Violence4 Cw3 Bak

7 24 trump assass RNC unity BS

created 1/6/22

see violent rhetoric eg CPAC 8 22 cruz bannon

MERRI OK

see border BS DEW space lasers

see trump gop

see trump 15 indict

SEE SPIRITUAL WAR

violence dog whistle? “The answer to 1984 is 1776,” }:

see big lie

SEE HYPE FEAR ALT FACT EARTH 2

SEE POLARIZATION / DEMONIZATION DEVIL TERMS enemy existential threat

see student/ press suppression

see lie any means

see ali alex 1-3

see strict fr

see authoritarian fascism

The four pillars of fascism that Finchelstein identifies in his book are xenophobia, propaganda [DISINFO] , political violence, and dictatorship.

see racism

see radicalization soc med

see mass shooter domestic terror hate

see acceleration

SEE DEATH THREAT

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aha note that violence is always DEFENSIVE  // tucker "warnings"

roof,  turner diary defend white women from black rapists?

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NC militia ~ fema hunters

an 1024

kns

Republican strategist's attempt to minimize former President Donald Trump's threat of "enemies within" spurred a swift fact check and heated debate on CNN Monday morning.

Conservative commentator Shermichael Singleton was checked by CNN anchor Jim Acosta as he tried to claim Trump's threat to sic the military on political enemies was limited only to those who live in the U.S. without citizenship status.

"I think he's talking about immigration," Singleton said. "And when you look at—"

The video player is currently playing an ad.

"No, no, no," interrupted Acosta. "He was talking about what he called radical left people in this country. Americans. Political opponents."

Singleton shrugged off what Acosta described as a "dangerous" threat — arguing Republicans cared more about policy than rhetoric — and in doing so outraged Democratic strategist Julia Roginsky.

"Let me just say something right now," Roginsky said. "This is not Donald Trump saying crazy stuff...he's done this before."

Roginsky argued Trump meant what he said at a Coachella rally over the weekend that he'd bully Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) into supporting his border control policies by threatening to withhold "fire money....for all the forest fires."

She pointed to recent reports from two former staffers who said Trump tried to block wildfire relief from reaching California in 2018 until he was shown voter data proving supporters lived there and raised a crucial concern.

"There were people around him [during his first term] to stop the worst impulses...they're not going to be there this time around," she said. "He's basically letting the voters know that, you know, this is what you're voting for."

When Acosta asked if Democrats needed to do more to call out Trump's authoritarian rhetoric, Roginsky replied with an incredulous shake of the head and a figurative finger pointed at his industry.

"The media has not done enough to call this out," Roginsky snapped back. "Here you have a fascist — and General Milley is right because all of the markers of a fascist exist in Donald Trump — and yet our news media has not done enough, by any stretch of the imagination, to call this out."

As proof, Roginsky pointed to intense media scrutiny of President Joe Biden's age and Gov. Tim Walz' (D-MN) location during the Tiananmen Square protests 35 years ago.

Singleton, given a chance to respond, interestingly did not slap back with a defense of his political party — but of colleagues in the media he argued could not be blamed for focusing more important issues than Trump's rhetoric.

"We have covered it," he said. "i just think there are far more consequential issues that impact people's day-to-day lives."

"With all do respect," Roginsky replied, "Take a look at the ratio. This is an existential problem."

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RESEARCH/STUDY

Republican convention features speakers who have called for and downplayed political violence

Media outlets should not buy Trumpist spin when many figures who are speaking have advocated violence

WRITTEN BY ZACHARY PLEAT

PUBLISHED 07/16/24

Media outlets covering the RNC convention should not buy the MAGA narrative that messaging has “softened” or that there is any sort of “unity” pivot.

Donald Trump, the former president and Republican nominee for president, reportedly reframed the Republican National Convention on the fly around the theme of “unity” after a shooter targeted him during a rally a few days previously, grazing his ear and killing a bystander. But many of the featured RNC speakers, including Trump himself, have a history of encouraging political violence or downplaying it when it happens to Democrats.

Key among these speakers is former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who is currently scheduled for a prime-time speaking slot before Trump’s speech and has a long history of encouraging conspiracy theories that reportedly inspired multiple mass shootings throughout the country. He was also a primary validator of the lies that led to the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol as Trump supporters sought to prevent Congress from confirming Joe Biden’s victory, and also aired a campaign of lies about its aftermath.

But Carlson is far from the only scheduled convention speaker who has validated political violence. Many others, including Republican elected officials and candidates, downplayed the violence of the January 6 insurrection, called for violence against protesters, and in at least one case called for violence against Democrats.

Case in point, during his speech during the first night of the convention, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) strayed from the supposedly unifying themes by directly accosting the Democratic Party, whose policies he labeled "a clear and present danger to America, to our institutions, our values and our people.”

• ## Ohio Sen. and Trump VP pick J.D. Vance

• • Vance, Trump’s vice presidential running mate, downplayed the violence directed at then-VP Mike Pence during the January 6 insurrection. The Hill reported that in a CNN interview, Vance said: “I’m truly skeptical that Mike Pence’s life was ever in danger” during the January 6 insurrection. During the attack, some people chanted “Hang Mike Pence!” and Pence was evacuated by the Secret Service to a secure location. Vance continued: “I think politics and politics people like to really exaggerate things from time to time.” The Hill, [5/1/24, 7/15/24]

• ## Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton

• • Cotton called for military force to be used against protesters of police brutality during the George Floyd protests: “No quarter for insurrectionists, anarchists, rioters, and looters.” In social media posts, Cotton recommended that U.S. Army units be deployed to end protests: “We need to have zero tolerance.” Merriam-Webster’s Trend Watch explained Cotton’s use of the phrase “no quarter,” saying that it defines the terms “as ‘no pity or mercy —used to say that an enemy, opponent, etc., is treated in a very harsh way.’ … This particular sense of quarter may be defined as ‘merciful consideration of an opponent’ (often specifically refers to ‘the clemency of not killing a defeated enemy’).” Twitter/X, [6/1/20, 6/1/20; Merriam-Webster, Trend Watch, 6/1/20]

• • Cotton in New York Times op-ed: “Send in the troops.” Cotton wrote that then-President Trump should use the Insurrection Act and send military forces to ensure protesters against police brutality are “subdued,” stating: “One thing above all else will restore order to our streets: an overwhelming show of force to disperse, detain and ultimately deter lawbreakers. … In these circumstances, the Insurrection Act authorizes the president to employ the military ‘or any other means’ in ‘cases of insurrection, or obstruction to the laws.’” The New York Times, [6/3/20]

• • Cotton encouraged vigilante violence, saying he “would encourage most people anywhere that get stuck” by protesters “to take matters in their own hands.” Cotton, specifically talking about people protesting Israeli military strikes against civilians in Gaza by blocking roads, continued: “If something like this happened in Arkansas on a bridge there – let’s just say I think there’d be a lot of very wet criminals that have been tossed overboard, not by law enforcement, but by the people whose road they’re blocking. If they glued their hands to a car or the pavement, well, [it would be] probably pretty painful to have their skin ripped off. But I think that’s the way we’d handle it in Arkansas.” The Guardian, [4/16/24]

• • Cotton: Police should have been called in to pro-Palestinian protests “the very first day they set up their tents.” He added, “Where were the liberal administrators and liberal politicians sending in the police on the very first day? We should not have tolerated this for a moment.” Many of the police activities against campus protests featured violence against the protesters. ABC News, [5/5/24; CBS News, 5/4/24; Rolling Stone, 4/30/24]

• • Cotton called for presidential pardons for many convicted of January 6 insurrection charges. Mother Jones reported that “Cotton said people ‘who did not attack a law enforcement officer, [and] who did not damage public property’ on Jan. 6 should be ‘considered’ for a pardon.” Mother Jones, [6/2/24]

• ## Texas Sen. Ted Cruz

• • Cruz portrayed elected Democrats as “barbarians” and military targets to be fought. Rolling Stone reported that during a Conservative Political Action Conference speech in August 2022, Cruz railed against the “power hungry, abusive totalitarian nitwits” of the Biden administration and Democrats in Congress, and said: “It’s like the old Roman Colosseum where you slam on a breastplate and you grab a battle axe and you go fight the barbarians.” Cruz continued: “As they say in the military world, it is a target-rich environment.” Rolling Stone, [8/6/22]

• • Cruz shared a conspiracy theory downplaying the political motivations of Paul Pelosi’s attacker. The Washington Post reported: “When a right-wing provocateur wagered Sunday that it was ‘absurd’ to ‘paint a hippie nudist from Berkeley as some kind of militant right winger,’ the junior senator from Texas responded Monday, simply: ‘truth.’” The Post explained that Cruz was wrong: “Even when Cruz tweeted, it was clear that David DePape had an extensive online trail indicating he subscribed to views that were in line with the far right.” The Washington Post, [11/1/22]
• ## Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson

• • Johnson downplayed the violence of January 6, repeatedly denying that it was an “armed insurrection.” PolitiFact explained that “within a week of the attack, a dozen guns and thousands of rounds of ammunition were found. In other words, the crowd was armed.” Johnson repeatedly ignored these facts in an effort to downplay the violence that day, saying just weeks after the insurrection: “The fact of the matter is this didn’t seem like an armed insurrection to me.” And in October 2022, Johnson said: “To call what happened on January 6 an armed insurrection, I just think is not accurate.” PolitiFact, [10/10/22]

• ## Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt

• • In 2020, Schmitt defended a gun-toting St. Louis couple who menaced Black Lives Matter protesters. In a Fox News interview, then-Missouri Attorney General Schmitt said that charges against the McCloskeys, who waved guns at protesters passing by their property, were “nothing more than [a] political prosecution” and declared that he would work to get them dismissed. (The couple, who appeared as guest speakers at the 2020 Republican National Convention, pleaded guilty to assault and harassment charges but were later pardoned by Gov. Mike Parson.) FoxNews.com, [7/21/20; ABC News, 8/3/21]

• ## Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz

• • Gaetz had a social media post restricted for glorifying violence after he wrote: “Now that we clearly see Antifa as terrorists, can we hunt them down like we do those in the Middle East?” The New York Times, [6/1/20]

• • While next to Trump at the Iowa State Fair, Gaetz said, “We know that only through force do we make any change in a corrupt town like Washington, DC.” Mediaite, [8/12/23]

• • Gaetz referenced violent far-right gang the Proud Boys when he posted that he was “standing back and standing by” at the courthouse where Trump’s New York criminal trial was being held. The Associated Press reported: “The Proud Boys — whose leaders were convicted of seditious conspiracy after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol — have used that verbiage since Trump, during a 2020 campaign debate, said: ‘Proud Boys, stand back and stand by.’” The Associated Press, [5/16/24]

• ## Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene

• • Greene repeatedly endorsed using violence against Democrats. CNN reported that “Greene repeatedly indicated support for executing prominent Democratic politicians in 2018 and 2019 before being elected to Congress. … In one post, from January 2019, Greene liked a comment that said ‘a bullet to the head would be quicker’ to remove House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. In other posts, Greene liked comments about executing FBI agents who, in her eyes, were part of the ‘deep state’ working against Trump.” Media Matters, [2/2/21]

• • Greene praised militia members as people who can protect the country from “a tyrannical government.” In 2018, Greene gave a speech after various militia members appeared on stage at a rally in Washington, D.C. She praised the militia members as “the very definition of our Second Amendment. Because when our government gets to a place where it’s a tyrannical government, we’re guaranteed the right to bear arms and make a state militia so that they do not run us over.” Media Matters, [2/2/21]

• • Greene called for vigilante violence against trans people. On conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ radio show, Greene said that if she had a daughter and she had a trans camp counselor, “my husband would’ve beat him into the ground, and then he’d be in jail. But this is exactly how we need to stand up against this stuff.” Greene continued: “We have to draw the line in the sand and say we are not willing to cross it. This is such perversion.” Media Matters, [2/23/22]

• • Greene said that “the only way you get your freedoms back is it’s earned with the price of blood.” Mother Jones reported that in an October 2020 video, Greene “warned ominously about fending off ‘socialists’ like Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, claiming they would confiscate Americans’ guns. ‘If this generation doesn’t stand up and defend freedom, it’s gone,’ Greene said, addressing viewers. ‘And once it’s gone, freedom doesn’t come back by itself. The only way you get your freedoms back is it’s earned with the price of blood.’” Media Matters, [2/2/21]

• • Greene said if she had organized the January 6 insurrection, “we would have won” and “it would’ve been armed.” Many of the insurrectionists were, in fact, armed. Greene later said she was making a “sarcastic joke.” ABC News, [12/12/22]

• • Greene defended conspiracy theories about Paul Pelosi’s attacker. After then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul was attacked and David DePape charged in the incident, The Washington Post reported: “The Georgia Republican defended the Paul Pelosi conspiracy theories Monday morning while citing Pelosi’s supposedly having referred to DePape as his ‘friend.’” It continued: “There remains no evidence Pelosi actually knew DePape, much less that they were friends, and there is plenty to dispute it.” The Washington Post, [11/1/22]

• ## New York Rep. and House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik

• • Stefanik defended the January 6 insurrectionists who have been charged and/or convicted of crimes, labeling them “January 6th hostages.” The Hill reported: “‘I have concerns about the treatment of January 6th hostages,’ Stefanik told NBC when asked if those who stormed the Capitol should be held responsible to the full extent of the law. ‘We have a rule in Congress of oversight over our treatment of prisoners. And I believe that we’re seeing the weaponization of the federal government against not just President Trump, but we’re seeing it against conservatives.’” The Hill, [1/7/24]

• ## Texas Gov. Greg Abbott
  • In a tacit endorsement of vigilante killings, Abbott pardoned a far-right killer who murdered a Black Lives Matter protester. Following a campaign by right-wing media, the Texas governor pardoned Daniel Perry, who had been convicted of murdering a Black Lives Matter protester after fantasizing about killing such protesters. Vox, [5/17/24; Media Matters, 4/12/23]

• ## Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis

• • While he was campaigning for president, DeSantis said he would “slit the throats” of federal employees. When asked if he regretted that language, DeSantis said he did not, and claimed “people knew it was a figure of speech.” The Hill, [11/2/23]

• • DeSantis repeatedly called for killing people crossing the southern border without authorization. NBC News reported that DeSantis said “you absolutely can use deadly force” against people crossing the border who “have hostile intent, because you’re obviously running drugs.” He also said: “If the cartels are cutting through the border wall, trying to run product into this country, they’re going to end up stone-cold dead as a result of that bad decision. And if you do that one time, you are not going to see them mess with our wall ever again.” As NBC News explained, “it’s not clear exactly how officers would be able to tell exactly who was a drug smuggler and who was not.” NBC News, [6/26/23]

• ## North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson

• • Robinson said mass shootings were “karma” due to the legality of abortion and belittled mass shooting survivors. Following an August 2019 mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, Robinson said mass shootings were “karma” due to the legality of abortion, adding: “When you spill that innocent blood, that blood is going to come back as a stain on you and it's going to come home to roost.” He then said that progressive activists “have nobody to blame but themselves and the policies that they've been pushing that devalue human life across the country.” Following the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, Robinson called the survivors “spoiled, angry, know it all CHILDREN,” “spoiled little bastards,” and “media prosti-tots.” Media Matters, [5/12/23; CNN, 5/9/23]

• • Robinson called for violence to settle political issues: “Some folks need killing!” The New Republic reported that during a speech at a church in June of this year, Robinson “appeared to endorse lethal violence against these unnamed enemies, particularly on the left” when he ranted: “Some folks need killing! It’s time for somebody to say it. It’s not a matter of vengeance. It’s not a matter of being mean or spiteful. It’s a matter of necessity! When you have wicked people doing wicked things, torturing and murdering and raping. It’s time to call out, uh, those guys in green and go have them handled. Or those boys in blue and have them go handle it.” The New Republic, [7/5/24]

• ## Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake

• • Lake mocked the attack on Paul Pelosi during a campaign event. NBC News reported that Lake “made light of the attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband in remarks at a campaign event Monday, drawing laughter from the audience.” During the event, she remarked: “Nancy Pelosi, well, she’s got protection when she’s in D.C. — apparently her house doesn’t have a lot of protection.” NBC News, [10/31/22]

• • Lake repeatedly defended January 6 insurrectionists during her political campaigns. The Arizona Republic reported that Lake “has issued a flurry of congratulations and sympathy towards participants in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.” It also reported that she “has suggested that prosecution of Jan. 6 participants is politically motivated,” and that “she struck a similar tone while running for governor in 2022, telling one participant he did nothing wrong. That man was sentenced to three years of probation after he encouraged others to ‘go, go, go’ into the Capitol building and take a police officer’s shield.” The Arizona Republic, [12/17/23]

• • Lake repeatedly encouraged supporters to arm themselves to settle political issues. In June 2023, Lake responded to one of Trump’s multiple indictments by saying, “If you want to get to President Trump, you’re going to have to go through me, and you’re going to have to go through 75 million Americans just like me. And I’m going to tell you, most of us are card-carrying members of the NRA. That’s not a threat – that’s a public service announcement.” In April 2024, Lake told her supporters: “The next six months is going to be intense. We’re going to strap on our seatbelt. We’re going to put on our helmet — or your Kari Lake ball cap. We are going to put on the armor of God. And maybe strap on a Glock on the side of us just in case.” The Guardian, [6/12/23; USA Today, 4/17/24]

• ## Ohio Senate candidate Bernie Moreno

• • Moreno downplayed the violence of the January 6 insurrection. The Daily Beast reported that Moreno “has called Jan. 6 defendants ‘political prisoners,’ once said ‘don’t ever use the word insurrection,’ and shared a post from a right-wing Twitter account that condemned the Department of Justice for prosecuting people who were inside the Capitol for ‘two minutes.’” The Daily Beast, [8/17/23]

• ## Vivek Ramaswamy, former presidential candidate

• • Ramaswamy repeatedly downplayed the January 6 insurrection and dismissed political violence against Democrats. During his campaign for the GOP nomination, Ramaswamy claimed that the January 6 insurrection was an “inside job” and a case of “government entrapment,” and he suggested that insurrectionists were “targets of politicized federal prosecutions.” Ramaswamy also downplayed the kidnapping plot against Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, claiming that the Trump supporters arrested in that case were also entrapped. CNN, [12/13/23; The Dispatch, 9/15/23]

• ## Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA

• • Kirk has repeatedly claimed that conservatives are being provoked into violence. During a 2021 event in Idaho, an audience member asked Kirk: “When do we get to use the guns? … I mean, literally, where's the line? How many elections are they going to steal before we kill these people?” Kirk replied that it would be “playing into all their plans” because they “are trying to make you do something that will be violent that will justify a takeover of your freedoms and liberties.”

In a 2023 interview with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Kirk said: “If we, as the figures in the media, the people that have audiences, aren't clear about the proper course of action, that this is gonna get wildly out of control. In a way that people will act you know, I don't want them to act violently. I don't. I'm trying to preach peace as much as possible. But … it's almost like they're being provoked, and I don’t like that.” In another 2023 instance, Kirk said to his audience: “They would love nothing more than for people to act uncharacteristic. They need to try to incite you to right-wing violence to justify their mass takeover of the country.” And in July 2023, Kirk said “the left” wants “another January 6,” and “they have been preempting us and preconditioning us with domestic violent extremism and right-wing violence.” Media Matters, [10/27/21, 8/17/23, 4/3/23, 7/28/23]

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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."

READ MORE: Assassination attempt likely to make Trump voters even more energized: experts

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 MORE:'Look in the mirror': Expert on political violence calls out MAGA for unleashing on 'moderate GOP'

*Read the full Wired article at this link.

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an 7 24

the FBI has been conducting a thorough investigation of Thomas Matthew Crooks, the 20-year-old gunman who attempted to assassinate presumptive 2024 GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on Saturday afternoon, July 13.

Crooks, who was killed by U.S. Secret Service agents, didn't have a strong online presence. The gunman was a registered Republican, yet made a small donation to a progressive group. And his motivations for the Butler attack remain a mystery.

During an appearance on The New Republic's podcast, journalist/author Zack Beauchamp warned that the horrors of July 13 could be followed by more violence in the weeks and months to come.

READ MORE: **Election bombshell: RNC uses fake electors to crown Trump**

When host Greg Sargent noted fears that the United States could be facing a long, protracted period of political violence comparable to The Troubles in North Ireland, Beauchamp explained, "The issue is that political violence…. tends to emerge out of a sense that the system is failing. Whoever the person is, whatever their grievances are, whatever their cause is, they feel — in addition to being kind of an angry, resentful person, just on an individual level — that their grievances aren't being articulated and can't be addressed by the political system."

Beauchamp continued, "The issue we have in the United States right now is that due to our extreme polarization, there are people — a small minority of people…. a sizable minority nonetheless, who express willingness to take matters into their own hands because: (A) They feel frustrated by the system, and (B) They hate he other side so much, so fundamentally and see them as an enemy, an existential threat… They believe violence might be justified."

Sargent pointed out that no possible motivations on Crooks' part have been identified and that he could end up being like John Hinkley, Jr., who attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan in 1981.

The delusional Hinkley suffered from extreme mental illness and did not act for political reasons, but rather, believed he was in love with actress Jodie Foster and thought he was trying to win her affections. Foster was horrified.

READ MORE:**Progressives condemn GOP attempts to blame Biden for Trump rally shooting**

Sargent, warned, however, that some Republicans are making the "preposterous" claim that President Joe Biden and other Democrats are "to blame" for the attempt on Trump's life.

Beauchamp responded that Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) and other "really prominent" figures "in the conservative world" were "talking in the way that you describe."

"The thing is: even if we end up in a John Hinckley-type scenario or the shooter had some type of inexplicable motivation…. it might not matter," Beauchamp told Sargent. "What happens is once an event gets fed in the partisan maelstrom, it gets surfaced and recycled as: the other side is to blame for this. It's their fault. And it's particular true when elites push that narrative."

READ MORE:**Assassination attempt likely to make Trump voters even more energized: experts**

*Listen to Greg Sargent's full interview with Zack Beauchamp for The New Republic at this link or here.

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an 7 24

After the attempted assassination (https://www.nationalreview.com/news/explosives-found-in-car-of-would-be-trump-assassin-thomas-matthew-crooks/?utm_source=onesignal&utm_medium=push&utm_campaign=article) of Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on Saturday afternoon, July 13, a long list of prominent Democrats — including President Joe Biden, former President Barack Obama and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) — forcefully condemned the attack, emphasizing that such violence has no place in U.S. politics.

Regardless, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) — once a scathing critic of Trump but now a devoted loyalist and possible running mate — blamed Democrats for the assassination attempt. Some other Republicans have pointed the finger at Democrats as well.

During an MSNBC segment on July 14, national security reporter Ken Dilanian warned that the Proud Boys and other far-right extremist groups have responded to the attack by calling for a civil war.

READ MORE: See it: Blood-stained Trump whisked off stage by Secret Service after apparent gunshots at rally (https://www.alternet.org/trump-blood-secret-service/)

(https://youtu.be/eYfvEBLDohI), "Several Republican members of Congress have directly blamed President Biden, the Democrats and the media for the assassination attempt. They claim it was a result of overheated rhetoric about Trump and part of a campaign to jeopardize his safety. So, for example, Georgia Republican Congressman Mike Collins posted, quote, 'Joe Biden sent the orders.'"

Dilanian continued, "And Trump campaign surrogate Nick Adams posted, on social media, quote, 'Joe Biden's rhetoric is directly responsible. There can be no discussion. This is a fact.'"

The that although Democrats have "called Donald Trump an authoritarian and a threat to democracy," they "have never hinted that violence was an appropriate response to that."

(https://youtu.be/eYfvEBLDohI), vid?]

"After this shooting, Democrats, including President Biden, have condemned it in the strongest possible terms, and they've called this political violence a threat to democracy…. And experts are worried that this kind of rhetoric increases the risk of more violence."

READ MORE:'I don't want to go down that road': Lindsey Graham ducks question on JD Vance’s rhetoric (https://www.alternet.org/Bank/lindsey-graham-jd-vance/?utm_source=push_notifications)

The MSNBC reporter warned that according to national security experts, "extremists" are "seizing on this incident.

"Telegram channels for branches of the Proud Boys militia group have been calling for civil war and violence," (https://youtu.be/eYfvEBLDohI). "According to Advance Democracy — that's an NGO that tracks this stuff — a user on one forum wrote that the Democratic National Committee, RINOs, and the feds, quote, 'should all be hung in the streets of D.C.' And users on a pro-Trump platform, Patriots.Win, are calling for violence and civil war. One user wrote, 'War now. They don't want to live and let live.' Some really dangerous rhetoric coursing around out there, Kate."

Dilanian observed that although some members of Congress are trying to calm the situation down, "flame-throwing politicians" are "not doing that at all."

"As long as there is some group of people who are throwing gasoline on the fire,"](https://youtu.be/eYfvEBLDohI), "there are sort of a group of deranged individuals out there that are listening to it, paying close attention, and think they are essentially in a civil war."

READ MORE:Historian recalls bipartisan unity after 1981 Reagan assassination attempt: 'We came together' (https://www.alternet.org/beschloss-trump-assassination-attempt/)

Watch the full video below or at this link (https://www.alternet.org/ken-delanian-trump-proud-boys/).

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militia hunkered down after j6 went to jail oathkeepers and ---

now kinda coming back 7 24

an

Back in March on Long Island, Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman — a far-right MAGA Republican and Donald Trump supporter — announced his plan to recruit a force of 75 armed "special deputies." Blakeman urged residents with gun permits to apply, saying they would be "provisional emergency special deputy sheriffs" and could be activated when he desired.

The special force, Blakeman said, would focus on the "protection of human life and property during an emergency" — which could be anything from a hurricane or a blackout "a riot."

According to New York Times reporter Corey Kilgannon, the force has "drawn vocal opposition" from some Long Island residents and "plunged Nassau into a national debate about authoritarianism in an election season that some see as a fork in the road for American democracy."

READ MORE: 'Flat-out nuts.': Conservative blasts Trump’s 'bananas' rant on 'law and order'

"Critics have accused (Blakeman) of creating, with little notice or explanation, an unsanctioned militia answering only to him," Kilgannon reports in an article published on July 11. "They called the move especially dangerous amid heightened fears of political violence, and as Mr. Trump promulgates plans for mass deportations and quashing dissent."

One of those critics is Great Neck, Long Island-based IT manager Sabine Margolis, who has posted an online petition named "Stop Bruce Blakeman's Personal Nassau County Militia."

Another critic is Delia DeRiggi-Whitton, Democratic minority leader of the Nassau County Legislature.

DeRiggi-Whitton told the Times, "It's the opposite way we want to be going, a private militia with guns. We're trying to work on gun control, rather than promote them."

READ MORE:'Only in MAGAville': The strange reason J.D. Vance’s face is a major roadblock to his VP nomination

New York City's Long Island suburbs are divided among four counties, one of which is Nassau County's neighbor, Suffolk County.

Jay Jacobs — who chairs the New York State Democratic Party as well as the Nassau County Democratic Party — told the Times, "This is all to solidify his extreme right-wing base. Instead of solving the county's problems, he's appealing to the right wing by speaking the language they like: militia, guns, law and order. There is no problem he is looking to solve. Does he think we're going to be invaded by Suffolk County?"

READ MORE:George Clooney calls for 'hero' Biden to 'save democracy' in 2024 — by leaving the race

*Read the full New York Times report at this link (subscription required).

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an 7 24

Despite his long history of making extremes statements — from Holocaust denial to saying that women shouldn't have been given the right to vote — far-right MAGA Republican Mark Robinson, according to some polls, is quite competitive in North Carolina's 2024 gubernatorial race. An East Carolina University poll in June found Josh Stein, the Democratic nominee, leading Robinson by only 1 percent.

Robinson has made no effort to soften his image during his gubernatorial campaign. And according to The New Republic's Greg Sargent, the far-right MAGA Republican made some more extreme statements during a June 30 speech in a church in White Lake, North Carolina.

Robinson told the crowd, "Some folks need killing. It's time for somebody to say it. It's not a matter of vengeance. It's not a matter of being mean or spiteful. It's a matter of necessity."

READ MORE: Historian warns Trump 'imperial presidency' will be 'huge shock' to Americans: 'Never been here before'

Sargent notes that those Robinson advocated "killing" included "wicked people" as well as socialists and communists, adding that the North Carolina lieutenant governors has a "long history of wildly radical and unhinged moments."

According to Sargent, "He has linked homosexuality to pedophilia, called for the arrest of trans women, pushed hallucinogenic antisemitic conspiracy theories, endorsed the vile 'birther' conspiracy about Barack Obama, described Michelle Obama as a man, hinted at the need to violently oppose federal law enforcement and the government, and posted memes mocking and denying the brutal, violent assault on Nancy Pelosi's husband, among many other things."

Sargent adds, "His latest rant is yet another example of an ugly game widely played on the MAGA right, one supercharged by Donald Trump. It entails hinting that right-wing political violence is necessary and justified because a ubiquitous, all-seeing, all-powerful leftist threat — one that is pure invention — is already supposedly attacking and persecuting conservatives on a mass scale."

The journalist emphasizes that Robinson's comments are not an anomaly, but part of a pattern of MAGA Republicans calling for violence against political opponents. And he cited Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts as an example.

READ MORE:'Yes off record': Series of 'bombshell' texts by ex-Trump staffer hint at secret payoffs

Roberts recently said of the right-wing think tank's Project 2025, "We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be."

Sargent warns, "In this, Roberts essentially said that if liberals and Democrats too vehemently resist MAGA's intent to stock the government with corrupt loyalists to Trump and unleash mass persecution of the opposition, violence will be necessary to crush them — and if so, it will be their fault for not meekly accepting what they have coming to them."

The journalist adds, "Meanwhile, Trump himself recently suggested that political violence may erupt if the presidential election isn't conducted with 'fairness' and is stolen from him, by which he really means, 'if I don’t win.'"

READ MORE: Several Democratic governors 'not supportive' of Biden staying in 'and want a change': report

*Read Greg Sargent's full New Republic article at this link.

===

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aha 7 24

algorithm:

see hype 3 fear anger echo escalator polarization misinfo disinfo soc med facebook meta

see google

AI machine learning

see monetize

boost influence provocateur vs expertise echo escalator fever swamp conspiracy alt fact earth 2 no correction

see extraction corps silicon valley monopoly max profits cancer amplify

note de-platform correction filter fail b/c of $ extraction corps

--> radicalization --> civil war 2 violence

see amplifying feedback

---

Days ahead of his scheduled imprisonment, Steve Bannon declares the country is in a “political war”

06/27/24 mma

===

{{ insert from spiritual war

godless commies oppose trump who is god’s agent thus they are evil, demonic extremelist lunatic who are irrational thus cannpt be reasoned/compromised with so must be eliminated by violence holy cleansing fire

jan 6 trump called his troops to fight like hell for him ~dark dems who stole power

spiritual battle gets us that bit closer to real violence (tho starts as dog whistle then gets literal?

dog whistle for demon/satan? bannon is satan adjacent

“The answer to 1984 is 1776,” }: violence civial war?

:{rww tag: [Spiritual Warfare }} END INSRT SORTA

charlie Kirk’s Turning Point connects far-right extremists with the Republican National Committee and the Trump campaign

The Turning Point event this past weekend featured a number of extremists, with at least two speakers using the phrase “Christ is king” — an antisemitic dog whistle long favored by the white nationalist “groyper” movement

WRITTEN BY JOHN KNEFEL

RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM MADELINE PELTZ, SOPHIE LAWTON & ALEX KAPLAN

PUBLISHED 06/18/24

Several right-wing extremist figures spoke at a weekend event organized by conservative radio host Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point Action, which is partnering with the Republican National Committee and former President Donald Trump's campaign. At least two speeches included the phrase “Christ is king,” an antisemitic dog whistle long favored by white nationalists.

Speakers at The People’s Convention included right-wing pundit Candace Owens, who has a history of making antisemitic remarks and appears to be associating herself with Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes; neo-Nazi collaborator and Pizzagate conspiracy theory peddler Jack Posobiec; and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. The presence of these figures is not surprising, given the significant ties Kirk and Turning Point have to right-wing extremists and white nationalists.

The three-day summit illustrated how Turning Point Action and its affiliate Turning Point USA have come to serve as a bridge between official Republican Party institutions and the more openly bigoted and extremist elements of Trump’s movement. Over the weekend, CNN reported that the Trump campaign is working with Turning Point Action. Politico wrote that Turning Point “has become a central player in the party apparatus,” as “part of recent collaborations between the [Trump] campaign, RNC and outside groups.” In May, The Washington Post reported that the RNC was adopting a “leaner” approach and was considering outsourcing much of its voter outreach to TPUSA and other right-wing organizations.

Speaking directly after Kirk on the event’s opening day, Owens opened and closed her speech with the phrase “Christ is king” — a slogan long used by Fuentes’ “groyper” movement that has gained antisemitic connotations through its use in far-right-wing contexts. Last November, Owens used the phrase to troll Ben Shapiro, her then-colleague at The Daily Wire — one flare-up in a monthslong feud between the two. The Daily Wire and Owens “ended their relationship” in March, according to CEO Jeremy Boreing.

“When you do come together and you do start a family, for the love of God, put Christ first,” Owens said, prompting an audience chant of: “Christ is king.”

“Correct, and we’re going to lead out on that chant,” Owens responded.

Owens then claimed that Democrats and liberals are bringing “the full weight of the government” against Trump, but that “Trump is just one step — they’ve always been after Jesus Christ.”

“Christ is king,” Owens said in closing.

Video

CitationFrom the June 14, 2024, Rumble livestream of Turning Point USA's The People's Convention

On the third day of the event, Posobiec echoed Owens.

“We understand this is a war against the demonic, this is a spiritual war!” Posobiec shouted, raising a rosary in his clenched fist. “We can only defeat a spiritual war with Christ as king because Christ is king.”

“Christ is king,” he repeated.

That phrase wasn’t the only example of the groypers’ influence on Turning Point. In 2021, Chet Hanks attempted to manufacture a viral moment for himself by calling for a “white boy summer,” but the phrase was quickly adopted by neo-Nazis and other extremists, including followers of Fuentes. On Sunday, Posobiec took the stage next to a banner reading “WHITE BOY SUMMER” and tossed hats branded with the slogan to the crowd.

Video

CitationFrom a June 16, 2024, Rumble livestream of Turning Point USA's The People's Conference

Posobiec then introduced Jones, appearing fresh off a court order to liquidate his assets in order to pay surviving members of the Sandy Hook massacre whom he’d repeatedly defamed by claiming the shooting was a false flag.

“The answer to 1984 is 1776,” Jones said before attempting to lead the crowd in a “1776” chant — a dog whistle that signifies opposition to the anti-racist 1619 Project.

“Just three or four days ago, the great folks at Turning Point Action invited me on here. I’m very blessed and honored to be here,” Jones said before pushing an election denialist conspiracy theory. “We are in the very center, the TCF Center, where almost four years ago, in the dead of night, they stole the election not just from our amazing president, but from us.”

Later in his speech, Jones repeated another conspiracy theory he’d helped spread in May when he falsely claimed President Joe Biden had hatched a scheme to kill Trump. “They are going to try to assassinate President Trump, make no mistake about that,” Jones said.

Video

CitationFrom a June 16, 2024, Rumble livestream of Turning Point USA's The People's Conference

Posobiec, standing next to Jones, praised his career. “Alex Jones has spent 30 years being the loudest voice for freedom, for liberty, and for anti-war that this world has seen,” Posobiec said.

Other notable speakers included anti-LGBTQ extremist James Lindsay and QAnon conspiracy theory peddler Scott Presler, who was present during the January 6 attempted insurrection and previously worked at anti-Muslim hate group Act for America. In March, RNC co-chair Lara Trump said she was interested in hiring Presler to be “part of the team” to help with “the largest legal ballot harvesting operation in the entire country,” which will be “started by the RNC.”

===

an 6 24

Trump's fundraising emails have long been viewed as over-the-top. But recently, they have, according to Rolling Stone and The New Republic, taken an especially dark turn.

On Wednesday morning, June 12, Trump's campaign sent out an e-mail that read, in all caps, "HAUL OUT THE GUILLOTINE!"

Rolling Stone's Nikki McCann Ramirez notes that "thankfully," the e-mail "was not a declaration of intent by Trump, but a melodramatic fundraising pitch accusing his political opponents of wanting to behead him."

READ MORE:**'MAGA imperial presidency': Analysis reveals the radical 'theocracy' central to Project 2025**

The e-mail read, "Remember when that Sicko Kathy Griffin made the rounds parading my BEHEADED head when I was President?! The radical-left CHEERED! Obama and Biden were SILENT! And the Fake News BLASTED it everywhere! The SAD and HORRIFIC TRUTH is that this is STILL the Sick Dream of every Trump-Deranged lunatic out there! And it's not just me they want gone, THEY'RE REALLY COMING AFTER YOU."

In an article published by The New Republic the same day, reporter Talia Jane cites the "guillotine" pitch as an example of how paranoid Trump's fundraising pitches are sounding.

"The e-mails, written by Trump's campaign but styled to sound like they're coming directly from Trump, intend to provoke supporters into donating," Jane observes. "A fundraising e-mail sent last week falsely claimed Biden directed the FBI to assassinate Trump, saying, 'He tried to publicly torture and humiliate me.… but he failed. He tried to raid my home and take me out with deadly force.… but he failed."

When CNN's Jim Acosta noted the "guillotine" e-mail on X, formerly Twitter, historian/author Ruth Ben-Ghiat — known for her expertise on fascism and authoritarianism — gave her take on Trump's email with a tweet.

READ MORE:**Imprisoned Jan. 6 rioter leading 'network of armed militias in all 50 states': report**

"From Fascism onward, authoritarians have prepared people to accept and commit violence by conjuring existential threats," she wrote. "Those threats must be not only to the beloved leader, but also to his followers. Jan. 6 was another [example]: it was a rescue operation of a cult leader in distress. Now a desperate convicted felon, Trump conjures a guillotine meant for them too. #Strongmen."

*Read Rolling Stone's full article at this link (subscription required) and The New Republic's reporting here.

===

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an 6 24

Monday, June 11, Politico's Alexander Burns reported that some Canadian government officials are worried about the possibility of civil war breaking out in the United States. In a 37-page document titled "Disruptions on the Horizon," a Canadian government office called Policy Horizons Canada argued that officials in Ottawa should make preparations for that grim possibility.

The report warned that if "U.S. ideological divisions, democratic erosion, and domestic unrest escalate," the result could be "plunging the country into civil war."

Only a day after Politico's article was published, Wired's David Gilbert reports that far-right Edward "Jake" Lang — who is incarcerated while awaiting trial for his alleged role in the January 6, 2021 insurrection — "is now using encrypted messaging channels to create a nationwide network of armed militias in all 50 states."

READ MORE: Biden campaign uses KKK, January 6, Trump and Putin images in new ad

Lang, federal prosecutors allege, swung a baseball bat at police officers during the attack on the U.S. Capitol Building.

"Though he has been in prison for over 1200 days, Lang is working with a network of election deniers and conspiracists to promote the North American Patriot and Liberty Militia, or Napalm for short," Gilbert reports in his June 12 article for Wired. "The group officially launched last week with 50 state-specific militia groups on Telegram."

Gilbert continues, "Lang claims that the Telegram groups already have 20,000 members, including pastors, farmers, former military personnel, and currently serving sheriffs. However, multiple experts who reviewed the channels tell Wired said that figure was wildly overestimated and that the real figure was closer to 2500 members. But a group this size, they warn, is still large enough to cause a serious threat."

The Wired reporter notes that "tensions around" the United States' 2024 presidential election in November "are already at an all-time high," adding that "many Republicans refuse to say if they will peacefully accept the outcome of the November election."

Devin Burghart, executive director at the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights (IREHR), told Wired, "We've noted considerable energy being put into resurrecting far-right paramilitary activism right now. The growing talk of 'Second Amendment remedies' to unfavorable electoral outcomes is a serious cause for concern. Militia groups like Napalm promote political violence and sow the seeds for another potential insurrection."

Lang is presently incarcerated at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn while awaiting his trial, which is set for September.

READ MORE:'This isn’t a joke to us': Far-right evangelicals aim to enlist Trump in 'censorship regime'

Lang told Wired, "I thought it was necessary to get organized in case these encroachments, these violations of our civil liberties, our natural rights were to escalate to a point where it'd absolutely be untenable and that we would need to defend ourselves. There is a tyrannical wave that has hit America that we've never seen before. And so, it's time that people get organized in case they escalate to something that basically puts our very lives in danger."

READ MORE:'Trump in 2028': GOP-aligned organization calls for abolition of presidential term limits

*:{Read David Gilbert's full report for Wired at this link.

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an 5 24 post verdict

as supporters of Donald Trump flood right-wing platforms with threats against the jurors and judge following guilty verdicts Thursday in his criminal case regarding hush money payments, fears are growing that the influence the Republican presumptive presidential nominee has over his supporters will soon lead to violence.

"Until and unless he accepts the process, the extremist reaction to his legal troubles will be militant," Jacob Ware, a research fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, toldReuters.

The former president gave no sign of accepting the legal process Friday as he held a press conference at Trump Tower, repeating claims that the case had been "rigged."

Shortly after a New York jury announced its verdictin the case regarding documents that were falsified to cover up payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniel just before the 2016 election to keep her from publicizing an alleged sexual encounter she had with Trump, right-wing websites like Gateway Pundit, Truth Social, and Patriots.Win saw an uptick in violent posts from users.

READ:The GOP has chosen hell over America — and there should be no coming back from it

One commenter called for "someone in NY with nothing to lose" to "take care of" New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, while another on Gateway Pundit directed a threat at any and all opponents of Trump.

"Time to start capping some leftys," said the user. "This cannot be fixed by voting."

The reaction is a direct result, said Ware, of Trump's "insistence that he is being mistreated."

Trump responded to the verdict on Thursday by telling reporters he is "a very innocent man" and calling the trial—one of four criminal cases against him—"a disgrace." He is expected to appeal the verdict. On Friday morning, the Trump campaign announced a $35 million fundraising haul following the guilty verdict.

Some Trump supporters signaled they are waiting for instructions from the former president, who is the presumptive Republican nominee for president in the November general election and is set to be formally nominated days after his scheduled sentencing in July.

On Patiots.win, one commenter called for 1 million armed Trump supporters to "go to Washington and hang everyone," while another said the former president "should already know he has an army willing to fight and die for him if he says the words...I'll take up arms if he asks."

While Republican lawmakers have not explicitly endorsed a violent reaction to the verdict that found Trump guilty of 34 felony counts, many have joined Trump in making clear that they don't accept the trial's outcome.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who has said she would not endorse Trump in the 2024 election, saidManhattan District Attorney charged Trump for politically motivated reasons and falsely claimed that he campaigned on prosecuting the former president.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said the "charges never should have been brought in the first place," while House Speaker Mike Johnson accused the Biden administration of the "weaponization of our justice system."

Progressives agreed with Trump on one point Friday, after he pledgedthat the hush money case is "long from over" and said that "the real verdict is going to be November 5" when U.S. voters go to the polls in the general election.

While celebrating that a jury of "everyday people" held the former president accountable and proved that "despite his worst efforts, Trump is not above the law," People's Action executive director Sulma Arias saidDemocrats "must beat him at the ballot box" to keep him from further eroding U.S. democracy, climate action, and other progressive values.

===

2x?

an 5 24

Trump has long used the social media platform Truth Social to criticize anyone he views as an enemy, or a threat to his reputation.

Ahead of the start of his New York hush money trial on 34 felony counts for falsifying business records, the MAGA hopeful urged his supporters to turn out in droves to protest the case against him.

A few days later, on April 23, the former president wrote via Truth Social that presiding Judge Juan Merchan is a "'highly conflicted' overseer of a 'kangaroo court.'"

READ MORE:**'History is repeating itself': House Dem warns GOP laying groundwork for another January 6**

Per a Thursday USA Today report, Trump's "rhetoric is inspiring widespread calls for violence."

MAGA fans "swiftly replied to his post with a blitz of attacks on Merchan," according to the report, and "the comments soon turned ugly," as some devoted Trump supporters "called for Merchan and other judges hearing cases against Trump to be killed."

One social media user wrote, "Treason is a hangable offense."

Another said, "They should all be executed."

USA Today reports:

In a review of commenters’ posts on three pro-Trump websites, including the former president’s own Truth Social platform, Reuters documented more than 150 posts since March 1 that called for physical violence against the judges handling three of his highest-profile cases – two state judges in Manhattan and one in Georgia overseeing a criminal case in which Trump is accused* of illegally seeking to overturn the state’s 2020 election results.

The newspaper also notes:

The Gateway Pundit, a website influential in the pro-Trump community, is also a frequent venue for Trump-inspired violent rhetoric. 'These judges and lawyers should HANG for perpetuating these fraud cases,' a commenter wrote on April 16, suggesting the executions would be '*an example for future generations of judges and lawyers.'

READ MORE:['Ready to start another insurrection’: Gaetz support for Trump echoes Proud Boys order

Former New York Police Department Director of Intelligence Mitchell Silber, according to the report, "compared the Trump supporters now calling for violence against judges to the Capitol rioters who believed they were following Trump’s 'marching orders' on Jan. 6, 2021."

Silber emphasized, "This is just the 2023-2024 iteration of that phenomenon. Articulating these ideas is the first step along the pathway of mobilizing to violence."

USA Today's full report is available[here

===

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AN 5 24

Former President Donald Trump has long used the social media platform Truth Social to criticize anyone he views as an enemy, or a threat to his reputation.

Ahead of the start of his New York hush money trial on 34 felony counts for falsifying business records, the MAGA hopeful urged his supporters to turn out in droves to protest the case against him.

A few days later, on April 23, the former president wrote via Truth Social that presiding Judge Juan Merchan is a "'highly conflicted' overseer of a 'kangaroo court.'"

READ MORE:'History is repeating itself': House Dem warns GOP laying groundwork for another January 6

Per a Thursday USA Today report, Trump's "rhetoric is inspiring widespread calls for violence."

MAGA fans "swiftly replied to his post with a blitz of attacks on Merchan," according to the report, and "the comments soon turned ugly," as some devoted Trump supporters "called for Merchan and other judges hearing cases against Trump to be killed."

One social media user wrote, "Treason is a hangable offense."

Another said, "They should all be executed."

USA Today reports:

In a review of commenters’ posts on three pro-Trump websites, including the former president’s own Truth Social platform, Reuters documented more than 150 posts since March 1 that called for physical violence against the judges handling three of his highest-profile cases – two state judges in Manhattan and one in Georgia overseeing a criminal case in which Trump is accused* of illegally seeking to overturn the state’s 2020 election results.

The newspaper also notes:

The Gateway Pundit, a website influential in the pro-Trump community, is also a frequent venue for Trump-inspired violent rhetoric. 'These judges and lawyers should HANG for perpetuating these fraud cases,' a commenter wrote on April 16, suggesting the executions would be '*an example for future generations of judges and lawyers.'

READ MORE:'Ready to start another insurrection’: Gaetz support for Trump echoes Proud Boys order

Former New York Police Department Director of Intelligence Mitchell Silber, according to the report, "compared the Trump supporters now calling for violence against judges to the Capitol rioters who believed they were following Trump’s 'marching orders' on Jan. 6, 2021."

Silber emphasized, "This is just the 2023-2024 iteration of that phenomenon. Articulating these ideas is the first step along the pathway of mobilizing to violence."

*USA Today's full report is availablehere

===

===

an 5 24

in his new book, "The Wannabe Fascists: A Guide to Understanding the Greatest Threat to Democracy," historian/author Federico Finchelstein examines authoritarian movements around the world — and cites Donald Trump's MAGA movement as an example.

Casey Michel of The Human Rights Foundation applauds the book as informative, if imperfect, in a review published by the conservative website The Bulwark on May 14.

Finchelstein, according to Michel, identifies four "primary characteristics" of fascism and lays out some reasons why "Trump and the other budding autocrats rising alongside him" are "so dangerous."

READ MORE:**George Conway: Trump’s New York trial is proving to be 'the perfect case'**

"As Finchelstein ably argues, it's only in properly defining Trump — and properly understanding his historical context, American and otherwise — that we can truly understand the threat he poses and navigate the world he’s ushered in," Michel explains. "Indeed, much of the book is devoted to definitions, and to identifying where the lines between populism and fascism truly lie.

The four pillars of fascism that Finchelstein identifies in his book are xenophobia, propaganda, political violence, and dictatorship.

According to Michel, Trump has "clearly built out planks" of the first three but "has been unable to construct a full dictatorship."

"In that sense…. Trump is simply an aspiring fascist, rather than a fully realized one," Michel argues. "He is, as Finchelstein writes, a 'populist aspirant to fascism' — or…. a 'wannabe fascist.'"

READ MORE:**Trump's price for selling the planet: $1 billion**

Finchelstein's book, according to Michel, underscores the dangers of Trump possibly winning the United States' 2024 presidential election.

"Right now, with a U.S. election less than six months away, the American wannabe despot is eager to take power once more in Washington — this time without any need for a self-coup," Michel warns. "It's for Americans themselves to decide whether they'd like to offer Trump the opportunity, as a would-be fascist, to finally get what he wants."

READ MORE:**Expert warns dark shift in Trump’s tone is 'how fascists campaign'**

*Casey Michel's full article for The Bulwark is available at this link.

===

an raw 5 24

yet another false claim by Trump supporters in defense of the January 6 rioters has been blown to pieces after House Republicans released their latest batch of footage of the attack on the U.S. Capitol, according to longtime congressional reporter Jamie Dupree.

Specifically, Dupree wrote, the footage puts the lie to the assertion that police at the Capitol stood by and opened the doors to let the rioters in — a claim that is often used as evidence that the whole event was somehow an entrapment operation to trick Trump supporters into committing acts of violence.

"Courtesy of House Republicans, I went to watch 3 more hours of Jan. 6 security tapes from the Capitol today," wrote Dupree in a post on X. "The tapes show the biggest lie about Jan. 6 is that the cops 'opened the doors' to let Trump supporters in. That did not happen."

The footage in Dupree's post showed police trying to hold the line and prevent the mob from bursting in through several doors at the Capitol, often being overpowered by a flood of people rushing them. At no point in the footage did police stand aside or open doors to allow people in.

ALSO READ:**Trump told to pay up before rallying in N.J. town he previously stiffed**

Ever since the Capitol attack, which led to widespread injuries among officers, millions of dollars in damage throughout the building, and jeopardized the safety of members of Congress certifying the electoral count, defenders of the participants of pushed a number of false claims, including that none of them were armed — which was swiftly debunked as several were arrested on various weapons charges.

In recent months, House Republicans have released thousands of hours of raw security footage of the January 6 attack. This marks a reversal from a previous assertion by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) that the footage couldn't be released unaltered because those who participated in the attack could be "retaliated against," which led to widespread outrage.

Watch the video below or at this link

5/15/24 kpfa 7 am BET ucla gaza students coord attack threat 2 days before GUK ; leave our kids alone anti drag; kkk pol pro zion but anti-semite

4 Bruin student joutno targeted /hurt

===

an 5 24

rr despite the popularity of the recent movie “Civil War,” we’re not on the verge of a second one. But we areseparating into so-called “red” and “blue.” And if Trump is reelected president, he’ll hasten the separation.

Since the Supreme Court’s decision to reverseRoe v. Wadeleft the issue of abortion to the states, one out of three women of childbearing age now lives in a state that makes it nearly impossible to get an abortion.

And while red states are making it harder than ever to get abortions, they’re making it easier than ever to buy guns.

Red states are also banning diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in education. Florida’s Board of Education recently prohibited public colleges from using state and federal funds for DEI. Texas Governor Greg Abbott has signed a law to require that all state-funded colleges and universities close their DEI offices.

Red states are suppressing votes. In Florida and Texas, teams of “election police” have been created to crack down on the rare crime of voter fraud, another fallout from Trump’s big lie.

They’re banning the teaching of America’s history of racism. They’re requiring transgender students to use bathrooms and join sports teams that reflect their sex at birth.

They’re making it harder to protest. More difficult to qualify for unemployment benefits and other forms of public assistance. Harder than ever to form labor unions.

They’re even passing “bounty” laws — enforced not by governments but by rewards to private citizens for filing lawsuits — on issues ranging from classroom speech to abortion to vaccination.

Blue states are moving in the opposite direction. Several, including Colorado and Vermont, are codifying a right to abortion. Some are helping cover abortion expenses for out-of-staters.

When Idaho proposed a ban on abortion that empowers relatives to sue anyone who helps terminate a pregnancy after six weeks, nearby Oregon approved $15 million to help cover the abortion expenses of patients from other states.

Maryland and Washington have expanded access and legal protections to out-of-state abortion patients. California has expanded access to abortion and protected abortion providers from out-of-state legal action.

After the governor of Texas ordered state agencies to investigate parents for child abuse if they provide certain medical treatments to their transgender children, California enacted a law making the state a refuge for transgender youths and their families.

Blue states are also coordinating more of their policies. During the pandemic, blue states joined together on policies that red states rejected — such as purchasing agreements for personal protective equipment, strategies for reopening businesses as Covid subsided, even on travel from other states with high levels of Covid.

But as blue and red states separate, what will happen to the poor in red states, disproportionately people of color?

“States’ rights” has always been a cover for racial discrimination and segregation. The poor — both white and people of color — are already especially burdened by anti-abortion legislation because they can’t afford travel to a blue state to get an abortion.

They’re also hurt by the failure of red states to expand Medicaid eligibility under the Affordable Care Act, by red state de factosegregation in public schools, and by red state measures to suppress votes.

One answer is for Democratic administrations and congresses in Washington to prioritize the needs of the red state poor and make extra efforts to protect the civil and political rights of people of color in red states. Yet the failure of the Senate to muster enough votes to pass the Freedom to Vote Act, let alone revive the Voting Rights Act, suggests how difficult this will be.

Blue states could spend additional resources on the needs of red state residents, such as Oregon is now doing for people from outside Oregon who seek abortions. And prohibit state funds from being spent in any state that bans abortions or discriminates on the basis of race, ethnicity, or gender.

California already bars anyone on a state payroll (including yours truly, who teaches at Berkeley) from getting reimbursed for travel to states that discriminate against LGBTQ+ people.

Where will all this end?

If Trump is elected this November, the separation will become even sharper. When he was president last time, Trump acted as if he was president only of the people who vote for him — overwhelmingly from red states — and not as the president of all of America.

Recall that during his presidency, he supported legislation that hurt voters in blue states — such as his tax law that stopped deductions of state and local taxes from federal income taxes.

More than 4 in 10 voters believe that a second civil war is likely within the next five years, according to a Rasmussen Reports poll conducted April 21-23.

Red zip codes are getting redder and blue zip codes, bluer. Of the nation’s total 3,143 counties, the number of super landslide counties — where a presidential candidate won at least 80 percent of the vote — jumped from 6 percent in 2004 to 22 percent in 2020.

Surveys show Americans find it increasingly important to live around people who share their political values. Animosity toward those in the opposing party is higher than at any time in living memory. Forty-two percent of registered voters believe Americans in the other party are “downright evil.”

Almost 40 percent would be upset at the prospect of their child marrying someone from the opposite party. Even before the 2020 election, when asked if violence would be justified if the other party won the election, 18.3 percent of Democrats and 13.8 percent of Republicans responded in the affirmative.

We are becoming two Americas — one largely urban, racially and ethnically diverse, and young. The other, largely rural or exurban, white and older.

But rather than civil war, I see a gradual, continuous separation — analogous to unhappily married people who don’t want to go through the trauma of a formal divorce.

America will still be America. But it is fast becoming two versions of America. The open question is the same as faced by couples who separate: Will the two remain civil toward each other?

*Robert Reich is a professor at Berkeley and was secretary of labor under Bill Clinton. You can find his writing at https://robertreich.substack.com/.

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mma 5 24

right-wing media figures have spent the last year hyping the potential for mass political violence and baselessly asserting the 2024 election will be stolen. In a new interview with Time magazine, former President Donald Trump appeared to give fuel to both of those trends.

In the interview, Trump refused to condemn or discourage any future violent actions by his supporters if he loses the general election in November. When asked by Time whether he was concerned about political violence following the election, Trump responded: “I think we're gonna have a big victory. And I think there will be no violence.” Time later followed up, asking, “What if you don’t win, sir?”

“Well, I do think we're gonna win,” Trump responded, adding, “I don't think they'll be able to do the things that they did the last time, which were horrible.”

“And if we don't win, you know, it depends,” he said. “It always depends on the fairness of an election. I don't believe they'll be able to do the things that they did the last time. I don't think they'll be able to get away with it.”

Trump has long pushed election denialism and is currently facing charges for attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election, including attempting to prevent certification of the results during the riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. He has also been open in his embrace of street vigilantism, famously instructing far-right extremist gang the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” following large-scale anti-racist demonstrations in the summer of 2020.

Beyond Trump’s own comments, consumers of right-wing media have been fed a steady diet of commentary that normalizes political violence, making it appear inevitable. In one particularly clear example from March, BlazeTV’s Steve Deace said, “I think there will be violence after the election regardless of the outcome,” and wished that “Trump had acted the way we wanted him to in the summer of 2020” by cracking down harder on the left-wing protests, predicting that it “would have rallied people that were either on the fence and sick of all that crap or inspired his own base all the more.”

These right-wing fantasies about large-scale violence often take the form of claiming the United States is headed toward another civil war as a result of left-wing provocation.

Last August, on the same evening that Trump surrendered to authorities in Georgia on charges he’d acted to overturn the state’s 2020 election results, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin appeared on Newsmax.

“I think those who are conducting this travesty and creating this two-tiered system of justice and I want to ask them, ‘What the heck? Do you want us to be in civil war?’ because that's what's going to happen,” Palin said. “We're not going to keep putting up with this."

Palin agreed with the host that “we need to get angry,” adding, “We do need to rise up and take our country back.”

The same month, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk was asked a question about whether right-wing activists should form militias, and responded by warning that “the bad guys are trying to provoke us into a civil war.” He then advised the audience that “you need to have systems and backup plans of self-sovereignty [if], God forbid, our entire society falls apart and/or our government becomes even more tyrannical and authoritarian,” concluding, “That's why we have the Second Amendment."

Trump and right-wing media are in a feedback loop, each feeding the other's fantasies about impending political violence and rigged elections.

In October, Daily Wire host Micheal Knowles argued that a judge’s decision to allow a challenge to Trump’s candidacy based on the 14th Amendment meant that “we are dangerously close to the conditions that we were at in 1860."

“And I'm not one of these catastrophists who says that we're always going to be on the brink of civil war, and we're all gonna — I'm certainly not encouraging civil war by any means,” Knowles said. “But it could happen. … Civil wars happen. And the liberals would appear to be cultivating the conditions to make it much more likely."

January saw right-wing media figures turn the civil war rhetoric on overdrive after the Supreme Court allowed the Biden administration to remove razor wire Texas state authorities had placed along the U.S.-Mexico border.

On his January 23 show, Kirk said that if Texas ignored the ruling, “some people would say, ‘Well, that's the seeds of a civil war,’” adding, “By the way, I'm all on board."

In the same episode, Kirk told his audience: “Native-born Americans, you better buy weapons, everybody. Have a lot of guns at your disposal. I would never leave your home without a weapon. It's the new country we live in. It is Mad Max. Biden is creating Mad Max. You're on your own."

The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh argued that “the solution is obvious, which is that red state governors will need to ignore the Supreme Court,” warning ominously that “the last civil war was unimaginable until it wasn't. That was a lesson this country learned in the middle of the 19th century. And if the Biden administration is somehow still in office after this next election, then just as abruptly, we might have to learn it again.”

Walsh’s then-colleague Candace Owens similarly claimed, “We are edging very closely to a civil war."

Even when right-wing figures aren’t normalizing civil war rhetoric or rationalizing mass violence, they extoll the virtues of breaking the law on behalf of the MAGA movement.

In March, former Trump adviser Steve Bannon told attendees at a right-wing activists conference, “You have to be prepared to go to prison” in order “to take on the deep state.” Just days later, Kirk defended a Turning Point USA activist charged in the January 6 Capitol riot, calling the case “typical Soviet-style indictment BS” and promising, “I'm gonna keep on standing behind her.”

“These are modern day hostages that are being held by this regime,” he added.

In the Time interview, Trump said he would “absolutely” consider pardoning the more than 800 people who have been sentenced for their role in January 6, who he has also referred to as “hostages,” “political prisoners,” and “patriots.” (Earlier this month, a group of Proud Boys appeared outside a Trump rally in North Carolina, with one member holding a sign demanding the release of January 6 prisoners.)

Another key aspect of Trump’s Time interview is his false insistence that the 2020 election was fraudulent, and that the only way he could lose in November is also rigged against him.

Here again Trump has myriad allies in right-wing media. In January, Fox News was already casting doubt on the 2024 election, with host Laura Ingraham baseless claiming, “The Democrats are going to stop at nothing” to win, including trying “to game the system or yeah, maybe even cheat.”

Bannon frequently makes the same accusations. Just in the last few months, he’s said that Democrats need “phony fake voters” to win and claimed, “The only way they defeat Trump is they steal it.” In March, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones appeared on Bannon’s podcast and declared, “We know they are publicly trying to steal this election again.”

For his part, Kirk recently hosted an entire conference devoted to election denialism with the expressed purpose of “competing right up against” the Republican National Committee, which was holding a winter meeting in the hotel next door.

All of these comments together create a media environment where consumers of conservative news are prepared to reject the outcome of the November election if Trump loses. Those same audiences have been primed to expect — or potentially engage in — right-wing vigilantism following a Biden victory.

Last July, a poll from The Associated Press found that “only 22% of Republicans have high confidence that votes in the upcoming presidential election will be counted accurately compared to 71% of Democrats, underscoring a partisan divide fueled by a relentless campaign of lies related to the 2020 presidential election.” Separately, a March poll from PBS found that “28% of Republicans strongly agree or agree that Americans may have to resort to violence in order to get the country back on track.” (That number was 12% for Democratic voters.)

Trump and right-wing media are in a feedback loop, each feeding the other's fantasies about impending political violence and rigged elections. The Time interview makes clear that Trump will continue to pour fuel on this fire.

an 4 24

americans who have purchased firearms since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic are far more willing to engage in political violence against their fellow citizens, according to a new study.

The Guardian recently reported on a study by the University of California-Davis' violence prevention research program dubbed "Firearm Ownership and Support for Political Violence in the United States." Researchers surveyed roughly 13,000 gun owners who bought their weapons over the last four years, and asked if violence was justified in order to accomplish political objectives. 39% of gun owners — a plurality — said yes, while 30% said no.

UC-Davis researchers warned that American gun owners in the survey could potentially be "arming up for anticipated civil conflict."

READ MORE:**Robert Reich: The threat of 'fascist political violence' has 'clearly intimidated Republican lawmakers'**

"Our findings strongly suggest that large numbers of armed individuals who are at least potentially willing to engage in political violence are in public places across the US every day," the study read.

More specifically, 42% of respondents who own AR-15 style assault weapons were in favor of political violence, along with 44% of more recent gun buyers. Additionally, 56% of gun owners who openly carry their firearms in public told researchers they would be willing to carry out political violence.

"Recent purchasers and always- or nearly-always-carriers were more willing to kill to advance political objectives," the study read.

The study was published Tuesday by Jama Network Open, which is a monthly open access medical journal published by the American Medical Association. Its principal author, Garen Wintemute, is a professor of emergency medicine at UC-Davis, and is approaching the problem of American political violence as a public health issue, according to the Guardian.

READ MORE:**Jen Psaki slams Trump over 'embrace of political violence'**

While the political violence that erupted on January 6, 2021 was initially widely criticized by former President Donald Trump (though only hours after his supporters initially breached the US Capitol) and Republican lawmakers, many have since done a one-eighty. Trump himself has promised on multiple occasions to pardon January 6 defendants, particularly those incarcerated in Washington, DC jail.

As New York University's Just Security publication recently reported, many of those defendants are incarcerated specifically for attacking police officers. The former president has reportedly been in contact with Micki Witthoeft, who is the mother of deceased January 6 participant Ashli Babbitt. A US Capitol police officer shot Babbitt after she broke past several police lines and attempted to leap through a broken window at several lawmakers huddling in the speaker's lobby just several feet away.

READ MORE:**Nearly all J6 defendants Trump wants to pardon assaulted police officers: security experts**

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an 4 24 op ed

...If 3 and 10 Republicans believe Americans may have to resort to violence “to set things straight” we are talking about roughly 20 million Americans who feel this way. And even if this poll’s plus/minus accuracy rate is absolutely abysmal, would any of you feel better if “only” 15 million Republicans feel this way? How about ten million? Five million????

Hell, it’s chilling that 1,000 people actually think this is a prudent course. It takes just one nut with a gun to terrorize an entire town, for Christ’s sake.

If you are asking how I arrived at my calculations, I did it this way: Trump got slightly more than 74,000,000 votes in 2020. Thirty percent of that number would roughly work out to 20+ million.

Twenty million-plus people who think we need violence “to set things straight ...”

And what does “set things straight” even mean? I’ll let you decide that, but besides sounding thuggish, in my mind we are talking about returning to a time when white men ran every single bit of everything in this country, and by extreme force.

How many of these Republicans who see violence as a way “to set things straight” are cops? How many of these Republicans who see violence as a way “to set things straight” are in our military? How many of these Republicans who see violence as a way “to set things straight” are in our Congress? How many of these Republicans who see violence as a way “to set things straight” are moms and dads?

We know for an ironclad fact the Republican nominee for president feels this way. He sees January 6 as a reason for celebration, not utter shame. He calls it a “beautiful day” and those who attacked us “hostages.” He told us, “he loves them.”...

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kirk Trump ally’s stunning request: 'If this election doesn’t go our way the next day we fight' - Alternet.org

mma 3 24

sotu response? in which boden laid out strong economy, also // no gun control b/c madmen

econ spin on they will make us be violent

LAURA LOOMER (HOST): Nobody gives a shit about profanity. Nobody gives a shit. Nobody cares anymore about optics. Nobody cares anymore about how you say things. Because once people start starving, right, once people have to look their children in the eyes and their kids are hungry, and they say, mommy, I'm hungry, and they say, I'm sorry, baby. I don't have any money for food, that's when things are about to get real in this country. OK? That's when things are gonna get real, and you're gonna see massive amounts of people switch from voting Democrat to voting Republican, and you're already seeing it. Because there's people that are sitting there, they're busting their ass, working two to three jobs a week, working 80 to 90 hours a week, not even able to meet their expenses. OK? Their kids are starving. They're starving. Their marriages are struggling because they and their husband, or they and their wife are struggling to just get by, OK?

And meanwhile, every damn day, we see another story about illegal aliens going to the Ritz Carlton. Illegal aliens getting free flights. Illegal aliens getting free clothes and free cell phones, and someone's gonna snap. Someone's gonna snap. It's gonna happen. And you know what? I'm not gonna care when it happens. You know why? Because there's only so much people can take.

I'm not inciting violence when I say that, but they're pushing people to a point of no return. OK? They're pushing people to the point where people are going to start feeling mentally unstable because of their own despair in this country, and people are gonna start to go actually crazy. OK? They're pushing people to the brink. We have a mental health crisis in this country. And when you have people who are feeling unstable and they can't afford to get help because they can't even afford food and they can't even afford gas and they can't afford rent, you're creating an unstable environment in your country. You're -- it's like a -- it's a -- it's like a powder keg waiting to explode. That's how I would describe it. And so I wouldn't be surprised if we start to see people losing their minds and having, you know, psychotic episodes or if we see people start to snap and more shootings take place, or more acts of violence take place.

alternet- no lnx

Home | Trumpsters who want a civil war hope they can create enough chaos to fulfill their fantasies

How to reverse 'democracies being taken over by far-right ideologies and conspiracy thinking': author

Thom Hartmann

February 21, 2024

America is under assault, and, in the 9th year since Trump burst on the political scene, it’s happening so often now that it’s becoming normalized. This is a very real danger to the survival of our republic.

And they’re getting more brazen: this past weekend a group of mask-clad Nazis marched through downtown Nashville complete with swastikas and racist chants. The media treated it like “just another day.”

Republicans who run Texas are in open defiance of the US Supreme Court and the federal government over who has legal responsibility for enforcing our immigration laws and protecting our borders. It’s the most significant challenge to federal authority since the Nullification Crisis of 1832 that led us straight toward the Civil War.

And, indeed, it’s stirring up pro-new-civil war rhetoric among the racist base of the GOP. Televangelist Andrew Wommack, a big Republican supporter who called COVID a hoax “hyped by liberals as an opportunity to come against Trump,” on his Truth & Liberty podcast recently promoted the idea, along with replacing the US Constitution with the Christian Bible:

“I’ve actually had people say that if Trump was to be elected if we got a conservative Congress, that they fear that we would have another civil war,” Wommack told a caller. “And you know what? I don’t want a civil war, I don’t know anybody that does, but would it be worth it? To turn this nation back? I believe it would.”

Having been caught in the middle of a civil war years ago in Uganda (and having had one of my colleagues killed in it by stray gunfire into our refugee camp), I can say with a pretty high level of certainty that anybody who’s pushing civil war here in America has never experienced one.

Nikki Haley has been swatted twice, been physically attacked on stage, and is now being stalked at campaign events by Putin-loving Trump followers who are outraged that she’s calling for more military aid for Ukraine.

Jacob Ware, author of Guns, God, and Sedition: Far-Right Terrorism in Americaand a consultant to the Council on Foreign Relations, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC):

“I think intent to commit violence is high across the political spectrum, but especially on the far right. And in the United States, we always have the capability to conduct violence because of our gun laws. There’s a very poisonous mix being brewed with the great potential for violence in 2024 and beyond.”

Just days after Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows ruled that Trump had committed sedition and therefore couldn’t be on that state’s ballot, she was swatted at home. Judges Tanya Chutkin and Arthur Engoron have also been targeted by fascist Trump followers.

A Trump devotee armed with a hammer broke into Nancy Pelosi’s home and tried to beat her husband, Paul Pelosi, to death; on the campaign trail, Trump regularly refers to the incident as if it was some sort of victory for him and his people, joking about it in a way that some interpret as encouragement for future similar attacks on Democrats.

Another apparent Trump follower, just last month, murdered and decapitated his own father because he was a federal employee and, therefore, part of the “deep state” that Trump has repeatedly called on to be destroyed.

An October survey by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) found that fully 23 percent of Americans agree with the statement that “true American patriots may have to resort to violence to save the country.” The Institute’s CEO, Melissa Deckman, told the CBC:

“You have political leaders like Donald Trump who are not willing to ratchet down that rhetoric — in fact, they're doing the very opposite. In that context, I’m not surprised to see that Nikki Haley is asking for more security.”

When The Washington Post looked into the problem, they found that people running for Congress increased their spending on security by over 500 percent between the time Trump lost in 2020 and last November’s midterms.

The Brennan Center for Justice questioned over 1,700 state and local elected officials in all 50 states and found that fully 40 percent reported being threatened or physically attacked in the three years since Trump lost. Ninety percent said they’d been “harassed, intimidated, or stalked,” and one in ten state legislators reported that a person with a weapon had tried to intimidate them on one or more occasion.

Fascist Republicans are apparently getting what they want out of these intimidation tactics: one-in-five state officials, and almost half of local elected officials report that because of the threats they’re less willing to involve themselves in any way with “controversial” issues like abortion, immigration, or gun control.

Last year, Republican anti-abortion extremist Philip Buyno loaded his car with a hatchet, flares, matches, and bottles and cans filled with gasoline, then drove to the offices of an Illinois reproductive care clinic, Affirmative Care Solutions.

He repeatedly rammed his car into the front entrance of the building, destroying the main entrance and damaging the building’s foundation, and told police that when he got out of jail he was going to “finish the job.”

Buyno told police he was a member of a “rescue group” along with Matt Trewhella and Dan Holman; Trewhella signed the “Justifiable Homicide Statement” supporting people who murder abortion doctors, while Holman has defended using murder as a way to stop abortion.

Last week an openly Nazi group marched in front of the home of Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey. In Idaho, a group of 31 hateful white supremacists had the case against them dismissed because FBI agents and local prosecutors had “accidentally” bungled evidence and interrogations.

Last week, a Tennessee man was arrested for trying to participate in a plot with two Texas men to visit the southern border and murder Border Patrol agents along with any immigrants they could find. One of them was in possession of six semiautomatic firearms, over 20 magazines, and around 1,800 rounds of ammunition.

The border has been inundated with immigrants ever since Speaker “Moscow Mike” Johnson held a press conference to inform people in South and Central America that “the US border is wide open.” NPR reported on it, noting in their headline, “The border crisis is helping to mainstream a dangerous conspiracy theory.”

Johnson has openly promoted that hateful and antisemitic “Great Replacement Theory” that says wealthy Jews are funding the entrance of millions of Hispanics into our country so they can illegally vote for Democrats.

“If you’re scratching your head,” Johnson told his followers, “you’ve seen the video, you see droves of people, 2.4 million people coming over the border illegally, the president allowing it, the Democrats in charge of Congress are allowing it. The deal is they're going to turn them into voters.”

The Great Replacement Theory, a warmed-over reboot of Hitler’s theories about Jews and Gypsies, now has a huge following in the Republican Party and among Trump supporters.

Recently a “convoy” of armed white supremacists calling themselves “God’s Army” made its way to the southern border, echoing Trump’s (and Hitler’s) rhetoric that dark-skinned immigrants “poison the blood” of a country and intend to “replace” white men in the workplace and bedroom.

The FBI had to evacuate the Border Patrol processing center in Eagle Pass because of threats; a few days later Paul Faye Sr., identified as a “militia sniper,” was arrested for planning to murder Border Patrol agents. His hope was it would cause what he called a “domino effect” in which white men all over the country would take out their weapons and begin a mass slaughter of federal employees, much like the scenario from the novel Turner Diaries that inspired Tim McVeigh.

Faye credited the Great Replacement Theory as his main inspiration, as did the Trump followers and racists who murdered Jews in Pittsburgh, Black shoppers in Buffalo, and Hispanics in El Paso. The Theory was also the basis for Republicans’ impeachment of DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, a detail rarely mentioned in our media.

As the pro-democracy, pro-immigration group America’s Voice noted last month:

“Speaker Johnson, who was an instrumental supporter of Trump’s attempted coup, is far from alone as a Member of Congress promoting the conspiracy meant to undermine the faith in the democratic process.

“America’s Voice has identified 120 Members of Congress who amplified the replacement and invasion conspiracy in their official capacity just this last year.

“We identified over 1,040 times top GOP candidates, officials, or outfits that pushed the bigoted fiction in just the last year. We also identified this disturbing practice more than 700 times in 2022.

“In 2023 the Republican House majority also brought 13 witnesses to Congressional hearings who had promoted replacement and invasion conspiracies and even one witness who participated in Jan. 6 was asked by the Republicans to serve as a witness on one of their anti-immigrant hearings.”

Even candidates for the Senate are getting into the act, as American Journal News noted with their headline about the man who wants to take on Bob Casey for the US Senate this November:

“Republican David McCormick invests millions in website that platforms Holocaust denial.”

The Michigan House of Representatives just stripped Republican Representative Josh Schriver of his committee assignments for publicly promoting the Replacement Theory. Lt. Governor Garlin Gilchrist, a regular guest on my radio program, said:

“Rep. Schriver’s peddling of the racist ‘replacement theory’ is a deplorable demonstration of his fear of a dynamic and diverse Michigan future where all of our people in every community can succeed.”

Rolling Stone has discovered that fascist street gangs (“militias”) are embracing a new tactic, showing up on the scene of mass shootings and other mass casualty events to do their recruiting. Trace reporter Sonny Sone lays it out:

“According to geolocated footage reviewed by the magazine, members of a right-wing militia called Patriots for America — whose volunteers patrol the southern border with long guns and regularly espouse conspiracy theories targeting migrants — were on the scene, and spent almost 10 minutes beyond the police line, while law enforcement responded to the massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, in May 2022.

“Last fall, armed neo-Nazis responded to the mass-casualty gun rampage in Lewiston, Maine, and gained access to the shooter’s registered address.”

The highly publicized mass shooting at Joel Ornsteen’s megachurch last week was allegedly committed by a woman steeped in antisemitic writings. That same week, the FBI arrested a Minnesota man who was a member of the Aryan Freedom Network, an openly Nazi group of Trump supporters, for conspiring to modify semiautomatic weapons into full automatic mode for the “coming race war.”

Two weeks ago, police in Massachusetts arrested a second man in connection with four fires set at Jewish community centers and Jewish-owned businesses. Rabbi Avi Bukiet, one of the victims of the attacks, said the fires were, “a domestic terror attack fueled by antisemitic motivations.”

In Maine, a man and his son were arrested last week for painting swastikas on public street corners. In Dallas, a Jewish city councilwoman’s home was defaced with antisemitic and anti-abortion graffiti. Two days later the Hillel Center for Jewish students at Brown University in Rhode Island was on the receiving end of threats of violence. White supremacy stickers popped up on street signs in Stillwater, MN.

In Cheyenne, Wyoming, residents woke up to find White Lives Matter flyers in their mailboxes. The hateful screeds quoted America First leader Charles Lindbergh and mentioned an “anti-white trend” that “will continue to increase unless White people come together to Defend and support their common interests.”

The screed demands, the Rocket Miner newspaper reports:

“[T]hat white people ‘band together to preserve their European blood’ and ‘guard against dilution by foreign races’ because ‘harmonious coalescence is virtually impossible. America’s founding population has gradually been overtaken by a wave of immigration from all around the world which share no connection with American heritage, culture and history.”

In Ashville, NC a white supremacist shut off the power to a local restaurant and left racist material for people stumbling out to find on the front porch, provoking County Commissioner Al Whitesides to say:

“What concerns me is not just what’s alleged here but what you see in America going on all over the country. If you’re African-American, if you’re Jewish, we’re living in an environment in 2024 that I didn’t think in the ‘60s that I would see today.”

In Austin, Texas last week a white supremacist named Bert James Baker stabbed a victim because of the color of his skin or his national origin. Mustafaa Carroll, the interim executive director for CAIR, told reporters:

“Baker repeatedly screamed the N-word and other obscenities, opened a passenger door, pulled one of the victims out of the car and physically attacked him.”

The father of the victim told reporters: “We came into the U.S. after the American dream. And my dream, and our dream, was not a big house or a big car. We want to live in peace and tranquility. We want to be able to cast our opinion without being jeopardized of being killed or shot or even harassed.”

Meanwhile, here in Portland, Oregon a man tried to set several people of color on fire, screaming racial epithets at them.

Almost everything in this article is from the past two weeks or thereabouts: the racist Trump followers who want a second civil war call this an “acceleration,” and hope they can create enough chaos that they can finally fulfill their adolescent fantasies about fighting in a “noble” civil war.

Will they get the conflict they so desperately want (and thought they were getting on January 6th)? I’m skeptical: to paraphrase President Eisenhower, their numbers are small and they are stupid.

Nonetheless, we must be vigilant if America is to survive as a pluralistic, multiracial society…

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https://www.mediamatters.org/tiktok/conspiracy-theories-about-record-breaking-texas-wildfire-spread-online-after-biden-visited

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denier // d barton

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/andrew-wommack-says-it-would-be-worth-having-a-civil-war-to-turn-this-nation-back-to-god/

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January 31, 2024 5:02 pm

• Roger Sollenberger @ The Daily Beast: The ‘Profound Influence’ of Christian Extremists on Mike Johnson.

Speaker Mike Johnson’s spiritual journey reveals ties to Christian fundamentalists who support slavery. Johnson’s office won’t say where he stands on that issue.

• Tom Winter, Valeriya Antonshchuk, Patrick Smith and Caroline Radnofsky @ NBC News: Pennsylvania man arrested after allegedly killing his father and displaying his decapitated head on YouTube.

In the video, which has since been removed, Justin Mohn says his father was a federal employee and refers to him as a traitor while voicing right-wing conspiracy theories.

• Angry White Men: Stew Peters: Somalis Are ‘Filthy Cockroaches That’ve Infested’ Minneapolis.

On the Jan. 30, 2024 episode of his Rumble show, white nationalist and Holocaust denier Stew Peters went on a vile, racist rant about Somali immigrants. While interviewing British Neo-Nazi Mark Collett, Peters called Somalis “gross,” “low IQ” “parasites” and “filthy cockroaches” who “infested the city of Minneapolis” and “hate white people.”

• Kiera Butler @ Mother Jones: Anti-Vax Influencer Stew Peters Has a New Fixation: “The Jews.”

He says he’s not sure whether Hitler was a bad guy, because of all the “propaganda.”

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rww 1 24

william Vaillancourt @ The Daily Beast: Newsmax Airs Alarming Discussion of Civil War With Federal Government.

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt and Newsmax host Carl Higbie mused Thursday about a potential “force-on-force” conflict between Texas and the Biden Administration after the Supreme Court ruled against the state’s Republican governor by declaring that federal agents can remove razor wire laid along the border with Mexico.

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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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*The Federal Government has broad constitutional powers in determining what aliens shall be admitted to the United States, the period they may remain, regulation of their conduct before naturalization, and the terms and conditions of their naturalization… Under the Constitution, the states are granted no such powers." — Takahashi v. Fish & Game Comm'n (1948)

For decades, the Supreme Court has been clear that the federal government, not the states, has the power to regulate immigration. Since 2021, however, Texas has been spending billions annually to impose its own vision of immigration policy — an effort known as "Operation Lone Star." Using members of the Texas National Guard and Texas Department of Public Safety, "Operation Lone Star personnel work around-the-clock to detect and repel illegal crossings." Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) has pledged to "hold the line" at the southern border due to alleged inaction by the Biden administration.

Over the years, Operation Lone Star has become increasingly aggressive. In 2024, it has brought the country to the precipice of a Constitutional crisis.

:{:{The epicenter of the confrontation between Texas and the federal government is Shelby Park, a municipal park in Eagle Pass, Texas, that abuts the Rio Grande River. In this map of the area, submitted by the federal government in a legal filing, the area of the park is defined by the yellow line and the river:}:

pix]

Texas has seized control of Shelby Park, enclosing the entire 47 acres in razor wire and denying entry to the U.S. Border Patrol.

*Texas National Guard soldiers wait nearby the boat ramp where law enforcement enter the Rio Grande at Shelby Park on January 27, 2024 in Eagle Pass, Texas.

Access to Shelby Park is important to federal authorities because it is used as a "staging area for policing and interdiction operations along the Rio Grande." This includes the use of a boat ramp in the park to access the Rio Grande.

Texas' seizure of Shelby Park and refusal to allow federal officials access have created an extremely dangerous situation. On January 12, three migrants — a woman and two children — drowned in the Rio Grande near the park. When Border Patrol agents went to Shelby Park to address the situation and help other migrants in distress, guardsmen from the Texas National Guard refused to let them enter, saying "they had been ordered not to allow Border Patrol access to the park."

The legal battle between Texas and the federal government over Shelby Park began when Texas sued the federal government for cutting and removing some of the razor wire it installed along the Rio Grande. Border Patrol argued that the razor wire was putting its agents and migrants legally entitled to claim asylum at risk. Texas argued that the federal government was illegally destroying its property. The state eventually won an injunction from the Fifth Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals, prohibiting the federal government from disturbing Texas' razor wire. The federal government, however, appealed to the Supreme Court. On January 22, in a brief order, the Supreme Court sided with the federal government and lifted the injunction.

Texas' response to the Supreme Court order has been alarming. Abbott issued a statement stating that "[t]he federal government has broken the compact between the United States and the States." Compact theory was championed by John C. Calhoun, one of the staunchest defenders of slavery. It essentially views states as "independent sovereigns" that are free to reject federal authority. It was used to justify the "nullification" of federal laws and, ultimately, secession from the union by Southern states.

As law professor Steven Vladeck notes, the specific constitutional argument Abbott is advancing makes even less sense. This is the key excerpt from Abbott's letter:

I have already declared an invasion under Article I, § 10, Clause 3 to invoke Texas’s constitutional authority to defend and protect itself. That authority is the supreme law of the land and supersedes any federal statutes to the contrary. The Texas National Guard, the Texas Department of Public Safety, and other Texas personnel are acting on that authority, as well as state law, to secure the Texas border.

Abbott is claiming that he can simply declare an "invasion" and grant himself authority that "supersedes any federal statutes." This is legal hogwash.

Article I, § 10, Clause 3 of the Constitution declares that "no State shall, without the Consent of Congress… engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay." In this case, Texas is not being invaded. Migrants, many of whom have legitimate claims of asylum, presenting themselves at the border is not an invasion. Illegal border crossings are something that occurs under every administration and does not constitute an invasion. Further, Abbott is not responding by engaging in "war." He has not invaded Mexico. He has put up some razor wire. But his actions are, according to Vladeck, "antithetical to the constitutional structure of our federal system," which establishes the supremacy of federal law.

Notably, Texas is not yet defying the Supreme Court's January 22 order. That order simply lifted the Fifth Circuit injunction preventing the federal government from removing the razor wire installed by Texas in Shelby Park. The Supreme Court hasn't yet ordered Texas to do anything.

But Texas is continuing to interfere with the federal government's access to Shelby Park, in clear violation of the Constitution and federal law. On January 23, the Department of Homeland Security wrote a letter to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R), demanding "the ability to access the border in the Shelby Park area that is currently obstructed by Texas." In a January 26 response, Paxton rejected the Department of Homeland Security's request and informed the federal government that Texas will continue "to protect its southern border against every effort by the Biden Administration to undermine the State’s constitutional right of self-defense."

The conflict that Texas is creating with the federal government will almost certainly end up back at the Supreme Court. And Texas is inviting a constitutional crisis by signaling that it is prepared to ignore the Supreme Court if it does not get its way.

The new confederacy

The radical and dangerous legal theories being advanced by Texas previously provoked a Civil War and have been broadly rejected for more than a century. So, one might expect Texas to get little support from other states. That is not the case.

On January 25, the Republican Governors Association released a letter — signed by 25 Republican governors — "supporting Texas' constitutional right to self-defense." The governors write that they "stand in solidarity with our fellow Governor, Greg Abbott, and the State of Texas in utilizing every tool and strategy, including razor wire fences, to secure the border." They also explicitly endorsed compact theory, which was used to justify secession. "The authors of the U.S. Constitution made clear that in times like this, states have a right of self-defense, under Article 4, Section 4 and Article 1, Section 10, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution," the governors write. "Because the Biden Administration has abdicated its constitutional compact duties to the states, Texas has every legal justification to protect the sovereignty of our states and our nation." The letter was signed by every Republican governor except Phil Scott (R-VT).

Former President Donald Trump is also supporting Abbott. Trump called on "all willing States to deploy their guards to Texas to prevent the entry of Illegals."

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA), and numerous members of Congress have also aligned themselves with Abbott. Congressman Chip Roy (R-TX) said Texas should tell the Supreme Court to "go to hell." Roy was so proud of this remark, he made a special graphic for his social media accounts.

Inviting chaos

Claiming that Texas has a duty to ignore the authority of the federal government unsurprisingly attracts dangerous extremists. "A trucker convoy of 'patriots' is heading to the U.S. border with Mexico next week," Vice reports. The group, which has dubbed itself "God's Army," believes they are "on a mission to stand up against the 'globalists' who they claim are conspiring to keep U.S. borders open and destroy the country."

A fundraising effort for the group has already raised more than $113,000. "Once willing to die defending this country, now willing to die protecting my family from what this country has become," one anonymous donor wrote. The convoy is being heavily promoted by far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. “There’s a war literally happening now for America,” Jones said.

The convoy is expected to reach Eagle Pass on February 3.

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On Rumble, Stew Peters and TPUSA ambassador suggest violent insurrection against “Jewish-controlled” government | Media Matters for America

Turning Point USA Ambassador Evan Kilgore appeared on the show of virulent antisemite Stew Peters, where the two alleged that Jewish people are behind the world’s problems and advocated for armed revolt. After claiming that the government is “Jewish-controlled,” Kilgore said that people “have to be willing to stand up and use their firearm, use the Second Amendment to protect themselves against this tyranny.”

Peters is a white nationalist and antisemite who hosts a program that streams on Rumble. He has endorsed Holocaust denial and pro-Hitler propaganda and encourages violence as a solution to problems.

Kilgore is a Turning Point USA ambassador. The right-wing organization states that he is an “outspoken Christian and Conservative commentator who focuses on politics, faith, and culture” and says he was “retweeted by President Trump multiple times.”

TPUSA is led by Charlie Kirk, whose recent commentary has included both antisemitism and Islamophobia. The organization recently cut ties with Morgan Ariel, a far-right influencer who pushes antisemitism and has appeared on Peters’ program.

Kilgore was a guest on the January 25 edition of Peters’ program, where the two started discussing the razor wire case in Texas. Kilgore told Peters that “this is all part of a mass depopulation agenda” and “the United States is being invaded by illegal immigrants. It's absolutely disgusting.”

Peters replied of the border: “Electrify it. Shoot people that are trying to come across it.” (Peters has previously called for shooting workers for the nonprofit Catholic Charities USA.)

The conversation then descended into open antisemitism when the two discussed who was behind the world’s problems.

Peters alleged that there’s a “criminal Jewish banking cabal, the central banking system. This system, by the way, that was kicked out of Russia by Vladimir Putin, which is why he's the boogeyman for the entire Jewish-funded media. Blackrock, State Street, Vanguard, the Rothschilds. He kicked them out.”

Kilgore later replied: “No, exactly. They fund everything from the public education system to the banks to literally everything. So they’re funding these wars, they’re instigating these wars, they’re creating these wars in essence, truly.”

Peters also said that when it comes to government, “We have a bunch of people that are sold out to Jews”:

STEW PETERS (HOST): We don't have any representation in Washington. We have a bunch of people that are sold out to Jews. That's what we have. I mean, literally, that's what we have. Nobody can argue that. It's not antisemitic to say that, it is freaking fact. Every one of our bureaucracies. Every one of our three letter agencies, all of our Ivy League schools, all of our publicly funded college post-secondary institutions, every institution in this country is led by somebody who claims to be a Jew. Are they practicing Jews? No, of course they're not. They hide behind the Jew label.

Kilgore replied after Peters’ rant: “What you said is exactly correct.” He added: “They're Jewish-controlled. And, you know, people like me, the everyday American conservative Christian is waking up to this.” He then praised Holocaust denier Nick Fuentesfor being “kind of a forefront leader” in criticizing “Jewish people.”

Peters and Kilgore talked about alleged solutions to taking back their government, which prominently included violence. When Peters asked if “America needs to see an insurrection, a violent one,” Kilgore replied:

EVAN KILGORE (TPUSA AMBASSADOR): I think that if we can't get this country back under control, then we certainly need to do something, and does it need to be an insurrection? Possibly. There needs to be a list of demands. If we're going to go take over the Capitol, there needs to be a list of demands saying we're not going to leave unless these are satisfied, unless we the people regain the power in this nation.

(Kilgore had said during the program: “Personally, I don't think January 6 went far enough.”)

Kilgore later complained that “most Americans are far too lazy to ever engage in a civil war,” but the “American people have to be willing to stand up and use their firearm, use the Second Amendment to protect themselves against this tyranny.”

STEW PETERS (HOST): How many Americans do you think are willing to actually use firearms and lethal force to protect their life, liberty, and property, and to protect their kids against a tyrannical government? Or how many of them are just going to lay down and just go to jail, just be carted off by the feds and, you know, handcuffed and just go to jail peacefully and like, be like victims and be like, “Oh my God. Well, now I need a crowdfunding. I need” — you know, I mean, where are we? Where are the real fighters? We don't need political candidates. We need William Wallace.

EVAN KILGORE (TPUSA AMBASSADOR): No, exactly. I do think those people are few and far between. But you're right. A lot of Americans, we talk about a coming civil war between the left and the right, or even some sort of war on the world stage. Most Americans are far too lazy to ever engage in a civil war. The most that we can do is make some tweets on X and post terrible memes on Instagram, and they believe that's fighting the culture war. And it's going to come. One day, this war is going to come to our front door, and American people have to be willing to stand up and use their firearm, use the Second Amendment to protect themselves against this tyranny.

PETERS: Yeah. We have exhausted virtually every, every other available recourse that we have. We really have. I mean, we really have. We have tried to petition the government to redress our grievances. January 6, perfect example.

Peters concluded the segment by stating: “Your State Department is controlled by Jews. Your Department of Justice is controlled by Jews. Your Ivy League schools are controlled by Jews. Your public schools are controlled by Jews. All of your major universities are controlled by Jews. Your entire media is funded by Jews.”

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:{:{WALSH KIRK BLAZE}:

Right-wing media escalate civil war rhetoric after Supreme Court rules against Texas in razor wire case | Media Matters for America

In response to a recent Supreme Court ruling allowing Border Patrol agents to cut razor wire Texas laid along the border with Mexico, right-wing pundits are claiming the Biden administration has sparked a second American Civil War. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett, two members of the court’s conservative block, sided with the three liberal justices in ruling for the federal government.

The issue stems from Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s decision to stretch razor wire over dozens of miles along the state’s southern border, a cruel policy that has failed in its stated objective of deterring unauthorized border crossings. The Biden administration opposes the measures, and has ordered the Border Patrol to remove the barriers. The stand-off between Border Patrol and the Texas National Guard escalated earlier this month, with federal officials blaming Abbott for the deaths of a mother and her two children who drowned in the Rio Grande. (Texas authorities dispute this version of events.)

For his part, Gov. Abbott pledged that Texas will “continue to deploy this razor wire to repel illegal immigration.” Although it may appear that Abbott is in direct defiance of the Supreme Court, the American Immigration Council’s Aaron Reichlin-Melnick explained that the ruling overturned an “order saying Border Patrol COULDN’T remove Texas razor wire to process migrants. It didn’t affirmatively rule that the Border Patrol COULD remove Texas razor wire.” Or, as the New Republic's Matt Ford put it, the Supreme Court “lifted an injunction” on the Department of Homeland Security, so there's “nothing in this case for Texas to obey or defy at the moment.”

This simmering confrontation is the new backdrop for an old story. During election years, conservative media outlets generally ramp up their attacks on immigrants. Separately, over the last year, conservatives have become increasingly comfortable calling for, threatening, or warning about a coming civil war in the country. Responses to the recent court ruling have married these two trends.

As the news broke on January 22, conservative YouTube streamer Tim Pool said it “looks like a Fort Sumter-esque type scenario,” referencing the first battle of the Civil War, adding that “it does feel like it could be escalating to this federal versus state conflict.”

That evening, former Fox News star Tucker Carlson posted on X (formerly Twitter), asking: “Where are the men of Texas? Why aren’t they protecting their state and the nation?”

The same night, Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA) wrote that “the feds are staging a civil war, and Texas should stand their ground.”

Then on January 23, former Trump adviser Steve Bannon appeared to favorably reference that post, saying “as Clay Higgins said” there is “kind of a civil war between the federal government and the state of Texas.”

Hours later, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk fantasized about Gov. Abbott openly defying the court’s ruling at the barrel of a gun.

Video CitationFrom the January 23, 2024, edition of Salem Media Group's The Charlie Kirk Show, streamed on Rumble

“So someone says right here, ‘Charlie, what would happen if Texas ignores the ruling? Will the government go to war with Texas?’” he asked.

“The federal government would come in, and some people would say, ‘Well, that's the seeds of a civil war.’ Is that what you want? Where does this end?” Kirk added moments later. “By the way, I'm all on board.”

“If we had an actual governor of Texas that was willing — 100% defy this,” Kirk continued, before advising Abbott on the logistics.

“If you're going to defy, here's how it works: press conference flanked by your most loyal Texas Rangers. ‘I am ignoring the Supreme Court's decision,’” Kirk said, adopting Abbott’s point of view. “‘I will enforce the border of Texas. If you're going to arrest me, you have to go through the Texas Rangers.’”

“If we had more governors on the border, it would be even more powerful,” he added, implicitly invoking the Confederacy. “Get every red state on board. Fly in every Republican governor.”

On Wednesday afternoon Abbott issued a statement invoking “Texas’s constitutional authority to defend and protect itself,” which he claimed is “the supreme law of the land.” Throughout the day, at least nine governors backed Abbott on X, even if they fell short of Kirk’s demand that they travel to the border. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte, Utah Gov. Spencer J. Cox, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp all posted their support for Texas, as did Speaker of the House Mike Johnson.

In the same episode, Kirk told his audience that they had “better buy weapons,” and “have a lot of guns at your disposal.”

That afternoon, The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh echoed Kirk. “Red state governors will need to ignore the Supreme Court and do what needs to be done to protect their citizens and the border,” Walsh said. He later added, “The last civil war was unimaginable until it wasn't.”

In the early evening, Bannon returned to the topic with guest Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA). “That Supreme Court decision that was made has now put the federal government at war with the state of Texas,” Greene said.

“If they fund a war in Ukraine when Zelensky is raising the white flag, asking for peace talks in Switzerland, and they weaken our border policy while the federal government is at war with Texas, that is truly, possibly the start of a civil war in this country,” she added.

Blaze TV’s Steve Deace also invoked the memory of the Civil War. “Basically, the Supreme Court has told Texas your choices are: be invaded or secede,” Deace said.

Video

CitationFrom the January 23, 2024, edition of BlazeTV's The Steve Deace Show

On January 25, Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade adopted the same framing on Fox & Friends.

Video

CitationFrom the January 25, 2024, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends

“It feels like almost like a soft civil war,” Kilmeade said. “You’ve got all the Republicans saying, ‘Can we secure our borders?’ the Democrats saying, ‘I want this to go away’ and blaming Republicans, the President against the governor of Texas — the most independent state in the union. I mean, this is getting a little crazy.”

Fox News sounded little different than the fringe. “This is a constitutional crisis,” said conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, in a video titled: “Supreme Court Decision Provokes Civil War in Texas.”

The story was the same in the right-wing blogosphere, too, with conservative news site PJ Media asking, “Is Joe Biden Mounting a Civil War at the Border?”

Conservative influencer Jordan Peterson posted: “So is it the case that@TheDemocrats are truly ready to go to war with Texas?”

While right-wing media figures fantasize about a new civil war, their rhetoric has real implications for immigration policy. They are stoking xenophobia and nativism, and endorsing cruel policies that are already injuring and killing some of the most vulnerable people in the world.

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{{MMA 1 24 ERUPTION?

SCOTUS let feds nat guard cut texas barbed razor wire?

BlazeTV host Steve Deace: "The Supreme Court has told Texas your choices are be invaded or secede" | Media Matters for America

Warning of civil war, Matt Walsh: "Red state governors will need to ignore the Supreme Court and do what needs to be done to protect their citizens and the border" | Media Matters for America

Charlie Kirk: There is a "border invasion" and "native-born Americans, you better buy weapons, everybody. Have a lot of guns at your disposal" | Media Matters for America

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After previously dining with Trump, Nick Fuentes gives Nazi salute and discusses his willingness to commit violence for Trump | Media Matters for America }}:

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E. Jean Carroll judge tells jurors to use assumed names and not tell family about service - Alternet.org

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Fox News’ Jesse Watters reacts to the Colorado Supreme Court ruling: "The left wants violence" | Media Matters for America

JESSE WATTERS (HOST): Every time Trump's arrested, he becomes more powerful in the eyes of the voters. What's going to happen when they take him off the ballot? They're turning Trump into the greatest political underdog America's ever witnessed. They're setting up the greatest comeback story in American political history.

They say they're protecting us from danger, but Trump's not a danger to us, he's a danger to them. And Americans are starting to ask themselves why. It feels like the left wants violence, because that's where this is going. We're being baited so their actions are justified. That's how it feels. The more the left overplays their hand, the scarier this gets.

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Trump’s promise to pardon Jan. 6 rioters guarantees 'likelihood of more violence': experts - Alternet.org

Nearly 40 percent of Fox News viewers believe FBI organized deadly Jan. 6 riot: survey - Alternet.org

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Steve Bannon: "We should get kids off of social media and start teaching them the proper use of guns" | Media Matters for America

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aha note that violence is always DEFENSIVE  // tucker "warnings"

Daily Wire host suggests a judge allowing a lawsuit regarding Trump's eligibility for office under the 14th Amendment to move forward could result in another civil war | Media Matters for America

Daily Wire host suggests a judge allowing a lawsuit regarding Trump's eligibility for office under the 14th Amendment to move forward could result in another civil war

Michael Knowles: “Civil wars happen. And the liberals would appear to be cultivating the conditions to make it much more likely.”

WRITTEN BY MEDIA MATTERS STAFF

PUBLISHED 10/24/23

CNN reported about a Colorado judge allowing a lawsuit regarding Trump's eligibility for the ballot to move forward:

A judge has rejected three more attempts by former President Donald Trump and the Colorado GOP to shut down a lawsuit seeking to block him from the 2024 presidential ballot in the state based on the 14th Amendment’s “insurrectionist ban.”

The flurry of rulings late Friday from Colorado District Judge Sarah Wallace are a blow to Trump, who faces candidacy challenges in multiple states stemming from his role in the January 6, 2021, insurrection. He still has a pending motion to throw out the Colorado lawsuit, but the case now appears on track for an unprecedented trial this month.

A post-Civil War provision of the 14th Amendment says US officials who take an oath to uphold the Constitution are disqualified from future office if they “engaged in insurrection” or have “given aid or comfort” to insurrectionists. But the Constitution does not spell out how to enforce the ban, and it has been applied only twice since the 1800s.

Legal scholars are discussing whether or not former President Donald Trump can be legally removed from 2024 presidential ballots for his role in inciting the January 6 insurrection, citing a clause in the 14th amendment that bars anyone who “engaged in insurrection” against the United States government from serving in public office. Right-wing pundits have blasted the idea as a “vile attack on our elections” and warned that there will be an “insurrection” if Trump is removed from ballots.

:{:{Video}:

CitationFrom the October 24, 2023, edition of The Daily Wire's The Michael Knowles Show

A judge, a Democrat judge in Colorado, has just green-lit a campaign to keep Trump off the ballot in Colorado. This judge, Sarah Wallace, was appointed by the Democrat governor, Jared Polis, and she has denied a motion by Trump and the Colorado GOP to throw out a lawsuit seeking to block Trump from appearing on the ballot in Colorado. And why are they gonna block Trump from appearing on the ballot? Because he's an evil rapist, insurrectionist, Ukraine colluding, Russia colluding, mean old orange man who we really hate and in invisible ink in the Constitution that says that mean orange men can't be on the ballot. I think that's pretty much the substance of the lawsuit. And this Colorado judge says, OK, it can go ahead – or that's the substance of the campaign, rather. And the judge says, yeah, the campaign could go ahead. Sure. OK.

The last time we had a situation like this, I will remind you, was 1860. People sometimes say that in 1860, Abraham Lincoln didn't appear on the ballot in the southern states, which is not quite true because elections were conducted differently than they are today. You didn't have a formal ballot on a computer screen or even just printed out, it was parties who would produce the ballots, and the GOP didn't even invest in the South because they were never gonna win, and GOP was a new party with not a lot of resources. But the effect of it was basically that Abraham Lincoln was not a candidate that one could even really plausibly vote for in a lot of the country. And then when he got elected president, that was a cause of the Civil War because half the country felt that it didn't have any representation, it didn't really have any say whatsoever. This is not an identical situation, but it's pretty close.

If the liberals succeed at kicking Donald Trump off the ballot in 2024, it's going to tell us two things. One, it's going to tell us that Trump is obviously electable. One of the silliest lines I hear is that Donald Trump can't win the general election. He can't win a general election, which I know is false because he won at least one general election. He did. A lot of people who said the same thing in 2016, Donald Trump can never win a general election. They were quite surprised when he won the general election in 2016. But then they use the dubious election of 2020 to say, well, see, now he actually he can't win, although he could. I think he will. I'm just saying he could. So it's going to the fact that the Dems want to keep him off the ballot shows you they don't think it's going to be a slam dunk to defeat him at the ballot box. Even with the vote harvesting, even with the drop boxes, even with all of their nonsense and all of their shenanigans that open the elections to fraud, they still are not convinced they can beat him at the ballot box. So they want to they want to prevent voters from even having the choice at the ballot box. That's the first thing it's going to tell you.

The second thing it tells you is we are dangerously close to not having much of anything in common as a country. We are dangerously close to the conditions that we were at in 1860. And I'm not one of these catastrophists who says that we're always going to be on the brink of civil war, and we're all gonna – I'm certainly not encouraging civil war by any means. But it could happen. Just like people sometimes say, do you think we're living in the end times? My answer is, well, I don't think we are, but someone's gonna be living in the end times. I guess we could be. That's kind of how I feel about civil war. I'm not saying that we're headed for civil war, but we could be. Civil wars happen. And the liberals would appear to be cultivating the conditions to make it much more likely.

[aha note that violence is always DEFENSIVE  // tucker "warnings"

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Along with Clay Clark, Flynn co-founded the pro-Trump ReAwaken America tour.

LOW PROFILE A WHILE?

MMA 1 24

Retired Gen. Mike Flynn appeared on the December 27, 2023, edition of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ show to praise the host, saying that when he “had first seen him in 2008 and 2009” he had said, “That guy's absolutely right on the money.” In the years since, Flynn has served as the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and White House national security adviser, and could potentially return to government under a second Trump administration.

Jones is one of the country’s leading conspiracy theorists. He has pushed false claims about a variety of tragedies, including the mass shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School and Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School; the Boston Marathon bombing; and 9/11. In November, Jones aired a report questioning the Holocaust death toll.

The families of the Sandy Hook shooting victims successfully sued Jones for his lies about the tragedy.

Despite Jones’ long history of toxicity, right-wing media figures and Republican politicians — including former President Donald Trump — have embraced him over the years.

Among Jones’ admirers is Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser who twice pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI before being pardoned by Trump. Prior to that, Flynn also served as the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency under then-President Barack Obama, but was fired in 2014.

Trump has suggested that Flynn will be involved in his potential second administration, telling him at an event last year: “We’re going to bring you back.”

Flynn has also acted as a far-right media commentator and has repeatedly made toxic remarks. In 2021, he warned his audience that “we're being marched” to Nazi death camps but that, unlike Holocaust victims, he “would never get on that train.” He also seemed to call for a Myanmar-style coup in the United States (which he later denied); encouraged Trump to invoke martial law in order to redo the 2020 election; and tweeted that “Fear of Muslims is RATIONAL.” Flynn also previously supported the QAnon movement.

Along with Clay Clark, Flynn co-founded the pro-Trump ReAwaken America tour. Those events, which feature Eric Trump and other Trump allies, have repeatedly featured Hitler-promoting antisemites. (The tour has dropped those speakers after facing criticism.)

On the December 27, 2023, edition of The Alex Jones Show, Flynn appeared in-studio for a significant amount of time and praised his host. Clark also appeared on the program as a guest.

During a commentary about trusting the right people, Flynn spoke directly to Jones’ audience: “Alex has been bashed over the head for the better part of really 30 years, and I told Alex a couple of years ago when we met that I had first seen him in 2008 and 2009. I said, ‘That guy's absolutely right on the money.’ And here we are sitting here today in 2023, we're talking about the same issues — although they have exacerbated. So we have to really dig in. Do the research, listen to the right people.”

:{:{Video}:

CitationFrom the December 27, 2023, edition of The Alex Jones Show

Shortly after Flynn’s endorsement, Jones characteristically argued that government-aligned entities are planning to stage false flags in order to spark a civil war: “They're going to stage false flags — unless we expose them and stop them — to blame us and trigger this. And they're going to make moves that they believe will elicit a civil war. This isn't coming. It's here. They are going to try this.”

Following Jones’ “false flags” warning, Flynn replied: “This is absolutely right.”

:{:{Video}:

CitationFrom the December 27, 2023, edition of The Alex Jones Show

During the show, as Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights Executive Director Devin Burghart noted, Flynn also invoked violent imagery to prepare viewers for bloody conflict.

MIKE FLYNN: I don't raise my voice that much, but when I do, it means that we are moving to — as Alex just said — we're moving towards the sound of the guns here, folks. And the sound of the guns is freedom. We are going to move towards freedom.

:{:{Video}:

CitationFrom the December 27, 2023, edition of The Alex Jones Show

In a December 2018 Washington Post profile about Flynn, a Defense Intelligence Agency officer said that when Flynn was leading the agency, he “started doing weird things, like bring[ing] his unsecured BlackBerry into the secure space.” Flynn “became unabashed about his beliefs,” the officer said, “In meetings, he sounded like he was reading Breitbart and Alex Jones and random bloggers, alt-right stuff, and he’d just say, ‘Well, I heard this . . .’ ” ENDIT

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an 12 23 no lnx

'Kill yourself now so we can save ammo!' How Trump's violent movement could conquer America

:

Thom Hartmann

December 29, 2023

How would you react if one day you were sitting at home and the phone rang and when you picked it up you heard a man shout:

“Kill yourself now so we can save ammo!”}:

Moments later, an email arrives that says:

“I hope the Federal government hangs you and your daughter from the Capitol dome, you treasonous piece of shit! I pray that I will be sitting close enough to hear your necks snap.”}:

This is what happened to “Shaye” Moss and Ruby Freeman when Trump and Giuliani decided to blame Trump’s loss in Georgia on them, incorrectly claiming they were stuffing ballots for Biden. Just a few hours later, a mob with torches and a bullhorn showed up at Freeman’s house, although she’d already left after being warned by the FBI that she was on the “kill list” of a January 6th defendant they’d just arrested.

Mitt Romney, speaking with writer McKay Coppins for his book “Romney: A Reckoning,” told him the story of multiple Republican senators who were so terrified of violence at the hands of Trump’s fascist followers that they set aside their consciences and voted against convicting him of trying to blackmail Zelenskyy and, later, trying to overthrow the government of the United States.

“One Republican congressman confided to Romney that he wanted to vote for Trump’s second impeachment, but chose not to out of fear for his family’s safety. The congressman reasoned that Trump would be impeached by House Democrats with or without him — why put his wife and children at risk if it wouldn’t change the outcome?}:

“Later, during the Senate trial, Romney heard the same calculation while talking with a small group of Republican colleagues. When one senator, a member of leadership, said he was leaning toward voting to convict, the others urged him to reconsider. You can’t do that, Romney recalled someone saying. Think of your personal safety, said another. Think of your children. The senator eventually decided they were right.”}:

I know liberals and regular reporters in the media who are quite happy trash-talking Biden but are frankly terrified of the possibility that Trump or one of his high-profile followers might sic Trump’s fascist fan boys on them. As a result, they self-censor.

Similarly, multiple judges in the past few months have been given the chance to take Trump off the ticket because of his clear violation of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment by inciting and supporting an insurrection. Each one whiffed, and their legal logic was so thin it’s reasonable to conclude they’re also unwilling to have their families suffer the death threats and harassment that comes with being an “enemy of Trump.”

When the justices on the Colorado Supreme Court finally found the spine to vote him off the ballot, within hours the threats began. Now they’re having to pay for security for themselves and their family members, and go to sleep every night dreading the possibility that a lone wolf Trump supporter — like the one who broke into Paul Pelosi’s home and attacked him with a hammer — may be looking for them, too.

As NBC News reported, Trump’s followers reacted to the Colorado justices with predictable ferocity:

“’This ends when we kill these f--kers,’ a user wrote on a pro-Trump forum that was used by several Jan. 6 rioters.}:

“’Kill judges. Behead judges. Roundhouse kick a judge into the concrete,’ read a post on a fringe website. ‘Slam dunk a judge’s baby into the trashcan.’”}:

NBC’s Ryan Reilly added:

“The threats fit into a predictable and familiar pattern, seen time and time again after legal developments against Trump.”}:

Thus, Jack Smith was unable to find even four Supreme Court justices who were willing to grant cert to hear his challenge to Trump’s claim of absolute immunity from prosecution; terrified, they left the case with the DC Circuit Court of Appeals in the hope those judges will draw Trump’s ire — and his followers’ fire — thus diluting their own risk.

This is how fascism takes over a nation from within: with violence and the fear of violence.

I’ve been doing what is now the nation’s largest progressive radio/TV show for 20 years, reaching an estimated audience of 6 million a week. My writings here on HartmannReport.com are frequently reprinted by other progressive media.

The result is that I regularly get threats, although this is not a phenomenon shared by my rightwing colleagues. When I asked a couple of rightwing radio hosts I’ve known for years if they get threats of violence or death, each said, “No.”

There is no movement advocating political violence on either the American left or in the center. It is entirely confined to the American right, and the media needs to admit that and the FBI needs to recalibrate their efforts.

As fascism expert and historian Emilio Gentile noted about how fascist movements start and gain power:

“In the beginning there was violence.”}:

Violence and the threats of violence are the key to understanding fascists like Trump and the movements they inspire.

As any professional interrogator can tell you, deep down inside, all of us humans are really just scared little kids. The more we’re broken down by the circumstances of life or government policy, the less secure we feel, the harder it is to get by in life, and the more scared we become.

And, for many people, out of that fear comes the willingness — hell, the enthusiasm — to embrace “big daddy” in the form of a tough guy leader who promises to “restore” those who feel the fear back to their previous (or imagined future) positions of power, wealth, and authority.

This becomes particularly easy for fascist leaders when their followers are convinced that the nation’s government has become hopelessly corrupt, a project rightwing fossil fuel billionaires, rightwing media, and Republican politicians have been promoting here in the US for decades.

Ever since the Reagan Revolution, in their zeal to cut their own taxes and stop regulation of the fossil fuel and other polluting industries, they’ve been hammering the message that our government has been seized by “deep state socialists” bent on destroying our country.

Republicans and the billionaires who own them have repeated this conspiracy theory so often for the last few decades that an entire religion, Qanon, as arisen around it.

This belief, that much of what our government does is illegitimate or even malicious, makes it easy for low-information voters to bind themselves to a fascist “reform movement” that promises better times ahead.

As fascist followers act out their violent threats against their leaders’ perceived enemies, they get an inner sense of strength and the feeling that they’ve joined a community: that diminishes their own fear for a short while.

The more an “other” — political enemies; racial, religious, and gender minorities; women — are blamed for the ills of the nation, the more vigilante-style violence against them is justified and the more violent the future becomes.

When the state pushes back against that violence, as America did after January 6th, the calls for increased violence become even louder. Trump is practically shouting “kill them!” with a bullhorn and even our court system is afraid to stop him by throwing him into jail as they would have any other common criminal who encouraged such violence against judges, juries, witnesses, court officials, and their families.

Calling people to violence by denouncing those being scapegoated is central to fascist politics.

Mussolini used to feature Italian “whistleblowers” who, like Joe McCarthy here back in the day, would call out “corrupt” government officials whose only real crime was not supporting him. Hitler had every radio station in Germany play phone calls from local citizens who denounced their neighbors for sympathizing with Jews, socialists, or trade union organizers.

Once publicly targeted in these ways, mobs or lone-wolf assassins would descend on these people’s homes. After a few well-publicized beatings and killings, everybody from media figures to politicians to judges backed away from trying to stop fascists or even hold them accountable.

When he was rising to power in Hungary, for example, Victor Orbàn’s right-hand-man led a torchlight march into a Budapest Roma neighborhood threatening to burn the “gypsies” — who fled in terror — out of their homes. More recently, Orbán started arresting people who “defamed” him on social media.

Soon, nobody in or out of the government is willing to stand up to the fascists; it’s too dangerous and too exhausting. Being the object of regular threats of violence or death is not something anybody would volunteer for unless they saw the stakes as being very, very important.

This is what Trump and the GOP he’s captured are working toward: the silencing of dissent and accountability, replacing them with fear and a guilty complicity. Just take a look at the state of social media today, particularly Xitter and Facebook, which have dialed back on their content moderation and thus loosed the fascists on anybody who dares criticize Trump or the GOP.

As Michael Ebner wrote in his book “Ordinary Violence in Mussolini’s Italy”:

“The Fascist state ruled Italy violently, projecting its coercive power deeply and diffusely into society through confinement, imprisonment, low-level physical assaults, economic deprivations, intimidation, discrimination and other quotidian forms of coercion.

“Moreover, by promoting denunciatory practices, the regime cemented the loyalties of 'upstanding' citizens while suppressing opponents, dissenters and social outsiders.”

Trump is telling us right up right now that he intends to rule as a fascist if he’s able to either win or seize power through other means in 2024. Informally, his militia followers will be showing up at polling places next fall to intimidate voters; they see themselves as the shock troops of the new GOP.

Formally, he’s planning on ending your and my protections against state-sponsored police violence, which he openly intends to deploy against anybody who opposes him and his regime:

“I am also going to indemnify our police officers. This is a big thing, and it’s a brand-new thing, and I think it’s so important. I’m going to indemnify, through the federal government, all police officers and law enforcement officials throughout the United States from being destroyed by the radical left for taking strong actions against crime.”

When Trump says “crime,” of course, he’s using the same fascist-speak that Hitler, Mussolini, Putin, and Orbán use that means “minorities” and “political enemies.”

And his followers are listening and acting.

The Anti-Defamation League published a report finding there have been more than 170 murders committed by rightwing (and, I’d add, therefore probably Trump-aligned) extremists over the past five years; only 3 deaths could be attributed to people “on the left.” None of the victims were “criminals.”

So, how does a nation deal with an epidemic of violent rhetoric and actual violent attempts?

SEE OFFENSIVE:

Fascists are always a minority when they rise to power in a country. They’re experts at manipulating democratic systems — particularly through things like voter suppression, gerrymandering, voter roll purges, and voter intimidation — to seize power, and then corrupting the existing systems and laws in ways that keep them in power.

At the moment, the fascist movement in the US is very much confined within the GOP and aligned with fringe militia and fundamentalist religious factions.

Merrick Garland should have come down on them hard as soon as he assumed his job as Attorney General; because he dithered for two full years until he was shamed into appointing Jack Smith by the January 6th Committee, Trump’s fascist followers have gained considerable momentum.

By continuing to refuse to investigate or prosecute the people who are still in power and conspired with Trump to overthrow our government, Garland further empowers America’s homegrown fascist movement. This must stop, and news that the FBI has finally acquired some of the content of Congressman Scott Perry’s phone is a positive sign, albeit too little and too late.

But the ultimate victory over fascism in America has to be in the ballot box rather than the courthouse. Americans who believe in democracy and reject strongman oligarchy must turn out next November in overwhelming numbers and so shatter the GOP that the party will be forced to reinvent itself in a way that includes purging itself of its fascist-supporting members.

And we damn well better succeed, because fascists never give you a second chance to defeat them or hold them to account. If we try to stop them and fail, Trump has already told us he’ll have a nice cold cell waiting for you and me in the concentration camps he promises to build to hold “millions.”

There is pretty much nothing more important now than waking up our friends and neighbors to this threat…

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Matt Walsh: "We would be a better, healthier country if physical fights broke out in Congress every once in a while" | Media Matters for America

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an 11 23

'Entire existence will be crushed': Trump spokesperson threatens critics - Alternet.org

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an 1123

in 2020, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer was, according to the FBI and U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) officials, the target of a kidnapping plot by far-right militia extremists. The would-be kidnappers, angry over Whitmer's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, reportedly planned to subject her to a fake "trial" and execute her if convicted.

Altogether, 14 people faced federal criminal charges for their alleged roles in the plot; five were convicted by a jury, four entered "guilty" pleas, and five were acquitted. Two of the ones who were acquitted, twin brothers Michael and William Null, were recently honored by far-right Michigan State Rep. Rachelle Smit — who, the Daily Beast reports, honored them at a late-October ceremony."

In a report published on November 8, the Daily Beast's Kelly Weill emphasizes that Smit and other far-right MAGA Republicans are seriously distorting the facts in the plot to kidnap Whitmer.

At the ceremony, Weill reports, Smit gave Michael and Wiliam Null a certificate that read, "Michael Null is an outstanding example of the kind of person who is not content to sit idly while the forces of tyranny attack our Republic. Through his courageous efforts to expose the government's false-flag Whitmer conspiracy, he has made it clear that we all have opportunities each and every day to put our love of country to good use in helping out our fellow citizens."

The certificate also said, "Michael Null could have given up. His government — state and federal — betrayed him: it sent members of its secret police forces to concoct a plot to 'kidnap' Gretchen Whitmer, and to persecute innocent men in this government-orchestrated conspiracy, for the purpose of political theater and political gain."

But Smit, according to Weill, downplays the fact that nine of the defendants in the Whitmer case were either convicted or pled guilty.

"When the FBI announced the arrests of 14 men accused of plotting to kidnap Whitmer, Michigan’s Democratic governor in 2020, commentators on the right were quick to call it a hoax," Weill explains. "While on the 2022 campaign trail, Michigan Republicans even falsely accused Whitmer of concocting the plot herself. When two men were acquitted in the scheme, a GOP gubernatorial candidate running against Whitmer baselessly asserted that 'the FBI conceived a plot to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer and preyed on Michiganders to push it along.'"

READ MORE:'Bitter disputes' and MAGA extremism are leaving the Michigan GOP 'starving for cash': report

The MAGA gubernatorial candidate that Weill is referring to is Garrett Soldano.Far-right conspiracy theorist Julie Kelly, Weill notes, has also described the kidnapping plot as a "hoax."

In response to Smit honoring the Hull Brothers, former Michigan GOP Chairman Jeff Timmer told the Beast, "It's this normalizing, inch by inch, of political violence, making what would've previously been intolerable tolerable in the sense that we just have become numb to it. It's not too distant — if it's distant at all — from the Republican Party, its elected officials, and its party officers…. many of whom, prominent members of Congress from Michigan, members of the legislature, members of the elected party apparatus, have ties to these people who were part of the kidnapping plot."

Barbara McQuade, a former federal prosecutor and frequent legal analyst for MSNBC, described honoring the Hull Brothers as "a very dangerous and reckless move."

McQuade told the Beast, "They were acquitted at trial. And certainly, that means that the jury found that the government had failed to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt, and we should respect that verdict. But it's quite another thing to celebrate political violence."

READ MORE:Muslim Republicans increasingly frustrated by Michigan GOP’s 'strong push toward Christian nationalism'

*Read The Daily Beast's full report at this link (subscription required).

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an ah?1123

in his new book, "The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy: And the Path to a Shared American Future," author Robert P. Jones — founder of the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) — examines the role that far-right Christian nationalism has played in white supremacy. Jones discussed his book and the disturbing results of PRRI's latest American Values Survey during an interview with Salon's Chauncey DeVega.

The survey, Jones warns, found a "rise in support for political violence" to be "particularly troubling."

Jones told DeVega, "The main findings of the survey are pretty stark, troubling and worrisome. We're clearly in for a pretty rough ride in this country over the next 12 months. There is all the awful violence in Israel, and that is spilling over into the U.S. A child was stabbed to death near Chicago by his landlord in a hate crime against Palestinians. Many Jewish students are not feeling safe on university campuses. There are threats against both synagogues and mosques around the country. These are tough times."

The author/PPRI founder added, however, "But I do have hope. This fall, as I’ve been touring the country in the wake of the publication of my new book, 'The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy: And the Path to a Shared American Future,' I've encountered countless people working in local contexts doing the hard work of reckoning with the injustices of our past, repairing the rifts in their communities, and protecting our democracy — not just in blue states, but in places I feature in the book like Mississippi and Oklahoma."

Jones discussedTrump's popularity among Christian nationalists, who, he warns, have a very racist mindset.

"For many of these leaders, be it Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, or Mike Johnson, when they use the word 'Christian,' it is racially coded," Jones told DeVega. "When they say 'Bible-believing Christians,' they are not talking about Black folks and the AME Church. They're not talking about Latino Catholics. They are specifically talking about white evangelical Protestant Christians."

Jones was vehemently critical of House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) during the interview, citing him as a prime example of how dangerous "white Christian nationalism" is.

READ MORE:'Just pure evil': Scarborough hits Trump for comparing Jan. 6 'thugs' to Hamas' hostages

"Mike Johnson is a white Christian nationalist in a tailored suit," Jones told DeVega. "He believes that America is a promised land for white European Christians and that protecting that reality and future is above everything else. Johnson is deeply steeped in that white Christian nationalist worldview, which also includes not believing in the separation of church and state. Behind Johnson's polished public persona is a fairly extreme kind of vision of a white Christian America and a willingness to make the country fit that reality. And that includes overturning an election, such as on January 6, which Johnson supported."

READ MORE:'Strong spokesman': Why Johnson's election is 'like winning the lottery' for evangelical Christians

*Read Chauncey DeVega's full interview with Robert P. Jones at this link.

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AHA still defensive but inevitable/ necessary? // armageddon?

AN 11 23

Former President Donald Trump’s rhetoric has regularly bordered on the incitement of violence. Lately, however, it has become even more violent. Yet both the press and the public have largely just shrugged their shoulders.

As a political philosopher who studies extremism, I believe people should be more worried about this.

Mark Milley, the outgoing chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, is guilty of “treason,” Trump said in September 2023, just for reassuring the Chinese that the U.S. had no plans to attack in the waning days of the Trump administration. And for this, Trump says, Milley deserves death.

And back in April, Trump said that his indictment by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg would result in “death and destruction.” Then, in early October, Trump urged people to “go after” Letitia James, the New York attorney general who filed suit against him for business fraud.

Trump’s prior rhetoric is also now on record as having inspired many of those convicted to engage in insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

But it is not just government officials whom Trump suggests be targeted for extrajudicial killings. Mere shoplifters should be killed too. “Very simply, if you rob a store, you can fully expect to be shot as you are leaving,” Trump said to cheers at the California Republican Party convention in September.

Trump supporters storm the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

More than crazy bluster

This rhetoric may seem like crazy bluster, which is no doubt why many people appear prepared to ignore it. But put in its historical context, what Trump is doing is echoing views that are part of a long tradition of illiberal and outright fascist thought. For fascists have always seen the use of violence as a virtue, not a vice.

First, this is the natural result of the way that fascist communities define themselves. According to Carl Schmitt, a prominent Nazi and for a time the official legal theorist of the party under Adolf Hitler, one builds and maintains a community by identifying and vilifying its enemies. And in this kind of highly polarized environment, the threat of violence always hangs in the air.

Second, among fascists, machismo is much admired. Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, whose own outrageous rhetoric has also encouraged violent behavior by his supporters, simply “beamed” when Russian President Vladimir Putin praised him for his masculinity.

Trump often acts as a sycophant for Putin too, and machismo also is a big part of Trump’s own public persona.

Third, fascists are obsessed with purity. They long for a world where they can live among their own racial, ethnic, religious and ideological kind on land they view as exclusively theirs.

But in the real world, people are too intermixed for this to occur naturally. True purity of community is an aspiration that can be made real only through violence and subjugation. Hence the Holocaust,genocide and ethnic cleansing, and other more limited attacks on minority and immigrant populations.

Violence as noble and intoxicating

Fascists, then, see violence as noble and intoxicating. For example, Julius Evola, a far-right intellectual active in Italy from 1920 to 1970 and the author, among other things, of “Fascism Viewed from the Right” and “A Handbook for Right-Wing Youth,” writes that violence “offers man the opportunity to awaken the hero that sleeps within him.”

Today, Evola is a favorite of the alt-right, and he suggests that a hero’s death is preferable to a life built on liberal compromise. “The moment the individual succeeds in living as a hero,” Evola writes, “even if it is the final moment of his earthly life, weighs infinitely more on the scale of values than a protracted existence consuming monotonously among the trivialities of cities.”

The ultraconservative Catholic authoritarian and opponent of the French Revolution Joseph de Maistre, who is recognized as one of the intellectual forefathers of fascism, goes even further.

“The whole earth, perpetually steeped in blood, is nothing but a vast altar upon which all that is living must be sacrificed without end, without measure, without pause, until the consummation of things, until evil is extinct, until the death of death,” Maistre writes. Indeed, without an executioner, the man who kills other men, Maistre claims society could not exist. For violence is necessary to satisfy “men’s natural desire to be destructive,” he writes; it leaves them feeling “exalted and fulfilled.”

Patriot Front – labeled a ‘white supremacist group’ by the Anti-Defamation League – marches in Washington, D.C., in May 2023.

Nathan Posner/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Social disruption and destruction

These comments make clear that fascists see violence as something to be used for more than just personal retribution and intimidation. It is to be used to create wider social disruption and destruction. Not only are individuals to be subject to attack, but institutions and norms as well.

Consider “The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy,” a work by two amateur historians popular on the far right.

The book is actually a restatement of Evola’s theory of historical regression, set forth in his “Revolt against the Modern World.”

The idea is that history moves in cycles, the first one being the best and each one thereafter representing a further decline. The fourth cycle is the worst, and it ends only when all existing social institutions are destroyed. This, in turn, is an application of the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s idea that “one can build only in a space which has been previously razed to the ground.”

Then history will reset and cycle once again.

Trump’s former adviser Steve Bannon admires these ideas so much he made a movie about them.

Trump appears to embrace these ideas too. “When the economy crashes, when the country goes to total hell, and everything is a disaster, then you’ll have riots to go back to where we used to be, when we were great,” he says.

Viewed in this context, not taking Trump’s violent rhetoric more seriously seems dangerous indeed.

Mark R. Reiff, Research Affiliate in Legal and Political Philosophy, *University of California, Davis

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Daily Wire's Michael Knowles claims the white nationalist "great replacement" conspiracy is "an empirical fact" | Media Matters for America

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'Diary of a madman': Florida shooter with 'several manifestos' originally targeted HBCU

Maya Boddie August 27, 2023

The white gunman who murdered three Black people at a Jacksonville, Florida Dollar General store Saturday night has been identified by the Jacksonville Sheriff's Department.

The Sheriff's Department shared the suspect's name on Sunday via X — formerly known as Twitter — along with a photo, writing, "Sheriff TK Waters holds follow-up briefing to identify the three victims who senselessly lost their lives yesterday during this tragic event. The suspect has been identified as 21yo Ryan Palmeter."

Although department officials noted that the 21-year-old "bought his guns legally and had no criminal history," according to Reuters, "Authorities have described the shooting as racially motivated, saying the man had authored 'several manifestos; for media, his parents and law enforcement detailing his hatred for Black people."

POLL: Should Trump be allowed to hold office again?

During the Sunday press conference, Waters described one manifesto as a "diary of a madman."

Reuters reports:

On Saturday, he was spotted trying to enter a local historically Black college, Edward Waters University, before heading to the Dollar General store.

The university said in a statement that a man had refused to identify himself and had been turned away by a campus security officer. 'It was later determined that the individual would be involved in a shooting near EWU campus,' the institution said.

The New York Times reports Palmeter used an "an AR-15-style rifle that bore swastika markings, as well as a handgun" to kill the three victims before turning the gun on himself.

READ MORE: Targeted 'because they were Black': Jacksonville’s state senator reacts to Saturday mass shooting

Reuters' full report is available at this link (subscription required).

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obligatory macho? // gaetz w trump iowa? use force

right cannot rule out violence?

https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/charlie-kirk-responds-audience-question-about-forming-militias-you-needs-have-systems

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no lnx mojo

POLITICS

OCTOBER 18, 2021

A New Odd Couple on the Right: Roger Stone and Ammon Bundy

An extremist candidate for Idaho governor has backing from one of Donald Trump’s most trusted advisers.

DAN FRIEDMAN

Senior Reporter

Ammon Bundy announces his candidacy for governor of Idaho on June 19, 2021 in Boise, Idaho.Nathan Howard/Getty

Anti-government extremist Ammon Bundy, who is running for governor in Idaho, is celebrating an endorsement from longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone—a step that unites what might seem like disparate strands of the American right.

“He is a renowned infighter, a seasoned practitioner of hard-edge politics, a veteran strategist and a political fixer,” Bundy said in a statement Sunday. “Roger Stone understands clearly the threat freedom in this country faces and is confident that I will not compromise in securing liberty for the people of Idaho.” 

Boosted by anti-maskers, Bundy is waging a long-shot bid to unseat Republican Idaho Gov. Brad Little,who is expected to seek reelection, with a “Keep Idaho IDAHO” slogan and pledges to take illegal actions like immediately banning all abortions and seizing all federal land in the state if elected. Bundy led the 2016 occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon and was involved in a 2014 showdown in Nevada pitting his father, Cliven Bundy, against agents from the Bureau of Land Management. Last year, he took part in an armed invasion of the Idaho state legislature related to COVID restrictions. But, as Stephanie Mecimer detailed in Mother Jones earlier this year, Bundy is also a seemingly earnest proponent of libertarian views. He had planned to join a Black Lives Matter protest in Boise last year, though it didn’t work out because he refused to wear a mask. And Bundy has damaged his own standing on the right by criticizing some of Donald Trump’s authoritarian tendencies—in 2018, he compared Trump to Hitler, and he has faulted January 6 rioters as “confused” and “Trump worshipping.” 

Stone, a self-styled dirty trickster, is not earnest. Stone is a liar. In 2019, he was convicted of five counts of making false statements to Congress about his efforts to act as go-between for the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks in 2016. He was also convicted of obstructing a congressional investigation and witness tampering. Trump pardoned Stone late last year, just as Stone was promoting Trump’s efforts to use lies and anti-democratic means to remain in power. Stone amplified Trump’s false claims about election fraud and mingled with Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, including several who are now facing conspiracy charges for the January 6 attack. Stone also raised money for “security” for the January 6 protest and urged Trump backers to help stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s electoral win that day. “This is nothing less than an epic struggle for the future of this country between dark and light, between the godly and godless, between good and evil,” Stone said in a January 5 speech in Washington. “And we will win this fight or America will step off into a thousand years of darkness.”

Stone is a hustler who currently earns a living by peddling his brand as a hard-edged Trump booster and libertine at various far-right conferences, where he calls Trump “the greatest president since Abraham Lincoln.” Ammon Bundy, by contrast, offers himself as a true believer, a family-man, a Mormon devotee, and a committed ideologue who is willing to go to jail—or to cause the cancelation of his son’s football game by refusing to wear a mask.

But as Mecimer notes, Bundy is “oblivious or indifferent” to the reality that he is enabling right-wing fans who do not share his scruples. Bundy practices nonviolent resistance. But he doesn’t always advocate that others follow suit. “I’m worried about violence not being used when it should be used,” he said. “Violence is not necessarily a bad thing when it’s used correctly.”

Betsy Gaines Quammen, author of American Zion: Cliven Bundy, God, and Public Lands in the West, told Mencimer that Bundy has“tapped into a very angry group of people who, like him, think they’re victims. He told me very clearly, ‘I’m not the conspiracy theory guy, I’m not the QAnon guy.’ But what he is is this guy who is helping with cross-pollination. He’s got the militia people, the anti-vax people, the people who are pro-Trump no matter what—even though he isn’t. These are the guys that Ammon is inspiring.”

A pardoned felon and former adviser to a disgraced president endorsing a long-shot candidate in Idaho doesn’t matter much on its own. But Bundy is continuing to cross-pollinate, uniting with Stone—and the authoritarian Trumpism he has faulted in the past—in a far-right coalition that includes some of the most extreme elements in American politics. That’s more than a little scary.

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https://www.alternet.org/alternet-exclusives/kentucky-cops-release-kkk-member/

6 23 raw

kKK members pulled guns on pro-LGBTQ protesters — but Kentucky officers let them go free: police docs

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INDICTMENT

https://www.alternet.org/news-politics/trump-followers/

no lnx twt

'The final battle': Trump tells followers they 'have to' protest as some promise to come 'well-armed'

David BadashandThe New Civil Rights Movement June 12, 2023

More than 24 hours before he he is scheduled to be arraigned, Donald Trump’s supporters have started to show up at the federal courthouse in Miami, where the ex-president will be formally advised of the 37 felony criminal charges against him Tuesday at 3 PM.

Trump wants a big showing – “See you in Miami on Tuesday!!!” – he posted to his Truth Social account last week, in all-caps.

“This is the final battle,” Trump told supporters Saturday, Axios reports, and warned, “our people are angry.”

VICE on Monday reported Trump’s supporters “are planning mass protests at a Miami courthouse on Tuesday, following Trump’s indictment last week. Many are promising to come ‘well-armed.'”

It quoted some Trump supporters, including one who said, “MAGA will make Waco look like a tea party.”

“I used to laugh when my mom said that she was afraid if she registered Republican she may be arrested one day. I’m not laughing any more. Just buying more ammo,” VICE says another wrote.

READ MORE: House Republican’s Paranoid Rant Claims Trump Indictment Is a DOJ ‘Entrapment’ Plan to ‘Imprison’ Conservatives

Yet another over the weekend posted a photo of Attorney General Merrick Garland, and wrote: “America cannot allow this cowardly thug to destroy our democracy. This is what the Second Amendment was made for. Buy a gun or help organize your local militia today.”

On the highly-trafficked forum known as The Donald, many posts “directly referenced Trump’s own posts on his social media platform Truth Social. Under one screenshot of a Trump post about his aide Walt Nauta also being indicted, one user wrote: ‘Revolution Now.’ Another added: ‘I want blood. I want fucking blood.'”

Trump, VICE notes, “has done nothing to tamp down any potential threats, repeatedly calling for his own supporters to turn up en masse in Miami on Tuesday, just as he did ahead of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot,” and he “shared a meme about his indictment with a caption declaring, ‘THIS IS NOT A GAME, THIS IS WAR.'”

Pushing for a big showing, Trump spoke Sunday on the radio show of his longtime friend and advisor Roger Stone, whose sentence he commuted.

Our country has to protest,” Trump said, as Rolling Stone reported. “We’ve lost everything.”

READ MORE: ‘What You’re Saying Just Doesn’t Make Sense’: CNN’s Dana Bash Cuts Off Jim Jordan’s Trump-Defending Rant

Real Clear Politicsadds that Trump told Stone, “our country is being taken away from us. Our country is going communist, it’s going Marxist, it’s going really bad, and the people of our country aren’t that way. But the people running it are. And we need strength at this point and everyone’s afraid to do anything. They’re afraid to talk, and they have to go out and they have to protest peacefully. They have to go.”

Reuters posted this live video feed Monday afternoon. Not a big showing.

Last week author Jeff Sharlet, who writes about extremism and the religious right, said he was “skeptical” that they would show, after all the January 6 arrests.

Sharlet says Trump’s remarks, like “Saturday’s claim that World War III ‘WILL’ occur if he’s not back, & that he is the ‘only one’ who can stop the obliteration of the world, are claims to divinity.”

On Friday The Guardian reported there are 12 million Americans who “believe violence is justified to restore Trump to power.”

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In the wake of Donald Trump's indictment over his handling of classified information, some worry that the anger and resentment that led to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot has been kicked back into high gear. According to extremism expert, author and podcast host Brad Onishi, the religious underpinnings that inspired the violence on Jan. 6 could spark violence once again.

Speaking to Rolling Stone, Onishi said that while it's good that no violence erupted outside the Miami courthouse where Trump was booked this week,"there are little fires everywhere that are pointing us toward deep civil unrest and deep mistrust in our public square."

Onishi says that "Christian nationalism is pervasive in right-wing American politics at the moment," and it emanates from politicians, pastors, and Fox News hosts.

Christian nationalism seeks a nostalgia for a time when America was the “city on a hill," Onishi says.

"The narrative now is that that city on the hill has been overrun by interlopers, and those for whom the country was never intended. So maybe we need to 'build a wall' around the city, because it needs protection — too many folks have gotten in and ruined it and eroded the order that we need in the country."

According to Onishi, when Christian nationalists talk about "freedom," what they really mean is "living out your role in God’s hierarchy."

"They may see the trans person, for example, as not living according to their God-given gender," Onishi said. "So just by being on the subway, or being in their kids’ school, they’re making them less free, because the order is all out of whack. And therefore they need to do something about it. They need to go tear down displays at Target or put forth anti-trans legislation."

Christian nationalists believe that America is on the precipice of an Apocalypse, but they don't see it as the end of the world -- they're more focused on the end of the United States, he said.

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"It is sense of a cosmic war between good and evil. Many Christians believe that they are characters in an epic, and that the ending hasn’t been written yet in terms happens to the United States," Onishi says.

Read the full interview over at Rolling Stone.

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no lnx

let’s review.

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) calledDaniel Penny a “hero” after the 24-year-old former Marine killed street performer Jordan Neely on a subway despite the fact New York Police Department sources said Neely had not become violent that day, May 1, nor had he threatened Penny.

Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) has vowed to pardon Daniel Perry, who in April was convicted of murdering Garrett Foster in July 2020 during a Black Lives Matter protest in Austin, Texas, after Perry texted a friend, “I might have to kill a few people on my way to work, they are rioting outside my apartment complex," anddrove his car threateningly into a crowd before shooting Foster.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) was among Republican officials who mocked the assault last October on the husband of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, sharing conspiracy theories about the right-wing vigilante who fractured Paul Pelosi’s skull with a hammer.

In November 2021, Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), tweeted an altered anime video showing him killing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) with a sword to the neck, earning him a formal censure from the then-Democratic-controlled U.S. House of Representatives … and pats on the back from Republican colleagues.

The 2020 Republican National Convention glorified a white couple who, on the lawn of their St. Louis mansion, brandished firearms at peaceful Black Lives Matter demonstrators.

Republican support for violence is so prolific, it has become a staple of campaign ads. Vice, for one, sees this as evidence vigilantism seeps up from the base, and incendiary media such as Fox News amplify it. While demagogues such as Alex Jones and Tucker Carlson have a history of inciting violence, the godfather of modern-day vigilantism is Donald Trump.

Vox counts more than 40 instances, from the launch of Trump’s presidential campaign in June 2015 to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, in which he encouraged or endorsed violence. Following his election, threats against Congress memberssoared more than tenfold to 9,625 incidents in 2021 alone. “Far-right terror,”says Vox, “is currently the most significant ideological threat in the US,” with a proliferation of right-wing threats against elected officialsacross the country. Axios published a roster filled with others.

In a notorious call for vigilantism, Trump praised child soldier Kyle Rittenhouse “as the ‘poster boy’ for the right to self-defense,” according to CNN. Weeks before traveling to Kenosha, Wis., in August 2020 where he killed two people with an AR-15-style rifle at a Black Lives Matter protest, the then-17-year-old Rittenhouse fantasized about shooting looters.

While the corporate media recognize the GOP has “made violence part of their brand,” it doesn’t answer the most important question: why this happened.

Trump’s scorched-earth racism is the pivotal factor. By winning the presidency in 2016, Trump blazed a social-media shortcut to power. His victory inspired a surge of fascist gangs such as the Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer, and obscure but even more violent outfits including Patriot Front, Resist Marxism, Rise Above Movement, Jericho March and American Guard.

Trump made it possible for any dime-store bigot to jump on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, demonize entire groups — particularly leftists like anti-fascists and BLM — and threaten violence. For those with persistence and a bit of prowess, social-media demagoguery was an easy path to notoriety, money and followers. Operating under the protection of the demagogue-in-chief, and indifference if not sympathy from elements of police, formed by the history of white supremacy, these new hatemongers were able to jump from virtual violence to the real world.

The violence began with a bang the night of Trump’s inauguration when a right-wing couple shot and nearly killed a left-wing protester in Seattle. Within months, far-right riots — and killings — took place in leftist bastions such as Berkeley, Calif., and Portland, Ore., culminating in the August 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va., where a neo-Nazi rammed a crowd of counter-protesters with his car, killing Heather Heyer. The shock of the murder, and hundreds of neo-Nazis chanting “Jews will not replace us” during a torch-light parade, put extremists back on their heels.

[White supremacists march on Charlottesville, Va., during the August 2017 "Unite the Right" rally that left a woman dead. Image via Karla Cote/Creative Commons.

But far-right gangs reconstituted themselves, aided by police in Portland who allowed the Proud Boys to turn the city into their fight club with almost no consequences. The George Floyd protests supercharged vigilantism as police aligned with the far right in seeing BLM and antifa as public enemy number one.

This time the explosion was even bigger: the Jan. 6 insurrection.

The only reason Trump’s attempted coup did not succeed is because his mob of thousands did not use guns, which convicted seditionist Stewart Rhodes regretted afterwards, against a police force who had every warning imaginable of the coming insurrection.

Far from squelching the taste for violence, the failed coup whetted the appetite of Republican politicians and voters alike for lawless justice.

This raises a more fundamental question. Why do GOP voters believe it necessary to circumvent legitimate channels to enact their vision?

It wasn’t always this way, and the growing desire for vigilantism is an ominous warning sign for the future of America. In short, there is a vicious cycle from media that stokes fears for profit to a middle class fed the message that those at the bottom are to blame for society’s woes to politicians who claim deep-rooted social problems can be solved through policing at home or abroad: the war on crime, the war on drugs, the war on terror.

A crucial similarity in criminalizing social problems is they are racialized, as well. Blacks are to blame for crime, Mexicans for illegal drugs, Muslims for terrorism. This approach begins with Nixon’s Southern strategy that delivered him the White House. He used coded racial appeals such as “law and order,” “war on drugs” and “benign neglect” toward the Black community to indicate Black people were a threat whom he would protect the “silent majority” of whites from.

Before winning the 1980 presidential race, Ronald Reagan used overt dog whistles, talking of “welfare queens,” “strapping young bucks” buying steak with food stamps, saying the Voting Rights Act was “humiliating to the South,” and kicking off his general election campaign with a segregationist friendly speech endorsing states rights near Philadelphia, Miss., site of the infamous murder of three civil-rights activists in 1964.

As the right’s racial rhetoric got hotter at the presidential level, with George H.W. Bush relying on the Willie Horton ad to win the 1988 contest by implying a victory by Democrat Michael Dukakis would mean “Black rapists running amok,” the era of hate radio simultaneously dawned after Reagan gutted the Fairness Doctrine in 1987.

Soon, Republican voters were sucking on vitriol from the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Lou Dobbs, Sean Hannity and Mark Levin for decades. The relentless drumbeat that “real Americans” were under attack from feminists/Blacks/Muslims/Marxists/immigrants/Mexicans/queers — take your pick — stoked volcanic rage on the right.

But for years, Republican voters couldn’t adequately vent that anger. Newt Gingrich’s Republican revolution that put Congress in the hand of the bomb-throwers in 1994, eight years of the Bush-Cheney “war on terror”, and the white backlash to Barack Obama under the banner of the Tea Party, were unable to satisfy the desire of a rabid right to not just defeat, but to smash their foes.

The torrent of right-wing hate helped inspire Timothy McVeigh to bomb a federal building in 1995 in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people, but the atrocity undercut support for far-right extremism. The attraction of racial violence soared after the 9/11 attacks and exploded into a reinvigorated militia movement and a series of racist murders after Obama was elected.

On one side was Fox News incitement of viewer rage to stay relevant, profitable and powerful, and on the other was wild fantasies of the politics of revenge that government could not fulfill.

Enter Donald Trump. His 2016 campaign completed the electrical circuit triggering a bomb. Millions of Americans, saturated with racist grievances, could now take matters into their own hands. And many did. Trump promises even more unchecked violence if elected again in 2024, telling supporters a few months ago, “for those who have wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.”

Trump has turned the party of law and order into one of lawlessness and chaos.

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Right-wing media figures are celebrating both Florida’s expansion of the death penalty for people who have sexually assaulted children as well as the extrajudicial homicide of Jordan Neely, a Black homeless man killed by a white former Marine on the New York City subway on May 1. The two stories illustrate a growing trend in right-wing media to argue that the deaths of marginalized and criminalized populations are not only justified but actually desirable, whether those killings are carried out by the state or by vigilantes.

Bloodlust is nothing new in right-wing media. From the proto-fascist Father Charles Coughlin through Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly to former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, conservative pundits and writers frequently fantasize about violence aimed at their political opponents or marginalized people. In 1989, Donald Trump, who was a media personality for decades before entering politics, called for the execution of the wrongly convicted Central Park Five, a group of Black and Latino teenagers railroaded into false confessions by the New York Police Department. The conservative ecosystem made a celebrity of Kyle Rittenhouse — who killed two people and injured a third during an August 2020 Black Lives Matter demonstration in Kenosha, Wisconsin — and tried to justify the killings of Trayvon Martin, Ahmaud Arbery, and Eric Garner. 

Building on this history of right-wing calls for state-sanctioned and extrajudicial violence, there now appears to be an increasing frequency of calls from conservative media for their enemies to be put to death. Much of this new intensity has been driven by the two leading hopefuls in the Republican presidential primary, Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Trump has called for expanding the death penalty to include people convicted of selling illicit drugs to someone who later overdoses, an idea he has bandied about for years. He also engaged in a “killing spree” in his final months in office, carrying out 13 federal executions in six months, according to recent reporting from Rolling Stone — “more federal executions than in the previous 10 administrations combined.”

But DeSantis has recently captured the right-wing media’s attention with a bill he signed earlier this month that would make convicted child rapists eligible for the death penalty. The new law violates Supreme Court precedent set in Kennedy v. Louisiana, a 5-4 decision in 2008 that found that the death penalty can’t be applied in the case of the rape of a child that didn’t result in murder. Legal challenges to the new Florida law are widely expected.

Conservative media figures cheered on DeSantis’ signing of the bill, often in language mirroring anti-LGBTQ rhetoric that is now ubiquitous on the right. Over the last year, right-wing media have revived a longstanding myth that LGBTQ people are dangers to children, frequently referring to them as “groomers” or pedophiles and endorsing violence targeting their events and communities. Conservative commentators have adopted eliminationist rhetoric toward trans people, openly calling for them to be expelled from public life entirely.

Matt Walsh: “Just execute them all”

It’s in this context that the right-wing media response to DeSantis’ bill needs to be understood, as typified by the Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh[vid]

"On the merits of this legislation, it's clearly the right thing,” Walsh began on his May 2 show. “The idea that you can only have — we can only impose capital punishment on someone who kills another person, it's completely arbitrary. There's no, nowhere is that written in the heavens. Certainly the opposite. I mean, if we want to talk about biblical precedent, then that's not biblical precedent.”

Walsh then indulged in an extended thought experiment about having to choose between which types of convicted criminals should be executed, happily concluding that the state doesn’t in fact need to make that choice and should be killing many more people.

“If we have this weird rule that we've imposed on ourselves that we can only execute one, either murderers or child rapist, like if we had to choose between those two categories of people to execute, then I would say, well, if we don't do one, then I'd probably murder the — I'd probably execute, rather — execute legally the child rapist,” Walsh said. “But in fact, we don't have to choose. You know, that's the wonderful thing.”

“We don't have to make choices. We can execute all of them,” he continued. “We should be able to, anyway. Execute all the worst people, all of the worst criminals. Just execute them all. And this is the right first step. There's a lot more that needs to be done. I mean, this is actual criminal justice reform.”

Walsh further justified his desire to drastically ramp up executions on the grounds that the people he wants killed are drains on society, and he argued that their sentences should be carried out with no appeals process.

“Because the other thing about these worst, you know, the worst of the worst, the people that commit heinous, the most heinous sorts of crimes like child rape — well, they are so evil and so monstrous that even the other criminals in prison don't want to be around them,” Walsh argued. “Which means that we don't put them in the general population. So then they are in protective custody. So we're spending more money, society is spending more money just to keep these absolute lowest-of-the-low dirtbags alive.”

“I would say that along with everything else, it is an unjust and undue burden on society. You know, as a taxpayer, I should not be required to keep child rapists alive just because we're too squeamish to execute them as we should,” he continued. “And if we're really starting to understand that society — if we're really starting to reform the system, you know, then we're going to start talking about not only are we executing these people, but we're doing it quickly. We're not giving them 30 years to appeal, OK? The conviction is passed down, you're convicted, you're guilty, you've been found guilty, and then the execution is carried out the next day — how about, carried out at dawn following the conviction.”

Walsh recently argued that the punishment for a false rape accusation should be life in prison, and also implied that he’d be in favor of the death penalty for convicted rapists and those he refers to as “false accusers.”

“I think that actually guilty and convicted rapists should go to prison for life,” Walsh said on his May 9 show. “I'd be in favor of life sentences, at a minimum, for actual rapists. And I would be in favor of life sentences for those who falsely accuse someone of rape because to falsely accuse someone of rape is just as bad as being a rapist. There is no moral distinction between the two.”

Michael Knowles: “I think it’s quite natural, biblical”

Also on May 2, Walsh’s Daily Wire colleague Michael Knowles addressed DeSantis’ bill, supporting it “in principle” but not “in practice."

[vid]

"Ron DeSantis says we’re challenging that now if you rape a child, pretty much the most heinous crime you can imagine, you get the death penalty. I totally agree with that in principle,” Knowles said. “I see no problem with that in principle. I see no problem with the death penalty in principle. In fact, I think it's quite natural, biblical.”

Knowles later clarified that the law could create unintended consequences, which gave him pause.

“I don't actually agree with this particular instantiation of the death penalty in practice,” he said. “In principle, I do. But in practice, the only reason I don't is that as a matter of prudence, if you don't kill child rapists, if you, if the punishment is not execution, then it creates some incentive for the rapist not to murder his victim. So if there's any way that through the law, we can incentivize a rapist not to murder his victim, I think that's probably wise and prudent. In principle, they deserve death, certainly.”

After attempting to thread that needle, Knowles made it clear that the way this policy cashed out would be beneficial for DeSantis in a potential 2024 presidential run.

“Broadly speaking, ‘execute pedos’ is a very popular campaign slogan,” he concluded.

Alex Jones to Steven Crowder: “Hang them in the public square” as a deterrent because “these damn predators are everywhere”

Walsh and Knowles are hardly alone in his violent impulses. On the same day the two Daily Wire personalities delivered their blood-soaked monologues, Steven Crowder hosted conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on his Rumble show and the two also discussed the new Florida law with nearly identical rhetoric [vid]

"I think this is good news to celebrate, right, some actual good news here,” Crowder said to introduce the segment. “Monday, Ron DeSantis — this is really good news — signed a bill that’s going to allow the death penalty for child rapists.”

Crowder played a clip of DeSantis celebrating the bill’s passage and then returned to continue his discussion with Jones.

“First off, you rape a child, you deserve to — you forfeit your right to live,” Crowder said. “You deserve to die actually, not forfeit your right to live. You play the knockout game, you forfeit your right to live because someone has the right to defend themselves. You rape a child, in my opinion, you deserve to die.”

Jones responded, making typically unhinged remarks about supposedly lax liberal state law.

“I think this is good also because it goes against laws in California that they're trying to pass — they passed one where you can have sex with a 12-year-old, you can give people HIV and it's not a felony,” Jones said. “I mean, they're trying to normalizethis, the U.N. is trying to normalize this. That's a very strong message we're not going to allow this.” (In 2017, California reduced penalties related to the transmission of HIV, in accordance with public health best practices; it is not legal in the state for an adult to have sex with a 12-year-old.)

“I think if you're caught with evidence that you did it and it's irrefutable, there should be a high burden of proof, but if it's proven I say we take those people out after they've been given their jury trial, we hang them in the public square and let all the other pedophiles know you do this, you're dead,” Jones added.

“Yep,” Crowder replied.

“These damn predators are everywhere,” Jones continued.

“No, you're absolutely right,” Crowder agreed. “I don't think there's any greater evil. And by the way, all societies have recognized that since the beginning of time.”

The two ended the segment by distilling their argument: “Just to be really clear though, to go back and end on the point — someone who rapes someone 12 years old or younger, hang them in the town square?” Crowder said.

“Yes,” Jones responded. “If an adult rapes a child and there’s proof, we kill them.”

Right-wing media agree that the ex-Marine who killed Jordan Neely is a “hero”

In calling for the public execution of people convicted of sexual battery of a child, Crowder’s initial phrasing was nearly identical to the way he characterized the killing of Jordan Neely, an unhoused Black man, by Daniel Penny, a white Marine veteran, on the New York City subway on May 1.

“You start going crazy in a subway car and attack people for the umpteenth time —we don't know if he was attacking there, but we know that people felt attacked, and we do know that he attacked people before in the sub — you do forfeit your right to live,” Crowder said. “The second that you are engaging in an activity where someone else is forced to make a decision to save their life or a life of their loved one — completely, by the way, not of their own volition; you've put them in that scenario — you forfeit your right to live.”

Right-wing commentators almost universally praised Penny’s actions, and several went even further than Crowder, referring to him as a hero.

Racist-policing apologist Heather Mac Donald of conservative think tank the Manhattan Institute was typically effusive in her praise of Penny, who she suggested was justified in carrying out the role of law enforcement.

Right-wing commentators almost universally praised Penny’s actions, and several went even further than Crowder, referring to him as a hero.

“For these activists now to be playing the race card here is preposterous, but if the government is unwilling to protect its citizens, you are going to have a certain degree of vigilante justice,” Mac Donald said on the podcast of Fox News’ Laura Ingraham. “And this guy, as far as I'm concerned, from what we know now, is an urban hero.”

“And if Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg brings some sort of criminal charge against him, there should be a public uprising, because the reason he was there is because Alvin Bragg refuses to enforce the law against turnstile jumping.”

Fox & Friends co-host Rachel Campos-Duffy made the same argument.

“I think it’s really important as a culture, we need to send very clear messages about how we, what we feel about heroes who step in and protect people in need,” she said. “Now imagine being in that car. You know, we raise our boys to step in and protect those who are vulnerable. But when moms see this, see someone now facing prison time for trying to protect those who are weaker, it makes us wonder: Do we want our kids to be the guy that steps in and protects people or do we want our men in our culture to be the guys who just film crimes on their cell phones?”

Later on the show, Fox News contributor Leo Terrell echoed Campos-Duffy.

“Jordan was a erratic person who had a history of erratic behavior, but you also have other individuals restraining this individual,” Terrell said. “There is no intent and that Marine is a hero. A hero.”

The list goes on. Both Walsh and Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, called Penny a “hero.” So did rape apologist Mike Cernovich and Scott Adams, the openly racist creator of the comic strip Dilbert. Federalist contributor Peachy Keenan (a pseudonym) referred to Penny as an example of “the bravest and most selfless heroes.” PragerU founder Dennis Prager read approvingly from a tweet by cryptofascist online personality Aimee Terese calling Penny a “hero” as well.

“That’s correct,” Prager said. “They don’t want that ethos to catch on. They want a nation of cowards.”

The accolades continued and even escalated after Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg charged Penny with second-degree manslaughter, including from the faux high-brow organs of conservative commentary. Echoing a tweet from Gov. DeSantis, The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board referred to Penny as one of the “good samaritans,” and worried that “the charges against him will surely deter other potential samaritans from intervening to subdue a seemingly dangerous person or even to stop a robbery or assault.”

At The New York Times, conservative Trump critic David French posed a related counterfactual designed to exonerate, or at least excuse, Penny. “What if Penny had done nothing? Would everyone — including Neely — have emerged from that subway car unscathed?” French wrote. “We can’t know for certain, and that lack of certainty creates the conditions for violence.”

Fox News’ on-air talent uniformly praised Penny. Ingraham responded to the charges by calling Penny a “hero,” and saying he “deserves our thanks.” The Five’s Greg Gutfeld called Bragg’s decision “pro-criminal, anti-hero.” A day later on the same program, Fox News’ Will Cain said “this was not just reasonable behavior by Daniel Penny, but potentially heroic behavior by Daniel Penny. Our society, to be absolutely clear, needs more Daniel Pennys.” On America’s Newsroom, Fox’s Geraldo Rivera predicted Neely’s death would be ruled a “justifiable homicide,” implicitly endorsing that conclusion.

Others in right-wing media joined in as well. YouTube streamer Tim Pool tweeted that he donated $20,000 to a fundraiser supporting Penny, referring to him as the “Subway Good Samaritan.”

Walsh openly celebrated Neely’s death, calling the victim “a terrible person.”

“The community is better off without him — like, everyone is safer without him” Walsh said. “This community, pretending to mourn — you are better off without this guy. You’re all safer because he’s gone.”

This list is illustrative of the conservative media response, and their collective, reflexive justification and celebration of a white person killing a person of color extends far beyond Neely’s death.

Conservatives defend, justify extrajudicial killings not officially sanctioned by the state

Recent examples abound. In April, Carlson and Rittenhouse urged Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to pardon Daniel Perry, who was convicted that month and sentenced to 25 years in prison for killing a Black Lives Matter protester in 2020. Other Fox News stars soon got on board, and Abbott has now promised to pardon him.

In Arizona, Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb, currently running for Senate, has on at least two recent occasions defended a white person killing someone who isn’t white on the grounds that the shooter was simply exercising theirproperty rights.

On April 21, Lamb attempted to justify Andrew Lester’s shooting of Ralph Yarl, a Black 16-year-old, in an appearance on a white nationalist show. Lester, who is white, “was trying to protect his property, stand his ground,” Lamb said. “You know, he felt that his life was in danger. He took some action and now he's being persecuted.”

Lamb made an almost identical argument to excuse Arizona rancher George Alan Kelly’s lethal shooting of a migrant who he believed was trespassing. Speaking on former Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast in February, Lamb said the episode looked like “self-defense,” adding, “We have the ability to protect our properties.”

“What right do they have to protect their property?” Lamb continued. “If he feared for his life, and the life of his wife, or the life of somebody else, or feared serious physical injury, then that certainly falls within the justification of using deadly force, whether they’re armed or not.”

Lamb then claimed that “criminals are not being held accountable,” but “then a good citizen does something like this to protect his property and he’s held accountable to the fullest extent of the law.” He then described Kelly as “this poor old guy” and someone who “seems like a very nice guy.”

From Mississippi burning to the police killing of Tyre Nichols

The above examples don’t even touch on right-wing media apologia for police violence, which is reflexive and ubiquitous. Conservative pundits responded to video of Memphis police beating to death Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, by pushing for more police power and autonomy and blaming Nichols for his death. Mac Donald, the Manhattan Institute police propagandist, argued without evidence that Nichols could’ve been on drugs, as though that would have justified his killing.

Taken together, all of these examples underscore a point The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer made in 2018: “The cruelty is the point.” The reactionary desire to enact vengeance winds throughout U.S. history, braiding state and extrajudicial violence together, linking the first and second formations of the Ku Klux Klan to white citizens councils to Jim Crow to Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential announcement at the site of the 1964 killing of three civil rights activists.

The viciousness that right-wing media are expressing now isn’t new, but their growing comfort with openly cheering for the deaths of their political opponents and marginalized people is an alarming trend. When conservative media figures proclaim their desire to “just execute them all,” we should take it very seriously.

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no lnx

an 5 23

Texas mall shooter wore neo-Nazi symbol and shared 'white-supremacist content online': report

Maya BoddieMay 07, 2023

The man who murdered eight people using an AR-15 at an outlet mall in Allen, Texas, Saturday likely identified with neo-Nazi beliefs,The Washington Post reports.

Allen resident Mauricio Garcio,according to The Post wore a "patch on his chest" at the time of the shooting that read "RWDS," meaning "Right Wing Death Squad," a "phrase popular among right wing extremists, neo-Nazis and white supremacists."

Additionally, NBC reports Garcia "interacted with neo-Nazi and white supremacist content online."

READ MORE: All extremist-related murders in 2022 were committed by right-wing radicals

Last year, an Anti-Defamation League's Center (ADLC) on Extremism report revealed "all extremist-related murders in 2022 were committed by right-wing extremists," adding, "More than four out of five extremist-related murders last year were committed by white supremacist right-wing extremists."

The report also noted "nearly all extremist-related mass killings were committed by right-wing extremists, and warns the number of those mass murders 'is of growing concern.'"

An official familiar with the matter told NBC not only did Garcia engage with neo-Nazi content online, but he also posted such content himself.

Regarding the issue of gun violence specifically pertaining to Texas, The Post reports:

In 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recorded 4,613 firearms-related deaths in Texas. The state's annual death toll from guns has increased steadily since 2014.

Led by Abbott, Texas has moved in recent years to loosen restrictions on firearms. In 2021, the state began allowing permitless carry so residents can carry handguns in public without a license. The state 'does not specifically put restrictions on who can carry a long gun such as a rifle or shotgun,' according to a Texas government website.

READ MORE: Gavin Newsom takes aim at Texas gun laws

ADLC's report added the "main threat in the near future will likely be white supremacist shooters," noting, "The increase in the number of mass killing attempts, meanwhile, is one of the most alarming trends in recent years."

READ MORE: Robert Reich breaks down the Texas law that protects gun manufacturers from discrimination

The Washington Post's full report is available at this link (subscription required). NBC's report is here.

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an 4 23  // alt rt macho shitposting? newspaper editor and son

https://www.alternet.org/appalled-and-disheartened-oklahoma-governor-demands-resignation-of-officials-who-condoned-and-lynching/

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aha before any gop dirty trick ok rationalized b/c THEY dems are baby murderers; nowsecession --> dog whistle for violent civil war [also (white) xian nat'lism?:

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/tucker-carlson-guest-says-**secession-necessary**-because-democrats-are-so-unclean-and-are mutilating kids

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https://www.mediamatters.org/rumble/rumbles-leaderboard-right-wing-pundits-and-qanon-figures-are-agitating-civil-war-after

Following former President Donald Trump’s indictment, Rumble promoted videos of right-wing pundits and QAnon figures pushing civil war rhetoric on its “Battle Leaderboard Top 50.”

On March 18, Trump announced on his Truth Social account that he was expecting Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office to indict and arrest him the following Tuesday, March 21, telling his followers to “PROTEST” and “TAKE OUR NATION BACK.” The posts came while a Manhattan grand jury heard testimony as part of an ongoing investigation into Trump’s alleged payment of hush money to adult film actor Stormy Daniels in 2016 to cover up an alleged affair. Trump is now expected to surrender to prosecutors in Manhattan on Tuesday, April 4.

In the weeks since, Trump’s right-wing media allies have gone well beyond merely downplaying and defending his wrongdoing. The right-wing echo chamber has devolved into full blown wartime rhetoric, comparing the indictment to the atrocities committed by communist dictator Joseph Stalin, fearmongering that America will soon witness political executions, and predicting or alluding to — if not encouraging or calling for — retaliation including violence and civil war.

Unsurprisingly, the right-wing pundits who have been encouraged to make a home for themselves on Rumble are also agitating their audiences toward civil war. Launched in 2013, Rumble plays an important role in the alternative digital infrastructure, which caters to the extreme right. For years, conservatives have falsely claimed that social media platforms are biased against them, while building alternative platforms with little to no content moderation or concern for user safety. Rumble co-founder and CEO Chris Pavlovski has echoed that sentiment, promoting Rumble as an alternative to Google-owned YouTube that is “immune from cancel culture.”

Rumble publishes a “Battle Leaderboard Top 50” on its platform, ranking top performing videos from the previous 24 hours or so and promoting them on a list that is prominently displayed in two different spots on its homepage. Media Matters found that Rumble promoted numerous videos from right-wing pundits and QAnon figures seemingly agitating for civil war on this leaderboard.

Right-wing pundits and QAnon figures pushing civil war rhetoric featured on Rumble’s leaderboard

• Right-wing “Rumble Exclusive” show Redacted News did a livestream claiming that the country is “on Civil War watch” following Trump’s indictment. This video was ranked #8 on Rumble’s leaderboard on March 21. Rumble, [3/20/23]
• Conspiracy theorist Tim Poolshared a video to Rumble claiming that civil war is “looming” following Trump’s indictment. This video was ranked #44 on Rumble’s leaderboard on March 22. Rumble, [3/21/23]
• Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirkheld a special livestream on March 30 as reports of Trump’s indictment in New York emerged during which he called for retribution against his political opponents, who he claimed are “acting like Stalinists.” He added, “We must make them pay a price and a penalty” by indicting Democrats, claiming they “crossed the Rubicon” and have “declared quote-unquote the Roman Civil War.” This video was ranked #12 on Rumble’s leaderboard on March 31. Rumble, [3/30/23]
• The next day, Kirkdid another livestream and used a thumbnail image featuring the Roman army under Caesar fording the Rubicon river, reacting to Trump’s indictment. This video was ranked #15 on Rumble’s leaderboard on April 1. Rumble, [3/31/23]
• Extremist conspiracy theorist and QAnon sympathizer Lara Logan appeared as a guest on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast. When Bannon claimed that the “American version of the globalist elites have now gone to outright war with the populist nationalist movement,” Logan replied by saying that “this is almost the moment that we've been waiting for,” that “things are escalating,” that we’re “heading to a breaking point,” and that “we are going to see a fight to the death.” This video was ranked #39 on Rumble’s leaderboard on April 1. Rumble, [3/31/23]
• Fox News host and “Rumble Exclusive” creator Dan Bonginodid a livestream during which he described Trump’s indictment as crossing a red line and warning, “Get out of blue states as soon as you can. … If they can do what they did up in New York to Trump last night, completely fabricate and bootstrap a crime out of nothing, to try to put a former president in handcuffs, to parade him like a banana republic in front of the camera, you think you have any rights? Get out as soon as you can.” This video was ranked #1 on Rumble’s leaderboard on April 1. Rumble, [3/31/23]
• QAnon influencer Juan O. Savin – who has previously threatened civil war – published a video on Rumble following Trump’s indictment titled “This Is A Battle To The Death” in which he and his guest agreed that “the American people and the world have woken up.” This video was ranked #26 on Rumble’s leaderboard on April 2. Rumble, [4/1/23]
• QAnon channel "And We Know" did a livestream warning about a “day of reckoning” following Trump’s indictment. This video was ranked #3 on Rumble’s leaderboard on April 1. Rumble, [3/31/23]
• “Rumble Exclusive” creator JP Sears shared a video questioning whether Trump’s indictment signaled “the end of our democracy.” This video was ranked #30 on Rumble’s leaderboard on April 1. Rumble, [3/31/23]
• Right-wing outlet LFA TV did a livestream claiming that “THEY WILL DESTROY OUR ENTIRE COUNTRY TO ‘GET TRUMP.’” This video was ranked #22 on Rumble’s leaderboard on April 1. Rumble, [3/31/23]
• QAnon influencerSGANON published a video claiming “WW3 Events Are Coming” following Trump’s indictment. This video was ranked #41 on Rumble’s leaderboard on April 1. Rumble, [3/31/23]

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yikes

an 3 23

no lnx

author Jeff Sharlet has spent years interviewing conservatives and found many unassuming Americans are ready and eager for violence against their political enemies.

Sharlet's latest book, The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War, is the result of more than a dozen years of reporting on the religious right, compiling numerous interviews conducted throughout the Midwest and Great Plains, and he's more worried than ever about the possibility of civil war, reported The Guardian.

"I’ve been writing about the right for a long time," he told the newspaper. "I’m always interested in the margins of things that tell us about what’s happening at the center. An undertow is a metaphor for that, for the force that’s been pulling us to this place for a long time. If you’d asked me 10 years ago if I ever thought another civil war would be possible in the United States, I would have said no. But to think so [now] is to not understand that the right in America is as dangerous as it is."

He cited a "nice-looking" family he met near Eau Claire, Wisconsin, who seemed like "ordinary" conservatives, as the newspaper described them, but harbored bloodthirsty fantasies rooted in extreme conservative politics.

"[The father said] he had a 'Let’s go Brandon' sticker because he didn’t want to swear around his son," Sharlet said. "They’re a middle-class dad and mom. They were always gun people, but not a lot of guns. Now they’re up to 36, now they are arming up. The father had always been anti-abortion. But now it was like a dream had moved into his and his wife’s mind. He described, in incredibly violent detail, the process of abortion. Then he described, in incredibly violent detail, the punishment he thought he and others were going to give to abortion doctors. They were ready for executions."

The current political moment was rooted in a decades-old struggle against fascism, and Sharlet said Donald Trump, intentionally or instinctively, used its "dream logic" to spellbind his followers, who fill in the unfinished thoughts in his pronouncements with their own beliefs -- and that creates the illusion that he's speaking their truth into existence.

"The free association that happens at Trump’s rallies, the ways people make connections that make no sense – it has dream logic," Sharlet said. "One minute, a scary man is crawling into the window to rape your wife, and then the next minute we’re laughing at windmills, and then the next minute we’re sad for the birds that were killed by windmills. And then, in the next minute, we’re yelling, 'Lock her up.'"

"This is dream logic, and there’s vanity in it, right?" Sharlet added. “'I will interpret what they’re saying and I will bend it.'It’s the vanity of the base, the vanity of the mob, the aggregate grotesque imagination of power. It becomes a spinning whirlpool that pulls more and more people in. These are people for whom reality is not enough."

:{:{}:

The illusion that's created for Trump and his followers feels interactive and very real to them, Sharlet said, and that's where the twice-impeached former president gains his power.

"This is why the right feels they are more democratic than the left," he said. "The intellectual rightwingers are like, 'F*ck democracy, we don’t need it.' But the everyday people, they’re like, 'This is the most democratic I’ve ever felt. I am not only receiving – I receive, I interpret and then I transmit back.'"}:

:{:{Sharlet sees a similar dynamic at work within the anti-abortion movement, which the left sees as an effort to control women's bodies, but the right sees as a cause so righteous that violence is necessary.}:

"Yes, the project is misogynist to the core," he said. "But it is not experienced as such by many on the right. Once you make that move, that we’re talking about children, what kind of person are you if you don’t want to save that child?"}:

"It’s astonishing there hasn’t been more violence," Sharlet added. "I think we’ve had a shield from that violence for a long time and now that shield … I sound like Jerry Falwell saying the hand of God is being removed from America."

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tucker no time to give up ar15

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rww 4 23

no twt

Levin appeared on Fox & Friends March 31, 2023 to denounce the indictment of Donald Trump (and plug his book).

When news broke Thursday that a Manhattan grand jury had voted to indict former President Donald Trump, Trump and his supporters were quick to portray him as an innocent victim and to suggest that his prosecution spelled the end of democracy in America.

The charges follow an investigation into a hush money payment made to former adult film star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election. With the indictment under seal, the exact charges have not yet been made public, though some news reports suggest Trump faces about 30 charges and that he is expected to be charged with falsifying business records to cover up the payment.

Trump himself displayed his trademark narcissism Thursday, writing in one of many urgent emails, “We are living through the darkest chapter of American history.”

The always-blustery right-wing pundit Mark Levin ranted on “Fox & Friends” Friday morning, “We have crossed the Rubicon. This is atyrannynow.”

Right-wing youth leader Charlie Kirk, who heads Turning Point USA, claimed that the indictment of Trump is a “designed campaign” by the left to provoke right-wing violence “to justify the next phase of their takeover of the country.”

Ali Alexander, a leader of the “Stop the Steal” effort to keep Trump in power after his 2020 loss, wrote on his Telegram account, “TRUMP INDICTMENT refocuses some things. We’re approaching Luciferian-triggered civil war. We must fight Them.May God bless and forgive us where we fall short.”

Far-right broadcaster Pete Santilli—who last week said that if Trump were arrested, the military and law enforcement should round up and execute former President Barack Obama and other members of the “criminal cabal”—reacted to the news by telling his viewers that “these leftist, gun-grabbing Maoists, you will never have a peaceful resolution with. They’re going to come and kill you.:

amid reports that New York law enforcement officials are preparing for possible violence, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted, “I’m going to New York on Tuesday. We MUST protest the unconstitutional WITCH HUNT!”

Although details of the indictment haven’t been made public,Sen. Ted Cruzused his “Verdict” podcast to denounce the indictment as “utter and complete garbage,” describing himself as angry and “heartbroken” over what he called a “devastating” blow to the rule of law. Cruz claimed that the Manhattan investigation was an effort by “radical Democrats” to “steal” the 2024 presidential election.

Cruz said the indictment would boost Trump’s election campaign, a sentiment echoed by other far-right followers of the twice-impeached former president. The Christian Broadcasting Network’s David Brody said the indictment had made Trump a “political martyr.”

On “FlashPoint,” a show that appears on evangelist Kenneth Copeland’s Victory Channel that was a steady source of misinformation about the 2020 election and Jan. 6 insurrection, failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate and election denier Kari Lake denounced what she called “false, phony charges.” Trump’s supporters, she said, are “tried and true” and will stay with him “all the way.”

Trump’s religious-right backers also rallied around him, with Franklin Graham calling it a “shameful day for America.”

As noted by religion scholar Diana Butler Bass in her latest newsletter, Trump has been using increasingly messianic and apocalyptic languagein reference to his legal troubles in an effort to maintain religious-right support.Trump followers who believe he is anointed by God and is being persecuted like Jesus by the legions of Satan is “a theo-political wild card we’ve got to pay attention to,”Bass writes. She points to the biblical story of Jesus’ arrest in whichone of his disciples attacked one of the soldiers. While Jesus insisted, “Put your sword back into its place; for all who take the sword will perish by the sword,” Bass warns, “Do not expect the same from Trump.”

Tags: Charlie Kirk David Brody Donald Trump Franklin Graham Kari Lake Marjorie Taylor Greene Mark Levin Pete Santilli Donald Trump Election 2024 Rule of LawTrump Indictment

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an 3 23 no lnx twt

no lnx badash

r. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) is being mocked and criticized after issuing an off-the-rails rant defending Donald Trump after the ex-president was indicted late Thursday afternoon.

Trump reportedly will face over 30 charges when he is arraigned in Manhattan Supreme Court Tuesday, two weeks after he claimed would be the day he would be arrested. In that infamous social media post Trump also urged his supporters to “protest!”

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}:

Congresswoman Greene, an ultra-MAGA acolyte and far-right extremist, on Friday announced she will travel to New York City to show her support for the indicted ex-president.

“I’m going to New York on Tuesday. We MUST protest the unconstitutional WITCH HUNT!” she tweeted.

Her remarks came barely hours after Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg sent a six-page letter to House Republican Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan warning that Congress must not “interfere” with the prosecution of Donald Trump. It accused him and two other top Republicans of “an improper and dangerous usurpation,” “attempted interference with an ongoing state criminal investigation,” and warned them against “unlawful political interference.”

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READ MORE: ‘You Can’t Stand on Fifth Avenue and Just Shoot Somebody’: Donald Trump Indicted – Legal Experts Respond

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That letter specifically called out Congresswoman Greene for her rhetoric, noting “some committee members have explicitly stated an intent to interfere with the state proceeding.”

“For example, responding to Trump’s statement that he would be arrested, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene stated that ‘Republicans in Congress MUST subpoena these communists and END this! We have the powerto do it and we also have the power to DEFUND their salaries and departments!’ … and that Republicans who ‘do nothing to stop’ the prosecution ‘will be exposed to the people and will be remembered, scorned, and punished by the base.’”

Clearly his warning had little impact on the far-right Georgia Member of Congress.

In response to Greene’s Friday morning tweet, former U.S. Congressman David Jolly, also a former Republican, appeared to suggest she was encouraging an untoward response.

:{:{}:

}:

“Lighting the match,” he tweeted.

NBC News senior Capitol Hill correspondent Garrett Haake appearing to suggest it was a bad idea, responded by saying, “The situation downtown Tuesday is going to be tense. Narrow streets. Tons of press. Lots of police from different jurisdictions already highly visible.”

READ MORE: Favoring Right Wing Christians, Texas Judge Voids ACA’s Mandate That Insurance Cover Full Cost of HIV Drugs Including PrEP

Top CBS News reporter Robert Costa responded to Greene’s remarks, noting: “By order, NYPD officers here in lower Manhattan, outside the court, are already in full uniform, bracing for protests next week…”

Condé Nast legal affairs editor Luke Zaleski, also responding to Greene, wrote: “They want to incite violence in NYC.”

“Marge is a confederate soldier not an American public servant,” Zaleski added. “She has taken over Congress and wants to destroy the nation from inside. She admits it. Her public agenda is reinstalling a criminal traitor she’s obstructing justice for and breaking up the United States of America.”

Meanwhile, journalist Helen Kennedy appeared to not take Greene’s remarks – or Greene – seriously.

“Clown hurries to circus,” she tweeted.

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amp req one up macho

https://www.mediamatters.org/tiktok/i-smell-civil-war-far-right-tiktok-users-are-alluding-violence-following-news-trumps

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https://www.mediamatters.org/steven-crowder/youtube-steven-crowder-claims-arresting-donald-trump-would-be-how-you-start-civil

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arrest?!

https://www.alternet.org/smartnews/trump-waco/

30th anniv rally?

https://www.alternet.org/smartnews/trump-waco/

no lnx teyt

Experts: Trump is encouraging violence with Waco campaign rally on 30th anniversary of deadly siege

David Badash and The New Civil Rights Movement March 18, 2023

Early Friday evening Donald Trump announced he will hold a campaign rally in Waco on March 25, which falls during the 30th anniversary of the 51-day deadly siege in that Texas community. Barely more than 12 hours later the one-term ex-president under at least four criminal investigations posted a statement that some, including legal experts, warn is encouraging or inciting violence, or is “a call for violence,” after claiming he will be arrested on Tuesday.

For those who would like a refresher, in 1993 agents from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) raided the headquarters of religious cult leader David Koresh and his Branch Davidians. Armed with warrants, federal agents targeted the compound searching for stockpiled firearms. By the end of the standoff, four ATF agents and 82 Branch Davidians had been killed.

Two years later The New York Times pointed to right-wing reaction to that raid, and to the Ruby Ridge siege, as the basis for Timothy McVeigh’s bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, which the FBI called “the worst act of homegrown terrorism in the nation’s history.” 168 people, including 19 children, were killed that day.

Marcy Wheeler, a well-respected journalist who writes about civil liberties and national security, Saturday morning warned: “If you want to talk about Trump inciting violence, it’s probably plenty early to point out that Trump staged a rally in Waco during the 30 year anniversary of the siege.”

READ MORE: ‘A BFD’: Legal Experts Say Judge Ordering Ex-President’s Attorney to Testify Means ‘Trump Probably Committed Crimes’

NBC News presidential historian and author of ten books, Michael Beschloss, summed it up: “So Trump is planning his first campaign rally for Waco on thirtieth anniversary of the siege where a cult leader challenged the authority of the federal government and threatened violence.”

Saturday morning, in several lengthy all-caps rage posts on his Truth Social platform, Trump claimed he was being arrested on Tuesday, and demanded his followers “protest, take our nation back!”

Retired FBI Assistant Director Frank Figliuzzi, now a well-known NBC News national security analyst, wrote: “Cult leader to hold rally where wanted cult leader refused to surrender to feds 30 years ago, killed ATF agents, and ran deadly stand-off where at least 75 died: Donald Trump will host first 2024 presidential rally in Waco.”

Former FBI Deputy Assistant Director of Counterintelligence Peter Strzok, who led the Bureau’s investigation of Russia’s attack on America’s 2016 presidential election and was targeted by Trump, who demanded his firing, pointed to a passage in another of Trump’s rage posts from Saturday morning, highlighting this phrase: “with no retribution.”

Trump, in his Saturday morning rage posts, offered support for the more than 1000 January 6 rioters and insurrectionists who have been arrested.

“American patriots are being arrested & held in captivity like animals, while criminals & leftist thugs are allowed to roam the streets, killing & burning with no retribution,” he wrote.

That line echoes his now-infamous speech earlier this month at CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference.

“In 2016, I declared, ‘I am your voice,’” Trump declared. “Today, I add: I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.”

On December 19, 2020, Trump posted a now-infamous tweet, saying: “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th,” and “Be there, will be wild!”

READ MORE: Trump’s Tuesday ‘Arrest’ Freak-Out Will Come Back to Haunt Him in Court: Legal Expert

Strzok says Saturday’s “retribution” reference is “Will be wild 2.0,” referring to Trump’s December 2020 tweet that’s widely seen as a “call to arms,” including by the U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack.

Legal, national security, and political experts are warning that Trump is encouraging or inciting violence, all over again.

“Trump also calls on his supporters to ‘PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!’—words that echo the language he used to encourage violence in the days leading up to the events of Jan. 6, 2021,” says Anna Bower, who writes for Lawfare Blog and has been reporting on Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis’ election fraud investigation into Trump.

“To be clear: Trump is encouraging violence,” adds Bower. “It’s a move ripped from his Jan. 6 playbook, when he told supporters at the Capitol ‘..if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.’ His conduct was contemptible then; it remains contemptible now.”

That “fight like hell” remark is echoed in another comment Trump made recently, as Strzok points out.

Responding to news five local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies are coordinating security for if and when Trump is indicted, Strzok writes:

“So if indicted, law enforcement is worried about violence from the followers of the guy telling his followers two weeks ago, ‘This is the final battle, they know it…Either they win or we win. And if they win, we no longer have a country’?This is the stuff of failed states.”

Olivia Troye, a former Dept. of Homeland Security official who also worked on national security and homeland security at the National Counterterrorism Center during the Trump administration, issued this warning: “Trump has issued a call for violence. He knows exactly what he’s doing. Republicans need to publicly rebuke this dangerous rhetoric immediately.”

Donald Moynihan, Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy professor, says, “The thing about Trump, is that you never can be sure when it all might tilt over into political violence. Because for sure, that is how some of his followers will read ‘take our nation back’ in the context of his possible arrest.”

Top national security attorney Brad Moss says: “Trump is trying to incite another mob for next week.”

Former Trump attorney Michael Cohen told The New York Post on Saturday, “Donald would have no reason to put out the statement unless he has been contacted by the [office of Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg] and advised accordingly.”

“Donald’s post is eerily similar to his battle cry prior to the January 6th insurrection; including calling for protest,” he added. “By doing so, Donald is hoping to rile his base, witness another violent clash on his behalf and profit from it by soliciting contributions.”

Author and political commentator Jared Yates Sexton, who covered the Trump 2016 campaign and hosts a live weekly podcast, issued this warning:

“For everyone who has spent years now trying to argue that Donald Trump isn’t a fascist or a demagogue, open your eyes. Facing indictment he’s calling for unrest and violence. Exactly as he did when he was soundly beaten in an election. We’re in this thing. Time to get serious.”

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yikes

poll xian natl

https://www.alternet.org/white-christian-nationalism-2659398796/

maya

A new national survey conducted by the Public Research Institute and Brookings Institution found that a majority of Republicans in the U.S. "are sympathetic to" Christian nationalism, The Guardian reports.

The survey finds more than 50 percent of Republicans identify as one of two groups, showing that 29 percent “of white evangelical Protestants qualify as Christian nationalism adherents,” and 35 percent “qualify as sympathizers.”

The Guardian reports:

The survey comes as the US experiences an increasing number of Americans shifting away from religious affiliations, as well as a declining number of churches across the country. Data released last year by the Pew Research Center found that Christians in the US could be a minority group by 2070.

READ MORE:Are evangelicals distancing from Trump?

:{:{Additionally, the survey shows that 50 percent of Christian nationalism supporters and 38 percent of sympathizers favor the “idea of an authoritarian leader ‘who is willing to break some rules if that’s what it takes to set things right.’”}:

}:

Last year, NBC aired a clip of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) on the ideology.

"We need to be the party of nationalism," she said. "I'm a Christian and I say it proudly: We should be Christian nationalists."

Around the same time, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and potential 2024 GOP presidential nominee urged a private Christian college audience to "put on the full armor of God. The Tampa Bay Times reports DeSantis "is increasingly using biblical references in speeches that cater to those who see policy fights through a morality lens."

READ MORE:'Mean-spirited, vulgar grab for power': This evangelical pastor is fighting back against Christian nationalism

Futhermore, in the same year, Politico and The University of Maryland also conducted a survey raising questions around Christian nationalism to U.S. Republicans. The survey found 61 percent of Republicans would be in "favor" of "the United States officially declaring the United States to be a Christian nation."

Building on that data, PRRI and Brookings Institution's survey now finds 57 percent "of Christian nationalism adherents disagree that white supremacy is a major problem in the country," while 70 percent "reject the idea that historical discrimination contributes to current challenges faced by Black Americans."

Additionally, 23 percent of Christian nationalism supporters "believe the stereotype that Jewish people in the United States hold too many positions of power," while 67 percent "say that people from some Muslim-majority countries should be banned from entering the U.S."

READ MORE:'QMaga': How QAnon, MAGA and 'Christian nationalism' have pushed the GOP into 'madness'

As political violence increases in the U.S., supporters of Christian nationalism “are nearly seven times more likely than” non-supporters to believe “true patriots might have to resort to violence to save our country."

The Southern Poverty Law Center asserts "the [white nationalist] movement’s energy has shifted into more mainstream spaces in the aftermath of Jan. 6."

Of the population who agrees with resorting to said violence, the survey finds12 percent “personally threatened to use or actually used a gun, knife or other weapon on someone in the past few years.”

The Guardian's full report is available to read at this link.

READ MORE:More than 60 percent of Republicans want the United States of America declared a Christian nation: report

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aha note that property damage and peeing is violent, but not jan 6:

https://www.mediamatters.org/matt-walsh/daily-wire-host-says-trans-people-commit-:(style="background-color:#ffffffff"):}::{violence-using-bathroom-:(style="background-color:#ffff66ff"):}::{their-very-presence

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https://www.mediamatters.org/tim-pool/tim-pool-and-guests-discuss-how-acquire-guns-without-attracting-attention-authorities

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an 2 23

Professor, historian and author Kathleen Belew, one of the United States’ top experts on white supremacist and white nationalist terrorism, has often stressed that violent, racially motivated attacks shouldn’t be viewed as isolated incidents, but as part of a broader movement. And when Belew made a Monday night, February 6 appearance on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show,” she explained how a Maryland woman’s alleged role in a plot to attack five energy substations in the Baltimore area fits into the overall “white power” game plan.

Earlier in the day, law enforcement officials had announced the arrest of Maryland resident Sarah Beth Clendaniel, who, they allege, conspired with fellow white supremacist Brandon Russell in that plot. Clendaniel and Russell, according to officials, hoped to completely disable energy infrastructure in Baltimore and deprive the city of electricity for an extended period of time.

During her conversation with Maddow, Belew emphasized that this was not an isolated incident. White supremacists, white nationalists and neo-Nazis, according to the professor, are targeting energy infrastructure in general — not just in Baltimore, Maryland.

READ MORE:Why the power grid is an 'attractive target' for domestic terrorists and white supremacists: report

Belew, author of the 2019 book, “Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America,” told Maddow, “The electrical part may be new, but infrastructure attacks by this movement are not new. This is a strategy that was pioneered by a group called The Order in 1983…. Infrastructure attacks are one kind of violence among several others that are all laid out in a strategy in common in order to bring about what the movement seeks, which is the overthrow of the United States and the creation of a white ethno-state — mass violence against communities of color and even genocide against non-white peoples.”

According to Belew — who teaches at Northwestern University in the Chicago suburbs — attacks on energy infrastructure and the January 6, 2021 insurrection are both part of the “white power” game plan.

Belew told Maddow, “Infrastructure attacks sit next to a show of forced violence like the January 6 attack on the Capitol and mass casualty violence like the Oklahoma City bombing. All of these exist together within one broad ideology in the white power movement.”

READ MORE: Terrorism expert explains why the Great Replacement theory is so central to white racist ideology

Watch the full video at this link.

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got nom tho 19 prev felonies?!

Solomon Peña, a New Mexico GOP candidate who lost a November election, was arrested as a key suspect in a series of drive-by shootings that specifically targeted Democratic lawmakers’ homes, The Associated Press reports.

Peña suggested that the election was “rigged” after he lost to incumbent state Rep. Miguel P. Garcia by approximately 3,600 votes.

NBC reported in November that many “Republicans fear democracy is in peril because they believe that elections are rigged against them” and that former president Donald Trump’s false claim of voter fraud have encouraged his supporters to “use force or intimidation” — hence the Jan. 6 insurrection. Peña has confirmed in a tweet that he was in Washington, D.C. on the day of the attack.

READ MORE:Law professor’s Jan. 6 takeaway: the 'threat of political violence' is 'far from over'

Later that month, Peña also tweeted a photo of himself wearing a "Make America Great Again" sweatshirt, with the caption "Trump just announced for 2024. I stand with him. I never conceded my HD 14 race. Now researching my options." Around the same time, the 39-year-old Albuquerque resident took it upon himself to show up at the homes of elected officials uninvited, in an attempt to prove that he won the election. Not too long after that, the shootings began on December 4.

Harold Medina, Albuquerque Police Chief called Peña a “mastermind” of a “politically motivated conspiracy” that resulted in the shootings, which occurred at the homes of Bernalillo County Commissioner Adriann Barboas, New Mexico Rep. Javier Martinez, Bernalillo County Commissioner Debbie O’Mally — whose home received “more than a dozen rounds” of bullets — and lastly, New Mexico Senator Linda Lopez, who confirmed that three bullets grazed her 10-year-old daughter’s room.

Peña, although the key suspect, is not the only one. The “failed Republican candidate” paid four other men cash to execute the shootings using stolen cars, although he, himself, did “pull the trigger” in one of the shootings.

A few hours after investigators detected gunfire rippling through Sen. Lopez’s neighborhood, an officer discovered bullet casings in a car driven by Jose Trujillo and registered under Peña’s name. The car contained over 800 fentanyl pills and two firearms.

READ MORE:New report destroys GOP talking points blaming Dems for crime: Trump states have 8 out of the 10 highest murder rates

The New Mexico GOP responded to Peña’s arrest in a statement, saying, “If Peña is found guilty, he must be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”

More arrests and charges are on the horizon, according to police, and the investigation remains ongoing.

READ MORE:'Not just an aberration': Hillary Clinton blasts the GOP's embrace of calls for political violence

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idaho pride arrest proud boys militia 6 22 (pastor erased endorsement?) patriot prayer?

// trump coup fake electors AZ

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turner diary?

12 22

The “rule of three” is one of those informal guidelines that help us journalists decide whether an event is newsworthy. If something occurs three times, it’s probably a trend. Trends are newsworthy.

Trends can be fads, but three rifle attacks on critical infrastructure in less than 10 years – two this week alone – isn’t a fad. That goes double since the attacks appear to correlate with another political trend, which is wider and greater social acceptance of trans people.

Even as GOP-dominated state legislatures move to restrict trans rights, more than 500 municipal governments are moving the other way, opening cities to greater equality and freedom. Two hundred major urban centers and 50 state capitals have enacted or are set to enact laws, policies and services inclusive of the LGBT-plus people.

READ MORE: FBI investigating five power substations attacked in Pacific Northwest strikes similar to North Carolina

That’s democratic politics. It never stops. But neither does the political violence that erupts in reaction to democratic politics. The more Americans perceive trans people as people, rather than subhuman perversions, the more political violence we can expect.

Hence the nature of the ongoing right-wing insurgency.

It’s not a fad

Two electrical substations were damaged Saturday in Moore County, North Carolina, knocking out power in more than 37,000 homes.

READ MORE: What Ye's antisemitism teaches us about right-wing hate speech

In what police said was an “intentional” and “malicious” attack, a person or persons “open fired” on the transformers, leaving behind more than two dozen shell casings from a “high-powered rifle.”

Investigators initially said there was no evidence linking the attack to “a local drag show that had been targeted with threats of violence and calls to cancel the show in recent weeks,” reported USA Today.

There’s still no hard evidence linking the events, but investigators appear now to be broadening their perspective, setting the attack, according to CNN, “in context with the growing tensions and armed confrontations around similar LBGTQ+ events across the country.”

They are looking at “writings by extremists on online forums encouraging attacks on critical infrastructure” as well as “a series of recent disruptions of LGBTQ+ events by domestic extremists.”

CNN reported that paramilitaries have for the last two years used online forums to discuss attacking critical infrastructure, including the power grid, and to encourage individuals to act. These paramilitaries “posted documents and even instructions outlining vulnerabilities and suggesting the use of high-powered rifles.”

A government report from 2013 determined that attacks on 17 transformers in Silicon Valley were the result of sniper fire. More than 100 bullets were expended over 20 minutes, leaving scores of thousands without power and costing the public utility $15 million.

The Seattle Times reported today the investigation of at least five rifle attacks on electrical substations in Washington state. The damage was similar to the damage in North Carolina. Authorities there said it was a “deliberate physical attack,” though the newspaper reported it was unclear whether they caused service disruptions.

That, my friend, is three related events. It’s not a fad.

It’s a trend.

“Normal reality”

It’s also an example of the friction between democratic politics and an established political order (white power) that refuses to yield to democratic politics. That friction can be healthy, but more often than not in this country a consequence of it has been political violence.

It bears repeating at this point that the greatest locus of friction was probably when Americans elected their first Black president. Given that white power was “normal reality” to most white Americans, Barack Obama’s ascendance was a perversion of the natural order.

I don’t find it surprising that a person or persons fired on 17 electrical substations after Obama was reelected in 2012. If democratic politics couldn’t stop “normal reality” from being turned upside down, political violence was justified in returning us to “normal reality.”

But the attack on critical infrastructure was, in 2013, an outlier.

Most of the political violence we have seen since then has been inflicted on people. As I have said before, every shooting massacre is a reaction to white people’s perceived loss of racial status. There have been so many mass shootings, in fact, that if they happened anywhere else in the world, they would be called an insurgency.

If the attackers were Black or brown, yes! Then that’s an insurgency! But we don’t call it that. Most people in this country are white and most white people can’t see a political insurgency in front of them, even when it erupts in schools, even when it mows down children

Property over people

Maybe that will change given this new trend.

This is America, after all. Here, the rights of property have historically superseded the rights of people, as is evidenced by Republican legislators bent on outlawing gender-affirming healthcare for trans youth, banning certain trans-related books in public schools and forbidding the discussion of LGBT-plus topics in the classroom.

All of that is jim-dandy, as is the massacre of innocents, but taking out the power supply? That crosses the line. Crosses! The! Line!

There’s no hope for gun control as long as the Republicans don’t want it – and they won’t want it when the status quo is mere mass death.

The Republicans, however, are the party of property, of business, of old white people. Power outages cost time. Time costs money. And money is the entire point of living a once-only existence on Earth.

I’m not the only one who sees a crack in the GOP’s united front. North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, a Democrat, said Tuesday:

“When we look at all the money that’s being lost by businesses here at Christmastime, when we look at threats to people in nursing homes having lost power, hospitals having to run off generators and not being able to do certain kinds of operations at this point – all of those are deep concerns here, and we can’t let this happen” (italics mine).

I’m not holding my breath, but if this new trend gains some momentum, we might see a few Republicans actually stand up to the paramilitaries among them and put an end to this insurgency.

READ MORE: 25 pro-QAnon extremists arrested in far-right plot to overthrow Germany’s federal government

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edit bd an 11 22

There was another mass shooting last night, this one in a Chesapeake Bay-area Walmart. Using a pistol, the gunman shot dead six people, wounded five more, then killed himself. Police say the suspect was an employee at the store. They say the shooting began in a break room.

We don’t know the shooter’s identity yet, but we do know last night marked the seventh mass shooting in seven days, according to the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit group that tracks and makes available information on gun-related violence. Investigators are still determining a motive for the violence. Honestly, it doesn’t matter.

The gunman’s motive doesn’t matter because whatever it is in detail, the urge to murder expressed itself from inside a political context that’s already highly tolerant of spectacular rates of political violence. The Gun Violence Archive reports an estimated 600 gun-related incidents of mass death so far this year. That’s nearly two daily.

READ MORE: 'Gays Against Groomers' founder predicts more anti-LGBTQ+ violence until 'we end the evil agenda'

Whether, over 20 years, the bodies piled skyward came from criminals shattering the peace or from police officers “keeping the peace” – one way or another, it’s political violence. No matter the Walmart shooter’s goals, his actions are political violence, too.

Yet we pretend it isn’t.

Why?

“Commonsense” is senseless

READ MORE: How the GOP's 'folk libertarians' and 'cynical irreligious right' clashed in the midterms: historian

In any other time and place, in any other part of the world, seven mass shootings in seven days, nearly two every day of the current year, would not be called “senseless,” “insane” and “barbaric.” Why?

Because in any other time and place, in any other part of the world, seven mass shootings in seven days, nearly two every day of the current year, would be seen as acts of political violence demanding a political solution. We don’t do that, though. We say it’s “senseless.”

We say the solution is “commonsense.”

No, “commonsense” is senseless.

Because political violence is never senseless! It has an objective! If we stopped denying what’s in front of our eyes for a moment, we’d see why there’s so much mass death in such short periods of time.

This is an insurgency.

Rule of law as the enemy

One way or the other, mass death is a consequence of liberal democracy head-banging with the hierarchies of white power that have constituted the political order of America since the start.

Democratic politics, which never stops pressing forward, triggers a reaction from the status quo, which never stops defending itself. One kind of politics irritates another kind. Occasionally, they collide. Political violence is the outcome. Mass death is one variety of it.

Precisely, the Republicans favored democratic politics as long as democratic politics was in line with “the natural order of things.” Then democratic politics produced a Black president. That was it.

Not only has the GOP retreated since then from democratic norms and democratic institutions. They have retreated from the rule of law. They permitted guns to deluge communities. The sheer volume empowered white men to take the law into their own hands. Equal treatment under law was no longer an ideal. It was the enemy.

Soft targets

Since 2008, but especially since 2012 (with Barack Obama’s reelection), the paramilitary wing of the Republican Party has continued to grow, as has the political culture around it that allows men of any color to solve their personal problems with a gun.

No matter the shooter’s identity, his actions are political violence arising from a political context in which people seek political goals. The main one is weakening the perceived grip liberal democracy has on the United States for the purpose of “taking their country back.”

This paramilitary insurgency – which, by the way, operates inside and outside the ranks of law enforcement; which, by the way, includes freelancers unrelated to the GOP – cannot succeed, ie, would fail fantastically, if viewed as an armed internal threat.

In that case, GOP guerrillas would risk open warfare with the government, a confrontation they’d lose and never recover from.

So these partizans hit soft targets – schools, churches, nightclubs, Walmarts – anything that can’t fight back. They foment anarchy. Spread chaos. Create an air of insanity. Such is the status quo upheld by establishing an atmosphere of fear that’s designed to prevent reformers from using democratic politics to reform the status quo.

The problem is obvious

As I said, in any other time and place, in any other part of the world, the paramilitary wing of the Republican Party would be seen for what it is – an armed faction that can’t get what it wants democratically and instead uses violence to bring back political conditions in which democratic politics is again in line with “the natural order of things.”

Why don’t most Americans see that?

That’s obvious.

Most of us are white.

White power serves white Americans such that a paramilitary insurgency can’t possibly exist. Something like that happens in South America or Asia, not these United States! There must be another reason – any reason! – that does not call on us white Americans to rethink our political advantages or, God forbid, be responsible for choices we make that altogether uphold the white-power order.

It must be the Republicans’ fault! It’s all those guns!

No, the problem is us.

We just won’t see it.

READ MORE: Saying 'trans people deserve to be alive' is political

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/11/fox-news-club-q/

mass shooting revert BS

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11 22 an

According to a report from WDJT, an unidentified man was taken into custody on election day in West Bend, Wisconsin after he brandished a knife and demanded election workers "stop the voting."

The report notes, the 38-year-old man showed up at the West Bend Community Memorial Library where he confronted poll workers which led to voting stopping for approximately 30 minutes until police arrived.

On their Facebook page, the West Bend Police Department issued a statementsaying, "On Tuesday, November 8, 2022, at approximately 12:35 p.m., the City of West Bend Police Department received a call from West Bend Community Memorial Library staff reporting a male subject in the library armed with a knife demanding for staff to 'stop the voting.' Police officers responded and took a 38-year-old male into custody without incident. There were no injuries reported."

"The library is a polling location for the City of West Bend. Voting was paused for just over 30 minutes while the scene was secured and the initial investigation was conducted. ," the statement continued before adding, "The incident remains under investigation and charges will be forthcoming. There is no further threat to the community."

You can read more here.

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not wrong on vast rw consp

https://www.alternet.org/2022/11/not-just-an-aberration-gop/

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11 22 an raw

During a segment on his livestream show, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk slammed news outlets and journalists who say the attack on Nancy Pelosi's husband this weekend is a sign that right-wing rhetoric is sparking real-world violence, saying "of course" Republicans should reject Democrats' attempts to link them to the attack.

"Why is the conservative movement to blame for gay schizophrenic nudists that are hemp jewelry maker breaking into someone's home -- or maybe not breaking into someone's home. Why are we to blame for that exactly," Kirk said. "And why is he still in jail? Why has he not been bailed out? And by the way, if someamazing patriot out there in San Francisco or the Bay Area wants to really be a midterm hero, someone should go and bail this guy out... bail him out, and then go ask him some questions."

Kirk's claim that Paul Pelosi's attacker, Dave DePape, is gay likely came from an article posted, then deleted, by Elon Musk that claimed without evidence that DePape had previously attended a gay nightclub before the attack.

Reports show that DePape had a long history of believing in and blogging about conspiracy theories. In recent years, his beliefs started to reflect themes that are echoed in right-wing conspiracy theorist circles.

Watch the video below or at this link.

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an 11 22

The suspect, David Wayne DePape, has been charged with a slew of state and local offenses, including attempted homicide and attempted kidnapping of a family member of an elected official.

DePape allegedly smashed a back window of Pelosi’s San Francisco home early Friday morning, woke up her sleeping husband and demanded to speak with “Nancy.” The Speaker was not at home.

DePape told investigators his plan was to hold “Nancy hostage and talk to her.” He came prepared with flex-cuffs, tape, rope and two hammers, according to police. He said he wanted to interrogate Nancy Pelosi, because she was the “leader of the pack” of the lying Democratic Party, according to the federal criminal complaint.

READ MORE: 'Break her kneecaps': Feds charge suspect who attacked Paul Pelosi as new details on his motivation are revealed

DePape said he planned to let Pelosi go if she told him “the truth,” but that if she “lied,” he was going to break “her kneecaps,” the complaint said. DePape said he was certain that Pelosi would not have told the “truth.” This was an astute inference on his part seeing as the “truth” he was looking for probably had something to do with a cabal of satanist pedophiles. Pelosi’s wounds, DePape stated, would put Congress on notice that there are “consequences for actions.”

That’s the classic logic of terrorism.

DePape’s plan is reminiscent of another plan to kidnap and interrogate Democratic leaders. It’s what the Wolverine Watchmen militia were accused of plotting to do with Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat. The men schemed and trained to kidnap her and “put her on a show trial” over covid regulations.

DePape’s online footprint shows a man in the tightening grip of radicalization. He registered a domain name in August and began posting feverishly about QAnon, Pizzagate and the pedophile cabal that runs the world. He was an election denier and a proponent of the Big Lie of 2020 voter fraud. He also indulged in Holocaust denial and other forms of antisemitism, anti-Black racism, rants against “groomers” and attacks on Ukrainian democracy. He also found time to defend the honor of rightwing scholar and icon Jordan Peterson.

READ MORE: ['What the hell is wrong with these people?': Conservative batters the GOP response to Pelosi beating

DePape embraced the Revolutionary War kitsch beloved of J6 insurgents. In an interview, he repeatedly likened himself to the American founding fathers. He claimed to be fighting tyranny without the option of surrender.

Some of the most notorious J6 insurgents specifically targeted Pelosi during the J6 siege.

Guy Reffitt said he wanted to drag Nancy Pelosi out of the building. He brought a semi-automatic handgun onto Capitol grounds. "I just want to see Pelosi's head hitting every fucking stair of the building,” Reffitt said. Reffit also brought flex-cuffs.

Oath Keeper Kelly Meggs, who is on trial for seditious conspiracy, said he wanted to see Pelosi’s head “rolling down the front steps” of the Capitol. Meggs and fellow Oath Keeper Kenneth Harrelson are accused of splitting off from the group to go “hunting” for Pelosi.

Insurgent Mark Mazza, who brought two loaded guns, told investigators that if he’d crossed paths with Pelosi "you'd be here for another reason."

Dawn Bancroft admitted on video that she and her friend broke into the Capitol and that they’d been “looking for Nancy to shoot her in the friggin' brain.”

We now know, in the suspect’s own words, that he was specifically targeting Speaker Pelosi for political violence. In the days following the attack, the political right has tried every bad faith deflection tactic imaginable, blaming DePape’s actions on drugs and mental illness. While DePape is likely mentally ill and may suffer from addiction, these factors are secondary at best.[ knowingly wind them up, then throw under bus]

This was a well-organized, premeditated attack.

DePape allegedly assembled a restraint kit, bought hammers, pinpointed his target’s address, and broke into the home under the cover of darkness. He knew exactly what he was doing.

The roots of this attack lie in toxic conspiracy theories that convince unstable people that their freedom is at risk and an insurrection that has gone largely unpunished.

As President Joe Biden said in Delaware, “[i]t’s one thing to condemn the violence but you can’t condemn the violence unless you condemn those people who continue to argue the election was not real, that it’s being stolen.”

READ MORE: 'Too soon?' Don Jr. mocks brutal hammer attack with 'Paul Pelosi Halloween costume' meme

underwear and hammer gay tryst? musk twit consp theory from wacko blog?

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an ah 10 22 max boot

The United States has had more than its share of disturbing political headlines in the weeks leading up to the Tuesday, November 8 election, from death threats against election workers to a break-in at the campaign headquarters of Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (who is running for governor against far-right MAGA Republican Kari Lake), to a violent attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, on Friday, October 28. During the invasion of the Pelosi’s San Francisco home, the intruder demanded to know, “Where is Nancy?” before attacking Paul Pelosi with a hammer — indicating that the attack could have been politically motivated rather than a robbery attempt. “Where is Nancy?” is a phrase that some of the rioters used during the January 6, 2021 invasion of the U.S. Capitol Building.

The attack on Paul Pelosi came before a weekend of attention-grabbing political headlines around the world, from thousands of fascists descending on Predappio, Italy, Benito Mussolini’s birthplace, to celebrate the 100-year anniversary of Il Duce’s rise to power to left-wing candidate Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s narrow victory over far-right President Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil’s 2022 election. Some of Lula’s supporters fear that with Brazil having become so bitterly divided — not unlike the U.S. — the country could suffer political violence from pro-Bolsonaro authoritarians.

In a column published on Halloween, Never Trump conservative and Washington Post opinion columnist Max Boot speaks candidly about far-right violence in the U.S. — stressing that it is disingenuous to use “both sides” rhetoric when discussing the United States’ problem with political violence, most of which is coming from the far right rather than the far left.

READ MORE: Historian describes Trump as one of the leading influencers of political violence

“The same day as the Pelosi attack, a man pleaded guilty to making death threats against Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.),” Boot explains. “Two days earlier, three men who were motivated by right-wing, anti-lockdown hysteria after COVID-19 hit were convicted of aiding a plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D). In August, another man died after attacking an FBI office because he was so upset about the Bureau’s search of Mar-a-Lago."

Boot continues, “Then there are all the terrible hate crimes, in cities including Pittsburgh, El Paso and Buffalo, where gunmen were motivated by the kind of racist rhetoric — especially the ‘Great Replacement theory’ — now openly espoused on Fox ‘News.’”

Boot goes on to say that many journalists, in the interest of being “fair-minded,” will write something along the lines of, “To be sure, political violence is not confined to the right. Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) was shot in 2017 by a gunman with leftist beliefs, and in June, a man was arrested for allegedly plotting to assassinate Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh after becoming incensed about court rulings on abortion and guns.”

Republican National Committee Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel, following the assault on Paul Pelosi, said, “Violence is up across the board.” But Boot finds such comments disingenuous, as most of the political violence in the U.S. is coming from the far right rather than the far left.

READ MORE:Georgia election worker tells how Trump’s election lies made her a target for death threats

“Violence is unacceptable whether from the left or right, period,” Boot writes. “But we can’t allow GOP leaders to get away with this false moral equivalency. They are evading their responsibility for their extremist rhetoric that all too often motivates extremist actions. The New America think tank found last year that, since September 11, 2001, far-right terrorists had killed 122 people in the United States, compared with only one killed by far-leftists.”

Boot continues, “A study from the Center for Strategic and International Studies last year found that since 2015, right-wing extremists had been involved in 267 plots or attacks, compared with 66 for left-wing extremists. A Washington Post/University of Maryland survey released in January found that 40 percent of Republicans said violence against the government can be justified, compared with only 23 percent of Democrats. There is little doubt about what is driving political violence: the ascendance of (Donald) Trump.”

Boot wraps up his column by emphasizing that it is disingenuous to claim that in 2022, the left and the right are the same when it comes to political violence in the United States.

“Please don’t accept the GOP framing of the assault on Paul Pelosi as evidence of a problem plaguing ‘both sides of the aisle,’” Boot warns. “Political violence in America is being driven primarily by the far right, not the far left, and the far right is much closer to the mainstream of the Republican Party than the far left is to the Democratic Party.”

READ MORE:Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs’ campaign office burglarized ahead of midterms: report

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an

man who made ‘terrifying’ death threats to Eric Swalwell pleads guilty after admitting to posing as Trump son

David Badash The New Civil Rights Movement

October 29, 2022

A Pennsylvania man has pleaded guilty to making death threats to U.S. Congressman Eric Swalwell (D-CA), after also admitting he posed as former President Donald Trump’s son and late brother in a fraudulent fundraising...

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false balance

an 10 22

CNN's Jake Tapper recently weighed in on the assault of Paul Pelosi, the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) as he called out a faction of "elected officials" and members of the media who he believes are responsible for promoting "political violence" and dehumanizing opponents.

On Friday, October 28, the CNN anchor offered details about Paul Pelosi's injury confirming that he'd suffered a skull fracture in the aftermath of a home invasion. According to Tapper, the lawmaker's husband had undergone surgery at a hospital in the San Francisco, Calif., area.

It was also reported that the assailant who entered their home asked, “Where’s Nancy?” Multiple reports also confirmed the suspect involved in the assault supported conspiracy theories about the COVID-19 pandemic and criticized the House Select Committee's efforts to investigate the insurrection on the U.S. Capitol.

READ MORE: 'They ruined everything': Jake Tapper tears into boomers during interview with Gen. Z candidate

Tapper went on to play a clip of the violence that ensued on Jan. 6 where a rioter asked a question similar to the one the assailant asked during the Pelosi home invasion.

“This horrifying act of violence today, I wish I could tell you it’s an outlier,” Tapper said. “It’s not. It is the inevitable product of a poisonous political climate where unchecked lies and hate-filled dehumanizing rhetoric combine to create a perfect storm of political violence.”

Expressing concern about the hate-filled rhetoric, the news anchor also referenced the results of a poll that determined 34% of Americans believe "it’s justifiable for citizens to take violent action against the government.”

He noted how conservatives are not alone in pushing political violence. "As much as Donald Trump is part of the problem here, you need to know these threats and horrific acts are not only from the right,” he continued. “Back in 2017, Republican congressman Steve Scalise was nearly killed after being shot during an attack on a congressional baseball game. Supreme Court justices are also under threat. This summer, a man traveled to D.C. From California armed to the teeth with the stated intention of killing Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.”

READ MORE: 'Disappointed': Jake Tapper grills GOP Virginia governor over support of election denier Kari Lake

Tapper went on to argue that these incidents of violence are not isolated as he blamed some members of the media and certain politicians for their role in perpetuating political violence.

We’re at a moment right now of extreme polarization, where calls for violence are leading to actual violence. We cannot pretend that these are all isolated, fringe events. There are people in mainstream accepted society – elected officials, TV anchors, others – who have been creating a permission structure that is helping to open the door to this violence, a permission structure created when they dehumanize opponents or smear them, or belittle or make light of acts or threats of violence against their perceived foes or spread conspiracy theories.

Watch the video below or at this link.

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cya twt by mtg

https://www.alternet.org/2022/10/pelosi-gop/

A new analysis is exposing the real timeline of staged attacks against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) while explaining why it should not be a surprise that the lawmaker and her husband were the victims of a home invasion.

The report, collectively written by The Washington Post's Ashley Parker, Hannah Allam, and Marianna Sotomayor, sheds light on how far-right Republicans have been depicting the top-ranking Democratic lawmaker as a target for several years. In fact, some have even suggested that she be assassinated.

In the report, the writers highlighted how the alleged home invasion assailant, identified as 42-year-old David Depape, has a history of echoing conspiracy theories. They also suggested that the Republican Party's disturbing rhetoric may also be a contributing factor to the uptick in politically charged threats and violence.

READ MORE: 'Everybody was surprised': Nancy Pelosi reacts to Mar-a-Lago search

According to the Post, "For many Democrats, the attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband represents the all-but-inevitable conclusion of Republicans’ increasingly violent and threatening rhetoric toward their political opponents — a phenomenon that escalated under former president Donald Trump, who prided himself on his inflammatory oratory and who was often reluctant to denounce white nationalists and others spewing hate speech."

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) also said, "Sadly this attack was inevitable. Political violence is on the rise. And instead of GOP leaders condemning it, they condone it with silence or, even worse, glorification.”

As an example, the writers referenced thehistory of controversial remarks made by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.). On multiple occasions, the conspiracy-driven lawmaker has encouraged threats against Pelosi.

"But the threats against Pelosi have often been particularly ferocious and date back more than a decade, when Republicans worked to make her one of the faces of former president Barack Obama’s health-care law," they wrote.

READ MORE: Watch: Fox News tries to blame President Biden for violent attack on Speaker Pelosi’s husband

"More recently, CNN reportedthat in 2018 and 2019, Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) — who was elected to Congress in 2020 and quickly became known for her conspiracy theory-laden views — repeatedly expressed support for executing prominent Democratic politicians, including Pelosi."

"Greene liked a Facebook comment that said 'a bullet to the head would be quicker' as a way of removing Pelosi as speaker, CNN found. And in a video of a speech Greene gave promoting a 2019 petition she’d launched to impeach Pelosi for 'crimes of treason,' Greene calls Pelosi 'a traitor to our country' and says the speaker could be executed for treason," with Greene sen stating in a video,"It’s a crime punishable by death — is what treason is. Nancy Pelosi is guilty of treason.”

Michael Jensen, with the START consortium for terrorism research at the University of Maryland, also expounded on some of the problems that could arise when some individuals are targeted.

"If somebody sets their sights on these individuals and then they decide to mobilize, there’s virtually nothing stopping them,” Jensen said, later adding, "There was an opportunity for the more moderate elements of the Republican Party to distance themselves from the more radical elements and marginalize them, and be the start of the end of this wave. The exact opposite happened. What we saw instead was a doubling down on moving extremism into the mainstream.”

READ MORE: Trump lawyer dhillon  writes conspiratorial post questioning Paul Pelosi hammer assault

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edit bd 10 22

rural trumpistas?

USA Today runs a daily poll on its frontpage. On Friday, the public survey results were on gun laws. “If it were harder to obtain guns legally, Americans think there would be __ mass shootings.”

Sixty-six percent said there would be far fewer or somewhat fewer mass shootings. Nearly 30 percent said no difference. (A smattering of cranks, 5 percent, said there would be more or somewhat more.)

I bring this to your attention not so much to bolster the prospect of tighter gun laws (though it does), but to point out a pretty common demographic pattern – that a radical third stands against the majority with respect to issues concerning us all. Whether gun control, abortion or “indoctrination” in public school, there’s always about a third of the country representing the country’s shame.

READ MORE: Dark money groups have pumped $1 billion into GOP effort to retake the Senate

This alone isn’t noteworthy. After all, every country has its yokels and yahoos. But not every country has a political setup that gives yokels and yahoos more practical power than the majority. Very few countries, if any, give voters in sparsely populated farming areas an effective veto over densely populated areas with large urban centers.

That setup – or the political advantages of it – are apparent when the Republicans slander cities, and in the slandering, they protect those same advantages. Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan said last week: “Do you feel safe in cities controlled by the Left? Cities that defunded the police? Cities that ignore police staffing issues. No. No. No.”

The dynamic of political power between urban and rural is obviously asymmetrical. That’s by design. It’s to prevent liberal democracy from flourishing fully. The thinking at the time of the founding was that a fully flourishing liberal democracy would inflict tyranny on the minority. In the case of the founders, rich white men like them.

But the problem is and has been the opposite.

READ MORE: 'Just out here watching boxes': Armed Arizona 'poll watchers' raise fears of right-wing voter intimidation

A radical minority dictates the terms of American democracy.

I suspect that even people with something better to do than pay attention to politics get this. The Electoral College stands against democracy. So does the US Senate. The courts, especially the Supreme Court, do, too. We liberals say “it’s a republic, not a democracy” is wrong, but we don’t consider whether right-wingers have a point. Saying they’re wrong is more theoretical than empirical.

We should consider something else that’s more theoretical than empirical – the idea that political violence is an exception to the rule. Precisely, that political violence is random, irrational, senseless: something that deviates from the norm. It’s nothing of the sort.

Its origins have always been here.

It’s that place, demographically speaking, where the minority believes, say, that tighter gun laws will make no difference to shooting massacres, even amid mass death, even amid murder rates in Republican-controlled state outstripping those of all other states.

What respect is the truth (or anything) owed when a third controls contramajoritarian institutions built into the system by design? What respect is the political majority owed by a political minority? Why would the politically strong give respect to the politically weak?

But sometimes those contramajoritarian institutions fail (or appear to). If and when they do, this radical third of America is entitled, on account of having political advantages, to resort to violence in order to maintain those same political advantages. While democracy is the point for the political majority, with violence the exception, violence is the point for the political minority, with democracy the exception.

So when a school kid is sent a letter like the one above (regarding the child’s mother, a Loudoun County, Virginia, school board member), it should not be seen as extraordinary, because it’s actually ordinary. After all, what’s more common? People discussing hard topics like “critical race theory” in public school? Or people losing their minds over things they don’t understand and don’t want to understand?

The radical third has been living among us since the founding. They had kids. Their kids had kids had kids. This is how they think. This is what they do. The difference is of degree, not kind. As long as the contramajoritarian institutions hold, all’s well. If they don’t, well …

According to USA Today, “bomb threats at [historically Black colleges and universities] had swelled to at least 57” since February, “leaving administrators and students on edge and rekindling a history of violence aimed at Black students seeking educational advancement.”

The FBI said that it had focused on six subjects in 2021, but arrested no one, according to USA Today. In the meantime, however, “the menacing behavior continued into the next school year.”

“If we allow people to feel like they can continue to do this without being held accountable, they will always be able to be disruptive,” Walter Kimbrough told the newspaper. “We’re the only group where there have been threats, and nobody has been caught” (my italics).

If it isn’t apparent, the source of these threats is the radical third of America, where democracy is undeserving of respect and where the rule of law applies only if it maintains baked-in political advantages.

A radical third dictates the terms of American democracy.

It’s empirical, not theoretical.

READ MORE: Are SCOTUS Republicans in on a plot to end Democratic presidencies forever?

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rww 10 22

vid

Far-right activist and so-called “Stop the Steal” founder Ali Alexander went on a manic rant during his podcast Monday in which openly advocated for Christian fascism and “a violent Christian crusade” against his perceived political opponents.

Buoyed by reports that Elon Musk will purchase Twitter and that Kanye West was photographed wearing a “White Lives Matter” shirt, Alexander expressed his conviction that his far-right worldview is gaining power and popularity, prompting him to lay out his vision for afascist Christian nationalist theocracy.

“I refuse to walk into a future where it is commonplace to have sexual perversion in public,” Alexander. “It’s just not going to be the norm, not where we’re going. OK? You can call that whatever the hell you want. You can call that Americana, you can call that America First, you could call it fascism, you could call it a theocracy, you could call it Christian nationalism. You could call it age appropriate. How about that’s what we call it?I don’t give a crap what you call it.”

“We will not live in a future where violence doesn’t meet widespread perversion. Period,” he continued. “I am aligned with God that we will not march quietly into a future where you got all kinds of things hanging out at public eateries, restaurants, libraries, with or without children. It’s just not acceptable. That’s over. And I will train tens of millions of Americans to not denounce, to not flinch, when they see evil coming upon evil, destruction coming upon evil.”

“All the good faith that we have allowed our oppressorsto be assigned, it’s gone,” Alexander said. “I’m not gonna bomb an abortion clinic, but if somebody did, I’m not denouncing it. I’m not calling for violence. I’m not calling for death. I’m explicitly saying, ‘Don’t do that,’ but if it happens, c’est la [vie]. OK? C’est la [vie]. You know, if they can poll a bunch of moderate Muslims and they don’t feel the urge to denounce radical Islam, guess what? This guy—Ali Alexander and Ali Alexander alone—but guess what? I’m going to be joined by tens of millions, maybe a couple hundred million Americans; we’re done. I’m going to finally teach people what is the moral allowable line that we can walk up to? What does the Bible allow us to get away with? ‘Oh, no. Ali’s going to show them the loopholes.’ You’re damn right I am.”

“I’m not gonna get beatified for this,” Alexander asserted. “I’m not going to reach sainthood, but I am here to say, ‘Fuck them.’ Fuck their nuclear war. Fuck their World War III. Fuck their rejection of peace. And if they don’t deal with the middle—the Elons and the Kanyes—then they should meet—I’m talking about the whole world—they should meet a violent Christian crusade. I mean it,100 percent. … And we’ve got to start conditioning each other for these mental models.”

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no explicit link but trend wrong direction?

an raw 10 22

A new survey shows Republicans are more likely than any other political group to reject the results of a losing election, and a veteran pollster expressed alarm at those findings.

The new poll conducted by Yahoo News and YouGov found just 43 percent of Republicans say political candidates who got fewer votes should concede their loss, compared to 74 percent of Democrats and 57 percent of independents, and Republican pollster Frank Luntz told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" those results were chilling.

"Scary as hell," Luntz said. "I'm here at the Conservative Party Conference [in the United Kingdom], trying to say to them, be very careful what you wish for, be very careful of what kind of campaign you hold because you could end up like the U.S."

"When you lose faith and trust in elections itself, you've lost your democracy," he added, "and we are so close to the edge. I'm sitting in a room with students from Radley College and have to teach them, I have to explain to them this isn't the way democracy is supposed to work, that you have winners and losers, you accept the loss and then you move on. We are so poisoned, we are so toxic, and I don't want what's going on in the U.S. to happen here in the U.K. That would be a real tragedy."

Watch video below or at this link.

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/09/michael-flynn-bizarrely-predicts-that-governors-might-declare-war-soon/

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an 922

Roger Stone, a long-time associate and ally of former President Donald Trump, previously told a camera crew he was ready for violence ahead of the 2020 presidential election.

According to CNN, the clip was filmed as part of a documentary titled “A Storm Foretold.”

Excerpts from the documentary, compiled by filmmakers Christoffer Guldbrandsen and Frederik Marbell, are reportedly expected to be included in the upcoming hearing to be conducted by the House Select Committee as they continue their investigation into the U.S. Capitol insurrection.

READ MORE: Lordy – there are tapes: footage shows Roger Stone desperately fleeing DC on January 6th

“F--k the voting, let’s get right to the violence,” Stone can be heard saying in a clip that CNN obtained from the filmmakers.“Shoot to kill. See an Antifa? Shoot to kill. F--k ’em. Done with this bulls--t.”

However, according to The Washington Post, Stone now insists he was “only kidding" when he made the remarks. “We renounce violence completely,” he said. “We totally renounce violence.The left is the only ones who engage in violence.”

Speaking to CNN's Don Lemon, the filmmakers shared their reaction to Stone's attempt to backpedal. According to them, Stone's remarks seemed disingenuous as he appeared to offer his take with “more of a wink and a nod.”

Stone also argued that the clip obtained by CNN appeared to be “manipulated and selectively edited.”

READ MORE: Alex Jones texted wife’s naked picture to Roger Stone: Sandy Hook lawyer

Stone was previously sentenced to a maximum of 40 months behind bars back in 2020 for multiple felonies, "including witness tampering, lying to Congress and obstruction," per the news outlet. However, he was one of many who received a pardon from Trump.

Watch the video below or at this link.

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note aha sys: no filter/brake, amp accel?  // trump wd not rein in, as gop wd not cross trump; to call them out means acknow a relationship?

an 9 22 raw tom b

According to two different experts on the rising tide of domestic terrorists since the election of Donald Trump, things are going to get a lot worse before they get better as long as the former president remainsfree to incite violencein much the way he did on Jan 6, 2020.

Speaking with the New York Times' Blake Hounshell, authors Luke Mogelson and Andy Campbell, both of whom have new books on right-wing extremists, waved the red flag about what they see coming as Trump continues to egg his followers on -- which is setting the stage for more violence.

As Hounshell summed up their warning: "The worst is yet to come."

Getting right to the point, Campbell, who has a new book out on the Proud Boys, told the Times, "I really do believe that, going forward, it’s not just going to be MAGA rallies. It’s not just going to be political violence at Proud Boys rallies or leftist rallies or B.L.M. events. It’s going to be political violence at any civic event that happens to fall in the cross hairs of Donald Trump and company.”

According to Hounshell, "In the United States, it is not illegal to be a part of a domestic extremist group. To go after specific threats, the government has limited tools, meaning that federal officials often must find links to groups overseas in order to crack down on homegrown extremists or prosecute them under other provisions of law," adding, "Complicating matters, Republican politicians like Trump — who instructed the Proud Boys to 'stand back and stand by' during a presidential debate in 2020 — often provide rhetorical cover."

Mogelson claims the violence he saw on Jan 6, when supporters of the former president stormed the Capitol, reminded him of covering armed conflicts around the world for the past decade.

"He witnessed a mob killing of someone in Iraq, which gave him an understanding of what he called the 'intoxicating' feeling that can whip a crowd of seemingly ordinary people into a frenzy," the Times reports before noting, "he began reporting on anti-lockdown groups that mobilized against the pandemic measures put in place by governors like Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, a Democrat, he immediately saw that the story was much larger."

He told the Times, "I soon realized that these groups and this movement was rapidly mutating.”

Campbell chimed in to add the Republican Party appears unable -- or unwilling -- to rein the far-right extremists in.

“The Republican Party seems to not know what to do,” he claimed before warning, “It seems like their inability to rebut the Proud Boys and other extremists is pushing this machine forward so much faster and really making it hard for law enforcement to keep up.”

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badash ncrm an 9 22

CBS chief White House correspondent Major Garrett fears America is close to civil war.

Garrett, who also served as senior White House correspondent for Fox News, teams up with elections expert David Becker, The Daily Beast reports, to pen a new book based on the GOP’s election lies, the plot to steal the 2020 election, and the insurrection.

“This is not something I’ve seen in the history of this country, except for before the Civil War,” Bob Harvie, the chair of the Bucks County, Pennsylvania Board of Elections, says in Garrett’s and Becker’s new book. “And it does scare me. I’m really worried we’re approaching a precipice that’s going to be impossible to come back from.”

The book “opens with alternate Januarys in both 2023 and 2017, offering ideas of what the U.S. could or could have looked like had either Democrats employed the same tactics Republicans had after Hillary Clinton lost in 2016 or if Texas chooses to effectively secede if House Democrats waver on seating its delegation in the 2022 midterms,” The Daily Beast notes. “The portrayals are dramatic, if a tad alarmist, answers to the question: What could serve as the genesis of a modern-day civil war?”

READ MORE: Crist Calls Out DeSantis With Bible Verse Over Flying Immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard (Video)

“We wanted to show people that what we’re talking about is just incremental steps from where we already are,” Garrett said. “I don’t think anyone reading that first chapter can honestly say, ‘Oh, that could never happen.’ They have to say, ‘Holy crap, we’re 85 percent there.’”

The book is The Big Truth: Upholding Democracy in the Age of “The Big Lie.”

Garrett and Becker are not the only ones warning of civil war.

An opinion piece over the weekend at The Hill asks, “Can Civil War happen again?” It discusses what its authors say are four stages that led to the American civil war. They call the current situation “unquestionably alarming.”

READ MORE: GOP Nominee for Governor Was Registered to Vote in NJ Until Last Year – While a State Senator in Pennsylvania: Report

“The potential for large-scale violence exists today as it did in 1861. Americans possess nearly 400 million firearms, concentrated in the South, Midwest and West. A large fraction of Trump voters agree that ‘true patriots may have to resort to violence to save the USA.’ Nearly 100 anti-establishment militias have been identified, the most virulent of which, Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, are standing by for a fight.”

The piece’s authors, Hans Binnendijk of the Atlantic Council and David C. Gompert, who is on the faculty of the U.S. Naval Academy, say, “Republican leaders must squarely condemn all threats of political violence and distance themselves from colleagues who encourage or condone it — even at the cost of votes and elections.”

While they note that “2022 is not 1861, when half the nation chose to leave, and the other half resisted with force,” they say if there is violence the rift in America will still not be fixed.

“Stage three and violence may need only a triggering event, akin to the 1860 election of Lincoln that precipitated secession,” the warn. “Perhaps, as Sen Lindsey Graham(R-S.C.) warns, widespread rioting would follow an indictment of Trump. Or claims of another stolen election, in 2024 or even 2022, could ignite hostilities, possibly involving coordinated militia attacks on government property and personnel, or on minorities. While these would surely be put down, a forceful reaction by police, National Guard or, in the extreme, federal troops would scar the nation and leave it no less divided.”

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omg rhet

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-news-laying-groundwork-next-insurrection-or-worse-telling-its-viewers-biden-waging-war

9/13

mma

On Monday evening, Fox News stars Tucker Carlson and Jesse Watters each used the 21st anniversary of 9/11 to tell their millions of viewers that the Biden administration has declared war on conservatives for their political beliefs.

Carlson and Watters argued, as the network has for months, that President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice is a tyrannical force bent on persecuting Fox News viewers, and that it’s only a matter of time before Democrats criminalize all political dissent.

Both defended the election denialism that has become core to the Republican Party after Trump’s loss in 2020, reinforcing the idea not only that the election was stolen, but also that those who say the election wasn’t rigged are jackbooted authoritarians.

Carlson approached the topic by playing a clip of Chuck Todd’s interview of Vice President Kamala Harris, in which she described how dangerous it is to have at least 11 election deniers running for secretary of state positions throughout the country. Typically the top statewide election official, the office is incredibly powerful, and those races have been flooded with cash as Republicans seek to install denialists to oversee upcoming elections.

Todd framed the interview, which was pegged to the anniversary of 9/11, as a discussion of how national security issues had evolved from external dangers to “the threat within.”

“Who is this threat?” Carlson responded. “Well, of course, it's you and anyone else in the way of the Biden administration.”

“And especially, as the vice president just said, and you saw it, anyone who questions the legitimacy of the last election,” he continued.

Carlson then added his own election conspiracism, arguing without evidence that “there are reasons not to believe” the final vote count, and that if a conservative voices that belief, under Biden, “you need to be pursued by law enforcement."  [vid]

minutes later, Carlson brought up the Department of Justice issuance of roughly 40 subpoenas to top aides to former President Donald Trump, including white nationalist Stephen Miller.

Carlson argued that the Biden Department of Justice was trying to “suppress political dissent, to hobble an entire political party and to keep these people from ever participating in American politics again.”

One hour earlier, Watters had made a similar point. “This war on Republicans -- it's a war of choice,” he said. “It's a preemptive war so the Republican Party never wins another election. And that is the real threat to democracy." [vid]

fox News’ business model relies on stoking its viewers’ fears, and Monday’s segments come on the heels of months of similar coverage.

In late June, Carlson devoted an entire opening monologue to a lengthy mischaracterization of the legal cases of 14 conservatives, nearly all of whom were involved in some effort to overturn the 2020 election. “The signature tactic of the Biden administration … has been the criminalizing of American politics,” Carlson said at the time.

Carlson and others at Fox also spent part of the summer pushing a preposterous theory that Biden was hiring 87,000 new IRS agents to act as a paramilitary force against conservatives. A Media Matters study found that the network had pushed the bogus theory more than 200 times by the end of August.

Following the search of Trump’s residence and golf resort at Mar-a-Lago, Fox and other right-wing outlets and pundits characterized the DOJ’s actions as additional evidence that Biden was persecuting regular conservatives. “But the real target of this investigation isn't Trump,” Laura Ingraham said. “The real target of this investigation is you or anyone who dares to call out and take on the rank corruption of the D.C. establishment.”

Watters responded to the search by arguing that any attempt to hold Trump accountable wasin reality an attack on Fox viewers. “These are bloodthirsty savages who want to see you humiliatedand violated,”he said. “This is athreat to anybody who opposes them. Look what we can do to you. We can even storm into your president's home and take whatever we want.”

“They don’t need evidence,” Watters said in July, speaking broadly about various DOJ investigations into Trump. “Their goal is to scare you into submission.”

The overall implication of these arguments — that conservatives are being persecuted, and that the January 6 insurrection was really just about asking questions about vote totals — is not hard to understand. Fox News is laying the groundwork for future fascist violence, including but not limited to violence in response to elections won by Democrats.

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'We will not stand by and we will not stand down': Armed Trump supporters protest at Phoenix FBI office

Image via Screengrab / News2Share [confed flag patch]

Lauren Sue and Daily Kos August 14, 2022

Video captured by the independent media site News2Share shows supporters of former President Donald Trump armed with guns, waving confederate and American flags outside of the FBI office in Phoenix, Arizona on Saturday.

"We're here in support of Trump, for what happened to him, the unlawful search with the FBI at his Mar-a-Lago home," someone at the demonstration told News2Share. "We are sick and tired of this tyrannical government called the Biden regime. We will not stand by and we will not stand down.

"We're gonna take the fight to the FBI if need be."

The latest in a string of Republican rantings, the demonstration is in response to the FBI executing a search warrant at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, Florida, on Monday—an act that has led to the seizure of 11 sets of classified documents, including those related to nuclear weapons, according to The Washington Post.

Somehow though, Trump apologists still maintain the former president’s rights were violated while they go about the business of threatening the federal judge who signed the warrant and any other official they see fit to accuse without a shred of evidence of widespread election fraud.

In Gillespie County, Texas, a county about 80 miles west of Austin, elections administrator Anissa Herrera said she resigned from her work due in large part to threats she faced, according to the Fredericksburg Standard.

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“After the 2020 (election), I was threatened, I’ve been stalked, I’ve been called out on social media,” Herrera told the newspaper. “And it’s just dangerous misinformation.”

FBI Director Christopher Wray condemned such threats in a statement on Thursday. “Unfounded attacks on the integrity of the FBI erode respect for the rule of law and are a grave disservice to the men and women who sacrifice so much to protect others,” he said. “Violence and threats against law enforcement, including the FBI, are dangerous and should be deeply concerning to all Americans.

They are to Democrats. Many tweeted their outrage at the double standard propagated when a group of white men and women were allowed to threaten federal officials while armed.

Warning: This video contains disturbing footage of violence that may be triggering to viewers.

A social media user who goes by Jason V. tweeted on Sunday, that the "armed domestic terrorists" probably haven't been taken down yet "because they're not black or brown."

Shannon Watts, founder of the grassroots movement for public safety Moms Demand Action, pointed to a trend of recent violence following GOP reaction to the search of Trump’s home.

The most recent of which is a Capitol Police report that a man started firing in the air then drove his car into a vehicle barricade in a fiery crash early Sunday at East Capitol Street and Second Street.

”When our officers heard the sound of gunfire, they immediately responded and were approaching the man when he shot himself,” Capitol Police said in a news release. “Nobody else was hurt.

“At this time, it does not appear the man was targeting any Members of Congress, who are on recess, and it does not appear officers fired their weapons.”

No other injuries were reported in the incident, and investigators are still looking into the man’s background. But for many, the incident is an example of violence spiraling out of control as Republicans instigate a greater divide between Trump supporters and the rest of the country.

Regarding the protest outside of the Phoenix FBI building, Democrat Eric Smith tweeted congressional candidates of North Carolina:

“This is a Declaration of War & as such the Federal Government will be well within its rights to use all the firepower at its disposal to put these traitors down & down for good”

Majid Padellan, a blogger and influencer who goes by "Brooklyn Dad" on social media, tweeted on Sunday:

"Not a single Republican leader has called upon the armed trumpers at the Phoenix FBI to stand down. Any blood will be on their hands."

In another tweet, Padellan laid out a series of actions and statements by Trump that created the kind of climate in which his supporters would feel emboldened to threaten federal officials. "First he told domestic terrorists to ‘Stand back and stand by,’” Padellan said. “Then he refused to call the National Guard on January 6th.

“Then he wouldn't call off his armed supporters outside the Phoenix FBI. Donald trump is a pathetic, cowardly traitor."

Read the full redacted search warrant obtained for Trump’s Mara Lago home:

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On Thursday, August 11 — three days after the FBI executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago in South Florida — a Donald Trump supporter was killed during a violent confrontation with law enforcement. The armed suspect, identified by the Washington Post as 42-year-old Ricky Shiffer, unsuccessfully tried to breach an FBI field office in Cincinnati; after fleeing the premises, he was pursued by law enforcement agents and died during a shootout near Wilmington, Ohio.

The FBI agents who searched Mar-a-Lago were looking for classified government documents. Shiffer, according to the Post, had posted anti-FBI messages on Trump’s social media platform Truth Social before the attack — writing “kill the enemy” and “If you don't hear from me, it is true I tried attacking the F.B.I." In an official statement on August 11, the FBI’s Cincinnati office noted, “The subject shot at law enforcement officers. During the incident, law enforcement also fired their weapons.”

Criminologist Brian Levin discussed the potential for more violence during a Friday night, August 12 appearance on CNN. Levin, who serves as director of the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism, fears that violent attacks by Trump supporters could escalate if the former president faces some type of indictment.

READ MORE: Fox News guest calls Mar-a-Lago search 'a preemptive coup'

Levin told CNN’s Kim Brunhuber, “As this heats up, where there's a certain event, an indictment — we're not saying it's happening — but if it does, that will cause this fire to burn more. The kindling is already out there, and we are quite concerned because this kind of stuff heats up and gets more directed as we go down that trail as to what's going to happen with respect to a possible criminal prosecution of the former president.”

Brunhuber noted all the angry, over-the-top rhetoric that has been coming from Republican politicians and far-right media figures following the FBI’s August 8 search at Mar-a-Lago, where Trump has been living since leaving the White House on January 20, 2021. When Brunhuber asked Levin if “right politicians and media figures…. just don't care about the consequences of stoking political violence,” Levin responded, “I don't think they care. And we had reams of data showing that both hate crimes, extremist plots and including homicides, go up downstream around this kind of rhetoric.”

Levin continued, “What this does is it labels certain groups and individuals as legitimate targets of aggression. But sometimes, that aggression is manifest as what we're seeing online in this firehose of insults, epithets and conspiracy theories…. For some, they're gonna act on it either individually or in a more organized fashion.”

Levin added that according to FBI data, the “worst day for hate crimes” occurred in 2019 after the U.S. House of Representatives indicted then-President Trump on articles of impeachment.

READ MORE:Kamala Harris condemns GOP rhetoric and attempted attack on FBI field office

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maralago:

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/right-wing-media-built-pretext-january-6-what-its-doing-now-scarier

Right-wing news outlets have a rage-based business model, converting unhinged rants to readers and revenues. But there are few precedents, in intensity or duration, for the frenzy that has consumed Fox News and other bastions of the MAGA media since the FBI carried out a search warrant at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence on Monday.Their incendiary commentary, which posits that a criminal probe into the former president is intrinsically corrupt and part of an attack on his voters, is courting a paroxysm of political violence.

The FBI executed a warrant signed by a federal magistrate judge, reportedly seeking classified material that Trump illegally removed from the White House at the end of his term. Pundits on the right could be trying to lower the temperature by telling their audiences that there’s much we don’t know yet; a legal process is playing out; and Trump, like any American, is subject to the rule of law.

Instead, Fox and other right-wing outlets describe the search as “the worst attack on this republic in modern history,” part of a “preemptive coup” to prevent Trump’s reelection, and a sign the country is now a “tyranny.” They say the FBI is acting like “the East German Stasi in the Cold War” and the Nazi “Gestapo,” and call its agents part of a “lawless criminal organization” that “planted evidence,” bugged Trump’s bedroom, and may be planning his “assassination.”

And they are quick to tell their viewers that they should fear their own persecution in the wake of the search. According to right-wing outlets, “the real target of this investigation is you” and its perpetrators are “trying to show all of us that we'll be destroyed if we fight them” because they are “at war with the American people.”

“If this is what they're able to do to the former president of the United States, think about what they could do to you, to anybody in America,” warned Lara Trump, Fox contributor and Trump’s daughter-in-law.

That paranoia is everywhere within the right-wing bubble, and some are calling for direct action in response. On Fox, Jesse Watters suggested that “honest Americans” would respond to the search by getting “out on the streets” against the “corrupt government.” According to the network’s Will Cain, a “permanent national split” – in other words, another civil war – may be needed to rectify the situation. The militia-linked radio host Pete Santilli, meanwhile, argued that it may be necessary for MAGA supporters to “arm up and surround Mar-a-Lago to protect it, to protect life, liberty, and property.”

What might someone do if they are ensconced in the right-wing media bubble, trust these personalities, take their views seriously, and come to believe their claims that federal agents are Nazis waging war on the American public and threatening their own safety and the safety of their families? How far might they go?

This is not an idle question – extremism researchers are sounding the alarm about the prospect of pro-Trump violence. On Wednesday, Vice reported that “far-right extremists on pro-Donald Trump message boards and social networks are making violent, antisemitic threats” against the judge who reportedly signed off on the search warrant. FoxNews.com reported the same day that “FBI agents, as well as U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Chris Wray, are experiencing an uptick in death threats” following the search.

“The posts on these pro-Trump forums tonight are as violent as I've seen them since before January 6th. Maybe even more so,” NBC News’ Ben Collins reported on Monday night.

Collins’ comment in particular points to the risks Fox and its brethren are courting. We’ve seen over the years that when the right-wing media riles up its audience enough, the consequences can be dire. When they spent weeks after the 2020 election championing Trump’s false claims of voter fraud and warning their audiences that they would lose their country if his lies were not vindicated, the result was a violent mob of thousands Trump had summoned to Washington, D.C., storming the U.S. Capitol, assaulting scores of law enforcement officers, and threatening the continuation of our democratic system.

What conservative pundits appear to have learned from that deadly debacle is that they will face no consequences for inciting mob violence. No one seems to have lost their job or their audience for unduly inflaming their viewers. They correctly assume that they are under no restraints as they stoke fear and rage to turn profits and bolster the political power of the Republican Party so it can carry out its goals of cutting taxes for rich people and banning abortion. And that means that they may be pushing the country once more toward the precipice.

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[[Indiana Rep. Banks facing 'insurrection' ballot challenge

By TOM DAVIES, Associated Press -2 22

© Provided by Associated Press

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — An Indiana congressman who was rejected by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as the top Republican for the committee investigating last year’s U.S. Capitol insurrection is fending off an effort to remove his name from this year's election ballot.

The challenge to Rep. Jim Banks’ candidacy is at least the second across the country against a Republican House member citing a portion of a post-Civil War amendment to the U.S. Constitution pertaining to insurrections against the United States.

Banks, an outspoken supporter of former President Donald Trump and leader of the influential Republican Study Committee, has denounced the ballot challenge as frivolous.

It was filed by a long-shot Democratic candidate for Banks’ congressional seat and likely has little chance of success when it goes before the state election commission on Friday, a former longtime commission member said.

A similar challenge is pending against North Carolina Rep. Madison Cawthorn, who spoke at the rally supporting Trump before the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot that interrupted the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory.

The Indiana challenge petition filed byDemocrat Aaron Calkins claims Banks is ineligible to be a candidate because of a “violation of the 14th Amendment supporting an insurrection.” The filing with the state election commission didn’t include additional information supporting the claim against Banks and Calkins didn’t return a telephone message from The Associated Press seeking comment.

The 14th Amendment says no one can serve in Congress “who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress ... to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same.”

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House Republicans, including Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN), the chair of far-right Republican Study Committee, traveled to Donald Trump‘s Bedminster, New Jersey golf resort one day after the FBI raided his Mar-a-Lago home to urge him to announce his 2024 run for president.

Congressman Banks is a far-right Republican who spread Trump’s “Big Lie,” the false claims about the 2020 election, objected to the certification of the election results, and falsely claimed Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was to blame for the January 6 insurrection.

Tuesday night Rep. Banks posted a photo of himself and other members of the House Republican Study Committee at Bedminster,  “House conservatives are united in standing with President Trump. We will Make America Great Again!”[twt pix rsc]

CBS News chief election and campaign correspondent Robert Costa&...">writes, “Conservative House Republicans have publicly and privately rallied behind Trump in the past 24 hours, including the visit below to Bedminster, where several GOP lawmakers encouraged him to jump into the 2024 race.”

READ MORE: [Experts Call on Trump to Release Search Warrant and Inventory List as His Supporters Talk of ‘Civil War’

Trump “told the group he ‘has made up his mind’ about his long-teased run, and ‘enjoyed encouragement’ from them to ‘get the decision out sooner rather than later,'” the New York Post adds Wednesday morning. Banks also told Fox News that Trump “said we are going to like his decision and it is only a matter of time before he will make that decision known.”

READ MORE: ‘He Was Going to Sacrifice You’: Pence Mocked for Rushing to Support Trump After FBI Mar-a-Lago Raid

Rep. Banks has falsely claimed he is the ranking member of the U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack in a letter to the U.S. Dept. of the Interior in an effort to obtain information about the investigation.

Far right Republicans and Trump supporters have been passionately defending Trump after the FBI executed its search warrant and confiscated reportedly ten cartons believed to include classified documents from Mar-a-Lago that were required to be sent to the National Archives.

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Veteran journalist Sarah Posner, who has spent years writing about religion and the Christian right, has an explanation for the outraged response from some Trump supporters over the FBI executing a legal search warrant on Mar-a-Lago.

Hours after the news broke, Florida Republican state representative Anthony Sabatini called for “an emergency legislative session” to “Sever all ties with DOJ immediately” over the FBI executing a legal search warrant of Trump’s home. “Any FBI agent conducting law enforcement functions outside the purview of our State should be arrested upon sight,” he wrote, apparently unaware of the U.S. Constitution.

Tuesday night Trump supporters formed a small convoy driving outside Mar-a-Lago, some with Trump banners, Trump flags, or the American flag, – even one vehicle painted with the American flag – to show their support for the former president who might be facing legal consequences, as video from NBC 6 reporter Cristian Benavides shows.

READ MORE: [‘This Is a National Security Issue’: Former FBI Agents Note Key Details About ‘Raid’ on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago

[twt]

"the GOP position is that Trump is above the law,” writes The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent. “That’s what the GOP position on Trump was throughout his presidency, and that’s what it is now. Say it that way. Don’t let Republicans get away with using fake outrage to obscure this fundamental reality.”

Posner has written two books on the Christian Right including “UNHOLY: How White Christian Nationalists Powered the Trump Presidency, And the Devastating Legacy They Left Behind.”

In response to Sargent’s remarks she advises: “Remember too that much of Trump’s base believes that God anointed him, that it’s God’s will that he be back in the White House. And that they need to engage in ‘spiritual warfare’ with ‘demonic’ enemies of Trump — keep this in mind as right-wing influencers call for civil war.”

READ MORE: [IRS Under Trump Allowed a Decades-Old Influential Anti-LGBTQ Hate Group to Change Its Tax Status and Become a Church

U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene Monday night tweeted, “The FBI is raiding President Trump’s home in Maralago! This is therogue behavior of communist countries, NOT the United States of America!!! These are the type of things that happen in countries during civil war. The political persecution MUST STOP!!!”

Tuesday morning CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan posted a graph and noted the “big spike in tweets referencing ‘civil war’ right after the news of the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago broke last night.”

Dr. Caroline Orr Bueno posted an image of a large number of tweets that mention civil war and other related calls, including: “I already bought my ammo,” “Civil war! Pick up arms, people!” “Civil War 2.0 just kicked off,” “Let’s do the war,” and “One step closer to a kinetic civil war.”

1 OF 2  grfx see 2nd civil war for twt]

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8 22 an the conv

in the run-up to the U.S. midterm elections, some politicians continue to ride the wave of what's known as "Christian nationalism" in ways that are increasingly vocal and direct.

GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right Donald Trump loyalist from Georgia, told an interviewer on July 23, 2022, that the Republican Party "need[s] to be the party of nationalism. And I'm a Christian, and I say it proudly, we should be Christian nationalists."

Similarly, Rep. Lauren Boebert, a Republican from Colorado, recently said, "The church is supposed to direct the government. The government is not supposed to direct the church." Boebert called the separation of church and state "junk."

Many Christian nationalists repeat conservative activist David Barton's argument that the Founding Fathers did not intend to keep religion out of government.

As a scholar of racism and communication who has written about white nationalism during the Trump presidency, I find the amplification of Christian nationalism unsurprising. Christian nationalism is prevalent among Trump supporters, as religion scholars Andrew Whitehead and Samuel L. Perry argue in their book "Taking Back America for God."

Perry and Whitehead describe the **Christian nationalist movement as being "as ethnic and political as it is religious," noting that it relies on the assumption of white supremacy. Christian nationalism combines belief in a particular form of Christianity with nativist and populist political platforms. American Christian nationalism is a worldview based on the belief that America is superior to other countries, and that that superiority is divinely established. In this mindset, only Christians are true Americans.[real am]

Parts of the movement fit into a broader right-wing extremist history of violence, which has been on the rise over the past few decades and was particularly on display during the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021.

The vast majority of Christian nationalists never engage in violence. Nonetheless, Christian nationalist thinking suggests that unless Christians control the state, the state will suppress Christianity.

From siege to militia buildup

Violence perpetrated by Christian nationalists has manifested in two primary ways in recent decades. The first is through their involvement in militia groups; the second is seen in attacks on abortion providers.

The catalyst for the growth of militia activity among contemporary Christian nationalists stems from two events: the 1992 Ruby Ridge standoff and the 1993 siege at Waco.

At Ruby Ridge, former Army Green Beret Randy Weaver engaged federal law enforcement in an 11-day standoff at his rural Idaho cabin over charges relating to the sale of sawed-off shotguns to an ATF informant investigating Aryan Nation white supremacist militia meetings.

Weaver ascribed to the Christian Identity movement, which emphasizes adherence to Old Testament laws and white supremacy.Christian Identity members believe in the application of the death penalty for adultery and LBGTQ relationships in accordance with their reading of some biblical passages.

During the standoff, Weaver's wife and teenage son were shot and killed before he surrendered to federal authorities.

In the Waco siege a year later, cult leader David Koreshand his followers entered a standoff with federal law enforcement at the group's Texas compound, once again concerning weapons charges. After a 51-day standoff, federal law enforcement laid siege to the compound. A fire took hold at the compound in disputed circumstances, leading to the deaths of 76 people, including Koresh.

The two events spurred a nationwide militia buildup. As sociologist Erin Kania argues: "Ruby Ridge and Waco confrontations drove some citizens to strengthen their belief that the government was overstepping the parameters of its authority. … Because this view is one of the founding ideologies of the American Militia Movement, it makes sense that interest and membership in the movement would sharply increase following these standoffs between government and nonconformists."

Distrust of the government blended with strains of Christian fundamentalism have brought together two groups with formerly disparate goals.

Christian nationalism and violence

Christian fundamentalists and white supremacist militia groups both figured themselves as targeted by the government in the aftermath of the standoffs at Ruby Ridge and Waco. As scholar of religion Ann Burlein argues,"Both the Christian right and right-wing white supremacist groups aspire to overcome a culture they perceive as hostile to the white middle class, families, and heterosexuality."

Significantly, in 1995, Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and accomplice Terry Nichols cited revenge for the Waco siege as a motive for the bombing of the Alfred Murrah federal building. The terrorist act killed 168 people and injured hundreds more.

Since 1993, at least 11 people have been murdered in attacks on abortion clinics in cities across the U.S., and there have been numerous other plots.

They have involved people like the Rev. Michael Bray, who attacked multiple abortion clinics. Bray was the spokesman for Paul Hill, a Christian Identity adherent who murdered physician John Britton and his bodyguard James Barrett in 1994 outside of a Florida abortion clinic.

In yet another case, Eric Rudolph bombed the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. In his confession, he cited his opposition to abortion and anti-LGBTQ views as motivation to bomb Olympic Square.

These men cited their involvement with the Christian Identitymovement in their trials as motivation for engaging in violence.

Mainstreaming Christian nationalist ideas

The presence of Christian nationalist ideas in recent political campaigns is concerning, given its ties to violence and white supremacy.

Trump and his advisers helped to mainstream such rhetoric with events like his photo op with a Bible in Lafayette Square in Washington following the violent dispersal of protesters, and making a show of pastors laying hands on him. But that legacy continues beyond his administration.

Candidates like Doug Mastriano, the Republican gubernatorial candidate in Pennsylvania who attended the Jan. 6 Trump rally, are now using the same messages.

In some states, such as Texas and Montana, hefty funding for far-right Christian candidates has helped put Christian nationalist ideas in the mainstream.

Blending politics and religion is not necessarily a recipe for Christian nationalism, nor is Christian nationalism a recipe for political violence. At times, however, Christian nationalist ideas can serve as a prelude.

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the founder of a neo-Nazi terror network comprised of former military service members who sought to create a base in Idaho appears to be talking to federal prosecutors about a potential plea deal.

Posting on Iron March — a now-defunct global online forum for accelerationist neo-Nazis — in 2017, Liam Montgomery Collins wrote, “I live in the Northeast, so I have a tightknit crew of ex-mil and security I train with. We do hikes, gym sessions, live firing exercises, and we eventually plan to buy a lot of land. Can’t really specify the name or details because it’s an inner-circle thing, but it will serve its purpose when the time comes.

“Think of it as a modern-day SS,” Collins added, referencing the elite corps of the Third Reich under Adolf Hitler.

It was through Iron March that Collins met Paul James Kryscuk, an actor who specialized in a subgenre of pornography that is degrading to women of color and helped him build theterror network that they called “BSN.”

Collins entered the Marine Corps in August 2017 and recruited fellow Marine Jordan Duncan and Justin Wade Hermanson while stationed at Camp LeJeune in North Carolina.

In 2020, Kyrscuk relocated from New York City to Boise, Idaho. Members of the network stalked Black Lives Matter members in Boise and held a live-fire training that attracted Joseph Maurino, an enlisted member of the New Jersey Army National Guard. Another member, Joseph Zacharek, joined the Lafayette, Ind. Police Department as a probationary recruit in the summer of 2020, and remained employed there for four months until he was doxed by an antifascist researcher and was fired.

In an Instagram chat on Oct. 1, 2020, Kryscuk and Duncan fantasized about shooting protesters in Boise, according to a federal indictment.

Duncan: “How the BSNs finna be pulling up to chipotle after hitting legs.”

Kryscuk: “Death squad…. Assassins creed hoodies and suppressed 22 pistols.”

Duncan: “People freaking tf out.”

Kryscuck: “About what?”

Duncan: “The end of democracy.”

Kryscuk: “One can hope.”

When the FBI raided Kryscuk’s home in Boise in October 2020, they found a list of assassination targets that included Black Lives Matter founders Alicia Garza and Patrisse Cullors and Oregon Gov. Kate Brown, and a list of intersections that were consistent with power stations. The investigation revealed a plot to attack the power grid to create a blackout before undertaking an assassination campaign. A fourth Marine who joined BSN after serving in the same unit as Collins and Hermanson began cooperating with the authorities in October 2020, along with Zacharek, the former police officer, according to testimony by Naval Criminal Investigative Service Special Agent Chris Little.

Kryscuk and Collins wereinitially charged with conspiracy to illegally manufacture and transport firearmsin October 2020. A superseding indictment the following month added Duncan and Hermanson as defendants. A second superseding indictment filed in June 2021 added Maurino as the fifth defendant. And in August 2021, a third superseding indictment expanded the charges to include conspiracy to destroy an energy facility.

Kryscuk and Hermanson accepted plea deals earlier this year that include agreements to cooperate with the government’s investigation and testify against their codefendants.In return for their cooperation, the two men could receive reductions from expected prison sentences of up to 15 years.

Collins was previously scheduled to be arraigned in the Eastern District of North Carolina on Sept. 6, but last week Chief District Judge Richard E. Myers agreed to push back the date to Nov. 1. The new date gives Collins and the government time to work out a deal.

In a motion filed on July 27, Collins' lawyer, Elliot S. Abrams, wrote, “Undersigned counsel has been in discussions with the government about a potential resolution of this matter. These discussions have been fruitful and undersigned counsel requests this additional time to continue discussions with the government regarding non-trial disposition.”

Duncan and Maurino, the two remaining defendants, are both currently scheduled to be arraigned in Wilmington on Sept. 20.

Kryscuk’s sentencing is scheduled for Sept. 20 in Wilmington, while Hermanson’s sentencing is set for the Sept. 22 term.

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/proud-boys-2657735123/

a sorta secular version?! hyped by fox oann etc? red bubble

Over the years, far-right pundits at Fox News and Fox Business have spent a great deal of time railing against “coastal elites” who don’t understand “the real America” and rural voters. The ironic part is that Fox News and Fox Business are full of New York City residents who spend most of their time in Manhattan, not rural areas of Oklahoma or Kansas. But they typically describe Blue America in apocalyptic terms even though they live and work in the heart of Blue America.

Liberal economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman discusses that type of “apocalyptic” view of Blue America in his June 25 column, stressing that much ofRed America has little or no interaction with a part of the United States it has been conditioned to fear.

“At this point, most political observers simply accept it as a fact of life that an overwhelming majority of Republicans accept the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen — a claim with nothing to support it, not even plausible anecdotes,” Krugman explains. “What I don’t think is fully appreciated, however, is that the Big Lie is embedded in an even bigger lie: the claim that the Democratic Party is controlled by radical leftists aiming to destroy America as we know it. And this lie in turn derives a lot of its persuasiveness from a grotesquely distorted view of what life is like in Blue America.”

READ MORE:Trump supporters are taking the 'Big Lie' into their own hands with a rise in vigilantism and Big Tech is failing to respond

Krugman notes that “urban elites” are “constantly accused of not understanding real America,” acknowledging that “most big-city residents probably don’t have a good sense of what life is like in rural areas and small towns.”

“I’d argue that right-wing misperceptions of Blue America run far deeper — and are far more dangerous,” Krugman writes. “Let’s start with the politics…. How many Republicans believe that President Biden and other leading Democrats are left-wing radicals, indeed Marxists? Relatedly, I’d like to know how many Republicans believe that Black Lives Matter demonstrators looted and burned large parts of America’s major cities.”

Krugman continues, “Now, the reality is that the modern Democratic Party is a mildly center-left coalition, consisting of what Europeans would call social democrats, and relatively conservative ones at that. To take one measure, I can’t think of any prominent Democrats — actually, any Democratic members of Congress — who have expressed admiration for any authoritarian foreign regime. This is in contrast to widespread conservative admiration for Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, who recently denounced other Europeans for ‘mixing with non-Europeans’ and declared that he doesn’t want Hungary to become a ‘mixed-race’ country.”

Republicans who live in the Red America bubble, according to Krugman, fail to realize (or simply ignore) that most of the political violence and domestic terrorism in the U.S. has been coming from the far right, not the left.

READ MORE: Conservative explains the powerful weapon MAGA Republicans have a in their 'authoritarian' playbook: 'Lies'

“On the domestic violence front,” Krugman observes, “a study by the Anti-Defamation League found that 75 percent of extremist-related domestic killings from 2012 to 2021 were perpetrated by the right and only 4 percent by the left. Finally, about (Black Lives Matter): The protests were, in fact, overwhelmingly peaceful. Yes, there was some arson and looting, with total property damage typically estimated at $1 billion to $2 billion.”

Krugman continues, “That may sound like a lot, but America is a big country, so it needs to be put in perspective…. The fact is that a large segment of the U.S. electorate has bought into an apocalyptic vision of America that bears no relationship to the reality of how the other half thinks, behaves or lives. We don’t have to speculate about whether this dystopian fantasy might lead to political violence and attempts to overthrow democracy; it already has. And it’s probably going to get worse.”

READ MORE:The problem isn't Democrats losing white voters — it's Republicans winning them over with lies

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an 7 22

it not quite clear what, exactly, former President Donald Trump was doing and privately saying inside the White House during the five long, violent hours when more than 2,000 rioters invaded the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021.

It’s a key timeline that the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol is set to explore on July 21, 2022 during its latest – and possibly last – public hearing.

At the heart of the issue is Trump’s precise engagement, if any, with the rioters and several fringe nationalist militia groups, including the Proud Boys, Three Percenters and Oath Keepers, that stormed the Capitol.

Amy Cooter, a senior lecturer in sociology at Vanderbilt University, embedded with militia groups, mostly in Michigan, from 2008 through 2012. Knowing who these groups are – and how they have changed over time – makes it easier to understand the Jan. 6 attacks, Cooter said.

“Fifteen years ago, people thought of these groups as being niche, crazy people. That’s not really what I saw in my fieldwork – I saw people who were just more willing to be open about their political perspectives than maybe more mainstream Republicans were at the time. It seemed to me, both then and now, that their concerns resonate with a broad swath of the population,” Cooter said in a recent interview.

We asked Cooter to explain what drives these groups and their complicated relationship with Trump and the government.

What is your understanding of how Trump is seen by these nationalist groups?

Traditionally, militia groups have been very opposed to the federal government, regardless of whether we’re talking about Democrats or Republicans. However, with Trump, they really found sort of a mouthpiece. Not all of them truly liked him, but they really want somebody who speaks out against immigration and has a nationalistic and isolationist perspective. Trump gave them a sense of legitimacy. But there didn’t seem to be too many formal connections, as far as we know.

How does leadership and hierarchy work within these groups?

Many of these groups present themselves as top-down organizations with centralized leadership and then different state-level structures. But the degree to which that is reality varies enormously, especially with the Three Percenters but also with the Oath Keepers.

There are groups that kind of fit the stereotypical top-down model that make it easy to activate them for action. There are other groups who maybe were completely oblivious to this Jan. 6 plan.

What do you mean by activate? That sounds similar to language Trump used during a presidential debate in September 2020, to “stand back and stand by.”

Militias always see themselves as prepared for action. Usually, this means they’re prepared to defend themselves and their communities in the event of a natural disaster, or some kind of invasion. But as we saw leading up to Jan. 6, some of these groups were clearly planning more than just a defensive stance.

What was Trump getting from these groups, and what were they getting from Trump?

They get from Trump this idea that someone finally represents their interests, someone finally sees the state of the nation as they do, even though not all of them completely agree with him. They see it as an opportunity to push things in the direction that they would prefer.

I don’t think it’s much of an exaggeration to say that Trump sees an opportunity for a private army from them. In 2018, he pardoned the Bundy ranchers, who were arrested for arson on federal land. Not a lot of people paid attention to this, but that was a signal to these groups that he had their back and would expect them to have his back in the future.

I think that Jan. 6 is really kind of proof of that, that he has activated people who in some cases do have military or police experience.

How have you seen these groups evolve over time, since you began researching them?

Before Trump, there had been very clear-cut tensions between different groups. That boundary has broken down substantially, and most groups have been pushed more toward an extreme than used to be true – in no small part because of how Trump and others in his administration legitimized the core fears that different groups had about being invaded.

Since Jan. 6, the groups as a whole have declined in size. Many of these people were really surprised at how Jan. 6 played out and were quite embarrassed –or they were appalled that it didn’t go far enough.

Now, many people have taken a step back even from these groups altogether. But the folks that have stuck around continue to be quite radical, and probably even more radical than they were before. Especially thinking about what is going to happen with the midterm elections, we are going to see a lot of invigoration.

Amy Cooter, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Vanderbilt University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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an 7 22

A new analysis is breaking down how Republican lawmakers and candidates are further contributing to the spread of dangerous rhetoric. From "replacement theories" to other conspiracy-driven rhetoric promoting misinformation, USA Today's Candy Woodall is shedding light on Republicans' increased use of aggressive ad campaigns.

Woodall wrote: "Experts who study language, rhetoric, and communication see a disturbing pattern between a string of violent incidents across the country and an increase in 'dangerous' language from Republican candidates and sitting GOP members of Congress in ads, social media posts, and speeches."

The Congressional reporter went on to highlight the issues withRepublican-backed political ads currently circulating as the 2022 midterm elections approach. "During the 2022 midterm cycle, more than 2,700 ads have aired on television and social media focusing on racist tropes, according to a compilation by America's Voice, a progressive immigration advocacy group," Woodall wrote.

She added, "More than 100 directly mentioned the racist Great Replacement Theory and 'invasion' language, accusing Democrats of deliberately encouraging migrants to cross the southern border illegally to replace white voters. And more than 300 ads cite critical race theory, claiming Democrats are trying to indoctrinate children with fake history lessons about systemic racism against Blacks, according to a USA TODAY analysis."

She went on to highlight some of Republicans' main focal points. "For example, the Republican candidates' claims that liberals were 'grooming' children by pushing for LGBTQI+ rights were repeated by the Proud Boys when the extremist street gang disrupted a drag queen story hour on June 11 in California."

Although these types of ads may prove to be effective among Republican voters, critics have also expressed concern about the toll they can take on America's society. Zachary Mueller, the political director for America's Voice, shared his projection of the problems that could arise in the near future. "Without a doubt, there are serious downstream violent consequences," said Mueller.

She also explained how this type of political strategy appears to be working in Republicans' favor although they are facing deep criticism for it as it has taken its toll on America's democracy. "It has become a political strategy," said Sophie Bjork-James, a professor at Vanderbilt University and an expert on race relations, "and it's working very well."

"Many historians and professors who study U.S. democracy place the blame of escalating rhetoric squarely on Republicans," Woodall wrote. "They say it is highly unusual for leaders of one of America's two major political parties to be engaging in, much less condoning, such dangerous and divisive speech."

"It elevates extreme views to a legitimacy they haven't had in the past," said Ziad Munson, a professor of sociology at Lehigh University. "Words that used to be in the fringes of political life are now part of major political campaigns."

The latest analysis comes just days after U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas weighed in on the department's efforts to monitor and surveil extremist groups.

"Individuals spurred by ideology of hate, false narratives, personal grievances, to acts of violence and it is that we respond to and we seek to of course prevent," Mayorkas said. "We are in a heightened threat environment." [vs prev DHS that ignored warnings/suppresed on white supr]

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yikes omg

an 6 22

NO LNX

Talk of secession in Texas means political violence is already here. Thanks to SCOTUS, there will be more

Blackboard with "Texit"written on it (Shutterstock).

John Stoehr June 23, 2022

The Texas Republican Party issued its platform Monday. Among other terrible things, it called for the Lone Star State to secede from the US.[and UN]

This was met with mixed reactions from liberals. On the other hand, some said great – good riddance!On the other, some said secession would mean the abandonment of people who are already on the margins of society. As my friend, the historian Thomas Lecaque said: “Every time you say ‘let them secede,’ slap yourself in your stupid overprivileged face.”

I think there’s a third perspective.

Right-wingers know they’re winning

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Liberals do not, perhaps cannot, see that political violence is normal in this country. Political violence, in fact, is so ubiquitous that one could say it constitutes the political reality of the American experience. We all live inside white power. Serious challenges to it are met violently. There are always serious challenges to it. Political violence is always already normal.

Violent reactions to democracy, however, usually backfire, politically speaking, unless political conditions prevent them from backfiring.

I don’t know exactly what those conditions would be, but they surely involve polarization over the fundamentals of America – over whether it’s a white man’s country. When these conditions allow, political violence stops backfiring. First, it will be tolerated. Then, it will be encouraged.

That tells us something.

That the right-wingers are winning.

And they know it.

We have been tolerating subversive political violence since at least 2012. As I’ve argued, every shooting massacre is in one way or another part of the white-power reaction to Barack Obama’s historic twin victories.The GOP has since then gotten the public tied up in knots over the ins and outs of the Second Amendment. That’s deadlocked public opinion long enough to push political violence as a means of state-level social control.

Forward to 2022, after the J6 coup, to see the evolution from tolerating subversive political violence to encouraging overt political violence.

Indeed, as of this writing, the Supreme Court has issued a ruling that will encourage more overt political violence. In a 6-3 opinion written by Justice Clarence Thomas, the court struck down a 108-year-old New York state open carry law, saying it was too restrictive of Second Amendment rights.

Eric Greitens, a Missouri Republican running for the Senate, made an ad in which he’s holding a shotgun and inviting voters to go RINO hunting. A GOP challenger to Nevada’s Democratic attorney general reportedly told a friend: "This guy should be hanging from a fucking crane.” Couy Griffin, a rightwing organizer with influence on Donald Trump, has often said that “the only good Democrat is a dead Democrat.” The former president reportedly said hanging Vice President Mike Pence wasn’t a bad idea.

All of this is to say talk of secession does not come from nothing.

There is a context. That context features the evolution from subversive political violence to overt political violence. We should remember that.

Illinois Congressman Adam Kinzinger, an anti-Trump Republican, said that political violence is coming. So is a sustained period of democratic instability. But we’re already in that period. We have already seen the evolution from subversive political violence to overt political violence.

That’s why the Texas GOP now formally supports secession.

Talk of secession is a consequence of political violence – especially political violence that is now working in the Republicans’ favor.

Indeed, they appear to believe political violence not only doesn’t backfire anymore – it’s now a political asset. Whatever political violence the future holds will be an expansion of overt political violence that’s already here.

Secession-talk is a sign that they know they’re winning.

Refresh liberalism

As usual, liberals missed it.

They tend to think political violence is unusual, an interruption of normal life. There’s more to this thinking than the basic human longing for peace.

Unlike rightwingers – unlike anarchists, Marxists, communists, even some progressives – liberals do not seek out conflict, because liberals do not see politics as war by other means. Politics is about problem-solving.

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To liberals, politics is about process, strategy and established rules and norms. And anyway, labeling peace as normal, and violence as abnormal, pits those encouraging violence against those favoring the status quo.

Which is to say, pits rightwingers against conservatives.

But in order to insist that political violence is abnormal, (white) liberals must pretend that white power is not the political reality we inhabit. By pretending white power has nothing to do with it, (white) liberals end up legitimating the status quo – which is, as I said, already politically violent.

Our precious norms won’t stop political violence.

They’re already politically violent.

Indeed, by insisting on preserving established rules and norms, liberals paper over the root problem, which is that white power constitutes our political reality. In this way, liberals, I think without meaning to, hasten rather than circumvent the destabilization of American democracy.

As I said, Kinzinger thinks that’s coming.

No, it’s here.

Liberals think they are addressing political violence. They think that by appealing to peace, law and order, they are seizing the advantage.

They aren’t.

The more they stick to “the rules,” the worse things get. Politics isn’t war by other means. It’s about problem-solving. But when liberalism’s solutions aggravate things, perhaps it’s time to refresh liberalism.

Secession, seschmession

As I said, on the one hand are those welcoming the Texas Republican Party’s support for secession. Good riddance, wrote the Post’s Dana Milbank. On the other hand are those saying no liberal should welcome such a thing, as the human tool of secession would be horrific.

Both sides are missing the political violence that has made talk of secession seem real, credible and plausible (though entirely illegal).

It’s that political violence we need to focus on.

We need to admit it’s here – that it’s been here.

And liberals need new ways of thinking about it.

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an 6 22

on January 6, 2021, far-right groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers rioted at the U.S. Capitol to prevent Joe Biden from becoming president. Their members didn’t act alone, often relying on funders and others who supported their violent efforts.

This compelled The Hill to question **how many U.S. residents actually support political violence. According to academics from institutions like John Hopkins, Stanford, Cornell, and the Universities of California and Chicago, the number could range anywhere from 3 to 20 percent of the U.S. adult population, signifying between 7 to 51 million people.

For comparison, the population of New York City is around 8.6 million and the population of California is 39.6 million. So, put another way, the U.S. has enough supporters of political violence to nearly fill New York City or to just under two Californias.

This may seem like a theoretical exercise. After all, if that many people actually supported political violence, why aren’t we seeing revolt in the streets or daily attacks on political leaders?

But, as the Army’s Counterinsurgency Manual points out, supporters of political violence offer all sorts of assistance which can aid the growth of violent insurgency movements.

“Active popular support often has the greatest impact on the insurgency’s long-term effectiveness,” the manual says. “Popular support results in safe havens, freedom of movement, logistic support, financial support, intelligence, and new personnel.… As the insurgent group gains in support, its capabilities grow.”

However, recent studies suggest that voters often misbelieve that members of their opposing political viewpoint approve of violence more than they do. This makes people more inclined to support using violence against them.Conversely, if someone is shown data to prove that their opponents don’t favor using political violence, their own support of political violence lowers.

Also, studies suggest that one’s own support of political violence also decreases the more serious the offense. So while some voters might support property damage or theft against an opposing political party, their appetite for violence decreases with more serious offenses, like death threats or actual physical assault.

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an 6 22

Discussing bomb threats recently called into his home, Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) — one of two Republicans in the U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack — told ABC’s “This Week” that “My party has utterly failed the American people at truth.”

“It makes me sad, but it’s a fact,” he added.

Kinzinger’s comment came as “This Week” host George Stephanopoulos asked Kinzinger why,in a recent poll, only 20 percent of Republicans said that former President Donald Trump should be prosecuted for his role in inciting the Capitol riots and trying to overturn the 2020 election. The same poll found that 90 percent of Democrats and 60 percent of American voters felt that Trump should be prosecuted.

“It is leadership, lack of leadership in the Republican Party,” Kinzinger explained. “If you have people that don’t trust what they hear on the media, and they don’t trust what they hear from certain leaders…. Everybody has people they trust and where they get their information, that whole segment of leaders that Republican voters trust… If you’re going to stand up to those people and lie to him and tell him Donald Trump’s right, the election was stolen… We could have no doubt that 80 percent of the country is going to believe what their leaders are saying.”

Kinzinger added that he is not personally worried about the bomb and death threats that were recently mailed to his house. The threats promised violence against his wife and their five-month-old child.

“I’ve never seen or had anything like that,” he said, adding, “It was sent from the local area.”

He also said he expects threats of violence to increase leading into the 2024 presidential election as Trump’s supporters have also gained control of political positions that will enable them to contest or sabotage the next election’s results.

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/06/jan-6-2657514043/

pelosi target? 1/6

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omfg, recall polls on 30%(?) GOP thinks violence inevitable/justified

6 22  an  CDV

it has been almost a year and a half since Jan. 6, 2021, when Donald Trump and his cabal attempted to nullify the results of the presidential election, and by doing so effectively bring an end American democracy. By any reasonable standard, this was the greatest crime committed by an American president in the country's history.

Last Thursday night, the House committee tasked with investigating Jan. 6 and the larger threat to American democracy held the first in a series of televised hearings. Its preliminary findings are that Trump and numerous allies, including Republican members of Congress, orchestrated a sophisticated, well-funded, nationwide effort that included the Big Lie and other propaganda about "election fraud," dozens of spurious legal challenges designed to subvert the electoral outcome and undermine public faith in democracy, and other attempts to rig the outcome in Trump's favor.

The coup plot also involved premeditated political violence and terrorism as seen in the attack on the Capitol by right-wing paramilitaries and thousands of other Trump followers. Trump's coup plot also involved proposals to invoke martial law and use the military and other security forces to "confiscate" voting machines and presumably engage in other nefarious tasks as ordered.

The ultimate goal of this elaborate plot was for Trump to remain in power indefinitely as an political strongman who rules by declaring a perpetual "national emergency" or finding some other quasi-legal justification to end democratic government.

Trump and his cabal's plan came much closer to succeeding than most people recognized at the time. In that sense, the events of Jan. 6 were practice for a future coup attempt — one far more likely to succeed, given that America's pro-democracy forces are being defeated at almost every turn.

There are many people who would prefer to erase this fact from memory and history: Russian President Vladimir Putinordered his intelligence services to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, with the goal of putting Donald Trump in power and thereby undermining and destabilizing American democracy. As confirmed again by the House Jan. 6 committee's presentation, Putin's plan was remarkably successful.

In fact, none of this is a revelation; with the exception of a few new details, all this information has been public knowledge for some time. The real power of the House committee's first hearing lay in efficiently connecting the dots, navigating a mountain of evidence, and ultimately framing a devastating case that Donald Trump and his co-conspirators should be prosecuted and convicted on numerous criminal charges.

In just over two hours, the committee provided new information that confirmed some of the rumors and rumblings around Trump's coup plot and the events of Jan. 6. Some of Trump's Cabinet members, including Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, discussed invoking the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from power following the attack on the Capitol. Vice President Mike Pence reportedly refused to consider this despite ample justifications given Trump's erratic and dangerous behavior.

Trump was reportedly elated that his followers wanted to kill Mike Pence for refusing to cooperate with the coup plot. But Trump cannot plausibly claim that he didn't know he had lost the election: He was repeatedly told by political advisers and legal experts, including Attorney General Bill Barr, that Joe Biden had won the election and that voter fraud had not played a role.

At least one Republican member of Congress sought a pardon from Trump for his role in the coup plot, a de facto admission of criminal culpability. As for the violence on Jan. 6, to a significant degree it was premeditated and planned well before Jan. 6 and Trump's speech urging his followers to march on the Capitol. Members of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys have now been indicted by the Justice Department on charges of seditious conspiracy.

In total, as outlined by the House select committee during their first public hearing on Thursday, the unifying theme so far is that Donald Trump is a criminal mastermind, with a remarkable ability to corrupt the people around him by ensnaring them in a web of antisocial and pathological values and behavior.Donald Trump is a political cult leader, an apparent sociopath and an incipient fascist strongman who commands the loyalty of tens of millions of Americans.

To discuss the current state of the Trump cult I recently spoke withSteven Hassan, one of the world's leading experts on cults and other dangerous organizations, as well as how to deprogram people who have succumbed to "mind control." Hassan was once a senior member of the Unification Church, better known as the "Moonies." He is now founder and director of the Freedom of Mind Resource Center and has written several bestselling books, including "Freedom of Mind," "Combating Cult Mind Control" and, most recently, "The Cult of Trump."

In this conversation, Hassan discusses Trump's enduring power over his followers and why it has outlasted his presidency. He argues that right-wing Christian churches, Fox News, conspiracy theorists, right-wing social media and other propaganda machines are keeping Trump's cultists loyal and further radicalizing them. He warns that the cult is actually bigger than Donald Trump and may outlast him, because "today's Republican Party is part of an authoritarian cult movement that hates democracy and freedom."

Hassan also reflects on his own experience as a cult member who was conditioned to be willing to kill on command. He warns that Trump's most loyal followers would likely obey such orders targeting Democrats, liberals, progressives, Muslims, black and brown people, or other designated enemies.

Donald Trump is a political cult leader, but he is no longer president. How does that influence his power over the cult members? What happens next?

My thesis was completely confirmed after Jan. 6 and all the efforts by the GOP to avoid being held accountable for their role in Trump's coup attempt.

I agreed to write "The Cult of Trump" with the knowledge that Trump was a malignant narcissist.He fits the stereotypical profile of a cult leader. I viewed him as the leader of a cult of personality. His business is also part of his cult. As I began to do the research for my book, it became very clear to me that he would not have been elected president if not for the thousands of new apostolic reformation ministers supporting him and then telling their millions of followers to believe in Trump as someone doing the work of God. They represent a right-wing Christian religious movement that does not believe in equality under the law, or in civil rights for women and those not of their faith. These right-wing Christian leaders want to destroy any type of organized effort to advance liberty and freedom and knowledge. Trump as a cult leader and authoritarian is a perfect fit for their beliefs.

What is the role of the Big Lie in Trump's cult and the larger movement?

The Big Lie operates on the assumption that the more extreme the lie, the average person cannot even imagine making up such a lie. The average person then rationalizes the Big Lie as being true because the opposite somehow cannot be true. The Big Lie is ultimately bigger than most people's ability to contemplate it. It is just too much of a lie to not be true. What solidifies it is constant repetition, and it also works because the leader projects the Big Lie onto some type of enemy. Mind control cults always need an enemy — a devil to focus people's anger and negative emotions on.

What is the relationship between the Republican Party and Trump's cult? So many journalists and other professional politics-watchers still do not understand that Trumpism is much bigger than one man, or that it's a mistake to say that the Republican Party was "taken over" by Trump and his cult.

Today's Republican Party is part of an authoritarian cult movement that hates democracy and freedom. They want blind obedience. They want people to distrust science and reason and critical thinking. Another example of how cults work is the belief that a person can create their own reality, where if a person truly believes something then it must be true. Of course that is ridiculous.

That is why it is important for the Department of Justice to prosecute Donald Trump and the other top Republicans who were involved in the coup attempt. A message needs to be sent to the cult members that reality exists and that there are consequences for criminal behavior. Right now, these Trump Republican cult members believe that manmade laws do not apply to them, because they exist on some higher plane or alternate reality.

The Trumpists and other fascists are now burning books they deem to be "dangerous" or "un-American," and targeting books by Black and brown authors or by and about the LGBTQ community. What is the role of book-burning and book-banning, in terms of cults and mind control?

Book burnings are an example of information control. That is a key part of the authoritarian cult. Book burnings are part of an escalating pattern that ends with arresting and killing journalists and other truth-tellers.

Republicans and other right-wing authoritarians have wanted to destroy public education for decades. Why? Because an educated citizen is what a democracy needs. To have a theocracy, for example, or some other type of authoritarian regime, you need uneducated citizens, especially young people. That is one of the main reasons why the right wing pushes for homeschooling and charter schools. The dumbing down of Americans is a hugely important part of their anti-democracy project.

Donald Trump has suggested that his followers must be ready to kill and die for his cause. He praises the Jan. 6 terrorists as patriots, victims and political prisoners. Michael Flynn has told people at his events that they should be prepared to "charge machine-gun nests" to defend their children against "critical race theory." How does this fit into the relationship between the cult leader and his followers?

I was taught such things when I was in the Moonies. I was told to be prepared, if North Korea invaded South Korea, to go to the front lines and die. I was later trained to die or kill on command without hesitation. Michael Flynn is an expert on military intelligence. He knows exactly what he is going to do. Flynn is creating an army of people to engage in a civil war.

Who do you think is likely to follow such orders?

We need to start with the military vets who feel betrayed by the U.S. government. Some of them may also have emotional or psychological issues as well. There are many veterans in the cult of Trump, and they're trained killers. If you make moral appeals and claim that you are acting in the name of God and country, then it is easy to get people to sacrifice their comfort and even their money, their marriage and their families for the cause. Once you make it into a matter of good and evil, and then psychologically condition a person that the other side are not really human, it is easy to get people to engage in lethal violence.

How do you explain Trump's enduring power over his followers, and over Republican voters as a whole?

The biggest single bloc of true believers are the members of right-wing Christian fundamentalist churches and other groups. These are authoritarian religions where the members believe that their pastor is an apostle who is directly connected to God and getting direct revelations.

If the pastor says, "God wants Trump," you're going to believe in Trump. If the pastor says, "God gave me a revelation where we are now following Ron DeSantis. God's taken the blessing away from Donald Trump," then those people are going to blindly follow DeSantis. Why? Because they're already in a mind-control cult.

How have Trump, the Republican Party and other right-wing leaders been able to successfully create an alternate reality for their followers?

It started with an increasingly extreme Republican Party and right-wing movement. They have their own media, churches and so forth. The members are just voting for the party now, without doing much critical thinking. It was incremental at first, but now the Trumpists are the hardcore base of the authoritarian political movement. These diehard Republicans and other conservatives are in Christian religious cults, or they've been sucked into QAnon and other apocalyptic, "end of days," great-reset conspiracy theories.It is all related.

Outsiders often say that Trump is dumb or stupid and make fun of his rallies. They say his speeches are incoherent. When I listen to Trump and observe his rallies, I see a dangerous and sophisticated propaganda machine and brainwashing operation. The use of repetition and the manipulation of emotions and violent imagery is highly intentional.

If they are already indoctrinated, these rallies and other repeated messaging are just more confirmation, reinforcement and community-building. It makes these Trump cultists feel like they are not alone, that they are part of a big powerful movement. Fox News is an integral part of this as well. When Fox News keeps claiming that it is the most powerful cable news network, that makes the viewers feel like they are part of a powerful community and movement. It is very strategic.

Many experts on national security, terrorism and related topics are warning that the United States is on the verge of a second civil war or a sustained right-wing insurgency, and that Jan. 6 was just the beginning. What is your estimate of the likelihood of Trump's cult members engaging in widespread violence?

Ninety-five percent. I am certain there will be a civil war or other type of massive violence. I say this as a former cult leader who wanted to take over America and thought that democracy was Satanic, and that we must take over the world for God. Part of that mission was getting rid of Satan's army.The likelihood of a second civil war in America, because of Trumpism and these other authoritarian cults, is very high.

Will the average Trump supporter participate in this violence?

I'm going to apply the rule of thirds: One-third will double down and engage in acts of violence. Another third will not follow the commands. The middle third will make their decision based on what their peers are doing. I wish the news media would understand the danger we're in. The people who believe that Donald Trump is an agent of God are going to be the ones committing most of these violent acts.

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an 6 22

U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has released a new bulletin to raise awareness about the possibility of election misinformation, warning the U.S. could see a rise in violence in the summer months and upcoming midterm election season, thanks in part to the Supreme Court's potential decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

On Tuesday, June 7, the National Terrorism Advisory System released its bulletin as it explained that "threat actors" are on the rise, according to CNN.

"Threat actors have recently mobilized to violence due to factors such as personal grievances, reactions to current events, and adherence to violent extremist ideologies, including racially or ethnically motivated or anti-government/antiauthority violent extremism," a National Terrorism Advisory System bulletin issued Tuesday said."

One DHS senior official also expressed concern the political events set to transpire later this year as many are still displeased with the outcome of the 2020 presidential election which was shrouded by disturbing claims of misinformation.

"One of the key upcoming events that we are worried about are first and foremost the mid-term elections," said the DHS official.

Per CNN, the DHS official also noted thatindividuals who still feel slighted by the outcome of the 2020 presidential election "may feel compelled to respond to the election season using violence."

"As the United States enters mid-term election season this year, we assess that calls for violence by domestic violent extremists directed at democratic institutions, political candidates, party offices, election events, and election workers will likely increase," the bulletin, obtained by CNN, said.

The bulletin also highlighted concerns about the controversy surrounding abortion rights and the U.S. Supreme Court's final opinion which is gearing up to be "a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade's holding of a federal constitutional right to an abortion."

Per the DHS bulletin: "Given a high-profile U.S. Supreme Court case about abortion rights, individuals who advocate both for and against abortion have, on public forums, encouraged violence, including against government, religious, and reproductive healthcare personnel and facilities, as well as those with opposing ideologies."

The DHS senior official also warned that "going forward, we're concerned that grievances related to restricting abortion access in general could fuel a broader response."

The latest bulletin is the sixth DHS has released since the insurrection on the U.S. Capitol which took place Jan. 6, 2021. In addition to the domestic concerns, the bulletin also noted that this unpredictable time may be one that foreign agitators may attempt to seize on.

"Foreign adversaries — including terrorist organizations and nation state adversaries — also remain intent on exploiting the threat environment to promote or inspire violence, sow discord, or undermine U.S. democratic institutions," the bulletin said.

It was also noted that social media platforms continue to pose heightened risks as it is still considered a hub for misinformation.

"Individuals in online forums that routinely promulgate domestic violent extremist and conspiracy theory-related content have praised the May 2022mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas and encouraged copycat attacks," the bulletin said. "Others have seized on the event to attempt to spread disinformation and incite grievances, including claims it was a government-staged event meant to advance gun control measures."

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an 6 22

judge shot by ex-con (political? trms 6/6/22  says reflect deterioration of rule of law, links to prev white pwr, no convict of sedition, got guns back except machine)

n alliance of right-wing extremists and hardcore Donald Trump supporters has come together since the Jan. 6 insurrection, and law enforcement officials are gravely concerned.

The confederation was predictable -- and was indeed predicted -- by Homeland Security officials, who are no less alarmed to see how emboldened extremists have become since the insurrection caused their numbers to swell with new recruits, reported The New Yorker.

“On Jan. 6, we had neo-Nazis hanging out with a bunch of otherwise just MAGA people,” said Elizabeth Neumann, who served as DHS assistant secretary for counterterrorism and threat prevention during the Trump administration. “That’s an opportunity to recruit.”

Some of the U.S. Capitol rioters awaiting trial at the District of Columbia jail have formed an almost "cultlike" bond while locked up, and another former DHS official said that could be seen as symbolic of the alliances forming among disparate extremist groups after the former president's loss.

“One of the things that make the current threat environment complicated for law enforcement and intelligence is the blending that occurs,” said John Cohen, who served as DHS acting chief of intelligence during the first year of Joe Biden's presidency. “People who may have come from very different ideological backgrounds or somewhat different ideological backgrounds are coalescing around certain things.”

Cohen said the unit he oversaw has picked up some disturbing and unmistakeable patterns.

“Anti-government militia, hardcore white supremacists, and even people more from the anarchist movement have come together,” Cohen said. Their goals are explicit: “assassination of elected officials, and violent activities to resist government activities or programs.”

Cohen pointed to a white supremacist's recent mass shooting at a grocery store in Buffalo as an example of this escalating threat.

“In my 38-plus years of law enforcement, this is the most complex threat environment I’ve ever seen,” Cohen said. “We have unacceptable levels of violence by people who are influenced and inspired by content they see online.”

“I am really f*cking concerned about where we are," he added.

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no lnx twt

'The coup is ongoing': Critics sound the alarm after Trump boosts message 'advocating or predicting civil war'

David Badash and The New Civil Rights Movement May 23, 2022

Critics are expressing anger and issuing warnings after Donald Trump, the former president, posted a message over the weekend on his own social media platform that well-known attorney George Conway described as “advocating or predicting civil war in the United States.”

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Fox Nation propagandist and antisemitic conspiracy theorist Lara Logan had reposted a message from the right-wing “populist” President of El Salvador, that suggests the United States is “falling so fast” due to an “enemy” within.

A pro-Trump account on Trump’s Truth Social platform then commented “Civil War.”

Trump reposted that message.

“Nothing to see here,” George Conway wrote on Twitter. “Just a former president of the United States sharing a social media post advocating or predicting civil war in the United States. No biggie.”

Former GOP Congressman Denver Riggleman, a former National Security Agency contractor who calls himself a “Disinfo Hunter” commented: “Trump mirrors his base. Pay attention.”

GOP U.S. Congressman Adam Kinzinger:

“Tell me how … he has never egged on violence again?” asked Amanda Carpenter, a columnist at The Bulwark.

Veteran foreign correspondent and sports columnist Robert Lusetich:

“After seeking to overturn his election defeat, the former president is now endorsing the claim that we are in a ‘civil war.’ Incredibly dangerous,” wrote Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist and professor at Dartmouth College. “How long until the next gunman takes him literally and/or seriously? What about the next time he or his party lose another election?”

Attorney, journalist, SiriusXM host, and frequent cable news contributor Dean Obeidallah writes, “Trump’s suggestion of a Civil War appears to forget that on Jan 6 he and his forces tried that and FAILED. But the fact Trump can call for a civil war today is only possible because DOJ has still not prosecuted Trump–despite it being 502 days since Jan 6!”

Political commentator Lindy Li:

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5 22

an salon rosenberg?

a single incident can't prove anything in terms of social science, but it can certainly serve as a vivid illustration. That was the case with the Buffalo massacre that horrified the nation and the world last weekend, which seemed almost inevitable in light of the new book "Radical American Partisanship: Mapping Violent Hostility, Its Causes, and the Consequences for Democracy" by Nathan Kalmoe and Lilliana Mason.

The Buffalo shooter's so-called manifesto, Kalmoe told me, consists of "partisan Republican media talking points," especially those of Fox News' Tucker Carlson,"along with the most radical elected Republican leaders." I wrote about the history of the "great replacement" theory last year, but "Radical American Partisanship" provides a broader perspective. "Our book talks about the long history of racial-partisan violence and how those two things are linked," Kalmoe said. "We don't know the shooter's media exposure so we can't begin to judge cause and effect, but we can say this is the kind of action you'd expect more people to take as explicit white supremacy, antisemitism and other extreme conspiratorial vilification gets mainstreamed among Republicans."

That mainstreaming creates another causal pathway by way of "norm erosion," as co-author Mason noted in a Twitter conversation with other social scientists: "More people holding radical (in our case, violent) beliefs changes the social norm-enforcement mechanism, by reducing the number of people who will engage in norm-enforcing social sanctions."

Partisan violence is part of our history, as Kalmoe explored in his 2020 book "With Ballots and Bullets: Partisanship and Violence in the American Civil War" (Salon interview here), but when Kalmoe and Mason began their collaboration in 2017 they could hardly find any public-opinion research on the subject. They didn't quite have to invent a new field from scratch, but they did have to weave together a bunch of different strands of academic research that hadn't previously been integrated into how we think about partisan politics. The surveys reported in this book, which basically cover the period of the Trump presidency, from 2017 to early 2021 will reshape our understanding of this long-neglected aspect of American politics. But they're also important right now, for tragic and obvious reasons. I interviewed Kalmoe and Mason recently by email. Their responses have been edited for clarity and length.

The massacre in Buffalo immediately made me think of your book. The shooter's stated rationale wasn't "partisan," in the normal sense, but his worldview surely was. Your book begins by asking why it was so easy for Donald Trump to stoke the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021. Beyond the immediate answer — his own incitements — you argue that "the bases of each party are divided into nearly warring factions with radically opposed visions for America," and that this is "a battle over the future — and the past — of the United States." So what consequences flow from that?

Mason: One of themain findings of the book is that Republicans who are high in racial resentment and hostile sexism are also the most likely to vilify and dehumanize Democrats. For Democrats, it's the people low in racial resentment who are the most likely to vilify and dehumanize Republicans.These vilifying and dehumanizing attitudes (what we call "moral disengagement") are common precursors to mass violence in other countries. For Republicans in particular, the most powerful predictor of moral disengagement is an opposition to racial and gender equality or a denial that any inequality exists.

This means that one of the biggest divides (and sources of conflict) between Democrats and Republicans is a fundamental disagreement about whether the U.S. has made enough progress toward racial and gender equality, or whether we have gone too far and need to roll back some of the progress we have made. Americans aren't very good at talking about racial and gender equality in a calm and composed way. These conversations often erupt into violence throughout American history.

So what's different right now?

Mason: It's already a volatile topic. But now that we've organized the discussion along partisan lines, it allows our electoral politics to become as violent as racial conflict. The "replacement" theory that Tucker Carlson, Rep. Elise Stefanik and others are pushing is, on its face, a political one. They say that Democrats are trying to replace white voters (who tend to vote for Republicans) with "immigrants" who are "more obedient" and will automatically vote for Democrats. This "sanitized" version of replacement theory allows racial animosity to be papered over with "political" animosity — which is generally more socially acceptable.

All of this comes out of the increasing trend of "social sorting" between the parties, with the Republican Party becoming the party of white Christian rural men, and the Democratic Party representing everyone else. The party divide mirrors the divide between those at the top of the traditional social hierarchy and those who are traditionally marginalized. The Buffalo shooting, however, made clear that even if Tucker Carlson is speaking about a political conflict, the racial message still comes through quite clearly.

Partisan violence is very understudied in political science, so much so that there were very few surveys you could use. But that's not the case with social psychology. Why is there a difference, and what tools does social psychology provide that you built upon?

Kalmoe: Political violence, including violence instigated by parties, is a big research area among political scientists studying other countries, but it has rarely been a focus for scholars of American politics, partly because of our bias toward studying the present and recent past. Many assumed that what's happening "over there" can't happen here, even though it already happened here in the more distant past.

The founding research on American partisanship focused narrowly on the national electoral politics of the 1950s. There was white supremacist political violence in the South targeting civil rights efforts at the time, but that conflict divided Northern and Southern Democrats rather than dividing the two parties. Thus, the account of partisan identities and motives among ordinary people is quite tame.

Social psychology was founded at the same time, but with a heavy focus on explaining the violence of the Holocaust, which followed empowerment of the Nazi Party in Germany and fascists elsewhere. What caused ordinary people to participate in atrocities on an unfathomable scale? They focused on the harms that can emerge from us-vs.-them identity categorization, and the extent to which people are susceptible to following leaders and peers — opinion leadership and social influence.

We identify strength of social identification with a political party as one vital factor distinguishing those who are more likely to endorse radical partisan views, and we test the role of messages for top party leaders in changing the views of their followers and opponents.

You focus on two major concepts: partisan moral disengagement and partisan violence. How are these defined as concepts? How are they related, and how do you measure them?

Kalmoe: Partisan moral disengagement builds on psychological research by Albert Bandura and others showing that people who hurt others tend to hold views that rationalize that harm. For example, we measure views that political opponents are a national threat, that they are evil and that they lack the traits to be fully human. We expected that people who endorse some of all of these views would be more likely to endorse physically harming opponents, and that is what we found in our surveys.

We measured support for partisan violence with more than two dozen different questions, ranging in specificity of the context and severity of harm. Our four most common questions asked about approval of threats against opposing leaders and voters. One question on whether violence by one's own party is justified, and there was a final question on support for violence if the opposing party wins the next presidential election. We also asked specific questions about assassinating opponents, about support for the January 2021 Capitol insurrection, and reactions to the shootings of Rep. Gabby Giffords (a Democrat) and Rep. Steve Scalise (a Republican), for example.

One important thing we found is that people have lots of different things in mind for the term "violence." While psychologists define it as resulting in severe maiming or death, many of the people who endorse partisan violence in our surveys told us in follow-up questions that they had lesser harms in mind, like fistfights, for example. So levels of support for "violence" include a broad range of behaviors, though they're all contentious and worrisome in their own ways.

Historically, you argue, "Americans seem to support political violence in some historical cases and under certain conditions." When do they support it, and when don't they? And what falls in between?

Kalmoe: One of the most important takeaways from our research is that there is no single level of support for political violence to find. Support depends entirely on the details. For example, we found modern support for the political violence of the American Revolution at 80% among partisans, which is about four times higher than our standard measures and orders of magnitude above some of our most severe and contextually specific questions.

We know from historical episodes of political violence in the past that millions of ordinary Americans can be organized into violent conflict, as during the Revolution and the Civil War, along with the organized racial-partisan violence during Reconstruction and Jim Crow.

We argue that the most important factors that shift public support for political violence, and participation in that violence, are the factors identified by social psychologists: influence from trusted leaders and from peer social networks. Both serve to set the norms for attitudes and behaviors regarding violence, and when the group says it's OK, people think and act accordingly. Of course, individual attributes like "trait aggression" still influence who is especially inclined to be an early adopter of those views and behaviors.

How is support for violence calibrated? In the extreme, some people involved in the Jan. 6 insurrection were ready or even eager for civil war. But how many people were willing to go that far?

Kalmoe: Our research speaks most to public attitudes about political violence, which certainly serves as a risk factor for the few who engage in violent acts. We began this project, however, thinking about the broader social environment for contentious partisanship. The prevalence of violent views could serve as a vital accelerant or brake on violent acts when neighbors and friends learn that someone in their social circle is planning violence. Their own views about violence could serve to encourage or discourage actions by others, and it will affect how they respond politically to violent political attacks in general. Our work doesn't directly analyze participation in political violence. That vital question is being answered by others.

How did the measures of partisan moral disengagement and partisan violence change over time? What did those changes reflect or reveal?

Kalmoe: We found steadily rising levels of support for partisan violence from our first survey in 2017 through our last reported in the book, in February 2021. Our vilifying questions for partisan moral disengagement also steadily rose over that time. Support for threats against leaders and citizens were a little more variable, rising at times of greatest contention and then dropping afterward. Those results tell us that, even within our current contentious period, those radical views are becoming more prevalent.

The trends in our survey work generally comport with rising levels of threats against leaders. For example, the Los Angeles Times cataloged steadily rising threats against Congress from 2016, when they numbered just under 1,000, to 2021, when they nearly reached 10,0000 — an order of magnitude more in just four years.

What's the role of "trait aggression," which you mentioned earlier? What role does it play in predicting partisan violence, and how does it interact with partisan moral disengagement?

Kalmoe: Trait aggression is an individual tendency to behave aggressively in everyday interactions with other people, including verbal and physical forms. We found that aggressive tendencies translate into greater support for partisan violence. In fact, trait aggression is the strongest predictor of violent partisan views among the many factors we tested.

But the political component of those views is important too. We found the strongest relationships between trait aggression and support for partisan violence among people who vilified partisan opponents, and likewise, we found that partisan moral disengagement predicted violent partisan views most among people who were interpersonally aggressive.

We can see a similar dynamic in violent political behavior. Those perpetrators almost always seem to have a history of aggressive criminal behavior and often a history of perpetrating domestic violence too.

You write that "the same things that predict conventional political actions like voting can also predict and explain aggressive behavior and violence." How so?

Kalmoe: Strength of social identification with the political party is one of the most important motivating forces for partisan action through voting, volunteering, donating and other nonviolent participatory acts. Our work shows that that same identity-based motivation also leads some partisans to endorse violence against their partisan opponents.

You write that one of your survey results "means [there are] roughly 20 million [Americans] who endorse assassinating U.S. leaders." That would surely be a shocking result to most people. What was the question that produced this result, and why is it so at odds with "common sense" political discourse?

Kalmoe: In one question, we asked "How much do you feel it is justified for [your own party] to kill opposing political leaders to advance their political goals these days?" Response options ranged from "not at all" to "a great deal." Nearly 90% of respondents chose "not at all," but 11% said assassination was at least "a little" justified.

Many people tend to censor their most extreme views in public for fear of social and legal sanctions, so the extreme rhetoric we hear often lacks that violent specificity. But we've also heard quite a lot of explicitly violent rhetoric stated publicly in recent years. Pundits and researchers have been too quick to dismiss those as merely expressive and fundamentally unserious. Of course, there are ranges of seriousness across people, but it is a mistake to dismiss these expressions as just blowing off steam. Given the rise in political violence and threats, alongside violent rhetoric and violent attitudes, some of the folks who set the conventional wisdom are beginning to wrestle with the degree and prevalence of that extreme hostility.

You report that "Political victimization is prevalent in the U.S.," ranging from insults to physical attacks. While far fewer people report aggression, you wrote that even the small percentages you found "potentially represent the behaviors of hundreds of thousands — even millions — of Americans engaged in extreme political behavior that goes unnoticed in news and scholarship."

Kalmoe: In addition to asking about extremely hostile and violent attitudes, we asked people to report their own aggressive political behavior, and whether they have been on the receiving end of aggression over politics. Nearly half of our respondents said they had been insulted, one in six said they'd been threatened, and 3% said they had been physically assaulted over politics. The numbers were substantially higher among those who said they regularly talk about politics, as you'd expect.

The portion admitting they themselves had behaved aggressively over politics was much lower: about one-quarter for insults, and only 1% for threats and physical altercations.

Both sets of results are novel, as far as we know. Few if any researchers are asking questions like these, even among those now asking about political violence. One reason that people might be so surprised by political violence like the 2021 Capitol attack is that no one has been systematically documenting the prevalence of milder aggressive behaviors that apparently are very common. And of course the people who engage in low-level political aggression are the likeliest to participate in more extreme actions.

After the 2020 election, you found that "about a fifth of American partisans were ready for a full-blown violent rebellion against the newly elected president and his government." What are the implications of that?

Kalmoe: Clearly, several thousand Americans went beyond support for violently overthrowing the newly-elected government to acting on that view in the 2021 Capitol attack. That episode, and the thousands of death threats targeting election administrators and others for upholding their civic duties after the 2020 election, are the clearest implications.

Most people who support political violence won't act on it. Of course, that's true in wars too. A majority of Americans initially supported the Iraq war, for example, even though a tiny fraction actually did the fighting. But their support for violence has important effects on the actions of those few, and helps determine whether the numbers of combatants will grow in spirals of provocation.

What did you find about the potential impact of anti-violence messages? How did this compare with what Donald Trump actually did?

Mason: A piece of good news from the book is that leaders seem to have a powerful ability to pacify violent attitudes among partisans. When we had survey respondents read a message from Biden or Trump denouncing political violence, we found that strong partisans responded by becoming less supportive of violence. We saw this effect even after reading a single sentence from a leader. It follows that sustained anti-violence rhetoric from leaders should be even more powerful. Importantly, Trump did the opposite in the lead-up to the Jan. 6 insurrection. He very likely could have prevented the violence that occurred if he had broadly discouraged it in the first place. But instead Trump stoked violent feelings and behaviors.

In our surveys, we observe similar levels of support for violence among Democrats and Republicans. But observed levels of real violence in the American public are almost entirely from right-wing actors. This is likely due to the difference in rhetoric between Democratic and Republican leaders. Condemning violence is extremely important, even if the original violent message is purported to be "only a joke."

What did your research show about the relative influence of Fox News and MSNBC?

Mason: Americans who consumed partisan media (Fox News and MSNBC) were significantly more radical in their partisan views than those who watched CNN. For Fox News in particular, their viewers were both more morally disengaged from Democrats and more willing to endorse sending threats to Democrats. Those who watched MSNBC were not more morally disengaged than those who watched CNN, but they were more likely to endorse sending threats to Republicans. Overall, Fox News viewers seem to be significantly more likely to dehumanize and vilify Democrats than consumers of any other news source.

The recent wave of attacks on Democrats who support LGBTQ+ rights as "groomers" — by implication, pedophiles — seems like another worrying example of dehumanization. Aren't media elites and politicians who take up such language grooming their followers for violence?

Kalmoe: The "groomer" and "pedo" conspiracy rhetoric accomplishes two things at once for Republicans. It ties into long-standing vilifying tropes of LGBTQ+ people that appeal to the most radical religious base, but it also serves a broader purpose of vilifying Democrats and liberals generally. It's hard to imagine anything more vile than sexually abusing children, so the attempt to invent that political reputation for their opponents is the horrifying logical conclusion of increasing vilification. By going to those vilifying extremes, they make political violence against all those groups more likely because it's easier for people to rationalize violence against people whose evil behaviors define them.

What did you find in terms of prospects for the future? How should we understand the stakes and the risks we face?

Mason: We're in a pivotal moment as a country. Every time we make progress on racial equality and civil rights, we tend to see a backlash. The current political clash is about whether we can continue to improve the country's progress toward a fully multiracial democracy, or whether we go back to a time when white Christian men had full control over society. It's an intense conversation, but also it's one that we need to have. When we can't talk about racism and sexism, that protects racism and sexism. There is no way to have this conversation about the country's past and future in a way that is without conflict, but there is also no guarantee that equality will always win and prejudice will always lose. So it's an intense moment, but it's also a very important one.

Any final thoughts you'd like to leave us with?

Kalmoe: We make very clear in the book that while levels of radical partisanship are sometimes similar between Democrats and Republicans, the roots of that radicalism are not morally equivalent. We also acknowledge that political violence is sometimes a last resort, and that viewing opponents as a threat may be an objective evaluation and not a view to be condemned.

We should also note that while our research focuses on partisan violence, the biggest threats to democracy in the U.S. are from legal channels, not civilians acting out violently — although those sometimes reinforce each other. Legislatures, governors, courts, administrators and presidents all have far more influence over whether the U.S. moves toward or away from democracy than any mob, militia, terror cell or assassin.

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/05/cheney/

Buff NY mass shooter

no twt lnx

S. Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) has become the face of the Republican Party’s embrace of the racist, white supremacist, and white nationalist “Great Replacement Theory” after a white 18-year-old man drove 200 miles and allegedly slaughtered 10 Black people in Buffalo. Stefanik’s Facebook ads and her rhetoric in recent months have been highlighted as contributing to advancing the baseless conspiracy theory, but rather than pull back and apologize the chairwoman of the House Republican Caucus is being accused of “doubling down” on her “terrorist rhetoric.”

“Democrats desperately want wide open borders and mass amnesty for illegals allowing them to vote. Like the vast majority of Americans, Republicans want to secure our borders and protect election integrity,” Stefanik tweeted Monday morning.

“There is nothing humane or compassionate about Joe Biden & Democrats wide open border and amnesty policies. It is Joe Biden’s Border Crisis. A tragic humanitarian crisis. A national security crisis. An economic crisis. And the American people know it,” she also tweeted Monday.

Immediately before those tweets, Stefanik issued a press release attacking the media for “disgraceful, dishonest and dangerous … smears” that accuse her of the very same “Great Replacement Theory” rhetoric she minutes later went on to invoke.

Noted economist David Rothschild, a frequent political commentator, calls Stefanik’s tweets “terrorist rhetoric.” He criticized her Monday morning, saying the New York Congresswoman “is doubling-down with numerous [tweets] this morning echoing the Buffalo’s terrorist’s manifesto with baseless, hateful rhetoric designed to encourage violence against minorities, immigrants, and Jews.”

Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy Professor Don Moynihan agrees Stefanik is doubling down:

As does historian Kevin M. Kruse:

Some more responses to Stefanik’s tweets from this morning:

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180 pp gt replace manifesto, dad bought him one of the guns?

https://www.alternet.org/2022/05/matt-gaetz/

amanda

in the 16 months since Jan. 6, 2021, Donald Trump and the hosts Fox News hosts — especially its top-rated personality, Tucker Carlson — haven't exactly been subtle in approving of what happened and longing to see more right-wing violence. Trump has publicly mused about issuing pardons to the Capitol insurrectionists if he wins back — or rather steals back — the White House in 2024. Like many of the far-right Republicans in Congress, Trump has also made a martyr out of Ashli Babbitt, the QAnon believer who was shotduring the Capitol riot when she tried to break into a secure area and quite likely attack members of Congress. Carlson, meanwhile, has been at the forefront of popularizing various often contradictory conspiracy theories, mostly intended to portray the Jan. 6 insurrectionists as noble patriots and lambaste any Republican who dares say otherwise. While these GOP leaders and media personalities are generally careful to avoid direct calls for violence, their overall message of sympathy and support for right-wing terrorism is undeniable.

So Saturday's mass shooting in Buffalo, while horrifying, is really no surprise.

The alleged shooter who killed 10 people and injured three others in a Buffalo supermarket is 18-year-old Payton Gendron, who appears to have target a busy location in a predominantly Black neighborhood. As has become far too common with these kinds of mass murders, Gendron reportedly live-streamed the massacre on video, and apparently also published a manifesto that echoes many of the paranoid right-wing talking points one can hear every day streaming from the mouths of Fox News hosts and Republican politicians: a series of scurrilous lies about "critical race theory," George Soros and the "great replacement."

Now a familiar refrain will commence. No doubt we will be hear a great deal of umbrage in the coming days from Republican leaders and right-wing pundits. "How dare you blame us?" they will proclaim, in almost hysterical terms, acting shocked, shocked, that anyone would suggest that their words have had horrible consequences. The point of this fake outrage will be to make it too emotionally exhausting to hold them accountable, and to reinforce the ridiculous victim complex that fuels the American right as it increasingly slides into fascism. But let's not mince words: These folks share the blame. They have been encouraging violence, and violence is what they got.

The "great replacement" theory has been a favorite of Carlson's for some time now. This particular paranoid hypothesis is deeply rooted in neo-Nazi and other white nationalist circles. A cabal of rich Jewish people, the theory holds, has conspired to "replace" white Christian Americans with other races and ethnic groups in order to gain political and social control.Carlson doesn't actually say "Jews," and generally blames the sinister plan on Democrats, socialists or unspecified "elites," but otherwise has kept the conspiracy theory intact. (Antisemitism remains the mix by singling out individual Jewish people especially Soros, as the alleged ringleaders.) It's not like Carlson only invokes this narrative on occasion. As Media Matters researcher Nikki McCann Ramirez has documented, Carlson is obsessed with this idea that the people he calls"legacy Americans" — a not-so-veiled euphemism for white Christians of European ancestry — are under siege from shadowy forces flying the banner of diversity. He uses anodyne terms like "demographic change" to make the point, but has gotten bolder more recently, using the word "replacement" to make it even clearer that he's borrowing his ideas from the white-supremacist fringe.

Carlson has also explicitly linked this conspiracy theory to the threat of violence, repeatedly "warning" that America faces a new civil war unless these fictional conspirators stop trying to "replace" his cherished "legacy Americans." The GOP base has been getting the message. A poll conducted in December showed that nearly half of Republican respondents buy into the idea that there's a conspiracy to "replace" white Christians with different racial and ethnic groups. That proportion has probably risen since then, as Carlson's deluge has further mainstreamed this delusional and dangerous notion. Unsurprisingly, there has been a concurrent rise in hate crimes, of which this Buffalo shooting is merely the most dramatic recent example.

When called out for stoking a conspiracy theory that is likely to inspire violence, Carlson inevitably plays the victim, accusing liberals of being "hysterical" and characterizing these criticisms as "cancel culture." This only encourage his viewers to embrace the conspiracy theory even more, telling themselves that they (and he) are bold truth-tellers fighting against the forces of liberal oppression.That's why the how-dare-they posturing we will almost certainly see from Carlson and other right-wing pundits in coming days so predictable. This article, for instance, will quite likely be characterized as hysterical name-calling or an attempt to censor bold political speech. But let's understand this feigned outrage for what it is: an attempt to leverage an act of terrorism in a way that leads people to accept it or even condone it.

The "great replacement" theory fits in with the larger pattern of right-wing Republicans (especially our former president and his allies) and Fox News pundits encouraging not just right-wing paranoia, but the inevitable acts of violence that flow from it. The most straightforward example of this, of course, is the relentless rewriting of the history of Jan. 6, which began in the immediate aftermath and continues to this day. Republican leaders in Congress voted down Trump's impeachment only weeks after the riot and have tried to block congressional efforts to uncover exactly how the attempted coup went down.

Over this past winter, Fox News, Trump and other GOP leaders made another big push towards political violence, hyping outrageous conspiracy theories about COVID vaccines and encouraging their audiences toward aggressive acts of so-called resistance. As with Carlson, these threats are often packaged as "warnings," as when Trump declared on Fox News in February, "You can push people so far and our country is a tinderbox too, don't kid yourself." Around the same time, Carlson, Sean Hannity, Carlson and Glenn Beck all started pushed the idea that anti-vaccination fanatics were potentially justified in using violence as "self-defense."

Indeed, as the shooting was unfolding in Buffalo, there was an overt call for right-wing violence at Trump's rally in Austin, Texas, where oock geezer turned gun advocate Ted Nugent told the crowd of 8,000 that he'd "love" it if they all "went out and just went berserk on the skulls of the Democrats and the Marxists and the communists." In his speech afterward, Trump praised Republican politicians in Texas, including Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton, who have slavishly proven their loyalty to him.

Many of the people arrested for their actions on Jan. 6 , 2021, have stopped being apologetic about what they did, and are now portraying themselves as martyrs and heroes. Last week, one of the most prominent ringleaders on the insurrection,Tim "Baked Alaska" Gionet, a troll to the very end, dramatically declared at a hearing that he was changing his plea. He had agreed to plead guilty to a lesser offense, but now wants to plead not guilty, even though he filming himself inside the Capitol during the riot and put the evidence online. Other Jan. 6 defendants have also become more confrontational, including pulling a gun on probation officers, acquiring new guns in defiance of a court order, or claiming that their actions on that dayamounted to "self-defense." In fairness, why shouldn't they feel emboldened? Most Republican voters, along with the party's leadership, are more interested in making excuses for Trump's coup than holding anyone accountable for it.

And all of the above doesn't even touch on the way Republican politicians and right-wing media have mainstreamed the QAnon conspiracy theory by regularly slurring Democrats, LGBTQ folks and their allies as "groomers." Demonizing political opponents with false allegations of pedophilia is unbelievably slimy, even by Republican standards. It also serves to inspire or encourage potential acts of violence, by dehumanizing their targets and creating a delusional narrative that makes such attacks seem justified.

Perhaps the horror unleashed in Buffalo on Saturday will cause Carlson and his allies to rethink their paranoid, racist and inflammatory rhetoric. That is doubtful, however. After all, this is just the latest in a series of mass shootings inspired by the "great replacement" theory, including the

Just this week, the conspiracy theory got another round of hype as Republican pundits and politicians pretended to believe that President Biden was stealing baby formula from Americans to feed "illegals," their slur for refugees applying for asylum. Those who would support deliberately starving babies for racist and xenophobic reasons aren't likely to feel any real empathy for the victims and their families in Buffalo. We cannot legitimately hope that they will be chastened by this latest round of violence, but we can make clear that their hateful rhetoric helped to unleash it.

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/05/right-wing-terrorism/

dart kos

One of the moredisturbing— but increasingly common— behaviors of the political right is its practice of cleverly goading and inciting violence towards other Americans. I say “cleverly” because they do this in full awareness of the potential consequences, but believe themselves to be untouchable, because they are online and usually anonymous.

These implicit, “winking” appeals to violence have recently been employed by the right in public settings — such as campaign speeches— where a speaker demonizes certain groups or individuals without ever explicitly urging that they be harmed or killed. Donald Trump himself elevatedthis type of malevolent rhetoricto an art form when he deliberately demonize and ethnic groups, often resulting in harassment and death threats against those same individuals(and often their/maxresdefault.jpg)). His son, Donald Trump Jr. recently of himself at a shooting range with Missouri Senate candidate Eric Greitens in which the two of them fired automatic weapons at targets while voicing threats against “liberals.”

With these public models to inspire them and the anonymity afforded by the internet, it’s hardly surprising that purveyors of online hate speech have metastasized to the point where the encouragement of violence in rightwing online forums is now normalized. Up to this point, few people have suffered any consequences for the harm their “ free speech” might inflict on others.

That may be changing. One of the time-tested axioms in law is that there should be “no wrong without a remedy.” And legal practitioners fed up with the reckless disregard now exhibited (mostly) by the right, routinely putting other peoples’ lives at risk through this spew of untrammeled hate speech, are beginning to respond to this threat by laying the groundwork for new legal causes of action to hold such terrorists (for that is exactly what they are) accountable to those they harm through their exhortations to violence.

Jane Bambauer is a professor of law at the University of Arizona. In an article written for Lawfare, she explains why a variation on current common law jurisprudence should be adapted to the necessities of hate speech as it exists in the modern digital age. That article dovetails with a law review articleshe co-wrote which will be published in theinfluential Harvard Journal of Law and Technology.

The abstract of that article, titled Reckless Associations*,* explains why such an adaptation of the law is necessary in light of what we have witnessed developing over the last five years:

This Article provides a theoretical foundation and practical guide for a new form of liability that has proven necessary in the Internet era: the tort of Reckless Association. This tort would hold de facto leaders of informal networks responsible when radicalized members of the network cause physical harm to others. Recent prosecutions of the leaders of the Oath Keepers and other white supremacists who organized the Charlottesville protest, and rumblings of a similar prosecution against Donald Trump, demonstrate that there is a public appetite for this form of legal responsibility. To date, these prosecutions proceed on theories of incitement or conspiracy, but those doctrines are poor fits for cultural leaders, like Trump, whose media habits have created a drumbeat for increasingly paranoid thinking and action while also studiously avoiding making discrete statements that fit the heightened requirements of incitement.

In her Lawfare article, Bambauer notes that current criminal law does not provide an effective remedy for the type of “at-a-distance” terrorism practiced on the internet by the Alex Jones’s, Trumps and Greitens, for example. To hold such perpetrators accountable to the people harmed by their online digital discourse, it’s necessary to adapt common law liability to encompass the “ringleaders,” as she describes them: “[T]he central figures who are the most active, trusted and influential nodes in a radicalized network should be held civilly responsible for the physical harm foreseeably caused by other individuals in their social group.”

From the law review article, Bambauer describes how this type of liability would work in practice:

As an illustration: Alex Jones could be held civilly liable for the physical harm caused by the shooting at Comet Ping Pong pizzeria if the victim, through discovery of Twitter, Facebook, and other social networking data, could show that Jones was (one of) the most influential node(s) in the shooter’s network that persistently trafficked in Pizzagate pedophile conspiracy theories. Jones would have a defense based on lack of sufficient mental state (reckless indifference) if he could show that he had made even a modest attempt to correct the record or dampen the hostility—a defense we believe he would not actually be able to muster.

As Bambauer notes, the discovery process would provide the victim of such right-wing terrorism appropriate legal tools to determine, through the perpetrators’ online metadata, a graph network identifying those radicalized individuals “who are the most connected and the most frequent contributors to the swarm of crazy-making content.” Measuring the network’s centralitycould (and likely would) narrow this down to specific individuals.

The difficulty, of course, is establishing causation between these ringleaders’ conduct and the subsequent attack on the victim of violence. In Bambauer’s formulation, “liability should pass to the de facto leader only if the plaintiff can prove, by a preponderance of evidence, that the leader’s communications and activities in the social network had a true causal connection to the attack.” Bambauer suggests a Restatement (commonly used by lawyers and judges to summarize and define a specific point of law) be adopted as follows:

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aha note that violence is always DEFENSIVE in this case our kids pink pill pedo groomer BS]

plus quasi-legally it is self-defense; also note 2nd civil war as false flag deep state plot

rww 4 22

Ali Alexander, an organizer with the so-called Stop the Steal campaign, told radical conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on Wednesday that “there is a time for legitimate violence when there is legitimate tyranny.” The two agreed that now is not the time but began to discuss what would constitute “legitimate tyranny.”

Alexander and Jones are people of interest to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Alexander organized the rallies and strategy of the Stop the Steal campaign, which perpetuated the Big Lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from former President Donald Trump and worked desperately to keep him in power, while Jones and his InfoWars’ crew spoke at the rallies and advertised the campaign on their networks.

In December, Alexander sat for eight hours of testimony in front of the House select committee and threw fellow rally organizers, Amy and Kylie Kremer and Katrina Pierson, under the bus;Jones says he pled the Fifth when he met with the committee. Last Friday, Alexander told the New York Times through a lawyer that he would cooperate with the Department of Justice in its investigation of the attack. But by Tuesday, Alexander joined Jones on “InfoWars” to suggest he would never do so.

On the Wednesday edition of “InfoWars,” Alexander repeated part of his conspiracy theory that he shared with Jones the day prior: that the Jan. 6 investigations were part of a “deep state” plot to get rid of elections, the Republican Party, and Christians, with the goal to usher in a “stateless New World Order.” A civil war orchestrated by the deep state would be central to this effort, according to Alexander. In response to Jones asking how to avoid such a civil war, Alexander suggested viewers pray, before discussing “legitimate violence.”

“The second byproduct of prayer is that it makes us sane,” Alexander said. “So when we’re getting this deluge of persecution, we’re not saying, in our gut primal level, ‘We need to go bomb something, we need to go shoot something’; it’s ‘I will not give them an inch or become the monster they want us to become.’”

“Now, folks, I’m going to say something really crazy,” Alexander continued. “I’m not going to deny that the people have the right of revolution. I’m not going to deny 1776. I’m not going to deny there is a time for legitimate violence when there is legitimate tyranny. And by the way, the Declaration of Independence even outlines—”

“Says it’s your right and duty,” Jones interrupted. “But they are just losing right now, we’re winning politically. We don’t want to do it yet, but you’re not denying we have the right.” 

“Right,” Alexander replied. “I’m not denying the—I’m saying it’s not the time now, that’s for sure.” 

“But it’s definitely a card we have in our hand we’re allowed to play,” Jones said.

“Right! Right,” Alexander said. 

“When all else is lost you gotta do it,” Jones said.

“If they start ripping your children from your home and doing reassignment surgeries—” Alexander began.

“Everyone knows when the time is,” Jones interrupted. “The point is,anybody trying to lure you into plots to kidnap governors, anybody who wants you tooffensively attack, that’s not what we do.” 

“Frankly, a discerning mind and a mind in prayer, frankly, would not punch cops at the Capitol, would not  kidnap governors,” Alexander said.

“You know it makes us look bad!” Jones said

“And it won’t be successful,” Alexander said. 

“Not only do I not want to randomly punch cops, it’s dumb!” Jones exclaimed.

“It’s very dumb,” Alexander agreed. “It’s dumb, and it displeases God I think. But you know, these cops need to stop complying with COVID orders and lockdowns and stealing.”

“Yeah, no, they’re putting themselves in that position,” Jones said.

Alexander regularlyuses violent rhetoric and has called for civil war and rebellion. On the eve of the insurrection, Alexander led a Stop the Steal crowd in chants of “Victory or death!” and declared “1776 is always an option.”

As Luke O’Brien reported in HuffPost, Alexander considers violence a “natural right”:

On Twitter, Alexander had called violence a “natural right.” He was a prominent influencer on the platform, with almost 200,000 followers. “I am a sincere advocate for violence and war, when justified,” he tweeted in 2019. “I recognize no law above what is natural and good.” A militant Christianity has permeated his extremism; he has spoken often about being an agent of God.

Tags: Alex Jones Ali Alexander Capitol Insurrection conspiracy theories Jan. 6 violent rhetoric InfoWars

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/04/republicans-enemies-pedophiles-stochastic-terrorism/

beyerstein

Supporters of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law have dusted off the vintage lie that gay men, trans folks, and their allies are child molesters.

The word of the day is “grooming.”

Much has been written about how dangerous this rhetoric is to LGBTQ communities(see John Stoehr’s interview with Gabriel Rosenberg), but the threat extends further. Republicans have opened a new front against political opponents, insinuating or downright alleging that all Democrats and even dissenting Republicans are pedophiles.

This rhetoric crosses the line from spirited debate to eliminationist rhetoric. Falsely labeling one’s political enemies as pedophiles is a tacit incitement to harassment and even to violence.If the campaign is waged from huge media platforms over a sustained period of time, as we’re seeing now, it crosses the line into stochastic terrorism.

Actual grooming is a form of manipulation.

Abusers ingratiate themselves into the victim’s life and wear down their defenses so they submit to sexual abuse. Proponents of these anti-gay bills claim that teaching kids about sex and gender is the same as grooming them for abuse, if not child abuse in itself. That’s preposterous, as are allegations that supporting a trans child’s identity or providing gender-affirming medical care is child abuse.

The rightwing is cynically collapsing the distinction between sexually abusing children, teaching ideas they falsely claim make children vulnerable and supporting the teaching of these ideas, thus exposing a large segment of the population to reprisals for alleged pedophilia.

“If you’re against the Anti-Grooming Bill, you are probably a groomer or at least you don’t denounce the grooming of four 8-year-old children,” wrote Ron DeSantis’s press secretary Christina Pushaw on Twitter.

US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene proclaimed “the Democrats are the party of pedophiles,” adding that "either you are pro-pedophile and pro-transgender biological men or you defend children and women.”

Greene’s comments might be the ravings of a crank if not for the rightwing uniting behind her. The moral panic over child porn extends from the lowliest 8chan poster to the halls of the United States Senate.

A bizarre conspiracy theory alleging that Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson was soft on child porn became the centerpiece of GOP objections to her confirmation. Greene accused three senators of her own party of being “pro-pedophile” for voting to confirm Judge Jackson.

Not to be outdone, Tucker Carlson told viewers the Walt Disney Corporation was behaving like a sex offender by including gay characters in its movies and for belatedly opposing “Don’t Say Gay.”

This strategy of equating political opponents with child molesters and pedophiles in order to legitimize violence against them may be more recognizable when seen in a totalitarian regime overseas.

When protests erupted against the invasion of Ukraine, the Russian state media responded by branding the organizers of the demonstrations as “political pedophiles,” whom they baselessly allege to be sexually exploiting young activists who joined their cause.

Russian leader Vladimir Putin famously equates homosexuality and pedophilia with the west. In his speech outlining his motives for invading Ukraine, Putin claimed he was invading in part to stop the west from imposing values “contrary to human nature” on Ukraine.

The term eliminationism was coined by political scientist Daniel Goldhagen in his 1996 book Hitler’s Willing Executioners to describe the kinds of rhetoric used to utterly dehumanize a segment of society and mark them for forcible exclusion, expulsion or even elimination.

More recently, journalist and scholar Dave Neiwert has written extensively on eliminationist themes in US right-wing rhetoric.

Eliminationist rhetoric asserts that a group of people is so depraved and debased that coexistence is impossible. The group is thought to be a menace that must be crushed, expelled or otherwise eliminated.

At its core, eliminationist rhetoric is tacitpermission for violence.That is exactly what branding your political opponents as pedophiles does.

“Pedo” is eliminationist rhetoric. It’s the logical bridge that explains why people who claim to be the biggest proponents of democracy and freedom don’t want democracy or freedom for Democrats.

Allegedly, we’re too depraved to engage in normal politics.

We must be crushed, literally.

These spurious allegations can also be viewed as a form of stochastic terrorism that involves a group with a big media platform picking a target, blaming them for a social ill and flooding the zone with inflammatory rhetoric until the target is inundated with harassment.

A stochastic terrorist need not intend their demagoguery to end in violence. It is enough for such violence to be reasonably foreseeable.

Who can say whether disgraced former Fox host Bill O’Reilly wanted someone to shoot Dr. George Tiller by he incessantly calling the Wichita, Kansas, abortion provider a “baby killer”? Maybe O’Reilly’s intent was simply to scare Tiller or drive him out of the abortion business, but the fact remains that someone did assassinate him.

Stochastic terrorism unfolds in predictable phases:

demonization,

dehumanization,

desensitization and

denial.

A group with a mass communication platform sets out to demonize a person or a group of people as the cause of a major social ill whether it’s child sexual abuse, a global pandemic or an electoral defeat.

The target is repeatedly and falsely labeled as deviant, criminal, diseased and dangerous. The target may be called pedophiles, psychotics, drug addicts, Nazis, communists and murderers.

The despised group is frequently described as dirty, diseased or even as vermin that must be exterminated for the health of the body politic.

The audience comes to think of the target as subhuman. At this point, it becomes easier to imagine violence as acceptable and necessary.

If these messages are disseminated widely enough, it’s virtually guaranteed the target will be harassed and threatened. And, in a country awash with guns and angry people, there’s a non-trivial chance that someone will eventually attack the target.

The certainty of harassment and the possibility of violence can easily drive the target out of public life, ruin political careers and terrorize families. When the target complains or law enforcement begins asking questions, the stochastic terrorist can deny all responsibility.

After all, they didn’t tell their followers to harass abortion providers, Jews, trans kids, public health officials or female tech journalists.

After all, they just blamed these groups for major social ills and implied that they are too debased and dangerous to be engaged with politically, and normalized violent rhetoric about them.

Legally, they have a point.

Morally, we all know the score.

Moral panics over pedophilia can escalate into real-world harassment and violence. In 2016, an assailant fired a gun into the Comet Ping Pong pizza parlor, a beloved family restaurant in Washington, DC. He believed the restaurant was the center of a child sex trafficking plot.

This so-called Pizzagate conspiracy, a forerunner of QAnon, grew out of baseless online speculation about Hillary Clinton campaign emails hacked by Russian spies and dumped onto the internet.

As a result of the conspiracy, the owner of Comet Ping Pong was deluged with death threats even before the shooting incident.

Extremists protest outside his restaurant to this day.

The concerted Republican attempt to label enemies as pedophiles is a disgusting and dangerous display of homophobia and transphobia, but the threat extends to all of their political enemies.

They are trying to construe anyone opposing their agenda, whether by supporting gay kids, voting for the wrong Supreme Court nominee or even watching a Disney movie with their family, as a pedophile.

This is stochastic terrorism by a major political party.

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an 3 22

'TV terrorist' Donald Trump blasted for telling followers they 'must lay down their very lives' to defend against CRT

David Badash and The New Civil Rights Movement March 13, 2022

Donald Trump is calling on his followers to “lay down their very lives” to defend the United States against critical race theory. The disgraced former president delivered that dangerous call to arms at his “Save America” rally Saturday night in Florence, South Carolina.

“Getting critical race theory out of our schools is not just a matter of values, it’s also a matter of national survival,” Trump told his MAGA supporters. So-called critical race theory is not something that is taught in K-12 grades, it is a college-level interdisciplinary means to examine social and institutional constructs surrounding race.

“We have no choice,” Trump continued, a claim he often makes when speaking falsely.

That’s when he laid the groundwork for weaponizing his followers in the racist battle inside his mind that one day may erupt in physical war on our streets.

“The fate of any nation depends upon the willingness of its citizens to lay down – and they must do this – lay down their very lives to defend their country. If we allow the Marxists and communists and socialists to teach our children to hate America there will be no one left to defend our flag or to protect our great country or its freedom.”

“Calling for political violence to stop the teaching of accurate history in our schools is what fascism looks like,” commented Indivisible’s Sarah Dohl.

“Trump doesn’t want a political party. He wants an army. He’s a TV terrorist yes. But he’s also a real fascist,” wrote Condé Nast Legal Affairs Editor Luke Zaleski. “Attacking the Capitol, waiting, calling it off, then telling them he loved them after they terrorized the country and got his message across was a kind of a hint, folks.”

Zaleski later added: “Trump is a traitor and political mob boss.”

Civil-rights lawyer Subodh Chandra described Trump’s remarks as a “call to a violent race war. Over nothing but the teaching of our actual history. (CRT is not taught in public schools.)”

“Donald Trump,” said Moms Demand Action founder Shannon Watts, “who seems to be in the running for 2024, tells a nation awash in guns to kill or be killed in order to stop anyone from ‘hating our country.'”

“Scenes from a slow civil war,”observed Vanity Fair contributing editor Jeff Sharlet, who exposed the international right-wing Christian fundamentalist theocratic organization known as The Family.

“What does this mean?” asked Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy professor Don Moynihan. “If you are a teacher in a state you probably feel less and less safe by the extremist nature of this rhetoric.”

“Encouraging his fanboys to commit political violence again. Why is he still at large?” asked Salon’s Bob Cesca.

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an 3 22

U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth today blasted Republican lawmakers who continue to spread the "delusion" that non-violent participants in the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection are unfairly being held in jail before trial. Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA) and Lauren Boebert (CO) have been among those protesting the loudest on the issue.

Lamberth roundly dismissed that theory, according to a report by Politico as he rejected a bid for release by a Pennsylvania man accused of some of the most violent and offensive rhetoric in any Jan. 6 case. The man’s history was full of racist and anti-Semitic outbursts as well as stark threats to assassinate lawmakers.

The defendant is Marshall Neefe, who worked in construction and delivered bottled water. He was arrested in September and has been locked up ever since. He is accused of bringing to the riot a large wooden club he fashioned — dubbed “theCommie Knocker”— and slamming a large metal sign, along with other rioters, into a line of police officers guarding the Capitol.

In petitioning the court to keep him behind bars, prosecutors revealed a series of messages that Neefe had sent on Facebook using the “N-word” and discussing lynching people. Neefe also had made violent threats towards lawmakers, saying that Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell deserved “a bullet in the head.” He also talked openly of igniting a civil war and indicated that he was willing to return to Washington, D.C. with firearms to renew the attack on the Capitol.

After laying out his rationale for detaining Neefe, Lamberth added this highly unusual addendum:

“Some members of the public and even a few members of Congress retain the impression that peaceful political protestors are being held in jail pending trial,” wrote Lamberth, an appointee of President Ronald Reagan. “Neefe’s detention disproves that delusion. Neefe is detained not because of his beliefs, but because of his alleged violent actions and his expressed intent to engage in violent activity again.”

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an 3 22

Although now-President Joe Biden enjoyed a decisive victory in the United States’ 2020 presidential election — winning 306 electoral votes and defeating then-President Donald Trump by more than 7 million in the popular vote — it certainly wasn’t because of Idaho, a deep red state that Trump won by 30%. But far-right conspiracy theorist and MyPillowCEO Mike Lindell, a tireless promoter of the Big Lie, has claimed that Trump’s margin of victory was even higher than 30% in Idaho but that votes were stolen from Trump there through widespread voter fraud. And Lindell’s false claim, journalist Allan Smith reports for NBC News, has become a divisive issue among Idaho Republicans.

“Last summer, Idaho officials received demand after demand to investigate extraordinary claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election,” journalist Allan Smith reports in an article published by NBC News’ website on March 6. “In a state where former President Donald Trump won by more than 30 points, people claimed a vast conspiracy cheated the former president out of an even greater margin of victory. Almost all the e-mails referred to theories promoted by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, DeputySecretary of State Chad Houcksaid. Lindell, people claimed, had proof of major malfeasance — if only someone would look into it.”

Houck and the office of Idaho Secretary of State Lawerence Denney, according to Smith, investigated Lindell’s claims and “found them to be totally without merit.”

According to Smith, “Houck’s office decided to manually count the ballots in two of Idaho’s smallest counties — Camas and Butte — as well as manually recount the ballots in eight of the 32 precincts in Bonner County, a medium-size locale in the state. Between the three counties, it found an error rate of roughly 0.1 percent.”

But Lindell’s supporters in Idaho are not satisfied.

“Idaho’s work combating Lindell only seems to have made supporters of his fraud narrative angrier, Houck said, and has set the stage for midterm battles along fault lines Republicans are contending with nationwide,” Smith reports.

Houck told NBC News, “We’ve received two types of responses back to the office. One has been: ‘How dare you attack a patriot like Mike Lindell.’ On the flip side, (others) said: ‘Thank you for standing up to Lindell’s narratives’…. I’ve had counties that have had individuals come into county commissioner meetings and threatened the entire county commission that they were going to be unseated. And if they couldn’t do it through bureaucratic means, then they’re going to do it through physical means, to a point where I’ve had counties that have requested assistance in funding to put additional security measures into their county buildings, just to secure the election office from physical threat.”

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2 22

in the weeks after the January 6 insurrection, the Washington Post published a disturbing piece that hinted at how everyday Republicans had come to embrace the politics of terrorism. In Oklahoma City, the Post noted, the memory of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building bombing has become a flashpoint, as both Republican politicians and ordinary citizens bully anyone who tries to draw a line between Timothy McVeigh's crime and Donald Trump-incited storming of the Capitol. The link is obvious, however. Both crimes were committed by white nationalists who refuse to accept a multiracial democracy — but woe on those who say as much in Oklahoma. When Oklahoma's Department of Education shared information from the bombing memorial linking McVeigh's attack with the domestic terror attack on the Capitol, their Facebook page was flooded with vitriol.

"How in the world is this even remotely the same as the Oklahoma bombing??!!!" one teacher wrote. Another derided the education department as the "Oklahoma Dept of Socialist Indoctrination." An angry dad clashed with other parents who argued that McVeigh's radicalism and the anti-government rhetoric at the Capitol were "the very definition of the same context."

One angry Oklahoman even shared the right-wing slogan about the "tree of liberty" needing to be "refreshed" with "blood" in the comments, seemingly unaware that the same phrase was on the T-shirt that McVeigh wore the day he murdered 168 people.

This incoherent insistence on treating McVeigh's insurrectionist violence as somehow different than the Capitol rioters illustrates an ugly shift that's happened in Republican politics since 1995. Back then, most Republicans rejected the view that a white nationalist is entitled to commit violence to protest democratic outcomes he doesn't like. Now, McVeigh's ideology is the mainstream view in GOP politics. Sure, they rarely come right out and say it. But this insistence on minimizing the Capitol riot and continuing support for the man who instigated it — Donald Trump — speaks loudly enough. And ugliness in Oklahoma City in the days after the 2021 insurrection demonstrated that this pro-insurrection view was fixed on the right within days, if not hours, of the event itself.

We see this, as well, in the celebratory attitude that right-wing media — especially Fox News — is taking towards the Ottawa trucker blockade.

As Zack Beauchamp of Vox notes, the uprising that brought that part of the Canada-U.S. border to a standstill and has terrorized the city of Ottawa "is on the fringe, including among Canadian truckers — some 90 percent of whom are vaccinated." It's a group of right-wingers who "are angry because they have lost" and are trying to gain by force what they cannot through democratic means. And yet, it's become a cause célèbre on Fox News, causing comically overwrought claims like it's "the single most successful human rights protest in a generation."

Fox News doesn't like the blockade despite its widespread unpopularity — they support it because it's unpopular.

As with the January 6 insurrection, the trucker tantrum is viewed by right-wing media asa model for how the embittered white conservative majority can impose its will without getting public support. Both the insurrection and the trucker tantrum are a far-right minority expressing a belief that they entitled to rule, no matter what. And while the Ottawa demonstration has so far not been as violent as the January 6 insurrection, it is still about using force — by taking the economy hostage and intimidating the residents with the threat of violence — to obtain what conservatives cannot gain fairly.

This shift from being anti- to pro-terrorism among Republicans can really be traced back to Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy's 2014 standoff with the Bureau of Land Management(BLM) and his sons' subsequent 2016occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. That's when a group of far-right extremists, led by brothers Ryan and Ammon Bundy, seized control of a visitor's center at an Oregon national wildlife refuge, spouting a bunch of incoherent demands that amounted to a belief that a democratically elected government had no right to pass laws restricting the right of white men to wreak as much environmental damage as they damn well pleased. The fight quite literally started because the occupiers didn't believe the government had a right to convict two men who had set fire to federal lands to protest not being allowed to graze their cattle there.

The occupiers were domestic terrorists, trying to obtain through violence what they couldn't through fair engagement in politics. But while Republicans formally condemned the violence, they were also tripping over each other to validate the asinine complaints of the occupiers. Multiple GOP congressmen even drew on arguments that came from fringe authoritarian writers who believe in things like turning the U.S. into a Christian theocracy. Even more troublingly, the occupiers were found "not guilty" at their trial, suggesting that by October of 2016, enough Republicans were pro-terrorism enough to make it impossible to put together a jury to convict in a case that should have been a slam dunk. So that Trump was able to cobble together enough votes the next month to win the electoral college should not, in retrospect, have been a surprise.

The Department of Justice under Barack Obama had been slow and cautious in its response to the occupation, fearing another debacle like the Branch Davidian fire in Waco, TX in 1993. Instead of storming in, they let the occupiers feel safe enough to actually leave the property for a media event, where they were then easily captured on an open highway. It was a decision heavily criticized at the time, with lots of people rightfully pointing out that people of color who commit acts of terrorism don't get the kid glove treatment. Others, including myself, defended the feds, arguing that the fact that only one person died in the process justified the strategy. Now I'm beginning to doubt that view.

It may be that Democrats just need to get stiffer spines when dealing with right-wing bullies and terrorists, even when doing so means the right will react with violence. As Brian Beutler of Crooked Media argued in his newsletter last week, it's reasonable to worry that the utter failure of the Department of Justice to arrest Trump or his allies for their many crimes "is driven by fear" of a violent backlash. Certainly, Trump has been using intimidation recently, promising pardons for people who commit violence for him and demanding ugly reactions from his followers if he does face a consequence.

But this failure of nerve on the part of Democratic leadership is going to screw us all over in the long run. As Beutler argues, the system "can't function if one side gets a hostage-taker's veto over the rules of fair play," and without imposing real consequences for crime and violence, "he public will just grow desensitized to right-wing tactics or, worse," even start to sympathize with the hostage-takers and violent terrorists.

We see this in the shift in GOP circles from 1995, when McVeigh's villainy was indisputable, to our modern time, when people who share McVeigh's views and stormed the Capitol are described by the Republican National Committee as merely engaging in "legitimate political discourse." The RNC did walk that lie back a little bit, but notably only for the people who got arrested. That only underscores the validity of Beutler's argument: Consequences matter when it comes to public opinion.

The ongoing failure of Democrats to bring the hammer down on the ringleaders of the coup signals strongly to the public that the coup was no big deal — and indeed, opens the door to arguing that the coup was justified. Republicans are walking right through that door right now.

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/02/gop-violence/

no lnx twt vid

Arizona Republican Senate hopeful slammed as 'disgusting' for violent campaign ad

[Jim Lamon speaking at a MAGA rally in Scottsdale, Arizona in July 2021,]

Alex Henderson February 11, 2022

Jim Lamon, one of the MAGA Republicans competing in Arizona’s 2022 GOP U.S. Senate primary, is drawing criticism for a new campaign ad that depicts him shooting at President Joe Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and incumbent Sen. Mark Kelly — who he is hoping to compete with in the general election, and whose wife, Gabby Giffords, survived an attempted murder in 2011.

The ad, which Lamon posted on Twitter on February 10, is made to look like one of Italian director Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns of the 1960s. Lamon plays a Clint Eastwood-like character, and the music recalls Ennio Morricone’s work in Leone movies like “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,” “Once Upon a Time in the West” and “A Fistful of Dollars.” Actors portraying Biden, Pelosi and Kelly, all clad in western attire, are described in the ad as “The D.C. Gang”— and Lamon shoots the guns out of their hands.

Lamon, also wearing western attire, declares, “The good people of Arizona have had enough of you. It’s time for a showdown.”

The Guardian’s Gloria Oladipo reports, “Criticism towards the ad has been swift, with many people pointing out other recent instances of violent imagery used by members of the Republican Party. Last November, Paul Gosar, Republican representative for Arizona, was officially censured by the House after sharing an animated video depicting him killing the Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and attacking Biden.”

Shannon Watts, founder of the group Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, slammed the ad as “disgusting”:...

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...There are also some less familiar pieces of evidence, such as the 50-person Christian choir singing about swords and taking possession of the land while the attack was underway. Multiple rioters recounted how God's hand or voice had urged them to enter the capital. One avowed white supremacist had convinced his parole officer to let him travel to Washington that week to hand out Bibles. And then there's the man who broke down Nancy Pelosi's office door, believing that "the crowd would tear her 'into little pieces,'" and latertestified in court that God had been on Trump's side: "And if patriots have to kill 60 million of these communists, it's God's will."

Seidel also describes how the events of the previous two months — including the Million MAGA March in November, and the Jericho March events on Dec. 12 and Jan. 5 — served as test runs for Jan. 6 and a broader "permission structurethat gave the insurrectionists the moral and mental license that they needed," through the promise that they were doing the Lord's work.

There's an exhaustive list of such examples. Paula White, "faith adviser" to the Trump White House, recorded nightly prayer videos calling on God to smite Trump's enemies. The Proud Boys prayed in the street and were "hailed as God's warriors." Evangelical speaker Lance Wallnau told his massive following, "Fighting with Trump is fighting with God," and said that angels were looking for some "risk takers" and "wild cards that are gonna go start something up."

"They marched around government buildings in state capitals and in D.C., including the Capitol and the Supreme Court, blowing on shofars and claiming to know God's will," said Seidel. "Sometimes I wonder how could we possibly have been surprised by the violence that day."

More than a year later, said the panelists, Christian nationalists continue to march under slightly new banners, leading efforts to suppress voting rights through gerrymandering and new legislation that would require everything from lifetime disenfranchisement of convicted felons to Jim Crow-style civics tests for would-be voters. Jemar Tisby, president of the Black Christian organization The Witness and author of "The Color of Compromise," said Christian nationalism is also animating numerous state and local fights, including culture-war battles like the manufactured debate over critical race theory, as well as efforts to silence dissenting Christians.

"Even the religious voices within the church are being labeled as critical race theory, as too liberal or progressive to be trusted, and even the communist and Marxist labels are being used," said Tisby.... [violence to be expected]

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/01/chrisitan-nationalism/

Most of the far-right extremist movements that arose online and then in real life over the past decade—the alt-right, white nationalists, and other authoritarian proto-fascists—have been generally ecumenical and areligious in their rhetorical appeals and organizing, other than their frequent expressions of antisemitism. But that’s beginning to change, as Jack Jenkins explored this week at the Washington Post.

With “Groyper” leader Nick Fuentes leading the way, it’s becoming much more common to hear them embracing Christian nationalism—an ideology long embraced by the larger radical right, particularly the so-called “Patriot” movement. Moreover, a number of these white nationalists appear to be pushing even farther into a particularly ugly—and previously stagnant—brand of religious nationalism: Christian Identity, the bigoted theological movement claiming that white people are the true “Children of Israel,”that Jews are the literal descendants of Satan, and that all nonwhite people are soulless “mud people.”

As Jenkins reports, since the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection, Fuentes’ white-nationalist “America First” organization has increasingly employed Christian nationalist rhetoric: Chanting “Christ is King” at the antiabortion “March for Life” last week and at anti-vaccine protests, using crucifixes as protest symbols, and similar rhetorical appeals. In a speech at the America First conference in Orlando in March at which he declared America “a Christian nation,” Fuentes warned his audience that America will cease to be America “if it loses its White demographic core and if it loses its faith in Jesus Christ.”

“Christian nationalism—and even the idea of separatism, with a subtext of White, Christian and conservative-leaning [influences]—took a more dominant role in the way that extremist groups talk to each other and try to propagandize in public,” Jared Holt of the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab told Jenkins.

Christian nationalism has long been a feature of the nation’s extremist right, dating back to the original Ku Klux Klan of the 1860s and its later version in the 1920s.Fuentes’s rhetoric “could have come word-for-word from a Klan speech in 1922,” historian Kelly J. Baker told Jenkins. “The Klan’s goal here was patriotism and nationalism, but it was combined with their focus on White Christianity.”

This worldview was a powerful animating force at the Jan. 6 insurrection, embodied by the moment when the self-described “Patriots” entered the vacated Senate chambers, took over the dais, and proceeded to share a prayer led by Jacob “QAnon Shaman” Chansley.

 captured by The New Yorker shows the moment: One insurrectionist shouts, “Jesus Christ, we invoke your name!” The men bellow “Amen!” Then Chansley begins to lead them in prayer, saying: “Thank you heavenly father for gracing us with this opportunity tostand up for our God-given inalienable rights.” He also thanks God for allowing them to “exercise our rights, to allow us to send a message to all the tyrants, the communists and the globalists that this is our nation, not theirs.”

He concluded: “Thank you for allowing the United States of America to bereborn. Thank you for allowing us to get rid of the communists, the globalists, and the traitors within our government.”

As historian Katherine Stewart explained in the New York Times:

A final precondition for the coup attempt was the belief, among the target population, that the legitimacy of the United States government derives from its commitment to a particular religious and cultural heritage, and not from its democratic form. It is astonishing to many that the leaders of the Jan. 6 attack on the constitutional electoral process styled themselves as “patriots.” But it makes a glimmer of sense once you understand that their allegiance is to a belief in blood, earth and religion, rather than to the mere idea of a government “of the people, by the people, for the people.”

A number of the groups, notably the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, who led the insurrection similarly voiced their affinity for Christian nationalism. The morning of Jan. 6, as Jenkins reports, a group of Proud Boys led by Ethan Nordean—the primary leader of the men who later spearheaded the siege of the Capitol, were seen praying together.

At a gathering of Proud Boys near the Washington Monument on Dec. 11 by independent journalist Dakota Santiago for Religion News Service,Nordean had spoken about “sacrificing ourselves for our country” while speaking at an impromptu Proud Boys rally near the Washington Monument, according to footage provided to Religion News Service (RNS) by independent journalist Dakota Santiago.

Nordean—a notorious street brawler nicknamed “Rufio Panman”—described an epiphany he had during a protest about Jesus Christ’s sacrifice on the cross:

I had a moment of realization where I was like, “You know what, I’m going to be diehard about everything in my life. I’m gonna be real.” Because everything that we have sacrificed—because you know how hard it is in this environment that we live in—it is time that you rise to the occasion. Be real.

Now you may not believe in that, but it’s important in the very least for my case for me, because this man did this thing. Just as we sacrifice ourselves for our country. A man provides and protects even when he’s not loved. That is what we do. We are hated but we do it in anyway, we keep showing up every day and we protect these people from these tyrannical dictators.

The same religious fervor has intensified in the aftermath of the insurrection, particularly as “Patriot” movement believers and their mainstream Republican enablers have doubled down with a gaslighting narrative insisting that what happened Jan. 6 wasn’t an insurrection, it was a righteous protest by Real Americans.

That narrative has been ardently adopted by Christian nationalists like the Trump supporters interviewed earlier this month by NPR:

Outside on the walkway, Murray Clemetson stands with an armful of hand-made signs he brought to church, such as, "Set the DC Patriots Free" and "We Are Americans, Not Terrorists." The law-school student and father of three —all home-schooled— was at the "Stop The Steal" rally in Washington, D.C., last year.

"The only insurrection that happened on Jan. 6 was by the agent provocateurs, paid actors, and corrupt police and FBI," he says, disputing all the evidence made public in the more than 700 criminal cases that the rioters were Trump fanatics.

The church the interviewers reported from is Ken Peters’ Patriot Church in Tennessee, one of the nation’s most prominent Christian nationalist congregations. Peters is a rabidly pro-Trump pastor who has appeared onstage in recent months with Mike Lindell, the “My Pillow” conspiracy theorist who claims Donald Trump was the victim of election fraud. Peters also spoke to the crowd gathered in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 5 at a pre-rally for the next day’s “Stop the Steal” protest that devolved into the Capitol insurrection.

Peters’ predilection for linking arms with violent white-nationalist thugs like the Proud Boys manifested itself in summer 2021 in Salem, Oregon, outside a Planned Parenthood clinic targeted by Peters’ “Church at Planned Parenthood” campaign. A phalanx of Proud Boys provided “security” for the event, including notorious brawler Tusitala “Tiny” Toese, currently in jail awaiting trial on assault charges.

The sermon Peters delivered during NPR’s visit to his church turned asimilarly convenient blind eye to Donald Trump’s manifest flaws as a Christian hero."We consider the left in our nation today to be a giant bully,” Peters said. “And when there is a bully on the schoolyard and somebody rises up and punches back, 'Hallelujah!' So we are thankful for Trump."

Then he added: "But you know what? If Trump passes away tomorrow, God forbid, does that stop us? Does that slow us down? Not one bit. We'll be looking for the next guy to lead the way."

Indeed, the long-term determination of Christian nationalists to impose a narrow sectarian view on American government and society are reflected in its legislative assault on state laws, an attempt to reshape U.S. laws from the ground up as well as the top down. Their program “Project Blitz,” revealed by journalist Frederick Clarkson in 2018—a detailed and complex system of proposed legislation with which Christian nationalist beliefs are gradually embedded within state laws—is only one example of the breadth and depth of their assault on liberal democracy.

"The use of Christian symbols, iconography, Scripture in efforts to dominate and exclude are as old the republic itself," Rev. Fred Davie, executive vice president of Union Theological Seminary in New York City, told Trevor Hughes of *USA Today*. "It's deeply baked into our nation. It's deep, but it's also been proven time and time again to be wrong."

While many Christian nationalists are grounded in more traditional evangelical views, there is also a component who are cynically embracing religious fervor as a way of broadening their community of white supremacists and expanding their recruitment base.

"For them, it's just shorthand for identity," Edward Ahmed Mitchell, deputy executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told Hughes. "There absolutely is a connection between far-right political extremism and far-right religious extremism, but I doubt these people are showing up at church every Sunday and reading their Bibles."

Research sociologist Matthew DeMichele told Hughes that many of today's religious displays are an "intense redeployment of old tactics."

"People don't want to say that this is a country founded on white supremacy. But we know that to be true," DeMichele said. "It's very important to understand that it's not new for white supremacists to have a Christian identity. But it is intriguing there has been the strengthening overlap of the white nationalists and those of Christian Identity."

The striking aspect of the surge of Christian nationalism has been its ability to unify sectors of the radical right, from militia-oriented “Patriots” to bigoted white nationalists to conspiracists like the authoritarian QAnon cult.Alex Newhouse, deputy director of theCenter on Terrorism, Extremism and Counterterrorism at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies .  Besides faith, told Jenkins that social media have been powerful vectors for this confluence.

“This unification is pretty unprecedented,” Newhouse said. “The infusion of Christian nationalism throughout that unification process has been particularly interesting and, in my opinion, is going to end up being pretty dangerous.”

Newhouse particularly has noticed a sudden uptick, since 2019, of interest in Christian Identity, the infamous religious movement long associated with neo-Nazis, particularly the Aryan Nations operation in the northern Idaho Panhandle between 1978 and 2000, which was an Identity church. Newhouse noted that Christian nationalist appeals may “disguise a much more dangerous uptick in adoption of Christian Identity.”

One of the leading voices in this resurgence of Identity beliefs, Newhouse says, is Kyle Chapman, the cofounder of the Proud Boys-affiliated Fraternal Order of the Alt-Knightswho later attempted to create an explicitly racist and antisemitic offshoot called “Proud Goys.” (Chapman is currently awaiting trial in Idaho on charges of assaulting a health-care worker when he was hospitalized last November.)

Newhouse said Chapman has been interacting with Christian Identity influencers on the encrypted chat platform Telegram, while “blasting out Christian Identity propaganda.” Another key Trumpist figure—Qanon influencer GhostEzra,who has 300,000 followers on Telegram—posted explicit Identity messages. Identity theology—including references to the “two seedline theory,” which claims that Eve also mated with Satan in the Garden of Eden and thus gave birth to Jews—has been popping up with regularity on QAnon and Proud Boys channels on Telegram, Newhouse reported.

“There’s this gradual move toward a more revolutionary, burn-it-all-down posture, and I think Christian Identity for a lot of these people has become a way for them to organize their thoughts,” he said.

As Stewart explained in the NYT,Christian nationalist beliefs are not merely spreading among far-right extremists. Perhaps even more pernicious is their spread among mainstream conservatives in the media and especially within the Republican Party:

National organizations like the Faith & Freedom Coalition and the Ziklag Group, which bring together prominent Republican leaders with donors and religious right activists, feature “Seven Mountains” workshops and panels at their gatherings. Nationalist leaders and their political dependents in the Republican Party now state quite openly what before they whispered to one another over their prayer breakfasts. Whether the public will take notice remains to be seen.

As I’ve observed previously (while reviewing Stewart’s excellent review of Christian nationalism, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism):When viewed through the lens of its real-world outcomes, fundamentalist Christianity is less a coherent theology than it is a form of spiritual or religious totalitarianism, one that requires abject submission to what is actually a very perverse and narrow interpretation of the meaning of Scripture.

This approach translated naturally into political authoritarianism—the kind that Donald Trump practices. And Trump in turn has proven very adept at feeding the psychological needs of the kinds of personalities that adhere to such movements.

Many leaders of the Christian right like to dress up in red, white, and blue and announce themselves as true patriots. But they are the same people who seek to pervert our institutions, betray our international alliances, treat the Constitution as a subcategory of their holy texts, demean whole segments of the population, foist their authoritarian creed upon other people’s children, and celebrate the elevation of a “king” to the presidency who made a sport out of violating democratic laws and norms.

We can only be grateful that he is out of power now. And it will be incumbent on everyone who treasures their democratic institutions to do everything in their power to defend them against this lethal tide of extremism now.

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https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/its-gonna-get-bloody-anti-vax-qanon-conspiracy-theorist-scott-mckay-threatens-to-put-bullets-inside-health-care-providers/

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rww

Early in 2021, Christian nationalist home-schooling advocate, author, and podcaster Heidi St. John launched a bid for U.S. Congress in Washington state’s 3rd Congressional District. Outraged by incumbent Republican Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler’s vote to impeach former President Donald Trump in the wake of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol, St. John decided to try and unseat her in the GOP primary by MAGA voters, denouncing public libraries as “evil organizations,” and pledging to “be a mom for America.”

Earlier this month, St. John appeared on the “Stand Up For The Truth” podcast, where she soundedSeven Mountains and Christian nationalist themesthat have been central to her campaign, describing politics as “a spiritual battle” and vowing to “bring back the name of God into the political sphere.”

“[Politics is] in my blood,” St. John. “And I think it should be in the blood of every Christ follower. Politics determined policy, and it is policy that has murdered 63 million of our unborn in this country. It is policy that has gotten us into the mess that we are in as a nation, and we need wise people and godly people to ascend to positions of authority in the nation.”

“What we’ve observed over years and years and years is a church deciding to pull itself out of arguably one of the most important aspects of the culture, which is determining our laws and determining the policy that governs the people here,” she continued. “Christians belong in every sphere of influence. We have a command to be strong and courageous. [God] did not say, ‘Be strong and courageous except for in the political sphere, stay out of that one.’ No, we belong in every sphere of influence. We belong in medicine. We belong in entertainment. We belong in education. And we belong in politics.”

“[Christians] should be canvassing, they should be helping clean up the voter rolls, they should be running for positions of authority in every sphere of influence,” St. John added. “We bring back the name of Jesus, we bring back the name of God into the political sphere and we say out loud, ‘What is the biggest problem in our country? We have turned away from God.'”

“This is a spiritual battle,” St. John declared. “We know that we serve the Lord of Heaven’s armies. We serve the creator of the universe, the one who spoke the world into being. He can do anything. And I think he’s calling his people back out of hiding and out of the shadows and into the battle and onto the battlefield.”[pixvid: armour up xian soldiers it's game on!]

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civil war expert recoils in horror at interviews with Trump fans: 'They don’t want democracy anymore'

Travis Gettys Raw Story

The U.S. recently fell out of the rankings of democratic nations, and one expert worries that it will happen again -- and tip the country into civil war...

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https://www.mediamatters.org/one-america-news-network/year-after-january-6-one-america-news-has-found-its-insurrectionist

no lnx vid

A year after January 6, One America News has found its insurrectionist footing

OAN spent the last year promoting GOP voter suppression efforts, selling airtime to a demented pillow maven, and priming its audience for political violence -- perhaps even civil war

WRITTEN BY BOBBY LEWIS

RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM BEATRICE MOUNT

PUBLISHED 01/06/22

The January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of former President Donald Trump was a watershed moment for conservative media. The “peaceful transition of power” that has long been a force in the mythologization of American democracy broke down that day, and rather than owning up to the gravity of a violent attack on that tradition, One America News Network stuck to its familiar playbook of lies and deceit – this time in service of increasing voter suppression.

A survey performed inSeptember 2021 found that 68% of Republicans wrongly believed that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. Among Republicans who primarily trust far-right outlets like OAN, 97% believed the election was stolen. This correlation is no coincidence, and right-wing media’s continued lies about the 2020 election have provided fuel for nationwide voter suppression efforts by the GOP. In the wake of the Capitol attack, OAN became an important part of the conservative media campaign pushing a whopping 440 bills in state legislatures in 2021 that attempted to restrict voting access.

Voter suppression is nothing new for the conservative movement, but OAN used the aftermath of January 6 to double down on election lies and promote efforts to make voting more difficult for its fellow Americans – while priming its right-wing audience for a potential civil war.

OAN helped drive a frenzy for fraudulent election audits

OAN correspondent Christina Bobb disputed the 2020 election results before a winner was even declared, a moment which was a harbinger for her coverage in 2021. Fueled by a passionate embrace of the Big Lie that the election had been stolen, Bobb essentially became a salesperson for election audits in any state that would entertain the idea.

Bobb provided documents and testimony to get the Arizona audit in motion, and founded a nonprofit to raise money for the audit. Her group Voices & Votes raised $605,000 for the Arizona audit, or about 10% of its cost, undoubtedly in part because of Bobb’s frequent fundraising during her audit coverage on OAN.

The amateurish operation in Arizona appears to be the playbook for other so-called “audits” going forward, even though it confirmed both President Joe Biden’s victory in the state and the oft-asserted fact that there was no significant fraud. But that didn’t stop Bobb or other audit extremists.

Bobb has been concentrating her efforts to spread audits to Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, and Michigan, counting on friendly GOP legislatures to indulge in the Big Lie. Some states, like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, are making moves toward their own audits. In Texas, which Trump won handily, preliminary results of an audit have once again confirmed earlier counts.

Besides its own correspondent, OAN has helped create a second star of the right-wing election fraud movement. MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell was already known before the 2020 election to be a prolific, unhinged Trump supporter, but Lindell’s delusions turned into an erratic fusillade of election lies, and -- unprecedented in television news -- the wealthy pillow CEO acquired vast swaths of OAN airtime in 2021 to zealously push his own false claims and conspiracy theories.

OAN repeatedly aired at least three different Lindell “documentaries” alleging to unravel the conspiratorial web behind the 2020 election. Additionally, OAN ran ads for Lindell’s three-day “cyber symposium” over 150 times in a single week, before devoting more than 30 hours of live coverage to his erratic event. Just before Lindell's symposium began, OAN was sued by Dominion Voting Systems for defamation over spreading other election lies; later the network was hit with another defamation suit from voting technology company Smartmatic.

OAN followed the symposium and defamation suit by letting Lindell take over its evening programming on at least three occasions. In his “The Lindell Report” the businessman aired even more potentially defamatory election lies.

OAN backed voter suppression attempts nationwide

Pursuant to its whole-of-network embrace of the Big Lie, OAN gave friendly coverage to or expressed outright support of several voter suppression efforts in states all over the country.

OAN’s prime-time shows became important stops for Texas state legislators to promote Senate Bill 7, which “includes provisions to limit early voting hours, curtail local voting options and further tighten voting by mail.” On June 1, OAN’s Natalie Harp hosted GOP state Rep. Kyle Biedermann to raise concerns about “a lot of things going on against the laws” in 2020, like “drive-thru voting” and “ballots that were mailed out that shouldn’t have been mailed out.” OAN’s Dan Ball hosted state Sen. Bob Hall, who claimed that SB 7 would guard against what he called “soft fraud” by “election officials taking advantage of rules to bend them as much as they could in their favor.” According to Media Matters’ data, since December 2020, eight Texas state legislators have made at least 23 appearances on OAN prime time, many of them clustered around the SB 7 debate.

The Georgia omnibus election bill was another focal point of OAN programming, particularly since the network is also interested in fomenting an election audit in Georgia. In ostensible news segments, OAN reports called Senate Bill 202 a “voting rights bill” that is “securing integrity for future elections,” and literally laughed at the notion that anyone would take issue with these “common-sense changes.” The Justice Department filed suit against Georgia over a long list of “racially discriminatory” provisions in the law, including “the prohibition on efforts by churches and civic groups to provide food or water to persons waiting in long lines to vote.”

OAN frequently turns to one guest in particular for Georgia political commentary: former state representative and current gubernatorial candidate Vernon Jones. According to Media Matters' data, Jones has made at least 26 appearances on OAN prime time since December 2020 -- often dedicated to promoting his campaign for governor while pushing election lies and audit attempts.

Video file

CitationFrom the October 5, 2021, edition of OAN's Real America with Dan Ball

OAN primed its audience for more political violence

On June 23, correspondent Pearson Sharp drew widespread condemnation for an OAN segment suggesting mass executions of Democrats for supposedly stealing the election from Trump. 

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Declaring the 2020 election was actually “overthrown,” Sharp told his audience: “Any American involved in these efforts, from those who ran the voting machines to the very highest government officials, is guilty of treason under U.S. Code. 2381, which carries with it the penalty of death.” 

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Despite the unmistakable clarity of Sharp’s words, he told Talking Points Memo, “Neither I, nor OAN, are suggesting anyone should be executed,” but added, “That is for the appropriate law enforcement agencies to determine.” 

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Sharp’s midsummer bloodlust wasn’t much of an aberration for One America News Network. OAN guests have casually gamed out civil war scenarios on-air, and the network has aired reports accusing “retired Democrat generals” of spreading civil war allegations against Republicans, while falsely claiming “evidence indicates that it is actually the left that is at war.” 

Though she did not directly suggest violence, Bobb brought in the new year by strongly denouncing the Biden administration as “fascist” and “illegitimate,” in part for having “faked an insurrection on the Capitol” and stealing the 2020 election. For a conservative steeped in Second Amendment mythology about “the tree of liberty” and “the blood of tyrants,” the dots don’t need to be connected.

Wayne Allyn Root, a radio host and far-right conspiracy theorist, appeared on OAN in December and denounced Biden’s “communist dictatorship” for stealing both the 2020 election and Georgia’s two U.S. Senate seats, giving Democrats their current tie-breaking Senate majority “destroying this country.” Root accused Democrats of “looking for a civil war,” which he claimed conservatives like him do not want -- but later in the same rant, Root said that the oppression of conservatives by the Democratic Party “is a lot worse” than the conditions that merited the American Revolution. 

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“The worst is yet to come,” Root warned.

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CitationFrom the December 29, 2021, edition of OAN's The Real Story with Natalie Harp

OAN is headed into 2022 with more of the same lies, and little care for any negative consequences

From OAN’s perspective, 2021 was a good year for “election integrity.” OAN’s Bobb fought for and secured an Arizona election audit, and successfully spun the mundane results into enough fuel to keep pushing for more audits. OAN collected viewers and money from airing MyPillow’s Lindell, even if it did help get the network sued for defamation. Several of the voter suppression initiatives OAN supported became law. OAN’s suggestions of political violence have retained a veneer of plausible deniability while priming the audience with fury and fear to keep pushing for more voter suppression.

Reckless, false commentary about stolen elections and calls for punishing enemies are how we got Trump supporters invading the Capitol, menacing members of Congress, and chanting to execute Trump’s vice president one year ago. But it’s all just good business for OAN.

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aug 2021

https://news.yahoo.com/poll-two-thirds-of-republicans-still-think-the-2020-election-was-rigged-165934695.html

...The  survey of 1,552 U.S. adults, which was conducted from July 30 to Aug. 2, found that 66 percent of Republicans continue to insist that “the election was rigged and stolen from Trump,” while just 18 percent believe “Joe Biden won fair and square.” Twenty-eight percent of independent voters also said they think Trump was the rightful winner of the 2020 election, as did a small 3 percent of Democrats.

While those who continue to hold this unsubstantiated view about the election are in the overall minority, representing just 29 percent of total respondents, the number has remained relatively unchanged over the last several months. Since January, similar surveys have found that between 27 and 29 percent of people believe the election was rigged....

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https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2022-01-04/less-than-half-of-gop-say-1-6-was-very-violent-ap-norc-poll

...Video cameras captured the violence live, with rioters clubbing officers with flag polls and fire extinguishers, even squeezing one between doors as he begged for his life.

Yet nearly a year after the Jan. 6 siege only about 4 in 10 Republicans recall the attack by supporters of then-President Donald Trump as very violent or extremely violent, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. About 3 in 10 Republicans say the attack was not violent,and about another 3 in 10 say it was somewhat violent.

Their views were a distinct minority as overall about two-thirds of Americans described the day as very or extremely violent, including about 9 in 10 Democrats....

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https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/02/politics/january-6-poll-violence-against-government/index.html

washington (CNN)  Thirty-four percent of Americans think violent action against the government is sometimes justified, according to a new poll from The Washington Post and the University of Maryland released days ahead of the one-year anniversary of the insurrection at the US Capitol.

The new figure "is considerably higher than in past polls by the Post or other major news organizations dating back more than two decades," according to the newspaper. The survey, conducted between December 17 and 19, revealed stark partisan splits on the question:40% of Republicans and 41% of independents said violence against government is sometimes justified, compared to 23% of Democrats.

In a separate CBS News-YouGov poll released Sunday, 62% of Americans said they expect violence over losing in future presidential elections; 38% said they expect the losing side will concede peacefully. At least a quarter of Americans said "force might be justified," depending on the situation, regarding issues like civil rights, gun policies, election results and labor.

Thursday marks the one-year anniversary of the January 6 attack, during which supporters of then-President Donald Trump stormed the Capitol in an attempt to stop lawmakers from certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Rioters attacked law enforcement officers and destroyed parts of the iconic building, with the violent event leading to the deaths of multiple people the day of the attack or shortly thereafter, while several officers who responded to the Capitol during the attack later died by suicide.

The Post-UMD poll found 60% of Americans feel Trump bears "a great deal" or "good amount" of responsibility for his role in the attack. Self-identified Republicans and Trump supporters in the poll tended to think he bears less responsibility.

In the CBS News-YouGov poll, 62% of Americans said they think Trump should "not seek the presidency again," while 26% said he should run in 2024. The former President has not announced a bid for a second term but is seen by many as the likely Republican frontrunner should he run again.

Shortly after the insurrection, the House impeached Trump for inciting the mob, though he was later acquitted by the Senate in a vote that took place after his tenure ended. A small minority of Republicans voted with Democrats to impeach him in the House and convict in the Senate, but Trump has continued to hold significant influence over the direction of the GOP, with his loyalist members downplaying the violence on January 6 in the months since the attack.

The Post-UMD survey found that 54% of Americans believe rioters who entered the Capitol were "mostly violent," while 19% view them as "mostly peaceful," and another 27% see them as "equally peaceful and violent." Democrats were much more likely to view them as mostly violent (78%) compared to Republicans (26%).

There was more agreement about violence against law enforcement officers that day, with 87% saying they think "some protesters injured police officers" and 10% saying "everyone acted peacefully."

More than 700 people have been charged by the Justice Department in connection with the Capitol riot, with the offenses ranging from illegally entering the building to assaulting officers and members of the media.

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