ammon bundy 2

===

VAXXER

finchem any hands-on involvEment malheur?

see raiklin

see vets on patrol

dar leaf?

---==

SOMEONE HAD THREE? PRONG APPROACH TO 2020 ELECTION, INVOLVED MASK LOCKDOWN PROTESTS?

---

RWW

02/03/2026

Kyle Mantyla

Isaac Schorr @ Mediaite: Mike Johnson Jumps Aboard Trump’s Rigged Elections Bandwagon: ‘Can I Prove That? No’

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) suggested that three 2024 congressional elections may have been rigged against the GOP while speaking to reporters on Tuesday.

David Moye @ HuffPost: Turning Point USA's Alternative Super Bowl Lineup Is Even Lamer Than You Thought

Turning Point USA, the right-wing political group founded by Charlie Kirk, announced the lineup on Monday for what it’s billed as an alternative Super Bowl halftime show, and people on social media aren’t exactly singing its praises.

The Throckmorton Initiative: TPUSA's Super Bowl Halftime Show with a Side Dish of Christian Nationalism

The late Charlie Kirk’s organization Turning Point USA is planning and promoting what it calls a “conservative friendly” alternative to the NFL sponsored Super Bowl halftime show. The NFL show features Puerto Rican raggaeton artist Bad Bunny. Headling the TPUSA show is Kid Rock. If you know anything about these artists, you know that both use profanity and explicit lyrics. The key difference for people supporting the alternative show is that Bad Bunny is Puerto Rican and performs his lyrics in Spanish. This has MAGA folk in a tizzy. They want their Super Bowl white and English.

Sophie Lawton @ Media Matters: Steve Bannon's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Weekend

As his extensive and friendly communications with Epstein were revealed, Steve Bannon's candidate lost a “vitally important” election.

Alex Galbraith @ Salon: “Can’t understand how they think”: Bundy breaks with MAGA over ICE operations

The rancher famous for armed standoffs with the government said the left is "more correct" on immigration.

Steve Benen @ The Maddow Blog: Trump claims he wasn’t ‘friendly’ with Epstein, despite all of the available evidence

The president’s willingness to push a line that was obviously untrue was an odd and unnecessary misstep.

Vic Verbalaitis @ The Daily Beast: Judge Jeanine Scrambles to Backtrack After MAGA Turns on Her

Judge Jeanine is doing damage control, but it’s not going well.

---

===

// hurric BS?

alternet-

Extremists posing as aid workers urge NC locals to tear down cell towers and hit military

Michael Lewis Arthur Meyer booking photo from 2018

Jordan Green November 02, 2024

A group of anti-government extremists who showed up in western North Carolina promising to provide disaster relief after Hurricane Helene is now threatening to destroy cell-phone towers and sabotage military vehicles.

The group, Veterans on Patrol, attracted attention by setting up a disaster relief staging area in the parking lot of the Ingles grocery store in Lake Lure, about 50 miles from Asheville.

But locals, including some who initially cooperated with the group, began to complain about threats and harassment.

Over the past three weeks, members of the group, which falsely claims that Helene was caused by a “weather weapon,” have been making conspiracy-driven claims that the U.S. military is attempting to kill U.S. citizens with “directed energy weapons.”

ALSO READ: Inside the grift that could cost Donald Trump the election

Veterans on Patrol’s channel on the encrypted social-media platform Telegram posted a message on Thursday displaying photos of what appears to be a cell tower on a mountaintop. The message asserted that locals “are in Live Exercises where the United States Military is permitted to destroy your homes, bodies and minds,” while suggesting that equipment on the tower “is solely for providing the U.S. military the means to murder Americans.”

“Focus on tearing down their weapons,” the message reads. It continues, “All it takes is one weapon tower being toppled with the stated reason spoken boldly.”

Another message posted in the group’s Telegram channel appears to advocate for sabotaging military vehicles and assets.

“Simple acts of pouring sugar into fuel tanks of military equipment, backup power systems, and personal vehicles of military personnel can wreak havoc on those who murdered all these people out here,” reads the message, which was posted on Wednesday.

Soldiers from Fort Liberty and Fort Campbell have deployed to western North Carolina to assist in the disaster response, along with National Guard members from nine states.

Veterans on Patrol is led by Michael Lewis Arthur Meyer, who has a long history of anti-government extremism, dating back at least 10 years. Meyer, according to the extremism watchdog group Southern Poverty Law Center, is not a veteran.

Reached by phone on Friday, Meyer doubled down on the threats.

“Jesus used bullwhips and flipped tables,” he told Raw Story. “We’re going to use our bullwhips and topple towers.”

At first during the interview, Meyer argued that the Telegram messages weren’t advocating for targeting cell towers, saying instead that the group would “surgically” remove the supposed “directed energy weapons." He went on to say that they would provide Appalachian residents with generators and Starlink boxes so they could maintain power and communication links.

Asked about the message referencing “pouring sugar into fuel tanks,” Meyer told Raw Story: “We’re going to destroy your tanks…. You want to get dirty? That’s what we should be doing.”

Veterans on Patrol has promoted multiple conspiracy theories based on false claims since arriving in western North Carolina.

One message posted on Telegram on Oct. 22 claimed that “Helene was a Weather Weapon steered to destroy the area, while also claiming that the investment fund BlackRock is attempting a “land grab” and describing the storm and its aftermath as “an act of war perpetrated against the People.”

As the final day of voting in the presidential election approaches, posts on the group’s Telegram channel have taken on an increasingly urgent tone.

The Oct. 22 post claimed that “stolen elections” are a real phenomenon, along with “weather weapons,” “Satanic pedophiles” and “adrenochrome," which refers to a QAnon conspiracy theory that a cabal of elites tortures children to extract a chemical from their bodies which is then used as a recreational drug.

In another post last week, a Veterans on Patrol member nicknamed “Shepherd” claimed that the U.S. Air Force command is instructing pilots “to deploy additional weather weapons.” The post goes on to say, “These people don’t have 2 weeks to wait for vote and 3 months to hopefully wait for a Regime change.”

Another message on the group channel that was published on Wednesday suggests without basis that Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff is the beneficiary of BlackRock’s supposed landgrab.

Speaking to Raw Story, Meyer seemed to all but dare law enforcement to intervene.

“For people to go and do something to prevent weapons from being deployed — that’s not a crime,” he said. “If they want to bring this to court and charge us with conspiracy, then let’s go.”

The FBI did not respond to an inquiry about Veterans on Patrol's activities, but Meyer told Raw Story in an email that he "would imagine the FBI knows full well what we are attempting through Operation Leaning Tower."

Meyer told Raw Story that he notified the office of Gov. Roy Cooper about his "operation." Cooper's office did not immediately respond to a voicemail message from Raw Story.

Phone calls from Raw Story for this story to officials in Lake Lure and Rutherford County, which surrounds the town, went unreturned.

Meyer’s history of extremism dates back to the Bundy Ranch standoff, when armed militants faced down the FBI and other federal agencies in 2014 during a dispute over rancher Cliven Bundy’s refusal to pay grazing fees. Meyer’s involvement in the Bundy Ranch standoff came to light later, when the Oregonian reported that he and a group of friends got into a brawl with other anti-government extremists during the standoff at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, which Bundy and a group of armed supporters had occupied.

Meyer founded Veterans on Patrol in Arizona in 2015, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Prior to presenting itself as a disaster response group in the aftermath of Helene, Veterans on Patrol has claimed its efforts were directed towards rescuing children from sex trafficking, addressing veteran suicide and dubious claims that the military is maliciously harming civilians. Meyer’s activities have frequently landed him in trouble with law enforcement.

Meyer was arrested twice in 2015 after emergency responders talked him down from a light pole in Surprise, Ariz. in 2015.

In 2018, was arrested by the police in Tucson, Ariz. for trespassing and an outstanding warrant for an assault charge, after occupying a tower on an industrial property. A press release from the Tucson Police Department claimed that Meyer “found an abandoned homeless encampment” on the property, “and fictitiously declared, without evidence or corroboration, that the area was the site of a sex-trafficking ring.”

The Tucson police said they received complaints from Tucson residents that Meyer and his followers had threatened and intimidated them, and Meyer made “multiple threatening and hostile remarks directed towards various elected and appointed officials” through social media.

In the summer of 2024, before Hurricane Helene, Veterans on Patrol was active in Spokane, Wash. In Telegram message from July 2, 2024, Veterans on Patrol announced to the police that it “would no longer be safe” for one of its officers “to work his beat.” The channel also posted the home addresses of city council members.

NOW READ: Fox News is the reason the race is close

===

an 10 24

Revealed: Bundy collaborator fueled FEMA conspiracy in Hurricane Helene aftermath

Clockwise from upper right: Ammon Bundy, Ryan Bundy, Brian Cavalier, Shawna Cox, Pete Santilli, Jon Ritzheimer, Ryan Payne, Joe O'Shaughnessy

Jordan GreenandRaw StoryOctober 14, 2024

Only 30 minutes after billionaire Elon Musk began publicly accusing the federal government of blocking his company from delivering the satellite internet components to the disaster zone in western North Carolina, another extraordinary claim popped up on X.

“NC State Police issue statement that they will start arresting any federal employees trying to hinder rescue operations,” an Arizona man named Joseph O’Shaughnessy wrote on X Oct. 4.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, quickly disputed the claim from Musk, who owns both SpaceX and the social media platform X and would speak at Trump’s rally in Butler, Pa. the following day. But O’Shaughnessy’s claim piggy-backing off Musk's post added a new layer to manufactured intrigue: a potential clash between state and federal authorities in a region traumatized by the staggering loss.

The statement is completely false, and it comes from someone with a history of armed confrontation with the FBI and other federal agencies. O’Shaughnessy served prison time for his role in the armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon in 2016 and was also charged in the standoff at Cliven Bundy’s ranch in 2014.

Prior to his involvement in the Bundy ranch standoff, O’Shaughnessy had been arrested for disorderly conduct, domestic violence and drugs, according to federal prosecutors.

“If you tie back to this guy, you’ll see that nothing reliable comes from that guy,” First Sgt. Christopher Knox, a public information officer for the N.C. State Highway Patrol, told Raw Story. “That’s not a trusted source of information. That information is not true in any way, shape or form.”

Knox pointed out that North Carolina doesn’t even have an agency called “NC State Police.” The claim is even more dubious if one considers that State Highway Patrol in North Carolina is under the command of Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, an ally of Vice President Kamala Harris. From a purely partisan standpoint, it is unlikely the two agencies would end up in an adversarial position with one another.

O'Shaughnessy responded to an inquiry from Raw Story by sending an AI-generated GIF of Trump dancing through a direct message on X.

While O’Shaughnessy’s post was quickly shot down by X users who pointed out that no such agency exists in North Carolina, it landed within a matrix of false claims by Trump allies that has created a mutually reinforced narrative, belied by the facts on the ground, that the federal government is abandoning the people of western North Carolina.

O’Shaughnessy’s post was reshared 18,000 times, including Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, who has a long history of promoting conspiracy theories despite a professional background that requires an ability to separate fact from fantasy astutely.

Before joining the Trump administration, Flynn held the highest military intelligence position as head of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, re-shared O’Shaughnessy’s post, writing: “Finally, some good news!”

Flynn, who has persistently used his X account to push apocalyptic messages about the impending breakup of the United States, has also pushed misinformation related to the disaster. During an Oct. 4 interview with right-wing influencer Benny Johnson, Flynn said there were “reports” about “illegals” raping children, while describing the flood-ravaged region as a “warzone.”

Flynn also could not be reached for comment for this story.

Johnson, who interviewed Flynn on his show, was recently employed by a media company alleged by federal prosecutors to be a front for a Russian influence operation. Johnson and other conservative influencers linked to the company have said they were victims of the scheme. During his interview with Flynn on Oct. 4, Johnson echoed many of the same themes as his guest during his opening monologue for the segment, claiming that the federal government has “chosen” immigrants over Trump supporters.

“Our federal government has left you to die in whatever small, inconsequential town that you come from because you are a Trump voter, because you support MAGA, because you are America first,” he said.

Flynn wasn’t the only one who greeted O’Shaughnessy’s bogus claim about a state law enforcement agency challenging the federal government.

Gianna Miceli, who co-hosts a podcast that promotes sovereign citizen ideology, enthused: “Now we have a jurisdiction war happening! What a great time for people to learn some lessons about who is the government and who is not.”

“Exactly,” O’Shaughnessy responded.

In another reply to O’Shaughnessy’s thread, Miceli falsely claimed: “FEMA is a private for-profit corporation. It is not government.”

O’Shaughnessy’s false claim that a state agency in North Carolina is threatening to arrest federal agents in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election fits a pattern with not only his involvement in the 2014 Bundy ranch standoff and 2016 Malheur occupation, but also the effort to overturn the 2020 election.

Bundy ranch, Malheur occupation and Stop the Steal 2020

O’Shaughnessy was described in a federal indictment in response to the Bundy ranch standoff as a “mid-level leader and organizer of the conspiracy who, among other things: organized gunmen and other followers; led gunmen and other followers in the assault and extortion of federal law enforcement at the impound site; organized protection for members of the criminal enterprise; and organized armed patrols and security checkpoints.”

Similarly, federal prosecutors would later describe O’Shaughnessy as a “mid-level organizer” of the Malheur occupation. In a video interview during the occupation, according to the criminal complaint, O’Shaughnessy said: “I’m right now in the process of trying to set up a constitutional security protection force to make sure these federal agents and these law enforcement don’t just come in here like cowboys.”

O’Shaughnessy pleaded guilty to conspiracy to impede federal officers for his conduct during the Malheur occupation, but the government dismissed charges in the Bundy ranch case. O’Shaughnessy was sentenced to time served, and reportedly spent one year and nine months in custody for the two cases.

O’Shaughnessy has described Roger Stone, a political consultant and longtime confidant of Trump, as a “hero and a mentor.” Like Flynn, Stone was pivotal in mobilizing a pressure campaign to overturn the 2020 election. Immediately following the 2020 election, Stone privately strategized with Flynn, the Washington Post reported.

O’Shaughnessy’s Instagram account shows that he was with Stone during a dinner in Florida with Stop the Steal organizer Ali Alexander in November 2020. Another post shows dated Dec. 11, 2020, the eve of the pro-Trump Jericho March rally in Washington, D.C. includes a photo that shows Stone drinking with InfoWars conspiracy trafficker Alex Jones.

It is unclear what, if anything, O’Shaughnessy discussed with Stone, Jones and Alexander when they met on those two occasions.

A false claim that evolved out of Elon Musk’s dustup with FEMA

In his false post about state law enforcement threatening to arrest their counterparts last week, O’Shaughnessy appears to have taken a cue from Nick Sortor, a right-wing videographer who spent the past week in the Asheville area delivering Starlink terminals while producing media assailing the federal government response to the disaster.

In an Oct. 3 X post, Sortor thanked Musk and SpaceX “for bringing us another truckload of Starlinks. A photo in the post shows an officer wearing a North Carolina State Highway Patrol uniform holding a box labeled “Starlink,” while a video shows police vehicles that appear to be providing an escort for Sortor down a winding mountain road.

The following day, Sortor replied to Musk’s post accusing FEMA of preventing his engineers from allowing him to deliver supplies. In his reply, Sortor appears to reference the State Highway Patrol, while using the same misnomer that O’Shaughnessy would later use.

“Let me know where the blockades are and we’ll have the NC State Police move them out of the way,” Sortor wrote. “Already did it once, which is one reason why we have an escort now. FEMA has zero jurisdiction.

“Trust me,” he added. “They’re not going to win this one.”

Twenty-four minutes later, O’Shaughnessy made his post claiming that the “NC State Police” were prepared to start arresting federal agents.

Challenged to substantiate his claim, O’Shaughnessy responded to one detractor by writing, “Calm down stranger danger, my boys were one of the 1st on-scene to bring aid…. I am the source.”

O’Shaughnessy didn’t identify his “boys” on the ground in North Carolina, but on Sunday he praised Sortor for delivering the Starlink terminals, writing, “And everyone, please follow @nicksortor. He’s the one who made it happen.”

Manufacturing a fake turf war between FEMA and state law enforcement doesn’t help the residents of western North Carolina, Christopher Knox, the State Highway Patrol spokesperson, told Raw Story. Instead of relying on dubious accounts on X, Knox recommended that people seek information about the recovery effort from trusted sources such as the NC Department of Public Safety.

“There’s a lot of people hurting and a lot of people looking for resources,” Knox said. “We hate that there’s stuff out there slowing the response. Getting people to the right sources is a big goal of the state of North Carolina.”

NOW READ: The Purge is real: Inside the GOP's 2024 playbook to disenfranchise voters

===

an 10 24

no lnx

alternet

Busted: Armed man arrested at rally tied to Trump's 'secretary of retribution'

Ivan Raiklin takes the stage to speak at a New Hampshire Election Security Seminar presented by the New Hampshire Voter Integrity Group in Manchester, New Hampshire, U.S., November 19, 2021. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

Jordan GreenandRaw Story October 21, 2024

The man arrested with guns outside Donald Trump’s rally in Coachella, Calif. on Oct. 12 had spoken about assassination attempts against the former president less than two weeks earlier with a retired Army lieutenant colonel who calls himself Trump’s “secretary of retribution.”

Vem Miller, a 49-year-old former music video director who now produces conspiracy-driven documentary films, interviewed retired Lt. Col. Ivan Raiklin, known for circulating a “Deep State target list” against Trump’s political enemies. The interview was produced for the America Happens Network, a company co-founded by Miller that describes itself as “the anti-thesis of what the mockingbird media has to offer.”

“You know, you inspire me,” Miller told Raiklin during the interview, which was posted on the video platform Rumble on Oct. 1. “This episode’s actually going to be called, ‘What are we going to do once they steal the election,’ because that’s certain, 100 percent certainty that they’re going to steal this. And we need to be prepared.”

“I already have a plan,” Raiklin responded. “I have the counter-strategy. I’ve already war-gamed basically their next 15 moves. I got 30 moves ahead of it. I’m doing worse-case [sic] scenario. And if worse-case [sic] scenario doesn’t happen, we win, right? But I’m always planning for the worse case [sic] scenario that they can do, both within their law, legal authority, and beyond of what they’re capable of.

“So, the categories of what they’re gonna do is they’re gonna continue to try to assassinate Trump,” Raiklin continued. “I already got a plan in response to that and what should take place.”

“Tell me that,” Miller interrupted. “Say it.”

“No, no, no,” Raiklin responded. “I don’t need to put it out. Because if I put it out, people are going to think I’m trying to advocate for that to take place. I’m not. But you always have to have someone planning out worst case already in advance that has already thought through it, so that immediate action takes place. I’ve already thought through that deliberately. I got a response for that. It’s going to be worse for them if that takes place.”

Vem Miller (right) speaks with Ivan Raiklin during a taping of his show "Blood Money," which was posted to Rumble on Oct. 1.(Screengrab / America Happens Network)

Raiklin added that he had already explained his thinking during an appearance on InfoWars with conspiracy trafficker Alex Jones in February 2024.

During that exchange, Raiklin told Jones: “This is a message directly to every single person on the Deep State target list. My assessment — Ivan Raiklin’s assessment that if you assassinate any political presidential candidate, whether it’s RFK, whether it’s Trump, guess what? America will do the following: Immediately, they will respond in kind.

“If they do that, option 2 behind Trump is going to be so much better for us, and so much worse for them,” Raiklin continued.

“I was about to say, if they kill him that’s best-case scenario,” Jones agreed. “From a sick level, from a sick level medium, oh, please kill him. It’s so good after that.”

Raiklin added: “It’s going to be the best cleansing and the fastest cleansing that we’ve ever seen in my lifetime. I assess with almost certainty, with the highest level of confidence, that if they assassinate Trump, it is so game over for them.”

Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, himself a fervent Trump supporter, told reporters during a press conference that a deputy arrested Miller when he stopped his vehicle at the inner perimeter of the rally. Miller had been allowed to drive through the outer perimeter, Bianco said, because it appeared that he was either a VIP or press.

But at a checkpoint for the inner perimeter, the sheriff said the deputy noticed that the “interior of the vehicle was in quite disarray.” The deputy also noticed a homemade license plate that led him to conclude that the driver was a sovereign citizen. Bianco said the deputy found multiple driver’s licenses and passports with different names. Eventually, the deputy also found a loaded handgun and a shotgun, the sheriff said.

The arrest took place before Trump arrived at the rally. Bianco said Miller was arrested for illegal firearms.

"If you're asking me right now, I probably did have deputies that prevented the third assassination attempt," Bianco said.

Miller denied that he had any intent to assassinate Trump, calling himself “100 percent a Trump supporter” in an interview with Fox News. He also denied that he is a sovereign citizen or that he was carrying fake documents.

Mindy Robinson, one of Miller’s partners at the America Happens Network, angrily posted on X that Miller’s arrest was retribution from the “Deep State.” Miller and Robinson released a six-hour documentary, which opens with an apocalyptic assessment of current events centered on the first assassination attempt against Trump in Butler, Pa. before moving to its main subject: the armed standoff in 2014 that pitted the Bundy family and their supporters against the FBI.

“Vem just exposed a huge Deep State coverup involving the feds and the Bundy ranch scandal,” Robinson wrote on X on Sunday. “So, I firmly believe this is 100% some kind of setup in retribution for exposing it. That, or Trump’s security team is a bunch of dips---s trying to make up for how badly they failed in Pennsylvania with any kind of ‘win’ they can get, fake or not.

“There isn’t a universe his intention was to kill Trump,” Robinson continued. “He’s worked too hard in this movement to expose the Deep State and all the people against him. If he had guns in his car that were illegal, whooptie-f---ing do As a pro-2A advocate, ask me if I give a s--- about a good guy with a gun in an unsafe s---hole like California. It doesn’t even make sense why his passes would be fake either when we’re both usually invited as media to these things.”

Raiklin’s response to the news of his associate’s arrest was uncharacteristically muted.

“My hunch is there will be lots of retractions,” he posted on X on Sunday. “And the sheriff will have egg on his face as his stunt will be the end of his gubernatorial run before it even started.”

---

May 24, 2024 5:02 pm

Frederick Clarkson and André Gagné @ Religion Dispatches: A Reporter’s Guide to the New Apostolic Reformation

The story of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) lives at the epicenter of the intersection of politics and religion in the US—and reporting about it is as essential as it is challenging.

Kathryn Post @ Religion News Service: How is the ‘Appeal to Heaven’ flag spotted at Alito’s house linked to Jan. 6?

‘Throughout the Trump presidency, the flag became a symbol for Trump, for Christian America, for this insurgent Christian nationalism,’ says scholar Matthew Taylor.

Julianne McShane @ Mother Jones: Moms for Liberty Is Coming for the Swing States

The group will launch more than $3 million in ads attacking Biden in several battleground states—but they will not say who’s paying for it.

Roger Sollenberger and Mini Racker @ Daily Beast: GOP Senate Candidate Spent Thousands in Donor Funds on Strip Clubs, Luxury, and Mysterious Wire Transfers

Star athlete and conspiracy theorist Royce White just landed the Minnesota GOP’s endorsement for Senate. They must not have seen his previous campaign expenses.

Jason Wilson @ The Guardian: At least 66 members of far-right group in rural Oregon standing for office

At least 66 members of an anti-government group founded by far-right militia figure Ammon Bundy have attempted to win local positions of influence in the Republican party in Oregon, the Guardian can reveal.

---

an 7 23 no lnx

no lnx

'Threats and intimidation': Ammon Bundy slammed with over $52 million in damages in hospital lawsuit

Alex Henderson July 25, 2023

In 2022, far-right militia supporter Ammon Bundy and his ally Diego Rodriguez turned their wrath on St. Luke's Medical Center, accusing the Boise, Idaho hospital of wrongdoing in a child welfare case. St. Luke's responded with a civil lawsuit, and on Monday, July 24, a jury awarded St. Luke's more than $52 million in damages — including $26.5 million in compensatory damages and $26 million in punitive damages.

According to the Idaho Statesman's Sally Krutzig, "The $500,000 extra in the compensatory category came as a result of the jury's finding that violations of the Idaho Charitable Solicitation Act by Rodriguez and his Freedom Man Press business had harmed the plaintiffs."

Attorneys for St. Luke's have stressed that the hospital suffered considerable harassment because of Bundy, who claimed that the child in the custody case was "kidnapped" by the hospital.

READ MORE: Militia extremist Ammon Bundy shows how 'emboldened' America’s far right has become: journalist

In an official statement, St. Luke's said, "Taking legal action is not something we take lightly. But standing up to the threats, bullying, intimidation, disruption and self-serving actions of the defendants was necessary. Inaction would have signaled that their menacing behavior was acceptable. Clearly, it is not, and the jury's decision validates that fact."

The Daily Beast's Kate Briquelet, reporting on the verdict, notes that Bundy "was a consistent no-show throughout the legal proceedings."

"In April," Briquelet explains, "a judge issued a default judgment against Bundy and Rodriguez for failing to respond to the suit,leading Bundy to put out an emergency alert that falsely claimed cops surrounded his home and that beckoned his (People's Rights Network) disciples to show up to defend him…. As a result of the default, jurors in the two-week trial were tasked with deciding what damages Bundy and Rodriguez owed to the hospital system."

Briquelet adds, "They heard testimony from doctors and administrators about the men's mob stoking fear among patients and families in the emergency room, and Life Flight pilots refusing to land at the facility, fearing shots from the armed crowd on the ground."

READ MORE: Idaho judge scolds Ammon Bundy before jail sentence — says he needs to be 'held accountable'

Lindsay Schubiner, programs director for the Western States Center, is applauding the verdict. The Western States Center, which has been vehemently critical of Bundy and his allies, monitors far-right extremists.

Schubiner said of Bundy, "His decision to target St. Luke’s and to use inflammatory, dishonest rhetoric about the hospital's actions endangered both staff and patients. This verdict shows that the courts have the ability to treat this kind of threat with the seriousness it deserves."

READ MORE: The Bundy takeover: How the GOP's embrace of pro-terrorist politics opened the door for Jan. 6 and the Ottawa trucker tantrum

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

Exposing America's Billionaire Welfare Ranchers ›

Warrant issued for Ammon Bundy after dodging lawsuit for more than one year ›

The theology of Ammon Bundy: A historian explains how the 'White Horse Prophecy' fuels anti-lockdown protestors ›

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

Ammon Bundy breaks with Trump on anti-migrant rhetoric: 'It's all ... ›

Retired law enforcement leaders jointly condemn Ammon Bundy's ... ›

Far-right activist Ammon Bundy's latest standoff is in court | AP News ›

===

no lnx mojo

POLITICS

OCTOBER 18, 2021

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

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

DAN FRIEDMAN

Senior Reporter

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

===

guk

How far-right figures like Ammon Bundy cause chaos in US politics

Bundy, who is running for governor in Idaho, summoned his followers to a judge’s home, revealing a troubling development in a divided political landscape

Sergio Olmos

Tue 5 Apr 2022

One recent Friday afternoon far-right militia figure Ammon Bundy started a live video feed on his YouTube channel in the wake of being arrested on trespassing charges at a hospital in Idaho, where he is running for governor.

Bundy appeared disappointed to tell his followers what he believed the government was forcing him to do next. He looked down at the camera, wearing an open-collared shirt and his usual cowboy hat, and let out a sigh. Then he threatened a sitting Idaho judge, summoning his supporters to go to his home.

Lt governor Janice McGeachin announces she will run for Idaho Governor at the Downtown Event Center in Idaho Falls, on 19 May 2021.

Republican hopes to ride far-right rage into Idaho’s governor’s office

Addressing his followers, he told them: “I’m calling on you to put off whatever you’re doing tomorrow, and come to [the judge’s] house … Patriot groups all across Idaho and around the country, I cannot try to hold you back any longer.”

What had excised Bundy so much was a child custody case. But what his actions really revealed was a troubling development in America’s ever-more divided political landscape where far-right figures feel emboldened enough to threaten a judge, wield their followers against the institutions of the state and where an implicit threat of violence is increasingly present as they seek elected office.

By the time Bundy made his remarks, his 17,000 YouTube subscribers were receiving near daily updates about a 10-month-old child near Boise, Idaho, who was taken into temporary protection from his parents after officials determined the child was suffering from severe malnourishment and in imminent danger.

Diego Rodriguez, Bundy’s campaign consultant and friend, is the grandfather of the child at the center of a controversy in which even the far-right deputy governor, Janice McGeachin, has become embroiled. An ultra-conserative pastor, Rodriguez is emblematic of the Christian fringe pushing to create a US “theocracy” in Idaho.

Bundy railed against what he considered a “kidnapping” at the hands of the government. After an Ada county judge signed a warrant transferring temporary custody of the child to health and wellness officials, Bundy urged his followers – who are often armed – to physically descend on the judge’s house, to the deep alarm of local police.

It was hardly Bundy’s first time in the headlines. Nor was it even his first time getting his followers to swarm an Idaho judge’s home, following a similar call in 2021.

Bundy and his family have long been established figures in anti-government folklore after leading an armed standoff at their ranch in Bunkerville, Nevada. For 20 years Cliven Bundy, Ammon Bundy’s father, avoided paying grazing fees to the Bureau of Land Management, insisting that his cattle had more right to the land than the federal government.

When armed federal agents were sent to confiscate the cattle for non-payment, hundreds of protesters and some armed militia members came to their support. Charges for Cliven and his two sons, Ammon and Ryan, were dismissed after a mistrial in which the federal prosecutor failed to turn over evidence and disclose the existence of surveillance camera footage and the presence of federal snipers in the area.

Two years later in 2016 Ammon Bundy led a high-profile armed takeover and lengthy occupation of the Malheur national wildlife refugee, a sanctuary for birds in eastern Oregon. That year Ammon and Ryan Bundy were charged with conspiracy in federal court but again found not guilty.

Ammon Bundy speaks to reporters during a news conference at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in January 2016.

But Bundy has adapted to new times in US politics as the Republican party has lurched right under the influence of Donald Trump, and far-right militia groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers have dominated headlines, including after the January 6 assault on the Capitol. Bundy, however, has attracted far less attention as he built up a state-by-state-level, cell-like network that can host dinners to create a sense of community but also produce on-demand protesters.

Bundy’s People’s Rights Network aims to form a coalition of militia members, anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists, preppers and other far-right travelers. Its size eclipses most far-right groups put together. And many experts see it as a real threat to democracy.

“They’ve repeatedly shown an ability to mobilize large number of armed far-right activists to threaten, harass, and intimidate public officials,” said Devin Burghart, director of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, a non-profit that monitors the far right.

While 2021 saw a retreat for many of the national far-right groups as they came under intense scrutiny from law enforcement, People’s Rights Network grew last year by 53%. Today it has 33,000 members across 38 states, according to a report from the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights.

“Ammon Bundy, with People’s Rights Network, was the first to grasp on to Covid-19 denial as a mobilizing vehicle.The first to galvanize militants to oppose Covid-19 restrictions and to meld together anti-vaxxers, paramilitaries, Proud Boys and others into a larger movement to protest and protect these kinds of efforts,” said Burghart.

Burghart says Bundy has shown the ability to radicalize people by “engaging in local conflict. Whether that’s showing up at vaccination sites and threatening healthcare providers or showing up at school boards and harassing school board members.”

In the case of the call for militias to descend on the Ada county judge’s home, local police announced the baby at the center of the spat would be returned to the parents under stipulations agreed upon by the court. In a statement, Meridian police concluded with a plea: “There is no need to continue protesting or harassing our public health officials, police officers or anyone else involved.”

Bundy called off the protest. But within a week Bundy had announced a new rally – a potluck to recruit new members to the cause.

“Ammon Bundy is important because in many ways his efforts are a bellwether for where the paramilitary side of the movement is moving,” said Burghart.

no lnx slate

Where Far-Right Militias Trained for Jan. 6

BY LEAH SOTTILE

JULY 13, 2022

A man with a yellow Don't Tread On Me snake flag draped on his back and Jason van Tatenhove during the January 6 hearings.

Tuesday’s Jan. 6 hearing focused on the link between the Trump White House and the far-right militia groups that participated in the Capitol riot, so it makes sense that a former member of one of those militias would testify.

Jason van Tatenhove, a former spokesman for the Oath Keepers—a group of self-appointed vigilantes who were instrumental in storming the Capitol—told the House committee that the actions of the group on Jan. 6 provided “a glimpse” of their vision. The group had actively hoped for (and trained for) the chance to participate in a violent insurrection like the kind staged in the waning days of Donald Trump’s presidency.

What We Know About That Third Possible Trump

Indictment

Though van Tatenhove ended his affiliation with the group in 2018, his testimony this week was meant to underscore the serious threat that groups like the Oath Keepers pose for the U.S., as well as their capacity for violence in the next election cycle, especially if Trump is re-elected.

But van Tatenhove’s testimony made another thing very clear: Far-right militia groups have, for years, used the Western United States as a testing ground for extremist violence, staging stand-offs on public land to amass followers and experiment with what they could get away with.

Van Tatenhove would know. Sitting before Congress in a Descendents T-shirt and jean jacket adorned with punk pins, the former Oath Keeper told the committee that his association with the group began back in 2014, when he arrived as an “independent journalist” at the Bundy Ranch standoff in the Nevada desert.* He was quickly sucked into the cause.

The 2014 standoff was started by the rancher Cliven Bundy, a man who considered himself a member of the 1970s anti-federal lands Sagebrush Rebellion, and who had been vocal since the 1970s about his disdain for federal ownership of land.

For 20 years, Bundy had refused to pay the required fees to the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) that he owed for grazing his cattle on public land. So, in April 2014, the BLM attempted to round up Bundy’s cattle as a penalty for non-payment. It was a repossession: Bundy hadn’t paid his bills, and the government came to collect.

But Bundy twisted the affair into something else entirely: taking to a right-wing YouTube livestreamer’s channel (someone who also positioned himself as an independent journalist), Bundy told a story of a rural family being attacked by a tyrannical government. He called for “We the People” to take a stand, and many people answered Bundy’s call. Supporters arrived from around the country — New Hampshire, Utah, Idaho, Montana, Arizona — and eventually outnumbered the federal officers. These supporters included the Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and members from chapters around the West, who seized the Bundy affair as an opportunity to promote their anti-government worldview. The feds found themselves surrounded: militiamen pointed sniper rifles at the small group of officers from overpasses. Eventually, the BLM let Bundy’s cattle go, and fled.

It wasn’t just that standoff that attracted Oath Keepers and other far-right militia groups.

Far-right militias also showed up at Oregon’s Sugar Pine Mine and Montana’s White Hope Mine in 2015, and at the 41-day Malheur National Wildlife Refuge standoff helmed by Bundy’s sons in 2016. Van Tatenhove testified that these conflicts owed a lot to far-right propaganda; he himself was a propagandist who had called on “patriots” to fight tyranny at these standoffs.

And for the most part, the anti-government movement got away with all of it: the trial over the affair at Bundy Ranch was tossed out by a federal judge over Brady violations committed by government prosecutors. In Oregon, the trial over the 41-day standoff at Oregon’s Malheur National Wildlife Refuge resulted in acquittals for Bundy’s sons and most of the main players. These resolutions emboldened the far-right — it had victories. In the past few years, Ammon Bundy — who was the main voice of the Malheur affair — founded a multi-state coalition out of Idaho called the People’s Rights Movement. It staged large-scale protests at hospitals and health board meetings over COVID restrictions across the west. Now he’s running for governor of Idaho.

On Tuesday,Van Tatenhove gave a sobering warning. From his time within the organization, he said he knew first hand that the Oath Keepers want “to get their way through lies, through deceit, through intimidation, and through the perpetration of violence, the swaying of people who may not know better through lies and rhetoric and propaganda.”

He said that at all those western conflicts, “the potential for bloodshed … was always there.” It had only been luck that had kept more blood from being spilled.

There was a time when van Tatenhove had been the one helping spread disinformation, and drum up fear. But on Tuesday, he struck a new tone: “I do fear for this next election cycle, because who knows what that might bring?” he said. If Trump was willing to align with groups that flirted with bloodshed so many times before, he said, “what else is he going to do if he gets elected again?”

“All bets are off at that point,” van Tatenhove said, “and that’s a scary notion.”

https://www.alternet.org/2022/06/patriot-front-2657499955/

no lnx pix twt

on Saturday, June 11, 31 members of the white nationalist group Patriot Front were arrested in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho for allegedly planning to attack a local gay pride event. Historian Thomas Lecaque, in an article published by the conservative website The Bulwark on May 13, stresses that this alleged plot shouldn’t be viewed as an isolated incident, but as one example of the far right’s campaign for “overturning democracy.”

“The arrest of dozens of members of extremist group Patriot Front over the weekend shines a light on the new agenda for the militant factions of the far right,” Lecaque explains. “Their energies are now being focused on another goal: prosecuting a renewed culture war against sexual minorities. Packed tightly into the back of a rented U-Haul truck with their flags and weapons, members of the accelerationist fascist groupwere en route to the Coeur d’Alene Pride rally when they were pulled over and arrested.”

The historian adds, “Police made the stop on the basis of a tip from local residents. Images of the men, kneeling and zip tied in a field next to their truck, spread quickly on social media.”

Lecaque, a professor at Grand View University in Des Moines, Iowa, describes Patriot Front as part of the openly violent wing of the far right; other examples include the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers.

“As has been the case at other times in history when political instability has drawn extremist groups into open street-fighting — a Proud Boys calling card — these groups represent the sharp end of the ax that the far right is driving into American society,” Lecaque warns. “On January 6, 2021, their goal was to overturn the results of the recent presidential election. In June 2022, however, their goals have shifted.”

Lecaque notes thatPatriot Front was founded in 2017 by Thomas Rousseau, who is among the members charged with conspiracy to riot. Rousseau had been a member of Vanguard America, one of the white supremacist and white nationalist groups that was part of the infamous Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia that year. But after that event, where activist Heather Heyer was murdered, Rousseau left Vanguard America to start his own group.

“Patriot Front members believe themselves to be the ruling heirs to the continent by dint of their racial connection to its European colonizers and consider their racial identity essential to American identity more broadly,” Lecaque observes. “Of course, this is just the sort of blood genealogy nonsense one expects from Nazis…. What makes them significant, however, is their media savvy.”

Lecaque stresses that Patriot Front should be viewed as part of a broader far-right anti-democracy movement.

“Patriot Front is just one distinctive group of many,” Lecaque warns. “Other extremist groups gathered in Coeur d’Alene to watch and harass the pride march, including Three Percenters, Ammon’s Army, PDX Liberation, Proud Boys, and Atomwaffen. These groups have their own ideologies, own brands of violence, and many of them — Atomwaffen being an incredibly clear example — are much readier to engage in violence first, foremost, and often.”

Lecaque adds, “The Coeur d’Alene pride event was not the only target. Christian fascists in Dallas protested at an LGBTQ bar at the beginning of the month as part of a coordinated far-right assault on Pride Month. American Nationalist Initiative, a neo-fascist group, planned to link up with Proud Boys to flash mob outside of a Planned Parenthood in Plano, Texas this weekend, while other planned to harass a Pride Drag event in Arlington.”

The push for anti-gay violence, according to Lecaque, “goes beyond the White supremacists and militias” — and he cites far-right evangelical pastor Dillon Awes as an example. During a June 5 sermon, Awes called for murdering gays.

“Violent fantasies about murdering marginalized communities and overturning democracy are not new,” Lecaque writes. “We have seen them before.”

sierra club

why Did Trump Pardon Two Arsonist Ranchers?

The strange saga of Dwight and Steven Hammond By Heather Smith| Jul 12 2018

On Tuesday, President Trump pardoned Dwight L. Hammond and his son, Steven D. Hammond—two ranchers that very few Americans had ever heard of.

“The Hammonds are multigeneration cattle ranchers in Oregon imprisoned in connection with a fire that leaked onto a small portion of neighboring public grazing land,” Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, wrote in :{a statement:(style="background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;text-decoration-line:underline;text-decoration-skip-ink:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"):}:. A district court sentenced Dwight to serve three months in prison, and Steven to a year and a day, but the Obama administration filed an appeal, pointing out that there’s a federal minimum sentence for arson, and it’s five years. That’s what the Hammonds wound up serving when they were pardoned.

None of this answered the question of why, out of the 1.5 million people currently incarcerated in state and federal prison, Trump would pick the Hammonds to pardon. It’s not like there was a groundswell of popular opinion in favor of freeing them—if public-lands-hating ranchers were musical acts, the Hammonds would be an obscure indie band with an obsessive fan base.

A petition started on Whitehouse.gov last May got 8,566 signatures—nowhere near the 100,000 needed to even get a response to your petition from the White House. The Trump administration also shows no signs of acceding to the requests of even more popular Whitehouse.gov petitions (“:{Divest or put in a blind trust all of the President's business and financial assets:(style="background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;text-decoration-line:underline;text-decoration-skip-ink:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"):}:” had 360,299, and “:{Do Not Repeal Net Neutrality:(style="background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;text-decoration-line:underline;text-decoration-skip-ink:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"):}:” had 274,905). But on Wednesday, they were :{flying home:(style="background-color:#ff9900;"):}: from minimum-security prison :{in a private jet owned by oil magnate Forrest Lucas:(style="font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;text-decoration-line:underline;text-decoration-skip-ink:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:#ff9900;"):}:.

So why the Hammonds? Here are a few possibilities:

Trump pardoned the Hammonds because he couldn’t pardon any Bundys.

No one is a bigger fan of Dwight and Steven Hammond than Ammon and Ryan Bundy, who claimed that their whole inspiration for carrying out an armed takeover of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, a popular Oregon bird-watching site, was the injustice of the Hammonds having to serve the federal minimum sentence for arson.

The Hammonds did not return the favor and refused to endorse the Malheur takeover. The Bundys meanwhile became famous enough :{to have a whole podcast miniseries about them:(style="font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;text-decoration-line:underline;text-decoration-skip-ink:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"):}:, while the Hammonds remained—to get all Bette Midler about it—the wind beneath their wings.

To a president whose environmental platform so far has largely consisted of smoothing the path for private individuals to exploit land that belongs to the public, pardoning the Bundys would have been the perfect troll maneuver, in much the same way that pardoning former sheriff Joe Arpaio trolls anyone who thinks that officers of the law:{should be held accountable to the same laws they are supposed to enforce:(style="background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;text-decoration-line:underline;text-decoration-skip-ink:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"):}:.

But as it is, the Bundys weren’t available to be pardoned: charges against them and their father, Cliven, were dismissed in January of this year after the judge on their case :{declared a mistrial:(style="font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;text-decoration-line:underline;text-decoration-skip-ink:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"):}:. The Hammonds may have just been the next best thing.

No one at the White House thinks death threats to Fish & Wildlife Service employees is a big deal.

An article written about the Hammonds :{in **High Country News**:(style="background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;text-decoration-line:underline;text-decoration-skip-ink:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"):}: back in 1994 describes Malheur officials as already in possession of a “thick file” about the Hammonds, who were allowed to drive their cattle through the refuge on their way to BLM lands to the north, as long as they gave Malheur advance notice.

Not only did the Hammonds not give notice, they also sometimes let their cows wander around in the refuge for days, trampling on habitat restoration projects and wandering into irrigation canals. When Malheur officials told the Hammonds to cut it out, Dwight Hammond didn’t take it well. “Hammond allegedly made death threats against previous managers in 1986 and 1988 and against Cameron, the current manager, in 1991 and again this year,” wrote High Country News.

In 1994, the Hammonds lost the right to graze cattle and grow hay to the north of the refuge, and Malheur decided to build a fence along the refuge boundary to keep the Hammonds' cows out. The article described what happened later that year:

the events of Aug. 3 are outlined in the sworn affidavit of special agent Earl M. Kisler, who assisted in the Hammonds' arrest. On the day the fence was to be built, the crew and refuge officials arrived to find Hammond had parked his Caterpillar scraper squarely on the boundary line and disabled it, removing the battery and draining fuel lines. When a tow truck arrived to move it, Dwight Hammond showed up, leaped to the controls of the scraper and hit a lever that lowered the bucket, narrowly missing another special agent. Meanwhile, said Kisler, Steve Hammond shouted obscenities at federal officials.

Both Hammonds were arrested and released two days later without having to post bail. By the time they emerged, their case had attracted the attention of the American Land Rights Association, which argued that the Hammonds were victims of government overreach. Representative Bob Smith, an Oregon Republican, wrote a letter to then–Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt arguing that arresting the Hammonds had caused Smith’s constituents “to lose faith in their government.” Shortly thereafter, the U.S. attorney's office in Portland reduced the charges against the Hammonds from felonies to misdemeanors and postponed the hearing on those charges indefinitely.

Trump has no idea just how much the Hammonds were into starting fires.

Dwight and Steven Hammond did more than just start a few fires that got a little out of hand. :{The indictment filed against them in 2012:(style="font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;text-decoration-line:underline;text-decoration-skip-ink:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"):}: says that as early as 1999 the Hammonds were already being warned by the BLM district manager about starting fires that drifted into BLM territory.

In 2001, a hunting party passing through the area saw a group that included the Hammonds shoot into a herd of seven or eight deer on BLM land—a move that, given the hunting laws in southwest Oregon, was immediately obvious as poaching. “I saw at least four bucks get hit by bullets,” hunting guide Gordon Choate said at the trial. “I saw one with a leg flopping, running. And basically the herd of bucks just exploded like a flock of quail.” The Hammonds moved on and didn’t try to kill the wounded deer, which further unnerved Choate and the other hunters.

When they realized Choate had spotted them, Steven’s then-13-year-old nephew, Dusty, :{told federal investigators:(style="font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;text-decoration-line:underline;text-decoration-skip-ink:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"):}: that Steven passed out matches to the hunting party and told them to walk through the grass, lighting and throwing them to the ground. Dusty, an inexperienced arsonist, accidentally set fire to the grass on all sides of where he was standing, and had to seek shelter in a creek until the wildfire blew over.

In the distance, Choate’s hunting camp looked up and saw a wildfire advancing. The Hammonds had made no effort to warn them. The group hurriedly evacuated, leaving all of their equipment behind. By the time the fire was extinguished, it had burned 139 acres of public land.

Or Trump just really likes fires.

In 2005, Dwight Hammond :{blocked BLM firefighters from crossing through his ranch on the way to wildfires:(style="font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;text-decoration-line:underline;text-decoration-skip-ink:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"):}:, and Steven Hammond started a fire that hopped a fence and set fire to the private ranch next door. He asked the local sheriff if he could file a complaint against any BLM firefighters who set foot on his property, but also confided in a local BLM range management specialist that he and Dwight had been setting fires in the area “for years” to keep juniper trees from taking up water that could go into growing more grass.

In 2006, a group of BLM firefighters had to pack up their camp at night and evacuate after three fires suddenly appeared downhill from their camp. :{Steven Hammond admitted to setting the fires, and told a group of nearby firefighters that they should “just clear out:(style="font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;text-decoration-line:underline;text-decoration-skip-ink:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:#ff9900;"):}::{.”:(style="background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;text-decoration-line:underline;text-decoration-skip-ink:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"):}: That same day, two BLM officials caught Dwight Hammond near another suspicious fire. When they tried to drive away after confronting Dwight, another fire started in the area where they had left Dwight behind that nearly boxed them in.

These are only a handful of the fires mentioned in the indictment—it requires real endurance to read through the entire list.

Or Trump is holding to an unconventional interpretation of the phrase “family man.”

Wrote Huckabee Sanders in her statement: “The Hammonds are devoted family men, respected contributors to their local community, and have widespread support from their neighbors, local law enforcement, and farmers and ranchers across the West.”

Setting aside the part where the Trump administration has separated family men (and women) from their children for far more minor actions than arson,it’s still clear that this pardon will be reuniting a strange kind of family. When the Hammonds' lawyers introduced a similar “family man” argument during their resentencing trial, :{the prosecution’s response was a sheriff’s report:(style="font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;text-decoration-line:underline;text-decoration-skip-ink:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"):}: written after an employee at the local high school reported that Steven’s now-16-year-old nephew, Dusty, had some strange injuries.

Dusty told the sheriff that, in a fit of teenage experimentation, he had scratched some letters into his chest with a paperclip. When Steven Hammond found out, he held his nephew down and sanded the scratches off with sandpaper, all the while threatening to get a knife and fillet them out if the sandpaper didn’t work.

When the sheriff questioned Steven Hammond about this, Hammond said that Dusty was lucky that he was not at the ranch, because “Dusty would have wished he wasn’t alive.” The sheriff explained to the Hammonds that the state of Oregon was leading the investigation of child abuse, not Dusty. Steven Hammond told the sheriff that he did not agree with the government getting involved in family matters. The investigation appears to have ended there.

But five years later, when federal agents showed up at Dusty’s house and asked him about his uncle, he was ready to talk. He was done, he later said in court, with being afraid.

an 7 22

it not quite clear what, exactly, former President Donald Trump was doing and privately saying inside the White House during the five long, violent hours when more than 2,000 rioters invaded the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021.

It’s a key timeline that the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol is set to explore on July 21, 2022 during its latest – and possibly last – public hearing.

At the heart of the issue is Trump’s precise engagement, if any, with the rioters and several fringe nationalist militia groups, including the Proud Boys, Three Percenters and Oath Keepers, that stormed the Capitol.

Amy Cooter, a senior lecturer in sociology at Vanderbilt University, embedded with militia groups, mostly in Michigan, from 2008 through 2012. Knowing who these groups are – and how they have changed over time – makes it easier to understand the Jan. 6 attacks, Cooter said.

“Fifteen years ago, people thought of these groups as being niche, crazy people. That’s not really what I saw in my fieldwork – I saw people who were just more willing to be open about their political perspectives than maybe more mainstream Republicans were at the time. It seemed to me, both then and now, that their concerns resonate with a broad swath of the population,” Cooter said in a recent interview.

We asked Cooter to explain what drives these groups and their complicated relationship with Trump and the government.

What is your understanding of how Trump is seen by these nationalist groups?

Traditionally, militia groups have been very opposed to the federal government, regardless of whether we’re talking about Democrats or Republicans. However, with Trump, they really found sort of a mouthpiece. Not all of them truly liked him, but they really want somebody who speaks out against immigration and has a nationalistic and isolationist perspective. Trump gave them a sense of legitimacy. But there didn’t seem to be too many formal connections, as far as we know.

How does leadership and hierarchy work within these groups?

Many of these groups present themselves as top-down organizations with centralized leadership and then different state-level structures. But the degree to which that is reality varies enormously, especially with the Three Percenters but also with the Oath Keepers.

There are groups that kind of fit the stereotypical top-down model that make it easy to activate them for action. There are other groups who maybe were completely oblivious to this Jan. 6 plan.

What do you mean by activate? That sounds similar to language Trump used during a presidential debate in September 2020, to “stand back and stand by.”

Militias always see themselves as prepared for action. Usually, this means they’re prepared to defend themselves and their communities in the event of a natural disaster, or some kind of invasion. But as we saw leading up to Jan. 6, some of these groups were clearly planning more than just a defensive stance.

What was Trump getting from these groups, and what were they getting from Trump?

They get from Trump this idea that someone finally represents their interests, someone finally sees the state of the nation as they do, even though not all of them completely agree with him. They see it as an opportunity to push things in the direction that they would prefer.

I don’t think it’s much of an exaggeration to say that Trump sees an opportunity for a private armyfrom them. In 2018, he pardoned the Bundy ranchers, who were arrested for arson on federal land. Not a lot of people paid attention to this, but that was a signal to these groups that he had their back and would expect them to have his back in the future.

I think that Jan. 6 is really kind of proof of that, that he has activated people who in some cases do have military or police experience.

How have you seen these groups evolve over time, since you began researching them?

Before Trump, there had been very clear-cut tensions between different groups. That boundary has broken down substantially, and most groups have been pushed more toward an extreme than used to be true – in no small part because of how Trump and others in his administration legitimized the core fears that different groups had about being invaded.

Since Jan. 6, the groups as a whole have declined in size. Many of these people were really surprised at how Jan. 6 played out and were quite embarrassed –or they were appalled that it didn’t go far enough.

Now, many people have taken a step back even from these groups altogether. But the folks that have stuck around continue to be quite radical, and probably even more radical than they were before. Especially thinking about what is going to happen with the midterm elections, we are going to see a lot of invigoration.

Amy Cooter, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Vanderbilt University

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

ref

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-oregon-standoff-trump/trump-pardons-oregon-ranchers-who-inspired-refuge-standoff-idUSKBN1K021Q

no lnx pix

U.S. NEWS

JULY 10, 2018 UPDATED 4 YEARS AGO

Trump pardons Oregon ranchers who inspired refuge standoff

By Jonathan Allen

(Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday pardoned two imprisoned Oregon ranchers whose sentencing on arson convictions sparked the 2016 occupation of a wildlife refuge, part of a long-simmering dispute over federal land policies in the U.S. West.

The armed standoff at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in southeast Oregon followed a judge’s ruling that sent Dwight Hammond and his son, Steven, back to prison to serve more time after their initial release. Police shot one of the occupiers dead during the 41-day midwinter protest.

The takeover was another flare-up in a decades-old conflict over federal control of millions of acres of public land in the Western United States. In Oregon, about half of all land is controlled by the federal government.

The leaders of the Malheur standoff, including activists Ammon and Ryan Bundy, were cleared of federal charges for their role in the protest in October 2016.

Ammon Bundy on Tuesday called the pardon “long overdue.”

“We went up there to prevent the atrocity from happening to begin with, and if people would have listened to us, the Hammonds wouldn’t have to have gone through this suffering,” Bundy said in a telephone interview.

The pardons are the latest in a series by Trump that have raised questions about whether he is using the presidential power to reward political supporters.

Trump in late May pardoned Dinesh D’Souza,a conservative pundit convicted of campaign finance crimes.Last August he pardoned former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, who campaigned for Trump before being convicted in a case regarding racial profiling.

“LAWLESS EXTREMISTS”

Dwight Hammond, 76, and Steven, 49, were convicted in 2012 for setting a fire that spread onto public land after years of disputes with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.

The Hammonds said they were using standard brush-control and land-management techniques, but the government said that in at least one instance they were trying to hide evidence of their slaughtering a herd of deer.

A U.S. flag covers a sign at the entrance of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Burns, Oregon, January 3, 2016. REUTERS/Jim Urquhart

The Hammonds were set to return by airplane to Oregon on Wednesday morning, the Bundy family said in an email. The pair walked out of a federal prison in California about 6-1/2 hours after the pardon was announced, the Oregonian newspaper reported.

Some conservation groups were dismayed at the pardon.

Jennifer Rokala, executive director of the Center for Western Priorities, called the Hammonds “lawless extremists.”

“Pardoning the Hammonds sends a dangerous message to America’s park rangers, wildland firefighters, law enforcement officers, and public lands managers,” Rokala said in a statement.

The two men were initially sentenced to less than the legal minimum five-year prison sentence by a judge who thought the minimum too harsh and later released the two, Dwight Hammond after three months and Steven Hammond after a year.

After the government’s appeal in 2016, a different federal judge ordered the pair back to prison to serve the full five years, sparking protests and the refuge occupation.

In a statement on Tuesday, the White House said the decision sentencing the Hammonds to five years in prison was “unjust” and said that the fire had burned only “a small portion” of public land.

“The evidence at trial regarding the Hammonds’ responsibility for the fire was conflicting, and the jury acquitted them on most of the charges,” the statement said.

As of 2018, Dwight Hammond had served about three years in prison and Steven Hammond had served four, according to the White House.

Reporting by Jonathan Allen in New York; Additional reporting by Gina Cherelus; Editing by Frank McGurty and Leslie Adler

ggl 7 23

Where Far-Right Militias Trained for Jan. 6

Slate

https://slate.com › news-and-politics › 2022/07 › jan-6...

Jul 13, 2022 — 6 hearing focused on the link between the Trump White House and the far-right ... The 2014 standoff was started by the rancher Cliven Bundy, ...

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

Mother Jones

https://www.motherjones.com › politics › 2021/10 › a...

Oct 18, 2021 — Ammon Bundy announces his candidacy for governor of Idaho on June 19, ... “security” for the January 6 protest and urged Trump backers to ...

How a standoff in Nevada years ago set the militia movement ...

go.com

https://abcnews.go.com › story

Jan 5, 2022 — How the road to January 6 began as early as 2014 on a ranch in Nevada. ... 6 and what activist Ammon Bundy and his father started years ago ...

Trump pardons Oregon cattle ranchers at the center of Bundy ...

https://abcnews.go.com › Politics › story

Jul 10, 2018 — President Trump pardoned two Oregon cattle ranchers on Tuesday whose sentencing sparked a standoff led by states' rights activist Ammon ...

How far-right figures like Ammon Bundy cause chaos in US ...

The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com › us-news › apr › ammo...

Apr 5, 2022 — Bundy, who is running for governor in Idaho, summoned his followers to a judge's home, revealing a troubling development in a divided ...

Boise woman charged in connection with Jan. 6 insurrection

AP News

https://apnews.com › article

Aug 4, 2021 — BOISE, Idaho (AP) — An Idaho woman has been charged with four misdemeanors after prosecutors said she participated in the Jan. 6 ...

Mix of extremists who stormed Capitol isn't retreating

https://apnews.com › article

Jan 13, 2021 — FILE - In this Jan 8, 2016, file photo, Burns resident Steve Atkins, left, talks with Ammon Bundy, center, one of the sons of Nevada rancher ...

REPORT: Insurrectionists, Anti-Conservation Movement One in the Same

Washington, D.C. — The anti-government extremism that fueled the insurrection on January 6, 2021 aligns almost perfectly with the violent opposition to public lands conservation, a new report from the nonpartisan watchdog Accountable.US found.

Anti-government extremists who want to end public ownership of land and water have infiltrated the halls of power from county commissioners all the way to the United States Congress, according to the report which can be downloaded :{HERE:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:. Those same leaders and their allies in groups such as the Oath Keepers have been on the front lines of the attempt to overturn the 2020 Election and undermine democracy based on Donald Trump’s “Big Lie.”

“It is time to call opposition to conservation what it truly is: an attack on American democracy,” said Kyle Herrig, President of Accountable.US. “The movement to end public ownership of land is almost identical to the movement to overrule the public’s right to choose who leads the country.”

Key findings from the report reveal the far-reaching connections between anti-public lands and anti-democracy leaders and groups:

Before the Oath Keepers:{:{ tried to overturn the 2020 election, they participated in multiple armed attacks on public lands in Nevada, Oregon, and Montana.}::{ The Atlantic, :(style="background-color:#fbfbfb;"):}::(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:[:{09/30/20:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}::{; Vox, }::{11/07/16:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}::{; Montana Public Radio, }::{08/12/15:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}::{]}::{

Cliven Bundy:{:{ declared “Range War” on the federal government prior and supported the forcible occupation of the capitol during the January 6 riot }::{Reno Gazette Journal, :(style="background-color:#fbfbfb;"):}::(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:[:{01/08/21:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}::{; Vox, }::{05/14/15:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}::{].}::{

Arizona Congressman Paul Gosar:{:{ encouraged lawbreaking at the January 6 insurrection and the selling off of public lands}::{ Business Insider, :(style="background-color:#fbfbfb;"):}::(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:[:{10/24/21:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}::{; Paul Gosar, D.D.S., }::{07/15/16:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}::{].}::{

Colorado Congresswoman Lauren Boebert:{:{ collaborated with extremists comparing protecting public lands to Hitler and Stalin }::{and was reported to have been in prior contact with the organizers of the January 6 attacks. Washington Post, :(style="background-color:#fbfbfb;"):}::(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:[:{01/19/21:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}::{; Rolling Stone, }::{10/24/21:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}::{; The Guardian, }::{05/14/21:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}::{].}::{

Right-wing talk show host Trent Loos:{:{, who has been a leading critic of campaigns to protect nature, supported violence during the capitol riots and participated in the occupation of Malheur wildlife reserve}::{ Facebook, :(style="background-color:#fbfbfb;"):}::(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:[:{01/11/16:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}::{; The Oregonian, }::{01/02/16:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}::{; High Plains Journal – Op Ed by Trent Loos, }::{04/3/21:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}::{].}:

:{Read the full analysis. :(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:

4 22 an

Ammon Bundy is headed off to Ada County jail after he thoroughly ticked off an Idaho judge. Bundy was convicted in March for an April 2020 trespassing charge at the Idaho Capitol Building. He was given community service, one year of probation, and a $3,315 fine.

But Bundy had to Bundy. He submitted to the court that he had fulfilled his 40 hours of public service—by working on his own campaign for Idaho governor.

According to KTVB, Judge Annie McDevitt said, "The whole point of public service is to give back to the community in ways that do not serve yourself.”

Ada County Prosecutor Whitney Welsh called the Capitol protest "our own little mini January 6" and showed a video of Bundy threatening two law enforcement officers, telling them he will find out where they live, saying, “I’ll come after you, each one of you personally.”

2 22 kos an

The Bundy family is best known for being one of the most (in)famous illegal welfare recipients in recent history. They’re also suspected to have been bankrolled by fossil fuel money, used as the “y’all”-talking foot soldiers for big business’ interests in trying to privatize public lands. In May of last year, Ammon Bundy announced his intentions to run for governor of Idaho, filing paperwork to run for the Republican primary. In June, the Idaho Republican Party issued astatement saying that Bundy was not welcome.

Since that time, Bundy has been successfully expanding his “People’s Network” of right-wing extremists, and somehow Republican Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin—the other Republican running—isn’t far right enough. On Thursday, a new plot twist! After social media reports that Bundy had cut some kind of endorsement deal with McGeachin, Bundy went to his Twitter account and posted a big, hilarious statement saying this was all false. Oh, and he is going to run as an independent.

In a post that was pulled down and then put back up, Bundy stated that he was pulling out of the Republican primary because “the Republican establishment in Idaho is full of filth and corruption and they refuse to put forth the party platform.” Saying that the news story that he and McGeachin had made a mutual endorsement deal with one another was “lazy” and “tabloid journalism,” Bundy proceeded to describe the current GOP political establishment being in a “corrupt and wicked state.”

He then went on to slam Idaho Republican Party Chairman Jonathan Parker for “wearing a wig and masturbating in public.” He hit out at Republican Sen. Mike Crapo and former Republican Gov. Butch Otter’s arrests for DUI, and state Rep. Greg Cheney and his history of domestic violence. Bundy then pointed to investigations of state Sen. Fred Martin and whether or not he illegally entered a high school girls’ bathroom on two separate occasions.

Bundy then threw some shade at the surprise early retirement of Ada County Sheriff Steve Bartlett, alleging he traded “promotion to his deputies for sexual favors.” Bundy rounded it all off by going back to a classic Republican moment of moral hypocrisy: When then-Sen. Larry Craig was busted soliciting sex in an airport bathroom. Bundy then announced his intentions to take back the Republican Party by running as an independent candidate.

The sources of the story that Bundy is calling fake news all reportedly came from inside the Bundy campaign.

KBOI Radio's Nate Shelman first broke the news Wednesday evening that Bundy would drop out of the primary. Multiple sources from inside Bundy's campaign told Shelman that Bundy would endorse McGeachin in the primary and that in turn, McGeachin would back Bundy in the general election if she lost in the primary. KTVB independently confirmed that with a source in Bundy's campaign.

Ammon’s filing for the Republican primary came just weeks before his trial for being arrested twice in one day for violating an Aug. 26, 2020 order that barred Bundy from the Capitol for a year. He would be found guilty of those charges. Keep up! In December 2021, Bundy tried to argue that his gubernatorial campaign stops where he urged Idahoans to register to vote should count towards the 1,621 hours of community service he owes the courts....[twt?]

2 22

in the weeks after the January 6 insurrection, the Washington Post published a disturbing piece that hinted at how everyday Republicans had come to embrace the politics of terrorism. In Oklahoma City, the Post noted, the memory of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building bombing has become a flashpoint, as both Republican politicians and ordinary citizens bully anyone who tries to draw a line between Timothy McVeigh's crime and Donald Trump-incited storming of the Capitol. The link is obvious, however. Both crimes were committed by white nationalists who refuse to accept a multiracial democracy — but woe on those who say as much in Oklahoma. When Oklahoma's Department of Education shared information from the bombing memorial linking McVeigh's attack with the domestic terror attack on the Capitol, their Facebook page was flooded with vitriol.

"How in the world is this even remotely the same as the Oklahoma bombing??!!!" one teacher wrote. Another derided the education department as the "Oklahoma Dept of Socialist Indoctrination." An angry dad clashed with other parents who argued that McVeigh's radicalism and the anti-government rhetoric at the Capitol were "the very definition of the same context."

One angry Oklahoman even shared the right-wing slogan about the "tree of liberty" needing to be "refreshed" with "blood" in the comments, seemingly unaware that the same phrase was on the T-shirt that McVeigh wore the day he murdered 168 people.

This incoherent insistence on treating McVeigh's insurrectionist violence as somehow different than the Capitol rioters illustrates an ugly shift that's happened in Republican politics since 1995. Back then, most Republicans rejected the view that a white nationalist is entitled to commit violence to protest democratic outcomes he doesn't like. Now, McVeigh's ideology is the mainstream view in GOP politics. Sure, they rarely come right out and say it. But this insistence on minimizing the Capitol riot and continuing support for the man who instigated it — Donald Trump — speaks loudly enough. And ugliness in Oklahoma City in the days after the 2021 insurrection demonstrated that this pro-insurrection view was fixed on the right within days, if not hours, of the event itself.

We see this, as well, in the celebratory attitude that right-wing media — especially Fox News — is taking towards the Ottawa trucker blockade.

As Zack Beauchamp of Vox notes, the uprising that brought that part of the Canada-U.S. border to a standstill and has terrorized the city of Ottawa "is on the fringe, including among Canadian truckers — some 90 percent of whom are vaccinated." It's a group of right-wingers who "are angry because they have lost" and are trying to gain by force what they cannot through democratic means. And yet, it's become a cause célèbre on Fox News, causing comically overwrought claims like it's "the single most successful human rights protest in a generation."

Fox News doesn't like the blockade despite its widespread unpopularity — they support it because it's unpopular.

As with the January 6 insurrection, the trucker tantrum is viewed by right-wing media asa model for how the embittered white conservative majority can impose its will without getting public support. Both the insurrection and the trucker tantrum are a far-right minority expressing a belief that they entitled to rule, no matter what. And while the Ottawa demonstration has so far not been as violent as the January 6 insurrection, it is still about using force — by taking the economy hostage and intimidating the residents with the threat of violence — to obtain what conservatives cannot gain fairly.

This shift from being anti- to pro-terrorism among Republicans can really be traced back to Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy's 2014 standoff with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and his sons' subsequent 2016occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. That's when a group of far-right extremists, led by brothers Ryan andAmmon Bundy, seized control of a visitor's center at an Oregon national wildlife refuge, spouting a bunch of incoherent demands that amounted to a belief that a democratically elected government had no right to pass laws restricting the right of white men to wreak as much environmental damage as they damn well pleased. The fight quite literally started because the occupiers didn't believe the government had a right to convict two men who had set fire to federal lands to protest not being allowed to graze their cattle there.

The occupiers were domestic terrorists,trying to obtain through violence what they couldn't through fair engagement in politics. But while Republicans formally condemned the violence, they were also tripping over each other to validate the asinine complaints of the occupiers. Multiple GOP congressmen even drew on arguments that came from fringe authoritarian writers who believe in things like turning the U.S. into a Christian theocracy.

Even more troublingly, the occupiers were found "not guilty" at their trial, suggesting that by October of 2016, enough Republicans were pro-terrorism enough to make it impossible to put together a jury to convict in a case that should have been a slam dunk. So that Trump was able to cobble together enough votes the next month to win the electoral college should not, in retrospect, have been a surprise.

The Department of Justice under Barack Obama had been slow and cautious in its response to the occupation, fearing another debacle like the Branch Davidian fire in Waco, TX in 1993. Instead of storming in, they let the occupiers feel safe enough to actually leave the property for a media event, where they were then easily captured on an open highway. It was a decision heavily criticized at the time, with lots of people rightfully pointing out that people of color who commit acts of terrorism don't get the kid glove treatment. Others, including myself, defended the feds, arguing that the fact that only one person died in the process justified the strategy. Now I'm beginning to doubt that view.

It may be that Democrats just need to get stiffer spines when dealing with right-wing bullies and terrorists, even when doing so means the right will react with violence. As :{Brian Beutler of :(style="background-color:#ffffff;"):}::{Crooked Media argued :(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:in his newsletter last week, it's reasonable to worry that the utter failure of the Department of Justice to arrest Trump or his allies for their many crimes "is driven by fear" of a violent backlash. Certainly, Trump has been using intimidation recently, promising pardons for people who commit violence for him and demanding ugly reactions from his followers if he does face a consequence.

But this failure of nerve on the part of Democratic leadership is going to screw us all over in the long run. As Beutler argues, the system "can't function if one side gets a hostage-taker's veto over the rules of fair play," and without imposing real consequences for crime and violence, "he public will just grow desensitized to right-wing tactics or, worse," even start to sympathize with the hostage-takers and violent terrorists.

We see this in the shift in GOP circles from 1995, when McVeigh's villainy was indisputable, to our modern time, when people who share McVeigh's views and stormed the Capitol are described by the Republican National Committee as merely engaging in "legitimate political discourse." The RNC did walk that lie back a little bit, but notably only for the people who got arrested. That only underscores the validity of Beutler's argument: Consequences matter when it comes to public opinion.

The ongoing failure of Democrats to bring the hammer down on the ringleaders of the coup signals strongly to the public that the coup was no big deal — and indeed, opens the door to arguing that the coup was justified. Republicans are walking right through that door right now.

https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/bundy/ nor ca water

far-right anti-government activist Ammon Bundy has made national news on multiple occasions, from leading an armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon to anti-mask standoffs in Idaho that resulted in extremists converging on a state judge's home.

Now, according to The Sacramento Bee, Bundy and his followers could be about to get involved in another confrontation with the government — this time over water shutoffs in Northern California.

"In the summer of 2001, local farmers and other activists armed with saws and blowtorches breached a chain-link fence and opened the headgates of a federal canal that supplies farmland in Oregon and far Northern California," reported Ryan Sabalow. "Local farmer Grant Knoll was among the activists there that year. The protesters forced the gates open three times but were eventually blocked by U.S. marshals. Now, with a drought just as severe as two decades ago — and with farmers' water again cut off — he's prepared to fight again."

"This spring, he and another farmer, Dan Nielsen, bought the property next to the headgates in Klamath Falls, Ore.," said the report. "They erected a red and white tent surrounded by American flags and protest signs, and they're holding regular gatherings. And they're working with a group with close ties to anti-government activist Ammon Bundy."

According to the report, "Federal water managers have for years struggled to strike a balance between supplying water for farmers while still leaving enough water in Oregon's Upper Klamath Lake to keep two species of endangered suckers from going extinct." However, the government also is obligated to send spurts of water down the canals known as "flushing flows" to maintain the health of local salmon populations local tribes depend on, and amid a drought, they lack the water for even that, let alone to supply farmers with everything they are asking for.

Farmers, however, don't buy the government's explanation, claiming water levels are higher than would exist in a drought.

"Knoll said the Bundy family's fight with the federal government has proven that if activists push back forcefully, the feds will back down," said the report. "Members of the Bundy family and their supporters have been acquitted or mistrials were declared after armed standoffs with federal authorities in Oregon and in Nevada."

You can read more here.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/ammon-bundy/

david n kos

One of the consequences of the GOP's sidelong embrace of its extremist elements—from the insurrection denialists and Big Lie gaslighters to the QAnon cultists like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert—is that far-right extremists are now perfectly comfortable identifying as Republicans. In some cases, they're demanding the overthrow of the party's establishment—which can't seem to decide whether to fight back or just succumb willingly to the incoming far-right tide.

Establishment Republicans in Western states are particularly under siege from extremist elements among their voting base. I**n Idaho**, for instance, armed-standoff-guru-turned-pandemic-denialist Ammon Bundy filed paperwork to run for governor, in a race already featuring another leading state "Patriot" movement figure. InNevada, an insurgent far-right group organized on social media and led by Proud Boys members are attempting an open hostile takeover of the Clark County GOP, the state's largest county-level Republican organization.

Bundy's filing is rich in irony. For starters, he is currently banned from the Idaho Statehouse in Boise after his two ejections and arrests for defying masking requirements, for which he is currently standing trial. For another, as KTVB notes, Bundy himself is not even registered to vote in Idaho, and has apparently never done so in the five years or so that he has lived in Emmett.

He also named himself the treasurer of his campaign, which means that he will have to refile the paperwork, according to the Idaho Secretary of State's office, which tweeted out an explanation: "Because a treasurer must be a registered Idaho voter, Ammon Bundy will either need to register and refile or name a new treasurer by refiling. IDSOS staff have notified him as such."

The Republican field to replace incumbent Governor Brad Little (who has not announced whether he will seek re-election) is already large, and Bundy's competition in the primary already features another leading "Patriot" movement figure, Lieutenant Governor Janice McGeachin,who announced her candidacy last week. While Bundy was probably the earliest far-right figure in Idaho to take up the cause of opposing COVID-19-related public-health restrictions, McGeachin—who has supported Bundy and his fellow standoff-loving "Patriots" steadfastly from her office in Boise—has also been on the pandemic-denialist bandwagon.

McGeachin appeared alongside Bundy at one anti-restriction rally in Boise. More notoriously, she appeared in a video in which she brandished a handgun and a Bible while sitting in the driver's seat of a pickup, railing against coronavirus restrictions.

The political insurgency inside Clark County's NV] GOP was reported Friday by Rory Appleton at the *Las Vegas Review-Journal*,who explained that a group of far-right activists with deep ties to the Proud Boys are positioning themselves to take over the county Republican leadership. Some of its members, meanwhile, are alleged to have threatened a number of prominent Republicans.

The group, Appleton reported, organized online—primarily using the encrypted chat app Telegram—while reveling in anti-Semitic and white-nationalist memes and rhetoric. "Two Republican women in public office told the Review-Journal they've been threatened by leaders of the fringe movement, as did the current board of the Clark County party, which is hiring security for a crucial meeting Tuesday," the story reads.

Calling itself the "Republican Chamber of Commerce" (despite lacking ties to any known GOP organization), the far-right group first made its presence felt last month when it organized a late surge in votes favoring the censure of Barbara Cegavske, the state's Republican Secretary of State, for refusing to play along with attempts to overturn the 2020 election results based on Donald Trump's false claims of election fraud.

Since then, it has been preparing to provide a similar wave of votes to sweep three of their three leading figures—Rudy Clai, Matt Anthony and Paul Laramie—into the leadership of the Clark County GOP. The group has no record of doing business anywhere in the state of Nevada, and has no connection to any of the known chamber or Republican groups already established in Nevada.

Yet its website appears to be a nominally mainstream GOP group. Its primary emblem resembles the Republican National Committee's logo but inverted, with a red elephant on a white background encircled in red with the letters "RCC" and "Republican Chamber of Commerce" within.

Anthony has achieved a level of media notoriety as one of Las Vegas' most prominent Proud Boys, though he insists the local chapter is nonviolent and nonracist. After the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, he defended the people arrested and warned against a law-enforcement crackdown on "Patriots": "They're basically going all in on tyranny, guys. … They're watching. It's to be expected. They're the enemy. They're going to shut down our ability to communicate."

As it happens, Anthony is also a fugitive: He is the subject of an arrest warrant from the state of Michigan after he broke probation by moving to Nevada and then refusing to return after Nevada declined to oversee his probation, all stemming from his 2012 arrest on a drug charge.

The group's Telegram channel—owned by Anthony, and administered by Clai—is titled "Keep Nevada Open," apparently an offshoot of a Facebook group with the same name that boasted 17,000 members and organized anti-masking and other pandemic-related protests. Appleton describes a review of the channel's contents by the Clark County GOP executive board, led by chief of staff Richard MacLean:

MacLean showed his fellow board members several pictures and videos posted within the group, though not specifically by Anthony and Clai.

One photo blamed the 9/11 terrorist bombings on Jews. Another video featured a long clip of an Adolf Hitler speech and Nazi soldier marches. Some featured cartoon characters with negative Jewish stereotypes, and one photo featured messages written on dollar bills.

A post even poked fun at Republicans, claiming they seemed to be shocked at certain current events while white nationalists were thrilled by them.

The board promptly ejected the three men from the party. However, on Thursday, 10 people including Anthony and Clai filed a lawsuitagainst both the county and state party central committees, accusing them of illegally boxing them out of Clark County GOP meetings. They claim Clai and Anthony are heading up an alternative leadership slate, and are running against a mainstream ticket headed up by state Sen. Carrie Buck.

Despite the pushback by local Republican officials, the extremist elements remain emboldened in no small part because national-level Republicans have shown their eagerness to ignore the radicalism and even embrace it. Certainly, the local far-right leaders are confident that the party's base supports them, and not the establishment players.

"We have the numbers, and they don't, so they have to play dirty," Anthony said in an interview Thursday. "It's that simple."

McGeachin's campaign signs feature the hashtag #IAmIdaho. "Ladies and gentlemen, we are at a pivotal moment in history, not just for Idaho but for our nation," McGeachin said.

Bundy told NBC News on Monday that, despite the filings, he hasn't formally announced his candidacy, but is preparing to build a campaign organization.

"The people of Idaho are very freedom-minded," Bundy said. "I had never desired (to run for office), but I knew as early as 2017 that I would run for governor of Idaho."

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

wackjob, note same rhet as wolverine. pence luciferian traitor, proto-Qanon?

https://timothycharlesholmseth.com/must-view-by-what-authority-are-they-acting-on-murdering-their-own-people-ammon-bundy/

MUST VIEW! By What Authority are they Acting On? (murdering their own people)- Ammon Bundy

August 3, 2020 Timothy Holmseth FRAUD, GOVERNMENT, HEALTH 1

by Timothy Charles Holmseth on August 3, 2020

Ammon Bundy, the third son of Cliven Bundy, articulates how the Unites States has been taken over by criminals.

Bundy explains and shows, for instance, that the federal government has no constitutional authority to involve itself with "education" or "health".

"These agencies have found a way to create their own laws, without the people's elected representatives. Over the past several decades they have been organizing their own law enforcement regiments, building their own prison systems, and appointing their own judges," Ammon Bundy said.

Timothy Holmseth

https://timothycharlesholmseth.com

Timothy Charles Holmseth is an award winning news reporter and investigative journalist. He is an FBI witness in a national profile kidnapping case. He captured rogue CIA and FBI child traffickers on tape discussing their operations. He has been targeted for a decade. In 2019 Timothy Charles Holmseth became part of thePentagon Pedophile Task Force. Timothy Holmseth is the only reporter authorized to report original content for the PPTF. There is ONE MAN between Timothy Holmseth and President Trump.

See author's posts

https://www.alternet.org/2021/03/ammon-bundy/

ammon Bundy, right-wing malcontent behind the 2016 armed takeover of Oregon's Malheur Wildlife Refuge and now a western anti-mask movement, believes he's doing God's work.

Coming from a long line of religiously inspired men who have been "called" to defend the US Constitution, Bundy has varied in his focus, from rebelling against public land ranching regulations to protesting COVID-19 safety protocols. But in his view, these are all forms of government tyranny and affronts to constitutional rights. Arrested for the fourth time on March 15, 2021, Bundy was taken into custody for failing to appear at his hearing on past trespassing charges. Because he refused to wear a mask into the courtroom, thereby missing his trial, he was apprehended outside amid of a throng of other protesters.

Bundy's crusade has been a long time in the making, but in the last year he successfully established a coalition of supporters that is broad, diverse, and a serious threat to federal law. His group is called the People's Rights Network. Like the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, it includes members who see the current government as a threat to perceived rights and are committed to defend their ideas of personal liberty, by force if necessary.

So what has taken Ammon Bundy, who first came to prominence during the 2014 armed standoff in Nevada over his father's unpaid grazing fees and trespassing cattle, into a life of an anti-government militant? The answer is a libertarian worldview and his take on Mormonism. Bundy's ideology parallels the thinking of certain leaders in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who've had a history of government cynicism. He also shares with them a tradition of theo-constitutionalism--venerating the Constitution as a sacred document. The paradox here is that Bundy believes he is upholding the Constitution and fulfilling his religious duties in his acts of lawlessness.

His impetus has roots in the early Church. After the founder and first prophet of Mormonism, Joseph Smith (1805-1844) was murdered, Brigham Young (1801-1877) assumed the reins of the Church and brought the Latter-day Saints into the Great Basin. By that point, Young and his brethren were disgusted with the US government after the years of mistreatment and bigotry they had faced. But the Mormon people kept great faith in the Constitution. While still an apostle of Smith, Young said "I find no fault with the Constitution or laws of our country; they are good enough. It is the abuse of those laws which I despise, and which God, good men and angels abhor." He later avowed " Corrupt men cannot walk these streets with impunity, and if that is alienism to the Government, amen to it. The Constitution of the United States we sustain all the day long, and it will sustain and shield us, while the men who say we are aliens, and cry out 'Mormon disturbance,' will go to hell….But to proceed; the principal evil is in the rulers, or those who profess to be rulers, and in the dispensers of the law…"

Young was not just the leader of the Church; like Smith, he was a prophet. Although he was not as prolific in his revelations as other Mormon prophet/presidents, these statements are memorialized in the Journal of Discourses and the History of the Church, texts not part of official Church doctrine, but significant, especially to those with radical leanings. Over the years, many Church prophets echoed Young's sentiments, from Wilford Woodruff (1807-1898) to Ezra Taft Benson (1899-1994), reinforcing the idea that the Constitution is good, but not those who govern under it. Benson took that idea further, declaring that the Mormon people had a religious obligation to protect the Constitution, even if this meant violence. In 1979 he declared, "I say to you with all the fervor of my soul that God intended men to be free. Rebellion against tyranny is a righteous cause. It is an enormous evil for any man to be enslaved to any system contrary to his own will. For that reason men, 200 years ago, pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor. No nation which has kept the commandments of God has ever perished, but I say to you that once freedom is lost, only blood – human blood – will win it back."

So this is where things get treacherous. If the Constitution is sacred, but those overseeing it are evil, then who determines and upholds the law of the land? Bundy has come to think that this is his duty—a chilling certainty that is likely to escalate during this current administration.As vaccines are more widely administered and mask mandates therefore become less of a concern, Bundy's focus will return to his original cause. The new Secretary of the Interior, Deb Haaland, is now charged with overseeing public lands, including the place where Ammon's Bundy's father, Cliven, continues to illegally graze his cows. The patriarch Bundy and his most infamous son share the conviction that the federal government has no constitutional right or power to own land; hence the land belongs to those white people who have occupied and used it, and the requirement of grazing fees paid to the Bureau of Land Management is unconstitutional.

Although Cliven has repeatedly lost his appeals in federal court, and currently owes over a million dollars in fines and fees, the old rancher's cows still roam the same BLM land, years after the Nevada armed standoff.To Ammon, mask mandates and grazing regulations are the same thing—affronts to constitutional rights. Law and common good be damned—he sees both as tyranny. He is determined to protect the Constitution, even by unconstitutional means. Where the next action is again taken—Nevada, Oregon, or somewhere else on the 600,000,000 acres of American public lands—remains to be seen.

In 2018, Bundy talked before an audience in South Jordan, UT during an event advertised as a "power packed four hours, with an LDS [Latter-day Saints] perspective, but practical info for all true friends of liberty." He told them about his father's dream, in which people approached a large building. Inside the building sat a golden calf, a biblical reference to a false idol, that Cliven understood to symbolize the American court of law. Ammon explained that the dream meant people are putting their faith in judges who do not have their best interests at hearts. "You can't worship the golden calf, you have to have faith in God," he told the audience. "When you know for certain that those are your own rights, you do not allow them to be questioned. And I know that's a strong thing I'm saying. But when you do that, then your friends need to come and protect you also. And it's a duty of ours to do that." Four months later, PeoplesRights.org was registered, a year and two months before pandemic brought America to a screeching halt. COVID-19 gave him a cause that fit a long ongoing narrative. The pandemic swelled the ranks of People's Rights because of conspiracy theory and righteous anger, but it wasn't invented in response to it.

Ammon Bundy has been looking for a next battle since the takeover of Malheur, when he led a group of heavily armed militia to occupy government buildings in Harney County, Oregon. During that takeover, one man, LaVoy Finicum, was shot and killed by police. Ammon now has his own militia, the People's Rights Network, an army of over 50,000 members in 50 states, according to the organization's website. He recently finished a recruitment tour in Utah, talking God, liberty, and the need for vigilante action—antidotes to golden calves. His campaign is part of a long drawn arc and we shouldn't expect his rebellion to end with a die-down of COVID-19. Bundy's attention will return to public land battles, where the first insurgencies began. It wasn't COVID-19 that spurred the formation of the People's Rights Network and inspired Bundy's mission, it was a deeply rooted sense of righteousness, Cliven's dream, and a version of Mormon ideology.

Betsy Gaines Quammen, PhD is the author of American Zion: Cliven Bundy, God and Public Lands in the West.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

https://theintercept.com/2021/01/15/capitol-riot-mob-anti-lockdown/

STUCK AT HOME last spring, newly furloughed or just newly bored, tens of thousands of Americans joined anti-lockdown groups on Facebook. Largely comfortable, mainly white people living in states from Oregon to Florida, the anti-lockdown converts initially railed against masks and restaurant closures, trading videos from demonstrations they attended at state Capitols. After Minneapolis police officers killed George Floyd in May, the anti-lockdown activists’ rhetoric took on toxic levels of racism and suspicion, their paranoia about vaccines mixing with paranoia about antifa. After the November election, they pivoted to hyping an insurrection.

Anti-lockdown and anti-mask groups, which now count some 3 million members on Facebook, were a crucial recruiting ground for the “Stop the Steal” effort that culminated in the deadly siege of the U.S. Capitol on January 6. “The ranks of ‘Stop the Steal’ groups were able to swell to hundreds of thousands almost overnight largely because they drew on this established base that had already been radicalized,” said Devin Burghart, executive director of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, which documents far-right organizing and white nationalism.

Behind the Proud Boys, boogaloo proponents, and QAnon adherents who stormed the Capitol on January 6 were legions of others who started with a less ambitious gateway cause: that no politician should stand in the way of their right to order a steak on Saturday night.

As the election fraud movement gained steam in the week following the election, Burghart and his colleagues counted 35,994 members of anti-lockdown groups who joined “Stop the Steal”-related groups. That number is likely a severe undercount. The researchers were only able to catalog a portion of anti-lockdown supporters’ profiles, and even as they worked, Facebook was taking down “Stop the Steal” pages. But it became clear to Burghart that Covid-19 denialist groups were critical to the Capitol assault. Recruits from such groups far exceeded those who had previously joined Facebook militia groups or tea party groups. “We’re pretty confident that was just the tip of the iceberg, given the high presence of “Stop the Steal” rhetoric in anti-lockdown groups,” Burghart said.

AS Facebook expelled more blatantly undemocratic groups, the reopen groups took over their message.Last week, members showed off photos and videos from the rallies in Washington, D.C., that preceded the Capitol siege as well as from the demonstrations that rocked state Capitols around the country.

Among the anti-lockdown activists who showed up in Washington, D.C., on January 6 was Army Capt. Emily Rainey, a psychological operations officer. “Get off the bench,” she said in a video that she posted to her Facebook page two days later, after Capitol sanitation workers had cleaned blood and feces off marble floors and statues. “This is not an extracurricular activity. This is an existential activity. You need to start fighting.”

A member of ReopenNC, a private group advocating reopening in North Carolina, Rainey has a history of coronavirus-related stunts. She clashed with police last spring after repeatedly tearing down the tape surrounding a playground that had been closed off because of stay-at-home orders. The Army is now investigating her for leading a group of people to the Washington, D.C., rally on January 6. Rainey toldthe Associated Press that she did not enter the Capitol during the riot.

In response to a request for comment, Facebook spokesperson Kristen Morea emailed a statement that reads: “We removed content and accounts that violated our policies against inciting violence and dangerous organizations in the lead up to January 6. We have put emergency measures into place and will continue to monitor activity on our platform in real time and remove anything that breaks our rules.”

But at least 150 anti-lockdown groups reviewed by The Intercept remain active, and the chatter in some is openly violent. In Reopen Minnesota, a private group with 38,000 members, people are calling for the state’s governor and attorney general to be burned at the stake. In Open Oregon, they are pledging to assault Gov. Kate Brown — to “squeeze her face shut” — and bring on bloodshed. “Governor Brown we are coming for YOU!” one person wrote on January 9. “God is in control. Trump isn’t done. The best is yet to come,” wrote another.

In ReopenNC, Rainey’s group, an administrator went live on January 8 to urge her 87,000 followers to rise up. Her voice shook as she explained that she was preparing to migrate the group to another platform: “Stay the course. Hold the line. Don’t give up. This is not over yet.” She also said, apparently alluding to the violence at the Capitol: “A lot of important things happened in D.C. Some precedents were set.”

[PIX Protesters carry rifles near the steps of the state Capitol in Lansing, Mich., on April 15, 2020.

Photo: Paul Sancya/AP

THE ROUTE FROM rejecting masks to rejecting the republic was more direct than it might seem. Although some spring anti-lockdown demonstrations consisted mainly of people in SUVs, other events were more threatening. On April 30 — days after President Donald Trump tweeted “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!”—demonstrators armed with rifles entered the Michigan Capitol. In May they showed up again, this time with signs that compared Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to Hitler and others that read “Tyrants Get the Rope.” Whitmer would later became the subject of an elaborate kidnapping plot.

The early anti-lockdown protests were promoted and partially bankrolled by groups linked to the tea party. Other efforts were spearheaded by gun rights advocates and far-right rabble-rousers the Dorr brothers.

Masks Off: How the Brothers Who Fueled the Reopen Protests Built a Volatile Far-Right Network

In May, authorities arrested a Colorado reopen protester after investigators found four pipe bombs in his home. In June, federal prosecutors in Nevada charged three anti-lockdown activists for conspiring to blow up or set fire to U.S. government buildings. Armed men affiliated with the Oath Keepers, a right-wing militia group, and other far-right groups also provided protection to hair salons that defied business closure orders.

Along the way, the tone of the Facebook groups shifted. Initially, some members clung to the notion that their cause was bipartisan. “Hey guys FYI this group isn’t just Trump supporters there are some democrats and independents here too,” someone posted in Reopen Minnesota on April 17. As they prepared to rally at the governor’s mansion, another asked people to “leave all your Trump gear at home,” writing: “This whole thing about getting our rights back is not about Trump.”

But by summer, the Minnesota group was flooded with photos from Trump boat parades and rallies. By November, members spoke of Trump as the sole figure standing between the United States and communism.

Although far-right, white supremacist, and militia groups have long flourished in the United States, pandemic-related rage may have further grown their ranks, with social isolation making people more prone to radicalization. “You’ve got a need for community, and the need for community becomes about rejecting the lockdown, and that becomes the first principle of forming the community,” said Alexander Reid Ross, a researcher at the Center for Analysis of the Radical Right and author of “Against the Fascist Creep.” “That is a recipe for disaster.”

People who may have started out concerned about local businesses stayed at home glued to screens, where they were exposed to ever more extreme content. “They stepped onto this conveyor belt and then were rapidly drawn into this world which filled them with more and more conspiracy theories and more and more reasons to go out and commit acts of violence,” said Burghart. “That radicalization path is far more rapid today than it ever has been in the past. It used to take years to radicalize someone. It now takes months.”

[PIX Ammon Bundy was arrested twice in two days at the state Capitol in Boise, Idaho, in August 2020.

Photo: Darin Oswald/Idaho Statesman/AP

AMONG THOSE easing the transition was far-right leader Ammon Bundy, infamous for his 2016 takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon and his family’s earlier standoff with the federal government in the Mojave Desert. In April 2020, he launched the group People’s Rights, whose purpose was to defy Covid-19-related health directives. He soon expanded to include anti-vaccine proponents,growing the network in part on Facebook. In August, Bundy and his maskless followers stormed the Idaho Capitol, foreshadowing the events of January 6. “The government has no right to tell a person what they can put over their mouth,” Bundy later told the New Yorker. On January 6, People’s Rights adherents fanned out to state Capitols and to Washington, D.C., posting videos of the events on Facebook afterward. People’s Rights now has informal chapters in at least 16 states.

Though the group has been banned from Facebook, many of its leaders remain active on the platform. Ruby Lefeau, a prominent People’s Rights organizer in Washington state, posted a video from a car in Washington, D.C., after the January 6 rally in which she said: “We left the Capitol because they’re starting to lock it up. We’re going to go drive around. Looks like we’re looking for the White House.” She added, apparently to the other passengers in the vehicle, “I’d be careful we don’t get arrested.” The banner photo on Lefeau’s Facebook is a digital flyer that was widely circulated by the far right ahead of January 6. “Operation Occupy the Capitol,” it reads.

:{

“That whole incident is white supremacists fighting for their lives so that they can keep their militarized police force suppressing and killing Black people. That is why they rose up. That is why they stormed the Capitol.”

}:

Anti-lockdown leaders have told their followers that the next few weeks will be critical. “It’s at times like this when everybody has to decide what kind of man they are, what kind of woman they are,” Ben Dorr, one of the Dorr brothers, said in a video posted to Reopen Minnesota on January 8. “It forces people out of this comfort zone, and you’re either a little weasel, a little squirrel, or you’re a titan. You’re a patriot. You’re a fighter.”

Researchers and activists say that while Facebook bears significant responsibility for the radicalization of anti-lockdown groups, law enforcement is also to blame for not taking those early protests seriously. The June 2020 BlueLeaks hack, which exposed data from law enforcement agencies and fusion centers around the country, turned up relatively little on the spring reopen protests even though many demonstrators were armed. The George Floyd protests, by contrast, came in for intense scrutiny in the trove of documents, with fusion centers including in their alerts anti-racist barbecues and candlelight vigils. Documents that were subsequently leaked to The Intercept showed that police also surveilled cultural events held by the Black community over the summer.

To Jamie Garcia, an organizer with the abolitionist group Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, the events of January 6 are inextricable from abuses in policing. “That whole incident is white supremacists fighting for their lives so that they can keep their militarized police force suppressing and killing Black people. That is why they rose up. That is why they stormed the Capitol.”

Meanwhile, a volatile far-right movement is not the only outgrowth of anti-lockdown demonstrations. The Covid-19 denialism that radicalized some insurrectionists has also contributed to a spike in cases across the United States. “The military is at my hospital,” said Garcia, who is a nurse in Los Angeles. “That’s how bad it is. People are dying. There is nowhere to go if you get sick.”

no lnx

Militia takes over Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters

Published: Jan. 02, 2016,

By Les Zaitz | The Oregonian/OregonLive

Update at 9:15 p.m.: Statement from Harney County Sheriff Dave Ward: "After the peaceful rally was completed today, a group of outside militants drove to the Malheur Wildlife Refuge, where they seized and occupied the refuge headquarters. A collective effort from multiple agencies is currently working on a solution. For the time being please stay away from that area. More information will be provided as it becomes available. Please maintain a peaceful and united front and allow us to work through this situation."

The Bundy family of Nevada joined with hard-core militiamen Saturday to take over the headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, vowing to occupy the remote federal outpost 30 miles southeast of Burns for years.

The occupation came shortly after an estimated 300 marchers -- militia and local citizens both -- paraded through Burns to protest the prosecution of two Harney County ranchers, Dwight Hammond Jr. and Steven Hammond, who are to report to prison on Monday.

Among the occupiers is Ammon Bundy, son of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, and two of his brothers. Militia members at the refuge claimed they had as many as 100 supporters with them. The refuge, federal property managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, was closed and unoccupied for the holiday weekend.

In phone interviews from inside the occupied building Saturday night,Ammon Bundy and his brother, Ryan Bundy, said they are not looking to hurt anyone. But they would not rule out violence if police tried to remove them, they said.

"The facility has been the tool to do all thetyranny that has been placed upon the Hammonds," Ammon Bundy said.

"We're planning on staying here for years, absolutely," he added. "This is not a decision we've made at the last minute."

Neither man would say how many people are in the building or whether they are armed. Ryan Bundy said there were no hostages, but the group is demanding that the Hammonds be released and the federal government relinquish control of the Malheur National Forest.

He said many would be willing to fight -- and die, if necessary -- to defend what they see as constitutionally protected rights for states, counties and individuals to manage local lands.

"The best possible outcome is that the ranchers that have been kicked out of the area, then they will come back and reclaim their land, and the wildlife refuge will be shut down forever and the federal government will relinquish such control," he said. "What we're doing is not rebellious. What we're doing is in accordance with the Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land."

Government sources told The Oregonian/OregonLive that the militia also was planning to occupy a closed wildland fire station near the town of Frenchglen. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management posts crews there during the fire season.

Law enforcement officials so far have not commented on the situation. Oregon State Police, the Harney County Sheriff's Office and the FBI were involved.

Ammon Bundy posted a video on his Facebook page calling on patriots from across the country to report to the refuge - with their weapons.

"We went to the local communities and presented it many times and to many different people," he said. "They were not strong enough to make the stand. So many individuals across the United States and in Oregon are making this stand. We hope they will grab onto this and realize that it's been happening."

Among those joining Bundy in the occupation are Ryan Payne, U.S. Army veteran, and Blaine Cooper. Payne has claimed to have helped organize militia snipers to target federal agents in a standoff last year in Nevada. He told one news organization the federal agents would have been killed had they made the wrong move.

He has been a steady presence in Burns in recent weeks, questioning people who were critical of the militia's presence. He typically had a holstered sidearm as he moved around the community.

At a community meeting in Burns Friday, Payne disavowed any ill intent.

"The agenda is to uphold the Constitution. That's all," he said.

Cooper, another militia leader, said at that meeting he participated in the Bundy standoff in Nevada.

"I went there to defend Cliven with my life," Cooper said.

Ian K. Kullgren of The Oregonian/OregonLive contributed to this report.

-- Les Zaitz

503-221-8181; @leszaitz

https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/bundy

ammon Bundy defended himself during a virtual court hearing regarding the trespassing charge and arrest at the Idaho Capitol back in August. Charges were filed against Bundy after he was arrested twice amid the Idaho Legislature's special session.

Ada County Magistrate Judge David Manweiler allowed Bundy to speak but also warned him that anything said could be used against him. Bundy made a request for discovery — due to evidence he believe the state already has in its possession.

According to Bundy, Bundy "Gov. Brad Little, House Speaker Scott Bedke, R-Oakley, and Senate Pro Tempore Brent Hill, R-Rexburg, 'conspired' against him," reports Idaho Statesmen.

"The governor and others has, if you will, despised our response to the COVID restrictions," Bundy told the judge. "They have spoke about me personally, by name, our organization or network by name, and there has been an effort, a concerted effort, to combat our political stance."

Deputy prosecutor Whitney Welsh has the power to file for a subpoena and request records. However, she has not done so as she described Bundy's request as a "fishing expedition."

Bundy admitted that he does believe the state has a legitimate charge for him as he argued that the state lacks a "legal standing" for the trespassing charge he is currently facing. According to Bundy, he and other supporters were there on government business. Although he was offered a plea deal, he reportedly denied the offer, according to Welsh.

"I in no way believe I did anything illegal and I don't believe I did anything wrong," Bundy said. "This is much more than just a little trespassing charge."

The latest court hearing follows multiple trials in the past. Bundy and his family members previously made headlines following their involvement in two different armed standoffs: one in 2014 at a Nevada family ranch and another in eastern Oregon at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in 2016.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/ammon-bundy-arrested-after-refusing-to-obey-idaho-statehouse-meeting-rules/ar-BB18n7cp

no lnx pix blk cowboy

ammon Bundy arrested after refusing to obey Idaho Statehouse meeting rules

8/26/2020

Idaho state police troopers arrested states' rights activist Ammon Bundy Tuesday and wheeled him out of the Idaho Statehouse, still in his seat, after he disrupted a special legislative session, police said.

[Ammon Bundy wearing a suit and tie talking on a cell phone: Idaho State troopers take Ammon Bundy toward a waiting patrol car after he was arrested for trespassing at a special legislative session being held in regard to the coronavirus pandemic at the Idaho State Capital in Boise, Idaho, Aug. 25, 2020.© Brian Myrick/Idaho Press via Reuters ]

Idaho State troopers take Ammon Bundy toward a waiting patrol car after he was arrested for trespassing at a special legislative session being held in regard to the coronavirus pandemic at the Idaho State Capital in Boise, Idaho, Aug. 25, 2020.]

His arrest, along with three other protesters, came a day after a crowd of unmasked protesters, some of whom were armed, broke glass, stormed the chambers and violated social distancing rules during the special session, according to authorities.

The Idaho State Police said in a statement to ABC News that Bundy, who was not wearing a mask, Aaron Von Schmidt, 42, and Jill Watts, 38, failed to leave the Lincoln Auditorium after the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Scott Bedke, ordered the room cleared.

MORE: Oregon Standoff Ends as Remaining Occupiers Arrested, Cliven Bundy Charged in Separate Case]

Bundy, who took part in a 41-day standoff with federal agents in Oregon in 2016, allegedly did not get up from his seat despite orders from the officers, according to the state police.

[Ammon Bundy wearing a military uniform: This image taken from video shows anti-government activist Ammon Bundy, rear, being wheeled into an elevator in a chair following his arrest at the Idaho Statehouse in Boise, Idaho, Aug. 25, 2020.© Keith Ridler/AP This image taken from video shows anti-government activist Ammon Bundy, rear, being wheeled into an elevator in a chair following his arrest at the Idaho Statehouse in Boise, Idaho, Aug. 25, 2020.]

"He was placed in handcuffs and removed from the Statehouse still in the rolling chair where he was seated," the police said in a statement.

Bundy, Von Schmidt and Watts were charged with misdemeanor trespassing, according to the state police. Bundy was charged with an additional misdemeanor of resisting and obstructing officers, the state police said.

Earlier in the afternoon, Bryan Bowermaster, 33 of Boise, Boise man was removed from the statehouse after he violated assigned seating guidelines and took the spot reserved for credentialed journalists, according to the state police. Bowermaster was charged with misdemeanor trespassing, according to the police.

[Ammon Bundy et al. in a uniform: Idaho State troopers take Ammon Bundy toward a waiting patrol car after he was arrested for trespassing at a special legislative session being held in regard to the coronavirus pandemic at the Idaho State Capital in Boise, Idaho, Aug. 25, 2020.© Brian Myrick/Idaho Press via Reuters Idaho State troopers take Ammon Bundy toward a waiting patrol car after he was arrested for trespassing at a special legislative session being held in regard to the coronavirus pandemic at the Idaho State Capital in Boise, Idaho, Aug. 25, 2020.]

Video: Portland Police declare "riot" after officers attacked (Reuters)]

Attorney information for Bundy and the other defendants wasn't immediately available.

Idaho state leaders have been meeting for a special session this week to discuss and vote on several bills, including one that would end Gov. Brad Little's state of emergency over the coronavirus.

Idaho currently has 30,475 confirmed and probable COVID-19 cases and 326 confirmed and probable deaths, according to the state's Health Department. There have been 9,361 new coronavirus diagnoses between August 1 and August 25, according to state data.

On Aug. 19, the state recorded 12 COVID-19 deaths, which broke the previous record of 10 set on July 27, the health data showed.

[MORE: Protester with ax involved in clash at Michigan rally against stay-at-home orders]

On Monday, the statehouse was the scene of a chaotic protest where several people, including Bundy, ignored rules requiring social distancing.

[Ammon Bundy et al. holding a sign: Ammon Bundy, center, who led the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge occupation, stands on the Idaho Statehouse steps in Boise, Idaho, on Monday, Aug. 24, 2020.© Keith Ridler/AP Ammon Bundy, center, who led the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge occupation, stands on the Idaho Statehouse steps in Boise, Idaho, on Monday, Aug. 24, 2020.

Protesters shattering a glass door, rushed into the House chambers, which was supposed to have limited seating, and shoved their way past state police officers, according to local reports. Some of the protesters were armed with rifles and the majority didn't wear face coverings.]

a person standing in front of a building: Allen Clark of Meridian, Idaho, attends the opening of the Idaho special session at the Statehouse in Boise, Idaho, on Monday, Aug. 24, 2020.© Keith Ridler/AP Allen Clark of Meridian, Idaho, attends the opening of the Idaho special session at the Statehouse in Boise, Idaho, on Monday, Aug. 24, 2020.]

Republican House Speaker Scott Bedke allowed the gallery to fully open as long as the crowd stopped chanting and was respectful, and there were no arrests.

“I want to always try to avoid violence,” Bedke told the Associated Press.

He later added he was "disappointed" about the violence.

"I think that Idahoans expect more out of their citizens," he told the AP.

A spokeswoman for the Idaho State Police said in a statement an investigation is underway into any criminal behavior that may have occurred during the Monday protest.

"Troopers very aware that their own actions may escalate or deescalate a situation with immediate impact on the safety of all involved. The situation outside the House Chambers Monday broke out in a matter of moments," the spokeswoman said in a statement.

"Troopers acted in such a way as to ensure the important business of the Legislature could continue under these extraordinary circumstances."

1/2016 AP https://nypost.com/2016/01/28/in-total-surrender-ammon-bundy-urges-followers-to-stand-down/

no lnx

bak ammon 1020

bek podcast tip

html woverine

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/ammon-bundy-is-building-a-far-right-theocratic-army-under-the-guise-of-defending-rights/

There's been a buffoonish quality to Ammon Bundy's brand of far-right "constitutionalist" politics over the past six months, primarily organized in a typically paranoid response to COVID-19-related public-health measures: Protesting at the home of a police officer who had arrested an anti-vaccination fanatic for violating the closure of a playground. Trying to bully his way inside a health-board meeting. Getting arrested twice in two days for ignoring his ban from the Idaho Statehouse. Going maskless at a Caldwell High School football game that forced the game to be called off, for which he was not only ejected but banned from future games by the local school district.

The endless antics, however, have always obfuscated a darker, much more dangerous agenda. A disturbing new in-depth report by Devin Burghart at the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights reveals that all the time that Bundy has been gathering media time and headlines, he's been building a massive army of volunteers—a network called People's Rights—intent on imposing a far-right authoritarian state, all under the guise of defending individual rights.

Bundy first announced the formation of the People's Rights network in March, when he held a gathering not far from his home in Emmett, Idaho, discussing plans to organize people to form ad-hoc gatherings to "defend" local citizens against COVID-19-related "tyranny." Bundy told the audience that they didn't need to obey the governor's stray-at-home or business-closure orders. And he pledged to bring fellow "Patriots" to the rescue if anyone felt pressure from "authorities" to comply.

"I will be there," Bundy told the Idaho Press. "I will bring as many people as we can. We will form a legal defense for you, a political defense for you, and we will also, if necessary, provide a physical defense for you, so that you can continue in your rights."

As it has played out on the ground, these gatherings have become bellicose, and frequently armed, mobs protesting police officers at their homes, breaking into health-board meetings that were being held online, and breaking down the doors inside the Statehouse and attending committee meetings unmasked in order to intimidate state legislators.

The incident resulting in the cancellation of the football game between Caldwell and Emmett high schools is emblematic of these anti-democratic intimidation tactics at work.

Bundy, whose son plays for Emmett High, showed up in Caldwell for the game without a mask—though one was required for entry—and refused to put one on, first taking a seat in the stands, then moving to a fenced area away from the stands. As he livestreamed the exchange, Bundy refused to leave when game officials asked him to.

Moreover, members of his network watching on Facebook sprang into action and began phoning 911 dispatchers in Caldwell—not merely to complain, but to threaten and intimidate. The flood of threats was so overwhelming and worrisome that at halftime, officials announced the game was being cancelled.

"The threats made to dispatch appear to have stemmed from the dispute between Mr. Bundy and the Caldwell School District personnel that requested he wear a mask while attending the game," a Caldwell police spokesman told the Idaho Statesman. "The calls did specifically reference the football game."

Ten days later, the district voted unanimously to ban Bundy from Caldwell school grounds for the next year.

The IREHR report explores how this is all being organized. The People's Rights network, it explains, has seen rapid growth fueled by "a fusion of Bundy's core of the far-right paramilitary supporters built up over years of armed standoffs with a mass base of new activists radicalized in protest over COVID-19 health directives."

Bundy devised a secure online system built on SMS text messaging to enable the network to organize without public scrutiny or exposure. IREHR managed to obtain access to the network, however, and reports that "Bundy has assembled a team of 153 'assistants' in sixteen states." It goes on to identify all of those people, and found that their backgrounds include significant activism in radical right causes—and that, somewhat unusually, the majority of those local assistants are women (though the national and state leadership remain dominated by men).

This network is not engaged in the usual far-right battle against "government tyranny," which is the usual rhetoric that surrounds "Patriot" groups. Bundy's network instead is pro-government—but one that has no compunction about erasing the rights of people its participants have deemed morally depraved:

Instead of a more traditional "anti-government" narrative, People's Rights leaders have expressed a desire for governmental power to be used to protect the "righteous" against "wicked" liberals, antifa, Black Lives Matter activists, and others. Several People's Rights leaders are running for elected office—to become the government. Absent that sort of intervention, leaders have proposed a type of armed enclave-style "neighborhood" nationalism, where "righteous" neighbors stand against the "wicked." People's Rights leaders have often defined the "wicked" using far-right conspiracism, racism, antisemitism, anti-indigenous, and anti-transgender sentiment.

Moreover, in addition to building an "Uber-like" paramilitary response system that can be mobilized whenever people believe their rights are under attack from godless liberals, IREHR's report explains that discussion within the surreptitious network go well beyond such imagined "self-defense" measures.

Some of the People's Rights network participants are running for elective office, hoping to promote the group's theocratic-state agenda from within the halls of power. Mario Perea, a People's Rights assistant from Idaho, told would-be participants in a rally for a political candidate: "We claim, and we use, and we defend our rights. In order to defend our rights, we have to get people into these government positions. That is a form of defense because we're being attacked politically. So we need to fight back and resist politically."

The politics include a sensibility attuned to modern "Patriot" movement rhetoric, particularly the rising "Boogaloo" talk about broad social breakdowns and violence surrounding the coming election. Mostly, there is a fairly typical eagerness for the battle to begin.

"Are you ready for Civil War November 4?" asked People's Rights leader Tony Pellegrino in a Facebook post.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/ammon-bundys-anti-antics-earn-him-2-ejections-from-idaho-statehouse-in-2-days

if there is one thing we already know about Ammon Bundy, it’s that he’s anointed himself the arbiter of all things constitutional and legal—which is why he’s so frequently inclined to ignore the laws he considers “unlawful,” including the federal government’s ownership of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, as well as the efforts of Idaho’s governor to clamp down on the COVID-19 pandemic.

And it’s why he was arrested twice in two days for his obstreperous attempts to lead a “people’s rights” revolt against Idaho state leadership during the opening days of a special legislative session intended to deal with pandemic-related state business. After leading a rowdy crowd of protesters on Monday who pushed past state troopers, broke a glass door and filled both legislative galleries and committee-hearing rooms beyond social-distancing requirements, Bundy was arrested Tuesday (and banned for a year from the Statehouse) for refusing to leave a hearing room—and then arrested again Wednesday for ignoring the ban.

Both arrest scenes were notable for Bundy’s passive non-cooperation, leading to state troopers carting him out the door on the same wheeled chair in which he sat in the meeting room after he refused to leave on Tuesday—and then somewhat repeating the scene Wednesday, with Bundy first being bodily dragged out of the legislative chambers and then being wheeled out of the building in a wheelchair.

No one was arrested after Monday’s riotous opening. However, on Tuesday, Bundy and a cluster of his anti-state-of-emergency supporters flooded another committee hearing in the Lincoln Auditorium of the Statehouse—and became so raucous that legislators cancelled the hearing and moved the hearing to another location.

bundy and his cohorts had occupied the section of the hearing room normally reserved for members of the press, and afterwards, they chose to remain—and then refused to leave when state officials attempted to close the room. So a large phalanx of Idaho State Troopers marched into the room, ordered everyone still present out, and then arrested Bundy and two of his supporters when they refused to leave their seats.

Bundy was rolled out of the building in the office chair, with his hands bound behind his back. He was released shortly afterwards at the Ada County Courthouse, and informed that as a result of his arrest, he was banned from the Statehouse for a year, and would be considered to be trespassing if he attempted to return.

Republican House Speaker Scott Bedke condemned the incident: “The events that have taken place over the past couple of days are unacceptable. It is important to protect the rights of all to participate in the process, not simply those who are the most aggressive and have the loudest voices,” Bedke said in a press release. “Unfortunately, a small group of individuals have disrupted what should be a deliberate and fair process. The end result has been chaotic and unproductive.”

Still Bedke was optimistic, saying he hoped legislators could get back to work “without further distractions.”

Instead, Bundy showed back up again on Wednesday, seated this time with a group of supporters in the gallery of the Senate chambers—utterly indifferent to the warning against trespassing he had received the day before. Security officers and ISP officials confronted him, asked him to leave, and when he refused, arrested him.

This time, he was carried out bodily to a secured area, then apparently placed in a wheelchair and taken out of the Statehouse again through an underground tunnel and put in a police vehicle.

Bundy has taken the lead role in organizing right-wing extremists’ “resistance” to Gov. Brad Little’s stay-at-home orders and other anti-pandemic measures. So far, he has organized an Easter celebration that defied the state’s social-distancing rules, helped promote an “anti-vaccination” mother’s attempt to make a martyr of herself by ignoring the shutdown of a Meridian playground, and tried to bully his way inside a district health-board meeting that was actually being held online.

Ammon Bundy arrested at Idaho state capital after occupying press desk

Ammon Bundy to defy stay-at-home order for Easter holiday

Federal trial set to begin for leaders of standoff at Oregon wildlife refuge

Bundy brothers remain in jail following courtroom outburst

In total surrender, Ammon Bundy urges followers to stand down AP?

In total surrender, Ammon Bundy urges followers to stand down

buRNS, Ore. — Three members of an armed group occupying an Oregon wildlife refuge surrendered to authorities, officials said, hours after their jailed leader urged remaining militants to abandon the site and “go home.”

The three arrests Wednesday at a checkpoint law officers have set up near the refuge, followed the arrests a day earlier of leader Ammon Bundy and seven others.

The FBI and Oregon State Police said in a statement that 45-year-old Duane Leo Ehmer of Irrigon, Oregon, and 34-year-old Dylan Wade Anderson of Provo, Utah, turned themselves in around 3:30 p.m. And 43-year-old Jason S. Patrick of Bonaire, Georgia, did the same a few hours later.

The men were described as being in contact with the FBI and officials said the men surrendered to agents on a road near the refuge.

After Bundy made his first court appearance in Portland on Wednesday, his attorney, Mike Arnold, read this statement from his client: “Please stand down. Go home and hug your families. This fight is now in the courts.”

It was unclear whether the rest of Bundy’s followers still holed up at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge south of Burns were ready to heed his advice. It was believed perhaps a half-dozen remained late Wednesday, apparently sitting around a campfire.

(Clockwise from top left) Ammon Bundy, Ryan Bundy, Brian Cavalier, Jon Ritzheimer, Peter Santilli, Shawna Cox, Ryan Payne and Joseph O’Shaughnessy in booking photos after their arrests.Reuters]

Meanwhile, details began to emerge about the confrontation Tuesday on a remote highway that resulted in the arrest of Bundy and other leading figures in the group of occupiers, and in the death of militant Robert Finicum.

Bundy followers gave conflicting accounts of how Finicum died. One said Finicum charged at FBI agents, who then shot him. A member of the Bundy family said Finicum did nothing to provoke the agents.

An Oregon man who says he witnessed the shootout says he heard about a half-dozen shots but didn’t see anyone get hit, and that the shooting happened quickly — over maybe 12 or 15 seconds. Raymond Doherty told KOIN-TV that he was about 100 feet back and couldn’t see who specifically was shooting. But, he added, “I saw them shooting at each other.”

Authorities refused to release any details about the encounter or even to verify that it was Finicum who was killed.

Also on Wednesday, a federal judge in Portland unsealed a criminal complaint that said the armed group had explosives and night-vision goggles and that they were prepared to fight at the refuge or in the nearby town of Burns.

Someone told authorities about the equipment on Jan. 2, when the group took over Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, according to the document.

Bundy and the seven others are charged with felony counts of “conspiracy to impede officers of the United States from their official duties through the use of force, intimidation, or threats.”

The criminal complaint stresses that point. It states that the 16 employees at the wildlife refuge “have been prevented from reporting to work because of threats of violence posed by the defendants and others occupying the property.”

Enlarge Image

Duane Ehmer shows his support for the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon.Zumawire

Federal law officials and Harney County Sheriff Dave Ward held a news conference on Wednesday in which they called on the rest of the occupiers to go home. There is a huge law enforcement presence in the region, and the FBI has now set up checkpoints outside the refuge.

FBI agent Greg Bretzing said people could leave through checkpoints “where they will be identified.” FBI officials said that Wednesday night, in addition to the three men arrested, five people left the refuge through the checkpoints and were released without arrest.

Bretzing also defended the FBI-led operation that resulted in the arrest of Bundy and other leaders, and in the death of Finicum. “I will say that the armed occupiers were given ample opportunities to leave peacefully,” he said.

Ward said multiple law enforcement agencies put together “the best tactical plan they could.”

Bundy followers took to social media to offer conflicting accounts of Finicum’s final moments.

In a video posted to Facebook, Mike McConnell said he was driving a vehicle carrying Ammon Bundy and another occupier, Brian Cavalier. He said Finicum was driving a truck and with him were Ryan Bundy — Ammon’s brother — as well as three others.

He said the convoy was driving through a forest when they were stopped by agents in heavy-duty trucks. He said agents first pulled him out of the vehicle, followed by Ammon Bundy and Cavalier.

When agents approached the truck driven by Filicum, he drove off with officers in pursuit. McConnell said he did not see what happened next, but he heard from others who were in that vehicle that they encountered a roadblock.

The truck got stuck in a snowbank, and Finicum got out and “charged them. He went after them,” McConnell said.

Relatives of Ammon Bundy offered similar accounts, but they said Finicum did nothing to provoke FBI agents.

Briana Bundy, a sister of Ammon Bundy, said he called his wife after his arrest. He said the group was stopped by state and federal officers.

She said people in the two vehicles complied with instructions to get out with their hands up.

“LaVoy shouted, ‘Don’t shoot. We’re unarmed,’ ” Briana Bundy said in an interview with the Associated Press. “They began to fire on them. Ammon said it happened real fast.”

“Ammon said, ‘They murdered him in cold blood.'”

McConnell had a different perspective.

“Anytime someone takes off with a vehicle away from law enforcement after they’ve exercised a stop, it’s typically considered an act of aggression, and foolish,” he said in the Facebook video.

Ammon and Ryan Bundy are the sons of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, who was involved in a high-profile 2014 standoff with the government over grazing rights.

The group they led came to the frozen high desert of eastern Oregon to decry what it calls onerous federal land restrictions and to object to the prison sentences of two local ranchers convicted of setting fires.

In the small community of Burns, near the refuge, 80-year-old Bev Schaff said the occupation has “split this town.”

“Some people are for it and some against it. But I think everyone is ready for it to be over,” Schaff said.

FILED UNDER AMMON BUNDY , FBI , MILITIAS , OREGON , 1/28/16

Ammon Bundy arrested at Idaho state capital after occupying press desk

Ammon Bundy to defy stay-at-home order for Easter holiday

Federal trial set to begin for leaders of standoff at Oregon wildlife refuge

Bundy brothers remain in jail following courtroom outburst

In total surrender, Ammon Bundy urges followers to stand down

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-cheering-rogue-sheriffs-connected-extremist-group

faux News is cheering on rogue sheriffs who refuse to enforce shelter-in-place or social distancing orders that they claim are unconstitutional. Three of these sheriffs who have appeared on the network also have ties to the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, an extremist, pro-militia group.

While protests to the stay-at-home orders cropped up across the country, sheriffs in several states have insisted that enforcing the orders would violate people’s constitutional rights. According to the Miami Herald, Sheriff J.D. Raymond in Washington state said he will not enforce any guidelines that he believes “infringe on your constitutional rights.” Four sheriffs in Michigan issued a statement that sympathized with Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s desire to protect the public, but concluded her orders are “overstepping her executive authority” and said they therefore will not enforce them.

Fox News has interviewed several sheriffs who refuse to enforce these measures, asking if the orders have gone “too far” and if people are just “standing up” for their rights. (Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade agreed that Michigan’s orders are “unreasonable,” and Fox prime-time host Sean Hannity went as far as to call the orders “draconian” and praised the places that are starting to ease restrictions.)

Three of the sheriffs Fox spoke to -- Mark Lamb of Pinal County, Arizona; Dar Leaf of Barry County, Michigan; and Ted Schendel of Benzie County, Michigan -- have ties to the extremist group Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA).

CSPOA was founded by Richard Mack, a former rural Arizona sheriff and one of Southern Poverty Law Center’s top radical, anti-government leaders. According to SPLC, Mack’s website warns that “the greatest threat we face today is not terrorists; it is our federal government” and calls the IRS “Gestapo.” His group ascribes to a theory that county sheriffs are the “highest legitimate law enforcement” in the United States, as SPLC put it, and that they should not enforce laws that they deem to violate people’s constitutional rights.

Mack made headlines in 2014 when he told Fox News there was a plan to put women on the frontlines in a Nevada standoff between rancher Cliven Bundy and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. While he admitted his plan “sounds horrible,” he insisted it was the only way to show how ruthless federal agents are. He was also one of the most ardent supporters during the 41-day standoff at an Oregon wildlife refuge led by Bundy's son in 2016 and openly admitted he hoped his support would boost the visibility of CSPOA.

Now Fox is interviewing these CSPOA-associated sheriffs about their opposition to the stay-at-home orders.

Mark Lamb: Lamb is a member of the CSPOA’s “Freedom Coalition,” which demands an independent investigation into “all arrests and incarcerations from the IRS, BLM, FDA, BATF, EPA, USFS, and all other bureaucracies” in order to free any victims whose only crime “has been to offend federal bureaucrats” and are now in prison because of “out-of-control” federal regulations.

Dar Leaf: In 2016, Leaf was named CSPOA’s “Sheriff of the Year,” and in 2019, he spoke at the organization’s annual conference, where he allegedly called progressives “people who can’t spell communism.”

Ted Schendel: According to Michigan’s Northern Express, Schendel refers to himself as a “constitutional sheriff” and in 2013 won the CSPOA’s “Grand Defender of the Constitution” award for vowing not to enforce an assault weapons ban if it was passed.

cf pendejo

ew 120

The letter writers also raised concerns about Pendley's actions and opinions in and out of office.

In November, he publicly expressed support for the views of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA), an extremist public lands organization affiliated with armed militants Ammon and Cliven Bundy.

He has various conflicts of interests. He represented three Utah counties in their attempt to shrink Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments and still receives payments from former-employer the Mountain States Legal Foundation, which is still suing the BLM.

He is overseeing a controversial move of the BLM headquarters from Washington, DC to Colorado that has not been approved by Congress.

He holds controversial views. In addition to arguing in support of selling off public lands, he also thinks that wild horses are the biggest issue facing Western public lands, ignoring issues like fossil fuel extraction and the climate crisis, the fate of the endangered greater sage-grouse and Gunnison sage-grouse and overgrazing by livestock.

"Putting someone like William Perry Pendley in charge of what happens on these public lands is likely to just accelerate climate disruption," Shelley Silbert, letter signatory and executive director of conservation group Great Old Broads for Wilderness, told InsideClimate News.

The Interior Department dismissed the concerns of the letter writers.

"For this group of environmental extremists to call themselves sportsman and conservationists is as laughable as this letter. Mr. Pendley brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to the Department and is committed to carrying out the Administration's priorities for the betterment of the American people," an Interior spokesperson told The Hill Monday.

But environmental groups argue that Pendley's positions are the extreme ones.

"William Perry Pendley is an ideological zealot with values that are deeply out of touch with the mainstream," Wilderness Society conservation director Phil Hanceford

no lnx

How the bizarre tale of the ‘Oregon standoff’ explains what happened to America in 2016

Written by Andrew O'Hehir / Salon September 8, 2019

Anthony McCann’s “Shadowlands: Fear and Freedom at the Oregon Standoff” is one of those extraordinary books that seems to be about one thing, and turns out to be about almost everything. I raved to people a lot while I was reading it, drawing unwise comparisons to “Moby-Dick” and “Beyond Good and Evil.”

I’m still somewhat OK with those analogies. But rather than going deep on the lit-crit, I would more soberly suggest that “Shadowlands” belongs on the shelf beside Peter Matthiessen’s “In the Spirit of Crazy Horse” or Edward Abbey’s “Desert Solitaire,” as a work of political nonfiction that isn’t really “political,” at least not in the narrow, normative use of that word.

McCann is a poet and writing teacher who lives in the Mojave Desert of Southern California, and was drawn into the now-half-forgotten story of the 2016 “Oregon standoff” by his interest in the geography of the West, Native American messianic spirituality and the way those things intersect with the uniquely American theology of the Latter-day Saints. (Who have officially requested that we no longer call them the Mormons: Everybody gets a safe space.)

I want to let my fascinating conversation with McCann tell most of the story, but let’s just say that whatever you think you know about the Oregon standoff — when a handful of libertarian loons, associated with the notorious Bundy family of Nevada and drawn together by the internet, took over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in the remote desert of southeastern Oregon — is probably wrong. The Malheur occupiers relied on a thoroughly nutty interpretation of the U.S. Constitution, and most of them came from the fringes of the far right. But they weren’t white supremacists, mostly weren’t gun-totin’ militia types (except for a few hangers-on), and never resorted to violence or even seriously threatened to do so.

You don’t have to agree with anything about the occupiers’ understanding of America or God or freedom — and McCann certainly doesn’t — to agree that they were responding to something real: a notionally democratic state that has lost much of its popular legitimacy, and a civil society that often feels unmoored or uprooted. Something else, of course, also happened in 2016, and McCann’s book becomes an inadvertent chronicle of the weird stew of discontent, on social media and IRL, that led to the election of our current president.

If the Oregon standoff provided an early warning of what would happen in November of that year, it wasn’t exactly in the way you might think. Many of the Malheur occupiers vigorously despised Donald Trump as a statist or authoritarian strongman, and Trumpism wound up dividing their quadrant of the right just as it broke apart the old Republican Party. Ammon Bundy, the movement’s charismatic leader, eventually wound up breaking with Trump’s version of conservative politics entirely, endorsing asylum for Central American refugees and the abolition or devolution of the federal prison system.

Yeah, the deeper you go the weirder it gets, and you’ll want to keep reading “Shadowlands” not just for McCann’s remarkable powers of description and narrative sympathy, but in hopes he can explain not just what has gone wrong in America but why.

[quite long]

https://www.rawstory.com/2016/02/koch-backed-lobbying-group-is-spreading-ammon-bundys-lies-misspellings-and-all/

Koch-funded lobbying group is helping Ammon Bundy, the jailed Oregon militant leader, spread misleading information about federal land management agencies.

The American Lands Council, which promotes legislation that would give states and individuals control of federally owned land, posted a video on Facebook accusing the Bureau of Land Management of deliberately starting fires and allowing them to burn out of control.

https://www.ecowatch.com/up-in-arms-new-book-2638990950.html

Tara Lohan

When armed militants with a grudge against the federal government seized the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in rural Oregon back in the winter of 2016, I remember avoiding the news coverage. Part of me wanted to know what was happening, but each report I read — as the occupation stretched from days to weeks and the destruction grew — made me so angry it was hard to keep reading.

That's why I picked up John Temple's new book Up in Arms: How the Bundy Family Hijacked Public Lands, Outfoxed the Federal Government, and Ignited America's Patriot Militia Movement.

I wanted to see what I'd missed. And I wanted to understand the extremist ideologies that continue to dominate many discussions in the American West.

Temple, an author and journalism professor at West Virginia University's Reed College of Media, provides a page-turning account of both the 2014 standoff in Bunkerville, Nevada, that launched scofflaw rancher Cliven Bundy and his family into the national spotlight and the 2016 occupation of Malheur, led by Bundy's sons Ammon and Ryan.

"It's obviously an exciting story with cowboys and guns and takeovers and standoffs," Temple told me about the book. "But it sheds light on public lands issues, environmental issues, on questions about how the government should handle these situations and the urban-rural divide in this country."

The book also delves into the history of the Sagebrush Rebellion, a western U.S. movement against federal ownership of public lands that ignited in the late 1970s and has continued to smolder in the decades since.

The Bundys, who still subscribe to this line of thinking, refused to recognize the Bureau of Land Management's authority over the public land where they graze their cattle (or the federal government in general). That ultimately led — after 20 years of federal agencies looking the other way — to an armed standoff in which the FBI attempted to seize the rancher's cattle after years of unpaid grazing fees and mounting fines.

Spoiler alert: It didn't end well for the government.

Temple then chronicles the play's second act, during which the Bundy sons engineered the takeover of the federally run Malheur National Wildlife Refuge for more than a month. The pretense was defending local Oregon ranchers Dwight and Steven Hammond, who were sentenced to jail for federal land arson, but who actually eschewed the Bundys' help. The occupation turned out to be more of a publicity stunt than anything — one that ended in spectacular failure (although the Bundys insist it was a success). In the process they also trashed the refuge headquarters and racked up a $9 million tab for taxpayers.

While Up in Arms gives a detailed view of the ideology that motivates the Bundys, the story is much bigger than them. It's also an exploration of the motivations of some of the most hardline anti-federal militants in the country — not just the Bundys, but the ragbag collection of so-called Patriot movement followers that flocked to their ranch, even when most of them lacked understanding of public-lands issues and the cause they were backing.

In fact, Temple said, he first came to the story of the Bundys researching an unrelated project about militias. As a result there's not much in the book about the underlying environmental issues at the heart of the Bundy actions, including the impact of renegade ranching on public lands.

But Temple writes about the personal histories of many of the supporters who turned up for the initial showdown in Bunkerville and others who joined the occupation at Malheur. He reveals the power dynamics among different Patriot militia groups as they jockeyed for media attention and acolytes.

While the Bundys honed their talking points in scores of interviews about their anti-government rhetoric and their calling from God to act on it, Temple said that most of the other Bundy supporters didn't have much political inspiration or well-formed ideologies.

"I think some of these folks were motivated on a very personal level where they have trouble with authority and that kind of thing," he said. "Every individual seemed to have a different set of grievances or issues that were driving them, but it coalesced around a few things: Distrust of the federal government and the feeling that the federal government was overreaching in its authority, and the Second Amendment."

What could go wrong?

As Temple writes, a lot went wrong on both sides of the confrontation between the government and the militias. This was on full view when the Bundys and their compatriots eventually faced their day in court.

If you've ever wondered, as I did, how the leaders of an armed insurrection that occupied federal property, degraded public lands, and terrorized government workers escaped punishment, it's explained here in great detail. Temple writes about not just the court proceedings that followed the standoffs but the main players on the federal government's team, including FBI leadership involved in Bunkerville. A series of bumbles and missteps ultimately led to the prosecution's ultimate failure.

There's no happy ending, unless you believe divine providence is shining down on the Bundy clan. But Temple's book paints a useful picture of the simmering, ongoing range war in the West and the havoc an unlikely alliance of right-wing groups can wreak when they converge.

That's the most sobering part of the book: It's likely a preview of things to come. RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB...https://www.amazon.com/Up-Arms-Hijacked-Outfoxed-Government/dp/1946885959...Up in Arms: How the Bundy Family Hijacked Public Lands, Outfoxed ... ›...sjpl oathkeepers

Radical Right Joins in Secession Frenzy

HATEWATCH November 14, 2012

Nevada Rancher Says Confrontation With Feds Is 'Spiritual Experience'

HATEWATCH August 05, 2014

Bringing Out The Big Guns at the Phoenix March 4 Trump

HATEWATCH March 07, 2017

Leader of Josephine County Oath Keepers Breaks with Stewart Rhodes Over Leadership Style

HATEWATCH May 16, 2017

Indiana Sheriff with Antigovernment Views Creates Stir by Traveling to Bundy Ranch

HATEWATCH May 07, 2014

"Alt-Right" Declares Flame War On Oath Keepers

HATEWATCH June 15, 2017

Bundy Sons Lead Antigovernment Extremists, Militia in Takeover of Federal Wildlife Headquarters in Oregon

HATEWATCH January 04, 2016

https://thinkprogress.org/the-bundy-familys-odd-mormon-connection-explained-a41f75ad7b60/

News broke over the weekend that a group of armed militiamen commandeered a federal building housed in Oregon’s Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, an action they said was meant to protest the conviction of two local ranchers found guilty of setting fire to federal land. Media outlets were quick to note the group’s leaders included Ammon Bundy, the son of Cliven Bundy, a Nevada rancher who staged a similar standoff with the U.S. government in 2014 when he refused to remove his cattle from federal land. The family, it seemed, was rapidly becoming heroes of a national?—?and increasingly militant?—?anti-government moment.

But while the Nevada standoff and the armed Oregon occupation is often framed by pundits and politicians as a dispute over the role of government, the Bundy family also appears to be influenced by something else: their Mormon faith.

Granted, it would be a mistake to call the Bundy’s armed campaign against the government a “Mormon movement,” as some of their supporters do not share their faith and the Mormon church has condemned the Oregon occupation. Also, thousands of Mormons, or members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), serve proudly in the U.S. military, not to mention the U.S. government.

But religion has undoubtedly played a key role in the lives and activism of the Bundys, as well as many of their passionate?—?and often armed?—?supporters. To fully understand those staring down government agents in Oregon, you first have to unpack their faith?—?and why their church rejects it.

The Bundy family claims a Mormon faith as inspiration for their cause…

As John Sepulvado pointed out over at OPD, Cliven Bundy repeatedly cited his Mormonism to justify his standoff with the United States government in 2014, insisting he has a right to graze cattle on federal land because his Mormon ancestors worked it long before the federal Bureau of Land Management was established.

“If the standoff with the Bundys was wrong, would the Lord have been with us?” Bundy said. “Could those people that stood (with me) without fear and went through that spiritual experience … have done that without the Lord being there? No, they couldn’t.”

Bundy even said that God inspired him to resist and “disarm” federal agents, arguing that failing to do so would result in civil war.

If the standoff with the Bundys was wrong, would the Lord have been with us?

“I have no idea what God wants done, but he did inspire me to have the sheriffs across the United States take away these weapons, disarm these bureaucracies, and he also gave me a little inspiration on what would happen if they didn’t do that,” Bundy said while speaking on the radio program KUER later that year. “It was indicated that ‘this is our chance, America, to straighten this problem up. If we don’t solve this problem this way, we will face these same guns in a civil war.’”

Bundy’s family reportedly fasted and prayed for the “spirit of their forefathers to be with them” during the 2014 incident, and Bundy’s son, Ammon Bundy, articulated a similar vision to explain his involvement in the recent takeover in Oregon. In a videoposted on January 1, Ammon?—?whose name is the same as a famous figure from the Book of Mormon?—?explained that it was God who called him to leave his home and campaign on behalf of the Hammond family in Oregon.

“I clearly understood that the Lord was not pleased with what was happening to the Hammonds,” Ammon said in between various references to prayer. He also reflected on God guiding him through the process: “It was exactly like it was happening at the Bundy ranch, when we were guided and directed as to what we were supposed to do…[Our plan is] wisdom in the Lord…And I ask you now to come participate in this wonderful thing in Harney County that the Lord is about to accomplish.”

Other Mormons have responded to the Bundys’ call to action. Several militia members who participated in the Nevada standoff quoted Mormon scripture and waved Mormon flags, for instance, and members of the Oregon occupation are already making references to Mormon religious figures.

…But the Mormon church doesn’t agree.

The LDS Church was mostly silent during the 2014 standoff, when Cliven Bundy told reporters that he “never had a problem with the bishop” regarding the dispute. On Monday, however, officials released a statement strongly condemning the Oregon occupation.

“While the disagreement occurring in Oregon about the use of federal lands is not a Church matter, Church leaders strongly condemn the armed seizure of the facility and are deeply troubled by the reports that those who have seized the facility suggest that they are doing so based on scriptural principles,” the statement read. “This armed occupation can in no way be justified on a scriptural basis. We are privileged to live in a nation where conflicts with government or private groups can?—?and should?—?be settled using peaceful means, according to the laws of the land.”

Indeed, most members of the LDS church have a deep, abiding respect for the U.S. government?—?especially the Constitution, which the church sees as divinely inspired. In addition, the 12th article of faith for LDS members compels them to obey governmental authority, saying, “We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates, in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law.”

The Bundys may be influenced by a distinctly Mormon style of Libertarianism

Regardless of the church’s current position, the Bundys’ rejection of the federal government mirrors that of many non-Mormons within the political right, but it might also originate from their faith. According to Matthew Bowman, a historian and author of The Mormon People: The Making of an American Faith, the family’s political beliefs appear to reflect the theology of two prominent (and politically active) 20th-century Mormons: Ezra Taft Benson, former Secretary of Agriculture under president Dwight D. Eisenhower and the 13th president of the LDS Church, and Cleon Skousen, an influential Mormon political thinker and theologian. Bowman told ThinkProgress that both men forged a Libertarian approach to politics based on their religious beliefs.

“There is an important concept in Mormonism called free agency,” Bowman said. “Mormons don’t believe in original sin, so everyone is on this earth to choose how to live their lives, which [ to Benson and Skousen, was] with maximum possible individual liberty.”

The Bundys very closely link their Mormonism to conspiratorial Libertarianism.

“For Benson and Skousen, essentially we need to live in a Libertarian society for liberty to be effective,” he said, noting that Skousen is often lauded by conservative pundit and Mormon Glenn Beck, who called his book The 5,000 Year Leap “divinely inspired.”

The political concept is decidedly fringe within modern-day Mormonism, but Bowman acknowledged that “there remains a cadre of mormons who are very much followers of his idea.” He pointed to websites such as the “LDS Freedom Forum,” where Mormons vigorously debate right-wing Libertarian ideas on a number of message boards.

“A lot of people cheering for Bundy on that website right now,” he said, adding, “the Bundys very closely link their Mormonism to conspiratorial Libertarianism.”

Ammon Bundy appeared to envision this kind of Libertarian utopia when outlining his plan for the Oregon occupation. GHOST DANCE BUT WITH ASSAULT RIFLES]

“While we’re here, what we’re going to be doing is freeing these lands up, getting the ranchers back to ranching, getting the miners back to mining, getting the loggers back to logging, where they can do it under the protection of the people?—?and not be afraid of this tyranny that has been upon them,” Bundy said.

Bowman didn’t draw a direct connection between the family’s specific land-use ideas and Mormon theology, but noted that it was “a kind of radical localism” that “echoes of the Mormon settlement in the West.”

Militia members and Bundy supporters are pointing to Mormon scripture to justify their actions

AMMON BUNDY SPEAKS AT A RALLY ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF CLIVEN BUNDY’S STAND AGAINST THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. THE FLAG THAT WAVES BESIDE HIM IS THE “TITLE OF LIBERTY,” A MORMON FLAG. CREDIT: AP PHOTO/JOHN LOCHER

As other writers have already pointed out, one of the gun-toting militants holed up on the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge is refusing to identify himself as anything other than “Captain Moroni.” The cryptic name is a direct reference to Captain Moroni from the Book of Mormon, an important religious figure who is remembered for resisting a tyrannical government. According to scripture, Moroni rose to power when a group of dissenters tried to establish their leader Amalickiah as king over the captain’s people, the Nephites. Moroni became so outraged that he tore off his clothing, wrote a slogan on it, and fashioned it into a flag, using it to rally his army and drive out Amalickiah’s forces.

“And it came to pass that [Moroni] rent his coat; and he took a piece thereof, and wrote upon it?—?In memory of our God, our religion, and freedom, and our peace, our wives, and our children?—?and he fastened it upon the end of a pole,” the scripture reads.

Moroni killed any dissenters who did not flee, and his banner, now known as the “Title of Liberty,” was raised over every Nephite tower. Similarly, flags bearing Moroni’s slogan “In memory of our God, our religion, and freedom, and our peace, our wives, and our children” were waved by Bundy supporters and militia members at a rally last summer in Nevada, when the family organized an event to mark the anniversary of the rancher’s refusal to comply with federal laws.

“Captain Moroni is the prototypical Mormon defender for freedom of worship and freedom of liberty,” Bowman said.

Although the LDS church believes the U.S. Constitution is divinely inspired, there is a long history of armed, anti-government Mormon militias

Bundy supporters haven’t specifically mentioned Mormonism’s previous military entanglements, but the group’s history is still rife with examples of the faithful resisting rulers?—?specifically the United States government. This isn’t to say Mormons were ever apolitical: The religion’s founder, Joseph Smith, ran an unsuccessful campaign for president that ended abruptly when he was attacked and killed by a mob that disagreed with his political beliefs. Smith’s chief campaigner and successor, Brigham Young, ultimately lead most of the remaining Mormons to modern-day Utah, where he was appointed the first governor of what was then a U.S. territory.

It’s possible that higher-level authorities could get involved at some point, but that would be the exception instead of the rule.

But relations with the U.S. government and the religious settlers quickly deteriorated, resulting in the Utah War, sometimes called the “Mormon War.” Stretching from 1857–1858, the conflict began when the U.S. government sent an expedition of federal troops to the region, which the Mormon population?—?having endured oppression and violence before moving to Utah?—?saw as an attempt to annihilate their people. In response, the Mormons mustered an armed militia to harass the government soldiers, and while there were no formal battles, there were several skirmishes between the two forces. The conflict also set the stage for the infamous Mountain Meadows massacre, when Mormon-affiliated militiamen murdered 120 California-bound settlers over several days as they crossed through northern Utah.

Ultimately, though, the Bundy’s faith may just be the Mormon version of a mindset common throughout the American West?—?regardless of faith tradition.

“We can talk about the Bundys as Mormon, but their beliefs are very Western as well?—?it’s not a mistake that you see this happening in the West,” Bowman said. “There is a pervasive Libertarianism in the region.”

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-krakauer/fundamentalist-religious-ammon-bundy-militia-oregon_b_8931762.html

Ammon and Ryan Bundy, the brothers in command of the Citizens for Constitutional Freedom?—?an armed group that has taken over a cluster of government buildings at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in an empty swath of eastern Oregon desert?—?explain that they have occupied the facility to protest the “terrorism that the federal government is placing on the people.”

To understand the source of the Bundy’s self-righteous anger, it’s helpful to examine their religious views, which are rooted in a maverick strain of fundamentalism found throughout rural Oregon, Wyoming, Idaho, Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and Nevada. I became intimately familiar with this worldview when I was conducting research for the book Under the Banner of Heaven.

My book tells the true story of two brothers, Dan and Ron Lafferty, who killed their sister-in-law and her infant daughter thirty-two years ago. Dan was sentenced to life in prison. Ron was sentenced to death. Dan claims they murdered this smart, compassionate woman and her baby because God commanded them to do so.

Below, are two excerpts from the book?—?five paragraphs from the Prologue, and Chapter Twelve in its entirety?—?which provide insight not only into the rationale given by the Lafferty brothers to justify these murders, but also into the rationale offered by the Bundy brothers for their own transgressive acts.

...The more he studied historical Mormon documents, the more certain Dan became that the LDS Church had blundered off course around 1890, when then-president and prophet Wilford Woodruff was coerced into doing away with the doctrine of plural marriage by the godless government in Washington, D.C. The modern LDS Church, Dan had become convinced, was an elaborate fraud.

Like fundamentalists in other faiths, he was intent on adhering unfailingly to God’s “true” commandments, as determined by a rigorously literal interpretation of his church’s earliest and most sacred texts. And he was no less intent on adhering to the “true” commandments of his country’s earliest and most sacred texts, as well. To Dan, such documents as the Book of Mormon, The Peace Maker, the United States Constitution, and The Declaration of Independence are all of a piece: They are holy scriptures that provide a direct link to the Almighty. The authority that flows from their divinely inspired sentences is absolute and immutable. And it is the duty of righteous men and women to conduct their lives according to a stringently literal reading of those sentences.

For people like Dan who view existence through the narrow lens of literalism, the language in certain select documents is assumed to possess extraordinary power. Such language is to be taken assiduously at face value, according to a single incontrovertible interpretation that makes no allowance for nuance, or ambiguity, or situational contingencies. As Vincent Crapanzano observes in his book, Serving the Word, Dan Lafferty’s brand of literalism encourages a closed, usually (though not necessarily) politically conservative view of the world: one with a stop-time notion of history and a we-and-they approach to people, in which we are possessed of truth, virtue, and goodness and they of falsehood, depravity, and evil. It looks askance at figurative language, which, so long as its symbols and metaphors are vital, can open - ?promiscuously in the eyes of the strict literalist — the world and its imaginative possibilities.

For his part, Dan scoffs at this sort of pointy-headed exegesis. “I was just on a quest,” he insists. “A quest to find the truth.”

***

After seeking guidance through prayer, and receiving confirmation that he was acting in accordance with the Lord’s wishes, Dan sent his driver’s license back to the state of Utah, revoked his marriage license, and returned his Social Security card. He ignored posted speed limits, which he believed were illegal, and simply drove “wisely and carefully” instead. And he quit paying taxes of any kind? — ?including the sales tax when he shopped in local stores, which provoked frequent confrontations with cashiers.

Energized by the self-evident righteousness of his crusade, in the summer of 1982 Dan declared himself a candidate for sheriff of Utah County and embarked on a lively political campaign, speaking at public forums, writing letters to the Provo newspaper, doing radio interviews, and riding in small-town parades. He promised, if elected, to enforce the laws according to a scrupulously literal interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. As he explained, “My motive in running was to restore the primacy of Common Law juries, and to restore the fundamentals of the Constitution.”

On October 4, 1982, Dan was driving home after meeting with another candidate for sheriff (the American Fork police chief, with whom Dan had hoped to engage in a public debate), when he was stopped on Interstate 15 by the Utah State Troopers for speeding and not having a vehicle inspection sticker. “I had already had some confrontations with the officer who pulled me over,” Dan allows. “He knew I would be driving home from this debate meeting, and he had set a trap for me. They wanted to get a felony against me so I couldn’t run for office, and they swarmed me on the freeway. I had just published an important article in the paper?—?a very important article?—?which had really unnerved a lot of people, about how the powers of government were being improperly used through improper warrants of arrest?—?how it was unconstitutional to stop a person on the freeway and arrest them.

“When the officer pulled me over, he told me he had read my article?—?‘I’ve got it right here in my car,’ he said. So I told him, ‘Well, if you’ve read the article, you understand why you can’t arrest me right now. If you want to arrest me go get a warrant from a judge, bring it to my home, and I’ll conform to the proper procedures.’” Dan had by now locked the car doors and rolled up all the windows, leaving only a one-inch gap at the top of the diver’s window, which, he says, “I figured was narrow enough to keep a hand from reaching in and grabbing me, but would allow me to talk to the officer.”

The trooper wasn’t amused. He ordered Dan out of the car. “When I refused to get out,” says Dan, “the cop did something I hadn’t anticipated: He grabbed the top of the window with both hands and pulled hard, pulling the window out of its tracks, and then he tried to reach in and grab me. So I said, ‘Well, I gotta go now! See you later!’ and took off.”

“For people like Dan who view existence through the narrow lens of literalism, the language in certain select documents is assumed to possess extraordinary power.”

The State Troopers gave chase and apprehended Dan a short while later. He was charged with five crimes, including second-degree felony escape, third-degree felony assault by a prisoner, and evading an officer. Then he was thrown in the county jail. At his Justice Court trial, Dan served as his own attorney and attempted to mount a defense based on several arcane points of constitutional law. The judge repeatedly pointed out, however, that Justice Courts in Utah are not empowered to hear constitutional matters, which infuriated Dan. He was further angered when the judge overruled his objection to the makeup of the four-woman jury (Dan argued that he was entitled to have at least one male on the jury).

When Dan ignored the judge’s instructions and continued to argue his case on constitutional grounds, the exasperated judge declared him in contempt of court?—?at which point Dan’s brothers and several other supporters staged a riot in the courtroom, shouting that they were placing the judge, prosecutor, and court clerk under “citizen’s arrest.” In the middle of this melee, Dan stood up and loudly admonished the judge, “In the name of Christ, do justice or be struck down!”

In the end, the theatrics didn’t do anything to help his case. Dan was sent to the state prison for a 45-day psychiatric evaluation, and then locked up in the county jail to serve a 30-day sentence.

His stay behind bars only hardened his resolve. As a matter of principle, he stopped paying the property taxes on his father’s home and business. His father’s property, Dan explains, was “owned free and clear. By paying property taxes, you are basically telling the government that they’re the ones who really own the property, because you give them the right to take it from you if you don’t pay your taxes. And I was willing to force a stand-off to determine who actually owned that property.”

When that inevitable standoff occurred, Dan did not prevail. The Utah County assessor notified him that the county was taking possession of the Lafferty home for nonpayment of taxes, as well as seizing all of Watson Lafferty’s office equipment. At which point Dan politely informed the assessor’s office “that I intended to defend myself against any invasion of my constitutional God-given rights.”

Dan’s four younger brothers fully supported him in his ongoing battles with the state. But when Dan’s father — who was still out of the country on his LDS mission — learned that his home and business equipment were about to be auctioned off for non-payment of taxes, he was furious. Watson Sr. called Dan from abroad to express his profound displeasure, and to accuse Dan of “hypnotizing” his brothers; the Lafferty patriarch even suggested Dan was trying to hypnotize him and Claudine from afar, over the telephone line.

Watson managed to save his home from the auction block by cutting short his mission and rushing back to Provo with Claudine, but he remained furious at Dan. Although his father’s wrath saddened Dan, it did not dissuade him from his crusade.

During the last months of 1982 through early 1983, that crusade became more overtly religious, and Dan’s four younger brothers became increasingly infected with his fundamentalist zeal. The Lafferty boys started meeting on a more regular basis to discuss the merits of polygamy and other principles advocated in The Peace Maker. When three of Dan’s brothers attempted to impose these principles in their own homes, however, their wives refused, and began to complain to Dianna — the wife of Ron, the eldest Lafferty brother — about the disturbing changes in their husbands’ personalities.

***

NOTE: On January 4, 2016, in response to media inquiries, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints issued this statement, on www.mormonnewsroom.org, about the takeover of the federal facility in Oregon by the Bundy brothers, who are members of the LDS Church:

While the disagreement occurring in Oregon about the use of federal lands is not a Church matter, Church leaders strongly condemn the armed seizure of the facility and are deeply troubled by the reports that those who have seized the facility suggest that they are doing so based on scriptural principles. This armed occupation can in no way be justified on a scriptural basis. We are privileged to live in a nation where conflicts with government or private groups can - ?and should — be settled using peaceful means, according to the laws of the land.

From the book:

UNDER THE BANNER OF HEAVEN by Jon Krakauer

GOODMAN: Kierán Suckling, we are speaking to you in Portland, Oregon. In Yosemite right now, the national park, thousands of people are being evacuated because of terrible wildfires. I want to ask you about something else that happened in Oregon. Earlier this month, Donald Trump pardoned Dwight Hammond and his son Steven Hammond, two Oregon cattle ranchers who were convicted in 2012 of committing arson on federal lands. Prosecutors say the Hammonds set the fires to cover up their illegal deer poaching. Their conviction sparked armed right-wing militiamen, led by Ammon Bundy, to take over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon, provoking a 41-day armed standoff in 2016. Can you comment on this and what message President Trump was sending with this, these pardons?

KIERÁN SUCKLING: This is very disturbing, because the Hammonds not only were arsonists who set fire to our public lands, threatening firefighters who were out there, but have a long history of threatening to kill federal officials. And when the Bundy militia group came up to support them when they were prosecuted, they came up there with the message of not just let’s help the Hammonds, but let’s give all of America’s public lands away to industry and state groups.

And so, when Trump is pardoning these people, he’s really signaling—sending a signal to this right-wing base to say, “Hey, anti-government extremism, threats of violence against those you don’t like, against the government, are acceptable.” They’re encouraged. And, in fact, earlier, when he pardoned Joe Arpaio, another very controversial action, well, it turns out Joe Arpaio, Sheriff Joe, was also a supporter of this Bundy group and this radical, violent agenda. And I think it goes along with Trump gearing up this violent undercurrent in America to support him and to drive fear into others.

frontline patriot

fed judge mistrial december

nd two of his sons after she found that prosecutors “willfully” failed to turn over evidence related to an armed standoff three years ago.

U.S. District Judge Gloria Navarro pointed to several violations of the Brady rule — which requires prosecutors to disclose evidence that could be favorable to a defendant. She then called in jurors and dismissed the...

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-bundy-trial-20171220-story.html

https://www.opb.org/news/series/burns-oregon-standoff-bundy-militia-news-updates/nevada-mistrial/

again, members of the Bundy family have stymied federal prosecutors.

A U.S. District Court judge in Nevada declared a mistrial Wednesday in the case against rancher Cliven Bundy, his sons Ryan and Ammon Bundy, and Ryan Payne for their role in an armed standoff against federal agents in 2014.

You might remember the Bundy brothers and Payne; they were the organizers of the takeover at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge two years ago.

Payne pleaded guilty to his role at the refuge. The Bundy brothers were acquitted in the Oregon case.

Now there are questions about how the federal government handled the Nevada case. Journalist Leah Sottile covered Malheur and is in Nevada this week covering the trial for the Washington Post and other outlets. She spoke to “All Things Considered” host John Notarianni on Wednesday about the mistrial. Hear the entire conversation by using the audio player at the top of this story. Meanwhile, here are the highlights:

Evidence Withheld

Judge Gloria Navarro declared the mistrial, in short, because there were six Brady Rule violations — cases where prosecutors withhold evidence that could be favorable to the defense.

Among other items, prosecutors failed to share evidence about the presence of a surveillance camera overlooking the Bundy family ranch, Bureau of Land Management snipers placed just outside the ranch and threat assessments done by federal officials that suggested the Bundys were not dangerous or capable of violence.

The Bundys and Ryan Payne all faced charges of conspiring to prevent federal officials from doing their jobs. In this case, that meant Bureau of Land Management officers who were trying to round up Bundy-owned cattle illegally grazing on public land.

A Mistrial Doesn’t Mean Not Guilty

Navarro was quick to point out that the mistrial had to do with Brady violations by the prosecution, not the defendants’ guilt or innocence. She essentially was ruling that the Bundys and Payne could not have a fair trial without full access to the evidence.

The defendants had sought an outright dismissal of the case. Lawyers for both sides have until Dec. 29 to file their arguments for why the case should or should not be retried.

Federal Government Struggles

The cases against Bundy family members in the Oregon and Nevada incidents are different, but there are some common themes.

In Oregon, prosecutors failed to convince a jury to convict despite the fact that much of the defense arguments had to do with their beliefs about the Constitution and public lands policy, rather than the specific laws they were charged with breaking.

A similar dynamic played out in Nevada before the mistrial.

https://kpfa.org/episode/rising-up-with-sonali-october-31-2016/

And, Arun Gupta, our news correspondent will join us in studio to discuss the Bundy Brothers’ acquittal, the Dakota Access protests, labor organizing, and more.

PORTLAND, Ore. — The armed occupation of Oregon’s Malheur National Wildlife Refuge spanned 41 freezing cold days in January and February. The trial for the standoff’s leader, Ammon Bundy, his brother Ryan and five others took six weeks. And the verdict came in just five days: all defendants were found not guilty of federal conspiracy charges.

It was the grand finale of a federal trial that played out like a three-ring circus. The trial often saw the ninth-floor courtroom packed with more than 100 people — jurors, attorneys, supporters, journalists — and another room four floors up packed with even more.

Just after 4 p.m. Thursday, Judge Anna Brown announced that all defendants were found not guilty of charges of conspiracy to impede federal officers and not guilty of possession of firearms in a federal facility. One of the occupiers, Kenneth Medenbach, was found not guilty of theft of a government-owned truck. The jury was hung on the charge of theft of government cameras against Ryan Bundy.

...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/10/27/jury-acquits-leaders-of-armed-takeover-of-the-oregon-wildlife-refuge-of-federal-conspiracy-charges/?utm_term=.be796e0651a5

Post Nation

Jury acquits Ammon Bundy, six others for standoff at Oregon wildlife refuge Leah Sottile October 27, 2016

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/frightening-implications-acquittals-oregon-standoff

On Thursday, seven anti-government protesters who took over a federally owned wildlife sanctuary in Oregon last winter were acquitted of all charges. Led by Ammon and Ryan Bundy, sons of rancher Cliven Bundy, who is being tried for another illegal standoff with the federal government, the group's lawyers were somehow able to persuade a jury in federal court that this was a case of government over-reach, not domestic terrorism. The acquittals on all federal conspiracy and weapons charges shocked many.

“I had been telling my client you can count on being convicted,” Matthew Schindler, a lawyer for one of the men on trial for the armed takeover of Oregon’s Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, told the Wasington Post. “You don’t walk into a federal court and win a case like this. It just doesn’t happen.”

The Wild West-like armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Preserve in southeastern Oregon started as a protest against the arrests of two men who illegally started fires at the preserve, and was rooted in the rabid anti-government belief that the federal government has no right to control the lands that fall under its jurisdiction. Eleven people had already pleaded guilty in the standoff. One, who said he'd rather die than be arrested, got his wish: LaVoy Finicum was killed by authorities at the end of the standoff.

Although the takeover was clearly planned, ringleader Ammon Bundy argued it was a spontaneous action rooted in his religious beliefs. These beliefs apparently inspired him to put out the call to like-minded people nationwide to join his band of outlaws with their guns. One wonders if his beliefs and followers had been Muslim how that argument would have gone over.

The verdict is seen to have potentially frightening implications. John Horning, executive director of WildEarth Guardians, worried it would embolden others and endanger employees of public land-management agencies. “It is entirely possible there will be threats or intimidations from militants that believe such actions are justified by this verdict.”

It could also embolden other far-right groups calling themselves "patriots," such as the Oath Keepers, who see far-ranging conspiracies like election rigging and a plot to deprive them of their Second Amendment rights. The group, which is made up of former military and law enforcement officers, and others like it, are calling for members to "take action on election day." Oath Keepers "has urged its members to 'blend in' with voters and do 'incognito intelligence gathering and crime spotting' at polling places across the country on Nov. 8," the Post reported this week.

The Bundy brothers remain in custody, still facing charges along with their father for the standoff at Bundy ranch.

http://www.alternet.org/belief/what-link-between-oregon-militiamen-and-mormonism

On the afternoon of Tuesday the 26th of January, LaVoy Fincum, a rancher from Mohave County, Arizona, was shot and killed by law enforcement officers. It happened on Highway 395 in Oregon after he and other members of an armed right-wing group were subject to a police stop. They were on their way to try to spread their mission of resistance to the U.S. government to neighbouring counties.

On the video released late on Thursday by the FBI, we can see the action as captured by a drone overhead. In the final moments of his life, Finicum attempts to avoid police by driving a car — containing three other members of the group they called Citizens for Constitutional Freedom — into a roadside snow drift.

He emerges from the suddenly stationary vehicle with his hands outstretched, and appears to talk to the two state police officers trying to apprehend him with their guns drawn. Then he reaches for his pocket, where he has a loaded pistol, according to law enforcement. He is immediately shot by one of the officers, and falls to the ground.

We see a 55-year-old family man, who has had ample time to think, make a conscious choice to throw his life away.

In many ways, Finicum was the philosopher of the group. He acted as a spokesman, and pushed their stark constitutional originalism in media appearances and press conferences.

The conspiracy theorists in the broader patriot movement are already working on the ambiguities that the footage - any footage - makes available to the paranoid. But Finicum’s choice to die is in keeping with what he repeatedly told me and other journalists during the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.

Time and again, he said that liberty was more important than life. That despite missing his ranch and his family, he would rather die than go to prison.

What is capable of turning a grievance over grazing rights into a matter of life and death? When do political beliefs become something one is prepared to both kill and die for?

The first clue is in what Finicum shared with the Bundys at the Refuge, and with their father Cliven at home in Nevada. They were all members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and all from a corner of the country with a habit of departing from the respectable path the church’s hierarchy has been charting for more than a century.

The second are the pocket Constitutions the group ostentatiously carried around from the first morning of their stay. One the surface those were simply underscoring the occupiers’ claims that in their alleged persecution of Dwight and Steven Hammond - local ranchers sent back to prison for arson on federal property - and their general management of public land, the federal government was acting unconstitutionally.

Courtney Campbell, a professor of religion at Oregon State University, says that in part, “Why these protestors are carrying around the constitution is that they do feel their constitutional rights to freedom of religion and association, to due process and the law have been violated by the government.”

But these are not any old constitutions. They are editions published by the National Center for Constitutional Studies, founded by W. Cleon Skousen, who like the Bundy family and Finicum, was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. If you order in bulk, you can get them for as little 35 cents apiece.

Skousen’s editions pair the text of the constitution - which many Mormons believe to be divinely inspired - with highly selective quotes from the founding fathers, with the intention of persuadine readers that the republic was a Christian enterprise from the outset, and was part of a divine promise.

Skousen - who died in 2006 at the age of 92 - was a popular, prolific writer who had stints in the FBI and as Salt Lake City police chief. He was also one of the most prominent and influential ultraconservative political activists in mid-century America, inspiring the John Birch Society’s febrile brand of anticommunist conspiracy thinking.

He insisted - at the height of the Cold War - that various government agencies were riddled with Communist infiltrators, and that this put America in existential danger. In books like The Naked Communist, first published in 1958, Skousen gave a lurid picture of the degree to which communists were embedded in public life, their tactics and what he saw as the godless nihilism of their world view. More conciliatory foreign policy, divorce law reform and campaigns against school prayer were just some of his examples of communists working toward the subversion of American life.

But Skousen was also a deeply involved Latter-Day Saint, serving for a time as a professor at Brigham Young University. Seth Payne, a former Mormon who began researching LDS conspiracy beliefs at Harvard Divinity School, explains that “when Skousen would talk to LDS audiences about these subjects he would bring in the religious element. He would describe these conspiracies as ‘secret combinations’. Secret combinations are not just criminal gangs or people looking for power. At the root of secret combinations is a Satanic influence.”

He was able to find support for these claims in the LDS church’s central text, the Book of Mormon.

When LDS founder and prophet Joseph Smith was assembling his prophetic book in the late 1820s - supposedly as a translation of golden plates left for the purpose by the angel Moroni - he incorporated elements of all the popular enthusiasms swirling around in upstate New York, where he was then living. His testament purported to tell the story of ancient inhabitants of the Americas who were descendents of the tribes of Israel, and who were visited by the risen Christ. But in a sense it was very much a book of its time.

It reflects Protestant revivalism, Israelism (the idea, popular in the 19th century that certain peoples, or groups were descended from the lost tribes of Israel), occultism and folk religion, and then-current anti-Masonic ideas.

Payne explains that while Smith did not specifically call out Masons, he used “secret combinations” as a familiar euphemism for Masonic activity. In the Book, “secret combinations” of satanic conspirators brought about the end of the Jeredites and the Nephites, two of the civilizations the book describes.

These were working in the interests of “Satan’s plan.” In Mormon theology, the conflict between this and God’s plan goes back to the beginning of time. While Lucifer wanted humans to be compelled to be obedient to God so they would be guaranteed a return to heaven, God wanted humans to be able to freely choose, so they would benefit from their time on earth.

In this way, Payne says, the Book of Mormon melds “classical Liberal thought with religious thought - the Protestant ethic and Protestant theology of the early 19th century - so tightly so that there really is no separation.” Liberal individual autonomy is a gift from God, and compelled behavior - even if it results in good deeds - is worthless for salvation, and even an artefact of the devil’s continuing effort to erode the power of human will.

Anti-Masonic enthusiasms are long-forgotten, but the idea of secret combinations carrying out Satan’s plan is very much alive. In a paper, Payne explains that “modern LDS conservatives tend to view any government action which compels behavior — even if that behavior is moral and productive — as being a version of Satan’s original plan to force God’s children to do good.”

That’s why many conservative Mormons, even those who would stop short at actions like those that the Bundys have taken, are bitterly opposed to welfare and other government programs that have a benevolent purpose.

In Skousen’s thought, this all mapped neatly onto his anticommunist zeal. He was faced, he thought, with “secret combinations” of communist infiltrators, and socialist schemes were not just politically disagreeable, but setbacks in “a cosmic battle going on where Satan is trying to infringe on individual liberty or state sovereignty.”

Except among conservative Mormons, Skousen’s influence faded long before the end of the cold war. Then Glenn Beck—another conspiratorially inclined, conservative Mormon—reintroduced it to a broader audience late last decade, managing to lift books like The 5000 Year Leap back onto the bestseller lists. Beck managed to recast Skousen’s thought to cast suspicion on the ambitions of President Obama, in particular, his plans to deliver universal health care.

Payne says, “Glenn Beck reintroduced Skousen’s ideas—his anticommunism and fears about sovereignty —to a broader community. That resonates with people who think that the president is a communist.”

Meanwhile, other Mormon conspiracists like Joel Skousen, nephew of Cleon, continue all the while to push the idea of secret combinations in the service of Satan’s plan, which was now identified less with communism than the institution of a single world government under the control of “globalists." In one sense, this bears similarities to the conspiracy ideas of essentially secular figures like Alex Jones. There's enough common ground for Joel Skousen—also an icon of the prepper movement—to have appeared several times on Jones’ radio program.

But the distinctive spiritual dimension of LDS-derived conspiracism raises the stakes for a segment of ulturaconservative Mormons. For some, like the Bundy group, such ideas are a stimulus to radical action.

Disaffection with federal government agencies is widespread throughout the western interior. Whether it is the festering issue of grazing rights, and perceptions that the BLM is antagonistic toward ranchers, or the feeling that conservation of native species like wolves or the spotted owl is taking precedence over ranchers’ interests, the emerging “sagebrush rebellion” takes in a lot of actors and sympathizers who are not Mormons.

But like the vast majority of conservative Mormons, very few ranchers have shown themselves willing to carry out armed occupations of federal buildings.

The resurgent militia and sovereign citizen movements have beliefs that overlap with the more religiously inclined conspiracists, They also fear world government and federal government tyranny, espouse an eccentric form of constitutional originalism, try to reassert local and state jurisdiction over federal land, and are prepared to use tactics of harrassment and intimidation, as they’ve shown in Harney County.

But even those who had been cooperating with the Bundys in organizing locals in opposition to the reimprisonment of Steven and Dwight Hammond were appalled in the early days of the occupation that the Bundy group had departed from a longer plan and involved the federal government. And in this circumstance, none have shown that they are willing to die.

In explaining Finicum’s actions, we need to take into account his particular form of radically ultraconservative Mormon belief. As Payne says, “for a believing Latter-Day Saint who takes these things seriously, they aren’t just looking at some political machinations for money and power, they’re looking at an eternal cosmic struggle that’s been going on since the beginning of time.”

The Bundys—and Finicum—see themselves as “soldiers in this resistance against not just political tyranny but also Satanic tyranny.”

This belief may be reflected even in the names they have been given and chosen. Ammon Bundy’s first name comes from an important personage in the book of Mormon—a warrior who spreads God’s word to unbelievers. The scriptural Ammon, Campbell says, “provides a model for the sort of person who stands up to oppression and unjust governments, resists and prevails.”

Campbell also points out that Finicum made veiled references to “the Title of Liberty,” a story from the Book of Mormon in which Captain Moroni of the Nephites “in the face of of a government that’s become tyrannical, individuals and their communities need to stand up for their liberty, their religion, and their land.” Another of the occupiers, Dylan Anderson, used Captain Moroni as his alias when talking to reporters.

Other references to Mormon lore came before the occupation, such as in a video where Bundy said that the constitution was “hanging by a thread," an allusion to the so-called White Horse Prophecy, in which Joseph Smith reportedly predicted that a time would come when Mormons would have to restore constitutional government.

Payne points out that there are serious dounts as to whether Joseph Smith ever said such a thing, and that it comes from secondhand accounts of his remarks by followers. The LDS church itself felt bound to say that the prophecy “has not been substantiated by historical research” after Mormon politicians like Orrin Hatch and Rex Rammel referred to it in the early years of the Obama administration. “It’s an urban legend, a folk myth.” Nevertheless, over the years “it has taken hold in the LDS community; even in mainstream LDS you’ll hear that phrase used.”

People like the Bundys and Finicum, “take that phrase and see themselves as elders of Israel who are going to save the Constitution.”

What is one man’s life in the face of such a cause, and such a danger?

The LDS church was quick to disown the occupation and the Bundys' actions. In 2012, sensing a growing wave of Skousenite Mormon activity, LDS Church Elder Apostle Dallin Oaks warned against “the influence of right-wing groups who mistakenly apply prophecies about the last days to promote efforts to form paramilitary or other organizations… The leaders of the church have always taught that we should observe the law and we should not try to substitute our own organizations for the political and military authorities put in place by constitutional government and processes. We counsel against joining or supporting paramilitary organizations.”

No doubt this reflects the sincere disapproval of the vast majority of Mormons, even conservatives. And the Bundys represent a significant departure from the teachings of the church, according to Campbell. “They really emphasize that there needs to be obedience to the laws of the land. Even if there’s some kind of injustice that’s occurred, you don’t take over property, you don’t take over land.”

Actions like these also imperil the respectability Mormons have worked so hard to maintain from the beginning of the 20th century. In the 19th century, they came into open conflict with the federal government. First, in the 1850s, over their own territorial ambitions and a perception that the Utah Territory under Prophet Brigham Young was in insurrection. And later, in the 1890s, as they were forced to give up the practice of polygamy.

Payne explains that rebellions such as the Malheur occupation are embarrassing to the church hierarchy and many ordinary Mormons, since they “harken back to a period that most Mormons are embarrassed about from time to time—those days of conflict with the federal government and the American society as a whole.”

The Utah/Arizona/Nevada tri-state area, where the Bundys and Finicum are from, has been a reliable source of such embarrassments. Northern Arizona was the long-time locale for the polygamist holdouts of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints under Warren Jeffs. Not far away in Nevada, the Bundy ranch standoff provided the immediate precursor for the occupation just ended.

People in such areas of the American West are culturally isolated, even from the moderating influences of contemporary Mormon practice.

“It’s certainly peculiar to areas in the western United States that are difficult to get to because they’re mountainous or arid,” Campbell says of these fundamentalist currents. “They’ve been historically bypassed by other people as they migrated to western Oregon or California. As a result there has been a tradition of anti-government anti-authoritarianism, where a person is accountable to God and not to civil authority.”

LaVoy Finicum clearly had a lot to lose: his ranch, his family, his life. But by melding his political beliefs with cosmic struggle, by embracing a tendentious reading of scripture and prophecy, by viewing those he disagreed with not just as political adversaries but as agents of the devil, Finicum turned a cause into a death wish. http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/authorities-plan-cut-power-militia-occupied-oregon-refuge authorities Plan to Cut off Power to Militia at Occupied Oregon Refuge

January 5, 2016, 7:01am - 0 comments

Right-Wing Militia Threatens Showdown With U.S. Agents at Oregon Wildlife Refuge

January 3, 2016, 6:02pm - 0 comments

Oregon Ranchers Who Sparked Standoff Threatened to Wrap Official’s Son in Barbed Wire and Drown Him

January 22, 2016,

With the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge almost three weeks old and tempers fraying at a community meeting in the nearby town of Burns, Oregon, one voice has been absent from the drama: the Fish and Wildlife Service employees whose work has been disrupted and offices turned into an armed camp by anti-government militants.

In a Raw Story exclusive, former and current employees of the Malheur Refuge have provided new revelations on the conflict between Dwight and Steve Hammond, two local ranchers who have clashed with federal government agencies for decades. The employees claim the Hammonds illegal grazing was damaging the refuge that’s home to 320 bird and 58 mammal species. They allege the Hammonds lawbreaking ranged from aerial hunting of animals in the refuge to death threats against employees and their families to cattle grazing that was altering the entire species composition of critical ecosystems.

The Fish and Wildlife Service did not return a request for comment. Sources say there is a gag order on employees now that the FBI is in charge of monitoring the occupation by Ammon Bundy, son of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, and his supporters.

The beef the Hammonds currently have with the feds is over access to land under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management. More than 20 years ago the Hammonds also had a permit for grazing on the Malheur Wildlife Refuge. That was canceled in the mid-90s because of what officials say was the Hammonds’ constant violation of the permit’s terms. Today, the FWS is still caught in the middle because the Hammonds need to cross the 187,700 acres of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge to access the BLM land on which their cattle are allowed to graze.

Marvin Plenert, 80, who served as Northwest regional director for the Fish and Wildlife Service from 1986 to 1994, says the agency tried to accommodate the Hammonds. “We gave them a day to cross through the refuge and they took two or three weeks to do it. They were in your face about everything. They kept pushing the envelope, cut fences, cattle wound up in the refuge illegally.”

Plenert’s tenure overlapped with that of Forrest Cameron, 67, who served as the Fish and Wildlife Service manager of the Malheur Refuge from 1989 to 1999. Cameron, who now lives in Portland and is retired like Plenert, had numerous run-ins with the Hammonds.

In his first in-depth interview since the occupation began, Cameron says the conflict between the Hammonds and the Fish and Wildlife Service goes back to the 1980s when they leveled death threats against the previous refuge manager. Cameron says during his time “one way or another the Hammonds were violating their permit” for grazing cattle on refuge lands. He says it was an ongoing issue and, “They’ve done so many illegal activities that never got to a courtroom.”

“Some violations were not significant,” says Cameron, “and we figured we could correct it by talking to them.”

Once, however, a biologist employed at the refuge reported, “The Hammonds were aerial gunning coyotes on the Malheur Refuge, which is illegal.” Cameron claims the Hammonds had an airplane at the time. “They were flying to shoot coyotes on their (own) land, and we didn’t have a problem with that.” The biologist allegedly witnessed the Hammonds’ plane “flying low, turning tight corners, and shooting, and it was over refuge property.” The issue was raised with the Hammonds “and they claimed they were not over the refuge.” Cameron says, “There were so many other contentious things going on that was one incident we didn’t push.”

In the 1990s the conflict with the Hammonds stemmed from the Fish and Wildlife view that their cattle were damaging the Malheur refuge. It was the following decade that the Hammonds illegally torched BLM lands, landing them in the clink for five years each and sparking the takeover.

It’s now well-known that Malheur, an oasis in the arid Great Basin that spans six states, is called “one of the crown jewels of the National Wildlife Refuge System.” It’s a “crucial stop along the Pacific Flyway and offers resting, breeding and nesting habitat for hundreds of migratory birds and other wildlife.” But the little-known story is how years of uncontrolled grazing by Hammonds and other ranchers were sending shockwaves through the refuge.

Cameron says when he arrived at Malheur in 1989, relations were “fairly good” with local ranchers, and about 30 of them had permits for grazing and haying on refuge land. Prior to his arrival changes had been made to match grazing policies with enforcement. He says National Wildlife Refuges allow public recreation in any way feasible. “That can be hunting, fishing, birdwatching, hiking — as long as it’s compatible with the wildlife on the refuge.” Cattle had been grazing year-round on Malheur, but the policy has a higher threshold for economic uses like grazing. “It has to be beneficial to wildlife or otherwise we don’t allow it.”

Implementing the prescribed grazing practices led the Hammonds and Fish and Wildlife Service to butt heads in the early 1990s over the Bridge and Mud creeks and a watering hole for birds. Cameron says Hammonds’ cattle would get into Bridge Creek, a deep canyon, “until someone drove them out.” The cattle would devour woody plant species crucial to the ecosystem....

From Tampons to French Vanilla Creamer: Armed Oregon Militants Update Their Occupation Wish List

January 11, 2016, 11:06am - 0 comments

Oregon Militia's Behavior Increasingly Brazen as Public Property Destroyed

January 17, 2016, 9:05am - 0 comments

Republican Presidential Candidates Silent on Armed Militia Takeover of Federal Building in Oregon

January 4, 2016, 9:39pm - 0 comments

Warning from the Birding Community to the Terrorists in Oregon: We're Watching You

January 6, 2016, 7:46am - 0 comments

Oregon Militia Makes Plea for Snacks, PETA Responds With Yummy Vegan Jerky

January 7, 2016, 1:09pm - 0 comments

Oregon Armed Occupiers Include Prominent Anti-Islam Activist

January 17, 2016, 8:35pm - 0 comments

If the Oregon Militiamen Were Muslim or Black, They'd Probably Be Dead By Now

January 17, 2016, 9:19pm - 0 comments

cbd

An armed militia has taken over a federal building in southeastern Oregon as part of a long-running campaign of violence, intimidation and right-wing paranoia that has festered for decades in the West, most recently with the standoff with Cliven Bundy in Nevada in 2014. Among the demands at the latest standoff is to shut down Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, which provides crucial protections for wildlife, especially birds that migrate through the area.

Ammon Bundy is the leader of the occupation that took over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge building. Photo credit: Amanda Peacher / OPB

“This is the latest in a long string of armed, right-wing thugs attempting to seize America’s public lands and enact their paranoid, anti-government dream bought by guns and intimidation,” Kierán Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, said. “We’ve seen it with pipe bombs planted on wilderness trails and sent to the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management. We saw in 2014 with Cliven Bundy and his racist and violent rhetoric in Nevada and now we’re seeing it with his sons in Oregon.”

Cliven Bundy stopped paying the federal government for the privilege of grazing his cows on public lands in Nevada and owes about $1 million to taxpayers. Bundy, who was quoted in an interview with The New York Times wondering whether black people were better off as slaves, was the center of an armed standoff with the Bureau of Land Management in April 2014 that ended with the bureau backing away and Bundy’s continued trespass on federal land. Among the anti-federal government militia who were defending Bundy at his ranch was Jared Miller who just three months after the standoff at the ranch went on a shooting spree with his wife that included the ambush-murder of two Las Vegas police officers as they ate at a restaurant. They draped the officers with a Gadsden flag—a symbol of liberty used by both theantigovernment “Patriot” movement and members of the Tea Party movement.

The latest standoff near Burns, Oregon, followed a judge’s call for additional prison time for a father and son—73-year-old Dwight Hammond and 46-year-old Steven Hammond—who prosecutors say lit a fire on federal land in 2001 to cover up the illegal slaughter of a deer herd. Both were convicted of arson and are scheduled to report to federal prison on Monday.

The wildlife refuge’s headquarters was seized by Bundy’s sons, including leader of the occupation Ammon Bundy, and others on Saturday. The men are armed and say they are willing to occupy the building for years if needed. According to the Oregonian, Ryan Bundy said that they’re willing to kill and be killed if necessary. Also among the armed occupiers of the wildlife refuge building is Jon Ritzheimer, an infamous anti-Muslim activist who has repeatedly threatened violence.

“Despite their flags and patriotic overtures, don’t mistake this standoff for anything than what it is: An attempt to use guns to seize control over what taxpayers own and bully the government into acquiescing to their demands,” Suckling said. “But there’s a larger context here. What’s happening in Oregon is a logical outgrowth of right-wing rhetoric that demonizes even the concept of federal land—places like national parks and forests—and villainizes those who believe that publicly owned land should be more than just a source of profit for ranchers and corporations.”

There’s been a growing movement among politicians in the West to seize control of federal lands and hand them over to state and local government, where they’re more likely to be logged, mined and drilled for profit.

“These are special places that deserve protection for values that we all hold dear: clean air, water and refuge for wildlife,” Suckling said. “Americans, collectively, have decided that these public lands need and deserve protection. That shouldn’t be undone at the behest of men with guns and a dangerous view of how a government should be run.”

ammon bundy 2

REPORT: Insurrectionists, Anti-Conservation Movement One in the Same

Related

Masks Off: How the Brothers Who Fueled the Reopen Protests Built a Volatile Far-Right Network