mass shooter 2 bak

massshooter819

see columbine SCHOOL SHOOTER

see gun control, nra

see assault weapon racism, radicalization algo --> mass shooter

MERRI OK

announced in chatroom --> live video?

see new zealandmanifesto valhalla viking

capt bak 819

html loneyy

-----

---

TREND? KIRK? TEXAS ICE?

RWW

05/21/2026

Kyle Mantyla

Tim Barton claims that President Donald Trump is "actually more similar to the kind of leaders that God has historically chosen, biblically speaking, than what we're used to."

Meanwhile, David Barton is on right-wing media spreading the false claims that the two shooters who attacked a San Diego mosque were transgender.

Rick Green declares that Trump has enacted "the most constitutional, conservative, Christian agenda that I have ever seen in my lifetime."

Nick Fuentes complains that "you can't live comfortably inside the United States if you're antisemitic and I have a big problem with that."

Former Family Research Council intern Cole Cuzick knows that God orchestrated his Republican primary win for a seat in the Kentucky legislature.

Finally, Dale Partridge admits that doesn't actually expect to repeal the 19th Amendment with his new book but wrote it so that when the United States breaks up, he wants the smaller Christian nation that emerges in its wake "to be very clear on not letting women vote."

---

AN 3 26

Pop star Rihanna was allegedly attacked at her home on Sunday by a rifle-wielding Christian influencer who had previously threatened her online.

“Rihanna's alleged shooter is a Christian influencer who made a twisted threat against the singer days before her rifle attack,” Radar Online reported. Ivanna Ortiz, who was previously arrested in Florida for domestic violence, careless driving and violating pretrial release conditions, first threatened Rihanna on Facebook on Feb. 23rd.

Ortiz, who is facing an attempted murder charge, wrote: "@badgalriri Are you there?” She then continued, "Cause I was waiting for your AIDS 5-head self to say something to me directly instead of sneaking around like you talking to me where I'm not at." On previous occasions, Ortiz blasted Rihanna as a "turn hiding b — —."

On Sunday, Ortiz allegedly pulled up outside Rihanna’s Beverly Hills mansion on Sunday in a white Tesla, pulled out a rifle and fired roughly 10 shots in the direction of Rihanna’s residence. Although Rihanna was home at the time, according to reports she “didn’t know too much” about the shooting as it transpired.

Ortiz, a former pageant contestant who won Miss Teen Illinois Latina Princess in 2006, runs a program on YouTube called "Praying Woman's Journal.”

Rihanna has previously experienced tragedy in her personal life from domestic abusers. In the late 2000s, Rihanna had a well-publicized break up with her physically abusive then-boyfriend, fellow pop star Chris Brown, who repeatedly beat, punched, choked and bit her. It took Rihanna multiple attempts to permanently leave Brown.

Rihanna has also not hesitated to make her views known on the Christian right. In 2018, she issued a cease-and-desist to President Donald Trump for using her song “Don’t Stop The Music” without her permission at a campaign event. In 2011, meanwhile, Rihanna abruptly cancelled at a South Florida fundraiser where she was scheduled to perform for Trump at the height of his spreading racist conspiracy theories about President Barack Obama. Despite claiming to have been sick, Rihanna took the stage at halftime of the NBA All-Star Game 24 hours after she cancelled on Trump.

“I thought that (Rihanna bailing) was insulting to everyone,” Trump told the Palm Beach Post at the time. "But for Rihanna to go to the (NBA) All-Star game and perform after she told us she was sick, that is just a lack of respect."

I was pushing my 4-year-old on the swing at our neighborhood playground in Providence, Rhode Island, on Saturday, less than a mile from my alma mater, Brown University, when my wife texted me about a mass shooting. I would eventually learn that two people had been killed and many were injured. Three days later, we still don’t know the shooter’s identity, and thus don’t know anything about his motives—but that has not stopped influential right-wing figures, including Elon Musk, from amplifying disinformation that portrays the shooting as a political attack on Republicans. Meanwhile, voices of reason in the center and on the left have appeared helpless to counter this dangerous false narrative, which is further evidence of how badly we are losing the information war.

What we know is that a man dressed in black walked into a classroom in Brown’s Barus & Holley building, just as a study session for Brown’s introductory economics course—the most widely taken course at the university—was wrapping up. The gunman shouted something (students who were present that they don’t know what he said), and then fired more than 40 rounds at the assembled group, injuring nine students and killing two people: Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, an 18-year-old immigrant from Uzbekistan who grew up in Virginia, and Ella Cook, a 19-year-old Alabaman who was vice president of the Brown College Republicans. This is more or less all we know.

Right-wingers have filled this void with a baseless narrative that Cook was, as the chairman of the College Republicans put it in a post on X with nearly two million views, “targeted for her conservative beliefs, hunted, and killed in cold blood.” To be clear, there is zero evidence, as of this writing, that Cook was targeted for her conservative beliefs. It’s not impossible, but it’s just as likely—or significantly more likely, considering that most extremist-related murders are committed by white supremacists—that the shooter targeted Umurzokov for being an immigrant. By farthe most logical possibility, given that the shooter fired 40 rounds into a crowded classroom and hit 11 students in total, is that this shooting was not targeted at any one individual—that he wanted to kill as many people as possible at Brown, regardless of what they believed.

And yet, the right’s declarations of victimization, honed after Charlie Kirk’s assassination, have been immediate and relentless. One right-wing influencer wrote, “The left is going to target and kill every effective Republican they can find.” A fellow at the Heritage Foundation with almost a million followers on X wrote, “If you don’t absolutely destroy left wing extremists, they WILL be emboldened.” Republican elected officials joined in, with New York City Council Member Vickie Paladino writing that the attack “was perpetrated by the leftist activist and targeted Republicans.” Another post read, “This happened because Antifa (and all the like groups) wasn’t liquidated after Charlie Kirk was assassinated.… The time to respond harshly was months ago, but now is better than never.” Musk shared that last post, which has more than 30 million views.

At one point, my timeline on X was full—literally full—of nothing but these false claims, all from accounts I have never followed. Others have reported similar experiences. It’s hard to imagine such informational dominance not being the result, among other dynamics, of a clear algorithmic push (Musk runs X, after all). And the goal is to exploit this tragedy toward political ends, namely the repression of MAGA’s political opponents. This repression is the explicit aim of President Donald Trump’s NSPM-7 directive and Attorney General Pam Bondi’s recent memo ordering the FBI to “compile a list of groups or entities engaging in acts that may constitute domestic terrorism,” which is targeted toward those expressing “opposition to law and immigration enforcement; extreme views in favor of mass migration and open borders; adherence to radical gender ideology, anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, or anti-Christianity,” as well as “hostility towards traditional views on family, religion, and morality.”

Of course, this isn’t an isolated example of the MAGA conspiracy machine whirring into action. Increasingly, it seems like every high-profile event with potential political ramifications—certainly shootings but also climate disasters, elections, and more—gets poisoned by the right’s toxically mendacious content amplification system. This week it’s been occurring on multiple fronts simultaneously, with Grok spreading the lie that the hero in the antisemitic mass shooting at Sydney’s Bondi Beach was Christian, despite media confirmation that the man, Ahmed Al Ahmed, was a Muslim immigrant originally from Syria.

American politics today are defined by a profound informational asymmetry. The right now controls most of the traditional media institutions, the social media platforms, and the algorithms that shape our attentional ecosystem. They have also built up a far larger network of creators than anything the left has at its disposal. How do you beat opponents who have the informational and attentional firepower to impose deceptive conspiracies on the public and, in many cases, make their lies an accepted common truth? How can we win back the narrative on climate change when they can ascribe every climate-induced hurricane or wildfire to DEI initiatives or weather control technology? How can we address far-right political violence when they can turn an evangelical Trump supporter’s assassination of a Democratic lawmaker into a plot by radical Marxists? How can we protect free and fair elections when they can just deny the results?

I don’t have the solutions to these problems. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the last few days—watching the buzz saw of MAGA disinformation tear through the factual reality of this mass shooting not far from my home—it’s that we need to figure them out, and quickly. It’s not about finding that oft-discussed “liberal Joe Rogan.” What’s required is the buildout of a media ecosystem that can challenge the right’s extensive informational infrastructure with the full panoply of content creators, revenue structures, cross-platform coordination, amplification systems, and attention-getting strategies necessary to win this narrative war.

Our reality is just what we see in front of us. It can be defined by truth or by lies, by information or disinformation. Ensuring that people start receiving more of the former, and less of the latter, is an incredibly difficult and expensive challenge. But there may not be a way around it. And we’ve got to start building fast, before MAGA’s attentional stranglehold becomes our permanent reality.

Aaron Regunberg

Aaron Regunberg is a contributing editor at The New Republic, a climate lawyer, and a progressive organizer.

---

AN 10 25

At a press conference announcing that the suspect in the shooting of Charlie Kirk had been detained, FBI director Kash Patel ended his speech with a personal message to his “brother”, saying: “We have the watch, and I’ll see you in Valhalla.”

Many people commenting on the press conference reacted to this confusing reference to Valhalla with a mixture of amusement and disdain, with some pointing out the contradiction of eulogizing a Christian nationalist with reference to the pagan afterlife.

For scholars of the Vikings, Patel’s reference to Valhalla looked like something far more sinister. To understand why, we need to know both what Valhalla meant to the Vikings, and what it means in political discourse today.

The Norse peoples had a developed concept of the afterlife. The desirable destination for Norse warriors was Valhalla, the hall of the slain, where Odin watched over his band of chosen warriors as they prepared for Ragnarök, the world-destroying battle against the giants. Only those who died a heroic death in combat were brought to Valhalla by the Valkyries.

Those who died by sickness, old age or accident – or who had committed murder and other dishonourable crimes – seem to have been excluded from this martial afterlife. Some believed that you could cheat the Norse gods by arranging to be buried with deliberately worn and damaged weapons as if you had seen heavy combat. There’s a lot we don’t know.

What we do know is that in the 1930s the concept of Valhalla, along with the image of the heroic Viking and many of the symbols of Norse mythology, had a profound appeal to Nazi thought leaders. They looked to Norse mythology as a survival of a wider “Germanic” culture that had been erased by Judeo-Christian dominance.

The Nordic “race” was held up as the Aryan ideal. Norse cultural remnants were used to add legitimacy to the idea of a glorious German past. Heinrich Himmler in particular repurposed Norse symbols for use by the SS.

Today, many white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups continue to brand themselves using a widening range of symbols taken from Norse mythology. One aspect of Norse culture that has gained increasing prominence in the past few decades is the specific co-opting of Valhalla by those who are prepared to kill, and die, in the cause of “protecting” an endangered white supremacy.

Valhalla in terrorist manifestos

The most chilling example of the co-option of the phrase “see you in Valhalla” is found in the manifestos published by far-right terrorists in the wake of their atrocities.

In 2019, Brenton Tarrant carried out mass shootings at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in which 51 people were killed. He published a rambling manifesto in which he attempted to justify his actions, and touted the “great replacement” conspiracy theory which holds that Jewish elites are deliberately engineering the replacement of white populations through immigration.

This has since become a far-right talking point and was pushed by Charlie Kirk on his show. Tarrant signed off his diatribe against multiculturalism and “white genocide” by saying “Goodbye, god bless you all and I will see you in Valhalla.”

Tarrant in turn influenced other far-right terrorists. One such terrorist, Peyton Gendron, was convicted of the Buffalo mass shooting in 2022 in which ten black Americans were murdered. Gendron plagiarised much of his 180-page manifesto, and similarly ends his screed with the statement: “I hope to see you in Valhalla.”

By invoking Valhalla, these terrorists are attempting to cast themselves as warriors in the Viking tradition. There is, of course, nothing remotely heroic about gunning down unarmed civilians.

But the point is that this reference doesn’t require any understanding of the Norse tradition. In this context it comes directly from the Nazi’s fetishisation of violent death to secure the racial purity of Germany.

From terrorists to the FBI

Rather than borrowing from extremist discourse, Patel may have been influenced by the use of “til Valhalla” by the US marines to honour fallen comrades – including those who died by suicide. This is a use which has been traced back to the influence of Norwegian Nato forces in Afghanistan, who may have used “til Valhalla” as a kind of battle cry. Of course, the optics of using a military honorific to commemorate the assassination of a civilian is problematic in itself.

Patel’s “see you in Valhalla” was much closer in its wording to the sign off used by far-right terrorists – but even this phrasing was unlikely to have been lifted directly from extremists. It is more likely an example of a phenomenon often observed in the study of the far-right online ecosystem, which is the seepage of extreme right discourse into more mainstream spaces.

Neo-Nazi groups use memes, s--posting and humour as a deliberate strategy to seed increasingly extreme ideas into groups amenable to their message.

It isn’t hard to find references to Valhalla commercialized, repackaged as inspirational Viking quotes for MAGA consumption, referencing cancel culture, or even using Norse video games as a gateway to white supremacy. In this way, the more mainstream right often ends up sharing and amplifying extremist messaging.

Patel’s reference to Valhalla was at the very least a huge misstep by a government official trying to appeal to the MAGA base and elevate Kirk’s tragic killing into a heroic warrior’s death.

While he may not have made his reference to Valhalla in knowledge of its association with far-right terrorism, it nevertheless served as a signal to white supremacists. As reported elsewhere, there was a lot of engagement from the extreme right on social media, but their posts tended to ridicule Patel.

His words prompted memes on social media playing on the apparent absurdity of someone of Patel’s ethnicity cosplaying as a Viking. And among this racially tinged mockery, there was also some revelling in the fact that a stock phrase of violent white supremacy had found its way into the mouth of the director of the FBI.

Tom Birkett, Professor of Old English and Old Norse, *University College Cork

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

---

---}:

mma 7 25

On July 28, a shooter opened fire in a Manhattan office building that houses the NFL headquarters, killing four individuals including New York Police Department officer and Muslim immigrant Didarul Islam. Laura Loomer, an extremist with close ties to the Trump administration, immediately began pushing anti-Muslim lies about the suspected shooter, later identified as a former high school football player from Las Vegas who reportedly had a note mentioning the NFL and claiming he had a degenerative brain disease linked to concussions.

Loomer initially claimed the shooter was “described by witnesses as a Middle Eastern man with an AR-15 rifle.” She also claimed the shooter supported the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani, and the “Free Palestine movement.”

After the identity of the suspected shooter was released, Loomer doubled down on claims that he was a “Free Palestine” activist, writing, “So let me get this straight. A Free Palestine low IQ black jihadi killed a Muslim police officer in his rampage on a building in NYC with a Jewish CEO while he was screaming Free Palestine?”

Loomer then lashed out against the media for not pushing baseless claims about the shooter’s motives: “Now the media is running to cover up another act of Islamic terrorism by the FREE PALESTINE crowd.”

IFrame Content

There appears to be no evidence that the shooter is connected to protests about Palestinians, but the New York Post did report that a protester outside the building yelled, “Free Palestine, I’m not the shooter,” and was arrested. Witness testimony Loomer cited included a witness saying police arrested the man saying “free Palestine.” The suspected shooter reportedly took his life in the building.

Loomer used her claims to push an Islamophobic agenda, repeatedly calling for Mamdani, who has been visiting Uganda, to be refused reentry to the country. She framed Mamdani as an “Islamic immigrant invader” and attacked Muslim politicians broadly, writing, “We need to have a serious conversation about banning Islamic immigrants from running for office in America.” Loomer also repeated her Islamophobic attacks while attempting to tie them to the shooter, writing: “I don’t feel safe with Muslims holding office in America. Mamdani inspires cop killers and Islamic terrorists to wage war on the streets of America while screaming ‘Free Palestine,’” and “This is why I will never care about Gaza.”

This is not Loomer’s first time pushing baseless claims in the aftermath of a shooting. Following the shooting of two Democratic Minnesota lawmakers, Loomer claimed the shooter was an “ally” of Minnesota Democratic Gov. Tim Walz and suggested Walz may have known about the shooting ahead of time.

Loomer is a self-described “proud Islamophobe” with a long history of making bigoted remarks about Muslims. Infamously in 2017, rideshare apps Uber and Lyft banned Loomer after she made multiple bigoted complaints that they hire Muslim drivers. During the 2024 election, Loomer argued that a Kamala Harris win would create an “Islamic caliphate in this country.” She also said China detains Uyghurs, a mostly Muslim group, because the country recognizes “the threat of Islam.”

Loomer is an influential figure in the MAGA world. She has repeatedly boasted that she has influence over the administration and often claims Trump “hired” her four times but his staff “did not listen to him.” She regularly brings up her communications with Trump, even noting that she spoke with the president shortly after he signed the “Big Beautiful Bill” into law. In April, Trump fired six national security officials after a meeting with Loomer. She also took credit for the firing of Mike Waltz from the National Security Council in early May and boasted that Trump “took my advice” on Panama Canal policies during the 2024 election.

### After the killing of a leading Minnesota politician, Laura Loomer pushed baseless claims

06/20/25 9:35 AM EDT

### Laura Loomer says she spoke with Trump following the signing of the One Big Beautiful Bill

07/08/25 1:11 PM EDT

### Laura Loomer on the Epstein files: “Let's move on and talk about other things”

07/17/25

---

===

an 6 25

On Saturday morning, June 14, 2025 — before President Donald Trump's military/birthday parade in Washington, DC and nationwide protests expressing opposition to it got underway — some disturbing news broke in Minnesota.

MSNBC reported that two state lawmakers had been shot in their homes: Minnesota State Sens. John Hoffman and Melissa Hortman, both members of the Democratic Farmer-Labor Party. And Gov. Tim Walz, at a press conference, gave reporters details on the attack and the ongoing investigation.

Walz confirmed to reporters, "This was an act of targeted political violence."

IFrame Content

The suspect, according to Minnesota officials, remains at large and is the target of an aggressive manhunt. Minnesota officials told reporters that the suspect impersonated a police officer and did so convincingly; one of them said the suspect's vehicle "looked exactly like a police vehicle."

Hortman, MSNBC confirmed, was killed — while Hoffman, at the time of the press conference, was still alive but undergoing surgery. MSNBC's Ali Velshi and former FBI special agent John D'Amico, after the press conference, were both surprised by how sophisticated the attack was and that the suspect, according to Minnesota officials, was so convincing — using a taser, a gun and a fake police vehicle.

In response to the tragedy, a No Kings Day protest in Minneapolis was canceled.

The suspect, according to Minnesota officials, had a "manifesto" in the vehicle and what appeared to be a list of people targeted for assassination.

===

---

AN 5 25

The grinding path to justice for the most lethal mass shooter to ever appear in a U.S. courtroom came to an end Monday when Patrick Crusius pleaded guilty to murdering 23 people and wounding 22 others in an anti-Hispanic assault on an El Paso Walmart in 2019.

“The community you tried to break has become a symbol of resilience, of love overcoming hate, of humanity enduring in the face of evil,” 409th District Judge Sam Medrano said to Crusius after sentencing him to 23 life terms in prison. “This community will always remember those whose lives you stole – their names, their stories, their accomplishments. Their light will never fade. While you, your name and your hate, will be forgotten.”

Crusius was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for capital murder, and life in prison for each of 22 counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. The capital murder and aggravated assault sentences will be served concurrently, meaning at the same time.

While the hearing was focused on a horrific hate crime from 5 1⁄2 years ago, both the prosecution and defense spoke of anti-immigrant rhetoric that lit the fuse for Crusius’ explosion and continues to animate political and media conversations.

“While Patrick claimed in his manifesto that his views predated the then-President (Donald Trump) and that political figures were not to blame, he also explicitly stated the attack was a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas, echoing the language used by political figures,” defense attorney Joe Spencer told the court. “Indeed, Patrick believed he was acting in the direction of the president at the time, seeing it as his duty to stop the invasion because that’s what he believed the president was telling him.”

IFrame Content

Spencer had first spoken of the influence of Trump’s rhetoric in a March interview with El Paso Matters. The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment at that time, and hasn’t responded to a request for comment about statements in court on Monday.

District Attorney James Montoya also cited anti-immigrant rhetoric in his remarks to the court. But he urged the community to focus on those whose lives were torn about by the 2019 attack.

“There’s a lot to say about the defendant and the hateful ideology that motivated him, and that there are other public figures and elected officials that espouse and promote this ideology,” he said. “But my sincere hope is that for the rest of this proceeding, this afternoon in the next few days and moving forward, that the focus can remain on the 23 lives that were taken from us far too soon.”

Montoya also took the unusual step of criticizing actions taken by his predecessor, Yvonne Rosales, and her associates. Rosales resigned in 2022while facing a legal proceeding to remove her from office.

“I also wanted to take a moment, your Honor, on behalf of the state of Texas, to apologize to the community, and the court, and specifically the family of Gerhardt Alexander Hoffmann for the gross and abominable misconduct by one of my predecessors and her representatives, acting as representatives of the state of Texas, and their manipulation and terrorizing and frankly the revictimization of Mr. Hoffmann’s family during the pendency of these proceedings,” Montoya said.

El Paso Matters could not reach Rosales for comment.

An investigation ordered by Medrano found that then-Assistant District Attorney Curtis Cox and Roger Rodriguez, a private attorney working for Rosales, had retaliated against the family of Hoffmann, a Ciudad Juárez man killed in the attack, because they refused to participate in an effort to attack Medrano and a former prosecutor in the case.

Hoffmann’s son Thomas was at the hearing, but his widow, Rosa Maria Valdez Garcia, was not present.

The hearing

Crusius — in an orange and white jail jumpsuit and shackled — said little during the hearing other than pleading guilty and providing brief answers to Medrano’s questions about whether his guilty plea was voluntary and that he understood his rights.

During the hearing, Montoya read the names of each of the 23 people killed in the attack, as well as the 22 wounded.

The hearing was conducted amid intense security, both inside and outside the county courthouse. People attending the hearing had to go through multiple security screenings before being allowed in the courtroom.

Montoya decided last month to no longer pursue the death penalty, leading to the guilty plea.

While state and federal prosecutions of cases are now complete, the survivors of the mass shooting, and the families who lost loved ones face lives that have been horrifically altered.

More than 100 family members of those slain by Crusius were in the makeshift courtroom set up in the county commissioners’ meeting space to accommodate a large crowd.

A community shattered and healing

El Paso itself — selected by a man who lived 600 miles away to be the target of the deadliest act of anti-Hispanic violence in modern history — continues to heal. That path to healing has been complicated bypolitical changes that have seen the gunman’s rhetoric of an “invasion” of Hispanic immigrants as part of a “great replacement” move from the darkest corners of the internet to mainstream political and media conversation.

“On August 3rd 2019, Patrick Crusius afflicted a wound on our community that may never fully heal. He brought violence and terror to a place of peace, shattering lives and forever changing the landscape of El Paso,” defense attorney Spencer said. “To everyone who lost loved ones, to those who were injured, to everyone who’s sense of safety was violated, we offer our deepest, most sincere condolences.”

Looking directly at Crusius, Medrano said: “Now, as you begin the rest of your life locked away, remember this: Your mission failed. You did not divide this city, you strengthened it. You did not silence its voice, you made it louder. You did not instill fear, you inspired unity. El Paso rose stronger and braver. The community you tried to break has become a symbol of resilience, of love overcoming hate, of humanity enduring in the face of evil.”

The Aug. 3, 2019, attack on the Cielo Vista Walmart killed 23 people, the sixth-deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. The gunmen in the five more lethal killings — in Las Vegas; Orlando, Florida; Blacksburg, Virginia; Newtown, Connecticut; and Sutherland Springs, Texas — took their own lives or were killed by law enforcement.

Crusius, who was from Allen, a Dallas suburb, is the deadliest U.S. mass shooter to have to answer for his crimes in a courtroom.

Shortly before his attack, he posted what he called a “manifesto” on a website frequented by white nationalists that outlined his racist motivations.

In his statement to the court Monday, Spencer said his client had a long history of mental illness and had become radicalized by reading white nationalist websites on platforms like 4Chan and 8Chan. He has made similar statements at his client’s federal sentencing and in media interviews.

“This explanation of a severe mental illness and toxic political environment does not, in any way, justify or excuse the horrific violence that Patrick committed. He bears responsibility for the choices he made and the devastation that he caused,” he said.

In addition to his guilty pleas to state charges of capital murder and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, he also pleaded guilty in 2023 to federal hate crimes and weapons charges and was sentenced to 90 consecutive life terms in federal prison. Federal prosecutors also opted not to seek the death penalty against Crusius.

Crusius likely will head to the Texas state prison system to serve his sentences, spokespeople for the federal and state prison systems told El Paso Matters.

People whose lives were upended by Crusius will face him as they deliver victim impact statements starting Monday afternoon. More than 40 victims have asked to give statements, the District Attorney’s Office said. Medrano has said he will allow victims to speak as long as they want, and will continue the hearing throughout the week if necessary to allow everyone to speak.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

---

an 6 25

the Salt Lake City Police Department is investigating a shooting that occurred during a “No Kings” protest Saturday night, leaving one person with critical injuries. An estimated 10,000 people were marching at the time.

Salt Lake City Police Chief Brian Redd told media shortly after 10 p.m., about two hours after the incident, that gunshots had been fired as protesters were walking near 151 S. State Street. Police responded immediately, finding one person with life-threatening injuries.

It wasn’t clear whether the first responding officers had heard or seen the shooting, or what alerted them to the incident, Redd said.

Officers received immediate witness information from people in the crowd and pursued the suspected shooter to 200 East and 100 South. It was discovered he too had a gunshot wound, Redd said, and he was treated and taken to a hospital under police observation.

Two more people who Redd said were involved in the incident were also arrested. No details about their possible involvement were provided. Redd said police are not looking for any additional people, and there is no ongoing threat to the public.

IFrame Content

Investigators are working to determine what led up to the shooting, including whether any of the people involved were participating in the march.

“It appears they were involved at some level in the protest, or at least as part of the group that was walking,” Redd said.

A Utah News Dispatch reporter who was on scene saw panicked protesters scatter just before 8 p.m., many of them running and shouting that there were gunshots. Minutes later, a Salt Lake City police officer ran past, saying officers were looking for a male dressed in black with a gun, and asking “where is he?”

About a half a block east of the Wallace F. Bennett Federal Building, near 125 S. State Street, a photojournalist working with the Dispatch saw a crowd of people running after gunshots broke out. Near the north corner of the Federal Building plaza, people were seen taking shelter behind concrete walls and cars.

Further south down State Street, the photojournalist saw a crowd of first responders, including police and volunteers wearing vests, crouching around a man lying on the ground. What appeared to be his hat, lying next to him, was covered in blood.

Near 102 South and 200 East, the photojournalist saw a man on the ground in handcuffs, surrounded by police. Officers then walked the man away before setting him on a curb, where first responders appeared to render him aid for about 15 minutes.

First responders then put the man on a gurney, still handcuffed, before loading him into an ambulance and driving him away.

After the shooting, protesters were emotional. Some cried and hugged each other. An activist was also heard yelling in a loudspeaker: “Don’t let them tell you this was a riot. We only want to be heard. We were nonviolent.”

The demonstration was the last and largest of 11 planned protests across the state Saturday in conjunction with nationwide demonstrations against President Donald Trump, including another Salt Lake City protest that drew thousands more to the University of Utah that morning.

The demonstration that began at Pioneer Park, 350 S. 300 West, had been boisterous but peaceful up until the shooting, with protesters marching up 400 South to State Street and circling around the block at the Wallace F. Bennett Federal Building to double back. Before they set out, speakers at the park had urged nonviolence, their message met with cheers.

Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall, who joined Redd to brief reporters, condemned the shooting while thanking Salt Lake City police for their “swift and professional response to this tragic event.”

“The violence that we’ve seen here today in Salt Lake City and even in other parts of this nation is horrific. And it is not who we are,” she said. “Let me be clear. This act of violence does not define our city.”

Utah’s capital of Salt Lake City is a Democratic stronghold in an otherwise deep red state.

Mendenhall, a Democrat, said the purpose of Saturday’s demonstrations was a “powerful and peaceful expression until this event. And that cannot be overshadowed or silenced by a single act meant to harm.”

“I want to urge everyone in the public to be calm, to give one another grace, and to look out for one another tonight and in the coming days,” she said.

Mendenhall again thanked Salt Lake City police and other first responders including Salt Lake City firefighters for their “heroic actions,” calling them “among the best in this city, and I am so proud of you.” She also thanked protesters who came downtown to “stand peacefully together.”

“Your city sees you,” she told protesters. “Thank you for using your voice. Thank you for your peaceful cooperation with our police department tonight. And please know that your calm response and your support of their efforts likely prevented a more dangerous potential situation. You represent the Salt Lake City that I am proud to call home.”

The mayor added that “we will not walk in fear of one another. Not in this city, and not in this nation.”

“America, we are better than this violence,” she said. “We are stronger than this hate. This moment does not define us.”

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican, issued a statement at about 9 p.m. saying the shooting was “a deeply troubling act of violence and has no place in our public square.”

“This is an active situation, and we’re working closely with law enforcement to ensure accountability,” Cox said.

About 20 minutes later, Cox in a post on X, said he had just spoken with Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall about the shooting.

“My heart is broken for everyone impacted tonight,” he said. “Thank you to the thousands of protestors who exercised their constitutional rights in the right way tonight. I’m grateful to security, SLCPD, DPS, and medical personnel who jumped into action to protect lives.”

Another one of the state’s top Republicans, Senate President Stuart Adams, R-Layton, also issued a statement expressing gratitude for Salt Lake City Police’s “prompt actions in maintaining order, safeguarding our communities and bringing a dangerous situation under control in Salt Lake City. Their dedication helped protect lives and restore order.”

“The freedom to organize and participate in peaceful protests is a cornerstone of our great country,” Adams said. “However, violence, destruction and vandalism are unacceptable.”

*This breaking story has been updated as more information becomes available.

Utah News Dispatch is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Utah News Dispatch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor McKenzie Romero for questions: info@utahnewsdispatch.com.

---

no lnx

an no lnx

'Nothing is beyond our reach': Extremist site accused of 'grooming' teen attackers exposed

An image taken by school shooter Solomon Henderson and shared in his diary features a character from the Soyjak website. It's thought to be based on Patrick Crusius, who carried out a mass shooting in El Paso.

(Taken from Solomon Henderson's diary.)

Jordan Greenand Raw StoryFebruary 01, 2025

Before taking a handgun out of his backpack and walking into the cafeteria at Antioch High School in Nashville, where he opened fire and killed another student before taking his own life on Jan. 22, 17-year-old Solomon Henderson posted a link to an online screed filled with violence and unfiltered racism.

His message gave “special thanks” to Soyjak.party, an imageboard website whose anonymous users and administrators post bigoted memes based on a stock set of caricatures that typically make fun of liberals, sensitive men and trans people.

Using the insider lingo of the community, Henderson closed his post with a sign-off, “Remember keep jakking ‘teens,” followed by the website’s emblem, an octopus-like creature wrapping its tentacles around the globe. The emblem was accompanied by the slogan, “Nothing is beyond our reach.”

Henderson is one of three teenage attackers who have carried out shootings — and in one case a knife attack — over the past six months that extremism researchers have linked to a subset of the Soyjak community known as the Soyjak Attackers Video Fandom, or SAVF.

In the hours after Henderson’s school attack, investigators at the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism monitored discussions among the anonymous users on the Soyjak website.

“We watched as they started panicking about losing their website out of fear because they believed the Antioch shooter had been groomed to carry out the shooting by their imageboards,” Carla Hill, the center’s director of investigative research, told Raw Story.

Henderson was a Black teenager whose writings revealed a deep immersion in white supremacist ideology. His consumption of extremist content appears to have manifested as a loathing for himself and other Black people, as he grappled with personal difficulties.

Henderson also identified with the involuntary celibate, or incel, movement, whose members blame women and society for their lack of romantic success.

The title of Henderson’s screed combined the two ideas by marrying a racial slur against Black people with the suffix “cel,” adding a parenthetical to explain that he was an “involuntary” Black person.

“We felt like the Antioch shooter was driven to self-loathing by what he saw online,” Hill said. “That’s how he came to be a self-hating person.”

Other terrorist attacks — such as the car-ramming recently carried out by an ISIS sympathizer in New Orleans and the 2019 mass shooting by a white supremacist at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas — have proven to be significantly more lethal, but Henderson’s attack has unnerved extremism researchers as a harbinger of an emerging hybrid threat that is harder to pin down.

Hill took notice of three intertwined “driving forces” behind Henderson’s attack.

“There’s the incel space — various incel spaces — we found him in those. Soyjak crosses over with that,” Hill said. “Then, he was in spaces that glorify violence and gore and school shooters. Third, he was in these reactionary imageboard sites like Soyjak that serve as a hub for all kinds of extremist discourses, including antisemitism, accelerationism, white supremacy and misogyny.”

Through his participation in overlapping fringe internet subcultures where members use multiple social media platforms to celebrate white supremacist mass murder, dabble in the occult and engage in degrading interpersonal drama, Henderson connected online with 15-year-old Natalie Rupnow, who fatally shot a fellow student and teacher before taking her own life in Madison, WI, in December.

And Henderson took inspiration from an 18-year-old Turk named Arda Küçükyetim, who carried out a knife attack at an open-air café near a mosque in August. Rupnow participated in an online group that held a pre-arranged viewing party to watch Kücükyetim carry out the attack on a livestream.

Küçükyetim and Rupnow were also “part of” the Soyjak Attacker Video Fandom,” according to a report written by two pseudonymous authors and published by Marc-André Argentino, a senior researcher at the Accelerationist Research Consortium.

A screed left behind by Ryan Palmeter, a 21-year-old white supremacist who fatally shot three Black people in a Dollar Store in Jacksonville, FL in August 2023, also bears the imprint of the Soyjak community. A graphic included in Palmeter’s document includes a Soyjak character known as Chudjak, who is said to have been inspired by Patrick Crusius, the El Paso shooter. The word “soy” is emblazoned across Chudjak’s T-shirt in the graphic. The reference caught the attention of Henderson, who referenced him in his writings as a “soyteen,” the term that insiders use to describe a member of the community.

Similar to Palmeter, Henderson and Küçukyetim published screeds in advance of their attacks that celebrated previous white supremacist shootings, reviewed their meticulous planning and gear, and provided encouragement to readers they hoped would emulate their actions. (Rupnow also engaged in this ritualistic practice, but it’s unclear what she wrote because she left her Google document on private before taking her own life.)

As part of an iterative effort to promote accelerationist violence calculated to bring about the collapse of society, Henderson and Küçükyetim’s posts shared one specific facet: They recommended documents produced by the Terrorgram Collective, which was recently named as a specially designated global terrorist entity by the U.S. State Department.

Terrorgram first emerged in 2019 and, within a couple years, coalesced into a tight-knit group that produced PDFs with highly stylized graphics that combine terrorist propaganda, white supremacist hate, and tactical guidance. Terrorgram’s propaganda venerates white supremacist mass murderers by calling them “saints.”

Terrorgram’s publications function like a virus that finds a receptive host in fringe online extremist communities such as Soyjak, and then infects individuals who attack society at large through mass shootings and other lone-actor violence.

Henderson shared instructions on how to perpetrate attacks on social media from a Terrorgram Collective publication, among others, according to Argentino, and links to three of the publications appear in his screed.

Küçükyetim, meanwhile, shared PDFs of three Terrorgram publications on Telegram, according to a federal indictment of two Terrorgram Collective leaders. Dallas Humber of Elk Grove, CA, and Matthew Allison of Boise, ID, the Terrorgram leaders, were arrested less than a month after Kücükyetim carried out his attack. Humber and Allison were indicted on 15 counts, including conspiring to provide material support for terrorists, and could face up to 220 years in prison if convicted.

On the morning of his attack in the northwestern Turkish city of Eskisehir, according to the Humber/Allison indictment, Küçükyetim posted in a Telegram group chat: “Come see how much humans I can cleanse.” The post included links to a livestream and PDF files of the Terrorgram publications.

Hill and her team at the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism found the group chat. A Telegram account they identified as Natalie Rupnow's joined the chat through an invitation, which meant that she had been connected somehow to the other members of the chat prior to the livestreamed attack, Hill said.

Hill told Raw Story that Rupnow participated in a post-play discussion to evaluate the merits of the attack. Rupnow remarked that Küçükyetim had been “caught” and that the death toll was “0 probably,” but that he deserved “credit” for at least trying.

Humber and Allison also took note of the attack.

“He included the Terrorgram books and other Saint manifestos in his file dump, gives shoutouts to the other Saints in his manifesto and references several Hard Reset passages, he was 100% our guy,” Humber wrote in a chat with Allison, according to the indictment.

“But he’s not white, so I can’t give him an honorary title,” she added. “We still celebrating his attack tho, he did it for Terrorgram.”

When Rupnow posted her screed on X before opening fire at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, WI on Dec. 16, Henderson replied under the post: “Livestream it.”

Later that day, after the attack, he expressed excitement that “the newest skool shooter followed” him on two of his X accounts.

In his diary, Henderson appears to speculate that he may have influenced Rupnow.

“It’s weird how we had similar takes and views, but not really because she followed my account,” he wrote.

“Arda was right!” Henderson added. Then he quoted directly from Küçükyetim’s screed: “Remember, I and the other saints will not forget what you did…. In this way, you will motivate future saints.”

It’s not clear whether Henderson directly interacted with Küçükyetim. In his diary, Henderson described Küçükyetim as “an ultimate saint” and “someone I was inspired by,” while cryptically adding, “maybe I didn’t know him.”

The transfer of terrorist motivation and camaraderie in each of the attackers’ screeds is part of a negative feedback loop, along with group chats and other social media posts, that is ensnaring some teenagers who are globally linked to one another through the internet.

“It’s not like a conversation in real life where if I told you something crazy you would be like, ‘Wait a minute,’” Hill said. “It’s an echo chamber that allows anything to go. They’re not getting healthy feedback. It builds on things that trouble them, and causes real-world problems.”

The proliferation of accelerationist terrorism through online radicalization is a challenge that law enforcement is not equipped to handle alone, she said.

“It’s going to take everyone,” Hill said. “It’s going to take parents talking to kids about how what you see on the internet could be false and horrible. And the tech community somehow trying to stop the spread of this.”

NOW READ: Incompetence and chaos as Trump 2.0 crashes and burns

This story is the first in a three-part series exploring how violent online subcultures provide the opportunity for teenagers attracted to accelerationism and inceldom to network and encourage one another to carry out terrorist attacks.

no lnx

:{:{Alternet}:

Social media shows Antioch shooter was influenced by Holocaust deniers, white nationalists

Antioch High School.

Jordan Greenand Raw StoryJanuary 23, 2025

The 17-year-old who killed a female student at a high school in Nashville before taking his own life was an African-American Reserve Officers' Training Corp member who hated Black people and identified as involuntarily celibate, according to a manifesto apparently posted by him online.

A document outlining the views was posted to the X account of the shooter, Solomon Henderson, along with a photo of a handgun in a backpack that appears to have been taken in a bathroom before he walked into the cafeteria at Antioch High School and opened fire around 11 a.m. Central Time. Henderson’s X account was still active, with the link at the time of publication.

In a question-and-answer section in the document, Henderson indicated the attack was motivated by “hatred” of Black people referenced through a racial slur. Europeans, according to the shooter, “need to be protected because they are conquerors, inventors and revolutionary’s [sic] thinkers.” It goes on to accuse Jews of subverting Europeans and imperiling their existence, echoing the racist Great Replacement theory.

ALSO READ: Trump's MAGA America revives a Confederate nightmare

The final page of a diary that was also posted on the shooter’s X account shows a photograph of Henderson, accompanied by the inscription: “God I am ugly. 4 hours to go.”

An entry in the position document on Henderson's opinions of Black people includes a litany of shockingly dehumanizing and ultraviolent descriptors of murder and atrocities.

Henderson credited less than a dozen internet personalities, mostly far-right influencers with radicalizing him.

The list includes Candace Owens, a Black conservative who left the Daily Wire website founded by Ben Shapiro last March following a string of increasingly antisemitic comments. In 2019, Owens testified before a House subcommittee hearing on white supremacist terrorism as a witness for the Republican minority. Owens lashed out at another witness during the hearing, saying, “The audacity of you to bring up the Christchurch shooting manifesto and make it seem as though I laughed at people that were slaughtered by a homicidal maniac is in my opinion absolutely despicable.”

Henderson wrote: “To expand on this, Candace Owens has influenced me above all. Each time she spoke I was stunned by her insights and her own views helped push me further and further into the belief of violence over the Jewish questions.”

Henderson also said he was influenced by Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist and Holocaust denier who dined with President Trump at Mar-a-Lago in 2022, and Ethan Ralph, a far-right podcaster who helped stoke the Gamergate controversy, a culture war flashpoint in 2014 that proved to be a staging ground for a misogynist backlash against women’s participation in gaming and other male-dominated spaces.

Henderson describes himself as a "Groyper incel," using terms that respectively refer to Fuentes followers and the involuntary celibate, or incel, movement.

Fuentes responded to the shooting by acknowledging that Henderson called himself a 'groyper,' but distanced himself from the attack in a post on X.

The document also credits the rapper Ye (formerly known as Kanye West) with inspiring his violence and extremism.

Henderson's position document pays tribute to an array of white supremacist mass murderers, including Patrick Crusius, who carried out a massacre targeting Hispanics in El Paso, Texas, in 2019; Brenton Tarrant, who killed Muslims at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019; and Anders Breivik, who murdered young people at a youth camp in Norway in 2011.

Henderson's document expresses support for neo-Nazi ideals, which he described as "a better, neater, cleaner world by eliminating all undesirables." He added, "We must aid the Aryans regardless of our race."

Henderson’s diary indicates that he had initially planned to attack on Thursday, but decided to move it up to Wednesday because he wanted “to speed things up.” He said he was “scared of failing to kill myself and then going to jail,” and that his “goal was to kill at least 10 people.”

He wrote on X that he had saved money for a GoPro camera "but it was hard to explain to my parents why I needed it so I couldn't buy it." Henderson's X account includes a link to the streaming platform Kick.com, where three videos documenting his attack were posted. The videos have since been taken down from that site, although Henderson's X account remains active.

Henderson’s X account re-shares posts from four other accounts that promote violence, self-hatred, white supremacy and the incel movement. Some of the accounts show pictures of the users making the A-OK hand signal and writing, “Goodbye everyone.”

The similarities suggest some degree of coordination, although it is unclear whether the other account owners carried out attacks of their own.

Henderson said he had "connections" to some of the other shooters, although "only loosely via online messaging platforms."

In a section of his position document, Henderson paid tribute to what he called "new gen cases," including Natalie Rupnow, the 15-year-old girl who fatally shot two students at the Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin, last month.

yet another mass shoot xian school 12 24

In wake of a school shooting, Newsmax's Greg Kelly condemns “a sick, lame and lazy conversation about gun control”

12/17/24 mma

December 16, 2024, edition of Newsmax's Greg Kelly Reports

GREG KELLY (HOST): All right, you probably heard about this. Another mass shooting at a school. Three dead, including the shooter. Six injured, I'm told some of those are really, really critical. Bad news, right? And what's going to happen now? What is happening right now? A sick, lame and lazy conversation about gun control.

...

KELLY: Well, whatever it may look like, it's a violation of the Constitution. You want to have that conversation again? Everybody's sick of it. All right? Even the gun control advocates, I think they know deep down inside they don't know what they're talking about. Why can't we talk about psychotropic drugs? Notice it never really comes up. We have millions and millions and millions of kids on lithium, all kinds of — whatever it is.

I mean, there are all kinds of drugs, and those drugs have side effects, right? They tell us in the commercials, you know, watch out for this ideation. Watch out for that. Some of the side effects are pretty intense, really intense.

But we don't — does anybody know that this is actually when it all started? The first school mass shooting — a lot of people consider this the first school mass shooting, when Brenda Ann Spencer shot at a middle school right across the street where she lived. She was 16 years old at the time, and that might have been the first modern day school shooting. What was going on in the 80s? The pills, the pills, and more pills. This country has always been awash in guns. We're a gun culture. We are pioneers. It's not the guns. It's a lot of other things.

an 10 24

Police in Tempe, Arizona have arrested a man they believe is responsible for a spate of shootings at a Democratic field office in the pivotal battleground state. The alleged shooter's cache of weapons and ammunition suggests he may have been planning a politically motivated mass shooting.

Phoenix-based ABC affiliate KNXV reported Wednesday that 60 year-old Jeffrey Michael Kelly has been arrested in connection with three different shootings reported at the campaign office since September. Democrats have since closed that office and moved operations to an undisclosed location out of concern for the safety of workers and volunteers.

Kelly has since been charged with unlawful discharge, shooting at a non-residential structure, terrorism and criminal damage. He is also accused of "hanging suspicious bags of white powder from several political signs lined with razor blades," according to KVXN.

The Democratic field office was targeted in three separate shootings on September 16, September 23 and October 6. Witnesses reported a silver Toyota Highlander SUV near the scene. No one was in the office at the time of the shootings, and no deaths or injuries were reported in either incident.

According to Phoenix-based outlets KTVK and KPHO, Kelly allegedly used Google Maps to search the location of the field office, and he was also reportedly seen posting "anti-Democratic ideology signs" in several locations near his home.

KVXN further reported that when the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms searched Kelly's home, they found a massive arsenal of weapons, including 120 firearms, approximately 250,000 rounds of ammunition and a grenade launcher, in addition to body armor. Maricopa County Deputy County Attorney Nena Bhatia said it's likely Kelly was planning a mass shooting.

"The state and law enforcement believe that this person was preparing to commit an act of mass casualty with the guns he had, and that his progression of violence was escalating," she said.

While the types of guns investigators and caliber of ammunition seized has not yet been disclosed, it's worth noting that an AK-47 in its fully automatic setting is capable of firing 600 rounds a minute**. This means that without even counting for time to reload, it would take approximately seven hours to fire 250,000 rounds of ammunition continuously.

Kelly is currently being held on a $500,000 bond, according to the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office. His next court appearance is scheduled for Tuesday, October 29.

Click here to read KVXN's article in full.

===

huffpo jan? 24

Republicans Are Panicking Over This Issue — And Experts Have A Warning

see kirk 4 annot

right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk, leader of the MAGA youth groups Turning Point USA and Students for Trump and the host one of the most listened-to podcasts in the United States, encouraged his listeners this week to take up arms in preparation for an “invasion” of immigrants at the southern border.

“The break-ins, the looting, the murder, the rapes, the arson, it’s — by the way, this is just getting warmed up,” Kirk said Wednesday on “The Charlie Kirk Show,” echoing white supremacist talking points depicting immigrants and asylum seekers as inherently criminal. “You got 15,000 fighting-age males that are getting deployed all across the country. 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.’ [President Joe] Biden is creating ‘Mad Max.’ You’re on your own.”

The day before, Tucker Carlson, who had hosted the former Fox News prime-time juggernaut “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” had also suggested it was time for civilians to take matters into their own hands.

“It’s unanimous: Everyone in power, from the White House, to the hedge fund managers, to the Supreme Court of the United States, has decided to destroy the country by allowing it to be invaded,” Carlson told his 11 million followers on X (formerly Twitter). “That leaves the population to defend itself. Where are the men of Texas? Why aren’t they protecting their state and the nation?”

Kirk and Carlson — both of whom have long promoted the “great replacement theory,” falsely suggesting Democrats are bringing migrants into the country to “replace” white people — were responding to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling earlier this week that said the federal government could remove dangerous razor wire Texas had installed along its border with Mexico.

In his response to the ruling, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) released a statement Wednesday that used language eerily reminiscent of Southern states’ statements of secession ahead of the Civil War: He threatened to defy the Supreme Court decision, declaring that the “federal government has broken the compact between the United States and the States.” The next day, Republican governors from 25 states issued a joint statement supporting Abbott, praising him for “stepping up to protect American citizens from historic levels of illegal immigrants, deadly drugs like fentanyl, and terrorists entering our country.”

It was the latest, most dramatic escalation between Abbott and President Joe Biden over the situation at the border — an escalation experts say has corresponded with increasingly dangerous rhetoric from prominent conservatives that could encourage violent vigilantism targeting immigrants.

“It does provide a lot of license to vigilantes,” journalist Patrick Strickland, author of the book “The Marauders: Standing Up to Vigilantes in the American Borderlands,” told HuffPost. “This is not an ‘invasion’; it’s desperate people fleeing organized crime or poverty or war or violence. It’s not the same as the organized regiments of a formal army.”

Strickland pointed to the mass shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, in 2019, when a white supremacist who wanted to stop the “Hispanic invasion” at the southern border opened fire, killing 22 people in what has been called the deadliest anti-Latino hate crime in American history. Earlier that year, Abbott had published campaign material calling on Texans to “defend” the state and to “take matters into our own hands” when it comes to immigration.

“This is not an ‘invasion’; it’s desperate people fleeing organized crime or poverty or war or violence. It’s not the same as the organized regiments of a formal army.”

Patrick Strickland, author of "The Marauders"

Similarly, in 2018, as then-President Donald Trump, with the help of Fox News, manufactured a panic about a “migrant caravan” marching toward the southern border, another white supremacist opened fire inside the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. The shooter, who had cited antisemitic conspiracy theories about Jews hastening the replacement of white Americans by importing immigrants into the country, killed 11 worshippers.

Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas), who represents the El Paso area, said her “community knows better than any that there are deadly consequences to the hatred and xenophobia the far-right is promoting.”

“A reminder to them that the white supremacist who drove over 10 hours to my community on August 3, 2019 to massacre immigrants and Hispanics used the same language they continue to espouse,” Escobar told HuffPost in a statement. “The normalization of such violent rhetoric and dehumanization led to the murder of innocent people in El Paso, and I fear such hatred and unfounded fear will only perpetuate the next incident.”

Also of concern is the long, menacing history of right-wing paramilitary groups along the U.S.-Mexico border, including in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when white supremacist leaders David Duke, then a grand wizard in the Ku Klux Klan, and Louis Beam, head of the Texas Knights of the KKK, patrolled the border in search of migrants. There was another explosion of right-wing militia activity along the border when Barack Obama was president.

There remains a large coterie of paramilitary groups, often acting with the implicit, or explicit, support of elected lawmakers and law enforcement officials.

“People often think of vigilantes as operating completely separate from the state, completely removed from politics, and that’s actually not the case,” Regina Bateson, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Colorado at Boulder, told HuffPost. “So it’s very common that there are relationships between people involved in vigilantism and elected officials. It’s a way of pushing political agendas, sometimes trying to sort of force the state into acting where it wouldn’t have otherwise.”

Bateson said the current conservative panic about migrants crossing the border is fostering conditions that could lead to a new period of vigilantism.

First, she said, there are already “pre-existing networks” of militias along the border, and they have all the “relevant skills.” Second, vigilantism is typically carried out by “someone from a more powerful or more privileged group in society, targeting somebody who’s from a more marginalized group” — in this case, predominantly white Americans targeting Latino migrants. This more privileged group, Bateson added, will frame their actions as “defensive,” depicting their targets as a threat, even if they’re the ones “proactively carrying out ‘security patrols,’ or acting in ways that are offensive, like proactively going out and looking for people.” Finally, Stateson said, right-wing vigilantism often thrives when there’s an abundance of harsh, dehumanizing language about the target group.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has threatened to defy a Supreme Court decision that allows federal officials to remove razor wire from the U.S.-Mexico border.

Eric Gay/Associated Press

Abbott has used such language. Earlier this month, the governor boasted that “the only thing we’re not doing is shooting people” crossing the border because “the Biden administration would charge us with murder” — seemingly implying he’d condone the extrajudicial killings of asylum seekers if he and other Texans could get away with it.

And last month, Trump said immigrants were “poisoning the blood” of America, words that parallel language Adolf Hitler used about Jews in “Mein Kampf.”

Right-wing figures have also started to invoke the possibility of a new civil war if Biden doesn’t deal with the “invasion” at the border, as reported by Media Matters.

“My thoughts are that the feds are staging a civil war, and Texas should stand their ground,” Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) wrote on X earlier this week.

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt also indulged in fantasies of a hypothetical “force-on-force” conflict between Texas and the Biden administration during an interview this week with Newsmax.

If the Biden administration were to take over control of the Texas National Guard as a way of ending the conflict with Abbott, Stitt said, he’d understand if soldiers started to consider not obeying the president’s orders.

“I think they would be in a difficult situation: to protect their homeland or to follow what Biden’s saying,” Stitt said. “It’s very interesting. But then, you know, then you’ve got Oklahoma and Florida and Tennessee, and you got all these other states that would send our National Guard to help and to support the efforts of Gov. Abbott. Because every state is a border state.”

Matt Walsh, the popular Daily Wire host, said this week that “red-state governors will need to ignore the Supreme Court and do what needs to be done to protect their citizens and the border,” adding, “The last civil war was unimaginable until it wasn’t.”

Tim Pool, a conservative YouTuber with more than a million subscribers, described what’s happening in Texas as a “Fort Sumter-esque type scenario,” referring to the opening battle of the Civil War. “It does feel like it could be escalating to this federal vs. state conflict.”

Kirk also got in on the action. “So someone says right here, ‘Charlie, what would happen if Texas ignores the ruling? Will the government go to war with Texas?’” Kirk asked on his podcast, reading a question a listener had sent in.

===

chief win superbowl taylor swift dude but

Kansans absorb shock of joyous Chiefs celebration turning into violent tragedy - Alternet.org

mass shoot 1 woam kia 20 plus wounded 3 arrest

---

{{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 end }}

---

trump-tells-iowans-to-get-over-school-shootings

---

https://www.alternet.org/florida-laws-set-scene-shooting/

// clarence scotus bruen

---

2 in one wk? colo?

buffalo, uvalde, copenhagen, highland pk 7 22

11 22 over 60, on track to beat 2021? record?

---

Numerous verified X accounts are claiming that the Maine mass shootings were a “false flag” | Media Matters for America

---

Jesse Watters says American civilians need guns to deter a British invasion | Media Matters for America

---

The Jacksonville shooter was one of 'the chosen people'

Jacksonville gunman who killed 3 Black people is identified: report

John Stoehr

August 30, 2023

Sarah Palin got a lot of attention after Donald Trump’s fourth indictment and arrest. On Newsmax, the former governor of Alaska asked: “Do you want us to be in a civil war? Because that’s what’s going to happen. We’re not going to keep putting up with this. I like that you suggested that we need to get angry. We do need to rise up and take our country back.”

Palin is a has-been, but her remarks indicate that “many, many, many attention-starved MAGA straphangers, in or at the periphery of national politics, are going to have a new mantra,” Ed Kilgore wrote recently. “Having burned through more conventional measures to ‘take our country back’ via normal electoral or legislative activity, Trump’s surrogates are embracing their leader’s increasingly incendiary talk about past, present, and future setbacks that must be avenged or prevented by any means.”

All this talk about civil war has many, many, many people worried, and justifiably so. But I think we should consider the fuller context, to wit: we are already in a sort of civil war. It’s slow-motion, one-sided and covert, to be sure, but it’s plainly visible if you’re willing to see it. Before we fear a civil war in the future, let’s properly assess and appreciate the one in the present. Then, perhaps, we can prevent matters from getting truly worse.

Since the beginning of the year, there have been more than 475 shooting massacres in the United States, according to the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit tracking group. In most instances, 10 people or fewer died. By July, according to CNN, the US had “eclipsed the number of mass shootings recorded each year from 2013 through 2018. Should the current pace continue, 2023 will see more mass shootings than in 2019 through 2022.”

I don’t see anyone using adequate words to describe death on this scale. Either it’s “the price that we pay for our freedoms” (often the Republican view) or it’s “senseless” or “crazy” (often the Democratic view). But in any other time and place, in any other part of the world, we’d call this out for what it is: intentional, political, seditious, treasonous. It’s guerilla warfare.

Last weekend’s massacre in Jacksonville, Florida, is a case in point. A 21-year-old white supremacist entered a Dollar Store, armed with a semiautomatic rifle (AR-15) and a semiautomatic pistol (Glock), and shot to pieces three Black people before shooting himself to death. He left behind copious writings explaining why political murder was a legitimate recourse against enemies bent on taking away the “natural birthright” of “his people.”

The shooter, whose name I won’t use, was one of “the chosen.” That’s Thomas Jefferson’s phrase. These are people who are historically considered to be the realestof Americans. According to Jason Opal, parties and presidents have since the founding “flattered and favored the [old] rural majorities. American culture identified farm folk and small towns as the most authentic and virtuous parts of the nation — or, as President Andrew Jackson put it in 1837, ‘the bone and sinew of the country.’”

Everything was going fine for The Chosen. They controlled the country – until the revolutions of the 1960s. Specifically, until the federal government stopped balancing the country, by law, on the backs of Black people. That’s when “the heirs of Jefferson’s ‘chosen people’ lost their status as the most American of Americans,” Opal wrote. Since then, “the new, diverse America enrages tens of millions of people who predominantly live in small towns and in the South and mostly identify as white, straight and Christian.”

Another way of understanding The Chosen is by calling them what they call themselves – “Realamericans.” As I wrote in March: “Realamerica is not the real America. Realamerica, according to its adherents, is a ‘nation’ inside the real nation. It is a confederacy of the mind and spirit, made of pure makebelieve. Realamericans live according to God’s law. They share the goal of ruling, in God’s name, the real America. If Realamericans can’t dominate real Americans lawfully, they must take ‘the law’ into their own hands. With the proliferation over two decades of semiautomatic rifles, they have.”

With these weapons of war, white-power guerillas have prosecuted their insurgency. They “hit soft targets – schools, churches, nightclubs, Walmarts – anything that can’t fight back,” I wrote last year. “They foment anarchy. Spread chaos. Create an air of insanity. Voilà! The status quo is upheld by establishing an atmosphere of dread and fear that’s designed to prevent reformers from using democratic politics to reform the existing order.”

I don’t mean to suggest that all of the more than 475 shooting massacres that the country has seen since the beginning of the year have been committed by white supremacists who identify themselves as Realamericans who are fighting to protect the orders of white power against liberal values and democratic politics. That’s clearly not the case.

However, these Realamericans – and the Republicans who serve them — set the tone for everyone else. Since 2013, after the country produced for a second term for its first Black president, they have deregulated firearms at a breathtaking pace, enabling any man of any color to “solve” his problems with a gun. Moreover, that some shooters are nonwhite in effect hides the fact that more than 475 shooting massacres in under a year, more than the total of the previous four years combined, constitute guerilla warfare.

For which, Republicans like Sarah Palin should be grateful.

However much she and other “attention-starved MAGA straphangers” might pine for actual civil war, that’s not what her party wants. That would mean coming out of the shadows to take on the United States government fully and openly. There’s no chance of winning that fight. It’s better to remain hidden beneath the veil of plausible deniability. As long as the civil war is slow-motioned, one-sided and covert, the Republicans are winning.

Which is why we must see what’s really going on. This isn’t only about “the ideology of hate” coming to the surface to kill people, though it’s obviously about that, too. This is about one faction of the country going to war, literally war, with another faction. It’s a civil war, of sorts. We should say so.

From Your Site Articles

US Supreme Court justices 'facilitated' racially motivated Florida shooting: law professor ›

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

Miami newspaper urges FL GOP to reflect on contribution to the 'full story' behind racist shooting ›

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

DeSantis’ laws 'set the scene' for racist Jacksonville shooting: professor ›

---

the road to shoot-dom

---

8 23 AN invol admit hosp 2017? desantis booed

'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).

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

Florida Sheriff slams DeSantis’ permitless carry law in Jon Stewart interview: 'No benefit to the community' ›

Leading anti-racism activist explains how Trump's 'casual racism' fuels far-right terrorism ›

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

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

'People will die': why is Ron DeSantis loosening gun laws that most ... ›

DeSantis signs bill to carry concealed guns without a permit | AP News ›

Sunshine State Becomes The Firearm State: Florida's New ... ›

---

https://www.alternet.org/theyre-losing-white-supremacist-groups/

an 7 23

journalist and author Wesley Lowery explained on Saturday's edition of The Saturday/Sunday Show with Jonathan Capehart how the American white supremacist movement has evolved away from "big organizational, hierarchical groups" such as the Ku Klux Klan into a peppering of acts of vigilante violence throughout the United States.

"So one thing that's very interesting right, is that there's a historian, David Chalmers. He writes 'the definitive history of the Klan' in a book called Hood Americanism. And he writes that for most of its history, the Klan and other white supremacist groups were dispositionally conservative, meaning that they were winning. We lived in a white supremacist society. Their goal was to keep things the way they were," Lowery recalled.

"But following the entrance of our country into multiracial democracy in the late Sixties, their tactic changes," Lowery continued. "They become radical and revolutionary.They're no longer winning, they're losing. And so now they're fighting to restructure the country back to the way it was. Now that justifies more aggressive violence or aggressive acts of terror.We start to see the rise of these extremely complex groups who are literally trying to spark a race war."

Lowery noted that "beyond that, they shift — white supremacist leader Louis Beam writes in the Eighties — they shift to a quote-unquote 'leaderless resistance model.' We think about this as quote-unquote 'lone wolves' very often, that their aim is to build these bureaucratic systems and goals and membership organizations. But their aim is to put their toxic propaganda out into the world via the internet, via pamphlets, via television shows, via the mainstream politics, so that an individual can become radicalized."

Lowery also cited recent examples of these occurrences.

"We see this with Timothy McVey. We see this with Dylann Roof. We see this with the shooter in El Paso and in Buffalo. They're not members of these big organizational, hierarchical groups," Lowery said. "They — these are white Americans who have racialized prejudice, who locate the writings and the message boards of these, of these violent white supremacists. And what their marching orders are, become very clear, and then they carry them out."

Watch MSNBC's clip below or at this link

---

an 6 23

https://www.alternet.org/fbi-arrests-michigan-man-shooting/ synagogue stopped

---

6 23 raw

new York (AFP) - An American man was found guilty on Friday of massacring 11 Jewish worshippers five years ago in the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in US history, local media reported.

Robert Bowers was convicted of opening fire inside the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on October 27, 2018.

The 50-year-old was found guilty of all 63 federal charges against him, including hate crimes resulting in death, CNN, ABC and others reported.

A jury will now decide whether Bowers should receive the death penalty for the mass shooting.

Prosecutors told his trial that Bowers methodically tracked down victims at the synagogue, shooting many of them multiple times and from close range.

The court heard that the former truck driver yelled "All Jews must die!" during the rampage that added to fears about a resurgence of far-right extremists and neo-Nazis across the United States.

The incident occurred during Shabbat services and Bowers was armed with an AR-15 semiautomatic assault rifle and three Glock handguns. He was arrested at the scene.

Members of three congregations in the synagogue were killed, while two additional worshippers and several police officers were also wounded.

Bowers had expressed strong anti-Semitic views online ahead of the attack.

Donald Trump, then the US president, called for Bowers to receive the death penalty, which federal prosecutors formally requested in August 2019.

The Department of Justice under President Joe Biden has not carried out any federal executions since he came to power in January 2021, however.

Bowers' defense team has argued that their client suffers from schizophrenia. They offered a guilty plea in exchange for life in prison, which was rejected by the prosecution.

Bowers' lawyers did not dispute during the trial that it was Bowers who shot the congregants, but they argued that he had not been motivated by a hatred of Jewish people.

They claimed he had a "misguided intent" of wanting to stop one of the Jewish organizations from helping immigrants settle in the United States.

The trial opened in late April and came amid a rising number of anti-Semitic incidents in the United States, according to data compiled by the Anti-Defamation League.

In 2022, the US-based Jewish group registered 3,697 acts of harassment, vandalism and assault, a 36 percent increase over the prior year and the highest since it began keeping records in 1979.

The United States is home to around six million Jewish people, according to a Pew Research Center study published in May 2021.

---

https://www.alternet.org/tennessee-senator-prayers-nashville-victims/

sen. Marsha Blackburn said Wednesday she is "heartbroken" over the Nashville school shooting that resulted in the deaths of six people, although the lawmaker's campaign received $1.3 million from the National Rifle Association (NRA).

On Wednesday Blackburn tweeted, "My heart is broken over the unspeakable evil that occurred Monday at The Covenant School in Nashville, and my family and I are grieving along with those who lost loved ones. Now is a time for our community to come together in prayer and lift one another up."

Following the Monday shooting, the senator tweeted, "Chuck & I are heartbroken to hear about the shooting at Covenant School in Nashville. My office is in contact with federal, state, & local officials, & we stand ready to assist. Thank you to the first responders working on site. Please join us in prayer for those affected."

READ MORE: Tennessee governor slammed after 'praying' for Nashville community without mentioning mass shooting

According to Politico, California Governor Gavin Newsom responded to Blackburn's tweet, saying, "You received $1,306,130 in donations from the NRA. You voted against the most recent bipartisan gun package in June. If you're so 'ready to assist' -- start by doing your joband passing commonsense gun laws that will help prevent tragedies like the one today."

Politico also reports:

Blackburn voted against the passage of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act in June, stating that the gun control bill 'would erode Americans' constitutional right to bear arms.' The measure provides grants for states to implement so-called red flag laws, which allow for the temporary confiscation of firearms from individuals who are deemed threats to themselves or others, as well as other crisis intervention programs.

Twitter users found the NRA-funded senator's heartbreak hard to believe.

@majastein1: "This is going to be another wonderful photo op. so heartbroken so mournful so shocked full of patriotism full of Christian spirit sponsored by the @NRA $ 1.3 million Marsha?"

READ MORE: 'Furious' Gen Z lawmaker delivers blistering remarks to GOP following Nashville school shooting

Dana Goldberg: "Did you want to donate all the money you get from the NRA to support mental health reform and safer gun laws in your state? Or just sending thoughts and prayers instead of a check?"

Skinsurrection: "Okay, so sponsor some AR-15 legislation."

grandmabear44: "Not broken enough to refuse NRA blood money."

Timmy Hogan: "No, Marsha now is the time for gun reform. If you are really heartbroken, you’ll do the right thing. It’s so sad that we already know that you will not"

READ MORE: 'How is this still happening?' Mass shooting survivor hijacks news conference to plea for gun control

Grace Lidia Suárez: "Another Republican calling for prayer instead of action. Like that's worked so well in the past."

Denise Keddy: "If your heart is broken then DO something to get the guns off the streets. Why do you love the #nra more than children"

Mic: "BREAKING: Republican attempts to share genuine feelings. Commits to doing absof**kinglutely nothing to ever solve problems."

@zach_fetzer: "The NRA has given Marsha Blackburn $1.3 million. She does not 'stand ready to assist,' she stands ready to make a profit off of this shooting."

K Clark: "Marsha, if you and Chuck are so ready to assist then donate the 1.3 million the NRA has given you to the victims' families."

READ MORE: Here’s how 5 House Republicans are responding to the TN school shooting that left 6 dead

Politico's full report is available at this link.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

'Weeping parents' and 'small caskets': Columnist condemns 'Christians' who refuse to protect kids ›

Tennessee governor slammed after 'praying' for Nashville community without mentioning mass shooting ›

'Taking guns away is not the answer': Scalise encourages prayer after Nashville school shooting ›

'Lower than low can go': Donald Trump Jr. suggests father’s indictment distracts from Nashville shooting - Alternet.org ›

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

After Texas shooting, Republicans face online anger over NRA money ›

Nashville Shooting: Gun-Loving Republicans Offer Thoughts and ... ›

Senate chaplain: 'thoughts and prayers' not enough after Nashville ... ›

---

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-news-laura-ingraham-calls-coverage-allen-texas-shooting-bloody-electoral-strategy

---

https://www.mediamatters.org/tim-pool/tim-pool-calls-allen-texas-shooters-pro-nazi-online-footprint-psyop-and-blames-mass

tiM POOL (HOST): So, I mean the first thing I just want to say before we get into any of the politics from either side is, we don't want these things to happen, we want these things to stop. We need to figure out what the issue is in our society, in our culture. I genuinely believe it's dissociation. It is a dejected society where individuals don't know or care about each other and they seek validation or they seek to push some extremist ideology. And this whole thing creates a recipe for disaster.

And I'll put it simply, I think it's multiculturalism. And not the idea that people of all different types are holding hands under the rainbow, it's that you have different communities stacked on top of each other and next to each other with wildly different views and they don't like each other. And then people who are crazy will do crazy things.

But what ends up happening today, we have this story from the Daily Mail, “Revealed: Texas gunman staked out massacre mall to monitor peak times three weeks before killing eight and posting details on Russian social media alongside photos of Nazis,guns, and ammunition.” You see, here’s where we get into the PSYOP.

---

same weekend PU truck plows into migrants

https://www.alternet.org/texas-state-rep-almighty-shootings/

https://www.alternet.org/texas-democrat-greg-abbott-explain/ dem call out

gop wants more guns https://www.alternet.org/texas-lawmaker-god-responsible-shooting/

https://www.alternet.org/she-had-no-face/

an 5 23

no lnx vid twt

texas Governor Greg Abbott declined to say whether he would support measures to reduce gun violence during an appearance on Fox News Sunday.

Abbott's remarks come a day after eight people were murdered in Saturday's mass shooting — the 199th so far in 2023 — at the Allen Premium Outlets in Allen, Texas.

Speaking with anchor Shannon Bream, Abbott blamed "the government" for the massacre.

READ MORE: 'Now it’s God’s fault': Texas Republican slammed for claiming 'the almighty' controls shootings

"And I'll be going up to Allen later today to begin the process, uh, providing hope and, and healing. But I gotta tell you that there are questions that are lingering that the families want answers to, and that is, why did this happen? Why did the government do this? How did this happen? And I know that those families need an answer as quickly as possible," Abbott said. "And then the last thing I'll tell you, and, andI just wanna reiterate my gratitude and the gratitude of all Texans for the swift response of that police officer — you had just a single police officer who had to confront, uh, that dangerous gunman — and did the right thing by taking swift action to eliminate the gunman. [just happened to be there on another case?] And we are great for that officer's heroism."

Bream addressed recent Fox News polling showing that reasonable restrictions have enormous public support.

"Just out from Fox News. When you ask people what they wouldfavor, background checks for guns, enforcing existing gun laws, legal age to 21, requiring mental health checks, flagging people for danger to self, all of those score at more than eighty percent. Are there things that you would consider in Texas or that you think Congress should consider at a federal level along those lines?" Bream asked.

"Well, on the federal level, as you know, some laws were passed last year to begin to address this. At the state level, listen, this is something that we've been grappling with over the past year. And there are some potential easy solutions such as passing laws that we're working on right now to get guns out of the hands of dangerous criminals [AA?] and to criminals into increased penalties for criminals who possess guns," replied Abbott, who has loosened firearm laws in the Lone Star State in spite of the recent spikes in violence.

READ MORE: 'So we’re legislating nothing': Texas Democrat stumps GOP sponsor of anti-'tyrannical government' bill

"But, Shannon, we need to, to recognize a reality. What we've seen across the United States over the past year or two. And that is a, an increased number of shootings in both red states and blue states. Shannon, we've seen an increased number of shootings in states with easy gun laws as well as states with very strict gun laws," Abbott continued. "I think that the state in which the largest number of victims, uh, have occurred this year is in California where they have very tough gun laws where 11 people died."

That statement is demonstrably false. According to WiseVoter.org, California ranks 44th in terms of gun deaths per capita, with 8.5 per 100,000. Texas, however, sits at 26th, with 14.2 per 100,000.

"And so one thing that we can observe very easily, and that is there has been a dramatic increase in the amount of anger and violence that's taking place in America," Abbott stated. "And what Texas is doing in a big-time way, we are working to address that anger and violence by going to its root cause, which is addressing the mental health problems behind it."

But the governor was not quite finished.

"One, one last thing about this, Shannon, and that is, it truly seems today that America is more divided than we've been in decades," he declared, adding that "we gotta find a way in this country where we can once again reunite Americans as Americans and come together as one big family, and in that regard, find ways to reduce violence in our country."

Watch the clips below or at this link.

READ MORE: 'She had no face': Witness and father recalls 'carnage' from Saturday’s Texas mass shooting

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

'Absolutely repulsive': Some House Republicans are now wearing an assault weapon lapel pin ›

'So the answer is more guns?' CNN host challenges House Republican's call for armed guards at schools ›

Journalist slams the 'disgusting and predictable' hypocrisy of NRA organizers banning guns from Trump event ›

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott hit for weakened gun laws after Uvalde ... ›

Texas Governor Greg Abbott Chooses Inaction on Gun Safety as ... ›

Texas gun laws are loosened by GOP lawmakers after mass ... ›

---

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.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

How ecofascists are fueling racism and violence ›

Researcher who tracks racist far-right groups fears the possibility of a ‘post-democratic society in America’ ›

America the Vulnerable: Government Does Nothing as Right Wing Violence Surges ›

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

How to Understand White Power, White Violence - The Atlantic ›

Opinion | White Supremacists Are a Problem for America, and the ... ›

DHS Strips Funding From Group That Counters Neo-Nazi Violence ... ›

---

an 5 23

Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) on Saturday blamed "mental illness, drugs, and evil forces" for a mall shooting in Allen, Texas, where [8?] deaths are confirmed.

Multiple people were shot and some were killed at a mall in Allen, Texas, CNN reported. The network also reported that the gunman was believed to be acting alone, and that he was killed on the scene.

Brian Glenn, director of programming at the right-wing Right Side Broadcasting Network, tweeted a graphic video purporting to show the body of the deceased shooter.

"This is the piece of shit that took innocent lives today," he wrote. "Thank GOD that a brave police officer ran into the line of fire to kill this demon."

:{:{Greene, who recently said that Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, is "the biggest piece of white trash in America," retweeted the video and wrote, "This is exactly what this monster deserves."}:

She added, "Thank God for the brave officer that courageously ran into the line of fire to save others."

Greene's tweet didn't address the existing gun laws in Texas, nor did it talk about the possibility of firearm reform in the U.S., butit did lay the blame at the feet of unidentified "forces." She also offered the victims prayers.

"We pray [vs funding?] for the victims and their families and an end to the mental illness, drugs, and evil forces that cause people to commit such horrors," according to the congresswoman from Georgia.

---

new rep

no lnx

Every Republican running or rumored to be running for president is speaking to the National Rifle Association convention in Indianapolis, Indiana, beginning on Friday. The convention is taking place on the anniversary of one of the deadliest mass shootings in the city’s history and follows two major mass shootings in the last month.

On March 27, a shooter killed three children and three adults at a private Christian grade school in Nashville, Tennessee. The shooting spurred thousands of residents to protest for days on end in support of gun safety measures and the Democratic lawmakers who were expelled for joining their protests. Two weeks later, on April 10, a shooter killed five people and left another eight injured in Louisville, Kentucky. These are just two of the more than 150 mass shootings in America this year.

Saturday, April 15 also marks two years since one of the deadliest mass shootings in state history, when a shooter killed nine people and injured another seven at a FedEx facility in the same city where the NRA is hosting its weekend convention.

Meanwhile, every Republican likely vying to lead this country is openly dishonoring the people killed, their families and friends, and every single person in America frustrated by government inaction on gun violence.

By video, the NRA convention will warmly welcome Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, and South Carolina Senator Tim Scott. Donald Trump, Mike Pence, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu, Former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, and Vivek Ramaswamy will all be appearing in person, alongside other shameless Republicans.

It’s not a matter of whether it’s surprising that Republicans are tripping over themselves to satisfy the NRA. Sometimes the most stirring and instructive conclusions can be found in simplicity: Every single potential presidential candidate of a major political party is bowing down to the NRA in the wake of yet another pair of devastating mass shootings.

To call it depraved would be generous. The subservience that the Republican Party has to a group that insists upon making it as easy as possible for anyone to access tools used for killing is unworldly. The phrase “dodging a bullet” is becoming less a plain colloquial metaphor, and more guiding advice for anyone trying to do anything in public in the United States.

---

https://www.alternet.org/menacing-wickedness-marjorie-taylor-greene/

no lnx twt

:{:{on June 22nd, 2021, then-freshman United States Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) filed House Resolution 3960 to abolish the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, alleging that the agency was in cahoots with President Joe Biden to strip American citizens of their right to bear arms.}:

"The ATF's ongoing, unconstutional [sic] attacks on the Second Amendment must end," Greene's office stated of the Brian A. Terry Memorial Eliminate the ATF Act, which went nowhere because Democrats controlled both chambers of Congress. The typo still appears on Greene's website.

Like most right-wing lawmakers, Greene is steadfastly opposed to any form of sensible gun control, even as thousands of Americans are killed by bullets every year. But Monday's mass shooting at the private Christian Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee that claimed the lives of at least six people marked an escalation in Greene's rhetoric and actions aimed at thwarting efforts to save lives.}:

READ MORE: Marjorie Taylor Greene garners few sympathizers after claiming she was 'attacked' in a restaurant

:{:{At around the same time that Greene baselessly blamed Biden for the slaughter, Greene and other members of their state's Capitol Hill delegation were obstructing a routine ATF inspection of a weapons retailer in Smyrna, Georgia.}:

Footage of the confrontation was posted to Twitter along with a screenshot of Greene boastfully writing that the ATF abandoned its assignment "after we questioned their motives."

In the video, Greene flexed her power.

"We're members of Congress," she said, adding that "I serve on the Oversight Committee."}:

READ MORE: Watch: Jamie Raskin shreds Marjorie Taylor Greene at hearing for sympathizing with insurrectionists

:{:{Greene also complained to the ATF officer that the "government has been weaponized," that "people feel like their gun rights are threatened," and that "gun dealers feel like their businesses are threatened."}:

Given the day's events, social media users tore into Greene with exasperated disgust.}:

Jayme Ruimveld: "Is this today? Is she running her mouth about guns while children have been murdered by guns at their preschool? Not a shred of decency. Not an ounce of respect or concern for the grieving families. Absolutely soulless."

Kat: "And they're worried about gun vendors, feeling threatened!"

Judy Miron: "There are 7 more people dead, 3 of them children today in Nashville.. and she complains about ATF inspections!! Time to get rid of her. Vote her out!!"

Michelle: "Marge is nothing but a heartless hateful little troll."

Leon: "Meanwhile children died today at a Christian School, but hey as long as your precious 2nd Amendment that was written for Flintlock rifles is protected right."

Cathy Coleman: "There is something very wrong with MTG and the Republican members of Congress who hover around her & follow her lead. Something beyond dirty politics or unbridled ambition - there is a menacing wickedness and cruelty about them all."

ZoëbethC-MeidasMighty: "Just as another shooter shows up in Tennessee to kill elementary school kids. They got their priorities straight. I bet after lunch it's more bills to ban Drag Shows on a federal level."

Marcus Flowers: "As America grieves over yet another school shooting, this time in Nashville, Marjorie Taylor Greene is trying to prevent the ATF from doing their job. Common Sense Gun Legislation is necessary. We must do something to protect our children."

Seth Abramson: "Marjorie Taylor Greene is all about 'good guys with guns' until a violent insurrectionist smashes the window of the Speaker's Lobby inside a closed-to-the-public United States Capitol so a military veteran can leap into the breach and kidnap or kill a sitting member of Congress."

Watch the encounter below or at this link.

READ MORE: 'Performative disgrace': Marjorie Taylor Greene ridiculed for defending Ashli Babbitt while misspelling her name

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

'Liar, liar': Joe Biden amuses crowd with quip about Marjorie Taylor Greene ›

Marjorie Taylor Greene says the Navy will be 'force fed' bugs and Krabby Patties ›

Veteran rips into Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert over Jan. 6 jail visit ›

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

Marjorie Taylor Greene's jail visit pulls GOP closer to Jan. 6 rioters ... ›

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene rises from GOP fringe to front | AP News ›

House Republican leaders condemn GOP candidate who made ... ›

---

an 2 23

A new report from the Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism reveals that all extremist-related murders in 2022 were committed by right-wing extremists. More than four out of five extremist-related murders last year were committed by white supremacist right-wing extremists.The report finds that nearly all extremist-related mass killings were committed by right-wing extremists, and warns the number of those mass murders "is of growing concern."

"All the extremist-related murders in 2022 were committed by right-wing extremists of various kinds," the ADL’s Center on Extremism (COE) reports, "who typically commit most such killings each year but only occasionally are responsible for all (the last time this occurred was 2012)."

"Left-wing extremists engage in violence ranging from assaults to fire-bombings and arsons, but since the late 1980s have not often targeted people with deadly violence."

The report adds: "White supremacists commit the greatest number of domestic extremist-related murders in most years, but in 2022 the percentage was unusually high: 21 of the 25 murders were linked to white supremacists. Again, this is primarily due to mass shootings. Only one of the murders was committed by a right-wing anti-government extremist—the lowest number since 2017."

Last year, COE notes, "domestic extremists killed at least 25 people in the U.S., in 12 separate incidents. This represents a decrease from the 33 extremist-related murders documented in 2021 and is comparable to the 22 extremist-related murders in 2020. It continues the recent trend of fewer extremist-related killings after a five-year span of 47-78 extremist-related murders per year (2015-2019)."

The Associated Press, pointing to the "especially high number" of extremist killings "linked to white supremacy" reports they "include a racist mass shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, that left 10 Black shoppers dead and a mass shooting that killed five people at an LGBT nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colorado."

The "main threat in the near future will likely be white supremacist shooters, the report found," The AP adds. "The increase in the number of mass killing attempts, meanwhile, is one of the most alarming trends in recent years, said Center on Extremism Vice President Oren Segal."

In a separate article on that LGBT nightclub mass shooting, Club Q, also published Thursday, the AP reports the "22-year-old accused of carrying out the deadly mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs in November ran aneo-Nazi websiteand used gay and racial slurs while gaming online, a police detective testified Wednesday."

"Anderson Lee Aldrich also posted an image of a rifle scope trained on a gay pride parade and used a bigoted slur when referring to someone who was gay, Detective Rebecca Joines said."

---

https://www.alternet.org/2022/11/jenna-ellis-club-q-victims/

burn in hell

---

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.

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

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.

---

https://www.alternet.org/2022/11/fox-news-club-q/

mass shooting revert BS

---

Man Charged With Violent Threats Against TPUSA Is Connected to White Nationalist, Incel Communities

ByKristen Doerer | August 22, 2022 10:39 am

The FBI charged Alejandro Richard Velasquez Gomez Thursday for making a credible threat against Turning Point USA, a right-wing youth organizing group founded by Charlie Kirk.

Velasquez is connected to the misogynist “incel” community, according to federal agents, as well as the white nationalist America First youth movement headed by Nick Fuentes, highlighting the very real threat of the ideologies these communities espouse.

The San Antonio Express-News first reported that Velasquez threatened participants of TPUSA’s Student Action Summit, which was held in July 22-24 in Tampa, Florida, and featured speakers like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Sens. Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz.

“July 22 is the day of retribution the day I will have revenge against all of humanity which all of you will pay for my suffering,” Velasquez wrote on his Instagram page. The then 18-year-old also bought a flight from Austin, Texas, to Tampa on July 22, only canceling it the night before.

Tampa police deemed Velasquez’s threat against TPUSA attendees credible, and on July 22, police in San Antonio arrested him. After obtaining a search warrant and searching Velasquez’s phone, the FBI found more damning material. Velasquez’s phone included three images of children being sexually exploited by adults, which were detailed in the affidavit.

On Thursday, the FBI charged Velasquez with making threatening interstate communications and possession of child pornography.

Velasquez’s threats of violence and possession of child pornography follow a long line of extremist rhetoric. Political Research Associate’s Ben Lorber reportedin 2021 that Velasquez regularly posted neo-Nazi content on Instagram and TikTok under monikers like “Sp*cWaffen.” Velasquez also showed familiarity with the misogynist “incel” community.

Incels—short for involuntarily celibate—are today best characterized by their virulent misogyny and belief that women owe them sex. Incels’ hatred for women is displayed on online message boards, where users insist that women are commodities, argue that women should not have the right to vote, and celebrate violence against women.

The language of Velasquez’s threat echoes that of Elliot Rodger, a self-identified incel who murdered six people in a stabbing and shooting rampage in 2014. Rodger has become an idolized figure among those in the misogynist incel subculture, including apparently Velasquez.

An FBI agent who interviewed Velasquez said in an affidavit that Velasquez “explained to me that he intended the post to evoke Elliot Rodger and was familiar with Elliot Rodger due to extensive online research.”

Velasquez also has connections to white nationalists like Nick Fuentes, who has alternatively praised and mocked Velasquez, according to PRA’s Lorber. Lorber also reported that Velasquez at one point established a micro-community of brown ultranationalists who dwelt alongside America First.

Fuentes discussed Velasquez, who uses the moniker LatinoZoomer, on his “America First” show around 2021. “I’ve met him, he’s a nice guy,” Fuentes said of Velasquez in a video unearthed by KiwiFarms, a controversial forum known for doxing. Later, Fuentes read a message from Velasquez and wished him a happy birthday. “We love you, big guy,” he said.

Velasquez was also pictured with the white nationalist in 2021 after Fuentes’ speech in Dallas, Texas, which was held outside of the Conservative Political Action Conference. While Fuentes is banned from CPAC, Velasquez appeared to have attended the Trumpian conservative conference that year.

[Velasquez was also pictured with the white nationalist in 2021 after Fuentes’ speech in Dallas, Texas, which was held outside of the venue for the Conservative Political Action Conference.

Fuentes has also been banned from TPUSA events for harassing TPUSA speakers. In 2019, Fuentes and America First’s army of “groypers”—young, mostly white men who make up America First—heckled speakers at TPUSA events held on college campuses and targeted TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk for not being adequately “pro-white” and far-right.The effort was two-fold: force TPUSA to be more extreme and recruit new followers.

On Friday, Fuentes denied claims that Velasquez was a part of America First. “For the record, Alejandro Velasquez had nothing to do with me or America First,” he posted on Telegram.

Though best known for his white nationalism, Fuentes is also a virulent misogynist and self-declared incel. And in spite of his well-known white nationalism, antisemitism, and Christian nationalism, some far-right Republican elected officials like Rep. Paul Gosar, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green, and Arizona state Sen. Wendy Rogers attend his events, lending him credibility among the GOP.

:{:{}:

[vid/twt incel b/c no time for girls vs --> historical figure]

among Fuentes’ misogynist beliefs are that women should not have the right to vote or work, and that women in the United States should be treated like they are under the Taliban. In June, Fuentes declared, “We need to go back to burning women alive more.” That language has been echoed by other America First white nationalists like Dalton Clodfelter, who recently said he would like to see a woman burned alive at the stake for wearing a “blasphemous” bikini.

Such virulent misogyny and violent rhetoric has been chocked up by some as a desire to shock audiences and increase notoriety. But if Velasquez’s credible threat of violence against TPUSA proves anything, it’s that such talk doesn’t remain just talk—and that it won’t spare conservatives either.

---

https://www.alternet.org/2022/05/4chan-republican-rhetoric-mass-murderer/

The self-identified white supremacist who slaughtered 10 Black people inside of a Buffalo, New York supermarket last week was a known risk to local law enforcement and even published a 180-page manifesto in which he outlined his hateful ideations.

According to an analysis published in The Guardian on Wednesday, GUK however, the ideas that the mass shooter espoused – enhanced by his aridly creepy selection of words – were not his original thoughts. Instead, the outlet found that the gunman copied and pasted his text from various posts that he read on the dark web right-wing hub known as 4chan.

The document "allegedly released by the accused along with a video of the attack, is rife with pseudo-scientific racism, antisemitic conspiracy theories and a call for others to mimic his violence," the investigation revealed, adding that "the screed is mostly plagiarized from other extremists" on 4chan.

Peppered throughout the viciously bigoted musings were references to the Great Replacement Theory, a fringe belief that immigrants with higher levels of epidermal melanin are invading the United States and committing genocide against White Americans.

The hateful treatise "details the baseless racism that underpins the philosophy, including the idea that Jewish people secretly control the world, and that the genetic differences between the races make them incompatible. One particular image, sourced from 4chan, claims to show 'the truth about race' – compiling a handful of debunked, misunderstood, or cherrypicked studies to assert the claim that certain races are inferior to whites," wrote TheGuardian, noting that it "even seeks to back up its claims with the long-abandoned pseudoscience of phrenology, which studies the sizes and shapes of craniums."

Excerpts of missives authored by the indicted domestic terrorist on the instant messaging app Discord that The Guardian obtained indicate that he felt as if he had found a community in which he belonged. The Guardian also pointed out that he viewed 4chan as a dependable source of information, noting that "he confessed to browsing 4chan daily" and admitted that he “barely interacts with regular people."

The perpetrator stated in one exchange that “I only really turned racist when 4chan started giving me facts." In another instance, he claimed that “White genocide is real when you look at data, but is not talked about on popular media outlets."

While 4chan certainly had a profound influence on his worldview, it is not fully to blame for poisoning the assailant's impressionable mind, which at 18 years of age, significant scientific research has determined, is still developing.

The foundation of those repugnant conspiracy theories has been promoted by prominent conservative figures likeFox News propagandist Tucker Carlson and his colleague Laura Ingraham; misogynist podcasters Nick Fuentes, Charlie Kirk, and Ben Shapiro; Republican Ohio Senate candidate JD Vance (whom former President Donald Trump endorsed), and, most notably, Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, who chairs the GOP Conference in the House of Representatives and is the only Jewish Republican currently serving in Congress.

Stefanik in particular has been under heavy fire in the wake of the Buffalo massacre over her cache of anti-immigrant talking points as well as her championing of Great Replacement during conversations with journalists and appearances on mainstream news networks.

The danger they pose is immediate and substantial. But it is not unforeseen.

Last September, The Times UnionEditorial Board warned that the "undeniable echo of Nazi Germany" has been "resonating ever since in the right-wing, repackaged lately in what’s known as ‘replacement theory,’ espoused by conservative media figures like Fox News’ Tucker Carlson. And it has seeped into the mainstream political discourse in the Capital Region, where Rep. Elise Stefanik has adapted this despicable tactic for campaign ads."

Stefanik, the newspaper's editors continued, "isn’t so brazen as to use the slogans themselves; rather, she couches the hate in alarmist anti-immigrant rhetoric that’s become standard fare for the party of Donald Trump. And she doesn’t quite attack immigrants directly; instead, she alleges that Democrats are looking to grant citizenship to undocumented immigrants in order to gain a permanent liberal majority, or, as she calls it, a ‘permanent election insurrection.’ Quite a choice of words, of course, considering that the country is still suffering the aftershocks of the Jan. 6 insurrection in Washington by supporters of Mr. Trump who tried to overturn Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election."

Queen’s University Assistant Professor of Religion Amarnath Amarasingam expanded on these points to The Guardian.

“We have seen (the great replacement myth) playing a greater role in mobilizing individuals to violence because it has a somewhat unique ability to foster a sense of emergency,” she explained.“You can hear it all over the Buffalo shooter’s manifesto – a deep sense of urgency that there is an imminent collapse of white people and white culture. Combine all this with the furious nihilism, racism, and angst of 4chan and it all becomes deeply worrying.”

So how did a seemingly unsuspecting teenager become helplessly enraptured by online hate? The answer provided by The Guardian was as bewilderingly simple as it was unnerving.

The culprit whose name was not mentioned in this article out of respect for his victims – "including Aaron Salter, a security guard who tried to stop the shooting; local activist Katherine Massey; and substitute teacher Pearl Young" – reportedly joined 4chan out of "extreme boredom" during the COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020.

He has been charged with 10 counts of first-degree murder.

---

random wingnuttery rww

Oklahoma state Senate candidate Jarrin Jackson warns that “godless commies want to take over the world … by manipulating the weather.”
Curt Landry the spiritual significance of the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago.
Shane Vaughn declares that “Satan hates AMERICA because HE LOVES CONTROL (COMMUNISM) and America stands for INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM.”
Misogynistic racist incel Nick Fuentes insists that it is okay for him to be attracted to Black women because he’s an eccentric genius: “There’s something about it because it’s naughty, because it’s transgressive. … If you don’t understand this, you’re an idiot.”
Finally, Tim Barton asserts that the United States has more mass shootings than other nations “because we still have freedom here. We haven’t had communism, we haven’t socialism, we haven’t had Marxism.”

---

wapo

daniel makes ar15 used in uvalde:

...The eventual rejection of the proposed Super Bowl commercial resulted in “by far” the most successful marketing effort in the company’s history, Hunter said during the deposition. “Nothing’s even close,” he said.

The online commentator’s video fiercely criticizing the NFL went viral, and the story about the banned Super Bowl ad reached tens of millions of people after it was featured on Fox News’s signature programs, such as “The Sean Hannity Show” and “The Five,” Hunter recounted in the deposition.

Within Daniel Defense, the publicity generated by the rejected Super Bowl ad was seen as a marketing coup that the owners sought to replicate, according to Thomas Carlson, who led the manufacturer’s marketing and communications from 2015 to 2017 and reported to Cindy Daniel, co-owner with her husband and CEO Marty Daniel.

“Cindy was always trying to figure out that kind of thing - what kind of PR stunt can we do to get a little more notoriety,” he told The Post.

Another key element of the company’s marketing strategy, he added, was to use images of military and tactical units holding Daniel Defense rifles. The AR-style rifles closely resemble their military counterparts, though the military version allows the shooter to fire more than one round with each pull of the trigger....

---

an 7 22

there was another shooting massacre over the weekend, this one in Highland Park, a picturesque, affluent and majority-white suburb of Chicago, where mass violence of the kind experienced during a Fourth of July parade isn’t supposed to happen on account of Highland Park being picturesque, affluent and majority white.

Mass violence of this kind is supposed to happen in places like Philadelphia, which did experience a shooting during a fireworks display, sending hundreds of spectators fleeing, but that has gotten none of the attention that the Highland Park shooting has gotten on account of Philadelphia, which is majority Black, being where violence is supposed to happen on account of being majority Black.

Evidently, Robert E. Crimo III doesn’t get it.

The 22-year-old, who appears to be white, perched himself atop a building along the holiday parade route with a “high-powered rifle” to shoot into the crowd, killing six and wounding 40. Per the *Post*: “At least two long bursts of rapid gunfire left five people dead at the scene and sent hundreds of people fleeing in panic, leaving a wake of overturned lawn chairs, coolers and strollers. … One spectator, a father, put his young son in a dumpster for safety as he scrambled to find and shield other family members while bullets rained down.”

I’ll talk more about the shooter after the story has been reported out, although we learned on Tuesday that Crimo had planned the attack for weeks, USA Today reported. The details of his case don’t matter, however, as much as the larger contours they fit in. As I’ve said, all shooting massacres, in one way or another, are a violent reaction to the politics of liberal democracy making it possible to elect the first Black president, who then ceased being subject to the law and became instead the enforcer of it.

That’s impossible for people who see “the law” as the same as white.

So impossible, they feel crazy.

Shooting massacres are the result of “the natural order of things” being turned upside down in a country where “the law” is not the law so much as the law is a white man with a gun. In such an upside-down world, it’s only “natural” for some Americans (ie, usually white men who cannot and will not tolerate “their country” turned upside down) to seek “justice” by “taking the law into their own hands.”

This pattern has held steady since at least 2012, after the Sandy Hook massacre, when the Republicans made a permanent choice. They could do the truly conservative thing – enacting laws that would regulate the distribution of firearms for the purpose of promoting the general welfare and securing the blessings of liberty for all. Or they could recognize the obvious – that liberal democracy and the rule of law in the hands of a Black man had become the enemy.

The writer David Frum once famously said that "if conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.”

That’s close, but more precisely: if the champions of white power become convinced that they cannot win democratically, theywill notabandon white power, nor will theyonly reject democracy.

They will go to war with it, replacing law and orderwith anarchy and chaos so that respectable white people doubt democracy, too.

Since 2012, the GOP has built on the structures of white power already in place in police departments around the country. (These structures are why cops can arrest Robert Crimo without incident, but shoot Jayland Walker 60 times, killing him, for no crime at all.)

They radically expanded the number of people with the authority to enforce the law by deputizing every white man willing to wield a gun. They got around the old constraints on law enforcement that were acceptable to respectable white people by resorting to vigilantism.

With easy access to guns, and permission to carry them virtually anywhere, Republicans created conditions for wave after wave of mass death that has for years been tearing apart civil society.

I don’t think the respectable white people who populate places like Highland Park are champions of white power. If choosing between a liberal Democrat and a fascist Republican, I’m confident they’d make the right choice. But respectable white people, who determine so much of the direction and scope of our national politics, are nonetheless the principal beneficiaries of white power. They are the property owners, the bourgeoisie, the social class elected officials turn to when charting a respectable position on any given issue.

As the principal beneficiaries of white power, respectable white people are more often than not insulated from or immune to the consequences of a political party’s decision to go to war with democracy. (It’s a one-sided war that involves “soft targets” like parades.) They are, that is, all the way up to when they are not.

I think that’s the case with the Highland Park massacre. White-power violence first came for immigrants, then Black Lives Matter, then LGBT-plus people. And now, those who had least expected it. “If this can happen here, I promise it can happen anywhere. This is the last place I would ever imagine something like this happening.”

Will respectable white people understand that the Republicans are responsible for the chaos and anarchy, for the upheaval of the established order? Or will they turn to the Republicans to protect them from the chaos and anarchy that the Republicans created?

---

an 6 22

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said recently that he would tell parents of young children killed in the Uvalde school shooting that "God has a plan."

Paxton, who took the leading role in a failed Supreme Court case aimed at overturning the results of the 2020 election, went on a media blitz to fight calls for gun restrictions shortly after an 18-year-old shooter killed 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in the West Texas town of Uvalde.

In an interview with right-wing radio host Trey Graham, Paxton acknowledged that it is "difficult to give comfort" to families who lost their kids. "If I lost one of my children I'd be pretty devastated, especially in a way that is so senseless and seemingly has no purpose," he continued. "I think ... I would just have to say, if I had the opportunity to talk to the people I'd have to say, look, there's always a plan. I believe God always has a plan. Life is short no matter what it is. And certainly, we're not going to make sense of, you know, a young child being shot and killed way before their life expectancy."

Paxton's comments last week came ahead of emotional testimony by parents of Uvalde victims in the House last week. Kimberly Rubio, whose 10-year-old daughter Lexi was killed in the attack, pleaded for Congress to take action on gun safety in response to the massacre.

"We understand that for some reason, to some people — to people with money, to people who fund political campaigns — that guns are more important than children," while testifying with her husband, Felix. "Somewhere out there, there is a mom listening to our testimony thinking, 'I can't even imagine their pain,' not knowing that our reality will someday be hers. Unless we act now."

Dr. Roy Guerrero, a Uvalde pediatrician who treated some of the victims, made a similar plea as he described how children's bodies were "pulverized" and "decapitated" by the bullets from the AR-15-style rifle used by the gunman, to the point that "the only clue as to their identities were the blood-spattered cartoon clothes still clinging to them."

"Making sure our children are safe from guns, that's the job of our politicians and leaders," Guerrero said. "In this case, you are the doctors and our country is the patient. We are lying on the operating table, riddled with bullets like the children of Robb Elementary and so many other schools. We are bleeding out, and you are not there. My oath as a doctor means that I signed up to save lives. I do my job, and I guess it turns out that I am here to plead, to beg, to please, please do yours."

But after the heart-wrenching testimony, all but five Republicans in the House voted against a package that would raise the age to buy an AR-15 from 18 to 21 and toughen existing gun laws. Senate Republicans have already ruled out any new gun restrictions, as have Republican state leaders in Texas.

Paxton's immediate response to the shooting was to call for arming teachers, which some schools in Texas already do despite strong pushback from teachers.

"We can't stop bad people from doing bad things. We can potentially arm and prepare and train teachers and other administrators to respond quickly. That, in my opinion, is the best answer," Paxton said following the shooting.

Other Texas Republicans have also tried to blame anything but widespread easy access to guns. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, called for "door control" in schools and Gov. Greg Abbott pushed an emphasis on mental health — despite slashing funds for mental health treatment.

Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, after Wednesday's hearing suggested that the answer is more "prayer."

"Look, maybe if we heard more prayers from leaders of this country instead of taking God's name in vain, we wouldn't have the mass killings like we didn't have before prayer was eliminated from school," he said.

Paxton in particular has a long history of opposing gun restrictions in response to mass shootings in Uvalde, El Paso and Sutherland Springs, arguing that mass shooters are "not going to follow a single gun law" even though gun laws prevented the shooter from getting a gun until he turned 18 — the legal age to purchase an AR-15, but not a handgun — just days before the attack.

Paxton has a close relationship with the gun lobby.The NRA, the Texas State Rifle Association and the Gun Owners of America Political Victory Fundhave all contributed heavily to his campaigns. Paxton also signed an amicus brief backing the NRA's petition asking the Supreme Court to strike down California's ban on high-capacity magazines. He even "welcomed" the NRA to Texas after the group tried and failed to file for bankruptcy to dodge a corruption investigation by New York's attorney general.

After a gunman killed 26 people in the 2017 Sutherland Springs church shooting, Paxton argued that the only answer to gun violence was more guns.

"In Texas at least we have the opportunity to have concealed carry," he told Fox News. "And so if it's a place where somebody has the ability to carry, there's always the opportunity that gunman will be taken out before he has the opportunity to kill very many."

After another gunman killed 23 people at an El Paso Walmart, Paxton again argued that more guns were the answer rather than fewer guns.

"The best way is to be prepared to defend yourself," he told CBS News.

Ironically, Paxton himself cannot buy a gun under federal law, because he has been under indictment since 2015 for breaking state securities law.

Researchers have found no evidence that arming teachers or other school personnel has any effect on school shootings. A review of 89 journal publications and media reports by researchers at the University of Toledo and Ball State University similarly found that armed school resource officers, restrictions on the number of school exits and active-shooter drills do not help either.

The "ideal method for eliminating school firearm violence by youths is to prevent them from ever gaining access to firearms," the researchers concluded, adding that "unfortunately, studies have found an alarming rate of firearms accessible to youths."

---

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."

---

see icn ref report cjr

https://www.cjr.org/special_report/ecofascists.php

betsy hartmann

last November, Tucker Carlson invited Justin Haskins, the editorial director of the Heartland Institute, to discuss climate change on his popular talk show. The Heartland Institute is a climate-denial think tank, and given Fox News’s penchant for climate misinformation, the appearance of one of its representatives on the channel was hardly surprising. According to a report by Public Citizen, a watchdog group, “The millions of Americans who tune into Fox News are regularly bombarded with messages intended to undermine climate science, cast climate advocates as hysterical and frame climate policy as dangerous and un-American.”

The episode offered something different from Fox’s usual slant, however. Haskins’s rhetoric departed from climate denialism, pure and simple, in favor of blaming immigrants for causing environmental damage—an ideology known as the “greening of hate.” Supposing that climate change really is human-caused, Haskins mused, then why let in all those immigrants from countries like Mexico and Guatemala, where CO2 emissions per person are way lower than in the US? Carlson jumped in: “Isn’t crowding your country the fastest way to despoil it, to pollute it, to make it a place you wouldn’t want to live?”

Both men were repeating lines of argument routinely deployed by the Tanton network, a collection of more than a dozen anti-immigration groups founded or funded by John Tanton, a wealthy ophthalmologist from Michigan. Tanton, who died last summer, believed that the root cause of environmental destruction is overpopulation by the wrong sorts of people. To protect both nature and the nation, one must preserve white supremacy by keeping immigrants out.

Tanton was a shrewd political operator who, in the seventies, was a leader of the Sierra Club and the Zero Population Growth organization. He was a clever fundraiser, too; over the years he secured generous financial backing fromCordelia Scaife May, an heiress to the Mellon family fortune.With her support, he set up multiple anti-immigration organizations, including the influential Federation for American Immigration Reform, Numbers USA, and Center for Immigration Studies (CIS).

Tanton lured mainstream environmentalists into the nativist camp by exploiting the public’s fears of overpopulation and environmental doom. He was successful at first, but in the nineties the Tanton network’s attempts to take over the Sierra Club ran up against resistance from a coalition of progressive activists. (Full disclosure: I was part of that coalition.)

The network remained largely off the radar of liberal media outlets until the election of President Donald Trump. A number of top Trump advisers and appointees—Stephen Miller, Kellyanne Conway, and Jeff Sessions, to name a few—have close ties to the Tanton network. So far, the anti-immigrant messages emanating from the White House and right-wing media have leaned on economic and security narratives rather than Tanton’s environmental arguments. But the Carlson-Haskins exchange from November offers a preview of how the political calculus could change.

outright climate denial is falling, even among Republicans. A recent Pew Research Center poll of Americans’ views on climate and energy found that 67 percent of the public thinks that the federal government is doing too little to reduce the effects of climate change. Predictably, 90 percent of Democrats believe this, as opposed to 65 percent of moderate to liberal Republicans and 24 percent of conservative Republicans. But Republicans are also split along generational and gender lines. More than half of millennial and Gen Z Republicans want more government action, compared to less than a third of boomers and those older. And Republican women are significantly more likely to favor climate action than Republican men. As the direct impacts of climate change become ever more apparent in severe heat waves, storms, wildfires, droughts, and coastal flooding, climate denial is likely to become an increasingly hard sell.

The European right is facing similar challenges, and some parties are adapting their positions on climate change. Last spring, the youth wing of Alternative for Germany, the country’s largest ultra-right party, called on its leadership to reexamine climate skepticism after the party received a poor showing in the European Parliament elections compared to the Greens. In Austria, a new coalition government has formed between the conservative People’s Party and the progressive Greens. The People’s Party has pledged to crack down on Muslims and immigrants; it has also committed to the Greens’ goal to make Austria carbon-neutral by 2040.

:{:{If political necessity forces the US Republican Party in this same direction, the Tanton network stands ready to help. Its main think tank, the CIS, served as an important source of immigration-}:

related disinformation for the 2016 Trump campaign. CIS has also carefully cultivated access to the liberal press by cloaking its agenda in the neutral language of research studies and statistics. A study by Define American and the MIT Center for Civic Media found that from 2014 to 2018, more than 90 percent of references to CIS in the Washington Post, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and USA Today were made “without contextual information as to the nature of the group or its ties to the Trump administration.” In January, the New York Times ran an anti-immigration op-ed written by a member of CIS who identified himself, in the headline, as a “liberal.” It was likely an attempt to spin the organization’s image away from a less favorable label: being named a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.}:

how the conservative media treats climate change matters deeply. The views of moderate Republicans who favor bipartisan action on climate change, whether through taxing carbon, investing in alternative energies, or improving infrastructure, warrant far more space than they’re getting in right-wing outlets like Fox and Breitbart as well as in conservative newspapers like the Wall Street Journal.

At the same time, liberal media need to play a much stronger role in educating the public about the key issues and debates that will emerge when the federal government finally gets serious about establishing a national climate policy. Years of climate denial have left the public largely illiterate about the brass tacks of an effective and equitable transition away from fossil fuels.

It’s of equal and vital importance that liberal media expose the influence of the Tanton network. To guarantee close and continuous scrutiny of the network, why not assign reporters to a “Tanton beat”? Only a few days after theTimespublished the CIS op-ed, a Tanton network litigator wrote on the organization’s website that immigration-caused population growth drives carbon emissions, pollution, and destruction of open space in the US. We must correct this narrative rather than giving disinformation a platform.

The environmental stakes are high. The stakes are also high for the safety and security of immigrants. The white-supremacist shooters who went on killing sprees last year in El Paso, Texas, and Christchurch, New Zealand, rationalized their deadly violence against immigrants in part on environmental grounds. “The environment is getting worse by the year,” the El Paso shooter lamented in his manifesto. “Most of y’all are just too stubborn to change your lifestyle. So the next logical step is to decrease the number of people in America using resources.” The Christchurch shooter wrote that he was an ecofascist concerned about the threats of climate change, overpopulation, and immigration: “They are the same issue, the environment is being destroyed by over population, we Europeans are one of the groups that are not over populating the world. The invaders are the ones over populating the world.Kill the invaders, kill the overpopulation and by doing so save the environment.”

As outright climate denial diminishes among conservatives, we can expect the Tanton network to renew its focus on the environment to push anti-immigrant policies—cloaking the wolf in sheep’s clothing. Now is the time to prevent a serious resurgence of the greening of hate.

---

5 22

in wake of the back-to-back mass shootings that have taken place inBuffalo, N.Y., and Uvalde, Texas, right-wing conspiracy theorists have begun spreading lies and misinformation about the deadly attacks.

According to Axios, a growing "pipeline of misinformation" that spans from "obscure internet platforms to the mouths of sitting members of Congress 'seems to be going a lot faster now.'" Speaking to the news outlet, Bryce Webster-Jacobsen, who serves as the intelligence operations director at the firm GroupSense, weighed in on the narratives he has been seeing online.

"The misinformation narratives that start on places like 4chan or Reddit make it to the public consciousness really quickly," he added.

Jared Holt, a Digital Forensic Research Lab resident fellow at theAtlantic Council, also noted that they are "getting picked up by individuals with more power and louder voices. Holt added, "So the effect of misinformation has felt like it's multiplying."

Many of the conspiracy theories circulating on social media platforms have aligned the mass shooters with politically-motivated narratives. Per Axios:

In Uvalde, misinformation falsely claiming the shooter was transgender appears to have quickly spread from 4chan, an anonymous message board, to the mainstream. The pictures used to support the falsehood were pulled from a user on Reddit. Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) tweeted that the shooter was a "transsexual leftist illegal alien," but later deleted the post.

In Buffalo, misinformation falsely claiming that the shooting was a "false flag" operation — an attack disguised to look like it was made by the opposite side in a conflict — spread quickly in the aftermath of the massacre. A conservative Arizona state lawmaker is under investigation by the Arizona Senate for her Telegram post endorsing the theory.

"Often, it strikes me that these kinds of communities or figures ... want to believe a certain thing, and someone on the internet finds something to provide source material," Holt said. "They come up with the concept first and then scour the internet to patch details in there so that it can live on."

The so-called "great replacement theory" is said to have motivated the Buffalo shooter, according to his "manifesto."

"There are some common stories that always get spread, and they’re usually about the shooter's identity — and they usually use the same pictures and names," Webster-Jacobsen also noted.

Caroline Orr Bueno, a behavioral scientist who conducts research on social media manipulation also explained the rise in conspiracy theories. "People want answers, and if they’re not getting them from authorities, they’ll get them somewhere else," said Bueno.

gop excuses

https://www.alternet.org/2022/05/republicans-bizarre-excuses-mass-shootings/

Here are some of the excuses that Republicans are using to explain the recent mass shootings

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) in February 2018 (Wikimedia Commons).

Meaghan Ellis May 27, 2022

While most of the world is well aware of the fact that the United States' lenient gun control laws have contributed to the number of disturbing mass shootings, Republican leaders and lawmakers are attempting to make excuses to divert attention from the firearm discussions.

As the days progress, the excuses are becoming more outlandish.According to HuffPost, Republicans have blamed everything from liberal teachers to ADHD medications for shootings that have taken place across the country. Then, there are bizarre remarks from far-right conservatives like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R). While Greene believes there's not enough "God" in schools, Paxton and Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colorado) believe there aren't enough guns in school.

“The reality is, we don’t have the resources to have law enforcement at every school,” he said. “It takes time for law enforcement, no matter how prepared, no matter how good they are to get there. So, having the right training for some of these people at the school is the best hope.”

Boebert, meanwhile, shares on Thursday night that she wants "teachers that can protect themselves and their students."

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) even attempted to blame the shootings on "fatherlessness" as he discussed the "root cause" of the shootings. “Questions involving things like, why is our culture suddenly producing so many young men who want to murder innocent people?” he said. “It raises questions like, you know, could things like fatherlessness, the breakdown of families, isolation from civil society or the glorification of violence be contributing factors?”

Like most Republican lawmakers, Lee failed to offer any suggestions to combat that would ensure troubled individuals are unable to obtain access to firearms.

Speaking to HuffPost, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Alabama) believes ADHD medication is to blame. "Kids have changed over the years, the drugs they’re taking for attention deficit just to focus on what they’re doing. It’s mind-boggling to me,” Tuberville said.

There have also been instances of right-wing internet trolls having "spread photos of a random trans woman who bears a passing resemblance to the actual shooter, Salvador Ramos, whom police said they killed responding to the massacre. ... The woman in the widely disseminated photos has come and out said that she’s not the shooter — and that she doesn’t even live in Texas — and asked people to stop sharing the pictures of her apparently taken without her consent from Reddit.”

Another vexing argument actually centers on gun control. However, Erich Pratt, the senior vice president of Gun Owners of America, believes gun control is actually the problem.

“Killers love gun control, and that’s what enabled this killer in Texas,” he said.

Despite all of the endless arguments, the vast majority of Republicans still refuse to acknowledge the real problem. no lnx twt many

---

an 5 22

...After 10 people were killed in a school shooting in Santa Fe, Texas, in 2018, Gov. Greg Abbott suggested considering a “red flag” law. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick nixed it.

After 23 people were killed at a Walmart in El Paso and seven people were killed in Midland-Odessa in 2019, Patrick discussed expanding background checks. Instead, the Legislature passed permitless carry.

But after Uvalde, neither Patrick nor Abbott indicated any interest in reforming the state’s gun laws. On Fox News, Attorney General Ken Paxton said it’s unreasonable to think we can “stop bad people from doing bad things.”

“We can potentially arm and prepare and train teachers and other administrators to respond quickly,” he said. “That, in my opinion, is the best answer.”

While Democrats expressed their outrage — some more immediately than others — none of this came as any surprise to people who study gun issues.

Poliquin’s research shows that Republican-dominated states tend to pass legislation in the wake of mass shootings that make guns more readily accessible. Democrat-led states don’t see a statistically significant increase in gun laws of any kind after these events, in part, Poliquin hypothesized, because they already have strong gun control laws.

Republicans in Texas are acting on their party’s ideology around guns, which emphasizes more guns in more places as a deterrent to acts of violence. And even if that doesn’t reflect public opinion, they have no reason to anticipate backlash in the voting booth.

[Gov. Greg Abbott speaks at a press conference at Uvalde High School on Wednesday, May 25, 2022 in Uvalde. Twenty one people were killed after a gunman after a high school student opened fire inside Robb Elementary School on Tuesday where two teachers and 19 students were killed.

Even conversations about compromise are enough to rile up the faithful, and in a polarized and gerrymandered state like Texas, the political fringes are where a politician's career can be made or lost.

“The more the gun control advocates try to put in place what they euphemistically call common sense gun laws … those of us that believe in the Second Amendment and everything it was set in place to protect tend to hold much tighter,” Hupp said. “We recognize what their ultimate goal is, which is to completely disarm citizens.”

Donna Howard, one of a minority of Democrats in the state Legislature, said Texas’ approach to gun policy reminds her of the bumper stickers she would see in the 1960s: “America: Love it or leave it.”

It feels like her fellow legislators are telling her — and any Texans who want gun control — “if you don't like it, you can just leave,” she said.

“That’s not something I have felt until recent years,” she said. “This is my home, and the fact that what I believe and people like me believe, and the way we would like to have society structured, is just totally discounted, it feels like we don't matter.”

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2022/05/29/texas-mass-shootings-self-defense-gun-ownership/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

---

avowed white nationalist' House Republican torched for tweeting 'despicable' lies about Uvalde shooting

David Badash The New Civil Rights Movement

May 25, 2022

U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) is being criticized after falsely identifying the Uvalde, Texas shooter who massacred 19 children and two adults at an elementary school as being a “leftist,” undocumented, and LGBT..."

gosar said leftist gay illegal? tx shooter

https://www.alternet.org/2022/05/tucker-carlson-2657394885/

---

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.

---

5/22

Third was a trio of mass shootings in California, Dallas and Buffalo.

Buffalo’s is getting the most attention.

The shooter is an18-year-old white supremacist from rural New York. His semi-automatic rifle was emblazoned with the n-word as well as the names of notorious white terrorists: Anders Breivik (Norway, 2011), Dylann Roof (Charleston, 2015), Robert Bowers (Pittsburgh, 2018), Brenton Tarrant (New Zealand, 2019) and John Earnest (El Paso, 2019).

---

an 5 22

The latest mass shooting, which claimed the lives of 10 Black victims in Buffalo, N.Y., has reignited concerns about dangerous rhetoric perpetuated by far-right media and conspiracy theorists.The Guardian's Cas Mudde recently explored how right-wing media and Republican lawmakers have contributed to this ongoing problem.

"The problem is, we can talk endlessly about better regulating social media or calling for even more funding and powers for public and private 'counter-terrorism' organizations, but none of that will make us safer as long as the broader conservative movement embraces and propagates far-right propaganda," wrote Mudde, who is also a professor for the University of Georgia's School of Public and International Affairs. "This is a point worth repeating, even if I and others have made it many times before."

Mudde went on to validate his point by highlighting how the Buffalo shooter's manifesto echoed dangerous talking points from far-right media. The disturbed terrorist referenced concerns about "the Left," America's "open borders," and immigration.

"The so-called 'manifesto' of the terrorist included a lot of the standard tropes of the far-right, including the so-called Great Replacement Theory. Often linked to antisemitism, this conspiracy theory holds that 'the Left' is supporting 'open borders' to replace the 'original people' with 'immigrants,' who are inferior and therefore easier to control. Variants of this theory go back to at least the original Populists of the mid-19th century, but in its current iteration it has been around since the start of the 1980s postwar far-right in Europe."

He also expressed concern about Republican lawmakers' conflicting position on this topic. "Since the storming of the Capitol on 6 January 2021, I have had various informal conversations with people who work in Congress or in other state agencies about the far right," Mudde wrote. "They tell me that they want to talk about the threat it poses, but then rapidly narrow the focus to 'online radicalization' and violent groups with scary names like Atomwaffen Division or Feuerkrieg Division.This is not just because these groups get disproportionate attention in the media and the counter-terrorism industry, but because they are politically safe. These groups are so extreme that they are out of bounds for almost all political elites, even on the right. But they are also small and marginal."

He added, "This is not the case for most other more mainstream actors and ideas of the far right. In fact, their power is now so great in Washington, that it is almost impossible to come up with a term that is acceptable to both sides of the political spectrum. Republicans are skeptical about terms like 'far-right' and 'racism,' fearing this would include groups and ideas they sympathize with. This is not without reason."

"The Grand Old Party has become a far-right party that advances racist arguments in both implicit and explicit form. And many organizations within the broader “conservative” movement have followed suit, from Fox News to Turning Point USA."

With the direction the Republican Party is going toward, Mudde emphasized the reality America is facing as he offered a piece of advice to President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party.

"The sad reality is that fighting the far right has become a highly partisan affair in the United States," Mudde wrote. "Any attempt to make this a bipartisan effort means watering down of measures and limiting them to the most extremist fringes. If Biden and the Democrats really want to fight white supremacy, including institutional racism, they must do it without the Republican party."

---

Three things happened this weekend.

They are connected.

They are the GOP’s three-legged stool.

First, several high-profile Republicans, including the No. 3 House leader, accused the president of giving preferential treatment to undocumented Americans at the expense of “native” white Americans.

The administration provides baby formula to mothers detained at the US-Mexican border while they see through the deportation process. (Baby formula is scarce due to issues relating to trade, monopoly and the covid pandemic. The national shortage is reaching crisis levels.)

New York Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, chair of the GOP conference, alleged on Twitter that “Joe Biden continues to put America last by shipping pallets of baby formula to the southern border as American families face empty shelves. This is unacceptable. American mothers and their babies shouldn’t suffer because of the #BidenBorderCrisis.”

In September, the representative ran a series of ads on Facebook accusing “radical Democrats” of “planning their most aggressive move yet: a PERMANENT ELECTION INSURRECTION.Their plan to grant amnesty to 11 MILLION illegal immigrants willoverthrowour current electorate andcreate a permanent liberal majority in Washington.”

The second thing that happened this weekend was tens of thousands of women, mostly white, demonstrating in Washington and other major American cities to protest the Supreme Court’s imminent ruling that will almost certainly strike down Roe. Organizers say the marches preview a “summer of rage” happening before the midterm elections.

Third was a trio of mass shootings in California, Dallas and Buffalo.

Buffalo’s is getting the most attention.

Payton Gendron went to an eastside Tops, a grocery store not far from where I lived in the 1990s. Of the 13 people he killed and injured, 11 were Black. He’s in custody. He was arraigned Saturday on a charge of first-degree murder. Hate-crime felony charges are likely forthcoming.

Two days beforehand, Gendron posted online what appears to be a manifesto. According to Ben Collins, who covers right-wing extremism for NBC News, it “laid out specific plans to attack Black people andrepeatedly cited the ‘great replacement’ theory, the false idea that a cabal is attempting to replace white Americans with nonwhite people through immigration, interracial marriage and, eventually, violence.”

Collins wrote that, “the manifesto includes dozens of pages of antisemitic and racist memes, repeatedly citing the racist ‘great replacement’ conspiracy theory frequently pushed by white supremacists, which falsely claims white people are being ‘replaced’ in America as part of an elaborate Jewish conspiracy theory. Other memes use tropes and discredited data to denigrate the intelligence of nonwhite people.”

Three things happened this weekend. They are connected.

The “great replacement theory” is the link.

More precisely, democracy is.

Democracy in the 21st century isn’t yielding the results the right-wingers want. It produced the first Black president. It produced his reelection.

The rightwingers cannot trust democracy until they are certain that “demographic change,” which the Democrats love to talk about, has been stopped. They can’t trust democracy until there are enough white people around to make sure white people are still in charge.

Immigration.

Abortion.

Guns.

These are the three-legged stool of the Republican Party.

The stool animates the rightwing imagination. It animates the Republican incumbents running for reelection. It animates a third of Americans who believe “an effort is underway” by the Democratic Party “to replace U.S.-born Americans with immigrants for electoral gains,” according to a recent AP poll. It animated Payton Gendron.

On immigration – stop it.

Stop all of it, even legal immigration. The more nonwhite people, Muslims and Jews in America, the more risk there is to white power.

On guns – more of them in more white hands.

Rightwingers can’t get rid of Black people and Latinos who were born here or immigrated years ago, but they can terrorize or (legally) lynch them. More guns in more white hands overlap with police officers who already serve an unspoken mandate to control nonwhite people.

On abortion – more white babies.

Most of the women who get abortions are white. By forcing them to give birth, the rightwing attempts to “repopulate” the country so that, over the years, there are more white people who can vote. Only at that point can the right-wingers' return to trusting American democracy.

Gendron’s manifesto spells it out: “If there’s one thing I want you to get from these writings, it’s that White birth rates must change. Everyday the White population is fewer in number. To maintain a population, the people must achieve a birth rate that replacement fertility levels.”

It also says “critical race theory” a rightwing talking point that has come to “encompass teaching about race in school, is part of a Jewish plot, and a reason to justify mass killings of Jews,” Collins wrote.

When Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin said “CRT, CRT, CRT,” his voters didn’t hear anything about education or even children. What they heard was that the Democrats are trying to replace them. What they heard was a plan for “PERMANENT ELECTION INSURRECTION.”

This weekend, the three-legged stool was in full view.

Few Americans believed it beforehand.

A “white supremist killed my mother and other family members,” the Rev. Sharon Risher said Saturday. “Again, we deal with death because of hate and a gun. Thoughts and prayers won’t cut it. Something must be done! Can I count on you to help change this narrative?”

When democracy betrays you, where do you turn?

To hate and a gun.

Will more Americans believe it now?

---

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.

---

eve of roe ~ gop pious on life, chris murphy 180 in car and came back to spk on hypocrisy on guns

---

12 21 an

Michigan, a 15-year-old suspect has been charged with murder following a Tuesday, November 30 shooting at a high school in the midwestern state. The suspect’s mother, according to The Independent, was a Donald Trump supporter who praised the former president as being supportive of gun owners.

The mother, 43-year-old Jennifer Crumbley, wrote an open letter to Trump on her blog on November 11, 2016 — after Trump had defeated Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election — and said, “As a female and a Realtor, thank you for allowing my right to bear arms. Allowing me to be protected if I show a home to someone with bad intentions. Thank you for respecting that Amendment.”

The November 30 attack left four people dead and others seriously wounded others at the high school. The 15-year-old suspect, the Independent reports, allegedly used a semi-automatic handgun that was legally purchased by his father, James Crumbley, according to Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard in Michigan.

Bouchard, on December 1, said that administrators at the high school flagged the teenager for “behavior in the classroom they felt was concerning.”

Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald alleges that the attack was premeditated. McDonald told reporters, “There is a mountain of digital evidence — videotape, social media, all digital evidence possible — and it absolutely, we are confident that we can show it was premeditation.”

The teenager, at his arraignment, pleaded “not guilty” to the charges he is facing.

In her November 11, 2016 open letter to Trump, Jennifer Crumbley stressed that she didn’t consider herself a card-carrying Republican but had become receptive to his MAGA message.

Crumbley wrote, “You see Mr. Trump I can go on and on, in fact I used to think Democrat. I don’t believe in God and Im quite opposite of your typical ‘republican.’ But now I am 38 years old. I have a family. My husband and I both work full time jobs. I have watched our insurance premiums double. I cannot afford to buy into this Obamacare. For my family its over $600 a month with deductibles. We bust our ass Mr. Trump. I pay taxes, my husband pays his child support, I donate to charities.. We are good fucking Americans that cannot get ahead. And what makes me sick, is people that come over here from other countries and get free everything.”

The Michigan resident, who described herself as “a hard working Middle Class Law Abiding Citizen who is sick of getting fucked in the ass,” went on to tell the then-president-elect, “I have NEVER had this much belief in one person, and you are it.”

---

posts weekly list paywall?

11 21 mass shooter update mostly so but 3 of 15 CA?!

there were 15 separate mass shooting incidents in the US last week, where thirteen people were killed and 60 were injured. I document all mass shootings every Sunday, along with a recap of all the week's biggest events, so be sure to check it out: https://shero.substack.com/p/what-happene...

SHERO is on Substack – the place for independent writing

---

NZ livestream // call of duty?!

http://www.thewaroneveryone.com/

at end sez most surprise was jnx xian ID?

Chapter 1: The Eternal Fascist

There is nothing new under the sun. In this chapter, you’ll learn about “Ur-Fascism”, and how humor and irony have historically been used to enable its rise.

Chapter 2: An American Fascist Faith

The Tree of Life Synagogue Shooting, the Poway Synagogue shooting, the Olympic park bombing and dozens of other terrorist attacks all have one thing in common- Christian Identity. In this chapter, we delve into a cultic belief system at the heart of American fascism.

Chapter 3: The Apostle of Fascism

William Luther Pierce is the most important Nazi you’ve never heard of, and his work has helped inspire a generation of terrorists- right up to the present day.

Chapter 4: How to Build an Army

Louis Beam was once a normal American soldier. But in the wake of the Vietnam War, he would painstakingly craft a vicious fascist insurgency. When Beam’s ground-level activism met Pierce’s propaganda, the result was the birth of a terrorist movement that still stalks us to this day.

Chapter 5: The Hidden Civil War

Inspired by Beam and Pierce, a young man named Bob Mathews attempted to spark a Second American Civil War. Whether he succeeded or failed is still up in the air.

Chapter 6: The Perfect Soldier

In his life and death, Timothy McVeigh represented the best-case scenario for the kind of warriors Louis Beam wanted to inculcate through his “leaderless resistance” strategy. His story is a tale of triumph for American fascism.

In Tim McVeigh, Louis Beam and his fellow fascists had found the perfect soldier, the perfect exemplar of Beam's concept of leaderless resistance. He was not a lone wolf as some foolish pretenders in journalism had named him. McVeigh was radicalized by a constellation of writers and thinkers as well as hundreds of men he had spoke with at gun shows and survivalist conventions and sitting outside the siege lines at Waco. He was radicalized by William Pierce, who wrote 'the Turner Diaries' hoping desperately that someone would do exactly what McVeigh did. McVeigh's attack prompted response from federal law enforcement, but not the one you might expect. While there were some crackdowns on militia cells and organizations, the justice department largely responded by taking a lighter hand with white supremacists and militias.

In 1996 'the Montana Freemen' wound up in a standoff with the federal government. As a group they represented a synthesis of Christian Identity and Posse Comatatus beliefs.They declared themselves independent of federal control and wound up in an 81 day standoff with law enforcement. For awhile it looked like the Freemen compound might become another Waco. But the standoff ended peacefully. Video footage of the 23 adults and 4 children surrendering showed no giant armored vehicles or military-looking police. The FBI's hostage rescue team wore sneakers and casual civilian clothing. McVeigh would go to his grave convinced that the lighter hand used on the Montana Freemen was the result of his attack on Oklahoma City... and he might have been right. According to 'American Terrorist', "Clinton R. VanZandt, the former FBI agent who'd tried without success to negotiate a peaceful end to the Waco standoff three years earlier, agreed with McVeigh, at least on that point. Retired from the FBI and working as a security consultant, VanZandt feels that the government learned a painful lesson from the OKC bombing. In VanZandt's words, 'the government realized that it must become a velvet brick, not a battering ram.' 'What an absolute classic tragedy,' VanZandt had said soon after the conflagration at Waco, 'what a total indictment of mankind's inability to communicate and relate even though we have different religious beliefs and personal philosophies.' While VanZandt condemned the OKC bombing, he felt that Waco had started a war and that McVeigh's bombing had not only been an escalation, but a turning point in the war."

My only disagreement with Mr. VanZandt is the idea that the war Mr. McVeigh wound up fighting in had started with Waco. This war had been going on much longer than that, at least as far back as the days of George Lincoln Rockwell. Timothy McVeigh may have seen himself as a patriotic american, but he fought as a soldier of the american fascist movement under generals Louis Beam and William Pierce. The failure of the federal government, and almost everyone, to see this war is one reason why things have gotten so bad in 2019 as I write this. McVeigh would be joined on down 30 years by dozens of other angry young men. Men like Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the infamous Columbine shooters. Most experts would agree that Harris was the motivating force behind the attacks, more or less pulling Klebold along with him. This is not often reported on, but Harris was obsessed with Adolf Hitler and Nazism. He wrote constantly about Nazi ideology, his hatred of free speech, the press, and his desire to see mentally defective people executed. Harris was also obsessed with Timothy McVeigh.

Dave Colon is a journalist who spent more than a decade studying the massacre.He found regular references to OKC and McVeigh in Harris's writings before the shooting. Colon writes, "In his journal, Eric would brag about topping McVeigh. Oklahoma City was a one-note performance, McVeigh set his timer and walked away. He didn't even see his spectacle unfold. Harris admired McVeigh, but desperately wanted to beat him, carrying out a larger attack, killing more people."

Eric Harris and DK did not succeed in their goal of topping McVeigh, but Harris may yet manage to beat McVeigh's 'High Score'. In the decades since the 1996 shooting at Columbine it has inspired at least 74 copycat attacks which have killed 89 people and injured 126 more. You can draw a direct line from George Lincoln Rockwell to William Pierce and Louis Beam, to Tim McVeigh, and then to Eric Harris. By the late 1990s, it was incredibly clear that leaderless resistance as a tactic was the best weapon in the white supremacist arsenal; but it would take the mass adoption of the internet and the era of the smartphone for Louis Beam's deadliest innovation to see its full potential.

Chapter 7: The Digital Reich

This is where we are now: an era where a distributed network of individual extremists are able to radicalize each other and inspire acts of violence worldwide. This is not the result of an unhappy accident, or an unforeseen consequence of the digital era. It’s the result of decades of careful planning.

nazi good at WWW early]

In 2014, things on the internet rather suddenly boiled over into the cultural phenomenon known as 'gamergate'. On the surface, gamergate was a reaction to corruption in video games journalism. In reality, it was an eruption of white and male supremacist hatred, an attack on modernity and liberalism by an army of young men who believed they'd been wronged by society. There has not yet been a great deal of research into whether or not there'd been an organized attempt by the white supremacist movement to co-opt gamergate, but there is ample evidence that the ideas of that movement quickly made it into popular memes spread by gamergaters.

During my research I came across a thread on the website recetera filled with other confused digital natives trying to figure out just what the fuck had happened with gamergate. One user posted a series of memes he'd saved during that time. In retrospect they seem to show a progressive descent into white nationalism. The first is a propaganda poster featuring a cartoon mascot of 4chan's /pol/ board, 'Polina', advising the anons of pol on how to effectively aid the movement. Polina is blond haired and blue eyed. At the top of the poster are the words 'Who is that girl? Blond haired, blue eyed, fair skin? Why, it must be Polina!' Another meme, from further on in the collection, is significantly nazier. It's based around an old labour movement political cartoon, 'the pyramid of a modern capitalist system', showing laborers at the very bottom being exploited by the classes above them. In the gamergate adaptation, gamers are at the bottom of the pyramid, with games journalists above them, critical theorists and social justice warriors above them, cultural marxist academia above them, and then FAFSA loans above them at the top represented by the all-seeing illuminati eye symbol. We don't see explicit anti-semitism in this cartoon, but it is there subtly, in the caricature drawings of Jewish video game critics. It's clear at this point that some white supremacist talking points had started to mutate to better appeal to modern and extremely online youths.

Eventually the harassment of video game journalists and critics, most of whom were women, grew severe and illegal enough that 4chan exiled its gamergaters. Many of them migrated to 8chan and over the next several years, they grew more radical and more explicitly fascist until, eventually, they were openly planning for how to cause a new holocaust. It's impossible to know how much of the ironic fascist shitposting started off innocently, and how much of it was seeded by white power activists, but we know they were engaging in that sort of behavior purposefully for over 20 years, and in the years after gamergate this work has paid dividends. The true danger of the digital reich was best expressed by Alex Curtis, publisher of a neo-nazi magazine and self-proclaimed 'lone wolf of hate'. In the early 2000s he wrote of his hope that, "Some well placed Aryans will one day cause some serious wreckage. A thousand Timothy McVeigh's would end any semblance of stability in this racially corrupt society."

We have not yet reached 1000 Timothy McVeighs thankfully, but we have seen a marked increase in the amount of right-wing domestic terror over the last several years and it certainly seems to be driven largely by online radicalization. Robert Bowers, the Tree of Life Synagogue shooter, was radicalized in part on Gab, a social network for nazis.

He announced the start of his rampage there. Six months later, the Poway Synagogue shooter announced the start of his rampage on 8chan, as had the Christchurch shooter 6 weeks prior. There are other names in the roll-call of internet inspired fascist violence, the Atomwaffen terrorist group responsible for 3 murders so far, started off with extremely online nazis working to form a terrorist cell in imitation of the book 'Siege' written by James Mason. We talked briefly about Mason and 'Siege' at the start of this book, he was a student of William Pierce, and 'Siege' might best be understood as a more academic accompanying text to 'the Turner Diaries'. Where the diaries proposes fiction, 'Siege' outlines in strategic depth. Mason advocates for leaderless resistance and lone-wolf style attacks. "The lone-wolf cannot be detected, cannot be prevented, and seldom can be traced. If I were asked by anyone of my opinion on what to look for or hope for next, I would tell them a wave of killings or assassinations of system bureaucrats by roving gunmen who have their strategy well mapped out in advance and well-nigh impossible to stop."

Early in 2019, Coast Guard Lt. Christopher Hasson was caught planning this exact sort of attack. He had a cache of weapons and ammo and a kill-list of journalists and democratic politicians. Hasson was obsessed with the manifesto of Anders Brevik, a right-wing shooter who murdered dozens of students in Utoya, Norway. We don't know where he first came into contact with that manifesto, but spreading it has been a priority of online fascists for years. In the wake of the Christchurch shooting, fascists have started spreading Tarrant's manifesto as well.

The Poway synagogue shooter cited both manifestos as inspirations for his attack. In his own rampage thread on 8chan, the Poway shooter stated his desire to beat Tarrant's 'high score'. In this we see echoes of Eric Harris, the Columbine shooter who was obsessed with beating Timothy McVeigh's 'high score'. Right now, [2019?] as I read this, violent men in 8chan's pol board and numerous dischord chat rooms are plotting ways that they might beat their heroes and win a 'high score' of their own. On telegram, 'the Bowl Patrol', a group of young fascists dedicated to Charleston church shooter Dylan Roof, celebrate St. Roof and fantasize about new acts of violence in his name.

The early harvest in blood these young men will reap was sown by Louis Beam, William Pierce, and Bob Matthews. Now, though, there is no need for an organization to buy up arms and plan terror attacks. 'The Order' proved to be less resilient than the completely decentralized radicalization and killing machine made possible by the advent of the internet. The internet had given the white power movement a steady supply of armed and ready young killers, living cruise missiles who strike unpredictably at targets around the country. Bit-by-bit, their attacks chisel away at our sense of security, our national stability, and our trust in each other. It took decades, but Louis Beam and his comrades did bring the war home, to all of us, and against all of us.

---

https://www.alternet.org/2021/03/michael-moore-joke/

cdv

The right-wing "cancel culture" mob has once again grabbed their torches and pitchforks. Their newest target is documentary filmmaker and political commentator Michael Moore.

What is Moore's most recent offense?

In response to Monday's mass shooting in Boulder, Colorado, Moore tweeted"The life of Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa shows that people can come from all over the world and truly assimilate into our beloved American culture," and included an image of the Statue of Liberty.

Alissa is the alleged shooter in the Boulder tragedy. He was born in Syria but came to the United States as a child in 2002.

Reasonable persons may choose to disagree with Moore's timing, or his tone. But the fact remains that his comments about the Boulder mass shooting are largely correct.

Those on the right and elsewhere who are performatively "outraged" at Moore's comment are just angry because he spoke the truth about America's gun culture and our societal addiction to mass shootings and gun violence.

A society's culture is not a buffet where a person chooses the things they like and then ignores or denies the existence of those they do not. Such thinking is immature, simplistic and lacks nuance. In other words, it confirms what research by social psychologists, neuroscientists and others has shown about how conservatives and right-wing authoritarians think about morality, politics and society more generally.

As demonstrated by historian Richard Slotkin in his landmark book "Gunfighter Nation", guns and gun violence are central to America's culture and identity.

During an interview with Bill Moyers about the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, Slotkin elaborated:

And what we have in this country is we have a history in which certain kinds of violence are associated for us with the growth of the republic, with the definition of what it is to be an American. And because we are also devoted to the notion of democratic individualism, we take that glorification of social violence, historical violence, political violence, and we grant the individual a kind of parallel right to exercise it, not only to protect life and property but to protect one's honor and to protect one's social or racial status. In the past that has been a legitimate grounds.

To that end, mass shootings and other examples of gun violence are one of the principal ways that America is truly an "exceptional" nation.

As I explained in an earlier essay at Salon:

The U.S. has the highest rate of gun-related deaths among wealthy nations. The number of deaths from gun violence would be even higher if not for dramatic recent advances in trauma and emergency medicine.

The U.S. has more guns per capita than any other country in the world — even more than Yemen, a nation torn apart for years by a bloody civil war. In fact, there are more guns in the United States than there are people. Gun violence is estimated to cost the U.S. economy more than $200 billion a year, according to a 2019 report.

It is especially worth noting that just 3 percent of gun owners possess half the total number of guns in America. Some of these "super-owners" have dozens of guns. They are overwhelmingly white and male. …

While gun "advocates" have created superhero narratives, such as the fantasy about "a good guy with a gun" who stops "a bad guy with a gun," the reality is that a gun owner is much more likely to shoot a family member, a neighbor, a friend or themselves — by accident or suicide — than a criminal assailant. "Defensive gun use" statistics are inaccurate and wildly exaggerated.

Many members of the right-wing chattering class and others of that tribe are responding to Michael Moore's basic observations about guns and American culture as though they had suffered a narcissistic injury. This is true more generally in how the American right responds to nearly all attempts to enact reasonable gun safety laws.

But what is the source of this injury? For many gun owners, especially right-wing white men, the gun is a key part of their core identities in terms of privilege, sense of self and power. It is not just the gun that they fear will be regulated — they believe their literal personal existence will be imperiled if access to guns were to somehow be even marginally curtailed. Such deep attachment to guns as an extension of the self is largely explained by what social psychologists have termed "terror management theory."

This posits that because human beings are aware of their own mortality, they therefore develop compensatory behaviors which include cultural institutions like religion and patriotism. Symbols such as flags, and in the case of Christianity the crucifix, have a totem-like power which gives the believer and follower a sense of immortality. These systems of meaning and dynamics are at work on both a conscious and subconscious level, for individuals and society as a whole.

In American culture, guns have effectively become sacred objects. In that role, the gun is a means of symbolic and literal protection from death. It is also a tool for getting and keeping one group's power over others as seen with the genocide of Native Americans, the enslavement of black people, militarized policing, and the creation and maintenance of American empire.

Moore's tweet about guns and American culture were even more triggering for conservatives and other members of the right because he included an image of the Statue of Liberty, a sacred object in the national imagination.

It is no coincidence that death anxieties are a key factor that correlate with high levels of support for Trumpism and other authoritarian movements.

Public opinion polls show that as mass shootings and other gun violence has increased in America, Republicans actually oppose gun safety efforts even more. Predictably — and far more logically — Democrats and liberals respond to mass shootings and other gun-violence tragedies with greater support for gun safety laws.

Death anxiety has a profound influence on American politics in other ways as well: In red-state regions where coronavirus rates (and death rates) are highest, support for Donald Trump during the 2020 Election was also at its highest. In essence, death and sickness have made Trump's followers increasingly loyal to him and the Republican Party.

Ultimately, America's inability to create and enforce effective gun laws is rooted in competing conceptions of freedom. Conservatives emphasize "negative freedom" and a belief that government should be shrunk down to the bare minimum, and that "freedom from" is the most important aspect of democracy and human existence.

Liberals, progressives and other more humane thinkers understand that government can play a positive role in society. In this conception, "positive freedom" means that citizens can live better and more productive lives where, for example, they are free from anxieties about being killed in a mass shooting, or free from the fear that they may fall ill and not have access to health care, or free from the fear that their environment is dangerously polluted.

To state this equation differently, a gun owner's freedom ends at the boundaries and limits of public safety. Likewise, the "personal freedom" not to wear a mask during the coronavirus pandemic ends at the health and safety of other people.

A healthy democracy always involves a balance between these positive and negative understandings of freedom.

What Michael Moore hinted at in his tweet about gun violence is the reality that we need to embrace a new form of American patriotism, one grounded in the facts and realities of American history, life and culture.

If the American people keep on lying to themselves about who they are, then the plague of mass shootings and gun violence will continue — and all the other existential problems in our society that feed into this epidemic of violence will keep getting worse as well.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

How Michael Moore Lost His Audience - Variety ›

Michael Moore: Filmmaker destroyed over Colorado shooting joke ... ›

---

https://theintercept.com/2020/09/22/stephen-paddock-las-vegas-shooting-far-right/

no lnx

tHREE YEARS AFTER the worst mass shooting in recent American history, the FBI has yet to identify a motive explaining what could have driven Stephen Paddock to open fire on a crowded music festival from a Las Vegas hotel window, killing 58 people and injuring many hundreds more. But the FBI, which has been notoriously slow to recognize right-wing threats in recent years, may have ignored a politically inconvenient explanation: Paddock, in our view, fit the profile of a far-right political extremist bent on sowing violence in society.

Paddock appeared fixated on three pillars of right-wing extremism: anti-government conspiracy theories, threats to Second Amendment rights, and overly burdensome taxes. For instance, one witness told Las Vegas police that Paddock was “kind of fanatical” about his anti-government conspiracies and that he believed someone had to “wake up the American public” and get them to arm themselves in response to looming threats. Family members and associates of Paddock painted a picture of a man who loathed restrictions on gun ownership and believed that the Second Amendment was under siege, according to our review of their statements to investigators after the shooting and other documents compiled by the authorities.

Some violent, far-right extremists, including the attacker in last year’s mass shooting at two New Zealand mosques, point as inspiration to the notion of “accelerationism”: their desire to create violent chaos in society, even a civil war. While that term hadn’t yet taken hold when Paddock opened fire on October 1, 2017 — and, as his final act, shot himself dead — his anti-government hostilities, his right-wing ideologies, and his violent rampage that night might qualify him as one of the first in a new wave of accelerationists.

The FBI and Las Vegas police each spent many months searching for a motive in the Las Vegas attack, and both agencies claimed to come up empty in the end. There was “no single or clear motivating factor behind Paddock’s attack,” an FBI panel concluded in a report released in January 2019, and it found “no evidence that Paddock’s attack was motivated by any ideological or political beliefs.” The FBI said that “throughout his life, Paddock went to great lengths to keep his thoughts private, and that extended to his final thinking about this mass murder,” much like many violent lone actors before him.

[Paddock’s anti-government hostilities, his right-wing ideologies, and his violent rampage that night might qualify him as one of the first in a new wave of accelerationists.]

The FBI’s silence on a possible motive is unsatisfying. Attacks carried out by Muslims and Middle Easterners are routinely labeled as terrorism inside the United States, while many of those carried out by non-Muslims like Paddock — a 64-year-old white man — often are not. It was not until earlier this year, after mounting evidence from outside studies, thatFBI Director Christopher Wray acknowledged, belatedly, that the bureau considered the rising threat of violent domestic extremists to be on a par with foreign and Islamic-inspired terrorist groups like the Islamic State. Then came the news earlier this month from a high-ranking Homeland Security whistleblower who said he had been pressured to downplay the threat of white supremacists and other intelligence that might be frowned upon by the Trump White House. Another high-ranking Homeland Security official made the same claim in a Forbes interview last month.

With the three-year anniversary of the Las Vegas massacre a week away, Paddock’s motives deserve closer scrutiny by the FBI and others — not only for understanding the rampage itself, but also for understanding a string of other deadly attacks carried out by right-wing extremists in recent months in response to the ongoing Black Lives Matter protests.

TO BE SURE, factors like Paddock’s declining mental health or an apparent downturn in his high-stakes gambling could also have played a part in his twisted thinking that night. We may never know for certain what would drive a man to barricade himself inside the Mandalay Bay resort with nearly two-dozen high-powered weapons and commit an act of such horrendous violence. But consider what is known about Paddock’s deep-set political beliefs and grievances on issues like guns and taxes.

[Kitchenette in the hotel room of Las Vegas gunman Stephen Paddock's 32nd floor room of the Mandalay Bay hotel in Las Vegas, an image released as part of a preliminary report by Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo on Jan. 19, 2018, in Las Vegas.Kitchenette in the hotel room of Stephen Paddock’s 32nd floor room of the Mandalay Bay hotel, an image released as part of a preliminary report by Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo on Jan. 19, 2018, in Las Vegas. Photo: Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department/AP]

Paddock “had an obsession with guns” and would become angry when challenged on the Second Amendment, according to Adam LeFevre, who dated the sister of Paddock’s partner. Paddock “made it very clear he would have no part of gun ownership restrictions,” said LeFevre, who got a glimpse of Paddock’s well-stocked gun room during a tour of his home, in another interview. Indeed, by the time of the attack, Paddock had amassed an arsenal of some 80 firearms, mostly assault-style rifles, in addition to stockpiling ammunition and some survivalist equipment — another glaring attribute of the far right.

“He was animated about the government and the tax system,” LeFevre told us in an email. “He was outspoken about the inadequacies and waste of the government.”

“He was animated about the government and the tax system. He was outspoken about the inadequacies and waste of the government.”

Paddock’s ardent opposition to gun restrictions bled into his embrace of a number of the debunked conspiracy theories that have helped to fuel a rise in right-wing extremism in recent years, according to the statements collected by the Las Vegas police, as well as interviews with journalists.

The month before the shooting, one unnamed associate recounted to Las Vegas police detectives that Paddock tried to bribe him into selling a gun part used to convert a semiautomatic firearm into a fully automatic machine gun, demonstrating a total disregard for federal firearms laws. When the associate refused because he said it would be illegal, Paddock reportedly became enraged and made references to a litany ofanti-government conspiracy theories, including supposed plans by the Federal Emergency Management Administration to set up “detention camps” of Americans and plans for widespread confiscation of firearms.Paddock believed that Hurricane Katrina in 2005 “was just a dry run for law enforcement and military to start kickin’ down doors and confiscating guns,” the associate said.

“He was kind of fanatical about this stuff,” the associate added, quoting Paddock as saying that “somebody has to wake up the American public and get them to arm themselves.”

Another witness interviewed in the investigation gave a similar account of Paddock’s fixation on anti-government conspiracy theories. A 27-year-old Las Vegas sex worker, who said she spent many hours drinking and gambling with Paddock,described him as “paranoid” and said that he would often rant about the American government’s orchestration of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Paddock, a high-stakes gambler at Las Vegas casinos, also held views on the burden of taxes — which might seem ironic, since he had worked for the IRS early in his career. In fact, the shooter’s younger brother, Eric Paddock, believed that Stephen, who was trained as an accountant, had gone to work for the IRS years earlier “in order to learn how to hide income,” according to the Las Vegas Metro Police Department’s final report on the shooting. Another brother, Bruce Paddock, recalled that Stephen would “juice” the family’s tax returns to get back thousands of dollars in refunds.

WHILE THE FBI has been reluctant to label many attacks by far-right figures as terrorism, outside academics and researchers who track terrorism have filled that void in recent years, compiling data on the growing amount of far-right violence. The managers of two exhaustive databases on terrorism incidents — the START program at the University of Maryland, which works with the Department of Homeland Security, and the Center for Investigative Reporting — decided to include Paddock’s Las Vegas massacre as an act of domestic terrorism, even though the FBI does not classify it that way.

[Related

In Buried Report, U.S. Government Admits Major Failures in Confronting Domestic Terrorism]

Trying to decipher the motives of a mass murderer like Paddock is no mere academic exercise; it is vital that law enforcement officials and policymakers are able to identify warnings signs and institute prevention strategies to try to head off the next attack. Too often, the system has fallen short, with clear warnings missed — and lives lost. Understanding Paddock’s motivations becomes even more critical in light of the violent responses to Black Lives Matters protests by a number of far-right agitators who, like Paddock, appear motivated by a passion for guns, extremist ideologies, and a desire to “wake up Americans” to their perceived plight.

President Donald Trump, with little evidence, has tried repeatedly to blame antifa and “left-wing” protesters for organized violence surrounding the protests. But in most cases of violence, evidence on the ground so far points instead to far-right, anti-government protesters — particularly members of the so-called boogaloo boys, who believe in conspiracies about the government’s confiscation of guns and predict a coming civil war in America.

[A group gathers around Patriot Prayer leader Joey Gibson for a prayer after a candlelight vigil Saturday, Sept. 5, 2020, in Vancouver, Wash., for Aaron "Jay" Danielson, who was fatally shot in Portland, Ore.A group gathers around Patriot Prayer leader Joey Gibson for a prayer after a candlelight vigil on Sept. 5, 2020, in Vancouver, Wash., for Aaron “Jay” Danielson, who was fatally shot in Portland, Ore. Photo: Alisha Jucevic/The Columbian via AP]

Prosecutors have linked the boogaloos and armed, right-wing militia groups to a series of violent episodes, including the fatal shootings of law enforcement officers in Oakland and Santa Cruz, Calif., the shooting of a Black Lives Matter protester in Albuquerque, N.M., the killing of two people at a protest in Kenosha, Wis., and — in Las Vegas itself — the attempted bombing of another protest.

Another far-right group called Patriot Prayer has been involved in a series of increasingly volatile and sometimes violent clashes with Black Lives Matter protesters in its support for Trump. One of Patriot Prayer’s members, Aaron Danielson, was shot and killed in a Portland demonstration during an apparent confrontation with Michael Reinoehl, who was later killed by federal authorities in the state of Washington. Danielson’s death is the first known killing carried out by anyone affiliated with antifa during the recent wave of unrest.

[Related

Leaked Documents Show Police Knew Far-Right Extremists Were the Real Threat at Protests, Not “Antifa”]

Admittedly, the idea that Stephen Paddock’s rampage in Las Vegas may have been driven by right-wing extremism still leaves many questions unanswered — such as why he would pick a country music festival as his target or what finally drove him to violence. After all, there are plenty of conspiracy-minded, gun-toting tax haters who never kill anyone.

Paddock left behind no note or manifesto explaining his actions — unlike a number of recent mass murderers motivated by far-right grievances who wrote screeds that laid out their hatreds. That list includes Dylann Roof, who killed nine black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015; Patrick Crusius, accused of killing 23 people last year at a Walmart in El Paso frequented by many Latinos; and Brenton Tarrant, who killed 51 people last year at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand.

In his New Zealand screed last year, Tarrant, a white supremacist angry at immigrants, wrote of his adherence to the idea of using violence to speed accelerationism and destabilize society, giving the idea a much wider platform on social media. This violent extremist concept has existed for decades, but those on the far right in the United States — both anti-government extremists and white supremacists — have reinvigorated this concept in recent years in an attempt to foment violence and civil war.

The clues to his political motives certainly merit further review from law enforcement officials to help solve the mystery of what drove him to massacre those dozens of concertgoers.

We asked officials at both the FBI and the Las Vegas Police Department whether they believed that Paddock may have been motivated by extreme right-wing ideologies, given what is now known about his beliefs. The FBI and Las Vegas police referred us back to their 2018 reviews of the attack, which were unable to pinpoint a motive. In releasing that report, Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo said at the time: “What we have been able to answer are the questions of who, what, when, where and how. What we have not been able to definitively answer is the ‘why’ Stephen Paddock committed this act.”

Both of us have examined from a close vantage point the rise of right-wing extremism — and resistance from the federal government in recognizing it. Daryl Johnson was the author of a 2009 report at DHS on the rising threat, which was retracted under political pressure by Republicans, and he has written two books on the subject. Eric Lichtblau has written about the subject extensively over the years, including an article in The Intercept in June about an intelligence report acknowledging the government’s failings in confronting the threat of domestic extremists.

People may disagree, based on the evidence, about whether Paddock should be considered part of the rogue’s gallery of ideologically inspired, right-wing killers — alongside people like Roof in Charleston and Crusius in El Paso. But the clues to his political motives certainly merit further review from law enforcement officials to help solve the mystery of what drove him to massacre those dozens of concertgoers on that October night three years ago. The families of the victims deserve it, and the government’s efforts to head off the next massacre demand it.

Kenosha shooter Kyle Rittenhouse's Mom receives standing ovation at GOP event in Wisconsin

AlterNet Staff

September 25, 2020

Highlights from a Republican women's event in Waukesha, WI., have left many Twitter users appalled by the series of events that unfolded.

---

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/19-years-after-9-11-americas-biggest-terrorist-threat-is-far-right-white-supremacists-who-love-trump/

it was 19 years ago, on September 11, 2001, that the United States suffered the deadliest terrorist attack in its history. Almost 3000 people were killed when members of the terrorist group al-Qaeda hijacked four airplanes, flying two of them into the World Trade Center in New York City and one of them into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.; the fourth plane crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Although the 9/11 terrorist attacks underscored the dangerous fanaticism of far-right Islamist groups, countless Republicans and supporters of President Donald Trump have ignored or downplayed another terrorist threat from the far right — white supremacy and white nationalism — and that threat is alive and well in the Trump era.

:{:{}:

Time and time again, Fox News and others in the far-right media have encouraged Republicans to believe that Islamist groups like al-Qaeda, ISIS (Islamic State, Iraq and Syria) and Boko Haram have the market cornered on terrorism. Fox News will cover white supremacist attacks, but in a calmer way; when Islamists carry out terrorist attacks, Fox News’ message is, “Be afraid. Be very afraid.” And anti-Islam extremists like Jihad Watch’s Robert Spencer and his ally, Pamela Geller, would have us believe that the terrorist threat posed by white supremacists and white nationalists and the terrorist threat posed by Islamist groups are in no way comparable. But one need only look at the history of white supremacist terrorism to realize how ignorant that claim is.

To be sure, the Islamist ideology of ISIS and al-Qaeda — which is anti-democratic, anti-feminist and anti-gay — is something that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation should keep a close eye on. But it’s important to stress that groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda are by no means typical of Islam on the whole; countless Muslims, as even President George W. Bush acknowledged, reject that ideology. And when it comes to terrorism, the claim that white supremacists are white nationalists are somehow less dangerous than radical Islamists is ludicrous.

White nationalists and white supremacists have carried out one terrorist attack after another in the Trump era.

item: in August 2019, more than 20 people were killed after a racist gunman opened fire at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas and killed more than 20 people, mostly Latino. His motivation was to combat “the Hispanic invasion of Texas.”

Item: in October 2018, a white supremacist/white nationalist gunman attacked the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, killing 11 people simply because they were Jewish.

Item: in 2018, domestic terrorist and Trump supporter Cesar Sayoc mailed a series of pipe bombs to prominent Democrats, including Barack and Michelle Obama and Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Item: in 2019, white nationalist Christopher Hasson, a U.S. Coast Guard lieutenant, was arrested on gun and drug charges and — according to law enforcement — was planning a terrorist plot against critics of Trump. Hasson’s hit list, investigators said, ranged from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Sen. Elizabeth Warren to media figures like CNN’s Chris Cuomo and MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough (a former Republican congressman and Never Trump conservative).

Item: at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017, neo-Nazi James Fields, Jr. rammed his vehicle into a group of counterdemonstrators and killed activist Heather Heyer. Fields was sentenced to life in prison.

Item: federal investigators have accused Steven Carrillo, a member of the far-right Boogaloo movement, of fatally shooting a security officer in Oakland on May 29.

But despite all that, Trump and his sycophants have downplayed the terrorist threat that white supremacists and white nationalists pose in the United States. Trump’s analysis of terrorism is painfully flawed. While he is correct that radical Islamists are a threat, Trump’s claim that left-wing Antifa is a terrorist movement is absolute nonsense: Antifa, for all their militant rhetoric, do not carry out the type of attacks that ISIS or the Ku Klux Klan are known for and do not fit the definition of terrorists. And Trump seriously downplays the threat posed by white nationalist extremists like QAnon and the Boogaloo movement (which calls for a race war).

Elizabeth Neumann, a conservative Republican who formerly served as assistant secretary of counterterrorism and threat prevention at the Department of Homeland Security, has announced that she plans to vote for former Vice President Joe Biden in November — and one of the main reasons is the fact that Trump has been downplaying the white nationalist/white supremacist threat. During a recent interview with National Public Radio, Neumann explained that for too long, Trump was uncomfortable with the term “domestic terrorism.”

Neumann told NPR, “The irony is that when (Trump) finally was comfortable with using the word domestic terrorism, it was in the context of Antifa and trying to exploit or sell a story that the looting and the violence that we have seen somewhat associated with peaceful protests is Antifa. And yet, if you look at the arrests that have occurred in the protests of the summer, it’s the Boogaloo movement — or it’s an association with QAnon. It’s the right side of the spectrum; it is not Antifa.”

Of course, white supremacist terrorism didn’t start in the Trump era. The Ku Klux Klan has been carrying out terrorist attacks for generations. But in the Trump era, white supremacists and white nationalists feel empowered by his racist rhetoric.

One of the most idiotic talking points one sometimes hears in the right-wing media is that the KKK are liberals. Never mind the fact that the KKK have a long history of targeting liberals and progressives for terrorist attacks.

The way to honor the memories of the victims of the 9/11 terror attacks is not by promoting Islamophobia. President George W. Bush, for all his blunders, was spot on when he characterized al-Qaeda as a disgrace to Islam. The victims of 9/11, 19 years later, are honored by showing compassion for the victims of terrorist attacks in general — included those killed or injured by white nationalist and white supremacist supporters of President Donald Trump.

---

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

david n kos

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

:{:{}:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

an 220

The study also pointed to a particular area of concern: namely, the ability of these extremists to simply blend into existing power structures, including law enforcement and the military. One “boogaloo” enthusiast, Coast Guardsman Christopher Hasson, was arrested with a full arms cache and a plan to assassinate liberal political leaders. A Patriot Wave member is quoted in the study: “Some of the guys we were with aren’t exactly out of the military yet, so they had to keep their faces covered.”

---

https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/white-extremists-are-on-the-rise-around-the-world-emboldened-by-heroes-and-hate-music/

(AFP) – They may lack centralised organisation or even a common goal, but white supremacists encouraged by the exploits of extremist “heroes” canonised on social media pose an ever-growing security threat, analysts say. After nine people in Germany were killed by a gunman with “a very deeply racist attitude,” the country’s interior minister on Friday warned that the far right still posed a “very high” security threat.The shootings on Wednesday at a shisha bar and a cafe in the city of Hanau were the latest in a growing list of attacks in the West attributed to self-appointed defenders

...

Emboldened by 'heroes' and hate music, white extremists on the rise

AFP

Didier LAURAS

,AFP•February 21, 2020

[A day after nine people were killed by a gunman with "a very deeply racist attitude," Germany's interior minister warned that the far right still posed a "very high" security threat (AFP Photo/Odd ANDERSEN)

Paris (AFP) - They may lack centralised organisation or even a common goal, but white supremacists encouraged by the exploits of extremist "heroes" canonised on social media pose an ever-growing security threat, analysts say.

After nine people in Germany were killed by a gunman with "a very deeply racist attitude," the country's interior minister on Friday warned that the far right still posed a "very high" security threat.

The shootings on Wednesday at a shisha bar and a cafe in the city of Hanau were the latest in a growing list of attacks in the West attributed to self-appointed defenders of a "white race" perceived to be under threat from migration, globalisation and Islam.

From Christchurch to Pittsburg, Halle to El Paso, militants have been emboldened by a narrative of hatred spread on the internet with an ease that observers find worrying.

"This digital ecosystem is fuelling a cumulative momentum, which serves to lower 'thresholds' to violence for those engaged in this space, both in the United States and elsewhere," Graham Macklin, assistant professor at the Center for Research on Extremism at the University of Oslo, said in a recent article.

One attack "encourages and inspires another, creating a growing 'canon' of 'saints' and 'martyrs' for others to emulate," he wrote -- noting that Norwegian neo-Nazi Anders Behring Breivik, who massacred 77 people in 2011, had become "an aspirational figure" for many.

Internet a 'facilitator' -

According to the Soufan Center, a global security think-tank, white supremacism has entered a phase of globalisation driven by niche websites popular among neo-Nazis, such as Gab and 8chan, and even the so-called "white power" music scene.

"White supremacy extremists rely on a diverse set of techniques to radicalise potential recruits," it said in a recent report, with attackers "lionised" on such platforms "as heroes, martyrs, 'saints,' 'commanders' and other honorifics."

White extremists do not share a single, common goal -- some seek self rule, others the expulsion of minorities -- but all believe their "race" to be under threat.

Many adherents to transnational white supremacy extremism hold millenarian and apocalyptic beliefs about an imminent race war, with some ardent believers in the end of time and influenced by elements of Christian identity," Soufan said.

Some believe their governments are conspiring with minority populations to bring about their demise -- the so-called Great Replacement theory, based on the title of a 2011 book by French writer Renaud Camus.

Anais Voy-Gillis, an extreme right specialist at the French Institute of Geopolitics, said: "The current context, with notably the migrant crisis of 2015, has surely contributed to the radicalisation of many people who are now ready to cross over to action."

Not only fringe sites are used to spread messages of fear, hate, and racial superiority.

The gunman who attacked two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, last March, killing 51 Muslim worshippers, live-streamed his attack live on Facebook.

A few months later, an anti-Semitic attack in the east German city of Halle, which claimed two lives, was posted on the streaming platform Twitch.

"There are many radical groups in the world and the internet is a facilitator for them to get together nationally and even internationally," Voy-Gillis told AFP.

- 'Exporter' of white supremacism -

In Europe, a well-organised coordination of far-right efforts seems unlikely, for now.

Last June, a French parliamentary committee conducted an analysis of far-right groups in the country, including attempts to make contact with like-minded organisations elsewhere in Europe, notably in Germany, Greece, Belgium, Italy, Britain, Spain and Austria.

At the time, the boss of France's DGSI domestic intelligence service Nicolas Lerner told investigators the chances were "extremely limited" that these movements would have the ability to work together at a European level.

But within a country's borders, the threat is real.

German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said Friday that right-wing extremism was the "biggest security threat" facing his country, as he announced a more visible police presence and bolstered surveillance at mosques, train stations, airports and borders.

In the United States, an FBI report last November showed that 65 percent of "lone wolf" perpetrators of terror attacks where white.

Nearly a fifth (19 percent) of 52 such attacks committed in the United States between 1972 and 2015 were motivated by ideologies "advocating for the superiority of the white race," it found.

It was the same percentage as attackers motivated by radical Islamist doctrine.

"For almost two decades, the United States has pointed abroad at countries who are exporters of extreme Islamist ideology," Russell Travers, acting director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said in November.

"We are now being seen as the exporters of white supremacist ideology; that's a reality with which we are going to have to deal," he said. yahoo

---

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/hiding-in-plain-sight-the-white-nationalist-who-toiled-inside-a-right-wing-media-powerhouse

...

More Than a Decade of Racist Material

[Michael J. Thompson and Devin Saucier pose with Rep. Steve King of Iowa at a Virginia golf resort during a Republican election celebration. (Image courtesy of Katie McHugh)]

Paul Kersey is the name of the main character in the “Death Wish” film series. Kersey is a bleeding-heart liberal who roams the streets searching for criminals to murder in the name of vigilante justice after his wife and daughter are beaten and raped. In a scene from the first film, released in 1974, cocktail?-party guests can be heard discussing the vigilante murders.

“I’ll tell you one thing, the guy’s a racist. You notice he kills more blacks than whites,” a male guest says.

“Oh, for Pete’s sake, Harry, more blacks are muggers than whites,” a woman replies. “What do you want us to do, increase the proportion of white muggers so we’ll have racial equality among muggers?”

Black crime is a favorite topic on Thompson’s blog, Stuff Black People Don’t Like?, which he launched in May 2009, as noted in a post celebrating its 10th anniversary. On the blog, Thompson presents misleading? content designed to further arguments for reintroducing racial segregation in America, which he believes the country was foolish to abandon, and for reorganizing the powers of the government to enforce a ruling white supermajority in the United States. Tweets citing Paul Kersey blog posts have been retweeted by far-right commentator Ann Coulter, who could not be reached for comment.

During a 2016 appearance ?as “Paul Kersey” on thewhite supremacist web outlet Red Ice, Thompson said that his blog began as a joke between friends but quickly became more serious after he was convinced that Detroit had ?been destroyed? by African Americans who moved there during the Great Migration. The blog, which began on the Google-owned Blogspot site, is currently hosted on a website owned by far-right writer Ron Unz.

To this day, Thompson uses his Kersey byline to advance falsehoods asserting the genetic inferiority of black people and spin reports of crimes committed by black people to justify the creation and implementation of racist government policies. He has called black men “the biggest terror threat to America” and claimed that black people are more prone to violence than white people for biological reasons. He once described black people as “America’s greatest liability, dragging down western civilization to the black mean wherever they are found.”

When Barack Obama was president, Thompson spun into meltdown after meltdown, repeatedly railing what he called “Black-Run America” and claiming that electing an African American president had solidified “the United States’ permanent decline.” That kind of repulsion for black people carries into Thompson’s vision of the United States.

In one article Thompson?, writing as Kersey, co-authored with Taylor for American Renaissance, ?the pair argued ?that the anniversary of the United States Naturalization Law of March 26, 1790, which limited the acceptance of immigrants to the United States to free white people, should be recognized as American Independence Day, rather than July 4. Thompson has also denounced the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which did away with racial quotas for immigration?.

Thompson has repeatedly promoted the white supremacist “Great Replacement” myth—the notion that the white populations of various countries are being “replaced” by black- and brown-skinned immigrants. He’s currently writing a book under the Kersey byline ?called “The Great Replacement in the USA,” according to a recent Kersey blog post.Since the Christchurch, New Zealand, massacre on March 15, 2019—where a white supremacist uploaded a manifesto crediting the myth as his reason for killing 51 Muslim worshipers in two mosques—Thompson has promoted the “great replacement” myth in at least twelve Kersey blog posts.

“The Great Replacement is not only real, but leveling the civilization our ancestors built in the United States and slowly – but surely – erasing the rights we were granted. Sadly, we are learning they are not inalienable, but easily defeated simply because demography is destiny. And democracy is nothing more than a racial headcount,” Thompson wrote in November.

“Kersey” has published a volume of columns and books that rivals some of the country’s most prolific white supremacist propagandists. He has appeared on podcasts alongside well-documented white nationalists, including Spencer and Greg Johnson, and regularly co-hosts the American Renaissance podcast with Taylor.

His Nearly Clean Getaway

The pavement was wet and the suburban sidewalks quiet in a middle-class neighborhood sprung from the ruins of a coal-mining town after the mine closed down. Most of the white wood mailbox posts display the last name of the family that resides in the home they belong to, but the post is blank where Thompson is thought to live in Midlothian, Virginia.

Tracking down Thompson was a difficult task, due to how diligent he has been in obscuring his identity and maintaining a low profile in conservative society since his time at WorldNetDaily. When I drove by the home, I caught only a glimpse of a man who I thought looked like Thompson, and who withdrew inside his garage after I stopped my vehicle in front of his home. Multiple attempts to reach Thompson via email failed. His neighbors declined to talk to us.

We were unable to determine whether Thompson continues to work anywhere using his real name, or if his income comes primarily from his role within the white nationalist movement. Thompson’s former colleagues, employers, and friends declined to speak with us, except for Epstein, who called us and then declined to be interviewed after we informed him about this report’s subject matter.

Thompson seemingly maneuvered himself into the heart of right-wing politics in Washington and escaped without a scratch, unlike many of his peers who saw their careers implode. It’s not clear who knew about Thompson’s moonlighting and to what extent he is still in communication with employees at right-wing media outlets and The Leadership Institute.

I tried to imagine Thompson coming back to the two-story home in the suburbs of Richmond, Virginia, turning into the gentle curves of the road and rolling up the driveway to greet his children; it’s a serene picture of an unassuming American life. But online, Thompson authors vitriolic material for racist websites that Trump’s top policy adviser on immigration apparently reads. That much he can no longer hide.

Update: This article previously stated that the Youth for Western Civilization student group received support from white nationalists at its founding. The story has been updated to reflect that the group reportedly received such support in 2011.

Tags: Joseph FarahMichael ThompsonAlt-RightRacismwhite nationalismwhite supremacyBreitbartLeadership InstituteWorldNetDaily

---

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/neo-nazis-virginia-gun-rally_n_5e221a24c5b63211761391ad

no lnx pix vid

6 Suspected Neo-Nazis Have Now Been Arrested In Lead-Up To Virginia Gun Rally

The men are all alleged members of The Base, a white supremacist group that hopes to start a race war.

By Sebastian Murdock

George Bush Praises ImmigrationGeorge Bush Praises Immigration

Six neo-Nazis have been arrested just days before a gun rally in Virginia is expected to draw thousands, including far-right extremists.

Three Georgia men were arrested Friday on charges of conspiracy to commit murder and participating in a criminal street gang as members of The Base, a white supremacist group that seeks to start a race war.The suspects are Luke Austin, Michael Helterbrand and Jacob Kaderli, The Associated Press reported.

:{:{}:

The men are accused of seeking out antifascists to kill, and were planning to “overthrow the government and murder a Bartow County couple,” the Floyd County Police Department said in a statement.

Left to right: Luke Austin Lane, Jacob Kaderli and Michael Helterbrand are all suspected neo-Nazis who allegedly planned to t

FLOYD COUNTY POLICE DEPARTMENT]

Left to right: Luke Austin Lane, Jacob Kaderli and Michael Helterbrand are all suspected neo-Nazis who allegedly planned to target and kill antifascists.

Atlanta Antifascists, a group that works to confront and expose fascists throughout Georgia, told HuffPost the news of the arrests “underscores that organized white supremacists remain a threat to our communities.”

“Targeting people as members of our group has become a favorite pastime of violent white supremacists,” Atlanta Antifascists said. “Many of these people are not even connected to organized antifascism at all — they simply have become caught in the crosshairs. This is part of a concerted attempt by fascists to create a general attitude of terror and paranoia. We extend our solidarity to all members of the community targeted by white supremacy and fascism and encourage everyone to watch out for each other and keep each other safe.”

The arrests came a day after three other suspected neo-Nazis affiliated with The Base were arrested in Maryland. One of the men, Patrik Mathews, fled Canada earlier last year after his white supremacy ties were discovered. A former reservist in the Canadian Army, Mathews trained as a combat engineer and is an explosives expert.

Patrik Mathews fled Canada after his white supremacy ties were discovered.

RCMP

Patrik Mathews fled Canada after his white supremacy ties were discovered.]

Authorities said Mathews is a top recruiter for the terrorist group and was allegedly planning to start violence at Monday’s gun rally in Virginia along with accomplices Brian Lemley and William Bilbrough IV. Police found guns and more than 1,500 rounds of ammunition during the arrests.

Monday’s rally in Richmond is expected to draw thousands of people who oppose recent gun control bills introduced in the state legislature, including one that would require universal background checks for firearm purchase and another that would limit people from buying more than one handgun per month.

Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) declared a temporary state of emergency on Wednesday banning all guns from the state Capitol grounds amid threats of violence from far-right extremists.

“We have received credible intelligence from our law enforcement agencies of threats of violence surrounding the demonstration planned for Monday, January 20,” Northam said in a tweet. “This includes extremist rhetoric similar to what has been seen before major incidents, such as Charlottesville in 2017.”

Organizers of the rally, anti-gun control group Virginia Citizens Defense League, falsely accused Democratic leaders of inviting violent groups to the rally following the temporary ban on guns.

“[Democrats] would love for it to degenerate to ‘violence, rioting, and insurrection’ in order to smear gun owners,” the group said in a statement. “Has the Democrat leadership actually invited violent groups to attend for the purpose of disrupting our peaceful assembly?”

Hours after the statement, three of the suspected neo-Nazis were arrested. The VCDL did not respond to a request for comment.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/how-racists-cynically-market-hate-by-hijacking-mainstream-symbolism/

no lnx

How racists cynically market hate by hijacking mainstream symbolism

Written by David Neiwert / Daily Kos January 14, 2020

The gun that Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, showed off on Instagram this week was intended to grab people’s attention: An AR-15 semiautomatic rifle adorned with dubious Christian “Crusader” decorations, sold by a Florida gunmaker who assures buyers that they are “inspired by some of the most fierce warriors who fought in nearly 200 years of epic conflicts known as the Crusades.”

In addition to the pseudo-medieval decorations, the gun (called “The Crusader”) featured a magazine decorated with a caricature image of Hillary Clinton behind bars.

A Trump Jr. spokesperson told The Hill: “The Instagram post was strictly about him using a famous meme to mock Hillary Clinton, as he and many others have done on numerous occasions and will surely do again in the future, so long as it continues triggering humorless liberals.”

However, the gun itself and its decorations were what caught a lot of people’s attention, since the Crusades and medieval mythology are yet another field of mainstream culture that has been appropriated by the racist alt-right in recent years. The way alt-right activists deploy such symbology—ironically, with full awareness of its mainstream meaning, behind which the people wielding them cynically hide by claiming that the people offended or disturbed by their use are simply oversensitive liberals—is similar to the alt-right’s similar appropriation of such mainstream symbols as the “OK” hand signal, or the cartoon Pepe the Frog and its permutations.

As with all these ploys, it’s frequently difficult to discern the user’s motives. Is it an innocent display intended to invoke its established mainstream meaning? Or is it a surreptitious (and cynical) expression of affiliation with racist ideology?

The ensuing confusion has a twin effect: It simultaneously creates chaos within the realm of mainstream discourse, while it provides cover for the spread of that racist ideology and its organizing.

“The adoption of these symbols is meant largely as a way ofsignaling anti-Muslim sentiment in particular, but also this notion that Christianity needs to retake western civilization,” Howard Graves, a senior research analyst at the Southern Poverty Law Center, told CNN.

Trump’s spokesman told CNN there was no connection, saying that “Symbols on firearms depicting various historical warriors are extremely common within the 2nd Amendment community.”

The gunmaker, Rare Breed Firearms, responded angrily: “It’s objectively silly and dishonest for leftwing groups, like the SPLC, to claim that this symbol on our Crusader model has anything to do with hate or an extremist ideology,” said CEO Cole Lelux. “In other words, these people have no idea what they’re talking about and should apologize for their outrageous smears.”

When Rare Breed first began making the gun, it explained the religious connotations of its decorations to the Orlando Sentinel in xenophobic terms: “They believe America and much of the world is threatened by Islamic terrorism and the Crusader is a symbol of shared Christian values and the right to defend themselves, he said. The safety selector that controls the Crusader’s trigger has three settings: Peace, War and God Wills It.”

Trump’s gun featured an etching of a Bible verse as well as the Latin phrase “Deus Vult,” another medieval term meaning “God wills it”—a phrase with an ominous quality, since the alt-right ideologues latching onto Crusader mythology have adopted it as their personal battle cry. It appeared on the streets ofCharlottesville in 2017, and still crops up regularly in far-right demonstrations involving such hate groups as the Proud Boys.

It turned up recently at the scene of the attempted firebombing of a Planned Parenthood women’s health clinic in Newark, Delaware. An 18-year-old man named Samuel Gulick spray-painted “Deus Vult” on an exterior wall before he threw a lit incendiary device into the building, police said.

Police investigators were able to identify Gulick through a combination of video evidence and his social media posts, in which he frequently used “Deus Vult” and ranted against abortion. More broadly,Gulick eagerly participated in alt-right ideology, using a Pepe-esque “Groyper” cartoon as his online avatar and posting viciously anti-Semitic and anti-LGBT sentiments.

One post featured a link to an article about transgender girl, on which he commented: “Hans, get the flamethrower.”

“The Nazis said killing millions of Jews was a national health issue. Democrats are using the same excuse to kill American children,” Gulick wrote in another post. “When will we start shooting? Its about time we kill these genocidal demons.”

His social media posts were filled with references to the Crusaders, as were those of another teenager charged last August in a strikingly similar case. Justin Olsen, an 18-year-old Ohio man, was charged with threatening federal officers for posts fantasizing about the murders of FBI agents after the 1993 tragedy involving the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas. Olsen operated an iFunny page titled “Army of Christ” adorned with images of Christian Crusade knights.

White nationalist fanboys’ love affair with the Crusades dates primarily back to 2011, when Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik published a manifesto titled “2083—A European Declaration of Independence,” adorned with Crusader imagery and demanding a “Second Crusade” in which Muslims would be driven out of European nations—just before setting off a truck bomb in downtown Oslo that killed eight people, and then murdering 69 teenage campers at a socialist youth camp.

At his trial, it emerged that Breivik claimed to be a member of a modern-day group of “Knights Templar,” the 12th-century military order. According to Breivik, an April 2002 meeting of the “Knights” in London featured pseudonyms for the participants such as “Richard the Lionheart” and “Sigurd the Crusader.”

More recently, the Christchurch shooter claimed a similar kind of affiliation in his manifesto, and the weapons he used to murder 51 people in March 2019 were scrawled with references to crusading knights. Fittingly, he also notoriously flashed the “OK” white-power symbol with his hands.

The Crusades have also been adopted by a broad range of alt-right activists, notably at neo-Nazi websites such as The Daily Stormer, where pro-Trump memes featuring Crusade imagery have been common. The debate has even made its way into academia. As Joseph Livingstone explained in The New Republic, all of these reinterpretations are travesties of history—and the internet has played a critical role in producing them.

Hijacking vaguely understood religious belief systems for their own ends is nothing new for the American radical right. In the early 1980s, a number of neo-Nazis—choosing to reject the racist “Christian Identity” movement popular among their ranks at the time, on the grounds that Jesus was Jewish and therefore tainted—instead decided to adopt certain ancient Nordic religions as their “true faith,” most notably the Odinist religion Asatru.

That trend has intensified in recent years, thanks in no small part to the increasing reach of far-right ideologies on the Internet. It’s also spread globally, and racists deploy it as a kind of cynical shield in much the same way as other appropriations from the mainstream.

Asatru recently turned up in news stories about a couple of Army National Guardsmen in Georgia who were given the boot after their activities as neo-Nazis were uncovered. Active in a local chapter of Asatru Folk Assembly, described by the SPLC as “perhaps this country’s largest neo-Völkisch hate group,” the men complained that they were being persecuted for their faith.

Ex-Guardsman Trent East told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that he is not a racist—rather, he’s simply interested in his ancestry and worshiping as his forebears did.

“The whole race thing started with me finding Asatru or Odinism or whatever you want to call it and seeing that as a better option than Christianity as a spirituality,” he said. “I’ve just never been a fan of Christianity, and so seeing a faith that was about my ethnic roots was something I could get into a little more.”

However, as the AJC noted, East’s social media profile—much of it deleted after he was exposed—told a very different story. It included “numerous memes and slogans popular among white supremacists, and his contacts include neo-Nazis and other extremists. After his doxxing, East opened an account on VK.com, a Russian social media platform popular among the racist far right.” He also attended a speech by alt-right godfather Richard Spencer in 2017, toting a sign bearing white nationalist slogans.

For white nationalists, disguising the vile bigotry inherent in their ideology is critical to their ongoing project to normalize their belief systems within the mainstream of society—which is why so many of them go to such lengths to deny their involvement or the existence of the innate racism in their movement.

As social media’s wide-open global distribution of ideas has taken hold, the work of camouflaging their beliefs has become increasingly sophisticated—particularly the way it hijacks popular internet behaviors such as trolling and the use of ironic language as both vehicles for ideas as well as means of intimidating and threatening their critics. This is central to the alt-right’s appeal to its targeted core demographic—namely, young white males between the ages of 12 and 30.

Talia Lavin at GQ acutely observes that Donald Trump Jr.’s exercise in indulging this mindset on his Instagram account—intentional, accidental, or otherwise—fits in neatly with the White House’s current push to war in the Middle East, one in which the underlying premise is that “war is holy”: “It’s a Knight Templar with an AR-15; it’s Arabic script as a signal of enmity. That’s the signal Donald Trump Jr. was sending, with his snug Crusader gun-helmet. And it may be ensconced even deeper in the halls of power, with those formally entrusted with our nation’s security under the Trump regime.”

The machinery of hate thus encompasses both the individual nebbishes—hiding in the dark corners of the Internet, ever-fearful about revealing themselves as the face of hate even as they revel in it as trolls—and their willing, if not always conscious, enablers who walk the world’s halls of power, as well as everyone in between. Mainstream observers, particularly those working in media, often feel confused by the resulting crossfire—unsure about the meanings of the wielded symbology, most likely feeling “left out”—and so dismiss the talk as functionally meaningless.

It’s not, particularly for the racist ideologues who organize and spread their hatefulness behind the resulting fog and smoke they throw up for the rest of us. Donald Trump Jr. may not have intended to send an encouraging, approving signal to white nationalists—it’s likely it never crossed his less-than-a-steel-trap mind—but intentions matter little in this arena.

That’s not how things work in the world of white nationalists. Just as with his father, these kinds of signals are received rapturously as proof that the Trumps are on their side, and that their values are shared by people at the very apex of the social ladder: thus, they feel deeply empowered. Any later denials are laughed at and excused as “what he has to do.”

The key to the game, no matter who’s playing, is plausible deniability for everybody involved. The alt-right has mastered its use as a way to market and spread the movement’s hate.

---

https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/trumps-national-security-adviser-pensacola-shooting-appears-to-be-a-terrorist-attack/

trump’s national security adviser: Pensacola shooting ‘appears to be a terrorist attack’

Matthew Rozsa

During an appearance on the CBS program “Face the Nation” on Sunday, White House national security adviser Robert O’Brien said that at a shooting at a naval base in Pensacola

... the shooting is to believed to have been perpetrated by Mohammed Alshamrani, 21, a second lieutenant in the Royal Saudi Air Force and student naval flight officer at the Naval Aviation Schools Command. Theshooting left three service members deadand eight others injured. The fatalities included Airman Mohammed Hathaim, 19, from St. Petersburg, Fla., Ensign Joshua Kaleb Watson, 23, from Coffee, Ala. and Airman Apprentice Cameron Scott Walters, 21, from Richmond Hill, Ga.

https://www.mediamatters.org/national-rifle-association/nra-offers-revisionist-history-santa-clarita-school-shooting-credit

one day after a California school shooting left two dead and three injured, the National Rifle Association issued a tweet that misleadingly credited the NRA and legislation it pushed with saving lives.

On November 14, a 16-year-old gunman opened fire with a .45-caliber pistol at his high school just outside of Los Angeles, killing two students and injuring three others before turning the gun on himself. The victims and survivors were all Saugus High School students, and the gunman remains in hospital in “grave condition.”

In a November 15 tweet, the NRA highlighted that the first responders on scene were off-duty police officers, before applauding itself for being “the driving force in the passage of LEOSA, allowing qualified off-duty current/retired officers to carry.”

Originally passed in 2004, the Law Enforcement Safety Act (LEOSA) gave current law enforcement officers in good standing, and former officers who retired in good standing, a government ID to carry a concealed weapon.

While the first responders at Saugus High School were off-duty police officers dropping their children off, and they did “likely” save lives according to authorities, they did not use firearms -- like the NRA tweet suggests -- and instead issued first aid. According to CNN, three off-duty officers “entered the school within seconds” of hearing gunshots, saw the gun, and “figured the threat was likely over and focused on saving victims.” The shooting unfolded in 16 seconds after the gunman’s firearm jammed and he ultimately turned it on himself.

This is not the first time the NRA has altered the details of mass shootings in order to credit guns with saving lives. Then-NRA spokesperson Dana Loeschran with an inaccurate report that the Christchurch mass shooting in New Zealand was stopped by a “good guy with a gun.” In actuality, a man inside the mosque where the shooting took place chased the gunman out and took his firearm but did not fire any shots.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/analyzing-online-posts-could-help-spot-future-mass-shooters-and-terrorists/

see conv

---

https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/furious-former-white-house-official-blasts-trump-video-of-church-slaughter-mass-shootings-are-not-jokes/

former White House official blasts Trump video of church slaughter: ’Mass shootings are not jokes!’Tom Boggioni / Raw Story

no lnx

Furious former White House official blasts Trump video of church slaughter: ’Mass shootings are not jokes!’

Written by Tom Boggioni / Raw Story October 14, 2019

A CNN panel was equally appalled and furious about a video that was shown at the conservative conference held at a hotel owned by Donald Trump that showed the president slaughtering church worshipers who represented CNN, NPR, MSNBC and Black Lives Matter in the “Church of Fake News.”

Speaking with hosts John Avlon and Alisyn Camerota, former President Bill Clinton communications director Joe Lockhart seemed visibly angry that it was shown at a conservative sanctioned event that featured Sarah Sanders and Don Trump Jr. as speakers.

Asked by Avlon, “Has there been anything remotly like this in American political history or something truly new and dangerous?”

“This is something truly new,” Lockhart responded. “We haven’t had the internet for that long of time, if you’re going over the sweep of history. that’s what allows this to be distributed widely. But we’ve had presidents who have denounced the media. We’ve had every president in the history of the country who has at times wanted to denounce them and probably had thoughts in their head about what they’d like to do.”

“But kept them inside their head,” Avlon prompted.

“This isn’t a case where some over-enthusiastic supporter did something,” Lockhart continued. “This is Nixonian in the sense that the campaign was sanctioning dirty tricks like Nixon did. Here the president is not blameless — he has retweeted these people’s memes. He has retweeted memes with things hitting CNN reporters in the head — they’re not funny.”

“What struck me from this video is this all happened in a church. The president — probably the biggest part of his base are churchgoers, evangelicals,” he added. “And they are now making fun of someone coming in and committing vicious murders in a church. I don’t care what the president does, he’s already lost his credibility on this. People who went to church yesterday who are going to wake up this morning and wake up and see the president and his supporters think it’s funny to commit violence in a church. ”

Watch below:

el paso and odessa same month?

Texas eases gun laws one day after Odessa massacre leaves 7 dead, 22 injured

Amy Goodman, Democracy Now

A gunman killed seven people and injured 22 others on Saturday, including a 17-month-old girl. Police have identified the shooter as 36-year-old Seth Ator.

no lnx an 919

crazy? evil? racist?

Police never responded when neighbor of Odessa, Texas shooter called to report him last month

Written by Sarah K. Burris / Raw Story September 2, 2019

The Odessa, Texas mass shooter was accused of threatening his neighbor last month with a rifle.

According to a CNN report, Veronica Alonzo said that the 36-year-old gunman, who killed seven people and injured 22, would frequently shoot out of a structure on top of his house.

The shooter was angry with Alonzo for putting her trash in one of his dumpsters. He threatened her with his rifle, she said.

She explained that he would often shoot at animals in his yard and retrieve them after they were dead.

Last month, however, she was forced to call the police, out of fear. She said that because the location doesn’t show up on GPS, police never responded.

According to Alonzo, the shooter’s home didn’t have any running water or electricity, and he could be seen over the winter sitting inside his Toyota Camry with the heat on to keep warm.

This isn’t the first time a mass shooting has exhibited dangerous behavior that police ignored. The shooter in Parkland, Florida, showed signs of violence and frequently shot his weapon in his backyard. Neighbors were similarly concerned and complained to police in that case as well.

Read the ongoing coverage of the latest mass shooting at CNN.

new

https://yyy.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/20/cult-of-columbine-how-the-high-school-shooting-motivated-a-murder-plot

NEW

ref 2 mma

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/rush-limbaugh-and-other-conservative-media-dismiss-ny-times-report-showing-el-paso-shooter

Conservative media figures dismissed an analysis from The New York Times showing hundreds of instances in which they used the same sort of anti-immigration rhetoric as the manifesto of the gunman who shot and killed 22 people in El Paso,TX, in early August.

El Paso mass shooter’s white supremacist manifesto echoed language used by prominent Fox News figures and other conservative media personalities

Multiple Fox News personalities have pushed rhetoric that white Americans are going to be “replaced” by non-white immigrants -- the same white supremacist conspiracy theory referenced by the El Paso shooter. The shooter wrote in his manifesto that he wanted revenge against “the Hispanic invasion of Texas” and warned of “cultural and ethnicreplacement.” Media Matters showed that multiple Fox News personalities, including prime-time hosts Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, had spread similar rhetoric on the channel. Media Matters, [8/5/19]

NY Times: “There is a striking degree of overlap between the words of right-wing media personalities and the language used by” the shooter. The New York Times conducted its own analysis of the manifesto written by the El Paso shooter and found that his numerous references to an “invasion” by Hispanics and cultural “replacement” of white people overlapped in hundreds of instances with comments from prominent Fox News and other conservative media personalities, including Carlson and Rush Limbaugh.

Tucker Carlson went on his prime-time Fox News show in April last year and told his viewers not to be fooled. The thousands of Central Americans on their way to the United States were “border jumpers,” not refugees, he said. “Will anyone in power do anything to protect America this time,” he asked, “or will leaders sit passively back as the invasion continues?”

When another group approached the border six months later,Ann Coulter, appearing as a guest on Jeanine Pirro’s Fox News show, offered a dispassionately violent suggestion about what could be done to stem the flow of migrants: “You can shoot invaders.”

A few days after, Rush Limbaugh issued a grim prognosis to his millions of radio listeners: If the immigrants from Central America weren’t stopped, theUnited States would lose its identity. “The objective is to dilute and eventually eliminate or erase what is known as the distinct or unique American culture,” Mr. Limbaugh said, adding: “This is why people call this an invasion.”

There is a striking degree of overlap between the words of right-wing media personalities and the language used by the Texas man who confessed to killing 22 people at a Walmart in El Paso this month. In a 2,300-word screed posted on the website 8chan, the killer wrote that he was “simply defending my country from cultural and ethnic replacement brought on by an invasion.”

It remains unclear what, or who, ultimately shaped the views of the white, 21-year-old gunman, or whether he was aware of the media commentary. But his post contains numerous references to “invasion” and cultural “replacement” — ideas that, until recently, were relegated to the fringes of the nationalist right.

An extensive New York Times review of popular right-wing media platforms found hundreds of examples of language, ideas and ideologies that overlapped with the mass killer’s written statement — a shared vocabulary of intolerance that stokes fears centered on immigrants of color. The programs, on television and radio, reach an audience of millions.

…

At the start of the El Paso suspect’s screed, he refers to the “great replacement,” a white supremacist conspiracy theory based on a French book that claims the migration of minority groups can lead to a “genocide” of white culture.

The El Paso suspect, who confessed to the mass shooting last week, claimed in the document he posted to be defending against a “Hispanic invasion of Texas.” The words “invasion” and “invaders” appear six times in the text, a stark parallel to the language heard on conservative television and talk radio today. The New York Times, [8/11/19]

Conservative media respond by attacking NY Times and mocking concern over white supremacist rhetoric

Radio host Rush Limbaugh suggested a 14-year-old quote from then-Sen. Barack Obama was as incendiary as his own language. Talk radio host Rush Limbaugh claimed of the New York Times story that “they worried about me because I called this invasion a ‘flood’” and then played an audio clip of remarks then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) made in December 2005 in which he used the phrase “flood of illegals” to distance his own rhetoric from the shooter’s. Premiere Radio Networks, *The Rush Limbaugh Show*, [8/12/19]

Limbaugh: NY Times story is just the latest attempt to sabotage me. During his second segment responding to the Times story, Limbaugh said it’s the latest in a long line of attempts to discredit him specifically and conservative media in general.

RUSH LIMBAUGH (HOST): I appreciate the emails that you have sent that I caught during the first breaks here in the program about not taking this thing in The New York Times today apparently seriously enough.

You know, when I know that there isn’t any truth to it, then that’s the primary reason I’m able to laugh at it. And I know the motivation behind it. They simply -- folks, they cannot defeat us on ideas or debates of ideas, in the arena of ideas.

It’s been a constant attempt by the left since I started this program to discredit me,to impugn me. And their purpose has been to make sure I don’t acquire an even larger audience. They are trying to poison the minds of people who don’t listen into never trying the program. That’s the objective of it, and that’s always been the objective.

…

Now we have an obviously deranged lunaticwho is just part of the crowd that has been influenced, but only influenced, by conservative media. This guy apparently, according to The New York Times, was immune to being influenced by anybody else. He was incapable of making up his own mind or coming to his own deranged conclusions on his own. And this has been the baseline, or foundational, attack on me and all of conservative media since it began.

It’s actually an attack on all of you.That you’re dumb, uninformed hicks who don’t know anything and don’t think anything every day until you get marching orders after listening to this program or as a result of listening. This has always been absurd. And I think it’s always been a very weak and very, very telling admission on their part, and that is they hold average people in contempt. Average people are not smart enough to think on their own. They’re not smart enough to live life the right way. They’re not smart enough to make the right decisions, even with their own money.

So I don’t get worked up by it anymore because it’s been a feature of 30 years. And I’ll tell you this. By righteously opposing it and standing here -- sitting here -- pounding my fists on the table and acting out is not gonna stop it, either. I just mock it. I just try to make fun of it. And then I welcome other people to the montage. Now they’re adding -- you know, it used to just be me. Now they’re throwing a bunch of other people into it because conservative media has expanded and become so big that now their efforts to destroy conservative media go beyond me. Premiere Radio Networks, *The Rush Limbaugh Show*, [8/12/19]

The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro dismissed those linking conservative media rhetoric to the El Paso shooter as a “conspiracy theory.”

BEN SHAPIRO (HOST): Again, I don’t like the language of “invasion,” and I don’t believe I’ve used it. If I had, I’m sorry I did, because I don’t think that it is correct. But I’m fairly certain I never did, because I never considered it a quote-unquote “invasion” when illegal immigrants cross our southern border. But -- and I certainly don’t believe in the idea of quote-unquote “racial replacement,” because I literally do not care about the races of people who live in America. I care about their ideas and their ideology.

But The New York Times decides that because there is language that sounds similar to stuff that Tucker Carlson has said, they’re now going to attribute this shooter to Tucker.

…

Again, this is a conspiracy theory:{. And a conspiracy theory, this one, is deliberately designed in order to link together basic conservative tropes about immigration with white supremacism. The Daily Wire, :(style="background-color:#eff3f7ff"):}:*The Ben Shapiro Show*:{, :(style="background-color:#eff3f7ff"):}:[8/12/19:{]}:

Breitbart News Daily's Alex Marlow: NY Times story is “such bad journalism,” and “they’re going to have blood on their hands” for taking the shooter’s manifesto seriously.

ALEX MARLOW (HOST): This is where I’m obsessed with this story from yesterday, where The New York Times had five bylines on how the El Paso killer echoed the incendiary words of conservative media stars and they cited something like 50 or 60 examples of [unintelligible] -- almost everyone on Fox News personalities using the term “invasion.” And this assumes so much -- it's such bad journalism because it is, it assumes a couple of key things.

First of all, it assumes that because the -- it takes the manifesto seriously, which I keep saying is a mistake that only will encourage more serial killers or more mass shooters. These are lunatic ravings that are designed to give attention. And to give attention to it, and to take it literally, it means that all you have to do is write something and then shoot people, and then you get a platform forever for whatever insane ideas you have. So I think the media taking these manifestos literally is actually going to -- they’re going to have blood on their hands if they keep doing this. But this has been the tactic of most of the media, to take the manifesto of the El Paso shooter seriously.

And the implication that if you used the word “invasion,” it means that you’re culpable for violence from one lunatic, who again, his idea of stopping the invasion was going to a Walmart and shooting a lot of people who were not invaders. That was his way of dealing with the invasion. So, it is -- and this just prints five bylines here. The New York Times. It takes five people to go through Fox News and say, “They used invasion,” the implication being this is why this guy shot people at a Walmart. It’s so stunningly irresponsible, even for The New York Times. Sirius XM Patriot, *Breitbart News Daily*, [8/12/19]

Conservative blogger and pundit Erick Erickson mocked the Times’ analysis, saying it “blames the dictionary for El Paso shooting.”

Oh how awful. The shooter in Texas used the same language the President and Rush Limbaugh have used to talk about the caravans of illegal aliens flooding our southern border.

The particular word is “invasion.” That’s what the President called it. That’s what Rush Limbaugh called it. That’s what the dictionary calls it.

I realize many journalists and progressives will seal clap this story. They’ll get excited by it and might even go blind in the bathroom stall while reading it. But the technical term for a horde of people crossing the border without permission is “invasion.”

...

Has there been incendiary rhetoric? Absolutely. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez accused the United States of running a concentration camp and a leftwing radical used that same language to justify his firebombing of an ICE facility.

Most of the media has willfully ignored that.

They’d rather blame Rush, Tucker Carlson, Fox News, and Donald Trump.

They might as well blame the dictionary. The Resurgent, [8/12/19]

Conservative radio host Mark Simone deflected to the Dayton, OH, shooter’s support of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), calling the NY Times “a total joke.”

MARK SIMONE (HOST): Hey, the fake news has been -- you know, it’s been fake news for two years. Michael Goodwin wrote an incredible piece about The New York Times, how it went from being -- they used to call it the “Gray Lady,” the paper of record -- to being the sleaziest fake news organization ever. In fact, he’ll be with us later this hour and we’ll talk about it. But if you look at today's New York Times, they have an article, front page, above the fold, and it's a photograph of the El Paso shooter's manifesto with certain words underlined. It's a big -- right above the fold on the front page. The biggest place they could put it, and it's all about how look how the El Paso shooter's manifesto says similar things to the right-wing talking points. This is the big story. Now, nowhere in the paper does it mention that the Dayton shooter, his manifesto was all Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren stuff. The Dayton shooter a huge supporter of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, quoting their stuff left and right. You think we'll see that article tomorrow? You think we'll ever see that article? This is why The New York Times has become a total joke. WOR-AM, *Mark Simone Show*, [8/12/19]

Philadelphia talk show host Dom Giordano defended using “invasion” to describe the border situation and pushed the white supremacist “replacement” theory.

DOM GIORDANO (HOST): All right, the word of the day, according to The New York Times, front and center, is “invasion.” You can't say “invasion” anymore. Now they're going after not just Fox News, but talk radio, and they talk about how talk radio hosts and callers and others use this word “invasion.” Now, in fairness, I might start using it more now. I don't think I've used it enough. That's exactly what it is that's going on at the border. The numbers are staggering. It's a perfectly legitimate word.

Now the word they allege that the El Paso gunman used -- and they claim is being used a lot -- I guess Tucker Carlson -- and I see Tucker most nights -- is replacement. That’s the one you’re going to start to hear more. In other words, this plays into the big narrative that white working-class people believe they’re being replaced by people the Democrats, mainly open-borders crowd, want to bring into the country. And there are books, there are conspiracy theorists out there that this is an organized effort to do that exactly. Versus an outcome that comes out of this invasion. I mean, these people that were arrested in Mississippi -- did you see the outcome of this now?

…

Now these companies are going to be holding job fairs to have to replace these workers that were here illegally. And the theory is, and there seems to be some evidence of that, they’re going to have to up the wages and benefits. Bingo. So is that not a case of replacement, where they’re able to replace low-skilled high school graduates, or not even, that are in these tough jobs, meatpacking, and all that?

...

And by extension, even though I don’t think it’s a planned thing, it’s just an economic thing, they were replacing American workers in these industries. WPHT-AM, *The Dom Giordano Show*, [8/12/19]

---

new

https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/revealed-leaked-memo-shows-the-republican-partys-vile-strategy-to-respond-to-mass-shootings-with-lies/

no lnx

Revealed: Leaked memo shows the Republican Party’s vile strategy to respond to mass shootings with lies

Written by Walter Einenkel / Daily Kos August 16, 2019

In the wake of the most recent mass shootings in Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso, Texas, congressional Republicans have been circulating a “memo,” on how to discuss gun violence. The Tampa Bay Times obtained this memo and report that while not shocking to most people here, the depth of cynicism and craven hypocrisy on the part of Republicans knows no bottom. According to the Times, the memo discusses the general rhetorical tricks of handling questions about closing existing gun law loopholes instead of creating more robust gun laws. But it also discusses how to very specifically move the conversations away from white supremacy and the role that right-wing propaganda seems to be playing in most domestic terrorist scenarios like the recent El Paso shootings, where the gunman told authorities that he wanted to kill Mexicans.

If asked, the memo suggests that the first thing to do is to “steer the conversation away from white nationalism to an argument that implies both sides are to blame.” Subsequently, Republicans are directed to point out, falsely, that many of the mass shootings in recent years were carried out by “left-leaning” individuals. They specifically point to “El Paso shooter, the recent Colorado shooters, the Congressional baseball shooter, Congresswoman Giffords’ shooter and Antifa.” The El Paso mention is a classic right-wing typo, they meant the Dayton shooting—the right wing in our country does have a level of incompetence that one might call its brand.

Did you know that all of those shooters were “left leaning?” I bet you didn’t. Cause they weren’t. The man that shot Arizona’s Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and a dozen other people January of 2011, while registered as a Democrat, showed motives all over the map, referencing everyone from Hillary Clinton to Adolf Hitler, and according to people around him, a general obsession with Giffords herself. The Colorado shooters seem to have been motivated, more than anything, by anger over bullying and a perverse sense of revenge.

The most recent Dayton, Ohio, shooting has been the big news story for the right wing of this country because Donald Trump tweeted and told reporters that the shooter was a “fan” of Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

CBS News

@CBSNews

President Trump on Dayton shooter: "He was a fan of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, nothing to do with Trump. Nobody ever mentions that." https://cbsn.ws/2Ky1ZZO

Embedded video

However, while the Dayton shooter may have had left “leanings,” politically, he also had a very specific history of violent fantasy not at all connected to one political ideology or another. Either way, the fact remains that domestic white nationalist terrorism is still the biggest problem when it comes to mass shooting gun violence in our country. As FBI Director Christopher McKay told a Senate Judiciary Committee last month, the majority of 2019’s domestic terrorist arrests were “motivated by some version of what you might call white supremacist violence.” The need for the Republican Party to sit on their hands to protect their gun money, dovetails nicely with their need to appeal almost exclusively to white nationalists and the people who hate being called white nationalists, but espouse most of the same positions and beliefs of white nationalists.

---

new

https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/trump-and-right-wing-media-are-peddling-an-apocalyptic-ideology-of-a-civilizational-conflict/

no lnx

Trump and right-wing media are peddling an apocalyptic ideology of a civilizational conflict

Written by Nancy LeTourneau / Washington Monthly August 6, 2019

It has been seventeen years since John Judis and Ruy Teixeira published their book, The Emerging Democratic Majority. One of the central themes of the book was to cite demographic data about the so-called “browning of America” and note that it was the left that was positioned to benefit from the fact that non-Hispanic whites would eventually become a minority in this country.

In the years since the book was published, a lot of liberals (including one of the authors) came to question the premise that “demography is destiny.” While those on the right have publicly panned the book’s analysis, there is a way in which it has become the foundation of what we are witnessing from Donald Trump and his enablers.

Two years ago, I wrote about the connection between the president and white supremacists, including this quote fromRichard Spencer.

“Trump, on a gut level, kind of senses that this is about demographics, ultimately. We’re moving into a new America.” He said, “I don’t think Trump is a white nationalist,” but he did believe that Trump reflected “an unconscious vision that white people have – that their grandchildren might be a hated minority in their own country. I think that scares us. They probably aren’t able to articulate it. I think it’s there. I think that, to a great degree, explains the Trump phenomenon.”

More than a year before Trump was elected, Spencer—a spokesperson for white supremacists—explained that the “Trump phenomenon” was based on the fear white people have about the changing demographics in this country.

As Courtney Hable explains, the El Paso gunman was inspired by “the white supremacist ‘great replacement’ conspiracy theory that white people are being systematically ‘replaced’ by people of color through mass immigration.” She goes on to document how Fox News has been pushing that narrative relentlessly.

The subtle shift in how this narrative is being presented is that personalities like Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham have re-framed the demographic changes away from being the inevitable destiny of this country so that they can blame it on immigration. The El Paso gunman caught on and described immigrants as “invaders” flooding into the United States.

Thomas Kaplan documents how that is exactly the language being employed by the Trump campaign on social media.

President Trump’s re-election campaign has harnessed Facebook advertising to push the idea of an “invasion” at the southern border, amplifying the fear-inducing language about immigrants that he has also voiced at campaign rallies and on Twitter.

Since January, Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign has posted more than 2,000 ads on Facebook that include the word “invasion” — part of a barrage of advertising focused on immigration, a dominant theme of his re-election messaging.

I would not normally read an article titled, “White Terrorism Shows ‘Stunning’ Parallels to Islamic State’s Rise” because it sounds exploitative. But Max Fisher, who has a reputation as a thoughtful and serious journalist—especially on matters related to terrorism and propaganda—is the author. Here is what he wrote.

Many scholars of terrorism see worrying similarities between the rise of the Islamic State and that of white nationalist terrorism, seen most recently in the carnage in El Paso, Tex.

“The parallels are stunning,” said Will McCants, a prominent expert in the field.

And they are growing more notable with each new attack.

Experts say that the similarities are far from a coincidence. White nationalist terrorism is following a progression eerily similar to that of jihadism under the leadership of the Islamic State, in ways that do much to explain why the attacks have suddenly grown so frequent and deadly.

In both, there is the apocalyptic ideology that predicts — and promises to hasten — a civilizational conflict that will consume the world. There is theatrical, indiscriminate violence that will supposedly bring about this final battle, but often does little more than grant the killer a brief flash of empowerment and win attention for the cause.

There are self-starter recruits who, gathering in social media’s dark corners, drive their own radicalization. And for these recruits, the official ideology may serve simply as an outlet for existing tendencies toward hatred and violence…

The feedback loop of radicalization and violence, once triggered, can take on a terrible momentum all its own, with each attack boosting the online radicalization and doomsday ideology that, in turn, drive more attacks.

The apocalyptic ideology of a civilizational conflict is being peddled by the president of the United States and his enablers in right-wing media via the great replacement conspiracy theory. The use of indiscriminate violence as a response travels around the underbelly of social media in places like 8chan.

Americans who don’t pay attention to right-wing media and have no exposure to radicalized social media forums have no idea this kind of thing is happening. They simply wake up one day to see that yet another mass shooting has taken place. When Democrats point the finger of blame at Trump and his enablers, it can appear as if it’s just another example of the politicization of tragedy.

That’s why it is important for people to learn about what’s going on. The use of the word “invasion” over 2,000 times on Facebook by the president’s re-election campaign is no accident. It is a calculated strategy to incite the kind of reaction we just witnessed in El Paso.

As Fisher notes:

It is nearly impossible to eradicate a movement animated by ideas and decentralized social networks. Nor is it easy to prevent attacks when the perpetrators’ ideology makes nearly any target as good as the next, and requires little more training or guidance than opening a web forum.

It will take time and a concerted effort to deal with those decentralized social networks that have developed. But it all begins by exposing the president as the man behind the curtain who is inflaming the situation.

This weekend, there were two more mass shootings, in El Paso, TX and Dayton, OH. As I write this, at least twenty people were murdered in El Paso, and 9 were killed in Dayton. This follows the mass shootings last weekend in Gilroy, CA, and Brooklyn, NY.

NBC News reporter Ben Collins reported on the El Paso shooter’s alleged manifesto, writing, “The screed posted to the anonymous extremist message board [8chan] railed against immigrants in Texas and pushed talking points about preserving European identity in America.”

8chan is a far-right message board where shooters like this are portrayed as heroes; the New Zealand shooter and the Poway Synagogue shooter bothposted there. The Gilroy shooter recommended a book that white supremacists there often tout. In his assessment, Collins was blunt: 8chan has a "body count."

The El Paso shooter's alleged manifesto is built around the "great replacement" theory -- the white supremacist conspiracy theory that immigrants are being brought into the United States to replace white people. That should sound familiar: It is a regular part of Fox News prime time. It's specifically one of the things that Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson have been criticized for pushing.

I spent a lot of time watching Fox News’ Saturday coverage of the El Paso shooting, and it was striking how the coverage bent toward propaganda. There were numerous interviews with survivors and witnesses that could have been done by any news outlet. But in between those interviews, Fox went out of its way to avoid any conversations about easy access to guns and the rash of far-right white nationalist shooters.

The network multiple times speculated on a link between video games and the El Paso shooting On Sunday morning, Republicans Lt. Gov. of TexasDan Patrick and House minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) both talked to Fox News about the dangers of video games as well. NBC's Collins pointed out in return that “Nowhere did this shooter mention video games. The screed shows he had an encyclopedic knowledge of real-life guns, posted to a community of white nationalists, and wrote about doing this as part of a cause against immigration.”

Fox News also speculated on a link to ISIS, given the proximity to the border (their implicit and evidence-free theory being that an ISIS terrorist came over the border). A Fox guest even suggested that this type of mass shooting is why the American military is performing "counter-terrorism work" around the globe. But, of course, Fox News also said that now was not the time to talk about gun violence as a systemic problem.

Republicans are already hiding behind Fox News. CNN's Jake Tapper reported that a number of top Republicans declined to appear on CNN today to talk about the mass shootings. The list included the White House, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, Ohio Gov. Mike Dewine, and Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.

Patrick instead appeared on Fox & Friends, where he used the El Paso shooting to call for federal government intervention into the video game industry, more prayer in schools, and more saluting of the flag. Patrick hasappeared on Fox previously to push the Great Replacement theory.

How conservatives lied about the Gilroy mass shooting

Last Sunday, a gunman opened fired at a Garlic Festival in Gilroy, California, killing three people and injuring at least twelve more.

Investigators who searched the home of the shooter uncovered empty boxes of ammunition, a gas mask, a bulletproof vest, and white supremacist reading materials. Additionally, the alleged shooter recommended on social media that people read a book popular among white nationalists.

Meanwhile, right-wing media decided to ignore all available evidence and push tired and dishonest "gun-free zone" talking points.

Dan Bongino on Fox & Friends: "Gun-free zones are inherently dangerous."

Breitbart: "The festival prohibited 'weapons of any kind.;"

Ammoland.com: California festival was "a gun free zone" and attendees were "sitting ducks."

In actual fact, the festival reportedly had "very tight" security, which included police officers who were able to engage the gunman in less than minute after he opened fire. As Media Matters' Cydney Hargis explained, "Despite the popularity of the pro-gun 'good guy with a gun' myth, civilian gun owners typically do not take down mass shooters and actually contribute to the overall chaos."

https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/police-probing-alleged-white-supremacist-views-of-el-paso-gunman-who-left-20-dead

no lnx

Police probing alleged white supremacist views of El Paso gunman who left 20 dead

Written by Julia Conley / Common Dreams August 4, 2019

Within 13 hours in two U.S. cities—El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio—at least 29 people were killed in mass shootings on Saturday and Sunday.

Police in Dayton, Ohio were gathering information on Sunday morning about a shooting that took place in the city’s downtown Oregon neighborhood at about 1:00am. Nine people were killed by a gunman who used what one eyewitness described as an assault rifle and wore body armor, and at least 16 were injured.

Just a few hours before the shooting in Washington, D.C., the hundreds of protesters representing the national gun control group Moms Demand Action marched from the White House to the Capitol to demand legislative action following Saturday morning’s shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas.

@nicksuplina

Hundreds of @momsdemand and #StudentsDemandAction volunteers and survivors of gun violence spontaneously making their voices heard in DC. #NotOneMore #GSU19

A number of observers on social media expressed grief over the two shootings taking place within a day of one another.

G.E. Anderson

We live in a country where the mass shooting that took place yesterday in El Paso, Texas is not the top story because there was another mass shooting overnight in Dayton, Ohio. #MakeAmericaSaneAgain

@Will_Bunch

How many others did what I did? -- fell asleep with the latest news out of El Paso on the TV, slept fitfully for about 6 hours and woke up at 5 a.m. startled to see carnage in Dayton on the screen. In America, the nightmares come when you wake up

@tedlieu

Still grieving over the mass shooting in El Paso. My heart breaks again for the victims of another mass shooting in Dayton.

The policies of @realDonaldTrump & his enablers have not made us safer. Time to give others a chance. Vote out those who do nothing about gun violence. https://twitter.com/BNONews/status/1157903408201949185 …

BNO News

@BNONews

UPDATE: Multiple fatalities, others seriously injured after gunman opens fire in Dayton, Ohio https://bnonews.com/index.php/2019/08/active-shooter-in-dayton-ohio/ …

Investigators on Sunday were examining an anti-immigration “manifesto” posted online by a 21-year-old gunman who opened fire in El Paso late Saturday morning, killing at least 20 people and injuring 26.

“If reports are true, this senseless attack cannot be separated from the escalating politics of hate and fear,” said Ernest Coverson, head of Amnesty International USA’s gun control campaign. “This is simply unacceptable. Everyone has the human right to live in safety, whether they are going to the mall or walking down the street in their neighborhood.”

The shooter fired multiple rounds with an AK-47-style rifle, walking through the store and shooting shoppers aisle-by-aisle.

The manifesto was posted on the online forum 8chan less than 20 minutes before the first 911 call was made about the shooting, according to the New York Times. The forum was the same one on which the gunman in the March mass shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand posted his own statement about his intent to kill Muslims and immigrants, shortly before he killed 51 people at two mosques.

The El Paso shooter expressed support for the Christchurch gunman and reportedly said his own goal was to stop the “Hispanic invasion of Texas” with the shooting in the largely Latino border city.

The man lived outside Dallas and made the nine-hour trip because he believed “the heavy Hispanic population in Texas will make us a Democrat stronghold,” according to the statement. He expressed support for the white supremacist theory of “the great replacement” which argues that so-called “elites” are attempting to replace white Europeans with immigrants from the Middle East and Africa.

“This is about hate,” Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas), who represents El Paso, said in a statement. “The manifesto narrative is fueled by hate, and it is fueled by racism and bigotry and division.”

On social media, just as many have vehemently rejected the “thoughts and prayers” of politicians who accept thousands of dollars in campaign donations from the NRA and refuse to fight for broadly-popular gun control reforms, some critics directed ire at another perennial post-shooting sentiment, expressed by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott hours after the El Paso shooting—that better mental healthcare is the answer to the United States’ epidemic of gun violence.

The causes of the shooting in El Paso, many said, were the shooter’s easy access to guns and the growth of the white supremacist viewpoints he allegedly subscribed to—as well as support for such views by President Donald Trump and other elected officials.

@shannonrwatts

BULLSHIT: The El Paso gunman drove NINE HOURS to the Texas border to kill brown people.

White supremacy is not a mental illness. It’s an ideology encouraged by the President and too many of our leaders, and it’s made deadly in the US via easy access to arsenals and ammunition. https://twitter.com/texastribune/status/1157801199225188352 …

Texas Tribune

@TexasTribune

.@GregAbbott_TX says in #ElPaso: "Bottom line is mental health is a large contributor" to any type of violence. #ElPasoShooting https://bit.ly/2LYlfmk

Eugene Gu, MD

@eugenegu

Massive income inequality creates this whole generation of disgruntled white men who scapegoat immigrants and minorities for all their problems and then go on these brutal killing sprees with easy access to assault weapons. All of this predates Trump but he makes it much worse.

Eugene Gu, MD

That’s why this second mass shooting in Dayton, Ohio just hours after the one in El Paso, Texas is so extremely scary right now. White supremacy is an ideology not a mental illness. And unlike a mental illness, an ideology can be highly contagious

---

13 hrs after walmart [gilmore?]

Appearing on CNN’s “New Day” early Sunday morning, national security expert Juliette Kayyem lashed out at 8chan, the user-generated chatroom website, for being nothing more than a haven for white supremacists encouraging each other to commit atrocities.

Speaking with host Christi Paul, Kayyem got right to the point after it was pointed out that the El Paso shooter posted his racist manifesto on the board just before he went on his killing spree that left 20 dead.

“It’s legal because it is simply the sharing of ideas,” she said of the boards. “But what we are seeing with 8chan and others, it actually has become some sort of the announcement of my terror attack, as we saw it with El Paso, as well as a place that not just promotes this ideology but sort of eggs it on.”

“If you go on 8chan, that is essentially what it is doing, ‘do it, do it!’ this sort of peer pressure where these white supremacist ideologues are creating a safe haven,” she explained. Who knows who is going to go out and do a shooting? That’s the challenge here. Obviously, 8chan exists for this ideology. You don’t go on that platform but for this white supremacy.”

https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/gilroy-shooter-who-killed-3-posted-about-white-supremacist-book-popular-with-neo-nazis/

no lnx

Gilroy Shooter who killed 3 posted about white supremacist book popular with Neo-Nazis

Santino William Legan w phone, selfie?]

Written by David Badash / The New Civil Rights Movement July 30, 2019

The 19-year old believed to have slaughtered three people, including a 6-year old boy, at California’s Gilroy Garlic Festival posted about a book popular with white supremacists minutes before opening fire with an assault-style rifle.[bot legally in nevada, mebbe we need a wall there? gavin?]

Santino William Legan (NCRM will not use his name again if possible) posted to his now-deleted Instagram account a photo of the festival, urging followers to read what The Daily Beast is describing as “a 19th-century, proto-fascist book.”

“The book, which is repeatedly recommended alongside works by Hitler and other fasicsts on forums like 8chan, is full of anti-Semitic, sexist and white supremacist ideology. The book glorifies ‘Aryan’ men, condemns inter-marriage between races and defends violence based on bogus eugenicist tropes.”

The suspected shooter is also believed to have shot to death a 13-year old girl, and a man in his 20’s.

“Why overcrowd towns and pave more open space to make room for hordes of mestizos and Silicon Valley white tw**s?” the suspect wrote in his Instagram post.

CNN explains a “‘mestizo’ is a person of mixed descent, usually white and Hispanic, or white and American Indian.” The book, which NCRM also will not name, was “published in the late 1800s” and “has been described as a white supremacist text that promotes anarchy, vilifies Christianity and calls Jesus the ‘true Prince of Evil.’ The natural order, according to the book, is a world at war in which the strong must vanquish the weak, and white men must rule over those of color.”

NBC News calls the book “a staple among neo-Nazis and white supremacists on extremist sites.”

gilroy shooter might is right 14 words press

https://archive.org/stream/MightIsRightByRagnarRedbeard/might-is-right-ragnar-redbeard_djvu.txt

new 519

March For Our Lives, the gun violence prevention movement, called for an end to #GenerationLockdown following the latest school shooting.

Two suspects opened fire at the Denver-area STEM School Highlands Ranch Tuesday. Kendrick Castillo, 18, died. He was just days away from graduation. Eight others were injured.

It was the fourth school shooting in Colorado since the Columbine High School massacre on April 20, 1999, the Denver Post reported.

March For Our Lives, which was formed in the wake of the Parkland, Florida mass shooting last year, demanded an end to such violent acts. The group said people must not to “grow numb” to the tragedies and urged political leadership tackle the gun violence epidemic.

The group made the calls in a Twitter thread that included video from local Denver7 News of young STEM students boarding a bus outside the school....

post-poway. manifestos, spark a civil war [// propaganda of the deed?!]

14 words nz shooter also? also in turner diary (sparked by gun siezure??)

https://kpfa.org/episode/letters-and-politics-april-29-2019/

bring the war home author

white supr often well educated, pastors

---

https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/right-wing-terrorists-tend-to-attack-groups-which-trump-views-as-the-enemy-of-course-he-wont-stop-them/

https://www.democracynow.org/2019/4/29/headlines/trump_admin_disbanded_domestic_terror_unit_amid_rising_far_right_violence

latest white nationalist killing comes after the Department of Homeland Security disbanded its domestic terrorism unit last year, reassigning its analysts to other departments. DHS says the threat of “homegrown extremism” has been significantly reduced, but in a review of 50 murders committed by extremists in 2018, the Anti-Defamation League found 49 came at the hands of right-wing extremists, with white supremacists alone accounting for 39 of the murders.

Topics:

Department of Homeland Security

White Supremacy

Racism

Race in America

Hate Groups

mma

Saturday, there was another mass shooting at a synagogue. A man opened fire inside the Chabad synagogue in Powoy, CA, just outside of San Diego. NBC's Ben Collins and Andrew Blankstein reported that an open letter was posted on far-right forum 8chan in the shooters name, which also took credit for an unsolved arson of a nearby mosque. According to the San Diego County Sheriff, the alleged shooter is now being investigated for that arson as well.

Over at Bellingcat, Robert Evans took a deep dive into 8chan, which was also the place where the Christchurch mosque shooter posted his manifesto. Media Matters' Cristina López has previously written about how board users launch harassment campaigns using 8chan. 8chan is also the hub of the QAnon conspiracy theory which has swept pro-Trump media; a number of prominent right-wing figures have amplified that conspiracy theory. And board users absolutely love Sean Hannity.

Over at The New York Times, Charlie Warzel wrote about how these mass shootings have become a meme in the far-right internet: "The pattern is eerie: it starts with a crude genealogy of the shooter’s ethnic roots, then a self-aggrandizing Q. and A. with himself, followed by a litany of toxic in-jokes meant to confuse the media and those less savvy in far-right online culture. ... Like the Christchurch massacre, the Poway shooting is not only tailored for the internet but also sickeningly standardized. The digital footprint and manifestoes of these white nationalist terrorists follow a familiar template — one that each shooter fills in with their own hideous details. Indeed, it seems real-world murderous hate crimes have become a message board meme of sorts. And like any online meme, the creation cycle only seems to be accelerating, refining itself and, horrifyingly, increasing in frequency."

On Fox News, a guest was linking the rise of anti-Semitism to Trump's permissive rhetoric about the far right, specifically Trump's defense of white nationalists in Charlottesville who chanted "Jews will not replace us." (Trump even doubled down on that characterization on Friday in an interview with Mark Levin.) But as the guest described this, the show suddenly cut to commercial . The guest was invited back on later in the day, but the discussion moved quickly beyond Trump's rhetoric to an assertion that Trump could not possibly be personally anti-Semitic.

Fox News never stopped pushing the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that motivated the Tree of Life shooter. Glenn Beck was on Fox News earlier this month pushing it. And earlier this week, a Fox Nation guest fearmongered about George Soros infiltrating the census, harkening back to when a guest was banned from the network for complaining about the "Soros-occupied State Department."

---

https://theconversation.com/how-columbine-became-a-blueprint-for-school-shooters-115115

When 12 students and one teacher were killed in Littleton, Colorado 20 years ago, it not only became what at the time was the worst high school shooting in U.S. history. It also marked when American society was first handed a script for a new form of violence in schools.

We make that observation as researchers – a psychologist and a sociologist – who have been studying mass public shootings as part of a grant from the U.S. Department of Justice.

Since the 1999 tragedy at Columbine High School, we identified six mass shootings and 40 active shooter incidents at elementary, middle or high schools in the United States. Mass shootings are defined by the FBI as an event in which four or more victims died by gunfire.

In 20 – or nearly half – of those 46 school shootings, the perpetrator purposely used Columbine as a model.

Columbine’s influence continues until this day. On April 17 – just three days ahead of the 20th anniversary of the Columbine shooting – authorities closed schools across Colorado due to a credible threat of a woman armed with a shotgun and who was “infatuated with Columbine.” The 18-year-old Florida woman was reportedly found dead in Colorado later in the day from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.

The ties that bind to Columbine

In our study of school shootings, we only looked at cases where a gun was fired on campus, following the practice of The Washington Post’s database on school shootings. Had we included foiled plots, the number would be significantly higher.

Several school shooters in our study were fascinated with Columbine and researched the massacre before their own. This includes the Parkland shooter, a 14-year-old who aspired to be “the youngest mass murderer,” and a 15-year-old who shot at his teacher after she refused to praise Marilyn Manson, the rock singer who was erroneously blamed for inspiring the Columbine killers.

The timing of the April 17 threat to Colorado schools is no coincidence. Prior perpetrators chose the anniversary of Columbine to commit their shootings, including one month and two years after. A different shooter talked of how he was going to “pull a Columbine.” Others discussed Columbine with classmates, even joked about it.

The Sandy Hook Elementary School shooter idolized the Columbine killers and curated a Tumblr account paying homage, alongside a graphic collage of Columbine victims. A North Carolina shooter was so obsessed with Columbine that he took a vacation there with his mother and fantasized about “finishing off” any wounded survivors.

Multiple shooters, including one 15-year-old in Oregon and another in Washington state, were inspired by a documentary about Columbine that included detailed recreations of what happened. One Wisconsin teenager held his classroom hostage after reading a bookabout Columbine.

Perpetrators also dressed in trench coats like the Columbine shooters, including those responsible for the 2018 Santa Fe shooting, where 10 people died, and a 2004 nonfatal shooting in New York. Indeed, the trench coat has appeared in subsequent school shootings because Columbine gave it meaning beyond any intrinsic use.

Why Columbine?

Columbine has spawned an entire subculture of “Columbiners” and copycats. A March 2019 shooting in Brazil that killed eight shows that Columbine’s influence is global. But Columbine was not the first school shooting, not even that year. Eleven months before the horror in Littleton unfolded, an expelled 15-year-old – also wearing a trench coat – killed two and injured 25 at a school in Springfield, Oregon. Why do we not now talk about the “Springfield effect”?

Partly because the perpetrator in Springfield was professionally diagnosed as psychotic, meaning his attack could be more easily explained away. He also acted alone, whereas having two shooters immediately intensified the intrigue around Columbine. But the main reason for Columbine’s longevity was that its perpetrators created manifestos and home movies of their preparations in hopes that their story would outlive them. Unfortunately, it has.

Before Columbine, there was no script for how school shooters should behave, dress and speak. Columbine created “common knowledge,” the foundation of coordination in the absence of a standardized playbook. Timing was everything. The massacre was one of the first to take place after the advent of 24-hour cable news and during the “the year of the net.” This was the dawn of the digital age of perfect remembering, where words and deeds live online forever. Columbine became the pilot for future episodes of fame-seeking violence.

Separating myth from reality

Our research has found that school shootings have nothing to do with jock envy, satanism, video games, or Keanu Reeves, and school shooters are not psychopathic masterminds. In fact, these soundbite explanations for aberrant behavior only blind us to the reality of school violence.

School shooters are almost always current students of their schools. They are students who are in crisis, students who have experienced trauma, and students who are actively suicidal prior to the shooting and expect to die in the act. Such children have always existed. But for 20 years they’ve had a new script to follow.

And we, the public, have contributed to the production and direction of this script. Again and again and again. Through our obsession with true crime and films, books, memes and entire websites devoted to Columbine. By releasing CCTV footage of the shooting to the public. By running our children through regular lockdowns and active shooter drills starting in preschool through 12th grade. By sending them to school through secure entrances with clear backpacks and bulletproof binders. Society and culture have reared a Columbine generation, modeling that this is just part of childhood in America.

Flipping the script

After serial killing peaked in the late 1980s, it’s hard to know which faded first – the serial killers themselves or the public obsession with them. The same fear and fascination that created the serial killer panic is what drives the Columbine effect. After 20 years, it’s time to rewrite the script being rehearsed with young people.

It starts with no names, no photos and no notoriety for mass shooters in media coverage – which is why we don’t indulge here. The next step is a paradigm shift from homeroom security to holistic violence prevention in schools – mental health, supportive environments, strong relationships and crisis intervention and deescalation. Teachers should feel as comfortable asking a student about suicide as they feel going into lockdown; empowered to spend as much time teaching empathy and resilience as they do now training to run, hide, fight.

The victims and survivors of school violence must not be forgotten, but to prevent another two decades of contagion and copycats, it requires a recognition that it is time to close the curtain on the spectacle of Columbine. "

...?

---

On Aug. 12, 2017, James Alex Fields Jr. drove his car into protesters demonstrating against the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va. (Ryan M. Kelly/Daily Progress/AP)

By Paul Duggan and

Justin Jouvenal March 27 at 6:38 PM

CHARLOTTESVILLE — An avowed neo-Nazi who killed one woman and injured 35 other people when he plowed his car into a group of counterprotesters at an infamous white-supremacist rally here pleaded guilty to hate crimes in federal court Wednesday.

James Alex Fields Jr., 21, of Ohio admitted guilt to 29 of 30 counts in a federal indictment as part of a deal with prosecutors, who agreed they would not seek the death penalty in a case that has come to symbolize the violent resurgence of white supremacism in the United States. Fields is set to be sentenced July 3.

Late last year, Fields was convicted in state court of first-degree murder and other charges for killing Heather D. Heyer, 32, and injuring dozens at the chaotic Unite the Right rally on Aug. 12, 2017. The jury in that case recommended a life sentence, and a state judge is scheduled to formally impose it in mid-July.

Admitting guilt to hate crimes marks a dramatic shift for Fields, whose attorneys argued during his trial in state court that he sped toward the crowd out of fear for his safety and confusion. They said he immediately regretted his actions.

On Wednesday, Fields, who has grown a bushy beard in the months since his state trial, entered a federal courtroom here in a gray-and-white-striped prisoner’s jumpsuit and handcuffs. He spoke only to answer a judge’s questions and displayed no emotion during the hour-long hearing.

Susan Bro, Heyer’s mother, said after the hearing she was satisfied with the result.

'He needs to be kept away from society': Charlottesville car attacker sentenced to life in prison

A jury sentenced James Alex Fields Jr., an avowed neo-Nazi who rammed his car into a group of counterprotesters at a white-supremacist rally, to life in prison. (Reuters)

“There’s no point in killing him. It would not bring back Heather,” Bro said.

“It’s a relief to think we don’t have to go through another trial. It was exhausting the first time. I can get on with my life, and the other victims can, too.”

Thomas T. Cullen, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia, said he was gratified that Fields finally admitted he was motivated by hate, calling the crime “an indelible mark on the city of Charlottesville, our state and our country.”

Fields pleaded guilty to one count of a hate crime that resulted in the death of Heyer and 28 counts of hate crimes that caused injuries and involved attempts to kill other people in the crowd. Each of the 29 counts carries a maximum sentence of life in prison. Attorney General William P. Barr approved the deal.

[Fields sentenced to life in prison in fatal Charlottesville car attack]

U.S. Attorney Thomas Cullen speaks to the media Wednesday after a plea agreement with Fields, who was charged with 30 counts stemming from the car attack in Charlottesville. (Steve Helber/AP)

The violence in 2017 and President Trump’s assertion afterward that there were “very fine people” on both sides of the Charlottesville rally sparked intense criticism and a fresh focus on the renewed forces of ethno-nationalism.

The events began on Aug. 11 when far-right groups mounted a torchlight march through the University of Virginia campus shouting racist and anti-Semitic slogans, including, “Jews will not replace us!”

Fields was already on his way to Charlottesville, arriving the next day for a white-supremacist rally that was nominally held to protest the planned removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.

The event, involving hundreds of marchers, generated national media attention after rallygoers carrying Nazi flags and shouting racial epithets clashed violently with throngs of counterprotesters. Police eventually dispersed the groups.

A short time later, Fields was seen driving his gray Dodge Charger up to a group of counterprotesters on a narrow street. He slowly backed up and then accelerated down a hill directly into the group.

Harrowing video, which was played at Fields’s state trial, shows protesters tumbling and screaming as the car slams into them. Fields then reversed at a high speed, hitting and dragging others. Someone repeatedly yelled: “Oh, God! Oh, God!”

Heyer was killed, while others were seriously wounded. One woman who limped to the witness stand at Fields’s state trial testified she had five surgeries and was about to undergo a sixth. Another described a broken pelvis and a third how he pushed his fiancee out of the way before he was hit by the Dodge.

At the state trial, a mental health expert detailed Fields’s psychiatric disorders dating to early childhood.

He did not deny running into the crowd, but his attorneys argued that he acted to protect himself. Prosecutors forcefully countered that argument, and the jury at the six-day trial rejected the defense.

Jurors were shown a deleted Instagram post by Fields shared three months before that crash that featured a car running into a group of people. A caption read: “You Have the Right to Protest, But I’m Late for Work.”

A state prosecutor also showed a blown-up image of Fields in his car to counter the idea that he was frightened when he acted.

“This is not the face of someone who is scared,” a state prosecutor said at the time. “This is the face of anger, of hatred. It’s the face of malice.”

As part of the plea agreement in federal court, prosecutors said Fields admitted that before the rally, he had used social media to “express and promote white supremacist views” including admiration for the racial-purity doctrine of Adolf Hitler. They said he used those accounts to “espouse violence against African Americans, Jewish people, and members of other racial, ethnic and religious groups he perceived to be non-white.”

[From wary observer to justice warrior: How Heather Heyer’s death gave her mom a voice]

After Wednesday’s federal court hearing, Bro was asked whether Heyer’s killing had raised the community’s consciousness about racial disparities.

“Sadly, it took a white girl dying before anyone paid attention to civil rights around here,” she told reporters. “I wish we had woken up sooner.’

But Bro did describe one moment of healing. When asked whether she had ever come in contact with Fields’s mother, Bro said she had seen her just once, at the state trial.

“She looked at me, and I looked at her,” Bro said. “I said, ‘I’m sorry.’ She said, ‘I’m sorry.’ ”

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/03/the-shooters-manifesto-was-designed-to-troll/585058/

no lnx twit

In the hours after the horrific mass shootings at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, people desperately searched the internet for any sign of a motive or meaning behind the attack. Early Friday, a number of unverified social-media posts surfaced, along with a bizarre manifesto posted to 8chan, rich with irony and references to memes.

Together, the posts suggest that every aspect of the shootings was designed to gain maximum attention online, in part by baiting the media. The shooter live-streamed the attack itself on Facebook, and the video was quickly shared across YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram. Before committing the act, he shouted, “Remember, lads, subscribe to PewDiePie,” a reference to Felix Kjellberg, who runs YouTube’s most subscribed-to channel. The phrase itself is a meme started by PewDiePie’s fans, and its goal is to be reprinted.

Read: YouTube extremism and the long tail]

Kjellberg, who has previously found himself embroiled in controversy over alleged anti-Semitism, disavowed the shooting on Twitter Friday morning. “Just heard news of the devastating reports from New Zealand Christchurch. I feel absolutely sickened having my name uttered by this person. My heart and thoughts go out to the victims, families and everyone affected by this tragedy,” he wrote. By forcing Kjellberg to acknowledge the attack, the shooter succeeded in further spreading the word about the crime to Kjellberg’s tens of millions of followers.

@loudmouthjulia

"Subscribe to PewDiePie" is a meme that encompasses a misled belief that it's a fight for the disenfranchised; those constantly being pushed down. It's David vs Goliath. It's used on boards like 8chan as a rallying cry. It doesn't belong to PDP anymore — but we need to examine it...

Significant portions of the manifesto appear to be an elaborate troll, written to prey on the mainstream media’s worst tendencies. As the journalist Robert Evans noted, “This manifesto is a trap … laid for journalists searching for the meaning behind this horrific crime. There is truth in there, and valuable clues to the shooter’s radicalization, but it is buried beneath a great deal of, for lack of a better word, ‘shitposting.’”

[The Tech White Power Used to Go Viral

OLGA KHAZAN]

Shitposting is a slang term used to describe the act of posting trollish and usually ironic content designed to derail a conversation or elicit a strong reaction from people who aren’t in on the joke. Certain aspects of the shooter’s manifesto fall into this category. He includes Navy Seal Copypasta, a meme that originated on 4chan. He claims that Spyro: Year of the Dragon, a video game, taught him ethno-nationalism and that Fortnite taught him to “floss on the corpses,” referring to a viral dance move from the game. These absurd references are meant to troll readers

Jasmin Mujanovic

@JasminMuj

Replying to @JasminMuj

One more thought: the shooter makes repeated references to the “remove Kebab” meme, which is based on a propaganda video produced by Serb nationalist forces during the Bosnian War & Bosnian Genocide in 90s. Meshes w/ Obilic references & clear Breivik influence.

...

The shooter also credits the far-right personality Candace Owens with helping to “push me further and further into the belief of violence over meekness.” Though the shooter could be a genuine fan of Owens, who has been known to espouse right-leaning views on immigration and gun control, this reference might be meant to incite Owens’s critics to blame her.

That doesn’t mean the racism expressed throughout the 74-page manifesto isn’t genuine. But the complexities of the crime are still unfolding, and as the New York Times journalist Kevin Roose cautioned, “The NZ shooter’s apparent manifesto is thick with irony and meta-text and very easy to misinterpret.” Unfortunately, when journalists report on these horrific acts, the shooter’s hateful messages are sometimes amplified in the process. But the origins of that hate and the shooter’s public postings do need to be examined, even when taking them at face value is difficult.

Mass killers have long exploited the media environments they operate within. The Zodiac killer gained notoriety by persuading newspapers to publish his cryptic messages. In 2015, a shooter in Virginia killed people during a live television broadcast.

As the internet and social media have democratized access to information, much of it spreads without necessary context. As the Verge writer Elizabeth Lopatto noted in 2015, “Our interactions with these killers were mediated by huge media gatekeepers—their manifestos were left at their homes, or sent to newspapers and TV stations. If the manifestos appeared at all, they were quoted from, rather than released in full. This is no longer the case.”

Read: The dangerous spread of extremist manifestos]

While this system of gatekeeping itself was undoubtedly problematic, since many of the gatekeepers upheld norms and power structures built on privilege, technology has upended our media environment so quickly that many people are ill-equipped to handle the new information environment. We’ve seen the consequences of this play out in the rise of fake news, thriving misinformation campaigns, and bizarre viral hoaxes warped by trolls to capitalize on people’s worst fears.

Before people can even begin to grasp the nuances of today’s internet, they can be radicalized by it. Platforms such as YouTube and Facebook can send users barreling into fringe communities where extremist views are normalized and advanced. Because these communities have so successfully adopted irony as a cloaking device for promoting extremism, outsiders are left confused as to what is a real threat and what’s just trolling. The darker corners of the internet are so fragmented that even when they spawn a mass shooting, as in New Zealand, the shooter’s words can be nearly impossible to parse, even for those who are Extremely Online.i

---

https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2018/10/28/analyzing-terrorists-social-media-manifesto-pittsburgh-synagogue-shooters-posts-gab

---

| March 15, 2019 5:33 pm

Taylor Lorenz @ The Atlantic: The Shooter’s Manifesto Was Designed to Troll.

Josh Marshall @ Talking Points Memo: So I Read the Manifesto.

Media Matters: Rush Limbaugh suggests New Zealand shootings might be a false flag attack committed by a leftist to smear conservatives.

Joe Jervis: AUSTRALIA: Far-Right Senator Blames New Zealand For “Allowing Muslim Fanatics To Migrate In The First Place”.

Aidan McLaughlin @ Mediaite: Trump Warns of ‘Invasion’ on U.S. Border After Condemning New Zealand Mosque Shooting.

Anna Nemtsova @ The Daily Beast: Trump’s Breitbart Biker Threat Came From the Putin Playbook—Then Tweet Deleted After Mosque Massacre.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/03/new-zealand-is-not-the-first-here-are-some-of-the-most-horrific-white-terrorist-attacks-and-plots-of-the-trump-era/

At least 49 people have been killed in a terrorist attack that New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has described as one of the country’s “darkest days.” The targets were two mosques in the city of Christchurch, and according to New Zealand police, the suspects were greatly influenced by far-right white nationalists of the United States. One of the suspects, according to police, published a 74-page manifesto demonizing Muslims and immigrants—and American terrorist Dylann Roof, who slaughtered nine African-American churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina in 2015, was cited as a role model in the document.

After Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana survived a shooting spree in June 2017, the right-wing media in the U.S. claimed that a wave of violence was coming from the left (never mind the fact that Sen. Bernie Sanders wholeheartedly condemned the attack and wished Scalise a speedy recovery). AM talk radio host Michael Savage even went so far as to that President Donald Trump’s critics needed to be “removed from the airwaves by the federal government for their constant drumbeat of hatred.” But the notion that terrorism is unique to either leftists or far-right Islamist groups like al-Qaeda, ISIS (Islamic State, Iraq and Syria) and Boko Haram is ludicrous—and the horrific attack in Christchurch follows a series of white nationalist, white supremacist or Christianist attacks or plots in the U.S.

Here are some of the most disturbing white terrorist attacks or alleged plots of the Trump era.

February 2019: U.S. Coast Guard officer faces weapons charges after alleged plot to assassinate Democrats and journalists

One of the most underreported stories of 2019, hands down, is a U.S. Coast Guard officer’s alleged plot to murder a long list of prominent Democrats. In February, a self-described white nationalist was arrested on weapons charges after federal law enforcement found more than 1000 rounds of ammunition in his apartment in Maryland—and according to investigators, he had a hit list that named House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Sen. Kamala Harris, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other Democrats as potential targets. Some major media figures were on the list as well, including Van Jones and Don Lemon of CNN and MSNBC’s conservative Joe Scarborough (who is one of President Donald Trump’s most vocal critics on the right).

The Coast Guard officer’s alleged plot received a lot more coverage on MSNBC and CNN than it did on their cable news competitor, Fox News, which is not surprising: it didn’t fit into the right-wing narrative of Islamists having a monopoly on terrorism. But if the alleged terrorist had been connected to ISIS or the Taliban, Fox News would have given it nonstop coverage.

October 2018: Terrorist mail bomb campaign targets prominent Democrats

In October 2018, a series of mail bombs were sent to Barack and Michelle Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Sen. Cory Booker, investor George Soros and many other prominent Democrats—and the knee-jerk response of Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, John Cardillo and other far-right media figures was that the whole thing was a Democratic hoax or “false flag” operation. Republicans, Limbaugh insisted, simply don’t resort to such acts. But in fact, a 56-year-old Florida resident and avowed Trump supporter was arrested on October 26, 2018 for the attacks and was charged with interstate transportation of explosives and other federal crimes. The suspect lived in a van, where authorities found numerous pro-Trump stickers and anti-Democrat messages.

October 2018: 11 worshippers slaughtered in vicious attack on Pittsburgh synagogue

The terrorist shooting at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue on October 27, 2018 was the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in U.S. history. Eleven people were killed, and suspect Robert Bowers (a white supremacist) was charged with a long list of federal and state crimes. According to investigators, the suspect had been posting anti-Semitic messageson social media and blamed Jews for illegal immigration in the U.S. Bowers he had become a critic of President Trump, claiming that he was a “globalist, not a nationalist.” But he shared Trump’s obsession with the caravan of Central American refugees that was making its way north.

October 2018: older African-American couple killed in Kentucky

On October 24, 2018 in Kentucky, an older African-American couple, Maurice E. Stallard and Vickie Lee Jones, were randomly killed in a supermarket parking lot in Jeffersontown, Kentucky near Louisville simply for being black. According to police, the suspect (who was charged with three federal hate crimes and had a history of making racist comments) tried to enter an African-American church before the attack on Stallard and Jones but, thankfully, didn’t get in.

August 2017: activist Heather Heyer murdered at Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia

On December 7, 2018, white nationalist James Alex Fields, Jr. was found guilty of killing activist Heather Heyer by running his car into a group of counterdemonstrators in Charlottesville, Virginia on August 12, 2017. Heyer, who was 32, was among the activists who gathered in Charlottesville that day to protest against a large demonstration by white supremacists, white nationalists and Christianists that was billed as a Unite the Right rally. And the event had many of the familiar themes one finds among white terrorists: the U.S. is being invaded, and the invasion must be stopped.

The Washington Post has reported that the 74-page manifesto of one of the suspects in the Christchurch, New Zealand massacre is titled “The Great Manifesto”—a title the Post says “echoes the rallying cry of, among others, the torch-bearing protesters who marched in Charlottesville in 2017.”

---

coast guard mass shooter chris hayes

mass shootings in Florida, Georgia, and Louisiana that left a combined 14 dead. Cydney Hargis found that cable news mostly ignored them. MSNBC in particular spent less than a minute on them combined.

mma 119

rww

During his recent appearance on Greg Hunter’s “USAWatchdog” program, so-called “firefighter prophet” and radical conspiracy theorist Mark Taylor warned that former attorney general Eric Holder is delivering secret “mind control” codes to the public via his Twitter account.

Recently, Holder changed the banner image on his Twitter account to feature a photo of him standing beside John F. Kennedy’s grave at Arlington National Cemetery, which both Taylor and Hunter are interpreting as Holder sending a message to President Trump.

“He changed his Twitter background to you see him standing there with his arms crossed in front of JFK’s grave site and he’s got his hands together with his two fingers, like he is giving a code,” Taylor said. “People aren’t stupid.”

“Do you think he’s giving the order to have the same thing happen to Donald Trump that happened to JFK?” asked Hunter.

“It’s not looking good, let’s put it that way,” responded Taylor. “It looks like there is something being given off in the spirit by what he is doing. These guys have code words, they have symbolism, they don’t have to come right out and say something to activate these people.”

Taylor went on to assert that people who have carried out mass shootings have often been under CIA “mind control” and that Holder is attempting to “activate” more of them to target Trump with his Twitter image.

“These guys are totally demonic when it comes to this stuff,” he said. “They’re using the mind control, they are using the activation codes to activate these guys.”

...

rww

Two neo-Nazis who filmed One America News Network personality Jack Posobiec while he roamed the streets of a Washington, D.C., to create propaganda for the Seth Rich conspiracy theory on behalf of Rebel Media are suspected to have schemed violence in relation to the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting that left 11 murdered, court documents show.

Jeffrey Clark, who police arrested on November 9, was active on Gab, where he used his profile honoring white supremacist mass murderer Dylann Roof to connect with the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter. Prior to his arrest, he had attended the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he was photographed alongside the young man who killed counter-protester Heather Heyer. Clark’s relatives told the FBI that he sought to “expedite” a race war.

Clark’s brother, a fellow neo-Nazi named Edward, committed suicide after the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting when it was revealed that Gab, a Twitter spin-off overrun with violent extremists, had provided the shooter’s profile information to law enforcement. Apparently concerned that he’d soon be receiving a visit from the FBI, he shot himself in a park.

The tie-ins don’t stop at Gab. The neo-Nazi Clark brothers were connected to a web of white nationalists who ushered in the “alt-right,” including Posobiec.

The brothers were photographed filming Posobiec while he worked on footage about the murder of former DNC staffer Seth Rich, which served as rich fodder for pro-Trump conspiracy theorists online in 2016. Posobiec also notably traveled to Comet Ping Pong, a Washington pizza restaurant and bar that was at the center of wild internet conspiracy theories about satanic pedophile rings, to “infiltrate” the scene. When a believer in the conspiracy theory took matters into his own hands and entered the restaurant with a firearm, Posobiec deleted evidence of his visit and began lying about his role in spreading the hoax.

In the images and reporting published by HuffPost, the Clark brothers are seen filming Posobiec. Jeffrey Clark reportedly told Laura Sennett of One People’s Project that “Posobiec absolutely was” aware of their neo-Nazi beliefs and had told his brother “that he was sympathetic to those beliefs.” HuffPost reports:

In May 2017, the Clark brothers teamed up with far-right “Pizzagate” propagandist Jack Posobiec, who was then the D.C. bureau chief for the far-right website Rebel Media, to shoot footage for a film Posobiec was working on about Seth Rich, the Democratic National Committee staffer whose murder near the Clarks’ home in Bloomingdale has spawned numerous far-right conspiracy theories.

Laura Sennett, an anti-fascist researcher who works with One People’s Project, spoke with Jeffrey Clark a few weeks after he and his brother were spotted in Bloomingdale with Posobiec, who by then had been fired from Rebel under mysterious circumstances after plagiarizing Jason Kessler, the white nationalist who organized the Unite the Right rally.

“[Clark] told me that Jack Posobiec hired him and his brother to follow him with a camera to take video of his investigation of Seth Rich,” Sennett told HuffPost. “Not sure if it was a documentary or a news story, but [Posobiec] was doing some kind of reporting for Rebel Media. I asked him if Posobiec was aware of his Nazi beliefs. He told me that Posobiec absolutely was and had told Jeff that he was sympathetic to those beliefs.”

The Clark brothers would stand alongside Posobiec again at a rally he led alongside white nationalist Richard Spencer, of whom the brothers and Posobiec were both seeming fans. Alexander Reid Ross, the author of the book “Against the Fascist Creep,” tweeted that the Clark brothers had infiltrated a book talk he gave last year. According to Ross, a Daily Caller reporter was filming the incident. Later that night, Posobiec published the PDF of Ross’ book.

...

---

anomaly?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Congressional_baseball_shooting

alexandria

June 14, 2017, in Alexandria, Virginia, Republican member of Congress and House Majority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana was shot while practicing for the annual Congressional Baseball Game for Charity, scheduled for the following day. Also shot were Crystal Griner, a U.S. Capitol Police officer assigned to protect Scalise; Zack Barth, a congressional aide; and Matt Mika, a Tyson Foods lobbyist.

A ten-minute shootout ensued between the shooter—James Hodgkinson of Belleville, Illinois, a left-wing activist[9][10]—and officers from the Capitol and Alexandria Police. Officers shot Hodgkinson, who died from his wounds later that day at the George Washington University Hospital.[7][11]

Scalise and Mika were taken to nearby hospitals, where they underwent surgery.[12] Scalise is the first sitting member of Congress to have been shot since Arizona Representative Gabrielle Giffords was shot in 2011.[13]

The Virginia Attorney General concluded it was “fueled by rage against Republican legislators,” and “an act of terrorism.”[14]

Contents

1 Background

2 Shooting

3 Injuries

4 Perpetrator

5 Reactions

6 Effect on the 2017 Congressional Baseball Game

7 See also

8 References

9 External links

Background[edit]

The shooting took place on June 14, 2017, at Eugene Simpson Stadium Park in Alexandria, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. There were 24 Republican congressmen who had gathered at the park to practice for the next day's Congressional Baseball Game for Charity, an annual, bipartisan event first held in 1909. Among those at the practice, aside from Scalise, were Senators Rand Paul and Jeff Flake, and Representatives Roger Williams (the team's coach), Chuck Fleischmann, Trent Kelly, Mo Brooks, Brad Wenstrup, Rodney Davis, Jeff Duncan, Jack Bergman, and Joe Barton (the team's manager).[7][15][16][17]

Prior to the game, the Republicans had held practices at the same time and place each morning.[18] The team began its practice around 6:30 a.m. EDT that day.[18][19][20]

According to Representatives Ron DeSantis and Jimmy Duncan, they were approached before the shooting at the practice by a man who asked whether Republicans or Democrats were practicing on the field. Duncan reportedly replied that it was the Republican team. DeSantis later told reporters that both he and Duncan believe that the man was the perpetrator of the shooting, James Hodgkinson.[21]

Three Capitol Police officers were present at the practice to protect Scalise,[22] who, due to his House leadership position, has a full-time security detail assigned to protect him.[23] They were posted behind the first-base dugout on that day.[22][24]

Shooting[edit]

...The practice had been underway for about half an hour when James Hodgkinson began firing. According to the Capitol Police, he was armed with an SKS rifle and a 9mm Smith & Wesson handgun, both of which he had apparently purchased legally.[1] It was unclear if Hodgkinson used the handgun during the shooting incident.[25]

...

he attack drew a bipartisan response as many politicians immediately sent out notes expressing their anger over the shooting, recovery wishes for the injured and gratitude for the police. News of the shooting and injuries quickly reached the Democratic Congressional Baseball players, who were at their own practice at another location when the shooting occurred. They gathered together in the dugout to pray for the injured.[63]

President Donald Trump addressed the nation saying, "We are deeply saddened by this tragedy. Our thoughts and prayers are with the members of Congress, their staffs, Capitol Police, first responders, and all others affected."[64] President Trump and his wife Melania visited Scalise and Griner in the hospital. While at the hospital, the Trumps spoke with Scalise's family and with Griner and her wife.[65] On July 27, 2017, Trump awarded the Medal of Valor to five of the officers who were injured in the shooting.[66]

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R–WI) addressed the House of Representatives before their afternoon session and said, "An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us." Members of both parties rose in applause to his remarks.[67]

Former Representative Gabrielle Giffords (D–AZ), who survived being shot in the head at a constituent event in 2011, sent a tweet that read "My heart is with my former colleagues, their families and staff, and the US Capitol Police—public servants and heroes today and every day."[13]

Hours after the shooting, Senator Bernie Sanders responded on the Senate floor to news that Hodgkinson was a campaign volunteer for his 2016 presidential run:

I have just been informed that the alleged shooter at the Republican baseball practice is someone who apparently volunteered on my presidential campaign. I am sickened by this despicable act. Let me be as clear as I can be, violence of any kind is unacceptable in our society and I condemn this action in the strongest possible terms. Real change can only come about through nonviolent action, and anything else runs counter to our most deeply held American values.[68]

Reactions to the shooting among political activists were split. Some liberals, like Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, called for stricter gun control laws, while some Republicans, like Chris Collins, blamed anti-Trump rhetoric.[69] Other activists blamed growing national polarization[70] for causing the shooting.[71]

bad week runup to midterms, djt hysterical rhet on invasion caravan

aha anti semite [the original archetypal conspiracy theory: unseen evil force at fault for all, vs actual structural], anti- islam (sikh temple?)

---

Pennsylvania man accused of killing the 11 Jewish worshipers was indicted Wednesday on 44 counts, including murder and hate crimes. Robert Bowers has a history of posting anti-Semitic and xenophobic content. Just before the shooting rampage, Bowers wrote on a far-right social media site, ”HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people. I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in.” HIAS, formerly known as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, is a nonprofit providing assistance to refugees.

Meanwhile, President Trump attacked the media again following massive protests in Pittsburgh during his visit to the Tree of Life synagogue Wednesday. Trump tweeted, “Melania and I were treated very nicely yesterday in Pittsburgh. The Office of the President was shown great respect on a very sad & solemn day. We were treated so warmly. Small protest was not seen by us, staged far away. The Fake News stories were just the opposite-Disgraceful!” Reports estimate several thousand protesters turned out to protest Trump’s visit. Many local leaders also publicly opposed the visit. On Wednesday night, protesters gathered at the University of Pittsburgh to rally against hate and gun violence.

https://www.democracynow.org/2018/11/1/headlines/racist_kentucky_shooter_indicted_for_murder

Kentucky, the white man accused of shooting and killing two African-American customers at a grocery store last Wednesday was indicted on murder charges. Before the deadly shooting, Gregory Bush was captured on a surveillance camera trying to force open the doors of a predominantly black church, the First Baptist Church of Jeffersontown, before turning his attention to a nearby Kroger supermarket, where he opened fire and killed Maurice Stallard and Vickie Lee Jones. Bush has a history of making racist slurs and has a long rap sheet of misdemeanor charges, including domestic violence, menacing and making terroristic threats.

...The ordinary spectrum of hypocrisy is not broad enough to encompass Trump, who directed the fury of his unruly admirers at specific members of the press during his rallies, and denounced the profession as “dishonest,” and threatened to “open up” the nation’s libel laws, now adopting the pose of a protector of the First Amendment. At issue here is not freedom of speech but the freedom to treat other people, particularly vulnerable ones, badly; the freedom to whip up sentiment along the predictable fault lines and to do so without facing any consequence; the freedom to embolden forces that represent a tangible danger to people. While the digital cavalry of the alt-right rode to Yiannopoulos’s defense, there was almost nothing said, certainly not by Trump publicly, although he spoke to Justin Trudeau, the Canadian Prime Minister, by phone about the six Muslims killed in Quebec City by a gunman who shared many of the demagogic President’s views.

...

Following a mass shooting at a Madden video game tournament in Jacksonville, conservatives ran their usual disinformation campaign.

A Fox News guest speculated without evidence that the shooter had autism and that was responsible for the shooting: "This isn’t a gun control problem ... It’s mainly a video game control problem and access to good mental health treatment problem"

A Fox panel called for the regulation of video games and smartphones, with one Fox host arguing with a straight face that "When we think of other risks to children and their health, for example smoking, we actually take action and ban those things."

An NRATV host criticized a survivor of the shooting for supposedly not hearing gunshots over his headphones, saying if your headphones are “so loud you can’t hear what is going on around you, you are living in your own world. That can become deadly."

Anything to not blame America's lax gun laws.

https://www.alternet.org/propaganda-working-trump-voters-call-ms-13-serious-threat-us-thats-simply-not-true

When news broke of an active shooting at the Capital Gazette, my local newspaper in Annapolis, Maryland, I tweeted editor Rick Hutzell to ask if he was safe, and how I could help. When police announced the arrest of 38-year-old Jarrod Ramos as the suspect in the mass shooting, I, like many others, delved into his Twitter accounts.

I was shocked when I realized that Ramos – whom a grand jury just indicted on 23 charges, including five counts of first-degree murder – had contacted me two years ago. He taunted me in response to the Capital’s March 2015 report about how I had helped law enforcement thwart a mass shooting threat made on Twitter against grade school kids and Jews in Kalispell, Montana, by a man named David J. Lenio.

What I learned about Ramos, as I followed his Twitter trail, reveals as strange a worldview as one could imagine informing a mass-murder scenario. There are at least two main influences evident in Ramos' tweets. One is a worldview taken from the theocratic wing of the alt-right, and the other comes from a violent anime subculture centered around a popular manga, anime and film series titled “Berserk.” Taken together, they provide a Rosetta Stone that allows us to translate the significance of two religious visions, in relation to each other, as they existed in Ramos' mind. I believe these mutually informing visions allowed Ramos to cast himself as a vigilante hand of God. His theocratic worldview, combined with his immersion in the world of "Berserk," helps to solve the mystery of his cryptic, final tweet and illuminate his possible motive for mass murder.

For all of Ramos’ vividly imagined righteousness, this story begins with a woman-hating, angry man. That there is a misogynist root to Ramos’ rage-filled rampage is no surprise. Numerous male mass murderers have backgrounds of stalking and harassing women, especially online. Ramos’ beef with the Capital goes back to his ill-conceived defamation suit against the paper, its publisher and a columnist for reporting on his guilty plea for the online harassment of a woman he had known slightly in high school. In court documents he objected to the Capital’s report that, after he had not heard from the woman in months, he told her, “Fuck you, leave me alone.” Ramos told the judge that he felt it unfair that the reporter had not allowed him to offer an explanation. He complained to the judge, “That carries a clear implication that something is wrong inside my head, that I’m insane.”

Whether Ramos is sane is a matter for the court to determine. But there is an explanation for these hostile words – which he cribbed from the protagonist in "Berserk" – and it has to do with Ramos’ worldview, which needs to be more clearly understood.

The alt-right half of the Rosetta Stone

I believe Ramos contacted me initially because the Capital had reported on my connection to David Lenio, a white nationalist who had tweeted threats of a possible mass shooting, and also because I was researching and writing about ties between a local politician named Michael Peroutka and a right-wing group called the League of the South.

The League is a theocratic, secessionist organization whose leader, Michael Hill, had called for the formation of death squads targeting journalists, elected officials and other members of “the elite.” In his essay “A Bazooka in Every Pot,” Hill described such an assassination campaign as part of “fourth-generation warfare,” a style of decentralized conflict that blurs the lines between war and politics, combatants and civilians.

Hill wrote: “To oversimplify, the primary targets will not be enemy soldiers; instead, they will be political leaders, members of the hostile media, cultural icons, bureaucrats, and other of the managerial elite without whom the engines of tyranny don’t run.”

That was not Hill’s only overt call to violence. He followed up with another essay calling for young men of “Christendom” to become “citizen-soldiers” to destroy the “galloping tyranny” of our time.

...

As for Peroutka, he is a neo-Confederate theocrat who thinks that the wrong side won the Civil War and that our real national anthem is “Dixie.” He is also a former board member of the League, which had endorsed his successful 2014 campaign for a seat on Maryland’s Anne Arundel County Council, running as a Republican. This is the same League that helped organize the infamous torch-lit Unite the Right march in Charlottesville, Virginia, last summer.

Over a period of nearly seven years, Peroutka is one of only two politicians whom Ramos tweeted about – the other being Donald Trump, who has repeatedly vilified journalists.

For example, Ramos wrote in his @EricHartleyFrnd Twitter bio (which he named in apparent mockery of a former Capital columnist whom Ramos had sued unsuccessfully for defamation), “Dear reader: I created this page to defend myself. Now I’m suing the shit out of half of AA County and making corpses of corrupt careers and corporate entities.”Jarrod Ramos is not affiliated with any political party, and there is no evidence that he was politically motivated or that he acted on anyone’s orders. On the other hand, as Salon’s Paul Rosenberg has reported, he was influenced by the rhetoric and ideology of the racist alt-right. And like Hill, Ramos showed bold belligerence toward managerial elites whom he viewed as enemies.

Justice and public safety require that we consider the context, including multiple influences and possible triggers, when a suspect faces mass murder charges. Therefore, it is fair and necessary to ask whether President Trump’s demagoguery against journalists could trigger some lone nut to murder them. As researcher Chip Berlet has written, sociologists call such a violent response to coded rhetoric “scripted violence” – and “heroes know which villains to kill.” Followers thus don’t require specific orders, but gather a sense of validation and righteousness in carrying out a violent campaign of societal purification against people designated as corrupting influences.

This suspect had a simmering feud for seven years with the Capital, its former publisher and Eric Hartley, the former columnist whom he had sued unsuccessfully. Ramos created a website on which he posted documents and communications about his case, describing himself as an agent of “the Inquisition” and “a crusader” who answered to a “Higher Authority” than civil government and who meted out literal “carnage” to his foes.

Ramos wrote of his perceived enemies: "The authority that permits their power also stands poised to punish its abuse. Even kings must answer to God, and a modern day Inquisition is at hand. The potential judgement is no less severe; the carnage differs only in literal terms. As this search for Truth commences, a crusader they could not kill approaches."

His crusade targeted court officials as well as journalists, whom he considered dishonest. For example, Ramos tweeted a quote from German poet Paul Gerhardt: “When a man lies, he murders some part of the world.” Ramos concluded, “Time to slay some murderous shitbag esquires." In another tweet criticizing “inequity in the MD justice system,” he said: "Here's to Higher Authority hearing and #hurting."

To Ramos, defamation is a violation of common law but, more important, a violation of God’s law that is worthy of hellfire.

For example, he once tweeted: “Catholicism still says liars go to hell.”

He also tweeted, without attribution or citation, a quote from a 16th-century church court case: “Again, my unruly tongue, if it were not punished, it would not only set more of you on fire, but it would bolden others to do the like.” This quote is from a confession to defamation in Mitford v. Shaw, an ecclesiastical court case from 1569-70. Church courts in England had jurisdiction over cases of defamation when the plaintiff’s claim was not for money damages but for the correction of a sin. (Common law courts oversaw claims for money damages.) Church courts sentenced violators to do public penance, on pain of excommunication.

In the Mitford case, when the church court found Charles Shaw guilty of slander, he did penance by standing up in church, wearing linen apparel, and reading his confessional statement, which equates slander to murder, worthy of divine retribution.

Shaw stated, “I acknowledge thus to slander my Christian brother is an heinous offence, first towards God, who hath straightly forbidden it in his holy laws, accounting it to be a kind of murdering of my neighbor, and threatening to punish it with hellfire and the loss of the kingdom of heaven.”

Modern-day theocrats, such as Peroutka, would like to see ecclesiastical courts replace the American judicial system. At a 2016 Summer of Justice rally in Wichita, Kansas, which took place the same week as the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Peroutka called on his fellow Christian nationalists to “take dominion over these positions of civil authority” in order to “interpose” against laws that don’t square with their notion of God’s law.

Peroutka claimed that the only valid laws are ones which adhere to this fundamentalist vision of the Constitution and the Bible. “What if the Congress did pass a law allowing abortion? And then what if a sitting president signed it and a sitting court validated it?” he asked. “Would it be the law? No, of course not.” Then he slung on his guitar and filmed the crowd for a video for his new song, “Courts cannot make law.”

Near the end of the Summer of Justice, the anti-abortion group Operation Save America staged a kangaroo “ecclesiastical court” which declared that Supreme Court rulings on abortion rights, LGBTQ rights, marriage equality and the removal of government-sponsored prayer in schools were contrary to God’s law. Eight “judges” took turns reading “charges” against the Supreme Court and then declared their decisions “null and void.”

The judges included the Rev. Matt Trewhella, leader of the Milwaukee-based Missionaries to the Preborn, who had signed a statement in 1993 declaring that the murder of abortion providers was “justifiable homicide.” Convicted murderers Paul Hill and Michael Griffin later unsuccessfully used “justifiable homicide” defenses in their trials for killing abortion providers.

Ramos’ tweets make clear that in his theological view, journalists who had allegedly framed him and court officers who had supposedly lied about him were as guilty as murderers and would ultimately answer to God. He saw himself as an agent of divine retribution. He was not subtle about how he would punish the sin of defamation.

He tweeted: “Awaiting reprisal, death will be their acquisition.” This is a misquoted lyric from a thrash metal song by Slayer, “Raining Blood.” The actual line is: “Awaiting reprisal, death will be their acquittance.” The song ends with a vision of victims’ blood deluging a revenge-driven killer: “Raining blood from a lacerated sky, bleeding its horror, creating my structure. Now I shall reign in blood!”

“Ramos came to see himself as some kind of vigilante for righteousness, casting himself for example as a 'crusader' and gunning down innocent people in a newsroom," Political Research Associates analyst Frederick Clarkson told Salon. This vision was "not unlike the militaristic, millennial vision of Michael Hill,” he continued. “Last year [Hill] rallied what he calls the Southern Defense Force, which he envisions as not just a modern Confederate army but the ‘Army of the True Living God.’”

So it makes sense that Ramos, who has metaphorically casts himself as a Christian holy warrior, would identify with Peroutka, a dyed-in-the-wool theocrat who has argued that civil servants must disobey any laws believed to be contrary to God’s law. Ramos tweeted three times in defense of Peroutka, once to crow to Rema Rahman, a journalist at the Capital, about Peroutka’s 2014 election to the Anne Arundel County Council. He tweeted: “Peroutka won and you lost @remawriter. Get over it. You’re already going to Hell, so why not concern yourself with more relevant matters?”

He tweeted again to tell Rahman to “shut the fuck up” after she wrote a piece reporting that illegal robocalls might have helped put Peroutka’s campaign over the top. He said: “It's not your place, so shut the fuck up @capgaznews. Peroutka's columns don't get the pickled shit sued out of him.”

He also tweeted: “Why are they so obsessed about Peroutka @capgaznews?” He added the hashtag #CapDeathWatch.

Ramos, who nursed grievances against perceived injustices, and who had sued a newspaper for defamation, also identified with Donald Trump. In response to an opinion column in the Capital that questioned Trump’s qualifications for the presidency, he tweeted a warning: “Referring to @realDonaldTrump as ‘unqualified’ @capgaznews could end badly (again).” His tweet linked to a Wall Street Journal article about Trump's lawsuit against Univision, claiming breach of contract and defamation.

The next day, Ramos tweeted: “Fuck you, leave me alone,” and linked to a Maryland appellate court document upholding the dismissal of his defamation case against the Capital. It is reasonable to assume that this angry comment was directed at the journalists and newspaper who had bested him in court, and perhaps also at attorneys and judges.

The embittered suspect with a vendetta against a local newspaper the justice system had been simmering since 2011. What triggered him in 2018? I don’t know. But shortly before the massacre, two things happened that could have been factors. Three days before the shooting, Donald Trump had pointed out members of the news media at a big outdoor rally in South Carolina, demonizing them as “enemies of the people.” This is a phrase that demagogues throughout history, from the French Revolution to Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, have understood and used as an incitement to violence. A day later, Peroutka was defeated in his 2018 re-election bid, losing to a female candidate in the Republican primary.

The "Berserk" half of the Rosetta Stone

The other, seemingly unrelated element of Ramos' worldview is drawn from the world of anime, the source of his final, cryptic tweet, approximately three minutes before the shooting began. It was a peculiar expression he had used before: “Fuck you, leave me alone.” This world of manga and anime informed the suspect’s hero-versus-villain worldview and also the way he expressed it through language and religious symbolic imagery. While his tweets referenced mainstream sci-fi touchstones, such as "Star Wars" and "Star Trek," his primary influence was the universe of "Berserk," a blood-and-guts manga, anime and movie series that has also inspired several video games.

Ramos tweeted numerous references to "Berserk" characters, paraphrased quotes from them, and used symbolism drawn from the series. He described himself as playing a role in the world of "Berserk" and hinted that an understanding of its fictional world was key to understanding his “psyche.” Indeed, in a letter he wrote stating his intention of “killing every person present” in the Capital newsroom, he quoted from "Berserk." As mentioned above, he did so again in his final tweet before the shooting began.

Ramos tweeted to ask whether Eric Hartley, the former Capital columnist, was “Ordained to Be Murdered by the God Hand?” In "Berserk," the God Hand is a group of the five most powerful demons. The photo on Ramos' Twitter avatar was the face of Hartley, with a Berserk symbol pasted over it – a brand that marks victims for demonic sacrifice.

He tweeted, “Judge Nick doesn’t believe in the God Hand. I play a well-established part of that system by tweeting of it.” It appears that Ramos identified with the world of "Berserk" and saw himself as playing a part in it.

Ramos also marked former Capital Gazette publisher Thomas Marquardt -- whom he nicknamed "Evil Tom" -- with the demonic brand, in the banner image for the Twitter account @EricHartleyFrnd. To Ramos, the brand signified that it was "Open Season" to hunt and kill. He tweeted, "Another stooge @capgaznews says Evil Tom is going on his own terms? That mark on his head is called Brand of Sacrifice; or now, Open Season." He also tweeted a YouTube link to the song “Murder” from the "Berserk" soundtrack.

He repeatedly referenced a vampire character from "Berserk," Nosferatu Zodd, and tweeted an image of Zodd. He tweeted: "If you think this man [wants to be] your friend, know this: when his ambition crumbles, death will come for you — a death you cannot escape." This is a paraphrased quote from Zodd, who said, “If you consider this man your true friend, and regard him as a brother, then know this. When this man's ambition crumbles, it is your destiny to face your death. A death you can never escape!”

Ramos also identified with "Berserk" characters on several other occasions. He tweeted, “I told you once. I will have my own kingdom. Nothing has changed.” This is a close paraphrase of a quote from the character Griffith, who said, “I told you once, I will get my own kingdom. Nothing has changed.”

He tweeted, “I'm Femto. I can also do whatever I want. I will have my own kingdom. I will choose the place you die," adding a link to a trailer for "Berserk." Griffith dies and is reborn as Femto, a member of the God Hand, who is undeterred by moral inhibitions. Femto becomes the spearheadof the God Hand’s schemes.

Ramos tweeted the anime cover art from "Berserk – The Golden Age Arc Movie Collection" on DVD, which features the protagonist Guts. He twice quoted Guts, a swordsman motivated by revenge whose left forearm is replaced by a prosthetic which can be fitted with a cannon. Guts kills many enemies, including his primary antagonist, Bishop Mozgus, who is a demon spawn with angelic wings. Before delivering the coup de grâce, Guts tells Mozgus, “If you meet your God, say this for me … Leave me the hell alone!”

The latter is one of the most popular quotes among "Berserk" fans. However, some translate the quote, or paraphrase it differently. For example: “If you meet your God, tell him to leave me the fuck alone!”

Or, as Ramos tweeted, some three minutes before the shooting: “Fuck you, leave me alone.” He then added another of his Twitter handles, @JudgeMoylanFrnd, which features the face of Charles Moylan, the judge who had dismissed his defamation case, marked with the brand of sacrifice.

Guts’ message for Mozgus to take to his god is a familiar trope in action movies, the sort of comment that a protagonist makes before dispatching a villain, such as “I’ll see you in Hell,” “See you on the other side,” or “Hasta la vista, baby.” However, this “Leave me alone” message is not meant for the people whom the protagonist is about to kill; it is for them to carry to their god.

In light of Ramos’ having previously tweeted this same language in anger at both the Capital and Maryland court officials, and that this closely tracks what Guts tells his primary antagonist before delivering the killing blow, Ramos was making clear his intent to kill. In the context of scripted violence, as when a politician uses his office to demonize journalists, individuals who view themselves as holy warriors or heroes motivated by a sense of grievance know which villains to kill.

Ramos, who represented himself in his defamation case against the Capital, insisted that he was sane and that he had not been merely fantasizing online about being a predator. He wrote on his website, "I’ve been learning law for a different kind of game. It’s no publicity stunt, nor clinical insanity, nor predatory Internet fantasy, but very dangerous indeed."

In the same document, he wrote, "Much like a life, what is the price of a name? Are these even two different questions?" Like the 16th-century English penitent who confessed to defamation in Mitford v. Shaw, calling it a kind of murder, Ramos equates the loss of his good name with the loss of a life. This is akin to the reasoning of those who kill abortion providers: If, according to their understanding of God’s law, abortion is murder, then those who provide abortions are subject to death. Likewise, if a theocrat believes defamation to be a kind of murder, then what is the penalty?

After years of build-up, Ramos became a self-righteous, avenging character he had invented for himself, and announced his intent to kill, writing to the newspaper’s former attorney and to Maryland court officials that he was on his way to the Capital newsroom “with the objective of killing every person present.” They received the letters after the massacre. In a letter to Judge Moylan, he wrote, “Welcome, Mr. Moylan, to your unexpected legacy: YOU should have died.” He signed off, “Friends forever, Jarrod W. Ramos.”

Here again, Ramos is quoting from Berserk.

Guts’ adoptive father Gambino blames him for the death of his wife. So he tries to kill Guts, while telling him, “You should have died.” In self-defense, Guts kills Gambino. But he feels guilty and conflicted about this deed. A recurring nightmare of an army of skeletons haunts him, their eyeless orbs glaring as they chant over and over, “You should have died.”

This message is not for the people whom the protagonist has killed, nor for the people he would have liked to kill. It is for Guts himself – a killer who felt justified but also conflicted and guilty even as he killed.

Ramos seems to be suggesting that, like the "Berserk" protagonist he referenced in his final tweet, he felt conflicted about killing. It appears that just prior to the mass murder, Ramos signaled his realization that, like Guts, he would feel guilty about it. This suggests that he knew right from wrong, and therefore supports the argument that, as Ramos himself has insisted, he was sane. While his final tweet indicates a rationale that he must defend himself from perceived oppression and injustice (“Leave me alone”), his letter to the judge indicates that he anticipates feeling haunted by the consciousness of guilt (“You should have died”).

Lessons learned

As our family members, friends and colleagues die in one mass shooting after another, we urge ourselves to understand what we could do differently as a society. Why did this suspect do what he did? Each time, we come away with at least as many questions as answers. I don’t claim to know the right questions, let alone the answers. We all have a lot of work to do. But I have learned a few things from my research into Jarrod Ramos’ world. One of them recalls Maya Angelou’s famous quote, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”

Ramos showed himself to the world before he acted. He collected a grab bag of grievances out of which he tried to forge a rationale, arguably a theology, that would give his revenge tale a transcendent meaning: It would be the story of his life. He revealed himself often; society chose not to see or was unable to, or at any rate did not take him seriously. He recognized this fact. After the mass murders, his letters reminded us all, “I told you so.”

Ramos' worldview is clearly derived from multiple, esoteric sources – sources he may not have accessed all by himself. This does not mean that he did not act alone; it does mean that he did not come to such sources as 16th-century ecclesiastical court records by himself. Someone pointed him in this direction. Ramos is probably not the only one who has been directed to such material in search of the will of God in the 21st Century and one’s role in God’s plan.

Ramos called himself “an arrogant auto-didact,” with reference to how he learned how to represent himself (however unsuccessfully) in court. There is a rich history on the far right of individuals -- including self-proclaimed “sovereign citizens” and theocrats advocating Higher Law -- who defend themselves by cobbling together supposed legal precedents, divine authority and ill-conceived justifications for illegal and sometimes violent acts.

There are also Christian nationalist think tanks, such as Michael Peroutka’s Institute on the Constitution, that peddle books and courses to self-taught advocates on how to “defend against those in opposition to God’s Word.” However out of the mainstream they may be, such people should be properly understood and taken seriously. They say what they mean; they mean what they say. When someone speaks out about meting out carnage in service to Higher Authority, let’s all pay attention.

Ignoring an injustice collector who views himself as the hand of God doesn’t work. Ignoring the women he harasses doesn’t work. Coddling him in the courts despite his overt law-breaking doesn’t work. Ignoring the multiple cultural influences that shape and validate his viewpoint doesn’t work.

When it comes to Jarrod Ramos in particular, however bizarre and convoluted his "Berserk"-influenced, alt-right worldview may seem, pay attention. There is much more we need to know about the profoundly anti-democratic origins of this man's violent history.

https://www.alternet.org/accused-annapolis-mass-shooter-left-trail-evidence-ties-him-alt-right

hen the identity of the apparent gunman in the massacre of five journalists in Annapolis, Maryland, was revealed, area resident John Hutson, a retired Navy admiral who is now a prominent consultant and writer, had a shock of recognition. The suspect, Jarrod Ramos, had contacted Hutson in March 2015, taunting him about his role in alerting law enforcement and thwarting a potential mass killer who threatened schoolchildren and Jews in far-away Montana.

That first individual in Montana, David Lenio, overflowed with hyperbolic threats, and Hutson’s efforts to stop him succeeded, as I reported at Salon, just after it happened. Ramos was more cryptic less overtly demonstrative—but in the end, far more deadlier. Both were somewhat enigmatic, angry loners, with an unmistakable affinity for the racist alt-right.

This article originally appeared in Salon.

“Jarrod Ramos was a lone nut who was not politically motivated, but he was politically influenced by the alt-right,” Hutson told Salon. Researcher Fred Clarkson agrees. “Ramos and David Lenio seem to have been drawn into the orbit of far-right visions of anti-democratic violence, even as they seem to have ultimately acted on their own,” said Clarkson, a senior research analyst with Political Research Associates, a progressive think tank in Somerville, Massachusetts.

The only two politicians Ramos had tweeted about, according to Hutson, were Donald Trump and Michael Peroutka, a wealthy neo-Confederate funder turned Maryland county councilman. Hutson has written about Peroutka, as have I. Peroutka had major funding ties to former Alabama judge and U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore, as well to the League of the South, whose leader, Michael Hill, had written approvingly about plans to form paramilitary groups to fight a militarized “fourth generation” culture war, one of whose targets would be the media.

“To oversimplify, the primary targets will not be enemy soldiers;” Hill wrote, “instead, they will be political leaders, members of the hostile media, cultural icons, bureaucrats, and other of the managerial elite without whom the engines of tyranny don’t run.”

Ramos first contacted Hutson through Twitter, the latter recalls, after "the Capital Gazette published a piece about how I had alerted the FBI about mass shooting threat suspect David Lenio,” Hutson said.

After Hutson tweeted about the story, Ramos tweeted a couple of disturbing responses, first asking “Were any school children intimidated?” then claiming that Lenio “had won”:

...

santa fe

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/hugh-hewitt-seriously-proposes-trench-coat-ban-stop-gun-violence-after-texas

---

vox

Alek Minassian, the man who killed 10 people by driving a van down a busy street in Toronto on Monday, is a terrorist.

We know this because he told us so. On Tuesday afternoon, Facebook confirmed the authenticity of a post in his name, in which he pledged allegiance to something called the “Incel Rebellion.” This is not an organized militant group but rather an ideal developed by the so-called “incel” movement — an online community of men united by their inability to convince women to have sex with them. (“Incel” stands for “involuntarily celibate.”)

Some self-identified incels, as they call themselves, have developed an elaborate sociopolitical explanation for their sexual failures, one that centers on the idea that women are shallow, vicious, and only attracted to hyper-muscular men. They see this as a profound injustice against men like them, who suffer an inherent genetic disadvantage through no fault of their own. A small radical fringe believes that violence, especially against women, is an appropriate response — that an “Incel Rebellion” or “Beta [Male] Uprising” will eventually overturn the sexual status quo.

Minassian is not the first to turn these violent fantasies into reality. In 2014, a sexually frustrated man named Elliot Rodger killed six and wounded 14 in a shooting spree in Santa Barbara, California. He justified his actions in a lengthy and creepy manifesto sent to acquaintances and then widely shared online as retaliation against women as a group for refusing to provide him with the sex he is owed. This man has become a hero to many incels; the Toronto perpetrator praised him as the “Supreme Gentleman” (a term the California shooter coined for himself) in his Facebook post.

Only a tiny percentage of incels seem willing to turn to violence or terrorism, and the movement isn’t a threat on the level of an al-Qaeda or ISIS. But it’s a new kind of danger, a testament to the power of online communities to radicalize frustrated young men based on their most personal and painful grievances.

guaRDUK

Just seven weeks into 2018, there have been eight shootings at US schools that have resulted in injury or death.

Seventeen people have been confirmed dead in the latest shooting in Parkland, Florida, on Valentine’s Day.

Less than a month ago, a 15-year-old student opened fire at a high school in Kentucky, leaving two students dead and 18 injured. Other incidents have been grave, but on a smaller scale.

In early February, one student in Los Angeles was shot in the head, and another in the arm, when a gun concealed in a fellow student’s backpack went off.

...

https://everytownresearch.org/school-shootings/

In 2013, Everytown began tracking gunfire in schools and at college and universities — public reports that a firearm was discharged inside a school building or on school or campus grounds — and over the next three years identified 160 qualifying incidents, including fatal and nonfatal assaults, suicides, and unintentional shootings.

INTRODUCTION

In all, these incidents resulted in 59 deaths and 124 non-fatal gunshot injuries.

Regardless of the individuals involved in a shooting, or the circumstances that gave rise to it, gunfire in schools and at colleges and universities undermines the sense of security that all students should have in their learning environments. By tracking this data, Everytown hopes to begin a reasoned discussion about effective means to promote school safety.

Of shootings perpetrated by minors at primary and secondary schools and for which the source of the firearm was known, more than half of the kids obtained the gun at home — likely because an adult did not store it locked and unloaded.

Twenty-four shootings — nearly one in six — occurred after a confrontation or verbal argument intensified, because of the presence of a gun rather than in spite of it.

Incidents were classified as school shootings when a firearm was discharged inside a school building or on school or campus grounds, as documented by the press or confirmed through further inquiries with law enforcement. Incidents in which guns were brought into schools but not fired, or were fired off school grounds after having been possessed in schools, were not included.

THREE YEARS AND AT LEAST 160 SCHOOL SHOOTINGS

Everytown began tracking gunfire in schools and at colleges and universities because no one else was doing it. The U.S. Department of Education produces statistics annually on the number of students killed on-campus per year — approximately 15 homicides and 5 suicides annually. But they only track shootings at primary and secondary schools (not higher education institutions), do not distinguish between the weapons used, and omit shootings outside of regular school hours.1 To fill this gap, Everytown began documenting all incidents where a firearm was discharged on school property, relying on media reports and following up with local law enforcement and school officials when necessary.

Between 2013-15 Everytown identified 160 school shootings across 38 states. Nearly 53 percent of the identified shootings took place at K-12 schools, and 47 percent took place on college or university campuses.

In 95 incidents — over half — the perpetrator(s) intentionally injured or killed at least one other person with a gun. In eight of those incidents, the shooter then shot and killed him or herself; in 20 separate incidents, the shooter attempted or completed suicide without first attacking someone else. Twelve shootings were purely unintentional in nature, and in 33 other incidents, a gun was discharged but no one was injured.

The number of identified incidents was relatively stable over the three years with the exception of incidents in which a gun was fired on campus and no one was injured, which rose each year. It is possible that press coverage of those incidents became more comprehensive over the period of observation.

Regardless of the individuals involved in a shooting or the circumstances that gave rise to it, gunfire in schools undermines the sense of security that all students should have in their learning environments. There is evidence these shootings have long-term impacts on the school community as a whole: a recent analysis of school shootings found that those involving a homicide reduced student enrollment in the affected schools, and depressed students’ standardized test scores by nearly five percent.2

K-12 SCHOOL SHOOTINGS IN FOCUS

Between 2013 and 2015, an average of two school shootings took place at K-12 schools each month. Among shootings at K-12 schools in which the age of the shooter was known, 56 percent (39 of 70) were perpetrated by minors.

Many of the students who perpetrated these shootings had easy access to guns at home. In some cases investigators declined to comment on the source of the firearm because the incidents were under active investigation, but in the 24 incidents where the source of the firearm could be determined, 13 of the shooters (54 percent) used a gun they obtained from home.

This is consistent with an analysis of school-associated violent deaths between 1992-99 by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which found that 56 percent of students involved directly in a school-associated homicide or suicide used a firearm, and of those guns for which the source could be determined, 79 percent were obtained from the shooter’s home or that of a friend or relative.3

Unsecured firearms frequently make their ways to school. A recent press analysis found that nationwide, a child brought a gun onto school property almost daily during the academic school year.4 And a survey by the Department of Education found that, during the 2009-2010 school year, one in every thirty K-12 schools took serious disciplinary action against at least one student for use or possession of a firearm on school property.5

School shootings involving unsecured firearms brought from home included the following:

November 10, 2015 – Lecanto High School, Lecanto, Florida: During his morning English class, a 15-year-old boy walked to the front of the classroom, pulled out his father’s 9mm semi-automatic handgun, and shot himself in the head. He was taken to an area hospital in critical condition and survived.

August 25, 2015 – Hornsby Elementary School, Augusta, Georgia: An unidentified male third-grader brought his father’s gun to school, and while playing with the gun inside his desk, he unintentionally discharged the weapon and hit a female student sitting next to him, injuring her.

October 24, 2014 – Marysville Pilchuck High School, Marysville, Washington: Fifteen-year-old Jaylen Fryberg walked into the school cafeteria and shot five students, killing four, before fatally shooting himself. The gun used in the incident belonged to Fryberg’s father.

January 14, 2014 – Berrendo Middle School, Roswell, New Mexico: Mason Campbell, age 12, walked into his school gym and pulled out a 20-gauge shotgun that he’d taken from home. The boy opened fire on his fellow students, critically wounding an 11-year-old boy, seriously injuring a 13-year-old girl, and slightly wounding an adult staff member. A teacher persuaded the boy to put the gun down.

October 21, 2013 – Sparks Middle School, Sparks, Nevada: Shouting “Why are you laughing at me? Why are you doing this to me?” 12-year-old Jose Reyes fatally shot a teacher and wounded two other 12-year-old students with a 9mm semiautomatic Ruger handgun. His parents told investigators that the gun had been stored in an unlocked case on a shelf above the refrigerator.

January 10, 2013 – Taft Union High School, Taft, California: Sixteen-year-old Bryan Oliver walked into his science classroom with a 12-gauge Winchester shotgun that belonged to his brother, aimed at a 16-year-old classmate he said had bullied him, and fired a single shot that struck the boy in the chest, injuring him.

School Confrontations Lead to Shootings

Between 2013 and 2015, at least 14 shootings on college or university campuses — nearly a quarter of total documented incidents there — occurred after a confrontation or verbal argument intensified to gunfire. Among the shootings that occurred on college campuses after an altercation escalated:

October 9, 2015 – Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, Arizona: Following a fight outside of a dormitory shortly after midnight, 18-year-old freshman Steven Jones ran to his car, grabbed a handgun, and shot and killed freshman Colin Brough, and shot and injured three other students.

April 16, 2014 – Stillman College, Tuscaloosa, Alabama: After two students began arguing over a bet they had made over a video game, one pulled out a small caliber handgun and shot the other student twice in the torso. The victim was rushed to a hospital but did not die, and the other student turned himself in and was charged with attempted murder.

January 22, 2013 – Lone Star College, Houston, Texas: A confrontation that began when two young men bumped into each other in the doorway of an academic building ended when one fired at least 10 shots. Three people were wounded, including two students and a 55-year-old maintenance worker who was shot in the leg.

January 16, 2013 – Chicago State University, Chicago, Illinois: A fight broke out after a basketball game and spilled into the parking lot. In the confusion 17-year-old Tyrone Lawson was shot twice in the back, killing him. Two older men were later charged with the crime.

---

Last week, a Michigan man named Brandon Griesemer was arrested for threatening to kill CNN’s “fake news” anchors. In December of 2016, North Carolina resident Edgar Maddison Welch burst into a pizza restaurant near Washington with a rifle and fired off three rounds, in part because Jones and his staff had spent hours telling their followers the place was the center of a global child-sex ring.

Following Welch’s guilty plea last March, Jones begrudgingly and partially retracted his support for the “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory. His actions since, however, suggest he has no legitimate intention of cleaning up his act.

People have mocked the idea that Trump could become a dictator. What's clear is that many people he likes are telling him to become one.

Matthew Sheffield

---

nb early report

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/florida-gunman-who-killed-17-previously-trained-white-nationalist-group-report

man charged in this week’s Florida school shooting allegedly trained with a white supremacist group.

A spokesman for the right-wing group Republic of Florida claimed accused gunman Nikolas Cruz had been “brought up” by another member of the organization and took part in at least one training exercise in the Tallahassee area, reported ADL.

Jordan Jereb, who is believed to be the militia group’s leader, confirmed the association after self-described ROF members claimed on the online 4chan forum that Cruz had been a member.

The anti-government paramilitary group, which is only a few years old, describes itself as a “white civil rights organization fighting for white identitarian politics” and promotes the creation of a “white ethnostate.”

Jereb told ADL that his group had not directed Cruz to commit the shooting at his former school, and he said the ROF did not support his actio

---

stalk student at hs?

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/mass-shooters-are-linked-narcissism-and-aggressive-behavior-according-psychology

Mass shootings are only getting more frequent—the Kentucky school shooting this week is the 17th shooting in 2018, an outrageous number considering we’re only one month into the year. As activists and legislators rightfully fight battles to enact common sense gun control laws, social scientists are still exploring the other “why” behind the frequency of these horrific tragedies. One recent article published in American Behavioral Scientist finds a compelling new link between mass shooters and narcissistic, aggressivebehavior.

Findings by Brad Bushman, a professor of communication and psychology at Ohio State University, contrast with the widely perceived notion that mass killers tend to be timid types, suffering from self-loathing and poor self-image. “It is a myth that aggressive and violent people suffer from self-esteem," Bushman told PsyPost. "They are much more likely to have narcissistic tendencies,” he explained. “Narcissists think they are special people who deserve special treatment. When they don’t get the respect they think they deserve, they lash out at others in an aggressive manner.”

As Eric Dolan writes for PsyPost, “Mass shootings are often preceded by the perpetrator being subjected to a ‘humiliating loss of face,’ such being fired from work or rejected by a romantic partner.” That certainly fits the profile of many of the violent men last year who gunned down their ex-partners and their families and friends after a breakup. More widely, it makes sense considering so many shooters are also guilty of domestic violence.

Obviously, Bushman's research doesn't imply that all narcissists have violent tendencies. But, as Bushman writes in his study, “After doing research on aggression and violence for over 30 years I have come to the conclusion that the most harmful belief people can have is the belief that they are superior to others (e.g., their religion, race or ethnicity, gender or gender identity, sexual orientation, political party or ideology, school, city, state, country, etc. is best). When people believe they are superior to others, they behave very badly.”

Psychologists agree that we are stuck in a cultural catch-22: we know that many mass shooters kill because they want attention, but constant combined coverage of shootings on 24-hour television news, written media and radio give copycat killers exactly the attention they are often seeking. PsyPost notes “that the prevalence of mass shootings has risen in relation to the mass media coverage of them.” Bushman agrees that the media assists in perpetuating violence in this way. “One should avoid mentioning the names of mass shooters or showing their photos,” he advised.

H/T: PsyPost

---

LV paddock high roller at casino thus slower response?!

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/documentary-reveals-coverup-and-corruption-las-vegas-police-department-stephen

James Jackson reportedly acknowledged the crime to the New York Daily News, saying he wanted to discourage white women from getting romantically involved with black men.

“I didn’t know he was elderly,” Jackson told the paper. He added that he would have rather killed “a young thug” or “a successful older black man with blonds ... people you see in Midtown. These younger guys that put white girls on the wrong path.”

Vance’s statement said a crime like this is a reminder that New York’s “remarkable diversity” can’t be taken for granted. “We must celebrate it, protect it, and refuse to let violence and hate undermine the progress we have made as a city, a state, and a nation.”

Jackson’s lawyer, Sanford Talkin, declined to comment Monday, according to Newsday. His next court date is scheduled for April 13.

https://www.ft.com/content/3b73068a-d1ed-11e6-b06b-680c49b4b4c0

https://www.c-span.org/video/?424764-2/age-anger

Age Anger | Video | C-SPAN.org

https://www.c-span.org/video/?424764-2/age-anger

Mar 2, 2017 - Age of Anger Pankaj Mishra examines the catalysts in society, past and present, that give rise to ... Series. Book TV. More information about ...

'Age Of Anger' Chronicles Rise Of Populist Backlash : NPR

www.npr.org/2017/02/15/.../age-of-anger-chronicles-rise-of-populist-backlash

Feb 15, 2017 - NPR's Kelly McEvers speaks with Pankaj Mishra, author of Age of Anger, about the relationship between populist movements and governments ...

Missing: booktv

Age of Anger by Pankaj Mishra, reviewed. - Slate

www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/.../age_of_anger_by_pankaj_mishra_reviewed.html

Jan 25, 2017 -

What America’s violent transition to modernity has in common with the rise of Islamic extremism. ... “Islam needs a Reformation,” went a popular but bizarrely ahistorical refrain in the mid-2000s. ... How soon we forget: This could be the motto of Pankaj Mishra’s new book, Age of ...

Missing: booktv

...

Mishra, a columnist at Bloomberg View and the New York Times Book Review, wants to remind Westerners of our own painful, violent transition to modernity and to emphasize that much of the turmoil in the developing world is a symptom of the same ordeal. Contrary to the assertions of those pundits who evoke “a worldwide clash of civilizations in which Islam is pitted against the West, and religion against reason,” we are witnessing—in the chaos, conflict, and alarming extremism around the globe—a replay of our own history.

It’s a history we’ve chosen to erase from our collective memory, replacing it with a delusional cover story about the “peaceful convergence” of Western nations on “a benevolent Enlightenment tradition of rationalism, humanism, and liberal democracy.” But in reality, Mishra points out, “the history of modernization is largely one of carnage and bedlam.”

...

The observation that militant Islamic fundamentalism is a modern phenomenon is not new; the popular historian Karen Armstrong has repeatedly written, most memorably in 2000’s

The Battle for God: Fundamentalism in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, that fundamentalism arises in reaction to a rapidly changing world. Without that vertiginous change, it wouldn’t occur.

But in Age of Anger, Mishra further points out the resemblance between jihadis and lone-wolf terrorists such as Timothy McVeigh (who described “science” as his religion) and Orlando nightclub shooter Omar Mateen. The same roiling passions that drive such young men have also fueled, Mishra argues, the rise of nationalist demagogues in India, Turkey, and Thailand. Most tellingly, the whole lot harkens back, with often eerie similarities, to the revolutionaries and revanchists that harrowed Europe in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

This is a framework that pushes aside conventional, familiar divisions of left and right to focus on the profound sense of dislocation and alienation that spawned (and still spawns) movements ranging from fascism to anarchism to nihilism. All of these responses are animated by an upsurge in “ressentiment,” which Mishra defines as “an existential resentment of other people’s being, caused by an intense mix of envy and sense of humiliation and powerlessness.” No Westerner can read that description in 2017 and not think of the election of Donald Trump and a campaign that seemed defined far less by what the candidates advocated than by who voters hated most. Not only is the rest of the world undergoing a bone-rattling allergic reaction to modernity, but America continues to reel from it as well.

https://www.splcenter.org/20140401/white-homicide-worldwide

---

Stormfront, the leading white supremacist Web forum, has another distinction — murder capital of the Internet.

A typical murderer drawn to the racist forum Stormfront.org is a frustrated, unemployed, white adult male living with his mother or an estranged spouse or girlfriend. She is the sole provider in the household. Forensic psychologists call him a “wound collector.” Instead of building his resume, seeking employment or further education, he projects his grievances on society and searches the Internet for an excuse or an explanation unrelated to his behavior or the choices he has made in life.

His escalation follows a predictable trajectory. From right-wing antigovernment websites and conspiracy hatcheries, he migrates to militant hate sites that blame society’s ills on ethnicity and shifting demographics. He soon learns his race is endangered — a target of “white genocide.” After reading and lurking for a while, he needs to talk to someone about it, signing up as a registered user on a racist forum where he commiserates in an echo chamber of angry fellow failures where Jews, gays, minorities and multiculturalism are blamed for everything.

Assured of the supremacy of his race and frustrated by the inferiority of his achievements, he binges online for hours every day, self-medicating, slowly sipping a cocktail of rage. He gradually gains acceptance in this online birthing den of self-described “lone wolves,” but he gets no relief, no practical remedies, no suggestions to improve his circumstances. He just gets angrier.

And then he gets a gun.

The hatemaker: Don Black, the former Alabama Klan leader who founded and still runs Stormfront, provides an electronic home and breeding ground for racists who have murdered almost 100 people in the last five years. To this day, he remains fiercely unapologetic, even as he rakes in donations from his forum members.

It is a myth that racist killers hide in the shadows. Investigators find that most offenders openly advocated their ideology online, often obsessively posting on racist forums and blogs for hours every day. Over the past two decades, the largest hate site in the world, Stormfront.org, has been a magnet and breeding ground for the deadly and the deranged.

There is safety in the anonymity of the Web, and comfort in the endorsement others offer for extreme racist ideas, argues former FBI agent Joe Navarro, who coined the term “wound collector.” “Isolation permits the free expression of ideas, especially those which are extreme and which foster passionate hatred,” Navarro, who helped found the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Division, wrote in 2011 in Psychology Today. “In this cocoon of isolation the terrorist can indulge his ideology” without the restrictions of the routines of daily life.

Then there is a trajectory from idea to action.

Though on any given day, fewer than 1,800 registered members log on to Stormfront, and less than half of the site’s visitors even reside in the United States, a two-year study by the Intelligence Report shows that registered Stormfront users have been disproportionately responsible for some of the most lethal hate crimes and mass killings since the site was put up in 1995. In the past five years alone, Stormfront members have murdered close to 100 people. The Report’s research shows that Stormfront’s bias-related murder rate began to accelerate rapidly in early 2009, after Barack Obama became the nation’s first black president.

For domestic Islamic terrorists, the breeding ground for violence is often the Al Qaeda magazine Inspire and its affiliated websites. For the racist, it is Stormfront.

Making Excuses

Investigators find that most offenders openly advocated their ideology online for lengthy periods while sucking up the hatred around them. Yet Stormfront’s founder, former Alabama Klan leader Stephen Donald “Don” Black, shrugs off responsibility for what he has wrought.

The homicidal trend began just four years after the site went up. On Aug. 10, 1999, Buford O’Neil Furrow, a known user of Stormfront, left his parents’ home in Tacoma, Wash., and drove to Los Angeles, where he shot and wounded three children, a teenage girl and an elderly woman at a Jewish day care center. Furrow then shot and killed a Filipino-American postal worker.

Buford Furrow (AP Images/ Laura Rauch)

Eight months later, on April 28, 2000, just days after exchanging E-mails and a phone call with a woman he met on the Stormfront “Singles” page, Richard Scott Baumhammers shot and killed his next-door neighbor, a 63-year-old Jewish woman. Next, he drove to the victim’s synagogue, shot out the windows and painted two large red swastikas on the front of the building. And then Baumhammers went on a shooting rampage, specifically targeting minorities and murdering five people. A sixth victim would die of his injuries several months later.

When Baumhammers’ connection to Stormfront was pointed out in media reports, Black denied any responsibility. He claimed Baumhammers “had been previously diagnosed as something worse than schizophrenic.” But Black did note that attention to the killings had more than doubled the number of “hits” to his website.

Richard Baumhammers (AP Images / Keith Srakocic)

Furrow, 37, and Baumhammers, 34, were both unemployed and still living with their parents at the time of the killings. The next Stormfront user to commit murder was also living with his parents. This one was in the ninth grade.

On April 19, 2002, Ian Andrew Bishop, a 14-year-old so-called “Stormfront Youth” killed his brother by striking him repeatedly in the head with a claw hammer, allegedly because he thought 18-year-old Adam Bishop was gay. “He said his brother was a faggot,” said a 15-year-old witness. “He said he wanted to kill his parents, too.”

Bishop’s activity on Stormfront included downloading and distributing Third Reich images while promoting his racist views in the neighborhood. Described as a “racist bully with neo-Nazi views,” Bishop’s attorney cited his activities on Stormfront as evidence Ian was “troubled” and “drawn to the skinhead philosophy.”

Again, Black denied any responsibility in the Bishop case, claiming “Bishop killed his older brother because he thought his parents liked him better. But we’re ‘responsible’ for that too,” he added sarcastically, “since he was a ‘good kid’ before visiting SF.”

Ian Andrew Bishop (Tribune-Review / AP Images / Scott Spangler)

The Body Count Skyrockets

James “Yankee Jim” Leshkevich

The murders would keep on coming, their frequency accelerating. On Feb. 19, 2008, James “Yankee Jim” Leshkevich, who had posted more than 5,000 times to Stormfront in the preceding four years, beat and strangled his wife to death in the living room of the home they shared in West Hurley, N.Y. Then he hung himself.

Similarly, a little over two years later, on April 21, 2010, Curtis Boone Maynard shot and killed his ex-wife outside her Lake Jackson, Texas, home. He then shot his 16-year-old stepdaughter in the face, severely wounding her, before killing himself during a subsequent police chase. Maynard had posted almost 900 times on Stormfront before he was banned for publishing personal information about a black woman who had voted as a juror to acquit a black murder suspect.

In April 2009, a few months after Obama’s inauguration and less than four hours after logging on to his Stormfront account, Richard Andrew Poplawski ambushed, shot and killed three Pittsburgh, Pa., police officers, and wounded a fourth.

Richard Poplawski (AP Images/ Jason Minick)

Poplawski, 22, was unemployed and living with his mother when an early morning argument escalated between the two and resulted in her calling 911. Poplawski waited just behind the front door with his AK-47 assault rifle and shot and killed the first three police officers who responded. Another officer was injured before a SWAT team shot and wounded Poplawski and then took him into custody.

Fifteen weeks before the murders, Poplawski, who went by the name “Braced for Fate” on Stormfront, wrote that he kept his AK-47 “in a case within arms reach.” He’d been a registered Stormfront member for 20 months prior to the murders, but with a Web footprint going back to at least 2001. He started on pro-Second Amendment forums, moved to conspiracy pages and finally landed at Stormfront, where he had at least two user names, “Braced for Fate” and “p0p633.” An aspiring skinhead, Poplawski posted his “Iron Eagle” Nazi tattoo under his p0p633 user name in 2007, about 16 months before the killings.

The worst mass murder was still to come.

Anders Breivik

On July 22, 2011, Anders Behring Breivik set off a truck bomb in front of a government building in downtown Oslo, Norway. The blast killed eight and injured hundreds more. Dressed as a police officer and armed with a Ruger Mini-14 assault rifle and a Glock pistol, Breivik then boarded a ferry to Utoya Island, where a Workers Youth League summer camp was being held. There, Breivik shot and killed 69 people, most of them teenagers.

When he was taken into custody by a SWAT team without incident, Breivik calmly told authorities that he blamed the government for allowing Norway to be “invaded” by Muslims.

At the time of the killings, Breivik had been a registered member on Stormfront for almost three years. Under the username “year2183,” Breivik introduced himself in October 2008. In one post he wrote, “Feminism, corrupt treacherous politicians, a corrupt treacherous media, pro-immigration Jewry and a corrupt academia is the hole in the ‘dike,’ while Muslims are the water flooding in.” After a rant about Islamic enemies, Breivik was warmly welcomed by close Black confidant Freeland Roy Dunscombe, or “TruckRoy”: “glad to have you here.”

Hours before he began his terror campaign, Breivik E-mailed a copy of his racist manifesto to two other influential Stormfront members, Billy Joe Roper (see related story, p. XX) and Timothy Gallaher Murdock, who runs the racist WhiteRabbitRadio.net. In his manifesto, Breivik claimed he was banned from Stormfront, though a search shows no suspension. Breivik later admitted he was not removed as a registered member.

“I was never kicked out of Stormfront,” he said last September. “Instead, I attacked them in the compendium in order to protect them … [as] an army of leftist journalists otherwise would strike hard.”

Breivik’s large purchases of chemicals before the attack had been reported to the authorities, who took no heed because he claimed he was a farmer. If they had looked at Breivik’s posts on Stormfront, they might have felt differently. His racist vitriol and posts suggesting overthrowing his government almost certainly violated Norway’s laws against hate speech. Following the pattern for so-called “lone wolves,” he had broadcast his violent intentions ahead of time on Stormfront.

A year later, in August 2012, after Breivik was convicted and sentenced to 21 years in prison, a Stormfront thread announced the sentence and included a photograph of Breivik defiantly raising his fist in the air. Some posters lauded Breivik as a “hero” and a “P.O.W.”

Black provided his own commentary on Breivik. “Unfortunately, I happened upon this thread this morning, just before our radio show. This makes me want to pull the plug on this place and never look back,” Black wrote, before laying out a stark assessment of those on his site: “We attract too many sociopaths.”

Monetizing Murder

Although Stormfront posters eventually grew critical of Breivik’s actions, the public interest the attack generated on the site resulted in the highest number of registered users ever on the forum. In the 24 hours after the killings, 4,481 members were online, a record that stands to this day. Alexa, which monitors Web traffic, shows that Stormfront visits spiked globally on the day of the Oslo attacks. This means money to Black, whose banner ads pay him by the click.

A year after the Oslo terrorist attacks, in mid-summer 2012, more media came Black’s way from two more mass killings and a bizarre mutilation murder attributable to registered members.

J.T. Ready (Corbis / Natalie Keyssar)

On May 2, 2012, less than six hours after logging in and posting on Stormfront, Jason Todd Ready shot and killed four people, including an infant, before killing himself. Ready, 39, was unemployed and living with his estranged girlfriend, Lisa Mederos. He shot and killed her, her daughter Amber and her 15-month-old granddaughter, Lily. Ready then shot and killed Amber’s 24-year-old fiancée, Jim Hiott, before turning his gun on himself. Ready had made 678 posts on Stormfront in the two years prior to his death, often raising funds for his armed anti-immigrant militia group, U.S. Border Guard.

Luca Rocco Magnotta (FEREX / AP Images / Rex Features)

Also in May, Black was taking media heat over a Canadian murder suspect known as Luka Rocco Magnotta, 29, who had posted on Stormfront under two usernames in the 12 months prior to the torture and dismemberment killing of a Chinese immigrant. In September 2011, eight months before the murder, Magnotta complained: “It was unfare [sic] that every country in the world was able to have their heritage protected, blacks get their own countries, chinese [sic] get their own countries ... if white people want their own countries then we are denied that right.” Magnotta, whose real name is Eric Clinton Kirk Newman, also followed Black on Twitter.

Wade Michael Page (Contributed)

Three months after the Magnotta murder, on Aug. 5, 2012, Wade Michael Page shot and killed six people at a Sikh temple, including an 84-year-old woman, and wounded four others before killing himself during a shootout with police. Page, a longtime racist skinhead, had been a registered user on Stormfront, under various user names, for more than 10 years.

Motivational Culpability

A haggard-looking Don Black appeared on a CBS News affiliate’s newscast three days after the Sikh Temple killings. While attempting to minimize Page’s activities on Stormfront, Black said Page’s actions were “counterproductive” but then added, “We think the Sikhs should be back in Punjab.”

As Alexa Internet Inc. shows, though Stormfront’s online popularity had been in a gradual decline over the previous two years, the August 2012 Sikh temple killings resulted in one of the highest and most significant spikes of the year for the online forum (there also was a notable and rapid decline following the Sikh temple killings). And Stormfront appears to have benefited financially from the publicity that summer. Monthly donations to the site rose from $6,545 in August 2012, to $8,028 in September to $10,032 in October of that year.

A strong argument could be made that Stormfront is, in effect, monetizing murder. And Black’s personal history undermines the argument that he had no reasonable way to know how his website and the hatred he hawks was attracting and motivating a new breed of unstable, sociopathic killers. That ugly reality has been a recurring theme in Don Black’s life for almost half a century.

A Lifetime of Hate

In many respects, Don Black resembles the prototypical killers that seem to be drawn to Stormfront. Black, 60, is a frustrated, unemployed white adult male living with an ideologically estranged wife, Chloe Hardin Black, who has publicly denounced the racist movement. She is the sole provider in the household.

Black spends hours every day online, utterly convinced of the supremacy of his race while expressing frustration with the inferiority of his outcomes. He occasionally complains about the sociopaths Stormfront seems to attract or laments that his only son, Derek, recently publicly denounced white supremacy.

A young Don Black (seen here in Klan robe) has known most key racist leaders in his life, including David Duke (in tie); Jerry Ray, the brother of Martin Luther King assassin James Earl Ray; and Joseph Paul Franklin, a racist serial killer who was executed last year. (The Tennessean / Jimmy Ellis)

Black’s 46-plus years of involvement with the racist movement started at the age of 15, when, like the fratricidal Ian Andrew Bishop, he began distributing racist fliers around his high school. That he was involved with a subculture of sociopaths would become quite obvious, given who Black met while on his very first “movement” road trip at the age of 16.

In the summer of 1969, Black traveled to a World Union of National Socialists meeting in Arlington, Va., in the back seat of a beat-up Chevy Chevelle, sitting next to a 19-year-old James Clayton Vaughn for more than 12 hours. Neo-Nazi and soon-to-be Klan leader David Duke was driving. As Black recollects, Vaughn was the very first person he met in the “white nationalist” movement to which he would devote his life.

Joseph Paul Franklin (AP Images/ Al Behrman)

Vaughn, who would change his name to Joseph Paul Franklin, later became probably the most prolific racist serial killer in U.S. history, targeting interracial couples and killing as many as 20 people in several states between 1977 and 1980 (he was convicted of eight murders). Franklin was executed last year.

Black’s exposure to the worst of the racist movement continued the following year. He spent his 17th birthday in the hospital with a bullet wound in his chest after being caught trying to steal the mailing list of the racist National States Rights Party. The shooter, Jerry Ray, was the brother of Martin Luther King Jr. assassin James Earl Ray. Jerry Ray was prosecuted for attempted murder but acquitted after claiming self-defense. Black pleaded guilty and received one year of probation.

Jerry Ray

By 1975, Black was a rising leader in the Alabama wing of David Duke’s Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, a position he kept for the next 12 years. But his ambitions went beyond the robe and hood. On April 27, 1981, Black was arrested with nine other white supremacists as they prepared to board a yacht to invade the tiny Caribbean island of Dominica, oust its black-run government, and transform it into a “white state.”

Black’s resulting three-year federal prison sentence was time well spent taking classes in computer programming. He eventually set up a dial-up bulletin board service for the radical right and, in March 1995, that service evolved into Stormfront.org, the Web’s first and best-known hate site. Black saw clearly that with this new technology, white supremacists might finally bypass the mainstream media and political apparatus he felt had long restricted the racists’ message.

“The potential of the Net for organizations and movements such as ours is enormous,” Black told a reporter in 1996. “We’re reaching tens of thousands of people who never before had access to our point of view.”

He was right.

In January 2002, Stormfront had a mere 5,000 members. But only a year later, membership had more than doubled to 11,000; and a year after that, in early 2004, it had reached 23,000. By this year, membership had hit about 286,000 registered users, though most were inactive. These numbers didn’t include the many people who simply read Stormfront postings without actually joining up (becoming a member allows one to post messages and also to view personal information.) Stormfront also became home to other hate sites that shared its servers and advertised their wares.

After a life basically monetizing ethnic hatred and death, Don Black, who walks with a cane from a 2008 stroke, has become increasingly philosophical. On the Stormfront page eulogizing serial killer Franklin, he wrote: “I may be the only person here who actually knew Franklin. I’ve been contemplating how my life would have been different had he remained the only ‘White Nationalist’ I’d ever met. I’d have quit in disgust. I had just turned sixteen, and maybe I could have then led a ‘normal’ life.”

With nearly 100 bias-related homicides attributable to registered members of his site since 2009, a great many “normal lives” are no longer being led.

Still, Black remains defiant. The theme song for his daily radio program on the Rense Radio Network is a remake of Johnny Cash’s “I Won’t Back Down.”

His wife, his son, and those who cared for the victims of racist killers connected to Stormfront probably wish he would.

---

A Kansas man was charged Feb. 23 with shooting to death an Indian man and wounding a second Indian man and an American in a bar. Federal authorities are investigating the incident as a possible hate crime. (Reuters)

Authorities in Kansas filed first-degree murder charges against a man accused of opening fire in a bar there, killing one Indian man, injuring two other people and causing fears about bigotry to reverberate across the globe.

According to witness accounts, the gunman reportedly told two of the people who were shot — both Indian men who work for Garmin, the technology firm — to “get out of my country” before opening fire and had also used racial slurs during the Wednesday evening shooting.

Multiple law enforcement agents launched an investigation into the deadly shooting inside Austin’s Bar and Grill in Olathe, a city about 20 miles southwest of Kansas City. Even as authorities said they had not yet identified a motive for the attack, relatives of the Indian men said they feared the shooting was connected to a climate of fear and xenophobia in America.

The father of one of the people injured pointed to the election of President Trump, who has routinely described a threat posed to Americans from people outside the country’s borders, and pleaded with parents in India “not to send their children to the United States.”

The White House responded by calling the link to Trump’s rhetoric absurd, according to Reuters.

...he man, Adam Purinton, 51, of Olathe, made his first appearance in court Monday via video link. He has been charged with first-degree murder and first-degree attempted murder. According to witnesses, Purinton yelled "get out of my country" at two 32-year-old Indian men, Srinivas Kuchibhotla and Alok Madasani, before he opened fire at Austin's Bar and Grill in the Kansas City suburb on Wednesday evening.

Kuchibhotla was killed and Madasani injured. The two had come to the U.S. from India to study, and they worked as engineers at GPS-maker Garmin. A third patron, Ian Grillot, 24, was wounded when he tried to intervene.

After the shooting, Purinton, who is white, drove 70 miles east to an Applebee's restaurant in Clinton, Missouri, where he made the shocking admission to the bartender.

In the 911 call, the bartender told the dispatcher a man had come into the bar and said he'd done something "really bad" and was on the run from the police.

"He asked if he could stay with me and my husband, and he wouldn't tell me what he did. I kept asking him, and he said that he would tell me if I agreed to let him stay with me," the bartender said. "Well, I finally got him to tell me and he said, like, that he shot and killed two Iranian people in Olathe...."

Authorities have declined to discuss a possible motive for the attack or to say if they were investigating it as a hate crime. But the incident has raised concern about the treatment of immigrants, who feel targeted by President Donald Trump's promises to ban certain travelers, build a wall along the Mexico border and put "America first."

During Monday's hearing, Johnson County District Judge Charles Droege appointed public defender Michael McCulloch to represent Purinton. McCulloch declined to comment on the case.

Purinton is jailed on $2 million bond and his next court appearance is set for March. 9.

Andy Berthelsen, a neighbor of Purinton's for the past 15 years, told The Associated Press that Purinton had been in rapid decline since the death of his father about 18 months ago. The two had exceptionally close, Berthelsen said.

Always a drinker, Purinton became "a drunken mess" after his father's death and bounced from one menial job to the next. Berthelsen said he's never heard him make a racist remark or talk politics. He said he doesn't believe the shooting stemmed from hatred, and that it likely resulted from Purinton's physical and mental deterioration.

"This is someone who's gone downhill very quickly," Berthelsen said.

The University of Kansas Health System released a video Sunday of an interview with Grillot, of Grandview, Missouri, who is recovering after a bullet went through his right hand and into his chest.

Grillot said he had to do something because there were families and children in the bar when the gunfire erupted. Grillot, said he is grateful that the attack is bringing the community together and that it is "awesome honestly to be able to give people a hope that not everybody hates everybody."...

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/police-search-man-shot-sikh-seattle-suburb-45912961

...Authorities said a gunman approached the Sikh man, 39, and shot him in the arm as he worked on his car in his driveway in Kent, city of about 125,000 people some 20 miles south of Seattle. The FBI will help investigate the shooting, authorities said.

Kent Police Chief Ken Thomas said his department is investigating the shooting as a hate crime. He said that no arrests have been made yet but that he did not believe anyone was in imminent danger.

"This is a top priority investigation, and we are doing everything possible to identify and arrest the suspect," Thomas said in an email, adding that residents should "be vigilant" but not let the shooting hurt their quality of life.

The FBI's Seattle office said in a statement Sunday that it is "committed to investigating crimes that are potentially hate motivated," The Seattle Times reported.

The shooting comes after an Indian man was killed and another wounded in a recent shooting at a Kansas bar that federal agencies are investigating as a hate crime after witnesses say the suspect yelled, "Get out of my country."

Friday night's shooting was on the minds of many who gathered at a Sikh temple in Renton on Sunday morning. Women in colorful saris and headscarves and men wearing turbans sat on the floor on opposite sides inside the worship space.

As they entered and left the services, many expressed fear that one of their own was targeted and said they're scared to go to stores and other public places. Some said they have noticed an uptick in name-calling and other racist incidents in recent months. Still others expressed hurt and disbelief at the lack of understanding and ignorance.

"Sikhism teaches about equality and peace," said Sandeep Singh, 24. "It's sad to see that's what it has come to," he said of the violence. "This is our country. This is everyone's country."

...

http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/aurora-shooting-survivors-paying-cinemarks-legal-bill

may not count as mass shooter but Beck or Limbaugh encouraged shooing of abortion doctors/ government official shot at front door fatally my soverignty militia wacko?

Beck

ch 17: violence Poplawski has posted video w/ gb/rp fema on stormfront

clock ticking and someone will do something stupid [shoot ppl} but then rolls back into death panels 247

advoc killing pelosi, rangel and m moore; has claimed on air obama admin trying to kill hi/ gb 248 july 09 thugocracy 249

greg guisti threatened pelosi if she voted for health care 249 fox watcher

gb called pelosi" really dangerous ppl" like commie, socialist and eco terrorist 250 pelosi and BO have thought about picking up a gun b/c maybe tired of evolution and want revo 250 some of ppl around BO have "engaged in bomb-throwing" [of a bathroom?]

summer of 09 town halls: "there is a coup going on, There is a stealing of America...through the guise of an election but they lie to us the entire time...grab power in every way they can, and God help us in an emergency" 252 pretended to pour gas on guest

suggest secession mult times; TX moat of fire civil war demos putting a gun to Am head: pass bill or die

cass s and john holdren: Between health-care and the envir those two men, in the wrong conditions, will be responsible for many, many death" 254..."they are taking you to be slaughtered"

follow the Pols to Safeway, look them in whites of their eyes" a pt coming where all (peaceful?) options exhausted

anti-God forces are aligning themselves all over the world and here at home" 255 "bullets in our backs by our politicians" 255 one nut like tim mcv could ruin all

every time want to spk shut down by pol correct, tho accused of starving kids and racists 256

Tides fdn hardest topic to explain (took 4 nights and black bd)

ch 16 912 new book The Plan had rally on mall on anniv of i have a dream speech" appropriate' as he will finish the job; will have confs around the country and assemble team of advisors // skousen Bus labl GB show and rally for Am, on armed forces radio jessica lynch family appeared ; bachmann his radio guest; he offered to raise $ for her 233 april 15 09 TP at Alamo w/ ted nugent actor dressed at paine read; gb word thy would not dare pearl harbor, WTC pentagon, pass biggest bill in hist

dc rally claimed univ said 1.7 mil

linc mem rally Special Ops Wounded Warrior' gb said bene, but they actually on hook for costs 243 Palin guest to honor troops

ch 15 race; rev wright "black liberation theology' vj black nationalists (white are poisoning blk ppl)

david horowitz: blacks are human shield of democ party , slavery, segregation, of race preferences " 227-8

ch 14 coughlin : sovereignty

Brooks says race baiting of gb and rl = fr C, taking over gop. C small town priest from MI avg 10 mil (up to 40) 208 fr c used a variety of techniques sentinet, anger, patriot religious 210 teary eyed said FDR cd be dictator if wants to 210 opposed world ct, part of L of Nations hinted at apocalyptic civil war

ch 13; 32 czars: u of Penn/ factcheck.org 9 conformed by senate, 8 not appt by pres, 7 in jobs created by prev admins (b2 had 35)

numerous historical facts wrong (TJ create marines to deal w/ Islamic pirates (actually Adams for French pirates)

gb claimed BO gave 2b$ loan Brazil oil co; urban legend debunked by factcheck 9 mos before: actually US Export-Imp bank, elf funded, prelim commit approved by B2 ppt board; loan was to buy US oil gear; soros had reduced his stake 193-4 but picked up by Indiana sen Dan Burton 194

your PC can be grabbed by feds if you log into clash for clunkers 196

lied about view ladies on amtrak, denied he was invest reporter or reporter, but a commentator, so no fact checking 197

union supporters are for one world gov 198 acorn wrote health care bill, apollo wrote stim seiu wrote immig law and consults on afghan mil strategy 200 smart grid"could take critical information out of your house" 202

at fox, co split on gb damage to corp rep; ailes sometimes crits "negative tone" 202

ch 12 fema concentration camps (part of one world conspiracy;177 Ron Paul said guest FEMA very powerful and overrule local authorities in emergency 179 ollie said by newspaper miami herald to have secret plan, and nixon has plan to round up blacks in case of martial law (panthers?) 11 m21 in "assembly ctrs or relocation camps " 181 ollie plan 86'd and denied '88 xfile movie revived

Monckton cop15: "a treaty will be signed that will, for the first time, create a world government with powers to intervene directly in the economy and in the environmental affairs of individual nations" cm 183 annex 1 Para 38 John Bolton said he wd not sign such a doc

WND: may 18 2010 gb on fox and friends touted one world; 4 days later praise from Henry lamb (sovereignty Int'l) on WND 184 cites World Res Inst and UN Conf on Hu Settlements; James Meigs for Pop Mech 6 april Who blgs FEMA conc camp; video by militia claimed gas chambers and advocated "march on Washington and start executing senators" 185 "atrocities going on in camp? yes next day "reveal" was it was North Korea; when krigman called him on it, gb shucked and jived w/ "can't debunk" claim 186 but then returned to touting totalitarianism 187

ch 10 scalps: van jones named adviser to CEQ july 23 09 gb tried to prove BO wants race reparations; vj spent 6 mos in jail, came out a commie, he found the eco-movement and decided green is the new red 139 5 days later gb said BO had a deep hatred of white ppl

aug 24 vj is "czar #1" ~ oil co's, a "community organizer" [oh no] Color of change group (co fdr vj, but he'd since left) called for advertiser boycott of gb; in 9 mos vj name used 435x long after he quit p 140. gb said after r king riots, j radical for 10 yrs, founding STORM into mao, arrested at wto

gb req dirt on vj and got video saying only Nat Am belong here, and gop asshoes; i can be too, gotta get uppity 144 apology, also recant? petition truther

next days resigned "smear campaign , lies, distortions to distract and divide" l145 in historic fight, can't ask colleagues to defend; vj gloating for a year

green collar economy book espouses capitalism 142-3 after j quit, gb hitlist ("do not link before burning to disc" [?]: cass sunstein, mark lloyd and carol browner 148 john holdren of harvard kennedy school dir WH office of sci and techn policy 150 30 yo book espoused male contraception 1977 ecoscience textbook tho gb said forced abortions and chems in water 151 the book actually said some gov might resort to such methods if smarter and milder meas not undertaken 1st, and opposed invol pgm 151

2 gop sen put holds on sust nom, but approved 57-40 155

; claimed dubiously that Const could allow compuls abortion in emergency . gb then extended distortion. gb gave up and went after harv law prof sunstein (also on type by WND, //vj) he actually said opposite on animal rights that gb said "most dang man in Am" 155

browner hardcore socialist nat rev guest 156 part of Commiss for Sust World (so was BP PM's) but afil w/ Socialist Int'l

acorn "weasels' trying to start brothels w/ 13 yo 168

lloyd marxist trying to silence free sp, un Am 156-7 FCC

anita dunn attacked gb, so she was proved a commie by hs speech (she contrasted mao to mo teresa)

NEA Yosi Sergant (breitbart posted vid of him asking artists to make msg promoting volunteerism (health care , ed , environ

then maurice strong

ch 9: woodrow wilson spawn of satan: WW jaile 2-3 K ppl for speaking out (vs WWI?], actually 100, including E Debs; "czars" go back to WW

conspiracy: seui, acorn, apollo initiative , soros van j, valerie jarrett all inspired by richard cloward and frances piven [who?]weather ugd

ch 8 hitler: gore not rounding up jews, but same tactic 120 goal now is globalization carbon tax, UN running the world, in 30's goal was get rid of jews and have global gov't 120

http://www.hopenothate.org.uk/hate-groups/bf/

UK brexit:

2015 was an extraordinary year of over-exposure in the media and yet, as with the year before, the party reaped few rewards. In part, this is down to the temperamental nature of its leadership and an inability to commit to serious political work.

Neither Golding nor Fransen seem clear or in agreement on where the party is heading. Having outshone both the competition in the British National Party (BNP) and the English Defence League (EDL) neither is certain which direction the group should take. The decision to not fight the General Election as a political party but to instead to offer their uniformed services to UKIP was both a financial and face-saving decision.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Isla_Vista_killings

6 kia UCSB

dad 2nd unit hunger games

Earlier incidents[edit]

In July 2011, Rodger followed a couple he was jealous of out of a Starbucks in Goleta and threw coffee on them.[16]:p.87 In a later incident, he splashed his latte on two girls sitting at a bus stop in Isla Vista for not paying attention to him.[16]:p.100 In July 2012, Rodger purchased a Super Soaker, filled it with orange juice, and used it to spray a group playing kickball at Girsh Park.[16]:pp.106–107[78]

Referring to an incident that occurred on July 20, 2013,[78] Rodger "wrote that he tried to shove girls at a party over a ten-foot ledge after being mocked but failed," and instead other boys pushed him over it. He said that he "felt a snap in [his] ankle, followed by a stinging pain" and "tried to get away from there as fast as [he] could". Realizing that he left his sunglasses at the party, Rodger returned to retrieve them but the "same people he had tangled with before began mocking him and calling him names, then dragged him into the driveway to beat him up". One of Rodger's neighbors said that "he saw Rodger come home, crying" and said that Rodger claimed that he was going to kill the men involved, and "kill myself".[74] Rodger told investigating officers that he had been assaulted, but they determined that he might have been the aggressor.[20][78][79] He wrote in his manifesto that the incident was the final trigger for his planning of the attack.[78]

On January 15, 2014, Rodger accused his roommate Cheng Yuan Hong of stealing his candles; he performed a citizen's arrest and called 9-1-1. Hong was charged with petty theft and pleaded guilty to the charge.[80][81] Hong was one of Rodger's stabbing victims.[6]

On April 30, 2014, about three weeks before the attack,[36] Rodger's parents contacted police after becoming alarmed by his behavior and YouTube videos. He wrote in his manifesto that he had already planned the killings and purchased his guns by that time. The officers who interviewed him at his apartment would have found the weapons if they had conducted a search of his bedroom.[16]:p.134[26][82] Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown later said that the deputies "determined he did not meet the criteria for an involuntary hold" and that Rodger told them "it was a misunderstanding" with his parents.[69]

Manifesto and online posts[edit]

Rodger's 107,000-word manifesto was titled "My Twisted World: The Story of Elliot Rodger".[83] He e-mailed this manifesto to 34 individuals,[9]:p.7 including his therapist,[2][39] his parents, and some of his other family members,[84] former schoolteachers, and childhood friends.[85] In the manifesto, Rodger claimed he originally sought to carry out his attack on Halloween of 2013, but reconsidered because "[t]here would be too many cops walking around during an event like Halloween, and cops are the only ones who could hinder my plans".[16]:p.110

In his last YouTube video, titled "Elliot Rodger's Retribution", he complained of being rejected by women while envying sexually active men, and described details of his upcoming attack,[38] laying out his motives and plans.[34] In the wake of the killings, the video was deleted from Rodger's account, but copies were repeatedly re-posted by other users.[24][86] In the video, he says:

Well, this is my last video, it all has to come to this. Tomorrow is the day of retribution, the day in which I will have my revenge against humanity, against all of you. For the last eight years of my life, ever since I hit puberty, I've been forced to endure an existence of loneliness, rejection and unfulfilled desires all because girls have never been attracted to me. Girls gave their affection, and sex and love to other men but never to me.[87]

I'm 22 years old and I'm still a virgin. I've never even kissed a girl. I've been through college for two and a half years, more than that actually, and I'm still a virgin. It has been very torturous. College is the time when everyone experiences those things such as sex and fun and pleasure. Within those years, I've had to rot in loneliness. It's not fair. You girls have never been attracted to me. I don't know why you girls aren't attracted to me, but I will punish you all for it. It's an injustice, a crime, because... I don't know what you don't see in me. I'm the perfect guy and yet you throw yourselves at these obnoxious men instead of me, the supreme gentleman.[87]

He wrote in "My Twisted World" that being of mixed race made him "different from the normal fully white kids".[19][74] On one online forum, he said that he opposed interracial dating and made several racist posts regarding African American, Hispanic, South Asian and East Asian peoples, stating that seeing men of these ethnic groups socializing with white women "makes you want to quit life".[16]:p.87[74][88] In one online post, Rodger wrote:

Full Asian men are disgustingly ugly and white girls would never go for you. You're just butthurt that you were born as an Asian piece of shit, so you lash out by linking these fake pictures. You even admit that you wish you were half white. You'll never be half-white and you'll never fulfill your dream of marrying a white woman. I suggest you jump off a bridge.[88]

In his manifesto, Rodger wrote:

How could an inferior, ugly black boy be able to get a white girl and not me? I am beautiful, and I am half white myself. I am descended from Britisharistocracy. He is descended from slaves.[16]:p.84

In the manifesto, he outlined some of his plans:

On the day before the Day of Retribution, I will start the First Phase of my vengeance: Silently killing as many people as I can around Isla Vista by luring them into my apartment through some form of trickery.[89]

The manifesto specifically mentions a "War on Women," as the second phase of his plan, for "starving him of sex", in which he describes:[75]

The Second Phase will take place on the Day of Retribution itself, just before the climactic massacre. ... My War on Women. ... I will attack the very girls who represent everything I hate in the female gender: The hottest sorority of UCSB.[90]

In Rodger's self-proclaimed ideal world, he imagined that he would "quarantine all [women] in concentration camps. At these camps, the vast majority of the female population will be deliberately starved to death. That would be an efficient and fitting way to kill them all off... I would have an enormous tower built just for myself... and gleefully watch them all die."[16]:p.136

In the manifesto, he also said that he planned to kill his half-brother and stepmother, but wasn't mentally prepared to kill his father.[82]

ref trigger warn

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/us/warning-the-literary-canon-could-make-students-squirm.html?_r=1

no links

ANTA BARBARA, Calif. — Should students about to read “The Great Gatsby” be forewarned about “a variety of scenes that reference gory, abusive and misogynistic violence,” as one Rutgers student proposed? Would any book that addresses racism — like “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” or “Things Fall Apart” — have to be preceded by a note of caution? Do sexual images from Greek mythology need to come with a viewer-beware label?

Colleges across the country this spring have been wrestling with student requests for what are known as “trigger warnings,” explicit alerts that the material they are about to read or see in a classroom might upset them or, as some students assert, cause symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder in victims of rape or in war veterans.

The warnings, which have their ideological roots in feminist thought, have gained the most traction at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where the student government formally called for them. But there have been similar requests from students at Oberlin College, Rutgers University, the University of Michigan, George Washington University and other schools.

The debate has left many academics fuming, saying that professors should be trusted to use common sense and that being provocative is part of their mandate. Trigger warnings, they say, suggest a certain fragility of mind that higher learning is meant to challenge, not embrace. The warnings have been widely debated in intellectual circles and largely criticized in opinion magazines, newspaper editorials and academic email lists.

“Any kind of blanket trigger policy is inimical to academic freedom,” said Lisa Hajjar, a sociology professor at the university here, who often uses graphic depictions of torture in her courses about war. “Any student can request some sort of individual accommodation, but to say we need some kind of one-size-fits-all approach is totally wrong. The presumption there is that students should not be forced to deal with something that makes them uncomfortable is absurd or even dangerous.”

Bailey Loverin, a sophomore at Santa Barbara, said the idea for campuswide trigger warnings came to her in February after a professor showed a graphic film depicting rape. She said that she herself had been a victim of sexual abuse, and that although she had not felt threatened by the film, she had approached the professor to suggest that students should have been warned.

A sophomore at the university, Bailey Loverin, and others have formally called for “trigger warnings” on class syllabuses that would flag potentially traumatic subject matter. Credit Monica Almeida/The New York Times

Ms. Loverin draws a distinction between alerting students to material that might truly tap into memories of trauma — such as war and torture, since many students at Santa Barbara are veterans — and slapping warning labels on famous literary works, as other advocates of trigger warnings have proposed.

Continue reading the main story