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      Two Proud Boys arrested over Capitol attack, including one who smashed window

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      Federal law enforcement officials have arrested two members of the Proud Boys, a rightwing nationalist extremist group, for their role in the attack on the US Capitol on 6 January.The riot is now the subject of a second impeachment trial of Donald Trump, who is accused of inciting the rightwing mob at a rally that immediately preceded the assault. Federal authorities have charged more than 150 people in the onslaught.Federal prosecutors indicted Dominic Pezzola, 43, of Rochester, New York, and William Pepe, 31, of Beacon, New York on charges of conspiracy, civil disorder, unlawfully entering restricted buildings, and disorderly conduct in restricted buildings.Both men were identified as members of the Proud Boys, who, federal charging documents note, describe themselves as a “pro-Western fraternal organization for men who refuse to apologize for creating the modern world; aka Western Chauvinists”. The far-right group is known for using violent tactics against its opponents.Pezzola was the subject of one of the most widely distributed videos of the Capitol riots, in which he used a protective shield ripped away from a Capitol police officer to smash a window leading into the Capitol.Michael Sherwin, the acting US attorney for Washington, said in a court filing that Pezzola had “showed perseverance, determination, and coordination in being at the front lines every step along the way before breaking into the Capitol”, and that his actions in shattering the window and allowing an initial group of rioters to stream through “cannot be overstated”.Pezzola was later seen inside the Capitol building with a cigar, having what he described as a “victory smoke” and boasting that he “knew we could take this”. Pezzola’s lawyer described his client as a self-employed family man.In a search of Pezzola’s home in Rochester, New York, FBI agents found a computer thumb drive with hundreds of files detailing how to make firearms, poisons or explosives, Sherwin wrote in arguing that Pezzola should continue to be held without bail.Pepe was also photographed inside the Capitol. Federal authorities later identified him as a Metro-North Railroad train yard laborer who called in sick to attend the Trump rally that preceded the riot. Metro-North suspended Pepe without pay. He was also forced to surrender a shotgun and a hunting rifle, according to the Associated Press.In yet another arrest, federal authorities have charged Dawn Bancroft, a woman who entered the Capitol building and took a video of herself inside, with unlawful entry into a restricted building, disorderly conduct inside a restricted building, and violent entry into a restricted building.An affidavit from the FBI said Bancroft at first denied entering the building. When she was shown her own video of the event, the affidavit said she “stated that she lied”. Bancroft’s video showed her inside the Capitol with a friend and said she was searching for “Nancy”, believed to be Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, so they could shoot her “in the friggin’ brain”.Police are still searching for a suspect in the placement of pipe bombs in front of the Republican and Democratic party headquarters on 5 January.The FBI said it believed the suspect had placed the bombs in Washington DC between 7.30 and 8.30pm, and that the suspect was wearing Nike Air Max Turf shoes in yellow, black and gray. Authorities have increased the reward for information leading to the suspect’s arrest from $75,000 to $100,000. More

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      Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio was an FBI informant

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      Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the Proud Boys extremist group, has a past as an informer for federal and local law enforcement, repeatedly working undercover for investigators after he was arrested in 2012, according to a former prosecutor and a transcript of a 2014 federal court proceeding obtained by Reuters.In the Miami hearing, a federal prosecutor, a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent and Tarrio’s own lawyer described his undercover work and said he had helped authorities prosecute more than a dozen people in various cases involving drugs, gambling and human smuggling.Tarrio, in an interview with Reuters on Tuesday, denied working undercover or cooperating in cases against others. “I don’t know any of this,’” he said, when asked about the transcript. “I don’t recall any of this.”Law enforcement officials and the court transcript contradict Tarrio’s denial. In a statement to Reuters, the former federal prosecutor in Tarrio’s case, Vanessa Singh Johannes, confirmed that “he cooperated with local and federal law enforcement, to aid in the prosecution of those running other, separate criminal enterprises, ranging from running marijuana grow houses in Miami to operating pharmaceutical fraud schemes”.Tarrio, 36, is a high-profile figure who organizes and leads the rightwing Proud Boys in their confrontations with those they believe to be antifa, short for “anti-fascism”, an amorphous leftist movement. The Proud Boys were involved in the deadly insurrection at the Capitol on 6 January.The records uncovered by Reuters are startling because they show that a leader of a far-right group now under intense scrutiny by law enforcement was previously an active collaborator with criminal investigators.Washington police arrested Tarrio in early January when he arrived in the city two days before the Capitol Hill riot. He was charged with possessing two high-capacity rifle magazines, and burning a Black Lives Matter banner during a December demonstration by supporters of Donald Trump. The DC superior court ordered him to leave the city pending a court date in June.Though Tarrio did not take part in the Capitol insurrection, at least five Proud Boys members have been charged in the riot. The FBI previously said Tarrio’s earlier arrest was an effort to pre-empt the events of 6 January.The transcript from 2014 shines a new light on Tarrio’s past connections to law enforcement. During the hearing, the prosecutor and Tarrio’s defense attorney asked a judge to reduce the prison sentence of Tarrio and two co-defendants. They had pleaded guilty in a fraud case related to the relabeling and sale of stolen diabetes test kits.The prosecutor said Tarrio’s information had led to the prosecution of 13 people on federal charges in two separate cases, and had helped local authorities investigate a gambling ring.Tarrio’s then lawyer Jeffrey Feiler said in court that his client had worked undercover in numerous investigations, one involving the sale of anabolic steroids, another regarding “wholesale prescription narcotics” and a third targeting human smuggling. He said Tarrio helped police uncover three marijuana grow houses, and was a “prolific” cooperator.In the smuggling case, Tarrio, “at his own risk, in an undercover role met and negotiated to pay $11,000 to members of that ring to bring in fictitious family members of his from another country”, the lawyer said in court.In an interview, Feiler said he did not recall details about the case but added, “The information I provided to the court was based on information provided to me by law enforcement and the prosecutor.”An FBI agent at the hearing called Tarrio a “key component” in local police investigations involving marijuana, cocaine and MDMA, or ecstasy. The Miami FBI office declined comment.There is no evidence Tarrio has cooperated with authorities since then. In interviews with Reuters, however, he said that before rallies in various cities, he would let police departments know of the Proud Boys’ plans. It is unclear if this was actually the case. He said he stopped this coordination after 12 December because the DC police had cracked down on the group.Tarrio on Tuesday acknowledged that his fraud sentence was reduced, from 30 months to 16 months, but insisted that leniency was provided only because he and his co-defendants helped investigators “clear up” questions about his own case. He said he never helped investigate others.That comment contrasts with statements made in court by the prosecutor, his lawyer and the FBI. The judge in the case, Joan A Lenard, said Tarrio “provided substantial assistance in the investigation and prosecution of other persons involved in criminal conduct”.As Trump supporters challenged the Republican’s election loss in often violent demonstrations, Tarrio stood out for his swagger as he led crowds of mostly white Proud Boys in a series of confrontations and street brawls in Washington DC, Portland, Oregon and elsewhere.The Proud Boys, founded in 2016, began as a group protesting against political correctness and perceived constraints on masculinity. It grew into a group with distinctive colors of yellow and black that embraced street fighting. In September their profile soared when Trump called on them to “Stand back and stand by.”Tarrio, based in Miami, became the national chairman of the group in 2018.In November and December, Tarrio led the Proud Boys through the streets of DC after Trump’s loss. Video shows him on 11 December with a bullhorn in front of a large crowd. “To the parasites both in Congress, and in that stolen White House,’” he said. “You want a war, you got one!” The crowd roared. The next day Tarrio burned the BLM banner.Former prosecutor Johannes said she was surprised that the defendant she prosecuted for fraud is now a key player in the violent movement that sought to halt the certification of President Joe Biden.“I knew that he was a fraudster, but had no reason to know that he was also a domestic terrorist,” she said. More

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      Far-right extremism in the US is deadly serious. What will Biden do about it? | Cas Mudde

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      “The cry for survival comes from the planet itself, a cry that can’t be any more desperate or any more clear. And now a rise of political extremism, white supremacy, domestic terrorism that we must confront and we will defeat.”
      This sentence, in Joe Biden’s inauguration speech, was manna from heaven for anti-fascists, including me, and in many ways a direct refutation of President Donald Trump’s “American carnage” speech four years ago. After decades of presidents minimizing the white supremacist threat, and four years of emboldening and protecting it, finally there is a president who dares to call the threat by its real name: white supremacy.
      My relief was somewhat short-lived, however. A few days later Biden both narrowed and broadened his focus. While there were still implicit references to the far right, most notably the storming of the Capitol on 6 January, the focus was now on “domestic violent extremism”. Why we needed yet another neologism, rather than the common term “domestic terrorism”, was not explained – nor was the fact that most definitions of extremism include the threat or use of violence, which makes the phrase “violent extremism” redundant.
      But leaving aside semantics, much more problematic was the generalization of the threat. Did jihadis storm the Capitol? Were “eco-terrorists” involved? Or antifa? No, the only people storming the Capitol were a broad variety of conspiracy theorists, white supremacists, and other far-right adherents. (To make this absolutely clear, given that conservative and far-right media and politicians keep spreading this lie, antifa was not involved in the storming of the Capitol.)
      So why focus on “domestic violent extremism” and not, specifically, on white supremacy or, perhaps better, the far right? I know that there are other “violent extremisms” in the US, but with the exception of the far right, they have not been ignored or minimized by the state. The threats from leftwing extremism, from antifa to the Animal Liberation Front, and Muslim extremism too, have been overemphasized for decades by intelligence agencies and politicians of both parties. It is far-right extremism, including white supremacy, that has generally been ignored.
      My second disappointment came from the fact that Biden called for a “comprehensive assessment of the threat of domestic violent extremism” by the director of national intelligence, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, thereby reducing it to a militarized security issue. This not only prioritizes a certain type of expertise and experts (eg military and security), at the expense of others (eg social sciences), it also tends to operate in the grey zones of democracy, with limited oversight from Congress and little to none from the public.
      Obviously, there is a security angle here, given the violent core in many far-right subcultures, including the alt-right, self-described “sovereign citizens”, QAnon conspiracy theorists and militia groups. In fact, most of these threats have long been acknowledged by agents on the ground. An FBI report in 2006 warned of far-right infiltration of law enforcement, while in 2014 a national survey of 175 law enforcement agencies ranked sovereign citizens as the most important terrorist threat in the country. Even Trump’s own FBI director and the acting secretary of homeland security called white supremacist extremists the most important domestic terrorist threat.
      However, the core of the far-right threat to US democracy goes well beyond these still relatively small groups of potentially violent extremists. That is why these extremists have been minimized and protected by sympathizers in law enforcement and the political mainstream. If Biden really wants to fight far-right “domestic violent extremism”, he has to go to the core of the issue, not limit himself to the most violent outliers. In fact, the “domestic violent extremism” threat can already be reduced significantly by simply providing political cover for FBI and homeland security agents who have been investigating them for decades. No new agencies, laws or resources are necessary – just a refocus of existing resources away from jihadi terrorism and towards the domestic far right.
      The real threat comes from the broader political and public context in which these “domestic violent extremists” operate – such as the enormous media and social media infrastructure that promotes white supremacist ideas and spreads conspiracy theories. Banning extremist rhetoric and conspiracy theories from social media might help a bit, but it doesn’t do anything about more powerful voices in traditional media, such as Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity on Fox News. Similarly, it is easy to focus on relatively marginal groups such as the Proud Boys, but their actions are insignificant compared with those of Republican senators such as Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz.
      That is why the fight against the far right is, first and foremost, a political one. Our task is to call out the far right in all its guises, irrespective of connections and power. It is to reject far-right frames and policies, including the ones that have been part of the country’s fabric since its founding and those that have been mainstreamed more recently by the Republican party and Donald Trump. If Biden is not willing to go to the root of the problem, much of his fight against far-right “domestic violent extremism” will fail too, just as it did during the presidency of his friend, Barack Obama.
      In 2009, the Department of Homeland Security published an intelligence assessment of “rightwing extremism” in the US, which warned that veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan might be particular targets for recruitment by extremist groups. The report sparked a conservative backlash which accused the Obama administration of unfairly targeting conservatives and veterans. Within days, secretary of homeland security, Janet Napolitano, apologized, the report was effectively shelved, rightwing extremism was deprioritized, and the main author of the report resigned. The situation has not gotten better since. We know that the military, and police departments across the country, have been infiltrated and compromised by hate groups and far-right sympathizers. We also know that nearly one in five defendants in Capitol storming cases have served in the military.
      So, the real questions are: does Biden understand how broad and entrenched the far-right threat to US democracy really is, and is he willing to boldly go where Obama did not dare? Or is he going to take the easy way out, as so many others have done before? I fear the Biden administration will engage in some rhetorical grandstanding and throw the might of the national security state at some of the more marginal far-right groups and individuals, further eroding civil liberties, while staying silent about the broader far right. While this might prevent some far-right terrorist attacks in the margins, it will also permit the further legitimization and mainstreaming of the far right at the heart of US politics and society.
      Cas Mudde is Stanley Wade Shelton UGAF professor of international affairs at the University of Georgia, the author of The Far Right Today (2019), and host of the podcast Radikaal. He is a Guardian US columnist More

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      New York Times fires editor targeted by rightwing critics over Biden tweet

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      A row has broken out over accusations that a New York Times journalist was fired after being targeted by rightwing critics for tweeting she had “chills” at seeing Joe Biden’s plane land at Joint Base Andrews.Lauren Wolfe, who had been working as an editor at the Times, posted the message on 19 January, as Biden arrived ahead of his inauguration as president the next day.Two days later, Wolfe was let go by the Times, after her tweet was picked up by rightwing social media users and news outlets, who used Wolfe’s tweet to allege claims of media bias.Wolfe, a seasoned journalist who has written for the Guardian, said she has since been subjected to a torrent of abuse in the wake of the incident, including being followed by a photographer as she walked her dog.The New York Times responded to criticism on Sunday, after many members of the media rallied to Wolfe’s defense.“There’s a lot of inaccurate information circulating on Twitter,” Danielle Rhoades Ha, a spokeswoman for the Times, told the Washington Post.“For privacy reasons we don’t get into the details of personnel matters, but we can say that we didn’t end someone’s employment over a single tweet. Out of respect for the individuals involved, we don’t plan to comment further.”The Times added that Wolfe was not a full-time employee but was instead working on a contract basis. On Sunday, The Times workers’ union, however, said it was “investigating the situation”.“We believe all our members deserve due process and just cause protections, the very rights that are fundamental to independent, objective journalism,” the TimesGuild said.CNN host Jake Tapper was among those to share details of Wolfe’s situation, while journalists Kirsten Powers and Jeremy Scahill also criticized the Times.Late to this–I can’t believe the @nyt FIRED @Wolfe321 for a few tweets! This is not a proportionate response. There’s a middle ground that doesn’t involve revoking someone’s employment. To all those who worked to get her fired: don’t ever complain about ‘cancel culture’ again.— Kirsten Powers (@KirstenPowers) January 24, 2021
      I think it’s absurd and wrong that the NYT fired Lauren Wolfe. Also, does anyone remember how MSNBC’s Chris Matthews literally cried over an Obama speech, compared him to Jesus and said he “felt this thrill going up my leg” when Obama spoke? https://t.co/ZA6iZ6892t— jeremy scahill (@jeremyscahill) January 24, 2021
      The attention from the right did not stop once it emerged Wolfe was no longer working at the Times. Wolfe shared some of the abusive messages she had been sent, one of which called for her to develop cancer, while the conservative New York Post ran a series of paparazzi-style photos of Wolfe walking her dog in New York City,The Daily Mail, a rightwing British newspaper with a popular website, extrapolated from Wolfe’s tweet that there had been a “huge amount of gushing” towards Biden in the media, something the Mail said will “do nothing to restore any kind of trust in the media”.Many of Wolfe’s defenders noted that the Times did not fire reporter Glenn Thrush after multiple women accused him of sexually inappropriate behavior in 2017. The Times suspended Thrush for two months, and executive editor Dean Baquet said the journalist had “behaved in ways that we do not condone”, but Thrush kept his job. More

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      Here’s how to understand the politics of the US Capitol breach | Heinrich Geiselberger

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      “When fascism comes back, it will not say ‘I am fascism’; it will say ‘I am antifascism’.” This prophecy, attributed to the Italian writer Ignazio Silone, has been appropriated by the online right and become a tired Twitter meme. Users now replace “antifascism” with basically anything. Some attempts to come to grips with the storming of the US Capitol have adopted a similar syntax: it was an (attempted) coup disguised as something else. Others insisted it wasn’t a coup but a “venting of accumulated resentments” (Edward Luttwak), “a big biker gang dressed as circus performers” (Mike Davis), an “alt-right charivari” (Alex Callinicos), or a “re-enactment” of fantasies originally tested on social media (Wolfgang Ullrich).Some of these interpretations have been accused of trivialising the events. But the semantic helplessness in face of the Washington events suggests a wider uncertainty about the more general phenomenon. The confusion about the event mirrors confusion about the movement as a whole. Is contemporary “rightwing populism” best described as “authoritarianism” or even “fascism”? The answer depends on which level one focuses on: the ideology, the structure of their institutions, the aesthetics, the supporters or the consequences of their actions. If we follow the Hungarian philosopher Gáspár Miklós Tamás, with his very broad definition of fascism as “a break with the enlightenment tradition of citizenship as a universal entitlement”, the similarities sharpen. A penchant for violence and machismo also points in that direction.But if we stick to strategies, aesthetics or demographics, the differences become more pronounced. When authors like Silone and Erich Fromm analysed interwar-period fascism, they interpreted it as an alliance between what once was called “fractions” of capital (ie business) and the petite bourgeoisie to fend off the challenge posed by workers in the labour movement. Intuitively, we think of fascism as the attempt to impose order, and deprive enemies of organisational power, with authoritarian means. The Nazis force-built a simulacra of civil society: organisations for young women and car owners (the NSDAP’s Kraftfahrkorps was the classic example). The coercive corporatism of German fascism forced employers and unions into the national Labour Front, while the goose steps of masses in brown or black shirts were strictly choreographed.What is different today? Most obviously, trade unions in Europe and the United States are weaker than they have been at any point in the last 150 years (with the exception of fascist periods). No longer threatened by its reality, the enemies of socialism can only invoke its spectre. Suddenly all kind of things are called “socialist”: demands for a speed limit on the German autobahn, stricter gun control, as well as the bond-buying programme of the European Central Bank.More glaringly, unlike in the interwar years, and despite the best efforts of political scientists, it is still not really clear which groups make up the social base of “rightwing populism” today. That certain business elites participate in “rightwing populism” – just think of Rupert Murdoch (media), Charles Koch (fossil fuels), Christoph Blocher (chemicals) and Donald Trump (real estate) – drops out of focus when “populism” is dismissed as a revolt by “hillbillies” or explained by the hardships of “the losers of globalisation”. Academics and pundits highlight the role of industrial workers who lost their jobs. But do unemployed workers still take to the streets or even vote at significant rates? Maybe the petite bourgeoisie, or the small-business-owning middle class, is the more significant second component of the alliance: the craftspeople or small shopkeepers who still have something to lose and who have been bamboozled into fear of anarchism (“Defund the police”) and socialism (higher taxes)?But categories such as petite bourgeoisie or working class are of little use when classes are disintegrating in an economy that pits permanent employees against contract workers, where an engineer at Volkswagen has more to lose than a gig driver for Uber or a woman running a boutique in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Among the crowd storming the Capitol were said to be nuns, soldiers, an Olympic swimmer, a Texas real-estate broker who flew in on a private plane and the son of a New York judge. If political attitudes themselves have always been hard to pin down, this is especially true today.The trouble with concepts such as “coup”, “fascism”, and “authoritarianism” is that they all date back to the period that the late philosopher Zygmunt Bauman called “solid modernity”. By “solid” he meant societies with large groups of people bundled up in intermediary associations (churches, unions, parties) with ideologies that were at least striving for some kind of consistency, and the predictability that comes with it.Tamás spoke of “post-fascism” back in 2000. But all the “post” concepts have the disadvantage of only saying what something is not or no longer. Bauman himself bristled at the term “postmodernity”, but used a positive, content-filled counter-concept: as a lot of solid things had melted into air, he argued, western societies entered a phase of “liquid modernity” in the final quarter of the 20th century at the very latest. Atomised, volatile, swarm-like, with porous borders between gravity and earnestness, sincerity and irony.Bauman, who was born in the Polish town of Poznań in 1925 and experienced the dark sides of solid modernity, applied his concept widely: “liquid love”, “liquid time”, “liquid surveillance”. Single events are by their nature liquid or transient, so while Bauman would probably not have spoken of a “liquid putsch”, it is quite possible that he might have spoken of “liquid authoritarianism”: irony instead of grim determination; social media instead of radio broadcasts; swarms instead of orchestrated formations; merchandise instead of uniforms; followers instead of members; flashmobs instead of regular meetings; erratic policies instead of long-term projects. Trump lards his speeches with references from pop culture. “Sanctions are coming,” he tweets, like a character in Game of Thrones.Attempts to distinguish the phenomenon of Trumpism from its predecessors do not have to trivialise it. What looks liquid or carnivalesque can have terrible consequences. Pipe bombs may still lie in wait for already vulnerable groups or government employees or certain elites.Arnold Schwarzenegger compared the storming of the Capitol to the November pogroms in Nazi Germany in 1938. The Twitterati pounced and proposed the Beer Hall Putsch as the better comparison. The Nazi movement itself was still in a liquid stage in 1923 before it solidified organisationally and institutionally in the 1920s and 1930s. States of matter can change into different compounds: from solid to liquid to gas and the other way round. In this sense one could interpret “Trumpism” or “rightwing populism”, at least when it comes to its diverse base, as an attempt to use liquid-authoritarian means to react to a situation of cultural and economic liquidity. All with the goal of realising the nostalgic utopia of a more solid modernity. More

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      One dozen national guard troops pulled from inauguration duties after vetting

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      Sign up for the Guardian’s First Thing newsletterOne dozen members of the US national guard have been removed from their duties helping to secure Joe Biden’s inauguration after vetting – which included screening for potential ties to rightwing extremism, Pentagon officials said on Tuesday.A Pentagon spokesman said the vetting went beyond ties to extremist groups. One guard member was removed from duty after troubling text messages and another had been reported to a tip line, the chief of the National Guard Bureau, Gen Daniel Hokanson, told reporters.Earlier it was reported that two army national guard members were being removed from the mission. That figure grew on Tuesday afternoon and could expand further as vetting continues by the defense department and FBI.About 25,000 guard members have been deployed in Washington in the aftermath of the Capitol attack on 6 January, in which a mob incited by Donald Trump in his attempt to overturn his election defeat rampaged through Congress, seeking lawmakers to kidnap and kill. Five people died, including a police officer who confronted the mob.Senior defense officials subsequently indicated concern that attacks on the inauguration might be launched from within the ranks of the guard.A US army official and a senior US intelligence official, speaking anonymously, had initially told the Associated Press the first two guard members removed had been found to have ties to fringe rightwing militias. No plot against Biden was found, the officials said.The federal government has taken the possibility of insider threats seriously after multiple rioters who breached the US Capitol were revealed to have ties to law enforcement and the military.The mood in the capital remained tense as the Washington Post reported that the FBI had privately warned law enforcement agencies that far-right extremists had “discussed posing as national guard members in Washington and others had reviewed maps of vulnerable spots in the city”.The army official and the intelligence official spoke on the condition of anonymity due to defense department regulations. They did not say what fringe group the guard members belonged to or what unit they served in.In the Senate, the Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, said the pro-Trump mob that stormed the Capitol had been “fed lies” by the president and others.McConnell’s remarks were his most severe and public rebuke of Trump. The Republican leader vowed a “safe and successful” inauguration of Biden at the Capitol, which is under extremely tight security.“The mob was fed lies,” McConnell said. “They were provoked by the president and other powerful people, and they tried to use fear and violence to stop a specific proceeding of branch of the federal government.”After Biden’s inauguration on the Capitol’s West Front, which McConnell noted the former president George HW Bush called “democracy’s front porch”, “we’ll move forward”, the majority leader said.Republican senators face a daunting choice over whether to convict Trump of inciting the insurrection, in the first impeachment trial of a president no longer in office.In opening remarks at his confirmation hearing on Tuesday, Biden’s nominee for secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas, vowed to get to the bottom of the “horrifying” attack on the Capitol.Mayorkas told the Senate homeland security committee that if confirmed he would do everything possible to ensure “the desecration of the building that stands as one of the three pillars of our democracy, and the terror felt by you, your colleagues, staff, and everyone present, will not happen again”. More

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      Biden inauguration: 25,000 National Guard vetted over insider attack fears as state protests fizzle

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      The FBI is vetting all 25,000 National Guard troops arriving in Washington DC for president-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration amid fears of an insider attack, as heavily fortified state capitals across the US saw only small-scale protests by far-right groups on Sunday.
      Commanders have been warned to be on the lookout for problems within their ranks, and Guard members are being trained to identify potential insider threats, army secretary Ryan McCarthy told the Associated Press.
      “We’re continually going through the process, and taking second, third looks at every one of the individuals assigned to this operation,” McCarthy said in an interview on Sunday after he and other military leaders went through a three-hour security drill. So far, however, he and other leaders said they had not seen evidence of any such threats, and officials said the vetting hadn’t flagged any issues.
      The warning came after muted protests across the country saw only a handful of armed men showing up to planned rightwing demonstrations.
      Following the pro-Trump insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January, governors in many states had mobilized the national guard, erected fences around government buildings, and in some cases even cancelled official business, amid warnings from law enforcement agencies of armed protests in all 50 states ahead of Biden’s inauguration.
      On Sunday, the only far-right groups that were visible at the protests were the ones who had first promoted the event: members of the “Boogaloo Bois”, an extremist pro-gun and anti-government movement fixated on a coming civil war. Their desire to make the protest happen across all 50 states was not realized, and even in the states where protests took place, they were unable to muster significant numbers.
      In Salem, Oregon, where the state capitol was breached in December, and where dozens of far-right protesters clashed with Oregon state police on 1 January, the entire protest consisted of eight heavily armed Boogaloo Bois, compared with more than 20 reporters.
      In Lansing, Michigan, where the state’s capitol was also breached by armed men in April, and where men with alleged Boogaloo ties were charged in a plot to kidnap the Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, this fall, about a dozen Boogaloo Bois showed up to protest, according to local news reports. One journalist estimated the Boogaloo Bois stayed for about 30 minutes.

      Dave Boucher
      (@Dave_Boucher1)
      About a dozen people who appear to be boogaloo boys accompanied by a fair number of media members walk to the front of the Capitol pic.twitter.com/rUjWvP6F3C

      January 17, 2021

      In Ohio, there were about two dozen protesters at the capitol in all, some armed with assault-style rifles and wearing military gear. Several identified themselves as part of the Boogaloo movement. In Colorado, there were a handful of Boogaloo Bois at the state capitol, and in New Hampshire, there were five, the New York Times reported. In Arizona, there were about 10 protesters at the state capitol, the Arizona Republic reported, with two men captured in photographs wearing the Hawaiian shirts paired with a military-style rifle that the Boogaloo Bois chose as their uniform.
      The National Guard vetting process began as the first troops began deploying to DC more than a week ago, according to multiple officials.
      “The question is, is that all of them? Are there others?” said McCarthy. “We need to be conscious of it and we need to put all of the mechanisms in place to thoroughly vet these men and women who would support any operations like this.”
      “This is a national priority. We have to be successful as an institution,” said McCarthy. “We want to send the message to everyone in the United States and for the rest of the world that we can do this safely and peacefully.”
      Since June, prosecutors have charged multiple Boogaloo Bois in a series of violent incidents, including the alleged murders of a federal security officer and a sheriff’s deputy in California, an alleged plot to set off molotov cocktails at a Black Lives Matter protest in Las Vegas, and the alleged plot to kidnap a Democratic governor of Michigan.

      Anna Liz Nichols
      (@annaliznichols)
      View from Lansing, MI https://t.co/syDrL5Kv4n

      January 17, 2021

      Asked in a text message about the limited success of the protests on Sunday, Southern Poverty Law Center spokesman Michael Edison Hayden said: “Boogaloo adherents voiced quixotic plans for Sunday. They ran up against obstacles in achieving them in the aftermath of the violence on 6 January and lost access to websites they typically use to bring crowds together.”
      An influential Boogaloo movement website that analysts said had first advertised the national protests on Sunday was taken offline last week.
      And amid fallout from the Capitol riot, Sunday’s protests themselves had become a point of contention in the remaining online platforms that far-right activists could access.
      In a group dedicated to refugees from Parler, the far-right-friendly social media platform whose hosting was yanked by Amazon a week ago, users clashed over the planned protests, with some arguing the events were a “false flag”, and a trap laid by antifascists or law enforcement. More

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      How Trump supporters are radicalised by the far right

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      Far right “playbooks” teaching white nationalists how to recruit and radicalise Trump supporters have surfaced on the encrypted messaging app Telegram ahead of Joe Biden’s inauguration.
      The documents, seen by the Observer, detail how to convert mainstream conservatives who have just joined Telegram into violent white supremacists. They were found last week by Tech Against Terrorism, an initiative launched by the UN counter terrorism executive directorate.
      Large numbers of Trump supporters migrated on to Telegram in recent days after Parler, the social media platform favoured by the far right, was forced offline for hosting threats of violence and racist slurs after the attack on the US Capitol on 6 January.
      The documents have prompted concern that far right extremists congregating on Telegram instead of Parler has made it far harder for law enforcement to track where the next attack could come from.
      Already, hundreds of suspects threatening violence during this week’s inauguration of Biden have been identified by the FBI.
      One of the playbooks, found on a channel with 6,000 subscribers, was specially drawn up to radicalise Trump supporters who had just joined Telegram and teach them “how to have the proper OPSEC [operations security] to keep your identity concealed”.
      The four-page document encourages recruiters to avoid being overtly racist or antisemitic initially when approaching Trump supporters, stating: “Trying to show them racial IQ stats and facts on Jewish power will generally leave them unreceptive… that material will be instrumental later on in their ideological journey.
      “The point of discussion you should focus on is the blatant anti-white agenda that is being aggressively pushed from every institution in the country, as well as white demographic decline and its consequences.”
      The document concludes with its author stating: “Big Tech made a serious mistake by banishing conservatives to the one place [Telegram] where we have unfettered access to them, and that’s a mistake they’ll come to regret!”
      The document is named the “comprehensive redpill guide”, a reference to the online term red-pilling, used to describe a conversion to extreme far-right views.
      The document adds: “Not every normie can be redpilled, but if they’re receptive and open-minded to hearing what you have to say, you should gradually be sending them edgier pro-white/anti-Zionist content as they move along in their journey.”
      Another white nationalist recruitment guide uncovered by Tech Against Terrorism, which is working with global tech firms to tackle terrorist use of the internet, shares seven steps of “conservative conversion”. More