MP3 (One 30-minute segment)
NB: This stream contains FTRs 681 and 682 in sequence. Each is a 30-minute segment.
Introduction: Noting recent developments with regard to German Nazi lawyer Jurgen Rieger (who coined (pictured at right) the term “specialized knowledge and abilities”), the program begins with his recent appointment to become Vice-President of the NPD, the top German neo-Nazi party. Rieger advocated that Nazis and fascists worldwide adopt the tactic of infiltrating military and law-enforcement establishments in order to acquire “specialized knowledge and abilities” which they can apply to overthrowing their respective governments. (This broadcast is a follow-up to FTR #27.)
The bulk of the program is devoted to an article from Salon.com. Due to the over-extension of the military resulting from U.S. involvement in two wars, the armed services have been forced to lower recruiting standards, permitting white supremacists and neo-Nazis to successfully enlist and remain in the ranks.
Among the outgrowths of this is a growing presence of members of the National Alliance, the organization whose publishing arm issued Serpent’s Walk. In that book (considered by Mr. Emory to be a manifesto for the future, rather than the “novel” it purports to be), the descendants of the SS infiltrate the U.S. military and, after much of the country is destroyed by weapons of mass destruction resulting in the declaration of martial law, the Nazis take over.
A number of the white supremacist and Nazi infiltrators in the military are quite explicit about their enlistment being for the explicit purpose of applying their skills later, to kill their self-perceived enemies and overthrow the government that they see as controlled by those self-same “enemies.”
Of significance, also, are the attempts described below to procure arms for their movement. Nazi and fascist elements who have exited the military networking with comrades still in the ranks could generate a truly powerful Underground Reich Fifth Column in this country.
In that context, it is important to remember that the National Alliance associate Bob Whitaker held a key position within the Reagan White House, in which he assisted with staffing and security clearances. Imagine the implications of people like Whitaker networking with like-minded people in the military and lawenforcement!
Program Highlights Include: The open advocacy by Nazi and white-supremacist leaders of the tactic of military infiltration by their members; review of Jurgen Rieger’s participation in the Holocaust Denial conference in Iran in December 2006.
NB: This analysis should in no size, shape, form or manner be construed as a blanket condemnation or characterization of the military as a whole. Mr. Emory views our men and women in uniform as the finest element in America.
1. Noting recent developments with regard to German Nazi lawyer Jurgen Rieger (who coined the term “specialized knowledge and abilities”), the program highlights his recent appointment to become Vice-President of the NPD, the top German neo-Nazi party. Rieger advocated that Nazis and fascists worldwide adopt the tactic of infiltrating military and law-enforcement establishments in order to acquire “specialized knowledge and abilities” which they can apply to overthrowing their respective governments. (This broadcast is a follow-up to FTR #27.)
Germany’s main far-right group, the National Democratic Party (NPD), embraced a leading extremist Sunday, May 25 but avoided explicit expressions of neo-Nazi opinion which are prohibited under German law.
Juergen Rieger, a lawyer who has advised and defended neo-Nazis, was appointed one of the group’s three vice-presidents. Rieger has convictions for Holocaust denial and assault.
Reporters suggested that the overtly neo-Nazi faction within the NPD was gaining a greater voice in the anti-foreigner party, which has seats in two of Germany’s 16 state assemblies but has never won parliamentary representation at federal level.
A party spokesman later welcomed Rieger’s appointment, saying he would energize the NPD.
Under party leader Udo Voigt, the NPD has sought the support of militants who praise Adolf Hitler’s National-Socialist or Nazi doctrines, though Voigt insists that the NPD’s nationalist views comply with Germany’s democratic constitution.
In a speech to delegates, leader Voigt won applause as he said the party’s policy was both nationalist and socialist, but used German grammar to carefully separate them into two words. He said this had no connection whatever to the Nazi era.
More than 2,000 people demonstrated Saturday against the annual convention of the NPD in the Bavarian city of Bamberg.
Kurt Beck, leader of Germany’s co-ruling Social Democratic Party SPD, called in Leipzig for the NPD to be compulsorily dissolved.
“It ought not to be allowed,” he said. “A robust democracy ought not to give state support to people who want to abolish democracy.”
2. The bulk of the program is devoted to an article from Salon.com. Due to the over-extension of the military resulting from U.S. involvement in two wars, the armed services have been forced to lower recruiting standards, permitting white supremacists and neo-Nazis to successfully enlist and remain in the ranks.
Among the outgrowths of this is a growing presence of members of the National Alliance, the organization whose publishing arm issued Serpent’s Walk. In that book (considered by Mr. Emory to be a manifesto for the future, rather than the “novel” it purports to be), the descendants of the SS infiltrate the U.S. military and, after much of the country is destroyed by weapons of mass destruction resulting in the declaration of martial law, the Nazis take over.
A number of the white supremacist and Nazi infiltrators in the military are quite explicit about their enlistment being for the explicit purpose of applying their skills later, to kill their self-perceived enemies and overthrow the government that they see as controlled by those self-same “enemies.”
Of significance, also, are the attempts described below to procure arms for their movement. Nazi and fascist elements who have exited the military networking with comrades still in the ranks could generate a truly powerful Underground Reich Fifth Column in this country.
On a muggy Florida evening in 2008, I meet Iraq War veteran Forrest Fogarty in the Winghouse, a little bar-restaurant on the outskirts of Tampa, his favorite hangout. He told me on the phone I would recognize him by his skinhead. Sure enough, when I spot a white guy at a table by the door with a shaved head, white tank top and bulging muscles, I know it can only be him.
Over a plate of chicken wings, he tells me about his path into the white-power movement. “I was 14 when I decided I wanted to be a Nazi,” he says. At his first high school, near Los Angeles, he was bullied by black and Latino kids. That’s when he first heard Skrewdriver, a band he calls “the godfather of the white power movement.” “I became obsessed,” he says. He had an image from one of Skrewdriver’s album covers — a Viking carrying a staff, an icon among white nationalists — tattooed on his left forearm. Soon after he had a Celtic cross, an Irish symbol appropriated by neo-Nazis, emblazoned on his stomach.
At 15, Fogarty moved with his dad to Tampa, where he started picking fights with groups of black kids at his new high school. “On the first day, this bunch of niggers, they thought I was a racist, so they asked, ‘Are you in the KKK?’ ” he tells me. “I said, ‘Yeah,’ and it was on.” Soon enough, he was expelled.
For the next six years, Fogarty flitted from landscaping job to construction job, neither of which he’d ever wanted to do. “I was just drinking and fighting,” he says. He started his own Nazi rock group, Attack, and made friends in the National Alliance, at the time the biggest neo-Nazi group in the country. It has called for a “a long-term eugenics program involving at least the entire populations of Europe and America.”
But the military ran in Fogarty’s family. His grandfather had served during World War II, Korea and Vietnam, and his dad had been a Marine in Vietnam. At 22, Fogarty resolved to follow in their footsteps. “I wanted to serve my country,” he says.
Army regulations prohibit soldiers from participating in racist groups, and recruiters are instructed to keep an eye out for suspicious tattoos. Before signing on the dotted line, enlistees are required to explain any tattoos. At a Tampa recruitment office, though, Fogarty sailed right through the signup process. “They just told me to write an explanation of each tattoo, and I made up some stuff, and that was that,” he says. Soon he was posted to Fort Stewart in Georgia, where he became part of the 3rd Infantry Division.
Fogarty’s ex-girlfriend, intent on destroying his new military career, sent a dossier of photographs to Fort Stewart. The photos showed Fogarty attending white supremacist rallies and performing with his band, Attack. “They hauled me before some sort of committee and showed me the pictures,” Fogarty says. “I just denied them and said my girlfriend was a spiteful bitch.” He adds: “They knew what I was about. But they let it go because I’m a great soldier.”
In 2003, Fogarty was sent to Iraq. For two years he served in the military police, escorting officers, including generals, around the hostile country. He says he was granted top-secret clearance and access to battle plans. Fogarty speaks with regret that he “never had any kill counts.” But he says his time in Iraq increased his racist resolve.
“I hate Arabs more than anybody, for the simple fact I’ve served over there and seen how they live,” he tells me. “They’re just a backward people. Them and the Jews are just disgusting people as far as I’m concerned. Their customs, everything to do with the Middle East, is just repugnant to me.”
Because of his tattoos and his racist comments, most of his buddies and his commanding officers were aware of his Nazism. “They all knew in my unit,” he says. “They would always kid around and say, ‘Hey, you’re that skinhead!’ ” But no one sounded an alarm to higher-ups. “I would volunteer for all the hardest missions, and they were like, ‘Let Fogarty go.’ They didn’t want to get rid of me.”
Fogarty left the Army in 2005 with an honorable discharge. He says he was asked to reenlist. He declined. He was sick of the system.
Since the launch of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. military has struggled to recruit and reenlist troops. As the conflicts have dragged on, the military has loosened regulations, issuing “moral waivers” in many cases, allowing even those with criminal records to join up. Veterans suffering post-traumatic stress disorder have been ordered back to the Middle East for second and third tours of duty.
The lax regulations have also opened the military’s doors to neo-Nazis, white supremacists and gang members — with drastic consequences. Some neo-Nazis have been charged with crimes inside the military, and others have been linked to recruitment efforts for the white right. A recent Department of Homeland Security report, “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment,” stated: “The willingness of a small percentage of military personnel to join extremist groups during the 1990s because they were disgruntled, disillusioned, or suffering from the psychological effects of war is being replicated today.” Many white supremacists join the Army to secure training for, as they see it, a future domestic race war. Others claim to be shooting Iraqis not to pursue the military’s strategic goals but because killing “hajjis” is their duty as white militants.
Soldiers’ associations with extremist groups, and their racist actions, contravene a host of military statutes instituted in the past three decades. But during the “war on terror,” U.S. armed forces have turned a blind eye on their own regulations. A 2005 Department of Defense report states, “Effectively, the military has a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy pertaining to extremism. If individuals can perform satisfactorily, without making their extremist opinions overt … they are likely to be able to complete their contracts.”
Carter F. Smith is a former military investigator who worked with the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command from 2004 to 2006, when he helped to root out gang violence in troops. “When you need more soldiers, you lower the standards, whether you say so or not,” he says. “The increase in gangs and extremists is an indicator of this.” Military investigators may be concerned about white supremacists, he says. “But they have a war to fight, and they don’t have incentive to slow down.”
Tom Metzger is the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan and current leader of the White Aryan Resistance. He tells me the military has never been more tolerant of racial extremists. “Now they are letting everybody in,” he says.
The presence of white supremacists in the military first triggered concern in 1976. At Camp Pendleton in California, a group of black Marines attacked white Marines they mistakenly believed to be in the KKK. The resulting investigation uncovered a KKK chapter at the base and led to the jailing or transfer of 16 Klansmen. Reports of Klan activity among soldiers and Marines surfaced again in the 1980s, spurring President Reagan’s Defense Secretary, Caspar Weinberger, to condemn military participation in white supremacist organizations.
Then, in 1995, a black couple was murdered by two neo-Nazi paratroopers around Fort Bragg in North Carolina. The murder investigation turned up evidence that 22 soldiers at Fort Bragg were known to be extremists. That year, language was added to a Department of Defense directive, explicitly prohibiting participation in “organizations that espouse supremacist causes” or “advocate the use of force or violence.”
Today a complete ban on membership in racist organizations appears to have been lifted — though the proliferation of white supremacists in the military is difficult to gauge. The military does not track them as a discrete category, coupling them with gang members. But one indication of the scope comes from the FBI.
Following an investigation of white supremacist groups, a 2008 FBI report declared: “Military experience — ranging from failure at basic training to success in special operations forces — is found throughout the white supremacist extremist movement.” In white supremacist incidents from 2001 to 2008, the FBI identified 203 veterans. Most of them were associated with the National Alliance and the National Socialist Movement, which promote anti-Semitism and the overthrow of the U.S. government, and assorted skinhead groups.
Because the FBI focused only on reported cases, its numbers don’t include the many extremist soldiers who have managed to stay off the radar. But its report does pinpoint why the white supremacist movements seek to recruit veterans — they “may exploit their accesses to restricted areas and intelligence or apply specialized training in weapons, tactics, and organizational skills to benefit the extremist movement.”
In fact, since the movement’s inception, its leaders have encouraged members to enlist in the U.S. military as a way to receive state-of-the-art combat training, courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer, in preparation for a domestic race war. The concept of a race war is central to extremist groups, whose adherents imagine an eruption of violence that pits races against each other and the government.
That goal comes up often in the chatter on white supremacist Web sites. On the neo-Nazi Web site Blood and Honour, a user called 88Soldier88, wrote in 2008 that he is an active duty soldier working in a detainee holding area in Iraq. He complained about “how ‘nice’ we have to treat these fucking people … better than our own troops.” Then he added, “Hopefully the training will prepare me for what I hope is to come.” Another poster, AMERICANARYAN.88Soldier88, wrote, “I have the training I need and will pass it on to others when I get out.”
On NewSaxon.org, a social networking group for neo-Nazis, a group called White Military Men hosts numerous contributors. It was begun by “FightingforWhites,” who identified himself at one point as Lance Cpl. Burton of the 2nd Battalion Fox Company, but then removed the information. The group calls for “All men with military experience, retired or active/reserve” to “join this group to see how many men have experience to build an army. We want to win a war, we need soldiers.” FightingforWhites — whose tagline is “White Supremacy will prevail! US Military leading the way!” — goes on to write, “I am with an infantry battalion in the Marine Corps, I have had the pleasure of killing four enemies that tried to kill me. I have the best training to kill people.” On his wall, a friend wrote: “THANKS BROTHER!!!! kill a couple towel heads for me ok!”
Such attitudes come straight from the movement’s leaders. “We do encourage them to sign up for the military,” says Charles Wilson, spokesman for the National Socialist Movement. “We can use the training to secure the resistance to our government.” Billy Roper, of White Revolution, says skinheads join the military for the usual reasons, such as access to higher education, but also “to secure the future for white children.” “America began in bloody revolution,” he reminds me, “and it might end that way.”
When it comes to screening out racists at recruitment centers, military regulations appear to have collapsed. “We don’t exclude people from the army based on their thoughts,” says S. Douglas Smith, an Army public affairs officer. “We exclude based on behavior.” He says an “offensive” or “extremist” tattoo “might be a reason for them not to be in the military.” Or it might not. “We try to educate recruiters on extremist tattoos,” he says, but “the tattoo is a relatively subjective decision” and shouldn’t in itself bar enlistment.
What about something as obvious as a swastika? “A swastika would trigger questions,” Smith says. “But again, if the gentlemen said, ‘I like the way the swastika looked,’ and had clean criminal record, it’s possible we would allow that person in.” “There are First Amendment rights,” he adds.
In the spring, I telephoned at random five Army recruitment centers across the country. I said I was interested in joining up and mentioned that I had a pair of “SS bolts” tattooed on my arm. A 2000 military brochure stated that SS bolts were a tattoo image that should raise suspicions. But none of the recruiters reacted negatively, and when pressed directly about the tattoo, not one said it would be an outright problem. A recruiter in Houston was typical; he said he’d never heard of SS bolts and just encouraged me to come on in.
It’s in the interest of recruiters to interpret recruiting standards loosely. If they fail to meet targets, based on the number of soldiers they enlist, they may have to attend a punitive counseling session, and it could hurt any chance for promotion. When, in 2005, the Army relaxed regulations on non-extremist tattoos, such as body art covering the hands, neck and face, this cut recruiters even more slack.
Even the education of recruiters about how to identify extremists seems to have fallen by the wayside. The 2005 Department of Defense report concluded that recruiting personnel “were not aware of having received systematic training on recognizing and responding to possible terrorists” — a designation that includes white supremacists — “who try to enlist.” Participation on white supremacist Web sites would be an easy way to screen out extremist recruits, but the report found that the military had not clarified which Web forums were gathering places for extremists.
Once white supremacists are in the military, it is easy to stay there. An Army Command Policy manual devotes more than 100 pages to rooting them out. But no officer appears to be reading it.
Hunter Glass was a paratrooper in the 1980s and became a gang cop in 1999 in Fayetteville, North Carolina, near Fort Bragg. “In the early 1990s, the military was hard on them. They could pick and choose,” he recalls. “They were looking for swastikas. They were looking for anything.” But the regulations on racist extremists got jettisoned with the war on terror.
Glass says white supremacists now enjoy an open culture of impunity in the armed forces. “We’re seeing guys with tattoos all the time,” he says. “As far as hunting them down, I don’t see it. I’m seeing the opposite, where if a white supremacist has committed a crime, the military stance will be, ‘He didn’t commit a race-related crime.’ ”
In fact, a 2006 report by the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command shows that military brass consistently ignored evidence of extremism. One case, at Fort Hood, reveals that a soldier was making Internet postings on the white supremacist site Stormfront.org. But the investigator was unable to locate the soldier in question. In a brief summary of the case, an investigator writes that due to “poor documentation,” “attempts to locate with minimal information met with negative results.” “I’m not doing my job here,” the investigator notes. “Needs to get fixed.”
In another case, investigators found that a Fort Hood soldier belonged to the neo-Nazi group Hammerskins and was “closely associated with” the Celtic Knights of Austin, Texas, another extremist organization, a situation bad enough to merit a joint investigation by the FBI and the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command. The Army summary states that there was “probable cause” to believe the soldier had participated in at least one white extremist meeting and had “provided a military technical manual … to the leader of a white extremist group in order to assist in the planning and execution of future attacks on various targets.”
Our of four preliminary probes into white supremacists, the Criminal Investigation Command carried through on only this one. The probe revealed that “a larger single attack was planned for the San Antonio, TX after a considerable amount of media attention was given to illegal immigrants. The attack was not completed due to the inability of the organization to obtain explosives.” Despite these threats, the subject was interviewed only once, in 2006, and the investigation was terminated the following year.
White supremacists may be doing more than avoiding expulsion. They may be using their military status to help build the white right. The FBI found that two Army privates in the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg had attempted in 2007 to sell stolen property from the military — including ballistic vests, a combat helmet and pain medications such as morphine — to an undercover FBI agent they believed was involved with the white supremacist movement. (They were convicted and sentenced to six years.) It found multiple examples of white supremacist recruitment among active military, including a period in 2003 when six active duty soldiers at Fort Riley, members of the Aryan Nation, were recruiting their Army colleagues and even serving as the Aryan Nation’s point of contact for the state of Kansas.
One white supremacist soldier, James Douglas Ross, a military intelligence officer stationed at Fort Bragg, was given a bad conduct discharge from the Army when he was caught trying to mail a submachine gun from Iraq to his father’s home in Spokane, Wash. Military police found a cache of white supremacist paraphernalia and several weapons hidden behind ceiling tiles in Ross’ military quarters. After his discharge, a Spokane County deputy sheriff saw Ross passing out fliers for the neo-Nazi National Alliance.
Rooting out extremists is difficult because racism pervades the military, according to soldiers. They say troops throughout the Middle East use derogatory terms like “hajji” or “sand nigger” to define Arab insurgents and often the Arab population itself.
“Racism was rampant,” recalls vet Michael Prysner, who served in Iraq in 2003 and 2004 as part of the 173rd Airborne Brigade. “All of command, everywhere, it was completely ingrained in the consciousness of every soldier. I’ve heard top generals refer to the Iraq people as ‘hajjis.’ The anti-Arab racism came from the brass. It came from the top. And everything was justified because they weren’t considered people.”
Another vet, Michael Totten, who served in Iraq with the 101st Airborne in 2003 and 2004, says, “It wouldn’t stand out if you said ‘sand niggers,’ even if you aren’t a neo-Nazi.” Totten says his perspective has changed in the intervening years, but “at the time, I used the words ‘sand nigger.’ I didn’t consider ‘hajji’ to be derogatory.”
Geoffrey Millard, an organizer for Iraq Veterans Against the War, served in Iraq for 13 months, beginning in 2004, as part of the 42nd Infantry Division. He recalls Gen. George Casey, who served as the commander in Iraq from 2004 to 2007, addressing a briefing he attended in the summer of 2005 at Forward Operating Base, outside Tikrit. “As he walked past, he was talking about some incident that had just happened, and he was talking about how ‘these stupid fucking hajjis couldn’t figure shit out.’ And I’m just like, Are you kidding me? This is Gen. Casey, the highest-ranking guy in Iraq, referring to the Iraqi people as ‘fucking hajjis.’ ” (A spokesperson for Casey, now the Army Chief of Staff, said the general “did not make this statement.”)
“The military is attractive to white supremacists,” Millard says, “because the war itself is racist.”
The U.S. Senate Committee on the Armed Forces has long been considered one of Congress’ most powerful groups. It governs legislation affecting the Pentagon, defense budget, military strategies and operations. Today it is led by the influential Sens. Carl Levin and John McCain. An investigation by the committee into how white supremacists permeate the military in plain violation of U.S. law could result in substantive changes. I contacted the committee but staffers would not agree to be interviewed. Instead, a spokesperson responded that white supremacy in the military has never arisen as a concern. In an e‑mail, the spokesperson said, “The Committee doesn’t have any information that would indicate this is a particular problem.”
“Neo-Nazis are in the Army Now” by Matt Kenard; Salon.com; 6/15/2009.
Martin Borman, Nazi in Exile
Anyone interested in the Red-Brown alliance ought to investigate the odyssey of Nick Camerota, formerly Pierce’s number two man at the National Youth Alliance/National Alliance, now currently a member of Workers World Party/International Action Center. I’m sure he has a very interesting story to tell, if you can get him to talk.
Here’s an update on gang infiltration of the military: http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011–10-22/news/30309693_1_gang-members-law-enforcement-weapons
The FBI Announces Gangs Have Infiltrated Every Branch Of The Military
Robert Johnson|October 22, 2011
The FBI has released a new gang assessment announcing that there are 1.4 million gang members in the US, a 40 percent increase since 2009, and that many of these members are getting inside the military (via Stars and Stripes).
The report says the military has seen members from 53 gangs and 100 regions in the U.S. enlist in every branch of the armed forces. Members of every major street gang, some prison gangs, and outlaw motorcycle gangs (OMGs) have been reported on both U.S. and international military installations.
From the report:
Through transfers and deployments, military-affiliated gang members expand their culture and operations to new regions nationwide and worldwide, undermining security and law enforcement efforts to combat crime. Gang members with military training pose a unique threat to law enforcement personnel because of their distinctive weapons and combat training skills and their ability to transfer these skills to fellow gang members.
The report notes that while gang members have been reported in every branch of service, they are concentrated in the U.S. Army, Army Reserves, and the Army National Guard.
Many street gang members join the military to escape the gang lifestyle or as an alternative to incarceration, but often revert back to their gang associations once they encounter other gang members in the military. Other gangs target the U.S. military and defense systems to expand their territory, facilitate criminal activity such as weapons and drug trafficking, or to receive weapons and combat training that they may transfer back to their gang. Incidents of weapons theft and trafficking may have a negative impact on public safety or pose a threat to law enforcement officials.
The FBI points out that many gangs, especially the bikers, actively recruit members with military training and advise young members with no criminal record to join the service for weapon access and combat experience.
....
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@Pterrafractyl: Scary shit if that report happens to be even partly accurate...and frankly, I think it most likely is!
on a tangentially-related topic of specialized knowledge and abilities...it looks like TEPCO has a proclivity towards hiring yakuza to work the dirtiest jobs at their power plants. That’s sounds like some useful specialized skills: http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2011/06/tepco-will-someone-turn-lights/39364/
TEPCO: Will Someone Turn Off the Lights?
The Atlantic
Jake Adelstein and Stephanie Nakajima
Jun 28, 2011
...
After an expose in the weekly magazine Shukan Bunshun, last week TEPCO admitted that 69 of its plant workers can’t be located for radiation checks—30 of them were found not even to have had their names recorded. This raises questions about how these workers were recruited, paid, monitored for radiation exposure, or vetted before entering the site of the nuclear disaster. Former and current workers within the plant testify that many of the hired hands are yakuza or ex-yakuza members. One company supplying the firm with contract workers is a known Japanese mafia front company. TEPCO when questioned would only say, “We don’t have knowledge of who is ultimately supplying the labor at the end of the outsourcing. We do not have organized crime exclusionary clauses in our standard contracts but are considering it.” The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) has asked the company to “submit a report” on the matter.
....
Sugaoka also says he saw signs of yakuza ties among his colleagues at the facility. “When we’d enter the plant, we’d all change clothes first. The cleanup crews were staffed with guys covered with typical yakuza tattoos, a rough bunch,” he says. Police sources confirm that one of the companies currently supplying the plant with workers, M‑Kogyo, headquartered in Fukuoka Prefecture is a front company for the Kudo-kai, a designated organized crime group. A former yakuza boss notes, “we’ve always been involved in recruiting laborers for TEPCO. It’s dirty, dangerous work and the only people who will do it are homeless, yakuza, banished yakuza, or people so badly in debt that they see no other way to pay it off.” The regular employees were given better radiation suits than the often uneducated yakuza recruits, although it was the more legally vulnerable yakuza and day laborers who typically performed the most dangerous work.
A TEPCO executive, speaking on conditions of anonymity, described the TEPCO working hierarchy:staff employees working at the nuclear reactors enjoy special benefits, safer conditions, and more stringent radiation level checks, while hired workers at the power plants were considered sub-human. “If you voice concerns about the welfare of temporary workers at the plants, you’re labeled a troublemaker, or a potential liability. It’s a taboo to even discuss it.”
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So if I’m interpreting this correctly, the Fukushima cleanup crew may consist of a large of number of now-radiactive Yakuza members? I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about...
Just FYI to all the White Supremacists: in case you were wondering why everyone thinks you’re a bunch of violent morons, here’s an example:
Wisconsin Sikh Temple Shooter: Reputed Nazi background + Reported to be “former” psychological operations specialist from Fort Bragg
http://www.salon.com/2012/08/06/temple_shooters_hateful_past/
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/temple-shooting-suspect-was-former-army-psychological-operations-specialist/article4464677/
Not much is being made (in the media) of the implications of his specialization and former milieu (Fort Bragg).
It’s also worth noting that page was an active White Supremacist during his time in the military:
@Pterrafractyl: I heard about the shooting later that afternoon.....that is just so tragic, man.....may the victims rest in peace. =(
I also wonder if there may be something more to this, especially given some of the information that’s been posted from the C.S. Monitor, like the fact he served at Fort Bragg, and the fact that he became a psy-ops specialist.......definitely something to think about there.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/08/12/missouri-national-guardsman-gave-combat-training-to-white-supremacists/
Missouri National Guardsman gave combat training to white supremacists
Sunday, August 12, 2012
A document released in a Florida court proceeding against a white supremacist group reveals that its members received training last year from a member of the Missouri National Guard who had formerly served with the U.S. Army in Iraq.
The Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League both identify the American Front as a hate group whose members believe they are preparing for an inevitable race war. According to the Associated Press, the 28-year-old guardsman traveled to Florida in July 2011 to train the group’s members in fighting techniques and the use of the use of the AK-47 assault rifle and was given a patch as a sign that he had become a full-fledged member.
Members of the group were charged this May with hate crimes, conspiracy, and paramilitary training in furtherance of a civil disorder. However, the guardsman has not been charged in the case, and for that reason, the AP is not revealing his name. Court documents suggest that he has been cooperating with authorities, handing over emails and a cellphone with text messages.
According to court documents, the guardsman told investigators that he “became interested in protecting the White race” while serving in Iraq in 2008. He began posting on skinhead blogs and exchanged messages with Marcus Faella, the leader of American Front. He then remained in contact with Faella after returning to the United States in 2010, which led to the invitation to conduct the training.
The guardsman now claims that he was already starting to have second thoughts about being associated with American Front, but he continued sending Faella advice on firearms. He says that he is not currently affiliated with any racist skinhead group but he considers himself a “lone wolf” and still believes in their ideology.
This latest revelation comes in the wake of the mass shooting at a Sikh temple by another Army veteran turned racist skinhead, Wade Michael Page, who has also been described as having adopted white supremacist views while in the military.
The Southern Poverty Law Center has been following the American Front case closely. When seven members of the group — which was founded in California but now appears to be centered in Florida — were arrested in May, a source indicated that this was only the second round in a “major, ongoing investigation.” Court documents charge that Faella was attempting to turn his heavily fortified compound near St. Cloud, Florida into an “Aryan compound where all the AF members could live when the United States Government fails.”
The National Guardman’s enlistment ended this May, and a National Guard spokesperson told the AP that an investigation had been conducted but its results were not being made public.
The AP notes, however, that another Missouri National Guardsman was fired from a state military honor guard last March, after co-workers described him as a self-proclaimed neo-Nazi who had tried to recruit them to the cause.
I’ve always been curious about just what pharmaceuticals guys like this were taking in the run up to these horrific events. Clearly alcohol has taken its toll on the shooter. I wonder what else?
Ugh:
With that in mind, note that the neo-Nazi white people’s rights leader featured in this latest story also served at Fort Bragg. Plus, he was recently elected to a 4‑year term on the Republican party committee for Luzerne County, PA. No rest for the wicked:
The neo-nazi won by a single vote. His own. And it was the only vote in the race. The state of our democracy is just awesome.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/21/us-usa-wisconsin-shooting-army-idUSBRE87K04Y20120821
U.S. Army battling racists within its own ranks
By Daniel Trotta
FAYETTEVILLE, North Carolina | Tue Aug 21, 2012
9:56am EDT
(Reuters) — They call it “rahowa” — short for racial holy war — and they are preparing for it by joining the ranks of the world’s fiercest fighting machine, the U.S. military.
White supremacists, neo-Nazis and skinhead groups encourage followers to enlist in the Army and Marine Corps to acquire the skills to overthrow what some call the ZOG — the Zionist Occupation Government. Get in, get trained and get out to brace for the coming race war.
If this scenario seems like fantasy or bluster, civil rights organizations take it as deadly serious, especially given recent events. Former U.S. Army soldier Wade Page opened fire with a 9mm handgun at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin on August 5, murdering six people and critically wounding three before killing himself during a shootout with police.
The U.S. Defense Department as well has stepped up efforts to purge violent racists from its ranks, earning praise from organizations such as the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has tracked and exposed hate groups since the 1970s.
Page, who was 40, was well known in the white supremacist music scene. In the early 2000s he told academic researcher Pete Simi that he became a neo-Nazi after joining the military in 1992. Fred Lucas, who served with him, said Page openly espoused his racist views until 1998, when he was demoted from sergeant to specialist, discharged and barred from re-enlistment.
While at Fort Bragg, in North Carolina, Page told Simi, he made the acquaintance of James Burmeister, a skinhead paratrooper who in 1995 killed a black Fayetteville couple in a racially motivated shooting. Burmeister was sentenced to life in prison and died in 2007.
No one knows how many white supremacists have served since then. A 2008 report commissioned by the Justice Department found half of all right-wing extremists in the United States had military experience.
“We don’t really think this is a huge problem, at Bragg, and across the Army,” said Colonel Kevin Arata, a spokesman for Fort Bragg.
“In my 26 years in the Army, I’ve never seen it,” the former company commander said.
Experts have identified the presence of street gang members as a more widespread problem. Even so, the Pentagon has launched three major pushes in recent decades to crack down on racist extremists. The first directive was issued in 1986, when Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger ordered military personnel to reject supremacist organizations.
That failed to stop former Marine T.J. Leyden, with two-inch SS bolts tattooed above his collar, from serving from 1988 to 1991 while openly supporting neo-Nazi causes. A member of the Hammerskin Nation, a skinhead group, he said he hung a swastika from his locker, taking it down only when his commander politely asked him to ahead of inspections by the commanding general.
“I went into the Marine Corps for one specific reason: I would learn how shoot,” Leyden told Reuters. “I also learned how to use C‑4 (explosives), blow things up. I took all my military skills and said I could use these to train other people,” said Leyden, 46, who has since renounced the white power movement and is a consultant for the anti-Nazi Simon Wiesenthal Center.
RATTLED BY OKLAHOMA BLAST
In 1995, eight months before the Fort Bragg murders, two former Army soldiers bombed the Oklahoma City federal building, killing 168 people. With a growing awareness of the spreading militia movement, the Pentagon in 1996 banned military personnel from participating in supremacist causes and authorized commanders to cashier personnel for rallying, recruiting or training racists.
“What’s scary about Page is that he served in the 1990s when putatively this was being treated quite seriously by the military. There’s plenty of other Pages who served during the war on terror, and we don’t know what they’re going to be doing over the next decade or so,” said Matt Kennard, author of the forthcoming book “Irregular Army: How the U.S. Military Recruited Neo-Nazis, Gang Members and Criminals to Fight the War on Terror.”
Kennard argues the U.S. military was so desperate for troops while fighting simultaneous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that it allowed extremists, felons and gang members into the armed forces.
The military can grant a “moral waiver” to allow a convicted criminal or otherwise ineligible person into the armed forces, and the percentage of recruits granted such waivers grew from 16.7 percent in 2003 to 19.6 percent in 2006, according to Pentagon data obtained by the Palm Center in a 2007 Freedom of Information Act request. But the Pentagon says no waiver exists for participation in extremist organizations.
“Our standards have not changed; participation in extremist activities has never been tolerated and is punishable under the Uniformed Code of Military Justice,” said Eileen Lainez, a Defense Department spokeswoman.
The Pentagon’s third directive against white supremacists was issued in 2009 after a Department of Homeland Security report expressed concern that right-wing extremists were recruiting veterans returning from wars overseas.
The Pentagon’s 2009 instruction, updated in February 2012, directs commanders to remain alert for signs of racist activity and to intervene when they see it. It bans soldiers from blogging or chatting on racist websites while on duty.
“This is the best we’ve ever seen,” said Heidi Beirich, leader of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s intelligence project, referring to the Pentagon’s attitude. “It was really disheartening under the Bush administration how lightly they took it, so this is a major advance.”
Her group monitors online chatter among self-described active-duty warriors serving overseas and reports it to military officials. It also receives regular calls from military investigators asking about racists in the service.
The Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), another civil rights monitor, have helped train officers on how to spot extremists, although Mark Pitcavage, director of investigative research at the ADL, says the military lacks comprehensive training for recruiters and commanders. He called the military’s reaction when alerted to white supremacists “patchy.”
“We’ve discovered a great range of response, from getting a phone call the next day saying, ‘He’s already out,’ to not doing anything at all,” Pitcavage said.
THE TATTOO MATRIX
The Army showed Reuters a one-hour presentation it says was designed to educate soldiers and Army leaders about its extremism policy and how to respond, including to white supremacy groups. Penalties for extremist ideology may include being removed from the military, having security clearances yanked or being demoted.
“The standard hateful message has not been replaced, just packaged differently with issues like freedom of speech, anti-gun control themes, tax reform and oppression,” the presentation says, noting that recruitment may be difficult to detect, occurring quietly “in bars and break areas” on bases.
The presentation instructs Army leaders to look out for tattooed symbols of lightning bolts, skulls, swastikas, eagles and Nordic warriors. Skinheads may have tattoos showing barbed wire, hobnailed boots and hammers.
In a detailed flowchart called a “Tattoo Decision Support Matrix,” Army leaders are shown how to respond to various tattoos. At the time of publication, the Army was unable to identify the locations where this course was being taught.
SCREENING OUT ROGUES
“We’re very strict on the tattoo policy here within this recruiting station,” said Sergeant Aaron Iskenderian, head of the Army recruiting office in Fayetteville, the Army town next to Fort Bragg.
With the United States withdrawn from Iraq, winding down from Afghanistan and unemployment stuck above 8 percent, recruiters can be choosy again.
Iskenderian cited the example of a young man who came in recently with a tattoo of the Confederate flag.
“We’re in the South here. It’s considered Southern heritage. It’s on the General Lee,” Iskenderian said, referring to the car from the television show “The Dukes of Hazzard.”
“Is it racist? I asked him, ‘What does it mean to you?’ and he said, ‘Southern pride.’ ”
The potential recruit also told Iskenderian he had a black girlfriend. Iskenderian sent the issue up the chain of command, and the young man was rejected.
Academics who study white supremacists say proponents of the “infiltration strategy” of joining the U.S. military have adapted, telling skinheads to deceive military recruiters by letting their hair grow, avoiding or covering tattoos, and suppressing their racist views.
“You have to differentiate between some of the grandiose fantasies of some of the leaders of the movement and what actually is going on,” cautioned the ADL’s Pitcavage.
For neo-Nazis who get past the screeners, as with the gang members, the military needs a comprehensive strategy, said Carter F. Smith, a former military investigator who is now a professor of criminal justice at Austin Peay State University in Tennessee.
“They are some of the most disciplined soldiers we have. They really want to learn to shoot those weapons,” Smith said. “The problem wasn’t just that we were opening the floodgates to let them in. We let them out after prosecution or when their time was up and we didn’t let the police know.”
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_SOLDIERS_CHARGED_PLOT
Aug 27, 2012 5:59 PM EDT
Prosecutor: Ga. murder case uncovers plot to kill Obama, “overthrow government”
By RUSS BYNUM
Associated Press
LUDOWICI, Ga. (AP) — Four Army soldiers based in southeast Georgia killed a former comrade and his girlfriend to protect an anarchist militia group they formed that stockpiled assault weapons and plotted a range of anti-government attacks, prosecutors told a judge Monday.
Prosecutors in rural Long County, near the sprawling Army post Fort Stewart, said the militia group of active and former U.S. military members spent at least $87,000 buying guns and bomb components. They allege the group was serious enough to kill two people — former soldier Michael Roark and his 17-year-old girlfriend, Tiffany York — by shooting them in the woods last December in order to keep its plans secret.
“This domestic terrorist organization did not simply plan and talk,” prosecutor Isabel Pauley told a Superior Court judge. “Prior to the murders in this case, the group took action. Evidence shows the group possessed the knowledge, means and motive to carry out their plans.”
One of the Fort Stewart soldiers charged in the case, Pfc. Michael Burnett, also gave testimony that backed up many of the assertions made by prosecutors. The 26-year-old soldier pleaded guilty Monday to manslaughter, illegal gang activity and other charges. He made a deal to cooperate with prosecutors against the three other soldiers.
Prosecutors said the group called itself F.E.A.R., short for Forever Enduring Always Ready. Pauley said authorities don’t know how many members it had.
Burnett, 26, said he knew the group’s leaders from serving with them at Fort Stewart. He agreed to testify against fellow soldiers Pvt. Isaac Aguigui, identified by prosecutors as the militia’s founder and leader, and Sgt. Anthony Peden and Pvt. Christopher Salmon.
All are charged by state authorities with malice murder, felony murder, criminal gang activity, aggravated assault and using a firearm while committing a felony. A hearing for the three soldiers was scheduled Thursday.
Prosecutors say Roark, 19, served with the four defendants in the 4th Brigade Combat Team of the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division and became involved with the militia. Pauley said the group believed it had been betrayed by Roark, who left the Army two days before he was killed, and decided the ex-soldier and his girlfriend needed to be silenced.
Burnett testified that on the night of Dec. 4, he and the three other soldiers lured Roark and York to some woods a short distance from the Army post under the guise that they were going target shooting. He said Peden shot Roark’s girlfriend in the head while she was trying to get out of her car. Salmon, he said, made Roark get on his knees and shot him twice in the head. Burnett said Aguigui ordered the killings.
“A ‘loose end’ is the way Isaac put it,” Burnett said.
Aguigui’s attorney, Daveniya Fisher, did not immediately return a phone call from The Associated Press. Attorneys for Peden and Salmon both declined to comment Monday.
Also charged in the killings is Salmon’s wife, Heather Salmon. Her attorney, Charles Nester, did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
Pauley said Aguigui funded the militia using $500,000 in insurance and benefit payments from the death of his pregnant wife a year ago. Aguigui was not charged in his wife’s death, but Pauley told the judge her death was “highly suspicious.”
She said Aguigui used the money to buy $87,000 worth of semiautomatic assault rifles, other guns and bomb components that were recovered from the accused soldiers’ homes and from a storage locker. He also used the insurance payments to buy land for his militia group in Washington state, Pauley said.
In a videotaped interview with military investigators, Pauley said, Aguigui called himself “the nicest cold-blooded murderer you will ever meet.” He used the Army to recruit militia members, who wore distinctive tattoos that resemble an anarchy symbol, she said. Prosecutors say they have no idea how many members belong to the group.
“All members of the group were on active-duty or were former members of the military,” Pauley said. “He targeted soldiers who were in trouble or disillusioned.”
**The prosecutor said the militia group had big plans. It plotted to take over Fort Stewart by seizing its ammunition control point and talked of bombing the Forsyth Park fountain in nearby Savannah, she said. In Washington state, she added, the group plotted to bomb a dam and poison the state’s apple crop. Ultimately, prosecutors said, the militia’s goal was to overthrow the government and assassinate the president.**
Fort Stewart spokesman Kevin Larson said the Army has dropped its own charges against the four soldiers in the slayings of Roark and York. The Military authorities filed their charges in March but never acted on them. Fort Stewart officials Monday refused to identify the units the accused soldiers served in and their jobs within those units.
“Fort Stewart-Hunter Army Airfield does not have a gang or militia problem,” Larson said in a prepared statement, though he said Army investigators still have an open investigation in the case.
“However, we don’t believe there are any unknown subjects,” he said.
District Attorney Tom Durden said his office has been sharing information with federal authorities, but no charges have been filed in federal court. Jim Durham, an assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Georgia, would not comment on whether a case is pending.
A white-supremacist US soldier just got busted by the FBI trying to sell info to an agent posing as a Russian spy. This included info about the F22 and a US jamming system used to sweep for roadside bombs. That’s alarming:
Ah, wonderful, the Air Force just stripped 17 officers of their nuclear missile launch codes. There appears to be some sort of thermonuclear disciplinary rot:
If stories about major disciplinary problems amongst the individuals with nuclear missile launch codes puts the fear of God in you don’t feel alone. God also fears situations that might disrupt the US’s ability to launch its missiles. Jesus loves nukes:
Ummmm...WTF?
Pretty creepy, whether or not they were “Watchmen of America” members or just fans:
You have to wonder why someone that is convinced that society will inevitably collapse into race war would also want to work for DHS. Presumably they aren’t expected that government pension decades from now so what other kinds of benefits would they be getting from that kind of position? With the Snowden affair highlighting how much classified information low-level analysts have access to, it raises the question of just what kinds of special perks a black or white supremacist might find with this guy’s job:
If a band of mercenary elite snipers sounds kind if scary, imagine mercenary elite snipers that seem to engage in contract killing for the love of the work. And cocaine. Lots of cocaine:
Anyone that happened to serve with the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg from 2009–2012 might want to check in with an identity protection service:
Here’s a strange twist; wonder what happens if these guys return to the U.S.—
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/03/03/two-l-a-gang-members-are-apparently-fighting-for-syrias-assad/
Two L.A. gang members are apparently fighting for Syria’s Assad
By Liz Sly March 3 at 5:30 am
Two Los Angeles gang members appear to have joined the flow of foreigners flocking to fight in Syria – in this instance, on the side of President Bashar al-Assad. In a video posted online, the two men boast that they are on the front lines and fire their guns in the direction of what they call “the enemigos.”
One of the men identifies himself as Creeper from the Sur-13 or Surenos, a loose affiliation of southern California gangs linked to the Mexican mafia. He rolls up his sleeves to show his gang tattoos and greets fellow gang members Capone‑E and Crazy Loco.
The other says he is called Wino, and belongs to a gang called Westside Armenian Power. Members of the Armenian Christian minority in Syria are known to be staunch supporters of Assad.
The two men don’t reveal much about what they are doing or why they are fighting for Assad.
“It’s Syria, homie, we’re in Syria, homie. ... Frontline, homie, frontline, homie,” says Wino.
“In Middle East, homie, in Syria, still gangbanging,” says Creeper, in comments typical of the 2 1/2‑minute video.
Warning: the video, posted here, contains strong language. This version is provided by the Middle East Media Research Institute, and contains subtitles.
It was impossible to independently verify the authenticity of the video or determine where or when it was filmed. But the desolate scene in which the two men are firing from a bombed building looks like Syria.
The Middle East Media Research Institute, a pro-Israel group that monitors media in the region, said it had identified Wino as Nerses Kilajyan, whose Facebook page features multiple photographs of the man who calls himself Wino, apparently in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo. In some, Wino is seen posing with fighters from the Shiite Hezbollah militia. In others, he is pictured with the man who calls himself Creeper. The dates on the photographs suggest the pair have been in Syria for about a year.
It was also unclear whether they are U.S. citizens. So far, there have been no reported instances in which Americans have volunteered to fight in Syria on behalf of Assad, though at least 50 U.S. citizens are believed to have traveled there to join the rebels, according to congressional testimony by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper last month. Thousands of Arabs, Europeans and Sunni Muslims of other nationalities who have flooded into Syria, most of them joining radical Islamist groups.
Thousands of Iraqi and Lebanese Shiite Muslims are meanwhile reported to be fighting on the side of Assad’s government, as well as Iranians, some Russians and smaller numbers of Afghans, Pakistanis and other Arabs, making this a truly international war.
Returning troops help KKK build paramilitary force to ‘retake’ US in coming race war
By Travis Gettys
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/06/10/returning-troops-help-kkk-build-paramilitary-force-to-retake-us-in-coming-race-war/
The Ku Klux Klan plans to begin military-style combat training under the direction of military troops returning home from overseas deployments, according to a Barcroft Media report.
The notorious hate group has been attempting to recruit new members – children, in particular – in recent months, and the Loyal White Knights faction has begun preparations for a long-awaited race war.
“We’re going to do something a little different for probably the next couple of years to try to get our men and women ready for the upcoming battle that we’re about to take upon us, and this is something that no Klan has ever done and we’re going to start it,” said one Klan leader during a rally in Parkersburg, West Virginia. “All our boys are finally coming back home from the military, which is good, and we’re getting a lot more military members to join.”
Klan members have dropped leaflets and candy in neighborhoods across the United States, and the group has also used social media in hopes of attracting teenage recruits.
Other young people are recruited by their own parents to join the group.
“I enjoy days like today, because I like being around people, not disgusting people, not drug addicts,” said one hooded boy whose parents brought him and his brother to the Parkersburg rally – which drew about 40 people.
The boy’s mother said she believes black and Hispanic students take drugs from their parents and sell them at her son’s school.
“Their parents are so worried about doing drugs than providing for their own children, that’s what I think,” said the woman, who was wearing full Klan regalia like her husband and two sons.
Barcroft reported that Klan leaders claim existing members serving in the military will begin training other members in armed combat, hand-to-hand combat, and survival skills.
The group, which has an estimated 6,500 members, has never before trained its members in combat tactics.
“We got police officers in the Klan, we got lawyers, we got doctors – your next-door neighbor could be in the Klan, and you’d never know it,” said James Moore, grand dragon for Virginia.
Klan expert Brian Levin said the biggest threat comes from individual members trying to make a name for themselves, rather than an army affiliated with the hate group.
“This is something we’ve seen throughout recent decades, where the Klan has gone through cycles, where they’ve armed themselves, gotten in trouble, then mellowed out and then armed themselves again,” Levin said.
He said Klan members hope to signal their social relevance by arming themselves and warning of racial unrest.
“The ultimate goal for myself is to have our membership get to the point where we can affect change through the political system,” said one Klan official. “Right now, our numbers aren’t quite good enough.”
But members are confident their message will attract new followers.
“Black people, white people, we’re all getting tired of the government, and pretty soon you can see the government collapse,” Moore said. “And when the government keeps on sending their money over to Israel, and it finally collapses, you can see the Klan take it back and make this nation the way it needs to be.”
https://www.splcenter.org/news/2016/08/03/intelligence-report-constitutional-sheriffs-movement-spreads-promotes-defiance-federal-laws
Intelligence Report: ‘Constitutional sheriffs’ movement spreads, promotes defiance of federal laws
The cover story, “Line in the Sand,” details the growth of this radical ideology since 2009. The movement, formed around an organization called the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA), is a phenomenon rarely, if ever, seen in the United States – a concerted, long-term effort to recruit law enforcement officers into the antigovernment “Patriot” movement.
“The phenomenon of the ‘constitutional sheriffs’ movement is deeply troubling and problematic,” said Mark Potok, senior fellow at the SPLC and editor of the Intelligence Report. “These men and women are being told by extremist leaders that they have the right to decide what laws they want to enforce and can keep federal law enforcement agents out of their counties. That is utterly untrue, the very opposite of constitutional, and it in fact encourages sheriffs and their deputies to defy the law of the land.”
The Intelligence Report interviewed dozens of sheriffs who appeared on a list, compiled by the CSPOA, of almost 500 sheriffs who purportedly had “vowed to uphold and defend the Constitution against Obama’s unconstitutional gun measures.” Overall, it appears the movement is successfully exploiting concerns about gun, environmental and land-use regulations to bring law enforcement officers into the fold.
The report notes that the organizing of these sheriffs is occurring against the backdrop of the larger militia movement and the occupation at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon early this year by antigovernment extremists.
The threat of the antigovernment “Patriot” movement is also examined in a training DVD included in the law enforcement edition of this issue of the Intelligence Report. The video, a short film designed to be shown at roll call, focuses on the rising threat of antigovernment extremists, especially in the wake of the occupation in Oregon and a related 2014 armed standoff with law enforcement officials in Nevada.
Also in this issue of the Intelligence Report:
“White Lives Matter” is a look at a counter-movement to Black Lives Matter that has been built by radical-right activists. The project, which has become increasingly popular among neo-Nazis and other white supremacists, appears to be largely the work of a 40-year-old woman in Tennessee.
“Hate in the Race” is a month-by-month examination of the political vitriol and extremism that has characterized the presidential race since last summer – a deluge of extremist rhetoric coming primarily from Donald Trump.
“670 Days” reflects on the nearly two years between Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy’s first armed standoff with the federal government and his arrest in February – a period that saw the antigovernment movement grow by leaps and bounds, in part because of Bundy’s apparent imperviousness to arrest.
Here’s a rather alarming story about neo-Nazis in a group that was officially declared illegal in the UK last December infiltrating the UK military. It’s alarming for the obvious reasons (neo-Nazis infiltrating militaries are inherently alarming) but it’s an extra alarming due largely to how clearly unalarmed the UK is in general about the threat posed by violent far-right groups. Because it turns out when this neo-Nazi group, National Action, was added to the UK’s list of banned terrorist organizations back in December it was the first far-right group in the UK added to the list (a list that had 70 other organizations already on it):
“Its online material contains extremely violent imagery and language and it condones and glorifies those who have used extreme violence for political or ideological ends, the Home Office says.”
Yeah, if you’re going to ban groups based on their support for violence it sure sounds like National Action deserves to be on the list. And yet, amazingly, it’s the only far-right group on the list that includes 71 such banned groups:
So yeah, the relative lack of alarm is pretty alarming. And note that when National Action was added to the list of banned organizations last December it’s not like there were hardly any other violent extremists of a far-right nature that the counter-extremism officials were dealing with. It was closer to a quarter of counter-extremist cases involving the far-right:
“Rudd said last month that far-right groups were becoming increasingly sophisticated, and about a quarter of the cases being handled by the government’s counter-extremism programme, Channel, concerned rightwing radicalisation”
About a quarter of the cases being handled by the government’s counter-extremism program involve rightwing radicalization. And yet National Action was the only one added, just added late last year, and is reportedly still operating under different names. Sounds like that list could use a few new entries.
Given the ongoing tensions between police departments and minority communities over police shootings in the US and the failure to reach some sort of common ground between the different parties, here’s a very disturbing report that ironically might present an opportunity to find that common ground between communities and law enforcement: According to a recently leaked trove of internal communications on white supremacist chat boards recently obtained and published by Unicorn Riot, the overwhelming majority of the white supremacists on that board appear to believe that US law enforcement and the military are largely on the side of the white supremacists. Beyond that, these leaked communications indicate that the white supremacists are still quite enthusiastic about their long-standing drive to drop the ‘skinhead’ look and instead infiltrate public institutions under cover. The fact that Nazis are trying to infiltrated law enforcement and the military isn’t a new finding. Calls for infiltration have been going on for years. But these leaked chats are a timely reminder that this infiltration effort continues to this day. And that seems like the kind of finding that presents a very convenient opportunity for creating common ground between minority communities and law enforcement: uniting around openly rejecting the white supremacists and what they stand for and making it very clear that white supremacists aren’t welcome in law enforcement. Especially making it very clear to the neo-Nazis:
“The Southern Poverty Law Center in 2008 began issuing reports about members of white supremacist groups joining the military in large numbers. The FBI in 2006 issued a heavily redacted report warning of systematic infiltration of law enforcement organizations by white supremacists.”
Yep, this infiltration effort has been going on for years. And the longer it goes on, the harder it’s going to be to deal with.
And as one of the members of the neo-Nazi chat board made clear was he described his experiences during a criminal investigation class, these neo-Nazis are joining the police for the explicit purpose of engaging in exactly the kind of abuses of power minority communities are complaining about:
And as long as these white supremacists believe they will be welcomed in the police force, or in the military, they’re going to be far more likely to join. Which, again, is reason why openly making it clear that white supremacists (or supremacists of any type) won’t be welcome in the police force, and then enforcing that, could be a great way to not only avoid future officers that ruin the reputation of the entire force but also build greater trust with communities:
“I do know very many people from the organization that I used to lead 30 years ago, the neo-Nazi group, that actually did go on to become police officers in Chicago.”
Those were the chilling words of former neo-Nazi Christian Picciolini: he actually knew about of neo-Nazis who did actually become police officers. It’s not just Nazi aspirations. This is a real issue even if the scale of the issue remains an open question.
And beyond the danger infiltrated Nazis represent to the communities they police and the reputation of their police forces, these Nazis are also going to proceed to try and recruit from within the police force, exacerbating the problem:
Now, the last thing we want to do is create some sort of crypto-Nazi witch hunt within law enforcement since that would be guaranteed to backfire and problem enhance the standing of the crypto-Nazis that are there. And you don’t want to create an environment where every officer involved in a controversial shooting is assumed to be a neo-Nazi.
But the more we learn neo-Nazis are actively encouraging each other to join law enforcement agencies — or any public institutions, for that matter — the greater the risk that there really is going to be a major problem with this at some point, which just adds to the reasons why both police and communities should proactively treat this like a “known unknown” situation: we know neo-Nazis are doing this and we know they succeeded in some cases. But we also know that it would be absurd to casually assume every white police officer is a white supremacist. So perhaps making it clear to the public, and especially making it clear to neo-Nazis, that law enforcement takes this seriously and will make serious attempts to identify and expel white supremacists (or any kind of radical bigots) could be a productive parallel community-relations effort in the current environment where tensions between minority communities and the police often run high. After all, police departments across the country are already engaging in a number of active efforts to improve relations with minority communities. It seems like a public anti-crypto-Nazi effort could be a highly productive program to add to that list.
This next article shows that Germany is facing mounting political pressure on its “preppers” which are their version of far-right wing survivalists who may be having some level of infiltration into German intelligence agencies.
In the wake of the assassination of the pro-refugee politician Walter Lübcke and a white supremacist’s planned terror attack on a synagogue in Halle, security circles have raised alarm about rightwing extremist attempts to infiltrate the military and police. More members of the Christian Democratic Union were revealed to be members of a shadowy military network with links to “prepper” or survivalist circles. Robert Möritz, confirmed that he was a member of Uniter, a private support network for active and former soldiers and security personnel.
While Uniter remains a legally registered association and is currently not on any of the intelligence agencies’ official watchlists, its founder André Schmitt is on trial for offences against Germany’s weapons and explosives act. Uniter’s founder also set up and administered a complex command chain of Telegram chat networks, in whose subgroups so-called preppers discussed plans to build up parallel infrastructures in preparation for the anticipated collapse of the prevailing social order.
One founding member of Uniter in its 2016 incarnation, Ringo M, used to work for the domestic intelligence agency in Baden-Württemberg, while one of Uniter’s four district leaders has been training police at a police academy in Brandenburg.
Armin Schuster, a CDU chairman of the Bundestag’s committee on internal affairs, stated “What we are seeing is a number of isolated suspicious cases, and every single one of them is one too many for me,” Schuster told the Guardian. CDU party leader Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer also asserted that “Everyone should be aware that anyone who is a member of Uniter and wears Uniter symbols will be suspected of proximity of rightwing extremist networks and chats”.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/18/members-of-angela-merkels-party-found-to-have-far-right-links?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
More members of Angela Merkel’s party found to have ‘prepper’ links
CDU criticised for allegedly failing to guard against neo-Nazis and ‘prepper’ infiltration
Philip Oltermann and Janina Findeisen
@philipoltermann
Wed 18 Dec 2019 13.00 EST Last modified on Thu 19 Dec 2019 03.35 EST
• Hundreds of neo-Nazis demonstrate in Halle, Germany, in May 2011. Photograph: Dpa Picture Alliance Archive/Alamy
Pressure is mounting on the leadership of Angela Merkel’s conservative party to fortify its “firewall against the far right”, as more members of the Christian Democratic Union were revealed to be members of a shadowy military network with links to “prepper” or survivalist circles.
Last week a member of the CDU’s executive committee in the district of Anhalt-Bitterfeld, Robert Möritz, confirmed that he was a member of Uniter, a private support network for active and former soldiers and security personnel.
In the wake of the assassination of the pro-refugee politician Walter Lübcke and a white supremacist’s planned terror attack on a synagogue in Halle, security circles have raised alarm about rightwing extremist attempts to infiltrate the military and police.
While Uniter remains a legally registered association and is currently not on any of the intelligence agencies’ official watchlists, its founder André Schmitt is on trial for offences against Germany’s weapons and explosives act.
Uniter’s founder also set up and administered a complex command chain of Telegram chat networks, in whose subgroups so-called preppers discussed plans to build up parallel infrastructures in preparation for the anticipated collapse of the prevailing social order.
Some of the chats, which were divided into regional districts, covered the threat of Islamist terrorist attacks and how to respond to them by hoarding weapons, munitions and food supplies. Other prepper groups have been accused of compiling “death lists” of leftwing and pro-refugee targets, as well as ordering body bags and quicklime to dispose of their victims after a “Day X” doomsday scenario.
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• German far-right group ‘used police data to compile death list’
So far the CDU’s branch in Saxony-Anhalt has declined to expel the ex-Uniter member Möritz, in spite of him admitting to taking part in a neo-Nazi rally in 2011 and carrying a “black sun” tattoo on his right arm, a symbol which has been adopted by neo-Nazis and occultists. The CDU’s district leader in Anhalt-Bitterfeld insisted the 29-year-old had “credibly” distanced himself from his rightwing extremist past.
Uniter’s enmeshment with the eastern offices of Germany’s dominant political party of the postwar era is more intricate than previously known, however. Kai Mehliss, a member of the CDU’s hardline “conservative circle” who also sits on the district branch in Anhalt-Bitterfeld, is listed on Uniter’s website as a member and organised a roundtable event for the network as recently as last week. Like Möritz, he has since cancelled his membership.
Another CDU member, a town councillor in the municipality of Sandersdorf-Brehna, was a founding member of Uniter in its original incarnation in 2012, before the association was founded anew in Stuttgart.
The local politician said on Wednesday that he co-founded Uniter to help elite German soldiers find employment after they had been deployed abroad, and claimed not to know the other two Uniter members in his party personally. Since Saturday, his profile appears to have been removed from the CDU’s website.
The revelations came on the eve of what is likely to be Angela Merkel’s last full year as German chancellor, and as the country nervously eyes her party’s political direction in the post-Merkel era.
While Merkel’s successor at the head of the CDU, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, is a politician in the chancellor’s liberal mould, conservative politicians in the eastern states have agitated for the party to drop its cordon sanitaire against coalitions with the rightwing populist Alternative für Deutschland.
The general secretary of Merkel’s junior coalition partner, the Social Democratic party, on Wednesday accused Kramp-Karrenbauer of failing to crack down on far-right tendencies in her party.
“What we are seeing in the CDU’s Saxony-Anhalt branch is a bursting of the dam against the far right,” Lars Klingbeil told Tagesspiegel newspaper. Social Democrat politician Ralf Stegner, meanwhile, said events in Saxony-Anhalt showed “the firewall against the far right is crumbling”.
The veteran conservative and former finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble said that “democratic parties, and especially the party of which I am a member, must not have anything to do with neo-Nazis”. But many senior figures in the party have stopped short of explicitly calling for the expulsion of members with a neo-Nazi past.
The interior minister, Horst Seehofer, of the CDU’s Bavarian sister party, at the start of this week announced 600 new intelligence positions for weeding out potentially violent rightwing extremists and their networks. But opposition politicians say the search will have to start at the door of Seehofer’s own agencies.
One founding member of Uniter in its 2016 incarnation, Ringo M, used to work for the domestic intelligence agency in Baden-Württemberg, while one of Uniter’s four district leaders has been training police at a police academy in Brandenburg.
Armin Schuster, a CDU chairman of the Bundestag’s committee on internal affairs, rejected claims that German security had a “large-scale problem” with the far right, but conceded some of the recent revelations had been troubling. “What we are seeing is a number of isolated suspicious cases, and every single one of them is one too many for me,” Schuster told the Guardian.
CDU party leader Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer on Wednesday night vowed to take “decisive and uncompromising” action in tackling the issue in her party. “Everyone should be aware that anyone who is a member of Uniter and wears Uniter symbols will be suspected of proximity of rightwing extremist networks and chats”.
This next articles shows how at an Army-Navy Football games which was attended by President Trump. Some of the Cadets were flashing White Power hand Symbols with the “OK” sign. The symbol’s co-option by racists began as a joke on far-right messaging site 4Chan — where users took an innocent gesture and pretended there was a hidden meaning behind it, hoping to trick left-leaning people into outrage. The joke escalated and soon the symbol was being widely used among far-right extremists, leading some people to conclude it has changed its meaning. Conservative Viner Pizza Party Ben and the alt-right’s former pin-up boy Milo Yiannopoulos began making the gesture at various campaign events for Donald Trump in the lead up to the 2016 election.
White supremacist Richard Spencer also flashed the sign on election night in 2016 in front of a Trump Hotel with the caption ‘Tonight’s the night.’ The symbol has continued to be used, including allegedly by White House intern Jack Breuer in 2017, photographed making the OK sign in his class photo, who claimed he was copying the president’s gesture of touching his index finger and thumb while speaking.
The popular emoji has been registered as a hate symbol by the US-based Anti-Defamation League, but the group warned it is still ‘overwhelmingly’ used to show approval or that someone is OK.
https://mol.im/a/7793965
US military opens investigation after West Point cadets and Annapolis midshipmen appeared to flash white power hand signs during the live broadcast of the Army-Navy game
• West Point and Annapolis are investigating the hand signs at Saturday’s game
• Several cadets and midshipmen were seen making the ‘OK’ hand symbol
• Once innocuous, the hand sign has been appropriated by racist provocateurs
By KEITH GRIFFITH FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 01:32 EST, 15 December 2019 | UPDATED: 02:43 EST, 16 December 2019
Officials at West Point and the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis are investigating after several cadets and midshipmen were seen flashing a hand sign sometimes associated with ‘white power’ at Saturday’s Army-Navy football game.
Students at both service academies were seen appearing to flash the controversial hand symbol during a pregame sideline report from journalist Rece Davis on an ESPN broadcast.
The hand symbol, once innocuous and typically meaning ‘OK’, was initially associated with ‘white power’ as an online joke, but has since been adopted by fringe racist figures.
Now, military officials are investigating to see what the intention of the cadets and midshipmen may have been in displaying the hand symbol.
PHOTO: A cadet appears to flash a ‘white power’ hand sign live on ESPN at the Army-Navy game during a pregame sideline report from journalist Rece Davis
PHOTO A midshipman on the right side of the shot is shown extending his arm and making the symbol
TWEET
Looky Yonder
@YonderLooky
· Dec 14, 2019
Replying to @KwikWarren @WestPoint_USMA
I have it on my DVR. His face is clearly visible just a moment before. And one of his asshole classmates one row up does the same hand sign. Not photoshopped.
Looky Yonder
@YonderLooky
‘We’re looking into it,’ Lt. Col. Chris Ophardt, a West Point spokesman, told the Wall Street Journal. ‘I don’t know what their intention is.’
‘We are aware and will be looking into it,’ said Annapolis spokeswoman Cmdr. Alana Garas.
At least two cadets and one midshipman were seen making the hand symbol.
The hand sign is formed by joining the the index finger and thumb in a circle while extending the other three fingers, as in the traditional ‘OK’ symbol.
A similar gesture is used in the so-called ‘circle game,’ in which the person making the gesture tries to trick someone into looking at it, and if successful gets to punch the onlooker in the arm.
However, the ambiguous nature of the gesture is part of the appeal to extremists, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
PHOTO: Cadets were seen goofing off in the background during the live TV shot, and some of them flashed the controversial hand symbol
U.S. Coast Guard leaders last year reprimanded an officer who used a similar hand sign during a television broadcast.
After the Army-Navy broadcast, many spoke up saying that they were certain the gesture was intended as a brazen display of racist white supremacy.
‘They did this because they fully understand that most people in the dominant society share their views, and there will be no serious punishment against them,’ tweeted Tariq Nasheed, director of the film Hidden Colors 4: The Religion Of White Supremacy, and author of dating advice book The Art Of Mackin’.
‘Anyone trying to deny that this is a white power hand signal, are most likely to be white supremacist themselves,’ Nasheed added.
Saturday’s game was the 120th such match-up between the two service academies, and part of a beloved tradition in both branches of the military as well as the world of college sports.
PHOTO: President Donald Trump takes part in the ceremonial coin toss before the start of the Army-Navy college football game in Philadelphia on Saturday
The Philadelphia game drew 68,075 fans and ESPN’s ‘College GameDay’ was on hand.
The cadets and midshipmen stood, saluted, bounced and cheered for the entirety of what’s billed as ‘America’s Game.’
President Donald Trump attended the game for the second straight year. Trump also was at the 2016 game as president-elect.
Trump wore a red ‘Keep America Great’ hat for the traditional coin flip in misty conditions, and was greeted by a roaring ovation.
Army called heads, the coin landed tails and the Midshipmen deferred possession.
The referee said before the toss it was with ‘great pride, great honor, to welcome our Commander in Chief, our President of the United States, Donald J. Trump. Mr. President, thank you for all that you do.’
Trump sat on the Army side of the field in the first half and crossed the field to the Navy side for the second half.
In 2016, Army snapped Navy´s 14-game winning streak and has won three years in a row. But the Midshipmen routed Army’s Black Knights 31–7 on Saturday. They had entered the game as a significant favorite.
How the ‘OK’ sign came to be associated with white supremacy:
The historic hand sign for OK — touching the forefinger to thumb with other three fingers raised — is a formerly innocent symbol that has recently been co-opted by the far right.
The symbol’s co-option by racists began as a joke on far-right messaging site 4Chan — where users took an innocent gesture and pretended there was a hidden meaning behind it, hoping to trick left-leaning people into outrage.
But the joke escalated and soon the symbol was being widely used among far-right extremists, leading some people to conclude it has changed its meaning.
PHOTOS: The ‘OK’ hand gesture (left) is now sometimes associated with white supremacy despite its usually innocent meaning. Brenton Tarrant, the Australian man arrested for killing 51 people at mosques in New Zealand earlier this year, is seen right making the gesture in court in March
Conservative Viner Pizza Party Ben and the alt-right’s former pin-up boy Milo Yiannopoulos began making the gesture at various campaign events for Donald Trump in the lead up to the 2016 election.
White supremacist Richard Spencer also flashed the sign on election night in 2016 in front of a Trump Hotel with the caption ‘Tonight’s the night.’
The symbol has continued to be used, including allegedly by White House intern Jack Breuer in 2017, photographed making the OK sign in his class photo, who claimed he was copying the president’s gesture of touching his index finger and thumb while speaking.
The popular emoji has been registered as a hate symbol by the US-based Anti-Defamation League, but the group warned it is still ‘overwhelmingly’ used to show approval or that someone is OK.
Others use it as part of a ‘circle game’ created on US TV show Malcolm in the Middle, which involves someone making the gesture and holding it below their waist. If someone else looks at it, they get a punch in the arm.
——————————————-
This issue was also covered in the Guardian which stated: “The US army and navy academies are investigating hand signs flashed by students that can be associated with “white power” and were televised during the Army-Navy football game on Saturday, school officials said.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/dec/15/army-navy-white-power-hand-signals?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Here’s a set of articles that underscore just how close we are to a situation in the US where President Trump really does issue a general call for open warfare against ‘the left’ on the streets of America. Like actual shooting warfare, although it wouldn’t really be ‘war’ so much as a government-sanctioned one-sided slaughter of left-leaning individuals justified by bad faith dirty tricksters and carried out by Trump-loyalist militias (in other words, the white nationalist dream scenario):
First, here’s an article about a leaked teleconference call between Trump and US governors regarding the response to the nationwide police brutality protests that have erupted in the wake of the killing of George Floyd. A call where Trump berates governors for being ‘weak’ and calls for mass arrests and long jail sentences for protestors:
““You’ve got to arrest people, you have to track people, you have to put them in jail for 10 years and you’ll never see this stuff again,” said Trump. “We’re doing it in Washington, D.C. We’re going to do something that people haven’t seen before.””
“We’re doing it in Washington, D.C. We’re going to do something that people haven’t seen before.” A pledge of some sort of crackdown that “people haven’t seen before” in DC and exhortations that governors follow suit. That’s the leadership coming out of the White House house during the call to governors. But that message wasn’t limited to a behind-the-scenes call. Trump was openly retweeting calls for the use of “overwhelming force against the bad guys.” That sure sounds like a variant of ‘when the looting starts, the shooting starts’. So we can clearly see that Trump really would like to declared the left as ‘the bad guys’ and enemies of America. He’s openly tweeting this:
But it wasn’t just Trump calling on governors to be much more aggressive with protestors. Attorney General Bill Barr was also calling on governors to “dominate” the streets:
As as the following TPM piece ominously describes, Bill Barr’s calls for the “domination” of the streets was echoed by none other than Secretary of Defense Mark Esper. As the article also notes, this chilling phone call took place a day after Trump threatened to issue an executive order declaring Antifa a domestic terrorist organization. And while legal experts appear to dismiss that threat as something Trump doesn’t have the authority to carry out, it’s a sign of how keen the Trump administration is on using the looting and chaos emerging from unidentified actors in the George Floyd protests to create a national atmosphere of ‘war on Antifa/the Left.’ Civil war/race war/Helter Skelter really is his reelection strategy and the Defense Secretary is enthusiastically on board:
““I think the sooner that you mass and dominate the battlespace, the quicker this dissipates and we can get back to the right normal,” Esper said in a White House call with governors, according to audio obtained by the Washington Post.”
Dominating the battlespace. That’s how the White House is encouraging governors to think about this situation. Dominating a battlespace where anyone who can be associated with Antifa is considered a dangerous terrorist who should be hunted down. That’s literally what Trump-toady congressman Matt Gaetz gleefully called for in response to the threat to designate Antifa a domestic terrorist group: a wish to “hunt them down”:
And Rep. Gaetz wasn’t the only Republican elected official enthusiastically backing Trump’s threat of using military force on protesters. Senator Tom Cotton, a notorious hawk when it comes to the us of US military force oversees, demonstrated his enthusiasm for using that force domestically when he tweeted out a call to do “whatever it takes to restore order. No quarter for insurrectionists, anarchists, rioters, and looters.” That’s where we are: calls for “no quarter” against the protesters. And yes, these calls are ostensibly only against largely fictional militant antifa “bad guys”, but this is the kind of situation where “bad guys” is a highly vague definition and could easily encompass virtually all of the protesters. After all, the president is threatening to make self-described antifascists domestic terrorists. It’s unclear who won’t be considered a ‘bad guy’ under those definitions:
““What the President can do is say that justice will be done in accordance with law for George Floyd and we will always respect the right of peaceful protest as many of these cities saw in the daytime, but the rioting, the anarchy and the looting ends tonight,” Cotton said. “If local law enforcement is overwhelmed, if local politicians will not do their most basic job to protect our citizens, let’s see how these anarchists respond when the 101st airborne is on the other side of the street.””
That’s a pretty clear call for martial law by Senator Cotton. You have to wonder what Alex Jones has to say about this. Will he be only mildly supportive or super supportive? We’ll see, but related to that question of how the ‘patriotic’ wing of the far right will response to Trump’s threats of martial law, here’s an article from Right Wing Watch about far right personality Brenden putting out a video that basically pleads with Trump to call for the militias to come out to the streets and start shooting protesters. And Dilley puts it, there’s a legion of Trump supporters just waiting for Trump to give them “the green light” to go into the streets and start killing protesters:
““If for any reason the president of the United States feels that it’s not getting done the way it should and decides to put out the tweet that says, ‘My fellow Americans, my fellow 2A-loving Americans, it’s time to take up arms against these assholes,’ you are all fu cked in under an hour,” he continued. “[We’re] waiting for that one tweet, that one emergency text message from the fu cking president of the United States that gives us the green light to finish this entire thing in under an hour.””
“[We’re] waiting for that one tweet, that one emergency text message from the fu cking president of the United States that gives us the green light to finish this entire thing in under an hour.” That’s how volatile the situation is: the militias are waiting for Trump to tweet out permission to go out and slaughter the Left. This is a president that routinely sends out vaguely interpretable tweets on a near daily basis. How long before he ‘accidentally’ tweets out something that gets widely interpreted as that ‘green light’?
And note that, while many have criticized Trump’s threat to declare Antifa a domestic terror group as nonsense in part because there isn’t actually a formal Antifa group, that vagueness just means it will be up to the people ‘hunting down’ Antifa members to decide who is a member of Antifa. Are you a Trump loyalist who supports the mass rounding up of Antifa members? No? Well then you are clearly an Antifa member. That’s the kind of dynamic we’re seeing develop.
Don’t forget that the grand prize of the far right has long been coming up with a grand excuse for the future history books for why they just had to violently suppress the political left and lead a insurrection that brutally subjugates any political opposition. Physically and permanently eliminating the left in a manner that doesn’t so morally repulse the survivors that it destabilizes the new far right regime: that’s the big challenge that figures like Steve Bannon and right-wing media forces have been working on for years which is why coming up with an excuse for why that kind of mass violence has to happen has been a top priority in terms of right-wing rhetoric. It’s why right-wing rhetoric routinely dehumanizes the left and portrays it has an inhuman plot against decent Americans. It’s what the whole QAnon phenomena is about: Convincing a large number of conservative Americans that they have no choice but to violently suppress the globalist Satanic pedophile left. And, lo and behold, we find that Trump retweeted a QAnon account on Saturday. Because of course he did. QAnon is dedicated to convincing conservatives that they really are under some sort of existential threat from the left and the only solution is civil war. Retweeting QAnon memes is completely consistent with this broader strategy. A broader strategy that’s been an ironic source of stability amidst all of the chaos of the Trump administration: no matter how chaotic he’s been, Trump has been consistent in his portrayal of the American left as a fundamentally illegitimate force in America that poses a threat to ‘real Americans’ and will have to be ‘dealt with’ at some point in the future. It’s never clear when that point will arrive where conservative America has ‘had enough’ and rises up to ‘do something’. We haven’t reached that point of open slaughter of the left but we’re almost there. It’s always getting closer and closer. That’s been the consistent message coming from the Trump administration and with the attorney general and secretary of defense now openly backing Trump’s calls for a military crackdown it’s looking like that point of open slaughter of the left is about one inflammatory vaguely interpretable presidential tweet away.
Are we seeing the contours of a far right false flag murder plot to kill inflame tensions between protesters over the death of George Floyd and law enforcement? It’s starting to look like that with the FBI having announced that it’s investigating whether or not an Air Force sergeant who was just arrested on Saturday over an ambush attack on California sheriffs is connected to the May 29 random drive-by murder of a federal security guard nearby some of the protests.
Here’s what we know so far: Steven Carrillo — a 32 year old US Air Force sergeant assigned to the 60th Security Forces Squadron based at Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, California — was involved in a shootout with three deputies in the Santa Cruz Mountains on Saturday. The shootout appears to have been triggered by a 911 call about a suspicious ban in with guns and bomb-making material inside that was parked off the road. The van pulled away right when deputies arrived. They followed it to Carrillo’s house in Ben Lomond and when they approached the vehicle they were met with gunfire and multiple improvised explosives thrown at them. One deputy, Sgt. Damon Gutzwiller, was killed and others were injured. Carrillo was taken into custody alive after being shot and wounded.
Here’s the tie-in to a previous murder that suspicious took place nearby some of the George Floyd protests: on May 29th, Federal Protective Services Officer Dave Patrick Underwood was killed with standing outside guarding the Ronald V. Dellums Federal Building during protests. A white van with no license plates was seen speeding away from the crime scene. As we’ll see in the third article excerpt below, they have it narrowed down to a white 1997–2002 Ford E‑250 or E‑350, so it’s a more specific description than just “a white van” and Carrillo’s van presumably matches that description. The description of a mystery van that appeared to senselessly murder a federal security guard right nearby the George Floyd protests which is precisely what we would expect from the ‘Boogaloo Bois’ and other far right groups who have been openly talking with each other about staging violent attacks against law enforcement in the middle of the protests in order to create chaos.
So is there anything in Carrillo’s background or statements that would suggest a motive? Well, as we’ll see, Carrillo, who is Hispanic, reportedly expressed disgusts over police brutality both on Facebook and after getting arrested, telling officers, “This is what I came here to fight. I’m sick of these goddamn police.” And yet as we’ll see, his Facebook page also indicates a Libertarian ideology and it turns out Carrillo is essentially an elite Air Force military police officer. He’s a team leader in the elite Phoenix Raven unit, a group describes as providing “security for Air Mobility Command aircraft transiting high terrorist and criminal threat areas.” So a Libertarian elite military police officer randomly murders a security guard for no apparent reason nearby the George Floyd protests and was driving around with bomb-making materials. And when he’s caught and arrested after a deadly shootout he tells officers he did it all over being upset over the police. Hmmmm....:
“An Air Force spokesperson said Carrillo arrived at Travis Air Force Base in June 2018 and was a team leader on the Phoenix Raven unit. That group is comprised of “specially trained security forces personnel dedicated to providing security for Air Mobility Command aircraft transiting high terrorist and criminal threat areas,” according to an Air Force website.”
Yep, this guy was a team leader on the Phoenix Raven unit. That’s literally elite Air Force military police. And yet, as the following article describes, Carrillo was quite open after getting arrested with his motive: “This is what I came here to fight. I’m sick of these goddamn police.”
And yet, as reporters discovered, his friends from the Air Force were absolutely stunned that he would have done something like this. While his Facebook page is already down journalists captures a profile picture that lists him as a Libertarian. But it also turns out he was posting on Facebook various messages sympathetic to the protesters. For example, on June 5th, he wrote, “Who need antifa to start riots when you have the police to do it for you...” And on May 31st he reposted a meme that said, “I’ll never let racist white people make me forget about the dope white people I know exist. I love y’all.” The post includes fist emojis of different skin tones, and both of the “whites” in the meme were crossed out. Carrillo wrote, “The only race that matters, the human race.” That’s the earliest example listed in the article of Carrillo posting memes related to race relations and police brutality on his Facebook page. And what’s interesting about that is, of course, that all of these posts came after the shooting of Dave Patrick Underwood on May 29. So it would be interesting to know if these types of posts literally only started showing up on his Facebook page after May 29 or if there’s a longer-track record of this. Either way, the fact of the matter is this was a Libertarian military police officer who appears to be behind this law enforcement killing spree allegedly motivated by outrage over police brutality:
“The I‑Team has confirmed Carrillo is an active duty military police officer, a staff sergeant at Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield. His former colleagues are baffled that, in effect, a cop would target cops.”
A cop targeting cops. That’s the situation here. And Carrillo didn’t hide this alleged motive. He yelled it at the police during his arrest:
And yet his friends, like retired Air Force military police officer Justin Ehrhardt, expressed shock that he would ever do this. According to Ehrhardt, Carrillo talked about retiring last month with him and yet “there was nothing even brought up in a negative light bout anything with police at all.” Now, granted, perhaps Carrillo wouldn’t be inclined to complain about the police to a retired military police officer friend, but it’s interesting that all of the examples given of Carrillo’s Facebook posts about the police came after the May 29th murder of Underwood:
So did Steven Carrillo only recently start expressing concern about police brutality following the outbreak of the George Floyd protests or is this a long-standing thing with him. In fairness, maybe he wouldn’t have wanted to express those kinds of sentiments while working as the team leader of an elite military police officer. But if we’re to believe he really did go on this killing spree to express his outrage over the death of George Floyd we would have to assume he’s held extremely intense feelings about these matters for a while.
It’s also worth recalling that one of the factors that was contributing to the strange outreach efforts between the far right ‘Boogaloo Bois’ movement and the protesters is the loathing of law enforcement felt by some, but not all, members of far right (especially the ‘accelerationist’ neo-Nazis). So given Carrillo’s apparent libertarian leanings it’s possible he fell into one of those ‘libertarian who hates the police’ groups. And yet this was an elite Air Force military police officer. It’s all quite odd.
Finally, here’s a short article from June 5th, the day before the shootout, about the FBI asking for help to identify the white van involved with the May 29th shooting. As the article points out, they have this van narrowed down to a 1997–2002 Ford E‑250 or E‑350:
“The FBI is looking for a white van that’s either a 1997–2002 Ford E‑250 or E‑350. They say the van didn’t appear to have license plates attached at the time of the shooting.”
Is Steven Carrillo a genuinely aggrieved libertarian who anonymously attacked a federal building right next to the protests, an act that almost seems designed to spark a broader conflict between the protesters and law enforcement? Or was this elite military police officer acting as a far right provocateur? He’s clearly anxious to play the role of the aggrieved protester as his admissions to the arresting officers made clear. So we’re going to see how this investigation plays out but it seems pretty clear that he had much more violence in mind. Those IEDs in his van weren’t just for fun. He was a Hispanic man planning on bombing something in the name of the protesters, which happens to be the ‘Boogaloo Bois’ dream scenario and a protester nightmare scenario. A Boogaloo dream scenario that would have been the perfect pretext for sending military troops into the streets and portrayed the protesters as a dangerous insurgent army. Is it just a coincidence that the guy carrying out this Boogaloo dream scenario that would have justified the military taking on domestic policing powers happens to be a Libertarian elite military policy officer? That’s what Steven Carrillo would have us believe. It’s a reminder if that if there’s one major factor in these protests that should unify protesters with the police it’s the far right extremists who are more than happy to get both of them killed.
Oh look at that: it turns out Steven Carrillo — the Air Force elite military police team leader who killed a police officer in Ben Lomond, California, during a shootout that was triggered by reports of guns and bomb-making equipment in his van and who is suspected of killing a federal security guard nearby a police brutality protest in Oakland — happened to write in blood various ‘Boogaloo’ and Libertarian slogans right being arrested. So the guy who’s opening act of violence was killing a federal security guard David Patrick Underwood — who happened to be African American — appears to be a far right provocateur. Surprise!
And as we’ll see in the article excerpts below, he was also using these far right slogans when talking to various bystanders before being apprehended. One of the phrases he wrote in blood was simply ‘boog’, a clear ‘boolagloo’ reference. Another was, “I become unreasonable”, which is a reference to the Marvin Heemeyer. Heemeyer became a far right folk hero in 2004 after he leveled his town using a weaponized bulldozer — the “Killdozer” — in revenge for being upset with the local zoning regulations and references to Heeymey and the “Killdozer” are apparently quite common on ‘boogaloo’ chatrooms and social media groups.
Carrillo also wrote “Stop the duopoly”, a frequent slogan used by Libertarian candidates. Former Libertarian presidential nominee Gary Johnson launched a “Stop the Duopoly” campaign to promote third-party candidates in 2018. As we’ve seen, Carrillo was an avowed Libertarian based on his social media posts. As we’re going to see below, one of the people Carrillo spoke to while fleeing from the police before getting apprehended reported that Carrillo told him, “I’m not a bad guy. I’m just sick of all the duality bullsh*t.” He also had a history of calling for the abolition of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF).
So the guy appears to have pretty clear anarcho-far right leanings. And yet, as we’ve also seen, he started posting anti-police brutality content on Facebook in the last few weeks. And now we learn that one of his last Facebook posts was a link to a group “A Gun Page for Poors Who Know They Are Poors,” a the now notorious video of police in Buffalo shoving a 75 year old man to the group. And just minutes before he waged his attack on the officers in Ben Lomond he posted some sort of anti-fascist image on his Facebook page. So the picture emerging is one of Carrillo one of being a long-time Libertarian ideologue who only recently has been trying to associate himself with the protest movement right before and during this anti-police killing spree. Which leaves the big question of whether or not this elite military police officer’s attacks on the police for driven from genuine anti-police beliefs or pure cynicism intended to bring about the ‘boogaloo’ civil war:
“Carrillo’s presence on Facebook mostly featured support for a libertarian presidential candidate, anti-police sentiment and pro-gun causes. His profile picture showed George Washington and other American presidents holding modern weapons and tactical gear.”
A profile pic with George Washington and other American presidents holding modern weapons and tactical gear. That sure doesn’t sound like someone with left-wing sensibilities. And yet one of his very last Facebook posts appeared to be an attempt to associate himself with the protests, albeit in a gun-nut kind of way:
But when he was about to finally get apprehended he appears to drop the act and starts writing ‘boogaloo’ slogans in blood on the hood of a car:
And then there’s the “Stop the duopoly” phrase he also wrote on the hood of the car in blood:
So when he was about to be apprehended suddenly the guy lets his inner ‘boogaloo’ Libertarian out. But as the following article describes, he wasn’t just trying to convey these motives by writing slogans in blood. He was telling them to various bystanders, including the people he was trying to carjack. Notably, he didn’t shoot the people when they resisted. In fact, he apologized and left the car, telling a bystander “I’m not a bad guy. I’m just sick of all the duality bullsh*t.” But according to his deceased wife’s parents, Carrillo was a domineering narcissist with “dead eyes” who directly caused their daughters’ suicide in 2018:
“The ambush and frantic search traumatized this small mountain town, where witnesses on Monday described how the Carrillo allegedly leapt into at least two vehicles trying to steal them. At one point, when confronted by a shopkeeper while standing behind a parked car, he said, “I’m not a bad guy. I’m just sick of all the duality bullsh*t.””
“I’m not a bad guy. I’m just sick of all the duality bullsh*t.” That’s what Carrillo was telling the random people he was encountering as he was fleeing from the police. So he doesn’t appear to have been in the kind of mindset where he was just randomly killing people like a typical spree shooter. But he was :
At the same time, he also appeared to be willing to blow himself up with one of his pipebombs, along with the man who ultimately tackled and apprehended him. And when the officers arrive, he’s caught on video saying, “Hey listen everybody. This is what I’m sick of.” So when he was arrested he was trying to ensure everyone assumed his motive was primarily a grudge against the police:
It’s worth noting that being subdued by the man in the red shirt is probably the act that saved Carrillo’s life. After killing an officer he was almost certainly going to be shot and killed by police when they found him if he wasn’t already pinned to the ground by that man.
Finally, note how the family of his wife, who committed suicide in 2018, blames Carrillo for her death and view him as a dangerous domineering narcissist:
So we have this odd mix of someone who has been described by family members as being a domineering narcissist who lacks empathy and drove his wife to suicide, a charge that’s not hard to believe given his actions. And yet when he was trying to carjack people after fleeing the police he was clearly trying to convey to the terrified strangers that he didn’t want to hurt them and he’s not a “bad guy” but was just “sick of all the duality bullsh*t.” It’s a weird mix.
Next, here’s another article that gives a few more details on Carrillo’s behavior during his carjacking attempts. It sounds like after Carrillo tried to carjack the first car in the parking lot of the marijuana dispensary he jumped into a second parked car but then left the car after the occupant screamed. So other than his attempts to blow himself up when he was wrestling with the man who ultimately apprehended him it appears that Carrillo was exclusively focusing his violence on police officers.
The article also includes more interviews with his friend from the military, Justin Erhardt, who reportedly hasn’t seen Carrillo since 2014 but has been maintaining contact with him over Facebook. According to Ehrhardt, Carrillo’s recent posts about police brutality was out of character, something not hard to believe given his Facebook profile of heavily armed former presidents and general focus on Libertarianism and gun rights:
“Law enforcement officials said it was too soon to announce a motive for Carrillo’s alleged attack on Gutzwiller and another unnamed deputy who was wounded and in stable condition Monday, but a fellow airman of Carrillo’s who served with him at Hill Air Force Base outside of Salt Lake City called the suspect’s recent social media posts out of character.”
That’s how Justin Ehrhardt describes Carrillo’s recent social media posts expressing concerns about police brutality: out of character. And this is coming from someone who has primarily been in contact with Carrillo over Facebook since 2014 so he presumably has a good sense of what Carrillo posts about. And yet minutes before police arrive at his residence and the shootout ensues, Carrillo was sharing an anti-fascism image on social media:
And, again, note how he could have just shot people and taken their cars but he didn’t. When he attempted to carjack as second person he fled and apologized after the occupant screamed:
Part of what makes his unwillingness to just violence take one of these cars by force is what it hints about his mindset: unlike spree killers who shoot people seemingly at random because they are mad at ‘society’ and ready to die going down in a blaze of violent ‘glory’, Carrillo seemed to genuinely want to escape. Other than his attempts to light a pipebomb after getting subdued by the man in the red shirt he seemed to want to escape and live. It’s the kind of mindset that again raises the question: did Carrillo really ‘snap’ because he just couldn’t stand police brutality and the ‘duality bullsh*t’ anymore? Because he doesn’t appear to have snapped to point where he was ready to die, something that further suggests his original intent was stoking the ‘boogaloo’ dream scenario by killing federal officers and hoping it would be blamed on the protesters.
Finally, here’s another article with Justin Ehrhardt about his interactions with Carrillo. Ehrhardt, who now run a financial planning company, says he recently spoke with Carrillo about financial planning and nothing seemed off about it. Ehrhardt also appears to be speaking on behalf of the Raven Phoenix Unit to put distance between Carrillo and the elite Air Force unit. But when recounting his and others’ experiences with Carrillo, Ehrhardt described it as a shock to everyone. “Every single person is shocked by it. A lot of people are saying they are shocked, because he was one of the nicest guys they dealt with when they were stationed with him.”:
“While Carrillo made his disdain for police brutality known through Facebook posts over the past few weeks—he is a self-proclaimed Libertarian who is against government involvement and wants to abolish the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms—there was no indication he was considering a violent attack, Erhardt said.”
A self-proclaimed Libertarian who is against government involvement and wants to abolish the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. That’s how Erhardt described Carrillo. But he also seemed to be vouching for the other people who interacted with Carrillo in the military by emphasizing that every single person who knew him from the military is shocked by these events because Carrillo is one of the nicest people they’ve ever worked with:
All in all, we have quite a jumble of contradictions here: a self-proclaimed Libertarian elite military police officer who is described as scary and lacking empathy by his wife’s family but described as the nicest person anyone has met by his former military colleagues suddenly starts posting concerns about police brutality right before he likely carried out an assassination of an African American federal security guard nearby the police brutality protests in Oakland. Then, days later, his van gets reported by someone who saw what appeared to be bomb-making materials in it. The police track the van down to his house where he ambushes them, killing one officer. Shortly before that ambush he’s posting more anti-fascism memes on Facebook. And after fleeing the police he proceeds to attempt to carjack two vehicles but is apologetic about it and refuses to use force to actually take the cars while explaining his actions with vague Libertarian slogans. He’s then apprehended at a nearby house where the man in the red shirt knocks the AR-15 out of his hands and wrestles him to the ground, at which point Carrillo fails at attempting to light a pipe bomb. And at some point during this time he manages to write “boog” and “I become unreasonable”, two far right slogans, in blood on the hood of a car. So the picture that emerges is that Carrillo started off with the intent of depicting himself as sympathetic to the protesters but as it became clear that he was likely about to die he starting telling people and leaving Libertarian and ‘boogaloo’ slogans. It’s as if Carrillo was trying to ensure he would become a ‘boogaloo’ folk hero after he was killed by the police. And that raises an interesting question: So is Carrillo a ‘boogaloo’ hero yet?
And there we have it: the FBI just formally charged Steven Carrillo in the deadly May 29 shooting of federal security guard David Patrick Underwood outside of the George Floyd protests in Oakland, California. That was to be largely expected.
Here’s the unexpected twist: an accomplice was just arrested. Robert Alvin Justus Jr., a white man of Millbrae, California, just turned himself in to the FBI, although it sounds like he was already under surveillance in connection to this case. According to the FBI, both Justus and Carrillo traveled to Oakland for the purpose of using the chaos of the protests to carrying out the assassination of law enforcement, with Justus driving the vehicle and Carrillo firing the gun. Electronic messages exchanged between the two indicate that the assassinations were the intent of their trip. It sounds like Carrillo used a privately-made machine gun with a silencer to carry out the attack.
So while we don’t yet know the full picture, at a minimum we can say this wasn’t Steven Carrillo suddenly going off the deep end in response to police brutality. Leaving the big question of whether or not this conspiracy was limited to Carrillo and Justus or part of a larger ‘boogaloo’-backed operation:
““We believe Carrillo and Justice had chosen this date because the planned protest in Oakland provided an opportunity for them to target multiple law enforcement personnel and avoid apprehension to the large crowds attending the demonstrations, as described in detail in the complaint,” Bennett said.”
Based on the information they have, investigators believe Carrillo and Justus were planning on using the crowds of the protests to hide themselves while they killed law enforcement. In other words, this is precisely the plan ‘boogaloo’ members were caught talking about on leaked encrypted chat boards: infiltrating the protests and killing law enforcement in the hopes of sparking a broader conflict between the protesters and police. The exact plan. A plan that involved a silenced privately made machine gun with a silencer:
And while we haven’t yet heard about Justus’s ideological affiliations, Carrillo’s decision to write ‘boogaloo’ slogans in blood following his shootout with deputies in Ben Lomond give us a pretty good idea of what those motivations are going to be:
So a big question remaining in this case is the question of whether or not this was a conspiracy of two or part of a broader ‘boogaloo’ operation. But that leads to the much larger question related all of the arson, looting, and any other attacks on law enforcement that have taken place in the context of these weeks of national police brutality protests in cities around the US: how much of all of that destruction and violence was in reality a far right false flag operation? It’s a question we had to ask all along. But now we have a pair of ‘boogaloo’-connected individuals — one of whom happens to be a highly trained enlisted military officer — who were caught traveling to a protest with a silenced machine gun for the purpose of murdering law enforcement and blaming it on the protesters. And they did it. They really did murder a federal security guard right next to a protest. This isn’t just talk on an encrypted ‘boogaloo’ chat room. So how much other ‘boogaloo’ talk is getting translated into action that we haven’t learned about yet? We have no idea, but we can be pretty confident this wasn’t the last of it. And that’s part of what makes this story potentially so big: It’s the kind of crime story where the biggest part of the story is all the other similar crimes we never hear about.
The 2020 Republican National Convention is thankfully on its final day but the worst is clearly yet to come. Donald Trump still has to give his keynote speech. A speech that will no doubt extend the prevailing theme of the convention thus far and paint a picture of a nation under siege from far left fascist Antifa hordes roaming the country looking for conservatives to terrorize. And then, with the political conventions complete, the US will enter the final stretch of the 2020 election where the full force of the right-wing media complex will hammer away at that idea that average Americans are facing a perilous far left threat. A final stretch that will undoubtedly include more incidents like the false flag attack by ‘Boogaloo’ members like Steven Carrillo and Robert Alvin Justus Jr. on David Patrick Underwood, a federal officer who was guarding a federal building nearby an Oakland police brutality protest.
And as the following pair of articles remind us, if and when these false flag ‘Boogaloo’ attacks are revealed to be false flags, the GOP and right-wing media complex will continue to dutifully ignore these revelations and continue to try to exploit the attacks. Like Vice President Mike Pence just did during his convention speech last night:
“Pence’s speech highlighted a single law enforcement officer, strongly implying that this officer was the victim of left-wing radicals opposed to police officers and to President Trump: “Dave Patrick Underwood was an officer of the Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Protective Service, who was shot and killed during the riots in Oakland, California,” said Pence, before acknowledging Underwood’s sister, who was in the audience.”
It was just one in a string of lies and half-truths that one would normally expect from a politician like Mike Pence. But it was a particularly ominous lie nonetheless because it was an invitation and shoutout to the ‘Boogaloo Bois’ to repeat it. Yes, the Vice President essentially sent a barely coded message to the ‘boogaloo’ domestic terrorism movement to carry out more false flag attacks. After all, if they get revealed to be a false flag the Trump administration will maintain the lie anyway. Imagine what an incredible incentive it is to individuals who are considering carrying out such attacks to have the vice president use his prime time convention address to cover for the last exposed false flag attack.
And as the following article from a few weeks ago makes clear, this kind of gross revisionism of a recently exposed false flag attack isn’t limited to the vice president. GOPers have been maintaining the lie about Underwood’s death all along:
““There is no evidence that these men had any intention to join the demonstration in Oakland,” said John Bennet, the agent in charge of the FBI’s San Francisco division, referring to Carrillo and the man charged with driving the van used in the drive-by shooting. “They came to Oakland to kill cops.””
As the FBI’s own investigators make clear, there’s no evidence at all that Carrillo and Justus intended on joining the protests. They were there explicitly to run a false flag operation. Carrillo admitted to it on his own Facebook posts. And yet for months Republican politicians and Trump administration officials have been openly trying to connect Carrillo to the protestors with impunity. Keep in mind that it was abundantly clear that Carrillo was a ‘Boogaloo’ false flag operative by early June. And yet here we have Senators Ron Johnson and Ted Cruz going out their way to connect Carrillo to the protestors two months later in August. They obviously know they are blatantly lying and are more than happy to continue doing so, which, again, is a blatant shout out to other ‘Boogaloo’ members to carry out their own false flag attacks:
And then there’s the Trump administration officials like Acting Deputy DHS secretary Ken Cuccinelli who were more than happy to play along with Senator Cruz during his hearing and butressing the same lie he himself had been promoting for weeks. Because Big Lies require coordination. Coordination between the kind of people happy to engage in a Big Lie:
And now we get to see whether or not President Trump decide to drop a David Patrick Underwood reference in his convention speech tonight. It’s clearly on the administration’s mind, as Mike Pence made clear. Understandably. After all, if there actually was a widespread acknowledgement that David Patrick Underwood was murdered in a ‘Boogaloo’ false flag attack that was intended to paint the protestors as violent killers that’s the kind of fun fact that could do real damage to the narrative of far left violent hordes threatening the nation that the Trump campaign is clearly relying on as one of its core campaign messages.
It also raises the question of why the Democrats haven’t pounced on the Carrillo story yet. After all, imagine if this story and the political fight over whether or not Carrillo was a false flag ‘Boogaloo’ member or an actual protestor was the kind of story the Democrats were routinely raising and forcing the Republicans to comment on now that the GOP has double and tripled and quadrupled down on a Big Lie narrative. Republicans had a chance to back away from this story once it became clear who Carrillo was but they couldn’t resist just lying like always and relying on the power of the right-wing media to back up the lie. As a result, the campaign commercials write themselves at this point. Clips of one Republican after another spreading the Big Lie of Carrillo juxtaposed to Carrillo’s own words and deeds. In a campaign where that exact Big Lie — of violent mobs of dangerous left-wing assassination squads coming for you in your homes — is at the heart of not just Trump reelection campaign but the rest of the GOP at this point, it seems like the GOP’s ‘up-is-down black-is-white’ embrace of such an easily debunk lie represents a real opportunity. Sure, Big Lies are inherently hard to counter, especially in the face of the contemporary vast right-wing media disinfo-tainment complex that dominates America’s national dialogue. But this is an election year where billions of dollars spent on ads from both sides.
And, yes, attempting to counter right-wing Big Lies has kind of become a fool’s errand in modern day America. But not as foolish as not trying to counter them.
The more chaos and anarchy and vandalism and violence reigns, the better it is for the very clear choice on who’s best on public safety and law and order. That was the direct quote from White House adviser Kellyanne Conway a few day ago in what is being seen as a perhaps unintentionally honest description of the White House’s reelection strategy. A strategy that could probably be summarized as a Helter Skelter ‘Strategy of Tension’ for the US:
A strategy of tension that includes President Trump and virtually the entire Republican Parry and right-wing media turning the 17-year old shooter at last week’s protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Kyle Rittenhouse, into a right-wing folk hero. And a strategy that can be deployed with ease. All that’s required is a new egregious police shooting incident that gets caught on video. Protests will predictable ensue. Some of the protesters — or right-wing plants — will engage in looting, vandalism, or arson and some sort of violence between protestors and counter-protestors takes place. And then Trump and the right-wing media use that violence to frame the protests as something Trump can protest voters from. It’s a diabolically simple strategy. All it requires to keep going is new egregious police brutality incidents every few weeks to maintain the tension. Blatantly bad cops are good for Trump’s reelection as long as they’re so bad they trigger a protest. That’s how the strategy works.
And it’s that unfolding Trumpian Strategy of Tension that makes a new report on the infiltration of police departments by white supremacists in the US so disturbingly timely. The report was written by former FBI agent Mike German and describes a national situation where there is basically no real oversight to watch for white supremacist’s trying to infiltrate the police. Even more disturbing is that few police departments even have a policy against officers being affilitated with white supremacist groups. It’s why the timing of this report almost couldn’t be better. But it’s not just a report that should be of interest to anti-police brutality protesters. Police themselves should be keenly interested in its contents right now. Why? Because the Trump administration isn’t just stoking violence by pro-Trump/pro-police counter-protestors. Trump is also implicitly encouraging the kind of acts of extreme police violence that’s starting these protests in the first place because the protests are part of his reelection strategy. If you’re a closet neo-Nazi cop the unambiguous signal that you have been getting from the White House this summer is that these protests are great for Trump’s reelection. And that’s an invitation for more acts of policy brutality...specifically acts of brutality that get caught on camera and enrage swathes of the public. And that means every police department in the US should be extra worried right now about its closet white supremacist cops deciding that the best way to help Trump get reelected is to do something that triggers an anti-police brutality protest.
Are some of these police killings or shootings, like the obscene shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, being done by police with the hopes of triggering a protest? That’s unclear at this point, but what is clear is that white supremacist infiltration of the police is an long-standing phenomena and almost no police departments have been watching out for it:
“The exact scale of ties between law enforcement and militias is hard to determine, German told the Guardian. “Nobody is collecting the data and nobody is actively looking for these law enforcement officers,” he said.”
Nobody is collecting the data and nobody is actively looking for white supremacists in the police force. As a result, we don’t know the true scale of ties between law enforcement and far right groups likes militias. It’s the kind of ambiguity that should leave us pretty sure those ties are deeper than we suspect. And when those ties between police and militias result in the kind of coddling like we saw with the Kenosha police department’s treatment of Kyle Rittenhouse — allowing him to leave without being arrested after shooting and killing multiple people — the militias are even more incentivized to come out to the protests and commit more acts of violence:
Without the protests Trump’s current reelection strategy crumbles. And you can’t have anti-police brutality protest with police brutality. So are any of these incidents being intentionally created by white supremacist cops who are aware of this Helter Skelter-style strategy of tension reelection campaign? Well, if the White House was to send out any quiet requests for more high-profiling police killings there’s pretty clearly going to be a receptive audience. We just don’t know how big of an audience because we don’t know how many white supremacist cops there are at all because no one is looking.
Here’s an update on Michael Forest Reinoehl, the suspect in the shooting of Aaron “Jay” Danielson, a far right Patriot Prayer member in Portland last weekend. Recall how one of the curious things about Reinoehl is how his public social media posts indicated basically no interest in politics until June 3rd of this year when he has a post about a “New Perspective” on the need for radical change. And it was a couple weeks after that ‘New Perspective’ post that he claimed on social media to be “100% ANTIFA all the way”. So the ostensible leftist who killed the first far right individual this year appeared to be “100% ANTIFA” for a couple of months or so before this killing. A killing that’s predictably being portrayed by groups like Oath Keepers as being the first shot fired in Civil War 2.0.
And now here’s the update: Reinoehl was shot dead by law enforcement hours after Vice New published an interview with Reinhoehl. It’s unclear at this point why exactly precipitated the shooting but based on eyewitness reports it sounds like Reinhoehl was leaving an apartment that happened to be under surveillance to go to his car. Once he got into his car two unmarked SUV raced up to the car. At that point Reinoehl got out of the car with what looked like an assault rifle and began to fire at the SUV. The officers opened fire and killed Reinoehl. No officers were injured. So it definitely has the feel of an ‘arrest’ that Reinoehl never intended to survive.
During the Vice interview published hours earlier, Reinoehl admitted to the shooting and justified it by suggesting that Danielson was threatening “a dear and close friend of mine in the movement” with mace or knife. It would be interesting to know how long he’s known this “dear and closer friend in the movement”. Is this someone he just met following his “New Perspective” in June or someone he’s known for years? Reinoehl claims he felt like he or his friend were going to be stabbed if they took one step closer to Danielson. Keep in mind there’s grainy video of the actual shooting and the Reinhoehl doesn’t appear to be within stabbing distance of Danielson.
Reinoehl also claimed in the interview that the police in Portland were intentional encouraging violent conflicts between far left and far right protesters by leaving these areas unpoliced for hours at a time while clashes are underway. As we’ll see in the fourth article excerpt below, the recent report put out by former FBI agent Mike German about links between law enforcement and far right groups has a section dedicated to the history of Portland’s police department with far right groups. The article also discusses incidents over this summer where large street battles were allowed to go on for hours without police intervention. So those claims of Reinoehl in the interview seem pretty plausible. He also explained that the reason he was on the run from the police is because he was convinced they were working with the militias and had no plans on protecting him or his family.
The Vice interview ends with Reinoehl making the kind of statement that, again, should raise questions about whether or not he’s was entering the protest movement with the goal of stoking conflicts: He feels like the shots he fired felt like the beginning of a a civil war, echo groups like the Oath Keepers. So whether or not the guy was a genuine left-wing activist or a plant he was definitely playing into that far right narrative. He played a starring role in fact:
And at the end of this all we still know almost nothing about Reinoehl. He was ex-military, a profession snowboarder, and working as a handyman contractor. That’s all we know about this figure who suddenly became “100% ANTIFA” just months ago and is now the poster boy in far right’s quest to spark a civil war
Ok, first, here’s an article describing his killing police in Washington state and the eyewitnesses who saw Reinoehl take an assault rifle out of his car and start firing it at the SUVs that just swarmed him:
“The man got out of his vehicle and began to fire what they believe was an assault rifle at the SUVs. They said they heard 40 or 50 shots, then officers returned fire, hitting the man.”
That definitely sounds like a “suicide by cop” scenario. And this all took place hours after the Vice interview was published where Reinoehl expresses a sense that he had just fired the first shots of a new civil war:
““I feel that they’re trying to, you know, put other charges on me. They’ll find another way to keep me in,” Reinoehl said when asked why he didn’t tell his story to the police. “Honestly, I hate to say it, but I see a civil war right around the corner,” he said. “That that shot felt like the beginning of a war.””
“That that shot felt like the beginning of a war.” It’s like he’s reading a script written by the Oath Keepers. As Reinoehl describes it, he had no choice but to shoot Danielson. It was either he shoot Danielson or Danielson stabs his “dear and close friend of mine in the movement”. Video of shooting doesn’t appear to show Reinoehl being even close to Danielson when the shooting took place, although its not clear in the video how close his friend was to Danielson and whether or not Danielson had a knife out:
Next, here’s an Oregon Public Broadcasting article that makes an important observation regarding Reinoehl’s history of activism that’s more important now that Reinoehl’s social media accounts have been deleted following his death: It was only in June of this year that his Instagram account took a radical shift, from snowboarding post to almost exclusively posts about the Portland protests:
“His social media account depicts a dramatic shift at the end of May, coinciding with the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police.”
Again, all indications are that Reinoehl only suddenly became politically active right when the George Floyd protests broke out. At that point his posts almost exclusively were about Portland area protests. So the guy went from no apparent activism to a singular focus on activism. But the kind of activism that he himself saw is precipitating a more violent conflict
“But it will be like a fight like no other! It will be a war and like all wars, there will be casualties.” That’s how he was framing these protests from the very beginning of his activism in June. It will be a war with casualties.
Finally, here’s an article about the recent report put out by Mike German on the ties between far right groups and law enforcement and how that relates to charges that Portland’s police are intentionally promoting the violence between protestors and counter-protesters
“German, now a fellow at Liberty & National Security Program of the Brennan Center for Justice, recently published a report on connections between law enforcement and white supremacist and far-right militant groups. The report highlights the history of Portland police officers with ties to white supremacists and racist groups. It concludes that the department’s failure to adequately address earlier allegations of white supremacist activity set the stage for the public to believe officers failed to do enough to control a series of violent rallies instigated by far-right militants and white supremacist groups starting in 2016.”
As we can see, German’s report includes the history of Portland police officers with ties to white supremacists. A history that includes some relatively recent history back in 2016. It’s that recent history that activists are pointing to when they decry recent events where protesters were battling in the streets for hours while police remained at a distance:
As German describes it, the Portland police essentially have a policy of condoning fights between protestors and counter-protesters and that’s a policy that’s asking for a lot more violence. All of the ingredients are there for an escalation. The far right is actively pining for violence and a civil war while Portland’s Police are happy to stand by and allow that violence to happen. All that’s required is an ostensible leftist willing to play the role of left-wing villain can be used to justify an escalation and they found one in Michael Reinoehl, a guy who went from seemingly apolitical to “100% ANTIFA” and predicting civil war less than three months ago.
Here’s a series of articles that highlights how the pro-Trump militias that are getting increasingly agitating as the election approaches are not just getting more militant but also increasingly veering into domestic terrorism territory. The articles also describe how these groups will be able to rely on a growing number of veteran and active duty members of the military who have the skills to carry out a pro-Trump domestic terror campaign if they choose to do so:
First, here’s an update on the violence between protestors and far right pro-Trump counter-protestors in Portland. Recall how Michael Reinoehl, someone with no apparent political background who suddenly declared himself “100% ANTIFA” over the summer, shot and killed Aaron “Jay” Danielson, a member of the far right Patriot Prayer group, in Portland last month. Reinoehl was killed by federal officers days later in a hail of bullets just hours after he gave an interview to Vice. We’re now learning more about the mindset of the pro-Trump militia groups operating in Portland at that time. A mindset of intentionally starting violence and even considering the political assassination of Portland’s mayor. This is what was just revealed in the last instance of leaked far right chat logs. In this case it was logs obtained by Eugene Antifa — one of the few long-standing established “Antifa” groups that actually exists — of chats on the GroupMe app between members of Patriots Coalition, a militia umbrella group. And as the chats show, the group’s discussion included talk of freezing paintballs for maximum damage and the need to bring guns and prepare for shooting. The leader of one of member militias, Mark Melchi, claims to have been a captain in the US Army. Melchi’s advice included ignoring weapons statues and that, “We must be ready to defend with lethal response… Suggest wearing mask and nothing to identify you on Camera…to prevent any future prosecution.” According to the report, the group members, not just the leaders, are constantly fantasizing about mass violence, including fantasies that Trump will ask them to fight on his behalf. As one user put it ahead of an August 22 rally, “I’m waiting for the presidential go to start open firing”. Melchi responds with, “Well Saturday may be that go lol”:
“Newhouse said that the ideas expressed in the group were entrenched in “extreme nationalism – that a few strong men with guns can together take out an evil that is at once imagined as an existential threat, and pathetically weak”. Newhouse added that the group’s discussions “fit within a broader trend of rightwing extremists becoming more accelerationist over time”.”
As these chat logs remind us, the “accelerationist” trend on the far right is accelerating. They’ve gone from constantly fantasizing about violence to using the nationwide protests of 2020 to live the dream:
And the person many of these militia groups look to as their de facto leader is of course Donald Trump. They aren’t just willing to kill for him but eagerly anticipating Trump’s command to do so:
Ok, now here’s a New York Times piece that reminds us of something we’ve known for a long time: the growth of the militias that began surging in 2009 with the election of Barack Obama is surging once again, thanks in part to President Trump’s calls for law and order. Experts estimate that veterans and active duty members of the military make up at least 25 percent of militia rosters, with 15,000–20,000 active militia members in total across 300 groups. So there’s around 4,000–5,000 veteran and active duty militia members operation in militias today according to these estimates and they are increasingly willing to kill for Trump:
“Although only a small fraction of the nation’s 20 million veterans joins militia groups, experts in domestic terrorism and law enforcement analysts estimate that veterans and active-duty members of the military may now make up at least 25 percent of militia rosters. These experts estimate that there are some 15,000 to 20,000 active militia members in around 300 groups.”
It’s Trump’s private army. 15,000–20,000 members with a core of 4–5k veterans and active duty members. Might Trump call upon his militia to deal with upcoming election disputes? If so, they’re ready to answer his call, especially if it’s a call for political violence against the left:
The groups are clearly ready and willing to answer Trump’s call to arms should he make it. If he asks, there’s thousands of militia members ready to swarm major cities and there’s no reason to believe they won’t do so. They’re already doing it.
But, of course, there are alternative forms of militancy than the kind of open militancy the militias are engaging in at the street protests. Alternative forms that what Timothy McVeigh carried out in Oklahoma City when he used his explosives-making skills he acquired in the military to build a giant bomb and blow up a federal building. Should we be concerned about these kinds of events if Trump is forced to leave office while refusing to concede? Of course we should be. Which is why the following report about the leader of the neo-Nazi accelerationist terror group, The Base, is so chilling: it turns out the founder and leader of the group, 47-year-old New Jersey native Rinaldo Nazzaro, was a Pentagon contractor who in 2014 worked with Special Operations Command (SOCOM) on anti-terror operations like ISIS and al Qaeda. And yes, the name “al Qaeda” translates as “The Base”:
“An international terrorist leader who was once a specialist in combatting jihadist terrorism turning his expertise around and aiming it at the U.S. government speaks to the growing professionalization of the far right as it transforms into a dangerous national security threat on American soil.”
They aren’t just playing soldier. These movements are increasingly filled with highly trained individuals, some like Nazarro who had access to top secret clearances. And that raises the question of how extensively are these special skills being taught and proliferating through these underground networks. Anything that can be taught over a chat room can be spread with ease thanks to encrypted chat tools. While we don’t know the extent that this is happening, we know it’s happening:
It’s also worth keeping in mind the recent story of Ethan Melzer, the US Army private who was a member of the Satanic neo-Nazi group “Order of the Nine Angles” and who was sending information to a purported member of al Qaeda with troop movement information about his own unit with the hopes that an al Qaeda attack on his unit would provoke a further regional war. Given that both “The Base” and “Order of the Nine Angles” overlap heavily with Atomwaffen’s accelerationist neo-Nazi goals, it raises the question of whether or not Nazzaro’s experience with military operations targeting groups like al Qaeda and ISIS are the kinds of experiences that might make him inclined to reach out to these groups and coordinate attacks. Either way, it’s a reminder that when we’re talking the danger of pro-Trump militia groups carrying out acts of political violence during and after the upcoming election we’re implicitly talking about possibly including the kinds of accelerationist terror groups like Atomwaffen and The Basethat are ideological affiliates of al Qaeda and ISIS. If Trump makes the call to arms these are the axis of groups who will answer that call. Birds of a feather...
A reelection campaign running against the election. That’s the theme that emerged on the night of the first presidential debate between President Trump and Joe Biden. First, as expected, Trump continued to push the idea that massive mail-in vote fraud is taking place and predicted the election will be bogged down for months with litigation. He also acknowledged that one of the reasons he thinks Amy coney Barrett needs to be appointed to the Supreme Court is so she can help resolve the upcoming cases involve mail-in ballots, predicting, “But you know what? We might not know for months because these ballots are going to be all over.”:
““This is not going to end well,” he predicted.”
Well, that’s one bit of honesty from Trump during the debate. This is not going to end well. That’s literally Trump’s reelection strategy. Ensuring this ends so horribly it breaks the system in a manner that somehow allows him to stay in power or breaks the country entirely.
But while his fear mongering about the mail-in ballots was entirely expected, in a somewhat unexpected replay of his infamous “good people on both sides” Charlottesville moment, Trump was once again pressed to bluntly condemn white nationalist groups and once again couldn’t bring himself to do so. Trump first bumbled about asking for a specific group to condemn. He then blurts out, “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by! But I’ll tell you what, somebody’s got to do something about antifa and the left.” Yep, in response to calls to condemn white nationalist groups he called on the Proud Boys to “stand by” (as if they’re a part of his private army) and warned that somebody’s got to do “something” about “antifa and the left”, a barely cloaked call for political violence. It was an unexpected moment that, in retrospect, should probably have been completed expected in the context of a reelection campaign strategy that is focused on running against the idea of that a valid election is possible. Because when you’re running against the idea that a valid election is even possible, you don’t need votes. You need private armies:
“The Proud Boys immediately shared a new logo online that included the phrase “stand back and stand by.””
Message received. The Proud Boys are standing by, along with the hundreds of other pro-Trump militias that have sprung up in recent years.
But since winning the election through ‘other means’, including military means, is clearly part of Trump’s reelection strategy, it’s worth keeping in mind that the far right’s ability to help Trump steal the election isn’t limited to their ability to intimidate the public and potentially fight a civil war on Trump’s behalf. Domestic terror campaigns intended to sow confusion and misdirection are also an option. And that especially includes domestic terror campaigns that appear to be targeting Trump himself. That’s part of what makes the following article so disturbing because it appears to be about a pair of Americans who joined ISIS and plotted a the kind of gory terror campaign that would earn them a Netflix special. Their targets ranged from shopping malls filled with children to Wall Street to Trump Tower. And if you had to think of an event that would help Trump earn votes at this point in the election cycle it’s hard to think of something more effective than an ISIS attack on Trump Tower. It’s another reason the long-standing far right alliance between Nazi and Islamist jihadist — as evidenced by the recent case of the Satanic member of Atomwaffen working al Qaeda to get his army unit attacked to provoke a wider regional war — is vital for understanding the contemporary world. Because right now that Nazi-Islamist alliance — and the increased prospects of a jihadist attack directed at Trump — could be his best shot at winning the election with an actual majority of the vote
“Ali Jibreel was arrested in Tennessee on Monday, while Abdur Rahim was detained in Texas the same day. An affidavit laying out the charges against them was filed in the US District Court for the Western District of Texas. According to a 14-page criminal complaint filed in US District Court for the Western District of Texas in San Antonio, Ali Jibreel and Abdur Rahim are accused of conspiring with other ISIS supporters over a period of months to blow up important government centers such as the Trump Tower and the New York Stock Exchange.”
It’s quite an ISIS conundrum: should the group support an attack targeting Trump since doing so would inevitably give Trump a major boost in the polls? On the one hand, seeing Trump get reelected would probably be the death blow for the US. But on the other hand, Trump is far more likely to propel the US into a civil war if he loses the popular and electoral vote and is forced to claim massive voter fraud to hold onto power.
It’s a sign of the times that not carrying out a terror attack is probably a lot more devastating. Just step aside and let Trump do the dirty work. Well, Trump and his private army.
There’s a new piece in The Atlantic exploring the history and evolution of the Oath Keepers. It’s a piece that took on a disturbing new level of relevance following President Trump’s shout-out to the Proud Boys during the first presidential debate this week when he called on the group to “stand back and stand by” while claiming someone needs to do something about “antifa and the left”.
The Atlantic piece is based on a database of Oath Keeper members that was obtained by the reporter and includes a number of interviews that review the types of issues motivating the kind of people who are joining the group. And as we should expect, the interviews reveal an American conservative movement that appears to be genuinely convinced that there really is this vast armed and organized violent leftist movement centered around Black Lives Matter and antifa that really is plotting a Marxist revolution that’s just around the corner. Armies of antifa and BLM activists were going to invade their communities and burn them down. In other words, they binge-drank the far right Kool-Aid and are now in a Kool-Aid induced state of extreme paranoia. Far right Kool-Aid that’s not just the domain of Alt Right podcasts or InfoWars but is instead the main narrative that’s been pushed by Fox News and other mainstream conservative media for years. And as a result of these years of mainstream propagandizing, Stewart Rhodes has been able to successfully shift from selling the idea of fighting a civil war to stop a tyrannical federal government to selling the idea of civil war to stop the violent insurrectionist left from overthrowing President Trump in a coup:
“By then, some writers popular on the militant right had been warning that wars don’t always start with a clear, decisive event—an attack, a coup, an invasion—and that you might not realize you’re in one until it’s under way. Civil conflict is gradual. The path to it, I thought, might begin with brooding over it. It could start with opening your mind.”
That path to a civil war starts with open minds to its possibility. At least that’s the path Stewart Rhodes has chosen in what appears to be a personal quest to spark a civil conflict that he’s been pursuing from the very beginning of the Oath Keepers. It’s a deviously simple strategy: He just travels the United States talking up the idea of civil war. During the Obama year it would have been war against the federal government but these days it’s the alleged threat of a leftist “insurrection”. The exact same narrative the GOP and mainstream right-wing media has been aggressively pushing for months:
It’s a narrative that Rhodes has been developing and pushing from the very beginning of the Oath Keeper’s founding in 2009. It’s a reminder that the contemporary mainstreaming of the “insurrectionist left” meme is an adoption of a meme that figures like Rhodes have been pushing for years:
But the threat posed by this movement isn’t limited to the Oath Keepers itself. As a paramilitary group it acts as fuel to the flames plenty of other groups are just as interesting in fanning. As the article reminds us, three white supremacists were arrested days before a Martin Luther King day event in Virginia this year for plotting a terror attack intended to provoke a civil war. Recall how it was members of the “accelerationst” neo-Nazi domestic terror group, The Base, who plotted the attack. And they new they would be attacking both the left wing and heavily armed far right members at the protest in the hopes it would spark a broader shooting conflict. It’s a reminder that the members of the Oath Keepers can simultaneously be plotters hoping to stoke a civil war at the same time they’re positioning themselves to be dupes in the plots of other far right groups like The Base:
And while the list of 25,000 members isn’t necessarily up to date, if and when Rhodes issues his call to arms there’s going to be thousands of veterans and active duty members answering that call. He’s like an aspiring American warlord with a private secret army waiting for his order:
As as that thwarted terror attack reminds us, the many other groups also pining for civil war may not wait for Rhodes to issue that call to arms. In other words, in the realm of US groups openly advocating for civil war the Oath Keepers have a lot more competition than they used to:
It’s a sign of Rhodes’s wild success: the Oath Keepers have done such a great job of selling the idea of civil war that the group is at risk of being supplanted by the newer pro-civil war start ups. Of course, the Oath Keepers didn’t accomplish this all themselves. They had help. Lots of help. Help in the form of Fox News, right-wing talk radio, President Trump, and what remains of the Republican Party. If civil war does return to America it will clearly be a group effort. A group effort that almost exclusively came from a mainstreamed far right.
This January 17, 2021 Guardian UK article by Jason Wilson “How US police failed to stop the rise of the far right and the Capitol attack” illustrates that the laws involving right wing terror is unevenly enforced including members of law enforcement. The worry is that the laws will become more repressive despite existing ones not being properly applied. If there is ever a coup those laws will be used against law abiding citizens who are the coup plotters political enemies.
Snippets from the article include:
- “law enforcement has become politicized since 9/11, and even more so under the Trump administration”.
- While the incoming Biden administration has raised the possibility of new anti-terror laws to deal with the threat of far-right violence, Brennan argues that they should instead, through the justice department, ensure that current laws are consistently applied to far-right militants, including those in uniform.
- “This isn’t new”, he says. “We shouldn’t treat it as if it has come out of nowhere”.
- He points out that some of those involved in the Capitol riot have been involved in similar incidents over months or years, and because they have been repeatedly caught on tape, “we know their names, we know their criminal histories”.
- “They’ve been doing it because the police have been letting them do it. They’ve been doing it because the FBI have been letting them do it”, he said
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/17/us-police-far-right-capitol-attack?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
How US police failed to stop the rise of the far right and the Capitol attack
Jason Wilson
Teargas is released into a pro-Trump mob during clashes with Capitol police, 6 January 2020.
Teargas is released into a pro-Trump mob during clashes with Capitol police on 6 January. Photograph: Shannon Stapleton/Reuters
Off-duty officers, firefighters and corrections workers from agencies around the US took part in the Capitol riot
@jason_a_w
Sun 17 Jan 2021 05.00 EST
Last modified on Mon 18 Jan 2021 10.23 EST
The alleged complicity of some police officers in the attack on the US Capitol has led to fresh questions about how law enforcement and other public agencies around the US have approached a surging far-right street protest movement during the life of the Trump administration.
The presence of off-duty officers, firefighters and corrections officers from other agencies around the country in the protest crowd was a reminder of how members of a lawless movement have been able to find a place in their ranks.
Since the violent invasion of the Capitol by pro-Trump extremists seeking to overturn the election of Joe Biden, at least two Capitol police officers have been suspended, and at least 12 more are reportedly under investigation for dereliction of duty, or directly aiding the rioters.
Some officers were filmed offering apparent assistance or encouragement to the mob – whether by posing for selfies with confederate flag-waving protesters, or directing protesters around the building while sporting a Maga cap.
They did this at the same time that colleagues in the DC metropolitan police, a sister agency, say that they were maced, Tasered, stripped of their badges and ammunition and beaten by the angry crowd.
Mike German, a former FBI agent and fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, said he saw the failure of police to protect the building as following the pattern whereby “militant far-right groups have been given impunity” throughout the Trump era.
In what he called a “multifaceted failure” in Washington, German said the central problem was a “failure to recognize a threat for what it was”. Far-right groups, he said, “have been engaging in militancy for months”.
Pointing to similar attacks on state capitols in Virginia, Michigan, Idaho, Georgia and Oregon in 2020, German asked: “How many times do they have to storm a capitol before it’s taken seriously?”
In the wake of the riot – and near misses for elected officials who the mob had in its sights – former Capitol police officers who have been involved in lawsuits over decades alleging employment discrimination against black officers, have claimed that their sustained and repeated warnings about racism in the department were ignored.
Meanwhile, agencies around the country have announced investigations into their own officers who were present at the Capitol riot.
In Houston, an 18-year-veteran officer resigned after the Houston police department announced an investigation into his alleged actions at the rally. In Virginia, two officers who participated in the riot, and one who posed for selfies in front of a statue of the revolutionary general John Stark, are now facing criminal charges.
The actions of a serving officer in Boston are under investigation, while in California, the Los Angeles police department has launched a joint investigation with the FBI to determine whether or not any of its officers attended.
It’s not just rank-and-file officers who are having to answer difficult questions. In Oklahoma, Canadian county’s pro-Trump sheriff, Chris West, last Friday denied that he had participated in the riot following the rally, which he said he attended as a “patriotic citizen”, despite social media posts claiming to identify him in the crowd inside the Capitol.
West later refused to answer questions from local journalists about deleted Facebook posts in which another Facebook user said that he and West had pushed past Capitol police to enter the building, and in which West himself allegedly aired conspiracy theories about election fraud, and appeared to contemplate a violent response.
Elsewhere, Butch Conway, the recently retired 24-year sheriff of Gwinnett county, Georgia, attended the rally but claims not to have participated in storming the Capitol.
Other current and former public safety officers were part of the melee. A retired firefighter was arrested for allegedly throwing a fire extinguisher at Capitol police and in Maryland, a corrections officer is being investigated by the Charles county sheriff’s department for their actions at the rally.
Some police officers who did not attend the rally have nevertheless expressed support for the crowd’s actions, or promoted the conspiracy theories that spurred them on. In Maine, the chief of that state’s own capitol police, reportedly shared coronavirus- and Black Lives Matter-related conspiracy theories on his Facebook page in recent months.
In Pinal county, Arizona, the pro-Trump “constitutional sheriff” Mark Lamb made a speech on 6 January that contained vague allegations of criminal conduct by Hillary Clinton, and urged his listeners to “fight for the constitution”. Last August, near the height of 2020 electioneering, Lamb asserted in a speech to the Arizona Police Association that “the constitution is hanging by a thread”.
The large number of police and other sworn officers who either participated in, or sympathized with a large scale act of public disorder once again highlighted the significant number of serving police officers who were discovered to have been radicalized, or even to be members of extremist groups during the period in which Trump has dominated US politics.
Between 2015 and 2020, police officers were revealed as having ties to far-right groups such as the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters, and the League of the South – all three of which had members on the ground at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. In Texas, Florida, Louisiana and Michigan during that time, some officers were even revealed to have been recruited to the Ku Klux Klan.
In 2019, Reveal reported that dozens of serving police officers around the country were members of extremist groups on Facebook.
This isn’t new ... We shouldn’t treat it as if it has come out of nowhere
US authorities have repeatedly highlighted the presence of extremists in law enforcement agencies as a national security issue. In 2015, the agency noted that various extremist groups had “active links to law enforcement officers”.
German, the Brennan Center fellow, published a report last August on the ongoing problem of far-right militancy among law enforcement officers. He said “law enforcement has become politicized since 9/11, and even more so under the Trump administration”.
While the incoming Biden administration has raised the possibility of new anti-terror laws to deal with the threat of far-right violence, Brennan argued that they should instead, through the justice department, ensure that current laws are consistently applied to far-right militants, including those in uniform.
“This isn’t new,” he said. “We shouldn’t treat it as if it has come out of nowhere”.
He points out that some of those involved in the Capitol riot have been involved in similar incidents over months or years, and because they have been repeatedly caught on tape, “we know their names, we know their criminal histories”.
“They’ve been doing it because the police have been letting them do it. They’ve been doing it because the FBI have been letting them do it,” he said.
© 2021 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. (modern)
Here’s a story to keep in mind in the context of the recently announced moves by the US military to purge the military of white supremacists:
It’s never a good sign when “we lost the C‑4” is the best case scenario. But that’s the situation that’s unfolding at Twentynine Palms Marine Corps Base, where 10 pounds of C‑4 have gone missing during a long training exercise two weeks ago and investigators aren’t ruling out the possibility it was stolen. So let’s hope there’s ten pounds of C‑4 accidentally laying around somewhere on that base because otherwise it’s intentionally sitting in the hands of the people who stole it:
“Sources report that approximately 10 pounds of Composition C‑4 disappeared during a long training exercise two weeks ago. They also believe the manufactured plastic explosives may have been stolen.”
A story about missing C‑4 explosives would have been a disturbing story regardless of the year. But in 2021, when concerns of far right Trumpist terror are higher than ever following the storming of the Capitol and a surge in pro-Trump militia recruitment, this story is more or less the worst kind story because it’s the kind of story that hints at a growing terror movement and more attacks on the US government to come. It’s a sign of an existentially bad situation getting worse.
Then again, maybe the C‑4 really was merely lost during a training exercise. That presumably happens in the military. But, again, that’s the best case scenario. A best case scenario that increasingly feels like wishful thinking as an insurrectionary spirit takes hold of the GOP. This is the era of the QAnon/Trump Republican Party and the myth of the stolen election. It’s probably prudent to assume that the missing high explosives aren’t just laying under a pile of coats on the base somewhere.
A collective sigh of relief could be felt in cities across the US after a Minneapolis jury convicted Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin on all charges over the death of George Floyd. Relief over a sense that justice was finally served but also relief in a feeling that ‘fierce urgency of now’ became at least a little less immediately urgent. The waves of despair-induced protests and outrage in the face of an acquittal didn’t have to happen.
So it’s worth noting a PBS Frontline story that came out while the trial of Derek Chauvin was playing out that addresses another aspect of this situation that we should probably be breathing a sigh of relief over: The first interview of Steven Carrillo just took place. Recall how Carrillo was the former elite Air Force Phoenix Raven Team Leader who ambushed and killed multiple members of law enforcement as part of a ‘Boogaloo’ plot to frame the attacks on the George Floyd protestors. Also recall how Carrillo wasn’t working alone. A fellow ‘Boogaloo’ member who Carrillo met over Facebook, Robert Justus, was driving the van when Carrillo first attacked a pair of federal officers nearby an Oakland area George Floyd protest. So we know there was a far right ‘Boogaloo’ conspiracy to pin violence on the George Floyd protestors but we never really had a sense of how large this conspiracy reached. We have a better idea now.
It appears that Carrillo and Justus were far from working alone. For example, the investigation found at least 15 other active-duty members of the US Air Force who have been openly promoting Boogaloo content on social media. Carrillo was well known to the ‘Boogaloo’ leadership and joined up with a larger Northern California-based group called the Grizzly Scouts. There was extensive communication within this network including communication about killing law enforcement and framing it on the protests. In fact, hours after Carrillo and Justus shot two federal officers, one of the Boogaloo leaders texted him and told him to attack a police station. Carrillo even pleaded with his fellow ‘Boogaloo’ members to come save him from the police as he was on the run.
So about a week before this historic ruling over the death of George Floyd we learn that the far right Boogaloo plot to attack law enforcement and frame it on the George Floyd protestors was far larger and more organized than previously recognized. It’s one of the chapters of the broader story about the repercussions of the killing of George Floyd. A largely unread chapter that only grows in danger the longer it remains unread:
“ProPublica, FRONTLINE and Berkeley Journalism’s Investigative Reporting Program also uncovered new evidence that some military service members have embraced extremist ideology. The news organizations identified 15 active-duty members of the Air Force who, like Carrillo, openly promoted Boogaloo memes and messages on Facebook. On Friday, the Pentagon announced new measures to combat extremism inside the military. The Biden administration, meanwhile, is increasing funding for preventing attacks by militias, white supremacists and other anti-government groups, The New York Times reported this month.”
Steven Carrillo may have been the guy who pulled the trigger but he clearly wasn’t a lone nut. Law enforcement has been stunned at the extent of coordination, planning and communications within the ‘Boogaloo’ movement, with the Grizzly Scouts possessing a chain of command that included a leader. And that leader reportedly “discussed tactics involving killing of police officers and other law enforcement,” with Carrillo and other members. Carrillo’s murders were a group effort:
And while it’s unclear exactly when Carrillo joined the Boogaloo movement, he was in direct contact with movement leaders by December 2019 and in March of 2020, movement leader Ivan Hunter instructed Carrillo about ‘greening some sh*t’ and soon after Carrillo joined the Grizzly Scouts, which was advertising on Facebook as the “/K/alifornia Kommando” group (because of course Facebook allowed this). The coordination extensive enough that Hunter texted Carrillo to attack a police station hours after Carrillo had already shot two federal officers:
And throughout it all, pinning the blame on the George Floyd protestors was always one of the goals. Not the end goal. The end goal was civil war and a race war. Stoking conflicts between law enforcement and the George Floyd protestors was just a means to that end:
And perhaps the most alarming aspect of this whole story is the fact that Carrillo appears to have been radicalized from within the Air Force. How many more Steven Carrillo’s are there getting training they’re planning on using to foment a civil war? A lot more, based to this report:
Yes, of the 15 Air Force members found by this investigation who were openly promoting Boogaloo content on Facebook, 8 of them work for the Air Force security branch like Carrillo’s elite Phoenix Ravens unit. And this is just the open members of Boogaloo. How many hidden members are there? We don’t know. But if there were 15 members of the Air Force this investigation was able to find openly promoting Boogaloo content online, we can be pretty confident there’s A LOT more hidden members. Secretly coordinating with each other and waiting for an opportunity to commit acts of violence to be pinned on protestors. And now deleting all their past communications with Steven Carrillo about these plans.
Here’s a pair of stories underscoring the enduring threat of extremist infiltration of law enforcement agencies. A threat that’s only grown since the January 6 Capitol insurrection:
First, here’s an emerging story that’s worth keeping an eye on. A former undercover informant who spent a decade infiltrating the KKK in a hunt for secret law enforcement members has just come forward with an Associated Press interview where he raises the alarm about a much larger problem with KKK infiltration of law enforcement agencies than those agencies want to admit. That’s the message from Joseph Moore, a former army sniper who was first recruited by the FBI back in 2007 to infiltrate a klan group called the United Northern and Southern Knights of the KKK in rural north Florida. Moore claims he came across dozens of police officers, prison guards, sheriff deputies and other law enforcement officers who were involved with the klan and outlaw motorcycle clubs. Moore continue to help with the FBI over the next decade. But after going into hiding and changing their names, his family appears to be actively harassed by klan associates and Moore has concluded that going public with his story is the best way to keep his family safe. He’s also warning that Florida’s law enforcement agencies failed to address the problem and a systemwide review is required because the problem is out of control:
““From where I sat, with the intelligence laid out, I can tell you that none of these agencies have any control over any of it. It is more prevalent and consequential than any of them are willing to admit.””
Infiltration by white supremacists is more prevalent and consequential than any of Florida’s law enforcement agencies are are willing to admit. That’s the message from this former undercover informant, who appears to be going public now in part to raise an alarm about what is apparently an unchecked problem that these agencies are unwilling or unable to control. Systemwide investigations are necessary, according to Moore:
Also note how Moore and his family appear to have been threatened in recent months by klan-connected people. In other words, Moore went public in part because he felt like his life is increasingly at risk and going public might confer a degree of protection. It’s a disturbing move in part because it raises the question of whether or not Moore has lost faith in the ability or willingness of law enforcement to keep Moor and his family protected:
But what is perhaps the most disturbing part of this story is the response from the Florida Department of Correction. A response that came in the form of a denial that there’s any problem with white supremacist networks at all. No evidence of a systemic problem. It’s the kind of response that would understandably give Moore nightmares and prompt him to go public:
Will going public keep Moore and his family safe? Let’s hope so. It sounds like his warnings are very much still needed, in large part because they aren’t being heeded. Hence the appeal to the public.
And as the following article from back in July reminds us, it’s not just the KKK doing the infiltration. Far more ‘mainstream’ extremist white national groups are also a concern. Groups like the the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys. And as Central Florida law enforcement learned after the January 6 Capitol insurrection, these groups aren’t just recruiting members of law enforcement. They’re also potentially asking these members to participate in mass actions like the insurrection and presumably already working on preparations for the next insurrection :
“Nationwide, dozens of current and former police officers, other first-responders and military veterans have been among those arrested in the Capitol riot. But Central Florida law enforcement leaders provided few details when asked how they combat potential extremism within their ranks.”
Father and son duo Kevin and Nathan Tuck weren’t the only Central Florida members of law enforcement who played a role in the January 6 Capitol insurrection. Arthur Jackman, the vice president of the Proud Boys Orlando chapter was there too, along with his wife Sarah who happens to be an Organge County deputy sheriff. Sarah Jackman has already been cleared of wrongdoing. And it also turns out Nathan Tuck’s wife, Gabriela Tuck, still works for the Longwood PD and is not currently under any investigation:
It’s just one small glimpse into the patchwork of relations connecting the groups directly involved with the planning and execution of Capitol insurrection with law enforcement agencies around the US. This is just the story of Central Florida’s law enforcement ties to the extremist groups behind that attack. There’s presumably similar stories from communities all over the US. With similar endings in the form of minimal investigations that ultimately fizzled out.
What is Ron DeSantis planning on doing with his new state militia? That’s one of the many disturbing questions raised by the following Miami Herald report on the troubles facing the new Florida State Guard, started last year as a kind of state version of National Guard to assist with state emergencies. Or, at least, that was initial plan. Plans change. And as we’re going to see, the changes have all been in one direction: turning the Florida State Guard into the governor’s armed militia.
Initially, the 2022 law creating the State Guard (technically, it was ‘reactivating the guard after it was deactivated in 1947) limited the guard’s activities to emergencies inside the state. That limitation was later dropped. Then, in March, lawmakers and DeSantis revealed that they wanted the Guard to purchase $89 million in boats, planes, and helicopters and create a new armed specialized unit with police powers. They also grew the target size of unit from 400 to 1500 members.
So just on paper, the scope of this new State Guard has gotten a more militaristic since its inception. And then there’s the stories we’re getting from the actual recruits. Including Brian Newhouse, a retired 20-year Navy veteran who was chosen to lead one of the State Guard’s three divisions. As Newhouse put it, “The program got hijacked and turned into something that we were trying to stay away from: a militia.”
As we’re also going to see, it appears to be a militia with some training issues. That’s according to various veterans who reported physical abuse at the hands of the programs drill sergeants. It also sounds like the quality of the training is sub-par, with no actually written tests or any verification that you’ve learned anything.
There also appears to be leadership issues, with the initial leader of the Guard committing suicide in October. Luis Soler was selected as a replacement. Interestingly, Soler didn’t attend the June 30th graduation ceremony for the first class and ended up resigning for “personal reasons” a week later. At this point his replacement has yet to be announced. Keep in mind that Soler assumed that leadership position before it became clear that this is going to be a militia. So while it’s unclear why exactly Soler resigned, it’s not hard to imagine the surprise militarization of this new entity had a lot to do with it. And, presumably, concerns over how this new governors’ militia will actually be used.
Keep in mind that this is all happening in the context of a 2024 GOP primary where Ron DeSantis has clearly adopted a strategy of being even more ‘hard core’ than Donald Trump. It’s not hard to imagine how a new militia might play into that political dynamic:
“When DeSantis announced in 2021 he wanted to revive the long-dormant State Guard, he vowed it would help Floridians during emergencies. But in the year since its launch, key personnel and a defined mission remain elusive. The state is looking for the program’s third leader in eight months. According to records reviewed by the Herald/Times and interviews with program volunteers, a number of recruits quit after the first training class last month because they feared it was becoming too militaristic.”
Veterans are quitting the new Florida State Guard over concerns it’s becoming overly militaristic, including weapons and combat training. Something few, if any, state guards have similar kinds of powers. That seems like a red flag. Especially since these volunteer veterans were apparently given the impression that this wasn’t going to be a militaristic entity when they initially signed up. It’s like a militia-building bait-and-switch:
Or as Brian Newhouse, a retired 20-year Navy veteran who was chosen to lead one of the State Guard’s three divisions, put it, “The program got hijacked and turned into something that we were trying to stay away from: a militia.” Ron DeSantis is building a militia:
Adding to the troubling track record of this program is the fact that the first director died by suicide back in October. Luis Soler was named as his replacement. And according to Newhouse, both he and Soler viewed this new program as more like a FEMA-like initiative to help during emergencies. But in March of this year, state lawmakers and DeSantis revealed that they wanted the State Guard to buy boats, planes, helicopters, and establish a special armed unit with police powers. That sounds like an extremely well armed militia:
And while Luis Soler was tapped to lead the program, it doesn’t sound like he was technically leading its training program. That responsibility fell on Florida National Guard Lt. Col. Peter Jennison and former political operative Ben Fairbrother. But while creation of a militia-like entity appears to be their goal, it doesn’t sounds like Jennison and Fairbrother designed a ‘boot camp’ experience that actually provides a meaningful training experience. So this isn’t just a new armed militia but a particularly unprofessional one at that. Which seems like another red flag:
And it’s that lack of professionalism in the training of these recruits that brings us to an incident that hints at the kind of culture that’s being cultivate inside this new entity: a retired marine captain who dared ask questions wasn’t just kicked out of the program but literally grabbed and pushed into a white van by the programs drill sergeants, resulting in a police investigation:
Flash forward to the June 30, and the program is graduating its first class of 120 recruits, including state Rep. Tom Fabricio. It raises the disturbing prospects of serving in DeSantis’s militia becoming a kind of political boon. Interestingly, Luis Soler didn’t attend the graduating ceremony and stepped down for “personal reasons” a week later:
It’s going to be grimly interesting to see who DeSantis finds to replace Soler. Whoever it is will obviously be on board with the Florida GOP’s militia-like vision for new entity.
But it’s going to be more grimly interesting to see who the politically convenient targets of the unit will ultimately be. Undocumented immigrants? Black felons who voted? Transgendered children and drag queens? The sky is the limit. Less so with all those planes and helicopters.