3% three percent

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3% leader in mich plot, precursor to insurrection 1/5

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AN 12 24

Politico legal correspondent Kyle Cheney reported Wednesday that Russell Taylor — who invited "fighters" to help him storm the Capitol in an attempt to overturn the 2020 election — will be attending President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration on January 20, 2025. Former Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah) wrote a letter to U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth saying that "three current members of the Utah congressional delegation" were co-signing his invitation of Taylor to the inauguration, given that the terms of Taylor's probation ban him from traveling to Washington, D.C. without an invitation. He did not mention which three of Utah's six representatives were in support of Taylor's attendance.

“He is [a] caring father and reveres his family, his faith, and his love of our Country as his highest priority in life,” Stewart wrote. “I am honored to extend this invitation for him to attend the Inauguration as my guest.”

Some of the "fighters" Taylor asked to help assault the Capitol were "Three Percenter" militia members. The Southern Poverty Law Center has deemed Three Percenters as an "antigovernment general militia movement" whose leaders have specifically targeted Muslims and immigrants. Cheney wrote that on January 6, Taylor "surged to the U.S. Capitol with a knife and a tactical vest." And the day before, he delivered a speech threatening violence unless the election was overturned in Trump's favor.

"In these streets, we will fight and we will bleed before we allow our freedom to be taken from us," Taylor said according to court documents. "We will not return to our peaceful way of life until this election is made right."

Trump has promised that he would pardon scores of January 6 participants shortly after taking the oath of office next month. Some defendants have cited Trump's promise of pardons to argue that their proceedings should be delayed until after the inauguration, given that a presidential pardon would negate their prosecutions by President Joe Biden's Department of Justice.

According to Cheney, members of the U.S. Capitol Police Department will be tasked with protecting Taylor during his impending visit to Washington. This makes it a historic first that someone who participated in a deadly attack on the Capitol — that led to the death of Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick and the injuries of 174 other Capitol police officers — will be protected by that same department. Former Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn called it a "slap in the face" for Trump to consider pardoning people who attacked police.

In a 2023 post to her Substack newsletter, journalist Sarah Kendzior presciently warned that Biden's presidency would be a mere "placeholder" between "aspiring American autocracy" and a more "entrenched" form of authoritarianism if he failed to thoroughly prosecute both the participants and architects of the 2021 insurrection.

"Under Biden, the United States became the first country to face an attempted coup and not only fail to punish the coup plotters but allow them to hold office and make laws," she wrote. "There is no parallel in world history. Even Hitler had a prison interlude between his putsch and his presidency."

an 7 24

After former President Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt at a campaign rally in Western Pennsylvania on Saturday, July 13, many journalists and political scholars expressed worries that more political violence will follow. And some far-right militia members have called for violent retaliation.

Wired's Tess Owens reports that Scot Seddon, the Pennsylvania-based founder of the American Patriots Three Percenters (APIII), has posted a video on TikTok telling his allies to prepare for the possibility of civil war.

In the video, Seddon declared, "This is not going to just go away. We need to become f*****g strong, f*****g lions. Start reaching out to individuals in your state that are trustworthy, that have the like-minded vision of local strong communities, to hold down the fort, just in case (of) war, or for when s*** hits the fan."

According to Owens, "incendiary rhetoric and calls for retaliatory violence" have "exploded online" following the attempt on Trump's life.

"In the past year," Owens reports, "APIII has made a significant recruitment push across major social media platforms, such as Facebook, X, TikTok, and even NextDoor, according to research from the Tech Transparency Project shared exclusively with Wired. Despite featuring 'Three Percenters' in its name — a clear nod to the militia movement — APIII touts a disclaimer on its website insisting that it is not a militia."

Owens adds, "That's in line with the broader trend seen since January 6, 2021, when paramilitary activists scrambled to distance themselves from the militia movement implicated in the Capitol riot. But groups like APIII have increasingly been trying to rebuild the militia movement from the ground up, urging people to get organized in their communities.

*Read the full Wired article at this link.

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indictment

hostetter,russ taylor...

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21046979-210609-hostetter-et-al

proud boys and OK got more attn but

https://www.emptywheel.net/2021/08/23/stop-the-steal-hints-of-the-january-5-rallies-in-the-january-6-riot-investigation/

sTOP THE STEAL: HINTS OF THE JANUARY 5 RALLIES IN THE JANUARY 6 RIOT INVESTIGATION

August 23, 2021/in 2020 Presidential Election, emptywheel, January 6 Insurrection

With the charges against Owen Shroyer, the government has now charged three people who had a speaking part in several rallies tied to Stop the Steal the day before the insurrection: Brandon Straka, Russell Taylor and his co-conspirators, and Shroyer. Because I’m working on some gaps in the government’s story — gaps that must be intentional, for investigative or prosecutorial reasons — I want to look at how DOJ is beginning to fill in the story about January 5.

With Walk Away founder Brandon Straka, who was arrested on January 25, the mention of his speech at the Stop the Steal rally at Freedom Plaza in his arrest affidavit was almost incidental, included along with the rest of his incendiary speech directly tied to the riot (but the affidavit didn’t include his other public comments over a broader period — for example, it doesn’t mention Straka’s role in sowing suspicion of the Michigan vote tally).

My review of STRAKA’s Twitter account on January 11, also found a video he had posted of himself speaking at a “Stop the Steal” rally held at Freedom Plazain Washington, D.C. on January 5, 2021. As of January 13, STRAKA had removed this video from his Twitter account, but a video of the entire event had been posted to YouTube. The video showed that STRAKA was introduced by name and brought onto stage. STRAKA spoke for about five minutes during which time he repeatedly referred to the attendees as “Patriots” and referenced the “revolution” multiple times. STRAKA told the attendees to “fight back” and ended by saying, “We are sending a message to the Democrats, we are not going away, you’ve got a problem!”

Though Straka was charged with civil disorder for encouraging others to strip an officer of his riot shield, he has not yet been indicted, with or without obstruction, which these statements would seem to support. Instead, the government has gotten two 90-plus day continuances in this case with Straka’s consent, offering the explanation that, “are continuing to communicate in an effort to resolve this matter.” Straka currently has a status hearing scheduled on August 25, Wednesday, though these things do get moved quickly.

The January 5 rally at the Supreme Court (which featured some of the same people as the Freedom Plaza one) appears in theSo Cal Three Percenter conspiracy indictment in part for the logistical challenges it posed.

On December 30, 2020, KINNISON sent a text message to MELE, WARNER, and MARTINEZ in which he attached a flyer advertising the January 5, 2021 rally outside the Supreme Court, at which TAYLOR, HOSTETTER, and PERSON ONEwere named speakers for the American Phoenix Project. After KINNISON set this message, MELE wrote, “We need to make sure we roll into town earlier on the 5th now,” to which KINNISON responded, “We can leave Saturday.”

But it still provided cause for DOJ to mention that by December 30, Russell Taylor knew of a Stop the Steal plan to “surround the Capitol.”

On December 30, 2020, TAYLOR posted to his “russ.taylor” Instagram account:

Spread the word to other CALIFORNIA Patriots to join us as we March into the Capitol Jan 6. The Plan right now is to meet up at two occasions and locations: 1. Jan 5th 2pm at the Supreme Court steps for a rally. (Myself, Alan, [and others] will be speaking) 2. Jan 6th early 7am meet in front of the Kimpton George Hotel…we will leave at 7:30am sharp and March (15 mins) to the Capital [sic] to meet up with the stop the steal organization and surround the capital. [sic] There will be speakers there and we will be part of the large effort for the “Wild Rally” that Trump has asked us all to be part of. [my emphasis]

Mentioning this rally also gave DOJ an opportunity to describe Taylor promising to “fight” and “bleed” in his speech at the rally.

On January 5, 2021, TAYLOR spoke at a Virginia Women for Trump rally in front of the United States Supreme Court as part of a panel of American Phoenix Project speakers. In his speech, he stated:

I am Russell Taylor and I am a free American. And I stand here in the streets with you in defiance of a communist coup that is set to take over America. But we are awake and we are never going back to sleep. We are free Americans and in these streets we will fight and we will bleed before we allow our freedom to be taken from us. We declare that we will never bend a knee to the Marxists within Antifa, to the tyrannical Democrat governors who are puppets, and to the deep state commie actors who threaten to destroy America…. But now these anti-Americans have made the fatal mistake, and they have brought out the Patriot’s fury onto these streets and they did so without knowing that we will not return to our peaceful way of life until this election is made right, our freedoms are restored, and American is preserved.

That is, in the conspiracy indictment charging 3 percenters with organizing not just themselves to come armed to the Capitol, but others in Southern California, the earlier rally serves as both an organizational focus and a platform to sow violence.

Shroyer’s affidavit mentions several things he said on January 5

SHROYER traveled to Washington, D.C. in January 2021, and in advance of January 6, 2021, spoke of stopping the certification of the Electoral College vote. In a video1 posted to the Infowars website on January 5, 2021, SHROYER gave an address in Freedom Plaza in Washington D.C., during which he stated: “Americans are ready to fight.We’re not exactly sure what that’s going to look like perhaps in a couple of weeks if we can’t stop this certification of the fraudulent election . . . we are the new revolution! We are going to restore and we are going to save the republic!”

In another video2 posted to the Infowars website on January 5, 2021, SHROYER called into an Infowars live broadcast and said: “what I’m afraid of is if we do not get this false certification of Biden stopped this week. I’m afraid of what this means for the rest of the month . . .Everybody knows election was stolen . . . are we just going to sit here and become activists for 4 years or are going to actually do something about this .. . whatever that cause or course of cause may be?”3

In addition, SHROYER was featured in promotional material circulated by Infowars. One promotional video urged listeners to “come to the big D.C. marches on the 5th and 6th of January, I’ll see you there.”4 The video ended with an edited graphic of SHROYER and others in front of the Capitol building. That graphic is depicted below:

1 https://banned.video/watch?id=5ff4aebaa285a02ed04c4d6e.

2 https://banned.video/watch?id=5ff511bb5a212330029f5a9c.

3 https://banned.video/watch?id=5ff511bb5a212330029f5a9c.

4 https://www.banned.video/watch?id=5ff22bb71f93a8267a6432ee.

While Shroyer is circled in that graphic — which demonstrates that Jones had a plan to go to the Capitol (significantly, this is the East front) days in advance — it really is all about Jones.

As I noted, this is just a trespass arrest, like hundreds of other trespass arrests (though by charging Shroyer with violating a pre-existing Deferred Prosecution Agreement, they lessen any claims of persecution that will come as they investigate Shroyer further).

But what these three arrests together show is that those involved as speakers on January 5 seem to have had advance knowledge of what would happen the next day.

One of the other mentions of January 5 rallies thus far appears in the filings for Josiah Colt, Ronnie Sandlin, and Nate DeGrave, three random guys who hooked up on the Internet and armed themselves for violence in advance of January 6. Though they have no ties to any organized militia, the day after they went to a January 5 rally, they seemed to know there would be a second front opening at the East door, and Sandlin and DeGrave were among those charged with forcibly ensuring that door was opened.

Tags: Alan Hostetter, Brandon Straka, Josiah Colt, Owen Shroyer, Ronnie Sandlin, Russell Taylor

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mma 1 24

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Amid an ongoing right-wing media panic about a supposed “invasion” of migrants coming across the southern border, a group of right-wing extremists — including members with ties to QAnon, the election denial movement, and anti-vaccine propagandists — have organized a convoy and series of rallies along the southern border. The “Take Our Border Back Southern Border Convoy” has been amplified and celebrated by right-wing media and political figures as posts promoting it have spread across social media.

## A group of right-wing extremists are organizing a convoy along the southern border to protest the supposed migrant crisis

- The Take Our Border Back convoy aims to “call on our government to TAKE ACTION and SECURE OUR SOUTHERN BORDER.”The convoy is set to start from Virginia and travel across various locations on the southern U.S. border from January 29 through February 3, with a series of rallies planned along the way. A GiveSendGo fundraising campaign in support of the convoy has already received over $36,000 in donations. TakeOurBorderBack.com, accessed [1/24/24, GiveSendGo, accessed 1/25/24]

- The convoy's organizers and sponsors include far-right podcasters, online influencers, and conspiracy theorists. In a video posted to the convoy’s Rumble channel, podcast host Kim Yeater said that she, Noél Roberts, Pete Chambers, Robert Agee, and Mark Anthony are members of the group’s “steering committee.” Yeater’s Take Your Power Back podcast, Robert's “Patriot Mom 007” account, Chambers’ website, Agee’s right-wing billboard company, and Scotty Saks’ Sovereign Radio program are also listed as sponsors of the convoy. Rumble, *We The People*, [1/19/24; TakeOurBorderBack.com, accessed 1/25/24]

- Yeater, Chambers, and other organizers have used extreme rhetoric when talking about the southern border, frequently claiming that there is an “invasion” of migrants and pushing the racist “great replacement” conspiracy theory. In an interview uploaded to Rumble on January 20, Yeater claimed that migrants at the border are part of a “Trojan horse” of “fighting age men crossing our border.” During a January 24 appearance on Infowars’ The Alex Jones Show, Chambers claimed that “globalists” are using immigration to destabilize the U.S., saying, “This is ‘we’re going to take over your country from within’ stuff,” echoing the white supremacist “great replacement” conspiracy theory, which claims that migrants are being purposefully brought to the U.S. to replace white Americans as a new electoral majority. Rumble, *The Alex Stone Show*, [1/20/24; Infowars, The Alex Jones Show, 1/24/24; Southern Poverty Law Center, 5/17/22]

## The Take Our Border Back convoy is being organized and promoted by anti-vaccine figures, conspiracy theorists, and vehement election deniers

- Kim Yeater, one of the convoy organizers who has promoted it in a media appearance, has a history of promoting election denial efforts.Yeater is a radio host and the CEO of Take Our Elections Back, which aims “to restore the integrity of America's voting system.” She has also promoted multiple events held by election denier Mike Lindell. On an episode of her radio show, Yeater said there is “not even a question anymore, there’s election fraud. Period,” adding that it would be “a problem” if voting machines were used in future elections. Yeater has worked with many of the other convoy promoters in the past and seemingly mingled with multiple far-right figures. KimYeater.com, accessed [1/25/24; Rumble, accessed 1/26/24; Instagram, accessed 1/25/24, 1/25/24, 1/25/24; Salem Radio Network, Take Your Power Back, 8/21/23]

- At least two sponsors of the convoy have referenced the QAnon conspiracy theory. Right-wing billboard company Banners 4 Freedom, a sponsor of the convoy run by organizer Robert Agee, has shared the “WWG1WGA” hashtag associated with the conspiracy theory. Agee himself has used the QAnon slogan on social media, including during an X Space about the convoy. Scotty Saks, host of Sovereign Radio which is another convoy sponsor, has also used the slogan on social media. Telegram, [1/7/23; Banners4Freedom.com, accessed 1/25/24; Twitter/X Space, 1/23/24, 1/23/24; Twitter/X, 10/10/18]

- Discussing the federal response to January 6, convoy organizer and promotor Mark Anthony expressed that the convoy would be heavily protected and only going to places where local law enforcement is “on board.” In an interview uploaded to Rumble, Anthony stated that “January 6, that scared the hell out of everyone. I mean scared them to the point they feel like they didn’t want to do anything because they’re scared about the government coming after them.” Anthony added, “Every place that we have, we’ve gotten in with the sheriffs, we’ve gotten in with the local police departments, and these people are on board. Even Border Patrol.” Rumble, [1/19/24]

- Convoy organizer Peter Chambers, a former Green Beret who claims he retired because of “the mandates for the vaccines,” is also sponsoring the convoy through his Remnant A-Team ministry.Chambers became an anti-vaccine figure during the COVID-19 pandemic and appeared in the anti-vaccine propaganda film Died Suddenly, produced by conspiracy theorist Stew Peters. He was part of a lawsuit attempting to block the military from mandating COVID-19 vaccines, and he has also spread the 5G conspiracy theory. Chambers has also claimed that he “developed friendships all along the border with Border Patrol guys that really want to do their jobs, you know, Department of Public Safety, Texas Rangers.” Rumble, [11/4/23; Mother Jones, May 2023; Arizona Mirror, 10/20/23]

- Noél Roberts, a right-wing podcaster known online as “Patriot Mom 007,” has frequently appeared alongside fringe figures and election deniers. Roberts has interviewed extremist Arizona Sheriff Mark Lamb, right-wing lawyer Harmeet Dhillon, and Turning Point USA influencer Benny Johnson, among others. PatriotMom007.com, accessed, [1/25/24, 1/25/24; Media Matters, 2/9/23]

- Joshua James, who self-identifies as a “De Jure Sheriff” of Bexar County, Texas, has frequently promoted the convoy on social media and also posted the QAnon slogan. James claims to be “constitutional sheriff” in Texas, but actually is a self-identified “de jure sheriff” -- a term that seemingly flows from the sovereign citizens movement, which holds that local sheriffs are the supreme law of the land and that the federal government of the United States is illegitimate. Instagram, [10/31/20, 1/11/24; Facebook, accessed 1/25/24; Twitter/X, accessed 1/25/24; Southern Poverty Law Center, accessed1/25/24, Sovereign Citizen Watcher,5/21/22]

## Right-wing media and political figures have celebrated the convoy as part of an ongoing attack against the Biden administration’s border policies

- Rep. Keith Self (R-TX) promoted the convoy on X (formerly Twitter), saying “The time is NOW to take action and secure our borders!”Self provided specific dates and locations of the convoy and included a screenshot of the poster advertising it. Twitter/X, [1/22/24, 1/22/24]

- Chambers appeared on a recent episode of Infowars’ The Alex Jones Show to promote the convoy and fearmonger about “an invasion” happening along the southern U.S. border. During the segment, Chambers claimed that “this is an invasion, absolutely. Oh, absolutely. We briefed Gov. Abbott two years ago on the invasion that was taking place on the border.” Discussing what the “feds” are “going to try next,” Jones suggested, “Maybe they send a shooter down to shoot some of the illegals to make us the — make them the victims.” Infowars, *The Alex Jones Show*, [1/24/24, 1/24/24]

- Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon mentioned the convoy when discussing the “pure insanity” he claims is going on in Europe, saying that “it’s coming here to the U.S. This is why you’re seeing the farmers and the truckers are going to have a convoy to go to the southern border.” Real America’s Voice, *War Room*, [1/24/24]

- One America News host Alison Steinberg promoted the convoy, showing its flier during the January 25 episode of In Focus. Steinberg also said that the convoy would be “adding to the escalation,” asking, “Is this a constitutional crisis? Could this be a match that ignites a civil war?” One America News, *In Focus*, [1/25/24]

CitationFrom the January 25, 2024, edition of One America News' In Focus

- In an appearance on Fox Business, Rep. Beth Van Duyne (R-TX) welcomed the convoy to her state, saying: “Bring those beautiful, huge semis, those 18-wheeler bad boys down here to protect our border. … I hope it is a fantastic convoy.” When discussing the convoy with Van Duyne, host Liz MacDonald said “more Americans are stepping up.” Fox Business, *The Evening Edit*, [1/25/24]
Video file

:{:{Video}:

CitationFrom the January 25, 2024, edition of Fox Business' The Evening Edit

LIZ MACDONALD (HOST): We have a new, this new news coming in. A trucker convoy is kicking off heading to the border states — we're hearing February 3 — for a multistate rally at the border in Texas, Arizona, and California. And they're calling on active and retired law enforcement, military veterans, elected officials, small business owners, ranchers to join them to rally in protest of what's going on at the border. What do you make of this? More Americans are stepping up.

REP. BETH VAN DUYNE (R-TX): Hey, don’t forget the mama bears that they’re also asking to go down there, who are seeing what’s happening in schools, where their kids are getting kicked out because they’re having illegal immigrants stay in classrooms.

Yeah, I say bring those beautiful, huge semis, those 18-wheeler bad boys down here to protect our border. They need to understand that this is not simply — you know, they can't sweep this under the rug. People are opening their eyes to it, and I hope it is a fantastic convoy, and I hope it does, you know, shed more light on it, and you're seeing people from around the country. I mean, they're even talking about having folks from Canada now come down because they see the damage that is being caused. So yeah, bring those bad boys down to our coast.

- “Pizzagate” conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec shared an image of the convoy flier to X asking, “So, how many fed will be at this?” Yeater replied to the post saying that there should be “NO FEAR” because “GOD IS WITH US.” Twitter/X, [1/25/24]

- Far-right blog The Gateway Pundit shared information about the convoy and claimed, “This message is being sent all over social media.” The post also claims that “good Americans have had enough of Biden’s destruction of the country.” The Gateway Pundit, [1/25/24]

- On X, right-wing outlet The Leading Report shared the convoy’s flier. The post also highlighted the convoy’s “opposition to the open border disaster under the Biden administration.” The Leading Report, [1/22/24]

- An article posted to the website The Politics Brief claimed that the convoy was in protest of “the recent Supreme Court decision that will allow Border Patrol agents to cut razor-wire fencing installed by Texas National Guard personnel.” The article also highlighted Self’s endorsement of the convoy, and former Fox News associate producer Kyle Becker shared the article on X. The Politics Brief, [1/24/24; Twitter/X, 1/24/24]

- Right-wing outlet Conservative Brief published an article celebrating that the convoy will “draw more attention to President Joe Biden’s lax immigration enforcement policies.” The Conservative Brief, [1/24/24]

- Conspiracy theorist Lara Logan shared a post on X about truckers going to the border, saying, “This is one to watch.” Other users replied to her post with further information about the Take Our Border Back convoy. Twitter/X, [1/23/24]

## Social media users have also promoted the convoy has across various platforms

- A public Telegram group for the Texas Three Percenters militia directed members to the convoy website for details.The post also threatened “legal action against non-affiliated individuals posting inaccurate, non-approved, offensive, provocative or aggressive content” in relation to the convoy. Telegram, [1/22/24]

- On Telegram, QAnon promoter Defender of the Republic shared the link to the convoy’s website, stating: “Digital soldiers, it’s time to work.” Their message opened with an appeal to other QAnon followers, reading, “If you’re a follower of Q, the white hats have been asking you to get involved.” Telegram, [1/23/24; Substack, 12/30/23]

- On X, far-right streamer Ryan Augustine Sánchez shared information about the convoy, claiming that it would be part of a “standoff against Federal troops.”He also stated that the convoy would be in support of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and the Texas National Guard. Twitter/X, [1/23/24]

- Responding to an X post from right-wing account Merissa Hansen discussing the border, one user shared the convoy’s website.The post also mentioned a planned stop along the route where the user states that they plan to join the convoy. Twitter/X, [1/23/24]

- Right-wing influencer account “Trucker Jake,” who claims that he will be joining the convoy, has repeatedly shared the link to the official website. In one post discussing the convoy, the account claimed that migrants coming across the border “are not economic refugees. They are all criminals, and they all need to go back.” Twitter/X, [1/19/24, 1/24/24]

- On fringe social media platforms Truth Social, Gab, and GETTR, users have widely shared the link to the convoy’s website. Truth Social, Gab, GETTR, accessed [1/25/24]

- Details of the convoy have also been posted to a number of public and private Facebook groups. One post celebrating the convoy stated that it was “Doing the lord's work!!!” Facebook, accessed [1/25/24]

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mma 7 23

january 6 defendant Alan Hostetter will reportedly rely on three conspiracy theories at his trial, each of which he could have seen repeatedly on Fox News.

Hostetter, a former police chief, was initially charged alongside four other January 6 defendants who the government has accused of being Three Percenters — an extremist, anti-government ideology. The judge severed his case, however, “in a nod to the unusual nature of Mr. Hostetter’s proposed defense,” according to the New York Times.

The Times further reports:

Acting as his own lawyer, Mr. Hostetter has said that he intends to fight charges of conspiracy and obstruction based on what he calls “three fundamental pillars”: that the 2020 election was stolen from President Donald J. Trump; that he and other rioters had no desire to disrupt the challenges to the vote results that were taking place inside the Capitol on Jan. 6; and that, therefore, the assault on the building had to have been staged by “federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies.”

Fox News embraced Hostetter’s first false claim — that the 2020 election was stolen — across nearly the entire network.Fox cast doubt on the election results almost 800 times in the two weeks after it called the race for President Joe Biden, and falsely claimed machines run by Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic were unreliable or had been hacked to change vote totals. Dominion sued Fox for defamation, forcing a massive settlement on the day the trial was set to open. Smartmatic also filed a defamation lawsuit against Fox, which is ongoing.

Fox News also pushed Hostetter’s second inaccurate claim,that the rioters were simply tourists or otherwise not looking to disrupt the transfer of power. As recently as this March, prime-time host Laura Ingraham argued the insurrectionists were “old ladies walking through the halls of Congress taking selfies.” In January, her guest Miranda Devine, a Fox News contributor, claimed “most of the people that they've been rounding up are just guilty of trespassing. A lot of them were confused.” Fox’s Mark Levin said the rioters were simply “parading on public lands,” and compared them to “people in the civil rights movement.” On the day after the riot, Fox & Friends insisted the insurrectionists were at the Capitol to “voice their concerns” and to “defend our Republic.” That type of language was a fixture of Fox’s coverage, with on-air talent and guests calling the rioters “nonviolent” and “political prisoners." [twt]

hostetter’s final claim, that the insurrection was an inside job orchestrated and manufactured by federal law enforcement, was also a mainstay on Fox News. Like much of the network’s January 6 revisionism, this particular myth was largely, but not exclusively, driven by former marquee star Tucker Carlson. He filled his prime-time show and a documentary-style series called Patriot Purge with unsupported allegations that the riot was driven by FBI agents or informants, a claim that doesn’t stand up to even the mildest scrutiny.

Carlson promoted the series on Fox & Friends, during which co-host Brian Kilmeade asked, “Do you think maybe, perhaps and maybe you don't want to give away your series, you find indications that the FBI was actually pushing for this invasion?”

Hostetter recently criticized the network’s decision to fire Carlson in a rambling, incoherent defense motion that also referenced the JFK assassination and The Wizard of Oz. Prior to his ouster, Carlson had defended Hostetter as a victim of deep state persecution.

But Carlson wasn’t alone in spreading the conspiracy theory that the federal government was behind the attempted insurrection. Ingraham devoted a segment in October 2021 to the conspiracy theory that a man named Ray Epps was an FBI informant who had surreptitiously provoked the riot. She suggested in March of this year that FBI informants were “working the crowd either before they entered the Capitol or while they were in the Capitol.” Her guest in that segment was American Greatness’ Julie Kelly, a leading January 6 conspiracy theorist, who frequently pushed the same line on Carlson’s program as well.Levin interviewed Kelly in November 2021, asking, “Was this attack on the Capitol building instigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation on January 6?” And a guest on the radio program of Fox’s Sean Hannity recently suggested that then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi “planned and conjured up” the riot to add drama to her daughter’s documentary film.

As the Times reports, prosecutors in Hostetter’s case are worried about the trial devolving to a “circuslike atmosphere.” If it does, Fox News will have played no small role in providing the elements for Hostetter’s spectacle.

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{{ https://www.alternet.org/2022/08/former-virginia-police-officer-sentenced/

Although it remains to be seen whether or not former President Donald Trump will face any type of federal charges in connection with the January 6, 2021 insurrection, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has prosecuted many of the Trump supporters who attacked the U.S. Capitol Building that day. The DOJ certainly hasn’t had a one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to prosecuting Capitol rioters; the charges have ranged from severe to relatively mild. And one of the harsher sentences came on Thursday, August 11, whenformer Rocky Mount, Virginia police officer Thomas Robertson was sentenced to 87 months in federal prison for his role in the assault on the Capitol.

The Washington Post’s Rachel Weiner, in an article published on August 12, notes that a jury found Robertson guilty of “six crimes, including using a large wooden stick to block police outside the Capitol and destroying his phone when he got home.” And another former Rocky Mount police officer, Jacob Fracker, pled guilty to a conspiracy charge.

“At his sentencing, Robertson depicted his actions on January 6 as an aberration in the life of a respected member of a law-abiding and respectable community,” Weiner reports. “The government’s filings suggest he became radicalized under the influence of those around him, including the chief of a small neighboring police department and a retired FBI agent. Prosecutors took the unusual step of publishing two detailed FBI investigations into the claims Robertson made in his appeal for mercy.”

Part of the evidence against Robertson, according to Weiner, was a “text conversation from March 2021” in which Robertson told former Boones Mill, Virginia Police Chief Dennis M. Deacon, “I can kill every agent that they send for at least two weeks.” Robertson, Weiner reports, also told Deacon he was “prepared to die in battle.” And Deacon responded that Robertson needed to “be smart, pick battles, plan logistics, very carefully recruit and hope it’s not going to come down to it.”

The judge in the case, Christopher Cooper, said he found it especially disturbing that Robertson was still threatening violence in March 2021 even though police officers had been seriously injured during the Capitol attack two months earlier.

Fracker’s sentencing is scheduled for Tuesday, August 16.

Weiner reports, “In his letter to the court, Fracker said he had been labeled a ‘rat,’ a ‘snitch’ and a ‘back stabber’ by community members for testifying against Robertson. ‘It really is just heartbreaking,’ he said. Robertson was a mentor to him and a ‘once valued father figure,’ Fracker wrote.”

According to Weiner, “Robertson was released after his arrest in January 2021 but was jailed months later after going on what Cooper described as a ‘remarkable shopping spree for high-powered assault weapons’ while becoming ‘further radicalized.’ Robertson could be charged with illegal firearm possession, the judge noted.”

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ref

Ex-Va. police officer gets more than 7 years for role in Jan. 6 riot

Sentence for former Rocky Mount officer Thomas Robertson matches highest punishment for a Capitol riot defendant so far

By Rachel Weiner

Updated August 11, 2022 at 7:14 p.m. EDT|Published August 11, 2022

Thomas Robertson, right, and Jacob Fracker, then officers in the Rocky Mount Police Department, inside the Capitol. (U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia)

A Virginia police officer who prosecutors say lied about his actions before, during and after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, including his military service and his marriage, was sentenced Thursday to 87 months in prison.

Thomas Robertson and Jacob Fracker were members of the police department in the small western Virginia town of Rocky Mount when they joined the mob that stormed the Capitol. Both have since been fired.

...

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Ex-cop sentenced to more than 7 years in prison for role in storming U.S. Capitol

By Sarah N. Lynch

no lnx

Reuters.com

WASHINGTON, Aug 11(Reuters) - A former Virginia police sergeant who joined Donald Trump's supporters in storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was sentenced to seven years and three months in prison on Thursday, a Justice Department spokesperson said.

A jury in April convicted Thomas Robertson, a former police sergeant for the town of Rocky Mount, Virginia, of six criminal charges, including obstructing an official proceeding and obstruction of justice.

Prosecutors had asked U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper to sentence Robertson to eight years - the longest amount yet for any Capitol riot defendant - on the grounds that Robertson abused his position of trust as a law enforcement officer.

Both Robertson and Guy Reffitt, an associate of the far-right Three Percenters militiawho also received a sentence of seven years and three months earlier this month, are now tied for the longest sentence to date for any Capitol riot defendant. read more

Thousands of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, in an attempt to overturn his election defeat, which Trump falsely claims was the result of fraud.

Robertson's defense attorney had asked for a sentence of no more than 15 months.

He has been in detention since last year, after the judge found he violated court orders and continued to purchase what prosecutors described as an "arsenal" of guns online. FBI agents also found a loaded M4 rifle and a partially assembled pipe bomb at his home during a search.

Robertson's trial featured testimony from Jacob Fracker, who had reported to Robertson on the police force, who entered the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, with Robertson where they took selfies together.

Prosecutors said Robertson later destroyed the cell phones they had used that day.

Fracker, who cooperated with the Justice Department, pleaded guilty to a felony charge of conspiracy in March, and is due to be sentenced on Aug. 16. In exchange for his cooperation, prosecutors are asking the judge to sentence him to six months’ probation with a condition of community confinement or home detention.

Prosecutors said Robertson "anticipated violence" on Jan. 6, and he packed gas masks for himself and Fracker, as well as military food rations, water and a large wooden stick.

Robertson "used his law enforcement training to block Metropolitan Police Officers attempting to hold back the mob," federal prosecutor Elizabeth Aloi wrote in the government's sentencing memo.

In a letter to the judge, Robertson said he takes "full responsibility" for his actions on Jan. 6, and said he was "exposed to lots of pro-Trump, anti-Biden media" while he was passing the time in 2020 with a cancer-stricken friend.

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He drank to cope with stress, he said, and fell deep into the "rabbit holes of election conspiracy theories."

However, he denied ever having "any intention to disrupt Congress" and claimed that Fracker actually destroyed the cell phones, and later lied to the FBI and the court about it.

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bomb in box labelled booby trap

https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2022/0404/Traitor-or-scapegoat-How-one-cop-became-the-face-of-Jan.-6

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/03/19/mask-mandate-midterm-elections/

wapo no lnx

Military

Building on anti-mask activism, far-right groups pivot from mandates to midterms

Energized by their fight against government coronavirus restrictions, far-right activists are rallying supporters to engage in politics and show up to vote.

By Hannah Allam

March 19, 2022

A person holds a sign advocating for the recall of Washington Gov. Jay Inslee during a protest against coronavirus vaccine mandates and other issues, on March 5, 2022, at the Capitol in Olympia, Wash. (Ted S. Warren/AP)

OLYMPIA, Wash. — Melanie Gabriel became the teen idol of Washington state’s anti-masking movement last fall when she showed up to school and, claiming a medical exemption, marched barefaced to class.

As Gabriel’s protest continued and she was barred from campus, she drew support from self-styled militia groups and other far-right extremists who saw theanti-mandate movementas a chance to rally conservatives toward more-militant stances. Members of the Proud Boys offered to escort Gabriel to class, prompting a security lockdown of three schools.

Now, with the lifting of most mask and vaccine requirements, Gabriel and her far-right backers are mobilizing the networks they’ve built over the past two years toward a new goal: November’s midterm elections.

Gabriel spoke this month at a gathering that was emblematic of the increasingly blurry lines on the right — it was organized by the far-rightWashington Three Percent and sponsored by a conservative student group, Turning Point USA. With the state Capitol dome in the background, speaker after speaker told supporters not to get complacent with mandates gone.

“Just because they’re lifted doesn’t mean they’re going to stay that way, and that’s why we’re all here,” said Gabriel, a striking figure in a bright crimson bob, cat-eye makeup, and a T-shirt with the anti-Biden slogan “Let’s Go Brandon.” Her bullhorn was decorated with stickers that read “Say No To Critical Hate Theory” and “Allergic to socialism.”

A man in the audience yelled that Gabriel should run for governor.

“I will!” Gabriel replied. “I will run for governor. And I’ll run for president. And I’ll run for everything!” She waited a beat before adding: “Once I’m of legal age.”

That’s the kind of youthful energy far-right movements are working to harness across the country as they teach the pandemic’s newly minted activists how to get out the vote.

A school board race in Washington state shows how far-right groups are thinking locally

Extremism trackers say the past two years of fighting pandemic restrictions have given far-right groups a new generation of recruits and a blueprint for taking the lead in conservative organizing. The midterm season, they warn, brings a heightened risk of political violence, as armed groups build on those gains to push deeper into the mainstream.

“In Olympia today, we saw paramilitary groups and a range of other anti-democracy activists aggressively working to recruit young people and making pledges of unity against what they see as their common enemies,” Eric K. Ward, executive director of Western States Center, a regional extremism watchdog, said in a statement after the event where Gabriel spoke.

Anti-mandate activists galvanized a broad cross section of political conservatives by melding disparate agendas into one fuzzy call to “fight tyranny.” By now, most of their big demonstrations look like a right-wing soup, featuring Trump and MAGA logos, self-styled militia insignia, Confederate flags, references to the debunked QAnon movement, and Christian nationalist prayers.

Researchers say connections forged early in the pandemic allowed once-fringe groups to take on more visible roles in other kinds of organizing, such as the “Stop the Steal” effort to overturn the 2020 election results, or the campaign to whitewash U.S. history by attacking the teaching of racism and its impact.

New laws on teaching about race have teachers scared, confused and self-censoring

The nonstop focus on grievances, researchers say, has created a tinderbox of disenchanted Americans who view themselves as foot soldiers in a struggle against mandates and other perceived attacks on personal liberties. Many right-wing politicians and media personalities are stoking the outrage in pursuit of a “red wave” in November.

“The grievances are there as a reservoir for mobilization, but they still have to be triggered.They have to be activated towards specific action,” said Robert Pape, a University of Chicago professor leading an in-depth study of the rioters who violently breached the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. “And it rarely happens spontaneously.”

The event where Gabriel spoke was called GRIT, for Government Resistance Impedes Tyranny. Several hundred people participated, along with a convoy of big rigs, part of the U.S. version of the Canadian trucker demonstrations that united a variety of conspiracy-minded protesters.

Unlike at previous far-right gatherings in Olympia, no leftist counter protesters showed up, and the event was peaceful.Journalists were encouraged to refer to it as a “freedom festival,” not a rally. On the damp statehouse grounds, leather-clad bikers chatted about gas prices with khakis-wearing politicians. Gun rights activists told college students that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is an example of why they consider the Second Amendment untouchable. A voter registration table sat next to a self-styled militia’s information booth, a reminder that, in this milieu, there are two paths to making change.

Organizer Matt Marshall, founder of the Washington Three Percent and a member of his local school board,called the rally “a networking event” to connect pandemic-era upstarts with more established groups and reliable donors. A dozen or so Republican candidates for congressional and local races worked the crowd, urging constituents to serve on precinct committees as a first step into politics.

Some had clear-cut ties to extremism, with documented support for and interactions with parts of the anti-government movement. Take, for example, a former police chief named Loren Culp, a failed gubernatorial candidate now running to unseat U.S. Rep. Dan Newhouse, one of 10 members of the House GOP who voted to impeach President Trump after the Capitol riot. Culp has close ties to a far-right sheriff’s organization that believes local authorities have the power to decide whether state and federal laws are constitutional; in 2018, he pledged he wouldn’t enforce a statewide gun-control law.

Many other candidates, however, fall into a gray area. They espouse views or cultivate relationships that only a few years ago would have put them on the far-right fringe, but which are now broadly shared, or at least tolerated, by Republican leaders. Extremism researchers say it’s startling how quickly it became socially acceptable for relatively mainstream groups like Turning Point USA to provide funding and speakers to an event led by the anti-government Washington Three Percent.

“This kind of meshing of people is typical of the landscape we’re seeing right now — the blurring of the line with an extremist host and mainstream sponsor,” said Carla Hill, associate director of the Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism, which is tracking more than 100 political candidates who have documented ties to extremist groups or conspiratorial movements.

Black, brown and extremist: Across the far-right spectrum, people of color play a more visible role

Rachel Anderson, 29, head of Lewis County Young Republicans in the western part of the state, told the crowd how in the space of a year she went from being politically unaware to joining other nascent activists in “taking over” the county party. She said she has helped four Young Republicans get elected and contributed to a threefold increase in local GOP fundraising — work she calls vital to electoral success next fall.

“We can’t be complacent anymore,” Anderson told the crowd, to cheers. “We have to go out there. We have to canvass our voting rolls, make sure that every single vote counts and we elect proper, conservative patriots into office.”

As they stump for votes, some Republican hopefuls are encountering a problem of their party’s own making. After two solid years of being fed lies about a stolen election, a bloc of Republicans no longer see the point in voting and refuse to participate in what they regard as a corrupt system.

“We still get a lot of people who say, ‘Nah, I just don’t believe it matters,’” said Joe Kent, a former Green Beret trying to oust Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R), whose vote to impeach President Donald Trump after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot made her a pariah within much of the GOP. “And there’s where we’ve got to come back, to tell people we’re taking real stands.”

When asked whether he had qualms about appearing at an event alongside groups like the Washington Three Percent, Kent looked puzzled and said he didn’t know the organizers.

“All I know is that there’s a bunch of people with flags,” he said.

[How the Jan. 6 Capitol riot happened: A Washington Post investigation

Within days of the event, Kent was under scrutiny again for another far-right link: a phone call with white nationalist Nick Fuentes in which the two discussed working together on social media strategy for Kent’s campaign. In an interview, Kent told Oregon Public Broadcasting that he had no association with Fuentes beyond the conversation last spring.

Federal authorities are careful to say they don’t police protected views, including the racist or anti-government stances often articulated at anti-mandate events, and don’t want to overhype a fringe threat. The problem is, violent messaging is now laced throughout the planning for big gatherings, making it difficult to separate “keyboard warriors” from real-life provocateurs.

John Cohen, the top Homeland Security counterterrorism official, said in public remarks last month that the current threat environment is “more volatile and even more dynamic than it was even back in December.” A recent report from the global nonprofit conflict-monitoring group known as ACLED said current trends in guns and violence at U.S. protests “raises the specter of further escalation in armed demonstration activity going into the upcoming midterm elections.”

At the Olympia gathering, guns were concealed, in accordance with a recently changed law that bans open-carry near protests and the state Capitol grounds. The event was legally permitted, and organizers had asked participants not to display hateful imagery. Three Percenter logos, a few Confederate flags and a Proud Boys shirt were visible, but most of the participants wore generic MAGA, anti-Biden, or red, white and blue attire. Families brought their dogs. Children blew soap bubbles on the lawn.

Speakers repeatedly invoked civil rights language to refer to their perceived persecution, a common theme throughout the anti-mandate movement. Online and at rallies, protesters regularly compare themselves to enslaved Africans, dispossessed Native Americans, Jewish victims of the Holocaust, the Founding Fathers, Martin Luther King, Jr., Gandhi and Jesus.

“It’s about trying to give themselves some historical cache, and it’s remarkable how they do this,” said terrorism analyst Juliette Kayyem, a former Homeland Security official now at Harvard’s Kennedy School. “It’s not like, ‘We’re just upset about vaccines.’ It’s ‘This is the arc of history, and we’re on it with all of these other quote-unquote freedom fighters.’”

The idea of historical significance resonated with Don and Carol Moody, a married couple in their 60s who were eating smoked-pork sandwiches in side-by-side lawn chairs at the Olympia event. Speaking over loud honking as another trucker convoy arrived, Don said that this was a moment, “to make a stand with what you believe in your heart.”

The couple said they’re confused and frightened by the bloodshed in Ukraine; the right-wing news outlets they watch tell them it’s a precursor to World War III. They worry about whether their unvaccinated grandkids will be cleared to play sports. They said they’ve heard that the government might introduce a “vaccine passport.”

They still plan to vote in the midterms — it’s worth a try, they said — but they firmly believe lies about the “stolen” 2020 election and suspect the Biden administration is already cooking up new ways to disenfranchise the right.

“Everything they do seems to be poking us to be more angry,” Don said.

Carol said that’s why she’s suspicious of the lifting of mandates. In her conspiratorial world, it’s not the time to celebrate.

“They’re thinking up something next,” Carol said. “And that’s what scares me.”

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no lnx biz insider

A police officer bragged online about his role in the January 6 attack. His defense lawyer argued at trial that it was just social media bravado.

C. Ryan Barber

Apr 5, 2022,

Thomas Robertson

Jacob Fracker (left) and Thomas Robertson posed by a statute inside the Capitol on January 6, 2021, prosecutors said. US attorney's office in Washington, DC

Opening trial arguments featured dueling views of an accused Capitol rioter's social media posts.

A lawyer for Thomas Robertson suggested to jurors that his online bravado was just "for the 'gram."

Prosecutors highlighted texts in which Robertson appeared to talk about destroying his phone.

Standing next to a fellow police officer flashing the middle finger, Thomas Robertson posed for a photograph inside the Capitol on January 6, 2021, as hordes of Trump supporters stormed the building.

It was an image, Robertson later said on social media, of "2 men willing to actually put skin in the game and stand up for their rights."

"I am fucking PROUD of it," he wrote in an Instagram post shared to Facebook.

The photograph would soon feature prominently in court papers charging Robertson, then a police officer in Rocky Mount, Virginia, with participating in the January 6 attack on the Capitol. But as he stood trial on those charges Tuesday,his defense lawyer urged jurors to disregard Robertson's prideful social media posts.

"Let's be honest here: social media is not reality,"Robertson's defense lawyer Camille Wagner said Tuesday, during opening arguments in the third trial related to the January 6 attack on the Capitol. In a reference to Instagram, Wagner suggested that Robertson's online bravado was merely a put-on "for the 'gram."

In the year since the Capitol attack, many of the more than 770 alleged participants have been dogged by their own social media posts, messages, and documentation of January 6.

Wagner's argument was reminiscent of a defense that Guy Reffitt raised in the first January 6-related trial: That his incendiary messages about the Capitol attack amounted to "hyperbole" that did not accurately reflect his conduct.

The jury in that trial found Reffitt, a member of the far-rightThree Percenters group, guilty on all five charges he faced, including obstruction of an official proceeding.Reffitt's sentencing is set for June 8.

Wagner's argument stood in stark contrast Tuesday to the Justice Department's view of Robertson's social media posts.

In an opening argument, prosecutor Elizabeth Aloi highlighted Robertson's posts, including one that read: "A government scared of its people. The pictures of them huddled in the floor crying is the most American thing I have ever seen."

The FBI arrested Robertson in January 2021, a week after the Capitol attack, on charges of violent entry and trespassing on restricted grounds. Robertson now faces six charges, including disorderly conduct and obstruction of an official proceeding.

Roberson was also charged with destroying one or more cell phones to impair the criminal investigation into the January 6 insurrection.

Aloi showcased text messages in which Robertson appeared to brag about destroying his phone.

"Anything that may have been problematic is destroyed," he wrote in one text.

"Took a lake swim," Roberston said in another text, according to Aloi's presentation.

"They asked for my phone but I'm not a retard," Robertson wrote in another message.

The off-duty police officer who joined Robertson at the Capitol, Jacob Fracker, was also charged in the days after January 6. The Rocky Mount Police Department later fired the men.

In March, just weeks before trial, Fracker pleaded guilty in March to conspiring to obstruct the joint session of Congress that gathered on January 6 to certify now-President Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 election.

Fracker agreed as part of his plea deal to cooperate with the Justice Department. He is expected to testify against Roberston.

In her opening argument, Wagner asserted that Roberston "did not act corruptly" on January 6 and only entered the Capitol to "retrieve Mr. Fracker."

And while his social media posts might suggest otherwise, she told jurors, he "only entered, retrieved, and departed."

"Your job here today is to judge him for his actions," Wagner said, "not for his words."

}}:

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2 teams, one looking for peolsi]

A right-wing talking point about Jan. 6 just completely collapsed after indictment of the Oath Keepers

https://www.alternet.org/2022/01/oath-keepers-sedition/

An Oath Keepers billboard in Pine River, Minnesota in July 2015, Wikimedia Commons minuteman]

Alex Henderson January 13, 2022

Stewart Rhodes, founder of the far-right militia group the Oath Keepers, has been charged with seditious conspiracyas part of the U.S. Department of Justice’s probe of the January 6, 2021 insurrection. Washington Post reporters Spencer S. Hsu and Devlin Barrett have described the 56-year-old Rhodes as “the most high-profile person charged in the investigation so far.” And according to Never Trump conservative Amanda Carpenter, Rhodes’ arrest explodes a MAGA talking about the violence that occurred during the Capitol riot.

Ten others were charged along with Rhodes.

Carpenter, who is known for her commentary on CNN and her articles for The Bulwark, notes that “Trump defenders” have been claiming that the January 6, 2021 violence wasn’t an insurrection “because people like Rhodes had not been charged yet.”

“That talking point is out the window now,” Carpenter emphasized in a Twitter thread. “Sedition is being charged.”

READ: One sentence from the Supreme Court's ruling against an OSHA vaccine rule reveals its upside-down logic]

Carpenter, who once served as communications director for Sen. Ted Cruz but now criticizes him for being a Trump apologist, observed:

The Washington Post’s Dave Weigel also believes that Rhodes’ arrest totally discredits a flawed MAGA talking point. Weigel tweeted:

Fox News’ Brit Hume has argued, “Let's base our view on whether 1/6 was an ‘insurrection" on whether those arrested are charged with insurrection. So far, none has been.” And blogger Marcy Wheeler explained why Hume’s reasoning doesn’t hold up:

Christian Vanderbrouk likewise noted that the lack of sedition charges had been a popular right-wing, Jan. 6 apologist talking point:

Here are some more reactions to Rhodes’ arrest for seditious conspiracy:[twt]

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

'I fear the next election cycle': Former Oath Keepers spokesman ... ›

Tucker Carlson's effort to divert blame for Jan. 6 away from Trump ... ›

DC attorney general to sue Proud Boys and Oath Keepers militias ... ›

Tug of war

The conspiracy may have begun on an obscure web forum, but it is now influencing the Republican Party at all levels.

A recent Daily Kos/Civiqs poll found that 55% of Republicans believe some element of the conspiracy is true.

And in many parts of the country, QAnon supporters are winning elections. From local school boards to city councils, QAnon now has dozens of advocates at nearly every level of local government. While many of these positions hold sway far outside Washington, D.C., the breadth of this movement shows its influence is not likely to wane any time soon.

Not all Republicans are happy with this shift. In South Carolina, Indiana, Michigan and other states, Republican politics are fraught with tensions between QAnon supporters and more traditional conservatives.

For instance, in Indiana, local newspaper The Herald Bulletin published a story on March 21, 2021, headlined “Republican tug-o'-war: Factions vie for influence," reporting that “QAnon believers … showed their support at the Indiana Statehouse in January, holding signs bearing the QAnon phrase "#WWG1WGA" for 'Where we go one, we go all.'" Kyle Hupfer, chair of the Indiana GOP, was quoted as saying, “I don't think QAnon is part of the Republican Party. Leaders need to lead in a fact-based, solution-oriented manner and stick to the actual facts that are proven. Not opinions and not conspiracy theories."

State GOP politicians have promoted QAnon in Arizona through social media posts, although one later apologized for doing so, saying, “Now I think half of them are rather nuts." In January 2021, the Twitter account of the Republican Party of Hawaii tweeted a defense of QAnon believers. The account also defended a Holocaust denier. The official who posted the tweets was later forced to resign.

A similar confrontation has played out in Huntington Beach, California, where the appointed mayor pro tem – or vice mayor – inspired a vote of no confidence for supporting QAnon along with conspiracies against mask-wearing and vaccines.

Part of the conversation

Many QAnon proponents post-election have worked to reframe the COVID-19 vaccines not as the solution to a global pandemic but as an attempt by a cabal to control the minds of a hapless world.

Opposing mask mandates, vaccines and lockdowns have been effective campaigns for QAnon as it mobilizes anti-government sentiment common among the conservative base of the Republican Party. These efforts appear to be coalescing around bans on making vaccines mandatory.

Missouri's Republican-led Senate recently voted to ban so-called vaccine passports, and Texas, Florida, Idaho and Utah have all passed similar legislation. Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds is asking for similar legislation. It is unclear to what extent these bans were influenced by QAnon. But they do echo the opposition to masks and vaccines that have shaped the conspiracy.

In California, a recall campaign against Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has targeted his COVID-19 response. The campaign was initially organized by people affiliated with both right-wing militias and QAnon supporters.

Not going away

Yotam Ophir, a communications scholar at the University at Buffalo, has studied QAnon. He told me that he doesn't “see a reason to believe the conspiracy will go away anytime soon."

Part of this is that QAnon has deep historical roots in a variety of other conspiracies, including a centuries-old anti-Semitic conspiracy of a blood libel. The flexibility of the conspiracy has also proved resilient within a shifting political landscape.

Perhaps the biggest threat posed by QAnon is articulated by Lindsay Schubiner, a program director at the Western States Center in Portland, Oregon, which works to support democracy and challenge white nationalism.

“Bigoted conspiracy theories like QAnon have an enormous influence on the context in which local government operates," Schubiner told me. “Democratic governance is hard to achieve if we don't live in a shared reality, and that's as true on the local level as it is on the national level."

Sophie Bjork-James, Assistant Professor of the Practice in Anthropology, Vanderbilt University

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https://www.newsweek.com/recall-gavin-newsom-movement-includes-proud-boys-member-1564573

members of the far-right Proud Boys group, the Three Percenters militia movement, and someone who has described

Black Lives Matter activists as "vile, violent...the black version of the KKK" are among the activists linked to the effort to recall California Governor Gavin Newsom.

The Proud Boys, founded in 2016, are a right-wing extremist group who were involved in the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol building on January 6. The group, which glorifies violence and believes men and Western culture are under attack, has been banned from several social networks, and is listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The Three Percenters are an American and Canadian far-right, anti-government militia movement. The "three percent" refers to the belief that only three percent of the American colonists fought against the British during the American Revolution in the 1700s. Founded in 2008, the paramilitary organisation sees itself as a group of dedicated "patriots" protecting Americans from government tyranny.

The campaign to recall Newsom began in July last year. Supporters of the recall have until March 17 to collect the 1,495,709 signatures required for a recall election. The campaign is picking up steam, with more than 1.2 million people signing a petition to demand Newsom's recall.

Recall supporters have criticized Newsom for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, tax increases, abolishing capital punishment, rising crime and lack of affordable housing. The official became the focus of public outrage when he was caught dining with friends at an upmarket restaurant in November—seated closely together and without masks—after telling Californians to avoid social gatherings and stay home to avoid risk of spreading the coronavirus.

aaron Bate, an El Dorado County recall organizer, is a member of the Three Percenters. Bate is noted in a Three Percenter newsletter with fellow member Daniel Seoane as fundraising for the recall movement. Antifa Sacramento has also accused Bate of organizing with the American Guard, a neo-Nazi group. Newsweek has contacted Bate for comment.

Jeffery Perrine, a recently-elected member of the Sacramento County Republican Party's Central Committee, who is a member of the Proud Boys, has said he had been "intimately involved in the Recall movement". The Sacramento County Republican Party on Monday called for his resignation due to his ties with the far-right group. Social media videos show Perrine in Portland shouting that "illegal immigrants should have their heads smashed into the concrete."

Jeffrey Erik Perrine, a member of the SPLC designated hate-group the Proud Boys, was recently elected to Sacramento County’s GOP Central Committee.

He was in Portland on June 30th, 2018 calling for the murder of immigrants and the separation of parents from their children. pic.twitter.com/AH4WiSVYfk

— Daniel V. Media (@danielvmedia) January 26, 2021

Perrine told Newsweekthat his words were taken out of context by leftwing activists.

"The clip is completely out of context. Its not what it seems. I can however see how it was taken and spun to look like I was only talking about illegals in a disparaging way. When that is not what I was there really even talking about. I touched on many subjects that day. That one just so happens to be the one the left snagged, and trimmed, to make me look as bad as possible," he said.

"I understand my mistake, and have grown significantly since that clip."

Stephen Frank, who is on the board of the California Revival PAC group, has been seen speaking at recall rallies and he held a virtual townhall on the recall of the California governor in June last year. The PAC group's website shares the Recall Gavin Newsom petition on its home page and it donated $60,000 towards the campaign in the fall.

Frank has previously described Black Lives Matter activists as "vile, violent...the black version of the KKK" on the California Political Review, the conservative website he is a senior editor of. Frank has also often referred to Black public figures he disagrees with as a member of "The Klan in Tan," using the phrase on Michelle Obama and former Attorney General Eric Holder on the same website. The phrase is considered hate speech. A St. Louis police officer was investigated by his own department in 2017 for having used the phrase in reference to Black Lives Matter activists.

Commenting on the remarks, Frank told Newsweek that he opposed all racism "black or white".

"The term "The Klan in Tan" is a term that was used by Dr. Walter Williams," he said. Williams was a Black conservative economist who died in December. Frank's claim that he first used the term is unproven.

"Riots around the nation, violence against innocent people, the belief that people not of color are racist, these are vile and violent actions and values. It is not civil discourse, it is use of brutal strength to get political goals," he added.

Daniel Seoane is an author on the recall campaign's website and also a member of the Three Percenters. He is listed as one of the proponents of the fifth recall effort submitted on February 21, 2020. The Three Percenters newsletter reported in January 2020 on Seoane and Aaron Bate's efforts to get recall petitions signed. In a social media video, he can be seen wearing a Three Percenter patch (the Roman numeral three with stars encircling it) while refusing to answer students who asked him what group he's with.

An investigation by theL.A.Times found that vaccine skeptics had also worked with the Recall movement. Two local leaders in the anti-vaccination movement, Denise Aguilar and Tara Thornton with the Freedom Angels, organized and participated in several demonstrations at the state Capitol that supported the ousting of Newsom. Speakers also denounced vaccines and health orders, the paper said.

Although many recall supporters identify as Republican, there are past Democrat donors who have rallied behind the effort. For example, Chamath Palihapitiya, a former Facebook executive and a major Democratic donor, on Twitter revealed he supported the campaign and told CNBC he thought that Newsom "has done a terrible job."

"First step is we need to recall Gavin Newsom," Palihapitiya added.

On the other side of the political aisle, Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has endorsed the movement, as well as the California Republican Party. Half a dozen GOP party leaders in the state also support it.

Orrin Heatlie, a leading proponent of the recall movement, told Newsweek he believed that people in California care more about what Newsom has done and how they've been impacted than who the people behind the movement are.

"I want to emphasize the fact that we are aware there are people in this movement from the entire political spectrum and from all walks of life," said Heatlie, a recently retired Yolo County Sergeant.

"These include liberal and environmental groups angry about Newsom's lack of leadership regarding climate change, and that he signed off oil fracking permits, to the anti-vaxxer crowd, the anti-maskers, open schools, open California, 'let them play' groups and pro-Trump and pro-Bernie Sanders individuals."

Heatlie, who worked with Bate on an early petition drive for the recall movement, said it is policy of the campaign to keep posts on their Facebook network focused on the recall.

"We do not take a position or promote matters unrelated to the recall. Postings about COVID, global or national politics, are not allowed. Do some get by? Yes, and we take appropriate action when brought to our attention," he said. He added that the campaign has removed many members and administrators that have failed to adhere to its messaging standards.

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He said people who support the recall movement attend different rallies and gatherings on their own accord to collect signatures, but the recall campaign does not promote the events themselves, other than to announce that people may be able to gather signatures. Heatlie added that just because a person or group may endorse the recall, doesn't mean the campaign's management supports them.

"We have no control over who promotes the recall by their own volition. This is a non-partisan all-inclusive movement. We promote unity and harmony across the board! This is a peaceful movement and we denounce any person or group who engage in acts of violence, threats or vandalism on any level," he said.

Hundreds of people gather to protest the stay-at-home orders outside the state capitol building in Sacramento, California on May 1, 2020. The campaign to remove California Governor Gavin Newsom is building up steam, with more than 1.2 million people having signed a petition to remove him from office.JOSH EDELSON/GETTY

In June last year, Newsom said that the recall will cost state taxpayers $81 million. If the recall campaign manages to get 1,495,709 signatures, a special election will take place this year, where multiple candidates will be able to run for California governor.

California Democratic Party chair Rusty Hicks has called the recall campaign a "coup" and said it was associated with "right-wing conspiracy theorists."

Since 1911, Californians have attempted to recall their governor 55 times, but were successful only in 2003 against Gray Davis. Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected to replace Davis as governor in a special election

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Far-right movements including QAnon, virus skeptics linked to Newsom recall

Hundreds protest the stay-at-home orders outside the Capitol in Sacramento

Hundreds protest the stay-at-home orders in May outside the Capitol in Sacramento. (Josh Edelson / AFP/Getty Images)

By ANITA CHABRIA, PAIGE ST. JOHN

PUBLISHED JAN. 23, 2021 UPDATED JAN. 24, 2021 8:08 PM PT

SACRAMENTO — As the pandemic continues to shutter businesses, close schools and upend lives in California, Gov. Gavin Newsom has become a target of angry frustration for some, driving a grassroots effort to recall him from office. What once started as a pipe dream is beginning to look like a political threat for the Democratic governor.

But a Times investigation found that recall campaign leaders, seeking to capitalize on the darkening public mood, allied with radical and extreme elements early on to help collect signatures. Those included groups promoting distrust of government, science and medicine; peddlers of QAnon doomsday conspiracies; “patriots” readying for battle and one organization allied with the far-right extremist group, the Proud Boys.

The recall gave those fringe factions a higher profile and a shared villain. They helped energize the campaign with large and often inflammatory rallies over masks, in support of Trump and against the election they falsely say was stolen from the former president — ripe venues to harvest petition signatures.

Many supporters of the recall are not extremists and may not be aware of the far-right groups involved with the effort. But with the violent insurgency at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, organizers are grappling with the consequences of their alliances. They now insist the extremists don’t represent the values of the recall movement but continue to associate with them, amid a national debate about how far is too far when it comes to winning in politics.

“Do we have to denounce everybody that is involved to move it forward?” the official proponent of the recall drive, a retired sheriff’s sergeant from Yolo County named Orrin Heatlie, asked The Times.

“Or do we just move forward and ignore those other elements?”

Behind the momentum that Heatlie would now look past, The Times found:

Hardline activists from the anti-vaccination movement. Two leaders, Denise Aguilar and Tara Thornton with the Freedom Angels, organized and participated in numerous rallies at the state Capitol that promoted the recall effort. At these events, speakers denounced vaccines and health orders. The Proud Boys, who have been involved in protest violence, from street brawls in Sacramento to the incursion of the nation’s Capitol, are also often present. Aguilar has said they provided security.

The recall campaign itself provided a safe harbor for the propaganda and violent rhetoric that riled the Republican voter base and spilled over into the Capitol riot. An organizer in El Dorado County is a Three Percenter — an anti-government extremist movement, according to the Anti-Defamation League. Until social media crackdowns and questions from reporters at The Times, the recall’s ostensibly bipartisan Facebook pages repeated the surreal conspiracies of QAnon as fact and asserted the national election was rigged despite all evidence to the contrary. Those pages have also likened the daily disruptions of COVID-19 to the Holocaust and the governor to Hitler, framing their struggles as if they were on par with the massacre of 6 million Jews.

Recall officials, including Heatlie, all said it is unfair to hold the campaign accountable for the individual actions of its volunteers and supporters, and they are unable to monitor where signatures are gathered.

“You cannot control a movement,” said Randy Economy, a veteran political consultant who is the recall’s senior advisor and chief publicist. “It’s not our job to manage what somebody says about the recall at a public event.”

Economy said more than 1.2 million Californians have signed the petition to remove Newsom. As of Jan. 6, state elections officials said 723,783 signatures have been turned in by the recall campaign and of those, 485,650 have been verified. The campaign needs to turn in almost 1.5 million signatures by the March 17 deadline, though far more will likely need to be collected to mitigate for those proved invalid.

Many of those signing are fed up with coronavirus testing problems and disarray around lockdown rules and data, slow vaccine access and Newsom’s now-infamous dinner party at the French Laundry without the masks that other Californians were told to wear, Economy said.

Heatlie said his organization cut ties with at least one of those early partners, the Freedom Angels, and is careful about connections to groups with far-right views such as science deniers. Yet, The Times found recall signature gatherers continue to frequent such events.

Last weekend, the recall participated in a “Free and the Brave” Sutter County event featuring false claims about the virus and a silent auction for militia training.

The Church of Glad Tidings hosted the three-day conference against pandemic restrictions, and there were no masks in sight. One of the recall’s earliest regional organizers, Donna Wahlberg, was excited to set up her petition table inside the church where speakers advocated defiance of COVID-19 health orders and claimed that wearing masks was more dangerous than the virus.

Speakers touted COVID-19 cures of vitamins and horse wormer, and claimed hospitals are “murdering people” to collect government money for treating coronavirus patients.

Outside the church, thick-muscled men in tactical vests protected those attending with an arsenal of pepper ball guns, pepper rifles and Tasers. A trio of sheriff’s cars sat down the road.

Wahlberg said she promoted the conference on official recall web sites to tens of thousands of subscribers across California.

“We wanted as many people statewide [as possible] to attend this,” said Wahlberg, festooned in lively accents of red, from her brightly lacquered toenails to the turban wrap crowning her head. She is a Yuba County web administrator for the recall campaign, and before that, worked with Heatlie on a prior Newsom recall effort.

Heatlie said he was unaware his campaign had promoted the conference on its social media, but because there are so few large events to collect signatures at during the pandemic, there “might be a certain level of acceptance for certain gatherings.”

Heatlie also said he monitors all of his organization’s Facebook pages and has rules forbidding posts about federal politics or personal views, though The Times found multiple examples of such messaging across groups. Some included misinformation from QAnon — a nonsensical mythos that Trump was fighting a secret war with deep state occults who traffic children, and would declare martial law with executions.

These include posts from San Diego that carried the QAnon motto, W1GWGA (where one goes, we go all). Other posts depict Newsom as Adolf Hitler and compare pandemic restrictions to the rise of the Third Reich.

A protest sign against Gov. Gavin Newsom on the side of a truck outside the state Capitol

A protest sign against Gov. Gavin Newsom is displayed on a truck outside the state Capitol in May. (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

That imagery is characterized as hate speech by the Anti-Defamation League, but for months, the image of Newsom as Hitler has been prominent at rallies, and the theme was adopted by a San Diego recall organizer to announce petition signings.

One politician who stands to benefit from Newsom’s ouster is John Cox, a San Diego-based venture capitalist and Republican gubernatorial hopeful who has already contributed $50,000 to the recall campaign and $1 million into his own gubernatorial exploratory committee. Cox said he was unaware of the role extreme groups have played in helping the recall gain momentum. He minimized the prevalence of such factions in the campaign, attributing them to “a couple of people who were unhinged.”

Cox said he found the Holocaust imagery of Newsom objectionable. “You’ll never see me inciting anything like that.”

Kathryn Olmsted, a professor of history at UC Davis who studies politics and conspiracy theories, said conspiracy theories, especially those associated with QAnon, are dangerous to peaceful politics.

“If you really believe your political opponents are Satan-worshiping pedophiles, you can be justified in using any weapon against them,” she said.

Strident language has become more common in the recall as the pandemic progresses, with the Freedom Angels one group turning up the temperature. The group first gained prominence in California opposing laws that require vaccinations for public school attendance, which they claim is an overreach of government authority. With the pandemic, two leaders of the Freedom Angels splintered off to join those opposed to COVID-19 closure and stay-at-home orders.

The splinter group also recently started an all-female militia, and advertises seminars on social media on how to target local health department officials, including staging nonviolent actions at officials’ private homes.

Aguilar, one of the founders of the offshoot group, is also a supporter of the Proud Boys, appearing at one Capitol rally wearing a shirt with a patch that read, “I (heart) Proud Boys” and at another introducing group members as security. Since the election, Proud Boys have fought with antifa counter-protesters during at least seven Capitol rallies, according to Sacramento police, and 27 people have been arrested or cited.

STOCKTON, CA - DECEMBER 10, 2020 - Stockton business owners make their statement for keeping their businesses open and call for local government to declare Stockton a "sanctuary city" for businesses on the steps of City Hall In Stockton on December 10, 2020. Faced with a dire shortage of hospitals beds, health officials announced Saturday a large swath of the Central Valley, which included San Joaquin County, and the vast region of Southern California to be placed under a sweeping new lockdown. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

CALIFORNIA

Anti-vaccine and alt-right groups team up to stoke fears of COVID-19 vaccine

Dec. 18, 2020

In a Dec. 13 Facebook post, Aguilar wrote, “I will have their back to the fullest and will not be shy about my support for my PB’s.”

Heatlie said he became concerned about the Freedom Angels in May, after an unruly Capitol rally in which 32 people, including Aguilar and Thornton, were detained by the California Highway Patrol. But despite his misgivings, Heatlie agreed to appear on a Freedom Angels webcast in June, on the day the Secretary of State’s office approved his petitions for circulation. And later in the month, Heatlie’s recall campaign called on supporters to attend a Freedom Angels rally at the Sacramento courthouse to support those who had been arrested during demonstrations.

Denise Aguilar, far left, and Tara Thornton, right, huddle together as they are detained by California Highway Patrol.

Freedom Angels founders Denise Aguilar, far left, and Tara Thornton, right, huddle together as they are detained by CHP officers during a May demonstration in Sacramento against Gov. Gavin Newsom’s stay-at-home orders.(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

Aguilar declined to speak to The Times about her organization’s alliances, saying the recall campaign reflects only the voices of those who sign the petitions, though she continues to promote it. Thornton did not respond to calls for comment.

Heatlie said he cut formal ties with the Freedom Angels in July, but acknowledged that signature gatherers continue to frequent events featuring or arranged by the group.

The recall also has not censured those within its own ranks.

Aaron Bate, an El Dorado County recall organizer who with Heatlie was part of an earlier petition drive against Newsom, is active in the Three Percenters and has personally delivered thousands of recall signatures to his county election office.

On social media, Bate has posed with others flashing a Three Percenter hand sign, and with men in Proud Boys clothing flashing an OK hand gesture associated with their group and with white supremacy. Brian Levin, professor of criminal justice and director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at Cal State San Bernardino, described the Three Percenters as “an anti-government paramilitary group that promotes the idea that violence is legitimate to combat gun control laws.”

In an email, Bate disputed that characterization.

“The Three Percent Groups are not a Militia nor are they far right,” Bate wrote. “They are made up of people from all Races, Political Views and Professions. There are Vets, Police Officers, Doctors, Electricians, and many other Professions.”

Robin McCrea, chief financial officer for the recall and one of its founding members, posted memes and comments on a personal social media page disputing the election. “PEVERT (sic) Quid Pro Joe Corrupt Beijing Biden will NEVER be the President of Patriots...NEVER,” she wrote in one. Later that day, she posted false assertions that the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol was the work of anti-fascist activists, another conspiracy theory that quickly took hold after the insurgency.

McCrea said via email that she stands by her views.

“I’ve seen on live TV the way Biden touches young girls. Would I want my child or a grandchild around him? No.,” McCrea wrote in an email. “Do I believe there was and is ample evidence to show the election results were not accurate? Yes ... Do my views regarding national politics have a thing to do with the Recall of Newsom? No.”

Heatlie defended both McCrea and Bate. He said that being a member of the Three Percenters was not a reason to remove Bate from the recall organization.

“This is about recalling the government. It’s not about Aaron Bate or his personal views,” said Heatlie.

Heatlie said he was unaware of McCrea’s views and she had not shared them in official channels, but that her financial skills were valuable to the campaign.

“If [people] don’t want to sign the petition because Robin McCrea is on the board or the committee or part of the management team or part of the volunteer team, then I don’t know what to tell you,” he said. “She helped bring this opportunity to the people of California.”

Two groups are raising money for the recall. Separate from Heatlie’s organization is Rescue California-Recall Gavin Newsom, which has a PAC headed by Tom Del Beccaro, former state Republican Party chairman. That PAC is tapping donors in the Republican establishment, campaign finance reports show.

Del Beccaro is a frequent contributor to the far-right Epoch Times, which has come under scrutiny for its far-reaching dissemination of pandemic falsehoods. In one piece, he commented on what he called the “CCP virus” (Chinese Communist Party) in an article entitled, “The Pandemic Expansion: The Greatest Media Bias of All is Pushing Ever Larger government.”

Del Beccaro’s committees are separately distributing petitions by mass mail, and he said he is unaware of Heatlie’s connections. But he also characterized those elements as irrelevant.

“It doesn’t matter what Orrin thinks, doesn’t matter what I think,” Del Beccaro said. “I represent or am fostering helping the 1.2 million (who signed petitions) and that’s, that’s what matters.”

Ann Ravel, chairwoman of the California Fair Political Practices Commission, discusses the $1 million fine, the largest in its history, levied against two political action committees for campaign-reporting violations, during a news conference in Sacramento, Calif., Thursday, Oct. 24, 2013. The FPPC also ordered two separate groups to pay the state's general fund the amount of money donated to them during the 2012 election cycle by the groups that were fined. The Small Business Action Committee was ordered to pay $11 million while the California Future Fund for Free Markets was ordered to pay $4 million. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

CALIFORNIA

Gavin Newsom recall effort faces ‘dark money’ complaint over alleged hidden donors

Jan. 5, 2021

If the recall does qualify for the ballot, it would trigger a special election this year. Unlike a regular vote for governor, the recall ballot could see multiple candidates — with the winner simply needing the most votes.

Last week, California Democrats attempted to brand the Recall Newsom campaign as an “attempted coup” akin to the Capitol insurrection — an effort that backfired, with critics saying it was reckless to characterize a legal recall attempt with what happened on Jan. 6. But one prominent Republican analyst said few should be shocked that the recall has extremists and conspiracy theorists.

“That’s become mainstream Republican politics,” said Mike Madrid, a former state Republican Party political director who co-founded The Lincoln Project, a political action committee of Republicans aligned against Trump.

“It used to be low taxes,” Madrid said. “It is now white grievance.”

Updates

9:31 AM, Jan. 24, 2021: This article has been updated with the headline of Tom Del Becarro’s Epoch Times article.

Anita Chabria

Anita Chabria covers California state politics and policy for the Los Angeles Times and is based in Sacramento. Before joining The Times, she worked for the Sacramento Bee as a member of its statewide investigative team, and previously covered criminal justice and City Hall.

Paige St. John

Paige St. John covers criminal justice, disasters and investigative stories for the Los Angeles Times from Northern California.

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Report finds the owner of a truck with a Three Percenter logo at the Capitol riot is married to a lawmaker

Rep. Mary E. Miller // House Creative Committee, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Alex Henderson February 26, 2021

The Three Percenters are among the far-right militia groups that were present in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6 and have been investigated by the FBI in connection with the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol Building that day. And according to Daily Beast reporters Adam Rawnsley, Kelly Weill and Jackie Kucinich, Republican Chris Miller — a member of the Illinois House of Representatives and the husband of GOP U.S. Rep. Mary E. Miller — had a Three Percenter sticker on his Ford pickup truck the day of the Capitol insurrection.

The 66-year-old Chris Miller acknowledged that the truck belonged to him, although he told the Beast that he "never was (a) member" of the Three Percenters and "didn't know anything about 3% till fake news started this fake story and read about them."

In an e-mail to the Daily Beast, Chris Miller wrote, "Army friend gave me decal. Thought it was a cool decal. Took it off because of negative pub."

Because of his use of the term "fake news," one might assume that Chris Miller is a supporter of former President Donald Trump — and in fact, Chris Miller and his wife, 61-year-old Mary Miller, are both strong Trump supporters. He serves in Illinois' state government, while his wife was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives via Illinois in 2020 and has served on the House Education Committee as well as the House Agriculture Committee.

In Washington, D.C. on Jan. 5, the day before the Capitol riot, Mary Miller spoke at the pro-Trump "Moms for America" rally — where she told the crowd, "Hitler was right on one thing: whoever has the youth has the future." She has since apologized for that remark, saying that she wasn't trying to praise Hitler.

Rawnsley, Weill and Jackie Kucinich note that militia groups "have garnered new attention from law enforcement given the number of members arrested and charged with riot-related crimes since Jan. 6" — and that includes the Three Percenters.

According to an FBI affidavit, Colorado resident Robert Gieswein — one of the people who is facing criminal charges in connection with the Capitol insurrection — "appears to be affiliated with the radical militia group known as the Three Percenters."

Rawnsley, Weill and Jackie Kucinich say of the Three Percenters, "The group, which first formed in 2008, is part of a loose network of 'anti-government extremists' who liken their crusade against the U.S. government to that of Revolutionary War-era patriots, according to the Anti-Defamation League. Their name comes from the false claim that only 3% of U.S. colonists fought in that war."...no lnx

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Although Michigan is one of the 2016 Trump states that Joe Biden flipped in 2020, it is also a state that has had a disturbing amount of activity from far-right militia extremists — including those who planned to kidnap Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer last year, subject her to a "trial" for treason and execute her if found guilty. Journalists David D. Kirkpatrick and Mike McIntire, in an article published by the New York Times on February 8, takes an in-depth look at the extremism of Michigan's paramilitary militias and their relationship to the Michigan GOP — a relationship that helped pave the way for the violence of January 6.

"Michigan has a long tradition of tolerating self-described private militias, which are unusually common in the state," Kirkpatrick and McIntire explain. "But it is also a critical electoral battleground that draws close attention from top party leaders, and the Republican alliance with paramilitary groups shows how difficult it may be for the national party to extricate itself from the shadow of the former president and his appeal to this aggressive segment of its base."

In April 2020, the Times reporters recall, armed militia members protested coronavirus restrictions in Lansing, Michigan and stormed the Michigan Capitol Building. According to Kirkpatrick and McIntire, "That intrusion into the Statehouse now looks like a portent of the assault halfway across the country months later at the United States Capitol."

Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin has said that in light of the events in Michigan in 2020, "We knew there would be violence" on January 6. When Republican politicians in Michigan condone militia members carrying assault rifles during their protests, Slotkin warned, that "normalizes violence."

Kirkpatrick and McIntire report, "Six Trump supporters from Michigan have been arrested in connection with the storming of the (U.S.) Capitol. One, a former marine accused of beating a Capitol Police officer with a hockey stick, had previously joined armed militiamen in a protest organized by Michigan Republicans to try to disrupt ballot counting in Detroit. The chief organizer of that protest, Meshawn Maddock, on Saturday was elected co-chair of the state Republican Party — one of four diehard Trump loyalists who won top posts."

However, Maddock has condemned the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol Building and told the Times, "When it comes to militias or the Proud Boys, I have no connection whatsoever to them."

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prominent Michigan Republicans who have allied themselves with militias, according to Kirkpatrick and McIntire, include Ryan Kelley — who has announced a gubernatorial run — and Londa Gatt, a Proud Boys supporter who has described the extremist group as "true patriots." Jeff Timmer, a former director of the Michigan GOP and a conservative critic of former President Donald Trump, is troubled by the alliance between militia members and Michigan Republicans and told the Times, "It is like the Republican Party has its own domestic army."

JoEllen Vinyard, a professor at Eastern Michigan University and expert on political extremism, is also troubled by the Michigan GOP's relationship with militia groups and told the Times, "I think there is a fair amount of sympathy in the Republican Party for these people that wasn't there in the past. It's a much closer relationship now."

Maddock's causes have ranged from fighting coronavirus restrictions in Michigan to trying to help Trump overturn the presidential election results in that state. And although she distanced herself from militias and the Proud Boys in her statement to the Times, she has remained a devout Trump supporter.

"When attempts to stop the counting failed, Ms. Maddock, in December, led 16 Republican electors trying to push into the Michigan Capitol to disrupt the casting of Democratic votes in the Electoral College," Kirkpatrick and McIntire note. "During a 'Stop the Steal' news conference in Washington the next day, she vowed to 'keep fighting.' Marching toward the (U.S.) Capitol on January 6, she tweeted that the throngs were 'the most incredible crowd and sea of people I have ever walked with.'"

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

'Tacit endorsement': The Proud Boys are celebrating Trump telling them to 'stand by'

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http://www.politicalresearch.org/2020/06/19/mapping-paramilitary-and-far-right-threats-racial-justice

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By Political Research Associates and the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights (IREHR)

Additional research support provided by Alexander Reid Ross

We have been tracking reports of paramilitary and other far-right actors who are showing up at or adjacent to protests demanding an end to racist policing and a transformation of our carceral state. This map seeks to right-size the threat of paramilitaries to our social justice movements, neither exaggerating nor minimizing. We have confirmed 136 reported incidents since the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police on May 25, 2020, and with new reports daily there are dozens more as of yet unconfirmed incidents to review. Given the variety of groups and factions involved and types of incidents, we have divided the data into a few broad categories of actors/ideologies on the one hand and actions and tactics on the other. In most cases, the underlying data preserves more nuance and can be used to make finer distinctions.

Background

Although most people may not remember, if they ever knew, far-right paramilitaries did turn up at previous rounds of protests over police violence. For example, during the second wave of Ferguson protests, after a grand jury declined to indict the officer who killed Michael Brown, members of the paramilitary group the Oathkeepers patrolled rooftops claiming to be there to protect people and property. The heavily armed militia—which reports drawing its membership primarily from military veterans, police officers, and other first responders—was greeted with mixed reactions by protesters. Mostly they were a distraction from demands for justice and police accountability.

Now in 2020, far-right paramilitaries are once again making the scene at racial justice protests.Particularly in the last days of May, rumors circulated that large numbers of armed militia members and/or outright White Nationalists were infiltrating, disrupting protests and threatening activists. Some of the armed militias were claiming to be there to support the protestors—or at least to speak against police violence and overreach.

President Trump continues to try to divert attention to an invented threat from “antifa,” tweeting that he will have them declared a terrorist group and the Attorney General of the United States has threatened to point the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) at “Antifa and similar groups.” Meanwhile, the Trump campaign has run over 2,000 advertisements on social media since June 2, warning about “Dangerous MOBS of far-left groups,” some versions of which featured a point-down red triangle, an image used to identify political enemies in Nazi concentration camps. Even as police deployed tear gas and rubber bullets against protestors, activists and organizers were left wondering how seriously to take the threat of violence from right-wing paramilitaries.

Key Findings

The absolute number of far-right and paramilitary actors at racial justice and police accountability protests has been relatively small, typically no more than a dozen people, and often only one or two men in Hawaiian shirts and tactical gear in a sea of racial justice protestors. The exceptions have been where less organized groups of people with guns have turned up to confront an imaginary “antifa” menace, usually in smaller towns in the West.

In spite of the low numbers involved, there are reasons to be concerned. Some of the paramilitary actors are proving to be willing not just to talk about using violence to stir up chaos and provoke confrontation between protestors and the state, but to take violent action.

Steven Carillo, an active-duty staff sergeant in the Air Force, has been arrested and charged with killing a guard at the federal courthouse in Oakland. In a Facebook post before the attack, Carillo allegedly wrote: “Use their anger to fuel our fire. Think outside the box. We have mobs of angry people to use to our advantage.” Wounded in a firefight with Santa Cruz deputy sheriffs, Carillo apparently highjacked a car and scrawled “Boog” on the hood in his own blood.

Three men also connected to the Boogaloo movement were arrested in Nevada on charges of possessing explosives and conspiring to incite violence.

Other rightwing violence has been less intentionally directed toward fomenting chaos and confrontation with the state. For example in Albuquerque, New Mexico, a one-time city council candidate shot and critically wounded a racial justice protestor and assaulted several others in an attempt to defend a conquistador monument. He was subsequently defended from the crowd by members of the New Mexico Civil Guard, a militia group, though they subsequently disavowed any connection to the shooter.

Map Details

Incidents are grouped into four categories:

Harassment/counterprotest is the largest category, with 106 instances, and includes a variety of activities including verbal harassment, intimidation, those claiming to be there to protect property, prevent looting, or defend the First Amendment or engaged in the doxxing of protestors.

Violence/threat, which includes only actual or attempted violence in or around the protest space or direct menacing, such as pointing a gun or other weapon at someone.

Attended protest claiming support, includes mostly members of the Boogaloo faction, and only when they have shown through words, spoken or written, or through their actions, that they intend their presence to be in support of racial justice and police accountability, for example by carrying signs that say Black Lives Matter or Justice for George Floyd.

Law enforcement complicity is a small category in the data with large implications and refers to law enforcement officials who indicate alignment with paramilitary or far-right groups, for example by wearing a III% insignia.

The main actors that show up in our data include:

The Boogaloo, or Boogaloo Bois, is a very loose network of actors that originated online, but who have begun to show up at in-person protest actions in recent months. They are often recognizable by wearing tactical military-style gear and Hawaiian shirts. The “Boogaloo” is a code word for a new civil war, which they tend to see as inevitable, if not desirable. They have shown up in a variety of ways, including claiming support for police accountability and violence/threat.

The Oathkeepers and the III% (Three Percenters) are closely allied paramilitary or militia factions that typically claim a constitutionalist orientation—that is, that they exist to defend the Constitution from threats. Many are or claim to be military veterans or first responders of one sort or another.

Proud Boys, who define themselves as “Western chauvinists” defending U.S. institutions from leftists and outside influences. In practice, they are best known for their street brawls with anti-fascists, anarchists, anti-racists, and others. They have shown up mostly in the counterprotest/harassment category.

Other categories include armed mobs of mostly white men who have appeared after online calls to defend their communities from mostly imaginary threats of left-wing looters being bused into town. They are, as far as we can tell, not part of any organized or recognizable group. There are also a small number of explicit White nationalists, including some neonazis, who have shown up in the counterprotest/harassment lane.

The map presented here is our joint attempt to create a resource for organizers and activists, journalists and researchers, to place the threat of the far-right showing up at racial justice protests in context, more-or-less at a glance.

https://www.desmogblog.com/2020/07/21/three-percenters-militia-bakken-oil-oneok-domestic-terrorism

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Whose Allegiance? Three Percenters Militia Working in Bakken Oil Patch Raises Concerns of Domestic Terrorism Risk

By Justin Nobel • Tuesday, July 21, 2020

The Three Percenters, a loosely organized group of far-right militants, appear to have established a significant presence in North Dakota’s Bakken oilfield, one of the most productive oilfields in the nation. “There is a lot of membership in the oil and gas industry up there,” says Matt Marshall, a Three Percenter running for state legislature in Washington. “The fact that you have a lot of Three Percenters working in the oilfields of North Dakota is not surprising.”

The Three Percenters are so named for the dubious historical claim that only three percent of American colonists took up arms in the Revolutionary War. Their adherents have frequently been involved with incidents of ?armed protests, hate speech, and ?threatening behavior across the U.S., and the group’s members have shown up prominently at recent protests related to both pandemic response measures and police brutality.

In April, Marshall, wearing a colonial tricorn hat with bullets strapped to the side, and a Hawaiian shirt, helped lead a coronavirus stay-home order protest at his state’s capitol in Olympia, Washington. Hawaiian shirts are described by the Anti-Defamation League as a coded reference to coming civil war, although Marshall denies the link.

He says he is aware of Three Percenters who are working in oilfields in Colorado, Texas, Wyoming, Oklahoma, and Alaska. And also according to Marshall, top officials with two North Dakota chapters, the North Dakota United Patriots Three Percenters and North Dakota Three Percenter Originals, work in the oil and gas industry.

“We are mostly blue-collar workers who want to put in a hard day’s labor, support our family, pay a limited amount of taxes to get the services we require and at the end of the day be left alone,” says Marshall. “I don’t think there is any concern about having a bunch of threepersworking in that industry,” referring to an alternate name for the group.

But points of significant concern emerged in a multi-month DeSmog investigation that involved interviews with former Department of Homeland Security and FBI officials, and local residents of North Dakota, who live in a state still pumping out more than a million barrels of oil a day.

According to a whistleblower who contacted DeSmog, Three Percenters have established a prominent presence at a Bakken oil and gas facility regarded as critical infrastructure by the Department of Homeland Security. Militia-related patches, flags, and artwork have popped up across the Bakken oil patch, and a thriving gun culture among its workers has led to a Mad Max-mentality of chaos plaguing residents of the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation.

While federal security agencies and their partners have prioritized focus on the energy industry and produced a raft of reports in the past two decades on other risks to the nation’s critical infrastructure, such as cyber security, natural disasters, and environmental activism, right-wing militia groups appear to be escaping close scrutiny.

“It certainly seems like a security vacuum,” Michael German, a fellow with the Brennan Center for Justice, told DeSmog when informed about our reporting. German is a former FBI special agent who specialized in domestic terrorism and covert operations. “The FBI characterizes itself as a domestic terrorism agency and has been outspoken about prioritizing ecoterrorism as a threat, which is ridiculous because there are no deaths with any of the environmental threats,” he said. “Yet somehow there does not appear to be an attempt to find out what the infiltration is of anti-government militia groups, and that is problematic.”

At the same time, state legislators across the country, backed by the notoriously ultra-conservative American Legislative Exchange Council, have been devising laws to target environmental activists as terrorists.

“The FBI’s approach of de-emphasizing investigations of white supremacist and right-wing militia violence while targeting resources at social justice movements and calling that extremism has existed for some time,” said Hina Shamsi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s (ACLU) National Security Project.

“What militias like this do is conduct surveillance and find facilities they will either need to take over or attack when ‘shit hits the fan.’”

It’s an approach that continues to play out at this very moment. In the midst of protests against the police killing of George Floyd and other Black Americans, President Trump has fanned the flames with tweets about “shooting” looters, calling MAGA supporters into action, and saying he intends to designate the amorphous leftwing anti-fascism movement Antifa as a terrorist organization.

Meanwhile, reports of right-wing militia members bringing weapons to protests allegedly in order to transform this moment into civil war have surfaced online. On May 31, Marshall’s group sent perhaps a dozen members to a small town north of Seattle in response to rumors of an Antifa threat that never materialized. And neo-Nazis, through online networks, have suggested to followers that with police forces spread thin, the present moment would be an ideal one to strike energy infrastructure targets.

DeSmog’s investigation indicates a culture of guns and paranoia has worked its way deep into the heart of America’s third richest oilfield.

Domestic Terrorism Experts Troubled by Militia’s Oilfield Presence

Paul Lehto is a 54-year-old former plant operator at the Lonesome Creek Gas Processing Plant, outside Watford City, North Dakota. During his tenure there in 2016, he says coworkers would “talk about automatic weapons all the time,” gather in common spaces to watch social media videos that featured demonstrations of people firing sub-automatic machine guns, leave articles of clothing with Three Percenter insignia lying around the workplace, and regularly wear the militia’s notorious patches, which typically contain the Roman numeral III, sometimes placed over a darkened American flag. During one conversation, he says a coworker spoke about hijacking a commercial jet.

Although Lehto says the comment may well have been in jest, it conveyed a “habit of thinking” that was worrisome and was part of his decision to eventually leave his job at the natural gas processing plant. “The constellation of issues around being a Three Percenter was probably the number one topic of conversation at work,” says Lehto. “These guys are basically supportive of the idea of some sort of eventual civil war in the United States of America.”

Paul Lehto

Paul Lehto, a ONEOK gas plant employee from 2015 to 2016, shown in 2019. Credit: DeSmog]

Daryl Johnson, an expert on right-wing militia groups who from 2004 to 2010 served as the Department of Homeland Security’s senior domestic terrorism analyst, told DeSmog that this was the first information he has received of right-wing militia presence in the oil and gas industry. He was deeply alarmed.

“These are operationally minded people with a paranoid worldview that believe at some point there is going to be a societal collapse,” said Johnson, who authored the 2012 book, Right-Wing Resurgence: How A Domestic Terrorist Threat Is Being Ignored. “What militias like this do is conduct surveillance and find facilities they will either need to take over or attack when ‘shit hits the fan.’ When they are working, they are also thinking about what else they would need to do to bring the plant to its knees. They may follow the order of their commander or act on a lone wolf instinct, and their allegiance lies not with their employer but with the militia, although they might think they are doing something righteous and good for the country.”

Lehto says that during the day shift, more than half of the 20 to 25 workers stationed at Lonesome Creek would either be wearing Three Percenter regalia and openly supportive of the militia, or be workers that he considered to be sympathizers. Three Percenters came to work there from North Dakota, Oklahoma, and Texas, says Lehto.

“I heard one Three Percenter expressing frustration and astonishment that HR did not hire his recommendation for a fellow Three Percenter, saying, ‘He is qualified, he has a great resume, and he is a Three Percenter, I just don’t understand why they turned him down,’” says Lehto. “Implied was that he had prior success with this.”

On the night shift Lehto managed the $600 million plant with just two other workers, one of whom was an active Three Percenter, the other a sympathizer. “I was just being constantly reminded of the Three Percenter presence,” says Lehto.

Protester at a confederate memorial in Louisiana waves a Three Percenter flag]

New Orleans, August 19, 2017. A man waves a Three Percenter flag as counter-protesters and protesters clash at the conclusion of the march organized by Take ‘Em Down NOLA,” an event held in solidarity with Charlottesville, days after the deadly Unite the Right rally. Credit: ©2020 Julie Dermanksy]

“I find it concerning that it is not just one, or two, or three, it is more like half the plant that are Three Percenters or supporting them rhetorically,” says Johnson. “There is a threat capability calculation we use in intelligence —capability plus intent equals threat,”he continued. “The Three Percenters definitely have capability, and they definitely have made their intent known, and the fact that they have access is even more concerning. Having the insider knowledge of how that plant operates, where that gas comes from and where it is going is all information an adversary can use for maximum threat and maximum damage. They can sabotage the plant or pipelines running from it, which may not cause a lot of deaths but can disrupt the energy supply.”

Furthermore, added Johnson, “There is also a counterintelligence threat. They have intel on critical infrastructure that, shall the need arise, they can share with people who don’t need to know.”

A 2008 Department of Homeland Security report on insider threats to critical infrastructure says insider motivations can come from, “some combination of: revenge for a perceived wrong; radicalization for advancement of religious or ideological objectives; or simple illicit financial gain.” Companies who run infrastructure like energy pipelines may misunderstand insider risks and have a financial incentive to downplay them. “Insider incidents can cause lost credibility with shareholders, employees, and customers, and negatively effect to [sic] shareholder values,” the report states. “It appears corporate leadership neither completely appreciates the risk nor realizes the potential consequences.”

The Lonesome Creek plant is operated by the Oklahoma-based oil and gas service company, ONEOK, and came online in 2015 to process the growing surge of natural gas and natural gas liquids being pumped from the booming Bakken oilfields. The plant, like all gas processing plants, is considered “critical infrastructure” by the Department of Homeland Security.

This designation goes back to the Patriot Act of 2001, which defines the term as “systems and assets, whether physical or virtual, so vital to the United States that the incapacity or destruction of such systems and assets would have a debilitating impact on security, national economic security, national public health or safety, or any combination of those matters.”

ONEOK headquarters in Tulsa, OK

ONEOK is headquartered in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Credit: Joseph Wingenfeld, CC BY 2.0]

A risk assessment of the Lonesome Creek Plant by ONEOK says a “worst-case scenario” would involve “a release of 368,536 pounds of flammable mixture” from a large storage tank and generate a wave of destruction more than a half-mile in radius.

While the risk assessment states that ONEOK has “numerous controls to prevent such releases and to manage their consequences,” they are not described in the document. Silverio Caggiano, an Ohio Fire Chief who works regularly with the oil and gas industry and has more than two decades of experience related to Hazardous Materials and Weapons of Mass Destruction, laid out reasons for continued concern. “You would need to have a pretty good background in chemistry to do something specific with a certain gas based on its properties, but if you’ve got a bunch of guys there that are all in cahoots and they decide they want to take shit out, they can pretty much do anything they want,” said Caggiano. “A person working within the system knows how the system runs.”

“From a security standpoint the Three Percenters are probably among the most worrisome groups … it is not whether there will be a right-wing attack, it is when.”

In replies to specific questions by DeSmog, ONEOK did not describe what the “numerous controls” were at the Lonesome Creek facility intended to prevent a “worst-case scenario,” nor did the company respond to requests to speak with present workers at the plant. “ONEOK expects all of our employees to know and abide by our company policies and to embrace the company’s core values of Ethics, Quality, Diversity, Value and Service,” the company explained, in a statement to DeSmog. “ONEOK’s Violence-Free Workplace Policy prohibits violence, violent acts, and threats of violence. ONEOK has implemented numerous safety and security practices to safeguard our facilities and to comply with applicable law. Clearly, the scope and nature of many of these practices and safeguards must remain confidential. We support, cooperate, and frequently coordinate with federal, state, and local law enforcement to anticipate and plan for potential security events. Furthermore, ONEOK has worked with several state legislatures to enact legislation to protect energy infrastructure from hostile actions.”

But Michael German, the Brennan Center for Justice fellow and former FBI special agent, pointed out that this legislation is typically enacted with environmentalist protest groups in mind, not militia-minded employees.

The American Legislative Exchange Council has crafted a “model” bill based on Oklahoma’s HB 1123, which calls for citizens to receive a felony sentencing, $100,000 fine, and/or 10 years in prison if their actions “willfully damage, destroy, vandalize, deface, or tamper with equipment in a critical infrastructure facility.” The bill has been replicated across the country including in Ohio, Alabama, Kentucky, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Louisiana, and Iowa, where reporting by DeSmog in 2018 revealed that corporate backers included Koch Industries, the American Petroleum Institute, and many other oil and gas and pipeline companies.

People opposing the Dakota Access pipeline gather at Standing Rock in North Dakota, December 4, 2016.

Opponents of the Dakota Access pipeline gather at Standing Rock in North Dakota, December 4, 2016. Credit: Joe Brusky, CC BY-NC 2.0]

The FBI told DeSmog that the agency meets frequently with members of the private sector to make them aware of potential threats and to provide information on how to enhance their security.

“We have no comment on threats to specific industries or any groups,” said an FBI spokesperson. “Our focus is not on membership in particular groups but on individuals who commit violence and criminal activity that constitutes a federal crime or poses a threat to national security. The FBI can never initiate an investigation based solely on an individual’s race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, or the exercise of First Amendment rights.”

However such statements go against research done by the ACLU, which unearthed records indicating that in the early 2000s the FBI targeted environmental groups, animal rights groups, and anti-war groups in a way that violated their First Amendment rights. A review of these episodes, published in 2010 by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General, concluded that while the FBI did not target groups for investigation based on First Amendment activities, the basis for opening some of the investigations for certain individuals was “factually weak,” the FBI “extended the duration of investigations involving advocacy groups or their members without adequate basis,” and “in a few instances the FBI improperly retained information.”

“What Congress should do in our opinion,” says Hina Shamsi, the ACLU security expert, “is ask the FBI why it targets groups like this as opposed to those who have carried out white supremacist violence.”

The Rise of the Three Percent

In our investigation to determine the extent of Three Percenter involvement in the oil and gas industry, DeSmog discovered that the right-wing group has increasingly taken a pro-oil and gas stance, railed against the perils of the “Green Deal Manifesto,” and openly defended the oil and gas industry and its legislative enablers. They have also intentionally stepped into the limelight.

[T-shirt with "Come and get it" featuring guns and the Obama campaign logo

New Orleans, May 7, 2017. After a march organized by Take ‘Em Down NOLA celebrating the removal of Confederate memorials was met with pro-Confederate monument supporters. Someone brought a Three Percenter flag to the event. Credit: ©2020 Julie Dermanksy]

The Three Percenters were founded in 2008, part of a wave of right-wing militia groups that sprang up during Barack Obama’s rise to the presidency. The group, according to Daryl Johnson, the former Department of Homeland Security analyst, is “a hybrid organization which blends the tactical elements of a militia, the logistical expertise of the prepper community, and the ‘off the grid’ mindset and outdoors resourcefulness of survivalists.” It has a command structure and claims chapters in every U.S. state.

Three Percenter adherents have engaged in self-appointed, heavily armed “border patrols,” assisted in the armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon in 2016, and attempted to detonate a car bomb outside a bank in Oklahoma City in 2017. Three Percenters also had members in tactical gear armed with semi-automatic rifles at the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017, although its National Council later issued a statement distancing itself from the rally’s white supremacists and neo-Nazis.

In Oregon, in June 2019, after Governor Kate Brown called state police to return Republican state legislators who fled the Capitol to avoid voting on a climate bill, it was Three Percenters who, in a series of Facebook posts, vowed to defend the legislators and referred to the Democratic governor as a fascist and compared her to the Nazi party. Just north, in Washington, Three Percenter Matt Marshall is on the local schoolboard, holds a prominent position in his county’s Republican party leadership, and if elected to state congress, vows to, “Drain the Evergreen Swamp.”

Protesters in military gear and holding a Three Percenter flag at a rally for a Confederate memorial in Louisiana

New Orleans, August 19, 2017. A man holds a Three Percenter flag at the conclusion of the Charlottesville solidarity march organized by Take ‘Em Down NOLA, which was met with counter-protesters. Credit: ©2020 Julie Dermanksy]

In 2018 in Louisiana, U.S. Congressman Clay Higgins,during a near-hysterical speech at the “Expanding Global Gas Infrastructure” seminar, made a number of oblique references to the militia. “Some of us refer to ourselves as ‘Three Percenters,’” Higgins, a former police officer, announced to the oil and gas industry representatives. “You, ladies and gentlemen, are the Three Percenters of the modern era…Together, as the Three Percenters, we represent everything that’s right about this world, and we stand against everything that’s wrong.”

“Welcome to the war for the future of our planet,” the Congressman continued. “My role as your representative is to be not just your ally, but your warrior. Please allow the service of my office to represent the point of the spear that you wield. We’ll knock down every bureaucratic wall. We’ll kick down every federal barrier.” In a series of emails sent in early May, DeSmog asked Higgins’ staff about the Congressman’s connection to the militia group but has yet to receive a reply.

Three Percenters also took swiftly to the terrain of the coronavirus. An article posted in April by the Anti-Defamation League noted that, “Three Percenters were identified at protests in Idaho, Tennessee, and Ohio.” At the Washington protest that Three Percenter state congressional candidate Matt Marshall helped organize, many teens and children were in attendance and few people were wearing masks. Social distancing was scant, and was visibly mocked by attendees.

“Open up, Inslee!” Marshall shouted in a video he livestreamed, the cry directed toward the state’s famously pro-climate governor. “We are swarming the Capitol right now, we have people everywhere.”

The Mountain West and Upper Midwest may be a hotbed of Three Percenter activity. Men associated with an Illinois chapter were charged by the FBI in the bombing of a Minnesota mosque in 2018, attempting to “scare” Muslims away from living in the United States. That same year, the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations called for an investigation into a YouTube video that showed men with the “North Dakota III% Security Force” firing shots at a model of a mosque that then explodes.

“Being a Three Percenter is a way of life,” states the Colorado chapter’s Facebook page. “Remember, we do not seek after violence, but if violence is ever called for, WE are the III% of the population that will stand and fight against a tyranny.”

A 2019 article published in Combatting Terrorism Center Sentinel, a prominent research journal of the United States Military Academy at West Point, notes that, “From September 2, 2011, to December 31, 2016, right-wing extremists were responsible for three times as many attacks as those inspired by jihadi ideology.” But the response to this threat by U.S. security and law enforcement officials, the article states, has been insufficient, “complicated by First Amendment-protected speech and association rights, which prevent state agencies from interfering with domestic extremist groups.” Also hampering efforts, the West Point article notes, is an inadequate budget from the Trump administration, and a refusal by the administration to appropriately prioritize the threat from domestic terror groups.

The Three Percenter movement, despite being grounded in the mythology of the American Revolution, has even spread across the border to Canada, where every single province now has a chapter. Rhetoric from the Three Percenter group in Alberta, which contains the nation’s most productive oilfields, is violently anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant and particularly disturbing, says David Hofmann, an assistant professor at the University of New Brunswick and fellow with the school’s Gregg Centre for the Study of War and Society.

“From a security standpoint the Three Percenters are probably among the most worrisome groups,” says Hofmann. “In conversations with my colleagues it is not whether there will be a right-wing attack, it is when.”

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Marshall, the Washington state Three Percenter leader, made a distinction between different groups within the movement. For example, he said the Three Percent Security Force, which is based in North Dakota and made the video of members shooting a mosque that exploded, is a fringe element of the movement, “absolutely crazy, absolutely lunatic, anti-government extremists.”

“The Three Percenter movement has multiple flavors,” Marshall says. “They are abusing the game, they are a minority in the Three Percenter movement, and the rest of us are all upset because it makes us look bad.”

“Clearly we are not trying to hurt this country, many of us have gone to war for this country,” Marshall continued. “I know my FBI antiterrorism agents because I talk to them so much, they come and ask us questions because they get reports on us. But I can also tell you that they understand what we are about and what we are going for and what our goals are.” He added, “I can tell you the great majority of our organization are current or former military, current or former law enforcement, and we have multiple members that hold a TS/SCI clearance, which is one of the highest security clearances you can get.”

“We at least in our Three Percent groups make sure nobody talks about romanticized civil war,” he said. “I do believe one is coming but I absolutely don’t want it. I have been to war, I have seen what happens and I do not want one happening in this country.” Any government agency focusing on the general Three Percenter groups are wasting their energies, said Marshall, and at a huge taxpayer’s expense.

Protesters in Louisiana wave Confederate flags in front of a memorial

New Orleans, May 7, 2017. Pro-Confederate monument supporters with Confederate flags stand at the ready to confront supporters of the group Take 'Em Down NOLA, who marched celebrating the removal of Confederate monuments before a statue of General Lee was later removed from the pedestal on May 19, 2017. A Three Percenter flag was also present at the May 7 event. Credit: ©2020 Julie Dermanksy ]

“There is indeed a spectrum of philosophies within any militia group and many adherents do not violate the law,” says Michael German, the former FBI special agent, “but I would be concerned with anyone associated with a militant anti-government group if there is evidence of potential wrongdoing that does not appear to have resulted in an investigation by the FBI.”

“Certainly, there are different types of militia groups with differing levels of paranoia and antigovernment sentiment,” adds Daryl Johnson, the former Department of Homeland Security senior domestic terrorism analyst. “That said, I would argue that the group we’re talking about at the gas plant is a potential concern given your informant’s observations/allegations coupled with the III percent movement’s more radical beliefs when compared to other militia groups.”

The government’s apparent lack of attention on the issue is of concern to other watchdogs. “The U.S. government increasingly acts like a tool of fossil fuel companies and oligarchs,” Basav Sen, Director of the Climate Policy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive Washington, D.C. think tank, wrote last October. He added, “the slide into extractivist authoritarianism in the U.S. is part of a worldwide trend.”

Sen pointed to a number of issues that promoted a linkup between the fossil fuels industry and the far right. Each group favors a hands-off approach to government meddling and regulation. And in a trend that has become more pronounced under the Trump administration, with its constant mention of the nation’s newfound fracking-led oil and gas dominance, support of the fossil fuels industry has been promoted as patriotic duty. Oil and gas industry workers are made to feel they are part of a great mission, says Sen, and those who critique them, such as pipeline protesters or climate marchers, are sworn enemies, or even terrorists. This enables the federal government to place individuals on watchlists and, as seen with Indigenous-led protests at Standing Rock and elsewhere has helped to encourage a dangerous operating environment in which federal law enforcement has relied on outside groups, including actual militia members, to help with security work and law enforcement.

“As we head toward a renewable world and fossil fuels become less competitive, it makes perfect sense that the global elite and fossil fuels industry will turn to the far right, whether indirectly or directly, for protection,” says Sen. “The fossil fuels industry is going to need escalating levels of subsidies to survive, and one form of subsidy is this massive tax-funded private security force.”

Perhaps nowhere has the use of mercenary-like private security forces been more heavily employed than against Indigenous communities in the United States.

“If you throw a Three Percenter patch on you can stand in a government building with an assault rifle all damn day and nobody will bother you.”

Michael German, the former FBI agent and security expert, says this is already occurring.

“What we saw in North Dakota during Standing Rock is groups organized as professional companies doing security work for law enforcement agencies,” says German. “This is quite troubling. Furthermore, there have been situations, such as happened at a rally in 2017 in Portland, where militia members have actually been caught on film helping Department of Homeland Security officials arresting counter protesters.”

Tensions with Oilfield Workers at the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation

James Brugh lives with his family in the community of Four Bears on western North Dakota’s Fort Berthold Indian Reservation, home to the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation, in the heart of the Bakken. The 35-year-old Brugh says his community has been infiltrated by oilfield service workers who ignore “no trespassing” signs, carry high-powered rifles and handguns hidden in their vehicles, and often have a cavalier and racist attitude.

An oilfield security guard with a chambered 5.56 rifle in his company vehicle's front seat

An oilfield service worker carrying a chambered rifle (middle, from left to right) in the front seat of his vehicle on James Brugh's property on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota. Credit: James Brugh

“It’s like the second coming of the cavalry, they treat our land like it’s the Wild West,” says Brugh. “These guys come here to the rez at Fort Berthold thinking they are soldiers of fortune, with this wild gunslinger mentality. I have heard enough of these guys talking about us like we are subhuman, like we are not people.” Brugh has met a number of Three Percenters working in the oil and gas industry, and early on in the Bakken boom, around 2015, was even drawn to the movement as “a rebellious and entertaining part of the American fabric,” before noticing that “this Three Percenter crap had taken a turn.”

Brugh lives in a home surrounded by oil and gas development. Pollution is so bad that last December, while his wife Victoria was seven months pregnant, the couple received a letter from an obstetrics and gynecology doctor they had visited in Bismarck recommending that Victoria “relocate for the remainder of her pregnancy.” But the family couldn’t, as they had nowhere else to go.

One particularly harrowing event occurred at a 12th birthday party last year for one of Brugh’s daughters. His wife was several months pregnant at the time. Brugh says an oilfield worker with Nine Line Oilfield Services, a Montana-based company, trespassed onto his property and started acting aggressively. On more than one occasion, Brugh says he has witnessed a firearm in the front seat of an oil and gas worker’s company vehicle, and in this instance, he was concerned this worker may have been reaching for a gun.

“I have been saying this for a long time,” says Brugh, “there is this mercenary mentality of a lot of these guys up here.” The phrase Nine Line refers to a medevac request for a soldier who is injured on the battlefield.

Three Percenter sympathy is apparently mainstream enough in this part of the country that its insignia has even been used to help brand an oil country restaurant. DeSmog discovered that in 2014, a Pennsylvania-based graphic designer created images to be used for the Hard Ride Saloon, a now-closed bar in the heart of the oil patch, in Alexander, North Dakota. One image, “American Patriot 1,” shows a zombie oilfield truckdriver with a smoking shotgun. The Roman numeral “III,” commonly used to denote the Three Percenters, is emblazoned on the license plate and also in bones on the truck’s grill. “American Patriot 2” features a muscular skeleton draped in ammo and a tattered American flag, menacingly clutching a semi-automatic rifle. The third graphic, “Roughneck Zombies” features several zombie oilfield workers and a toppling oil derrick in the background.

American Patriot 1, "Bakken Army Three Percenter," graphicAmerican Patriot 2, "Bakken Army Three Percenter," graphicZombie Roughnecks Bakken Army Three Percenter graphic

Graphics featuring Three Percenter insignia and oilfield references created for the Hard Ride Saloon, a now-closed oil country bar in Alexander, North Dakota. Used with permission

DeSmog questioned the Department of Labor on whether or not its Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) had rules regarding oil and gas workers carrying firearms in company vehicles or on the jobsite. “OSHA doesn’t have the authority to grant permission to carry firearms on a worksite,” stated a spokesperson. “These questions would be best answered by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.” ATF spokeswoman April Langwell said: “We do not regulate firearms at oilfield facilities.” The FBI did not address a set of DeSmog questions on the issue. When the company was contacted by phone, a Nine Line official told DeSmog they were “not interested in participating in this story.”

“From my perspective he was trespasser 999,” says Brugh. “We have done everything we have done to indicate this is private property. Private property is private property, and some people take that very seriously.” But apparently, not on Native American reservations like Fort Berthold, laments Brugh. “We have no jurisdiction, we have no authority,” he says.

With protests against police brutality sweeping the nation, this dichotomy of privilege has become even more visible.

“If you throw a Three Percenter patch on you can stand in a government building with an assault rifle all damn day and nobody will bother you, but if you are a minority you can peacefully protest and be met with this military force,” says Brugh.

Concerns About Three Percenters: From 2016 to 2020 and Beyond

Meanwhile, Paul Lehto, the former ONEOK plant operator, did manage to leave the oilfield. Sometime in the spring of 2016, he says he filed a report to an independent third-party reporting system called EthicsPoint detailing his discomfort over the presence of militia members at the gas plant. ONEOK did not specifically reply to questions from DeSmog asking whether or not the company has ever received a complaint of this nature. But Lehto says that he never heard back, and the militia presence, connected with the other safety issues he observed, continued to weigh on his mind. On July 23, 2016, he sent an email to ONEOK, notifying the company that he was leaving.

“Oneok makes remarkably strong statements and claims about safety,” he wrote. “All I’ve attempted to do is follow that.” A reply he received three days later from ONEOK human resources attorney Kenneth Short appears to acknowledge Lehto’s concerns about militia activity at the plant.

“In your July 23, 2016 resignation email to Kris Rafferty you stated that you are aware of safety and/or ethical concerns,” the ONEOK letter stated. “Furthermore, in your exit interview you stated you are aware of illegal and/or unethical activities. Please provide a detailed list of any unsafe, illegal, or unethical activities, of which you are aware…so that the Company may address such matters, if necessary.”

Lehto replied to Short that same day, via email, explaining that, “while Oneok does regularly solicit information in the area of ethics, safety, and legality, there is very little evidence in my experience of either taking action on them or even responding in a substantive manner.”

In a nation increasingly at odds with itself and running high with emotion, it is this ignoring of risks and selective trampling of rights, including for protesters and people of color, that can potentially lead to an explosion, whether literal or figurative. “The whole Trump strategy has been to whip these people into a frenzy and give them the perfect way to fight back against the left,” says Daryl Johnson, the former Department of Homeland Security domestic terrorism analyst.

“This administration has been quick to label Antifa a terrorist group, which it is not, while the far right has killed people and they have been very reluctant to use the terrorist label,” adds Johnson. “It is ignorance, it is hypocritical, it is not responsible either, and it is inaccurate.”

When it comes to the situation Lehto described with Three Percenters at ONEOK’s Lonesome Creek plant in North Dakota, Johnson believes the matter should be examined by the FBI. “What we appear to have here is an operational threat environment, and I think there is definitely a potential criminal case,” he says.

punisher logo ken blackwell nra retwt clint w/ rifle pix

https://www.mediamatters.org/national-rifle-association/nra-board-member-shares-extremist-militia-branded-meme-blames-shootings

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/white-supremacy-groups-are-hoping-to-leverage-george-floyds-death-into-their-longed-for-race-war/

no lnx pix vid twt

white supremacy groups are hoping to leverage George Floyd’s death into their longed-for ‘race war’

Image via Screrengrab.

Written by Mark Sumner / Daily Kos May 31, 2020

The protests that have spread across the nation in the wake of the murder of George Floyd have attracted a diverse group of supporters that go beyond local Black communities and national organizations. At events in Washington, New York, Minneapolis, and elsewhere, community activists have been joined by allies, by groups supporting Latinos, Indian groups, and even groups of Mennonite farmers speaking out in support and showing up for protests.

But, with dozens of buildings burned and Donald Trump preparing to bring in the military, there’s a growing sense that the violence in many cases isn’t originating from within the local Black community. In multiple instances, there have been incidents that seemed to spring up on the periphery of peaceful protests, leading to violent confrontations and property destruction. And increasingly, there are reports that these events are not originating organically from the protests or from confrontations between protesters and the police. There is a very real feeling that white supremacists are using this moment to create incidents designed to justify still more violence and suppression.

peanut butter cup

@deshawnieboy

Raw footage of who started the looting in Oakland at Walgreens. Had just seen them three blocks down hitting some other businesses. All prepared with hammers. Don’t let them say different.

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With dozens of protests across the nation, not every event is the same. For example, it’s not hard to see what sparked this incident Atlanta, where a police officer slams a bicycle into a Black woman for having the audacity to wave a finger at him while saying “Don’t touch me.” It’s clear that the violence in this particular moment originated direct from the police.

Brittany Miller

@Brittm_tv

WATCH: I was recording when the first clash between police & protestors broke out in Atlanta. @cbs46 #cbs46 #news #GeorgeFloydprotest

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But in some of the most publicized incidents across the nation, there seem to be a singular nature to some of those involved, as in this recording in which what appears to be a young white man in camo pants and military boots paints graffiti on a federal building.

Fin Gomez

@finnygo

The protest then headed to in front of the White House. A protester was taken by the USSS in front of Pennsylvania Ave into an adjacent federal building. Unclear what he did.A couple men then splintered off from the group and spray painted “F*ck Trump” on the building. @cbsnews

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Or this group which is, reportedly, shown attempting to smash store windows in Minneapolis, with the group initiating this action appearing to be led by a number of white people.

Joy Reid

@JoyAnnReid

May 30, 2020

Replying to @lewoofl

Yes we are. Absolutely.

Barbara Stiles

@Dovewoman1

This from @Mikel_Jollett

It shows the instigators clearly. They are white. Organized with walkie talkies. pic.twitter.com/zPhBoSg3fE

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8:02 AM - May 30, 2020

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And those on the ground reported similar events at other protests in many locations.

Asia

@AsiaJannelll

I was at Downtown Oakland protests a little while ago. Let me say something; the people breaking glass, breaking into windows & starting fires were WHITE men wearing all black. They had hammers and walkie talkies. They were organized. BLM protestors did not start the violence!

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Repeatedly, from eye witnesses and from officials, have come claims that violence in the protests is originating not with those who live in the community, but with others who have appeared to take advantage of this moment.

Joy Reid

@JoyAnnReid

Remarkable info coming out of this presser: Gov. Tim Walls, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter and now MN attorney general Keith Ellison ALL alleging outside forces, domestic and possibly foreign, have post-Tuesday infiltrated the state, and are

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And, as Vice reports, far right extremists are trying to use this situation in hopes of bringing about their much-desired “race war.”That effort involves both showing up at protests with guns, initiating violence, and taking to computers to urge everyone involved toward more tragic confrontations. Even the Hawaiian shirt-wearing “Boogaloo Bois” have appeared at some of the protests. The possibility of using these protests as a precipitating incident, and calls for white supremacist militias to confront protesters, are dominating discussion boards and social media for these groups.

This is also generating some genuinely bizarre events.

Fox Wound

@foxwoundband

Atlanta has deployed a child militia at Lenox Mall fitted with riot shields and batons. What the actual fuck is going on?

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The extent to which those trying to instigate more widespread violence are behind the incidents of property damage and physical clashes remains unclear. What is absolutely clear it that white supremacists are hoping to leverage yet another example of violence against an individual Black man as an excuse to carry out a campaign of expanded violence against the entire Black community.

Following closely on the heels of the police murder of Breonna Taylor and the recorded lynching of Ahmaud Arbery—as well as decades in which police violence has been repeatedly excused—there’s no doubt of the weight of grief in the Black community, or the justified anger. But there are definitely those who are seeking to turn this moment from one in which those suffering injustice are finally heard, to one in which that injustice is “justified” and made worse.

And with Donald Trump calling Nazis in Charlottesville “very fine people” and protesters in Minneapolis “thugs,” there seems little doubt about which side he is ready to join.

Joy Reid

@JoyAnnReid

May 30, 2020

Replying to @JoyAnnReid

And the governor says he has reached out to the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense, and fully mobilized the MN National Guard for the first time in 164 years. This is a continuing story and presumably we will begin hearing it echoed in other cities.

Joy Reid

@JoyAnnReid

Mayor Carter said EVERY person arrested last night during the protests was from out of state. The governor said it is at least 80 percent, and that they will begin releasing the names. Dept of Safety Commissioner John Harrington says they are contract-tracing arrestees:

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ref

https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/pkyb9b/far-right-extremists-are-hoping-to-turn-the-george-floyd-protests-into-a-new-civil-war

no lnx pix vid twt

Far-Right Extremists Are Hoping to Turn the George Floyd Protests Into a New Civil War

Armed extremists are showing up to protests and urging a "boogaloo" — code for civil war — online.

By Tess Owen

May 29 2020, 2:57pm

Far-right extremists are showing up, with guns, to the protests against police brutality that have exploded across the country.

Others are egging on the violence from behind their computers, urging followers to carry out acts of violence against black protesters with the goal of sparking a “race war.”

Their presence makes an uneasy addition to the escalating unrest, which was triggered by the death of George Floyd, a black man who was choked to death by a white Minneapolis police officer earlier this week.

But there’s a range of motivations that’s driving far-right interest toward the protests, which are being led by community members and Black Lives Matter, and bolstered by antifascists.

For example, the so-called Boogaloo Bois — a group of armed anti-government extremists made visible by their Hawaiian shirts — have reportedly shown up to some of the protests.

READ: The cop who kneeled on George Floyd's neck was just charged with murder]

The “boogaloo” is code for impending civil war or violent confrontation with law enforcement, and that’s what they’re hoping to get out of the protests. Their main reason for being there is their antipathy toward law enforcement, and so they’re trying to position themselves as allies of Black Lives Matter protesters. They’ve made police brutality one of their central issues, which was explored at length in a Bellingcat article this week.

Their approach to police brutality links the victims of the deadly standoff with federal agents at Ruby Ridge in 1992, to the victims of modern police brutality, including Floyd. But unlike the vast majority of protesters, they refuse to acknowledge the fact that police brutality is an issue that disproportionately impacts people of color.

There have been scattered reports of Boogaloo Bois’ presence at the protests, which were compiled by a Bellingcat investigative journalist in a thread. He includes an audio clip (stripped of video per activists’ requests) ofprotesters saying they’d wrestled a handgun from a “white nationalist” agitator — whom he describes as a Boogaloo Boi who became overly rowdy.

READ: New video shows three cops kneeling on George Floyd as he lay dying]

Another photo, shared across private Boogaloo Facebook pages, showed one of their own unfurling their trademark flag during the Minneapolis protests.

And one protester posted a picture of himself wearing a gas mask to Instagram, under the hashtag #Boogaloo.

While some Boogaloo Bois say they’re just libertarians, others will, on occasion, veer into racism — and make no secret of their desire for violence. In addition to their physical presence at the protests, the #boogaloo hashtag on social media has been flooded with memes in the last couple days egging on violence, and talking about how they hope this is the beginning of a civil war.

While more established militia types sometimes share those perspectives, they often view themselves as intermediaries between law enforcement and civilians. For example, two armed white men were interviewed by the Minnesota Reformer, a local independent news organization, outside a tobacco store in Minneapolis this week. They said they were protecting businesses from looters, but were also there to defend civilians should they need to.

“Cops are less likely totread on people’s rightswhen there’s other armed people around them,” one of the men told the interviewer.

Local activists identified another group in Minneapolis as members of the III% militia, one of the largest militia networks in the U.S.

But perhaps the most troubling of all are the hardcore “accelerationists” who are encouraging their neo-Nazi followers to go to the protests and carry out acts of violence against black people — all with the goal of “exacerbating the ethnic tensions” and sparking a “race war.”

Accelerationists promote violence to speed up the collapse of society. Aneco-fascist Telegram channel wrote to its nearly 2,500 subscribers on Thursday that “a riot would be the perfect place to commit a murder.” Accelerationists often seek to exploit moments of political or civil unrest, and the widespread protests that have unfolded across the country fit the bill. Similarly, 4chan is full of racists cheering the violence and saying that they hope it’s the beginning of a “race war.”

Cover: Protesters are trapped between police and other protesters who gathered in a call for justice for George Floyd following his death, outside the 3rd Police Precinct on May 27, 2020 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Photo by KEREM YUCEL/AFP via Getty Images)

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

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5/20 hmn yikes

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/far-right-boogaloo-militants-have-embedded-themselves-in-the-george-floyd-protests-in-minneapolis-they-want-their-civil-war/

raw astory

young, white men dressed in Hawaiian-style print shirts and body armor, and carrying high-powered rifles have been a notable feature at state capitols, lending an edgy and even sometimes insurrectionary tone to gatherings of conservatives angered by restrictions on businesses and church gatherings during the coronavirus pandemic.

Just as many states are reopening their economies — and taking the wind out of the conservative protests —the boogaloo movement found a new galvanizing cause: the protests in Minneapolis against the police killing of George Floyd.

A new iteration of the militia movement, boogaloo was born out of internet forums for gun enthusiasts that repurposed the 1984 movie Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogalooas a code for a second civil war, and then modified it into phrases like[big igloo] “big luau” to create an insular community for those in on the joke, with Hawaiian-style shirts functioning as an in-real-life identifier. Boogaloo gained currency as an internet meme over the summer of 2019, when it was adopted by white supremacists in the accelerationist tendency. In January, the movement made the leap from the internet to the streets when a group boogaloo-ers showed up at the Second Amendment rally in Richmond, Va.

It’s not just the jittery aesthetics and pop-culture irony that sets boogaloo apart from an older generation of militia activists, but also its unbridled hostility towards law enforcement. In late 2019, the movement spread beyond private Discord servers to multiple Facebook groups with names like Thicc Boog Line, Boojahideen of Occupied Appalachistan and, in North Carolina, Blue Igloo. Some of the memes generated and shared on the Facebook pages contain overt signals towards white nationalists, including images of the German Wehrmacht during World War II and references to the failed war to preserve white rule in Rhodesia during the 1970s. But others signal an interest in building bridges with the political left by lifting up the names of black victims of police violence like Oscar Grant, Eric Garner and Breonna Taylor, alongside right-wing martyrs like LaVoy Finicum, Sammy Weaver and Duncan Lemp, the latter a boogaloo-er who was killed by police in March during a no-knock raid at his home in Maryland.

When protests against the police killing of George Floyd escalated into clashes between police and protesters on Tuesday night, a significant segment of the boogaloo movement was electrified.

At 8:38 p.m., an anonymous Discord user identified as [MN-TC] Jimmydean338 posted in the#SOS channel for the private Citizens Liberty Organizationserver. The post displayed a red button inscribed with the words, “Send help!” followed by the address 3000 Minnehaha Ave., which is the location of the Minneapolis Police 3^rd Precinct. “Police opening fire on protesters breaching precinc [sic],” Jimmydean338 wrote. “Not a drill.”

At about 11:30, the Big Igloo Bois Facebook group posted a photo of a young man holding the trademark boogaloo flag depicting an igloo and palm tree in the protests.

“If there was ever a time for bois to stand in solidarity with all free men and women in this country, it is now,” the admin for the page wrote. “This is not a race issue. For far too long we have allowed them to murder us in our homes, and in the streets. We need to stand with the people of Minneapolis. We need to support them in this protest against a system that allows police brutality to go unchecked.”

Benjamin Ryan Teeter, a resident of the coastal community of Hampstead in southeastern North Carolina, reshared the red button panel posted by Jimmydean338 on his Facebook page at 11:44 p.m., writing, “Lock and load boys. Boog flags are in the air, and the national network is going off.”

Teeter, who is active in the North Carolina Libertarian Party and has participated in weekly armed excursions through downtown Raleigh with a group organized through the Blue Igloo Facebook group over the four weeks alerted his friends that he would be driving, not flying to Minneapolis.

Tom Bailey, a Libertarian candidate for Congress in 2018, commented, “Grim.” To which Teeter replied, “Exactly! I love it!”

Another private Discord server set up for boogaloo users — named “We should all Led(better)” — had designated special channels for different functions: #on-scene-only (for users on the ground), #off-scene-intel (for remote users sharing information), and #location-want-to-repond (for users across the country to coordinate travel to Minneapolis).

Boogaloo activists who showed up for the first night of protests on Tuesday met with mixed reaction.

One, a white man identified on Facebook as Michael Solomon, posted photographs of himself and another friend holding high-powered rifles while posing alongside black protesters, including one wearing a Black Lives Matter hoodie. But another, Tyler Scott of Minnesota man, warned in the Big Igloo Bois thread: “This is not the time for boog, this is how a race war starts.” He added that the protesters“jumped one of our 3%ers” — a term that denotes an older generation of militia activists — “earlier tonight and stole a firearm. They are not with us. They’ve made it clear they don’t want us.” Scott’s statements were met with skepticism, with other commenters suggesting he was making it up or speculating that the older militia activists were racist and had it coming.

“I think for a lot of boogaloo-ers, their primary interest is resisting the state, what they believe to be state tyranny,” said Alex Friedfeld, an investigative researcher at the ADL Center on Extremism in Chicago. “They have this hostility towards law enforcement…. They oppose these [pandemic] directives. They’re upset about no-knock raids, police brutality. The George Floyd case — this is an example of police brutality, this willingness of the state to execute those who disobey — so it’s not surprising that they showed up to protest.”

The nascent boogaloo movement is not monolithic, Friedfeld said, and it draws from spectrum of groups from the right wing to the far right, from militias and anarcho-capitalists to white supremacists. An internal struggle is underway to define the movement’s relationship with race, he said.

“You see this in the Facebook comments,” Friedfeld said. “You’ll see very strong condemnations of racism and homophobia. Then there are people who use racially charged phrases such as, ‘Vote from the rooftops.’ It’s a reference to Korean shop-owners who went to rooftops to fire on looters [during the 1992 Los Angeles riots], who are presumed to be black. There’s this debate: Why are we accepting Black Lives Matter when they won’t accept us? There’s a good deal of social distrust.”

Antifascist Twitter accounts on Wednesday issued a steady stream of stern warnings against making common cause with boogaloo.

“It’s a right-wing thing; it’s a neo-fascist thing,” said Daryle Lamont Jenkins, a veteran antifascist organizer based in New Jersey, in a Twitter video. “And they’re trying to use what’s happening in Minneapolis as a jump-off. Do not let them. They are not our friends.”

Jenkins told Raw Story that he fears that boogaloo-ers are bringing their apocalyptic fantasies about civil war to Minneapolis and will leave residents to pick up the pieces.

“They can be more aggressive, and they can cause the police to be more aggressive,” he said. “They can get people hurt because they want their civil war…. People who are in the community, all they know is they have to defend themselves. The people they hate get hurt, and they walk away scot-free. So, it’s kind of a win-win for them.

“You don’t even necessarily have to be interacting with anybody in order to pop something off,” he added. “You’re going to be one with the crowd.”

Jenkins noted that Minneapolis has rocky track record with armed white men interposing themselves in protests against police brutality: In 2015, five people at a Black Lives Matter protest were shot, resulting in non-life-threatening injuries. A white man from Bloomington named Allen Scarsella was later convicted in the shootings.

Jenkins charges that the boogaloo-ers are operating in bad faith, citing a fellow New Jersey resident named Paul Miller who was recently involved in a Memorial Day reopen protest. Miller identifies himself as a “Boogaloo Boy” on his Instagram account, which also includes the Latin Catholic motto “Deus vult,” or “God wills [it],” generally associated with Islamophobia.

On Wednesday, Miller re-shared livestreams from Minneapolis on his Instagram, while refraining from providing his views on the action underway. A previous post includes a whimsical video of armed protesters during an April 30 reopen protest at the Michigan state capitol captioned, “When the boogaloo kicks off cuz the boys had enough.”

Others more definitively signal that Miller’s politics don’t align with the protesters in Minneapolis. One calls for the release of the white father and son who are charged with murdering Ahmaud Arbery, a black jogger in Georgia, while another contends that the media is burying coverage of migrants “rioting throughout France.” Miller frequently uses boogaloo hashtags with Instagram posts, including #bigluau, #boogaloomemes, #boogaloo2020, #Boogvirus, #boogaloosidequest and #boogaloobois.

“There’s two versions of boogaloo,” said Friedfeld of the ADL. “There’s the white supremacist burn society down and build a white ethno-stage. And then there’s the anti-government resist tyranny at all costs, and if it creates a civil war, so be it version.”

So far, the wing of the boogaloo movement that’s shown up in the streets is the more mainstream, outwardly inclusive version.

But some white supremacists, especially in the accelerationist tendency, are likely cheering events in Minneapolis from the sidelines, or looking for ways to melt into the crowd.

A user identified as “Terrorwave Refine” messaged at 11:59 p.m. on Tuesday: “Boogaloo boys are reportedly on [sic] place. If someone really wanted to kick off the boogaloo, now would be a fine time to fire some shots and frame the crowd around you as responsible.”

Earlier in the evening, a user named “The Shitpost Facility (Dick)” wrote, “I hate that I support the n****** over the pigs at this point, get some you dumb monkey f****ot. This is absolutely the end goal of our philosemitic society. Imagine giving n****** ‘civil rights’ hahahha.”

Another, named “Uncle Paul,” forwarded Dick’s message, adding, “I don’t support either the n****** or the pigs… certainly not the k****. However, I’ll do some pushups and pull-ups while I watch them redacting each other.”

Benjamin Ryan Teeter, the North Carolina man traveling to Minneapolis, said he is motivated to join the protests out of genuine solidarity with black residents who are oppressed by police violence. Teeter, who describes himself as an “LGBT left-leaning anarchist,” said he plans to “defend the protesters.”

He deflected when asked if he and other boogaloo-ers are consulting with local residents to see how they can best support them, as opposed to pursuing their own agenda.

“I think trying to get the police to stop killing people is trying to support the people of the community,” he said. “If we’re not willing to stand up because we might hurt someone, how bad are we going to allow things to get?”

Teeter insisted the share of white supremacists in the boogaloo movement is no greater than any other group or political party. But he pleaded ignorance when asked about Dillon Goad, a North Carolinian who attended the first Raleigh boogaloo walk on May 1 wearing a Hawaiian-style shirt. In addition to his primary Facebook page, Goad has an alt page under his name that pays tribute to Hans Friedrich, a member of the SS Infantry Brigade accused of murdering Jews and communists in the Soviet Union.

Teeter posted a breathless update at 1:23 a.m. on Wednesday.

“Baltimore cop shot,” Teeter wrote. “Chicago is a powderkeg. MN police are planning an emergency exit if the building is breached.”

Goad was the first to comment: “It’s all coming together.”

Reached on the road nine hours outside of Minneapolis on Wednesday evening, Teeter demurred when asked about Goad.

“Dillon is someone I’m not familiar with,” he said. “I don’t want to speak to the account without knowing. I don’t know if it’s a satire account or something else.”

Whether their movement is infiltrated with neo-Nazis or not, there’s little doubt that the boogaloo-ers want to see an escalation in Minneapolis.

In a post that has now been removed from the We should all be Led(better) server, (KS) RugbyIsLife lamented at 11:38 p.m. on Wednesday: “Looks like it’s just a bunch of looting that should have been booging. Are people going to wake the fuck up and start laying down lead or just steal TVs and shit?”

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/the-far-right-wants-to-make-its-shared-fantasy-of-violent-civil-war-a-reality/

david n kos

The Age of Conspiracy Theories in which we are now immured has produced a kind of bastard offspring: the Shared Violent Fantasy. Exhibit A is the “Boogaloo,” the far-right’s ironic name for the long-sought “second civil war” they believe is on the verge of erupting in the United States—and in which the ongoing novel-coronavirus pandemic has become a virtual petri dish for cultivating the fear of societal collapse essential to their worldview.

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Like many conspiracy theories, and all such fantasies, the “Boogaloo” has a powerful tendency to produce real-life violence from people who absorb the underlying paranoid values and believe in them fervently. A recent incident in Texas in which a self-proclaimed “Boogaloo Boi” set out to murder a police officer in order to help spark the civil war underscores the extent to which the believers are likely eventually to attempt manifesting their fantasies—which can entail violence not just against authorities, but sometimes even their unsuspecting neighbors.

Aaron Swenson is a 36-year-old Texarkana man who frequented “Boogaloo”-related Facebook pages with some frequency, sharing their frequently violent memes and indulging the usual violent rhetoric in the comments. Eventually, he reached a point where he decided to act on it.

The world of “Boogaloo” on social media—particularly on Facebook, where over 125 such pages reside—is riddled with references, both direct and obscure, to their eagerness to begin a civil war by shooting law-enforcement who attempt to enforce gun-control measures, or for that matter any other measures that attract the ire of the far right. Recently, these have come to include COVID-19 lockdown and social-distancing measures.

The universe it occupies resides in a bubble of conspiracy theories and “constitutionalist” fantasies, but with a distinctly alt-right edge. Irony abounds everywhere:adherents wearHawaiian shirts as a reference to “the boog,” or the “Big Igloo” (the “Boogaloo” flag features an igloo and a palm tree). Their memes reference “Pepe the frog,” white-nationalist OK signals, and the common shared belief that nefarious communists are plotting to confiscate their guns and enslave them in concentration camps. This fantasy is the justification for their announced intention to begin shooting their fellow citizens, especially those who work for the federal government or police.

On the night of April 11, Aaron Swenson began livestreaming from his pickup truck, telling his audience that he was out hunting a police officer—anyone would do, he wasn’t particular—to shoot and kill, all in order to start the “Boogaloo.” He told them he was seeking a lone cop to “ambush and execute.”

People began calling the Texarkana Police Department, which promptly found the page and figured out both where Swenson was located and what kind of vehicle he was driving. Upon locating him, he fled a squad of police cars at high speed, eventually grinding to a halt well after his tires were flattened by a spike strip. “He was wearing an armored plate carrier type vest when we arrested him, and officers found several loaded weapons inside his truck,” the police department’s Facebook post reported.

At his own Facebook account, Swenson liked more than a dozen pages that mention boogaloo in their names, as a report from the Tech Transparency Project (TTP) on the “Boogaloo” phenomenon described. It also noted that “some users leaving comments on the profile on the night of the attempted attack endorsed the targeting of police officers, while others suggested calling 911 in response to the live broadcast.” The two videos were active on the Facebook page at the time of the report, having amassed over 1,500 and 3,400 views, respectively; however, they have since been removed by Facebook.

Swenson has been charged with making terrorist threats against an officer, evading with a vehicle and illegal possession of a weapon.

He is not the first such “Boogaloo” enthusiast intent on making the shared fantasy into a violent reality. In January, three would-be terrorists from the neo-Nazi organization The Base were arrested by the FBI, charged with plotting to wreak havoc with their weapons at a planned anti-gun-control march in Richmond, Virginia, around which “Boogaloo” rhetoric was already rife.

A few days later, three more “Boogaloo”-loving members of The Base were arrested in Georgia for plotting to assassinate a local antifascist couple, as well as overthrow the local county government.

At the Richmond rally, the “Boogaloo” was a major theme—flags, signs, and social-media posts from the event all referenced and celebrated it—that continued even afterward during the debate in Virginia over its gun-control laws.

And just as the white-nationalist, conspiracist and “accelerationist” right has sought multiple means to exploit the novel-coronavirus pandemic, the “Boogaloo” theme has become a louder topic of discussion on far-right telegram channels. The lockdown measures instituted by governors around the nation in response to the virus have particularly provided ample evidence for the conspiracists—in their minds, at least—of their long-running contention that “globalists” are seeking ways to enslave the world.

Signs referencing the “Boogaloo” have popped up at a number of the far-right-led protests against the lockdown measures. One marcher at the “ReOpen” rally in Topeka, Kansas, on April 23 carried a large black “Big Igloo” flag.

There has also been a certain amount of somewhat predictable crossover between the “Boogaloo” element and the far-right conspiracists of the Trump-loving QAnon world, some of whom have also been acting out violently during the pandemic—notably the locomotive engineer who attempted to ram the USNS Mercy with a train engine.

According to QAnon expert Travis View, the “Boogaloo” has become the preferred fallback position for people swept up in “The Storm” theories, believing that one day soon there will be mass arrests of leading liberal and media figures for their roles in a global child-trafficking ring, and increasingly disappointed at its failure to materialize.

“If that change doesn’t come, some of the followers have made reference to what they call Plan Z,” View says. “If the whole Q operation fails, then Plan Z is sort of equivalent to what the far-right extremists call the ‘Boogaloo.’ Which is civil war, basically.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has sharpened the interest in a civil war. The TTP report found that most of the 125 Facebook groups devoted to the “boogaloo”—some 60%—were created in the very recent past (within three months), just as the states began declaring lockdowns and social-distancing measures. Perhaps more worryingly, “they have attracted tens of thousands of members in the last 30 days.”

In several private boogaloo Facebook groups that TTP was able to access, members discussed tactical strategies, combat medicine, and various types of weapons, including how to develop explosives and the merits of using flame throwers. Some members appeared to take inspiration from President Donald Trump’s recent tweets calling on people to “liberate” states where governors have imposed stay-at-home orders.

Despite these findings, TTP notes, Facebook has been slow to remove these pages. One of the most prominent—Thicc Boog Line, which specializes in selling branded “Boogaloo”-themed gear and clothing—attracts thousands of readers. It has recently been pitching messages to its readers emphasizing the opportunity to wreak “boojahideen” havoc during the time of a pandemic.

These findings resonate with a similar report issued in February by the :(style="background-color:#ffffffff"):}::{Network Contagion Research Institute, warning that “domestic militants” are organizing around memes to “incite violent insurrection and terror against government and law enforcement.”

The boogaloo, a joke for some, acts as aviolent meme that circulates instructions for a distributed, viral insurgency for others.The topic network for boogaloo describes a coherent, multi-component and detailed conspiracy to launch an inevitable, violent, sudden, and apocalyptic war across the homeland. The conspiracy, replete with suggestions to stockpile ammunition,may itself set the stage for massive real-world violence and sensitize enthusiasts to mobilize in mass for confrontations or charged political events.

Daniel E. Stevens, executive director of Campaign for Accountability, the umbrella organization under which TTP operates, told Christopher Mathias of HuffPost in a statement that “Facebook’s failure to stop their platform from being used as an organizing tool for extremists is completely unacceptable.”

“There is nothing subtle about how these extremist groups are using Facebook’s platform to advance their cause,” Stevens said. “Boogaloo proponents are not simply discussing ideas or political views; they are directly advocating for violent action and tactically planning how to defeat government entities.”

“Boogaloo” enthusiasts indeed have detailed plans for how to achieve their goals, both militarily and through propaganda, as the TTP report details. However, government and law enforcement are not the only targets that “Boogaloo” memes discuss. A subcurrent in a number of the violent fantasies that they express in their memes is the idea of committing home-invasion robberies targeting their relatively hapless and untrained neighbors as a means of thriving during the civil war—or a pandemic.

Another featured a photo of an angry Joaquin Phoenix in Jokerwith the script: “When you dispatch the normie with ease to raid their stash because they stocked up on TP and not ammunition”—with a subscript across the bottom reading: “You get what you fucking deserve.”One popular meme among Facebook “Boogaloo” followers was one that showed a SWAT-style armed raid team in military gear massing outside a door, with the script: “Me and my boys going for a grocery run at my asshole neighbor’s house.” Another features a grid of graphics demonstrating military hand signals during a raid, all of which are interpreted in the language of a home invasion: “Shoot that dog.” “Cover up the evidence.” “I found cocaine. It’s pretty good.” “Wrong house. Let’s boogie!”

These ideas are not particularly new among the more openly cynical participants in far-right conspiracism and survivalism. Indeed, they were openly elucidated back in 2014 by a “Patriot” movement survivalist named Tyler Smith, who was featured on an episode of National Geographic’s TV series Doomsday Preppersboasting about his plans to invade the homes of his neighbors—particularly those who might also be preppers, since they would make better targets.One of the more commonly shared of these memes actually makes fun of other “preppers,” particularly those who are suddenly new to the business amid the pandemic. It shows a “Virgin Prepper” who is “always scared, can’t sleep at night,” and “has no fun,” then contrasts him with an obviously fun-loving “Chad Raider” who “Takes your good shit and burns all the rest so no one else can have it,” and is seen holding up a bag marked “All Your Shit.” He’s also “not scared of death or coronavirus.”[vid]

“We’re not in it to stockpile,” he proclaimed in a segment that was used to promote the show. “We’re in it to take what you have, and there’s nothing you can do to stop us. We are your worst nightmare, and we are coming.”

He told the show’s producers that he only had a few months’ supplies for his family because he intended to aggressively assault his neighbors and steal their food and weapons caches.

“All your shiny ARs, your high-powered .308 rifles, your 50,000 rounds of ammo, are all going to be ours,” he said on the show.

Smith was arrested by the sheriff of Pierce County, Washington, where he resided at the time, shortly after his appearance on national TV, because he wielded multiple guns on camera in the segment, and he was already a felon (on a sexual-behavior-with-a-minor charge) forbidden from owning weapons. He spent a couple more years in prison for that, but was back on the streets by late 2016.

He was most recently spotted marching in Portland with Patriot Prayer—the far-right street-brawling group led by Joey Gibson of Vancouver, Washington—at one of its 2017 demonstrations. Gibson, as it happens, has been active in the anti-coronavirus-lockdown protests, traveling to Seattle and Olympia for protests.

Those protests, of course, featured plenty of “Patriots” wearing Hawaiian shirts underneath their body armor—a signal for what the “boojahideen” like to call “the Big Luau.” The chief organizer of the “Boogaloo” motif in Olympia was Matt Marshall, the leader of the III Percent of Washington, a “Patriot” militia group based in Eatonville, Washington, and a close ally of both Gibson and state Rep. Matt Shea, the far-right legislator whose plan for a post-breakdown society called for the execution of all non-believers.

These violent fantasies keep mounting in number and vehemence. The question increasingly is what spark will inspire them to attempt to make them manifest.

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https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2019/08/23/convention-states-fires-up-base-for-push-to-rewrite-u-s-constitution

david a cmd

Convention of States Action (COS) kicked off its first “Leadership Summit” in Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia today. COS, a project of Mark Meckler and Eric O’Keefe’s Citizens for Self-Governance, claims that “hundreds” of activists, state directors, and coordinators from all 50 states will attend to get inspired and learn strategies for passing COS resolutions in the states calling for a constitutional convention to rewrite the U.S. Constitution.

Fifteen states have passed the group’s applications so far, with 17 more states considering the resolution this year, according to COS. Wisconsin recently introduced a COS resolution, which would bump the number up to 18.

A constitutional convention has never been held since the Constitution was adopted, and COS will need 34 states to file applications in order for it to occur. If that happens, COS plans to move an array of sweeping amendments to redefine key parts of the Constitution and radically weaken the federal government.

COS has ties to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the National Rifle Association, the right-wing militia group Three Percenters, and the Christian nationalist group WallBuilders.

More than 200 civil rights and public interest groups, including the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), signed a letter last year denouncing such constitutional convention calls as “a threat to every American’s constitutional rights and civil liberties.”

Right-Wing Extremists to Speak

Fox News anchor Pete Hegseth, from Trump’s beloved Fox & Friends, addressed the crowd this morning, telling them that the Left hates the Constitution, the founding fathers understood that the word of “Jesus Christ our savior” is the guiding force for our country, and that there “is no other freedom-loving bastion in the world that values the individual with God-endowed rights.”

And, referencing the Three Percenters likely in attendance, Hegseth said, “it has always been the one percent or two percent or three percent of people that get it, that are willing to buck the comfiness of their moment and the established norms that everyone is comfortable with, willing to be defiant, willing to stand — be accused of being radical about things that are not radical at all.”

Recently, Hegseth has made some radical comments himself, saying that Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (MI-D) has a “Hamas agenda,” implying that she works with a U.S. designated terrorist organization.

Hegseth has also publicly defended Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’s brother Erik Prince’s Blackwater contractors, who were convicted of murdering Iraqi citizens, and has called climate change a “religion” that Democrats use to “control” people.

David Barton warmed up the crowd with a history lecture on the Constitution’s basis in fixed moral standards based on natural law and scripture, and drew applause with his claim that the federal government has “emasculated the states.”

A Christian nationalist with strong anti-LGBT views. Barton once said,

“There’s a passage that I love in Romans 1. … [I]t talks about homosexuality and it says that they will receive in their bodies the penalties of their behavior. … The Bible [is] right every time … and that’s why AIDS has been something they haven’t discovered a cure for or a vaccine for. … And that goes to what God says, ‘Hey you’re going to bear in your body the consequences of this homosexual behavior.'”

Barton founded the group WallBuilders, which has worked with Focus on the Family and the Family Policy Alliance to influence judicial elections and selection rules in states across the country, the Center for Media and Democracy detailed.

WallBuilders also works with the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation to push out Christian-Right model legislation in the mold of ALEC to state lawmakers under the name Project Blitz.

Also in line to speak at the Summit is one of the NRA’s top attorneys, Charles Cooper. Cooper will speak on, “The Real Threat to Gun Rights.” In an email to COS activists, Cooper is quoted as saying:

“The real threat to our constitutional rights today is posed not by an Article V Convention of States, but by an out-of-control federal government, exercising powers that it does not have and abusing powers that it does.”

COS materials in recent years have argued that a constitutional convention could be used to rewrite the Second Amendment in order to make it Supreme-Court-proof.

Others on the agenda to speak include founding board member Eric O’Keefe, former professor Rob Natelson, former U.S. Senator and COS Senior Advisor Tom Coburn, and the right-wing author of Liberty Amendments Mark Levin.

But the stars of the summit are likely to be the actors COS will have play the founding fathers Patrick Henry, James Madison, and George Washington.

Stay tuned to ExposedbyCMD.org for more on the right-wing’s effort to rewrite the Constitution.

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http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/04/far-right-white-supremacists-berkeley-protests-antifa-trump

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alternet

Saturday, March 3, some of the same nationalist militia groups that took part in last year's Unite the Right rally-turned-riot in Charlottesville, Virginia, will converge on nearby Verona, a small town where the nationwide offices of a pro-immigrant and anti-white-supremacist law firm is located. AlterNet's Steven Rosenfeld spoke to Mike Donovan, the CEO of Nexus Caridades, about the nationalist militias targeting his civil rights firm, and his plans for a counter-protest.

Steven Rosenfeld: Your company provides services to immigrants, including those without visas. You’ve heard from state and local police that the same groups responsible for the Unite the Right riot in Charlottesville were planning to hold protests at your offices on Saturday. Tell me what you heard.

Mike Donovan: The first we heard from the state police and the local sheriff was that they wanted a meeting with me. I was out of town at the time. We have a law firm that does civil rights work. And that law firm has sued both the local sheriff’s office and the state police, so it was a little bit of a surprise to get a request for a meeting.

When we had the meeting, I couldn't attend because I was not in Virginia at the time. And they informed us that there was a protest planned on Saturday. They anticipated that as many as 500 people might appear at that rally, according to the state police—from what they heard or what they investigated. And they told us that the county had made certain decisions. They were going to close the road, which is the only road into and out of our complex. There’s just not enough room for 500 people to be held in a grassy area. We get the sense there will be protesters across the street and funneling onto the street. I also think they were trying to limit vehicular traffic after Charlottesville. The police did seem very concerned—and I have to give them credit, I think they have done a great job so far in trying to prepare as best they can. They let us know pretty quickly. So we were able to find out about some of the individuals who are organizing this rally.

SR: Who will appear? Who is organizing this?

MD: There’s a gentleman named Larry Lewis, who’s one of the Virginia leaders of the Three Percenters. I was little surprised. I looked up the Three Percenters. I don’t want to call them a gun rights group, because I think that’s not fair. They’re more of a weapons of mass destruction group. They believe that people should be able to own assault weapons and weapons of war. They tend to protest with those weapons. Calling them a gun rights group doesn’t do enough.

They’re obviously a fringe group. They’re an anti-government group, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. I hadn’t seen a lot of anti-immigration stuff that they’ve done. I’ve seen some. Certainly, they post on their social media about immigration. But when I started to look a little bit deeper into the organizer, he has a very clear white supremacist, anti-immigrant ideology. I think he believes, just perusing his social media, that immigrants present a clear and present danger to his perceived community and perceived world. The guy clearly is a bit demented. And it seems that the folks that have rallied around him share these views.

Now it is important to understand that even demented people have the right to protest. I respect the First Amendment. I think that if they want to come and protest, they absolutely have the right to do that. But, I believe that there’s no place for weapons of war in protests and peaceful demonstrations. They shouldn’t bring those weapons to our campus. They should keep them away. And in the marketplace of ideas, the better ideas win. And there’s no reason to have guns at protests, in my opinion.

And the second thing that I would say is that we are going to stand against division and hate. And we are going to stand up for what we believe in and our vision of the world, which is a vision that affirms and promotes the inherent dignity of every single person. We believe that standing up when they come is incredibly important. I also think that bullies tend to turn away when they realize that people stand up to them. That’s why many of our team members and friend that support equality, and stand against hate and division, will be gathering Saturday in a counter rally that really is a really about hope and love—and the importance of standing up for the meekest among us. We’ll be doing that on Saturday simultaneous to the white nationalist protest at our campu

...

Michael Brian Vanderboegh

A veteran of the 1990s militia movement, when he headed a group called the Sons of Liberty, Vanderboegh in 2008 co-founded another Patriot group, the Three Percenters, who vow to resist gun control laws with force if necessary. In more recent years, Vanderboegh has remained just as inflammatory on his Sipsey Street Irregulars blog and in other Patriot forums. In 2013 and 2014, he emailed Connecticut State Police employees warning of bloody scenarios if they tried to enforce a new state gun control law, and also published the home addresses and phone numbers of the state senators who had voted for the measure.

Vanderboegh’s rhetoric has apparently inspired a number of people to act, including a group of Georgia militiamen who plotted to attack several cities with the deadly ricin toxin and a number of unknown people who once targeted Democratic offices around the country.

Vanderboegh passed away in August of 2016 after a lengthy battle with cancer.

In His Own Words

“[I]f you wish to send a message that [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi and her party cannot fail to hear, break their windows. Break them NOW. Break them and run to break again. Break them under cover of night. Break them in broad daylight. … Break them with rocks. Break them with slingshots. Break them with baseball bats. But BREAK THEM. ”

—Reacting to the imminent passage of health care reform, Sipsey Street Irregulars blog, March 19, 2010

“The health care law carries … the hard steel fist of government violence at the center. If we refuse to obey, we will be fined. If we refuse to pay the fine, we will in time be jailed. If we refuse to report meekly to jail, we will be sent for by armed men. And if we refuse their violent invitation at the doorsteps of our own homes we will be killed — unless we kill them first.” —After U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, Sipsey Street Irregulars blog, June 29, 2012

“The recent spate of citizen disarmament laws in states like Colorado, Connecticut, Maryland and New York has led me on a campaign to defy, resist, evade and smuggle in opposition to those laws. … I have broken the laws of three of those states… . But it is an established principle in American jurisprudence that an unconstitutional law is null and void. One man’s criminal is another man’s freedom fighter.”

—Speech at the Alamo, Oct. 19, 2013

Background

Mike Vanderboegh first surfaced in the Alabama militia, or “Patriot,” movement after the 1993 standoff in Waco, Texas, between Branch Davidian cultists suspected of illegal arms trafficking and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF). Vanderboegh wrote a post-Waco call to arms entitled, “Strategy and Tactics for a Militia Civil War,” where he discussed the value of snipers who could target secret police and militia watchdogs. Still, he liked to portray himself as a moderate within that often-violent movement. In 1996, he joined some militia leaders in signing a document that tried to distance the movement from racists and neo-Nazis.

In the mid-2000s, Vanderboegh briefly took up the anti-immigrant crusade, participating in “patrols” to catch undocumented immigrants along the Mexican border with his very small Alabama Minuteman Support Team.

More important, Vanderboegh in 2008 became one of the founders of a Patriot group called the Three Percenters, a loosely organized movement of gun owners who name stemmed from the disputed claim that only 3 percent of American colonists took up arms against the British. The group, which sees itself as a lineal descendant of those early American patriots, has grown since President Obama took office, according to the Anti-Defamation League, but its exact size remains unknown. Vanderboegh regularly blasts opposition to gun control laws as a leader of the Three Percenters, vowing never to surrender any arms on his Sipsey Street Irregulars blog.

Based in the small town of Pinson just north of Birmingham, Vanderboegh has lived for years on a monthly disability check despite his repeatedly professed contempt for the government that issues it. Suffering from diabetes, hypertension and congestive heart failure, Vanderboegh has had plenty of time for movement activities, including writing his unpublished novel, Absolved, in 2008. In the introduction, Vanderboegh called the book “a cautionary tale for the out-of-control gun cops of the ATF” and “a combination field manual, technical manual and call to arms for my beloved gunnies of the armed citizenry.” Militia fighters in his book denounce gay marriage and gun control laws, and it features a bloody shootout between law enforcement and a man who has stockpiled arms that prompts the militiamen to plan a far-reaching campaign to murder government officials.

Authorities cited the book as the inspiration for a 2011 plot by militia members in Georgia to attack four cities with ricin, blow up federal buildings, and assassinate law enforcement and other officials. The plotters, led by 73-year-old Frederick W. Thomas, had amassed at least 52 firearms and 30,000 rounds of ammunition and had already begun milling the deadly ricin from castor beans. Thomas and an accomplice pleaded guilty in 2012 to conspiracy charges.

Vanderboegh seemed to think the whole thing was a joke. In an interview with the online Huffington Post, he laughed about the notoriety he’d gained from the incident, ridiculed the men’s plans and disingenuously claimed that he’d never advocated violence against the government. On his blog, Vanderboegh was skeptical that a “pretty geriatric” militia could have carried out the planned attacks.

It wasn’t the first time that Vanderboegh’s rhetoric appeared to inspire criminal violence. In 2010, after Congress passed the health care reform bill, he urged right-thinking citizens to heave bricks through the windows of Democratic offices. From Kansas to Rochester, N.Y., to Tucson, Ariz., unknown persons responded, shattering windows of party offices — at least 10 Democrats in Congress reported harassment, vandalism or death threats. Again, Vanderboegh was wholly unapologetic, telling The Washington Post that throwing bricks “is both good manners” and “a moral duty to warn the people” about the health care act. Earlier, in 2006, Vanderboegh had also urged followers to throw bricks through the office windows of members of Congress who supported legislation that would have eventually given legal status to undocumented immigrants.

Vanderbeogh’s history apparently gave no pause to Fox News, which brought him on as an expert commentator to attack a failed ATF gun-trafficking sting called “Fast and Furious” without giving any inkling of his extremist activities. Finally, after the brick-throwing episodes in 2010, Fox stopped giving Vanderboegh a platform and describing him as “an authority.”

None of this has tempered Vanderboegh’s violent rhetoric. On Nov. 6, 2012, his blog post entitled “Vote” advised going to the polls but added ominously, “At least later on you can say you tried everything else before you were forced to shoot people in righteous self-defense of life and liberty.”

Vanderboegh has a special hatred for the Obama administration.In a 2013 speech to a radical group called the Liberty Oath Keepers meeting in Monticello, N.Y., Vanderboegh claimed, as he often does, that he started out on the far left politically, virtually a Communist — and so he knows a Communist when he sees one. “When you’re in the Party, there are radishes, tomatoes and killer tomatoes,” he said. “A radish is … only red on the outside, on the inside she’s white. A tomato is red through and through. A killer tomato … is a Communist willing to pull the trigger. And if you look at the current Administration … these people are killer tomatoes. … They are willing to do whatever it takes to bend you to their will.”

Nothing has seemed to slow Vanderboegh’s penchant for making threats, or at least implied threats. In the wake of the 2012 Newtown, Conn., school massacre, he warned in emails sent to more than 1,000 employees of the Connecticut State Police that they risked “initiating hostilities” if they tried to enforce the state’s tough new gun control law. “I personally violated this unconstitutional and tyrannical act by smuggling and by the encouragement of smuggling, defiance and non-compliance on the part of your state’s citizens,” he boasted to the police.

And he also seemed to target the Connecticut state senators who voted for a new state gun control law, posting information about where they, their spouses and their children lived, what their phone numbers were, and their photos.

In April of 2014, Mike Vanderboegh and his Three Percenters were key participants in the standoff between antigovernment extremists and the federal government in Bunkerville, Nev. Tension was high and the possibility of bloodshed was real until the government ultimately decided abandon operations to roundup a cattle herd belonging to Nevada cattle rancher Cliven Bundy. Vanderboegh was quick to paint the events that day as a significant militia victory.

“It is impossible to overstate the importance of the victory won in the desert today. The feds were routed -- routed. There is no word that applies. Courage is contagious, defiance is contagious, victory is contagious.”

Shortly after, on April 19th, Patriot’s Day, Vanderboegh gave a speech in Bunkerville that highlighted what many extremists claimed was a pattern of victimization of antigovernment extremists and offered a stern warning of what awaited the federal government.

“And I tell you now -- and I proclaim to the world -- to all the would-be tyrants in this country who would victimize such honest, simple people with their evil corruption, their follies, their schemes of power and their insatiable appetites for other people’s liberty, property and lives -- YOU MESS WITH SUCH PEOPLE AT YOUR OWN DEADLY PERIL … People can be wolverines when they need to. I think y’all know about that. I’m sure that the BLM rangers were grateful they got out of Clark County with their testicles intact."

Vanderboegh closed his remarks with a threat to U.S. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada. “Don’t poke the wolverine with a sharp stick, Harry, unless you want your balls ripped off.”

But his support for the Bundy’s began to fade.In January 2016 when antigovernment extremists, led by Ammon Bundy and the self-proclaimed Citizens for Constitutional Freedom, took over and occupied the Malheur Wildlife Refuge outside of Burns, Ore. Vanderboegh quickly condemned them, calling them fruits, nuts and federal provocateurs.

RELATED NEWS & ARTICLES

HATE & EXTREMISM

III% Antigovernment Blog Shuts Down After Death of Its Founder

http://www.politicalresearch.org/2016/01/05/profiles-on-the-right-three-percenters/

Three Percenters (aka 3%ers, III%ers, or “Threepers”) are a Patriot movement paramilitary group that pledges armed resistance against attempts to restrict private gun ownership.1 Adherents and supporters have been associated with threats and acts of violence. Like other Patriot groups, they depict the federal government as tyrannical. Their name refers to the (disputed) percentage of American colonialists who took up arms against the British during the Revolutionary War.

Image created by a Three Percenter and posted to the conservative blog Skeptical Eye favorably compares the Three Percenters to the Confederacy and the American Revolution.

The Three Percenters have a loosely defined membership and a decentralized organizational structure. Seemingly anyone can use the label. There are overlapping Three Percenter organizations, including local, state, and regional leadership structures that coordinate actions and decision-making.

A Three Percenter from Idaho provides "security" at the Oregon Standoff, Jan 14, 2015. Photo by Spencer Sunshine.

The Three Percenters were co-founded in late 2008 by Mike Vanderboegh, who was active in 1990s Alabama militia groups. Vanderboegh has said, “The Three Percent idea, the movement, the ideal, was designed to be a simple, powerful concept that could not be infiltrated or subjected to agents provocateurs like many organizations that I observed in the constitutional militia movement of the 90s.”2 Along with the Oath Keepers, the Three Percenters are part of a new wave of Patriot movement groups that are successors to the militia movement of the 1990s and have had a dramatic rebirth since the 2008 election of Barack Obama to the presidency.3

Ideologically, the Three Percenters are similar to the better-known Oath Keepers, a Patriot movement group of current and former military, law enforcement, and first responders. The Oath Keepers claim to “defend the Constitution,” and interpret this as a commitment to right-wing social and economic views of the kind usually associated with the John Birch Society. The Oath Keepers promote conspiracy theories that claim that the United States is a socialist government intent on disarming the population so that a foreign government can invade. They are committed to a libertarian view of private property that opposes most federal land ownership or restrictions on private use for environmental or other reasons.4

A Three Percenter flag could be seen flying above the Jan. 2015 militia seige of a federal building in rural Oregon.

Where the Oath Keepers are a formally incorporated group with a board of directors and membership roll, the Three Percenters are more like a loosely organized social movement. The Oath Keepers carefully cultivate a public image of bold but legal resistance against supposed government tyranny. Consistent with their media-ready image, they claim that they can deny membership to felons.5

Those with felony convictions are welcome in the Three Percenters, who work closely with the Oath Keepers. There appears to be substantial membership overlap and their most prominent members appear in public together; for example, Vanderboegh and Oath Keepers President and Founder Stewart Rhodes both spoke at a 2015 Salem, Oregon rally against a law requiring registration of gun sales between private individuals. This arrangement with the Three Percenters may afford the Oath Keepers a measure of insulation from public scrutiny of actions by Three Percenters.

Three Percenter co-founder Vanderboegh is well known for his violent rhetoric. In 2010, he called for breaking the windows of Democratic Party offices, and a slew of such attacks followed. He called for armed resistance to Obamacare and has published personal information about the families of legislators who voted for gun control measures.6 At the 2015 Salem, Oregon rally against state gun control legislation, he threatened “civil war” (as he did at the Bundy Ranch) as a response to the new laws. He also called Oregon Governor Kate Brown and others in the state government “tyrants” and “domestic enemies of the Constitution,” before saying, “this country has long had a remedy for tyrants—a second amendment remedy. So be careful for what you wish for, Madam—you may get it.”7

The Three Percenters have shown up at almost all of the major Patriot movement standoffs and armed camps in recent years, including the Bundy Ranch confrontation with Bureau of Land Management (BLM) agents in Nevada in April 2014; a Josephine County, Oregon dispute between miners and the BLM in April 2015; and a Lincoln, Montana dispute between miners and the BLM and Forest Service in July 2015. In Idaho, they have mobilized religious hatred and xenophobic hostility, organizing public rallies against Syrian refugee resettlement.8 The Idaho Three Percenters’ organizing has inspired similar actions in California. Supporters also tried to build a “citadel” in rural Benewah County in the Idaho panhandle.9

Numerous arrests of Three Percenters and those who have shown affinity with them have been documented. Allen “Lance” Scarsella, who was arrested in connection with the shooting of five people at a Black Lives Matter demonstration in Minneapolis in November 2015, showed an affinity for the Three Percenters.10 So did Jerad Miller, who was at the Bundy Ranch before he and his wife, Amanda, were involved in a June 2014 ambush of police officers and subsequent shootout that left five dead, including the Millers.11 Three Percenter Brad Bartelt threatened to detonate a homemade explosive on Arkansas State University’s campus in December 201512. Brandon D. Gibbs, who was heavily armed and armored when police arrested him in December 2014 for threatening a city official, also had shown an affinity for the Three Percenters.13 And in 2011, Frederick Thomas was arrested in Georgia as a member of a militia group, which “planned to attack cities including Atlanta with deadly ricin, bomb federal buildings and murder law enforcement officials and others.”14 Thomas was allegedly inspired by Vanderboegh’s online novel Absolved; it describes a future confrontation where activists with Patriot movement views have a shootout with law enforcement and plan to murder government officials.15

Related Patriot Movement Profiles:

Oath Keepers

Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA)

CITATIONS

[1] Co-founder Mike Vanderboegh described the concept this way in 2009: “The Three Percent today are gun owners who will not disarm, will not compromise and will no longer back up at the passage of the next gun control act. Three Percenters say quite explicitly that we will not obey any further circumscription of our traditional liberties and will defend ourselves if attacked. We intend to maintain our God-given natural rights to liberty and property, and that means most especially the right to keep and bear arms. Thus, we are committed to the restoration of the Founders’ Republic, and are willing to fight, die and, if forced by any would-be oppressor, to kill in the defense of ourselves and the Constitution that we all took an oath to uphold against enemies foreign and domestic.” Mike Vanderboegh, “What is a ‘Three Percenter’?,” February 17, 2009, http://sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com/2009/02/what-is-three-percenter.html.

[2] Mike Vanderboegh, “A Brief Three Percent Catechism — A discipline not for the faint-hearted,” June 29, 2014, http://sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com/2014/06/a-brief-three-percent-catechism.html.

[3] Mark Potok, “The ‘Patriot’ Movement Explodes,” March 1, 2012, https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2012/patriot-movement-explodes.

[4] Rachel Tabachnick, “Profile on the Right: Oath Keepers,” April 23, 2015, www.politicalresearch.org/2015/04/23/profile-on-the-right-oathkeepers.

[5] See Article VIII, Section 8.01 in the “Bylaws of Oath Keepers,” accessed December 31, 2015, https://www.oathkeepers.org/bylaws.

[6] “Michael Brian Vanderboegh,” accessed December 31, 2015, https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/michael-brian-vanderboegh-0; see also David Neiwert, “Antigovernment Speakers Denounce Washington State Gun Law, Threaten Violent Revolt,” December 17, 2014, https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2014/12/17/antigovernment-speakers-denounce-washington-state-gun-law-threaten-violent-revolt.

[7] Devin Burghart of Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights pointed this part of the speech out. “We Will Not Comply Rally – Salem, Oregon – May 30, 2015,” uploaded July 3, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDD7GZJLSkE. Vanderboegh’s “civil war” comment is around 57:15, and comments on Brown around 1:04:40; for his Bundy Ranch speech, see Miranda Blue, “Bundy Ranch Speaker Warns Of ‘Civil War On A Vast Scale,’ Promises Harry Reid Will Have His ‘Balls Ripped Off’,” April 30, 2014,

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/bundy-ranch-speaker-warns-civil-war-vast-scale-promises-harry-reid-will-have-his-balls-rippe.

[8] David Neiwert, “‘III Percenters’ Ride Wave of Islamophobia in Idaho to Lead Anti-Refugee Protests,” November 4, 2015, https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2015/11/04/%E2%80%98iii-percenters%E2%80%99-ride-wave-islamophobia-idaho-lead-anti-refugee-protests.

[9] Bill Morlin, “Behind the Walls,” May 16, 2015, https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2013/behind-walls.

[10] Sarah Kaplan, “Minn. man accused in Black Lives Matter shootings reportedly subscribed to ‘sovereign citizen’ subculture,” December 1, 2015, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/12/01/minn-man-accused-of-shooting-black-lives-matter-protesters-reportedly-subscribed-to-sovereign-citizen-subculture/.

[11] Mark Potok, “Alleged Las Vegas Cop-Killers in ‘Patriot’ Movement, Warned of ‘Sacrifices’,” June 9, 2014, https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2014/06/09/alleged-las-vegas-cop-killers-‘patriot’-movement-warned-‘sacrifices’.

[12] Arturo Garcia, “Alleged Arkansas State gunman was investigated for saying he was ‘suicidal and homicidal’ online,” December 10, 2015, http://www.rawstory.com/2015/12/alleged-arkansas-state-gunman-was-investigated-for-saying-he-was-suicidal-and-homicidal-online/

[13] “Apparent Extremist Threatens Police Officers and a City Employee,” December 17, 2014, http://blog.adl.org/extremism/apparent-extremist-threatens-police-officers-and-a-city-employee.

[14] Mark Potok, “Georgia Militiamen Arrested in Major Domestic Terror Plot,” November 2, 2011, https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2011/11/02/georgia-militiamen-arrested-major-domestic-terror-plot.

[15] “Michael Brian Vanderboegh,” accessed December 31, 2015, https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/michael-brian-vanderboegh-0.

Spencer Sunshine, Ph.D. (associate fellow) is a researcher and activist. His research interests include U.S. white nationalism, post-war fascism (particularly Third Position and European New Right politics), left/right crossover movements, and left-wing antisemitism. As an activist he has worked on issues regarding anti-fascism, police misconduct, prisoner rights, global trade agreements, environmental issues, and bisexual and queer politics. Follow him on Twitter at @transform6789.

See more at: http://www.politicalresearch.org/2016/01/05/profiles-on-the-right-three-percenters/

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