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FTR #1084 The Turner Diaries, Leaderless Resistance and the Internet

Posted by Dave Emory ⋅ August 21, 2019Post a comment Email This Post Email This Post Print This Post Print This Post
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This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

Intro­duc­tion: Resum­ing analy­sis from our last pro­gram, we begin by review­ing and sup­ple­ment­ing dis­cus­sion about the con­ti­nu­ity of Nazism and fas­cism around the polit­i­cal and his­tor­i­cal milieu of  Sub­has Chan­dra Bose.

Surya Kumar Bose is pres­i­dent of the Indo-Ger­man asso­ci­a­tion. (S.K. Bose is the grand­nephew and acolyte of Sub­has Chan­dra Bose.) ” . . . . Surya, who has a soft­ware con­sul­tan­cy busi­ness in Ham­burg and is pres­i­dent of the Indo-Ger­man Asso­ci­a­tion . . . .”

We note the gen­e­sis of the Indo-Ger­man asso­ci­a­tion in Ger­many dur­ing World War II: ” . . . . ‘The DIG was set up on Sep­tem­ber 11, 1942, by Sub­hash Chan­dra Bose at Hotel Atlanta in Ham­burg.’ . . . . Bose recounts, adding that the DIG today is the largest bilat­er­al organ­i­sa­tion in Ger­many, with 27 branch­es. As a con­sul­tant he often guides Ger­mans keen on work­ing in the boom­ing Indi­an IT sec­tor. He is also a founder-mem­ber of the Ger­man-Indi­an Round Table, an infor­mal gath­er­ing that seeks to fur­ther mutu­al busi­ness inter­ests. . . .”

Note, also, Surya Kuma Bose’s net­work­ing with Alexan­der Werth, the Ger­man trans­la­tor for Sub­has Chan­dra Bose’s Ger­man forces, which were fold­ed into the Waf­fen SS at the end of World War II. ” . . . . Back in the day, Netaji’s stay in Ger­many had proved instru­men­tal in shap­ing his strug­gle. Decades lat­er, that lega­cy would play a piv­otal role in shap­ing his grandnephew’s career. Bose came to Ger­many on the advice of Alexan­der Werth, Netaji’s Ger­man inter­preter in the Indi­an Legion. . . .”

In an audio seg­ment from 1985 (con­tained in FTR #1068), we accessed infor­ma­tion from Spies and Trai­tors of World War II by Kurt Singer.  That vol­ume, writ­ten just after World War II, notes the par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Ger­man-Indi­an Soci­ety of Ger­man intel­li­gence chief Admi­ral Wil­helm Canaris (head of the Abwehr.) This makes the DIG an ele­ment of polit­i­cal, eco­nom­ic, mil­i­tary and intel­li­gence con­ti­nu­ity from the World War II peri­od to the present.

Recap­ping infor­ma­tion about what we feel is an “Ille­gal Immi­grant Psy-Op,” we review the piv­otal role of a fake Face­book account in the gen­er­a­tion of the immi­grant car­a­van that became a pro­pa­gan­da foot­ball for Team Trump in the run-up to the 2018 mid-term elec­tions.

We also not­ed the mur­der of Mol­lie Tib­betts, alleged­ly by Chris­t­ian Rivera. Bear­ing sim­i­lar­i­ties to the mind-con­trol of RFK assas­si­na­tion pat­sy Sirhan Sirhan and the appar­ent role of the Pol­ka-Dot-Dress Girl in that gam­bit, Rivera “blacked out” and has no mem­o­ry of the mur­der.

Next we review Glenn Green­wald’s piv­otal role in run­ning legal inter­fer­ence for the lead­er­less resis­tance strat­e­gy, the lit­er­a­ture pub­lished  by the Nation­al Alliance, in par­tic­u­lar.

We then briefly detail the lead­er­less resis­tance strat­e­gy as set forth by Louis Beam, not­ing that the Inter­net, social media, chat groups and bul­letin boards dra­mat­i­cal­ly ampli­fy the reach of that strat­e­gy.

The Turn­er Diaries, pub­lished by the Nation­al Alliance, is high­ly influ­en­tial in the milieu of the lead­er­less resis­tance. A nov­el, it was craft­ed as an instruc­tion­al man­u­al and tool of ide­o­log­i­cal inspi­ra­tion to the Nazi move­ment.

Depict­ing a suc­cess­ful Nazi upris­ing against what is por­trayed as ZOG (Zion­ist Occu­pa­tion Gov­ern­ment), the book opens with the con­fis­ca­tion of firearms by the author­i­ties.

Although reac­tion to the recent shoot­ings in El Paso and Day­ton will not lead to the con­fis­ca­tion of firearms, any moves toward gun con­trol will be por­trayed as such in the fas­cist media and inter­net echo cham­ber.

In that con­text, we note that New Zealand shoot­er Bren­ton Tar­rant intend­ed his action to inspire  gun con­trol mea­sures in the U.S., which he  felt would lead to a Nazi upris­ing.

We con­clude with review of Tar­ran­t’s stay in Ukraine, and pos­si­ble net­work­ing with the Azov Bat­tal­ion.

1a. Surya Kumar Bose is pres­i­dent of the Indo-Ger­man asso­ci­a­tion. ” . . . . Surya, who has a soft­ware con­sul­tan­cy busi­ness in Ham­burg and is pres­i­dent of the Indo-Ger­man Asso­ci­a­tion . . . .”

We note the gen­e­sis of the Indo-Ger­man asso­ci­a­tion in Ger­many dur­ing World War II: ” . . . . ‘The DIG was set up on Sep­tem­ber 11, 1942, by Sub­hash Chan­dra Bose at Hotel Atlanta in Ham­burg.’ . . . . Bose recounts, adding that the DIG today is the largest bilat­er­al organ­i­sa­tion in Ger­many, with 27 branch­es. As a con­sul­tant he often guides Ger­mans keen on work­ing in the boom­ing Indi­an IT sec­tor. He is also a founder-mem­ber of the Ger­man-Indi­an Round Table, an infor­mal gath­er­ing that seeks to fur­ther mutu­al busi­ness inter­ests. . . .”

Note, also, Surya Kuma Bose’s net­work­ing with Alexan­der Werth, the Ger­man trans­la­tor for Sub­has Chan­dra Bose’s Ger­man forces, which were fold­ed into the Waf­fen SS at the end of World War II. ” . . . . Back in the day, Netaji’s stay in Ger­many had proved instru­men­tal in shap­ing his strug­gle. Decades lat­er, that lega­cy would play a piv­otal role in shap­ing his grandnephew’s career. Bose came to Ger­many on the advice of Alexan­der Werth, Netaji’s Ger­man inter­preter in the Indi­an Legion. . . .”

“Lega­cy Wrapped in a Mys­tery” by Ragi­ni Bhuyan; The Hin­du Busi­nessLine; 7/17/2015.

1b.  Audio seg­ment from FTR #1068. Text: Spies and Trai­tors of World War II by Kurt Singer.

1c. In FTR #718, we warned [back in 2010] that Face­book was not the cud­dly lit­tle enti­ty it was per­ceived to be but a poten­tial engine of fas­cism enabling. Momen­tum for the remark­ably timed immi­grant car­a­van that became a focal point for Trump/GOP/Fox News pro­pa­gan­da dur­ing the recent­ly-con­clud­ed midterm elec­tions was gen­er­at­ed by a fake Face­book account, which mim­ic­ked a Hon­duran politician/human rights activist, Bar­to­lo Fuentes. Sig­nif­i­cant aspects of the event:

  1. ” . . . . Face­book has admit­ted the account was an imposter account imper­son­at­ing a promi­nent Hon­duran politi­cian. But it is refus­ing to release infor­ma­tion about the account, who may have set it up or what coun­try it orig­i­nat­ed from. . . .”
  2. ” . . . . In response to a query from Buz­zFeed News, a Face­book spokesper­son said the pho­ny account ‘was removed for vio­lat­ing [the company’s] mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion pol­i­cy,’ but declined to share any fur­ther infor­ma­tion, such as what coun­try it orig­i­nat­ed from, what email address was used to open it, or any oth­er details that might reveal who was behind it. Face­book added that, bar­ring a sub­poe­na or request from law enforce­ment, it does not share such infor­ma­tion out of respect for the pri­va­cy of its users. Fuentes said he believes it’s impor­tant to find out who was behind the rogue account — but hasn’t got­ten any answers from Face­book. ‘Who knows how many mes­sages could have been sent and who received them?’ . . . .”
  3. ” . . . . Fuentes has been unable to get any infor­ma­tion from Face­book about the account, but one small detail stood out. Who­ev­er cre­at­ed it list­ed the Hon­duran cap­i­tal of Tegu­ci­gal­pa as Fuentes’s home­town, rather than the San Pedro Sula sub­urb of El Pro­gre­so. That might seem like a minor error, but it’s the sort of mis­take a for­eign­er — not a Hon­duran — would make about the well-known for­mer law­mak­er, whose left-wing par­ty stands in oppo­si­tion to the cur­rent president’s admin­is­tra­tion. . . . ”
  4. ” . . . . It oper­at­ed entire­ly in Span­ish and pre­cise­ly tar­get­ed influ­encers with­in the migrant rights com­mu­ni­ty. And rather than crit­i­cize or under­mine the car­a­van — as oth­er online cam­paigns would lat­er attempt to do — it was used to legit­imize the event, mak­ing a loose­ly struc­tured grass­roots event appear to be a well-orga­nized effort by an estab­lished migrant group with a proven track record of suc­cess­ful­ly bring­ing Cen­tral Amer­i­can peo­ple to the US bor­der. . . .”
  5. ” . . . . before the account got start­ed not many peo­ple seemed to be join­ing. Only after the account kicked into gear did enthu­si­asm and par­tic­i­pa­tion spike. The account also claimed false­ly that the car­a­van was being led by a migrant rights orga­ni­za­tion called Pueblo Sin Fron­teras. Lat­er, once the car­a­van swelled to a mas­sive scale, the Pueblo Sin Fron­teras did get involved, though in a sup­port rather than lead­er­ship role. . . .”
  6. ” . . . . It appears that this account helped the car­a­van gain key momen­tum to the point where its size became a self-ful­fill­ing prophe­cy, spurring even more to join and groups which hadn’t been sup­port­ive to get involved. . . .”
  7. ” . . . . It’s hard to believe one Face­book account could play that deci­sive a role. But the account seems to have been sophis­ti­cat­ed. And it is equal­ly dif­fi­cult to believe that a sophis­ti­cat­ed oper­a­tor or orga­ni­za­tion would have gone to such trou­ble and lim­it­ed their efforts to a sin­gle imposter account. . . .”

1d. In the sum­mer of 2018, we high­light­ed the first degree mur­der charge laid against an “ille­gal” Mex­i­can migrant work­er fol­low­ing the dis­cov­ery of a deceased white Iowa col­lege girl Mol­lie Tib­betts. This became pro­pa­gan­da fod­der for Team Trump.

We note in this con­text that:

  1. The announce­ment of River­a’s arrest for the Tib­betts mur­der hap­pened on the same day that Paul Man­afort’s con­vic­tion was announced and Michael Cohen plead­ed guilty. Might we be look­ing at an “op,” intend­ed to eclipse the neg­a­tive pub­lic­i­ty from the the Manafort/Cohen judi­cial events?
  2. Rivera exhib­it­ed pos­si­ble symp­toms of being sub­ject­ed to mind con­trol, not unlike Sirhan Sirhan. ” . . . . Inves­ti­ga­tors say Rivera fol­lowed Mol­lie in his dark Chevy Mal­ibu as she went for a run around 7.30pm on July 18. He ‘blacked out’ and attacked her after she threat­ened to call the police unless he left her alone, offi­cers said. . . . It is not yet clear how Mol­lie died. . . . Rivera told police that after see­ing her, he pulled over and parked his car to get out and run with her. . . . Mol­lie grabbed her phone and threat­ened to call the police before run­ning off ahead. The sus­pect said that made him ‘pan­ic’ and he chased after her. That’s when he ‘blacked out.’ He claims he remem­bers noth­ing from then until he was back in his car, dri­ving. He then noticed one of her ear­phones sit­ting on his lap and blood in the car then remem­bered he’d stuffed her in the truck. . . . ‘He fol­lowed her and seemed to be drawn to her on that par­tic­u­lar day. For what­ev­er rea­son he chose to abduct her,’ Iowa Depart­ment of Crim­i­nal Inves­ti­ga­tion spe­cial agent Rick Ryan said on Tues­day after­noon. . . . ‘Rivera stat­ed that she grabbed her phone and said: ‘I’m gonna call the police.’ . . . . ‘Rivera said he then pan­icked and he got mad and that he ‘blocked’ his mem­o­ry which is what he does when he gets very upset and does­n’t remem­ber any­thing after that until he came to at an inter­sec­tion.’ . . .”
  3. Just as Sirhan had been in a right-wing milieu pri­or to the Robert Kennedy assas­si­na­tion, so, too, was Rivera: ” . . . . The promi­nent Repub­li­can fam­i­ly which owns the farm where Mol­lie Tib­betts’ alleged killer worked have insist­ed that he passed back­ground checks for migrant work­ers. Christhi­an Rivera, 24, who is from Mex­i­co, was charged with first degree mur­der on Tues­day after lead­ing police to a corn field where Mol­lie’s body was dumped. Dane Lang, co-own­er of Yarrabee Farms along with Eric Lang, con­firmed that Rivera had worked there for four years and was an employ­ee ‘of good stand­ing.’ Dane’s broth­er is Craig Lang, for­mer pres­i­dent of the Iowa Farm Bureau Fed­er­a­tion and the Iowa Board of Regents, and a 2018 Repub­li­can can­di­date for state sec­re­tary of agri­cul­ture. . . .”
  4. Trump cit­ed the Tib­betts mur­der in a Charleston, West Vir­ginia, ral­ly that day: ” . . . . Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump chirped in dur­ing his Tues­day address at a ral­ly in Charleston, West Vir­ginia, blam­ing immi­gra­tion laws for Mol­lie’s death. ‘You heard about today with the ille­gal alien com­ing in very sad­ly from Mex­i­co,’ he said. ‘And you saw what hap­pened to that incred­i­ble beau­ti­ful young woman. ‘Should’ve nev­er hap­pened, ille­gal­ly in our coun­try. We’ve had a huge impact but the laws are so bad. The immi­gra­tion laws are such a dis­grace. ‘We are get­ting them changed but we have to get more Repub­li­cans.’ Gov. Kim Reynolds com­plained about the ‘bro­ken’ immi­gra­tion sys­tem that allowed a ‘preda­tor’ to live in her state. . . .”

“Promi­nent Iowa Repub­li­can Fam­i­ly which Owns Farm where Mol­lie Tib­betts’ Alleged Killer Worked say he PASSED Gov­ern­men­t’s Migrant Back­ground Check as the 24-year-old Is Charged with Her Mur­der after Admit­ting to ‘Chas­ing Her Down while Jog­ging’” by Ben Ash­ford, Chris Pleas­ance, Jen­nifer Smith and Han­nah Par­ry; Dai­ly Mail [UK]; 8/21/2018.

The promi­nent Repub­li­can fam­i­ly which owns the farm where Mol­lie Tib­betts’ alleged killer worked have insist­ed that he passed back­ground checks for migrant work­ers.

Christhi­an Rivera, 24, who is from Mex­i­co, was charged with first degree mur­der on Tues­day after lead­ing police to a corn field where Mol­lie’s body was dumped.

Dane Lang, co-own­er of Yarrabee Farms along with Eric Lang, con­firmed that Rivera had worked there for four years and was an employ­ee ‘of good stand­ing.’

Dane’s broth­er is Craig Lang, for­mer pres­i­dent of the Iowa Farm Bureau Fed­er­a­tion and the Iowa Board of Regents, and a 2018 Repub­li­can can­di­date for state sec­re­tary of agri­cul­ture.

Dane’s state­ment said: ‘First and fore­most, our thoughts and prayers are with the fam­i­ly and friends of Mol­lie Tib­betts.

‘This is a pro­found­ly sad day for our com­mu­ni­ty. All of us at Yarrabee Farms are shocked to hear that one of our employ­ees was involved and is charged in this case.

‘This indi­vid­ual has worked at our farms for four years, was vet­ted through the gov­ern­men­t’s E‑Verify sys­tem, and was an employ­ee in good stand­ing.

‘On Mon­day, the author­i­ties vis­it­ed our farm and talked to our employ­ees. We have coop­er­at­ed ful­ly with their inves­ti­ga­tion.’

The E‑Verify site allows employ­ers to estab­lish the eli­gi­bil­i­ty of employ­ees, both US or for­eign, by com­par­ing a work­er’s Employ­ment Eli­gi­bil­i­ty Ver­i­fi­ca­tion Form I‑9 with data held by the gov­ern­ment.

The employ­ee is eli­gi­ble to work in the US if the data match­es. If it does­n’t, the work­er has only eight fed­er­al gov­ern­ment work days to resolve the issue.

Despite the Lang fam­i­ly using the sys­tem, police say Rivera had been in the US ille­gal­ly for between four and sev­en years.

Inves­ti­ga­tors say Rivera fol­lowed Mol­lie in his dark Chevy Mal­ibu as she went for a run around 7.30pm on July 18.

He ‘blacked out’ and attacked her after she threat­ened to call the police unless he left her alone, offi­cers said. 

Rivera was iden­ti­fied by sur­veil­lance footage obtained in the last cou­ple of weeks from some­one’s home.

It showed him fol­low­ing the stu­dent in his car and Mol­lie run­ning ahead of him.  It is not yet clear how Mol­lie died. 

Ear­li­er Mon­day a mem­ber of the Lang fam­i­ly which runs Yarrabee Farms told DailyMail.com he was a per­son­al friend of Mol­lie and her broth­ers and was ‘dev­as­tat­ed’ by the news of her death.

It’s under­stood the com­pa­ny hires around 15 migrant work­ers, most of whom are believed to be Mex­i­can.

Rivera is believed to have lived with a num­ber of oth­er migrant work­ers on a seclud­ed farm­house in Brook­lyn owned by their employ­er.

Work­ers asso­ci­at­ed with the farm told DailyMail.com that they bare­ly knew Rivera but con­firmed that he lived there with a girl­friend named Iris Monar­rez and their baby.

They said Iris had gone to stay with her moth­er after Rivera was arrest­ed in Mol­lie’s mur­der.

Neigh­bors told DailyMail.com they had seen a black Chevy Mal­ibu just like the one Rivera was dri­ving when he abduct­ed Mol­lie reg­u­lar­ly dri­ving to and from the prop­er­ty for the past cou­ple of years. 

Mol­lie’s autop­sy is planned for Wednes­day but the results may not be released for weeks.

Rivera told police that after see­ing her, he pulled over and parked his car to get out and run with her. 

Mol­lie grabbed her phone and threat­ened to call the police before run­ning off ahead. The sus­pect said that made him ‘pan­ic’ and he chased after her.

That’s when he ‘blacked out.’  

He claims he remem­bers noth­ing from then until he was back in his car, dri­ving. 

He then noticed one of her ear­phones sit­ting on his lap and blood in the car then remem­bered he’d stuffed her in the truck. 

Rivera drove her then to a corn field where he hauled her body out of the truck and hid her beneath corn stalks.

He was arrest­ed on Fri­day after police honed in on his vehi­cle by view­ing sur­veil­lance footage obtained from a pri­vate res­i­den­t’s home sur­veil­lance cam­eras.

‘He fol­lowed her and seemed to be drawn to her on that par­tic­u­lar day. For what­ev­er rea­son he chose to abduct her,’ Iowa Depart­ment of Crim­i­nal Inves­ti­ga­tion spe­cial agent Rick Ryan said on Tues­day after­noon. 

But it’s still unclear what the motive behind the killing was, Rahn said.

Rivera told police he had seen her in the area before. She is friends on Face­book with the moth­er of his daugh­ter but it is not clear if he and Mol­lie knew each oth­er.

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump chirped in dur­ing his Tues­day address at a ral­ly in Charleston, West Vir­ginia, blam­ing immi­gra­tion laws for Mol­lie’s death.

‘You heard about today with the ille­gal alien com­ing in very sad­ly from Mex­i­co,’ he said. ‘And you saw what hap­pened to that incred­i­ble beau­ti­ful young woman.

‘Should’ve nev­er hap­pened, ille­gal­ly in our coun­try. We’ve had a huge impact but the laws are so bad. The immi­gra­tion laws are such a dis­grace. 

‘We are get­ting them changed but we have to get more Repub­li­cans.’

Gov. Kim Reynolds com­plained about the ‘bro­ken’ immi­gra­tion sys­tem that allowed a ‘preda­tor’ to live in her state.

‘I spoke with Mol­lie’s fam­i­ly and passed on the heart­felt con­do­lences of a griev­ing state,’ Reynolds said. ‘I shared with them my hope that they can find com­fort know­ing that God does not leave us to suf­fer alone. Even in our dark­est moments, He will com­fort and heal our bro­ken hearts.’

At 3pm on Mon­day, law enforce­ment arrived at the farm­house where Rivera worked, accord­ing to a neigh­bor.

FBI agents were still search­ing the house and a num­ber of near­by trail­ers on Tues­day after­noon.

Neigh­bors said the build­ing housed a ‘revolv­ing door’ of hired migrant work­ers but that they had nev­er caused any prob­lems.

FBI agents attend­ed anoth­er near­by prop­er­ty belong­ing to the farm overnight Mon­day to quiz River­a’s co-work­ers, most of whom claim only to under­stand Span­ish.

‘There was a pan­ic when they arrived because they thought at first that it was ICE launch­ing a raid,’ a local source told DailyMail.com.

‘A lot of these peo­ple arrive with forged doc­u­ments. But it turned it was the FBI and it was about Mol­lie.’

Accord­ing to pub­lic records the prop­er­ty being searched is owned by Mary and Craig Lang, whose fam­i­ly own the near­by Yarrabee Farms.

Mol­lie was stay­ing alone overnight in her boyfriend’s home the night she went miss­ing and was last seen going for a jog in the neigh­bor­hood at around 8pm but what hap­pened after­wards has remained a com­plete mys­tery for weeks. 

Her boyfriend opened a Snapchat pho­to­graph from her at 10pm which appeared to sug­gest that she was indoors but it is not known what time Mol­lie sent it.

In his arrest war­rant, police describe River­a’s chill­ing con­fes­sion.

‘Rivera admit­ted to mak­ing con­tact with the female run­ning in Brook­lyn and that he pur­sued her in his vehi­cle in an area east of Brook­lyn. Defen­dant Rivera stat­ed he parked the vehi­cle, got out and was run­ning behind her and along­side of her.

‘Rivera stat­ed that she grabbed her phone and said: ‘I’m gonna call the police.’

‘Rivera said he then pan­icked and he got mad and that he ‘blocked’ his mem­o­ry which is what he does when he gets very upset and does­n’t remem­ber any­thing after that until he came to at an inter­sec­tion.

‘Rivera stat­ed he then made a u‑turn, drove back to an entrance to a field and then drove into a dri­ve­way to a corn­field.

‘He noticed there was an ear piece from head­phones in his lap and that this is how he real­ized he put her in the trunk.

‘He went to get her out of the trunk and he noticed blood on the side of her head.

‘He described the female’s cloth­ing, what she was wear­ing includ­ing an ear phone or head phone set.

‘He described that he dragged Tib­betts on foot from his vehi­cle to a seclud­ed loca­tion in a corn­field.

‘He put her over his shoul­der and took her about 20 meters into the corn­field and he left her cov­ered in some corn leaves and that he left her there, face up.

‘The Defen­dant was able to use his phone to deter­mine the route he trav­eled from Brook­lyn.

‘Rivera then lat­er guid­ed law enforce­ment to her loca­tion from mem­o­ry,’ the affi­davit con­tin­ues.

River­a’s arrest and the dis­cov­ery of the stu­den­t’s body brings an end to five weeks of tire­less inves­ti­ga­tion by the FBI, the Iowa Divi­sion of Crim­i­nal Inves­ti­ga­tion and local sher­iffs.

River­a’s ini­tial court appear­ance is sched­uled for 1pm Wednes­day in Mon­tezu­ma.

If con­vict­ed of first-degree mur­der he faces a manda­to­ry sen­tence of life in prison with­out parole.

Last week, the FBI said it believed she had been abduct­ed by some­one she knew.

They warned that the per­son was ‘hid­ing in plain sight’ and had even attend­ed vig­ils held in her hon­or but no arrests were made.

A $400,000 fund for her safe return was estab­lished but it did not pro­duce any leads either.

Greg Wil­ley of Crime Stop­pers of Cen­tral Iowa said her fam­i­ly and inves­ti­ga­tors would ded­i­cate their resources to catch­ing her killer ‘once they catch their breath’.

The Iowa Depart­ment of Crim­i­nal Inves­ti­ga­tion refused to share details of the dis­cov­ery on Tues­day when con­tact­ed by DailyMail.com.

The only per­son who had been vis­i­bly scru­ti­nized by police after she went miss­ing was pig farmer Wayne Cheney.

He was grilled by offi­cers more than once and had his prop­er­ty searched twice after search crews found a red t‑shirt that was sim­i­lar to one owned by the stu­dent near his land.

It was nev­er estab­lished if the t‑shirt did in fact belong to Mol­lie.

Mol­lie’s father Rob went back to Cal­i­for­nia, where he lives, last week for what he called a much need­ed ‘break’ from the inves­ti­ga­tion

He said he had been urged by author­i­ties to do so and that it was a ‘half way’ point in the inves­ti­ga­tion.

Rob was not in the state when his daugh­ter dis­ap­peared.

Her boyfriend, Dal­ton Jack, was away for work when she dis­ap­peared as was his old­er broth­er Blake.

The young­sters lived togeth­er in a home in Brook­lyn with Blake’s fiancee who was also cleared.

As the hunt for her inten­si­fied,  author­i­ties set up a web­site that was ded­i­cate to find­ing her.

It pro­vid­ed a map detail­ing five loca­tions police con­sid­ered to be sig­nif­i­cant. The web­site also offered a tips page which gen­er­at­ed hun­dreds of clues about what may have hap­pened to her.

The news of her death shook the small town of Brook­lyn where most res­i­dents are known to each oth­er.

The Rev. Joyce Proc­tor at Grace Unit­ed Methodist Church said she’d been pray­ing for Tib­betts’ ene­mies ‘to do the right thing... and release her.’

Sad­ly that nev­er hap­pened.

Proc­tor, who said she heard Tib­betts ‘was a won­der­ful young lady’, said peo­ple were in shock their lit­tle town isn’t as safe as they first believed it was, the Des Moines Reg­is­ter report­ed.

‘I told the ladies at our prayer group this morn­ing that if it’s not safe in Brook­lyn it’s not safe any­where,’ she said. ‘And I think that’s been a hard thing to real­ize for a lot of peo­ple here.’

2. Anoth­er icon of the so-called “pro­gres­sive” sector–Glenn Greenwald–harbors views on immi­gra­tion which have a Trumpian tone:

“Would You Feel Dif­fer­ent­ly About Snow­den, Green­wald, and Assange If You Knew What They Real­ly Thought?” by Sean Wilentz; The New Repub­lic; 1/19/2014.

. . . . Greenwald’s oth­er clients includ­ed the neo-Nazi Nation­al Alliance, who were impli­cat­ed in an espe­cial­ly hor­ri­ble crime. Two white suprema­cists on Long Island had picked up a pair of unsus­pect­ing Mex­i­can day labor­ers, lured them into an aban­doned ware­house, and then clubbed them with a crow­bar and stabbed them repeat­ed­ly. The day labor­ers man­aged to escape, and when they recov­ered from their injuries, they sued the Nation­al Alliance and oth­er hate groups, alleg­ing that they had inspired the attack­ers. . . .

. . . . On cer­tain issues, though, his [Green­wald’s] prose was suf­fused with right-wing con­ceits and catch­phras­es. One exam­ple was immi­gra­tion, on which Green­wald then held sur­pris­ing­ly hard-line views. “The parade of evils caused by ille­gal immi­gra­tion is wide­ly known,” Green­wald wrote in 2005. The facts, to him, were indis­putable: “ille­gal immi­gra­tion wreaks hav­oc eco­nom­i­cal­ly, social­ly, and cul­tur­al­ly; makes a mock­ery of the rule of law; and is dis­grace­ful just on basic fair­ness grounds alone.” Defend­ing the nativist con­gress­man Tom Tan­cre­do from charges of racism, Green­wald wrote of “unman­age­ably end­less hordes of peo­ple [who] pour over the bor­der in num­bers far too large to assim­i­late, and who con­se­quent­ly have no need, moti­va­tion or abil­i­ty to assim­i­late.” Those hordes, Green­wald wrote, posed a threat to “mid­dle-class sub­ur­ban vot­ers.” . . . .

3. In addi­tion to Matthew Hale, Green­wald also rep­re­sent­ed a con­sor­tium of neo-Naz­i/White Suprema­cist groups, includ­ing the Nation­al Alliance.

Being sued for incit­ing two white suprema­cists to attack Lati­no day-labor­ers, they were rep­re­sent­ed by Green­wald. It was Green­wald’s con­tention that he was moti­vat­ed by the need to pre­serve the free speech rights of these groups.

“The Day the Blog­gers Won” by Eric Boehlert; salon.com; 5/19/2007.

. . . . His work was at times polit­i­cal in the sense that he took on unpop­u­lar clients in free speech cas­es that spot­light­ed the prac­ti­cal ten­sions between the rights of indi­vid­u­als and the col­lec­tive urges of the com­mu­ni­ty. In 2002 he defend­ed a stri­dent anti-immi­gra­tion group, Nation­al Alliance, in a New York civ­il rights law­suit after two Mex­i­can day work­ers were beat­en and stabbed on Long Island by two men pos­ing as con­trac­tors in search of labor­ers. The vic­tims claimed that the anti-immi­gra­tion rhetoric of Nation­al Alliance, which urged racist vio­lence against Lati­no immi­grants and oth­er racial minori­ties, was part­ly to blame for the beat­ings. Green­wald argued that the case rep­re­sent­ed a mis­guid­ed attempt to impose lia­bil­i­ty and pun­ish­ment on groups because of their polit­i­cal and reli­gious views. A fed­er­al judge threw out the case. . . .

4. More about the attack on the Mex­i­can day-labor­ers and Green­wald’s defense of the Nation­al Alliance.

“Anti-Immi­grant Groups Can’t Be Held Liable for Attack” [AP]; First Amend­ment Cen­ter; 9/16/2002.

A fed­er­al judge has dis­missed a civ­il rights law­suit that held sev­en anti-immi­gra­tion orga­ni­za­tions part­ly respon­si­ble for the bru­tal Sep­tem­ber 2000 attack on a pair of Mex­i­can day labor­ers.

But work­ers Israel Perez and Mag­daleno Estra­da can still pur­sue civ­il rights claims against the two men con­vict­ed of beat­ing them, U.S. Dis­trict Judge Joan­na Sey­bert ruled on Sept. 13.

In her deci­sion, Sey­bert said the sev­en groups did not vio­late the two immi­grants’ civ­il rights by mak­ing anti-immi­grant state­ments. A lawyer for one of the groups, the Farm­ingville-based Sachem Qual­i­ty of Life, praised the rul­ing. . . .

. . . Perez and Estra­da were beat­en and stabbed by Christo­pher Slavin and Ryan Wag­n­er in Sep­tem­ber 2000. The pair had posed as con­trac­tors look­ing for day labor­ers.

Both attack­ers were con­vict­ed of attempt­ed mur­der, and sen­tenced to 25 years in prison. . . .

. . . . The news­pa­per also report­ed that the law­suit claimed that the phi­los­o­phy of white suprema­cist orga­ni­za­tions — includ­ing the West Vir­ginia-based Nation­al Alliance and Amer­i­can Patrol in Sher­man Oaks, Calif. — urged racist vio­lence against Lati­no immi­grants and oth­er racial minori­ties. News­day report­ed that Brew­ing­ton said the group’s urg­ings prompt­ed the attacks.

“The law­suit was a very dan­ger­ous attempt to start impos­ing lia­bil­i­ty and pun­ish­ment on groups because of their polit­i­cal and reli­gious views,” Glenn Green­wald, a Man­hat­tan attor­ney rep­re­sent­ing the Nation­al Alliance and oth­er groups, was quot­ed by Newsweek as say­ing. “If you can be liable for the actions of oth­er peo­ple who hear your views, then you would be afraid to ever express any views that were ever uncon­ven­tion­al.”

5. An arti­cle that will be dis­cussed in the next pro­gram in this series (prob­a­bly in two weeks, as an inter­view is ten­ta­tive­ly sched­uled for next week), we high­light Louis Beam’s for­mu­la­tion of the “Lead­er­less  Resis­tance” strat­e­gy.

“The Strat­e­gy of Vio­lent White Suprema­cy Is Evolv­ing” by J.M. Berg­er; The Atlantic; 8/7/2019.

. . . . In the 1980s, [Louis] Beam, a for­mer Klans­man and Aryan Nations activist, had been linked to The Order, a semi-inde­pen­dent ter­ror­ist cell that car­ried out a spree of armed rob­beries and mur­der before final­ly being stopped by the FBI. Although The Order act­ed most­ly at its own dis­cre­tion, it fun­neled some of the pro­ceeds from its crimes back into for­mal white-nation­al­ist orga­ni­za­tions.

Believ­ing that The Order’s activ­i­ties had been close­ly coor­di­nat­ed with lead­ers of the white-suprema­cist move­ment, the Jus­tice Depart­ment indict­ed 14 promi­nent figures—including Beam—for sedi­tious con­spir­a­cy in 1987. The high-pro­file tri­al was a dis­as­ter for the gov­ern­ment, end­ing in the exon­er­a­tion of all those accused (13 acquit­tals and one dis­missal of charges). But it was also bad for the accused, some of whom were impris­oned for oth­er crimes, and oth­ers made infa­mous, no longer able to oper­ate from the shad­ows.

Beam him­self leaned into his new noto­ri­ety, pub­lish­ing a racist mag­a­zine taunt­ing­ly titled The Sedi­tion­ist, in whose pages appeared the essay for which he is most remem­bered, “Lead­er­less Resis­tance.” Beam had not invent­ed the idea, which was au courant in white-nation­al­ist cir­cles of the day, but he explic­it­ly artic­u­lat­ed and enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly endorsed it. Allud­ing indi­rect­ly to his expe­ri­ence in the sedi­tion tri­al, the thrust of his florid­ly writ­ten argu­ment can be summed up as fol­lows:

  • The struc­ture of “resis­tance” (mean­ing white-suprema­cist) orga­ni­za­tions is too vul­ner­a­ble to dis­rup­tion by the oppres­sive U.S. fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, which through infil­tra­tion and pros­e­cu­tion will “crush” any orga­ni­za­tion with real poten­tial to resist it effec­tive­ly.
  • The solu­tion to this prob­lem is that extrem­ists should adopt a strat­e­gy of self-direct­ed action on an indi­vid­ual lev­el, or as part of very small cells that oper­ate inde­pen­dent­ly from one anoth­er and from any larg­er orga­ni­za­tion.
  • These indi­vid­ual cells and orga­ni­za­tions should not take orders from any­one else in the move­ment but should instead loose­ly coor­di­nate their activ­i­ties based on a shared infor­ma­tion infra­struc­ture of wide­ly dis­trib­uted “news­pa­pers, leaflets, com­put­ers, etc.”
  • Num­bers were key to the strat­e­gy, as out­lined by Beam, because the FBI would be over­whelmed with the demands of inves­ti­gat­ing so many indi­vid­u­als and tiny uncon­nect­ed groups. “A thou­sand small phan­tom cells … is an intel­li­gence night­mare for a gov­ern­ment,” he wrote.

A lit­tle more than three years after the essay was pub­lished, the strat­e­gy pro­duced what was, for a time, con­sid­ered to be its most notable suc­cess, the Okla­homa City bomb­ing. But that plot, car­ried out by a small cell super­fi­cial­ly sim­i­lar to what Beam had described, served in many ways to high­light the strategy’s weak­ness­es.

The first dis­con­ti­nu­ity relat­ed to the “lead­er­less” part of the equa­tion. While Tim­o­thy McVeigh and his co-con­spir­a­tors (at min­i­mum Ter­ry Nichols and Michael Forti­er) were nev­er proved to have tak­en direc­tion from an orga­ni­za­tion, they were hard­ly inde­pen­dent and uncon­nect­ed. McVeigh  com­mu­ni­cat­ed with many white suprema­cists and anti-gov­ern­ment extrem­ists as he advanced his plot, includ­ing trav­el­ing very near to Beam him­self and com­mu­ni­cat­ing with sev­er­al of Beam’s asso­ciates. He also repeat­ed­ly reached out to an even wider assort­ment of lead­ers, activists, and orga­ni­za­tions, although most of these efforts appear to have been unsuc­cess­ful. If McVeigh was not con­nect­ed to an orga­ni­za­tion or leader, it was not for lack of try­ing. . . .

. . . . Then came the inter­net. Beam’s orig­i­nal con­cep­tion of lead­er­less resis­tance required wide­ly dis­trib­uted “news­pa­pers, leaflets, com­put­ers, etc.” to spread extrem­ist ide­olo­gies and loose­ly syn­chro­nize the activ­i­ties of lead­er­less “phan­tom cells” by sig­nal­ing the time and type of the required action.

While white suprema­cists cer­tain­ly gen­er­at­ed enough of this material—thousands and thou­sands of pages pro­duced fair­ly con­sis­tent­ly over the course of decades—virtually no one saw it. When Beam intro­duced the lead­er­less con­cept in 1992, the only media plat­forms that could meet the require­ments of his strategy—television, com­mer­cial radio, and com­mer­cial presses—were pro­hib­i­tive­ly expen­sive and pro­tect­ed by reg­u­la­to­ry and cor­po­rate gate­keep­ers. All of the white-suprema­cist newslet­ters, video­tapes, short­wave-radio pro­grams, and cable-access shows com­bined could only reach a tiny frac­tion of the pop­u­la­tion.

The spir­it was will­ing, but the dis­tri­b­u­tion was weak, until the inter­net age arrived. White suprema­cists were ear­ly adopters, fol­low­ing the exam­ple of Beam, who had run dial-up BBS forums for white suprema­cists as ear­ly as the 1980s. In 1995, the for­mer Klans­man Don Black launched Storm­front, a white-suprema­cist mes­sage board that still oper­ates today. Oth­er boards and web­sites soon fol­lowed.

While these forums helped pro­vide some con­ti­nu­ity in the move­ment dur­ing the years that fol­lowed the Okla­homa City bomb­ing, they were not engines of growth. Open social-media plat­forms changed the game.

Jihadists were the first extrem­ists to extract real ter­ror­ist val­ue from the new envi­ron­ment. It began with Inspire, the Eng­lish-lan­guage mag­a­zine pro­duced by al-Qae­da in the Ara­bi­an Penin­su­la and dis­trib­uted online, first through jihadist mes­sage boards and lat­er on social media. Inspire weld­ed ide­o­log­i­cal provo­ca­tion to detailed instruc­tions about how to car­ry out ter­ror­ist attacks, alarm­ing media out­lets and pol­i­cy mak­ers enough to make sure that every­one with a tele­vi­sion or the inter­net knew about its exis­tence. After a slow start, the mag­a­zine even­tu­al­ly lived up to its name and inspired a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of self-direct­ed ter­ror­ist attacks, most notably the Boston Marathon bomb­ing.

Even more dra­mat­ic was the rise of the Islam­ic State, whose slow-motion split from al-Qae­da was for­mal­ized in ear­ly 2014 amid an aggres­sive social-media cam­paign. ISIS quick­ly went from auto­mat­ed “astro­turf” tweets to more sophis­ti­cat­ed forms of online recruit­ment, uti­liz­ing Face­book, Twit­ter, and oth­er plat­forms (remem­ber Google+?) to build enthu­si­as­tic com­mu­ni­ties of fans and suc­cess­ful­ly urge online sup­port­ers to car­ry out attacks. Some of these were again mis­con­strued as lead­er­less or lone-wolf attacks, when in fact they were direct­ed quite sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly by the organization’s hier­ar­chy.

Mean­while, white suprema­cists were catch­ing up in the online space. Although many lega­cy white-nation­al­ist fig­ures and orga­ni­za­tions had Twit­ter or Face­book accounts by 2012, most boast­ed only a hand­ful of fol­low­ers. By 2016, the same fig­ures on Twit­ter had increased their fol­low­er counts by more than 600 per­cent, and by 2018, hun­dreds of thou­sands of new and lega­cy racist extrem­ists had flood­ed the plat­form. Those num­bers were ampli­fied by astro­turf, but unques­tion­ably includ­ed thou­sands of real, engaged peo­ple, many of whom were vis­i­ble par­tic­i­pants in main­stream pol­i­tics.

Less promi­nent plat­forms, includ­ing 4chan, 8chan, and Gab, made space for more extreme white suprema­cists who couldn’t col­or with­in the lines of the major social-media plat­forms’ rules. When Face­book and YouTube began, belat­ed­ly, to crack down on white-suprema­cist con­tent this year, many users moved to the encrypt­ed Telegram app, join­ing ISIS in exploit­ing that platform’s more per­mis­sive envi­ron­ment.

Deplat­form­ing helped reduce the over­all reach of white-suprema­cist pro­pa­gan­da, but users who migrat­ed to less promi­nent plat­forms quick­ly cre­at­ed a pres­sure-cook­er envi­ron­ment where rad­i­cal­iza­tion to vio­lence could take place very quick­ly, with adher­ents goad­ing one anoth­er into ever more extreme views and actions.

While all this was hap­pen­ing on the infor­ma­tion front, anoth­er impor­tant dynam­ic changed—the art of the pos­si­ble.

In 2011, the Nor­we­gian white suprema­cist and anti-Mus­lim extrem­ist Anders Behring Breivik car­ried out a dev­as­tat­ing­ly dead­ly and tru­ly lone ter­ror­ist attack, killing 77 peo­ple in a sin­gle day with no assis­tance, no accom­plices, and appar­ent­ly none of the crav­ing for val­i­da­tion that led Tim­o­thy McVeigh to make repeat­ed phone calls to white-suprema­cist lead­ers in the days before the Okla­homa City bomb­ing. Oth­er lone actors had killed before, but Breivik was set apart by his soli­tary plan, his mas­sive body count, and his 1,518-word man­i­festo, which laid out both his rea­sons for car­ry­ing out the attack and his detailed tac­ti­cal prepa­ra­tions.

That man­i­festo became the baton in a relay race of extrem­ists, passed from one ter­ror­ist mur­der­er to the next through online com­mu­ni­ties. Since Breivik’s attack, a series of ter­ror­ist imi­ta­tors and suc­ces­sors have repli­cat­ed the form of the writ­ten record he left behind, and his style of attack. In the after­math of Breivik’s attack, a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of extrem­ists, both white nation­al­ist and jihadist, car­ried out reg­u­lar and high­ly lethal gun mas­sacres with­out appar­ent direc­tion, includ­ing but not lim­it­ed to a mas­sacre at a Sikh tem­ple in Wis­con­sin in 2012, the Charleston church shoot­ing in June 2015, the San Bernardi­no shoot­ing in Decem­ber 2015, and the Pulse night­club shoot­ing in 2016. In July of this year, an anar­chist lone attack­er was killed by police while mount­ing an assault on an ICE facil­i­ty in Taco­ma, Wash­ing­ton.

In recent months, the chain of cus­tody has become much clear­er and more explic­it, espe­cial­ly with­in white nation­al­ism. The Christchurch mosque shoot­er pub­lished a man­i­festo in March 2019 that direct­ly cit­ed Breivik’s man­i­festo. In April, the attack­er of a Poway syn­a­gogue post­ed a man­i­festo cit­ing the Christchurch doc­u­ment as inspi­ra­tion, and the killer in El Paso on Sat­ur­day did the same. The next ter­ror­ist attack­er may well point to El Paso.

he lead­er­less-resis­tance strat­e­gy of yes­ter­year was unmoored from its time, but real­i­ty may final­ly have caught up with Beam’s mag­num opus. Yet in its cur­rent man­i­fes­ta­tion, lead­er­less resis­tance is still less than what Beam him­self and those who have inter­pret­ed his essay as a Roset­ta Stone for under­stand­ing and pri­or­i­tiz­ing the “lone wolf” mod­el of ter­ror­ism con­ceived it to be. The jury is still out as to whether the cur­rent iter­a­tion of the strat­e­gy can be con­sid­ered tru­ly lead­er­less or tru­ly a resis­tance move­ment.

On the lead­er­ship front, many of the recent attacks are ful­ly self-direct­ed, in the sense that no evi­dence has emerged that the per­pe­tra­tors are tak­ing orders from any one per­son. But a host of oth­er influ­ences are eas­i­er to detect. In place of lead­er­less resis­tance, we seem to be wit­ness­ing dis­trib­uted lead­er­ship, as 2019’s man­i­festo writ­ers sug­gest. The man­i­festos them­selves offer a form of direc­tion, and the three key examples—Christchurch, Poway, and El Paso—all fol­lowed the same vec­tor of intro­duc­tion. The doc­u­ments were post­ed to 8chan, where a com­mu­ni­ty of blood­thirsty boost­ers encour­age imi­ta­tors by lion­iz­ing pre­vi­ous killers, rat­ing them for the qual­i­ty of their man­i­festo writ­ing and their body count “high scores.” . . . .

6. We note that the Nazi takeover por­trayed in the Turn­er Diaries begins with the con­fis­ca­tion of firearms. Although no one is advo­cat­ing the con­fis­ca­tion of firearms

The Turn­er Diaries; “Andrew Mac­don­ald;” Bar­ri­cade Books, Inc. [SC] 1996; Copy­right 1978, 1980 William Pierce; ISBN 1–56980-086–3.

Chap­ter 1 Sep­tem­ber 16, 1991. Today it final­ly began! After all these years of talk­ing-and noth­ing but talk­ing-we have final­ly tak­en our first action. We are at war with the Sys­tem, and it is no longer a war of words. I can­not sleep, so I will try writ­ing down some of the thoughts which are fly­ing through my head. It is not safe to talk here. The walls are quite thin, and the neigh­bors might won­der at a late-night con­fer­ence. Besides, George and Kather­ine are already asleep. Only Hen­ry and I are still awake, and he’s just star­ing at the ceil­ing. I am real­ly uptight. I am so jit­tery I can bare­ly sit still. And I’m exhaust­ed. I’ve been up since 5:30 this morn­ing, when George phoned to warn that the arrests had begun, and it’s after mid­night now.

I’ve been keyed up and on the move all day. But at the same time I’m exhil­a­rat­ed. We have final­ly act­ed! How long we will be able to con­tin­ue defy­ing the Sys­tem, no one knows. Maybe it will all end tomor­row, but we must not think about that. Now that we have begun, we must con­tin­ue with the plan we have been devel­op­ing so care­ful­ly ever since the Gun Raids two years ago. What a blow that was to us! And how it shamed us! All that brave talk by patri­ots, “The gov­ern­ment will nev­er take my guns away,” and then noth­ing but meek sub­mis­sion when it hap­pened. On the oth­er hand, maybe we should be heart­ened by the fact that there were still so many of us who had guns then, near­ly 18 months after the Cohen Act had out­lawed all pri­vate own­er­ship of firearms in the Unit­ed States. It was only because so many of us defied the law and hid our weapons instead of turn­ing them in that the gov­ern­ment was­n’t able to act more harsh­ly against us after the Gun Raids. I’ll nev­er for­get that ter­ri­ble day: Novem­ber 9, 1989.

They knocked on my door at five in the morn­ing. I was com­plete­ly unsus­pect­ing as I got up to see who it was. I opened the door, and four Negroes came push­ing into the apart­ment before I could stop them. One was car­ry­ing a base­ball bat, and two had long kitchen knives thrust into their belts. The one with the bat shoved me back into a cor­ner and stood guard over me with his bat raised in a threat­en­ing posi­tion while the oth­er three began ran­sack­ing my apart­ment. My first thought was that they were rob­bers. Rob­beries of this sort had become all too com­mon since the Cohen Act, with groups of Blacks forc­ing their way into White homes to rob and rape, know­ing that even if their vic­tims had guns they prob­a­bly would not dare use them. Then the one who was guard­ing me flashed some kind of card and informed me that he and his accom­plices were “spe­cial deputies” for the North­ern Vir­ginia Human Rela­tions Coun­cil.

They were search­ing for firearms, he said. I could­n’t believe it. It just could­n’t be hap­pen­ing. Then I saw that they were wear­ing strips of green cloth tied around their left arms. As they dumped the con­tents of draw­ers on the floor and pulled lug­gage from the clos­et, they were ignor­ing things that rob­bers would­n’t have passed up: my brand-new elec­tric razor, a valu­able gold pock­et watch, a milk bot­tle full of dimes. They were look­ing for firearms! Right after the Cohen Act was passed, all of us in the Orga­ni­za­tion had cached our guns and ammu­ni­tion where they weren’t like­ly to be found. Those in my unit had care­ful­ly greased our weapons, sealed them in an oil drum, and spent all of one tedious week­end bury­ing the drum in an eight-foot-deep pit 200 miles away in the woods of west­ern Penn­syl­va­nia. But I had kept one gun out of the cache. I had hid­den my .357 mag­num revolver and 50 rounds of ammu­ni­tion inside the door frame between the kitchen and the liv­ing room. By pulling out two loos­ened nails and remov­ing one board from the door frame I could get to my revolver in about two min­utes flat if I ever need­ed it. I had timed myself. But a police search would nev­er uncov­er it. And these inex­pe­ri­enced Blacks could­n’t find it in a mil­lion years. . . .

8. It was with an eye toward gun con­trol (as por­trayed in The Turn­er Diaries) that Bren­ton Tar­rant, the appar­ent Christchurch shoot­er, under­took his shoot­ing and man­i­festo-post­ing.

 “Shit­post­ing, Inspi­ra­tional Ter­ror­ism and the Christchurch Mosque Mas­sacre,” by Robert Evans; Belling­cat; 3/15/2019.

. . . . At mul­ti­ple points in the man­i­festo the author express­es the hope that his mas­sacre will spark fur­ther attempts at gun con­trol in the Unit­ed States, which he believes will lead to gun con­fis­ca­tion and a civ­il war. . . .

9. Brent Tar­rant, allege Christchurch, New Zealand, Mosque shoot­er, had appar­ent­ly vis­it­ed Ukraine.

 “Sus­pect Trav­eled World, But Lived on the Inter­net” by David D. Kirk­patrick; The New York Times [West­ern Edi­tion]; 3/16/2019; p. A15.

. . . . His man­i­festo alludes to vis­its to Poland, Ukraine, Ice­land and Argenti­na as well. . . .

10a.  Tar­rant may have been a ben­e­fi­cia­ry of the afore­men­tioned visa-free trav­el that EU asso­ci­a­tion has for Ukraine.

“Tragi­com­e­dy;” The Econ­o­mist; 3/16/2019; pp. 44–45.

. . . . Three quar­ters of them say the coun­try is head­ed in the wrong direc­tion, despite the fact that Ukraine has moved clos­er to Europe (it now has visa-free trav­el to the EU, for instance). . . .

10b. Even The New York Times not­ed the pos­si­ble con­tact between Azov and Tar­rant.

   “Ukraine’s Ultra-Right Increas­ing­ly Vis­i­ble as Elec­tion Nears” [AP]; The New York Times; 3/27/2019.

. . . . The Ukrain­ian far right also appears to have ties in oth­er coun­tries. Aus­tralian Bren­ton Tar­rant, accused of slaugh­ter­ing 50 peo­ple at two mosques in the city of Christchurch in New Zealand, men­tioned a vis­it to Ukraine in his man­i­festo, and some reports alleged that he had con­tacts with the ultra-right. The Soufan Cen­ter, a research group spe­cial­iz­ing on secu­ri­ty, has recent­ly alleged pos­si­ble links between Tar­rant and the Azov Bat­tal­ion. . . .

10c. A pri­vate intel­li­gence group–the Soufan Center–has linked Tar­rant to the Azov Bat­tal­ion.

“Intel­brief: The Transna­tion­al Net­work That No One Is Talk­ing About;” The Soufan Net­work; 2/22/2019.

In the wake of the New Zealand mosque attacks, links have emerged between the shoot­er, Brent Tar­rant, and a Ukrain­ian ultra-nation­al­ist, white suprema­cist para­mil­i­tary orga­ni­za­tion called the Azov Bat­tal­ion. Tarrant’s man­i­festo alleges that he vis­it­ed the coun­try dur­ing his many trav­els abroad, and the flak jack­et that Tar­rant wore dur­ing the assault fea­tured a sym­bol com­mon­ly used by the Azov Bat­tal­ion. . . .

Discussion

17 comments for “FTR #1084 The Turner Diaries, Leaderless Resistance and the Internet”

  1. Here’s one of those sto­ries that’s simul­ta­ne­ous­ly good news and bad news: fol­low­ing the twin mas­sacres in El Paso, TX, and Day­ton, OH, FBI Direc­tor Chris Wray told senior FBI offi­cials to put togeth­er a new threat assess­ment look­ing for mass shoot­ings. FBI field offices were ordered to scour the US look­ing for mass shoot­ing threats. So the good news is that, fol­low­ing that new clos­er look, author­i­ties have found new pos­si­ble threats. The bad news is, of course, that after this new clos­er look, author­i­ties have found A LOT of new pos­si­ble mass shoot­ing threats. At least 27 in two weeks:

    CNN

    At least 27 peo­ple have been arrest­ed over threats to com­mit mass attacks since the El Paso and Day­ton shoot­ings

    By Steve Almasy, Dave Alsup and Made­line Hol­combe, CNN

    Updat­ed 9:30 AM ET, Wed August 21, 2019
    Police: Teen arrest­ed after mak­ing threat in chat room

    (CNN)When author­i­ties arrived Fri­day to arrest a 15-year-old in Flori­da after threats to com­mit a school shoot­ing showed up on a video game plat­form, he told them he was jok­ing, they said.

    “I Dal­ton Barn­hart vow to bring my fathers m15 to school and kill 7 peo­ple at a min­i­mum,” the boy wrote using a fake name, accord­ing to a Volu­sia Coun­ty Sher­if­f’s Office report.

    The teen is one of more than two dozen peo­ple who have been arrest­ed over threats to com­mit mass shoot­ings since 31 peo­ple were killed in one week­end this month in shoot­ings in El Paso, Texas, and Day­ton, Ohio.

    The raft of cas­es fol­lows a direc­tive by the FBI direc­tor imme­di­ate­ly after the two ear­ly August mas­sacres for agency offices nation­wide to con­duct a new threat assess­ment in an effort to thwart more mass attacks.

    The FBI was con­cerned that US-based domes­tic vio­lent extrem­ists could become inspired by the attacks to “engage in sim­i­lar acts of vio­lence,” the agency said in a state­ment.

    Indeed, it was a tip to the FBI that sent sher­if­f’s deputies to the home of the Flori­da teen, the sher­if­f’s report states. CNN is not nam­ing him because he is a minor.

    A woman who said the boy is her son told author­i­ties that kids say things like that all the time and her child should not be treat­ed like a ter­ror­ist, body-cam­era footage from the arrest shows.

    ...

    Here are the known threats with pub­li­cized arrests that law enforce­ment agen­cies have inves­ti­gat­ed since the Day­ton and El Paso shoot­ings:

    August 4: A man from the Tam­pa area called a Wal­mart and told an employ­ee he would shoot up the store, the Hills­bor­ough Coun­ty Sher­if­f’s Office said in a state­ment. The man faces a false threat charge.

    August 7: Police in Wes­la­co, Texas, arrest­ed a 13-year-old boy. The boy will face a charge of ter­ror­is­tic threat for mak­ing a social media post that prompt­ed a Wal­mart to be evac­u­at­ed, police said on Face­book. The boy’s moth­er brought him to the sta­tion.

    August 8: A man is accused of walk­ing into a Wal­mart in Mis­souri equipped with body armor, a hand­gun and a rifle less than a week after a gun­man killed 22 peo­ple in a Texas Wal­mart says it was a “social exper­i­ment” and not intend­ed to cause pan­ic. The 20-year-old was charged with mak­ing a ter­ror­ist threat.

    August 9: A 23-year-old Las Vegas man is charged with pos­sess­ing destruc­tive devices after author­i­ties found bomb-mak­ing mate­ri­als at his home. The FBI says he was plan­ning to attack a syn­a­gogue and a gay bar.

    August 9: A 26-year-old Win­ter Park, Flori­da, man was arrest­ed after inves­ti­ga­tors say he post­ed a threat on Face­book that he was about to have his gun returned and peo­ple should stay away from Wal­mart.

    August 10: Offi­cers respond­ed to a threat a man post­ed on social media, the Har­lin­gen, Texas, Police Depart­ment said in a state­ment. A man was arrest­ed at his home on charges of mak­ing a ter­ror­is­tic threat.

    August 11: A Palm Beach Coun­ty, Flori­da, moth­er is accused of threat­en­ing to car­ry out a shoot­ing at an ele­men­tary school because her chil­dren were being moved there, accord­ing to CNN affil­i­ate WFTS. The 28-year-old woman is charged with send­ing a writ­ten threat to com­mit bod­i­ly injury.

    August 11: A Mis­sis­sip­pi teen is accused of mak­ing threats in the Lamar Coun­ty School Dis­trict, the agency says on Face­book.

    August 12: Author­i­ties charged an 18-year-old Ohio man who the FBI says threat­ened to assault fed­er­al law enforce­ment offi­cers and showed sup­port for mass shoot­ings in a post online. Court doc­u­ments say that the teen had a stock­pile of weapons and ammu­ni­tion.

    August 12: A 25-year-old Jef­fer­son Coun­ty, West Vir­ginia, man was arrest­ed on charges of mak­ing ter­ror­is­tic threats online to kill peo­ple, accord­ing to CNN affil­i­ate WDVM.

    August 13: Albert Lea Police arrest­ed and charged a 15-year-old Min­neso­ta girl for threat­en­ing a school shoot­ing on social media.

    August 13: A man was arrest­ed in Phoenix after police say he threat­ened to blow up an Army recruit­ment cen­ter, accord­ing to CNN affil­i­ate KTVK.

    August 15: A tip from a cit­i­zen led Con­necti­cut author­i­ties and the FBI to inves­ti­gate and arrest a man who they said expressed an inter­est in com­mit­ting a mass shoot­ing on Face­book and had weapons and tac­ti­cal gear, the FBI and Nor­walk Police Depart­ment said.

    August 15: A 15-year-old girl was arrest­ed in Fres­no, Cal­i­for­nia, for post­ing a post­ing a pho­to of a Wal­mart gun case with rifles dis­played and the cap­tion, “Don’t come to school tomor­row,” the city’s police chief said. “The teen’s very bright future is now stained by this,” he said, adding she was booked with mak­ing ter­ror­ist threats.

    August 16: A 15-year-old boy was tak­en into police cus­tody in Volu­sia Coun­ty, Flori­da, after inves­ti­ga­tors say he threat­ened to com­mit a school shoot­ing in com­ments on a video game chat plat­form.

    August 16: Two Mis­sis­sip­pi juve­niles were arrest­ed in con­nec­tion with threat­en­ing mes­sages to two Tupe­lo schools, plac­ing a school in par­tial lock­down, accord­ing to CNN affil­i­ate WTVA..

    August 16: A Flori­da man was arrest­ed and charged with threat­en­ing to com­mit a mass shoot­ing after his ex-girl­friend alert­ed author­i­ties to a series of omi­nous text mes­sages he sent her.

    August 16: A 14-year-old in Ari­zona was arrest­ed by Tempe Police after online threats were made against a school, accord­ing to CNN affil­i­ate KNXV.

    August 16: A Chica­go man, 19, was arrest­ed after police say he threat­ened to kill peo­ple at a wom­en’s repro­duc­tive health clin­ic on iFun­ny, a social media plat­form where users can post memes, fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors said Mon­day.

    August 16: A 35-year-old Clarks­burg, Mary­land, res­i­dent was arrest­ed in Seat­tle after being charged with threat­en­ing to kill peo­ple and call­ing for the “exter­mi­na­tion” of His­pan­ics, accord­ing to a state­ment released by the US attor­ney for the South­ern Dis­trict of Flori­da.

    August 17: New Mid­dle­town Police arrest­ed a self-described white nation­al­ist who they say threat­ened to shoot an Ohio Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty cen­ter.

    August 18: A man was arrest­ed in Reed City, Michi­gan, after author­i­ties said he post­ed online videos mak­ing threats toward Fer­ris State Uni­ver­si­ty and oth­er loca­tions, accord­ing to CNN affil­i­ate WXMI.

    August 18: Clare­more, Okla­homa, police arrest­ed an 18-year-old who they say made social media threats against police offi­cer fam­i­lies, accord­ing to a Face­book post from the Clare­more Police Depart­ment.

    August 19: A 38-year-old truck dri­ver was arrest­ed after mak­ing “cred­i­ble threats to con­duct a mass shoot­ing and sui­cide” planned for Thurs­day, an FBI spe­cial agent said in a sworn affi­davit filed in the South­ern Dis­trict of Alaba­ma.

    August 19: Maui Police arrest­ed an 18-year-old man after a social media post claimed he intend­ed to “shoot up a school,” accord­ing to CNN affil­i­ate KITV..

    August 19: A 37-year-old Rapid City, South Dako­ta, man was arrest­ed and charged with threat­en­ing to blow up state and fed­er­al gov­ern­ment agen­cies, Pen­ning­ton Coun­ty Sher­if­f’s Office said in a post on Face­book..

    ———-

    “At least 27 peo­ple have been arrest­ed over threats to com­mit mass attacks since the El Paso and Day­ton shoot­ings” By Steve Almasy, Dave Alsup and Made­line Hol­combe, CNN, 08/21/2019

    “The raft of cas­es fol­lows a direc­tive by the FBI direc­tor imme­di­ate­ly after the two ear­ly August mas­sacres for agency offices nation­wide to con­duct a new threat assess­ment in an effort to thwart more mass attacks.”

    It’s amaz­ing what you find when you look for stuff.

    So is there just a sud­den surge in peo­ple mak­ing mass mur­der threats right now? Or was this some­thing the FBI could have been doing the whole time and sim­ply did­n’t do until this new threat assess­ment order? The lat­ter seems more like­ly giv­en the fact that the Trump admin­is­tra­tion has been inten­tion­al­ly down­play­ing the threat of domes­tic ter­ror­ism and staffing the Depart­ment of Home­land secu­ri­ty with white nation­al­ist sym­pa­thiz­ers. So hope­ful­ly this was­n’t a one-time check for domes­tic ter­ror threats by the FBI.

    But also note that the 27 peo­ple arrest­ed appear to all have been peo­ple who active­ly hint­ed on the inter­net or to an asso­ciate that they were plan­ning on com­mit­ting an attack. And while quite a few domes­tic ter­ror­ists do indeed sig­nal their plans in advance, they don’t all. And for ever per­son unhinged enough to make these kinds of threats, there’s going to be plen­ty of indi­vid­u­als who hold vio­lent extrem­ist views who may not be active­ly mak­ing threats but are clear­ly tick­ing time bombs. For exam­ple, a 57-year-old neo-Nazi was just caught in New Jer­sey with a mas­sive arse­nal of weapons includ­ing a rock­et launch­er. The man had­n’t made any pub­lic threats. He was caught after he crashed his car and author­i­ties noticed an unusu­al num­ber of weapons in his vehi­cle. That’s when they searched his home and found the arse­nal. Along with an instruc­tion man­u­al for own­ing a slave. Was this neo-Nazi going to even­tu­al­ly go on a mur­der spree? We don’t know at this point. Maybe he’s just a neo-Nazi who likes own­ing an arse­nal and had no intent on liv­ing out his neo-Nazi world­view by going on a mur­der spree. But the key les­son from this is that the heav­i­ly armed peo­ple who hold vio­lent ide­olo­gies aren’t nec­es­sar­i­ly going to make vio­lent threats that result in their arrest and inves­ti­ga­tion:

    New York Dai­ly News

    New Jer­sey man caught with arse­nal of guns, Nazi para­pher­na­lia, slave ‘man­u­al’ — cops

    By Nel­son Oliveira
    Aug 21, 2019 | 11:02 AM

    What author­i­ties said they found dur­ing a recent raid in New Jer­sey sounds like a scene out of a dis­turb­ing and twist­ed movie script.

    A 57-year-old sus­pect­ed drug deal­er was caught with an arse­nal of dan­ger­ous and unusu­al weapons, includ­ing a grenade launch­er and an ax han­dle, a vari­ety of Nazi pro­pa­gan­da and even a doc­u­ment described as “an instruc­tion man­u­al for own­ing a slave,” the U.S. Depart­ment of Jus­tice said Tues­day.

    The alarm­ing dis­cov­ery came after Joseph Rubi­no, a Lafayette Town­ship res­i­dent, crashed his car in Sus­sex Coun­ty on July 24. Author­i­ties said state police noticed an unusu­al num­ber of weapons in his vehi­cle while extract­ing him from the car and imme­di­ate­ly applied for search war­rants.

    A search of the car turned up a semi­au­to­mat­ic hand­gun, a semi­au­to­mat­ic assault pis­tol with a high-capac­i­ty mag­a­zine, a loaded pis­tol, two shot­gun bar­rels, a set of brass knuck­les, a wood­en ax han­dle, a wood­en base­ball bat, a large amount of ammu­ni­tion and sev­er­al oth­er items, accord­ing to a crim­i­nal com­plaint.

    A raid of his home alleged­ly turned up a grenade launch­er, an assault rifle, two semi­au­to­mat­ic rifles, two semi-auto­mat­ic hand­guns, at least three shot­guns, mul­ti­ple high-capac­i­ty mag­a­zines, a vari­ety of firearm parts and ammu­ni­tion, a bal­lis­tic vest, about 2.5 ounces of metham­phet­a­mine and more than six pounds of mar­i­jua­na.

    Detec­tives also found a box filled with cloth­ing and bumper stick­ers fea­tur­ing white suprema­cist and neo-Nazi sym­bols and a doc­u­ment enti­tled “N—-r Owner’s Man­u­al,” which con­tained racist mate­r­i­al and pur­port­ed to be an instruc­tion man­u­al for own­ing a slave, accord­ing to the com­plaint.

    ...

    Rubi­no was charged with one count each of pos­ses­sion with intent to dis­trib­ute metham­phet­a­mine, pos­ses­sion of firearms in fur­ther­ance of a drug-traf­fick­ing crime, and pos­ses­sion of firearms by a con­vict­ed felon. If con­vict­ed on all charges, he could face up to life in prison.

    ———-
    “New Jer­sey man caught with arse­nal of guns, Nazi para­pher­na­lia, slave ‘man­u­al’ — cops” by Nel­son Oliveira, New York Dai­ly News, 08/21/2019

    “Rubi­no was charged with one count each of pos­ses­sion with intent to dis­trib­ute metham­phet­a­mine, pos­ses­sion of firearms in fur­ther­ance of a drug-traf­fick­ing crime, and pos­ses­sion of firearms by a con­vict­ed felon. If con­vict­ed on all charges, he could face up to life in prison.”

    So the guy was charged with drug traf­fick­ing, pos­ses­sion of firearms in fur­ther­ances of drug-traf­fick­ing, and pos­ses­sion of firearms by a con­vict­ed felon. He was­n’t charged with being a neo-Nazi in pos­ses­sion of an assault rifle and grenade launch­er because that’s legal­ly fine as long as he’s not insane enough to make pub­lic threats. And it’s that con­text that’s part of what makes the sud­den surge of arrests of pos­si­ble domes­tic ter­ror­ists over the past two weeks so dis­turb­ing. Those 27 arrest­ed peo­ple all made it clear to some­one what they were plan­ning. They were incred­i­bly incom­pe­tent domes­tic ter­ror­ists that adver­tised their intent. Most vio­lent extrem­ists prob­a­bly aren’t going to be that stu­pid and some of them might go on to qui­et­ly col­lect a per­son­al arse­nal that only gets dis­cov­ered by acci­dent. Or when its too late.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | August 22, 2019, 1:21 pm

  2. Here’s the kind of sto­ry that is both pro­found­ly dis­turb­ing and absolute­ly pre­dictable giv­en the preva­lence of encrypt­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tions plat­forms like What­sApp that osten­si­bly enables extrem­ist groups to com­mu­ni­cate and coor­di­nate with­out fear of being observed: Lars Lar­son, a right-wing talk radio host, invit­ed Shane Kohfield, a US marine vet­er­an, on to his show last week. Who is Kohfield? Well, he’s an indi­vid­ual who made news after he had his guns tak­en away ear­li­er this sum­mer under Ore­gon’s new “Red Flag” laws that allowed author­i­ties to take an indi­vid­u­als guns away if there was rea­son to fear they might be plan­ning vio­lence. And in Kohfield­’s case he was­n’t hid­ing his plans. The guy was ini­tial­ly in the news after he staged a protest out­side the Port­land may­or’s house in July. Kohfield, wear­ing a MAGA hat and a con­cealed car­ry per­mit strapped to his chest, com­plained through a loud­speak­er about how the city was han­dling antifa demon­stra­tions, declar­ing, “If antifa gets to the point where they start killing us, I’m going to kill them next...I’d slaugh­ter them and I have a detailed plan on how I would wipe out antifa.” The FBI’s Joint Ter­ror­ism Task Force (JTTF) had his guns tak­en away fol­low­ing that inci­dent and he was tak­en to a vet­er­an’s hos­pi­tal where he under­went a psy­chi­atric eval­u­a­tion. That’s the guy who was just invit­ed onto Lars Lar­son­’s show.

    Dur­ing the inter­view, Lar­son repeat­ed­ly pressed Kohfield about what exact­ly he meant when he said he had a detailed plan to “slaugh­ter” antifa. Kohfield even­tu­al­ly described his plan. He and oth­er vet­er­ans would engage in infor­ma­tion-gath­er­ing to deter­mine the home address­es of antifa mem­bers. Then, the vet­er­ans would be put into squads. Each squad would be giv­en a list of address­es. Then, on one sin­gle well-coor­di­nat­ed night, they all go and mur­der these antifa mem­bers at their homes. In oth­er words, Kohfield is basi­cal­ly describ­ing the same tac­tic used by Klaus Bar­bie dur­ing the Boli­vian cocaine coup: draw up a list of left­ist ene­mies and mass mur­der them all in a day.

    Lar­son quick­ly end­ed the inter­view after Kohfield made it clear he was talk­ing about killing antifa mem­bers in their homes (you can lis­ten herez), but Lar­son has sub­se­quent­ly argued to TPM that Kohfield­’s sec­ond amend­ment rights had been infringed when his guns were tak­en away because he had­n’t made an immi­nent threat of vio­lence and there­fore “did­n’t cross the line”. So that gives us a taste of how the right-wing is going to respond to any attempts for author­i­ties to pre­emp­tive­ly address indi­vid­u­als and groups open­ly talk­ing about coor­di­nat­ed tar­get­ed mass mur­der cam­paigns: there’s no right to take their guns away until after they already mass mur­dered peo­ple or declared they’re immi­nent­ly about to do so. Keep in mind that, with encrypt­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tions plat­forms like What­sApp, indi­vid­u­als like Kohfield can make those kinds of immi­nent dec­la­ra­tions exclu­sive­ly to their tar­get audi­ences so when they do make those immi­nent dec­la­ra­tions of intent to kill the only oth­er peo­ple who hear those dec­la­ra­tions will be their co-con­spir­a­tors.

    Oh, and it turns out when Kohfield open­ly declared his detail plans to slaugh­ter antifa out­side the Port­land may­or’s home that was­n’t the first time he made these plans pub­licly known. Back in March, Kohfield sent a let­ter to Repub­li­can con­gress­man Dan Cren­shaw where he explained that if antifa isn’t des­ig­nat­ed a ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion soon, he and oth­er vet­er­ans would be forced to begin killing antifas­cists “until we have achieved geno­cide.” He also argued in the let­ter than he would be legal­ly jus­ti­fied to do so if the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment did­n’t act. That sure sounds like an immi­nent threat of vio­lence.

    The U.S. Capi­tol Police shared the let­ter with the FBI’s Port­land office and the case was assigned to a Clacka­mas Coun­ty sheriff’s deputy serv­ing on the area’s JTTF. A deputy inter­view Kohfield and his father in April. So Kohfield was allowed to send a let­ter to a con­gress­man mak­ing clear his intent to start killing antifas­cists soon “until we have achieved geno­cide” back in March, the FBI was made aware of this, and it was­n’t until he shout­ed about his plans for killing antifa mem­bers out­side the Port­land may­or’s home in July that his guns were tak­en away and that was only because of Ore­gon passed its own ‘red flag’ laws that allowed for this.

    And as we’re going to see in the sec­ond excerpt below, after the JTTF issued an affi­davit on July 25 call­ing for Kohfield­’s guns to be removed a judge approved the affi­davit that day. But it was­n’t until August 7th, days after the mass shoot­ings in El Paso, TX, and Day­ton, OH, that local author­i­ties actu­al­ly came and took Kohfield­’s weapons and brought him in for a men­tal eval­u­a­tion. It’s unclear what cause the two week delay.

    So as we can see, at both the fed­er­al and state lev­el there exists an extreme appre­hen­sive­ness about con­fis­cat­ing guns even when a judge approves the order and even when the per­son in ques­tion was writ­ing to mem­bers of con­gress and protest­ing out­side a may­or’s home mak­ing clear their plans to com­mit mass mur­der. And when an indi­vid­ual who open­ly talks about these plans does final­ly have their guns tak­en away, the right-wing noise machine will char­ac­ter­ize it was an infringe­ment on their sec­ond amend­ment rights:

    Talk­ing Points Memo

    He Drew Up Plans For An Antifa ‘Slaugh­ter,’ Then Got Invit­ed On A Nation­al Radio Show

    By Matt Shuham
    Sep­tem­ber 17, 2019 1:16 pm

    Con­ser­v­a­tive radio host Lars Lar­son brags that his radio show is broad­cast on over 20 sta­tions in the Pacif­ic North­west and has fea­tured inter­views with every­one from Paul Ryan to Sean “Com­man­der” Spicer, as Lar­son referred to the then-press sec­re­tary over Skype in the White House brief­ing room last year.

    But on Thurs­day last week, Lar­son offered some­thing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent to his thou­sands of lis­ten­ers: A detailed plan on how to “slaugh­ter” scores of left wing activists in their sleep.

    The plan came from Shane Kohfield, who ear­li­er this sum­mer had his guns con­fis­cat­ed by the FBI and was briefly tak­en to a VA hos­pi­tal after announc­ing a sim­i­lar plan in front of the may­or of Portland’s house. Right Wing Watch flagged the inter­view on Mon­day.

    “There’s a group of peo­ple that are try­ing to dis­man­tle the Con­sti­tu­tion, and they want to kill us. I’m try­ing to pro­tect free­dom,” the Marine vet­er­an told Lar­son, refer­ring to the vague­ly defined term “antifa,” or those who iden­ti­fy as antifas­cists. Kohfield lat­er said he would only car­ry out his plan in response to lethal vio­lence from antifa, call­ing the plan a “nuclear deter­rent.”

    Mid­way through the con­ver­sa­tion, Lar­son asked for detail.

    “What is the detailed plan to wipe out antifa?” he probed, repeat­ing the ques­tion again before Kohfield launched into it.

    After exten­sive infor­ma­tion-gath­er­ing involv­ing find­ing home address­es and divid­ing cities into grids assigned to spe­cif­ic anti-antifa mil­i­tary vet­er­ans, Kohfield said, “the vet­er­ans will be bro­ken down into squads.”

    The squads, he said, would be giv­en a list of address­es of “the most vio­lent antifa mem­bers” and would work “until every one of them was gone in every city in Amer­i­ca, if need be, in a sin­gle well-coor­di­nat­ed night.”

    Lar­son pressed again: What would be the plan for antifa mem­bers found sleep­ing in their beds, who pose no imme­di­ate threat to any­one?

    “Well, accord­ing to the plan, it would be kill,” Kohfield replied.

    Lar­son end­ed the inter­view soon after, thank­ing Kohfield for his ser­vice and his time.

    It wasn’t the first time Kohfield had spo­ken about the plan.

    In July, Kohfield stood in front of Port­land May­or Ted Wheeler’s home in a MAGA hat, speak­ing through a loud­speak­er. He had a knife and a con­cealed car­ry per­mit strapped to his chest, the the Ore­gon­ian lat­er report­ed. Kohfield and oth­ers had shown up to crit­i­cize the city’s han­dling of demon­stra­tions involv­ing antifa.

    “If antifa gets to the point where they start killing us, I’m going to kill them next,” he said. “I’d slaugh­ter them and I have a detailed plan on how I would wipe out antifa.”

    After a few days, the Ore­gon­ian report­ed, the FBI Joint Ter­ror­ism Task Force took away Kohfield’s guns, cit­ing a new red flag law in the state. They also report­ed­ly com­mit­ted him to a vet­er­ans’ hos­pi­tal where he under­went psy­chi­atric obser­va­tion for five days and vol­un­tar­i­ly stayed for anoth­er two weeks.

    Kohfield suf­fers from PTSD and bipo­lar dis­or­der, the paper report­ed, cit­ing his med­ical records. He served two tours of duty in Iraq.

    “I will put almost any­body on the air unless they are active­ly threat­en­ing some­body,” Lar­son told TPM in a phone inter­view Tues­day. “Short of that,” he added, “I’ll put all the crazy on you want.”

    Lar­son said he want­ed to give his lis­ten­ers an exam­ple of some­one who, under Oregon’s new red flag law, was con­sid­ered too dan­ger­ous to have guns.

    Kohfield sound­ed “as though he could do vio­lence against some­body,” Lar­son said, adding that many lis­ten­ers wrote in after the pro­gram aired to say that Kohfield “sound­ed like a guy who should have his guns tak­en away.”

    But, Lar­son argued to TPM, Kohfield’s rights had been infringed upon because he hadn’t made an immi­nent threat of vio­lence.

    “He didn’t cross the line,” Lar­son said, crit­i­ciz­ing the red flag laws like the one used to con­fis­cate Kohfield’s guns as rem­i­nis­cent of “Minor­i­ty Report.”

    The vet­er­an first appeared on the FBI’s radar in March, the Ore­gon­ian report­ed, when he sent a let­ter to Rep. Dan Cren­shaw (R‑TX) explain­ing that, if Con­gress didn’t des­ig­nate antifa a ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion soon, he and oth­er vet­er­ans would be forced to begin killing antifas­cists “until we have achieved geno­cide.”

    ...

    ———–

    “He Drew Up Plans For An Antifa ‘Slaugh­ter,’ Then Got Invit­ed On A Nation­al Radio Show” by Matt Shuham; Talk­ing Points Memo; 09/17/2019

    “But on Thurs­day last week, Lar­son offered some­thing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent to his thou­sands of lis­ten­ers: A detailed plan on how to “slaugh­ter” scores of left wing activists in their sleep.”

    A inter­view of the guy claim­ing to have a detail plan to “slaugh­ter” left-wing activists. That’s the kind of con­tent the lis­ten­ers to the Lars Lar­son show got last week:

    ...
    “What is the detailed plan to wipe out antifa?” he probed, repeat­ing the ques­tion again before Kohfield launched into it.

    After exten­sive infor­ma­tion-gath­er­ing involv­ing find­ing home address­es and divid­ing cities into grids assigned to spe­cif­ic anti-antifa mil­i­tary vet­er­ans, Kohfield said, “the vet­er­ans will be bro­ken down into squads.”

    The squads, he said, would be giv­en a list of address­es of “the most vio­lent antifa mem­bers” and would work “until every one of them was gone in every city in Amer­i­ca, if need be, in a sin­gle well-coor­di­nat­ed night.”

    Lar­son pressed again: What would be the plan for antifa mem­bers found sleep­ing in their beds, who pose no imme­di­ate threat to any­one?

    “Well, accord­ing to the plan, it would be kill,” Kohfield replied.

    Lar­son end­ed the inter­view soon after, thank­ing Kohfield for his ser­vice and his time.
    ...

    And note how Lars Lar­son jus­ti­fied this inter­view as giv­ing lis­ten­ers an idea of the kinds of peo­ple who might have their guns tak­en away under Ore­gon’s red flag laws. Then Lar­son explained how he did­n’t think Kohfield should have had his guns tak­en away because he had­n’t made any immi­nent threats of vio­lence:

    ...
    Lar­son said he want­ed to give his lis­ten­ers an exam­ple of some­one who, under Oregon’s new red flag law, was con­sid­ered too dan­ger­ous to have guns.

    Kohfield sound­ed “as though he could do vio­lence against some­body,” Lar­son said, adding that many lis­ten­ers wrote in after the pro­gram aired to say that Kohfield “sound­ed like a guy who should have his guns tak­en away.”

    But, Lar­son argued to TPM, Kohfield’s rights had been infringed upon because he hadn’t made an immi­nent threat of vio­lence.

    “He didn’t cross the line,” Lar­son said, crit­i­ciz­ing the red flag laws like the one used to con­fis­cate Kohfield’s guns as rem­i­nis­cent of “Minor­i­ty Report.”
    ...

    So if some­one is open­ly talk­ing about their detailed plans for coor­di­nat­ed polit­i­cal mass mur­der sprees and they get their guns tak­en away as a result, that’s some sort of “Minor­i­ty Report” dystopia accord­ing to Lar­son.

    Ok, now here’s an arti­cle describ­ing the time­line of Kohfield­’s threats and what even­tu­al­ly led to his guns being removed. As the arti­cle describes, Kohfield did­n’t have his guns tak­en away after he was inves­ti­gat­ed in April for send­ing Rep Cren­shaw a let­ter in March describ­ing his intent to kill antifas­cists “until we have achieved geno­cide” if antifa isn’t declared a domes­tic ter­ror orga­ni­za­tion soon. It was only after his protest out­side the may­or’s office in July that the order was giv­en. And even then, it still took two weeks for that order to be exe­cut­ed, days after the twin mass slaugh­ters of El Paso and Day­ton:

    The Oregonian/OregonLive

    For­mer Marine said he’d ‘slaugh­ter’ antifa. The FBI, using Oregon’s new red flag law, took his guns away

    By Shane Dixon Kavanaugh
    Updat­ed Aug 30, 2019; Post­ed Aug 30, 2019

    Shane Kohfield stood out­side the home of Portland’s may­or in July wear­ing body armor and a “Make Amer­i­ca Great Again” base­ball cap, a large knife strapped to one shoul­der and a copy of his con­cealed weapons per­mit dis­played on the oth­er.

    Using a loud­speak­er, he warned the right-wing activists who turned out to con­demn the city’s han­dling of recent vio­lent demon­stra­tions that they need­ed to pro­tect them­selves against their anti-fas­cist, or antifa, rivals.

    “If antifa gets to the point where they start killing us, I’m going to kill them next,” Kohfield, 32, said. “I’d slaugh­ter them and I have a detailed plan on how I would wipe out antifa.”

    That threat pushed the FBI’s Joint Ter­ror­ism Task to take a series of extra­or­di­nary steps against Kohfield, includ­ing tem­po­rary seizure of a cache of his firearms under Oregon’s new “red flag” law aimed at pre­vent­ing gun vio­lence, The Oregonian/OregonLive has learned.

    The task force also had the ex-Marine com­mit­ted to a vet­er­ans’ hos­pi­tal in Port­land. He spent the next 20 days there.

    The moves came as city offi­cials and law enforce­ment pre­pared for poten­tial­ly vio­lent clash­es Aug. 17 dur­ing a right-wing ral­ly and coun­ter­protests planned in down­town Port­land that had become inflamed with incen­di­ary polit­i­cal rhetoric nation­wide. Police wor­ried that they would end in cat­a­stro­phe.

    Though Kohfield wasn’t accused or charged with any crimes, police took no chances and pre­vent­ed him from attend­ing the ral­ly as he repeat­ed­ly had promised to do on social media after his con­fronta­tion at May­or Ted Wheeler’s house.

    The episode shows that fed­er­al law enforce­ment may be begin­ning to take a more aggres­sive tack toward poten­tial polit­i­cal threats, said Michael Ger­man, a retired FBI agent and fel­low at the Bren­nan Cen­ter for Jus­tice at New York Uni­ver­si­ty Law School.

    “Clear­ly, this lat­est inci­dent shows how effec­tive proac­tive polic­ing can be in reduc­ing the chance of vio­lence,” said Ger­man, who has mon­i­tored polit­i­cal street clash­es in Port­land and oth­er parts of the coun­try over the last few years.

    “It also makes you won­der if they’d been proac­tive from begin­ning whether all of this would have grown into the men­ace it has become.”

    The FBI declined to pro­vide addi­tion­al details about the case or answer ques­tions sub­mit­ted by The Oregonian/OregonLive.

    “The Port­land JTTF’s role is to assess, address, and mit­i­gate any giv­en threat against the peo­ple of Ore­gon appro­pri­ate­ly,” Beth Anne Steele, a spokes­woman for the bureau’s Port­land office said in an email Fri­day.

    “Some­times that mit­i­ga­tion takes the form of crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion, and some­times it involves a holis­tic response, includ­ing con­sul­ta­tion with threat assess­ment teams or oth­ers to divert a per­son before a sig­nif­i­cant vio­lent crime occurs.”

    ***

    Kohfield, who spoke with The Oregonian/OregonLive, suf­fers from bipo­lar dis­or­der and post-trau­mat­ic stress dis­or­der, med­ical records show.

    He returned home Tues­day from the VA hos­pi­tal and main­tains he nev­er planned to hurt or maim oth­er peo­ple. But he under­stands why he alarmed police.

    “I looked unhinged. I looked dan­ger­ous and have the train­ing to be dan­ger­ous,” said Kohfield, who lives with his father in Can­by and receives dis­abil­i­ty pay­ments for phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal injuries he sus­tained dur­ing two tours of duty in Iraq.

    By lev­el­ing vicious warn­ings, Kohfield said, he hoped to deter oth­ers from caus­ing phys­i­cal harm.

    “I fig­ured that the key to de-esca­lat­ing the sit­u­a­tion was to not be the most vio­lent per­son in the room,” he said. “It was to be the scari­est per­son in the room.”

    A sup­port­er of Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, Kohfield said he isn’t affil­i­at­ed with Patri­ot Prayer, the Proud Boys or oth­er right-wing groups that have orga­nized march­es and demon­stra­tion through­out Port­land over the last 2 ½ years, some that have devolved into bloody brawls and riots.

    His protest activ­i­ty, he said, has been lim­it­ed to the event out­side the mayor’s house and a right-wing ral­ly last fall in down­town Port­land, both orga­nized by local con­ser­v­a­tive activist Haley Adams.

    “I was watch­ing on the news that city of Port­land did noth­ing to pro­tect the peo­ple against antifa,” Kohfield said. “I fig­ured I’d show up to pro­tect these peo­ple.”

    ***

    By the time he popped up at the mayor’s house, Kohfield was already on the FBI’s radar.

    He had land­ed there in March after he sent a let­ter to Texas Rep. Dan Cren­shaw, a first-term Repub­li­can con­gress­man and for­mer Navy Seal, accord­ing court doc­u­ments filed in Clacka­mas Coun­ty..

    The five-page let­ter, includ­ed in the court fil­ings, accused Portland’s may­or and police of per­mit­ting anti-fas­cist activists to com­mit “sav­age attacks” against con­ser­v­a­tives at protests, includ­ing the Novem­ber ral­ly where Kohfield said he was assault­ed by masked demon­stra­tors.

    Kohfield told Cren­shaw that Con­gress need­ed to take imme­di­ate steps to declare antifa a ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion. Oth­er­wise, he and oth­er vet­er­ans would have no choice but to begin sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly killing antifa mem­bers “until we have achieved geno­cide.”

    Kohfield includ­ed a detailed out­line of how he would car­ry out the mis­sion, which he argued would be legal­ly jus­ti­fied if the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment refused to act.

    The U.S. Capi­tol Police shared the let­ter with the FBI’s Port­land office, which assigned the case to a Clacka­mas Coun­ty sheriff’s deputy serv­ing on the area’s Joint Ter­ror­ism Task Force, court records show.

    Deputy Jere­my Stin­son inter­viewed Kohfield and his father at their home in April, accord­ing to the court doc­u­ments.

    Stin­son learned Kohfield had served in the Marines and kept guns in the house. Kohfield told the deputy he would defend him­self the next time mem­bers of antifa attacked him.

    ***

    Near­ly four months after the vis­it, the deputy was noti­fied that Port­land police had opened a non-crim­i­nal inquiry known as a threat inves­ti­ga­tion in response to the remarks Kohfield made July 20 at the mayor’s house.

    “I can’t say that he won’t kill some­one,” Kohfield’s father told Port­land police dur­ing their inves­ti­ga­tion, accord­ing to court records.

    He also told police that his son was tak­ing med­ica­tion for bipo­lar dis­or­der, drink­ing heav­i­ly and had become increas­ing­ly agi­tat­ed.

    “(Kohfield’s father) pro­vid­ed that Shane was real­ly upset by Portland’s ‘lib­er­al gov­ern­ment’ and the state of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment,” the court doc­u­ments read.

    Stin­son includ­ed all these details in a July 25 affi­davit seek­ing an “extreme risk pro­tec­tion order” against Kohfield, which a judge approved the same day.

    Such pro­tec­tion orders, intro­duced in Ore­gon in 2018, allow author­i­ties to pry guns from peo­ple not con­vict­ed of a crime who show signs they might shoot them­selves or some­one else.

    Each pro­tec­tion order stands for a year but can be extend­ed indef­i­nite­ly. Those who have their guns tak­en away can appeal the deci­sion.

    Judges statewide received 122 extreme risk pro­tec­tion order peti­tions through July 2019 and grant­ed 98 of them, said Phil Lem­man, Oregon’s act­ing deputy state court admin­is­tra­tor. Kohfield’s is only the sixth approved in Clacka­mas Coun­ty, records show.

    Accord­ing to court doc­u­ments and Kohfield, law enforce­ment offi­cers served him with the order on Aug. 7 while he was vis­it­ing fam­i­ly in cen­tral Ore­gon.

    ***

    It’s not clear why law enforce­ment wait­ed near­ly two weeks to serve the order, but they did so only days after a pair of dead­ly mass shoot­ings in El Paso, Texas, on Aug. 3 and Day­ton, Ohio, the fol­low­ing day.

    Kohfield, who was unarmed, said at least a dozen offi­cers stopped him while he was leav­ing a relative’s home out­side Prineville.

    Offi­cers said they planned to take Kohfield to the VA hos­pi­tal in Port­land. He said they then served him with the pro­tec­tion order.

    “I was told that I didn’t have a choice,” he said. “The cops were great. They were respect­ful and com­pas­sion­ate.”

    Kohfield said he was placed under psy­chi­atric obser­va­tion for five days. He said that he then vol­un­teered to remain at the VA hos­pi­tal for anoth­er two weeks.

    Accord­ing to Lem­man, the state court admin­is­tra­tor, Kohfield sur­ren­dered an AR-15, a pis­tol, a rifle and a shot­gun.

    ...

    ———-

    “For­mer Marine said he’d ‘slaugh­ter’ antifa. The FBI, using Oregon’s new red flag law, took his guns away” by Max­ine Bern­stein; The Oregonian/OregonLive; 08/30/2019

    “By the time he popped up at the mayor’s house, Kohfield was already on the FBI’s radar.”

    The guy sure was­n’t hid­ing his intent. It’s one thing to stand out­side a may­or’s house with a loud­speak­er declar­ing your intent to kill antifa if they attack you first. But when he sent that let­ter to Rep Cren­shaw in March, he made clear his opin­ion that he would be legal­ly jus­ti­fied to kill antifas­cists if Con­gress did­n’t take imme­di­ate steps to declare antifa a ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion. And yet send­ing this let­ter appeared to result in sim­ply an JTTF inter­view in April. It was only after the protest out­side the may­or’s house that the JTTF final­ly issued an affi­davit for the removal of his guns on July 25. A judge approved the affi­davit that day but his guns weren’t actu­al­ly removed for anoth­er two weeks, days after the mass slaugh­ters in El Paso and Day­ton:

    ...
    He had land­ed there in March after he sent a let­ter to Texas Rep. Dan Cren­shaw, a first-term Repub­li­can con­gress­man and for­mer Navy Seal, accord­ing court doc­u­ments filed in Clacka­mas Coun­ty..

    The five-page let­ter, includ­ed in the court fil­ings, accused Portland’s may­or and police of per­mit­ting anti-fas­cist activists to com­mit “sav­age attacks” against con­ser­v­a­tives at protests, includ­ing the Novem­ber ral­ly where Kohfield said he was assault­ed by masked demon­stra­tors.

    Kohfield told Cren­shaw that Con­gress need­ed to take imme­di­ate steps to declare antifa a ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion. Oth­er­wise, he and oth­er vet­er­ans would have no choice but to begin sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly killing antifa mem­bers “until we have achieved geno­cide.”

    Kohfield includ­ed a detailed out­line of how he would car­ry out the mis­sion, which he argued would be legal­ly jus­ti­fied if the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment refused to act.

    The U.S. Capi­tol Police shared the let­ter with the FBI’s Port­land office, which assigned the case to a Clacka­mas Coun­ty sheriff’s deputy serv­ing on the area’s Joint Ter­ror­ism Task Force, court records show.

    Deputy Jere­my Stin­son inter­viewed Kohfield and his father at their home in April, accord­ing to the court doc­u­ments.

    Stin­son learned Kohfield had served in the Marines and kept guns in the house. Kohfield told the deputy he would defend him­self the next time mem­bers of antifa attacked him.

    ***

    Near­ly four months after the vis­it, the deputy was noti­fied that Port­land police had opened a non-crim­i­nal inquiry known as a threat inves­ti­ga­tion in response to the remarks Kohfield made July 20 at the mayor’s house.

    “I can’t say that he won’t kill some­one,” Kohfield’s father told Port­land police dur­ing their inves­ti­ga­tion, accord­ing to court records.

    He also told police that his son was tak­ing med­ica­tion for bipo­lar dis­or­der, drink­ing heav­i­ly and had become increas­ing­ly agi­tat­ed.

    “(Kohfield’s father) pro­vid­ed that Shane was real­ly upset by Portland’s ‘lib­er­al gov­ern­ment’ and the state of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment,” the court doc­u­ments read.

    Stin­son includ­ed all these details in a July 25 affi­davit seek­ing an “extreme risk pro­tec­tion order” against Kohfield, which a judge approved the same day.

    ...

    Accord­ing to court doc­u­ments and Kohfield, law enforce­ment offi­cers served him with the order on Aug. 7 while he was vis­it­ing fam­i­ly in cen­tral Ore­gon.

    ***

    It’s not clear why law enforce­ment wait­ed near­ly two weeks to serve the order, but they did so only days after a pair of dead­ly mass shoot­ings in El Paso, Texas, on Aug. 3 and Day­ton, Ohio, the fol­low­ing day.
    ...

    And note that the removal of guns under Ore­gon’s red flag laws is only for a year. Each year they need to be extend­ed and the indi­vid­ual can appeal the deci­sion:

    ...
    Such pro­tec­tion orders, intro­duced in Ore­gon in 2018, allow author­i­ties to pry guns from peo­ple not con­vict­ed of a crime who show signs they might shoot them­selves or some­one else.

    Each pro­tec­tion order stands for a year but can be extend­ed indef­i­nite­ly. Those who have their guns tak­en away can appeal the deci­sion.

    Judges statewide received 122 extreme risk pro­tec­tion order peti­tions through July 2019 and grant­ed 98 of them, said Phil Lem­man, Oregon’s act­ing deputy state court admin­is­tra­tor. Kohfield’s is only the sixth approved in Clacka­mas Coun­ty, records show.
    ...

    So we’ll see if Kohfield gets his guns back next year. But let’s all keep in mind that Kohfield was­n’t sim­ply plan­ning on exe­cut­ing a mass slaugh­ter on his own. He was plan­ning on doing this in coor­di­na­tion with a group of oth­er peo­ple. So Kohfield does­n’t actu­al­ly need his own guns to car­ry out his plans or even be involved with the plan’s their exe­cu­tion. He’s already pop­u­lar­ized it, with some help from right-wing radio.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | September 20, 2019, 10:49 am

  3. This arti­cle reports that a man from Oslo, Philip Man­shaus, went into a mosque fir­ing ‘two shot­gun-like weapons’ and wear­ing a uni­form and body armour.  Lat­er he went to a court hear­ing and raised his arm in a Nazi salute to the assem­bled media.  He is now accused of mur­der­ing his adopt­ed Asian step-sis­ter because of her race.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7545833/Norway-mosque-gunman-gives-Nazi-salute-court.html

    Nor­way mosque gun­man gives a Nazi salute in court as he stands accused of killing his 17-year-old Asian step-sis­ter and ter­ror­is­ing an Islam­ic cen­tre

    ¥ Philip Man­shaus, 22, opened fire at an Oslo mosque on August 10, injur­ing one 
    ¥ Before this, he is accused of killing his half-sis­ter, 17, with three shots to her head
    ¥ Police pre­vi­ous­ly said this was because of his adopt­ed sis­ter’s ‘Asian ori­gin’ 
    ¥ Today, as once before, Man­shaus gave a Nazi salute at the court in Nor­way
    ¥
    By ROSS IBBETSON FOR MAILONLINE
    PUBLISHED: 06:07 EDT, 7 Octo­ber 2019 | UPDATED: 08:56 EDT, 7 Octo­ber 2019

    The Nor­way mosque gun­man, accused of killing his 17-year-old step-sis­ter before open­ing fire at an Islam­ic cen­tre in Oslo, gave a Nazi salute in court today. 

    Philip Man­shaus, 22, stormed the Al-Noor mosque in an afflu­ent sub­urb of the city on August 10 before he was over­pow­ered by a 65-year-old wor­ship­per.

    One per­son was injured in the ram­page before Mohamed Rafiq hero­ical­ly appre­hend­ed Man­shaus. 

    His step-sis­ter, Johanne Zhangjia Ihle-Hansen, adopt­ed by his father’s girl­friend, was lat­er found with three shots to the head at their home. A .22-cal­iber rifle was found in Man­shaus’ car. 

    Police offi­cial Pal-Fredrik Hjort Kra­by pre­vi­ous­ly revealed how Man­shaus’ expla­na­tion and tech­ni­cal evi­dence, includ­ing the lack of a strug­gle, ‘sup­port the ver­sion that she (his step-sis­ter) was killed because of what the attack­er con­sid­ers as race, because she was of Asian ori­gin.’ 

    Mr Rafiq was among three peo­ple inside when a man burst in with ‘two shot­gun-like weapons’ and wear­ing a uni­form and body armour. 

    Police said the sus­pect was wav­ing weapons while inside the mosque but did not spec­i­fy what type. 

    After break­ing through a glass door, the gun­man fired off a num­ber of shots before Mr Rafiq and Mohamed Iqbal, who helped to sub­due the sus­pect, spot­ted him.   

    The retired Pak­istani Air Force offi­cer described strug­gling with the gun­man.

    Mr Rafiq said: ‘He put the fin­ger inside my eye up to there, the whole fin­ger.’ 

    He was the only per­son injured at the mosque despite mul­ti­ple gun­shots being fired, accord­ing to police.   

    Prime Min­is­ter Erna Sol­berg called the attempt­ed attack a ‘direct attack on Nor­we­gian Mus­lims.’ 

    Man­shaus, who is being held in cus­tody pend­ing for­mal charges, has admit­ted to the facts but has reject­ed the ‘ter­ror­ist act’ and ‘mur­der’ sus­pi­cions against him.

    On Sep­tem­ber 9, at a court hear­ing to extend his deten­tion in cus­tody, Man­shaus raised his arm in a Nazi salute to the assem­bled media. 

    Posted by Mary Benton | October 11, 2019, 3:14 pm

  4. This Oct. 10, 2019 Dai­ly Mail arti­cle, shows anoth­er lone wolf attack in Ger­many with a man, Stephan Bal­li­et, wear­ing body armor, who live streamed his attempt­ed attack on Jew­ish peo­ple pray­ing in a syn­a­gogue wor­ship­ping on their most sacred Jew­ish hol­i­day of the year, Yom Kip­pur. He also had a a 10-page man­i­festo, writ­ten in Eng­lish, which men­tioned his objec­tive to kill ‘anti-whites’, includ­ing Jews. He was throw­ing explo­sives, and then lay­ing bombs out­side the entrance and try­ing to shoot his way inside. The man­i­festo was cre­at­ed a week ago reveals his exten­sive plan­ning and prepa­ra­tion for this attack.

    The shoot­ing came three months after the shock­ing assas­si­na­tion-style mur­der of local pro-migrant politi­cian Wal­ter Lue­bcke in the west­ern city of Kas­sel, alleged­ly by a neo-Nazi sus­pect, Stephan Ern­st’s, who is being inves­ti­gat­ed to deter­mine those ties and whether he had links to the far-right mil­i­tant cell Nation­al Social­ist Under­ground (NSU).

    Inte­ri­or Min­is­ter Horst See­hofer last month warned of the ris­ing dan­ger of the mil­i­tant far right, call­ing it ‘as big a threat as rad­i­cal Islamism’. This is 75 years after the Holo­caust.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7557491/Loner-Yom-Kippur-shooter-posted-manifesto-killing-anti-whites-Germany-week-ago.html

    Revealed: ‘Lon­er’ Yom Kip­pur shoot­er post­ed man­i­festo about ‘anti-whites’ say­ing he would attack a syn­a­gogue a WEEK before his attack, as Ger­many’s Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty warns of grow­ing anti-Semi­tism
    ¥ Stephan Bal­li­et, 27, iden­ti­fied as anti-Semit­ic shoot­er who killed two after failed attack on Ger­man syn­a­gogue
    ¥ He was a lon­er who lived with his mum, spent hours online, and ‘blamed oth­ers for his prob­lems’, father said
    ¥ Man­i­festo uploaded last week talked about killing ‘anti-whites’ and con­tained images of home-made guns
    ¥ Bal­li­et live-streamed footage of his attack in which he rant­ed against Jews, fem­i­nists and immi­grants
    ¥ Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty has demand­ed more action to com­bat anti-Semi­tism and bet­ter pro­tec­tion for Jew­ish sites
    By CHRIS PLEASANCE and TIM STICKINGS FOR MAILONLINE and AFP

    PUBLISHED: 03:11 EDT, 10 Octo­ber 2019 | UPDATED: 11:19 EDT, 10 Octo­ber 2019

    An anti-Semit­ic gun­man who shot two peo­ple dead in Ger­many after try­ing and fail­ing to mas­sacre wor­ship­pers inside a syn­a­gogue on Yom Kip­pur was a lon­er who lived with his moth­er, it has been revealed. 

    Stephan Bal­li­et, 27, spent hours online and was a user of Twitch — a live-stream­ing ser­vice pop­u­lar with video gamers — where he shared footage his ram­page on Wednes­day in chill­ing echoes of the Chirstchurch mosque attack in New Zealand. 

    Bal­li­et’s father, who was not named, told Bild that his son was an angry young man who ‘was not at peace with him­self or with the world, and always blamed every­one else’ for his prob­lems.

    It was also revealed that Bal­li­et post­ed a man­i­festo online a week ago where he specif­i­cal­ly talks about attack­ing the syn­a­gogue in Halle while out­lin­ing his plan to kill ‘anti-whites’, includ­ing Jews.

    In the wake of the attack, Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers crit­i­cised Ger­man author­i­ties for fail­ing to do enough to com­bat ris­ing anti-Semi­tism, while demand­ing round-the-clock secu­ri­ty for Jew­ish sites in the coun­try.
    ‘The fact that, 75 years after the Holo­caust, such groups are gain­ing influ­ence in Ger­many speaks vol­umes,’ Ronald Laud­er, head of the World Jew­ish Con­gress, said. 

    Around 50 ter­ri­fied wor­ship­pers — includ­ing 10 Amer­i­cans — were trapped inside the syn­a­gogue dur­ing the attack, which they watched unfold on secu­ri­ty cam­eras that broad­cast to TV screens inside the prayer house.

    Roman R, 31, told local media that he was in the mid­dle of Yom Kip­pur prayers when he heard a bang and went into the cor­ri­dor to see smoke com­ing into the build­ing.

    The major­i­ty of those inside — includ­ing the elder­ly and chil­dren — went to find shel­ter while Roman and five oth­er men bar­ri­cad­ed the door to the prayer room, called police, and then pre­pared them­selves to fight back.

    He described watch­ing as Bal­li­et shot at the wood­en doors, believ­ing they would give way any moment and that he would come inside and attack them.

    For­tu­nate­ly the doors held, explo­sives that Bal­li­et placed at the doors did not go off, and flam­ma­ble liq­uid he sprayed at the build­ing failed to light.

    After fail­ing to get into the syn­a­gogue, Roman watched as Bal­li­et left to con­tin­ue his attack else­where as police arrived. He remained trapped inside the build­ing for hours after­wards before final­ly being freed once offi­cers had dis­armed the explo­sives. After­wards wor­ship­pers were pic­tured hug­ging and laugh­ing as they were led away. 

    Bal­li­et was not a known extrem­ist, Bild report­ed, and appears to have self-rad­i­calised while liv­ing alone with his moth­er in Held­bra, a vil­lage around 25 miles from Halle, and spend­ing lots of his time online.

    He born in Eisleben, anoth­er vil­lage close to Held­bra and lived with both of his par­ents until they divorced when he was 14 years old 

    After that he went to live with his moth­er in Held­bra, which is where he was stay­ing at the time of the attack, although he rou­tine­ly saw his father who lives in Ben­ndorf, about a five minute dri­ve away.

    The father said he last saw his son on Tues­day, around 24 hours before the attack, when he was con­fronta­tion­al.
    ‘There was always a fight, my opin­ion did not count,’ he said. ‘I could­n’t reach him any more.’

    While the man did­n’t reveal details of his final con­ver­sa­tions with his Bal­li­et, when asked whether he thought about his son after reports spread of an attack on a syn­a­gogue, he stayed silent and began weep­ing.

    Records seen by Bilt reveal that Bal­li­et grad­u­at­ed from high school and went on to study chem­istry for two semes­ters at a high­er edu­ca­tion insti­tu­tion, but had to aban­don his stud­ies after a seri­ous stom­ach oper­a­tion.

    It is not clear exact­ly what he did for work after quit­ting his stud­ies, though a neigh­bour said he was work­ing as a broad­cast­ing tech­ni­cian at the time of the attack.

    Video tak­en of Bal­li­et dur­ing the ram­page sug­gests he was at least famil­iar with com­bat tac­tics, even if he had no for­mal train­ing, as he can be seen tak­ing shel­ter while fir­ing his weapons and mov­ing around as a solid­er might.

    In footage that he streamed online, Bal­li­et also claims he built his weapons him­self, sug­gest­ing a famil­iar­i­ty with mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing, though he can also be heard lament­ing the fact that his guns keep jam­ming.

    In a man­i­festo which was post­ed online as a PDF doc­u­ment, the author includ­ed pic­tures of the weapons and ammu­ni­tion used in the attack, accord­ing to extrem­ism mon­i­tor­ing ser­vice SITE.

    The man­i­festo also men­tioned a live-stream as well as his objec­tive to kill ‘anti-whites’, includ­ing Jews.

    ‘This man­i­festo doc­u­ment, which appears to have been cre­at­ed a week ago on Octo­ber 1, gives yet more indi­ca­tion how much plan­ning and prepa­ra­tion’ the gun­man put into the attack, Rita Katz, direc­tor of SITE, said. 

    Shoot­er posts video on Ama­zon-owned Twitch
    Social media firms faced anger and calls to ‘step up’ last after graph­ic footage of the anti-Semit­ic gun ram­page in Ger­many was streamed live on Twitch and watched by thou­sands of peo­ple.  

    The 35-minute video was streamed live on Twitch, an Ama­zon-owned gam­ing site, and stayed there for anoth­er 30 min­utes after the broad­cast had fin­ished before it was final­ly tak­en down. 
    In that time more than 2,000 peo­ple viewed the footage and some of them dis­trib­uted it fur­ther via oth­er social media net­works. 

    The shoot­er had cre­at­ed his Twitch account two months before Wednes­day’s Yom Kip­pur vio­lence. 

    Last night there were calls for social media sites to take action to stop their plat­forms being used for vio­lence. 

    ‘Ama­zon is just as much to blame as Twitch for allow­ing this stream online,’ said Hans-Jakob Schindler of the Counter Extrem­ism Project. 
    ‘Online plat­forms need to step up and stop their ser­vices being used and in turn, par­ent com­pa­nies need to hold them account­able.

    ‘This trag­ic inci­dent demon­strates one more time that a self-reg­u­la­to­ry approach is not effec­tive enough and sad­ly high­lights the need for stronger reg­u­la­tion of the tech sec­tor.’

     ‘We are shocked and sad­dened by the tragedy that took place in Ger­many, and our deep­est con­do­lences go out to all those affect­ed,’ a Twitch spokesman said. 

    ‘Twitch has a zero-tol­er­ance pol­i­cy against hate­ful con­duct, and any act of vio­lence is tak­en extreme­ly seri­ous­ly. 

    ‘We worked with urgency to remove this con­tent and will per­ma­nent­ly sus­pend any accounts found to be post­ing or repost­ing con­tent of this abhor­rent act. 

    ‘Once the video was removed, we shared the hash with an indus­try con­sor­tium to help pre­vent the pro­lif­er­a­tion of this con­tent. 
    ‘We take this extreme­ly seri­ous­ly and are com­mit­ted to work­ing with indus­try peers, law enforce­ment, and any rel­e­vant par­ties to pro­tect our com­mu­ni­ty.’ 

    Ger­man news­pa­per Die Welt report­ed that the text, which is about 10 pages long and writ­ten in Eng­lish, specif­i­cal­ly men­tions the plan to attack the syn­a­gogue in Halle dur­ing Yom Kip­pur.

    The ram­page was streamed live for 35 min­utes on Twitch, and even­tu­al­ly seen by some 2,200 peo­ple, the online plat­form said. 

    Police sub­se­quent­ly cap­tured a sus­pect after a gun bat­tle that left the man injured, though they have refused to say whether the man they cap­tured is the same one seen online.
    It is thought that Bal­li­et tried and failed to get into the Halle syn­a­gogue where around 80 peo­ple were pray­ing, before shoot­ing through the doors, throw­ing explo­sives, and then lay­ing bombs out­side.

    He then gunned down a woman in the street before dri­ving around the cor­ner to a kebab shop where he again opened fire, killing a man and wound­ing sev­er­al oth­ers.

    Video tak­en out­side the shop shows a man wear­ing tac­ti­cal gear and a hel­met with a cam­era strapped to it climb­ing out of a car and fir­ing sev­er­al shots into the street with what appears to be an impro­vised shot­gun.

    He then walks up and down the road in full view of secu­ri­ty cam­eras before flee­ing in the direc­tion of Wieder­s­dorf.
    After arriv­ing in that vil­lage he shot an elec­tri­cian in a work­shop, then stole a taxi and made his way on to the A9 motor­way, skirt­ing around the city of Leipzig, before turn­ing on to the B91 towards Zeitz.

    It was there that he was con­front­ed by police and arrest­ed after a brief gun bat­tle, Bild reports. 

    Chan­cel­lor Angela Merkel joined a sol­i­dar­i­ty vig­il at Berlin’s main syn­a­gogue on Wednes­day, and firm­ly con­demned the anti-Semit­ic ram­page.

    But Jew­ish lead­ers said that words were not enough, with Israeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Netanyahu join­ing calls for Ger­man author­i­ties to ‘act res­olute­ly against the phe­nom­e­non of anti-Semi­tism’.

    The head of the Cen­tral Coun­cil of Jews in Ger­many ripped into the author­i­ties for fail­ing to pro­vide ade­quate secu­ri­ty on such a key day.

    ‘It is scan­dalous that the syn­a­gogue in Halle is not pro­tect­ed by police on a hol­i­day like Yom Kip­pur,’ said Josef Schus­ter.
    ‘This neg­li­gence has now been bit­ter­ly repaid.’

    Ronald Laud­er, who heads the World Jew­ish Con­gress, also stressed: ‘We need action not words’ as he called for round the clock secu­ri­ty for Jew­ish sites.

    ‘We also need imme­di­ate­ly to launch a uni­fied front against neo-Nazi and oth­er extrem­ist groups, which threat­en our well-being.

    ‘The fact that, 75 years after the Holo­caust, such groups are gain­ing influ­ence in Ger­many speaks vol­umes.’ 

    In a copy of a 35-minute video obtained by AFP the gun­man filmed him­self launch­ing into a dia­tribe against women and Jews, before car­ry­ing out the attack.

    The video’s authen­tic­i­ty has been con­firmed by the SITE mon­i­tor­ing group but not by police. 

    The gun­man also pub­lished an anti-Semit­ic ‘man­i­festo’ online more than a week ago, accord­ing to SITE direc­tor Rita Katz, who said the doc­u­ment showed pic­tures of the weapons and ammu­ni­tion he used.

    In the video, he was seen try­ing to force open the syn­a­gogue door before shoot­ing dead a female pass­er-by. He then tried unsuc­cess­ful­ly to blast open the gate of the Jew­ish ceme­tery with explo­sives.

    The man was lat­er seen shoot­ing at a patron of a kebab shop about 600 metres (yards) away from the syn­a­gogue.
    Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty leader Max Priv­o­rotz­ki, who was in the Halle syn­a­gogue, told the Stuttgarter Zeitung of the har­row­ing min­utes as the site came under assault.

    ‘We saw through the cam­era of our syn­a­gogue that a heav­i­ly armed per­pe­tra­tor wear­ing a steel hel­met and rifle was try­ing to shoot open our door.’

    Between 70 and 80 peo­ple were in the syn­a­gogue then, Priv­o­rotz­ki said.

    ‘We bar­ri­cad­ed our doors from inside and wait­ed for the police,’ he said, adding that ‘in between, we car­ried on with our ser­vice.’ 

    Among those in the syn­a­gogue were 10 Amer­i­cans, as well as sev­er­al Israelis, who had turned up in Halle espe­cial­ly to join the small local pop­u­la­tion in cel­e­brat­ing Yom Kip­pur.
    ‘We’ve made it out with our lives, in health and amaz­ing spir­its,’ wrote Rebec­ca Bla­dy, a Jew­ish Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ty leader, who was in the syn­a­gogue.

    The own­er of the kebab shop, Rifat Tekin, mean­while described the gun­man as ‘calm like a pro­fes­sion­al’.
    ‘Maybe he has done this many times. Like me mak­ing a kebab, he’s doing this — like a pro­fes­sion­al.’ 

    Anti-ter­ror­ist pros­e­cu­tors con­firmed that they were tak­ing over the probe giv­en ‘the par­tic­u­lar impor­tance of the case’ which involved ‘vio­lent acts that affect the domes­tic secu­ri­ty of the Fed­er­al Repub­lic of Ger­many’.

    Wednes­day’s shoot­ings came three months after the shock­ing assas­si­na­tion-style mur­der of local pro-migrant politi­cian Wal­ter Lue­bcke in the west­ern city of Kas­sel, alleged­ly by a known neo-Nazi.

    Lue­bck­e’s killing has deeply shak­en Ger­many, rais­ing ques­tions about whether it has failed to take seri­ous­ly a ris­ing threat from right-wing extrem­ists.

    Inves­ti­ga­tors have been prob­ing the extent of sus­pect Stephan Ern­st’s neo-Nazi ties and whether he had links to the far-right mil­i­tant cell Nation­al Social­ist Under­ground (NSU).

    Inte­ri­or Min­is­ter Horst See­hofer last month warned of the ris­ing dan­ger of the mil­i­tant far right, call­ing it ‘as big a threat as rad­i­cal Islamism’.    

    Posted by Mary Benton | October 11, 2019, 6:05 pm

  5. Should guns be banned for every­one or just the men­tal­ly ill? That’s become one of the fun­da­men­tal ques­tions fac­ing the gun con­trol debate in the US as a result of repeat­ed mass shoot­ings fol­lowed by calls for more gun con­trol laws and counter-calls by gun advo­cates for focus­ing exclu­sive­ly on men­tal health and keep­ing guns out of the hands of those deemed to be too men­tal­ly unsta­ble to safe­ly own guns. One of grand ironies of this debate is, of course, the fact that many of those who most intense­ly oppose any sort of gun con­trol laws and call for men­tal health-restric­tions instead would prob­a­bly fail a men­tal health eval­u­a­tion.

    For exam­ple, recall the recent case of a man in Ore­gon, Shane Kohfield, who had all of his guns tem­porar­i­ly tak­en away for a year under Oregon’s new “Red Flag” laws that allow guns to be tak­en from indi­vid­u­als if there’s a rea­son to fear they might be plan­ning vio­lence. Kohfield had been open­ly talk­ing about his plans for orga­niz­ing a group of peo­ple to iden­ti­fy mem­bers of Antifa and mur­der in their beds in a sin­gle night of vio­lence. He even wrote a let­ter to Repub­li­can Con­gress Dan Cren­shaw explain­ing his desire to com­mit “geno­cide” against anti-fas­cists. It wasn’t until Kohfield lat­er stood out­side the Port­land mayor’s house with a loud­speak­er, declar­ing, “If antifa gets to the point where they start killing us, I’m going to kill them next…I’d slaugh­ter them and I have a detailed plan on how I would wipe out antifa,” that the FBI’s Joint Ter­ror­ism Task Force (JTTF) has his guns seized. For a year. And it was only because of Oregon’s new “Red Flag” laws that this was even an option for the FBI, which was work­ing with local author­i­ties when they moved to seize Kohfield’s guns. In addi­tion, recall how Kohfield lat­er went on the right-wing Lars Lar­son talk radio show where he explained his plan to put togeth­er cells of peo­ple who would all mass mur­der anti-fas­cists in their homes in a sin­gle night using encrypt­ed mes­sag­ing apps to coor­di­nate it all. At the end of the radio inter­view, Lar­son said he felt the seizure of Kohfield’s guns was unjus­ti­fied.

    The fact that a pop­u­lar right-wing talk radio host like Lar­son didn’t feel Kohfield should have his guns seized (for only a year) even after all of that rais­es the ques­tion: ok, so what would con­sti­tute a jus­ti­fi­able rea­son for pre­emp­tive­ly tak­ing away someone’s guns? Kohfield was open­ly talk­ing about his plans for mass mur­der anti-fas­cists and shar­ing this plans with mem­bers of con­gress and open­ly shout­ing about them out­side the Port­land mayor’s house. That’s not enough to war­rant a “red flag” pre­emp­tive gun seizure? If now, what is? It’s a poten­tial­ly sig­nif­i­cant ques­tion because, in the mod­ern age of inter­net-based far right rad­i­cal­iza­tion, there’s A LOT of peo­ple who have expressed a desire for polit­i­cal vio­lence direct­ed against the left in the Unit­ed States. Again, it’s why the right-wing’s focus on men­tal health as a stand in for gun con­trols laws is so iron­ic.

    That’s all what’s going to make the right-wing response to the fol­low­ing sto­ry some­thing to keep in eye on: Anoth­er far right nut job just had their guns pre­emp­tive­ly seized. This time it was in Wash­ing­ton state and the indi­vid­ual who had his guns tak­en away is even more of an unam­bigu­ous­ly dan­ger­ous indi­vid­ual than Kohfield. Kaleb J. Cole, the sus­pect­ed leader of the Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion in Wash­ing­ton state, had his guns seized for a year. He isn’t charged with a crime. Instead, the FBI and pros­e­cu­tors con­vinced a judge that, “Kaleb Cole pos­es a seri­ous threat to pub­lic safe­ty by hav­ing access and pos­ses­sion to firearms and a con­cealed pis­tol license.” The judge then filed a Extreme Risk Pro­tec­tion Order (ERPO) which result­ed in Cole hav­ing his guns seized, which is the the same order used to seize Kohfield’s guns. It’s the first ERPO issued in Wash­ing­ton state and one of the first instances of an ERPO in the nation. That’s how rare this kind of action is by author­i­ties.

    So, if fig­ures like Lars Lar­son view Kohfield as hav­ing had his guns unjus­ti­fi­ably seized, what are their views on an Atom­waf­fen mem­ber hav­ing his guns seized? Don’t for­get that, while Atom­waf­fen is unusu­al­ly open about their ter­ror­is­tic agen­da, their geno­ci­dal race war neo-Nazi ide­ol­o­gy is trag­i­cal­ly wide­spread. What about the marchers as the 2017 Char­lottesville ral­ly? A large num­ber of those marchers were basi­cal­ly ide­o­log­i­cal­ly aligned with Atom­waf­fen and clear­ly desire mass vio­lence. Where is that ERPO ‘line’ going to be drawn? This is the kind of debate that these pre­emp­tive ERPO gun seizures are inevitably going to be trig­ger­ing, espe­cial­ly on the far right where many share the views of Atom­waf­fen:

    King5 News

    Police seize guns from avowed neo-Nazi in Sno­homish Coun­ty
    Accord­ing to court doc­u­ments, Kaleb Cole is the leader of a small, but dan­ger­ous white suprema­cist group called “Atom­waf­fen.”

    Author: Chris Ingalls
    Pub­lished: 6:51 PM PDT Octo­ber 17, 2019
    Updat­ed: 8:28 AM PDT Octo­ber 18, 2019

    SEATTLE — Police seized mil­i­tary-style firearms from an avowed neo-Nazi in Sno­homish Coun­ty in what is believed to be a first-of-its-kind case in Wash­ing­ton state.

    “We actu­al­ly, I firm­ly believe, pre­vent­ed a mas­sacre,” said Seat­tle City Attor­ney Pete Holmes, whose office was involved in the inves­ti­ga­tion.

    Records filed in King Coun­ty court show offi­cers from the Arling­ton and Seat­tle police depart­ments seized five mil­i­tary-style rifles, three pis­tols, and oth­er gun parts from a res­i­dence on Jor­dan Trails Road in Arling­ton.

    Accord­ing to court doc­u­ments, the weapons belong to Kaleb J. Cole, who is the sus­pect­ed leader of The Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion in Wash­ing­ton state.

    Author­i­ties claim Cole has been amass­ing firearms and train­ing with weapons in west­ern Wash­ing­ton. Online videos show Atom­waf­fen mem­bers fir­ing guns and mov­ing through rooms at “dev­ils tow­er,” a graf­fi­ti-scarred build­ing at an aban­doned cement plant near the City of Con­crete.

    “This is a hate-filled human being but one who, unfor­tu­nate­ly, pos­sess­es a large num­ber of weapons,” Holmes said.

    Cole is not charged with a crime but is named in an Extreme Risk Pro­tec­tion Order (ERPO) filed ear­li­er this month in King Coun­ty court. In the civ­il paper­work, pros­e­cu­tors and the FBI con­vinced a judge that “Kaleb Cole pos­es a seri­ous threat to pub­lic safe­ty by hav­ing access and pos­ses­sion to firearms and a con­cealed pis­tol license.”

    The judge issued an order requir­ing Cole to sur­ren­der all firearms to the police.

    Atom­waf­fen, which is a Ger­man for “atom­ic weapon,” is a small but extreme orga­ni­za­tion that seeks inspi­ra­tion from Adolph Hitler and Charles Man­son, who ordered mass mur­ders to attempt to trig­ger a race war.

    ...

    The FBI has clear­ly been watch­ing Cole, although a spokesper­son for the bureau’s Seat­tle office declined to com­ment.

    Doc­u­ments filed in court show that Cole trav­eled to East­ern Europe in Decem­ber of 2018 on a trip to hon­or the sites of some of World War II’s most hor­rif­ic scenes.

    Cell phone pho­tos retrieved by Cus­toms and Bor­der Patrol agents when Cole re-entered the U.S. show him pos­ing in front of the Nazi death camp Auschwitz. In the pho­tos, Cole is hold­ing up the Atom­waf­fen flag at oth­er loca­tions, and oth­er pho­tos show him hold­ing guns.

    “Cole has been per­ma­nent­ly banned from entry into Cana­da as a result of his [admit­ted] membership/affiliation with the Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion,” the Bor­der Patrol report stat­ed.

    Ear­li­er this year, the Seat­tle FBI approached Seattle/King County’s Region­al Firearms Enforce­ment Unit oper­at­ed by the Seat­tle City Attor­ney, King Coun­ty Pros­e­cu­tor, and Seat­tle police.

    Agents sought an ERPO to dis­arm Cole, but the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment has no such tool.

    “The fact is the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment came to us. There’s no oth­er mech­a­nism like our firearms unit that’s in exis­tence. There’s no one else in the state that’s doing this,” said Holmes.

    It’s the first time the Feds have sought an ERPO in Wash­ing­ton state, and it’s believed to be one of the first instances in the nation.

    King Coun­ty Pros­e­cu­tor Dan Sat­ter­berg, whose deputy pros­e­cu­tor Kim Wyatt argued the ERPO case before the judge, said the order to sur­ren­der guns is the right tool when law enforce­ment does not have enough evi­dence to file a crim­i­nal charge.

    “In this case, the joint ter­ror­ism task force had assessed Mr. Cole and said he was some­body who was doing more than think­ing and talk­ing about his extrem­ist, vio­lent beliefs, but that he was actu­al­ly act­ing on it,” Sat­ter­berg said.

    Holmes said the case marks an impor­tant mile­stone since he start­ed work­ing with his domes­tic vio­lence pros­e­cu­tor, Chris Ander­son, on the pilot project that formed the firearms enforce­ment unit.

    That unit has now seized near­ly 1,100 firearms since 2017, most­ly from accused domes­tic abusers.

    The fact the FBI rec­og­nized an ERPO’s abil­i­ty to stop a threat is sig­nif­i­cant.

    “We can actu­al­ly pre­vent some of these mas­sacres,” said Holmes.

    KING 5 has been unable to reach Cole for com­ment. The order that he does not pos­sess any firearms remains in effect for one year.

    ———-

    “Police seize guns from avowed neo-Nazi in Sno­homish Coun­ty” by Chris Ingalls; King5 News; 10/17/2019

    “Cole is not charged with a crime but is named in an Extreme Risk Pro­tec­tion Order (ERPO) filed ear­li­er this month in King Coun­ty court. In the civ­il paper­work, pros­e­cu­tors and the FBI con­vinced a judge that “Kaleb Cole pos­es a seri­ous threat to pub­lic safe­ty by hav­ing access and pos­ses­sion to firearms and a con­cealed pis­tol license.””

    The ERPO appears to be lit­er­al­ly the only tool author­i­ties have for tak­ing guns out the hands of Nazis. And this tool is only avail­able because Seat­tle set up a Region­al Firearms Enforce­ment Unit in 2017 that has the pow­er to car­ry out these ERPOs. That unit has seized over 1,100 firearms, but most­ly from accused domes­tic abusers. This is the first time it’s used against a neo-Nazi like Cole on the basis that he’s the leader of an extreme­ly vio­lent group. So this real­ly is a sig­nif­i­cant legal prece­dent

    ...
    Ear­li­er this year, the Seat­tle FBI approached Seattle/King County’s Region­al Firearms Enforce­ment Unit oper­at­ed by the Seat­tle City Attor­ney, King Coun­ty Pros­e­cu­tor, and Seat­tle police.

    Agents sought an ERPO to dis­arm Cole, but the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment has no such tool.

    “The fact is the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment came to us. There’s no oth­er mech­a­nism like our firearms unit that’s in exis­tence. There’s no one else in the state that’s doing this,” said Holmes.

    It’s the first time the Feds have sought an ERPO in Wash­ing­ton state, and it’s believed to be one of the first instances in the nation.

    King Coun­ty Pros­e­cu­tor Dan Sat­ter­berg, whose deputy pros­e­cu­tor Kim Wyatt argued the ERPO case before the judge, said the order to sur­ren­der guns is the right tool when law enforce­ment does not have enough evi­dence to file a crim­i­nal charge.

    “In this case, the joint ter­ror­ism task force had assessed Mr. Cole and said he was some­body who was doing more than think­ing and talk­ing about his extrem­ist, vio­lent beliefs, but that he was actu­al­ly act­ing on it,” Sat­ter­berg said.

    Holmes said the case marks an impor­tant mile­stone since he start­ed work­ing with his domes­tic vio­lence pros­e­cu­tor, Chris Ander­son, on the pilot project that formed the firearms enforce­ment unit.

    That unit has now seized near­ly 1,100 firearms since 2017, most­ly from accused domes­tic abusers.
    ...

    And note how Cole is now per­ma­nent­ly banned from Cana­da over his mem­ber­ship in Atom­waf­fen. It will be inter­est­ing to see if oth­er coun­tries start ban­ning him. We’re also told that he trav­eled to “East­ern Europe” in Decem­ber of 2018, rais­ing the ques­tion of whether or not he’s been net­work­ing with Azov or oth­er Ukrain­ian neo-Nazi out­fits that are keen on build­ing inter­na­tion­al ties:

    ...
    The FBI has clear­ly been watch­ing Cole, although a spokesper­son for the bureau’s Seat­tle office declined to com­ment.

    Doc­u­ments filed in court show that Cole trav­eled to East­ern Europe in Decem­ber of 2018 on a trip to hon­or the sites of some of World War II’s most hor­rif­ic scenes.

    Cell phone pho­tos retrieved by Cus­toms and Bor­der Patrol agents when Cole re-entered the U.S. show him pos­ing in front of the Nazi death camp Auschwitz. In the pho­tos, Cole is hold­ing up the Atom­waf­fen flag at oth­er loca­tions, and oth­er pho­tos show him hold­ing guns.

    “Cole has been per­ma­nent­ly banned from entry into Cana­da as a result of his [admit­ted] membership/affiliation with the Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion,” the Bor­der Patrol report stat­ed.
    ...

    And, again, note that this is just a one year ban for Cole. He’ll poten­tial­ly get his guns back in a year:

    ...
    KING 5 has been unable to reach Cole for com­ment. The order that he does not pos­sess any firearms remains in effect for one year.
    ...

    Also keep in mind that, as a mem­ber of Atom­waf­fen, it’s not like Cole needs to own his own guns to have access to them. He’s an Atom­waf­fen cell leader, after all.

    And as the fol­low­ing ProP­ub­li­ca arti­cle from Feb­ru­ary of 2018 lays out, Cole isn’t just the leader of the Wash­ing­ton state Atom­waf­fen cell. Accord­ing to anony­mous for­mer mem­bers of the group, Cole is one of the lead pro­pa­gan­dists and recruiters for the group, so he pre­sum­ably knows A LOT of Nazis with guns if he want­ed to get his hands on them:

    ProP­ub­li­ca

    Inside Atom­waf­fen As It Cel­e­brates a Mem­ber for Alleged­ly Killing a Gay Jew­ish Col­lege Stu­dent
    ProP­ub­li­ca obtained the chat logs of Atom­waf­fen, a noto­ri­ous white suprema­cist group. When Samuel Wood­ward was charged with killing 19-year-old Blaze Bern­stein last month in Cal­i­for­nia, oth­er Atom­waf­fen mem­bers cheered the death, con­cerned only that the group’s cov­er might have been blown.

    by A.C. Thomp­son, ProP­ub­li­ca, Ali Win­ston, spe­cial to ProP­ub­li­ca, and Jake Han­ra­han, spe­cial to ProP­ub­li­ca
    Feb. 23, 2018, 5 a.m. EST

    Update, Aug. 3, 2018: Orange Coun­ty Dis­trict Attor­ney Tony Rack­auckas on Thurs­day announced that Samuel Wood­ward would now face a hate crime charge as part of his pros­e­cu­tion for the mur­der of Blaze Bern­stein. ProP­ub­li­ca revealed ear­li­er this year that Wood­ward was a mem­ber of a neo-Nazi group called Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion. Accord­ing to the Orange Coun­ty Reg­is­ter, Rack­auckas said, “We will prove that Wood­ward killed Blaze because Blaze was gay.” Rack­auckas said inves­ti­ga­tors had uncov­ered mate­r­i­al on Woodward’s phone and com­put­er that was “graph­ic and chill­ing” and “spew­ing hate toward almost every pro­tect­ed group.” With the hate charge, Wood­ward, if con­vict­ed, could face life in prison with­out the chance at parole.

    Late last month, ProP­ub­li­ca report­ed that the Cal­i­for­nia man accused of killing a gay and Jew­ish Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia stu­dent was an avowed neo-Nazi and a mem­ber of Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion, one of the country’s most noto­ri­ous extrem­ist groups.

    The news about the mur­der sus­pect, Samuel Wood­ward, spread quick­ly through­out the U.S., and abroad. Wood­ward was accused of fatal­ly stab­bing 19-year-old Blaze Bern­stein and bury­ing his body in an Orange Coun­ty park.

    The report, it turns out, was also tak­en up in the secre­tive online chats con­duct­ed by mem­bers of Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion, a white suprema­cist group that cel­e­brates both Hitler and Charles Man­son.

    “I love this,” one mem­ber wrote of the killing, accord­ing to copies of the online chats obtained by ProP­ub­li­ca. Anoth­er called Wood­ward a “one man gay Jew wreck­ing crew.”

    More soon joined in.

    “What I real­ly want to know is who leaked that shit about Sam to the media,” a third mem­ber wrote.

    At least one mem­ber want­ed to pun­ish the per­son who had revealed Woodward’s affil­i­a­tion with Atom­waf­fen.

    “Rats and trai­tors get the rope first.”

    Encrypt­ed chat logs obtained by ProP­ub­li­ca — some 250,000 mes­sages span­ning more than six months — offer a rare win­dow into Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion that goes well beyond what has sur­faced else­where about a group whose mem­bers have been impli­cat­ed in a string of vio­lent crimes. Like many white suprema­cist orga­ni­za­tions, Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion uses Dis­cord, an online chat ser­vice designed for video gamers, to engage in its con­fi­den­tial online dis­cus­sions.

    In a mat­ter of months, peo­ple asso­ci­at­ed with the group, includ­ing Wood­ward, have been charged in five mur­ders; anoth­er group mem­ber plead­ed guilty to pos­ses­sion of explo­sives after author­i­ties uncov­ered a pos­si­ble plot to blow up a nuclear facil­i­ty near Mia­mi.

    The group’s pro­pa­gan­da makes clear that Atom­waf­fen — the word means “nuclear weapons” in Ger­man — embraces Third Reich ide­ol­o­gy and preach­es hatred of minori­ties, gays and Jews. Atom­waf­fen pro­duces YouTube videos show­ing mem­bers fir­ing weapons and has filmed mem­bers burn­ing the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion and set­ting fire to the Amer­i­can flag. But the orga­ni­za­tion, by and large, cloaks its oper­a­tions in secre­cy and bars mem­bers from speak­ing to the media.

    The chat logs and oth­er mate­r­i­al obtained by ProP­ub­li­ca pro­vide unusu­al­ly exten­sive infor­ma­tion about the group’s lead­ers, wider make­up, and poten­tial tar­gets, indi­cat­ing:

    The group may have as many as 20 cells around the coun­try, small groups of inde­ter­mi­nate size in Texas, Vir­ginia, Wash­ing­ton, Neva­da and else­where. Mem­bers armed with assault rifles and oth­er guns have tak­en part in weapons train­ing in var­i­ous loca­tions over the last two years, includ­ing last month in the Neva­da desert near Death Val­ley.

    Mem­bers have dis­cussed using explo­sives to crip­ple pub­lic water sys­tems and destroy parts of the elec­tri­cal pow­er grid. One mem­ber even claimed to have obtained clas­si­fied maps of the pow­er grid in Cal­i­for­nia. Through­out the chats, Atom­waf­fen mem­bers laud Tim­o­thy McVeigh, the for­mer sol­dier who bombed the Alfred P. Mur­rah fed­er­al build­ing in Okla­homa City in 1995, killing 168, includ­ing numer­ous chil­dren. Charleston church shoot­er Dylann Roof and Anders Breivik, the Nor­we­gian extrem­ist who mas­sa­cred 77 peo­ple, also come in for praise.

    Wood­ward post­ed sev­er­al mes­sages in the days after Bernstein’s mur­der, but before he was arrest­ed and charged. In one thread, he told his fel­low Atom­waf­fen mem­bers that he was think­ing about the “pass­ing of life” and was “tru­ly grate­ful for our time togeth­er.”

    Wood­ward, 20, has plead­ed not guilty in the Bern­stein case. Pros­e­cu­tors have said they are explor­ing whether the mur­der con­sti­tut­ed a hate crime and detec­tives are now inves­ti­gat­ing what role, if any, Atom­waf­fen might have played in the homi­cide. Wood­ward and Bern­stein had known each oth­er in high school in Cal­i­for­nia, and appear to have recon­nect­ed some­how short­ly before the killing.

    Law enforce­ment, both fed­er­al and state, have said lit­tle about what they make of Atom­waf­fen. But orga­ni­za­tions ded­i­cat­ed to track­ing and study­ing hate groups have been call­ing atten­tion to what they regard as the group’s con­sid­er­able threat.

    “We haven’t seen any­thing like Atom­waf­fen in quite a while,” said Kee­gan Han­kes, a researcher who tracks the group for the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter. “They should be tak­en seri­ous­ly because they’re so extreme.”

    Jef­frey Kaplan, a his­to­ri­an, has stud­ied racial extrem­ists for decades and edit­ed the Ency­clo­pe­dia of White Pow­er. In an inter­view, he sug­gest­ed that Atom­waf­fen is dan­ger­ous, but that talk in their pro­pa­gan­da and pri­vate con­ver­sa­tions of aims such as top­pling the U.S. gov­ern­ment amount­ed to what he called a kind of “mag­i­cal think­ing.” Kaplan said such groups often con­tain a hand­ful of diehards who are will­ing to com­mit crimes and many more wannabes who are unwill­ing to do much more than read fas­cist lit­er­a­ture.

    “It’s very hard to go from talk­ing about vio­lence to look­ing a guy in the eyes and killing him,” said Kaplan, a pro­fes­sor of nation­al secu­ri­ty stud­ies at King Fahd Defense Col­lege in Sau­di Ara­bia.

    **********

    “Pol­i­tics are use­less. Rev­o­lu­tion is nec­es­sary.”

    ProP­ub­li­ca has iden­ti­fied five key Atom­waf­fen mem­bers through infor­ma­tion pro­vid­ed by law enforce­ment inves­ti­ga­tors, inter­nal Atom­waf­fen records, out­side experts and a for­mer group mem­ber.

    Those records and inter­views make clear that John Cameron Den­ton is the leader of Atom­waf­fen. Den­ton, 24, grew up in Mont­gomery, Texas, a small town about 30 miles north of Hous­ton. Pub­lic records show Den­ton cur­rent­ly lives in the near­by town of Con­roe, a few miles to the south of Mont­gomery.

    ProP­ub­li­ca has obtained sev­er­al pho­tos of Den­ton. In one, Den­ton, who is short and wiry, has a bulky com­bat shot­gun slung over his shoul­der. He seems to favor cam­ou­flage pants and black T‑shirts embla­zoned with the logos of Nation­al Social­ist Black Met­al bands, a fringe sub­genre of heavy met­al music that mix­es Satan­ic and Nazi themes.

    “Pol­i­tics are use­less. Rev­o­lu­tion is nec­es­sary,” Den­ton said in a chat post express­ing the Atom­waf­fen world­view.

    Records and inter­views show Den­ton goes by the name Rape in the online con­ver­sa­tions, and he appears to be involved in near­ly every aspect of the orga­ni­za­tion. He shapes Atomwaffen’s ide­ol­o­gy, choos­es designs for its dis­tinc­tive black-and-white posters and online pro­pa­gan­da, and selects the books that new recruits must study as part of their ini­ti­a­tion, said a for­mer Atom­waf­fen mem­ber inter­viewed by ProP­ub­li­ca. Denton’s younger broth­er, Grayson Patrick Den­ton, 19, is also a mem­ber, accord­ing to the chat logs and inter­views; with­in the group, he goes by Leon, an homage to a Bel­gian fas­cist who fought with the SS.

    The leader’s iden­ti­ty was first revealed last month in a report by the Anti-Defama­tion League. After­ward, Den­ton was seething. “They think they can stop RAPE!? THEY THINK THEY CAN STOP ME!?!,” Den­ton wrote in one chat mes­sage.

    Nei­ther Den­ton broth­er respond­ed to mes­sages seek­ing com­ment.

    Just how many peo­ple belong to Atom­waf­fen is unknown. The ex-mem­ber told ProP­ub­li­ca that the group has enlist­ed about 80 mem­bers across the coun­try, many of whom joined after the dead­ly events in Char­lottesville last sum­mer.

    An inter­nal Atom­waf­fen doc­u­ment obtained by ProP­ub­li­ca shows mem­bers scat­tered across 23 states and Cana­da. The group’s largest chap­ters are based in Vir­ginia, Texas and Wash­ing­ton, accord­ing to a mes­sage post­ed in the chats by an Atom­waf­fen recruiter last sum­mer.

    “Each chap­ter oper­ates inde­pen­dent­ly,” wrote the recruiter. “We want men who are will­ing to be the boots on the ground. Join­ing us means seri­ous ded­i­ca­tion not only to the Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion and its mem­bers, but to the goal of Total Aryan Vic­to­ry.”

    A review of the chat logs shows mes­sages post­ed by peo­ple using more than 100 dif­fer­ent user names. Access to the dis­cus­sions is tight­ly con­trolled, and it is unclear if some mem­bers post under mul­ti­ple user­names.

    Den­ton has helped build the orga­ni­za­tion around the ideas expressed in an obscure, hyper-vio­lent book: “Siege.” The 563-page book col­lects and orga­nizes the month­ly newslet­ters pro­duced dur­ing the 1980s by an old-line neo-Nazi activist named James Mason. It is required read­ing for all Atom­waf­fen mem­bers and serves as the back­bone for the organization’s ide­ol­o­gy, world­view and train­ing pro­gram.

    When Mason began pub­lish­ing his newslet­ter in 1980, he was bit­ter and deeply dis­mayed. He had devot­ed his life to the fas­cist cause, join­ing the Amer­i­can Nazi Par­ty in the mid-1960s, at the age of 14. But the move­ment had com­plete­ly failed.

    For Mason, the way for­ward was obvi­ous: He no longer want­ed to con­vince the mass­es of the right­ness of Nazism. They would nev­er get it. Now was the time for true believ­ers to go under­ground and launch a clan­des­tine guer­ril­la war aimed at bring­ing down “The Sys­tem.”

    “Siege” is essen­tial­ly a long string of essays cel­e­brat­ing mur­der and chaos in the name of white suprema­cy. In Mason’s view, Dan White, the local politi­cian who assas­si­nat­ed San Fran­cis­co May­or George Moscone and gay civ­il rights leader Har­vey Milk, was a hero.

    Mason pro­posed the cre­ation of a White Lib­er­a­tion Front com­posed of small armed squads that would “hide in wilder­ness areas,” mov­ing fre­quent­ly from loca­tion to loca­tion while strik­ing out in a string of “hit-and-run engage­ments.” Mason based this pro­posed orga­ni­za­tion on the short-lived Nation­al Social­ist Lib­er­a­tion Front, a small splin­ter group of the Amer­i­can Nazi Par­ty that formed in 1969 and espoused the strate­gic use of polit­i­cal ter­ror­ism.

    The chat logs show that Den­ton and oth­er Atom­waf­fen fig­ures are in con­tact with Mason, who is 65 and is said to be liv­ing in Den­ver, Col­orado; in one online con­ver­sa­tion, Samuel Wood­ward wrote about meet­ing with Mason face to face along with oth­er Atom­waf­fen mem­bers. In chats, mem­bers fre­quent­ly post pic­tures of Mason and revere him as a bril­liant, under-appre­ci­at­ed thinker.

    ProP­ub­li­ca was unable to con­tact Mason.

    Jef­frey Kaplan, the aca­d­e­m­ic at King Fahd Defense Col­lege in Riyadh, inter­viewed Mason in the 1990s and spoke to ProP­ub­li­ca about Mason’s out­look and the groups he inspires, such as Atom­waf­fen.

    He describes Mason as “a true believ­er.”

    “Now he’s got a fol­low­ing, which he didn’t have for the last 30 years,” Kaplan said. “He’s got some kids who’ve redis­cov­ered him. He must be in heav­en.”

    As Kaplan sees it, groups such as Atom­waf­fen — would-be Nazi guer­ril­las devot­ed to white rev­o­lu­tion in the U.S. — are “akin to cults,” and are pro­pelled by a qua­si-reli­gious faith that they will ulti­mate­ly pre­vail. He con­tin­ued, “What else would sus­tain you when every­one hates you?”

    John Cameron Den­ton, based on inter­views and the mate­r­i­al obtained by ProP­ub­li­ca, comes across as some­thing of a cult leader. Late­ly he has been push­ing for Atom­waf­fen mem­bers to pool mon­ey and pur­chase land in rur­al areas so they can “get the fu ck off the grid,” and begin imple­ment­ing their rev­o­lu­tion­ary agen­da. The for­mer mem­ber said Den­ton envi­sions using this net­work of Atom­waf­fen com­pounds to launch attacks against tar­gets in the U.S.

    The leader is already gird­ing for a con­fronta­tion with law enforce­ment. “I do expect that one day I’ll get raid­ed,” wrote Den­ton in one chat mes­sage. “I’m not gonna have a shoot out or any­thing stu­pid like that, but I just dont rule out pos­si­bil­i­ties because I know the govt does­nt play by the rules.”

    ******

    “You would want to tar­get things like sub­sta­tions, water fil­tra­tion plants, etc.”

    Late last month, Atom­waf­fen held a three-day train­ing ses­sion — or “Hate Camp” in the group’s par­lance — deep in the Neva­da desert. The event was orga­nized by an Atom­waf­fen leader, Michael Lloyd Hub­sky, who calls him­self Komis­sar, accord­ing to the chat logs.

    A 29-year-old res­i­dent of Las Vegas, Hub­sky holds both a con­cealed weapons per­mit and a secu­ri­ty guard license, and is a big fan of high-pow­ered mil­i­tary-style firearms. In one post he dis­cussed a favorite weapon: a Czech-made rifle called a CZ Scor­pi­on that, Hub­sky said, he’d con­vert­ed to ful­ly auto­mat­ic and equipped with a flash sup­pres­sor.

    In anoth­er mes­sage, Hub­sky wrote that he was plan­ning on get­ting an “FFL” — fed­er­al firearms license — so he could “man­u­fac­ture” guns.

    “I can lit­er­al­ly become our armory in the event we need it,” Hub­sky bragged.

    The for­mer mem­ber said Atom­waf­fen has a rule: Don’t talk about the group’s ter­ror­ist ambi­tions in online chats or on social media. Those sorts of con­ver­sa­tions are only sup­posed to hap­pen in per­son. But Hub­sky, at times, has been less than dis­creet out­side the group’s con­fi­den­tial chats.

    “So in any war, you need to cut off your enemy’s abil­i­ty to shoot, move and com­mu­ni­cate,” Hub­sky wrote in a Sep­tem­ber 2017 mes­sage post­ed in a dis­cus­sion on white nation­al­ism that occurred in a non-Atom­waf­fen chat room. “You would want to tar­get things like: Sub­sta­tions, water fil­tra­tion plants, etc.” ProP­ub­li­ca has obtained Hubsky’s state­ments from that online con­ver­sa­tion.

    Hub­sky wrote that he had “a map of the US pow­er grid.”

    “West-coast only,” he added in the mes­sage. “Clas­si­fied map. Had some­one with spe­cial per­mis­sions get it.”

    Hub­sky also dis­cussed blow­ing up nat­ur­al gas lines.

    “You put a home-made ther­mite grenade on those,” he wrote. While oth­er types of infra­struc­ture — like water lines – fig­ured in Hubsky’s dis­cus­sions, hit­ting the pow­er grid was, in his view, the most dev­as­tat­ing and effec­tive attack pos­si­ble. Destroy­ing elec­tric­i­ty infra­struc­ture, Hub­sky wrote, “would by default take out the inter­net because it relies on pow­er to oper­ate.”

    In a tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion and sub­se­quent series of text mes­sages with ProP­ub­li­ca, Hub­sky at first denied being a mem­ber of Atom­waf­fen. But he lat­er offered to dis­cuss the group at length if his name was not made pub­lic, an arrange­ment ProP­ub­li­ca declined. Hub­sky acknowl­edged that he owns a CZ Scor­pi­on assault rifle — even shar­ing a pic­ture of the weapon — but said it was not ful­ly auto­mat­ic. He con­clud­ed the exchange by say­ing he had retained a lawyer.

    Hubsky’s orga­ni­za­tion of the three-day Hate Camp in Neva­da began with a pro­pos­al to the group late last year. He offered to arrange it so the group could hone its com­bat skills. There would be shoot­ing and hand-to-hand spar­ring at a secret loca­tion on the edge of Death Val­ley.

    Atom­waf­fen had already held a Hate Camp in the Shawnee Nation­al For­est in south­ern Illi­nois dur­ing the fall of 2017. At least 10 mem­bers from dif­fer­ent states attend­ed, with some dri­ving in from as far away as Texas, Kansas, Okla­homa and New Jer­sey. In the Pacif­ic North­west, cell mem­bers had con­verged on an aban­doned cement fac­to­ry, known as “Dev­il’s Tow­er” near the small town of Con­crete, Wash­ing­ton, where they had screamed “gas the kikes, race war now!” while fir­ing off round after round from any array of weapons, includ­ing an AR-15 assault rifle with a high capac­i­ty drum mag­a­zine.

    The train­ing ses­sions were doc­u­ment­ed in Atom­waf­fen pro­pa­gan­da videos.

    Mem­bers had also orga­nized small­er train­ing ses­sions, such as the one last year in Texas that had drawn Blaze Bernstein’s alleged mur­der­er, Samuel Wood­ward. The Texas train­ing attend­ed by Wood­ward took place in the coun­try­side out­side San Anto­nio and involved 10 mem­bers of the Texas cell who took part in firearms, sur­vival and weapons instruc­tion.

    Hub­sky sched­uled his train­ing camp dur­ing the last week­end in Jan­u­ary. Atomwaffen’s Wash­ing­ton chap­ter leader Kaleb J. Cole, who uses the alias Khi­maere, agreed to help orga­nize the desert train­ing ses­sion in Neva­da, which the group start­ed call­ing the Death Val­ley Hate Camp.

    “Bring your uni­form, rifle/sidearm, and what­ev­er camp­ing gear you need,” he wrote. Cole, who is 22 and lives close to the Cana­di­an bor­der in the town of Blaine, is a Nation­al Social­ist Black Met­al enthu­si­ast who holds a con­cealed firearms per­mit and owns an AK-47. In 2015, while Cole was liv­ing in Belling­ham, police respond­ed to a report that he had “Nazi mem­o­ra­bil­ia” in his res­i­dence, accord­ing to Lt. Danette Beck­ley of the Belling­ham Police Depart­ment; he was also report­ed to police in the island town of Ana­cortes for alleged­ly harass­ing a Jew­ish gro­cery store own­er by a wav­ing a Nazi flag in front of the busi­ness, accord­ing to two law enforce­ment sources.

    The for­mer Atom­waf­fen mem­ber told ProP­ub­li­ca that Cole wields a sig­nif­i­cant degree of influ­ence over the organization’s pro­pa­gan­da, recruit­ment and orga­ni­za­tion. ProP­ub­li­ca could not reach Cole for com­ment.

    When the group got out to the desert, Hub­sky made sure they shot pho­tos and videos to be used in Atom­waf­fen recruit­ing clips. In one pic­ture obtained by ProP­ub­li­ca, an Atom­waf­fen mem­ber is stand­ing at the base of a sand dune show­ing off a mil­i­tary-grade weapon — an MCX Vir­tus rifle made by Sig Sauer — while hold­ing a flag bear­ing the Atom­waf­fen insignia, a black shield bear­ing the sym­bol for radioac­tiv­i­ty. Anoth­er mem­ber, clutch­ing an assault rifle, is also in the pho­to.

    Hub­sky returned from Death Val­ley enthused and eager to do more train­ing. He uploaded a memo to the Atom­waf­fen chat. Mem­bers would now be required to join Front Sight, a “pri­vate com­bat train­ing facil­i­ty” out­side of Las Vegas in the small desert town of Pahrump. Front Sight, the memo said, could pro­vide class­es in “Uzi and full auto M16 com­bat, as well as knife fight­ing, hand to hand com­bat,” and instruc­tion in climb­ing and rap­pelling.

    “I don’t know any­thing about this group,” Bill Cook­ston, Front Sight’s direc­tor of oper­a­tions, said this week. “If any­one were to be doing some­thing against the law or in a rad­i­cal man­ner, we would look into that.”

    Short­ly after­ward, Michael Meach­er, Front Sight’s CEO, said the train­ing cen­ter had sent Hub­sky a let­ter refund­ing his mem­ber­ship fees and inform­ing the Las Vegas res­i­dent that he was banned from the facil­i­ty for life.

    ...

    ———-

    “Inside Atom­waf­fen As It Cel­e­brates a Mem­ber for Alleged­ly Killing a Gay Jew­ish Col­lege Stu­dent” by A.C. Thomp­son, ProP­ub­li­ca, Ali Win­ston, spe­cial to ProP­ub­li­ca, and Jake Han­ra­han, spe­cial to ProP­ub­li­ca; ProP­ub­li­ca; 02/23/2018

    “Encrypt­ed chat logs obtained by ProP­ub­li­ca — some 250,000 mes­sages span­ning more than six months — offer a rare win­dow into Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion that goes well beyond what has sur­faced else­where about a group whose mem­bers have been impli­cat­ed in a string of vio­lent crimes. Like many white suprema­cist orga­ni­za­tions, Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion uses Dis­cord, an online chat ser­vice designed for video gamers, to engage in its con­fi­den­tial online dis­cus­sions.”

    As those leaked encrypt­ed chats make clear, Atom­waf­fen’s ambi­tions are far larg­er and more vio­lent than the string of mur­der Atom­waf­fen mem­bers have com­mit­ted. The group real­ly is ded­i­cat­ed to wag­ing guer­ril­la war­fare against soci­ety in gen­er­al. Attack­ing the pow­er grid and water sup­plies are all part of an almost reli­gious belief that through repeat­ed domes­tic ter­ror attacks a Nazi move­ment can sub­ju­gate soci­ety by force. A reli­gious belief root­ed in the decades-old writ­ings of James Mason, who the group is in con­tact with. And Kaleb J. Cole is one of the top lead­ers of this orga­ni­za­tion. That’s who he is. A key leader in one of those most dan­ger­ous domes­tic ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions in the Unit­ed States. And Cana­da. It turns out there are Cana­di­an mem­bers too:

    ...
    ProP­ub­li­ca has iden­ti­fied five key Atom­waf­fen mem­bers through infor­ma­tion pro­vid­ed by law enforce­ment inves­ti­ga­tors, inter­nal Atom­waf­fen records, out­side experts and a for­mer group mem­ber.

    Those records and inter­views make clear that John Cameron Den­ton is the leader of Atom­waf­fen. Den­ton, 24, grew up in Mont­gomery, Texas, a small town about 30 miles north of Hous­ton. Pub­lic records show Den­ton cur­rent­ly lives in the near­by town of Con­roe, a few miles to the south of Mont­gomery.

    ProP­ub­li­ca has obtained sev­er­al pho­tos of Den­ton. In one, Den­ton, who is short and wiry, has a bulky com­bat shot­gun slung over his shoul­der. He seems to favor cam­ou­flage pants and black T‑shirts embla­zoned with the logos of Nation­al Social­ist Black Met­al bands, a fringe sub­genre of heavy met­al music that mix­es Satan­ic and Nazi themes.

    “Pol­i­tics are use­less. Rev­o­lu­tion is nec­es­sary,” Den­ton said in a chat post express­ing the Atom­waf­fen world­view.

    ...

    Just how many peo­ple belong to Atom­waf­fen is unknown. The ex-mem­ber told ProP­ub­li­ca that the group has enlist­ed about 80 mem­bers across the coun­try, many of whom joined after the dead­ly events in Char­lottesville last sum­mer.

    An inter­nal Atom­waf­fen doc­u­ment obtained by ProP­ub­li­ca shows mem­bers scat­tered across 23 states and Cana­da. The group’s largest chap­ters are based in Vir­ginia, Texas and Wash­ing­ton, accord­ing to a mes­sage post­ed in the chats by an Atom­waf­fen recruiter last sum­mer.

    “Each chap­ter oper­ates inde­pen­dent­ly,” wrote the recruiter. “We want men who are will­ing to be the boots on the ground. Join­ing us means seri­ous ded­i­ca­tion not only to the Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion and its mem­bers, but to the goal of Total Aryan Vic­to­ry.”

    A review of the chat logs shows mes­sages post­ed by peo­ple using more than 100 dif­fer­ent user names. Access to the dis­cus­sions is tight­ly con­trolled, and it is unclear if some mem­bers post under mul­ti­ple user­names.

    Den­ton has helped build the orga­ni­za­tion around the ideas expressed in an obscure, hyper-vio­lent book: “Siege.” The 563-page book col­lects and orga­nizes the month­ly newslet­ters pro­duced dur­ing the 1980s by an old-line neo-Nazi activist named James Mason. It is required read­ing for all Atom­waf­fen mem­bers and serves as the back­bone for the organization’s ide­ol­o­gy, world­view and train­ing pro­gram.

    When Mason began pub­lish­ing his newslet­ter in 1980, he was bit­ter and deeply dis­mayed. He had devot­ed his life to the fas­cist cause, join­ing the Amer­i­can Nazi Par­ty in the mid-1960s, at the age of 14. But the move­ment had com­plete­ly failed.

    For Mason, the way for­ward was obvi­ous: He no longer want­ed to con­vince the mass­es of the right­ness of Nazism. They would nev­er get it. Now was the time for true believ­ers to go under­ground and launch a clan­des­tine guer­ril­la war aimed at bring­ing down “The Sys­tem.”

    “Siege” is essen­tial­ly a long string of essays cel­e­brat­ing mur­der and chaos in the name of white suprema­cy. In Mason’s view, Dan White, the local politi­cian who assas­si­nat­ed San Fran­cis­co May­or George Moscone and gay civ­il rights leader Har­vey Milk, was a hero.

    Mason pro­posed the cre­ation of a White Lib­er­a­tion Front com­posed of small armed squads that would “hide in wilder­ness areas,” mov­ing fre­quent­ly from loca­tion to loca­tion while strik­ing out in a string of “hit-and-run engage­ments.” Mason based this pro­posed orga­ni­za­tion on the short-lived Nation­al Social­ist Lib­er­a­tion Front, a small splin­ter group of the Amer­i­can Nazi Par­ty that formed in 1969 and espoused the strate­gic use of polit­i­cal ter­ror­ism.

    The chat logs show that Den­ton and oth­er Atom­waf­fen fig­ures are in con­tact with Mason, who is 65 and is said to be liv­ing in Den­ver, Col­orado; in one online con­ver­sa­tion, Samuel Wood­ward wrote about meet­ing with Mason face to face along with oth­er Atom­waf­fen mem­bers. In chats, mem­bers fre­quent­ly post pic­tures of Mason and revere him as a bril­liant, under-appre­ci­at­ed thinker.

    ...

    As Kaplan sees it, groups such as Atom­waf­fen — would-be Nazi guer­ril­las devot­ed to white rev­o­lu­tion in the U.S. — are “akin to cults,” and are pro­pelled by a qua­si-reli­gious faith that they will ulti­mate­ly pre­vail. He con­tin­ued, “What else would sus­tain you when every­one hates you?”
    ...

    “As Kaplan sees it, groups such as Atom­waf­fen — would-be Nazi guer­ril­las devot­ed to white rev­o­lu­tion in the U.S. — are “akin to cults,” and are pro­pelled by a qua­si-reli­gious faith that they will ulti­mate­ly pre­vail. He con­tin­ued, “What else would sus­tain you when every­one hates you?””

    A qua­si-rel­gious faith that they will ulti­mate­ly pre­vail through ter­ror­ism. It sure sounds like ISIS, does­n’t it?

    And Cole’s activ­i­ties aren’t lim­it­ed to plot­ting ter­ror attacks in Wash­ing­ton state. As the Dis­cord chat logs lay out, in addi­tion to the train­ing ses­sions near “Dev­il’s Tow­er” in Wash­ing­ton, Cole was help­ing to orga­nize Atom­waf­fen’s “Hate Camp” in Neva­da last year, where mem­bers met up near Death Val­ley and trained in shoot­ing and hand-to-hand com­bat. The lead orga­niz­er of that gath­er was Michael Lloyd Hub­sky, anoth­er Atom­waf­fen leader. Chats show Hub­sky’s keen inter­est in attack­ing pow­er grids and oth­er forms of pub­lic infra­struc­ture and he even claims to have received a clas­si­fied map of the pow­er grid along the West-coast. He’s also appar­ent­ly inter­est­ed in blow­ing up nat­ur­al gas lines. So odds are their “Hate Camp” train­ing includ­ed some explo­sives train­ing too:

    ...
    “You would want to tar­get things like sub­sta­tions, water fil­tra­tion plants, etc.”

    Late last month, Atom­waf­fen held a three-day train­ing ses­sion — or “Hate Camp” in the group’s par­lance — deep in the Neva­da desert. The event was orga­nized by an Atom­waf­fen leader, Michael Lloyd Hub­sky, who calls him­self Komis­sar, accord­ing to the chat logs.

    A 29-year-old res­i­dent of Las Vegas, Hub­sky holds both a con­cealed weapons per­mit and a secu­ri­ty guard license, and is a big fan of high-pow­ered mil­i­tary-style firearms. In one post he dis­cussed a favorite weapon: a Czech-made rifle called a CZ Scor­pi­on that, Hub­sky said, he’d con­vert­ed to ful­ly auto­mat­ic and equipped with a flash sup­pres­sor.

    In anoth­er mes­sage, Hub­sky wrote that he was plan­ning on get­ting an “FFL” — fed­er­al firearms license — so he could “man­u­fac­ture” guns.

    “I can lit­er­al­ly become our armory in the event we need it,” Hub­sky bragged.

    The for­mer mem­ber said Atom­waf­fen has a rule: Don’t talk about the group’s ter­ror­ist ambi­tions in online chats or on social media. Those sorts of con­ver­sa­tions are only sup­posed to hap­pen in per­son. But Hub­sky, at times, has been less than dis­creet out­side the group’s con­fi­den­tial chats.

    “So in any war, you need to cut off your enemy’s abil­i­ty to shoot, move and com­mu­ni­cate,” Hub­sky wrote in a Sep­tem­ber 2017 mes­sage post­ed in a dis­cus­sion on white nation­al­ism that occurred in a non-Atom­waf­fen chat room. “You would want to tar­get things like: Sub­sta­tions, water fil­tra­tion plants, etc.” ProP­ub­li­ca has obtained Hubsky’s state­ments from that online con­ver­sa­tion.

    Hub­sky wrote that he had “a map of the US pow­er grid.”

    “West-coast only,” he added in the mes­sage. “Clas­si­fied map. Had some­one with spe­cial per­mis­sions get it.”

    Hub­sky also dis­cussed blow­ing up nat­ur­al gas lines.

    “You put a home-made ther­mite grenade on those,” he wrote. While oth­er types of infra­struc­ture — like water lines – fig­ured in Hubsky’s dis­cus­sions, hit­ting the pow­er grid was, in his view, the most dev­as­tat­ing and effec­tive attack pos­si­ble. Destroy­ing elec­tric­i­ty infra­struc­ture, Hub­sky wrote, “would by default take out the inter­net because it relies on pow­er to oper­ate.”

    ...

    Hubsky’s orga­ni­za­tion of the three-day Hate Camp in Neva­da began with a pro­pos­al to the group late last year. He offered to arrange it so the group could hone its com­bat skills. There would be shoot­ing and hand-to-hand spar­ring at a secret loca­tion on the edge of Death Val­ley.

    Atom­waf­fen had already held a Hate Camp in the Shawnee Nation­al For­est in south­ern Illi­nois dur­ing the fall of 2017. At least 10 mem­bers from dif­fer­ent states attend­ed, with some dri­ving in from as far away as Texas, Kansas, Okla­homa and New Jer­sey. In the Pacif­ic North­west, cell mem­bers had con­verged on an aban­doned cement fac­to­ry, known as “Dev­il’s Tow­er” near the small town of Con­crete, Wash­ing­ton, where they had screamed “gas the kikes, race war now!” while fir­ing off round after round from any array of weapons, includ­ing an AR-15 assault rifle with a high capac­i­ty drum mag­a­zine.

    The train­ing ses­sions were doc­u­ment­ed in Atom­waf­fen pro­pa­gan­da videos.

    Mem­bers had also orga­nized small­er train­ing ses­sions, such as the one last year in Texas that had drawn Blaze Bernstein’s alleged mur­der­er, Samuel Wood­ward. The Texas train­ing attend­ed by Wood­ward took place in the coun­try­side out­side San Anto­nio and involved 10 mem­bers of the Texas cell who took part in firearms, sur­vival and weapons instruc­tion.

    Hub­sky sched­uled his train­ing camp dur­ing the last week­end in Jan­u­ary. Atomwaffen’s Wash­ing­ton chap­ter leader Kaleb J. Cole, who uses the alias Khi­maere, agreed to help orga­nize the desert train­ing ses­sion in Neva­da, which the group start­ed call­ing the Death Val­ley Hate Camp.

    “Bring your uni­form, rifle/sidearm, and what­ev­er camp­ing gear you need,” he wrote. Cole, who is 22 and lives close to the Cana­di­an bor­der in the town of Blaine, is a Nation­al Social­ist Black Met­al enthu­si­ast who holds a con­cealed firearms per­mit and owns an AK-47. In 2015, while Cole was liv­ing in Belling­ham, police respond­ed to a report that he had “Nazi mem­o­ra­bil­ia” in his res­i­dence, accord­ing to Lt. Danette Beck­ley of the Belling­ham Police Depart­ment; he was also report­ed to police in the island town of Ana­cortes for alleged­ly harass­ing a Jew­ish gro­cery store own­er by a wav­ing a Nazi flag in front of the busi­ness, accord­ing to two law enforce­ment sources.

    The for­mer Atom­waf­fen mem­ber told ProP­ub­li­ca that Cole wields a sig­nif­i­cant degree of influ­ence over the organization’s pro­pa­gan­da, recruit­ment and orga­ni­za­tion. ProP­ub­li­ca could not reach Cole for com­ment.
    ...

    Also recall that Con­ner Climo, the recent­ly arrest­ed Las Vegas-based Nazi who was plot­ting mul­ti­ple attacks against a local gay night club and syn­a­gogue, was not only in con­tact with Atom­waf­fen but he also attend­ed “Hate Camp” in Neva­da in ear­ly 2018. So there’s also been a thwart­ed domes­tic ter­ror attack ema­nat­ing from that camp Cole helped to orga­nize.

    So as we can see, Kaleb Cole is one of the key nation­al lead­ers in one of the key most dan­ger­ous domes­tic ter­ror groups in the US. And that’s all part of what’s going to make the pub­lic debate over the seizure of Cole’s guns (for a year) under these new ‘red flag’ laws so inter­est­ing to watch play out in the con­text of the Amer­i­ca’s gun con­trol debates. Because if some­one like Cole, who leaves no mys­tery about their vio­lent ter­ror­is­tic ambi­tions, can’t have their guns pre­emp­tive­ly seized under these “red flag” laws then the laws are going to noth­ing about pre­vent­ing the kinds of ide­o­log­i­cal­ly dri­ven mass shoot­ing events. At the time, if the seizure of Cole’s guns is accept­ed by an over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of the Amer­i­can pub­lic, even gun con­trol foes, that’s going to raise the ques­tion of who else should have their guns pre­emp­tive­ly removed. Because as we’ve seen, Atom­waf­fen is real­ly only dif­fer­ent from most neo-Nazi orga­ni­za­tion in how overt­ly they embrace ter­ror­ism is the pri­ma­ry means of achiev­ing the Nazi vic­to­ry. The use of domes­tic ter­ror to bring about the over­throw of the gov­ern­ment and a Nazi takeover is a pret­ty stan­dard belief for far right orga­ni­za­tions. They’re just a lit­tle more low key about it than Atom­waf­fen.

    Is gun con­trol using “red flag” laws specif­i­cal­ly tar­get­ing Nazis, or ISIS or any oth­er mem­bers of ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions, the kind of gun con­trol com­pro­mise Amer­i­ca can get behind? Accord­ing to recent polls, around 77% of Amer­i­cans sup­port fam­i­ly-ini­ti­at­ed ERPO’s and 70% sup­port law enforce­ment ini­ti­at­ed ERPOs (like in Cole’s case). But that still leaves a size­able per­cent of the pub­lic that oppose these laws, so the answer is prob­a­bly no, but we’ll see.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | October 19, 2019, 2:18 pm

  6. This next arti­cle shows com­mon themes between the white suprema­cist mass shoot­ings by lone nuts inci­dents at the Gilroy Gar­lic Fes­ti­val, Poway Chabad syn­a­gogue, Charleston Emanuel church and the El Paso Wal­mart. – They all involve a per­pe­tra­tor whose inter­ac­tions in online white suprema­cist net­works played a part in incit­ing, ener­giz­ing, and det­o­nat­ing racial hatred turned to vio­lence. The researcher, Gottschalk, devel­oped a mod­el that explains how indi­vid­u­als who join white suprema­cist net­works trans­form pri­vate feel­ings of fear, anger, and shame into a sense of pow­er, pride, belong­ing, and a desire for vengeance which was ulti­mate­ly act­ed upon.

    The research revealed that indi­vid­u­als who are denied the social recog­ni­tion they expect  — for exam­ple, love, esteem, respect, sol­i­dar­i­ty — can expe­ri­ence feel­ings of anger, fear and shame. Indi­vid­u­als in these sit­u­a­tions typ­i­cal­ly repress those painful emo­tions, which only inten­si­fies them, and are also moti­vat­ed to blame oth­ers. This switch in the tar­get of neg­a­tive feel­ings can lead to feel­ings of anger, rang­ing from fury to the desire for revenge against the imag­ined vic­tim­iz­er.

    “One of the key func­tions of white suprema­cist net­works is to tap into and manip­u­late those repressed emo­tions,” “They do so by con­vinc­ing recruits that the social psy­cho­log­i­cal pain they expe­ri­ence at the per­son­al lev­el is actu­al­ly caused by anti-white dis­crim­i­na­tion.”

    Mem­bers, who now see them­selves as vic­tims, also find that pub­licly express­ing their neg­a­tive emo­tions in online white suprema­cist net­works is encour­aged, val­i­dat­ed, and reward­ed by their peers, which boosts feel­ings of accep­tance, sol­i­dar­i­ty, pow­er, pride, and even poten­tial­ly plea­sur­able and addic­tive neur­al rush­es

    He found that algo­rithms on search engines and social media sites sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly manip­u­late the like­li­hood that increas­ing­ly extreme posts will cir­cu­late more broad­ly, there­by cap­tur­ing mem­bers’ atten­tion, stir­ring pow­er­ful emo­tions, can incite vio­lent action. A person’s cell­phone keeps them con­stant­ly in touch with

    hate ide­ol­o­gy with con­stant and instant pos­i­tive feed­back when­ev­er you voice the emo­tion­al­ly cor­rect mes­sages, para­noid beliefs, geno­ci­dal threats, or plans of action. Once indi­vid­u­als are hooked to the net­work, it becomes rel­a­tive­ly sim­ple for those in the con­trol booth to mod­u­late the anger-fear com­plex,” The most fre­quent­ly voiced accu­sa­tion is that ene­mies — espe­cial­ly Jews — are intent on phys­i­cal­ly destroy­ing white peo­ple. 

    http://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/dr20191018-from-hateful-words-to-real-violence

    Home­land Secu­ri­ty Newswire 18 Octo­ber 2019
    From Hate­ful Words to Real Vio­lence

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    The Gilroy Gar­lic Fes­ti­val. The Poway Chabad syn­a­gogue. The Charleston Emanuel church. The El Paso Wal­mart. One com­mon denom­i­na­tor in these mass shoot­ings and count­less oth­ers? A per­pe­tra­tor whose inter­ac­tions in online white suprema­cist net­works played a part in incit­ing, ener­giz­ing, and det­o­nat­ing racial hatred into real vio­lence, says UNLV soci­ol­o­gist Simon Gottschalk. He stud­ied how white suprema­cist net­works can con­vert hate­ful words into real vio­lence with their online inter­ac­tions.

    The Gilroy Gar­lic Fes­ti­val. The Poway Chabad syn­a­gogue. The Charleston Emanuel church. The El Paso Wal­mart. One com­mon denom­i­na­tor in these mass shoot­ings and count­less oth­ers? A per­pe­tra­tor whose inter­ac­tions in online white suprema­cist net­works played a part in incit­ing, ener­giz­ing, and det­o­nat­ing racial hatred into real vio­lence, says UNLV soci­ol­o­gist Simon Gottschalk.

    Gottschalk and grad­u­ate stu­dents Celene Fuller, Jaimee Nix, and Daniel Oka­mu­ra recent­ly ana­lyzed more than 4,400 dis­cus­sion threads from eight blogs host­ed on three promi­nent white suprema­cist web­sites. Com­ments were post­ed dur­ing and imme­di­ate­ly after 2017 ral­lies in Char­lottesville and on the Uni­ver­si­ty of Flori­da cam­pus, as well as on “a rel­a­tive­ly unevent­ful day” in terms of media atten­tion to the white suprema­cist move­ment and activ­i­ties in August 2017.

    Researchers devel­oped a mod­el that explains how indi­vid­u­als who join white suprema­cist net­works trans­form pri­vate feel­ings of fear, anger, and shame into a sense of pow­er, pride, belong­ing, and a desire for vengeance. Even­tu­al­ly, some of these indi­vid­u­als con­vert those emo­tions into vio­lence. 

    Ahead of the study’s release in an upcom­ing issue of Deviant Behav­ior, UNLV News sat down with Gottschalk to learn why he believes it’s cru­cial to under­stand how inter­ac­tions in these online net­works recruit, trans­form, and rad­i­cal­ize mem­bers; how they can prompt some to engage in vio­lent acts; and what can be done about it. 

    The Typ­i­cal Pro­file
    Gottschalk says it’s dif­fi­cult to trace the pro­file of peo­ple who post on these sites because, except for a user­name and an icon, they are pur­pose­ful­ly anony­mous and invis­i­ble — which explains the attrac­tion of those net­works. He aims to devel­op a social-psy­cho­log­i­cal pro­file instead.

    Indi­vid­u­als who are denied the social recog­ni­tion they expect  — for exam­ple, love, esteem, respect, sol­i­dar­i­ty — can expe­ri­ence feel­ings of anger, fear and shame. Indi­vid­u­als in these sit­u­a­tions typ­i­cal­ly repress those painful emo­tions, which only inten­si­fies them, and are also moti­vat­ed to blame oth­ers. This switch in the tar­get of neg­a­tive feel­ings can lead to feel­ings of anger, rang­ing from fury to the desire for revenge against the imag­ined vic­tim­iz­er.

    “One of the key func­tions of white suprema­cist net­works is to tap into and manip­u­late those repressed emo­tions,” Gottschalk says. “They do so by con­vinc­ing recruits that the social psy­cho­log­i­cal pain they expe­ri­ence at the per­son­al lev­el is actu­al­ly caused by anti-white dis­crim­i­na­tion.”

    Mem­bers, who now see them­selves as vic­tims, also find that pub­licly express­ing their neg­a­tive emo­tions in online white suprema­cist net­works is encour­aged, val­i­dat­ed, and reward­ed by their peers, which boosts feel­ings of accep­tance, sol­i­dar­i­ty, pow­er, pride, and even poten­tial­ly plea­sur­able and addic­tive neur­al rush­es.

    Gottschalk empha­sizes that while these dynam­ics are not unique to Amer­i­can white suprema­cist net­works, the desire for revenge and the poten­tial for vio­lence become espe­cial­ly volatile among mem­bers of social cat­e­gories who con­front a “rever­sal of for­tune.”

    “Indi­vid­u­als who are no longer grant­ed the respect and esteem they expect and feel enti­tled to by virtue of their race will expe­ri­ence this con­di­tion as a frontal assault on their sense of self and iden­ti­ty.”

    Esca­lat­ing Online Hate to Vio­lence
    UNLV’s research of online white suprema­cist net­works fol­lows pre­vi­ous research find­ings that mem­bers inter­pret neg­a­tive per­son­al expe­ri­ences as caused by dis­crim­i­na­tion. But the UNLV researchers argue that their mod­el explores yet anoth­er impor­tant step that explains the path to vio­lence: a switch in mem­bers’ per­cep­tions where­by they are not only out­raged because they believe that an “ene­my” dis­crim­i­nates against them, but are now also afraid because they believe that this ene­my threat­ens to phys­i­cal­ly harm them. 

    “When this switch occurs, vari­ants of anger fuse with vari­ants of fear to form an espe­cial­ly explo­sive com­pound. Under the ‘right’ con­di­tions, some indi­vid­u­als moti­vat­ed by those emo­tions can eas­i­ly sur­ren­der to blood­lust and jus­ti­fy vio­lence as self-defense,” Gottschalk says. 

    Gottschalk’s mod­el sug­gests that inter­ac­tions in online white suprema­cist net­works pro­duce those very con­di­tions. He says the con­ver­sion to vio­lent behav­ior is espe­cial­ly like­ly in fas­cist net­works — regard­less of race, reli­gion, or nation — as their ide­olo­gies typ­i­cal­ly bestow the ulti­mate pres­tige not to those who talk a good talk about vio­lence, but to those who actu­al­ly act on it. 

    Assess­ing Calls for Vio­lence
    Gottschalk’s research team exam­ined users’ posts to deter­mine their pre­vail­ing emo­tions, griev­ances, and moti­va­tions.

    Their analy­sis found that anger was the pre­vail­ing emo­tion (51%). And among the vari­ants of anger, vengeance was the emo­tion most fre­quent­ly expressed (37%). Among dif­fer­ent types of vengeance, more than 15% of those threads men­tion sadis­tic fan­tasies of phys­i­cal harm, killing, muti­la­tion, and exter­mi­na­tion. The most fre­quent­ly voiced accu­sa­tion (41%) is that ene­mies — espe­cial­ly Jews — are intent on phys­i­cal­ly destroy­ing white peo­ple. 

    Researchers called it “note­wor­thy” that there was a “com­plete absence” of com­ments seek­ing to tem­per calls for vio­lence.

    “Ana­lyz­ing anony­mous online dis­cus­sion threads pro­vid­ed us the unique advan­tage of glean­ing the uncen­sored, spon­ta­neous views of white suprema­cists who might not have been so can­did in a face-to-face inter­view,” Gottschalk said. “Online hate group mem­bers find that — under the dou­ble-cloak of anonymi­ty and invis­i­bil­i­ty — they no longer have to cen­sor or even mod­er­ate hos­tile dis­po­si­tions that would be con­sid­ered para­noid or crim­i­nal in most oth­er set­tings.” 

    Why This All Mat­ters
    In con­trast to phys­i­cal net­works, online ones pro­vide porta­bil­i­ty, mobil­i­ty, and 24/7 access. And as these net­works are mul­ti­ply­ing world­wide, their con­tent can eas­i­ly migrate to less extrem­ist ones, con­t­a­m­i­nate them, nor­mal­ize extrem­ist beliefs, and shift the range of accept­able ideas that can be dis­cussed in soci­ety.
    Even more wor­ri­some, Gottschalk says, algo­rithms on search engines and social media sites sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly manip­u­late the like­li­hood that increas­ing­ly extreme posts will cir­cu­late more broad­ly, there­by cap­tur­ing mem­bers’ atten­tion, stir­ring pow­er­ful emo­tions, and in some cas­es, encour­ag­ing vio­lent action.

    “You can lit­er­al­ly car­ry the net­work in your back pock­et and stream its hate­ful ide­ol­o­gy straight into your brain. It can pro­vide you with con­stant and instant pos­i­tive feed­back when­ev­er you voice the emo­tion­al­ly cor­rect mes­sages, para­noid beliefs, geno­ci­dal threats, or plans of action. Once indi­vid­u­als are hooked to the net­work, it becomes rel­a­tive­ly sim­ple for those in the con­trol booth to mod­u­late the anger-fear com­plex,” Gottschalk said.

    “Obvi­ous­ly, how some peo­ple respond to what they see on the screens of online white suprema­cist net­works can become a mat­ter of life and death,” he con­tin­ues. “And when you con­sid­er the com­bi­na­tion of those pow­er­ful online group dynam­ics, the increas­ing tol­er­ance for the online expres­sion of hate­ful emo­tions, and the ready avail­abil­i­ty of weapons in our soci­ety, we should move quick­ly and intel­li­gent­ly.”

    To illus­trate the risks these net­works rep­re­sent, Gottschalk points to a 2012 Face­book exper­i­ment that exposed near­ly 700,000 unaware users to mild neg­a­tive emo­tions, and found that these users quick­ly con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed their own net­works with these emo­tions. 

    “If you can achieve this effect with mild neg­a­tive emo­tions, just imag­ine the veloc­i­ty and feroc­i­ty with which strong pri­ma­ry neg­a­tive emo­tions such as anger and fear can infect online extrem­ist and oth­er net­works, espe­cial­ly in times of social con­fu­sion and insta­bil­i­ty. It could even get worse,” he says. “Remem­ber how Russ­ian trolls mobi­lized real indi­vid­u­als to par­tic­i­pate in fic­ti­tious street protests dur­ing the 2016 elec­tions? Well, bots will soon be able to per­form this func­tion more pre­cise­ly, quick­ly, and effi­cient­ly than human beings. Add to that the grow­ing con­cern with deep fakes, and we have a rather volatile sit­u­a­tion in our hands.”

    Pos­si­ble Solu­tions
    Gottschalk — who has spent a decade study­ing the social psy­cho­log­i­cal impacts of tech­nol­o­gy on our lives — believes that until we bet­ter under­stand the influ­ence of these net­works, they should be shut down.

    He points to the exam­ple of the French gov­ern­ment, which in Novem­ber 2018 blocked all access to the Démoc­ra­tie Par­tic­i­pa­tive web­site — the French equiv­a­lent of The Dai­ly Stormer — and sim­i­lar net­works.

    “I know this sug­ges­tion sounds unre­al­is­tic to many, but is it real­ly?” Gottschalk said. “While it does not guar­an­tee imme­di­ate suc­cess, it will at least dis­rupt the dynam­ics dri­ving the net­works of the ‘fas­coscphere’ and hope­ful­ly con­tain their effects. At the same time, we should devel­op addi­tion­al strate­gies that address white suprema­cists’ claims.”

    Posted by Mary Benton | October 22, 2019, 3:01 pm

  7. This next arti­cle talks about a neo Nazi, Tim­o­thy Wil­son, who was a Neo Nazi died of gun­shot wounds when the FBI tried to arrest him for plan­ning Attempt­ing to blow up a hos­pi­tal over­whelmed with Coro­na Virus Patients. How­ev­er it was a ruse, involv­ing a fake bomb. I sus­pect a counter-sur­veil­lance effort.

    Wil­son was an admir­er of “The Order” a 1980’s neo Nazi group who Mur­dered Dave Berg. Keep in mind that the Neuord­nung (New Order) was the polit­i­cal order which Nazi Ger­many want­ed to impose on its con­quered ter­ri­to­ries. Hew was active in pub­lic Telegram chan­nels for two neo-Nazi groups: the Nation­al Social­ist Move­ment (NSM) and Vorherrschaft Divi­sion (VSD) both are vio­lent newon­azi groups.  VSD urges mem­bers to engage in mass shoot­ings or ter­ror attacks to help bring about the col­lapse of mod­ern civ­i­liza­tion. 

    Wil­son crit­i­cized oth­er neo-Nazi groups like Atom­waf­fen and The Base because some of their mem­bers had been arrest­ed with­out vio­lence. He post­ed “Don’t be the cuck that gives up with­out a fight,” Wil­son wrote. “Make uncle bob proud.” refer­ring to Bob Matthews who lead the Order and died fight­ing to his death.

    These and oth­er groups seem to have an agen­da sim­i­lar to that of what is described in the Nazi Nov­el “Ser­pents Walk”. Are these groups part of an orga­nized long term plan to desta­bi­lize the US?

    https://www.informant.news/p/heartland-terror

    Heart­land ter­ror
    The FBI said Tim­o­thy Wil­son planned to blow up a hos­pi­tal in Mis­souri. Before that, he was active in online chats for two neo-Nazi groups.

    Hi, and wel­come to The Infor­mant, a pub­li­ca­tion cov­er­ing hate and extrem­ism in Amer­i­ca, writ­ten and edit­ed by me, Nick R. Mar­tin.

    This was a break­ing news arti­cle that was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished at 9:56 p.m. ET on March 25. It was updat­ed with more details at 2:06 a.m. ET on March 26.
    Please sub­scribe to the newslet­ter to sup­port inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism about these impor­tant top­ics.

    A Mis­souri man who died in a con­fronta­tion with the FBI on Tues­day and who author­i­ties said was in the final stages of a plot to blow up a hos­pi­tal car­ing for coro­n­avirus patients was an admir­er of the 1980s ter­ror­ist group The Order and had ties to two active neo-Nazi orga­ni­za­tions, The Infor­mant has learned.

    Tim­o­thy Wil­son, 36, died as the FBI moved in to arrest him in Bel­ton, Mis­souri, a sub­urb south of Kansas City. It’s unclear whether he was killed by FBI agents or com­mit­ted sui­cide. In a news release, the FBI said only that he was “injured and was trans­port­ed to an area hos­pi­tal where he was lat­er pro­nounced deceased.”

    Wil­son was plan­ning to use a vehi­cle bomb to blow up a local hos­pi­tal, accord­ing to the FBI. He arrived in Bel­ton on Tues­day to pick up what he believed was the bomb, but the bureau said it was all part of a ruse. “There was no actu­al bomb,” the FBI said in its news release.

    Author­i­ties said Wil­son was the sub­ject of a domes­tic ter­ror­ism inves­ti­ga­tion for months, and that he was moti­vat­ed “by racial, reli­gious, and anti-gov­ern­ment ani­mus.” They said he looked at mul­ti­ple poten­tial tar­gets but decid­ed on the hos­pi­tal once the coro­n­avirus out­break hit. They did not dis­close which hos­pi­tal he want­ed to tar­get.
    Wil­son was active on the encrypt­ed social mes­sag­ing plat­form Telegram under the name “Wer­wolfe 84,” accord­ing to a source.

    Using that infor­ma­tion and with the help of Elon Uni­ver­si­ty com­put­er sci­ence pro­fes­sor Megan Squire, The Infor­mant was able to deter­mine on Wednes­day that Wil­son was active in pub­lic Telegram chan­nels for two neo-Nazi groups: the Nation­al Social­ist Move­ment (NSM) and Vorherrschaft Divi­sion (VSD).

    The NSM is a decades-old neo-Nazi orga­ni­za­tion with a his­to­ry of vio­lence. One of its long­time mem­bers, JT Ready, killed four peo­ple before killing him­self in 2012 in Ari­zona. The group was also involved in the dead­ly 2017 “Unite the Right” ral­ly in Char­lottesville, Vir­ginia, and is fac­ing a fed­er­al law­suit for its role in the melee.

    The NSM is also known for hold­ing a ral­ly each April to cel­e­brate the birth of Adolf Hitler — an event that often includes dis­plays of swastikas and racist speech­es by its lead­ers. This year, its annu­al ral­ly is sched­uled for April 18 in Williamsport, Penn­syl­va­nia.

    VSD, mean­while, is a new­er group mold­ed in the image of Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion, an orga­ni­za­tion that urges mem­bers to engage in mass shoot­ings or ter­ror attacks to help bring about the col­lapse of mod­ern civ­i­liza­tion. Posters dis­play­ing the name of VSD were used to van­dal­ize a Michi­gan syn­a­gogue in Octo­ber.

    Wil­son was list­ed as one of the admin­is­tra­tors of the pub­lic Telegram chat for the NSM and was active there as recent­ly as Tues­day after­noon. He wrote at the time that he believed the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic was being used by the gov­ern­ment as an “excuse to destroy our peo­ple.”

    “Mark my words it’s com­ing I hope peo­ple are ready,” he wrote.

    The day pri­or, he used anti­se­mit­ic lan­guage to com­ment about an arti­cle on the coro­n­avirus out­break.
    “If you don’t think this whole thing was engi­neered by Jews as a pow­er grab here is more proof of their plans,” Wil­son wrote. “Jews have been play­ing the long game we are the only ones stand­ing in their way.”

    Wilson’s writ­ings in both the NSM and VSD chan­nels showed he was an admir­er of the neo-Nazi ter­ror­ist group The Order, which was active from 1983 to 1984 and car­ried out armored car rob­beries and a mur­der.

    Wil­son referred to Robert Math­ews, the leader of The Order, as “Uncle Bob.” Math­ews was killed in a shootout with fed­er­al author­i­ties in 1984.

    In Jan­u­ary, Wil­son post­ed a pho­to of sev­er­al mem­bers of The Order in the Telegram chan­nel for VSD and added a cap­tion: “Remem­ber our heroes.”

    Then on Sun­day, Wil­son post­ed a pho­to of Math­ews in the NSM chan­nel.

    “Don’t be the cuck that gives up with­out a fight,” Wil­son wrote. “Make uncle bob proud.”

    Sim­i­lar­ly, on March 1, Wil­son crit­i­cized oth­er neo-Nazi groups like Atom­waf­fen and The Base because some of their mem­bers had been arrest­ed with­out vio­lence.

    “If they were seri­ous they would have pulled a Robert J Matthews (sic) and used all those weapons they were stash­ing to unleash hell on the feds,” he wrote.

    Like The Infor­mant and want to help make it even bet­ter? Give me feed­back, point out fac­tu­al errors or typos, or send me news tips. Reach me at nick@informant.news.

    Posted by Mary Benton | March 27, 2020, 4:40 pm

  8. This arti­cle reveals a 13 year old Eston­ian boy who lead a decen­tral­ized Nazi Ter­ror­ist group Feuerkrieg Divi­sion from the inter­net. He sup­port­ed the ide­ol­o­gy pro­mot­ing a race war and “accel­er­a­tionism” which was part of the Christchurch mur­der of 51 Mus­lims in New Zealand. The Feuerkrieg Divi­sion was linked to a planned fire­bomb­ing attack on a Las Vegas Jew­ish Syn­a­gogue.

    April 11, 2020 AP Arti­cle “He Led A Neo-Nazi Group Linked To Bomb Plots. He Was 13” It par­tial­ly states:

    A report pub­lished Wednes­day by the week­ly Eston­ian news­pa­per Eesti Eks­press said Eston­ian secu­ri­ty offi­cials had inves­ti­gat­ed a case involv­ing a 13-year-old boy who alleged­ly was run­ning Feuerkrieg Divi­sion oper­a­tions out of a small town in the coun­try. The news­pa­per said the group has a “decen­tral­ized struc­ture,” and the Eston­ian teen can­not be con­sid­ered the organization’s actu­al leader but was cer­tain­ly one of its key fig­ures. 

    The Anti-Defama­tion League has described Feuerkrieg Divi­sion as a group that advo­cates for a race war and pro­motes some of the most extreme views of the white suprema­cist move­ment. Formed in 2018, it had rough­ly 30 mem­bers who con­duct­ed most of their activ­i­ties over the inter­net, the ADL said.

    Oren Segal, vice pres­i­dent of the ADL’s Cen­ter on Extrem­ism, said chil­dren aren’t just a tar­get audi­ence for online forums that glo­ri­fy white suprema­cy and vio­lence. They also main­tain such sites, cap­ti­vat­ed by their abil­i­ty to join or influ­ence an inter­na­tion­al move­ment from a home com­put­er, he said. 

    “That young kids are get­ting that sense of belong­ing from a hate move­ment is more com­mon than most peo­ple real­ize and very dis­turb­ing. But access­ing a world of hate online today is as easy as it was tun­ing into Sat­ur­day morn­ing car­toons on tele­vi­sion,” Segal said in a text mes­sage.

    An FBI joint ter­ror­ism task force in Las Vegas began inves­ti­gat­ing 24-year-old Conor Climo in April 2019 after learn­ing he was com­mu­ni­cat­ing over Wire with Feuerkrieg Divi­sion mem­bers, a court fil­ing says. Climo told an FBI source about plans to fire­bomb a syn­a­gogue or attack a local ADL office, author­i­ties said. Climo awaits his sen­tenc­ing after plead­ing guilty in Feb­ru­ary to felony pos­ses­sion of an unreg­is­tered firearm.

    Anoth­er man linked to Feuerkrieg Divi­sion, U.S. Army sol­dier Jar­rett William Smith, plead­ed guilty in Feb­ru­ary to sep­a­rate charges that he pro­vid­ed infor­ma­tion about explo­sives to an FBI under­cov­er agent while sta­tioned at Fort Riley, Kansas, last year. An FBI affi­davit said Smith, 24, talked about tar­get­ing an uniden­ti­fied news orga­ni­za­tion with a car bomb. CNN report­ed that it was the tar­get.

    Based on a com­ment the boy post­ed on Wire, ADL linked “Com­man­der” to the gam­ing plat­form Steam. The Steam account lists his loca­tion as a vil­lage in Esto­nia and his URL as “HeilHitler8814,” Segal said.

    Feuerkrieg Divi­sion has been part of a grow­ing wing of the white suprema­cist move­ment that embraces “ accel­er­a­tionism,” a fringe phi­los­o­phy that pro­motes mass vio­lence to fuel society’s col­lapse. The man who recent­ly plead­ed guilty to attack­ing two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, and killing 51 peo­ple last year devot­ed a sec­tion of his man­i­festo to the con­cept of accel­er­a­tionism.

    https://hosted.ap.org/standardspeaker/article/7067c03e1af0b157be7c15888cbe8c27/he-led-neo-nazi-group-linked-bomb-plots-he-was-13

    Posted by Mary Benton | April 20, 2020, 7:30 pm

  9. Is a big shake­up on the way for the Trump cam­paign? That appears to be the case based on the reports that Pres­i­dent Trump’s reelec­tion cam­paign man­ag­er, Brad Parscale, was demot­ed. Parscale will appar­ent­ly stay on with the cam­paign as a senior advi­sor and head of dig­i­tal strate­gies, with the cam­paign man­ag­er posi­tion going to deputy cam­paign man­ag­er Bill Stepi­an. So there is some sort of shake­up going on in the cam­paign but it’s unclear what’s actu­al­ly going to change. Both Parscale and Stepi­en are known to be very close to Jared Kush­n­er and as one cam­paign offi­cial put it, “Make no mis­take, Jared was the cam­paign man­ag­er yes­ter­day and Jared is the cam­paign man­ag­er today.” It’s has the appear­ance of being a much less sig­nif­i­cant shake­up than the shake­up of 2016 when Steve Ban­non was brought in to replace Paul Man­afort (or when Man­afort was brought in to replace Cory Lewandows­ki).

    Yes, despite the demo­tion of Parscale there’s an open ques­tion about what’s actu­al­ly going to change. Jared is still ulti­mate­ly run­ning the show and there’s no appar­ent­ly change it strat­e­gy under­way. So giv­en all of these ques­tions about what actu­al­ly changed, it’s worth recall­ing anoth­er inci­dent from the 2016 cam­paign (which actu­al­ly took place in 2015) that might give us insight into what’s tak­ing place here: the fake ‘fight’ between Roger Stone and Don­ald Trump that result­ed in Stone ‘leav­ing’ the Trump cam­paign. And as Trump remind­ed us with his recent par­don­ing of Roger Stone, that appears to have been a large­ly the­atri­cal fight intend­ed to give Stone the kind of space from the Trump cam­paign to allow him to pur­sue dirty tricks oper­a­tions like court­ing Julian Assange and Wik­ileaks.

    Might we be see­ing the ini­tial stages of a sim­i­lar kind of fake fight with the demo­tion of Parscale? Is Parscale’s demo­tion pri­mar­i­ly tar­get­ed at large fund-rais­ers who were get­ting cold feet about throw­ing more mon­ey at what is increas­ing­ly look­ing like a doomed cam­paign and need­ed to see some evi­dence of a shake­up? We’ll pre­sum­ably get some sort of answers to those ques­tions rel­a­tive­ly soon because we’re going to see if there’s a big change in the Trump cam­paign’s strat­e­gy.

    But as the Roger Stone episode also reminds us, if there’s a fake fight going on that could indi­cate some very devi­ous plans for Parscale on in the works, which rais­es the ques­tion of what those plans might be. And unfor­tu­nate­ly we have to look no fur­ther than what the Trump cam­paign has been doing in recent months to get a very good idea of what kind of devi­ous plans the Trump cam­paign might have in mind for a ‘dis­tanced’ or ‘demot­ed’ Parscale: under-the-radar neo-Nazi dog-whis­tle social media cam­paigns with with wink-and-nod far right sym­bol­ism and memes. Basi­cal­ly the same thing the Trump cam­paign did in 2016, but even worse.

    Keep in mind that unless Trump decides to make that ‘piv­ot to the mid­dle’ to appeal to a greater swathe of the elec­torate, there’s no oth­er path to win­ning oth­er than max­i­miz­ing the con­ser­v­a­tive white vote and appeal­ing to far right non-vot­ers. Like the ‘Booga­loo Bois’. At the same time, cul­ti­vat­ing that ‘Booga­loo Bois’ audi­ence could be his best bet if he los­es the elec­tion too. For starters, if Trump decides to declare the elec­tion invalid or fraud­u­lent and decides he’s not going to leave office vol­un­tar­i­ly, hav­ing an army of ‘Booga­loo Bois’ who are eager to lit­er­al­ly fight a civ­il war on his behalf would come in real­ly handy. And even if he does ulti­mate­ly leave office, there’s not rea­son he won’t still declare that he was cheat­ed and that the US gov­ern­ment is ille­git­i­mate, cre­at­ing a Trumpian per­pet­u­al griev­ance about the legit­i­ma­cy of the US gov­ern­ment. If that hap­pens, it’s the ‘Booga­loo Bois’ and oth­er far right mili­tia groups who will be car­ry­ing that griev­ance torch into the future. Trump would obvi­ous­ly love that.

    So we have to ask: Could they be posi­tion­ing Parscale to ‘leave’ the Trump cam­paign so he can run an ‘inde­pen­dent’ pro-Trump social media cam­paign focused on extrem­ist under-the-radar the far right mes­sag­ing? It’s unfor­tu­nate­ly a pos­si­bil­i­ty we can’t real­ly rule out. And as Parscale has made abun­dant­ly clear, he’s real­ly good at exact­ly that kind of mes­sag­ing, with the seem­ing­ly end­less stream of ‘oops’ ads that some­how man­age to include a Nazi sym­bol or slo­gan. And as the per­son who built the Trump cam­paign’s Big Data ‘Death Star’ of vot­er micro-tar­get­ing infor­ma­tion, Parscale is prob­a­bly the most skilled per­son in the Trump cam­paign at under-the-radar micro­tar­get­ing. In oth­er words, if the Trump cam­paign is indeed plan­ning on some sort of dia­bol­i­cal under-the-radar neo-Nazi mes­sag­ing cam­paign, Parscale is the per­son with both the skills, expe­ri­ence, and ded­i­ca­tion to car­ry it out. That’s why we have to be ask­ing our­selves whether or not this pub­lic fall­out between Trump and Parscale is being used to put dis­tance between Parscale and the rest of the cam­paign in antic­i­pa­tion of a dia­bol­i­cal neo-Nazi mes­sag­ing cam­paign. For now, Parscale is still with the Trump cam­paign. We’ll see if he stays on through­out the cam­paign. But it he leaves the cam­paign and still pledges to con­tin­ue to help it ‘inde­pen­dent­ly’, like Stone did, we should prob­a­bly assume some sort of neo-Nazi Booga­loo mes­sag­ing cam­paign is part of his agen­da.

    And as the fol­low­ing arti­cle by Dale Beran, author of It Came from Some­thing Awful, reminds us, when it comes to mes­sag­ing cam­paigns tar­get­ing audi­ences like the ‘Booga­loo Bois’, that mes­sag­ing can be very indi­rect. Just a bunch of well-tar­get­ed joke memes on key mes­sage boards like 4Chan that appeal to the per­va­sive sense of iso­la­tion of griev­ance can do the trick because that’s how the ‘Booga­loo Bois’ move­ment start­ed in the first place: as a bunch of joke memes on 4Chan:

    The Atlantic

    The Booga­loo Tip­ping Point

    What hap­pens when a meme becomes a ter­ror­ist move­ment?

    Dale Beran
    July 4, 2020
    Updat­ed at 1:36 p.m. ET on July 13, 2020.

    On May 29, two fed­er­al secu­ri­ty offi­cers guard­ing a cour­t­house in Oak­land, Cal­i­for­nia, were ambushed by machine-gun fire as else­where in the city demon­stra­tors marched peace­ful­ly to protest the killing of George Floyd. One of the guards, David Patrick Under­wood, died as a result of the attack, and the oth­er was wound­ed. For days, con­ser­v­a­tive news broad­cast­ers pinned the blame on “antifa,” the loose­ly affil­i­at­ed group of anti-fas­cist anar­chists known to attack prop­er­ty and far-right demon­stra­tors at protests. But the alleged cul­prit, appre­hend­ed a week lat­er, turned out to be a 32-year-old Air Force sergeant named Steven Car­ril­lo, the head of a squadron called the Phoenix Ravens, which guards mil­i­tary instal­la­tions from ter­ror­ist attacks.

    Accord­ing to pros­e­cu­tors, Car­ril­lo and an accom­plice, 30-year-old Robert A. Jus­tus Jr., were part of the “booga­loo” move­ment, a patch­work of right-lean­ing anti-gov­ern­ment lib­er­tar­i­ans, Sec­ond Amend­ment advo­cates, and gun enthu­si­asts all prepar­ing for anoth­er Amer­i­can civ­il war.

    ...

    The booga­loo move­ment orig­i­nal­ly grew from the weapons dis­cus­sion sec­tion (“/k/”) of the anar­chic anony­mous mes­sage board 4chan over the past sev­er­al years. By 2019, its cul­ture had dis­sem­i­nat­ed across social media into a mix of online groups and chat servers where users shared lib­er­tar­i­an polit­i­cal memes. In the past six months, this all began to man­i­fest in real life, as users from the groups emerged at protests in what became their sig­na­ture uni­form: alo­ha shirts and com­bat gear. As nation­wide unrest inten­si­fied at the start of the sum­mer, many booga­loo adher­ents inter­pret­ed this as a cue to real­ize the group’s cen­tral fantasy—armed revolt against the U.S. gov­ern­ment.

    In Col­orado ear­li­er in May, then in Neva­da in June, police arrest­ed sev­er­al oth­er heav­i­ly armed self-iden­ti­fied booga­loo mem­bers, who the author­i­ties claimed were on their way to demon­stra­tions to incite vio­lence. Dis­turbing­ly, the booga­loo move­ment is at least the third exam­ple of a mass of memes escap­ing from 4chan to become a real-life rad­i­cal polit­i­cal move­ment, the first being the left­ist-lib­er­tar­i­an hack­tivist col­lec­tive Anony­mous, which emerged in 2008; the sec­ond was the far-right fas­cist group of angry young men called the alt-right, which formed in 2015. (The con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry QAnon might be con­sid­ered a fourth, but it is more than a polit­i­cal move­ment.)

    At first glance, armed right-wing mil­i­tants dressed in flo­ral shirts may seem like anoth­er baf­fling grotes­querie in the parade of calami­ties that is 2020. How­ev­er, their arrival can be explained by trac­ing their online ori­gins. Sim­i­lar to oth­er right-lean­ing extrem­ist move­ments, they are the prod­uct of an unhap­py gen­er­a­tion of men who com­pare their lot in life with that of men in pre­vi­ous decades and see their prospects dimin­ish­ing. And with a mix of igno­rance and sim­plic­i­ty, they view their dis­con­tent through the most dis­tort­ed lens imag­in­able: inter­net memes.

    Since its found­ing in 2003, 4chan has attract­ed a unique pop­u­la­tion of deeply cyn­i­cal men, once all young, but now aged from their 40s down to their teens, who gen­er­al­ly use the board to express their angst through dark humor. Peo­ple who are unhap­py with the cir­cum­stances of their life tend to retreat there. The unhap­pi­er they are, the longer they stay and the more they post.

    The site was orig­i­nal­ly con­ceived as a blank slate, where any­one could scrawl what they pleased. Gen Xers and Mil­len­ni­als start­ed out want­i­ng to talk about escapist fan­tasies such as ani­me and video games, but after two decades of eco­nom­ic crises and polit­i­cal dead­lock, the dis­cus­sion even­tu­al­ly evolved into car­toon-inflect­ed talk of polit­i­cal mobi­liza­tion.

    The birth­place of the booga­loo move­ment, 4chan’s /k/ sec­tion, is osten­si­bly devot­ed to the own­er­ship and pur­chase of weapons. But in prac­tice, it is a space where weapons dis­cus­sions com­bine with 4chan’s politi­cized male anger. The name “booga­loo boys” is a ref­er­ence to the crit­i­cal­ly maligned 1984 sequel Breakin’ 2: Elec­tric Booga­loo—around 2012, users on /k/ began refer­ring to the pos­si­bil­i­ty of “Civ­il War 2: Elec­tric Booga­loo.” Half-seri­ous posts about how cer­tain weapons might be employed in “the booga­loo” evolved over time and grew more elab­o­rate. Like many memes on 4chan, each new ver­sion was more cryp­tic than the last, a means to express insid­er knowl­edge and in-group sta­tus.

    This meant that the oft-repeat­ed phrase Elec­tric Booga­loo became cor­rupt­ed into the sim­i­lar-sound­ing Big Igloo and Big Luau. Soon users were cre­at­ing images in which rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies appeared beside hous­es made of ice and at Hawaii-themed par­ties.

    The co-option of Hawai­ian imagery and igloos was inher­ent­ly cyn­i­cal and mean­ing­less. There was no con­nec­tion to the group’s ide­ol­o­gy out­side of the lin­guis­tic resem­blance of the word booga­loo to igloo and luau. But this co-option fit the ethos of online spaces per­fect­ly, with a niche group cel­e­brat­ing its anti-gov­ern­ment, lib­er­tar­i­an views by drap­ing them in col­or­ful jokes and non­sense that could be remixed and rein­ter­pret­ed end­less­ly.

    The mes­sage board /k/’s cul­ture over­lapped heav­i­ly with 4chan’s vir­u­lent­ly racist pol­i­tics dis­cus­sion board /pol/. How­ev­er, by 2017, the move­ment that had devel­oped there—the alt-right—had large­ly implod­ed, after the dis­as­trous Unite the Right ral­ly in Char­lottesville, Vir­ginia.

    While overt fas­cism fell out of vogue for many, the core demo­graph­ic of dis­en­chant­ed men remained, their cir­cum­stances and unhap­pi­ness large­ly unchanged. Indeed, the unique mix­ture of right-wing male dis­con­tent appealed to many who nev­er fre­quent­ed 4chan. By 2018, as talk of fas­cism declined on /pol/, the more lib­er­tar­i­an and less overt­ly racist cul­ture of 4chan’s /k/ and the booga­loo move­ment began to fill the emp­ty niche.

    The memes about a new civ­il war spread from /k/ to var­i­ous groups on Face­book and Red­dit, all with names that evoked the terms booga­loo, igloo, or luau. Enthu­si­asts also con­gre­gat­ed in group chats using ser­vices such as Dis­cord. The pol­i­tics of the booga­loo boys are deeply con­tra­dic­to­ry and var­ied but can be rough­ly summed up by a few agreed-upon ideas. They are lib­er­tar­i­an, in favor of gun rights, and opposed to gov­ern­ment police forces. Many users say they are active-duty ser­vice mem­bers or mil­i­tary vet­er­ans.

    The booga­loo groups dis­agree when it comes to racism. Some mem­bers are white suprema­cists. Oth­ers com­pare the move­ment to the left’s cam­paign against police bru­tal­i­ty. Many booga­loo memes are focused on police over­reach, equat­ing the Bureau of Alco­hol, Tobac­co, Firearms, and Explo­sives and FBI sieges at Ruby Ridge, Ida­ho, and Waco, Texas, in the ’90s with the recent high-pro­file police killings of Black Amer­i­cans.

    As with the alt-right, many booga­loo posts are about men in cri­sis, humil­i­at­ed or debased. Inter­min­gled with memes about rev­o­lu­tion are nos­tal­gic images and video clips, glitched out to look like old VHS tapes, of what they imag­ine was the ide­al exis­tence: being the patri­arch of a mid­dle-class Amer­i­can nuclear fam­i­ly some­time between the 1950s and the 1990s.

    As alt-right protests waned, booga­loo boys began to appear on the streets. Armed men in alo­ha shirts and booga­loo patch­es made their first wide­ly noticed appear­ance at a heav­i­ly attend­ed pro–Second Amend­ment ral­ly in Rich­mond, Vir­ginia, in Jan­u­ary. And they came out again for the anti-lock­down protests in March. Lat­er, many attend­ed protests over the killing of George Floyd, some in sol­i­dar­i­ty, oth­ers to oppose the left.

    The cat­a­lyst was sim­i­lar to what mobi­lized so many young peo­ple on the left: the notion that the gov­ern­ment enriched a priv­i­leged few at the expense of the peo­ple. In this, the booga­loo boys shared the anti-cor­po­ratist left’s belief that the gov­ern­ment had betrayed pub­lic trust by main­tain­ing a grow­ing police force to per­pet­u­ate an unjust sta­tus quo. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s incon­sis­tent response to the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic and his promise to march the mil­i­tary into Amer­i­can cities to quell unrest only strength­ened these con­vic­tions.

    The recent killings in the name of the booga­loo appear to blend two once-dis­tinct domes­tic-ter­ror­ist move­ments, one new, one old.

    Last sum­mer, mur­der­ers who iden­ti­fied as fas­cist “incels” (invol­un­tary celi­bates) attacked syn­a­gogues and mosques, and, in one case, a Wal­mart. Like the booga­loos, their stat­ed goal was to spark a larg­er con­flict. And in addi­tion to post­ing hate­ful man­i­festos on the 4chan copy­cat site, 8chan, some coat­ed their semi­au­to­mat­ic weapons and gear in images from memes from the chans.*

    But Carrillo’s crimes in Oak­land are also close­ly relat­ed to Tim­o­thy McVeigh’s bomb­ing of an Okla­homa fed­er­al build­ing in 1995. McVeigh was a mil­i­tary vet­er­an whose expe­ri­ence in the Gulf War left him rad­i­cal­ized and resent­ful of the gov­ern­ment as a source of injus­tice. His hatred killed more inno­cents than the ATF and FBI did at Ruby Ridge or Waco, his bloody-shirt caus­es that have since become the booga­loos’.

    Hav­ing spent the past sev­er­al years speak­ing with rad­i­cals on 4chan for a book I wrote on its polit­i­cal his­to­ry, I’m not sur­prised by the odd mix­ture of ide­olo­gies that the booga­loo move­ment encom­pass­es. One of my first sources was a chan-going Black man in his 30s, an accel­er­a­tionist Com­mu­nist who was friends with a vari­ety of rad­i­cals, includ­ing many in the alt-right. What these men shared was years of mar­gin­al­iza­tion and a hatred of the present state of soci­ety.

    As decades of ris­ing inequal­i­ty pro­duced suc­ces­sive gen­er­a­tions who felt they were con­signed to the fringes, 4chan became an out­let to express rolling waves of escapist memes and rad­i­cal anger. Among the left, this uptick in rad­i­cals and the cor­re­spond­ing increase in fund­ing for law-enforce­ment agen­cies have gen­er­at­ed fur­ther sup­port for protests aimed at defund­ing the police and divert­ing the funds to social pro­grams. Among lib­er­tar­i­ans, they have pro­duced phe­nom­e­na such as the booga­loo boys.

    Booga­loo boys cer­tain­ly do not face the eco­nom­ic dis­ad­van­tages of mar­gin­al­ized groups in the Unit­ed States, but like the alt-right, they are unhap­py enough to form their own rad­i­cal iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics of col­lec­tive griev­ances. Also like the alt-right, they now face a wave of de-plat­form­ing. In the past few months, both Red­dit and Face­book have purged major booga­loo groups, though not all of them, from their sites.

    But 4chan occu­pies a unique place on the social web, dis­tinct from more main­stream sites. If 4chan’s his­to­ry is any indi­ca­tion, it’s extreme­ly like­ly that some por­tion of these social-media users and posters on /k/ are fed­er­al agents. Hav­ing inter­viewed many young men who ran chan-style sites, I know that state secu­ri­ty agen­cies knock on their doors ear­ly and often and ask for com­pre­hen­sive records. On 8chan, many posts were auto­mat­i­cal­ly logged for fed­er­al agen­cies issu­ing sub­poe­nas in a data-col­lec­tion sys­tem nick­named “Sun­shine.” (8chan was tak­en offline last sum­mer and replaced by a site called 8kun.) When chan rad­i­cals are caught and pros­e­cut­ed, court doc­u­ments often reveal police “hon­ey­pots,” meant to tempt extrem­ists into unwit­ting­ly plot­ting crimes with under­cov­er agents.

    Indeed, before most peo­ple, includ­ing myself, got wind of the booga­loo move­ment, Rut­gers Uni­ver­si­ty had gen­er­at­ed a “con­ta­gion and ide­ol­o­gy report” for law-enforce­ment agen­cies in Feb­ru­ary that detailed the group’s online net­work. Its con­clu­sion: The booga­loo boys are ter­ror­ists. Its rec­om­men­da­tions: more law enforce­ment, more sur­veil­lance.

    ———–

    “The Booga­loo Tip­ping Point” by Dale Beran; The Atlantic; 07/04/2020

    “The booga­loo move­ment orig­i­nal­ly grew from the weapons dis­cus­sion sec­tion (“/k/”) of the anar­chic anony­mous mes­sage board 4chan over the past sev­er­al years. By 2019, its cul­ture had dis­sem­i­nat­ed across social media into a mix of online groups and chat servers where users shared lib­er­tar­i­an polit­i­cal memes. In the past six months, this all began to man­i­fest in real life, as users from the groups emerged at protests in what became their sig­na­ture uni­form: alo­ha shirts and com­bat gear. As nation­wide unrest inten­si­fied at the start of the sum­mer, many booga­loo adher­ents inter­pret­ed this as a cue to real­ize the group’s cen­tral fantasy—armed revolt against the U.S. gov­ern­ment.”

    A group of memes on 4chan’s weapons (“/k/”) forum. If we trace the ori­gins of the ‘booga­loo’ move­ment that’s where it start­ed. A bunch of jokey memes about the plight of the white male in an online com­mu­ni­ty dom­i­nat­ed by aggriev­ed white males. It’s a sto­ry that under­scores how a sense of emas­cu­la­tion, rage, and nihilism dri­ves the ‘pop­ulist’ grass­roots ele­ment of fas­cist polit­i­cal move­ments. But also a sto­ry about how inte­gral humor and joke memes are to the spread of these move­ments by simul­ta­ne­ous­ly encour­ag­ing spread of these ideas at the same time the tox­ic nature gets sug­ar-coat­ed. As the arti­cle described, the ‘booga­loo’ move­ment basi­cal­ly arose the ash­es of the online pres­ence of the ‘Alt Right’ on 4Chan that had implod­ed after the 2017 Unite the Right ral­ly in Char­lottesville. So ‘booga­loo’ is like the light-heart­ed rebrand­ing of what the Unite the Right ral­ly was sup­posed to accom­plish: unit­ing the far right under a com­mon polit­i­cal agen­da inspired by the elec­tion of Pres­i­dent Trump:

    ...
    At first glance, armed right-wing mil­i­tants dressed in flo­ral shirts may seem like anoth­er baf­fling grotes­querie in the parade of calami­ties that is 2020. How­ev­er, their arrival can be explained by trac­ing their online ori­gins. Sim­i­lar to oth­er right-lean­ing extrem­ist move­ments, they are the prod­uct of an unhap­py gen­er­a­tion of men who com­pare their lot in life with that of men in pre­vi­ous decades and see their prospects dimin­ish­ing. And with a mix of igno­rance and sim­plic­i­ty, they view their dis­con­tent through the most dis­tort­ed lens imag­in­able: inter­net memes.

    Since its found­ing in 2003, 4chan has attract­ed a unique pop­u­la­tion of deeply cyn­i­cal men, once all young, but now aged from their 40s down to their teens, who gen­er­al­ly use the board to express their angst through dark humor. Peo­ple who are unhap­py with the cir­cum­stances of their life tend to retreat there. The unhap­pi­er they are, the longer they stay and the more they post.

    ...

    The birth­place of the booga­loo move­ment, 4chan’s /k/ sec­tion, is osten­si­bly devot­ed to the own­er­ship and pur­chase of weapons. But in prac­tice, it is a space where weapons dis­cus­sions com­bine with 4chan’s politi­cized male anger. The name “booga­loo boys” is a ref­er­ence to the crit­i­cal­ly maligned 1984 sequel Breakin’ 2: Elec­tric Booga­loo—around 2012, users on /k/ began refer­ring to the pos­si­bil­i­ty of “Civ­il War 2: Elec­tric Booga­loo.” Half-seri­ous posts about how cer­tain weapons might be employed in “the booga­loo” evolved over time and grew more elab­o­rate. Like many memes on 4chan, each new ver­sion was more cryp­tic than the last, a means to express insid­er knowl­edge and in-group sta­tus.

    ...

    The mes­sage board /k/’s cul­ture over­lapped heav­i­ly with 4chan’s vir­u­lent­ly racist pol­i­tics dis­cus­sion board /pol/. How­ev­er, by 2017, the move­ment that had devel­oped there—the alt-right—had large­ly implod­ed, after the dis­as­trous Unite the Right ral­ly in Char­lottesville, Vir­ginia.

    While overt fas­cism fell out of vogue for many, the core demo­graph­ic of dis­en­chant­ed men remained, their cir­cum­stances and unhap­pi­ness large­ly unchanged. Indeed, the unique mix­ture of right-wing male dis­con­tent appealed to many who nev­er fre­quent­ed 4chan. By 2018, as talk of fas­cism declined on /pol/, the more lib­er­tar­i­an and less overt­ly racist cul­ture of 4chan’s /k/ and the booga­loo move­ment began to fill the emp­ty niche.

    The memes about a new civ­il war spread from /k/ to var­i­ous groups on Face­book and Red­dit, all with names that evoked the terms booga­loo, igloo, or luau. Enthu­si­asts also con­gre­gat­ed in group chats using ser­vices such as Dis­cord. The pol­i­tics of the booga­loo boys are deeply con­tra­dic­to­ry and var­ied but can be rough­ly summed up by a few agreed-upon ideas. They are lib­er­tar­i­an, in favor of gun rights, and opposed to gov­ern­ment police forces. Many users say they are active-duty ser­vice mem­bers or mil­i­tary vet­er­ans.
    ...

    And that’s all part of why we should prob­a­bly remain high­ly sus­pi­cious about what exact­ly the Trump cam­paign has in mind for Brad Parscale fol­low­ing his ‘demo­tion’ that will have him focus­ing on the cam­paign’s dig­i­tal strat­e­gy. Is this this kind of ‘demo­tion’ that’s mere­ly going to give him more time to focus on what he does best? Because what Brad Parscale does best is mass micro­tar­get­ing and wink & nod ‘oops’ neo-Nazi dog-whis­tle cam­paigns. So while it’s going to be impor­tant to keep in eye on what Parscale is up to fol­low­ing this appar­ent demo­tion, it’s also going to be impor­tant to keep in mind that he may have been demot­ed in part to allow him to focus on the kind of cam­paign work we’re not sup­posed to see.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | July 16, 2020, 2:03 pm

  10. Three Per­centers and Their Intel on Oil and Gas Infra­struc­ture

    This next arti­cle, writ­ten by Nick Mar­tin “The Infor­mant” talks about how right Wink mili­tia mem­bers who work in the oil and gas indus­try who are called 3 per­centers elud­ing to the belief 3% of the pop­u­la­tion takes up arms in a rev­o­lu­tion and over­lap with the Booga­loo move­ment. They gen­er­al­ly believe that a sec­ond Civ­il War is nec­es­sary in the Unit­ed States. They pro­vid­ed armed pro­tec­tion for the dead­ly Unite the Right ral­ly in Char­lottesville, Vir­ginia in 2017.  

    They were asso­ci­at­ed with and a mem­ber Kurt Cofano who was arrest­ed by the FBI owns Cofano Ener­gy Ser­vices, which spe­cial­ized in con­struct­ing oil and gas pipelines. He post­ed numer­ous racist state­ments online and alleged­ly talked about blow­ing up gov­ern­ment build­ings. Three Per­centers have their own his­to­ry of vio­lence, includ­ing the 2018 bomb­ing of a mosque in Min­neso­ta. These groups have long been asso­ci­at­ed with right-wing, anti-gov­ern­ment caus­es, includ­ing the occu­pa­tion of a wildlife refuge in Ore­gon in 2016. On the same day as the Char­lottesville protest, the FBI arrest­ed a 23-year-old man, Jer­ry Drake Var­nell, report­ed­ly a fol­low­er of the “Three Per­centers,” who had plans to det­o­nate a car bomb at an Okla­homa bank.

    “What mili­tias like this do is con­duct sur­veil­lance and find facil­i­ties they will either need to take over or attack when ‘shit hits the fan.’ They can sab­o­tage the plant or pipelines run­ning from it, which may not cause a lot of deaths but can dis­rupt the ener­gy sup­ply.” Addi­tion­al­ly, they can share their intel on crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture with peo­ple who don’t need to know.”

    Here is the arti­cle:

    Jeep­ers three­p­ers
    Right-wing mili­tia mem­bers work in the oil and gas indus­try, and the indus­try doesn’t seem to mind, a new Desmog inves­ti­ga­tion claims.

    Nick R. Mar­tin
    By Emi­ly Atkin July 22, 2020

    Far-right, anti-gov­ern­ment mili­tia mem­bers “have estab­lished a promi­nent pres­ence” at a major nat­ur­al gas pro­cess­ing plant in North Dako­ta deemed “crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture” by the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty, accord­ing to an inves­ti­ga­tion pub­lished in DeSmog on Tues­day.

    Known as the Three Percenters—or “three­p­ers,” as they call themselves—the group is named after the “dubi­ous his­tor­i­cal claim that only three per­cent of Amer­i­can colonists took up arms in the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary War.” The group has “long been active around the fringes of the white suprema­cist ecosys­tem,” accord­ing to The Cen­ter for Inves­tiga­tive Report­ing, and is best known for pro­vid­ing armed pro­tec­tion to the dead­ly Unite the Right ral­ly in Char­lottesville, Vir­ginia in 2017.  

    It appears the group is active in the oil and gas indus­try, too. Accord­ing to Tuesday’s sto­ry by reporter Justin Noble, Three Per­centers are work­ing at the Lone­some Creek gas pro­cess­ing plant near Wat­ford City, North Dakota—and at oth­er oil and gas facil­i­ties across the coun­try.

    To back up his claims, Noble quotes for­mer Lone­some Creek work­er Paul Lehto, who says he quit his job at the plant in 2016 in part because of the grow­ing three­p­er cul­ture at the facil­i­ty. “The con­stel­la­tion of issues around being a Three Per­center was prob­a­bly the num­ber one top­ic of con­ver­sa­tion at work,” Lehto said.

    Noble also quotes Matt Mar­shall, a well-known Three Per­center run­ning for state leg­is­la­ture in Wash­ing­ton, as say­ing promi­nent mem­bers are cur­rent­ly work­ing all over the Bakken oil indus­try, as well as “in oil­fields in Col­orado, Texas, Wyoming, Okla­homa, and Alas­ka.”

    Noble men­tions that Mar­shall was recent­ly seen at a protest sport­ing an Alo­ha shirt, one of the mark­ers of the emerg­ing “booga­loo” move­ment. In the world of right-wing extrem­ism, the move­ment has some over­lap with the Three Per­center sub­cul­ture but leans more heav­i­ly into the the­o­ry that a sec­ond Civ­il War is nec­es­sary in the Unit­ed States. Law enforce­ment has linked booga­loo adher­ents to mul­ti­ple crimes in recent months, includ­ing mur­ders, attempt­ed ter­ror attacks, and even drug deal­ing.

    And just last week, a fed­er­al grand jury brought firearms and explo­sives charges against a Penn­syl­va­nia busi­ness­man who used the Twit­ter han­dle “Pgh­Boogey” after he was alleged­ly found with dozens of home­made explo­sives in his car. Kurt Cofano post­ed numer­ous racist state­ments online and alleged­ly talked about blow­ing up gov­ern­ment build­ings. He also owned Cofano Ener­gy Ser­vices, which spe­cial­ized in con­struct­ing oil and gas pipelines.

    Addi­tion­al­ly, Three Per­centers have their own his­to­ry of vio­lence, as Noble points out, includ­ing the 2018 bomb­ing of a mosque in Min­neso­ta.

    In his inter­view with Noble, Mar­shall essen­tial­ly dis­tanced him­self from the vio­lent ele­ments of the move­ment and acknowl­edged the promi­nence of Three Per­centers in the oil and gas busi­ness.
    “Mar­shall basi­cal­ly told me, ‘This is where [Three Per­centers] work. This is what we do: oil and gas,” Noble said in an inter­view with HEATED on Tues­day. “He said he didn’t think that should be a con­cern. But I think that’s a point for soci­ety to argue over.”

    Domes­tic ter­ror expert “deeply alarmed”
    Noble’s inves­ti­ga­tion, linked here, is worth read­ing in full. But the most notable part is his inter­view with Daryl John­son, a for­mer senior domes­tic ter­ror­ism ana­lyst at the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty from 2004 to 2010.

    Noble said John­son was “deeply alarmed” by the poten­tial pres­ence of Three Per­centers at the Lone­some Creek plant and across the oil and gas indus­try.

    “These are oper­a­tional­ly mind­ed peo­ple with a para­noid world­view that believe at some point there is going to be a soci­etal col­lapse,” said John­son, who authored the 2012 book, Right-Wing Resur­gence: How A Domes­tic Ter­ror­ist Threat Is Being Ignored.

    “What mili­tias like this do is con­duct sur­veil­lance and find facil­i­ties they will either need to take over or attack when ‘shit hits the fan.’ When they are work­ing, they are also think­ing about what else they would need to do to bring the plant to its knees. They may fol­low the order of their com­man­der or act on a lone wolf instinct, and their alle­giance lies not with their employ­er but with the mili­tia, although they might think they are doing some­thing right­eous and good for the coun­try.”

    “Hav­ing the insid­er knowl­edge of how that plant oper­ates, where that gas comes from and where it is going is all infor­ma­tion an adver­sary can use for max­i­mum threat and max­i­mum dam­age. They can sab­o­tage the plant or pipelines run­ning from it, which may not cause a lot of deaths but can dis­rupt the ener­gy sup­ply.” Fur­ther­more, added John­son, “There is also a coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence threat. They have intel on crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture that, shall the need arise, they can share with peo­ple who don’t need to know.”

    Plant own­er dis­miss­es secu­ri­ty con­cerns
    The Lone­some Creek gas pro­cess­ing plant is owned by one of the largest nat­ur­al gas cor­po­ra­tions in the coun­try: ONEOK. (Pro­nounced “One-Oak”).

    Though not as large or well-known as, say, Exxon or Chevron, ONEOK is a pow­er­house pub­lic com­pa­ny, includ­ed in the S&P 500 and the For­tune 500. The Tul­sa-Okla­homa-based com­pa­ny either owns or has inter­est in a con­sid­er­able share of America’s ener­gy infra­struc­ture, includ­ing an “exten­sive net­work of nat­ur­al gas gath­er­ing, pro­cess­ing, stor­age and trans­porta­tion assets.”

    A map of ONEOK’s assets. Source: oneok.com

    Lehto, the for­mer Lone­some Creek work­er, told Noble that he did not believe ONEOK took his con­cerns seri­ous­ly. While the com­pa­ny “does reg­u­lar­ly solic­it infor­ma­tion in the area of ethics, safe­ty, and legal­i­ty,” he said, “there is very lit­tle evi­dence in my expe­ri­ence of either tak­ing action on them or even respond­ing in a sub­stan­tive man­ner.”

    Indeed, ONEOK did not respond sub­stan­tive­ly to Noble’s inquiries about mili­tia activ­i­ty at the plant, accord­ing to an email exchange pro­vid­ed to HEATED. The com­pa­ny said that their poli­cies pro­hib­it “vio­lence, vio­lent acts, and threats of vio­lence.”
    ONEOK has imple­ment­ed numer­ous safe­ty and secu­ri­ty prac­tices to safe­guard our facil­i­ties and to com­ply with applic­a­ble law. Clear­ly, the scope and nature of many of these prac­tices and safe­guards must remain con­fi­den­tial. 

    HEATED also reached out to ONEOK fol­low­ing pub­li­ca­tion of Noble’s sto­ry, with the fol­low­ing ques­tions.
    ¥ Does ONEOK agree with con­cerns about the poten­tial pres­ence of vio­lent mili­tia mem­bers at a facil­i­ty deemed crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture by the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty? If so, how does the com­pa­ny plan to address these con­cerns? If not, why are those con­cerns not valid?

    ¥ Was ONEOK aware of the poten­tial pres­ence of mili­tia mem­bers before this sto­ry came out?

    ¥ Does ONEOK have poli­cies in place to pre­vent mem­bers of extrem­ist mil­i­tant groups from work­ing at major plants like Lone­some Creek?

    ONEOK gave the exact same response it gave to Noble.

    Envi­ron­men­tal­ists are threats. Right-wing mili­tias are not.

    ONEOK is a polit­i­cal­ly active com­pa­ny. It paid more than $1.1 mil­lion in mem­ber­ship dues alone to state and nation­al indus­try groups in 2019, includ­ing near­ly $500,000 to the Amer­i­can Petro­le­um Insti­tute (API), which has worked to pass anti-cli­mate pol­i­cy on both the local and nation­al lev­el.

    One of the poli­cies API has worked to pass on the state lev­el is called the Crit­i­cal Infra­struc­ture Pro­tec­tion Act, which attempts to impose crim­i­nal pun­ish­ments on peo­ple “who com­mit ‘sab­o­tage’ of crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture,” like pipelines and gas pro­cess­ing facil­i­ties.

    The peo­ple these bills tar­get, how­ev­er, are not right-wing mili­tia mem­bers who work for pipeline and gas com­pa­nies. They tar­get envi­ron­men­tal­ists who are protest­ing them.

    In terms of poten­tial secu­ri­ty threats to Amer­i­can oil and gas infra­struc­ture, Noble says his sto­ry rais­es ques­tions about prioritization—not just by the indus­try, but by the FBI. Accord­ing to the Cen­ter for Strate­gic and Inter­na­tion­al Stud­ies, right-wing ter­ror­ism rep­re­sents the most sig­nif­i­cant domes­tic ter­ror threat; and the FBI is strug­gling to con­tain it.

    “The FBI has spent a lot of resources fol­low­ing envi­ron­men­tal move­ments and fol­low­ing social jus­tice move­ments, and yet the right wing mili­tia groups do not seem to have received a sim­i­lar sort of atten­tion,” Noble said. “There could be inter­est­ing rea­sons why, but they won’t answer those ques­tions.”

    Like The Infor­mant and want to help make it even bet­ter? Give me feed­back, point out fac­tu­al errors or typos, or send me news tips. Reach me at nick@informant.news.

    Posted by Mary Benton | July 26, 2020, 5:54 am

  11. Here’s a pair of updates on the sto­ry of far right actors infil­trat­ing the ongo­ing police bru­tal­i­ty protests and car­ry­ing out acts of loot­ing and vio­lence. Specif­i­cal­ly, it’s a pair of updates about new evi­dence of exact­ly that sce­nario hap­pen­ing in mul­ti­ple cities, as we should have expect­ed:

    First, remem­ber the “Umbrel­la Man” of the Min­neapo­lis protests who was filmed walk­ing around with a ham­mer smash­ing the win­dows of the Auto­Zone short­ly before it was set on fire? And remem­ber how the man had a resem­blance to a Min­neapo­lis police offi­cer, lead­ing to wide­spread spec­u­la­tion that the Umbrel­la Man was an under­cov­er offi­cer? Well, the Min­neapo­lis police just issued a state­ment on the sus­pect­ed iden­ti­ty of the Umbrel­la Man: he’s a 32-year-old white suprema­cist mem­ber of the Hel­l’s Angels who was there to “sow dis­cord and racial unrest”. The Hel­l’s Angels mem­ber, who has­n’t yet been iden­ti­fied, is also sus­pect­ed of being an asso­ciate of the Aryan Cow­boy Broth­er­hood, a white suprema­cist prison and street gang that main­ly oper­ates in Min­neso­ta and Ken­tucky. The man is believed to have been involved with an inci­dent that took place in Still­wa­ter, MN, in late June when a group of around 20 Aryan Cow­boy Broth­er­hood mem­bers report­ed­ly roamed down Still­wa­ter’s Main Street and harassed a Mus­lim woman and her four year old child while they were eat­ing at a cafe. His role as the “Umbrel­la Man” was report­ed­ly deter­mined after a tip­ster informed the police who fol­lowed up and con­firmed that the man the tip­ster referred to did indeed have a strik­ing resem­blance to the “Umbrel­la Man”. It’s sounds like there’s an ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tion and no for­mal charges yet which is why his iden­ti­ty has­n’t been revealed.

    Keep in mind that the arson of the Auto­Zone that the “Umbrel­la Man” was taped van­dal­iz­ing with his ham­mer was basi­cal­ly the big event that shift­ed the peace­ful protests over the death of George Floyd into a more chaot­ic sit­u­a­tion involv­ing loot­ing and oth­er acts of arson. So based on the time­line of the protests and this real­ly was a cat­alyt­ic event and it was appar­ent­ly car­ry­ing out by a white suprema­cist bik­er gang mem­ber.

    The sec­ond update involves a much more recent instance of far right provo­ca­teurs infil­trat­ing a Black Lives Mat­ter protest: A planned BLM protest in Rich­mond Vir­ginia end­ed up turn­ing into a round of van­dal­ism and loot­ing over the week­end. It appears that the ‘Booga­loo’ mem­bers car­ry­ing around “BLM” wood­en shields had infil­trat­ed the protests and were large­ly respon­si­ble for the van­dal­ism. They also threw rocks and bat­ter­ies at police offi­cer and bricks at fire­fight­ers who were try­ing to put out a city dump truck that was set on fire by some­one in the crowd. In addi­tion, police deter­mined that some­one from out­side Rich­mond cre­at­ed and cir­cu­lat­ed online fly­ers that adver­tised the “Rich­mond Stands with Port­land” protest while call­ing for vio­lence. So it sounds like the ‘Booga­loos bois’ had a plan for infil­trat­ing these protests and car­ried out that plan. In this case they were caught but it rais­es the obvi­ous ques­tion of just how wide­spread this has been through­out these protests. After all, the “Umbrel­la Man” looked like a typ­i­cal Antifa mem­ber and these Booga­loo bois in Rich­mond were report­ed­ly car­ry­ing around “BLM” slo­gans. So they aren’t just show­ing up at these protests. They’re show­ing up under cov­er.

    Ok, first, here’s the update on the Umbrel­la Man’s secret iden­ti­ty. An iden­ti­ty that has yet to be revealed but is report­ed­ly that of a white suprema­cist Hel­l’s Angels bik­er gang mem­ber:

    WCCO

    MPD: ‘Umbrel­la Man’ Believed To Be Mem­ber Of Hell’s Angels Who Want­ed To Sow Racial Unrest Dur­ing Floyd Protests

    By Esme Mur­phy
    July 28, 2020 at 5:00 pm

    MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — Min­neapo­lis police have iden­ti­fied a sus­pect in con­nec­tion to the “Umbrel­la Man” seen break­ing win­dows and help­ing to incite a riot dur­ing the George Floyd protests. And they say he is a white suprema­cist.

    Accord­ing to police, the sus­pect was seen in viral videos break­ing glass of the Auto Zone in south Min­neapo­lis on the late after­noon of Wednes­day, May 27. Loot­ing and arson inci­dents start­ed not long after. Until then, the protests were rel­a­tive­ly qui­et, accord­ing to police.

    “The actions of this per­son cre­at­ed an atmos­phere of hos­til­i­ty and ten­sion … this individual’s sole aim was to incite vio­lence,” Min­neapo­lis police said.

    The sus­pect is also believed to have spray paint­ed “free s— for every­one zone” on the front doors of the Auto Zone.

    For weeks, attempts to iden­ti­fy the sus­pect have been unsuc­cess­ful. That is until a tip was emailed to Min­neapo­lis police in July.

    The tip iden­ti­fied the “Umbrel­la Man” as a 32-year-old man who is a mem­ber of the Hell’s Angels and want­ed to “sow dis­cord and racial unrest” by break­ing the win­dows and spray paint­ing what he did.

    Police con­firmed that the man is a mem­ber of the Hell’s Angels and an asso­ciate of the Aryan Cow­boys, which is a known prison gang out of Min­neso­ta and Ken­tucky. The sus­pect is also believed to be involved in a recent inci­dent in Still­wa­ter where a Mus­lim woman claimed she was racial­ly harassed by bik­er gang mem­bers wear­ing Aryan Cow­boys vests.

    Accord­ing to police, the man has a strik­ing resem­blance to the “Umbrel­la Man” includ­ing facial fea­tures and height.

    ...

    Dur­ing the riots fol­low­ing Floyd’s death, WCCO pho­to­jour­nal­ist Dymanh Chhoun record­ed his reac­tion to being tear­gassed. Behind him, you can see “Umbrel­la Man.”

    Moments lat­er, Chhoun was cap­tur­ing images of loot­ers when sud­den­ly you can see the edge of the umbrel­la and the sus­pect threat­ens him.

    “I will f— up your cam­era if you don’t keep walk­ing, keep m———— walk­ing right now,” the sus­pect said.

    Chhoun did walk away.

    “I did remem­ber. I did lis­ten to him, he did scare me,” Chhoun said.
    Chhoun who cov­ered the most intense moments of the riot­ing for WCCO said the inci­dent with “Umbrel­la Man” is one he won’t for­get.

    “I think he is the only one who said some­thing bad to me, 99.9% or 100% — no one said any­thing to me except for him,” Chhoun added. “He was the only one.”

    A search war­rant has been filed to view all cell phone activ­i­ty from the sus­pect on the day of May 27.

    Both the Hen­nepin Coun­ty Attorney’s office and the Min­neapo­lis Police say they could not com­ment because this is an ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tion.

    The man does have a record of crim­i­nal con­vic­tions for brawl­ing, assault, ter­ror­is­tic threats and domes­tic abuse.

    WCCO does not name sus­pects until they have been for­mal­ly charged.

    ———-

    “MPD: ‘Umbrel­la Man’ Believed To Be Mem­ber Of Hell’s Angels Who Want­ed To Sow Racial Unrest Dur­ing Floyd Protests” by Esme Mur­phy; WCCO; 07/28/2020

    “Police con­firmed that the man is a mem­ber of the Hell’s Angels and an asso­ciate of the Aryan Cow­boys, which is a known prison gang out of Min­neso­ta and Ken­tucky. The sus­pect is also believed to be involved in a recent inci­dent in Still­wa­ter where a Mus­lim woman claimed she was racial­ly harassed by bik­er gang mem­bers wear­ing Aryan Cow­boys vests.”

    The guy cer­tain­ly fits the pro­file of some­one we might expect to infil­trate these protests: a white suprema­cist gang mem­ber with a recent his­to­ry of racist harass­ment. But note how the guy did­n’t just try to smear the pro­tes­tors with van­dal­ism and like­ly arson. He also walked up to a pho­tog­ra­ph­er who was try­ing to cap­ture images of the loot­ers and threat­ened him if he kept tak­ing pho­tos:

    ...
    Dur­ing the riots fol­low­ing Floyd’s death, WCCO pho­to­jour­nal­ist Dymanh Chhoun record­ed his reac­tion to being tear­gassed. Behind him, you can see “Umbrel­la Man.”

    Moments lat­er, Chhoun was cap­tur­ing images of loot­ers when sud­den­ly you can see the edge of the umbrel­la and the sus­pect threat­ens him.

    “I will f— up your cam­era if you don’t keep walk­ing, keep m———— walk­ing right now,” the sus­pect said.

    Chhoun did walk away.

    “I did remem­ber. I did lis­ten to him, he did scare me,” Chhoun said.
    Chhoun who cov­ered the most intense moments of the riot­ing for WCCO said the inci­dent with “Umbrel­la Man” is one he won’t for­get.

    “I think he is the only one who said some­thing bad to me, 99.9% or 100% — no one said any­thing to me except for him,” Chhoun added. “He was the only one.”
    ...

    It rais­es the ques­tion of how many his fel­low white suprema­cists were involved in that ini­tial round of loot­ing and whether or not he was try­ing to pro­tect the iden­ti­ties of fel­low infiltrator/looters at that moment. Because, again, this was when the protests first became filled with arson and loot­ing, so if we know the “Umbrel­la Man” was active­ly work­ing to trig­ger that loot­ing we have to ask how many fel­low white suprema­cists or affil­i­at­ed bad actors may have been ‘fol­low­ing his lead’ dur­ing that ini­tial wave to get things start­ed.

    Ok, now here’s a report from Rich­mond, Vir­ginia, about police deter­min­ing that mem­bers of Antifa and Booga­loo were among the BLM protests that descend­ed into loot­ing and vio­lence Sat­ur­day night. Based on the police chief’s com­ments it sounds like it was Booga­loo mem­bers who were respon­si­ble for the vio­lence:

    WTVR CBS 6

    Police chief believes Antifa, Booga­loo boys were at Rich­mond riot
    ‘The ori­gin of the fly­er came from out­side of Rich­mond’

    By: WTVR CBS 6 Web Staff
    Post­ed at 5:16 PM, Jul 26, 2020
    and last updat­ed 5:00 PM, Jul 26, 2020

    RICHMOND, Va. — The chief of police believes mem­bers of Antifa and the Booga­loo boys were part of the hun­dreds of peo­ple who marched to Rich­mond Police Head­quar­ters Sat­ur­day night dur­ing a demon­stra­tion in sup­port of pro­test­ers in Port­land, Ore­gon. That group con­tin­ued march­ing leav­ing a path of destruc­tion that includ­ed win­dows shat­tered at restau­rants, busi­ness­es and a Vir­ginia Com­mon­wealth Uni­ver­si­ty dorm.

    “We have iden­ti­fied some indi­vid­u­als who have been seen with the Booga­loo boys and some Antifa groups around the area,” Rich­mond Police Chief Ger­ald Smith said dur­ing a news con­fer­ence Sun­day after­noon. “The major­i­ty of those indi­vid­u­als who were there last night were Cau­casian.”

    Smith also said that he believed some in the crowd were Antifa-influ­enced.

    “And some of the indi­vid­u­als that we encoun­tered were from out­side of Rich­mond, Vir­ginia, and some of the sur­round­ing area,” Smith not­ed.

    Smith said an online fly­er for the “Rich­mond Stands with Port­land” demon­stra­tion, which had been cir­cu­lat­ing for days and called for vio­lence, did not orig­i­nate in Rich­mond.”

    “We know that the ori­gin of the fly­er came from out­side of Rich­mond,” Smith said. “There are some peo­ple who are still inside some of these orga­ni­za­tions that will still give us infor­ma­tion. And that’s how we know it came from out­side of Rich­mond.

    Offi­cials said the six men arrest­ed Sat­ur­day night were not charged in the van­dal­ism and destruc­tion in sev­er­al Rich­mond neigh­bor­hoods. (Two of those sus­pects were charged with felonies: assault on a law enforce­ment offi­cer; pos­ses­sion of a firearm while riot­ing.)

    When asked when those respon­si­ble for the destruc­tion would be held respon­si­ble, Smith said police are “uti­liz­ing a lot of video to iden­ti­fy peo­ple.”

    Smith had this mes­sage to the own­ers of busi­ness­es, like Grad­u­ate Rich­mond, the Vil­lage Cafe, Chipo­tle, Noo­dles & Com­pa­ny, Pan­da Express, Rick­’s Piz­za and SWEAT in the Fan, were dam­aged.

    “We still stand with them and we hope that they con­tin­ue to stand with us,” Smith said. “And know that we are not nec­es­sar­i­ly lay­ing down on this — we’re not. What we are doing is doing vig­or­ous inves­ti­ga­tions to iden­ti­fy these indi­vid­u­als to hold them account­able for every­thing that they did.”

    The chief and the may­or lat­er thanked the 200 Vir­ginia State troop­ers who helped with the demon­stra­tion as well as the Rich­mond police offi­cers who worked dur­ing their vaca­tion or days off.

    May­or: White suprema­cists marched under Black Lives Mat­ter ban­ner

    May­or Levar Stoney opened his remarks by thank­ing peace­ful pro­test­ers with orga­ni­za­tions like Black Lives Mat­ter after what he called “24 con­sec­u­tive days of peace­ful protests.” He also thanked the police and fire depart­ments for their response Sat­ur­day night.

    “You know, here in Rich­mond our stan­dard for protest is that all groups walk away safe,” Stoney said. “But pro­test­ers hav­ing expressed their dis­con­tent, and the offi­cers hav­ing sup­port­ed that peace­ful expres­sion of their First Amend­ment rights. That’s not what hap­pened last night.”

    Stoney said the vio­lence “hurt many peo­ple in the Rich­mond com­mu­ni­ty, both through the threat­en­ing of lives and the destruc­tion of prop­er­ty. And sim­ply put, that is unac­cept­able in the City of Rich­mond. Unac­cept­able.”

    Pro­jec­tiles like rocks and bat­ter­ies were thrown at police offi­cers, Stoney said. and bricks were lobbed at fire­fight­ers try­ing to douse a city dump truck that was set ablaze by some­one in the crowd.

    “That could have led to a very, very dead­ly event,” Stoney said.

    The may­or blamed white suprema­cists “march­ing under the ban­ner of Black Lives Mat­ter” for cor­rupt­ing the peace­ful social jus­tice move­ment.

    “We’ve spo­ken on many occa­sions about those who’ve cho­sen a more vio­lent route to express their dis­con­tent, and what that does for the over­all move­ment towards social jus­tice,” Stoney said. “Last night that reared its ugly head right here in the City of Rich­mond... We saw some vio­lent actions, vio­lent protests, spear­head­ed by white suprema­cists. And frankly, it was dis­gust­ing. Dis­gust­ing. As they held ply­wood shields that read, BLM, these folks toured areas of dam­age down­town, The Fan, break­ing win­dows, tag­ging pri­vate prop­er­ty with hate­ful lan­guage.”

    Stoney said Sat­ur­day’s riot aimed to under­mine the month of peace­ful, com­mu­ni­ty-dri­ven protest in Rich­mond.

    “As I began with, I want to send a thanks to the BLM pro­test­ers on the ground who decried the white suprema­cists once they were iden­ti­fied. I’m thank­ful to you for draw­ing the line and stick­ing up not just for the sanc­ti­ty of your move­ment, but also the safe­ty of your fel­low Rich­mon­ders that you marched along­side as well,” Stoney said. “I’m thank­ful to the offi­cers who were on duty last night for con­tend­ing with the change in expec­ta­tions for them. Change is always hard, but now it is the time for that change — and if you’re on our team, you know that.”

    The may­or said vig­ils and bas­ket­ball games are “far more com­mon than the mess we saw last night.”

    ...

    ———–

    “Police chief believes Antifa, Booga­loo boys were at Rich­mond riot” by WTVR CBS 6 Web Staff; WTVR CBS 6; 07/26/2020

    “The chief of police believes mem­bers of Antifa and the Booga­loo boys were part of the hun­dreds of peo­ple who marched to Rich­mond Police Head­quar­ters Sat­ur­day night dur­ing a demon­stra­tion in sup­port of pro­test­ers in Port­land, Ore­gon. That group con­tin­ued march­ing leav­ing a path of destruc­tion that includ­ed win­dows shat­tered at restau­rants, busi­ness­es and a Vir­ginia Com­mon­wealth Uni­ver­si­ty dorm.”

    After 24 con­sec­u­tive days of peace­ful protests vio­lence and loot­ing sud­den­ly erupt­ed Sat­ur­day night in Rich­mond. Vio­lence and loot­ing that was pre­ced­ed by an online fly­er pro­mot­ing the protests and call­ing for vio­lence. Rocks and bat­ter­ies were thrown at police offi­cers and bricks were lobbed at fire­fight­ers try­ing to douse a city dump truck set on fire by some­one in the crowd. The whole nature of the protests rad­i­cal­ly changed and, lo and behold, it appears to have all been the work of ‘Booga­loo bois’ infil­tra­tors who were march­ing around town with “BLM” ply­wood shields:

    ...
    Smith said an online fly­er for the “Rich­mond Stands with Port­land” demon­stra­tion, which had been cir­cu­lat­ing for days and called for vio­lence, did not orig­i­nate in Rich­mond.”

    “We know that the ori­gin of the fly­er came from out­side of Rich­mond,” Smith said. “There are some peo­ple who are still inside some of these orga­ni­za­tions that will still give us infor­ma­tion. And that’s how we know it came from out­side of Rich­mond.

    Offi­cials said the six men arrest­ed Sat­ur­day night were not charged in the van­dal­ism and destruc­tion in sev­er­al Rich­mond neigh­bor­hoods. (Two of those sus­pects were charged with felonies: assault on a law enforce­ment offi­cer; pos­ses­sion of a firearm while riot­ing.)

    When asked when those respon­si­ble for the destruc­tion would be held respon­si­ble, Smith said police are “uti­liz­ing a lot of video to iden­ti­fy peo­ple.”

    ...

    May­or Levar Stoney opened his remarks by thank­ing peace­ful pro­test­ers with orga­ni­za­tions like Black Lives Mat­ter after what he called “24 con­sec­u­tive days of peace­ful protests.” He also thanked the police and fire depart­ments for their response Sat­ur­day night.

    ...

    Pro­jec­tiles like rocks and bat­ter­ies were thrown at police offi­cers, Stoney said. and bricks were lobbed at fire­fight­ers try­ing to douse a city dump truck that was set ablaze by some­one in the crowd.

    “That could have led to a very, very dead­ly event,” Stoney said.

    The may­or blamed white suprema­cists “march­ing under the ban­ner of Black Lives Mat­ter” for cor­rupt­ing the peace­ful social jus­tice move­ment.

    “We’ve spo­ken on many occa­sions about those who’ve cho­sen a more vio­lent route to express their dis­con­tent, and what that does for the over­all move­ment towards social jus­tice,” Stoney said. “Last night that reared its ugly head right here in the City of Rich­mond... We saw some vio­lent actions, vio­lent protests, spear­head­ed by white suprema­cists. And frankly, it was dis­gust­ing. Dis­gust­ing. As they held ply­wood shields that read, BLM, these folks toured areas of dam­age down­town, The Fan, break­ing win­dows, tag­ging pri­vate prop­er­ty with hate­ful lan­guage.”
    ...

    So that’s our two updates: an update on the very first major act of loot­ing and arson that rad­i­cal­ly changed the tone of the police bru­tal­i­ty protests and an update on one of the most recent acts of loot­ing and arson. And both updates are basi­cal­ly the same update telling us some­thing we should have already known. It’s all a hor­ri­ble reminder that the ‘Booga­loo bois’ move­ment that is ded­i­cate to incit­ing a civ­il war can’t suc­ceed with­out the help of a much larg­er par­al­lel move­ment ded­i­cat­ed to play­ing dumb about the what the Booga­loo bois are obvi­ous­ly up to.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | July 29, 2020, 3:26 pm

  12. Oh what a sur­prise: it turns out the vio­lence com­mit­ted by mem­bers of the ‘booga­loo’ far right domes­tic ter­ror move­ment dur­ing the police bru­tal­i­ty protests was far more sig­nif­i­cant and coor­di­nat­ed than pre­vi­ous­ly acknowl­edged.

    First, recall the false flag mur­der of a fed­er­al offi­cer in Oak­land, Cal­i­for­nia, by Steven Car­ril­lo and his accom­plice Robert Alvin Jus­tus Jr. that result­ed in a dead­ly stand­off with Car­ril­lo where he pub­licly left evi­dence of his ‘booga­loo’ motives.

    Next, recall the case of the two ‘booga­loo bois’ — Michael Robert Solomon from Min­neso­ta and Ben­jamin Ryan Teeter from North Car­oli­na — who formed the “Boo­jahideen” sub­group that tried to sell weapons to Hamas and join the group as mer­ce­nar­ies to raise mon­ey for the ‘booga­loo’ move­ment.

    Well, we’re now learn­ing that Car­ril­lo in reg­u­lar con­tact with Solomon and Teeter as they plot­ted attacks on law enforce­ment intend­ed to be blamed on the pro­tes­tors. And there was anoth­er ‘booga­loo’ mem­ber they were coor­di­nat­ed with: Ivan Har­ri­son Hunter, a 26-year-old from Boerne, Texas, who trav­eled to Min­neapo­lis to par­tic­i­pate in the George Floyd protests. Accord­ing to the fed­er­al charges against Hunter, wear­ing a skull mask and tac­ti­cal gear, shot 13 rounds at the south Min­neapo­lis police head­quar­ters while peo­ple were inside and loot­ed and helped set the build­ing ablaze. Two hours after the fire, Hunter mes­saged Car­ril­lo, telling him to “Go for police build­ings.” Car­ril­lo mes­saged back, “I did bet­ter lol.” This was sev­er­al hours after Car­ril­lo shot and killed fed­er­al offi­cer David Patrick Under­wood in Oak­land.

    But it sounds like Hunter had com­pa­ny in Min­neapo­lis: Solomon and Teeter. It was a May 26, 2020, Face­book post that prompt­ed Hunter dri­ve 1,000 miles Min­neapo­lis. That post was cre­at­ed by Michael Solomon. Ryan Teeter replied to the post “Lock and load boys. Boog flags are in the air, and the nation­al net­work is going off.” Hunter and Teeter con­tin­ued to com­mu­ni­cate through Face­book as they sep­a­rate­ly drove to Min­neso­ta and coor­di­nat­ed with Solomon to meet him at a Cub Foods gro­cery store near the police depart­men­t’s third precinct. “We have a team of 5,” Hunter mes­saged Solomon. So this group involved more peo­ple than just Hunter, Solomon, and Teeter. It was the evening of May 28 when the 3rd precinct police head­quar­ters was burned down. Video footage shows Hunter open­ing fire on the build­ing short­ly before it was set on fire. And in case it’s not obvi­ous this is a ter­ror move­ment, it turns out Hunter referred to him­self as a “ter­ror­ist” accord­ing to the fed­er­al com­plaint.

    So we’re final­ly see­ing fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors acknowl­edge what was always obvi­ous: the ‘booga­loo bois’ aren’t just a bunch of deranged indi­vid­u­als rad­i­cal­ized over the inter­net. They’re deranged indi­vid­u­als who have formed a nation­al domes­tic ter­ror net­work. A domes­tic ter­ror net­work that heav­i­ly relies on Face­book to first put all of the indi­vid­u­als on con­tact with each oth­er. And not just get in con­tact with each but proud­ly boast about their acts after the fact, as was the case with this group. As Bri­an Levin, direc­tor for the Cen­ter for the Study of Hate and Extrem­ism at Cal­i­for­nia State Uni­ver­si­ty, San Bernardi­no, points out in the sec­ond excerpt below, the fact that Face­book even­tu­al­ly and belat­ed cracked down on Booga­loo posts was too lit­tle too late because the peo­ple Face­book put in con­tact with each oth­er have an array of options for stay­ing in con­tact after they get kicked off of Face­book.

    Ok, first, here’s an arti­cle describ­ing how Hunter used Face­book to pub­licly brag about all the acts of vio­lence he had engaged in dur­ing the protests along with his pri­vate coor­di­na­tion with Steven Car­ril­lo:

    Star Tri­bune

    Texas mem­ber of Booga­loo Bois charged with open­ing fire on Min­neapo­lis police precinct dur­ing protests over George Floyd
    Feds say Texas adher­ent of far-right group fired on precinct build­ing, con­spired with cop killer to ignite civ­il war.

    By Andy Man­nix
    Octo­ber 24, 2020 — 12:13pm

    In the wake of protests fol­low­ing the May 25 killing of George Floyd, a mem­ber of the Booga­loo Bois opened fire on the Min­neapo­lis Police Third Precinct with an AK-47-style gun and screamed “Jus­tice for Floyd” as he ran away, accord­ing to a fed­er­al com­plaint made pub­lic Fri­day.

    A sworn affi­davit by the FBI under­ly­ing the com­plaint reveals new details about a far-right anti-gov­ern­ment group’s coor­di­nat­ed role in the vio­lence that roiled through civ­il unrest over Floyd’s death while in police cus­tody.

    Ivan Har­ri­son Hunter, a 26-year-old from Boerne, Texas, is charged with one count of inter­state trav­el to incite a riot for his alleged role in ramp­ing up vio­lence dur­ing the protests in Min­neapo­lis on May 27 and 28. Accord­ing to charges, Hunter, wear­ing a skull mask and tac­ti­cal gear, shot 13 rounds at the south Min­neapo­lis police head­quar­ters while peo­ple were inside. He also loot­ed and helped set the build­ing ablaze, accord­ing to the com­plaint, which was filed Mon­day under seal.

    Unrest flared through­out Min­neapo­lis fol­low­ing Floyd’s death, which was cap­tured on a bystander’s cell­phone video, caus­ing Gov. Tim Walz to acti­vate the Min­neso­ta Nation­al Guard. As police clashed with pro­test­ers, Hunter and oth­er mem­bers of the Booga­loo Bois dis­cussed in pri­vate Face­book mes­sages their plans to trav­el to Min­neapo­lis and ral­ly at the Cub Foods near the Third Precinct build­ing, accord­ing to fed­er­al court doc­u­ments. One of the peo­ple Hunter coor­di­nat­ed with post­ed pub­licly to social media: “Lock and load boys. Boog flags are in the air, and the nation­al net­work is going off,” the com­plaint states.

    Two hours after the police precinct was set on fire, Hunter texted with anoth­er Booga­loo mem­ber in Cal­i­for­nia, a man named Steven Car­ril­lo.

    “Go for police build­ings,” Hunter told Car­ril­lo, accord­ing to charg­ing doc­u­ments.

    “I did bet­ter lol,” Car­ril­lo replied. A few hours ear­li­er, Car­ril­lo had killed a Fed­er­al Pro­tec­tive Ser­vices offi­cer in Oak­land, Calif., accord­ing to crim­i­nal charges filed against him in Cal­i­for­nia.

    On June 1, Hunter asked Car­ril­lo for mon­ey, explain­ing he need­ed to “be in the woods for a bit,” and Car­ril­lo sent him $200 via a cash app.

    Five days lat­er, Car­ril­lo shot and killed a sheriff’s deputy in San­ta Cruz when author­i­ties tried to arrest him, accord­ing to charges filed in Cal­i­for­nia. Author­i­ties say he then stole a car and wrote “Boog” on the hood “in what appeared to be his own blood.”

    A cou­ple of days lat­er, dur­ing police protests in Austin, Texas, police pulled over a truck after see­ing three men in tac­ti­cal gear and car­ry­ing guns dri­ve away in it. Hunter, in the front pas­sen­ger seat, wore six loaded banana mag­a­zines for an AK-47-style assault rifle on his tac­ti­cal vest, accord­ing fed­er­al author­i­ties. The two oth­er men had AR-15 mag­a­zines affixed to their vests. The offi­cers found an AK-47-style rifle and two AR-15 rifles on the rear seat of the vehi­cle, a pis­tol next to the driver’s seat and anoth­er pis­tol in the cen­ter con­sole.

    Hunter denied he owned any of the weapons found in the vehi­cle. He did, accord­ing to the com­plaint, vol­un­teer that he was the leader of the Booga­loo Bois in South Texas and that he was present in Min­neapo­lis when the Third Precinct was set on fire. Police seized the guns and let Hunter and the oth­ers go.

    Hunter had bragged about his role in the Min­neapo­lis riots on Face­book, pub­licly pro­claim­ing, “I helped the com­mu­ni­ty burn down that police sta­tion” and “I didn’t’ [sic] protest peace­ful­ly Dude … Want some­thing to change? Start risk­ing felonies for what is good.”

    “The BLM pro­test­ers in Min­neapo­lis loved me [sic] fireteam and I,” he wrote on June 11. Accord­ing to the com­plaint, “fire team” is a ref­er­ence to a group he start­ed with Car­ril­lo “that responds with vio­lence if the police try to take their guns away.”

    “Hunter also referred to him­self as a ‘ter­ror­ist,’?” the com­plaint states.

    A con­fi­den­tial infor­mant told police that Hunter planned to “go down shoot­ing” if author­i­ties closed in. He didn’t. They arrest­ed him with­out inci­dent in San Anto­nio, Texas, this week, and he made his first court appear­ance Thurs­day.

    ...

    ———–

    “Texas mem­ber of Booga­loo Bois charged with open­ing fire on Min­neapo­lis police precinct dur­ing protests over George Floyd” by Andy Man­nix; Star Tri­bune; 10/24/2020

    “Ivan Har­ri­son Hunter, a 26-year-old from Boerne, Texas, is charged with one count of inter­state trav­el to incite a riot for his alleged role in ramp­ing up vio­lence dur­ing the protests in Min­neapo­lis on May 27 and 28. Accord­ing to charges, Hunter, wear­ing a skull mask and tac­ti­cal gear, shot 13 rounds at the south Min­neapo­lis police head­quar­ters while peo­ple were inside. He also loot­ed and helped set the build­ing ablaze, accord­ing to the com­plaint, which was filed Mon­day under seal.”

    He shot at the 3rd precinct police head­quar­ters with ah AK-47 while peo­ple were still inside, then helped loot the build­ing and set it on fire. So once again, we are learn­ing that worst acts of vio­lence wide­ly attrib­uted to the pro­tes­tors were insti­gat­ed by far right agent provo­ca­teurs. High­ly coor­di­nat­ed far right agent provo­ca­teurs:

    ...
    Two hours after the police precinct was set on fire, Hunter texted with anoth­er Booga­loo mem­ber in Cal­i­for­nia, a man named Steven Car­ril­lo.

    “Go for police build­ings,” Hunter told Car­ril­lo, accord­ing to charg­ing doc­u­ments.

    “I did bet­ter lol,” Car­ril­lo replied. A few hours ear­li­er, Car­ril­lo had killed a Fed­er­al Pro­tec­tive Ser­vices offi­cer in Oak­land, Calif., accord­ing to crim­i­nal charges filed against him in Cal­i­for­nia.

    On June 1, Hunter asked Car­ril­lo for mon­ey, explain­ing he need­ed to “be in the woods for a bit,” and Car­ril­lo sent him $200 via a cash app.

    ...

    “Hunter also referred to him­self as a ‘ter­ror­ist,’?” the com­plaint states.
    ...

    And yet they felt per­fect­ly fine post­ing about this on Face­book to not just cel­e­brate burn­ing down the police sta­tion but encour­age oth­ers to do the same:

    ...
    Hunter had bragged about his role in the Min­neapo­lis riots on Face­book, pub­licly pro­claim­ing, “I helped the com­mu­ni­ty burn down that police sta­tion” and “I didn’t’ [sic] protest peace­ful­ly Dude … Want some­thing to change? Start risk­ing felonies for what is good.”

    “The BLM pro­test­ers in Min­neapo­lis loved me [sic] fireteam and I,” he wrote on June 11. Accord­ing to the com­plaint, “fire team” is a ref­er­ence to a group he start­ed with Car­ril­lo “that responds with vio­lence if the police try to take their guns away.”
    ...

    And now here’s a Buz­zFeed arti­cle that describes how Hunter was first prompt­ed to trav­el to Min­neapo­lis from a May 26, 2020, post by Michael Solomon. Hunter then met up with Solomon and Teeter, along with two unnamed peo­ple that formed their “team of 5”. That’s the group that pre­sum­ably assault­ed the police sta­tion before set­ting it ablaze. As extrem­ism expert Bri­an Levin puts it, “This now tells us the Booga­loo Bois are more than just a bunch of uncon­nect­ed extremists...[It’s] a net­work for extrem­ists who com­mu­ni­cate in real time around ter­ror plots and attacks.”:

    Buz­zFeed News

    This Is How The FBI Says A Net­work Of ‘Booga­loo’ Boys Sparked Vio­lence And Death

    The killing of a fed­er­al offi­cer in Oak­land, the shoot­ing of a police sta­tion in Min­neapo­lis, and a plot to sup­ply Hamas with weapons weren’t iso­lat­ed cas­es, accord­ing to a fed­er­al indict­ment.

    Sal­vador Her­nan­dez Buz­zFeed News Reporter
    Post­ed on Octo­ber 24, 2020, at 1:03 p.m. ET

    The young man came to the protest over the police killing of George Floyd wear­ing a tac­ti­cal vest on his chest and a skull mask over his face. In grainy video footage cap­tured out­side of Minneapolis’s 3rd Police Precinct on the night of May 28, the man can be seen pulling out an AK-47 style rifle and blast­ing 13 shots into the police build­ing. The shoot­ing hap­pened short­ly before the struc­ture was set ablaze.

    On Fri­day, fed­er­al offi­cials issued a com­plaint against a 26-year-old Tex­an, Ivan Har­ri­son Hunter, they say they have iden­ti­fied as the man in the video. Hunter faces one count of par­tic­i­pat­ing in a riot, with a sen­tence of up to five years in prison.

    ...

    But along with the charge, fed­er­al offi­cials unsealed an affi­davit accus­ing Hunter of being part of a loose nation­wide net­work of vio­lent extrem­ists, known as “booga­loo” boys (also spelled “bois”). The extrem­ists con­nect­ed and com­mu­ni­cat­ed through social media apps, includ­ing Face­book, to plot and glo­ri­fy shock­ing vio­lence, includ­ing killing a fed­er­al offi­cer in Oak­land and a scheme to sup­ply Hamas with weapons to use against US sol­diers.

    For exam­ple, just a few hours after alleged­ly shoot­ing up the precinct, Hunter mes­saged an asso­ciate in Cal­i­for­nia, Steven Car­ril­lo.

    “Boog,” Hunter wrote.

    “Did,” Car­ril­lo respond­ed.

    “Go for police build­ings,” Hunter advised.

    “I did bet­ter lol,” Car­ril­lo answered. Indeed, short­ly before that exchange, accord­ing to author­i­ties, Car­ril­lo had shot and killed a Fed­er­al Pro­tec­tive Ser­vice offi­cer, David Patrick Under­wood, in Oak­land.

    Experts said the affi­davit sug­gests evi­dence of a devel­op­ment that many have long sus­pect­ed and feared: The so-called booga­loo boys may not be just dis­con­nect­ed extrem­ists who share a pen­chant for Hawai­ian shirts and chaos. They may have built nation­wide sys­tems to coor­di­nate acts of vio­lence and ter­ror.

    “This now tells us the Booga­loo Bois are more than just a bunch of uncon­nect­ed extrem­ists,” said Bri­an Levin, direc­tor for the Cen­ter for the Study of Hate and Extrem­ism at Cal­i­for­nia State Uni­ver­si­ty, San Bernardi­no. “[It’s] a net­work for extrem­ists who com­mu­ni­cate in real time around ter­ror plots and attacks.”

    Accord­ing to the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter, the booga­loo boys emerged from “antigov­ern­ment and white pow­er online spaces in the ear­ly 2010s.” They have at times called for a sec­ond Civ­il War and are well known for wear­ing flo­ral Hawai­ian shirts with cam­ou­flage fatigues and sub­scrib­ing to a range of extrem­ist ideas.

    The crim­i­nal com­plaint filed in court Fri­day reveals a net­work across the coun­try whose mem­bers have been direct­ly linked with dead­ly acts, hop­ing to incite even more vio­lence across the nation. It also reveals the vio­lent group of extrem­ists used a vari­ety of apps to com­mu­ni­cate and net­work, yet con­tin­ued to heav­i­ly rely on Face­book to not just con­nect with one anoth­er, but ampli­fy their mes­sage over a net­work that expand­ed across the coun­try, touch­ing on Oak­land, Min­neapo­lis, Texas, and across to North Car­oli­na.

    Face­book announced on June 30 that it was ban­ning the anti-gov­ern­ment net­work from its plat­form. Buz­zFeed News had pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed that the social net­work had prof­it­ed by run­ning ads for booga­loo pages.

    Despite the ban, Levin said much dam­age had already been done: The group had already great­ly expand­ed using the net­work. Now, groups like the booga­loo boys could sim­ply move their net­work out of Face­book and into oth­er encrypt­ed apps and net­works.

    “The prob­lem is they give the vac­cine after the virus has already rav­aged the body,” Levin said of the deci­sion by Face­book to ban booga­loo groups on its plat­form. “The hors­es are out of the barn now with regard to booga­loo.”

    Accord­ing to court records, it was a May 26 Face­book post that prompt­ed Hunter to drop every­thing, grab his AK-47-style rifle and make the 1,000-mile dri­ve from Austin to Min­neapo­lis, where protests over the killing of George Floyd by police had turned vio­lent.

    “I need a head­count,” the post read, ask­ing booga­loo boys mem­bers across the coun­try to respond.

    “72 hours out,” Hunter replied.

    The Face­book post Hunter respond­ed to, author­i­ties said, was post­ed by Michael Solomon, a 30-year-old who, along with Ben­jamin Ryan Teeter, is accused of try­ing to sell weapons to some­one they believed was a mem­ber of Hamas. The two also con­sid­ered becom­ing “mer­ce­nar­ies” for the ter­ror­ist group, pros­e­cu­tors alleged, in order to raise mon­ey to fund the booga­loo move­ment.

    “Lock and load boys,” Teeter alleged­ly post­ed on Face­book as he head­ed to Min­neapo­lis from North Car­oli­na. “Boog flags are in the air, and the nation­al net­work is going off.”

    As each man made their sep­a­rate dri­ves to Min­neapo­lis, fed­er­al offi­cials allege that Teeter and Hunter com­mu­ni­cat­ed most­ly through Face­book mes­sages, and coor­di­nat­ed with Solomon to even­tu­al­ly meet at a Cub Foods gro­cery store near the police department’s third precinct.

    “We have a team of 5,” Hunter mes­saged Solomon, accord­ing to the indict­ment.

    Video obtained by the FBI shows some­one wear­ing a skull mask over his head, glass­es, and a base­ball cap fir­ing into the police sta­tion that night while loot­ers were inside the build­ing. Accord­ing to the indict­ment, Hunter was iden­ti­fied as the shoot­er by a “coop­er­at­ing defen­dant.”

    Hunter alleged­ly yelled out “Jus­tice for Floyd!” and then high-fived some­one near­by.

    Days lat­er, Solomon would post a pic­ture on his Face­book page of the group stand­ing in the dark­ness out­side the Cub Foods that day, includ­ing Hunter hold­ing on to his rifle.

    Teeter would post two pic­tures with Hunter, wear­ing the same skull mask, and then mes­sage him call­ing them­selves “bat­tle bud­dies” before Hunter head­ed back down to Texas.

    “My mom would call the fbi if she knew what I do and the lev­el I’m at w[ith] iot,” Hunter alleged­ly wrote on social media.

    The group of extrem­ists con­tin­ued to com­mu­ni­cate through Face­book and oth­er apps, and even reached out to each oth­er as law enforce­ment tried to catch up to them.

    On June 1, Car­ril­lo was being sought by law enforce­ment after alleged­ly killing a fed­er­al offi­cer in Oak­land. Offi­cials said Car­ril­lo is believed to have tak­en advan­tage of the mas­sive protests that erupt­ed across the coun­try “to kill cops” to try to spark a civ­il war.

    Car­ril­lo was in hid­ing when Hunter reached out on Face­book again, ask­ing for mon­ey.

    Court records don’t explain why Hunter need­ed the mon­ey, but Car­ril­lo respond­ed that he was going to “be in the woods for a bit,” and man­aged to send Hunter $200.

    “Doing good shit out there,” Car­ril­lo alleged­ly wrote to Hunter.

    “You too king!” he replied.

    Mean­while, on Face­book, Hunter pub­licly boast­ed of com­mit­ting vio­lent acts, claim­ing he had “burned police sta­tions with black pan­thers in Min­neapo­lis.”

    “Want some­thing to change? Start risk­ing felonies for what is good,” he wrote.

    Accord­ing to the com­plaint, Hunter referred to him­self as a “ter­ror­ist,” and claimed he and Car­ril­lo were mem­bers of the “Hap­py Friends Group,” a team that would respond with vio­lence if police tried to take their guns away.

    Then on June 7, Hunter learned Car­ril­lo had been tak­en into cus­tody, accused of shoot­ing and killing a San­ta Cruz sheriff’s deputy in the process. Before offi­cers grabbed him, Car­ril­lo alleged­ly wrote “BOOG” on the hood of a white van with his own blood.

    Hunter sent a Face­book mes­sage to Teeter that day, shar­ing a link to news of the arrest.

    “Well shit,” Teeter replied.

    It was months lat­er in Sep­tem­ber that Hunter would learn that Teeter and Solomon were arrest­ed over their alleged plot to sell weapons to Hamas.

    The 26-year-old then told a con­fi­den­tial infor­mant work­ing with the FBI that it was “time to start shoot­ing” and that he was will­ing to “go down shoot­ing.”

    ———–

    “This Is How The FBI Says A Net­work Of ‘Booga­loo’ Boys Sparked Vio­lence And Death” by Sal­vador Her­nan­dez; Buz­zFeed News; 10/24/2020

    “The crim­i­nal com­plaint filed in court Fri­day reveals a net­work across the coun­try whose mem­bers have been direct­ly linked with dead­ly acts, hop­ing to incite even more vio­lence across the nation. It also reveals the vio­lent group of extrem­ists used a vari­ety of apps to com­mu­ni­cate and net­work, yet con­tin­ued to heav­i­ly rely on Face­book to not just con­nect with one anoth­er, but ampli­fy their mes­sage over a net­work that expand­ed across the coun­try, touch­ing on Oak­land, Min­neapo­lis, Texas, and across to North Car­oli­na.”

    Yep, extrem­ists have no short­age of com­mu­ni­ca­tion options. But they still rely heav­i­ly ion Face­book to not just con­nect with each oth­er but to ampli­fy their mes­sage:

    ...
    Face­book announced on June 30 that it was ban­ning the anti-gov­ern­ment net­work from its plat­form. Buz­zFeed News had pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed that the social net­work had prof­it­ed by run­ning ads for booga­loo pages.

    Despite the ban, Levin said much dam­age had already been done: The group had already great­ly expand­ed using the net­work. Now, groups like the booga­loo boys could sim­ply move their net­work out of Face­book and into oth­er encrypt­ed apps and net­works.

    “The prob­lem is they give the vac­cine after the virus has already rav­aged the body,” Levin said of the deci­sion by Face­book to ban booga­loo groups on its plat­form. “The hors­es are out of the barn now with regard to booga­loo.”

    ...

    Days lat­er, Solomon would post a pic­ture on his Face­book page of the group stand­ing in the dark­ness out­side the Cub Foods that day, includ­ing Hunter hold­ing on to his rifle.

    Teeter would post two pic­tures with Hunter, wear­ing the same skull mask, and then mes­sage him call­ing them­selves “bat­tle bud­dies” before Hunter head­ed back down to Texas.

    “My mom would call the fbi if she knew what I do and the lev­el I’m at w[ith] iot,” Hunter alleged­ly wrote on social media.

    ...

    The group of extrem­ists con­tin­ued to com­mu­ni­cate through Face­book and oth­er apps, and even reached out to each oth­er as law enforce­ment tried to catch up to them.
    ...

    In this case it was a May 26 Face­book post from Michael Solomon that got this par­tic­u­lar plan start­ed:

    ...
    Accord­ing to court records, it was a May 26 Face­book post that prompt­ed Hunter to drop every­thing, grab his AK-47-style rifle and make the 1,000-mile dri­ve from Austin to Min­neapo­lis, where protests over the killing of George Floyd by police had turned vio­lent.

    “I need a head­count,” the post read, ask­ing booga­loo boys mem­bers across the coun­try to respond.

    “72 hours out,” Hunter replied.

    The Face­book post Hunter respond­ed to, author­i­ties said, was post­ed by Michael Solomon, a 30-year-old who, along with Ben­jamin Ryan Teeter, is accused of try­ing to sell weapons to some­one they believed was a mem­ber of Hamas. The two also con­sid­ered becom­ing “mer­ce­nar­ies” for the ter­ror­ist group, pros­e­cu­tors alleged, in order to raise mon­ey to fund the booga­loo move­ment.

    “Lock and load boys,” Teeter alleged­ly post­ed on Face­book as he head­ed to Min­neapo­lis from North Car­oli­na. “Boog flags are in the air, and the nation­al net­work is going off.”

    As each man made their sep­a­rate dri­ves to Min­neapo­lis, fed­er­al offi­cials allege that Teeter and Hunter com­mu­ni­cat­ed most­ly through Face­book mes­sages, and coor­di­nat­ed with Solomon to even­tu­al­ly meet at a Cub Foods gro­cery store near the police department’s third precinct.

    “We have a team of 5,” Hunter mes­saged Solomon, accord­ing to the indict­ment.
    ...

    Who are the oth­er two mem­bers of the “team of 5”? At this point we have no idea but it’s worth recall­ing how the ini­tial arson inci­dent in Min­neapo­lis dur­ing the ear­ly days of the George Floyd Protests — the burn­ing down of an Auto­Zone store near the protests — appears to have been com­mit­ted by a mem­ber of the Aryan Cow­boy Broth­er­hood white suprema­cist gang who had embed­ded him­self in the protests dressed up like a mem­ber of antifa. It’s unclear if that Aryan Cow­boy Broth­er­hood gang mem­ber was part of this group but he was cer­tain­ly in the area with the same agen­da.

    So as the US nears Elec­tion Day with the grow­ing pos­si­bil­i­ty that Pres­i­dent Trump and the Repub­li­cans are going to turn to mili­tias an oth­er far right ter­ror to pro­vide them street ‘mus­cle’ to some­how force a Trump vic­to­ry, it’s going to be impor­tant to keep in mind that not only is there a not-so-secret nation­wide domes­tic ter­ror move­ment open­ly oper­at­ing in the US, but it’s a nation­wide domes­tic ter­ror move­ment with expe­ri­ence coor­di­nat­ing domes­tic ter­ror attacks and the largest social media plat­form on the plan­et to help them do it.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | October 27, 2020, 4:44 pm

  13. Here’s a look at the kind of per­ilous antics we can expect from the mili­tia on and after Elec­tion Day: Stew­art Rhodes, the founder of the Oath­keep­ers, made anoth­er one of his reg­u­lar appear­ances on Alex Jones’ Infowars show Tues­day. It sounds like more or less went as expect­ed. Rhodes and Jones both con­curred that Pres­i­dent Trump was assured a vic­to­ry unless Joe Biden and the Democ­rats some­how steal the elec­tion, and went on to repeat­ed­ly refer to the Tran­si­tion Integri­ty Project — a group formed in 2019 by a estab­lish­ment Democ­rats like John Podes­ta with ‘nev­er-Trumpers’ con­ser­v­a­tives like David Frum and Bill Kris­tol — as a blue­print for over­throw­ing the Trump admin­is­tra­tion. Steve Ban­non has appar­ent­ly been very keen on push­ing this idea.

    But Rhodes float­ed a new idea that gives us an idea of the kind of sce­nario we could be look­ing at dur­ing the peri­od fol­low­ing Elec­tion Day when the count­ing of votes is a high­ly con­test­ed issue: Rhodes said the Oath­keep­ers were plan­ning for a “Beng­hazi-style attack” on the White House around Elec­tion Day. This “Beng­hazi-style attack” would involve hordes of left­ist rush­ing the White House and pre­sum­ably tak­ing it over or some­thing? Rhodes warned that it would include a mil­i­tary stand-down order, so the Pen­ta­gon is appar­ent­ly going to be in on the plot. Jones explain­ing that even 500 Secret Ser­vice agents would run out of bul­lets when faced with the left­ist hoards. So like a Pen­ta­gon-backed zom­bie apoc­a­lypse attack on the White House. Just waves and waves of left-winger rush­ing the White House. Rhodes also claims that there’s a mod­ern-day “Ho Chi Minh Trail,” sup­ply­ing arms to the Amer­i­can left through Mex­i­co. Because appar­ent­ly it’s too hard to get guns in the US.

    And as absurd as this sce­nario may be, it is ground­ed in real­i­ty on one key point: there’s prob­a­bly going to be a lot of pro­tes­tors out­side the White House on and after Elec­tion Day. Espe­cial­ly if Trump does what he’s sig­nalling he’s plan­ning on doing and claim­ing the elec­tion was rigged against him and invalid. That’s the type of move that’s going to ensure mil­lions of peo­ple descend on DC in protest. So Rhodes and Jones are fram­ing those like­ly protests as part of a ““Beng­hazi-style attack” on the White House and indi­cat­ing that armed Oath­keep­ers will be there as part of some sort of Trumpian army.

    But there’s more. Rhodes also indi­cat­ed a much broad­er plan for using the post-elec­tion chaos to real­ize the civ­il war he’s long dreamed of: there’s appar­ent­ly a group of cur­rent and for­mer spe­cial forces mem­bers who are going to be car­ry­ing out attacks on the left­’s “com­mand-and-con­trol”. So that sounds like tar­get­ed assas­si­na­tion on left wing politi­cians and oth­er pub­lic fig­ures.

    It’s worth recall­ing that the White House itself has indulged in these same fan­tasies and took action actions non-vio­lent pro­tes­tors based on those fan­tasies. It was back in June of this year, when Pres­i­dent Trump first fled to the White House bunker (the Pres­i­den­tial Emer­gency Oper­a­tions Cen­ter) dur­ing a series of protests over the George Floyd killing out­side the White House. Then, after Trump report­ed­ly became embar­rassed after all the mock­ery he was receiv­ing for flee­ing to the bunker over non-vio­lent pro­tes­tors, he then had those pro­tes­tors dis­bursed with tear-gas so he could walk across the street from the White House to do a pho­to op as St. John’s Epis­co­pal Church, hold­ing a Bible. The myth of a vio­lent left­ist mob was at the core of those events.

    Also keep in mind that grow­ing evi­dence of ‘Booga­loo bois’ estab­lish­ing a nation­al net­work of indi­vid­u­als who will infil­trat­ing protests to car­ry out false-flag attacks designed to be blamed on the left. Might we see some of those ‘Booga­loo’ infil­tra­tors open­ing infil­trat­ing the inevitable protests out­side the White House on Elec­tion Day? Of course they will. The only ques­tion is whether or not the far right provo­ca­teurs will go as far as fir­ing on the White House or some oth­er high­ly provoca­tive act and how heav­i­ly coor­di­nat­ed will these acts be with the Oath­keep­er mili­tias that will be act­ing as Trump’s Prae­to­ri­an Guard:

    Talk­ing Points Memo

    Off The Deep End: Oath­keep­ers Hon­cho Warns Of ‘Beng­hazi-Style’ Com­mu­nist Attack On WH

    By Matt Shuham
    Octo­ber 28, 2020 4:40 p.m.

    The leader of an armed group that adver­tis­es thou­sands of ex-cops and vet­er­ans as mem­bers jumped the shark on Tues­day, imag­in­ing a civ­il war over the 2020 elec­tion results and play­ing out how an army of fringe gun enthu­si­asts would respond.

    Stew­art Rhodes, founder of the armed right-wing group Oath­keep­ers, also said dur­ing an appear­ance on Alex Jones’ Infowars show Tues­day that the left was seek­ing to steal the elec­tion through vio­lence against Trump sup­port­ers. He and Jones the­o­rized that a months-old exer­cise involv­ing polit­i­cal sci­en­tists and com­men­ta­tors such as Bill Kris­tol, David Frum, Max Boot and Norm Eisen was real­ly a blue­print for the over­throw of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion.

    Rhodes paused halfway through his appear­ance to acknowl­edge that the dis­cus­sion sound­ed absolute­ly insane.

    He’d just fin­ished explain­ing why Oath­keep­ers in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. were plan­ning for a “Beng­hazi-style attack” on the White House around Elec­tion Day. Such an event would include a so-called “stand down” order from Pen­ta­gon brass, Rhodes posit­ed, which would leave thou­sands of rag­ing left­ies free to fly the com­mu­nist flag over Wash­ing­ton.

    “I know it sounds out­landish, and it sounds kind of crazy, but giv­en the tra­jec­to­ry of the left and how far they’ve gone into Weath­er Under­ground ter­ror­ism already, I think we’d be fool­ish not to plan for that as a pos­si­bil­i­ty,” Rhodes said. Media Mat­ters flagged the appear­ance.

    Jones con­curred and began explain­ing that even 500 Secret Ser­vice agents would run out of bul­lets when faced with the left­ist hoards, which he described as “armies of meth­heads they’ve already got cranked up and ready to go in D.C.”

    ...

    Jones, egging the mili­tia leader on, made fre­quent ref­er­ence to the Tran­si­tion Integri­ty Project, a months-old table­top exer­cise involv­ing politi­cos of both par­ties who gamed out var­i­ous elec­tion sce­nar­ios. Some on the fringe right, Jones and Trump ally Steve Ban­non espe­cial­ly, saw the project as the bat­tle­plan for a Deep State coup against the Pres­i­dent.

    Rhodes com­plained of the left’s “gaslight­ing” and accused his polit­i­cal oppo­nents of seek­ing to intim­i­date Trump sup­port­ers and steal the elec­tion.

    “And so when those of us who are tasked with defend­ing your rights announce we’re going to stand up and pro­tect peo­ple on Elec­tion Day, they imme­di­ate­ly spin that as though we’re the ones — you know, ‘armed mili­ti­a­men are going to be out on the streets on Elec­tion Day out­side of polls to intim­i­date vot­ers,’” he griped.

    But the Oath­keep­ers leader didn’t seem too con­cerned with the demo­c­ra­t­ic process.

    “I think Trump will beat [Joe Biden] sound­ly unless it’s stolen,” Rhodes pre­dict­ed, echo­ing the Pres­i­dent him­self.

    Even­tu­al­ly, the pair got into a dis­cus­sion of the com­ing civ­il war, get­ting into the nit­ty-grit­ty details. Rhodes not­ed a mod­ern-day “Ho Chi Minh Trail,” explain­ing that it was cur­rent­ly sup­ply­ing arms to the Amer­i­can left-wing through Mex­i­co, and won­dered, after the even­tu­al bat­tle had fin­ished, what would be done with the com­mu­nists who’d betrayed their coun­try.

    “It’s kind of like the found­ing fathers deal­ing with the loy­al­ists [dur­ing the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary War],’” he said. “What do you do with these peo­ple?”

    He lat­er com­pared America’s cur­rent state to the Civ­il War, because there are “sit­ting politi­cians who are part of the enemy’s ranks.”

    Rhodes and his con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist host sur­veyed the bat­tle­field. “Law enforce­ment just needs to take mat­ters into their own hands,” Jones said, stress­ing that he was speak­ing hypo­thet­i­cal­ly, of course.

    The “aver­age Joe,” Rhodes said, would be able to pro­tect their own com­mu­ni­ty. Mean­while, high­ly trained vet­er­ans “will go for their com­mand-and-con­trol, also.” He said he’d spo­ken recent­ly to spe­cial forces vet­er­ans and “also cur­rent serv­ing” about the prospect.

    “They’re pay­ing very much atten­tion to what’s going on, and quite a few of them are wak­ing up,” he said.

    ———–

    “Off The Deep End: Oath­keep­ers Hon­cho Warns Of ‘Beng­hazi-Style’ Com­mu­nist Attack On WH” by Matt Shuham; Talk­ing Points Memo; 10/28/2020

    “He’d just fin­ished explain­ing why Oath­keep­ers in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. were plan­ning for a “Beng­hazi-style attack” on the White House around Elec­tion Day. Such an event would include a so-called “stand down” order from Pen­ta­gon brass, Rhodes posit­ed, which would leave thou­sands of rag­ing left­ies free to fly the com­mu­nist flag over Wash­ing­ton.”

    The Pen­ta­gon is in league with a vast vio­lent com­mu­nist secret army that’s get­ting read to attack the White House and fly the com­mu­nist flag over Wash­ing­ton. That’s the mes­sage Rhodes had to deliv­er to Jones’s audi­ence and Jones com­plete­ly con­curred, pre­dict­ing an army of metham­phet­a­mine addicts would lead the charge. If they weren’t being seri­ous (or play-act­ing being seri­ous for their gullible audi­ence) it was be fun­ny. Instead it’s just the lat­est reminder that the far right real­ly is plan­ning on seiz­ing this oppor­tu­ni­ty to bring about the civ­il war they’ve long dreamed of. A civ­il war where they round up all the ‘left­ist’ and either imprison or exe­cute them for trea­son:

    ...
    Jones con­curred and began explain­ing that even 500 Secret Ser­vice agents would run out of bul­lets when faced with the left­ist hoards, which he described as “armies of meth­heads they’ve already got cranked up and ready to go in D.C.”

    ...

    Jones, egging the mili­tia leader on, made fre­quent ref­er­ence to the Tran­si­tion Integri­ty Project, a months-old table­top exer­cise involv­ing politi­cos of both par­ties who gamed out var­i­ous elec­tion sce­nar­ios. Some on the fringe right, Jones and Trump ally Steve Ban­non espe­cial­ly, saw the project as the bat­tle­plan for a Deep State coup against the Pres­i­dent.

    ...

    Even­tu­al­ly, the pair got into a dis­cus­sion of the com­ing civ­il war, get­ting into the nit­ty-grit­ty details. Rhodes not­ed a mod­ern-day “Ho Chi Minh Trail,” explain­ing that it was cur­rent­ly sup­ply­ing arms to the Amer­i­can left-wing through Mex­i­co, and won­dered, after the even­tu­al bat­tle had fin­ished, what would be done with the com­mu­nists who’d betrayed their coun­try.

    “It’s kind of like the found­ing fathers deal­ing with the loy­al­ists [dur­ing the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary War],’” he said. “What do you do with these peo­ple?”

    He lat­er com­pared America’s cur­rent state to the Civ­il War, because there are “sit­ting politi­cians who are part of the enemy’s ranks.”

    ...

    The “aver­age Joe,” Rhodes said, would be able to pro­tect their own com­mu­ni­ty. Mean­while, high­ly trained vet­er­ans “will go for their com­mand-and-con­trol, also.” He said he’d spo­ken recent­ly to spe­cial forces vet­er­ans and “also cur­rent serv­ing” about the prospect.
    ...

    How will the Trump admin­is­tra­tion respond to groups of armed Oath­keep­ers show­ing up to pro­tect Trump from the hordes of pro­test­ers? Will they be dep­u­tized, like Rhodes want­ed to hap­pen in the wake of the Park­land school mas­sacre? Will they be active­ly coor­di­nat­ing with the Secret Ser­vice and/or Cap­i­tal police? What hap­pens when an Oath­keep­er fires on the pro­test­ers? Will they be her­ald­ed as heroes by the Trump admin­is­tra­tion and right-wing media? These are the kinds of ques­tions we need to be ask­ing because when it comes to whether or not Trump and the far right will cede pow­er vol­un­tar­i­ly we already got our answer. It’s the same answer we’ve been get­ting for the last four years.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | October 29, 2020, 5:09 pm

  14. With the Trump cam­paign furi­ous­ly threat­en­ing more law­suits at the same time its pre­dict­ing a vic­to­ry for Pres­i­dent Trump as ear­ly as Fri­day (tomor­row), we’re fast approach­ing one of first big post-elec­tion tests. A test for both Trump and the rest of the US: What hap­pens when it does­n’t look like Trump can secure a vic­to­ry under legal means? Does he start grum­bling about extra-legal means for stay­ing in office? A call to arms? A shout out to the Oath­keeprs or some oth­er Trumpian mili­tia? Per­haps he’ll start wear­ing Hawai­ian shirts or engage in some oth­er ‘Booga­loo’ sym­bol­ism? We don’t know what he’ll do. We just know he’s going to be REALLY tempt­ed to do some­thing, legal or not, if it’s look­ing like the Supreme Court won’t some­how save him.

    Will Trump’s words be the spark for a wave of ‘Booga­loo’ domes­tic ter­ror­ism intend­ed send the mes­sage that the US will pay a bloody price for not reelect­ing Trump? It’s an increas­ing­ly urgent ques­tion that we just might get answered in the next few days as Trump’s legal option start run­ning out. And just moments ago we got a big hint as to what to expect: Trump just gave a night­mare press con­fer­ence filled with unfound­ed alle­ga­tions of elec­tion rig­ging. He’s push­ing the big red ‘through any means nec­es­sary’ rhetor­i­cal but­ton.

    That’s all part of the con­text of the fol­low­ing very dis­turb­ing, and yet utter­ly pre­dictable, pair of arti­cles about the lat­est updates on the inves­ti­ga­tions into the under­ground net­work of Booga­loo fig­ures who have bee arrest­ed so far. Fig­ures like Steven Car­ril­lo — who shot and killed fed­er­al offi­cer Patrick Under­wood in Oak­land Cal­i­for­nia in a false flag attack intend­ed to be blamed on George Floyd pro­tes­tors — and the “team of 5” of ‘Booga­loo bois’ Car­ril­lo was direct­ly coor­di­nat­ing who embed­ded them­selves in the Min­neapo­lis George Floyd protests. Recall that, at this point, we know three of the “team of 5” mem­bers: Ivan Har­ri­son Hunter of Texas, Michael Solomon of Min­neso­ta, and Ben­jamin Ryan Teeter of North Car­oli­na. Also recall how Solomon and Teeter are both charged with try­ing to weapons to Hamas and con­sid­ered join­ing Hamas as mer­ce­nar­ies for the pur­pose of rais­ing mon­ey for the ‘Booga­loo’ move­ment.

    So here’s the update on this ‘Booga­loo’ domes­tic ter­ror net­work: fed­er­al author­i­ties arrest­ed a man for sell­ing a 3D-print­ed part that can turn semi-auto­mat­ic rifles into auto­mat­ic rifles. The man was sell­ing 3D-print­ed “innocu­ous” hooks made with two pieces over his web­site portablewallhanger.com. When dis­as­sem­bled, one piece func­tions as an ille­gal drop-in auto sear that can covert a rifle into an auto­mat­ic weapon.

    As we’ll see, the sus­pect, Tim­o­thy John Wat­son, of Ran­son, West Vir­ginia, adver­tised his busi­ness on Face­book Booga­loo groups and includ­ed on his web­site a pledge that a per­cent of all prof­its would sup­port a “Jus­tice for Dun­can Lemp” GoFundMe fundrais­er. Lemp was killed in March dur­ing the exe­cu­tion of a no-knock war­rant and has been described as a mar­tyr for the Booga­loo move­ment.

    And guess who pur­chased some of these units: Steven Car­ril­lo, who report­ed­ly used a “ghost gun” home­made machine­gun to kill Under­wood, pur­chased some of these pieces.

    We’re also told anoth­er cus­tomer in Min­neso­ta told the FBI that he ordered four 3D-print­ed drop-in auto sears in August from Wat­son’s site using mon­ey that was pro­vid­ed to him by an under­cov­er agent. He appar­ent­ly believed this under­cov­er agent was a “high-lev­el” mem­ber of a des­ig­nat­ed for­eign ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion. So while we don’t know the iden­ti­ty of this unnamed per­son, it sure sounds like it could be Michael Solomon of Min­neso­ta, who pre­sum­ably thought the FBI agent was a mem­ber of Hamas.

    How many of these “portable wall­hang­ers” did Wat­son end up sell­ing? Well, it sounds like the site was in oper­a­tion from Jan­u­ary through Octo­ber 2, and accord­ing to Pay­Pal records he sold around 600 units dur­ing this peri­od. Accord­ing to Wat­son’s stamps.com account he sent out around 362 pack­ages dur­ing this peri­od. So while we know Car­ril­lo and this net­work of Booga­loo boys got their hands on these items which Car­ril­lo used to build his own “ghost” machine­gun, we also know that this was just a tiny frac­tion of the total num­ber of these items sold. And since we also know that Wat­son was direct­ly mar­ket­ing this prod­uct to Booga­loo online groups, we can be pret­ty con­fi­dent a lot of those oth­er 600 units were like­ly sold to oth­er Booga­loo mem­bers.

    Over­all, based on the avail­able evi­dence it would appear that this sin­gle indi­vid­ual, Tim­o­thy John Wat­son, has helped cre­ate hun­dreds of “ghost” machine­guns that are pre­sum­ably in the hands of the Booga­loo domes­tic ter­ror move­ment. So if we end up see­ing a wave of mys­te­ri­ous polit­i­cal vio­lence from unknown peo­ple uti­liz­ing machine guns we have bet­ter keep this sto­ry in mind, along with the false flag tac­tics of this ter­ror move­ment:

    Her­ald Mail Media

    Feds nab Jef­fer­son Coun­ty man on charges he sold firearm parts to mem­bers of extrem­ist group

    By Matthew Umstead
    Nov 3, 2020

    MARTINSBURG, W.Va. — A Jef­fer­son Coun­ty, W.Va., man is accused of sell­ing wall hang­er kits that were actu­al­ly used to con­vert AR-15 firearms to ful­ly-auto­mat­ic machine guns to peo­ple asso­ci­at­ed with a loose­ly orga­nized anti-gov­ern­ment, extrem­ist polit­i­cal group.

    Arrest­ed Tues­day, Tim­o­thy John Wat­son, 30, of Ran­son, W.Va., faces charges of con­spir­a­cy, ille­gal pos­ses­sion and trans­fer of a machine gun and unlaw­ful­ly engag­ing in the busi­ness of man­u­fac­tur­ing firearms, accord­ing to a crim­i­nal com­plaint filed in U.S. Dis­trict Court in Mar­tins­burg and oth­er court records.

    Wat­son was being held in East­ern Region­al Jail Tues­day night after an ini­tial appear­ance before U.S. Mag­is­trate Robert W. Trum­ble, accord­ing to jail and court records.

    Accord­ing to a com­plaint filed by FBI Spe­cial Agent Mark McNeal, author­i­ties obtained records indi­cat­ing one of Wat­son’s cus­tomers was Steven Car­ril­lo, a man accused of shoot­ing secu­ri­ty offi­cers in May at the Ronald V. Del­lums Fed­er­al Build­ing and U.S. Cour­t­house in Oak­land, Calif., and the June shoot­ing of mem­bers of the San­ta Cruz (Calif.) Coun­ty Sher­if­f’s Office. A secu­ri­ty offi­cer died in the May inci­dent and a deputy also died from injuries sus­tained in the June shoot­ing, records said.

    ...

    Wat­son was alleged­ly engaged in the wall hang­er enter­prise from Jan­u­ary through Oct. 30 and was oper­at­ing his online retail busi­ness — portablewallhanger.com — from his home at 302 S. Mar­shall St. in Ran­son, court records said.

    The busi­ness sold 3D-print­ed “innocu­ous” hooks made with two pieces, but when dis­as­sem­bled, one piece func­tions as an ille­gal drop-in auto sear, which has been con­firmed by fed­er­al author­i­ties to con­vert a semi-auto­mat­ic AR-15 into a ful­ly-auto­mat­ic machine gun, McNeal not­ed in his com­plaint.

    The com­plaint said evi­dence of the poten­tial asso­ci­a­tion with Booga­loo was ini­tial­ly found on the busi­ness’ web­site, which includ­ed an adver­tise­ment that a por­tion of pro­ceeds would ben­e­fit a “Jus­tice for Dun­can Lemp” GoFundMe fundrais­er.

    Lemp was fatal­ly shot in March in Potomac, Md., dur­ing the exe­cu­tion of a no-knock war­rant, and has been described as a mar­tyr for the Booga­loo move­ment, accord­ing to McNeal’s com­plaint.

    Author­i­ties were sep­a­rate­ly told that the wall hang­er busi­ness was adver­tised on Face­book Booga­loo groups, records said.

    In addi­tion to Car­ril­lo, a cus­tomer in Min­neso­ta told the FBI that he ordered four 3D-print­ed drop-in auto sears in August from portablewallhanger.com using mon­ey that was pro­vid­ed to him by an under­cov­er agent, records said.

    The cus­tomer told author­i­ties he believed the under­cov­er agent was a “high-lev­el” mem­ber of a des­ig­nat­ed for­eign ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion, records said.

    ———–

    “Feds nab Jef­fer­son Coun­ty man on charges he sold firearm parts to mem­bers of extrem­ist group” by Matthew Umstead; Her­ald Mail Media; 11/03/2020

    “Accord­ing to a com­plaint filed by FBI Spe­cial Agent Mark McNeal, author­i­ties obtained records indi­cat­ing one of Wat­son’s cus­tomers was Steven Car­ril­lo, a man accused of shoot­ing secu­ri­ty offi­cers in May at the Ronald V. Del­lums Fed­er­al Build­ing and U.S. Cour­t­house in Oak­land, Calif., and the June shoot­ing of mem­bers of the San­ta Cruz (Calif.) Coun­ty Sher­if­f’s Office. A secu­ri­ty offi­cer died in the May inci­dent and a deputy also died from injuries sus­tained in the June shoot­ing, records said.”

    The guy set out to sup­ply the Booga­loo move­ment with auto­mat­ic weapons and, sure enough, Steven Car­ril­lo ends up buy­ing one of his “portable wall­hang­ers” and builds him­self a “ghost” machine­gun that was used to kill a fed­er­al offi­cer. Mis­sion accom­plished:

    ...
    The com­plaint said evi­dence of the poten­tial asso­ci­a­tion with Booga­loo was ini­tial­ly found on the busi­ness’ web­site, which includ­ed an adver­tise­ment that a por­tion of pro­ceeds would ben­e­fit a “Jus­tice for Dun­can Lemp” GoFundMe fundrais­er.

    Lemp was fatal­ly shot in March in Potomac, Md., dur­ing the exe­cu­tion of a no-knock war­rant, and has been described as a mar­tyr for the Booga­loo move­ment, accord­ing to McNeal’s com­plaint.

    Author­i­ties were sep­a­rate­ly told that the wall hang­er busi­ness was adver­tised on Face­book Booga­loo groups, records said.
    ...

    And then there’s the cus­tomer who thought pur­chased the items with mon­ey he thought was com­ing from a “high-lev­el” mem­ber of a for­eign ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion. If this was­n’t Michael Solomon, who thought he was deal­ing with Hamas, then there’s anoth­er for­eign ter­ror­ist group involved with this move­ment that we don’t yet know about. But this was prob­a­bly Solomon, giv­en the avail­able evi­dence:

    ...
    In addi­tion to Car­ril­lo, a cus­tomer in Min­neso­ta told the FBI that he ordered four 3D-print­ed drop-in auto sears in August from portablewallhanger.com using mon­ey that was pro­vid­ed to him by an under­cov­er agent, records said.

    The cus­tomer told author­i­ties he believed the under­cov­er agent was a “high-lev­el” mem­ber of a des­ig­nat­ed for­eign ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion, records said.
    ...

    And now here’s an arti­cle that gives us a sense of just how many of these “portable wall­hang­ers” he sold: Around 600 units sent to around 362 loca­tions. That’s a lot of ghost machine­guns in the hands of domestric ter­ror­ists:

    The Jour­nal

    Ran­son man alleged to have sold ille­gal gun parts across 46 states

    By Kelsie LeRose
    11/4/2020

    MARTINSBURG — A Ran­son man was arrest­ed by fed­er­al author­i­ties on Tues­day after inves­ti­ga­tions allege he cre­at­ed an online retail store to sell 3D print­ed wall hang­ers used to con­vert an AR-15 into a ful­ly-auto­mat­ic machine gun.

    Tim­o­thy John Wat­son, 30, accord­ing to a 32-page crim­i­nal com­plaint filed in U.S. Dis­trict Court, faces charges of con­spir­a­cy, ille­gal pos­ses­sion and trans­fer of a machine gun and unlaw­ful­ly engag­ing in the busi­ness of man­u­fac­tur­ing firearms.

    The FBI alleges in the com­plaint that Wat­son cre­at­ed “portablewallhanger.com” to sell 3D print­ed innocu­ous hooks, made with two pieces; how­ev­er, when dis­as­sem­bled, one of the pieces func­tions as an ille­gal drop-in auto sear for the afore­men­tioned con­ver­sion. It is said he man­u­fac­tured and dealt the parts from Jan. 8 to Oct. 30.

    The busi­ness is alleged to have been run from his South Mar­shall Street apart­ment, inves­ti­ga­tors said.

    Oth­er alleged evi­dence, put forth in the com­plaint, con­nects Wat­son to the web­site includ­ing email, Insta­gram and Pay­Pal accounts. The Pay­Pal account was alleged­ly cre­at­ed with Wat­son’s address asso­ci­at­ed to the account.

    Court records show that Pay­Pal account has alleged­ly made 600 trans­ac­tions from Jan. 8 to Oct. 2. It is also alleged a stamps.com account reg­is­tered to Wat­son showed 362 ship­ments.

    Among a cou­ple oth­er alle­ga­tions, inves­ti­ga­tors say in the com­plaint that there are items of evi­dence asso­ci­at­ing the busi­ness of Portable Wall Hang­er with the “Booga­loo” move­ment.

    ...

    ————

    “Ran­son man alleged to have sold ille­gal gun parts across 46 states” by Kelsie LeRose; The Jour­nal; 11/04/2020

    “Court records show that Pay­Pal account has alleged­ly made 600 trans­ac­tions from Jan. 8 to Oct. 2. It is also alleged a stamps.com account reg­is­tered to Wat­son showed 362 ship­ments”

    How many of those 600 trans­ac­tions result­ed in a work­able machine­gun? We have no idea. We just know they prob­a­bly aren’t being used as portable wall­hang­ers. Than, and who­ev­er bought these things are prob­a­bly the type of peo­ple who have spent months psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly prepar­ing them­selves to kill for Trump’s glo­ry.

    It’s all a chill­ing reminder that it only takes a few ingre­di­ents to make the ‘lead­er­less resis­tance’ mod­el of far right ter­ror­ism that has long been brew­ing in the Unit­ed States a lot scari­er. Ingre­di­ents like 3D-print­able ghost machine­gun parts. And ingre­di­ents like lead­er­ship from the nation’s pur­port­ed leader.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | November 5, 2020, 4:43 pm

  15. With each day that Pres­i­dent Trump refused to con­cede his elec­tion loss and dou­bled and tripled-down on alle­ga­tions of mas­sive mail-in vot­er fraud, the ques­tion of whether or the rest of the Repub­li­can Par­ty’s lead­er­ship would fall in line with Trump became less a ques­tion of if they would fall in line and more a ques­tion of how soon they would find a way to do so. And we have our answers. Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader Mitch McConnell come out back­ing Trump’s refusals to con­cede on Mon­day while Sen­a­tor Lind­sey Gra­ham is telling Repub­li­cans that if Trump con­cedes there will nev­er be anoth­er Repub­li­can pres­i­dent elect­ed again. Basi­cal­ly the entire par­ty is ral­ly­ing around what­ev­er vot­er fraud fic­tion the White House comes up with and we’re prob­a­bly set to see a future purg­ing of any elec­tion Repub­li­can offi­cials who don’t back Trump’s mas­sive vot­er fraud claims. Trump’s final gift to Amer­i­ca’s democ­ra­cy could be an even more extreme Repub­li­can Par­ty primed for call­ing any elec­tion it los­es a result of mass vot­er fraud. Or maybe his final gift will be an open civ­il war and the end of Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy. Either sce­nario is look­ing entire­ly plau­si­ble at this point. All that was required with the com­plete moral col­lapse of the Repub­li­can Par­ty and that hap­pened a while ago.

    So it’s worth not­ing one of the more bizarre but poten­tial­ly sig­nif­i­cant sto­ries that emerged over the week­end: the “Q” per­sona for QAnon phe­nom­e­na has­n’t made a peep since elec­tion day and it’s freak­ing the QAnon sup­port­ers out. Giv­en that QAnon rep­re­sents a main­stream­ing of what amounts to a mod­ern­ized ver­sion of the Pro­to­cols of the Elders of Zion and the fact that a large per­cent­age of Repub­li­can vot­ers are “Q” fol­low­ers, the role “Q” might play or might not play in this post-elec­tion peri­od is a very big deal. Pres­i­dent Trump clear­ly has the pow­er to send his base into a vio­lent fren­zy should he choose to go down that path. But he’s not alone in that. “Q” has that pow­er too. If “Q” wants to unleash a ‘Hot’ civ­il war all they have to do is leave the appro­pri­ate­ly inter­pretable “crumbs” for their gullible fol­low­ing. Their vast gullible fol­low­ing that appears to grow larg­er and more dan­ger­ous no mat­ter how many times the pre­dic­tions of “Q” go wrong. The mantra of “trust the plan” — and the fer­vent wish that some sort of “plan” real­ly exists where Trump secret­ly works with the mil­i­tary to mass arrest the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Satan­ic Illu­mi­nati that secret­ly runs every­thing — is that pow­er­ful.

    Then there’s the oth­er recent major twist in this sto­ry: The “Q” per­sona might be up for sale. At least that appears to be the case based on the account of Neon Revolt — an anony­mous blog­ger with a large QAnon fol­low­ing — who claimed that he saw what appeared to be an offer to sell the con­trol of the “Q” per­sona for $1 mil­lion on the Dark Web. It was appar­ent­ly on a Dark Web auc­tion site that has enough cred­i­bil­i­ty to sug­gest it’s as real offer.

    So how exact­ly could Q be put up for sale? Well, there’s long been spec­u­la­tion that “Q” is either Jim Watkins — the own­er of the “8Kun” site that Q posts on — or that Watkins at least has the pow­er to become Q any time he wants. This is based on the rea­son­ing that the “trip­codes” and oth­er means Q uses to “authen­ti­cate” their posts are triv­ial­ly easy to break and that if “Q” real­ly was an anony­mous poster who logs into 8Kun to post their mes­sages there would like­ly be all sorts of com­plete­ly fake “Q” mes­sages too from peo­ple try­ing to mess with the grift. But that has­n’t been the case, which has led to the sus­pi­cion that Watkins is active­ly involved in man­ag­ing which mes­sages are allowed to be post­ed as “Q” on his 8Kun mes­sage board. In oth­er words, whether or not Watkins is active­ly “Q”, he’s still some­one with the pow­er to decide who gets to have that role. In that sense, sell­ing access to the “Q” phe­nom­e­na for $1 mil­lion is at least tech­ni­cal­ly plau­si­ble.

    So the one enti­ty that has the pow­er that rivals Trump’s to make a real “call to arms” to mil­lions of Trump sup­port­ers is up for sale. Now. Right when Trump and the GOP are increas­ing­ly look­ing ready to make that fate­ful call to arms. Whether or not Trump is plan­ning on ulti­mate­ly leav­ing office peace­ful­ly, he’s clear­ly plan­ning on leav­ing peace­ful­ly in a man­ner that sows the seeds of future con­flict. A future con­flict that could be trig­gered by a for­mer-Pres­i­dent Trump or “Q”, assum­ing Q con­tin­ues to main­tain its sway with its fol­low­ers.

    And that points towards one of the oth­er dan­ger­ous twists in all this: The whole nar­ra­tive that “Q” has been sell­ing its adher­ents on is the nar­ra­tive that Trump is going to mass arrest the Satan­ic Illu­mi­nati (((Democ­rats))). Many Q fol­low­ers have appar­ent­ly already latched onto the the­o­ry that Trump’s loss was all part of “the plan”. The big plan Trump and Q have been work­ing on all along. It’s the dark­ness before the dawn. Trump and Q just want­ed to give the Democ­rats the oppor­tu­ni­ty to engage in mass vot­er fraud so the evi­dence could be col­lect­ed and shown to the Amer­i­can peo­ple. Now we’re just wait­ing for Trump and Q to spring their trap. A trap that pre­sum­ably involves call­ing in the mil­i­tary to car­ry out the mass arrests. So the “Q” enti­ty has an immense amount of val­ue right now. But if Trump does end up leav­ing office with­out that mass arrest that’s a major blow to Q’s cred­i­bil­i­ty. Cred­i­bil­i­ty that’s cur­rent­ly being main­tained with one last promise that Trump los­ing was part of the plan all along. So if some­one does buy “Q” per­sona priv­i­leges for $1 mil­lion they might only have a cou­ple of months to real­ly exploit those powers...unless Trump and Q real­ly do fol­low through their threats to unleash some sort of vio­lent insur­rec­tion, at which point Q becomes a top gen­er­al in the new Civ­il Hot War:

    The Dai­ly Beast

    QAnon Lost and Con­fused After Trump’s Elec­tion Show­ing
    STORM-LESS

    The con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists have been forced to reck­on with some­thing they didn’t expect. And some have begun sim­ply advanc­ing more con­spir­a­cies.
    Will Som­mer
    Updat­ed Nov. 07, 2020 1:00PM ET
    Pub­lished Nov. 06, 2020 9:47PM ET

    Aside from per­haps Don­ald Trump him­self, no one is strug­gling more with the president’s re-elec­tion defeat than QAnon con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists.

    Since Oct. 2017, when the mys­te­ri­ous “Q” first began issu­ing clues on the anony­mous mes­sage board 4Chan, QAnon believ­ers have been promised that Trump would bring down a “cabal” of pedophile-can­ni­bals in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, Hol­ly­wood, and bank­ing with mass waves of arrests in a cathar­tic moment called “The Storm.” They have been promised that The Storm would solve not only the world’s biggest prob­lems, but their own. At var­i­ous points, they have even con­vinced each oth­er that Trump would solve dis­eases like can­cer and absolve crush­ing med­ical and cred­it card debts.

    But as Joe Biden built his lead in Penn­syl­va­nia, QAnon fol­low­ers were faced with their great­est chal­lenge yet. For years, they’ve been told that—no mat­ter how bad things looked for Trump on the outside—the pres­i­dent and the mil­i­tary had every­thing in hand. “Patri­ots were in con­trol,” Q told them in one pop­u­lar mot­to, “Enjoy the show.”

    Now, it’s start­ing to look to even some of the most ded­i­cat­ed followers—some of whom have sac­ri­ficed fam­i­ly in their devo­tion to the con­spir­a­cy theory—that QAnon might actu­al­ly have been non­sense. And they aren’t sure what to do.

    “It’s hard to keep the faith when your wife and daugh­ters have left you and we didn’t get the deci­sive MOAB win we deserved on elec­tion night!!” com­plained one QAnon sup­port­er on a QAnon forum on Fri­day, as QAnon believ­ers tried to cheer one anoth­er up. “No win for me-PERI­OD!!”

    The 2020 elec­tion results have shak­en the faith of QAnon believ­ers. Some have tak­en to despair. Oth­ers began pro­mot­ing new con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries, such as one that alleged bal­lot “water­marks” would save the elec­tion for Trump.

    QAnon believ­ers have faced dis­ap­point­ment before. The entire con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry launched with the idea that Hillary Clin­ton would be arrest­ed by the end of Octo­ber 2017 and shipped to Guan­tanamo Bay. When that failed to hap­pen, they decid­ed that they had mis­read the clues, or that Clin­ton had been arrest­ed and was wear­ing an ankle bracelet, or that she real­ly was impris­oned and the Clin­ton appear­ing at book sign­ings and in TV inter­views was real­ly a clone.

    QAnon has faced elec­tion loss­es before, too. In 2018, Q promised that Repub­li­cans would weath­er the midterms, only to be proven wrong—a con­tra­dic­tion that one-time QAnon sup­port­er and new­ly elect­ed con­gress­woman Mar­jorie Tay­lor Greene (R‑GA) has claimed shook her faith in QAnon.

    But Trump’s elec­tion defeat promis­es to under­mine the entire project in an unprece­dent­ed way, leav­ing “The Storm” unful­filled and the “cabal” intact.

    The dis­ap­point­ment of a Trump loss also comes at a tumul­tuous time inter­nal­ly for QAnon. Ron Watkins, an admin­is­tra­tor on QAnon hub 8kun, whose tech­ni­cal access would the­o­ret­i­cal­ly let him post as Q or at least know Q’s iden­ti­ty, announced that he was step­ping back from the site. Neon Revolt, an anony­mous blog­ger who’s amassed a fol­low­ing in the QAnon com­mu­ni­ty, implied this week that the “Q” account was for sale online for $1 mil­lion, an idea that brought into ques­tion the con­spir­a­cy theory’s foun­da­tions.

    Mak­ing mat­ters worse, QAnon believ­ers had been left to deal with Trump’s dwin­dling bal­lots lead with­out their mas­ter­mind, since Q stopped post­ing after elec­tion day. Even more omi­nous­ly, a QAnon believ­er was arrest­ed in Philadel­phia on Thurs­day near the bal­lot-count­ing site with QAnon mer­chan­dise and an AR-15-style rifle.

    Of course, QAnon believ­ers can always invent a new bizarre claim to reaf­firm their beliefs, even if only for a lit­tle while. In this case, some of them have cre­at­ed a hoax about a fic­ti­tious bal­lot water­mark.

    The ori­gins of the water­mark claim cen­ter on a viral Face­book post that assert­ed the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty had plant­ed secret “blockchain” water­marks on legit­i­mate bal­lots. The post, which went viral on a “Stop the Steal” Face­book group with more than 300,000 mem­bers before Face­book shut it down, posit­ed that DHS cre­at­ed those water­marks as a sting oper­a­tion to test how many true legit­i­mate bal­lots emerged after the elec­tion.

    “The DEMS fell right into the trap of this sting oper­a­tion and TRUMP has it all!!!” the post, which has been screen­shot­ted and copy-past­ed into forms across social media, read.

    If you thought prime-time Fox was out of con­trol last night, it’s PBS New­sHour com­pared to what’s cir­cu­lat­ing in Q‑adjacent quar­ters of social media. A friend’s very sweet, very Chris­t­ian mom sent him this: pic.twitter.com/WL9NMp71aq— David French (@DavidAFrench) Novem­ber 6, 2020

    For water­mark believ­ers, Biden bal­lots in bat­tle­ground states will be wiped away as fraud­u­lent once DHS and the Nation­al Guard step in. After that, the the­o­ry goes, top Democ­rats will, as always, be arrest­ed.

    The con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry was fur­ther fueled by an InfoWars inter­view with Alex Jones asso­ciate Steve Pieczenik, who claimed that the water­marks were real. It was also aid­ed by a wide­ly cir­cu­lat­ed, but ulti­mate­ly fraud­u­lent screen­shot of a sup­posed DHS press release that claimed to show the depart­ment admit­ting to the scheme and claim­ing near­ly half of all Biden bal­lots in Michi­gan, for exam­ple, were fake.

    “DHS announces elec­tion audit sting after con­tentious US elec­tion sparks con­fu­sion and out­rage from elec­tion skep­tics,” the head­line on the bogus press release reads.

    And yet, the water­mark con­spir­a­cy has tak­en off. Twit­ter replies to top Repub­li­cans like Trump and his sons have filled up with diehard Trump believ­ers ask­ing for con­fir­ma­tion of the alleged sting.

    ...

    The water­mark con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry has bust­ed out of QAnon’s con­fines. News­max White House cor­re­spon­dent Emer­ald Robin­son nod­ded at the the­o­ry on Fri­day, tweet­ing that “lots of my fol­low­ers have been ask­ing me to check into a sto­ry that DHS put a water­mark on elec­tion bal­lots to ver­i­fy them.”

    Lots of my fol­low­ers have been ask­ing me to check into a sto­ry that DHS put a water­mark on elec­tion bal­lots to ver­i­fy them. So I checked.Would you like to hear what I found out?— Emer­ald Robin­son ?? (@EmeraldRobinson) Novem­ber 6, 2020

    It also reg­u­lar­ly appears among talk radio show callers, baf­fling even hard-right hosts. Glenn Beck was forced to address the water­mark hoax on his show on Fri­day, point­ing out that one of its tenets—that one paper com­pa­ny sup­plies all the paper bal­lots in the country—obviously isn’t true.

    ...

    ————

    “QAnon Lost and Con­fused After Trump’s Elec­tion Show­ing” by Will Som­mer; The Dai­ly Beast; 11/07/2020

    “The dis­ap­point­ment of a Trump loss also comes at a tumul­tuous time inter­nal­ly for QAnon. Ron Watkins, an admin­is­tra­tor on QAnon hub 8kun, whose tech­ni­cal access would the­o­ret­i­cal­ly let him post as Q or at least know Q’s iden­ti­ty, announced that he was step­ping back from the site. Neon Revolt, an anony­mous blog­ger who’s amassed a fol­low­ing in the QAnon com­mu­ni­ty, implied this week that the “Q” account was for sale online for $1 mil­lion, an idea that brought into ques­tion the con­spir­a­cy theory’s foun­da­tions.”

    Is “Q” going to sud­den­ly reemerge? Per­haps with a slight­ly dif­fer­ent style of com­mu­ni­ca­tion? Per­haps more inclined to call for open vio­lence? We’ll see, but if some­one pays $1 mil­lion for the right to speak for “Q” they pre­sum­ably have big plans.

    But let’s not for­get that you don’t need to speak as “Q” to heav­i­ly influ­ence the QAnon com­mu­ni­ty for trig­ger a call to arms. When two armed QAnon sup­port­ers were arrest­ed after show­ing up at a Philadel­phia vote count­ing loca­tion last week with some sort a plan to invade the build­ing, it was­n’t “Q” or Trump who issued the call to arms. It was an anony­mous text mes­sage sent to Trump sup­port­ers that trig­gered them. The mes­sage urged Trump sup­port­ers to ral­ly out­side of the vote count­ing cen­ter and claimed Democ­rats were try­ing to steal the elec­tion. We don’t know who exact­ly sent the text. We know it was sent by the com­pa­ny Opn Sesame, which has been used by both the Trump cam­paign and the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee this year for send­ing out direct text mes­sages. The company’s CEO is Gary Coby, the Trump campaign’s dig­i­tal direc­tor. But we aren’t told which of Opn Sesames GOP clients sent out this par­tic­u­lar mes­sage. It could have been the Trump cam­paign. Maybe the RNC. Or maybe some oth­er Trump-con­nect­ed client. Either way, who­ev­er sent those texts man­aged to pro­vide two heav­i­ly armed QAnon sup­port­ers to show up ready to fight for Trump’s, and Q’s, glo­ry. All it took was an anony­mous text mes­sage:

    Asso­ci­at­ed Press

    Incen­di­ary texts traced to out­fit run by top Trump aide

    By FRANK BAJAK and GARANCE BURKE
    Novem­ber 6, 2020

    BOSTON (AP) — A tex­ting com­pa­ny run by one of Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s top cam­paign offi­cials sent out thou­sands of tar­get­ed, anony­mous text mes­sages urg­ing sup­port­ers to ral­ly where votes were being count­ed in Philadel­phia on Thurs­day, false­ly claim­ing Democ­rats were try­ing to steal the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion.

    The mes­sages direct­ed Trump fans to con­verge at a down­town inter­sec­tion where hun­dreds of pro­test­ers from the oppos­ing can­di­dates’ camps faced off Thurs­day after­noon. Penn­syl­va­nia is a cru­cial bat­tle­ground state where for­mer Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s jumped ahead Fri­day and in a tele­vised address lat­er pre­dict­ed a vic­to­ry that would give him the pres­i­den­cy.

    “This kind of mes­sage is play­ing with fire, and we are very lucky that it does not seem to have dri­ven more con­flict,” said John Scott-Rail­ton, senior researcher at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toronto’s online watch­dog Cit­i­zen Lab. Scott-Rail­ton helped track down the source.

    The texts were sent using phone num­bers leased to the text-mes­sag­ing plat­form Opn Sesame, said two peo­ple famil­iar with the mat­ter who spoke on con­di­tion they not be fur­ther iden­ti­fied. The company’s CEO is Gary Coby, the Trump campaign’s dig­i­tal direc­tor. It pro­vides text-mes­sag­ing ser­vices to GOP clients includ­ing the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee.

    “ALERT: Rad­i­cal Lib­er­als & Dems are try­ing to steal this elec­tion from Trump! We need YOU!” the text said, direct­ing recip­i­ents to “show your sup­port” on a street cor­ner near the Philadel­phia Con­ven­tion Cen­ter where votes were being count­ed and ten­sions were run­ning high.

    A top Trump cam­paign offi­cial, speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, said the mes­sage did not come from the cam­paign. Because Opn Sesame is used by mul­ti­ple cus­tomers, none of whom the com­pa­ny would iden­ti­fy, it could not be deter­mined exact­ly who sent the mes­sage. Coby declined to com­ment.

    ...

    Among those who received the ral­ly­ing text was Chris Bray, who lives in rur­al Bucks Coun­ty, about 25 miles out­side Philadel­phia.

    A reg­is­tered Inde­pen­dent who said he vot­ed for Biden, Bray said he was very sur­prised to see the mes­sage pop up on his phone since he nev­er signed up for any­thing relat­ed to the Trump cam­paign.

    “I actu­al­ly texted a num­ber of oth­er friends to say ‘hey, have you guys been get­ting robo-texts like this?’” Bray said Fri­day. “It was a call to action. It bor­ders on that the rhetoric that we’ve been hear­ing for months now and that’s real­ly dan­ger­ous if you get the right peo­ple togeth­er with a slight screw loose, we just don’t know what can hap­pen.”

    Lat­er Thurs­day night, two men were arrest­ed near the con­ven­tion cen­ter for car­ry­ing loaded hand­guns with­out a per­mit, Police Com­mis­sion­er Danielle Out­law said. Dis­trict Attor­ney Lar­ry Kras­ner said there were no indi­ca­tions they were part of an extrem­ist group. Their vehi­cle bore a win­dow stick­er for the right-wing con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry QAnon and an AR-style rifle and ammu­ni­tion inside, Out­law said.

    The text mes­sages were sent using 13 dif­fer­ent phone num­bers iden­ti­fied by RoboKiller, a mobile phone app that lets users block text and voice spam, said com­pa­ny vice pres­i­dent Giu­lia Porter. RoboKiller traced the num­bers to Twilio, a gate­way for bulk-mes­sag­ing ser­vices.

    After being noti­fied, Twilio shut down the num­bers, say­ing in a state­ment that the texts “were sent with­out con­sumer opt-out lan­guage, which is in direct con­tra­ven­tion of our poli­cies.” A com­pa­ny spokesman declined fur­ther com­ment.

    About 80 mil­lion polit­i­cal text mes­sages have been sent dai­ly since Sep­tem­ber in the U.S. — many of those from the Trump camp echo­ing his base­less claims that Democ­rats were try­ing to steal the elec­tion, said RoboKiller’s Porter. They are high­ly tar­get­ed.

    Polit­i­cal text-mes­sag­ing cam­paigns can exploit the same flaws in telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions infra­struc­ture that let robo­callers hide their ori­gin. They can spoof the num­bers they call from and auto-blast thou­sands of texts with a sin­gle mouse click.

    Opn Sesame has earned mil­lions as a hub of text-mes­sag­ing efforts for the Trump cam­paign and the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee this elec­tion cycle, said a dig­i­tal Repub­li­can strate­gist, who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty for fear of polit­i­cal ret­ri­bu­tion.

    Face­book and Twit­ter cracked down on dis­in­for­ma­tion in the runup to the elec­tion, mak­ing text mes­sag­ing and robo­calls more attrac­tive to those seek­ing to spread false and some­times dan­ger­ous mes­sages direct­ly to vot­ers via their phones.

    “The extent to which these com­pa­nies are rely­ing upon loop­holes in the law and a lack of reg­u­la­tion in this space has real­ly stag­gered me,” said Sam Wool­ley, a mis­in­for­ma­tion and com­pu­ta­tion­al pro­pa­gan­da researcher at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at Austin.

    “They real­ly want to cir­cum­vent the need to rely social media firms which is why they are using these pri­vate mech­a­nisms,” he added. “They are using tech that we don’t think of as par­tic­u­lar­ly new, tex­ting, call­ing, but using them in ways that are very Machi­avel­lian.”

    ———–

    “Incen­di­ary texts traced to out­fit run by top Trump aide” by FRANK BAJAK and GARANCE BURKE; Asso­ci­at­ed Press; 11/06/2020

    “Lat­er Thurs­day night, two men were arrest­ed near the con­ven­tion cen­ter for car­ry­ing loaded hand­guns with­out a per­mit, Police Com­mis­sion­er Danielle Out­law said. Dis­trict Attor­ney Lar­ry Kras­ner said there were no indi­ca­tions they were part of an extrem­ist group. Their vehi­cle bore a win­dow stick­er for the right-wing con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry QAnon and an AR-style rifle and ammu­ni­tion inside, Out­law said.”

    QAnon stick­ers and an AR-style rifle. That’s who respond­ed to this anony­mous text mes­sage ask­ing Trump sup­port­ers to show up at that loca­tion to stop the Democ­rats from steal­ing the elec­tion.

    Accord­ing to RoboKiller, around 80 mil­lion polit­i­cal text mes­sages have already been sent since Sep­tem­ber and many of those mes­sages were from the Trump cam­paign spread­ing claims that Democ­rats are try­ing to steal the elec­tion. So who sent the texts? Well, the com­pa­ny’s CEO is the Trump cam­paign’s dig­i­tal direc­tor, tut we’re told by an anony­mous top Trump cam­paign offi­cial that it was­n’t them. Now, obvi­ous­ly this anony­mous offi­cial is prob­a­bly just lying. But if not, was it the RNC who sent this? If not them, who? It’s not mere­ly a ques­tion that would help us get to the bot­tom of this sto­ry. Because as the arti­cle notes, the Trump cam­paign appar­ent­ly fig­ured out that direct text mes­sag­ing is an effec­tive means of get­ting around social media bar­ri­ers to spread­ing mis­in­for­ma­tion. So the more out­landish and inflam­ma­to­ry the Trump cam­paign’s mes­sag­ing gets, the more valu­able text mes­sag­ing becomes. This ‘old tech’ is iron­i­cal­ly a new fron­tier for dis­in­for­ma­tion:

    ...
    The texts were sent using phone num­bers leased to the text-mes­sag­ing plat­form Opn Sesame, said two peo­ple famil­iar with the mat­ter who spoke on con­di­tion they not be fur­ther iden­ti­fied. The company’s CEO is Gary Coby, the Trump campaign’s dig­i­tal direc­tor. It pro­vides text-mes­sag­ing ser­vices to GOP clients includ­ing the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee.

    “ALERT: Rad­i­cal Lib­er­als & Dems are try­ing to steal this elec­tion from Trump! We need YOU!” the text said, direct­ing recip­i­ents to “show your sup­port” on a street cor­ner near the Philadel­phia Con­ven­tion Cen­ter where votes were being count­ed and ten­sions were run­ning high.

    A top Trump cam­paign offi­cial, speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, said the mes­sage did not come from the cam­paign. Because Opn Sesame is used by mul­ti­ple cus­tomers, none of whom the com­pa­ny would iden­ti­fy, it could not be deter­mined exact­ly who sent the mes­sage. Coby declined to com­ment.

    ...

    About 80 mil­lion polit­i­cal text mes­sages have been sent dai­ly since Sep­tem­ber in the U.S. — many of those from the Trump camp echo­ing his base­less claims that Democ­rats were try­ing to steal the elec­tion, said RoboKiller’s Porter. They are high­ly tar­get­ed.

    Polit­i­cal text-mes­sag­ing cam­paigns can exploit the same flaws in telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions infra­struc­ture that let robo­callers hide their ori­gin. They can spoof the num­bers they call from and auto-blast thou­sands of texts with a sin­gle mouse click.

    Opn Sesame has earned mil­lions as a hub of text-mes­sag­ing efforts for the Trump cam­paign and the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee this elec­tion cycle, said a dig­i­tal Repub­li­can strate­gist, who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty for fear of polit­i­cal ret­ri­bu­tion.

    Face­book and Twit­ter cracked down on dis­in­for­ma­tion in the runup to the elec­tion, mak­ing text mes­sag­ing and robo­calls more attrac­tive to those seek­ing to spread false and some­times dan­ger­ous mes­sages direct­ly to vot­ers via their phones.
    ...

    Keep in mind that we’ve already seen the far right around the globe pounce on a tech­nol­o­gy that’s very sim­i­lar to direct text mes­sag­ing and also far more dif­fi­cult for tech com­pa­nies to reg­u­late: the Face­book-owned encrypt­ed What­sApp app has been deployed by far right par­ties like Mod­i’s BJP or Jair Bol­sonar in Brazil for years to wage high­ly effec­tive dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paigns. Direct text mes­sag­ing is just like the old school ver­sion of that same method. And unlike What­sApp, you don’t need to down­load an app to your phone. You just need a phone that can receive text mes­sages. That’s it. As long as the Trump team or RNC can get your phone num­ber they can send you text mes­sages that say any­thing. And say it anony­mous­ly, appar­ent­ly. Kind of like “Q”, but some­how with even less cred­i­bil­i­ty.

    And that’s an overview of how eas­i­ly some­one, any­one, can strike that rhetor­i­cal match to spark some­thing much more seri­ous. “Q”, arguably the most influ­en­tial voice in right-wing pol­i­tics today, is pos­si­bly for sale. But don’t waste your mon­ey if you’re look­ing to pur­chase the pro­pa­gan­dis­tic pow­er to cre­ate real dam­age. Thanks in large part to the wild suc­cess Trump, “Q”, an the rest of the right-wing dis­in­fo­tain­ment com­plex at dri­ving psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly vul­ner­a­ble Amer­i­cans mad, anony­mous text mes­sages will appar­ent­ly suf­fice.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | November 9, 2020, 5:12 pm

  16. Fol­low­ing up on the recent arti­cle about Par­ler — the new Mer­cer-financed far right friend­ly Twit­ter-like social media plat­form, has explod­ed in pop­u­lar­i­ty with con­ser­v­a­tive audi­ences over the last month due in part to aggres­sive pro­mo­tion by main­stream right-wing media, cre­at­ed a shared space between aver­age con­ser­v­a­tives and mem­bers of groups like Atom­waf­fen — here’s an arti­cle about a pro-Trump ral­ly in Raleigh, North Car­oli­na, that rep­re­sents a dis­turb­ing in-per­son exam­ple of the grow­ing asso­ci­a­tions between main­stream con­ser­v­a­tives and far right extrem­ists. A grow­ing asso­ci­a­tion that’s tak­ing place in the con­text of Pres­i­dent Trump’s active efforts to build a ‘lost cause’ griev­ance myth of mas­sive 2020 elec­tion fraud:

    Raw Sto­ry

    ‘We will exter­mi­nate you’: Proud Boys and oth­er right-wing Trump diehards con­front counter-pro­test­ers at Raleigh ral­ly

    By Jor­dan Green, Spe­cial to Raw Sto­ry
    Pub­lished Novem­ber 29, 2020

    A band of COVID deniers, neo-Con­fed­er­ates and pro-Trump diehards, aug­ment­ed by a 50-strong Proud Boy secu­ri­ty detail, marched around the Governor’s Man­sion in down­town Raleigh on Sat­ur­day, fir­ing up a far-right coali­tion to car­ry on the fight as their pres­i­dent faces the real­i­ty of leav­ing office.

    The post-Thanks­giv­ing ral­ly was co-orga­nized by Joshua Flo­res of Stop the Steal NC and Lati­nos for Free­dom, who brought in Reopen NC to help him pro­mote it on Face­book. But the Proud Boys — ref­er­enced by Flo­res as his “pri­vate secu­ri­ty” in a Face­book Live video two days pri­or to the event — took the most promi­nent posi­tion in the ral­ly as they spread out along a block of East Jones Street and taunt­ed antifas­cist counter-pro­test­ers.

    Flo­res had pro­mot­ed the Thanks­giv­ing potluck as a fam­i­ly-friend­ly event, and urged atten­dees to not engage with counter-pro­test­ers, warn­ing that they would be asked to leave if they failed to hon­or the request, and adding that “the Proud Boys” would also “have the author­i­ty to kick you out.” He also sug­gest­ed, “Try not to use major cuss words, if you don’t mind.”

    The request was almost far­ci­cal con­sid­er­ing the Proud Boys’ his­to­ry of incit­ing con­flict through pro­fan­i­ty-laced taunts that are often barbed with misog­y­ny and homo­pho­bia.

    True to form, a Proud Boy named Jere­my Berti­no picked up a bull­horn a cou­ple min­utes after the offi­cial 11:30 a.m. start time and addressed the counter-pro­test­ers across the street.

    “Amer­i­ca will nev­er be a com­mu­nist nation — nev­er!” Berti­no said as fel­low Proud Boys lined the side­walk wear­ing tac­ti­cal vests and trade­mark yel­low and black gear. “Your side will lose. We will exter­mi­nate you like the rats you are…. Exter­mi­nate you!”

    Berti­no kicked off a chant of, “Fu ck antifa.”

    Anoth­er Proud Boy wore a patch with the let­ters “S‑B-S‑B,” a ref­er­ence to Trump’s infa­mous elec­tion-debate direc­tive: “Proud Boys — stand back and stand by.”

    Berti­no wore a patch with the let­ters “R‑W-D‑S” — short for “right-wing death squads.” Mass killing of polit­i­cal oppo­nents is a theme wide­ly pro­mot­ed by Proud Boys and oth­er far-right extrem­ists who cel­e­brate Chilean dic­ta­tor Augos­to Pinochet’s gris­ly prac­tice dur­ing the 1970s of dis­ap­pear­ing oppo­si­tion activists by drop­ping them out of heli­copters.

    Pre­view­ing the in-real-life show­down on Sat­ur­day, Berti­no post­ed a pho­to of North Car­oli­na antifas­cist Lind­say Ayling on the Par­ler social media plat­form, encour­ag­ing fol­low­ers to make a con­test out of Pho­to­shop­ping her image, while mak­ing a vio­lent and misog­y­nis­tic claim that “she has an affin­i­ty for alpha males and heli­copters” and hash-tag­ging the post #antifawhore.

    Berti­no told Raw Sto­ry he was mere­ly “trolling” Ayling, but the Proud Boys’ goof­ball pre­sen­ta­tion — nam­ing cere­als dur­ing their ini­ta­tion rite, for exam­ple — con­ve­nient­ly pro­vides plau­si­ble deni­a­bil­i­ty for any expressed fan­tasies of vio­lence.

    Berti­no also denied that his “exter­mi­na­tion” remarks were per­son­al­ly direct­ed at the counter-pro­test­ers, although his own words say oth­er­wise.

    Through­out the four-hour event, uniden­ti­fied men with bull­horns stood behind the Proud Boys and exco­ri­at­ed the counter-pro­test­ers.

    “You guys are mak­ing lists,” one of the men said. “We’re mak­ing lists, too.” He added a ref­er­ence to “9mm” ammu­ni­tion that was oth­er­wise inaudi­ble. Anoth­er time, the man addressed the counter-pro­test­ers, say­ing, “You are in a very dan­ger­ous posi­tion. You are in the vast minor­i­ty.” Berti­no told Raw Sto­ry he did not hear the com­ment and could not iden­ti­fy the speak­er.

    Anoth­er uniden­ti­fied man told the counter-pro­test­ers: “Don­ald Trump has stirred the pot. You think you’ve cap­tured him. But all you’ve done is wok­en us up. You think this is gonna end? No!” The speak­er also called the counter-pro­test­ers lazy and accused them of not under­stand­ing Chris­tian­i­ty.

    The right-wing group, which broad­ly expressed defi­ance of COVID restric­tions and loy­al­ty to Don­ald Trump, out-num­bered counter-pro­test­ers almost two to one.
    Drawn from Raleigh activists who have been protest­ing against police bru­tal­i­ty since late May, along with antiracists and antifas­cists who are vet­er­ans of efforts to remove Con­fed­er­ate mon­u­ments, the counter-pro­test­ers respond­ed in kind with taunts toward the Proud Boys. One sign held by a counter-pro­test­er read, “Proud Boy Thugs: 21st Cen­tu­ry Nazi Brown Shirts.” Anoth­er showed a depic­tion of a Con­fed­er­ate flag, a swasti­ka and the name “Trump,” con­clud­ing, “3 gen­er­a­tions of losers.”

    ...

    Around 1 p.m., Tara LaRosa, an MMA fight­er, led an advance team of Proud Boys into the street, with Berti­no and oth­ers act­ing as mar­shals as the larg­er group of right-wing activists marched around the governor’s res­i­dence. It’s unclear whether they had a per­mit for the march.

    The marchers chant­ed “Reopen NC,” “No more masks,” “We are the repub­lic,” and “Silent no more.”

    Reopen NC leader Ash­ley Smith and her hus­band, Adam Smith, addressed the crowd with a bull­horn at the entrance of the Governor’s Man­sion as the right-wing activists held the street, with tight secu­ri­ty from the Proud Boys. At the direc­tion of one of the co-orga­niz­ers, the Proud Boys eject­ed two reporters, from Raw Sto­ry and INDY Week.

    The right-wing activists staked out an alter­nate real­i­ty, with one woman insist­ing to reporters: “Don­ald Trump won the elec­tion.”

    Jay Thax­ton, a North Car­oli­na Proud Boy, blocked a reporter’s cam­era. He said, “When you guys start writ­ing real news, we won’t have a prob­lem with you.”

    A cou­ple wear­ing shirts pro­mot­ing QAnon — a con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry that posits Trump as a hero work­ing beyond the scenes to van­quish an elite glob­al cabal of pedophiles — strolled through the cor­don of Proud Boys to join the ral­ly. The man, who declined to give his name, told a reporter: “I pray that God would help you see both sides of the issue, not being right or left. We have a Bill of Rights.”

    Ear­li­er in the ral­ly, before the right-wing activists broke out cov­ered dish­es for their defi­ant potluck, Reopen NC leader Ash­ley Smith addressed them.

    ...

    In antic­i­pa­tion of Thanks­giv­ing, on Nov. 10, Gov. Coop­er issued an exec­u­tive order lim­it­ing the num­ber of peo­ple at indoor gath­er­ings to no more than 10. On Nov. 23, he fol­lowed up with anoth­er exec­u­tive order requir­ing masks in all pub­lic indoor set­tings.

    As jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the restric­tions, the most recent exec­u­tive order cit­ed record high COVID-19 dai­ly case counts and hos­pi­tal­iza­tions in North Car­oli­na.

    “We are at a crit­i­cal point, and I am writ­ing to update you on the wors­en­ing surge of COVID cas­es in our com­mu­ni­ty and health sys­tem, and to share the actions we are tak­ing,” wrote Cone Health Chief Oper­at­ing Offi­cer Mary Jo Cagle in a memo to staff on Nov. 20.

    Cone Health serves Greens­boro, North Carolina’s third largest city. Cagle said that dur­ing the pre­vi­ous week, the num­ber of COVID patients in the hos­pi­tal sys­tem leapt by almost 50 per­cent, from 95 to 142. She warned that the Green Val­ley facil­i­ty, Cone’s spe­cial COVID hos­pi­tal, was near­ing capac­i­ty.

    Like the Proud Boys, Adam Smith, the hus­band of the Reopen leader, has expressed a will­ing­ness to resort to vio­lence to uphold his belief sys­tem.

    In May, he car­ried a rifle through down­town Raleigh while march­ing along­side a booga­loo-inspired group that flout­ed North Carolina’s law against car­ry­ing dan­ger­ous weapons dur­ing a demon­stra­tion. The polit­i­cal­ly var­ied group includ­ed an array of Sec­ond Amend­ment hard­lin­ers, includ­ing a neo-Nazi, an avowed anar­chist and self-described con­sti­tu­tion­al­ists. One of the armed men who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the walks, Ben­jamin Ryan Teeter, is now fac­ing fed­er­al charges of attempt­ing to pro­vide mate­r­i­al sup­port to Hamas.

    In May, Adam Smith post­ed a Face­book Live video say­ing that peo­ple must be will­ing to kill, if nec­es­sary, to resist emer­gency orders — or what he described as “tyran­ny.”

    “But are we will­ing to kill peo­ple? Are we will­ing to lay down our lives?” he asked. “We have to say, ‘Yes.’ We have to say, ‘Yes.’ Is that vio­lence. Is that ter­ror­ism? I’m not try­ing to strike fear in peo­ple by say­ing, ‘I’m going to kill you.’ I’m gonna say, ‘If you bring guns, I’m gonna bring guns. If you’re armed with this, we’re going to be armed with this.’”

    On Sat­ur­day, Lind­say Ayling, the antifas­cist activist, said she observed a Proud Boy point her out to Smith. Then, she said, Smith said, “Lind­say, I’m going to kill you.”

    Smith respond­ed by text to Raw Sto­ry: “Of course I didn’t say that!… That’s ridicu­lous.”

    Ayling insist­ed that she heard the state­ment clear­ly and con­firmed with anoth­er per­son that they heard it, too. She post­ed a video on Twit­ter show­ing Smith point­ing in her direc­tion and then wig­gling his fin­gers in a motion that sug­gests pulling a trig­ger. Smith was stand­ing next to Berti­no at the time, and just before mak­ing the ges­ture, Smith yelled, “We are the peo­ple. We are the pow­er.”

    Raleigh, NC. Trump ral­ly is a pathet­ic excuse for a Thanks­giv­ing par­ty. So far it’s just a bunch of Proud Boys and neo-Con­fed­er­ates yelling taunts.When anti-racists promise a potluck, we deliv­er. pic.twitter.com/P4PXznh9tv— Lind­say Ayling (@AylingLindsay) Novem­ber 28, 2020

    As Trump’s polit­i­cal and legal options for hang­ing onto the pres­i­den­cy evap­o­rate, the Raleigh event and oth­er ral­lies at state capi­tols are help­ing to main­tain the ten­u­ous alliance of vio­lent nation­al­ists, Chris­t­ian-right extrem­ists and con­spir­a­cy-mon­gers that are intent on pre­vent­ing a left turn as Biden takes office. At the moment, much of that ener­gy is focused on a planned pro-Trump ral­ly on Dec. 12, two days before Biden’s elec­tion is made offi­cial as states cast their elec­toral votes. The Proud Boys have pro­mot­ed the event through their Telegram account, and the gath­er­ing is expect­ed to be a reprise of the chaot­ic Mil­lions for MAGA march on Nov. 14, which Proud Boys and oth­er far-right groups treat­ed as a moment of tri­umph.

    Berti­no stood at the side of Proud Boys Chair­man Enrique Tar­rio at the Wash­ing­ton Mon­u­ment that night as Tar­rio exult­ed after a clash with left-wing oppo­nents.

    “I mean, we prac­ti­cal­ly cleaned the streets right there where they’re sit­ting at BLM Plaza,” Tar­rio said. “They’re cor­ralled in, and there’s like a hun­dred of ’em, when usu­al­ly there’s thou­sands of ’em. And you know who we have to thank for that?

    “All of us,” he con­tin­ued. “And this right here shows you the pow­er when we the right-wing unite, and we get togeth­er. And we don’t bick­er about stu­pid sh it.”

    ———–

    “‘We will exter­mi­nate you’: Proud Boys and oth­er right-wing Trump diehards con­front counter-pro­test­ers at Raleigh ral­ly” by Jor­dan Green; Raw Sto­ry; 11/29/2020

    “The post-Thanks­giv­ing ral­ly was co-orga­nized by Joshua Flo­res of Stop the Steal NC and Lati­nos for Free­dom, who brought in Reopen NC to help him pro­mote it on Face­book. But the Proud Boys — ref­er­enced by Flo­res as his “pri­vate secu­ri­ty” in a Face­book Live video two days pri­or to the event — took the most promi­nent posi­tion in the ral­ly as they spread out along a block of East Jones Street and taunt­ed antifas­cist counter-pro­test­ers.”

    Yep, at the heart of this protest con­sist­ing of pro-Trump sup­port­ers and neo-Con­fed­er­ates was the Proud Boys — the same group that Trump noto­ri­ous told to “stand back and stand by” dur­ing a pres­i­den­tial debate a cou­ple of months ago — act­ing as the “pri­vate secu­ri­ty” for the co-orga­niz­er of “Stop the Steal”. The Proud Boys were lit­er­al­ly tasked with being the the enforcers of decen­cy among the right-wing pro­test­ers. So, of course, we find that the Proud Boy Jere­my Berti­no was wear­ing a “right-wing death squads” patch and threat­en­ing to “exter­mi­nate” the “oth­er side”:

    ...
    Flo­res had pro­mot­ed the Thanks­giv­ing potluck as a fam­i­ly-friend­ly event, and urged atten­dees to not engage with counter-pro­test­ers, warn­ing that they would be asked to leave if they failed to hon­or the request, and adding that “the Proud Boys” would also “have the author­i­ty to kick you out.” He also sug­gest­ed, “Try not to use major cuss words, if you don’t mind.”

    The request was almost far­ci­cal con­sid­er­ing the Proud Boys’ his­to­ry of incit­ing con­flict through pro­fan­i­ty-laced taunts that are often barbed with misog­y­ny and homo­pho­bia.

    True to form, a Proud Boy named Jere­my Berti­no picked up a bull­horn a cou­ple min­utes after the offi­cial 11:30 a.m. start time and addressed the counter-pro­test­ers across the street.

    “Amer­i­ca will nev­er be a com­mu­nist nation — nev­er!” Berti­no said as fel­low Proud Boys lined the side­walk wear­ing tac­ti­cal vests and trade­mark yel­low and black gear. “Your side will lose. We will exter­mi­nate you like the rats you are…. Exter­mi­nate you!”

    Berti­no kicked off a chant of, “Fu ck antifa.”

    Anoth­er Proud Boy wore a patch with the let­ters “S‑B-S‑B,” a ref­er­ence to Trump’s infa­mous elec­tion-debate direc­tive: “Proud Boys — stand back and stand by.”

    Berti­no wore a patch with the let­ters “R‑W-D‑S” — short for “right-wing death squads.” Mass killing of polit­i­cal oppo­nents is a theme wide­ly pro­mot­ed by Proud Boys and oth­er far-right extrem­ists who cel­e­brate Chilean dic­ta­tor Augos­to Pinochet’s gris­ly prac­tice dur­ing the 1970s of dis­ap­pear­ing oppo­si­tion activists by drop­ping them out of heli­copters.
    ...

    And note the role Par­ler played in this: Berti­no also post­ed a pho­to of Lind­say Ayling, a North Car­oli­na antifas­cist, on Par­ler with jokes to her affin­i­ty for heli­copters, an obvi­ous ref­er­ence to the mass mur­der of left­ists by Argenti­na’s right-wing death squads. And then the hus­band of the leader of one of the anti-COVID-lock­down groups at the event end­ed up mak­ing a death threat at the ral­ly towards Ayling:

    ...
    Pre­view­ing the in-real-life show­down on Sat­ur­day, Berti­no post­ed a pho­to of North Car­oli­na antifas­cist Lind­say Ayling on the Par­ler social media plat­form, encour­ag­ing fol­low­ers to make a con­test out of Pho­to­shop­ping her image, while mak­ing a vio­lent and misog­y­nis­tic claim that “she has an affin­i­ty for alpha males and heli­copters” and hash-tag­ging the post #antifawhore.

    ...

    Like the Proud Boys, Adam Smith, the hus­band of the Reopen leader, has expressed a will­ing­ness to resort to vio­lence to uphold his belief sys­tem.

    In May, he car­ried a rifle through down­town Raleigh while march­ing along­side a booga­loo-inspired group that flout­ed North Carolina’s law against car­ry­ing dan­ger­ous weapons dur­ing a demon­stra­tion. The polit­i­cal­ly var­ied group includ­ed an array of Sec­ond Amend­ment hard­lin­ers, includ­ing a neo-Nazi, an avowed anar­chist and self-described con­sti­tu­tion­al­ists. One of the armed men who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the walks, Ben­jamin Ryan Teeter, is now fac­ing fed­er­al charges of attempt­ing to pro­vide mate­r­i­al sup­port to Hamas.

    In May, Adam Smith post­ed a Face­book Live video say­ing that peo­ple must be will­ing to kill, if nec­es­sary, to resist emer­gency orders — or what he described as “tyran­ny.”

    “But are we will­ing to kill peo­ple? Are we will­ing to lay down our lives?” he asked. “We have to say, ‘Yes.’ We have to say, ‘Yes.’ Is that vio­lence. Is that ter­ror­ism? I’m not try­ing to strike fear in peo­ple by say­ing, ‘I’m going to kill you.’ I’m gonna say, ‘If you bring guns, I’m gonna bring guns. If you’re armed with this, we’re going to be armed with this.’”

    On Sat­ur­day, Lind­say Ayling, the antifas­cist activist, said she observed a Proud Boy point her out to Smith. Then, she said, Smith said, “Lind­say, I’m going to kill you.”

    Smith respond­ed by text to Raw Sto­ry: “Of course I didn’t say that!… That’s ridicu­lous.”

    Ayling insist­ed that she heard the state­ment clear­ly and con­firmed with anoth­er per­son that they heard it, too. She post­ed a video on Twit­ter show­ing Smith point­ing in her direc­tion and then wig­gling his fin­gers in a motion that sug­gests pulling a trig­ger. Smith was stand­ing next to Berti­no at the time, and just before mak­ing the ges­ture, Smith yelled, “We are the peo­ple. We are the pow­er.”
    ...

    Then there’s the now oblig­a­tory QAnon folks at at the ral­ly. Recall the report about the leaked Dis­cord serv­er chat logs that revealed the “Red Storm” chat serv­er set up to act as a com­mon forum for main­stream con­ser­v­a­tives, QAnon adher­ents, and neo-Nazis to coor­di­nate in get­ting Repub­li­cans elect­ed in the 2018 elec­tions. This ral­ly was basi­cal­ly the real-life ver­sion of that Dis­cord chat serv­er:

    ...
    A cou­ple wear­ing shirts pro­mot­ing QAnon — a con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry that posits Trump as a hero work­ing beyond the scenes to van­quish an elite glob­al cabal of pedophiles — strolled through the cor­don of Proud Boys to join the ral­ly. The man, who declined to give his name, told a reporter: “I pray that God would help you see both sides of the issue, not being right or left. We have a Bill of Rights.”

    ...

    As Trump’s polit­i­cal and legal options for hang­ing onto the pres­i­den­cy evap­o­rate, the Raleigh event and oth­er ral­lies at state capi­tols are help­ing to main­tain the ten­u­ous alliance of vio­lent nation­al­ists, Chris­t­ian-right extrem­ists and con­spir­a­cy-mon­gers that are intent on pre­vent­ing a left turn as Biden takes office. At the moment, much of that ener­gy is focused on a planned pro-Trump ral­ly on Dec. 12, two days before Biden’s elec­tion is made offi­cial as states cast their elec­toral votes. The Proud Boys have pro­mot­ed the event through their Telegram account, and the gath­er­ing is expect­ed to be a reprise of the chaot­ic Mil­lions for MAGA march on Nov. 14, which Proud Boys and oth­er far-right groups treat­ed as a moment of tri­umph.
    ...

    Final­ly, note the mes­sage from Proud Boys Chair­man Enrique Tar­rio at the ral­ly about the pow­er of unit­ing the right-wing. It’s the same theme of the August 2017 “Unite the Right” ral­ly of Char­lottesville:

    ...
    Berti­no stood at the side of Proud Boys Chair­man Enrique Tar­rio at the Wash­ing­ton Mon­u­ment that night as Tar­rio exult­ed after a clash with left-wing oppo­nents.

    “I mean, we prac­ti­cal­ly cleaned the streets right there where they’re sit­ting at BLM Plaza,” Tar­rio said. “They’re cor­ralled in, and there’s like a hun­dred of ’em, when usu­al­ly there’s thou­sands of ’em. And you know who we have to thank for that?

    “All of us,” he con­tin­ued. “And this right here shows you the pow­er when we the right-wing unite, and we get togeth­er. And we don’t bick­er about stu­pid sh it.”
    ...

    And Enrique Tar­rio was cor­rect. When main­stream con­ser­v­a­tives and the far right unite they real­ly do have more pow­er. Specif­i­cal­ly, pow­er in the form of Brown­shirts-like armed groups that will roam around ter­ror­iz­ing the rest of the pop­u­lace into sub­mis­sion. It’s not the kind of pow­er that will nec­es­sar­i­ly trans­late into more polit­i­cal pow­er in a democ­ra­cy, but that’s pre­sum­ably not a huge con­cern for move­ments that cel­e­brate right-wing deaths squads and the exter­mi­na­tion of their polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion. Espe­cial­ly now that they have Trump’s “they stole the elec­tion from me!” griev­ance nar­ra­tive to work with.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | November 30, 2020, 3:57 pm

  17. Here’s a very dis­turb­ing sto­ry about a recent­ly dis­cov­ered white nation­al­ist domes­tic ter­ror plot that relates to a num­ber of dif­fer­ent domes­tic ter­ror plots we’ve seen over the years:
    Accord­ing to an war­rant that was unsealed last week in Wis­con­sin’s East­ern U.S. Dis­trict Court, three peo­ple are the sub­ject of the inves­ti­ga­tion into the plot, one aged 17 who was tasked with act­ing as a recruiter. The plot, dubbed Oper­a­tion “Lights Out”, was a plan to simul­ta­ne­ous­ly take down the pow­er grid across the US by fir­ing high-pow­ered rifles at elec­tri­cal grid pow­er sub­sta­tions. It’s eeri­ly rem­i­nis­cent of the noto­ri­ous mil­i­tary-style attack on the PG&E pow­er grid sub­sta­tion in 2013 with a rifle that took place the day after the Boston Marathon bomb­ing and caused a mas­sive strain on the region­al pow­er sup­ply. And it was deter­mined by experts at the time that if mul­ti­ple such an attack was car­ried out simul­ta­ne­ous­ly it could cause a mas­sive region­al black­out.

    So what fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tors have just revealed is a plot to do exact­ly that: simul­ta­ne­ous­ly rifle attacks on mul­ti­ple pow­er grid sub­sta­tions intend­ed to cause a mas­sive black­out.

    Note that the Met­calf attack sniper was nev­er iden­ti­fied but inves­ti­ga­tors did even­tu­al­ly con­clude that it was like­ly done by an insid­er. So for all we know, that insid­er could have been advis­ing these plot­ters or oth­ers with sim­i­lar schemes.

    It sounds like the plot was already get­ting devel­oped by Novem­ber of 2019, when the 17 year old shared plans with rough­ly 10 oth­er peo­ple. So while three peo­ple are under inves­ti­ga­tion, the actu­al plot pre­sum­ably involved many more peo­ple, espe­cial­ly if simul­ta­ne­ous sub­sta­tion attacks were being planned. The tar­get date was to have the plan “oper­a­tion” by the 2024 elec­tion. That time was cho­sen because because they report­ed­ly pre­dict­ed that a Demo­c­rat would win the elec­tion in 2024. So it’s some sort of plot intend­ed to be acti­vat­ed in the event of a Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­cy. More alarm­ing­ly, the time­line was intend­ed to be moved up if Trump lost the 2020 elec­tion, so this is a plot that was pre­sum­ably going to be put in action soon after Biden takes office.

    We don’t yet have iden­ti­ties on the indi­vid­u­als involved, but we do have some inter­est­ing clues. The 17 year old was intend­ing on mov­ing from Ohio to Oshkosh, Wis­con­sin, to live with one of the oth­er plot­ters. That’s inter­est­ing in rela­tion to the recent domes­tic ter­ror plot dis­cov­ered in Michi­gan where they were plan­ning on abduct­ing Gov­er­nor Whit­mer and trans­port­ing her to Wis­con­sin where she would be held on tri­al for trea­son and exe­cut­ed. It was a mul­ti-state plot that report­ed­ly involved meet­ings in Ohio. Might Oper­a­tion “Lights Out” be part of this broad­er mul­ti-state plot to over­throw state gov­ern­ments?

    We’re also told that the areas the plot­ters were plan­ning on attack­ing sub­sta­tions includ­ed Col­orado Springs, Col­orado, and both Jack­sonville and Mia­mi in Flori­da. So it sounds like all of Flori­da was intend­ed to lose pow­er. This is inter­est­ing in part because we have the sto­ry from last week of those two indi­vid­u­als — Duane Lee Storey and Cody Sean Brels­ford — who trav­eled from Col­orado to Flori­da before engag­ing in a ran­dom high­way shoot­ing spree west of Tal­la­has­see until they were final­ly arrest­ed and told inves­ti­ga­tors that “now is the time for war”. Were those two part of this larg­er inter­state plot?

    The plan to black out Flori­da is also a reminder of the Atom­waf­fen plot to wage a mor­tar attack on a Mia­mi-area nuclear pow­er plant with the inten­tion of forc­ing a mass depop­u­la­tion of Flori­da so a Fourth Reich could be set up there. And that brings us to the third clue about the nature of this group: The 17 year old recruiter was report­ed­ly using encrypt­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tion apps to encour­age his recruit­ment tar­gets to read books by James Mason. It’s not par­tic­u­lar­ly sur­pris­ing that these would be Mason fans giv­en the nature of the plan, but it’s a con­fir­ma­tion that this is a group oper­at­ing under the “Accel­er­a­tionist” par­a­digm of using domes­tic ter­ror attacks to ulti­mate­ly desta­bi­lize and over­throw soci­ety. Which, again, rais­es the ques­tion of whether or not this plot was some­how an exten­sion of that ear­li­er Atom­waf­fen plot to cause a nuclear melt­down in Flori­da to make space for a new Fourth Reich. But whether or not this is direct­ly an Atom­waf­fen plot, it’s def­i­nite­ly the kind of plot Atom­waf­fen would approve of:

    WISN

    Feds: White suprema­cy ter­ror plot time­line tied to Trump elec­tion loss

    The inves­ti­ga­tion was revealed in a fed­er­al search war­rant unsealed Thurs­day in the U.S. Dis­trict Court East­ern Dis­trict of Wis­con­sin.

    Der­rick Rose
    Anchor/Investigative Reporter
    WISN Updat­ed: 9:54 AM CST Dec 12, 2020

    MILWAUKEE —

    A white suprema­cy ter­ror plot tar­get­ing pow­er grids across the coun­try was to have its oper­a­tional sta­tus accel­er­at­ed if Pres­i­dent Don­ald J. Trump lost the 2020 elec­tion, an FBI infor­mant told inves­ti­ga­tors, accord­ing to a new­ly unsealed fed­er­al search war­rant.

    Accord­ing to the war­rant, which was unsealed Thurs­day in Wis­con­sin’s East­ern U.S. Dis­trict Court, three peo­ple were the sub­ject of the inves­ti­ga­tion.

    The per­son described by inves­ti­ga­tors as a recruiter for the plot was as young as 17 years old.

    That per­son, accord­ing to the war­rant, planned to move from Ohio to Oshkosh and live with one of the oth­er sus­pects under inves­ti­ga­tion.

    The teen, agents write in the war­rant affi­davit, used mul­ti­ple encrypt­ed apps to encour­age fol­low­ers to read books by neo-Nazi James Mason and oth­ers with white suprema­cist ide­ol­o­gy.

    “To make Amer­i­ca Great Again, you had to make it white again,” Mason is quot­ed by agents of hav­ing said of Pres­i­dent Don­ald J. Trump’s 2016 elec­tion vic­to­ry.

    Infor­mant to @FBIMilwaukee on white suprema­cy ter­ror plot — “The time­line for being oper­a­tional would accel­er­ate if @realDonaldTrump lost the 2020 elec­tion.” @WISN12News pic.twitter.com/BczrteWQbk— Der­rick Rose (@DRoseTV) Decem­ber 12, 2020

    In Novem­ber 2019, inves­ti­ga­tors said the 17-year-old shared plans with a group of as many as 10 peo­ple to attack the U.S. elec­tric grid in an oper­a­tion dubbed “Lights Out.”

    “The plan was to knock out key pow­er grids by strate­gi­cal­ly shoot­ing rifle rounds into pow­er sub-sta­tions cost­ing the gov­ern­ment mil­lions in recov­ery spend­ing,” the infor­mant told inves­ti­ga­tors, accord­ing to the records.

    The tar­gets includ­ed Mia­mi and Jack­sonville in Flori­da and a sub­sta­tion in Col­orado Springs, Col­orado.

    ...

    Of the time­line, inves­ti­ga­tors said the infor­mant told them the teen “want­ed the group to be ‘oper­a­tional’ by the 2024 elec­tion because he believed it was like­ly a Demo­c­rat would be elect­ed at the time.”

    The infor­mant added, “The time­line for being oper­a­tional would accel­er­ate if Pres­i­dent Trump lost the 2020 elec­tion,” accord­ing to the doc­u­ment.

    ———–

    “Feds: White suprema­cy ter­ror plot time­line tied to Trump elec­tion loss” by Der­rick Rose; WISN; 12/12/2020

    “The infor­mant added, “The time­line for being oper­a­tional would accel­er­ate if Pres­i­dent Trump lost the 2020 elec­tion,” accord­ing to the doc­u­ment.”

    Well, let’s hope inves­ti­ga­tors caught all the plot­ters. At least enough of them to pre­vent a coor­di­nat­ed pow­er grid attack. Because if not, we prob­a­bly should­n’t be super shocked if the US expe­ri­ences a series of mas­sive black­outs in com­ing months. Mas­sive black­outs, maybe some abduc­tions and exe­cu­tions of Demo­c­ra­t­ic politi­cians, and per­haps a nuclear melt­down or two. And a Fourth Reich, if all goes accord­ing to plan.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | December 14, 2020, 5:17 pm

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