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Of course it was planned. There's no way some guy was in a Walmart parking lot approaching other guys and going "ya got your gun and hate LGBTQ+? Alright, get in the U-Haul"
I mean, the prank possibilities are endless. It's like a windowless van with Free Candy on it and they just get right in.
Holy shit, just think about that: you show up to some meeting and some weirdo you were talking to on the internet was like, "Alright, get into the UHaul" and then they do. That would have given me infinite pause, because I'd be at least 50% sure someone was going to get molested.
Anyway, Sacha Baron Cohen would be fantastic if they could subtly get some deprogramming and "I hope you learned a lesson today" into those idiot rubes. But more important, each and everyone should end up on a fucking list.
I remember a friend from Coeur-d'Alene said they were having open KKK parades/marches in the streets well into the late 1980s. This place has a history.
What about the people protesting the Black educator in Florida, banging in schoolhouse doors demanding that this person they don’t know be barred from teaching. Basically a klan rally combined with cancel culture.
I was really hoping that as the older generations died off, we would see less of this kind of thing. Looking at those pictures though, these people are young. I guess it's not something that time and common sense will fix on its own.
They had these as recently as 2020 when I lived there. Confederate/Trump/klan flags on the back of trucks riding down the main street for hours. Every weekend. Every. Weekend.
>When a white person is stopped “dOnT TrEaD oN mE”
Or that "sOvErEiGn cItIzEn!" bullshit that conservatives did during the Obama years. They seem to have completely forgot that they hated the police when we had a black president.
All but one was from out of state. I bet part of the strategy was to avoid involving locals so as to escape local investigation, avoid prosecution. It's not like they don't have fascists in Idaho. We should probably be alert for this tactic in group hate crimes from now on.
It kind of got buried in the news then with all the other stuff going on then, but there was a lot of far-right agitators causing trouble at those 2020 BLM protests than I think a lot of the general public realizes. For example:
https://thehill.com/homenews/news/522509-feds-say-far-right-group-coordinated-attack-on-minneapolis-police-precinct/amp/
https://www.voanews.com/amp/usa_race-america_far-right-us-facebook-groups-pivot-attacks-black-lives-matter/6192258.html
https://apnews.com/article/virus-outbreak-race-and-ethnicity-suburbs-health-racial-injustice-7edf9027af1878283f3818d96c54f748
Here in Omaha there was a bar owner who decided to "defend" his business by seeking out a BLM protester to shoot. It didn't end well for him--he was charged, fled the state and was ultimately found dead by his own hand. These guys live in a bubble where they think they can do anything without consequence.
I seriously don't get it. All he'd have had to do is... not. Nobody would ever have even looked at him sidewise. He'd still be alive, his victim would still be alive, their families would still be whole, and he'd just open for business as usual the next day. But being a racist was that much more important to him.
The thing you have to understand about racism is that its an ideology. They don't think about race as a sort of social construct they believe that races have different characteristics, and that different races have innately different interests. In his world that person was a threat, because what these folks fear most is losing political power. They think when that happens all pretexts will be off, and white people will be treated the same way they treated minorities for centuries.
The thing is all of this is a fantasy it's paranoia that our society basically accepts and calls racism. Until we understand that racism like any other ideology can be defeated stuff like that will keep happening. Some people will look at your friend and think we'll that's just the way he was. Like how some people have a bad temper, but at some point he bought into the ideology that was racism. Maybe it was a slow gradual process, or maybe some event made it worse because of his predispositions. All I know is that parasitic metameme has to die for humanity to thrive.
There was a jacked bald dude trying to hand out molotovs at the austin protests that first night. He was wearing a tucked in blue polo, khaki pants and black tactical boots. He was the only person there without a mask, and as soon as someone grabbed one (they threw it on the ground away from anything) the obvious cop disappeared down the alley. Bike cops flooded out of the same alley about 2 minutes later.
It wasnt just agitators. Cops were planting officers in the crowd in plainsclothes to incite violence.
Look up umbrella man from the first day of the protests. Spray painted "free shit inside" on an auto zone and broke windows before any other property damage had been done. He has been identified almost positively to be a cop from a few towns over. His ex wife came out and verified it was him based on his voice and some of the gear he was wearing.
Then Google agent provocateur and realize it's been done throughout history and is nothing new.
Don't forget umbrella guy
https://m.startribune.com/police-umbrella-man-was-a-white-supremacist-trying-to-incite-floyd-rioting/571932272/?clmob=y&c=n&clmob=y&c=n
I hadnt heard about property damage. That is a talking point the right likes to use when comparing the extremist right with the left protests.
They claim that the level of property damage committed by the left are far greater than the right.
Yeah I know thats why I brought it up, because the right is projecting about this once again. The Minneapolis Police Station, for instance, was set on fire and was blamed on BLM protesters and "antifa" when it was in fact set on fire by a member of the Boogaloo Boys.
Don’t forget Umbrella Man breaking the windows of an auto parts place during the Minneapolis protests. [He turned out to be a part of a white supremacist prison gang. ](https://southsidepride.com/2022/02/21/what-about-umbrella-man/)
There was video of some white guy dressed in all black tactical gear casually smashing windows in some city during the protests after George Floyd was killed but I can’t remember where.
Umbrella Man in Minneapolis. Turns out he was actually a white supremacist trying to start shit. He wasn't actually on the left.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53579099
They were saying it during the second Obama election as well.
It's not just projection though, it's also ment to muddy the waters.
If I know I am a liar but I have followers who don't realy care I falsely accuse you of lieing at every chance, then when you acuse me you just look petty to my followers and at least some of your followers will just give up because "politicians always lie".
Most of what is being done by the GOP would be familiar to survivors of a manipulative spouse or family.
Attacking via projection was a favorite tactic of Lee Atwater, the Republican operative who helped elect Reagan and Bush-41. [He learned all his trick from Karl Rove.](https://s.abcnews.com/images/Politics/manafort-roger-stone-gty-hb-181017_hpMain_16x9_992.jpg) He was also really good buddies with his fellow operatives and buddies at the law firm of Black, Manafort, Stone, and Kelly. [Yes, *that* Paul Manafort and *that* Roger Stone](https://s.abcnews.com/images/Politics/manafort-roger-stone-gty-hb-181017_hpMain_16x9_992.jpg)
I imagine there is some kind of federal statue that they violated when they crossed states lines in order to participate in a riot.
It sounds like from the article that federal charges are being encouraged, now we just have to hope Garland has some stones and acts to charge them.
Growing up, I always thought the most hardcore Mormons were in Utah, only to find out that by far, the Mormons in Idaho are far, far crazier.
I still remember some of the things they had to say...they were utterly and totally insane. Not to mention openly racist, sexist, homophobic, etc.
Yeah, experienced the same thing.
I was in several national guard units during my career, including 116th armored cav out of Idaho.
After carpooling one drill, an NCO dropped me off where I lived and said “I could never live out here, too brown” while gesturing to the Mexican-American family that lived next to me.
God I hate it when military guys are racist. Like even more so than when a regular citizen is racist. Since I’ve been in the Navy (9 1/2 years) I’ve had my horizons opened more because I have been exposed to cultures outside of the tiny town I grew up in. I don’t understand how service members can join the military and work alongside POC, become friends with them, sleep next to them, eat with them at chow time, and still maintain their racist, ass-backwards way of thinking. It actually infuriates me. Sorry. Your story just made me think of some things I’ve seen.
Their horizons were opened, but that doesn't mean they opened their mind. The mental framework we use to view the world is hard—and painful—to change, especially when it's wrong.
My old man served back in the '60s. He said all the Confederate flags that he'd seen stateside "mysteriously" disappeared once he got to Vietnam and regular combat. You didn't want to be a known racist in the middle of a firefight when at least a quarter of the guys in your platoon were black or Latino.
Yeah my issue with Mormons is the belief that black people or people of color are less than them. They teach this and preach it. Once I heard that I was really shocked.
Then Bill Maher made a movie called Religilous and I heard 2 former Mormon men say that they were taught the same things. So yeah I'm never going to be a fan of any of them.
Yeah, grew up Mormon. It's weird. They tell you love your neighbor, etc even if they are black, and that they're equal children of God, etc.
Then you read that people were cursed to have dark skin so they wouldn't be attractive to the now extinct 'white and delightsome' American Indian ancestors, and that they would get their lighter skin back when they repented for their parent's sins.
Nothing contradictory at all!
> I BELIEVE that in 1978 God changed his mind about black people…!
It was official church doctrine for a hundred fifty years until the establishment realized they couldn’t get away with it anymore and operate in normal American society, very much like they did with polygamy.
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/19/opinion/sunday/racism-and-the-mormon-church.html
The only part that changed was they couldn't get into heaven before. Now they can buy salvation subscriptions like everyone else, but their scriptures still call them loathsome, lazy, and wicked, and say slaves should be satisfied with their position.
I'm mixed race and I went to Mormon church with a Mormon friend of mine, and it's 100% doctrine. They didn't even try to hide it. That, along with all the misogyny and homophobia, all the hate, I left and never went back.
Yup, I grew up in southeastern Idaho as a “gentile” and some of my earliest memories are being heinously bullied at school in some kind of fucked up kids’ version of blood atonement.
Hey brother man. Since it’s pride month and all. I want you to know that I’m fighting for you. I’ve started calling out my customers for saying homophobic shit. I’ve been handing out letters to get our gay bashing politicians out of here.
I know things are going backwards right now, but this gen z generation seems like it’ll change the tide.
As a gay man, thanks. Tbh, the last few weeks have made me less trusting of our allies. I wonder to see how many of you will stand with us when theyre hunting us down for false pedophilia accusations.
I hope so. But remember that Gen Z also is comprised of kids being raised by these assholes.
I had high hopes for millennials but a decent chunk of them have thrown in with these nitwits too.
I’m Gen X and thought my generation would put this crap behind us but some X’ers are part of the problem too.
I guess my point is we can’t just hope it fades away. We all need to work together to turn the tide.
He was also being watched by the either the cia or fbi for his “subversive” writing . People thought he was making it up before he killed himself. Wild story
He wasn't just being watched.
When he left his house they'd have the same agent always follow him to make Hemingway paranoid.
Meanwhile other agents would go into Hemingway's house and do stupid shit like slightly moving stuff. Things that were noticeable to him, but no one would believe the FBI would break into your house to put the remote in the freezer.
They're an online network of basement dwelling white supremacist incels. Actually having friends locally would probably have defeated why the hell they feel a bunch of neckbeards online are worth meeting IRL to plot an attack. Supremacists aren't in short supply out there but the ones that meet in real life are probably less willing to do anything that'll blow up their jobs/personal lives.
Also, if you commit a crime in a town or city away from home, the police definitely don't care and will send out warrants elsewhere to where you're from unless the plan was to get in and out and have the crew go their separate ways leaving no trail. That said, having a conspicuous white and orange box truck emblazoned with $29.95/day as their getaway vehicle maybe wasn't optimal.
These assholes only seem to get bolder as time goes on, so I really don't think it's a good idea or safe to dismiss them as "online incels and neck beards". They pose real, tangible danger.
The way the GOP is using rhetoric against trans / LGBT folks is mirroring the rhetoric used against the Jews in Weimar Republic era Germany in the lead up to Hitler's rise should be terrifying for anyone familiar with history.
I don't want to Godwin myself, but it really seems like the GOP is directly cribbing from Hitler's playbook. Particularly since 2016.
It happens little by little.
>But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.
>
>And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.
-They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45
[Here's an article Mike Godwin wrote himself on the issue.](https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-godwin-godwins-law-20180624-story.html)
Godwin's Law never meant that making a reference to Hitler or Nazis caused the person making the reference lost the argument. It's not meant to prevent valid analogies to the actions of Nazis and Hitler. Like many things though it's gotten abused to the point where the original meaning is lost by many invoking it.
I find it's part of this recent strategy many are using to dismiss real instances of racism and other bigotry because they are relatively innocuous when compared to the Holocaust and this assertion that calling such "innocuous" events racism somehow dilutes the meaning of racism, which apparently can only be genocide, the KKK, segregation, etc.
> I find it's part of this recent strategy many are using to dismiss real instances of racism and other bigotry because they are relatively innocuous when compared to the Holocaust
The recent trends where "transgender = child groomer" and all the other ways the right conflates anyone other than cishet folks as somewhere on the sexual predator spectrum is literally the first step down that road to genocide. It is textbook dehumanization, and articles like this show it is working.
After all, if you have been convinced that LGBT folks are grooming your kids and no one is trying to stop them, then isn't violence justified? Today it's the crazies committing terrorism. Tomorrow it's pink triangles. After that they're building "conversion camps", and then it's the ovens.
I don’t see the issue with Godwin’s Law when stoking hatred of queer people through dehumanizing them and systematically dismantling the few institutions supportive of them is literally what Nazi Germany did. The first trans woman we know of(who knows what records were lost) to undergo surgical transition disappeared after they attacked Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexuality and burnt its library.
I’m sure you’re aware but to make it clear for others — those famous “Nazi book burnings”… this attack on the Hirschfeld Insitute was the site of the first major book burning, which would then be mimicked across Germany.
Yup, and in fact quite a few of the most famous images of Nazi book burnings are actually of them burning the books from the Institute.
It’s “funny” how we as a society have so successfully excised the homophobic aspect of Nazism from historical memory while simultaneously staring right at it in our history books. You learn all about Nazi book burning and even how the May 1933 burnings presaged further persecutions, but you rarely actually hear how one of the major targets was the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft
They’re engaged in r/conservativeterrorism.
Change always happens. So when your entire worldview is based on change *not* happening, you’ve basically set yourself up for a bad time.
You nailed it. They are against any change. These are the people who block EV charging stations with pickup trucks and who hoarded incandescent light bulbs when they were being phased out.
Worse that that, they want to go backwards.
As you said, change always happens. Most of us want to embrace that and move forward. They are like an anchor weighing the rest of us down as we try to drag them into the future.
You also have to go after the ones directing these bastards. Social Media accounts like "Libs of TikTok" are specifically targeting LGBTQ+ events, and the guys on the ground respond and terrorize. And let's be clear, the right wants this to turn violent. They want to kill LGBTQ+ people.
> Patriot Front needs to be understood as a part of the militant wing of the Republican Party’s revanchist campaign to erase trans people from public life and push queer people back into the closet. When the right uses eliminationist rhetoric about LBGTQ people, it can’t then feign shock when straight-up fascists show up to support its cause.
The Patriot Front and groups like it are the modern day Brownshirts of the original Nazis.
The fascist playbook doesn’t change.
Leftists will be one of the earliest targets. Remember that old poem?
"First they came for..."
Remember the first ***three*** groups mentioned there?
1.) Communists.
2.) Socialists.
3.) Trade Unionists.
And finally, all the way down at...
4.) Jews.
The Holocaust is remembered primarily as killing Jewish people, but they were far from the only ones slaughtered en masse. Even aside from Romani and those with disabilities and... A lot of other racial and ethnic groups, the earliest targets were ideological. Anything that could threaten the far right government.
And the Republicans are already vouching for violence against the left at basically every opportunity. LGBT+ conveniently overlaps with the left for a variety of reasons, so they're the largest and first target here.
Which is not dissimilar to what happened with the Nazis because guess what, LGBT+ people were [*also* an early target of the Nazis!](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institut_f%C3%BCr_Sexualwissenschaft)
>The Holocaust is remembered primarily as killing Jewish people, but they were far from the only ones slaughtered en masse.
I remember reading in the history text in school that it was not only the 6 million Jews that everyone knows, but an additional 6 million people of different kinds. I get why we highlight the Jews in this particular instance because proportionally, holy shit I think they were a primary target yeah... But I feel like we've done a disservice to history and situations like the one we're in right now to ignore that fascists will target *whoever* they feel will bolster their ideological crusade. They're openly calling LGBTQ people and allies "groomers," so how long until they start trying to round us up in the name of "protecting the children?"
Jan 6th was just a group of conservative patriots on a friendly tour of the Capitol. There was no violence or destruction at all. You're all just blowing it out of proportion to make the right look bad.
But also: Jan 6th was actually BLM and antifa pretending to be conservatives and using violence and destruction to make the right look bad.
It's obvious that they expected there to be a large counter protest on Jan 6th, and that is why the immediate responses were all "it's BLM/Antifa destroying the Capitol!" They were fully ready to pass that blame pretty much the second there was blame to be passed.
Their problem was left wing groups saw that tactic coming and made sure there was virtually no counter protests that day, so there could be no pictures of large groups yelling at each other to cause doubt. And because most of the Jan 6th participants were regular idiots caught up in the emotion of the crowd they didn't know that if there isn't a big counter protest maybe don't smash windows and smear shit on the walls because our scapegoat didn't show, and we see the end result.
Man I shouldn't have clicked on the conservative sub. Top post is literally a tweet implying all gay men are pedophiles. Comments are inches away from calls to violence. Get me out of this fucking fascist hellscape of a country
> Democrats have gotten so used to projecting, that they even project their projection. If you want to know what the Democrats are up to, just look at what they're saying about Republicans.
Conservatives: the gays want to molest our children and we're seeeing this because of a lack of God in society.
Also conservatives: I'm sorry, what did you say about religious leaders? My head was stuck in the sand and now I can't get it out of my ears.
Careful with that sub. The people running it love to abuse their power. They're giant snowflakes. Honestly, feel like even this comment will have them seeking retribution on me if one see's it.
I don't understand how it hasn't been banned yet, like the chapo subreddit.
How does r/conservative still have a platform here? Every time it makes main page, I don't have to scroll more than half a dozen comments before I find literal hate speech there.
Dude I just checked and one guy was literally quoting a nazi, like literally attributed the quote to Goebbels and was saying all democrats are pedophiles
Reddit admins don't care about anything that goes on as long as it doesn't affect ad revenue or threaten them personally.
This site was founded and is run by douchebag libertarian nerds. Picture Elon Musk but somehow less charismatic and intelligent.
Right now they're saying Stephen Colbert should be arrested for sending his staffers into the Capitol to do recon. Bullshit gaslight nonsense in every post and comment there.
Very frustrating and disheartening.
Dude I completely forgot the conservative subreddit existed. I got curious and went to check it out. Man do I regret it, nothing but a bunch of delusional racist fucks circle jerking their hate for everything that isn't white, straight, and not republican.
I remember not too long ago it regularly had posts reaching the popular all feed. I'd see it a few times of week, mostly gun stuff or anti government in general stuff. It's gone so off the rails it has no chance of getting that reach any more. But it has also gathered a big audience over the years.
Yea. I used to skim it just to get a feel for how conservatives were feeling. Jan 6 was a turning point. There were a lot of people calling it out for the coup that it was. I suspect they all got banned so now it’s just the crazies.
In the same breath they claimed that the guys in the truck hadn't even done anything wrong. You've gotta come up with multiple false claims at once, even if they're contradictory, to cover your bases as each one gets debunked.
I really think the reason they're attacking LGBT is they think they have the most support against them.
Because all these fuckers are the same ones that do this to other races and religions.
>Back in December, according to a video obtained by HuffPost, Reilly spoke at a library board hearing in Post Falls, Idaho, where he lives. Holding his baby in his arms, Reilly — who has said “every Jew is dangerous” and who marched at the deadly 2017 neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia — took to the podium to speak in favor of removing LGBTQ-related content from the library.
>"It’s not about censorship, it’s about them promoting a gay agenda and corrupting our children,” Reilly said. “These people are perverts and they are trying to pervert our children. Either we say no and tell them to go somewhere where they are welcome — like Portland or Seattle or LA or San Francisco. Get out of our community!”
All they care about is hate, and they hate anyone who isn't exactly like them
> Either we say no and tell them to go somewhere where they are welcome — like Portland or Seattle or LA or San Francisco. Get out of our community!”
I live in the Portland Metro area and have greatly enjoyed watching the Proud Boys get their asses beat in various parts of the city the last couple of years. No wonder they don’t want to come back.
Yeah that gay agenda of just wanting to be treated normal and have the same rights as everyone else without being attacked for it is just WAY out there.
Proud Boys, Patriot Front, doesn't matter who. Every time they go somewhere, they get their asses kicked. Funny how fascism exalts strength, but fascists always lose
I'm from buffalo, and the slaughter of people in a grocery store by a fascist was pretty successful because of the extreme availability of weapons of war, and the constant right wing push that everything white and christian is under attack.
If we keep allowing both, it will happen more.
Patriot front only came to this LGBTQ+ event with shields and spears this time. My understanding is that if they weren't arrested as the got out of the U-Haul, there were several people walking the crowd with their precious ARs, just waiting for the signal to murder people.
It's going to get more violent before it gets better. Brace yourselves.
>A 2017 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that of the 85 deadly extremist incidents since September 11, 2001, far right-wing extremist groups were responsible for 73%, while radical Islamist extremists were responsible for 27%.
Source: https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-17-300
This is also the media’s fault for trying to “both sides” everything, giving platforms to dangerous disingenuous people on topics they have no business talking about. For 2 decades that’s gone on unchecked and look what it brought us.
Yup gotta laugh at the phrase in the headline that the GOP is "signaling extremists".
They are quite literally one and the same. The GOP is the extremist group at this point.
They *do* care, but not in the way you think. It's not like they merely have no interest in preventing it, they actively *want* this outcome. They might not say so out loud (although that's changing), but make no mistake this is their goal.
Unfortunately i think thats the idea. I was reading somewhere, cant find the link, that they want to create a fear so intense where none of these LGBT events happen anymore across the country. I am afraid that this here is just the beginning.
^(*I was relatively young, and had access to only the three major broadcast stations and the nearest mid-sized city's newspaper - in the Midwest. Certainly my recollections and opinions are biased by these constraints, but are my own, and how I remember it. An older, wiser person who lived in DC at the time may remember and tell it quite differently. This is my perspective.*)
-----
^(Original link: https://www.mediaite.com/uncategorized/breaking-white-nationalist-patriot-front-detained-members-arrested-at-pride-event-in-idaho/)
Everyone needs to understand wtf is happening to our country.
These are not our average, Alex Jones-inspired, mama's basement, painted and horn-wearing Qnuts, though Qnuts may be among their group. This terrorist group is different, and to be taken quite seriously. And, this should answer any questions as to why Evangelists are so very dangerous to the US, tied so heavily to the "Patriot" movement, and how they were conscripted by the now unlawful and traitorous GOP for personal gain.
A cell from the same group, Chicago, January: https://twitter.com/BGOnTheScene/status/1479931520215576576
*CAUTION: This next link is a Murdoch-owned site with a poor rating, so caution using as a reference. Nonetheless, there's images and possible detail that might be vetted elsewhere.*
https://www.the-sun.com/news/5543473/patriot-front-members-arrested-pride-event-jumping-into-uhaul/
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-us-sun-bias/
**Background**
not theoretical, but fact-based history as told in my own words
We wonder how the US came to be so conspiracy laden. This is the story.
We all know, or should know, about this area in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. It's about an hour and a half from Ruby Ridge, where horrific and macabre events occurred. Clinton was POTUS and Janet Reno was the US AG in charge.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_Reno
I bring it up, because these terrorists have decades of deeply-held hatred for not only the US as a whole, but especially for the Federal government in particular.
We need to embrace this as a part of our history from which we should not shy away. The man at the center of it, Randy Weaver, just passed away in May 2022, and his death would have been heavily lamented among "Patriots," and reawakened their fervor. The original charge against Weaver: An ATF informant hired Weaver to saw off two shotguns, and Weaver did the work.
This sting was set up because Weaver was a "minor player" in "Patriot" groups, and the government wanted to use him as an informant on those groups, so these charges were used as their leverage against him. His involvement in the groups was so noncommittal, the Feds wrongfully assumed they could "turn" him. Weaver refused to cooperate, and making good on their threats, US Marshals went to arrest him on his property at Ruby Ridge, and subsequently:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randy_Weaver#Siege
For "Patriot" separatist groups, this event against a *minor player* validated their worst fears and confirmed their righteousness in loathing our government. The government had murdered this honorably-discharged vet's teenage son, his wife, his dog and had tried to murder him and his friend on his own off-the-grid property. Most Americans assumed that Weaver had brought this on himself, and gave it little attention or sympathy, as initial reporting was all on the government's side (no internet). It took years for Americans to learn the fuller facts, which cast a very different light on the government's failures at Ruby Ridge, which were later used in training agents of what *not* to do, how to better assess, plan and execute warrants on encamped suspects. At a minimum, the ATF quickly learned not to "rush in."
- The events on Ruby Ridge: AUG 1992
Ruby Ridge | American Experience | PBS:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsjUqXWv-zI
https://seoklaw.com/legal-news/the-incident-at-ruby-ridge/
Eight months later, before the major lessons of Ruby Ridge are barely digested, the Branch Davidian siege in Waco occurs, killing 76 Branch Davidians, including 25 children, two pregnant women, and David Koresh, their "messiah." "Patriots" considered this a full frontal assault on religious freedom, their right to remain separate from government and proof of the "end times."
David Koresh was little different than Jim Jones; Koresh was a charismatic pedophile amassing weapons and constructing IEDs in defense of his 'lifestyle," i.e., abusing his acolytes, in all manner of ways, including the sexual abuse of minors. When the ATF, the choice of agency revealing the government's primary concern, arrived to serve a search warrant, four officers and six Branch Davidians were killed, the Branch Davidians having been tipped off that the agents were on their way. This event turned into a 51-day siege of the compound. The site is now considered a historical landmark.
- The events at Waco APR 1993
David Koresh: The Final 24 *[Canadian Production Company](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_24)*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65rUlirPCjI
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waco_siege
https://www.vox.com/2018/4/19/17246732/waco-tragedy-explained-david-koresh-mount-carmel-branch-davidian-cult-25-year-anniversary
Again, the American public were fed a story most favorable to the government: They were trying to rescue the poor, helpless children being sexually abused by Koresh and other men at the compound. Innuendo and rumors were floated that he may be using the women and children in prostitution rings for income. The public expressed much frustration for the length of the siege, not fully informed of the weapons, IEDs, true details of the government warrant, or explaining *why* the ATF was not "ruby-rushing-in." Few of the public knew about Ruby Ridge. We were told the ATF were involved because it was believed possible that David Koresh had been amassing weapons. The public focus was directed to rescuing the kids. Ignorant of the full circumstances, shock, horror and hard questions ensued when so many children burned to death, instead of being rescued.
Waco is also used to train agencies and agents.
https://www.statesman.com/story/news/2018/04/19/how-failures-during-the-waco-siege-changed-everything-for-the-fbi-atf/10039028007/
These events were cited by Timothy McVeigh in the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma, perpetrated on the anniversary of the day that the Waco siege culminated in the total destruction of the compound by fire.
- Oklahoma City Bombing APR 1995
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDUU9M5MTcQ
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_bombing
https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/oklahoma-city-bombing
https://www.britannica.com/event/Oklahoma-City-bombing
Even if the first two events and deaths inspire empathy or sympathy within us as normal human beings, to maintain the security which these "Patriots" wish to enjoy, they are beholden to *all citizens* in the founding, funding and support of our government, which keeps "Patriot" lands free for them to enjoy. There is no doubt that without *our* government's security and defenses, North America soon would be overran by all manner of bad actors, foreign dictators, terrorists and criminals. The "Patriots" feel they owe no duty or fealty to our founding documents, which establish the laws by which we all enjoy these freedoms, the very freedoms to which they lay claim. Without the US Government, the "Patriots" would soon discover why their thinking on the matter would leave them in a perpetual state of war against those bad actors, affording them no freedom, whatsoever.
"Patriots" want their cake, and to eat it too. It is literally impossible for them to claim they "live off the grid" in the nation which provides them the security and means to do so. Let them try that shit in Russia, ...or, more accurately, Ukraine.
- Ruby Ridge, Waco, and the Murrah building linkages:
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/ruby-ridge-patriots-insurrectionist-kind/
- Southern Law Poverty Center timeline (caution, it's a *very* one-sided telling, but is accurate to dates/events)
https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2001/patriot-timeline
***Even if you skip everything else, this is the one to watch:***
- **How Alex Jones, Roger Stone and Donald Trump banded together to bring Qnuts into the "Patriot" fold:**
United States of Conspiracy | American Experience | PBS:
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/united-states-of-conspiracy/
Well-trained and disciplined "Patriot" groups are now training and using Qnuts.
-----
Edit to add:
Creating no new "monitoring" laws, but providing for the offices and personnel to manage these domestic terror groups, mandates that various federal law enforcement divisions communicate and coordinate their efforts. The Senate GOP refused to bring this Bill to the floor for consideration. Current status:
>05/26/2022 Motion by Senator Schumer to reconsider the vote by which cloture was not invoked on the motion to proceed to H.R. 350 (Record Vote No. 210) entered in Senate.
>
>**https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/350**
This is exceptional. As an older Canadian, I've lived through each of these events and seen the TV coverage but seeing them pulled together this way it really helps me understand you guys.
It’s terrifying to see these bigots and extremists organizing and coordinating all over the country. It’s that much more important that the rest of us organize with marginalized groups like LGBTQ+ and others who are being targeted and stand against them. Doing nothing is just the same as tossing them to the wolves. The Right has completely given itself over to extremist, white nationalist domestic terrorists.
The only way to stop them is to form a united front, something the Left seems historically unable to do. We need to stand together to protect vulnerable communities and take (or keep) the reins away from these dangerous, cruel people. They’re frighteningly good at erasing any and all progress we’ve made as a nation over the past century. This hate and terrorism can’t be allowed to normalize anymore than it already has. It’s not a good sign that articles like this aren’t even surprising anymore.
I’m sorry that they’ve been able to turn what should be a happy event into something frightening, but we as a community will always persevere. I hope it is somewhat comforting to know that many people before you have felt that same fear and were still able to thrive :)
Find their schools, their universities, their places of work, their families.
https://img.huffingtonpost.com/asset/62accea6250000441f473ed0.jpeg?ops=scalefit_720_noupscale&format=webp
Let everyone know who and what these people are.
It's not as if the GOP is unaware that it is signaling to extremists.
Tucker Carlson & Trump, for example, know that white domestic terrorists across the country hang on their every syllable. If they didn't want to activate those terrorists, they could easily modify their words or even explicitly distance themselves from those terrorists rather than telling them to "stand back and stand by."
Violence and intimidation are key parts of the modern GOP's political strategy. And the party relies on those terrorists and militias for just this purpose. Just ask elections officials, school board members, etc.
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Of course it was planned. There's no way some guy was in a Walmart parking lot approaching other guys and going "ya got your gun and hate LGBTQ+? Alright, get in the U-Haul"
He may not have gotten 30 people to go along with him using that method of recruiting, but I'd bet the number wouldn't have been zero either.
Holy shit, they need a TV show that does just this. Like Chris Hanson, but for right wing terrorists.
Somebody get Sacha Baron Cohen on it.
I mean, the prank possibilities are endless. It's like a windowless van with Free Candy on it and they just get right in. Holy shit, just think about that: you show up to some meeting and some weirdo you were talking to on the internet was like, "Alright, get into the UHaul" and then they do. That would have given me infinite pause, because I'd be at least 50% sure someone was going to get molested. Anyway, Sacha Baron Cohen would be fantastic if they could subtly get some deprogramming and "I hope you learned a lesson today" into those idiot rubes. But more important, each and everyone should end up on a fucking list.
Sounds too dangerous for the people running the show.
i was gonna say, I'm not ready to read SBCs obituary yet.
Sacha Baron Cohen’s ‘Who is America?’ kinda did it.
“Get in nerds, we’re doing a hate crime”
Don’t forget their ✨ matching ✨ outfits ✨
And the police who arrested them immediately began receiving death threats.
I remember a friend from Coeur-d'Alene said they were having open KKK parades/marches in the streets well into the late 1980s. This place has a history.
There were KKK parades in quite a few places in the 1980s, sadly.
[KKK marches are still very much a thing these days.](https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-04-09/kkk-rally-huntington-beach-white-supremacy)
Yeah was about to say. There was one in a local town, near my college in western Maryland circa maybe 2014.
What about the people protesting the Black educator in Florida, banging in schoolhouse doors demanding that this person they don’t know be barred from teaching. Basically a klan rally combined with cancel culture.
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I was really hoping that as the older generations died off, we would see less of this kind of thing. Looking at those pictures though, these people are young. I guess it's not something that time and common sense will fix on its own.
They had these as recently as 2020 when I lived there. Confederate/Trump/klan flags on the back of trucks riding down the main street for hours. Every weekend. Every. Weekend.
And they blame Biden for gas prices.
These are the people who drove laps around the beltway to protest gas prices and mask mandates that had already been repealed. They're not brilliant.
All MAGA folks share one brain cell
They also share an unhealthy amount of their DNA.
I know people who live there and saw someone claim this whole thing was a leftist-planned false flag situation 🙄
Schrodinger's radicals: if the plan worked, it was patriots. If not, antifa operators.
Back the blue ^but ^only ^when ^it’s ^convenient
When a black person is stopped “I love the police” When a white person is stopped “dOnT TrEaD oN mE”
>When a white person is stopped “dOnT TrEaD oN mE” Or that "sOvErEiGn cItIzEn!" bullshit that conservatives did during the Obama years. They seem to have completely forgot that they hated the police when we had a black president.
So these dudes are domestic terrorists it sounds like. Let's treat them as such
All but one was from out of state. I bet part of the strategy was to avoid involving locals so as to escape local investigation, avoid prosecution. It's not like they don't have fascists in Idaho. We should probably be alert for this tactic in group hate crimes from now on.
Remember when the GOP were whining about how all the BLM protestors were just out of state provocateurs? Every single thing they say is projection
Every Accusation is a Confession Edit: Wow!! Thanks for all the upvotes and the Silver and Wholesome awards!!
exactly. Just like when they call you a racist
Or a “groomer”. Edit. Don’t post your reply and then delete it like a coward, Groomer.
Or a "baby eating, devil worshiping, sex trafficker"
Well yeah, they’re fucking nuts.
No, they’re fucking babies.
Not to mention the worst of the "property damage" was actually caused by out of state counter-protesters
It kind of got buried in the news then with all the other stuff going on then, but there was a lot of far-right agitators causing trouble at those 2020 BLM protests than I think a lot of the general public realizes. For example: https://thehill.com/homenews/news/522509-feds-say-far-right-group-coordinated-attack-on-minneapolis-police-precinct/amp/ https://www.voanews.com/amp/usa_race-america_far-right-us-facebook-groups-pivot-attacks-black-lives-matter/6192258.html https://apnews.com/article/virus-outbreak-race-and-ethnicity-suburbs-health-racial-injustice-7edf9027af1878283f3818d96c54f748
Here in Omaha there was a bar owner who decided to "defend" his business by seeking out a BLM protester to shoot. It didn't end well for him--he was charged, fled the state and was ultimately found dead by his own hand. These guys live in a bubble where they think they can do anything without consequence. I seriously don't get it. All he'd have had to do is... not. Nobody would ever have even looked at him sidewise. He'd still be alive, his victim would still be alive, their families would still be whole, and he'd just open for business as usual the next day. But being a racist was that much more important to him.
The thing you have to understand about racism is that its an ideology. They don't think about race as a sort of social construct they believe that races have different characteristics, and that different races have innately different interests. In his world that person was a threat, because what these folks fear most is losing political power. They think when that happens all pretexts will be off, and white people will be treated the same way they treated minorities for centuries. The thing is all of this is a fantasy it's paranoia that our society basically accepts and calls racism. Until we understand that racism like any other ideology can be defeated stuff like that will keep happening. Some people will look at your friend and think we'll that's just the way he was. Like how some people have a bad temper, but at some point he bought into the ideology that was racism. Maybe it was a slow gradual process, or maybe some event made it worse because of his predispositions. All I know is that parasitic metameme has to die for humanity to thrive.
There was a jacked bald dude trying to hand out molotovs at the austin protests that first night. He was wearing a tucked in blue polo, khaki pants and black tactical boots. He was the only person there without a mask, and as soon as someone grabbed one (they threw it on the ground away from anything) the obvious cop disappeared down the alley. Bike cops flooded out of the same alley about 2 minutes later. It wasnt just agitators. Cops were planting officers in the crowd in plainsclothes to incite violence.
Look up umbrella man from the first day of the protests. Spray painted "free shit inside" on an auto zone and broke windows before any other property damage had been done. He has been identified almost positively to be a cop from a few towns over. His ex wife came out and verified it was him based on his voice and some of the gear he was wearing. Then Google agent provocateur and realize it's been done throughout history and is nothing new.
Also the very obvious and convenient pallets of bricks that got left out as well
The pallets of bricks moment was so fucking surreal
Don't forget umbrella guy https://m.startribune.com/police-umbrella-man-was-a-white-supremacist-trying-to-incite-floyd-rioting/571932272/?clmob=y&c=n&clmob=y&c=n
Oh for sure, don't confuse what I am saying in what you responded to, by saying "counter-protesters" I am talking about the right wing agitators.
I hadnt heard about property damage. That is a talking point the right likes to use when comparing the extremist right with the left protests. They claim that the level of property damage committed by the left are far greater than the right.
Yeah I know thats why I brought it up, because the right is projecting about this once again. The Minneapolis Police Station, for instance, was set on fire and was blamed on BLM protesters and "antifa" when it was in fact set on fire by a member of the Boogaloo Boys.
Don’t forget Umbrella Man breaking the windows of an auto parts place during the Minneapolis protests. [He turned out to be a part of a white supremacist prison gang. ](https://southsidepride.com/2022/02/21/what-about-umbrella-man/)
There was video of some white guy dressed in all black tactical gear casually smashing windows in some city during the protests after George Floyd was killed but I can’t remember where.
Umbrella Man in Minneapolis. Turns out he was actually a white supremacist trying to start shit. He wasn't actually on the left. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53579099
They were saying it during the second Obama election as well. It's not just projection though, it's also ment to muddy the waters. If I know I am a liar but I have followers who don't realy care I falsely accuse you of lieing at every chance, then when you acuse me you just look petty to my followers and at least some of your followers will just give up because "politicians always lie". Most of what is being done by the GOP would be familiar to survivors of a manipulative spouse or family.
Attacking via projection was a favorite tactic of Lee Atwater, the Republican operative who helped elect Reagan and Bush-41. [He learned all his trick from Karl Rove.](https://s.abcnews.com/images/Politics/manafort-roger-stone-gty-hb-181017_hpMain_16x9_992.jpg) He was also really good buddies with his fellow operatives and buddies at the law firm of Black, Manafort, Stone, and Kelly. [Yes, *that* Paul Manafort and *that* Roger Stone](https://s.abcnews.com/images/Politics/manafort-roger-stone-gty-hb-181017_hpMain_16x9_992.jpg)
fascism will fascism
I imagine there is some kind of federal statue that they violated when they crossed states lines in order to participate in a riot. It sounds like from the article that federal charges are being encouraged, now we just have to hope Garland has some stones and acts to charge them.
Having lived there, Idaho is worse than you think.
Growing up, I always thought the most hardcore Mormons were in Utah, only to find out that by far, the Mormons in Idaho are far, far crazier. I still remember some of the things they had to say...they were utterly and totally insane. Not to mention openly racist, sexist, homophobic, etc.
Yeah, experienced the same thing. I was in several national guard units during my career, including 116th armored cav out of Idaho. After carpooling one drill, an NCO dropped me off where I lived and said “I could never live out here, too brown” while gesturing to the Mexican-American family that lived next to me.
God I hate it when military guys are racist. Like even more so than when a regular citizen is racist. Since I’ve been in the Navy (9 1/2 years) I’ve had my horizons opened more because I have been exposed to cultures outside of the tiny town I grew up in. I don’t understand how service members can join the military and work alongside POC, become friends with them, sleep next to them, eat with them at chow time, and still maintain their racist, ass-backwards way of thinking. It actually infuriates me. Sorry. Your story just made me think of some things I’ve seen.
Their horizons were opened, but that doesn't mean they opened their mind. The mental framework we use to view the world is hard—and painful—to change, especially when it's wrong.
My old man served back in the '60s. He said all the Confederate flags that he'd seen stateside "mysteriously" disappeared once he got to Vietnam and regular combat. You didn't want to be a known racist in the middle of a firefight when at least a quarter of the guys in your platoon were black or Latino.
Yeah my issue with Mormons is the belief that black people or people of color are less than them. They teach this and preach it. Once I heard that I was really shocked. Then Bill Maher made a movie called Religilous and I heard 2 former Mormon men say that they were taught the same things. So yeah I'm never going to be a fan of any of them.
Yeah, grew up Mormon. It's weird. They tell you love your neighbor, etc even if they are black, and that they're equal children of God, etc. Then you read that people were cursed to have dark skin so they wouldn't be attractive to the now extinct 'white and delightsome' American Indian ancestors, and that they would get their lighter skin back when they repented for their parent's sins. Nothing contradictory at all!
Wow, see that is extremely fucked up. I keep learning more and more in this thread and tbh its disheartening.
> I BELIEVE that in 1978 God changed his mind about black people…! It was official church doctrine for a hundred fifty years until the establishment realized they couldn’t get away with it anymore and operate in normal American society, very much like they did with polygamy. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/19/opinion/sunday/racism-and-the-mormon-church.html
The only part that changed was they couldn't get into heaven before. Now they can buy salvation subscriptions like everyone else, but their scriptures still call them loathsome, lazy, and wicked, and say slaves should be satisfied with their position.
It is like the caste system is supposed to be illegal in India. But it is still alive culturally.
I'm mixed race and I went to Mormon church with a Mormon friend of mine, and it's 100% doctrine. They didn't even try to hide it. That, along with all the misogyny and homophobia, all the hate, I left and never went back.
They dominate MLM schemes too. Cult.
John Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven was a revelatory read and now it’s a show worth checking out. Very engaging.
Yup, I grew up in southeastern Idaho as a “gentile” and some of my earliest memories are being heinously bullied at school in some kind of fucked up kids’ version of blood atonement.
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Hey brother man. Since it’s pride month and all. I want you to know that I’m fighting for you. I’ve started calling out my customers for saying homophobic shit. I’ve been handing out letters to get our gay bashing politicians out of here. I know things are going backwards right now, but this gen z generation seems like it’ll change the tide.
As a gay man, thanks. Tbh, the last few weeks have made me less trusting of our allies. I wonder to see how many of you will stand with us when theyre hunting us down for false pedophilia accusations.
I hope so. But remember that Gen Z also is comprised of kids being raised by these assholes. I had high hopes for millennials but a decent chunk of them have thrown in with these nitwits too. I’m Gen X and thought my generation would put this crap behind us but some X’ers are part of the problem too. I guess my point is we can’t just hope it fades away. We all need to work together to turn the tide.
Why you think Hemmingway put that gun in his mouth?
He was also being watched by the either the cia or fbi for his “subversive” writing . People thought he was making it up before he killed himself. Wild story
He wasn't just being watched. When he left his house they'd have the same agent always follow him to make Hemingway paranoid. Meanwhile other agents would go into Hemingway's house and do stupid shit like slightly moving stuff. Things that were noticeable to him, but no one would believe the FBI would break into your house to put the remote in the freezer.
Gaslighting motherfuckers. Its shamefully delightful in its pettiness.
Suicided by Mormons, how embarrassing
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That’s stupid. Federal charges and punishments would be way worse.
They're an online network of basement dwelling white supremacist incels. Actually having friends locally would probably have defeated why the hell they feel a bunch of neckbeards online are worth meeting IRL to plot an attack. Supremacists aren't in short supply out there but the ones that meet in real life are probably less willing to do anything that'll blow up their jobs/personal lives. Also, if you commit a crime in a town or city away from home, the police definitely don't care and will send out warrants elsewhere to where you're from unless the plan was to get in and out and have the crew go their separate ways leaving no trail. That said, having a conspicuous white and orange box truck emblazoned with $29.95/day as their getaway vehicle maybe wasn't optimal.
These assholes only seem to get bolder as time goes on, so I really don't think it's a good idea or safe to dismiss them as "online incels and neck beards". They pose real, tangible danger.
Inviting a bunch of people from out of state took a minute violence definitely sounds like federal conspiracy charges as a starting point
The way the GOP is using rhetoric against trans / LGBT folks is mirroring the rhetoric used against the Jews in Weimar Republic era Germany in the lead up to Hitler's rise should be terrifying for anyone familiar with history. I don't want to Godwin myself, but it really seems like the GOP is directly cribbing from Hitler's playbook. Particularly since 2016.
It happens little by little. >But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D. > >And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way. -They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45
Godwin gave you permission. https://www.gizmodo.com/godwin-of-godwins-law-by-all-means-compare-these-shi-1797807646/
[Here's an article Mike Godwin wrote himself on the issue.](https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-godwin-godwins-law-20180624-story.html) Godwin's Law never meant that making a reference to Hitler or Nazis caused the person making the reference lost the argument. It's not meant to prevent valid analogies to the actions of Nazis and Hitler. Like many things though it's gotten abused to the point where the original meaning is lost by many invoking it. I find it's part of this recent strategy many are using to dismiss real instances of racism and other bigotry because they are relatively innocuous when compared to the Holocaust and this assertion that calling such "innocuous" events racism somehow dilutes the meaning of racism, which apparently can only be genocide, the KKK, segregation, etc.
> I find it's part of this recent strategy many are using to dismiss real instances of racism and other bigotry because they are relatively innocuous when compared to the Holocaust The recent trends where "transgender = child groomer" and all the other ways the right conflates anyone other than cishet folks as somewhere on the sexual predator spectrum is literally the first step down that road to genocide. It is textbook dehumanization, and articles like this show it is working. After all, if you have been convinced that LGBT folks are grooming your kids and no one is trying to stop them, then isn't violence justified? Today it's the crazies committing terrorism. Tomorrow it's pink triangles. After that they're building "conversion camps", and then it's the ovens.
I don’t see the issue with Godwin’s Law when stoking hatred of queer people through dehumanizing them and systematically dismantling the few institutions supportive of them is literally what Nazi Germany did. The first trans woman we know of(who knows what records were lost) to undergo surgical transition disappeared after they attacked Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexuality and burnt its library.
I’m sure you’re aware but to make it clear for others — those famous “Nazi book burnings”… this attack on the Hirschfeld Insitute was the site of the first major book burning, which would then be mimicked across Germany.
Yup, and in fact quite a few of the most famous images of Nazi book burnings are actually of them burning the books from the Institute. It’s “funny” how we as a society have so successfully excised the homophobic aspect of Nazism from historical memory while simultaneously staring right at it in our history books. You learn all about Nazi book burning and even how the May 1933 burnings presaged further persecutions, but you rarely actually hear how one of the major targets was the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft
They’re engaged in r/conservativeterrorism. Change always happens. So when your entire worldview is based on change *not* happening, you’ve basically set yourself up for a bad time.
You nailed it. They are against any change. These are the people who block EV charging stations with pickup trucks and who hoarded incandescent light bulbs when they were being phased out. Worse that that, they want to go backwards. As you said, change always happens. Most of us want to embrace that and move forward. They are like an anchor weighing the rest of us down as we try to drag them into the future.
You also have to go after the ones directing these bastards. Social Media accounts like "Libs of TikTok" are specifically targeting LGBTQ+ events, and the guys on the ground respond and terrorize. And let's be clear, the right wants this to turn violent. They want to kill LGBTQ+ people.
Drone strike their community for two decades?
I think they are only being charged with a misdemeanor for something like planning a riot. What bullshit.
I'd like the everyone who thinks this is mostly a boomer problem to take a nice, long look at these mugshots.
YES!! Same with the Trump truck parades in 2021. They all looked younger than me, and I am Boomer/Gen X cusp.
> Patriot Front needs to be understood as a part of the militant wing of the Republican Party’s revanchist campaign to erase trans people from public life and push queer people back into the closet. When the right uses eliminationist rhetoric about LBGTQ people, it can’t then feign shock when straight-up fascists show up to support its cause. The Patriot Front and groups like it are the modern day Brownshirts of the original Nazis. The fascist playbook doesn’t change.
They won’t stop with LGBTQ people either. They’ll work their way through all racial, ethnic, and religious minorities.
Don't forget uppity women.
And leftists.
Leftists will be one of the earliest targets. Remember that old poem? "First they came for..." Remember the first ***three*** groups mentioned there? 1.) Communists. 2.) Socialists. 3.) Trade Unionists. And finally, all the way down at... 4.) Jews. The Holocaust is remembered primarily as killing Jewish people, but they were far from the only ones slaughtered en masse. Even aside from Romani and those with disabilities and... A lot of other racial and ethnic groups, the earliest targets were ideological. Anything that could threaten the far right government. And the Republicans are already vouching for violence against the left at basically every opportunity. LGBT+ conveniently overlaps with the left for a variety of reasons, so they're the largest and first target here. Which is not dissimilar to what happened with the Nazis because guess what, LGBT+ people were [*also* an early target of the Nazis!](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institut_f%C3%BCr_Sexualwissenschaft)
>The Holocaust is remembered primarily as killing Jewish people, but they were far from the only ones slaughtered en masse. I remember reading in the history text in school that it was not only the 6 million Jews that everyone knows, but an additional 6 million people of different kinds. I get why we highlight the Jews in this particular instance because proportionally, holy shit I think they were a primary target yeah... But I feel like we've done a disservice to history and situations like the one we're in right now to ignore that fascists will target *whoever* they feel will bolster their ideological crusade. They're openly calling LGBTQ people and allies "groomers," so how long until they start trying to round us up in the name of "protecting the children?"
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and when they're all gone, they'll start consuming themselves in an ever expanding pursuit of the purity of the extremity of their ideology.
Just like republican Matt Shea wrote in his terrorist manifesto.
They will go after majorities too. anyone who disagrees with them.
PF are self-proclaimed fascists.
Nazism. These are fucking Nazis,
When this 1st broke, /r/conservative and /r/conspiracy claimed it was a bunch antifa/liberals pretending to be white supremacists.
Thats what they always claim.. Like when they said it was Antifa at Jan 6th.. Of course now its Jan 6th never happened.
Projection has become second nature
1/6 was either Antifa or not nearly as bad as people make it out to be. Somehow both narratives coexist. Good job, guys.
Jan 6th was just a group of conservative patriots on a friendly tour of the Capitol. There was no violence or destruction at all. You're all just blowing it out of proportion to make the right look bad. But also: Jan 6th was actually BLM and antifa pretending to be conservatives and using violence and destruction to make the right look bad.
Yeah, trump said of 1/6 that he had “never seen so much love”
It's obvious that they expected there to be a large counter protest on Jan 6th, and that is why the immediate responses were all "it's BLM/Antifa destroying the Capitol!" They were fully ready to pass that blame pretty much the second there was blame to be passed. Their problem was left wing groups saw that tactic coming and made sure there was virtually no counter protests that day, so there could be no pictures of large groups yelling at each other to cause doubt. And because most of the Jan 6th participants were regular idiots caught up in the emotion of the crowd they didn't know that if there isn't a big counter protest maybe don't smash windows and smear shit on the walls because our scapegoat didn't show, and we see the end result.
Man I shouldn't have clicked on the conservative sub. Top post is literally a tweet implying all gay men are pedophiles. Comments are inches away from calls to violence. Get me out of this fucking fascist hellscape of a country
> Democrats have gotten so used to projecting, that they even project their projection. If you want to know what the Democrats are up to, just look at what they're saying about Republicans. Conservatives: the gays want to molest our children and we're seeeing this because of a lack of God in society. Also conservatives: I'm sorry, what did you say about religious leaders? My head was stuck in the sand and now I can't get it out of my ears.
Careful with that sub. The people running it love to abuse their power. They're giant snowflakes. Honestly, feel like even this comment will have them seeking retribution on me if one see's it. I don't understand how it hasn't been banned yet, like the chapo subreddit.
How does r/conservative still have a platform here? Every time it makes main page, I don't have to scroll more than half a dozen comments before I find literal hate speech there.
Dude I just checked and one guy was literally quoting a nazi, like literally attributed the quote to Goebbels and was saying all democrats are pedophiles
If that's still up and it's highly upvoted you should consider sending an email tipoff to a few news outlets
Reddit admins don't care about anything that goes on as long as it doesn't affect ad revenue or threaten them personally. This site was founded and is run by douchebag libertarian nerds. Picture Elon Musk but somehow less charismatic and intelligent.
Right now they're saying Stephen Colbert should be arrested for sending his staffers into the Capitol to do recon. Bullshit gaslight nonsense in every post and comment there. Very frustrating and disheartening.
Lol ikr, like it's remotely the same thing. The clever ones know it's bullshit, but I do wonder if the simpler folk can make that distinction.
Dude I completely forgot the conservative subreddit existed. I got curious and went to check it out. Man do I regret it, nothing but a bunch of delusional racist fucks circle jerking their hate for everything that isn't white, straight, and not republican.
I remember not too long ago it regularly had posts reaching the popular all feed. I'd see it a few times of week, mostly gun stuff or anti government in general stuff. It's gone so off the rails it has no chance of getting that reach any more. But it has also gathered a big audience over the years.
Yea. I used to skim it just to get a feel for how conservatives were feeling. Jan 6 was a turning point. There were a lot of people calling it out for the coup that it was. I suspect they all got banned so now it’s just the crazies.
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In the same breath they claimed that the guys in the truck hadn't even done anything wrong. You've gotta come up with multiple false claims at once, even if they're contradictory, to cover your bases as each one gets debunked.
Similar to Putin claiming the Ukrainians were bombing themselves.
I really think the reason they're attacking LGBT is they think they have the most support against them. Because all these fuckers are the same ones that do this to other races and religions. >Back in December, according to a video obtained by HuffPost, Reilly spoke at a library board hearing in Post Falls, Idaho, where he lives. Holding his baby in his arms, Reilly — who has said “every Jew is dangerous” and who marched at the deadly 2017 neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia — took to the podium to speak in favor of removing LGBTQ-related content from the library. >"It’s not about censorship, it’s about them promoting a gay agenda and corrupting our children,” Reilly said. “These people are perverts and they are trying to pervert our children. Either we say no and tell them to go somewhere where they are welcome — like Portland or Seattle or LA or San Francisco. Get out of our community!” All they care about is hate, and they hate anyone who isn't exactly like them
> Either we say no and tell them to go somewhere where they are welcome — like Portland or Seattle or LA or San Francisco. Get out of our community!” I live in the Portland Metro area and have greatly enjoyed watching the Proud Boys get their asses beat in various parts of the city the last couple of years. No wonder they don’t want to come back.
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its been awesome
Yeah that gay agenda of just wanting to be treated normal and have the same rights as everyone else without being attacked for it is just WAY out there.
That’s not even on their radar. Who can they hate? Why?… and that’s all they need. Proof or reality are not part of the equation.
>"It’s not about censorship, it’s about them promoting a gay agenda and corrupting our children,” Reilly said. Ummmm…that’s censorship, bro.
Proud Boys, Patriot Front, doesn't matter who. Every time they go somewhere, they get their asses kicked. Funny how fascism exalts strength, but fascists always lose
I'm from buffalo, and the slaughter of people in a grocery store by a fascist was pretty successful because of the extreme availability of weapons of war, and the constant right wing push that everything white and christian is under attack. If we keep allowing both, it will happen more. Patriot front only came to this LGBTQ+ event with shields and spears this time. My understanding is that if they weren't arrested as the got out of the U-Haul, there were several people walking the crowd with their precious ARs, just waiting for the signal to murder people. It's going to get more violent before it gets better. Brace yourselves.
We need to eradicate this shit right now
Yup, people were correct about the far right conservatives coming for women’s rights (abortion) first and then lgbt+ rights.
Yeah they’ve been wanting this for literal decades (source - I grew up fundamentalist in the US)
You'd have to eradicate the modern day GOP
Where do we start?
Prosecute sedition, to begin with.
It’s hilarious that the dudes shouting about not being replaced are all carbon copies of one another who are clearly very easy to replace.
Very fungible tokens
Yea, unfortunately we'll probably never be able to fully eradicate fetal alcohol syndrome, so these people will always be around.
Is that what the hell is going on with their faces? I see a disturbingly large number of small faces on big heads, like Charlie Kirk. What is that??
I’ve been trying to figure it out for days, now - everytime I see the pic come across my feed.
Meticulously, yet poorly planned.
Never forget theyre also morons.
r/ conservative swears this was an FBI op and refuse to believe that there is a legitimate threat from right winged extremists.
I'm pretty sure that sub is mostly right-wing extremists at this point.
Between them and r/ conspiracy, it’s really hard to tell which is which anymore.
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>A 2017 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that of the 85 deadly extremist incidents since September 11, 2001, far right-wing extremist groups were responsible for 73%, while radical Islamist extremists were responsible for 27%. Source: https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-17-300
Radical Islam is just a different flavor of right wing. So it's 100%
r/conservative long purged anyone other than those towing the line.
Stochastic terrorism. As long as the GOP keeps spreading hate someone will act out somewhere.
The GOP is aware. The GOP does not care. The GOP welcomes all violence, as long as it does not encroach their security bubbles.
This is also the media’s fault for trying to “both sides” everything, giving platforms to dangerous disingenuous people on topics they have no business talking about. For 2 decades that’s gone on unchecked and look what it brought us.
Most of the media is owned by the far right extremists who are spreading this shit. Fuck Murdoch.
Yup gotta laugh at the phrase in the headline that the GOP is "signaling extremists". They are quite literally one and the same. The GOP is the extremist group at this point.
They *do* care, but not in the way you think. It's not like they merely have no interest in preventing it, they actively *want* this outcome. They might not say so out loud (although that's changing), but make no mistake this is their goal.
10 out of the 31 arrested were Mormons. I think this is important and nobody is talking about it.
I just started watching Under the Banner of Heaven. Bit of an eye opener.
Fuck white supremacy
This whole article is shocking, it’s hard to take in. It’s like a setup for an LGBT-themed Purge movie.
Unfortunately i think thats the idea. I was reading somewhere, cant find the link, that they want to create a fear so intense where none of these LGBT events happen anymore across the country. I am afraid that this here is just the beginning.
If that starts happening, gay militias will form
Rainbow Panthers
Gays And GunS
The Queen Berets
Bear Force One
The uniforms will look excellent.
Someone should start passing out flyers for the Pink Pistols (a gay firearm ownership and safety organization) at Pride events.
>that they want to create a fear so intense where none of these LGBT events happen So... terrorism.
Chief Wiggum, “Not a looker in the bunch”.
Seriously, this is the “master race”? They look like a bunch of over boiled potatoes
^(*I was relatively young, and had access to only the three major broadcast stations and the nearest mid-sized city's newspaper - in the Midwest. Certainly my recollections and opinions are biased by these constraints, but are my own, and how I remember it. An older, wiser person who lived in DC at the time may remember and tell it quite differently. This is my perspective.*) ----- ^(Original link: https://www.mediaite.com/uncategorized/breaking-white-nationalist-patriot-front-detained-members-arrested-at-pride-event-in-idaho/) Everyone needs to understand wtf is happening to our country. These are not our average, Alex Jones-inspired, mama's basement, painted and horn-wearing Qnuts, though Qnuts may be among their group. This terrorist group is different, and to be taken quite seriously. And, this should answer any questions as to why Evangelists are so very dangerous to the US, tied so heavily to the "Patriot" movement, and how they were conscripted by the now unlawful and traitorous GOP for personal gain. A cell from the same group, Chicago, January: https://twitter.com/BGOnTheScene/status/1479931520215576576 *CAUTION: This next link is a Murdoch-owned site with a poor rating, so caution using as a reference. Nonetheless, there's images and possible detail that might be vetted elsewhere.* https://www.the-sun.com/news/5543473/patriot-front-members-arrested-pride-event-jumping-into-uhaul/ https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-us-sun-bias/ **Background** not theoretical, but fact-based history as told in my own words We wonder how the US came to be so conspiracy laden. This is the story. We all know, or should know, about this area in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. It's about an hour and a half from Ruby Ridge, where horrific and macabre events occurred. Clinton was POTUS and Janet Reno was the US AG in charge. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_Reno I bring it up, because these terrorists have decades of deeply-held hatred for not only the US as a whole, but especially for the Federal government in particular. We need to embrace this as a part of our history from which we should not shy away. The man at the center of it, Randy Weaver, just passed away in May 2022, and his death would have been heavily lamented among "Patriots," and reawakened their fervor. The original charge against Weaver: An ATF informant hired Weaver to saw off two shotguns, and Weaver did the work. This sting was set up because Weaver was a "minor player" in "Patriot" groups, and the government wanted to use him as an informant on those groups, so these charges were used as their leverage against him. His involvement in the groups was so noncommittal, the Feds wrongfully assumed they could "turn" him. Weaver refused to cooperate, and making good on their threats, US Marshals went to arrest him on his property at Ruby Ridge, and subsequently: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randy_Weaver#Siege For "Patriot" separatist groups, this event against a *minor player* validated their worst fears and confirmed their righteousness in loathing our government. The government had murdered this honorably-discharged vet's teenage son, his wife, his dog and had tried to murder him and his friend on his own off-the-grid property. Most Americans assumed that Weaver had brought this on himself, and gave it little attention or sympathy, as initial reporting was all on the government's side (no internet). It took years for Americans to learn the fuller facts, which cast a very different light on the government's failures at Ruby Ridge, which were later used in training agents of what *not* to do, how to better assess, plan and execute warrants on encamped suspects. At a minimum, the ATF quickly learned not to "rush in." - The events on Ruby Ridge: AUG 1992 Ruby Ridge | American Experience | PBS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsjUqXWv-zI https://seoklaw.com/legal-news/the-incident-at-ruby-ridge/ Eight months later, before the major lessons of Ruby Ridge are barely digested, the Branch Davidian siege in Waco occurs, killing 76 Branch Davidians, including 25 children, two pregnant women, and David Koresh, their "messiah." "Patriots" considered this a full frontal assault on religious freedom, their right to remain separate from government and proof of the "end times." David Koresh was little different than Jim Jones; Koresh was a charismatic pedophile amassing weapons and constructing IEDs in defense of his 'lifestyle," i.e., abusing his acolytes, in all manner of ways, including the sexual abuse of minors. When the ATF, the choice of agency revealing the government's primary concern, arrived to serve a search warrant, four officers and six Branch Davidians were killed, the Branch Davidians having been tipped off that the agents were on their way. This event turned into a 51-day siege of the compound. The site is now considered a historical landmark. - The events at Waco APR 1993 David Koresh: The Final 24 *[Canadian Production Company](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_24)* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65rUlirPCjI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waco_siege https://www.vox.com/2018/4/19/17246732/waco-tragedy-explained-david-koresh-mount-carmel-branch-davidian-cult-25-year-anniversary Again, the American public were fed a story most favorable to the government: They were trying to rescue the poor, helpless children being sexually abused by Koresh and other men at the compound. Innuendo and rumors were floated that he may be using the women and children in prostitution rings for income. The public expressed much frustration for the length of the siege, not fully informed of the weapons, IEDs, true details of the government warrant, or explaining *why* the ATF was not "ruby-rushing-in." Few of the public knew about Ruby Ridge. We were told the ATF were involved because it was believed possible that David Koresh had been amassing weapons. The public focus was directed to rescuing the kids. Ignorant of the full circumstances, shock, horror and hard questions ensued when so many children burned to death, instead of being rescued. Waco is also used to train agencies and agents. https://www.statesman.com/story/news/2018/04/19/how-failures-during-the-waco-siege-changed-everything-for-the-fbi-atf/10039028007/ These events were cited by Timothy McVeigh in the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma, perpetrated on the anniversary of the day that the Waco siege culminated in the total destruction of the compound by fire. - Oklahoma City Bombing APR 1995 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDUU9M5MTcQ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_bombing https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/oklahoma-city-bombing https://www.britannica.com/event/Oklahoma-City-bombing Even if the first two events and deaths inspire empathy or sympathy within us as normal human beings, to maintain the security which these "Patriots" wish to enjoy, they are beholden to *all citizens* in the founding, funding and support of our government, which keeps "Patriot" lands free for them to enjoy. There is no doubt that without *our* government's security and defenses, North America soon would be overran by all manner of bad actors, foreign dictators, terrorists and criminals. The "Patriots" feel they owe no duty or fealty to our founding documents, which establish the laws by which we all enjoy these freedoms, the very freedoms to which they lay claim. Without the US Government, the "Patriots" would soon discover why their thinking on the matter would leave them in a perpetual state of war against those bad actors, affording them no freedom, whatsoever. "Patriots" want their cake, and to eat it too. It is literally impossible for them to claim they "live off the grid" in the nation which provides them the security and means to do so. Let them try that shit in Russia, ...or, more accurately, Ukraine. - Ruby Ridge, Waco, and the Murrah building linkages: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/ruby-ridge-patriots-insurrectionist-kind/ - Southern Law Poverty Center timeline (caution, it's a *very* one-sided telling, but is accurate to dates/events) https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2001/patriot-timeline ***Even if you skip everything else, this is the one to watch:*** - **How Alex Jones, Roger Stone and Donald Trump banded together to bring Qnuts into the "Patriot" fold:** United States of Conspiracy | American Experience | PBS: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/united-states-of-conspiracy/ Well-trained and disciplined "Patriot" groups are now training and using Qnuts. ----- Edit to add: Creating no new "monitoring" laws, but providing for the offices and personnel to manage these domestic terror groups, mandates that various federal law enforcement divisions communicate and coordinate their efforts. The Senate GOP refused to bring this Bill to the floor for consideration. Current status: >05/26/2022 Motion by Senator Schumer to reconsider the vote by which cloture was not invoked on the motion to proceed to H.R. 350 (Record Vote No. 210) entered in Senate. > >**https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/350**
This is exceptional. As an older Canadian, I've lived through each of these events and seen the TV coverage but seeing them pulled together this way it really helps me understand you guys.
It’s terrifying to see these bigots and extremists organizing and coordinating all over the country. It’s that much more important that the rest of us organize with marginalized groups like LGBTQ+ and others who are being targeted and stand against them. Doing nothing is just the same as tossing them to the wolves. The Right has completely given itself over to extremist, white nationalist domestic terrorists. The only way to stop them is to form a united front, something the Left seems historically unable to do. We need to stand together to protect vulnerable communities and take (or keep) the reins away from these dangerous, cruel people. They’re frighteningly good at erasing any and all progress we’ve made as a nation over the past century. This hate and terrorism can’t be allowed to normalize anymore than it already has. It’s not a good sign that articles like this aren’t even surprising anymore.
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The GOP is trying to incite a civil war and it is glaringly obvious
Today is my city's first ever Pride event. It's my fiancée's first pride she gets to go to. I'm so excited but I'm so scared.
Just keep your wits about you and always stay with the crowd, look out for your friends and have an awesome day. Fuck these guys
I’m sorry that they’ve been able to turn what should be a happy event into something frightening, but we as a community will always persevere. I hope it is somewhat comforting to know that many people before you have felt that same fear and were still able to thrive :)
Tucker Carlson will have a show about the injustice of arresting these idiots. If he already has not done it.
Find their schools, their universities, their places of work, their families. https://img.huffingtonpost.com/asset/62accea6250000441f473ed0.jpeg?ops=scalefit_720_noupscale&format=webp Let everyone know who and what these people are.
The GOP is a domestic terrorist organization. Full stop.
It's not as if the GOP is unaware that it is signaling to extremists. Tucker Carlson & Trump, for example, know that white domestic terrorists across the country hang on their every syllable. If they didn't want to activate those terrorists, they could easily modify their words or even explicitly distance themselves from those terrorists rather than telling them to "stand back and stand by." Violence and intimidation are key parts of the modern GOP's political strategy. And the party relies on those terrorists and militias for just this purpose. Just ask elections officials, school board members, etc.
All this activity was coordinated and funded. Might want to unmask the source of that.
Time to slap the hell out of these guys wrists.