The far right

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      We Are Proud Boys review: chilling exposé illuminates Republicans’ fascist turn

      by

      We Are Proud Boys review: chilling exposé illuminates Republicans’ fascist turn Andy Campbell has delivered a smart, well-written and brilliantly reported book about the street gang allied to Donald Trump and the GOP he commandsAndy Campbell has produced a smart, well-written and brilliantly reported book about another loathsome progeny of the most dangerous union of our time, the horror couple responsible for so many of the burgeoning threats to American democracy: Donald Trump and the internet.Proud Boys memo reveals meticulous planning for ‘street-level violence’Read moreIts subject is the Proud Boys, racist, beer-addled and violence-addicted street fighters who have become best friends with many of Trump’s warmest supporters, from Ann Coulter to Roger Stone.Coulter and Stone have both bragged about using these modern Brown Shirts as bodyguards. Stone even allowed himself to be filmed for a video in which he took the Proud Boys oath: “I’m a western chauvinist. I refuse to apologize for creating the modern world.”Coulter credited the group with saving her life when “2,000 antifa”, leftwing protesters, tried to shut down a speech at UC Berkeley. If she hadn’t invited 20 Proud Boys, she said, she “might not have made it to the campus at all”.The Proud Boys are “brawny, tattooed brutes”, Coulter cooed.As Campbell puts it, the Proud Boys have “proven that you can make it as a fascist gang of hooligans in this country, as long as you make the right friends”.The organization’s father is Gavin McInnes, 52, a child of Scots who moved to Canada. In Montreal in the early 1990s McInnes founded a magazine called Pervert, which in 1999 he and two others rebranded as Vice. He moved the magazine to New York a couple of years later, then left in 2008.In spring 2016, on his own talkshow, he declared his main priority: “I want violence. I want punching in the face. I’m disappointed in Trump supporters for not punching enough.”Not long after that, he “announced that he’d turned his audience into a gang”. He called them the Proud Boys.McInnes’s alliance with the GOP warmed up after he was invited to speak at the headquarters of the New York state Republican party in October 2018.Members were undaunted when their intended guest announced on Instagram that he planned to reenact an “inspiring moment … the political assassination of Inejiro Asanuma, the former leader of the Japan Socialist party, who was killed during a debate on live TV when a far-right ultranationalist rushed the stage and pushed a sword between his ribs”.Then he photoshopped an image of himself “with the eyes and clothing of the Japanese assassin”.Republicans loved it. On Facebook, they responded: “This Godfather of the Hipster Movement has taken on and exposed the Deep State Socialists and stood up for Western Values. Join us for an unforgettable evening with one of Liberty’s Loudest Voices.”After his speech, McInnes left the club with his sword. But Proud Boys “and their skinhead pals” attacked a handful of antifascist protesters after one knocked a MAGA hat from one of their heads.“They turned it into a pummeling,” a Huffington Post reporter remembered. “This was three people on the ground and people just kicking the shit out of them.”The two most violent attackers were each sentenced to four years in prison. The judge didn’t hesitate to draw the appropriate parallel to 1930s Germany. Mark Dwyer, of the New York state supreme court, said he knew what had happened then, “when political street brawls were allowed to go ahead without any type of check from the criminal justice system. We don’t want that to happen in New York”.Regardless, the New York brawl became another opportunity for the Republican establishment to normalize fascist behavior. Immediately after the attack, Fox News quoted Ed Cox, the Republican state chairman (and son-in-law of Richard Nixon) as “calling on Democrats to cease inciting these attacks”.As Campbell writes, the event at the Republican club was “a jumping-off point for the GOP into what would eventually become a full embrace of domestic extremist violence”.Kelly Weill, a reporter who covers domestic extremism, explained, the Proud Boys “really embody the political violence the GOP needs just a little bit of a proxy for. They can’t personally be out there doing it, so they have the Proud Boys”.It only took two more years for the Proud Boys to get an official, nationally televised presidential imprimatur, after Joe Biden suggested during a 2020 debate that they were one of the groups Trump should have denounced long ago. Trump said: “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by.”01:16Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, a former FBI informant and convicted felon who had become the Proud Boys chairman, described the effect of Trump’s declaration.“We got mentioned, and my life has not been the same since,” Tarrio told Campbell. “My phone started blowing up off the hook. I had 10 fucking news trucks at my house the next morning. I didn’t sleep for … two days.”The Divider review: riveting narrative of Trump’s plot against AmericaRead moreTrump’s longtime attorney, Michael Cohen, who turned on his former boss after pleading guilty to charges related to tax evasion and lying to Congress, was sure the president made his statement on purpose.“If you look at who the Proud Boys really are,” said Cohen, “they’re an army. This is Trump’s army … and when he loses he’s going to use them to try and keep control of power.”Which of course is what happened. Proud Boys were some of the most active players when Trump urged the crowd in front of him on 6 January 2021 to march on the US Capitol.Thirteen months after the deadly attack, the Republican endorsement of fascist violence became official: the Republican National Committee unanimously approved a resolution which memorialized the Capitol attack as nothing more than “legitimate political discourse.”Campbell’s book provides an indispensable account of exactly how the Grand Old Party reached that disgraceful destination.
      We Are Proud Boys: How a Right-Wing Street Gang Ushered in a New Era of American Extremism is published in the US by Hachette
      TopicsBooksThe far rightUS politicsRepublicansDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackPolitics booksreviewsReuse this content More

    • 213 Shares139 Views

      in US Politics

      Ruling the US supreme court isn’t enough. The right wants to amend the constitution | Russ Feingold

      by

      Ruling the US supreme court isn’t enough. The right wants to amend the constitutionRuss FeingoldA conservative movement to rewrite the US constitution is gaining momentum – potentially plunging the US into a vast legal unknown In a recent primetime address, President Joe Biden spoke about “the soul of the nation” – calling out rightwing forces for their numerous efforts to undermine, if not overthrow, our democracy. Biden’s speech was prescient, in more ways than one. In addition to many Republicans promoting the “big lie” that the 2020 election was stolen and working to fill elected offices with people ready to subvert the will of the people, there is a conservative movement underway to radically rewrite the US constitution.The right has already packed the supreme court and is reaping the rewards, with decisions from Dobbs to Bruen that radically reinterpret the constitution in defiance of precedent and sound legal reasoning. But factions of the right are not satisfied to wait for the court to reinterpret the constitution. Instead, they have set their sights on literally rewriting our foundational document.Why bother with constitutional interpretation when you can change the actual text? This strategy by factions of the right could carry far graver consequences for our country and our democracy than even the right’s packing of the court or the Capitol attack on January 6.Our founding fathers did not see the constitution as written in stone; they expected it to be revised and believed that revisions could help the document endure. As such, they included in Article V of the constitution two different mechanisms through which to amend the text.All 27 amendments to the constitution have been achieved through only one of those mechanisms: by having two-thirds of both chambers of Congress propose an amendment to the constitution and then having that amendment ratified by three-quarters of state legislatures.There is a second mechanism, however. The second option is to have two-thirds of all state legislatures (34 states or more) apply for a constitutional convention and then to have three-quarters of all state legislatures or state ratifying conventions ratify any amendments proposed by the convention.To be clear, a constitutional convention under Article V has never before been held. Moreover, the constitution provides no rules on how a constitutional convention would actually be run in practice. There is nothing in the constitution about how delegates would be selected, how they would be apportioned, or how amendments would be proposed or agreed to by delegates. And there is little useful historical precedent that lends insight to these important questions. This means that nearly any amendment could be proposed at such a convention, giving delegates enormous power to engage in political and constitutional redrafting.A convention would be a watershed moment in American history. And this is exactly what factions of the right are banking on. Rather than a deterrent, they see the constitution’s lack of clarity on how a convention should be run as an opportunity to pursue new theories of constitutional power and change.The Convention of States Project, the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec) and other rightwing organizations have spent more than a decade working to persuade state legislators to pass applications for an Article V convention. This effort has recently attracted a who’s-who roster of far-right supporters, including the Trumpist attorneys John Eastman and Jenna Ellis, and financial support from conservative megadonors.As legislatures continue to trend conservative in many states, due in no small part to partisan and racial gerrymandering, factions of the right see an increasingly viable and potentially imminent path to securing the 34 applications necessary to call a convention. In recent months, some congresspeople have even claimed that the constitutional threshold has been satisfied and that Congress must call a convention. While their counting is dubious, the momentum that they could nonetheless achieve is deeply worrying.Those involved in this effort have made their radical aims quite clear: to disassemble modern government and the century-old New Deal consensus, returning the country to the troubling, splintered times when the federal government could do little to provide for national welfare or defense.A convention would also be an opportunity for the right to try to ban abortion in this country, to further whittle down voting rights and to enshrine their interpretation of the second amendment. Put simply, the opportunities for radical rewriting could be nearly endless, given the complete lack of restraint that the constitution puts on an Article V convention.Like recent attempts to overturn the 2020 election using anti-democratic theories, far-right activists are forging ahead into this vast constitutional unknown. They are already holding mock conventions with the aim of controlling the process and the outcome should an actual convention come to pass.The US constitution is by no means perfect. The inclusion of Article V is evidence that even the framers expected amendments. George Washington famously remarked that the constitution was not “free from imperfections”, but he nonetheless encouraged his fellow citizens to ratify the document because those imperfections could be mended over time.Constitutional amendment could be a legitimate method for addressing the founding failures of the constitution. That said, any conversation about how to go about amending the constitution needs to be transparent, inclusive and informed. What factions of the right are pursuing is anything but. They are pursuing exclusively partisan outcomes and have sought to keep their efforts opaque. They do not seem interested in a representative, democratic process.Biden was right. The soul of our nation is under threat. This plan by the far right could send this country into a constitutional crisis, one much more damaging and far-reaching than January 6. Concerned citizens of all ideological stripes should speak out against this radical effort. The far right has benefited from having its efforts conducted mostly under wraps. That must change. A light must be shined on these efforts so they can be stopped and our constitutional democracy preserved.
      Russ Feingold served nearly two decades in the United States Senate and is president of the American Constitution Society
      TopicsUS politicsOpinionRepublicansThe far rightJoe BidencommentReuse this content More

    • 113 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Proud Boys memo reveals meticulous planning for ‘street-level violence’

      by

      Proud Boys memo reveals meticulous planning for ‘street-level violence’ Document of 23 pages shows the lengths to which the far-right group goes to prepare for potentially violent encounters and exposes the militaristic structure and language it has adoptedThe document is so dowdy and formal it resembles the annual minutes of a society of tax accountants. Its index lists sections on “objectives” and “rules of engagement” and carries an “addendum” that provides recommendations for hotels and parking.On the cover, two words give a clue to the notoriety of the group that produced it: “MAGA” and “WARNING”. That and the date: 5 January 2021, the day before the US Capitol attack.Proud Boys developed plans to take over government buildings in Washington DCRead moreWhat goes unsaid on the cover and is barely mentioned throughout the 23 pages is that this is the work of one of the most violent political gangs in America, the far-right street fighters who Donald Trump told to “stand back and stand by”: the Proud Boys.The document, published by the Guardian for the first time, gives a very rare insight into the meticulous planning that goes into events staged by the far-right club.The Proud Boys have been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center and are alleged to have acted as key organizers of the violent assault on the Capitol.In the wake of January 6, which has been linked to the deaths of nine people, the New York march featured in the document was called off and the strategy so fastidiously laid out was never implemented. But the document remains sharply revealing.It shows the lengths to which the Proud Boys go to prepare for potentially violent encounters and then to cover their tracks – something prosecutors have stressed but that has never been seen in the group’s own words. It exposes the militaristic structure and language the Proud Boys have adopted, and their aspiration to become the frontline vigilante force in a Trump-led America.It also provides clues as to how the group continues to spread its tentacles throughout the US despite the fact that many of its top leaders, including its national chairman, Enrique Tarrio, are behind bars awaiting trial on charges of seditious conspiracy.The purpose of the document is to provide a “strategic security plan” and call to action, summoning Proud Boys members to a pro-Trump Maga march that was scheduled for New York City on 10 January 2021. That was four days after Congress was to certify Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election – the occasion that would be targeted by the fatal insurrection.The document was obtained from a Proud Boys member by the extremism reporter Andy Campbell as he researched his new book, We Are Proud Boys: How a Right-Wing Street Gang Ushered in a New Era of American Extremism. The book will be published on Tuesday. Campbell shared the document with the Guardian.The author of the document is Randy Ireland, who as president of the group’s New York branch, the Hell’s Gate Bridge Chapter, is one of the most prominent Proud Boys in the US north-east. The paper was circulated through Telegram, the encrypted chat app widely used by the Proud Boys as an organizing tool, to at least nine other chapters in New York and beyond.Campbell told the Guardian the decentralized structure of the group, into what it claims are 157 active chapters in all but three states, is one of the Proud Boys’ greatest strengths, as reflected in the autonomous nature of the New York planning.“Chapter leaders like Randy can create their own events, run independently of each other,” Campbell said. “Enrique Tarrio and other leaders are in prison, but these guys are going to continue what they are doing.”‘We will not disappoint’The language in the planning paper is overtly militaristic. Ireland designates himself “General of Security Detail”, while his underlings in the chain of command are “VPs” of “Recruiting”, “Scout Security” and “Team Leads”.The plan is for 60 or so Proud Boys at the 10 January event in Manhattan to be corralled into seven “tactical teams” of five to eight men each (they are all men, as one of the overriding values of the group is misogyny). Members are told to bring protective gear, including “knife/stab protection, helmets, gloves, boots etc” and to make use of radio channels, walkie-talkies or Telegram to communicate with each other.They are to stick together in groups and under no circumstances allow “Normies” – ordinary Trump supporters who are not Proud Boys – or “Females” into their ranks.“Their presence will jeopardise the health and safety of all those involved with Security, and simply cannot be allowed to happen!” Ireland writes.Maps reproduced at the back of the document show positions “scouts” and “tactical teams” should adopt at key points along the route of the march, which was planned to start at Columbus Circle and pass Trump Tower.“That spot is understood in a very public way to hold special meaning for us,” the paper says, referring to Trump’s home on Fifth Avenue. “WE WILL NOT DISAPPOINT!”Campbell, who has been reporting on the Proud Boys since they started turning up at Trump rallies in early 2017, describes them as America’s most notorious political fight club. In the planning paper, he sees equal parts fantasy and danger.“These guys see themselves as super soldiers, like some sort of military outfit,” he said. “On one level it’s funny, as nothing is in fact going to pan out the way they say it will. But on another level, it’s alarming because it shows how much thought they put into this stuff.”In We Are Proud Boys, Campbell traces the group from its birth in 2015-16 through to its central role on January 6 when a member, Dominic Pezzola, became the first person to breach the US Capitol. At least 30 Proud Boys have been charged in relation to the insurrection, including Tarrio and four others accused of seditious conspiracy – among the most serious indictments yet handed down.The group was invented by the British-born founder of Vice magazine, Gavin McInnes, who branded himself a “western chauvinist” and peddled in bigotry. McInnes floated the Proud Boys name on his online chatshow in May 2016, introducing them as a “gang” and inventing a uniform, a black Fred Perry polo shirt with yellow trim.McInnes was careful to brand his creation as harmless fun, a satirical male-only patriotic drinking club that later attached itself to all things Trump. But Campbell argues that from the outset political violence was baked in.A Proud Boy was an organizer of the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, during which an anti-fascist protester was murdered. The group has held violent gatherings in Portland, Oregon. Outside a Republican event in New York in 2018, several members were arrested and charged with felonious assault.‘Street-level violence’Proud Boys membership is structured into four ranks, known as “degrees”, the fourth granted once you “get arrested or get in a serious violent fight for the cause”, as McInnes himself explained. In an interview with Campbell for the book, McInnes denied promoting violence and insisted the Proud Boys were never proactively aggressive, only reacting to leftwing attacks.That official line is reiterated in the document published by the Guardian. Ireland is careful to portray the Proud Boys as a defensive group.He writes: “If any violence does spout off, all Proud Boys are expected to respond immediately – only so far as to eliminate and end that threat to them or others. VERY IMPORTANT: Once the threat has been neutralized, WE STOP!”But there is a glaring contradiction: Ireland presents his chapter as a non-violent organization yet it goes out seeking violence. He assigns the group, uninvited, the role of a vigilante police force.“We are there as the first line of defense for all event attendees,” he writes, then contradicts himself by saying the only role of the Proud Boys is to play a “back-up role” to law enforcement and to “force them to do their jobs”.That speaks volumes. It carries the implication that if the police will not assail anti-fascist protesters, Proud Boys will.“I’ve reported at Proud Boys events where they stood back and relaxed as police lobbed teargas and other munitions into the crowd of counter-protesters,” Campbell said. “Then the Proud Boys didn’t have to do what Randy Ireland is hinting at here – step in and do the fighting themselves.”For Campbell, the most disturbing aspect of the document is that, with its soft-lensed double-talk and contradictory meanings, it falls into arguably the main ambition of the Proud Boys: the normalization of political violence. Despite having so many leaders behind bars, the group is prospering.As new chapters pop up, Americans are increasingly inured to the idea of heavily armed gangs in public settings. Proud Boys have posed as “security details” at anti-abortion rallies, anti-vaccination demonstrations, pro-gun protests and of course Trump rallies.“The street-level violence the Proud Boys helped to create is now being carried out by regular people,” Campbell said. “You saw it on January 6, you see it at Planned Parenthood and LGBTQ+ events where people are harassed and attacked by everyday Americans.”TopicsThe far rightUS politicsPolitics booksfeaturesReuse this content More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

      The Divider review: riveting narrative of Trump’s plot against America

      by

      The Divider review: riveting narrative of Trump’s plot against America Peter Baker and Susan Glasser offer a beautifully written, utterly dispiriting history of the man who attacked democracyThe US labors in Donald Trump’s shadow, the Republican party “reborn in his image”, to quote Peter Baker and Susan Glasser. Trump is out of office but not out of sight or mind. Determined to explain “what happened” on 6 January 2021, when Trump supporters attacked the Capitol, the husband-and-wife team examines his term in the White House and its chaotic aftermath. Their narrative is riveting, their observations dispiriting.Trump chief of staff used book on president’s mental health as guideRead moreThe US is still counted as a liberal democracy but is poised to stumble out of that state. The stench of autocratization wafts. Maga-world demanded a Caesar. It came close to realizing its dream.In electing Trump, Baker and Glasser write, the US empowered a leader who “attacked basic principles of constitutional democracy at home” and “venerated” strongmen abroad. Whether the system winds up in the “morgue” and how much time remains to make sure it doesn’t are the authors’ open questions.Trump spoke kindly of Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-un. He treated Volodymyr Zelenskiy of Ukraine as a plaything, to be blackmailed for personal gain.In a moment of pique, Trump sought to give the Israeli-controlled West Bank to King Abdullah of Jordan. For Benjamin Netanyahu, the former and possibly future prime minister of Israel, he had a tart “fuck him”.At home, the US is mired in a cold civil war. Half the country deems Trump unfit to hold office, half would grant him a second term, possibly as president for life. Trump’s “big lie”, that the 2020 election was stolen, is potent.The tectonics of education, religion and race clang loudly – and occasionally violently. The insurrection stands as bloody testament to populism and Christian nationalism. The cross and the noose are icons. The Confederacy has risen.Baker is the New York Times’s chief White House correspondent. Glasser works for the New Yorker and CNN. Their book is meticulously researched and beautifully written. Those who were in and around the West Wing talk and share documents. Baker and Glasser lay out receipts. They conducted more than 300 interviews. They met Trump at Mar-a-Lago, “his rococo palace by the sea”, to which we now know he took more than 300 classified documents.“When we sat down with [him] a year after his defeat,” Baker and Glasser write, “the first thing he told us was a lie.”Imagine that.Trump falsely claimed the Biden administration had asked him to record a public service announcement promoting Covid vaccinations. Eventually, he forgot he had spun that yarn. It never happened.Baker and Glasser depict a tempestuous president and a storm-filled presidency. Trump’s time behind the Resolute Desk translated into “fits of rage, late-night Twitter storms, abrupt dismissals”. The authors now compare Trump to Napoleon, exiled to Elba.Congress impeached him twice. He never won the popular vote. His legitimacy flowed from the electoral college, the biggest quirk in the constitution, a document he readily and repeatedly defiled. Tradition and norms counted little. The military came to understand that Trump was bent on staging a coup. The guardrails nearly failed.The führer was a role-model. Trump loudly complained to John Kelly, his second chief of staff, a retired Marine Corps general and a father bereaved in the 9/11 wars: “You fucking generals, why can’t you be like the German generals?”“Which generals?”“The German generals in world war II.”“You do know that they tried to kill Hitler three times and almost pulled it off?”It’s fair to say Trump probably did not know that. He dodged the Vietnam draft, suffering from “bone spurs”, with better things to do. He is … not a reader.In Trump’s White House, Baker and Glasser write, Kelly used The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, a study by 27 mental health professionals, as some sort of owner’s manual.A week before Christmas 2020, Trump met another retired general, the freshly pardoned Michael Flynn, and other election-deniers including Patrick Byrne, once a boyfriend of Maria Butina, a convicted Russian agent. Hours later, past midnight, Trump tweeted “Big protest in DC on January 6th … Be there, will be wild!”In that moment, the fears of Gen Mark Milley, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff who saw the coup coming, “no longer seemed far-fetched”. Now, as new midterm elections approach, Republicans signal that they will grill Milley if they retake the House.Baker and Glasser also write of how Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump sought refuge from the Trumpian storm, despite being his senior advisers. They endeavored to keep their hands clean but the muck cascaded downward.Not everyone shared their discomfort. Donald Trump Jr proposed “ways to annul the will of the voters”. Rick Perry, the energy secretary, pushed for Republican state legislatures to declare Trump the winner regardless of reality.“HERE’s an AGGRESSIVE STRATEGY,” a Perry text message read.Trump’s increasing tirade against FBI and DoJ endangering lives of officialsRead moreIn such a rogues’ gallery, even the wife of a sitting supreme court justice, Ginni Thomas, stood ready to help. Mark Meadows, Trump’s last chief of staff, was a child who yearned for his parent’s affection. He would say and do anything. And yet he managed to spill the beans on Trump testing positive for Covid before debating Biden. Trump called Meadows “fucking stupid”. Meadows has since complied with subpoenas issued by the Department of Justice and the January 6 committee.Baker and Glasser conclude by noting Trump’s advanced age and looking at “would-be Trumps” who might pick up the torch. They name Ron DeSantis, Josh Hawley and Tucker Carlson.On Thursday, Trump threatened violence if he is criminally charged.“I think you’d have problems in this country the likes of which perhaps we’ve never seen before,” he said. “I don’t think the people of the US would stand for it.”As Timbuk 3 once sang, with grim irony: “The future’s so bright, I gotta wear shades.”
      The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021 is published in the US by Penguin Random House
      TopicsBooksDonald TrumpTrump administrationUS Capitol attackUS politicsRepublicansThe far rightreviewsReuse this content More

    • 125 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Oath Keepers membership rolls feature police, military and elected officials

      by

      Oath Keepers membership rolls feature police, military and elected officialsHundreds of public officials, including police chiefs, appear on far-right group’s leaked lists of members, report finds The names of hundreds of US law enforcement officers, elected officials and military members appear on the leaked membership rolls of a far-right extremist group that is accused of playing a key role in the January 6 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol, according to a report released on Wednesday.The Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism pored over more than 38,000 names on leaked Oath Keepers membership lists and identified more than 370 people it believes currently work in law enforcement agencies – including as police chiefs and sheriffs – and more than 100 people who are currently members of the military.Oath Keepers lawyer faces conspiracy charge in connection with January 6Read moreIt also identified more than 80 people who were running for or served in public office as of early August. The membership information was compiled into a database published by the transparency collective Distributed Denial of Secrets.The data raises fresh concerns about the presence of extremists in law enforcement and the military who are tasked with enforcing laws and protecting the US. It is especially problematic for public servants to be associated with extremists at a time when lies about the 2020 election are fueling threats of violence against lawmakers and institutions.“Even for those who claimed to have left the organization when it began to employ more aggressive tactics in 2014, it is important to remember that the Oath Keepers have espoused extremism since their founding, and this fact was not enough to deter these individuals from signing up,” the report says.Appearing in the Oath Keepers’ database does not prove that a person was ever an active member of the group or shares its ideology. Some people on the list contacted by the Associated Press said they were briefly members years ago and were no longer affiliated with the group. Some said they were never dues-paying members.“Their views are far too extreme for me,” said Shawn Mobley, sheriff of Otero county, Colorado. Mobley told the AP in an email that he distanced himself from the Oath Keepers years ago over concerns about its involvement in the standoff against the federal government at Bundy Ranch in Bunkerville, Nevada, among other things.The Oath Keepers, founded in 2009 by Stewart Rhodes, is a loosely organized conspiracy theory-fueled group that recruits current and former military, police and first responders. It asks its members to vow to defend the constitution “against all enemies, foreign and domestic”, promotes the belief that the federal government is out to strip citizens of their civil liberties and paints its followers as defenders against tyranny.More than two dozen people associated with the Oath Keepers – including Rhodes – have been charged in connection with the January 6 attack. Rhodes and four other Oath Keeper members or associates are heading to trial this month on seditious conspiracy charges for what prosecutors have described as a weeks-long plot to keep the then president, Donald Trump, in power. Rhodes and the other Oath Keepers say that they are innocent and that there was no plan to attack the Capitol.The Oath Keepers has grown quickly along with the wider anti-government movement and used the tools of the internet to spread their message during Barack Obama’s presidency, said Rachel Carroll Rivas, interim deputy director of research with the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project. But since January 6 and Rhodes’s arrest, the group has struggled to keep members, she said.That is partly because Oath Keepers had been associated so strongly with Rhodes that the removal of the central figure had an outsized impact, and partly because many associated with the group were often those who wanted to be considered respectable in their communities, she said.“The image of being associated with January 6 was too much for many of those folks,” she said.Among the elected officials whose name appears on the membership lists is a South Dakota state representative, Phil Jensen, who won a June Republican primary in his bid for re-election. Jensen told the AP he paid for a one-year membership in 2014 but never received any Oath Keepers’ literature, attended any meetings or renewed his membership.Jensen said he felt compelled to join because he “believed in the oath that we took to support the US constitution and to defend it against enemies foreign and domestic”.He would not say whether he now disavows the Oath Keepers, saying he did not have enough information about the group today.“Back in 2014, they appeared to be a pretty solid conservative group. I can’t speak to them now,” he said.ADL said it found the names of at least 10 people who now work as police chiefs and 11 sheriffs. All of the police chiefs and sheriffs who responded to the AP said they no longer have any ties to the group.“I don’t even know what they’re posting. I never get any updates,” said Mike Hollinshead, sheriff of Idaho’s Elmore county. “I’m not paying dues or membership fees or anything.”Hollinshead, a Republican, said he was campaigning for sheriff several years ago when voters asked him if he was familiar with the Oath Keepers. Hollinshead said he wanted to learn about the group and recalls paying for access to content on the Oath Keepers’ website, but that was the extent of his involvement.Benjamin Boeke, police chief in Oskaloosa, Iowa, recalled getting emails from the group years ago and said he believes a friend may have signed him up. But he said he never paid to become a member and does not know anything about the group.Eric Williams, police chief in Idalou, Texas, also said in an email that he has not been a member or had any interaction with the Oath Keepers in over 10 years. He called the storming of the Capitol “terrible in every way”.“I pray this country finds its way back to civility and peace in discourse with one another,” he said.TopicsUS politicsThe far rightnewsReuse this content More

    • 113 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

      The Destructionists review: brilliant study of Republican rage pre-Trump

      by

      The Destructionists review: brilliant study of Republican rage pre-Trump Dana Milbank of the Washington Post does not fall victim to false equivalency. He knows the GOP is a threat to democracyAfter Joe Biden’s fiery speech in defense of democracy last week, most of the Washington press corps responded with another stream of fatuous false equivalencies.Donald Trump once tried to pay a lawyer with a horse, new book saysRead more“The Two Parties Finally Agree on Something: American Democracy Is in Danger”, was the headline in the New York Times. A Washington Post editorial declared the president was “wrong to conflate upholding the rule of law with his own partisan agenda, which he called ‘the work of democracy’”.In his brilliant new book, Dana Milbank, a Post columnist, does not offer any of the squishy-soft judgements to which most of his Washington colleagues have become sadly addicted.He comes straight to the point that eluded the authors of that Times story and that Post editorial: “Republicans have become an authoritarian faction fighting democracy. There’s a perfectly logical, if deeply cynical reason for this. Democracy is working against Republicans” who have only carried the popular vote once in eight presidential elections since 1988.As America “approaches majority-minority status”, Milbank writes, “… white grievance and white fear” have driven “Republican identity more than any other factor – and drive the tribalism and dysfunction in the US political system”.Working as a political columnist for the last 16 years, Milbank has had “a front-row seat for the worst show on earth: the crack-up of the Republican party, and the resulting crack-up of American democracy”.The book has four roughly equal sections: about the Clinton presidency (“defined by the slashing style of [Newt] Gingrich”), the George W Bush presidency (“defined by the dishonesty of Karl Rove”), the Obama presidency and the era of Trump.This is meticulous history, showing how the Republicans have spent a quarter of a century “hacking away at the foundations of democracy and civil society”, conducting “their war on truth, their growing exploitation of racism and white supremacy, their sabotage of the institutions … of government, and their dehumanizing of opponents and stoking of violence”.Milbank traces the Republican love affair with racism back to Richard Nixon’s southern strategy in his 1968 presidential campaign, and dates the beginning of government dysfunction to the four disastrous years from 1995 to 1999 when Gingrich did as much as he could to blow up the federal government when he was speaker of the House.By showing with minute detail “how extensively Republicans and their allied donors, media outlets and interest groups have been pulling at the threads of democracy,” Milbank makes it clear that the Trump presidency was far from an aberration. It represented the real Republican party, without any of the camouflage of compassionate conservatism.There was nothing new about Donald Trump’s 30,573 documented lies as president. Gingrich’s Republicans were “saturated with wild, often unsubstantiated allegations. Whitewater. Troopergate. Travelgate. Filegate. Furnituregate. Fallen Clinton aide Webb Hubbell fathered Chelsea Clinton … commerce secretary Ron Brown’s death in a plane crash … was a Clinton-arranged hit”. And so on.It was Gingrich, the Clinton special prosecutor Ken Starr, his aide Brett Kavanaugh, Rudy Giuliani and Rush Limbaugh who showed Trump “the political power of an endlessly repeated lie”.The crassness also started with Gingrich.“I think one of the great problems we have in the Republican party is that we don’t encourage you to be nasty,” Gingrich told college Republicans way back in 1978. “You’re fighting a war. It is a war for power.”Eleven years later, Gingrich told the reporter John Harwood (who last week left CNN after calling Trump a “demagogue”) Democrats were “grotesque”, “loony” and “stupid”.Milbank is especially strong about Ralph Reed, “a crucial figure in the perversion of the religious right into an entity more ‘right’ than ‘religious’.” There is also a long recounting of the gigantic lobbying scandal centered on Jack Abramoff and Michael Scanlon, a former top aide to House majority leader Tom DeLay. Scanlon and Abramoff “defrauded Indian tribes to the tune of tens of millions of dollars” by telling them they were promoting their casinos. They also got Reed to mobilize evangelical Christians to oppose gambling projects that competed with his own gambling interests.Another long section reminds us that the administration of George W Bush actually did even greater damage than Trump, by promoting the lie that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and leading America into the completely unnecessary and utterly disastrous war in Iraq.Milbank’s book is in the fine tradition of It’s Even Worse Than It Looks, the 2012 book by Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann which was the first to point out the uselessness of the Washington press corps’ attempts to be “fair” to both parties.‘Donald kept our secret’: Mar-a-Lago stay saved Giuliani from drink and depression, book saysRead moreMilbank quotes from it: “The Republican party has become an insurgent outlier – ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence, and science, and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.”Herein lies the tragedy of Washington journalism. Ten years after Ornstein and Mann made those astute observations, Milbank is one of just a handful of reporters who have incorporated their wisdom into his work. As a result, he is almost alone in treating the pronouncements of the Republican party with the contempt they invariably deserve.As Ornstein tweeted on Saturday: “Tragically our mainstream media have shown that they are either AWOL in this battle or have opted on the side of the authoritarians by normalizing their behavior and minimizing their intentions.”
      The Destructionists: The Twenty-Five Year Crack-Up of the Republican Party, is published in the US by Doubleday
      TopicsBooksRepublicansDonald TrumpNewt GingrichGeorge BushRichard NixonThe far rightreviewsReuse this content More

    • 138 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘A white nationalist pyramid scheme’: how Patriot Front recruits young members

      by

      ‘A white nationalist pyramid scheme’: how Patriot Front recruits young members The rightwing group’s workings resemble a media production company more than a classic neo-Nazi group, researchers sayIn June, police in Idaho arrested 31 members of the white nationalist group Patriot Front packed into the back of a U-Haul near a Coeur d’Alene Pride event. The group had planned to riot during the LGBTQ+ celebrations, authorities said, and carried riot gear, a smoke grenade, shin guards and shields.Trump sought to mount ‘armed revolution’, militia ex-spokesman saysRead moreThe mass arrest not only revealed the names of members of an extremist group that had long worked to keep those hidden, it provided extremist experts with new insight into how the group is meticulously planning, financing, organizing and publicizing armed demonstrations at public events that celebrate diversity.Patriot Front’s fundraising and mobilizing efforts, those experts say, reveal a corporate-style organization that more resembles a media production company with satellite offices than a classic neo-Nazi group.“No other white supremacist group operating in the US today is able to match Patriot Front’s ability to produce media, ability to mobilize across the country, and ability to finance,” says Morgan Moon, investigative researcher with the ADL Center on Extremism. “That’s what makes them a particular concern.”When white nationalism meets media productionPatriot Front was founded after the 2017 Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville by Thomas Rousseau, a former member of the small, neo-Nazi group Vanguard America.Disaffected members of Vanguard America left to join Rousseau’s organization, and for two years, primarily stickered college campuses and dropped banners with slogans like “Reclaim America” over highway overpasses.In the 18 months after the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol, many anti-government extremist groups, like the Proud Boys, Oathkeepers and Three Percenters, have lain low. But Patriot Front has geared up. The group has made unpermitted demonstrations its “bread and butter”, says Moon, making sure each event is heavily publicized on social media.Since last December, the group has organized five such flash demonstrations. Two of them – the event in Idaho and a contentious march along Boston’s Freedom Trail on the Fourth of July holiday – resulted in national media attention.At the rallies, Rousseau typically addresses the crowd, urging onlookers to rise up physically and “reclaim your country”.To capture different angles of a rally, several camera operators circulate and shoot video while members wear body-worn cameras, according to Jeff Tischauser, senior research analyst at the Southern Poverty Law Center. Then, the media team edits the footage and circulates a video package on alt-tech platforms like Gab, Odyssey and Telegram.Afterward, Patriot Front’s social media team monitors the group’s mentions, shares news coverage on private servers, and tells members which social media accounts to harass, Tischauser says.The video packages are specifically designed toward attracting a younger audience, says Stephen Piggott, program analyst with Western States Center, a Portland-based non-profit that promotes inclusive democracy. And while other far-right and white nationalist groups are engaging in meme culture and recruiting people online, the group has been effective at attracting young radicals and getting them off their laptops and into the streets, he adds.Throughout its propaganda, the group is careful to craft an image that will appeal to younger users, promoting the “idea of a young warrior” and becoming the “warrior elite”, says Moon, the ADL researcher. The group emphasizes fitness, diet and training and often holds paramilitary drills before demonstrations.Also attractive to young recruits is the premium the group puts on anonymity. Banner drops and mural defacing typically happen after dark, and members keep their faces covered. Internal chats show members using code names. At protests, Rousseau is typically the only person whose face is shown.‘A white nationalist pyramid scheme’Undergirding Patriot Front’s activities is a rigid, top-down hierarchy, researchers say.Rousseau is at the head. Lieutenants run departments of the group, including media production, recruitment and online security. Fifteen regional network directors organize local and national activities, and supervise members.Once recruits become members, they are required to attend monthly roundups, hit a weekly activism quota, and show up to demonstrations, according to Moon. If they don’t, Rousseau expels them from Patriot Front.Internal chats obtained by extremist experts show members complaining about the ongoing expenses they incur paying for stickers, stencils and other mandatory propaganda materials, which Rousseau charges them for.Rousseau charges members a premium for Patriot Front propaganda material, Tischauser said, adding that network directors are expected to push members to purchase flyers to go on several flyering runs a month. “In this sense, Patriot Front is close to a white nationalist pyramid scheme,” Tischauser notes.The tightly organized structure enables Patriot Front to be responsible for up to 14 hate incidents a day, according to the ADL. Under the direction of network directors, Patriot Front members defaced 29 murals honoring Black history, LGBTQ+ pride, migrant history and police shooting victims, said Tischauser.Patriot Front did not respond to a request for comment.‘It lifted the veil a bit’Recent events have somewhat disrupted the group’s carefully constructed image. Earlier this year, the leftwing non-profit Unicorn Riot leaked the group’s internal audio and chats, which helped investigators discover the identity of the national team, regional directors and many other members. And following the arrest in Coeur d’Alene, all 31 names of arrested members were broadcasted and published in local media outlets, along with their mugshots.“They got kind of the opposite of what they wanted: they weren’t able to disrupt the LGBTQ Pride events, and they got a whole lot of mainstream media attention,” Piggott said.The Idaho arrests also exposed that their members flew into the state from different parts of the country, Piggott added. “It lifted the veil a bit. They may not have the numbers they say they have.”Still, civil rights groups are increasingly concerned about violence breaking out at flash demonstrations. During Patriot Front’s unpermitted rally in Boston this July, for example, members of the group allegedly assaulted a Black artist and activist, Charles Murrell.Murrell did not respond to an interview request.The ADL, the Western States Center and other civil rights groups have urged the Department of Justice to launch a comprehensive investigation into the group, arguing that some of its activities could violate federal legislation.“More must be done to hold the group accountable and ensure they do not continue to intimidate historically marginalized communities,” the organizations wrote in a letter to the US attorney general, Merrick Garland.“This is particularly true at a time when Patriot Front is becoming increasingly emboldened and coordinating its activity at a national level, targeting specific locations across the country,” they added. “The Department of Justice may indeed be the only entity able to address these concerns effectively.”TopicsUS newsUS Capitol attackUS politicsThe far rightIdahofeaturesReuse this content More

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

      Oath Keepers lawyer faces conspiracy charge in connection with January 6

      by

      Oath Keepers lawyer faces conspiracy charge in connection with January 6Kellye SoRelle, general counsel for the extremist group, was arrested over conspiracy to obstruct official proceeding, DoJ says A lawyer for the far-right Oath Keepers extremist group has been charged with conspiracy in connection with the January 6, 2021 attack at the US Capitol, authorities said on Thursday.Kellye SoRelle – general counsel for the anti-government group – was arrested in Texas on charges including conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, the justice department said.SoRelle is a close associate of Stewart Rhodes, the Oath Keepers’ leader who is heading to trial later this month alongside other extremists on seditious conspiracy charges.Prosecutors say Rhodes and his militia group plotted for weeks to stop the lawful transfer of power. Prosecutors say the Oath Keepers purchased weapons and set up battle plans with the goal of keeping President Donald Trump in office.SoRelle was present at an underground garage meeting the night before the riot that’s been a focus for investigators.The meeting included Rhodes and and Enrique Tarrio, the former chairman of the Proud Boys extremist group, who is charged separately with seditious conspiracy alongside other members of the group that describes themselves as a politically incorrect men’s club for “western chauvinists”.SoRelle told the Associated Press last year that FBI agents seized her phone and provided her a search warrant that said it was related to an investigation into seditious conspiracy, among other crimes.The indictment against SoRelle made public on Thursday does not include a charge of seditious conspiracy.SoRelle told the AP at the time that she had no knowledge of or involvement in the Capitol breach, calling the seizure of her phone “unethical” and the investigation “a witch-hunt”.SoRelle is expected to make an initial appearance in federal court in Austin, Texas, later on Thursday.TopicsUS Capitol attackThe far rightUS politicsnewsReuse this content More