civil war race 2nd new

belated 919, this combines several flavors

SEE 2ND CIVIL WAR

bak 920

html mobilize

primary 9/20 kenosha kyle, portland

promote 2nd 1219 on military digs putin

see boogaloo

see ~ stay at home militia

Online spaces foster terrorists

For this terroristic part of the movement to gather any steam, they needed spaces to congregate and reinforce each other’s belief that violence is, beyond all doubt, the only way to move toward their political vision. In the years since Trump was elected, theaccelerationist movement has grown on places like Gab and, increasingly, on the encrypted messaging app Telegram – both platforms run by techno-libertarians who tout their commitment to a laissez-faire form of content moderation, which, in practice, means allowing extremists to use their platforms largely unabated.

“I guess I have to say it again and again,” a channel admin who uses the name of Fox News host Tucker Carlson as his moniker wrote in May 2019. “Destabilizing the US is the only way to create a mass movement of any kind ever. Therefore Accelerationism is the only path to victory for anyone further right then [sic] John McCain. Lets face it, We don’t have the numbers to win the next presidential election nor the one after that.”

In another post a few days later, “Carlson” admonished those who believe “we are getting out of this without bullets flying.”

Because it tolerates even their most violent ideations, Telegram has become a safe haven for accelerationists in a social media world where the they fear deplatforming (though, it bears mentioning, major social media companies continue to harbor extremists on their platforms and enforce their policies against hate inconsistently and insufficiently).

Hatewatch notified Telegram that far-right extremists were calling for acts of terrorism on their platform in June 2019, but the company did not respond. Some white terror channels were placed in a restricted state in January 2020 and, the next month, a handful appeared to have been removed from the site. The company has not explained why certain channels were restricted. In any case, users have found ways around the restrictions and channels often reappear shortly after deletion.

“Build your base on a platform that doesn’t hate you. Use this superior gathering place to send [Twitter] to its well deserved grave,” one Telegram admin told their more than 5,000 subscribers.

A number of channel administrators have formed a formalized network of users who promote terrorism and violence. They have created a web of extremist content by constantly sharing posts from each other’s channels. While about a dozen core channels in the network set the ideological tone for the rest – one with nearly 6,000 subscribers and many more with close to 4,000 – hundreds of channels contain accelerationist content. In other words, finding your way into just one channel in the network makes it easy enough to completely submerge yourself in an echo chamber of violent extremism.

Over roughly the last decade, terroristic violence has been heralded as a solution by a segment of white supremacist activists – but most of them were sequestered on highly secretive sites where it was difficult for even true believers to gain access. The primary hub was Iron March, a site that was online from 2011 to 2017, during which time it helped launch at least nine fascist groups around the world. Iron March produced both Atomwaffen Division and American Vanguard – whoseoffshoot organization, Vanguard America, murderer James Alex Fields marched with at the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville.

The forum had a total of 1,653 posters – far smaller than many Telegram channels peddling accelerationist and exterminationist content. But the small community helped shape the aesthetics, language and ideological foundations that eventually came to proliferate on Telegram. On Iron March, the writings of older figures in the white power movement, like George Lincoln Rockwell and Louis Beam, were resurrected, but**none more so than James Mason**. A committed neo-Nazi since the 1960s, Mason produced a newsletter called SIEGE between 1980 and 1986 that was eventually compiled into a single, unwieldy volume meant to serve as a guide for racist revolutionaries. Readers, the publisher of the volume’s second edition wrote in the introduction, should heed the “clarion call, wage battles of attrition, and act in a manner commensurate to Timothy McVeigh of Oklahoma City fame.” From Iron March, SIEGE and its ideas were launched into the wider spaces of the internet, turning #readsiege into a meme within certain white supremacist social media circles.

For the most part, however, the kind of ideas and discussions found on Iron March – the overt calls for terroristic violence, deep dives into the writings and speeches of fascist thinkers and advice on how to form networks of leaderless cells in the style outlined by Beam – were difficult to find on social media before white supremacists began flocking to Telegram.The platform has radically changed the kinds of rhetoric white supremacists openly use and has, in turn, changed the tenor of the movement as a whole. Just as users on Iron March talked each other into embracing ever more extreme and violent ideas, users on Telegram are doing the same – but they are operating within a vastly larger and more accessible platform that facilitates social networking and peer-to-peer contact.

While still steeped in the language of memes familiar to anyone who has scrolled 4chan’s /pol/ board, the rhetoric on Telegram is remarkably earnest and direct. “Real shit,” one user wrote to their more than 3,000 subscribers last October, “However you try to cut it, there will be violence. An insane amount of bloodshed.”

Once people do find their way onto Telegram (likely through links supplied by extremists on places like Twitter and YouTube), the platform’s design could make it an exceptionally effective space for quickening the process of radicalization. Channels act like a steady propaganda stream in which the admin(s) of a channel can, day and night, tell their subscribers that the white race is being attacked and that it is their job to acquire weapons, learn how to make explosives and become expert in guerrilla warfare and operational security.

Channels are packed with propaganda that is often sophisticated, including branded and highly stylized images and videos. Telegram allows users to upload videos up to 1.5 gigabytes – far larger than any other comparable platform. It became the primary platform through which The Base posted their propaganda, including photos and videos of members engaging in paramilitary-style training.

Within that unceasing stream of posts, subscribers are made to feel as if a race war is looming on the horizon. “Boogaloo soon,” a meme referencing a future civil war, is a common refrain from people like Paul Nehlen, a former Republican congressional candidate turned neo-Nazi who has more than 2,300 Telegram subscribers. One Telegram admin promoted a channel created to “prepare the reader to become and [sic] effective guerrilla fighter.” “Lots of information you will need one day,” they wrote above a link to the channel. “Don’t be the f****t that gets taken out on day one of the boogaloo.” Another provided a simple message to “all Jews…living in White countries around the world: Run.”

White power activists pine for stories they can use to create collective outrage or celebration that will bond members of the community. After a December 2019 shooting at a kosher grocery in Jersey City, New Jersey, for instance, Telegram users posted “Pleaseletitbeawhitemale.” They were evidently hoping their movement had gained a new “saint,” a term accelerationists use to describe many mass killers. When white supremacist shooters do carry out an attack, extremists swarm to places like Telegram and 4chan in ugly veneration and to encourage others to be the next to take up arms for their cause.....

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/rick-joyner-assures-his-viewers-its-gonna-be-pretty-much-business-as-usual-during-the-coming-civil-war/

no vid

right-wing pastor Rick Joynerposted a video on his Facebook page Friday in which he told viewers not to worry about the looming civil war that is supposedly coming to the United States because even though there will be violence and bloodshed, it’ll mostly be confined to the inner cities, and life will be “pretty much business as usual” for everyone else.

Joyner, who has been warning for years that the United States is heading for civil war and martial law and recently declared that God had “seeded our country” with military veterans who are experienced with urban warfare to head up “good militias,” assured his viewers that they would most likely be minimally impacted by the coming conflagration.

“Everyone, when they hear civil war, they think, ‘Oh no, every city, community, everybody’s gonna be in battles,'” Joyner. “Think about it: Only a tiny percentage of the population of America was engaged in the first Civil War. Really it was 1 or 2 percent of the actual population of the country were engaged in battles in the Civil War. The rest of the country went on with business as usual.”

“Now, I believe this one is going to be of a different nature,” he continued. “It’s not gonna be pitched battles with armies. I believe it is going to be inner cities. I believe it’s gonna be a lot of militias engaged. I believe it’s going to be difficult, no doubt about it, but it’s going to be different. But still, in most of the country, it’s gonna be pretty much business as usual.”

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/author-noam-chomsky-trump-is-a-sociopathic-maniac-capable-of-provoking-a-civil-war-if-he-doesnt-win-the-electoral-college-in-november/

rww 920

Josh Bernstein Melts Down Over Mail-In Voting

[vid w/ amazing minuteman w/ covid mask bandana pretty scary]

radical right-wing commentator Josh Bernstein posted a on his YouTube channel Friday in which he warned that if Joe Biden wins the election in November, “the only thing that’s going to save this country is revolution.”

Bernstein, who has repeatedly falsely that Democrats are preparing to engage in massive voter fraud because “it is mathematically impossible” for Biden to win the election fairly, warned that a Biden presidency would result in a cavalcade of horrors, ranging from the dismantling of the Second Amendment to the wholesale confiscation of private wealth.

The only remedy,, will be violent revolution.

“I am personally trying to scare the living shit out of you on purpose,” Bernstein said. “Why? Because I want you to understand what is at stake here. I can’t be any clearer than my message is now. And yes, you should be frightened. But more importantly, you should be motivated—which I know you all are—but more importantly, it is your responsibility to get other people that you know to not only see this video so they understand what’s at stake, but anyone out there that doesn’t want to vote for Trump, they’re signing their own death warrant,as far as I’m concerned. And not just their own, but for their country.”

“Everything, folks, is on the line. Everything,” he added. “If, God forbid, they figure out how to steal this election, the only thing that’s going to save this country is revolution. And trust me, it will happen. There’s no question about it. And when it happens, we will have a new America. Yes, there will be blood spilled, unfortunately,but they’re bringing it upon us.”

aha ish bannon and tucker mainstreamed the hate?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/scholar-explains-how-the-conservative-movement-transmits-sanitized-versions-of-white-supremacist-ideology/

paul r salon

As the longest sustained period of racial justice protests in American history segues into the heat of election season, dark shadows have appeared, from the vigilante _{killing of protesters}_ in Kenosha, Wisconsin — and _{widespread conservative defenses}_ of the teenage accused murderer — to ludicrous _{charges against protesters, including "terrorism,"}_ to the Trump administration's _{crackdown on federal antiracism training}_, calling it "anti-American," and Attorney General Bill Barr's call for _{protesters to be charged with sedition}_.

So much for the notions that Donald Trump has no ideology, or, for that matter, that getting rid of him will make America great again. In July of 2016, I wrote about _{why such views were myopic}_: "Trump advances core paleoconservative positions," researcher Bruce Wilson told me, including "rebuilding infrastructure, protective tariffs, securing borders and stopping immigration, neutralizing designated internal enemies and isolationism."

Trump's record as president has been surprisingly consistent for such an erratic figure, with his purely rhetorical support for infrastructure as the most notable exception. And therein lies a key to the current moment:With infrastructure removed from the equation — the most broadly popular position Trump's ever embraced — the remaining white nationalism stands out in stark relief, highlighted in the frenzied push toward violent confrontation around the election, and beyond.

Dr. James Scaminaci III has just published a report about the long historical genesis of this recent push for Political Research Associates, "_{Battle With Bullets: Advancing a Vision of Civil War}_." Scaminaci has a PhD in sociology from Stanford and has worked as a civilian intelligence analyst with expertise on the former Soviet Union, the former Yugoslavia, and organized crime. So the spread of social chaos, internecine violence and associated enabling ideologies is a subject he's familiar with.

Scaminaci traces the roots of culture-war and race-war narratives as far back as the Haitian revolution of the early 19th century. He observes that Steve Bannon nurtured those carefully at Breitbart News and they have played a key role in radicalizing Trump's base over the past five years, to the point where some of his supporters are visibly preparing themselves for violence. Some parts of this story have been relatively well covered, but Scaminaci provides a much more integrated and historically extensive account of how we reached our present state. I reached out to him recently for an interview by email to discuss some of his key insights and how they provide us with a much clearer picture of the forces pushing America toward civil war. The following has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

In your article, you write: "Over the last several years, a narrative around the threat of civil war — and more specifically, a racial civil war — has been growing on the Right." You observe that this comes in different versions and has deep historical roots, dating back to the colonial era. Before getting into the details, why is it important to recognize this history and learn about it?

I wanted to convey that what we are seeing now on the right wing has a long history, a history that is either overlooked or ignored. Jill Lepore and other scholars looking at the right have noted that modern day "patriots" cast themselves as lineal descendants of the founding fathers and the American Revolution — that they are revolutionaries against the existing "tyrannical" federal government. But that history is drenched in violence and blood against Black and indigenous peoples. That context cannot be omitted. And the idea that whites are under existential threat from Black folks also needs to be put into historical context.

Second, the right-wing idea that the federal government is "tyrannical" is largely the product of white supremacist politicians, both Republican and Democratic, and intellectuals like William F. Buckley. This was the idea that post-World War II federal support for civil rights was federal overreach, was unconstitutional, and that it upset allegedly harmonious race relations in the South and eventually in the North.

According to white supremacists, the existential threat to white people in the Jim Crow South came from Black folks, whether children or adults, even touching anything that could be shared with whites. A schoolbook touched by a Black child became a Black textbook. Blacks and whites could not share drinking fountains or sit in the same seats on a bus.

What I wanted to portray in "Battle With Bullets" is that whites have long viewed any expression of nonviolent Black agency as an existential threat to themselves that required whites to resort to a brutal, genocidal racial civil war. One can understand the palpable fear of a slave revolt before 1861. But white supremacists have claimed that registering to vote, voting, moving into a white neighborhood after a history of redlining, moving into managerial or foreman positions in the workplace, or being cast as heroes or superheroes are existential threats.

You write that "The most dangerous versions of that [civil war] narrative come from leaders with paramilitary forces, while other appeals seem intended to generate a heightened sense of crisis." Can you give an example of each and then help us understand how the two are related?

Roger Stone is a political operative who has graduated from ratfucking political operations into calling for a civil war or violence or martial law. He is an ideological chaos agent. He can help set the narrative mood for the right wing. As Chip Berlet has written, elites know how to write the score for scripted violence. Somehow, the gunmen always know who to kill. In a similar category are the numerous Christian right leaders who broadcast the same civil war message to their Christian nationalist supporters and followers. I also quoted [Dallas megachurch pastor] Robert Jeffress in the article.

David Neiwert owns the beat on tracking the transmission of fringe ideas to the conservative mainstream. Even a decade before Trump, the ideological lines were blurring.

In 2008,Michael Savage, a right-wing radio host, said, "[T]he white person is being erased from America's future. ... There is a racial element to the immigration invasion." Then Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly claimed, "So now, it's becoming a race war."The _{Center for American Progress}_ went on to note that O'Reilly claimed that immigration reformers "hate America ... because it's run primarily by white, Christian men" and were seeking "to change the complexion...of America."

That is no different from Jean Raspail's theme in "The Camp of the Saints" or the narrative at The Social Contract, a white nationalist journal which published Raspail's novel. Or Glenn Beck on Fox News in February 2009, airing his _{racial civil war scenario}_ within one month of the first Black president taking office. Or a variety ofChristian Right leaders during the Obama years calling for or suggesting a racial civil war is coming, including_{Tony Perkins}_, _{Larry Klayman}_ and _{Rick Joyner}_.

In 2006, the Southern Poverty Law Center noted the "_{symbiotic dance}_" between white supremacist groups and John Tanton's hardline anti-immigration movement, as well as the _{sharing of conspiracy narratives}_ between white supremacists and the "patriot" militia movement.

The conservative movement, both the political and religious wings, transmit sanitized versions of white supremacist ideology. The latter is premised on preparing for, if not instigating, a racial civil war in America.

John Jackson, a scholar who covers "scientific" racism, in a recent article titled, "_{Going Full Nazi}_,"asked the question: "[W]hat is the point of drawing a line between the 'mainstream' and the 'alt' right? Perhaps there is no useful distinction to be made." The angry white guys with guns are dangerous because they have weapons of war. But the dividing line between them and the "Fourth Generation Warfare" chaos agents creating a crisis of legitimacy is increasingly blurred.

You write that this rhetoric is rooted in a narrative adapted from the1973 French novel you just mentioned, "The Camp of the Saints." Can you explain its basic narrative?

The novel has seven key ideas that its critics and proponents have noted. One, mass migration is an invasion. Two, immigrants and refugees are invaders. Three, the invaders will eventually destroy Western culture and replace Western populations. Four, the West's political elites do not have the moral strength to defend the West. Five, the invaders must be physically removed and/or violently repelled. Six, there is a difference between the "real country" and "real citizens" and the "legal country" and "legal citizens." Seven, multiracial, multiethnic or multi-confessional societies are not only unstable but undesirable, and lead to the "balkanization" of societies — a view also imported from Serbian genocidal propaganda into the American and global right.

The main variations within this "Camp of the Saints" worldview are whether the political elites lack moral strength to resist the invasions ("Great Replacement"), enact immoral policies which weaken Western societies to invasion ("demographic winter") or actively collaborate with the governments of the invading migrants to facilitate the invasion (as in John Tanton's network). The other variation distinguishes the neo-Nazis from all the other segments: whether or not the Jews are responsible for the destruction of their societies ("white genocide").

You note that for both France and the United States, the historical roots of this narrative go back to the Haitian Revolution of 1791-1804. In the U.S. this has produced the "white genocide theory" and in France the "great replacement" theory. What distinguishes them and what draws them together?

The "white genocide" theory is premised on the fear of a Black slave revolt against the white slave-owning society. The "great replacement" theory is based on the fear of massive nonwhite immigration coupled with lower white birth rates leading to a "replacement" of the white population with a nonwhite population, and the transformation of the culture.

White supremacists use the more palatable, more sanitized "great replacement" theory interchangeably and conflate them. But they have different causal mechanisms.

On the other hand, the neo-Nazis and other proponents of the "white genocide" narrative consider any action by Black people to improve themselves, to gain access to privileged white spheres of social action or to more equitably redistribute power and status as an existential threat. "Great replacement" proponents do not share this outlook. Nor do "great replacement" proponents, in general, blame Jews for what they consider to be massive immigration.

You write, "It would be a mistake to see these various 'White Replacement' narratives as isolated from mainstream conservative thought in Europe or America." How has their influence spread through terrorist acts?

In the right-wing information sphere, ideas swirl around, mix, recombine and mutate over time to fit changing circumstances. Raspail's "Camp of the Saints" is foundational to this narrative or worldview. Raspail directly influenced the emergence and popularity of the "great replacement" theory, which is the catchall theory cited by white terrorists.

But Bat Ye'or's conception of the problem — that European elites conspire with Arab elites to produce both subservience to Islam and the "great replacement" — directly influenced the Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik, who was motivated to provoke a decades-long civil war to stop the formation of what Ye'or called "Eurabia." Breivik, as well as the "great replacement" narrative, have inspired numerous white terrorist acts around the globe.

Returning to the American context, How did Steve Bannon and Breitbart spread their influence?

Bannon's principal contribution was to use Breitbart News to mix white supremacist ideology into the Republican Party and the Christian Right, and to heavily promote Raspail's "Camp of the Saints." In 2015 and 2016, Breitbart was the largest driver of ideological influence on the right.

How has this spread through the Trump administration?

The "Camp of the Saints" worldview largely shapes Stephen Miller's approach to immigration issues. Raspail's bottom line was that "the barbarians had to be repelled" either by violence or cruelty or both. Trump's _{immigration policy has been cruel}_, and as Adam Serwer noted, "_{cruelty is the point}_."

You also call attention to the Christian right's specific variant called "demographic winter," and argue that this has played a central role in evangelical support for Trump and his wall. What should people know about that?

The term "demographic winter" appears to have come from Don Feder, communications director of the World Congress of Families [a far-right, anti-LGBT Christian group]. He is the most prominent WCF official _{linked to the Tanton}_ _{anti-immigration network}_ and was apparently influenced by Bat Ye'or's "Eurabia" ideas, which circulate widely in conservative and right-wing Jewish circles.

In November 2005, Feder's view of Muslims in France reflected the worldview of Raspail and other "Eurabia" writers. Feder blamed the French riots of that year on "_{demographic winter}_," "lax immigration policies" and "brain-dead multiculturalism." Where "demographic winter" differs from Raspail, the "great replacement" and the Eurabia narratives is that liberal elite support for women's reproductive freedom and gay marriage are the principal culprits, in addition to massive Muslim immigration.

What resonates with conservative Christians and Christian nationalists is the idea that Christian (Western) civilization is under threat from nonwhite immigration, Christians are being persecuted in the West and around the world, and _{only a strong, authoritarian leader building a wall can save them}_.

Survey data supports my contention that white evangelical Protestants have a "Camp of the Saints" worldview: Seventy-eight percent favor strict limits on "legal immigration," 76% favor "building a [border] wall," 69% support a "temporary" Muslim ban and, 54% favor "preventing refugees from coming into the United States," according to October 2019 PRRI data.

The last section of your article deals with the emergence of the "Boogaloo boys"during the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests. How can we better understand them in terms of the longer history you've laid out? What lessons need to be learned?

The first lesson to be learned is that Donald Trump and _{local elected}_ _{Republican}_ _{officials}_, especially the so-called "constitutional sheriffs," have a much closer relationship to the armed wing of the Christian right. _{Bruce Wilson}_ and _{David Neiwert}_ have been _{tracking that}_.

The second lesson is that Trump is openly orchestrating armed demonstrations of force against Democratic Party governors and mayors.

The third lesson is that it is very easy to take off your camouflage fatigues and put on a Hawaiian shirt and pretend you just got concerned — but not before you spent around $2,000 on a rifle, tactical gear and ammunition. Journalists should stop being so credulous.

The last lesson is that claims that the "patriot" militia support Black Lives Matter protests are preposterous. The BLM protests are not simply about wrongful deaths at the hands of law enforcement — something a majority of whites can see and empathize with.

BLM is calling for reckoning, a "Third Reconstruction" of America — politically, economically and culturally — in the context of a deliberate confrontation with that racist, violent history. Even at the intellectual level of the "Never Trumpers," those potentially most sympathetic to BLM, there is a blindness or an inability to confront that larger American history and the smaller Republican Party history regarding racism. To think that "angry white men with guns" have thought it through is absurd.

What's the most important question I haven't asked? And what's the answer?

I do not know the answer to the question: "Why do scholars and journalists not consider the religious basis of America's long-term crisis of legitimacy in terms of politics and science?" But I would suggest that scholars and journalists have glommed on to the least important of Richard Hofstadter's explanations, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics," and ignored his more trenchant analysis in "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life," which focuses on the epistemological disruption caused by fundamentalist Protestantism. They also ignore Marty Lipset's and Earl Raab's use of the concept of monism in describing the right wing in "The Politics of Unreason." Those old guys were on to something.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/this-is-exactly-how-it-happens-foreign-reporters-warn-us-is-sliding-into-totalitarianism-and-could-be-sleepwalking-towards-a-kind-of-:{cold-civil-war/:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:

9/20/20 yikes how is picking up support? recent twist vs boogaloo is that THEY/left/antifa have to start it, b/c US wd never strike 1st/john wayne han solo.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/republican-state-leaders-threaten-violence-in-coming-war-with-black-lives-matter

no lnx pix twt

republican state leaders threaten violence in ‘coming war’ with Black Lives Matter

Written by Daniel Villarreal / The New Civil Rights Movement September 20, 2020

This week, two local Republican leaders published and then deleted social media posts which threatened violence in an imminent right-wing clash against Black Lives Matter and Antifa (anti-fascist) activists.

First, Iron County, Utah commissioner Paul Cozzens published a now-deleted picture showing a soldier with a gun and the words: “Warning to BLM & Antifa—Once you’ve managed to defund & eliminate the police, there’s nobody protecting you from us. Remember that.”

[pix]

Cozzens later told Newsweek that he never supports violence against protestors but merely wanted to say that “If we defund the police, fathers and mothers will be forced to protect their families and properties which would descend us into anarchy.”

What Cozzens may not realize is that many Black Lives Matter and Antifa activists already believe that police do a terrible job protecting them from right-wing violence. Such activists have sometimes been subject to violence from the police themselves, bringing into doubt the whole question of whether police “protect” them from anything.

Second, Michael Brown — a Republican member of the Johnson County Commission in Kansas City, Missouri — published a now-deleted Facebook message in which he urged his followers to “buy a firearm and ammunition” for “the coming war” that is both “inevitable” and caused by left-wing police reform activists and Democratic leaders who are “silent” and “weak.”

“[This] isn’t a joke or hyperbole,” Brown wrote. “I’d rather fight and die than live in their dictated world.” pm: he aLSO says left does not want what they claim to want, but insurrection. // salon on 1619 patriotism BS

[[Four of Johnson County’s seven commissioners on Thursday agreed to rebuke Commissioner Mike Brown for a weekend Facebook post where he warned of impending anarchy and a “coming war.”

He wrote the post following the shooting of two sheriff’s deputies in California. Brown, who is up for reelection in November, warned of a violent uprising and conflict with the left, then told his constituents to “buy a firearm and ammunition” and “learn how to safely use it to defend yourself and your property.”

“I’d rather fight and die than live in their dictated world. And right now I’ve got my own war drum — and I’m waiting for the other side to give me reason to pound on it. And I will. Say when. Don’t tread on me,” Brown wrote.

Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas on Monday tweeted, “At a time when heated rhetoric rarely surprises me, I have to admit shock in seeing something like this from a local elected. Gross distortions; encouraging constituents to prepare for armed war w/ political opponents? This is reckless. This is racist. This is wrong. Just stop.”

Many others condemned Brown, arguing the post was heightening social unrest, misleading constituents and inciting violence.]]

In response, Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas wrote on Twitter, “At a time when heated rhetoric rarely surprises me, I have to admit shock in seeing something like this from a local elected. Gross distortions; encouraging constituents to prepare for armed war w/political opponents? This is reckless. This is racist. This is wrong. Just stop.”

Brown later said that he had made the post in response to Monday reports of a gunman who opened fire on a parked sheriff’s squad car, killing two officers in Los Angeles. Brown said he was “speaking out against violence and calling on other electeds, community leaders and citizens to do the same.”

https://www.mediamatters.org/roger-stone/roger-stone-antifa-and-black-lives-matter-thugs-are-going-be-clubbing-people-suburbs

Roger Stone: Antifa and Black Lives Matter “thugs” are going to be “clubbing” people in the suburbs to suppress voting

09/18/20 4:25 PM EDT

roger Stone continues to lay the groundwork for Trump to declare martial law

09/18/20 1:26 PM EDT

https://www.mediamatters.org/roger-stone/roger-stone-continues-lay-groundwork-trump-declare-martial-law

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/warning-left-wing-coup-trumpist-media-prep-their-audience-election-unrest

no lnx many

Warning of a left-wing coup, Trumpist media prep their audience for election unrest

WRITTEN BY MATT GERTZ

PUBLISHED 09/18/20 10:25 AM EDT

Trump

Molly Butler / Media Matters

Nearly 5 million people were watching on Tuesday night as a Fox News host who claims that white supremacy is a hoax and a former speechwriter for President Donald Trump who was fired for speaking at a white nationalist conference spun out a wild-eyed conspiracy theory portraying mail-in voting as a sinister Democratic cabal’s coup attempt.

Tucker Carlson opened the segment by telling his viewers that Democrats were promoting mail-in voting not as a way to boost safe turnout during a pandemic, but because “they want the uncertainty over the outcome of the election, so they can manipulate the results.” His guest, Revolver News’ Darren Beattie, then explained that “a very specific type of coup called the color revolution” is “unfolding before our eyes.”

A color revolution, Beattie explained, is “a regime change model favored by many in our national security apparatus, particularly against Eastern European countries to overthrow target regimes that they don't like.” (They were actually peaceful protests that toppled despots in places previously dominated by the Soviet Union.) And now, he claimed, that model is being applied to the United States, with “color revolution professionals” deliberately generating election fraud in order “to use lawfare in order to overturn the 2020 election.”

Right-wing media figures generally push a baseline level of apocalyptic rhetoric about the purported predations of progressives. But Trumpist media have reached a dangerous fever pitch over the last week or so, even by that standard. With polls showing Trump trailing former Vice President Joe Biden following the party conventions and the election only weeks away, commentators like Carlson are preparing their audiences to treat a Trump defeat as a left-wing coup -- and encouraging the president toward an authoritarian response.

Their deranged statements are fed by -- and fuel -- the president’s own unhinged remarks. Trump has portrayed himself as “saving the world from a radical left philosophy that will destroy this country.” He describes his political opposition as supporters of “angry mobs,” “far-left fascism,” and “left-wing cultural revolution” so dangerous that he has even endorsed extrajudicial executions.And all the while, he’s been openly claiming that he could not possibly lose a fairly held election, and that any defeat would be the result of a Democratic election fraud conspiracy.

Carlson’s show is the most prominent vehicle fearmongering about a Democratic coup, but it is not the only one. A new special from The Blaze TV’s Glenn Beck is titled “CIVIL WAR: The Way America Could End in 2020,” and it details how “the Left is grooming us for an Eastern European-style color revolution this election.” His complex plot sprawls over three chalkboards and features mail-in voting as a vector for “something dangerous happening in November if we don’t act now.” (Beck praised Carlson during the program for the way he has been “putting the puzzle pieces together.”) The Trumpist publication The Federalist has offered up a similar “coup” theory.

The right-wing “coup” talk is the natural result of their demagoguery and dehumanization of the political opposition. Months ago, Trumpist media figures began warning that civilization itself was on the ballot in the fall, with Trump standing as the only thing preventing the left from making America “unrecognizable.” That type of rhetoric has only escalated, producing ever-more-inflammatory claims about what Trump’s defeat might mean to the safety and security of his supporters.

Over the last week or so alone:

Carlson described Black Lives Matter as “poison” that “we have to fight” because “if we’re going to survive as a country, we must defeat this.”

Wall Street Journal columnist Bill McGurn explained that he bought a gun in case “100 or 200 people bent on violence” show up in his suburb.

Fox’s Laura Ingraham and the pro-Trump podcaster Joe Rogan baselessly attributed the massive western wildfires to left-wing arsonists, blasting false rumors circulating on social media to millions of viewers and listeners.

Fox contributor Dan Bongino claimed that “we're watching the greatest nation in the history of sentient beings collapse in front of our face.”

Fox host Sean Hannity said that U.S. cities have become “war zones” and that there is a “war on police now.”

And Charlie Kirk, a frequent Fox guest and head of the Trumpist youth group Turning Point USA, warned on his podcast that if Trump loses, leftists seeking “bloodthirsty revenge” will “come for us all. They will come for your children.”

Some are taking their hatred of the left to lawless, authoritarian conclusions.

Roger Stone, a longtime confidant of the president, said during an appearance earlier this month on far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ Infowars network that if Trump were to lose (illegitimately as a result of voter fraud, of course), he should try to retain power by having federal agents seize purportedly tainted ballots, using martial law or the Insurrection Act to carry out widespread arrests, and nationalizing state police forces.

Fox’s Mark Levin,meanwhile, has also urged Trump to consider invoking the Insurrection Act -- but he argued that it would be needed if he wins. “He will have to use it to put down the enemy,” Levin explained on his radio show last week.

“The enemy is antifa, the enemy is Black Lives Matter, and the enemy is anybody that is going to use rioting, arson, looting, violence against our country to try to overthrow our country,” he added. “Those are traitors. That's treasonous.”

Extremist violent rhetoric is nothing new for right-wing media. Glenn Beck made it a staple of Fox News during President Barack Obama’s first term. Before the midterm elections, Fox warned its audience members that they needed to vote for Republicans to protect themselves from being killed by Democratic mobs.

But this sort of demagoguery can come with a heavy price. Beck’s rhetoric inspired an attempted domestic terror attack against one of his regular targets that ended with a firefight with law enforcement. And in the days before the 2018 midterm elections, a Trump superfan sent bombs to leftist leaders whom Fox commentators had attacked.

There’s still six weeks to go before the election. How will this spate of violent rhetoric end?

IN THIS ARTICLE

Voter Fraud and Suppression

Voter Suppression

Fox News fuels Trump’s dangerous Portland “law and order” strategy

07/21/20 3:52 PM EDT

Desperate Trumpists say civilization is on the ballot as Biden lead grows

06/24/20 11:06 AM EDT

How Tucker Carlson became the Fox host Trump listens to the most

07/08/20

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/expert-on-the-radical-right-warns-that-vigilantes-are-preparing-to-launch-a-coup

in the Age of Trump, Portland, Oregon, is no longer just another city. Now it is a symbol and almost a Rorschach test for the country’s deep and explosive political divides.

For Trumpists, Republicans and members of the far right, Portland is all that is wrong with “the Left” and “Liberals,” a chaotic nightmare zone where Black Lives Matter, antifa and other“enemies”are running amok while they attack “patriotism” and “real American values.”

To TrumpWorld, Portland and other Democratic-led big cities (which of course is virtually all of them) are hives of scum and villainy, overrun by criminals and “rioters,” which must be conquered by Trump’s enforcers and armed vigilante supporters.

Trump’s “law and order” politics, and its inherent racism and violence, are believed by many to be his path back to the White House. In this view, Portland and other “Democrat cities” and communities are targets of opportunity for the Trump regime.

writing at Washington Monthly, David Atkins explains Trump’s mindset:

He sees the violence as politically beneficial, a useful cudgel against Democratic nominee Joe Biden — even though the violence is happening while Trump himself is president, not Biden.

Trump’s election theme is that Americans won’t be safe in a Biden presidency. The opposite is true. Americans won’t be safe as long as a white supremacist president is leading a movement of bigots to incite a civil war, and attempting to ensure that the majority of Americans with cosmopolitan, egalitarian values remain politically disenfranchised and under the thumb of those who fear and despise them.

Trump’s campaign of racial authoritarianism and stochastic terrorism, as well as overt threats of “law and order,” resulted in a group of his supporters driving into Portland last weekend, armed with mace and paintball guns, to seek out confrontations with Black Lives Matter and anti-fascist protesters. During one such encounter, a member of the right-wing militia group Patriot Prayer, Aaron Danielson,was shot and killed. On Thursday night, the apparent shooter,Michael Reinoehl, was himself shot and killed by U.S. marshals in Olympia, Washington.

Despite this lamentable violence — for which Trump and the right must bear ultimate responsibility — for progressives and other people of conscience Portland is a symbol of resistance and hope. As part of the nationwide people’s uprising sparked by the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, protesters have been outside the Portland federal courthouse for more than 100 days.

The protests were largely peaceful until Trump and acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf deployed federal police forces to the city in July. Their presence, as designed, escalated the tension and led to increasing levels of property damage and incidents of violence.

Previewing Trump’s plan for other parts of the nation, these federal shock troops made journalists and reporters a special focus of their violence. They also kidnapped protesters and other “enemies” of Donald Trump’s regime off the street as though they were operating in a banana republic.

Much of the mainstream American news media’s coverage of the recent events in Portland lacks meaningful context. Writing at Medium, a Portland press collective describes one such example of this “parachute journalism”:

One night last week, during one of the smaller demonstrations, a tall white man in a clean ballistic helmet and brand-new plate carrier emblazoned with “PRESS” strolled through the crowd in front of the Hatfield Federal Courthouse in Portland, Oregon. He stopped by a gaggle of other journalists, most out-of-towners. “I’ve only been around for the last week,” he said, “but the protests in Portland feel a lot more performative than the ones I’ve seen in other cities. Less genuine.” A local journalist mentioned having been present for over 50 nights of the protests, starting in early June. “Yeah, I can only speak for what I’ve seen this week,” said Clean Helmet. “I’m flying back to DC tomorrow.” … Clean Helmet was on the ground in Portland, by his own description, for less than a week. This means that he was present for approximately 1/10th of Portland’s BLM protests, thus far. I’m sure he got some great footage.

The Parachutes (as we have come to know them) come with money, and zero community connections. Their goal is the clip that can make the nightly news. They want a story that will dominate the news cycle. They do not know what is happening in Portland, and they do not care. They are coming to a city with a vibrant, scrappy community of street-level journalists. By and large, they do not want the context that those journalists can provide. And soon they will come to a city near you. When the Feds and the Parachutes come to your town, you’ll want everyone to understand the context there, too. And they are coming. Clean Helmet is already back in DC, and on to the next assignment.

The important context which “the Parachutes” usually omit includes the way Portland is depicted as a liberal oasis in America’s popular imagination. In reality, Portland is a very race and class-segregated city. As historian and activist Walidah Imarisha and others have richly documented, the Oregon territory passed laws in 1844 explicitly excluding Black people from the region under punishment of whippings and other violence. The state of Oregon formally included white supremacy in its constitution, explicitly banning nonwhites.

To this day, Oregon remains a redoubt of white supremacy, where white supremacists and other right-wing extremists have a large presence in the state and surrounding region. Portland itself has a long and ongoing history of right-wing violence.

Alexander Reid Ross is a doctoral fellow at the Center for Analysis of the Radical Right. His most recent book is “Against the Fascist Creep.” Ross has also completed new research which documents more than 500 incidents in which white vigilantes and other right-wing extremists have confronted Black Lives Matter protests. This includes hundreds of acts of intimidation and other threats as well as dozens of examples in which right-wing extremists have assaulted or attacked Black Lives Matter protesters.

In this conversation Ross shares his firsthand experiences with the recent George Floyd protests in Portland. He also provides some context for those events and the police and federal response. Ross also details the long history of right-wing paramilitaries and political street gangs in Portland and their relationship with local police and other law enforcement.

Reid warns that Portland, the right-wing vigilante killings in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and the hundreds of other attacks by right-wing extremists on Black Lives Matter protesters is just a preview of the massive violence that Donald Trump and his movement may unleash before and after Election Day — perhaps including the arrest or imprisonment of prominent Democrats, journalists, and others deemed to be enemies of the state.

Q: After almost four years of Trump and his regime’s authoritarian, neofascist behavior, some voices in the mainstream American news media now use that correct and appropriate language to describe the reality of the situation. Why was there so much fear and denial about the obvious? Even when they use the correct terminology, the coverage is largely superficial and avoids serious discussion of the dire implications.

You must also take into account that many so-called left-leaning voices have also been interfering with bringing that truth to light. There were writers at the Guardian, for example, who were trying to sound the alarm about the dangers of right-wing extremism and fascism in America, but they were derided by their peers across the political spectrum.

I also believe that publications such as the Washington Post and the New York Times saw themselves as being aloof from questions of the mob and political violence in America. There is a tendency among elite voices to want to say that, “We’re above political violence here in America and we resolve our differences through conversation. Therefore, let’s give everyone a hearing and let’s debate these issues, regardless of how extreme they may be. That is what a democratic country should act like.”

In a sense, they put their faith completely in some abstract idea of “democracy” instead of taking the temperature of what is really happening on the ground.

You live in Portland. How is your experience different from the narrative being offered by the mainstream American news media and other outside observers?

We in Portland have been dealing with right-wing extremists and police abuse for a long time. Portland has experience with the likes of right-wing extremist groups such as Patriot Prayer and the Proud Boys. This is not new to us.

I would go out to protests and see how the political violence is not a result of the breakdown in the monopoly of violence held by the police. The political violence was a result of the Proud Boys and the police effectively acting as two different elements of the same side. It wasn’t that the police had lost the monopoly of violence. It was the police were shooting us in order to allow the Proud Boys to march through the city without proper permits.

Most mainstream news media coverage of the protests which have taken place here in Portland, recently and before, totally fail to acknowledge or even fathom the police involvement in the rise of the far right in this community. That failure has cascaded to the point that we are now at a point where the press is painting the current crisis as some type of grudge match between the feds and the anarchists. In fact, the protest movement is a very diverse group of people — especially by Portland standards — who are coming out night after night and making extraordinarily clear demands and being absolutely brutalized in the streets every night.

What too many reporters in many cases are trying to do is figure out how to resolve the situation, rather than understanding it and properly explaining to the public what is really happening and the context for it. By doing so, too many reporters are creating false equivalencies regarding the various forces at play here in Portland.

What does Portland exemplify, in terms of the protests and the Trump’s regime’s reaction?

It is an example of Donald Trump attempting to rise to the level of a right-wing political strongman. Donald Trump is using classic authoritarian tactics that one does not often see in a healthy democracy. Donald Trump is deliberately undermining the Constitution by using federal law to circumvent local governments’ control over their police forces.

Trump and William Barr’s de facto secret police are literally disappearing people off the streets of Portland and in other parts of the country where the Democratic Party is in power. How do you explain what is happening to people who do not live in those communities? Who are not being targeted by Trump and his henchmen?

The specific federal forces involved are BORTAC — the Border Patrol Tactical Unit — and the U.S. Marshals Special Operations Group and others, under the coordination of the Department of Homeland Security. BORTAC have been in Portland shooting at people and launching tear gas. BORTAC is not trained for crowd or riot control. They are trained to engage in raids against migrants and to separate children from their mothers. That is what BORTAC does. They pride themselves on being the most militarized branch and group of the U.S. law enforcement community. BORTAC members are extreme Trump supporters. What is happening in Portland and other parts of the country is the border closing in on the citizens of the United States.

BORTAC is loyal to Donald Trump and that’s why he is using them.He’s not using them because they’re the most skilled and adept at riot and crowd control management. That also explains why there are so many incidents of people being shot in the face and otherwise abused here in Portland and other places where BORTAC and other such forces are being deployed by the Trump administration.They don’t know what they’re doing at all.

BORTAC is being used because Trump feels that they are his most loyal forces. That is fully in keeping with the tactics of authoritarian leaders who cultivate secret police whose main function is to serve as the government leader’s private force, one that operates outside of any restraints such as internal review.

The [former] Chilean dictatorship is explicitly supported by Trump’s own supporters, who wear T-shirts that say, “Right-wing death squad” and “Pinochet did nothing wrong.”The American mainstream news media is far too charitable with its narrative that “Trump is playing to his base.”

During the recent protests in Portland, were there moments where you feared that the federal forces were going to start shooting the crowd with lethal rounds?

The fear is very real and it’s constant. The federal forces have assault rifles. They are loaded with live rounds. There are protesters who were throwing fireworks and things of that sort at the courthouse. What if one of the feds has an itchy trigger finger? What if a firework explodes and they then open fire on an entire group of unarmed people?

Trump and their defenders and other apologists will just say, “Well, these poor agents have been overworked for 60 days and look at all the things that have been thrown at them” and so on and so forth. We know what the narrative will be. All a person can do when protesting is to act accordingly and stay focused.

You have been documenting what are now almost 500 attacks, acts of intimidation, vehicular assaults, shootings and other threats by Trump supporters and other members of the right against Black Lives Matter protests. What do we know?

I have never seen this amount of anti-left vigilantism from the right. During the first year of Barack Obama’s administration, the Tea Party was huge, and they mobilized with events all over the country. There were also armed protests in opposition to Obamacare. But those right-wing protesters were not coming out to confront and intimidate a much smaller group of anti-racists. Of course, those anti-Obama Tea Party and anti-health-care type protesters were extremely racist and a breath away from being fascists, but there was not that same energy and menace that we are seeing today.

The idea of these right-wing protesters and militia types being “anti-government” — again, a narrative circulated by the mainstream American news media — is very uncritical, a total misnomer. They are really pro-government. They are entirely in favor of the United States government as controlled by Donald Trump. Their claim to be “libertarians” is a joke.

Those right-wing militias and others sympathetic to them are arming in opposition to Democrats, liberals and progressives.

Right-wing extremists and other terrorists, including white supremacists and neo-Nazis, are also coordinating at times with the police.

They actually say that they are at the protests to “protect the police.” Think about that claim: They are “anti-government” vigilantes who promise that they are trying to protect the police. In essence, these right-wing militias and the like are American citizens who believe it is their role not to become police, but to guard the police. Such a claim is ludicrous. It is a paramilitary force. These right-wing forces are coordinating and positioning themselves to be able to launch a coup against American democracy and the Democratic Party, if the latter gains control of the presidency and government.

The closest parallel with what we are seeing with Trump’s movement would be the “massive resistance” by white people against racial integration in the South during the civil rights movement. I am of the opinion that the United States has not seen such a mobilization of violent, far-right forces to this extent since the 1960s.

Recently, a Trumpist and right-wing militia supporter traveled to Kenosha, Wisconsin and involved himself in the protests there. He apparently shot three people, killing two of them. He crossed state lines illegally with a weapon he was not allowed to own. He was only a teenager, and was radicalized online into right-wing extremism. He is now being valorized by the right-wing media machine. Trump has defended this young man as a hero who was fighting against “criminals” and “looters.” This apparent killer now has hundreds of thousands of dollars pledged to his defense.

Trump has defended Kyle Rittenhouse with the claim he was firing in “self-defense.” In essence, Donald Trump supports the right-wing vigilante movement, which represents the disintegration of the rule of law.

We are witnessing an erosion of democratic norms in this country by Republicans. They accept breaking the law as being viable if it supports “traditional values” — meaning racism. As a practical matter, Donald Trump is spearheading the movement of the Republican Party into a full-on violent racist organization that encourages vigilantism.

In terms of engaging in the worst type of “both-sides-ism” and false equivalencies that helped Trump win and now keep power, the American mainstream news media is now advancing a “mutual combat” narrative in its coverage of Trump’s supporters and the violence in Portland last weekend. How does that narrative contradict what really happened in Portland?

The “mutual combat” framing is inane, legally a non-starter, and obviously supportive of the aggressive party, which is typically the Trump supporters. Their strategy is to provoke fights and then call for “law and order” intervention from a corrupt president.

Patriot Prayer leader Joey Gibsonhas not been leading protests in Portland for a long time. He is a marginal figure, but the American news media has suddenly selected him and lifted him up for no apparent reason other than that he participated in an aggressive and bellicose Trump “caravan” last week during which right-wing vigilantes tried to run people over with their trucks, shot protesters and bystanders with paintball guns, and used pepper spray to attack people.

Should Black Lives Matter, antifascist and other human rights and social justice supporters stop protesting in order to deny Trump’s supporters and other right-wing hooligans a narrative that could hurt Joe Biden nd the the Democrats? In essence, should they make a tactical withdrawal to deny Trump a strategic victory, because of how events will likely be distorted by the media to his advantage?

I will not say what protesters should or shouldn’t do. I do not think what they choose to do or not do will matter much. What is significant is that the far right will deepen its insurgency against the left the more that Donald Trump falters and as he continues demanding “law and order.”

The left would be remiss to engage them on this level. The left is not in the streets to spark a civil war or escalate violent encounters to the point of breaking civil society into protracted sectarian warfare. The left is in the streets to make life better for ordinary people, and to present a version of the future that would be better and more prosperous for everyone. The more the left maintains its sanity against overwhelming odds, the more the right’s paranoia and hysteria will marginalize it in American society. This will create new spaces for progressive causes and movements.

What do you want to warn the American people about? What do you think happens next?

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/election-theft-expert-says-trump-has-a-plan-to-steal-the-election-legally-and-the-usps-isnt-the-problem

Donald Trump is interfering with the U.S. Postal Service, in an apparent attempt to steal the 2020 election. He has repeatedly and publicly confessed to this scheme. For example, Trump has said that the post office must be denied additional funding because it would help facilitate mail-in voting — which he has previously said would hurt his chances of re-election chances. Trump has also said that mail-in voting is fraudulent and must be stopped. (There is virtually no evidence of such fraud.) He has also said that mail-in ballots may not be counted for “months or years” — a gesture toward his evident desire to remain president indefinitely.

This is one of many examples when Trump has shown himself to be an authoritarian who does not respect democracy: He has threatened not to leave office if he loses the 2020 presidential election, wants to extend the number of years he can be president and has floated the idea of delaying the date of the election if he believes that will help him “win.” During his speech on Monday before the Republican National Convention, Donald Trump said again that he wants to stay in office for 12 more years. He also said that mail-in voting is one of the biggest “scams” in human history and once again suggested that the only way Joe Biden and the Democrats can defeat him is by cheating. With such wild claims Trump is, again, creating a pretext for a “Reichstag fire” event which he will try to use to nullify the 2020 Election.

Trump is also threatening to dispatch 50,000 “poll watchers” in a Jim Crow-style campaign to prevent “fraud” by intimidating and harassing Democratic Party voters — a large proportion of them Black or brown — in major cities like Detroit and Milwaukee. Trump is never subtle in his schemes: Last week he told Fox News’ Sean Hannity that he would only send his “law enforcement” agents to “Democratic Party” areas.

Donald Trump’s efforts to steal the 2020 presidential election by interfering with mail delivery is being orchestrated by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a major Trump donor and Republican Party booster. DeJoy is also personally and financially invested in destroying the Postal Service because of his major investments in XPO, a competing delivery company. DeJoy has also previously invested in Amazon and UPS.

deJoy has ordered the removal of high-volume mail sorting machines, taken away mailboxes, ended overtime for postal workers and changed other rules and regulations which in some cases have caused weeks-long delays. His changes will cause a predictable delay in the delivery of mail-in ballots, which in many states will be discarded and not counted.

During his Senate hearing last Friday, DeJoy claimed that he would pause these disruptive damaging changes to the U.S. mail, and promised that mail-in ballots would be delivered on schedule

Like other Trump officials, DeJoy was at best being evasive and at worst lying in his testimony before Congress. Whistleblowers within the USPS as well as leaked memos indicate that he has no intentions of allowing the mail to proceed as normal in these weeks leading up to Election Day. There are also suggestions that DeJoy is targeting service delays to heavily Democratic areas, which would give Trump and even larger unfair advantage.

On Monday, DeJoy testified before the House Oversight Committee, where he proved incapable of answering basic questions about the Postal Service andadmitted to being in contact with the Trump 2020 campaign team through intermediaries. DeJoy also claimed that the damaging and disruptive changes to mail delivery began before he was appointed as postmaster general. When challenged with a chart which clearly showed that the delays corresponded with the beginning of his tenure, DeJoy had no sensible explanation.

In all, Donald Trump and his regime’s interference with the U.S. mail represents yet another crisis for the country and its failing democracy. Greg Palast, the investigative journalist and bestselling author who is one of the country’s foremost experts on vote rigging, vote fraud and election theft, believes that the Trump regime’s interference with the mail is largely a distraction from bigger problems with democracy and voting in America.

Palast is the author of several books, including “The Best Democracy Money Can Buy” and “Billionaires & Ballot Bandits.” His new book is “How Trump Stole 2020: The Hunt for America’s Vanished Voters.”

In our most recent conversation, Palast warned that the Trump regime and Republican Party and their agents are implementing a massive nationwide campaign to challenge the legitimacy of votes cast in support of Joe Biden. This is part of a plan that may also include intimidation and perhaps even coordinated violence and acts of terrorism by pro-Trump paramilitaries and other forces against post offices, polling stations and other election facilities. The goal is to create national chaos and a state of emergency in which millions of votes are left uncounted and the presidential election, under the 12th Amendment to the Constitution, is decided by the House of Representatives. The result of that, Palast predicts, will be the re-election of Donald Trump.

You can also listen to my conversation with Greg Palast on my podcast “The Truth Report” or through the player embedded below:

as usual, this interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What is actually happening with Donald Trump, the Postal Service, and his efforts to steal the 2020 election?

No. 1, we should thank Donald Trump and his postmaster general because he has woken people up to the fact that mail-in voting can be really dangerous. It is like playing Russian roulette with your voting ballot. Twenty-two percent of all mail-in votes never get counted.And that was under Barack Obama, when they were promoting mail-in voting. What is going to happen with Trump and the Republicans?

Mail-in voting has already been a disaster in America. One in 10 people who ask for absentee ballots do not get them. One in 10 people who do get their ballots and send them back have their ballots rejected, thrown out and not counted. Mail-in voting was a big problem before Trump decided to make it worse.

There have always been problems with the post office in its handling of mail-in ballots. But the post office is not the main problem with voter suppression and vote rigging in America. In many ways, focusing on Trump and the post office is a distraction.

There are eight states which require a person to have a witness signature. Three states require notarizing either the ballot or the request for a mail-in ballot. This was difficult before, but in a pandemic is problematic to the extreme. Very little of this has to do with the post office. The biggest reason why people don’t get their ballots is that they are not registered voters. What happened? Many of those people have been purged from the voter rolls. Seventeen million people have been purged during the last few years.

The real theft of the 2020 presidential election is not the lack of mailboxes that will stop people from mailing in their ballots or getting them. It’s not the lack of sorting machines. It is a lack of commitment to counting ballots by both parties.

The real danger of mail-in voting is that you do not get your ballot because some political functionary has decided to slow-walk your ballot to you or has removed your registration or decided they’re not going to send it because, for example, you are one of the several million people on what are called the “inactive voter” list. The post office is not responsible for that interference and trickery.

Is Trump’s sabotage of the U.S. mail an intentional distraction? Some type of sophisticated strategy?

Donald Trump and his agents are not that strategic. What they are doing with the mail is just one more thing among many that they are doing to try to keep the American people from voting in November.

Yes, if you tear apart the United States Postal Service the problems with voting are going to get worse. There is no question of that. Overtime is being eliminated by Trump’s postmaster. There are going to be 120 million mail-in ballots. How will those ballots get processed if overtime is reduced? Trump’s postmaster is also eliminating the requirement that mail comes in and goes out the same day. That is a longstanding post office rule. So yes, what is happening with Trump and the post office is very destructive and dangerous and will make it harder for people to vote. But, again, it is not the worst part of how mail-in voting, and voting more generally, in this country is being undermined. The whole system of voting in America needs to be fixed.

Why is Donald Trump being so bold as to publicly admit that he is sabotaging the mail so that he can win the 2020 election?

It is quite brilliant. But again, it is not Donald Trump being brilliant, but rather the people around him who are directing these efforts to interfere in the 2020 presidential election. Trump’s advisers are creating a situation where they will challenge the vote in November. Mail-in ballots are going to be central to the scheme. About half of all ballots cast, about 60 million, are going to be challenged. If there are 120 million mail-in votes, 26 million of them will not be counted.

My big fear is that Donald Trump is establishing the grounds for making a claim that mail-in ballots are fraudulent. Moreover, they will focus on black people as part of that strategy. This is an old lie and stereotype in America — that black people somehow vote twice. Watch the film “Birth of a Nation” and you will see that racist stereotype’s origins.Trump has repeatedly said that people of color are going to be sending in multiple ballots.

If Trump and the Republicans cannot win by challenging all those votes because Biden is too far ahead, then we will see some version of what happened in Florida in 2000 with Gore and Bush.

Then Roger Stone led $600-an-hour consultants who went crazy in the Miami-Dade County voting officesand stopped the counting of the ballots that the machines could not read. The result was that Bush became president by 537 votes. If you had counted all those votes in Miami, George W. Bush would likely not have been elected president. This time the Republicans and their operatives are going to say, “That building is filled with fraudulent ballots. That post office building has a million ballots from Bolivia or what have you that should not be counted!”

I believe there is a good chance that right-wing paramilitaries such as the Boogaloo Boys, the Proud Boys or other similar people are going to burn down the post offices. They are going to attack county offices. The riot this time will not be consultants wearing suits, like in 2000, but instead men armed with assault rifles. I also believe there are going to be large-scale protests on Election Day because of the interference with the vote. I really believe that there is a good chance that this nation will be on fire on Election Day. If Donald Trump is behind in the vote there are going to be massive attacks on polling places.

People are not going to get their mail-in ballots. They are going to have to wait in line during a pandemic. I am worried that the lines will be attacked by right-wingers trying to protect Trump and keep him in office. I am very worried that places such as Miami, Detroit, Milwaukee and Washington, D.C., will be in flames. In that scenario for example, the Florida legislature says, “There are a million mail-in ballots stuck in the post office. We believe they are fraudulent. We are getting word that there are huge numbers of questionable signatures. We cannot finish counting the votes on time and therefore we cannot certify the vote on time.”

What happens then? Florida does not certify the vote. The Republican-controlled legislature in Michigan does not certify the vote. Wisconsin does the same. Neither Biden or Trump gets 270 votes in the Electoral College as a result. Now the election is resolved under the 12th Amendment, which says it goes to the House of Representatives where Nancy Pelosi will call for a single vote from each state. Trump will win, 30-20. In that scenario, Donald Trump will be constitutionally elected by a right-wing riot and the burning of people’s votes.

The Republican Party, Trump and the right-wing propaganda media have spent years developing and circulating the lie that there is massive “vote theft” or “fake ballots” cast by Democrats. Of course, Republicans have actually been arrested for trying to rig elections using those means. Why don’t Republican operatives simply print up their own fake ballots, mail them in, and then claim that there is massive voter fraud? Create the “crime” that you later discover.

Exactly. That is an obvious trick, where fraudulent votes are sent in by the same right-wing operatives who then claim to “discover” them. I would not put such a plot past the likes of Roger Stone. Photocopy 1,000 ballots and mail them in and then say, “Look at all these fraudulent ballots!”

Donald Trump is threatening to use his own army of 50,000 “poll watchers” against Democratic voters. Trump has said he will deploy law enforcement agents in heavily Democratic communities as a way of ensuring that there is no “voter fraud,” but will not be sending law enforcement to Republican-controlled areas. Trump and William Barr also now have a secret police force which ran amok in Portland and elsewhere, and will certainly be used against the American people on Election Day.

The 50,000 volunteers that Trump has called for are not intimidation forces. I stood in line with the Souls to the Polls for five hours. I have stood in long lines in places such as Georgia and Milwaukee. I do not believe that a single person in those lines would be intimidated by anyone, even one of Trump’s people with an AK-47. The real issue will be that Trump’s poll watchers are going to challenge every ballot. So it’s not intimidation. The issue will be that they will go in as poll watchers and challenge every ballot.

What type of America are Donald Trump, William Barr, Stephen Miller and the Republican Party as a whole trying to create? To what end is their vote-rigging, vote suppression and other means of interference in the people’s will being directed?

There is apartheid in American voting. Let’s begin with that basic premise. The votes of nonwhite people are not being fully counted. This is because of the smart people around Donald Trump who have implemented many tactics and strategies to suppress and otherwise stop Democratic voters and their ballots from even being counted.

According to the Elections Assistance Commission, in the 2016 election 1,913,369 ballots cast in person were rejected, thrown out. In addition, 925,973 people were forced to cast provisional ballots which were not counted. In other words, roughly 1 million provisional ballots cast and rejected, 2 million in-precinct ballots cast and rejected, and then 3 million mail-in ballots which were either never received or were rejected. That comes to nearly 5.9 million ballots cast and not counted. And that was 2016. That is what elected Donald Trump. Nothing has been done to protect the American people’s votes.

Why don’t the Democrats make it clear to Donald Trump and the Republicans, “We’re going to challenge every single one of your votes”?

What I would like the Democrats to do is to challenge the Republican Party’s challenges to the votes. In Michigan, and this is very important, Republicans challenged every Hillary Clinton vote. The Democrats did not challenge a single Trump vote.

In response to your question, we should not answer the Republican Party’s attack on American democracy with another attack on democracy. Every vote should be counted. Voters’ intent should count — whether it is for Trump or whomever. If Donald Trump has 50,000 Boogaloo Boys or other right-wingers challenging votes, then the Democrats need 50,000 patriots — and they do not even have to be Democrats, just people who believe in democracy who will go in and say, “No, you cannot challenge those ballots. No, you can’t say that that signature is wrong. You have no expertise in signatures. Count that ballot!”

I believe in a true “We the people” democracy. That having been said, in terms of realpolitik why don’t the Democratic Party’s leaders tell the Republicans, “Whatever you do to stop our voters we are going to do yours 10 times worse unless you play it straight and fair.”

I really do not like the idea of mass challenges of votes. I do not want anyone playing that game. It would be sufficient for the Democrats to have people to challenge the challenges. I want Democrats to go to court and say, “Count the ballots. We need those ballots counted.” We also know that the chance a ballot will be challenged is 900 percent higher if a voter is black than if they are white.

We also need to go to the courts and demand an end to that discrimination. The Republicans also try to stop young people from voting. That should be challenged in court as well. Let me tell you, we still do have a Voting Rights Act in America. It may be weakened, it may be gasping for life, but we have it and we need to start enforcing it and demanding it.

I want the Democratic Party to be ready to challenge this attack on democracy. Trump and the Republicans are going to continue suppressing the votes of nonwhite people, young people, and others who support the Democratic Party. That is going to happen regardless of how much the Democrats put into the U.S. Post Office. Yes, the Postal Service should be protected, but that cannot be the main focus of stopping the theft of the 2020 election by Donald Trump.

What should people do if they are stopped or otherwise interfered with by one of Trump’s enforcers at a polling place? Would it be viable for the Democrats and other people of conscience to have their own security — a 21st-century version of the Deacons for Defense and Justice — to stop such interference and intimidation?

The American people do not need a vigilante force. We do need people who are vigilant and organized. For example, young people, who as a group are less susceptible to the pandemic, could volunteer to be poll watchers. They need to be there to challenge Trump and the Republican Party’s efforts to interfere with people’s votes. They must also know the rules. For example, 64% of all African-,American males are asked for their voter ID even in states which prohibit asking for a voter ID. If you’re a Black man, you’re going to be asked for your ID, even though it’s illegal to ask you for your ID.

Some people lose their vote because they do not have the acceptable ID. We need people at the polls to say, “No, you may not ask for that ID.” We have to know those rules and then we have to have people who will stay after the polls close for the opening of the mail-in ballots.

These trained observers would be watching for things such as when votes are disqualified because the “wrong” color ink was used. Our poll watchers must say, “No, that vote must count.”

What is the best-case scenario on Election Day in November — and what is the worst?

The best-case scenario is that the vote is so overwhelming against Trump that the Republicans and other Trumpists cannot steal the election. The voters make it such a defeat for Trump the outcome cannot be changed. The worst-case scenario is that the United States is in flames and the vote is not certified in several key states and then Trump wins through the 12th Amendment. I am very worried about massive violence and not the shutdown of the election per se, but rather using the violence as an excuse to go to the 12th Amendment.

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

Several recent violent plots associated with the anti-government Boogaloo movement have also allegedly been carried out by veterans or active service members. In May, two veterans and a current Army Reserve soldier were arrested in an alleged plot to throw explosives at a Black Lives Matter rally. That same month, a current Air Force staff sergeant was arrested for allegedly killing a federal security officer and attempting to kill another, in an apparent plot to kick off a new civil war that Boogaloo adherents believe is imminent.

DHS Takes to the Streets

Four days after Floyd's murder, amid street protests in Oakland, California, an officer for the Federal Protective Service was gunned down and killed outside the federal building he was guarding. Cuccinelli called the killing of the DHS agency officer "an act of domestic terrorism," and pledged that the department would take an active role in response to the violence.

"We will stand behind our law-enforcement officers here in the department and all over America," he said.

Six weeks later, when two men were captured and charged in the Oakland assault, federal prosecutors detailed evidencethat the men were associated with a right-wing extremist group, the Boogaloo Boys, and that they had taken advantage of the chaos of the anti-racism protests to stage their assault. That fact was lost in the executive order Trump signed on June 26, expanding DHS authority to respond to "anarchists and left-wing extremists." Trump directed DHS to provide personnel to assist in the protection of "federal monuments, memorials, statues or property."

Within days, DHS officers were deployed to Portland, Oregon, where Black Lives Matter protests had continued into July, stoked by tensions that have raged for years between leftists and white extremists in the city. [pix]

The conflict escalated with the arrival of the federal officers, and while many protesters were peaceful, others in the crowd tossed fireworks at officers and pointed high-powered lasers at federal agents, temporarily blinding them. Agents clubbed protestors with batons, used tear gas to disperse the crowds, and forced protestors into unmarked vans to detain them for questioning. An unarmed 26-year-old protesterwho was holding a radio over his head suffered a fractured skull and brain injury when a DHS officer shot him in the forehead with a rubber bullet.

DHS compiled and distributed to law enforcement "intelligence reports" on journalists who were covering the clash in Portland, a practice Wolf halted after The Washington Post reported on it. Politico later reported that the intelligence-gathering on journalists occurred after Cuccinelli relaxed the civil liberties oversight process at the agency.

no lnx

Suspect in Santa Cruz ambush linked to federal officer killing in Oakland; charged with 19 felonies

Suspect was a sergeant in the U.S. Air Force

By NATE GARTRELL | ngartrell@bayareanewsgroup.com and JULIA PRODIS SULEK | jsulek@bayareanewsgroup.com | Bay Area News Group

PUBLISHED: June 11, 2020 at 10:12 a.m. | UPDATED: June 12, 2020

A U.S. Air Force sergeant accused of ambushing Santa Cruz County deputies is also believed to be the gunman who shot a federal officer in Oakland, a law enforcement source confirmed Thursday, linking the extraordinary tragedies that may have been spurred in part by extremist, anti-law enforcement views found in the dark corners of social media.

The explosive claim connecting the cases comes the same day that Steven Carrillo, 32, was charged with 19 felonies, including murder, attempted murder, explosives charges and carjacking after the deadly rampage Saturday afternoon that terrorized the mountain community of Ben Lomond, where Carrillo grew up and lived with his father.

‘I became unreasonable’: Bloody message scrawled on car at Ben Lomond ambush]

In a 14-page criminal complaint filed in Santa Cruz County Superior Court, Carrillo — who was on active duty at Travis Air Force Base — was charged with murder in the death of Sgt. Damon Gutzwiller and with the attempted murder of Deputy Alex Spencer, who was critically injured and remains hospitalized. They had been responding to a call from a concerned citizen in nearby Boulder Creek who reported seeing firearms and explosives in Carrillo’s white van.

In all, Carrillo was charged on Thursday with assaulting a firefighter and trying to kill three other law enforcement officers, as well as the resident who ultimately pinned him to the ground as he tried to steal the man’s car during a desperate run from police. The charges include special circumstances of lying in wait, which makes Carrillo eligible for the death penalty, though prosecutors have not said if they will pursue death.

His first court appearance in that case will be a Friday afternoon arraignment in front of Judge Paul Burdick.

The complaint does not mention the Oakland case nor Carrillo’s increasingly hostile anti-government social media posts that alarmed Facebook friends. And it remains unclear why an active duty Air Force sergeant would target members of federal and local law enforcement.

“The link to the Oakland murder doesn’t necessarily surprise me,” said Troy Hunter, a Silicon Valley software engineer who was one of Carrillo’s alleged carjacking victims in Ben Lomond on Saturday.Hunter thwarted Carrillo’s getaway when he removed the keys from the ignition and ran. “It’s more surprising that this guy being an active Air Force member would go down that route. It’s absolutely a little alarming.”

A memorial to fallen Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Deputy Sgt. Damon Gutzwiller in front of Sheriff Headquarters is filled with flowers on Sunday as more than 1,000 mourners attend a vigil for Gutzwiller, who was killed in Ben Lomond in the line of duty on Saturday. (Shmuel Thaler — Santa Cruz Sentinel)

As the country grapples with the Black Lives Matter protests and police use of rubber bullets and tear gas, the rampage in Ben Lomond and the killing in Oakland of a federal officer, who was black, further entangle any notion of clear left and right political battle lines.

A former friend of Carrillo’s — Justin Ehrhardt, who served in the Air Force with him before retiring — said Carrillo’s Facebook posts point to a right-wing extremist group that includes former and active military members. In particular, Carrillo was sharing memes about the so-called “Boogaloo” movement that considers itself a libertarian anti-government citizen militia that is preparing for the next American civil war. Last week, the FBI arrested three adherents to the Boogaloo movement in Nevada, charging them with inciting violence with Molotov cocktails and other explosives at protests over the death of George Floyd.

Carrillo considered himself a libertarian, Ehrhardt said, speculating that police use of force during the protests may have pushed him over the edge.

“Excessive use of force on unarmed civilians — that was a huge thing for him,” Ehrhardt said. “It was a mental tipping point for him.” Ehrhardt imagined it was Carrillo’s way of saying, “If I’m going to fight for something, it’s going to be against the establishment.”

According to the complaint, Carrillo killed Gutzwiller while “lying in wait” for officers on Saturday afternoon at his Ben Lomond home and opened fire and lobbed pipe bombs before stealing one vehicle and attempting to carjack several others. Carrillo ultimately was wrestled to the ground by a nearby, unnamed resident whom Santa Cruz Sheriff Jim Hart praised for a “remarkable, heroic” act.

Carrillo also is charged with the attempted murder of that resident, who Hart said knocked away a pipe bomb and firearm as he grappled with Carrillo before officers arrived.

On Thursday, a source close to the investigation confirmed Carrillo is also believed to be behind the May 29 Oakland shooting that claimed the life of Federal Protective Services officer Dave Patrick Underwood. Underwood had been patrolling the federal building in Oakland blocks from a protest as tens of thousands of people took to the streets in cities across the country after the Minneapolis police killing of Floyd.

Federal prosecutors are reviewing the Oakland case and are expected to make a filing decision in coming days.

Angela Underwood Jacobs gives her opening statement 10 June, 2020 during a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC of the House Judiciary Committee about policing practices and law enforcement accountability prompted by the death of George Floyd while in police custody. (Photo by MICHAEL REYNOLDS / POOL / AFP) (Photo by MICHAEL REYNOLDS/POOL/AFP via Getty Images) ]

In testimony before a congressional panel on Wednesday, Underwood’s sister, Angela Underwood-Jacobs, said her heartbreak and grief are unexplainable.

“My brother wore a uniform, and he wore that uniform proudly. I’m wondering, where is the outrage for a fallen officer that also happens to be African American?” Jacobs told the House Judiciary Committee. “I truly hope that you take your positions, your offices so seriously that you want to go back and really work together and collaborate, because if you can’t get it right, there’s no hope for the rest of us.”

Carrillo had been living with his father in Ben Lomond over the two years since his wife, who was also in the Air Force, died by suicide while in South Carolina on a training program. He has been a member of a security squadron at Travis Air Force Base since 2018.

Carrillo has two school-age children who are living with his late wife’s parents.

Gutzwiller, the officer Carrillo is charged with killing, left behind a pregnant wife and young child.More than a thousand people turned out the day after his death for a vigil, and while it was clear that the case had national political overtones, the tragedy was deeply personal for this local community.

“There’s a hole in all of our hearts now,” Hart said.

Staff Writer John Woolfolk contributed to this report.

Nate Gartrell | Contra Costa County courts reporter

Nate Gartrell covers crime and corruption in Contra Costa County. He joined the Bay Area News Group in 2014.

Julia Prodis Sulek | Enterprise reporter

Julia Prodis Sulek has been a general assignment reporter for the Bay Area News Group, based in San Jose, her hometown, since the late 1990s. She has covered everything from plane crashes to presidential campaigns, murder trials to immigration debates. Her specialty is narrative storytelling.

ref

https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/06/12/i-became-unreasonable-bloody-message-scrawled-on-car-at-ben-lomond-ambush/

... Carrillo, 32, has been charged with 19 felonies including murder in Saturday’s ambush, according to a 14-page indictment filed in the Superior Court of Santa Cruz. He is also a suspect in the fatal shooting May 29 of a federal officer in Oakland, a law enforcement official confirmed to the Mercury News.

Before he was arrested in Ben Lomond, Carrillo scrawled the word “boog” and the phrases “I became unreasonable” and “stop the duopoly” in blood on the hood of a car, NBC News and other media have reported.

“Boog” is shorthand for the Boogaloo, a libertarian anti-government movement that claims to be preparing for a civil war in the United States.

“I became unreasonable” has become a meme in Boogaloo social media. It refers to a statement by Marvin Heemeyer, an icon in extremist anti-government groups because of the 2004 rampage in which he bulldozed 13 buildings in a Colorado mountain town over a zoning dispute. Heemeyer — aka “Killdozer” — fatally shot himself when the heavily armored bulldozer became stuck in the basement of a store he was destroying. A note he left behind included the line,“I was always willing to be reasonable until I had to be unreasonable.”

“Stop the duopoly,” referring to the dominance of the Republican and Democratic parties, is a slogan frequently pushed by third-party and libertarian candidates.

A former friend of Carrillo’s, Justin Ehrhardt,told the Mercury News that the suspect considered himself a libertarian and had been sharing Boogaloo memes on his Facebook account.

In the attack Saturday, Santa Cruz County sheriff’s Sgt. Damon Gutzwiller was killed and Deputy Alex Spencer was critically wounded, hit by shrapnel as the suspect fled, the indictment and media accounts said.

Other charges against Carrillo included detonating pipe bombs, laying in wait to attack officers and assaulting a firefighter and three other law enforcement officers, the indictment said.

Carrillo was an active-duty sergeant at Travis Air Force Base and a member of the 60th Security Force Squadron.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/what-trump-will-do-if-he-loses-is-the-wrong-question-what-matters-is-what-his-supporters-will-do/

hnn

It looks like Biden will beat Trump badly and the Republicans will suffer disastrous losses across the country in November.Although the polls have just been inching toward the Democrats, suddenly articles about what Trump might do if he loses are multiplying, here, here, and here.

Trump might declare the elections fake, go on FOX News to say he had really won, call out the National Guard, barricade himself in the Oval Office, order the Secret Service to shoot Biden on sight.

But what he will do is the wrong question. What matters is what his supporters will do when they lose.

Three groups of supporters are crucial to observe. The media will focus at first on Republican politicians.Will Senate losers in Montana, Arizona, Colorado, and other states jump on the fake news bandwagon? Would Mitch McConnell go quietly if Amy McGrath beats him in a very close race? Maybe Susan Collins will accept defeat in Maine, but what about QAnon promoter Jo Rae Perkins in Oregon? How about Lauren Boebert, QAnon enthusiast and House candidate in Colorado, and the other 7 Republican congressional candidates on the ballot who have expressed support for QAnon?

The whole Republican Senate delegation has already cast doubt on the results by allowing their leader to proclaim unchallenged that the election will be fraudulent. On June 22, Trump said the 2020 election “will be the most RIGGED Election in our nations history”. In 2018, the National Republican Senatorial Committee followed up a Trump tweet about “electoral corruption” in the Arizona Senate race by charging that the election they lost there was rigged. Stripped of power, perhaps for years, it’s not hard to imagine Senators Tom Cotton and Lindsey Graham, among others, casting doubt on the results.

Thus far the bravest Republicans in Washington, aside from Mitt Romney, are Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey, who called Trump’s pardon of Roger Stone a “mistake”, and Maine Sen. Susan Collins, who said she won’t campaign against Joe Biden. The majority of Senate Republicans cowers in silence.

Will Trump’s toadies now running our intelligence services and justice system speak up and what will they say? Across the country, Republican state legislators who lose their gerrymandered majorities could join the chorus.

A second set of Trump supporters use their control of media to send waves of influence into every corner of America. Will FOX News report the official results or attack them? How about the other people to whom Republicans listen, even more partisan and less connected to reality, like Limbaugh, Breitbart, InfoWars, Drudge? Will powerful evangelical pastors Franklin Graham and Robert Jeffress proclaim that their God-given leader was cheated?

The third group is the most important and hardest to gauge – the MAGA-hat-wearing, Confederate-flag-waving white supremacists and conspiracy partisans who make up his legendary “base”. Will they see the end times coming as their messiah is defeated? Will the dozens of armed militia groups adopt 2^nd Amendment remedies to the impending takeover of America by radical socialist pedophiles? What will Ammon Bundy, the boogaloo boys, the Oath Keepers, and the more than 500 other anti-government groups loosely allied in the so-called “patriot movement” identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center do? Will the NRA call out its members to fight the commies?

Trump could scream himself hoarse with no effect unless his supporters sing along. As full election results trickle in the days after November 3 and as the implications sink in with the approach of Inauguration Day on January 20, 2021, a coalition of supporters in Washington, state governments, media, and on the ground might throw our country into an existential, not merely Constitutional crisis.

It’s certain that Trump will do nothing brave himself, will commit himself to no action that he can’t back out of. But the radicals who drive their cars into Black Lives Matter protesters, who bring their assault rifles to the pizza palace, and who believe anything “Q” says are much more volatile, unhinged, and violent.

Whatever answers such questions might elicit now will change over the next few months, as Trump stokes more fear among his supporters, pushes them further away from the American center, and forces his Republican allies to come along.

Watch Reps. Jim Jordan (Ohio), Matt Gaetz (Florida) and Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (California), Gov. Ron DeSantis (Florida), and Mark Meadows, White House Chief of Staff. Watch wily Mitch McConnell, who shares with Trump a powerful belief in the importance of his own survival.

And watch out for America.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/experts-fear-trump-supporters-will-be-dangerous-if-he-loses-the-last-gasp-of-a-dying-party/

The United States has a long history of bitter, divisive presidential elections being followed by gracious concession speeches. But Journalist Andrew Feinberg, in an article published by The Independent on July 7, examines the possibility of far-right violence if Donald Trump loses to Joe Biden in November.

“Even by the hardball standards of American presidential politics,” Feinberg explains, “Trump’s reelection bid stands out in history as the sole example of an incumbent president who is pushing his supporters to view a loss as the end of the republic rather than the end of his political career. This unprecedented strategy is raising concerns among experts on extremism and authoritarianism, and even veterans of Republican politics who say it is likely to result in violence should Trump lose in November.”

Trump is hardly the first U.S. president to play hardball during his reelection campaign. President Richard Nixon, in 1972, slammed Democratic nominee George McGovern unmercifully and was reelected by a landslide. Had Nixon lost to McGovern, however, he would have no doubt congratulated him and moved on; for all his corruption and ruthlessness, Nixon knew when to quit. But as Feinberg points out in his article, Trump’s rhetoric has been historically over-the-top.

“While speaking last Friday at the foot of Mt. Rushmore as part of an official, taxpayer-funded celebration of American independence,” Feinberg notes, “Trump characterized the anti-racist protest movement that has swept the country in recent weeks as ‘a new far-left fascism’ and a ‘left-wing cultural revolution’ that is ‘designed to overthrow the American Revolution’ and ‘would destroy the very civilization that rescued billions from poverty, disease, violence and hunger, and that lifted humanity to new heights of achievement, discovery and progress.’"

Feinberg adds that on July 4, the day after his Mt. Rushmore speech, Trump gave a White House speech in which he railed against “the radical left, the Marxists, the anarchists, the agitators, the looters” and asserted that defeating them in November would be akin to “the process of defeating” the United States’ enemies during World War II.

Brian Klaas, a politics professor at Universal College London in the U.K., told The Independent he “would be surprised if there is not at least some sporadic low-level violence around the election” if Trump loses.

Klaas warned, “In modern American history, there has never been a major mainstream political figure who has argued that his opponents are not legitimate.” And the things that worry Klaas about the hardcore MAGA bass, he told The Independent, include the “high concentration of weapons among Donald Trump’s supporters” and the “steady diet of information that tells them that they are the last defense for America against some conspiracy against them.”

According to Klaas, “People who have really worked themselves up in this vortex of disinformation… and have really gone down the rabbit hole…. may take Trump’s tweets literally and say, ‘OK, they’re my enemies. They’re committing treason, they’re part of the Deep State, and it’s time to be a patriot and stand up against them.’ That would be very, very dangerous.”

Former Republican Rep. Joe Walsh, who was a Tea Party favorite befor he became a Never Trumper, also fears the possibility of violence from the far right if Trump loses. Walsh, interviewed by The Independent, described Trumpism as “the last gasp of a dying party” that will become “even more desperate” if Democrats retake the White House and the Senate in November.

“They will engage in violence,” Walsh warned. “They will engage in trying to stop the machinery of government from even working.”

by Matthew Valasik, Louisiana State Universityand Shannon Reid, University of North Carolina – Charlotte

As protests about police violence among black people continue and become more widespread across the U.S., certain individuals and groups have begun to stand out – including anarchists, agitators and members of a variety of far-right groups.

With the country’s long history of racist killings, it may be confusing to think that racists and white supremacists are among those objecting to the killing of people of color.

But people affiliated with far-right groups aren’t trying to be part of the overall protest movement. Having researched these groups, we think it’s likely that they are attempting to hijack the event for their own purposes.

As researchers of street gangs and far-right groups, we see that in this case, they want to stoke a civil war between the races – one they think they can win. By antagonizing police, destroying property, or intimidating the public by adopting military gear – including weapons – these groups are attempting to instigate violence between the police, protesters and the public. Rousting law enforcement to violently retaliate against black people en masse is the first step.

Instigating civil war

The far-right is not unified by a strict ideology. It is a broad movement with various factions vying for greater amounts of attention and influence.

In spite of this tension, our research shows that many share the conspiracy belief that Western governments are corrupt and controlled by the New World Order, a cabal of wealthy Jewish elites. To them, wealthy Jewish investor and democracy advocate George Soros is the puppet master of the world economy.

William Luther Pierce’s 1978 novel “The Turner Diaries,” which has come to be known as “the bible of the racist right,” lays out a plan to instigate a race war and bring about the federal government’s collapse. The book has inspired violence from the far-right, most notably the 1995 bombing at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

“Accelerationism” – the idea that inducing chaos, provoking law enforcement, and promoting political tension will hasten the collapse of Western government – has taken root among far-right groups. One such group, the “Boogaloo Bois,” identified by their penchant for wearing Hawaiian shirts, has been observed at protests in Minnesota, Florida, Georgia, Texas, Pennsylvania, Colorado and Oregon.As with any far-right movement, “Boogaloo Bois” groups are rather unstructured and have varied beliefs, lacking any hierarchical organization.

In Las Vegas, three “Boogaloo Bois” were arrested with firearms and a plan to incite violence during George Floyd protests. Social media posts and online chat groups have also shown them attempting to infiltrate other protests across the country.

Joining the crowds provides these groups an opportunity to discredit protesters by inciting looting, rioting, violence and vandalism – which they hope will spark like-minded white Americans to resist the civil disobedience of protesters. Already, there are roving bands of armed white counterprotesters at protests across America.

Other far-right extremists are talking on social media about the protests requiring a lot of police attention and see an opportunity to engage in targeted terror attacks. Their overall intention is the same: fanning flames to burn down the federal government, making room for them to establish a whites-only country.

Matthew Valasik, Associate Professor of Sociology, Louisiana State Universityand Shannon Reid, Associate Professor, University of North Carolina – Charlotte

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

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

no lnx pixvid twt

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

Image via Screrengrab.

Written by Mark Sumner / Daily Kos May 31, 2020

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

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

peanut butter cup

@deshawnieboy

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

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

Brittany Miller

@Brittm_tv

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

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

Fin Gomez

@finnygo

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

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

Joy Reid

@JoyAnnReid

May 30, 2020

Replying to @lewoofl

Yes we are. Absolutely.

Barbara Stiles

@Dovewoman1

This from @Mikel_Jollett

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

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

Asia

@AsiaJannelll

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

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

Joy Reid

@JoyAnnReid

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

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

This is also generating some genuinely bizarre events.

Fox Wound

@foxwoundband

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

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

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

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

Joy Reid

@JoyAnnReid

May 30, 2020

Replying to @JoyAnnReid

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

Joy Reid

@JoyAnnReid

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

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ref

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

no lnx pix vid twt

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

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

By Tess Owen

May 29 2020, 2:57pm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/ex-fbi-official-slams-bill-barr-for-ignoring-the-right-wing-boogaloo-bois-infiltrating-protests/

Ex-FBI official slams Bill Barr for ignoring the right-wing ‘Boogaloo Bois’ infiltrating protests

Written by Bob Brigham / Raw Story May 31, 2020

Attorney General Bill Barr was slammed by the former assistant director for counterintelligence at the Federal Bureau of Investigation on Saturday for misleading Americans about the source of violence at the protests over the killing of George Floyd while in police custody.

“There’s evidence developing, Brian, that the organization we’re seeing of the most violent protesters is coming from a couple of disturbing places,” both, by the way, there’s disparate in terms in being from the right or the left. here’s what those who monitor these groups and sites are seeing.

“We’re seeing a far-right group, one group for example known as the Boogaloo Bois, who on their private Facebook page and social media outlets are calling for violence, calling for people to show up,” Frank Figliuzzi told MSNBC’s Brian Williams.

“We’re seeing evidence in the protests that right-wing dangerous militia groups are there. We’ve seen flags and symbols that come from both Boogaloo Bois and dangerous militia groups,” he warned. “On the far-left, we’re seeing some evidence developing of global anarchists showing up.”

“So we’re seeing a strange alignment occurring by some groups who are anti-government on the right and therefore anti-police because they think the police are too oppressive to them, aligning themselves with people like Black Lives Matter and saying, ‘hey, we’re one because we both don’t like the police,’ but I’m here to tell you they are not one, their intention is to destroy government and the system of justice, as opposed to calling for justice within the system.”

“What do we do about it?” Williams asked.

“Well, ordinarily we’d rely on our system and mechanisms and rule of law, but here’s two things significant that happened today that caused me to be deeply troubled about the summer ahead. The attorney general, William Barr held a press conference where he chose selectively just the intelligence that indicates there’s far-left agitators within the protest groups,” Figliuzzi noted.

Acyn Torabi

@Acyn

AG Barr: it appears the violence is planned, organized, and driven by anarchic and left extremist groups, far left extremist groups using Antifa like tactics... it is a federal crime to cross state lines or to use interstate facilities to incite or participate in violent rioting

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“He politicized intelligence. We shouldn’t be surprised by it, but we should be disturbed that the whole truth is not getting out about all the groups that pose a threat because that goes toward whether or not law enforcement will take effective action against all groups that are violent and be allowed to take such action,” he explained.

“And then the second thing that should disturb us today is within the last hour, the president of the United States has tweeted he wants to use the unlimited power of the military with regard to these protests. Well, let me remind our viewers that we have laws in the United States that prevent the military from turning into law enforcement on the streets of America,” he reminded.

“Yet we see a direction of where this is headed: politicizing the intelligence so that only the far-left becomes the bad folks here, and then a president who seems inclined to use the military on our streets,” Figliuzzi warned.

“It’s scary stuff,” Williams said.

Watch:

no lnx twet pix

5/20 hmn yikes

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

raw astory

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

aha: ~ stay@home is a hub

https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2020/05/05/facebook-go-platform-organizing-protests-against-social-distancing

no pix lnx

Facebook Is Go-To Platform For Organizing Protests Against Social Distancing

May 05, 2020

Hatewatch Staff

As COVID-19 continues to pose a lethal threat worldwide, fringe, right-wing activists are using Facebook to mobilize protests of stay-at-home orders in several states.

In a review of Facebook event pages, Hatewatch identified more than 50 rallies from April 13 through May 1. The event pages are being set up all across the nation regardless of which political party controls the state house.

Facebook has become the social media platform of choice for far-right organizers and activists who engage in protests against social distancing.

“Unless government prohibits the event during this time, we allow it to be organized on Facebook,” a spokesperson for Facebook told Hatewatch via email.

The majority of these rallies run afoul of recommendations from health experts. They allow extremists, however, to reinforce the spread of far-right conspiracy theories and disinformation about COVID-19.

In Lansing, Michigan, hundreds of protesters rallied Thursday as Republican House legislators voted to not extend Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s state of emergency. The American Patriot Rally event, organized by theMichigan United for Liberty group, called for the reopening of local businesses.

The rally first spread through Facebook before the platform decided to pull the event page. Late Thursday, hundreds of protesters gathered outside the state capital building, ignoring social distancing recommendations. In some cases, demonstrators carried firearms and were seen peddling QAnon slogans and COVID-19 conspiracies.

Alex Jones

Alex Jones, radio host and creator of the website InfoWars, left, shakes hands with a demonstrator during a "You Can't Close America" rally outside the Texas State Capitol in Austin on April 18. (Photo by Alex Scott/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Antigovernment figures such as Alex Jones are capitalizing on these gatherings to advance the message that federal institutions can’t be trusted. In the days leading up to an April 18 rally in Austin, Texas, hosted by Infowars, promotional content was circulated on Facebook. Once on the ground, Jones accused the Texas state government of enacting “martial law” and told attendees, “We don’t live in fear of some made up virus. We know the globalists and the media are the enemy.” In far-right circles, the term “globalist” is frequently used as an antisemitic slur.

PMAZ flier

A flyer for the Patriot’s Day Rally circulates on Patriot Movement AZ’s Facebook page.

Similarly, in Phoenix, Arizona, the hate group Patriot Movement AZ shared “Patriots' Day Rally” flyers and memes in the lead-up to the April 20 rally in Phoenix. Although the group frequently dabbles in anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant and anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, the content shared aligned with common antigovernment talking points. In one instance, a member of the group’s Facebook page who goes by Brent Backus shared an image stating: “Quarantine is when you resist the movement of sick people. Tyranny is when you restrict the movement of healthy people.”

Militia organizations also did their part to vilify government institutions. TheSouth Carolina Light Foot militia shared details on their page for the “Drive to Thrive SC” gridlock event. Similar to other extremist groups, the South Carolina Light Foot Militia also used its Facebook page to rile up its base ahead of the April 24 event.

“Maybe we can put all the sick people in boxcars and take them to someplace safe, oh wait…” read one of the memes in an attempt to equate the government’s response to COVID-19 to that of life under the rule of Nazi Germany.

badge star of davis yellow as "pass"]

The South Carolina Light Foot militia stoked fears recently as they claimed yellow badge-style patches are in the near future for vaccinated individuals.

Other militia leaders such as John Cody, state commanding officer of the South Carolina Light Foot Militia Special Response Team, jumped on the bandwagon using Facebook to advertise a national May Day Rally.

Cody, who uses the codename “Hawkeye,” was a key organizer for the Jan. 29 Militias March on Richmond rally. The march, which was organized mainly on Facebook, was scheduled to coincide with the Virginia Citizens Defense League (VCDL) gun event. VCDL was hoping to put on a show of force for gun owners who stood in opposition to state bills that were aiming to adopt new gun restrictions. Cody’s rally ultimately helped bring together a number of right-wing militias with established gun rights organizations.

Cody post

Militia leader John Cody recently circulated two different flyers on Facebook for his May Day rallies.

Along with Cody, Virginia state Sen. Amanda Chase, R-Chesterfield, has been rallying her supporters to protest. Chase, who was involved in a number of controversial incidents earlier in the year and was subsequently ousted from her local GOP committee, has been sympathetic to far right causes. She made a personal appearance at the January VCDL gun rally where she joined several antigovernment militias in an attempt to protest new gun legislation.

Amanda Chase

Virginia state Senator Amanda Chase at work in the statehouse in Richmond. (Photo by Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Chase recently got on Facebook and shared details for several rallies against social distancing scheduled in Richmond, encouraging her supporters to attend, saying “Share with those who believe in Liberty, Freedom and pursuit of Prosperity, …not liberalism.”

Kayla Gogarty, a Media Matters senior researcher who has been tracking these rallies since they first appeared on Facebook, told Hatewatch: “We found that a lot of these Facebook groups and a lot of these events are including members of local militias and members of some local anti-vax groups. We’ve seen a lot of far-right figures attend some of the events like the Proud Boys. We’ve seen pro-gun activists and antigovernment extremists at these rallies and some local government officials as well.”

A Hatewatch analysis of Facebook posts earlier last month aligned with much of what Gogarty has seen in recent weeks, with the platform being a hotbed for COVID-19 misinformation.

Facebook touts response as rallies materialize

As first noted by the tech website The Verge, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is still heavily touting the billion-dollar company’s projects aimed at helping minimize the spread and impact of COVID-19. Facebook has donated $100 million to small businesses in a gesture made to help them through trying times. The social media company has alsoteamed up with Carnegie Mellon University to roll out a global symptoms survey to Facebook users in an effort to track COVID-19 growth. These initiatives come as Facebook is simultaneously failing to provide a clear solution for countering the spread of disinformation and anti-public health organizing on its own platform.

Owen Shroyer

Infowars host Owen Shroyer arrives at the Texas State Capitol building on April 18 in Austin. (Photo by Sergio Flores/Getty Images)

In an April 20 interview with ABC News, Zuckerberg emphasized that “the stuff that people are saying that is false around a health emergency like this, can be classified as harmful misinformation that has a risk of leading to imminent physical danger and we’ll just take that kind of content down.”

Complicating matters is the fact that not every state and country has instructed citizens to stay home. According to The New York Times, “42 states, three counties, 10 cities, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico” have adopted stay at home orders as of April 28th. This means that if protests occur in states where stay at home orders were never adopted, Facebook faces less pressure to take immediate action.

A general search on Facebook for rally terms such as “liberate” and “reopen” brings up a plethora of groups that oppose social distancing.

The decision to hold off on pulling down content that rails against social distancing undermines the work the company has done to help survey and map the spread of COVID-19. The networking site may have taken down a handful of conspiracy posts, but the antigovernment rhetoric contained in the rally posts has the potential to expose people to greater amounts of misinformation.

aha: abortion turned xian anti-gubmint; in 80's RR grifter televangelists had TV programs/stations; Rove courted (organized) for Bush 43; now drollinger cabinet and GOTV network (AI/digital tracking?); scary overlap with militias?! patriot prayer ~ stay at home order , boogaloo

old ppl and xian vote in primaries, thus leverage, flank, enforcer

putin cozied up to? thus US xians gave him pass on collusion, plus if true delegitimatizes trump, who delivers anti-abortion judge and SCOTUS w/ mcconnell

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/why-religious-freedom-stokes-coronavirus-protests-in-the-u-s/

...

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:#ffffff;"):}::{Network Contagion Research Institute,:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}: 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.

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/reopen-protests-stir-up-the-far-right

right-wing protest events against states’ stay-at-home orders and nonessential business closures have sprouted up across the country, attracting far-right activists who see a friendly avenue for their own extreme messages.

Protesters rallied in at least six states last week in opposition to measures taken to curb the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus, including orders to avoid public spaces, cancel social events, and close businesses deemed nonessential. The ”Reopen” events are the manifestation of a push by a powerful coalition of right-wing groups, including FreedomWorks, Americans for Prosperity, and the Heritage Foundation, to advance the reopening of the U.S. economy.

The Michigan Freedom Fund, a group linked to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ family, is helping organize the state events on Facebook, and NBC News found that a family-run network of pro-gun Facebook groups is responsible for some of the largest protest pages.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the protests have received glowing coverage in right-wing media. Fox News has advertised the protests while the network’s hosts have spoken favorably about participants. The sudden spark of big-donor groups, state organizing, and right-wing media coverage invokes strong parallels to the astroturf origins of the Tea Party movement.

Minutes after a Fox News segment Friday about the protests, President Donald Trump tweeted, “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!,” “LIBERATE MINNESOTA!,” and “LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!” All three states are led by Democratic governors.

[twt]

NBC News reported that Trump’s tweets led right-wing extremists online “to speculate whether the president was advocating for armed conflict,” which extremists have spent decades claiming is inevitable in the United States. According to NBC News, the Network Contagion Research Institute recorded a major spike in the term “boogaloo,” which is a phrase popular with far-right extremists online to refer to a supposedly inevitable modern civil war.

In Michigan, protests reportedly attracted members of the violent hate groups, anti-government militias, anti-vaccination groups, and religious-right fundamentalists. The Guardian reports GUK that members of the Michigan Proud Boys hate group participated in a vehicle convoy, and an activist from Michigan Liberty Militiawhose Facebook page “features pictures of firearms, warnings of civil war, celebrations of Norse paganism and memes ultimately sourced from white nationalist groups like Patriot Front” was interviewed by local radio.

At the Texas state capitol in Austin last weekend, members of the Infowars entourage including conspiracy theorist Alex Jones reportedly attracted hundreds of protesters for a rally called “You Can’t Close America” organized byInfowars host Owen Shroyer.As Right Wing Watch reported earlier this month, Shroyer had threatened to encourage the Infowars audience into “revolting” against social distancing measures if they were not lifted in a week.After protests in Michigan last Wednesday, Shroyer followed through on the promise and announced the Texas rally, which anti-vaccine activists attended.

[A QAnon supporter is seen protesting at an anti-quarantine rally in Olympia, Washington, on April 19, 2020. (Photo courtesy of Troy Schulz)]

The Colorado Times Recorder reported that “anti-vaccination activists, conspiracy theory advocates (including a Q-Anon supporter) and members of the Proud Boys hate group” were present at a “ReOpen Colorado” rally Sunday. Nathan Bernard reported that a “ReOpen Maine” rally Monday was organized in part by a state representative who “is known locally for spreading white nationalist conspiracy theories,” such as the claim that abortion and immigration are part of a plot to eliminate white people.

Protesting against stay-at-home orders has become a common cause for those among the far-right ranks. By calling COVID-19 a big hoax, asserting that the threat is overblown for political reasons,and advancing conspiracy theories about the search for a coronavirus vaccine, right-wing activists and media figures have created an environment for these protests to take hold. Meanwhile, unabashed extremists see the “Reopen” protest movement as fertile ground for their agendas–whether it be fomenting a rebellion against the government or targeting minority groups for hate.

oathkeepers infiltrate cops

220 alex jones wacko conspir fuels militias civil waR

https://www.star-telegram.com/news/politics-government/article240714426.html

https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/civil-war-talk-takes-on-a-life-of-its-own-as-far-right-extremists-coalesce-around-the-boogaloo/

dave n the myths and conspiracy theories that fuel the radical right often take on lives of their own: Think of how the QAnon phenomenonbegan as a handful of conspiracy theorists making groundless claims and predictions about a coming “Storm” that metastasized first into a wildly popular body of “Patriot”/militia conspiracism, and finally into a massive submovement operating within the framework of the Trump presidency—while producing a growing record of lethal violence by its unhinged believers.

Something similar appears to be coalescing around the “boogaloo”—the vision of members of the far right of a coming civil war, which they claim is being forced upon them by liberals who want to take their guns away as the first step toward their incarceration and enslavement. In reality, of course, a number of sectors of the far right have ginned up this kind of rhetoric for decades—but now, a systematic study of its spread through social media has found that it appears to be massing into a movement of its own.

The study, conducted by the independent Network Contagion Research Institute, explores, according to its subtitle, “how domestic militants organize on memes to incite violent insurrection and terror against government and law enforcement.” It focused on the “boogaloo” in large part due its increasing popularity—particularly as a hashtag (#Boogaloo or #Boogaloo2020)—on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, as well as the extreme and often callous expressions of violent intent that form the essence of the chatter.

In its initial forms, the “civil war” talk was generated in different sectors of the radical right in different ways. Among neo-Nazis, it generally has focused on a “race war”—i.e., a genocidal conflict between whites and nonwhites—dating back to the 1980s and the classic white-supremacist blueprint, The Turner Diaries.This vein of rhetoric has produced a long record of lethal domestic terrorism, including the 1984 neo-Nazi criminal gang The Order; the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing; and more recently, the 2011 attack in Norway that killed 87 people and the 2019 Christchurch mosque attacks in New Zealand that killed 51.

Among the “Patriot” movement believers who form militias in resistance to “the New World Order,”most of the rhetoric has focused on using arms against law enforcement, particularly the federal kind, as well as the mythic “blue-helmeted” United Nations soldiers about to descend on them from black helicopters. In its more recent iterations among far-right Oath Keepers and “III Percent” militiamen, the “boogaloo” talk has mostly revolved around resistance to liberal gun-control legislation.

This reached its apotheosis in January when thousands of armed “Patriots” from around the United States descended on Richmond, Virginia, to protest imminent gun safety legislation making its way through the state’s General Assembly. Before the rally, FBI agents arrested a trio of neo-Nazis who were preparing to open fire on law enforcement at the event.

However, one of the results of the broad emergence of popular “boogaloo” rhetoric has been a blurring of the lines between the anti-government extremists who foresee conflict with federal forces and the more extreme white supremacists who lust for a bloody conflict between the white and nonwhite races. While many of the latter also eagerly participate in the anti-government talk, many of the former appear to be warming up to the race-war talk.

The NCRI study found not only that the discussion of the “boogaloo” on social media had surged, but that discrete groups were coalescing around the discussion and creating the nascent forms of a movement. The “boogaloo” “topic network” produces “a coherent, multi-component and detailed conspiracy to launch an inevitable, violent, sudden, and apocalyptic war across the homeland,” it said, adding that the models created by researchers “show that the meme acts as a meaningful vector to organize seditious sentiment at large.”

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. Furthermore, the meme’s emphasis on military language and culture poses a specific risk to military communities due to the similar thematic structure, fraternal organization, and reward incentives.}:

One of the “boogaloo” groups featured in the study, calling itself “Patriot Wave,” illustrated perfectly how the lines between militia “Patriots” and alt-right white nationalists were completely blurred and submerged in the larger project of fomenting a violent civil war. Its members wore alt-right “Pepe the Frog” patches with the title “Boogaloo Boys,” while others wore the skull balaclava generally associated with members of the fascist Atomwaffen Division.

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.”

The spread of the “boogaloo” organizing on social media has been facilitated with the use of hashtags #Boogaloo and #Boogaloo2020, which are then accompanied by associated hashtags such as #2A, #CivilWar2, and #2ndAmendment, as well as hashtags such as #BigIgloo, intended to elude filters.

This kind of informational conflict—or what the study calls “memetic warfare”—has evolved, the study says, “from mere lone-wolf threats to the threat of an entire meme-based insurgency.”

The NCRI report was sent to members of Congress and the departments of Defense, Homeland Security, and Justice, among others. Paul Goldenberg, a member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council, told NBC News’ Brandy Zadrozny that the report was “a wake-up call.”

“When you have people talking about and planning sedition and violence against minorities, police and public officials, we need to take their words seriously,” said Goldenberg.

UBER AHA: inequality, polar, instability

1/20

aha_let: all these pols may not be bigots at heart, but anti-gay is culture war wedge issue, big w/ evangelicals, so mostly freebie nobrainer upside?

PLUS these hot-button issues are great to generate FEAR thus great for direct mail fundraising (also email) and mebbe GOTV

theory to check: scam pac online fundraise on FEAR?

gingrich rove and trump are masters of culture war thus polarization, also ailes nixon?

https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/trumps-most-fanatical-right-wing-followers-are-going-ballistic-over-impeachment-and-talking-of-civil-war

no lnx twit graf

Trump’s most fanatical right-wing followers are going ballistic over impeachment — and talking of ‘civil war’

Written by David Neiwert / Daily Kos December 27, 2019

The most fanatical right-wing followers of Donald Trump have been warning for some time that any attempt to impeach the man in the Oval Office would result in a second American civil war that will produce large amounts of bloodshed as they rise up with their weapons caches and begin murdering liberals.

Now that he actually has been impeached, they’re going even more ballistic.

“He’s not gonna be removed. He’s not gonna be removed. He’s not gonna be removed,” one attendee at Trump rally told a CBS reporter. When the reporter asked, “Do you feel confident in that?” he responded, “My .357 Magnum is comfortable with that. End of story.”

Rep. Louie Gohmert—who has talked up civil war on several previous occasions—went ballistic on the floor of the House last week, warning that impeachment meant the end of America: “This is a travesty. We’re in big trouble,” Gohmert huffed, adding, “Now it’s lowered even further, the bar. [Impeachment] will be used for political battles and this country’s end is now in sight. I hope I don’t live to see it. This is an outrage.”

Louisiana Congressman Clay Higgins was even more unhinged in his similar rant last week: “They fear the true will of we the people. They are deep established D.C. They fear, they call this Republican map flyover country. They call us deplorables. They fear our faith, they fear our strength, they fear our unity, they fear our vote, and they fear our president. We will never surrender our nation to career establishment D.C. politicians and bureaucrats. Our republic shall survive this threat from within. American patriots shall prevail.”

The real action, however, has been on social media, where Facebook and Twitter posts eagerly anticipating the violent uprising to preserve Trump’s presidency have been as common as dirt.

Ex-Navy SEAL Jonathan Gilliam, for instance, used Gohmert’s comments as a springboard on Twitterfor open discussion of a shooting civil war in which conservatives begin killing liberals for attempting to remove Trump: “Like so many, I see exactly what he sees. Therefor [sic] it is time we begin considering the possibility of civil war.”

“I am counting down the days until the vigilantes take to the streets. I dread the inevitable conflict that is coming but will do whatever I can I can to support the fight against the Left,” one commenter replied. Another answered: “lol it would be a short Civil War II. The vast majority of the peace officers, military personnel, and gritty hard-working 2nd Amendment loving Americans are on our side. The snowflakes have no idea about the sleeping bear they are about to awaken.”

[pix ReneHollan.PNG]

A fairly typical response among far-right extremists has been to pledge utter fealty to Trump, even unto death. Rene Hollan, a Monroe, Wash., man who is a regular participant in events organized by Patriot Prayer and the Proud Boys in the Pacific Northwest, posted a screed (later removed by Facebook) vowing that he would even detonate a nuclear bomb in a major liberal city:

As a naturalized U.S. citizen who swore the Oath of Allegiance, if President Trump orders me to drive a truck with a nuke into a city with Facebook offices or an illegal sanctuary city, and detonate it, killing myself, everyone in the city, and rendering it a sheet of glass, it would be my honor to comply.

Another Northwest far-right figure, “documentarian” Brandon Farley—long a player in the Portland-area “patriot” scene—invited neo-Nazis to start killing his critics: “Hey Atomwaffen, will you please take note of this and act accordingly?” he tweeted.

Farley3.png

A couple of days later, Farley discovered that his name came up in Twitter searches for Atomwaffen, and expressed his confusion.

Social scientist Caroline Orr collected a large cache of these kinds of comments on Twitter, noting, “It’s easy to laugh at the keyboard warriors in the mix, but there are definitely extremists using this opportunity to try to bring about social and political upheaval by issuing calls for violence.”

“Lock N Load, PATRIOTS, the demonratsjust told us what they want for Christmas: #CivilWar2,” wrote one. “Let’s make the demon rats live on the streets of their own districts!”

“ALERT!! If the Democrats impeach OUR PRESIDENT WE NEED TO HAVE A CIVIL WAR,” tweeted another. “America as we have known it will be gone and the squad will be in charge of us. I shiver thinking of it. A civil war will be the only way to get America back as we remember it.”

Of course, it’s always worth remembering that this talking point has been deliberately promoted by Russian intelligence agenciesas part of their campaign to undermine American democracy. A Justice Department affidavit released in 2018 noted that the “civil war” meme is being directly encouraged by Internet Research Agency, the Russian-financed disinformation agency that purchased 3,500 ads on Facebook during the 2016 campaign with the intent of undermining American political consensus. The affidavit describes directions given to IRA’s writers.

Forcefully support Michael Savage’s point of view with competence and honesty. Savage made it clear that any attempt to remove Trump is a direct path to a civil war in the United States. Name those who oppose the president and those who impede his efforts to implement his pre-election promises. Focus on the fact that the Anti-Trump Republicans: a) drag their feet with regard to financing the construction of the border wall; b) are not lowering taxes; c) slander Trump and harm his reputation (bring up McCain); d) do not want to cancel Obamacare; e) are not in a hurry to adopt laws that oppose the refugees coming from Middle Eastern countries entering this country. Summarize that in case Republicans will not stop acting as traitors, they will bring upon themselves forces of civil retribution during the 2018 elections.

Over at Trump-friendly Russia Today, op-ed writer Robert Bridge bolstered the civil war talk with a piece headlined “Democrats’ push to impeach Trump is just the latest chapter of US Civil War 2.0,” in which he concluded, “What is happening now in Washington DC between the Republicans and Democrats is just mere dress rehearsal for far more disasters down the road. I just hope the costumes don’t end up being blue and gray, once again.”

tom d ref

https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/why-trump-facing-impeachment-warns-of-civil-war

https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/military-leaders-at-the-pentagon-panicked-as-us-troop-affinity-for-russia-grows-report/

no lnx deriv

Military leaders at the Pentagon panicked as US troop affinity for Russia grows: report

Written by Tom Boggioni / Raw Story December 8, 2019

According to a report from Voice of America, military leaders at the Pentagon are growing increasingly concerned with the popularity of Russian President Vladimir Putin within the military ranks due to the influence of Russian propaganda and Donald Trump’s boosterism.

The report states, “While most Americans still see Moscow as a key U.S. adversary, new polling suggests that view is changing, most notably among the households of military members. The second annual Reagan National Defense Survey, completed in late October, found nearly half of armed services households questioned, 46%, said they viewed Russia as ally. Overall, the survey found 28% of Americans identified Russia as an ally, up from 19% the previous year.”

That same survey links Putin’s increasing popularity to the election of President Donald Trump.

“Pollsters found the positive views of Russia seemed to be ‘predominantly driven by Republicans who have responded to positive cues from [U.S.] President [Donald] Trump about Russia,’ according to an executive summary accompanying the results,” VOA reports.

At the same time, Washington Monthly reports, “Now, due to purely partisan interests, the nation’s military is being warped into supporting the hostile foreign power–against our own values, geopolitical interests, and intelligence services It’s like the plot from a bad spy novel, except that it’s happening right out in the open. This is the situation as it stands between Trump, Russia, the Republican Party and Ukraine.”

“U.S. defense and security officials have told VOA that Russia has been targeting U.S. military personnel, specifically, with a ramped-up influence campaign, as far back as 2017 in preparation for the November 2018 midterm elections,” VOA reports. “Russia’s goal, they said, was not so much to swing the result of the elections but to seed U.S. military personnel with the right type of disinformation so that they would be predisposed to view Russia and its actions in a more favorable way in the future.”

You can read more here.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/how-trump-is-aligning-the-us-military-with-the-russian-white-supremacist-criminal-syndicate/

no lnx

How Trump is aligning the US military with the Russian white supremacist criminal syndicate

Written by David Atkins / Washington Monthly December 8, 2019

omfg xian too? skinheads?

d beast

no lnx

OATH TAKERS

If Trump’s Rage Brings ‘Civil War,’ Where Will the Military Stand?

The moment may come when soldiers have to choose between the Constitution and Donald Trump. No doubt most will embrace the Constitution. But some will see that as a tough call.

Patricia Ravalgi

Updated 10.06.19

OPINION

Earlier this week Donald Trump, commander in chief of the U.S. armed forces, tweeted that his impeachment “will cause a Civil War” from which the country might never recover. Picking up on remarks made by an evangelical pastor on Fox News, Trump did not just say his removal would lead to a huge electoral defeat for the Democrats, or even mass demonstrations. He said “civil war”. Americans taking up arms against other Americans in his name.

“Civil War 2” started trending on Twitter. So, for a time, did #CivilWarSignup.

interview

thom h predicts para mil brownshirts if 2nd term

https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/a-complete-sham-anger-grows-over-report-gop-senators-met-with-trump-to-map-out-rigged-impeachment-trial/

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/at-american-priority-conference-speakers-sowed-distrust-peddled-conspiracy-theories-and-called-for-civil-war

Joshua Feuerstein took the main stage at the American Priorities Festival and Conference at the Trump Doral National Miami resort to deliver a message: the Civil War was here.

Feuerstein, a former evangelical pastor, used his sermon voice to recall the original Civil War, which he called the “turning point of America,” the battle of Gettysburg, which he deemed the “turning point of the war,” and the men who fought in Pickett’s Charge, which he labeled “the turning point of Gettysburg.” He paced the stage in his navy blue suit, passing by the large red “AMP” letters on the screen behind him, and painted a picture of heroic men and hand-to-hand combat during Pickett’s Charge. “Those men did not think it anything special,” he said.

“I need you to know that 2020 is a civil war that will change the face of America forever,” Feurestein said, his voice rising, as the crowd began to applaud. “And it’s God, ladies and gentlemen, it’s God that calls the qualified, that qualifies those that are called, that are willing to step up in the moment that matters, that has greatness thrust upon them. And tonight, together here in this place to say that we are willing to fight, we may think ourselves insignificant, but that we will stand together in 2020, and we will win the war that will change the face of America.”

Feurestein’s declaration of war wasn’t the only one at the conference. Earlier in the evening, evangelicalPastor Mark Burns had called for war; “We’ve come to declare war!” he said, and attendees in the back of the ballroom replied with “War! War!”

Over three days, speakers at the pro-Trump conference sowed seeds of distrust in nearly every American institution imaginable and cited conspiracy theories to bolster their case for the use of such civil war rhetoric, as they perpetuated sentiments of victimization and loathing. The conference could have been dismissed as a meeting of the fringe, but big-ticket speakers like Don Trump Jr. and Sarah Huckabee Sanders lent legitimacy to the conference,as did more respectable Republican groups like the Leadership Institute, which held a series of trainings in side rooms. By the time Don Trump Jr. took the stage on Friday evening, he simply invoked themes hammered into the audience throughout the day using subtler language, and it worked the crowd into a frenzy.

In this Trumpian, upside-down world, it’s hard to understand where one has landed until you take one conspiracy at face value: the “deep state.” The so-called deep state is supposedly comprised of supporters of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in high-rank positions in different government agencies who aim to sabotage Trump at every opportunity and eventually overthrow him. Originating on the fringe, the conspiracy theory has now entered the mainstream GOP and has become a staple of right-wing media messaging. At the American Priority Conference, the speakers legitimized the deep state, and layered more conspiracy theories on top.

Perhaps most telling was the “Unmasking the Russian Hoax” panel with Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch, a right-wing “investigative” organization, conservative activist Ned Ryun, George Papadopolous, who went to federal prison for making false statements to FBI agents about the timing of his contact with Russian intermediaries in 2016, and Corey Lewandowski, former Trump campaign manager and author ofTrump’s Enemies: How the Deep State Is Undermining the Presidency. Tracy Beanz, abooster of the QAnon conspiracy theory, moderated the panel.

In Fitton’s world, bad actors had been planning a coup before Trump was even elected.

“Anytime you heard the word impeachment, you can substitute the word coup, because that’s what’s going on here,” Fitton said. “It began during the campaign, when they weaponized intelligence agency against Trump, people like George [Papadopoulos], and who knows who else, to protect Hillary Clinton, to protect Barack Obama, and as Mr. Strzok said, to have an insurance policy if Mr. Trump won.”

The “insurance policy” Fitton references isa conspiracy theorybirthed on 4chan message boards that Democrats had a ready-to-go scheme to impeach Trump if he won.Amplified by right-wing media, the conspiracy theory has reached the White House and influenced the president’s policy making.

“They [Congress] weren’t getting the traction they needed, so the intelligence agencies, it looks like, that were targeting him to begin with, came up with another smear operation,” Fitton continued. “They had a leak they wanted to get out on this Ukrainian conversation, but they recognized doing it would be illegal, so they gussied it up in a whistleblower complaint and illegally communicated classified information, it looks like, with Adam Schiff and lied about it. And now it’s led to the coup operation of President Trump.“

Papadopoulos floated the deep state theory as well. “Some of the same spies that went after Michael Flynn in 2015 were after me in 2016,” he said. As for the whistleblower report, Papadopoulos noted that it came out when WIlliam Barr was, he said, trying to investigate the previous administration. “This was a preemptive strike by the deep state,” Papadopoulos said, suggesting that it was an effort by deep state actors to protect themselves.

Lewandowski focused on the FBI.“I look at the fact that they spied on American citizens who were participating in the political process, because they didn’t like our politics,” Lewandowski said. “What we know see over the course of the last three and a half years is that Jim Comey, and Andy McCabe, and the lovers, Dr. Page, which Trump talked about last night, James Baker who is the general counsel at the FBI, they use their badges and guns to go after American citizens because they don’t like our politics.”

The bad actors need to punished, the panelists agreed. “People have to go to jail,” Ryun said, to which an audience member yelled: “Barack Obama!”

According to the panelists, the media was among the bad actors, conspiring with Democrats. “The media intentionally wanted to brainwash all of you. They wanted to create chaos and division, and attempt a silent coup,” Papadopoulos said.

Later that evening, Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA warmed up the stage for Don Trump Jr.He zoomed in on the Jussie Smollett story, an actor who apparentlystaged a hate crime against himself, claiming it was indicative of the Democratic situation and “Democratic privilege,” where Democrats, like Smollett, are never prosecuted for wrongdoings. Kirk used the Smollett story to sow doubt—if Smollett fabricated a hate crime, what else could they lie to you about?—and bolster another debunked conspiracy theory that Adam Schiff changed the whistleblower laws just before the whistleblower filed his complaint.

“Guess what happens when we don’t hold them accountable? What happens is Congressman Adam Schiff then flies his staffer up to Ukraine, changes the whistleblower laws, uses a friend that he has in the CIA, and then do it all over again, just with a different country,” Kirk said.

Kirk then moved on to other supposed deep state actors. “If [Trump] would’ve won and did the typical Republican thing … maybe the deep state actors would’ve just stayed at bay. But the fact that they’re relentlessly going after him should give you renewal and confidence that this president actually doing what he said he was going to do,” Kirk said.

When Don Trump Jr. walked out onto the stage Friday night following Kirk, he wasted no time in getting to the Smollett story and attacking Schiff and the media.“Adam Schiff is the Jussie Smollett of Congress on steroids,” he said as his girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle, stared at him adoringly from her chair on stage. “And he gets away with it because people in the media protect him.”

“On paper, 2020 should be over, but it’s not, because we’re not in a fair fight,” Trump Jr. said, claiming that “the mainstream media has made a conscious decision to be the marketing team of the opposing party.”

While Trump Jr. didn’t go as far as to call for civil war or double down on the deep state, he didn’t need to. His presence lent legitimacy the conspiracy theories floated all day. It’s this very type of environment that civil war rhetoric on the right has grown. In early October, it appeared to reach Trump himself, who went as far as toquote Fox News contributor Pastor Robert Jeffress on Twitter saying, “If the Democrats are successful in removing the President from office (which they will never be), it will cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation from which our Country will never heal.”

In an upside-down world, where a deep state is conniving to imprison administration officials just doing their jobs, continues to get away with spying and crimes, and stages a coup against a democratically elected president, calling for a civil war doesn’t seem like that big of a leap.

Tags: Corey Lewandowski Donald J. Trump Donald Trump Jr.George Papadopoulos Joshua Feuerstein Mark Burns Tom Fitton Civil War conspiracy theories Deep State American Priority Judicial Watch

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OATH TAKERS

If Trump’s Rage Brings ‘Civil War,’ Where Will the Military Stand?

The moment may come when soldiers have to choose between the Constitution and Donald Trump. No doubt most will embrace the Constitution. But some will see that as a tough call.

Patricia Ravalgi

Updated 10.06.19 3:25AM ET / Published 10.05.19 8:04PM ET

OPINION

“Civil War 2” started trending on Twitter. So, for a time, did #CivilWarSignup.

In the modern era, real civil wars have been the great affliction of Third World countries—conflicts that split nations and societies along political, ethnic or religious fault lines. They are very often accompanied by martial law and resolved by military intervention. Is this what the president has in mind? Where would the U.S. military stand in such a situation? A view from the inside indicates the armed forces are as divided as the rest of the country—and divided is a dangerous place for the U.S. military to find itself.

[US AND THEM

The Soil From Which Trump’s ‘Civil War’ Tweet Grew

Eleanor Clift]

After spending 19 years in Washington with intelligence jobs in Congress, at the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (focusing on counterterrorism and counterintelligence), I had the opportunity to join the commander’s Red Team at U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Florida.

Within a few years, however, CENTCOM’s senior leadership told us Red Team’s “alternative analysis” was “confusing” the commander. (Truth was, they really didn’t want any competing analysis contradicting what the traditional intelligence analysts were selling.) I was told I would now be an Intelligence Planner. Intelligence Planners provide critical intelligence support to military operations. (CENTCOM has responsibility for most of the Middle East, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the fight against ISIS.) I remained at CENTCOM for 12 years.

Our republic rests on the important constitutional principle of civilian control of a non-politicized military. But the constant drumbeat of right-wing conspiracy theories and hateful political rhetoric has found its way into a sizable portion of the U.S. military’s rank and file. Not too long ago, the majority of those serving in the military would have identified themselves as Reagan Republicans. But just as that brand of Republicanism has been replaced by Trumpism among civilian Republicans, so too has it seeped into the armed forces, and by these standards, even Ronald Reagan would be viewed as a socialist.

“Donald Trump is everything the U.S. military should despise: a draft dodger, adulterer, flabby, lazy, unread, a tabloid joke for decades, and TV reality show star.”

Recent polling shows that among military veterans, approval ratings for Trump are higher than among the civilian population. In my experience, the support for Donald Trump among a large segment of the U.S. military is downright cult-like.

None of this makes sense. Trump is everything the U.S. military should despise: a draft dodger, adulterer, flabby, lazy, unread, a tabloid joke for decades, and TV reality show star. During the 2016 campaign, Trump sought to brandish his non-existent national security chops by insulting Barack Obama’s generals. “I know more about ISIS than the generals do. The generals have been reduced to rubble. They have been reduced to a point where it’s embarrassing for our country.” He hinted that as president, he would fire them. “They’d probably be different generals,” he said at NBC’s pre-election Commander-in-Chief Forum.

The man with a decades-long public record of immoral and unethical behavior, who had never served in uniform or undertook any public service to his country, tweeted juvenile insults about retired four-star generals like Colin Powell, John Allen, Stanley McChrystal, Michael Hayden and Martin Dempsey. Several of these decorated, battle-hardened generals, were life-long Republicans who had devoted their lives to serving their country. Yet they believed so strongly that Trump was a national security danger they took the extraordinary step of breaking with military tradition to criticize him publicly.

In normal times, this would have dealt a severe blow to any campaign and made a serious dent in support among the military. But the attacks by the generals, and Trump’s willingness to return fire, only endeared him to the rank and file more.

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These generals knew Hillary Clinton personally for years. They had worked with Hillary Clinton as both a senator and as secretary of state and had admired her seriousness and intellect. Once Trump had secured the Republican nomination, their panic led to a less-than-transparent attempt to help her candidacy by criticizing Trump’s sophomoric approach to national security. It backfired supremely, and only strengthened Trump’s support among the troops.

And then there was the case of Michael Flynn. After a long military career, Flynn’s anger and bitterness led him to hitch his star to Donald Trump. It would be his undoing. A retired three-star general, Flynn was found guilty of lying to the FBI and is awaiting sentencing. His leading the chant of “Lock her up” at the Republican National Convention should have evoked disgust for anyone who ever served in uniform. It did not.

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This reputational carnage of highly decorated American generals associated with Trump continued as H.R. McMaster, John Kelly, and James Mattis all tried to bring coherence to Trump’s policies. Instead they were subjected to his tantrums and humiliation, and ultimately left the administration. Never had access to decades of military and national security experience been so squandered and abused by an American president.

“From Michael Flynn, the rogue retired general closest to him, Trump learned just how deep the military’s disdain was for Democrats.”

Despite all this, the devotion to Trump from a large segment of the military was unwavering. Hearing military personnel, including Vietnam veterans, parrot Trump’s attacks against John McCain, who spent five agonizing years as a POW in the Hanoi Hilton, was shocking and unsettling. It was the rank and file, not the generals, Trump was courting with his calls for military parades.

From Michael Flynn, the rogue retired general closest to him, Trump learned just how deep the military’s disdain was for Democrats—and for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama specifically. Trump learned from Flynn that there were grievances and resentments within the military establishment to be exploited. Highly intelligent active duty and retired military officers with outstanding service records (not “deplorables”) could be heard at CENTCOM repeating far-right-wing conspiracy theories like: “Hillary murdered a lot of people” and “Obama is a Kenyan Black Muslim,” “The FBI and the CIA are corrupt,” “The media is fake news.” Trump’s attacks and abuse of their former bosses, andeven of a Gold Star family, didn’t seem to impact their opinion of him.

Once Trump was elected, they wholeheartedly bought into his claims that the “deep state” and the “fake news media” were now plotting a coup against him. Some would call themselves “nationalists,” not having the basic understanding of the difference between “nationalism” and “patriotism.” (The political divide also cut across racial lines. African-Americans serving in the military had a deep admiration and affection for the first black commander in chief, not shared by their white counterparts. One Army major, an Iraq War veteran, gave voice to many others in the military, telling me, “The military hates Obama.”)

“It was the doggedness with which Trump went after Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama that made him their hero.”

CENTCOM’s environment, and especially that of the Joint Intelligence Center (JIC) which houses all the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) analysts, felt political the moment you walked through its doors. Televisions in the lobby, the reception areas, in private office spaces, and even in the employee and visitor’s cafe—were tuned to FOX News. It was Orwellian in its pervasiveness. People at their desks were streaming FOX News while reading Drudge and Breitbart. (By 2018, more of the common areas began showing sports or weather channels to get away from the politics, which had made some uncomfortable.)

It was the doggedness with which Trump went after Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama that made him their hero. The FBI couldn’t be trusted any longer after letting “Crooked Hillary” off the hook, so anything the FBI and CIA revealed about Russian interference in the 2016 election automatically lacked any credibility. None of it was believed.

This was especially alarming coming from intelligence analysts who were parroting Trump’s insults of the former Intelligence Community chiefs who had sounded the alarms regarding the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russians. A very senior NSA liaison intelligence officer said he had proof the hacking of Hillary Clinton’s emails was “an inside job” and not really WikiLeaks and the Russians. It was hard to understand why these military intelligence experts felt compelled to denigrate so vigorously the assessments of the rest of the intelligence community, specifically when it came to Trump—nor the ferocity with which they personally defended him.

In their private time many watched internet trolls. “Did you see this! Hillary has Parkinson’s disease!” Were our military intelligence analysts a victim of the same Russian influence campaign that affected so much of the civilian population? Like a scene from The Manchurian Candidate, if you criticized Trump, they answered with “Hillary” did this, or “Obama” did that. It was almost as if they’d been programmed.

“Nothing stuck in the craw of the analysts and planners at CENTCOM more than the Iranian nuclear deal.”

The parroting of Trump took other disturbing turns. One also began to hear in casual conversation analysts at CENTCOM making disparaging remarks against the Western coalition partners—the Canadians, Brits, French, Germans—and against NATO in general, as “deadbeats.” Officers back from visits to Gulf States boasted how mutual the relief was in the region that Obama was gone, Hillary had lost, and there was “a new sheriff in town.”

The Arab Gulf states couldn’t believe their luck—especially the Saudis. No one would bother them anymore about human rights. They would get the military assistance they wanted unconditionally, and, if they played their cards right, they could even get Trump to attack Iran.

The Israelis were downright joyful over Trump’s election. Even during the media outrage over the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at Saudi hands, one analyst argued, “He wasn’t even an American citizen,” parroting what he had just heard Trump say over FOX News—as if that should have made a difference when chopping up a journalist.

On an operational level, the (not totally without merit) criticism of Obama was that he had been the appeaser whose pullout from Iraq created ISIS, as did his last-minute refusal to go after Bashar al-Assad in Syria. But nothing stuck in the craw of the analysts and planners at CENTCOM more than the Iranian nuclear deal—the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). It was this deal they believed prevented the U.S. from giving Iran the long-overdue bloody nose it deserved.

While the civilian national security establishment believed the JCPOA had pulled Iran back from the brink of nuclear weapons breakout capability that would lead to a regional nuclear arms race, the military saw it as inexcusable capitulation to the primary supporter of militancy and terrorism in the region. Most of the active duty and retired military officers at CENTCOM had served in Iraq at some point where, according to the Pentagon, Iranian backed Shi’a militia had killed 600 American soldiers. They had not forgotten or forgiven.

“The gulf between the civilian world and the military has been growing since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—wars that have touched more American families than at any time since Vietnam.”

During the Cold War, intelligence analysts had spent their entire careers planning for a war with the Soviet Union that, fortunately, never came. Many at CENTCOM had spent their careers doing the same regarding Iran. Military Planners understood there weren’t any good military options when it came to war with Iran. But the nuclear deal had given Iran over $100 billion in hard cash. This amounted to a windfall that the Iranian regime would use not to improve the lives of its people, but to increase funding to Shi’a militias and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC) who were now operating in close proximity to American soldiers in the fight against ISIS. (Time has proven this argument to be mostly accurate. But it is also true that the JCPOA provided protection to American troops from Shi’a militia and IRGC forces fighting in proximity to U.S. troops in the fight against ISIS.) CENTCOM viewed Trump’s willingness to pull the U.S. out of the deal unilaterally as nothing short of heroic.

The gulf between the civilian world and the military has been growing since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—wars that have touched more American families than at any time since Vietnam. Vietnam created a huge cultural divide in the U.S. that Richard Nixon successfully exploited, earning him one of the largest electoral victories in American history. But something more sinister may be afoot as we approach the 2020 election. Trump has done what Nixon ultimately could not do. He has, so far, avoided real accountability to Congress. He has successfully blurred the lines between lies and truth in the minds of the American public. He has undermined the institutions that have kept the U.S. safe since World War ll.

The extent of the visceral hatred much of the military feels for Democrats, the “deep state” and the “fake news media” is a new phenomenon. The belief that there is indeed a coup being orchestrated against President Trump is a weapon Trump has in his arsenal, depending how far down the road to authoritarianism he decides to go. But Trump would need to deeply fracture the military first, and that is something to watch for. Most members of the armed forces are honorable, patriotic Americans who would never take part in such a scheme, despite their support for Trump. But a significant portion just might.

mma 1019

Over the past week, Fox News and conservative talk radio have relentlessly characterized the House of Representatives’ formal impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump as a “coup d’etat” by Democrats “to try and take our votes away from us.”

Right-wing talk radio hosts have claimed Trump “is not going down without a fight” and questioned “how much longer are we going to endure” the House investigations.

In an October 1 tweet, Trump repeated the dangerous and false rhetoric that the constitutionally protected inquiry “is a COUP” to “take away the Power of the … People.”

Click for more on how this rhetoric made its way to the White House. video compilation:

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/sandy-rios-backs-trumps-civil-war-warning-its-reality/

Sandy Rios Backs Trump’s Civil War Warning: ‘It’s Reality’

By Jared Holt | October 1, 2019 4:47 pm

Sandy Rios speaks at Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C., on September 21, 2018. (Photo: Jared Holt for Right Wing Watch)]

American Family Association governmental affairs director and radio host Sandy Rios told listeners that President Donald Trump was not out of step to share a warning with the nation that a “Civil War-like fracture” would happen should he be impeached.

On Tuesday’s edition of “Sandy Rios in the Morning” on American Family Radio, Rios took issue with GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger’s reaction to Trump tweeting a quote from evangelical pro-Trump pastor Robert Jeffress’ warning of a “Civil War-like fracture” if Trump is impeached. Kinzinger wrote on Twitter: “I have visited nations ravaged by civil war. … I have never imagined such a quote to be repeated by a President. This is beyond repugnant.”

Adam Kinzinger

@RepKinzinger

I have visited nations ravaged by civil war. @realDonaldTrump I have never imagined such a quote to be repeated by a President. This is beyond repugnant. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1178477539653771264 …

Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump

Replying to @realDonaldTrump

....If the Democrats are successful in removing the President from office (which they will never be), it will cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation from which our Country will never heal.” Pastor Robert Jeffress, @FoxNews

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6:59 PM - Sep 29, 2019

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“I would just say to Congressman Kinzinger, if I ever cared to interview him, which I don’t—this is not the first thing he’s done that has not won my approval, that’s for sure—if he has seen war-torn areas, then he, of all people, should be the watchman-on-the wall warning,” Rios said. “Because I don’t think it takes a rocket scientist to understand that the tensions are growing in this country so much so that there is a divide that’s setting in that is much like a precursor to any civil unrest.”

Rios compared modern-day America to the time before the American Civil War when “families were divided” over the issue of slavery. Rios asked her viewers: “Are your families divided over politics right now, over President Trump, over his policies? Are you having problems in your own family, with your own friends, at work? You know that you are!”

Trump and Jeffress putting out warnings of a rupture in the nation akin to that of the Civil War, Rios argued, “is not a stretch and it’s certainly not repugnant. It’s reality.”

https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/gop-congressman-blasts-trump-for-quoting-evangelical-pastors-civil-war-threat-this-is-beyond-repugnant/

kinzinger jeffress

https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/fox-news-and-conservative-media-are-now-warning-of-bloodshed-if-democrats-win-in-2020

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Fox News and conservative media are now warning of bloodshed if Democrats win in 2020

Written by Eric Boehlert / Daily Kos September 9, 2019

That’s one way to try halt public debate in this country: by threatening mass violence and a bloody people’s revolt in the streets. That’s what conservative media voices, including those on Fox News, have done in recent days. Specifically, the reckless rhetoric has revolved around proposed new gun laws in the wake of America’s latest string of mass shootings. Those are laws that would likely only be enacted if Democrats won the Senate and the White House in 2020.

If you take “people’s guns away from them, there’s going to be a lot of violence,” The View’s Meghan McCain announced. “What you are calling for is civil war,” warned Fox News’ Tucker Carlson. “What you are calling for is an incitement to violence.” And that was just a sampling of the right-wing media hysteria last week.

These kinds of alerts about looming political violence if the opposition party wins power and passes laws in a democratic fashion represent the worst type of far-right insurrectionism. It’s an ominous and long-held belief among conservatives and conservative media outlets that citizens need to be fully armed in order to one day wage war on the American government, as a kind of second American civil war. In other words, the reason the Second Amendment exists is not for self-defense, or to protect the rights of hunters and gun enthusiasts, but to enable citizens to go to war with the U.S. government, and to fend off a “tyrannical” turn at home.

“The core philosophy of the Three Percenter movement, whose adherents have engaged in violence, is that citizens would be justified in taking up arms to violently overthrow the government if the government enacted stronger gun regulations,” Media Matters recently noted.

The movement spiked with the election of President Barack Obama. In 2009, a far-right Newsmax columnist determined that a “military coup ” to resolve the ‘Obama problem'” was not “unrealistic.” That was about the same time Glenn Beck used his then-new program on Fox News to game out bloody scenarios for the coming civil war against the Obama-led tyranny. Note that the armed rebellion rhetoric was uncorked just weeks after Obama’s first Cabinet had been confirmed.

During the gun debate that unfolded following theSandy Hook school massacre in Connecticut, Fox’s Todd Starnes warned there would “a revolution” if the government tries to “confiscate our guns,” while Fox News Pat Caddell claimed the country was in a “pre-revolutionary condition,” and “on the verge of an explosion.”

Specifically, when a Democrat was in the White House, typically gun-happy Fox News warned that the federal government had too many guns. In 2015, when it was reported that the Environmental Protection Agencylaw enforcement had a sizeable budget for weapons, conservative pundits freaked out, portraying the government as needlessly armed. “Why in the world, other than those dangerous snail darters, would the EPA need military grade weapons to protect the environment?” demanded Carlson on Fox News. “You arm yourself because you perceive you have enemies who threaten you, whom you don’t trust. When the government arms itself domestically, not to fight foreign wars or ISIS, but here in the U.S., it’s sending the message it doesn’t trust its citizens,” he insisted. (Truth: EPA law enforcement, like all branches of law enforcement, has to be prepared for possible physical, and even armed, confrontations.)

Now, with the prospect of Democrats seizing power and passing new gun laws coming into possible focus, the radical calls for rebellion are back. Expect to see more of these bloody warnings in coming months if, as the 2020 election season unfolds, it becomes clear Trump won’t be re-elected next year.

The latest round of chilling right-wing media chatter of pending violence was prompted by comments made by Democratic candidate Beto O’Rourke, who is advocating a mandatory buyback program to rid the country of assault weapons.“Americans who own AR-15s and AK-47s will have to sell them to the government,” O’Rourke proposed. Context: Those are the type of weapons that were banned in the United States following the passage of the 1994 Crime Bill under President Bill Clinton. (The guns were reinstated when President George W. Bush allowed the ban to expire.)

That debate about eliminating assault weapons from our streets then set off a rash of warnings about pending bloodshed. Washington Examiner executive editor Seth Mandel defended statements McCain and Carlson made, tweeting that “it’s not justifying or threatening an insurrection to predict” that a mandatory gun buyback program “is likely to go badly.”Townhall’s Kurt Schlichter asked, “How many deaths” is O’Rourke “willing to accept to achieve disarming the citizenry?” Appearing on Fox News, professional wrestler Tyrus was invited to pontificate about guns:“If my military has it, if my government has it, and we get into a situation with all this division and supposed one-side will take over. I don’t want to be in the Venezuela situation, to where I can’t form a militia and protect myself.” And right-wing radio show host Erick Erickson warned that friends of his who keep AR-15s buried in the ground will likely resort to violence against the government.

The sinister, desperate threats of bloodshed come as the public opinion pendulum continues to swing away from the NRA and its radical gun defenders. Last Thursday alone saw three enormous retail chains,CVS, Walgreens, and Wegmans, alter their store policies to discourage customers from carrying guns. Those announcements came in the wake of the big news thatWalmart, America’s largest retail chain, stated it would stop selling ammunition used for handguns and military-style weapons, completely end the sale of handguns, and discourage anyone from carrying weapons in its stores.

Many major retailers that previously refused to take a stand on the issue of guns in their stores are now stepping up, and this highlights the momentum on the side of gun safety advocates. The tide is turning in this country, so radical holdouts at Fox News turn to threats of violence.

Eric Boehlert is a veteran progressive writer and media analyst, formerly with Media Matters and Salon. He is the author of Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush and Bloggers on the Bus.

Rick Joyner: Christians Need to Establish Militias in Preparation for the Coming Civil War

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/rick-joyner-christians-need-to-establish-militias-in-preparation-for-the-coming-civil-war/

Right-wing pastor Rick Joyner appeared on “The Jim Bakker Show” today, where he urged conservative Christians to begin to form militias in preparation for a coming civil war.

For over a year, Joyner has been claiming that God gave him a vision in which he claims to have been shown that it is “inevitable” that America will undergo a Second American Revolution/Civil War. On today’s program, Joyner told Bakker that he believes the catalyst for this conflict will come when the government implements gun-control policies and begins to attempt to confiscate weapons.

“The Second Amendment is linked to militias,”. “We were meant to have militias throughout the country to defend our communities … I think there is going to be a militia movement that unites and supports and is open about what they are doing and they are going to be trained and prepared to defend their communities.”

“If Christians don’t get involved in things like that, [the] wrong people will get in,” he added. “Christians need to get in to set the course. We’re not just going to attack other races; we’re here to defend and support. Christians have to get engaged in it. Jesus himself said, ‘There is a time to sell your coat and buy a sword.’ That was the weapon of their day.”

“We are entering a time for war and we need to mobilize,” Joyner declared.