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      Olympic champion Klete Keller pleads not guilty to charges over US Capitol riot

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      Olympic swimming champion Klete Keller has pleaded not guilty to seven charges over the invasion of the US Capitol by a pro-Donald Trump mob in January.The charges against the 38-year-old, who won two relay gold medals as a teammate of Michael Phelps at the 2004 and 2008 Olympics, include civil disorder, disorderly conduct in a Capitol building, and entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds. Keller entered the not-guilty pleas during a video hearing, and his next court appearance is due on 6 April. In a criminal complaint, an FBI agent said the 6ft 6in Keller was easy to identify in video of the riot due to his height and the fact that he was wearing his Team USA jacket, “which also appears to bear a Nike logo on the front right side and a red and white Olympic patch on the front left side.”Keller turned himself into authorities in January and was released without a bond. Keller deleted his social media accounts after news of the charges against him became public. Swimming website SwimSwam reported that prior to the deletion, Keller had written several posts in support of Trump.In recent years, Keller has spoken about his struggles to adapt after his swimming career ended. “I found the real-world pressure much more intimidating and much more difficult to deal with because I went from swimming to having three kids and a wife within a year and so the consequences of not succeeding were very, very real and if I didn’t make a sale or if my manager was ticked off with me, or If I got fired – oh shoot, you have no health insurance. It’s very concrete,” he told an Olympic Channel podcast.Trump became the first president in history to be impeached twice, after he incited the mob to invade the Capitol, although he was later acquitted after the Senate fell 10 votes short of the two-thirds majority required to convict high crimes and misdemeanors. Trump baselessly claimed he lost the presidential election because of voter fraud. Five people, including a Capitol police officer, died as a result of the ensuing violence. More

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      The best way for Democrats to weaken the far right? Build up the labor movement | Brendan O'Connor

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      The election and inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris does not represent the defeat of the far right, as even the most mainstream Democrats must rhetorically acknowledge. The more critical question, however, is whether those same Democrats are willing to support the changes necessary to actually achieve this victory: not through the introduction of new domestic terror legislation and the expansion of the security state, but through passing laws that allow poor and working people to build power for themselves, in their own organizations and institutions, on their own terms.The incoming administration has already signaled its sensitivity to the urgency of the moment: within hours of taking office, Biden signed a slew of executive orders on the pandemic, immigration, and the climate that began the work of undoing some of what the Trump administration was able to accomplish without congressional involvement. But many of these orders only return federal policy to the pre-Trump status quo, which was already insufficient; those that go beyond that previous status quo do so in the most minimal or superficial of ways. If the Biden administration is serious about legislating towards a more just and equitable society, it must not only pursue reforms to the way that Congress itself works – abolishing the filibuster, for example – but it must prioritize structural reforms like the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, which would open the door to a transformation of the US labor movement.Mostly overshadowed by the storming of the US Capitol, the second impeachment of Donald Trump, and the inauguration of Joe Biden, a slew of worker struggles in the United States are entering critical phases. On Martin Luther King Day in New York, in two very different parts of the city, the New York police department descended upon peaceful demonstrators who had taken to the streets in support of separate, but related causes: in an encore of their performance this summer, hundreds of cops beat and arrested dozens of Black Lives Matter protesters marching through downtown Manhattan, near city hall; 11 miles and an hour’s subway ride away, in the Bronx’s Hunts Point neighborhood, hundreds more NYPD cops swarmed a picket line of workers on strike for a $1-an-hour raise, arresting six. The co-op that runs the market has reportedly hired a private security firm to keep fruits and vegetables moving, with help from the NYPD. Six workers at the market, mostly members of the striking Teamsters Local 202, have died since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.Without a robust labor movement, the sole bulwark against far-right violence will be the stateThis month alone, in addition to the workers who keep New York supplied with fresh produce going on strike, white-collar workers at Alphabet, Google’s parent company, announced the formation of a union, which grew from 225 members to more than 700 within a week. Elsewhere in California, gig workers, supported by the Service Employees International Union, are suing to overturn a ballot measure stripping them of their rights as workers that platform companies like Uber and Lyft spent $200m to get passed last year. Chicago’s formidable teachers’ union is threatening to strike over school reopenings. And a union drive at an Amazon warehouse in Alabama is headed to a vote beginning next month. Nearly half a million unionized essential workers’ contracts will be up for renegotiation this year, Luis Feliz Leon reports in the New Republic, setting the stage for a potential strike wave.Victory is not only necessary to improve the conditions of the workers engaged in these particular struggles, but because an organized working class that can fight (and win) is our only hope to defeat an increasingly militant far right. Without a robust labor movement, guided by the principles of anti-fascism and anti-racism, the sole bulwark against far-right violence will be the state – specifically, the law enforcement agencies whose repressive power has grown exponentially in the last few decades, and is inevitably turned against workers, the poor, the racialized and the left.In the weeks and months since the election, Washington’s liberal establishment dissuaded anyone from counter-demonstrating against the fascists who repeatedly marched through the city to protest Donald Trump’s election loss. The momentum those fascists were able to build carried them up the steps of the US Capitol, leaving five dead; consequently, tens of thousands of national guards members and police were ordered into DC.“Their America has always done this elsewhere,” the writer and army veteran Matt Gallagher told the Guardian, speaking of the young troops occupying the city. “Now it’s happening here.” Even though leftwing organizations weren’t actively targeted, leftwing organizing efforts were disrupted as a result, with mutual-aid networks disrupted by blockades and checkpoints.The point is not to attempt to win over people who would take up arms to oppose a multiracial, socially equitable democracy; the point is to build a movement that can fight for a society where the appeal of such ideologies is obviated. The more successful any fascist or far-right populist movement is, the more working-class people will be absorbed into it, won over by its subversiveness, its superficial anti-capitalism, and its appeals to blood and soil. But at their core, these movements are not for working people and the poor; they are based in the reactionary middle classes: the heirs to suburban fortunes; the cops and prison guards and border patrol agents; the serial entrepreneurs who never have to suffer the consequences of their failures.The struggle against fascism does not begin or end with fighting fascists in the street. In fact, the most successful antifascist mobilization is not one in which the fascists get beaten up, but one that is so well-organized, publicized, and receives such popular support that the fascists never show up at all. Admittedly, this does not make for dramatic photography or videos. It deprives journalists of the spectacle of violence, but it also keeps people safe.Sustaining such mobilization over time will not be possible without a dynamic, vital labor movement, freed to experiment with new organizational forms that reach new layers of the American working class – a movement that can also lead the fight against climate change, police violence and mass incarceration, and against the capitalist order that, when in crisis, gives rise to fascism in the first place. More

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      A far-right threat shut down US Congress this week. Why aren't we talking about it? | Cas Mudde

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      You might have missed it, but this week the House of Representatives canceled its meetings after the Capitol police warned of “a possible plot to breach the Capitol”. Most international media did not even cover it, and this extraordinary decision barely made the front pages of most US newspapers. In fact, the Washington Post covered it in its “Metro” section. Ironically, the New York Post, a rightwing tabloid, captured the significance best with its screaming headline “House Democrats surrender to QAnon, scrap March 4 session amid fortified Capitol”.What was the alleged threat that made the Democrats decide to cancel House meetings, something that has not happened since the attacks of 9/11? Even on 6 January, when pro-Trump rioters literally attacked the US Capitol, Congress returned to its session. According to news coverage, intelligence sources told Congress there was online chatter within QAnon circles that Donald Trump was going to be inaugurated for a second term on 4 March, the original inauguration date set in the constitution. Some federal sources also believed that militia members were involved, although it is unclear whether they had actually announced or promoted violence.Unfortunately, we will likely never know the real extent of the threat; intelligence agencies operate in almost complete secrecy in the US, with little congressional oversight, and almost no transparency to the broader public. But let’s assume, for argument’s sake, that there was indeed a far-right militia or militias that were planning to ensure that the former president was “inaugurated” this March. Are we really to believe that this threat was so serious that the state could not protect one of the most important institutions of its democratic system?Of course, that is exactly what seemed to happen earlier this year, on 6 January. But as investigations into that event have shown, the main reason the far-right mob was able to successfully storm the Capitol was the stunning incompetence of the Capitol police as well as White House sabotage of plans to support the police with national guard forces. But Trump has left the White House and Joe Biden has said he takes the threat of far-right domestic violent extremism very seriously. Moreover, Washington DC has been transformed into a garrison city in the wake of January’s so-called insurrection.Biden’s inauguration was protected by 26,000 members of the national guard, in addition to members of Washington DC’s almost 4,000-strong Metro police department and the 2,300-strong United States Capitol police – not to speak of the Secret Service and other intelligence, law enforcement and security forces. Even today, 7,000 members of the national guard remain in the nation’s capital and barbed-wire fences have gone up around key buildings, including the White House. How big was this week’s threat that thousands of heavily armed soldiers, who are sent off to fight wars abroad, were deemed incapable of defending the House of Representatives against it?If the threat were indeed so formidable, much more far-reaching measures would be in order. We would need a state of emergency, to protect the democratic system, and to mobilize local, state and federal intelligence, law enforcement and military (national guard, but, who knows, even regular military), to ensure that the state reclaims the monopoly of violence. If, however, the threat is not really so great, and the available troops in and around DC are able to deal with it, then why would it be necessary to cancel the meetings of one of the key institutions of the democratic system?First, it makes the state look very weak … Second, it makes the far right in general, and the broader QAnon subculture, look very strongIt is important to remember that the Senate did not cancel its meetings. I am sure Democratic members of Congress are more afraid of the far-right mob than their Republican counterparts (although they have also been targeted), but even if this overreaction was not a cynical political move to highlight the threat of the far right, it was a disastrous decision for US democracy.First, it makes the state look very weak. The great German social scientist Max Weber defined the state on the basis of its “monopoly on violence” and the House Democrats just openly questioned this. And if the exceptionally privileged and protected members of the House of Representatives do not feel safe against the far right, how can regular Americans, in particular targeted minorities like African Americans and Hispanic communities, feel safe?Second, it makes the far right in general, and the broader QAnon subculture, look very strong. After all, they single-handedly bought the House of Representatives to its knees. Despite obsessive media attention, less than 10% of Americans support the QAnon conspiracy. Moreover, the movement has been seriously weakened by the public backlash and state repression in the wake of the storming of the Capitol, as well as Biden’s inauguration. The complete lack of action on inauguration day may have been the clearest demonstration of that.Let’s be clear: the far right constitutes the most serious challenge to US democracy today. While the key threat comes through electoral and legislative politics, via a Republican party that has decided to stay loyal to Trumpism, there also remains a significant threat of physical violence. However, I have seen no credible or convincing evidence of an existential threat to the key institutions of the state. In other words, while the far-right threat is serious, and has long been ignored and minimized, the vast intelligence, law enforcement, military and security apparatus of the most powerful country in the world should be more than able to deal with it, even without infringing on the rights of its citizens.Whatever their motivations, the capitulation to the far right by House Democrats has weakened rather than strengthened US democracy. If they want to protect the state and its citizens from the far right, which is a troubling reality, they should beef up the protection of Congress and continue to hold their sessions in defiance of these threats. That would be the strongest way to show that democracy, as Biden said in his inauguration speech, has indeed prevailed.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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      US Capitol attack: former Trump state department aide charged

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      A former state department aide in Donald Trump’s administration has been charged with participating in the deadly insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January and assaulting officers who were trying to guard the building, court papers show.It is the first known case to be brought against a Trump appointee in connection with the Capitol attack, which led to Trump’s historic second impeachment.Federico Klein, who also worked for Trump’s 2016 election campaign, was seen wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat amid the throng of people in a tunnel trying to force their way into the Capitol on the day, the papers say.Klein pushed his way toward the doors, where, authorities say, “he physically and verbally engaged” with officers trying to keep the mob back.Klein was seen on camera violently shoving a riot shield into an officer and inciting the crowd as it tried to storm past the police line, shouting: “We need fresh people, we need fresh people,” according to the charging documents.As the mob struggled with police in the tunnel, Klein pushed the riot shield, which had been stolen from an officer, in between the Capitol doors, preventing police from closing them, authorities say.Eventually, an officer used chemical spray, forcing Klein to move somewhere else, officials say.Klein was arrested on Thursday in Virginia and faces charges including obstructing Congress and assaulting officers using a dangerous weapon.He was in custody on Friday and could not be reached for comment.It was not immediately clear whether he had an attorney who could comment on his behalf. A Trump spokesman said the former president had no comment.More than 300 people have been charged with federal crimes relating to the deadly riots that day.Klein became a staff assistant in the state department shortly after Trump’s inauguration in 2017, according to a financial disclosure report.He held a top secret security clearance that was renewed in 2019, according to the court papers.He resigned from his position on 19 January 2021.Klein reportedly worked in the office of Brazilian and Southern Cone affairs, according to the court papers. More

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      'It's not fair!' Capitol suspect who put feet on Pelosi's desk has court outburst

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      Of all the pictures that were taken during the insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January, one of the most famous is of a man sitting on a chair with one foot on the desk of the US House speaker, Nancy Pelosi.That man, Richard Barnett, was told by a judge on Thursday that he is to remain in jail until his next court date in May.Barnett, a self-proclaimed white nationalist, began to yell at US district judge Christopher Cooper, saying “it’s not fair” that he should remain in custody as he awaits trial.“Everybody else who did things much worse are already home,” he told Cooper during the virtual hearing, according to court records and reporters listening in. “I’ve been here for a month, they’re going to set it for another month, and everybody else is getting out.”!! WHOA: US Capitol defendant Richard Barnett — man accused of putting feet on Pelosi desk – is *screaming* at attorneys and judge during his court hearing right now.Upset he’s been locked up “for a whole month”… “it’s not fair” Judge just recessed hearing for “5 mins” pic.twitter.com/ayaO4d6lb0— Scott MacFarlane (@MacFarlaneNews) March 4, 2021
      Barnett was arrested in January in Arkansas, his home state, and faces a series of federal charges over his alleged role in the insurrection, including violent entry, disrupting official proceedings and disruptive and disorderly conduct.Upon leaving Pelosi’s office on the day of the riot, Barnett was seen by a New York Times reporter holding an envelope which displayed Pelosi’s letterhead. He told the Times that he “put a quarter on her desk” in exchange for the letter. He also said he “wrote her a nasty note, put my feet up on her desk”. Barnett is also facing charges of theft of public property.In a statement to NBC News, Joseph D McBride, Barnett’s attorney, denies that his outburst was directed at the judge.“Mr Barnett’s frustration stems from the fact that he is incarcerated pre-trial, despite lacking any criminal history, being gainfully employed, respected in his community and in a stable relationship for over 20 years,” the statement said. “Normally, facts like these are more than enough for an individual to fight their case from the outside.”More than 250 people have been identified by the government as suspected participants in the riot. The trials of those who have been charged began last month and will probably last months. More

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      Rightwing 'super-spreader': study finds handful of accounts spread bulk of election misinformation

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      A handful of rightwing “super-spreaders” on social media were responsible for the bulk of election misinformation in the run-up to the Capitol attack, according to a new study that also sheds light on the staggering reach of falsehoods pushed by Donald Trump.A report from the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), a group that includes Stanford and the University of Washington, analyzed social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok during several months before and after the 2020 elections.It found that “super-spreaders” – responsible for the most frequent and most impactful misinformation campaigns – included Trump and his two elder sons, as well as other members of the Trump administration and the rightwing media.The study’s authors and other researchers say the findings underscore the need to disable such accounts to stop the spread of misinformation.“If there is a limit to how much content moderators can tackle, have them focus on reducing harm by eliminating the most effective spreaders of misinformation,” said said Lisa Fazio, an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University who studies the psychology of fake news but was not involved EIP report. “Rather than trying to enforce the rules equally across all users, focus enforcement on the most powerful accounts.” The report analyzed social media posts featuring words like “election” and “voting” to track key misinformation narratives related to the the 2020 election, including claims of mail carriers throwing away ballots, legitimate ballots strategically not being counted, and other false or unproven stories.The report studied how these narratives developed and the effect they had. It found during this time period, popular rightwing Twitter accounts “transformed one-off stories, sometimes based on honest voter concerns or genuine misunderstandings, into cohesive narratives of systemic election fraud”.Ultimately, the “false claims and narratives coalesced into the meta-narrative of a ‘stolen election’, which later propelled the January 6 insurrection”, the report said.“The 2020 election demonstrated that actors – both foreign and domestic – remain committed to weaponizing viral false and misleading narratives to undermine confidence in the US electoral system and erode Americans’ faith in our democracy,” the authors concluded.Next to no factchecking, with Trump as the super-spreader- in-chiefIn monitoring Twitter, the researchers analyzed more than more than 22 million tweets sent between 15 August and 12 December. The study determined which accounts were most influential by the size and speed with which they spread misinformation.“Influential accounts on the political right rarely engaged in factchecking behavior, and were responsible for the most widely spread incidents of false or misleading information in our dataset,” the report said.Out of the 21 top offenders, 15 were verified Twitter accounts – which are particularly dangerous when it comes to election misinformation, the study said. The “repeat spreaders” responsible for the most widely spread misinformation included Eric Trump, Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr. and influencers like James O’Keefe, Tim Pool, Elijah Riot, and Sidney Powell. All 21 of the top accounts for misinformation leaned rightwing, the study showed.“Top-down mis- and disinformation is dangerous because of the speed at which it can spread,” the report said. “If a social media influencer with millions of followers shares a narrative, it can garner hundreds of thousands of engagements and shares before a social media platform or factchecker has time to review its content.”On nearly all the platforms analyzed in the study – including Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube – Donald Trump played a massive role.It pinpointed 21 incidents in which a tweet from Trump’s official @realDonaldTrump account jumpstarted the spread of a false narrative across Twitter. For example, Trump’s tweets baselessly claiming that the voting equipment manufacturer Dominion Voting Systems was responsible for election fraud played a large role in amplifying the conspiracy theory to a wider audience. False or baseless tweets sent by Trump’s account – which had 88.9m followers at the time – garnered more than 460,000 retweets.Meanwhile, Trump’s YouTube channel was linked to six distinct waves of misinformation that, combined, were the most viewed of any other repeat-spreader’s videos. His Facebook account had the most engagement of all those studied.The Election Integrity Partnership study is not the first to show the massive influence Trump’s social media accounts have had on the spread of misinformation. In one year – between 1 January 2020 and 6 January 2021 – Donald Trump pushed disinformation in more than 1,400 Facebook posts, a report from Media Matters for America released in February found. Trump was ultimately suspended from the platform in January, and Facebook is debating whether he will ever be allowed back.Specifically, 516 of his posts contained disinformation about Covid-19, 368 contained election disinformation, and 683 contained harmful rhetoric attacking his political enemies. Allegations of election fraud earned over 149.4 million interactions, or an average of 412,000 interactions per post, and accounted for 16% of interactions on his posts in 2020. Trump had a unique ability to amplify news stories that would have otherwise remained contained in smaller outlets and subgroups, said Matt Gertz of Media Matters for America.“What Trump did was take misinformation from the rightwing ecosystem and turn it into a mainstream news event that affected everyone,” he said. “He was able to take these absurd lies and conspiracy theories and turn them into national news. And if you do that, and inflame people often enough, you will end up with what we saw on January 6.”Effects of false election narratives on voters“Super-spreader” accounts were ultimately very successful in undermining voters’ trust in the democratic system, the report found. Citing a poll by the Pew Research Center, the study said that, of the 54% of people who voted in person, approximately half had cited concerns about voting by mail, and only 30% of respondents were “very confident” that absentee or mail-in ballots had been counted as intended.The report outlined a number of recommendations, including removing “super-spreader” accounts entirely.Outside experts agree that tech companies should more closely scrutinize top accounts and repeat offenders.Researchers said the refusal to take action or establish clear rules for when action should be taken helped to fuel the prevalence of misinformation. For example, only YouTube had a publicly stated “three-strike” system for offenses related to the election. Platforms like Facebook reportedly had three-strike rules as well but did not make the system publicly known.Only four of the top 20 Twitter accounts cited as top spreaders were actually removed, the study showed – including Donald Trump’s in January. Twitter has maintained that its ban of the former president is permanent. YouTube’s chief executive officer stated this week that Trump would be reinstated on the platform once the “risk of violence” from his posts passes. Facebook’s independent oversight board is now considering whether to allow Trump to return.“We have seen that he uses his accounts as a way to weaponize disinformation. It has already led to riots at the US Capitol; I don’t know why you would give him the opportunity to do that again,” Gertz said. “It would be a huge mistake to allow Trump to return.” More

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      Most alleged Capitol rioters unconnected to extremist groups, analysis finds

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      Nearly 90% of the people charged in the Capitol riot so far have no connection with militias or other organized extremist groups, according to a new analysis that adds to the understanding of what some experts have dubbed the “mass radicalization” of Trump supporters.A report from George Washington University’s Center on Extremism has analyzed court records about cases that have been made public. It found that more than half of people facing federal charges over the 6 January attack appear to have planned their participation alone, not even coordinating with family members or close friends. Only 33 of the 257 alleged participants appear to have been part of existing “militant networks”, including the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers anti-government militia.The dominance of these “individual believers” among the alleged attackers underscored the importance of understanding the Capitol violence as part of a “diverse and fractured domestic extremist threat,” and underscored the ongoing risk of lone actor terror attacks, the George Washington researchers concluded.Other analysts have argued the Capitol attackers should be understood as “not merely a mix of rightwing organizations, but as a broader mass movement with violence at its core”.‘Mass radicalization becomes mass mobilization’While individuals associated with far-right networks were critical in escalating the violence at the Capitol, the report found that members of organized extremist groups make up only a small minority of the people charged so far.About a third of the people charged were part of “organized clusters” of family members or friends who planned their participation together. These small groups allegedly include a father and son from Delaware, a mother and son from Tennessee, several husband and wife pairs, two brothers from Montana, and a group of acquaintances from Texas, including Jenna Ryan, a real estate broker, who took a private plane to Washington together to storm the capitol.The existence of these clusters of participants “demonstrates the importance of involvement in friendship or kinship networks as a key factor in encouraging increasingly extreme beliefs and high-risk, often violent, activism”, the report notes.But the largest category of alleged rioters, according to the report, was a “hodgepodge” of individuals with a variety of extremist beliefs who made plans to come to the rally, originally billed as a “Stop the Steal” protest, on their own, and had no documented connections to existing groups, or even to small clusters of other Trump supporters. These “inspired believers” included adherents of the QAnon conspiracy theory, as well as people who simply believed the false claims of Donald Trump and Republican lawmakers that the election had been stolen from Trump and wanted to do something about it.Michael Jensen, a senior researcher who specializes in radicalization at the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, said the results of the analysis were not surprising. “What we witnessed on January 6 wasn’t a one-off extremist plot,” he said. “We witnessed an instance of mass radicalization which turned into an instance of mass mobilization.”Trump’s “big lie” about election fraud, repeated for months across social media and traditional media platforms, had succeeded in radicalizing “potentially millions of individuals who have collectively adopted an extremist viewpoint” about the legitimacy of the election, Jensen said.“We’re seeing a lot of folks [charged] who look like pretty normal people,” he said. “They tend to be older individuals, that were married, with families, that had jobs. These are not hardcore extremists. These are individuals who got caught in a really extraordinary circumstance.”Many of the unaffiliated people charged in the attack might not have even known what an Oath Keeper or a Proud Boy was, Jensen said, “but they know who the president is … and the president was providing a narrative of fraud”.A different analysis of court records by the Chicago Project on Security and Threats, looking at 290 arrests connected to the Capitol attack, found very similar results to the George Washington University report, including that only 12% of alleged participants were part of militias or other organized violent groups.This initial data revealed, the Chicago analysts wrote, that “‘normal’ pro-Trump activists joined with the far right to form a new kind of violent mass movement”.The Chicago report also warned that typical counter-terrorism approaches, such as arresting members of dangerous extremist groups, would not be very effective to confront this complex threat, which may require “de-escalation approaches for anger among large swaths of mainstream society”.The George Washington University report also revealed how instrumental the alleged rioters’ own social media posts have been to building criminal cases against them. Roughly half of people charged over the riot had their own alleged social media posts used against them as evidence, while about 30% of people charged had “been possibly incriminated” by the social media accounts of friends. More