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  1. #1051
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    Canada Designates Proud Boys a Terrorist Organization

    The Canadian government designated the far-right group the Proud Boys as a terrorist organization Wednesday. Public Safety Minister Bill Blair called the male-only group one of the “most serious threats” to the security of his country. The classification expands the actions the Canadian government can take against the Proud Boys to include seizing assets, prosecuting those who assist the group, and denying members entry into the country. Canada also added the right-wing American group Atomwaffen Division, the neo-Nazi group The Base, and the nationalist Russian Imperial Movement to its list of terrorist groups.


    The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has issued similar warnings about the Proud Boys but has not declared it a terrorist group. Members of the Proud Boys took part in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, marching from a speech given by former President Donald Trump, who has encouraged them by name before, to the seat of Congress.

    https://www.thedailybeast.com/canada...ation?ref=home

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    The agency founded because of 9/11 is shifting to face the threat of domestic terrorism


    On a Saturday morning in August 2019, a 21-year-old White man with ear protectors, safety glasses and an AK-47-style rifle walked into a crowded Walmart in El Paso, his pockets bulging with ammunition. He had driven hundreds of miles across Texas, prosecutors say, because he wanted to kill Latinos.

    Kevin McAleenan, the acting homeland security secretary, was at a Coast Guard picnic in Virginia that day, and soon the urgent messages began arriving. A sinking feeling of horror set in as the magnitude of the attack became clear. “It was devastating,” he said.




    Twenty-three people were killed in the worst attack on Hispanic Americans in modern U.S. history.


    About 5,000 U.S. Customs and Border Protection employees live in El Paso, and six lost family members that day. “To have an individual attack us, at one of the home bases of our agency and specifically going after Hispanic Americans who make up a majority[at] of our employees in that area, was very personal for us, and it galvanized an effort that was already underway,” McAleenan said.


    For years leading up to El Paso, the Department of Homeland Security — created to prevent another 9/11 — had been under growing pressure to do more to address domestic extremism. Within seven weeks of the El Paso massacre, McAleenan released a plan for “countering terrorism and targeted violence” that amounted to a road map for the department’s pivot from foreign threats to homegrown ones. It was the first time DHS had identified the extent of the danger posed by domestic violent extremists and white supremacists.


    The plan got little attention or support from the White House, and even though DHS began speaking more directly about domestic threats, the effort made little difference on Jan. 6, when the department was one of several federal agencies caught flat-footed. Since that day’s attack on the U.S. Capitol, calls have intensified for DHS to emphatically turn its attention inward and do more to protect Americans from other Americans.

    The attack has left many lawmakers, and especially Democrats, insisting that domestic terrorism has eclipsed the threat from foreign actors such as the Islamic State and al-Qaeda. DHS and its agencies are responsible for securing the country’s borders, ports, transportation and cyber systems, generally leaving the monitoring of extremist groups and terrorism investigations to the FBI. But DHS and its agencies have nearly eight times as many employees as the FBI, and calls for the department to play a more muscular role in combating domestic extremism have policymakers looking at new ways to enlist its resources.


    The proposals have revived some of the civil liberties concerns that arose after the creation of the department as a large, internal security bureaucracy with a broad mandate. And the possibility of the department scrutinizing Americans has added to the unease because providing homeland security is less controversial when the threats are foreign.




    AdChoices
    DHS used its National Terrorism Advisory System to warn the public about attacks by domestic groups for the first time last month, citing “a heightened threat environment across the United States” in a bulletin issued a week after President Biden’s inauguration.


    “Ideologically-motivated violent extremists with objections to the exercise of governmental authority and the presidential transition, as well as other perceived grievances fueled by false narratives, could continue to mobilize to incite or commit violence,” the warning stated.


    Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, has long insisted DHS should protect Americans from the gravest dangers they face, and he said that domestic extremists and white supremacists present the most urgent, lethal threat.


    “A lot of them mask themselves under some guise of being patriots or some form of citizen, but the question is, what do they advocate? It’s violence. It’s overthrowing legitimately elected officials,” Thompson said in an interview.


    “So in my mind, those types of individuals who want to exercise violence to bring change, they are domestic terrorists, and we have the obligation to identify who they are and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law.”


    During a hearing Thompson held earlier this month, lawmakers of both parties spoke favorably of new legislation to specifically address domestic terrorism, as experts warned the attack on the Capitol was viewed as a “victory” for extremists and a “watershed moment for the white-supremacist movement.”


    Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Tex.), the committee’s former chairman, joined lawmakers calling for specific federal sanctions for domestic terrorism, potentially applying the same penalties as those that exist for terrorism that originates overseas. Such legislation could include penalties for providing material support to domestic groups and laws holding technology companies responsible for violent and extremist content on their platforms.


    “I think it sends a strong message about where Congress is that we’re going to treat domestic terrorism on an equal plane as international terrorism,” McCaul said.


    Preventive work
    Contrary to some television portrayals, DHS does not have a standing contingent of armed homeland security agents with a specific mandate to stop domestic terrorism. But it has agencies and programs that could expand to devote more attention and resources to risks posed by homegrown extremists.


    DHS’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis collects information from the FBI, private contractors and state and local law enforcement agencies to organize and disseminate threat reports. Its employees and contractors generally lack the training and experience of FBI investigators, and they rely on open-source material.


    The office failed to generate a specific warning about the possibility of right-wing groups storming the Capitol in an attempt to keep President Donald Trump in power.


    Homeland Security Investigations, a branch of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has about 6,000 agents nationwide who investigate drug smuggling, human trafficking and illicit goods or currency. HSI has not focused on countering domestic extremism, but it is an armed component of DHS that, in theory, could have a more hands-on role stopping homegrown terrorists and white supremacists.


    DHS’s most tangible institutional response is the Office for Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention, founded in 2019 to address “a growing threat from domestic actors — such as racially and ethnically motivated violent extremists, including white supremacist violent extremists, anti-government and anti-authority violent extremists, and others.”

    Its work is primarily preventive, not investigative, providing grants to state and local law enforcement programs and issuing threat briefings and assessments. The office remains relatively small, with a staff of about 30, but it is expected to grow in the coming years with more congressional funding.


    “In the post-9/11 world, the threat was foreign terrorism,” Tom Ridge, the first DHS secretary, said in an interview. “The CIA and the military were the tip of the spear, and we filled the defensive gap. But now there’s another adjective in front of terrorism: domestic terrorism.”


    The well-known failure of law enforcement and security agencies to properly share information ahead of the 9/11 attack was a justification for the creation of DHS, Ridge noted. So an immediate challenge for DHS will be coordination among multiple federal agencies that collect and share information on domestic groups, he said.


    Much of it arrives through state and local law enforcement agencies, and DHS’s biggest asset, Ridge said, “is its relationships with state and local authorities.”


    Yet Ridge cautioned against DHS turning its attention away from foreign threats and other priorities. “What people don’t understand — and people need to understand — is that DHS has so many other tasks embedded in its mission,” he said. “It’s a multitask organization, and DHS has to be careful moving in that direction because I still don’t think it’s their primary job.”


    Another risk is partisanship and the perception that DHS will be used to stigmatize or harass groups that don’t support the party in power.


    In September, the former head of DHS’s Intelligence and Analysis Office, Brian Murphy, filed a whistleblower complaint that included allegations that senior DHS officials sought to play down warnings of the threat posed by white supremacists, while giving more prominence to left-wing antifascists and anarchists. Murphy told his supervisors it would constitute “censorship of analysis and the improper administration of an intelligence program,” according to his account.


    His claims remain under investigation with DHS’s inspector general. Other former DHS officials, including some who are critical of Trump, insist the department did not water down the threats of right-wing and white-supremacist groups. They point to new DHS programs and strong language in recent reports clearly identifying the threat posed by domestic extremists.


    McAleenan, the former acting DHS secretary, also noted a major increase in FBI investigations of domestic extremists and white supremacists in recent years.


    “What was missing was a whole-of-government approach and an emphasis from the White House that it was a priority,”[at] McAleenan said.


    McAleenan had taken over DHS after Trump soured on Kirstjen Nielsen and removed her in April 2019. Nielsen directed her staff to develop plans for countering targeted violence and domestic hate groups, particularly after the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas and the 2018 attack on the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh.


    Then came El Paso.


    “We’d been tracking domestic terrorist threats and increased threats from white supremacists, but El Paso brought it home in a visceral way,” McAleenan, the former CBP commissioner, said in an interview.


    The gunman posted a missive before the Walmart rampage espousing racist theories of demographic replacement that echoed Trump’s statements about an immigrant “invasion.”


    “El Paso made it clear we needed a reorientation of DHS towards the current threat, both with respect to white supremacy but also domestic extremism more broadly,” said Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a counterterrorism consultant who worked with McAleenan to come up with the road map for DHS’s expanded role countering targeted violence and terrorism.


    An effort by a DHS analyst in 2009 to identify white supremacists and other extremist groups as a growing threat had fallen apart amid a backlash from Republicans who viewed it in partisan terms. The chilling effect lingered for years and discouraged analysts from devoting time and resources to domestic threats that lacked a link to foreign groups.


    The Strategic Framework after El Paso was a “green light” from DHS leadership, Gartenstein-Ross said, signaling that hateful, racist and violent Americans were an urgent threat and a priority for the department.


    A persistent threat
    In October, DHS identified violent extremism in the United States as the leading domestic terrorism danger, noting that white supremacists were responsible for more killings in 2018 and 2019 than any other type of attacker.


    “The primary terrorist threat inside the United States will stem from lone offenders and small cells of individuals,” said the department’s first Homeland Threat Assessment. “Some U.S.-based violent extremists have capitalized on increased social and political tensions in 2020, which will drive an elevated threat environment at least through early 2021.”


    The coronavirus pandemic was making matters worse, the report noted, by creating an environment that could “accelerate some individuals’ mobilization to targeted violence or radicalization to terrorism.”


    It was a description, in general terms, of the anger and fury that fueled the Capitol attack.


    Chad Wolf, the former acting DHS secretary who published the threat assessment, said DHS had a contingent of Customs and Border Protection officers and agents on standby on the day of the Capitol riot, but they were not called on by Capitol Police. “We don’t have jurisdiction for the protection of the U.S. Capitol,” he said.


    During last summer’s street protests following the police killing of George Floyd, Wolf was criticized by Democrats and former homeland security leaders for sending DHS agents and officers to quell civil unrest and use force against sometimes violent protests targeting a federal courthouse in downtown Portland, Ore.


    Trump was campaigning on a “law and order” message, echoed by DHS leaders, that fueled the politicization of the department’s domestic role. And the scenes of CBP and ICE tactical officers in military fatigues stuffing suspects into rental vehicles in Portland quickly became a symbol of heavy-handed federal law enforcement.


    In an interview, Wolf said he welcomed the bipartisan calls in the wake of Jan. 6 for a greater DHS focus on domestic extremism. “On the same token, I get frustrated because when we were in the thick of it last summer in Portland, there were no huge calls, except for vocal Republicans, saying we have to call out violence,” he said. “I think there’s a fine line — and we dealt with it — between protected First Amendment speech and what is considered hate and criminal activity.”


    In a sobering moment during the House hearing this month where lawmakers discussed new domestic terrorism legislation, former DHS adviser Elizabeth Neumann warned committee members the threat would probably persist for “10 to 20 years.”


    Neumann, who was DHS counterterrorism adviser under Trump, helped oversee the creation of a new contingent of DHS “regional coordinators” who work with state and local officials to prevent radicalization and recruitment by hate groups.


    The approach places a greater emphasis on the social and psychological factors that lead to extremist violence. DHS has a dozen regional coordinators across the country, but Neumann said the goal is to expand their presence to every U.S. state.


    “What we have been seeing the last five to six years is individuals with unmet needs who quickly radicalize according to whatever ideology they stumble upon,” Neumann said in an interview.


    “We’re dealing with a phenomenon in this country of vulnerable, disaffected individuals who are being preyed upon or seeking it out themselves. And when it comes to prevention, what we’ve learned is that law enforcement agencies aren’t necessarily the best to do interventions,” she said.


    “If someone has planned an attack, that is law enforcement territory. That person is too far gone. But when a person is on that journey to radicalization, their family members and loved ones notice changes in their behavior.”


    Neumann predicted it will take five to 10 years to build out a more robust effort at DHS to prevent radicalization and extremism. What’s challenging about the current moment, Neumann added, is the speed with which radicalization occurs, as individuals can quickly go from embracing an ideology to planning an attack.


    “We have so many people talking online and using war metaphors,” she said. “Are they using those terms to actually mean war? It’s very hard to discern when you have so many people participating in angry rhetoric.”


    The agency founded because of 9/11 is shifting to face the threat of domestic terrorism

  3. #1053
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    Not sure if this is the right thread.
    It makes you wonder WTF is going on in the U.S. when 17 elected representatives vote against condemning Qanon.
    After the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, police and military institutions are “taking seriously the threat posed not just by a handful of crazy-sounding individuals out there, but organized groups like the Proud Boys and the boogaloo bois and the Oath Keepers,” Malinowski said in an interview on “The Long Game,” a Yahoo News podcast.


    “The law enforcement piece of this is going after those people and those groups, not waiting for them, not just putting up fences in case they attack … but actually going out, conducting arrests, disrupting their organizations, conducting surveillance where that's lawful,” he said. “It's completely changed the posture of these groups. They are now more in hiding than what they were before the 6th.”


    More than 225 people have been charged with crimes related to the Jan. 6 insurrection, the Washington Post reported Sunday.


    Malinowski is also unhappy about the proliferation of razor-wire-topped fencing that now surrounds the U.S. Capitol in the wake of Jan. 6. “I hate these fences,” he said.


    Malinowski was already working on the issue of conspiracy theories when he became the target of death threats last year, after the National Republican Congressional Committee ran misleading ads that seemingly tapped into the growing popularity of the bizarre QAnon cult. QAnon is an alternative-reality belief system that falsely says Democrats are part of a sex trafficking ring. Congress approved a resolution condemning QAnon that was co-sponsored by Malinowski and a Republican congressman last year, although 17 Republicans voted against it.


    Malinowski said conspiracy theories like QAnon are a “precursor drug” that radicalizes people into violent action. “[It] gets your mind in the place where you're then susceptible, vulnerable, to being recruited by even more extreme and better-organized groups that actually conduct actions, operations,” he said.


    Many QAnon adherents took part in the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, which Malinowski said was unsurprising if you think about the fake world that its followers have entered.
    “Imagine if you really believed that there were thousands of children being held, kidnapped and sexually abused in your community. Would you write a letter to the editor? Would you go to a peaceful protest? I think a lot of people, if you really believed that, might think that that actually does justify smashing things, breaking things and hurting people,” Malinowski said. “The disinformation, the lies themselves, are an incredibly important part of this.”
    Congressman says he's 'tired of playing defense' against conspiracy theories and domestic extremism

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    Right-wing domestic terrorists-e0bmkrjucaahflg-jpeg
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails Right-wing domestic terrorists-e0bmkrjucaahflg-jpeg  

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    Texas Man Charged With Planning To Blow Up Ashburn Data Center


    ASHBURN, VA — A Texas man has been charged with plotting to blow up a data center in Ashburn in an attempt to "kill off about 70 percent" of the internet, according to the Department of Justice.

    Seth Aaron Pendley, 28, of Wichita Falls, Texas, was arrested on Thursday after allegedly attempting to obtain an explosive device from an undercover FBI agent in Fort Worth. He was charged with a malicious attempt to destroy a building with an explosive,




    Pendley allegedly wanted to blow up an Amazon Web Services' data center on Smith Switch Road in Ashburn. He made his initial appearance in federal court Friday morning. He faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.


    According to the federal criminal complaint, the investigation began after a citizen contacted the FBI on Jan. 8 about statements posted on MyMilitia.com, a forum dedicated to organizing far-right militia groups.


    A user who went by the screenname “Dionysus” said he was planning to “conduct a little experiment” that he said would “draw a lot of heat” and could be “dangerous.” When another user asked what outcome Dionysus desired, he responded, “death,” according to the U.S. attorney’s office for the Northern District of Texas.


    “Even if I only have a handful of fellow patriots standing beside me, I will happily die a young man knowing that I didn’t allow the evils in this world to continue unjustly treating my fellow Americans so disrespectfully,” Pendley allegedly wrote on MyMilitia.com.


    Pendley’s posts came at a time when Amazon was under scrutiny from supporters of former President Donald Trump for its plans to cut ties with Parler, a social network where far-right activists who participated in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol had congregated.


    A confidential source provided the FBI with the MyMilitia.com user’s email address, which was registered to Pendley.


    The FBI then searched Pendley’s Facebook account, which showed he had boasted about being at the U.S. Capitol for the insurrection on Jan. 6, according to the federal complaint.


    In private messages, he allegedly told friends that although he did not enter the Capitol building, he did reach the “platform,” where he swiped a piece of glass from a broken window and interacted with police. He said he brought a sawed-off AR rifle to D.C., but left the weapon in his car during his movement to the Capitol, the complaint said.


    In late January, Pendley allegedly began using Signal, an encrypted messaging app, to communicate with another confidential source, according to the complaint. The source told the FBI that Pendley said he planned to use C-4 plastic explosives to attack a prominent tech company's data centers in an attempt to “kill off about 70% of the internet.”


    On March 31, the confidential source introduced Pendley to a person who he claimed was his explosives supplier. The man was actually an undercover FBI agent.

    “We are indebted to the concerned citizen who came forward to report the defendant’s alarming online rhetoric,” Acting U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas Prerak Shah said in a statement Friday. “In flagging his posts to the FBI, this individual may have saved the lives of a number of tech workers.”


    In recorded conversations, Pendley allegedly told the undercover FBI agent that he planned to attack web servers that he believed provided services to the FBI, CIA and other federal agencies. He said he hoped to bring down “the oligarchy” currently in power in the United States.


    Last Monday, Pendley allegedly sent an associate hand-drawn maps of the Amazon facility he planned to target in Ashburn, Wired reported Friday.


    “We would like to thank the FBI for their work in this investigation,” an Amazon spokesperson said in a statement provided to Wired. “We take the safety and security of our staff and customer data incredibly seriously, and constantly review various vectors for any potential threats."


    An estimated 70 percent of the world's internet traffic flows through Northern Virginia's 12 million square feet of data center space, the majority of it in Ashburn and other parts of eastern Loudoun County. According to Northern Virginia Technology Council, Northern Virginia is the world's largest data center market, employing nearly 15,000 people.


    Last Thursday, Pendley again met with the undercover FBI agent to pick up what he believed to be explosive devices. However, the agent gave Pendley inert devices. After the agent showed Pendley how to arm and detonate the devices, the defendant loaded them into his car, according to the complaint.


    Pendley was then arrested by FBI agents who monitored the delivery of the inert devices.


    “We continually ask the public to report suspicious or threatening behavior to law enforcement, and in this instance, that vigilance may have prevented injuries and the destruction of property,” said Matthew J. DeSarno, the FBI’s Dallas special agent in charge.


    The FBI’s Dallas Field Office, Wichita Falls Resident Agency and FBI’s North Texas Joint Terrorism Task Force conducted the investigation, according to the U.S. attorney's office.



    Texas Man Charged With Planning To Blow Up Ashburn Data Center

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    How Trump’s Focus on Antifa Distracted Attention From the Far-Right Threat

    As racial justice protests erupted nationwide last year, President Donald J. Trump, struggling to find a winning campaign theme, hit on a message that he stressed over and over: The real domestic threat to the United States emanated from the radical left, even though law enforcement authorities had long since concluded it came from the far right.It was a message that was quickly embraced and amplified by his attorney general and his top homeland security officials, who translated it into a shift in criminal justice and national security priorities even as Mr. Trump was beginning to openly stoke the outrage that months later would culminate in the storming of the Capitol by right-wing extremists.

    Mr. Trump’s efforts to focus his administration on the antifa movement and leftist groups did not stop the Justice Department and the F.B.I. from pursuing cases of right-wing extremism. They broke up a kidnapping plot, for example, targeting Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, a Democrat.

    But the effect of his direction was nonetheless substantial, according to interviews with current and former officials, diverting key portions of the federal law enforcement and domestic security agencies at a time when the threat from the far right was building ominously.


    • In late spring and early summer, as the racial justice demonstrations intensified, Justice Department officials began shifting federal prosecutors and F.B.I. agents from investigations into violent white supremacists to focus on cases involving rioters or anarchists, including those who might be associated with the antifa movement. One Justice Department prosecutor was sufficiently concerned about an excessive focus on antifa that the official went to the department’s independent inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, telling his office that politics might have played a part.


    • Federal prosecutors and agents felt pressure to uncover a left-wing extremist criminal conspiracy that never materialized, according to two people who worked on Justice Department efforts to counter domestic terrorism. They were told to do so even though the F.B.I., in particular, had increasingly expressed concern about the threat from white supremacists, long the top domestic terrorism threat, and well-organized far-right extremist groups that had allied themselves with the president.
    • White House and Justice Department officials stifled internal efforts to publicly promote concerns about the far-right threat, with aides to Mr. Trump seeking to suppress the phrase “domestic terrorism” in internal discussions, according to a former official at the Department of Homeland Security.
    • Requests for funding to bolster the number of analysts who search social media posts for warnings of potential violent extremism were denied by top homeland security officials, limiting the department’s ability to spot developing threats like the post-Election Day anger among far-right groups over Mr. Trump’s loss.


    The scale and intensity of the threat developing on the right became stunningly clear on Jan. 6, when news broadcasts and social media were flooded with images of far-right militias, followers of the QAnon conspiracy movement and white supremacists storming the Capitol.

    Militias and other dangerous elements of the far right saw “an ally in the White House,” said Mary McCord, a former Justice Department official who teaches at Georgetown University and focuses on domestic terrorism. “That has, I think, allowed them to grow and recruit and try to mainstream their opinions, which is why I think you end up seeing what we saw” at the Capitol.

    A Focus on ‘Anarchists and Thugs’

    Mr. Trump’s focus on what he portrayed as a major threat from antifa was embraced in particular by Attorney General William P. Barr.

    Mr. Barr had long harbored concerns about protests and violence from the left. Soon after taking office in early 2019, he began a weekly national security briefing by asking the F.B.I. what it was doing to combat antifa, according to two people briefed on the meetings. Officials viewed his sense of the threat as exaggerated. They explained that it was not a terrorist organization, but rather a loose movement without an organization or hierarchy, and tried to correct what they described as misperceptions, according to one of the people.

    Still, in meetings last year with political appointees in Washington, department investigators felt pressured to find evidence that antifa adherents were conspiring to conduct coordinated terrorist attacks.

    When F.B.I. intelligence continued to deem white nationalists the leading domestic terrorism threats — part of what the bureau describes as racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists — prosecutors were asked to also consider information from the Department of Homeland Security that antifa and radical leftist anarchists were instead the leading threats, according to a person involved in the conversations.

    Mr. Barr said in a statement that “there was no ‘prioritization’” of the leftist threat, and that all violence should be condemned.

    “The F.B.I. already had a robust program to combat violence driven by white supremacy and nationalism,” Mr. Barr said. “I wanted there to be a comparable one for antifa and antifalike groups.”

    The pressure from Mr. Trump was unrelenting. After Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director, testified to Congress in September that antifa was “more of an ideology or a movement than an organization,” Mr. Trump lashed out at him on Twitter, saying that the F.B.I. protected such “anarchists and thugs” and allowed them “to get away with ‘murder.’”

    Investigators at the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security moved quickly and forcefully to address the violence that erupted amid the summer’s racial justice protests.

    The demonstrations gave way to looting and rioting, including serious injuries and shootings. Over several chaotic nights in Minneapolis, rioters burned down a corridor of largely immigrant-owned businesses and set a police precinct on fire. Similar scenes played out in other cities.

    In late August, Michael Reinoehl, a self-professed antifa supporter, shot and killed a pro-Trump protester in Portland, Ore. The president cheered his death at the hands of the federal officers who later tried to apprehend him. “We got him,” he said.

    But while Mr. Trump and others saw the developments as evidence of a major assault from the left, the picture was actually more complicated.

    The shooting by Mr. Reinoehl, as the F.B.I. pointed out this month in an internal memo, was the first killing in more than 20 years by what the bureau classifies as an “anarchist violent extremist,” the type of threat Mr. Trump had emphasized.

    Over the late spring and summer, the F.B.I. opened more than 400 domestic terrorism investigations, including about 40 cases into possible antifa adherents and 40 into the boogaloo, a right-wing movement seeking to start a civil war, along with investigations into white supremacists suspected of menacing protesters, according to F.B.I. data and a former Justice Department official. Even among those movements, career prosecutors saw the boogaloo as the gravest threat.

    Members of violent militias began to go to protests as self-appointed police forces, sometimes saying that they had heeded Mr. Trump’s call. They attended Republican events as self-described security forces.

    Still, Justice Department leadership was adamant that terrorism investigators focus on antifa as the demonstrations spread, according to an official who worked on the inquiries.

    The small cadre of intelligence analysts inside the department’s counterterrorism section were pulled into the effort, writing twice daily reports. National security prosecutors staffed command posts at the F.B.I. to deal with the protests and associated violence and property crimes, and to help protect statues and monuments seen as potential targets.

    All of this was a strain on the counterterrorism section, which has only a few dozen prosecutors and like other parts of the department was reeling from the coronavirus. A top F.B.I. domestic terrorism chief also expressed concern to Justice Department officials over the summer about the diversion of resources.

    The counterterrorism section at the time was working with prosecutors and agents around the country on cases involving people affiliated with the Three Percenters, Oath Keepers, other militia members and violent white supremacists. In some parts of the country, agents who had been investigating violent white supremacists pivoted to investigate anarchists and others involved in the rioting, struggling in certain cases to find any conspiracy or other federal charges to bring against them.

    Around the same time, the F.B.I. was tracking worrisome threats emanating from the far right. Agents in Michigan monitoring members of a violent antigovernment militia called Wolverine Watchmen received intelligence in June that the men planned to recruit more members and kidnap state governors, according to court documents.

    After six members of the group were charged in October with plotting to abduct Ms. Whitmer, one of Mr. Trump’s most vocal opponents, the president insulted her and reiterated that the left posed the true threat. “She calls me a White Supremacist — while Biden and Democrats refuse to condemn Antifa, Anarchists, Looters and Mobs that burn down Democrat run cities,” Mr. Trump said on Twitter.

    Dozens of F.B.I. employees and senior managers were sent on temporary assignments to Portland — including the head of the Tampa field office, who was an expert in Islamic terrorism, according to current and former law enforcement officials — where left-leaning protests had intensified since tactical federal teams arrived.

    Some F.B.I. agents and Justice Department officials expressed concern that the Portland work was a drain on the bureau’s effort to combat what they viewed as the more lethal strains of domestic extremism. The bureau had about 1,000 domestic terrorism cases under investigation at the time, and only several hundred agents in the field assigned to them. The Homeland Security Department even sent agents to Portland who were usually assigned to investigate drug cartels at the border.

    Mr. Barr also formed a task force run by trusted U.S. attorneys in Texas and New Jersey to prosecute antigovernment extremists. Terrorism prosecutors working on the investigations arising from the summer’s violence were not told beforehand of Mr. Barr’s decision. They questioned the rationale behind the task force because it seemed to duplicate their work and could create confusion, according to two people familiar with their pushback.

    Ultimately, the federal response to last year’s protests elicited a mixed bag. Federal prosecutors nationwide charged more than 300 people with crimes, including some who self-identified with antifa.
    But the F.B.I. also charged adherents of the boogaloo, including an Air Force sergeant suspected of murdering a federal officer and trying to kill another in California. The sergeant had previously been charged with the shooting death of a sheriff’s deputy in Santa Cruz County during a gun battle on June 6 that led to his arrest.

    The Homeland Threat

    Domestic terrorism has long been a politically sensitive issue for the Department of Homeland Security.

    A warning in a 2009 homeland security report that military veterans returning from combat could be vulnerable for recruitment by terrorist groups or extremists prompted backlash from conservatives, forcing the homeland security secretary at the time, Janet Napolitano, to apologize and retract the report. An edited version was eventually issued, but the lesson about the political risks of highlighting far-right extremism lingered inside the department.

    “They overhype the threat of the far left at the expense of far-right extremism,” said Daryl Johnson, a former senior analyst at the department who wrote the 2009 report.

    Like Mr. Barr, Mr. Trump’s acting homeland security secretary, Chad F. Wolf, took his lead from the White House and emphasized the threat from antifa. At one point, Mr. Wolf formed a task force that deployed tactical agents to protect statues and monuments.


    Mr. Wolf denied that the administration’s response to the violence at racial justice protests came at the cost of efforts to combat far-right violence, noting that the agency affirmed the rising threat of white supremacy in an assessment in 2019.

    “You could argue the reverse. The fact we were focused on white supremacist extremists in late 2019, early ’20, we missed the antifa stuff coming up,” Mr. Wolf said. “One could always go back and say, ‘You focused on this at the expense of that.’ I would say we focused on things happening in real time.”

    Mr. Trump said in May that he intended to designate antifa a domestic terrorist organization. National Security Council staff members, including Andrew Veprek, an ally of Stephen Miller who is now at the State Department, asked homeland security officials for evidence to justify such a designation. They sought information about possible ties between antifa and foreign entities; federal law defines domestic terrorism but the statute does not carry any criminal penalties, and designations of terrorist organizations are limited to foreign groups.

    In fact, the F.B.I. had seen troubling evidence of white supremacists in the United States with foreign ties, including one group that agents believe was being directed by an American living in Russia. The group, called the Base, was such a severe threat that the F.B.I. briefed Mr. Barr about it.

    Homeland security officials balked at helping designate antifa as a terrorist organization, and the effort failed.

    Officials in the department’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis also expressed concern after Mr. Wolf questioned one of their reports that labeled the boogaloo as “far right” in describing the shooting death of the federal officer in which the suspect, an Air Force sergeant, was linked to the movement. Asked about his response, Mr. Wolf said he was only trying to gain information, not alter reports.

    Under the Trump administration, analysts in the intelligence and analysis office had even more incentive to produce reports on threats outside of right-wing extremism, said Elizabeth Neumann, the former assistant homeland security secretary for counterterrorism and threat prevention under Mr. Trump.

    Many viewed their performance reviews as tied to whether they produced reports that aligned with the Trump administration’s priorities, including Mexican cartel organizations, foreign terrorism and antifa, rather than reports on militias and white supremacists. The number of warnings about all types of extremists in the second half of last year eventually dwindled, according to current and former officials.

    “You can read the tea leaves and say domestic terrorism isn’t going to be our priority,” Ms. Neumann said.

    “The culture absorbs those messages they hear the president speak or tweet,” she said, adding that some White House officials even cautioned against using the phrase “domestic terrorism.”

    Last spring, Brian Murphy, then the homeland security intelligence chief, requested $14 million to bolster training and increase staff to analyze social media for extremist threats, given that online forums had become a prime recruiting and organizing ground.

    Mr. Wolf’s deputy, Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, rejected the request, as well as an appeal for $8 million, officials said.

    Mr. Cuccinelli said in a statement that requests for additional funding would have come at the expense of other parts of the agency. He added that he had been working to shift resources from other parts of the department to expand training for the intelligence branch.

    Mr. Murphy had filed a whistle-blower complaint in September that prompted an outcry. He accused department leaders of ordering him to modify intelligence assessments to make the threat of white supremacy “appear less severe” and include information on violent “left-wing” groups and antifa. Mr. Wolf and Mr. Cuccinelli have denied the allegations, and after congressional backlash, they eventually released a report in October identifying white supremacy as the “most persistent and lethal threat” in the United States.

    Antifa Until the End

    Campaigning for re-election, Mr. Trump spent the summer blaming rioting and violence on Democratic governors and mayors and warning about a “left-wing cultural revolution.”

    Armed far-right militia groups started appearing at racial justice protests and demonstrations about the outcome of the election. Extremists groups like the Proud Boys marched in Washington in December, clashing with anti-Trump protesters in altercations that included stabbings.

    The Homeland Security Department’s intelligence branch issued an assessment on Dec. 30 highlighting the potential for white supremacists to carry out “mass casualty” attacks, according to a copy obtained by The New York Times.

    But there was no specific mention of armed groups targeting the Capitol, despite plenty of indicators online. The acting chief of the Capitol Police, Yogananda D. Pittman, later said that the department knew militias and white supremacists would be coming and “that there was a strong potential for violence and that Congress was the target.”

    In the days before Jan. 6, the Secret Service was told by homeland security officials to expect only an “elevated threat environment,” according to people familiar with the meeting.

    The Trump administration, however, continued to play up the threat of antifa. The night before the assault on the Capitol, the White House issued a memo seeking to bar any foreigners affiliated with antifa from entering the country and, once again, try to determine if the movement could be classified as a terrorist organization.

    When the pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol, some shouted explicit chants against antifa. Others were captured on video yelling, “We were invited by the president of the United States.”

    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/30/u...terrorism.html

  7. #1057
    Thailand Expat Backspin's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by happynz View Post
    So in your estimation, there is no people right of center that shouldn't be pushed into the sea ?

  8. #1058
    Hangin' Around cyrille's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Backspin View Post
    there is no people
    Have you ever read a post you couldn't mangle out of shape and transparently troll on?

  9. #1059
    Thailand Expat Backspin's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by cyrille View Post
    Have you ever read a post you couldn't mangle out of shape and transparently troll on?
    It's not trolling if you are dead serious

  10. #1060
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    This QAnon Militia of Ex-Cops and Soldiers Is Training ‘Patriots’ for Revolution

    After 15 hours on his feet protecting the attendees at a QAnon conference in Dallas, Robert Patrick Lewis was tired.

    But then the former Army sergeant, who did two tours in Afghanistan and Iraq, heard disgraced former national security advisor Michael Flynn speak. Flynn, who himself took the QAnon pledge and has become part celebrity and part spiritual leader to the QAnon faithful, called for a military coup in the U.S., and suddenly he felt invigorated.

    So he fired up a YouTube livestream and spoke straight to camera: “We need to talk about a revolution.”

    Lewis is a full-fledged QAnon believer and founder of the 1st Amendment Praetorians, named after the elite Roman soldiers who protected the emperor. The group consists of former military, law enforcement, and intelligence personnel whose stated mission is to provide pro bono security for “patriotic and religious events across the country.”

    The group was founded last September and has since acted as security for more than a dozen events, as well as providing security for Flynn himself. The QAnon conference—called “For God & Country: Patriot Roundup”—was a perfect fit.

    The Praetorians are a new paramilitary organization that Lewis says has grown to “hundreds” of members in just nine months, in almost complete secrecy. It is part of a growing network of right-wing extremists groups who are pushing baseless conspiracies about election fraud, and has direct links to violent militias, notably the Oath Keepers. Now Lewis, a QAnon believer, is helping establish a nationwide network of survivalist training camps to prepare patriots for the coming revolution.

    In Dallas on Memorial Day weekend, Lewis’ crew of a few dozen Praetorians didn’t have any threats to deal with other than a couple of journalists—including one from VICE News—who were ejected from the event. But the conference helped boost the Praetorians’ profile, and it helped Lewis make some new friends.

    During the event, he posted a picture of himself with Flynn and then-Texas GOP chair Allen West, holding a Pine Tree flag, a Revolutionary War-era emblem that has been appropriated by the far right.

    While Flynn called for a military coup, what Lewis says he wants is not bloodshed but a grassroots revolution.

    “I feel that we are going through a revolutionary country right now. It doesn't always have to be a kinetic revolution, it doesn't always mean bloodshed in the streets. Revolution can mean a completely different emerging viewpoint for a way of doing or a way of acting, I think that's what we're at,” Lewis told VICE News from his home near Los Angeles this week.

    But Lewis’ so-called peaceful revolution is at odds with his rhetoric on social media posts, in online articles, and in interviews on right-wing news stations. His vision of a new American revolution is also infused with conspiratorial thinking and linked to known violent extremists.

    In addition to his QAnon activism, Lewis is a COVID-denier who believes that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump. He also believes that critical race theory is bogus, and that the mainstream media is in league with the deep state. He believes that Antifa is the greatest threat to U.S. democracy and firmly believes they were behind the Capitol riot on January 6. Lewis says he was in D.C. on the day of the Capitol riot, but there’s no evidence he was part of the group that attacked the Capitol.

    Most worrying of all is that Lewis and the Praetorians are coordinating resources and information with more violent groups, far-right militias, and extremists. Lewis says he’s been in contact with Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the Oath Keepers, a far-right, anti-government militia who provide personal security to Roger Stone and whose members have been charged with conspiring to storm the Capitol.

    His contact with Rhodes has stopped since Jan. 6, which is when Lewis claims “the FBI started to frame the Oath Keepers and they went to ground.” While Rhodes has yet to be charged in relation to the Capitol insurrection, he has been named in documents filed by prosecutors, who have charged several other Oath Keepers with conspiring to attack the Capitol.

    Lewis says he is in contact with several groups similar to the Oath Keepers, not to coordinate actions but to "share information amongst each other: ‘What are you seeing? Are you seeing what we're seeing ramping up? What are you guys doing?’ It's not coordinating together; it's more like sharing information.”

    The Praetorians also work with a veritable who’s-who of conspiracy theorists, including renowned anti-vaxxer Sheri Tenpenny, who made headlines last week when she claimed COVID-19 vaccines made people magnetic.

    And now Lewis is using that network to launch survivalist training for “patriots” across the country, to prepare them for when the revolution finally arrives.

    "The people that came to this continent, and were able to form what became the United States of America had to be extremely resilient,” Lewis said. “They came here with what they had, and then everything else to survive had to be created. I feel like we've lost that in our country. My big worry is that if things ever do get really bad, it will be compounded by the fact that people don't know how to take care of themselves.”

    Lewis said that as well as working with sheriffs across the country on this project, he is coordinating with Scott Kesterson, a prominent QAnon promoter and podcaster who stole $12,000 from a cancer charity campaign for his dying friend.

    Tenpenny and Lee Merritt, an osteopath who is a member of the conspiracy-driven group America’s Frontline Doctors, are also part of this network, which Lewis said would teach people skills like basic medical training and farming.

    Lewis’ conspiracy-infused “revolution” is being echoed by conservative groups across the country, including QAnon and the Republican Party, who are using the lie that last November’s election was fraudulent to rally people to action.

    As QAnon conspiracies become subsumed as mainstream talking points by the GOP, right-wing figures have begun to amplify calls for followers to leave their computer screens and get involved by infiltrating school boards, joining local Republican parties, and even running for Congress.

    “It seems like we are going through a great awakening in this country.” Lewis said, echoing one of QAnon best-known phrases.

    After Lewis finished his military service in 2009, he tried his hand at writing, publishing a trilogy of titles called “The Pact,” a fictional account of a joint Chinese-Russian-Hezbollah attack on the U.S.

    Over the next decade, he also held a number of corporate roles, including working for UCLA Healthcare, and several marketing roles, including with several veteran-owned companies, according to Lewis’ LinkedIn profile.

    During this time he was not in the public eye, but in 2019 he said he felt compelled to do something after seeing Vietnam veterans attacked for holding Trump signs.

    Lewis couldn’t provide specifics for the incident, but in June 2020, an 82-year-old veteran was pushed to the ground at a Trump supporters’ rally in Fall River, Massachusetts. He was kicked in the ribs and legs by a man who had ripped the sign from his hands, according to the Herald News, a local newspaper.

    Lewis initially planned to attend Trump rallies and provide additional support to the private security inside the events by focusing on protecting the people outside the rallies who camped out for days ahead of Trump’s arrival.

    Lewis claimed people were being attacked going to and from their vehicles at these events or while they were waiting in line outside, but there are very few reports of incidents like this, and Lewis didn’t provide specifics.

    But as the pandemic hit, and the rallies were cancelled, Lewis pivoted and launched the Praetorians.

    In September, he published his first video talking about the Praetorians, describing them as “a group of military, law enforcement and intelligence veterans who refuse to stand on the sidelines and watch as your countrymen and women are intimidated from expressing their First Amendment rights.”

    In the nine months since that video was published, the group has recruited “hundreds” of volunteers to provide security at events, though Lewis would not say what the exact figure is. He also refuses to name any of the individuals who’ve signed up, citing privacy reasons.

    While he’s recruited a number of civilians, Lewis says he wants to focus almost exclusively on people from military, law enforcement, and intelligence backgrounds.

    “Each of these people have kind of an inculcated foundation of professionalism, and we can depend on them to do the right thing if the pressure ratchets up,” Lewis said. The vetting process is rigorous, according to Lewis, and conducted by a group of private investigators—or “digital ninjas,” as Lewis calls them—who he says thoroughly review people’s backgrounds, including their military records, looking for histories of violence and brushes with law enforcement.

    “We don't want people in our group that could possibly cause trouble or be prone to violence or anything like that,” Lewis said.

    Lewis says the group is entirely crowdfunded and covers the cost of flights, food, and accommodation for all the volunteers, as well as the purchasing of equipment such as radios, surveillance cameras, and the uniform: black shirts with the white Praetorian logo on them.

    The group’s first event, in October 2020, was organized by the Walkaway Campaign, an activist group led by Brandon Straka, a MAGA activist who was once a curtain-raiser at Trump rallies and was arrested for allegedly breaching the Capitol on Jan. 6.

    Including that initial event in Washington, Lewis says they provided support for 15 more events before the end of the year, while the Dallas conference was the group’s first of this year.

    And at pretty much every event, Lewis had one enemy in mind: antifa, whom he sees as the biggest threat to the U.S.—together with the Black Lives Matter movement.

    Lewis has a wild origin story for the anti-facist group. He believes it operated first in Germany before many its way to the U.S. in the last decade, where it has been funded by money from the U.S. government as well as directly from countries like Cuba and China.

    Lewis believes there’s a “cadre” of powerful people directing the movement, such as prominent 1970s feminist activist Susan Rosenberg, while the front lines of antifa are often populated with “useful idiots,” such as students or the children of wealthy families.

    Like many conspiracy theorists—and many within the Republican Party—Lewis is fully convinced that the attack on the Capitol was conducted not by pro-Trump groups but by antifa.

    “We saw at the Capitol on January 6 where they were trying to push people to do violence,” before citing a video he claims shows antifa activists “being led by Capitol Police magically to a door where the magnetic locks were unlocked at the right time.”

    Lewis’ entire worldview appears suffused with conspiratorial thinking and he has long expressed support for the QAnon movement, dating back to at least 2018 when he wrote an article called “What is QAnon, Q, and the Great Awakening are Real?” for the Heroes Media Group.

    And despite none of Q’s predictions coming true, Lewis’ outlook has not changed. “I think there's more to it, so people are willing to consider,” he said, calling QAnon “profound” and ”enormous.”

    Piling conspiracy on top of conspiracy, Lewis also believes that FBI agents are infiltrating the QAnon movement to spread extreme conspiracies that were not based on Q drops, as part of a plan to discredit the movement—and this, of course, is all being aided by the mainstream media.

    Lewis believes QAnon could be a U.S. government-funded operation, but he leaves open the possibility that it’s a disinformation campaign being run by a foreign state—though that, too, has a silver lining.

    “If it was a disinformation campaign, it was an abject failure, because you have up to 20% of the population [who have] learned to research on their own and they learned not to believe anything they hear from the media at face value, which is proven very valuable given the large-scale lies we’ve seen from the media.”

    https://www.vice.com/en/article/4avn...for-revolution

  11. #1061
    Thailand Expat misskit's Avatar
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    He was preparing for ‘a coming civil war,’ feds say. Now he faces up to 30 years in prison

    Sometimes Paul Miller dressed as Batman’s nemesis, the Joker — face paint and all. Other times he wore army-green tactical gear with a red armband adorned with a swastika. But in each video, Miller toggled between chats on Omegle, a website that randomly pairs users, waving a gun and making hateful statements.

    “Do you think we should gas the Jews?” he asked a group of young teenage boys.


    “Ship them all back to Africa … make them slaves again,” he said to another man, referring to Black people as the n-word.


    “White power,” he said emphatically, raising his right arm in the Nazi salute.


    Miller, a 32-year-old who went by “GypsyCrusader” online, was open about his extremist beliefs in videos reviewed by The Washington Post that remain active on BitChute, a posting site popular with the far right. In March, the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force took his threats seriously. During a raid of his Fort Lauderdale, Fla., home, investigators discovered a rifle and almost 850 rounds of ammunition.


    On Tuesday, Miller pleaded guilty to three felony counts for possession of an unregistered firearm and ammunition and possession of a weapon as a felon. He faces a maximum of 30 years in federal prison.


    Miller’s lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    MORE He was preparing for ‘a coming civil war,’ feds say. Now he faces up to 30 years in prison.

  12. #1062
    Thailand Expat misskit's Avatar
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    Facebook and tech giants to target attacker manifestos, far-right militias in database


    July 26 (Reuters) - A counterterrorism organization formed by some of the biggest U.S. tech companies including Facebook and Microsoft is significantly expanding the types of extremist content shared between firms in a key database, aiming to crack down on material from white supremacists and far-right militias, the group told Reuters.


    Until now, the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism's (GIFCT) database has focused on videos and images from terrorist groups on a United Nations list and so has largely consisted of content from Islamist extremist organizations such as Islamic State, al Qaeda and the Taliban.


    Over the next few months, the group will add attacker manifestos - often shared by sympathizers after white supremacist violence - and other publications and links flagged by U.N. initiative Tech Against Terrorism. It will use lists from intelligence-sharing group Five Eyes, adding URLs and PDFs from more groups, including the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters and neo-Nazis.


    The firms, which include Twitter and Alphabet Inc's YouTube, share "hashes," unique numerical representations of original pieces of content that have been removed from their services. Other platforms use these to identify the same content on their own sites in order to review or remove it.


    While the project reduces the amount of extremist content on mainstream platforms, groups can still post violent images and rhetoric on many other sites and parts of the internet.


    The tech group wants to combat a wider range of threats, said GIFCT's Executive Director Nicholas Rasmussen in an interview with Reuters.


    "Anyone looking at the terrorism or extremism landscape has to appreciate that there are other parts... that are demanding attention right now," Rasmussen said, citing the threats of far-right or racially motivated violent extremism.


    The tech platforms have long been criticized for failing to police violent extremist content, though they also face concerns over censorship. The issue of domestic extremism, including white supremacy and militia groups, took on renewed urgency U.S. lays out plan to confront white supremacist violence | Reuters following the deadly Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.


    Fourteen companies can access the GIFCT database, including Reddit, Snapchat-owner Snap, Facebook-owned Instagram, Verizon Media, Microsoft's LinkedIn and file-sharing service Dropbox.


    GIFCT, which is now an independent organization, was created in 2017 under pressure from U.S. and European governments after a series of deadly attacks in Paris and Brussels. Its database mostly contains digital fingerprints of videos and images related to groups on the U.N. Security Council's consolidated sanctions list and a few specific live-streamed attacks, such as the 2019 mosque shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand.


    GIFCT has faced criticism and concerns from some human and digital rights groups over centralized or over-broad censorship.


    "Over-achievement in this takes you in the direction of violating someone's rights on the internet to engage in free expression," said Rasmussen.


    Emma Llanso, director of Free Expression at the Center for Democracy & Technology, said in a statement: "This expansion of the GIFCT hash database only intensifies the need for GIFCT to improve the transparency and accountability of these content-blocking resources."


    "As the database expands, the risks of mistaken takedown only increase," she added.


    The group wants to continue to broaden its database to include hashes of audio files or certain symbols and grow its membership. It recently added home-rental giant Airbnb and email marketing company Mailchimp as members.


    Facebook and tech giants to target attacker manifestos, far-...

  13. #1063
    Thailand Expat Backspin's Avatar
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    How did the neo Jacobins miss this capital hill bomb scare ? Apparently he was a trump supporter.

    But he wants you to know he’s very anti-racist and down with LGBT, though he doesn’t like the Afghanistan withdrawal.

    https://twitter.com/RichardHanania/s...853338114?s=20

  14. #1064
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    Capitol bomb threat suspect charged in court

    The suspect who claimed to have a bomb in his truck near the U.S. Capitol on Thursday has been charged in federal court and faces up to life in prison if convicted.

    Floyd Ray Roseberry, of North Carolina, was charged in federal court in Washington, D.C., with attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction and attempted use of an explosive device.

    The first charge carries with it a maximum sentence of life in prison, as well as a possible fine of up to $250,000. The second carries up to 10 years in prison, with an additional $250,000 fine.

    According to court documents unsealed Friday, a relative of Roseberry told local law enforcement on Wednesday that the defendant “had recently expressed anti-government views and an intent to travel to Virginia or Washington, D.C. to conduct acts of violence.”
    Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

  15. #1065
    Excommunicated baldrick's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Backspin View Post
    miss this capital hill bomb scare ?
    are you talking about your compatriot who thought he was at the capitol building , but instead was outside the library of congress ?

  16. #1066
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    Quote Originally Posted by baldrick View Post
    are you talking about your compatriot who thought he was at the capitol building
    Why must they all be so stupid?


  17. #1067
    Thailand Expat Backspin's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by baldrick View Post
    are you talking about your compatriot who thought he was at the capitol building , but instead was outside the library of congress ?
    Fuck off Baldrick. Landteths story says capital too

  18. #1068
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    Man sentenced to 6 years in prison over Michigan governor kidnap plot

    Ty Garbin, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges earlier this year in an alleged plot to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, was sentenced to six years in prison on Wednesday, according to AP.

    Why it matters: It's the first prison sentence handed down in the case. Prosecutors are signaling to the other defendants awaiting trial that Garbin has shared many details about the plan while cooperating with investigators.

    The FBI said last October it disrupted a plot to violently overthrow Michigan's government by kidnapping Whitmer.


    • At the time, she had been heavily criticized by right-wing groups for implementing strict restrictions to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
    • Adam Fox, Barry Croft, Kaleb Franks, Daniel Harris and Brandon Caserta were also charged in the conspiracy plot.


    The big picture: After the plot was foiled, Whitmer said former President Trump was partly responsible for fomenting anger against her coronavirus restrictions and for not strongly denouncing far-right extremist groups.

  19. #1069
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    Quote Originally Posted by S Landreth View Post
    Ty Garbin, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges earlier this year in an alleged plot to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, was sentenced to six years in prison on Wednesday, according to AP.
    Good, but not long enough.

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    Quote Originally Posted by panama hat View Post
    Good, but not long enough.
    Agreed. That is an oddly short sentence. But he did flip on the others.

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    Bush warns of domestic extremism, appeals to 'nation I know'

    SHANKSVILLE, Pa. (AP) — Warning that the nation was falling into division and extremism, former President George W. Bush appealed Saturday for a return to the spirit of cooperation that emerged — almost instantaneously — after the 9/11 attacks 20 years ago.

    Delivering the keynote address at the national memorial to the victims of Flight 93, who forced down their airplane hijacked by al-Qaida terrorists before it could be used as a weapon against the nation’s capital, Bush warned of “violence that gathers within.”

    “There is little cultural overlap between violent extremists abroad and violent extremists at home,” he said. “But in their disdain for pluralism, in their disregard for human life, in their determination to defile national symbols, they are children of the same foul spirit. And it is our continuing duty to confront them.”

    Bush’s warning came barely eight months after the violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol by supporters of then-President Donald Trump attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

    It marked some of Bush's sharpest criticism of that attack and appeared to be an implicit criticism of Trump's brand of politics.

    Bush lamented that “so much of our politics has become a naked appeal to anger, fear and resentment.”

    He admitted he had no easy solutions. Instead, he channeled the heroism of the Flight 93 victims, and the determined spirit of a wounded nation to emerge from the tragedy stronger.

    “On America’s day of trial and grief, I saw millions of people instinctively grab for a neighbor’s hand and rally to the cause of one another,” Bush said. “That is the America I know.”

    He added that in the aftermath of the attacks Islamophobia, nativism or selfishness could have risen to the fore, but the country rejected them, and said, “That is the nation I know."

    “This is not mere nostalgia, it is the truest version of ourselves,” Bush said. “It is what we have been, and what we can be again.”

    Bush's appeal for unity drew plaudits from President Joe Biden, who visited Shanksville not long after Bush spoke, having watched his speech aboard Air Force One on the flight from 9/11 commemoration events in New York.

    “I thought that President Bush made a really good speech today," Biden said. "Genuinely.”

    Biden too has prioritized national unity, telling reporters Saturday, “That’s the thing that’s going to affect our well-being more than anything else.”

    Bush warns of domestic extremism, appeals to 'nation I know'

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    FBI director: Domestic terrorism cases have surged since 2020

    FBI Director Christopher Wray testified before a Senate committee Tuesday that the agency's domestic terrorism caseload has "exploded" in size since spring of 2020.

    Why it matters: The Jan. 6 Capitol riot refocused attention on the issue of domestic terrorism and security, but Wray's testimony points to a trend that pre-dates the insurrection.

    The big picture: In his testimony, Wray explained that there are two primary groups of threats the bureau focuses on – homegrown violent extremists radicalized by foreign terrorist organizations and ideologies, and domestic violent extremists, who are radicalized by racial hatred or anti-government sentiments.


    • Wray said that while the amount of homegrown violent extremists has remained fairly steady over the past few years, the number of domestic violent extremists has been rising exponentially since the spring of 2020.
    • "For the past 16, 18 months or so, we have more than doubled our domestic terrorism caseload from about 1,000 to around 2,700 investigations," Wray said, adding that "we have surged personnel to match, more than doubling the amount of people working that threat than the year before."
    • “Certainly, the domestic terrorism caseload has exploded, and meanwhile the international terrorism caseload hasn’t subsided,” he added during questioning.


    Of note:
    Wray added that recent events in Afghanistan could also increase the rate of homegrown violent extremists.


    • "So I think we anticipate, unfortunately, growth in both categories as we look ahead over the next couple of years," he said.




    FBI reports that domestic terrorism cases have surged since 2020 - Axios

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    Far-right militia group membership surged after Capitol attack, hack shows

    Hacked materials from the website of the rightwing militia group the Oath Keepers show that hundreds of people either joined or renewed their membership after many of the group’s members participated in the attack on the Capitol on 6 January.

    They included people who joined under their military ranks, including combat veterans, retired servicepersons, at least one serving national guardsman, several members of the clergy and others involved in security contracting and the firearms industry.

    Other materials in the hack show signups to petitions under government or military emails, and private email addresses being provided in response to appeals for assistance from military and service personnel.

    But with many of those addresses apparently not functioning or invalid, the extent of prior involvement by government and military employees in the group was not immediately clear.
    The post-Capitol attack membership surge is evident in payment records from the Oath Keepers website.

    They show that 801 people either joined the organization or made donations after 4 January, when founder Stewart Rhodes posted an article on the website headlined “Oath Keepers Deploying to DC to Protect Events, Speakers, & Attendees on Jan 5-6: Time to Stand!”

    But almost all of that number – 788 altogether – joined or donated after Oath Keepers members participated in the incursion into the Capitol building on 6 January, with the records showing that the surge built momentum in January before slowing in February, March and April, where the records end.

    There were no email addresses linked to military or government employers in the trove, but 10 sign-ups noted their military ranks in an optional “title” field, which ranged between corporal and colonel, including three men who offered the rank of lieutenant colonel.

    The Guardian’s investigation of the record showed that the majority of these are retired, but some have gone on to work in other sensitive roles.

    The records show, for example, that one sign-up was a former lieutenant colonel in the US Marine Corps and that his service included stints at the corps’ headquarters in Quantico, Virginia, before taking a position at Northrop Grumman, a defense contractor.

    Another sign-up, on 7 January, was apparently another Marine veteran who also worked as a bodyguard for the military contractor Blackwater, in a US government program to provide personal protection in theaters of war like Afghanistan and Iraq.

    Several other men joined who used the religious title of Reverend, including one man who appears to have run for office in Wyoming as a pro-Trump Republican candidate.

    The hacked materials were provided to reporters by the transparency organization Distributed Denial of Secrets after an anonymous hacker broke into the Oath Keepers’ infrastructure.

    It was not immediately apparent whether the hack exfiltrated all of the Oath Keepers’ data, or just a segment, but as delivered it contained email threads, message archives and extensive records on membership and calls to action on specific issues.

    Many of the records reveal direct communications to and from Rhodes, the Oath Keepers’ founder and leader.

    Previous reporting at the Daily Dot described hundreds of military and government emails in the trove. While many older member records and records of petition campaigns do show such addresses, Guardian attempts to contact them resulted in extensive email bounces and notices that the addresses did not exist.

    Similarly, many private addresses were associated with explicit calls for military and law enforcement volunteers.

    In each case, it was not immediately clear whether all the addresses represented currently serving military or law enforcement officers, and in some cases it was not clear if or when the email addresses were valid.

    Far-right militia group membership surged after Capitol attack, hack shows | US Capitol attack | The Guardian

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    Hack exposes law enforcement officers who signed up to join anti-government Oath Keepers


    The law enforcement officers described what they could offer the Oath Keepers:

    “I have a wide variety of law enforcement experience, including undercover operations, surveillance and SWAT,” one wrote on the membership application.

    "Communications, Weapons, K9 Officer for local Sheriffs office 12 years to present," wrote another.

    “​​I am currently working as a deputy sheriff in Texas,” typed a third.

    These men, who had sworn to uphold the law, were signing up to join an armed, extremist, anti-government group.

    The Oath Keepers trade in conspiracy theories and wild interpretations of the U.S. Constitution. Its members have been involved in armed standoffs with the federal government. Some face charges in connection with their role in the Jan. 6 insurrection.

    The statements are part of a massive trove of data hacked from the Oath Keepers website. The data, some of which the whistleblower group Distributed Denial of Secrets made available to journalists, includes a file that appears to provide names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses of almost 40,000 members.

    A search of that list revealed more than 200 people who identified themselves as active or retired law enforcement officers when signing up. USA TODAY confirmed 20 of them are still serving, from Alabama to California. Another 20 have retired since joining the Oath Keepers.

    One man who filled out the form claimed he was a federal police officer and once worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency.

    These men are almost certainly just a small fraction of the law enforcement officers who joined the militia over the years, since the vast majority of people listed did not volunteer information about their employment. The leaked data does not indicate whether the people on the list are now dues-paying members.

    Founded after the election of Barack Obama in 2009 by Yale Law School graduate Stewart Rhodes, the Oath Keepers refuse to acknowledge the authority of the federal government. Members must abide by a declaration of conspiracy-laden orders they will refuse to enforce, including disarming the American people.

    Rhodes has long claimed that the group, which experts believe is the largest unauthorized militia in the country, is made up primarily of active and retired law enforcement officers and military personnel.

    Just one Oath Keeper serving in a police or sheriff's department is too many, said Daryl Johnson, a security consultant and former senior analyst for domestic terrorism at the Department of Homeland Security.

    “The Oath Keepers subscribe to anti-government conspiracy theories, so the fact that officers belong to an organization that believes in this type of stuff really calls into question their discretion and their ability to make sound judgments,” Johnson said.

    More concerning is the fact that the Oath Keepers make their members swear an oath of allegiance, much like the police and military, Johnson said. That creates a dangerous conflict of interest.

    “They look at the U.S. government as an enemy,” he said. “When it comes down to a crisis situation or an investigation involving other militias, where is this person’s allegiance? Most likely with the Oath Keepers and not the police department.”

    Rhodes has long claimed that the group, which experts believe is the largest unauthorized militia in the country, is made up primarily of active and retired law enforcement officers and military personnel.

    Just one Oath Keeper serving in a police or sheriff's department is too many, said Daryl Johnson, a security consultant and former senior analyst for domestic terrorism at the Department of Homeland Security.

    “The Oath Keepers subscribe to anti-government conspiracy theories, so the fact that officers belong to an organization that believes in this type of stuff really calls into question their discretion and their ability to make sound judgments,” Johnson said.

    Jan. 6 prosecutions:Oath Keepers had ‘corrupt’ intent when they stormed Capitol, DOJ says as defendants seek case dismissal
    Guilty plea:Fourth suspected Oath Keeper pleads guilty to in Capitol riot conspiracy, obstruction

    More concerning is the fact that the Oath Keepers make their members swear an oath of allegiance, much like the police and military, Johnson said. That creates a dangerous conflict of interest.

    “They look at the U.S. government as an enemy,” he said. “When it comes down to a crisis situation or an investigation involving other militias, where is this person’s allegiance? Most likely with the Oath Keepers and not the police department.”

    Oath Keepers sought

    Scott Dunn, who left the Oath Keepers board of directors in 2019 after disagreements with Rhodes, said the group's membership form asked people to list their relevant skills.

    Rhodes "wanted to use that information as a searchable database, so we could punch in Oklahoma and it would show us all the different specialties around Oklahoma, or we could search for a specific type of skill and it would show which members had that skill," he said.

    James Holsinger, a lieutenant with the Washington County Sheriff’s Office in Maryland, is on the list. Holsinger is running for sheriff in the county, where Hagerstown is located.
    He did not respond to several requests for comment.

    On the form, Holsinger apparently wrote that he “designed and implemented tactical rescue drills” and had “experience with an assortment of weapons (lethal and nonlethal).”

    Officers around the country joined the Oath Keepers

    USA TODAY contacted dozens of active-duty and retired officers to ask why they joined the Oath Keepers. Most didn't respond; nearly everyone who did said they were no longer members. One retired Marine and correctional officer said he still supports the group.

    In 20 cases, law enforcement agencies or the men themselves confirmed they were still employed there. Among the officers identified on the membership list are:


    • An officer at the Louisville Metro Police Department who was involved in an officer-involved shooting in 2018.
    • A former U.S. Army member who joined the New York Police Department and a former U.S. Army captain who joined the Chicago Police Department. Both are still police officers there.
    • An 80-year-old, part-time officer at the Ashley County Sheriff’s Office in Arkansas.
    • A corrections officer in Riverside, California.


    Major Eben Bratcher, operations chief with the Yuma County Sheriff's Office in Arizona, is among them. Bratcher told USA TODAY he recalled receiving newsletters from the group for "some time."

    "I may have signed up many years ago but do not recall any specifics," Bratcher said. "I do know that I unsubscribed some time ago due to the sheer volume of email I received."

    When Bratcher signed up, he apparently wrote this note: "We have 85 sworn officers and Border (of) Mexico on the South and California on the West. I've already introduced your web site to dozens of my Deputies."

    Bratcher said he didn't recall writing that. "It is probable that I spoke to numerous people about the new organization," he said.

    Constable Joe Wright, of Collin County, Texas, said he joined in 2012, when he was running for office for the first time.

    "To be honest, I felt pressured to join it in this county for political support," Wright said. "The Oath Keepers, if you didn’t support them you were going to get bad reviews."

    Wright said he didn't know much about the group at the time. He said he remembers receiving a box of Oath Keepers paraphernalia, including brochures and stickers, after signing up. He said he threw it in the trash and hasn't engaged with the group since being elected in the county northeast of Dallas.

    "I don’t support them," Wright said. "I’m not into radical. I’m into doing my job."

    Officers say they're no longer members

    Several officers admitted signing up but claimed their membership expired long ago.

    For example, Michael Lynch, an officer with the Anaheim Police Department in California, said he joined the Oath Keepers many years ago, but he didn’t renew his membership when he learned more about the group.

    "I didn't get anything out of it," he said in an interview. "There was no local chapter or anything, so when it came time to renew I was like, I'm not sending another $40."

    Lynch was the officer who boasted of his undercover, surveillance and SWAT training.

    “Obviously we had no knowledge of this,” said Anaheim spokesman Sgt. Shane Carringer. “We will look into what options we have as a department while considering what rights our officer has."

    Other departments have previously suspended or investigated officers for associating with the group.

    Always an extremist group, but lately more extreme

    It’s unclear from the hacked data exactly when the officers in question signed up. Experts on the Oath Keepers said the militia has certainly changed since its founding in 2009.

    What started during the Obama administration as a group to fight what it saw as federal government overreach has developed into a more hateful and paranoid organization, said Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism. She has tracked the Oath Keepers since their inception.

    “Rhodes and company have become much more radical,” Beirich said.

    Nonetheless, the Oath Keepers was always an extremist group, she said. It was founded in nonsensical and hateful conspiracy theories and always had an anti-government bent.

    She and other experts said they were concerned about law enforcement officers who joined the Oath Keepers at any point.

    “I don’t think police officers should be involved with extremist groups,” Beirich said. "You are a part of the government, you represent the full, whole community as a police officer, and there’s obviously a problem when you’re in a group that’s questioning the government’s right to do the things that the government has the right to do.”

    J.J. MacNab, a fellow at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, said she understands how law enforcement officers could have joined the Oath Keepers years ago without knowing much about it.

    Lynch, the officer in Anaheim, said he joined in 2016 after talking to recruiters at a booth at a gun show in Las Vegas. He said he thought they were an alternative to the National Rifle Association.

    MacNab buys that.

    "People join stuff all the time without doing any due diligence," she said. "And for years the only due diligence you could have done was on the Southern Poverty Law Center's website, and most police officers would immediately dismiss that as biased."

    For most Americans, joining the Oath Keepers is an act protected by the First Amendment. But several Supreme Court cases have established that police departments can place broad limits what their employees may say or write, and what organizations they belong to.

    Most officers are under the false impression that the First Amendment gives them the right to say just about anything on social media or in public, said Valerie Van Brocklin, a former federal prosecutor who trains police departments on using social media.

    "The vast majority of cops in the country don't understand this," Van Brocklin said. "A public employer does not have to pay you for your insubordination or dishonorable conduct that sullies the badge and the uniform."

    https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...us/5949281001/

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    Millions of Angry, Armed Americans Stand Ready to Seize Power If Trump Loses in 2024

    This is the first part of the article as it is a long read, but it is disturbingly worth it. The link is below as usual...

    Mike "Wompus" Nieznany is a 73-year-old Vietnam veteran who walks with a cane from the combat wounds he received during his service. That disability doesn't keep Nieznany from making a living selling custom motorcycle luggage racks from his home in Gainesville, Georgia. Neither will it slow him down when it's time to visit Washington, D.C.—heavily armed and ready to do his part in overthrowing the U.S. government.Millions of fellow would-be insurrectionists will be there, too, Nieznany says, "a ticking time-bomb" targeting the Capitol. "There are lots of fully armed people wondering what's happening to this country," he says. "Are we going to let Biden keep destroying it? Or do we need to get rid of him? We're only going to take so much before we fight back." The 2024 election, he adds, may well be the trigger.

    Nieznany is no loner. His political comments on the social-media site Quora received 44,000 views in the first two weeks of November and more than 4 million overall. He is one of many rank-and-file Republicans who own guns and in recent months have talked openly of the need to take down—by force if necessary—a federal government they see as illegitimate, overreaching and corrosive to American freedom.

    The phenomenon goes well beyond the growth of militias, which have been a feature of American life at least since the Ku Klux Klan rose to power after the Civil War. Groups like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, which took part in the January 6th riot at the Capitol and may have played organizational roles, have grown in membership. Law enforcement has long tracked and often infiltrated these groups. What Nieznany represents is something else entirely: a much larger and more diffuse movement of more-or-less ordinary people, stoked by misinformation, knitted together by social media and well-armed. In 2020, 17 million Americans bought 40 million guns and in 2021 were on track to add another 20 million. If historical trends hold, the buyers will be overwhelmingly white, Republican and southern or rural.

    America's massive and mostly Republican gun-rights movement dovetails with a growing belief among many Republicans that the federal government is an illegitimate tyranny that must be overthrown by any means necessary. That combustible formula raises the threat of armed, large-scale attacks around the 2024 presidential election—attacks that could make the January 6 insurrection look like a toothless stunt by comparison. "The idea that people would take up arms against an American election has gone from completely farfetched to something we have to start planning for and preparing for," says University of California, Los Angeles law professor Adam Winkler, an expert on gun policy and constitutional law.

    Both Democrats and Republicans are rapidly losing faith in the integrity of U.S. elections. Democrats worry that voter suppression and election interference from Republican state officials will deny millions of Americans their say at the polling booths. A PBS NewsHour/ NPR/ Marist poll in early November reported that 55 percent of Democrats saw voter suppression as the biggest threat to U.S. elections. Republicans claim, contrary to the evidence, that Democrats have already manipulated vote counts through fraud to steal a presidential election. An October CNN poll found that more than three-quarters of Republicans falsely believe Joe Biden's 2020 election win was fraudulent.

    According to the Constitution, Congress and the Supreme Court are supposed to settle those sorts of dueling claims. Given the growing intensity and polarization of political life, would either side accept a decision that handed a contested 2024 election result to the other?

    Such a decision would more likely bring tens of millions of protesters and counter-protesters into the streets, especially around the U.S. Capitol and possibly many state capitols, plunging the country into chaos. Although many Democrats might be inclined to demonstrate, a larger percentage of Republican protesters would almost certainly be carrying guns. If the Supreme Court ruling, expected in mid-2022, on New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen establishes an unrestricted right to carry a gun anywhere in the country, bringing firearms to the Capitol in Washington, D.C. could be perfectly legal. Says Winkler: "The Supreme Court may be close to issuing the ruling that leads to the overthrow of the U.S. government."

    If armed violence erupts the 2024 elections, quelling it could fall to the U.S. military, which may be reluctant to take arms against U.S. citizens. In that case, the fate of the nation might well be decided by a simple fact: a big subset of one of the two parties has for years been systemically arming itself for this very reason.

    "I hope it's just too crazy to happen here," says Erica De Bruin, an assistant professor of government at Hamilton College, who studies coups around the world. "But it's now in the realm of the plausible."

    Enemy at the Gates

    Many Republicans are increasingly coming to see themselves less as citizens represented by the federal government, and more as tyrannized victims of that government. More than three-quarters of Republicans reported "low trust" in the federal government in a Grinnell College national poll in October; only a minority of Democrats agreed. From this point of view, peaceful elections will not save the day. More than two out of three Republicans think democracy is under attack, according to the Grinnell poll, which echoes the results of a CNN poll in September. Half as many Democrats say the same.

    Mainstream news publications are filled with howls of protest over political outrages by Republican leaders, who are reflecting the beliefs of the party mainstream. But the small newspapers in the rural, red-state areas that are the core of the Republican party's rank and file are giving voice to a simpler picture: Politics are dead; it's time to fight. "Wake up America!" reads a September opinion piece excoriating Democrats in The Gaston Gazette, based in Gastonia, N.C. "The enemy is at our gates, God willing it is not too late to turn back the rushing tide of this dark regime." The piece goes on to quote Thomas Paine's exhortation to colonists to take up arms against the British. "We are in a civil war," a letter published in September in The New Mexico Sun likewise warns Republicans, "between the traditional Americans and those who want to impose socialism in this country and thus obtain complete government control of its citizens."

    Evidence that a significant portion of Republicans are increasingly likely to resort to violence against the government and political opponents is growing. More than 100 violent threats, many of them death threats, were leveled at poll workers and election officials in battleground states in 2020, according to an investigation by Reuters published in September—all those threat-makers whom Reuters could contact identified as Trump supporters. In October 2020, 13 men were charged with plotting to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat; all of them were aligned with the political right. Nearly a third of Republicans agree that "true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country," according to a September poll conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute, a non-partisan group. That's three times as many as the number of Democrats who felt the same way.

    Guns are becoming an essential part of the equation. "Americans are increasingly wielding guns in public spaces, roused by persons they politically oppose or public decisions with which they disagree," concludes an August article in the Northwestern University Law Review. Guns were plentiful when hundreds of anti-COVID-precaution protestors gathered at the Michigan State Capitol in May 2020. Some of the armed protesters tried to enter the Capitol chamber.

    Those who carry arms to a political protest may in theory have peaceful intentions, but there's plenty of reason to think otherwise. An October study from Everytown for Gun Safety and the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED) looked at 560 protests involving armed participants over an 18-month period through mid-2021, and found that a sixth of them turned violent, and some involved fatalities.

    One indication of how far Republicans may be willing to go in violently opposing the government is their sanguine reaction to the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Republicans by and large see no problem with a mob of hundreds swarming and forcing their way into the seat of American government. Half of Republicans said that the mob was "defending freedom," according to a CBS/YouGov poll taken just after the insurrection. Today two-thirds of Republicans have come to deny that it was an attack at all, according to an October survey by Quinnipiac University. "There's been little accountability for that insurrection," says UCLA's Winkler. "The right-wing rhetoric has only grown worse since then."

    Most Republican leaders are circumspect when it comes to supporting violence against the government, but not all. Former Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, a controversial character who remains popular among many Republicans, reportedly told an enthusiastic gathering of Trump supporters in October that if and when a "serious" insurrection springs up, "there's very little you're going to be able to do about it."

    Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, another prominent Republican popular with the rank and file, opined that the January 6 insurrectionists were simply doing what the Declaration of Independence tells true patriots to do, in that they were trying to "overthrow tyrants." The real threat to democracy, she added, are Black Lives Matter protesters and Democratic "Marxist-communist" agents. Greene and Representative Madison Cawthorn, a Republican from North Carolina, have referred to some of the insurrectionists as "political prisoners."

    Trump himself, of course, has nurtured a constant undercurrent of violence among his supporters from the beginning of his first presidential campaign. In 2016 he publicly stated he could shoot someone in the street without losing any of his political support, and he went on to encourage attendees at his rallies to assault protesters and journalists. When demonstrators at a rally in Miami were being dragged away, Trump warned that next time "I'll be a little more violent." At a 2016 rally in Las Vegas, he openly complained to the crowd that security wasn't being rough enough on a protester they were removing. "I'd like to punch him in the face, I'll tell you," he said.

    Today Trump openly declares the January 6 rioters to be "great people." In October, he suggested that Republicans might not want to bother to vote in the 2022 or 2024 elections because of their concerns over fraud in the 2020 election. At the same time, he declared that he would achieve an "even more glorious victory in November of 2024." The notion that Republicans could turn their backs on voting booths while sweeping Trump to glory only makes sense if Trump envisions a path to taking power that doesn't require votes.

    Republicans approve of that sort of talk. The October Quinnipiac poll found that while 94 percent of Democrats insist Trump is undermining democracy, 85 percent of Republicans say he's protecting it.



    Continues here...

    https://www.newsweek.com/2021/12/31/...4-1660953.html

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