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odd no node 8/17? under militia before?

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5 25 ggg

Sheriffs Fellowship

The Claremont Institute

https://www.claremont.org › Fellowships

claremont sheriff's fellowship from www.claremont.org

All incoming Sheriffs Fellows will be awarded: a $1,500 honorarium, up to $700 in travel costs, and lodging for the duration of the fellowship. Most meals will ...

2024 Claremont Sheriff Fellows - by Jessica Pishko

Substack · Posse Comitatus

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A list of the 2024 Claremont Sheriff Fellows. I will write more about each sheriff later, but do want people to know if your sheriff is on the list.

Fellowships

substack Jessica Pishko

wayburn richard mack spkr

please forgive my failure to post for the past few weeks. You can read here why I’ve had trouble accessing the basics of water, power, and internet. We are doing much better, however, and thank you to everyone who sent me notes.

On October 30, the Claremont Institute is presenting its “sheriff award” to Sheriff Bill Waybourn of Tarrant County. You know, the one who let a baby die in his jail. I wanted to also give my readers a list of the 2024 Claremont Sheriff Fellows. I will write more about each sheriff later, but do want people to know if your sheriff is on the list. (Since I started writing about the Claremont Sheriff Fellowship, Claremont has refused to make the names public.)

They are:

Al Auxier, Kendall County, Texas

Marquis Cantu, Llano County, Texas

Thaddeus Cleveland, Terrell County, Texas

Mark Crider, Walla Walla County, Washington

Damon Devereaux, Logan County, Oklahoma

Max Dorsey, Chester County, South Carolina

Jeff Gahler, Harford County, Maryland

Richard Hickox, Churchill County, Nevada

Gordon Smith, Bradford County, Florida

Bob Songer, Klickitat County, Washington

Rick Staly, Flager County, Florida

Clinton CJ Walters, Bradford County, Pennsylvania

Chris West, Canadian County, Oklahoma

I’ll point to a few trends. First of all, Ryan Williams’s fever dream of the West is plainly alive, given the number from Texas, Oklahoma, and Washington. Second, there are at least a handful of CSPOA members or affiliates on this list as well as one sheriff who was present on January 6, plus multiple sheriffs credibly accused or misconduct. As I’ve written before, however, these all appear to be requirements to be a Claremont Sheriff Fellow, not a barrier.

There is a chapter in my book* all about the Claremont Sheriff Fellows, which I consider at this point the greatest threat to not just democracy but the safety of communities.

Let me know in the comments if you have information on these sheriffs. I’ll write more about each one as well as the specifics of the fellowship this week.

*I am still donating to Mutual Aid in Asheville if you send me proof of purchase of the book, any version.

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claremont-institute-secret-sheriff-fellowship-curriculum-revealed

last November, the Claremont Institute hosted its inaugural class of “Sheriff Fellows.” Over the course of a week, eight sheriffs—all white men—chosen from the more than 3,000 in the country stayed at the Waterfront Beach Resort in Huntington Beach, California, attending a series of discussions, lectures, and fireside chats steeped in the far-right-wing think tank’s heady intellectualism and radical ideology. While the Claremont Institute restricted public access to the fellowship, a review of the fellowship’s previously unreported curriculum reveals a program that presented for the sheriffs two sets of people in America: those communities sheriffs should police as freely and brutally as they see fit, and those “real” Americans who should be considered virtually above the law.

:{Public information requests and other reporting have provided insight into the stated and unstated reasons behind the Claremont Institute’s recruitment of county sheriffs, and revealed the curriculum of the fellowship. (You can read the full curriculum at the bottom of this article.) What emerges in reviewing this information is a portrait of the far right’s deep investment in sheriffs.

They seem to be a key target of the movement because the office is already vulnerable to extremism and because sheriffs can enable other extremist actors like vigilantes and militias to wreak havoc on society. Claremont provides a historical and intellectual cover for selected sheriffs to continue a march into white Christian nationalism; for Claremont, the sheriffs are elected influencers who can push their message into the mainstream, far from the coterie of intellectual elites. They also have the authority to use violence under the color of law to enforce these principles in their communities.}:

IFrame Content

Claremont is currently recruiting a second class, with a plan to announce the lucky few this fall. The five-decade-old Southern California institution announced in an email sent during the fall of 2021 that the goal of the fellowship was to connect with sheriffs as “uncorrupted law enforcement officials … not beholden to bureaucratic masters,” whose “jurisdictional latitude … places them on the front lines of the defense of civilization.”

:{:{While the Claremont Institute hosts a variety of other fellowships, the Sheriffs Fellowship is the first program to focus on elected officials who are currently serving. For that reason, information about the fellowship and the program is important for voters who live in counties where these sheriffs run jails, serve warrants, detain individuals at traffic stops, and help federal officials enforce immigration laws. Sheriffs also have a great deal of discretion in important contested legal areas like the enforcement of gun laws, where they are often in charge of issuing permits and confiscating weapons under red flag laws, and in how to handle health orders, including enforcement of anti-COVID-19 measures like mask mandates, business closures, and vaccination policies.}:

At least some of the Claremont sheriffs were recruited because of their resistance to COVID orders from state and federal governments. Sheriff Chad Bianco of Riverside County, California, was specifically praised by the institute for “the courageous stand taken over the past year,” clearly a reference to Bianco having allied himself early in the pandemic with anti-vaxxers and with right-wing anti-abortion advocates in Southern California. Most recently, Bianco accused a Latina Riverside city councilmember, Clarissa Cervantes, of defacing the county courthouse because of her presence at in a pro-choice protest, spurring calls for his resignation. “You are lucky we couldn’t arrest you!” he threatened Cervantes through social media.}:

Sheriff Kim Cole of Mason County, Michigan, was recruited through Hillsdale College, whose chairman, Pat Sajak, took controversial positions against stay-at-home orders early in the pandemic and was recently photographed with anti-vaxxer Marjorie Taylor Greene. A Claremont program director explained the reason for the invitation in an email to Cole: “In our research on who to extend invitations to we took recommendations from friend [sic] of the institute and organizations but one thing that I know stood out to us about your leadership in these times has been how you courageously stood up to unconstitutional covid mandates.” During the peak of COVID deaths, Cole appeared regularly on Fox News to critique Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s stay-at-home orders and signed a letter promising not to enforce COVID protections that said, in part, “We believe that we are the last line of defense in protecting your civil liberties.”

Some of the sheriffs brought their wives along; they also were awarded a $1,500 honorarium. (According to emails from his office, Bianco turned down the honorarium.) Upon accepting program invitations, sheriffs received a box of books as well as a nearly 300-page packet of readings, largely by Claremont scholars. “Do not be alarmed by the amount of reading,” an email from the organizer warned.

:{:{The first day was focused on policing and heavily featured the Manhattan Institute’s Heather Mac Donald, a lawyer who has written dozens of articles arguing that law enforcement in America does not have an implicit or explicit racism problem. The supplemental readings for this section included articles and books by Mac Donald with titles like War on Cops, The Diversity Delusion, “The Myth of Systemic Police Racism,” and “Black Lies Matter.” One assigned reading included Mac Donald’s argument that Derek Chauvin’s murder of George Floyd may not have been “a product of racial animus at all,” but rather was possibly due to “poor training and an unfit temperament.”}:

In a different article on Chauvin’s murder conviction—one that didn’t make it into the Claremont materials—Mac Donald argued that Chauvin may have been railroaded, and that his conviction meant that “it is an open question whether any police officer can receive a trial free from mob pressure, should he be prosecuted for use of lethal force.” }:

This is the type of learning the sheriffs would have been likely to experience on Day One, and likely fits with many of their preexisting views. Attendee Sheriff Mike Lewis of Wicomico County, Maryland, has been a longtime outspoken critic of the Black Lives Matter movement and his biography is titled Sheriff Mike Lewis: Constitutional. Uncanceled. (“Sheriff Lewis is at the forefront of important initiatives protecting conservatism and the American way of life against defund the police, identity politics, and cancel culture,” reads the book description.)

Sheriff Brian Hieatt of Tazewell County, Virginia, later echoed Mac Donald when he wrote in a reflection on his time with Claremont scholars, “We are facing movements across our Nation to take away punishments and any disciplinary actions from people committing crimes.” (Hieatt’s department has imprinted the words “In God We Trust” on its official vehicles—Christian natural law, which dismantles the line between church and state, is a big part of both the “constitutional sheriff” movement and Claremont.)

Day Two involved a series of history lessons, including New York Times Magazine’s editor-in-chief Jake Silverstein’s essay about the 1619 Project, of which Claremont Institute scholars have been deeply critical. (Nikole Hannah-Jones’ essay “America Wasn’t a Democracy, Until Black Americans Made It One” was assigned as a supplemental reading.)

The day ended with a fireside chat with Kyle Shideler, a Claremont analyst who has focused his work on “terrorist groups.” It’s worth considering Shideler’s views on what does—and what does not—constitute a terrorist threat to understand what this lecture might have entailed. For years, Shideler has written that antifa and Black Lives Matter protesters are direct threats to the nation. By contrast, Shideler has written extensively and ferociously against laws to combat domestic terrorism. He has complained of the “FBI and Justice Department’s overzealous behavior in regards to January 6” prosecutions, calling the rioters and insurrectionists that day “trespassers,” and accused the DOJ of “persecuting J6 participants.”

He’s called the Jan. 6 committee the “Russian Collusion Hoax 2.0,” criticized the “fanatics at DOJ prosecuting non-violent J6 protestors,” and claimed it was a “lie” to say Capitol police officers lost their lives as a result of the Jan. 6 attack. These are claims that were echoed by Sheriff Mark Lamb of Pinal County, Arizona, another attendee of the fellowship program, after Jan. 6, when he called the rioters “very loving, Christian people,” and demurred after being asked about the law enforcement officers killed and injured that day.

Recently, Shideler seemed to make an odd pivot to siding with the “defund the police” crowd he had spent years criticizing, calling for the FBI to be “abolished” and saying that “To save the rule of law, the bureau must be destroyed.” The reason for this call for radical abolition? The enforcement of a court-authorized search warrant at Mar-a-Lago over allegedly stolen classified documents, or as Shideler described it, a raid “over some boxes that another part of the government shipped to [former President Donald Trump].” (Opposition to the FBI is a core tenet of the constitutional sheriff movement, whose adherents believe that ultimate authority rests with the sheriffs, not federal law enforcement agencies.) The subject of Shideler’s chat to the fellows last year was “Antifa’s Threat to the Constitution.”

Day Three was focused on heady philosophical pursuits, while Day Four broadened the discussion to include various progressive movements and projects, largely, it seems, from the angle of learning about one’s enemy—or “countering the perversion of the justice system by which the revolutionary Left seeks to advance its totalitarian agenda,” in Claremont-speak. This included sessions called “The Federalist vs. The Progressives” (Parts I and II), “Black Power & Identity Politics,” and “The Sexual Revolution & Feminism.” The last two sessions are notable in what they do include—strangely chopped-up readings from Stokely Carmichael on Black Power and Ibram X. Kendi on the idea of an anti-racist amendment—as well as what they do not: any feminist writers other than Betty Friedan.

The only reading about LGBTQ issues was a 1971 manifesto from the Trans Liberation Newsletter, which raises the question of why sheriffs need some special knowledge of “transgender liberation” in order to do their police work in a way that treats everyone similarly. (Research has shown that trans people who interact with the police are much more likely to encounter violence than cisgender people, but it seems doubtful that this information was on the syllabus.) The day ended with a classic John Wayne Western, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.

Ultimately, the Claremont Sheriffs Fellowship is, at first blush, an unlikely union of the intellectual right and the populist right. But Claremont and its affiliates have long looked to figures like Barry Goldwater and Donald Trump to unite right-wing populism with their somewhat obsessive desire to defeat the perceived harms of liberals. Considering Claremont’s embrace of Trump and the Big Lie, the union feels like the appropriate sign of the times.

:{:{The intellectual far right also clearly sees the utility of an army of sheriffs who are able to put these ideals into practice. Prior to the last presidential election, the Claremont Institute’s 79 Days Report outlined how Donald Trump could take over the federal government by force, specifically naming county sheriffs as important to recruiting militia members and civilian posses to prevent “hostile crowds of outsiders” from protesting a MAGA takeover. Sheriffs appear willing to accept this mantle.}:

In a reflection on the fellowship, Sheriff Cole wrote: “I never saw this day coming to America. A time when Sheriffs are placed in a position to stand in the gap between citizens’ rights and a government that seems to reach further and further over that line. Sheriffs must have a knowledge of where that line is and how to address the overreach with confidence.” He then credited Claremont with giving him the “Constitutional based knowledge” he needed to make these decisions.}:

This leads to another important point: Sheriffs are the perfect messenger for Claremont. They have a great deal of authority thanks to the overfunding of police in this country. They can use tanks, helicopters, SWAT teams, battering rams, surveillance technology, and, of course, guns to subdue and terrify community members. Because they are elected, they are in a better position to defy state and federal authorities, who have little oversight and cannot remove a sheriff from office even if they are a member of a militia group like the Oath Keepers. Perhaps most insidiously of all, because the left has paid so little attention to sheriffs and the largely rural areas where they have the most power, sheriffs have been allowed to spread their extremist beliefs with the imprimatur of gun and badge.

In the wake of Trump’s election lies, sheriffs are demanding more leeway to surveil ballot boxes and have encouraged vote vigilantes to snitch on their neighbors regarding alleged-but-never-proven “voter fraud.” Unlike the brains behind Claremont, sheriffs who are currently serving can act independently from other elected officials to fight this nonexistent fraud with the force of an army and relative impunity. Now, thanks to the Claremont Institute, they can justify such violent and anti-democratic schemes with the patina of intellectual firepower.

doc agenda]

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Return of the Sheriff

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https://morningshots.thebulwark.com/p/militias-with-badges

chls sykes

yes, it could get worse.}:

The Claremont Institute — the home of John Eastman, author of the blueprint for overthrowing the presidential election — has a new initiative for undermining the rule of law.

And if you are not alarmed, you ought to be.

The Trumpian institute is launching a programto weaponize "patriotic law enforcement officers" to counter "the perversion of the justice system by which the revolutionary left seeks to advance its totalitarian agenda."

In announcing its new "Sheriff’s Fellowship" the institute tied together last year’s urban disorders, Covid-19 lockdowns, and “the electoral disaster of 2020,” and declared that “our nation's conservative movement needs a countervailing network of uncorrupted law enforcement officials.”

Specifically, Claremont envisions a cadre of sheriffs “not beholden to bureaucratic masters, and whose geographic boundaries, jurisdictional latitude, and - most important - direct connection and responsibility to citizens, places them on the frontlines of the defense of civilization.”

Think of it as militias with badges, guns, and formal law enforcement powers. Or, if you like, secession-by-sheriff.

Indeed, Claremont is late to the game. The so-called Constitutional Sheriffs have been a thing for quite a while now.

“Although the Oath Keepers, another anti-government extremist group that recruits from law enforcement, have garnered more media attention in recent years,” the Anti-Defamation League said in their report, the Constitutional Sheriff movement “has arguably had more success infiltrating law enforcement, including at the executive level.”

The central tenet of [the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association], borrowed from the anti-government extremist sovereign citizen movement, is that the county sheriff is the ultimate authority in the county, able to halt enforcement of any federal or state law or measure they deem unconstitutional.

This is no longer simply a fringe movement confined to a few rural counties.

Trump and members of his administration cultivated and encouraged the sheriffs’ movement, and openly embraced leading figures like Arizona’s Joe Arpaio. Former Attorney General Sessions famously praised what he called “the Anglo-Saxon heritage” of the office.

“Since our founding, the independently elected sheriff has been the people’s protector, who keeps law enforcement close to and accountable to people through the elected process,” Sessions said. “The office of sheriff is a critical part of the Anglo-American heritage of law enforcement. We must never erode this historic office.”

Milwaukee’s Sheriff David Clarke — who was named Constitutional Sheriff of the year in 2013 — became a prominent Trump surrogate and was, reportedly in line for a position in Trump’s Department of Homeland security.

More recently, Clarke urged January 6 participants to refuseto cooperate with law enforcement authorities.

"ALERT!!!," Clarke wrote. "If you attended the Trump rally in Washington DC last Wednesday and are contacted by the FBI or they come to your home, YOU DO NOT HAVE TO TALK TO THEM. DON'T LET THEM IN YOUR HOME EITHER. POLITELY TELL THEM TO LEAVE AND CLOSE THE DOOR."

"If you did not go into the US Capital (sic) you do not have to explain why you exercised your Constitutional right to assemble," Clarke wrote. "TRUST NO GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL right now." [twt pix]

clarke has since fallen into well-deserved obscurity, but the hot new face of the movement is Mark Lamb, the sheriff of Pinal County, Arizona.

In a new Politico profile, Lamb calls himself ‘America’s Sheriff,’ who “fashions himself as more of a vigilante resister, with a heavy dose of anti-government, sometimes militant rhetoric.”

Sheriff Lamb is the very model of the modern Trumpian law enforcement official. Politico reports:

Lamb supported the “stop the steal” campaign in Arizona and has expressed sympathy for the Jan. 6 rioters. He has called vaccine mandates “garbage” and spoke at a recent anti-vaccine rally in Phoenix, where he told supporters, “We’re going to find out what kind of patriots you are. We’re going to find out who is willing to die for freedom.” He also makes direct appeals to citizens, an effort that looks more dangerous after former President Donald Trump riled up supporters on Jan. 6. For example, Lamb, an ardent defender of the Second Amendment, has spoken in support of the formation of private militias — “well within the Constitution,” he told a group of supporters in March — and emphasized the power of sheriffs in Arizona, an open-carry state, to call local civilians into service to “suppress all affrays, insurrections and riots that comes to the attention of the sheriff.” Last year, as Black Lives Matter protests swept across the country, he formed a **local civilian “posse” to assist his office with law enforcement, even though there were no such protests in Pinal County.

Now, fresh off its role in trying to overthrow the 2020 election, Claremont wants a piece of that action. Here is how a recent fund-raising letter for Claremont described the Trumpian think tank’s new program:

• The current revolution against the American regime, involving as it does both crime and political malfeasance, requires a coordinated response from patriotic law enforcement officers. Those whose "chain of dependency" is directly to the people of their region - officers not beholden to the centralized ( and often corrupt) bureaucracies of federal or state governments, nor the vicissitudes of easily pressured city officials.

• Sheriffs are appropriate for this response. Since their beginnings as "shire-reeves" ("county watchmen") centuries ago in England, sheriffs have been intimately connected with, and answerable to, the people of their "shires" and therefore the first layer of protection, and last line of defense, for the people's rights.

• Our project will equip sheriffs with strategic knowledge and end their isolation. Their efforts will be supported, enhanced, and multiplied through a reliable like-minded network of fellow sheriffs and others with complementary areas of expertise and potency.

(Here is a screen shot of the letter.)

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If Claremont gets its way, there will be sheriffs like Joe Arpaio, David Clarke, and Mark Lamb all across the country.

You are not worried nearly enough about what that might mean.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/michigan-sheriff-implies-that-extremists-arrested-in-plot-to-kidnap-gretchen-whitmer-were-merely-trying-to-arrest-her/

vid

On Thursday, the FBI announced that six men were facing federal charges in connection with an alleged plot to kidnap and possibly kill Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel announced that seven of their allies were facing weapons charges at the state level.

And in a new local sheriff who had appeared at a rally with some of the suspects made an awkward effort to defend them, implying that perhaps they were merely trying to "arrest" Whitmer rather than kidnap her.

According to the FBI, far-right extremists (including members of the Wolverine Watchmen, a militia group) planned to kidnap Whitmer and take her to Wisconsin, where they would conduct a "trial" for treason. The militia members were furious with Whitmer for the social distancing restrictions that she ordered in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. And if they found Whitmer guilty of treason, the FBI said, she would be executed.

But when Barry County Sheriff Dar Leaf was interviewed by Fox 17 (a Fox affiliate in Grand Rapids, Michigan), he implied that what the extremists had in mind was not a terrorist plot, but merely a citizens' arrest.

Two of the men facing charges are brothers Michael and William Null, who have been accused of providing support for terrorist acts. Fox 17 aired video that showed Leaf standing alongside William Null at a demonstration in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where both of them protested against Whitmer's stay-at-home order. Leaf was a guest speaker at that event.

Leaf, discussing the Null brothers, told Fox 17, "We can't convict them in the news media here. They do have a right to a fair trial."

Leaf was asked if he had any "regrets" about standing alongside a man who is "now being charged in a plot to kidnap the governor."

He responded, "Well, it's just a charge. And they say a plot to kidnap, and you gotta remember: are they trying to kidnap — because a lot of people are angry with the governor, and they want her arrested. So, are they trying to arrest, or was it a kidnapping attempt? Because in Michigan, if it's a felony, you can make a felony arrest."

Leaf added, "It doesn't say, if you're elected to office, that you're exempt from that arrest. I have to look at it from that angle, and I'm hoping that's more what it is. In fact, these guys are innocent until proven guilty. So, I'm not even sure if they had any part in it."

Leaf's comments are drawing a lot of responses on social media. Twitter user George Schwab, @CpkGeo, posted, "That sheriff needs to go NOW!," and another Twitter user, Eric Brown, @EricBrown1911, wrote, "Words cannot describe the lengths at which people go through to justify ignorance and stupidity."

Detroit-based attorney William Maze, @TheDUILawyer, tweeted, "Insane. But Sheriff Dar Leaf is a member of the far right Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA) and has links on his page to 'Posse,' which can only refer to theright wing hate group Posse Comitatus."

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oops see later

Due in part to Pierce’s desire to appeal to normal people, as well as the novel’s limited circulation among Neo-Nazis, Turner assumes its readers are already racist and do not need to be recruited to that mindset. The abandonment of “why” empowers a single narrative focus on “what” and “how”, the necessity of immediate, violent action and concrete suggestions about how to go about it. This is part of why the book has so often been associated with violence and terrorism.

The Turner Diarieswould go on to become probably the most influential single piece of fascist propaganda sinceMein Kampf. It’s inspired more than 200 murders since its publication. But it’s also inspired a hell of a lot more than just murder. The Turner Diaries became the ideological underpinning of a vicious American insurgency, which eventually led to hundreds and hundreds of armed men around the country working actively towards the establishment of a white supremacist state. The Turner Diaries also inspired a whole genre of fascist and quasi-fascist propaganda books, written to the same rubric but reining in on the racism, just a little bit, in order to avoid freaking out the “normies”. In 1996 John Ross published Unintended Consequences, a novel that is best described as The Turner Diaries but all the racism is whispered. The cover of the copy I have features a burning copy of the Constitution, with a black-clad cop attempting to sexually assault Lady Justice in front of it. Its main innovation from The Turner Diaries was to switch the focus of its revolutionaries away from race war and towards just gun rights. The plot focuses around a man, Henry Bowman, who winds up being framed by the ATF for some stupid reason related to their desire to take all of America’s guns. He kills most of the ATF agents who come for him and then brutally tortures one who he captures. Bowman and a small group of gun rights activists then carry out a terrorist campaign, horribly murdering gun control advocates around the nation until the president repeals all gun control law. Alex Jones has mentioned multiple times on InfoWars that Unintended Consequences is one of his favorite books.

In more recent years a guy named Matt Bracken has written a whole series of books starting with Enemies Foreign and Domestic. Like Unintended Consequences, his first book is basically Turner Diaries with less racism.The liberal government creates a false flag mass shooting to take away everyone’s guns. The ATF is the bad guy, and brave patriots beat them via terrorism. Bracken’s innovation was to have the cast of his books include numerous non-white people. The idea seems to be that if most of the people aren’t white, then the book can’t be racist. On an unrelated note, the second book in the series is Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista. Its plot is that the evil liberals orchestrate an invasion of Mexicans with the goal of having them ban English in the Southwest and secede from the United States. J.M. Berger, this time writing for The Daily Beast identified some similarities between Bracken’s third book and The Turner Diaries. “After an earthquake demolishes Memphis, black refugees turn into a seething mob of gang-rapists and cannibals, characterizations that feature memorably in The Turner Diaries, while urban blacks loot a path from Baltimore to Washington DC, where they demand and receive a new Socialist constitution engineered by a thinly veiled caricature of President Obama. The narrative disclaimers continue; one character condemns white racist killings in the chaos after the quake, and a battle-weary white racist girl near the end of the book accepts the hand of comfort offered by a black army medic, but these and other individual moments of race-grace are hard pressed to counter the otherwise vivid, lengthy depiction of African-Americans en masse as cannibal rapists directly responsible for destroying America’s constitution.”

In writing The Turner Diaries, William Pierce ignited a movement within the far right that is still very much present and relevant today. The next chapter will discuss, in depth, the generation of terrorists who were inspired by his words to take horrifying, bloody action. Like Christian Identity, The Turner Diarieshave influenced many people who may never have even read the book. In his manifesto, the Christchurch Mosque shooter wrote about his hope that his attack would spark renewed calls for gun control in the United States, because he believed this would lead inevitably to a new civil war. The Poway Synagogue shooter repeated the same desire. William Peirce died in 2002 but his ideas live, and kill, to this day.

...Now in this chapter, we focus mostly on Louis Beam, the KKK, and the Neo-Nazis but it’s important you know that an awful, awful lot of other fascist groups were active, organizing, and growing during this period. Militant right-wing organizations popped up constantly throughout the 1980s. One important group was the Posse Comitatus. In brief, the Posses were a series of militant antigovernment cells. They were believers in Christian Identity Theology and these “true Israelites” also subscribed to a conspiratorial interpretation of American history in which all government above the county level was fundamentally illegitimate. Posse believers felt that the Federal Reserve and the IRS were part of a Jewish plot to wipe out the white man. In their view, the county sheriff was the only legitimate power in the land and if he did not act in accordance with the wishes of the county, he should be hung by the neck until dead. As a general rule, Posse members were big fans of hanging. Modern day sovereign citizens descend from the Posse Comitatus and you can draw a direct line between them and many modern militia movements, including the Constitutional Sheriffs who supported the Bundy clans Malheur occupation. 

Appropriately enough, the first Posse Comitatus cell seems to have been formed in Portland, Oregon, back in 1969. But Posse beliefs did not generate national awareness until 1983 when a guy named Gordon Kahl got in a series of gunfights with authorities. Kahl had declared himself a “tax protestor” in 1967, writing the IRS to let them know he would no longer pay taxes to the “synagogue of Satan”. He was arrested in 1976 but got out on parole and went to ground near Medina, North Dakota. A warrant was eventually issued for his arrest over parole violations, which prompted US Marshalls to try and arrest him while he and his family were driving home from a Posse-related meeting in February of 1983. A shootout ensued, and Kahl and his family killed two US Marshalls. Gordon went on the run after that and was finally brought down in June, after a viscous gun fight that left an Arkansas Sheriff and Kahl himself dead.

By the time Kahl died, the Posse movement had metastasized into a series of townships filled with White Supremacist Christian Ideology believers who considered the federal government illegitimate, were heavily armed, fiercely independent, and more than willing to kill for their beliefs. This was part of a broader trend on the far-right to attempt to create autonomous enclaves for their ideologies in isolated rural communities. Another such group was the Aryan Nations, a Neo-Nazi organization centered around a compound in Hayden Lake, Idaho.  On paper, the Nations were officially a Christian Identity Church, but by the self-proclaimed reverend Richard Butler. In the early 1980’s Butler’s group began to reach out to incarcerated white Americans, eventually leading to the formation of the Aryan brotherhood, a Christian identity prison gang that remains influential to this day. Another Christian Identitycompound was, and still it, Elohim city in Oklahoma. By the early 1980s, Elohim was a totally self-sufficient community with it sown sawmill, crops, and weapons ranges on 400 sprawling acres. Elohim’s operations were funded by a trans-continental trucking company and construction business operated from the compound. The denizens of Elohim considered American society to be decadent and sinful beyond salvation, and they homeschooled their children and stockpiled weapons in anticipation of societal collapse. There were numerous other right-wing groups doing similar things around the country in the 1980s. Most of them fell either into the mold of Elohim city, urging total separation from society, or the mold of the Aryan Nations, attempting to build a white insurgency against the Zionist occupied government. These disparate groups were tied together loosely by Christian Identity Theology, and recruited heavily from the nascent “prepping” movement that had started to crop up in the 1980s. In Blood and Politics, Leonard Zeskind notes “For William Pierce, survivalist events became an opportunity for national alliance cadres to sell literature and find new recruits”. Pierce wasn’t concerned about human existence per se, rather he worried about the preservation of white genes during a time of “racial decay”. To ensure this preservation, he needed to influence the large survivalist movement’s direction. As usual, he began with a cold-eyed analysis. One can recognize three distinguishing traits in the survivalist, Pierce’s National Vanguard opined. The first was the strong personal identity, the second was a will to survive, and the third was alienation from the present society.

Despite this positive assessment, Pierce also looked for weak spots. The largely individualistic approach bothered him the most. Survivalists were interested in self-preservation, like professionals practicing lifeboat ethics, rather than the advancement of the white race. So Pierce’s goal in this time became to infuse white racial consciousness into the survivalist movement, and then turn it from a disconnected...

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jbs roots

https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/the-radical-rights-terrorist-faction-has-long-followed-the-anti-communist-blueprint-from-the-1960s

no lnx many

The radical right’s terrorist faction has long followed the ‘anti-Communist’ blueprint from the 1960s

Written by David Neiwert / Daily Kos February 3, 2020

Far-right terrorist gangs are all in the news these days, thanks to the recent arrests of members of The Base for planning to cause violence at the Richmond, Virginia, gun rally of Jan. 20, as well as to murder a couple believed to be antifascists in Georgia. But this is hardly the first such operation in the United States.

Their history, in fact, offers some real-life context about the nature of more recent iterations, including Atomwaffen Division and the Rise Above Movement, as well as The Base, not to mention Friday’s sentencing of would-be domestic terrorist Christopher Hasson. Gather ‘round, then, for the saga of Robert DePugh and the Minutemen—probably the progenitor of what we would now call a modern-day, far-right militant terrorist group. And like all of them, the Minutemen wrapped themselves in the flag.

First, let’s be clear: We’re not talking about those Minutemen—the border vigilantes who prowled the Mexico border during the first decade of the 2000s. I am talking about an even earlier iteration of a right-wing action/terror organization supposedly inspired by the Revolutionary War heroes, concocted by a vitamin salesman in the late 1950s.

Robert Bolivar DePugh was a Missouri man, born in 1923, who gained some wealth through a veterinary drug firm called BioLabs, which specialized in a vitamin for dogs that promised to increase their lifespans. In the mid-1950s he also began producing a malt-flavored, ultra-compact storage food designed for human consumption, called Minuteman Survival Tabs. You can still find a version of these tabs in stores today....

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wiki

The Posse Comitatus (Latin, "force of the county")[1] is a loosely organized, far-right social movement in the United States starting in the late 1960s, whose members spread a conspiracy-minded, anti-government and anti-Semitic message in the name of white Christians to counter what they believe is an attack on their social and political rights.[2]

Many Posse members practice survivalism and played a role in the formation of the armed citizens' militias in the 1990s. The Posse Comitatus pioneered the use of false liens and other types of "paper terrorism" to harass opponents with frivolous legal actions.[3]

Historical background

Developing strong ties to the white supremacist Christian identity movement, they believe themselves to be the true Israelites, chosen by God, and they state that the Jews seek to help Satan destroy civilization, and undermine white citizens' rights by means of the Federal Reserve and the Internal Revenue Service.[2]

Posse charters were issued in 1969 in Portland, Oregon, by Henry Lamont Beach, "a retired dry cleaner and a one-time member of the Silver Shirts, a Nazi-inspired organization that was established in America after Hitler took power in Germany."[4] William Potter Gale has been described by one expert as the founder of the movement.[5]

Posse members believe that there is no legitimate form of government above that of the county level and no higher law authority than the county sheriff.[6] If the sheriff refuses to carry out the will of the county's citizens:

...he shall be removed by the Posse to the most populated intersection of streets in the township and at high noon be hung by the neck, the body remaining until sundown as an example to those who would subvert the law.[7][8]

Christian Identity

Some Posse members embraced the anti-Semitic and white supremacist beliefs of Christian Identity.[9] Some believe that the U.S. federal government is illegitimate and in the hands of aZionist Occupation Government(ZOG),an alleged Jewish conspiracy.[10] In 1985, a member of the Posse Comitatus announced: "Our nation is now completely under the control of theInternational Invisible government of the World Jewry."[11]

Federal taxes

Members of the Posse Comitatus frequently refuse to pay taxes, to obtain driver's licenses, or otherwise to comply with regulatory authorities. They deny the validity of United States fiat money as not backed by gold, which they claim the Constitution requires.[2]

They have unusual legal documents drawn up and attempt to record them,declaring independence from the United States, or claiming to file "common law" liens against perceived enemies like Internal Revenue Service employees or judges. They are often involved in various tax protests, and have invoked arguments popularized by tax protesters.[2]

Criminal activities

The Posse Comitatus made national news when, on February 13, 1983, former Posse member Gordon Kahl killed two federal marshals who had come to arrest him in North Dakota and became a fugitive. Another shootout ensued on June 3, 1983, in which Kahl and Lawrence County, Arkansas, Sheriff Gene Matthews were killed. Other members of the group have also been convicted of crimes ranging from tax evasion and counterfeiting to threatening the lives of IRS agents and judges.

The organization also demonstrated to support its members over other issues. On September 2, 1975, Francis Earl Gillings, the founder of a San Joaquin County Posse group, led a group of armed Posse members to prevent United Farm Workers union organizers from attempting to organize non-union tomato pickers. As sheriff's deputies attempted to arrest Gillings on a traffic warrant, one got into a scuffle with Gillings and a shot was fired, injuring a deputy's ear.[12]

On August 15, 2012, five suspects were arrested in connection with the fatal shooting of two sheriff's deputies and wounding two others in St. John the Baptist Parish, Louisiana. Terry Smith, 44; Brian Smith, 24; Derrick Smith, 22; Teniecha Bright, 21; and Kyle David Joekel, 28, were identified, with Brian Smith and Joekel identified as the shooters in the incident. The men are rumored to be affiliated with a Posse Comitatus group.[13] On August 17, 2012, two more suspects—Chanel Skains, 37, and Britney Keith, 23—were charged with accessory after the fact.[14]

Sovereign citizens

Main article: Sovereign citizen movement

The legal theories of Posse Comitatus have been further developed by the sovereign citizen movement, which claims that a U.S. citizen can become a "sovereign citizen" and thereby be subject only to common law or "constitutional law," not to statutory law (including most taxes).[15] The Uniform Commercial Code plays a part in these legal theories, for example see the 1991 case United States v. Saunders, 951 F.2d 1065 (9th Cir. 1991). in the 9th Circuit United States Court of Appeals.[16][citation ^needed]

Some African-American groups have adopted sovereign citizen beliefs,[17] and the movement is dominated by adherents of the Christian Identity religion.[citation ^needed] Some within the movement see African Americans, who only gained legal citizenship after the Civil War and passage of the 14th Amendment, as "14th Amendment citizens" with fewer rights than whites.[18]

The sovereign citizen movement gave rise to the "redemption movement," which claims that the U.S. government has enslaved its citizens by using them as collateral against foreign debt.[citation ^needed] Redemption scheme promoters sell instructions explaining how citizens can "free" themselves by filing particular government forms in a particular order using particular wording.[citation ^needed] The movement "has earned its promoters untold profits, buried courts and other agencies under tons of worthless paper, and led to scores of arrests and convictions."[19]

The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) classifies some sovereign citizens ("sovereign citizen extremists") as a domestic terrorist movement.[20] In 2010 the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) estimated that approximately 100,000 Americans were "hard-core sovereign believers" with another 200,000 "just starting out by testing sovereign techniques for resisting everything from speeding tickets to drug charges."[21]

Alpine County, California

In the late 1970s, the Posse Comitatus attempted to take over Alpine County, California, by settling there and fielding candidates in local elections.[22]

Alpine County is in the Sierra Nevada Mountains east of Stockton on the west and east slope of Ebbetts Pass on State Highway 4. The 2010 population is 1,175 people. The Posse thought winning local elections in Alpine County was their best opportunity to take control of a single county. The group fielded a candidate for sheriff and registered fictitious voters using post office boxes and vacant lots as their addresses. Six people were prosecuted for voter fraud, the false registration thrown out, and the incumbent sheriff was re-elected.[23]

Tigerton, Wisconsin

The posse had an active presence in Tigerton**, Wisconsin until a crackdown by government prosecutors in the early 1980s left many of the groups' leaders imprisoned.[24][25]

See also

References

  1. Jump up Solodow, Joseph (2010). Latin Alive: The Survival of Latin in English and the Romance Languages. Cambridge University Press. p. 160. Out of the phrase posse comitatus "the force of the county" arose our present use of posse for a group of men whom the sheriff calls upon in a crisis.
  2. ^ ^Jump up to:^a^ ^b^ ^c^ ^d^ Knight, Peter, ed. (2003). Conspiracy Theories in American History: An Encyclopedia. p. 591. ISBN 978-1-57607-812-9.
  3. Jump up Pitcavage, Mark (June 29, 1998). "Paper Terrorism's Forgotten Victims: The Use of Bogus Liens against Private Individuals and Businesses". Anti-Defamation League.
  4. Jump up Corcoran, James (1990). Bitter Harvest: Gordon Kahl and the Posse Comitatus: Murder in the Heartland. p. 29. ISBN 0-670-81561-6 – via Google Books.
  5. Jump up Levitas, Daniel (2002). The Terrorist Next Door: The Militia Movement and the Radical Right. Thomas Dunn Books. ISBN 0-312-29105-1.
  6. Jump up Atkins, Stephen (September 13, 2011). Encyclopedia of Right-Wing Extremism In Modern American History. ABC-CLIO. p. 197 – via Google Books.
  7. Jump up Smith, Brent L. (1995). Terrorism in America: Pipe Bombs and Pipe Dreams. SUNY Press. pp. 57–58. ISBN 0-7914-1759-X – via Google Books.
  8. Jump up Pitcavage, Mark (July 25, 1997). "Common Law and Uncommon Courts: An Overview of the Common Law Court Movement". Anti-Defamation League: Militia Watchdog archives.
  9. Jump up Marks, Kathy (1996). Faces of right wing extremism. Branden Publishing Company. p. 146. ISBN 978-0-8283-2016-0 – via Google Books.
  10. Jump up Knight, Peter (2003). Conspiracy theories in American history: an encyclopedia, Volume 1. ABL-CIO. p. 758. ISBN 978-1-57607-812-9– via Google Books.
  11. Jump up Christian Posse Comitatus Newsletter, n.d. quoted in Stern, Kenneth S. (1996). A Force upon the Plain: The American Militia Movement and the Politics of Hate. New York: Simon & Schuster. p. 50.
  12. Jump up "Jail Term for Posse Founder". Merced Sun-Star. August 9, 1976. p. 1.
  13. Jump up Russell, Gordon (August 17, 2012). "Picture of suspects in St. John Parish shootings starting to emerge". The Times-Picayune.
  14. Jump up Finn, Kathy (August 17, 2012). "Seven charged in shootings that killed Louisiana police officers". Reuters.
  15. Jump up "What is a Sovereign Citizen?". Anti-Defamation League, Message to Students, Militia Watchdog archives.
  16. Jump up Tang, O'Scannlain & Rymer (1991). "United States v. Saunders". US Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit Court.
  17. Jump up "Are sovereign citizens racist?". Anti-Defamation League, Message to Students, Militia Watchdog archives.
  18. Jump up "What is a 'Sovereign Citizen'?". Intelligence Report. Southern Poverty Law Center. Winter 2008.
  19. Jump up "Beyond Redemption". Intelligence Report. Southern Poverty Law Center. Winter 2002.
  20. Jump up "Sovereign Citizens A Growing Domestic Threat to Law Enforcement". Federal Bureau of Investigation. September 11, 2011. Retrieved April 30, 2017.
  21. Jump up MacNab, J. J. (Fall 2010). "'Sovereign' Citizen Kane". Intelligence Report. Southern Poverty Law Center (139).
  22. Jump up Levitas, Daniel. The Terrorist Next Door: The Militia Movement and the Radical Right. Macmillan. p. 164. ISBN 978-1-42994-180-8. Retrieved June 29, 2014 – via Google Books.
  23. Jump up Duncan, Dayton. Miles from Nowhere: Tales from America's Contemporary Frontier. University of Nebraska Press. p. 259. ISBN 0803266278. Retrieved June 29, 2014 – via Google Books.
  24. Jump up "With Leaders in Jail, Posse Comitatus' Fate Is Uncertain". Associated Press. September 23, 1990.
  25. Jump up "Posse Comitatus Manual Urged Terrorism, Sheriff Says". Associated Press. September 12, 1985.

External links

Categories: 

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http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/09/01/joe-arpaio-pardon-sheriffs-movement-215566

when ...Trump pardoned Sheriff Joe Arpaio, calling him a “patriot,” he didn’t just absolve him from the consequences of defying a federal judge. He didn’t merely excuse Arpaio’s racial profiling and illegal immigration sweeps. Trump’s pardon did do all of that. But it also did something more: It boosted a radical theory of law and American history that Arpaio supports, and which is gaining steam across the United States.

It’s called the “constitutional sheriff” movement, and as it grows, it’s increasing the risk of conflict between local law enforcement and federal authorities. Its animating idea is that a sheriff holds ultimate law-enforcement authority in his county—outranking even the federal government within its borders. Though the movement claims deep history in English law, its real roots lie in the more recent fringes of American right-wing thought. And its popularity helps explain why Arpaio’s defiance of federal law shouldn’t be seen as just one grandstanding sheriff crossing a line, but instead should be seen as part of a broader grassroots resistance to constitutional and cultural upheavals during the 20th century.

The strange idea that unites all members of this movement is that a sheriff is the highest law enforcement officer within a county’s borders—superior not only to local police, but also to officers and agents of the federal government.The actual influence of sheriff supremacy is hard to measure, but it has been growing in recent years, and today the official constitutional sheriffs’ association boasts 4,500 dues paying members and over 200 sheriffs. Its highest-profile members include Arpaio and David Clarke, who just resigned as sheriff of Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, reportedly to help Trump in some capacity.

But those figures may underestimate how far its influence extends, and how fully it pervades certain regions of the country. In 2013, Arpaio joined nearly 500 other sheriffs who vowed not to obey any federal law that required them to confiscate guns from private citizens. In Utah, 28 of 30 sheriffs went even further, warning that “[n]o federal official will be permitted to descend upon our constituents and take from them what the Bill of Rights—in particular Amendment II—has given them.”

The constitutional sheriff movement arose from the ashes of the far-right, anti-semitic Posse Comitatus movement of the 1970s and 80s, led by William Potter Gale. The insignia favored by these Christian Patriots was a redesigned sheriff’s badge containing a noose, Bible and sword, to reflect their belief that sheriffs were responsible for the armed defense of citizens and higher law (a combination of their view of the Constitution and Christian Identity teachings). Before the movement collapsed with Gale’s death, its paramilitary figures developed an anti-tax, anti-government agenda that stoked conspiracy theories that Jews were responsible for oppressing farmers through crushing taxes and exorbitant loans. Its foot soldiers gained notoriety when they tried to stop foreclosures in the Midwest and engaged in shootouts with U.S. marshals.

The modern constitutional sheriff movement has revived the idea of sheriff supremacy envisioned by the Christian Patriots, tried to shed its anti-Semitic and racist origins, and now seeks to “take back America county by county, state by state.” Today, its ideology has gained traction with the militia movement, so-called sovereign citizens, separatists wary of centralized government—and increasingly, landowners, county commissioners, veterans and law enforcement figures. Cliven Bundy,who has clashed for years with the Bureau of Land Management, is an adherent of sheriff supremacy. In 2014, he demanded that the local sheriff step in and protect him from federal agents: “Sheriff, this is what We the People are asking this morning. Disarm the Park Service at …parks where the federal government claims they have jurisdiction.” One of his sons, Ryan Bundy, later said on TV, “The county sheriff is the only person that We the People have allowed to have policing power.”

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