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FTR #1003 School Shootings and Fascist Groups, Part 2

Posted by Dave Emory ⋅ March 28, 2018Post a comment Email This Post Email This Post Print This Post Print This Post
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This broad­cast was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sev­er­al fac­tors great­ly exac­er­bate the school shoot­ing phe­nom­e­non.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pro­gram High­lights Include:

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

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

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

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

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

Sev­er­al con­sid­er­a­tions to be weighed in con­nec­tion with the inci­dent:

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

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

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

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

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

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

…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2b. More about the Repub­lic of Flori­da:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s still unclear why the sus­pect stopped shoot­ing.

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

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

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

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

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

…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Day 1: Con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rhodes’ response? “Tough.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Discussion

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

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

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

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

    Geor­gia sniper appeared fas­ci­nat­ed with Nazis

    May 07, 2018
    Bill Mor­lin and Nick R. Mar­tin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    At least 17 shell cas­ings were recov­ered, author­i­ties said.

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

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

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

    May 5, 2018

    Sher­iff: High­way sniper idol­ized school shoot­ing sus­pect

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Posted by Mary Benton | May 10, 2018, 3:58 pm

  2. This arti­cle hints at a com­mon theme among the alt-right relat­ing to these increas­ing­ly com­mon mass shoot­ings. The inci­dents start by hav­ing online pro­pa­gan­da tar­get white men between about 14 and 30 who are under­em­ployed and frus­trat­ed with their lives:

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

    The Ter­ri­fy­ing Trend of White Men Rad­i­cal­ized Online Becom­ing IRL Ter­ror­ists

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Fol­low David Nei­w­ert on Twit­ter.

    Posted by Mary Benton | May 19, 2018, 8:15 pm

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

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

    The Guardian

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

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

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

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

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

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

    What did the doc­u­ment release tell us?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    This sounds implau­si­ble. Where did this idea come from?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    ...

    So what does this mean for the Pad­dock inves­ti­ga­tion?

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

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

    ———-

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    The Dai­ly Beast

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

    Kel­ly Weill
    Kate Briquelet
    05.18.18 1:14 PM ET

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    ...

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

    ———-

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | May 22, 2018, 4:23 pm

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

    Boston Globe

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

    By Dan­ny McDon­ald Globe Staff
    Octo­ber 27, 2018

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

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

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

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

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

    ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

    ———–

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    The New York Times

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    ———-

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

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

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

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

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

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

    ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    The New York Times

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    ...

    ———-

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    The Guardian

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    ...

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

    ———-

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Talk­ing Points Memo

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

    by David Tain­tor
    Octo­ber 26, 2018 5:00 pm

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

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

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

    — TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) Octo­ber 26, 2018

    ———-

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

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

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

    Politi­co

    What Steve Ban­non Wants You to Read

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

    By ELIANA JOHNSON and ELI STOKOLS

    Feb­ru­ary 07, 2017

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

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

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

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

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

    ...

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

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

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

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

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

    ...

    ———-

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | October 27, 2018, 4:03 pm

  5. Here’s a series of arti­cles that under­scores why online video game plat­forms like Steam have become pop­u­lar recruit­ment tools for neo-Nazis and oth­er extrem­ist move­ments:

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

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

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

    Dai­ly Mail

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    ...

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

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

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

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

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

    ———-

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

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

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

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

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

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

    ...

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

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

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

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

    The Dai­ly Beast

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

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

    Amy Zim­mer­man
    03.08.19 1:43 AM ET

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

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

    ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    ...

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

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

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

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

    ———-

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

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

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

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

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

    ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Nation­al Pub­lic Radio

    Right-Wing Hate Groups Are Recruit­ing Video Gamers

    Anya Kamenetz
    Novem­ber 5, 2018 10:37 AM ET

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

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

    John con­front­ed his son angri­ly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Video games are a hun­dred bil­lion dol­lar indus­try.

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

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

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

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

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

    ...

    ———-

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

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

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

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

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | March 13, 2019, 1:50 pm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    “Watch your backs out there,” one wrote.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    “We are reg­u­lar peo­ple,” his father added.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Thalia Beaty and Lucas Wal­dron con­tributed to this report.

    Posted by Mary Benton | November 9, 2019, 10:07 am

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Talk­ing Points Memo
    News

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    ...

    ————

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

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

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

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

    ...

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

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

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

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

    ...

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

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

    The Oregonian/Oregon Live

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    ...

    ———-

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

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

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

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

    ...

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

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

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

    ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | September 1, 2020, 3:30 pm

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Along those lines, here’s a sto­ry about anoth­er appar­ent ‘lone wolf’ act. This time it was at the Spokane Coun­ty Demo­c­ra­t­ic head­quar­ters in Wash­ing­ton State. A 45 year old man, Peter Yea­ger, walked into the build and announced he had a bomb. He then report­ed­ly hand­ed the indi­vid­u­als in the build­ing copies of a man­i­festo and asked them to read it. The man­i­festo does­n’t appear to have been post­ed online any­where. Yea­ger man­aged to start a small fire in the build­ing but that’s it. He did­n’t resist arrest and claims he want­ed to burn the build­ing down but did­n’t want to harm any­one.

    What did Yea­ger’s man­i­festo say? We only have snip­pets avail­able, but inter­est­ing­ly, while Yea­ger claims to be a ‘lone wolf’ act­ing com­plete­ly along, the man­i­festo uses the lan­guage “we” quite a bit with state­ments like “We will con­tin­ue domes­tic oper­a­tions.” The man­i­festo also states that while Yea­ger has “pro­found respect for the grass­roots move­ments of both the Demo­c­ra­t­ic and Repub­li­can par­ties,” that he and oth­ers would con­tin­ue attacks against their “rul­ing elite as they exist in their cur­rent form.” It’s the kind of lan­guage that sug­gests Yea­ger might be a QAnon adher­ent. It’s the sec­ond inci­dent in a week in the US where a ‘lone wolf’ domes­tic ter­ror attack includes hints of a larg­er net­work at work:

    Inlan­der

    A bomb threat, a fire and a “man­i­festo”: Spokane Coun­ty Demo­c­ra­t­ic vol­un­teers were afraid some­thing like this would hap­pen

    By Daniel Wal­ters
    Decem­ber 09, 2020

    Vol­un­teers with the Spokane Coun­ty Democ­rats — at least some of them — have long been afraid that their activism would make them the tar­gets of an extrem­ist attack.

    This morn­ing it felt like their fears may have been real­ized.

    “All I can con­firm is the man walked into the [build­ing] and said he had a bomb,” says Spokane Police Depart­ment spokes­woman Julie Humphreys. “He was able to some­how detain one or more employ­ees or vol­un­teers.”

    That build­ing, says Nicole Bish­op, chair of the Spokane Coun­ty Democ­rats, is the Team­ster’s union hall where the local Democ­rats’ offices are head­quar­tered.

    “He hand­ed a doc­u­ment to one of our vol­un­teers,” Bish­op says.

    “He said, ‘I want you to read this,” that vol­un­teer, 78-year-old Shirley Gross­man, told KHQ news. “I tried to read it and my mind was not work­ing very well obvi­ous­ly. It said some­thing about the Demo­c­ra­t­ic and Repub­li­can Par­ty and more stuff. He said, ‘do you under­stand what this says?’ And I said ‘No, I can’t get it.’ He took the paper back and said, ‘Is there any­body else there?’ ”

    The device did not appear to have suc­cess­ful­ly det­o­nat­ed, but police spokesman Ter­ry Pre­uninger says that the sus­pec­t’s actions did appear to ignite a small fire that fiz­zled by the time the fire depart­ment arrived.

    He also says the sus­pect did “detain one male employ­ee for a short time” but that the sus­pect sur­ren­dered peace­ful­ly when police arrived.

    So far, though, the police depart­ment has declined to reveal any­thing more, includ­ing the name of the sus­pect or whether they believe he inten­tion­al­ly tar­get­ed the Democ­rats, the Team­sters or anoth­er group with offices in the build­ing.

    “Our vol­un­teers are under­stand­ably shak­en up,” Bish­op says. “[But] every­one is safe. Our vol­un­teers are safe. Every­one is safe­ly evac­u­at­ed.”

    Last year, a heat­ed inter­nal bat­tle broke out among the Democ­rats over whether to pass a res­o­lu­tion con­demn­ing spe­cif­ic far-right, white suprema­cist or extrem­ist groups. While many in the par­ty saw the res­o­lu­tion as a moral imper­a­tive, sev­er­al vol­un­teers in lead­er­ship wor­ried it could put their lives in dan­ger.

    “My back is to the front door of the office,” Mary Winkes, the par­ty’s for­mer state com­mit­tee­woman, told the Inlan­der ear­li­er this year. “And I did­n’t want the Proud Boys or some­body else bust­ing in and shoot­ing me because they were men­tioned in some res­o­lu­tion.”

    But Bish­op does­n’t believe today’s scare was relat­ed to any­thing spe­cif­ic to actions from the local par­ty at this point.

    “Because of COVID, our par­ty has been fair­ly qui­et,” Bish­op says.

    It’s far more like­ly, she says, that if there’s a polit­i­cal con­nec­tion, it’s relat­ed to the con­tentious nation­al elec­tion.

    “This may have hap­pened regard­less,” Bish­op says. “I don’t know if that’s an indi­ca­tion that we need to shy away from nam­ing hate groups or mili­tia groups, because they’re clear­ly active regard­less.”

    Lorilee Gill, who had spent five years vol­un­teer­ing as the par­ty’s direc­tor of oper­a­tions, says that the poten­tial threat of vio­lence is always some­thing that their vol­un­teers have to face, espe­cial­ly around elec­tion time.

    The same thing was true when the Democ­rats were in their old offices on Third Avenue, she says.

    “We’ve had times where we have to lock the doors and turn the lights off and tell the vol­un­teers, ‘You’re not to sit out on the front desk,’ ” Gill says. “I’ve been down there at mid­night doing PDC report­ing, and I’d had some­one in the park­ing lot flash­ing their highs at me.... Doing my civic duty should not be putting you in jeop­ardy. It should not be putting me in har­m’s way.”

    These con­cerns became a part of vol­un­teer train­ing, she says.

    “ ‘What should you do?’ ” Gill says. “How can you get out of here if some­one comes in the front of the build­ing? ... Where do you meet? Pick the phone up, dial 911 and tell me if there’s an emer­gency.”

    ...

    This isn’t the only appar­ent recent bomb-relat­ed inci­dent in Spokane. Thanks­giv­ing week, a man named Jer­main Wake­field called 911 and false­ly claimed that he had placed mul­ti­ple bombs at the local Planned Par­ent­hood office, just two blocks away from the Demo­c­ra­t­ic head­quar­ters.

    Paul Dil­lon, spokesman for Planned Par­ent­hood of Greater Wash­ing­ton and North Ida­ho, says in today’s case, the sus­pect seems to have been more orga­nized than the per­son who threat­ened them.

    “Obvi­ous­ly the media atten­tion that was giv­en to the bomb threat, we cer­tain­ly wor­ry about copy cats, that being a fac­tor,” Dil­lon says.

    Nation­al fig­ures on both sides of the polit­i­cal aisle have been hor­ri­fied by the way that Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump and oth­er right-wing fig­ures have been stok­ing extrem­ism with their wild claims of a stolen elec­tion.

    “When the pres­i­dent and var­i­ous promi­nent Repub­li­cans are out telling peo­ple the elec­tion is stolen, var­i­ous peo­ple are com­mit­ting trea­son, and the peo­ple need to rise up — some crazy MF’er is going to do it even­tu­al­ly,” writes Erick Erick­son, a right-wing Geor­gia-based talk show host who vot­ed for Trump this year.

    “I think the per­son that called in the bomb threat was on a down­ward spi­ral,” Dil­lon says. “You can’t sep­a­rate the rhetoric from these acts. You are del­uged with the dis­tor­tion and con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries. And some­thing snaps and that’s what caus­es peo­ple to car­ry out these destruc­tive acts. You hit a break­ing point.”

    It’s far too soon to know the moti­va­tion of the sus­pect.

    After Ari­zon­a’s U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Gif­fords’ was shot by a gun­man, some observers blamed over-the-top nation­al rhetoric from Repub­li­cans. But an inves­ti­ga­tion found that the gun­man, who suf­fered from para­noid schiz­o­phre­nia, had been obsessed with Gif­fords for years and lit­tle evi­dence tied his actions to the nation­al rhetoric.

    Still, the Inland North­west has a grim his­to­ry of extrem­ist bomb­ings, car­ried out by white suprema­cist groups like The Order. His­tor­i­cal­ly, extrem­ists have det­o­nat­ed bombs at Spokane City Hall, a local bank branch, and a Planned Par­ent­hood clin­ic. In 2011, an extrem­ist tried to blow up a back­pack bomb made of gun-pow­der, fish­ing weights and rat poi­son at a Mar­tin Luther King Jr. parade.

    ...

    ———-

    “A bomb threat, a fire and a “man­i­festo”: Spokane Coun­ty Demo­c­ra­t­ic vol­un­teers were afraid some­thing like this would hap­pen” by Daniel Wal­ters; Inlan­der; 12/09/2020

    ““He said, ‘I want you to read this,” that vol­un­teer, 78-year-old Shirley Gross­man, told KHQ news. “I tried to read it and my mind was not work­ing very well obvi­ous­ly. It said some­thing about the Demo­c­ra­t­ic and Repub­li­can Par­ty and more stuff. He said, ‘do you under­stand what this says?’ And I said ‘No, I can’t get it.’ He took the paper back and said, ‘Is there any­body else there?’ ””

    Hand­ing your vic­tim a hard copy of your man­i­festo. That’s sur­pris­ing­ly old school. But that’s appar­ent­ly what hap­pened. A man­i­festo where Yea­ger claimed to have no griev­ances against the grass­roots mem­bers of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic and Repub­li­can par­ty but deep griev­ances against the ‘elites’ in those par­ties. So he is at least attempt­ing to cre­ate a ‘non-par­ti­san’ veneer to his act. A non-par­ti­san lone wolf. And yet his man­i­festo includes repeat­ed ref­er­ences to “we”, sug­gest­ing that even if he real­ly is act­ing as a long wolf he’s act­ing in con­cert with a larg­er move­ment

    The Spokesman-Review

    Police say sus­pect­ed arson­ist at coun­ty Demo­c­ra­t­ic HQ was after ‘elites,’ but real­i­ty didn’t match up

    By Mag­gie Quin­lan
    UPDATED: Thu., Dec. 10, 2020

    The man who police say claimed to have a bomb and then lit a sub­stan­tial fire at the Spokane Coun­ty Demo­c­ra­t­ic head­quar­ters was after “elites” of any polit­i­cal par­ty, he told inves­ti­ga­tors, accord­ing to a Spokane Police Depart­ment news release.

    The peo­ple he actu­al­ly encoun­tered includ­ed a woman in her sec­ond day as a local Demo­c­ra­t­ic vol­un­teer and a mem­ber of the local truck Team­sters union.

    Peter Yea­ger, 45, of Grand Coulee, was arrest­ed on sus­pi­cion of first-degree arson, although Spokane Police Chief Craig Mei­dl said detec­tives are pur­su­ing oth­er charges.

    At the local Democ­rats’ office, Yea­ger told sev­er­al vol­un­teers he had a bomb and one vol­un­teer saw wires com­ing from his back­pack, said Spokane Coun­ty Democ­rats chair Nicole Bish­op.

    Police deter­mined Yeager’s back­pack did not have a bomb but con­tained gaso­line and oil used to start the fire, accord­ing the news release.

    That fire caused “tens of thou­sands” of dol­lars in dam­age, Mei­dl said. The FBI and Home­land Secu­ri­ty are aid­ing in the inves­ti­ga­tion.

    Yea­ger told inves­ti­ga­tors he does not align with any polit­i­cal par­ty and was not tar­get­ing Democ­rats, Mei­dl said. Yea­ger told police he is an Iraqi war vet­er­an and suf­fers from PTSD.

    The sus­pect­ed arson­ist described him­self as a “lone wolf,” Mei­dl said, although his man­i­festo promised, “We will con­tin­ue domes­tic oper­a­tions.”

    Mei­dl said detec­tives don’t take Yeager’s self-descrip­tion at face val­ue, and will con­tin­ue to see if he real­ly act­ed alone or was a “cog in a larg­er machine.”

    Yea­ger told detec­tives he used a Google search to find a polit­i­cal office and the Demo­c­ra­t­ic office was the clos­est to him. He assumed the near­est Repub­li­can head­quar­ters would be in Ida­ho, the release said.

    Jor­dan Kuhn said instead of a Demo­c­ra­t­ic leader, it was his father, a mem­ber of the local Team­sters labor union and a “strong con­ser­v­a­tive,” who Yea­ger “held hostage” in a room for about 15 min­utes.

    As a for­mer marine and cor­rec­tions offi­cer, Kuhn’s dad is “hard­wired to face dan­ger rather than run away,” Kuhn said.

    “He just did it with­out think­ing,” Kuhn said of his father.

    Mei­dl said Kuhn’s father went into a room with Yea­ger vol­un­tar­i­ly after a Demo­c­ra­t­ic vol­un­teer said “there’s a man in our office with a bomb.”

    Kuhn said his father want­ed to keep the suspect’s atten­tion while some of the women from the local Democ­rats ran out of the build­ing.

    “We have to flesh out what hap­pened while the man was there,” Mei­dl said. “Was his per­cep­tion that he wasn’t free to leave? Even then, there might not be any­thing that ris­es to the lev­el of a crim­i­nal charge.”

    Kuhn said his dad tried to “talk the guy down” and con­nect with him over their respec­tive time in the armed forces. Kuhn said when the sus­pect was briefly dis­tract­ed, his dad took the oppor­tu­ni­ty to “bolt” out the door.

    In a Democ­rats meet­ing Wednes­day, Bish­op point­ed out the for­mer cor­rec­tions officer’s hero­ism in dis­tract­ing and calm­ing the sus­pect­ed arson­ist.

    Bish­op also said she believed the threat and arson was like­ly influ­enced by vio­lent dis­course in the nation.

    “It’s not just about the vio­lent rhetoric,” state Sen. Andy Bil­lig said. “It’s about the peo­ple who are silent.”

    Bil­lig point­ed to region­al polit­i­cal lead­ers.

    Rep. Cathy McMor­ris Rodgers said in a state­ment Wednes­day evening that “no one should be tar­get­ed with vio­lence because of their polit­i­cal beliefs.”

    May­or Nadine Wood­ward failed to release a state­ment on Wednes­day, call­ing the inci­dent a mat­ter for law enforce­ment.

    In a joint state­ment issue on Thurs­day, Wood­ward and Mei­dl wrote: “Threats, intim­i­da­tion, and vio­lence will nev­er be tol­er­at­ed in our com­mu­ni­ty, espe­cial­ly in an attempt to ter­ror­ize the com­mu­ni­ty into mak­ing sys­tem change.”

    In his man­i­festo, Yea­ger wrote that he had “pro­found respect for the grass­roots move­ments of both the Demo­c­ra­t­ic and Repub­li­can par­ties,” but that he and oth­ers would con­tin­ue attacks against their “rul­ing elite as they exist in their cur­rent form.”

    Mei­dl said he’s con­cerned about more polit­i­cal­ly dri­ven vio­lence in the com­ing months.

    “I think law enforce­ment across the nation is con­cerned with where we’re at across the nation,” Mei­dl said. “There’s a feel­ing that the vio­lence peo­ple now think is accept­able to push their agen­das is at a lev­el most of us have nev­er seen before.”

    Mei­dl point­ed out that men­tal health cri­sis calls in Spokane are up about four to five times com­pared with last year. He attrib­uted this to a com­bi­na­tion of the pan­dem­ic, reces­sion, iso­la­tion and polit­i­cal divi­sion.

    ...

    Yea­ger also told inves­ti­ga­tors he had been think­ing about doing some­thing rad­i­cal for a long time, accord­ing to the news release.

    He told police his plan was to burn down the build­ing but not to hurt any­one, and said he tried to get every­one out of the build­ing before start­ing the fire, Mei­dl said.

    ...

    ———–

    “Police say sus­pect­ed arson­ist at coun­ty Demo­c­ra­t­ic HQ was after ‘elites,’ but real­i­ty didn’t match up” by Mag­gie Quin­lan; The Spokesman-Review; 12/10/2020

    “The sus­pect­ed arson­ist described him­self as a “lone wolf,” Mei­dl said, although his man­i­festo promised, “We will con­tin­ue domes­tic oper­a­tions.””

    A ‘lone wolf’ mak­ing promis­es that “we” will con­tin­ue domes­tic oper­a­tions. Was he just engaged in rhetor­i­cal self-aggran­dize­ment? Was he act­ing alone but per­haps express­ing the sen­ti­ments of a group he’s involved with? QAnon per­haps? We don’t know, but he promised the attacks would con­tin­ue against the Demo­c­ra­t­ic and Repub­li­can Par­ty “rul­ing elite as they exist in their cur­rent form”:

    ...
    In his man­i­festo, Yea­ger wrote that he had “pro­found respect for the grass­roots move­ments of both the Demo­c­ra­t­ic and Repub­li­can par­ties,” but that he and oth­ers would con­tin­ue attacks against their “rul­ing elite as they exist in their cur­rent form.”
    ...

    Keep in mind that, for a large num­ber of die-hard Trump sup­port­ers, the rage against the Repub­li­can Par­ty ‘elites’ is par­tic­u­lar­ly acute right now fol­low­ing the grow­ing attacks by Pres­i­dent Trump on Repub­li­can offi­cials who don’t com­plete­ly back his attempts to over­turn the elec­tion results. In oth­er words, any­one claim­ing to be enraged against Demo­c­ra­t­ic and Repub­li­can ‘elites’ right now is some­one repeat­ing stan­dard pro-Trump talk­ing points.

    But, for now, we don’t know what exact­ly drove Yea­ger to do this and whether or not he was act­ing as part of a larg­er group. Just as we don’t know if Storey and Brels­ford are in con­tact with the ROF or some oth­er group. But there’s no deny­ing the real­i­ty that this is a peri­od when ‘lone wolf’ attacks against soci­ety and civ­il war are increas­ing­ly main­stream ideas in the Right. And there’s also no deny­ing the real­i­ty that Pres­i­dent Trump’s 2020 loss and claims of a stolen elec­tion are the per­fect spark to ignite a wave of ‘lone wolf’ attack for years to come. It’s part of what makes assess­ing this sit­u­a­tion so tricky: while there’s plen­ty of evi­dence hint­ing at these ‘lone wolf’ attacks being part of broad­er move­ments, the cur­rent rhetor­i­cal cli­mate in the US is so extreme on the Right that we don’t need to nec­es­sar­i­ly assume groups like ROF are secret­ly rad­i­cal­iz­ing peo­ple online. The main­stream con­ser­v­a­tive media and right-wing politi­cians are car­ry­ing out that rad­i­cal­iza­tion right in pub­lic.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | December 11, 2020, 4:29 pm

  9. @Pterrafractyl–

    It is worth keep­ing in mind that Nazi ide­o­logues see any­thing that will dis­rupt the “sys­tem” and kill those who are doing work ben­e­fi­cial to it as worth­while.

    Some things–killing a nurse, shoot­ing up a school–might not make cohe­sive ide­o­log­i­cal sense to an out­sider, but might be seen as valu­able by some­one seek­ing to over­throw a “sys­tem” they see as ZOG–“Zionist Occu­pa­tion Gov­ern­ment.”

    Gods of the Blood: The Pagan Revival and White Sep­a­ratism by Mat­tias Gardell; Duke Uni­ver­si­ty Press [SC]; Copy­right 2003 by Duke Uni­ver­si­ty Press; ISBN 0–8223-3071–7; pp. 200–201.

    . . . . Endors­ing Beam’s lead­er­less strat­e­gy, [David] Lane argued for tac­ti­cal sep­a­ra­tion between an open pro­pa­gan­da arm and an under­ground para­mil­i­tary arm termed WOTAN (Will of the Aryan Nation). The func­tion of the overt wing is to “counter sys­tem spon­sored pro­pa­gan­da, to edu­cate the Folk, to pro­vide a man pool from which the covert or mil­i­tary arm can be [recruit­ed] . . . and build a rev­o­lu­tion­ary men­tal­i­ty” (David Lane 1994a, 26). Since the open racial pro­pa­gan­dist “will be under scruti­ny,” Lane empha­sized that the cadres involved need to “oper­ate with­in the [legal] para­me­ters” and keep “rigid­ly sep­a­rat­ed” from the mil­i­tary under­ground. The WOTAN para­mil­i­tary “must oper­ate in small, autonomous cells, the small­er, the bet­ter, even one man alone,” and it was “incum­bent” that no “sys­tem atten­tion” was to be drawn “to the overt cadres” (ibid., 27). The aim of the mil­i­tary under­ground was, Lane ham­mered down, to “has­ten the demise of the sys­tem before it total­ly destroys our gene pool” (26). Rev­o­lu­tion­ary activ­i­ty meant uti­liz­ing “fire, bombs, guns, ter­ror, dis­rup­tion and destruc­tion. Weak points in the infra­struc­ture of an indus­tri­al­ized soci­ety are pri­ma­ry tar­gets. What­ev­er and who­ev­er per­form valu­able ser­vice for the sys­tem is [sic] tar­gets, human or oth­er­wise. Spe­cial atten­tion and mer­ci­less ter­ror are vis­it­ed upon those White men who com­mit race trea­son.” (27). 11

    Lane was aware of, but indif­fer­ent to, the pos­si­bil­i­ty that his mes­sage might con­tribute to inspir­ing a lone wolf with a war­rior com­plex to com­mit an act of blind ter­ror along the lines of the Okla­homa City bomb­ing, which count­ed fif­teen chil­dren among the vic­tims killed. “There are only those who are for our cause and those who are our ene­mies . . . the mass­es are self­ish, greedy ass­es. They have always been and they always will be.” . . .

    In that same vein, keep in mind the 3rd Reich vet­er­ans and sec­ond and third gen­er­a­tion Nazis involved with the Al Taqwa milieu and 9/11. “The Turn­er Diaries” fore­shad­ow very direct­ly the events of 9/11.

    FTR #456 details these con­nec­tions:

    Al Taqwa’s Youssef Nada helped key axis spy Haj Amin Al-Husseini–the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem–escape from Ger­many at the end of World War II.

    “Islamism, Fas­cism and Ter­ror­ism (Part II)” by Marc Erik­son; Asia Times; 11/5/2002; p. 2.

    . . . . Anoth­er val­ued World War II Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor was Youssef Nada, cur­rent board chair­man of al-Taqwa (Nada Man­age­ment), the Lugano, Switzer­land, Liecht­en­stein, and Bahamas-based finan­cial ser­vices out­fit accused by the US Trea­sury Depart­ment of mon­ey laun­der­ing for and financ­ing of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qae­da. As a young man, he had joined the armed branch of the secret appa­ra­tus’ (al-jihaz al-sir­ri) of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and then was recruit­ed by Ger­man mil­i­tary intel­li­gence. When Grand Mufti el-Hus­sei­ni had to flee Ger­many in 1945 as the Nazi defeat loomed, Nada report­ed­ly was instru­men­tal in arrang­ing the escape via Switzer­land back to Egypt and even­tu­al­ly Pales­tine, where el-Hus­sei­ni resur­faced in 1946. . . .

    12. Next, the pro­gram reviews a speech made by William Pierce 1998, the pro­gram sets forth the Nation­al Alliance leader’s eerie fore­shad­ow­ing of the events of 9/11. (Pierce is the author of The Turn­er Diaries and Serpent’s Walk.) Pierce spoke of Osama bin Laden attack­ing tall build­ings, such as the World Trade Cen­ter, and the com­ing of bio-ter­ror­ism to the U.S. This is but one indi­ca­tion that the rela­tion­ship between Islamists and neo-Nazis sought by Huber had become a reality—whether or not Huber was the one who cement­ed its gen­e­sis. Note that the Nation­al Alliance and the Ger­man NPD (with which Huber is affil­i­at­ed) are very close.

    “Neo-Nazis and 9/11” by Jack McCarthy; Coun­ter­punch; 10/29/2001.

    Upon perus­ing his speech­es from 1998–99, I dis­cov­ered that Pierce, who heads the so-called ‘Nation­al Alliance,’ did indeed utter some most inter­est­ing (pre‑9/11—if not prophetic—remarks about Osama bin Laden and bio-ter­ror­ism. The run­ning theme in Pierce’s com­men­taries is—to para­phrase his hero Hitler—that Osama Bin Laden’s warn­ing to Amer­i­ca is ‘I Am Com­ing.’ And so is bio-ter­ror­ism.

    In one chill­ing com­men­tary Pierce, (after not­ing that Bin Laden and the rest of the lost gen­er­a­tion of angry Moslem youth had it with their par­ents’ com­pro­mis­es and were hell bent on revenge against infi­del Amer­i­ca) issued this stark, prophet­ic warn­ing in a 1998 radio address titled, ‘Stay Out of Tall Build­ings.’ ‘New York­ers who work in tall office build­ings any­thing close to the size of the World Trade Cen­ter might con­sid­er wear­ing hard hats . . .’ Pierce warned. . . . [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s].

    13. Next, review­ing pre­vi­ous infor­ma­tion, the broad­cast high­lights the sim­i­lar­i­ty between the events of 9/11 and the con­clud­ing episode of The Turn­er Diaries—the blue­print for Tim­o­thy McVeigh and com­pa­ny, as well as the Nazi ter­ror group The Order. That Nazi tract (authored by the above-men­tioned William Pierce) con­cludes with a low-lev­el sui­cide aer­i­al attack against the Pen­ta­gon.

    It is worth not­ing that The Turn­er Diaries fea­tures the cli­mac­tic attack on the Pen­ta­gon as occur­ring on Novem­ber 9th. That date had great sig­nif­i­cance for the Nazis. The Ger­man sailors’ rebel­lion that pre­cip­i­tat­ed the advent of the Weimar Repub­lic so hat­ed by the Nazis began on 11/9. Attempt­ing to roll back the Weimar rev­o­lu­tion, the Nazis launched the ill-fat­ed Beer Hall Putsch on that date, as well. Die Krys­tall­nacht (the Night of Glass pogrom) of 1938 was launched on that date also. Inter­est­ing­ly, the Berlin Wall came down on Novem­ber 9. A Ger­man (or oth­er Euro­pean) would write the date Novem­ber 9 as—9/11!

    The Turn­er Diaries; “Andrew Mac­don­ald;” Bar­ri­cade Books, Inc. [SC] 1996; Copy­right 1978, 1980 William Pierce; ISBN 1–56980-086–3; p. 201.

    . . . . I con­ferred pri­vate­ly with Major Williams of the Wash­ing­ton Field Com­mand for more than an hour on the prob­lem of attack­ing the Pen­ta­gon. The military’s oth­er major com­mand cen­ters were either knocked out on Sep­tem­ber 8 or sub­se­quent­ly con­sol­i­dat­ed with the Pen­ta­gon, which the top brass appar­ent­ly regards as impreg­nable. And it damned near is. We went over every pos­si­bil­i­ty we could think of, and we came up with no real­ly con­vinc­ing plan—except, per­haps one. That is to make an air deliv­ery of a bomb.

    In the mas­sive ring of defens­es around the Pen­ta­gon there is a great deal of anti-air­craft fire­pow­er, but we decid­ed that a small plane, fly­ing just above the ground, might be able to get through the three-mile gaunt­let with one of our 60-kilo­ton war­heads. One fac­tor in favor of such an attempt is that we have nev­er before used air­craft in such a way, and we might hope to catch the anti-air­craft crews off their guard.

    Although the mil­i­tary is guard­ing all civ­il air­fields, it just hap­pens that we have an old crop duster stashed in a barn only a few miles from here. My imme­di­ate assign­ment is to pre­pare a detailed plan for an aer­i­al attack on the Pen­ta­gon by next Mon­day. We must make a final deci­sion at the time and then act with­out fur­ther delay.

    Novem­ber 9, 1993. It’s still three hours until first light, and all sys­tems are ‘go.’ I’ll use the time to write a few pages—my last diary entry. Then it’s a one-way trip to the Pen­ta­gon for me. The war­head is strapped into the front seat of the old Stear­man and rigged to det­o­nate either on impact or when I flip a switch in the back seat. Hope­ful­ly, I’ll be able to mange a low-lev­el air burst direct­ly over the cen­ter of the Pen­ta­gon. Fail­ing that, I’ll at least try to fly as close as I can before I’m shot down.

    Thus end Earl Turner’s diaries, as unpre­ten­tious­ly as they began. His final mis­sion was suc­cess­ful, of course, as we all are remind­ed each year on Novem­ber 9—our tra­di­tion­al Day of the Mar­tyrs. . . .

    14. A Ger­man paper on the neo-Naz­i/Is­lamist con­nec­tion dis­cuss­es dia­logue writ­ten by Pierce in The Turn­er Diaries. The pro­tag­o­nist of this book (express­ing the views of William Pierce, the book’s author) rants about his desire to see the “100 floors of the sky­scraper fall.” Recall that—as seen above—the book also has a scene eeri­ly like the attack on the Pen­ta­gon and that Pierce him­self fore­shad­owed the attacks in a 1998 radio broad­cast.

    “The Unholy Alliance Between the Swasti­ka and the Cres­cent, Part I—Neo Nazis and Fun­da­men­tal­ist Islam” by Anton Maegerle; 12/12/2001; p. 2.

    . . . . 47 years lat­er the Hitler wor­ship­per William Pierce (born 1933) tells in his right-wing ter­ror­ist nov­el “The Turn­er Diaries” of a right-wing extrem­ist Kamikaze-ing an air­plane into the Pen­ta­gon. In an apoc­a­lyp­tic scene Pierce rejoic­es over the destruc­tion of the cen­ter of the world cap­i­tal-con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed, Jew­ish-dom­i­nat­ed New York. The neo-Nazi, writ­ing under the alias Andrew Mac­Don­ald, says he desires to see the ‘100 floors of the sky­scraper’ fall. Pierce’s book [The Turn­er Diaries] is a utopi­an fan­ta­sy, pro­mot­ed as a neo-nazi Bible world-wide, as the pub­li­ca­tion of the diaries of the US-Amer­i­can right-wing extrem­ist Earl Turn­er found in the years 2091 dur­ing exca­va­tions of the ruins of Wash­ing­ton, 100 years after the nation­al rev­o­lu­tion of 1991–93. . . .

    15. Next, the pro­gram reviews infor­ma­tion sup­ple­ment­ing the exam­i­na­tion of neo-Nazi con­nec­tions to the events of 9/11. Specif­i­cal­ly, the pro­gram fur­thers some details con­nec­tion­ing the 1993 World Trade Cen­ter bomb­ing, the Okla­homa City bomb­ing, and 9/11. Andreas Strass­meir, the alleged mas­ter­mind of the OKC bomb­ing and Tim­o­thy McVeigh’s alleged supe­ri­or in the oper­a­tional aspects of the attack is alleged in a 5/10/1995 FBI mem­o­ran­dum to have sought the pur­chase of a Boe­ing 747 from Lufthansa. The pos­si­bil­i­ty that this may be an indi­ca­tion that neo-Nazis and Islamists were coop­er­a­tive­ly plot­ting attacks like 9/11 in the mid-1990’s is not one to be too read­i­ly dis­missed.

    “Al Qaeda’s Neo-Nazi Con­nec­tions” by William Grim; The Jew­ish Press. 

    . . . Extrem­ists resid­ing at Elo­him City received mil­i­tary-style train­ing from a num­ber of sources. One of the train­ers there was Andreas Carl Strass­meir of Ger­many, a neo-Nazi and the son of Guenter Strass­meir, a chief aide of dis­graced for­mer Ger­man chan­cel­lor Hel­mut Kohl. The elder Strass­meir is wide­ly regard­ed as the archi­tect of Kohl’s reuni­fi­ca­tion plan that merged the for­mer East Ger­many with the Fed­er­al Repub­lic in 1991. And Guenter’s father was one of the orig­i­nal mem­bers of the Nazi Par­ty in the ear­ly 1920s. Andreas Strass­meir is impor­tant to this sto­ry because he not only became a close friend and con­fi­dant of Tim­o­thy McVeigh, but also because he is regard­ed by many inves­ti­ga­tors as John Doe #2, the unknown per­son assist­ing McVeigh and Ter­ry Nichols at the scene of the Okla­homa City bomb­ing who was seen by a num­ber of eye­wit­ness­es. In addi­tion to train­ing var­i­ous neo-Nazi and mili­tia groups, Strass­meir was involved in a num­ber of very curi­ous activ­i­ties. Accord­ing to an FBI report dat­ed May 10, 1995, ‘Addi­tion­al doc­u­ments reveal that at one time Strass­meir was attempt­ing to pur­chase a 747 air­craft from Lufthansa; how­ev­er, the rea­son for the pur­chase is not reflect­ed in the doc­u­ments.’ In 1995 it would not have been unrea­son­able for an FBI inves­ti­ga­tor to give Strassmeir’s abort­ed air­lin­er pur­chase mere­ly pass­ing notice. In light of 9/11, how­ev­er, it gives one pause and rais­es the real pos­si­bil­i­ty that 9/11 type attacks were being planned as far back as 1995 by insid­ers in the neo-Naz­i/Is­lam­ic ter­ror­ist net­work. . . .

    Best,

    Dave Emory

    Posted by Dave Emory | December 11, 2020, 5:38 pm

  10. There’s a new piece in Wired about anoth­er cor­ner of the inter­net that was warped into a far right rad­i­cal­iza­tion tool tar­get­ing kids:

    It turns out the wild­ly pop­u­lar Roblox game — a game that allows large num­bers of users to col­lec­tive­ly cre­ate any Lego-like world they want — isn’t lim­it­ed to cre­at­ing light-heart­ed fun fan­ta­sy worlds. It can also be used to cre­ate dig­i­tal fas­cist dystopias. Fas­cist enclaves where vol­un­tary slav­ery is the norm and degen­er­a­cy laws against things like fem­i­nism and homo­sex­u­al­i­ty are the enforced. That’s the sto­ry sur­round­ing a Roblox play­er, known as Mal­colm, who man­aged to cul­ti­vate a loy­al fol­low­ing of play­ers who helped him build mul­ti­ple fas­cist king­doms, the largest of which was a kind of Rome-based fas­cist hier­ar­chy. Mal­colm was known to fre­quent­ly make Holo­caust jokes and was, him­self, appar­ent­ly rad­i­cal­ized on the 4Chan mes­sage board. Accord­ing to for­mer high-rank­ing mem­bers, Mal­colm would ask them to read SS man­u­al and lis­ten to a far right pod­cast about a school shoot­er. One for­mer mem­ber, Chip, even start­ed an Ein­satz­grup­pen divi­sion, know­ing it would please Mal­colm. This dig­i­tal Rome even had its own Sen­ate and accord­ing to esti­mates around a third of the 200 peo­ple run­ning the Sen­ate were fas­cists in real life. Final­ly, while it sounds like this par­tic­u­lar dig­i­tal fas­cist king­dom fiz­zled out on its own around 5 years ago and Roblox is doing a bet­ter job of polic­ing its con­tent, the game is still being used as a rad­i­cal­iza­tion plat­form. Plus, it also sounds like a lot of the more rad­i­cal­ized mem­bers of groups like the noto­ri­ous /pol/ forum on 4Chan are for­mer fol­low­ers of Mal­colm and con­tin­ue to thank him for ‘red-pilling’ them years ago with a dig­i­tal taste of fas­cism:

    Wired

    How Roblox Became a Play­ground for Vir­tu­al Fas­cists
    Thou­sands of play­ers flocked to a dig­i­tal world filled with dra­con­ian rules, slav­ery, and anti-Semitism—and test­ed how far “just a game” can go.

    Cecil­ia D’Anas­ta­sio
    06.10.2021 06:00 AM

    Fer­gu­son, a mid­dle school­er in Ontario, Cana­da, had been tap­ping out the same four-let­ter sequence on his key­board for hours.

    W, A, S, D.

    W, A, S, D.

    He was steer­ing his dig­i­tal avatar, a Lego-man-like mil­i­tary grunt, in laps around a futur­is­tic air­field. Although his fin­gers ached, he would glad­ly have gone on for hours more. Every key­stroke brought the 11-year-old clos­er to his goal: scal­ing the ranks of a group in the video game Roblox.

    The group had rules. Strict rules. Play­ers dressed as pilots and marines went around bark­ing out orders in lit­tle speech bub­bles. When Fer­gu­son wasn’t run­ning laps, he was doing drills or scal­ing walls—boot camp stuff. The only three words he could say dur­ing train­ing were “YES,” “NO,” and “SIR.” And “SIR” gen­er­al­ly applied to one per­son, Mal­colm, the dom­i­neer­ing ado­les­cent who ruled the group. “His thing was the winky face,” Fer­gu­son says. “He was charm­ing. He was fun­ny. He always had a response; it was instant. He was a dick.”

    At the time, in 2009, Roblox was just over two years old, but sev­er­al mil­lion peo­ple—most of them kids and teens—were already play­ing it. The game isn’t real­ly a game; it is a hub of inter­con­nect­ed vir­tu­al worlds, more like a sprawl­ing mall video arcade than a stand-alone Street Fight­er II machine. Roblox gives play­ers a sim­ple set of tools to cre­ate any envi­ron­ment they want, from Naru­to’s ani­me vil­lage to a high school for mer­maids to Some­where, Wales. Play­ers have built games about bee­keep­ing, man­ag­ing a theme park, flip­ping piz­zas, shov­el­ing snow, using a pub­lic bath­room, and fling­ing them­selves down stair­cas­es. They have also built spaces to hang out and role-play dif­fer­ent char­ac­ters and scenarios—rushing a soror­i­ty, polic­ing Wash­ing­ton, DC.

    Fer­gu­son was attract­ed to the more orga­nized, mil­i­taris­tic role-plays. (Now 23, he asked that I refer to him only by his online name. He says he hears it more often than his giv­en name; also, he doesn’t want to be doxed.) Grow­ing up, he says, he was an annoy­ing kid. He was checked out of school, had no hob­bies or goals or friends. “Lit­er­al­ly, like, zero,” he says. Self-­es­teem issues and social anx­i­ety made him list­less, hard to relate to. It didn’t mat­ter. When he got home from school every day, he’d load up Roblox. There, he says, “I could be king of the fuc king world.”

    Or at least the king’s errand boy. In that ear­ly group he was in with Mal­colm—a role-play based on the sci-fi mil­i­tary game Halo—Fer­gu­son proved his loy­al­ty, drill after drill, lap after lap. Mal­colm (not his real name) didn’t demand con­trol; he sim­ply behaved with the total assur­ance that he would always have it. “It very much was like being in a small mil­i­tary team,” Fer­gu­son says. “You val­ue that person’s opin­ion. You strive to do the best. You have to con­stant­ly check up to their stan­dards.” Even­tu­al­ly, Fer­gu­son became one of Malcolm’s trust­ed lieu­tenants.

    To grow their influ­ence, the boys would invade oth­er groups, charg­ing in as Mal­colm shout­ed the lyrics to Sys­tem of a Down’s “Chop Suey!” over Skype. They fun­neled new fol­low­ers into their own role-plays—one based on Star Wars, where they were the Sith; anoth­er based on Viet­nam, where they were the Amer­i­cans; and one based on World War II, where they were the Nazis.

    Fer­gu­son says that Malcolm’s inter­est in Nazism began with his dis­cov­ery of the edgelord mes­sag­ing board 4chan. From there, he start­ed fix­at­ing on anti-­Se­mit­ic memes and inver­sions of his­to­ry. He built a Ger­man vil­lage where they could host reenactments—capture the flag, but with guns and SS uni­forms. Malcolm’s title would be Führer.

    Fer­gu­son describes him­self as an “anar­chist shi thead.” At first, this sen­si­bil­i­ty expressed itself as irrev­er­ence. Then it became cru­el­ty. He had final­ly found his com­mu­ni­ty and estab­lished some author­i­ty with­in it. He didn’t mind punch­ing down to fit in. At the same time, he believed that Mal­colm was attract­ed to con­trar­i­an­ism, not out-and-out fas­cism. He says he chafed at Malcolm’s “oven talk,” the anti-Semit­ic jokes he made over late-night voice calls. Malcolm’s favorite refrain was “muh 6 mil­lion,” a mock­ing ref­er­ence to the vic­tims of the Holo­caust. “It was at a point in the inter­net where it’s like, OK, does he mean it?” Fer­gu­son recalls. “He can’t mean it, right? Like, he’d be crazy.” (Mal­colm says it was “a lit­tle bit of typ­i­cal trolling, noth­ing too seri­ous.”)

    In 2014, accord­ing to Fer­gu­son, Mal­colm watched HBO’s Rome, which depicts the Roman Republic’s vio­lent (and appar­ent­ly very raunchy) trans­for­ma­tion into an empire. Inspired, he told Fer­gu­son they would be swap­ping their uni­forms for togas. Togeth­er, they forged Malcolm’s proud­est achieve­ment with­in ­Roblox—a group called the Sen­ate and Peo­ple of Rome. The name con­jured high-mind­ed ideals of rep­re­sen­ta­tive democ­ra­cy, but this was a true fas­cist state, com­plete with shock troops, ­slav­ery, and degen­er­a­cy laws. Mal­colm took the title ­Your­Caesar. In 2015, at the height of the group’s pop­u­lar­i­ty, he and Fer­gu­son claim, they and their red-pilled enforcers held sway over some 20,000 play­ers.

    Roblox is no longer the light­ly policed sand­box it once was. The com­pa­ny that owns it went pub­lic in March and is val­ued at $55 bil­lion. Tens of mil­lions of peo­ple play the game dai­ly, thanks in part to a recent pan­dem­ic surge. It has stronger mod­er­a­tion poli­cies, enforced by a team of humans and AIs: You can’t call peo­ple your slaves. You can’t have swastikas. In fact, you can’t have any Ger­man regalia at all from between 1939 and 1945.

    Still, present-day Roblox isn’t all mer­maids and piz­zaio­los. Three for­mer mem­bers of the Sen­ate and Peo­ple of Rome say the game still has a prob­lem with far-right extrem­ists. In ear­ly May, the asso­ciate direc­tor of the Anti-­Defama­tion League’s Cen­ter for Tech­nol­o­gy and Soci­ety, Daniel Kel­ley, found two Roblox re-cre­ations of the Christchurch mosque shoot­ing. (They have since been tak­en down.) And there are still Nazi role-plays. One, called Inns­bruck Bor­der Sim­u­la­tor, received more than a mil­lion vis­its between mid-2019 and late May or ear­ly June of this year, when—not long after I asked a ques­tion about it—Roblox removed it.

    But how do these com­mu­ni­ties shape who young play­ers become? Dun­geons & Drag­ons was sup­pos­ed­ly going to turn kids into dev­il wor­ship­pers. Call of Duty was going to make them fer­al warhounds. “It’s the same thing you see in rela­tion to alt-right recruit­ment,” says Rachel Kow­ert, the direc­tor of research at Take This, a non­prof­it that sup­ports the men­tal health of game devel­op­ers and play­ers. “‘And they play video games’ or ‘And this hap­pened in video games.’” It’s hard­er to pin down because. “There’s a line of research talk­ing about how games are social­ly rein­forc­ing,” she says. “There’s this process of oth­er­ing in some games, us ver­sus them. All of these things do seem to make a cock­tail that would be prime for peo­ple to recruit to extreme caus­es. But whether it does or not is a total­ly dif­fer­ent ques­tion. Because nobody knows.”

    Fer­gu­son, who today claims he is pen­i­tent for his role in the Sen­ate and Peo­ple of Rome, says he wants peo­ple to know about it, to make sense of it, to learn some­thing, and hope­ful­ly, even­tu­al­ly, make it stop. They just have to get it first. “I say, ‘Oh, when I was a kid, I start­ed play­ing this game. Sud­den­ly, I’m hang­ing out with Nazis, learn­ing how to build a repub­lic on the back of slav­ery,’” he says. “But no one under­stands how. ‘It’s just a game.’”

    Ear­li­er this year, Fer­gu­son took me to Rome. Or rather, he took me to a dusty, far-flung Roman out­post called Parthia, which, for com­plex rea­sons involv­ing a cat­fish and some stolen source code, is the most Mal­colm ever got around to build­ing. My avatar mate­ri­al­ized beyond the settlement’s walls, beside some con­crete store­hous­es. The label “Out­sider” appeared next to my user­name. Fer­gu­son was pac­ing toward me in a cow­boy hat with antlers, and I hopped over a line of wood­en looms to meet him.

    The area appeared desert­ed. On a typ­i­cal day in 2014 or 2015, he explained over Dis­cord voice chat, this was where “ran­dom chil­dren” would craft weapons and tools. He ges­tured toward some stone bar­racks in the dis­tance. “Over there,” he said, “there would be legionar­ies watch­ing the bar­bar­ians and prac­tic­ing for­ma­tions.” A bar­bar­ian was any play­er who hadn’t yet been admit­ted into Parthia’s rigid hier­ar­chy. Inside the out­post, the rank­ings got more granular—commoner, for­eign­er, ser­vant, patri­cian, legionary, com­man­der, sen­a­tor, mag­is­trate.

    Fer­gu­son, whose title was aedile, was in charge of the mar­kets and the slaves. “They’re not tech­ni­cal­ly slaves,” he explained. “They’re, in a sense, sub­mit­ting their free will to par­tic­i­pate in a sys­tem where they’re told every­thing to do.” (W, A, S, D.) Slaves could earn their cit­i­zen­ship over time, either through ser­vice or by sign­ing up to be glad­i­a­tors. When a Roblox employ­ee vis­it­ed the group once, he says, Fer­gu­son helped stage a bat­tle between two slaves in the amphithe­ater.

    ...

    Anoth­er of Malcolm’s for­mer fol­low­ers, a play­er I’ll call Chip, joined when he was 14. He says he liked the struc­tured social inter­ac­tions, the def­i­nite ranks, how know­able it all was. “I’ve always been the kind of gamer who prefers a seri­ous envi­ron­ment,” he says. As a mid­dle school­er in Texas, he felt like a com­put­er miss­ing part of its code—never quite sure “how to be nor­mal, how to inter­act with peo­ple, how to not be weird.”

    Parthi­an soci­ety was a prod­uct of Malcolm’s increas­ing­ly big­ot­ed pol­i­tics and his fierce need for con­trol, three for­mer mem­bers say. The outpost’s laws clas­si­fied sup­port for race-mix­ing, fem­i­nism, and gay peo­ple as “degen­er­a­cy.” They also required one play­er in the group, who is Jew­ish in real life, to wear “the Judea tunic or be arrest­ed on sight.” Inside Parthia, vig­iles patrolled the streets. We’d be stopped, Fer­gu­son said, for hav­ing the wrong skin tone. (My avatar’s skin was olive.) The play­ers vot­ed over­whelm­ing­ly to allow Mal­colm to exe­cute whomev­er he want­ed.

    We approached Parthia’s gate, which was on the oth­er side of a wood­en bridge. Fer­gu­son faced me and stuck his hand out. “If you’re an out­sider, they’d go like this to you,” he said, block­ing my avatar’s path. A bub­ble with the words “Out­siders not allowed” appeared above his head. The gate itself was closed, so Fer­gu­son and I took turns dou­ble-jump­ing off each other’s heads to scale the wall. On the oth­er side, I got my first glimpse inside Parthia.

    Fer­gu­son and Mal­colm had talked a tal­ent­ed ­Roblox archi­tect into design­ing it. Every­thing was big, big, big—columned pub­lic build­ings, loom­ing aque­ducts, a mud-brown sprawl of rec­tan­gu­lar build­ings stocked with end­less tiny rooms. After a brief tour, we ascend­ed a lad­der into a half-dome cupo­la. “If you had wealth or a name, you were stand­ing here,” Fer­gu­son said. “You’re sup­posed to be admir­ing your­self, your suc­cess, and look­ing down on the bar­bar­ians.” Romans would hang out, talk, col­lect social sta­tus, and, in Ferguson’s words, “smell their own farts all day.”

    One of the most exclu­sive cliques in Parthia was the Prae­to­ri­an Guard, Malcolm’s per­son­al army. Accord­ing to sev­er­al for­mer mem­bers, he some­times asked high-rank­ing mem­bers to read SS man­u­als and lis­ten to a far-right pod­cast about a school shoot­er. (“Sim­ple friend­ly ban­ter among friends,” Mal­colm says.) Chip start­ed an Ein­satz­grup­pen divi­sion, a ref­er­ence to the Nazis’ mobile death squads—partly because he thought it would get laughs, he says, and part­ly to please the cae­sar. In one case, memo­ri­al­ized on YouTube, Malcolm’s hench­men exe­cut­ed some­one for say­ing they didn’t “care about” the architect’s girl­friend, Cleopa­tra. Chip still thinks that, for a lot of peo­ple, fas­cism start­ed as a joke. “Until one day it’s not iron­ic to them,” he says. “One day they are argu­ing and ful­ly believe what they’re say­ing.”

    When it comes to Malcolm’s fas­cist lean­ings, Chip says, “On the stand, under oath, I would say yes, I believe he actu­al­ly thought these things.” Mal­colm, who says he is “just a lib­er­tar­i­an on the books,” dis­agrees. “It’s always been just trolling or role-­play­ing,” he says. “I’m just a his­to­ry buff. I don’t care for the appli­ca­tion of any of it in a real-world set­ting.”

    Chip and Fer­gu­son esti­mate that a third of the 200 play­ers who ran the Sen­ate and Peo­ple of Rome—most of them young adults—were IRL fas­cists. Enforc­ing the group’s dra­con­ian rules was “a game-play func­tion to them,” Fer­gu­son says. In oth­er words, they enjoyed it.

    Here is one vision of how far-right recruit­ment is sup­posed to work: Bob­by queues up for a Fort­nite match and gets paired with big, bad skin­head Ryland. Ryland has between two and 20 min­utes to make his pitch to Bob­by over voice or text chat before ene­my play­er Sal­ly shot­guns them both in the face. If Ryland’s vibe is intrigu­ing, maybe Bob­by accepts his Fort­nite friend request; they catch some more games and con­tin­ue their friend­ship on Dis­cord. Over time, weeks or months, Ryland nor­mal­izes extrem­ist ide­ol­o­gy for Bob­by, and even­tu­al­ly the kid becomes rad­i­cal­ized.

    Or, just as like­ly: Bob­by thinks that guy is wack and sucks at Fort­nite, and he doesn’t accept Ryland’s friend request. Next game, he’ll go for the shot­gun.

    Rad­i­cal recruit­ment in games is a tricky sub­ject to study. For one thing, all the use­ful data on Ryland and Bob­by is locked away in pri­vate cor­po­rate data­bas­es. Also, this is an ill­ness with a bewil­der­ing array of caus­es. In March, the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty host­ed a dig­i­tal forum called Tar­get­ed Vio­lence and Ter­ror­ism Pre­ven­tion in Online Gam­ing and Esports Engage­ment, designed to high­light how “vio­lent extrem­ists mali­cious­ly manip­u­late the online gam­ing envi­ron­ment to recruit and rad­i­cal­ize.” The ADL’s Daniel Kel­ley, who gave a keynote address, struck a more cau­tious note than the event’s name would sug­gest. He point­ed to the New Zealand government’s offi­cial report on the Christchurch mosque attack. The shoot­er played games, yes. But he also used Face­book and Red­dit and 4chan and 8chan, and he told the Kiwi author­i­ties that YouTube was, as the report put it, a “sig­nif­i­cant source of infor­ma­tion and inspi­ra­tion.”

    Ear­li­er this year, I asked Rabindra Ratan, an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of media and infor­ma­tion at Michi­gan State Uni­ver­si­ty, what the lat­est research said about far-right recruit­ment in games. Curi­ous him­self, he put it to Games­Net­work, a list­serv he’s on that goes out to some 2,000 game schol­ars and researchers.

    Respons­es trick­led in. A cou­ple of schol­ars point­ed to the ADL’s sur­vey on harass­ment and racism in online games, in which near­ly a quar­ter of adult gamers said they’d been exposed to talk of white suprema­cy while play­ing. Oth­ers not­ed the exis­tence of alt-right mes­sag­ing boards for gamers, the deep links between edgelord inter­net cul­ture and white suprema­cy, and the pop­u­lar­i­ty of Felix “PewDiePie” Kjell­berg, a gam­ing YouTu­ber who has made sev­er­al anti-Semit­ic jokes to his audi­ence. When one design­er ques­tioned the idea that rad­i­cal­iza­tion in games is wide­spread, some­one else shot them down: “I think it’s a dan­ger­ous mis­take to dis­miss rad­i­cal­iza­tion in gam­ing com­mu­ni­ties and cul­ture as mere­ly ‘urban leg­end,’” they wrote.

    ...

    In the very broad­est sense, the qual­i­ties asso­ci­at­ed with gamers—young, white, male, mid­dle class-ish, outsider—overlap with the qual­i­ties asso­ci­at­ed with peo­ple who might be can­di­dates for rad­i­cal­iza­tion. Of course, most of the near­ly 3 bil­lion peo­ple who play games don’t fit that stereo­type. The word “gamer” sum­mons these qual­i­ties because, for a long time, this was the con­sumer class that cor­po­ra­tions like Nin­ten­do mar­ket­ed to. Over the decades, that con­sumer class became a pas­sion­ate, even obses­sive cul­tur­al fac­tion. And in 2014, with the Gamer­gate con­tro­ver­sy, a sex­ist harass­ment cam­paign found­ed on a lie, parts of it cur­dled into a reac­tionary iden­ti­ty. Right-wing provo­ca­teurs such as Milo Yiannopou­los spurred it on, see­ing in the “frus­trat­ed male stereo­type” a chance to trans­form resent­ment into cul­tur­al pow­er. Gam­ing and gamer cul­ture belonged to a par­tic­u­lar type of per­son, and that type of per­son was under attack, Gamergate’s adher­ents held. “Social jus­tice war­riors” were para­chut­ing into their games to change their cul­ture. Nongamers, or gamers who didn’t resem­ble them, became “normies,” “e‑girls,” “Chads,” “NPCs” (non-playable char­ac­ters).

    “It’s a good tar­get audi­ence, most­ly male, that’s often been very sus­cep­ti­ble to rad­i­cal­iza­tion,” says Julia Ebn­er, a coun­tert­er­ror­ism expert for the Unit­ed Nations. Ebn­er has gone under­cov­er in a num­ber of extrem­ist groups, both online and offline, includ­ing jihadists, neo-­Nazis, and an antifem­i­nist col­lec­tive. She watched as sub­cul­tures that grew out of 4chan—initially trolling, not explic­it­ly political—slowly became more polit­i­cal, and then rad­i­cal. Grad­u­al­ly, inher­ent­ly extrem­ist con­tent cam­ou­flaged as satire became nor­mal­ized. Then it became real. The vec­tors, she says, were peo­ple like Mal­colm.

    “Recruit­ment” isn’t always the right word, Ebn­er told me. Some­times “groom­ing” is a bet­ter descrip­tor. “It’s often not real­ly clear to the peo­ple who are recruit­ed what they’re actu­al­ly recruit­ed into,” she says.

    Ebn­er does not believe that video games are rad­i­cal­iz­ing peo­ple on any large scale. But she has seen extrem­ists use gam­i­fi­ca­tion or video games as a method of recruit­ment, part­ly because of those qual­i­ties asso­ci­at­ed with capital‑G gamers. “There is a big lone­li­ness issue in parts of the gam­ing com­mu­ni­ty,” she says. “And there’s also a cer­tain desire for excite­ment, for enter­tain­ment.”

    Ebn­er argues that there should be more inter­ven­tion pro­grams tar­get­ing fringe com­mu­ni­ties on the inter­net, staffed by trained psy­chol­o­gists and recov­ered extrem­ists. But first, she says, soci­ety needs to change the way it talks about far-right recruit­ment and gam­ing. Peo­ple write off entire com­mu­ni­ties as being “com­plete­ly extrem­ist, being alt, being rad­i­cal,” she says. But extrem­ists “lure indi­vid­u­als from those sub­cul­tures into their polit­i­cal net­works.” It’s a com­plex, dif­fuse prob­lem, and the con­ver­sa­tion about it, she says, “isn’t nuanced enough.”

    The Sen­ate and Peo­ple of Rome fell in 2015. It wasn’t sacked by Lego-man Visig­oths or brought down by the par­a­sitic forces of degen­er­a­cy. What hap­pened was that Parthia’s archi­tect fell in love with Cleopa­tra, whom he mar­ried in-game and gave his login cre­den­tials. But Cleopa­tra turned out to be a cat­fish, and the dude behind the account leaked Parthia’s source code. Any­one could copy Malcolm’s empire and rule over it them­selves. The increas­ing­ly para­noid cae­sar began exil­ing play­ers. He tried to forge a new fas­cist dystopia, but the attempt fiz­zled. Rome was dead. By 2016, he and Fer­gu­son had stopped spend­ing time in the same groups.

    A year after that, though, 4chan users on the infa­mous /pol/ board would rem­i­nisce about the Sen­ate and Peo­ple of Rome in its heydey. /Pol/, short for “polit­i­cal­ly incor­rect,” is infa­mous specif­i­cal­ly for hate speech and polit­i­cal trolling, and as an engine of extrem­ism. One per­son wrote that most of the high-rank­ing mem­bers of Parthia were “/pol/tards”—frequent com­menters on the board. User after user thanked Mal­colm for red-pilling them. One said that after “sim­u­lat­ing life under Fas­cism” as a 14-year-old, he had since become even “more sup­port­ive” of it. (Mal­colm says that his “cult of per­son­al­i­ty is strict­ly built off of trolls.”)

    After the Unite the Right ral­ly in Char­lottesville, Vir­ginia, in 2017, the left-wing activist col­lec­tive Uni­corn Riot obtained hun­dreds of thou­sands of mes­sages from white suprema­cist Dis­cord servers. They sug­gest­ed that com­mu­ni­ties like Parthia exist­ed else­where in Roblox. In a /pol/ gam­ing serv­er, a user named Lazia Cus wel­comed new arrivals. “Cur­rent­ly,” they wrote, “we have start­ed a ‘Red­pill’ the Youth project which is going on in ‘Roblox.’ We’ve cre­at­ed a clan in which we will oper­ate Raids/Defences and expand on this project into oth­er plat­forms.” (The clan was a “futur­is­tic Roman legion,” though not nec­es­sar­i­ly mod­eled after Malcolm’s Rome or one of its many off­shoots.)

    Fer­gu­son still isn’t sure whether he par­tic­i­pat­ed in a fas­cist recruit­ment cam­paign. It was a role-play. Sure, the struc­ture of the Sen­ate and Peo­ple of Rome nor­mal­ized and even gam­i­fied fas­cism. And there were peo­ple like Mal­colm who brow­beat kids into adopt­ing extrem­ist beliefs. “I’ve nev­er inter­act­ed with peo­ple who were like, ‘OK, we’re going to make more neo-­Nazis,’” he says. “But I feel like it’s inevitable. It’s indi­rect.” Fer­gu­son point­ed out a Roblox role-play of the US-Mex­i­co bor­der in which play­ers are Bor­der Patrol agents. Near­ly 1.1 mil­lion peo­ple had vis­it­ed the game. “It’s not racial­ly moti­vat­ed,” Fer­gu­son says, drip­ping with irony. “They’re just pre­tend­ing to be a law enforce­ment agency that has a long his­to­ry of extreme­ly racist and xeno­pho­bic ten­den­cies.” (A Roblox spokesper­son said the com­pa­ny reviews “every sin­gle image, audio file, and video before it is uploaded.”)

    Mem­bers of Malcolm’s Prae­to­ri­an Guard have gone on to join the mil­i­tary and the TSA and to become police offi­cers, or what Fer­gu­son calls “actu­al Nazis.” Mal­colm him­self now owns a Star Wars role-play group with 16,000 mem­bers. To become cit­i­zens, play­ers must fol­low the group’s social media accounts. “Hail the Empire,” one winky-faced com­menter wrote.

    Ear­li­er this year, back in Roblox, Fer­gu­son took me to the Group Recruit­ing Plaza. Booths manned by avatars lined the perime­ter. Next to a Star Wars group was a red, white, and blue booth and a beard­ed man in a suit. The poste­r above him fea­tured a Con­fed­er­ate flag. It read:

    (Were not racist, were just a war group) 5th Texas Infantry Reg­i­ment, Con­fed­er­ate States. We’re at war with a USA Group.

    A Dis­cord han­dle appeared below.

    When I approached, the avatar behind the booth explained to me that they role-play the Con­fed­er­a­cy.

    “Why does your sign say ‘We’re not racist’?” I asked.

    “It’s just South­ern pride, and a war group,” he respond­ed. A human-sized scor­pi­on walked through me. A boxy gen­tle­man with avi­a­tors and a blue Napoleon jack­et came over to offer sup­port to his friend in the suit.

    “But how is that not racist?” I asked. The booth oper­a­tor hopped over the counter and stood in front of me. “You can’t call a nation racist,” he respond­ed. “That’s just unfair.”

    Fer­gu­son and I decamped to anoth­er role-play: Wash­ing­ton, Dis­trict of Colum­bia. The serv­er was near­ly full, 60 play­ers. I spawned inch­es from the Nation­al World War II Memo­r­i­al hon­or­ing Amer­i­can troops. “Vis­i­tor” appeared above my avatar’s head. Fer­gu­son was sit­ting in a police car. The offi­cer had a gun on him. “You should hop in,” Fer­gu­son said.

    On our way to fed­er­al prison, Fer­gu­son explained that, like the Sen­ate and Peo­ple of Rome, this role-play had a strict hierarchy—senators, FBI and NSA agents, and so on. We exit­ed the car as it did a midair triple-­flip beside a mob of peo­ple just stand­ing around talk­ing. As I was escort­ed in, a Depart­ment of Jus­tice offi­cial with bead­ed hair asked a man in a head­scarf what he thought about Black Lives Mat­ter. We were forced into an inter­ro­ga­tion room. The inter­roga­tor, our dri­ver, jumped on the table. He demand­ed to know what race we were. Wash­ing­ton, DC, was appar­ent­ly at war with South Korea.

    In his real life these days, Fer­gu­son trav­els around Ontario, some­times liv­ing with his dad, some­times liv­ing else­where, pick­ing up man­u­al labor jobs when he can. He has taught infil­tra­tion meth­ods to the youth, he says, so they can inves­ti­gate Roblox groups for extrem­ist behav­ior. They then report the groups or take them over. And for years, he has been grow­ing his own online group, the Cult, which he calls “a fam­i­ly of friends to pro­tect younger people”—particularly over Roblox. Right now, mem­bers of the Cult pay him between $100 and $1,000 a month for his efforts. He says he’s clos­er to them than to his fam­i­ly.

    Fer­gu­son is sor­ry, he says, for his role in con­nect­ing so many peo­ple to Mal­colm, and for his own big­otry. The Cult’s val­ues are the antithe­sis of all of that, he says. He made his fol­low­ers read “Desider­a­ta,” a prose poem by the Amer­i­can writer Max Ehrmann about how to be “kind, nur­tur­ing souls.” Right now he’s on a farm, grow­ing arugu­la, he says. He hopes to one day buy a plot of land and till it with the Cult’s most ded­i­cat­ed mem­bers. At some point, he says, he had a real­iza­tion: “If we took all of what we did online and slow­ly shift­ed it toward real life, we’d nev­er be alone.”

    —————

    “How Roblox Became a Play­ground for Vir­tu­al Fas­cists” by Cecil­ia D’Anas­ta­sio; Wired; 06/10/2021

    “At the time, in 2009, Roblox was just over two years old, but sev­er­al mil­lion peo­ple—most of them kids and teens—were already play­ing it. The game isn’t real­ly a game; it is a hub of inter­con­nect­ed vir­tu­al worlds, more like a sprawl­ing mall video arcade than a stand-alone Street Fight­er II machine. Roblox gives play­ers a sim­ple set of tools to cre­ate any envi­ron­ment they want, from Naru­to’s ani­me vil­lage to a high school for mer­maids to Some­where, Wales. Play­ers have built games about bee­keep­ing, man­ag­ing a theme park, flip­ping piz­zas, shov­el­ing snow, using a pub­lic bath­room, and fling­ing them­selves down stair­cas­es. They have also built spaces to hang out and role-play dif­fer­ent char­ac­ters and scenarios—rushing a soror­i­ty, polic­ing Wash­ing­ton, DC.”

    Roblox isn’t real­ly a game. It’s a hub of inter­con­nect­ed vir­tu­al worlds. Any­thing you can imag­ine. Includ­ing fas­cist dystopias. A plat­form for cre­at­ing vir­tu­al cults of vir­tu­al per­son­al­i­ties. Some­times vir­tu­al fas­cist per­son­al­i­ties. Anony­mous peo­ple inter­act­ing with anony­mous peo­ple in an act of vir­tu­al role-play­ing. You aren’t just talk­ing. You’re act­ing out. It’s the per­fect plat­form for rad­i­cal­iza­tion. Espe­cial­ly when a large por­tion of the peo­ple run­ning it are real life fas­cists:

    ...
    Fer­gu­son describes him­self as an “anar­chist shi thead.” At first, this sen­si­bil­i­ty expressed itself as irrev­er­ence. Then it became cru­el­ty. He had final­ly found his com­mu­ni­ty and estab­lished some author­i­ty with­in it. He didn’t mind punch­ing down to fit in. At the same time, he believed that Mal­colm was attract­ed to con­trar­i­an­ism, not out-and-out fas­cism. He says he chafed at Malcolm’s “oven talk,” the anti-Semit­ic jokes he made over late-night voice calls. Malcolm’s favorite refrain was “muh 6 mil­lion,” a mock­ing ref­er­ence to the vic­tims of the Holo­caust. “It was at a point in the inter­net where it’s like, OK, does he mean it?” Fer­gu­son recalls. “He can’t mean it, right? Like, he’d be crazy.” (Mal­colm says it was “a lit­tle bit of typ­i­cal trolling, noth­ing too seri­ous.”)

    In 2014, accord­ing to Fer­gu­son, Mal­colm watched HBO’s Rome, which depicts the Roman Republic’s vio­lent (and appar­ent­ly very raunchy) trans­for­ma­tion into an empire. Inspired, he told Fer­gu­son they would be swap­ping their uni­forms for togas. Togeth­er, they forged Malcolm’s proud­est achieve­ment with­in ­Roblox—a group called the Sen­ate and Peo­ple of Rome. The name con­jured high-mind­ed ideals of rep­re­sen­ta­tive democ­ra­cy, but this was a true fas­cist state, com­plete with shock troops, ­slav­ery, and degen­er­a­cy laws. Mal­colm took the title ­Your­Caesar. In 2015, at the height of the group’s pop­u­lar­i­ty, he and Fer­gu­son claim, they and their red-pilled enforcers held sway over some 20,000 play­ers.

    ...

    Fer­gu­son, whose title was aedile, was in charge of the mar­kets and the slaves. “They’re not tech­ni­cal­ly slaves,” he explained. “They’re, in a sense, sub­mit­ting their free will to par­tic­i­pate in a sys­tem where they’re told every­thing to do.” (W, A, S, D.) Slaves could earn their cit­i­zen­ship over time, either through ser­vice or by sign­ing up to be glad­i­a­tors. When a Roblox employ­ee vis­it­ed the group once, he says, Fer­gu­son helped stage a bat­tle between two slaves in the amphithe­ater.

    ...

    Anoth­er of Malcolm’s for­mer fol­low­ers, a play­er I’ll call Chip, joined when he was 14. He says he liked the struc­tured social inter­ac­tions, the def­i­nite ranks, how know­able it all was. “I’ve always been the kind of gamer who prefers a seri­ous envi­ron­ment,” he says. As a mid­dle school­er in Texas, he felt like a com­put­er miss­ing part of its code—never quite sure “how to be nor­mal, how to inter­act with peo­ple, how to not be weird.”

    Parthi­an soci­ety was a prod­uct of Malcolm’s increas­ing­ly big­ot­ed pol­i­tics and his fierce need for con­trol, three for­mer mem­bers say. The outpost’s laws clas­si­fied sup­port for race-mix­ing, fem­i­nism, and gay peo­ple as “degen­er­a­cy.” They also required one play­er in the group, who is Jew­ish in real life, to wear “the Judea tunic or be arrest­ed on sight.” Inside Parthia, vig­iles patrolled the streets. We’d be stopped, Fer­gu­son said, for hav­ing the wrong skin tone. (My avatar’s skin was olive.) The play­ers vot­ed over­whelm­ing­ly to allow Mal­colm to exe­cute whomev­er he want­ed.

    ...

    One of the most exclu­sive cliques in Parthia was the Prae­to­ri­an Guard, Malcolm’s per­son­al army. Accord­ing to sev­er­al for­mer mem­bers, he some­times asked high-rank­ing mem­bers to read SS man­u­als and lis­ten to a far-right pod­cast about a school shoot­er. (“Sim­ple friend­ly ban­ter among friends,” Mal­colm says.) Chip start­ed an Ein­satz­grup­pen divi­sion, a ref­er­ence to the Nazis’ mobile death squads—partly because he thought it would get laughs, he says, and part­ly to please the cae­sar. In one case, memo­ri­al­ized on YouTube, Malcolm’s hench­men exe­cut­ed some­one for say­ing they didn’t “care about” the architect’s girl­friend, Cleopa­tra. Chip still thinks that, for a lot of peo­ple, fas­cism start­ed as a joke. “Until one day it’s not iron­ic to them,” he says. “One day they are argu­ing and ful­ly believe what they’re say­ing.”

    When it comes to Malcolm’s fas­cist lean­ings, Chip says, “On the stand, under oath, I would say yes, I believe he actu­al­ly thought these things.” Mal­colm, who says he is “just a lib­er­tar­i­an on the books,” dis­agrees. “It’s always been just trolling or role-­play­ing,” he says. “I’m just a his­to­ry buff. I don’t care for the appli­ca­tion of any of it in a real-world set­ting.”

    Chip and Fer­gu­son esti­mate that a third of the 200 play­ers who ran the Sen­ate and Peo­ple of Rome—most of them young adults—were IRL fas­cists. Enforc­ing the group’s dra­con­ian rules was “a game-play func­tion to them,” Fer­gu­son says. In oth­er words, they enjoyed it.
    ...

    In a tes­ta­ment to poten­cy of inter­net in gen­er­al as a rad­i­cal­iza­tion tool, we find how Mal­com was report­ed­ly orig­i­nal­ly rad­i­cal­ized on 4Chan, the same forum his rad­i­cal­ized Roblox play­ers end­ed up after the fall of Parthia. And on 4Chan’s /pol/ forum, we can find ref­er­ences to new­er Roblox sim­u­la­tions of life under fas­cism. This is still hap­pen­ing:

    ...
    Fer­gu­son says that Malcolm’s inter­est in Nazism began with his dis­cov­ery of the edgelord mes­sag­ing board 4chan. From there, he start­ed fix­at­ing on anti-­Se­mit­ic memes and inver­sions of his­to­ry. He built a Ger­man vil­lage where they could host reenactments—capture the flag, but with guns and SS uni­forms. Malcolm’s title would be Führer.

    ...

    The Sen­ate and Peo­ple of Rome fell in 2015. It wasn’t sacked by Lego-man Visig­oths or brought down by the par­a­sitic forces of degen­er­a­cy. What hap­pened was that Parthia’s archi­tect fell in love with Cleopa­tra, whom he mar­ried in-game and gave his login cre­den­tials. But Cleopa­tra turned out to be a cat­fish, and the dude behind the account leaked Parthia’s source code. Any­one could copy Malcolm’s empire and rule over it them­selves. The increas­ing­ly para­noid cae­sar began exil­ing play­ers. He tried to forge a new fas­cist dystopia, but the attempt fiz­zled. Rome was dead. By 2016, he and Fer­gu­son had stopped spend­ing time in the same groups.

    A year after that, though, 4chan users on the infa­mous /pol/ board would rem­i­nisce about the Sen­ate and Peo­ple of Rome in its heydey. /Pol/, short for “polit­i­cal­ly incor­rect,” is infa­mous specif­i­cal­ly for hate speech and polit­i­cal trolling, and as an engine of extrem­ism. One per­son wrote that most of the high-rank­ing mem­bers of Parthia were “/pol/tards”—frequent com­menters on the board. User after user thanked Mal­colm for red-pilling them. One said that after “sim­u­lat­ing life under Fas­cism” as a 14-year-old, he had since become even “more sup­port­ive” of it. (Mal­colm says that his “cult of per­son­al­i­ty is strict­ly built off of trolls.”)

    After the Unite the Right ral­ly in Char­lottesville, Vir­ginia, in 2017, the left-wing activist col­lec­tive Uni­corn Riot obtained hun­dreds of thou­sands of mes­sages from white suprema­cist Dis­cord servers. They sug­gest­ed that com­mu­ni­ties like Parthia exist­ed else­where in Roblox. In a /pol/ gam­ing serv­er, a user named Lazia Cus wel­comed new arrivals. “Cur­rent­ly,” they wrote, “we have start­ed a ‘Red­pill’ the Youth project which is going on in ‘Roblox.’ We’ve cre­at­ed a clan in which we will oper­ate Raids/Defences and expand on this project into oth­er plat­forms.” (The clan was a “futur­is­tic Roman legion,” though not nec­es­sar­i­ly mod­eled after Malcolm’s Rome or one of its many off­shoots.)
    ...

    Keep in mind that Roblox is still, at the end of the day, a very prim­i­tive sim­u­la­tion envi­ron­ment. It’s pow­er­ful, but still just Lego-like worlds. And that means these fas­cist sim­u­la­tions are still just like a vague abstrac­tion of what a fas­cist world might be like. Future gen­er­a­tions of sim­u­la­tion tech­nol­o­gy isn’t going to be lim­it­ed. That’s part of the sig­nif­i­cance of this sto­ry. It’s not just the sto­ry about how Roblox was suc­cess­ful­ly turned into a fas­cism indoc­tri­na­tion plat­form. It’s also a warn­ing about how seduc­tive these sim­u­la­tion plat­forms are going to be when the sim­u­la­tion is more than just fas­cist Legos.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | June 12, 2021, 4:01 pm

  11. It’s had all the now-stan­dard hall­marks of an “accel­er­a­tionist” pub­lic slaugh­ter. With one notable excep­tion: the Nazi gun­man has a His­pan­ic name. That’s the nag­ging detail that is already serv­ing as a trolling excuse for fig­ures like Mar­jorie Tay­lor Greene to declare that only “dumb white peo­ple” could believe that a non-white per­son would car­ry out that attack in the name of white suprema­cy. Nev­er mind the attack­er’s Nazi tat­toos. Or the “Right Wing Death Squad” (RWDS) patch on his out­fit. A man named Mauri­cio Gar­cia sim­ply could­n’t be a white suprema­cist Nazi mur­der­er in MTG’s mind. Or at least that’s the troll­ish response she’s decid­ed to go with. Maybe she believes it, maybe not. That’s kind of beside the point for trolls. But giv­en that MTG’s ‘no his­pan­ic Nazis’ meme seems to have already per­me­at­ed the right-wing nar­ra­tives around this attack, here’s a set of arti­cles that’s a reminder that two of the biggest white suprema­cist groups in con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­ca are lead by men with His­pan­ic names: Nick Fuentes of the pro-Trump Amer­i­ca First move­ment and Enrique Tar­rio of the Proud Boys.

    Yes, two of Amer­i­ca’s lead­ing white nation­al­ist lead­ers are His­pan­ic. It’s a reflec­tion of the neb­u­lous nature of ‘race’ and what defines ‘white­ness’. But also a reflec­tion of the demo­graph­ic changes in the mod­ern US. There are sim­ply A LOT of His­pan­ics who find white nation­al­ist memes appeal­ing, espe­cial­ly if adopt­ing them acts as a kind of ‘white­ness’ ID card. In oth­er words, while His­pan­ic neo-Nazis like Gar­cia might be atyp­i­cal, we should expect them to be increas­ing­ly typ­i­cal as white nation­al­ism con­tin­ues to be cement itself as the default con­ser­v­a­tive ide­ol­o­gy in the US. Nazi His­pan­ics are real, whether non-His­pan­ic white nation­al­ists like MTG like it or not:

    Asso­ci­at­ed Press

    Posts show mall gun­man researched attack, had Nazi tat­toos

    By JAKE BLEIBERG, GENE JOHNSON and LOLITA C. BALDOR
    Mon­day May 8, 2023 20:15:31 CST

    DALLAS (AP) — The man accused of killing eight peo­ple and wound­ing sev­er­al oth­ers in a mass shoot­ing at a sub­ur­ban Dal­las shop­ping mall researched when it was busiest and post­ed pho­tos on social media in mid-April of a store near where he ulti­mate­ly start­ed his attack.

    The posts by Mauri­cio Gar­cia on a Russ­ian social net­work­ing site sug­gest the 33-year-old had been plan­ning the attack for weeks before he stepped out of a sil­ver sedan and opened fire Sat­ur­day. Among the dead were two ele­men­tary school-age sis­ters, a cou­ple and their 3‑year-old son, and a secu­ri­ty guard.

    Garcia’s online activ­i­ty also betrayed a fas­ci­na­tion with white suprema­cy and mass shoot­ings, which he described as sport. Pho­tos he post­ed showed large Nazi tat­toos on his arm and tor­so, includ­ing a swasti­ka and the SS light­ning bolt logo of Hitler’s para­mil­i­tary forces.

    Oth­er posts indi­cat­ed Gar­cia had researched when the Allen Pre­mi­um Out­lets in Allen, one of the Dallas-area’s most diverse sub­urbs, would be the busiest — Sat­ur­day after­noons, the time he car­ried out the mas­sacre, which end­ed when police shot and killed him.

    The online activ­i­ty con­tributed to an emerg­ing pic­ture of the gun­man Mon­day. He was dis­charged from the Army in 2008 because of men­tal health issues and appar­ent­ly had been work­ing as a secu­ri­ty guard, accord­ing to neigh­bors and an Army offi­cial.

    Aric Tol­er, direc­tor of train­ing and research at the inter­na­tion­al research col­lec­tive bellingcat.com, said he iden­ti­fied Garcia’s pro­file on the site OK.RU by search­ing for active accounts with his birth­date locat­ed in the U.S. The AP inde­pen­dent­ly ver­i­fied the account, which also fea­tured an image of a traf­fic tick­et with Garcia’s name and birth­date as well as paper­work from a motel where he stayed before the shoot­ing.

    Fed­er­al agents inves­ti­gat­ing what moti­vat­ed the shoot­ing have also reviewed the online posts, accord­ing to a fed­er­al law enforce­ment offi­cial who could not dis­cuss details of the inves­ti­ga­tion pub­licly and spoke to the AP on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty.

    The offi­cial also said Gar­cia had a patch on his chest when police killed him that read “RWDS,” an acronym for the phrase “Right Wing Death Squad,” pop­u­lar among right-wing extrem­ists and white suprema­cy groups.

    Inves­ti­ga­tors have also inter­viewed fam­i­ly mem­bers and asso­ciates of Gar­cia to ask about his ide­o­log­i­cal beliefs and are exam­in­ing his finan­cial records and oth­er elec­tron­ic media, the offi­cial said.

    Gar­cia joined the Army in 2008 but was ter­mi­nat­ed three months lat­er with­out com­plet­ing his ini­tial train­ing, U.S. Army spokes­woman Heather J. Hagan said.

    Accord­ing to an Army offi­cial who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to dis­cuss per­son­nel issues, he was kicked out due to men­tal health issues.

    Gar­cia received an “unchar­ac­ter­ized” dis­charge, which is com­mon for recruits who don’t make it through train­ing or the first 180 days, accord­ing to a defense offi­cial who also spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to dis­cuss per­son­nel issues. That type of dis­charge — which is not dis­hon­or­able — would not set off red flags or require any reports to law enforce­ment.

    On the Dal­las block where Gar­cia lived at a fam­i­ly home until recent­ly, neigh­bors said they thought he worked as a secu­ri­ty guard but they weren’t sure where. The com­pa­ny that man­ages the mall where the attack hap­pened didn’t imme­di­ate­ly reply to mes­sages seek­ing fur­ther infor­ma­tion.

    ...

    The shoot­ing was the lat­est attack to con­tribute to the unprece­dent­ed pace of mass killings this year in the U.S. Just over a week before, five peo­ple were fatal­ly shot in Cleve­land, Texas, after a neigh­bor asked a man to stop fir­ing his weapon while a baby slept, author­i­ties said.

    ...

    Allen, which is home to about 105,000 peo­ple, is among the Dal­las-Fort Worth area’s diverse sub­urbs. The area saw the largest Asian Amer­i­can growth rate of any major U.S. metro area, accord­ing to U.S. Cen­sus fig­ures. Those sta­tis­tics show that Allen’s pop­u­la­tion is about 19% Asian, 10% Black and 11% His­pan­ic.

    Allen also is con­nect­ed to anoth­er of Texas’ recent mass shoot­ings. Patrick Cru­sius lived there in 2019 before he post­ed a racist screed online warn­ing of a “His­pan­ic inva­sion” and drove to El Paso, where he opened fire at a Wal­mart, killing 23. Cru­sius, 24, plead­ed guilty to fed­er­al hate crime and weapons charges in Feb­ru­ary.

    ———–

    “Posts show mall gun­man researched attack, had Nazi tat­toos” By JAKE BLEIBERG, GENE JOHNSON and LOLITA C. BALDOR; Asso­ci­at­ed Press; 05/08/2023

    “Garcia’s online activ­i­ty also betrayed a fas­ci­na­tion with white suprema­cy and mass shoot­ings, which he described as sport. Pho­tos he post­ed showed large Nazi tat­toos on his arm and tor­so, includ­ing a swasti­ka and the SS light­ning bolt logo of Hitler’s para­mil­i­tary forces.”

    The guy who shot up a mall in one of the most diverse sub­urbs of Dal­las was­n’t hid­ing his Nazi sym­pa­thies. Imag­ine that! And if his tat­too weren’t clear enough, the “RWDW” patch was there to clar­i­fy:

    ...
    The offi­cial also said Gar­cia had a patch on his chest when police killed him that read “RWDS,” an acronym for the phrase “Right Wing Death Squad,” pop­u­lar among right-wing extrem­ists and white suprema­cy groups.

    Inves­ti­ga­tors have also inter­viewed fam­i­ly mem­bers and asso­ciates of Gar­cia to ask about his ide­o­log­i­cal beliefs and are exam­in­ing his finan­cial records and oth­er elec­tron­ic media, the offi­cial said.

    ...

    Allen, which is home to about 105,000 peo­ple, is among the Dal­las-Fort Worth area’s diverse sub­urbs. The area saw the largest Asian Amer­i­can growth rate of any major U.S. metro area, accord­ing to U.S. Cen­sus fig­ures. Those sta­tis­tics show that Allen’s pop­u­la­tion is about 19% Asian, 10% Black and 11% His­pan­ic.
    ...

    It has all the clas­sic hall­marks of an “accel­er­a­tionist” Atom­waf­fen-style inspired attack on a minor­i­ty com­mu­ni­ty, much like Patrick Cru­sius’s 2019 attack on an El Paso mall. But there one twist that appears to have fig­ures like Mar­jorie Tay­lor Greene already denounc­ing those who view this is a white suprema­cist attack as “dumb white peo­ple”: the shoot­er had a His­pan­ic name. So giv­en all the appar­ent con­fu­sion elicit­ed by some­one simul­ta­ne­ous­ly hold­ing white suprema­cist views while being His­pan­ic, here’s a reminder that two of the lead­ing far right fig­ures in the US today asso­ci­at­ed with white nation­al­ist move­ments are also His­pan­ic: Nick Fuentes and Enrique Tar­rio:

    The Wash­ing­ton Post

    Why non-White peo­ple might advo­cate white suprema­cy

    Analy­sis by Philip Bump
    Nation­al colum­nist
    May 8, 2023 at 2:48 p.m. EDT

    Police have iden­ti­fied the man who shot and killed at least eight peo­ple at an out­let mall in Allen, Tex., over the week­end as 33-year-old Mauri­cio Gar­cia.

    Gar­cia was killed at the scene, mean­ing that efforts to deter­mine the moti­va­tion for his actions are slow­er to emerge. On Sun­day, The Wash­ing­ton Post report­ed that, among oth­er pos­si­ble moti­va­tions, author­i­ties were exam­in­ing whether Gar­cia was moti­vat­ed by white-suprema­cist or neo-Nazi beliefs. Social media posts linked to Gar­cia rein­force this idea.

    For many peo­ple, this idea trig­gered an imme­di­ate neg­a­tive reac­tion: How could some­one with the name “Mauri­cio Gar­cia” — a His­pan­ic name — be a white suprema­cist? In some quar­ters, that The Post was offer­ing such a pos­si­bil­i­ty was some­how demon­stra­tive of this newspaper’s pur­port­ed inter­est in ele­vat­ing unsup­port­ed racial claims.

    In real­i­ty, the idea that some­one named Gar­cia might be sym­pa­thet­ic to white-suprema­cist views is unex­pect­ed but not inex­plic­a­ble. The Post has pre­vi­ous­ly explored the ways in which non-White Amer­i­cans at times ally with extrem­ists who would seem to be their nat­ur­al ene­mies. But the point can be made suc­cinct­ly by con­sid­er­ing two things: “White” is not as hard and fast a racial cat­e­go­ry as many assume, and “white suprema­cy” is about pow­er as much as it is about race.

    ‘White’ is often mal­leable

    Par­tic­u­lar­ly for most White peo­ple, “White” isn’t com­pli­cat­ed. The racial iden­ti­ty is a mix of skin col­or and her­itage and seems con­crete. For most White peo­ple, in fact, “being white is hav­ing the choice of attend­ing to or ignor­ing one’s own white­ness,” as Robert W. Ter­ry wrote in 1981. “To be white in Amer­i­ca is not to have to think about it.”

    Terry’s quote was a use­ful frame­work as I was explor­ing America’s racial his­to­ry and trends for my recent book “The After­math.” For those in the cat­e­go­ry of “White” as it is cur­rent­ly under­stood, the idea that “White” is hazi­ly bound­ed seems ridicu­lous or oppor­tunis­tic.

    But there’s lots of evi­dence to the con­trary. For exam­ple, the Cen­sus Bureau made a sim­ple data-col­lec­tion change between its 2010 and 2020 sur­veys, increas­ing the amount of vol­un­teered racial infor­ma­tion it processed from respon­dents. That helped con­tribute to a huge surge in the num­ber of Amer­i­cans who iden­ti­fy as “White and some oth­er race” — in part because the coun­try has got­ten more diverse but in part sim­ply because we’re doing a bet­ter job record­ing this data.

    It’s use­ful to con­sid­er the his­to­ry of being White in Amer­i­ca. A cen­tu­ry ago, immi­grants from Italy and Greece were con­sid­ered infe­ri­or to the major­i­ty-White pop­u­la­tion in the Unit­ed States, even if they had white skin. As his­to­ri­an David Roedi­ger wrote in his book “Col­ored White”: “When Greeks suf­fered as vic­tims of an Oma­ha ‘race’ riot in 1909, and when eleven Ital­ians died at the hands of lynch­ers in Louisiana in 1891, their less-than-white racial sta­tus mat­tered along­side their nation­al­i­ties.”

    His­pan­ic Amer­i­cans often find them­selves at the blur­ry edges of White­ness. How His­pan­ic Amer­i­cans are con­sid­ered by oth­ers is often cen­tered on skin col­or but also con­text: where and how that con­sid­er­a­tion is tak­ing place. But self-iden­ti­fi­ca­tion is also com­plex. Pew Research Cen­ter found that His­pan­ic iden­ti­ty fades over time in the Unit­ed States, for exam­ple.

    In writ­ing my book, I also came across a 2008 paper from Tanya Golash-Boza and William Dar­i­ty that point­ed to a use­ful exper­i­ment under­tak­en in 1989. His­pan­ic par­tic­i­pants in the sur­vey were asked to iden­ti­fy their race: White, Black or some­thing else. At the same time, the per­son con­duct­ing the sur­vey record­ed their own obser­va­tions about the respon­dents’ skin col­or.

    The result, as seen in this chart from the book, was that even among the dark­est-skinned respon­dents, iden­ti­fi­ca­tion as “White” was more com­mon than iden­ti­fi­ca­tion as “Black.”

    There are a lot of things that might explain such respons­es, but the broad­er point is clear: Racial iden­ti­ty and expect­ed race often don’t align. Anoth­er exper­i­ment con­duct­ed by the Cen­sus Bureau found that neigh­bors of mixed-race Amer­i­cans were often more like­ly to iden­ti­fy those Amer­i­cans as Black or His­pan­ic than did the mixed-race peo­ple them­selves.

    All of this nuance about race, though, assumes that the “white suprema­cism” is per­haps exclu­sive­ly about racial bound­aries. But it often isn’t.

    White suprema­cy is also about pow­er

    One of the most promi­nent adher­ents of white suprema­cy in the Unit­ed States at the moment is the right-wing agi­ta­tor Nick Fuentes. For­mer pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump earned days of neg­a­tive press after Fuentes joined him and the musi­cian Ye for din­ner at Mar-a-Lago.. The last name “Fuentes” is His­pan­ic, as is Fuentes’s fam­i­ly back­ground.

    Or con­sid­er the Proud Boys, head­ed by Enrique Tar­rio, son of immi­grants from Cuba. The group insists that its activism is not about race, but, instead, about “West­ern chau­vin­ism.” That’s spin: If you are biased in favor of “the West,” whom are you biased against? When for­mer Iowa con­gress­man Steve King ® said he was defend­ing West­ern civ­i­liza­tion, his expla­na­tion was use­ful­ly con­tex­tu­al­ized as being a short­hand for white­ness.

    What Fuentes and Tar­rio advo­cate is not that His­pan­ics should be sub­ju­gat­ed to White Amer­i­cans. Instead, it’s often about bol­ster­ing struc­tures of pow­er that large­ly ben­e­fit Whites. It’s also about dom­i­nance, of course, often man­i­fest­ed as anti­semitism (as Fuentes embraces) or hos­til­i­ty to immi­gra­tion. White suprema­cy is often root­ed in per­son­al inse­cu­ri­ty.

    ...

    We don’t yet know specif­i­cal­ly what drove Gar­cia to gun down shop­pers in Texas on Sat­ur­day. But we do know that it is not at all impos­si­ble for some­one with a His­pan­ic name to embrace white-suprema­cist rhetoric.

    ————

    “Why non-White peo­ple might advo­cate white suprema­cy” by Philip Bump; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 05/08/2023

    “In real­i­ty, the idea that some­one named Gar­cia might be sym­pa­thet­ic to white-suprema­cist views is unex­pect­ed but not inex­plic­a­ble. The Post has pre­vi­ous­ly explored the ways in which non-White Amer­i­cans at times ally with extrem­ists who would seem to be their nat­ur­al ene­mies. But the point can be made suc­cinct­ly by con­sid­er­ing two things: “White” is not as hard and fast a racial cat­e­go­ry as many assume, and “white suprema­cy” is about pow­er as much as it is about race.”

    White suprema­cy isn’t exclu­sive­ly for peo­ple with Anglo Sax­on names. It’s a lot more flu­id then that, hence fig­ures like Nick Fuentes and Enrique Tar­rio and the promi­nent lead­er­ship roles they’ve played:

    ...
    One of the most promi­nent adher­ents of white suprema­cy in the Unit­ed States at the moment is the right-wing agi­ta­tor Nick Fuentes. For­mer pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump earned days of neg­a­tive press after Fuentes joined him and the musi­cian Ye for din­ner at Mar-a-Lago.. The last name “Fuentes” is His­pan­ic, as is Fuentes’s fam­i­ly back­ground.

    Or con­sid­er the Proud Boys, head­ed by Enrique Tar­rio, son of immi­grants from Cuba. The group insists that its activism is not about race, but, instead, about “West­ern chau­vin­ism.” That’s spin: If you are biased in favor of “the West,” whom are you biased against? When for­mer Iowa con­gress­man Steve King ® said he was defend­ing West­ern civ­i­liza­tion, his expla­na­tion was use­ful­ly con­tex­tu­al­ized as being a short­hand for white­ness.

    What Fuentes and Tar­rio advo­cate is not that His­pan­ics should be sub­ju­gat­ed to White Amer­i­cans. Instead, it’s often about bol­ster­ing struc­tures of pow­er that large­ly ben­e­fit Whites. It’s also about dom­i­nance, of course, often man­i­fest­ed as anti­semitism (as Fuentes embraces) or hos­til­i­ty to immi­gra­tion. White suprema­cy is often root­ed in per­son­al inse­cu­ri­ty.
    ...

    And Fuentes and Tar­rio aren’t sim­ply lead­ers of their respec­tive white nation­al­ist groups. They are at this point part and par­cel of the polit­i­cal ecosys­tem around the con­tem­po­rary GOP, in both cas­es after play­ing lead­ing roles in the lead up to the Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol insur­rec­tion. As we ase, Nick Fuentes was lit­er­al­ly invit­ed to dine with Trump at Mar-a-Lago as part of his work on Kanye West­’s 2024 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign. And as the fol­low­ing arti­cle describes, Proud Boys leader Enrique Tar­rio has more or less infused his orga­ni­za­tion into the Flori­da GOP since Jan 6:

    Key Bis­cayne Inde­pen­dent

    Tar­rio, Miami’s Proud Boy, nor­mal­ized white suprema­cist group with­in coun­ty GOP

    By John Pacen­ti
    May 8, 2023

    For­mer Proud Boy chair­man Enrique Tar­rio, con­vict­ed of sedi­tion last week for the Jan. 6 Capi­tol insur­rec­tion, left his mark local­ly and nation­al­ly, main­stream­ing the white suprema­cist group with­in the Repub­li­can Par­ty.

    Proud Boys occu­pied five seats on the Mia­mi-Dade County’s GOP’s 2021–2022 exec­u­tive com­mit­tee. Fol­low­ing the Jan. 6 riots, Tar­rio was invit­ed to speak to the Boca Raton Region­al Repub­li­can Club.

    After his con­vic­tion, social media was flood­ed with pre­vi­ous pho­tos of Tar­rio with nation­al GOP lead­ers: Don­ald J. Trump Jr.; Sarah Huck­abee Sanders, who is now gov­er­nor of Arkansas; Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas; and Sen. Rick Scott of Flori­da.

    Tar­rio inte­grat­ed the Proud Boys agen­da with Chris­t­ian nation­al­ists that now occu­py posi­tions on school boards, coun­ty com­mis­sions, the state Leg­is­la­ture and arguably the Flori­da governor’s man­sion, activists who have inves­ti­gat­ed the Proud Boys told The Key Bis­cayne Inde­pen­dent.

    Both groups oppose crit­i­cal race the­o­ry, abor­tion access for women, LGBTQ rights, restric­tion of assault weapons and any­thing they see that resem­bles “woke.”

    “The prob­lem is that they are tol­er­at­ed with­in the Mia­mi-Dade Repub­li­can Par­ty and with­in the Repub­li­can Par­ty of Flori­da. They are allowed at their events,” said Thomas Kennedy, a Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Com­mit­tee mem­ber and activist.

    Key Bis­cayne is not immune.

    For­mer Gen. Michael Fly­nn, a white Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist and QAnon con­spir­a­to­ri­al­ist who served in the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, has embraced the Proud Boys. Dur­ing Key Biscayne’s last elec­tion, a far-right group tied to Fly­nn tar­get­ed Vil­lage coun­cil can­di­date Oscar Sardiñas.

    Before that, fol­low­ing a Vil­lage Coun­cil meet­ing in July 2021, coun­cil mem­bers asked a police pres­ence be added to future meet­ings after vit­ri­olic pub­lic com­ment – includ­ing one speak­er who derid­ed the “deep state” and expressed sym­pa­thy with those arrest­ed for the Jan. 6 riot.

    Across the bridge in Mia­mi, though, Tarrio’s name became tar­nished when it was revealed he worked as a fed­er­al infor­mant before he came to fame, rat­ting out fel­low pet­ty crim­i­nals. The Mia­mi Proud Boys split into fac­tions, named “Vice City” and “Vil­lain City.”

    “Although he is some­what of a retard, we don’t feel that this type of pun­ish­ment is war­rant­ed for what he did,” Vice City tweet­ed after the con­vic­tion. “This coun­try is lost,” Vil­lian City respond­ed.

    Andy Camp­bell, a senior edi­tor at Huff­in­g­ton Post, wrote “We are Proud Boys: How a Right-wing Street Gang Ush­ered in a New Era of Amer­i­can Extrem­ism.”

    In an inter­view four months ago with The Major­i­ty Report, Camp­bell said it was Tar­rio who after the dead­ly Unite the Right ral­ly in Char­lottesville, Va., decid­ed to align with like-mind­ed forces in the GOP.

    “Through Enrique, they did absolute­ly that and now they are cel­e­brat­ed in their polit­i­cal vio­lence,” he said. “This has been a real evo­lu­tion.”

    ...

    Tar­rio wasn’t there, though. He had been arrest­ed two days pri­or for alleged­ly burn­ing a Black Lives Mat­ter ban­ner tak­en from a Black church dur­ing anoth­er protest. He was sen­tenced to five months for that crime and then was indict­ed – and now con­vict­ed – of sedi­tion for his role in plan­ning the Jan. 6 riot.

    Defend­ers of Tar­rio often say he can’t be a white nation­al­ist because he is of Cuban descent. But the rise of white nation­al­ism among His­pan­ics has been well doc­u­ment­ed. Mauri­cio Gar­cia, who police say killed eight – includ­ing chil­dren – at a Texas shop­ping mall on Sat­ur­day was also His­pan­ic and wore a RWDS patch or Right Wing Death Squad – the same patch worn by Proud Boys and sold by the group.

    Mia­mi Against Fas­cism, an activist group, spoke to the Key Bis­cayne Inde­pen­dent about Tar­rio. The spokesman asked not to be iden­ti­fied out of fear of vio­lent retal­i­a­tion against him for the work of the orga­ni­za­tion. The New York Times cred­it­ed Mia­mi Against Fas­cism with uncov­er­ing how The Proud Boys infil­trat­ed the Mia­mi-Dade Repub­li­can Par­ty in a sto­ry last Octo­ber.

    “In their rhetoric, they align them­selves with the grow­ing idea of Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism,” the spokesman said. “And all of that has kind of brought togeth­er many dif­fer­ent forces who pre­vi­ous­ly were very dif­fer­ent polit­i­cal­ly.”

    When a trio of “anti-woke” GOP can­di­dates endorsed by Gov. Ron DeSan­tis and the far-right group Moms for Lib­er­ty won seats on the Sara­so­ta school board; they cel­e­brat­ed with mem­bers of the Proud Boys.

    Broward Coun­ty School Board mem­ber Bren­da Fam spoke at a anti-LGBTQ ral­ly, where uni­formed mem­bers of the Proud Boys were in atten­dance.

    The Mia­mi Against Fas­cism spokesman said that while it appears the local chap­ters of the Proud Boys are some­what in dis­ar­ray, he expects the group as a whole to remain active in Repub­li­can cir­cles.

    “Will the local GOP reject their role in some kind of defin­i­tive way? There is no indi­ca­tion that they will,” he said.

    ————

    “Tar­rio, Miami’s Proud Boy, nor­mal­ized white suprema­cist group with­in coun­ty GOP” By John Pacen­ti; Key Bis­cayne Inde­pen­dent; 05/08/2023

    “Tar­rio inte­grat­ed the Proud Boys agen­da with Chris­t­ian nation­al­ists that now occu­py posi­tions on school boards, coun­ty com­mis­sions, the state Leg­is­la­ture and arguably the Flori­da governor’s man­sion, activists who have inves­ti­gat­ed the Proud Boys told The Key Bis­cayne Inde­pen­dent.”

    The Proud Boys may not have suc­ceed­ed in keep­ing Trump in the White House, but that clear­ly has­n’t stopped them from mak­ing fur­ther inroads into the GOP main­stream. A main­stream­ing process that appears to have accel­er­at­ed since Jan 6, with Tar­rio being invit­ed to speak to the Boca Raton Region­al Repub­li­can Club. We even find the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy (CNP)‘s Moms for Lib­er­ty work­ing direct­ly with the Proud Boys these days. Tar­rio isn’t just a Cuban Amer­i­can leader of a white nation­al­ist group. He’s the Cuban Amer­i­can leader of a main­stream white nation­al­ist group with major polit­i­cal clout:

    ...
    Proud Boys occu­pied five seats on the Mia­mi-Dade County’s GOP’s 2021–2022 exec­u­tive com­mit­tee. Fol­low­ing the Jan. 6 riots, Tar­rio was invit­ed to speak to the Boca Raton Region­al Repub­li­can Club.

    After his con­vic­tion, social media was flood­ed with pre­vi­ous pho­tos of Tar­rio with nation­al GOP lead­ers: Don­ald J. Trump Jr.; Sarah Huck­abee Sanders, who is now gov­er­nor of Arkansas; Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas; and Sen. Rick Scott of Flori­da.

    ...

    Both groups oppose crit­i­cal race the­o­ry, abor­tion access for women, LGBTQ rights, restric­tion of assault weapons and any­thing they see that resem­bles “woke.”

    “The prob­lem is that they are tol­er­at­ed with­in the Mia­mi-Dade Repub­li­can Par­ty and with­in the Repub­li­can Par­ty of Flori­da. They are allowed at their events,” said Thomas Kennedy, a Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Com­mit­tee mem­ber and activist.

    Key Bis­cayne is not immune.

    ...

    Mia­mi Against Fas­cism, an activist group, spoke to the Key Bis­cayne Inde­pen­dent about Tar­rio. The spokesman asked not to be iden­ti­fied out of fear of vio­lent retal­i­a­tion against him for the work of the orga­ni­za­tion. The New York Times cred­it­ed Mia­mi Against Fas­cism with uncov­er­ing how The Proud Boys infil­trat­ed the Mia­mi-Dade Repub­li­can Par­ty in a sto­ry last Octo­ber.

    “In their rhetoric, they align them­selves with the grow­ing idea of Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism,” the spokesman said. “And all of that has kind of brought togeth­er many dif­fer­ent forces who pre­vi­ous­ly were very dif­fer­ent polit­i­cal­ly.”

    When a trio of “anti-woke” GOP can­di­dates endorsed by Gov. Ron DeSan­tis and the far-right group Moms for Lib­er­ty won seats on the Sara­so­ta school board; they cel­e­brat­ed with mem­bers of the Proud Boys.

    Broward Coun­ty School Board mem­ber Bren­da Fam spoke at a anti-LGBTQ ral­ly, where uni­formed mem­bers of the Proud Boys were in atten­dance.

    The Mia­mi Against Fas­cism spokesman said that while it appears the local chap­ters of the Proud Boys are some­what in dis­ar­ray, he expects the group as a whole to remain active in Repub­li­can cir­cles.

    “Will the local GOP reject their role in some kind of defin­i­tive way? There is no indi­ca­tion that they will,” he said.
    ...

    And what to we find as part of the Proud Boys cho­sen set of sym­bols? The same “RWDS” patch found on the body of Mauri­cio Gar­cia. You have to won­der if Tar­rio was a direct inspi­ra­tion at this point:

    ...
    Defend­ers of Tar­rio often say he can’t be a white nation­al­ist because he is of Cuban descent. But the rise of white nation­al­ism among His­pan­ics has been well doc­u­ment­ed. Mauri­cio Gar­cia, who police say killed eight – includ­ing chil­dren – at a Texas shop­ping mall on Sat­ur­day was also His­pan­ic and wore a RWDS patch or Right Wing Death Squad – the same patch worn by Proud Boys and sold by the group.
    ...

    We’ll see what addi­tion­al details inves­ti­ga­tors dis­cov­er in terms of the shooter’s motives. But he was­n’t exact­ly hid­ing them. The guy was on a sui­ci­dal racist ram­page. A ram­page dri­ven, in part, by a seething anger at non-whites but also dri­ven by an appar­ent self-iden­ti­ty as an aggriev­ed white man. A self-iden­ti­ty that Gar­cia did­n’t have to get val­i­dat­ed by his fel­low white nation­al­ists before head­ing off to slaugh­ter their shared per­ceived ene­mies.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | May 9, 2023, 4:50 pm

  12. What com­pelled Thomas Matthew Crooks — a gun lov­ing reg­is­tered Repub­li­can who by near­ly all accounts held con­ser­v­a­tive views — to car­ry out that appar­ent assas­si­na­tion attempt against con­tem­po­rary con­ser­v­a­tive icon Don­ald Trump? We still have no real idea, despite more details becom­ing avail­able.

    Over­all, it’s look­ing like Crooks may have had a sim­i­lar motive to that of many school shoot­ers, where it’s less about the polit­i­cal state­ment of the attack and more about com­mit­ting sui­cide in a spec­tac­u­lar and mem­o­rable man­ner. That’s at least what we might sus­pect after learn­ing that Crooks actu­al­ly revealed hints of his plans to a com­mu­ni­ty of games on the Steam online gam­ing plat­form. While it does­n’t sound like Crooks was in any way spe­cif­ic about the nature of what he was plan­ning, he shared that he was going to make his “pre­miere” on July 13, the day of the shoot­ing. But oth­er than that cryp­tic hint, Crooks did­n’t real­ly share any polit­i­cal sen­ti­ments on the plat­form, accord­ing to FBI offi­cials who have exam­ined Crook­s’s phones (he had two phones, one of which was on him at the time of the shoot­ing).

    Beyond that, his search his­to­ry on the phones include Pres­i­dent Biden, the FBI direc­tor, Christo­pher Wray, Attor­ney Gen­er­al Mer­rick Gar­land, and a mem­ber of the British roy­al fam­i­ly. That’s more or less all we’ve learned from law enforce­ment about what they’ve been able to dis­cern about Crook­s’s motives. Keep in mind that he was prob­a­bly using the Steam plat­form on a com­put­er, not his phone, so while we’re learn­ing about the search­es he made on his phone, that’s real­ly only one glimpse into his online activ­i­ty and not nec­es­sar­i­ly the most reveal­ing glimpse.

    At a min­i­mum, though, these details estab­lish that Crooks had an online com­mu­ni­ty of gamers that he was appar­ent­ly close enough to that he felt the need to hint at his plans. Keep in mind that we were pre­vi­ous­ly told that, while Crooks had an account on the Dis­cord chat forum, he rarely used it. That does­n’t appear to be the case for his Steam account. And as we’ve seen, it’s the Steam chat forums where researchers once dis­cov­ered 173 forums ded­i­cate to the cel­e­bra­tion of school shoot­ings. So we have to ask: how thor­ough­ly are inves­ti­ga­tors able to explore Crook­s’s his­to­ry of posts (or just views) on Steam’s forums? Because the more this looks like a school shoot­er ‘burn it all down, I want to die’ men­tal­i­ty drove this attack, the more inter­est­ing his activ­i­ty on Steam should be for inves­ti­ga­tors.

    We’re also hear­ing from anoth­er for­mer class­mate of Crooks who recounts how Crooks seemed to dis­like both Repub­li­can and Democ­rats. At least that’s based on inter­ac­tions this stu­dent had with Crooks in the sev­enth grade, which was pre­sum­ably around 2016–2017 and not nec­es­sar­i­ly all that reveal­ing about Crook­s’s pol­i­tics at the age of 20. But assum­ing he did have a gen­er­al ‘both par­ties suck’ view, while also hold­ing the gen­er­al con­ser­v­a­tive lean­ings that have been described by oth­er for­mer class­mates and indi­cat­ed by his reg­is­tra­tions as a Repub­li­can, it’s worth keep­ing in mind that con­ser­v­a­tives with a ‘both par­ties suck’ men­tal­i­ty were more or less the core of the MAGA base. And espe­cial­ly Alt Right con­ser­v­a­tives.

    And that brings us to that very inter­est­ing arti­cle flagged by Robert Mal­don­a­do about some of the nar­ra­tives that have been per­co­lat­ing in far right media in recent months. Specif­i­cal­ly, the appear­ance on Alex Jones’s Info Wars just six months ago where Jones and a guest were open­ly pin­ing for the assas­si­na­tion of Don­ald Trump because they were con­vinced it would lead to a mas­sive right-wing cam­paign of retal­ia­to­ry assas­si­na­tions. How com­mon has that mes­sage been in far right online media in recent months? It’s a ques­tion worth ask­ing in part because it’s the kind of mes­sage that’s prob­a­bly only going to be get ampli­fied after the shoot­ing. While we don’t have a clear sense of Crook­s’s pol­i­tics, he sure fits the pro­file for a poten­tial Info Wars audi­ence mem­ber. Was Crooks get­ting “if Trump is killed that’s the best thing ever for the MAGA move­ment” mes­sages in the media he con­sumed? We’ll prob­a­bly nev­er know but it’s worth ask­ing.

    And the fact that Crooks fits the pro­file of a poten­tial Alex Jones audi­ence mem­ber brings us to anoth­er notable fact in this sto­ry: it turns out the Crooks house­hold was one of the mil­lions of house­holds pro­filed by the Trump cam­paign in 2016 as part of a secret effort to build data­bas­es of vot­er pro­file for cam­paign micro­tar­get­ing pur­pos­es. As we’ve seen, micro­tar­get­ing has proven to be a wild­ly effec­tive­ly method for shift­ing vot­er atti­tudes. While there’s still a debate over how effec­tive Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca’s ‘psy­cho­graph­ic pro­fil­ing’ ulti­mate­ly was, we’ve already seen the poten­tial effec­tive­ness of this approach when deployed. Recall how the Koch broth­ers cre­at­ed the mas­sive­ly detailed i360 data­base pro­fil­ing near­ly every vot­er in the US. Ini­tial­ly part of the Project REDMAP 2010 ger­ry­man­der­ing ini­tia­tive, the i360 data­base helped Repub­li­cans pre­dict vot­er pref­er­ences at effec­tive­ly a house­hold-lev­el, which was invalu­able for deter­mine how to best redraw dis­trict lines to their advan­tage. But then the i360 data­base was retooled to micro­tar­get­ing vot­ers with mes­sages per­son­al­ized to their polit­i­cal pro­file, with incred­i­ble suc­cess in shift­ing vot­er atti­tudes in the races where it was deployed. And we can be con­fi­dent those micro­tar­get­ing efforts are going to be a lot more sophis­ti­cat­ed and robust in 2024. Just as we can be con­fi­dent that the micro­tar­get­ed mes­sages poten­tial­ly sent out con­ser­v­a­tive vot­ers is prob­a­bly A LOT more extreme in 2024 than even in 2016. After all, while Trump’s 2016 plat­form was already adopt­ing the ‘if Trump los­es it was rigged’ approach, it was­n’t yet a ‘vengeance’ plat­form.

    As we’re going to see, the Crooks house­hold was deter­mined to be an extreme­ly gun-friend­ly based on the mod­el­ing used in this secret project. Crook­s’s father in par­tic­u­lar scored a 0.99 for the like­li­hood of return­ing a war­ran­ty card for a firearms pur­chase; 0.95 for the like­li­hood of pur­su­ing hunt­ing sports; and 0.94 for the like­li­hood of shop­ping at the hunt­ing retail­er. That’s on a scale of 0 — 1. In fact, out of the more than 19,000 peo­ple in Bethel Park cap­tured in this mod­el, Crook­s’s father was among the top 20 high­est scor­ing indi­vid­u­als for those three gun own­er­ship met­rics. In oth­er words, the Crooks house­hold has like­ly been micro­tar­get­ed with the most extreme ‘gun rights’ mes­sag­ing the Trump cam­paign ever deploys. What kind of mes­sag­ing are the most zeal­ous gun enthu­si­ast tar­get­ed with by the Trump cam­paign and oth­er con­ser­v­a­tive out­lets? It’s one of the ques­tions we have to ask in this sto­ry. Espe­cial­ly since Thomas Crooks pre­sum­ably was­n’t micro­tar­get­ed him­self in 2016 but will have been in 2024. What kind of gen­er­al polit­i­cal zeit­geist was Crooks — a young male polit­i­cal­ly alien­at­ed con­ser­v­a­tive gun nut — sim­mer­ing in thanks to the con­tem­po­rary media envi­ron­ment where micro-tar­get­ed mes­sag­ing is more pow­er­ful than ever? Ques­tions we’ll prob­a­bly nev­er real­ly have answered, but, again, we have to ask. Because while Crooks may have been dri­ven by the kind of sui­ci­dal impulse of a school shoot­er, that does­n’t mean he did­n’t have a polit­i­cal motive too. These aren’t mutu­al­ly exclu­sive moti­va­tions. Did he tar­get Trump just to die famous? Or did he choose to die famous­ly trig­ger­ing a much larg­er polit­i­cal event?

    Ok, first, here’s a New York Times report on that haunt­ing “pre­miere” hint that appears to be the only hint of his plans that Crooks left on social media. A clue left to a com­mu­ni­ty of gamers on the Steam plat­form which has a his­to­ry of allow­ing pro-school shoot­er forums to fes­ter and oper­ate as mass shoot­er recruit­ment forums:

    The New York Times

    Gunman’s Phone Had Details About Both Trump and Biden, F.B.I. Offi­cials Say

    The dis­clo­sure, dur­ing pri­vate brief­in­gs to law­mak­ers in the House and Sen­ate, offered more details from the ear­ly stages of the inves­ti­ga­tion into the attempt­ed assas­si­na­tion of for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald J. Trump.

    By Glenn Thrush, Jack Healy and Luke Broad­wa­ter
    Glenn Thrush and Luke Broad­wa­ter report­ed from Wash­ing­ton.
    July 17, 2024

    F.B.I. offi­cials told mem­bers of Con­gress on Wednes­day that the gun­man who tried to kill for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald J. Trump used his cell­phone and oth­er devices to search images of Mr. Trump and Pres­i­dent Biden, along with an array of pub­lic fig­ures.

    The 20-year-old gun­man, Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, Pa., also looked up dates of Mr. Trump’s appear­ances and the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion, accord­ing to peo­ple on two con­fer­ence calls held to answer law­mak­ers’ ques­tions.

    And, at least once, his brows­ing his­to­ry sig­naled con­cerns about his own men­tal state. He also seems to have pre­viewed his attack on Steam, a gam­ing plat­form he fre­quent­ed, telling fel­low gamers he planned to make his “pre­miere” on July 13, the day of the shoot­ing.

    The dis­clo­sures, made dur­ing pri­vate brief­in­gs to law­mak­ers by the F.B.I. and the head of the embat­tled Secret Ser­vice, offered the most com­plete por­trait so far of a would-be assas­sin with no crim­i­nal his­to­ry, or even clear­ly dis­cernible polit­i­cal beliefs, who came close to killing Mr. Trump. Still, no clear motive for the attack has emerged.

    The offi­cial assess­ment aligned with rec­ol­lec­tions of peo­ple who knew him. Sev­er­al for­mer class­mates have said they nev­er heard the gun­man express any par­tic­u­lar polit­i­cal ide­ol­o­gy. But Vin­cent Taormi­na, a for­mer class­mate who said he attend­ed mid­dle school and high school with the gun­man, said in an inter­view that Mr. Crooks showed a gen­er­al dis­dain for politi­cians in both par­ties.

    He recalled one instance when the two were in sev­enth grade. Dur­ing a class­room polit­i­cal debate, Mr. Taormi­na voiced his sup­port for Mr. Trump. Mr. Crooks seemed incred­u­lous.

    “He says, ‘Aren’t you His­pan­ic? And you like Trump?’” Mr. Taormi­na said. “He said, ‘That’s a lit­tle stu­pid.’”

    Mr. Taormi­na brushed off the encounter, and had few oth­er inter­ac­tions with Mr. Crooks. But he dis­put­ed oth­er class­mates’ accounts that the gun­man had been bul­lied or had been a lon­er, say­ing that he was intel­li­gent and had his own small group of friends.

    “I did not know him per­son­al­ly or as a friend, but he was not bul­lied, he was not a recluse,” Mr. Taormi­na said.

    The F.B.I. has been scour­ing Mr. Crooks’s pos­ses­sions since the shoot­ing on Sat­ur­day — includ­ing two phones and at least one lap­top — for clues about his motive. So far, they have found no indi­ca­tion that Mr. Crooks, who was a reg­is­tered Repub­li­can, had strong par­ti­san polit­i­cal views one way or anoth­er, bureau offi­cials told law­mak­ers.

    Nor have they uncov­ered any evi­dence of co-con­spir­a­tors or con­nec­tions to for­eign actors, two top bureau offi­cials said dur­ing the tense calls in which mem­bers of the House and Sen­ate demand­ed answers about a near­ly cat­a­stroph­ic fail­ure to safe­guard Mr. Trump.

    The offi­cials told law­mak­ers that there was some indi­ca­tion that the gun­man, who led a qui­et life and worked at a nurs­ing home near his house, might have been strug­gling with depres­sion.

    Offi­cials sin­gled out some of the search­es on one of his cell­phones, say­ing that he had looked up “major depres­sive dis­or­der,” accord­ing to a per­son on the calls and anoth­er briefed on its con­tents.

    Mr. Crooks seems to have been on good terms with his par­ents, who are both coun­selors, but they were not close­ly involved in the day-to-day details of his life, offi­cials said.

    Over the last sev­er­al months, the gun­man received mul­ti­ple pack­ages, includ­ing sev­er­al that were marked “haz­ardous mate­r­i­al,” accord­ing to a fed­er­al law enforce­ment memo obtained by The New York Times. Fed­er­al offi­cials reviewed his ship­ping his­to­ry after they dis­cov­ered three explo­sive devices con­nect­ed to him, the memo said. One device was found in his home, and two oth­ers were found in his car parked near the ral­ly.

    ...

    While the brief­ing on Wednes­day filled in some blanks, it left many ques­tions unan­swered. Fed­er­al law enforce­ment offi­cials are puz­zled and exas­per­at­ed by the lack of evi­dence on the gunman’s two phones, one of which was found by his body on the roof of a ware­house out­side the secu­ri­ty perime­ter of the ral­ly, the oth­er dis­cov­ered dur­ing a search of his house.

    F.B.I. offi­cials, speak­ing on the calls, sug­gest­ed that his search his­to­ry indi­cat­ed he was broad­ly inter­est­ed in pow­er­ful and famous peo­ple, with­out any obvi­ous ide­o­log­i­cal or par­ti­san pat­tern.

    Among the oth­er promi­nent fig­ures the gun­man searched for using one of his phones, besides Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden: the F.B.I. direc­tor, Christo­pher A. Wray; Attor­ney Gen­er­al Mer­rick B. Gar­land; and a mem­ber of the British roy­al fam­i­ly, accord­ing to two offi­cials with knowl­edge of the sit­u­a­tion, speak­ing on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to dis­cuss the mat­ter pub­licly.

    ...

    Kim­ber­ly A. Chea­tle, the direc­tor of the Secret Ser­vice, admit­ted that her agency made seri­ous “mis­takes” dur­ing one of the calls, and pro­vid­ed new infor­ma­tion about Mr. Crooks’s move­ments dur­ing the shoot­ing. She is sched­uled to tes­ti­fy before the House Over­sight Com­mit­tee on Mon­day.

    Dur­ing the brief­ing with sen­a­tors, offi­cials ran through a time­line of events, not­ing that law enforce­ment offi­cers had iden­ti­fied the gun­man as sus­pi­cious about an hour before the shoot­ing but then lost track of him, accord­ing to two peo­ple famil­iar with the con­tents of the brief­ing.

    About 20 min­utes before the shoot­ing, a sniper spot­ted him again, the peo­ple said.

    ...

    ———–

    “Gunman’s Phone Had Details About Both Trump and Biden, F.B.I. Offi­cials Say” By Glenn Thrush, Jack Healy and Luke Broad­wa­ter; The New York Times; 07/17/2024

    “And, at least once, his brows­ing his­to­ry sig­naled con­cerns about his own men­tal state. He also seems to have pre­viewed his attack on Steam, a gam­ing plat­form he fre­quent­ed, telling fel­low gamers he planned to make his “pre­miere” on July 13, the day of the shoot­ing.”

    Well, that’s at least the clos­est thing to a clue about motive that we’ve learned about so far: Crooks hint­ed at his July 13 “pre­mier” with fel­low games on the Steam gam­ing plat­form which we are told he fre­quent­ed. That stands in con­trast with the Dis­cord chat forum, which we are told he rarely used. As we’ve seen, it’s the Steam chat forums where researchers once dis­cov­ered 173 forums ded­i­cate to the cel­e­bra­tion of school shoot­ings. And while Crooks thank­ful­ly did­n’t end up going down the path of shoot­ing up a school, the more we’re learn­ing about his vague polit­i­cal moti­va­tions the more it seems like he could have been gripped by the kind of ‘let the world burn as I com­mit sui­cide’ men­tal­i­ty that seems to dri­ve so many school shoot­ers:

    ...
    F.B.I. offi­cials, speak­ing on the calls, sug­gest­ed that his search his­to­ry indi­cat­ed he was broad­ly inter­est­ed in pow­er­ful and famous peo­ple, with­out any obvi­ous ide­o­log­i­cal or par­ti­san pat­tern.

    Among the oth­er promi­nent fig­ures the gun­man searched for using one of his phones, besides Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden: the F.B.I. direc­tor, Christo­pher A. Wray; Attor­ney Gen­er­al Mer­rick B. Gar­land; and a mem­ber of the British roy­al fam­i­ly, accord­ing to two offi­cials with knowl­edge of the sit­u­a­tion, speak­ing on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to dis­cuss the mat­ter pub­licly.
    ...

    At the same time, we’re con­tin­u­ing to get con­flict­ing rec­ol­lec­tions of Crook­s’s time in school and the degree of bul­ly­ing or ostra­ciza­tion he expe­ri­enced. Anoth­er stu­dent recounts Crooks not being bul­lied but also hold­ing a gen­er­al dis­dain for both Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats. Keep in mind the over­all pic­ture we’re get­ting of Crook­s’s pol­i­tics seems to indi­cate an over­all con­ser­v­a­tive dis­po­si­tion, includ­ing his even­tu­al reg­is­ter­ing as a Repub­li­can. But also keep in mind that ‘both par­ties are awful, burn is all down’ real­ly is the zeit­gi­est of the pol­i­tics of Don­ald Trump and MAGA and the Alt Right in gen­er­al. Or maybe he was very Lib­er­tar­i­an lean­ing. Either way, the more we’re learn­ing about Crook­s’s vague but con­ser­v­a­tive polit­i­cal lean­ings, the more it seems like he could have suc­cumbed to some sort of polit­i­cal nihilism:

    ...
    The dis­clo­sures, made dur­ing pri­vate brief­in­gs to law­mak­ers by the F.B.I. and the head of the embat­tled Secret Ser­vice, offered the most com­plete por­trait so far of a would-be assas­sin with no crim­i­nal his­to­ry, or even clear­ly dis­cernible polit­i­cal beliefs, who came close to killing Mr. Trump. Still, no clear motive for the attack has emerged.

    The offi­cial assess­ment aligned with rec­ol­lec­tions of peo­ple who knew him. Sev­er­al for­mer class­mates have said they nev­er heard the gun­man express any par­tic­u­lar polit­i­cal ide­ol­o­gy. But Vin­cent Taormi­na, a for­mer class­mate who said he attend­ed mid­dle school and high school with the gun­man, said in an inter­view that Mr. Crooks showed a gen­er­al dis­dain for politi­cians in both par­ties.

    He recalled one instance when the two were in sev­enth grade. Dur­ing a class­room polit­i­cal debate, Mr. Taormi­na voiced his sup­port for Mr. Trump. Mr. Crooks seemed incred­u­lous.

    “He says, ‘Aren’t you His­pan­ic? And you like Trump?’” Mr. Taormi­na said. “He said, ‘That’s a lit­tle stu­pid.’”

    Mr. Taormi­na brushed off the encounter, and had few oth­er inter­ac­tions with Mr. Crooks. But he dis­put­ed oth­er class­mates’ accounts that the gun­man had been bul­lied or had been a lon­er, say­ing that he was intel­li­gent and had his own small group of friends.

    “I did not know him per­son­al­ly or as a friend, but he was not bul­lied, he was not a recluse,” Mr. Taormi­na said.
    ...

    And then we get the search­es about the “major depres­sive dis­or­der”. Now, we don’t know why he was look­ing up infor­ma­tion on “major depres­sive dis­or­der” and per­haps it was in rela­tion to some­one else and was­n’t a sign of some sort of self-diag­no­sis. But there’s no deny­ing that this very like­ly intend­ed to be a sui­ci­dal act which does strong­ly sug­gest he was wrestling with sui­ci­dal impuls­es:

    ...
    The offi­cials told law­mak­ers that there was some indi­ca­tion that the gun­man, who led a qui­et life and worked at a nurs­ing home near his house, might have been strug­gling with depres­sion.

    Offi­cials sin­gled out some of the search­es on one of his cell­phones, say­ing that he had looked up “major depres­sive dis­or­der,” accord­ing to a per­son on the calls and anoth­er briefed on its con­tents.

    Mr. Crooks seems to have been on good terms with his par­ents, who are both coun­selors, but they were not close­ly involved in the day-to-day details of his life, offi­cials said.
    ...

    And that com­bi­na­tion of pos­si­ble sui­ci­dal impuls­es com­bined with con­ser­v­a­tive lean­ing pol­i­tics but an appar­ent gen­er­al dis­dain for both par­ties brings us to the very inter­est­ing sto­ry about the nar­ra­tives that were get­ting spout­ed out on Alex Jones’s Info Wars just six months ago, where Jones and a guest were open­ly pin­ing for the assas­si­na­tion of Don­ald Trump because they were con­vinced it would lead to a mas­sive right-wing cam­paign of retal­ia­to­ry assas­si­na­tions. Which rais­es a gen­er­al ques­tion that’s only going to get more urgent the clos­er we get to the elec­tion: how preva­lent is this nar­ra­tive on right-wing social media about Trump’s assas­si­na­tion being a glo­ri­ous event that would spark a mas­sive far right back­lash that would just over­whelm the ‘deep state’?:

    Mei­das News

    “Please Kill Him”— Alex Jones Dis­cussed Ben­e­fits of Assas­si­nat­ing Trump 6 Months Ago

    Jones and a guest believed a Trump assas­si­na­tion would trig­ger “in kind” respons­es against their polit­i­cal ene­mies list

    J.D. Wolf
    Jul 16, 2024

    6 months ago on his InfoWars show, Alex Jones and his guest, Ivan Raik­lin, dis­cussed how assas­si­nat­ing Trump would be ben­e­fi­cial, accord­ing to them, because it would lead to retal­ia­to­ry “in kind” assas­si­na­tions of a “deep state tar­get list,” a list that names Pres­i­dent Joe Biden and oth­ers.

    5 months ago, Alex Jones and InfoWars guest Ivan Raik­lin dis­cussed how assas­si­nat­ing Trump would be ben­e­fi­cial, accord­ing to them, because it would lead to retal­ia­to­ry “in kind” assas­si­na­tions of a “deep state” list which includes Pres­i­dent Joe Biden.Ivan Raik­lin: “If they… pic.twitter.com/yzc1x1QJxh— Patri­ot­Takes ???? (@patriottakes) July 14, 2024

    The con­ver­sa­tion between Jones and Raik­lin revealed a twist­ed glee that polit­i­cal vio­lence against Trump would unleash a response “in kind” against Trump’s “deep state” polit­i­cal oppo­nents:

    Ivan Raik­lin: “If they [assas­si­nate Trump], option 2, behind Trump, is going to be so much bet­ter for us and so much worse for them.”

    Alex Jones: “I was about as to say, If they kill him, that’s best case sce­nario from a sick lev­el. From a sick lev­el medi­um, ‘Oh, please kill him.’ I mean, it’s so good after that.”

    Jones’ guest then char­ac­ter­ized what would hap­pen next as a “cleans­ing.”

    Raik­lin: “Oh, it’s going to be the best cleans­ing and the fastest cleans­ing that we’ve ever seen in my life­time. I guaran—, I access, with almost cer­tain­ty, with the high­est lev­el of con­fi­dence, that if they assas­si­nate Trump, it is so game over for them.”

    Dur­ing the same episode, Jones played the guest’s “deep state tar­get list” video which includes Pres­i­dent Joe Biden, Speak­er Hakeem Jef­fries, for­mer Vice Pres­i­dent Mike Pence, and sev­er­al cur­rent and for­mer politi­cians and gov­ern­ment offi­cials, media mem­bers, and oth­ers.

    ...

    ———-

    ““Please Kill Him”— Alex Jones Dis­cussed Ben­e­fits of Assas­si­nat­ing Trump 6 Months Ago” by J.D. Wolf; Mei­das News; 07/16/2024

    “Raik­lin: “Oh, it’s going to be the best cleans­ing and the fastest cleans­ing that we’ve ever seen in my life­time. I guaran—, I access, with almost cer­tain­ty, with the high­est lev­el of con­fi­dence, that if they assas­si­nate Trump, it is so game over for them.””

    Was Crooks an Alex Jones fan? We’re told he had basi­cal­ly no social media pres­ence and yet he was clear­ly post­ing on Steam to a com­mu­ni­ty of gamers. What kind of media was he con­sum­ing? We still have no records on that. But the guy seems to have had a com­mu­ni­ty of peers he was want­ed to share his plans with. What was the over­all polit­i­cal ori­en­ta­tion of that online com­mu­ni­ty?

    But as the fol­low­ing report reminds us, the information/media envi­ron­ment Crooks was mari­nad­ing in would­n’t just be lim­it­ed to the media he was active­ly con­sum­ing. There’s also the real­i­ty that we live in an age were micro-tar­get­ed mes­sag­ing is eas­i­er than ever. Tar­get­ing down to not just the house­hold lev­el but the indi­vid­ual lev­el. And it turns out the Crooks house­hold was tar­get­ed as part of a secret 2016 Trump micro­tar­get­ing cam­paign that was build­ing polit­i­cal pro­files on mil­lions of vot­ers in swing states. The house­hold was deter­mined to be an extreme­ly gun-friend­ly house­hold, with Crook­s’s father scor­ing a 0.99 for the like­li­hood of return­ing a war­ran­ty card for a firearms pur­chase; 0.95 for the like­li­hood of pur­su­ing hunt­ing sports; and 0.94 for the like­li­hood of shop­ping at the hunt­ing retail­er. That’s on a scale of 0–1. In fact, out of the more than 19,000 peo­ple in Bethel Park cap­tured in this mod­el, Crook­s’s father was among the top 20 high­est scor­ing indi­vid­u­als for those three gun own­er­ship met­rics.

    As we’ve seen, micro­tar­get­ing has proven to be a wild­ly effec­tive­ly method for shift­ing vot­er atti­tudes. While there’s still a debate over how effec­tive Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca’s ‘psy­cho­graph­ic pro­fil­ing’ ulti­mate­ly was, we’ve already seen the poten­tial effec­tive­ness of this approach when deployed. Recall how the Koch broth­ers cre­at­ed the mas­sive­ly detailed i360 data­base pro­fil­ing near­ly every vot­er in the US. Ini­tial­ly part of the Project REDMAP 2010 ger­ry­man­der­ing ini­tia­tive, the i360 data­base helped Repub­li­cans pre­dict vot­er pref­er­ences at effec­tive­ly a house­hold-lev­el, which was invalu­able for deter­mine how to best redraw dis­trict lines to their advan­tage. But then the i360 data­base was retooled to micro­tar­get­ing vot­ers with mes­sages per­son­al­ized to their polit­i­cal pro­file, with incred­i­ble suc­cess in shift­ing vot­er atti­tudes in the races where it was deployed.

    So with the Trump cam­paign pre­sum­ably get­ting much more robust micro­tar­get­ing oper­a­tions under­way and Thomas Crooks now a viable vot­er, it’s worth ask­ing what kind of tar­get­ed polit­i­cal mes­sag­ing Crooks may have been receiv­ing over the last year or so. Because we can be pret­ty con­fi­dent Crooks had been iden­ti­fied as a young male gun lov­ing reg­is­tered Repub­li­can in a key bat­tle­ground state. What kind of micro­tar­get­ed mes­sag­ing was he get­ting thanks to fit­ting that pro­file? And how many oth­er young men fit­ting that same pro­file are there get­ting sim­i­lar mes­sag­ing? We’ll pre­sum­ably nev­er learn these kinds of details. But it’s still worth ask­ing, if only to acknowl­edge that, if the over­all zeit­geist of polit­i­cal nihilism that is so per­va­sive on the right played a role in Crook­s’s actions, he’s far from the only gun obsess­es polit­i­cal­ly nihilis­tic young male stew­ing in that zeit­geist:

    Chan­nel 4 News

    REVEALED: Trump cam­paign secret data on gunman’s fam­i­ly

    The fam­i­ly of Trump’s would-be assas­sin Thomas Crooks was among mil­lions of vot­ers pro­filed by Trump’s 2016 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign

    Siob­han Kennedy Wash­ing­ton Cor­re­spon­dent
    15 Jul 2024

    The own­er of the rifle used to shoot at Don­ald Trump had been iden­ti­fied by the for­mer president’s cam­paign as a strong repub­li­can, like­ly gun own­er and “hunter”, as revealed today by Chan­nel 4 News.

    In 2016 the Trump cam­paign built a data­base pro­fil­ing mil­lions of vot­ers in key bat­tle­ground states – includ­ing the fam­i­ly of Trump’s would-be assas­sin Thomas Crooks.

    It found that both the par­ents of Thomas Crooks were very like­ly to be gun own­ers and shared oth­er gun-relat­ed lifestyle indi­ca­tors.

    This data­base was first obtained and revealed by Chan­nel 4 News in 2016.

    The pro­gramme can now reveal the infor­ma­tion was com­piled as part of a secre­tive project aim­ing to iden­ti­fy mil­lions of gun own­ers in Amer­i­ca who could be tar­get­ed with pro-gun rights mes­sages in the lead-up to the 2016 elec­tion cam­paign.

    ...

    It has emerged that the AR-15-style semi-auto­mat­ic rifle he used was legal­ly pur­chased months ear­li­er by his father Matthew, 53. The fam­i­ly is coop­er­at­ing with the inves­ti­gat­ing author­i­ties.

    ...

    There is no sug­ges­tion that any mem­ber of the Crooks fam­i­ly had knowl­edge of the assas­si­na­tion attempt by recent high school grad­u­ate Thomas Crooks or that they per­mit­ted the ille­gal use of weapons by him.

    DATABASE

    Trump’s 2016 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign data­base, obtained by Chan­nel 4 News in 2020, lists the assailant’s par­ents Matthew, and his wife Mary, 53, as liv­ing at a res­i­dence in the bor­ough of Bethel Park, south of Pitts­burgh.

    They were among 6.7 mil­lion peo­ple in the swing state of Penn­syl­va­nia pro­filed for their like­ly own­er­ship of firearms. Both scored high­ly, with Crook’s father Matthew giv­en par­tic­u­lar­ly high scores.

    Data sci­en­tists can analyse rel­a­tive­ly small orig­i­nal datasets to deter­mine the char­ac­ter­is­tics that would make some­one like­ly, for exam­ple, to be a gun own­er. Using machine learn­ing they can gen­er­ate mod­els that match those char­ac­ter­is­tics across the pop­u­la­tion, assign­ing indi­vid­u­als a like­li­hood score.

    The gun-relat­ed pro­files which appear in the 2016 Trump cam­paign data­base range between 0 – mean­ing no like­li­hood – and 1 – a cer­tain­ty.

    Matthew Crooks scored high­ly across a range of gun-relat­ed mod­els includ­ing: 0.99 for the like­li­hood of return­ing a war­ran­ty card for a firearms pur­chase; 0.95 for the like­li­hood of pur­su­ing hunt­ing sports; and 0.94 for the like­li­hood of shop­ping at the hunt­ing retail­er

    Over­all, aver­aged across all three of these mea­sures, out of more than 19,000 peo­ple in Bethel Park, Matthew Crooks was among the top 20 high­est scor­ing indi­vid­u­als.

    In total, the data tech­nique was deployed in ten swing states – scor­ing a total of around 50 mil­lion indi­vid­u­als – to find vot­ers who could be sus­cep­ti­ble to polit­i­cal mes­sages about gun-rights, a bedrock issue in all of Don­ald Trump’s pres­i­den­tial cam­paigns.

    While the Crooks fam­i­ly were assigned scores derived from mod­els, such mod­els are not nec­es­sar­i­ly accu­rate and may not reflect the Crooks family’s actu­al views or gun own­er­ship at that time.

    ...

    ———–

    “REVEALED: Trump cam­paign secret data on gunman’s fam­i­ly” by Siob­han Kennedy; Chan­nel 4; 07/15/2024

    “The pro­gramme can now reveal the infor­ma­tion was com­piled as part of a secre­tive project aim­ing to iden­ti­fy mil­lions of gun own­ers in Amer­i­ca who could be tar­get­ed with pro-gun rights mes­sages in the lead-up to the 2016 elec­tion cam­paign.”

    It’s not remote­ly sur­pris­ing to learn the Crooks house­hold was tar­get­ed as part of this 2016 oper­a­tion. What would be sur­pris­ing would be learn­ing that they haven’t been sim­i­lar­ly tar­get­ed this year too, with Thomas Crooks part of the tar­get­ing this time around. How high would Thomas Crooks score on these 0–1 gun own­er­ship met­rics? Pre­sum­ably quite high, like his father. What kind of spe­cial mes­sages are the most gun-hap­py vot­ers get­ting this year? A year when the over­all polit­i­cal zeit­geist on the right is even more extreme than in 2016 and effec­tive­ly ‘Trump wins or the coun­try burns’:

    ...
    The gun-relat­ed pro­files which appear in the 2016 Trump cam­paign data­base range between 0 – mean­ing no like­li­hood – and 1 – a cer­tain­ty.

    Matthew Crooks scored high­ly across a range of gun-relat­ed mod­els includ­ing: 0.99 for the like­li­hood of return­ing a war­ran­ty card for a firearms pur­chase; 0.95 for the like­li­hood of pur­su­ing hunt­ing sports; and 0.94 for the like­li­hood of shop­ping at the hunt­ing retail­er

    Over­all, aver­aged across all three of these mea­sures, out of more than 19,000 peo­ple in Bethel Park, Matthew Crooks was among the top 20 high­est scor­ing indi­vid­u­als.
    ...

    Keep in mind we did­n’t learn about all the ques­tion­able micro­tar­get­ing of 2016 until well after the elec­tion. And it would be bizarre at this point if micro­tar­get­ed mes­sages hint­ing at polit­i­cal vio­lence if Trump does­n’t win aren’t being aggres­sive­ly deployed. After all, the right-wing’s macro-mes­sag­ing has been more vio­lence tinged than at any point in liv­ing mem­o­ry. When the macro-mes­sag­ing is open­ly vio­lent, what are the micro-tar­get­ed mes­sages like for vot­ers iden­ti­fied as the most recep­tive to that at kind of rhetoric? We can only assume it’s more extreme than ever. Extreme enough that the idea of killing Trump in the hopes of spark­ing a much larg­er polit­i­cal blood­bath might be the next ‘log­i­cal’ step for the wrong tar­get­ed audi­ence. Espe­cial­ly if they hap­pen to be an Alex Jones fan.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | July 18, 2024, 5:40 pm

  13. More infor­ma­tion about the his­to­ry Thomas Matthew Crooks is con­tin­u­ing to show up. And while the motive for the shoot­ing remains elu­sive, we’re get­ting more clar­i­ty on the Crook­s’s polit­i­cal ide­ol­o­gy.

    First, it appears the account on the pop­u­lar Steam gam­ing forums inves­ti­ga­tors pre­vi­ous­ly attrib­uted to Crooks — where he seemed to cryp­ti­cal­ly hint at a July 13 “pre­mier” - turned out to be a hoax account that only changed its account name and pro­file pic­ture the day after the shoot­ing.

    At the same time, inves­ti­ga­tors have also revealed an account on the far right Gab social medi­um plat­form attrib­uted to Crooks that has over 700 posts from 2019–2020. The posts were filled with anti­se­mit­ic and anti-immi­grant sen­ti­ments, along with an advo­ca­cy for polit­i­cal vio­lence. This would have been when Crooks was 15–17 in high school. As we’ve seen, Crook­s’s for­mer high school class­mates have recount­ed how Crooks expressed con­ser­v­a­tive views while he was in high school. But we haven’t heard about his express­ing far right views. So it would appear he was a lot more extreme dur­ing those high school years than he let on to his peers.

    Gab founder, Andrew Tor­ba, is pub­licly dis­put­ing these reports. Not that Tor­ba is deny­ing that Crooks had that account filled with far right con­tent. Instead, Tor­ba is point­ing to a sec­ond Gab account — cre­at­ed in 2019 with the han­dle “EpicMi­crowave” — also attrib­uted to Crooks that post­ed com­ments in 2021 in sup­port of immi­gra­tion and Joe Biden’s poli­cies. As Tor­ba insists in response to the reports on the new­ly dis­cov­ered account express­ing far right sen­ti­ments, “This is not con­sis­tent with Gab’s under­stand­ing of the shooter’s motives based on an Emer­gency Dis­clo­sure Request (“EDR”) we received from the FBI last week for the Gab account ‘EpicMi­crowave’ which, based on the con­tent of that EDR, the FBI appeared to think belonged to Thomas Crooks...The sto­ry is this: the account for which data was request­ed was, UNEQUIVOCALLY, pro-Biden and in par­tic­u­lar pro-Biden’s immi­gra­tion policy...To the best of Gab’s knowl­edge, as of 2021, Crooks was a pro-lock­down, pro-immi­gra­tion, left-wing Joe Biden sup­port­er.”

    Now, what Andew Tor­ba left out of that analy­sis is the fact that the ‘EpicMi­crowave’ account had a total of 9 posts, start­ing on Jan­u­ary 20, 2021, through Feb­ru­ary 4, 2021. Recall how Jan­u­ary 20, 2021, was the date of Crook­s’s $15 dona­tion to the Demo­c­ra­t­ic-lean­ing Act Blue polit­i­cal group, a detail that has been wide­ly cit­ed as evi­dence of Crook­s’s appar­ent left-wing ide­ol­o­gy. So on the same day Crooks made that $15 dona­tion, he start­ed post­ing pro-Biden posts on Gab, mak­ing a total of 9 posts over the next two weeks. And that was it. That’s the entire­ty of the evi­dence of Crook­s’s alleged pro­gres­sive lean­ings. 700 far right posts in 2019–2020 fol­lowed by 9 posts in ear­ly 2021 that seemed to indi­cate a change in sen­ti­ment. And let’s not for­get that Crooks lat­er reg­is­tered as a Repub­li­can, after he made that $15 Act Blue dona­tion.

    It’s also worth not­ing that the Dai­ly Mail has screen cap­tures of 8 out of those 9 posts and one of them was a direct response to @PrisonPlanet, which would be the Gab account affil­i­at­ed Alex Jones’s InfoWars. Keep in mind how Jones was open­ly hop­ing for some­one to assas­si­nate Trump back in Jan­u­ary, sug­gest­ing “If they [assas­si­nate Trump], option 2, behind Trump, is going to be so much bet­ter for us and so much worse for them.” So, at a min­i­mum, we can be con­fi­dent Crooks was aware of Alex Jones’s utter­ances.

    Final­ly, regard­ing the one clue Crooks him­self seemed to leave behind — his deci­sion to wear a Demo­li­tion Ranch t‑shirt dur­ing the shoot­ing — it’s impor­tant to keep in mind that, while many of these ‘Gun­Tu­ber’ chan­nels on YouTube avoid overt­ly get­ting into pol­i­tics, they are also inher­ent­ly polit­i­cal chan­nels. The big focus on the Sec­ond Amend­ment has polit­i­cal impli­ca­tions. But as Dan Trombly, a researcher who stud­ies polit­i­cal vio­lence and right-wing pol­i­tics in online spaces, observes, even though many Gun­Tu­bers lean right, their indi­vid­ual ide­olo­gies are rarely coher­ent beyond a “gen­er­al dis­dain” for lib­er­al soci­ety and for main­stream gun cul­ture typ­i­fied by the Nation­al Rifle Asso­ci­a­tion. As Trombly puts it, “There’s a desire to show that you’re going to get that kind of ‘a bit naughty’ with the sym­bols and the ideas you want to engage with with­out hav­ing to make a coher­ent polit­i­cal state­ment besides hav­ing a hard-line per­spec­tive on the Sec­ond Amend­ment.” In oth­er words, these Gun­Tu­ber chan­nels want to hint at far right sen­ti­ments with­out overt­ly embrac­ing them. Which sounds like the stan­dard ‘Alt Right’ trolling-as-pol­i­tics play­book.

    We still don’t have a clear motive. And it’s still pos­si­ble Crooks was pri­mar­i­ly moti­vat­ed by a desire to die in a high pro­file man­ner. A kind of high-pro­file-sui­cide crime of oppor­tu­ni­ty. Maybe it was that. But if the shoot­ing did indeed have a polit­i­cal motive, it’s become pret­ty clear what kind of pol­i­tics has been ani­mat­ing Crooks in recent years.

    Ok, first, here’s a report retract­ing the pre­vi­ous reports about a Steam account attrib­uted to Crooks. The account was a hoax:

    NBC News

    Trump shoot­er did not post to Steam account before assas­si­na­tion attempt, law enforce­ment offi­cials say

    Law­mak­ers were told last week that Thomas Crooks may have post­ed to a Steam account before he shot Trump. On Mon­day, offi­cials said the account did not belong to Crooks.

    July 18, 2024, 10:00 AM CDT / Updat­ed July 22, 2024, 9:28 PM CDT
    By Frank Thorp V

    An online gam­ing account that fea­tured an omi­nous mes­sage about the day of the assas­si­na­tion attempt on for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump was not con­nect­ed to the shoot­er, two senior law enforce­ment offi­cials told NBC News on Mon­day.

    At a con­gres­sion­al brief­ing last Wednes­day, U.S. law­mak­ers were told that the account on the Steam plat­form was asso­ci­at­ed with the shoot­er, Thomas Crooks, and that the mes­sage had hint­ed he would be in the news in the com­ing days, two sources famil­iar with the brief­ing said.

    But the account that post­ed the mes­sage was deter­mined to be a hoax after fur­ther inves­ti­ga­tion, two senior law enforce­ment offi­cials said Mon­day.

    FBI Direc­tor Christo­pher Wray is expect­ed to tes­ti­fy before Con­gress this week and will like­ly pro­vide the lat­est on the inves­ti­ga­tion.

    Last week, the two senior law enforce­ment offi­cials told NBC News that the FBI was work­ing to deter­mine the authen­tic­i­ty of the Steam account and whether Crooks had made the post.

    ...

    A Steam user pro­file seen by NBC News used the name Thomas M. Crooks, but it appears that the profile’s han­dle was changed from a pre­vi­ous user­name the day after the shoot­ing, accord­ing to an archive of the pro­file col­lect­ed by a web­site that tracks Steam user pages.

    The pro­file also fea­tured a wide­ly cir­cu­lat­ed pic­ture of Crooks as its avatar and has lan­guage that was report­ed that appeared to fore­shad­ow the attack.

    The pro­file, which has been active since May 2023, pre­vi­ous­ly went by “Blub­ber,” “Bub­bles” and oth­er user­names, accord­ing to the web­site, SteamID. It was not clear when the lan­guage about the attack was added.

    ...

    Inves­ti­ga­tors say they are still look­ing for what might have moti­vat­ed Crooks to shoot at him. Inves­ti­ga­tors looked into his inter­net his­to­ry and found that he made search­es this month spe­cif­ic to Trump, a ral­ly and the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Com­mit­tee, accord­ing to a senior U.S. law enforce­ment offi­cial.

    Crooks was a reg­is­tered Repub­li­can but also made a $15 dona­tion to the Pro­gres­sive Turnout Project the day Pres­i­dent Joe Biden was inau­gu­rat­ed in 2021, records showed.

    UPDATE (July 22, 2024, 10:25 ET): Two senior law enforce­ment offi­cials on Mon­day told NBC News that an account on the Steam gam­ing plat­form did not belong to the shoot­er in the Trump assas­si­na­tion attempt, Thomas Crooks. NBC News pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed that law­mak­ers were told in a Con­gres­sion­al hear­ing that the account belonged to Crooks, accord­ing to two sources famil­iar with the brief­ing.

    ———–

    “Trump shoot­er did not post to Steam account before assas­si­na­tion attempt, law enforce­ment offi­cials say” by Frank Thorp V, NBC News; 07/18/2024

    “But the account that post­ed the mes­sage was deter­mined to be a hoax after fur­ther inves­ti­ga­tion, two senior law enforce­ment offi­cials said Mon­day.”

    Welp. Ok, it was­n’t Crook’s account. Keep in mind this does­n’t mean Crooks was­n’t on these pop­u­lar gam­ing forums like Dis­cord or Steam. It just means inves­ti­ga­tors haven’t found one yet. After all, the fact that inves­ti­ga­tors were ini­tial­ly duped by this fake account serves as a reminder that peo­ple can obscure their iden­ti­ties fair­ly eas­i­ly on these plat­forms.

    And that brings us the lat­est set of updates on Crook­s’s social media pres­ence. It turns out he was a rather pro­lif­ic poster on the far right Gab mes­sag­ing plat­form from 2019–2020, when Crooks would have been rough­ly 15–17 years old. We’re told over 700 com­ments were post­ed by this account, reflect­ing not just anti­se­mit­ic and anti-immi­grant views but also an advo­ca­cy for polit­i­cal vio­lence. Keep in mind the pri­or reports we’ve received about Crooks con­sis­tent­ly express­ing con­ser­v­a­tive polit­i­cal views while he was in high school. So based on this dis­cov­ered Gab account, it would appear Crooks was­n’t sim­ply ‘con­ser­v­a­tive’ dur­ing this peri­od. He was a far right extrem­ist:

    The New Repub­lic

    New Shock­ing Details Emerge on Trump Shooter’s Extreme Polit­i­cal Views

    The FBI revealed a social media account believed to belong to Thomas Crooks before he attempt­ed to assas­si­nate Don­ald Trump.

    Robert McCoy
    July 30, 2024 4:21 p.m. ET

    Tes­ti­fy­ing before the Sen­ate Home­land Secu­ri­ty and Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tees Tues­day, FBI Deputy Direc­tor Paul Abbate revealed new details on a social media account believed to belong to Trump’s attempt­ed assas­sin, 20-year-old Thomas Crooks.

    In his open­ing remarks, Abbate said that the FBI has not yet deter­mined Crooks’s motive, but inves­ti­ga­tors have dis­cov­ered a social media account “believed to be asso­ci­at­ed with the shoot­er in about the 2019–2020 time­frame,” when Crooks would have been rough­ly 15–17 years old.

    The activ­i­ty of the account, which post­ed over 700 com­ments, Abbate said, “appear[s] to reflect anti­se­mit­ic and anti-immi­gra­tion themes, to espouse polit­i­cal vio­lence, and [is] described as extreme in nature.”

    While stress­ing that inves­ti­ga­tors are still work­ing to con­firm that the account belonged to Crooks, Abbate said, “We believe it impor­tant to share and note it today, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en the gen­er­al absence of oth­er infor­ma­tion to date from social media and oth­er sources of infor­ma­tion that reflect on the shooter’s poten­tial motive and mind­set.”

    ...

    ———-

    “New Shock­ing Details Emerge on Trump Shooter’s Extreme Polit­i­cal Views” by Robert McCoy; The New Repub­lic; 07/30/2024

    “The activ­i­ty of the account, which post­ed over 700 com­ments, Abbate said, “appear[s] to reflect anti­se­mit­ic and anti-immi­gra­tion themes, to espouse polit­i­cal vio­lence, and [is] described as extreme in nature.””

    700 com­ments over the course of a cou­ple years is a pret­ty good sam­pling of some­one’s think­ing. That’s basi­cal­ly a post a day on aver­age.

    But as the FBI also revealed, this account was­n’t Crook­s’s only Gab account. There was a sec­ond account that shared “dif­fer­ing points of view”. And that rev­e­la­tion about Crook­s’s sec­ond Gab account is gen­er­at­ing push­back against the idea that Crooks was actu­al­ly a con­ser­v­a­tive. The kind of push­back we should expect at this point: Gab found Andrew Tor­ba has been open­ly dis­put­ing the FBI’s find­ings. Tor­ba isn’t dis­put­ing that Crooks was the per­son behind that far right account. Instead, Tor­ba is dis­put­ing the notion that Crooks was con­ser­v­a­tive, point­ing to that sec­ond Gab account where Crooks seemed to express pro-Biden and pro-immi­gra­tion views. And since those posts from that sec­ond account were from 2021, Tor­ba asserts “To the best of Gab’s knowl­edge, as of 2021, Crooks was a pro-lock­down, pro-immi­gra­tion, left-wing Joe Biden sup­port­er”:

    Newsweek

    Con­flict­ing Accounts of Trump Shoot­er Thomas Crooks’ Social Media Emerge

    By Matthew Impel­li
    Pub­lished Jul 30, 2024 at 3:28 PM EDT
    Updat­ed Jul 31, 2024 at 10:43 AM EDT

    Con­flict­ing accounts relat­ing to social media belong­ing to for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s shoot­er, Thomas Crooks, have emerged this week.

    On Tues­day, act­ing Secret Ser­vice Direc­tor Ronald Rowe appeared before the Sen­ate Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee to answer ques­tions about the attempt against Trump’s life at a cam­paign ral­ly in But­ler, Penn­syl­va­nia, on July 13. Deputy FBI Direc­tor Paul Abbate also appeared before the Com­mit­tee on Tues­day.

    ...

    Dur­ing the hear­ing, Abbate explained to Sen­a­tors that the FBI dis­cov­ered two dif­fer­ent social media accounts that they believe may belong to Crooks. Accord­ing to Abbate, one account shared “anti­se­mit­ic” top­ics and thoughts, but a sec­ond account on the plat­form Gab, shared “dif­fer­ing points of view.”

    “While the inves­tiga­tive team is still work­ing to ver­i­fy this account to deter­mine if it did in fact belong to the shoot­er, we believe it impor­tant to share and note it today, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en the gen­er­al absence of oth­er infor­ma­tion to date from social media and oth­er sources of infor­ma­tion that reflect on the shooter’s poten­tial motive and mind­set,” Abbate said dur­ing the hear­ing, while speak­ing about the social media accounts.

    How­ev­er, in a post to X, for­mer­ly Twit­ter on Tues­day, Gab CEO Andrew Tor­ba said, “The FBI is now claim­ing that the Trump shoot­er Thomas Matthew Crooks had an unspec­i­fied ‘social media account’ in 2019/2020 (when he was 14/15 years old) that post­ed ‘anti-immi­grant and anti-semit­ic’ con­tent.”

    “This is not con­sis­tent with Gab’s under­stand­ing of the shooter’s motives based on an Emer­gency Dis­clo­sure Request (“EDR”) we received from the FBI last week for the Gab account ‘EpicMi­crowave’ which, based on the con­tent of that EDR, the FBI appeared to think belonged to Thomas Crooks,” Tor­ba said. “The sto­ry is this: the account for which data was request­ed was, UNEQUIVOCALLY, pro-Biden and in par­tic­u­lar pro-Biden’s immi­gra­tion pol­i­cy.”

    “To the best of Gab’s knowl­edge, as of 2021, Crooks was a pro-lock­down, pro-immi­gra­tion, left-wing Joe Biden sup­port­er,” Tor­ba added in his post.

    ...

    ———-

    “Con­flict­ing Accounts of Trump Shoot­er Thomas Crooks’ Social Media Emerge” by Matthew Impel­li; Newsweek; 07/30/2024

    “Dur­ing the hear­ing, Abbate explained to Sen­a­tors that the FBI dis­cov­ered two dif­fer­ent social media accounts that they believe may belong to Crooks. Accord­ing to Abbate, one account shared “anti­se­mit­ic” top­ics and thoughts, but a sec­ond account on the plat­form Gab, shared “dif­fer­ing points of view.””

    We have an ear­li­er Gab account drip­ping with far right posts in 2019–2020 but then a sec­ond account shar­ing seem­ing­ly pro-Biden views in 2021. How should we inter­pret this appar­ent con­tra­dic­tion? Well, accord­ing to Tor­ba, we should prob­a­bly assumed Crooks had adopt­ed a pro-Biden left-wing ide­ol­o­gy since 2021:

    ...
    How­ev­er, in a post to X, for­mer­ly Twit­ter on Tues­day, Gab CEO Andrew Tor­ba said, “The FBI is now claim­ing that the Trump shoot­er Thomas Matthew Crooks had an unspec­i­fied ‘social media account’ in 2019/2020 (when he was 14/15 years old) that post­ed ‘anti-immi­grant and anti-semit­ic’ con­tent.”

    “This is not con­sis­tent with Gab’s under­stand­ing of the shooter’s motives based on an Emer­gency Dis­clo­sure Request (“EDR”) we received from the FBI last week for the Gab account ‘EpicMi­crowave’ which, based on the con­tent of that EDR, the FBI appeared to think belonged to Thomas Crooks,” Tor­ba said. “The sto­ry is this: the account for which data was request­ed was, UNEQUIVOCALLY, pro-Biden and in par­tic­u­lar pro-Biden’s immi­gra­tion pol­i­cy.”

    “To the best of Gab’s knowl­edge, as of 2021, Crooks was a pro-lock­down, pro-immi­gra­tion, left-wing Joe Biden sup­port­er,” Tor­ba added in his post.
    ...

    So how do we make sense of these two ide­o­log­i­cal­ly opposed Gab accounts? Well, for starters, we can not that there were 700 mes­sages from the anti­se­mit­ic account but just nine posts from the ‘pro-Biden’ account. And all nine posts from made between Jan­u­ary 20, 2021 and Feb­ru­ary 4, 2021. Keep in mind that Jan­u­ary 20, 2021, was both Biden’s inau­gu­ra­tion day and also the day of Crook­s’s $15 Act Blue dona­tion that’s been cites so heav­i­ly as evi­dence of Crook­s’s alleged left-wing motive. In oth­er words, there were nine ‘pro-Biden’ posts over the course of two weeks fol­low­ing that $15 dona­tion on Biden’s inau­gu­ra­tion day. And that’s it. That’s the entire­ly of the ‘evi­dence’ of Crook­s’s alleged left-wing ide­ol­o­gy.

    But there’s anoth­er very inter­est­ing detail about this ‘pro-Biden’ Gab account: it was first cre­at­ed in Sep­tem­ber 2019, the same year the far right com­ments on Crook­s’s oth­er Gab account start­ed. So it appears Crooks cre­at­ed both his far right account — which was heav­i­ly used for two years — and his ‘pro-Biden’ account at rough­ly the same time. But for what­ev­er rea­son, Crooks only decid­ed to start post­ing with his ‘pro-Biden’ account on Jan­u­ary 20, 2021, the same day of his $15 Act Blue dona­tion, and only made 9 ‘left-wing’ posts over the course of two weeks.

    Keep in mind that, if we assumed Crooks made exact­ly 700 posts with his old account, that would make for 709 total Gab posts by Crooks, with 98.7% of them post­ed under the far right account and just 1.3% under his ‘pro-Biden’ account. So while there’s an appar­ent con­tra­dic­tion in Crook­s’s online activ­i­ty, it’s a wild­ly unbal­anced con­trac­tion tilt­ed towards a far right motive:

    The Dai­ly Beast

    Trump Ral­ly Gun­man May Have Had Pro-Biden Account on Far-Right Site

    Andrew Tor­ba, the founder of Gab, made the admis­sion in a blog post Wednes­day.

    Owen Lavine
    Break­ing News Intern
    Pub­lished Jul. 25, 2024 6:45PM EDT

    Andrew Tor­ba, the founder of the far-right favorite social media site Gab, wrote in a blog post Wednes­day that Thomas Matthew Crooks, the man who attempt­ed to take for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s life at a cam­paign ral­ly ear­li­er this month, may have been a user of the site.

    “Today Gab learned that Thomas Crooks, the deranged Joe Biden sup­port­er who attempt­ed to assas­si­nate Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, may have had an account on our plat­form,” Tor­ba wrote in the post. “We are unable to con­firm that the account in ques­tion actu­al­ly belonged to him, but have rea­son to believe it does after receiv­ing an emer­gency dis­clo­sure request from a law enforce­ment agency.”

    The account called ‘epicMi­crowave’ was cre­at­ed in Sep­tem­ber 2019 and made nine posts on the site, most of which defend­ed var­i­ous poli­cies cham­pi­oned by Pres­i­dent Joe Biden.

    “The account was last active on the site in 2021. As far as we are aware, the account did not use the site to send any direct mes­sages,” Tor­ba added.

    One post from Feb. 4, 2021 tags right-wing inter­net per­son­al­i­ty @Catturd and reads: “Didn’t you also think Biden would lose in a land­slide yeah I would not be very con­fi­dent in your elec­tion pre­dic­tions.”

    A Feb. 3, 2021 post direct­ly replied to Tor­ba, read­ing “@a Im sor­ry explain to me how trump was ever con­cerned with what the left want­ed, or any­body in the GOP for that mat­ter?”

    All nine of Crooks’ alleged posts were made between Jan. 20, 2021—the same day Crooks donat­ed to a Demo­c­rat-affil­i­at­ed PAC—and Feb. 4, 2021.

    ...

    ———–

    “Trump Ral­ly Gun­man May Have Had Pro-Biden Account on Far-Right Site” by Owen Lavine; The Dai­ly Beast; 07/25/2024

    “The account called ‘epicMi­crowave’ was cre­at­ed in Sep­tem­ber 2019 and made nine posts on the site, most of which defend­ed var­i­ous poli­cies cham­pi­oned by Pres­i­dent Joe Biden.”

    As we can see, Crooks appar­ent­ly cre­at­ed his ‘left wing’ account in Sep­tem­ber of 2019 — the same year he was post­ing anti­se­mit­ic and far right con­tent almost dai­ly under his oth­er account — but then only made 9 posts in total start­ing from Jan 20, 2021, to Feb­ru­ary 4, 2021. Evi­dence for Crook­s’s alleged left-wing ide­ol­o­gy is lim­it­ed to that two week peri­od:

    ...
    All nine of Crooks’ alleged posts were made between Jan. 20, 2021—the same day Crooks donat­ed to a Demo­c­rat-affil­i­at­ed PAC—and Feb. 4, 2021.
    ...

    Also note that the Dai­ly Mail has screen cap­tures of 8 out of those 9 posts and one of them was a direct response to @PrisonPlanet, which would be the Gab account affil­i­at­ed Alex Jones’s InfoWars. Keep in mind how Jones was open­ly hop­ing for some­one to assas­si­nate Trump back in Jan­u­ary, sug­gest­ing “If they [assas­si­nate Trump], option 2, behind Trump, is going to be so much bet­ter for us and so much worse for them.”

    Also keep in mind that Crooks ulti­mate­ly lat­er reg­is­tered as a Repub­li­can after this brief two week peri­od of 9 left-lean­ing posts. Beyond that, the shirt he was wear­ing dur­ing the shoot­ing was for “Demo­li­tion Ranch”, a pop­u­lar YouTube chan­nel ded­i­cat­ed to guns and explo­sives. And while the world of ‘Gun­Tube’ chan­nels tend to over overt pol­i­tics in their con­tent, that should­n’t be used to assume the con­tent of these chan­nels is apo­lit­i­cal. Instead, as the fol­low­ing Bloomberg piece describes, while some of these chan­nels might try to remain apo­lit­i­cal, they often just mask their right-wing pol­i­tics with edgy humor. As Dan Trombly, a researcher who stud­ies polit­i­cal vio­lence and right-wing pol­i­tics in online spaces, describes, while many ‘Gun­Tu­bers’ lean right, their indi­vid­ual ide­olo­gies are rarely coher­ent beyond a “gen­er­al dis­dain” for lib­er­al soci­ety and for main­stream gun cul­ture typ­i­fied by the NRA. In fact, many online gun enthu­si­asts see the NRA as cor­rupt and more or less spent as a polit­i­cal force. And while the NRA is undoubt­ed­ly cor­rupt, it’s hard to read that descrip­tion of the ide­olo­gies expressed on these chan­nels as any­thing oth­er than an over­ar­ch­ing ‘burn it all down’ far right ide­ol­o­gy, which is exact­ly the kind of ide­ol­o­gy we might expect from some­one who did what Crooks did:

    Bloomberg

    Inside Gun­Tube, the YouTube Sub­cul­ture Linked to the Trump Shoot­er

    The for­mer president’s would-be assas­sin was wear­ing a T‑shirt from a pop­u­lar firearms-focused YouTube chan­nel, but the world of gun influ­encers has no coher­ent polit­i­cal ide­ol­o­gy.

    By Jack Cros­bie
    July 31, 2024 at 6:00 AM CDT

    When Thomas Michael Crooks climbed onto the roof of a build­ing near But­ler, Penn­syl­va­nia, and tried to kill Don­ald Trump, he had a dis­tinc­tive, gun­metal-gray T‑shirt. On the back there was an angu­lar gray eagle, styl­ized like the crest of a futur­is­tic army. The front fea­tured one word: “DEMOLITIA.”

    The shirt comes from a YouTube chan­nel called Demo­li­tion Ranch, which over the past 13 years has pub­lished thou­sands of videos fea­tur­ing an almost uncount­able arse­nal of firearms. Crooks didn’t leave many dig­i­tal bread­crumbs, and his choice of the shirt, which retailed for about $30 from the channel’s online store, is one of a few clues about his inter­ests or ide­ol­o­gy.

    As a clue, though, it may not say much. The pol­i­tics of Gun­Tube, the sprawl­ing world of firearms-focused social media influ­encers, aren’t always clear. Demo­li­tion Ranch, which has 11.7 mil­lion sub­scribers, delib­er­ate­ly eschews all but the bland­est polit­i­cal state­ments about the Sec­ond Amend­ment.

    A typ­i­cal Demo­li­tion Ranch video will show Matt Car­rik­er, the own­er and host of the chan­nel, and his friends shoot­ing some­thing sur­pris­ing with a very large gun. They may show­case a spe­cif­ic weapon, a cer­tain type of bul­let or even a real-world sce­nario involv­ing firearms. But the gen­er­al scope is exact­ly as adver­tised: fun-lov­ing Tex­ans shoot­ing very large guns at things they want to blow up. Water­mel­ons are a favorite, as are every GunTuber’s top prop, a human-shaped dum­my made of bal­lis­tic gel that can sim­u­late a projectile’s impact on flesh.

    “We keep pol­i­tics out of it. For one, it’s not my bread and but­ter, but also I don’t feel the need to impose my views and beliefs on oth­er peo­ple. This chan­nel was nev­er meant to incite vio­lence or hate,” said Car­rik­er in a video on his chan­nel dis­cussing the Trump shoot­ing. He expressed dis­may at Crooks’ fash­ion choice. “We don’t vet the peo­ple who buy our shirts, obvi­ous­ly,” he said. A week and a half lat­er, Demo­li­tion Ranch returned to busi­ness as usu­al, post­ing a video of Car­rik­er shoot­ing tung­sten car­bide bullets—made and shipped to him by one of his viewers—out of a vari­ety of rifles into steel body armor plates to test their pen­e­tra­tion pow­er.

    ...

    A suc­cess­ful YouTube gun chan­nel can pull in hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars a year through a mix­ture of ad rev­enue and direct spon­sor­ships from a net­work of arms com­pa­nies, firearms acces­so­ry brands and tra­di­tion­al direct-to-con­sumer brands that are will­ing to take the risk in attach­ing them­selves to explo­sive con­tent. Spend­ing too much time on pol­i­tics could dri­ve away view­ers, cut­ting into earn­ing poten­tial. Then again, guns are an inher­ent­ly polit­i­cal top­ic in the US, and engag­ing in the cul­ture wars has some obvi­ous poten­tial ben­e­fits as well. The amount of polit­i­cal signaling—and the spe­cif­ic nature of those politics—varies wide­ly by chan­nel.

    Some Gun­Tu­bers, includ­ing the wiz­ened Hickcok45, have devel­oped a rep­u­ta­tion for more sober, respon­si­ble demon­stra­tions of mod­ern and antique firearms. Demo­li­tion Ranch and its peers engage in elab­o­rate and explo­sive stunts. Oth­er chan­nels, such as GarandThumb and Admin­is­tra­tive Results, have leaned into their hosts’ past mil­i­tary or law enforce­ment back­grounds, giv­ing their shoot­ing exper­i­ments the sheen of real-world exper­tise. Each chan­nel has its own fla­vor and brand­ing, usu­al­ly revolv­ing around a cen­tral per­son­al­i­ty and a rotat­ing sup­port­ing cast of friends and assis­tants. Many cre­ators are friends in their off-cam­era lives, and crossover videos, pod­casts and oth­er social media col­lab­o­ra­tions are com­mon.

    Some top influ­encers do incor­po­rate explic­it polit­i­cal sig­nal­ing. Bran­don Her­rera, best known for his attempts to build a home­made AK-style rifle capa­ble of shoot­ing mas­sive .50-cal­iber bul­lets, mount­ed an insur­gent cam­paign for Con­gress in Texas’ 23rd House Dis­trict, which cov­ers a pre­dom­i­nant­ly rur­al stretch of the state along the Mex­i­can bor­der. Run­ning on a far-right plat­form that paint­ed the incum­bent, sec­ond-term Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Tony Gon­za­lez, as a RINO, or Repub­li­can in name only, Her­rera gar­nered sup­port from hard-line right-wing politi­cians such as Flori­da Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Matt Gaetz. He came with­in 400 votes of win­ning the GOP pri­ma­ry.

    Dan Trombly, a researcher who stud­ies polit­i­cal vio­lence and right-wing pol­i­tics in online spaces, says that even though many Gun­Tu­bers lean right, their indi­vid­ual ide­olo­gies are rarely coher­ent beyond a “gen­er­al dis­dain” for lib­er­al soci­ety and for main­stream gun cul­ture typ­i­fied by the Nation­al Rifle Asso­ci­a­tion, which many online gun enthu­si­asts see as cor­rupt and more or less spent as a polit­i­cal force.

    ...

    Many Gun­Tu­bers express a famil­iar ver­sion of online pol­i­tics, where any actu­al views are hint­ed at only through many lay­ers of irony, trolling and humor. “This is a com­mon dynam­ic in a lot of right-wing cul­tur­al spaces in the US,” Trombly says. “You have a whole mish­mash of ide­olo­gies that on their face aren’t real­ly com­pat­i­ble, but they have a set of com­mon ene­mies and a shared desire to over­turn the sti­fling norms of the space that they’re in.”

    This sub­ver­sion comes through in an almost con­stant stream of small ref­er­ences, often with incen­di­ary or racist under­tones, such as insert­ing footage of Black Lives Mat­ter pro­test­ers into a video on urban sur­vival in dis­as­ter sit­u­a­tions, mak­ing quips about antifa and trans peo­ple, or pro­fess­ing an affin­i­ty for the brush­stroke cam­ou­flage once used by white Rhode­sian nation­al­ists. The name of one pop­u­lar Gun­Tube chan­nel, Admin­is­tra­tive Results, is a ref­er­ence to Exec­u­tive Out­comes, a South African mer­ce­nary group found­ed by apartheid-era death squad mem­bers. The chan­nel sells shirts with an emblem of a bloody dia­mond with the slo­gan “Sier­ra Leone Geol­o­gy Club.”

    “There’s a desire to show that you’re going to get that kind of ‘a bit naughty’ with the sym­bols and the ideas you want to engage with with­out hav­ing to make a coher­ent polit­i­cal state­ment besides hav­ing a hard-line per­spec­tive on the Sec­ond Amend­ment,” Trombly says. “At the end of the day, they’re mak­ing mon­ey off of this.”

    For many, the mon­ey is good, even as YouTube has shift­ed its pol­i­cy on guns. In 2018 the website’s par­ent com­pa­ny, Alpha­bet Inc., start­ed cut­ting off ad rev­enue for large amounts of firearms con­tent. This move prompt­ed a wide­spread and suc­cess­ful shift toward direct adver­tis­ing and spon­sor­ships in the videos, allow­ing cre­ators to make mon­ey with­out rely­ing on Google’s own ad plat­form. Many of the community’s largest accounts share a mar­ket­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tive, Leviathan LLC, which has helped to stan­dard­ize prices for spon­sored videos and main­tain rela­tion­ships between cre­ators and firearm indus­try con­tacts.

    Today, a gun review video on a major chan­nel will usu­al­ly have sev­er­al spon­sors. Many chan­nels that promise unbi­ased reviews pur­chase the spe­cif­ic weapons they fea­ture, while accept­ing spon­sor­ships from acces­so­ry brands, ammu­ni­tion com­pa­nies and orga­ni­za­tions such as the Sono­ran Desert Insti­tute, an online gun­smithing school in Ari­zona. Eventually—the time­line on YouTube’s spe­cif­ic poli­cies is a bit unclear, even to GunTubers—Alphabet reversed course, allow­ing firearm con­tent to be mon­e­tized again. This step was cru­cial, as the pop­u­lar­i­ty of demon­e­tized videos is harmed because YouTube’s rec­om­men­da­tion sys­tem doesn’t pro­mote them. “With­out mon­e­ti­za­tion, your videos real­ly aren’t going any­where,” says Mike Jones, who runs the pop­u­lar chan­nel GarandThumb.

    In addi­tion to hav­ing a pol­i­cy that requires gun-relat­ed con­tent cre­ators to adhere to spe­cif­ic guide­lines to keep their videos adver­tis­er-friend­ly if they want to mon­e­tize their con­tent, YouTube updat­ed its firearms pol­i­cy in ear­ly June. The new rules added an age restric­tion on con­tent involv­ing ful­ly auto­mat­ic or home­made weapons, as well as fur­ther enforce­ment on con­tent that links to or oth­er­wise pro­motes firearms sell­ers.

    “The recent updates to our firearms pol­i­cy are part of our con­tin­ued efforts to main­tain poli­cies that reflect the cur­rent state of con­tent on YouTube,” says YouTube spokesper­son Javier Her­nan­dez. “For exam­ple, 3D print­ing has become more read­i­ly avail­able in recent years, so we’ve expand­ed our restric­tions on con­tent involv­ing home­made firearms. We’ll con­tin­ue to work with cre­ators to help them under­stand this update and how they might man­age its impact on their chan­nels.”

    In June, YouTube announced a slate of rules includ­ing age-restric­tion man­dates for all gun con­tent and a ban on show­ing ful­ly auto­mat­ic firearms being fired. Cre­ators imme­di­ate­ly pushed back, com­plain­ing that videos requir­ing a login to watch often get a frac­tion of the views as pub­licly acces­si­ble ones. Demo­li­tion Ranch pub­lished a video in ear­ly July titled “Edg­ing YouTube’s New Gun Rules,” in which Car­rik­er ran through a series of sce­nar­ios delib­er­ate­ly designed to test the lim­its of the restric­tions (many of which involved a ful­ly auto­mat­ic AK-47).

    Like par­tic­i­pants in any con­tent indus­try, Gun­Tu­bers see con­tro­ver­sy as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to attract rev­enue-gen­er­at­ing atten­tion. Con­flict with Big Tech, absur­dist stunts, mil­i­tary cos­play and dog whis­tles to the far right all func­tion as effec­tive mar­ket­ing and brand­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties. In mid-July, the host of Admin­is­tra­tive Results, who keeps his real name a secret, post­ed a video lament­ing his fail­ures at self-pro­mo­tion. He start­ed with the atten­tion Her­rera got for his con­gres­sion­al run, say­ing that Her­rera would “be called a whole bunch of bad things in arti­cles, even the videos I was in … they nev­er men­tioned me,” before list­ing a hand­ful of online feuds he wasn’t involved in and not­ing the noto­ri­ety Demo­li­tion Ranch was get­ting after the Trump shoot­ing. “You know who wasn’t men­tioned? Me,” he said. “I’m think­ing I’m cooked.” He didn’t respond to a request for com­ment.

    For some cre­ators, the sig­nal­ing and big­ot­ed lan­guage com­mon­place on many big cre­ators’ chan­nels are a dis­trac­tion from the real issue: guns them­selves. “These ter­mi­nal­ly online, trans­pho­bic, homo­pho­bic, far-right peo­ple do not make up the major­i­ty of the gun com­mu­ni­ty,” says Jor­dan Levine, who runs a social media and pod­cast oper­a­tion brand­ed A Bet­ter Way 2A. “You go to a gun range, a gun club, and most peo­ple are just hap­py that you’re there and patron­iz­ing their range.”

    Levine’s chan­nel is part of a small­er net­work of influ­encers who attempt to posi­tion their sup­port for the Sec­ond Amend­ment as sep­a­rate from right-wing pol­i­tics, often claim­ing that gun rights are inte­gral to equal­i­ty for mar­gin­al­ized groups. “When you have these fig­ure­heads who have these big fol­low­ings and peo­ple who are latch­ing onto their mes­sage, I think it’s an issue,” Levine says. “It def­i­nite­ly hurts us over­all if our goal is to get more peo­ple into guns.”

    ———-

    “Inside Gun­Tube, the YouTube Sub­cul­ture Linked to the Trump Shoot­er” By Jack Cros­bie; Bloomberg; 07/31/2024

    “The shirt comes from a YouTube chan­nel called Demo­li­tion Ranch, which over the past 13 years has pub­lished thou­sands of videos fea­tur­ing an almost uncount­able arse­nal of firearms. Crooks didn’t leave many dig­i­tal bread­crumbs, and his choice of the shirt, which retailed for about $30 from the channel’s online store, is one of a few clues about his inter­ests or ide­ol­o­gy.”

    Crooks may not have left a man­i­festo. But that does­n’t mean he was­n’t leav­ing clues. Was his deci­sion to wear a Demo­li­tion Ranch t‑shirt dur­ing the shoot­ing a delib­er­ate choice? Per­haps intend­ed to be a shout out to a com­mu­ni­ty he iden­ti­fied with? Or was it more just a reflec­tion of who he was and what he typ­i­cal­ly wore on a day to day basis? Either way, Crooks was obvi­ous­ly a huge ‘Gun­Tu­ber’ fan. And while ‘Gun­Tube’ chan­nels may not always be overt­ly polit­i­cal, they’re also implic­it­ly very ‘pro-Sec­ond Amend­ment,’ and often express a “gen­er­al dis­dain” for lib­er­al soci­ety and main­stream gun cul­ture. In oth­er words, the Gun­Tu­ber com­mu­ni­ty isn’t exclu­sive­ly far right. But far right indi­vid­ual would very much feel at home there:

    ...
    As a clue, though, it may not say much. The pol­i­tics of Gun­Tube, the sprawl­ing world of firearms-focused social media influ­encers, aren’t always clear. Demo­li­tion Ranch, which has 11.7 mil­lion sub­scribers, delib­er­ate­ly eschews all but the bland­est polit­i­cal state­ments about the Sec­ond Amend­ment.

    ...

    A suc­cess­ful YouTube gun chan­nel can pull in hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars a year through a mix­ture of ad rev­enue and direct spon­sor­ships from a net­work of arms com­pa­nies, firearms acces­so­ry brands and tra­di­tion­al direct-to-con­sumer brands that are will­ing to take the risk in attach­ing them­selves to explo­sive con­tent. Spend­ing too much time on pol­i­tics could dri­ve away view­ers, cut­ting into earn­ing poten­tial. Then again, guns are an inher­ent­ly polit­i­cal top­ic in the US, and engag­ing in the cul­ture wars has some obvi­ous poten­tial ben­e­fits as well. The amount of polit­i­cal signaling—and the spe­cif­ic nature of those politics—varies wide­ly by chan­nel.

    ...

    Dan Trombly, a researcher who stud­ies polit­i­cal vio­lence and right-wing pol­i­tics in online spaces, says that even though many Gun­Tu­bers lean right, their indi­vid­ual ide­olo­gies are rarely coher­ent beyond a “gen­er­al dis­dain” for lib­er­al soci­ety and for main­stream gun cul­ture typ­i­fied by the Nation­al Rifle Asso­ci­a­tion, which many online gun enthu­si­asts see as cor­rupt and more or less spent as a polit­i­cal force.

    ...

    Many Gun­Tu­bers express a famil­iar ver­sion of online pol­i­tics, where any actu­al views are hint­ed at only through many lay­ers of irony, trolling and humor. “This is a com­mon dynam­ic in a lot of right-wing cul­tur­al spaces in the US,” Trombly says. “You have a whole mish­mash of ide­olo­gies that on their face aren’t real­ly com­pat­i­ble, but they have a set of com­mon ene­mies and a shared desire to over­turn the sti­fling norms of the space that they’re in.”

    ...

    “There’s a desire to show that you’re going to get that kind of ‘a bit naughty’ with the sym­bols and the ideas you want to engage with with­out hav­ing to make a coher­ent polit­i­cal state­ment besides hav­ing a hard-line per­spec­tive on the Sec­ond Amend­ment,” Trombly says. “At the end of the day, they’re mak­ing mon­ey off of this.”
    ...

    Anoth­er indi­ca­tion of the extrem­ism that can be found in the Gun­Tu­ber cul­ture is the fact that there does exist a net­work of explic­it­ly non-big­ot­ed and non-extrem­ist Gun­Tu­ber accounts. But it’s a rel­a­tive­ly small net­work:

    ...
    For some cre­ators, the sig­nal­ing and big­ot­ed lan­guage com­mon­place on many big cre­ators’ chan­nels are a dis­trac­tion from the real issue: guns them­selves. “These ter­mi­nal­ly online, trans­pho­bic, homo­pho­bic, far-right peo­ple do not make up the major­i­ty of the gun com­mu­ni­ty,” says Jor­dan Levine, who runs a social media and pod­cast oper­a­tion brand­ed A Bet­ter Way 2A. “You go to a gun range, a gun club, and most peo­ple are just hap­py that you’re there and patron­iz­ing their range.”

    Levine’s chan­nel is part of a small­er net­work of influ­encers who attempt to posi­tion their sup­port for the Sec­ond Amend­ment as sep­a­rate from right-wing pol­i­tics, often claim­ing that gun rights are inte­gral to equal­i­ty for mar­gin­al­ized groups. “When you have these fig­ure­heads who have these big fol­low­ings and peo­ple who are latch­ing onto their mes­sage, I think it’s an issue,” Levine says. “It def­i­nite­ly hurts us over­all if our goal is to get more peo­ple into guns.”
    ...

    And then there’s Gun­Tu­ber chan­nels like the pop­u­lar “Admin­is­tra­tive Results”, a name that’s a ref­er­ence to a South African mer­ce­nary group found­ed by apartheid-era South African death squad mem­bers. The chan­nel sell ‘blood dia­mond’ t‑shirts:

    ...
    This sub­ver­sion comes through in an almost con­stant stream of small ref­er­ences, often with incen­di­ary or racist under­tones, such as insert­ing footage of Black Lives Mat­ter pro­test­ers into a video on urban sur­vival in dis­as­ter sit­u­a­tions, mak­ing quips about antifa and trans peo­ple, or pro­fess­ing an affin­i­ty for the brush­stroke cam­ou­flage once used by white Rhode­sian nation­al­ists. The name of one pop­u­lar Gun­Tube chan­nel, Admin­is­tra­tive Results, is a ref­er­ence to Exec­u­tive Out­comes, a South African mer­ce­nary group found­ed by apartheid-era death squad mem­bers. The chan­nel sells shirts with an emblem of a bloody dia­mond with the slo­gan “Sier­ra Leone Geol­o­gy Club.”

    ...

    Like par­tic­i­pants in any con­tent indus­try, Gun­Tu­bers see con­tro­ver­sy as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to attract rev­enue-gen­er­at­ing atten­tion. Con­flict with Big Tech, absur­dist stunts, mil­i­tary cos­play and dog whis­tles to the far right all func­tion as effec­tive mar­ket­ing and brand­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties. In mid-July, the host of Admin­is­tra­tive Results, who keeps his real name a secret, post­ed a video lament­ing his fail­ures at self-pro­mo­tion. He start­ed with the atten­tion Her­rera got for his con­gres­sion­al run, say­ing that Her­rera would “be called a whole bunch of bad things in arti­cles, even the videos I was in … they nev­er men­tioned me,” before list­ing a hand­ful of online feuds he wasn’t involved in and not­ing the noto­ri­ety Demo­li­tion Ranch was get­ting after the Trump shoot­ing. “You know who wasn’t men­tioned? Me,” he said. “I’m think­ing I’m cooked.” He didn’t respond to a request for com­ment.
    ...

    Final­ly, note how YouTube imposed new restric­tions on Gun­Tu­ber videos back in June, weeks before the shoot­ing. New age restric­tions and a ban on videos of ful­ly auto­mat­ic firearm being fired. You have to won­der if Crook­s’s deci­sion to wear that Demo­li­tion Ranch t‑shirt was also, in part, a state­ment about those new restric­tions:

    ...
    In addi­tion to hav­ing a pol­i­cy that requires gun-relat­ed con­tent cre­ators to adhere to spe­cif­ic guide­lines to keep their videos adver­tis­er-friend­ly if they want to mon­e­tize their con­tent, YouTube updat­ed its firearms pol­i­cy in ear­ly June. The new rules added an age restric­tion on con­tent involv­ing ful­ly auto­mat­ic or home­made weapons, as well as fur­ther enforce­ment on con­tent that links to or oth­er­wise pro­motes firearms sell­ers.

    “The recent updates to our firearms pol­i­cy are part of our con­tin­ued efforts to main­tain poli­cies that reflect the cur­rent state of con­tent on YouTube,” says YouTube spokesper­son Javier Her­nan­dez. “For exam­ple, 3D print­ing has become more read­i­ly avail­able in recent years, so we’ve expand­ed our restric­tions on con­tent involv­ing home­made firearms. We’ll con­tin­ue to work with cre­ators to help them under­stand this update and how they might man­age its impact on their chan­nels.”

    In June, YouTube announced a slate of rules includ­ing age-restric­tion man­dates for all gun con­tent and a ban on show­ing ful­ly auto­mat­ic firearms being fired. Cre­ators imme­di­ate­ly pushed back, com­plain­ing that videos requir­ing a login to watch often get a frac­tion of the views as pub­licly acces­si­ble ones. Demo­li­tion Ranch pub­lished a video in ear­ly July titled “Edg­ing YouTube’s New Gun Rules,” in which Car­rik­er ran through a series of sce­nar­ios delib­er­ate­ly designed to test the lim­its of the restric­tions (many of which involved a ful­ly auto­mat­ic AK-47).
    ...

    But whether or not Crooks was get­ting inun­dat­ed with cryp­tic far right mes­sag­ing in the Gun­Tu­ber chan­nels he was watch­ing, it’s still a mys­tery as to why he would have cho­sen to try to assas­si­nate Don­ald Trump. The over­whelm­ing evi­dence at this point is that the guy was extreme­ly con­ser­v­a­tive.

    Which, again, brings us back to the sen­ti­ments expressed back on Jan­u­ary on Alex Jones’s show where Jones was open­ly hop­ing for some­one to assas­si­nate Trump because that would trig­ger a mas­sive vio­lence far right response. How wide­spread is this sen­ti­ment among the far right? Keep in mind that Trump is OLD. He only has so many years left. If it’s been deter­mined that an assas­si­na­tion and mar­tyring of Trump is in the best inter­est of the far right, well, we should only expect those attempts on his life to increase the old­er Trump gets.

    Was Crooks a canary in the ‘let’s mar­tyr Trump!’ coal mine? If so, also keep in mind that this assas­si­na­tion attempt hap­pened at a point when Trump’s elec­tion was look­ing quite prob­a­ble. Joe Biden was still the can­di­date. Now that Kamala Har­ris has reshuf­fled the race and Trump’s prospects are look­ing far less assured, you have to won­der how that “Let’s mar­tyr Trump!” sen­ti­ment shifts should we approach elec­tion day with the expec­ta­tion of a Trump loss. In oth­er words, while the Trump cam­paign undoubt­ed­ly has some sort of “Octo­ber Sur­prise” already in mind, Trump’s most die hard sup­port­ers might not have a sur­prise of their own.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | August 2, 2024, 4:30 pm

  14. I am not that inter­est­ed in the motive of the shoot­er. He could obvi­ous­ly be a pond like L.H.O. except he actu­al­ly took the shots. I dont think the secret ser­vice are com­plete bufoons, so what gives with the secu­ri­ty plan, leav­ing that roof unguard­ed so close to DT? Incom­pe­tence or crim­i­nal? This seems rem­i­nis­cent of the shoot­ing of George Wal­lace. Should the FBI inves­ti­ga­tion be trust­ed? What it all means I do not know.

    Posted by GK | August 7, 2024, 8:12 pm

  15. @GK–

    The FBI is not incom­pe­tent at all, nor is the Secret Ser­vice.

    THAT is exact­ly the point!

    re the shoot­ing of Wal­lace: https://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftr-648-arthur-who/

    I rec­om­mend check­ing out Pter­rafractyl’s bril­liant con­tri­bu­tions and the detailed dis­cus­sion of this on the Patre­on site.

    Posted by Dave Emory | August 8, 2024, 2:23 pm

  16. The updates keep com­ing, mak­ing less and less sense of the sit­u­a­tion. That’s the endur­ing theme of the reports we’re con­tin­u­ing to get on the inves­ti­ga­tion into the But­ler, Penn­syl­va­nia, assas­si­na­tion attempt on Don­ald Trump last month. The more we learn, the less sense the sto­ry the makes.

    In the lat­est round of updates, new body­cam footage was released by local police. The footage includes the moment when a local offi­cer climbed up onto the roof of the AGR fac­to­ry, was spot­ted by Crooks, and quick­ly dropped back down. As we can see and hear in the video, the offi­cer imme­di­ate­ly spot­ted Crook­s’s arse­nal and rushed to his car to get a gun.

    Body­cam footage also cap­tures the angry respons­es by local law enforce­ment in the min­utes after the shoot­ing, with one offi­cer livid with the Secret Ser­vice, insist­ing that he told the Secret Ser­vice days ear­li­er that the AGR fac­tor roof need­ed to be secured and that the Secret Ser­vice agreed to han­dle that.

    Recall that we pre­vi­ous­ly learned how the AGR build­ing that build­ing was being used as a stag­ing area for the local police to per­form over­watch on the crowd. But no one was on the roof. The top of that build­ing had pre­vi­ous­ly been iden­ti­fied as a “vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty” and we were told two local counter-sniper teams were sup­posed to cov­er the build­ing. But local police coun­tered that it was the Secret Secret ser­vice who was ulti­mate­ly respon­si­ble. So now we’re learn­ing that the Secret Ser­vice appar­ent­ly told local police that the Secret Ser­vice was going to han­dle the cov­er­age of that build­ing’s roof. But no one was there and appar­ent­ly there and no one knew about that secu­ri­ty lapse until it was too late.

    We also got more clar­i­ty on the moments right before the shoot­ing, when the local pol­i­cy offi­cer climbed up to spot Crooks and his arse­nal on the roof: pre­vi­ous­ly, we had been told the offi­cer climb up only to find him­self face to face with Crooks, with Crooks swing­ing his rifle towards the offi­cer. The offi­cer jumped down and we’re then told Crooks swung the rifle back towards Trump and fired off the vol­ley of shots before get­ting killed in a head shot by the Secret Ser­vice snipers. But now we’re learn­ing that it was approx­i­mate­ly 40 sec­onds between when the offi­cer spot­ted Crooks and when the shots were fired. That’s as LONG 40 sec­onds, giv­en the con­text. But also keep in mind that this is in keep­ing with video footage released show­ing the Secret Ser­vice snipers seem­ing­ly trained in on Crooks for 30–40 sec­onds before the shots were fired.

    And that brings us to anoth­er update we’ve recent­ly received: we’re told nei­ther the secret ser­vice snipers nor Trump’s secu­ri­ty detail were was­n’t aware Crooks was armed until the shots were fired. Yep. That’s the sto­ry we’re get­ting. Despite as 40 sec­ond lapse between when Crooks was direct­ly spot­ted by a local offi­cer with a rifle. Also keep in mind how only two of the mem­bers of Trump’s direct secu­ri­ty team — the peo­ple who direct­ly tack­led Trump — were Secret Ser­vice agents. The rest were local police includ­ing at least six offi­cer from But­ler Coun­ty tac­ti­cal units. In addi­tion, two local sniper teams were also there to sup­ple­ment the two Secret Ser­vice sniper teams. So if Trump’s secu­ri­ty detail was­n’t aware Crooks was armed, that sug­gests those local offi­cers weren’t get­ting com­mu­ni­ca­tions for fel­low local offi­cers.

    So what explains this appar­ent lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion between local police and the Secret Ser­vice? Well, that brings us to one more incred­i­ble update: we’ve now learned about the “unique” struc­ture of the secu­ri­ty orga­ni­za­tion that day. It turns out there were two sep­a­rate secu­ri­ty com­mand cen­ters. One for local police and one for the Secret Ser­vice. Keep in mind there’s a third enti­ty involved here: the state police. And it sounds like there was a sin­gle state police offi­cer post­ed in the Secret Ser­vice com­mand post and no Secret Ser­vice agents post­ed with the local police. As a result, we’re are told com­mu­ni­ca­tions were dis­joint­ed among the dif­fer­ent teams. That’s the arrange Secret Ser­vice Act­ing Direc­tor Ronald Rowe char­ac­ter­ized as “unique”.

    Now, could­n’t these sep­a­rate com­mand cen­ters at least have open radio com­mu­ni­ca­tion? Well, we are told that Secret Ser­vice counter snipers did not have radio com­mu­ni­ca­tions with local law enforce­ment that day. Instead, the agents relied on text mes­sag­ing. Local offi­cers sent the Secret Ser­vice snipers two pic­tures of Crooks via text at 5:45 PM. At 5:53 PM, the leader for the Secret Ser­vice counter snipers texted their team that local law enforce­ment was “look­ing for a sus­pi­cious indi­vid­ual out­side of the perime­ter lurk­ing around the AGR build­ing.”

    We had anoth­er remark­able exam­ple of the dis­joint­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tions shared with us: We’re told a mem­ber of Trump’s pro­tec­tive detail con­tact­ed a coun­ter­part with­in the Secret Ser­vice’s Pitts­burgh field office to fol­low up on that ear­li­er com­mu­ni­ca­tion 5:53 PM and was on the phone when the first shots range out. So in order to fol­low up on that ear­li­er noti­fi­ca­tion about a sus­pi­cious per­son on a roof, a mem­ber of Trump’s secu­ri­ty detail called some­one at the Pitts­burgh field office. That sounds like a very poor­ly orga­nized com­mand struc­ture. “Unique” is one way to put it.

    Oh, and it also turns out local police offered the Secret Ser­vice a drone, but the Secret Ser­vice turned it down. Just imag­ine how incred­i­bly use­ful a drone would have been dur­ing that extend­ed peri­od of time we’re told secu­ri­ty was search for Crooks. Or iden­ti­fy­ing that he was armed. Just anoth­er incred­i­ble secu­ri­ty anom­aly from that ‘unique’ day:

    CNN

    New body­cam video shows moment police offi­cer saw Trump shoot­er just before assas­si­na­tion attempt

    By Curt Devine, Holmes Lybrand, Isabelle Chap­man and Zachary Cohen, CNN
    Updat­ed 8:37 PM EDT, Thu August 8, 2024

    Dra­mat­ic video obtained by CNN shows, for the first time, the moment a police offi­cer climbed up to the roof of a build­ing over­look­ing the Don­ald Trump ral­ly on July 13 and saw the for­mer president’s would-be assas­sin just before the shoot­ing began.

    Oth­er footage from the ral­ly in But­ler, Penn­syl­va­nia, which CNN obtained through a pub­lic records request, shows local offi­cers lament­ing that they told Secret Ser­vice to post offi­cers near the build­ing the gun­man fired from days ear­li­er.

    A video from the But­ler police officer’s body-worn cam­era shows how the offi­cer was hoist­ed up by his col­league onto the roof, quick­ly drop­ping down after he sees the shoot­er, Thomas Matthew Crooks.

    Approx­i­mate­ly 40 sec­onds lat­er, Crooks turned back and fired eight shots at Trump, who was hit in the ear. Sec­onds lat­er, a Secret Ser­vice sniper shot and killed Crooks.

    After the encounter, the offi­cer runs around to anoth­er side of the build­ing before run­ning to his police car to retrieve a rifle.

    “F**king this close bro,” the offi­cer who saw Crooks says to anoth­er offi­cer. “Dude, he turned around on me.”

    One offi­cer asks where the shoot­er is and the offi­cer, pant­i­ng, says, “He’s straight up.”

    “Who’s got eyes on him?” the offi­cer asks. “He was right where you picked me up, bro. He was on that left side.”

    Over the radio a voice says: “We have two civil­ians – tend­ing to them,” and lat­er, “I need an ambu­lance in the back.”

    This video was released by But­ler Town­ship Police Depart­ment in response to CNN’s pub­lic records request that asked for any body-cam­era video or dash-cam­era video involv­ing But­ler Town­ship offi­cers or per­son­nel relat­ed to the ral­ly and shoot­ing at But­ler Farm Show on July 13. The town­ship ini­tial­ly declined to release the con­tent but did after CNN appealed.

    ‘Don’t put up your head — he’s right there’

    On the dash­board cam­era of the offi­cer who came face-to-face with Crooks, three shots can be heard ring­ing out, fol­lowed by five more shots fired in rapid suc­ces­sion.

    “Don’t put up your head – he’s right there!” the offi­cer shouts to oth­ers after open­ing his car half a minute after the shots were fired.

    Short­ly after, video shows law enforce­ment offi­cers attempt­ing to access the roof.

    “He’s got glass­es, long hair,” the offi­cer who saw Crooks tells sev­er­al oth­ers climb­ing up the side of the build­ing. “Yo, Mike, I climbed the wall and I popped my head right in front of him bro, he’s got a book bag, he’s got mad sh*t, AR lay­ing down.”

    “But watch out because he can f**king come right down on you over there,” the offi­cer warns.

    The offi­cer adds lat­er: “Before you m*therf**kers came up here I popped my head up there like an idiot, by myself, dude. He turned around, I f**king dropped.”

    When they ulti­mate­ly access the top of the build­ing, footage shows Crooks’ life­less body, his rifle and a trail of blood run­ning down the side of the roof.

    Offi­cers say they asked for Secret Ser­vice help ear­li­er that week

    In a sep­a­rate video released by the But­ler police, one offi­cer can be heard telling col­leagues about 10 min­utes after the shoot­ing that he had told Secret Ser­vice to post law enforce­ment by the build­ing that Crooks fired from.

    “I f**king told them they need to post the guys f**king over here,” the offi­cer said. “I told them that, the f**king, the Secret Ser­vice, I told them that f**king Tues­day. I told them to post f**king guys over here.”

    Anoth­er offi­cer replied that he wasn’t “even con­cerned about it because I thought some­one was on the roof. I thought that’s how we — how in the hell can you lose a guy walk­ing back here?”

    “I talked to the Secret Ser­vice guys, they were like, ‘Yeah, no prob­lem, we’re going to post guys over here,’” the first offi­cer said.

    Secret Ser­vice post­ed three local counter snipers inside one of the adja­cent build­ings, one of whom took pic­tures of Crooks ear­li­er that day and left his post to go look­ing for the soon-to-be shoot­er.

    ...

    Doc­u­ments from shoot­ing range show Crooks’ prepa­ra­tion

    On Thurs­day, Sen. Chuck Grass­ley released doc­u­ments obtained from the shooter’s gun club that revealed new details about Crooks’s prepa­ra­tion in the months lead­ing up to the attempt­ed assas­si­na­tion of Trump.

    The records from Clair­ton Sportsmen’s Club, reviewed by CNN, show Crooks vis­it­ed the gun range a total of 43 times after estab­lish­ing a mem­ber­ship on August 10, 2023 – less than a year before the assas­si­na­tion attempt

    Sign-in sheets pro­vid­ed to Grass­ley, an Iowa Repub­li­can, by Clair­ton Sportsmen’s Club also indi­cate Crooks spent the major­i­ty of his time at the rifle range – rather than oth­er des­ig­nat­ed areas for fir­ing pis­tols or shot­guns – in the months imme­di­ate­ly pre­ced­ing the ral­ly where he ulti­mate­ly used the same type of weapon to shoot Trump.

    Crooks attend­ed tar­get prac­tice at the club three to six times per month in 2024, before mak­ing one final vis­it at 2:45 p.m. on Fri­day, July 12, 2024 – the day before the Trump ral­ly, accord­ing to the records obtained by Grass­ley.

    ——–

    “New body­cam video shows moment police offi­cer saw Trump shoot­er just before assas­si­na­tion attempt” By Curt Devine, Holmes Lybrand, Isabelle Chap­man and Zachary Cohen; CNN; 08/08/2024

    ““I f**king told them they need to post the guys f**king over here,” the offi­cer said. “I told them that, the f**king, the Secret Ser­vice, I told them that f**king Tues­day. I told them to post f**king guys over here.””

    This was obvi­ous­ly a giant f#ck up. But it’s one kind of f%ck up if every­one neglect­ed to secure a build­ing that should obvi­ous­ly be secured. It’s anoth­er kind of f%ck up entire­ly if that build­ing was in fact iden­ti­fied in advance as a build­ing that needs to be secured and the Secret Ser­vice agreed to secure it but then, for mys­te­ri­ous rea­sons, neglect­ed to do so:

    ...
    In a sep­a­rate video released by the But­ler police, one offi­cer can be heard telling col­leagues about 10 min­utes after the shoot­ing that he had told Secret Ser­vice to post law enforce­ment by the build­ing that Crooks fired from.

    ...

    Anoth­er offi­cer replied that he wasn’t “even con­cerned about it because I thought some­one was on the roof. I thought that’s how we — how in the hell can you lose a guy walk­ing back here?”

    “I talked to the Secret Ser­vice guys, they were like, ‘Yeah, no prob­lem, we’re going to post guys over here,’” the first offi­cer said.

    Secret Ser­vice post­ed three local counter snipers inside one of the adja­cent build­ings, one of whom took pic­tures of Crooks ear­li­er that day and left his post to go look­ing for the soon-to-be shoot­er.
    ...

    And then we get this inter­est­ing update on the tim­ing around the moments right before the shoot­ing. Pre­vi­ous­ly, we were told that Crooks fired short­ly after swing­ing his rifle towards the police offi­cer who climbed up to the roof. Crooks swung the rifle back towards the ral­ly after the offi­cer dropped back down and opened fire. But now we’re learn­ing it was more like 40 sec­onds between when that offi­cer dropped down and when Crooks opened fire. With the Secret Ser­vice sniper tak­ing Crooks out imme­di­ate­ly after fir­ing those eight shots. Keep in mind that this time­line is in keep with video that’s already been revealed show­ing the sniper team seem­ing­ly trained on Crooks for rough­ly 30–40 sec­onds imme­di­ate­ly before the shoot­ing. Also note that this was a local, not state, offi­cer who direct­ly spot­ted Crooks. That’s going to be an impor­tant detail below when we exam­ine the “unique” dual com­mand post struc­ture deployed that day:

    ...
    Oth­er footage from the ral­ly in But­ler, Penn­syl­va­nia, which CNN obtained through a pub­lic records request, shows local offi­cers lament­ing that they told Secret Ser­vice to post offi­cers near the build­ing the gun­man fired from days ear­li­er.

    A video from the But­ler police officer’s body-worn cam­era shows how the offi­cer was hoist­ed up by his col­league onto the roof, quick­ly drop­ping down after he sees the shoot­er, Thomas Matthew Crooks.

    Approx­i­mate­ly 40 sec­onds lat­er, Crooks turned back and fired eight shots at Trump, who was hit in the ear. Sec­onds lat­er, a Secret Ser­vice sniper shot and killed Crooks.

    After the encounter, the offi­cer runs around to anoth­er side of the build­ing before run­ning to his police car to retrieve a rifle.

    “F**king this close bro,” the offi­cer who saw Crooks says to anoth­er offi­cer. “Dude, he turned around on me.”

    One offi­cer asks where the shoot­er is and the offi­cer, pant­i­ng, says, “He’s straight up.”

    “Who’s got eyes on him?” the offi­cer asks. “He was right where you picked me up, bro. He was on that left side.”

    Over the radio a voice says: “We have two civil­ians – tend­ing to them,” and lat­er, “I need an ambu­lance in the back.”

    This video was released by But­ler Town­ship Police Depart­ment in response to CNN’s pub­lic records request that asked for any body-cam­era video or dash-cam­era video involv­ing But­ler Town­ship offi­cers or per­son­nel relat­ed to the ral­ly and shoot­ing at But­ler Farm Show on July 13. The town­ship ini­tial­ly declined to release the con­tent but did after CNN appealed.
    ...

    Final­ly, note how, while we’re get­ting more clar­i­ty on the fre­quen­cy of Crook­s’s trips to the Clair­ton Sportsmen’s Club, we still have zero infor­ma­tion on who he may have been frat­er­niz­ing with. Did he hap­pen to have an reg­u­lar friends at the club? Or did he just show up alone and use the shoot­ing range with­out any social­iz­ing?

    ...
    On Thurs­day, Sen. Chuck Grass­ley released doc­u­ments obtained from the shooter’s gun club that revealed new details about Crooks’s prepa­ra­tion in the months lead­ing up to the attempt­ed assas­si­na­tion of Trump.

    The records from Clair­ton Sportsmen’s Club, reviewed by CNN, show Crooks vis­it­ed the gun range a total of 43 times after estab­lish­ing a mem­ber­ship on August 10, 2023 – less than a year before the assas­si­na­tion attempt

    ...

    Crooks attend­ed tar­get prac­tice at the club three to six times per month in 2024, before mak­ing one final vis­it at 2:45 p.m. on Fri­day, July 12, 2024 – the day before the Trump ral­ly, accord­ing to the records obtained by Grass­ley.
    ...

    So giv­en that pre­pos­ter­ous update, it’s worth look­ing at anoth­er round of pre­pos­ter­ous updates we got last week. For starters, we learned that this was appar­ent­ly the first time Secret Ser­vice counter snipers had been deployed to sup­port a Trump ral­ly this year. Which seems amaz­ing. Why this ral­ly and not any oth­ers? Were there sniper teams pro­vid­ed by state and local police entire­ly or where there no snipers at all? Keep in mind that it was­n’t just Secret Ser­vice snipers there that day. The top of the build­ing where Crooks fired had pre­vi­ous­ly been iden­ti­fied as a “vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty” and two local counter-sniper teams were sup­posed to cov­er the build­ing. But local police coun­tered that it was the Secret Secret ser­vice who was ulti­mate­ly respon­si­ble. So it’s pos­si­ble there have been sniper teams at pri­or Trump ral­lies this year that weren’t Secret Secret ser­vice sniper teams.

    But then we also learned about anoth­er “unique” of how the ral­ly’s secu­ri­ty was orga­nized: there was two sep­a­rate com­mand posts. One for the Secret Ser­vice and one for local police. We are told a sin­gle state police offi­cer was post­ed at the Secret Ser­vice com­mand post while no Secret Ser­vice offi­cers were post­ed at the local police com­mand post
    . Beyond that, we are told that the Secret Ser­vice counter snipers had no radio com­mu­ni­ca­tion with local law enforce­ment. Instead, they com­mu­ni­cat­ed via text.

    And then we get to this detail that makes that 40 sec­ond lapse between when local police spot­ted Crooks on the roof with the gun and when he fired off that vol­ley: we are told that nei­ther the counter snipers nor Trump’s secu­ri­ty detail were aware that the sus­pi­cious indi­vid­ual was armed until the shots were fired.

    Again, don’t for­get Crooks was shot in the head by a Secret Ser­vice counter-sniper imme­di­ate­ly have fir­ing those first eight shots, so it’s a lit­tle hard to imag­ine the Secret Ser­vice sniper had already. Also recall that video show­ing the sniper team seem­ing­ly trained in on Crooks for 30–40 sec­onds before the shoot­ing. And yet, we are now told the sniper team did­n’t know he was armed until Crooks opened fire.

    Also recall how only two of the mem­bers of Trump’s direct secu­ri­ty team — the peo­ple who direct­ly tack­led Trump — were Secret Ser­vice agents. The rest were local police includ­ing at least six offi­cer from But­ler Coun­ty tac­ti­cal units. In addi­tion, two local sniper teams were also there to sup­ple­ment the two Secret Ser­vice sniper teams. So when we’re told “Trump’s secu­ri­ty detail” also was­n’t aware of the armed man on the roof, what about the six local offi­cers? Were they not in com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the rest of the local police?

    But that’s the sto­ry we’re get­ting. A sto­ry that did­n’t make sense from the begin­ning, and makes less and less sense the more we are told:

    CBS News

    But­ler ral­ly was first Trump event of 2024 with Secret Ser­vice snipers, offi­cials say

    By Nicole Sgan­ga, Faris Tanyos
    August 2, 2024 / 8:08 PM EDT / CBS News

    When U.S. Secret Ser­vice counter snipers pulled up to a farm grounds in But­ler, Penn­syl­va­nia, on July 10, just three days before the assas­si­na­tion attempt on for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, it was the first time this cam­paign cycle that the high­ly trained, tac­ti­cal unit had been deployed to secure an event for the for­mer pres­i­dent.

    “It was the first time Secret Ser­vice counter snipers were deployed to sup­port” a Trump event this year, Secret Ser­vice Act­ing Direc­tor Ronald Rowe con­firmed to CBS News dur­ing a news con­fer­ence Fri­day, held at the fed­er­al law enforce­ment agen­cy’s Wash­ing­ton, D.C., head­quar­ters.

    On July 13, a gun­man opened fire on Trump from a rooftop rough­ly 400 feet away from the for­mer pres­i­dent dur­ing an out­door cam­paign ral­ly in But­ler, Penn­syl­va­nia. A CBS News video analy­sis deter­mined that the gun­man, 20-year-old Thomas Crooks, fired eight shots in under six sec­onds before he was fatal­ly struck by a round from one of the counter snipers — a fact lat­er con­firmed by the FBI.

    Among a litany of secu­ri­ty laps­es Rowe dis­closed Fri­day after­noon, the act­ing direc­tor told reporters that Secret Ser­vice counter snipers did not have radio com­mu­ni­ca­tions with local law enforce­ment that day. Instead, the agents relied on text mes­sag­ing, with local But­ler Coun­ty tac­ti­cal teams send­ing Secret Ser­vice snipers two pic­tures of Crooks via text mes­sage at 5:45 p.m., about 26 min­utes before shots were fired.

    At that point, nei­ther local law enforce­ment nor Secret Ser­vice knew Crooks had a gun. Rowe revealed that nei­ther the counter snipers nor Trump’s secu­ri­ty detail were aware that the sus­pi­cious indi­vid­ual — first spot­ted by local law enforce­ment rough­ly 75 min­utes ear­li­er — was armed until the shots were fired.

    “What I’ve direct­ed now is that every­body should be using the radio net,” Rowe said. “And if we don’t have the abil­i­ty to pipe in or lever­age that coun­ter­part sys­tem, that’s one of the things that we’re look­ing at now.”

    Com­mu­ni­ca­tions were also dis­joint­ed, Rowe explained, because there were two sep­a­rate com­mand posts used that day — a “Secret Ser­vice secu­ri­ty room” and a sep­a­rate com­mand post staffed with local law enforce­ment. Only one Penn­syl­va­nia State Police offi­cer was assigned to the agen­cy’s secu­ri­ty room, and there were no Secret Ser­vice per­son­nel with­in local law enforce­men­t’s com­mand post, a sit­u­a­tion that Rowe described as “unique,” mer­it­ing fur­ther inves­ti­ga­tion.

    “If the large major­i­ty of our part­ners are in a uni­fied com­mand post or in a dif­fer­ent loca­tion, we need to prob­a­bly be there too,” Rowe added.

    Accord­ing to a Secret Ser­vice time­line unveiled by Rowe on Fri­day, at 5:53 p.m., the leader for the U.S. Secret Ser­vice counter snipers texted their team that local law enforce­ment was “look­ing for a sus­pi­cious indi­vid­ual out­side of the perime­ter lurk­ing around the AGR build­ing,” refer­ring to the roof from which the shoot­er lat­er opened fire on Trump.

    “At this time, Secret Ser­vice per­son­nel are oper­at­ing with the knowl­edge that local law enforce­ment was work­ing on an issue of a sus­pi­cious indi­vid­ual,” Rowe said. “The con­cept of local law enforce­ment work­ing on such issues is com­mon at sites.”

    Rowe not­ed that there were mul­ti­ple sus­pi­cious per­sons report­ed to the Secret Ser­vice on July 13, along with over 100 calls for local law enforce­ment to address issues rang­ing from gen­er­al help requests to med­ical prob­lems to miss­ing chil­dren reports.

    At 6:11 p.m., moments before the shoot­ing, a mem­ber of Trump’s pro­tec­tive detail con­tact­ed a coun­ter­part with­in Secret Ser­vice’s Pitts­burgh field office to fol­low up on that ear­li­er com­mu­ni­ca­tion, but it was too late. As the agents spoke on the phone, shots rang out.

    “Right in the mid­dle of that phone con­ver­sa­tion, the shots begin fir­ing,” Rowe said.

    Rowe described the lack of cov­er­age on the roof where Crooks was sit­u­at­ed as “a Secret Ser­vice fail­ure,” adding, “the roofline should have been cov­ered. We should have had bet­ter eyes on that.”

    The Secret Ser­vice also failed to deploy a drone at the ral­ly site, Rowe said, with the agency also turn­ing down an offer from local law enforce­ment to use their drone. The act­ing direc­tor said he was unsure why that offer was declined, call­ing it anoth­er pro­to­col issue that will be reviewed.

    “One of the oth­er changes that I imple­ment­ed when I became the act­ing direc­tor, is we are now going to lever­age the use of unmanned aer­i­al sys­tems at sites now,” Rowe said.

    ...

    ———-

    “But­ler ral­ly was first Trump event of 2024 with Secret Ser­vice snipers, offi­cials say” By Nicole Sgan­ga, Faris Tanyos; CBS News; 08/02/2024

    ““It was the first time Secret Ser­vice counter snipers were deployed to sup­port” a Trump event this year, Secret Ser­vice Act­ing Direc­tor Ronald Rowe con­firmed to CBS News dur­ing a news con­fer­ence Fri­day, held at the fed­er­al law enforce­ment agen­cy’s Wash­ing­ton, D.C., head­quar­ters. ”

    Well that’s just extra odd. First time this year a Trump ral­ly had snipers? How is that not a rou­tine part of any large Trump ral­ly at this point? It’s the kind of detail that rais­es the ques­tion as to what secu­ri­ty laps­es may have been tran­spir­ing at pri­or Trump ral­lies. It’s also just an incred­i­ble coin­ci­dence: the snipers were there in place right when they were need­ed, but only imme­di­ate­ly after Crooks was inex­plic­a­bly allowed to fire a vol­ley off.

    Also note the some­what puz­zling nar­ra­tive we’re get­ting about when exact­ly the Secret Ser­vice knew Crooks was armed: we’re told nei­ther the counter snipers nor Trump’s secu­ri­ty detail were aware that Crooks was armed until the shots were fired. And yet the snipers were trained in on Crooks to the point where he was tak­en out in a sin­gle shot imme­di­ate­ly after that open­ing vol­ley. Rough­ly 40 sec­onds after police first spot­ted Crooks with the weapons on the roof, as we saw above. What dif­fer­ence might com­mu­ni­ca­tions between the Secret Ser­vice and enforce­ment had made dur­ing those 40 sec­onds?

    ...
    Among a litany of secu­ri­ty laps­es Rowe dis­closed Fri­day after­noon, the act­ing direc­tor told reporters that Secret Ser­vice counter snipers did not have radio com­mu­ni­ca­tions with local law enforce­ment that day. Instead, the agents relied on text mes­sag­ing, with local But­ler Coun­ty tac­ti­cal teams send­ing Secret Ser­vice snipers two pic­tures of Crooks via text mes­sage at 5:45 p.m., about 26 min­utes before shots were fired.

    At that point, nei­ther local law enforce­ment nor Secret Ser­vice knew Crooks had a gun. Rowe revealed that nei­ther the counter snipers nor Trump’s secu­ri­ty detail were aware that the sus­pi­cious indi­vid­ual — first spot­ted by local law enforce­ment rough­ly 75 min­utes ear­li­er — was armed until the shots were fired.

    ...

    Accord­ing to a Secret Ser­vice time­line unveiled by Rowe on Fri­day, at 5:53 p.m., the leader for the U.S. Secret Ser­vice counter snipers texted their team that local law enforce­ment was “look­ing for a sus­pi­cious indi­vid­ual out­side of the perime­ter lurk­ing around the AGR build­ing,” refer­ring to the roof from which the shoot­er lat­er opened fire on Trump.

    ...

    At 6:11 p.m., moments before the shoot­ing, a mem­ber of Trump’s pro­tec­tive detail con­tact­ed a coun­ter­part with­in Secret Ser­vice’s Pitts­burgh field office to fol­low up on that ear­li­er com­mu­ni­ca­tion, but it was too late. As the agents spoke on the phone, shots rang out.

    “Right in the mid­dle of that phone con­ver­sa­tion, the shots begin fir­ing,” Rowe said.
    ...

    And when we learn that the local police and Secret Ser­vice did not have direct radio com­mu­ni­ca­tions, that brings us to the oth­er appar­ent­ly unprece­dent­ed fea­ture of this ral­ly: there were two sep­a­rate com­mand posts. A “Secret Ser­vice secu­ri­ty room” and a sep­a­rate one for local law enforce­ment. With a lone State Police in the Secret Ser­vice com­mand post and no Secret Ser­vice per­son­nel in the local law enforce­ment com­mand post. So the state police could direct­ly com­mu­ni­cate with the Secret Secret ser­vice through that one lone agent, but no such direct com­mu­ni­ca­tion exist­ing between the Secret Ser­vice and the local police? Is that the sit­u­a­tion we’re look­ing at? A sit­u­a­tion with two com­mand posts that don’t have direct com­mu­ni­ca­tion with each oth­er out­side of text mes­sag­ing. Which seems impos­si­bly absurd. But that’s what we are told. And, again, don’t for­get that we learned there was a 40 sec­ond peri­od between when a local police spot­ted Crooks with the rifle on the roof and when Crooks opened fire, which would have been plen­ty of time to com­mu­ni­cate that fact to Secret Ser­vice had there been a radio com­mu­ni­ca­tion between local police and Secret Ser­vice. Or even plen­ty of time to send a text. “Man on AGR roof with rifle! Neu­tral­ize” should take that long to send:

    ...
    “What I’ve direct­ed now is that every­body should be using the radio net,” Rowe said. “And if we don’t have the abil­i­ty to pipe in or lever­age that coun­ter­part sys­tem, that’s one of the things that we’re look­ing at now.”

    Com­mu­ni­ca­tions were also dis­joint­ed, Rowe explained, because there were two sep­a­rate com­mand posts used that day — a “Secret Ser­vice secu­ri­ty room” and a sep­a­rate com­mand post staffed with local law enforce­ment. Only one Penn­syl­va­nia State Police offi­cer was assigned to the agen­cy’s secu­ri­ty room, and there were no Secret Ser­vice per­son­nel with­in local law enforce­men­t’s com­mand post, a sit­u­a­tion that Rowe described as “unique,” mer­it­ing fur­ther inves­ti­ga­tion.

    “If the large major­i­ty of our part­ners are in a uni­fied com­mand post or in a dif­fer­ent loca­tion, we need to prob­a­bly be there too,” Rowe added.
    ...

    Final­ly, we get the detail about the turned-down drone. Just imag­ine how incred­i­ble use­ful such a drone would have been in this situation...a sit­u­a­tion where the Secret Ser­vice inex­plic­a­bly neglect­ed to secure a rooftop it pre­vi­ous­ly promised to secure. Anoth­er amaz­ing ‘oops’:

    ...
    Rowe described the lack of cov­er­age on the roof where Crooks was sit­u­at­ed as “a Secret Ser­vice fail­ure,” adding, “the roofline should have been cov­ered. We should have had bet­ter eyes on that.”

    The Secret Ser­vice also failed to deploy a drone at the ral­ly site, Rowe said, with the agency also turn­ing down an offer from local law enforce­ment to use their drone. The act­ing direc­tor said he was unsure why that offer was declined, call­ing it anoth­er pro­to­col issue that will be reviewed.
    ...

    It’s going to be grim­ly inter­est­ing to see what kind of updates we get next. Based on what we already know, pret­ty much every­thing that could go wrong went wrong. There does­n’t seem to be much more room for fur­ther fail­ure. But that does­n’t mean we won’t learn about a new amaz­ing inex­plic­a­ble ‘fail­ure’. Like­ly the kind of inex­plic­a­ble fail­ures that, if tak­en at face val­ue, sug­gests every­one was at fault and there­fore no one was at fault. Lessons will be learned and every­one will resolve to nev­er allow such a cas­cade of inex­plic­a­ble fail­ures to hap­pen again. Etc.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | August 11, 2024, 5:06 pm

  17. It’s hard to imag­ine the cir­cum­stances around the appar­ent assas­si­na­tion attempt against Don­ald Trump get­ting any more mys­te­ri­ous than they already are. But that does­n’t mean there isn’t plen­ty of room for more mys­tery. There’s an inves­ti­ga­tion, after all. Plen­ty of oppor­tu­ni­ty for inves­tiga­tive mys­ter­ies.

    And that brings us to the fol­low­ing mys­te­ri­ous inves­tiga­tive update: it appears the FBI approved the cre­ma­tion of Thomas Matthew Crook­s’s body while the body was still under the author­i­ty of the coun­ty

    with­out the knowl­edge of con­gres­sion­al inves­ti­ga­tors. In fact, it sounds like the cre­ma­tion took place on July 23, 10 days after the shoot­ing and the same day both the Home­land Secu­ri­ty Com­mit­tee and the Over­sight Com­mit­tee opened inves­ti­ga­tions. House Speak­er Mike John­son also announced he was form­ing a con­gres­sion­al inves­tiga­tive body that day.

    This rev­e­la­tion was appar­ent­ly dis­cov­ered by Louisiana Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Clay Hig­gins, who was appoint­ed to the con­gres­sion­al bipar­ti­san task force inves­ti­gat­ing the event. Hig­gins, a for­mer law enforce­ment offi­cer, decid­ed to make a trip to con­duct a per­son­al inspec­tion of Crook­s’s body on August 4–6. That was appar­ent­ly when he learned about the cre­ma­tion. Accord­ing to Hig­gins, ‘nobody knew’ that the body had been returned to the fam­i­ly, includ­ing the coun­ty coro­ner who still had ‘legal author­i­ty over the body’ when the FBI made this deci­sion. Hig­gins notes that there’s still pic­tures and the coro­ner’s report avail­able but, under­stand­ably, remains per­turbed by the unde­clared cre­ma­tion and goes on to accuse the FBI of ‘obstruc­tion’.

    It’s the lat­est anom­aly for an event filled with the hall­marks of a far right provo­ca­tion designed to trig­ger a larg­er wave of polit­i­cal vio­lence. As we’ve seen, not only was Crooks appar­ent­ly deeply enmeshed in far right ide­olo­gies him­self but fig­ures like Alex Jones had been open­ly pin­ing for a Trump assas­si­na­tion for pre­cise­ly the pur­pose of trig­ger­ing mass retal­ia­to­ry vio­lence. So per­haps we should­n’t be sur­prised to learn that Rep Hig­gins him­self is a deeply far right mem­ber of con­gress with ties to groups like the Oath Keep­ers and the Three Per­centers. Recall how Hig­gins declared back in Jan­u­ary, “My thoughts are that the feds are stag­ing a civ­il war, and Texas should stand their ground,” in response to the show­down then tak­ing place between fed­er­al bor­der patrol agents and Texas author­i­ties. As the fol­low­ing arti­cle also men­tions, Hig­gins sug­gest­ed the Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol insur­rec­tion was a fed­er­al false flag oper­a­tion caused by oper­a­tives who were brought in by the FBI on ‘ghost bus­es.’ He’s that kind of rep­re­sen­ta­tive.

    So when we find Hig­gins lead­ing the inves­tiga­tive charge into this gen­uine inves­tiga­tive anom­aly, it’s the lat­est exam­ple of how the many mys­ter­ies around that shoot­ing all played per­fect­ly into far right nar­ra­tives. With the one notable excep­tion that the gun­man was, him­self, a far right nutjob, albeit one who donat­ed to Joe Biden once:

    The Dai­ly Mail

    Trump shooter’s body is ‘gone’ as con­gress­man uncov­ers ‘dis­turb­ing fact’ about inves­ti­ga­tion

    By Mitchell Good­bar For Dailymail.Com

    Pub­lished: 02:45 EDT, 16 August 2024 | Updat­ed: 10:07 EDT, 16 August 2024

    The body of Trump shoot­er Thomas Matthew Crooks has ‘gone’, a con­gress­man revealed in a report last night accus­ing the FBI of a ‘scorched earth’ inves­ti­ga­tion.

    Rep. Clay Hig­gins, a Louisiana Repub­li­can who was appoint­ed to Con­gress’ bipar­ti­san task force review­ing the assas­si­na­tion attempt, tried to view Crooks’ body on August 5 as part of his own per­son­al inspec­tion.

    The for­mer police cap­tain said his request to view the body ’caused quite a stir and revealed a dis­turb­ing fact’.

    It was at this point that he learned that the FBI had ‘released the body for cre­ma­tion 10 days’ after the shoot­ing in But­ler, Penn­syl­va­nia, on July 13.

    Hig­gins says ‘nobody knew’ that the body had been returned to the fam­i­ly, includ­ing the coun­ty coro­ner and local enforce­ment. He writes that the coro­ner still had ‘legal author­i­ty over the body’ when the FBI made this deci­sion and accus­es the agency of ‘obstruc­tion’.

    ....

    Hig­gins said that he took it upon him­self to inves­ti­gate dur­ing a ‘boots on the ground’ trip to But­ler from August 4 to 6.

    His ‘pre­lim­i­nary inves­ti­gate report’ was sub­mit­ted to Task Force Chair­man Mike Kel­ly (R‑PA) on August 12 and released to the pub­lic on Hig­gins’ web­site last night.

    In it he ques­tions why Crooks’ body was released to the fam­i­ly by the FBI with­out any over­sight.

    ‘The prob­lem with me not being able to exam­ine the actu­al body is that I won’t know 100% if the coro­ner’s report and the autop­sy report are accu­rate. We will actu­al­ly nev­er know,’ Hig­gins writes.

    ‘Yes, we’ll get the reports and pic­tures, but I will not ever be able to say with cer­tain­ty that those reports and pic­tures are accu­rate accord­ing to my own exam­i­na­tion of the body.

    EXCLUSIVE

    ‘Again, sim­i­lar to releas­ing the crime scene and scrub­bing crime scene bio­log­i­cal evi­dence... this action by the FBI can only be described by any rea­son­able man as an obstruc­tion to any fol­low­ing inves­tiga­tive effort.’

    Hig­gins states that on July 23, the day that Crooks was cre­mat­ed, both the Home­land Secu­ri­ty Com­mit­tee and the Over­sight Com­mit­tee had opened inves­ti­ga­tions into the assas­si­na­tion attempt, while Speak­er Mike John­son had stat­ed he was form­ing a con­gres­sion­al inves­tiga­tive body.

    ‘Why, then, by what mea­sure, would the FBI release his body to the fam­i­ly for cre­ma­tion? This pat­tern of inves­tiga­tive scorched earth by the FBI is quite trou­bling,’ Hig­gins writes.

    ...

    ‘As I have said, every ques­tion will be answered, every the­o­ry explored, and every doubt erased. The Amer­i­can peo­ple deserve the full truth on the attempt­ed assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Trump,’ he said.

    ‘Our inves­tiga­tive efforts are mov­ing for­ward in good faith. The release of my pre­lim­i­nary inves­tiga­tive report is reflec­tive of my desire to deliv­er trans­paren­cy and reas­sur­ance to the Amer­i­can peo­ple.’

    Pri­or to being elect­ed to the low­er house in 2016, Hig­gins worked as a police offi­cer in Louisiana.

    In Novem­ber 2023, he sug­gest­ed that vio­lence at the Capi­tol on Jan­u­ary 6 was caused by oper­a­tives who were brought in by the FBI on ‘ghost bus­es.’

    Hig­gins has also attend­ed and spo­ken at events orga­nized by groups like the Three Per­centers and the Oath Keep­ers.

    On July 29, the Louisiana con­gress­man was named as one of sev­en Repub­li­can mem­bers of a bipar­ti­san group tasked with inves­ti­gat­ing the attempt­ed assas­si­na­tion of Trump.

    The task force con­sists of 13 mem­bers — sev­en Repub­li­cans and six Democ­rats. It’s mis­sion is to deter­mine what went wrong on the day of the attempt­ed assas­si­na­tion and it will make rec­om­men­da­tions to pre­vent future secu­ri­ty laps­es.

    The task force will issue a final report before Decem­ber 13.

    ————

    “Trump shooter’s body is ‘gone’ as con­gress­man uncov­ers ‘dis­turb­ing fact’ about inves­ti­ga­tion” By Mitchell Good­bar; The Dai­ly Mail; 08/16/2024

    “Hig­gins says ‘nobody knew’ that the body had been returned to the fam­i­ly, includ­ing the coun­ty coro­ner and local enforce­ment. He writes that the coro­ner still had ‘legal author­i­ty over the body’ when the FBI made this deci­sion and accus­es the agency of ‘obstruc­tion’.”

    Did the FBI make the deci­sion to allow for the cre­ma­tion of Crook­s’s body with­out the knowl­edge of the coun­ty coro­ner and local enforce­ment? That’s the alle­ga­tion Rep Hig­gins is mak­ing. And while Hig­gins made his ‘per­son­al inspec­tion’ trip on August 4–6, it appears the body was cre­mat­ed on July 23, almost two weeks ear­li­er and the same day both the Home­land Secu­ri­ty Com­mit­tee and the Over­sight Com­mit­tee had opened inves­ti­ga­tions into the assas­si­na­tion attempt:

    ...
    Rep. Clay Hig­gins, a Louisiana Repub­li­can who was appoint­ed to Con­gress’ bipar­ti­san task force review­ing the assas­si­na­tion attempt, tried to view Crooks’ body on August 5 as part of his own per­son­al inspec­tion.

    ...

    It was at this point that he learned that the FBI had ‘released the body for cre­ma­tion 10 days’ after the shoot­ing in But­ler, Penn­syl­va­nia, on July 13.

    ....

    Hig­gins said that he took it upon him­self to inves­ti­gate dur­ing a ‘boots on the ground’ trip to But­ler from August 4 to 6.

    His ‘pre­lim­i­nary inves­ti­gate report’ was sub­mit­ted to Task Force Chair­man Mike Kel­ly (R‑PA) on August 12 and released to the pub­lic on Hig­gins’ web­site last night.

    ...

    ‘The prob­lem with me not being able to exam­ine the actu­al body is that I won’t know 100% if the coro­ner’s report and the autop­sy report are accu­rate. We will actu­al­ly nev­er know,’ Hig­gins writes.

    ‘Yes, we’ll get the reports and pic­tures, but I will not ever be able to say with cer­tain­ty that those reports and pic­tures are accu­rate accord­ing to my own exam­i­na­tion of the body.

    ...

    Hig­gins states that on July 23, the day that Crooks was cre­mat­ed, both the Home­land Secu­ri­ty Com­mit­tee and the Over­sight Com­mit­tee had opened inves­ti­ga­tions into the assas­si­na­tion attempt, while Speak­er Mike John­son had stat­ed he was form­ing a con­gres­sion­al inves­tiga­tive body.

    ‘Why, then, by what mea­sure, would the FBI release his body to the fam­i­ly for cre­ma­tion? This pat­tern of inves­tiga­tive scorched earth by the FBI is quite trou­bling,’ Hig­gins writes.
    ...

    And then we get to fact that Rep Hig­gins hap­pens to be a fel­low trav­el­er of exact­ly the kind of far right insur­rec­tionary forces that we would expect to be involved with a provo­ca­tion designed to trig­ger polit­i­cal vio­lence. Recall how Hig­gins declared back in Jan­u­ary, “My thoughts are that the feds are stag­ing a civ­il war, and Texas should stand their ground,” in response to the show­down then tak­ing place between fed­er­al bor­der patrol agents and Texas author­i­ties. It’s the kind of rhetoric we should expect from a rep­re­sen­ta­tive who dis­missed Jan­u­ary 6 as a fed provo­ca­tion and frat­er­nizes with mili­tias like the Oath Keep­ers and Three Per­centers:

    ...
    Pri­or to being elect­ed to the low­er house in 2016, Hig­gins worked as a police offi­cer in Louisiana.

    In Novem­ber 2023, he sug­gest­ed that vio­lence at the Capi­tol on Jan­u­ary 6 was caused by oper­a­tives who were brought in by the FBI on ‘ghost bus­es.’

    Hig­gins has also attend­ed and spo­ken at events orga­nized by groups like the Three Per­centers and the Oath Keep­ers.
    ...

    What’s the next ‘mys­tery’ in store for this inves­ti­ga­tion? Time will tell, but it’s hard to imag­ine this is the last one. After all, there’s still the final mys­tery that’s always await­ing us at the end of an event like this: the mys­tery of how all of these unan­swered glar­ing ques­tions will remain unan­swered and just kind of fall down the col­lec­tive mem­o­ry hole while far right nar­ra­tives are allowed to fes­ter unchal­lenged. Hap­pens every time, mys­te­ri­ous­ly.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | August 19, 2024, 5:02 pm

  18. We got anoth­er update on the pos­si­ble motives of Thomas Matthew Crooks and the Trump assas­si­na­tion attempt. It’s not so much an update on the avail­able infor­ma­tion on the inves­ti­ga­tion but more an update on how this sto­ry is being spun by Repub­li­cans and right-wing media. Spun in a man­ner that con­ve­nient­ly avoids any explo­ration of Crook­s’s appar­ent far right ide­ol­o­gy:

    Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mike Waltz, a mem­ber of the bipar­ti­san con­gres­sion­al com­mit­tee inves­ti­gat­ing the shoot­ing, is going to press to share his con­cerns about an aspect of the inves­ti­ga­tion that appar­ent­ly has con­tin­ued to thwart inves­ti­ga­tors. That would be the pres­ence of three encrypt­ed mes­sag­ing apps on Crook­s’s phone. The three apps aren’t named but we’re told the plat­forms are based in Bel­gium, Ger­many, and New Zealand. Keep in mind the pop­u­lar Telegram mes­sag­ing app is based in Ger­many. It sounds like inves­ti­ga­tors have yet to gain access to the con­tents of the mes­sages in any of those apps on Crook­s’s phone.

    Rep Waltz right­ly ques­tions how the FBI could con­clude Crooks had no help with­out first gain­ing access to those apps. But then he goes on to push a nar­ra­tive that we’ve seen pro­mot­ed from almost the start: that Crooks may have been work­ing for Iran.

    So what does Rep Waltz present as pos­si­ble evi­dence of an Iran­ian tie to the shoot­ing? Well, there’s the fact that an Iran­ian assas­si­na­tion plot tar­get­ing Trump has report­ed­ly been uncov­ered. So far there’s zero indi­ca­tion that Crooks had any­thing to do with that plot. It’s about as ten­u­ous an evi­den­tiary trail as one can con­coct, but that’s the nar­ra­tive Rep Waltz has been push­ing. For over a month now. As we’re going to see, Waltz was sug­gest­ing a con­nec­tion between Crooks and the Iran­ian plot dur­ing a July 18 Fox News appear­ance, dur­ing which he also men­tioned these three encrypt­ed over­seas accounts. “The shoot­er had three encrypt­ed accounts over­seas at the same time we’re hav­ing an Iran­ian plot.” Waltz said at the time. And when ask about what he meant, Waltz added, “Well, we know that they were based in servers over­seas.”

    Waltz was­n’t the only one push­ing the Iran­ian plot nar­ra­tive at the time. Far right activist Lau­ra Loomer and even Don­ald Trump start­ed rais­ing ques­tion about these over­seas app accounts, with Loomer going on to some­how con­flate them with “encrypt­ed over­seas bank accounts”. And here we are, a month lat­er, with Rep Waltz repeat­ing this nar­ra­tive in a new round of media inter­views. That’s the ‘update’, of sorts, that we recent­ly got from Rep Waltz. An update that informs us that inves­ti­ga­tors still haven’t gained access to any of those three encrypt­ed mes­sage apps and also informs us that the ‘Iran was behind it’ nar­ra­tive is still being ampli­fied at the same time all of the evi­dence point­ing to a far right ide­o­log­i­cal motive con­tin­ues to be ignored.

    But there’s anoth­er aspect to this ‘Iran­ian plot’ nar­ra­tive that real­ly could be very rel­e­vant in terms of try­ing to under­stand how on earth so many incred­i­ble secu­ri­ty laps­es could have tran­spired that day: the Secret Ser­vice was warned in advance about this Iran­ian plot and had surged resources for the Trump ral­ly in response to that per­ceived threat. That’s what we learned in a July 16 CNN report, just three days after the shoot­ing and long before we learned the full extent of all the incred­i­ble laps­es. So while the ‘Crooks was in league with Iran’ nar­ra­tive Rep Waltz is still push­ing may be high­ly ques­tion­able, the ques­tion of whether or not the Secret Ser­vice thought Crooks might be part of some sort of Iran­ian plot on that day is very much a ques­tion that should loom large in this inves­ti­ga­tion:

    The Dai­ly Mail

    EXCLUSIVE Rep. Mike Waltz says he isn’t con­vinced Don­ald Trump shoot­er Thomas Crooks act­ed alone in assas­si­na­tion attempt

    * Rep. Waltz notes Iran­ian and Pak­istani plots that were revealed after the attack

    By Kate­lyn Car­alle, Senior U.S. Polit­i­cal Reporter In Chica­go, Illi­nois

    Pub­lished: 09:12 EDT, 22 August 2024 | Updat­ed: 14:50 EDT, 22 August 2024

    Thomas Matthew Crooks may not have been act­ing alone when he tried to assas­si­nate Don­ald Trump, one of the mem­bers of Con­gress inves­ti­gat­ing the shoot­ing told Dailymail.com.

    Repub­li­can Rep. Mike Waltz said the gun­man’s moti­va­tion is still unknown and he is wor­ried a for­eign enti­ty or oth­er third-par­ty could have been involved in the attack.

    Waltz queried how fed­er­al law enforce­ment can con­fi­dent­ly say Crooks was a lone wolf if they can’t answer oth­er ques­tions like why he had mul­ti­ple for­eign encrypt­ed mes­sag­ing accounts.

    His com­ments came after it was revealed that Iran was also plot­ting an attempt on the for­mer pres­i­den­t’s life around the same time that Crooks car­ried out his plan.

    ‘The more we get into it, the more ques­tions I have,’ Waltz said. ‘It’s real­ly what’s com­ing out around it that is so dis­turb­ing.

    ‘And for me, the thing that’s most dis­turb­ing is that we have ongo­ing plots from Iran to take out a for­mer pres­i­dent, lead­ing can­di­date, and that a Pak­istani nation­al was just arrest­ed after mak­ing a down pay­ment for hit­men, and it’s bare­ly even being cov­ered in the news.’

    Crooks, 20, was able to cre­ate mul­ti­ple explo­sives with remote det­o­na­tors, anoth­er thing that raised Waltz’s eye­brows and makes him won­der whether he had help.

    As the FBI, U.S. Secret Ser­vice (USSS) and Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty con­duct their inves­ti­ga­tions into the mas­sive secu­ri­ty fail­ure, Waltz and 12 oth­er law­mak­ers on a House task force are also look­ing into the attempt­ed assas­si­na­tion.

    ‘I don’t under­stand, and I don’t have any answers yet to help me under­stand how the [Secret] Ser­vice and DHS came out so quick­ly and said – and I think the FBI as well, but I’ll have to check that – and said, he oper­at­ed alone,’ Waltz said when speak­ing with DailyMail.com at Trump Tow­er in Chica­go on Wednes­day. ‘How do you know that mere days into your inves­ti­ga­tion?’

    The Flori­da con­gress­man added: ‘You can’t tell us his motive, but you could tell us he oper­at­ed alone? You can’t get into these encrypt­ed over­seas accounts, but you can tell us he act­ed alone? So, I don’t buy that yet.’

    ...

    The FBI also found explo­sives in Crooks’ car, which was parked near the ral­ly site. And upon raid­ing his par­ents’ house, where he lived, they found more bombs.

    ‘I don’t know of many 19-year-old kids who could make mul­ti­ple IEDs with a remote det­o­na­tor on their own,’ Waltz told DailyMail.com. ‘Why did­n’t that get picked up if he’s search­ing that online or buy­ing lit­er­a­ture on how to do that?’

    ...

    Rep. Waltz says while fed­er­al agen­cies and con­gres­sion­al com­mit­tees are scru­ti­niz­ing the USSS over the attempt­ed assas­si­na­tion, there are more con­cern­ing details emerg­ing that make the attack even more omi­nous.

    That includes the rev­e­la­tion of the Iran­ian plot to assas­si­nate Trump around the same time as the Crooks attempt.

    Crooks had encrypt­ed mes­sag­ing accounts on plat­forms based in Ger­many, Bel­gium, and New Zealand.

    Waltz said: ‘We still haven’t learned a lot, we haven’t learned that much about those over­seas accounts.

    ‘Why does a 19-year-old kid who is a health­care aide need encrypt­ed plat­forms not even based in the Unit­ed States, but based abroad where most ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions know it is hard­er for our law enforce­ment to get into? That’s a ques­tion I’ve had since day one.’

    He added: ‘They need to be releas­ing infor­ma­tion as they come across it because this wasn’t an iso­lat­ed inci­dent. The threats are con­tin­u­al­ly Iran’s threats.’

    ———–

    “EXCLUSIVE Rep. Mike Waltz says he isn’t con­vinced Don­ald Trump shoot­er Thomas Crooks act­ed alone in assas­si­na­tion attempt” By Kate­lyn Car­alle; The Dai­ly Mail; 08/22/2024

    “The Flori­da con­gress­man added: ‘You can’t tell us his motive, but you could tell us he oper­at­ed alone? You can’t get into these encrypt­ed over­seas accounts, but you can tell us he act­ed alone? So, I don’t buy that yet.’ ”

    Con­gress­man Waltz starts off mak­ing a valid point: how can inves­ti­ga­tors con­clude Crooks had no help when there’s mul­ti­ple encrypt­ed mes­sag­ing accounts they haven’t yet been able to probe? That’s an espe­cial­ly rel­e­vant ques­tion giv­en that it does­n’t sound like Crooks did much social­iz­ing in per­son, point­ing to an online social life if any exist­ed.

    But then we get to the broad­er con­text of Rep Waltz’s com­plaints: The con­gress­man appears to be rais­ing the issue of the three over­seas bank accounts to sug­gest Crooks was some­how involved with the Iran­ian assas­si­na­tion plot. Now, when it comes to the gen­er­al ques­tion of ‘who was Crooks com­mu­ni­ca­tion with?’, the fact that he had encrypt­ed mes­sag­ing apps using plat­forms based in Ger­many, Bel­gium, and New Zealand is cer­tain­ly very impor­tant detail. But it’s a rather big stretch to view the pres­ence of these encrypt­ed mes­sage apps as some­how sug­gest­ing involve­ment in the Iran­ian plot. Sure, there’s the gen­er­al coin­ci­dence of the tim­ing. But that’s about it and it’s not a par­tic­u­lar­ly notable coin­ci­dence giv­en that this cam­paign sea­son, with all the out­door ral­lies, would obvi­ous­ly be the time some­one might want to plot an assas­si­na­tion attempt:

    ...
    His com­ments came after it was revealed that Iran was also plot­ting an attempt on the for­mer pres­i­den­t’s life around the same time that Crooks car­ried out his plan.

    ‘The more we get into it, the more ques­tions I have,’ Waltz said. ‘It’s real­ly what’s com­ing out around it that is so dis­turb­ing.

    ‘And for me, the thing that’s most dis­turb­ing is that we have ongo­ing plots from Iran to take out a for­mer pres­i­dent, lead­ing can­di­date, and that a Pak­istani nation­al was just arrest­ed after mak­ing a down pay­ment for hit­men, and it’s bare­ly even being cov­ered in the news.’

    Crooks, 20, was able to cre­ate mul­ti­ple explo­sives with remote det­o­na­tors, anoth­er thing that raised Waltz’s eye­brows and makes him won­der whether he had help.

    As the FBI, U.S. Secret Ser­vice (USSS) and Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty con­duct their inves­ti­ga­tions into the mas­sive secu­ri­ty fail­ure, Waltz and 12 oth­er law­mak­ers on a House task force are also look­ing into the attempt­ed assas­si­na­tion.

    ‘I don’t under­stand, and I don’t have any answers yet to help me under­stand how the [Secret] Ser­vice and DHS came out so quick­ly and said – and I think the FBI as well, but I’ll have to check that – and said, he oper­at­ed alone,’ Waltz said when speak­ing with DailyMail.com at Trump Tow­er in Chica­go on Wednes­day. ‘How do you know that mere days into your inves­ti­ga­tion?’

    ...

    Rep. Waltz says while fed­er­al agen­cies and con­gres­sion­al com­mit­tees are scru­ti­niz­ing the USSS over the attempt­ed assas­si­na­tion, there are more con­cern­ing details emerg­ing that make the attack even more omi­nous.

    That includes the rev­e­la­tion of the Iran­ian plot to assas­si­nate Trump around the same time as the Crooks attempt.

    Crooks had encrypt­ed mes­sag­ing accounts on plat­forms based in Ger­many, Bel­gium, and New Zealand.

    Waltz said: ‘We still haven’t learned a lot, we haven’t learned that much about those over­seas accounts.

    ‘Why does a 19-year-old kid who is a health­care aide need encrypt­ed plat­forms not even based in the Unit­ed States, but based abroad where most ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions know it is hard­er for our law enforce­ment to get into? That’s a ques­tion I’ve had since day one.’

    He added: ‘They need to be releas­ing infor­ma­tion as they come across it because this wasn’t an iso­lat­ed inci­dent. The threats are con­tin­u­al­ly Iran’s threats.’
    ...

    So giv­en Rep Waltz’s deci­sion to speak to the press about his sus­pi­cions of an Iran­ian plot tie to the Penn­syl­va­nia shoot­ing, here’s a Poli­ti­fact report from August 2, three weeks ear­li­er, describ­ing how the media first report­ed on these three over­seas encrypt­ed mes­sage apps in the days fol­low­ing the shoot­ing and this same nar­ra­tive about an Iran­ian angle to the shoot­ing has been pushed by Waltz and fel­low right-wing fig­ures like Lau­ra Loomer for over a month now. So while the recent reports about Rep Waltz’s sus­pi­cions might treat this nar­ra­tive like its part of a new set of rev­e­la­tions, this is same ‘Iran did it’ nar­ra­tive Waltz and Loomer have been pro­mot­ing from almost the begin­ning:

    Poli­ti­fact

    What to know about claims that Trump ral­ly shoot­er used ‘encrypt­ed’ mes­sag­ing, bank accounts

    By Madi­son Czopek August 2, 2024

    If Your Time is short

    * Encryp­tion is a method of scram­bling data so that only its intend­ed read­ers can deci­pher.

    * Three cyber­se­cu­ri­ty experts told Poli­ti­Fact that encryp­tion is com­mon in every­day mes­sag­ing and for online shop­ping, bank­ing and email­ing. That Thomas Matthew Crooks’ online activ­i­ties may have involved encryp­tion does not alone show he was involved in a larg­er crim­i­nal con­spir­a­cy.

    * As of July 24, FBI Direc­tor Christo­pher Wray said inves­ti­ga­tors had not iden­ti­fied any accom­plices or co-con­spir­a­tors.

    Author­i­ties inves­ti­gat­ing the assas­si­na­tion attempt on for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump found a num­ber of “encrypt­ed” appli­ca­tions on the shooter’s phone, spark­ing some Trump sup­port­ers to spec­u­late that more than a lone actor had per­pe­trat­ed the attack.

    Dur­ing a July 18 Fox News appear­ance, Rep. Mike Waltz, R‑Fla., linked the gun­man, Thomas Matthew Crooks, and reports that U.S. intel­li­gence had detect­ed a plot by Iran to assas­si­nate Trump.

    “The shoot­er had three encrypt­ed accounts over­seas at the same time we’re hav­ing an Iran­ian plot.” Waltz said. Pressed on what he meant, Waltz said, “Well, we know that they were based in servers over­seas.”

    Con­ser­v­a­tive activist and com­men­ta­tor Lau­ra Loomer in a July 20 X post said some­thing sim­i­lar: “How does a 20-year-old nerdy kid have 3 encrypt­ed over­seas bank accounts? Who was send­ing him mon­ey over­seas?”

    Trump, too, cit­ed encryption’s link to the shoot­ing. He said July 22 on Fox News that Crooks “had some encrypt­ed phone num­bers and to for­eign coun­tries.”

    ...

    As of July 24, FBI Direc­tor Christo­pher Wray said it appeared that Crooks act­ed alone. And inves­ti­ga­tors have not said that Crooks had bank accounts over­seas.

    PolitiFact’s report­ing found that these remarks about the pres­ence of “encryp­tion” in Crooks’ activ­i­ties reveal mis­con­cep­tions about what encryp­tion is and how com­mon­ly it fac­tors in online appli­ca­tions and com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

    Crooks used encrypt­ed plat­forms linked to for­eign coun­tries, accord­ing to news reports

    News orga­ni­za­tions includ­ing Politi­co, Axios and CBS News report­ed that top Secret Ser­vice and FBI offi­cials on July 17 updat­ed mem­bers of Con­gress on the inves­ti­ga­tion of the July 13 assas­si­na­tion attempt in But­ler, Penn­syl­va­nia.

    ...

    Axios and Politi­co report­ed the three encrypt­ed plat­forms were linked to Ger­many, New Zealand and Bel­gium, although this infor­ma­tion was also not cred­it­ed to a named source. CBS News described the plat­forms only as “three for­eign encrypt­ed plat­forms,” with­out iden­ti­fy­ing coun­tries.

    Waltz’s com­ments about Crooks’ “three encrypt­ed accounts over­seas” came a day after that brief­ing.

    The news reports did not men­tion banks or bank­ing and it is unclear what sparked Loomer’s claims about Crooks hav­ing for­eign bank accounts.

    Since that brief­ing, no new pub­licly avail­able infor­ma­tion from the FBI or any oth­er offi­cial source sup­ports the for­eign bank account claims.

    Ross Del­ston, an inde­pen­dent attor­ney and cer­ti­fied anti-mon­ey laun­der­ing expert, said he had nev­er seen “encrypt­ed over­seas bank accounts” used before in any con­text. He said the use of such ter­mi­nol­o­gy made him think the entire over­seas bank account alle­ga­tion was “bogus.”

    It’s hard to open an over­seas bank account. In any well-reg­u­lat­ed juris­dic­tion, “banks would have a min­i­mum require­ment with respect to funds on deposit, and there’d be ques­tions about the cus­tomer.”

    Del­ston said Ger­many, New Zealand and Bel­gium would all be con­sid­ered well-reg­u­lat­ed juris­dic­tions.

    “Unless there’s a lot of mon­ey involved, there would be lit­tle inter­est in open­ing an account” for a 20-year-old in the U.S. who is not a high-net-worth cus­tomer, Del­ston said.

    FBI direc­tor says shoot­er “had a num­ber of encrypt­ed mes­sag­ing apps” on his phone

    When asked about Crooks’ use of encrypt­ed plat­forms and accounts, an FBI spokesper­son point­ed Poli­ti­Fact to Wray’s July 24 tes­ti­mo­ny before the House Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee.

    Wray said then that FBI inves­ti­ga­tors had accessed some of Crooks’ accounts, “but some of them we’re still wait­ing on.”

    Crooks “had a num­ber of encrypt­ed mes­sag­ing apps on” his phone, Wray said, and the FBI was work­ing to gain access to that con­tent. The FBI ini­ti­at­ed legal pro­ceed­ings to try to gain access to sev­er­al plat­forms, includ­ing gam­ing accounts and mes­sag­ing appli­ca­tions, he said.

    “Some of them we may nev­er get access to because of the encryp­tion issue that … presents an increas­ing­ly vex­ing bar­ri­er for law enforce­ment,” Wray said. He did not men­tion bank accounts.

    Some of the FBI’s offices over­seas are part of the inves­ti­ga­tion because some of Crooks’ accounts, pur­chas­es or com­mu­ni­ca­tions involved for­eign com­pa­nies, mean­ing the agency must “get evi­dence from over­seas,” Wray said.

    Poli­ti­Fact searched Wray’s tes­ti­mo­ny and found no men­tion of Ger­many, New Zealand, Bel­gium, banks or bank­ing.

    At one point, Rep. Jim Jor­dan, R‑Ohio, the Judi­cia­ry Committee’s chair, asked Wray to “tell us what you can about the encrypt­ed plat­forms we’ve heard about.”

    Wray said inves­ti­ga­tors were dig­ging into Crooks’ devices and social media accounts “in an effort to try to learn more about his state of mind, his motive, his ide­ol­o­gy, his con­tacts — every­thing else.”

    Wray: “One of the things we’ve learned in final­ly get­ting into his phone — which was also a sig­nif­i­cant tech­ni­cal chal­lenge from an encryp­tion per­spec­tive. But, in addi­tion, once we got on the phone, it turned out he was using some encrypt­ed mes­sag­ing appli­ca­tion.”

    Jor­dan: “And, again, the same ques­tion rel­a­tive to the bombs, is this — was this a pret­ty sophis­ti­cat­ed or is this — this is the kind of the norm you see with folks like, you know, sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion? How would you —”

    Wray: “On this — on this sub­ject, I would say this is unfor­tu­nate­ly, now, become very com­mon­place and it’s a real chal­lenge for not just the FBI, but state and local law enforce­ment all over this coun­try.”

    Rep. Wes­ley Hunt, R‑Texas, asked two encryp­tion-relat­ed ques­tions: Which spe­cif­ic encrypt­ed mes­sag­ing appli­ca­tions the shoot­er had used and whether Wray could con­firm whether Crooks was com­mu­ni­cat­ing with for­eign nation­als through the encrypt­ed mes­sages.

    Wray said he could not imme­di­ate­ly pro­vide the spe­cif­ic appli­ca­tions and reit­er­at­ed that the FBI had not “iden­ti­fied any accom­plices or co-con­spir­a­tors, for­eign or domes­tic.” He said the agency hopes to gain access to the encrypt­ed mes­sages, part­ly because they could show whether Crooks had com­mu­ni­cat­ed with for­eign con­tacts.

    Encryp­tion is wide­spread; its use alone does not prove role in crim­i­nal con­spir­a­cy, experts say

    Encryp­tion is a method of scram­bling data so that only that data’s intend­ed read­ers can make sense of it, cyber­se­cu­ri­ty experts told Poli­ti­Fact.

    Cyber­se­cu­ri­ty experts also uni­ver­sal­ly said encryp­tion is used wide­ly.

    ...

    When data appears decrypt­ed on servers, Neu­man said law enforce­ment can often obtain it with a war­rant or sub­poe­na, depend­ing on fac­tors such as juris­dic­tion and the data’s loca­tion.

    How­ev­er, “encrypt­ed mes­sag­ing” typ­i­cal­ly refers to the use of end-to-end encryp­tion, Neu­man said.

    End-to-end encryp­tion means data does not get decrypt­ed on the serv­er, mak­ing it “much more dif­fi­cult for author­i­ties or oth­ers to inter­cept,” he said. Many mes­sag­ing apps pro­vide this encryp­tion by default, so “it is not that rare and many indi­vid­u­als use it for com­plete­ly legit­i­mate pur­pos­es,” Neu­man said.

    Strong encryp­tion is very dif­fi­cult, “if not prac­ti­cal­ly impos­si­ble,” to break, which pos­es a huge prob­lem for law enforce­ment, said John Sam­mons, an asso­ciate direc­tor and pro­fes­sor at Mar­shall University’s Insti­tute for Cyber Secu­ri­ty.

    Nev­er­the­less, all our experts agreed that the FBI’s state­ments about Crooks hav­ing used encryp­tion do not alone show Crooks was involved in a larg­er crim­i­nal net­work or plot.

    Crooks’ use of some plat­forms that employ encryp­tion “may sug­gest a larg­er crim­i­nal con­spir­a­cy, but it cer­tain­ly doesn’t prove one,” because “encryp­tion and encrypt­ed mes­sag­ing are in wide use today by both con­sumers and crim­i­nals,” Sam­mons said.

    ———–

    “What to know about claims that Trump ral­ly shoot­er used ‘encrypt­ed’ mes­sag­ing, bank accounts” By Madi­son Czopek; Poli­ti­fact; 08/02/2024

    “PolitiFact’s report­ing found that these remarks about the pres­ence of “encryp­tion” in Crooks’ activ­i­ties reveal mis­con­cep­tions about what encryp­tion is and how com­mon­ly it fac­tors in online appli­ca­tions and com­mu­ni­ca­tions.”

    As this report from three weeks ago points out, the nar­ra­tive about a tie to the Iran­ian plot was already per­co­lat­ing among right-wing media per­son­al­i­ties, even get­ting mor­phed into an ‘encrypt­ed over­seas bank account’ non­sense nar­ra­tive from fig­ures like Lau­ra Loomer. And this was weeks after media out­lets first report­ed on these three over­seas encrypt­ed mes­sag­ing apps in the days fol­low­ing the shoot­ing. So when we see Rep Waltz rais­ing the rev­e­la­tion about those over­seas encrypt­ed mes­sag­ing accounts an sug­gest­ing a tie to Iran, keep in mind that this is one of those right-wing nar­ra­tives that’s been spe­cious­ly pushed for over a month now. A nar­ra­tive that con­ve­nient­ly ignores all the evi­dence point­ing towards Crook­s’s far right ide­ol­o­gy:

    ...
    Dur­ing a July 18 Fox News appear­ance, Rep. Mike Waltz, R‑Fla., linked the gun­man, Thomas Matthew Crooks, and reports that U.S. intel­li­gence had detect­ed a plot by Iran to assas­si­nate Trump.

    “The shoot­er had three encrypt­ed accounts over­seas at the same time we’re hav­ing an Iran­ian plot.” Waltz said. Pressed on what he meant, Waltz said, “Well, we know that they were based in servers over­seas.”

    Con­ser­v­a­tive activist and com­men­ta­tor Lau­ra Loomer in a July 20 X post said some­thing sim­i­lar: “How does a 20-year-old nerdy kid have 3 encrypt­ed over­seas bank accounts? Who was send­ing him mon­ey over­seas?”

    Trump, too, cit­ed encryption’s link to the shoot­ing. He said July 22 on Fox News that Crooks “had some encrypt­ed phone num­bers and to for­eign coun­tries.”

    ...

    As of July 24, FBI Direc­tor Christo­pher Wray said it appeared that Crooks act­ed alone. And inves­ti­ga­tors have not said that Crooks had bank accounts over­seas.

    ...

    Crooks used encrypt­ed plat­forms linked to for­eign coun­tries, accord­ing to news reports

    News orga­ni­za­tions includ­ing Politi­co, Axios and CBS News report­ed that top Secret Ser­vice and FBI offi­cials on July 17 updat­ed mem­bers of Con­gress on the inves­ti­ga­tion of the July 13 assas­si­na­tion attempt in But­ler, Penn­syl­va­nia.

    ...

    Axios and Politi­co report­ed the three encrypt­ed plat­forms were linked to Ger­many, New Zealand and Bel­gium, although this infor­ma­tion was also not cred­it­ed to a named source. CBS News described the plat­forms only as “three for­eign encrypt­ed plat­forms,” with­out iden­ti­fy­ing coun­tries.

    Waltz’s com­ments about Crooks’ “three encrypt­ed accounts over­seas” came a day after that brief­ing.

    The news reports did not men­tion banks or bank­ing and it is unclear what sparked Loomer’s claims about Crooks hav­ing for­eign bank accounts.

    Since that brief­ing, no new pub­licly avail­able infor­ma­tion from the FBI or any oth­er offi­cial source sup­ports the for­eign bank account claims.

    Ross Del­ston, an inde­pen­dent attor­ney and cer­ti­fied anti-mon­ey laun­der­ing expert, said he had nev­er seen “encrypt­ed over­seas bank accounts” used before in any con­text. He said the use of such ter­mi­nol­o­gy made him think the entire over­seas bank account alle­ga­tion was “bogus.”
    ...

    But then there’s the oth­er Iran-relat­ed rev­e­la­tion we got in the days fol­low­ing the shoot­ing: The Secret Ser­vice was appar­ent­ly made aware of this Iran­ian plot before the Penn­syl­va­nia ral­ly and surged resources in response to that threat. It was a remark­able rev­e­la­tion giv­en all the secu­ri­ty laps­es that we knew about at that time. But when we take into account the much larg­er total­i­ty of secu­ri­ty laps­es that we’ve since learned about — laps­es that include the Secret Ser­vice snipers seem­ing­ly being trained in on Crooks for 30–40 sec­onds before he fires off that vol­ley of shots — it makes the ‘Iran­ian plot’ angle all the more mys­te­ri­ous and poten­tial­ly rel­e­vant for under­stand­ing how what tran­spired that day was allowed to hap­pen:

    CNN

    Exclu­sive: Secret Ser­vice ramped up secu­ri­ty after intel of Iran plot to assas­si­nate Trump; no known con­nec­tion to shoot­ing

    By Evan Perez, Zachary Cohen, Natasha Bertrand, Kylie Atwood and Kris­ten Holmes, CNN
    Updat­ed 9:01 PM EDT, Tue July 16, 2024

    CNN — US author­i­ties obtained intel­li­gence from a human source in recent weeks on a plot by Iran to try to assas­si­nate Don­ald Trump, a devel­op­ment that led to the Secret Ser­vice increas­ing secu­ri­ty around the for­mer pres­i­dent, mul­ti­ple peo­ple briefed on the mat­ter told CNN.

    There’s no indi­ca­tion that Thomas Matthew Crooks, the would-be assas­sin who attempt­ed to kill the for­mer pres­i­dent on Sat­ur­day, was con­nect­ed to the plot, the sources said.

    The exis­tence of the intel­li­gence threat from a hos­tile for­eign intel­li­gence agency — and the enhanced secu­ri­ty for Trump — rais­es new ques­tions about the secu­ri­ty laps­es at the Sat­ur­day ral­ly in But­ler, Penn­syl­va­nia, and how a 20-year-old man man­aged to access a near­by rooftop to fire shots that injured the for­mer pres­i­dent.

    A US nation­al secu­ri­ty offi­cial said the Secret Ser­vice and Trump cam­paign were made aware of the threat before Saturday’s ral­ly.

    “Secret Ser­vice learned of the increased threat from this threat stream,” the offi­cial told CNN. “NSC direct­ly con­tact­ed USSS at a senior lev­el to be absolute­ly sure they con­tin­ued to track the lat­est report­ing. USSS shared this infor­ma­tion with the detail lead, and the Trump cam­paign was made aware of an evolv­ing threat. In response to the increased threat, Secret Ser­vice surged resources and assets for the pro­tec­tion of for­mer Pres­i­dent Trump. All of this was in advance of Sat­ur­day.”

    The Trump cam­paign would not dis­close whether it was made aware of the Iran threat. “We do not com­ment on Pres­i­dent Trump’s secu­ri­ty detail. All ques­tions should be direct­ed to The Unit­ed States Secret Ser­vice,” the cam­paign said in a state­ment.

    Secret Ser­vice offi­cials have warned the Trump cam­paign repeat­ed­ly against hold­ing out­door ral­lies, which pose greater risks than events to which the agency can bet­ter con­trol access, peo­ple briefed on the mat­ter said. The warn­ings have been more gen­er­al in nature, the sources said.

    ...

    At one point dur­ing this elec­tion cycle, the cam­paign stopped hold­ing spon­ta­neous off-the-record events where guests weren’t swept by Secret Ser­vice before­hand due to secu­ri­ty con­cerns, a source famil­iar with the mat­ter told CNN.

    ...

    NSC spokesper­son Adri­enne Wat­son said there’s no known link between shoot­er Thomas Matthew Crooks and any­one else at the moment.

    “The inves­ti­ga­tion of Saturday’s attempt­ed assas­si­na­tion of for­mer Pres­i­dent Trump is active and ongo­ing. At this time, law enforce­ment has report­ed that their inves­ti­ga­tion has not iden­ti­fied ties between the shoot­er and any accom­plice or co-con­spir­a­tor, for­eign or domes­tic,” Wat­son said.

    The Per­ma­nent Mis­sion of the Islam­ic Repub­lic of Iran to the Unit­ed Nations denied there is an Iran­ian plot to assas­si­nate Trump.

    “These accu­sa­tions are unsub­stan­ti­at­ed and mali­cious. From the per­spec­tive of the Islam­ic Repub­lic of Iran, Trump is a crim­i­nal who must be pros­e­cut­ed and pun­ished in a court of law for order­ing the assas­si­na­tion of Gen­er­al Soleimani. Iran has cho­sen the legal path to bring him to jus­tice,” a spokesper­son for the mis­sion told CNN, ref­er­enc­ing Qasem Soleimani, the com­man­der of the Iran­ian military’s Islam­ic Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard Corps, who was killed by a US airstrike at Bagh­dad Inter­na­tion­al Air­port in Jan­u­ary 2020.

    CNN’s Fareed Zakaria pressed Iran’s act­ing For­eign Min­is­ter Ali Bagheri Kani on the alleged Iran­ian assas­si­na­tion plot, ask­ing in an inter­view if the plot was in retal­i­a­tion for Soleimani’s killing, which took place dur­ing the Trump admin­is­tra­tion.

    “I told you explic­it­ly that we would resort to legal and judi­cial pro­ce­dures and frame­works at the domes­tic lev­el and inter­na­tion­al lev­el in order to bring the per­pe­tra­tors and mil­i­tary advis­ers of Gen­er­al Soleimani’s assas­si­na­tion to jus­tice,” Kani told Zakaria in an inter­view that will air Sun­day on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS.”

    Pressed fur­ther if that meant not using vio­lent mea­sures, Kani said, “We will only resort to Iran­ian and inter­na­tion­al legal and judi­cial pro­ce­dures.”

    “Until now, we have done it, and this is our right and of course we will con­tin­ue it. And the Amer­i­cans open­ly said that, that they assas­si­nat­ed the senior Iran­ian mil­i­tary com­man­der. So it is our nat­ur­al right in order to fol­low this issue, and those who are accused in this case, they should be brought to jus­tice in a — in a just court,” Kani said.

    ...

    Surge of threats from Iran­ian state-backed media

    Iran has repeat­ed­ly vowed revenge for the US military’s killing of Soleimani. And for­mer senior Trump admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials who worked on nation­al secu­ri­ty have had tight secu­ri­ty since leav­ing the gov­ern­ment.

    In August 2022, the Jus­tice Depart­ment announced crim­i­nal charges against a mem­ber of the IRGC for alleged­ly try­ing to orches­trate the assas­si­na­tion of John Bolton, who served as Trump’s nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er. US pros­e­cu­tors said the plot against Bolton was “like­ly in retal­i­a­tion” for Soleimani’s assas­si­na­tion.

    For­mer Sec­re­tary of State Mike Pom­peo was also a tar­get of the Iran­ian assas­si­na­tion plot, accord­ing to a fed­er­al law enforce­ment source famil­iar with the inves­ti­ga­tion and a source close to Pom­peo.

    Trump’s for­mer nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er, Robert O’Brien, had a US gov­ern­ment secu­ri­ty detail due to threats from Iran, like Pom­peo and oth­er for­mer Trump offi­cials, but that detail was dropped last sum­mer, accord­ing to sources famil­iar with the mat­ter. O’Brien is now pay­ing for his own pri­vate secu­ri­ty detail, sources said. Law­mak­ers were not giv­en a spe­cif­ic rea­son for the deci­sion, which led to frus­tra­tion. O’Brien did not respond to a request for com­ment.

    Bolton still has his Secret Ser­vice detail.

    For months, law enforce­ment offi­cials have been con­cerned about the per­sis­tent threat of Iran poten­tial­ly attempt­ing to assas­si­nate for­mer Trump offi­cials and the for­mer pres­i­dent him­self, accord­ing to mul­ti­ple sources famil­iar with the mat­ter. But the recent intel­li­gence sug­gest­ed a sig­nif­i­cant uptick in the threat, the sources told CNN.

    Warn­ings about that oper­a­tional plan­ning have coin­cid­ed with a notice­able surge of online mes­sag­ing from Iran­ian accounts and state-backed media men­tion­ing Trump, which has raised secu­ri­ty con­cerns among US offi­cials, one of the sources told CNN.

    ————-

    “Exclu­sive: Secret Ser­vice ramped up secu­ri­ty after intel of Iran plot to assas­si­nate Trump; no known con­nec­tion to shoot­ing” By Evan Perez, Zachary Cohen, Natasha Bertrand, Kylie Atwood and Kris­ten Holmes; CNN; 07/16/2024

    “The exis­tence of the intel­li­gence threat from a hos­tile for­eign intel­li­gence agency — and the enhanced secu­ri­ty for Trump — rais­es new ques­tions about the secu­ri­ty laps­es at the Sat­ur­day ral­ly in But­ler, Penn­syl­va­nia, and how a 20-year-old man man­aged to access a near­by rooftop to fire shots that injured the for­mer pres­i­dent.”

    Yep, all of these absurd secu­ri­ty ‘oop­sies’ hap­pened dur­ing a time of enhanced para­noia about an Iran­ian assas­si­na­tion plot. That’s what we learned in the days after the shooting...before we learned the full scope in the incred­i­ble secu­ri­ty issues.

    We know Crooks was flagged as a sus­pi­cious per­son hours before the shoot­ing. What was the inter­nal assess­ment about him at that time? Did the Secret Ser­vice sus­pect Crooks might be part of an Iran­ian plot? We still have no idea. And it’s unclear we’ll even know. But we can be con­fi­dent Rep Waltz and his allies will still be push­ing the ‘Crooks was an Iran­ian agent’ angle either way. That’s their sto­ry and they’re stick­ing to it.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | August 23, 2024, 5:22 pm

  19. Anoth­er day, anoth­er shock­ing update to the Trump assas­si­na­tion attempt inves­ti­ga­tion. This time, we got anoth­er update from Con­gress­man Clay Hig­gins. Recall how Hig­gins, a Repub­li­can on the 13-mem­ber bipar­ti­san task force with ties to groups like the Oath Keep­ers and Three Per­centers, already came out with that stun­ning rev­e­la­tion that the FBI allowed the trans­fer of Crook­s’s body to the fam­i­ly for cre­ma­tion back in July 23, 10 days after the shoot­ing and while the body was still under the juris­dic­tion of the local coro­ner. Well, Hig­gins now has a new dra­mat­ic update about how the shoot­ing actu­al­ly went down:

    It turns out it was­n’t a Secret Ser­vice sniper who ini­tial­ly hit Crooks. The first shot at Crooks was fired by a local police SWAT mem­ber who hit Crook­s’s rifle, dis­abling it. It was sec­onds lat­er that the Secret Ser­vice sniper struck Crooks in the head. As the fol­low­ing arti­cle notes, new­ly released images of Crooks’ rifle seems to back up this account­ing, show­ing the stock end with a large hole where a bul­let struck near the Crook­s’s shoul­der.

    Hig­gins goes on to explain how this local offi­cer ini­tial­ly spot­ted Crooks through the foliage and left his post, run­ning towards the AGR build­ing. He end­ed up tak­ing what Hig­gins described as a very dif­fi­cult shot from the ground rough­ly 100 yards away. So it sounds like Crooks would have been in a posi­tion to fire off a lot more shots had this offi­cer not left their post and ran towards that build­ing.

    It also rais­es the ques­tion of how much longer the Secret Ser­vice SWAT team would have wait­ed to fired on Crooks had his gun not been dis­abled. As we’ve seen, footage shows the Secret Ser­vice SWAT team seem­ing­ly trained on Crooks for 30–40 sec­onds before open­ing fire. And as we’ve also learned, that 30–40 sec­onds appears to over­lap with the peri­od of time between when a local offi­cer climbed up on the roof and briefly encoun­tered Crooks. Recall how, ini­tial­ly, it sound­ed like Crooks swung his rifle at the offi­cer, who dropped back down, before he swung it back and imme­di­ate­ly opened fire. But then we learned that, actu­al­ly, Crooks spent rough­ly 40 sec­onds before fir­ing after swing­ing his rifle back towards the crowd. So while we don’t have the exact time­line on the moment this local SWAT mem­ber left their post and start­ed run­ning towards the AGR build­ing, it sounds like it would have all tran­spired right around this ini­tial 30–40 sec­onds before shots were fired. With the Secret Ser­vice SWAT team seem­ing­ly watch­ing the entire time:

    The Dai­ly Mail

    Bomb­shell con­gres­sion­al report on Trump assas­si­na­tion attempt reveals ‘who REALLY took the first shot at Thomas Crooks’

    By Will Pot­ter For Dailymail.Com
    Pub­lished: 02:17 EDT, 4 Sep­tem­ber 2024 | Updat­ed: 09:17 EDT, 4 Sep­tem­ber 2024

    A bomb­shell con­gres­sion­al report claims would-be Trump assas­sin Thomas Crooks was inca­pac­i­tat­ed by a local cop before he was killed by a Secret Ser­vice sniper.

    Two months after Crooks shot the for­mer pres­i­den­t’s ear at a ral­ly in But­ler, Penn­syl­va­nia, a pre­lim­i­nary report from Rep. Clay Hig­gins offered a dif­fer­ing nar­ra­tive to the offi­cial one pushed by the FBI.

    While it was ini­tial­ly claimed that Crooks was shot in the head with­in sec­onds by a Secret Ser­vice sniper, Hig­gins’ report claimed it was actu­al­ly a local SWAT oper­a­tor who stopped the gun­man’s hail of bul­lets.

    The con­gress­man said the local cop’s shot ‘hit Crooks’ rifle and fragged his face/ neck/ right shoul­der area from the (gun) stock break­ing up’, which meant Crooks was unable to keep fir­ing before he was killed.

    It comes amid mount­ing scruti­ny on the FBI and Secret Ser­vice’s inves­ti­ga­tions into the shoot­ing, weeks after Hig­gins also revealed Crooks’ body was mys­te­ri­ous­ly cre­mat­ed with approval from the FBI after just 10 days.

    The rev­e­la­tions from Hig­gins’ bomb­shell report were raised last night by Fox News pun­dit Jesse Wat­ters, who shared his shock over the response to the assas­si­na­tion attempt with Mis­souri Sen­a­tor Josh Haw­ley.

    ...

    He drew par­al­lels between the agen­cies’ offi­cial nar­ra­tive of the shoot­ing — that Crooks was quick­ly killed by a Secret Ser­vice sniper — and Hig­gins’ claim that a local SWAT oper­a­tor actu­al­ly hit the gun­man first.

    ‘I did­n’t know that,’ Wat­ters said, point­ing to Con­gres­sion­al tes­ti­mo­ny from act­ing Secret Ser­vice Direc­tor Ronald Rowe that made ‘no men­tion’ of the local cop’s hero­ics.

    ‘He gave his agency total cred­it for bring­ing down Crooks,’ he said.

    New­ly released images of Crooks’ AR-style rifle show the stock end of the firearm with a large hole where the bul­let pur­port­ed­ly struck near the shooter’s shoul­der.

    ALERT: @HawleyMO reveals shock­ing new whistle­blow­er tes­ti­mo­ny about the agents assigned to Trump’s detail the day he was near­ly assas­si­nat­ed. pic.twitter.com/IFR8c25hI1— Jesse Wat­ters (@JesseBWatters) Sep­tem­ber 4, 2024

    Accord­ing to Hig­gins’ report, the ral­ly could have been worse had it not been for the actions of local offi­cers.

    After Crooks fired eight bul­lets at the crowd, strik­ing Trump’s ear and hit­ting three ral­ly atten­dees, one fatal­ly, offi­cers were scram­bling to locate the source of the bul­lets and fire back.

    Hig­gins said the SWAT oper­a­tor — who he described as a ‘total badass’ in his report — fired at Crooks from the ground around 100 yards from the AGR build­ing where he had been perched.

    ‘When he had sight­ed the shoot­er Crooks as a most­ly obscured by foliage mov­ing tar­get on the AGR rooftop, he imme­di­ate­ly left his assigned post and ran towards the threat,’ Hig­gins wrote.

    The con­gress­man not­ed that the offi­cer ran into Crooks’ pos­si­ble line of fire and took a ‘very hard shot’ that struck the end of Crooks’ rifle and destroyed the gun’s func­tion­al­i­ty.

    ‘This means that if his AR buffer tube was dam­aged, Crooks’ rifle wouldn’t fire after his 8th shot,’ Hig­gins wrote.

    Sec­onds lat­er, a Secret Ser­vice sniper killed Crooks on the rooftop perch, which ‘entered some­where around the left mouth area and exit­ed the right ear area.’

    The rev­e­la­tions came as Hig­gins also stag­ger­ing­ly claimed that Crooks’ body was cre­mat­ed just 10 days after the ral­ly shoot­ing despite inves­ti­ga­tions still ongo­ing.

    The Louisiana con­gress­man, a for­mer police cap­tain, com­piled the report from his own ‘boots on the ground’ trip to But­ler in ear­ly August, which was sub­mit­ted to a 13-mem­ber Con­gres­sion­al bipar­ti­san task force inves­ti­gat­ing the shoot­ing that he is a mem­ber of.

    In the report, Hig­gins said that when he vis­it­ed the town for his own inves­ti­ga­tion, his request to view the body ’caused quite a stir and revealed a dis­turb­ing fact.’

    Hig­gins says ‘nobody knew’ that the body had been returned to the fam­i­ly, includ­ing the coun­ty coro­ner and local enforce­ment. He writes that the coro­ner still had ‘legal author­i­ty over the body’ when the FBI made this deci­sion and accus­es the agency of ‘obstruc­tion’.

    ...

    On July 29, the Louisiana con­gress­man was named as one of sev­en Repub­li­can mem­bers of a bipar­ti­san group tasked with inves­ti­gat­ing the attempt­ed assas­si­na­tion of Trump.

    The task force con­sists of 13 mem­bers — sev­en Repub­li­cans and six Democ­rats. Its mis­sion is to deter­mine what went wrong on the day of the attempt­ed assas­si­na­tion and it will make rec­om­men­da­tions to pre­vent future secu­ri­ty laps­es.

    The task force will issue a final report before Decem­ber 13.

    ———–

    “Bomb­shell con­gres­sion­al report on Trump assas­si­na­tion attempt reveals ‘who REALLY took the first shot at Thomas Crooks’ ” By Will Pot­ter; The Dai­ly Mail; 09/04/2024

    “While it was ini­tial­ly claimed that Crooks was shot in the head with­in sec­onds by a Secret Ser­vice sniper, Hig­gins’ report claimed it was actu­al­ly a local SWAT oper­a­tor who stopped the gun­man’s hail of bul­lets.”

    This sto­ry just keeps get­ting weird­er and wilder. Now it’s no longer the amaz­ing sto­ry of how Crooks was spot­ted by a local offi­cer who climbed up on the roof and then allowed to spend the next 30–40 sec­onds tak­ing aim before open­ing fire while a Secret Ser­vice SWAT team seem­ing­ly watch­es the entire time before open­ing fire on Crooks fol­low­ing that open­ing vol­ley of shots. No, accord­ing to this update, Crooks was actu­al­ly first fired on by a local offi­cer, dis­abling Crook­s’s gun before the Secret Ser­vice SWAT team final­ly took Crooks out. In fact, accord­ing to this account, the local offi­cer appar­ent­ly left his post after spot­ting Crooks and took a ‘very hard shot’ from the ground rough­ly 100 yards away. It was only sec­onds after this offi­cer dis­abled Crook­s’s rifle that the Secret Ser­vice SWAT team stuck Crooks in the head, accord­ing to this account:

    ...
    The con­gress­man said the local cop’s shot ‘hit Crooks’ rifle and fragged his face/ neck/ right shoul­der area from the (gun) stock break­ing up’, which meant Crooks was unable to keep fir­ing before he was killed.

    ...

    New­ly released images of Crooks’ AR-style rifle show the stock end of the firearm with a large hole where the bul­let pur­port­ed­ly struck near the shooter’s shoul­der.

    ALERT: @HawleyMO reveals shock­ing new whistle­blow­er tes­ti­mo­ny about the agents assigned to Trump’s detail the day he was near­ly assas­si­nat­ed. pic.twitter.com/IFR8c25hI1— Jesse Wat­ters (@JesseBWatters) Sep­tem­ber 4, 2024

    Accord­ing to Hig­gins’ report, the ral­ly could have been worse had it not been for the actions of local offi­cers.

    After Crooks fired eight bul­lets at the crowd, strik­ing Trump’s ear and hit­ting three ral­ly atten­dees, one fatal­ly, offi­cers were scram­bling to locate the source of the bul­lets and fire back.

    Hig­gins said the SWAT oper­a­tor — who he described as a ‘total badass’ in his report — fired at Crooks from the ground around 100 yards from the AGR build­ing where he had been perched.

    ‘When he had sight­ed the shoot­er Crooks as a most­ly obscured by foliage mov­ing tar­get on the AGR rooftop, he imme­di­ate­ly left his assigned post and ran towards the threat,’ Hig­gins wrote.

    The con­gress­man not­ed that the offi­cer ran into Crooks’ pos­si­ble line of fire and took a ‘very hard shot’ that struck the end of Crooks’ rifle and destroyed the gun’s func­tion­al­i­ty.

    ‘This means that if his AR buffer tube was dam­aged, Crooks’ rifle wouldn’t fire after his 8th shot,’ Hig­gins wrote.

    Sec­onds lat­er, a Secret Ser­vice sniper killed Crooks on the rooftop perch, which ‘entered some­where around the left mouth area and exit­ed the right ear area.’
    ...

    How many more head spin­ning updates are we in store for before this inves­ti­ga­tion is over? Time will tell. But we can safe­ly con­clude by now that this is one of those inves­ti­ga­tions that is nev­er real­ly going to be over. It will come to an offi­cial con­clu­sion, sure. But it’s hard to imag­ine any sort of wide­ly believ­able con­clu­sion emerg­ing from any of these inves­ti­ga­tions. Anoth­er per­ma­nent Amer­i­can assas­si­na­tion mys­tery. Mis­sion accom­plished?

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | September 6, 2024, 3:54 pm

  20. And the hits keep com­ing. Or close calls, as the case may be: Don­ald Trump appar­ent­ly sur­vived a sec­ond assas­si­na­tion attempt on Sun­day at his Trump Inter­na­tion­al Golf Resort in Flori­da. Secret Ser­vice spot­ted a muz­zled rifle pok­ing out from some bush­es and engaged the gun who fled and was lat­er appre­hend­ed. While the gun­man nev­er fired and was nev­er in sight of Trump, we are told he we as close as 300 feet.

    The over­all inci­dent was­n’t a lethal event like the But­ler, Penn­syl­va­nia, shoot­ing, it is turn­ing out to have a num­ber of par­al­lels. For starters, both events cen­ter around ‘lone gun­men’ with con­fus­ing ideological/political moti­va­tions. As we’ve seen, But­ler shoot­er Thomas Matthew Crooks appears to have been a life-long con­ser­v­a­tive with far right ide­o­log­i­cal lean­ings, but who also made a small dona­tion to Joe Biden via the Act­Blue dona­tion por­tal in Jan­u­ary of 2021 before lat­er reg­is­ter­ing as a Repub­li­can. In this case, the gun­man, 58 year old Ryan Routh, is all over the polit­i­cal map. In 2016 he vot­ed for Don­ald Trump before appar­ent­ly sour­ing on him. In 2019 and 2020, Routh made a total of $140 in dona­tions to Act­Blue while also indi­cat­ing sup­port for Tul­si Gab­bard. By 2024, he was appar­ent­ly a boost­ing Trump’s pri­ma­ry chal­lengers Vivek Ramaswamy and Nik­ki Haley. At the time of his arrest, reporters spot­ted a truck out­side his res­i­dence in Hawaii with a Biden/Harris bumper­stick­er.

    But Routh’s expressed pol­i­tics isn’t lim­it­ed to which can­di­dates he sup­ports. The guy has been out­spo­ken on a num­ber of issues, include Pales­tin­ian rights and COVID (he’s con­vinced COVID was a Chi­nese bio­log­i­cal war­fare attack). But the biggest issue by far is Ukraine. Not only is Routh a huge Ukraine boost­er but he actu­al­ly joined Ukraine’s Inter­na­tion­al Legion of for­eign vol­un­teers in 2022. Or at least that’s what he claimed, describ­ing him­self as a “vol­un­teer co-ordi­na­tor”. As we’ll see, the Inter­na­tion­al Legion has a some­what dif­fer­ent take, describ­ing Routh as a chaos agent who had “nev­er been part of, asso­ci­at­ed with, or linked with the legion ... in any capac­i­ty”. One Legion mem­ber described Routh as some­one who would “sneak around” offi­cials and was “doing more harm than good.”

    But our infor­ma­tion about what Routh was up to regard­ing Ukraine isn’t sole­ly based on the report­ing we’re get­ting after this inci­dent. Because it turns out Routh was inter­view by the New York Times for a March 2023 piece on Ukraine’s for­eign vol­un­teers. And as we saw at the time, Routh was telling the NY Times that his big goal was to recruit to fight for Ukraine the Afghan sol­diers who had fled the Tal­iban and were liv­ing in Iran or Pak­istan. There were no indi­ca­tions in that report that Routh was just some chaos agent sneak­ing around the Ukraine lead­er­ship. At the same time though, as we’re going to see below, it also turns out that Routh self-pub­lished a book in Feb­ru­ary of 2023 where he griped about how “I have yet to see... the small­est amount of appre­ci­a­tion or respect,” for his efforts. So Routh does appear to have run into dif­fi­cul­ties with his Afghan sol­dier recruit­ment scheme.

    And yet, as we’re also going to see, it turns out Routh made a rather inter­est­ing claim to the New York Times reporters dur­ing his inter­view for that March 2023: Routh claimed he was in Wash­ing­ton DC to meet with the U.S. Com­mis­sion on Secu­ri­ty and Coop­er­a­tion in Europe, known as the Helsin­ki Com­mis­sion “for two hours” to help push for more sup­port for Ukraine. That com­mis­sion is run by mem­bers of Con­gress and staffed by con­gres­sion­al aides. So if Routh real­ly was involved with some sort of Afghan-sol­dier recruit­ment scheme that was­n’t entire­ly in his head and real­ly did have sort of US gov­ern­ment sup­port for the gam­bit, there’s pre­sum­ably some con­gres­sion­al aides who could con­firm this. Will we get such a con­fir­ma­tion?

    Giv­en the fix­a­tion on Ukraine, we can at least see a some­what plau­si­ble motive for the tar­get­ing of Trump, unlike the case with Crooks where we still have no real expla­na­tion. And yet, as with the Crooks case, the event itself is just filled with secu­ri­ty anom­alies. Start­ing with the fact that Routh knew where to tar­get Trump in the first place. Because this appar­ent assas­si­na­tion attempt took place at the Trump Inter­na­tion­al Golf Resort in Flori­da and there was no pub­lic knowl­edge that Trump was going to be there that day. It was effec­tive­ly a secret golf event for Trump. And yet some­how Routh knew to be there. As for­mer FBI assis­tant direc­tor Chris Sweck­er warns, there’s just three sce­nar­ios that could explain how Routh was there: He guessed and got very lucky; he con­duct­ed sur­veil­lance on Trump and fol­lowed him to the golf course or he had inside infor­ma­tion about Trump’s sched­ule. As we’re going to see, Routh’s cell­phone data indi­cates he was ‘in the area’ for rough­ly 12 hours before the inci­dent. That sure sounds like a plan for an ambush. The kind of plan that required fore­knowl­edge about some­thing that should have been secret to the pub­lic.

    And then there’s the odd­ness around the get­away: we are told Routh dropped his rifle and fled to his car after being spot­ted, but a bystander saw the car and took down the license, allow­ing police to even­tu­al­ly arrest Routh and take him into cus­tody with­out inci­dent. And yet, as we’re going to see, we are also told two West Palm Beach offi­cers spot­ted Routh get­ting away in his vehi­cle and fol­lowed him for 45 min­utes. Routh was even­tu­al­ly arrest­ed by Mar­tin Coun­ty offi­cers. Why was Routh allowed such an extend­ed get­away ride?

    So once again we have a Trump assas­si­na­tion attempt by a gun­man with weird­ly ambigu­ous polit­i­cal moti­va­tions and an array of secu­ri­ty anom­alies that will like­ly nev­er be sat­is­fac­to­ri­ly answered. Except unlike Crooks, Routh may have have also had some sort of con­tact with mem­bers of Con­gress and who knows who else in Ukraine. Keep in mind anoth­er aspect of that appar­ent­ly poor treat­ment and lack of respect he was receiv­ing in Ukraine: it’s not like the Inter­na­tion­al Legion is the only Ukrain­ian group that accepts for­eign vol­un­teers. Did Routh have any con­tact with Azov? Right Sec­tor? These are the kinds of inves­tiga­tive angles that real­ly should be pur­sued and most like­ly won’t be at all.

    Also, keep in mind what is hope­ful­ly just an awful coin­ci­dence: the move Civ­il War had its stream­ing pre­mier on Max (HBO’s stream­ing ser­vice) on Fri­day, Sep­tem­ber 13. So rough­ly 100 mil­lion Max sub­scribers had an oppor­tu­ni­ty to watch a movie about a con­tem­po­rary Civ­il War — cen­tered around a Trump-like fig­ure that frac­tures the US — for two days before we had our sec­ond high­ly mys­te­ri­ous Trump assas­si­na­tion attempt. It’s a sign of the times, coin­ci­dence or not:

    BBC News

    What we know about Ryan Routh, sus­pect in Trump assas­si­na­tion attempt

    Ann But­ler
    Mike Wendling
    09/16/2024

    The sus­pect in an appar­ent assas­si­na­tion attempt against Don­ald Trump is a staunch sup­port­er of Ukraine who was reject­ed by the coun­try’s armed forces and failed to make much of a con­tri­bu­tion to the war effort.

    Ryan Wes­ley Routh, 58, who appeared in court on Mon­day, is from North Car­oli­na and spent most of his life there, but most recent­ly lived in Hawaii.

    He vot­ed for Trump in 2016 but lat­er turned against him, and made state­ments of sup­port and con­tri­bu­tions to oth­er politi­cians.

    ...

    What did Routh do?

    He is sus­pect­ed of going to the Trump Inter­na­tion­al Golf Course in Flori­da on Sun­day, armed with an SKS-style rifle. The FBI recov­ered the weapon and scope, two back­packs and a GoPro cam­era from an area heavy with bush cov­er.

    Law enforce­ment allege that Routh fled the area when a Secret Ser­vice agent fired in his direc­tion after spot­ting a rifle bar­rel pok­ing out of the bush­es.

    He is not believed to have fired his own weapon dur­ing the inci­dent, and is not believed to have had a clear line of sight to Trump at any point.

    Palm Beach Coun­ty Sher­iff Ric Brad­shaw said two offi­cers spot­ted Routh’s vehi­cle, a black Nis­san, and fol­lowed it for 45 min­utes.

    Routh was stopped on Inter­state 95, a major high­way, and arrest­ed.

    He has been ini­tial­ly charged with fed­er­al firearms offences. The affi­davit states that Routh’s phone was in the “vicin­i­ty” of the cov­ered area for 12 hours.

    The car, a Nis­san SUV, was lat­er deter­mined to have num­ber plates which belonged to a 2012 Ford which had been report­ed as stolen.

    What does Routh’s social media show?

    BBC Ver­i­fy found a num­ber of social media pro­files match­ing Routh’s name.

    Routh repeat­ed­ly tout­ed his work in encour­ag­ing for­eign fight­ers to go to Ukraine to bat­tle against Rus­sia.

    How­ev­er, most of his organ­is­ing appears to have hap­pened while he was in the US, not in Ukraine, where in 2022 he was reject­ed by the coun­try’s Inter­na­tion­al Legion due to his lack of com­bat expe­ri­ence.

    ...

    There are also pro-Pales­tin­ian, pro-Tai­wan and anti-Chi­na mes­sages on his pro­file, includ­ing alle­ga­tions about Chi­nese “bio­log­i­cal war­fare” and ref­er­ences to the Covid-19 virus as an “attack”.

    On an X post from 2020, Routh sug­gest­ed he vot­ed for Trump in 2016 but became dis­il­lu­sioned, writ­ing: “I will be glad when you [are] gone.”

    Routh also post­ed online urg­ing Pres­i­dent Joe Biden and Vice-Pres­i­dent Har­ris to meet vic­tims of the attempt on Trump’s life in But­ler, Penn­syl­va­nia, in July.

    What are his polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tions?

    Routh was reg­is­tered as an unaf­fil­i­at­ed vot­er in North Car­oli­na, but appears to have vot­ed in the most recent Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­ma­ry in March, accord­ing to state records.

    In 2019 and 2020, he gave a num­ber of small dona­tions totalling around $140 (£106) to Act­Blue, a Demo­c­ra­t­ic fundrais­ing organ­i­sa­tion, accord­ing to online fed­er­al elec­tions records.

    An Asso­ci­at­ed Press pho­to of a truck out­side Routh’s Hawaii home dis­played a Biden-Har­ris cam­paign stick­er on the back.

    In the past Routh also backed can­di­dates such as Tul­si Gab­bard, a Demo­c­rat who has since left the par­ty and swung behind Trump, and also declared his sup­port for for­mer Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates Vivek Ramaswamy and Nik­ki Haley.

    What was Routh doing in Ukraine?

    Routh described him­self as a “vol­un­teer co-ordi­na­tor” and his ambi­tions to join com­bat were not realised.

    The Inter­na­tion­al Legion told the BBC that Routh had “nev­er been part of, asso­ci­at­ed with, or linked” with the legion ... in any capac­i­ty”.

    A vol­un­teer for the legion described Routh to the BBC as a chaot­ic pres­ence who kept try­ing to “sneak around” offi­cials and was “doing more harm than good”.

    The vol­un­teer said that Routh was in Ukraine in April 2022.

    “He was not part of any unit and his activ­i­ties were essen­tial­ly caus­ing chaos,” the vol­un­teer said.

    “He was also try­ing to pose as some sort of offi­cial enti­ty for all vol­un­teers, which, again, he was not,” she said.

    Routh told The New York Times in 2023 that he want­ed to recruit Afghan sol­diers who had fled the Tal­iban.

    One Face­book post from July of this year read: “Sol­diers, please do not call me. We are still try­ing to get Ukraine to accept Afghan sol­diers and hope to have some answers in the com­ing months... please have patience.”

    In a book self-pub­lished in Feb­ru­ary 2023, Routh grum­bled about how his efforts were received in Ukraine. “I have yet to see... the small­est amount of appre­ci­a­tion or respect,” he wrote.

    In the book, Routh said he spent five months in Ukraine and worked on var­i­ous projects includ­ing a drone-build­ing pro­gramme. He claims his efforts end­ed in fail­ure or were shut down by the author­i­ties.

    The book also con­tains a pas­sage where he encour­ages Iran­ian offi­cials, that they were “free to assas­si­nate Trump”.

    Does Routh have a crim­i­nal record?

    Records show Routh’s legal issues go back to the 1990s, includ­ing a vari­ety of felonies and mis­de­meanours, includ­ing numer­ous charges for stolen goods.

    He was charged and con­vict­ed of numer­ous felony offences in Guil­ford Coun­ty in North Car­oli­na between 2002 and 2010, accord­ing to online records.

    In 2002, he was charged for pos­ses­sion of a ful­ly auto­mat­ic machine gun, which was referred to in court fil­ings as a “weapon of mass destruc­tion”.

    A local news­pa­per report from the time not­ed that he bar­ri­cad­ed him­self in a busi­ness and had a three-hour stand-off with police offi­cers in the town of Greens­boro before being tak­en into cus­tody.

    In anoth­er inci­dent, records show him being charged with mis­de­meanours includ­ing a hit-and-run, resist­ing arrest, and a con­cealed weapons vio­la­tion.

    His alleged offences also include dri­ving with a revoked licence and pos­ses­sion of stolen prop­er­ty.

    In 2019, the FBI also received a tip that Mr Routh was a felon in pos­ses­sion of a firearm. The unver­i­fied tip was passed on to local law enforce­ment in Hon­olu­lu.

    For­mer neigh­bour Kim Mun­go describes Routh as a “sweet­heart” and said fed­er­al agents once raid­ed Routh’s prop­er­ty.

    She alleged that he used to keep “loads of stolen prop­er­ty and stuff” at his home, and said she saw Routh and his fam­i­ly fir­ing guns in the open.

    Does Routh have any fam­i­ly?

    Routh’s eldest son, Oran, described his father as “a lov­ing and car­ing father, and hon­est hard­work­ing man”.

    He told CNN: “I don’t know what’s hap­pened in Flori­da, and I hope things have just been blown out of pro­por­tion, because from the lit­tle I’ve heard it doesn’t sound like the man I know to do any­thing crazy, much less vio­lent.”

    ...

    What hap­pens next?

    Routh appeared in front of a judge on Mon­day at the Palm Beach Coun­ty court near Mar-a-Lago, charged with firearms offences.

    The charges against him did not include any ref­er­ences to try­ing to kill Trump, though the FBI has said it is inves­ti­gat­ing Sun­day’s inci­dent as an assas­si­na­tion attempt.

    Law enforce­ment stat­ed after the court appear­ance that the sus­pect did not fire a weapon and did not have a line of sight on Trump.

    ...

    ———–

    “What we know about Ryan Routh, sus­pect in Trump assas­si­na­tion attempt” by Ann But­ler and Mike Wendling; BBC News; 09/16/2024

    “He is not believed to have fired his own weapon dur­ing the inci­dent, and is not believed to have had a clear line of sight to Trump at any point.”

    No shots were fired by Routh and Trump was nev­er in his sights. It was­n’t near­ly the kind of appar­ent­ly threat to Trump’s life posed by Thomas Matthew Crooks. But it was still obvi­ous­ly a very seri­ous secu­ri­ty lapse based on what we’re learn­ing.

    Remark­ably, it sounds like Routh’s vehi­cle was fol­lowed by two Palm Beach Coun­ty offi­cers for 45 min­utes after he fled the scene. Why exact­ly he was being fol­lowed for that long with­out get­ting pulled over? Even more amaz­ing is that he was appar­ent­ly dri­ving a vehi­cle with num­ber plates that belonged to a 2012 Ford which had been report­ed as stolen. Was Routh being fol­lowed by two offi­cers for 45 min­utes while dri­ving a stolen vehi­cle?

    Also note he his phone records appear to indi­cate Routh was in the “vicin­i­ty” for rough­ly 12 hours. How did he know Trump was going to be there for this unan­nounced golf trip? We still have no idea. No short­age of mys­ter­ies in this sto­ry:

    ...
    Palm Beach Coun­ty Sher­iff Ric Brad­shaw said two offi­cers spot­ted Routh’s vehi­cle, a black Nis­san, and fol­lowed it for 45 min­utes.

    Routh was stopped on Inter­state 95, a major high­way, and arrest­ed.

    He has been ini­tial­ly charged with fed­er­al firearms offences. The affi­davit states that Routh’s phone was in the “vicin­i­ty” of the cov­ered area for 12 hours.

    The car, a Nis­san SUV, was lat­er deter­mined to have num­ber plates which belonged to a 2012 Ford which had been report­ed as stolen.
    ...

    Adding to the intrigue around the stolen car plates is the fact that, not only did he have a crim­i­nal record going back decades, but his neigh­bors appar­ent­ly new he used to keep “loads of stolen prop­er­ty and stuff” at his home while the fam­i­ly would fire guns in the open. The guy was­n’t exact­ly an upstand­ing cit­i­zen:

    ...
    Records show Routh’s legal issues go back to the 1990s, includ­ing a vari­ety of felonies and mis­de­meanours, includ­ing numer­ous charges for stolen goods.

    He was charged and con­vict­ed of numer­ous felony offences in Guil­ford Coun­ty in North Car­oli­na between 2002 and 2010, accord­ing to online records.

    In 2002, he was charged for pos­ses­sion of a ful­ly auto­mat­ic machine gun, which was referred to in court fil­ings as a “weapon of mass destruc­tion”.

    A local news­pa­per report from the time not­ed that he bar­ri­cad­ed him­self in a busi­ness and had a three-hour stand-off with police offi­cers in the town of Greens­boro before being tak­en into cus­tody.

    In anoth­er inci­dent, records show him being charged with mis­de­meanours includ­ing a hit-and-run, resist­ing arrest, and a con­cealed weapons vio­la­tion.

    His alleged offences also include dri­ving with a revoked licence and pos­ses­sion of stolen prop­er­ty.

    In 2019, the FBI also received a tip that Mr Routh was a felon in pos­ses­sion of a firearm. The unver­i­fied tip was passed on to local law enforce­ment in Hon­olu­lu.

    For­mer neigh­bour Kim Mun­go describes Routh as a “sweet­heart” and said fed­er­al agents once raid­ed Routh’s prop­er­ty.

    She alleged that he used to keep “loads of stolen prop­er­ty and stuff” at his home, and said she saw Routh and his fam­i­ly fir­ing guns in the open.
    ...

    And then we get to Routh’s per­plex­ing pol­i­tics: A 2016 Trump vot­er who, by 2020, had appar­ent­ly soured on Trump and made a few small dona­tions to Democ­rats via Act­Blue, much like Crooks. We’re also told he was declar­ing sup­port for for­mer Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates Vivek Ramaswamy and Nik­ki Haley, and yet a truck out­side his Hawai­ian res­i­dence appar­ent­ly had a Biden/Harris stick­er:

    ...
    There are also pro-Pales­tin­ian, pro-Tai­wan and anti-Chi­na mes­sages on his pro­file, includ­ing alle­ga­tions about Chi­nese “bio­log­i­cal war­fare” and ref­er­ences to the Covid-19 virus as an “attack”.

    On an X post from 2020, Routh sug­gest­ed he vot­ed for Trump in 2016 but became dis­il­lu­sioned, writ­ing: “I will be glad when you [are] gone.”

    Routh also post­ed online urg­ing Pres­i­dent Joe Biden and Vice-Pres­i­dent Har­ris to meet vic­tims of the attempt on Trump’s life in But­ler, Penn­syl­va­nia, in July.

    What are his polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tions?

    Routh was reg­is­tered as an unaf­fil­i­at­ed vot­er in North Car­oli­na, but appears to have vot­ed in the most recent Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­ma­ry in March, accord­ing to state records.

    In 2019 and 2020, he gave a num­ber of small dona­tions totalling around $140 (£106) to Act­Blue, a Demo­c­ra­t­ic fundrais­ing organ­i­sa­tion, accord­ing to online fed­er­al elec­tions records.

    An Asso­ci­at­ed Press pho­to of a truck out­side Routh’s Hawaii home dis­played a Biden-Har­ris cam­paign stick­er on the back.

    In the past Routh also backed can­di­dates such as Tul­si Gab­bard, a Demo­c­rat who has since left the par­ty and swung behind Trump, and also declared his sup­port for for­mer Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates Vivek Ramaswamy and Nik­ki Haley.
    ...

    But by far the most eye­brow-rais­ing aspect of this sto­ry is the fact that Routh is just some com­plete­ly ran­dom lunatic. He was a Ukraine ‘vol­un­teer’ fight­er who was even fea­tured in a 2023 NY Times piece where he described a scheme to recruit for­mer Afghan sol­diers who had fled to Iran and Pak­istan to fight for Ukraine. And yet, fol­low­ing his arrest, we are hear­ing the Inter­na­tion­al Legion active­ly dis­as­so­ci­at­ed itself from any­thing to do with Routh, char­ac­ter­iz­ing him as some­one who would just “sneak around” offi­cial “doing more harm than good”. Accord­ing to his self-pub­lished book he pub­lished in Feb­ru­ary of 2023, Routh claimed his efforts end­ed in fail­ure or were shut down by the author­i­ties. And yet that NY Times report where he dis­cussed his plans for the Afghan solid­er scheme was pub­lished in late March of 2023. So was Routh engaged in a real effort to recruit Afghan sol­diers for Ukraine? Or was he real­ly just inde­pen­dent­ly ‘doing more harm than good’ and mere­ly annoy­ing the Ukrain­ian forces? And then there’s the pas­sage in his self-pub­lished book encour­ag­ing Iran to assas­si­nate Trump. There’s no ques­tion the guy is oper­at­ing as a kind of chaos agent. But was he a pure­ly inde­pen­dent chaos agent?

    ...
    Routh repeat­ed­ly tout­ed his work in encour­ag­ing for­eign fight­ers to go to Ukraine to bat­tle against Rus­sia.

    How­ev­er, most of his organ­is­ing appears to have hap­pened while he was in the US, not in Ukraine, where in 2022 he was reject­ed by the coun­try’s Inter­na­tion­al Legion due to his lack of com­bat expe­ri­ence.

    ...

    What was Routh doing in Ukraine?

    Routh described him­self as a “vol­un­teer co-ordi­na­tor” and his ambi­tions to join com­bat were not realised.

    The Inter­na­tion­al Legion told the BBC that Routh had “nev­er been part of, asso­ci­at­ed with, or linked” with the legion ... in any capac­i­ty”.

    A vol­un­teer for the legion described Routh to the BBC as a chaot­ic pres­ence who kept try­ing to “sneak around” offi­cials and was “doing more harm than good”.

    The vol­un­teer said that Routh was in Ukraine in April 2022.

    “He was not part of any unit and his activ­i­ties were essen­tial­ly caus­ing chaos,” the vol­un­teer said.

    “He was also try­ing to pose as some sort of offi­cial enti­ty for all vol­un­teers, which, again, he was not,” she said.

    Routh told The New York Times in 2023 that he want­ed to recruit Afghan sol­diers who had fled the Tal­iban.

    One Face­book post from July of this year read: “Sol­diers, please do not call me. We are still try­ing to get Ukraine to accept Afghan sol­diers and hope to have some answers in the com­ing months... please have patience.”

    In a book self-pub­lished in Feb­ru­ary 2023, Routh grum­bled about how his efforts were received in Ukraine. “I have yet to see... the small­est amount of appre­ci­a­tion or respect,” he wrote.

    In the book, Routh said he spent five months in Ukraine and worked on var­i­ous projects includ­ing a drone-build­ing pro­gramme. He claims his efforts end­ed in fail­ure or were shut down by the author­i­ties.

    The book also con­tains a pas­sage where he encour­ages Iran­ian offi­cials, that they were “free to assas­si­nate Trump”.
    ...

    But as we’re going to see in the fol­low­ing NY Times report, it’s not just that Routh claimed to be coor­di­nat­ing with Ukraine’s Inter­na­tion­al Legion. When he was inter­viewed for that March 2023 New York Times piece, Routh claimed he was in Wash­ing­ton DC for a meet­ing with the U.S. Com­mis­sion on Secu­ri­ty and Coop­er­a­tion in Europe, known as the Helsin­ki Com­mis­sion “for two hours” to advo­cate for Ukraine. The Helsin­ki Com­mis­sion is led by mem­bers of Con­gress and staffed by con­gres­sion­al aides. So was this true?:

    The New York Times

    Sus­pect­ed Gun­man Said He Was Will­ing to Fight and Die in Ukraine

    Ryan Wes­ley Routh, 58, told The New York Times in 2023 that he had trav­eled to Ukraine and want­ed to recruit Afghan sol­diers to fight there.

    By Adam Gold­man, Thomas Gib­bons-Neff, Glenn Thrush and Najim Rahim
    Sept. 15, 2024
    Updat­ed 9:27 p.m. ET

    Ryan Wes­ley Routh, the 58-year-old man who was arrest­ed on Sun­day in con­nec­tion with what the F.B.I. described as an attempt­ed assas­si­na­tion on for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald J. Trump, had expressed the desire to fight and die in Ukraine.

    Mr. Routh’s posts on the social media site X revealed a pen­chant for vio­lent rhetoric in the weeks after Russia’s inva­sion of Ukraine in 2022. “I AM WILLING TO FLY TO KRAKOW AND GO TO THE BORDER OF UKRAINE TO VOLUNTEER AND FIGHT AND DIE,” he wrote.

    On the mes­sag­ing appli­ca­tion Sig­nal, Mr. Routh wrote that “Civil­ians must change this war and pre­vent future wars” as part of his pro­file bio. On What­sApp, his bio read, “Each one of us must do our part dai­ly in the small­est steps help sup­port human rights, free­dom and democ­ra­cy; we each must help the chi­nese.”

    Mr. Routh, a for­mer roof­ing con­trac­tor from Greens­boro, N.C., was inter­viewed by The New York Times in 2023 for an arti­cle about Amer­i­cans vol­un­teer­ing to aid the war effort in Ukraine. Mr. Routh, who had no mil­i­tary expe­ri­ence, said he had trav­eled to the coun­try after Russia’s inva­sion and want­ed to recruit Afghan sol­diers to fight there.

    In a tele­phone inter­view with The New York Times in 2023, when Mr. Routh was in Wash­ing­ton, he spoke with a self-assured­ness of a sea­soned diplo­mat who thought his plans to sup­port Ukraine’s war effort were sure to suc­ceed. But he appeared to have lit­tle patience for any­one who got in his way. When an Amer­i­can for­eign fight­er seemed talked down to him in a Face­book mes­sage he shared with The New York Times, Mr. Routh said, “he needs to be shot.”

    In the inter­view, Mr. Routh said he was in Wash­ing­ton to meet with the U.S. Com­mis­sion on Secu­ri­ty and Coop­er­a­tion in Europe, known as the Helsin­ki Com­mis­sion “for two hours” to help push for more sup­port for Ukraine. The com­mis­sion is led by mem­bers of Con­gress and staffed by con­gres­sion­al aides. It is influ­en­tial on mat­ters of democ­ra­cy and secu­ri­ty and has been vocal in sup­port­ing Ukraine.

    Mr. Routh also said he was seek­ing recruits for Ukraine from among Afghan sol­diers who had fled the Tal­iban. He said he planned to move them, in some cas­es ille­gal­ly, from Pak­istan and Iran to Ukraine. He said dozens had expressed inter­est.

    “We can prob­a­bly pur­chase some pass­ports through Pak­istan, since it’s such a cor­rupt coun­try,” he said.

    It is not clear whether Mr. Routh fol­lowed through, but one for­mer Afghan sol­dier said he had been con­tact­ed and was inter­est­ed in fight­ing if it meant leav­ing Iran, where he was liv­ing ille­gal­ly.

    A man with the same name and sim­i­lar age as Mr. Routh was arrest­ed in 2002 in Greens­boro, N.C., after bar­ri­cad­ing him­self inside a build­ing with a ful­ly auto­mat­ic weapon, accord­ing to the Greens­boro News & Record news­pa­per.

    ...

    It is not clear if Mr. Routh, a lean man with red­dish-brown hair who wore Amer­i­can flag cloth­ing in one of his pro­file pic­tures, fired any shots before leav­ing the scene on Sun­day, accord­ing to the Secret Ser­vice.

    In a series of posts on X in 2020, Mr. Routh expressed admi­ra­tion for for­mer Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Tul­si Gab­bard, then a Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, say­ing “she will tire­less­ly nego­ti­ate peace deals in Syr­ia, Afghanistan, and all tur­moil zones.”

    At some point over the past sev­er­al years. Mr. Routh moved to Hawaii, where a man with his name ran a small busi­ness.

    In a May 2020 post, he invit­ed Kim Jong-un, the North Kore­an leader, to Hawaii for a vaca­tion and offered to act as “ambas­sador and liai­son” to resolve dis­putes between the two nations.

    ...

    ———–

    “Sus­pect­ed Gun­man Said He Was Will­ing to Fight and Die in Ukraine” By Adam Gold­man, Thomas Gib­bons-Neff, Glenn Thrush and Najim Rahim; The New York Times; 09/15/2024

    “In the inter­view, Mr. Routh said he was in Wash­ing­ton to meet with the U.S. Com­mis­sion on Secu­ri­ty and Coop­er­a­tion in Europe, known as the Helsin­ki Com­mis­sion “for two hours” to help push for more sup­port for Ukraine. The com­mis­sion is led by mem­bers of Con­gress and staffed by con­gres­sion­al aides. It is influ­en­tial on mat­ters of democ­ra­cy and secu­ri­ty and has been vocal in sup­port­ing Ukraine.”

    Was Routh real­ly in SD to meet­ing with the Helsin­ki Com­mis­sion when he was inter­viewed for that March 2023 NY Times piece? It seems like a crit­i­cal detail in this sto­ry: was Routh a fab­u­list? Or some­one actu­al­ly work­ing with Con­gress to gen­er­ate more sup­port for Ukraine? A crit­i­cal, and poten­tial­ly ver­i­fi­able, detail:

    ...
    In a tele­phone inter­view with The New York Times in 2023, when Mr. Routh was in Wash­ing­ton, he spoke with a self-assured­ness of a sea­soned diplo­mat who thought his plans to sup­port Ukraine’s war effort were sure to suc­ceed. But he appeared to have lit­tle patience for any­one who got in his way. When an Amer­i­can for­eign fight­er seemed talked down to him in a Face­book mes­sage he shared with The New York Times, Mr. Routh said, “he needs to be shot.”

    ...

    Mr. Routh also said he was seek­ing recruits for Ukraine from among Afghan sol­diers who had fled the Tal­iban. He said he planned to move them, in some cas­es ille­gal­ly, from Pak­istan and Iran to Ukraine. He said dozens had expressed inter­est.

    “We can prob­a­bly pur­chase some pass­ports through Pak­istan, since it’s such a cor­rupt coun­try,” he said.

    It is not clear whether Mr. Routh fol­lowed through, but one for­mer Afghan sol­dier said he had been con­tact­ed and was inter­est­ed in fight­ing if it meant leav­ing Iran, where he was liv­ing ille­gal­ly.
    ...

    Adding to the mys­tery is the fact that Routh real­ly did seem to be suf­fer­ing from some sort of delu­sion of grandeur in May of 2020 when he invit­ed Kim John-un to Hawaii to resolve dis­putes between the US and North Korea. Either that or the invi­ta­tion was joke. But at this point, it’s hard to rule it out as a joke:

    ...
    In a series of posts on X in 2020, Mr. Routh expressed admi­ra­tion for for­mer Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Tul­si Gab­bard, then a Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, say­ing “she will tire­less­ly nego­ti­ate peace deals in Syr­ia, Afghanistan, and all tur­moil zones.”

    At some point over the past sev­er­al years. Mr. Routh moved to Hawaii, where a man with his name ran a small busi­ness.

    In a May 2020 post, he invit­ed Kim Jong-un, the North Kore­an leader, to Hawaii for a vaca­tion and offered to act as “ambas­sador and liai­son” to resolve dis­putes between the two nations.
    ...

    Final­ly, as for­mer FBI assis­tant direc­tor Chris Sweck­er puts it in the fol­low­ing Newsweek piece, the biggest ques­tion in this whole sto­ry is quite sim­ply how did this seem­ing­ly ran­dom indi­vid­ual known Trump was going to be in that loca­tion when this was­n’t pub­lic knowl­edge. Did he have insid­er knowl­edge? Keep in mind that this inci­dent took place at the Trump Inter­na­tion­al Golf Course in Flori­da. So if, for exam­ple, a golf course employ­ee saw Trump and some­how tipped off Routh, it would have been one of Trump’s own employ­ees. But there’s no rea­son to assume a golf course employ­ee would have nec­es­sar­i­ly been the leak­er. And yet it seems like some­one had to leak this info to Routh.

    At the same time, don’t for­get what we saw above: Routh’s cell­phone records indi­cate he was ‘in the area’ for rough­ly 12 hours before the event. It sug­gests Routh knew Trump was going to be at the course well before he arrived there. So hope­ful­ly inves­ti­ga­tors are look­ing into when the deci­sion was made for Trump to have his sur­prise round of golf at that course and who was privy to that knowl­edge. Because based on what we know so far, it’s sounds like the ‘lone nut’ Routh was oper­at­ing with inside knowl­edge
    :

    Newsweek

    Pos­si­bil­i­ty Ryan Wes­ley Routh Had Infor­mant ‘Scary’: Ex-FBI Leader

    Pub­lished Sep 16, 2024 at 4:48 AM EDT
    Updat­ed Sep 16, 2024 at 11:57 AM EDT

    By Sean O’Driscoll
    Senior Crime and Courts Reporter

    The man accused of try­ing to assas­si­nate Don­ald Trump may have had inside infor­ma­tion on his move­ments, a for­mer FBI assis­tant direc­tor said.

    Chris Sweck­er told Newsweek that law enforce­ment will have to estab­lish how Ryan Wes­ley Routh appeared to know the exact details of when Trump was play­ing golf at a Flori­da resort.

    Shots were fired at Trump Nation­al Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Flori­da, on Sun­day where Trump, the 2024 GOP pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee, was golf­ing. No injuries have been report­ed, accord­ing to the Palm Beach Coun­ty Sher­if­f’s Office.

    The FBI lat­er said it was join­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion into the shoot­ing.

    Sweck­er, who retired from the Bureau as assis­tant direc­tor with respon­si­bil­i­ty over all FBI crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tions, said Routh appeared to be a “wingnut” who hat­ed author­i­ty.

    “The biggest ques­tion to answer is: ‘How did the would-be assas­sin know to be at that loca­tion at that time?’ ” he said. “There are only three pos­si­ble answers: He guessed and got very lucky; he con­duct­ed sur­veil­lance on Trump and fol­lowed him to the golf course or he had inside infor­ma­tion about Trump’s sched­ule.

    “The last answer is scary and has impli­ca­tions that anoth­er per­son was involved.”

    West Palm Beach Sher­iff Ric Brad­shaw said at a news con­fer­ence on Sun­day that a U.S. Secret Ser­vice agent spot­ted the bar­rel of a rifle stick­ing out the fence of the golf course and “engaged” with the sus­pect. The gun­man may have got to with­in 300 yards of Trump, law enforce­ment said at the con­fer­ence.

    In a Face­book post on Sun­day after­noon, the Mar­tin Coun­ty Sher­if­f’s Office said that it had “stopped a vehi­cle and tak­en a sus­pect into cus­tody believed to be con­nect­ed to a shoot­ing inci­dent at Trump Inter­na­tion­al in Palm Beach Coun­ty.”

    ...

    ———–

    “Pos­si­bil­i­ty Ryan Wes­ley Routh Had Infor­mant ‘Scary’: Ex-FBI Leader” By Sean O’Driscoll; Newsweek; 09/16/2024

    “Chris Sweck­er told Newsweek that law enforce­ment will have to estab­lish how Ryan Wes­ley Routh appeared to know the exact details of when Trump was play­ing golf at a Flori­da resort.”

    How did an appar­ent deranged lunatic work­ing entire­ly on his own seem­ing­ly car­ry out a plan that required detailed knowl­edge about some­thing he was­n’t sup­posed to know about? Trump’s golf course trip was­n’t pub­lic knowl­edge. How did Routh know this? Did he just hap­pen to be in the area when he got a tip from some­one about Trump being in town for a round of golf? This is a good time to keep in mind that this took place at the Trump Inter­na­tion­al Golf Course in Flori­da. In oth­er words, if a golf course employ­ee hap­pened to be the per­son who informed Routh of Trump’s pres­ence, it would have been one of Trump’s own employ­ees. At the same time, recall what we saw above: Routh’s cell­phone indi­cat­ed it was ‘in the area’ for rough­ly 12 hours. Which rais­es the ques­tion: why was Routh in that area in the first place? If Routh had no valid rea­son to be there it’s only rea­son­able to con­clude he was there for this ‘event’:

    ...
    Sweck­er, who retired from the Bureau as assis­tant direc­tor with respon­si­bil­i­ty over all FBI crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tions, said Routh appeared to be a “wingnut” who hat­ed author­i­ty.

    “The biggest ques­tion to answer is: ‘How did the would-be assas­sin know to be at that loca­tion at that time?’ ” he said. “There are only three pos­si­ble answers: He guessed and got very lucky; he con­duct­ed sur­veil­lance on Trump and fol­lowed him to the golf course or he had inside infor­ma­tion about Trump’s sched­ule.

    “The last answer is scary and has impli­ca­tions that anoth­er per­son was involved.”

    West Palm Beach Sher­iff Ric Brad­shaw said at a news con­fer­ence on Sun­day that a U.S. Secret Ser­vice agent spot­ted the bar­rel of a rifle stick­ing out the fence of the golf course and “engaged” with the sus­pect. The gun­man may have got to with­in 300 yards of Trump, law enforce­ment said at the con­fer­ence.
    ...

    Final­ly, note the fol­low­ing detail: it was the Mar­tin Coun­ty Sher­if­f’s Office that actu­al­ly appre­hend­ed Routh. And yet, as we saw above, two West Palm Beach police report­ed­ly fol­lowed Routh for rough­ly 45 min­utes after spot­ting his vehi­cle. Why was­n’t he appre­hend­ed soon­er? It’s just one more mys­tery in this sto­ry:

    ...
    In a Face­book post on Sun­day after­noon, the Mar­tin Coun­ty Sher­if­f’s Office said that it had “stopped a vehi­cle and tak­en a sus­pect into cus­tody believed to be con­nect­ed to a shoot­ing inci­dent at Trump Inter­na­tion­al in Palm Beach Coun­ty.”
    ...

    And, of course, let’s not for­get that any ques­tions about whether or not insid­er knowl­edge facil­i­tat­ed this inci­dent are the kinds of ques­tions that loom heav­i­ly over the Crooks shoot­ing. Or at least should be loom­ing heav­i­ly. At this point it’s most­ly just a fog of ‘WTF?!’ loom­ing over both inves­ti­ga­tions.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | September 17, 2024, 1:09 am

  21. I don’t think the Cold War­riors are going to let Trump get into office again. Or should I just say the War­riors due to their lack of cold­ness?

    Posted by Gk | September 18, 2024, 7:19 pm

  22. Details con­tin­ue to trick­le in on the appar­ent sec­ond assas­si­na­tion attempt against Don­ald Trump this year. We have more clar­i­ty on what hap­pened, although not real­ly any more clar­i­ty on why or how this inci­dent took place.

    As we saw, the gun­man, Ryan Wes­ley Routh, report­ed­ly spent rough­ly 12 hours in the area of the Trump Inter­na­tion­al Golf Resort near Mar-a-Lago where he was even­tu­al­ly spot­ted by the Secret Ser­vice before flee­ing, accord­ing to his cell­phone’s data. We also learned how Routh served as an inter­na­tion­al vol­un­teer for Ukraine, and even engaged in efforts to recruit Afghan sol­diers who have fled the Tal­iban to fight for Ukraine. And yet, Ukraine’s Inter­na­tion­al Legion has insist­ed that Routh was nev­er a mem­ber of the unit and was seen as more of a chaos agent. At the same time, it remained very unclear how Routh knew Trump was going to be at the golf course that day since there was no pub­lic post­ings about it.

    We’re now learn­ing that Routh did­n’t just spend those 12 hours in the area. He was camped out in the spot where he was even­tu­al­ly spot­ted for that entire 12 hour peri­od, based on cell­phone data. So it’s not the case Routh was just in the gen­er­al area and close enough to oppor­tunis­ti­cal­ly head to the golf course after learn­ing about Trump’s pres­ence. Routh plant­ed him­self in that spot just before 2AM and stayed there wait­ing for near­ly twelve hours.

    We’re also learn­ing more about how Routh might have known Trump was going to be at that course that day. Accord­ing to local res­i­dents, Trump is known to play golf at the course near­ly every Sun­day he’s not on the cam­paign trail. So it sounds like it’s pos­si­ble Routh knew this fact and guessed cor­rect­ly that Trump was going to be there that day. And yet, we’re also told that Trump had spent that Sat­ur­day evening at a cam­paign event in Utah. Adding to the mys­tery is the fact that we are also told by the Secret Ser­vice that Trump was “not even real­ly sup­posed to go there”, result­ing in a last minute scram­ble to put a secu­ri­ty plan togeth­er. Did Routh see an emp­ty cam­paign sched­ule for that Sun­day and just cor­rect­ly guess that Trump was going to be back at Mar-a-Lago that day? Either that, or he had a tip.

    And then there’s the updates we’re get­ting about Routh’s time in Ukraine. First, it turns out Routh was actu­al­ly inter­viewed in the west­ern press a month before that 2023 New York Times inter­view where he shared his plans for recruit­ing Afghan sol­diers who had fled the Tal­iban to fight for Ukraine. The Feb­ru­ary 2023 inter­view was for a short piece in the Finan­cial Times about the endur­ing sym­bol­ism of a “Flags of the Fall­en” memo­r­i­al set up by Routh in 2022. As the arti­cle not­ed, the ‘flag gar­den’ start­ed off as a few dozen flags — flags for Ukraini­ans killed in the war — to thou­sands, fill­ing a seg­ment of the lawn adja­cent to Kyiv’s Inde­pen­dence Square.

    The FT just post­ed an update to that sto­ry, reveal­ing that Routh told the FT dur­ing that inter­view that, “They said ‘You’re 56, you’re old and you have no experience’...So why don’t you recruit and co-ordi­nate?” Routh also described how Kyiv author­i­ties ini­tial­ly tore down a memo­r­i­al he set up at the Maid­an, which result­ed in him set­ting up the flag gar­den. The FT piece also include com­ments from an unnamed indi­vid­ual who knew Routh in Kyiv and said Routh kept “a data­base” of Afghan sol­diers, but that the Inter­na­tion­al Legion viewed the plan as far fetched and dis­missed the idea. It also sounds like Routh was­n’t just try­ing to recruit Afghan sol­diers to fight in Ukraine. Tai­wan and Haiti were also des­ti­na­tions he was explor­ing.

    But per­haps the most con­se­quen­tial update on Routh’s time in Ukraine involves his con­tact with the Azov move­ment. It turns out there are at least two known instances where Routh attend­ed pro-Azov ral­lies in Kyiv. The first was in April of 2022 and the sec­ond in May of 2022. In the case of the lat­ter ral­ly, Routh was actu­al­ly videoed at the ral­ly and shows up briefly in a video released by the “Save Azov” Twit­ter account. Azov has declared that it has no rela­tions with Routh and sug­gest­ed that attempts to tie the group to Routh are Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da.

    Those are just some of the details about Routh’s time in Ukraine described in the fol­low­ing Radio Free Europe/Radio Lib­er­ty report that also includes an account from Chris­t­ian Lutz, a Ger­man who runs an aid orga­ni­za­tion and met Routh sev­er­al times in 2022. A Lutz recounts, “once I was dri­ving him around Kyiv when he had an idea of look­ing for a fac­to­ry to build drones, a drone-man­u­fac­tur­ing plant,...We were trav­el­ing with a sol­dier. Some low-rank sol­dier. I don’t remem­ber the name. The sol­dier was help­ing him casu­al­ly.” It’s just one more exam­ple of how, despite Routh being por­trayed as a com­plete­ly inde­pen­dent actor, Routh seemed to be at least net­work­ing with plen­ty of peo­ple dur­ing his Ukrain­ian adven­tures:

    Radio Free Europe/Radio Lib­er­ty

    ‘The Recruiter Guy With An Amer­i­can Flag Around His Neck’: Who Is The Man Accused In Appar­ent Trump Assas­si­na­tion Attempt?

    By Alek­sander Palikot and Mike Eck­el
    Sep­tem­ber 16, 2024 16:06 GMT

    KYIV — In the ear­ly months after Rus­si­a’s full-scale inva­sion of Ukraine, Ryan Wes­ley Routh was a fre­quent and vis­i­ble pres­ence in Kyiv, reach­ing out to pedes­tri­ans on the city’s famed Khreschatyk Street, address­ing peo­ple in Eng­lish, exchang­ing phone num­bers, and ask­ing for help in sup­port­ing Ukraine’s armed forces.

    He was seen by vol­un­teers com­ing to Kyiv as a kind of mas­cot for Ukraine’s mil­i­tary, said Chris­t­ian Lutz, a Ger­man man who runs an aid orga­ni­za­tion called Phoenix and met Routh sev­er­al times in 2022.

    “‘The recruiter guy with an Amer­i­can flag around his neck’– It’s how every­body referred to him,” Lutz told RFE/RL. “He seemed to be a lone wolf. He did­n’t have col­leagues or friends with him.”

    Fast for­ward two years: Routh, 58, is now a sus­pect in an alleged assas­si­na­tion attempt against for­mer U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump. Routh was detained by police in Flori­da on Sep­tem­ber 15 after Secret Ser­vice agents spot­ted him alleged­ly point­ing a rifle at Trump as the Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­date golfed at a West Palm Beach club.

    Routh was arrest­ed after flee­ing the scene, and agents recov­ered an “AK-47-style” rifle with a scope, along with two back­packs and a GoPro cam­era from the scene, Palm Beach Coun­ty Sher­iff Ric Brad­shaw told reporters.

    ...

    “What the f*** is going on? This can­not be true,” Lutz said when he heard the news about Routh’s arrest.

    Some of Ukraine’s best-known vol­un­teer fight­ing units were quick to dis­tance them­selves from Routh, releas­ing state­ments deny­ing any con­nec­tion to him.

    “Routh has nev­er served in the Inter­na­tion­al Legion of the Main Direc­torate of Intel­li­gence of the Min­istry of Defense of Ukraine. He has no rela­tion to the unit,” the Inter­na­tion­al Legion, an offi­cial­ly sanc­tioned unit made up of for­eign vol­un­teers, said in a Telegram post. “Rumors cir­cu­lat­ing in cer­tain media are not true.”

    In April 2022, Routh appeared at a ral­ly in Kyiv in sup­port of the Azov Bat­tal­ion — a con­tro­ver­sial mil­i­tary unit revered by many in Ukraine for its fight­ing prowess.

    In the pre­ced­ing months, after weeks of hold­ing out in the port city of Mar­i­upol against a with­er­ing Russ­ian siege, bat­tal­ion mem­bers had final­ly sur­ren­dered, and many had been tak­en pris­on­er by Rus­sia. Fam­i­ly mem­bers waged a pub­lic rela­tions cam­paign, and staged ral­lies, to try and press for their rel­a­tives’ release.

    Accord­ing to an Asso­ci­at­ed Press video of the event, Routh was seen wear­ing a blue vest with a U.S. flag on its back and hold­ing a plac­ard that read: “We can­not tol­er­ate cor­rup­tion and evil for anoth­er 50+ years. End Rus­sia for our kids.”

    Routh also appeared in a video pub­lished in May 2022 by a Twit­ter account run by the rel­a­tives of Azov mem­bers.

    “We would like to offi­cial­ly state that Ryan Wes­ley Routh has no con­nec­tion to Azov and has nev­er had any con­nec­tion to Azov,” the group said in a post to X on Sep­tem­ber 16. “The peace­ful demon­stra­tion he attend­ed was open and any­one could join it. He was caught on the video filmed by the pro­test­ers by acci­dent.”

    Speak­ing by phone from Ger­many, Lutz told RFE/RL he met Routh on his first trip to Kyiv in June 2022.

    “He seemed very com­mu­nica­tive, extro­vert­ed, and hyper-focused on his task of get­ting for­eign­ers into the Ukrain­ian Army,” Lutz said.

    “Once I was dri­ving him around Kyiv when he had an idea of look­ing for a fac­to­ry to build drones, a drone-man­u­fac­tur­ing plant,” he said. “We were trav­el­ing with a sol­dier. Some low-rank sol­dier. I don’t remem­ber the name. The sol­dier was help­ing him casu­al­ly.”

    Lutz said he lat­er became wary of Routh’s efforts, and he ulti­mate­ly blocked Routh on social media because, he said, Routh was bom­bard­ing him with mes­sages.

    Routh’s per­sis­tence, and his pub­lic pres­ence, brought him atten­tion from some jour­nal­ists, includ­ing Newsweek, which pub­lished a brief inter­view with him in the mag­a­zine’s Roman­ian edi­tion.

    “This con­flict is def­i­nite­ly black and white,” he was quot­ed as say­ing. “This is about good ver­sus evil.”

    Pri­or to his trav­els to Ukraine, and his efforts to help its mil­i­tary, Routh led what appeared to be an itin­er­ant life, work­ing for a time as a roof­ing con­trac­tor in Greens­boro, North Car­oli­na. He did not serve in the U.S. mil­i­tary.

    Accord­ing to the Greens­boro News & Record news­pa­per, a man the paper iden­ti­fied as Routh and who had the same age was arrest­ed by police in 2002 after bar­ri­cad­ing him­self inside a build­ing with an auto­mat­ic weapon.

    ...

    Routh’s social media accounts — on X and on Face­book – have been closed down as of Sep­tem­ber 16. But archived posts showed a mix of inter­ests and rants about U.S. pol­i­tics, as well as the Ukraine war.

    In a series of posts on X in 2023, Routh claimed he was recruit­ing Afghan sol­diers who were will­ing to serve in Tai­wan or Haiti.

    On the job-net­work­ing site LinkedIn, a pro­file list­ed under Routh’s name matched many of his bio­graph­i­cal details and said he was self-employed at a Hawaii com­pa­ny called Camp Box Hon­olu­lu.

    A March 2023 post on the same LinkedIn pro­file showed two undat­ed pho­tos of what appeared to be Routh in front of the U.S. Capi­tol in Wash­ing­ton, and at Kyiv’s famed Maid­an, or Inde­pen­dence Square. The pho­tos were cap­tioned: “In DC and Kyiv to pro­vide sol­diers for the war effort.”

    ...

    ————

    “ ‘The Recruiter Guy With An Amer­i­can Flag Around His Neck’: Who Is The Man Accused In Appar­ent Trump Assas­si­na­tion Attempt?” By Alek­sander Palikot and Mike Eck­el; Radio Free Europe/Radio Lib­er­ty; 09/16/2024

    “He was seen by vol­un­teers com­ing to Kyiv as a kind of mas­cot for Ukraine’s mil­i­tary, said Chris­t­ian Lutz, a Ger­man man who runs an aid orga­ni­za­tion called Phoenix and met Routh sev­er­al times in 2022.”

    A mas­cot for Ukraine’s mil­i­tary. That’s how one observ­er described Routh’s activ­i­ties in Ukraine, who went on to recount an expe­ri­ence of trav­el­ing around Kyiv with Routh and “some low-rank sol­dier” who was help­ing Routh casu­al­ly. At a min­i­mum, it estab­lish­es that Routh was­n’t oper­at­ing entire­ly inde­pen­dent­ly dur­ing his time in Kyiv:

    ...
    Speak­ing by phone from Ger­many, Lutz told RFE/RL he met Routh on his first trip to Kyiv in June 2022.

    “He seemed very com­mu­nica­tive, extro­vert­ed, and hyper-focused on his task of get­ting for­eign­ers into the Ukrain­ian Army,” Lutz said.

    “Once I was dri­ving him around Kyiv when he had an idea of look­ing for a fac­to­ry to build drones, a drone-man­u­fac­tur­ing plant,” he said. “We were trav­el­ing with a sol­dier. Some low-rank sol­dier. I don’t remem­ber the name. The sol­dier was help­ing him casu­al­ly.”

    Lutz said he lat­er became wary of Routh’s efforts, and he ulti­mate­ly blocked Routh on social media because, he said, Routh was bom­bard­ing him with mes­sages.
    ...

    There’s also this inter­est­ing detail: it sounds like Routh was­n’t just inter­est­ed in recruit for­mer Afghan sol­diers to fight in Afghanistan. He was also look­ing to recruit for Tai­wan or Haiti. As we saw, Routh is an advo­cate of the ‘COVID was Chi­nese bio­log­i­cal war­fare’ nar­ra­tive. It sounds the war Ukraine isn’t the only con­flict Routh was try­ing to influ­ence:

    ...
    In a series of posts on X in 2023, Routh claimed he was recruit­ing Afghan sol­diers who were will­ing to serve in Tai­wan or Haiti.
    ...

    And then we get to these very inter­est­ing appear­ances by Routh at two pro-Azov events in April and May of 2022. Inter­est­ing­ly, the video show­ing Routh at a May 2022 event (where he appears for about a sec­ond at rough­ly 1:50) appears to be a heav­i­ly edit­ed video pro­duced by the Twit­ter account “SAVE AZOV” which seems to exist to pro­mote the mes­sage that the world must save the Azov Brigade. The Twit­ter account was cre­at­ed in March of 2022. So Routh attend­ed a ‘Save Azov’ ral­ly where he was filmed and who­ev­er pro­duced that film decid­ed to include a brief clip of him:

    ...
    In April 2022, Routh appeared at a ral­ly in Kyiv in sup­port of the Azov Bat­tal­ion — a con­tro­ver­sial mil­i­tary unit revered by many in Ukraine for its fight­ing prowess.

    In the pre­ced­ing months, after weeks of hold­ing out in the port city of Mar­i­upol against a with­er­ing Russ­ian siege, bat­tal­ion mem­bers had final­ly sur­ren­dered, and many had been tak­en pris­on­er by Rus­sia. Fam­i­ly mem­bers waged a pub­lic rela­tions cam­paign, and staged ral­lies, to try and press for their rel­a­tives’ release.

    Accord­ing to an Asso­ci­at­ed Press video of the event, Routh was seen wear­ing a blue vest with a U.S. flag on its back and hold­ing a plac­ard that read: “We can­not tol­er­ate cor­rup­tion and evil for anoth­er 50+ years. End Rus­sia for our kids.”

    Routh also appeared in a video pub­lished in May 2022 by a Twit­ter account run by the rel­a­tives of Azov mem­bers.

    “We would like to offi­cial­ly state that Ryan Wes­ley Routh has no con­nec­tion to Azov and has nev­er had any con­nec­tion to Azov,” the group said in a post to X on Sep­tem­ber 16. “The peace­ful demon­stra­tion he attend­ed was open and any­one could join it. He was caught on the video filmed by the pro­test­ers by acci­dent.”
    ...

    Next, here’s a Finan­cial Times report that includes some inter­est­ing infor­ma­tion on Routh’s activ­i­ties in Ukraine. The report is based, in part, on an inter­view Routh did for the FT in Feb­ru­ary of 2023 about a “Flags of the Fall­en” gar­den Routh start­ed in 2022 next to Kyiv’s Inde­pen­dence Square. Dur­ing that inter­view, Routh told the FT that after the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary reject­ed him for being too old and inex­pe­ri­enced, they sug­gest­ed he instead help with recruit­ment efforts. We’re also told by an unnamed indi­vid­ual who knew Routh dur­ing his time in Kyiv that Routh had “a data­base” of Afghan sol­diers but that his plan for them was viewed as far-fetched and dis­missed by the Inter­na­tion­al Legion:

    The Finan­cial Times

    Sus­pect­ed Don­ald Trump gun­man sought — and failed — to help Ukraine fight Rus­sia

    Ryan Routh had trav­elled to Kyiv to vol­un­teer after Moscow’s full-scale inva­sion in 2022

    John Reed in New Del­hi and Christo­pher Miller in Kyiv Sep­tem­ber 16 2024

    Ryan Routh, the sus­pect in an appar­ent assas­si­na­tion attempt on Don­ald Trump on Sun­day, was one of thou­sands of for­eign vol­un­teers who head­ed to Ukraine after Russia’s full-scale inva­sion in Feb­ru­ary 2022.

    But on arrival in the Pol­ish bor­der town of Medy­ka, he turned up at the office of the Ukrain­ian inter­na­tion­al legion only to be reject­ed. “They said ‘You’re 56, you’re old and you have no expe­ri­ence’,” Routh, speak­ing from Hawaii, told the Finan­cial Times in an inter­view last year. “So why don’t you recruit and co-ordi­nate?”

    *****

    On Sun­day, law enforce­ment offi­cials detained a man who they said had been hid­ing in bush­es bor­der­ing the Trump Inter­na­tion­al Golf Club in Flori­da. They found an AK-47 style rifle with a scope, two back­packs and a GoPro cam­era in the bush­es.

    ...

    After his rejec­tion by Ukrain­ian forces, Routh, who had pre­vi­ous­ly worked in con­struc­tion and lived in Hawaii, then went to Kyiv “to co-ordi­nate vol­un­teers”, pitch­ing a tent on the capital’s Maid­an Square.

    *****

    There, often seen wear­ing a star-stud­ded, red-white-and-blue T‑shirt, he hung flags on a ply­wood dis­play for every coun­try that had civil­ian vol­un­teers fight­ing on the Ukrain­ian side.

    “My ini­tial goal was to pro­mote the for­eign fight­ers and for­eign­ers who were there sac­ri­fic­ing their time and ener­gy and lives to sup­port Ukraine,” he said. “I want­ed to put flags in the yard for them.”

    He also hung fly­ers around Kyiv’s cen­tral square offer­ing $1,200 to for­eign­ers who took up arms against Rus­sia. The con­tact infor­ma­tion on the fly­ers was his own and mil­i­tary recruiters at the time said he had no offi­cial con­nec­tion to Ukraine’s bur­geon­ing inter­na­tion­al legion.

    ...

    *****

    But most who showed up in Kyiv were not bat­tle-hard­ened for­mer sol­diers from Nato mil­i­taries; they were sim­i­lar to Routh, lack­ing mil­i­tary expe­ri­ence and unsure of how to nav­i­gate a for­eign coun­try.

    Routh was also turned down by an arm of the inter­na­tion­al legion linked to Ukraine’s mil­i­tary intel­li­gence direc­torate GUR, said a per­son who knew him and was pre­vi­ous­ly asso­ci­at­ed with that unit. The per­son described Routh as “a lit­tle too much” for them and the legion, cit­ing his errat­ic behav­iour.

    Ukraine’s inter­na­tion­al legion con­firmed on Mon­day that “Amer­i­can cit­i­zen Ryan Routh has nev­er served in the Inter­na­tion­al Legion of the Main Direc­torate of Intel­li­gence of the Min­istry of Defense of Ukraine, [and] has no rela­tion to the unit.”

    When speak­ing to the FT, Routh described a series of alter­ca­tions with Ukrain­ian police, city author­i­ties and oth­ers over the sit­ing of the makeshift memo­r­i­al and tent on the Maid­an.

    “Police destroyed it [the ply­wood memo­r­i­al] and said ‘You can’t do it here’,” Routh said. He then moved the memo­r­i­al to a near­by site and also assem­bled an impromp­tu “Flags of the Fall­en” memo­r­i­al with paper flags remem­ber­ing Ukraini­ans who died in the war, which remains there today.

    The Amer­i­can also told the FT he was work­ing to get thou­sands of Afghan sol­diers who fled the coun­try after the Tal­iban takeover in 2021 to fight on Kyiv’s side. “We’ve got 20,000 Afghan sol­diers sit­ting around and doing noth­ing,” Routh said, and they could be recruit­ed to fight “so this war doesn’t drag on for years”.

    The FT was unable to inde­pen­dent­ly ver­i­fy the claim at the time. A per­son who knew Routh in Kyiv said on Mon­day that he had kept “a data­base” of Afghan sol­diers but that his plan was viewed as far-fetched and was dis­missed by offi­cials in Ukraine’s inter­na­tion­al legion.

    When asked why he had gone to Ukraine to vol­un­teer, Routh said at the time: “For me it’s pret­ty much a no-brain­er. I’m pret­ty baf­fled that every­one isn’t there.”

    ————-

    “Sus­pect­ed Don­ald Trump gun­man sought — and failed — to help Ukraine fight Rus­sia” by John Reed in New Del­hi and Christo­pher Miller; The Finan­cial Times; 09/16/2024

    “But on arrival in the Pol­ish bor­der town of Medy­ka, he turned up at the office of the Ukrain­ian inter­na­tion­al legion only to be reject­ed. “They said ‘You’re 56, you’re old and you have no expe­ri­ence’,” Routh, speak­ing from Hawaii, told the Finan­cial Times in an inter­view last year. “So why don’t you recruit and co-ordi­nate?””

    Routh was too old and inex­pe­ri­enced to fight, so why not recruit and co-ordi­nate? That’s the advice Routh was giv­en by the Inter­na­tion­al Legion. Or at least that’s what Routh claimed he was told dur­ing an inter­view with the Finan­cial Times in Feb­ru­ary of 2023. Routh went on to share with the FT how Kyiv author­i­ties end­ed up destroy­ing a ply­wood memo­r­i­al set up by Routh in the Maid­an, result­ing in Routh estab­lish­ing a “Flags of the Fall­en” memo­r­i­al near­by that remains there today. In fact, that Feb 2023 inter­view of Routh was about the “Flags of the Fall­en” memo­r­i­al and the promi­nent place it has acquired next to Kyiv’s Inde­pen­dence Square:

    ...
    After his rejec­tion by Ukrain­ian forces, Routh, who had pre­vi­ous­ly worked in con­struc­tion and lived in Hawaii, then went to Kyiv “to co-ordi­nate vol­un­teers”, pitch­ing a tent on the capital’s Maid­an Square.

    ...

    He also hung fly­ers around Kyiv’s cen­tral square offer­ing $1,200 to for­eign­ers who took up arms against Rus­sia. The con­tact infor­ma­tion on the fly­ers was his own and mil­i­tary recruiters at the time said he had no offi­cial con­nec­tion to Ukraine’s bur­geon­ing inter­na­tion­al legion.

    ...

    Routh was also turned down by an arm of the inter­na­tion­al legion linked to Ukraine’s mil­i­tary intel­li­gence direc­torate GUR, said a per­son who knew him and was pre­vi­ous­ly asso­ci­at­ed with that unit. The per­son described Routh as “a lit­tle too much” for them and the legion, cit­ing his errat­ic behav­iour.

    Ukraine’s inter­na­tion­al legion con­firmed on Mon­day that “Amer­i­can cit­i­zen Ryan Routh has nev­er served in the Inter­na­tion­al Legion of the Main Direc­torate of Intel­li­gence of the Min­istry of Defense of Ukraine, [and] has no rela­tion to the unit.”

    When speak­ing to the FT, Routh described a series of alter­ca­tions with Ukrain­ian police, city author­i­ties and oth­ers over the sit­ing of the makeshift memo­r­i­al and tent on the Maid­an.

    “Police destroyed it [the ply­wood memo­r­i­al] and said ‘You can’t do it here’,” Routh said. He then moved the memo­r­i­al to a near­by site and also assem­bled an impromp­tu “Flags of the Fall­en” memo­r­i­al with paper flags remem­ber­ing Ukraini­ans who died in the war, which remains there today.
    ...

    Next, we get anoth­er inter­est­ing exam­ple of how Routh seemed to be engaged in some sort of real activism that went beyond being pure delu­sions of grandeur. Accord­ing to an unnamed per­son who spoke with the FT and who knew Routh in Kyiv, it sounds like he had some sort of “data­base” of Afghan sol­diers for his recruit­ment scheme. Where did Routh get this data­base? Was it a data­base or Afghan sol­diers who had reached out to him? Or a data­base some­one gave to him? We still have no idea:

    ...
    The Amer­i­can also told the FT he was work­ing to get thou­sands of Afghan sol­diers who fled the coun­try after the Tal­iban takeover in 2021 to fight on Kyiv’s side. “We’ve got 20,000 Afghan sol­diers sit­ting around and doing noth­ing,” Routh said, and they could be recruit­ed to fight “so this war doesn’t drag on for years”.

    The FT was unable to inde­pen­dent­ly ver­i­fy the claim at the time. A per­son who knew Routh in Kyiv said on Mon­day that he had kept “a data­base” of Afghan sol­diers but that his plan was viewed as far-fetched and was dis­missed by offi­cials in Ukraine’s inter­na­tion­al legion.
    ...

    Next, let’s take a quick look at that Feb 2013 FT piece about Routh’s “Flags of the Fall­en” memo­r­i­al gar­den. Because as that arti­cle made clear, Routh real­ly had made a last­ing impact on Ukraine’s war effort. That memo­r­i­al gar­den start­ed by Routh — after Kyiv author­i­ties destroyed an ear­li­er memo­r­i­al, as we saw above — had grown from just a few dozen ini­tial­ly into thou­sands of flags cov­er­ing part of the lawn next to Inde­pen­dence Square. Routh may have been delu­sion­al, but that does­n’t mean he was­n’t also leav­ing an impres­sion. It’s a reminder that, when we hear vir­tu­al­ly every­one asso­ci­at­ed with Routh’s efforts in Ukraine dis­miss him as a delu­sion chaos agent, that does­n’t mean he was­n’t also engaged in some sort of real activism that involved real net­work­ing:

    The Finan­cial Times

    Scenes from Ukraine: Flags on Kyiv’s Inde­pen­dence Square

    by John Reed
    Feb 24, 2023 14:41

    In the first months after Russia’s full-scale inva­sion of Ukraine, a touch­ing and sim­ple war memo­r­i­al sprang up on a lawn along­side Kyiv’s Inde­pen­dence Square.

    Small Ukrain­ian flags were plant­ed on a grassy embank­ment, some with names scrawled on them to remem­ber those “killed by Putin”, in the words of a makeshift wood­en sign at the site. When I first glimpsed it last April, there were a few dozen flags; now there are thou­sands.

    “It’s a pret­ty big yard, but the front bank is com­plete­ly full,” Ryan Routh, an Amer­i­can vol­un­teer who start­ed the memo­r­i­al last year, said. “There may be 10,000 at this point. ‘Flags of the fall­en’ is what I’ve been call­ing it.”

    ...

    Aged 56, he was told he was too old to fight and instead set up a tent on the Maid­an to help co-ordi­nate for­eign vol­un­teers, then the flag memo­r­i­al too.

    ...

    Routh says he is still active in help­ing to recruit for­eign vol­un­teers so this war “doesn’t drag on for years”.

    ———–

    “Scenes from Ukraine: Flags on Kyiv’s Inde­pen­dence Square” by John Reed; The Finan­cial Times; 02/24/2023

    ““It’s a pret­ty big yard, but the front bank is com­plete­ly full,” Ryan Routh, an Amer­i­can vol­un­teer who start­ed the memo­r­i­al last year, said. “There may be 10,000 at this point. ‘Flags of the fall­en’ is what I’ve been call­ing it.””

    Routh’s Flags of the Fall­en memo­r­i­al had grown so large in less than a year that it made the news. And don’t for­get that it was a month lat­er that the NY Times had that inter­view with Routh where he described his inter­est in recruit­ing Afghani sol­diers. Last year, Routh’s Ukrain­ian activism was get­ting but­tressed by the press. And now he’s just this lone lunatic no one ever took seri­ous­ly.

    Now, let’s take a look at some of what we’re learn­ing about Routh’s time lay­ing in wait at the golf course. As we’ve seen, Routh’s cell­phone data indi­cates he spent the pri­or 12 hours in the area. And now we’re learn­ing that Routh report­ed­ly spent that entire 12 hours sit­ting in the bush­es where he was even­tu­al­ly spot­ted. Routh was­n’t just ‘in the area’ and avail­able for some sort of oppor­tunis­tic last-minute ambush. As for­mer FBI assis­tant direc­tor Chris Sweck­er sug­gest­ed, Routh was either very lucky, or had Trump under sur­veil­lance, or had insid­er knowl­edge. Now, as local res­i­dents tell reporters, Trump was known for spend­ing almost every Sun­day play­ing golf at the course when he was­n’t out cam­paign­ing. And yet Trump was cam­paign­ing in Utah that Sat­ur­day evening, so if Routh some­how deduced that Trump was going to be there the next day he would have had to assume Trump was return­ing from an event in Utah the night before. At the same time, the Secret Ser­vice is telling us that Trump was “not even real­ly sup­posed to go there” and that a secu­ri­ty plan had to be put togeth­er at the last minute:

    BBC News

    Gun­man lurked for hours before Trump’s last-minute game of golf

    Made­line Halpert
    09/16/2024

    A gun­man hid for near­ly 12 hours in bush­es before Don­ald Trump played an unsched­uled game of golf at his ocean­front club in Flori­da – leav­ing locals stunned at what author­i­ties say appears to be the sec­ond attempt to assas­si­nate the for­mer pres­i­dent in as many months.

    It was hot and cloudy on Sun­day after­noon when Trump and his good friend, real estate devel­op­er Steve Witkoff, arrived on the course of Trump Inter­na­tion­al Golf Club in West Palm Beach.

    The for­mer pres­i­dent was on the fifth fair­way at 13:31 EDT (17:31 GMT), an area adja­cent to busy roads near Palm Beach Inter­na­tion­al Air­port, when a mem­ber of his pro­tec­tion detail spot­ted a rifle pok­ing out of foliage by the sixth hole.

    ...

    A quick-think­ing Secret Ser­vice agent had opened fire in the direc­tion of the sus­pect, who was about 300–500 yards away and did not have a clear line of sight to Trump, fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tors said.

    “Secret Ser­vice knew imme­di­ate­ly it was bul­lets, and they grabbed me,” said Trump dur­ing a live-streamed event on X, for­mer­ly Twit­ter, from his Mar-a-Lago resort.

    ...

    The gun­man — who inves­ti­ga­tors say did not fire any shots — was con­cealed by the well-man­i­cured shrub­bery and tall palm trees that line the perime­ter of the 27-hole course.

    He had been lurk­ing there on the pub­lic side of a fence since 01:59 local time on Sun­day morn­ing, accord­ing to mobile phone records, cit­ed by fed­er­al offi­cials.

    The sus­pect was equipped with two dig­i­tal cam­eras, a black plas­tic bag of food, an SKS-style semi-auto­mat­ic rifle — a weapon with a range of near­ly 440 yards — and a scope to mag­ni­fy its lens.

    The Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial candidate’s last pub­licly sched­uled cam­paign event had been on Sat­ur­day evening, on the oth­er side of the coun­try, in the state of Utah.

    Res­i­dents say Trump spends almost every Sun­day at the West Palm Beach golf club when he is not on the cam­paign trail.

    But Secret Ser­vice direc­tor Ronald Rowe said on Mon­day that the for­mer pres­i­dent was “not even real­ly sup­posed to go there”, so agents had to put togeth­er a secu­ri­ty plan at the last minute.

    ...

    Did the sus­pect know the for­mer pres­i­dent would be com­ing to play golf, or was it a guess?

    How could he have gone unde­tect­ed for so long, hid­ing in the bush­es with a rifle?

    The gun­man escaped the scene in a black Nis­san, ditch­ing his back­pack of goods and weapon.

    A civil­ian woman was able to take a pic­ture of his licence plate and pass it to inves­ti­ga­tors, Trump said on Mon­day night.

    The gun­man made it about 40 min­utes before offi­cers pulled over his vehi­cle on Inter­state 95 and ordered him out.

    Body­cam footage shows he seemed calm as offi­cers shout­ed at him to step to the side before hand­cuff­ing him with­out inci­dent.

    On Mon­day, the sus­pect Ryan Routh, 58, appeared in a crowd­ed Palm Beach court, wear­ing a blue prison jump­suit and smil­ing as he chat­ted with his attor­ney.

    He was charged with one count of pos­ses­sion of a firearm by a con­vict­ed felon and one count of pos­ses­sion of a firearm with an oblit­er­at­ed ser­i­al num­ber. More charges could fol­low.

    Mr Routh, a Hawaii res­i­dent with a crim­i­nal his­to­ry, had come across the FBI’s radar in 2019 for being a felon in pos­ses­sion of a firearm. The bureau tipped off law enforce­ment in Hon­olu­lu at the time.

    While his motive for alleged­ly plan­ning to tar­get Trump has not been revealed, the sus­pect had said in the past on social media that he vot­ed for the Repub­li­can in 2016 before sour­ing on him.

    On the perime­ter of Trump’s golf course on Mon­day, bright orange cones, bar­ri­cades, police cars and offi­cers shield­ed all cor­ners of the club.

    The inci­dent has shocked West Palm Beach and neigh­bour­ing towns.

    Shel­by Stevens, a 52-year-old Trump sup­port­er from West Palm Beach, told the BBC: “No mat­ter how much secu­ri­ty you have and every­thing else, if some­one is will­ing to give their life to take some­one else’s, it can hap­pen.”

    Cosme Blan­co has lived just a few blocks away from the course for most of his life, where he said Trump comes as often as twice a week when he’s not cam­paign­ing.

    The 61-year-old Trump sup­port­er said the secu­ri­ty pres­ence around the golf club is typ­i­cal­ly not over­whelm­ing. But all that changed on Sun­day, when Mr Blan­co ran out­side five min­utes after shots were fired to see heli­copters cir­cling the neigh­bour­hood.

    “I was con­cerned. I’m going to be 62 years old and I’ve nev­er seen Amer­i­ca change this much,” said the Cuban immi­grant.

    Mr Blan­co said it would not be hard for a sus­pect to tar­get Trump at his golf course.

    The for­mer pres­i­dent trav­elled there in a motor­cade that would have tak­en about 12 min­utes to go from Mar-a-Lago across a bridge over­look­ing the Lake Worth Lagoon.

    “If they see the motor­cade com­ing, I’m sure at that point they know he’s going to play golf — it’s com­mon sense,” Mr Blan­co said.

    But Anka Palitz, a Palm Beach res­i­dent who says she has known Trump per­son­al­ly for years, said Routh’s tim­ing was sus­pi­cious.

    “He doesn’t play golf every Sun­day,” she said. “I think there’s a con­spir­a­cy.”

    “How was he [the gun­man] not seen?” she added.

    Ms Palitz, who said she used to go ski­ing with Trump’s ex-wife, Ivana, said she believed some­one must have alert­ed the sus­pect that the for­mer pres­i­dent was going to the course that day.

    Patri­cia Pel­ham, a Unit­ed King­dom native who has been liv­ing in Flori­da for 30 years, won­dered where the sus­pect was able to park his car close enough to quick­ly make a get­away.

    “How come there’s not secu­ri­ty around the out­side?” asked the Briton, who added that she was no sup­port­er of Trump.

    Ms Pel­ham said secu­ri­ty mea­sures have increased around Mar-a-Lago on the island of Palm Beach since Trump was injured when a 20-year-old gun­man attempt­ed to assas­si­nate him at a ral­ly in But­ler, Penn­syl­va­nia, in July.

    On Mon­day, police cars lined the roads of the island near­ly every half mile, with the 17-acre resort blocked off to vis­i­tors.

    Author­i­ties have said that the entire golf course would have been sur­round­ed had it been a sit­ting pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States on the green.

    After blam­ing White House rhetoric for the lat­est alleged attempt to kill him, Trump said on Mon­day night that he had had a “very nice call” with Pres­i­dent Joe Biden about boost­ing Secret Ser­vice pro­tec­tion.

    Pres­i­dent Biden, a Demo­c­rat, asked Con­gress on Mon­day to approve more mon­ey for the agency in the com­ing weeks, say­ing the Secret Ser­vice “needs more help”.

    Michael Matran­ga, a for­mer Secret Ser­vice agent who worked for for­mer Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma, said Trump has had bet­ter secu­ri­ty than many oth­er for­mer pres­i­dents, who typ­i­cal­ly receive less pro­tec­tion than White House incum­bents.

    For exam­ple, he said, for­mer pres­i­dents aren’t typ­i­cal­ly offered counter-sniper teams like Trump.

    The Secret Ser­vice has faced intense scruti­ny since the first attempt on Trump’s life, with the leader of the agency, Kim­ber­ly Chea­tle, resign­ing less than two weeks after the ral­ly.

    Agency offi­cials have said the Secret Ser­vice is short on resources.

    But even with the extra resources, Mr Matran­ga said agents are forced to con­tend with a del­i­cate bal­ance of pro­tect­ing Trump while allow­ing him to engage with con­stituents on the cam­paign trail and “enjoy a round of golf”.

    They can’t just “keep him in a bul­let proof box”, Mr Matran­ga said.

    ...

    ————-

    “Gun­man lurked for hours before Trump’s last-minute game of golf” by Made­line Halpert; BBC News; 09/16/2024

    “He had been lurk­ing there on the pub­lic side of a fence since 01:59 local time on Sun­day morn­ing, accord­ing to mobile phone records, cit­ed by fed­er­al offi­cials.”

    Routh was­n’t just ‘in the area’ for 12 hours pri­or to get­ting spot­ted. He was appar­ent­ly crouched in the bush­es for 12 hours. Which sounds like some­thing he would only have done if he was con­fi­dent Trump was going to be play­ing golf there that day. How did Routh seem to know Trump was going to be there? As we saw, for­mer FBI assis­tant direc­tor Chris Sweck­er sug­gest­ed Routh may have had insid­er knowl­edge of Trump’s loca­tion. But accord­ing to local res­i­dents, Trump spends almost every Sun­day he’s not cam­paign­ing play­ing golf at the course. If true, it’s pos­si­ble Routh some­how deduced Trump was going to be there. And as one local res­i­dent point­ed out, Trump’s motor­cade could have been a sig­nal that Trump was head­ing to the course. And yet, accord­ing to the Secret Ser­vice, Trump was “not even real­ly sup­posed to go there”, result­ing in a last minute scram­ble to secure the area. And with Routh spend­ing 12 hours there, he obvi­ous­ly did­n’t sud­den­ly decide to show up after see­ing Trump’s motor­cade:

    ...
    The Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial candidate’s last pub­licly sched­uled cam­paign event had been on Sat­ur­day evening, on the oth­er side of the coun­try, in the state of Utah.

    Res­i­dents say Trump spends almost every Sun­day at the West Palm Beach golf club when he is not on the cam­paign trail.

    But Secret Ser­vice direc­tor Ronald Rowe said on Mon­day that the for­mer pres­i­dent was “not even real­ly sup­posed to go there”, so agents had to put togeth­er a secu­ri­ty plan at the last minute.

    ...

    Did the sus­pect know the for­mer pres­i­dent would be com­ing to play golf, or was it a guess?

    How could he have gone unde­tect­ed for so long, hid­ing in the bush­es with a rifle?

    ...

    Cosme Blan­co has lived just a few blocks away from the course for most of his life, where he said Trump comes as often as twice a week when he’s not cam­paign­ing.

    The 61-year-old Trump sup­port­er said the secu­ri­ty pres­ence around the golf club is typ­i­cal­ly not over­whelm­ing. But all that changed on Sun­day, when Mr Blan­co ran out­side five min­utes after shots were fired to see heli­copters cir­cling the neigh­bour­hood.

    “I was con­cerned. I’m going to be 62 years old and I’ve nev­er seen Amer­i­ca change this much,” said the Cuban immi­grant.

    Mr Blan­co said it would not be hard for a sus­pect to tar­get Trump at his golf course.

    The for­mer pres­i­dent trav­elled there in a motor­cade that would have tak­en about 12 min­utes to go from Mar-a-Lago across a bridge over­look­ing the Lake Worth Lagoon.

    “If they see the motor­cade com­ing, I’m sure at that point they know he’s going to play golf — it’s com­mon sense,” Mr Blan­co said.
    ...

    But while Trump was fre­quent­ly at this gold course, as one local res­i­dent — who sounds like a Trump fam­i­ly friend — points out, it’s not like Trump is actu­al­ly play­ing golf there every Sun­day. In oth­er words, Routh could­n’t real­is­ti­cal­ly just assume Trump was going to be there. Some­how, Routh seemed to know this that Sun­day was going to be one of those Sun­days:

    ...
    But Anka Palitz, a Palm Beach res­i­dent who says she has known Trump per­son­al­ly for years, said Routh’s tim­ing was sus­pi­cious.

    “He doesn’t play golf every Sun­day,” she said. “I think there’s a con­spir­a­cy.”

    “How was he [the gun­man] not seen?” she added.

    Ms Palitz, who said she used to go ski­ing with Trump’s ex-wife, Ivana, said she believed some­one must have alert­ed the sus­pect that the for­mer pres­i­dent was going to the course that day.

    Patri­cia Pel­ham, a Unit­ed King­dom native who has been liv­ing in Flori­da for 30 years, won­dered where the sus­pect was able to park his car close enough to quick­ly make a get­away.

    “How come there’s not secu­ri­ty around the out­side?” asked the Briton, who added that she was no sup­port­er of Trump.

    Ms Pel­ham said secu­ri­ty mea­sures have increased around Mar-a-Lago on the island of Palm Beach since Trump was injured when a 20-year-old gun­man attempt­ed to assas­si­nate him at a ral­ly in But­ler, Penn­syl­va­nia, in July.
    ...

    It’s pret­ty clear at this point that Routh was indulging in some sort of delu­sion of grandeur. But how delu­sion was it? Was this pure­ly his delu­sion alone? Or has he had help? There isn’t a known net­work of asso­ciates that Routh was coor­di­nat­ing with, and yet by all accounts he was enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly net­work­ing with his Ukraine-relat­ed activism, not just dur­ing his time in Ukraine but after he returned to the US. Lots of peo­ple knew Routh and inter­act­ed with him. Even helped him. And yet every­one now insists they have noth­ing to do with him and the guy was just a lone nut.

    The more we’re learn­ing, the more con­fu­sion abounds. In oth­er words, it’s a nor­mal polit­i­cal assas­si­na­tion sto­ry for the US.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | September 19, 2024, 3:48 pm

  23. The twist­ed tale of Ryan Routh’s alleged assas­si­na­tion attempt just had a few more twists added to the mix. Mys­te­ri­ous twists and one very gross one.

    First, the gross twist: Routh’s son, Oran Routh, was just arrest­ed for being in pos­ses­sion of hun­dreds of files of child pornog­ra­phy on two sep­a­rate phones. The files were report­ed­ly dis­cov­ered as part of a search of Oran Routh’s res­i­dence in rela­tion to the inves­ti­ga­tion of his father. Evi­dence for Oran’s guilt goes beyond pos­ses­sion of the files and includes encrypt­ed chat mes­sages for the sell­er of files request­ing exam­ples of the con­tent he was pur­chas­ing.

    Next, we get to a pret­ty wild update on what has been learned about Ryan Routh’s plan­ning. First, it turns out the Nis­san Xter­ra Routh was dri­ving when he was arrest­ed con­tained six phones. One of those phones had a Google search on how to trav­el from Palm Beach Coun­ty, Flori­da, to Mex­i­co. That’s all we know about the con­tent of those six phones.

    But those aren’t the only phones Routh pos­sessed. We’re also learn­ing that a man has con­tact­ed author­i­ties about a box Routh dropped off at his house sev­er­al months ago. The man claims he did­n’t open the box until after Routh’s arrest. Keep in mind that if Routh dropped the box off at the man’s home, that sug­gests Routh and the man may have had a con­ver­sa­tion too. Did this man receive some sort of instruc­tion about not open­ing the box until after Routh was ‘in the news’?

    We are told the box con­tained ammu­ni­tion, a met­al pipe, build­ing mate­ri­als, tools, sev­er­al let­ters, and four addi­tion­al phones. One of the doc­u­ments was a hand­writ­ten list of dates in August, Sep­tem­ber, and Octo­ber where Trump had appeared or was expect­ed to go. This is a good time to recall how Trump’s round of golf that day was­n’t a pub­licly post­ed event, although it was pos­si­ble for Routh to make an edu­cat­ed guess that he might be there that day based on the lack of oth­er pub­licly post­ed events and Trump’s habit of play­ing golf there dur­ing his days off from cam­paign­ing.

    We’re also learn­ing that cell site records for two of the phones found in the vehi­cle show Routh trav­eled to West Palm Beach on August 14th and appeared near Trump Inter­na­tion­al Golf Course and Mar-a-Lago mul­ti­ple times from August 18th to Sep­tem­ber 15. So now it sounds like Routh may have been track­ing Trump’s where­abouts for around a month before he was arrest­ed, which rais­es the ques­tion as to whether or not this isn’t the first time he’s camped out on that golf course with a rifle.

    And then there’s the con­tent of one of the let­ters. We are told the hand­writ­ten let­ter was addressed, “Dear World”, and con­tained an explic­it admis­sion of guilt. Inter­est­ing­ly, it was writ­ten under the assump­tion that the assas­si­na­tion attempt failed, stat­ing, “This was an assas­si­na­tion attempt on Don­ald Trump but I failed you. I tried my best and gave it all the gump­tion I could muster.” Keep in mind that the But­ler, Penn­syl­va­nia, shoot­ing was rough­ly two months before Routh was arrest­ed. So if Routh sent this pack­age ‘sev­er­al months ago’, it appears he sent it before the But­ler shoot­ing.

    So, sev­er­al months ago, Routh wrote a let­ter admit­ting he was try­ing to assas­si­nate Trump but lament­ing how he failed, and then dropped off this let­ter to an unnamed man, along with a num­ber of oth­er let­ters and four phones. But the man claims he did­n’t open the pack­age until after Routh’s arrest and that’s all we know about him. That’s the oth­er bizarre inves­tiga­tive twist in this sto­ry. The kind of twist that strong­ly sug­gests Routh had a net­work of indi­vid­u­als he trust­ed enough to share with them his assas­si­na­tion months in advance.

    Ok, first, here’s a report on Oran Routh’s child pornog­ra­phy arrest. Which only hap­pened thanks to the search of his res­i­dence as part of the inves­ti­ga­tion of his father:

    ABC News

    Son of Ryan Routh, accused in Trump assas­si­na­tion attempt, arrest­ed for child pornog­ra­phy

    Oran Routh had “hun­dreds” of files of child pornog­ra­phy, pros­e­cu­tors said.

    By Alexan­der Mallin
    Sep­tem­ber 24, 2024, 9:59 AM

    The son of Ryan Routh, the man arrest­ed in con­nec­tion with the sec­ond appar­ent assas­si­na­tion attempt of for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, has been tak­en into cus­tody on fed­er­al charges of pos­sess­ing child pornog­ra­phy.

    Inves­ti­ga­tors say they dis­cov­ered “hun­dreds” of files with child pornog­ra­phy dur­ing a search of Oran Routh’s res­i­dence in Guil­ford Coun­ty, North Car­oli­na, on Sat­ur­day con­duct­ed “in con­nec­tion with an inves­ti­ga­tion unre­lat­ed to child exploita­tion.”

    ...

    The “unre­lat­ed inves­ti­ga­tion” referred to Routh’s father — who remains in cus­tody after a judge ordered him detained pend­ing tri­al Mon­day — a spokesper­son with the U.S. Attor­ney’s Office for the Mid­dle Dis­trict of Car­oli­na con­firmed to ABC News.

    Inves­ti­ga­tors said the pornog­ra­phy was found on a Sam­sung Galaxy Note device locat­ed inside Oran Routh’s pri­ma­ry bed­room in the res­i­dence, as well as anoth­er Galaxy Note device in Routh’s pos­ses­sion.

    “A review of the SD card locat­ed in Device‑1 revealed that it con­tained hun­dreds of child pornog­ra­phy files,” pros­e­cu­tors wrote in the crim­i­nal com­plaint. “These files include videos from a known child pornog­ra­phy series cre­at­ed out­side the state of North Car­oli­na.”

    The com­plaint includ­ed graph­ic descrip­tions of the videos and a chat from July in which Oran Routh alleged­ly respond­ed to some­one adver­tis­ing the con­tent for sale.

    ...

    ———

    “Son of Ryan Routh, accused in Trump assas­si­na­tion attempt, arrest­ed for child pornog­ra­phy” By Alexan­der Mallin; ABC News; 09/24/2024

    “Inves­ti­ga­tors say they dis­cov­ered “hun­dreds” of files with child pornog­ra­phy dur­ing a search of Oran Routh’s res­i­dence in Guil­ford Coun­ty, North Car­oli­na, on Sat­ur­day con­duct­ed “in con­nec­tion with an inves­ti­ga­tion unre­lat­ed to child exploita­tion.””

    Well, that’s a gross twist to this sto­ry. Oran Routh is pre­sum­ably going to be very coop­er­a­tive with inves­ti­ga­tors at this point.

    But that was­n’t the only twist we got in recent days. There’s also the pack­age Ryan Routh appar­ent­ly dropped off at the house of an unnamed man sev­er­al months ago. The box con­tained a doc­u­ment with a hand­writ­ten list of dates in August, Sep­tem­ber and Octo­ber and venues where Trump had appeared or was expect­ed to go. And then there’s the hand­writ­ten let­ter seem­ing­ly admit­ting to the assas­si­na­tion attempt but lament­ing its fail­ure.

    Again, this was alleged­ly mailed to this acquain­tance sev­er­al months ago, although we don’t have the exact date. But the shoot­ing in But­ler, Penn­syl­va­nia was a lit­tle over two months ago so it sounds like this box with the ‘I did it’ let­ter was sent even before the But­ler shoot­ing:

    CBS News

    Sus­pect claimed “assas­si­na­tion attempt on Don­ald Trump,” also searched how to trav­el to Mex­i­co, FBI says

    By Melis­sa Quinn

    Updat­ed on: Sep­tem­ber 23, 2024 / 8:01 PM EDT

    Wash­ing­ton — The FBI revealed Mon­day that the man arrest­ed in con­nec­tion with the aappar­ent assas­si­na­tion attempt on for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump ear­li­er this month had in his vehi­cle a list of dates and venues where the for­mer pres­i­dent had appeared or was expect­ed to appear, and a cell­phone found in his vehi­cle showed search­es of how to get from West Palm Beach to Mex­i­co.

    The FBI said in the fil­ing that Ryan Wes­ley Routh, who was iden­ti­fied as the sus­pect in the inci­dent, had left a hand­writ­ten let­ter with a man months before, addressed “Dear World,” that said: “This was an assas­si­na­tion attempt on Don­ald Trump but I failed you. I tried my best and gave it all the gump­tion I could muster.”

    The details were revealed in a court fil­ing from fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors call­ing for Routh to remain detained through a tri­al. Routh appeared before a fed­er­al mag­is­trate judge for a pre­tri­al deten­tion hear­ing Mon­day, dur­ing which he was denied bond and ordered to remain behind bars. Fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors revealed dur­ing the pro­ceed­ing that they plan to ask a grand jury to return a new indict­ment charg­ing Routh with attempt­ed assas­si­na­tion of a polit­i­cal fig­ure, which car­ries a max­i­mum poten­tial sen­tence of life in prison.

    ...

    Pros­e­cu­tors said in their lat­est fil­ing that the sus­pect was in line with the 6th-hole green, and Trump was play­ing the 5th hole when the Secret Ser­vice agent opened fire. Trump was swift­ly removed from the area once the shots were fired, accord­ing to the fil­ing.

    The FBI found in the fence line an AK-47 style rifle with a scope attached and extend­ed mag­a­zine. The gun was loaded with 11 rounds, accord­ing to court fil­ings, and the ser­i­al num­ber on the rifle was oblit­er­at­ed and unread­able. Secret Ser­vice agents also found a dig­i­tal cam­era, back­pack and reusable shop­ping bag hang­ing from the fence, pros­e­cu­tors said.

    The back­pack and shop­ping bag con­tained plates that “were capa­ble of stop­ping small arms fire,” accord­ing to the fil­ing.

    Routh was arrest­ed about 50 miles away, after a wit­ness at the golf course shared a descrip­tion of the vehi­cle and license plate, pros­e­cu­tors said. Dur­ing a search of the SUV, a Nis­san Xter­ra, the FBI found addi­tion­al license plates, six cell­phones, 12 pairs of gloves, a Hawaii dri­ver’s license in Routh’s name, and doc­u­ments, accord­ing to the court fil­ing. The FBI said the license plate on the SUV was not reg­is­tered to that vehi­cle.

    One of the phones con­tained a Google search of how to trav­el from Palm Beach Coun­ty, Flori­da, where Trump’s golf course is locat­ed, to Mex­i­co, pros­e­cu­tors said. Among the doc­u­ments was a hand­writ­ten list of dates in August, Sep­tem­ber and Octo­ber and venues where Trump had appeared or was expect­ed to go, accord­ing to the court records.

    Cell site records obtained by the FBI for two of the phones found in the vehi­cle showed that the sus­pect trav­eled from Greens­boro, North Car­oli­na, to West Palm Beach on Aug. 14, pros­e­cu­tors said. The records also showed that on mul­ti­ple days and times from Aug. 18 to Sept. 15, the day of the inci­dent, Routh’s cell­phone accessed tow­ers near Trump Inter­na­tion­al Golf Course and Mar-a-Lago, the for­mer pres­i­den­t’s South Flori­da res­i­dence, accord­ing to the court fil­ing.

    The FBI also found a fin­ger­print match­ing Routh’s on a piece of tape attached to the rifle recov­ered from the fence line at Trump’s golf course, pros­e­cu­tors said.

    Law enforce­ment revealed in the fil­ing that it received infor­ma­tion on Sept. 18, three days after the appar­ent assas­si­na­tion attempt, from a man who said Routh dropped off a box at his house sev­er­al months ear­li­er. After learn­ing of the Sept. 15 inci­dent, the man said he opened the box, which con­tained ammu­ni­tion, a met­al pipe, build­ing mate­ri­als, tools, four phones and sev­er­al let­ters, accord­ing to pros­e­cu­tors.

    Pros­e­cu­tors not­ed in their request that Routh was con­vict­ed in Decem­ber 2002 of pos­ses­sion of a weapon of mass destruc­tion, a felony. He was also con­vict­ed in March 2010 of mul­ti­ple felony counts of pos­ses­sion of stolen goods.

    ...

    ————

    “Sus­pect claimed “assas­si­na­tion attempt on Don­ald Trump,” also searched how to trav­el to Mex­i­co, FBI says” By Melis­sa Quinn; CBS News; 09/23/2024

    “Law enforce­ment revealed in the fil­ing that it received infor­ma­tion on Sept. 18, three days after the appar­ent assas­si­na­tion attempt, from a man who said Routh dropped off a box at his house sev­er­al months ear­li­er. After learn­ing of the Sept. 15 inci­dent, the man said he opened the box, which con­tained ammu­ni­tion, a met­al pipe, build­ing mate­ri­als, tools, four phones and sev­er­al let­ters, accord­ing to pros­e­cu­tors.”

    That’s quite a pack­age to receive from some­one. But appar­ent­ly the man nev­er opened the box until Routh showed up as the lat­est Trump assas­si­na­tion sus­pect sev­er­al months lat­er, at which point the man dis­cov­ered the let­ter admit­ting to the assas­si­na­tion plot and con­tact­ed author­i­ties:

    ...
    The FBI said in the fil­ing that Ryan Wes­ley Routh, who was iden­ti­fied as the sus­pect in the inci­dent, had left a hand­writ­ten let­ter with a man months before, addressed “Dear World,” that said: “This was an assas­si­na­tion attempt on Don­ald Trump but I failed you. I tried my best and gave it all the gump­tion I could muster.”

    ...

    Routh was arrest­ed about 50 miles away, after a wit­ness at the golf course shared a descrip­tion of the vehi­cle and license plate, pros­e­cu­tors said. Dur­ing a search of the SUV, a Nis­san Xter­ra, the FBI found addi­tion­al license plates, six cell­phones, 12 pairs of gloves, a Hawaii dri­ver’s license in Routh’s name, and doc­u­ments, accord­ing to the court fil­ing. The FBI said the license plate on the SUV was not reg­is­tered to that vehi­cle.

    One of the phones con­tained a Google search of how to trav­el from Palm Beach Coun­ty, Flori­da, where Trump’s golf course is locat­ed, to Mex­i­co, pros­e­cu­tors said. Among the doc­u­ments was a hand­writ­ten list of dates in August, Sep­tem­ber and Octo­ber and venues where Trump had appeared or was expect­ed to go, accord­ing to the court records.
    ...

    Final­ly, note how cell tow­er records indi­cate Routh had trav­eled to the area around Mar-a-Lago mul­ti­ple times between August 18 and Sep­tem­ber 15. Does this explain how Routh seem­ing­ly knew Trump was going to be there for a non-pub­licly adver­tised event?

    ...
    Cell site records obtained by the FBI for two of the phones found in the vehi­cle showed that the sus­pect trav­eled from Greens­boro, North Car­oli­na, to West Palm Beach on Aug. 14, pros­e­cu­tors said. The records also showed that on mul­ti­ple days and times from Aug. 18 to Sept. 15, the day of the inci­dent, Routh’s cell­phone accessed tow­ers near Trump Inter­na­tion­al Golf Course and Mar-a-Lago, the for­mer pres­i­den­t’s South Flori­da res­i­dence, accord­ing to the court fil­ing.
    ...

    Was Routh effec­tive­ly stalk­ing the area for the pri­or month, wait­ing for an oppor­tu­ni­ty? More details on that cell phone loca­tion data would prob­a­bly give us an answer.

    But at a min­i­mum, we can now con­fi­dent­ly con­clude that Routh did­n’t entire­ly act alone. He shared some sort of plans with some­one. We know noth­ing about this mys­tery man oth­er than the fact that he prob­a­bly lives in the US if Routh per­son­al­ly dropped off the pack­age at his home. And we can rea­son­ably assume Routh trust­ed the man deeply and like­ly had some sort of shared ide­ol­o­gy. Was this man pos­si­bly one of Routh’s con­tacts from his time in Ukraine? We have no idea at this point. But hope­ful­ly we’ll get some clar­i­ty with the next wild twist of an update to this increas­ing­ly non­sen­si­cal sto­ry.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | September 26, 2024, 5:46 pm

  24. We got anoth­er round of updates on the ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tion into the But­ler, Penn­syl­va­nia, Don­ald Trump assas­si­na­tion attempt. More updates that raise more trou­bling ques­tions:

    First, the The Sen­ate Home­land Secu­ri­ty and Gov­ern­men­tal Affairs Com­mit­tee (HSGAC) issued a new report about the tech­no­log­i­cal dif­fi­cul­ties thwart­ing the secu­ri­ty response that day. In par­tic­u­lar dif­fi­cul­ties with com­mu­ni­ca­tion. As we’ve seen, not only were there two sep­a­rate com­mand cen­ters — one for local police and one for the Secret Ser­vice — but they were only in com­mu­ni­ca­tion via text mes­sag­ing. As a result, the Secret Ser­vice’s counter snipers did­n’t even have radio com­mu­ni­ca­tions with local law enforce­ment. Instead, they relied on text mes­sag­ing, with But­ler Coun­ty tac­ti­cal teams send­ing the snipers two pic­tures of Crooks via text at 5:45 pm, 26 min­utes before shots were fired. But we’re also told they did­n’t know at that point that Crooks had a gun and did­n’t know this until the shots were fired.

    And now, on top of not have direct radio com­mu­ni­ca­tion set up between the Secret Ser­vice and the local police com­mand cen­ters, we’re told Secret Ser­vice agents also expe­ri­enced tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties with their radios. As a result, even though the Secret Ser­vice was noti­fied via text about Crooks 26 min­utes before the shoot­ing, the Secret Ser­vice Lead Advance Agent, Site Agent, and Site Coun­ter­part told the Sen­ate com­mit­tee that this infor­ma­tion was not relayed to them, and they did not know of the sus­pi­cious per­son on the roof. Instead, we are told the Secret Ser­vice counter sniper was unable to pick up a local radio because he was too busy fix­ing his own radio, and the Spe­cial Agent In Charge had no radio after giv­ing his to the Lead Advance Agent whose radio was not work­ing.

    At the same time, while the radio chan­nels used by the local police were record­ed, the Secret Ser­vices radio trans­mis­sion weren’t record­ed for some unex­plained rea­son. More evi­dence falls down the ‘whoops!’ black hole.

    And that was­n’t the only update we got. The House­’s inves­tiga­tive task force also held a hear­ing where we got more clar­i­ty on the han­dling of Thomas Matthew Crook­s’s body and the moments around the actu­al shoot­ing. First, recall all the ques­tions around the release of Crook­s’s body for cre­ma­tion by the FBI just 10 days after the shoot­ing, despite the body being under the juris­dic­tion of the coun­ty coro­ner. Well, as we’re going to see, the med­ical exam­in­er who car­ried out the exam­i­na­tion of Crook­s’s body states that the body was indeed released under the direc­tive of the coun­ty coro­ner.

    Inter­est­ing­ly, that med­ical exam­in­er, Dr. Ariel Gold­schmidt, does­n’t work for the But­ler Coun­ty coro­ner. Instead, he’s a med­ical exam­in­er for neigh­bor­ing Alleghe­ny Coun­ty. Keep in mind that, accord­ing to Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Clay Hig­gin­s’s report, it was But­ler Coun­ty that had juris­dic­tion over the body. As we’re going to see, But­ler Coun­ty Coro­ner William F. Young III con­duct­ed an ini­tial exam­i­na­tion of Crook­s’s body while the body was still on the roof, arriv­ing after mid­night that Sun­day for an ini­tial exam­i­na­tion and then return­ing after 6 am a fur­ther exam­i­na­tion. At that point, Young released the body to the Alleghe­ny Coun­ty Med­ical Exam­in­er to com­plete the autop­sy.

    Gold­schmidt also asserts that Crooks was struck by just one bul­let, seem­ing­ly con­tra­dict­ing the sworn tes­ti­mo­ny of the local offi­cer who was sure he struck Crooks. As we’ve seen, that local offi­cer was con­fi­dent they at least struck Crook­s’s rifle, pos­si­bly injur­ing Crooks in the process and pre­vent­ing it from fir­ing fur­ther. But it appears the FBI has exam­ined Crook­s’s rifle and found no evi­dence it was struck.

    Anoth­er notable admis­sion by Gold­schmidt includes the fact that the FBI x‑rayed and han­dled the body before his exam­i­na­tion. It’s unclear at this point if the FBI han­dling took place before But­ler Coun­ty Coro­ner Young was able to exam­ine the body on the roof. So Alleghe­ny Coun­ty med­ical exam­in­er con­duct­ed the autop­sy, but not before the FBI x‑rayed and han­dled the body. And accord­ing to this exam­in­er, the body was released for cre­ma­tion by the But­ler coun­ty coro­ner, not the FBI. And it was struck just once, con­tra­dict­ing the sworn tes­ti­mo­ny by the local offi­cer who is sure he hit either Crooks or the rifle. Those are just some of the remark­able updates we’ve received in recent days. The kind of updates that sug­gest there’s a lot more to be learned about this sto­ry but also the kind of updates that sug­gest that we’re nev­er real­ly going to get a coher­ent expla­na­tion. Instead, it’s going to be a series of seem­ing­ly inex­plic­a­ble mis­takes and con­tra­dic­to­ry tes­ti­monies.

    Ok, first, here’s a look at the update from the Sen­ate about the break­down in com­mu­ni­ca­tions. A mul­ti-lev­el break­down in com­mu­ni­ca­tions, for a lack of direct lines of com­mu­ni­ca­tion to mul­ti­ple mal­func­tion­ing Secret Ser­vice radios:

    Newsweek

    Thomas Matthew Crooks Update—Damning Secret Ser­vice Details in Sen­ate Report

    Pub­lished Sep 25, 2024 at 11:46 AM EDT
    Updat­ed Sep 25, 2024 at 3:01 PM EDT

    By Sophie Clark

    The recent­ly released bipar­ti­san report into the assas­si­na­tion attempt on Don­ald Trump details sev­er­al damn­ing fail­ures of the Unit­ed States’ Secret Ser­vice (USSS), from orga­ni­za­tion­al mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tions to tech­no­log­i­cal dif­fi­cul­ties expe­ri­enced on-site.

    The Sen­ate Home­land Secu­ri­ty and Gov­ern­men­tal Affairs Com­mit­tee (HSGAC) report dis­cuss­es the July 30 tes­ti­mo­ny of Ronald L. Rowe, Jr., Act­ing Direc­tor of the USSS, who informed the com­mit­tee that the assas­si­na­tion attempt was a result of “a fail­ure on mul­ti­ple lev­els.”

    ...

    The HSGAC report details the mul­ti­ple mis­steps tak­en by the USSS, as not­ed by Act­ing Direc­tor Rowe. It also details oth­er tes­ti­monies giv­en to the HSGAC and the Per­ma­nent Sub­com­mit­tee on Inves­ti­ga­tions.

    Per the report, the com­mit­tee found: “USSS fail­ures in plan­ning, com­mu­ni­ca­tions, secu­ri­ty, and allo­ca­tion of resources for the July 13, 2024 But­ler ral­ly were fore­see­able, pre­ventable, and direct­ly relat­ed to the events result­ing in the assas­si­na­tion attempt that day.”

    The com­mit­tee iden­ti­fied five key fail­ures. They said the USSS:

    1. Failed to clear­ly define respon­si­bil­i­ties for plan­ning and secu­ri­ty at the July 13 ral­ly.
    2. Failed to ensure the AGR Build­ing from which Crooks shot was effec­tive­ly cov­ered.
    3. Failed to effec­tive­ly coor­di­nate with state and local law enforce­ment.
    4. Failed to pro­vide resources for the July 13 ral­ly that could have enhanced secu­ri­ty.
    5. Failed to com­mu­ni­cate infor­ma­tion about the sus­pi­cious per­son to key per­son­nel and to take action to ensure the safe­ty of for­mer Pres­i­dent Trump.

    The report then goes into its twelve detailed find­ings about what went wrong on the day of the attempt­ed assas­si­na­tion. These range from inter­de­part­men­tal mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tions, a fail­ure to com­mu­ni­cate with oth­er law enforce­ment agen­cies, and tech­no­log­i­cal dif­fi­cul­ties.

    ...

    Per the report the: “USSS per­son­nel were noti­fied of a sus­pi­cious per­son with a range find­er around the AGR build­ing approx­i­mate­ly 27 min­utes before the shoot­ing.” How­ev­er, USSS Lead Advance Agent, Site Agent, and Site Coun­ter­part told the com­mit­tee that this infor­ma­tion was not relayed to them, and they did not know of the sus­pi­cious per­son on the roof.

    They also claimed that local offi­cers lost track of the indi­vid­ual before the shots were fired. They were then only informed of a shoot­er on the AGR Build­ing roof that Crooks was on two min­utes before shots were fired.

    On top of that, despite see­ing local law enforce­ment run­ning toward the AGR Build­ing, a USSS coun­ter­sniper did not alert Don­ald Trump’s pro­tec­tive detail to remove him from the stage.

    The USSS and the FBI were also not on the same page regard­ing the threat posed by Crooks. Coun­ter­snipers from the USSS were at the ral­ly due to “cred­i­ble intel­li­gence” of a threat at the event. How­ev­er, the FBI said Crooks was not known to them.

    Addi­tion­al­ly, despite the But­ler Emer­gency Ser­vices Unit telling the USSS that they did not have enough man­pow­er to lock down the AGR Build­ing, the USSS failed to take respon­si­bil­i­ty for the build­ing as it was on the “out­er perime­ter,” and failed to send agents to cov­er the build­ing.

    To make com­mu­ni­ca­tions mat­ters worse, there were two com­mu­ni­ca­tion cen­ters at the event, one cen­ter run by the USSS and a sep­a­rate cen­ter run by local law enforce­ment. They com­mu­ni­cat­ed with each oth­er via cell­phone, and were at least 120 yards apart.

    The report states that the two camps also oper­at­ed on sep­a­rate radio chan­nels, and where the local chan­nels were record­ed on July 13, USSS radio trans­mis­sions were not record­ed.

    There were also sev­er­al tech­no­log­i­cal fail­ures at the event includ­ing the Counter-Unmanned Aer­i­al Sys­tem (C‑UAS) which expe­ri­enced tech­ni­cal prob­lems to the point that the agent respon­si­ble for the C‑UAS—who only had three months of expe­ri­ence work­ing with the equip­ment—had to call a toll-free 888 tech sup­port hot­line “to start trou­bleshoot­ing with the com­pa­ny.”

    And, as well as work­ing on sep­a­rate radio fre­quen­cies, at one point USSS agents report­ed tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties with their radios. These agents were a USSS Her­cules 1 counter sniper who was unable to pick up a local radio because he was too busy fix­ing his own radio, and the USSS Spe­cial Agent In Charge (SAIC) who had no radio after giv­ing his to the Lead Advance Agent whose radio was not work­ing.

    The report also notes that with­in these fail­ures was a lack of account­abil­i­ty across the USSS, and blame deflec­tion across the chain of com­mand.

    ...

    ————

    “Thomas Matthew Crooks Update—Damning Secret Ser­vice Details in Sen­ate Report” By Sophie Clark; Newsweek; 09/25/2024

    “Per the report the: “USSS per­son­nel were noti­fied of a sus­pi­cious per­son with a range find­er around the AGR build­ing approx­i­mate­ly 27 min­utes before the shoot­ing.” How­ev­er, USSS Lead Advance Agent, Site Agent, and Site Coun­ter­part told the com­mit­tee that this infor­ma­tion was not relayed to them, and they did not know of the sus­pi­cious per­son on the roof.”

    It was one com­mu­ni­ca­tion issue after anoth­er. As we pre­vi­ous­ly saw, the Secret Ser­vice’s counter snipers did not have radio com­mu­ni­ca­tions with local law enforce­ment. Instead, they relied on text mes­sag­ing, with But­ler Coun­ty tac­ti­cal teams send­ing the snipers two pic­tures of Crooks via text at 5:45 pm, 26 min­utes before shots were fired. But we’re also told they did­n’t know at that point that Crooks had a gun and did­n’t know this until the shots were fired. And now, on top of not have direct radio com­mu­ni­ca­tion set up between the Secret Ser­vice and the local police
    com­mand cen­ters, we’re told Secret Ser­vice agents also expe­ri­enced tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties with their radios. At the same time, while the radio chan­nels used by the local police were record­ed, the Secret Ser­vices radio trans­mis­sion weren’t record­ed for some unex­plained rea­son. It will pre­sum­ably even­tu­al­ly be blamed on tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties:

    ...
    To make com­mu­ni­ca­tions mat­ters worse, there were two com­mu­ni­ca­tion cen­ters at the event, one cen­ter run by the USSS and a sep­a­rate cen­ter run by local law enforce­ment. They com­mu­ni­cat­ed with each oth­er via cell­phone, and were at least 120 yards apart.

    The report states that the two camps also oper­at­ed on sep­a­rate radio chan­nels, and where the local chan­nels were record­ed on July 13, USSS radio trans­mis­sions were not record­ed.

    ...

    And, as well as work­ing on sep­a­rate radio fre­quen­cies, at one point USSS agents report­ed tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties with their radios. These agents were a USSS Her­cules 1 counter sniper who was unable to pick up a local radio because he was too busy fix­ing his own radio, and the USSS Spe­cial Agent In Charge (SAIC) who had no radio after giv­ing his to the Lead Advance Agent whose radio was not work­ing.
    ...

    Also recall how we were pre­vi­ous­ly told the Secret Secret was offered a drone but turned it down for unknown rea­sons. Now it sounds like the drone oper­a­tor was expe­ri­enc­ing tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties too. A lot of tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties that day:

    ...
    There were also sev­er­al tech­no­log­i­cal fail­ures at the event includ­ing the Counter-Unmanned Aer­i­al Sys­tem (C‑UAS) which expe­ri­enced tech­ni­cal prob­lems to the point that the agent respon­si­ble for the C‑UAS—who only had three months of expe­ri­ence work­ing with the equip­ment—had to call a toll-free 888 tech sup­port hot­line “to start trou­bleshoot­ing with the com­pa­ny.”
    ...

    And then there’s this inter­est­ing detail: the Secret Ser­vice counter snipers saw the local offi­cer rush towards the AGR build­ing. And yet Trump’s pro­tec­tive detail still was­n’t noti­fied, pre­sum­ably with to all the tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties as the expla­na­tion:

    ...
    They also claimed that local offi­cers lost track of the indi­vid­ual before the shots were fired. They were then only informed of a shoot­er on the AGR Build­ing roof that Crooks was on two min­utes before shots were fired.

    On top of that, despite see­ing local law enforce­ment run­ning toward the AGR Build­ing, a USSS coun­ter­sniper did not alert Don­ald Trump’s pro­tec­tive detail to remove him from the stage.
    ...

    But the ques­tions swirling around this inves­ti­ga­tion aren’t lim­it­ed to ques­tions about the com­mu­ni­ca­tion sna­fus. There’s the ques­tions around why Crook­s’s body was released for cre­ma­tion by the FBI just 10 days after the shoot­ing. Well, as we’re going to see, the med­ical exam­in­er who car­ried out the exam­i­na­tion of Crook­s’s body, Dr. Ariel Gold­schmidt, states that the body was indeed released under the direc­tive of the coun­ty coro­ner.

    Inter­est­ing­ly, Gold­schmidt is the med­ical exam­in­er for neigh­bor­ing Alleghe­ny Coun­ty. As we’re going to see, But­ler Coun­ty Coro­ner William F. Young III con­duct­ed an ini­tial exam­i­na­tion of Crook­s’s body while the body was still on the roof of the build­ing the fol­low­ing morn­ing at 6 am. At that point, Young released the body to the Alleghe­ny Coun­ty Med­ical Exam­in­er to com­plete the autop­sy.

    Gold­schmidt also asserts that Crooks was struck by just one bul­let, seem­ing­ly con­tra­dict­ing the sworn tes­ti­mo­ny of the local offi­cer who was sure he struck Crooks. It also appears the FBI has exam­ined Crook­s’s rifle and found no evi­dence it was struck.

    Anoth­er notable admis­sion by Gold­schmidt includes the fact that the FBI x‑rayed and han­dled the body before his exam­i­na­tion. It’s unclear at this point if the FBI han­dling took place before But­ler Coun­ty Coro­ner Young was able to exam­ine the body on the roof. So Alleghe­ny Coun­ty med­ical exam­in­er con­duct­ed the autop­sy, but not before the FBI x‑rayed and han­dled the body. And accord­ing to this exam­in­er, the body was released for cre­ma­tion by the But­ler coun­ty coro­ner. Those are some of the claims made dur­ing the lat­est con­gres­sion­al hear­ing on the shoot­ing. The kind of claims that raise more ques­tions than they answer:

    The Dai­ly Mail

    Thomas Matthew Crooks’ autop­sy test results emerge as sniper com­man­der gives detailed descrip­tion of the moment Trump’s would-be assas­sin was shot

    By Jon Michael Raasch, Polit­i­cal Reporter On Capi­tol Hill, For Dailymail.Com
    Pub­lished: 11:15 EDT, 26 Sep­tem­ber 2024 | Updat­ed: 14:46 EDT, 26 Sep­tem­ber 2024

    View com­ments

    Shock­ing details about Don­ald Trump’s dead­ly July 13 But­ler, Penn­syl­va­nia, ral­ly are emerg­ing.

    Law enforce­ment wit­ness­es, many who were present at the ral­ly dur­ing the shoot­ing, are detail­ing gris­ly aspects that unfold­ed dur­ing the messy day dur­ing a pub­lic hear­ing.

    That includes the exact moment shoot­er Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, was tak­en out by a counter sniper, just sec­onds after he shot the for­mer pres­i­dent.

    ...

    In addi­tion, the long-await­ed results of a series of tests con­duct­ed dur­ing Crooks’ autop­sy are final­ly being released.

    Open­ing the hear­ing, Chair­man of the Trump Assas­si­na­tion Task Force Mike Kel­ly, R‑Pa., said the Secret Ser­vice’s mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion led to con­fu­sion.

    ...

    Mr. Edward Lenz, Sergeant, Adams Town­ship Police Depart­ment, Com­man­der, But­ler Coun­ty Emer­gency Ser­vices Unit (ESU) opened up the hear­ing with his tes­ti­mo­ny.

    He was in charge of a large 44 mem­ber Emer­gency Ser­vice Unit that close­ly assist­ed the Secret Ser­vice, more offi­cers than the agency request­ed.

    His wife, a med­ical pro­fes­sion­al, even aid­ed some wound­ed that day, he added.

    Lenz tes­ti­fied that at no point dur­ing the prepa­ra­tion was the local ESU asked to secure the AGR com­plex from where Thomas Matthew Crooks shot from.

    Nor were they asked to put any­one on the roof.

    They did, how­ev­er, have a sniper on the barn close to Trump.

    He described how that sniper shot at Crooks six sec­onds after the ini­tial shots at the for­mer pres­i­dent sound­ed off.

    That ESU sniper under his com­mand shot at Crooks from 110 yards, he tes­ti­fied.

    ‘When shots rang out he quick­ly was able to iden­ti­fy where the shots were com­ing from,’ Lenz told the pan­el.

    ‘He observed the shoot­er, shoul­dered his rifle, he acquired his tar­get, and he fired one shot at the shoot­er which caused him to recoil and briefly fall out of site.’

    That indi­vid­ual saw through his scope Crooks recoil after fir­ing, indi­cat­ing that the 20-year-old was hit by the round, or at least fright­ened.

    Lenz tes­ti­fied that the ESU shoot­er was ‘very con­fi­dent’ that the shot con­nect­ed with the tar­get.

    But sec­onds after Crooks dis­ap­peared fol­low­ing the ini­tial vol­ley, the 20-year-old reap­peared and was imme­di­ate­ly shot once more, this time fatal­ly by the Secret Ser­vice.

    Lenz said there was ‘no guid­ance’ from the Secret Ser­vice on where he should sta­tion his ESU oper­a­tors.

    They were also not giv­en infor­ma­tion on rules for engage­ment from the agency, Lenz said.

    And Crook­s’s body showed signs that the Secret Ser­vice sniper’s bul­let was the one that killed the shoot­er.

    Dr. Ariel Gold­schmidt, the med­ical exam­in­er of Alleghe­ny Coun­ty, who con­duct­ed the autop­sy on Thomas Matthew Crooks, con­firmed Thurs­day he was killed by the sniper.

    Gold­schmidt con­firmed that gun­shot residue sam­ples were tak­en.

    He deter­mined Crooks died as a result of a high-veloc­i­ty gun­shot wound to the head after con­duct­ing the autop­sy the morn­ing of July 14.

    The entrance wound was just above Crook­s’s lip, he tes­ti­fied.

    Then on July 22 his body was released to the funer­al home at the direc­tive of the coun­ty coro­ner.

    Gold­schmidt also revealed that pri­or to his review of the body it was x‑rayed and han­dled by the FBI.

    The med­ical exam­in­er also said that he does not believe that Crooks’ body was impact­ed by a ninth or tenth shot when pressed by Rep. Clay Hig­gins, R‑La., on whether there were addi­tion­al wounds dis­cov­ered dur­ing the autop­sy.

    Pre­vi­ous­ly Hig­gins released an inde­pen­dent report indi­cat­ing that the stock of Crook­s’s gun could have been hit by gun­fire and the result­ing shrap­nel from the strike could have injured the shoot­er.

    But the doc­tor dis­pelled that sug­ges­tion dur­ing the hear­ing Thurs­day.

    Hig­gins also had raised issues he encoun­tered after he tried to view Crooks’ body on August 5 as part of his own per­son­al inspec­tion.

    The for­mer police cap­tain said his request to view the body ’caused quite a stir and revealed a dis­turb­ing fact.’

    It was at this point that he learned that the FBI had ‘released the body for cre­ma­tion 10 days’ after the shoot­ing in But­ler, Penn­syl­va­nia, on July 13.

    Hig­gins says ‘nobody knew’ that the body had been returned to the fam­i­ly, includ­ing the coun­ty coro­ner and local enforce­ment. He writes that the coro­ner still had ‘legal author­i­ty over the body’ when the FBI made this deci­sion and accus­es the agency of ‘obstruc­tion’.

    John D. Herold, Lieu­tenant, Penn­syl­va­nia State Police, the offi­cer in charge for the State Police on July 13, also tes­ti­fied.

    Dur­ing the hear­ing he said there were 20 mem­bers of his team there to sup­port the Secret Ser­vice, and his agency pro­vid­ed every­thing the agency request­ed.

    He also said that his team was not tasked with secur­ing the AGR build­ing from where Crooks shot the for­mer pres­i­dent.
    ...

    ———–

    “Thomas Matthew Crooks’ autop­sy test results emerge as sniper com­man­der gives detailed descrip­tion of the moment Trump’s would-be assas­sin was shot” By Jon Michael Raasch; The Dai­ly Mail; 09/26/2024

    “In addi­tion, the long-await­ed results of a series of tests con­duct­ed dur­ing Crooks’ autop­sy are final­ly being released.”

    The long-await­ed autop­sy results have final­ly been released. Long-await­ed, in part, due to the rev­e­la­tion that Crook­s’s body had been cre­mat­ed after the FBI gave per­mis­sion to release the body to the fam­i­ly, despite the body still be under the coun­ty coro­ner’s juris­dic­tion. And yet, as we can see, ques­tions are still swirling around what exact­ly hap­pened in the final moments around the shoot­ing. Did the local offi­cer who rushed towards Crooks actu­al­ly hit Crooks or his rifle like the offi­cer tes­ti­fied? We can no longer inves­ti­gate the body to answer that ques­tion:

    ...
    Mr. Edward Lenz, Sergeant, Adams Town­ship Police Depart­ment, Com­man­der, But­ler Coun­ty Emer­gency Ser­vices Unit (ESU) opened up the hear­ing with his tes­ti­mo­ny.

    He was in charge of a large 44 mem­ber Emer­gency Ser­vice Unit that close­ly assist­ed the Secret Ser­vice, more offi­cers than the agency request­ed.

    ...

    That ESU sniper under his com­mand shot at Crooks from 110 yards, he tes­ti­fied.

    ‘When shots rang out he quick­ly was able to iden­ti­fy where the shots were com­ing from,’ Lenz told the pan­el.

    ‘He observed the shoot­er, shoul­dered his rifle, he acquired his tar­get, and he fired one shot at the shoot­er which caused him to recoil and briefly fall out of site.’

    That indi­vid­ual saw through his scope Crooks recoil after fir­ing, indi­cat­ing that the 20-year-old was hit by the round, or at least fright­ened.

    Lenz tes­ti­fied that the ESU shoot­er was ‘very con­fi­dent’ that the shot con­nect­ed with the tar­get.

    But sec­onds after Crooks dis­ap­peared fol­low­ing the ini­tial vol­ley, the 20-year-old reap­peared and was imme­di­ate­ly shot once more, this time fatal­ly by the Secret Ser­vice.
    ...

    And that brings us to the tes­ti­mo­ny of the actu­al med­ical exam­in­er who con­duct­ed the autop­sy, Dr. Ariel Gold­schmidt of of Alleghe­ny Coun­ty. Accord­ing to Gold­schmidt, the release of Crook­s’s body was done at the direc­tive of the coun­ty coro­ner. It’s unclear if Gold­schmidt is refer­ring to the Alleghe­ny Coun­ty coro­ner or the But­ler Coun­ty coro­ner. Gold­schmidt goes on to reveal that, pri­or to his review of the body, it was x‑rayed and han­dled by the FBI:

    ...
    Lenz said there was ‘no guid­ance’ from the Secret Ser­vice on where he should sta­tion his ESU oper­a­tors.

    They were also not giv­en infor­ma­tion on rules for engage­ment from the agency, Lenz said.

    And Crook­s’s body showed signs that the Secret Ser­vice sniper’s bul­let was the one that killed the shoot­er.

    Dr. Ariel Gold­schmidt, the med­ical exam­in­er of Alleghe­ny Coun­ty, who con­duct­ed the autop­sy on Thomas Matthew Crooks, con­firmed Thurs­day he was killed by the sniper.

    Gold­schmidt con­firmed that gun­shot residue sam­ples were tak­en.

    He deter­mined Crooks died as a result of a high-veloc­i­ty gun­shot wound to the head after con­duct­ing the autop­sy the morn­ing of July 14.

    The entrance wound was just above Crook­s’s lip, he tes­ti­fied.

    Then on July 22 his body was released to the funer­al home at the direc­tive of the coun­ty coro­ner.

    Gold­schmidt also revealed that pri­or to his review of the body it was x‑rayed and han­dled by the FBI.

    ...

    Hig­gins also had raised issues he encoun­tered after he tried to view Crooks’ body on August 5 as part of his own per­son­al inspec­tion.

    The for­mer police cap­tain said his request to view the body ’caused quite a stir and revealed a dis­turb­ing fact.’

    It was at this point that he learned that the FBI had ‘released the body for cre­ma­tion 10 days’ after the shoot­ing in But­ler, Penn­syl­va­nia, on July 13.

    Hig­gins says ‘nobody knew’ that the body had been returned to the fam­i­ly, includ­ing the coun­ty coro­ner and local enforce­ment. He writes that the coro­ner still had ‘legal author­i­ty over the body’ when the FBI made this deci­sion and accus­es the agency of ‘obstruc­tion’.
    ...

    And then there’s Gold­schmidt’s dis­put­ing the idea that Crooks had been hit by any addi­tion­al shots, includ­ing the shot by local offi­cer who fired first on Crooks and who seemed to be pret­ty con­fi­dent they hit Crooks or his rifle:

    ...
    The med­ical exam­in­er also said that he does not believe that Crooks’ body was impact­ed by a ninth or tenth shot when pressed by Rep. Clay Hig­gins, R‑La., on whether there were addi­tion­al wounds dis­cov­ered dur­ing the autop­sy.

    Pre­vi­ous­ly Hig­gins released an inde­pen­dent report indi­cat­ing that the stock of Crook­s’s gun could have been hit by gun­fire and the result­ing shrap­nel from the strike could have injured the shoot­er.

    But the doc­tor dis­pelled that sug­ges­tion dur­ing the hear­ing Thurs­day.
    ...

    And as we’ll see in the fol­low­ing report, it isn’t just Dr. Gold­schmidt who is assert­ing that Crooks was only hit by a sin­gle shot. The FBI also states that not only was Crooks not hit by the local offi­cer’s shot but Crook­s’s rifle was­n’t hit either. Instead, the FBI’s lab­o­ra­to­ry divi­sion test-fired Crooks’ rifle and found it remained ful­ly oper­a­tional. At the same time, the local offi­cer tes­ti­fied, “When I say goes down, it wasn’t like he was duck­ing to get out of the way. I mean, I know I hit him.” Keep in mind Crook­s’s rifle should still be avail­able for fur­ther exam­i­na­tion, so hope­ful­ly we can even­tu­al­ly get some sort of clar­i­ty on that front. But the ques­tions about whether or not Crooks was hit by that local offi­cer’s shot are, at this point, doomed to spec­u­la­tion thanks to the qui­et cre­ma­tion of Crook­s’s body:

    The Wash­ing­ton Times

    Who shot Crooks? Med­ical exam­in­er found one bul­let wound, and it didn’t come from But­ler cop

    By Lind­sey McPher­son The Wash­ing­ton Times Thurs­day, Sep­tem­ber 26, 2024

    A local police offi­cer missed when he shot at would-be assas­sin Thomas Matthew Crooks dur­ing the sniper’s attack on for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump on July 13, accord­ing to tes­ti­mo­ny from the med­ical exam­in­er.

    Ariel Gold­schmidt, Alleghe­ny Coun­ty med­ical exam­in­er, on Thurs­day told a bipar­ti­san House task force inves­ti­gat­ing the assas­si­na­tion attempt that his exam­i­na­tion of Crooks found one bul­let frag­ment and relat­ed wound that came from a sin­gle shot to the head.

    Dr. Gold­schmidt con­duct­ed his autop­sy of Crooks on July 14, the day after the shoot­ing, and deter­mined he died from “a high-veloc­i­ty gun­shot wound to the head with an entrance wound of the left upper lip.”

    ...

    Before the Secret Ser­vice sniper’s kill shot, a local tac­ti­cal offi­cer work­ing under the But­ler Coun­ty Emer­gency Ser­vices unit fired a sin­gle round at Crooks, who was on the roof of a near­by build­ing, from the ground below.

    The FBI has con­firmed that the shot occurred, but has said no foren­sic evi­dence shows it hit Crooks or his rifle.

    The local offi­cer who took the shot at Crooks did not tes­ti­fy at the task force’s hear­ing, but the com­man­der of the But­ler Coun­ty Emer­gency Ser­vices Unit, Edward Lenz, relayed his account.

    Mr. Lenz said the offi­cer had moved from a barn behind the stage on the But­ler Farm Show grounds, the ral­ly site, to the adja­cent AGR Inter­na­tion­al com­plex to help respond to reports of a sus­pi­cious per­son, who lat­er turned out to be Crooks. When shots rang out, the offi­cer quick­ly iden­ti­fied where they were com­ing from: the roof of the AGR build­ing.

    “He observed the shoot­er, he shoul­dered his rifle, he acquired his tar­get, and he fired one round at the shoot­er, which caused the shoot­er to recoil and briefly fall out of sight,” Mr. Lenz said.

    The offi­cer took his shot “less than six sec­onds after shots began” using his short-bar­rel rifle at a dis­tance of approx­i­mate­ly 110 yards, he said.

    Rep. Mark Green, Ten­nessee Repub­li­can, asked Mr. Lenz if the officer’s shot hit Crooks.

    “He’s very con­fi­dent that his round was on tar­get,” Mr. Lenz said.

    Rep. Clay Hig­gins, Louisiana Repub­li­can and a mem­ber of the House task force, stirred up ques­tions about the local officer’s shot when he issued a report over the sum­mer say­ing it hit Crooks’ “rifle stock and fragged his face/neck/right shoul­der area from the stock break­ing up.”

    “He stopped Crooks and, impor­tant­ly, I believe the shot dam­aged the buffer tube on Crooks’ [auto­mat­ic rifle],” Mr. Hig­gins said, not­ing he wasn’t cer­tain but was “99% sure,” based on eye­wit­ness reports. “This means that if his AR buffer tube was dam­aged, Crooks’ rifle wouldn’t fire after his eighth shot.”

    The FBI’s lab­o­ra­to­ry divi­sion test-fired Crooks’ rifle and found it remained ful­ly oper­a­tional.

    At Thursday’s hear­ing, Mr. Hig­gins iden­ti­fied the local offi­cer who took the shot as Aaron Zaliponi and quot­ed him as say­ing he fired a round at Crooks and saw him go down.

    “When I say goes down, it wasn’t like he was duck­ing to get out of the way. I mean, I know I hit him,” Mr. Hig­gins said, read­ing Mr. Zaliponi’s tes­ti­mo­ny.

    Mr. Hig­gins asked the med­ical exam­in­er if injuries on Crooks’ shoul­ders could have been caused by a com­bined impact of the local cop’s shot hit­ting Crooks’ rifle and frag­ment­ing and the Secret Ser­vice sniper’s shot.

    “No, it’s not pos­si­ble,” Dr. Gold­schmidt said.

    Mr. Hig­gins asked Dr. Gold­schmidt if he knew where the local officer’s shot went. Dr. Gold­schmidt said he didn’t know.

    Mr. Hig­gins then asked if it might have gone all the way through Crooks, “and you had no way of know­ing that because it was in the same wound that was fur­ther affect­ed by shot num­ber 10,” from the Secret Ser­vice sniper.

    “There was no evi­dence on the body of that occur­ring,” Dr. Gold­schmidt said.

    “That’s dif­fer­ent than impos­si­ble,” Mr. Hig­gins con­clud­ed.

    ...

    ————

    “Who shot Crooks? Med­ical exam­in­er found one bul­let wound, and it didn’t come from But­ler cop” By Lind­sey McPher­son; The Wash­ing­ton Times; 09/26/2024

    ““He observed the shoot­er, he shoul­dered his rifle, he acquired his tar­get, and he fired one round at the shoot­er, which caused the shoot­er to recoil and briefly fall out of sight,” Mr. Lenz said.”

    The local offi­cer who fired on Crooks is report­ed­ly “very con­fi­dent” that either Crooks or his rifle was hit. But accord­ing to the FBI, there is no evi­dence the rifle was hit at all and it remained ful­ly func­tion­al. Which rais­es the ques­tion: is that rifle still avail­able for inves­ti­ga­tion?

    ...
    Before the Secret Ser­vice sniper’s kill shot, a local tac­ti­cal offi­cer work­ing under the But­ler Coun­ty Emer­gency Ser­vices unit fired a sin­gle round at Crooks, who was on the roof of a near­by build­ing, from the ground below.

    The FBI has con­firmed that the shot occurred, but has said no foren­sic evi­dence shows it hit Crooks or his rifle.

    The local offi­cer who took the shot at Crooks did not tes­ti­fy at the task force’s hear­ing, but the com­man­der of the But­ler Coun­ty Emer­gency Ser­vices Unit, Edward Lenz, relayed his account.

    Mr. Lenz said the offi­cer had moved from a barn behind the stage on the But­ler Farm Show grounds, the ral­ly site, to the adja­cent AGR Inter­na­tion­al com­plex to help respond to reports of a sus­pi­cious per­son, who lat­er turned out to be Crooks. When shots rang out, the offi­cer quick­ly iden­ti­fied where they were com­ing from: the roof of the AGR build­ing.

    ...

    The offi­cer took his shot “less than six sec­onds after shots began” using his short-bar­rel rifle at a dis­tance of approx­i­mate­ly 110 yards, he said.

    Rep. Mark Green, Ten­nessee Repub­li­can, asked Mr. Lenz if the officer’s shot hit Crooks.

    “He’s very con­fi­dent that his round was on tar­get,” Mr. Lenz said.

    Rep. Clay Hig­gins, Louisiana Repub­li­can and a mem­ber of the House task force, stirred up ques­tions about the local officer’s shot when he issued a report over the sum­mer say­ing it hit Crooks’ “rifle stock and fragged his face/neck/right shoul­der area from the stock break­ing up.”

    “He stopped Crooks and, impor­tant­ly, I believe the shot dam­aged the buffer tube on Crooks’ [auto­mat­ic rifle],” Mr. Hig­gins said, not­ing he wasn’t cer­tain but was “99% sure,” based on eye­wit­ness reports. “This means that if his AR buffer tube was dam­aged, Crooks’ rifle wouldn’t fire after his eighth shot.”

    The FBI’s lab­o­ra­to­ry divi­sion test-fired Crooks’ rifle and found it remained ful­ly oper­a­tional.

    At Thursday’s hear­ing, Mr. Hig­gins iden­ti­fied the local offi­cer who took the shot as Aaron Zaliponi and quot­ed him as say­ing he fired a round at Crooks and saw him go down.

    “When I say goes down, it wasn’t like he was duck­ing to get out of the way. I mean, I know I hit him,” Mr. Hig­gins said, read­ing Mr. Zaliponi’s tes­ti­mo­ny.

    Mr. Hig­gins asked the med­ical exam­in­er if injuries on Crooks’ shoul­ders could have been caused by a com­bined impact of the local cop’s shot hit­ting Crooks’ rifle and frag­ment­ing and the Secret Ser­vice sniper’s shot.

    “No, it’s not pos­si­ble,” Dr. Gold­schmidt said.
    ...

    And then we get this rather inter­est­ing exchange between Gold­schmidt and Hig­gins, with Hig­gins ask­ing if it was pos­si­ble that both the shot fired from the local offi­cer and the Secret Ser­vice sniper went through the same wound, effec­tive­ly leav­ing one bul­let wound. It’s undoubt­ed­ly a low prob­a­bil­i­ty event. But keep in mind anoth­er sce­nario that could pos­si­ble fit the avail­able data: the local sniper’s shot being the only shot that hit. It’s the kind of ques­tion that should be rel­a­tive­ly easy to answer assum­ing there’s at least one bul­let that hit Crooks that been retrieved:

    ...
    Mr. Hig­gins asked Dr. Gold­schmidt if he knew where the local officer’s shot went. Dr. Gold­schmidt said he didn’t know.

    Mr. Hig­gins then asked if it might have gone all the way through Crooks, “and you had no way of know­ing that because it was in the same wound that was fur­ther affect­ed by shot num­ber 10,” from the Secret Ser­vice sniper.

    “There was no evi­dence on the body of that occur­ring,” Dr. Gold­schmidt said.

    “That’s dif­fer­ent than impos­si­ble,” Mr. Hig­gins con­clud­ed.
    ...

    Final­ly, here’s a report from the But­ler Eagle from July 17, days after the shoot­ing, that clar­i­fies why it is that the Alleghe­ny Coun­ty med­ical exam­ple was the one con­duct­ing the autop­sy: But­ler Coun­ty coro­ner William F. Young III con­duct­ed his ini­tial exam­i­na­tion of the body on the roof of the build­ing short­ly after mid­night that Sun­day, lat­er return­ing at 6 am, and then released the body to the Alleghe­ny Coun­ty Med­ical Exam­in­er to com­plete the autop­sy:

    The But­ler Eagle

    But­ler Coun­ty coro­ner eval­u­ates Saturday’s shoot­ing vic­tim, shoot­er

    Young con­firms death ear­ly Sun­day morn­ing, July 14

    Eddie Trizzi­no Eagle Staff Writer
    July 17, 2024 Last Updat­ed: July 17, 2024 03:55 PM Local News

    But­ler Coun­ty Coro­ner William F. Young III was unable to attend the cam­paign ral­ly for for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump on Sat­ur­day, July 13, because of oth­er engage­ments, but he found him­self at the But­ler Farm Show grounds after mid­night Sun­day to exam­ine the vic­tim who was shot at the ral­ly.

    Young and a deputy coro­ner con­firmed the death of Buf­fa­lo Township’s Corey Com­per­a­tore ear­ly Sun­day morn­ing and sent his body to the Alleghe­ny Coun­ty Med­ical Exam­in­er to com­plete the autop­sy.

    The coro­ner and anoth­er deputy lat­er returned after 6 a.m. to the Amer­i­can Glass Research (AGR) Inter­na­tion­al build­ing, where he climbed onto its roof to con­firm the death of Thomas Matthew Crooks, whose gun­fire killed Com­per­a­tore and struck three oth­ers, includ­ing Trump. The pres­i­den­tial candidate’s right ear was struck by a bul­let before he was whisked off stage.

    ...

    ———–

    “But­ler Coun­ty coro­ner eval­u­ates Saturday’s shoot­ing vic­tim, shoot­er” by Eddie Trizzi­no; The But­ler Eagle; 07/17/2024

    It sounds like Young first exam­ined the body a lit­tle after mid­night, and then returned after 6 am for anoth­er exam­i­na­tion before hand­ing the body over to the Alleghe­ny Coun­ty Med­ical Exam­in­er. Which, again, rais­es the ques­tion: when did the FBI han­dle and x‑ray the body? Was that before Young’s ini­tial mid­night exam­i­na­tion? We don’t know, but based on this time­line the body was sit­ting there for around six hours before Young ini­tial­ly arrived.

    As we can see, plen­ty of new infor­ma­tion was revealed from these House and Sen­ate inves­ti­ga­tions. New infor­ma­tion that, in some cas­es, seems to con­tra­dict the infor­ma­tion pre­vi­ous­ly revealed. And, in oth­er cas­es, new infor­ma­tion that ampli­fies the gen­er­al ques­tion of how a secu­ri­ty f*ck up on this scale, with this many dif­fer­ent sub‑f*ck ups, could have ever been allowed to hap­pen in the first place with­out it being inten­tion­al.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | September 27, 2024, 7:14 pm

  25. Again? REALLY?! It’s get­ting more than a lit­tle absurd at this point, but it appears there was anoth­er Don­ald Trump assas­si­na­tion attempt over the week­end. By anoth­er indi­vid­ual with a long his­to­ry of con­ser­v­a­tive pol­i­tics.

    Third time’s a charm? Well, no, it does­n’t appear Trump was ever in any real dan­ger. Beyond that, it remains very unclear at this point if the man arrest­ed for mul­ti­ple firearms at his ral­ly posed any dan­ger to Trump at all. After all, the alleged puta­tive gun­man, Vem Miller, is a right-wing media per­son­al­i­ty and HUGE Trump fan.

    Oh, but it gets so much weird­er. Not only is Miller the co-founder of a right-wing media out­let, Amer­i­ca Hap­pen­ing News, but it turns out he inter­view a very inter­est­ing guest less than two weeks before his arrest: Ivan Raik­lin, the same indi­vid­ual inter­view by Alex Jones ear­li­er this year where they dis­cussed how won­der­ful it would be if Don­ald Trump was assas­si­nat­ed because of all the ret­ri­bu­tion­al vio­lence it would trig­ger. Not only did Trump assas­si­na­tion sce­nar­ios come up dur­ing Miller’s inter­view of Raik­lin but Raik­lin even referred back to his inter­view with Jones when describ­ing the ‘response sce­nar­ios’ he had in mind in the event of a suc­cess­ful assas­si­na­tion.

    So what exact­ly hap­pened in this inci­dent? Well, it starts off with an Octo­ber 12 ral­ly at a ranch just out­side Coachel­la, Cal­i­for­nia, a loca­tion that had many rais­ing their eye­brows at the time. After all, Cal­i­for­nia isn’t exact­ly a state one would expect Trump to be hold­ing a ral­ly in this close to Elec­tion Day in what is effec­tive­ly a tied race.

    Accord­ing to police, Miller attempt­ed to gain access to the inner perime­ter of the ral­ly in a Black SUV by claim­ing he was a VIP mem­ber of the press. It was at that point that secu­ri­ty noticed the disheveled state of his car’s inte­ri­or and what appeared to be fake home­made license plates. In addi­tion, Miller has mul­ti­ple pass­ports and dri­vers licens­es under dif­fer­ent names. Along with a shot­gun, a loaded hand­gun and a high-capac­i­ty mag­a­zine. It had all the hall­marks of a vehi­cle being dri­ven by a sov­er­eign cit­i­zen. Inter­est­ing­ly, it sounds like he was actu­al­ly allowed through the out­er perime­ter of the ral­ly with his vehi­cle. It was only at the inner perime­ter that sus­pi­cions were aroused.

    Miller has since been released on a $5000 bail and is await­ing a court hear­ing. Keep in mind that the sec­ond alleged wannabe assas­sin, Ryan Routh, has been kept in cus­tody with­out bail. So the fact that Miller already been released on bail would seem to indi­cate that he isn’t seen as a real threat to Trump. And yet, River­side Coun­ty Sher­iff Chad Bian­co told reporters “If you’re ask­ing me right now, I prob­a­bly did have deputies that pre­vent­ed the third assas­si­na­tion attempt.”

    So what’s going on with this sto­ry? Well, as we’re going to see, there’s anoth­er big twist: it turns out Sher­iff Bian­co is not just a huge Trump sup­port­er like Miller. He’s a ris­ing polit­i­cal star with Cal­i­for­nia con­ser­v­a­tive with a grow­ing num­ber of state Repub­li­cans call­ing on him to chal­lenge Gavin New­son in 2026 for Cal­i­for­ni­a’s gov­er­nor­ship.

    Part of what appears to have made Sher­iff Bian­co a ris­ing con­ser­v­a­tive star was his will­ing­ness to refuse to enforce COVID vac­cine man­dates while describ­ing him­self as the “last line of defense” against a tyran­ni­cal gov­ern­ment. Beyond that, it turns out Bian­co’s name showed up on a leaked list of Oath Keep­ers mem­bers. Yes, the sher­iff who was in charge of the area where this third alleged assas­si­na­tion attempt took place just hap­pens to have been a mem­ber of the Oath Keep­ers while the alleged assas­si­na­tion was him­self a right-wing media per­son­al­i­ty.

    Bian­co asserts that he’s no longer a mem­ber of the group and can’t seem to recall why he joined in the first place. But he does claim to have found old emails that con­firm he joined the Oath Keep­ers ‘some­time around Feb­ru­ary 2014’. Keep in mind the rel­e­vance of that tim­ing: the Bundy Ranch stand­off start­ed in ear­ly April of 2014. And let’s not for­get which group played a key role in foment­ing both of the Bundy stand­offs: The Oath Keep­ers. So while Sher­iff Bian­co claims to have a dif­fi­cult time recall­ing why exact­ly he want­ed to join the Oath Keep­ers in 2014, it’s not exact­ly a huge mys­tery.

    And that all brings us to anoth­er weird twist in this sto­ry: accord­ing to Mindy Robin­son, one of Miller’s cowork­ers at his Amer­i­ca Hap­pens Net­work, Miller’s claims of being a VIP press mem­ber were true and she and Miller are rou­tine­ly invit­ed to Trump ral­lies as mem­bers of the press. Robin­son goes on to sug­gest that Miller is a tar­get of some sort of ‘Deep State’ plot as ret­ri­bu­tion for a doc­u­men­tary he recent­ly pro­duced expos­ing the Deep State’s role in the Bundy Ranch stand­off. Yep.

    So, to review, we had a Trump ral­ly held at a strange­ly cho­sen loca­tion in Cal­i­for­nia that seemed to serve no real strate­gic pur­pose. And at this ral­ly, a right-wing media per­son­al­i­ty was arrest­ed for claim­ing to be a VIP mem­ber of the press while pos­sess­ing mul­ti­ple firearms and the kind of fake ids asso­ci­at­ed with sov­er­eign cit­i­zens. And yet, this man is a kind of fringe media fig­ure who inter­viewed Ivan Raik­lin less than two weeks before this inci­dent. Beyond that, his busi­ness part­ner claims they’ve both been rou­tine­ly invit­ed to these events as mem­bers of the media. But on that day, he was arrest­ed, lead­ing to claims that it was all ret­ri­bu­tion by the Deep State over Miller’s Bundy Ranch doc­u­men­tary. And to top it all off, the sher­iff who sug­gest­ed to the press that Miller real­ly was plan­ning on an assas­si­na­tion is, him­self, a for­mer mem­ber of the Oath Keep­ers and a con­ser­v­a­tive ris­ing star. Yes, that all hap­pened, with the over­all net effect of gen­er­at­ing a nation­al news sto­ry about a third Trump assas­si­na­tion attempt:

    USA TODAY

    Trump was­n’t in dan­ger from armed man at Cal­i­for­nia ral­ly, offi­cials say

    Joey Gar­ri­son
    Paris Bar­raza
    Pub­lished 4:46 pm ET Octo­ber 13, 2024 | Updat­ed 9:41 am ET Octo­ber 14, 2024

    A Las Vegas man was charged with pos­ses­sion of a loaded firearm and a high-capac­i­ty mag­a­zine on Sat­ur­day after deputies assigned to a ral­ly by for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump in south­ern Cal­i­for­ni­a’s Coachel­la Val­ley stopped him at a check­point.

    ...

    The sus­pect, 49-year-old Vem Miller of Las Vegas, was stopped by deputies at 4:59 p.m. in a black SUV at a check­point at the inter­sec­tion of Avenue 52 and Cel­e­bra­tion Dri­ve, accord­ing to the River­side Coun­ty Sher­if­f’s Office.

    Miller was found ille­gal­ly pos­sess­ing a shot­gun, a loaded hand­gun and a high-capac­i­ty mag­a­zine, local author­i­ties said. He was arrest­ed and booked at the John J. Benoit Deten­tion Cen­ter in Indio, Cal­i­for­nia.

    Miller was released on $5,000 bail and awaits a court hear­ing.

    River­side Coun­ty Sher­iff Chad Bian­co said that Miller approached the perime­ter of the ral­ly before the event start­ed and false­ly claimed to have VIP access as mem­ber of the press corps, which he was not. Deputies spot­ted a num­ber of “irreg­u­lar­i­ties” includ­ing a fake license plate, Bian­co said, prompt­ing addi­tion­al inves­ti­ga­tion.

    In addi­tion to the firearms, deputies found mul­ti­ple pass­ports with mul­ti­ples names in Miller’s pos­ses­sion inside Miller’s vehi­cle as well as mul­ti­ple dri­vers licens­es with dif­fer­ent names, accord­ing to Bian­co. He said the vehi­cle was not reg­is­tered and the license plate appeared to be home­made, resem­bling those often used by mem­bers of anti-gov­ern­ment “sov­er­eign cit­i­zens” groups.

    ...

    “The U.S. Attor­ney’s Office, U.S. Secret Ser­vice and FBI are aware of the River­side Sher­if­f’s Coun­ty Office’s arrest on Sat­ur­day,” the three fed­er­al agen­cies said in a joint state­ment. “The U.S. Secret Ser­vice assess­es that the inci­dent did not impact pro­tec­tive oper­a­tions and for­mer Pres­i­dent Trump was not in any dan­ger. While no fed­er­al arrest was made at this time, the inves­ti­ga­tion is ongo­ing.”

    Bian­co spec­u­lat­ed that Miller’s inten­tion was to assas­si­nate the for­mer pres­i­dent.

    “If you’re ask­ing me right now, I prob­a­bly did have deputies that pre­vent­ed the third assas­si­na­tion attempt,” said Bian­co, who is a staunch Trump sup­port­er and endorsed the Repub­li­can nom­i­nee’s pres­i­den­tial bid this sum­mer.

    Trump spoke Sat­ur­day night to a crowd of sev­er­al thou­sand peo­ple at the Cal­houn Ranch in River­side Coun­ty, just out­side Coachel­la, at 5:30 p.m. — about half an hour after his remarks were sched­uled to begin.

    ...

    ———–

    “Trump was­n’t in dan­ger from armed man at Cal­i­for­nia ral­ly, offi­cials say” by Joey Gar­ri­son; Paris Bar­raza; USA TODAY; 10/13/2024

    “In addi­tion to the firearms, deputies found mul­ti­ple pass­ports with mul­ti­ples names in Miller’s pos­ses­sion inside Miller’s vehi­cle as well as mul­ti­ple dri­vers licens­es with dif­fer­ent names, accord­ing to Bian­co. He said the vehi­cle was not reg­is­tered and the license plate appeared to be home­made, resem­bling those often used by mem­bers of anti-gov­ern­ment “sov­er­eign cit­i­zens” groups.”

    If Vem Miller isn’t a sov­er­eign cit­i­zen he’s appar­ent­ly plan­ning to dress up as one for Hal­loween. Guns, fake pass­ports and home­made dri­vers licens­es more or less scream “I’m a sov­er­eign cit­i­zen!” to the world. That’s descrip­tion of the third appar­ent­ly would-be Trump assas­sin this year. Miller appar­ent­ly tried to dri­ve his vehi­cle, filled with guns, into the perime­ter of the Coachel­la ral­ly by claim­ing VIP press corp access, arriv­ing short­ly before 5 PM, when Trump was ini­tial­ly sched­uled to speak:

    ...
    The sus­pect, 49-year-old Vem Miller of Las Vegas, was stopped by deputies at 4:59 p.m. in a black SUV at a check­point at the inter­sec­tion of Avenue 52 and Cel­e­bra­tion Dri­ve, accord­ing to the River­side Coun­ty Sher­if­f’s Office.

    Miller was found ille­gal­ly pos­sess­ing a shot­gun, a loaded hand­gun and a high-capac­i­ty mag­a­zine, local author­i­ties said. He was arrest­ed and booked at the John J. Benoit Deten­tion Cen­ter in Indio, Cal­i­for­nia.

    ...

    River­side Coun­ty Sher­iff Chad Bian­co said that Miller approached the perime­ter of the ral­ly before the event start­ed and false­ly claimed to have VIP access as mem­ber of the press corps, which he was not. Deputies spot­ted a num­ber of “irreg­u­lar­i­ties” includ­ing a fake license plate, Bian­co said, prompt­ing addi­tion­al inves­ti­ga­tion.

    ...

    Trump spoke Sat­ur­day night to a crowd of sev­er­al thou­sand peo­ple at the Cal­houn Ranch in River­side Coun­ty, just out­side Coachel­la, at 5:30 p.m. — about half an hour after his remarks were sched­uled to begin.
    ...

    And while it remains unclear why exact­ly Miller was try­ing to gain access to the ral­ly with all those weapons and Miller has already been released on bail, River­side Sher­iff Chad Bian­co was ready to spec­u­late that his deputies just thwart­ed a third assas­si­na­tion attempt:

    ...
    Miller was released on $5,000 bail and awaits a court hear­ing.

    ...

    “The U.S. Attor­ney’s Office, U.S. Secret Ser­vice and FBI are aware of the River­side Sher­if­f’s Coun­ty Office’s arrest on Sat­ur­day,” the three fed­er­al agen­cies said in a joint state­ment. “The U.S. Secret Ser­vice assess­es that the inci­dent did not impact pro­tec­tive oper­a­tions and for­mer Pres­i­dent Trump was not in any dan­ger. While no fed­er­al arrest was made at this time, the inves­ti­ga­tion is ongo­ing.”

    Bian­co spec­u­lat­ed that Miller’s inten­tion was to assas­si­nate the for­mer pres­i­dent.

    “If you’re ask­ing me right now, I prob­a­bly did have deputies that pre­vent­ed the third assas­si­na­tion attempt,” said Bian­co, who is a staunch Trump sup­port­er and endorsed the Repub­li­can nom­i­nee’s pres­i­den­tial bid this sum­mer.
    ...

    Are we look­ing at anoth­er assas­si­na­tion attempt by anoth­er self-described con­ser­v­a­tive? Yes, accord­ing to Sher­iff Bian­co. And yet, as we’re going to see, all indi­ca­tions are that Miller is not only a huge Trump sup­port­er but he appar­ent­ly real­ly is kind of a mem­ber of the press. In fact, Miller co-found­ed a right-wing media out­let, Amer­i­ca Hap­pens Net­work, and accord­ing to one of his part­ners at the net­work, Miller would typ­i­cal­ly get invit­ed to these kinds of Trump ral­lies as a mem­ber of the press.

    Oh, and guess who Miller recent­ly inter­viewed on his Amer­i­ca Hap­pen­ing Net­work less than two weeks before his arrest: Ivan Raik­lin, the self-describe “sec­re­tary of ret­ri­bu­tion” for Don­ald Trump. The same per­son who had that now infa­mous inter­view with Alex Jones ear­li­er this year where they dis­cussed how won­der­ful it would be if Don­ald Trump was assas­si­nat­ed because of all the ret­ri­bu­tion­al vio­lence it would trig­ger. And guess what Miller and Raik­lin talked about dur­ing that inter­view less than two weeks before this inci­dent...:

    Raw Sto­ry

    Bust­ed: Armed man arrest­ed at ral­ly tied to Trump’s ‘sec­re­tary of ret­ri­bu­tion’

    Jor­dan Green, Inves­tiga­tive Reporter
    Octo­ber 14, 2024 6:21AM ET

    The man arrest­ed with guns out­side Don­ald Trump’s ral­ly in Coachel­la, Calif. on Oct. 12 had spo­ken about assas­si­na­tion attempts against the for­mer pres­i­dent less than two weeks ear­li­er with a retired Army lieu­tenant colonel who calls him­self Trump’s “sec­re­tary of ret­ri­bu­tion.”

    Vem Miller, a 49-year-old for­mer music video direc­tor who now pro­duces con­spir­a­cy-dri­ven doc­u­men­tary films, inter­viewed retired Lt. Col. Ivan Raik­lin, known for cir­cu­lat­ing a “Deep State tar­get list” against Trump’s polit­i­cal ene­mies. The inter­view was pro­duced for the Amer­i­ca Hap­pens Net­work, a com­pa­ny co-found­ed by Miller that describes itself as “the anti-the­sis of what the mock­ing­bird media has to offer.”

    “You know, you inspire me,” Miller told Raik­lin dur­ing the inter­view, which was post­ed on the video plat­form Rum­ble on Oct. 1. “This episode’s actu­al­ly going to be called, ‘What are we going to do once they steal the elec­tion,’ because that’s cer­tain, 100 per­cent cer­tain­ty that they’re going to steal this. And we need to be pre­pared.”

    “I already have a plan,” Raik­lin respond­ed. “I have the counter-strat­e­gy. I’ve already war-gamed basi­cal­ly their next 15 moves. I got 30 moves ahead of it. I’m doing worse-case [sic] sce­nario. And if worse-case [sic] sce­nario doesn’t hap­pen, we win, right? But I’m always plan­ning for the worse case [sic] sce­nario that they can do, both with­in their law, legal author­i­ty, and beyond of what they’re capa­ble of.

    “So, the cat­e­gories of what they’re gonna do is they’re gonna con­tin­ue to try to assas­si­nate Trump,” Raik­lin con­tin­ued. “I already got a plan in response to that and what should take place.”

    “Tell me that,” Miller inter­rupt­ed. “Say it.”

    “No, no, no,” Raik­lin respond­ed. “I don’t need to put it out. Because if I put it out, peo­ple are going to think I’m try­ing to advo­cate for that to take place. I’m not. But you always have to have some­one plan­ning out worst case already in advance that has already thought through it, so that imme­di­ate action takes place. I’ve already thought through that delib­er­ate­ly. I got a response for that. It’s going to be worse for them if that takes place.”

    Raik­lin added that he had already explained his think­ing dur­ing an appear­ance on InfoWars with con­spir­a­cy traf­fick­er Alex Jones in Feb­ru­ary 2024.

    Dur­ing that exchange, Raik­lin told Jones: “This is a mes­sage direct­ly to every sin­gle per­son on the Deep State tar­get list. My assess­ment — Ivan Raiklin’s assess­ment that if you assas­si­nate any polit­i­cal pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, whether it’s RFK, whether it’s Trump, guess what? Amer­i­ca will do the fol­low­ing: Imme­di­ate­ly, they will respond in kind.

    “If they do that, option 2 behind Trump is going to be so much bet­ter for us, and so much worse for them,” Raik­lin con­tin­ued.

    “I was about to say, if they kill him that’s best-case sce­nario,” Jones agreed. “From a sick lev­el, from a sick lev­el medi­um, oh, please kill him. It’s so good after that.”

    Raik­lin added: “It’s going to be the best cleans­ing and the fastest cleans­ing that we’ve ever seen in my life­time. I assess with almost cer­tain­ty, with the high­est lev­el of con­fi­dence, that if they assas­si­nate Trump, it is so game over for them.”

    River­side Coun­ty Sher­iff Chad Bian­co, him­self a fer­vent Trump sup­port­er, told reporters dur­ing a press con­fer­ence that a deputy arrest­ed Miller when he stopped his vehi­cle at the inner perime­ter of the ral­ly. Miller had been allowed to dri­ve through the out­er perime­ter, Bian­co said, because it appeared that he was either a VIP or press.

    ...

    Miller denied that he had any intent to assas­si­nate Trump, call­ing him­self “100 per­cent a Trump sup­port­er” in an inter­view with Fox News. He also denied that he is a sov­er­eign cit­i­zen or that he was car­ry­ing fake doc­u­ments.

    Mindy Robin­son, one of Miller’s part­ners at the Amer­i­ca Hap­pens Net­work, angri­ly post­ed on X that Miller’s arrest was ret­ri­bu­tion from the “Deep State.” Miller and Robin­son released a six-hour doc­u­men­tary, which opens with an apoc­a­lyp­tic assess­ment of cur­rent events cen­tered on the first assas­si­na­tion attempt against Trump in But­ler, Pa. before mov­ing to its main sub­ject: the armed stand­off in 2014 that pit­ted the Bundy fam­i­ly and their sup­port­ers against the FBI.

    “Vem just exposed a huge Deep State coverup involv­ing the feds and the Bundy ranch scan­dal,” Robin­son wrote on X on Sun­day. “So, I firm­ly believe this is 100% some kind of set­up in ret­ri­bu­tion for expos­ing it. That, or Trump’s secu­ri­ty team is a bunch of dips—s try­ing to make up for how bad­ly they failed in Penn­syl­va­nia with any kind of ‘win’ they can get, fake or not.

    “There isn’t a uni­verse his inten­tion was to kill Trump,” Robin­son con­tin­ued. “He’s worked too hard in this move­ment to expose the Deep State and all the peo­ple against him. If he had guns in his car that were ille­gal, whooptie‑f—ing do As a pro-2A advo­cate, ask me if I give a s— about a good guy with a gun in an unsafe s—hole like Cal­i­for­nia. It doesn’t even make sense why his pass­es would be fake either when we’re both usu­al­ly invit­ed as media to these things.”

    ...

    ———–

    “Bust­ed: Armed man arrest­ed at ral­ly tied to Trump’s ‘sec­re­tary of ret­ri­bu­tion’ ” by Jor­dan Green; Raw Sto­ry; 10/14/2024

    “The man arrest­ed with guns out­side Don­ald Trump’s ral­ly in Coachel­la, Calif. on Oct. 12 had spo­ken about assas­si­na­tion attempts against the for­mer pres­i­dent less than two weeks ear­li­er with a retired Army lieu­tenant colonel who calls him­self Trump’s “sec­re­tary of ret­ri­bu­tion.””

    Oh look at that: it turns our Vem miller is a close asso­ciate of Trump’s self-described “sec­re­tary of ret­ri­bu­tion” Ivan Raik­lin. The very same Ivan Raik­lin who appeared on Alex Jones’s show ear­li­er this year where Jones and Raik­lin dis­cussed how won­der­ful it would be if Trump was assas­si­nat­ed because of the right-wing revenge killings that would fol­low. In fact, it turns out Miller inter­viewed Raik­lin on Miller’s own Amer­i­ca Hap­pens Net­work media out­let where they also dis­cussed the con­se­quences of a Trump assas­si­na­tion and Raik­lin’s ‘response plan’. Less than two weeks before Miller’s arrest. What a remark­able coin­ci­dence:

    ...
    Vem Miller, a 49-year-old for­mer music video direc­tor who now pro­duces con­spir­a­cy-dri­ven doc­u­men­tary films, inter­viewed retired Lt. Col. Ivan Raik­lin, known for cir­cu­lat­ing a “Deep State tar­get list” against Trump’s polit­i­cal ene­mies. The inter­view was pro­duced for the Amer­i­ca Hap­pens Net­work, a com­pa­ny co-found­ed by Miller that describes itself as “the anti-the­sis of what the mock­ing­bird media has to offer.”

    “You know, you inspire me,” Miller told Raik­lin dur­ing the inter­view, which was post­ed on the video plat­form Rum­ble on Oct. 1. “This episode’s actu­al­ly going to be called, ‘What are we going to do once they steal the elec­tion,’ because that’s cer­tain, 100 per­cent cer­tain­ty that they’re going to steal this. And we need to be pre­pared.”

    “I already have a plan,” Raik­lin respond­ed. “I have the counter-strat­e­gy. I’ve already war-gamed basi­cal­ly their next 15 moves. I got 30 moves ahead of it. I’m doing worse-case [sic] sce­nario. And if worse-case [sic] sce­nario doesn’t hap­pen, we win, right? But I’m always plan­ning for the worse case [sic] sce­nario that they can do, both with­in their law, legal author­i­ty, and beyond of what they’re capa­ble of.

    “So, the cat­e­gories of what they’re gonna do is they’re gonna con­tin­ue to try to assas­si­nate Trump,” Raik­lin con­tin­ued. “I already got a plan in response to that and what should take place.”

    “Tell me that,” Miller inter­rupt­ed. “Say it.”

    “No, no, no,” Raik­lin respond­ed. “I don’t need to put it out. Because if I put it out, peo­ple are going to think I’m try­ing to advo­cate for that to take place. I’m not. But you always have to have some­one plan­ning out worst case already in advance that has already thought through it, so that imme­di­ate action takes place. I’ve already thought through that delib­er­ate­ly. I got a response for that. It’s going to be worse for them if that takes place.”
    ...

    If fact, Raik­lin even brought up his inter­view with Jones ear­li­er this year dur­ing his inter­view with Miller. This is clear­ly a fre­quent top­ic of con­ver­sa­tion in this cor­ner of the media land­scape:

    ...
    Raik­lin added that he had already explained his think­ing dur­ing an appear­ance on InfoWars with con­spir­a­cy traf­fick­er Alex Jones in Feb­ru­ary 2024.

    Dur­ing that exchange, Raik­lin told Jones: “This is a mes­sage direct­ly to every sin­gle per­son on the Deep State tar­get list. My assess­ment — Ivan Raiklin’s assess­ment that if you assas­si­nate any polit­i­cal pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, whether it’s RFK, whether it’s Trump, guess what? Amer­i­ca will do the fol­low­ing: Imme­di­ate­ly, they will respond in kind.

    “If they do that, option 2 behind Trump is going to be so much bet­ter for us, and so much worse for them,” Raik­lin con­tin­ued.

    “I was about to say, if they kill him that’s best-case sce­nario,” Jones agreed. “From a sick lev­el, from a sick lev­el medi­um, oh, please kill him. It’s so good after that.”

    Raik­lin added: “It’s going to be the best cleans­ing and the fastest cleans­ing that we’ve ever seen in my life­time. I assess with almost cer­tain­ty, with the high­est lev­el of con­fi­dence, that if they assas­si­nate Trump, it is so game over for them.”
    ...

    And then we get this addi­tion­al detail about Miller’s arrest that relates Miller’s work as a far right media per­son­al­i­ty: it appears his fake VIP press cre­den­tials allowed him to make it through the out­er perime­ter of the ral­ly. He was only stopped at the inner perime­ter check­point. At the same time, one of Miller’s part­ners at his Amer­i­ca Hap­pens Net­work, Mindy Robin­son, insists she and Miller are usu­al­ly invit­ed as media to Trump ral­lies. Also note how Robin­son points to Miller’s ‘expo­sure of the Deep State’ regard­ing the 2014 Bundy Ranch stand­off, sug­gest­ing this was all some sort of Deep State revenge plot:

    ...
    River­side Coun­ty Sher­iff Chad Bian­co, him­self a fer­vent Trump sup­port­er, told reporters dur­ing a press con­fer­ence that a deputy arrest­ed Miller when he stopped his vehi­cle at the inner perime­ter of the ral­ly. Miller had been allowed to dri­ve through the out­er perime­ter, Bian­co said, because it appeared that he was either a VIP or press.

    ...

    Miller denied that he had any intent to assas­si­nate Trump, call­ing him­self “100 per­cent a Trump sup­port­er” in an inter­view with Fox News. He also denied that he is a sov­er­eign cit­i­zen or that he was car­ry­ing fake doc­u­ments.

    Mindy Robin­son, one of Miller’s part­ners at the Amer­i­ca Hap­pens Net­work, angri­ly post­ed on X that Miller’s arrest was ret­ri­bu­tion from the “Deep State.” Miller and Robin­son released a six-hour doc­u­men­tary, which opens with an apoc­a­lyp­tic assess­ment of cur­rent events cen­tered on the first assas­si­na­tion attempt against Trump in But­ler, Pa. before mov­ing to its main sub­ject: the armed stand­off in 2014 that pit­ted the Bundy fam­i­ly and their sup­port­ers against the FBI.

    “Vem just exposed a huge Deep State coverup involv­ing the feds and the Bundy ranch scan­dal,” Robin­son wrote on X on Sun­day. “So, I firm­ly believe this is 100% some kind of set­up in ret­ri­bu­tion for expos­ing it. That, or Trump’s secu­ri­ty team is a bunch of dips—s try­ing to make up for how bad­ly they failed in Penn­syl­va­nia with any kind of ‘win’ they can get, fake or not.

    “There isn’t a uni­verse his inten­tion was to kill Trump,” Robin­son con­tin­ued. “He’s worked too hard in this move­ment to expose the Deep State and all the peo­ple against him. If he had guns in his car that were ille­gal, whooptie‑f—ing do As a pro-2A advo­cate, ask me if I give a s— about a good guy with a gun in an unsafe s—hole like Cal­i­for­nia. It doesn’t even make sense why his pass­es would be fake either when we’re both usu­al­ly invit­ed as media to these things.”
    ...

    So is Sher­iff Bian­co work­ing for the ‘Deep State’? Well, as we’re going to see, if so, he’s a very deep cov­er agent. Because by all appear­ances Bian­co and Miller are more or less on the same ide­o­log­i­cal page. But beyond that, Bian­co hap­pens to be a ris­ing star in Cal­i­for­nia con­ser­v­a­tive pol­i­tics thanks, in part, to stances he tak­en that are more or less in line with the kind of anti-fed­er­al gov­ern­ment pol­i­tics that has long ani­mat­ed groups like the sov­er­eign cit­i­zens and Oath Keep­ers. Groups that played key roles in both the Bundy Stand­offs. In fact, grow­ing num­bers of Cal­i­for­nia con­ser­v­a­tives are press­ing Bian­co to make a 2026 guber­na­to­r­i­al run. A run he’s seri­ous­ly con­sid­er­ing.

    But there’s one com­pli­ca­tion in Bian­co’s past that is bound to play a role in any guber­na­to­r­i­al runs for Bian­co: leaked Oath Keep­ers mem­ber­ship lists reveal Bian­co was a mem­ber:

    Los Ange­les Times

    River­side Coun­ty Sher­iff Chad Bian­co, fre­quent New­som crit­ic, pon­ders a run to suc­ceed him

    By Han­nah Fry
    Staff Writer
    June 8, 2024 3 AM PT

    River­side Coun­ty Sher­iff Chad Bian­co, a con­ser­v­a­tive fire­brand known for voic­ing law-and-order views and fierce crit­i­cism of Gov. Gavin New­som, is con­sid­er­ing a run for gov­er­nor in 2026.

    Bian­co, who was first elect­ed as sher­iff in 2018 after a decades-long career at the River­side Coun­ty Sheriff’s Office, hasn’t for­mal­ly announced his can­di­da­cy. How­ev­er, he told The Times in an inter­view Fri­day that he’s dis­cussing with his fam­i­ly a run for the state’s top job.

    “I live in the per­fect place. I have the per­fect job, and I would do this for the next 40 years if peo­ple would keep elect­ing me here in River­side Coun­ty,” Bian­co said. “So this is a huge thing for me to decide to just give up. The grow­ing num­ber of peo­ple that are try­ing to con­vince me to do this is a bug in my ear that, quite frankly, has giv­en me some­thing to think about.”

    The sher­iff, who has called atten­tion to what he sees as defi­cien­cies in statewide pub­lic safe­ty laws, had a viral moment this month when he post­ed a video on Insta­gram — which he says was tongue-in-cheek — endors­ing Don­ald Trump’s pres­i­den­tial cam­paign. In it, the sher­iff, sit­ting in a car wear­ing his uni­form, says that after years of being crit­i­cal of poli­cies that have closed pris­ons or reduced jail sen­tences, he is “going to change teams.”

    “I think it’s time we put a felon in the White House,” he says. “Trump 2024, baby. Let’s save this coun­try and make Amer­i­ca great again.”

    Crit­ics called him out for advo­cat­ing for a can­di­date while wear­ing a tax­pay­er-fund­ed uni­form.

    State Supt. of Pub­lic Instruc­tion Tony Thur­mond, who is run­ning for gov­er­nor, called for an inves­ti­ga­tion into Bianco’s actions and accused him of break­ing a state law that pro­hibits offi­cers or employ­ees of local agen­cies from par­tic­i­pat­ing in polit­i­cal activ­i­ties while in uni­form.

    ...

    Bian­co told The Times he has “zero regrets” about post­ing the video and was dis­mayed that his detrac­tors failed to address the first por­tion of it, in which he points out the pub­lic safe­ty chal­lenges­fac­ing the state.

    ...

    In 2021, Bian­co grabbed head­lines for vow­ing not to enforce vac­cine man­dates for Sheriff’s Office employ­ees, say­ing he believes vac­ci­na­tion is a per­son­al choice.

    A month lat­er, Bian­co faced scruti­ny after it was revealed through a data leak that in 2014 he was a dues-pay­ing mem­ber of the Oath Keep­ers, a vio­lent far-right, anti-gov­ern­ment group whose ranks par­tic­i­pat­ed in the insur­rec­tion at the U.S. Capi­tol on Jan. 6, 2021.

    At the time, he said in a state­ment that “like many oth­er law enforce­ment offi­cers and vet­er­ans who were mem­bers, I learned the group did not offer me any­thing and so I did not con­tin­ue mem­ber­ship.”

    Last year, Bian­co was among a coali­tion of 90 sher­iffs across the coun­try who pub­licly endorsed the tough stance on bor­der secu­ri­ty tak­en by Flori­da Gov. Ron DeSan­tis, who was cam­paign­ing for the Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion.

    ...

    A coali­tion of sher­iffs across Cal­i­for­nia, the Repub­li­can Par­ty of River­side Coun­ty and a num­ber of cur­rent and for­mer law­mak­ers have called on Bian­co to run for gov­er­nor.

    For­mer state Sen. Den­nis Hollingsworth, who is lead­ing a group called the “Draft Bian­co coali­tion,” said in a state­ment this week that the sheriff’s can­di­da­cy would pro­vide a “real alter­na­tive” for Cal­i­for­nia vot­ers.

    “In the face of Sacramento’s fail­ures on issues like crime and home­less­ness, Sher­iff Bianco’s lead­er­ship has been an exam­ple for oth­er com­mu­ni­ties to fol­low across the state,” Hollingsworth said.

    Bian­co would be the first high-pro­file Repub­li­can to enter the crowd­ed race to suc­ceed New­som, who terms out in 2027.

    ...

    “I don’t want to be just the Repub­li­can run­ning for gov­er­nor. I want to be the leader that peo­ple want to fix this state,” Bian­co said.

    “And if I can get men­tal­ly to a point where I believe that Cal­i­for­nia wants a leader to fix the state, then I will make the deci­sion to do it.”

    ———–

    “River­side Coun­ty Sher­iff Chad Bian­co, fre­quent New­som crit­ic, pon­ders a run to suc­ceed him” By Han­nah Fry; Los Ange­les Times; 06/08/2024

    “A coali­tion of sher­iffs across Cal­i­for­nia, the Repub­li­can Par­ty of River­side Coun­ty and a num­ber of cur­rent and for­mer law­mak­ers have called on Bian­co to run for gov­er­nor.”

    Sher­iff Bian­co isn’t just the sher­iff. He’s a ris­ing polit­i­cal star, with a grow­ing num­ber of Cal­i­for­nia Repub­li­cans press­ing him to make a guber­na­to­r­i­al run in 2026. Pre­sum­ably under a strong ‘MAGA’ ban­ner:

    ...
    The sher­iff, who has called atten­tion to what he sees as defi­cien­cies in statewide pub­lic safe­ty laws, had a viral moment this month when he post­ed a video on Insta­gram — which he says was tongue-in-cheek — endors­ing Don­ald Trump’s pres­i­den­tial cam­paign. In it, the sher­iff, sit­ting in a car wear­ing his uni­form, says that after years of being crit­i­cal of poli­cies that have closed pris­ons or reduced jail sen­tences, he is “going to change teams.”

    “I think it’s time we put a felon in the White House,” he says. “Trump 2024, baby. Let’s save this coun­try and make Amer­i­ca great again.”

    Crit­ics called him out for advo­cat­ing for a can­di­date while wear­ing a tax­pay­er-fund­ed uni­form.
    ...

    And as we can see, Bian­co’s con­ser­v­a­tive cre­den­tials not only includes an endorse­ment of Ron DeSan­tis’s Trumpian bor­der pol­i­cy pro­pos­als and refus­ing to enforce COVID vac­cine man­dates, but also includes hav­ing his name show up on a leaked Oath Keep­ers mem­ber­ship list back in 2021. It’s not hard to see why Bian­co is a ris­ing con­ser­v­a­tive star:

    ...
    In 2021, Bian­co grabbed head­lines for vow­ing not to enforce vac­cine man­dates for Sheriff’s Office employ­ees, say­ing he believes vac­ci­na­tion is a per­son­al choice.

    A month lat­er, Bian­co faced scruti­ny after it was revealed through a data leak that in 2014 he was a dues-pay­ing mem­ber of the Oath Keep­ers, a vio­lent far-right, anti-gov­ern­ment group whose ranks par­tic­i­pat­ed in the insur­rec­tion at the U.S. Capi­tol on Jan. 6, 2021.

    At the time, he said in a state­ment that “like many oth­er law enforce­ment offi­cers and vet­er­ans who were mem­bers, I learned the group did not offer me any­thing and so I did not con­tin­ue mem­ber­ship.”

    Last year, Bian­co was among a coali­tion of 90 sher­iffs across the coun­try who pub­licly endorsed the tough stance on bor­der secu­ri­ty tak­en by Flori­da Gov. Ron DeSan­tis, who was cam­paign­ing for the Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion.
    ...

    And as we’re going to see in the fol­low­ing Octo­ber 2021 piece, while Bian­co claims he does­n’t cur­rent­ly an Oath Keep­ers mem­ber and that he does­n’t remem­ber why exact­ly he joined the group in the first place, Bian­co still has very pos­i­tive feel­ings about the group and is both­ered by all the insin­u­a­tion that the Oath Keep­ers are some­how extrem­ist. Oh, and guess when Bian­co joined the Oath Keep­ers: he claims he found emails that indi­cate he joined ‘some­time around Feb­ru­ary 2014’, but he can’t remem­ber why exact­ly he learned about the group or joined. The Bundy Ranch stand­off — where the Oath Keep­ers played a promi­nent role — start­ed in ear­ly April of that year. It’s anoth­er remark­able coin­ci­dence in this sto­ry:

    LAist

    River­side Sher­iff Chad Bian­co Once Was An Oath Keep­er, Defends The Extrem­ist Group

    By Frank Stoltze
    Pub­lished Oct 5, 2021 4:08 PM

    River­side Coun­ty Sher­iff Chad Bian­co told LAist that he joined the extrem­ist group Oath Keep­ers in 2014 for a year while he was still a lieu­tenant in the depart­ment. While he denounced par­tic­i­pa­tion by some of the group’s mem­bers in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capi­tol, the sher­iff insist­ed the Oath Keep­ers is not a threat to democ­ra­cy.

    “Except for a few fringe peo­ple, that’s not real­ly what they stand for,” he said in an inter­view with LAist Mon­day. “They cer­tain­ly don’t pro­mote vio­lence and gov­ern­ment over­throw. They stand for pro­tect­ing the Con­sti­tu­tion.”

    Bian­co down­played his mem­ber­ship in the group, say­ing he nev­er attend­ed any meet­ings and that the extent of his knowl­edge is lim­it­ed to what he has read on its web­site.

    ...

    The South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter calls the Oath Keep­ers “one of the largest far-right anti-gov­ern­ment groups in the U.S. today.” George Wash­ing­ton University’s Pro­gram on Extrem­ismdescribes the group as a “domes­tic vio­lent extrem­ist orga­ni­za­tion.”

    In its August indict­ment charg­ing 17 Oath Keep­ers with con­spir­a­cy in con­nec­tion with Jan. 6, the U.S. Depart­ment of Jus­tice said some of the group’s mem­bers “are asso­ci­at­ed with mili­tias” and some believe the U.S. gov­ern­ment “has been co-opt­ed by a cabal of elites active­ly try­ing to strip Amer­i­can cit­i­zens of their rights.”

    The Oath Keep­ers is “a Sec­ond Amend­ment insur­rec­tion­ist group,” said Bri­an Levin, direc­tor of Cal State San Bernardino’s Cen­ter of the Study of Hate and Extrem­ism. “It does­n’t get sim­pler than that.”

    A ‘Cri­sis’ For The Sheriff’s Depart­ment?

    “Sec­ond Amend­ment insur­rec­tion­ists believe they have a right to armed rebel­lion when­ev­er they … believe the gov­ern­ment is tyran­ni­cal,” Levin said. “For [Bian­co] to be defend­ing the orga­ni­za­tion today when he is in the posi­tion of enforc­ing the law is extreme­ly prob­lem­at­ic.”

    This rep­re­sents a “cri­sis” for the River­side Coun­ty Sheriff’s Depart­ment, Levin main­tained.

    Bian­co bris­tled at the crit­i­cism. “If you love Amer­i­ca, if you’re proud to be an Amer­i­can and you sup­port the Con­sti­tu­tion, you are labeled as an extrem­ist,” he said. “Peo­ple want to make a big deal out of some­thing that is not. There is noth­ing wrong or sin­is­ter with me join­ing.”

    Levin did note that, “in the sheriff’s defense, the Oath Keep­ers years ago were less rad­i­cal, they were less con­fronta­tion­al.”

    Bian­co also expressed frus­tra­tion that the Oath Keep­ers is being por­trayed as “far right-wing,” adding, “that’s the polit­i­cal tox­ic envi­ron­ment that we are in.”

    While main­tain­ing that “what hap­pened at the Capi­tol was com­plete­ly wrong,” the sher­iff said it’s unfair to tar the Oath Keep­ers as sup­port­ing the insur­rec­tion “because one, two, three, 10, 15, 20 peo­ple of an entire orga­ni­za­tion do some­thing bad.”

    The Oath Keep­ers web­site says it is a “non-par­ti­san asso­ci­a­tion of cur­rent and for­mer­ly serv­ing mil­i­tary, police, and first respon­ders, who pledge to ful­fill the oath all mil­i­tary and police take to ‘defend the Con­sti­tu­tion against all ene­mies, for­eign and domes­tic.’ ”

    Bian­co, who was elect­ed in 2018, is the top law enforce­ment offi­cial in River­side Coun­ty and com­mands a force of rough­ly 3,600 deputies. River­side is California’s fourth most pop­u­lous coun­ty, with near­ly 2.5 mil­lion res­i­dents.

    Ques­tions about the sheriff’s affil­i­a­tion arose after the hack­er group Anony­mous announced a mas­sive data breach on Sept. 13 of Epik, which pro­vides Inter­net ser­vices to many right-wing groups. Data pro­vid­ed to LAist shows Bianco’s name was on a list of peo­ple who are or were at one time mem­bers of the Oath Keep­ers.

    ‘I Don’t Even Remem­ber Join­ing’

    “I don’t even remem­ber join­ing,” Bian­co said. He said he need­ed to look back at his emails to remind him­self that he joined the orga­ni­za­tion some­time around Feb­ru­ary 2014 when he was a sheriff’s lieu­tenant. Bian­co said he paid for one year’s worth of dues on his cred­it card and received a copy of the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion as a gift.

    ...

    Fed­er­al author­i­ties have been con­cerned for years about extrem­ist sen­ti­ment in law enforce­ment. An April ABC News inves­ti­ga­tion found “at least 52 active or retired mil­i­tary, law enforce­ment, or gov­ern­ment ser­vice employ­ees” among those arrest­ed in con­nec­tion with the Capi­tol insur­rec­tion.

    False sto­ries about the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion being stolen from Don­ald Trump in favor of Joe Biden fueled the Jan. 6 attack. When asked whether he believes Biden’s win was fraud­u­lent, Bian­co said, “Do I know there is elec­tion fraud? Yes I do, and any­body that says there isn’t is naive or polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed. Do I know whether or not there was enough of it to affect the out­come? That I do not know.”

    A Strong Appeal To Law Enforce­ment

    Bian­co said he doesn’t recall how he land­ed on the Oath Keep­ers web­site, but he liked how it appealed to law enforce­ment and mem­bers of the mil­i­tary.

    ...

    Bian­co said he doesn’t know if any mem­bers of his depart­ment belong to the Oath Keep­ers.

    The sher­iff said his frus­tra­tion with the state of polit­i­cal dia­logue came to a head a few weeks ago when he shut down his Twit­ter account. “It’s com­plete­ly tox­ic,” he said. “It’s hor­ri­ble. And it was wast­ing too much of my time.”

    Bian­co No Stranger To Con­tro­ver­sy

    Bian­co is no stranger to con­tro­ver­sy.

    In Decem­ber, he said Gov. New­som had a “dic­ta­to­r­i­al atti­tude” toward Cal­i­for­nia res­i­dents when he threat­ened to with­hold state fund­ing to coun­ties that did not com­ply with pan­dem­ic stay-at-home orders.

    Ear­li­er this month, the sher­iff made a series of false or mis­lead­ing state­ments about COVID-19 and vac­cines. Vow­ing not to enforce any vac­cine man­date for his deputies, Bian­co called man­dates “tyran­ni­cal gov­ern­ment over­reach” and described him­self as the “last line of defense” against such actions.

    In addi­tion to the Oath Keep­ers, Bian­co said he’s a sup­port­er of the Con­sti­tu­tion­al Sher­iffs and Peace Offi­cers Asso­ci­a­tion, which sub­scribes to the idea that fed­er­al and state author­i­ties are sub­or­di­nate to a local sheriff’s author­i­ty.

    “The law enforce­ment pow­ers held by the sher­iff super­sede those of any agent, offi­cer, elect­ed offi­cial or employ­ee from any lev­el of gov­ern­ment when in the juris­dic­tion of the coun­ty,” the group’s web­site states.

    “The phe­nom­e­non of the ‘con­sti­tu­tion­al sher­iffs’ move­ment is deeply trou­bling and prob­lem­at­ic,” accord­ing to Mark Potok, senior fel­low at the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter and edi­tor of the group’s Intel­li­gence Report, which focused on the move­ment in its Sum­mer 2016 issue.

    “These men and women are being told by extrem­ist lead­ers that they have the right to decide what laws they want to enforce, and can keep fed­er­al law enforce­ment agents out of their coun­ties,” Potok said on SPLC’s web­site. “That is utter­ly untrue, the very oppo­site of con­sti­tu­tion­al, and it in fact encour­ages sher­iffs and their deputies to defy the law of the land.”

    ———-

    “River­side Sher­iff Chad Bian­co Once Was An Oath Keep­er, Defends The Extrem­ist Group” By Frank Stoltze; LAist; 10/05/2021

    ““Except for a few fringe peo­ple, that’s not real­ly what they stand for,” he said in an inter­view with LAist Mon­day. “They cer­tain­ly don’t pro­mote vio­lence and gov­ern­ment over­throw. They stand for pro­tect­ing the Con­sti­tu­tion.””

    Sher­iff Bian­co answers regard­ing his actu­al­ly mem­ber­ship sta­tus with the Oath Keep­ers may be ambigu­ous, but he’s pret­ty unam­bigu­ous about how he views the group. The Oath Keep­ers are just proud patri­ots deter­mined to pro­tect the US Con­sti­tu­tion, accord­ing to Bian­co. And while he claims not to know about any oth­er Oath Keep­er mem­bers in his depart­ment, it’s pret­ty clear from these com­ments that he would­n’t real­ly care if he dis­cov­ered them:

    ...
    Bian­co bris­tled at the crit­i­cism. “If you love Amer­i­ca, if you’re proud to be an Amer­i­can and you sup­port the Con­sti­tu­tion, you are labeled as an extrem­ist,” he said. “Peo­ple want to make a big deal out of some­thing that is not. There is noth­ing wrong or sin­is­ter with me join­ing.”

    ...

    Bian­co also expressed frus­tra­tion that the Oath Keep­ers is being por­trayed as “far right-wing,” adding, “that’s the polit­i­cal tox­ic envi­ron­ment that we are in.”

    While main­tain­ing that “what hap­pened at the Capi­tol was com­plete­ly wrong,” the sher­iff said it’s unfair to tar the Oath Keep­ers as sup­port­ing the insur­rec­tion “because one, two, three, 10, 15, 20 peo­ple of an entire orga­ni­za­tion do some­thing bad.”

    ...

    Bian­co said he doesn’t know if any mem­bers of his depart­ment belong to the Oath Keep­ers.
    ...

    And note how Bian­co does­n’t seem to remem­ber why exact­ly he joined the Oath Keep­ers, but he appar­ent­ly can deter­mine when he joined: “around Feb­ru­ary 2014”. It’s a very inter­est­ing date range for some­one to sud­den­ly join the group. After all, it was ear­ly April of 2014 when the Bundy Ranch stand­off began. A stand­off that includ­ed a major Oath Keep­ers pres­ence. It’s not hard to rea­son­ably spec­u­late as to what piqued Bian­co’s inter­est in the group that year:

    ...
    “I don’t even remem­ber join­ing,” Bian­co said. He said he need­ed to look back at his emails to remind him­self that he joined the orga­ni­za­tion some­time around Feb­ru­ary 2014 when he was a sheriff’s lieu­tenant. Bian­co said he paid for one year’s worth of dues on his cred­it card and received a copy of the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion as a gift.
    ...

    Final­ly, note the remark­ably ‘sov­er­eign citizen’-friendly lan­guage Bian­co has a his­to­ry of using, describ­ing him­self as the “last line of defense” against “tyran­ni­cal gov­ern­ment over­reach”. It’s ‘con­sti­tu­tion­al sher­iff’ rhetoric. The kind of rhetoric that has long fueled the sov­er­eign cit­i­zen move­ment:

    ...
    In Decem­ber, he said Gov. New­som had a “dic­ta­to­r­i­al atti­tude” toward Cal­i­for­nia res­i­dents when he threat­ened to with­hold state fund­ing to coun­ties that did not com­ply with pan­dem­ic stay-at-home orders.

    Ear­li­er this month, the sher­iff made a series of false or mis­lead­ing state­ments about COVID-19 and vac­cines. Vow­ing not to enforce any vac­cine man­date for his deputies, Bian­co called man­dates “tyran­ni­cal gov­ern­ment over­reach” and described him­self as the “last line of defense” against such actions.

    In addi­tion to the Oath Keep­ers, Bian­co said he’s a sup­port­er of the Con­sti­tu­tion­al Sher­iffs and Peace Offi­cers Asso­ci­a­tion, which sub­scribes to the idea that fed­er­al and state author­i­ties are sub­or­di­nate to a local sheriff’s author­i­ty.

    “The law enforce­ment pow­ers held by the sher­iff super­sede those of any agent, offi­cer, elect­ed offi­cial or employ­ee from any lev­el of gov­ern­ment when in the juris­dic­tion of the coun­ty,” the group’s web­site states.

    “The phe­nom­e­non of the ‘con­sti­tu­tion­al sher­iffs’ move­ment is deeply trou­bling and prob­lem­at­ic,” accord­ing to Mark Potok, senior fel­low at the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter and edi­tor of the group’s Intel­li­gence Report, which focused on the move­ment in its Sum­mer 2016 issue.

    “These men and women are being told by extrem­ist lead­ers that they have the right to decide what laws they want to enforce, and can keep fed­er­al law enforce­ment agents out of their coun­ties,” Potok said on SPLC’s web­site. “That is utter­ly untrue, the very oppo­site of con­sti­tu­tion­al, and it in fact encour­ages sher­iffs and their deputies to defy the law of the land.”
    ...

    So was this the final ‘assas­si­na­tion attempt’ in an increas­ing­ly bizarre string of ‘assas­si­na­tion attempts’ for 2024? Time will tell. There’s still a few weeks left. Plen­ty of time for things to get much more bizarre, espe­cial­ly with Trump seem­ing­ly men­tal­ly melt­ing down in real time. ‘Tis the sea­son of extreme cam­paign tac­tics.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | October 16, 2024, 5:58 pm

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