radicalization

SEE TWO FUNNEL

1020 start as disambig, see dylann roof

merri ok prolly neglect

how many mass shooters trying to trigger race war? directly tied to turner diaries or permeates? Jared taylor?

see infiltration / active duty

see militia

note ~ gubmint attacks on efforts to stop disinfo/radicalization

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AN 2 26 TCONV

A new study published today in Nature has found that X’s algorithm – the hidden system or “recipe” that governs which posts appear in your feed and in which order – shifts users’ political opinions in a more conservative direction.

Led by Germain Gauthier from Bocconi University in Italy, it is a rare, real-world randomised experimental study on a major social media platform. And it builds on a growing body of research that shows how these platforms can shape people’s political attitudes.

Two different algorithms

The researchers randomly assigned 4,965 active US-based X users to one of two groups.

The first group used X’s default “For You” feed. This features an algorithm that selects and ranks posts it thinks users will be more likely to engage with, including posts from accounts that they don’t necessarily follow.

The second group used a chronological feed. This only shows posts from accounts users follow, displayed in the order they were posted. The experiment ran for seven weeks during 2023.

Users who switched from the chronological feed to the “For You” feed were 4.7 percentage points more likely to prioritise policy issues favoured by US Republicans (for example, crime, inflation and immigration). They were also more likely to view the criminal investigation into US President Donald Trump as unacceptable.

They also shifted in a more pro-Russia direction in regards to the war in Ukraine. For example, these users became 7.4 percentage points less likely to view Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy positively, and scored slightly higher on a pro-Russian attitude index overall.

The researchers also examined how the algorithm produced these effects.

They found evidence that the algorithm increased the share of right-leaning content by 2.9 percentage points overall (and 2.5 points among political posts), compared with the chronological feed.

It also significantly demoted the share of posts from traditional news organisations’ accounts while promoting or boosting posts from political activists.

One of the most concerning findings of the study is the longer-term effects of X’s algorithmic feed. The study showed the algorithm nudged users towards following more right-leaning accounts, and that the new following patterns endured even after switching back to the chronological feed.

In other words, turning the algorithm off didn’t simply “reset” what people see. It had a longer-lasting impact beyond its day-to-day effects.

One piece of a much bigger picture

This new study supports findings of similar studies.

For example, a study in 2022, before Elon Musk had bought Twitter and rebranded it as X, found the platform’s algorithmic systems amplified content from the mainstream political right more than the left in six out of the seven countries.

An experimental study from 2025 re-ranked X feeds to reduce exposure to content that expresses antidemocratic attitudes and partisan animosity. They found this shifted feelings towards their political opponents by more than two points on a 0–100 “feeling thermometer”. This is a shift the authors argued would have normally taken about three years to occur organically in the general population.

My own research offers another piece of evidence to this picture of algorithmic bias on X. Along with my colleague Mark Andrejevic, I analysed engagement data (such as likes and reposts) from prominent political accounts during the final stages of the 2024 US election.

Our findings unearthed a sudden and unusual spike in engagement with Musk’s account after his endorsement of Trump on July 13 – the day of the assassination attempt on Trump. Views on Musk’s posts surged by 138%, retweets by 238%, and likes by 186%. This far outstripped increases on other accounts.

After July 13, right-leaning accounts on X gained significantly greater visibility than progressive ones. The “playing field” for attention and engagement on the platform was tilted thereafter towards right-leaning accounts – a trend that continued for the remainder of the time period we analysed in that study.

Not a niche product

This matters because we are not talking about a niche product.

X has more than 400 million users globally. It has become embedded as infrastructure – a key source of political and social communication. And once technical systems become infrastructure, they can become invisible – like background objects that we barely think about, but which shape society at its foundations and can be exploited under our noses.

Think of the overpass bridges Robert Moses designed in New York in the 1930s. These seemed like inert objects. But they were designed to be very low, to exclude people of colour from taking buses to recreation areas in Long Island.

Similar to this, the design and governance of social media platforms also has real consequences.

The point is that X’s algorithms are not neutral tools. They are an editorial force, shaping what people know, whom they pay attention to, who the outgroup is and what “we” should do about or to them – and, as this new study shows, what people come to believe.

The age of taking platform companies at their word about the design and effects of their own algorithms must come to an end. Governments around the world – including in Australia where the eSafety Commissioner has powers to drive “algorithmic transparency and accountability” and require that platforms report on how their algorithms contribute to or reduce harms – need to mandate genuine transparency over how these systems work.

When infrastructure become harmful or unsafe, nobody bats an eye when governments do something to protect us. The same needs to happen urgently for social media infrastructures.

Timothy Graham, Associate Professor in Digital Media, *Queensland University of Technology

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

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AN 9 25

Small local organizations called Active Clubs have spread widely across the U.S. and internationally, using fitness as a cover for a much more alarming mission. These groups are a new and harder-to-detect form of white supremacist organizing that merges extremist ideology with fitness and combat sports culture.

Active Clubs frame themselves as innocuous workout groups on digital platforms and decentralized networks to recruit, radicalize and prepare members for racist violence. The clubs commonly use encrypted messaging apps such as Telegram, Wire and Matrix to coordinate internally. For broader propaganda and outreach they rely on alternative social media platforms such as Gab, Odysee, VK and sometimes BitChute. They also selectively use mainstream sites such as Instagram, Facebook, X and TikTok, until those sites ban the clubs.

Active Club members have been implicated in orchestrating and distributing neo-Nazi recruitment videos and manifestos. In late 2023, for instance, two Ontario men, Kristoffer Nippak and Matthew Althorpe, were arrested and charged with distributing materials for the neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen Division and the transnational terrorist group Terrorgram. Following their arrests, Active Club Canada’s public network went dark, Telegram pages were deleted or rebranded, and the club went virtually silent. Nippak was granted bail under strict conditions, while Althorpe remains in custody.As a sociologist studying extremism and white supremacy since 1993, I have watched the movement shift from formal organizations to small, decentralized cells – a change embodied most clearly by Active Clubs.

An investigation by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation tracks down two Ontario-based Active Clubs that recruit and train young men to fight.

White nationalism 3.0

IFrame Content

According to private analysts who track far-right extremist activities, the Active Club network has a core membership of 400 to 1,200 white men globally, plus sympathizers, online supporters and passive members. The clubs mainly target young white men in their late teens and twenties. Since 2020, Active Clubs have expanded rapidly across the United States, Canada and Europe, including the U.K., France, Sweden and Finland. Precise numbers are hard to verify, but the clubs appear to be spreading, according to The Counter Extremism Project

, the Anti-Defamation League, the Southern Poverty Law Center and my own research. The clubs reportedly operate in at least 25 U.S. states, and potentially as many as 34

. Active U.S. chapters reportedly increased from 49 in 2023 to 78 in 2025. The clubs’ rise reflects a broader shift in white supremacist strategy, away from formal organizations and social movements. In 2020, American neo-Nazi Robert Rundo introduced the concept of “White Nationalism 3.0

” – a decentralized, branded and fitness-based approach to extremist organizing. Rundo previously founded the Rise Above Movement, which was a violent, far-right extremist group in the U.S. known for promoting white nationalist ideology, organizing street fights and coordinating through social media. The organization carried out attacks at protests and rallies from 2016 through 2018. Active Clubs embed their ideology within apolitical activities such as martial arts and weightlifting

:{. This model allows them to blend in with mainstream fitness communities. However, their deeper purpose is to prepare members for racial conflict.

An actor reconstructs how British broadcaster ITV News infiltrated and secretly filmed inside Active Club England, documenting its recruiting process, activities and goals.}:

‘You need to learn how to fight’

Active Club messaging glorifies discipline, masculinity and strength – a “warrior identity” designed to attract young men. “The active club is not so much a structural organization as it is a lifestyle for those willing to work, risk and sweat to embody our ideals for themselves and to promote them to others,” Rundo explained via his Telegram channel. “They never were like, ‘You need to learn how to fight so you can beat up people of color.’ It was like, ‘You need to learn how to fight because people want to kill you in the future,’” a former Active Club member told Vice News in 2023.These cells are deliberately small – often under a dozen members – and self-contained, which gives them greater operational security and flexibility. Each club operates semi-autonomously while remaining connected to the broader ideology and digital network.

Expanding globally and deepening ties

:{:{Active Clubs maintain strategic and ideological connections with formal white supremacist groups, including Patriot Front, a white nationalist and neofascist group founded in 2017 by Thomas Rousseau after the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.Active Clubs share extremist beliefs with these organizations, including racial hierarchy and the “Great Replacement” theory, which claims white populations are being deliberately replaced by nonwhite immigrants.}:

While publicly presenting as fitness groups, they may collaborate with white supremacist groups on recruitment, training, propaganda or public events. Figures connected to accelerationist groups – organizations that seek to create social chaos and societal collapse that they believe will lead to a race war and the destruction of liberal democracy – played a role in founding the Active Club network. Along with the Rise Above Movement, they include Atomwaffen Division and another neo-Nazi group, The Base – organizations that repackage violent fascism to appeal to disaffected young white men in the U.S.}:

Brotherhood as a cover

By downplaying explicit hate symbols and emphasizing strength and preparedness, Active Clubs appeal to a new generation of recruits who may not initially identify with overt racism but are drawn to a culture of hypermasculinity and self-improvement.Anyone can start a local Active Club chapter with minimal oversight. This autonomy makes it hard for law enforcement agencies to monitor the groups and helps the network grow rapidly. Shared branding and digital propaganda maintain ideological consistency.

Through this approach, Active Clubs have built a transnational network of echo chambers, recruitment pipelines and paramilitary-style training in parks and gyms.Club members engage in activities such as combat sports training, propaganda dissemination and ideological conditioning. Fight sessions are often recorded and shared online as recruitment tools.Members distribute flyers, stickers and online content to spread white supremacist messages. Active Clubs embed themselves in local communities by hosting events, promoting physical fitness, staging public actions and sharing propaganda. Potential members first see propaganda on encrypted apps such as Telegram or on social media. The clubs recruit in person at gyms, protests and local events, vetting new members to ensure they share the group’s beliefs and can be trusted to maintain secrecy.

From fringe to functioning network

Based on current information from the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, there are 187 active chapters within the Active Club Network across 27 countries – a 25% increase from late 2023. The Crowd Counting Consortium documented 27 protest events involving Active Clubs in 2022-2023. However, precise membership numbers remain difficult to ascertain. Some groups call themselves “youth clubs” but share similar ideas and aesthetics and engage in similar activities. Active Club members view themselves as defenders of Western civilization and masculine virtue. From their perspective, their activities represent noble resistance rather than hate. Members are encouraged to stay secretive, prepare for societal collapse and build a network of committed, fit men ready to act through infiltration, activism or violence.

Hiding in plain sight

Law enforcement agencies, researchers and civil society now face a new kind of domestic threat that wears workout clothes instead of uniforms.Active Clubs work across international borders, bound by shared ideas and tactics and a common purpose. This is the new white nationalism: decentralized, modernized, more agile and disguised as self-improvement. What appears to be a harmless workout group may be a gateway to violent extremism, one pushup at a time.

Art Jipson, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Dayton This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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an 7 25

the normalization of political violence is taking root in public life in the United States. Once shocking near-assassinations are now becoming grimly accepted chapters in political campaigns. Experts warn this signals a dangerous shift in societal norms — and the consequences are already unfolding, The Hill reported Sunday.

The report notes that in the year following the first assassination attempt on President Donald Trump, public threats toward officials have not only persisted — they have escalated.

From the tragic killing of a Minnesota state legislator to last week’s firefight at a U.S. Border Patrol station in Texas, high-profile incidents are mounting.

Jon Lewis, a research fellow at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, told The Hill: “We continue to see a normalizing of political violence, a very casual acceptance that some elected officials may be legitimate targets for violence—based on conspiracies, based on disinformation—and unfortunately and tragically, we’ve seen that that has real-world consequences."

IFrame Content

He added: “When there is so much rhetoric…it’s only a matter of time before someone with a grievance and a gun finds that justification.”

This reflects a broader trend — federal arrests for threats against officials hit a 12-year high in 2024, according to Seamus Hughes of the University of Nebraska Omaha’s NCITE program, whose comments were also highlighted in the report.

Hughes pointed out that many cases now invigilated at the federal level would previously have been dropped or handled locally. “It’s clear law enforcement and prosecutors want to put their finger on the scale on such threats,” he said.

Last month, Robert Pape, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, told the Guardian: “We are in a historically high period of American political violence."

He added: “I call it our ‘era of violent populism’. It’s been about 50 years since we’ve seen something like this. And the situation is getting worse.”

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CONTEXT TRUMP DOING IT

an 6 25

Navy vet shakes with rage over 'grotesque MAGA merchandise'

:{:{D. Earl Stephens June 14, 2025}:

By now, you have most likely heard of the disgraceful appearance by Donald Trump at Fort Bragg in North Carolina on Tuesday.

The convicted felon’s remarks to Army personnel were partisan, incendiary, anti-American and belong in a dumpster and/or Mar-a-Lago, not a United States military base.

Except it was even worse than any of us thought ...

Thanks to some stellar reporting by Military.com, we are learning today that U.S. taxpayers essentially funded a vulgar MAGA rally at a U.S. Army facility.

The appearance by the president of the United States of America had NOTHING TO DO with the morale and good order of our troops and everything to do with HIM, as he stirred these young men and women into a partisan frenzy.

Things were so out of hand, that there were actually booths set up to sell grotesque MAGA merchandise and memorabilia to our troops. This didn’t just cross a line, it obliterated it, and was against myriad Defense Department regulations.

From military.com reporting:

substackcdn.com

I am admittedly shaking with rage as I type this, friends, because as a veteran I could have never conceived of something like this in my lifetime. These are the kinds of things that happen in other troubled countries — many of which WE actually have helped to liberate with our blood in the past.

I want to keep this missive brief, because I encourage you to read and share widely the comprehensive piece that I linked to above. Please do this.

As the retired managing editor of Stars and Stripes, the editorially independent newspaper that serves the troops and their families overseas, I want to commend the continued good work the folks at Military.com are continuing to do stateside. I assure you they are experts on the military, and wedded to top-notch journalism. Their work has never been more important as the U.S. slides toward fascism.

We are in the most precarious moment in our nation’s history since the beginning of the Civil War. Anybody who is not reporting it this way is dangerous, completely out of their depth, and should not be taken seriously.

Since day one of this anti-American administration I have been warning with some precision that we were heading toward this terrible juncture, and I wish nothing more than to report to you that I was wrong.

Turns out, I actually underestimated the pace of our descent into authoritarianism. Unless there is some significant pushback by our military, fellow citizens, the press, the Democrats and the reprehensible Republican Party, it is hard to see how we survive this.

Before signing out, I am again calling on our military leadership past and present, and fellow veterans everywhere, to speak out loudly against this ongoing attack THAT WE KNOW IS WRONG.

For now, stay strong, lean on each other, and call your political representatives (202-224-3121) to make your voices heard.

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no lnx

:{Alternet

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

Antioch High School.

Jordan Greenand Raw StoryJanuary 23, 2025

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

an 1 25

This was not a terrorist attack, it was a wake up call,” reads a line in written notes authorities made public last week from Matthew Livelsberger, the driver of the Cybertruck who killed himself in the vehicle shortly before it exploded in front of a Trump hotel in Las Vegas on New Year’s Day.

The combat veteran’s writings include poignant passages, as when he expressed the need to “cleanse my mind of the brothers I’ve lost and relieve myself of the burden of the lives I took.”

But Livelsberger also expresses warmed-over manosphere tropes and anti-Democratic clichés from the Republican 2024 campaign.

“Masculinity is good and men must be leaders.”

“Thankfully we rejected the DEI candidate and will have a real President instead of Weekend at Bernie’s.”

“Rally around the Trump, Musk, Kennedy, and ride this wave to the highest hegemony for all Americans!”

Those sound pretty much like rote red meat talking points slung around by JD Vance, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Steve Bannon, or whichever Trumpworld podcaster might be trending at any given time.

But other lines in Livelsberger’s notes invoke something less banal, and more violent, envisioning what reads like a January 6 style attack on the nation’s institutions, but on steroids.

“Military and vets move on DC starting now. Militias facilitate and augment this activity.”*

“Occupy every major road along fed buildings and the campus of fed buildings by the hundreds of thousands.”*

“Lock the highways around down with semis right after everybody gets in. Hold until the purge is complete.”*

“Try peaceful means first, but be prepared to fight to get the Dems out of the fed government and military by any means necessary. They all must go and a hard reset must occur for our country to avoid collapse.”*

Briefing reporters last week after Livelsberger’s life ended in a rented Tesla in front of a Trump hotel, law enforcement officials said Livelsberger appeared to have “no animosity” toward Donald Trump.

While delivering that briefing, Clark County Sheriff Kevin McMahill and FBI Special Agent in Charge Spencer Evans knew that not only did Livelsberger have no animosity toward Trump, but in fact was cheering on Trump, and Trumpism.

McMahill and Evans left that part out, along with Livelsberger’s calls for uprooting people he didn’t agree with from the government and the military “by any means necessary.”

Law enforcement officials weren’t the only ones glossing over the story.

Media reports on Livelsberger, in Nevada and nationally, have downplayed his Trump-friendly extremism, when they’ve mentioned it at all.

When law enforcement officials suggested the Cybertruck driver hadn’t indicated any malice toward Trump (and when they knew but neglected to mention the driver was actually a Trump fan), it seemed a relevant observation at the time, lest the motive for blowing up a truck made and sold by Trump’s right-hand billionaire Elon Musk in front of a hotel with Trump’s name on it might be seen as a statement of disapproval of both men.

Livelsberger’s action clearly wasn’t that. It might have been an homage to them though.

This week law enforcement provided more passages Livelsberger wrote in in the days leading up to the explosion, which show Livelsberger used ChatGPT to learn how to turn a Cybertruck into a garbage fire, was convinced he was being tailed on his way to Las Vegas, and had intended to carry out his plan at the Grand Canyon Skywalk.

And in one of the quotes authorities released, Livelsberger wrote: “As much as the MSM will paint me out to be some terrorist and monster, I had no intent on taking out anyone but myself if that happens. I am deeply sorry to anyone that gets hurt.”

It didn’t go exactly as Livelsberger intended. Seven people were hurt. Blessedly, their injuries were minor.

And the MSM — the mainstream media — did not paint him out to be some terrorist or monster.

Perhaps had bystanders been seriously injured or killed, the media would be paying more attention to the fact that whatever other things were going on with Livelsberger, one of those things was the radicalization of a Trump sympathizer into a violent extremist.

But as if taking its cue from McMahill and Evans, the media coverage has mostly left that part out.

Well, there have been other salacious or compelling storylines to focus on: a Cybertruck exploding in front of a Trump hotel; “very strange similarities” between Livelsberger and Shamsud-Din Jabbar, who killed New Orleans revelers with a truck earlier on New Year’s Day; the prospect of AI’s new role as an instruction guide for DIY explosive devices; and, of course, the tragedy of a hero’s fall.

Livelsberger left behind statements calling for an armed, violent assault on the nation’s most important public institutions, to be carried out by people of whom he approved. He called for a “purge” of people of whom he disapproved from the nation’s institutions “by any means necessary.” And, according to his journaling, he envisioned it all as a triumphant ride on the “Trump, Musk, Kennedy…wave to the highest hegemony for all Americans!”

And we’ve reached the point where the vast majority of the media doesn’t regard that as a particularly important part of the story, if they mention it at all.

Maybe the media hasn’t taken Livelsberger’s political extremism seriously because it happened in a place the media (and the nation) has a habit of not taking very seriously. Bizarre thing happens in Las Vegas, must be a day that ends in a y, etc. In which case Livelsberger’s hope that Las Vegas would be a prime location to place a wake up call was a miscalculation.

Or with everyone from Mark Zuckerberg to members of Congress from both parties to all the billionaires to pockets of the media surrendering in advance to Trump, maybe wake up calls are just passé anymore.

Portions of this column were originally published in the Daily Current newsletter, which is free and which you can subscribe to here.*

Nevada Current is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Nevada Current maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Hugh Jackson for questions: info@nevadacurrent.com.

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vets doku

Against All Enemies – FULL MOVIE

MeidasTouch

Aug 5, 2024

448,671 views • Premiered Aug 5, 2024

Why would US military veterans take up arms against the country they swore an oath to protect? Through gripping personal perspectives from all sides of this ongoing crisis, Against All Enemies goes deep inside the violent extremist movement in America, alongside the Proud Boys, 3 Percenters, and with never-before-seen footage of the Oath Keepers. These groups, organized and led by highly trained military veterans, pose one of the greatest threats to the United States today. While most veterans are successful in their transition to civilian life, an increasingly radicalized element is drawn to the insurrectionist movement. We saw evidence of this during the January 6 Capitol riots, but the danger goes far beyond a single day. The film explores the historical roots of the insurrectionist cause, its conspiracy fueled draw for today's veterans, and the top-cover coming from powerful politicians and highly decorated former military officers. Against All Enemies is a warning about an existential threat to democracy and a beacon for those hoping to combat it.

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NOLA NEW YR ATTACK BY SELF RADIC CITIZEN VET DIVORCE, BIZ FAIL

LONE WOLF, HAD FLAG

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an 12 24

A new trend taking over TikTok is targeting vulnerable young men. The “looksmaxxing” phenomenon – to maximise one’s looks – is aimed at young men and boys who want to change their appearance to become more attractive and gain social acceptance.

Unhappy with their appearance, teenage boys and young men scrolling the app are directed to chat rooms where they’re instructed to upload photos in exchange for advice.

It begins with “softmaxxing”. This includes basic hygiene such as teeth brushing and whitening, removal of face and body hair, and “mewing” (tongue exercises that supposedly help tone facial muscles).

This progresses to “hardmaxxing”, which is to improve one’s appearance by any means necessary. More extreme measures include:

steroid use
hair transplants and plastic surgery
using pumps for penis stretching
removing ribs for a sculpted waist
“bone-smashing”, which involves using hammers to break bones in the face to look more masculine
“starvemaxxing”, which encourages extreme dieting and eating disorders
“whitemaxxing”, which involves using creams to present as more White
and “edgemaxxing”, which is described as “withholding climaxing in order to boost testosterone to improve appearance”.

Looksmaxxing may appear harmless, encouraging self-care, exercise and healthy eating. But at its core it has ties to violence, suicide and incels (involuntary celibates) – men who blame women for their struggles with establishing romantic or sexual relationships.

A click away from the incel rabbit hole

Looksmaxxing videos on TikTok have amassed many millions of views.

They pull young boys and men into a dark subculture of incels. Incel and extremist content is suggested to users on multiple platforms including TikTok Instagram and Youtube.

Within minutes, TikTok users may be bombarded with videos that promote suicide and gendered hate speech. One 2021 research report found young YouTube users will sometimes be suggested incel-related videos by YouTube’s algorithm within just five hops when starting from a non incel-related video.

‘Hunter’ versus ‘prey’ eyes

Male model Jordan Barrett has become an envied idol for men and boys following the looksmaxxing trend.

Many looksmaxxers believe having his “hunter eyes” with a positive canthal tilt (the canthal is the angle between the inner and outer corner of the eye), along with pursed lips and hollow cheeks, translates to a dominating stare women can’t possibly resist.

On anonymous incel forums, young men are trained to calculate their “sexual market value”. If they’re deemed below average, they’re bullied, accused of being “bitches who are feminine, weak and submissive, too ugly to live” and told to take their own lives.

The Bateman effect

At the apex of the incel beauty tower is the character Patrick Bateman from the 2000 satire-thriller American Psycho. Bateman is known by incels as a superior “sigma” male: a lone wolf and capitalist hustler who attracts money-hungry women.

In fact, he is shallow, manipulative, misogynistic and extremely violent. This sociopathic ideal resonates with many incels. Other characters idolised by incels include Tyler Durden from Fight Club and Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker.

Incels who feel they are misunderstood and demoralised by women also look to self-proclaimed powerful male influencers with perceived “social status”, such as Andrew Tate, for solace. Alongside messages about fitness, financial gain and self-improvement, Tate is openly misogynistic and suggests it’s socially acceptable to indulge in violent desires against women.

This false representation of masculinity creates a sense of entitlement in men who believe they are repressed. This can then be used as fuel for gender-based violence, femicide, copycat crimes and mass killings.

Bateman and incel ideology influenced self-proclaimed incel and mass shooter Elliot Rodger. In 2014, Rodger carried out a deadly mass shooting and stabbing spree in Isla Vista, California, killing six people. He blamed women for his celibacy and wanted to seek revenge by killing them.

Many misogynist incels now hail him as a hero. Some men use his initials claiming they want to “go ER” or “be a hERo”, implying they’re ready to commit mass murder.

A 2023 report from the Australia Strategic Policy Centre highlights concerning incel content online. One user says “women should be stripped of their rights because they still have primitive minds that need to be tamed”. Another says “I might start a political movement. ‘BRING BACK RAPE’ […] ‘WANNA STOP BEING INCEL, TIME TO START RAPING’.”

Young people are under pressure

Our preoccupation with having a perfect appearance is an obsessive social disease alienating us from ourselves and others.

Researchers point to a link between trends such as looksmaxxing and the broader cultural pressures young people face. They’re growing up in an increasingly precarious world with war, post-pandemic anxiety, environmental degradation, unaffordable living and unstable employment. This is juxtaposed with neoliberal hyper-individualism, hypersexuality and consumer capitalism.

Where young people feel like they can’t control their environment, they may turn to trends such as looksmaxxing as something they can control.

In recent years, former members of the manosphere have started producing their own counter-forums that challenge the beliefs they once held.

Studies highlight young men and boys are beginning to recognise misogynistic ideology and restrictive performances of masculinity. These studies also argue these forums can offer alternative perspectives, with information that emphasises the importance of healthy socialising, consent and respectful relationships.

In the age of TikTok algorithms, schools and communities must do more to educate on masculinity, what it means to be a “man” and the dangers of incel culture, extremism, gendered hate speech and sexual violence.

Celebrities and influencers also have a role to play. Actors such as Mark Ruffalo and Ryan Gosling have helped foster positive ideas about what it means to be a man. Real, positive change can come from instilling the belief that collectively we can create a more equal and empathetic world.

Jamilla Rosdahl, Senior Lecturer, Australian College of Applied Psychology

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

YOUNG MEN MOST SUSCEPTIBLE? MORN JOE 9 YO BOY IN SCHOOL MADE TO FEEL GUILT FOR TOX MASC? BS? 11 24

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here is a paradox of the 2024 election result: Democrats advanced what they believed to be a profoundly inclusive platform, but they read to many voters as an out-of-touch, elitist party. Meanwhile, Republicans advanced a flagrantly exclusionary agenda, almost exclusively favorably to the richest and most powerful Americans, and they read to many voters as a populist movement friendly to the working class.

There is no point in fact-checking what people perceive. Elections are not math tests. There are no “right answers.” What people hear is all that matters, not what you intended to say.

The.Ink

Some of this paradox is explained, I think, by an underappreciated difference between platform and posture. There is the matter of what you stand for, and the rather different issue of how you stand. We all have that friend who believes all the right and beautiful and just things, but wouldn’t help you in a pinch. We all also have that friend or relative or neighbor who believes awful things but would be the first person to offer to help us move.

For reasons we will still be examining for some time, Democrats have somehow ended up in a situation where their platform is all about openness, but their stance reads to many voters as closed. It feels — and whether rightly or wrongly is beside the point — like a judgmental movement for inclusion and equity. Republicans have, at the same time, chosen a platform devoted to closings — of the border, of the gates of citizenship, of the generosity of the safety net, of fundamental freedoms — but their stance reads to many voters as open, inviting, come-as-you-are. It feels to many like a nonjudgmental movement for exclusion.

Please don’t misread this on purpose. It is not an endorsement of the right’s methods. But I think we need to be straightforward about this paradox. It is a scandal to allow the most exclusionary platform in modern American history to be read as openhearted to so many. It is a scandal that so many of the very people it would degrade feel attracted to the cause.

Part of what’s going on here, I think, is the Republicans embracing an ethic that I first heard from progressive community organizers: Meet people where they are.

This is the organizer’s code, the idea behind all other ideas. But when I wrote my book The Persuaders, many of the organizers on the left whom I profiled were sounding an alarm through my book about their own movements turning away from this ethic. They worried about their movements seeming to have prerequisites to join. Linda Sarsour, the progressive activist, described her own movement as being like a prison where you have to enter one gate and have that gate close behind you to cross the next gate. You had to know the right terms, never mess up, not have questions about the right approach to advancing social justice for marginalized groups, and, frankly, silence concerns you might have about the best strategy.

That Republicans have ended up with more of a “meet people where they are” ethic is beyond ironic. Again, I’m speaking of posture, not policy; stance, not substance. But they have managed to create the sense of an open invitation to join this movement of closings. There is a thirst for converts, rather than a suspicion that they may not be aligned with you on every last issue. There is an understanding that a lot of politics is actually about vibes and having your cause be an aspirational brand people want to join; and the Republicans made inroads with many nontraditional voter groups this time around by having the MAGA hat function as a status symbol, allowing people to flex and separate themselves from other members of their own communities, showing people that they are winners who didn’t need the Democrats’ offers of help.

But what turbocharges these differences in stance is a gigantic media ecology on the right that functions as a voter radicalization funnel. Meeting people where they are means that you pull people into that funnel at its very wide end. As they enter, they are merely annoyed by things around them — upset about inflation, frustrated at not being able to own a home, feeling destabilized by the rising status of women and people of color, unsure of their role. And the funnel — consisting of traditional media, newer media like podcasts and video talk shows, social media, and YouTube content — slowly pulls them from annoyance with questions toward ever more radical and pungent certitude. It doesn’t require them to be at the pointy end of the funnel at the beginning. The point of the funnel is to pull in everyone. The movement is self-confident enough to think that it can turn anyone bothered by a pea under their mattress, whether valid or invalid, utterly racist or genuinely born of pain, into a believer.

The pro-democracy movement needs to build its own funnel, now. It cannot and should not be a mirror image of the right’s funnel. It should be grounded in truth, not lies, and generosity, not closedness. But it needs to be a total media ecology that can meet people at any level of annoyance, curiosity, irritation, gripe, doubt, with any question — and move them toward a more humane and magnanimous view of the world. It needs to take lost and lonely boys and men and move them toward a sense of how to be in a gender-equal world. It needs to invite people to see their own story in the story of a pluralist America of the future. It needs to be longer on invitation, shorter on blame. It needs to meet you where you are, and be confident enough to move you, over years even, toward greater consciousness.

There is simply no such media ecology right now, no such organizing infrastructure at the scale required. People who want to build things like this get no help from those who could help them. People sit around and fret about Tuesday but don’t have the vision to help build the mental infrastructure for a different future.

Let’s change that.

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vets doku Against All Enemies – FULL MOVIE jdv flynn greitens

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NYT

NO LNX

On Telegram, a Violent Preview of What May Unfold on Election Day and After

Right-wing groups, which use Telegram to organize real-world actions, are urging followers to watch the polls and stand up for their rights, in a harbinger of potential chaos.

Telegram played a small but significant role in the 2020 election as an organizing tool for planners of the Jan. 6 attack.Credit...Jason Andrew for The New York Times

By Paul MozurAdam SatarianoAaron Krolik and Steven Lee Myers

Paul Mozur, Adam Satariano, Aaron Krolik and Steven Lee Myers analyzed more than 1 million posts from election skeptics and right-wing extremist groups on Telegram.

Nov. 4, 2024

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Groups backing former President Donald J. Trump recently sent messages to organize poll watchers to be ready to dispute votes in Democratic areas. Some posted images of armed men standing up for their rights to recruit for their cause. Others spread conspiracy theories that anything less than a Trump victory on Tuesday would be a miscarriage of justice worthy of revolt.

“The day is fast approaching when fence sitting will no longer be possible,” read one post from an Ohio chapter of the Proud Boys, the far-right organization that was instrumental in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. “You will either stand with the resistance or take a knee and willingly accept the yoke of tyranny and oppression.”

The messages were all posted on Telegram, the lightly moderated social media platform with nearly one billion users, which has become a harbinger of the potential actions and chaos that could unfold on Election Day and after. More so than other social apps, Telegram is a prime organizing tool for extremists, who have a tendency to turn digital coordination into real-world action.

A New York Times analysis of more than one million messages across nearly 50 Telegram channels with over 500,000 members found a sprawling and interconnected movement intended to question the credibility of the presidential election, interfere with the voting process and potentially dispute the outcome. Nearly every channel reviewed by The Times was created after the 2020 election, highlighting the growth and increased sophistication of the election denialism movement.

The Times reviewed messages from “election integrity” groups across a dozen states, including battlegrounds like Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, North Carolina and Michigan. Their posts overwhelmingly spewed disinformation and conspiracy theories and featured violent imagery.

More than 4,000 of their posts went further by encouraging members to act by attending local election meetings, joining protest rallies and making financial donations, the analysis found. Posts from other right-wing groups reviewed by The Times urged followers to be prepared for violence. These calls to action extended the right-wing language typically found on other major social media sites into the physical world.

In New Hampshire, one Telegram channel instructed people to question local officials in person about absentee ballot tallies. In Georgia, followers of a local Telegram channel were urged to attend election board meetings to argue for limits to absentee voting. In New Mexico, people were told to monitor voting stations with cameras, file police reports if necessary and be ready to “fight like hell.”

“If you have ever said, ‘What can I do?,’ this is your opportunity,” said one post from a Telegram group focused on Pennsylvania.

Katherine Keneally, a former intelligence analyst with the New York Police Department, said views shared on Telegram should not be dismissed as the musings of a fringe minority but rather seen as a warning about what could happen on Election Day and beyond.

“Telegram is very often central to actually organizing people to engage in offline activity,” said Ms. Keneally, who now works for the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a research firm that monitors Telegram. She recalled attending a meeting in 2022 of election skeptics in Montana, where participants taught one another how to use Telegram. Among more extreme movements, she said, Telegram is used “very strategically to radicalize and recruit.”

In a statement, Telegram, whose founder was arrested in France in August on charges related to the spread of illicit material on the service, said it had ramped up content moderation leading up to the election. The company added that it would cooperate with the authorities to remove “criminal content.”

“Telegram does not tolerate content that encourages disrupting legal democratic processes through violence or destruction of property,” it said.

Telegram played a small but significant role in the 2020 election as an organizing tool for planners of the Jan. 6 attack. Today, its influence is greater and potentially more ominous, according to The Times’s analysis.

Right-wing media channels post a stream of news, memes and misinformation about perceived voting irregularities, which are then picked up by other groups that use them to argue that the Democrats have begun to steal the election. Mixed in are calls for citizens to show up at the polls and to monitor and report irregularities — or fight if necessary.

Image

Right-wing media channels on Telegram post a stream of disinformation about perceived voting irregularities, which other groups pick up to argue that Democrats have already begun to steal the election.Credit...Bing Guan for The New York Times.

“While other platforms are primarily about self-expression, ‘owning the libs’ and hateful buffoonery, Telegram often generates an ambience of ‘let’s get something done,’” said Paul M. Barrett, the deputy director of the Stern Center for Business and Human Rights at New York University.

The “election integrity” movement on Telegram includes a loose network of accounts devoted to “auditing” the vote and amplifying election malfeasance theories, such as false claims that election workers are giving Republican voters Sharpies that are incompatible with voting machines.

One channel focused on election auditing in New York featured recruitment ads from United Sovereign Americans, which calls itself a national “election validity” advocacy group. One of its lawyers is a former solicitor general of Pennsylvania who defended Mr. Trump during his second impeachment in 2021 after Jan. 6.

Under an image of Uncle Sam and a bold red “WE NEED YOU!” banner, the group recently claimed, without any credible evidence, that 2022 voter records showed “millions of ‘irregularities’ which, when ignored, are election fraud.” Many claims about voter fraud have been debunked. The group did not respond to a request for comment.

Another group, focused on vote auditing in Pennsylvania, offered paid compensation for election monitors but only if they worked in the traditionally Democratic stronghold of Allegheny County, where Pittsburgh is.

“Fill out your information, and we’ll contact you to get you trained and ready for Election Day!” the group said.

Another Telegram channel run by a group called the People’s Audit posted a video that offered a “hypothetical situation that is totally possible,” in which the Department of Homeland Security used the driver’s licenses of undocumented immigrants to cast votes en masse for the Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris. The video floated the scenario even though it is illegal and rare for noncitizens to vote in federal elections.

“Yes, they would be engaging in ID theft, election interference and treason, which is punishable by death,” the video concluded.

Kris Jurski, who posted the video, said on Telegram that it had been taken down from X. He said he was grateful that the video had remained on Telegram, which he used later to advertise a webinar teaching people how to secure voter rolls and deter fraud. He did not respond to a request for comment.

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Trump supporters wore attire associated with the Proud Boys — the group’s colors are yellow and black — at a rally in December 2020.Credit...Luis M. Alvarez/Associated Press

Many posts casting doubt on election reliability made their way into the channels of extremist groups like the Proud Boys, which has preferred Telegram to other platforms after being restricted by sites like Facebook, Instagram and X.

The group’s posts questioned why states might not be able to fully tally election results on election night and repeated misleading claims about voter registration numbers in Michigan. In one video, a truck with a Confederate flag chased after immigrant children, with a caption reading: “1/20/25: Trump is sworn in as President. 1/21/25: Me and the Proud Boys begin the deportation.”

“When you look at the postings, even if it’s not actually calling for violence or even if it’s not saying we need to get whoever, there’s a very ugly tone to it,” said Wendy Via, a founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, which tracked a 317 percent spike in election denialism on Telegram in October. There was no significant left-wing movement like this, she said.

In recent months, many Telegram channels run by chapters of the Proud Boys have celebrated a return to relevance, including perceived attention from Mr. Trump and his allies. Several accounts pointed to the black-and-yellow ties and hats — which are Proud Boys colors — worn by Mr. Trump in the days before, and the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson during, a recent rally at Madison Square Garden in New York.

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Recent posts on Telegram channels associated with the Proud Boys celebrated a perceived show of support from Mr. Trump.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times

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Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host, at a recent Trump rally at Madison Square Garden.Credit...Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times.

Asked whether Mr. Trump had intended to send a signal, a spokeswoman for his campaign responded, “Lol. No.” Mr. Carlson did not respond to a request for comment but posted on X that The Times “knows a Proud Boys necktie when they see one.”

“They feel activated,” said Michael Loadenthal, who researches political violence at the University of Cincinnati, adding that Proud Boys groups had assembled publicly less often than they had before the 2020 election. “There’s a feeling they are in the right.”

Recruitment messages on the public Telegram accounts of various Proud Boys chapters have sought to capitalize on the perils of election fraud, often implying a need for violence. One popular image showed an armed man wearing a balaclava.

“Free men do not obey public servants,” it read.

Another portrayed a tit-for-tat with “leftist Democrats” going back to Mr. Trump’s presidency.

“Enough is enough!” read a part of the post. “Be ready for anything and everything!”

Methodology

The Telegram channels reviewed in this article were provided in part by researchers at the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism. The Times used software, including large language models, to organize and analyze the posts and to identify messages with calls to action.

A correction was made on Nov. 4, 2024: An earlier version of this article misstated the year in which Katherine Keneally of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue attended a meeting of election skeptics in Montana. It was in 2022, not this year.

When we learn of a mistake, we acknowledge it with a correction. If you spot an error, please let us know at nytnews@nytimes.com.Learn more

Paul Mozur is the global technology correspondent for The Times, based in Taipei. Previously he wrote about technology and politics in Asia from Hong Kong, Shanghai and Seoul. More about Paul Mozur

Adam Satariano is a technology correspondent for The Times, based in London. More about Adam Satariano

Steven Lee Myers covers misinformation and disinformation from San Francisco. Since joining The Times in 1989, he has reported from around the world, including Moscow, Baghdad, Beijing and Seoul. More about Steven Lee Myers

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https://www.alternet.org/far-right-womens-cult-like/

as far-right extremists continue to coalesce around Donald Trump and his third run for president, women, some of whom were once derided as "mommy bloggers," are taking an increasingly larger role as the faces of the movement.

According to a report from theGuardian, from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) to "martyr" Ashli Babbitt, who lost her life in the Jan. 6 riot, increasing numbers of women are recruiting or being used as recruiting tools to draw in other women that one researcher claims are susceptible to finding cults appealing.

As the Guardian's MacKenzie Ryan wrote, “alt-right” women have "shifted to influential public-facing roles in rightwing media production and far-right national politics," as they defend the rioters who stormed the Capitol or ostensibly use the protection of children to push a far-right agenda like the controversial Moms for Liberty."

According to Dr. Sandra Jeppesen of Lakehead University, "[Far-right women] have a lot more power than you think,” adding, "I think women definitely want power. I don’t think ‘alt-right’ women go into politics for altruistic reasons.”

Case in point, the rapid ascension of lawmaker Taylor Greene, with the Guardian reporting, "In the days leading up to 6 January 2021, Marjorie Taylor Greene, the extremist congresswoman from Georgia, paid tens of thousands of dollars for a promoted Parlor post stating the need for a grassroots army and created a Photoshopped image of her and Donald Trump. The post, used as an election fundraiser for Greene’s campaign, garnered millions of views and played a strong role in mobilizing people to the Capitol,Jeppesen explained."

The protection of children is a central selling point to recruiting more adherents with Iowyth Ulthiin, a PhD student at Toronto Metropolitan University, explaining, "Who doesn’t love children and want them to be safe?”

The Guardian report states, "The far right can take the same recruitment posture online. Ulthiin’s research has seen women in the 'mommy blogger aesthetic' on Instagram, known for sharing photos of 'lovely, enviable lives', become subtly political and then escalate rapidly into conspiracy theories."

Ulthiin suggested, "women who fall into the far-right trap often have similar psychological profiles, stating, "It would be a similar crowd to those who are in danger of joining a cult." [link]

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

an 7 23

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

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

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

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

Lowery also cited recent examples of these occurrences.

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

Watch MSNBC's clip below or at this link

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https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/worse-than-watergate-how-the-right-uses-disinformation-to-generate-outrage-and-conspiracy-theories/

last week, the right-wing Media Research Center released a report featuring the provocative title, “How Biden’s DHS Is Weaponizing an Anti-Terror Program Against Christians, Conservatives & the GOP.” As the title suggested, the report claimed that the federal government is “being used to target the entire spectrum of the political right and Christians,” specifically groups like “The Heritage Foundation, Fox News, Christian Broadcasting Network, Turning Point USA, PragerU, the National Rifle Association (NRA), Breitbart News, the American Conservative Union Foundation and the Republican National Committee.”

The central claim of the report is false, but it has proved irresistible to the right-wing political and media machine that thrives on generating bogus narratives about the supposed political persecution of conservatives.

The report focused on a grant made by the Department of Homeland Security through its “Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention Grant Program,” which provides funding to local governments, nonprofit organizations, and institutions of higher education “to establish or enhance capabilities to prevent targeted violence and terrorism.”

One of the recipients of a TVTP grant was the University of Dayton, which MRC alleged then used the funding to launch a program known as “PREVENTS-OH,” through which it allegedly held a seminar linking mainstream conservative organizations to neo-Nazi groups.

The University of Dayton used grants from TVTP to create the infamous PREVENTS-OH program, which in turn hosted a series of events that maliciously equated mainstream organizations with neo-nazis and other extremist hate groups.

One of the first PREVENTS-OH events was a seminar called “Extremism, Rhetoric, and Democratic Precarity.” The seminar featured analysis from several so-called extremism experts who recklessly tied conservatives, Christians and Republicans to genocide and terrorism. Among the speakers were DHS Agent Joseph “J.R.” Masztalics a Regional Prevention Coordinator at CP3—who appeared in his official capacity at the event—and University of Cincinnati researcher Michael Loadenthal, a self-proclaimed member of a radical, anti-American group.

During the seminar, Loadenthal shared an outrageous ” that he claimed depicts the “modern far-right” and extremism in America.

Among the organizations and movements displayed on the pyramid were the Republican Party (RNC), The Heritage Foundation, the American Conservative Union, Fox News, Breitbart News, the National Rifle Association (NRA), PragerUniversity, Tea Party Patriots, the MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement, the pro-police Blue Lives Matter movement and the Christian Broadcasting Network.

Also on the pyramid, as if somehow comparable to the aforementioned reputable organizations and movements, were rabidly hateful groups like the militant neo-Nazi gang The Base and pro-Nazi publicationThe Daily Stormer.

Right-wing media outlets immediately seized upon the “outrageous” Pyramid of Far-Right Radicalization to allege that the Biden administration is using the TVTP grant program to “target” conservatives.

MRC’s founder and president Brent Bozell appeared on TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk’s podcast last Friday to demand a “criminal investigation” into the grant....[vid]

There has to be, I think, a criminal investigation into what the Department of Homeland Security is doing with federal funds, weaponizing the most radical left-wing government in the history of this nation to shut down anybody who doesn’t toe the narrative with them,” Bozell declared. “That includes the Republican Party, that includes the conservative movement, and that now includes Christians.”

Kirk readily agreed that “this is a smoking gun” and declaring that the supposed scandal is “worse than Watergate.”

Unfortunately for Kirk, Bozell, and the rest of the right-wing movement, the central component of MRC’s report is wrong.

As the links contained in MRC’s own report make clear, the seminar at which the Pyramid of Far-Right Radicalization was shown took place in December 2021. The University of Dayton did not receive the TVTP grant until September 2022.

The university then used the grant to launch its PREVENTS-OH program, meaning that MRC’s assertion that “the University of Dayton used grants from TVTP to create the infamous PREVENTS-OH program, which in turn hosted a series of events that maliciously equated mainstream organizations with neo-nazis and other extremist hate groups” could not possibly be true.

Even Fox News essentially debunked MRC’s allegations in an article that nevertheless blindly echoed those claims.

According to DHS, the University of Dayton was not a TVTP grantee at the time of the seminar and received a grant the following year — when the department was already aware of what was presented at the event. A DHS spokesperson told Fox News Digital that the award was unrelated to the seminar and rejected the notion that it supports any form of discrimination.

“This seminar was not funded, organized, or hosted by the Department of Homeland Security,” the spokesperson said. “Similarly, the presented chart was not developed, presented, or endorsed by the Department of Homeland Security,and was not part of any successful grant application to the Department of Homeland Security.DHS does not profile, target, or discriminate against any individual for exercising their constitutional rights protected by the First Amendment.”

The University of Dayton similarly described the seminar as being separate from the PREVENTS-OH program.

“The speakers at the programs referred to in the Media Research Center’s report are from the University of Dayton Human Rights Center’s Social Practice of Human Rights Conference in the fall of 2021, which had no affiliation with and predates PREVENTS-OH,” the university told Fox News Digital in a statement. “The University of Dayton Human Rights Center received its PREVENTS-OH grant in the fall of 2022 and, to date, its community awareness events and dialogues have focused on all forms of domestic terrorism, targeted violence, and extremism. As we stated when awarded the grant, ‘We look forward to partnering with Ohioans throughout the Miami Valley across all political and social affiliations and sectors of the community.'”

On top of that, the Pyramid of Far-Right Radicalization image has been around since at least 2019, and clearly states that the institutions listed on the lower tiers are mainstream conservative organizations. In fact, the researcher who used the image, Michael Loadenthal, in his presentation, making clear that his focus was on the dangerous extremist groups “on the top tier."

[vid]

loadenthal likewise explained this to Fox News:

According to Loadenthal, the MRC is “misinterpreting and misrepresenting” the diagram as well as his role with it. He sent Fox News Digital a full copy of the image, which included text underneath the pyramid describing the bottom tier with the GOP, the NRA, and the Heritage Foundation as “mainstream conservatism.”

“The chart is meant to show that what is termed ‘the right’ is not monolithic and that some individuals travel to a path of radicalization, beginning with more mainstream sources,” said Loadenthal. “This point is not controversial nor is it deterministic; it is NOT meant to imply that engaging with level 1 inherently leads to level 4. That would obviously be false.”

When the pyramid was presented at the seminar, the text at the bottom was not visible. However, Loadenthal’s notes visible on the screen of the slideshow to the right of the image provide an abbreviated version of the text.

“So today we’re talking about the modern far-right, which depending on who you ask, can include things as mundane as the Heritage Foundation, all the way up to underground cells of militants,” the on-screen text reads. “I like the use of this 4-part taxonomy, although I disagree with some of the groups’ placements.”

Loadenthal also noted that he did not create the pyramid, telling Fox News Digital that he believes it was authored around 2018 — the upper left corner attributes the image to two scholars, McCauley and Moslalenko. “I found it a helpful conceptual scaffolding and used it,” he said.

Despite the fact that MRC’s report was basically debunked right out of the gate, that hasn’t stopped right-wing activists from using it to spin wild conspiracy theories, During Friday’s episode of her “WrongThink” program, right-wing commentator Anna Perez baselessly alleged that the Biden administration is using the TVTP grant program to “radicalize the youth and turn them into a paramilitary organization” that will attack conservatives. [vid]

"You know what this program is really for?” Perez said. “It’s so that the Biden administration can radicalize the youth and turn them into a paramilitary organization. … He is literally creating more members of antifa by implementing this program, that is why it exists. This program is literally meant to fund antifa.”

This entire saga provides a case study in how the right-wing movement works to generate “controversy” out of thin air, first by misrepresenting basic facts in order to generate outrage, and then using that outrage to gin up wild conspiracy theories. And the fact that the central component of this entire “controversy” is false will not, in any way, stop right-wing activists from continually repeating itin order to generate ever more outrage.

Tags: Anna Perez Brent Bozell Charlie Kirk Media Research Center

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3 23 paywall?

https://www.texasobserver.org/christian-youth-radicalization-nationalism-texas/

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an 3 23

veterans group is appealing to the U.S. Pentagon to implement a ban that would prohibit Fox News from being accessible on military bases.

According to HuffPost, the progressive political action committee (PAC) VoteVets on Monday posted a video to highlight concerns about the right-wing news network and its anchors who have knowingly circulated baseless, unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud following the 2020 presidential election.

“The most valuable weapon to the enemy is disinformation,” the narrator began. “That’s why the Pentagon spends hundreds of millions training our troops to resist it."

"Yet, at the same time, the U.S. military uses taxpayer-funded facilities to broadcast disinformation on military bases, knowingly letting false propaganda infiltrate the ranks," the narrator added.

At one point during the clip, the narrator also noted that Fox News' Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, and Sean Hannity have “open access to spread their conspiracy theories to U.S. troops."

The push for a Fox News ban on military bases comes as Fox News' Tucker Carlson faces criticism for his latest attempt to spread misleading information about the Jan. 6 insurrection.

During his broadcast on Monday night, Carlson featured subtle clips of Capitol surveillance footage in an effort to support his argument suggesting what transpired on Jan. 6 was not an insurrection.

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matt g

https://www.mediamatters.org/fake-news/right-wing-ecosystem-created-paul-pelosi-conspiracy-theory

mma 1122 no twt

it took roughly 48 hours for the right-wing media ecosystem to turn a story about a man who committed political violence after becoming consumed by right-wing conspiracy theories about the depravity of the left into another right-wing conspiracy theory about the depravity of the left.

On Friday morning, a man broke into the San Francisco home of Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. He was reportedly carrying zip ties and duct tape and, according to law enforcement, was looking for the woman who is second in line to the presidency. She was not present, but the man did find and severely beat her 82-year-old husband, Paul, with a hammer, sending him to the hospital for emergency surgery.

The assailant, who was arrested and identified by police as David DePape, had an extensive Internet footprint that suggests a standard case of online right-wing radicalization. DePape’s writings show his adherence to a wide range of conspiracy theories that are often propped up or adopted in their entirety by prominent right-wing media figures and Republican officials. President Joe Biden on Friday night condemned the impact the Republican Party’s “vitriol” has on those who may be mentally unbalanced.

But in the days since the attack, people who get their news from right-wing sources have instead been told an absurd and baseless conspiracy theory. In this telling, there was no home invasion; instead DePape is actually Paul Pelosi’s leftist gay lover, and the police,Democrats, and the press are covering up that the assault was really a lovers’ spat. The tale was quickly adopted by influential right-wing figures – including Twitter owner Elon Musk – and, if past is prologue, will be accepted by a sizable percentage of the GOP base.

The Pelosi conspiracy theory took hold so quickly thanks to the parallel media ecosystem the right constructed over decades. That ecosystem features numerous outlets that generate conspiracy theories for partisan and financial gain;food-chain mechanisms that swiftly distribute them to millions of people; an existing right-wing audience trained to demand such fantasies; minimal internal guardrails within the right-wing press to provide more credible information; and strong external barriers against contrary information from mainstream news sources.

How the right built a Paul Pelosi conspiracy theory

The right’s conspiracy theorists went to work soon after news of Paul Pelosi’s assault broke. They create dubious but politically beneficial narratives by taking existing facts – particularly ones that emerge early in the life of a story, when initial reports are often wrong – mixing in falsehoods, and using wild logical jumps to put the result in a different context.

First, an investigative journalist at a local TV affiliate reported on Friday that the assailant was wearing only his underwear when police arrived. But the journalist retracted that reporting the same day, and no other outlet confirmed it.

Second, the dispatcher who received a 911 call from Paul Pelosi said that he had identified the intruder as a “friend.” But Pelosi, according to law enforcement, was making that call surreptitiously from the bathroom and speaking “in code” to the dispatcher in an attempt to avoid his suspicion.

Third, some alleged that there were no signs of forced entry at the Pelosi home, suggesting that Paul Pelosi had willingly let DePape inside. In fact, police say he forced entry through the rear door, and aerial photos and video show shattered glass around that entryway (in fact, other internet sleuths claim that the glass pattern is suspicious).

Fourth, Politico reported on Friday based on San Francisco Police Chief William Scott’s press conference that the first police officers responding on the scene “were let inside by an unknown person. They discovered DePape and Pelosi struggling for a hammer.” This generated speculation that a third individual had been present. But Scott did not actually say that, and the SFPD subsequently confirmed only two people, DePape and Paul Pelosi, were at the home when police arrived.

The right’s conspiracy theorists took those four pieces of evidence, mixed in Paul Pelosi’s May DUI charge, and concocted the narrative that he had been the victim of a drunken gay lovers’ spat that was subsequently covered up.

By Sunday, versions of this speculation were rampant on the right. Commentators who present themselves as credible offered a version in which they were simply asking questions because the press supposedly refused to do so.

[twt]

those who lack such airs simply claimed, as Dinesh D’Douza did, that “this guy, the assailant, is either a sexual partner or a male prostitute, and this is a sexual rendezvous that went sideways.”

[twt]

eventually, the story reached Musk, a troll beloved on the right with a penchant for conspiracy theories. And on Sunday morning, he blasted it out to his 112 million Twitter followers.

After Hillary Clinton shared an article about DePape’s promotion of conspiracy theories and commented that “violence is the result” of the right spreading such lies, Musk responded, “there is a tiny possibility there might be more to the story than meets the eye.” He provided a link to a site with the headline, “The Awful Truth: Paul Pelosi Was Drunk Again, And In a Dispute With a Male Prostitute Early Friday Morning."

[musk twt]

the website, the Santa Monica Observer, had previously alleged that Clinton died in 2016 and had been replaced by a body double for her presidential debate with Donald Trump.

At the same time, the right-wing media generated nonsensical explanations for why the assailant’s Internet footprint is forged and he’s actually a leftist. They cannot accept that the assailant believed right-wing conspiracy theories without taking on responsibility, so they’ve developed an alternate explanation instead.

Roughly 72 hours after news of the assault on Paul Pelosi had broken, the conspiracy theory had been promoted by a Republican member of Congress and by Donald Trump Jr., and “Pelosigaylover” was trending nationally on Twitter.

The conspiracy-minded ecosystem that fuels the right

The right-wing information ecosystem is built to create and propagate conspiracy theories like the latest drivel about the Pelosi attack.

On message boards and social media platforms, an army of right-wing would-be sleuths looking for political advantage or simple amusement are constantly on the hunt for raw materials that they can spin into these alternate narratives.

Hyperpartisan news sites with no journalistic standards – from local ones like the Santa Monica Observer to national players like Gateway Pundit – trawl those venues looking for stories that they can write up andmonetize.

The conspiracy theories move up the right-wing media food chain, with more and more prominent influencers and outlets picking up the story and running with it, until it becomes pervasive on the right.

Sprawling conspiracy theories like 2020 election denial, QAnon, Pizzagate, and Gamergate – all of which DePape had championed – worked their way through these networks.

The right-wing audience is uniquely vulnerable to these narratives.

The right-wing press spent decades spinning out these politically convenient narratives about the diabolical nature of their perceived enemies [NEWT! fox] until the audience came to demand them. Few on the right – and none with any real degree of influence – are interested in debunking the rampant lies once they get going. Instead, powerful figures at Fox News and elsewhere end up pushing the likes of QAnon talking points and scoffing at its extremism. And decades of right-wing attacks on the mainstream press have created a bubble in which the audience is unlikely to receive or credit contradictory information from those outlets.

The result is that we consistently see the conspiracy theories come to infest the ranks of the movement, from Vince Foster’s death to QAnon.

I expect the Paul Pelosi fantasy to follow the same route. Republican politicians and prominent Fox hosts will either stand by as the conspiracy theory builds credence on the right or even give a knowing wink and nod to its supporters. Some will probably promote it entirely, perhaps suggesting that these are simply questions that the media refuses to answer.

Credible news outlets will divert resources from covering the rising tide of right-wing political violence or the GOP’s disturbing policy aims if the party gains ground in the midterm elections to pointing out that the right is peddling nonsense about Pelosi.But thanks to the right-wing media bubble, their facts won’t make it to the people inclined to believe it. And so a sizable chunk of the GOP will come to believe an absurd lie.

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CMD 3 22

CNP

...Pushing Back Against China, the Left, and a “Woke” Military

Placing China “at the heart of the greatest challenges facing the United States in recent years”—from Covid to currency manipulation, climate policies, and “undue influence over American corporations”—Economic War Room host Kevin Freeman led a discussion titled “The 21st: An American or Chinese Century?”

Freeman was joined in the panel by Beau Brunson, Consumers’ Research Director of Policy and Regulatory Affairs. Consumers’ Research has committed millions in dark money to fight environmental, social, and corporate governance concerns (ESG) and “woke” capitalism, where BlackRock has emerged as a top target of its campaign for its “hypocritical” investments in China.

CMD recently exposed Consumers’ Research as one of the largest sponsors of the State Financial Officers Foundation, a group of Republican treasurers, auditors, and staff from 16 states, which has also prioritized fighting the ESG movement and “woke” capitalism.

Also on the panel were Pete Hoekstra, former ambassador to the Netherlands under Trump, and Steve Milloy, a FoxNews contributor and paid advocate for Phillip Morris, ExxonMobil, and other corporations.

The three also participated in a CNP Action panel on “Countering China,” where they collectively worked “on ways to combat the increasing and pervasive threat China poses to the United States and American life.”

Leading an CNP Action panel discussion on “Defunding the Left,”Buckeye InstitutePresident and CEO Robert Altfacilitated a tutorial on how to cut off contributions to “left-wing causes” by targeting public employee unions, trial lawyers, and investment management firms. O.H. Skinner, executive director of Alliance for Consumers, and Bridgett Wagner, vice president of policy promotion at the Heritage Foundation, joined the discussion.

New CNP Executive Member Boykinled a panel discussion focused on the question: “Can a Woke Military Address Future Threats?” with Mike Berry, First Liberty’s general counsel, and Keith Kellogg, retired Army lieutenant general and co-chair of AFPI’s Center for American Security.The three talked about “extreme policies [that] have been implemented through the Department of Defense” and “how woke ideologies have influenced our armed services.”

Two other CNP meetings are scheduled for this year, May 18–20 in McLean, VA, and September 15–17 in Frisco, TX.

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chris hayes had 2 experts and ref'd sev artl but not sure i found]

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/guns-republican-primary-campaign-ads-midterms-1336903/

see greitens rino hunt, assault ar15

no lnx twt many pix

The Real Reason Republicans Are Loading Their 2022 Campaign Ads With Guns

Conservative candidates have responded to the attack on the Capitol by doubling down on firearm worship and violent imagery to court their base

By RYAN BORT

A Republican official poses with a large gunA Republican official poses with a large gun

20,885 people were killed by guns in America in 2021, according to the Gun Violence Archive. That figure does not include suicides.

Youtube

Garrett Soldano released a pretty strange campaign ad last fall. The only words spoken in it came from a voice aggressively asking, “WHO?” and a chorus twice chanting “WE THE PEOPLE!” in response. The rest of the ad was 45 seconds of Soldano firing various weapons at a gun range, set to a heavy, looping guitar riff.

Soldano is not running for sheriff, or even for a seat in the state House. He’s a Republican running to become the next governor of Michigan.

Soldano’s ad may have been absurd, but it wasn’t atypical. Republican candidates are turning to guns, guns, guns in a very big way ahead of the midterms, serving their potential constituents with a torrent of campaign ads, Instagram posts, and even Christmas cards of themselves toting and firing deadly weapons. Conservatives using guns in campaign ads is nothing new, of course, but the way in which they’re being used in the wake of Trump’s term in office — and particularly in the wake the violent attack on the Capitol that ended it — portends a dark future for the party, and if it regains control of Washington, D.C., for the nation.

Ron Filipkowski, a researcher who tracks right-wing activity online and has highlighted several examples of Republicans going gun crazy in their campaign ads, says the use of guns in ads has “absolutely” ratcheted up this primary cycle compared to 2020 and 2018.

[RELATED STORIES

GOP Candidate Fantasizes About Murdering Political Opponents in New Ad [greitens?]

Ohio Shrinks Training Requirement for Teachers to Carry Guns From 700 Hours to 24]

“I started noticing it and was like, ‘What’s going on?'” he says. “I think it’s almost like the [Lauren] Boebert-, [Marjorie Taylor] Greene-ization of the whole America First movement that’s driving the Republican Party now. It’s those candidates who are the ones that are doing it. I feel like the establishment candidates kind of feel like they have to do it too, now.”

Boebert built her successful 2020 campaign largely around guns, and last year released an ad promising to carry a Glock on Capitol Hill. Greene in an ad for her 2020 campaign cocked an assault rifle as she warned “antifa terrorists” to stay out of her district, and last fall blew up a Prius with a 50-caliber rifle. Establishment Republicans like Lindsey Graham, who last year released a video of himself at a shooting range in khakis, are struggling to keep up, but the point is that they feel like they need to try. This is what the party is now.

Filipowski says he really started noticing the uptick in gun-centric ads, which were often the first big campaign rollout ads candidates would release, last fall. They haven’t stopped since.

Here’s Max Miller, a former Trump aide running for the Ohio U.S. House seat left vacant by retiring Republican Rep. Anthony Gonzalez, talking about using “a rifle to protect our country.”

Here’s Georgia U.S. House candidate Michael Collins blowing up “Nancy Pelosi’s Plan for America” before hopping in a big rig, throwing a football, and firing another assault rifle for good measure. “I’m not afraid to say I was pro-Trump from Day One,” he adds.

Here’s Blake Masters, who’s running for Senate in Arizona, with an intimate — and frankly, creepy — ad about his love for his Walther PPK and silencers.

Masters, a venture capitalist and favorite of Trump-loving billionaire Peter Thiel, has featured guns prominently throughout his primary campaign. He responded to President Biden’s promise on Monday to crack down on “ghost guns,” which are homemade and untraceable, by tweeting a picture of a “ghost gun” he recently built himself. “Very legal & very cool,” he wrote.

“Our founders built their own guns,” Masters added. “They intended us to as well — it’s the ultimate political act, a liberty the 2A protects. Technology will not stop. With 3D printing, this is going to get easier year after year. I’ll be a political check on ‘gun control,’ but the technological check is inevitable.”

Masters isn’t the only Republican to cry that the Second Amendment is under assault while vowing to scale back gun reform policy — Florida U.S. House candidate Anthony Sabatini even responded to Biden’s address on Tuesday by calling for the abolition of the ATF — and if the party takes back Congress in November they are likely to attempt to pass a slew of pro-gun legislation, from clearing the way for nationwide open carry to doing away with background checks. “Far-right politicians in primaries are licking the boots of gun lobbyists,” Moms Demand Action founder Shannon Watts told Rolling Stone in an email on Tuesday. They’ll certainly continue to do so once in office.

But there’s something more insidious behind the sudden rash of pro-gun ads than protecting the Second Amendment. It’s a visual reminder that the party believes Jan. 6 was a good thing, that the attack on the Capitol was a valiant effort, and that Republicans deserve candidates who is willing to implicitly or explicitly condone the use of violence to reclaim a bygone version of the United Statesthey’ve seen slip through their fingers under Democratic leadership — to make America great again.

“It’s an extremist movement,” says Mike Madrid, a Republican strategist and co-founder of The Lincoln Project. “The GOP base, at least a wide swath of it, has been radicalized. There are very few things you can do to demonstrate you’re more extreme and intense on tribal issues than to insinuate, tacitly or overtly, violence, that you are willing to fight for the cause. That’s what it is. It’s not a Second Amendment issue. It’s saying, ‘I’m this intense. I’m this extreme. I’m willing to go to these measures to fight for our tribe.’ That’s what it’s all about.”

As Idaho gubernatorial candidate Janice McGeachin put it in an ad released Monday in which she fires an assault rifle, “the Second Amendment wasn’t ratified into the Bill of Rights so we could bird hunt.”

“The Second Amendment has always been a defensive posture,” Madrid continues. “It’s always been don’t take my guns. What we are moving into now is something foundationally different. It’s now advocating that gun ownership and bearing arms is a virtue. It’s not a right. It’s almost an obligation. … There’s a desire to see a society that is centralized on this type of weaponry. There’s a lot of paranoia involved here, but it’s also demonstrative of a society that a lot of these members feel is out of their control.They feel quote unquote America is gone. It’s behind them. It’s already been taken, and theonly way to defend themselves from whatever that boogeyman is, is to have a stockpile of gold bullion, canned goods, and a ton of weaponry.”

Madrid, like Filipkowski, acknowledges that the use of guns in political ads is “growing,” and that by 2024 Republicans are going to be blowing stuff up. “Brandishing weapons and leaning into gun culture is viewed as revolutionary, and by revolutionary I mean, in their minds, the most virtuous sense, as defenders of quote unquote America,” he says. “There’s the 1776 rhetoric and there’s the patriot rhetoric, and there’s the American flag that’s always waved. It’s this absurd definition of what American is, and it’s getting more and more extreme in the Republican Party every election cycle.”

The fact that it’s getting so extreme among Republicans, and Republicans alone, may lead some to believe that the tenor of the ads could calm down a little ahead of the general election, when candidates typically pivot to a more moderate message in an effort to court a wider swath of voters.

In last year’s gubernatorial election in Virginia, Glenn Youngkin hammered guns, abortion, and his love of Trump during the Republican primary, but eased up on guns and abortion and distanced himself from Trump ahead of the general election, which he went on to win convincingly over Democrat Terry McAullife.

But this new fixation on guns is not coming from savvy billionaires like Youngkin. It’s coming from the hardcore MAGA set, and not only is it likely to stick around beyond the primaries, it’s likely hardwired into the DNA of a party now driven by extremism, conspiracy, and a belief that violence is a legitimate tool to achieve desired political outcomes.

“It’s not going to change,” Madrid says. “This is not this is not a primary tactic. This is mainstream Republicanism. So once you start to move off of that, you will start to lose the intensity of the support and turnout you need from the shrinking Republican base. Radicalization is the goal. This is about saying I’m willing to go to arms to overthrow what’s here or what’s coming. I’m willing to be violent in that cause. It’s not a small fringe group. These people are winning Republican primaries.”

In This Article: guns, Lauren Boebert, marjorie taylor greene

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an 5 22

senate Republican Minority Whip John Thune of South Dakota immediately poured cold water on a just-passed House bill to help fight rising domestic terrorism, in the wake of his past weekend’s massacre of ten Black people in Buffaloby a self-avowed white nationalist and antisemite and a California church shooting deemed a “politically motivated hate incident” by local law enforcement.

The House bill passed with all Democrats and just one Republican voting for it. 203 Republicans voted against the legislation that would establish new offices across three federal agencies to help identify and combat domestic terrorism. Three of the Republicans who voted against the legislation are original co-sponsors of the bill, and many who voted for a very similar bill two years ago voted against this bill Wednesday. The final tally was 222-203.

CNN’s Manu Raju reports Senator Thune, the second-most-powerful Senate Republican, is “skeptical the domestic terrorism bill that passed the House will get 10 GOP senators,” which it would need to pass, assuming all 50 Democrats vote for it.

He noted that it was a ‘pretty party-line vote.’ Said he had not studied the details of the bill yet but noted the outcome in the House makes him think it is ‘largely a partisan bill.'”

Republicans have a long history of blocking any attempt to curtail or get out in front of preventing domestic terrorism, despite – or because of – the vast majority of extremist-related murders are committed by right-wing extremists.

Republicans’ opposition to addressing right-wing extremism and domestic terrorism goes back at least as far as 2009, when, as Wired reported, “an analyst at the Department of Homeland Security focusing on far-right extremist groups” published this report about the danger of right-wing extremism. Outrage was so dramatic DHS was forced to retract it.

In 2016 Politico reported Congressional Republicans also in 2009 “succeeded in pushing to shut” down a DHS program, an intelligence unit “called the Extremism and Radicalization Branch.” Its mission? “Studying and monitoring sub-sections of the population for potential signs of ideological and political radicalization.”

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/05/right-wing-terrorism/

dart kos

One of the moredisturbing— but increasingly common— behaviors of the political right is its practice of cleverly goading and inciting violence towards other Americans. I say “cleverly” because they do this in full awareness of the potential consequences, but believe themselves to be untouchable, because they are online and usually anonymous.

These implicit, “winking” appeals to violence have recently been employed by the right in public settings — such as campaign speeches— where a speaker demonizes certain groups or individuals without ever explicitly urging that they be harmed or killed. Donald Trump himself elevatedthis type of malevolent rhetoricto an art form when he deliberately demonize and ethnic groups, often resulting in harassment and death threats against those same individuals(and often their families /maxresdefault.jpg)). His son, Donald Trump Jr. recently of himself at a shooting range with Missouri Senate candidate Eric Greitens in which the two of them fired automatic weapons at targets while voicing threats against “liberals.”

With these public models to inspire them and the anonymity afforded by the internet, it’s hardly surprising that purveyors of online hate speech have metastasized to the point where the encouragement of violence in rightwing online forums is now normalized. Up to this point, few people have suffered any consequences for the harm their “ free speech” might inflict on others.

That may be changing. One of the time-tested axioms in law is that there should be “no wrong without a remedy.” And legal practitioners fed up with the reckless disregard now exhibited (mostly) by the right, routinely putting other peoples’ lives at risk through this spew of untrammeled hate speech, are beginning to respond to this threat by laying the groundwork for new legal causes of action to hold such terrorists (for that is exactly what they are) accountable to those they harm through their exhortations to violence.

Jane Bambauer is a professor of law at the University of Arizona. In an article written for Lawfare, she explains why a variation on current common law jurisprudence should be adapted to the necessities of hate speech as it exists in the modern digital age. That article dovetails with a law review articleshe co-wrote which will be published in theinfluential Harvard Journal of Law and Technology.

The abstract of that article, titled Reckless Associations*,* explains why such an adaptation of the law is necessary in light of what we have witnessed developing over the last five years:

This Article provides a theoretical foundation and practical guide for a new form of liability that has proven necessary in the Internet era: the tort of Reckless Association. This tort would hold de facto leaders of informal networks responsible when radicalized members of the network cause physical harm to others. Recent prosecutions of the leaders of the Oath Keepers and other white supremacists who organized the Charlottesville protest, and rumblings of a similar prosecution against Donald Trump, demonstrate that there is a public appetite for this form of legal responsibility. To date, these prosecutions proceed on theories of incitement or conspiracy, but those doctrines are poor fits for cultural leaders, like Trump, whose media habits have created a drumbeat for increasingly paranoid thinking and action while also studiously avoiding making discrete statements that fit the heightened requirements of incitement.

In her Lawfare article, Bambauer notes that current criminal law does not provide an effective remedy for the type of “at-a-distance” terrorism practiced on the internet by the Alex Jones’s, Trumps and Greitens, for example. To hold such perpetrators accountable to the people harmed by their online digital discourse, it’s necessary to adapt common law liability to encompass the “ringleaders,” as she describes them: “[T]he central figures who are the most active, trusted and influential nodes in a radicalized network should be held civilly responsible for the physical harm foreseeably caused by other individuals in their social group.”

From the law review article, Bambauer describes how this type of liability would work in practice:

As an illustration: Alex Jones could be held civilly liable for the physical harm caused by the shooting at Comet Ping Pong pizzeria if the victim, through discovery of Twitter, Facebook, and other social networking data, could show that Jones was (one of) the most influential node(s) in the shooter’s network that persistently trafficked in Pizzagate pedophile conspiracy theories. Jones would have a defense based on lack of sufficient mental state (reckless indifference) if he could show that he had made even a modest attempt to correct the record or dampen the hostility—a defense we believe he would not actually be able to muster.

As Bambauer notes, the discovery process would provide the victim of such right-wing terrorism appropriate legal tools to determine, through the perpetrators’ online metadata, a graph network identifying those radicalized individuals “who are the most connected and the most frequent contributors to the swarm of crazy-making content.” Measuring the network’s centralitycould (and likely would) narrow this down to specific individuals.

The difficulty, of course, is establishing causation between these ringleaders’ conduct and the subsequent attack on the victim of violence. In Bambauer’s formulation, “liability should pass to the de facto leader only if the plaintiff can prove, by a preponderance of evidence, that the leader’s communications and activities in the social network had a true causal connection to the attack.” Bambauer suggests a Restatement (commonly used by lawyers and judges to summarize and define a specific point of law) be adopted as follows:

A defendant is subject to liability for a plaintiff if the defendant assumed a position of leadership within an association that recklessly caused a member of the association to intentionally harm the person of the plaintiff.

The legal evolution of these terms of art would be left to the common law (the bulk of Professor Bambauer’s Law Review article is devoted to the explication of these terms). Significantly, this is largely a function of state — not federal — courts, so its essential evolution would not be subject to corrupt Trump ideologues ensconced in the federal judiciary (They and their cohorts would, however, be the primary gatekeepers to its constitutionality).

Which brings us to the most difficult task: to reconcile this type of action against the activities of the perpetrators with their rights under the First Amendment, specifically their rights of free speech and association. Bambauer recognizes that her proposed framework “must exist entirely within the constraints of constitutional scrutiny, like the tort of defamation or the tort of public disclosure of private facts.”

Bambauer believes that this can be done, with an appropriate legal standard derived from existing restrictions on so-called “free speech” to protect others from harm caused by that speech:

[T]he First Amendment allows the law to penalize expression when the penalty is narrowly tailored to harm. As long as liability puts the burden on a plaintiff (who, by supposition, has already suffered physical injury) to prove causation and a reckless mental state, a new law of this sort can be reconciled with free speech precedent.

She suggests one way to overcome the “First Amendment” objection to this type of legal remedy is to analogize its elements to the“imminence”standard for restricting/penalizing potentially violence-inducing free speech already established under First Amendment jurisprudence (speech which will likely result in “imminent harm” to someone is unprotected, for example). She also makes the shrewd point that the current efforts to “censor” harmful web content by imposing legal or regulatory obligations to do so is even more “censorious” than what she proposes.

Bambauer also recognizes there are also risks of over-reaction that could chill beneficial, non-injurious speech, and that the creation of this new tort would be an invitation to intentionally frivolous (and expensive) litigious harassment, leading to self-censorship by many internet platforms out of sheer fear. To combat this, she suggests, “The tort needs to be demanding enough in terms of elements and proof so that an awareness that somebody in the network might do something violent is not enough for liability.” She uses the example of a civil rights leader whose rhetoric sparks an act of violence, even if unintended.

But it’s possible for courts to construct a tort that would be strong and clear enough to avoid negative chilling effects and First Amendment conflict. First, the elements of the tort will ensure that it is not sufficient for a plaintiff to show that a defendant has a lot of followers or creates incendiary content that gets circulated a lot. The causation and mental state requirements would reach only individuals who are persistent—who are in the ear, so to speak, of the members of their informal groups on a daily or hourly basis. This is the behavior that keeps members of a loosely affiliated group in a cycle of grievance, and it is a phenomenon unique to, or at least uniquely trackable in, networked communications..[.]

I want to emphasize that Bambauer’s Lawfare article is only a summary of her points. She and her co-writers address the potential practical and constitutional objections to their proposal at considerable length in the law review article (which I trust you will all read :). I would also suggest that despite the relative novelty of its subject matter, her analysis is quite thorough and because of that fact alone it will be well-received by a judiciary grappling with these issues.

But the bottom line is this: Every indication is that Republicans and their enablers will continue ratcheting up the violent rhetoric until someone --or more likely, several people — are killed as a clear-cut, direct consequence of the hatred they now spew with such casual impunity. We now have electedor would-be elected officials airing advertisements which tacitly or explicitly encourage the murder of their political opponents. We have organizations whose sole mission relies on the provocation of an armed, violent overthrow of our government. And in the shadows, we have a set of well-heeled provocateurswho find themselves able to gleefully skate away from their responsibility for promoting violence against people they happen to disagree with.

None of this is a joke. There’s no “privacy” or “First Amendment” interest in soliciting murder. If Republicans and their enablers want to continue down this path of advocating violence while trying to hide behind a cloak of “plausible deniability,” these types of claims will be brought. A victim of this type of “stochastic” incitement to violence— or perhaps a relative of a victim — will sue in order to ferret out those responsible and hold them liable. Another basic maxim of the law is that if there’s any possible cause of action, some enterprising lawyer will use it. Eventually, a state court judge will allow that claim to go forward.

Bambauer’s law review article concludes as follows:

It is clear enough that the radical freedom of online associations predictably causes individuals to associate in likeminded groups where peer effects and feedback loops lead to increasingly deluded beliefs. Society needs law and social norms to place responsibility for these dynamics on the set of people who can most easily monitor and avoid the problems. Contrary to popular belief, that set of people is not the executives and employees of major tech platforms. It is the users themselves—particularly the informal leaders who benefit from the fame and financial rewards of the radicalization process without shouldering any of the risk.

Anyone who continues target their fellow citizens with this type of noxious rhetoric -- and thinks they’ll just “get away with it” when someone takes their words seriously -- might want to keep that in mind.

---

https://www.alternet.org/2022/03/the-disturbing-tale-of-how-one-texas-democrat-devolved-into-a-far-right-putin-propagandist/

Russell "Texas" Bentley was once a drug-dealing leftist but now he's devolved into a far-right extremist in support of Russian President Vladamir Putin.

The Putin advocate garnered attention from the far-right this week with his viral YouTube video explaining his position. Although the controversial video was removed from YouTube, it is still circulating on Twitter. Now, he's conducted an interview with Rolling Stone to further discuss how he made the transition.

According to Bentley's remarks, his goal aligns with that of Putin. He claims he desires to "bring 'Ukraine back into the Slavic family where it belongs and has been for 1,000 years.' As for the 'bad people' he hopes to see the hammer dropped on? They seem to include not only the rulers of Ukraine but the leaders of his former American homeland."

He added,"On VK — the Russian alternative to Facebook — Bentley posted that he was 'heading west with the Liberators of Ukraine. We may stop in Kiev, we may stop on the English Channel. We may liberate the USA.'"

[twt]

on Tuesday, March 1, Rolling Stone conducted a phone interview with Bentley.The propagandist, who described himself as an “auto-didact" and an "information warrior" for Russia, claims his distrust of the U.S. government has gradually swelled over the years.

His belief in conspiracies has also increased significantly. Like many other right-wing conspiracy theorists, Bentley has distorted beliefs about 9/11. He claims his U.S. military expertise have helped him to determine that 9/11 was "an inside job."

He said, "You can say what you want about building one and two, but building seven? Anyone that doesn’t understand that that was a pre-planned, pre-placed controlled demolition is either an idiot or a liar.”

Over the years, Bentley's disdain for the United States government waned while his fascination with Russia grew. When the Maidan Revolution began in Ukraine in 2014, Bentley became more determined to stand for Russia. He believes the overturn of the Russian-supported government in Kyiv was nothing more than "the work of the State Department and the CIA and Soros."

The Russian enthusiast reportedly packed up, broke up with his girlfriend and made his way to the frontlines Donbas. He recalled what life was like when he first arrived. “When I came here, I didn’t think I would live through the winter, bro,” says Bentley. “I didn’t hardly speak Russian. It was a major war with a full-on National Army against the people’s militia. And I was on the little guys’ side,” he said, as he claimed to believe he was "defending good people against abjectly evil people.”

As for the Russian assault on Ukraine, Bentley is adamant about his support of Putin although it will only lead to more innocent bloodshed. He concluded with an eerie prayer as the Russian invasion continues. “May God protect the innocent,” he said. “And may the rest of us get everything that we deserve.”

---

an 1 21

https://www.alternet.org/2022/01/capitol-riot-research/

Slate on Wednesday published an interview with Robert Pape, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago who has spent the last year analyzing the demographic background of Capitol rioters.

Slate described his conclusions about the rioters as "sobering" and in particular pointed to his "research that tied rioters’ home counties to the areas that had lost the most white population in recent years."

While speaking with Slate, Pape said that he was surprised that so many of the rioters were doctors, lawyers, and other well paid professionals, and not the kind of people who usually fall in with extremist militas.

"When you look at this, it’s just one category after another after another that shouts outmainstream," he said. "The Jan. 6 insurrectionists really are best understood as a product of the mainstream."

Pape then explained how he and his team of researchers went about trying to learn just how mainstream MAGA rioters' beliefs are among the general population, and found them to be surprisingly widespread.

"21 million American adults agree with two radical beliefs: one, that the use of force to restore Donald Trump to the presidency is justified, and two, that Joe Biden stole the 2020 election and is an illegitimate president," he said. "That is, 21 million don’t hold just one of those beliefs—they hold both of those beliefs.It’s 8 percent of the body politic, but that’s really significant. That really can’t easily be characterized as just the 'fringe.' We normally would think the 'fringe' would be 1 percent or less."

Underlying these two beliefs, Pape said, was the "great replacement" conspiracy theory that claims the American government is systematically trying to replace native-born white Americans with people of color from other countries.

"When you ask questions about their belief in 'the great replacement,' you see that that is head and shoulders the No. 1 belief that’s driving the difference between being in the 21 million versus being in the rest of the body politic," he explained.

---

is gosar signal that radicalization is primary? 1/6?

aha: almost truism but true that 1st step is to make enemy subhuman thus ok to kill; in fact it is your duty to kill enemy that threatens the sacred 14 words white children or OUR Way Of Life = capitalism freedumb see violence "when do we get to use the guns?"

xian end days = // qanon storm // turner diary cleansing fire of race war; madison [girl name?] cawthorne evokes satan? MTG? boebert?

nancy aoc, ilhan omar greta are women/ POC with power which is unnatural; nanny STATE gubmint take guns freedumbs vs strict fr who will punish/ put THOSE ppl back down in their rightful place //PHOBES basket of deplorables.

to apologize is unmanly, admitting defeat, esp to trump/istas for whom loyal tribal solidarity litmus is all; played inevitable victim card? gop minority in both houses explicit aim is obstructionist, gerry maintain minority power yet he bemoan/threatens this will be weapon in future?

aha: polarization --> demonization--> death threat --> death squad pinochet helo rides did nothing wrong Kyle

mantra of demonization can make name eg pelosi into a devil term; she was actively hunted 1/6 shoot bitch in the brain? AOC = commie? radicalization // demonization

landed here pol cartoon accidentally but interesting analogy? pirate creshaw action here, gosar flies? defeats evil? scott perry chr freedom cocks we must destroy dems/nazis

https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/ocasio-cortez-gosar/

put in context of huge surge in death threats and 1/6 attack; gabby scalise shot; how signif is that this is pix? cartoon? anime genre? trump WWF vs CNN?

gosar censored for aoc kill anime, also biden; tired to blame staff? alt rt ploy just kidding? shooting bills in ads cliche so he just escalated to claiming that he was killing a rep/symbol of their policies [that are destroying am // scott perry freedom cock?]; prev border patrol agent vid rape aoc? threw burritos?

pretty good speech:

Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona, a far-right MAGA Republican and conspiracy theorist who has never been shy about making inflammatory remarks, has been drawing vehement criticism from Democrats for posting a cartoon that depicts him murdering Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York City and inflicting harm on President Joe Biden. He has previously been criticized for appearing at a conference organized by white supremacists.

Many House Republicans, however, have been silent about the controversies. And Ocasio-Cortez, during a speech on the House floor this week, called them out them out for it.

The congresswoman, during her speech, made it clear that amuch more vehement response from House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and other GOP leaders is needed.

AOC: "It's a sad day in which a member who leads a political party in the United States of America cannot bring themselves to say that issuing a depiction of murdering a member of Congress is wrong, and instead decides to venture off into a tangent about gas prices and inflation"pic.twitter.com/fi13Jb396s

— Justin Baragona (@Justin Baragona)1637178021

AOC: "Does anyone in this chamber find this behavior acceptable? Would you allow depictions of violence against women, against colleagues? Would you allow that in your home? ... And if it\u2019s not acceptable there, why should it be accepted here?!"pic.twitter.com/Bas9dS5dfo

— Justin Baragona (@Justin Baragona)1637178312

Ocasio-Cortez told fellow House members, "What I believe is unprecedented is for a member of House leadership of either party to be unable to condemn incitement of violence against a member of this body. It is sad, it is a sad day in which a member who leads a political party in the United States of America cannot bring themselves to say that issuing a depiction of murdering a member of Congress is wrong…. What is so hard, what is so hard about saying that this is wrong?"

READ:A growing threat is emerging from the theocratic wing of the GOP — but many liberals are missing it

The Democratic congresswoman added, "This is not about me. This is not about Rep. Gosar. But this is about what we are willing to accept."

Gosar has maintained that the anti-AOC cartoon was meant to be a joke, but Ocasio-Cortez stressed that depictions of murder should never be taken lightly.

"This nihilism runs deep," Ocasio-Cortez explained. "It conveys and betrays a certain contempt for the meaning and importance of our work here — that what we do, so long as we claim it is a joke, doesn't matter."

jihad squad: https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/rep-ilhan-omar-torches-lauren-boebert-following-bizarre-rant-on-house-floor/

---

aha omg vax is everywhere basically = neg?!

radicalization, polarization --> civil war

perfect storm of koch anti-gubmint BS erodes trust in inst/norms that trump fascists must erode/coopt

tucker is mainstreaming gt replacement theory, bad trinity in on big lie and anti-vax

see black flag below

---

aha/doh IT'S SYSTEMIC: shift platform eg telegram, then use bad spelling, it's resilient b/c it's a network

amplify, algo, radicalization, echo/escalator

https://theconversation.com/facebook-whistleblower-frances-haugen-testified-that-the-companys-algorithms-are-dangerous-heres-how-they-can-manipulate-you-169420

Fo:{rmer Facebook product manager Frances Haugen testified before the U.S. Senate on Oct. 5, 2021, that the company’s social media platforms “} harm children, stoke division and weaken our democracy :{.”:(style="background-color:#ffffff;"/maxresdefault.jpg):{.”}:

Haugen was the primary source for a Wall Street Journal exposé on the company. She called Facebook’s algorithms dangerous, said Facebook executives were aware of the threat but put profits before people, and called on Congress to regulate the company.

Social media platforms rely heavily on people’s behavior to decide on the content that you see. In particular, they watch for content that people respond to or “engage” with by liking, commenting and sharing. Troll farms, organizations that spread provocative content, exploit this by copying high-engagement content and posting it as their own, which helps them reach a wide audience.

As a computer scientist who studies the ways large numbers of people interact using technology, I understand the logic of using the wisdom of the crowds in these algorithms. I also see substantial pitfalls in how the social media companies do so in practice.

From lions on the savanna to likes on Facebook

The concept of the wisdom of crowds assumes that using signals from others’ actions, opinions and preferences as a guide will lead to sound decisions. For example, collective predictions are normally more accurate than individual ones. Collective intelligence is used to predict financial markets, sports, elections and even disease outbreaks.

Throughout millions of years of evolution, these principles have been coded into the human brain in the form of cognitive biases that come with names like familiarity, mere exposure and bandwagon effect. If everyone starts running, you should also start running; maybe someone saw a lion coming and running could save your life. You may not know why, but it’s wiser to ask questions later.

Your brain picks up clues from the environment – including your peers – and uses simple rules to quickly translate those signals into decisions: Go with the winner, follow the majority, copy your neighbor. These rules work remarkably well in typical situations because they are based on sound assumptions. For example, they assume that people often act rationally, it is unlikely that many are wrong, the past predicts the future, and so on.

Technology allows people to access signals from much larger numbers of other people, most of whom they do not know. Artificial intelligence applications make heavy use of these popularity or “engagement” signals, from selecting search engine results to recommending music and videos, and from suggesting friends to ranking posts on news feeds.

Not everything viral deserves to be

Our research shows that virtually all web technology platforms, such as social media and news recommendation systems, have a strong popularity bias. When applications are driven by cues like engagement rather than explicit search engine queries, popularity bias can lead to harmful unintended consequences.

Social media like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and TikTok rely heavily on AI algorithms to rank and recommend content. These algorithms take as input what you like, comment on and share – in other words, content you engage with. The goal of the algorithms is to maximize engagement by finding out what people like and ranking it at the top of their feeds.

A primer on the Facebook algorithm.[vid?]

On the surface this seems reasonable. If people like credible news, expert opinions and fun videos, these algorithms should identify such high-quality content. But the wisdom of the crowds makes a key assumption here: that recommending what is popular will help high-quality content “bubble up.”

We tested this assumption by studying an algorithm that ranks items using a mix of quality and popularity. We found that in general, popularity bias is more likely to lower the overall quality of content. The reason is that engagement is not a reliable indicator of quality when few people have been exposed to an item. In these cases, engagement generates a noisy signal, and the algorithm is likely to amplify this initial noise. Once the popularity of a low-quality item is large enough, it will keep getting amplified.

Algorithms aren’t the only thing affected by engagement bias – it can affect people too. Evidence shows that information is transmitted via “complex contagion,” meaning the more times people are exposed to an idea online, the more likely they are to adopt and reshare it. When social media tells people an item is going viral, their cognitive biases kick in and translate into the irresistible urge to pay attention to it and share it.

Not-so-wise crowds

We recently ran an experiment using a news literacy app called Fakey. It is a game developed by our lab that simulates a news feed like those of Facebook and Twitter. Players see a mix of current articles from fake news, junk science, hyperpartisan and conspiratorial sources, as well as mainstream sources. They get points for sharing or liking news from reliable sources and for flagging low-credibility articles for fact-checking.

We found that players are more likely to like or share and less likely to flag articles from low-credibility sources when players can see that many other users have engaged with those articles. Exposure to the engagement metrics thus creates a vulnerability.

The wisdom of the crowds fails because it is built on the false assumption that the crowd is made up of diverse, independent sources. There may be several reasons this is not the case.

First, because of people’s tendency to associate with similar people, their online neighborhoods are not very diverse. The ease with which social media users can unfriend those with whom they disagree pushes people into homogeneous communities, often referred to as echo chambers.

Second, because many people’s friends are friends of one another, they influence one another. A famous experiment demonstrated that knowing what music your friends like affects your own stated preferences. Your social desire to conform distorts your independent judgment.

Third, popularity signals can be gamed. Over the years, search engines have developed sophisticated techniques to counter so-called “link farms” and other schemes to manipulate search algorithms. Social media platforms, on the other hand, are just beginning to learn about their own vulnerabilities.

People aiming to manipulate the information market have created fake accounts, like trolls and social bots, and organized fake networks. They have flooded the network to create the appearance that a conspiracy theory or a political candidate is popular, tricking both platform algorithms and people’s cognitive biases at once. They have even altered the structure of social networks to create illusions about majority opinions.

Dialing down engagement

What to do? Technology platforms are currently on the defensive. They are becoming more aggressive during elections in taking down fake accounts and harmful misinformation. But these efforts can be akin to a game of whack-a-mole.

A different, preventive approach would be to add friction. In other words, to slow down the process of spreading information. High-frequency behaviors such as automated liking and sharing could be inhibited by CAPTCHA tests, which require a human to respond, or fees. Not only would this decrease opportunities for manipulation, but with less information people would be able to pay more attention to what they see. It would leave less room for engagement bias to affect people’s decisions.

It would also help if social media companies adjusted their algorithms to rely less on engagement signals and more on quality signals to determine the content they serve you. Perhaps the whistleblower revelations will provide the necessary impetus.

---

splc accelerationist

...

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, butnone 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.....

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no lnx

Black flag: Understanding the Trumpists' latest threatening symbol

Chauncey DeVega and Salon October 12, 2021

It's an old truism that the "real bad men" (and bad women) "move in silence and violence." That's certainly true for the most dangerous and most effective of Donald Trump's allies, henchmen, henchwomen, and other followers. But for Donald Trump himself, and most of his political cult, that rule does not apply.

Trump and his followers were loud, exuberant and enthusiastic on Jan. 6. The lethal attack on the Capitol had been publicly announced weeks in advance, and should have come as no surprise. Trump's rallies and gatherings continue to celebrate violence and the prospect of revenge — and specifically of "getting even" with Trump's "enemies."

Steve Bannon, Trump's former campaign chairman and White House strategist, has now threatened to recruit Republican-fascist "shock troops" with the apparent goal of undermining the U.S. government, and by implication multiracial democracy, if and when Trump and the Republicans regain control of both Congress and the White House.

On a daily basis Fox News and other elements of the right-wing disinformation propaganda machine use stochastic terrorism and other techniques to radicalize their audience into committing acts of political violence. To this point, the Democratic Party and the political and news media class in general have remained in denial, and largely passive in response.

In one troubling new development, Trump supporters have begun flying all-black American flags, in an implicit threat to harm or kill their opponents — meaning nonwhite people,"socialist liberals," Muslims, vaccinated people and others deemed to be "enemies" of "real America." As media critic Eric Boehlert recently noted, the liberal opinion site Living Blue in Texas is sounding the alarm about the specific meaning of the black flag and the Republican-fascists support for terrorism and other political violence. That post, "Are Your Republican Neighbors Planning on Killing You?", merits lengthy quotation:

It didn't take long to find hundreds of videos where these Trumpers and so-called patriots were hanging black American flags. ...

Black American flags are the flags that mean "no quarter shall be given." They are the opposite of the white flag of surrender.

According to the people on TikTok and the Sun (British tabloid), the black American flag originated in the civil war and was flown by the Confederates.

It means that they will not surrender, will not take prisoners, and are willing to die for their cause. It means they will execute their enemies.

Who are their enemies? Pretty much any non-Conservative. You know, Democrats, Liberals, LGBTQ, BIPOC, and the vaccinated. ...

So, we're the enemy, and they're openly professing to want to execute us. … So, why are they doing this

Covid vaccinations, mostly. They believe that Joe Biden has declared a civil war on them by mandating that employers with over 100 employees and the military have vaccinations.

Yes, they say civil war, and they say it's already started. But, unfortunately, many of them also live in states where masks and vaccines are required by state governments, healthcare, and law enforcement.

An alarming number of military members have been making Tik Toks talking about how they are being discharged because they refuse the vaccine. It's alarming because there is probably an equal number of guys on there talking about the civil war plans and actively using Tik Tok to recruit these military and ex-military members.

The biggest message they have been sending out is, "it's time" or "the time is now." ...

Although showing guns on Tik Tok is supposed to be against community guidelines, they show lots of videos of their guns, shooting them, wearing them, or sitting on their bed.

They primarily use Tik Tok as a recruiting tool and let others know their willingness to commit violence. Then they tell people to message them or where to find them on Telegram.

However you interpret these videos posted by Trump followers and other neofascists — which could be mainly performative — it is clearly true that the American right is increasingly willing to accept or condone violence as a means of expanding and protecting their social and political power. (Salon did not find licensed news photographs of these flags, and has made the editorial decision not to reproduce the images mentioned above, which are easy to find on social media.)

Public opinion polls and other research have repeatedly shown that millions of Republican voters and Trump followers would support the use of violence to remove Joe Biden from office because of the "Big Lie" and their belief that that he is not a legitimate president. Similarly, a large proportion of Republicans believe that the rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 were "patriots" whose use of violence was justified.

And a new poll from the University of Virginia's Center for Politics even suggests that more than 50 percent of Trump supporters want "red states" to secede from the Union. Republican elected officials and other right-wing opinion leaders have continued to escalate their threats of political violence against Democrats and other targeted groups.

In a recent speech to the North Carolina Faith and Freedom Coalition's "Salt & Light" conference, Rep. Madison Cawthorn, R-N.C., issued what sounded like a declaration of war:

:{:{}:

It is time for the American Christian church to come out of the shadows to say, "No longer are we going to allow our culture to be determined by people who hate the things that we believe in…. We are going to stand valiantly for God's incredible inherent truths that predate any version of government. Because, my friends, if we lose this country today, if we bend the knee to the Democrats today, our country will be lost forever, our children will never know what freedom is. It's our duty to stand up, Let us stand united as men and women of faith to fight for our country.

During an interview with MSNBC's Joy Reid, terrorism and national security expert Malcolm Nance said that Cawthorn's video "picks up on the themes that are not just coming from the Steve Bannon level and Donald Trump level, they are coming from the Republican street — and that Republican street is armed. They're angry. They have been fed an entire line which makes them believe that America is no longer America and that they no longer want the America that the rest of us, the 60 percent of the country, live in. And they`re willing to take up arms for it."

Nance also noted that Cawthorn's propaganda video is thematically similar to the type of propaganda used by Islamic terrorist groups such as ISIS and al-Qaida to radicalize and recruit members.

During an interview with Scientific American magazine, Dr. Bandy Lee, the principal editor of the 2017 bestseller "The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump," explained how a mentally pathological leader can "infect" his followers and perhaps even an entire nation:

I have outlined two major emotional drives: narcissistic symbiosis and shared psychosis. Narcissistic symbiosis refers to the developmental wounds that make the leader-follower relationship magnetically attractive. The leader, hungry for adulation to compensate for an inner lack of self-worth, projects grandiose omnipotence — while the followers, rendered needy by societal stress or developmental injury, yearn for a parental figure. When such wounded individuals are given positions of power, they arouse similar pathology in the population that creates a "lock and key" relationship….

"Shared psychosis" — which is also called "folie à millions" ["madness for millions"] when occurring at the national level or "induced delusions" — refers to the infectiousness of severe symptoms that goes beyond ordinary group psychology. When a highly symptomatic individual is placed in an influential position, the person's symptoms can spread through the population through emotional bonds, heightening existing pathologies and inducing delusions, paranoia andpropensity for violence — even in previously healthy individuals. The treatment is removal of exposure.

Trump and his regime gave permission and encouragement to his followers and other supporters to engage in antisocial and other anti-human behavior on a national scale. Once such a process has begun, and those forces are unleashed, it is not easy to stop. Fascism is not a simple machine with an on-and-off switch. In practice, fascism is given life and takes corporeal form through its followers, with each one being a potential carrier of the pathology.

As Hussein Ibish warned in a recent article in the Atlantic, "The cancer of political violence is not an endemic American disease. At the moment, it is a Republican disease. No one but Republicans themselves can cure it. Until they do, the violence of the right is only going to keep swelling and crashing. From a Middle Eastern perspective, this is all appallingly familiar."

Fascism is a highly virulent social disease that usually destroys the host body – but not before spreading the disease to many other people. In fact, if the original host dies, he or she can be elevated to the status of martyr for "the cause," serving to inspire existing followers and lure in new ones.

Ultimately, Donald Trump, like other fascist and authoritarian leaders, is the symptom of a sick society. Trumpism is not actually the core disease. For America to counteract the deep underlying illness that has made Trumpism possible will require a long-term cultural and moral reckoning. Anything less, and the disease of American fascism will only go dormant until it is resurrected again — perhaps in a more dangerous and virulent form.

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BANNON AND TUCKER ARE MAINSTREAMING DANGEROUS rw bs:

same one as cspan booktv?

https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/this-is-american-fascism-a-disturbing-event-will-bring-together-gun-nuts-trumpians-and-doomsday-christianists-report/

Freedom Festival is a far-right event held in Greenley, Pennsylvania and organized by a combination of Moonies and gun manufacturers. The speakers at this year's event will include former National Rifle Association spokesperson Dana Loesch and former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, and according to Daily Beast reporter Jose Pagliery, their presence at Freedom Festival underscores the ever-increasing radicalization of the Republican Party.

"Few Americans are even aware that the gun company Kahr and a rural Pennsylvania doomsday church — both run by the same ultra-rich Korean family — hold an annual 'Freedom Festival'that attracts gun enthusiasts and the type of people who attach 'Don't Tread on Me' flags to the back of their trucks," Pagliery explains in an article published on October 8. "But in the wake of the failed January 6 insurrection, the event'samalgamation of sovereign citizens and alt-truthers has taken on a new meaning. And now, it's even got an all-star lineup."

Ryan Busse, a former gun industry executive, warns that the presence of a former NRA spokesperson at Freedom Festival is "legitimizing" extremism.

Busse told the Beast, "It's going to send a message across the country that this is normal, that this is OK. This is American fascism being developed right before our eyes. This is like 1936 Germany in a symposium."

Busse went on to say, "The one that concerns me the most is Dana Loesch. She's treated by gun consumers like royalty, and here she is legitimizing this insanity. That scares me."

Pagliery notes thatKahr Firearms Group,which manufactures semi-automatic weapons, is run by a family of Moonies. Founded by the late Rev. Sun Myung Moon during the 1950s, the Moonies are a Christianist cult known for conspiracy theories, End Times themes and a far-right ideology.

"While Sun Myung Moon became a prominent figure in the American conservative movement — founding the Washington Times newspaper — one of his sons, Justin Moon, founded the Kahr gun company in 1995," Pagliery explains. "And another son, Hyung Jin Sean Moon, inherited an offshoot of the church that goes by the World Peace and Unification Sanctuary and warns about 'the End of Times.' With the patriarch now deceased, his sons have largely merged their worlds."

Pagliery continues,"The reverend son now refers to his church with a more militant name — Rod of Iron Ministries— an allusion to his unification of disparate ideas: faith and guns. And churchgoers wear metal crowns on their heads, signifying individuals' ultimate sovereign authority over themselves. They also carry semi-automatic rifles like AR-15s and AK-47s, fashioning their guns like pious medieval knights would a sword."

The Moonies are not white supremacists; Rev. Sun Myung Moon was Korean. But according to J.J. MacNab of George Washington University's Program on Extremism, that doesn't make them any less dangerous.

MacNab told the Beast, "They've never really gotten the attention I think they should, because they're not a White supremacy group. Anybody that's pushing such a hearty mix of guns and religion are problematic to me. And the doomsday element is there. It's effectively talking about death."

Busse finds Freedom Festival's combination of religious extremism, guns, conspiracy theories and Trumpism to be incredibly toxic.

The former NRA member told the Beast, "It's what I fear: anything that will gin up people to buy more guns, hate people more, and vote for people like Trump. It's all of that on steroids. Doesn't the Klan meet in the dark out back behind uncle's barn? This is right out in the open."

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BTB

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

Chapter 7: The Digital Reich

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

nazi good at WWW early]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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an 621

fBI warns Congress of more possible QAnon violence targeting Democratic lawmakers

David Badash The New Civil Rights Movement June 15, 2021

The FBI has briefed members of Congress that QAnon "digital soldiers" may become violent and engage in more acts of domestic violent extremism, like the January 6 insurrection. In an unclassified version of the threat assessment delivered to top lawmakers in April the Bureau warns that Democrats may be targeted.

Rather than walking away from the far right wing conspiracy movement that paints some top Democrats as part of a dark cabal of cannibalistic Satan-worshipping pedophiles being fought by Donald Trump, some QAnon cultists think "that individuals need to take greater control of the direction of the movement than before," CNN reports in an exclusive.

The shift is fueled by a belief among some of the conspiracy's more militant followers that they "can no longer 'trust the plan" set forth by its mysterious standard-bearer, known simply as "Q," according an unclassified FBI threat assessment on QAnon sent to lawmakers last week, which was obtained by CNN.

This might lead followers to seek to harm "perceived members of the 'cabal' such as Democrats and other political opposition — instead of continually awaiting Q's promised actions which have not occurred," according to the assessment.

CNN also reports FBI Director Christopher Wray "made clear the bureau is not investigating" the QAnon movement, but only crimes committed by its adherents.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

'An idiocracy based on a digital prophet': QAnon longs for a fascist ... ›

How Fox News is now defending QAnon - Alternet.org ›

This QAnon supporter and Capitol rioter now says he was a 'victim ... ›

A Jailhouse Wedding

In interviews, Carrillo's siblings describe a brother who suffered from years of severe mental health problems and didn't get the support and medical treatment he needed from the Air Force. “I could see his pain," Carrillo's sister, Ruby, said.

Over two hours of interviews, Carrillo himself did not attribute any of his actions to mental illness. Instead, he forthrightly proclaimed his support for the Boogaloo Bois and repeatedly challenged what he views as misconceptions about the group.

“I just want to say, the Boogaloo movement, you know, there's a lot in the paper that I feel like people don't understand," he said. “And that is the Boogaloo movement, it's all inclusive. It includes everyone. It's not a thing about race. It's about people that love freedom, liberty, and they're unhappy with the level of control that the government takes over our lives. So it's just a movement, it's a thought about freedom. It's just a complete love for freedom."

Meanwhile, as Carrillo sits in jail awaiting trial, his political evolution continues. In a letter he wrote to reporters in October, he referred to Joe Biden as a man who “sniffs kids," echoing QAnon, a pro-Trump conspiracy theory that falsely accuses the Democratic Party of running a Satan-worshipping child sex-trafficking ring.

Carrillo's defense lawyers declined to comment.

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