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      How the far-right group ‘Oath Enforcers’ plans to harass political enemies

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      A national online network of thousands of rightwing self-described “Oath Enforcers” is threatening to unleash harassment tactics on elected officials and government workers around the country, the Guardian can reveal.While the network’s founder insists that the group is neither violent nor a militia, internal chats indicate that some members are planning for confrontations with law enforcement and their perceived political enemies.The chats also indicate that white supremacists and others connected with the militia movement are aiming to leverage the group’s success in recruiting disillusioned supporters of former President Donald Trump and the “QAnon” conspiracy movement, who are being exposed to a wide range of conspiracy theories, white nationalist material, and rightwing legal theories inside the groups.The group’s founder, who makes videos and organizes under the name Vince Edwards, lives off grid in a remote corner of Costilla county, in Colorado’s high desert region. Arrest records from 2016 indicate that he has also used the name Christian Picolo, and other public records associate him with the name Vincent Edward Deluca.Experts say that Edwards’s personal history reflects the potential danger in the spread of sovereign citizen ideology – along with voluminous online propaganda, that history includes an armed standoff with Costilla county sheriffs deputies in 2016.Edwards initially published videos and a printable flyer promoting the formation of “oath enforcement teams” of at least 30 people in every county in the nation during late January 2021, just weeks after his own self-documented attendance at a rally at the national Capitol on 6 January.His initial videos explicitly appealed to QAnon supporters, pointing out that “Q”, the supposed Trump administration insider whose gnomic forum posts animated the conspiracy-minded social movement, had not communicated with the movement since December, and that rather than “trusting the plan”, as adherents are enjoined to do, they should begin taking action.In the wake of the Capitol attack his efforts seem to have resonated with a growing pool of grassroots right-wingers. The Guardian found over 3,100 members in 50 state-based Telegram chats and a national chat. Some state based groups – such as Texas’s, Washington’s, and Alabama’s – were very active and had hundreds of members.The stated aims of the group include posting flyers designed by Edwards, the formation of “constitutional enforcement groups”, for every person to hand out 1,000 of Edwards’s flyers, and the creation of local hotlines to help “enforce the contract we made with our public servants” by live-streaming interactions with them or lodging spurious legal claims against them.In an introductory video entitled “OE training”, Edwards encourages new recruits to the network to emulate so-called “First amendment auditors” (FAAs).Professor Brian Levin is the director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism (CSHE) at California State University, San Bernardino. In a telephone conversation he explained that FAAs are a social media driven movement of libertarian provocateurs who “go to sensitive locations to see if law enforcement, security guards, or property owners will interfere with their activities which are annoying, but not usually illegal”.Meanwhile, some local groups show that well known extremists are seeing opportunities in the group’s fast growth.The Oregon Oath Enforcers group, for example, was joined on 5 February by Chester Doles of Dahlonega, Georgia. Doles, a long-time former member of the Ku Klux Klan and the neo-Nazi National Alliance, who was imprisoned in 1993 for beating a black man, and later marched in the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017.Doles received media attention recently as he and other members of the organization he currently leads, American Patriots USA, were among an armed crowd which protested outside the Georgia capitol on 6 January, am action which led Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, who had been demonized by the far right for his role in Georgia’s election count, to flee the building.In recent months, Doles has reportedly been seeking to build alliances with Three Percenters and other militia organizations in Georgia.A former member of far-right group Patriot Prayer, Tusitala “Tiny” Toese, joined the Oregon Oath Enforcers chat on 9 February. Toese, a Proud Boy, was a prominent and frequently violent participant in a long string of brawling, contentious street protests in Portland throughout the Trump era. He was jailed in Clark county, Washington, last October after violating the condition of his probation after earlier being convicted for assault over an unprovoked daylight attack on a man in Portland.In a video message to the Oath Enforcers group, Toese said: “You guys organizing? Me and my people will be there to take a stand with you.”Elsewhere in the Oath Enforcers instructional Telegram channel, Edwards and others have shared documents from a range of organizations around the country which promote false legal and constitutional doctrines associated with the so-called sovereign citizen movement.One document is presented as a judgment by a self-styled human rights tribunal, which orders the arrest order for a range of officials and philanthropists including Anthony Fauci and Bill and Melinda Gates for the crime of genocide.The sovereign citizen movement does not hold a universally consistent set of beliefs, but most adherents believe in a false alternative history of the United States, and that the present, and especially the law, reflects a conspiracy ordered by esoteric rules. Many treat all legal and governmental authority as illegitimate.In the Oath Enforcers’s chats, sovereign doctrine is presented side by side with false beliefs about vaccinations and masks, assertions that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump, and conspiracy theories about links between antifascist “Antifa” activists and powerful figures like billionaire George Soros.Vince Edwards and Chester Doles did not immediately respond to requests for comment.In intelligence assessments and public statements, federal agencies have advised that sovereign citizens pose an ongoing and specific threat to law enforcement officers.Levin, the extremism researcher, says of the apparent synergies between sovereign citizens and white supremacists that “there has been a realignment on the far-right extremist fringe”, wherein “law enforcement is viewed as an arm of a tyrannical government in much the same way that Sovereign Citizens viewed them decades prior.”Levin adds that “not only is the ideology getting a rebranding, so too are many far-right figures like former Klan Leader Chester Doles”.In a 28 March post on the Oregon Oath Enforcers page, a user reposted white nationalist broadcaster, Vincent James’s commentary on a clash between antifa and far-right street protesters in Salem the previous day.In part, the post read: “Cops never were and never will be your friend. They’re also the American regime. Not allies.” More

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      One Republican’s Lonely Fight Against a Flood of Disinformation

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      After losing an ugly congressional race last year, Denver Riggleman is leading a charge against the conspiracy-mongering coursing through his party. He doesn’t have many allies.AFTON, Va. — Denver Riggleman stood virtually alone.It was Oct. 2, on the floor of the House of Representatives, and he rose as one of only two Republicans in the chamber to speak in favor of a resolution denouncing QAnon. Mr. Riggleman, a freshman congressman from Virginia, had his own personal experiences with fringe ideas, both as a target of them and as a curious observer of the power they hold over true believers. He saw a dangerous movement becoming more intertwined with his party, and worried that it was only growing thanks to words of encouragement from President Donald J. Trump.“Will we stand up and condemn a dangerous, dehumanizing and convoluted conspiracy theory that the F.B.I. has assessed with high confidence is very likely to motivate some domestic extremists?” asked Mr. Riggleman, a former Air Force intelligence officer. “We should not be playing with fire.”Six months later, conspiracy theories like QAnon remain a threat that most Republicans would rather ignore than confront, and Mr. Riggleman is out of office. But he is ever more determined to try to expose disinformation from the far right that is swaying legions in the Republican base to believe in a false reality.Mr. Riggleman is a living example of the political price of falling out of lock step with the hard right. He lost a G.O.P. primary race last June after he officiated at the wedding of a gay couple. And once he started calling out QAnon, whose followers believe that a satanic network of child molesters runs the Democratic Party, he received death threats and was attacked as a traitor, including by members of his own family.The undoing of Mr. Riggleman — and now his unlikely crusade — is revealing about a dimension of conservative politics today. The fight against radicalism within the G.O.P. is a deeply lonely one, waged mostly by Republicans like him who are no longer in office, and by the small handful of elected officials who have decided that they are willing to speak up even if it means that they, too, could be headed for an early retirement.“I’ve been telling people: ‘You don’t understand. This is getting worse, not better,’” Mr. Riggleman said, sitting on a stool at his family bar one recent afternoon. “People are angry. And they’re angry at the truth tellers.”Mr. Riggleman, 51, is now back home in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, where he and his wife run the bar and a distillery. And for his next move in a career that has included jobs at the National Security Agency and founding a military contracting business, he is working with a group of other experts to shine a light on what he calls the “social disease” of disinformation.His experience with the issues and emotions at work is both professional and personal. He was so intrigued by false belief systems that he self-published a book about the myth of Bigfoot and the people who are unshakably devoted to it.Mr. Riggleman is working with a group of other experts to shine a light on what he calls the “social disease” of disinformation.Matt Eich for The New York TimesMr. Riggleman, who first ran and won in 2018 after the Republican incumbent in his district retired, joined the arch-conservative Freedom Caucus and was endorsed by Mr. Trump. Now he says it “gives me shivers” to be called a Republican. He hopes to show that there is still a way to beat back the lies and false beliefs that have spread from the fringe to the mainstream. It is a heavy lift, and one that depends on overcoming two strong impulses: politicians’ fear of losing elections and people’s reluctance to accept that they were taken in by a lie.Mr. Riggleman summarized his conversations with the 70 percent of House Republicans he said were privately appalled at the former president’s conduct but wouldn’t dare speak out.“‘We couldn’t do that in our district. We would lose,’” he said. “That’s it. It’s that simple.”Stocky, fast-talking and inexhaustibly curious, the former congressman is now working for a group of prominent experts and academics at the Network Contagion Research Institute, which studies the spread of disinformation in American politics and how to thwart it. The group has undertaken several extensive investigations into how extremists have used propaganda and faked information to sow division over some of the most contentious issues of the day, like the coronavirus pandemic and police violence.Their reports have also given lawmakers a better understanding of the QAnon belief system and other radical ideologies that helped fuel the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6.Mr. Riggleman said he had written one report about the involvement of far-right militants and white supremacist groups in the attack specifically at the request of a Republican member who needed help convincing colleagues that far-left groups were not the culprits.Getting lawmakers to see radical movements like QAnon as a threat has been difficult. Joel Finkelstein, the director of the Network Contagion Research Institute, said that in June, when the group tried to sound the alarm on QAnon to members of Congress, Mr. Riggleman was the only one who responded with a sense of urgency and agreed to help.“We were screaming it from the rooftops,” Mr. Finkelstein said. “We said: ‘This is going to be a problem. They’re growing increasingly militant in their conspiracies.’” When the institute’s members spoke to Mr. Riggleman, he said, “We showed him our data and he said, ‘Holy moly.’”Far from a theoretical or overblown concern, disinformation and its role in perpetuating false beliefs about Mr. Trump’s election loss and its aftermath are problems that some Republicans believe could cripple their party if left ignored.In a sign of how widespread these conspiracy theories are, a recent poll from Suffolk University and USA Today found that 58 percent of Trump voters wrongly believed the storming of the Capitol was mostly inspired by far-left radicals associated with antifa and involved only a few Trump supporters.“There was a troika of us who said, ‘This is going to a bad place,’” said Paul Mitchell, who represented Michigan in the House for two terms before retiring early this year in frustration. He said he had watched as members dismissed Mr. Riggleman, despite his experience in intelligence. “There weren’t many people who gave a damn what your expertise was,” Mr. Mitchell said. “It was inconsequential compared to the talking points.”Bob Good defeated Mr. Riggleman in a state Republican Party convention in June.Amy Friedenberger/The Roanoke Times, via Associated PressMr. Riggleman’s loss last summer in a closely held party convention allowed him to be more outspoken. The winner, Representative Bob Good, is a former associate athletic director at Liberty University who took issue with Mr. Riggleman’s officiation at the gay wedding and called him “out of step” with the party’s base.And as Mr. Riggleman kept it up and spoke out more aggressively against Mr. Trump after the election, his fight got lonelier.“I had a colleague of mine pat me on the shoulder and say: ‘Denver, you’re just too paranoid. You’re killing yourself for the rest of your life politically by going after the big man like this,’” Mr. Riggleman recalled.When he returned to Virginia for good in January, he said he sometimes felt just as isolated. Family members, former constituents and patrons at the distillery insisted that the election had been stolen from Mr. Trump. And they couldn’t be talked out of it, no matter how hard he tried.He recalled a recent conversation with one couple he is friends with that he said was especially exasperating.“I go over stats,” he said. “I go over figures. I go over the 50 states, how that actually works. How machines that aren’t connected are very hard to hack. How you’d have to pay off hundreds of thousands of people to do this.”“Did not convince them,” he added.Other friends of his, some of whom are also members of the growing group of former Republican lawmakers now publicly criticizing Mr. Trump, said that many conservative politicians saw no incentive in trying to dispel disinformation even when they know it’s false.“What some of these guys have told me privately is it’s still kind of self-preservation,” said Joe Walsh, a former congressman from Illinois who ran a short-lived primary campaign against Mr. Trump last year. “‘I want to hang onto the gig. And this is a fever, it will break.’”That is mistaken, Mr. Walsh said, because he sees no breaking the spell Mr. Trump has over Republican voters anytime soon. “It’s done, and it was done a few years ago,” he said.Mr. Riggleman, who is contemplating a run for governor in Virginia and is writing a book about his experience with the dark side of Republican politics, sees a way forward in his experience with Bigfoot. The sasquatch was how many people first learned about him as a politician, after an opponent accused him of harboring a fascination with “Bigfoot erotica,” in 2018.“I do not dabble in monster porn,” he retorts in his book, “Bigfoot … It’s Complicated,” which he based in part on a trip he took in 2004 on a Bigfoot expedition.Mr. Riggleman paid $2,000 to go on a Bigfoot expedition with his wife in 2004.Matt Eich for The New York TimesThe book is full of passages that, if pulled out and scrubbed of references to the mythical creature, could be describing politics in 2021.Mr. Riggleman quotes one true believer explaining why he is absolutely convinced Bigfoot is real, even though he has never seen it. In an answer that could have come straight from the lips of someone defending the myth that Mr. Trump actually won the 2020 election, the man says matter-of-factly: “Evidence is overwhelming. Check out the internet. All kinds of sightings and facts.”At another point, Mr. Riggleman describes a conversation he had with someone who asked if he really thought that all the people claiming to have seen Bigfoot over the years were liars. “I don’t think that,” Mr. Riggleman responds. “I do believe that people see what they want to see.”He did find one way to crack the Bigfoot false belief system: telling true believers that they were being ripped off to the tune of hundreds or thousands of dollars to go on expeditions where they would never actually see the creature.“They got very angry,” he said. But eventually, some started to come around. More

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      in US Politics

      Fox News host Tucker Carlson calls QAnon followers 'gentle' patriots

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      Followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory are “gentle people waving American flags”, Fox News host Tucker Carlson claimed on Friday night – two months since many joined a mob that stormed the US Capitol seeking to overturn Donald Trump’s election defeat, a riot in which five people died.“Do you ever notice,” Carlson asked his primetime audience, “how all the scary internet conspiracy theorists – the radical QAnon people – when you actually see them on camera or in jail cells, as a lot of them now are, are maybe kind of confused with the wrong ideas, but they’re all kind of gentle people now waving American flags? They like this country.”Five people died as a direct result of the Capitol attack, one a police officer struck with a fire extinguisher, one a Trump supporter shot by law enforcement. The Trump supporter, Ashli Babbitt, was reported to have followed internet conspiracy theories including QAnon.Another rioter, Roseanne Boyland, was trampled by the mob while holding a Gadsden flag, a revolutionary era symbol of a snake and the legend “Don’t tread on me”. A friend said she had “watched her decline and go on these rabbit trails … this all really fucked with her head – the QAnon conspiracy theories, the elections, the unrest, the violence”.The QAnon conspiracy theory holds that Trump is America’s true leader against a cabal of satanic liberal child-killers and paedophiles. He is not. No such cabal exists. Nonetheless, the theory has proliferated – even finding a sympathiser in Congress, the Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene.On 6 January, before the Capitol riot, Trump told supporters to “fight like hell” to overturn the election, which he claims was the result of massive electoral fraud, a lie repeatedly thrown out of court. He escaped conviction in an impeachment trial, on a charge of inciting the riot. But federal authorities have made more than 300 arrests.Carlson spoke a day after the US Capitol was closed, as law enforcement agencies warned of a threat from rightwing groups around the QAnon theory that Trump would return to power on 4 March. He did not. No attack materialised.Carlson mocked reactions by Democrats and media coverage of the closure, adding familiar racially loaded provocation.“By the time night fell and the city remained quiet,” he said, “except, of course, in the poor neighbourhoods where people are still shooting one another in ever-growing numbers and no one is noticing, MSNBC had decided that, in fact, they had saved the day.”Carlson also said QAnon followers were “not torching Wendy’s. They’re not looting retail stores. They’re not shooting cops. No, that’s not them, it’s the other people doing that.”Last summer, protests against police brutality and institutional racism sometimes produced civil unrest. A Wendy’s fast food restaurant burned in Atlanta; looting occurred in some cities. Police officers have been shot and sometimes killed amid tension and protest over police killings mostly of African American men.The protests of 2020, which spread internationally after officers in Minneapolis killed an African American man, George Floyd, were multi-racial. Carlson’s other racially loaded comments on his prime time show include that immigration makes the US “dirtier”, a remark which prompted some advertisers to withdraw.In some quarters, the Fox News host is seen as a contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, if Trump does not run again. Carlson’s comments about QAnon believers echoed remarks by Trump, who last August told reporters: “I’ve heard these are people that love our country. So I don’t know really anything about it other than they do supposedly like me.”At last week’s Conservative Political Action Conference in Florida, Carlson scored 3% in a straw poll regarding the next presidential pick – way behind Trump but ahead of Mike Pence, the former vice-president some in the Capitol mob said they wanted to hang. QAnon followers promise that fate for many of Trump’s opponents. More

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      in Elections

      Capitol Police Warn of Threat on Thursday, and House Cancels the Day’s Session

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Capitol Riot FalloutTracking the ArrestsVisual TimelineInside the SiegeThe Lost HoursThe Oath KeepersAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCapitol Police Warn of Threat on Thursday, and House Cancels the Day’s SessionThe agency, responding to what the force called “a possible plot to breach the Capitol,” again sounded the alarm that pro-Trump conspirators may be planning an attack.Capitol Police officers in front of the building on Wednesday. The agency said it is reaching out local, state and federal law enforcement agencies to prepare further.Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesZolan Kanno-Youngs and March 3, 2021Updated 9:13 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — The Capitol Police force is preparing for another assault on the Capitol building on Thursday after obtaining intelligence of a potential plot by a militia group, just two months after a mob of Trump loyalists and extremists attacked the building, leaving five dead and hundreds injured.Leaving nothing to chance, House leaders on Wednesday abruptly moved a vote on policing legislation from Thursday to Wednesday night, so lawmakers could leave town, according to a senior Democratic aide familiar with the planning.The “possible” plot, as described by the Capitol Police, appeared to be inspired by the pro-Trump conspiracy theory known as QAnon, according to a senior administration official who reviewed the intelligence warning. Intelligence analysts had spent weeks tracking online chatter by some QAnon adherents who have latched on to March 4 — the original inauguration date set in the Constitution — as the day Donald J. Trump would be restored to the presidency and renew his crusade against America’s enemies.Some federal officials described the threats as more “aspirational” than operational. The militia group was not named, and even many influential QAnon followers, who believe the United States is dominated by a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles, have cast March 4 as a “deep state” plot to incite the movement’s adherents and provoke a nationwide crackdown.But after being caught flat-footed by rioters on Jan. 6, the Capitol Police and members of Congress appeared to be taking no chances. Representative Michael McCaul of Texas, a senior Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, pleaded on CNN on Wednesday: “President Trump has a responsibility to tell them to stand down. This threat is credible. It’s real. It’s a right-wing militia group.”The perimeter of the Capitol had already been ringed with new fencing, topped with razor wire. The Capitol Police said the agency is now reaching out to local, state and federal law enforcement agencies to prepare further.“We have obtained intelligence that shows a possible plot to breach the Capitol by an identified militia group on Thursday, March 4,” the force said in a statement. “We are taking the intelligence seriously.”Skittish lawmakers, many still rattled by the January attack that sent them fleeing, were given plenty of warning this time. Yogananda D. Pittman, the acting chief of the Capitol Police, told lawmakers on Wednesday that the agency had received “concerning” intelligence about possible threats against the Capitol on March 4, adding that threats against lawmakers were “through the roof.” The Capitol Police later sent an alert to lawmakers warning that the force was “monitoring various reports referencing potential First Amendment activities from March 4 to March 6.”Melissa Smislova, the acting under secretary of the Department of Homeland Security’s intelligence branch, told senators on Wednesday that the department and the F.B.I. had the night before issued an intelligence bulletin about “extremists discussing March 4 and March 6.”While the warning did not definitively say militia groups planned to come to Washington, the analysts said that continued false statements of election fraud and narratives elevated by QAnon “may contribute” to extremists turning to violence. Those extremists were inspired to target March 4 by QAnon conspiracists who said Mr. Trump would be inaugurated on that date and eventually “return to power,” according to an official who requested anonymity to discuss the warning.Two federal law enforcement officials said broad concerns about potential violence were warranted, given the online chatter around the QAnon conspiracy and talk of an attack. But they said they had not seen or been briefed on any specific, credible threat of an attack on politicians, the Capitol or other symbols of government.While they felt it was unlikely that an organized militia group would be able to execute the kind of attack on the Capitol described in the Capitol Police bulletin, particularly given the fortifications around Washington, they did not rule out the possibility that “lone wolf” attackers could try to wreak havoc.National Guard troops have been stationed at the Capitol since the mob attack on Jan. 6. Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesIntelligence officials are struggling to determine whether suspicious online chatter should prompt public warnings about an attack that may not come to fruition. The issue is thorny given that much of that kind of chatter is protected by the First Amendment.Federal officials decided this time to have a more “forward leaning” approach to information sharing after federal agencies faced widespread backlash for the failed security response on Jan. 6, according to the official.The warning shared with the Capitol Police emphasized what top federal law enforcement officials have repeatedly said since Jan. 6: that the United States generally faces an elevated threat from domestic extremists emboldened by the attack on Congress.Ms. Pittman said threats against lawmakers had risen nearly 94 percent in the first two months of the year compared with the first two months of 2020. She assured members of Congress that the police force would be ready for any potential violence on March 4.Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director, told senators on Tuesday that the Jan. 6 attack was domestic terrorism and that such a threat was “metastasizing across the country.” In a rare terrorism bulletin in January, the Homeland Security Department warned that the attack would not be an isolated episode and that extremists were motivated by “the presidential transition, as well as other perceived grievances fueled by false narratives,” a clear reference to the accusations made by Mr. Trump.At the Conservative Political Action Conference on Sunday, his first public appearance since leaving office, Mr. Trump repeated his false claim that he had won the November election.Officials did not specify which militia group they believed was plotting to attack the Capitol on Thursday. The Capitol Police are asking for almost $620 million for the agency’s budget, an increase of nearly 21 percent over current levels, to pay for new equipment, training and an additional 212 officers for assignments such as a permanent backup force to respond to events like the Jan. 6 riot. Ms. Pittman told the lawmakers that she would be working with the architect of the Capitol to design more “physical hardening” of the building after it was overrun by the rioters.“The U.S.C.P. is steadfast in ensuring that an incident of this nature will never occur again,” she said, adding that “a similar incident occurring in the current environment is a very real and present danger.”QAnon’s central tenet is that Mr. Trump was elected to take on a cabal of Democrats, international financiers and deep-state bureaucrats who worship Satan, abuse children and seek to dominate the world. When that did not come to pass while Mr. Trump was in office, some QAnon adherents began spinning elaborate conspiracy theories around March 4. The theory, like much associated with QAnon, is convoluted and takes on various forms, at times including secret pardons issued by President Barack Obama, the Banking Act of 1871, the Emergency Broadcast System and Mr. Trump taking the helm of a newly restored republic. And those are not even the most outlandish elements.The theory is far from universally accepted among QAnon adherents. A number of the movement’s most influential voices have cast the March 4 theory as a conspiracy within a conspiracy, insisting it was a trap set by the movement’s enemies.“March 4 is the media’s baby. Nothing will happen,” one QAnon influencer wrote Tuesday on the messaging app Telegram.Other QAnon followers encouraged their compatriots to be patient. “In time, you’ll feel and see the uprisings around you, You’ll know when it’s safe,” one wrote on Telegram. “March 4 in DC is not safe.”One meme making the rounds on social media asserted that China’s Communist Party — a favorite QAnon target — and other “bad guys” were spreading the March 4 rumors to incite QAnon followers. “Don’t fall for that. They’ll make sure to turn any peaceful protest into a riot,” it reads.The meme also plays on the thoroughly debunked notion that anti-Trump forces staged the Jan. 6 attack. “Don’t let them fabricate another ‘Capitol Riot,’” the meme says. “Alert others.”But in a sign that at least some people believe there is a reason to be in Washington on Thursday, rates at the Trump International Hotel for March 3 and 4 have spiked to three or four times their usual prices, much as they did before Jan. 6.Reporting was contributed by More

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      Jews fear what follows after Republicans applauded Marjorie Taylor Greene | Deborah Lipstadt

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      For a few days last month, in a little corner of the internet where topics of Jewish interest are discussed, Jewish space lasers were trending.The discussion was prompted by speculation from the newly elected Georgia Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene based on “research” she had conducted, that wildfires in California had been caused by a project to explore “solar generators” tenuously associated with Rothschild, “an international banking firm”. Once that assertion became public, the floodgates opened and cynics, humorists and pundits – the Jewish community is blessed with an abundance of them – took ownership of this meme and began to explore every aspect of the lasers. Were they an appropriate batmitzvah gift? Did people who observe kashrut need separate lasers for dairy and for meat? Was a special one necessary for Passover? If buying in bulk, could they be obtained wholesale?Of course, the Jewish community is a place where there is always a surfeit of opinions. Not surprisingly, some observers doubted whether this was a matter for humour, arguing that it was not acceptable to laugh at such a dangerous – albeit absurd – claim. They argued that however far-fetched – a word that some pundits claim must have a Yiddish origin – Greene’s assertions might be, they were not a laughing matter.The doubters were quickly reminded that Jews have developed a fine art of laughing at their sorrows, even while trembling with fear. Surprising though it may be, in Nazi Germany Jews crafted jokes about the horrendous circumstances in which they lived. Consider this classic. Berlin 1938: two Jews were sitting on a park bench reading newspapers. One was engrossed in the Jewish communal paper, while the other occupied himself with the Nazi party’s official paper. The first, seeing his companion’s choice of reading material, expressed amazement that he would read a paper rife with antisemitic propaganda. The second explained that if he read the Jewish newspaper all he would find was news of Jews’ trials and tribulations. But if he read the Nazi paper, he learned that Jews controlled the banks, the media, foreign governments and every other important global institution. One depressed him, while the other made him feel powerful.But then, just as suddenly as it had gained a foothold on social media, the humour stopped. The abrupt halt to some very clever exchanges came when the Republican caucus refused to punish, criticise or condemn Greene in any fashion. Instead, they gave her a standing ovation. They did so after she told them that she had only been “curious” about some of the ideas she had posted and didn’t really know what space lasers were. Though her explanations beggared the imagination – her space laser post was long and detailed – it was enough for her colleagues.She made no public apology, neither to the gathering of Republican colleagues or on the following day, when she spoke on the House floor. She contended that the comments for which she was being criticised were “words of the past”, as if they had been made decades ago. In fact, some were just a few months old.Some people were shocked by Taylor’s comments. I was not. Having spent decades studying, teaching, researching and fighting antisemitism, Greene’s claims were familiar territory. All of them – space lasers, 9/11, school shootings, Trump’s election loss and so much else – shared a common theme: conspiracy.In her QAnon-inspired worldview, behind them all was a small group of inordinately powerful people who had global – not national – loyalties. They conspired against the common welfare to advance their own interests. They mutilated babies. They amassed power and money in order to harm good, hard-working and, one can fairly assume, Christian folks. This is the foundation stone of classic antisemitism. There are certainly non-Jews in the swamp Greene wants to “drain”. But ultimately it is Jews who are the puppeteers.Antisemitism is a prejudice, akin to so many others. Just like racism and an array of other hatreds, it relies on stereotypes and assumes that all members of the group share those characteristics. Antisemitism has unique characteristics that differentiate it from other hatreds. The racist “punches down” and loathes persons of colour because they are apparently “lesser than” the white person. They are, the racist proclaims, not as smart, industrious, qualified or worthy. In contrast, the antisemite “punches up”. The Jew is supposedly more powerful, ingenious and financially adept than the non-Jew. Jews use their prodigious skills to advance themselves and harm others. The Jew is not just to be loathed. The Jew is to be feared.Every act of antisemitism – from shoving a Jew on the street to murdering them en masse – has this conspiracy at its roots. It was what prompted people in the middle ages to believe that Jews had poisoned the wells in order to spread the plague. It was at the heart of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a well-known forgery that purported to be the records of a meeting of powerful Jews who were scheming to control the world’s finances. Nazi antisemitism was founded on the notion that Jews were engaged in a deadly conspiracy against the German people. They had, the Nazis charged, “stabbed Germany in the back” during the first world war, thereby engineering its loss.I don’t believe Greene is advocating physical violence against Jews. It was hard, however, not to be struck by her choice of words when she spoke on the House floor to argue that these were no longer her views. Rather than apologise, she condemned the attacks on her as an attempt to “crucify” her. Crucify?Irrespective of her personal views about Jews, there is no doubt, however, that she is reinforcing and spreading a dangerous notion. She may not pick up the rock or gun to harm a Jew, but she is giving ammunition to those who will. And this kind of hatred and violence may start with Jews, but it never ends with them. And if it begins with others, it will eventually lead to Jews. History makes that clear.The UK recently witnessed how seamlessly various manifestations of antisemitism flowed from the fringes of a political party into the centre. That was, of course, from the left of the political spectrum. One has to wonder, if after the embrace Greene has received from her colleagues, we will not witness the same thing in the Republican party. This time it will come from the right. Both give witness to the ubiquitousness of antisemitism. It has no political favourites.Ultimately, however, this is about something more all-encompassing than even antisemitism. It is about an attack on democracy and the institutions that undergird that democracy. Conspiracies, such as those peddled by QAnon, are not just infused with antisemitic symbolism and themes, but are designed to create doubt about democratic institutions including Congress, the courts, financial agencies, electoral processes, the media and anything that is even obliquely connected to democracy.Every act of prejudicial physical violence begins with words. Greene has provided an endless array of such words. Her Republican colleagues, rather than stand and applaud, should recognise that and act upon it. There are people who spread hatred and prejudice and there are those who enable the spread of hatred and prejudice. Not just Greene, but also the Republicans who have failed to condemn her are enablers. They will ultimately bear responsibility for the consequences.In the fight against hatred and evil, neutrality is not an option. There are no bystanders. More

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      How Long Can Democracy Survive QAnon and Its Allies?

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyHow Long Can Democracy Survive QAnon and Its Allies?Politicians and political scientists wonder if there are electoral reforms that might blunt the lunacy.Mr. Edsall contributes a weekly column from Washington, D.C. on politics, demographics and inequality.Feb. 10, 2021Credit…Shannon Stapleton/ReutersHas a bloc of voters emerged that is not only alien to the American system of governance but toxic to it?“The central weakness of our political system now is the Republican Party,” Daniel Ziblatt, a political scientist at Harvard, said in an interview with Vox on Jan. 13, a week after the storming of the Capitol.“The American Republican Party looks like a European far-right party,” Ziblatt continued. “But the big difference between the U.S. and a lot of these European countries is that the U.S. only has two parties and one of them is like a European far-right party. If the G.O.P. only controlled 20 percent of the legislature, like you see in a lot of European countries, this would be far less problematic — but they basically control half of it.”A central question, then, is how distant from the rest of the American electorate the voters who align themselves with the radical wing of the Republican Party are.Rachel M. Blum and Christopher Sebastian Parker, political scientists at the Universities of Oklahoma and Washington, conducted a two-wave panel study of the MAGA movement in late December 2020 and the second half of January 2021 that was designed to answer this question and others.They found that “at least 60 percent of them are white, Christian and male. Further, around half are retired, over 65 years of age, and earn at least $50K per year. Finally, roughly 30 percent have at least a college degree.” More than 50 percent were born at a time of white hegemony, before the civil rights and women’s rights movements and the sexual revolution.Overwhelming majorities of the 1,431 MAGA supporters surveyed by Blum and Parker — from 80 to 99 percent — said they were concerned that “real Americans are losing freedoms”; “our lives are controlled by secret plots”; “unknown actors make the big decisions” and “forces are changing our country for the worse.”These MAGA supporters, who were recruited after signaling sympathy for the movement on Facebook, were rock-solid Republicans, Blum and Parker found, voting at or near 100 percent for the party’s House and Senate candidates in 2018 and 2020, and for Trump last year. They are far more engaged in politics — contributing money, going to meetings and volunteering — than the average American. “By any metric, this group appears committed to the political process,” Blum and Parker wrote.Not only are these voters partisan, the authors note, but “when we asked our respondents about whether or not they agreed with Trump’s fraud claims, 98 percent believed them valid.”Blum and Parker cited a Pew Research Center survey that found “75 percent of Americans believe that Trump bears at least some responsibility” for the Jan. 6 mob attack on Congress. Among all Republicans, “this figure declines significantly to 52 percent.”Blum and Parker also asked MAGA supporters whether Trump “bears responsibility for the Capitol riot.” They found that “barely 30 percent of these respondents believe Trump bears any responsibility whatsoever,” and, of those, more than half said Trump bears “a little” responsibility.In contrast, they wrote, “roughly 95 percent of MAGA supporters believe Antifa — the left wing protest group — bears some responsibility for the riots,” with more than 85 percent agreeing that Antifa bears “a great deal” or “a lot” of responsibility.Along similar lines, a Washington Post/ABC News survey taken Jan. 10-13 demonstrated how the views of a majority of Republicans stand far apart from the views of a majority of Americans.Asked if Trump has acted “responsibly” or “irresponsibly” since the Nov. 3 election, the 1002 adults polled chose “irresponsibly” by 66-30. Republicans, in contrast, chose “responsibly” by 66-29.Are Trump’s claims of election fraud “based on solid evidence?” All adults: 62 percent no, 31 percent yes. Republicans: 25 no, 65 yes.Should Trump be “charged with the crime of inciting a riot?” All adults: yes 54, no 43. Republicans: yes 12, no 84.What the panel studies and the Post survey suggest is that a majority of Republicans, primarily Trump loyalists and MAGA supporters, have evolved, as a core component of their conspiracy theories, a coded or a cryptic language — a set of symbols, or an almost occult “cipher,” revolving around something like a secret cabal. “We are Q,” read one sign at the event in Florida. “Where Go One We Go All,” read another, which is the QAnon movement’s revealing motto.Using their accusations almost as a lingua franca, a way to identify the like-minded, MAGA partisans and followers of QAnon signal one another by alleging that pedophile rings seek to wrest control of government or by alleging that school shootings were staged by leftists to win passage of gun control. They evoke a world in which unknown forces pull the levers of government, where nothing is as it seems to be. Professing your belief in claims like these attests to MAGA loyalties while expressing — in an arcane, politicized shorthand — your fervent opposition to liberalism and racial and cultural change.At the extreme, these conspiratorial views can lead to the violence and sedition of Jan. 6, which gives immediacy to the question of whether there are electoral reforms that might blunt the impact of this lunacy.Are you close to someone who has fallen for conspiracy theories? Share your story.

      Several political scholars and strategists argue that the fault lies in our political system, that the unique way America has combined its government structure with the mechanics of its elections serves to exacerbate conflict in a deeply polarized country. These scholars have produced a variety of proposals, many involving the creation of multi-member congressional districts and the encouragement of proportional representation to replace the current single district, winner-take-all system.Lee Drutman, author of “The Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multi-Party Democracy in America” and a senior fellow at New America, is a leading proponent of proportional representation.In an email, Drutman contended that “a big consequence” of the reforms he and others are calling foris that the MAGA wing would be cut loose from the rest of the G.O.P. coalition and left to operate on its own. It’s certainly conceivable that there could be even a few more Marjorie Taylor Greenes and Lauren Boeberts elected, but proportional representation (PR) would also mean more Adam Kinzingers (a House Republican who is a critic of Trump) and Romney-type Republicans elected as well.Drutman wrote that he has “come to realize how much of an existential threat the current Republican Party is to the continuation of America democracy.” A two-party democracy cannot survive “for very long if one of two dominant parties gives up on the foundational institution of democracy: free and fair elections, in which all votes count equally.”In addition, Drutman wrote,I’ve also come to appreciate how much democracy depends on a conservative party that believes in democracy, and thus how important it is to create electoral institutions in this moment that will allow the currently-marginalized small “l” liberal Republicans to separate from the MAGA wing of the party and still win some representation in the Congress.Proportional representation, he argued “is the only way to break up the current Republican coalition and free the pro-democracy forces within the Republican Party to compete on their own.”What kind of parties would likely emerge under proportional representation? Drutman pointed to a separate 2019 survey by Echelon Insights, a survey research firm, that asked voters “Suppose the Democratic and Republican Parties were replaced by a new set of political parties. Which of these parties would you be most likely to support?”The firm gave respondents five choices,A nationalist-right party promising to “stop illegal immigration, put America First, stand up to political correctness” attracted 19 percent.A traditional-right party, committed to “defend the American system of free enterprise, promote traditional family,” won 21 percent.A culturally liberal and globalist party with a platform committed to “advance social progress including women’s rights and LGBTQ rights, to work with other countries through free trade and diplomacy, to cut the deficit, and reform capitalism with sensible regulation” gathered 12 percent.A center-left party committed to putting “the middle class first, pass universal health insurance, strengthen labor unions, and raise taxes on the wealthy to support programs for those less well off” amassed 28 percent.A green party with a platform calling for passage of “a Green New Deal to build a carbon-free economy with jobs for all, break up big corporations, end systemic inequality, and promote social and economic justice” picked up 10 percent.Credit…Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesRepresentative Don Beyer, Democrat of Virginia, plans to reintroduce The Fair Representation Act, which would, if enacted, put into place many of the reforms Drutman supports. Beyer wrote on his website that the measurewould move U.S. House elections into multi-member districts drawn by independent redistricting commissions and elected through ranked choice voting. The multi-member districts would be effective in states apportioned six or more seats in the House, and would elect three to five Representatives each, depending on the size of the state. Taken together, these three measures would incentivize congressional candidates to appeal to a broader range of voters.Drutman has received both support and criticism from specialists in elections.Gretchen Helmke, a political scientist at the University of Rochester, wrote that Bright Line Watch — a group of political scientists that conducts surveys of experts and the general public — found that there wasquite strong support among political scientists for the proposal to repeal the 1967 law mandating single member districts for the House so that states have the option to use multi-member districts on the condition that they adopt a nonwinner-take-all election model. Of the more than 500 expert respondents, 73 percent either moderately or strongly supported the proposal.Helmke noted thatMy own view has been really shaped by Lee Drutman’s excellent work on this. I agree with the general critique of the median voter theorem, which has been misinterpreted to mean that two parties automatically converge toward the middle of the ideological spectrum. Obviously, we can see that this hasn’t been true for American politics for several decades.Lilliana Mason, a political scientist at the University of Maryland, praises Drutman — “the real expert on this right now” — and noted that “if it were possible, I do think such a shift would decrease polarization because it would eliminate the zero-sum nature of American politics.”In addition, Mason pointed out thatIt shouldn’t be overlooked that a PR system would also inevitably create some version of an explicitly white nationalist party. The big question is how many members of the current G.O.P. would join/vote for that party?Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth, wrote in reply to my inquiry: “I’m convinced by Lee Drutman’s argument in his Two Party Doom Loop book that we should move in this direction.”Pippa Norris, a political scientist at Harvard who examined different levels of dissatisfaction in democratic countries in “Is Western Democracy Backsliding?” finds evidence supportive of Drutman’s argument:Parliamentary democracies with PR elections and stable multiparty coalition governments, typical of the Nordic region, generate a broader consensus about welfare policies addressing inequality, exclusion, and social justice, and this avoids the adversarial winner-take-all divisive politics and social inequality more characteristic of majoritarian systems.Jennifer McCoy, a political scientist at Georgia State University, proposed a set of reforms similar, but not identical, to those of Drutman and Beyer:I would prefer ranked-choice voting with some multi-member districts for state and national legislatures, and proportional representation (by state popular vote, not by Congressional district which are already gerrymandered) for the Electoral College.” These, she wrote, “could all be accomplished with just legislative change, no constitutional amendments.Along similar lines, Jennifer Victor, a political scientist at George Mason University, emailed to say that she doubts proportional representation could be enacted in this country, butThere are a number of reforms being talked about among activists, reformers, political scientists, and other ‘thought leaders’ that are both feasible and would move the US toward a system that approximates a PR system.Victor shares the view that Congress could repeal the law mandating single winner-take-all congressional districts to allow larger, multi-member districts coupled withranked choice voting and expanding the size of the House. These reforms can be accomplished locally, or by changes in federal law and would fundamentally change the way Congress works — in ways that are both good and bad, but where the positives outweigh the negatives.Victor also acknowledges that such a system would allow “the most extreme anti-democratic forces now present in U.S. politics to be institutionalized.” But, she continued, “that faction has always been there, even when we pretended it was gone. At least under a multiparty system it would be contained and perhaps minimized.”There is no guarantee, she notes, but it is possible thatBy creating institutions that give anti-democratic factions legitimacy, they can be controlled and marginalized, rather than pretending they don’t exist and allowing them to overcome the dominant systems.Other political experts question the effectiveness, feasibility and benefits of multi-member districts and proportional representation.Stephen Ansolabehere, a political scientist at Harvard, said by email that “a PR system would be political suicide for the parties.” Why, he asked, “would either party — let alone both — want to change?”This idea, Ansolabehere, “is not going anywhere. Good armchair speculation but it has no political support.”Bruce Cain, a political scientist at Stanford, raised another set of issues:The first question to ask when considering a reform proposal is what problem are you trying to solve? If you are interested in making it easier for the center left and center right to enter into a governing coalition, then PR might be the solution.But, he continued,It would come at a cost: more government instability as potential coalition allies jockey over cabinet posts, a particular issue or a budget item. It would also give the far ends of the political spectrum continuous formal representation in the political system. The Trumps could more easily realize their goal of becoming the Le Pens of America.More important, Cain argues,If the reform goal is to end polarization and limit populism, institutional tinkering is probably not the answer: the roots of these problems lie more deeply in economic, racial and cultural divisions exacerbated by social media, globalization and automation.The very fact that there is considerable disagreement within the ranks of political scientists, a center-left constituency, suggests that prospects for major reforms of the election system by Congress are not good.The key question is whether the formation of an angry and virulently discontent base of MAGA voters in the Republican Party — spreading obscurantist, cultish pseudo-politics — will push the long-term problems of polarization past a tipping point, threatening even more dangerous levels of disruption to the political system.If growing numbers of citizens and elected officials reach that conclusion, the odds could change, as more voters and politicians join John Carey, a political scientist at Dartmouth, in the view thatThe MAGA wing would certainly win representation if we moved to multiple-winner elections. Of course, they win a lot already — and arguably hold some Republican legislators who might prefer to move toward the center hostage via primary threats. The bet on multi-winner is that the relative gains of moderates would outstrip those of extremists. It’s a bet I’d make, but still a bet.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Liz Cheney Says G.O.P. Must Move Past Trump

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storySpurning Calls to Resign, Liz Cheney Says G.O.P. Must Move Past TrumpMs. Cheney, having fended off a challenge to her House leadership role, was defiant in defending her impeachment vote and called for Republicans to be “the party of truth.”Republican voters had been “lied to” by a president eager to steal an election, Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming said on Sunday.Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesFeb. 7, 2021Updated 5:24 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming waded deeper into Republicans’ identity crisis on Sunday, warning her party on the eve of a Senate impeachment trial not to “look past” former President Donald J. Trump’s role in stoking a violent attack on the Capitol and a culture of conspiracy roosting among their ranks.In her first television interview since fending off an attempt by Mr. Trump’s allies to oust her from House leadership over her vote to impeach him, Ms. Cheney said Republican voters had been “lied to” by a president eager to steal an election with baseless claims of widespread voter fraud. She cautioned that the party risked being locked out of power if it did not show a majority of Americans that it could be trusted to lead truthfully.“The notion that the election had been stolen or that the election was rigged was a lie, and people need to understand that,” Ms. Cheney said on “Fox News Sunday.” “We need to make sure that we as Republicans are the party of truth, and that we are being honest about what really did happen in 2020 so we actually have a chance to win in 2022 and win the White House back in 2024.”She added that Mr. Trump “does not have a role as a leader of our party going forward.”The remarks made plain that Ms. Cheney, a leading Republican voice trying to push the party back toward its traditional policy roots, had no intention of backing off her criticism of the former president after two attempts last week to punish her for her impeachment vote. In Washington, her critics forced a vote to try to oust her as the chairwoman of the House Republican conference, but it failed overwhelmingly on a secret ballot. And on Saturday, the Wyoming Republican Party censured her and called for her resignation.Answering that call, Ms. Cheney said on Sunday that she would not resign and suggested that Republicans in her home state continued to be fed misinformation about what had taken place. It came a few days after she privately rebuffed a request by the House Republican leader, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, to apologize to her conference for how she handled herself around the impeachment vote, according to two people familiar with the exchange, which was first reported on Sunday by Axios.“People in the party are mistaken,” she said on Fox News of the Jan. 6 attack, which, together with nearby protests, killed five people, including a Capitol Police officer. Referring to the Black Lives Matter movement, she added: “They believe that B.L.M. and antifa were behind what happened here at the Capitol. That’s just simply not the case, it’s not true, and we’re going to have a lot of work we have to do.”Firsthand accounts, video, criminal records and swaths of other evidence leave no doubt that supporters of Mr. Trump perpetrated the attack, believing that they could stop Congress from formalizing President Biden’s election victory.Though she declined to say if she would vote to convict Mr. Trump were she a senator, Ms. Cheney urged Republicans to carefully consider the charge and the evidence. She also raised the possibility that a tweet that Mr. Trump had sent as the violence began to unfold criticizing former Vice President Mike Pence for refusing to try to single-handedly overturn the election result was “a premeditated effort to provoke violence.”“What we already know does constitute the gravest violation of his oath of office by any president in the history of the country, and this is not something that we can simply look past or pretend didn’t happen or try to move on,” Ms. Cheney said. She urged her party to “focus on substance and policy and issues” rather than remain loyal to Mr. Trump.That message is not likely to go over well with wide swaths of Republicans. Public opinion surveys suggest that Mr. Trump remains the most popular national figure in his party by far, and Republican senators appear to be lining up overwhelmingly to acquit him of the “incitement of insurrection” charge that Ms. Cheney backed.The New WashingtonLive UpdatesUpdated Feb. 5, 2021, 9:20 p.m. ETState Dept. lifts terrorist designation against Houthi rebels issued in Trump’s final days.Two G.O.P. House members, Louie Gohmert and Andrew Clyde, are fined for bypassing security screening.Biden says he will bar Trump from receiving intelligence briefings, saying his ‘erratic behavior’ cannot be trusted.Ms. Cheney also leveled sharp criticism at Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a freshman Republican from Georgia, whose past embrace of QAnon and a range of anti-Semitic and Islamophobic conspiracy theories roiled the House last week. Ms. Cheney said Ms. Greene’s views “do not have any place in our public discourse.”“We are the party of Lincoln,” Ms. Cheney said. “We are not the party of QAnon or anti-Semitism or Holocaust deniers, or white supremacy or conspiracy theories.”Some prominent Republican senators backed Ms. Cheney on Sunday, saying they would carefully consider the impeachment case and seek to steer the party back toward conservative policy arguments rather than personality.“Our party is right now, if you will, being tried by fire,” said Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana. “We win if we have policies that speak to that families sitting around the table.”Senator Patrick J. Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania, said he was “really encouraged” by the House’s vote to keep Ms. Cheney in her leadership role. “They could have voted any way they felt right, and they maintained her role,” he said on “State of the Union” on CNN. “That’s how you begin to keep this party united and together and think about how we move on in the post-Trump era.”But Ms. Cheney, the daughter of a storied Republican family in Wyoming — her father, Dick Cheney, also represented the state in the House before he was vice president — still faces the likelihood of a motivated primary challenge for the 2022 election.And last week, even as they wagged their fingers at Ms. Greene, a vast majority of Ms. Cheney’s own House Republican conference refused to punish her. Ms. Greene emerged a day after the vote declaring she had been “freed” to push her party rightward.“The party is his,” Ms. Greene said, referring to Mr. Trump. “It doesn’t belong to anybody else.”Chris Cameron More

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      Michael Flynn Re-emerges Pushing QAnon, Stolen 2020 Election Lies

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Capitol Riot FalloutTracking the ArrestsVisual TimelineInside the SiegeMurder Charges?The Oath KeepersAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyPushing QAnon and Stolen Election Lies, Flynn Re-emergesRecast by President Trump’s most ardent supporters as a MAGA martyr, Michael T. Flynn has embraced his role as the man who spent four years unjustly ensnared in the Russia investigation.Michael T. Flynn at the Dec. 12 rally in Washington to protest the presidential election.Credit…Jonathan Ernst/ReutersFeb. 6, 2021Updated 4:48 p.m. ETIn Washington’s respectable circles, Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser, is a discredited and dishonored ex-general, a once-esteemed military intelligence officer who went off the rails ideologically and then was fired a mere 24 days into the Trump administration for lying to the F.B.I. about contacts with the Russian ambassador.As if he cared.Where others see disgrace, Mr. Flynn, 62, has found redemption. Recast by former President Donald J. Trump’s most ardent supporters as a MAGA martyr, Mr. Flynn has embraced his role as the man who spent four years unjustly ensnared in the Russia investigation.He was one of the most extreme voices in Mr. Trump’s 77-day push to overturn the election, a campaign that will be under scrutiny as the former president’s second impeachment trial gets underway next week. Mr. Flynn went so far as to suggest using the military to rerun the vote in crucial battleground states. At one point, Mr. Trump even floated the idea of bringing Mr. Flynn back into the administration, as chief of staff or possibly F.B.I. director, people familiar with the conversations told The New York Times.And now, safely pardoned and free to speak his mind, Mr. Flynn has emerged from the Trump presidency much as he entered it — as the angry outsider who pushes fringe ideas, talks of shadowy conspiracies and is positioning himself as a voice of a far right that, in the wake of the Capitol riot, appears newly, and violently, emboldened.All that has changed for Mr. Flynn are the subjects at hand, and his apparent willingness to cash in on his notoriety.Mr. Flynn’s dark view of Islam and eagerness to cultivate President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia have given way to an embrace of QAnon, the pro-Trump conspiracy theory, and a readiness to question the very fabric of American democracy. He has swapped a government job and an obsessive focus on “radical Islamic terrorism” for selling QAnon-branded T-shirts and a new media partnership with conspiracy theorists called Digital Soldiers.Yet his underlying message remains much the same as it was back in 2016, when he was leading chants of “lock her up” at Trump rallies: Washington’s establishment is irredeemably corrupt, and real Americans — that is, supporters of himself and Mr. Trump — are wise to it.“This country is awake,” he declared at the pro-Trump rally in Washington last month. “We will not stand for a lie.”It was the night before a mob attacked the Capitol, and the crowd on hand in Washington’s Freedom Plaza — some of whom would take part in the coming violence — left little doubt about where Mr. Flynn stood.“We love you, we love you, we love you,” they chanted. None of the other speakers at the rally — a boldface-name collection of Trumpworld characters like Roger Stone and Alex Jones — got as enthusiastic a reception.With Mr. Trump now in his post-presidency at Mar-a-Lago, a loose coalition that draws together militia members and conspiracy theorists along with evangelical Christians and suburban Trump supporters is searching for direction. Call it the alt-truth movement, and if it is to coalesce into something more permanent, it may well be, at least in part, because figures like Mr. Flynn continue to push false claims of how a deep-state cabal stole the election.“In order for us to breathe the fresh air of liberty, we the people, we are the ones that will decide our path forward, America’s future forward,” he said at the Jan. 5 rally. “It may not be a Republican Party, it may not be a Democratic Party, it will be a people’s party.”Martial LawMr. Flynn, who did not respond to an interview request for this article, spent 33 years as an Army intelligence officer, earning a reputation for being outspoken and unconventional and, in the years that followed the Sept. 11 attacks, for being unusually good at unwinding terrorist networks.Much of that work involved mapping out loose webs of ideological fellow travelers, figuring out who gave voice to extremist ideas and who committed the violence — two groups that were not always directly tied to each other. If a similar attempt was made to map the network of people who spread Mr. Trump’s stolen-election lie that led to the storming of the Capitol, Mr. Flynn himself would probably appear as one of those leading voices for his part in riling up Mr. Trump’s supporters without taking part in the attack.Perhaps most responsible for Mr. Flynn’s re-emergence is the conspiracy-theorizing lawyer Sidney Powell. Ms. Powell took over his legal defense in the Russia investigation after he had twice pleaded guilty in a deal to cooperate with prosecutors, and charted a combative new path. She challenged the deal and, marshaling a small army of like-minded Twitter users, recast Mr. Flynn from a turncoat into a victim, a man who had taken the fall to save his son, who was also under investigation.Mr. Flynn with his son, Mike Flynn Jr., at Trump Tower in New York in 2016.Credit…Sam Hodgson for The New York TimesIt was the story of the Russia investigation as a malevolent plot that first began priming tens of millions of Americans to believe Mr. Trump’s conspiracy theories about the deep state. As one of the heroes of that narrative, Mr. Flynn became an ideal messenger when it was refashioned into the demonstrably false claim that Democrats and their deep-state allies had rigged the election.Within days of being pardoned on Nov. 27, Mr. Flynn began sharing those views in the right-wing media.In some appearances, he described himself as a marked man. “I gotta make sure I’m a moving target, because these son-of-a-guns, they’re after me, in a literal and a figurative sense,” he told listeners of “The Matrixxx Groove Show,” a QAnon podcast.In an interview with Newsmax, the conservative channel, he suggested Mr. Trump could impose martial law in swing states he had lost and rerun the elections.“People out there talk about martial law like it’s something that we’ve never done,” Mr. Flynn said. He noted that the military had taken over for civilian authorities dozens of times in American history, though he did not mention that it had never done so to help decide an election.The suggestion horrified many of Mr. Flynn’s former compatriots in uniform. Even discussing personal politics is frowned upon in the military, and most generals see it as their duty to stay above the political fray after retirement, as well. There have long been exceptions, of course, but to many who had served with Mr. Flynn, a retired general calling for the military to help decide an American election represented a new level of recklessness.“Mike, stop. Just stop. You are a former soldier,” Tony Thomas, a retired general who headed the Joint Special Operations Command, wrote on Twitter. Throughout his military career, in fact, all most of Mr. Flynn’s fellow soldiers had known about his politics was that he was a registered Democrat. Then came 2016, and the sight of a retired general leading chants for the imprisonment of Hillary Clinton, a former senator and secretary of state.When a number of generals privately and publicly urged him to dial back his support for Mr. Trump, Mr. Flynn called them “disrespectful.” If they could use their titles to get on corporate boards, he could use his to back Mr. Trump, he countered in an interview at the time, saying, “I care deeply about this country.”In any case, he said, he had never really been part of their club.‘Flynn Facts’Mr. Flynn has described his family as “definitely lower middle class,” and he joined the military without the West Point pedigree of many of his peers. He graduated instead from the Army’s Reserve Officer Training Program at the University of Rhode Island, a short drive from the town where he was raised.Yet he rose to be a lieutenant general, among the most respected military officers of his generation. He helped reshape the Joint Special Operations Command at the height of the war in Iraq, and ran military intelligence in Afghanistan during the Obama administration’s troop surge. In 2012, President Barack Obama named him director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.Mr. Flynn, the Obama administration’s director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, testing before Congress with James Clapper, then head of national intelligence.Credit…Christopher Gregory/The New York TimesThen his career unraveled. After only two years, he was forced out when his attempt to reform the sprawling agency left subordinates squabbling and his superiors alarmed.Mr. Flynn, though, claimed that he had been fired for refusing to toe the Obama administration’s line that Islamist militants were in retreat. His position was vindicated with the rise of the Islamic State, and Mr. Flynn quickly became something of a cult figure among conservatives for what they saw as his brave stand against the Obama administration’s perfidy..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-c7gg1r{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:0.875rem;line-height:0.875rem;margin-bottom:15px;color:#121212 !important;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-c7gg1r{font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:0.9375rem;}}.css-rqynmc{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:1.25rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-rqynmc{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-rqynmc strong{font-weight:600;}.css-rqynmc em{font-style:italic;}.css-yoay6m{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-yoay6m{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}.css-16ed7iq{width:100%;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;justify-content:center;padding:10px 0;background-color:white;}.css-pmm6ed{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-pmm6ed > :not(:first-child){margin-left:5px;}.css-5gimkt{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.8125rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.03em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.03em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.03em;letter-spacing:0.03em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#333;}.css-5gimkt:after{content:’Collapse’;}.css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;position:relative;opacity:0;}.css-6mllg9:before{content:”;background-image:linear-gradient(180deg,transparent,#ffffff);background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(270deg,rgba(255,255,255,0),#ffffff);height:80px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0px;pointer-events:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-1amoy78{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1amoy78{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-1amoy78:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}.css-1amoy78[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-1amoy78[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-1amoy78[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-1amoy78[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-k9atqk{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-k9atqk strong{font-weight:700;}.css-k9atqk em{font-style:italic;}.css-k9atqk a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px solid #ccd9e3;}.css-k9atqk a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px solid #ddd;}.css-k9atqk a:hover{border-bottom:none;}Capitol Riot FalloutFrom Riot to ImpeachmentThe riot inside the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, Jan. 6, followed a rally at which President Trump made an inflammatory speech to his supporters, questioning the results of the election. Here’s a look at what happened and the ongoing fallout:As this video shows, poor planning and a restive crowd encouraged by President Trump set the stage for the riot.A two hour period was crucial to turning the rally into the riot.Several Trump administration officials, including cabinet members Betsy DeVos and Elaine Chao, announced that they were stepping down as a result of the riot.Federal prosecutors have charged more than 70 people, including some who appeared in viral photos and videos of the riot. Officials expect to eventually charge hundreds of others.The House voted to impeach the president on charges of “inciting an insurrection” that led to the rampage by his supporters.As his relentless focus on Islamist militancy intensified, his views veered hard to the right. He argued that militants posed a threat to the very existence of the United States, and at times crossed the line into outright Islamophobia, tweeting “fear of Muslims is RATIONAL.”In Mr. Trump, he found a presidential candidate who shared his dark and conspiratorial view of Islam.The similarities between the two men did not end there: Both shared a fondness for Twitter and often exhibited a loose relationship with the truth. When Mr. Flynn ran the D.I.A., his dubious assertions were so common that subordinates came up with a name for them: “Flynn facts.” (In January, he was among those banned from Twitter with Mr. Trump.)So it was no great stretch to see Mr. Flynn hurling conspiracy theories about an election that federal election-security experts considered among the best run on record, and for Mr. Trump to listen.Supporters gathered outside a sentencing hearing in Washington in 2018 after Mr. Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. Credit…Saul Loeb/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesLast Dec. 18, Mr. Flynn participated in a raucous White House meeting in which Ms. Powell proposed that the president appoint her as a special counsel investigating voter fraud. Mr. Trump at one point also raised the idea of putting Mr. Flynn in charge of the F.B.I., and later suggested making him chief of staff for the final weeks of his administration, according to Trump and Flynn associates familiar with the conversations, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid angering either man.Whether the president was serious about either idea is an open question. But Mr. Flynn shot them down, saying he needed to focus on paying off millions of dollars in legal debts he had amassed fighting off the Russia investigation.Joining the FringeHis plan for paying those bills appears to rely on leveraging his public persona into cold, hard cash. There are the T-shirts and other merchandise, which he is selling through a company called Shirt Show USA. The website features shirts emblazoned with #FightLikeAFlynn and camo trucker hats with the emblem “WWG1WGA,” a reference to a popular QAnon motto, “Where we go one, we go all.”Then there is his new media venture, Digital Soldiers, which will publish reader-submitted stories. Mr. Flynn is building it with UncoverDC, a website that has pushed QAnon and conspiracy theories about the Covid-19 pandemic and President Biden.The tenor of Digital Soldiers is unmistakably QAnon, a movement centered on the claim that Mr. Trump, secretly aided by the military, was elected to smash a cabal of Democrats, international financiers and deep-state bureaucrats who worship Satan and abuse children. The supposed dishonesty of the mainstream media is central to QAnon, and Digital Soldiers — a phrase followers often use to describe themselves — represents Mr. Flynn’s fullest embrace of the movement to date.“Digital Soldiers from all over the world have stepped up to fill the void where real journalism once stood,” the website says.This past summer, Mr. Flynn posted a video of himself taking QAnon’s “digital soldier” oath. To many of the movement’s followers, Mr. Flynn ranks just below Mr. Trump. Some have speculated that he is the mysterious figure known as “Q,” the purported government insider with a high-level security clearance who began posting cryptic messages in 2017 about the deep state trying to destroy the president.Mr. Flynn posted a video of himself taking a QAnon oath this past summer.“They really take his word as gospel,” said Travis View, a close observer of the movement who hosts the podcast “QAnon Anonymous.” “In the mythology, they often say that he knows where the bodies are buried, and that’s why they tried to railroad him over Russia.”The phrase “digital soldiers” is drawn from a speech Mr. Flynn gave shortly after the 2016 election during which he inadvertently laid the groundwork for the conspiracy theory. He compared the Trump campaign to an insurgency — a theme that QAnon adherents would later adopt for themselves — with “an army of digital soldiers.”“This was irregular warfare at its finest — in politics,” he said.Among QAnon faithful, who believe that Mr. Trump and others use public statements to send secret signals, Mr. Flynn’s speech is considered something of a foundational text. And now, in naming his new media outlet Digital Soldiers, many believe he is sending them a message to carry on, even though Mr. Trump left office before the predicted apocalyptic showdown with his enemies — know as “the storm” — could come to pass.As one QAnon devotee noted in an IRC channel, a relatively dated online chat room technology favored by those particularly suspicious of possible surveillance, “If they kill or capture Trump, Flynn can still carry out the mission.”“The troops march to the beat of his drum,” wrote the user, who went by the screen name “specialist.”The plan, the user added, was “masterful.”Ken Vogel and Maggie Haberman contributed reporting.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More