribers to the far-right QAnon con­spir­a­cy move­ment began flood­ing Twit­ter with absurd ideas, false­ly claim­ing that Warn­er was an actor, par­tial­ly because a dif­fer­ent Antho­ny Quinn was a Hol­ly­wood star before dying in 2001. Oth­er QAnon fol­low­ers broke down his name to asso­ciate his ini­tials with made-up clues, or to dis­sect parts of his name to dis­play “Q WARN.”

    The the­o­riz­ing didn’t stop at anony­mous Twit­ter accounts. Lin Wood, an attor­ney attempt­ing to over­turn the elec­tion in Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s favor, appeared to cast doubt on the bomb­ing in mul­ti­ple tweets. In one, he includ­ed Warner’s name in a tweet about false accu­sa­tions. In anoth­er, he tweet­ed pic­tures of a ruined stretch of Nashville’s down­town, not­ing that “that RV sure packed a pow­er­ful punch. Or did it?”

    Wood did not return a request for clar­i­fi­ca­tion on the tweets.

    For his part, Trump, who has pre­vi­ous­ly raged against acts of prop­er­ty dam­age, accus­ing left­ists of ter­ror, has been marked­ly mut­ed on the bomb­ing.

    “Pres­i­dent Trump has been briefed on the explo­sion in Nashville, Ten­nessee, and will con­tin­ue to receive reg­u­lar updates,” White House spokesman Judd Deere told the Wash­ing­ton Post in a state­ment on Fri­day. “The Pres­i­dent is grate­ful for the incred­i­ble first respon­ders and pray­ing for those who were injured.”

    Trump has not yet tweet­ed about the attack. Asked whether Trump had made or was plan­ning a com­ment, Deere told The Dai­ly Beast, “I’m his spokesper­son and I have, so yes he has.”

    While QAnon sup­port­ers debat­ed Warner’s inno­cence, pro-ter­ror chan­nels on the mes­sag­ing plat­form Telegram open­ly embraced his tac­tics. Some of those chan­nels, which have called for civ­il war and vio­lent attacks, cheered the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Warn­er might have been a QAnon-influ­enced terrorist—or, in the par­lance of these groups that pray for vio­lence from aged con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists, a “boomer bomber.”

    On Sun­day, anoth­er Ten­neseean alleged­ly mim­ic­ked Warner’s bomb threat, albeit with­out the bomb. James Tur­geon, 33, is accused of dri­ving a truck through Nashville-adja­cent Ruther­ford Coun­ty, while broad­cast­ing a warn­ing sim­i­lar to the one Warn­er played from his RV before the bomb explod­ed. Although Tur­geon was said to play sim­i­lar audio, offi­cials said Tur­geon and Warn­er appeared uncon­nect­ed.

    Turgeon’s motives are also unknown, although his dig­i­tal foot­print is larg­er than Warner’s, who did not appear to have had pub­lic social media under his own name. On Face­book, Tur­geon shared mul­ti­ple memes about stand­ing with Trump on Novem­ber 7, after Pres­i­dent-elect Joe Biden’s vic­to­ry became appar­ent.

    ...

    ———–

    “Con­spir­a­cy The­o­rists Race to Defend Nashville Bomber Antho­ny Quinn Warn­er” by Kel­ly Weill; The Dai­ly Beast; 12/28/2020

    “The the­o­riz­ing didn’t stop at anony­mous Twit­ter accounts. Lin Wood, an attor­ney attempt­ing to over­turn the elec­tion in Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s favor, appeared to cast doubt on the bomb­ing in mul­ti­ple tweets. In one, he includ­ed Warner’s name in a tweet about false accu­sa­tions. In anoth­er, he tweet­ed pic­tures of a ruined stretch of Nashville’s down­town, not­ing that “that RV sure packed a pow­er­ful punch. Or did it?”

    Pro-Trump lawyer Lin Wood isn’t so sure the RV actu­al­ly caused the explo­sion. How about Trump him­self? We have no idea, because he has­n’t said a thing:

    ...
    For his part, Trump, who has pre­vi­ous­ly raged against acts of prop­er­ty dam­age, accus­ing left­ists of ter­ror, has been marked­ly mut­ed on the bomb­ing.

    “Pres­i­dent Trump has been briefed on the explo­sion in Nashville, Ten­nessee, and will con­tin­ue to receive reg­u­lar updates,” White House spokesman Judd Deere told the Wash­ing­ton Post in a state­ment on Fri­day. “The Pres­i­dent is grate­ful for the incred­i­ble first respon­ders and pray­ing for those who were injured.”

    Trump has not yet tweet­ed about the attack. Asked whether Trump had made or was plan­ning a com­ment, Deere told The Dai­ly Beast, “I’m his spokesper­son and I have, so yes he has.”

    While QAnon sup­port­ers debat­ed Warner’s inno­cence, pro-ter­ror chan­nels on the mes­sag­ing plat­form Telegram open­ly embraced his tac­tics. Some of those chan­nels, which have called for civ­il war and vio­lent attacks, cheered the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Warn­er might have been a QAnon-influ­enced terrorist—or, in the par­lance of these groups that pray for vio­lence from aged con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists, a “boomer bomber.”
    ...

    Don’t for­get that if Warn­er was indeed fol­low­ing far right con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries when he car­ried out this act, that almost cer­tain­ly would have been a pro-Trump far right con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry and the intent of the bomb­ing would have like­ly been for the pur­pose of some­how help­ing Trump stay in pow­er. So from Trump’s per­spec­tive, the Nashville Christ­mas day bomb­ing was poten­tial­ly a bomb­ing done on his behalf. And if Trump does some­how man­age to cling to pow­er it would have to come through some sort of mass far right vio­lent insur­gency at this point. In oth­er words, Trump needs a lot more bomb­ings and attacks on crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture now. The kind of insur­gency that could cre­ate the kind of chaos required for a ‘Ser­pents Walk’-style pow­er grab. Mar­tial law is some­thing parts of the Trump camp is demand­ing right now any­way as a pre­text for redo­ing the elec­tion. If that mar­tial law is brought about by a far right ter­ror cam­paign, so be it. In that sense, Antho­ny Quinn Warn­er gave Pres­i­dent Trump the great­est Christ­mas present Trump could have ever asked for right now: the gift of hope. Hope that the bomb­ing might inspire a whole army of QAnon “boomer bombers” over the next few weeks who are will­ing to die to keep Trump in office. Trump pre­sum­ably does­n’t want to say any­thing that might jinx his pos­si­ble Christ­mas mir­a­cle.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | December 30, 2020, 5:44 pm
  20. Here’s a set of arti­cles relat­ed to the grow­ing trail of evi­dence tying the Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol insur­rec­tion­ists with “accel­er­a­tionist” vio­lent extrem­ist groups like Atom­waf­fen:

    First, we’re now learn­ing that Riley June Williams — the woman pre­vi­ous­ly iden­ti­fied as the per­son who stole a lap­top from House Speak­er Nan­cy Pelosi’s office — is the same woman who was found wear­ing the skull face­mask and voic­ing “accel­er­a­tionist” slo­gans in a “fash­wave” video on a neo-Nazi encrypt­ed chat serv­er. Sur­prise!

    Also we’ll also see, accord­ing to the ex-boyfriend of Williams, she planned on giv­ing the lap­top to a friend liv­ing in Rus­sia who was plan­ning on sell­ing it to Russ­ian intel­li­gence. The FBI is report­ed­ly inves­ti­gat­ing these claims but has­n’t found any evi­dence ot back them up, and Williams’s ex now says the trans­fer to the friend in Rus­sia nev­er hap­pened for some rea­son.

    So is the sto­ry about a friend a Rus­sia just com­plete BS? That’s an obvi­ous pos­si­bil­i­ty. But as we’ll see, there’s anoth­er intrigu­ing pos­si­bil­i­ty for who that ‘friend in Rus­sia’ may be in light of the videos show­ing Williams’s accel­er­a­tionist lean­ings: was this ‘friend in Rus­sia’ Rinal­do Naz­zaro, the recent­ly revealed founder of “The Base”? As we’ll see, Naz­zaro is indeed liv­ing in Rus­sia, osten­si­bly to be clos­er to the fam­i­ly of his Russ­ian wife. And he’s accused by some of hav­ing ties to Russ­ian intel­li­gence, charges he denies.

    As we’ll also see, part of what makes Naz­zaro such a mys­te­ri­ous fig­ure is that, despite the claims of ties to Russ­ian intel­li­gence, he has unde­ni­able ties to the US nation­al secu­ri­ty state. Naz­zaro, who comes from a wealthy fam­i­ly and has an Ivy League edu­ca­tion, report­ed­ly worked with US spe­cial forces, the FBI, the Marines, and DHS as an intel­li­gence ana­lyst in Iraq and Afghanistan, with a focus on insur­gency tac­tics.

    Naz­zaro’s career past was made pub­lic by Naz­zaro him­self, who post­ed the let­ters of com­men­da­tion in order to address the grow­ing sus­pi­cions with­in the neo-Nazi com­mu­ni­ty that Naz­zaro is actu­al­ly a fed­er­al infor­mant run­ning a sting oper­a­tion. Sus­pi­cions that are fueled in part by Naz­zaro’s high­ly atyp­i­cal back­ground for a neo-Nazi and the fact that he appeared to come out of nowhere a few years ago when he set out to form The Base, with­out any known pre­vi­ous far right activ­i­ty.

    Ini­tial­ly, Naz­zaro’s far right inter­ests were cen­tered around the con­cept of the “North­west Front”, a white eth­nos­tate to be cre­at­ed in the Pacif­ic North­west. The group was run by Harold Cov­ing­ton, who died in 2018.

    Anoth­er thing worth recall­ing regard­ing the claims that Naz­zaro is asso­ci­at­ed with Russ­ian intel­li­gence is that that, a lit­tle over a year ago, there were sev­en mem­bers of The Base arrest­ed for var­i­ous vio­lent plots. One of them, William Garfield Bil­brough IV, had expressed an inter­est in trav­el­ing to Ukraine to fight along­side “nation­al­ists” in order to get mil­i­tary expe­ri­ence. So Bil­grough want­ed to join groups in Ukraine that would have been extreme­ly anti-Russ­ian and fight­ing Russ­ian-backed sep­a­ratists.

    So is Naz­zaro the ‘friend in Rus­sia’ who Riley Williams sup­pos­ed­ly planned on pass­ing Nan­cy Pelosi’s stolen lap­top to? We’re forced to spec­u­late at this point, but the data points are align­ing in com­pelling ways. Williams appears to be affil­i­at­ed with either Atom­waf­fen or The Base, and the founder of The Base just hap­pens to be locat­ed in Rus­sia.

    And if Naz­zaro is indeed Williams’s friend in Rus­sia, that rais­es anoth­er set of dis­turb­ing ques­tions: was Naz­zaro involved with help­ing to orga­nize the insur­rec­tion? He is an expert in insur­gen­cies, after all.

    And more gen­er­al­ly, if it turns out at least some of the peo­ple involved in con­ceiv­ing of the Capi­tol insur­rec­tion were them­selves accel­er­a­tionists, that poten­tial­ly pro­vides an answer to one of the most baf­fling ques­tions about that event: what on earth where they think­ing would be accom­plished? Did they actu­al­ly think storm­ing the Capi­tol and arrest­ing or killing mem­bers of Con­gress would some­how result in Trump being rein­stalled as pres­i­dent? That part of the plan nev­er made sense...unless the Capi­tol insur­rec­tion was intend­ed to be an accel­er­a­tionist act. An action designed to do lit­tle more than desta­bi­lize soci­ety and lead to fur­ther vio­lence. From that per­spec­tive, the Capi­tol insur­rec­tion made a lot of sense. And arguably suc­ceed­ed. Amer­i­can soci­ety has been unde­ni­ably desta­bi­lized.

    So was the Capi­tol insur­rec­tion intend­ed to be an accel­er­a­tionist event? A desta­bi­liz­ing action pri­mar­i­ly designed to fos­ter larg­er desta­bi­liz­ing actions in the future? Keep in mind that, for an event as chaot­ic as the insur­rec­tion, there could have been mul­ti­ple groups each with their own motives and goals. Some may have gen­uine­ly thought they were about to trig­ger an imme­di­ate polit­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion that day. But as we’ll see, fig­ures like Naz­zaro aren’t plan­ning on one-day rev­o­lu­tions. They’re plan­ning on long-term domes­tic ter­ror cam­paigns that build on them­selves. So the pos­si­bil­i­ty that at least some of the mem­bers of that insur­rec­tionary mob were active­ly there with an accel­er­a­tionist mind-set is some­thing inves­ti­ga­tors need to be keep­ing in mind, even if plen­ty of non-accel­er­a­tionists were in the crowd.

    Ok, first, here’s a look at the new dis­cov­ery of neo-Nazi videos of a woman who appears to be Williams wear­ing skull masks and voic­ing accel­er­a­tionist slo­gans:

    Newsweek

    Woman Accused of Steal­ing Nan­cy Pelosi’s Lap­top Appears in Video Mak­ing Nazi Salute

    By Ewan Palmer On 2/25/21 at 6:07 AM EST

    A video has emerged that alleged­ly shows Riley Williams—the woman accused of steal­ing Nan­cy Pelosi’s lap­top dur­ing the Capi­tol riots—giving a Nazi salute.

    The short clip, obtained by Belling­cat, shows a woman alleged to be Williams, with her face cov­ered by a skull mask of the type often worn by neo-Nazi groups such as Atom­waf­fen. The woman is wear­ing a hat fea­tur­ing the Son­nen­rad, or Black Sun, far-right sym­bol.

    In the video, the woman dances to music while a voice plays over the top stat­ing: “Ham­mer was right all along. There is no polit­i­cal solu­tion. All that is left is accel­er­a­tion. Heil Hitler.”

    The woman then gives a Nazi salute while a neg­a­tive col­or fil­ter is added to the clip and her eyes glow—a visu­al effect often used in far-right imagery and known as “fash­wave.”

    The “Ham­mer” men­tioned is believed to be a neo-Nazi chan­nel on the encrypt­ed mes­sag­ing ser­vice Telegram.

    Although the woman in the video does not show her face or speak, a joint inves­ti­ga­tion by Belling­cat and NBC News has gath­ered enough evi­dence for them to iden­ti­fy her as Williams, the 22-year-old who faces decades in jail if con­vict­ed for her alleged role in the Jan­u­ary 6 attack.

    This evi­dence includes social media posts of Williams pos­ing in a skull mask, includ­ing one in which she appears to be wear­ing the same dress as the one seen in the Nazi salute video. She has also expressed sup­port for white suprema­cy and white nation­al­ists in online posts.

    In the pho­to with the dress and skull mask, Williams also appears to be wear­ing the same pair of glass­es as she wore on Jan­u­ary 6 at the Capi­tol.

    Williams is also iden­ti­fi­able by a tat­too on her side, which can be seen in videos she has post­ed online. These clips appear to have been filmed in the same room as the “Heil Hitler” video.
    Read more

    ...

    ————

    “Woman Accused of Steal­ing Nan­cy Pelosi’s Lap­top Appears in Video Mak­ing Nazi Salute” by Ewan Palmer; Newsweek; 02/25/2021

    “In the video, the woman dances to music while a voice plays over the top stat­ing: “Ham­mer was right all along. There is no polit­i­cal solu­tion. All that is left is accel­er­a­tion. Heil Hitler.””

    All that is left is accel­er­a­tion. It’s pret­ty explic­it. So we know Williams pals around with the far right. But what about her ‘friend in Rus­sia’ who was sup­posed to receive the lap­top? At this point we don’t even know if this per­son exists, because the claim that she was plan­ning on send­ing the lap­top to a friend in Rus­sia came from an ex-boyfriend, who went on to claim the exchange nev­er hap­pened and the FBI can’t find any evi­dence of this:

    The Dai­ly Beast

    Capi­tol Riot­er May Have Stolen Pelosi’s Lap­top and Tried to Sell It to Rus­sia, Says FBI

    An infor­mant, who claims to be the woman’s ex-lover, told the FBI that she tried but ulti­mate­ly failed to pass on the device to Russ­ian intel­li­gence.

    Jamie Ross
    Reporter
    Updat­ed Jan. 18, 2021 10:54PM ET
    Pub­lished Jan. 18, 2021 7:56AM ET

    UPDATE, 1/18/2021, 10:54 PM ET: Riley Williams was arrest­ed Jan. 18 in Penn­syl­va­nia on charges of vio­lent entry and dis­or­der­ly con­duct on Capi­tol grounds, as well as know­ing­ly enter­ing restrict­ed build­ings with­out law­ful author­i­ty. A per­son claim­ing to be a for­mer roman­tic part­ner told the FBI they saw in footage of the riot that Williams was direct­ing them to Nan­cy Pelosi’s office, accord­ing to a crim­i­nal com­plaint.

    One of the Trump­ist riot­ers who stormed the U.S. Capi­tol ear­li­er this month may have stolen House Speak­er Nan­cy Pelosi’s lap­top and then tried to sell it to Russ­ian intel­li­gence, accord­ing to a crim­i­nal com­plaint.

    ...

    While there doesn’t appear to be any pub­licly avail­able footage of Williams inside Pelosi’s office, the FBI is inves­ti­gat­ing an alle­ga­tion that the riot­er took a lap­top or hard-dri­ve from the room. Williams’ ex-part­ner said they had seen a video of Williams tak­ing the device, and alleged she “intend­ed to send the com­put­er device to a friend in Rus­sia, who then planned to sell the device to SVR, Russia’s for­eign intel­li­gence ser­vice.”

    The FBI has no sup­port­ing evi­dence for the ex-lover’s claim. Regard­less, even if a lap­top was tak­en, it appears not to have made its way into Russ­ian hands—the ex-part­ner said that the deal “fell through for unknown rea­sons and Williams still has the com­put­er device or destroyed it.” Pelosi’s aide Drew Ham­mill not­ed on Twit­ter last week that an office lap­top was stolen, but said that it was “only used for pre­sen­ta­tions.”

    ...

    Williams’ mom has iden­ti­fied her daugh­ter in the footage, and said she had tak­en a “sud­den inter­est” in Pres­i­dent Trump’s pol­i­tics and was an active mem­ber on sev­er­al “far right mes­sage boards.”

    There is an out­stand­ing war­rant for her arrest.

    ————

    “Capi­tol Riot­er May Have Stolen Pelosi’s Lap­top and Tried to Sell It to Rus­sia, Says FBI” by Jamie Ross; The Dai­ly Beast; 01/18/2021

    “The FBI has no sup­port­ing evi­dence for the ex-lover’s claim. Regard­less, even if a lap­top was tak­en, it appears not to have made its way into Russ­ian hands—the ex-part­ner said that the deal “fell through for unknown rea­sons and Williams still has the com­put­er device or destroyed it.” Pelosi’s aide Drew Ham­mill not­ed on Twit­ter last week that an office lap­top was stolen, but said that it was “only used for pre­sen­ta­tions.””

    What became of Nan­cy Pelosi’s lap­top? We still don’t know. Maybe Williams still has it or destroyed it, but it appar­ent­ly nev­er made it to Rus­sia.

    So was that sto­ry about a friend in Rus­sia just garbage being ped­dled to con­fuse inves­ti­ga­tors? It’s plau­si­ble. But with the recent rev­e­la­tions that the leader of the accel­er­a­tionist group The Group has been liv­ing in Rus­sia, we have to con­sid­er the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Williams’s friend in Rus­sia real­ly was Rinal­do Naz­zaro. And if it was indeed Naz­zaro, we have to con­sid­er the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the Capi­tol insur­rec­tion was, in part, planned by Naz­zaro, some­one with exten­sive work com­bat­ing insur­gen­cies and there­fore some­one who knows how to wage one too:

    Vice

    Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty Con­firms Neo-Nazi Leader Used to Work For It
    The leader of ter­ror group the Base once worked for an agency tasked with coor­di­nat­ing the U.S. government’s coun­tert­er­ror­ism efforts.

    by Ben Makuch
    Feb­ru­ary 17, 2021, 8:31am

    The Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty (DHS) con­firmed it once employed an Amer­i­can neo-Nazi ter­ror leader now based in Rus­sia after he post­ed what he said were let­ters of appre­ci­a­tion that DHS and the Pen­ta­gon sent him thank­ing him for his ser­vice.

    Ear­li­er this month, Rinal­do Naz­zaro, 47, founder and leader of the Base, one of the most vio­lent Amer­i­can domes­tic ter­ror groups in years, post­ed three undat­ed let­ters from U.S. agen­cies laud­ing him for his ser­vice. One was from DHS—an agency tasked with thwart­ing ter­ror­ism in the U.S.—and two were on Marine Corps let­ter­head. All spoke glow­ing­ly of Naz­zaro. Since late 2019, nine mem­bers of the Base, the group he found­ed, have been arrest­ed in the U.S. for alleged crimes as wide-rang­ing as an assas­si­na­tion plot, ghost-gun mak­ing, plans for train derail­ments, and a mass shoot­ing. The Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment has des­ig­nat­ed it as a ter­ror­ist group.

    While it wouldn’t authen­ti­cate the let­ter addressed to Naz­zaro, DHS ver­i­fied he had worked with the depart­ment in the past.

    “I can con­firm that Rinal­do Naz­zaro worked at DHS from 2004 to 2006,” said a DHS spokesper­son.

    VICE News pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed that Naz­zaro was said to have worked with U.S spe­cial forces on the Pen­tagon’s dime. (Pre­vi­ous­ly, the BBC report­ed that Naz­zaro was an FBI ana­lyst and had been a con­trac­tor with the Depart­ment of Defense.)

    The con­fir­ma­tion that Naz­zaro worked for DHS is indica­tive of a sig­nif­i­cant prob­lem Amer­i­can law enforce­ment and coun­tert­er­ror­ism offi­cials are fac­ing: Some vet­er­ans and peo­ple who have worked for the gov­ern­ment dur­ing recent wars, with real trade­craft and under­stand­ings of insur­gency, now see that gov­ern­ment as the ene­my.

    “Your out­stand­ing ser­vice has been great­ly appre­ci­at­ed,” says a let­ter Naz­zaro post­ed, claim­ing a DHS offi­cial had addressed it to him. “All the best in the future — I will miss you.”

    The same let­ter has a hand­writ­ten mes­sage scrib­bled onto it: “Thanks for all the per­son­al work you did to make DHS/Intelligence Analy­sis [...] as good as they were. You did a superb job.”

    Naz­zaro post­ed the let­ters on Telegram, a social media site pop­u­lar with extrem­ists, where he has pre­vi­ous­ly shared such per­son­al pho­tos from his work with the mil­i­tary as a shot of him­self (with tan Humvees in the back­ground) at the famous Vic­to­ry Arch in Bagh­dad, also known as the “Crossed Swords.”

    Ear­li­er in the month, DHS took the unprece­dent­ed step of call­ing out domes­tic extrem­ists as a major ter­ror­ism threat to the coun­try after far-right extrem­ists mount­ed an insur­rec­tion­ist attack on Capi­tol Hill.

    ...

    Naz­zaro told VICE News that he post­ed the let­ters to legit­imize him­self with the far right, mem­bers of which have ques­tioned his mil­i­tary career.

    “There’s been much spec­u­la­tion about my back­ground,” he said in an email. “So, I post­ed the let­ters for the ben­e­fit of my side as evi­dence that I am who I say I am.”

    Naz­zaro wrote about the let­ters under his alias “Roman Wolf,” one of the pseu­do­nyms he uses while work­ing with the Base. “Those were like mid-career for me,” he post­ed in ref­er­ence to the let­ters.

    ...

    Naz­zaro con­tin­ues to main­tain that the Base is no ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion, but a “sur­vival­ism and self-defense net­work for nation­al­ists.” Long dubbed a “fed” (short for fed­er­al infor­mant) by some neo-Nazis, he seems to have antic­i­pat­ed that the doc­u­ments would not go over well among his fol­low­ers. After the doc­u­ments were uploaded, he post­ed he “didn’t mean to break your hearts,” but want­ed to be trans­par­ent.

    ————

    “Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty Con­firms Neo-Nazi Leader Used to Work For It” by Ben Makuch; Vice; 02/17/2021

    “VICE News pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed that Naz­zaro was said to have worked with U.S spe­cial forces on the Pen­tagon’s dime. (Pre­vi­ous­ly, the BBC report­ed that Naz­zaro was an FBI ana­lyst and had been a con­trac­tor with the Depart­ment of Defense.)”

    We already knew Naz­zro worked with US spe­cial forces, and had worked as an FBI ana­lyst. And now we’re learn­ing that he also worked as a DHS intel­li­gence ana­lyst in the kind of work that gave him a real trade­craft and under­stand­ing of insur­gency. That’s the guy now lead­ing one of the newest accel­er­a­tionist neo-Nazi groups oper­at­ing today. And note how the let­ters he post­ed were appar­ent­ly mid-career. You have to won­der what oth­er high­ly sen­si­tive areas the guy was work­ing on over the past cou­ple of decades:

    ...
    The con­fir­ma­tion that Naz­zaro worked for DHS is indica­tive of a sig­nif­i­cant prob­lem Amer­i­can law enforce­ment and coun­tert­er­ror­ism offi­cials are fac­ing: Some vet­er­ans and peo­ple who have worked for the gov­ern­ment dur­ing recent wars, with real trade­craft and under­stand­ings of insur­gency, now see that gov­ern­ment as the ene­my.

    ...

    Naz­zaro wrote about the let­ters under his alias “Roman Wolf,” one of the pseu­do­nyms he uses while work­ing with the Base. “Those were like mid-career for me,” he post­ed in ref­er­ence to the let­ters.

    In a May 2019 con­ver­sa­tion in an encrypt­ed chat room, Naz­zaro told oth­er mem­bers of the Base that he had worked with the mil­i­tary dur­ing the aughts as a con­trac­tor.

    “[I did] mul­ti­ple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan over five years,” said Naz­zaro in an encrypt­ed chat room with his fol­low­ers.
    ...

    And to get a bet­ter sense of just how exten­sive Naz­zaro’s mil­i­tary con­trac­tor back­ground is, here’s a New York Mag­a­zine piece from almost a year ago describ­ing Naz­zaro’s high­ly unusu­al back­ground as a neo-Nazi accel­er­a­tionist fig­ure­head. He real­ly was a “prep-school Nazi” who went on to become a defense-con­trac­tor Nazi, and yet his extrem­ist views were appar­ent­ly hid­den from vir­tu­al­ly every­one the entire time. Even after he secret­ly set out to start The Base a few years ago and was oper­at­ing under alias­es like “Roman Wolf” or “Nor­man Spear”. It was only after his iden­ti­ty was revealed that the world, includ­ing those clos­est to him, learned the guy was­n’t just a neo-Nazi but an excep­tion­al­ly vio­lent neo-Nazi who was plan­ning on uti­liz­ing his knowl­edge of insur­gency to wave an accel­er­a­tionist col­lapse of soci­ety:

    New York Mag­a­zine

    The Prep-School Nazi
    Before he was Nor­man Spear, hate group founder and pos­si­ble Russ­ian asset Rinal­do Naz­zaro was just anoth­er Jer­sey boy.

    By Ben­jamin Wal­lace
    Mar. 30, 2020

    Six years before he would found a neo-Nazi group called the Base — Mein Kampf–ing its launch with a tweet­ed Hitler pho­to and the cap­tion “Führer, you were only the begin­ning. We will fin­ish what you start­ed” — the prep-school grad from New Jer­sey was get­ting dressed in his room at the Stan­dard Hotel in the Meat­pack­ing Dis­trict.

    His father, Michael, helped him into his tuxe­do jack­et. Play­ing the best-man role, his friend Don fas­tened a white lily to the lapel. Lat­er, he would be known to his fol­low­ers as Nor­man Spear. Now, at 39, he was just Rinal­do Naz­zaro. An ear­li­er engage­ment hadn’t worked out, but today he was get­ting mar­ried.

    Across town, at the Gramer­cy Park Hotel, Lyud­mi­la Sergeye­va, Nazzaro’s pret­ty, dark-haired 31-year-old Russ­ian fiancée, was hav­ing her hair done. She put on a strap­less Vera Wang wed­ding dress and ivory Vera Wang Laven­der sling­back pumps. Her florist Stacey arrived with a bou­quet, inspired by Kate Middleton’s, of gar­den and tea ros­es and flax flow­ers. “All white and pure,” as the bride would write lat­er in a Face­book tes­ti­mo­ni­al.

    Like the neo-Nazi group Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion, which has been linked to five mur­ders and report­ed­ly shared some mem­bers with the Base, Nazzaro’s group would be inter­est­ed in “accel­er­a­tionism” — a strain of white nation­al­ism aimed at has­ten­ing “the booga­loo,” or soci­etal col­lapse, through real-world action, includ­ing vio­lence. “I’ll be the light­en­ing rod [sic],” Nor­man Spear would tell one per­son over Twit­ter, “but you need to pay me back in blood (prefer­ably not your own).”

    ...

    The Base’s oper­a­tions would even­tu­al­ly stretch far beyond Naz­zaro. This past Novem­ber, 18-year-old Richard Tobin, an alleged mem­ber of the Base in South Jer­sey, was arrest­ed on sus­pi­cion of con­spir­a­cy to com­mit van­dal­ism of two syn­a­gogues in the Mid­west. Two months lat­er, in Mary­land and Delaware, the FBI arrest­ed three alleged Base mem­bers on weapons and oth­er charges: 27-year-old Patrik Math­ews, a for­mer com­bat engi­neer in the Cana­di­an Army Reserve turned inter­na­tion­al fugi­tive; 33-year-old Bri­an Mark Lem­ley; and William Garfield Bil­brough IV. On Jan­u­ary 15, police in Floyd Coun­ty, Geor­gia, helped by the FBI, arrest­ed anoth­er three alleged Base mem­bers — 21-year-old Luke Austin Lane, 19-year-old Jacob Kader­li, and 25-year-old Michael Hel­ter­brand — charg­ing them with plot­ting to over­throw the gov­ern­ment and to kill a mar­ried cou­ple they believed to be mem­bers of antifa. Two days lat­er, the FBI arrest­ed 22-year-old sus­pect­ed Base mem­ber Yousef Omar Baras­neh of Oak Creek, Wis­con­sin, for alleged­ly des­e­crat­ing a syn­a­gogue. When they burst into his par­ents’ house, he was still in bed, a loaded firearm beside him, accord­ing to a court doc­u­ment. Base mem­bers have also been iden­ti­fied in Europe, South Africa, and Aus­tralia, among oth­er places.

    The sweep and breadth of the Amer­i­can arrests was par­tic­u­lar­ly note­wor­thy because the entire premise of the Base was that its decen­tral­ized cell struc­ture would guard against just this sort of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. The group’s name was the Eng­lish trans­la­tion of Al Qae­da, whose rad­i­cal­ism and strat­e­gy of “lead­er­less resis­tance,” if not its racial make­up, are wide­ly admired among neo-Nazis. Of course, like Al Qae­da, it did have a leader, and in a Guardian arti­cle on Jan­u­ary 23, reporter Jason Wil­son was able to iden­ti­fy the man whom Base mem­bers knew only as Nor­man Spear or Roman Wolf. He was, in fact, Naz­zaro, an alum­nus of the elite Del­bar­ton School in Mor­ris­town and a cur­rent res­i­dent of Rus­sia. It was a reminder, in this time of ris­ing white nation­al­ism, not only of all the rocks still to be turned over, and of the crea­tures wrig­gling in the dark beneath them, but of their sur­pris­ing cul­tur­al pen­e­tra­tion, num­ber­ing among them not just Dylann Roof–style revan­chists but an edu­cat­ed, one­time Flat­iron Dis­trict res­i­dent with Estab­lish­ment ties.

    In the wake of his out­ing, peo­ple won­dered how some­one from such a back­ground could become a neo-Nazi, but just as quick­ly two oth­er pos­si­bil­i­ties were raised. Might he have been a fed­er­al agent and the Base a hon­ey­pot cre­at­ed express­ly to lure extrem­ists so that the FBI could eas­i­ly cor­ral them? Or could he be a Russ­ian asset, a covert oper­a­tive or use­ful idiot deployed by Vladimir Putin’s SVR as part of its broad­er cam­paign to sow chaos and divi­sion in the U.S.? The last pos­si­bil­i­ty was per­haps the most dis­turb­ing: Was this the unmade sea­son sev­en of The Amer­i­cans, updat­ing ’80s KGB sleep­er cells with ’20s Manchuri­an racists?

    ***********

    Rinal­do Naz­zaro grew up in Liv­ingston, a well-to-do com­muter sub­urb in North Jersey’s Essex Coun­ty. His moth­er, who seems to have been the dom­i­nant par­ent, worked in the trav­el busi­ness, includ­ing as a tick­et agent for Ali­talia. He had a Roman Catholic edu­ca­tion and grad­u­at­ed from Del­bar­ton, which is oper­at­ed by monks of the con­tem­pla­tive Bene­dic­tine order and was recent­ly ranked fourth among all schools in New Jer­sey. Naz­zaro liked his expe­ri­ence at Del­bar­ton well enough that two and a half decades lat­er, he’d still be con­tribut­ing to the school in alum­ni fundrais­ing dri­ves. (He and mem­bers of his fam­i­ly did not respond to requests for com­ment.)

    ...

    He spent his col­lege years at Vil­lano­va, then a proud­ly con­ser­v­a­tive place, run by Augus­tini­ans and nick­named “Vanil­lano­va.” It was the ear­ly 1990s, and Naz­zaro affect­ed a grunge style: grow­ing his hair out, wear­ing a beard, cov­er­ing his head with a wool hat, sport­ing a long dark coat, and lis­ten­ing to a lot of Alice in Chains.

    ...

    Naz­zaro had a seri­ous side, too. “Short­ly after we met,” the Vil­lano­va friend recalls, “he kind of decid­ed to stop get­ting intox­i­cat­ed for a good long peri­od of time. He was hap­py to hang around us, and we were hap­py to have him, but he made that deci­sion. Not a lot of us at age 20 in col­lege were mak­ing that deci­sion or tak­ing a real look at that. He said he felt like get­ting it togeth­er.”

    Naz­zaro became involved with the anti-cor­po­rate Demo­c­ra­t­ic Social­ists of Amer­i­ca, the future par­ty of Alexan­dria Oca­sio-Cortez and a lot of Bernie Sanders sup­port­ers, which was hav­ing a moment at Vil­lano­va and seemed to attract the school’s out­liers. Michele Rossi, who chaired the DSA on cam­pus at the time, recalls Naz­zaro as “smart, but rather spacey … sweet, cared about the vul­ner­a­ble.”

    “What I remem­ber most of Ron is he was some­one strug­gling to find a way to belong,” says Wal­ter Grea­son, who was one of the few Africana-stud­ies stu­dents on cam­pus as well as vice-pres­i­dent of the stu­dent gov­ern­ment and whose sub­se­quent aca­d­e­m­ic career at Mon­mouth Uni­ver­si­ty has focused large­ly on con­fronting racism. “I think phi­los­o­phy gave him a way to feel he was deep­er, so he didn’t have time for the mar­ket­ing majors. And being part of DSA gave him a way to express anti-gov­ern­ment kinds of ideas.”

    The sum­mer after his junior year, in 1994, Naz­zaro dropped out of Vil­lano­va for rea­sons that are unclear. “Last I heard of Ron,” his col­lege friend says, “he told me he want­ed to go to law school and work with bat­tered women, women who’d been in an abu­sive sit­u­a­tion.”

    **********

    Instead, his activ­i­ties over the next decade are murky, but he even­tu­al­ly grav­i­tat­ed to gov­ern­ment-adja­cent work. In ear­ly 1999, Naz­zaro did a two-month intern­ship with the Nation­al Defense Coun­cil Foun­da­tion, a small think tank in Alexan­dria, Virginia’s Old Town devot­ed to spe­cial oper­a­tions and ener­gy secu­ri­ty. For the con­ser­v­a­tive Wash­ing­ton Times, he co-bylined a pro-drug-war op-ed, “Mar­i­jua­na Canard,” with the NDCF’s founder and direc­tor, Major Andy Mess­ing. When I reached Mess­ing recent­ly, he strug­gled to recall Naz­zaro. “He would have been at the foun­da­tion twice a week for six hours per day being direct­ed to read defense-relat­ed mate­ri­als. Out of the dozens of for­mer interns I had, he just doesn’t stand out.” The NDCF, accord­ing to anoth­er for­mer intern from Nazzaro’s era, had a spe­cial inter­est in asym­met­ric war­fare — a sub­ject that would lat­er pre­oc­cu­py Nazzaro’s white-nation­al­ist alter ego Nor­man Spear.
    -
    Three years lat­er, dur­ing the post‑9/11 defense-con­trac­tor gold rush, Naz­zaro incor­po­rat­ed a com­pa­ny called Omega Solu­tions Inter­na­tion­al in Vir­ginia. It billed itself as a “secu­ri­ty con­sult­ing firm … spe­cial­iz­ing in com­mand, con­trol, and intel­li­gence (C2I) for home­land secu­ri­ty, coun­tert­er­ror­ism, and coun­terin­sur­gency mis­sions at every ech­e­lon.” He’d lat­er claim, under his Base pseu­do­nyms, to have been a mil­i­tary intel­li­gence con­trac­tor who’d been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.

    In 2003, he set his sights on an apart­ment in Arling­ton, Vir­ginia, in the Belvedere, a con­do tow­er just across Key Bridge from George­town. It was a fifth-floor one-bed­room with a bal­cony that over­looked Route 50 with a south­east­ern view of the Potomac Riv­er, the Jef­fer­son Memo­r­i­al, and the Iwo Jima Memo­r­i­al.

    When Naz­zaro first toured the apart­ment, he was accom­pa­nied by his moth­er, Gian­na. Naz­zaro was qui­et. His moth­er, the condo’s sell­er says, was “nice, a pos­i­tive per­son. His mom was in charge, call­ing the shots, pro­vid­ing the mon­ey. She did all the talk­ing and all the nego­ti­at­ing on price. I thought it was odd, but I didn’t care.” The con­do was being put in his name, but at the clos­ing, it was his moth­er who pushed a check across the table, pay­ing the full pur­chase price, $282,000, from her own account. (Six years ear­li­er, she’d set up an enti­ty named Rinal­do Enter­pris­es Ltd.)

    Around that time, Naz­zaro got engaged to a woman who appears to have been an Army vet­er­an who’d pre­vi­ous­ly been sta­tioned in North Car­oli­na in the psy­cho­log­i­cal oper­a­tions divi­sion at Fort Bragg. The mar­riage didn’t hap­pen. “Ron and I were engaged so long ago (over ten years),” the woman, who appar­ent­ly now holds a man­age­ment posi­tion at the State Depart­ment, wrote me in an email. (She didn’t respond to fur­ther con­tact attempts.)

    Maybe seek­ing a fresh start, four years after mov­ing into the Arling­ton con­do, Naz­zaro left it. “He cer­tain­ly didn’t seem like a neo-Nazi,” says a per­son of col­or who did busi­ness with Naz­zaro around the time Naz­zaro sold the Arling­ton apart­ment for $417,000 in 2007. Naz­zaro, who struck this per­son as “hip,” said he was mov­ing to New York. “He seemed like he might be a club guy.”

    Naz­zaro soon built a new life in Man­hat­tan, clos­er to his moth­er. He bought an apart­ment for $585,000 in Jade NYC, a new­ly ren­o­vat­ed build­ing on West 19th Street fea­tur­ing designs by Jade Jag­ger, where his neigh­bors includ­ed mod­el Miran­da Kerr. He rein­cor­po­rat­ed OSI in New York. His moth­er had got­ten remar­ried to Jon Grouf, a Har­vard Law–educated part­ner at the white-shoe cor­po­rate firm Duane Mor­ris, which did legal work for Omega, help­ing with its incor­po­ra­tion and the lat­er reg­is­tra­tion of a trade­mark for Watch­tow­er, Omega’s “pro­pri­etary” and “cloud-based” soft­ware for “oper­a­tional intel­li­gence aware­ness.” (A spokesman for Duane Mor­ris says the firm had no idea of Nazzaro’s “report­ed con­nec­tion to an extrem­ist hate group” until this month, nev­er did work for the Base, and has had “no con­nec­tion or con­tact with either Omega or Naz­zaro for over two years.”)

    Dur­ing this peri­od, Naz­zaro met Lyud­mi­la Sergeye­va, who came from Chebok­sary, in the eth­ni­cal­ly Tur­kic Chu­vash region of west­ern Rus­sia. She had stud­ied account­ing at Baruch Col­lege and worked at Chase bank as a teller and at Altour, the trav­el agency where Nazzaro’s moth­er worked. “She was flighty, sweet as pie, very good-natured,” says a fel­low inau­gur­al co-own­er in the build­ing. “There was noth­ing mali­cious about her.” The same per­son said of her hus­band, “He was nev­er around … she was neb­u­lous, I couldn’t get a straight sto­ry. I sug­gest­ed we get din­ner. I nev­er met him. I always sus­pect­ed he was some­thing like a CIA oper­a­tive.” This per­son observed that the cou­ple seemed to have mon­ey.

    A long­time morn­ing door­man at the Jade said, “Oh, Ron. I know he was in the Army. He was always on a mis­sion — in Wash­ing­ton, abroad. When the FBI was here, I tell them the same thing.”

    To out­ward appear­ances, things seemed to be going well for Naz­zaro. Soon, he and his wife had a daugh­ter, the first of two. They moved to Wash­ing­ton, D.C., again liv­ing at a tony address. They bought a town­house con­do on N Street, just off Wis­con­sin Avenue, for $675,000. They looked like a pros­per­ous young fam­i­ly, push­ing their City Mini around the cher­ry-blos­som-strewn brick side­walks of George­town.

    But there were signs of insta­bil­i­ty. The cou­ple sold off their D.C. con­do after just a year and moved north again into an apart­ment owned by Nazzaro’s moth­er and step­fa­ther in North Bergen, New Jer­sey. Some peo­ple who inter­act­ed with him after he returned from Iraq and Afghanistan felt that he had changed, and there was now some­thing — it was hard for them to artic­u­late exact­ly what — off about him.

    In win­ter 2017, he and his wife and daugh­ters, along with his father, spent three days at Dis­ney World; in a 30-minute video tak­en by his wife on that trip, Naz­zaro is near­ly always unsmil­ing. As his old­er daugh­ter sits on his shoul­ders, gaz­ing rap­tur­ous­ly at the Mag­ic King­dom while “Once Upon a Time” plays, Naz­zaro says, in a flat tone, “Lived hap­pi­ly ever after, the end.”

    That fall, the Naz­zaros moved to Rus­sia. By then, accord­ing to Fontan­ka, a St. Peters­burg news­pa­per, he had obtained Russ­ian cit­i­zen­ship and a Russ­ian pass­port. Under nor­mal cir­cum­stances, the move might have a sim­ple famil­ial expla­na­tion: The desire to be clos­er to their kids’ mater­nal grand­par­ents. Or it might appear to be a relo­ca­tion dri­ven by the age-old itch for a new begin­ning. But in light of lat­er events, it’s impos­si­ble not to won­der whether Naz­zaro was can­ni­ly putting him­self beyond the reach of legal extra­di­tion.

    After Nazzaro’s move to Rus­sia, Omega was sued over the Watch­tow­er trade­mark by a cyber­se­cu­ri­ty firm that already had an iden­ti­cal­ly named sim­i­lar prod­uct, and Nazzaro’s firm lost the case, nev­er fil­ing a response. But Naz­zaro was still try­ing to make mon­ey as a secu­ri­ty ven­dor. He was among the list­ed atten­dees at a defense expo in Moscow. He appar­ent­ly put up a LinkedIn pro­file under the name Aldo Con­dot­tiero (Ital­ian for “mer­ce­nary”). And the move seems to have been more than mere­ly geo­graph­ic. In a video post­ed to YouTube by his wife from March 2018, he was wear­ing a “Rus­sia: Absolute Pow­er” T‑shirt with a pic­ture of Putin on it.

    Nazzaro’s emer­gence as a neo-Nazi was odd­ly sud­den. Rapid con­ver­sion to tox­ic think­ing is com­mon among neo-Nazis, who like to share sto­ries of the moment when they were “red-pilled,” or saw the light. (Not coin­ci­den­tal­ly, the Base’s online library con­tained a sec­tion on “mas­culin­i­ty”: There’s more than a lit­tle over­lap between the red-pilling of the online manos­phere, with its fix­a­tion on the wrongs done to men, and the red-pilling of the fas­cist­sphere, with its fix­a­tion on the wrongs done to white peo­ple.) But typ­i­cal­ly they take their new world­view pub­lic in baby steps. Naz­zaro was dif­fer­ent. In Decem­ber 2017, short­ly after the move to Rus­sia, and four months after the now infa­mous “Unite the Right” ral­ly in Char­lottesville, he appeared in the online far-right scene using the name Nor­man Spear, and with a Twit­ter avatar that includ­ed a pho­to of him­self, his head now com­plete­ly shaved, a long, bushy beard cov­er­ing his jaw, and a ful­ly devel­oped ide­ol­o­gy.

    At first, he drew atten­tion on Twit­ter and YouTube, where he uploaded a series of videos of him­self talk­ing about “guer­ril­la war­fare the­o­ry”; Bitchute, a site that archived a num­ber of these videos, iden­ti­fied him as a “Defense Stud­ies expert and for­mer CIA field intel­li­gence offi­cer.” (New York was unable to find sup­port for claims that he served in the CIA or for his ever hav­ing been in the mil­i­tary.) Soon, he was being invit­ed onto far-right pod­casts, where he railed against the impo­tence of tra­di­tion­al white nation­al­ism — with its peace­ful march­es on the one hand and its incon­se­quen­tial lone-wolf shoot­ings on the oth­er. He spoke instead of the need for “a rev­o­lu­tion­ary van­guard” and advo­cat­ed for an exist­ing group called the North­west Front. It was run by Harold Cov­ing­ton, a white sep­a­ratist in Wash­ing­ton State who for years had been push­ing to imple­ment “the But­ler Plan,” also known as the North­west Ter­ri­to­r­i­al Imper­a­tive, focused on cre­at­ing a white eth­nos­tate in the Pacif­ic North­west.

    On the pod­cast “Paper Beats Rock,” Spear said “I’ve been NS” — Nation­al Social­ist, or Nazi — “for a while … we all kind of know what the prob­lems are, what’s fac­ing our race … Even­tu­al­ly a light­bulb just went on.” He lament­ed “the oppres­sion that whites are expe­ri­enc­ing” and said he thought it would take 20 years to achieve the “final solu­tion” of an Aryan nation. Two weeks lat­er, in a pod­cast inter­view on Lone Wolf Radio, he said that he hoped to achieve his own migra­tion to the North­west “in hope­ful­ly no more than a year … Amer­i­ca is no longer Amer­i­can.” In sub­se­quent inter­views and tweets, Spear elab­o­rat­ed a vision of “lead­er­less resis­tance,” a move­ment with an Al Qaeda–like cell struc­ture, and blithered about “Zion­ist Freema­sons.” To bypass Twitter’s hate-speech fil­ters, he delib­er­ate­ly mis­spelled words, tweet­ing that “major­i­ty of Amer­i­cans are men­tal­ly )ewish so even if all genet­ic and spir­i­tu­al )ews expelled USA would still have a )ewish prob­lem — unfix­able in time avail­able.”

    Spear seemed deter­mined to move from talk to action. By April 2018, he had fixed on a place to birth his new nation, tweet­ing drone footage of Repub­lic, a small town in rur­al Fer­ry Coun­ty, Wash­ing­ton, with the cap­tion: “Ter­rain analy­sis, an inte­gral part of the intel­li­gence prepa­ra­tion of the bat­tle­field.” On Gab, an online plat­form pop­u­lar among hate groups, he post­ed that “it’s only ter­ror­ism if we lose — If we win, we get stat­ues of us put up in parks.”

    That sum­mer, Cov­ing­ton died at age 64, and Spear start­ed the Base. While still push­ing the North­west plan, the Base was more action-ori­ent­ed, a plat­form on which cells could self-orga­nize, rather than a top-down group. While Spear used Twit­ter and oth­er pub­lic-fac­ing plat­forms to bait recruits, con­ver­sa­tions among the group’s mem­bers took place out of pub­lic view, in encrypt­ed chat rooms. You couldn’t just sign up for the Base. There was a vet­ting process, where appli­cants were asked about mil­i­tary expe­ri­ence because, as Spear put it, “the Base is a sur­vival­ism & self-defense net­work.”

    Spear was not like his fol­low­ers in cer­tain ways. He was old­er and more artic­u­late. His sud­den emer­gence as a con­fi­dent ide­o­logue was unusu­al, as was his ver­bal restraint: He tend­ed to avoid using the most vile racial slurs. He also came, though they didn’t know it, from a vast­ly more priv­i­leged back­ground (to the extent that his fol­low­ers’ iden­ti­ties have been revealed).

    Spear reg­u­lar­ly encour­aged Base mem­bers to be mind­ful of oper­a­tional secu­ri­ty, or OPSEC. But in Novem­ber 2018, the group drew unwel­come atten­tion from Vice, which pub­lished an exposé based in part on get­ting inside the group’s encrypt­ed chat room on Riot. Vice found a dig­i­tal library includ­ing instruc­tions for mak­ing chem­i­cal weapons as well as com­ments by Spear that “it doesn’t need to be zero or zyk­lon. Think esca­la­tion of force … We need non-attrib­ut­able action but that will still send a mes­sage and/or add to accel­er­a­tion as much as pos­si­ble.Mem­bers post­ed images of them­selves, some­times in groups, hid­den behind skull masks and bal­a­clavas, hold­ing rifles and engaged in para­mil­i­tary train­ing.

    When the Vice arti­cle came out, Spear was de-plat­formed by Twit­ter, but he soon reap­peared using a new pseu­do­nym, Roman Wolf. And he redou­bled his focus on bring­ing the Base into the real world. The fol­low­ing month, four days before Christ­mas, a com­pa­ny he’d incor­po­rat­ed in Delaware, Base Glob­al LLC, bought three ten-acre blocks of land in Fer­ry Coun­ty, Wash­ing­ton, for $33,000.

    The land acqui­si­tion, like the Base itself, was a cre­ation of the inter­net. Naz­zaro seems nev­er to have gone to Fer­ry Coun­ty. He found the extreme­ly remote prop­er­ty online and looked at the area via drone footage on YouTube. He also had a cou­ple of phone con­ver­sa­tions with the list­ing agent, telling him that he lived in St. Peters­burg, Rus­sia, where he was an Eng­lish teacher. He want­ed some land in Amer­i­ca far away from every­thing, he said, to retire on in the future. When it was time to sign the paper­work, a local title agent did so on Nazzaro’s behalf.

    ...

    *********

    As the Base began ramp­ing up IRL activ­i­ties — includ­ing alleged­ly hold­ing a three-day live-fire train­ing camp at a 105-acre farm in Sil­ver Creek, Geor­gia, in August 2019 — Roman Wolf’s talk of OPSEC became laugh­able. In July, an under­cov­er FBI agent made it through the vet­ting process and was invit­ed to join the group’s encrypt­ed mem­bers-only chat room. That month, Eugene Antifa, an Ore­gon-based group, seemed to have a source inside the group when it warned on Twit­ter that the Base was plan­ning a “hate camp” in Wash­ing­ton State and said Spear had pur­chased land there. After fly­ers began pop­ping up in Man­i­to­ba, Cana­da, read­ing “Save Your Race, Join the Base,” Ryan Thor­pe, a young reporter for the Win­nipeg Free Press, decid­ed to go under­cov­er and infil­trate the group.

    As part of his vet­ting, Thor­pe filled out a ques­tion­naire, respond­ing to ques­tions about mil­i­tary expe­ri­ence, any knowl­edge of chem­istry or engi­neer­ing, firearms train­ing, his polit­i­cal world­view, his loca­tion, and his desired pseu­do­nym. After that, Wolf engaged him over Pro­ton Mail (an open-source, pri­va­cy-obsessed, encrypt­ed email ser­vice) ask­ing about his expe­ri­ence with Seige, an influ­en­tial accel­er­a­tionist book writ­ten by a Nazi named James Mason. Thor­pe quick­ly did a crash course to answer plau­si­bly. Thor­pe then did a live voice inter­view over Sig­nal. Six to eight mem­bers were on the call, but for most of the hour­long con­ver­sa­tion, “Roman Wolf was the one ask­ing ques­tions.” Wolf left no ambi­gu­i­ty about his world­view. “I’d been pre­sent­ing myself as white nation­al­ist,” Thor­pe says, “and that almost wasn’t hard­core enough. This is close to a direct quo­ta­tion: ‘We have some run-of-the-mill white nation­al­ists in our midst, but most of us are Nation­al Social­ists or fas­cists.’ He said, ‘This will be the most hard­core col­lec­tion of pro-white indi­vid­u­als in the world.’”

    Wolf asked if Thor­pe had seen the Vice exposé, which Wolf called “‘a hit piece,’” Thor­pe says. The arti­cle, Wolf said, had tak­en the wind out of the group’s sails, and it was only now return­ing to its pri­or strength. “Yeah,” Wolf told the under­cov­er reporter, “a reporter infil­trat­ed our chat. We’ve upped our secu­ri­ty. That won’t hap­pen again.”

    After Wolf not­ed that Thor­pe wasn’t on social media — “they seemed weird­ed out by that,” Thor­pe says — he asked how Thor­pe had come to his beliefs. “I said I’d grown up in a con­ser­v­a­tive house­hold,” Thor­pe recalls. “But as I got old­er, I began to ques­tion a lot of things I’d learned from my par­ents. Then I start­ed on Wikipedia, went down the inter­net rab­bit holes, became aware of promi­nent thinkers … Roman said, ‘That’s inter­est­ing, I had a pret­ty sim­i­lar path to the cause.’”

    After the call, Thor­pe was cleared to meet a local Base mem­ber in per­son. The reporter already had a shaved head, and after razor­ing off his mus­tache and cov­er­ing up his more cos­mopoli­tan tat­toos, such as an em-dash-30 jour­nal­ist sym­bol, he went to meet the man in a park. The Base mem­ber, who Thor­pe would lat­er fig­ure out was Patrik Math­ews, the mem­ber of the Cana­di­an Army reserve, said he’d nev­er met the group’s founder but that once, when he’d set out to trav­el to the U.S. to take part in a para­mil­i­tary camp, “Roman planned to present him with a Base flag at that camp.” (Math­ews was stopped at the bor­der and nev­er made it to the flag cer­e­mo­ny, but Thor­pe was left with the impres­sion that on at least that occa­sion, Wolf had been back in the U.S.)

    ***********

    Thorpe’s work sig­naled the begin­ning of the end for the Base. After his arti­cle iden­ti­fy­ing Math­ews, “Home­grown Hate,” went live in August, the Roy­al Cana­di­an Mount­ed Police exe­cut­ed a search war­rant on Mathews’s home, and accord­ing to pros­e­cu­tors, Math­ews fled across the bor­der into Michi­gan, where Bri­an Lem­ley and William Bil­brough, after dri­ving 600 miles from Mary­land, took him into hid­ing. In Sep­tem­ber, Yousef Omar Baras­neh alleged­ly spray-paint­ed anti-Semit­ic sym­bols and words on Beth Israel Sinai syn­a­gogue in Racine, Wis­con­sin. In Han­cock, Michi­gan, that same week­end, Tem­ple Jacob was spray-paint­ed with swastikas and the Base’s Runic sym­bol.

    In late Octo­ber, the FBI inter­viewed Richard Tobin, an 18-year-old res­i­dent of Brook­lawn, New Jer­sey, who the gov­ern­ment says admit­ted to goad­ing mem­bers of the Base’s “Great Lakes cell,” includ­ing Baras­neh, into acts of van­dal­ism. Tobin told Spe­cial Agent Jason Novick that he’d launched “Oper­a­tion Kristall­nacht” to “tag the sh it” out of syn­a­gogues. He not­ed that he’d con­sid­ered “sui­cide by cop” more than once and that he thought car­ry­ing out a sui­cide bomb­ing would be “pret­ty badass.” In a sec­ond inter­view, he said he’d been depressed for the past three years and often felt trig­gered by the state of the coun­try. At a mall in Edi­son, New Jer­sey, for instance, he’d become “enraged” by how many black peo­ple were around; he want­ed to “let loose” with a machete he had in his car. A few weeks lat­er, Tobin was arrest­ed.

    Mean­while, the FBI was close­ly track­ing the move­ments of Math­ews and his two sav­iors. Using a “sneak and peek” war­rant, agents entered an apart­ment in Newark, Delaware, where they found Base fly­ers, com­mu­ni­ca­tion devices, emp­ty rifle cas­es, “go bags” with mil­i­tary rations, knives, and a video of Math­ews wear­ing a gas mask and expound­ing on his beliefs. The FBI then installed a video cam­era and micro­phone in the apart­ment and, over the next month, cap­tured hours of video of the men talk­ing about guns and play­ing with an assault rifle, which Math­ews repeat­ed­ly aimed, prac­tic­ing mag­a­zine reloads and exe­cut­ing tac­ti­cal entries from the kitchen into the liv­ing room. Talk­ing about an upcom­ing gun-rights protest in Vir­ginia, Math­ews was record­ed say­ing: “You want to cre­ate fuc king some insta­bil­i­ty, while the Vir­ginia sit­u­a­tion is hap­pen­ing, make oth­er things hap­pen, derail some rail lines, fuc king like shut down the high­ways, oh road block, great let’s shut down the rest of the roads, you know, you can kick off the eco­nom­ic col­lapse of the U.S. with­in a week, after the boog starts.” Lem­ley talked about using a ther­mal-imag­ing scope on his rifle to ambush civil­ians and police. “I lit­er­al­ly need, I need to claim my first vic­tim … If there’s like a PoPo cruis­er parked on the street and he doesn’t have back­up, I can exe­cute him at a whim and just take his stuff. He lit­er­al­ly has zero chance of not being ganked.”

    After the sweep of arrests and the out­ing of Naz­zaro, the neo-Nazi com­mu­ni­ty quick­ly coa­lesced around the idea that he’d been a gov­ern­ment agent run­ning a sting oper­a­tion, but a researcher I spoke with at the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter doesn’t give much weight to that sen­ti­ment, not­ing that white suprema­cists are con­stant­ly accus­ing each oth­er of being gov­ern­ment agents. Tobin, for his part, report­ed­ly believed Naz­zaro to be a Russ­ian spy, which isn’t a total­ly crazy idea. It’s well estab­lished that white nation­al­ists are fan­boys of nation­al­ist, author­i­tar­i­an Vladimir Putin — march­ing in Char­lottesville, they chant­ed “Rus­sia is our friend!,” and for­mer KKK grand wiz­ard David Duke has said that Rus­sia offers “an unmatched oppor­tu­ni­ty to help pro­tect the longevi­ty of the white race” — and the love­fest goes both ways. Russia’s bot and troll hordes ampli­fied far-right memes dur­ing the 2016 U.S. pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, and the country’s sup­port for extreme-right politi­cians across Europe has been wide­ly not­ed. The New York Times recent­ly report­ed that the FBI, dri­ven by intel­li­gence that Rus­sia is active­ly try­ing to nudge Amer­i­can extrem­ist groups toward vio­lence, is look­ing close­ly at Nazzaro’s Russ­ian ties, and in par­tic­u­lar at one neo-Nazi group’s fund­ing (it is unclear whether that group is the Base).

    ...

    ————-

    “The Prep-School Nazi Before he was Nor­man Spear, hate group founder and pos­si­ble Russ­ian asset Rinal­do Naz­zaro was just anoth­er Jer­sey boy.” by Ben­jamin Wal­lace; New York Mag­a­zine; 03/30/2020

    After the sweep of arrests and the out­ing of Naz­zaro, the neo-Nazi com­mu­ni­ty quick­ly coa­lesced around the idea that he’d been a gov­ern­ment agent run­ning a sting oper­a­tion, but a researcher I spoke with at the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter doesn’t give much weight to that sen­ti­ment, not­ing that white suprema­cists are con­stant­ly accus­ing each oth­er of being gov­ern­ment agents. Tobin, for his part, report­ed­ly believed Naz­zaro to be a Russ­ian spy, which isn’t a total­ly crazy idea. It’s well estab­lished that white nation­al­ists are fan­boys of nation­al­ist, author­i­tar­i­an Vladimir Putin — march­ing in Char­lottesville, they chant­ed “Rus­sia is our friend!,” and for­mer KKK grand wiz­ard David Duke has said that Rus­sia offers “an unmatched oppor­tu­ni­ty to help pro­tect the longevi­ty of the white race” — and the love­fest goes both ways. Russia’s bot and troll hordes ampli­fied far-right memes dur­ing the 2016 U.S. pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, and the country’s sup­port for extreme-right politi­cians across Europe has been wide­ly not­ed. The New York Times recent­ly report­ed that the FBI, dri­ven by intel­li­gence that Rus­sia is active­ly try­ing to nudge Amer­i­can extrem­ist groups toward vio­lence, is look­ing close­ly at Nazzaro’s Russ­ian ties, and in par­tic­u­lar at one neo-Nazi group’s fund­ing (it is unclear whether that group is the Base).”

    Sus­pi­cions about Naz­zaro sud­den­ly rose fol­low­ing a string of arrests in late 2019 and ear­ly 2020 and then the pub­lic out­ing of Naz­zaro. Was he a gov­ern­ment plant? Giv­en is high­ly unusu­al back­ground, you can’t blame them for sus­pect­ing it: It was only in Decem­ber 2017, months after the Naz­zaro fam­i­ly moved to Rus­sia, that he began post­ing online under the “Nor­man Spear”, talk­ing about gueril­la war­fare and the North­west Front. He was com­plete­ly new the scene but with exact­ly the kind of skill set the far right craves. In oth­er words, for neo-Nazis frus­trat­ed by the back­lash of Char­lottesville, Naz­zaro was too good to be true:

    ...
    Nazzaro’s emer­gence as a neo-Nazi was odd­ly sud­den. Rapid con­ver­sion to tox­ic think­ing is com­mon among neo-Nazis, who like to share sto­ries of the moment when they were “red-pilled,” or saw the light. (Not coin­ci­den­tal­ly, the Base’s online library con­tained a sec­tion on “mas­culin­i­ty”: There’s more than a lit­tle over­lap between the red-pilling of the online manos­phere, with its fix­a­tion on the wrongs done to men, and the red-pilling of the fas­cist­sphere, with its fix­a­tion on the wrongs done to white peo­ple.) But typ­i­cal­ly they take their new world­view pub­lic in baby steps. Naz­zaro was dif­fer­ent. In Decem­ber 2017, short­ly after the move to Rus­sia, and four months after the now infa­mous “Unite the Right” ral­ly in Char­lottesville, he appeared in the online far-right scene using the name Nor­man Spear, and with a Twit­ter avatar that includ­ed a pho­to of him­self, his head now com­plete­ly shaved, a long, bushy beard cov­er­ing his jaw, and a ful­ly devel­oped ide­ol­o­gy.

    At first, he drew atten­tion on Twit­ter and YouTube, where he uploaded a series of videos of him­self talk­ing about “guer­ril­la war­fare the­o­ry”; Bitchute, a site that archived a num­ber of these videos, iden­ti­fied him as a “Defense Stud­ies expert and for­mer CIA field intel­li­gence offi­cer.” (New York was unable to find sup­port for claims that he served in the CIA or for his ever hav­ing been in the mil­i­tary.) Soon, he was being invit­ed onto far-right pod­casts, where he railed against the impo­tence of tra­di­tion­al white nation­al­ism — with its peace­ful march­es on the one hand and its incon­se­quen­tial lone-wolf shoot­ings on the oth­er. He spoke instead of the need for “a rev­o­lu­tion­ary van­guard” and advo­cat­ed for an exist­ing group called the North­west Front. It was run by Harold Cov­ing­ton, a white sep­a­ratist in Wash­ing­ton State who for years had been push­ing to imple­ment “the But­ler Plan,” also known as the North­west Ter­ri­to­r­i­al Imper­a­tive, focused on cre­at­ing a white eth­nos­tate in the Pacif­ic North­west.
    ...

    But also note the inter­est­ing tim­ing in Naz­zaro’s only emerg­ing in late Decem­ber 2017 and the fact that this was months of the Unite the Right ral­ly trig­gered a pub­lic back­lash: at that point, the far right in the US was try­ing to decide if it’s still worth try­ing to put for­ward a ‘nice Nazi’ pub­lic face that could win over more the pub­lic. And here was Naz­zaro, bristling with insur­gency tac­tics, telling the far right to drop the nice guy act and just go for the rapid vio­lent desta­bi­liza­tion of soci­ety. So it isn’t just that Naz­zaro popped out of no where. He popped out of no where at a cru­cial cross-roads for the far right and advo­cat­ed going in the direc­tion of accel­er­at­ing vio­lence.

    It was the kind of path that appar­ent­ly vir­tu­al­ly no one expect­ed of him. At the same time, as we look at his past, the ques­tions of when he became rad­i­cal­ized are far from the only major ques­tion raised. The guy real­ly did have a spooky his­to­ry. He drops out of col­lege in 1994 for rea­sons that are unclear, and shows up in 1999 doing a two-month intern­ship with the Nation­al Defense Coun­cil Foun­da­tion, a think-tank that just hap­pens to have a focus on asym­met­ric war­fare:

    ...
    He spent his col­lege years at Vil­lano­va, then a proud­ly con­ser­v­a­tive place, run by Augus­tini­ans and nick­named “Vanil­lano­va.” It was the ear­ly 1990s, and Naz­zaro affect­ed a grunge style: grow­ing his hair out, wear­ing a beard, cov­er­ing his head with a wool hat, sport­ing a long dark coat, and lis­ten­ing to a lot of Alice in Chains.

    ...

    Naz­zaro became involved with the anti-cor­po­rate Demo­c­ra­t­ic Social­ists of Amer­i­ca, the future par­ty of Alexan­dria Oca­sio-Cortez and a lot of Bernie Sanders sup­port­ers, which was hav­ing a moment at Vil­lano­va and seemed to attract the school’s out­liers. Michele Rossi, who chaired the DSA on cam­pus at the time, recalls Naz­zaro as “smart, but rather spacey … sweet, cared about the vul­ner­a­ble.”

    “What I remem­ber most of Ron is he was some­one strug­gling to find a way to belong,” says Wal­ter Grea­son, who was one of the few Africana-stud­ies stu­dents on cam­pus as well as vice-pres­i­dent of the stu­dent gov­ern­ment and whose sub­se­quent aca­d­e­m­ic career at Mon­mouth Uni­ver­si­ty has focused large­ly on con­fronting racism. “I think phi­los­o­phy gave him a way to feel he was deep­er, so he didn’t have time for the mar­ket­ing majors. And being part of DSA gave him a way to express anti-gov­ern­ment kinds of ideas.”

    The sum­mer after his junior year, in 1994, Naz­zaro dropped out of Vil­lano­va for rea­sons that are unclear. “Last I heard of Ron,” his col­lege friend says, “he told me he want­ed to go to law school and work with bat­tered women, women who’d been in an abu­sive sit­u­a­tion.”

    **********

    Instead, his activ­i­ties over the next decade are murky, but he even­tu­al­ly grav­i­tat­ed to gov­ern­ment-adja­cent work. In ear­ly 1999, Naz­zaro did a two-month intern­ship with the Nation­al Defense Coun­cil Foun­da­tion, a small think tank in Alexan­dria, Virginia’s Old Town devot­ed to spe­cial oper­a­tions and ener­gy secu­ri­ty. For the con­ser­v­a­tive Wash­ing­ton Times, he co-bylined a pro-drug-war op-ed, “Mar­i­jua­na Canard,” with the NDCF’s founder and direc­tor, Major Andy Mess­ing. When I reached Mess­ing recent­ly, he strug­gled to recall Naz­zaro. “He would have been at the foun­da­tion twice a week for six hours per day being direct­ed to read defense-relat­ed mate­ri­als. Out of the dozens of for­mer interns I had, he just doesn’t stand out.” The NDCF, accord­ing to anoth­er for­mer intern from Nazzaro’s era, had a spe­cial inter­est in asym­met­ric war­fare — a sub­ject that would lat­er pre­oc­cu­py Nazzaro’s white-nation­al­ist alter ego Nor­man Spear.
    ...

    In 2002, Naz­zaro begins his career as a defense con­trac­tor, incor­po­rat­ing Omega Solu­tions Inter­na­tion­al, before mov­ing to Arling­ton the next year. Around this time, he gets engaged with a woman sta­tions in the psy­cho­log­i­cal oper­a­tions divi­sion at Fort Bragg:

    ...
    Three years lat­er, dur­ing the post‑9/11 defense-con­trac­tor gold rush, Naz­zaro incor­po­rat­ed a com­pa­ny called Omega Solu­tions Inter­na­tion­al in Vir­ginia. It billed itself as a “secu­ri­ty con­sult­ing firm … spe­cial­iz­ing in com­mand, con­trol, and intel­li­gence (C2I) for home­land secu­ri­ty, coun­tert­er­ror­ism, and coun­terin­sur­gency mis­sions at every ech­e­lon.” He’d lat­er claim, under his Base pseu­do­nyms, to have been a mil­i­tary intel­li­gence con­trac­tor who’d been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.

    In 2003, he set his sights on an apart­ment in Arling­ton, Vir­ginia, in the Belvedere, a con­do tow­er just across Key Bridge from George­town. It was a fifth-floor one-bed­room with a bal­cony that over­looked Route 50 with a south­east­ern view of the Potomac Riv­er, the Jef­fer­son Memo­r­i­al, and the Iwo Jima Memo­r­i­al.

    ...

    Around that time, Naz­zaro got engaged to a woman who appears to have been an Army vet­er­an who’d pre­vi­ous­ly been sta­tioned in North Car­oli­na in the psy­cho­log­i­cal oper­a­tions divi­sion at Fort Bragg. The mar­riage didn’t hap­pen. “Ron and I were engaged so long ago (over ten years),” the woman, who appar­ent­ly now holds a man­age­ment posi­tion at the State Depart­ment, wrote me in an email. (She didn’t respond to fur­ther con­tact attempts.)
    ...

    In 2007, Naz­zaro leaves Arling­ton for Man­hat­tan and relo­cates in com­pa­ny in New York. This is when he met his future wife Lyud­mi­la Sergeye­va:

    ...
    Maybe seek­ing a fresh start, four years after mov­ing into the Arling­ton con­do, Naz­zaro left it. “He cer­tain­ly didn’t seem like a neo-Nazi,” says a per­son of col­or who did busi­ness with Naz­zaro around the time Naz­zaro sold the Arling­ton apart­ment for $417,000 in 2007. Naz­zaro, who struck this per­son as “hip,” said he was mov­ing to New York. “He seemed like he might be a club guy.”

    Naz­zaro soon built a new life in Man­hat­tan, clos­er to his moth­er. He bought an apart­ment for $585,000 in Jade NYC, a new­ly ren­o­vat­ed build­ing on West 19th Street fea­tur­ing designs by Jade Jag­ger, where his neigh­bors includ­ed mod­el Miran­da Kerr. He rein­cor­po­rat­ed OSI in New York. His moth­er had got­ten remar­ried to Jon Grouf, a Har­vard Law–educated part­ner at the white-shoe cor­po­rate firm Duane Mor­ris, which did legal work for Omega, help­ing with its incor­po­ra­tion and the lat­er reg­is­tra­tion of a trade­mark for Watch­tow­er, Omega’s “pro­pri­etary” and “cloud-based” soft­ware for “oper­a­tional intel­li­gence aware­ness.” (A spokesman for Duane Mor­ris says the firm had no idea of Nazzaro’s “report­ed con­nec­tion to an extrem­ist hate group” until this month, nev­er did work for the Base, and has had “no con­nec­tion or con­tact with either Omega or Naz­zaro for over two years.”)

    Dur­ing this peri­od, Naz­zaro met Lyud­mi­la Sergeye­va, who came from Chebok­sary, in the eth­ni­cal­ly Tur­kic Chu­vash region of west­ern Rus­sia. She had stud­ied account­ing at Baruch Col­lege and worked at Chase bank as a teller and at Altour, the trav­el agency where Nazzaro’s moth­er worked. “She was flighty, sweet as pie, very good-natured,” says a fel­low inau­gur­al co-own­er in the build­ing. “There was noth­ing mali­cious about her.” The same per­son said of her hus­band, “He was nev­er around … she was neb­u­lous, I couldn’t get a straight sto­ry. I sug­gest­ed we get din­ner. I nev­er met him. I always sus­pect­ed he was some­thing like a CIA oper­a­tive.” This per­son observed that the cou­ple seemed to have mon­ey.
    ...

    Flash for­ward a decade to the win­ter of 2017, Naz­zaro has received Russ­ian cit­i­zen­ship and the Naz­zaros move to Rus­sia. What Naz­zaro was up to dur­ing that decade is unclear, but all indi­ca­tions are he was con­tin­u­ing his work as a defense con­trac­tor:

    ...
    In win­ter 2017, he and his wife and daugh­ters, along with his father, spent three days at Dis­ney World; in a 30-minute video tak­en by his wife on that trip, Naz­zaro is near­ly always unsmil­ing. As his old­er daugh­ter sits on his shoul­ders, gaz­ing rap­tur­ous­ly at the Mag­ic King­dom while “Once Upon a Time” plays, Naz­zaro says, in a flat tone, “Lived hap­pi­ly ever after, the end.”

    That fall, the Naz­zaros moved to Rus­sia. By then, accord­ing to Fontan­ka, a St. Peters­burg news­pa­per, he had obtained Russ­ian cit­i­zen­ship and a Russ­ian pass­port. Under nor­mal cir­cum­stances, the move might have a sim­ple famil­ial expla­na­tion: The desire to be clos­er to their kids’ mater­nal grand­par­ents. Or it might appear to be a relo­ca­tion dri­ven by the age-old itch for a new begin­ning. But in light of lat­er events, it’s impos­si­ble not to won­der whether Naz­zaro was can­ni­ly putting him­self beyond the reach of legal extra­di­tion.
    ...

    And as we saw, it was just months lat­er, in Decem­ber 2017, when “Nor­man Spear” appeared online to advo­cate for an al Qae­da-style form of accel­er­a­tionist domes­tic ter­ror­ism. It real­ly is a remark­able back­ground for an aspir­ing neo-Nazi ter­ror­ist leader.

    So we have to ask: Does Riley Williams con­sid­er Rinal­do Naz­zaro to be a US asset? If so, Naz­zaro pre­sum­ably was­n’t the intend­ed recip­i­ent of Pelosi’s lap­top. But if it turns out Williams and Naz­zaro are indeed on good terms with each oth­er that real­ly would make Naz­zaro a prime can­di­date for being the ‘Russ­ian friend’ Williams alleged­ly had in mind for receiv­ing the lap­top. Keep in mind that when Williams made that video, it was prob­a­bly done as a show of her sup­port for the accel­er­a­tionist cause which sug­gests it was intend­ed to be shared with fel­low accel­er­a­tionists. So if it was­n’t Atom­waf­fen she was shar­ing that with it was prob­a­bly The Base.

    And that all, again, is why it’s increas­ing­ly look­ing like the answer to the ques­tion of “what were the insur­rec­tion­ists think­ing they were going to accom­plish?” is, at least for the accel­er­a­tionists in the crowd, prob­a­bly some­thing like “more and more vio­lence in the future...all accord­ing to the plan.”

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | February 25, 2021, 6:00 pm
  21. As we learn more about the num­ber ‘accel­er­a­tionist’ neo-Nazis play­ing promi­nent roles in the Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol insur­rec­tion — notably Riley Williams, appears to be an accel­er­a­tionist pos­si­bly asso­ci­at­ed with The Base — one of the ques­tions raised about the future direc­tion of the MAGA move­ment is whether or not the US is poised to see a surge in the ‘sov­er­eign cit­i­zen’ move­ment. Because while the accel­er­a­tionist neo-Nazis and sov­er­eign cit­i­zens aren’t iden­ti­cal, there’s no deny­ing the immense ide­o­log­i­cal over­lap and a burn­ing desire to utter­ly dis­man­tle to the US. And yet the aes­thet­ics of the sov­er­eign cit­i­zens — with more of an empha­sis on ‘patri­o­tism’ vs the cre­ation of eth­nos­tates — might hold a much broad­er appeal to a MAGA base that views itself as ‘the good guys’ in a cos­mic strug­gle between good and evil. In oth­er words, if MAGA land is poised to ‘accel­er­ate’, per­haps we should expect it to ‘accel­er­ate’ under a sov­er­eign cit­i­zen ‘patri­ot­ic’ ban­ner.

    And as we’ll see in the fol­low­ing pair of arti­cles, part of the appeal of the sov­er­eign cit­i­zen move­ment to Don­ald Trump’s fol­low­ers is the sov­er­eign cit­i­zen idea that the US gov­ern­ment was replaced by an ille­gal invalid gov­ern­ment dur­ing the Civ­il War, and the REAL inau­gu­ra­tion day is there­fore March 4, the orig­i­nal inau­gu­ra­tion day in the US con­sti­tu­tion. And under that log­ic, Joe Biden is not the real pres­i­dent, paving the way for Don­ald Trump to return to office as the...19th pres­i­dent. It’s an idea that has tak­en root in exact­ly the place you would expect: the QAnon move­ment, a move­ment des­per­ate to right the wrong of Trump leav­ing office and final­ly actu­al­ly pre­dict some­thing cor­rect­ly for once:

    Talk­ing Points Memo

    QAnon­ers Bounce Back To New Con­spir­a­cy The­o­ry About Trump’s Com­ing Inau­gu­ra­tion

    By Kate Riga
    Feb­ru­ary 17, 2021 6:07 p.m.

    Jan­u­ary 20 was a tough day for the QAnon com­mu­ni­ty.

    As Pres­i­dent Joe Biden was sworn in, many online Q forums were beset with despair and dis­ap­point­ment. The day unfold­ed with no mass arrests, no Democ­rats exposed and shipped to Git­mo and no Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump.

    “Worst day in Amer­i­can his­to­ry,” wrote a user in one QAnon group chat. “I feel sick to my stom­ach.”

    The blow was com­pound­ed by a state­ment from Ron Watkins, for­mer admin­is­tra­tor of 8kun who was key to Q’s rise to promi­nence. (Q, the anony­mous leader who sprin­kles cod­ed clues to believ­ers, is believed by adher­ents to be a high-lev­el offi­cial with­in the gov­ern­ment.).

    “We have a new pres­i­dent sworn in and it is our respon­si­bil­i­ty as cit­i­zens to respect the Con­sti­tu­tion regard­less of whether or not we agree with the specifics or details regard­ing offi­cials who are sworn in,” Watkins wrote a Telegram mes­sage, seem­ing to throw in the tow­el. “As we enter into the next admin­is­tra­tion please remem­ber all the friends and hap­py mem­o­ries we made togeth­er over the past few years.”

    But believ­ers haven’t been kept down for long. They still believe that Trump is lying in wait to expose Democ­rats for their Satan­ic, pedophilic mis­deeds and wrest back right­ful con­trol. Already, new con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries have blos­somed, one of which has bled into main­stream Repub­li­can pol­i­tics.

    I wrote about it yes­ter­day: the idea that the Capi­tol insur­rec­tion was a “false flag” oper­a­tion that was actu­al­ly car­ried out by antifa with the help of Demo­c­ra­t­ic politi­cians to tar Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s name and lay his fol­low­ers open to per­se­cu­tion. It’s at odds with the jubi­la­tion that swept through the same cir­cles after the attack, the tri­umph claimed by riot­ers who fan­cy them­selves patri­ots in the mold of the found­ing fathers.

    But it’s tak­en root in rightwing cir­cles, and bub­bled into the main­stream to the point that Repub­li­can law­mak­ers are accus­ing House Speak­er Nan­cy Pelosi (D‑CA) of hold­ing back secu­ri­ty forces because she liked the optics.

    It’s a reflec­tion of how short the pipeline from fringey con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry mes­sag­ing boards to Repub­li­can law­mak­ers and their con­stituents has become.

    Back home on the QAnon ranch though, there is an even more extreme idea pick­ing up steam: that Trump will still be inau­gu­rat­ed after all!

    On March 4.

    As the 19th Pres­i­dent.

    The idea bor­rows heav­i­ly from the sov­er­eign cit­i­zens move­ment, which revolves around the the­o­ry that fol­low­ers get to decide which laws to abide by because the true, orig­i­nal U.S. gov­ern­ment has been secret­ly replaced by a new, ille­git­i­mate sys­tem. Sov­er­eign cit­i­zens clog courts with con­vo­lut­ed legal fil­ings, declar­ing they are not required to pay tax­es and immune to pun­ish­ment for break­ing the law. There are var­i­ous beliefs among the sov­er­eign cit­i­zens about when the switch to the ille­git­i­mate gov­ern­ment hap­pened, but for the pur­pos­es of its over­lap with the QAnon com­mu­ni­ty, that date has been pinned down to 1871.

    Then, per the var­i­ous believ­ers, an obscure 1871 law made the Unit­ed States a cor­po­ra­tion, not a gov­ern­ment — mean­ing that any law passed since then doesn’t apply, and that the line of pres­i­dents stopped with Ulysses S. Grant. Trump, they con­tend, will be inau­gu­rat­ed as the 19th Pres­i­dent on March 4, the day pres­i­dents were inau­gu­rat­ed pri­or to the pas­sage of the 20th Amend­ment in 1933. Trump will reign over a new­ly restored repub­lic.

    The bizarre the­o­ry is in the province of the hard core believ­ers. Dr. Marc Tuters, pro­fes­sor of new media and dig­i­tal cul­ture at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ams­ter­dam and a close fol­low­er of the con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry, dug into some QAnon mes­sag­ing boards for TPM. He found that there has been a spike in con­ver­sa­tion around “19th pres­i­dent” on both 4chan and 8kun dis­cus­sion boards.

    But on 4chan/pol/, he found a sig­nif­i­cant amount of mock­ery along­side earnest belief. Telling­ly, he found that even the more skep­ti­cal 4chan users seemed to accept the false flag insur­rec­tion the­o­ry as true.

    On the 8kun Q dis­cus­sion board, where he said mem­bers take the extreme the­o­ries much more seri­ous­ly, the 19th pres­i­dent idea has also expe­ri­enced some trac­tion.

    ...

    “Since its ini­tial iter­a­tion, QAnon has con­tin­ued to per­form this func­tion of cleans­ing the world of all facts that reflect bad­ly on Trump,” said Rus­sell Muir­head, chair of Dart­mouth College’s gov­ern­ment depart­ment and co-author of “A Lot of Peo­ple Are Say­ing: The New Con­spir­acism and the Assault on Democ­ra­cy.” “Such as the fact that he lost the elec­tion — hence, on Plan­et Trump, he will be inau­gu­rat­ed on March 4! And the fact that he encour­aged his sup­port­ers to attack the Unit­ed States leg­is­la­ture while it was cer­ti­fy­ing elec­tion results, and intim­i­date Vice Pres­i­dent Pence and Repub­li­can sen­a­tors into revers­ing the elec­tion — on Plan­et Trump, that is a fake.”

    Weeks out from inau­gu­ra­tion now, QAnon sup­port has expe­ri­enced “some degree of melt,” said Mark Fen­ster, pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Flori­da Law School and author of “Con­spir­a­cy The­o­ries: Secre­cy and Pow­er in Amer­i­can Cul­ture,” as Trump’s pow­er has waned and no great storm come to pass. But its infec­tious­ness lingers, both for the devot­ed few hope­ful­ly count­ing down the days as March approach­es, and those out­side of its cir­cles grad­u­al­ly becom­ing con­vinced that some­thing fishy was going on with that insur­rec­tion.

    “This lev­el of refusal to inhab­it real­i­ty cre­ates an epis­temic divide that goes deep­er than the par­ti­san or ide­o­log­i­cal divides, and in fact makes it impos­si­ble not only to come togeth­er, but impos­si­ble even to intel­li­gi­bly dis­agree,” Muir­head said. “That’s how QAnon con­tin­ues to assault the foun­da­tions of con­sti­tu­tion­al democ­ra­cy.”

    ————

    “QAnon­ers Bounce Back To New Con­spir­a­cy The­o­ry About Trump’s Com­ing Inau­gu­ra­tion” by Kate Riga; Talk­ing Points Memo; 02/17/2021

    The idea bor­rows heav­i­ly from the sov­er­eign cit­i­zens move­ment, which revolves around the the­o­ry that fol­low­ers get to decide which laws to abide by because the true, orig­i­nal U.S. gov­ern­ment has been secret­ly replaced by a new, ille­git­i­mate sys­tem. Sov­er­eign cit­i­zens clog courts with con­vo­lut­ed legal fil­ings, declar­ing they are not required to pay tax­es and immune to pun­ish­ment for break­ing the law. There are var­i­ous beliefs among the sov­er­eign cit­i­zens about when the switch to the ille­git­i­mate gov­ern­ment hap­pened, but for the pur­pos­es of its over­lap with the QAnon com­mu­ni­ty, that date has been pinned down to 1871.”

    QAnon is merg­ing with the sov­er­eign cit­i­zens, and now they have a joined cause. The cause of oppo­si­tion to ille­gal fed­er­al gov­ern­ment installed in 1871. We prob­a­bly should have seen this com­ing:

    ...
    Then, per the var­i­ous believ­ers, an obscure 1871 law made the Unit­ed States a cor­po­ra­tion, not a gov­ern­ment — mean­ing that any law passed since then doesn’t apply, and that the line of pres­i­dents stopped with Ulysses S. Grant. Trump, they con­tend, will be inau­gu­rat­ed as the 19th Pres­i­dent on March 4, the day pres­i­dents were inau­gu­rat­ed pri­or to the pas­sage of the 20th Amend­ment in 1933. Trump will reign over a new­ly restored repub­lic.

    The bizarre the­o­ry is in the province of the hard core believ­ers. Dr. Marc Tuters, pro­fes­sor of new media and dig­i­tal cul­ture at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ams­ter­dam and a close fol­low­er of the con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry, dug into some QAnon mes­sag­ing boards for TPM. He found that there has been a spike in con­ver­sa­tion around “19th pres­i­dent” on both 4chan and 8kun dis­cus­sion boards.

    But on 4chan/pol/, he found a sig­nif­i­cant amount of mock­ery along­side earnest belief. Telling­ly, he found that even the more skep­ti­cal 4chan users seemed to accept the false flag insur­rec­tion the­o­ry as true.

    On the 8kun Q dis­cus­sion board, where he said mem­bers take the extreme the­o­ries much more seri­ous­ly, the 19th pres­i­dent idea has also expe­ri­enced some trac­tion.
    ...

    Keep in mind that with QAnon believ­ers now embrac­ing a sov­er­eign cit­i­zen world­view, that not only puts them in oppo­si­tion to the cur­rent gov­ern­ment but every­thing that’s hap­pened in the US since the civ­il war. The his­toric scope of the QAnon mad­ness is expand­ing, quite lit­er­al­ly.

    So are we poised to see a new round of far right vio­lence at the Capi­tol tomor­row? Accord­ing to the Capi­tol police, yes, we are poised to see exact­ly that sce­nario which is why the US Capi­tol is going to be an extra high alert for the next few days:

    ABC News

    Capi­tol Police offi­cials say intel on pos­si­ble March 4 plot being tak­en ‘seri­ous­ly’

    QAnon fol­low­ers believe that Don­ald Trump will return to pow­er on March 4.

    By Jack Date, Luke Barr, and Mor­gan Win­sor
    March 3, 2021, 11:02 AM

    U.S. Capi­tol Police offi­cials said Wednes­day they have “obtained intel­li­gence that shows a pos­si­ble plot to breach the Capi­tol by an iden­ti­fied mili­tia group on Thurs­day, March 4” — the date that far-right con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists believe for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump will return to pow­er.

    The intel­li­gence, which an FBI bul­letin said could involve the “Three Per­centers” group pros­e­cu­tors call “extrem­ist,” is being tak­en “seri­ous­ly,” the Capi­tol Police offi­cials said in a state­ment post­ed on Twit­ter.

    “Our Depart­ment is work­ing with our local, state, and fed­er­al part­ners to stop any threats to the Capi­tol. We are tak­ing the intel­li­gence seri­ous­ly. Due to the sen­si­tive nature of this infor­ma­tion, we can­not pro­vide addi­tion­al details at this time,” the state­ment said.

    The Capi­tol com­plex remains sur­round­ed with tem­po­rary fenc­ing topped with razor wire and some 5,000 Nation­al Guard troops remain on site.

    The state­ment issued Wednes­day morn­ing fol­lows anoth­er Tues­day night in which offi­cials said they had beefed up secu­ri­ty.

    “Based on the intel­li­gence that we have, the Depart­ment has tak­en imme­di­ate steps to enhance our secu­ri­ty pos­ture and staffing for a num­ber of days, to include March 4th. The Depart­ment has com­mu­ni­cat­ed our enhanced pos­ture as well as the avail­able intel­li­gence for the entire work­force,” that state­ment said.

    An inter­nal U.S. Capi­tol Police bul­letin dis­trib­uted Tues­day con­tains infor­ma­tion about a pos­si­ble mili­tia plot to storm the Capi­tol on or around March 4, sources told ABC News.

    The infor­ma­tion in the bul­letin is sourced to an FBI intel­li­gence report from late Feb­ru­ary that describes the an alleged plot by the “Three Per­centers mili­tia group to use diver­sion­ary tac­tics such as det­o­nat­ing a bomb” to draw law enforce­ment away from the Capi­tol pri­or to an attempt by the group to take over the U.S. Capi­tol, accord­ing to a law enforce­ment source.

    The cred­i­bil­i­ty of the infor­ma­tion in the bul­letin remains unclear.

    The bul­letin describes the Three Per­centers’ alleged goal of hav­ing 50,000 mem­bers from around the coun­try trav­el to D.C. on our around March 4 through March 6 and par­tic­i­pate in a plan to over­run law enforce­ment and the Nation­al Guard troops at or near the Capi­tol Com­plex, the source said.

    Fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors have described Three Per­centers in court as a “mili­tia extrem­ist” group “based on the myth that only three per­cent of Amer­i­can colonists took up arms against the British dur­ing the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion,” and that some mem­bers “regard the present-day US Gov­ern­ment as anal­o­gous to the British” dur­ing the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion in terms of infringe­ments on civ­il lib­er­ties.

    While there are many inde­pen­dent groups that use “Three Per­centers” in their name, pros­e­cu­tors say the term is “rep­re­sen­ta­tive of a com­mon belief in the notion that a small force with a just cause can over­throw a tyran­ni­cal gov­ern­ment if armed and pre­pared.”

    ...

    One law enforce­ment source said that ini­tial intel­li­gence does not sup­port a crowd of 50,000 is com­ing to Wash­ing­ton, D.C. this week.

    Sources told ABC News that intel­li­gence chat­ter sur­round­ing the date of March 4 has been cir­cu­lat­ing for weeks. The date has sig­nif­i­cance for adher­ents to the QAnon con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry who believe it is the day Trump will return to pow­er. March 4 is also the orig­i­nal date for pres­i­den­tial inau­gu­ra­tion in the Con­sti­tu­tion, pri­or to the rat­i­fi­ca­tion of the 20th Amend­ment in 1933 that changed it to Jan. 20.

    How U.S. law enforce­ment and intel­li­gence agen­cies missed the vio­lent insur­rec­tion on Jan. 6 has been the focus of mul­ti­ple con­gres­sion­al inquiries in recent weeks.

    FBI Direc­tor Chris Wray, in tes­ti­mo­ny on Capi­tol Hill Tues­day, told law­mak­ers how an intel­li­gence infor­ma­tion gath­ered by the FBI in Nor­folk, Vir­ginia, warn­ing of pos­si­ble vio­lence at the Capi­tol on Jan­u­ary 6 was shared with law enforce­ment part­ners, includ­ing the U.S. Capi­tol police on the evening of Jan­u­ary 5.

    A pos­si­ble source of the threats is QAnon, the umbrel­la term for a set of dis­proven and dis­cred­it­ed inter­net con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries that allege the world is run by a secret cabal of Satan-wor­ship­ping can­ni­bal­is­tic pedophiles. Fol­low­ers of the fringe move­ment believe that the 2020 U.S. pres­i­den­tial elec­tion was stolen from Trump, who has pushed base­less claims of vot­er fraud along with his allies.

    QAnon fol­low­ers also believed that Trump would not actu­al­ly leave office on Inau­gu­ra­tion Day but rather would declare mar­tial law, announce mass arrests of Democ­rats and stop Joe Biden from becom­ing pres­i­dent. When that did­n’t hap­pen, the date was moved from Jan. 20 to March 4.

    The Fed­er­al Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion first labeled QAnon and its flu­id online com­mu­ni­ty of sup­port­ers as a “dan­ger­ous extrem­ist group” in August 2019. A num­ber of indi­vid­u­als believed to be QAnon fol­low­ers have been charged for their alleged involve­ment in the dead­ly insur­rec­tion on Jan. 6, when pro-Trump sup­port­ers stormed the U.S. Capi­tol build­ing in Wash­ing­ton, D.C.

    On Mon­day, the U.S. Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty’s Office of Intel­li­gence and Analy­sis issued a con­fi­den­tial assess­ment to law enforce­ment agen­cies, which was obtained by ABC News, say­ing that the threat of domes­tic vio­lent extrem­ism in 2020 — large­ly dri­ven by “vio­lent anti-gov­ern­ment or anti-author­i­ty nar­ra­tives, peri­ods of pro­longed civ­il unrest and con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries” — is a trend that will like­ly con­tin­ue in 2021 and “could esca­late to include tar­get­ing of crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture.”.

    ————–

    “Capi­tol Police offi­cials say intel on pos­si­ble March 4 plot being tak­en ‘seri­ous­ly’ ” by Jack Date, Luke Barr, and Mor­gan Win­sor; ABC News; 03/03/2021

    The infor­ma­tion in the bul­letin is sourced to an FBI intel­li­gence report from late Feb­ru­ary that describes the an alleged plot by the “Three Per­centers mili­tia group to use diver­sion­ary tac­tics such as det­o­nat­ing a bomb” to draw law enforce­ment away from the Capi­tol pri­or to an attempt by the group to take over the U.S. Capi­tol, accord­ing to a law enforce­ment source.”

    A plot to det­o­nate a bomb to draw law enforce­ment away from the Capi­tol pri­or to an attempt by the group to take it over. It’s a plan with eerie par­al­lels to the Michi­gan mili­tia coup plot of last year that involved blow­ing up a bridge near­by the gov­er­nor’s home for the pur­pose of draw­ing law enforce­ment away while they exe­cut­ed their kid­nap­ping at the gov­er­nor. You have to won­der if some the same peo­ple are involved with both plots.

    But at least it sounds like it’s prob­a­bly going to be extreme­ly obvi­ous the plot is going to be exe­cut­ed if it’s about to hap­pen because it involves hav­ing 50,000 mili­tia mem­bers descend on the Capi­tol and tak­ing it over:

    ...
    The cred­i­bil­i­ty of the infor­ma­tion in the bul­letin remains unclear.

    The bul­letin describes the Three Per­centers’ alleged goal of hav­ing 50,000 mem­bers from around the coun­try trav­el to D.C. on our around March 4 through March 6 and par­tic­i­pate in a plan to over­run law enforce­ment and the Nation­al Guard troops at or near the Capi­tol Com­plex, the source said.
    ...

    At the same time, while the odds of 50,000 “Three Per­centers” descend­ing on the Capi­tol seems unlike­ly sim­ply because there prob­a­bly aren’t 50,000 Three Per­centers in exis­tence, if this is a Three Per­center + QAnon oper­a­tion, get­ting 50,000 peo­ple to the Capi­tol is a lot more plau­si­ble. It’s part of what makes this sto­ry so dis­turb­ing: QAnon is being posi­tioned to con­vert into like the shock troops for the mili­tias:

    ...
    Sources told ABC News that intel­li­gence chat­ter sur­round­ing the date of March 4 has been cir­cu­lat­ing for weeks. The date has sig­nif­i­cance for adher­ents to the QAnon con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry who believe it is the day Trump will return to pow­er. March 4 is also the orig­i­nal date for pres­i­den­tial inau­gu­ra­tion in the Con­sti­tu­tion, pri­or to the rat­i­fi­ca­tion of the 20th Amend­ment in 1933 that changed it to Jan. 20.

    ...

    QAnon fol­low­ers also believed that Trump would not actu­al­ly leave office on Inau­gu­ra­tion Day but rather would declare mar­tial law, announce mass arrests of Democ­rats and stop Joe Biden from becom­ing pres­i­dent. When that did­n’t hap­pen, the date was moved from Jan. 20 to March 4.
    ...

    Final­ly, note the omi­nous secu­ri­ty warn­ing that goes well beyond the next few days at the Capi­tol: attacks against crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture are seen as increas­ing­ly like­ly:

    ...
    On Mon­day, the U.S. Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty’s Office of Intel­li­gence and Analy­sis issued a con­fi­den­tial assess­ment to law enforce­ment agen­cies, which was obtained by ABC News, say­ing that the threat of domes­tic vio­lent extrem­ism in 2020 — large­ly dri­ven by “vio­lent anti-gov­ern­ment or anti-author­i­ty nar­ra­tives, peri­ods of pro­longed civ­il unrest and con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries” — is a trend that will like­ly con­tin­ue in 2021 and “could esca­late to include tar­get­ing of crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture.”.
    ...

    So as we’ve been warned, don’t get too cozy if we end up mak­ing it through the next few days with­out anoth­er insur­rec­tion. After all, even if the the Three Per­centers don’t get their March 4 ‘inau­gu­ra­tion’, they’re still clear­ly get­ting one hel­lu­va Q‑fueled recruit­ment dri­ve. The GOP is basi­cal­ly the GQP at this point, so if the QAnon move­ment starts flock­ing to groups like the Three Per­centers, the Three Per­centers are going to have to change their name to the Six Per­centers or some­thing. Don’t for­get about the sto­ry of the “Red Storm” encrypt­ed Dis­cord serv­er that was set up in 2018 specif­i­cal­ly to facil­i­tate coor­di­na­tion between QAnon fol­low­ers with the broad­er neo-Nazi move­ment. They’ve been work­ing at build­ing these bridges for a while. Which means March 4, 2025 could be a very dark day...assuming we don’t have a dark­er day before then. Keep an eye on all that crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | March 3, 2021, 5:12 pm
  22. Was a Las Vegas-style mas­sacre nar­row­ly avoid­ed at tonight’s MLB All-Star Game in Den­ver? That’s the big ques­tion still lin­ger­ing days after four peo­ple were arrest­ed at a hotel near the game sta­di­um on Fri­day fol­low­ing a tip from the hotel staff of a large cache of weapons at the hotel. A hotel that hap­pens to be across the street from Coors Field. Police found 16 long guns, body armor, hun­dreds of rounds of ammu­ni­tion from two rooms at the hotel fol­low­ing the arrest of three men and a woman: Richard Platt, 42; Gabriel Rodriguez, 48; Ricar­do Rodriguez, 44, and Kanoele­hua Serikawa, 43. It sounds like author­i­ties see Ricar­do Rodriguez as the leader of this inci­dent. Rodriguez claims to have worked for mul­ti­ple fed­er­al agen­cies over the past decade-plus. Rodriguez said he designs and builds guns and then donates them to mil­i­tary vet­er­ans. So he sounds like some­one with the skills to make an untrace­able gun.

    Addi­tion­al­ly, it turns out the sus­pects were sched­uled to check out of the hotel on Fri­day, but Ricar­do Rodriguez had actu­al­ly request­ed a longer stay with a room with a bal­cony. And one of the two rooms did indeed have a bal­cony view of the down­town area. Addi­tion­al­ly, one of the three arrest­ed men report­ed­ly post­ed on Face­book he was going to “go out in a big way,” ref­er­enc­ing a recent divorce. So that’s all rather omi­nous.

    And yet, as of today, author­i­ties aren’t sus­pect­ing some sort of ter­ror­ism. Because in addi­tion to all the guns, they also found large quan­ti­ties of nar­cotics and cash in these hotel rooms. So while fears of a Vegas-style attack were what prompt­ed the arrests, author­i­ties are no longer fear­ing some sort of domes­tic ter­ror event was just avert­ed. Instead, it sounds like author­i­ties are lean­ing towards some sort of nar­cotics and/or guns trans­ac­tion that just coin­ci­den­tal­ly hap­pened to be at a hotel. Or at least that’s the pub­lic expla­na­tion so far. It is notable that author­i­ties still don’t claim to have a sol­id idea of what this group was actu­al­ly plan­ning. Was this a drug trans­ac­tion involv­ing some­one who hap­pened to have a large cache of guns? And why lay them out all over the hotel room where the maid can find them? Those kinds of ques­tions remain entire­ly unan­swered at this point in the inves­ti­ga­tion. Keep in mind that author­i­ties aren’t going to be inclined to tell the pub­lic that they don’t actu­al­ly know if there was a planned mass casu­al­ty event at tonight’s big event. It’s part of what makes this sto­ry dif­fi­cult to dis­miss as just a ran­dom drug/gun trans­ac­tion.

    As we’ll see, it sounds like most of these guns were brought there by Platt. In one inter­view below, Ricar­do Rodriguez describes Platt as some­one who would nev­er harm his com­mu­ni­ty and Rodriguez insists he would have inter­vened if Platt showed any signs of plan­ning a mass attack. And yet he also calls Platt some­one who he met for the first time the day before their arrest, hav­ing con­nect­ed via mutu­al friends. Rodriguez said Platt rec­om­mend­ed they stay at the Maven Hotel near Coors Field, which sound­ed great to Rodriguez who want­ed to be part of the All-Star Game expe­ri­ence. Rodriguez claims he does­n’t know what Platt had in mind with the guns oth­er than sell­ing or trad­ing them and col­lect­ing them for friends, telling reporters, “He had a lot of guns, he did...I don’t know what his inten­tions were from my under­stand­ing sell­ing them and trad­ing them. That was about it.”

    Adding to the omi­nous nature of this inci­dent are the actu­al weapons in this cache: Rodriguez describes Plat­t’s weapons cache as con­sist­ing of these long guns include at least two sniper rifles. The way Rodriguez described the scene, “They had a sniper rifle, prob­a­bly two of them, two or three mid-sized assault rifles, AK-47s, anoth­er short entry weapon, to the aver­age per­son it’s a TEC‑9, like an Uzi, numer­ous firearms.” It’s unclear who the “They” is that Rodriguez is refer­ring to in that state­ment, sug­gest­ing he per­haps arrived there with Kanoele­hua Serikawa? It’s one of the many unan­swered ques­tions in a sto­ry with basi­cal­ly no answers so far. Oth­er than the answers being giv­en by author­i­ties that the pub­lic has noth­ing to wor­ry about.

    Final­ly, it’s impor­tant to keep in mind that this isn’t a nor­mal MLB All-Star game. This is a high­ly politi­cized game due to the fact that the MLB relo­cat­ed it out of Geor­gia fol­low­ing the GOP-con­trolled George state gov­ern­men­t’s pas­sage of new high­ly restric­tive vot­ing laws. The GOP is even run­ning ads remind­ing view­ers of that con­tro­ver­sy dur­ing the game. So we don’t real­ly have to won­der what a pos­si­ble polit­i­cal motive would be for a mass casu­al­ty event. The deci­sion to move the game to Den­ver enraged the far right.

    So we have four peo­ple with a large cache of weapons, ammu­ni­tion, and even sniper rifles in the hotel across the street from a high­ly politi­cized All-Star Game and request­ing bal­cony seats. And one of these four peo­ple recent­ly declared on Face­book that he’s going to “go out in a big way” fol­low­ing a divorce. It’s the kind of sit­u­a­tion where you real­ly have to hope this was mere­ly drug/guns deal gone hor­ri­bly awry:

    ABC News

    Weapons cache at Den­ver hotel near MLB All-Star game venue uncov­ered by police

    FBI says pre­lim­i­nary inves­ti­ga­tion finds no link to ter­ror­ism.

    By Bill Hutchin­son, Jef­frey Cook, and Josh Mar­golin
    July 11, 2021, 5:10 PM

    A tip from a house­keep­er led police to uncov­er a large arse­nal of weapons at a hotel in down­town Den­ver about a block from Coors Field, where Major League Base­ball’s All-Star Game is set to be played on Tues­day.

    Three men and a woman were arrest­ed and 16 long guns, body armor, hun­dreds of rounds of ammu­ni­tion and nar­cotics were seized from two rooms at the Maven Hotel in down­town Den­ver.

    The dis­cov­ery ini­tial­ly prompt­ed police to sus­pect they had thwart­ed a pos­si­ble mass shoot­ing plot in the works. But on Sun­day morn­ing, FBI offi­cials in Den­ver said a pre­lim­i­nary inves­ti­ga­tion has not turned up any evi­dence that the episode was tied to ter­ror­ism.

    “We have no rea­son to believe this inci­dent was con­nect­ed to ter­ror­ism or a threat direct­ed at the All-Star Game,” the FBI Den­ver field office said in a state­ment. “We are not aware of any threat to the All-Star Game events, venues, play­ers, or the com­mu­ni­ty at this time.”

    The FBI said it is work­ing close­ly with the Den­ver Police Depart­ment, the lead inves­tiga­tive agency of the inci­dent, to get to the bot­tom of why the cache of weapons end­ed up at the hotel.

    A pre­lim­i­nary assess­ment indi­cat­ed the stash of guns appears to be con­nect­ed to a pos­si­ble ille­gal trans­ac­tion involv­ing drugs and guns, accord­ing to an inter­nal law enforce­ment memo obtained by ABC News.

    But Den­ver Police Chief Paul Pazen said at a news con­fer­ence Sun­day after­noon that the inves­ti­ga­tion is in its ear­ly stage and that “noth­ing has been ruled out.”

    “We don’t know what we don’t know,” Pazen said. “That’s what the inves­ti­ga­tion is all about. We need to iden­ti­fy exact­ly, to the extent pos­si­ble, why indi­vid­u­als were here in the first place, why in prox­im­i­ty to down­town. We don’t have those answers.”

    Pazen added, “What I can say is that through the great work of the staff at the Maven and the great work by our offi­cers that this is a safer city. Tak­ing guns off the street, tak­ing nar­cotics off the street is a good thing for the peo­ple of Den­ver.”

    With the nation­al spot­light on his city, Den­ver May­or Michael B. Han­cock attempt­ed to reas­sure res­i­dents and vis­i­tors that the city is safe.

    “Our No. 1 pri­or­i­ty is the safe­ty and well-being of every­one who is in our city enjoy­ing our great city,” Han­cock said at a press con­fer­ence Sun­day. “I want to assure the pub­lic today that because of the swift work of our police depart­ment, the sit­u­a­tion is under con­trol.”

    The four peo­ple arrest­ed were iden­ti­fied by author­i­ties as Richard Platt, 42; Gabriel Rodriguez, 48; Ricar­do Rodriguez, 44, and Kanoele­hua Serikawa, 43. The sus­pects were being held on sus­pi­cion of weapons charges and pos­ses­sion of a con­trolled sub­stance with intent to dis­trib­ute, accord­ing to Den­ver police.

    Gabriel and Ricar­do Rodriguez, who are sus­pect­ed of being con­vict­ed felons in pos­ses­sion of weapons, were being held with­out bond, police said. It is not imme­di­ate­ly clear at this time whether the sus­pects have lawyers.

    Platt made his first appear­ance in court on Sun­day and a judge ordered him to remain in jail in lieu of a $50,000 cash bond. The oth­er three sus­pects were wait­ing to be assigned defense attor­neys are expect­ed to appear in court on Mon­day, offi­cials said.

    ...

    The inci­dent came as thou­sands of base­ball fans poured into Den­ver for fes­tiv­i­ties sur­round­ing the All-Star Game, includ­ing the annu­al home run der­by sched­uled for Mon­day night.

    ———–

    “Weapons cache at Den­ver hotel near MLB All-Star game venue uncov­ered by police” by Bill Hutchin­son, Jef­frey Cook, and Josh Mar­golin; ABC News; 07/11/2021

    “A pre­lim­i­nary assess­ment indi­cat­ed the stash of guns appears to be con­nect­ed to a pos­si­ble ille­gal trans­ac­tion involv­ing drugs and guns, accord­ing to an inter­nal law enforce­ment memo obtained by ABC News.”

    The pre­lim­i­nary assess­ment points towards a guns and/or drugs sale. And based on the crim­i­nal his­to­ry of the peo­ple involved that sounds quite plau­si­ble. The prob­lem remains that author­i­ties still don’t know why this group was there. It remains a mys­tery:

    ...
    But Den­ver Police Chief Paul Pazen said at a news con­fer­ence Sun­day after­noon that the inves­ti­ga­tion is in its ear­ly stage and that “noth­ing has been ruled out.”

    “We don’t know what we don’t know,” Pazen said. “That’s what the inves­ti­ga­tion is all about. We need to iden­ti­fy exact­ly, to the extent pos­si­ble, why indi­vid­u­als were here in the first place, why in prox­im­i­ty to down­town. We don’t have those answers.”

    ...

    The four peo­ple arrest­ed were iden­ti­fied by author­i­ties as Richard Platt, 42; Gabriel Rodriguez, 48; Ricar­do Rodriguez, 44, and Kanoele­hua Serikawa, 43. The sus­pects were being held on sus­pi­cion of weapons charges and pos­ses­sion of a con­trolled sub­stance with intent to dis­trib­ute, accord­ing to Den­ver police.
    ...

    And adding to that mys­tery is the fact that they were sup­posed to check out of the hotel on Fri­day but Ricar­do Rodriguez had actu­al­ly request­ed a longer the stay, along with a room with a bal­cony. And as we’ll see, at least one of the two rooms they rent­ed did indeed have a bal­cony over­look­ing down­town Den­ver when they were arrest­ed. Now, if they were indeed inter­est­ed in the All-Star game or view­ing the fes­tiv­i­ties, an extend­ed stay in a room with a bal­cony would be an obvi­ous choice. It’s just an obvi­ous choice for shoot­ing up the game too:

    The Den­ver Chan­nel

    Sus­pect request­ed longer stay, room with bal­cony at Maven Hotel day of arrests, doc­u­ments say
    Three sus­pects have cash bonds set Mon­day morn­ing

    By: Blair Miller , Stephanie Butzer , Liz Gelar­di
    Post­ed at 1:06 PM, Jul 12, 2021
    and last updat­ed 4:10 PM, Jul 12, 2021

    DENVER – The man whom pros­e­cu­tors believe was the “leader” of the group of four peo­ple arrest­ed Fri­day at the Maven Hotel on sus­pi­cion of weapons and drug offens­es was sup­posed to check out of the two rooms he rent­ed on Fri­day, but asked to stay for longer and request­ed a room with a bal­cony, accord­ing to police doc­u­ments.

    Addi­tion­al­ly, the prob­a­ble cause state­ments for the arrests of the four peo­ple say that the dis­cov­ery of firearms, a bal­lis­tic vest, a duty belt and the new room request were “con­cern­ing” to police because the Major League Base­ball All-Star Game events are tak­ing place in the area.

    “There is a propen­si­ty for mass casu­al­ty inci­dents in sce­nar­ios such as the above where many peo­ple are gath­ered togeth­er in a small area for a sin­gle event,” the prob­a­ble cause state­ment for one of the men arrest­ed.

    The doc­u­ments were released by the Den­ver Police Depart­ment after three of the sus­pects made court appear­ances Mon­day morn­ing and had their bonds set along with their next court dates. The doc­u­ments are among the first bits of infor­ma­tion released by the depart­ment about what led to the arrests on Fri­day.

    ...

    Platt made his first appear­ance Sun­day and saw his bond set at $50,000. The three oth­ers appeared in front of Judge Tan­ja Wheel­er Mon­day morn­ing.

    Den­ver Deputy Dis­trict Attor­ney Michelle Williams said pros­e­cu­tors believe that Ricar­do Rodriguez “seems to be the leader of this entire inci­dent” and request­ed he be held on a $75,000 cash-only bond, which the judge grant­ed. He had been employed in Wash­ing­ton and was plan­ning on mov­ing to Col­orado, an attor­ney rep­re­sent­ing Rodriguez said in court. Rodriguez also claimed to have worked for mul­ti­ple fed­er­al agen­cies over the past decade-plus.

    Gabriel Rodriguez and Serikawa both had their bonds set at $50,000 cash.

    The prob­a­ble cause state­ments released by the Den­ver Police Depart­ment con­firm some of what Denver7 report­ed over the week­end – that a house­keep­er had noticed the weapons and alert­ed a super­vi­sor, and that police had feared a mass shoot­ing could have been pos­si­ble. But they also con­tain some new details about what led to the arrest of the four peo­ple.

    After the house­keep­er found the guns in one of the rooms — both were rent­ed by Ricar­do Rodriguez, accord­ing to the doc­u­ments — the super­vi­sor checked vehi­cles asso­ci­at­ed with the rooms “and could plain­ly see in the vehi­cles plate car­ri­ers and high capac­i­ty mag­a­zines,” accord­ing to one of the prob­a­ble cause state­ments. The oth­er said a bal­lis­tic vest and duty belt could be seen in a white Mer­cedes with an Ida­ho license plate.

    Offi­cers set up sur­veil­lance, and even­tu­al­ly saw Platt leave one of the rooms and Gabriel Rodriguez inside the hotel, at which time they were arrest­ed. Rodriguez alleged­ly had a gun, meth and hero­in inside a back­pack he was wear­ing. Police also wrote search war­rants for the rooms, and as they wait­ed for them to be signed, Serikawa was “ordered out” of a room and arrest­ed on a war­rant out of Long­mont.

    Offi­cers got the war­rants signed and served them around 10:30 p.m. Fri­day, accord­ing to the prob­a­ble cause state­ments. In one room, they found sus­pect­ed ecsta­sy and hero­in, a “large amount of US cur­ren­cy” and about a dozen guns.

    They found Ricar­do Rodriguez in the oth­er room that had been rent­ed and found “numer­ous firearms” inside that room as well before arrest­ing him on sus­pi­cion of pos­ses­sion of a weapon by a pre­vi­ous offend­er.

    The three sus­pects in court Mon­day had their next court appear­ances set for next Mon­day, July 19.

    On Sat­ur­day night, mul­ti­ple informed law enforce­ment sources con­nect­ed with the inves­ti­ga­tion told Denver7’s Liz Gelar­di and Denver7 chief inves­tiga­tive reporter Tony Kovales­ki that they had found weapons and ammu­ni­tion inside a room at the Maven Hotel, locat­ed at 1850 Wazee St., that had a bal­cony over­look­ing the down­town area. The sources said they recov­ered 16 long guns, body armor and hun­dreds of rounds of ammu­ni­tion from the room on Fri­day.

    Mul­ti­ple law enforce­ment sources said one of the sus­pects had post­ed on Face­book ref­er­enc­ing a recent divorce where he said he was going to “go out in a big way.”

    On Sun­day, the Fed­er­al Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tions said they were not aware of any threats to the All-Star Game and did not believe the arrests had any con­nec­tion with a planned threat at the event.

    Lat­er that day, Den­ver city offi­cials, includ­ing May­or Michael Han­cock, Police Chief Paul Pazen and Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of Den­ver’s Depart­ment of Pub­lic Safe­ty Mur­phy Robin­son, assured the pub­lic that All-Star Game events are safe to attend.

    “We want to reas­sure every­one that there is no ongo­ing threat, and that it is safe to enjoy the fes­tiv­i­ties through­out down­town Den­ver,” Han­cock said. “Our police depart­ment moved in and abat­ed a pret­ty seri­ous sit­u­a­tion.”

    Pazen said the inves­ti­ga­tion is ongo­ing into why the sus­pects were in Den­ver and at the Maven in the first place.

    ...

    ————-

    “Sus­pect request­ed longer stay, room with bal­cony at Maven Hotel day of arrests, doc­u­ments say” By Blair Miller , Stephanie Butzer , Liz Gelar­di; The Den­ver Chan­nel; 07/12/2021

    “The man whom pros­e­cu­tors believe was the “leader” of the group of four peo­ple arrest­ed Fri­day at the Maven Hotel on sus­pi­cion of weapons and drug offens­es was sup­posed to check out of the two rooms he rent­ed on Fri­day, but asked to stay for longer and request­ed a room with a bal­cony, accord­ing to police doc­u­ments.”

    They want­ed a bal­cony and they got at least one room with a bal­cony, over­look­ing the down­town area. But they could­n’t get the room booked through Mon­day night. Did they have oth­er hotels in the area booked for the week­end? Were those rooms also with­in shoot­ing dis­tance of Coors Field? These are the kinds of ques­tions we have bet­ter hope inves­ti­ga­tors are ask­ing:

    ...
    Den­ver Deputy Dis­trict Attor­ney Michelle Williams said pros­e­cu­tors believe that Ricar­do Rodriguez “seems to be the leader of this entire inci­dent” and request­ed he be held on a $75,000 cash-only bond, which the judge grant­ed. He had been employed in Wash­ing­ton and was plan­ning on mov­ing to Col­orado, an attor­ney rep­re­sent­ing Rodriguez said in court. Rodriguez also claimed to have worked for mul­ti­ple fed­er­al agen­cies over the past decade-plus.

    ...

    On Sat­ur­day night, mul­ti­ple informed law enforce­ment sources con­nect­ed with the inves­ti­ga­tion told Denver7’s Liz Gelar­di and Denver7 chief inves­tiga­tive reporter Tony Kovales­ki that they had found weapons and ammu­ni­tion inside a room at the Maven Hotel, locat­ed at 1850 Wazee St., that had a bal­cony over­look­ing the down­town area. The sources said they recov­ered 16 long guns, body armor and hun­dreds of rounds of ammu­ni­tion from the room on Fri­day.
    ...

    And then there’s the Face­book post by one of the three men involved about plans to “go out in a big way.”:

    ...
    Mul­ti­ple law enforce­ment sources said one of the sus­pects had post­ed on Face­book ref­er­enc­ing a recent divorce where he said he was going to “go out in a big way.”

    ...

    Pazen said the inves­ti­ga­tion is ongo­ing into why the sus­pects were in Den­ver and at the Maven in the first place.
    ...

    Which one of these men planned to “go out in a big way?” Was it Platt? If so, that only adds to the omi­nous­ness. Because as Ricar­do Rodriguez describes in the fol­low­ing inter­view, there were at least two sniper rifles in Plat­t’s mys­tery arse­nal:

    CBS4

    Sus­pect in Den­ver Hotel Case Calls It ‘Giant Mis­un­der­stand­ing’; Ricar­do Rodriguez Says ‘There Was Guns And Lots Of Them’ But No Plot To Harm Any­one

    By Bri­an Maass
    July 12, 2021 at 12:39 pm

    DENVER (CBS4) – One of four sus­pects arrest­ed in Den­ver Fri­day night at a hotel near Coors Field says there was no plot to shoot MLB All-Star Game fans, even though one of his friends har­bored a large cache of weapons in his room at the Maven Hotel.

    “He had a lot of guns, he did,” said Ricar­do Rodriguez. “I don’t know what his inten­tions were from my under­stand­ing sell­ing them and trad­ing them. That was about it.”

    Rodriguez, 44, spoke to CBS4 Sun­day night via a video feed at the Den­ver Jail where he is being held on a weapons charge. The oth­er three sus­pects arrest­ed Fri­day on drug and weapons charges declined to be inter­viewed.

    Rodriguez said he arrived in Den­ver from Wash­ing­ton state last Thurs­day, intend­ing to move to Col­orado. He said mutu­al friends intro­duced him to Richard Platt, 42, who he met for the first time on Thurs­day. He said Platt rec­om­mend­ed they stay at the Maven Hotel near Coors Field, which struck a chord with Rodriguez.

    “I want­ed to go to the All-Star show, want­ed to be part of that,” said Rodriguez.

    He said he was armed with a 9mm pis­tol and also had an AR-15 rifle in his 8th floor hotel room, which he booked him­self. Rodriguez said he designs and builds guns and then donates them to mil­i­tary vet­er­ans. He said on Fri­day, when he was in Platt’s hotel room, there was an array of weapon­ry.

    “I just saw a lot of firearms which kind of con­cerned me,” said Rodriguez.

    He said “They had a sniper rifle, prob­a­bly two of them, two or three mid-sized assault rifles, AK-47s, anoth­er short entry weapon, to the aver­age per­son it’s a TEC‑9, like an Uzi, numer­ous firearms.”

    Rodriguez said he also noticed body armor, ammu­ni­tion and a large quan­ti­ty of nar­cotics in the room. Rodriguez said some of the guns were inop­er­a­ble.

    Asked if he ques­tioned Platt about all the guns, Rodriguez said he did.

    “He said he was col­lect­ing them for his friends.”

    At anoth­er point in the inter­view, Rodriguez said, “He advised me he want­ed the guns, trad­ing them with oth­er bud­dies. That was about it.”

    ...

    Rodriguez says to the best of his knowl­edge, mass vio­lence was not planned.

    “If he would have active­ly men­tioned some­thing like that, if he would have said some­thing like that, no way I would have let any­thing like that hap­pen. I can tell you if I would have saw some­thing like that, seen him prepar­ing for some­thing like that I would have inter­vened. No way I would have let some­thing like that hap­pen,” said Rodriguez.

    “Richard Platt loves this com­mu­ni­ty. He may be involved in some activ­i­ty none of which I believe has any­thing to do with active­ly and aggres­sive­ly hurt­ing his own com­mu­ni­ty. I don’t think Richard Platt is the kind of per­son who would harm any­body.”

    ...

    ———–

    “Sus­pect in Den­ver Hotel Case Calls It ‘Giant Mis­un­der­stand­ing’; Ricar­do Rodriguez Says ‘There Was Guns And Lots Of Them’ But No Plot To Harm Any­one” by Bri­an Maass; CBS4; 07/12/2021

    “Rodriguez said he arrived in Den­ver from Wash­ing­ton state last Thurs­day, intend­ing to move to Col­orado. He said mutu­al friends intro­duced him to Richard Platt, 42, who he met for the first time on Thurs­day. He said Platt rec­om­mend­ed they stay at the Maven Hotel near Coors Field, which struck a chord with Rodriguez.

    They’re all just friends of friends. Friends of friends who decid­ed to meet for the first time at the hotel next to the All-Star Game so they could be part of the expe­ri­ence. But when they met, Rodriguez could­n’t help but notice the large cache of weapons, includ­ing mul­ti­ple sniper rifles. That had to be quite inter­est­ing to Rodriguez, who claims he designs and builds guns and then donates them to mil­i­tary vet­er­ans. But Rodriguez said Platt claimed he was col­lect­ing them for friends and to sell or trade them. That’s his sto­ry and he’s stick­ing with it:

    ...
    “He had a lot of guns, he did,” said Ricar­do Rodriguez. “I don’t know what his inten­tions were from my under­stand­ing sell­ing them and trad­ing them. That was about it.”

    ...

    “I want­ed to go to the All-Star show, want­ed to be part of that,” said Rodriguez.

    He said he was armed with a 9mm pis­tol and also had an AR-15 rifle in his 8th floor hotel room, which he booked him­self. Rodriguez said he designs and builds guns and then donates them to mil­i­tary vet­er­ans. He said on Fri­day, when he was in Platt’s hotel room, there was an array of weapon­ry.

    “I just saw a lot of firearms which kind of con­cerned me,” said Rodriguez.

    He said “They had a sniper rifle, prob­a­bly two of them, two or three mid-sized assault rifles, AK-47s, anoth­er short entry weapon, to the aver­age per­son it’s a TEC‑9, like an Uzi, numer­ous firearms.”

    Rodriguez said he also noticed body armor, ammu­ni­tion and a large quan­ti­ty of nar­cotics in the room. Rodriguez said some of the guns were inop­er­a­ble.

    ...

    “He said he was col­lect­ing them for his friends.”

    At anoth­er point in the inter­view, Rodriguez said, “He advised me he want­ed the guns, trad­ing them with oth­er bud­dies. That was about it.”

    ...

    Rodriguez says to the best of his knowl­edge, mass vio­lence was not planned.
    ...

    So was this whole thing real­ly just a drugs and guns trans­ac­tion? It’s plau­si­ble. The prob­lem is there are a num­ber of oth­er plau­si­ble sce­nar­ios that fit these data points. Again, this sport­ing event effec­tive­ly had a polit­i­cal hex placed on it when the MLB relo­cat­ed the game and that was before the US for­mal­ly entered a peri­od of insur­rec­tionary pol­i­tics. The idea that some nutjob might want to shoot up the All-Star game for polit­i­cal motives is sim­ply much more plau­si­ble than it was even a year ago. It’s part of why the rapid dis­missal of any ties to a domes­tic ter­ror plot are so unset­tling giv­en the com­plete lack of any offi­cial expla­na­tion for what was actu­al­ly hap­pen­ing. “We don’t know what was hap­pen­ing but we do know it did­n’t involved planned polit­i­cal vio­lence” is a much more dif­fi­cult pub­lic mes­sage to con­vinc­ing­ly sell these days.

    Don’t for­get, we still don’t have an offi­cial motive for Stephen Pad­dock. Plen­ty of under-explored leads, but no offi­cial answer.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | July 12, 2021, 5:00 pm
  23. With the ques­tion of whether or not Steve Ban­non will final­ly face jus­tice fol­low­ing the House Jan­u­ary 6 Com­mit­tee’s vote to hold Ban­non in con­tempt of con­gress yes­ter­day, here’s a legal update on anoth­er domes­tic ter­ror move­ment in the US: Atom­waf­fen. There have been a num­ber of Atom­waf­fen-relat­ed legal rul­ings this year.

    First, there have been a num­ber of legal devel­op­ments this year in the sto­ry of the Atom­waf­fen intim­i­da­tion cam­paign tar­get­ing jour­nal­ists and activists. The appar­ent lead­ers of the plot were Kaleb Cole and Cameron Shea. Recall how Cole had his guns seized by Seat­tle author­i­ties as part of a new state “Red Flag” law that allows for the pre­emp­tive seizure of weapons from indi­vid­u­als deemed to be a threat to the pub­lic health. Cole lost access to his guns for 1 year. He then appar­ent­ly moved to Texas and engaged in this mul­ti­state domes­tic ter­ror plot tar­get­ing the jour­nal­ists and activists who cov­ered the group. Cole was just last month of 5 felonies in rela­tion to the plot and faces up to a decade in prison. She was sen­tenced to three years in prison and is slat­ed to be released some time in late 2022/early 2023

    Next, turn­ing to an August 30th update from Nick Mar­t­in’s The Infor­mant, we learn that Atom­waf­fen cell leader Bran­don Rus­sell was released from prison back in August, after serv­ing a lit­tle more than four years on his 5 year sen­tence. Recall how Rus­sell was arrest­ed in 2017 in con­nec­tion to a plot to assault a Flori­da nuclear pow­er plant in the hopes of induc­ing a nuclear melt­down and forc­ing the depop­u­la­tion of Flori­da for the pur­pose of estab­lish­ing a Fourth Reich. As Mar­tin points out, dur­ing his time in prison, Rus­sell man­aged to release a pro­pa­gan­da video that named mul­ti­ple peo­ple who he claimed had betrayed the group and thanks oth­ers for their loy­al­ty. The judge did NOT order Rus­sell to avoid con­tact with oth­er Atom­waf­fen mem­bers upon his release.

    Final­ly, back in March, we got the sen­tenc­ing for Tay­lor Park­er-Dipeppe, a mem­ber of a Flori­da-based Atom­waf­fen cell who took part in the intim­i­da­tion plot. Park­er-Dipeppe man­aged to avoid prison based, in part, on the fact that he’s trans­gen­dered and sev­er­ly bul­lied as a child. It sounds like join­ing Atom­waf­fen was in part a reac­tion to his child­hood cir­cum­stances. Inter­est­ing­ly, Park­er-Dipeppe is the only mem­ber of the Flori­da cell charged in rela­tion to this plot even though it sounds like the entire cell was involved in the intim­i­da­tion cam­paign. Might this have to do with the fact that the Flori­da cell is described as “10 boys, around 15 to 16 years old”? It’s unclear, but it sounds like Atom­waf­fen’s Flori­da cell is basi­cal­ly a bunch of kids. Or was.

    Final­ly, it turns out Atom­waf­fen does­n’t exist any­more. That was the announce­ment by James Mason back in Sep­tem­ber of 2020, in response to all the mem­ber arrests. But that does­n’t mean the group is over. It’s just been rebrand­ed as the Nation­al Social­ist Order (NSO). So going for­ward, the cra­zies neo-Nazi group in the US is tech­ni­cal­ly the NSO. And the only mem­ber of this group fac­ing jail time going for­ward is Kaleb Cole. In oth­er words, the NSO is prob­a­bly expe­ri­enc­ing a pret­ty nice mem­ber­ship dri­ve for a ‘new’ group.

    Ok, first, here’s a look at the con­vic­tion of Kaleb Cole. A con­vic­tion that might come with a decade in prison. Or maybe a much short­er sen­tence. We’ll see:

    Asso­ci­at­ed Press

    US jury con­victs leader of neo-Nazi threat cam­paign

    By GENE JOHNSON
    Sep­tem­ber 29, 2021

    SEATTLE (AP) — A fed­er­al jury in Seat­tle on Wednes­day con­vict­ed a leader of a neo-Nazi cam­paign to threat­en jour­nal­ists and Jew­ish activists in three states.

    The jury delib­er­at­ed for about 90 min­utes Wednes­day fol­low­ing a two-day tri­al before con­vict­ing 25-year-old Kaleb Cole of five felony charges, includ­ing con­spir­a­cy, mail­ing threat­en­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions and inter­fer­ing with a fed­er­al­ly pro­tect­ed activ­i­ty. He could face a decade in prison when Judge John C. Coughenour sen­tences him in Jan­u­ary.

    Cole, most recent­ly of Mont­gomery, Texas, was a leader of a hate group called Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion. He and four oth­ers were charged last year with hav­ing cyber­stalked and sent Swasti­ka-laden posters to jour­nal­ists and employ­ees of the Anti-Defama­tion League in Wash­ing­ton state, Ari­zona and Flori­da, telling them, “You have been vis­it­ed by your local Nazis,” “Your Actions have Con­se­quences,” and “We are Watch­ing.”

    The posters includ­ed images such as a hood­ed fig­ure prepar­ing to throw a Molo­tov cock­tail at a house, and the words “Death to Pigs” — the same mes­sage fol­low­ers of Charles Man­son scrawled in vic­tims’ blood dur­ing a home inva­sion mur­der.

    Cole has been on law enforcement’s radar since at least 2018, when he was stopped at U.S. Cus­toms upon return­ing from a trip to Europe. Author­i­ties searched his cell phone and found pho­tos of him at var­i­ous sites through­out Europe, dis­play­ing a white suprema­cist flag and per­form­ing the Nazi salute.

    In 2019, Seat­tle police obtained an “extreme risk pro­tec­tion order” against him, seiz­ing nine guns from his home. They said Cole had “gone from espous­ing hate to now tak­ing active steps or prepa­ra­tion for an impend­ing ‘race war.’”

    Those steps includ­ing orga­niz­ing para­mil­i­tary-style “hate camps” in Neva­da and Wash­ing­ton, inves­ti­ga­tors said.

    Dur­ing the tri­al, vic­tims tes­ti­fied about the impact of receiv­ing the posters, the U.S. attorney’s office said in a news release. Some tem­porar­i­ly left their homes and installed secu­ri­ty sys­tems; one bought a gun and took a firearms safe­ty class; and anoth­er left her job as a jour­nal­ist.

    In his clos­ing argu­ment, assis­tant U.S. attor­ney Thomas Woods told the jury Cole “was not sim­ply send­ing a mes­sage of hate, he was send­ing a state­ment of ter­ror.”

    Cole did not call any wit­ness­es or tes­ti­fy on his own behalf. His attor­ney, Chris Black, argued that the posters did not con­sti­tute threats.

    “What we have here is a group of dis­il­lu­sioned young men who want to believe that they are engaged in some sort of pro­pa­gan­da war with jour­nal­ists and orga­ni­za­tions like the Anti-Defama­tion League,” Black said. “But they nev­er engaged in vio­lence. They nev­er planned vio­lence. And most impor­tant­ly, they nev­er intend­ed to com­mu­ni­cate an actu­al threat to com­mit vio­lence.”

    His three co-defen­dants plead­ed guilty and have already been sen­tenced, with the oth­er leader of the con­spir­a­cy, Cameron Shea, receiv­ing a three-year term after apol­o­giz­ing and say­ing, “I can­not put into words the guilt that I feel about this fear and pain that I caused.”

    John­ny Roman Garza, of Queen Creek, Ari­zona, was sen­tenced to 16 months for affix­ing one of the posters on the bed­room win­dow of a Jew­ish jour­nal­ist.

    ...

    ———–

    “US jury con­victs leader of neo-Nazi threat cam­paign” by GENE JOHNSON; Asso­ci­at­ed Press; 09/29/2021

    “The jury delib­er­at­ed for about 90 min­utes Wednes­day fol­low­ing a two-day tri­al before con­vict­ing 25-year-old Kaleb Cole of five felony charges, includ­ing con­spir­a­cy, mail­ing threat­en­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions and inter­fer­ing with a fed­er­al­ly pro­tect­ed activ­i­ty. He could face a decade in prison when Judge John C. Coughenour sen­tences him in Jan­u­ary.

    Kaleb Cole could be fac­ing up to a decade in prison over the intim­i­da­tion cam­paign he orga­nized. Will he actu­al­ly receive a sen­tence that long? We’ll see. We’ll also so how much of a fac­tor the extreme nature of this case — like the fact that Cole engaged in this intim­i­da­tion con­spir­a­cy after author­i­ties pre­emp­tive­ly sized his guns due to the fact that he was active­ly plan­ning on a race war and start­ing “hate camps” — plays into the sen­tenc­ing:

    ...
    The posters includ­ed images such as a hood­ed fig­ure prepar­ing to throw a Molo­tov cock­tail at a house, and the words “Death to Pigs” — the same mes­sage fol­low­ers of Charles Man­son scrawled in vic­tims’ blood dur­ing a home inva­sion mur­der.

    Cole has been on law enforcement’s radar since at least 2018, when he was stopped at U.S. Cus­toms upon return­ing from a trip to Europe. Author­i­ties searched his cell phone and found pho­tos of him at var­i­ous sites through­out Europe, dis­play­ing a white suprema­cist flag and per­form­ing the Nazi salute.

    In 2019, Seat­tle police obtained an “extreme risk pro­tec­tion order” against him, seiz­ing nine guns from his home. They said Cole had “gone from espous­ing hate to now tak­ing active steps or prepa­ra­tion for an impend­ing ‘race war.’”

    Those steps includ­ing orga­niz­ing para­mil­i­tary-style “hate camps” in Neva­da and Wash­ing­ton, inves­ti­ga­tors said.
    ...

    But as the fol­low­ing August 30 update from Nick Mar­t­in’s The Infor­mant reminds us, there should be no expec­ta­tion that Cole actu­al­ly serves a decade in prison. Or even receives any­thing close to that sen­tence. That became clear fol­low­ing the sen­tenc­ing of Bran­don Rus­sell, who was released from prison on August 23 after a serv­ing four years on a five year sen­tence. Pros­e­cu­tors orig­i­nal­ly want­ed 11 years for Rus­sell. Again, don’t for­get what Rus­sell was plan­ning: trig­ger­ing a nuclear melt­down that would force the depop­u­la­tion of Flori­da so a Fourth Reich could be estab­lished there. And now he’s out an about again, with­out even being ordered to avoid con­tact with oth­er Atom­waf­fen mem­bers.

    Addi­tion­al­ly, there was the sen­tenc­ing of one of Cole’s oth­er co-con­spir­a­tors in the intim­i­da­tion plat: Cameron Shea, who was sen­tenced to three years in prison and could be released in late 2022/early 2023. So while it was look­ing like Atom­waf­fen’s lead­er­ship was large­ly rot­ting away in prison last year, that’s large­ly changed. The lead­ers are out again or soon to be:

    The Infor­mant

    INTEL BRIEF: Atom­waf­fen founder gets out of prison
    PLUS: ‘Gyp­sy Cru­sad­er’ blames ‘right-wing media’ for his rad­i­cal­iza­tion; and Rep. Paul Gosar keeps pro­mot­ing Holo­caust deniers.

    Nick R. Mar­tin
    Aug 30, 2021

    — HAPPENING TODAY… Neo-Nazi Paul Miller, who went by the online nick­name “Gyp­sy Cru­sad­er,” is sched­uled to be sen­tenced on fed­er­al gun charges at 2:30 p.m. ET in Fort Laud­erdale, Flori­da.

    Miller has blamed “right-wing media” for his rad­i­cal­iza­tion. The claim was made by Miller’s attor­ney in a fil­ing (PDF) attempt­ing to con­vince a fed­er­al judge to go easy on the 33-year-old at today’s sen­tenc­ing. Pros­e­cu­tors, mean­while, have argued that Miller has played the vic­tim at every turn in the case and has not tak­en true respon­si­bil­i­ty for his crimes. The feds are ask­ing (PDF) for Miller to be sen­tenced to near­ly four years behind bars.

    — ATOMWAFFEN FOUNDER GETS OUT OF PRISON… Bran­don Rus­sell, the 26-year-old founder of the vio­lent neo-Nazi group Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion, was released from a fed­er­al prison on August 23 after serv­ing a lit­tle more than four years behind bars. Rus­sell was arrest­ed in Flori­da in May 2017 after one of his room­mates killed two oth­er room­mates, all of whom had been mem­bers of Atom­waf­fen. He even­tu­al­ly plead­ed guilty to two fed­er­al charges after inves­ti­ga­tors found ille­gal guns in his vehi­cle and bomb-mak­ing mate­ri­als in his garage.

    Pros­e­cu­tors asked for Rus­sell to be sen­tenced to 11 years in prison, say­ing he would con­tin­ue to pose a dan­ger and that he “must be stripped from the abil­i­ty to harm the pub­lic for as long as pos­si­ble.” The judge sen­tenced him to five years. He end­ed up serv­ing 85 per­cent of that, which is stan­dard for fed­er­al inmates.

    Dur­ing his time in prison, he man­aged to release a pro­pa­gan­da video that named mul­ti­ple peo­ple who he claimed had betrayed the group. He also thanked oth­er mem­bers for their “undy­ing loy­al­ty.”

    Rus­sell is now sched­uled to serve three years under the super­vi­sion of a pro­ba­tion offi­cer. Among the terms of his super­vi­sion (PDF) are that he must under­go men­tal health treat­ment and avoid oth­er con­vict­ed felons. The judge, how­ev­er, did not order him to avoid con­tact with oth­er Atom­waf­fen mem­bers.

    — ATOMWAFFEN RECRUITER SENTENCED TO THREE YEARS IN PRISON… A one-time recruiter for Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion was sen­tenced on Tues­day in fed­er­al court to three years in prison for his role in a con­spir­a­cy to intim­i­date jour­nal­ists and activists in mul­ti­ple states. Cameron Shea, 26, helped orga­nize a cam­paign in Jan­u­ary 2020 to place threat­en­ing posters at the homes of the neo-Nazi group’s per­ceived ene­mies, includ­ing the edi­tor of a Jew­ish pub­li­ca­tion. The posters warned: “You have been vis­it­ed by your local Nazis.” One depict­ed a neo-Nazi hold­ing a Molo­tov cock­tail.

    Fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors asked (PDF) for Shea to serve more than four years in prison. Shea, mean­while, wrote a let­ter (PDF) ask­ing the judge for a “sec­ond chance,” and his attor­neys asked (PDF) that he be let out of cus­tody imme­di­ate­ly. The judge end­ed up sen­tenc­ing him to three years in prison. He has already served about half that time in pre-tri­al cus­tody and will like­ly get out of prison in late 2022 or ear­ly 2023.

    Four mem­bers of Atom­waf­fen were arrest­ed in Feb­ru­ary 2020 for tak­ing part in the con­spir­a­cy. Of those, Shea was the third to plead guilty and be sen­tenced. The fourth is Kaleb Cole, who helped lead the neo-Nazi group while founder Bran­don Rus­sell was in prison. Cole is fight­ing the charges against him and could go to tri­al.

    — CONGRESSMAN KEEPS PROMOTING THE WORK OF HOLOCAUST DENIERS… Con­gress­man Paul Gosar, a Repub­li­can from Ari­zona, con­tin­ues to pro­mote the work of white nation­al­ists and Holo­caust deniers. Gosar has a his­to­ry of embrac­ing extrem­ists of var­i­ous stripes, as The Infor­mant has doc­u­ment­ed. But in recent weeks, he has repeat­ed­ly pro­mot­ed one par­tic­u­lar white nation­al­ist: Vin­cent James Foxx, who runs a racist and anti­se­mit­ic web­site called Dai­ly Verac­i­ty. Gosar did so again on Wednes­day, retweet­ing a post from Foxx that linked to his hate-filled web­site, which fear­mon­gered about the COVID-19 vac­cines. By The Informant’s count, it was at least the sixth time Gosar has pro­mot­ed Foxx on Twit­ter. (Two days lat­er, Gosar threat­ened to sue a jour­nal­ist who described the con­gress­man as a “white nation­al­ist.”)

    ...

    ———–

    “INTEL BRIEF: Atom­waf­fen founder gets out of prison” by Nick R. Mar­tin; The Infor­mant; 08/30/2021

    “Pros­e­cu­tors asked for Rus­sell to be sen­tenced to 11 years in prison, say­ing he would con­tin­ue to pose a dan­ger and that he “must be stripped from the abil­i­ty to harm the pub­lic for as long as pos­si­ble.” The judge sen­tenced him to five years. He end­ed up serv­ing 85 per­cent of that, which is stan­dard for fed­er­al inmates.”

    Pros­e­cu­tors asked for 11 years, got 5 years, and Bran­don Rus­sell end­ed up serv­ing 4. And now he’s out of prison, despite releas­ing threat­en­ing videos while in prison, and is appar­ent­ly free to con­tact oth­er Atom­waf­fen mem­bers. It’s the kind of sto­ry that should damp­en expec­ta­tions for what­ev­er sen­tence Cole ulti­mate­ly gets:

    ...
    — ATOMWAFFEN FOUNDER GETS OUT OF PRISON… Bran­don Rus­sell, the 26-year-old founder of the vio­lent neo-Nazi group Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion, was released from a fed­er­al prison on August 23 after serv­ing a lit­tle more than four years behind bars. Rus­sell was arrest­ed in Flori­da in May 2017 after one of his room­mates killed two oth­er room­mates, all of whom had been mem­bers of Atom­waf­fen. He even­tu­al­ly plead­ed guilty to two fed­er­al charges after inves­ti­ga­tors found ille­gal guns in his vehi­cle and bomb-mak­ing mate­ri­als in his garage.

    ...

    Dur­ing his time in prison, he man­aged to release a pro­pa­gan­da video that named mul­ti­ple peo­ple who he claimed had betrayed the group. He also thanked oth­er mem­bers for their “undy­ing loy­al­ty.”

    Rus­sell is now sched­uled to serve three years under the super­vi­sion of a pro­ba­tion offi­cer. Among the terms of his super­vi­sion (PDF) are that he must under­go men­tal health treat­ment and avoid oth­er con­vict­ed felons. The judge, how­ev­er, did not order him to avoid con­tact with oth­er Atom­waf­fen mem­bers.
    ...

    And then there was the sen­tenc­ing of Cameron Shea, Cole’s co-con­spir­a­tor in intim­i­da­tion cam­paign. Shea was sen­tenced to three years in prison and is like­ly to be let out some time in the next year or so. All in all, a fair­ly light sen­tence for some engag­ing in what amounts to a domes­tic ter­ror cam­paign designed to intim­i­date the jour­nal­ists cov­er­ing their oth­er domes­tic ter­ror cam­paigns:

    ...
    — ATOMWAFFEN RECRUITER SENTENCED TO THREE YEARS IN PRISON… A one-time recruiter for Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion was sen­tenced on Tues­day in fed­er­al court to three years in prison for his role in a con­spir­a­cy to intim­i­date jour­nal­ists and activists in mul­ti­ple states. Cameron Shea, 26, helped orga­nize a cam­paign in Jan­u­ary 2020 to place threat­en­ing posters at the homes of the neo-Nazi group’s per­ceived ene­mies, includ­ing the edi­tor of a Jew­ish pub­li­ca­tion. The posters warned: “You have been vis­it­ed by your local Nazis.” One depict­ed a neo-Nazi hold­ing a Molo­tov cock­tail.

    Fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors asked (PDF) for Shea to serve more than four years in prison. Shea, mean­while, wrote a let­ter (PDF) ask­ing the judge for a “sec­ond chance,” and his attor­neys asked (PDF) that he be let out of cus­tody imme­di­ate­ly. The judge end­ed up sen­tenc­ing him to three years in prison. He has already served about half that time in pre-tri­al cus­tody and will like­ly get out of prison in late 2022 or ear­ly 2023.

    Four mem­bers of Atom­waf­fen were arrest­ed in Feb­ru­ary 2020 for tak­ing part in the con­spir­a­cy. Of those, Shea was the third to plead guilty and be sen­tenced. The fourth is Kaleb Cole, who helped lead the neo-Nazi group while founder Bran­don Rus­sell was in prison. Cole is fight­ing the charges against him and could go to tri­al.
    ...

    And that brings us to Tay­lor Park­er-Dipeppe, a trans­gen­der neo-Nazi deemed a low-lev­el par­tic­i­pant in this intim­i­da­tion plot. Park­er-Dipeppe received no prison time in a rul­ing that weighed heav­i­ly his per­son­al cir­cum­stances as an emo­tion­al­ly bul­lied trans­gen­dered youth. Inter­est­ing­ly, Park­er-Dipeppe was the one mem­ber of the Flori­da Atom­waf­fen cell fac­ing state or fed­er­al charges at all over the plot even though it sounds like the entire Flori­da cell was involved. Why is that? We don’t know, but we’re told the cell is con­sists of group or about 10 boys, most­ly 15 and 16 years old. Park­er-Dipeppe even had the dis­tinc­tion of being the only Flori­da mem­ber with a car. It rais­es the ques­tion of whether or not the oth­er mem­bers are too young for pros­e­cu­tors to charge as adults. If so, it points towards a pret­ty dark strat­e­gy by Atom­waf­fen: recruit them at such a young enough age to con­fer poten­tial legal pro­tec­tions for their domes­tic ter­ror:

    Asso­ci­at­ed Press

    No prison time for trans­gen­der ex-neo-Nazi in threat case

    By GENE JOHNSON
    March 31, 2021

    SEATTLE (AP) — A fed­er­al judge declined to impose prison time Wednes­day on a for­mer mem­ber of a neo-Nazi ring that threat­ened jour­nal­ists, find­ing that the 21-year-old — who con­cealed his trans­gen­der iden­ti­ty from his co-con­spir­a­tors — had already suf­fered enough in his young life.

    Tay­lor Park­er-Dipeppe, of Spring Hill, Flori­da, was charged in ear­ly 2020 along with three oth­er mem­bers of the Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion, a white suprema­cist group.

    Inves­ti­ga­tors said they left or attempt­ed to leave Swasti­ka-laden posters with mes­sages like “You have been vis­it­ed by your local Nazis” at the homes of jour­nal­ists in Flori­da, Ari­zona and Wash­ing­ton state.

    Park­er-Dipeppe plead­ed guilty in Sep­tem­ber to con­spir­a­cy to mail threat­en­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions and to com­mit cyber­stalk­ing.

    Assis­tant U.S. Attor­ney Thomas Woods acknowl­edged his trou­bled child­hood, but sought a prison term of 16 months, writ­ing in a sen­tenc­ing memo that Park­er-Dipeppe “instilled ter­ror in his vic­tims and con­tributed to the wide sense of fear and unease that many groups in this coun­try under­stand­ably feel.”

    Parker-Dipeppe’s attor­ney, Peter Maz­zone, said prison would be dev­as­tat­ing for his client, who suf­fered abuse from an unac­cept­ing father, from an alco­holic step­fa­ther and from school bul­lies who tor­ment­ed him.

    Park­er-Dipeppe, who goes by Tyler, had known since age 5, when he was grow­ing up in Egg Har­bor, New Jer­sey, that he want­ed to be a boy, but his father threw away the “boy clothes” his moth­er bought him and phys­i­cal­ly abused him, includ­ing chok­ing him, Maz­zone wrote in a sen­tenc­ing memo.

    In his ear­ly teens, his high school failed to pro­tect him from inces­sant bul­ly­ing and even­tu­al­ly paid $50,000 to set­tle a law­suit he brought.

    He moved to Flori­da to live with his moth­er and her hus­band, who one day came home drunk and beat him severe­ly, break­ing his front tooth and smash­ing his head against the dri­ve­way.

    “This led him to just seek accep­tance, and unfor­tu­nate­ly he found it from these knuck­le­heads,” Maz­zone said, refer­ring to the group of about 10 boys, most­ly 15 and 16 years old, who made up the Flori­da Atom­waf­fen cell.

    U.S. Dis­trict Judge John C. Coughenour in Seat­tle agreed dur­ing a vir­tu­al court hear­ing Wednes­day, sen­tenc­ing Park­er-Dipeppe to time served after Park­er-Dipeppe tear­ful­ly apol­o­gized for his actions.

    Coughenour said he strug­gled with his deci­sion because he was mind­ful of the fear and suf­fer­ing such harass­ment can instill. But he added: “None of us have suf­fered the dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion this defen­dant has endured as a result of his gen­der iden­ti­ty con­fu­sion. ... Enough’s enough.”

    More than a dozen peo­ple linked to Atom­waf­fen or an off­shoot called Feuerkrieg Divi­sion have been charged with crimes in fed­er­al court since the group’s for­ma­tion in 2016.

    Atom­waf­fen has been linked to sev­er­al killings, includ­ing the May 2017 shoot­ing deaths of two men at an apart­ment in Tam­pa, Flori­da, and the Jan­u­ary 2018 killing of a Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia stu­dent in Cal­i­for­nia.

    Park­er-Dipeppe was a low-lev­el part of the con­spir­a­cy, which author­i­ties have said was planned by Cameron Bran­don Shea, of Red­mond, Wash­ing­ton, and Kaleb J. Cole, who moved from Seat­tle to Texas after Seat­tle police seized his guns in 2019 under an “extreme risk pro­tec­tion order” that sug­gest­ed he was plan­ning a race war. Cole is due to face tri­al in Sep­tem­ber, and Shea is sched­uled to plead guilty next week.

    They recruit­ed oth­er Atom­waf­fen mem­bers, includ­ing the Flori­da cell, to par­tic­i­pate in a coor­di­nat­ed cam­paign to threat­en jour­nal­ists in retal­i­a­tion for neg­a­tive media cov­er­age of the orga­ni­za­tion, pros­e­cu­tors have said.

    Park­er-Dipeppe was the only one in Flori­da with a car, and he and anoth­er mem­ber drove to St. Peters­burg and affixed a poster to a home where they believed a news reporter lived. It was the wrong address; instead, a Black woman lived there with her father and her child.

    The same day, Atom­waf­fen mem­bers sent or deliv­ered posters to the homes of reporters or activists in Wash­ing­ton state and Ari­zona, includ­ing Chris Ingalls, a jour­nal­ist at Seattle’s KING-TV who had report­ed on the group.

    “Even though the FBI says Park­er-Dipeppe was a low lev­el play­er in this plot, he was part of a ter­ri­fy­ing crime that my fam­i­ly and oth­er vic­tims live with to this day,” Ingalls said in a text mes­sage Wednes­day. “I’m sat­is­fied with the jus­tice system’s han­dling of this case and I take Park­er-Dipeppe at his word that he is tru­ly remorse­ful.”

    Park­er-Dipeppe con­fessed his involve­ment in Atom­waf­fen to his moth­er soon after deliv­er­ing the poster, afraid that the group would learn that he was trans­gen­der. She per­suad­ed him to tell Shea the truth. He did, was imme­di­ate­ly kicked out of Atom­waf­fen and still fears retal­i­a­tion, his attor­ney said.

    Park­er-Dipeppe was the only per­son from the Flori­da cell charged in state or fed­er­al court. He spent about a month in cus­tody before being released pend­ing tri­al. While out, he has made great progress in ther­a­py, obtained a job and mar­ried a sup­port­ive woman, Maz­zone said.

    ...

    The first mem­ber of the con­spir­a­cy to be sen­tenced was John­ny Roman Garza, 20, of Queen Creek, Ari­zona, who affixed one of the posters on the bed­room win­dow of a Jew­ish jour­nal­ist. The poster includ­ed the journalist’s name and home address. Coughenour sen­tenced Garza to 16 months, rough­ly half the time sought by pros­e­cu­tors.

    ————

    “No prison time for trans­gen­der ex-neo-Nazi in threat case” by GENE JOHNSON; Asso­ci­at­ed Press; 03/31/2021

    Park­er-Dipeppe was a low-lev­el part of the con­spir­a­cy, which author­i­ties have said was planned by Cameron Bran­don Shea, of Red­mond, Wash­ing­ton, and Kaleb J. Cole, who moved from Seat­tle to Texas after Seat­tle police seized his guns in 2019 under an “extreme risk pro­tec­tion order” that sug­gest­ed he was plan­ning a race war. Cole is due to face tri­al in Sep­tem­ber, and Shea is sched­uled to plead guilty next week.”

    Tay­lor Park­er-Dipeppe was appar­ent­ly a key Flori­da con­nec­tion in this mul­ti-state Atom­waf­fen con­spir­a­cy to intim­i­date. He was also lit­er­al­ly the only Flori­da mem­ber with a car in a group that was oth­er­wise more 15–16 year old boys:

    ...
    He moved to Flori­da to live with his moth­er and her hus­band, who one day came home drunk and beat him severe­ly, break­ing his front tooth and smash­ing his head against the dri­ve­way.

    “This led him to just seek accep­tance, and unfor­tu­nate­ly he found it from these knuck­le­heads,” Maz­zone said, refer­ring to the group of about 10 boys, most­ly 15 and 16 years old, who made up the Flori­da Atom­waf­fen cell.

    ...

    They recruit­ed oth­er Atom­waf­fen mem­bers, includ­ing the Flori­da cell, to par­tic­i­pate in a coor­di­nat­ed cam­paign to threat­en jour­nal­ists in retal­i­a­tion for neg­a­tive media cov­er­age of the orga­ni­za­tion, pros­e­cu­tors have said.

    Park­er-Dipeppe was the only one in Flori­da with a car, and he and anoth­er mem­ber drove to St. Peters­burg and affixed a poster to a home where they believed a news reporter lived. It was the wrong address; instead, a Black woman lived there with her father and her child.

    ...

    Park­er-Dipeppe was the only per­son from the Flori­da cell charged in state or fed­er­al court. He spent about a month in cus­tody before being released pend­ing tri­al. While out, he has made great progress in ther­a­py, obtained a job and mar­ried a sup­port­ive woman, Maz­zone said.
    ...

    So all of the rest of these Flori­da cell mem­bers are pre­sum­ably out and about, doing what­ev­er it is stray Atom­waf­fen mem­bers might do. Although prob­a­bly not under the “Atom­waf­fen” ban­ner any­more fol­low­ing James Mason’s dec­la­ra­tion that Atom­waf­fen is now defunct fol­low­ing the series of mem­ber arrests. Defunct and appar­ent­ly replaced with a new group, the Nation­al Social­ist Order (NSO):

    King5

    Mil­i­tant neo-nazi group Atom­waf­fen with links to Wash­ing­ton sur­faces in Col­orado
    The Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion, a neo-nazi group which has been linked to five mur­ders, has dis­band­ed and rebrand­ed itself as the Nation­al Social­ist Order.

    Author: Jere­my Jojo­la
    Pub­lished: 5:19 PM PDT Sep­tem­ber 18, 2020
    Updat­ed: 5:19 PM PDT Sep­tem­ber 18, 2020

    COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Neo-nazi stick­ers placed on busi­ness win­dows in this city indi­cate the white suprema­cy group for­mer­ly known as Atom­waf­fen is attempt­ing to reestab­lish itself after sev­er­al of its mem­bers were arrest­ed by the FBI this past year.

    The Nation­al Social­ist Order (NSO), which has been born out of the now-defunct Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion, has estab­lished a new web­site and social media accounts to share its racists’ views. The white suprema­cist group calls for vio­lence and civ­il war with­in the Unit­ed States.

    The Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion was linked to five mur­ders before it dis­band­ed after fed­er­al author­i­ties arrest­ed sev­er­al mem­bers of the group this past spring.

    9Wants to Know obtained a Col­orado Springs Police report describ­ing how a man dressed in cam­ou­flage pants was seen putting up a racist NSO stick­er on a busi­ness win­dow over a Black Lives Mat­ter poster.

    In the report from Sep­tem­ber 3, the own­er of a tar­get­ed LGBTQ-owned busi­ness describes the man as “wear­ing a short sleeve, tight white t‑shirt with aggres­sive red and black let­ter­ing on it, a mask with bones on the face with just his eyes show­ing, camo pants tucked into com­bat boots…”

    The stick­er con­tained an image of Adolf Hitler, a swasti­ka and an email for recruit­ment.

    Oth­er NSO stick­ers have been spot­ted in oth­er parts of Col­orado Springs, includ­ing the local bus depot.

    Online, the Nation­al Social­ist Order has estab­lished a new web­site that fea­tures many of the mil­i­tant hall­marks of the Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion, includ­ing ref­er­ences to James Mason, a promi­nent neo-nazi who lives in Den­ver.

    In 2019, 9Wants to Know encoun­tered James Mason who said he doesn’t take respon­si­bil­i­ty for inspir­ing acts of vio­lence but said if peo­ple were going to com­mit vio­lence, they should “do it right.”

    ...

    After a series of arrests of Atom­waf­fen mem­bers, Mason told the West­word in March Atom­waf­fen was dis­band­ing.

    How­ev­er, from his down­town apart­ment, Mason has been active­ly mak­ing racist videos and ref­er­ences the Nation­al Social­ist Order. These videos have been shared by the NSO social media accounts.

    ———-

    “Mil­i­tant neo-nazi group Atom­waf­fen with links to Wash­ing­ton sur­faces in Col­orado” by Jere­my Jojo­la; King5; 09/18/2020

    “Online, the Nation­al Social­ist Order has estab­lished a new web­site that fea­tures many of the mil­i­tant hall­marks of the Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion, includ­ing ref­er­ences to James Mason, a promi­nent neo-nazi who lives in Den­ver.”

    Yeah, they aren’t exact­ly fool­ing any­one. James Mason him­self even announced Atom­waf­fen was dis­band­ing back in March of 2020, fol­low­ing all the arrests, and then pro­ceed­ed to make videos ref­er­en­cign the new Nation­al Social­ist Order. It’s pure­ly a rebrand­ing exer­cise:

    ...
    In 2019, 9Wants to Know encoun­tered James Mason who said he doesn’t take respon­si­bil­i­ty for inspir­ing acts of vio­lence but said if peo­ple were going to com­mit vio­lence, they should “do it right.”

    ...

    After a series of arrests of Atom­waf­fen mem­bers, Mason told the West­word in March Atom­waf­fen was dis­band­ing.

    How­ev­er, from his down­town apart­ment, Mason has been active­ly mak­ing racist videos and ref­er­ences the Nation­al Social­ist Order. These videos have been shared by the NSO social media accounts.
    ...

    Are Atom­waf­fen’s “hate camps” going to become Nation­al Social­ist Order hate camps? It sure looks like­ly. But on the plus side, at least the lone mem­ber of the Flori­da cell who had a car is no long part of the group. That should make the com­mute out to those hate camps a lit­tle more dif­fi­cult.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | October 20, 2021, 3:18 pm
  24. Just how vul­ner­a­ble is the US elec­tri­cal grid to a ter­ror attack? It’s a ques­tion that’s popped up with dis­turb­ing reg­u­lar­i­ty in recent years. There was the high pow­ered sniper attack on the Met­calf elec­tri­cal grid back in 2013 the day after the Boston Bomb­ing that remains unsolved. More recent­ly, there was the far right “Lights Out” plot dis­cov­ered involv­ing a group of far right fol­low­ers of James Mason who were pre­emp­tive­ly plan­ning in the fall of 2019 a domes­tic ter­ror cam­paign attack­ing the US elec­tri­cal grid that would be unleashed across the US in the event of Don­ald Trump los­ing the 2020 elec­tion. And now we’re get­ting a new chap­ter to this going sto­ry of the grow­ing attempts to take down the US elec­tri­cal grid:

    The first known case of a “mod­i­fied unmanned air­craft sys­tem like­ly being used in the Unit­ed States to specif­i­cal­ly tar­get ener­gy infra­struc­ture” was just dis­closed in an Octo­ber 28 memo from the FBI, DHS, and Nation­al Coun­tert­er­ror­ism Cen­ter. The inci­dent took place in July 2020 at a Penn­syl­va­nia pow­er sub­sta­tion, when a small drone was appar­ent­ly inten­tion­al­ly crashed into the rooftop of a sub­sta­tion in an attempt to dis­able it. The drone was mod­i­fied to cre­ate a “short cir­cuit to cause dam­age to trans­form­ers or dis­tri­b­u­tion lines, based on the design and recov­ery loca­tion.” As we’re going to see, it was a DJI Mav­ic 2 drone that costs $2,000-$4,000 new online, although this par­tic­u­lar one was heav­i­ly used. So the cost of this attack was the cost of pur­chas­ing a heav­i­ly used drone that costs $2,000-$4,000 new, which means it cost almost.

    Impor­tant­ly, who­ev­er did it got away with it anony­mous­ly. The drone had iden­ti­fy­ing infor­ma­tion scratched off and at this point the oper­a­tor remains unknown. So unless the per­son who did this used their last bit of mon­ey to pur­chase this drone, they’re pre­sum­ably going to be able to repeat this until they fig­ure out how to get it right. That’s a big part of what makes this sto­ry so dis­turb­ing. It was a tri­al run on a form of domes­tic ter­ror attack that can poten­tial­ly be repeat­ed­ly exe­cut­ed anony­mous­ly for cheap:

    CNN

    Drone at Penn­syl­va­nia elec­tric sub­sta­tion was first to ‘specif­i­cal­ly tar­get ener­gy infra­struc­ture,’ accord­ing to fed­er­al law enforce­ment bul­letin

    By Sean Lyn­gaas,
    Updat­ed 6:42 AM ET, Thu Novem­ber 4, 2021

    (CNN) A drone that crashed near a Penn­syl­va­nia pow­er sub­sta­tion last year was like­ly meant to dam­age or dis­rupt the elec­tric equip­ment, accord­ing to a fed­er­al law enforce­ment bul­letin obtained by CNN.

    The July 2020 inci­dent is the first known case of a “mod­i­fied unmanned air­craft sys­tem like­ly being used in the Unit­ed States to specif­i­cal­ly tar­get ener­gy infra­struc­ture,” states the Octo­ber 28 memo from the FBI, Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty and the Nation­al Coun­tert­er­ror­ism Cen­ter. That state­ment is based on a review of drone inci­dents dat­ing back to 2017.

    No dam­age was done to the elec­tric­i­ty sup­ply or equip­ment, accord­ing to the memo. It is still unclear who was respon­si­ble for oper­at­ing the drone that crashed on a rooftop near the uniden­ti­fied sub­sta­tion.

    Fed­er­al offi­cials say they are dis­trib­ut­ing the intel­li­gence bul­letin now to state and local offi­cials to raise aware­ness about the inci­dent and the gen­er­al threat of drones to crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture.

    ABC News was first to report on the intel­li­gence bul­letin.

    Who­ev­er mod­i­fied the drone like­ly tried to cre­ate a “short cir­cuit to cause dam­age to trans­form­ers or dis­tri­b­u­tion lines, based on the design and recov­ery loca­tion,” the intel­li­gence memo says. The drone “appeared to be heav­i­ly worn, indi­cat­ing it was flown pre­vi­ous­ly and was mod­i­fied for this sin­gle flight.”

    A DHS spokesper­son said in a state­ment to CNN that the depart­ment “reg­u­lar­ly shares infor­ma­tion with fed­er­al, state, local, trib­al, and ter­ri­to­r­i­al offi­cials to ensure the safe­ty and secu­ri­ty of all com­mu­ni­ties across the coun­try.”

    ...

    As drones have become cheap and ubiq­ui­tous in recent years, crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture firms and gov­ern­ment agen­cies have had to account for phys­i­cal and sur­veil­lance threats from the unmanned air­craft.

    DHS has invest­ed in tech­nolo­gies to counter drone threats, and offi­cials last year advised US gov­ern­ment agen­cies on how to address the secu­ri­ty chal­lenge.

    Acci­den­tal drone crash­es are also a con­sid­er­a­tion.

    In Jan­u­ary 2015, a drone oper­at­ed by an off-duty fed­er­al employ­ee crashed on the White House grounds, prompt­ing the Secret Ser­vice to lock down the White House in the mid­dle of the night.

    Fed­er­al law enforce­ment offi­cials want crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture facil­i­ties to con­tin­ue to fac­tor drones into their secu­ri­ty plans.

    “[W]e expect illic­it [unmanned air­craft sys­tem] activ­i­ty to increase over ener­gy sec­tor and oth­er crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture facil­i­ties as use of these sys­tems in the Unit­ed States con­tin­ues to expand,” the new intel­li­gence bul­letin says.

    ———-

    “Drone at Penn­syl­va­nia elec­tric sub­sta­tion was first to ‘specif­i­cal­ly tar­get ener­gy infra­struc­ture,’ accord­ing to fed­er­al law enforce­ment bul­letin” by Sean Lyn­gaas; CNN; 11/04/2021

    The July 2020 inci­dent is the first known case of a “mod­i­fied unmanned air­craft sys­tem like­ly being used in the Unit­ed States to specif­i­cal­ly tar­get ener­gy infra­struc­ture,” states the Octo­ber 28 memo from the FBI, Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty and the Nation­al Coun­tert­er­ror­ism Cen­ter. That state­ment is based on a review of drone inci­dents dat­ing back to 2017.”

    The age of mod­i­fied attack drones is upon us. Mod­i­fied total­ly anony­mous attack drones:

    ...
    No dam­age was done to the elec­tric­i­ty sup­ply or equip­ment, accord­ing to the memo. It is still unclear who was respon­si­ble for oper­at­ing the drone that crashed on a rooftop near the uniden­ti­fied sub­sta­tion.

    ...

    Who­ev­er mod­i­fied the drone like­ly tried to cre­ate a “short cir­cuit to cause dam­age to trans­form­ers or dis­tri­b­u­tion lines, based on the design and recov­ery loca­tion,” the intel­li­gence memo says. The drone “appeared to be heav­i­ly worn, indi­cat­ing it was flown pre­vi­ous­ly and was mod­i­fied for this sin­gle flight.”
    ...

    And while the this par­tic­u­lar attack did­n’t actu­al­ly take down the elec­tri­cal sub­sta­tion, as the fol­low­ing arti­cle describes, the prin­ci­ple of mak­ing these kinds of attacks on sub­sta­tions to take down a grid is a tried and test­ed con­cept. For exam­ple, F‑117 Nighthawk stealth jets dropped clus­ter bombs loaded with graphite fil­a­ment sub­mu­ni­tions over Ser­bia in 1999 to take down the elec­tri­cal grid. And as the arti­cle also describes, the drone used in this attack isn’t a large drone. It’s a fair­ly small DJI Mav­ic 2s quad­copter-type drone that can be pur­chased for $2,000-$4,000 online. That’s it. And in this case it was a heav­i­ly used drone, which could pre­sum­ably be pur­chased for much cheap­er. So while this par­tic­u­lar attack may not have suc­ceed­ed in tak­ing down the grid, who­ev­er did it can pre­sum­ably afford to try it again. And again. Until they get it right:

    The Dri­ve

    Like­ly Drone Attack On U.S. Pow­er Grid Revealed In New Intel­li­gence Report (Updat­ed)
    An appar­ent attack on a pow­er sub­sta­tion in Penn­syl­va­nia under­scores the very real threat drones pose to domes­tic crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture.

    By Joseph Tre­vithick
    Novem­ber 4, 2021

    U.S. offi­cials believe that a DJI Mav­ic 2, a small quad­copter-type drone, with a thick cop­per wire attached under­neath it via nylon cords was like­ly at the cen­ter of an attempt­ed attack on a pow­er sub­sta­tion in Penn­syl­va­nia last year. An inter­nal U.S. gov­ern­ment report issued last month says this is the first time such an inci­dent has been offi­cial­ly assessed as a pos­si­ble drone attack on ener­gy infra­struc­ture in the Unit­ed States, but that this is like­ly to become more com­mon­place as time goes on. This is a real­i­ty The War Zone has sound­ed the alarm about in the past, includ­ing when we were first to report on a still-unex­plained series of drone flights near the Palo Verde nuclear pow­er­plant in Ari­zona in 2019.

    ABC News was first to report on the Joint Intel­li­gence Bul­letin (JIB) cov­er­ing the inci­dent in Penn­syl­va­nia last year, which the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty (DHS), Fed­er­al Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion (FBI), and the Nation­al Coun­tert­er­ror­ism Cen­ter (NCTC) pub­lished on Oct. 28, 2021. The doc­u­ment, which ABC obtained a copy of — but released only a small por­tion of — is marked unclas­si­fied, but some parts are labeled Law Enforce­ment Sen­si­tive (LES) and For Offi­cial Use Only (FOUO). Oth­er out­lets have since obtained copies of this doc­u­ment, which report­ed­ly says this like­ly attack took place on July 16, 2020, but it does not iden­ti­fy where the sub­sta­tion in ques­tion was locat­ed.

    ...

    ABC and oth­er out­lets have report­ed that the JIB says that this assess­ment is based in part on oth­er unspec­i­fied inci­dents involv­ing drones dat­ing back to 2017. As already not­ed, The War Zone pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed on anoth­er wor­ri­some set of inci­dents in 2019 around Ari­zon­a’s Palo Verde Gen­er­at­ing Sta­tion, the largest nuclear pow­er plant in the Unit­ed States in terms of its elec­tri­cal out­put. In the process of report­ing that sto­ry, we uncov­ered oth­er report­ed drone flights that prompt­ed secu­ri­ty con­cerns near the Lim­er­ick Gen­er­at­ing Sta­tion nuclear pow­er plant in Penn­syl­va­nia ear­li­er that year.

    “To date, no oper­a­tor has been iden­ti­fied and we are pro­duc­ing this assess­ment now to expand aware­ness of this event to fed­er­al, state, local, trib­al, and ter­ri­to­r­i­al law enforce­ment and secu­ri­ty part­ners who may encounter sim­i­lar­ly mod­i­fied UAS,” the JIB adds.

    Beyond the cop­per wire strung up under­neath it, the drone report­ed­ly had its cam­era and inter­nal mem­o­ry card removed. Efforts were tak­en to remove any iden­ti­fy­ing mark­ings, indi­cat­ing efforts by the oper­a­tor or oper­a­tors to con­ceal the iden­ti­fies and oth­er­wise make it dif­fi­cult to trace the drone’s ori­gins.

    It’s unclear how much of a threat this par­tic­u­lar drone posed in its mod­i­fied con­fig­u­ra­tion. The appar­ent intend­ed method of attack would appear to be ground­ed, at least to some degree, in actu­al sci­ence. The U.S. mil­i­tary employed Tom­a­hawk cruise mis­siles loaded with spools of high­ly-con­duc­tive car­bon fiber wire against pow­er infra­struc­ture to cre­ate black­outs in Iraq dur­ing the first Gulf War in 1991. F‑117 Nighthawk stealth com­bat jets dropped clus­ter bombs loaded with BLU-114/B sub­mu­ni­tions packed with graphite fil­a­ment over Ser­bia to the same effect in 1999.

    Regard­less, the inci­dent only under­scores the ever-grow­ing risks that small drones pose to crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture, as well as oth­er civil­ian and mil­i­tary tar­gets, in the Unit­ed States. If this mod­i­fied drone did pose a real risk, it would also high­light the low bar­ri­er to entry to at least attempt to car­ry out such attacks. New DJI Mav­ic 2s can be pur­chased online right now for between $2,000 and $4,000.

    The tech­nol­o­gy is so read­i­ly avail­able that non-state actors around the world, from ter­ror­ists in the Mid­dle East to drug car­tels in Mex­i­co, are already employ­ing com­mer­cial quad and hexa­copter-type drones armed with impro­vised explo­sive pay­loads on a vari­ety of tar­gets on and off more tra­di­tion­al bat­tle­fields. This includes attempt­ed assas­si­na­tions of high-pro­file indi­vid­u­als.

    The U.S. gov­ern­ment is final­ly com­ing to terms with these threats and there are cer­tain­ly some steps being tak­en, at least at the fed­er­al lev­el, to pro­tect domes­tic civil­ian and mil­i­tary facil­i­ties against small drones. At the same time, it is equal­ly clear there is still much work to be done.

    This par­tic­u­lar inci­dent in Penn­syl­va­nia last year high­lights sep­a­rate secu­ri­ty con­cerns relat­ing to Chi­nese-made small drones that are now wide­ly avail­able in the Unit­ed States and are even in use with­in the U.S. gov­ern­ment. DJI, or Da Jiang Inno­va­tions, is by far the largest Chi­nese drone mak­er sell­ing prod­ucts com­mer­cial­ly in the Unit­ed States today, and it has been at the cen­ter of these debates in recent years.

    Whether or not the mod­i­fied Mav­ic 2 posed a real dan­ger in this instance or if this was tru­ly the first-ever attempt­ed drone attack on ener­gy infra­struc­ture in the Unit­ed States, it def­i­nite­ly reflects threats are real now and will only become more dan­ger­ous as time goes on.

    UPDATED:

    A read­er has been able to iden­ti­fy the loca­tion of the elec­tri­cal sub­sta­tion and where the drone was recov­ered based on the par­tial map from JIB. The sub­sta­tion and adja­cent build­ing are across the way from the Her­shey Com­pa­ny’s old choco­late fac­to­ry in Her­shey, Penn­syl­va­nia. This is also rel­a­tive­ly close to the Her­shey­park amuse­ment park.

    ———–

    “Like­ly Drone Attack On U.S. Pow­er Grid Revealed In New Intel­li­gence Report (Updat­ed)” by Joseph Tre­vithick; The Dri­ve; 11/04/2021

    “It’s unclear how much of a threat this par­tic­u­lar drone posed in its mod­i­fied con­fig­u­ra­tion. The appar­ent intend­ed method of attack would appear to be ground­ed, at least to some degree, in actu­al sci­ence. The U.S. mil­i­tary employed Tom­a­hawk cruise mis­siles loaded with spools of high­ly-con­duc­tive car­bon fiber wire against pow­er infra­struc­ture to cre­ate black­outs in Iraq dur­ing the first Gulf War in 1991. F‑117 Nighthawk stealth com­bat jets dropped clus­ter bombs loaded with BLU-114/B sub­mu­ni­tions packed with graphite fil­a­ment over Ser­bia to the same effect in 1999.

    The idea of tak­ing down the elec­tri­cal grid with an attack by attack­ing sep­a­rate com­po­nents and wait­ing for the sys­tem to fail isn’t some fan­ta­sy. It’s a proven mil­i­tary tac­tic. What isn’t yet proven is if it can be accom­plished with small drones. But when these drones are as afford­able as the new DJI Mav­ic 2s, just $2,000-$4,000 new, it’s real­ly just a mat­ter of time before some­one fig­ures out how to do this:

    ...
    Regard­less, the inci­dent only under­scores the ever-grow­ing risks that small drones pose to crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture, as well as oth­er civil­ian and mil­i­tary tar­gets, in the Unit­ed States. If this mod­i­fied drone did pose a real risk, it would also high­light the low bar­ri­er to entry to at least attempt to car­ry out such attacks. New DJI Mav­ic 2s can be pur­chased online right now for between $2,000 and $4,000.
    ...

    Also keep in mind that cheap drones allows for anoth­er scary pos­si­bil­i­ty: large num­bers of drones being used to attack dif­fer­ent parts of the grid simul­ta­ne­ous­ly. Drone swarms are only going to get more and more afford­able.

    And note the oth­er high­ly dis­turb­ing appli­ca­tion of these cheap drones: tar­get­ed assas­si­na­tions. Anony­mous assas­si­na­tions using off-the-shelf cheap tech­nol­o­gy if done right. These are the kinds of skill sets that are pre­sum­ably being qui­et­ly devel­oped today:

    ...
    The tech­nol­o­gy is so read­i­ly avail­able that non-state actors around the world, from ter­ror­ists in the Mid­dle East to drug car­tels in Mex­i­co, are already employ­ing com­mer­cial quad and hexa­copter-type drones armed with impro­vised explo­sive pay­loads on a vari­ety of tar­gets on and off more tra­di­tion­al bat­tle­fields. This includes attempt­ed assas­si­na­tions of high-pro­file indi­vid­u­als.
    ...

    How long before the Secret Ser­vice has its own squad of inter­cep­tor drones rou­tine­ly hov­er­ing around VIPs? It’s prob­a­bly just a mat­ter of time. It’s a reminder that, while this sto­ry should cer­tain­ly prompt greater con­cern about the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of elec­tri­cal grids to drone attacks, the elec­tri­cal grid is real­ly just one exam­ple of the kind of thing that might be vul­ner­a­ble to a drone attack. Pret­ty much any­thing is poten­tial­ly vul­ner­a­ble to a drone attack with enough cre­ativ­i­ty. And tri­al and error. Prac­tice makes per­fect, espe­cial­ly when it comes to drone-based soci­ety-desta­bi­liza­tion cam­paigns.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | November 6, 2021, 4:19 pm
  25. Here’s a sto­ry that falls into a class of sto­ries that should serve as a grow­ing red flag over the dan­ger of the next insur­rec­tion involv­ing Maid­an-style false flag attacks. It’s also a sto­ry that gives us an update on whether or not the ‘Booga­loo Bois’ move­ment is still active in the post-Trump era. Yes, they’re stl­ll active. And still plot­ting attacks on police:

    Two men Wash­ing­ton State men were indict­ed on fed­er­al charges a cou­ple weeks ago on charges tied to the build­ing of explo­sive devices intend­ed for use on law enforce­ment. Daniel James Ander­son of Ken­newick and Con­nor Duane Good­man of Auburn were both self-described mem­bers of the “Ver­i­fied Bois” and accused of reg­u­lar­ly con­duct­ing train­ing exer­cis­es where they would prac­tice “small unit tac­tics, raids, firearms han­dling and manip­u­la­tion, and sur­vival skills” as they dis­cussed their hopes of attack­ing police “whom they per­ceived to engage in over-aggres­sive law enforce­ment action.” Good­man is even alleged to have dis­cussed load­ing a vehi­cle with the explo­sive Tan­ner­ite to turn the vehi­cle into a rolling IED dur­ing a May 2021 meet­ing. Good­man is described as the leader of the group.

    But it went beyond just talk of IED. In June 2021, Ander­son and Good­man alleged­ly obtained a load of fire­works from a trib­al reser­va­tion in east­ern Wash­ing­ton and deliv­ered them to an FBI infor­mant. Ander­son received five Thun­der­crack­er KK0033 fire­works from a “con­fi­den­tial source,” and lat­er told the source that he planned to make hand­held IEDs that could “be used at protests or thrown over the front line of law enforce­ment offi­cers and explode behind them.” Ander­son used the fire­works to con­struct home­made explo­sive devices in glass mason jars, assert­ing they could “throw bird­shot at least 20 yards.” Ander­son alleged­ly told the infor­mant that he want­ed to attach ball bear­ings to them that would act as shrap­nel. Two months lat­er, Ander­son told the source he designed the devices. In Sep­tem­ber 2021, Ander­son described his devices on social media as “dis­trac­tion devices” and said they “aren’t train­ing tools. I would­n’t be any­where near this thing. It’s going to throw shrap­nel like a MF.”

    It’s unclear how many oth­er peo­ple were involved with the group. There was clear­ly an unnamed FBI infor­mant. And there are ref­er­ences to Good­man and Ander­son train­ing oth­er mem­bers of the “Ver­i­fied Bois” in these var­i­ous sur­vival and fight­ing tac­tics. So it sounds like this was a real plot. They real­ly were build­ing IEDs and real­ly did have plans on using them at some sort of protest. But we have no idea how large this plot was. Nei­ther do we known whether or not their planned attacks on the police were intend­ed to be car­ried out at a left-wing protest — in keep­ing with the pre­vi­ous Booga­loo plots like the attack led by Steven Car­ril­lo that the GOP repeat­ed­ly blamed on left-wing pro­tes­tors — or if they were intend­ing to car­ry out a non-false flag direct attack on police at some sort of pro-Trump ral­ly. So while it remains unclear what exact­ly the Vig­i­lante Bois were fight­ing for, they were clear­ly prepar­ing for a fight. The kind of fight where they lob an IED at police from a crowd and run away:

    ABC News

    2 men with alleged ties to ‘booga­loo’ move­ment built explo­sive devices to use against police: FBI

    The men alleged­ly want­ed to throw the IEDs at police dur­ing protests.

    By Alexan­der Mallin
    Jan­u­ary 6, 2022, 1:20 PM

    Two Wash­ing­ton state men were indict­ed on fed­er­al charges this week that they con­spired to build explo­sives to use against law enforce­ment, accord­ing to new­ly unsealed court records.

    Daniel Ander­son and Con­nor Good­man, self-described mem­bers of the “Ver­i­fied Bois” whose mem­bers alleged­ly espouse the anti-gov­ern­ment “booga­loo” ide­ol­o­gy, accord­ing to the FBI, each face two charges of con­spir­a­cy to make a destruc­tive device and pos­ses­sion of a destruc­tive device.

    Accord­ing to the indict­ment, mem­bers of the “Ver­i­fied Bois” reg­u­lar­ly con­duct­ed train­ing exer­cis­es where they would prac­tice “small unit tac­tics, raids, firearms han­dling and manip­u­la­tion, and sur­vival skills” as they dis­cussed their hopes of attack­ing police “whom they per­ceived to engage in over-aggres­sive law enforce­ment action.”

    Dur­ing a meet­ing in May of last year, Good­man is alleged to have dis­cussed load­ing a vehi­cle with the explo­sive Tan­ner­ite to turn the vehi­cle into a rolling IED. In June, Ander­son and Good­man alleged­ly obtained a load of fire­works from a trib­al reser­va­tion in east­ern Wash­ing­ton and deliv­ered them to an indi­vid­ual who act­ed as an infor­mant for the FBI.

    Ander­son alleged­ly told the infor­mant that he want­ed to use the fire­works to build IEDs and attach ball bear­ings to them that would act as shrap­nel. The men alleged­ly expressed inter­est in throw­ing them behind lines of police at an unspec­i­fied protest.

    Good­man lat­er alleged­ly sold the infor­mant 12 mor­tar-style fire­works that he said he want­ed to be con­struct­ed into IEDs.

    ...

    ————

    “2 men with alleged ties to ‘booga­loo’ move­ment built explo­sive devices to use against police: FBI” by Alexan­der Mallin; ABC News; 01/06/2022

    “Accord­ing to the indict­ment, mem­bers of the “Ver­i­fied Bois” reg­u­lar­ly con­duct­ed train­ing exer­cis­es where they would prac­tice “small unit tac­tics, raids, firearms han­dling and manip­u­la­tion, and sur­vival skills” as they dis­cussed their hopes of attack­ing police “whom they per­ceived to engage in over-aggres­sive law enforce­ment action.””

    How many oth­er mem­bers of the “Ver­i­fied Bois” are there? We have no idea at this point. We just know about Ander­son, Good­man, and an unnamed FBI infor­mant who appears to have be been involved with the cre­ation of the IEDs:

    ...
    Dur­ing a meet­ing in May of last year, Good­man is alleged to have dis­cussed load­ing a vehi­cle with the explo­sive Tan­ner­ite to turn the vehi­cle into a rolling IED. In June, Ander­son and Good­man alleged­ly obtained a load of fire­works from a trib­al reser­va­tion in east­ern Wash­ing­ton and deliv­ered them to an indi­vid­ual who act­ed as an infor­mant for the FBI.
    ...

    And now here’s an arti­cle that gives a lit­tle more details on the nature of the IEDs: glass mason jars they called “dis­trac­tion devices” that could “throw bird­shot at least 20 yards.” We also learn that Good­man is con­sid­ered the leader of the group. Keep in mind that we were told it was Good­man who talks about load­ing a vehi­cle with the explo­sive Tan­ner­ite to turn the vehi­cle into a rolling IED:

    The Spokesman-Review

    Two men with ties to Cen­tral Wash­ing­ton anti-gov­ern­ment mili­tia indict­ed on fed­er­al charges

    By Kip Hill
    UPDATED: Wed., Jan. 5, 2022

    Two Cen­tral Wash­ing­ton men with ties to the “booga­loo” anti-gov­ern­ment mili­tia group have been indict­ed on charges tied to explo­sive devices alleged­ly intend­ed for use on law enforce­ment.

    Daniel J. Ander­son of Ken­newick and Con­nor D. Good­man of Auburn were indict­ed by a grand jury Tues­day on con­spir­a­cy charges to make or pos­sess unreg­is­tered explo­sive devices. Ander­son, who has been in cus­tody fol­low­ing a search of his home in mid-Decem­ber, also was charged with pos­ses­sion of an unreg­is­tered destruc­tive device. Court records did not list an attor­ney or deten­tion sta­tus for Good­man on Wednes­day.

    The FBI worked with a con­fi­den­tial infor­mant begin­ning in June to infil­trate the “Ver­i­fied Bois” group that dis­cussed steal­ing explo­sive mate­ri­als and com­mit­ting vio­lence against law enforce­ment offi­cials, accord­ing to court doc­u­ments.

    Ander­son, 26, used com­mer­cial fire­works to con­struct home­made explo­sive devices in glass mason jars, accord­ing to a sworn state­ment by Spe­cial Agent Justin Bodes of the FBI. Good­man is iden­ti­fied as the leader of the group who pro­vid­ed Ander­son with a shot­gun at a meet­ing in Sep­tem­ber.

    The FBI also received chat mes­sages in which Ander­son called the explo­sives “dis­trac­tion devices” that could “throw bird­shot at least 20 yards.” The con­fi­den­tial source told police that Ander­son lis­tened in to Ken­newick Police radio chat­ter in April, and put on body armor and armed him­self when offi­cers respond­ed to his apart­ment com­plex on a call of a sui­ci­dal neigh­bor.

    In one meet­ing, the infor­mant cap­tured video evi­dence of Ander­son hold­ing the explo­sive device. It was seized dur­ing the search Dec. 16, accord­ing to court records.

    ...

    Ander­son is list­ed in cus­tody of the Ben­ton Coun­ty Jail. The charges against him car­ry a max­i­mum penal­ty of 10 years in prison. Goodman’s charge car­ries a max­i­mum five-year penal­ty.

    ...

    ————-

    “Two men with ties to Cen­tral Wash­ing­ton anti-gov­ern­ment mili­tia indict­ed on fed­er­al charges” by Kip Hill; The Spokesman-Review; 01/05/2022

    “Ander­son, 26, used com­mer­cial fire­works to con­struct home­made explo­sive devices in glass mason jars, accord­ing to a sworn state­ment by Spe­cial Agent Justin Bodes of the FBI. Good­man is iden­ti­fied as the leader of the group who pro­vid­ed Ander­son with a shot­gun at a meet­ing in Sep­tem­ber.”

    Glass mason jar dis­trac­tion devices that could “throw bird­shot at least 20 yards.” That cer­tain­ly would be a dis­trac­tion.

    And note how were told Ander­son is in cus­tody, but theres men­tion of Good­man’s sta­tus. As the fol­low­ing arti­cle states, its not known if Good­man has been arrest­ed. It rais­es the ques­tion of whether or not he’s on the run, which rais­es addi­tion­al ques­tions about just how many oth­er mem­bers of this group there are out there. The fact that Ander­son was brag­ging about his IEDs on social media in Sept 2021 sug­gests Good­man might not have too much dif­fi­cul­ty get­ting in touch with mem­bers of the larg­er “Booga­loo” net­work:

    KREM2

    Doc­u­ments: East­ern Wash­ing­ton men with ties to “booga­loo” move­ment used fire­works to cre­ate explo­sives
    Daniel James Ander­son of Ken­newick and Con­nor Duane Good­man of Auburn alleged­ly con­spired to build explo­sives to be used against law enforce­ment per­son­nel.

    Author: Celi­na Van Hyn­ing
    Pub­lished: 3:28 PM PST Jan­u­ary 6, 2022
    Updat­ed: 3:28 PM PST Jan­u­ary 6, 2022

    SPOKANE, Wash. — Two East­ern Wash­ing­ton men asso­ci­at­ed with an anti-gov­ern­ment mili­tia group have been indict­ed on crim­i­nal charges after alleged­ly con­spir­ing to build explo­sives to be used against law enforce­ment per­son­nel, accord­ing to court doc­u­ments.

    The charges include con­spir­a­cy to make or pos­sess an unreg­is­tered destruc­tive device and pos­ses­sion of an unreg­is­tered destruc­tive device, as well as alle­ga­tions of for­fei­ture.

    Accord­ing to court doc­u­ments, Daniel James Ander­son of Ken­newick and Con­nor Duane Good­man of Auburn are mem­bers of a self-described anti-author­i­ty group known as the Ver­i­fied Bois.

    The Ver­i­fied Bois report­ed­ly share the same beliefs asso­ci­at­ed with the “booga­loo” move­ment, a net­work of peo­ple who believe a sec­ond Unit­ed States civ­il war is com­ing. The booga­loo move­ment report­ed­ly espous­es anti-gov­ern­ment and anti-author­i­ty rhetoric, accord­ing to the Cen­ter for Strate­gic and Inter­na­tion­al Stud­ies (CSIS)..

    Indict­ment doc­u­ments state that Ander­son and Good­man con­duct­ed train­ing events for oth­er mem­bers of the group, in which they and oth­er mem­bers “prac­ticed small unit tac­tics, raids, firearms han­dling and manip­u­la­tion, and sur­vival skills.” Inves­ti­ga­tors said at least one of these train­ings occurred in East­ern Wash­ing­ton.

    Dur­ing these train­ings, the two alleged­ly dis­cussed attack­ing police per­son­nel they per­ceived to be aggres­sive.

    Dur­ing a Ver­i­fied Bois meet­ing in May 2021, doc­u­ments said Good­man talked about load­ing a vehi­cle with a com­mer­cial explo­sive, which would turn the car into an “impro­vised explo­sive device.”

    Ander­son also used a social media plat­form in June 2021 to request flash pow­der or fire­works con­tain­ing mag­ne­sium and phos­pho­rus from oth­er group mem­bers. The indict­ment said he did this so he could build an explo­sive device.

    In response to Ander­son­’s request, Good­man report­ed­ly obtained fire­works from a trib­al reser­va­tion in West­ern Wash­ing­ton in June 2021. Good­man then arranged to send the fire­works to Ander­son, who was in East­ern Wash­ing­ton at that time.

    Ander­son then received a pack­age that con­tained five Thun­der­crack­er KK0033 fire­works from a “con­fi­den­tial source,” accord­ing to doc­u­ments. Dur­ing the exchange, Ander­son told the source that he planned to use the fire­works to make impro­vised explo­sive devices (IED). He also told the source that he planned to make hand­held IEDs that could “be used at protests or thrown over the front line of law enforce­ment offi­cers and explode behind them.”

    Two months lat­er, Ander­son informed the source that he has suc­cess­ful­ly designed two IEDs.

    The indict­ment said Ander­son took to social media in Sept. 2021 to describe his devices. He referred to them as “dis­trac­tion devices” and said they “aren’t train­ing tools. I would­n’t be any­where near this thing. It’s going to throw shrap­nel like a MF.”

    ...

    Ander­son was arrest­ed and tak­en into cus­tody in Decem­ber 2021. It is not known if or when Good­man was arrest­ed. No pleas have been entered at this time.

    ———–

    “Doc­u­ments: East­ern Wash­ing­ton men with ties to “booga­loo” move­ment used fire­works to cre­ate explo­sives” by Celi­na Van Hyn­ing; KREM2; 01/06/2022

    “Ander­son was arrest­ed and tak­en into cus­tody in Decem­ber 2021. It is not known if or when Good­man was arrest­ed. No pleas have been entered at this time.”

    Is Good­man just walk­ing around? If so, odds are he’s in con­tact with oth­er mem­bers of the group or fel­low trav­el­ers. The might include the oth­er unnamed “Ver­i­fied Bois” mem­bers who received direct train­ing from and Good­man and Ander­son. Or it might involve net­work­ing with who­ev­er they were com­mu­ni­cat­ing with over social media. But it’s pret­ty clear this was a plot that includ­ed more peo­ple than just Good­man and Ander­son:

    ...
    Indict­ment doc­u­ments state that Ander­son and Good­man con­duct­ed train­ing events for oth­er mem­bers of the group, in which they and oth­er mem­bers “prac­ticed small unit tac­tics, raids, firearms han­dling and manip­u­la­tion, and sur­vival skills.” Inves­ti­ga­tors said at least one of these train­ings occurred in East­ern Wash­ing­ton.

    ...

    Ander­son then received a pack­age that con­tained five Thun­der­crack­er KK0033 fire­works from a “con­fi­den­tial source,” accord­ing to doc­u­ments. Dur­ing the exchange, Ander­son told the source that he planned to use the fire­works to make impro­vised explo­sive devices (IED). He also told the source that he planned to make hand­held IEDs that could “be used at protests or thrown over the front line of law enforce­ment offi­cers and explode behind them.”

    Two months lat­er, Ander­son informed the source that he has suc­cess­ful­ly designed two IEDs.

    The indict­ment said Ander­son took to social media in Sept. 2021 to describe his devices. He referred to them as “dis­trac­tion devices” and said they “aren’t train­ing tools. I would­n’t be any­where near this thing. It’s going to throw shrap­nel like a MF.”
    ...

    Again, keep in mind that while the his­to­ry of the Booga­loo move­ment sug­gests we should expect that they were plan­ning on using these devices at a left-wing protest as part of a false flag attack, we can’t rule out plans to use the devices at some sort of pro-Trump ral­ly. It’s not like there’s a short­age of ele­ments on the far right who would love to see open war­fare between Trump sup­port­ers and the gov­ern­ment. So who knows, maybe they were plan­ning on esca­lat­ing ten­sions between Trump’s sup­port­ers and police in the hopes of spark­ing a full blown civ­il war. There’s a range of viable schemes that would fall into the ‘Booga­loo’ agen­da. When burn­ing down soci­ety is your main goal you actu­al­ly have a lot of options.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | January 22, 2022, 5:13 pm
  26. The nor­mal­iza­tion of mass gun vio­lence in the US has long been one of the most dis­turb­ing fea­tures of US soci­ety. And while the ease of the nor­mal­iza­tion is per­haps the most dis­turb­ing aspect of this phe­nom­e­na — with lit­tle beyond ‘thoughts and prayers’ being imag­in­able as a nation­al response — there’s anoth­er recur­ring fea­ture to these events that was promi­nent­ly on dis­play in the lat­est mass shoot­ing at an ele­men­tary school in Uvalde, Texas two days ago: a bizarrely slow response by police. As reports are now indi­cat­ing, the author­i­ties spent more than an hour prepar­ing to enter the class­room where the gun­man had bar­ri­cad­ed him­self. Mys­tery sur­rounds many aspects of the lat­est shoot­ing, but it’s that painful­ly slow police response that appears to have observers the most exas­per­at­ed.

    At the same time, we still have no real idea as to what actu­al­ly moti­vat­ed the now-deceased shoot­er, 18 year old Sal­vador Ramos. And may nev­er get those answers. So with the prospect loom­ing of this being anoth­er mass school shoot­ing for which there giant ques­tions — ques­tions about both the motive and the response — but no avail­able answers, here’s a pair of arti­cle that are a reminder that the US bare­ly dodged anoth­er mass school slaugh­ter just a month ago in a case that has a num­ber of par­al­lels to the slaugh­ter in Uvalde. That would be the attack on Edmund Burke School, an elite pri­vate prep school in the DC area, on April 22. No one was killed, but four peo­ple were shot, includ­ing a 12 year old stu­dent. That lack of a death count appears to have result­ed in the sto­ry large­ly falling down the mem­o­ry hole. But as we’re going to see, the sto­ry remains very unan­swered and bizarre.

    The gun­man was a 23 year old Fil­ipino-Amer­i­can man, Ray­mond Spencer, had no known ties to the school. Described as a ‘lon­er’, Spencer had been liv­ing with his par­ents until around a year ago, at which point he start­ed rent­ing an apart­ment in Vir­ginia. Start­ing in Jan­u­ary of this year he start­ed rent­ing a sin­gle bed­room 5th floor apart­ment in DC, which end­ed up being the apart­ment from which he launched the attack on the school. It’s not known how Spencer got the mon­ey to pay for two apart­ments.

    The attack took place at 3:18 PM, min­utes before stu­dents were set to be released from school. If it had hap­pened just five min­utes lat­er, the hun­dreds of stu­dents leav­ing to be picked up by their par­ents could have been hit.

    Spencer unleashed over two hun­dred rounds towards the school from his apart­ment and then appar­ent­ly retreat­ed to his bath­room and wait­ed for the police to arrive. And while no motive has been estab­lished for the attack, there were a num­ber of clues. For starters, Spencer was an avid mem­ber of 4Chan, and even began post­ing on the site about his school shoot­ing just min­utes after shoot­ing at 3:20 PM. He even post­ed a video of the shoot­ing itself cap­tured from his dig­i­tal rifle scope. And his post­ed this under an account using his real name. So Ray­mond Spencer clear­ly want­ed to be caught and killed. It was an act of mur­der sui­cide.

    Anoth­er clue about Spencer’s motives came in the form of a poster found on the wall on his DC apart­ment. The poster depict­ed “Yakub”, a black man with an enlarged head that’s part of the mythol­o­gy of the Nation of Islam. That pres­ence of that poster has been used to sug­gest that Spencer was a fol­low­er of the Nation if Islam, but as we’re going to see, the image has already been adopt­ed by 4Chan cul­ture and meme-ified into a white suprema­cist joke.

    Spencer con­tin­ued post­ing on 4Chan for anoth­er 15 min­utes. AT 3:24 PM, he post­ed, “Dear God please for­give me,” and at 3:30 he post­ed, “They’re in the wrong part of the build­ing right now search­ing XD.” Spencer made his last post on 4Chan at 3:36 PM, writ­ing “Wait­ing for police to catch up with me.” And that brings us to the oth­er extreme­ly bizarre aspect of this sto­ry: Spencer’s apart­ment was­n’t entered by police until around 8:30 PM, rough­ly five hours after the shoot­ing. This is despite the fact that police were able to iden­ti­fy the 5th floor apart­ment build­ing where the shots came from almost right away. Spencer even had a cam­era set up out­side his apart­ment door, mak­ing it com­plete­ly obvi­ous which apart­ment he was locat­ed it. But it sounds like police were wor­ried that the door could be booby­trapped. They were also con­cerned that Spencer was­n’t actu­al­ly in the apart­ment and had slipped away result­ing in a pub­lic com­mu­ni­ca­tion declar­ing Spencer a per­son of inter­est at 7:30 PM. And that whole time, Spencer was sit­ting in his bath­room, wait­ing for the police the arrive. He is assumed to have shot him­self when they final­ly breached his apart­ment door, five hours after the ini­tial attack that sent four peo­ple to the hos­pi­tal with bul­let wounds.

    Yes, a Fil­ipino-Amer­i­can young man who appears to have been rad­i­cal­ized on 4Chan tried to car­ry out a mass school shoot­ing and almost suc­ceed­ed. He did suc­ceed in hit­ting a 12 year old girl. The intent was there. His apart­ment was iden­ti­fied almost imme­di­ate­ly as the source of the shoot­ing. Yet it took five hours for author­i­ties to actu­al­ly enter his apart­ment. And this whole sto­ry was bare­ly cov­ered by the media and basi­cal­ly fell down the mem­o­ry hole. So as the inves­ti­ga­tion into the mas­sacre in Uvalde and the delayed police response plays out,
    it’s going to be inter­est­ing to see if there’s any fur­ther atten­tion giv­en to this near-mas­sacre from just a month ago that large­ly remains a giant 4Chan-inspired mys­tery:

    The Wash­ing­ton Post

    Inside the race to find the gun­man rain­ing bul­lets on a D.C. school

    By Peter Her­mann
    May 12, 2022 at 6:00 a.m. EDT

    When the first booms ripped along the line of bumper-to-bumper cars wait­ing for stu­dents leav­ing the Edmund Burke School for the day, William James Peter­son thought con­struc­tion scaf­fold­ing had col­lapsed.

    But a deaf­en­ing sec­ond round of blasts left the mil­i­tary-trained, vet­er­an D.C. police offi­cer with no doubt: It was gun­fire. He sprint­ed from a garage to a lane between build­ings where the line of par­ents pick­ing up their chil­dren forms.

    Throw­ing on his pro­tec­tive vest, draw­ing his firearm and breath­ing heav­i­ly, he keyed up an alert tone on his radio:

    “4101 Con­necti­cut Avenue,” he told a dis­patch­er at 3:18 p.m. “I believe we have an active shoot­er here. Get me units to respond.”

    Peter­son, start­ing his off-duty secu­ri­ty job at the school in the Van Ness area of North­west Wash­ing­ton, crouched behind a pil­lar as bul­lets crashed into cars in front of him and shat­tered the glass on a walk­way above that links the mid­dle and high school build­ings.

    Even if he didn’t know where the bul­lets were com­ing from, the 49-year-old offi­cer knew imme­di­ate­ly what was hap­pen­ing.

    The school was under attack.

    Shards of glass show­ered the alley, as ter­ri­fied dri­vers cow­ered in their vehi­cles or jumped out and sprawled face­down on the pave­ment to take cov­er from the bar­rage of rifle rounds that tore chunks of con­crete from pil­lars and curbs.

    The April 22 shoot­ing cast a pall of ter­ror across the nation’s cap­i­tal and plunged the area into lock­down. Stu­dents and staff launched into a well-rehearsed drill, rac­ing for offices, bar­ri­cad­ing doors, hid­ing in clos­ets and div­ing under desks.

    Secret Ser­vice offi­cers, SWAT teams, ambu­lances and tac­ti­cal vehi­cles swarmed the large­ly afflu­ent strip of Con­necti­cut Avenue in a neigh­bor­hood that includes a col­lege cam­pus, embassies and a Metro sta­tion. The ter­ror sep­a­rat­ed chil­dren at Edmund Burke and at oth­er schools from their par­ents for sev­er­al ago­niz­ing hours and added the pri­vate, pro­gres­sive col­lege prep insti­tu­tion with 305 stu­dents to an ever-grow­ing list of schools tar­get­ed across the coun­try in mass shoot­ings.

    No one died, but four peo­ple were struck and one remains hos­pi­tal­ized. The school reopened the first week of May. Now, near­ly three weeks after the shoot­ing, new details are emerg­ing about how the day unfold­ed, both on the ground and in the instant inves­ti­ga­tion law enforce­ment launched to find the shoot­er.

    That Fri­day after­noon, Peter­son, who had been on the force more than two decades, gripped his firearm with both hands, try­ing to trace the gun­fire. He thought a gun­man might be stand­ing in the open sun­roof of an approach­ing vehi­cle.

    “I real­ly felt that if this guy rolls down this alley,” Peter­son said, “I have one chance to try to take him out.”

    The gun­man, how­ev­er, was not on the street.

    Perched above it all, accord­ing to police, was Ray­mond God­frey Cham­bers Spencer. In a fifth-sto­ry apart­ment fur­nished with not much more than a mat­tress on the floor and two fold­ing tables, the 23-year-old had amassed four legal­ly pur­chased high-pow­ered rifles mount­ed with scopes, two hand­guns and more than a thou­sand rounds of ammu­ni­tion. Police would lat­er call the apart­ment a “sniper’s nest.”

    From his bed­room win­dow, where a tri­pod to bal­ance a long-gun stood, Spencer could look straight down the alley 160 feet to Edmund Burke’s glass walk­way, which stu­dents and staff call “The Bridge.”

    In the span of a few min­utes, he show­ered at least 239 bul­lets through that bed­room win­dow and a slid­ing screen door in the apartment’s liv­ing room.

    He hit a 12-year-old girl in the glass walk­way, a moth­er sit­ting in her SUV and a secu­ri­ty guard help­ing Peter­son. One bul­let grazed the shoul­der of anoth­er woman in her SUV.

    Ran­dom gun­fire hit two store­fronts near­ly a mile down Con­necti­cut Avenue in Cleve­land Park.

    He then stopped shoot­ing and retreat­ed to his bath­room with about 800 rounds of ammu­ni­tion remain­ing. Author­i­ties believe he may have real­ized coun­ter­snipers had quick­ly locat­ed his apart­ment, and felt it was too dan­ger­ous to return to the win­dow.

    In a final mes­sage post­ed on the 4chan social media plat­form at 3:36 p.m., Spencer wrote: “Wait­ing for police to catch up with me.”

    Five hours lat­er, police did.

    Spencer fatal­ly shot him­self in the head as offi­cers breached the gray door of Apt. 511 that night. Offi­cers found him on his back in his bath­room, slumped against the tub, one hand­gun by his side. He lay par­tial­ly atop an assault rifle set to fire on ful­ly-auto­mat­ic, along with a sec­ond, blood­ied hand­gun. Hun­dreds of spent shell cas­ings lit­tered the floors.

    Peter­son, who grew up in South­east Wash­ing­ton, was stunned that there weren’t more casu­al­ties. The gun­fire seemed timed for the school’s 3:15 p.m. dis­missal. Five more min­utes and the alley would have been filled with stu­dents.

    “He lit­er­al­ly start­ed this min­utes before the kids were to walk out this school.”

    ‘I need to get out of this alley’

    Ray­mond Spencer had nev­er been arrest­ed.

    He wasn’t on law enforcement’s radar, or any­one else’s as far author­i­ties can tell. He hadn’t spo­ken to his fam­i­ly in about a year, police said, and he didn’t seem to have a job. No part­ner or sig­nif­i­cant oth­er has turned up.

    “This guy was just an absolute lon­er,” said D.C. Police Chief Robert J. Con­tee III.

    ...

    The Wash­ing­ton Post was giv­en ear­ly access to the inves­ti­ga­tion as D.C. police sought to answer that ques­tion and oth­ers. This account is based on inter­views with nine D.C. police offi­cials and oth­ers who were at the shoot­ing or are involved in the ongo­ing inquiry.

    Short­ly before mid­night on April 22, Spencer left one of his apart­ments, off Inter­state 66 in Fair­fax Coun­ty, Va., and took a ride-share into the Dis­trict.

    At 12:43 a.m., sur­veil­lance video cap­tured him wheel­ing a suit­case into the lob­by of AVA Van Ness, where he had begun leas­ing a 765-square-foot one-bed­room apart­ment in Jan­u­ary. Inside the suit­case, police believe, were at least some of the firearms, ammu­ni­tion and oth­er sup­plies used in the attack.

    About 10 a.m., Spencer went to a Giant Food and bought two frozen Stouffer’s din­ners — meat­loaf and lasagna — and returned to his apart­ment about a two-minute walk away on Van Ness Street near Con­necti­cut Avenue, just north of the school.

    Though his apart­ment was sparse­ly fur­nished, police said he was well pre­pared for a mass shoot­ing, with items that includ­ed mitts to pro­tect his hands from the heat of con­tin­u­ous shoot­ing and head­phones to shut out the noise.

    At 3:18 p.m., a police lieu­tenant with news of Peterson’s alert burst into the office of D.C. Police Cmdr. Dun­can Bedlion, who runs the 2nd Dis­trict sta­tion on Ida­ho Avenue NW.

    As Bedlion raced to the school, uni­formed offi­cers with the U.S. Secret Ser­vice, patrolling near­by embassies, were already there, run­ning toward Peter­son, shout­ing “blue, blue, blue” to flag that they were police. They had rifles and took over for the out­gunned offi­cer.

    Patri­cia Ter­mi­ni, in her SUV, was fourth in the line of par­ents, wait­ing to pick up her neighbor’s 15-year-old son and head­ed toward the walk­way when shots shat­tered its win­dows.

    The sopho­more she was pick­ing up ran to an office.

    “They were so loud,” Ter­mi­ni, 63, said of the gun­shots. “They stopped. Then they start­ed again.”

    She dou­bled over in her SUV and called her neigh­bors.

    “I don’t know if it’s explo­sions or gun­fire, but some­thing is hap­pen­ing here,” she told them.

    She sat up for a moment and saw the “glass walk­way rid­dled with bul­lets.” She ducked again and felt a bul­let graze her shoul­der.

    “I thought, ‘These are bul­lets and I need to get out of this alley.’ ”

    Ter­mi­ni honked and the vehi­cle in front of her moved. She sped out to Upton Street, on the south side of the school, and onto Con­necti­cut Avenue, where she climbed out, scream­ing. The rear win­dow of her SUV had been blown out, and some of the tires were flat­tened.

    Peter­son, the D.C. offi­cer who had tak­en cov­er behind the pil­lar, ran back into the school and saw the 12-year-old girl who had been struck as she crossed the walk­way. Her right arm was bleed­ing, and she was cry­ing.

    But she was also walk­ing.

    Peter­son put his hand on her back and gen­tly guid­ed her toward the Con­necti­cut Avenue exit, and to an ambu­lance, as she pressed the wound with her left hand.

    “I asked her for her name and she told me her name,” he said. “I’m try­ing to keep her calm.”

    He went back into the build­ing and tried to call the oth­er school secu­ri­ty guard, a retired D.C. police offi­cer he knew from work­ing togeth­er at the 2nd Dis­trict. Peter­son couldn’t get through, and an admin­is­tra­tor who over­heard the call told him the oth­er guard had been shot and rushed to a hos­pi­tal.

    ‘Dear God please for­give me’

    By this time, the gun­fire had stopped.

    But the pan­ic of not know­ing the shooter’s exact loca­tion and whether the shoot­ing would start again hung over every­one.

    The Secret Ser­vice offi­cers tried to iden­ti­fy the source of the gun­fire and helped vic­tims, includ­ing a woman found grave­ly wound­ed and uncon­scious in her car. They car­ried her to an ambu­lance on Con­necti­cut Avenue.

    Tac­ti­cal offi­cers formed active-shoot­er teams, hop­ing to even­tu­al­ly con­front the shoot­er. Detec­tives went into the school to inter­view stu­dents and staff about poten­tial threats, while offi­cers began evac­u­at­ing apart­ment build­ings, includ­ing AVA Van Ness, wor­ried that the shoot­er might try to escape by blend­ing in with evac­uees.

    A per­son who lives in the area iden­ti­fied the AVA apart­ments as the source of the gun­fire.

    “We were able to use this infor­ma­tion and iden­ti­fy and iso­late a win­dow,” Bedlion said.

    The Secret Ser­vice deployed mem­bers of its coun­ter­sniper unit, a spokesman for the agency said, and two mem­bers pin­point­ed the shooter’s loca­tion to a cor­ner apart­ment on the fifth floor.

    Author­i­ties said the coun­ter­snipers were on a rooftop across from the apart­ment build­ing and could see the tri­pod in the open bed­room win­dow but not a shoot­er. D.C. police said offi­cers also were able to see into the apart­ment, observ­ing the tri­pod and two rifles on a table. But they still weren’t sure which apart­ment he was in — 511 or the one next door.

    By then, police believe, Spencer had hun­kered down in his bath­room, a makeshift com­mand cen­ter where he had a baby mon­i­tor synced to a small cam­era at the base of a hall­way door to track vis­i­tors; a key­board in the sink; bul­let clips on the counter; and pil­lows piled in the tub.

    The Secret Ser­vice spokesman said the agency believes the coun­ter­snipers’ efforts “like­ly pre­vent­ed the shoot­er from reen­gag­ing because he real­ized his loca­tion was known to law enforce­ment.”

    Con­tee said that he had not giv­en an order for the coun­ter­snipers to shoot because no one had appeared at the win­dow, but that he was pre­pared to reeval­u­ate if cir­cum­stances changed.

    Mean­while at police head­quar­ters, Car­olyn Mon­tagna, the direc­tor of the D.C. police department’s Joint Strate­gic and Tac­ti­cal Analy­sis Com­mand Cen­ter, coor­di­nat­ed with fed­er­al agen­cies and the FBI’s Joint Ter­ror­ism Task Force to unearth intel­li­gence.

    Her team saw one of the first clues to the shooter’s iden­ti­ty — a 3:20 p.m. post to 4chan by user Ray­mond Spencer read­ing: “School shoot­ing!”

    The post linked to a shaky video that appeared to show the shoot­ing from the gunman’s per­spec­tive. A red tar­get is in the cen­ter, the Burke school’s glass walk­way vis­i­ble behind it. In the video, which Montagna’s office saw when some­one tagged D.C. police in a tweet, the sound of gun­fire erupts and one of the walk­way win­dows shat­ters.

    At 3:24 p.m., the same user post­ed: “Dear God please for­give me.”

    Anoth­er mes­sage, at 3:30, read: “They’re in the wrong part of the build­ing right now search­ing XD.”

    Then, at 4 p.m., a user named Ray­mond Spencer updat­ed the Edmund Burke School’s Wikipedia page, writ­ing: “A based­man shot at the school on April 22, 2022. The sus­pect is still at large.” Short­ly after, the user swapped “based­man” for “gun­man” and added, “(Hope they catch him soon!)”

    A Wikipedia pro­file page for Ray­mond Spencer, since removed, has a pic­ture of an assault rifle fol­lowed by, among oth­er descrip­tors, “I’m an AR-15 afi­ciona­do.”

    Inside Apt. 511

    Mon­tagna and the team were thrown. Peo­ple often mask their iden­ti­ty on the Inter­net with pseu­do­nyms.

    Was Ray­mond Spencer a real name? Were these entries from the real shoot­er?

    By 5:30 p.m., police were instruct­ed to search every apart­ment at AVA Van Ness, even as units were being evac­u­at­ed, accord­ing to court doc­u­ments. Occu­pants could be seen walk­ing out under police escort with their hands in the air.

    As intel­li­gence offi­cials were still try­ing to con­firm if Spencer was behind the posts, tac­ti­cal offi­cers had reached the fifth-floor hall­way. They saw his cam­era set­up, and it was dis­abled.

    But offi­cers didn’t imme­di­ate­ly storm the apart­ment, wor­ried that the door might be boo­by-trapped. And they were still unsure who the shoot­er was and if he was still inside.

    Soon Mon­tagna learned that the online posts had come from a com­put­er with an Inter­net Pro­to­col, or IP address, linked to an account set up by Ray­mond Spencer, using his address at 2950 Van Ness St. NW.

    At 7:36 p.m., Assis­tant Police Chief Stu­art Emer­man, fill­ing in for Con­tee, who had flown to Boston that morn­ing for a con­fer­ence and was rush­ing back, stood before tele­vi­sion micro­phones with the may­or and iden­ti­fied Ray­mond Spencer as a per­son of inter­est.

    Police released two pic­tures of Spencer, one with long hair, one with short hair.

    “We would like to speak with Mr. Spencer,” Emer­man told the city.

    Behind the scenes, police were clos­ing in, now locked on Apt. 511.

    At 8:36 p.m. — five hours after the first gun­shots — police bat­tered the door, a refrig­er­a­tor block­ing the entrance. Police heard a sin­gle gun­shot as they rushed inside. They found Spencer’s body in the bath­room.

    At 9:37 p.m., Con­tee, who had just returned to D.C. and sped from the air­port to the scene, walked to a scrum of media in his street clothes.

    The shoot­er was dead, he announced, adding, “Our com­mu­ni­ties are now safe.”

    ‘An iso­lat­ed kid’

    The pub­licly known details of Spencer’s life are scant. He attend­ed Wheaton High School in Mont­gomery Coun­ty, Md. He ran track, once fin­ish­ing 20th in a 5,000-meter race, and was a life­guard at a pub­lic pool. It is still unclear what, if any, con­nec­tion Spencer had with the Edmund Burke School.

    He signed up for the U.S. Coast Guard in 2017 but did not grad­u­ate from basic train­ing, the ser­vice said with­out pro­vid­ing an expla­na­tion. His fam­i­ly has not spo­ken pub­licly and has not returned inquiries from The Post. Neigh­bors in the Van Ness apart­ment build­ing had infre­quent encoun­ters with him, and efforts to reach friends or acquain­tances were large­ly unsuc­cess­ful.

    Detec­tive Joshua Bran­son, an inves­ti­ga­tor in the homi­cide unit’s major-case squad, which inves­ti­gates mass shoot­ings, said Spencer’s fam­i­ly is help­ing police, but many ques­tions remain.

    “There was noth­ing that stuck out about Ray­mond, to [his par­ents] or to his sib­lings, that indi­cat­ed that he had any type of trou­ble,” the detec­tive said.

    Spencer lived with his par­ents until about a year ago, when he moved into the apart­ment in Vir­ginia and lost all con­tact with his fam­i­ly, Bran­son said. Author­i­ties said they are try­ing to deter­mine how he paid for his two apart­ments and his firearms.

    “He was kind of, you know, an iso­lat­ed kid,” Bran­son said. “None of his neigh­bors knew who he was at either apart­ment com­plex. … He came and went as he pleased and real­ly didn’t have any social inter­ac­tion with any­body that any­one would alert us to.”

    In the 10 days before the shoot­ing, it appears Spencer searched Wikipedia on sub­jects that includ­ed David Hogg, who sur­vived a dead­ly mass shoot­ing at Mar­jo­ry Stone­man Dou­glas High School in Park­land, Fla., and has become an out­spo­ken advo­cate for gun con­trol. There are also search­es for Wheaton High School and the recent shoot­ing attack on a New York sub­way.

    Police said they are inves­ti­gat­ing some cryp­tic post­ings on Spencer’s Wikipedia pro­file, includ­ing what might be a ref­er­ence to con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries involv­ing child pornog­ra­phy, and a poster on a wall of the Van Ness apart­ment that appears to be a meme of a Black sci­en­tist who some in the Nation of Islam believe cre­at­ed the White race.

    Bran­son and Con­tee said detec­tives are aware of the posts and the poster on the wall but do not yet know or under­stand the sig­nif­i­cance. Police said they have not locat­ed Spencer’s phone but do have some phone records and are seek­ing more. Bran­son said that so far in the review, “there is noth­ing that stands out” or points to a motive.

    ...

    Author­i­ties are par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in how the assault rifles were appar­ent­ly mod­i­fied to fire ful­ly auto­mat­ic, allow­ing con­tin­ued fir­ing with one pull of the trig­ger, at rough­ly 600 to 900 rounds per minute.

    Con­tee said inves­ti­gat­ing Spencer’s finances, oper­a­tions and moti­va­tion will take time.

    Added Bran­son: “We have the same ques­tions you have.”

    ———–

    “Inside the race to find the gun­man rain­ing bul­lets on a D.C. school” by Peter Her­mann; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 05/12/2022

    “Peter­son, who grew up in South­east Wash­ing­ton, was stunned that there weren’t more casu­al­ties. The gun­fire seemed timed for the school’s 3:15 p.m. dis­missal. Five more min­utes and the alley would have been filled with stu­dents.”

    This elite DC prep school was just five min­utes away from expe­ri­enc­ing anoth­er mass slaugh­ter of stu­dents. Instead, they got ‘lucky’ with ‘only’ four peo­ple shot, includ­ing a 12 year old stu­dent, and no one killed. That was just over a month ago. And yet, as we can see in this report, almost noth­ing is known about why Ray­mond Spencer did this. Or even basic infor­ma­tion like how he was pay­ing for two apart­ments. But it sounds like there are also ques­tions around the mod­i­fi­ca­tions that he made to his rifles to turn them into auto­mat­ic weapons capa­ble of fir­ing 600–900 rounds a minute. The police are appar­ent­ly still inves­ti­gat­ing how he did that. Did Spencer mod­i­fy those weapons using a nov­el tech­nique?

    ...

    Perched above it all, accord­ing to police, was Ray­mond God­frey Cham­bers Spencer. In a fifth-sto­ry apart­ment fur­nished with not much more than a mat­tress on the floor and two fold­ing tables, the 23-year-old had amassed four legal­ly pur­chased high-pow­ered rifles mount­ed with scopes, two hand­guns and more than a thou­sand rounds of ammu­ni­tion. Police would lat­er call the apart­ment a “sniper’s nest.”

    ...

    Spencer lived with his par­ents until about a year ago, when he moved into the apart­ment in Vir­ginia and lost all con­tact with his fam­i­ly, Bran­son said. Author­i­ties said they are try­ing to deter­mine how he paid for his two apart­ments and his firearms.

    “He was kind of, you know, an iso­lat­ed kid,” Bran­son said. “None of his neigh­bors knew who he was at either apart­ment com­plex. … He came and went as he pleased and real­ly didn’t have any social inter­ac­tion with any­body that any­one would alert us to.”

    ...

    Author­i­ties are par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in how the assault rifles were appar­ent­ly mod­i­fied to fire ful­ly auto­mat­ic, allow­ing con­tin­ued fir­ing with one pull of the trig­ger, at rough­ly 600 to 900 rounds per minute.

    Con­tee said inves­ti­gat­ing Spencer’s finances, oper­a­tions and moti­va­tion will take time.
    ...

    But per­haps the most dis­turb­ing ques­tion is why did it take five hours to find and breach Spencer’s apart­ment. Based on the avail­able details it sounds like the police were able to iden­ti­fy the apart­ment win­dow Spencer was fir­ing from rel­a­tive­ly ear­ly on. And yet it was as if they could­n’t find this apart­ment for hours:

    ...
    He then stopped shoot­ing and retreat­ed to his bath­room with about 800 rounds of ammu­ni­tion remain­ing. Author­i­ties believe he may have real­ized coun­ter­snipers had quick­ly locat­ed his apart­ment, and felt it was too dan­ger­ous to return to the win­dow.

    In a final mes­sage post­ed on the 4chan social media plat­form at 3:36 p.m., Spencer wrote: “Wait­ing for police to catch up with me.”

    Five hours lat­er, police did.

    ...

    At 3:18 p.m., a police lieu­tenant with news of Peterson’s alert burst into the office of D.C. Police Cmdr. Dun­can Bedlion, who runs the 2nd Dis­trict sta­tion on Ida­ho Avenue NW.

    As Bedlion raced to the school, uni­formed offi­cers with the U.S. Secret Ser­vice, patrolling near­by embassies, were already there, run­ning toward Peter­son, shout­ing “blue, blue, blue” to flag that they were police. They had rifles and took over for the out­gunned offi­cer.

    ...

    Tac­ti­cal offi­cers formed active-shoot­er teams, hop­ing to even­tu­al­ly con­front the shoot­er. Detec­tives went into the school to inter­view stu­dents and staff about poten­tial threats, while offi­cers began evac­u­at­ing apart­ment build­ings, includ­ing AVA Van Ness, wor­ried that the shoot­er might try to escape by blend­ing in with evac­uees.

    A per­son who lives in the area iden­ti­fied the AVA apart­ments as the source of the gun­fire.

    “We were able to use this infor­ma­tion and iden­ti­fy and iso­late a win­dow,” Bedlion said.

    The Secret Ser­vice deployed mem­bers of its coun­ter­sniper unit, a spokesman for the agency said, and two mem­bers pin­point­ed the shooter’s loca­tion to a cor­ner apart­ment on the fifth floor.

    Author­i­ties said the coun­ter­snipers were on a rooftop across from the apart­ment build­ing and could see the tri­pod in the open bed­room win­dow but not a shoot­er. D.C. police said offi­cers also were able to see into the apart­ment, observ­ing the tri­pod and two rifles on a table. But they still weren’t sure which apart­ment he was in — 511 or the one next door.

    ...

    Mean­while at police head­quar­ters, Car­olyn Mon­tagna, the direc­tor of the D.C. police department’s Joint Strate­gic and Tac­ti­cal Analy­sis Com­mand Cen­ter, coor­di­nat­ed with fed­er­al agen­cies and the FBI’s Joint Ter­ror­ism Task Force to unearth intel­li­gence.

    Her team saw one of the first clues to the shooter’s iden­ti­ty — a 3:20 p.m. post to 4chan by user Ray­mond Spencer read­ing: “School shoot­ing!”

    The post linked to a shaky video that appeared to show the shoot­ing from the gunman’s per­spec­tive. A red tar­get is in the cen­ter, the Burke school’s glass walk­way vis­i­ble behind it. In the video, which Montagna’s office saw when some­one tagged D.C. police in a tweet, the sound of gun­fire erupts and one of the walk­way win­dows shat­ters.

    At 3:24 p.m., the same user post­ed: “Dear God please for­give me.”

    Anoth­er mes­sage, at 3:30, read: “They’re in the wrong part of the build­ing right now search­ing XD.”

    Then, at 4 p.m., a user named Ray­mond Spencer updat­ed the Edmund Burke School’s Wikipedia page, writ­ing: “A based­man shot at the school on April 22, 2022. The sus­pect is still at large.” Short­ly after, the user swapped “based­man” for “gun­man” and added, “(Hope they catch him soon!)”
    ...

    We’re even told that police were instruct­ed to search every apart­ment in the build by 5:30 PM. That’s over two hours after the shoot­ing and long after the win­dow of the apart­ment was iden­ti­fied and Spencer him­self joked on 4Chan about how the police were search­ing the wrong part of the build­ing. Spencer even had cam­era equip­ment set up out­side the apart­ment. And then spent anoth­er three hours wait­ing to enter and even sent out pub­lic com­mu­ni­ca­tions about how the police want­ed to speak with Spencer. Yes, there was uncer­tain­ty about whether or not Spencer was the shoot­er or if the door was booby­trapped, but it’s hard to see how that uncer­tain­ty cre­at­ed such a long delay. Very lit­tle about this sto­ry makes sense:

    ...
    By 5:30 p.m., police were instruct­ed to search every apart­ment at AVA Van Ness, even as units were being evac­u­at­ed, accord­ing to court doc­u­ments. Occu­pants could be seen walk­ing out under police escort with their hands in the air.

    As intel­li­gence offi­cials were still try­ing to con­firm if Spencer was behind the posts, tac­ti­cal offi­cers had reached the fifth-floor hall­way. They saw his cam­era set­up, and it was dis­abled.

    But offi­cers didn’t imme­di­ate­ly storm the apart­ment, wor­ried that the door might be boo­by-trapped. And they were still unsure who the shoot­er was and if he was still inside.

    ...

    At 7:36 p.m., Assis­tant Police Chief Stu­art Emer­man, fill­ing in for Con­tee, who had flown to Boston that morn­ing for a con­fer­ence and was rush­ing back, stood before tele­vi­sion micro­phones with the may­or and iden­ti­fied Ray­mond Spencer as a per­son of inter­est.

    Police released two pic­tures of Spencer, one with long hair, one with short hair.

    “We would like to speak with Mr. Spencer,” Emer­man told the city.

    Behind the scenes, police were clos­ing in, now locked on Apt. 511.

    At 8:36 p.m. — five hours after the first gun­shots — police bat­tered the door, a refrig­er­a­tor block­ing the entrance. Police heard a sin­gle gun­shot as they rushed inside. They found Spencer’s body in the bath­room.
    ...

    And then there’s the ulti­mate ques­tion here: what was the motive? Why this school? We con­tin­ue to have no idea, although inves­ti­ga­tors note the poster on the wall of one of his apart­ments of an image asso­ci­at­ed with the Nation of Islam:

    ...
    The pub­licly known details of Spencer’s life are scant. He attend­ed Wheaton High School in Mont­gomery Coun­ty, Md. He ran track, once fin­ish­ing 20th in a 5,000-meter race, and was a life­guard at a pub­lic pool. It is still unclear what, if any, con­nec­tion Spencer had with the Edmund Burke School.

    ...

    Police said they are inves­ti­gat­ing some cryp­tic post­ings on Spencer’s Wikipedia pro­file, includ­ing what might be a ref­er­ence to con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries involv­ing child pornog­ra­phy, and a poster on a wall of the Van Ness apart­ment that appears to be a meme of a Black sci­en­tist who some in the Nation of Islam believe cre­at­ed the White race.
    ...

    Was this avid read­er of 4Chan — a site that has long host­ed one of the largest white suprema­cist com­mu­ni­ties in the world — also a Nation of Islam adher­ent? Don’t for­get Spencer is of Fil­ipino her­itage, so he’s not exact­ly the tar­get audi­ence for either the white suprema­cy of 4Chan or the world­view of the Nation of Islam. So what’s with this poster? Well, as the fol­low­ing arti­cle points out, that par­tic­u­lar image has long been turned into a 4Chan meme. An iron­ic meme used to jus­ti­fy white suprema­cy. So while we still don’t real­ly know what moti­vat­ed Spencer to do this — out­side of an obvi­ous desire to die — the cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence sug­gests he was just fol­low­ing along with the dom­i­nant 4Chan cul­ture. A 4chan cul­ture that glo­ri­fies school shoot­ers:

    The Guardian

    ‘Cheer­ing sec­tion’ for vio­lence: the attacks that show 4chan is still a threat

    The Wash­ing­ton DC shoot­ing was the most recent to spawn out of the extrem­ist cul­ture of unreg­u­lat­ed ‘chan’ mes­sage boards

    Justin Ling
    Sun 1 May 2022 05.00 EDT
    Last mod­i­fied on Sun 1 May 2022 05.01 EDT

    When police in Wash­ing­ton DC burst into a fifth-floor apart­ment build­ing on 22 April in search of a man who alleged­ly had shot four peo­ple at ran­dom, they found Ray­mond Spencer dead by his own hand, a cache of guns and ammu­ni­tion, and a poster with an iron­ic white suprema­cist meme.

    The poster invok­ing the meme, pop­u­lar on the extrem­ist online forum 4chan, was a stark reminder that this attack blamed on Spencer, 23, was only the most recent mass casu­al­ty attack to spawn out of the ugly extrem­ist cul­ture of unreg­u­lat­ed inter­net mes­sage boards such as 4chan.

    That par­tic­u­lar forum gave birth to QAnon, the far-right con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry that Don­ald Trump is com­bat­ing a cabal of left­ist pedophiles, before it moved on to its even-more-extreme cousin 8chan. QAnon has been par­tic­u­lar­ly effec­tive in craft­ing the lie that the 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion was stolen from Trump, inspir­ing the Capi­tol riot on 6 Jan­u­ary 2021. A bipar­ti­san Sen­ate com­mit­tee con­nect­ed sev­en deaths to the attack.

    Alek Minass­ian, 25, post­ed an update on Face­book with a direct ref­er­ence to 4chan and its extreme misog­y­nis­tic com­mu­ni­ty of so-called incels, short for invol­un­tary celi­bates, before launch­ing a dead­ly vehi­cle ram­ming ram­page in Toron­to in 2018. And after New Zealand police arrest­ed Bren­ton Tar­rant, who shot and killed 51 wor­ship­pers in mosques in Christchurch, he cit­ed 4chan and 8chan as direct influ­ences.

    Seem­ing­ly by sheer luck, Spencer’s recent attack in Wash­ing­ton was less cost­ly in terms of lives. But it was still a stark reminder of how many online extrem­ists and the move­ments with which they sym­pa­thize can trace their ori­gins to either 4chan or 8chan, said Oren Segal, vice-pres­i­dent of the Anti-Defama­tion League’s Cen­ter on Extrem­ism.

    “The chans – 4chan, 8chan, etc – are some of the most vile places on the inter­net,” Segal told the Guardian. The trolling, humor, appeals to vio­lence: it “seeps out­side the con­fines of the mes­sage boards,” he added.

    Spencer’s case has chill­ing aspects. He fired 200 rounds from a makeshift sniper’s nest, injur­ing a man, two women, and a 12-year-old girl. He had an addi­tion­al 800 rounds stashed.

    Just two min­utes after the shoot­ing began, some­one under the user­name “Ray­mond Spencer” logged onto the nor­mal­ly-anony­mous 4chan and start­ed a new thread titled “shool [sic] shoot­ing”. The new­ly pub­lished mes­sage con­tained a link – to a 30-sec­ond video of images cap­tured from the dig­i­tal scope of Spencer’s rifle. The clip streamed images and sounds of the bar­rage of bul­lets which slammed into cars and shat­tered win­dows at an adja­cent school while also maim­ing four strangers.

    Even as police stormed the apart­ment build­ing where Spencer hid, with offi­cers maneu­ver­ing past a sur­veil­lance cam­era that he had set up in the hall­way and was mon­i­tor­ing, Spencer con­tin­ued to post to the mes­sage board.

    “They’re in the wrong part of the build­ing right now search­ing,” he post­ed at one point. A few min­utes lat­er: “Wait­ing for police to catch up with me.”

    As he wait­ed, Spencer logged on to Wikipedia to edit the entry for Edmund Burke School, which he had just opened fire on.

    “A based­man shot at the school on April 22, 2022,” the edit read, using a mes­sage board term derived from the word “based,” which is 4chan slang for some­body who agrees to the board’s warped world­view. “The sus­pect is still at large.”

    Police believe Spencer shot him­self to death as offi­cers breached his apart­ment.

    Like those who have car­ried out oth­er domes­tic ter­ror attacks that rocked the US, Cana­da and New Zealand in recent years, Spencer sit­u­at­ed his mass shoot­ing in a tan­gle of iron­ic memes and 4chan in-jokes.

    On a poster hang­ing in the apart­ment where Spencer died was a car­toon of a Black man with an enlarged head. It’s a deeply iron­ic ref­er­ence to Nation of Islam the­ol­o­gy – which holds that a Black sci­en­tist named Yakub cre­at­ed the white race more than 6,000 years ago. 4chan co-opt­ed the con­cept more recent­ly, car­i­ca­tur­ing it along the way, to jus­ti­fy its own white suprema­cist phi­los­o­phy.

    Anti-extrem­ist groups such as the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter have warned for years that 4chan and 8chan would con­tin­ue inspir­ing domes­tic ter­ror attacks. Cassie Miller, a researcher at the cen­ter, ana­lyzed a self-select­ed sur­vey of users to a white suprema­cist web­fo­rum. She found near­ly 25% report­ed that they con­sid­ered them­selves rad­i­cal­ized – or, in their terms, “red­pilled” – by the cul­ture of 4chan and 8chan.

    It was tied for the sin­gle most-report­ed path­way to rad­i­cal­iza­tion.

    While the far-right online ecosys­tem has grown sig­nif­i­cant­ly since then, the edgy humor and racist pol­i­tics of ‘chan’ cul­ture con­tin­ue to prove influ­en­tial, espe­cial­ly among younger users.

    The chans “nor­mal­ize the kinds of nar­ra­tives and griev­ances that are dan­ger­ous”, Segal said. They form a sort of “cheer­ing sec­tion” for vio­lence.

    Even 8chan’s founder, Fred­er­ick Bren­nan, has blamed the site for a rise in mass shoot­ings and unsuc­cess­ful­ly called for it to be shut down.

    Bren­nan quit the site in 2016, leav­ing man­age­ment to its new own­ers: Jim Watkins and his son Ron. The pair, who have since been iden­ti­fied as the like­ly pup­pet mas­ters behind QAnon, have reject­ed more active mod­er­a­tion and have lever­aged the site’s extreme free speech ethos for their own polit­i­cal ends – Ron Watkins is cur­rent­ly run­ning in a Repub­li­can con­gres­sion­al pri­ma­ry in Ari­zona.

    ...

    ———-

    “‘Cheer­ing sec­tion’ for vio­lence: the attacks that show 4chan is still a threat” by Justin Ling; The Guardian; 05/01/2022

    “On a poster hang­ing in the apart­ment where Spencer died was a car­toon of a Black man with an enlarged head. It’s a deeply iron­ic ref­er­ence to Nation of Islam the­ol­o­gy – which holds that a Black sci­en­tist named Yakub cre­at­ed the white race more than 6,000 years ago. 4chan co-opt­ed the con­cept more recent­ly, car­i­ca­tur­ing it along the way, to jus­ti­fy its own white suprema­cist phi­los­o­phy.”

    While Spencer clear­ly want­ed to send some sort of mes­sage with this final act, it still remains entire­ly unclear what that mes­sage actu­al­ly was intend­ed to be. And per­haps that’s the mes­sage. An embrace of ran­dom chaos and nihilism. We don’t know. But the fact that he chose to put that poster in this “snipers nest” apart­ment and was post­ing on 4Chan through­out the shoot­ing tells us who is tar­get audi­ence was in this shoot­ing. He was try­ing to impress his com­mu­ni­ty. A white nation­al­ist vir­tu­al com­mu­ni­ty that loves school shoot­ings and the gen­er­al col­lapse of soci­ety.

    We’ll see if the Uvalde mas­sacre end up bring­ing any addi­tion­al scruti­ny to last mon­th’s school attack in DC. And maybe we’ll even see some sort of dis­cov­ered motive that can be direct­ly tied back to the extrem­ist com­mu­ni­ty Spencer belonged to. Maybe, but don’t hold your breath wait­ing for it.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | May 26, 2022, 3:25 pm
  27. One thing went inex­plic­a­bly wrong after anoth­er after anoth­er. That’s the gen­er­al sto­ry we’re get­ting out of inves­ti­ga­tors into last week’s school shoot­ing at Uvalde ele­men­tary school. A sto­ry with details that keep chang­ing. Chang­ing details like...

    * Author­i­ties ini­tial­ly said the gun­man was in cus­tody. (he was­n’t)
    * He was con­front­ed before enter­ing the school (he was­n’t)
    * He intial­ly entered the school at 11:40 am (he entered at 11:33 am)
    * Offi­cers “with­out hes­i­ta­tion tried to make entry into that school,” but were stopped by the gun­man fir­ing at them (they wait­ed over an hour)
    * The gun­man was killed at 12:40 PM (he was killed at 12:50 PM)

    Oth­er chang­ing details include...

    * The gun­man was wear­ing body armor (he was­n’t)
    * Respond­ing offi­cers did­n’t enter the school to res­cue their own chil­dren (that did hap­pen)

    It’s that con­stant­ly shift­ing nar­ra­tive, cou­pled with the dis­turb­ing videos of par­ents being tased after plead­ing with police out­side the school to do some­thing, that is leav­ing peo­ple ask­ing very basic ques­tions about actu­al­ly hap­pened. Not just in terms of what the gun­man did but also the actions by law enforce­ment. Or lack of actions.

    And that brings us to the fol­low­ing pair of real­ly dis­turb­ing new rev­e­la­tions. Rev­e­la­tions that direct­ly con­tra­dict pre­vi­ous­ly released details. First, we just learned that the back door of the school was not in fact propped open with a rock by a teacher. It had been propped open ear­li­er in the day. But that teacher became alarmed when the gun­man first crashed his car into the fence of the school and called 911. She removed that rock and closed the back door while she was on the phone call with the 911 oper­a­tor. And yet, we are told this door did­n’t lock after being close. Inves­ti­ga­tors are still try­ing to deter­mine why this door, which was designed to secure the exte­ri­or and lock auto­mat­i­cal­ly, did­n’t lock that day. So some sort of unex­pect­ed mechan­i­cal fail­ure played a cru­cial role in how the events of that day played out. There were two entry­ways into that school. If that back door hap­pened been left inex­plic­a­bly open there’s a good chance the gun­man could­n’t have entered.

    Also keep in mind that the gun­man report­ed­ly warned peo­ple online 10 days before the shoot­ing that he was plan­ning some­thing big on that day. Think about how bizarre it is that this indi­vid­ual decides in advance to com­mit some sort of gun mas­sacre days in advance, and a key ele­ment to his suc­cess was a weird­ly mal­func­tion­ing door lock.

    The sec­ond set of recent rev­e­la­tions involves the deci­sion by Uvalde school dis­trict police chief Pedro “Pete” Arredon­do that the gun­man had “tran­si­tioned from an active shoot­er to a bar­ri­cad­ed sub­ject,” which was the osten­si­ble jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for hte more than hour long delay in enter­ing that class­room. On its face it was a bizarre deci­sion. But as we’re going to see, it turned out to be far more unjus­ti­fi­able because it turns out there were mul­ti­ple sources of infor­ma­tion flow­ing to law enforce­ment con­firm­ing that there were peo­ple still alive in the class­rooms. First, it sounds like stu­dents start­ed phon­ing 911 around 30 min­utes after Ramos first entered the school. It’s not known if Arredon­do was aware of those 911 phone calls when he made the ‘bar­ri­cad­ed sus­pect’ deter­mi­na­tion.

    But those 911 phone calls weren’t the only source of infor­ma­tion about the sta­tus of the peo­ple inside those class­rooms. It also turns out that one of the teach­ers who was killed that day, Eva Mire­les, is the wife of one of the Uvalde school dis­trict police offi­cers, Ruben Ruiz. Mire­les called Ruiz dur­ing the attack and told him she was dying. Ruiz was on the scene but report­ed­ly pre­vent­ed from enter­ing the school by his fel­low offi­cers. So while it’s maybe con­ceiv­able that the 911 phone calls weren’t being relayed to the law enforce­ment com­man­der in the scene — although that still sounds rather implau­si­ble — it’s utter­ly incon­ceiv­able that they weren’t aware of the phone call from Ruiz’s wife. Peo­ple were obvi­ous­ly still alive in that class­room.

    And that’s all why more and more peo­ple are call­ing for a major inves­ti­ga­tion into what actu­al­ly hap­pened, includ­ing the “Com­bined Law Enforce­ment Asso­ci­a­tions of Texas” police union, as the com­mu­ni­ty of Uvalde braces itself from the next round of inex­plic­a­ble rev­e­la­tions:

    The Wash­ing­ton Post

    Texas offi­cials: Teacher didn’t leave door propped open before mas­sacre
    Author­i­ties said last week that the gun­man entered Robb Ele­men­tary School through a door that a teacher left open

    By Mark Berman
    May 31, 2022 at 9:18 p.m. EDT

    Four days after say­ing that the gun­man who mas­sa­cred chil­dren in a Uvalde, Tex., ele­men­tary school had got­ten inside through a door “propped open by a teacher,” the state agency inves­ti­gat­ing the mas­sacre now says the edu­ca­tor had closed the door.

    The teacher shut the door behind her, but it “did not lock as it should,” Travis Con­si­dine, chief of com­mu­ni­ca­tions with the Texas Depart­ment of Pub­lic Safe­ty, said in a brief tele­phone inter­view Tues­day. “And now inves­ti­ga­tors are look­ing into why that was.”

    This lat­est account came Tues­day, a week after a gun­man slaugh­tered 19 chil­dren and two teach­ers inside Robb Ele­men­tary School in the country’s dead­liest school mas­sacre in near­ly a decade. Author­i­ties in Texas are fac­ing crit­i­cism both for their response to the shoot­ing and their pub­lic accounts of what hap­pened, which have includ­ed state­ments, details and nar­ra­tives that offi­cials lat­er amend­ed, revised or with­drew entire­ly.

    The sta­tus of the door is par­tic­u­lar­ly notable, because it address­es how the gun­man made it inside the school despite secu­ri­ty mea­sures.

    On Fri­day, Steven C. McCraw, direc­tor of the Texas Depart­ment of Pub­lic Safe­ty, seemed to sug­gest that an employ­ee error played a crit­i­cal role, say­ing that the unnamed teacher had pre­vi­ous­ly propped open a door used as an “access point” by the gun­man.

    “That back door was propped open,” McCraw said Fri­day. “It wasn’t sup­posed to be propped open; it was sup­posed to be locked.”

    In an inter­view with the San Anto­nio Express-News, an attor­ney who said he rep­re­sents the teacher offered a dif­fer­ent account. The attor­ney said the edu­ca­tor had called 911 to report the gun­man crash­ing his vehi­cle near­by and closed the door while still on the phone.

    The teacher ran inside to get her phone, called 911 and “kicked the rock away when she went back in,” attor­ney Don Fla­nary told the news­pa­per, appar­ent­ly refer­ring to a rock used to hold the door open. “She remem­bers pulling the door closed while telling 911 that he was shoot­ing. She thought the door would lock because that door is always sup­posed to be locked.”

    ...

    In an inter­view after the Express-News sto­ry was pub­lished, Con­si­dine told The Wash­ing­ton Post that inves­ti­ga­tors had reviewed addi­tion­al video evi­dence that let them “deter­mine that the teacher did indeed remove the rock from the door when she went back into the school, and shut the door.”

    Since the shoot­ing, offi­cials have faced with­er­ing crit­i­cism over the series of details that they have released about the shoot­ing, only to lat­er say that infor­ma­tion was incor­rect. Author­i­ties ini­tial­ly said the gun­man exchanged fire with a school police offi­cer out­side, only to lat­er say this nev­er hap­pened; they also said the shoot­er was wear­ing body armor but reversed course on that as well.

    Author­i­ties say law enforce­ment per­son­nel who even­tu­al­ly stormed the class­room shot and killed the attack­er, although an autop­sy report has not been released.

    Police have also been pil­lo­ried for not pur­su­ing the gun­man more quick­ly while he was inside with chil­dren call­ing 911, plead­ing for help. McCraw said the school district’s police chief, Pedro “Pete” Arredon­do, had deter­mined the gun­man had “tran­si­tioned from an active shoot­er to a bar­ri­cad­ed sub­ject,” so there was a delay of more than an hour before offi­cials stormed the class­room. “It was the wrong deci­sion,” McCraw said.

    Arredon­do has not spo­ken pub­licly since McCraw’s descrip­tion of his approach dur­ing the mas­sacre. Nor has he respond­ed to numer­ous mes­sages seek­ing com­ment.

    Con­si­dine said that Arredon­do had spo­ken to inves­ti­ga­tors about the shoot­ing but, as of Tues­day after­noon, “has yet to respond” to a request for a fol­low-up inter­view from the Texas Rangers, who are inves­ti­gat­ing the mas­sacre as well as the law enforce­ment response.

    The Com­bined Law Enforce­ment Asso­ci­a­tions of Texas, which bills itself as “the largest police labor orga­ni­za­tion in the state,” said in a state­ment Tues­day that there has been ram­pant “false infor­ma­tion” released sur­round­ing the attack.

    “There has been a great deal of false and mis­lead­ing infor­ma­tion in the after­math of this tragedy,” the group said. “Some of the infor­ma­tion came from the very high­est lev­els of gov­ern­ment and law enforce­ment. Sources that Tex­ans once saw as iron-clad and com­plete­ly reli­able have now been proven false.”

    The group said it was advis­ing mem­bers “to coop­er­ate ful­ly” with inves­ti­ga­tors.

    ———-

    “Texas offi­cials: Teacher didn’t leave door propped open before mas­sacre” by Mark Berman; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 05/31/2022

    “Since the shoot­ing, offi­cials have faced with­er­ing crit­i­cism over the series of details that they have released about the shoot­ing, only to lat­er say that infor­ma­tion was incor­rect. Author­i­ties ini­tial­ly said the gun­man exchanged fire with a school police offi­cer out­side, only to lat­er say this nev­er hap­pened; they also said the shoot­er was wear­ing body armor but reversed course on that as well.”

    What’s next? Which cru­cial detail is going to turn out to be an inver­sion of real­i­ty? That’s the con­text of this lat­est rev­e­la­tion about the propped open door that nev­er war: it’s only the lat­est detail sur­round­ing this event that turned out to be wrong or fab­ri­cat­ed. How can the inves­ti­ga­tor get so much wrong unless there was some sort of ini­tial coverup? That’s the dis­turb­ing meta-ques­tion hang­ing over all of these oth­er ques­tion:

    ...
    The teacher shut the door behind her, but it “did not lock as it should,” Travis Con­si­dine, chief of com­mu­ni­ca­tions with the Texas Depart­ment of Pub­lic Safe­ty, said in a brief tele­phone inter­view Tues­day. “And now inves­ti­ga­tors are look­ing into why that was.”

    ...

    The sta­tus of the door is par­tic­u­lar­ly notable, because it address­es how the gun­man made it inside the school despite secu­ri­ty mea­sures.

    On Fri­day, Steven C. McCraw, direc­tor of the Texas Depart­ment of Pub­lic Safe­ty, seemed to sug­gest that an employ­ee error played a crit­i­cal role, say­ing that the unnamed teacher had pre­vi­ous­ly propped open a door used as an “access point” by the gun­man.

    “That back door was propped open,” McCraw said Fri­day. “It wasn’t sup­posed to be propped open; it was sup­posed to be locked.”

    ...

    In an inter­view after the Express-News sto­ry was pub­lished, Con­si­dine told The Wash­ing­ton Post that inves­ti­ga­tors had reviewed addi­tion­al video evi­dence that let them “deter­mine that the teacher did indeed remove the rock from the door when she went back into the school, and shut the door.”
    ...

    And note how we don’t have to take this teacher at her word that she rushed back to close the door. She was on the phone with 911 at the time. There’s going to be a record­ing of this:

    ...
    In an inter­view with the San Anto­nio Express-News, an attor­ney who said he rep­re­sents the teacher offered a dif­fer­ent account. The attor­ney said the edu­ca­tor had called 911 to report the gun­man crash­ing his vehi­cle near­by and closed the door while still on the phone.

    The teacher ran inside to get her phone, called 911 and “kicked the rock away when she went back in,” attor­ney Don Fla­nary told the news­pa­per, appar­ent­ly refer­ring to a rock used to hold the door open. “She remem­bers pulling the door closed while telling 911 that he was shoot­ing. She thought the door would lock because that door is always sup­posed to be locked.”
    ...

    So how does a door designed to pre­vent exter­nal entry, and which lit­er­al­ly had to be propped open with a rock, not lock when that rock is removed? Of all of the points of fail­ure that facil­i­tat­ing this attack, the fail­ure of that door lock­ing mech­a­nism is per­haps the most inex­plic­a­ble because there was no human fail­ure involved. A sim­ple mechan­i­cal device appar­ent­ly just did­n’t work.

    But that device fail­ure was then fol­lowed by a series of human deci­sions that, while not nec­es­sar­i­ly inex­plic­a­ble, have yet to be explained. It sounds like the school dis­trict police chief Arredon­do has even stopped respond­ing to the requests from inves­ti­ga­tors:

    ...
    Police have also been pil­lo­ried for not pur­su­ing the gun­man more quick­ly while he was inside with chil­dren call­ing 911, plead­ing for help. McCraw said the school district’s police chief, Pedro “Pete” Arredon­do, had deter­mined the gun­man had “tran­si­tioned from an active shoot­er to a bar­ri­cad­ed sub­ject,” so there was a delay of more than an hour before offi­cials stormed the class­room. “It was the wrong deci­sion,” McCraw said.

    Arredon­do has not spo­ken pub­licly since McCraw’s descrip­tion of his approach dur­ing the mas­sacre. Nor has he respond­ed to numer­ous mes­sages seek­ing com­ment.

    Con­si­dine said that Arredon­do had spo­ken to inves­ti­ga­tors about the shoot­ing but, as of Tues­day after­noon, “has yet to respond” to a request for a fol­low-up inter­view from the Texas Rangers, who are inves­ti­gat­ing the mas­sacre as well as the law enforce­ment response.
    ...

    What caused Arredon­do to almost imme­di­ate­ly con­clude that the sit­u­a­tion “tran­si­tioned from an active shoot­er to a bar­ri­cad­ed sub­ject”? It’s the biggest ques­tion loom­ing over this whole thing. Of all the deci­sions that could have been made at that moment, why that deci­sion? After all, as we’ve now learned, while the bulk of the shoot­ing that took place inside that class­room tran­spired in the ini­tial min­utes, that does­n’t mean there aren’t injured peo­ple bleed­ing out. Every minute counts for shoot­ing vic­tims. Even if you assume the shoot­er had already done all of the shoot­ing he had planned to do in the open­ing min­utes that’s no excuse for just wait­ing for an extend­ed nego­ti­a­tion.

    And that brings us to one of the oth­er ‘WTF?!’ rev­e­la­tions about this event that we just learned: it turns out one of the shot school teach­ers spent time on the phone with her hus­band who hap­pened to be one of the Uvalde school dis­trict police offi­cers on the scene out­side of the school. We’re told this offi­cer was pre­vent­ed from enter­ing the school by the oth­er offi­cers, in keep­ing with the deci­sion to treat it as a ‘bar­ri­cad­ed sub­ject’ sit­u­a­tion

    But beyond that, we’re also told that chil­dren in the class­room began call­ing 911 around 30 min­utes after the gun­man entered the school. Any assump­tions that every­one but the shoot­er was already dead was being active­ly refut­ed in real-time by the chil­dren. So there were two direct sources of infor­ma­tion to law enforce­ment that peo­ple were still alive in the class­room: the stu­dents call­ing 9/11 and the teacher direct­ly call­ing her police offi­cer hus­band who as on the scene:

    The New York Times

    Uvalde Teacher Spoke With Hus­band, a Police Offi­cer, Before She Died

    Eva Mireles’s hus­band was an offi­cer with the school district’s Police Depart­ment. But he was not allowed to enter the place where his wife and her stu­dents were under attack.

    By J. David Good­man
    June 1, 2022

    UVALDE, Texas — In the final moments of her life, Eva Mire­les, a teacher at Robb Ele­men­tary School, was on the phone with her hus­band, Ruben Ruiz, a school dis­trict police offi­cer, the senior coun­ty offi­cial said on Wednes­day.

    They spoke for the last time from oppo­site sides of the school walls: She was with her fourth-grade stu­dents in a pair of adjoin­ing class­rooms tak­en over by a gun­man; he was out­side the school, amid the fast-grow­ing throng of armed offi­cers who rushed to the scene.

    “She’s in the class­room and he’s out­side. It’s ter­ri­fy­ing,” the Uvalde Coun­ty judge, Bill Mitchell, said on Wednes­day after being briefed by sheriff’s deputies who were at the shoot­ing that left 19 stu­dents and two teach­ers dead.

    The call was among sev­er­al new details that have added to — and, in some cas­es, sig­nif­i­cant­ly altered — the shift­ing por­trait of the shoot­ing in Uvalde that has been offered by top offi­cials, includ­ing Gov. Greg Abbott and the head of the state police, Steven McCraw.

    The gunman’s grand­moth­er, whom he shot in the face at home min­utes before burst­ing into the school, had been employed at the ele­men­tary school in years past, a top teach­ers’ union offi­cial said. The two offi­cers who first approached the class­rooms and were struck by bul­lets that were fired through the locked door were senior mem­bers of the Uvalde Police Depart­ment, a lieu­tenant and a sergeant, offi­cials said.

    And a door to the school, through which the gun­man, Sal­vador Ramos, entered, had been closed, but not locked as it should have been — a cru­cial amend­ment to the offi­cial nar­ra­tive out­lined to reporters, griev­ing Uvalde fam­i­lies and view­ers of broad­casts car­ried live around the nation from the usu­al­ly qui­et ranch­ing city about 80 miles west of San Anto­nio.

    The lat­est detail about the teacher’s phone call to her hus­band is poten­tial­ly an impor­tant one — sug­gest­ing that at least one of the offi­cers arriv­ing at the scene had infor­ma­tion from inside the class­rooms that could have informed the deci­sion by the police to delay entry. A ques­tion remained as to whether 911 calls from chil­dren inside the class­rooms, start­ing 30 min­utes after the gun­man arrived, were com­mu­ni­cat­ed to the com­man­der at the scene.

    Sev­er­al times since last week, infor­ma­tion pre­sent­ed by offi­cials as fact in news con­fer­ences has lat­er been changed or entire­ly retract­ed, fur­ther rat­tling an already strick­en com­mu­ni­ty and under­min­ing the faith of many Tex­ans in the offi­cial nar­ra­tive of what hap­pened, even among law enforce­ment offi­cials and those who rep­re­sent them.

    The sit­u­a­tion prompt­ed Don McLaugh­lin, the may­or of Uvalde and a staunch con­ser­v­a­tive, to request a Jus­tice Depart­ment inves­ti­ga­tion over the week­end, and led a statewide law enforce­ment union to issue a state­ment sup­port­ing that inquiry, in part, because “sources that Tex­ans once saw as iron­clad and com­plete­ly reli­able have now been proven false.”

    The ref­er­ence was to the gov­er­nor and the head of the state police, accord­ing to a spokes­woman for the union, the Com­bined Law Enforce­ment Asso­ci­a­tions of Texas.

    Mr. McCraw’s agency, the Texas Depart­ment of Pub­lic Safe­ty, over­sees both the state police and the Texas Rangers, and it had been lead­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion into the shoot­ing and the response by the police until the Jus­tice Depart­ment stepped in with its own review.

    On Wednes­day, a spokesman for the state police, Travis Con­si­dine, referred ques­tions to the local dis­trict attorney’s office and said that going for­ward the depart­ment would not be pro­vid­ing updates on the inves­ti­ga­tion. The dis­trict attor­ney, Christi­na M. Bus­bee, did not respond to requests for an inter­view.

    State police offi­cials have been forced to amend por­tions of their time­line of events sev­er­al times, includ­ing last week when it became clear that a school dis­trict police offi­cer had not con­front­ed the gun­man before he entered the school. They did so again on Tues­day, when the depart­ment said that the gun­man did not enter through a door that was being propped open. Instead, the closed door had not been locked.

    “After exam­in­ing video evi­dence we were able to con­clude that after prop­ping the door open with a rock, the teacher ran back inside when she saw the shoot­er, and removed the rock and the door shut,” Mr. Con­si­dine said. “Inves­ti­ga­tors are now look­ing at why the door did not lock prop­er­ly when it was shut.”

    ...

    Ms. Mire­les, a teacher of 17 years and an avid hik­er who took pride in teach­ing at a most­ly His­pan­ic school, was shot and killed try­ing to pro­tect her stu­dents, accord­ing to her aunt Lydia Mar­tinez Del­ga­do.

    Her hus­band, Mr. Ruiz, who had rushed to the scene, was pre­vent­ed by oth­er police offi­cers from going inside. “He could not go into the class­room where all the shoot­ing vic­tims were at,” Ms. Mar­tinez Del­ga­do said in an inter­view last week.

    Offi­cer Ruiz declined a request for an inter­view.

    It was not clear when the two spoke or for how long dur­ing the 78 min­utes that elapsed between the first calls that came in to 911 of a gun­man at the school and the moment when a tac­ti­cal team from the Bor­der Patrol stormed into the room and killed him. Mr. Mitchell, the coun­ty judge, said deputy sher­iffs who had been at the school recount­ed the call.

    “I don’t know what was said,” Mr. Mitchell said, though the gist of it appeared to be, he said, that the gun­man was already on the attack. “He’s out­side hear­ing his wife: ‘I’m dying,’” he said, before cau­tion­ing that he did not know pre­cise­ly what words were exchanged.

    Mr. Mitchell said he did not know if the school dis­trict offi­cer had told the chief of his six-mem­ber depart­ment, Pete Arredon­do, about the call.

    “He was talk­ing to his wife. Whether that was con­veyed to Arredon­do or any­one else, I don’t know,” said the judge, who is the county’s exec­u­tive and top offi­cial.

    The state police have said it was Chief Arredondo’s deci­sion to wait to send offi­cers into the class­rooms until spe­cial­ized equip­ment and more high­ly trained offi­cers could arrive, a deci­sion that Mr. McCraw called “wrong” in a news con­fer­ence on Fri­day.

    A vast major­i­ty of the shoot­ing inside the class­rooms, which were joined in the mid­dle, took place just after the gun­man entered, at 11:33 a.m., Mr. McCraw said then. The gun­man was killed at about 12:51 p.m.

    While the motive of the gun­man remained unclear, offi­cials said that he, like so many in Uvalde, had a con­nec­tion to the ele­men­tary school.

    He lived with his grand­moth­er Celia Mar­tinez Gon­za­les, 66, in a mod­est home near the school. She used to be an “employ­ee at the school,” said Zeph Capo, the pres­i­dent of the Texas Amer­i­can Fed­er­a­tion of Teach­ers; a state law enforce­ment offi­cial con­firmed her for­mer employ­ment at the school.

    ...

    ———-

    “Uvalde Teacher Spoke With Hus­band, a Police Offi­cer, Before She Died” by J. David Good­man; The New York Times; 06/01/2022

    “The lat­est detail about the teacher’s phone call to her hus­band is poten­tial­ly an impor­tant one — sug­gest­ing that at least one of the offi­cers arriv­ing at the scene had infor­ma­tion from inside the class­rooms that could have informed the deci­sion by the police to delay entry. A ques­tion remained as to whether 911 calls from chil­dren inside the class­rooms, start­ing 30 min­utes after the gun­man arrived, were com­mu­ni­cat­ed to the com­man­der at the scene.”

    It was­n’t just this police offi­cer who received calls from inside the class­rooms. The chil­dren report­ed­ly start­ed call­ing 911 around 30 min­utes after the Ramos arrived. So there were calls com­ing from inside the class­room going to both 911 and direct­ly to one of the offi­cers direct­ly out­side. Keep in mind that the deci­sion to tran­si­tion the sit­u­a­tion from an “active shoot­er” to a “bar­ri­cad­ed sus­pect” scene was pre­sum­ably pred­i­cat­ed on the assump­tion that no one oth­er than the shoot­er was left alive in room. That’s why ques­tions about whether or not this infor­ma­tion was con­veyed to the com­man­der at the scene are both cru­cial to the sit­u­a­tion and also rather absurd. Of course they were aware there were peo­ple still alive in that room. Offi­cer Ruiz were lit­er­al­ly being pre­vent­ing from going into the school by oth­er offi­cers on the scene. Obvi­ous­ly he told them about the call he just received from his wife:

    ...
    Her hus­band, Mr. Ruiz, who had rushed to the scene, was pre­vent­ed by oth­er police offi­cers from going inside. “He could not go into the class­room where all the shoot­ing vic­tims were at,” Ms. Mar­tinez Del­ga­do said in an inter­view last week.

    ...

    It was not clear when the two spoke or for how long dur­ing the 78 min­utes that elapsed between the first calls that came in to 911 of a gun­man at the school and the moment when a tac­ti­cal team from the Bor­der Patrol stormed into the room and killed him. Mr. Mitchell, the coun­ty judge, said deputy sher­iffs who had been at the school recount­ed the call.

    “I don’t know what was said,” Mr. Mitchell said, though the gist of it appeared to be, he said, that the gun­man was already on the attack. “He’s out­side hear­ing his wife: ‘I’m dying,’” he said, before cau­tion­ing that he did not know pre­cise­ly what words were exchanged.

    Mr. Mitchell said he did not know if the school dis­trict offi­cer had told the chief of his six-mem­ber depart­ment, Pete Arredon­do, about the call.

    “He was talk­ing to his wife. Whether that was con­veyed to Arredon­do or any­one else, I don’t know,” said the judge, who is the county’s exec­u­tive and top offi­cial.

    The state police have said it was Chief Arredondo’s deci­sion to wait to send offi­cers into the class­rooms until spe­cial­ized equip­ment and more high­ly trained offi­cers could arrive, a deci­sion that Mr. McCraw called “wrong” in a news con­fer­ence on Fri­day.
    ...

    But for all of the ques­tions direct­ed as Arredon­do and the offi­cers imme­di­ate­ly on the scene, note how the out­rage expressed by the Texas law enforce­ment union over how this all unfold­ed isn’t just direct­ed at Arredon­do. They were explic­it in their con­dem­na­tion of Gov­er­nor Abbot and the head of the state police Steven McGraw. It’s anoth­er clue about the clusterf*ck going on here: the law enforce­ment union is point­ing fin­gers all the way to the top:

    ...
    The call was among sev­er­al new details that have added to — and, in some cas­es, sig­nif­i­cant­ly altered — the shift­ing por­trait of the shoot­ing in Uvalde that has been offered by top offi­cials, includ­ing Gov. Greg Abbott and the head of the state police, Steven McCraw.

    ...

    Sev­er­al times since last week, infor­ma­tion pre­sent­ed by offi­cials as fact in news con­fer­ences has lat­er been changed or entire­ly retract­ed, fur­ther rat­tling an already strick­en com­mu­ni­ty and under­min­ing the faith of many Tex­ans in the offi­cial nar­ra­tive of what hap­pened, even among law enforce­ment offi­cials and those who rep­re­sent them.

    The sit­u­a­tion prompt­ed Don McLaugh­lin, the may­or of Uvalde and a staunch con­ser­v­a­tive, to request a Jus­tice Depart­ment inves­ti­ga­tion over the week­end, and led a statewide law enforce­ment union to issue a state­ment sup­port­ing that inquiry, in part, because “sources that Tex­ans once saw as iron­clad and com­plete­ly reli­able have now been proven false.”

    The ref­er­ence was to the gov­er­nor and the head of the state police, accord­ing to a spokes­woman for the union, the Com­bined Law Enforce­ment Asso­ci­a­tions of Texas.

    Mr. McCraw’s agency, the Texas Depart­ment of Pub­lic Safe­ty, over­sees both the state police and the Texas Rangers, and it had been lead­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion into the shoot­ing and the response by the police until the Jus­tice Depart­ment stepped in with its own review.
    ...

    What’s next? What oth­er crit­i­cal details are going to turn out to be wrong or fab­ri­ca­tions? We’ll see. But it’s pret­ty clear that we haven’t heard the last inex­plic­a­ble revi­sion on this sto­ry. We can be con­fi­dent of that. But with even the police union point­ing fin­gers at every­one include the gov­er­nor and state chief of police, the ques­tion of whether or not we’re ever going to get a sen­si­ble expla­na­tion for what actu­al­ly hap­pened remains a very open ques­tion.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | June 2, 2022, 4:09 pm
  28. Here’s a pair of arti­cles about the July 4 parade attack in High­land Park, IL, and the ongo­ing role online cha­t­rooms pop­u­lar with gam­ing com­mu­ni­ties in cre­at­ing online rad­i­cal­iz­ing com­mu­ni­ties. Recall how the pop­u­lar gam­ing app, Steam, was found to be host­ing a large num­ber of forums ded­i­cat­ed to cel­e­brat­ing school shoot­ers and oth­er mass mur­der­ers.

    In this case, the shoot­er, Robert “Bob­by” Crimo, III, pre­ferred to hang out in the online Dis­cord chat serv­er with the name “SS”. Keep in mind that Dis­cord has been exten­sive used by neo-Nazis includ­ing plan­ning the August 2017 Unite the Right march in Char­lottesville, VA. Also recall how, in 2019, Conor Climo, a Las Vegas area man, was arrest­ed plan­ning a mass neo-Nazi ter­ror attack in coor­di­na­tion with an Atom­waf­fen off­shoot, Feuerkrieg Divi­sion. That attack was planned on a Dis­cord serv­er. Buf­fa­lo shoot­er Pay­ton Gen­dron spent months open­ly plan­ning his attack on a Dis­cord serv­er and even invit­ed a small group of peo­ple onto a Dis­cord serv­er to view his plan approx­i­mate­ly 30 min­utes before the attack. So when anoth­er mass mur­der­er pops up ema­nat­ing from one of these online com­mu­ni­ties, the ques­tion is once again raised: how many peo­ple are inhab­it­ing these anony­mous rad­i­cal­iza­tion breed­ing grounds and what’s being done to address them?

    As we’re going to see, part of what com­pli­cates this sto­ry is the fact that Crimo’s act was­n’t done in the name of any overt polit­i­cal ide­ol­o­gy, unlike oth­er mass mur­der­ers like Pay­ton Gen­dron who post­ed a polit­i­cal man­i­festo that made his inten­tions abun­dant­ly clear. That lack of any polit­i­cal state­ment has led to all sorts of head scratch­ing around Crimo’s pos­si­ble motives. Head scratch­ing and furi­ous denials that he was in any way enthralled by the same far right nihilis­tic ide­ol­o­gy that cap­ti­vat­ed and moti­vat­ed fig­ures like Gen­dron or Climo.

    And as we’re also going to see, Crimo’s pol­i­tics were pret­ty clear, despite the lack of a man­i­festo. Beyond a predilec­tion for post­ing extreme­ly graph­ic videos depict­ing acts of vio­lence, Crimo report­ed­ly had a predilec­tion for post­ing exact­ly the kind of con­tent that one would expect from a young far right indi­vid­ual, like com­plain­ing about “com­mu­nists” and even post­ing a pic of him­self wear­ing a Pepe the Frog t‑shirt. He even attend­ed a Sep­tem­ber 2020 Trump ral­ly. But two mem­bers of this online “SS” online com­mu­ni­ty who agreed to speak with the press insist that Crimo was apo­lit­i­cal and gave no hints of plan­ning such an attack. They also insist that “SS” stands for “Sleep Squad” and no one on the forum in any way sup­ports Nazism. They also point to the Where’s Wal­do out­fit Crimo was wear­ing at the Trump ral­ly and sug­gest that it was all an iron­ic joke and he was­n’t real­ly a Trump sup­port­er because he was actu­al­ly just apo­lit­i­cal. The con­ver­gence of clues point­ing towards a far right ide­ol­o­gy was all a coin­ci­dence, accord­ing to these “SS” Dis­cord com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers. So was it all a coin­ci­dence? Because if not, that implies the extrem­ist com­mu­ni­ty Crimo was a part of are engaged in an ongo­ing coverup if their extrem­ism:

    NBC News

    Dis­cord chat app faces mod­er­a­tion ques­tions after mass shoot­ing sus­pects are linked to plat­form

    “When we talk about peo­ple who com­mit these acts of vio­lence ... it’s going to be a part of this nexus,” one expert said of Dis­cord.

    By Wil­son Wong
    July 6, 2022, 3:12 PM CDT

    The sus­pect in the High­land Park shoot­ing had ded­i­cat­ed chat rooms on the pop­u­lar social mes­sag­ing plat­form Dis­cord and fre­quent­ed some oth­ers that traf­ficked in vio­lent con­tent despite rules meant to lim­it such mate­r­i­al.

    It’s the sec­ond time this year Dis­cord has come up as an appli­ca­tion used by a sus­pect in a mass shoot­ing. The man accused of killing 10 peo­ple at a Buf­fa­lo, New York, super­mar­ket in May used the same app to doc­u­ment his plans for the shoot­ing.

    The app’s use by such sus­pects rais­es ques­tions about the com­pa­ny’s mod­er­a­tion prac­tices and the activ­i­ty that’s occur­ring on the mil­lions of active servers it main­tains. One expert said the plat­form can be a vehi­cle for rad­i­cal­iza­tion.

    “Dis­cord reserves the right to review and remove any mate­r­i­al on the plat­form,” said Emer­son Brook­ing, a senior res­i­dent at the Dig­i­tal Foren­sic Research Lab of the Atlantic Coun­cil, a think tank based in Wash­ing­ton.

    “But there must be a flag that draws Discord’s atten­tion in the first place.”

    ...

    The ‘prac­ti­cal lim­it of mod­er­a­tion’

    Dis­cord, orig­i­nal­ly favored by gamers but now extreme­ly pop­u­lar across near­ly every online com­mu­ni­ty, allows users to cre­ate pri­vate chat spaces called “servers” that can house numer­ous cha­t­rooms.

    Robert “Bob­by” E. Crimo III, the High­land Park sus­pect who was arrest­ed hours after the shoot­ing on Mon­day, left a sprawl­ing online foot­print, includ­ing on Dis­cord, YouTube, Twit­ter and oth­er social plat­forms. Under his rap name “Awake,” Crimo post­ed music videos on his YouTube chan­nel that includ­ed depic­tions of mass mur­der, while on his own Dis­cord serv­er, Crimo shared nihilis­tic polit­i­cal memes and com­ments.

    Crimo appears to have been active in the Dis­cord serv­er since late Jan­u­ary 2021, accord­ing to chat logs archived by Uni­corn Riot, a non­prof­it media orga­ni­za­tion that tracks the far right. Images that were said to be screen­shots of his mes­sages appeared to show the user com­plain­ing about “com­mies” — short for “com­mu­nists” and typ­i­cal­ly used by far-right extrem­ists to refer to Democ­rats.

    In a March post on a pol­i­tics board in his serv­er, Crimo post­ed a pho­to of R. Budd Dwyer, a Penn­syl­va­nia politi­cian who fatal­ly shot him­self dur­ing a tele­vised news con­fer­ence in 1987, cap­tioned: “I wish politi­cians still gave speech­es like this.”

    Crimo also con­tributed to a mes­sage board dis­cussing graph­ic depic­tions of mur­der, sui­cide and death. His most recent post on the board last week showed a video of a behead­ing. Both his YouTube and Dis­cord accounts were tak­en down on Mon­day evening.

    Brook­ing said the High­land Park shoot­ing high­lights “the prac­ti­cal lim­it of mod­er­a­tion” on chat plat­forms like Dis­cord.

    “Crimo’s posts appear to have been too con­text-depen­dent to be flagged auto­mat­i­cal­ly and it’s unlike­ly that mem­bers of Crimo’s Dis­cord serv­er found them so dis­taste­ful as to report them,” he con­tin­ued.

    -..Brook­ing said he sus­pects some of Crimo’s mes­sages could have vio­lat­ed Dis­cord’s com­mu­ni­ty guide­lines, which pro­hib­it the glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of “vio­lent events, the per­pe­tra­tors of vio­lent acts, or sim­i­lar behav­iors,” but “mod­er­a­tors would have had to see them first.”

    Dis­cord’s role in the Buf­fa­lo shoot­ing

    Pay­ton Gen­dron, the sus­pect in the Buf­fa­lo shoot­ing, appeared to use Dis­cord as well in the run-up to the attack on the Tops super­mar­ket. In a 180-page dia­tribe that senior law enforce­ment offi­cials said they believe he wrote and post­ed online, Gen­dron referred to the Dis­cord chat plat­form and a com­mu­ni­ty cen­tered on guns and armor called “plate land.”

    In a dif­fer­ent Dis­cord serv­er, a user with the same user­name as the Twitch account that streamed the Buf­fa­lo attack made what appeared to be a to-do list relat­ed to the shoot­ing.

    A Dis­cord rep­re­sen­ta­tive said in a state­ment to NBC News at the time of the Buf­fa­lo shoot­ing: “We extend our deep­est sym­pa­thies to the vic­tims and their fam­i­lies, and are doing every­thing we can to assist law enforce­ment in the inves­ti­ga­tion.”

    In the after­math of the Buf­fa­lo shoot­ing, Dis­cord said it would com­mit to stronger con­tent mod­er­a­tion mea­sures to pre­vent the spread of con­tent relat­ed to the attack. The com­pa­ny also banned the suspect’s account, part­nered with coun­tert­er­ror­ism groups and removed accounts that were “cre­at­ing fake Dis­cord chat logs to trick law enforce­ment and media out­lets,” the com­pa­ny said.

    Dis­cord acts as ‘a means to orga­nize’

    Brook­ing explained that Dis­cord can be a “path­way of rad­i­cal­iza­tion” for users, par­tic­u­lar­ly those tapped into far-right online com­mu­ni­ties.

    “When we talk about peo­ple who com­mit these acts of vio­lence ... it’s going to be a part of this nexus,” Brook­ing said of Dis­cord. “Many far-right com­mu­ni­ties turn to Dis­cord as a means to orga­nize.”

    In 2017, the com­pa­ny banned some of the largest far-right Dis­cord com­mu­ni­ties fol­low­ing a white nation­al­ist ral­ly in Char­lottesville, Vir­ginia, that killed one per­son and injured dozens — elim­i­nat­ing one of the move­men­t’s most impor­tant means of com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

    Love. Not hate. pic.twitter.com/5xFpvHTuI2— Dis­cord (@discord) August 14, 2017

    But while social media plat­forms like YouTube, Twitch and Dis­cord do imple­ment mea­sures to remove and mod­er­ate con­tent relat­ed to mass shoot­ings, Brook­ing said that does­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly erase extrem­ists’ plans to coor­di­nate pub­lic killings.

    “The future of ter­ror­ism is not Dis­cord,” Brook­ing said, cit­ing Dis­cord’s move to ban some promi­nent far-right com­mu­ni­ties after the dead­ly Char­lottesville ral­ly and oth­er exist­ing plat­forms with more secure com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

    Dis­cord pro­vides the “tools for any­one to cre­ate and run their own serv­er,” he con­tin­ued, but it “will not be an attrac­tive plat­form for peo­ple and col­lab­o­ra­tors to plan to com­mit acts of vio­lence because the com­mu­ni­ca­tions on Dis­cord are not secure. They’re liable for review.”

    “One can cer­tain­ly oper­ate far-right com­mu­ni­ties on Dis­cord — you know, tox­ic, racist, some­times tinged with white suprema­cy,” he added. “But to real­ly build sus­tain­able far-right, ter­ror­ist infra­struc­ture, Telegram and tra­di­tion­al forum boards are a bet­ter alter­na­tive.”

    ————

    “Dis­cord chat app faces mod­er­a­tion ques­tions after mass shoot­ing sus­pects are linked to plat­form” By Wil­son Wong; NBC News; 07/06/2022

    “Robert “Bob­by” E. Crimo III, the High­land Park sus­pect who was arrest­ed hours after the shoot­ing on Mon­day, left a sprawl­ing online foot­print, includ­ing on Dis­cord, YouTube, Twit­ter and oth­er social plat­forms. Under his rap name “Awake,” Crimo post­ed music videos on his YouTube chan­nel that includ­ed depic­tions of mass mur­der, while on his own Dis­cord serv­er, Crimo shared nihilis­tic polit­i­cal memes and com­ments.

    Bob­by Crimo was just post­ing apo­lit­i­cal dark­ly humor­ous memes to this Dis­cord com­mu­ni­ty. He was post­ing nihilis­tic polit­i­cal memes and depic­tions of mass mur­der. That’s far from apo­lit­i­cal. If some­one has zero inter­est in all things pol­i­tics, that’s apo­lit­i­cal. But when some­one wants to watch every­one die and the world burn, that’s about as a polit­i­cal as you can get. Polit­i­cal­ly awful, yes, but vio­lent nihilism is absolute­ly polit­i­cal. The kind of polit­i­cal views appar­ent­ly shared with­in this Dis­cord com­mu­ni­ty. That’s one of the key points about seem­ing­ly apo­lit­i­cal mass killers like Crimo to keep in mind: it only looks apo­lit­i­cal if you make the mis­take of assum­ing burn­ing down soci­ety isn’t a polit­i­cal act:

    ...
    Crimo also con­tributed to a mes­sage board dis­cussing graph­ic depic­tions of mur­der, sui­cide and death. His most recent post on the board last week showed a video of a behead­ing. Both his YouTube and Dis­cord accounts were tak­en down on Mon­day evening.

    ...

    Brook­ing said he sus­pects some of Crimo’s mes­sages could have vio­lat­ed Dis­cord’s com­mu­ni­ty guide­lines, which pro­hib­it the glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of “vio­lent events, the per­pe­tra­tors of vio­lent acts, or sim­i­lar behav­iors,” but “mod­er­a­tors would have had to see them first.”
    ...

    And then there’s the overt­ly polit­i­cal state­ments, like Uni­corn Riot’s dis­cov­ery of posts by Crimo com­plain­ing about all the “com­mies”. That’s pret­ty polit­i­cal. Also note that Uni­corn Riot also found a pic of Crimo wear­ing a ‘Pepe the Frog’ t‑shirt. The polit­i­cal clues just keep build­ing:

    ..
    Crimo appears to have been active in the Dis­cord serv­er since late Jan­u­ary 2021, accord­ing to chat logs archived by Uni­corn Riot, a non­prof­it media orga­ni­za­tion that tracks the far right. Images that were said to be screen­shots of his mes­sages appeared to show the user com­plain­ing about “com­mies” — short for “com­mu­nists” and typ­i­cal­ly used by far-right extrem­ists to refer to Democ­rats.
    ..

    It’s also impor­tant ot keep in mind that, while the fun­da­men­tal­ly polit­i­cal nature of Crimo’s seem­ing­ly apo­lit­i­cal vio­lent nihilism con­trasts with the overt­ly hyper-polit­i­cal nature of Pay­ton Gen­dron Dis­cord-fueled shoot­ing spree, the two shoot­ers were ulti­mate­ly cater­ing to the same audi­ence: peo­ple rad­i­cal­ized online who want to watch the world burn. An extreme far right audi­ence:

    ...
    It’s the sec­ond time this year Dis­cord has come up as an appli­ca­tion used by a sus­pect in a mass shoot­ing. The man accused of killing 10 peo­ple at a Buf­fa­lo, New York, super­mar­ket in May used the same app to doc­u­ment his plans for the shoot­ing.

    ...

    Pay­ton Gen­dron, the sus­pect in the Buf­fa­lo shoot­ing, appeared to use Dis­cord as well in the run-up to the attack on the Tops super­mar­ket. In a 180-page dia­tribe that senior law enforce­ment offi­cials said they believe he wrote and post­ed online, Gen­dron referred to the Dis­cord chat plat­form and a com­mu­ni­ty cen­tered on guns and armor called “plate land.”

    In a dif­fer­ent Dis­cord serv­er, a user with the same user­name as the Twitch account that streamed the Buf­fa­lo attack made what appeared to be a to-do list relat­ed to the shoot­ing.

    A Dis­cord rep­re­sen­ta­tive said in a state­ment to NBC News at the time of the Buf­fa­lo shoot­ing: “We extend our deep­est sym­pa­thies to the vic­tims and their fam­i­lies, and are doing every­thing we can to assist law enforce­ment in the inves­ti­ga­tion.”
    ...

    Also note the omi­nous­ly scan­dalous nature of Dis­cord’s repeat­ed involve­ment in these mass shoot­ings: it’s scan­dalous in part because Dis­cord actu­al­ly had the abil­i­ty to review con­tent on the servers. But that only hap­pens if con­tent gets flagged. In oth­er words, while these Dis­cord com­mu­ni­ties can in the­o­ry be mod­er­at­ed, they are are effec­tive­ly self-polic­ing. And if Dis­cord ever does take steps to crack down on this kind of extrem­ism, these com­mu­ni­ties will just relo­cate to plat­forms like Telegram that lack these mod­er­a­tion capa­bil­i­ties entire­ly:

    ...
    Brook­ing explained that Dis­cord can be a “path­way of rad­i­cal­iza­tion” for users, par­tic­u­lar­ly those tapped into far-right online com­mu­ni­ties.

    “When we talk about peo­ple who com­mit these acts of vio­lence ... it’s going to be a part of this nexus,” Brook­ing said of Dis­cord. “Many far-right com­mu­ni­ties turn to Dis­cord as a means to orga­nize.”

    ...

    “The future of ter­ror­ism is not Dis­cord,” Brook­ing said, cit­ing Dis­cord’s move to ban some promi­nent far-right com­mu­ni­ties after the dead­ly Char­lottesville ral­ly and oth­er exist­ing plat­forms with more secure com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

    Dis­cord pro­vides the “tools for any­one to cre­ate and run their own serv­er,” he con­tin­ued, but it “will not be an attrac­tive plat­form for peo­ple and col­lab­o­ra­tors to plan to com­mit acts of vio­lence because the com­mu­ni­ca­tions on Dis­cord are not secure. They’re liable for review.”

    “One can cer­tain­ly oper­ate far-right com­mu­ni­ties on Dis­cord — you know, tox­ic, racist, some­times tinged with white suprema­cy,” he added. “But to real­ly build sus­tain­able far-right, ter­ror­ist infra­struc­ture, Telegram and tra­di­tion­al forum boards are a bet­ter alter­na­tive.”
    ...

    Final­ly, note this intrigu­ing ref­er­ence to Dis­cord remov­ing accounts that were “cre­at­ing fake Dis­cord chat logs to trick law enforce­ment and media out­lets.” So what kind of trick­ery was going on? The kind of trick­ery that obscures the vio­lent nature of what’s hap­pen on these servers?

    ...
    In the after­math of the Buf­fa­lo shoot­ing, Dis­cord said it would com­mit to stronger con­tent mod­er­a­tion mea­sures to pre­vent the spread of con­tent relat­ed to the attack. The com­pa­ny also banned the suspect’s account, part­nered with coun­tert­er­ror­ism groups and removed accounts that were “cre­at­ing fake Dis­cord chat logs to trick law enforce­ment and media out­lets,” the com­pa­ny said.
    ...

    And that appar­ent attempt to con­fuse law enforce­ment and the media about the nature of these online com­mu­ni­ties brings us to the fol­low­ing Rolling Stone piece that includes inter­views with two mem­bers of Crimo’s online com­mu­ni­ty. Both insist that Crimo was­n’t polit­i­cal at all but was just into dark iron­ic humor and memes. Both also insist that the forum itself, dubbed “SS”, mere­ly a humor­ous online com­mu­ni­ty for the “Sleepy Squad” and that Crimo nev­er showed any hints of plan­ning a vio­lent attack. When asked about pho­tos of Crimo at a 2020 Trump ral­ly, we are told he was just there as a joke, point­ing to the Where’s Wal­do? out­fit he was wear­ing at the ral­ly...as if that out­fit some­how sig­ni­fies that it was all a joke and in no way a show of sup­port for Trump.

    So at the same time we are told Crimo post­ed extreme­ly vio­lent videos on this Dis­cord serv­er not long before the attack, we’re also told by the com­mu­ni­ty itself that Crimo gave no sign of plan­ning the attack in advance. It’s the kind of sto­ry­line that either sug­gests these mem­bers of the Dis­cord com­mu­ni­ty are lying to media or that the post­ing of graph­i­cal­ly vio­lent videos was just such a nor­mal thing on this serv­er that they weren’t seen as a warn­ing sign by the rest of the com­mu­ni­ty. Or both:

    Rolling Stone

    Was the 4th of July Shoot­ing Polit­i­cal­ly Moti­vat­ed?

    Friends of Robert E. Crimo III, arrest­ed in con­nec­tion with the High­land Park shoot­ing that killed sev­en, say he was “polit­i­cal­ly com­plete­ly indif­fer­ent”

    By Kat Bouza
    July 5, 2022 1:44PM ET

    “The Awake I always knew was polit­i­cal­ly com­plete­ly indif­fer­ent.”

    Ben­nett Brizes refers to Robert E. Crimo III by his rap­per name when dis­cussing his long­time online friend. Crimo was arrest­ed on Mon­day in con­nec­tion with the Fourth of July parade shoot­ing that killed sev­en peo­ple and injured 30 oth­ers in High­land Park, Illi­nois. Ear­ly reports on Crimo have not­ed his atten­dance at a Trump ral­ly along­side oth­er infer­ences as evi­dence of an ide­o­log­i­cal extrem­ist. But mul­ti­ple online friends insist to Rolling Stone the Crimo they knew was more apo­lit­i­cal troll than extreme ide­o­logue.

    Brizes, like the oth­er online friends inter­viewed for this sto­ry, said that while Crimo, who was also known to his online friends as “Bob­by,” clear­ly strug­gled with men­tal health issues, they were com­plete­ly unaware of the car­nage he was plan­ning offline — and, they admit, missed signs, both of his vio­lent turn and of any pos­si­ble ide­o­log­i­cal moti­va­tion behind it.

    Still, the 22-year-old’s acquain­tances are adamant that, while they asso­ci­at­ed with Crimo in recent years, they com­plete­ly con­demn his vio­lent actions. “He sucks,” Brizes says blunt­ly. “But I was his friend. Try­ing to hide that is not some­thing that I can do.” (Rolling Stone reviewed numer­ous videos, pho­tographs and Dis­cord chat logs pro­vid­ed by the indi­vid­u­als inter­viewed for this sto­ry to ver­i­fy their con­nec­tion to Crimo.)

    Nod­fa­ther, an inde­pen­dent pro­duc­er who devel­oped a years-long rela­tion­ship with Crimo on the mes­sag­ing plat­form Dis­cord, said he’s “absolute­ly dis­gust­ed” by what took place Mon­day. He spoke at length with Rolling Stone about his spo­radic rela­tion­ship with Crimo, which began online in 2016 after the two began col­lab­o­rat­ing on music. “I was just mak­ing lo-fi music and beats for peo­ple — just try­ing to send them out to artists that I enjoyed,” he said. Not long after, Crimo shared that he was cre­at­ing a col­lec­tive for artists called “Sleepy Squad.”

    Sleepy Squad mem­bers com­mu­ni­cat­ed and shared their work via a Dis­cord serv­er named “S.S.” — an abbre­vi­a­tion many news out­lets point­ed to as evi­dence of a poten­tial racial- or fas­cist-lean­ing moti­va­tion for the shoot­ing. “I know a lot of peo­ple online are try­ing to, for some rea­son, link it to the [Nazi] S.S., which it’s not. It’s just an abbre­vi­a­tion. That’s all it is,” Nod­fa­ther said. “We were all just friends mak­ing music togeth­er on the Inter­net. A lot of us are just nerdy kids who grew up play­ing video games and hung out online.”

    Nod­fa­ther, who asked that only his alias be used, claims that the orig­i­nal logo was a “bed and the con­cept of ‘sleepy squad’ being lofi and lofi is full of beats to sleep/study to,” refer­ring to the pop­u­lar meme. “That was the inside joke because we were all ‘sleepy lofi boys.’”

    “I believe it to be 100% a coin­ci­dence,” Brizes adds. “There were a lot of real­ly great peo­ple in that col­lec­tive that would nev­er rock with some­thing like that.”

    Crimo lived his entire life online, friends insist­ed. “Pret­ty much every­body [he was friends with] was online,” Brizes said. “I don’t think he ever even men­tioned an IRL friend besides his ex.”

    “I knew that there was some­thing in his head that was mess­ing with him,” Nod­fa­ther added. “In all hon­esty, a lot of it was him being self-iso­lat­ing.”

    Nod­fa­ther said he and Crimo had drift­ed apart in recent years. In the inter­im, Crimo took up a new hob­by: fash­ion design. The uni­fy­ing image was a strik­ing logo: Four tri­an­gles arranged around a dia­mond in a cross-like shape. “I remem­ber him show­ing me draw­ings and stuff like that — and I was just kind of, like, ‘That’s cool, dude. I’m proud that you’re focus­ing on some­thing,’” he said. Despite feel­ing some relief that his intro­vert­ed friend dis­cov­ered a new way to chan­nel his cre­ativ­i­ty, Nod­fa­ther couldn’t shake the image of Crimo’s logo from his mind. “The logo was what real­ly stood out to me,” he said. “It was weird. It was real­ly fuc king weird.” (It’s worth not­ing that many mod­ern right-wing extrem­ists have often cloaked fas­cist sym­bols in memes, irony and inter­net dou­ble speak, find­ing refuge for their ide­ol­o­gy on forums such as 4chan.)

    Since news of his arrest broke, near­ly all of Crimo’s online foot­print — which includ­ed the Sleepy Squad Dis­cord, a self-pub­lished book­let on Ama­zon, two Twit­ter accounts, a YouTube page, an Insta­gram pro­file, a Sound­cloud account and a ver­i­fied artist pro­file on Spo­ti­fy — has been wiped from the inter­net. Before going offline, sev­er­al Awake the Rap­per tracks boast­ed over a mil­lion streams on the plat­form, with one song top­ping over two mil­lion lis­tens. (A Spo­ti­fy spokesper­son declined to com­ment, but con­firmed that the com­pa­ny had removed “the con­tent in ques­tion.”) In spite of the take­downs, a vast archive of Crimo’s videos still remained avail­able on a non­de­script Blogspot as of press time.

    In one since-removed video where he repeat­ed­ly refers to him­self as a “sleep­walk­er,” Crimo sug­gests he had arrived at a sort of emo­tion­al precipice, unable to con­trol the unre­lent­ing urges build­ing up inside him. He uploaded the video to two dif­fer­ent plat­forms under two dif­fer­ent names in Novem­ber of last year. On Vimeo, he titled the video “are you awake?” — but the YouTube ver­sion was giv­en a much more omi­nous title: “just do it.”

    “My thought is unnec­es­sary. I know what I have to do,” he says in the clip, which fea­tures the angu­lar logo he designed for him­self super­im­posed over images culled from his oth­er social media post­ings. “Noth­ing can stop me — not even myself.” oth­er videos linked to Crimo showed dis­turb­ing imagery, such as a crude­ly ani­mat­ed school shoot­ing. Ten months ago, Crimo also uploaded an unti­tled video fea­tur­ing footage of the parade route.

    Yet on the Sleepy Squad Dis­cord, his friends say, Crimo’s posts and behav­ior were far from trou­bling, instead reflect­ing the post-iron­ic, off-col­or inter­net speak pop­u­lar among ter­mi­nal­ly online youth. “He would make fun of the whole ‘uwu’ cul­ture — like iron­i­cal­ly make fun of them and pre­tend to be a weeb,” Nod­fa­ther explained, refer­ring to an emoti­con often used by ani­me devo­tees. “We all grew up watch­ing Adult Swim and kind of have a dif­fer­ent sense of humor.”

    Anoth­er puz­zling piece of dig­i­tal ephemera that could give insight into Crimo’s men­tal state is a 23-page-long book­let he self-pub­lished in Feb­ru­ary 2021. Before Ama­zon removed its list­ing, an image pre­view showed the text was com­prised entire­ly of ran­dom num­bers sequences. When asked about the work, Crimo’s friends were unsure of its sig­nif­i­cance, but insist­ed the book was most like­ly a delib­er­ate eso­teric art piece. “He was into sym­bol­o­gy, but he nev­er explained it to me. He just briefly brought up he was writ­ing a book,” Nod­fa­ther explained. “It makes way more sense for it to be an art piece to get peo­ple to start talk­ing.” Brizes is also con­vinced the text was intend­ed as a work of out­sider art and dis­miss­es the pos­si­bil­i­ty it con­tains hid­den mes­sages about the shoot­ing. “I don’t know, maybe it was a long play the whole time,” he con­ced­ed. “He wasn’t stu­pid by any means — but to orches­trate some­thing like that is def out of his scope.”

    In his scant pub­lic social media post­ings out­side of the Sleepy Squad com­mu­ni­ty, Crimo nev­er explic­it­ly ref­er­enced alliance to any par­tic­u­lar polit­i­cal par­ty or ide­ol­o­gy. Still, as images of him draped in a MAGA flag and attend­ing a Sep­tem­ber 2020 Trump ral­ly out­side of Chica­go spread across the inter­net, social media users won­dered if the grue­some attack was polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed. Oth­ers latched onto the geo­met­ric logo Crimo designed for his cloth­ing line and fre­quent­ly used in his music videos, due to its resem­blance to a sym­bol used by the Finnish far-right fac­tion Suomen Sisu.

    “The pic­tures of him being at the Trump ral­ly — I remem­ber ask­ing him about it because he was not a Trump sup­port­er at all, and it threw me off,” Nod­fa­ther said. “I was like, ‘What the fu ck are you doing there?’ And he was like, ‘Look at my shirt.’ He was wear­ing a Where’s Wal­do shirt. So, he just want­ed to fu ck with peo­ple. He just want­ed to be fun­ny.”

    By Tues­day morn­ing, infor­ma­tion about the vic­tims began to emerge, includ­ing a beloved syn­a­gogue employ­ee and a grand­fa­ther who immi­grat­ed to the Unit­ed States from Mex­i­co. As the fam­i­lies of the vic­tims in Monday’s tragedy attempt to process how and why their loved ones were sense­less­ly gunned down dur­ing a day meant for cel­e­bra­tion, Crimo’s friends are left won­der­ing if they missed any warn­ing signs — or if they’re for­ev­er enmeshed in the act com­mit­ted by a deeply dis­turbed indi­vid­ual they once con­sid­ered a friend.

    ...

    ———-

    “Was the 4th of July Shoot­ing Polit­i­cal­ly Moti­vat­ed?” by Kat Bouza; Rolling Stone; 07/05/2022

    Ben­nett Brizes refers to Robert E. Crimo III by his rap­per name when dis­cussing his long­time online friend. Crimo was arrest­ed on Mon­day in con­nec­tion with the Fourth of July parade shoot­ing that killed sev­en peo­ple and injured 30 oth­ers in High­land Park, Illi­nois. Ear­ly reports on Crimo have not­ed his atten­dance at a Trump ral­ly along­side oth­er infer­ences as evi­dence of an ide­o­log­i­cal extrem­ist. But mul­ti­ple online friends insist to Rolling Stone the Crimo they knew was more apo­lit­i­cal troll than extreme ide­o­logue.

    Despite all the clues point­ing towards Crimo hav­ing adopt­ed a vio­lent extrem­ist ide­ol­o­gy online — clues like Crimo’s repeat­ed posts of extreme­ly vio­lent videos and even his 2020 atten­dance at a Trump ral­ly, Crimo’s online friends insist that this is all a giant mis­un­der­stand­ing and this online com­mu­ni­ty was sim­ply about iron­ic humor. The “SS” stands for “Sleepy Squad” and the creep cross-like sym­bol Crimo cre­at­ed that hap­pens to look a sym­bol used by the Finnish far-right fac­tion Suomen Sisu is pure­ly coin­ci­den­tal. And when Crimo attend­ed a Trump ral­ly it was­n’t a reflec­tion of right-wing sym­pa­thies but was all just a big joke, as if a Where’s Wal­do? shirt some­how turns his pres­ence at a Trump ral­ly into an iron­ic act. That’s the nar­ra­tive this online com­mu­ni­ty is ask­ing us to believe:

    ...
    Nod­fa­ther, an inde­pen­dent pro­duc­er who devel­oped a years-long rela­tion­ship with Crimo on the mes­sag­ing plat­form Dis­cord, said he’s “absolute­ly dis­gust­ed” by what took place Mon­day. He spoke at length with Rolling Stone about his spo­radic rela­tion­ship with Crimo, which began online in 2016 after the two began col­lab­o­rat­ing on music. “I was just mak­ing lo-fi music and beats for peo­ple — just try­ing to send them out to artists that I enjoyed,” he said. Not long after, Crimo shared that he was cre­at­ing a col­lec­tive for artists called “Sleepy Squad.”

    Sleepy Squad mem­bers com­mu­ni­cat­ed and shared their work via a Dis­cord serv­er named “S.S.” — an abbre­vi­a­tion many news out­lets point­ed to as evi­dence of a poten­tial racial- or fas­cist-lean­ing moti­va­tion for the shoot­ing. “I know a lot of peo­ple online are try­ing to, for some rea­son, link it to the [Nazi] S.S., which it’s not. It’s just an abbre­vi­a­tion. That’s all it is,” Nod­fa­ther said. “We were all just friends mak­ing music togeth­er on the Inter­net. A lot of us are just nerdy kids who grew up play­ing video games and hung out online.”

    Nod­fa­ther, who asked that only his alias be used, claims that the orig­i­nal logo was a “bed and the con­cept of ‘sleepy squad’ being lofi and lofi is full of beats to sleep/study to,” refer­ring to the pop­u­lar meme. “That was the inside joke because we were all ‘sleepy lofi boys.’”

    “I believe it to be 100% a coin­ci­dence,” Brizes adds. “There were a lot of real­ly great peo­ple in that col­lec­tive that would nev­er rock with some­thing like that.”

    ...

    Nod­fa­ther said he and Crimo had drift­ed apart in recent years. In the inter­im, Crimo took up a new hob­by: fash­ion design. The uni­fy­ing image was a strik­ing logo: Four tri­an­gles arranged around a dia­mond in a cross-like shape. “I remem­ber him show­ing me draw­ings and stuff like that — and I was just kind of, like, ‘That’s cool, dude. I’m proud that you’re focus­ing on some­thing,’” he said. Despite feel­ing some relief that his intro­vert­ed friend dis­cov­ered a new way to chan­nel his cre­ativ­i­ty, Nod­fa­ther couldn’t shake the image of Crimo’s logo from his mind. “The logo was what real­ly stood out to me,” he said. “It was weird. It was real­ly fuc king weird.” (It’s worth not­ing that many mod­ern right-wing extrem­ists have often cloaked fas­cist sym­bols in memes, irony and inter­net dou­ble speak, find­ing refuge for their ide­ol­o­gy on forums such as 4chan.)

    ...

    In his scant pub­lic social media post­ings out­side of the Sleepy Squad com­mu­ni­ty, Crimo nev­er explic­it­ly ref­er­enced alliance to any par­tic­u­lar polit­i­cal par­ty or ide­ol­o­gy. Still, as images of him draped in a MAGA flag and attend­ing a Sep­tem­ber 2020 Trump ral­ly out­side of Chica­go spread across the inter­net, social media users won­dered if the grue­some attack was polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed. Oth­ers latched onto the geo­met­ric logo Crimo designed for his cloth­ing line and fre­quent­ly used in his music videos, due to its resem­blance to a sym­bol used by the Finnish far-right fac­tion Suomen Sisu.

    “The pic­tures of him being at the Trump ral­ly — I remem­ber ask­ing him about it because he was not a Trump sup­port­er at all, and it threw me off,” Nod­fa­ther said. “I was like, ‘What the fu ck are you doing there?’ And he was like, ‘Look at my shirt.’ He was wear­ing a Where’s Wal­do shirt. So, he just want­ed to fu ck with peo­ple. He just want­ed to be fun­ny.”
    ...

    Is this all just a case of missed clues? Or some­thing much worse? Let’s hope inves­ti­ga­tors are seri­ous­ly look­ing into how some­one wav­ing this many red flags could ‘slip through the cracks’ like this. It’s all a grim reminder that when soci­ety ignores the grow­ing over­lap between the kind of ‘burn it all down’ nihilism open­ly embraced by Bob­by Crimo and the ‘burn it all down if we don’t get to run every­thing’ main­stream far right ide­ol­o­gy, that should prob­a­bly qual­i­fy as ‘miss­ing a red flag’ being waved right before our eyes. Over and over.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | July 9, 2022, 3:22 pm
  29. It hap­pened again. There was anoth­er attack on the US pow­er grid. This time it was in Moore Coun­ty, North Car­oli­na. Pow­er to near­ly the entire coun­ty went down Sat­ur­day evening. And once again, the attack appears to have been car­ried out by sim­ply inca­pac­i­tat­ing key sub­sta­tions with a rifle. It’s expect­ed to take days to repair the dam­age.

    Recall the Decem­ber 2020 sto­ry about “Oper­a­tion Lights Out”, the white suprema­cist plot to simul­ta­ne­ous­ly take down the pow­er grid across the US by fir­ing high-pow­ered rifles at elec­tri­cal grid pow­er sub­sta­tions. It was a plot eeri­ly rem­i­nis­cent of the mil­i­tary-style attack on the PG&E Met­calf pow­er grid sub­sta­tion in 2013 with a rifle that took place the day after the Boston Marathon bomb­ing and caused a mas­sive strain on the region­al pow­er sup­ply. And it was deter­mined by experts at the time that if mul­ti­ple such an attack was car­ried out simul­ta­ne­ous­ly it could cause a mas­sive region­al black­out.

    That the Met­calf attack sniper was nev­er iden­ti­fied but inves­ti­ga­tors did even­tu­al­ly con­clude that it was like­ly done by an insid­er. And as we’re going to see, author­i­ties have already con­clud­ed that who­ev­er car­ried out this lat­est attack also knew what they were doing.

    While inves­ti­ga­tors are con­fi­dent who­ev­er car­ried out the attack knew what they were doing, their inves­ti­ga­tion appears to have hit a wall, with no group claim­ing cred­it for the attack or any known motive. And yet, as we’re also going to see, there’s actu­al­ly some pret­ty com­pelling cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence for the motive. Because it turns out the pow­er out­age coin­cid­ed with a drag queen show that local far right activists had been aggres­sive­ly protest­ing as part of the grow­ing orga­nized right-wing fix­a­tion with the LGBT com­mu­ni­ty, like the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy’s Project Blitz. Not only were there dozens of pro­test­ers out­side the show at the time, but one of the orga­niz­ers of those protests, Emi­ly Grace Rainey, post­ed on Face­book after the out­age that she knew the cause of it. It also turns out Rainey helped to orga­nized a group who trav­eled to DC for Jan­u­ary 6, 2021, so this was some­one with a his­to­ry of flirt­ing with polit­i­cal extrem­ism mak­ing these claims. Police sub­se­quent­ly spoke with Rainey, who claims to have informed them that God caused the out­age, and they appear to have con­clud­ed she had noth­ing to do with the attack. But it does­n’t sound like the atten­dees of the drag show are sat­is­fied with that inves­ti­ga­tion, and that’s where it stands at this point. Also keep in mind that this is just weeks after the dead­ly mass shoot­ing at Club Q in Col­orado Springs, under­scor­ing the increas­ing­ly vio­lent nature of that far right focus on drag queens being active­ly and aggres­sive­ly cul­ti­vat­ed by right-wing polit­i­cal net­works.

    So we know at least one per­son who knew what they were doing in tak­ing down an entire coun­ty’s pow­er sup­ply is still out there, and inves­ti­ga­tors have no sol­id leads or a motive. As per usu­al, like almost every oth­er attack of this nature:

    The Wash­ing­ton Post

    Gun­shots at sub­sta­tions cut elec­tric­i­ty to 45,000; police seek motive

    Two facil­i­ties in cen­tral North Car­oli­na were dam­aged

    By Marisa Iati, Maham Javaid and Han­nah Allam
    Updat­ed Decem­ber 4, 2022 at 9:08 p.m. EST|Published Decem­ber 4, 2022 at 7:59 p.m. EST

    A per­son or group appeared to inten­tion­al­ly fire mul­ti­ple gun­shots that dam­aged two pow­er sub­sta­tions in cen­tral North Car­oli­na on Sat­ur­day, local law enforce­ment said at a news con­fer­ence Sun­day.

    Fed­er­al and state agen­cies are help­ing local law enforce­ment inves­ti­gate the gun attack, and a state of emer­gency, along with a cur­few from 9 p.m. Sun­day to 5 a.m. Mon­day, has been imposed across Moore Coun­ty, offi­cials said dur­ing the news con­fer­ence.

    The attack ini­tial­ly left rough­ly 45,000 house­holds and busi­ness­es with­out pow­er, Duke Ener­gy said in a state­ment. Rough­ly 35,000 remained with­out pow­er Sun­day night. It may take until Thurs­day to repair the dam­aged equip­ment and restore pow­er across Moore Coun­ty, a spokesper­son for Duke Ener­gy said.

    “The per­son who did this knew what they were doing,” said Moore Coun­ty Sher­iff Ron­nie Fields, who described the attack as delib­er­ate. “It appears they were try­ing to shut down the coun­ty.” Offi­cials do not have a motive or sus­pect.

    Elec­tric­i­ty went out in tens of thou­sands of build­ings in Moore Coun­ty short­ly after 7 p.m. Sat­ur­day. Sun­day evening on Twit­ter, Ener­gy Sec­re­tary Jen­nifer Granholm called the out­age a “seri­ous inci­dent” and said her depart­ment is work­ing with fed­er­al part­ners as the inves­ti­ga­tion con­tin­ues.

    Inves­ti­ga­tors are look­ing into whether the inci­dent is linked to a drag queen show that took place in the town of South­ern Pines that evening, but they have so far not found any con­nec­tion, Fields said.

    Com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers said far-right activists have tried to shut down the event for weeks, the Fayet­teville Observ­er report­ed Fri­day.

    “Recent­ly there’s been a shift in our very small com­mu­ni­ty,” Monique Bak­er, an attendee of the drag show and moth­er to chil­dren from the LGBTQ com­mu­ni­ty, told The Wash­ing­ton Post.

    “It’s kind of scary to think that hate for a drag show could have brought on the attack,” she said. “Espe­cial­ly since the show was so full of love. Hope­ful­ly that isn’t the case.”

    Bak­er and her fam­i­ly have had to move into a friend’s house because their home is with­out pow­er.

    In part­ly rur­al Moore Coun­ty, cell­phone and inter­net ser­vice were large­ly unavail­able. Schools across the coun­ty will be closed Mon­day. Homes with elec­tric­i­ty-pow­ered wells had lim­it­ed water.

    At least one local phar­ma­cy had to store med­i­cine in the refrig­er­a­tor of a res­i­dent with a gen­er­a­tor, Andrew Wilkins, a D.C. res­i­dent vis­it­ing his par­ents in the coun­ty, told The Post.

    Util­i­ty work­ers found evi­dence that “inten­tion­al van­dal­ism” had occurred at two sites, said Fields, the Moore Coun­ty sher­iff. He said the out­age is being inves­ti­gat­ed as crim­i­nal in nature.

    Fields declined to elab­o­rate on how many gun­shots hit each sub­sta­tion or whether there were secu­ri­ty cam­eras that cap­tured the attacks, cit­ing a need to pro­tect the inves­ti­ga­tion.

    ...

    At Sun­rise The­ater in South­ern Pines, drag queen Nao­mi Dix was about to intro­duce a dance duo when the lights went out. At first, this seemed nor­mal, said Dix, who spoke to The Post on the con­di­tion that only her stage name be used because she feared for her safe­ty. The lights were sup­posed to go dark at that point in the “Down­town Divas” drag show. Then Dix’s assis­tant told her that the the­ater had no pow­er.

    Giv­en the hate­ful mes­sages she received in the run-up to the event and duel­ing protests out­side the venue, Dix said, par­tic­i­pants imme­di­ate­ly sus­pect­ed the pow­er out­age could be con­nect­ed to “our opposers.” Dix said her main con­cern was keep­ing the crowd calm and upbeat while orga­niz­ers fig­ured out what was hap­pen­ing.

    So Dix, 31, said she asked the rough­ly 320-mem­ber audi­ence to turn on their cell­phones’ flash­lights. With the devices illu­mi­nat­ing the room, Dix led the crowd in singing “Halo” by Bey­on­cé.

    “Us con­tin­u­ing with the show, even if it was for 45 min­utes, shows that the fight is going to con­tin­ue, and the fight is get­ting stronger,” she recalled telling the audi­ence.

    Con­tro­ver­sy around the “Down­town Divas” show, fea­tur­ing danc­ing and lip-sync­ing, began to pick up steam after a local res­i­dent noticed that the fli­er said stu­dent tick­ets were half-price. Soon, Dix said, Sun­rise was flood­ed with phone calls from peo­ple base­less­ly claim­ing that the the­ater was tar­get­ing young peo­ple for pedophil­ia. Dix said the theater’s deci­sion to change the event to adults only fueled those claims.

    Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Sun­rise did not imme­di­ate­ly respond to mes­sages from The Post on Sun­day.

    As show­time approached Sat­ur­day, con­struc­tion tape split the road out­side the the­ater, with police offi­cers stand­ing in the mid­dle as secu­ri­ty. On one side of the divide, Dix said, were about 40 peo­ple read­ing scrip­ture and call­ing drag artists sin­ners. Rough­ly 80 peo­ple wear­ing pink stood on the oth­er side in sup­port of her and the oth­er per­form­ers.

    Still, noth­ing so far has indi­cat­ed the attack was linked to the per­for­mance, Sher­iff Fields stressed. Author­i­ties are still seek­ing a motive for the inci­dent.

    When asked why the attack occurred in Moore Coun­ty, the sher­iff said: “This is God’s coun­try. I don’t have a clue.”

    ——–

    “Gun­shots at sub­sta­tions cut elec­tric­i­ty to 45,000; police seek motive” By Marisa Iati, Maham Javaid and Han­nah Allam; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 12/04/2022

    ““The per­son who did this knew what they were doing,” said Moore Coun­ty Sher­iff Ron­nie Fields, who described the attack as delib­er­ate. “It appears they were try­ing to shut down the coun­ty.” Offi­cials do not have a motive or sus­pect.”

    Who­ev­er did this knew what they were doing. That’s self-appar­ent from the effec­tive­ness of the attack. The attacks at these two loca­tions man­aged to take down pow­er for near­ly the entire coun­ty. And yet, with no groups tak­ing cred­it, inves­ti­ga­tors appear to be at a loss in terms of sus­pects. This is despite the cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence con­nect­ing the attacks and the start of a drag queen show that had become a focal point for local far right protests. Not only was there a large group of peo­ple out­side the drag show protest­ing it when the attack first hap­pened, but the tim­ing of the attack appears to have aligned with the start of the show:

    ...
    Inves­ti­ga­tors are look­ing into whether the inci­dent is linked to a drag queen show that took place in the town of South­ern Pines that evening, but they have so far not found any con­nec­tion, Fields said.

    Com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers said far-right activists have tried to shut down the event for weeks, the Fayet­teville Observ­er report­ed Fri­day.

    ...

    At Sun­rise The­ater in South­ern Pines, drag queen Nao­mi Dix was about to intro­duce a dance duo when the lights went out. At first, this seemed nor­mal, said Dix, who spoke to The Post on the con­di­tion that only her stage name be used because she feared for her safe­ty. The lights were sup­posed to go dark at that point in the “Down­town Divas” drag show. Then Dix’s assis­tant told her that the the­ater had no pow­er.

    Giv­en the hate­ful mes­sages she received in the run-up to the event and duel­ing protests out­side the venue, Dix said, par­tic­i­pants imme­di­ate­ly sus­pect­ed the pow­er out­age could be con­nect­ed to “our opposers.” Dix said her main con­cern was keep­ing the crowd calm and upbeat while orga­niz­ers fig­ured out what was hap­pen­ing.

    ...

    Con­tro­ver­sy around the “Down­town Divas” show, fea­tur­ing danc­ing and lip-sync­ing, began to pick up steam after a local res­i­dent noticed that the fli­er said stu­dent tick­ets were half-price. Soon, Dix said, Sun­rise was flood­ed with phone calls from peo­ple base­less­ly claim­ing that the the­ater was tar­get­ing young peo­ple for pedophil­ia. Dix said the theater’s deci­sion to change the event to adults only fueled those claims.

    ...

    As show­time approached Sat­ur­day, con­struc­tion tape split the road out­side the the­ater, with police offi­cers stand­ing in the mid­dle as secu­ri­ty. On one side of the divide, Dix said, were about 40 peo­ple read­ing scrip­ture and call­ing drag artists sin­ners. Rough­ly 80 peo­ple wear­ing pink stood on the oth­er side in sup­port of her and the oth­er per­form­ers.

    Still, noth­ing so far has indi­cat­ed the attack was linked to the per­for­mance, Sher­iff Fields stressed. Author­i­ties are still seek­ing a motive for the inci­dent.

    When asked why the attack occurred in Moore Coun­ty, the sher­iff said: “This is God’s coun­try. I don’t have a clue.”
    ...

    So beyond the gen­er­al ques­tions of who was behind this attack, we have to ask whether or not local inves­ti­ga­tors are even tak­ing it seri­ous­ly. And that brings us the fol­low­ing report flesh­ing out the kinds of clues author­i­ties have to work with in this inves­ti­ga­tion. Clues like the social media post­ings by Moore Coun­ty res­i­dent Emi­ly Grace Rainey, a vocal oppo­nent of the drag show who post­ed an invi­ta­tion to the draw show protest ear­li­er that day, and then post­ed on Face­book, “The pow­er is out in Moore Coun­ty and I know why.” It turns out Rainey orga­nized a group of Moore Coun­ty res­i­dents who trav­eled to DC on Jan­u­ary 6, 2021, so she’s not some­one unfa­mil­iar with extreme polit­i­cal acts. But Sher­iff Fields appears to have already con­clud­ed Rainey had no con­nec­tion to the attack. Accord­ing to Rainey, “I told them that God works in mys­te­ri­ous ways and is respon­si­ble for the out­age. I used the oppor­tu­ni­ty to tell them about the immoral drag show and the blas­phemies screamed by its sup­port­ers.” And that was enough to con­vince inves­ti­ga­tors. That’s all part of the dis­turb­ing con­text of this sto­ry: not only does this appear to be the lat­est attempt to ter­ror­ize the LGBT com­mu­ni­ty over the ‘groomer’ drag show hys­te­ria being active­ly cul­ti­vat­ed by pow­er­ful groups like the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy, but it’s not clear that it’s being seri­ous­ly inves­ti­gat­ed. Which sounds like a recipe for more coin­ci­den­tal­ly-time attacks on Moore Coun­ty’s pow­er sup­ply:

    The News & Observ­er

    Pow­er sub­sta­tion attack leaves Moore Coun­ty, NC in the dark. Here’s what we know

    By Martha Quillin, Dan Kane, and Brooke Cain
    This sto­ry was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished Decem­ber 4, 2022 1:44 AM.
    Updat­ed Decem­ber 05, 2022 6:07 PM

    Wide­spread pow­er out­ages caused by van­dal­ism of elec­tri­cal sub­sta­tions in Moore Coun­ty con­tin­ued on Mon­day, with elec­tric­i­ty shut off to thou­sands of res­i­dences and busi­ness­es, and esti­mates for restora­tion of pow­er stretch­ing pos­si­bly into Thurs­day, offi­cials say.

    The out­ages are the result of inten­tion­al dam­age by firearms to two sub­sta­tions in the coun­ty, accord­ing to Moore Coun­ty and Duke Ener­gy offi­cials.

    On Sun­day, Moore Coun­ty Sher­iff Ron­nie Fields called the per­pe­tra­tors “cow­ards” and announced a Sun­day cur­few from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. that will stay in effect for the dura­tion of a coun­ty­wide state of emer­gency procla­ma­tion. The state of emer­gency went into effect at 4 p.m. Sun­day.

    “No group has stepped up to acknowl­edge or accept that they’re the ones who’ve done it, so I call them cow­ards,” Fields said.

    ...

    How did Moore Coun­ty lose pow­er?

    Pow­er out­ages began short­ly after 7 p.m. Sat­ur­day and then spread through­out cen­tral and south­ern Moore Coun­ty, Fields said at Sunday’s press con­fer­ence.

    The first sub­sta­tion went offline between 7 and 8 p.m. Sat­ur­day night, with a sec­ond sub­sta­tion fol­low­ing, con­firmed Jeff Brooks, a spokesman for Duke Ener­gy.

    Duke Ener­gy pro­vides pow­er to near­ly the entire coun­ty. About 45,000 cus­tomers were affect­ed.

    When crews respond­ed, Brooks said they found “inten­tion­al impact on the sub­sta­tion, dam­ag­ing mul­ti­ple pieces of equip­ment in the sub­sta­tion.”

    Fields con­firmed that the dam­age was caused by a firearm. State and local law enforce­ment were called in to pro­vide secu­ri­ty at sub­sta­tions overnight, he said.

    ...

    How many peo­ple in Moore Coun­ty are with­out pow­er?

    As of 3:30 p.m. Mon­day, 32,307 homes and busi­ness­es remained with­out pow­er, accord­ing to the Duke Ener­gy pow­er out­age map.

    * More than 6,000 cus­tomers were with­out pow­er in the Pinehurst/Taylortown area.
    * More than 5,000 were with­out pow­er in the Aberdeen area.
    * More than 8,000 were with­out pow­er in the South­ern Pines area/Manly
    * More than 4,000 were with­out pow­er in the Whis­per­ing Pines

    Duke crews have been able to repair some of the dam­aged equip­ment and get pow­er flow­ing back through some local lines from the sub­sta­tions, said com­pa­ny spokesman Jeff Brooks. The com­pa­ny was able to restore pow­er to about 7,000 cus­tomers late Sun­day, Brooks said.

    How long will repairs take?

    Duke has all of the equip­ment it needs to ful­ly restore the sub­sta­tions, Brooks said. But get­ting some of the larg­er pieces to Moore Coun­ty, installed and func­tion­ing, will take days.

    Brooks said there might be ways to par­tial­ly restore some cus­tomers through tem­po­rary tech­nolo­gies.

    ”We’re hope­ful we can find some solu­tions that may help us find some par­tial restora­tions, but we can’t promise that,” he said.

    But in many cas­es, Duke Ener­gy equip­ment will have to be replaced, Brooks said Sun­day, and that’s what will take the longest.

    The com­pa­ny is “pur­su­ing mul­ti­ple paths of restora­tion” to restore as many cus­tomers as quick­ly as pos­si­ble.

    ”We’re look­ing at a pret­ty sophis­ti­cat­ed repair with some pret­ty large equip­ment, so we do want cit­i­zens to be pre­pared that this will be a mul­ti-day restora­tion for most cus­tomers extend­ing poten­tial­ly as long as Thurs­day,” he said.

    What were the outage’s effects?

    Mike Cameron, South­ern Pines’ assis­tant town man­ag­er and fire chief, said the pow­er out­age caused sev­er­al acci­dents, includ­ing a four-vehi­cle wreck at the inter­sec­tion of Mor­gan­ton Road and U.S. 15–501 in South­ern Pines that sent four peo­ple to the hos­pi­tal with minor injuries.

    “The car wreck was total­ly because the stop lights were out,” he said, adding that the NCDOT has since been putting up tem­po­rary stop signs to help with traf­fic nav­i­ga­tion.

    Fire­fight­ers were also busy respond­ing to res­i­dents con­cerned about how the out­age would affect vital med­ical equip­ment, while police respond­ed to trig­gered alarms and reports of break-ins, Cameron said.

    What about crit­i­cal care and health ser­vices?

    * The out­age hit FirstHealth Moore Region­al Hos­pi­tal in Pine­hurst, which switched to gen­er­a­tor pow­er. A hos­pi­tal spokes­woman in a mes­sage to staff said the out­age did not affect patients.

    * “The Moore cam­pus is safe­ly oper­at­ing on back­up gen­er­a­tor pow­er and we have not expe­ri­enced any issues or con­cerns,” Gretchen Kel­ly said. Kel­ly told The N&O on Sun­day that the hos­pi­tal has enough fuel on hand for sev­er­al days for gen­er­a­tor pow­er and plans in place to obtain more fuel as need­ed.

    * The Clara McLean House, a hos­pi­tal­i­ty house on the hospital’s cam­pus, is also run­ning on gen­er­a­tor pow­er.

    * FirstHealth is work­ing with local phar­ma­cies and med­ical device com­pa­nies to pro­vide sup­port and resources for res­i­dents depen­dent on med­ical devices or who require oxy­gen, Kel­ly said.

    * Moore County’s trans­porta­tion ser­vices are oper­at­ing only for clients who have sched­uled dial­y­sis, chemother­a­py and radi­a­tion treat­ment, the coun­ty web­site says.

    * Fire, police, water and sew­er ser­vices are all oper­at­ing on gen­er­a­tors, he said.

    What offi­cials are say­ing about the attack, pos­si­ble charges

    Fields stressed that Saturday’s attack was “tar­get­ed,” and that “the per­sons who did this knew exact­ly what they were doing.”

    Fields said that con­sid­er­ing state and fed­er­al involve­ment and the “mil­lions of dol­lars” of dam­age done to Duke Ener­gy prop­er­ty, charges will have “more teeth, more bite,” and will be “exten­sive.”

    But the dam­age has also been done to the cit­i­zens of Moore Coun­ty and its busi­ness­es, which are just start­ing to recov­er from COVID loss­es, Fields said. “This is gonna hurt.”

    Answer­ing a ques­tion about whether the attack ris­es to the lev­el of domes­tic ter­ror­ism, Fields deferred to the judg­ment of fed­er­al offi­cials assist­ing in the inves­ti­ga­tion.

    At a press con­fer­ence Mon­day, Fields said any­one with pos­si­ble tips relat­ed to the crime should call 910–947-4444.

    Where is Moore Coun­ty, NC?

    Moore Coun­ty cov­ers about 706 square miles in the small but geo­log­i­cal­ly dis­tinc­tive region of North Car­oli­na known as the Sand­hills, about 60 miles south­west of Raleigh.

    It is a retire­ment des­ti­na­tion and is per­haps best known for its golf cours­es in South­ern Pines and Pine­hurst. It’s also known for hav­ing good med­ical facil­i­ties.

    Golfers have come from all over the world to play at Pine­hurst Resort, and the resort has host­ed three U.S. Open cham­pi­onships, one U.S. Women’s Open, the U.S. Ama­teur Cham­pi­onships, a PGA Cham­pi­onship and the Ryder Cup. The U.S. Open will return to Pine­hurst in June 2024.

    The coun­ty also is home to many mil­i­tary and civil­ian work­ers at U.S. Army Base Fort Bragg in neigh­bor­ing Cum­ber­land Coun­ty, home to the 82nd Air­borne and Spe­cial Oper­a­tions.

    Is there a con­nec­tion to a drag show and pro­test­ers?

    Fields said they have not been able to make a con­nec­tion to a Sat­ur­day night drag queen show at Sun­rise The­ater in down­town South­ern Pines after state and fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tors looked into the rumor that start­ed online.

    Ear­li­er in the day Sat­ur­day, pro­test­ers had gath­ered out­side the the­ater, upset about a drag show planned for the small venue lat­er that night.

    The drag show start­ed at 7 p.m. and was under­way when the pow­er went out.

    Emi­ly Grace Rainey, an out­spo­ken oppo­nent of the drag show, post­ed an invi­ta­tion on her Face­book page to the protest at the the­ater. After the lights went out, Rainey, who became known in Moore Coun­ty dur­ing the pan­dem­ic for her oppo­si­tion to mask man­dates, post­ed on Face­book that, “The pow­er is out in Moore Coun­ty and I know why.”

    With­out nam­ing her, Fields indi­cat­ed in Sunday’s press con­fer­ence that the infor­ma­tion Rainey post­ed online was “false.” He said offi­cers “had to go and inter­view this young lady and have a word of prayer with her, but it turned out to be noth­ing.”

    Fields con­firmed on Face­book that the Moore Coun­ty Sheriff’s Office had come to her house to ask about the out­age. “I wel­comed them to my home,” wrote Rainey, who orga­nized a group of Moore Coun­ty res­i­dents to trav­el to Wash­ing­ton on Jan­u­ary 6, 2021. “Sor­ry they wast­ed their time. I told them that God works in mys­te­ri­ous ways and is respon­si­ble for the out­age. I used the oppor­tu­ni­ty to tell them about the immoral drag show and the blas­phemies screamed by its sup­port­ers.”

    Rainey said, “I told them God is chastis­ing Moore Coun­ty, thanked them for com­ing, and wished them a good night. Thank­ful for the LEOs ser­vice, as always.”

    Head­lin­er Nao­mi Dix of Durham kept the show going until almost 9 p.m.

    “I asked that every­one turn on their phone flash­lights to illu­mi­nate the room,” Dix said. “I then led the crowd in singing Beyoncé’s ‘Halo.’”

    Adri­enne Wood and Phoenix Rashash, two friends who were at the drag show, attend­ed the sheriff’s news con­fer­ence. They said law enforce­ment needs to take a hard look at the tim­ing of the out­age, which hap­pened just as the show was get­ting under­way.

    “You don’t go shoot­ing up pow­er sta­tions just for fun,” said Rashash, who works for the the­ater.

    ———-

    “Pow­er sub­sta­tion attack leaves Moore Coun­ty, NC in the dark. Here’s what we know” By Martha Quillin, Dan Kane, and Brooke Cain; The News & Observ­er; 12/04/2022.

    “”We’re look­ing at a pret­ty sophis­ti­cat­ed repair with some pret­ty large equip­ment, so we do want cit­i­zens to be pre­pared that this will be a mul­ti-day restora­tion for most cus­tomers extend­ing poten­tial­ly as long as Thurs­day,” he said.”

    This was­n’t a minor dis­rup­tion. It’s a mul­ti-day restora­tion process involv­ing the replace­ment of large pieces of equip­ment. Which, again, hints at sophis­ti­cat­ed actors who knew what they were doing and have the abil­i­ty to do it again. So it’s worth not­ing how Moore Coun­ty, home of many civil­ian and mil­i­tary work­ers at Fort Bragg, does­n’t have a short­age of peo­ple with the kinds of back­grounds and skills need­ed to pull off some­thing like that:

    ...
    Moore Coun­ty cov­ers about 706 square miles in the small but geo­log­i­cal­ly dis­tinc­tive region of North Car­oli­na known as the Sand­hills, about 60 miles south­west of Raleigh.

    It is a retire­ment des­ti­na­tion and is per­haps best known for its golf cours­es in South­ern Pines and Pine­hurst. It’s also known for hav­ing good med­ical facil­i­ties.

    Golfers have come from all over the world to play at Pine­hurst Resort, and the resort has host­ed three U.S. Open cham­pi­onships, one U.S. Women’s Open, the U.S. Ama­teur Cham­pi­onships, a PGA Cham­pi­onship and the Ryder Cup. The U.S. Open will return to Pine­hurst in June 2024.

    The coun­ty also is home to many mil­i­tary and civil­ian work­ers at U.S. Army Base Fort Bragg in neigh­bor­ing Cum­ber­land Coun­ty, home to the 82nd Air­borne and Spe­cial Oper­a­tions.
    ...

    And just as there’s on short­age of peo­ple with the skills need­ed to pull of this attack, there’s also no short­age of peo­ple like Emi­ly Grace Rainey with a grudge against that drag show. And yet it does­n’t look like inves­ti­ga­tors are seri­ous­ly look­ing into that pos­si­bil­i­ty:

    ...
    Fields said they have not been able to make a con­nec­tion to a Sat­ur­day night drag queen show at Sun­rise The­ater in down­town South­ern Pines after state and fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tors looked into the rumor that start­ed online.

    Ear­li­er in the day Sat­ur­day, pro­test­ers had gath­ered out­side the the­ater, upset about a drag show planned for the small venue lat­er that night.

    The drag show start­ed at 7 p.m. and was under­way when the pow­er went out.

    Emi­ly Grace Rainey, an out­spo­ken oppo­nent of the drag show, post­ed an invi­ta­tion on her Face­book page to the protest at the the­ater. After the lights went out, Rainey, who became known in Moore Coun­ty dur­ing the pan­dem­ic for her oppo­si­tion to mask man­dates, post­ed on Face­book that, “The pow­er is out in Moore Coun­ty and I know why.”

    With­out nam­ing her, Fields indi­cat­ed in Sunday’s press con­fer­ence that the infor­ma­tion Rainey post­ed online was “false.” He said offi­cers “had to go and inter­view this young lady and have a word of prayer with her, but it turned out to be noth­ing.”

    Fields con­firmed on Face­book that the Moore Coun­ty Sheriff’s Office had come to her house to ask about the out­age. “I wel­comed them to my home,” wrote Rainey, who orga­nized a group of Moore Coun­ty res­i­dents to trav­el to Wash­ing­ton on Jan­u­ary 6, 2021. “Sor­ry they wast­ed their time. I told them that God works in mys­te­ri­ous ways and is respon­si­ble for the out­age. I used the oppor­tu­ni­ty to tell them about the immoral drag show and the blas­phemies screamed by its sup­port­ers.”

    Rainey said, “I told them God is chastis­ing Moore Coun­ty, thanked them for com­ing, and wished them a good night. Thank­ful for the LEOs ser­vice, as always.”

    ...

    Adri­enne Wood and Phoenix Rashash, two friends who were at the drag show, attend­ed the sheriff’s news con­fer­ence. They said law enforce­ment needs to take a hard look at the tim­ing of the out­age, which hap­pened just as the show was get­ting under­way.

    “You don’t go shoot­ing up pow­er sta­tions just for fun,” said Rashash, who works for the the­ater.
    ...

    It does­n’t sound like the drag show atten­dees are sat­is­fied with the inves­ti­ga­tion so far and it’s not hard to see why. This sure looks like an attack direct­ed at the Moore Coun­ty LGBT com­mu­ni­ty, but it’s not clear local law enforce­ment is tak­ing that seri­ous­ly. But, of course, this was­n’t just an attack on the local LGBT com­mu­ni­ty even if they were the intend­ed tar­gets. The whole coun­ty was attacked. That’s part of what’s going to be grim­ly inter­est­ing to see play out: who will the Moore Coun­ty res­i­dents ulti­mate­ly blame for this dis­rup­tion in their lives? The appar­ent anti-LGBT big­ots who appar­ent­ly hate drag queens so much that they blacked out the whole coun­ty to pre­vent that show? Or blame the drag queens for incit­ing God’s wrath? It’s pret­ty clear who Emi­ly Grace Rainey and her fel­low trav­el­ers want the pub­lic to blame. We’ll see if she suc­ceeds, like­ly in the form of more unsolved attacks to come that are some­how blamed on God’s hatred of drag queens.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | December 5, 2022, 5:44 pm
  30. Either some­one is get­ting a lot of prac­tice tak­ing down the pow­er grid or a lot peo­ple are get­ting at least some prac­tice. Because sto­ries about phys­i­cal attacks on parts of the US pow­er grid are becom­ing increas­ing­ly com­mon events in the US, punc­tu­at­ed with a quadru­ple attack on Taco­ma’s pow­er sub­sta­tions on Christ­mas morn­ing result­ing in fires that caused sub­stan­tial dam­age. Mak­ing that the lat­est grid attack in the US Pacif­ic North­west in the last cou­ple of months. As we’re going to see, the Moore Coun­ty, NC, grid attack a few weeks ago was pre­ced­ed by at least six attacks in Ore­gon and Wash­ing­ton in the lat­ter half of Novem­ber. Two of those attacks were done with firearms, one in Wash­ing­ton and one in Ore­gon. So a vari­ety of meth­ods — some with firearms, some with­out, all effec­tive appar­ent­ly — were being test­ed out by a still unknown par­ties in the region a month before the quadru­ple Christ­mas Day attack in Taco­ma.

    It’s a dis­turb­ing trend, punc­tu­at­ed by a per­sis­tent lack of sus­pects. It’s hard to imag­ine they aren’t going to keep strik­ing. And with all the expe­ri­ence they’re get­ting, it’s hard to imag­ine they won’t be deliv­er­ing more and more effec­tive strikes.

    And as the third arti­cle below describes, neo-Nazis and accel­er­a­tionists have been cheer­ing on the attacks and post­ing details instruc­tions on how to car­ry out more, along with tips on where to strike next. So while we may not have sol­id sus­pects, we can pret­ty rea­son sus­pect the peo­ple behind the Taco­ma Christ­mas Day grid attack are at least aligned with the peo­ple who have been behind so many of the oth­er grid attacks in recent years. Who are prob­a­bly Nazis and fel­low trav­el­ers as usu­al.

    Ok, first, here’s a report on the quadru­ple Taco­ma attacks and note how all four attacks involved fires that cause sub­stan­tial dam­age:

    CBS News

    Four pow­er sub­sta­tions van­dal­ized in Wash­ing­ton, knock­ing out pow­er for at least 14,000

    By Jor­dan Freiman
    Updat­ed on: Decem­ber 26, 2022 / 2:32 PM

    Four pow­er sub­sta­tions in the Taco­ma, Wash­ing­ton, area were van­dal­ized Sun­day, knock­ing out pow­er to more than 14,000 cus­tomers, police said. 

    The first sub­sta­tion, locat­ed in Spanaway, Wash­ing­ton, and belong­ing to Taco­ma Pub­lic Util­i­ties, was attacked around 5:30 a.m. local time, accord­ing to the Pierce Coun­ty Sher­if­f’s Depart­ment. Noth­ing was stolen, but equip­ment was van­dal­ized, lead­ing to out­ages in the area, police said.

    A sec­ond near­by TPU sub­sta­tion was also van­dal­ized, police said.

    A sub­sta­tion belong­ing to Puget Sound Ener­gy was also van­dal­ized some­time in the ear­ly morn­ing, police said. Pow­er went around 2:30 a.m. local time. Police were noti­fied around 11:30 a.m., and when they arrived on the scene, they found “the fenced area was bro­ken into and the equip­ment van­dal­ized,” sim­i­lar to the oth­er two sub­sta­tions.

    Lat­er, just before 7:30 p.m. on Sun­day evening, anoth­er fire was report­ed at a fourth sub­sta­tion oper­at­ed by Puget Sound Ener­gy, accord­ing to the Pierce Coun­ty Sher­if­f’s Depart­ment. Emer­gency response crews that includ­ed fire­fight­ers and Puget Sound Ener­gy employ­ees were dis­patched to the scene, where the fire was extin­guished and the sub­sta­tion was deemed secured, the sher­if­f’s depart­ment said in a state­ment.

    Like the three local van­dal­ism inci­dents that pre­ced­ed it, author­i­ties said a blaze broke out at the fourth sub­sta­tion after “suspect(s) gained access to the fenced area and van­dal­ized the equip­ment which caused the fire.” Pow­er was cut to homes in two sur­round­ing neigh­bor­hoods, Kapowsin and Gra­ham — the lat­ter of which has a pop­u­la­tion of rough­ly 32,000 — although police did not spec­i­fy exact­ly how many out­ages occurred and said pow­er had been restored to most affect­ed homes by mid­night.

    ...

    No sus­pects are in cus­tody and it was not imme­di­ate­ly clear if all three sub­sta­tions were van­dal­ized by the same per­son or peo­ple or if the attacks are relat­ed.

    ...

    The three inci­dents come less than a month after some­one opened fire on a sub­sta­tion in North Car­oli­na, knock­ing out pow­er to some 45,000 peo­ple. The “delib­er­ate” attack raised con­cerns about the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of the U.S. pow­er grid to sab­o­tage, as many sub­sta­tions are pro­tect­ed by lit­tle more than chain­link fences.

    ———–

    “Four pow­er sub­sta­tions van­dal­ized in Wash­ing­ton, knock­ing out pow­er for at least 14,000” by Jor­dan Freiman; CBS News; 12/26/2022

    Like the three local van­dal­ism inci­dents that pre­ced­ed it, author­i­ties said a blaze broke out at the fourth sub­sta­tion after “suspect(s) gained access to the fenced area and van­dal­ized the equip­ment which caused the fire.” Pow­er was cut to homes in two sur­round­ing neigh­bor­hoods, Kapowsin and Gra­ham — the lat­ter of which has a pop­u­la­tion of rough­ly 32,000 — although police did not spec­i­fy exact­ly how many out­ages occurred and said pow­er had been restored to most affect­ed homes by mid­night.”

    Four Christ­mas morn­ing sub­sta­tion break-ins and blazes for Taco­ma by peo­ple who clear­ly knew what to do to cause a lot of dam­age. Some­one waged a ‘War on Christ­mas’ in Taco­ma and won. With no sus­pects, as usu­al with these types of crimes. Includ­ing the six oth­er attacks on elec­tri­cal pow­er sites in the Pacif­ic North­west since in the lat­ter half of Novem­ber. The Moore Coun­ty, NC, attack isn’t the only con­text here. There’s far more local con­text. As the fol­low­ing arti­cle describes, two of those six attacks were eeri­ly sim­i­lar to the Moore Coun­ty attack in how they involved the use of firearms to strate­gi­cal­ly inflict major dam­age on the grid. But it’s a com­plete lack of sus­pects that unites all of these attacks at the same time they appear to be accel­er­at­ing:

    Ore­gon Pub­lic Broad­cast­ing

    String of elec­tri­cal grid attacks in Pacif­ic North­west is unsolved

    Emails obtained by OPB and KUOW show that at least six elec­tric sub­sta­tions in the region have been attacked, at least two by peo­ple with firearms\

    By Con­rad Wil­son (OPB) and John Ryan (KUOW)
    Dec. 8, 2022 7:35 a.m. Updat­ed: Dec. 8, 2022 6:06 p.m.

    The elec­tri­cal grid has been phys­i­cal­ly attacked at least six times in Ore­gon and West­ern Wash­ing­ton since mid-Novem­ber, caus­ing grow­ing alarm for law enforce­ment as well as util­i­ties respon­si­ble for parts of the region’s crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture.

    Accord­ing to infor­ma­tion obtained by Ore­gon Pub­lic Broad­cast­ing and KUOW Pub­lic Radio, at least two of the inci­dents bear sim­i­lar­i­ties to the attacks on sub­sta­tions in North Car­oli­na on Sat­ur­day that left thou­sands of peo­ple with­out elec­tric­i­ty for days.

    Port­land Gen­er­al Elec­tric, the Bon­neville Pow­er Admin­is­tra­tion, Cowlitz Coun­ty Pub­lic Util­i­ty Dis­trict and Puget Sound Ener­gy have con­firmed a total of six sep­a­rate attacks on elec­tri­cal sub­sta­tions they man­age in Ore­gon and Wash­ing­ton. Attack­ers used firearms in at least some of the inci­dents in both states, and some pow­er cus­tomers in Ore­gon and Wash­ing­ton expe­ri­enced at least brief ser­vice dis­rup­tion as a result of the attacks.

    All four util­i­ties stat­ed they were coop­er­at­ing with the Fed­er­al Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion. The FBI declined to con­firm whether it was inves­ti­gat­ing.

    ...

    After the attacks on sub­sta­tions in Ore­gon and Wash­ing­ton, the FBI and Oregon’s Titan Fusion Cen­ter issued a memo on Dec. 2 that warned util­i­ties about the recent attacks. The fusion cen­ter gath­ers intel­li­gence to inves­ti­gate and pre­vent acts of ter­ror­ism.

    The next day, two sub­sta­tions in North Car­oli­na were dam­aged by gun­fire, cut­ting elec­tric­i­ty for days to tens of thou­sands of peo­ple.

    Elec­tri­cal sub­sta­tions are com­pli­cat­ed and poten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous parts of the elec­tri­cal grid that keep the nation’s lights on. Sub­sta­tions con­vert high-volt­age elec­tric­i­ty that trav­els across long-dis­tance trans­mis­sion lines to the low­er volt­ages used by busi­ness­es and res­i­dences.

    The Bon­neville Pow­er Admin­is­tra­tion, a fed­er­al agency that mar­kets hydropow­er through­out the Pacif­ic North­west and owns 15,000 miles of trans­mis­sion line and 200 sub­sta­tions, had con­firmed at least one inci­dent by Wednes­day evening. The agency called it a “delib­er­ate phys­i­cal attack” that dam­aged a sub­sta­tion in Clacka­mas Coun­ty, Ore­gon, ear­ly on Thanks­giv­ing morn­ing.

    Ore­gon Pub­lic Broad­cast­ing and KUOW obtained an email writ­ten by a secu­ri­ty spe­cial­ist with the Bon­neville Pow­er Admin­is­tra­tion that details that attack. OPB is with­hold­ing the spe­cial­ists’ name at the request of Bon­neville Pow­er due to their con­cerns about the specialist’s safe­ty. Two peo­ple cut through the fence sur­round­ing a high-volt­age sub­sta­tion, then “used firearms to shoot up and dis­able numer­ous pieces of equip­ment and cause sig­nif­i­cant dam­age,” the secu­ri­ty spe­cial­ist wrote.

    The memo also ref­er­enced “sev­er­al attacks on var­i­ous sub­sta­tions,” recent­ly, in West­ern Wash­ing­ton, “includ­ing set­ting the con­trol hous­es on fire, forced entry and sab­o­tage of intri­cate elec­tri­cal con­trol sys­tems, caus­ing short cir­cuits by toss­ing chains across the over­head bus­work, and bal­lis­tic attack with small cal­iber firearms.”

    (“Bus­work” is a term for the maze of wires and switch­es that hum over­head at a sub­sta­tion.)

    The secu­ri­ty spe­cial­ist stat­ed that online extrem­ist groups are call­ing for the attacks and pro­vid­ing instruc­tions on how to do it.

    “There has been a sig­nif­i­cant uptick in inci­dents of break-ins relat­ed to cop­per and tool or mate­ri­als theft, but now we are deal­ing with quick­ly esca­lat­ing inci­dents of sab­o­tage,” the email reads.

    A spokesper­son for Puget Sound Ener­gy, the largest util­i­ty in Wash­ing­ton, con­firmed two inci­dents in late Novem­ber at two of its sub­sta­tions. Spokesper­son Ger­ald Tra­cy declined to pro­vide loca­tions or any oth­er details, cit­ing an ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tion by the FBI.

    ...

    Cowlitz Coun­ty Pub­lic Util­i­ty Dis­trict spokesper­son Alice Dietz said van­dals cut fences and dam­aged elec­tri­cal equip­ment at two sub­sta­tions near Wood­land, Wash­ing­ton, about 20 miles north of Port­land, in mid-Novem­ber, caus­ing a brief pow­er out­age. Dietz declined to pro­vide fur­ther details.

    In Ore­gon, a spokesper­son for Port­land Gen­er­al Elec­tric con­firmed an attack on a sub­sta­tion “in the Clacka­mas area that occurred in late Novem­ber 2022.” The util­i­ty declined to pro­vide specifics of exact­ly when the inci­dent occurred and what tran­spired.

    Records obtained by Ore­gon Pub­lic Broad­cast­ing and KUOW indi­cate the inci­dent dis­rupt­ed elec­tric­i­ty in some areas of Clacka­mas Coun­ty, knock­ing some of the county’s com­put­er sys­tems offline. Records show the inci­dent occurred on Nov. 28, four days after the Bon­neville Pow­er Admin­is­tra­tion facil­i­ty, also in Clacka­mas Coun­ty, was dam­aged.

    “Our teams have assessed the dam­age and begun repair to the impact­ed facil­i­ties,” Port­land Gen­er­al Electric’s Alli­son Dob­scha said in a state­ment Wednes­day.

    Seat­tle City Light, the sole pow­er provider for the Northwest’s largest city, said it had not expe­ri­enced any attacks.

    ...

    After that inci­dent, News­Na­tion report­ed that a fed­er­al bul­letin had warned of attacks on pow­er facil­i­ties, not­ing reports from util­i­ties in Ore­gon and Wash­ing­ton.

    ———-

    “String of elec­tri­cal grid attacks in Pacif­ic North­west is unsolved” By Con­rad Wil­son and John Ryan; Ore­gon Pub­lic Broad­cast­ing; 12/08/2022

    “Port­land Gen­er­al Elec­tric, the Bon­neville Pow­er Admin­is­tra­tion, Cowlitz Coun­ty Pub­lic Util­i­ty Dis­trict and Puget Sound Ener­gy have con­firmed a total of six sep­a­rate attacks on elec­tri­cal sub­sta­tions they man­age in Ore­gon and Wash­ing­ton. Attack­ers used firearms in at least some of the inci­dents in both states, and some pow­er cus­tomers in Ore­gon and Wash­ing­ton expe­ri­enced at least brief ser­vice dis­rup­tion as a result of the attacks.”

    Six sep­a­rate attacks on the pow­er grid in Ore­gon and Wash­ing­ton since mid-Novem­ber. And the day after the FBI issues a memo to util­i­ties warn­ing of attacks, the Moore Coun­ty, NC, attack takes place. It’s some pret­ty alarm­ing con­text to that still unsolved Moore Coun­ty attack. At least two of those six inci­dents involve firearms, one in each state, and one thing all of these attacks have in com­mon is no sus­pect:

    ...
    Accord­ing to infor­ma­tion obtained by Ore­gon Pub­lic Broad­cast­ing and KUOW Pub­lic Radio, at least two of the inci­dents bear sim­i­lar­i­ties to the attacks on sub­sta­tions in North Car­oli­na on Sat­ur­day that left thou­sands of peo­ple with­out elec­tric­i­ty for days.

    ...

    After the attacks on sub­sta­tions in Ore­gon and Wash­ing­ton, the FBI and Oregon’s Titan Fusion Cen­ter issued a memo on Dec. 2 that warned util­i­ties about the recent attacks. The fusion cen­ter gath­ers intel­li­gence to inves­ti­gate and pre­vent acts of ter­ror­ism.

    The next day, two sub­sta­tions in North Car­oli­na were dam­aged by gun­fire, cut­ting elec­tric­i­ty for days to tens of thou­sands of peo­ple.
    ...

    And as the secu­ri­ty spe­cial­ist inves­ti­gat­ing the Bon­neville Pow­er Admin­is­tra­tion attack reminds us his memo, extrem­ist groups have not just been call­ing for attacks on the grid but post­ing instruc­tions:

    ...
    Ore­gon Pub­lic Broad­cast­ing and KUOW obtained an email writ­ten by a secu­ri­ty spe­cial­ist with the Bon­neville Pow­er Admin­is­tra­tion that details that attack. OPB is with­hold­ing the spe­cial­ists’ name at the request of Bon­neville Pow­er due to their con­cerns about the specialist’s safe­ty. Two peo­ple cut through the fence sur­round­ing a high-volt­age sub­sta­tion, then “used firearms to shoot up and dis­able numer­ous pieces of equip­ment and cause sig­nif­i­cant dam­age,” the secu­ri­ty spe­cial­ist wrote.

    The memo also ref­er­enced “sev­er­al attacks on var­i­ous sub­sta­tions,” recent­ly, in West­ern Wash­ing­ton, “includ­ing set­ting the con­trol hous­es on fire, forced entry and sab­o­tage of intri­cate elec­tri­cal con­trol sys­tems, caus­ing short cir­cuits by toss­ing chains across the over­head bus­work, and bal­lis­tic attack with small cal­iber firearms.”

    (“Bus­work” is a term for the maze of wires and switch­es that hum over­head at a sub­sta­tion.)

    The secu­ri­ty spe­cial­ist stat­ed that online extrem­ist groups are call­ing for the attacks and pro­vid­ing instruc­tions on how to do it.

    “There has been a sig­nif­i­cant uptick in inci­dents of break-ins relat­ed to cop­per and tool or mate­ri­als theft, but now we are deal­ing with quick­ly esca­lat­ing inci­dents of sab­o­tage,” the email reads.
    ...

    Is this the same group run­ning around com­mit­ting all these attacks? Or a bunch of dif­fer­ent attack­ers fol­low­ing the same instruc­tions? We don’t know because no one is ever caught. But as the fol­low­ing Newsweek piece reminds us, group that mon­i­tor extrem­ists have been warn­ing about the enthu­si­as­tic pro­mo­tion of attacks on the grid by neo-Nazis and accel­er­a­tionists with online man­u­als on how to do it and sug­gest­ed tar­gets. So while the com­plete lack of sus­pects means we don’t know whether or not this lat­est wave of pow­er grid attacks was the hand­i­work of some sort of ‘lone wolves’ who fol­low this extrem­ist con­tent, they’re the obvi­ous sus­pects at this point:

    Newsweek

    Neo-Nazis Say Attack Leav­ing 40,000 Amer­i­cans in Dark Is Only the Begin­ning

    By Tom O’Con­nor AND Naveed Jamali
    On 12/8/22 at 5:00 AM EST

    Amid a long-run­ning cam­paign by far-right com­mu­ni­ties threat­en­ing to attack the nation’s pow­er grid, domes­tic extrem­ists cheered when two still unat­trib­uted shoot­ings at North Car­oli­na sub­sta­tions plunged tens of thou­sands of peo­ple into dark­ness.

    Beyond cel­e­bra­tion, how­ev­er, their com­ments called for more, big­ger attacks tar­get­ing crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture on U.S. soil. Experts told Newsweek that the attack in Moore Coun­ty, North Car­oli­na, as well as in sim­i­lar pre­vi­ous attacks across the coun­try, may only be the start of a more destruc­tive cam­paign.

    Pri­or to Sat­ur­day’s attacks and in the lead­up to the midterm elec­tion, Newsweek obtained doc­u­ments demon­strat­ing dozens of instances of rad­i­cal groups and indi­vid­u­als shar­ing threats online against crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture sites across the nation, along with mate­ri­als designed to advance such plots. Now, two new reports show how far-right com­mu­ni­ties, includ­ing neo-Nazis, react­ed to the most recent sab­o­tage.

    The Moore Coun­ty Sher­if­f’s Office has yet to estab­lish a per­pe­tra­tor or motive in the Decem­ber 3 attack, but ini­tial sus­pi­cion has cen­tered on right-wing back­lash toward a drag show set to be held that same day at the Sun­rise The­ater in the town of South­ern Pines.

    That event inspired protests involv­ing armed indi­vid­u­als clad in mil­i­tary gear and the par­tic­i­pa­tion of groups such as Moore Coun­ty Cit­i­zens for Free­dom, whose direc­tor, for­mer U.S. Army psy­cho­log­i­cal oper­a­tions offi­cer Emi­ly Grace Rainey, was ques­tioned by the Moore Coun­ty Sher­if­f’s Office after the attack.

    Rainey, who was impli­cat­ed in the Jan­u­ary 6, 2021 storm­ing of the Capi­tol by pro-Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump crowds seek­ing to over­turn the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, attrib­uted the sub­sta­tion shoot­ings to “God,” whom she said was “chastis­ing Moore Coun­ty” over the drag show.

    Far-right chat­ter also drew a con­nec­tion between the attacks and the drag show, which was ulti­mate­ly held in spite of its detrac­tors. One neo-Nazi Telegram post laden with slurs against the LGBT+ com­mu­ni­ty and shared with Newsweek by the SITE Intel­li­gence Group cel­e­brat­ed the “mag­nif­i­cent act of sab­o­tage” as a “beau­ti­ful esca­la­tion” in a broad­er cul­ture war.

    Anoth­er neo-Nazi pub­li­ca­tion warned that “these attacks will only con­tin­ue” unless such events are not held. A num­ber of posts on mes­sage board 4Chan described spe­cif­ic tac­tics to cause fur­ther dam­age to the pow­er grid, and oth­ers pro­posed con­duct­ing sim­i­lar actions in larg­er cities such as New York and Wash­ing­ton, D.C. because they “are not major­i­ty white.”

    Rita Katz, founder and exec­u­tive direc­tor of the SITE Intel­li­gence Group, told Newsweek that the Moore Coun­ty attack is con­sis­tent with the neo-Nazi mes­sag­ing pro­mul­gat­ed online.

    “The sab­o­tage against the North Car­oli­na sub­sta­tion aligns per­fect­ly with direc­tives and meth­ods seen in accel­er­a­tionist neo-Nazi com­mu­ni­ties,” she said, “which we at SITE have exhaus­tive­ly report­ed on.”

    “If this was indeed a far-right ter­ror­ist attack, my wor­ry is that it will serve as a proof of con­cept for oth­er far-right extrem­ists,” Katz explained. “Imme­di­ate­ly after the reports about the attacks, we at SITE saw such com­mu­ni­ties praise what hap­pened in North Car­oli­na and call for more, while shar­ing more direc­tives about what to tar­get and how to do so. Some have specif­i­cal­ly sug­gest­ed large cities.

    But Katz, who recent­ly authored the book “Saints and Sol­diers: Inside Inter­net-Age Ter­ror­ism, From Syr­ia to the Capi­tol Siege” on the threat posed by sabo­teurs to dig­i­tal infra­struc­ture, explained how tar­get­ing infra­struc­ture as “a key objec­tive for accel­er­a­tionist neo-Nazis, who care less about any dis­tinct out­come and far more about sow­ing any kind of chaos.”

    “It is these com­mu­ni­ties that have inspired mass shoot­ers all over the world,” she stat­ed. “Thus, if this act of sab­o­tage was indeed inspired by these com­mu­ni­ties, it is yet more proof how dan­ger­ous these online spaces are, as I described in my recent book on Inter­net-age ter­ror­ism.”

    A sec­ond report shared with Newsweek by the Mid­dle East Media Research Insti­tute’s (MEMRI) Domes­tic Ter­ror­ism Threat Mon­i­tor (DTTM) fea­tured a neo-Nazi col­lec­tive on Telegram call­ing for more attacks on sub­sta­tions and rail­ways, as well as gro­cery stores and cen­ters for the online mega­s­tore Ama­zon.

    The same chan­nel for­ward­ed a video from anoth­er account that showed two men armed with rifles open­ing fire on what one describes as a “water plant.” The clip ends with the mes­sage “Kill Infra­struc­ture” and is sub­ti­tled in Eng­lish and Russ­ian.

    Some of the con­tent in the two reports over­lapped with one anoth­er, and with mate­ri­als pre­vi­ous­ly seen by Newsweek in Octo­ber in a cor­po­rate intel­li­gence secu­ri­ty memo and an intel­li­gence assess­ment issued by the Cal­i­for­nia State Threat Assess­ment Cen­ter.

    One ear­li­er post by a neo-Nazi pub­li­ca­tion in sum­mer ref­er­enced by Katz includ­ed “a detailed man­u­al” that called pow­er grids “the main sati­at­ing tool the sys­tem uses to keep the mass­es from riot­ing” and advised on ways to inflict max­i­mum dam­age.

    “The guide even advised on what to tar­get when ‘shoot­ing at sub­sta­tions,’ which notably fits with the report­ed method by which the sub­sta­tions in North Car­oli­na were attacked,” Katz said. “Since this man­u­al was released, its many sec­tions have been reg­u­lar­ly shared across neo-Nazi online venues.”

    With such mate­r­i­al read­i­ly avail­able to would-be sabo­teurs, DTTM Direc­tor Simon Pur­due told Newsweek that “the threat posed by attacks on crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture can­not be under­es­ti­mat­ed.”

    “The sit­u­a­tion in Moore Coun­ty offers only a glimpse into the chaos that attacks such as this can cause, and larg­er scale assaults could bring dis­rup­tion on a statewide or even nation­al lev­el,” Pur­due said, ref­er­enc­ing “a steady slew of man­i­festos, social media posts, videos and even instruc­tion man­u­als on this kind of attack being pro­duced by extrem­ists over the past few years.”

    Pur­due not­ed that “this is not the first attempt­ed attack on elec­tri­cal infra­struc­ture by extrem­ist groups,” and that many threats envi­sion much more ambi­tious attacks against crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture across the nation.

    Should such an attack suc­ceed, the con­se­quences could far exceed those expe­ri­enced by Moore Coun­ty.

    “If a large-scale attack were to occur in a major city or against a major node in either the elec­tri­cal, gas, or water infra­struc­ture, we could see very dead­ly results,” Pur­due said. “Some accel­er­a­tionists have spo­ken about using large-scale black­outs caused by such an attack as cov­er for fur­ther, direct­ed ter­ror attacks, while oth­ers have pro­mot­ed the sewing of dis­cord to incite riots or fur­ther vio­lence.”

    “The Moore Coun­ty case was small-scale when com­pared to some of the plans that we have seen,” he added, “and infra­struc­ture needs to be bet­ter pro­tect­ed against such attacks.”

    Newsweek has pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed on con­cerns over the lim­it­ed toolset avail­able to fed­er­al law enforce­ment when it comes to pur­su­ing domes­tic threats with­out any clear for­eign con­nec­tion, as is the case when inves­ti­gat­ing activ­i­ty asso­ci­at­ed with groups such as Al-Qae­da and the Islam­ic State mil­i­tant group (ISIS).

    Fur­ther com­pli­cat­ing fed­er­al probes is the fact that many of the far-right com­mu­ni­ties pro­mot­ing ide­o­log­i­cal­ly dri­ven attacks on infra­struc­ture do not abide by tra­di­tion­al group struc­tures.

    “While some of these groups are indeed orga­nized and struc­tured, the kind of ide­ol­o­gy that under­lies an attack such as this often relies on lead­er­less resis­tance and direct­ed self-rad­i­cal­iza­tion,” Pur­due said. “Many extrem­ists are mov­ing away from the group mod­el — believ­ing that groups are vul­ner­a­ble to infil­tra­tion or oth­er tar­get­ing from law enforce­ment — and towards what they tend to call lone-wolf attacks.”

    “It bears say­ing, how­ev­er, that no attack hap­pens in a vac­u­um,” he added, “and the dis­sem­i­na­tion of mate­ri­als and rad­i­cal­iza­tion process are very clear­ly inten­tion­al and direct­ed.”

    But the dig­i­tal, decen­tral­ized and domes­tic nature of the threat con­tin­ues to serve as a poten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous blind spot for fed­er­al agen­cies.

    “We find that many of these real-world attacks come from sin­gu­lar indi­vid­u­als or small cells whose engage­ment with the wider extrem­ist milieu hap­pens pri­mar­i­ly online,” Pur­due said.

    “This makes inter­ven­tion and dis­rup­tion extreme­ly dif­fi­cult,” he explained, “but law enforce­ment, Con­gress, and tech com­pa­nies have a respon­si­bil­i­ty to pre­vent the dis­sem­i­na­tion of vio­lent and harm­ful con­tent online, and this will play a key role in pre­vent­ing this kind of attack in future.”

    ...

    Mean­while, the inves­ti­ga­tion con­tin­ues on local, state and fed­er­al lev­els into what actu­al­ly hap­pened at the two Duke Ener­gy sub­sta­tions in Moore Coun­ty.

    Major Andy Con­way of the Moore Coun­ty Sher­if­f’s Office told Newsweek that at this stage “all pos­si­bil­i­ties are being explored and inves­ti­gat­ed,” and that “no threats what­so­ev­er were made pri­or to the inci­dent.”

    ...

    ————–

    “Neo-Nazis Say Attack Leav­ing 40,000 Amer­i­cans in Dark Is Only the Begin­ning” By Tom O’Con­nor AND Naveed Jamali; Newsweek; 12/08/2022

    ““The­si­t­u­a­tion in Moore Coun­ty offers only a glimpse into the chaos that attacks such as this can cause, and larg­er scale assaults could bring dis­rup­tion on a statewide or even nation­al lev­el,” Pur­due said, ref­er­enc­ing “a steady slew of man­i­festos, social media posts, videos and even instruc­tion man­u­als on this kind of attack being pro­duced by extrem­ists over the past few years”

    There’s no short­age of poten­tial sus­pects for these attacks when no one is ever arrest­ed. But it’s hard not to notice that the online neo-Nazi com­mu­ni­ties are enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly push­ing an ‘attack the grid’ mes­sage, along with detailed instruc­tions on how to attack and sug­ges­tions on where to hit next and this has been a grow­ing trend over the last few years:

    ...
    Rita Katz, founder and exec­u­tive direc­tor of the SITE Intel­li­gence Group, told Newsweek that the Moore Coun­ty attack is con­sis­tent with the neo-Nazi mes­sag­ing pro­mul­gat­ed online.

    “The sab­o­tage against the North Car­oli­na sub­sta­tion aligns per­fect­ly with direc­tives and meth­ods seen in accel­er­a­tionist neo-Nazi com­mu­ni­ties,” she said, “which we at SITE have exhaus­tive­ly report­ed on.”

    “If this was indeed a far-right ter­ror­ist attack, my wor­ry is that it will serve as a proof of con­cept for oth­er far-right extrem­ists,” Katz explained. “Imme­di­ate­ly after the reports about the attacks, we at SITE saw such com­mu­ni­ties praise what hap­pened in North Car­oli­na and call for more, while shar­ing more direc­tives about what to tar­get and how to do so. Some have specif­i­cal­ly sug­gest­ed large cities.

    But Katz, who recent­ly authored the book “Saints and Sol­diers: Inside Inter­net-Age Ter­ror­ism, From Syr­ia to the Capi­tol Siege” on the threat posed by sabo­teurs to dig­i­tal infra­struc­ture, explained how tar­get­ing infra­struc­ture as “a key objec­tive for accel­er­a­tionist neo-Nazis, who care less about any dis­tinct out­come and far more about sow­ing any kind of chaos.”

    “It is these com­mu­ni­ties that have inspired mass shoot­ers all over the world,” she stat­ed. “Thus, if this act of sab­o­tage was indeed inspired by these com­mu­ni­ties, it is yet more proof how dan­ger­ous these online spaces are, as I described in my recent book on Inter­net-age ter­ror­ism.”

    A sec­ond report shared with Newsweek by the Mid­dle East Media Research Insti­tute’s (MEMRI) Domes­tic Ter­ror­ism Threat Mon­i­tor (DTTM) fea­tured a neo-Nazi col­lec­tive on Telegram call­ing for more attacks on sub­sta­tions and rail­ways, as well as gro­cery stores and cen­ters for the online mega­s­tore Ama­zon.

    The same chan­nel for­ward­ed a video from anoth­er account that showed two men armed with rifles open­ing fire on what one describes as a “water plant.” The clip ends with the mes­sage “Kill Infra­struc­ture” and is sub­ti­tled in Eng­lish and Russ­ian.

    Some of the con­tent in the two reports over­lapped with one anoth­er, and with mate­ri­als pre­vi­ous­ly seen by Newsweek in Octo­ber in a cor­po­rate intel­li­gence secu­ri­ty memo and an intel­li­gence assess­ment issued by the Cal­i­for­nia State Threat Assess­ment Cen­ter.

    One ear­li­er post by a neo-Nazi pub­li­ca­tion in sum­mer ref­er­enced by Katz includ­ed “a detailed man­u­al” that called pow­er grids “the main sati­at­ing tool the sys­tem uses to keep the mass­es from riot­ing” and advised on ways to inflict max­i­mum dam­age.

    “The guide even advised on what to tar­get when ‘shoot­ing at sub­sta­tions,’ which notably fits with the report­ed method by which the sub­sta­tions in North Car­oli­na were attacked,” Katz said. “Since this man­u­al was released, its many sec­tions have been reg­u­lar­ly shared across neo-Nazi online venues.”

    With such mate­r­i­al read­i­ly avail­able to would-be sabo­teurs, DTTM Direc­tor Simon Pur­due told Newsweek that “the threat posed by attacks on crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture can­not be under­es­ti­mat­ed.”
    ...

    It’s also worth not­ing that the ini­tial sus­pect in the Moore Coun­ty attacks — Emi­ly Grace Rainey, who led a group of peo­ple to the Capi­tol on Jan 6 — is for­mer U.S. Army psy­cho­log­i­cal oper­a­tions offi­cer. That’s a rather inter­est­ing for a num­ber of rea­sons. For starters, there’s the psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare nature of pow­er grid attacks. From the accelerationist/Atomwaffen stand­point, tak­ing down the grid is Psy­Op at its core. But also the way she pub­licly drew atten­tion to her­self as an obvi­ous poten­tial sus­pect when she post­ed on Face­book that she knew the cause of the black­out, only to tell police it was God’s wrath over the drag show. Rainey isn’t some ran­dom MAGA fan. She was a psy­cho­log­i­cal oper­a­tions offi­cer. Should a sus­pect ever be iden­ti­fied for that attack it will be inter­est­ing to see what, if any, ties they have to Rainey. Because a mil­i­tary psy­cho­log­i­cal oper­a­tions offi­cer who led a Jan 6 group draw­ing atten­tion to her­self in the way she did with the Moore Coun­ty black­out just adds to the ques­tions about what ties she might have to this attack that appar­ent­ly still com­plete­ly lacks an offi­cial sus­pect:

    ...
    The Moore Coun­ty Sher­if­f’s Office has yet to estab­lish a per­pe­tra­tor or motive in the Decem­ber 3 attack, but ini­tial sus­pi­cion has cen­tered on right-wing back­lash toward a drag show set to be held that same day at the Sun­rise The­ater in the town of South­ern Pines.

    That event inspired protests involv­ing armed indi­vid­u­als clad in mil­i­tary gear and the par­tic­i­pa­tion of groups such as Moore Coun­ty Cit­i­zens for Free­dom, whose direc­tor, for­mer U.S. Army psy­cho­log­i­cal oper­a­tions offi­cer Emi­ly Grace Rainey, was ques­tioned by the Moore Coun­ty Sher­if­f’s Office after the attack.

    Rainey, who was impli­cat­ed in the Jan­u­ary 6, 2021 storm­ing of the Capi­tol by pro-Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump crowds seek­ing to over­turn the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, attrib­uted the sub­sta­tion shoot­ings to “God,” whom she said was “chastis­ing Moore Coun­ty” over the drag show.

    Far-right chat­ter also drew a con­nec­tion between the attacks and the drag show, which was ulti­mate­ly held in spite of its detrac­tors. One neo-Nazi Telegram post laden with slurs against the LGBT+ com­mu­ni­ty and shared with Newsweek by the SITE Intel­li­gence Group cel­e­brat­ed the “mag­nif­i­cent act of sab­o­tage” as a “beau­ti­ful esca­la­tion” in a broad­er cul­ture war.

    Anoth­er neo-Nazi pub­li­ca­tion warned that “these attacks will only con­tin­ue” unless such events are not held. A num­ber of posts on mes­sage board 4Chan described spe­cif­ic tac­tics to cause fur­ther dam­age to the pow­er grid, and oth­ers pro­posed con­duct­ing sim­i­lar actions in larg­er cities such as New York and Wash­ing­ton, D.C. because they “are not major­i­ty white.”
    ...

    What types of cel­e­bra­tions and future attack tips were these online com­mu­ni­ties shar­ing after the Taco­ma attacks? Who knows but we can be sure they were elat­ed. It was anoth­er big win for who­ev­er is doing this. And anoth­er big win for their accel­er­a­tionist fans.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | December 27, 2022, 3:00 pm
  31. @Pterrafractyl–

    Some­thing to con­sid­er in this regard is the phi­los­o­phy of the late David Lane, dri­ver of the get­away car in the mur­der of talk show host Alan Berg and an icon­ic white suprema­cist, whose Four­teen Words are the inspi­ra­tion for C14, the gov­ern­ment-sub­si­dized aux­il­iary police/militia unit in Ukraine.

    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.” . . .

    But of course, Lane was just a “nut” and his phi­los­o­phy could nev­er find sym­pa­thy in any kind of gov­ern­ing struc­ture, no?

    Best,

    Dave

    Posted by Dave Emory | December 27, 2022, 5:08 pm
  32. Well that’s new: It looks like there might actu­al­ly be appre­hend­ed sus­pects in the case of the Christ­mas Day quadru­ple pow­er grid attacks in the Taco­ma area. It’s a refresh­ing change for a kind of sto­ry where ‘no sus­pects’ is usu­al­ly a defin­ing fea­ture. Two men have been arrest­ed in the inves­ti­ga­tion and have already admit­ted to the crime.

    Case closed, right? Well, this is were this case is start­ing to sound awful­ly famil­iar: the two have told inves­ti­ga­tors that they car­ried out the attack pure­ly for the pur­pose of knock­ing pow­er out so they could rob a store. That’s their sto­ry and it appears inves­ti­ga­tors are buy­ing it. Yep.

    Now, it does appear that the two did indeed car­ry out a bur­glary. But, as we’re going to see, that’s still a high­ly ques­tion­able set of alleged motives for this crime. For starters, why would you need to attack four pow­er sta­tions hun­dreds of miles apart just to take the pow­er out at a store? And more impor­tant­ly, why the fourth attack, which hap­pen hours after the bur­glary.

    And then there’s the fact that this hap­pened in the wake of six unex­plained attacks on the pow­er grid in Ore­gon and Wash­ing­ton just weeks before this hap­pened amid a grow­ing far right online fer­vor for exact­ly these kinds of attacks. And then there’s the still-unex­plained Moore Coun­ty, NC, attacks. Evi­dence just keeps pil­ing up that the US pow­er grid is a major tar­get for extrem­ist attacks. No sus­pects are ever found. And yet, when we have a string of grid attacks that does indeed yield sus­pects, inves­ti­ga­tors appear to be ready to accept the “we did it to rob the store” plea. That’s per­haps the biggest sto­ry here: the fact that inves­ti­ga­tors final­ly caught the cul­prits in one of these grid attacks and yet still seem eager to not actu­al­ly car­ry out a full inves­ti­ga­tion:

    KOMO News

    2 men charged in con­nec­tion to attacks on Pierce Coun­ty sub­sta­tions

    by KOMO News Staff
    Tues­day, Jan­u­ary 3rd 2023

    PIERCE COUNTY, Wash. — Two Puyallup men were arrest­ed Sat­ur­day in con­nec­tion to attacks on four Pierce Coun­ty pow­er sub­sta­tions over the Christ­mas hol­i­day.

    Matthew Green­wood, 32, and Jere­my Cra­han, 40 appeared in court Tues­day on charges of con­spir­a­cy to dam­age ener­gy facil­i­ties. Green­wood also faces a charge of pos­ses­sion of an unreg­is­tered firearm If con­vict­ed, the two men could face up to 20 — 30 years in prison.

    Pros­e­cu­tors are ask­ing they remain at the Fed­er­al Deten­tion Cen­ter at SeaT­ac pend­ing future hear­ings.

    The attacks cut pow­er to thou­sands, caused at least $3 mil­lion in dam­age, and will take 36 months to repair.

    ...

    Accord­ing to court doc­u­ments, the two men broke into the four sub­sta­tions and manip­u­lat­ed the high side breaks caus­ing the out­ages but did not steal or cut any wire. They report­ed­ly told law enforce­ment they cut the pow­er so they could rob a near­by busi­ness.

    Accord­ing to the U.S. Depart­ment of Jus­tice (DOJ), the men were iden­ti­fied through cell phone loca­tion data and law enforce­ment offi­cials arrest­ed them a few days after the attack. Video at one of the sub­sta­tions also cap­tured images of one of the men and a pick-up truck.

    ...

    When asked about oth­er pow­er sta­tion attacks around the coun­try and in the Pacif­ic North­west last year, Brown said it’s a ‘nation­al ini­tia­tive’ to make sure these tar­gets are pro­tect­ed.

    “We are still get­ting into the facts obvi­ous­ly, we are pay­ing atten­tion to what hap­pened in North Car­oli­na. There have been pri­or attacks here in the North­west as well, not just most recent­ly, this is a nation­al prob­lem but we are still inves­ti­gat­ing this case and a lot to be deter­mined about the facts,” Brown said.

    ...

    The FBI served a search war­rant over the week­end and found cloth­ing match­ing the cloth­ing seen on the sur­veil­lance video in the men’s homes. Agents also seized two unreg­is­tered short-bar­reled firearms, one with a makeshift silencer from Green­wood’s res­i­dence.

    Some Puyallup neigh­bors were relieved to hear of the arrests, but stunned the home is locat­ed on their street.

    “I hap­py to hear that they arrest­ed two peo­ple,” said Ken Cor­nell. He lives a few hous­es away across the street. Cor­nell said he’d nev­er spoke to either of them, but noticed all the police activ­i­ty a few days ago.

    “To see that they are four hous­es away from me is a lit­tle ter­ri­fy­ing,” said Jocy, a near­by home­own­er.

    She was also curi­ous about an alleged motive. Accord­ing to court doc­u­ments, one of the defen­dants said the motive was to shut the pow­er to a local busi­ness to steal cash.

    “I Guess that could have been the rea­son that just seems unlike­ly to me seems more of like domes­tic ter­ror­ism to me, but what do I know, I’m just a lay per­son,” said Jocy.

    Taco­ma Pub­lic Util­i­ties also released a state­ment Tues­day writ­ing, “We take the safe­ty and secu­ri­ty of our sub­sta­tions and all crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture we oper­ate seri­ous­ly. We com­mit­ted sig­nif­i­cant resources to both cyber and phys­i­cal secu­ri­ty over the past sev­er­al years to increase pro­tec­tion of our assets.”

    Two sub­sta­tions in Gra­ham and Elk Plains are oper­at­ed by Taco­ma Pow­er, and the sub­sta­tions in Kapowsin and Hem­lock are oper­at­ed by Puget Sound Ener­gy.

    “The sub­sta­tions are spread out over dozens of miles; the attacks occurred ear­ly in the morn­ing and in the evening; and the first and fourth attacks were sep­a­rat­ed by over twelve hours,” the court doc­u­ments report. “This makes it at least unlike­ly that an indi­vid­ual would sim­ply hap­pen to be at all four loca­tions around the times they were each van­dal­ized.”

    Con­spir­a­cy to attack ener­gy facil­i­ties is pun­ish­able by up to 20 years in prison and pos­ses­sion of an unreg­is­tered firearm is pun­ish­able by up to 10 years in prison, accord­ing to the DOJ.

    Assis­tant U.S. Attor­ney Stephen Hobbs told the judge in U.S. Dis­trict Court in Taco­ma this after­noon that both defen­dants should remain in fed­er­al deten­tion because the mat­ter is an alleged ‘crime of ter­ror­ism’. Each appeared before the judge briefly to hear the charges against them.

    A deten­tion hear­ing is set for Fri­day for Green­wood and Cra­han next week. A pre­lim­i­nary hear­ing is set for both on Jan­u­ary 17th at 10 a.m.

    ———-

    “2 men charged in con­nec­tion to attacks on Pierce Coun­ty sub­sta­tions” by KOMO News Staff; KOMO News; 01/03/2023

    “Accord­ing to court doc­u­ments, the two men broke into the four sub­sta­tions and manip­u­lat­ed the high side breaks caus­ing the out­ages but did not steal or cut any wire. They report­ed­ly told law enforce­ment they cut the pow­er so they could rob a near­by busi­ness.

    They attacked four sep­a­rate sub­sta­tions in an attempt to cre­ate a black­out that would give them the oppor­tu­ni­ty to steal from the cash reg­is­ter at a ‘near­by busi­ness’. That’s the remark­ably absurd sto­ry Matthew Green­wood and Jere­my Cra­han are appar­ent­ly telling police fol­low­ing their arrests. Even more remark­able is that the inves­ti­ga­tors appear to buy their sto­ry. Although if there’s one detail that lends weight to pre­pos­ter­ous plan it’s the fact that the two were caught due to their deci­sions to car­ry around their cell­phones with them dur­ing each of the four attacks. In oth­er words, these weren’t par­tic­u­lar­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed crim­i­nals.

    ...
    Accord­ing to the U.S. Depart­ment of Jus­tice (DOJ), the men were iden­ti­fied through cell phone loca­tion data and law enforce­ment offi­cials arrest­ed them a few days after the attack. Video at one of the sub­sta­tions also cap­tured images of one of the men and a pick-up truck.
    ...

    Still, you don’t need to be a crim­i­nal mas­ter­mind to avoid doing things that don’t make any sense at all in accom­plish­ing your crimes. Like four sep­a­rate sub­sta­tion attacks over a broad area just to knock out the pow­er at a local busi­ness. Espe­cial­ly when the fourth sub­sta­tion attack is over 12 hours after the ini­tial attack. It does­n’t add up:

    ...
    Some Puyallup neigh­bors were relieved to hear of the arrests, but stunned the home is locat­ed on their street.

    “I hap­py to hear that they arrest­ed two peo­ple,” said Ken Cor­nell. He lives a few hous­es away across the street. Cor­nell said he’d nev­er spoke to either of them, but noticed all the police activ­i­ty a few days ago.

    “To see that they are four hous­es away from me is a lit­tle ter­ri­fy­ing,” said Jocy, a near­by home­own­er.

    She was also curi­ous about an alleged motive. Accord­ing to court doc­u­ments, one of the defen­dants said the motive was to shut the pow­er to a local busi­ness to steal cash.

    “I Guess that could have been the rea­son that just seems unlike­ly to me seems more of like domes­tic ter­ror­ism to me, but what do I know, I’m just a lay per­son,” said Jocy.

    ...

    “The sub­sta­tions are spread out over dozens of miles; the attacks occurred ear­ly in the morn­ing and in the evening; and the first and fourth attacks were sep­a­rat­ed by over twelve hours,” the court doc­u­ments report. “This makes it at least unlike­ly that an indi­vid­ual would sim­ply hap­pen to be at all four loca­tions around the times they were each van­dal­ized.”
    ...

    So when exact­ly were all of these attacks? Well, accord­ing to the fol­low­ing Vice arti­cle, the first attack took place at 2:30 am on Christ­mas morn­ing. The sec­ond and third attacks hap­pened sev­er­al hours lat­er. The fourth attack did­n’t hap­pen until 7:30 pm. So the attacks actu­al­ly took place over a 17 hour times­pan:

    Vice

    Thou­sands Lost Pow­er on Christ­mas so 2 Guys Could Rob a Store, Police Say

    Two men alleged­ly attacked a series of sub­sta­tions in Wash­ing­ton state, cut­ting pow­er off to 7,500 peo­ple.

    by Mack Lam­oureux
    Jan­u­ary 4, 2023, 4:45am

    Police say two men charged with attack­ing a series of substations—shutting off the pow­er for thou­sands of peo­ple in Wash­ing­ton state on Christ­mas Day—did so to rob a local store. 

    Author­i­ties allege that Matthew Green­wood, 32, and Jere­my Cra­han, 40, attacked the grid ear­ly on Decem­ber 25 in Pierce Coun­ty, Wash­ing­ton. 

    The two Puyallup, Wash­ing­ton men alleged­ly drove to a sub­sta­tion in rur­al west­ern Wash­ing­ton at 2:30 a.m.. Charg­ing doc­u­ments claim they used bolt cut­ters to gain entry to the sub­sta­tion and once inside, shut off the pow­er by manip­u­lat­ing a part of the grid called the “bank high side switch.” Their alleged actions on the first sub­sta­tion caused the pow­er to be cut off to an esti­mat­ed 8,000 peo­ple in the area.

    Sev­er­al hours lat­er, Green­wood and Cra­han alleged­ly hit two more sub­sta­tions in the exact same way. This time they report­ed­ly cut off the pow­er to over 7,500 peo­ple. Accord­ing to the court doc­u­ments, Green­wood told police after his arrest that the pair used this time to rob a store. 

    Lat­er in the evening, at about 7:30 p.m., the two alleged­ly tried their luck at a fourth sub­sta­tion. This go-round, how­ev­er, did not work in their favor. 

    “The sus­pects tam­pered with the bank high side switch and they tried to pry the link­age open,” reads the charg­ing doc­u­ments. “This caused the sub­sta­tion to start arc­ing and spark­ing.”

    Police allege this cost over $3 mil­lion in dam­ages. 

    Fol­low­ing the attack, local police brought in the FBI who aid­ed in the inves­ti­ga­tion. They said they were able to catch the two men after pin­point­ing two cell­phones to all four of the sub­sta­tions at the time they were attacked. The two phones were reg­is­tered to Green­wood and Cra­han under their real names and email address­es. After this infor­ma­tion came to light the two were put under “con­tin­u­ous FBI sur­veil­lance.” They were even­tu­al­ly arrest­ed on New Year’s Eve, mak­ing it a rather event­ful hol­i­day sea­son for the two men. 

    When he was arrest­ed Green­wood was alleged­ly dressed in the same clothes as the per­son caught on cam­era attack­ing one of the sub­sta­tions. Police also said Green­wood was pos­ses­sion of ille­gal short-bar­reled rifles. 

    ...

    The attacks came as all eyes were on the nation­al pow­er grid fol­low­ing simi­lar attacks in North Car­oli­na, Ore­gon, and Wash­ing­ton state. While far-right actors have pre­vi­ous­ly shared instruc­tions on how to attack grids, no groups nor indi­vid­u­als have been caught or laid claim to the oth­er attacks. 

    ...

    ———-

    “Thou­sands Lost Pow­er on Christ­mas so 2 Guys Could Rob a Store, Police Say” by Mack Lam­oureux; Vice; 01/04/2023

    “The attacks came as all eyes were on the nation­al pow­er grid fol­low­ing simi­lar attacks in North Car­oli­na, Ore­gon, and Wash­ing­ton state. /While far-right actors have pre­vi­ous­ly shared instruc­tions on how to attack grids, no groups nor indi­vid­u­als have been caught or laid claim to the oth­er attacks.”

    This did­n’t hap­pen in a vac­u­um. Their quadru­ple Christ­mas Day attack on Taco­ma’s pow­er grid was pre­ced­ed by a string of attacks across the Pacif­ic North­west along with the Moore Coun­ty, NC, attack. And while we know that far right groups are active­ly push­ing fol­low­ers to exe­cute exact­ly these kinds of attacks, NONE of these attacks have had any­one claim­ing attri­bu­tion or giv­ing a motive. In oth­er words, it appears that the far right’s strat­e­gy of attack­ing the pow­er grid does­n’t include tak­ing cred­it for it. Quite the oppo­site, the intent appears to be to just cause social stress and chaos.

    That aggres­sive under-the-radar pro­mo­tion of attacks on the grid, cou­pled with a com­plete absence of pub­lic cred­it for these attacks, is a key part of the con­text of this case. All indi­ca­tions are that the groups tar­get­ing the pow­er grid don’t want pub­lic cred­it. Yes, they want to take the grid down, but they don’t actu­al­ly want the pub­lic blame.

    Also note the puz­zling time­line here: the first attack hap­pened at 2:30 am, with the sec­ond and third attacks tak­ing place sev­er­al hours lat­er, and a fourth attack at 7:30 pm, 17 hours after the first attack. Are we expect­ed to believe that they decid­ed to knock pow­er out over a wide area over in a series of attacks that spanned 17 hours just to rob a store? Appar­ent­ly, yes, that’s what we’re expect­ed to believe. At least that’s what inves­ti­ga­tors appear to be accept­ing as a motive:

    ...
    The two Puyallup, Wash­ing­ton men alleged­ly drove to a sub­sta­tion in rur­al west­ern Wash­ing­ton at 2:30 a.m.. Charg­ing doc­u­ments claim they used bolt cut­ters to gain entry to the sub­sta­tion and once inside, shut off the pow­er by manip­u­lat­ing a part of the grid called the “bank high side switch.” Their alleged actions on the first sub­sta­tion caused the pow­er to be cut off to an esti­mat­ed 8,000 peo­ple in the area.

    Sev­er­al hours lat­er, Green­wood and Cra­han alleged­ly hit two more sub­sta­tions in the exact same way. This time they report­ed­ly cut off the pow­er to over 7,500 peo­ple. Accord­ing to the court doc­u­ments, Green­wood told police after his arrest that the pair used this time to rob a store. 

    Lat­er in the evening, at about 7:30 p.m., the two alleged­ly tried their luck at a fourth sub­sta­tion. This go-round, how­ev­er, did not work in their favor. 
    ...

    So with this time­line, we have to ask: when exact­ly was that store robbed? And where was this store locat­ed with respect to the areas that lost pow­er in these attacks? Was the pow­er at the store not out after the first attack, lead­ing the two to con­clude that the sec­ond and third attacks were need­ed? Those details are still large­ly miss­ing from the sto­ry we’re get­ting. But as the fol­low­ing pair of arti­cles make clear, the bur­glary appar­ent­ly hap­pened after the sec­ond and third attacks, which hap­pened around 5:30 am accord­ing to the above time­line. Which makes that fourth attack all the more bizarre.

    Ok, first, here’s a report that spec­i­fies that the bur­glary hap­pened fol­low­ing the attacks on the Gra­ham and South Hill pow­er sta­tions:

    KPTV/Gray News

    Feds reveal alleged motive behind Wash­ing­ton state pow­er grid attacks

    By FOX 12 Staff and Gray News staff
    Pub­lished: Jan. 5, 2023 at 8:48 AM CST|Updated

    TACOMA, Wash. (KPTV/Gray News) — Fed­er­al law enforce­ment author­i­ties have revealed the alleged motives behind attacks on four pow­er sub­sta­tions in Wash­ing­ton state on Christ­mas Day that left thou­sands of peo­ple with­out elec­tric­i­ty.

    The four sub­sta­tions that were tar­get­ed were the Gra­ham and Elk Plain sub­sta­tions oper­at­ed by Taco­ma Pow­er and the Kapowsin and Hem­lock sub­sta­tions oper­at­ed by Puget Sound Ener­gy. The dam­age to just the Taco­ma Pow­er sub­sta­tions was esti­mat­ed to cost at least $3 mil­lion.

    ...

    One of the Taco­ma Pow­er sub­sta­tions caught images of one of the sus­pects and a pick­up truck that was tied to the two men. When law enforce­ment arrest­ed Green­wood and Cra­han, they found the same cloth­ing caught on cam­era and seized two unreg­is­tered guns, one with a makeshift silencer.

    ...

    Accord­ing to the crim­i­nal com­plaint, the rea­son for the attacks, which occurred over a 12-hour peri­od and hun­dreds of miles apart, was to bur­glar­ize a near­by busi­ness while the pow­er was out for near­ly 15,000 cus­tomers in the area.

    The out­er chain-link fence around the Hem­lock sub­sta­tion, which is run by Puget Sound Ener­gy, was cut ear­ly on Christ­mas Day, court doc­u­ments said. A “bank high side switch” was tam­pered with, lead­ing to an out­age that affect­ed about 8,000 users.

    The next tar­get was the sub­sta­tion in Elk Plain. In order to enter the sub­sta­tion, pad­locks on the pedes­tri­an gates had to be removed, the crim­i­nal com­plaint said. Once inside, high side break­ers were altered, which result­ed in an out­age. The Gra­ham sub­sta­tion was the scene of the third attack, which involved the manip­u­la­tion of high side break­ers and the cut­ting of a chain-link fence.

    Accord­ing to court doc­u­ments, 7,500 con­sumers expe­ri­enced pow­er inter­rup­tions as a result of the dam­age to those two Taco­ma Pow­er sub­sta­tions. Accord­ing to the law­suit, replac­ing both “de-ener­giz­er taps” for each affect­ed trans­former that have been dam­aged will take up to 36 months.

    The fourth attack took place at the Puget Sound Ener­gy-run Kapowsin sub­sta­tion lat­er that evening. To obtain access, a chain-link fence was cut. The sub­sta­tion began to arc and spark after the sus­pects alleged­ly inter­fered with the bank high side switch and attempt­ed to pry the link­age open.

    Green­wood admit­ted, after being informed of his Miran­da rights, that he and Cra­han “have been prepar­ing to dis­rupt pow­er to com­mit a bur­glary,” accord­ing to a prob­a­ble cause sum­ma­ry by FBI Spe­cial Agent Mark Tuch­er.

    Cra­han is accused of going inside the fourth sub­sta­tion. After the Gra­ham and South Hill attacks, the two went to a near­by com­pa­ny where Cra­han drilled out a lock and Green­wood entered to steal from the cash reg­is­ter while the elec­tric­i­ty was off, accord­ing to Tuch­er. That com­pa­ny is not men­tioned in the com­plaint.

    ———–

    “Feds reveal alleged motive behind Wash­ing­ton state pow­er grid attacks” by FOX 12 Staff and Gray News staff; KPTV/Gray News; 01/05/2023

    “Cra­han is accused of going inside the fourth sub­sta­tion. After the Gra­ham and South Hill attacks, the two went to a near­by com­pa­ny where Cra­han drilled out a lock and Green­wood entered to steal from the cash reg­is­ter while the elec­tric­i­ty was off, accord­ing to Tuch­er. That com­pa­ny is not men­tioned in the com­plaint.”

    So after the Gra­ham and South Hill attacks, the two pro­ceed­ed to rob the still-unnamed local store. Which rais­es the ques­tion: when did the Gra­ham and South Hill attacks take place? Are these the sec­ond and third attacks? Or third and fourth attacks? In oth­er words, did they car­ry out the fourth attack before or after their rob­bery?

    The answer to that ques­tion isn’t clear in that report since there’s only a sin­gle ref­er­ence to the “South Hill” pow­er grid site. But we can get clar­i­ty on that ques­tion from the fol­low­ing arti­cle that was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished on Christ­mas morn­ing, hours before the fourth attack that evening. And as we can see, the Gra­ham and South Hill attacks were the sec­ond and third attacks of that day. So Green­wood and Cahan appar­ent­ly robbed that store after the sec­ond and third attacks that morn­ing, and then decid­ed to car­ry out a fourth attack lat­er that evening for some ran­dom rea­son. At least that’s the sto­ry inves­ti­ga­tors are buy­ing:

    The Belling­ham Her­ald

    Attacks on three elec­tri­cal sub­sta­tions affect thou­sands — inves­ti­ga­tion under­way

    By Sean Robin­son
    orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished Decem­ber 25, 2022 10:31 AM.
    Updat­ed Decem­ber 26, 2022 1:19 PM

    Three pow­er sub­sta­tions in East Pierce Coun­ty oper­at­ed by Taco­ma Pub­lic Util­i­ties and Puget Sound Ener­gy were attacked and van­dal­ized ear­ly Sun­day, result­ing in pow­er out­ages affect­ing thou­sands of cus­tomers. The affect­ed area was cen­tered in Gra­ham.

    The attacks were pre­ced­ed by a warn­ing from fed­er­al law enforce­ment cit­ing a pos­si­ble threat to the local elec­tri­cal grid, accord­ing to a state­ment from TPU. The util­i­ty did not describe the spe­cif­ic nature of the attack, apart from say­ing it occurred ear­ly Sun­day morn­ing. Accord­ing to the Pierce Coun­ty Sheriff’s office, unknown indi­vid­u­als broke into the two sub­sta­tions and van­dal­ized equip­ment.

    The sheriff’s office report­ed that a third sub­sta­tion on South Hill, oper­at­ed by Puget Sound Ener­gy, was also attacked ear­li­er Sun­day.

    All three inci­dents were described as bur­glar­ies, but noth­ing was tak­en, said sheriff’s spokesper­son Dar­ren Moss in an emailed state­ment.

    ...

    ———–

    “Attacks on three elec­tri­cal sub­sta­tions affect thou­sands — inves­ti­ga­tion under­way ” by Sean Robin­son; The Belling­ham Her­ald; 12/25/2022

    “The sheriff’s office report­ed that a third sub­sta­tion on South Hill, oper­at­ed by Puget Sound Ener­gy, was also attacked ear­li­er Sun­day”

    And there we have it. The third sta­tion attacked that day was the South Hill sta­tion. So it was after that third attack that the two car­ried out their rob­bery.

    And then, hours lat­er, they made the fourth sub­sta­tion attack. Why? Who knows? And why were three attacks need­ed in the first place to car­ry before car­ry­ing out the bur­glary? We have know idea about that either. And based on the way the inves­ti­ga­tion is going, it does­n’t look like we’ll ever get an answer. At least not an answer that does­n’t end up rais­ing more ques­tions about whether or not there’s a real inves­ti­ga­tion hap­pen­ing.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | January 5, 2023, 5:12 pm
  33. It’s long felt like just a mat­ter of time before the far right tar­get­ing of the US elec­tri­cal grid man­ages to suc­ceed in caus­ing a major cat­a­stro­phe. You can’t say they aren’t try­ing. In just the last sev­er­al months along we’ve seen the grid attacks on Moore Coun­ty, NC, fol­lowed by a string of unex­plained attacks in Ore­gon and Wash­ing­ton State. A few weeks lat­er, there was the quadru­ple-Christ­mas Day attacks on sub­sta­tions in the Taco­ma, WA, area.

    Now, as we sub­se­quent­ly saw, the per­pe­tra­tors of those quadru­ple Christ­mas-Day attacks were even­tu­al­ly caught, giv­ing inves­ti­ga­tors a sto­ry about how the attacks were car­ried out to exe­cute a bur­glary at a local busi­ness. As we also saw, inves­ti­ga­tors appeared to buy that sto­ry entire­ly, despite the fact that the fourth attack on the Taco­ma grid took place hours after the bur­glary. So while the Taco­ma attacks are offi­cial just part of a pet­ty crime plot, it’s not exact­ly a com­pelling offi­cial inves­tiga­tive con­clu­sion.

    And that brings us to the lat­est sto­ry about a grid attack plot in the US. A sto­ry that should sound awful­ly famil­iar: Atom­waf­fen co-founder Bran­don Rus­sell was just arrest­ed on charges of plot­ting a Bal­ti­more-area grid attack. Co-plot­ter Sarah Clen­daniel was also charged. Rus­sell and Clen­daniel report­ed­ly both met while the two were both in prison.

    Recall how Rus­sell was first sent to prison fol­low­ing the twin mur­ders of two of his room­mates by a fourth room­mate, Devon Arthurs, back in 2017. All four room­mates were mem­bers of Atom­waf­fen, but A it turns out Arthurs had recent con­vert­ed to Islam and decid­ed to kill his room­mates over their “dis­re­spect” for his new reli­gion. When police arrived, they dis­cov­ered enough explo­sives to make a bomb. Arthurs told police Rus­sell — a for­mer mem­ber of the Flori­da Nation­al Guard — was plot­ting a mor­tar attack on a Mia­mi-area nuclear plant. The plan was to force a depop­u­la­tion of Flori­da with the goal of set­ting up a Fourth Reich. Arthurs also told police that Rus­sell had the knowl­edge to build a nuclear bomb. Police found two radi­ac­tive sub­stances on the premis­es: Tho­ri­um and Ameri­ci­um. That’s the per­son who was just charged with plot­ting Bal­ti­more-area grid attacks. The Atom­waf­fen co-found who was pre­vi­ous sent to prison after plot­ting a Mia­mi-area nuclear melt­down.

    In terms of the spe­cif­ic attacks they had in mind, the Bal­ti­more plot sounds less like what Rus­sell was plot­ting in 2017 and more like the recent string of attacks involv­ing the direct tar­get­ing of elec­tri­cal sub­sta­tions with firearms. Using open-source infor­ma­tion, Rus­sell and Clen­daniel iden­ti­fied five sub­sta­tions in the Bal­ti­more area that, once inca­pac­i­tat­ed, would cre­ate a “cas­cade” that would end up tak­ing down the grid for an extend­ed peri­od of time.

    Now, in terms of the tim­ing of the plot, it’s worth not­ing that it appears that Rus­sell began this lat­est round of plot­ting in the sum­mer of 2022, while he was out of prison on super­vised release. Recall how Rus­sell was released in August of 2021, after serv­ing only four years out of his five year sen­tence. So how was Rus­sell plot­ting new attacks while out on super­vised release? Well, it sounds like he was using an encrypt­ed app to com­mu­ni­cate with an unnamed indi­vid­ual. That unnamed indi­vid­ual turned out to be an FBI infor­mant. It’s anoth­er part of this sto­ry: it appears that the plot could still be under­way had that third indi­vid­ual not turned out to be an FBI infor­mant while Rus­sell was out of prison on super­vised released. That’s how easy it is to car­ry out grid attacks in the mod­ern era. Even peo­ple on super­vised release from prison can do it with today’s encrypt­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tions tools. As long as they aren’t plot­ting with an infor­mant, of course:

    The Wash­ing­ton Post

    Duo accused of neo-Nazi plot to tar­get Mary­land pow­er sta­tions
    Atom­waf­fen founder Bran­don Rus­sell and Sarah Clen­daniel alleged­ly sought to attack sub­sta­tions around Bal­ti­more

    By Rachel Wein­er, Jas­mine Hilton and Dan Morse
    Updat­ed Feb­ru­ary 6, 2023 at 1:00 p.m. EST|Published Feb­ru­ary 6, 2023 at 10:48 a.m. EST

    BALTIMORE — A neo-Nazi leader recent­ly released from prison is accused of plot­ting an attack on the Mary­land pow­er grid with a woman he met while incar­cer­at­ed.

    The charges against Bran­don Rus­sell, 27, and Sarah Clen­daniel, 34, come amid a spate of sab­o­tage tar­get­ing pow­er sta­tions across the coun­try. Gun­fire at two North Car­oli­na sub­sta­tions in Decem­ber left 45,000 peo­ple with­out pow­er for sev­er­al days. Most of the cas­es remain unsolved, but author­i­ties and experts say they fol­low increased inter­est among white suprema­cists in tar­get­ing elec­tric infra­struc­ture.

    “If we can pull off what I’m hop­ing … this would be leg­endary,” Clen­daniel said on Jan. 29, accord­ing to the court record. She was speak­ing to a fed­er­al infor­mant, who was hav­ing sim­i­lar dis­cus­sions with Rus­sell.

    The two appeared in court Mon­day in Bal­ti­more and Flori­da fed­er­al courts on a charge of con­spir­ing to destroy an ener­gy facil­i­ty, which car­ries up to 20 years in prison.

    Accord­ing to pros­e­cu­tors, their plan was to attack with gun­fire five sub­sta­tions that serve the Bal­ti­more area. In con­ver­sa­tions about the plot, accord­ing to court doc­u­ments, Clen­daniel “described how there was a ‘ring’ around Bal­ti­more and if they hit a num­ber of them all in the same day, they ‘would com­plete­ly destroy this whole city.’”

    At a news con­fer­ence Mon­day morn­ing, U.S. Attor­ney for the Dis­trict of Mary­land Erek L. Bar­ron thanked fed­er­al, state and local law enforce­ment part­ners for stop­ping the plot.

    “Togeth­er, we are using every legal means nec­es­sary to keep Mary­lan­ders safe and to dis­rupt hate-fueled vio­lence,” Bar­ron said. “When we are unit­ed, hate can­not win.”

    Spe­cial Agent in Charge Thomas J. Sobocin­s­ki of the FBI field office in Bal­ti­more said Clen­daniel and Rus­sell con­spired to inflict “max­i­mum harm” to the pow­er grid.

    “The accused were not just talk­ing, but tak­ing steps to ful­fill their threats and fur­ther their extrem­ist goals,” Sobocin­s­ki said.

    The FBI views their extrem­ist views as “racial­ly or eth­ni­cal­ly moti­vat­ed,” Sobocin­s­ki said.

    Accord­ing to pros­e­cu­tors, they used open-source infor­ma­tion on the nation­al infra­struc­ture grid to pick five elec­tri­cal sub­sta­tions around Bal­ti­more that would, if attacked on the same day, cre­ate a “cas­cad­ing fail­ure” in the sys­tem.

    “Their actions threat­ened the elec­tric­i­ty and heat of our homes, hos­pi­tals and busi­ness­es,” Sobocin­s­ki said.

    In response to a ques­tion on whether this plot was con­nect­ed to oth­er attacks across the coun­try, Sobocin­s­ki said the FBI has “no indi­ca­tion” that this plot was part of “any­thing larg­er.” Clen­daniel and Rus­sell were tak­en into cus­tody with­out inci­dent late last week, one in Flori­da and the oth­er in Mary­land, Sobocin­s­ki said.

    Clen­daniel and Rus­sell met while incar­cer­at­ed at sep­a­rate pris­ons, accord­ing to the court doc­u­ments — Rus­sell in fed­er­al cus­tody for pos­sess­ing bomb­mak­ing mate­ri­als and Clen­daniel in a Mary­land facil­i­ty for rob­bing con­ve­nience stores with a machete.

    ...

    Clendaniel’s moth­er, Lan­ette Clen­daniel, said in an inter­view on Mon­day that her daugh­ter got involved with neo-Nazi beliefs in prison and car­ried them after her release.

    “Her beliefs stem from the prison sys­tem,” Lan­ette Clen­daniel said. “She didn’t real­ly get into that crap until she was in prison.”

    Sarah Clen­daniel has strug­gled with drug abuse and has crim­i­nal con­vic­tions, going back to at least 2006, when she was 18 and sen­tenced to three years in prison for rob­bery, accord­ing to court records. Lat­er, in 2016, she was sen­tenced to nine years in prison after being accused of rob­bing con­ve­nience stores three times while armed with a machete, accord­ing to court records and state offi­cials. She has three chil­dren, who are liv­ing with grand­par­ents.

    ...

    Rus­sell, a for­mer Flori­da Nation­al Guard mem­ber, is the founder of the neo-Nazi group Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion, which attempt­ed to use vio­lent attacks to spark a race war in the Unit­ed States. Experts say the group, while small, is dan­ger­ous because of its influ­ence on the broad­er far-right move­ment to eschew pol­i­tics and spill blood.

    An Atom­waf­fen mem­ber killed a gay, Jew­ish col­lege stu­dent in 2019; anoth­er adher­ent is accused of killing his girlfriend’s par­ents for oppos­ing his neo-Nazi views. Atom­waf­fen fol­low­ers have also threat­ened and harassed jour­nal­ists, African Amer­i­can church­es and Jew­ish orga­ni­za­tions.

    A for­mer Atom­waf­fen mem­ber named Devon Arthurs, who lived with Rus­sell in Tam­pa, killed two of their room­mates in 2017 and sub­se­quent­ly told author­i­ties they had been plan­ning attacks on U.S. nuclear plants and pow­er lines.

    Police dis­cov­ered bomb­mak­ing mate­ri­als and explo­sives inside the shared apart­ment where the mur­ders occurred; Rus­sell sub­se­quent­ly plead­ed guilty to pos­ses­sion of an unreg­is­tered destruc­tive device and improp­er stor­age of explo­sive mate­ri­als.

    His replace­ment as leader of Atom­waf­fen was sub­se­quent­ly impris­oned for “swat­ting,” or call­ing in fake crises to pro­voke lethal law enforce­ment raids.

    Rus­sell began talk­ing to the infor­mant while still in prison, accord­ing to the court record; he was released in August 2021. The dis­cus­sions of infra­struc­ture attacks alleged­ly began last sum­mer.

    Pros­e­cu­tors say Rus­sell rec­om­mend­ed tar­get­ing trans­form­ers because they are “cus­tom made and could take almost a year to replace.” He also said the attack would be most effec­tive after a win­ter storm, “when most peo­ple are using max elec­tric­i­ty.”

    Sarah Clen­daniel told the infor­mant she expect­ed to die of kid­ney dis­ease with­in months and just want­ed “to accom­plish some­thing worth­while” first. She left a state­ment, accord­ing to the com­plaint, that ref­er­enced Hitler, the Unabomber and a Nor­we­gian mass killer and said, “I would sac­ri­fice **every­thing** for my peo­ple.” She said Rus­sell, unlike her, “has a lot to lose.”

    Clen­daniel suf­fered from kid­ney dam­age and had told fam­i­ly mem­bers she only had a few months to live, accord­ing to her moth­er.

    In dis­cussing an attack on pow­er sta­tions, Clen­daniel “added that they need­ed to ‘destroy those cores, not just leak the oil …’ and that a ‘good four or five shots through the cen­ter of them … should make that hap­pen.’ She added: ‘It would prob­a­bly per­ma­nent­ly com­plete­ly lay this city to waste if we could do that suc­cess­ful­ly,’” accord­ing to court doc­u­ments.

    ...

    Clendaniel’s desire to car­ry out an attack quick­ly was ham­pered by her lack of access to a rifle, accord­ing to the crim­i­nal com­plaint. Her semi­au­to­mat­ic weapon had been seized in a dis­pute with a neigh­bor, and she was hop­ing to get a new one from the infor­mant. In the mean­time, pros­e­cu­tors say, she was plan­ning to scope out the poten­tial attack sites.

    The charges come after sim­i­lar attacks on the pow­er grid in North Car­oli­na and Ore­gon that remain unsolved; the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty recent­ly warned that the Unit­ed States is in a “height­ened threat envi­ron­ment” and that crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture is among the “tar­gets of poten­tial vio­lence.”

    Bri­an Har­rell, who over­saw infra­struc­ture pro­tec­tion at the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty in the pre­vi­ous admin­is­tra­tion, said there has been “a sig­nif­i­cant uptick” in online dis­cus­sion of grid attacks by home­grown extrem­ists and that it should be treat­ed as “domes­tic ter­ror­ism, pure and sim­ple.”

    A report issued in Sep­tem­ber by the Pro­gram on Extrem­ism at George Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty found that white suprema­cists have been “laser-focused on con­duct­ing attacks on the ener­gy sec­tor dur­ing the last six years as a pre­text for the antic­i­pat­ed col­lapse of Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment and soci­ety.”

    The researchers cit­ed Rus­sell as an ear­ly exam­ple.

    ———–

    “Duo accused of neo-Nazi plot to tar­get Mary­land pow­er sta­tions” By Rachel Wein­er, Jas­mine Hilton and Dan Morse; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 02/06/2023

    “Accord­ing to pros­e­cu­tors, their plan was to attack with gun­fire five sub­sta­tions that serve the Bal­ti­more area. In con­ver­sa­tions about the plot, accord­ing to court doc­u­ments, Clen­daniel “described how there was a ‘ring’ around Bal­ti­more and if they hit a num­ber of them all in the same day, they ‘would com­plete­ly destroy this whole city.’””

    A plot to shoot up mul­ti­ple sub­sta­tions around Bal­ti­more with an intent on caus­ing the kind of dam­age that could­n’t be quick­ly repaired. That was their plan, which sure sounds a lot like what var­i­ous groups have actu­al­ly been doing around the US over the last sev­er­al months, from Moore Coun­ty, NC, to the Christ­mas-day attacks in Taco­ma. That’s a big part of the con­text of this sto­ry: they are charged with plot­ting the kind of domes­tic ter­ror­ism activ­i­ty that’s been surg­ing in recent months:

    ...
    Accord­ing to pros­e­cu­tors, they used open-source infor­ma­tion on the nation­al infra­struc­ture grid to pick five elec­tri­cal sub­sta­tions around Bal­ti­more that would, if attacked on the same day, cre­ate a “cas­cad­ing fail­ure” in the sys­tem.

    ...

    Pros­e­cu­tors say Rus­sell rec­om­mend­ed tar­get­ing trans­form­ers because they are “cus­tom made and could take almost a year to replace.” He also said the attack would be most effec­tive after a win­ter storm, “when most peo­ple are using max elec­tric­i­ty.”

    ...

    In dis­cussing an attack on pow­er sta­tions, Clen­daniel “added that they need­ed to ‘destroy those cores, not just leak the oil …’ and that a ‘good four or five shots through the cen­ter of them … should make that hap­pen.’ She added: ‘It would prob­a­bly per­ma­nent­ly com­plete­ly lay this city to waste if we could do that suc­cess­ful­ly,’” accord­ing to court doc­u­ments.
    ...

    But then there’s the oth­er chill­ing con­text of this sto­ry: Bran­don Rus­sell isn’t just a co-founder of Atom­waf­fen. He was also already sent to prison on charges of plot­ting attacks against a Flori­da nuclear pow­er plant! Beyond that, when police searched his home in Tam­pa fol­low­ing the mur­der of his fel­low Atom­waf­fen room­mates by a third room­mate, Devon Arthurs, the police not only found enough explo­sives to build a bomb but also found two radioac­tive sub­stances: Tho­ri­um and Ameri­ci­um. Arthurs told police Rus­sell, a for­mer mem­ber of the Flori­da Nation­al Guard, was both plan­ning on attack­ing a Mia­mi-area nuclear pow­er plant with mor­tars but was also had the tech­ni­cal knowl­edge to build a nuclear bomb. Rus­sell was­n’t sim­ply sent to prison for plan­ning attacks on the elec­tri­cal grid. He was plan­ning attacks on a nuclear pow­er plant and was in pos­ses­sion of radioac­tive sub­stances:

    ...
    In response to a ques­tion on whether this plot was con­nect­ed to oth­er attacks across the coun­try, Sobocin­s­ki said the FBI has “no indi­ca­tion” that this plot was part of “any­thing larg­er.” Clen­daniel and Rus­sell were tak­en into cus­tody with­out inci­dent late last week, one in Flori­da and the oth­er in Mary­land, Sobocin­s­ki said.

    ...

    Rus­sell, a for­mer Flori­da Nation­al Guard mem­ber, is the founder of the neo-Nazi group Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion, which attempt­ed to use vio­lent attacks to spark a race war in the Unit­ed States. Experts say the group, while small, is dan­ger­ous because of its influ­ence on the broad­er far-right move­ment to eschew pol­i­tics and spill blood.

    An Atom­waf­fen mem­ber killed a gay, Jew­ish col­lege stu­dent in 2019; anoth­er adher­ent is accused of killing his girlfriend’s par­ents for oppos­ing his neo-Nazi views. Atom­waf­fen fol­low­ers have also threat­ened and harassed jour­nal­ists, African Amer­i­can church­es and Jew­ish orga­ni­za­tions.

    A for­mer Atom­waf­fen mem­ber named Devon Arthurs, who lived with Rus­sell in Tam­pa, killed two of their room­mates in 2017 and sub­se­quent­ly told author­i­ties they had been plan­ning attacks on U.S. nuclear plants and pow­er lines.

    Police dis­cov­ered bomb­mak­ing mate­ri­als and explo­sives inside the shared apart­ment where the mur­ders occurred; Rus­sell sub­se­quent­ly plead­ed guilty to pos­ses­sion of an unreg­is­tered destruc­tive device and improp­er stor­age of explo­sive mate­ri­als.

    His replace­ment as leader of Atom­waf­fen was sub­se­quent­ly impris­oned for “swat­ting,” or call­ing in fake crises to pro­voke lethal law enforce­ment raids.
    ...

    Now, regard­ing the fact that Sarah Clen­daniel’s semi­au­to­mat­ic weapon had been seized in a dis­pute with a neigh­bor, it’s worth recall­ing the episode of anoth­er Atom­waf­fen leader, Caleb Cole, who had his guns seized by Seat­tle author­i­ties back in 2019 as part of a new state “Red Flag” law that allows for the pre­emp­tive seizure of weapons from indi­vid­u­als deemed to be a threat to the pub­lic health. Cole lost access to his guns for 1 year. Also recall how Rus­sell was released from prison ear­ly, in August of 2021, after serv­ing lit­tle more than four years of his sen­tence. It sounds like the plot­ting for these new grid attacks appar­ent­ly start­ing in the sum­mer of 2022. So Rus­sell was plot­ting new attacks less than a year after his ear­ly release. Imag­ine that:

    ...
    Rus­sell began talk­ing to the infor­mant while still in prison, accord­ing to the court record; he was released in August 2021. The dis­cus­sions of infra­struc­ture attacks alleged­ly began last sum­mer.

    ...

    Clendaniel’s desire to car­ry out an attack quick­ly was ham­pered by her lack of access to a rifle, accord­ing to the crim­i­nal com­plaint. Her semi­au­to­mat­ic weapon had been seized in a dis­pute with a neigh­bor, and she was hop­ing to get a new one from the infor­mant. In the mean­time, pros­e­cu­tors say, she was plan­ning to scope out the poten­tial attack sites.
    ...

    Less that an a year after his ear­ly super­vised release, Bran­don Rus­sel­l’s ter­ror plot­ting begins anew. Over an encrypt­ed app, when Rus­sell first start­ed encour­ag­ing a third unnamed indi­vid­ual to start attack sub­sta­tions. A third indi­vid­ual who for­tu­nate­ly turned out to be an FBI infor­mant:

    CBS Bal­ti­more
    Local News

    ‘It would lay this city to waste:’ Catonsville woman con­spired with neo-Nazi leader to destroy Bal­ti­more pow­er grid, FBI says

    By Ava-joye Bur­nett
    Updat­ed on: Feb­ru­ary 7, 2023 / 10:58 AM /

    BALTIMORE — A Catonsville woman and a Flori­da man with neo-Nazi ties have been arrest­ed and charged with con­spir­ing to attack Bal­ti­more’s pow­er grid, the FBI and local offi­cials announced Mon­day.

    Sarah Beth Clen­daniel was alleged­ly record­ed telling an FBI infor­mant her plans to shoot ener­gy sub­sta­tions in Nor­risville, Reis­ter­stown, Per­ry Hall, and Bal­ti­more City. She is accused of col­lab­o­rat­ing with Bran­don Rus­sell, the found­ing mem­ber of an Orlan­do-based neo-Nazi group called the “Atom­waf­fen.”

    Rus­sell was sen­tenced to five years in fed­er­al prison in 2018 for charges asso­ci­at­ed with hav­ing explo­sives in his apart­men­t’s garage. Fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors said he planned to use the explo­sives to harm civil­ians, nuclear facil­i­ties and syn­a­gogues.

    Bomb-mak­ing mate­ri­als were dis­cov­ered dur­ing a 2017 mur­der inves­ti­ga­tion involv­ing Rus­sel­l’s room­mate in Tam­pa, Devon Arthurs, who fatal­ly shot two oth­er room­mates. Rus­sell was­n’t home at the time of the shoot­ing.

    Rus­sell was on super­vised release when in June 2022, he began encour­ag­ing an FBI source in an encrypt­ed mes­sen­ger app to attack sub­sta­tions, accord­ing to a crim­i­nal com­plaint.

    In Jan­u­ary, Rus­sell put the FBI source in touch with Clen­daniel, say­ing the woman was a felon who was strug­gling to buy new weapons. The two alleged­ly began com­mu­ni­cat­ing in 2018, when they were impris­oned in sep­a­rate loca­tions.

    “The accused were not just talk­ing, but tak­ing steps to ful­fill their threats and fur­ther their extrem­ist goals,” said Thomas Sobocin­s­ki, spe­cial agent in charge of the FBI Bal­ti­more field office.

    Rus­sell alleged­ly pro­vid­ed instruc­tions and loca­tion infor­ma­tion to Clen­daniel, and described attack­ing the pow­er trans­form­ers as “the great­est thing some­body can do.”

    In a con­ver­sa­tion between the source and Clen­daniel, she said she had a ter­mi­nal ill­ness and was unlike­ly to live more than a few more months. Offi­cials said she tried to plan the attack and coor­di­nate the pur­chase of weapons with the source over a phone call.

    In her own words, Clen­daniel said the attack “would lay this city to waste,” accord­ing to Sobocin­s­ki.

    The FBI also obtained a “man­i­festo” by Clen­daniel that alleged­ly ref­er­ences Adolf Hitler and Unabomber Ted Kaczyn­s­ki.

    The arrests come about two months after some­one opened fire on a sub­sta­tion in North Car­oli­na, knock­ing out pow­er to some 45,000 peo­ple. Accord­ing to the charg­ing papers, Rus­sell sent the FBI source a YouTube video about the attack.

    Offi­cials are say­ing there is not any evi­dence sug­gest­ing these two cas­es are relat­ed, how­ev­er.

    ...

    ———-

    “ ‘It would lay this city to waste:’ Catonsville woman con­spired with neo-Nazi leader to destroy Bal­ti­more pow­er grid, FBI says” by Ava-joye Bur­nett; CBS Bal­ti­more; 02/07/2023

    “The FBI also obtained a “man­i­festo” by Clen­daniel that alleged­ly ref­er­ences Adolf Hitler and Unabomber Ted Kaczyn­s­ki. ”

    A “man­i­festo” with ref­er­ences to Hitler and the Unabomber. Yeah, that’s more or less what we should have expect­ed. This is a good time to recall how police report­ed­ly found a framed pic­ture of Tim­o­thy McVeigh in Rus­sel­l’s Tam­pa bed­room.

    And note how Rus­sell appar­ent­ly start­ed this lat­est round of plot­ting in June of 2022 this an FBI infor­mant over an encrypt­ed app, while he was out on super­vised release. It rais­es the ques­tion: what if the infor­mant was­n’t an infor­mant? Would this plot still be ongo­ing?

    ...
    Rus­sell was on super­vised release when in June 2022, he began encour­ag­ing an FBI source in an encrypt­ed mes­sen­ger app to attack sub­sta­tions, accord­ing to a crim­i­nal com­plaint.

    In Jan­u­ary, Rus­sell put the FBI source in touch with Clen­daniel, say­ing the woman was a felon who was strug­gling to buy new weapons. The two alleged­ly began com­mu­ni­cat­ing in 2018, when they were impris­oned in sep­a­rate loca­tions.

    “The accused were not just talk­ing, but tak­ing steps to ful­fill their threats and fur­ther their extrem­ist goals,” said Thomas Sobocin­s­ki, spe­cial agent in charge of the FBI Bal­ti­more field office.

    Rus­sell alleged­ly pro­vid­ed instruc­tions and loca­tion infor­ma­tion to Clen­daniel, and described attack­ing the pow­er trans­form­ers as “the great­est thing some­body can do.”
    ...

    We’ll see how long before Rus­sel­l’s next super­vised release. But that does­n’t mean he’s return­ing to a ter­ror­ism hia­tus. Don’t for­get that Rus­sell and Clen­daniel began com­mu­ni­cat­ing in 2018, when they were both in sep­a­rate prison loca­tions. And as the above arti­cle not­ed, Rus­sell began com­mu­ni­cat­ing with the FBI infor­mant while he was still in prison. We’re liv­ing in the gold­en age of clan­des­tine com­mu­ni­ca­tions. If Bran­don Rus­sell has ideas to share he’s going to have the means to do so. And he’s clear­ly got a lot of ideas to share. Increas­ing­ly pop­u­lar action­able ideas.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | February 7, 2023, 4:42 pm

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