The Secret Origins of the Patriot Movement

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Re: The Secret Origins of the Patriot Movement

Postby American Dream » Thu Jul 23, 2015 2:22 pm

http://www.rop.org/patriot-movement-par ... in-oregon/

Patriot Movement Paramilitaries in Oregon

Spencer Sunshine, PhD, Associate Fellow at Political Research Associates

This is an expanded version of a talk given at the Rural Organizing Project’s Rural Caucus and Strategy Session in Woodburn, Oregon on June 13, 2015.


The Patriot Movement: From Posse Comitatus to the Oath Keepers
In April 2015, armed right-wing paramilitaries converged on a mining claim in the Galice Mining District near Grants Pass in Josephine County, Oregon. Organizationally, it was a combination of different parts of what is called the Patriot movement: militias, 3%ers, Sovereign Citizens, and the Oath Keepers.

The Patriot movement is a form of extreme right politics that exists between the Tea Party end of the Republican Party and the white supremacist movement.* Generally those in the Patriot movement view the current U.S. federal government as an illegitimate, totalitarian state. They see the militias that they are building—and allied county sheriffs—as political-military formations that will eventually replace the current federal government.

Many of their movement’s tactics originate in white supremacist politics, mixed with ideas derived from anti-Communist conspiracy theories of the John Birch Society. According to Daniel Levitas, the group that first espoused many of the basic Patriot concepts was Posse Comitatus, whose founder, William Potter Gale, was a member of the racist Christian Identity religion. In the 1960s, he started to advocate Posse Comitatus (power of the county), based on the idea that the county sheriff is the highest political authority of the land. Gale thought that, in the post-Civil Rights era, the federal government was a totalitarian state run by a cabal of Jews. “County power” would allow people to ignore Supreme Court decisions and federal laws about civil rights and income tax, and allow a return to white supremacy and unfettered capitalism, free from federal regulations. Posse Comitatus also advocated for armed citizens’ militias and crank legal filings, which set the foundation for the formation of militias and Sovereign Citizen ideas, respectively. In 1976, the FBI estimated there were 12,000­–50,000 Posse members.

The militia movement formed in the early 1990s. It was focused on conspiracy theories about a global New World Order, black helicopters, and a coming United Nations invasion. Many of these ideas had their origins in antisemitic conspiracy theories about a secret global elite that was conspiring to subvert national autonomy. These New World Order theories no longer named Jews as the active agents of the global conspiracy, but they used the same framework—thereby harnessing the emotional power of the older antisemitic narratives.

White supremacists were deeply involved in the militia movement from the beginning. Racist leaders Louis Beam and Richard Butler (an early Posse member, who later founded Aryan Nations) were present at the 1992 Estes Park, Colorado gathering, a key meeting in the founding of the modern militia movement. White supremacists helped create the militia movement’s structure and public presentation, seeing this as a way to mainstream some of their ideas. They downplayed open racism and cast the federal government as the main problem, as part of an alliance with gun advocates and other right-wing activists such as right libertarians and Christian Right activists who embraced conspiracy theories about “big government” tyranny and political repression. For example, one of the early influential militia organizers was Linda Thompson, an attorney from Indiana, who was not a White supremacist but rather a libertarian.

The government standoffs, both with white supremacists at Ruby Ridge in 1992, as well as the 1993 Waco siege, inspired the militias and their movement grew quickly. In the broadest sense it included up to five million people who agreed with its theories, and in the mid-1990s there were 20,000–60,000 active militia members. However, the militias got a bad reputation after Timothy McVeigh (who was part of their neo-Nazi-influenced wing) and Terry Nichols (who was not), killed 168 in the 1995 bombing of Oklahoma City’s Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. After 2000, the militias went into eclipse.

During George W. Bush’s terms the Patriot movement was small; he did not fit the movement’s Manchurian Candidate narrative of a leader who was a sleeper agent for a foreign power, plotting treason against his nation. Obama’s election in 2008 fit nicely, however—with the “birther” conspiracies and accusations that he is a secret Muslim—and the Patriot movement had a sudden resurgence. In 2012, there was a growth spurt in reaction to new discussions of gun control after the Aurora, Colorado and Sandy Hook massacres. There was both a revival of the older Patriot forms and the emergence of new groups: the 3%ers were co-founded by militia veteran Mike Vanderboegh in 2008, and the Oath Keepers were established by Stewart Rhodes in 2009. The focus of this newly revived Patriot movement shifted from global conspiracy theories back to the federal government—a return to Posse Comitatus’s conception.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), there were 874 Patriot groups in 2014; this was down from a peak of 1,360 groups in 2012. Oregon mirrored the national trend. Before Obama’s election 2008, the SPLC reported that there were five or six groups; in 2011 and 2012, this jumped to thirty-one, but in 2013 dropped to seventeen.

Since the 2009 revival, many of the new Patriot movement groups have tried to distance themselves from direct ties to white supremacists, despite some groups being still mired in racism. Even an article on the Josephine County Oath Keepers website admits this, saying “it cannot be argued that there aren’t some very bad people out there forming ‘militias’ based on hatred, bigotry or other negative philosophies” (however, the writers exclude themselves and their affiliated groups from this). I would also like to stress that there are Patriot movement members who are people of color. So while those of us on the left may consider the politics of many Patriot groups to be implicitly racist, with exceptions they are not explicitly so.

The Oath Keepers were founded by Rhodes, a former Ron Paul aide whose connections helped mainstream the group as a libertarian faction. They are a membership-based organization (which in 2014 claimed to have 40,000 members) that recruits current and former members of the military, police, firefighters, and first responders. The organization asks members to disobey orders they believe are unconstitutional. While this position sounds unobjectionable, what it actually means is deeply problematic. The Oath Keepers’ ten point “Orders We Will Not Obey” illustrates their extreme right-wing views. They believe the federal government is about to: seize all privately held guns, suspend privacy rights, detain right-wing activists as “unlawful enemy combatants,” impose martial law on the individual states (before invading them), “blockade American cities, thus turning them into giant concentration camps,” round citizens up and force them into “detention camps,” allow foreign troops to invade the United States, confiscate privately held possessions (including food), and end the right to free speech. These are the same paranoid conspiracy theories that have circulated since the early 1960s when the John Birch Society made them staples of the extreme right. In over half a century (including six years of the Obama administration), not a single one has come to pass—but this has not lessened these stories’ effectiveness in mobilizing the extreme right.

In the last few years, the group has moved towards having an active paramilitary wing: they have held armed marches in Texas; deployed armed members to Ferguson, the Bundy Ranch, and Josephine County; and have formed Community Preparedness Teams, which include armed members. (In July 2014, they also sent members to Murietta, California to block buses transporting immigrants who had been detained, although not as an armed action.) Despite this, the Oath Keepers are the most mainstream of the Patriot groups, and they often intentionally soft-sell their actual politics.

The 3%ers share an almost identical ideology to the Oath Keepers, but they were developed as a more decentralized form of militias (which are thought to be heavily infiltrated by the federal government). Their name refers to the percentage of colonists who actually took up guns during the American Revolution. While 3%er is a kind of political identity—anyone can claim the label—there are a series of local and national organizations. This group is fixated on gun issues and is very extreme in its approach. Many 3%ers believe the time to fight the federal government is almost here.

Last of the Patriot movement groupings are the Sovereign Citizens, whose telltale marks are all over prior legal filings by members of the Galice Mining District, the group that actually called the Oath Keepers in to Josephine County. Sovereigns come directly out of Posse ideology, which held that African-Americans are not full citizens because the Fourteenth Amendment (which established citizenship for everyone born in the United States, including freed slaves) is not legitimate. One writer says, “Although not all sovereigns subscribe to or even know about the theory’s racist basis, most contend that they do not have to pay taxes, are not subject to most laws, and are not citizens of the United States.” They have created their own their parallel government courts and juries, where they try individuals and can sentence them to death—which has included elected officials who have crossed their path. All of this is based on a completely fictitious argument regarding how Constitutional law works. Sovereigns have been involved in numerous armed confrontations with police, especially since the Patriot movement revival. In 2011 the SPLC estimated there were 100,000 “hard-core sovereign believers,” with twice as many sympathizers.

There are direct connections between the 1990s militias and the current Patriot movement. In January 2012, militia veteran and former sheriff Richard Mack—who has worked directly with white supremacists, and is also on the Oath Keepers board—formed a new group called the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA), which is formally affiliated with the Oath Keepers, and has over 500 county sheriffs. In 2013, twenty-one Oregon sheriffs were CSPOA members, although only fourteen of them are still in office.**

Nationally, some of these ideas are starting to mainstream into the state legislatures. In Oregon, both Rhodes and Vanderboegh went to Salem for a May 30, 2015, “I Will Not Comply” rally, and spoke alongside state-level elected representatives in opposition to Senate Bill 941, which requires background checks for private gun sales. In 2010, Vanderboegh called for throwing bricks through Democratic Party office windows—a call that was acted on. In May 2015, Rhodes (while speaking to a crowd that included the Arizona state Senate president) called for Senator John McCain to be tried for treason and executed. One is led to wonder about Oregon’s Republican officials—like State Representatives Mike Nearman and Bill Post, and State Senator Kim Thatcher—who are willing to appear on the same platform as Patriot movement activists who call for violent acts against their legislative colleagues.

What we saw in Josephine County was the miners—themselves involved in a group filing legal work with Sovereign Citizen markings—calling in various parts of the Patriot movement for armed muscle, including the Oath Keepers, militias, and 3%ers. Last year, many Patriot movement activists went to Cliven Bundy’s ranch in Nevada to support his refusal to pay fees for grazing his animals on federal land; they established an armed camp and snipers trained weapons on federal agents. The Oath Keepers wanted to make the Josephine mine a re-run of the Bundy Ranch, but this time under their organization’s total control. In fact, some of the same people from Bundy went to Josephine to participate.

Right-Wing Organizing and Land-Use Struggles in Oregon
Oregon has a long and deep history of extreme right and far right organizing. The state had racial exclusion laws in the nineteenth century and elected a Klan-backed governor in the 1920s. In the 1930s, hundreds of Oregonians belonged to the pro-Nazi Silver Shirts organization, while in the 1940s, Oregonians of Japanese descent were sent to internment camps. In the 1970s, a Portland veteran of the Silver Shirts, Henry Lamont “Mike” Beach, became the most important publicist for Posse Comitatus. Chapters were established in a half-dozen counties, including Lane County, and in 1976 Posse members briefly took over a farm in Stanfield, Oregon.

In the late 1980s, the state was a center for the Nazi skinhead movement. In 1988, Nazi skinheads affiliated with Tom Metzger’s White Aryan Resistance murdered Ethiopian immigrant Mulugeta Seraw in Southeast Portland. White supremacists, including the Aryan Nations, cooked up the Northwest Imperative—a plan to turn several Northwest states, including Oregon, into a white ethnostate. In 1995, Aryan Nations’ plans to make Josephine County the center of an organizing drive were cancelled after an anti-racist march in Grants Pass drew 1,500. In 2010, one of the post-Butler Aryan Nations factions tried to move its headquarters to John Day, Oregon; but this, too, was scrapped after strong local opposition, aided by the Rural Organizing Project (ROP).

The homophobic, Christian Right group Oregon Citizens Alliance was active in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and pushed several state, county, and city referendums, including Measure 9—the opposition to which led to the formation of ROP. Oregon also had its share Patriot groups in the 1990s.

There is also a history of land-use struggles in rural Oregon. Small-town wealth started to dry up in the 1970s and never recovered. In 2007, timber payments were $280 million, but in 2014 were only around $100 million, and will end in two years. Ongoing struggles, especially since the 1990s, over water, forests, and other natural resources have pitted a variety of groups—including Native tribes, environmentalists, and federal agencies—against those on the right who seek to engage in the unregulated exploitation of the environment without larger social or environmental obligations. Patriot groups are often involved in these land-use struggles, including the 2001 Klamath Water Crisis, which militia groups supported and also featured a personal appearance by Mack.

The presence of armed Patriot movement organizing in Josephine County exists in relation to both the deep history of extreme right organizing in Oregon around social issues, and broader fights for unrestricted land use.

Sucker Punch
Some progressives have sympathies for the Oath Keepers and see them as something like a veterans group that opposes invasive federal rule. One reason for this position is that the Patriot movement often uses producerist narratives.

Producerism is the idea that real worth comes from “productive capital” (concrete labor, like farming or manufacturing) but not “unproductive capital” (abstract labor, such as financial dealings). Producerists scapegoat minority groups, which can be either marginalized or elite—so both the “undeserving poor” and “international bankers” are condemned. (In fact, these can often be code words for people of color on one hand, and Jews on the other.) But if you listen only to the anti-elitist rhetoric—attacking Wall Street banks and international trade deals—it sounds similar to progressive views.

It is a deeply mistaken approach to unproblematically join forces with these political groups. At Political Research Associates we call this the “sucker punch”—progressives are taken in by rhetoric that seems to match their beliefs without realizing that the true aims of these extreme right groups are to dismantle social gains and reestablish an extremely conservative society that will have clear racial, gender, and sexual hierarchies.

Why This Is Important
What has happened in Josephine County is not just a local issue with some kooky miners. It is a canary in the coalmine. At the end of May 2015, neo-Nazi skinheads showed up in Olympia to publicly support a police officer who shot two young, unarmed black men. The fact that both Nazi and armed Patriot groups are able to mount these brazen public displays seems to show that this is a fertile time for extreme right-wing activism.

All of this is also in the context of an increasing tendency for right-wing activists to brandish firearms in order to intimidate their opponents. A few years ago in the Southwest, the Minuteman Project formed a vigilante border patrol, drawing support from Oregon elected officials. Although the group has since folded, it has been followed by other, smaller groups—some of whose members drove up to Josephine County to join the armed camps. In Arizona, armed right-wing groups have shown up to both Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter protests to intimidate them, and more recently, hundreds of armed Islamophobes rallied outside a mosque. (Imagine the outrage if this had happened outside a church or synagogue!) The ability of Patriot movement factions to conduct public, armed actions in Oregon shows how extensive their base of support is, and how weak the opposition is.

The federal government will not take care of this problem. It is widely seen that, since the debacles at Ruby Ridge and Waco in the 1990s, the feds have a long-standing policy not to engage in open confrontation with Patriot groups—although they do monitor them closely. The feds only intervene when they think there is going to be an assassination or bombing.

Although the Oath Keepers do stand up for privacy rights, on practically every other progressive metric they are bad news. Under their influence, systemic racism will continue as it is or get worse. They are deeply anti-immigrant. Armed with climate change denialism and fierce opposition to federal environmental laws, they will not help us deal with the rapidly degenerating environmental situation. Since the Patriot movement’s economic answers are to advocate for more capitalism, economic insecurity and wealth disparity will only increase if their ideas are implemented.

I urge ROP members to take this situation very seriously and see it for what it is: right-wing paramilitaries brandishing weapons in public settings, successfully intimidating the federal government, and winning people to their agenda of returning our society to one dominated by an extreme right-wing mindset. You cannot let this go unchecked.

You have a big task in front of you. You need to halt their advance, turn back their movement, and win the rural areas to a progressive agenda. On one hand, Oregon’s Patriot movement is organized and has momentum. On the other, you have ROP, which is perhaps a unique organization in the country, and a network of people all over who are willing to help you.

Notes
* There is no consensus on the meaning of terms like extreme right, far right, and radical right. This essay uses the term “far right” to refer to political actors who explicitly ground their perspective in racial or ethnonationalist claims, and “extreme right” to describe political movements that are radically opposed to the present system, but whose opposition is not centered in racism/ethnonationalism. The Patriot movement has far right elements in it, but exists primarily on the extreme right today.

** The CSPOA website, updated as of June 27, 2015, lists twenty-one Oregon county sheriffs as members; however ROP researchers showed that seven of these sheriffs were no longer in office. Current Oregon CSPOA sheriffs include: Tom Bergin (Clatsop), Jeff Dickerson (Columbia), Craig Zanni (Coos), Jim Hensley (Crook), Larry Blanton (Deschutes), John Hanlin (Douglas), Glenn E. Palmer (Grant), Frank Skrah (Klamath), Brian Wolfe (Malheur), Jason Myers (Marion), Bob Wolfe (Polk), Boyd Rasmussen (Union), Steve Rogers (Wallowa), and Pat Garrett (Washington). Myers is also president of the Oregon State Sheriffs’ Association, while Palmer is on the CSPOA Council of Sheriffs, Peace Officers and Public Officials.

CSPOA lists the following seven sheriffs who are no longer in office: Mitchell Southwick (Baker), John Bishop (Curry), Mike Winters (Jackson), Gil Gilbertson (Josephine), Phillip McDonald (Lake), Tim Mueller (Linn), and Jack Crabtree (Yamhill).

Last, it should also be noted that there are other Oregon sheriffs using similar language to the CSPOA but who are not listed as member
s.

For Further Reading:
See PRA’s “Patriot Movement Resource List” at http://politicalresearch.org/patriot-mo ... urce-list/ .
"If you don't stand for something, you will fall for anything."
-Malcolm X
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Re: The Secret Origins of the Patriot Movement

Postby American Dream » Tue Jul 28, 2015 10:00 am

Quotations From Chairman Blair Cottrell

Posted on July 27, 2015 by @ndy

The content below is sourced from comments by Blair Cottrell (AKA ‘National Democratic Party of Australia’), Melbourne organiser and spokesperson for the United Patriots Front, on Facebook, YouTube and Google. Almost all of the comments have since been deleted as part of Cottrell’s efforts to erase his neo-Nazi political commitments.

See also : Dialectic of Counter-Enlightenment: The Frankfurt School as Scapegoat of the Lunatic Fringe (March 9, 2012) [Martin Jay] | The Psychopathic God: Adolf Hitler [Robert G.L. Waite] (November 16, 2009).

On Jews, Marxism, Jews, National Socialism, Jews, Adolf Hitler, Jews, Mein Kampf, Jews:

1)

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Zionists … I’m sick of hearing that coward word. Get some guts people and just say Jews, they are all Jews or Jewish servants. For thousands of years these Jews have been expelled and chased out of European Nations for the same shit. Napoleon and Hitler were the last to stand against them (please don’t reply to this comment with ‘muh holocaust’ bullshit, cause that is a load of crap too). I[‘]m fed up with all the tiptoe words like [i]lluminati and [Z]ionist … I’ve found that all these so-called ‘truth-seekers’ delve into free information until they hit the plateau of the real truth; that point at which they must admit that there is no [I]lluminati or [Z]ionist conspiracy, only a Jewish conspiracy. Very few people make it past that plateau, they are too pacifist and too egalitarian to accept the reality of the Jewish nature and so they become weird peace & love people who forever talk about the ‘universe’ because they failed to acknowledge the reality of racial dispositions of the Jews. There is no “new” conspiracy with an “[I]lluminati” or “Zionist” foundation, there is only Jews; the same old Jews from a thousand years ago practicing the same old shit, only now they are actually succeeding.


2)

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Has it ever occurred to your brilliant mind that Jews get more nobel [sic] prizes because Jews award the nobel [sic] prizes? You do not appreciate the profound level of influence beheld [sic] by Jewish intellectuals. The first line of your comment was interesting, the rest of it was incredible; “jews actually bring generally a good improvement in every environment they live?” Please present to me one single example justifying this statement. You will be hard pressed to find one unless you consider sodomy to be a good improvement to social life. Actually, every environment Jews have ever lived in have been the counties [sic] of other races, and they have worked collectively and actively to morally support that host country; they have introduced and normalized Communism, adultery, homosexuality, atheism (which is a good thing for you I suppose), egalitarianism resulting in bastardization and race-mixing in the host people, economic disasters with the introduction of central banks based upon debt and the list goes on. I would consider the Jews of today to be a much deadlier enemy than the violent Islamic pillagers, who just kill and maim openly and seldom attempt to infiltrate and subvert entire generations of other nations in a bid for world power.


3)

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A race once lost cannot be resurrected. And all culture of a Nation; architecture, tradition and religious-moral structure is a product of the race responsible for is [sic] creation; a nation depends on the solidarity and health of its founding race in order to maintain and advance itself. Many races did not shape Europe, and sacrifice for its cultural preservation and advancement. Europe belongs only to a handful of races responsible for its cultural superiority over the rest of the world. Negroids, Mongoloids, Arabs, Asians, Hispanics, Islander natives, Aboriginals and various other tribal and wandering races had nothing to do with the cultural, traditional and religious-moral development of Europe, though today they enter into it and call it their home. They claim a special right on the grounds of ‘humanitarianism’ to reap what has been sown by thousands of years of European generations, and they are granted this right by political corruption and pacifistic weakness in the Democratic realm. If you cannot see this and the genocidal danger it poses or rather, do not want to see it then congratulations, you are just like the other 95% of common consuming masses. The news starts at 6, don’t miss it.


4)

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Ok gentlemen, here is what this video fails to explain, National Socialism and Marxism are the same in means but opposites in ends, meaning they use the same methods to achieve a completely different ambition; an opposite ambition in fact. The goal of Marxism is to eliminate Europe’s highborn; members of the nobility, royal families and aristocrats as these people represent the greatest opposition to world Jewish powers which are the governing life force behind Marxism. Marxism murders the best of the European races (their kings and aristocrats) by inciting the masses of peasantry into a hysteria of rage and then proceeds to equalize the remaining masses through ‘republican’ aims and thereby organizing them into a stock of human slavery which serves the centralized Jewish world-government. But Marxism can only ensure a lasting dominion over the Nations of Europe and their extensions (Australia, America, ect [sic].) if it convinces the members of these Nations of equality between the races. Marxism is ultimately a world-view that forces a fallacy of an idea onto the masses of these Nations that all the races of the world are equal and therefore should all live and mix together -the Jewish masters of Marxism promote this theory in massive propagandist force still today while they themselves breed only with members of their own racial group, so they may therefore remain the pure-blood masters of the world. Every other race inter-breeds gradually and loses its original identity and creative force while the Jewish race stays pure and therefore stays in control.

Now National Socialism still indeed tried to force the world view onto the masses through propagandist methods and early indoctrination however National Socialism represents the opposite world view; the ‘Naturalist’ view, which is more of a law than a view. It operates from the standpoint that all the races are not equal but unique and ought to be preserved in their purest form. It places the cultural advancement of the species as the highest judge of right and wrong; the most culturally advanced race which in the case of the early 1900’s [sic] and long before-hand was the English, the French and Germans, these cultures were viewed by the National Socialists as the highest races of humanity with a God-given ability to create and sacrifice for the sake of creation. National Socialism also harbors the highborn of its creative racial elements; it does not wish to kills its most gifted people in order to remain in power but rather, it finds and guides them through advanced institutions of education aimed at channeling the best racial elements into the service of the advancement of the whole world race and consequently; its culture.

The simple reality is, Marxism is a socialist clique of Jewish intellectuals and finance peoples which seek to and have usurped the leadership Europe and have gathered up all the power of influence over the masses into their own hands. It is also in its disguise a world view which convinces the masses of racial and sexual equality thereby demoralizing the integrity of Nation they dominate and prolonging their subversive despotic rule over such a Nation. Marxism = Jewish world power with massive influence and the disguise of equality.

National Socialism is or was represented by the intellectuals of the German race which created a bulwark against Marxist power and instead created their own Nationalist influence over their people, essentially inoculating them against Marxist influence by teaching them about it, about race, love of the Nation, advancement of the culture ect [sic].

Marxism is Jewish world power in the pretty disguise of equality.

National Socialism is a leadership of Nationalists who try to advance their own Nation and its culture in spite of Marxism.



Continues at: http://slackbastard.anarchobase.com/?p=38730/
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Re: The Secret Origins of the Patriot Movement

Postby American Dream » Fri Aug 28, 2015 9:27 pm

Oath Keepers, Ferguson, and the Patriot movement’s conflicted race politics

By Matthew N Lyons | Friday, August 28, 2015

When a group built around right-wing conspiracy theories sends heavily armed white men onto streets filled with Black Lives Matter protesters, it makes sense to be worried. But if these are white supremacist vigilantes, why are they proposing to arm black protesters and march alongside them?

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Police sharpshooter at Ferguson protests - a repressive
response strongly criticized by Oath Keepers


Oath Keepers has drawn a lot of discussion and criticism for deploying men with guns to Ferguson, Missouri, last fall and again this summer. As a part of the Patriot movement, Oath Keepers’ politics are predictably right wing on a host of issues — it glorifies private property, promotes homophobia and anti-immigrant scapegoating, and accuses Marxists of making common cause with radical Islamists to destroy western civilization. But Oath Keepers doesn’t fit the white supremacist profile that many leftists expect. Not only has the group disavowed racism (which in itself doesn’t mean much), more surprisingly it has also supported African Americans’ right to protest and even their right to practice armed self-defense. Very recently — apparently in the past few days — Oath Keepers has split over this very issue, suggesting a larger conflict within the Patriot movement over whether to maintain white centrism or pursue a more inclusive strategy. While some leftists may see this as a hopeful sign, I believe it has the potential to make the movement more dangerous.

Backgound on the Patriot movement
Oath Keepers is a Patriot movement organization for current and former military, law enforcement, and emergency personnel. Like other Patriot groups, Oath Keepers believes there is a conspiracy by globalist elites to turn the United States into a dictatorship. Members of Oath Keepers declare they will refuse to follow orders to impose martial law, round up U.S. citizens, or take away their guns. In a speech earlier this year, Oath Keeper leader Stewart Rhodes warned that the U.S. government is plotting to cause economic chaos, start a race war, unleash ISIS cells, and keep new immigrants from assimilating — all paving the way for a police state.

The Patriot movement is a political hybrid, a meeting place for several different rightist currents. Its ideology is rooted in a mix of libertarianism, John Birch-style conspiracy theories, white nationalism, and Christian theocracy. Although all Patriot movement activists are hostile to the federal government to a degree, some have taken an essentially defensive position while others reject the federal government in principle, and a few have planned or carried out physical attacks against federal institutions or personnel. Many Patriot groups avoid explicit racism, yet ideas rooted in white supremacist or antisemitic ideology circulate freely, such as the belief that black people have far fewer rights than whites, because most of them did not become U.S. citizens until passage of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution after the Civil War. Anti-immigrant politics and the implicitly racist claim that Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States (and therefore is ineligible to be president) have also become major movement themes in recent years.

The Patriot movement had its first big upsurge in the 1990s, when hundreds of thousands of activists (or more) — claiming core state functions for themselves — formed “citizen’s militias,” “common law courts,” and related groups. That movement wave didn’t last long, but Barack Obama’s election as president in 2008 sparked a second, even larger upturn. Since then, the number of Patriot groups rose from less than 150, peaked at 1,360 groups in 2012, then dropped to 874 in 2014. Oath Keepers, founded in 2009 and with a (disputed) claim of 30,000 members in 2015, has been on the leading edge of the movement’s resurgence. The movement got another boost in the spring of 2014, when hundreds of activists (including Oath Keepers) gathered at Cliven Bundy’s Nevada ranch to support his “right” to graze his cattle on federal lands without paying the grazing fees. Guns drawn, the heavily armed activists forced federal officers to back down.

Oath Keepers to Ferguson
Last December, after Ferguson, Missouri, exploded in fury over racist police violence and the legal system that protects it, Oath Keepers sent armed volunteers to guard Ferguson businesses and homes against arsonists and looters. This month, as protesters commemorated the anniversary of Michael Brown’s police killing, several heavily armed Oath Keepers were back on the streets of Ferguson. They said they were protecting reporters with Infowars.com, Alex Jones’s right-wing conspiracist website, as well as businesses and residents. Both times, all of the Oath Keepers present were apparently white men.

The Oath Keepers first appeared in Ferguson after reports that Ku Klux Klansmen were converging on the Ferguson area to protect white-owned homes and businesses. One Klan group referred to Darren Wilson (whose killing of Michael Brown touched off Ferguson’s 2014 protests against deadly police racism) as “the cop who did his job against the negro criminal,” and the group’s leader declared, “we can’t have blacks robbing and murdering innocent whites.” Many other rightists, including Patriot groups, echoed this view. When Oath Keepers showed up, a lot of people assumed it was following in the Klan’s footsteps. Many Ferguson activists pointed out that the Oath Keepers had the privilege to carry heavy weapons openly while black people were being arrested just on the suspicion that they were armed. Whatever Oath Keepers’ intentions, as Andrew O’Hehir noted in Salon, “the icon of the white man with a gun” is bound up in American mythology with the long history of Klan terror and racist lynchings.

But Oath Keepers is not the Klan. In some ways it’s rooted in the same legacy, and old-style racist attitudes can be found in its ranks. But overall its response to the Ferguson protests and the Black Lives Matter movement has been very different. It’s worth looking at this response closely, as well as the organizational split it generated, if we want to understand what the Patriot movement is about and why it dwarfs the openly white supremacist right. The New York Times, Washington Post, BBC News, and National Public Radio haven’t done this — and neither have the Southern Poverty Law Center or even Political Research Associates in their reports on right-wing responses to Ferguson. Here’s some of what they left out:

In August 2014, while the Klan was cheering Officer Wilson, Oath Keepers’ Missouri Chapter sent an “open letter of warning” to Missouri Governor Nixon. The letter harshly condemned the Ferguson police for violating people’s right to protest, and offered detailed criticisms of its “spectacularly unsafe weapons discipline and methodology” such as pointing automatic weapons at unarmed protesters. “The militarized police response we saw in Ferguson did not work. All it did was violate the rights of peaceful protesters and media, alienate the community, and make our country look even more like a police state…”

The Oath Keepers’ open letter to Governor Nixon related the Ferguson crackdown to earlier examples of militarized, abusive police practices, including tactics used against Occupy Wall Street and the lockdown after the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombing. Oath Keepers also connected police militarization with U.S. aggression abroad. “[M]uch like over-the top and indiscriminate threat displays and use of force in Iraq lost the hearts and minds of the locals, so too does it lose the battle for hearts and minds here at home – assisting in the agendas of those who wish to divide us along racial lines and create an ‘us vs. them’ mentality among both the people and the police.”

In November, Oath Keepers followed up with an open letter to the people of Ferguson, which began by declaring that “you have an absolute, God given, and constitutionally protected right to protest and speak your mind,” and that “the police have no right, no authority, and no power to violate those rights…” The letter reiterated Oath Keepers’ earlier criticisms of police repression in Ferguson, while also urging protesters to “‘police their own’ by looking out for hot-heads in the crowd who may resort to violence, looting, or property destruction,” so as not to distract from the reasons for the protest.

Addressing the local community, Oath Keepers specifically urged black military veterans to form armed patrols and neighborhood watches to keep Ferguson safe, and cited the Deacons for Defense and Justice (whose armed members defended 1960s civil rights marchers in the Deep South and helped to inspire the Black Panther Party) as a “proud and noble” example to follow, “except this time, you must defend against violence by anyone, whether outsiders or locals, of any race, against anyone, of any race.”

As an example of what they had in mind, Oath Keepers reposted an article about a group of armed black men in Ferguson who were standing guard protecting a white-owned gas station and convenience store. “They said they felt they owed it to [the store owner], who has employed many of them over the years and treats them with respect.”

In August 2015, an Oath Keeper interviewed on the streets of Ferguson offered an angry litany of recent police killings around the U.S., beginning with twelve-year-old Tamir Rice and other African Americans, then noting that police have also killed several whites, such as James Boyd, a homeless man in Albuquerque. In a separate interview, when St. Louis County Oath Keepers leader Sam Andrews was asked what he would like to say to Ferguson protesters, he replied, “The first thing I would say is ‘Black Lives Matter.’ The second thing I would say is that the Oath Keepers are there to protect your rights. We care about you, regardless of all the lies that the media and some other instigators have tried to propagate. Black lives matter, we care about you, we love you and we are there to protect you.”

Andrews also announced plans to hold a march through downtown Ferguson in which Oath Keepers members would accompany fifty African Americans armed with long barrel rifles. “Every person we talked to [among black protesters] said if they carried [guns] they’d be shot by police. That’s the reason we’re going to hold this event and it will be a legal demonstration,” Andrews said. “I’m sick and tired of law enforcement who doesn’t think they have to abide by the law.”


Continues at: http://threewayfight.blogspot.com/2015/ ... triot.html
"If you don't stand for something, you will fall for anything."
-Malcolm X
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Re: The Secret Origins of the Patriot Movement

Postby American Dream » Sat Nov 28, 2015 3:58 pm

http://threewayfight.blogspot.com/2009/ ... triot.html

Militant Anti-Abortion Activity, the Patriot Movement, & the Christian Right

By C. Alexander | Thursday, June 04, 2009

The recent killing of Dr. George Tiller, an abortion provider who has been targeted by anti-abortion activists for decades, has prompted a reexamination of the motivations for violence against clinics and providers. Some anti-abortion activists respond to the slogan, “If abortion is murder, then act like it” by engaging in non-violent demonstrations or civil disobedience, but others feel that performing abortions justifies a violent response. This small subset of the anti-abortion movement sometimes intersects with people who deeply oppose what they see as government intrusion, especially by liberal policies, into their lives. This web resource is intended to shed light on the complex relationships between thought and action behind the assassination.


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Re: The Secret Origins of the Patriot Movement

Postby American Dream » Sat Feb 27, 2016 9:15 am

Yet another patriotic military intelligence officer, fighting the Power:

William Guy Carr

William James Guy Carr (R.D.[1] Commander R.C.N. (R)) (June 2, 1895 - October 2, 1959) was an English-born Canadian naval officer and an author. Though his accounts of wartime naval experiences found a general audience, he is best remembered today as a conspiracy theorist, "the most influential source in creating the American Illuminati demonology", according to the American folklorist Bill Ellis.[2] Carr was also the author of famous books on the English submarine war as well as a popular lecturer.

In the 1950s, he was the leader of the anti-Communist National Federation of Christian Laymen of Toronto. He was also one of the presidents of the Naval Club of Toronto.[3]

Biography
Born in Formby (Lancashire, England),[4] Carr was educated in Scotland, and went to sea at the age of fourteen.[5] He served as navigating officer of Her Majesty's Ship Submarines during World War I. In World War II he was naval control officer for the St. Lawrence, then staff officer operations at Shelburne, Nova Scotia, then senior naval officer at Goose Bay, Labrador. As an officer on the staff of Commodore Reginald W. Brock he organized the 7th Victory Loan for the twenty-two Royal Canadian Naval Training Divisions.[6]


His experiences in the submarine fleet in World War I became the subject of By Guess and By God (1930), prefaced by his superior, Admiral S.S. Hall of the Submarine Service. Going through several printings, it was followed by sequels, including Hell's Angels of the Deep (1932). In 1931, he started giving conferences in different Canadian clubs on the topic of "International conspiracy" which was subdivided in two main subjects: "International communism" and "International capitalism", both controlled by the Illuminati and what he called the "International bankers" which, according to Carr, are represented mainly by the Rothschild and the Rockefeller families.[7]

After working for the Canadian Intelligence Service during World War II he wrote Checkmate in the North (1944), a book where he wrote that an invasion of the Axis forces was supposed to take place in the area of the CFB Goose Bay. During 1944 and 1945 he gave other conferences on world conspiracies.[citation needed]

In the 1950s, after he retired from the Navy, Carr's writings turned essentially to conspiracy themes from a firmly Christian standpoint. With his Pawns in the Game (1955) and Red Fog over America (1955) he became one of the most famous post-war conspiracy theorists (500,000 copies of Pawns in the Game were sold before his death).[8]

According to the Political Research Associates:

Carr promoted the anti-Semitic variant on conspiracism with books such as Pawns in the Game and Red Fog over America. Carr believes that an age-old Jewish Illuminati banking conspiracy used radio-transmitted mind control on behalf of Lucifer to construct a one world government. The secret nexus of the plot was supposedly the international Bilderberger meetings on banking policy. The anti-Semitic Noontide Press distributed Pawns in the Game for many years.[9]


Carr's works were notably influenced by the writings of Nesta Webster and the well known French hoaxer Léo Taxil (see Taxil hoax). He also refers to the theories of l'abbé Augustin Barruel and John Robison who explained the French Revolution as a Freemasonic plot linked to the German Illuminati of Adam Weishaupt (frequently associated to the conspiracy theory of the New World Order).[10] One of Carr's books published after his death, The Conspiracy to Destroy All Existing Governments and Religions clearly refers to Robison's main work: Proofs of a Conspiracy Against All the Religions and Governments of Europe Carried on in the Secret Meetings of Freemasons, Illuminati and Reading Societies (1798).

According to the French philosopher and historian Pierre-André Taguieff, the works of Carr (especially Pawns in the Game), "largely contributed to popularise the themes of anti-Masonic conspiracism in the United States and in Canada; first, it reached the Christian fundamentalist milieu (mainly concerned with his "Luciferian" conspiracies), then the whole far-right movement and the new generations of conspiracy theorists".[11] Even Dan Brown - although he probably had his information from a different source - includes in his novel Angels & Demons an interpretation of the Illuminati through an American one dollar bill that repeats the main arguments of Carr in Pawns in the Game.[12]

The first editions of Carr's book were mainly published by the Federation of Christian Laymen. Carr was actually the president of the Federation of Christian Laymen (Toronto). He directed the monthly anti-Masonic newsletter of the association: News Behind the News (Willowdale, Toronto, Vol. 1, # 1, 1956-) where he published numerous articles discussing the power of the Illuminati in U.S. and world affairs.[13] In that paper, Carr defends the politics of the Wisconsin anti-Communist Senator Joseph McCarthy.

The political ideas of this Christian association were close to those of John Horne Blackmore the first leader of the Social Credit Party of Canada[14] and Ron Gostick, another important member of the same party. Carr's Federation was closely linked with the Californian Council of Christian Laymen (1949–1964), especially with Alfred Kohlberg, Edward Geary Lansdale and Stan Steiner.[15] The council also distributed Carr's News Behind the News ; its president was Verne Paul Kaub who was also known for being an anti-communist and a conspiracy theory author. During the 1950s, both organisations fought communism and were involved in a campaign against water fluoridation (brochure, 1956; articles about this topic were also published in News Behind the News in 1958).[16] The historian Daniel Pipes studied this particular case and he mentions that "in the 1950s, the National Federation of Christian Laymen portrayed fluorine as the 'devil's poison'" and considered its addition to drinking water (to prevent tooth decay) "one of the most dastardly plots ever attempted against the human race".[17]

Carr died in Ontario.

Main theories

The three world wars
One of Carr's most lasting contributions to modern-day conspiracy theory was his discussion of an alleged plan for three world wars (often referred as the 3WW), which he believed was developed by Confederate general and Masonic scholar Albert Pike.

In Pawns in the Game, Carr claims that World War I was fought in order to enable the Illuminati to overthrow the powers of the Tsars in Russia and to turn that country into the stronghold of atheistic communism. The differences stirred up by the agents of the Illuminati between the British and German Empires were used to foment the war. After the war ended, communism was bolstered and used to destroy other governments and weaken religions. After this, World War II was fomented by using the differences between fascists and political Zionists. This war was fought so that Nazism would be destroyed and the power of political Zionism increased, so that the sovereign state of Israel could be established in Palestine. During World War II, international communism was built up until its strength equaled that of united Christendom. At this point it was contained and kept in check until required for the final social cataclysm.

Moving into the future, Carr claimed that a report came into his possession through the Canadian Intelligence Service of an alleged speech in 1952 by Rabbi Emanuel Rabinovich, in which it was made known that the Secret Powers wished to precipitate World War III within five years. Small nations would ally with either Russia or the United States, with Israel remaining neutral. The book quotes Rabinovich saying that there will be no more white race and no more religions.[18] Towards the end of the book, Carr states that "people who wish to remain free can follow only one plan of action. They must support Christianity against all forms of atheism and secularism." [19]

Confusion has arisen as to the precise source of Carr's three world wars scenario. As is the case with many of his claims, Carr does not provide a source for that scenario, but mentions a letter written by Pike and addressed to Italian revolutionary leader Giuseppe Mazzini, which outlines a plan for unleashing "Nihilists and Atheists", after World War Three has ended. The confusion increased when Michael Haupt launched his website threeworldwars.com, which mistakenly assumed that Carr also attributed the World War Three scenario to the Pike letter. In fact, the authenticity of this letter is disputed.[20] Carr states that he learned about the letter from the anti-Mason, Cardinal José María Caro Rodríguez of Santiago, Chile, author of The Mystery of Freemasonry Unveiled (Hawthorne, California, Christian Book Club of America, 1971). However, Carr's later book, Satan, Prince of This World (written in 1959), includes the following footnote: "The Keeper of manuscripts recently informed the author that this letter is NOT cataloged in the British Museum Library. It seems strange that a man of Cardinal Rodriguez's knowledge should have said that it WAS in 1925."[21] More recently, the British Museum confirmed in writing to researcher Michael Haupt[22] that such a document has never been in their possession. Pierre-André Taguieff states that Carr gave an ultimate and synthetic account[clarification needed] of this "legend" that links together the Illuminati, Mazzini and Pike in a satanic plot for world domination.[23]

The reference Terry Melanson gives a good treatment of the Pike letter, to show the origin of the account of unleashing the nihilists, and that a three world war scenario is not to be found in that material. Michael Haupt had taken the three world war theory from the introduction of Carr's Pawns in the Game (1958). This introduction outlines a plan that Carr attributes to Pike, but not to the letter from Pike to Mazzini. Only the last section of the three world war plan in Haupt's text is a quote attributed to the letter from Pike to Mazzini. This quote is virtually identical to the one in Rodrique's book and it can be traced to the book Le diable au XIXe siècle (1894) by Gabriel Jagond-Pager a.k.a. Leo Taxil, where it is claimed to be from a letter of Pike to Mazzini written in 1871. This quote was later considered to describe the Bolshevik revolution, but whether a hoax or not, it predates 1917. The book of Jagond-Pager is enlisted in the British Museum, which is what Rodríguez meant by his statement, and it contains the full letter, be it hoax or not. The plan attributed to Pike is also described in part in Le Palladisme by Margiotta and it seems to describe the same plan as in Jagond-Pager's book, so it is possible that in this case the famous hoaxer Leo Taxil actually refers to some existing letter, but Dominico Margiotta may be another pseudonym of Jacond-Pager. There is nothing of the three world war plan in this letter, and nothing especially prophetic-it simply describes a Freemasonry plan to overthrow all religions.

The conspiracy of the Synagogue of Satan
Carr's books often discuss a Luciferian conspiracy by what he calls the "World Revolutionary Movement," but he later attributed the conspiracy more specifically to the "Synagogue of Satan." The term "Synagogue of Satan" was not a reference to Judaism. Carr wrote, "I wish to make it clearly and emphatically known that I do not believe the Synagogue of Satan (S.O.S.) is Jewish, but, as Christ told us for a definite purpose, it is comprised of 'I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan.' (Rev. 2:9 and 3:9)".[24]

This quote is taken from Satan, Prince of this World, the book Carr had been working on at the time of his death. It was edited by his elder son W.J. Carr, Jr. and presented as the "last manuscript [of the author] exposing the Luciferian Conspiracy, Satanism, secret societies and the Synagogue of Satan as driving forces behind the World Revolutionary Movement".[25] Carr's son also mentions he did not publish some parts of the manuscript because many references were missing.

One of the most interesting things to note about Carr's Luciferian conspiracies is that he believes they were already at work during Christ's time. As Taguieff points out, there is a transhistorical scheme in Carr's idea of world conspiracy. In this kind of philosophy of history anticipating a final "World Government", the Illuminati are part of a satanic historical force that contributes to the evil original plot. According to that point of view Carr believes that there are "natural born" conspiracists which is nothing more for Taguieff than myth and paranoia invented from a delirious worldview.[26] It is indeed an original aspect of Carr's theories since most plot theorists usually start their "genealogy" with the modern age, especially with the French Revolution. As a Christian traditionalist, Carr believes that the world conspiracy is based on a Manichaean way of thinking; this view is common to many anti-Mason and anti-Communist conspiracy theorist, starting from Nesta Webster. There is another common variant in seeing the world conspiracy being based on the Sabbatean/Frankist teachings, but it also acknowledges Manichaean influences.

Influence
Whatever the source of the alleged plan for three world wars, it has become a topic for discussion among fringe conspiracy believers, and is cited in seminal conspiracy books such as Des Griffin's Fourth Reich of the Rich (1976) who published the fourth edition of Pawns in the Game and a cassette tape of one of Carr's speeches in Chicago in his own publishing house, Emissary Publications (Colton, Oregon).

Carr also inspired Dan Smoot (The Invisible Government, 1962), Gary Allen (The Rockefeller File, 1976), Phoebe Courtney, (Beware Metro and Regional Government, 1973), Richard T. Osborne (The Great International Conspiracy, 1974; and lately The Coming of World War III, 2006), Myron C. Fagan, (Audio Document (LP): The Illuminati and The Council on Foreign Relations, recorded in 1967-1968, ed. by a group calling themselves the Sons of Liberty. Fagan outlines the Illuminati world elite plans of global conspiracy for the New World Order and world domination), David Icke (The Biggest Secret, 1999), Jan van Helsing, and the French Canadian Social Credit Party member Serge Monast (1945–1996) who pretended to be Carr's disciple.[27][28] All these plot theorists argue for the continuing influence of the Illuminati as Carr suggested it in his two main works.

The works of Carr and his influence among conspiracy theorists has been studied by the American historian Daniel Pipes (1997) and the folklorist Bill Ellis (2000). The French philosopher and historian Pierre-André Taguieff recently wrote La Foire aux illuminés: Ésotérisme, théorie du complot, extrémisme (2005) (The Illuminati fair: esotericism, plot theory, extremism) where he makes an analysis of Pawns in the Game. He shows that Carr belongs to a tradition of conspiracy theorists that goes far back to l'abbé Augustin Barruel and is represented by the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (frequently quoted in Carr's work) in the twentieth century. Taguieff also studied Carr's theories in L'imaginaire du complot mondial: Aspects d'un mythe moderne (The world plot imaginary: about a modern myth), 2006).

Since 1998, Carr's most famous books (Pawns in the Game, The Conspiracy to Destroy All Existing Governments and Religions and Satan, Prince of this World) were translated in French.[29] His French editor Jacques Delacroix is also a conspiracy theorist who counts himself as one of Carr's successors.[30]



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Guy_Carr
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Re: The Secret Origins of the Patriot Movement

Postby American Dream » Mon May 23, 2016 3:57 pm

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Re: The Secret Origins of the Patriot Movement

Postby American Dream » Fri Jul 29, 2016 2:12 pm

White Workers Resisting Capitalism and White Supremacy: An Interview with RedNeck Revolt

How is the white working class getting played by Trump? Do you think that the situation will worsen when Trump isn't elected?

The white working class gets played by all sides; we should be clear on that. When it comes to institutional organizations and political parties, we get played by the right wing, and we definitely get played by the left wing. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have the interests of any members of the working class at heart.

But Trump is speaking a language that the white working class understands and can relate to, even using some language from more liberatory elements of the left when discussing economics and conditions within working class communities. He stands against Free Trade, for example, a hallmark of globalized capitalism. He talks about bringing jobs back to the United States. And then he mixes in attacks on migrants and other xenophobic remarks that speak to the fear in the white community. He plays off the fear and misery that white working people feel. He speaks in clear and easy to understand soundbites. Although he is a billionaire, he has convinced millions that he speaks for them and their conditions.

The problem is that for decades now, those of us on the liberatory left have abandoned the white working class to the right wing. We don't enter those communities to do the hard work of organizing. We have relegated white working people to be backwards and inherently racist. While groups like SURJ and other "anti-racist" white groups use the same language of white supremacy to dictate that white people all experience the same privileges and power within our society, regardless of class or real economic or political power, upper class liberals have consistently positioned themselves as being superior or better to working class whites, especially from rural areas. We have all created a situation where working class whites have been alienated and pushed toward the right wing, where reactionaries stand with open arms to welcome white working people into the fold.

This is not to say that the white working class has not historically earned some of this venom and derision. After all, the white working class has overwhelmingly found itself on the wrong side of history and on the wrong side of the struggle of other working class people. But that said, how have the efforts of those on the Left helped cement that relationship? How has the Left been complicit, especially in the last twenty years, to handing the white working class on a platter over to the racist right wing?

Whether Trump wins or loses, the terrain is dangerous and deadly at this current moment. Which brings us back to one of the other main focuses of our former work with the John Brown Gun Club that we want to revisit and revive. We need real formulated responses for the upsurge in reactionary and racist violence. We need armed community defense programs in every community. We need to be ready to rapidly respond to the armed right wing threat that menaces our communities. We need to stop being reactionaries when it comes to the topic of armed defense. We are approaching truly dangerous times. Will we be ready?


In what ways can white people support Black Lives Matter?

Again, it's important to conceptualize struggle in a way that does away with moral platitudes and calls for white people to feel guilt for their situations. It's nearly impossible to get most white working people to admit they have some relative privilege in society and that racism does in fact exist, when they are struggling to make ends meet and not get evicted from their decaying home. So, we must first understand that until we start to build movements in a way where white working class people also see that their interests are tied in ending white supremacy, white working class folks will consistently be found on the wrong side of social struggles including Black Lives Matter.

It is up to us then, as whites, to organize within white working class communities, speaking to the conditions on the ground, and building off the rich history and culture of white working people standing in solidarity with poor and working people of color to challenge capitalist, state, and white supremacist power. Putting out ally checklists and having endless workshops on white privilege will never cut it, and has helped maintain the situation we find ourselves in. We need people on the ground. At the gun shows, at the NASCAR races, at the swap meets and flea markets... We need people in the white working class communities speaking their language and bringing them over to the a liberatory political orientation. We need to be able to relate the conditions that white working people face to the conditions on the ground in communities of color.

We have to abandon paternalistic ally politics that speak of white working class people through the same language of white supremacy. White working people do not have more in common with white rich people merely because we are all white. We have more in common with working class people from all races and religions. Until we as anti-racist white working people put in the work to shed light on that reality to others from our community, then we are failing.

Black Lives Matter and communities of color don't need more feel good white allies. They need white accomplices who are preventing other whites from being the footsoldiers of genocide and colonial capitalism and bringing those whites over to our side. The real question is whether other white people are up to that task. Because we have a lot of work to do, and the current efforts of the vast majority of "anti-racist" whites are more counter productive than anything else at creating this reality.


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Re: The Secret Origins of the Patriot Movement

Postby American Dream » Thu Aug 04, 2016 9:26 pm

SEEDS OF SEDITION

Ryan Lenz and Mark Potok
August 03, 2016


The Oath Keepers say they’re busy forming armed ‘preparedness teams.’ But what they’re preparing for is pure, dystopian fantasy.

Four days after the nation awoke to the carnage of one of the deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history — a massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla., that left 49 victims dead — the Oath Keepers, an antigovernment group claiming many law enforcement officials as members, issued what sounded a lot like a call to war.

“[W]e are now honor bound to fulfill those promises and to honor our oaths by standing physically, shoulder-to-shoulder with our local peace officers and with fellow veterans and patriots, in direct defense of our communities against ISIS and their sympathizers and supporters,” Stewart Rhodes, the group’s president, wrote on June 16. “We must also fulfill our pledge to train our fellow Americans to FIGHT against this evil that aims to wipe liberty from the face of the earth.”

The pledge Rhodes was referring to was his group’s promise, first issued in 2013, to create “Community Preparedness Teams,” which were originally dubbed “Civilization Preservation Teams.” In the wake of the Orlando attack, which was carried out by an American citizen who claimed allegiance to the Islamic State, or ISIS, Rhodes sounded almost reasonable, describing the slaughter as a “senseless attack against our citizens, and the LGBT community specifically.”

But Rhodes and his band of present and former law enforcement and military members aren’t just sticking up for oppressed minorities and offering to help the authorities deal with endemic violence in America. They are true believers in a set of bizarre conspiracy theories that posit that the nation is facing massive subversion being carried out by self-interested global elites and President Obama — a fact that makes their ongoing paramilitary organizing efforts genuinely worrisome.

Indeed, Rhodes warned in the same post-Orlando piece that “this wave of Islamist terror attacks will be part of a ‘perfect storm’ of intentionally orchestrated … chaos-inducing economic devastation, social and political disruption and violence, and the use of intentionally undefended borders and mass illegal and ‘refugee’ immigration as weapons of destabilization (and to provide cover for and facilitate more violence and terrorism by multiple proxy agents of the elites, including the cartels, gangs, well funded Marxist and racist agitators — such as La Raza and Black Lives Matter — and radical Islamist cells and individuals.)”

To say it more plainly: Rhodes believes that Obama and “the elites” are intentionally refusing to defend the border and using criminal gangs and “Marxists” to subvert America from within. They are so evil that they are perfectly willing “orchestrate” terrorist attacks, he claims. The alleged plan, suggested in other Oath Keepers material, is seize Americans’ guns, jail any who resist, and impose a global “New World Order” that will pillage ordinary citizens to enrich global elites.

Obama, Rhodes says, is the “blood dancing domestic Enemy-In-Chief.”

The allegations, of course, are ridiculous. There has never been a shred of evidence that Obama is plotting the destruction of America, whatever one may think of his politics. But they put Rhodes’ paramilitary efforts in a different light.

Image
The Oath Keepers, who recently began training local militia-type units known as Community Preparedness Teams, have repeatedly interjected themselves into local conflicts like this one in Quartzsite, Ariz.

In fact, Rhodes’ Community Preparedness Teams (CPTs) are basically a new twist on the right-wing militias of the antigovernment “Patriot” movement. They amount to a well-armed vigilante movement animated by extremist fantasies.

“We want to see a restoration of the militia in this country,” is how Rhodes put it last year. “We think a good first step is to have the veterans stand up in every community and go help form and train neighborhood watches, to get the people to take back into their own hands their own personal self-defense and security.”

What Will They Defend?

If the past is prelude, the CPTs will be “defending” some unusual causes.

Formed in 2009, in the direct aftermath of the election of the nation’s first black president, the Oath Keepers first leaped into action in Quartzsite, Ariz., where they arrived to defend Jennifer Jade Jones, a local blogger who’d been arrested for disruptive behavior at a Town Hall meeting. Police said Jones had published a series of threatening communications, including a suggestion that residents at odds with town officials “run them out of town, or kill them.” Rhodes pronounced the dispute a “pivot point” in the alleged federal plan to impose a “New World Order.”

Rhodes, who was trained at Yale Law School, was later disbarred for acting as an attorney in Arizona during the dispute despite not being licensed in the state.

In April 2014, Rhodes and several Oath Keepers traveled to the Nevada ranch of Cliven Bundy, who engaged in an armed standoff with federal officials seeking to seize his cattle because Bundy had refused to pay federal grazing fees for some 20 years. (Twenty-seven people who participated in that standoff were charged this year with major crimes.) But the Oath Keepers fled after getting “intel” that Obama was about to launch deadly drones at the ranch, a fact that caused scores of Bundy’s other supporters to mock Rhodes’ crew as cowards and paranoid fantasists.

Needless to say, there was no drone attack.

Four months later, white, heavily armed Oath Keepers showed up in Ferguson, Mo., climbing on to rooftops as part of what they said was an effort to protect businesses in the area during angry protests against the police. Although they later claimed to have protected one black woman’s business, it seemed clear that they were really there to protect white businesses against black protesters.

Oath Keepers were involved in a number of other confrontations between the federal government and militants in disputes over public lands. And earlier this year, they were among those defending two sons of Cliven Bundy and other heavily armed militants who seized a wildlife refuge in Oregon for 41 days. Nineteen people were arrested in connection with that standoff and charged with federal crimes.

In a primer released in conjunction with its announcement of CPTs, the Oath Keepers described the situation bluntly. “We feel like we are flat running out of time and we need to get prepared as fast as possible,” it said. The group said that its board had already “war-gamed” how its “enemies” would “scrap the Constitution.”

Ground Game

It isn’t known how many CPTs the Oath Keepers have trained or created, and Rhodes would not respond to requests for comment from the Intelligence Report.

But the training is apparently intensive, and there is some evidence that it is really happening. “We have credible, well-trained veterans as the leadership and as the trainers,” Rhodes said in a podcast. “The real point … is not that Oath Keepers is going to be the security force or the community. … We are trainers.”

Brandon Smith, associate editor of the Oath Keepers blog, described in late 2014 one such CPT exercise held in Eureka, Mont. “Multiple steel and cardboard targets were camouflaged and placed along a wooded deer trail,” Smith recounted. “Members had to carefully traverse the area while seeking and destroying the targets, finding proper cover, etc. Missed targets resulted in a casualty.”

The trainees also went through exercises meant to teach them how to deal with casualties in battle. “As a prop, I fired a .308 round through a Christmas ham at about 50 yards,” Smith said. “One of our resident medical experts placed a plunger and tube into the ‘wound’ and pumped fake blood through it to add realism. We practiced applying hemostats to the fake artery, Celox for blood clotting, gauze insertion and packing, as well as how to use the famous ‘Israeli bandage.’”

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The Oath Keepers CPT page on the Internet is divided into five sections: “Emergency Medical,” “Emergency Communications,” “Security/Team Tactics,” “Emergency Engineering” and “General Preparedness.” The page says “the ultimate goal is a true revitalization of the ‘well-regulated militia’ of the several states, made up of the people themselves, well organized, trained, and equipped, and with official sanction by the people’s elected representatives” at the local level.

Nothing untoward is yet known to have occurred with the CPTs that the Oath Keepers says it is training. But a quick glance at the group’s website gives a sense of the paranoia that is the core of its ideology. Rhodes rants regularly about “violent Communist thugs,” “oath breaking, partisan scumbag politician[s],” and “radical leftist extremists” like, presumably, President Obama. The CPT page regularly carries headlines such as “REVELATION: Dawn of Global Governments” and “Soros and CFR Exploit Refugee Crisis for New World Order.” That last , referring to liberal billionaire George Soros and the allegedly globalist Council on Foreign Relations, is reprinted from The New American, the magazine published by the John Birch Society, which once accused President Dwight D. Eisenhower of being a Communist agent.

If that is what Stewart Rhodes and the 30,000 people on his email list really believe, then the idea of them patrolling the land with guns is scary indeed. It’s one thing to advocate for preparedness, but another to apparently support sedition.
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Re: The Secret Origins of the Patriot Movement

Postby American Dream » Fri Aug 12, 2016 9:48 am

Long-time Militia Leader Mike Vanderboegh Has Died

Bill Morlin
August 10, 2016


Michael Brian Vanderboegh, who rose from the 1990s militia ranks to become the angry, vocal co-founder of the extremist, pro-gun III Percent movement, using an Internet blog to promote his antigovernment views, has died.

Vanderboegh, 64, who described himself as a “Christian libertarian,” died Wednesday after a lengthy battle with cancer that he discussed frequently on his blog, “Sipsey Street Irregulars,” which he started in 2009.

His death was reported by The Kansas City Star and confirmed by his friend and ally, David Codrea.

The Sipsey blog was his ticket to notoriety, as well his unbridled soapbox to blast the Obama Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives, Bill Clinton or any supporter of tougher gun-control laws.

“If you try to take our firearms we will kill you,” Vanderboegh wrote in 2013 when a “gun safety” advocate suggested that only police and the military should have firearms.

As for proposed bans on semi-automatic assault rifles and federal control of all private transfers, Vanderboegh said he and his III Percent believers “will not obey such laws and [would] defy the federal government to do anything about it.”

His firebrand approach didn’t end there.

He used his blog to fire salvos at the ATF for its bungled gun-trafficking operation known as “Fast and Furious,” later claiming the mainstream media largely ignored the story he broke. He also vocally opposed the Affordable Care Act, which he contended “carried the hard-steel fist of government violence.”

Vanderboegh boasted that he had “been on the enemies lists of the last THREE White Houses, irrespective of party. "I am at least an equal opportunity gadfly. But despite the name calling by the other side, I am not seeking an ‘insurrection’ nor soliciting civil war but I am trying to prevent one,” he claimed.

His passing already is lighting up social media communications between various pro-gun, antigovernment, III Percent and militia groups.

His passing was noted with a quick online posting by his friend and fellow anti-gun law associate, David Cordea. “I received the sad news this morning. Our friend passed away this morning at around 1 a.m. Central,” Cordea posted.

"A Patriot died today. But his work will live on in the everyday push for freedom," a brief post on Sipsey Street Irregulars read. "His was a voice that was made silent, but his work will continue to echo so long as men and women have the means to resist. The future doesn't belong to the craven: it belongs to the brave."

Another Vanderboegh associate, Bob Wright, the commander of the New Mexico Militia, told the Kansas City Star that Vanderboegh “was a voice that this movement needed.” “Already, we’re feeling the loss of that voice," he said.

The Connecticut Citizens Defense League immediately posted a brief Facebook comment about Vanderboegh’s passing.

“Mike Vanderboegh, husband, father of three, and founder of the III% movement passed peacefully in his beloved Alabama home today,” said the CCDL posting, linking to a YouTube video of a speech Vanderboegh delivered in 2013 to a “gun rights” rally in Connecticut.

Even while in failing health during the past year, Vanderboegh continued writing almost-daily on his blog that helped make him a national celebrity, of sorts, in far-right, antigovernment, pro-gun circles.

Between 2013 and 2015, he accepted occasional invitations for public appearances at pro-gun rallies in various states where state gun control laws had passed or were pending. He called it “going behind enemy lines,” which he said was not “comic exaggeration” because some gun transaction laws would lead to registering gun owners.


His last known public appearance was in mid-March at the Alabama Gun Collectors Show in Birmingham, not far from his home in the rural community of Pinson, Ala. “Drop by for some dynamite sales on military surplus,” Vanderboegh posted on his blog. He didn’t sell the piles of military surplus gear, so his family members held a “garage sale” on May 21 at his Alabama home.

In mid-April, in one of his last blog posts, Vanderboegh wrote: “My apologies for no posts, but I'm in the end stages. The docs give me about 4 weeks and I still have a lot to get done before I check out.”

The following day, April 16, there was a “change of command” announcement on the blog informing followers that Vanderboegh’s son, Matthew Vanderboegh, would take over producing the Sipsey Street blog. In his introduction, Matthew Vanderboegh said he had served in the U.S. Army for 14 years and did tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. He pledged to follow his father’s footsteps in the III Percent movement.


Continues at: https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/201 ... h-has-died



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Mike Vanderboegh (1953-2016)


Kansas City Star


Mike Vanderboegh, a longtime leader in the “Patriot” movement, died Wednesday in Alabama after a lengthy battle with cancer. He was 64.

Vanderboegh also was founder of the “Three Percenters,” who vow to use force if necessary to resist what they see as oppressive gun-control laws.

Vanderboegh and his supporters were profiled in a 2015 series by The Kansas City Star about domestic terrorism.

The Second Amendment activist and blogger from Pinson, Ala., was known for pushing the envelope when it came to gun rights, from organizing an armed protest at the Washington state capitol to mailing standard-capacity gun magazines to governors of states that banned them.

“He was a voice that this movement needed,” said Bob Wright, a comrade and commander of the New Mexico Militia. “Already, we’re feeling the loss of that voice.”

But those who monitor extremist groups say the rhetoric Vanderboegh used was dangerous and helped fuel a resurgence of anti-government violence in recent years.

“Vanderboegh’s primary legacy will be as one of the more successful recent promoters of anti-government extremism, helping to increase both the anger levels and numbers of such extremists,” said Mark Pitcavage, a senior research fellow with the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism.

Shortly before he died, Vanderboegh donated his papers to the John Hay Library at Brown University in Rhode Island. University archivist Jennifer Betts said the collection would be processed and available to view by summer 2017.

Vanderboegh first surfaced in the 1990s as an organizer for the Sons of Liberty, then became head of the 1st Alabama Cavalry Regiment Constitutional Militia.

In recent years, he had been more widely known for his “Three Percent” movement, which draws its name from the percentage of colonists said to have taken up arms against the British in the American Revolution.

Vanderboegh was diagnosed five years ago with a gastrointestinal stromal tumor. Once a looming figure, Vanderboegh told The Star in May that he’d dropped nearly 200 pounds.

Larry Pratt, executive director emeritus of Gun Owners of America, called Vanderboegh “a man of passion and humor.”

Pratt disagreed with critics’ assertion that Vanderboegh incited violence.

“Mike’s whole idea has been to make people aware of our great past and to make it part of our present,” he said. “Maybe they see that as a violent threat.”

Known for his often-incendiary language, Vanderboegh directed his criticism not only at what he said was a corrupt government but sometimes even at others in his own movement.

When a group of armed militants led by Ammon Bundy took over a national wildlife refuge in Oregon in January, he called them fools.

“What Bundy and this collection of fruits and nuts has done is give the feds the perfect opportunity to advance their agenda to discredit us,” he said.

Vanderboegh’s most recent tactics involved leading what he called “armed civil disobedience” in response to tougher gun legislation passed after the 2012 shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

He smuggled 30-round AR-15 gun magazines into several states that had outlawed them, then announced it afterward. Around Christmas last year, he mailed 30-round AR-15 and AK-47 magazines to politicians who supported the stricter gun laws.

“I told them that now that they possessed these magazines, they should go arrest themselves,” he said.

In 2014, Vanderboegh traveled to Nevada to join other protesters in a standoff between federal authorities and Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, who the government said owed $1 million for grazing his cattle on federal land.

“All over this country, at this moment, we are still staring civil war in its bloody face,” he said in a speech he gave there.

In 2008, Vanderboegh attracted authorities’ attention when he started writing an online novel called “Absolved” and posted it on his blog, “Sipsey Street Irregulars.”

The book, a fictional story about gun owners and militias who resist federal government attempts to confiscate their firearms, contains detailed accounts of battles with law enforcement, airplane attacks on government buildings and assassinations of federal agents.

“The whole point of my work is to make people understand that we’re done backing up,” he told The Star.

The book set off alarms at the Kansas City regional fusion center, which issued a bulletin saying it might incite anti-government violence.

Authorities said the book later inspired a group of militia members in Georgia to go on a domestic terrorism rampage. The group was arrested in 2011 for plotting to attack four cities with ricin, blow up federal buildings and kill government employees and local police.


http://idavox.com/index.php/2016/08/11/ ... t-in-hell/
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Re: The Secret Origins of the Patriot Movement

Postby American Dream » Wed Oct 05, 2016 10:09 am

UP IN ARMS: A GUIDE TO OREGON’S PATRIOT MOVEMENT

BY SPENCER SUNSHINE
WITH
JESSICA CAMPBELL AND RURAL ORGANIZING PROJECT
POLITICAL RESEARCH ASSOCIATES
DANIEL HOSANG
STEVEN BESA
CHIP BERLET


Up in Arms: A Guide to Oregon’s Patriot Movement is a groundbreaking report and toolkit designed to support public officials and community activists under siege from armed militias and other Patriot movement groups. This guide was developed by Political Research Associates in partnership with Rural Organizing Project through extensive research on the right-wing movements and by pooling the local expertise of rural progressive community activists and scholars. It exposes, explains, and offers alternatives to this movement.

New Patriot movement groups formed since 2008 include local affiliates of the Oath Keepers and Three Percenters, as well as the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association. Researchers estimate that dozens of groups have thousands of supporters in the state, including within the state Republican Party. Up In Arms also documents how the Patriot movement takes advantage of the collapse of the rural Oregon economy and funding cuts.


Read the report at: http://www.politicalresearch.org/up-in-arms/
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Re: The Secret Origins of the Patriot Movement

Postby American Dream » Thu Oct 13, 2016 8:49 am

American Dream » Thu Jul 23, 2015 1:22 pm wrote:

http://www.rop.org/patriot-movement-par ... in-oregon/

Patriot Movement Paramilitaries in Oregon

Spencer Sunshine, PhD, Associate Fellow at Political Research Associates


Sucker Punch
Some progressives have sympathies for the Oath Keepers and see them as something like a veterans group that opposes invasive federal rule. One reason for this position is that the Patriot movement often uses producerist narratives.

Producerism is the idea that real worth comes from “productive capital” (concrete labor, like farming or manufacturing) but not “unproductive capital” (abstract labor, such as financial dealings). Producerists scapegoat minority groups, which can be either marginalized or elite—so both the “undeserving poor” and “international bankers” are condemned. (In fact, these can often be code words for people of color on one hand, and Jews on the other.) But if you listen only to the anti-elitist rhetoric—attacking Wall Street banks and international trade deals—it sounds similar to progressive views.

It is a deeply mistaken approach to unproblematically join forces with these political groups. At Political Research Associates we call this the “sucker punch”—progressives are taken in by rhetoric that seems to match their beliefs without realizing that the true aims of these extreme right groups are to dismantle social gains and reestablish an extremely conservative society that will have clear racial, gender, and sexual hierarchies.


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Re: The Secret Origins of the Patriot Movement

Postby American Dream » Thu Nov 17, 2016 11:34 am

From Redneck Revolt:

ORGANIZING PRINCIPLES

The history of the white working class is one full of resistance, collectively and individually, against the rich elite that hold power over all of our lives. From massive armed uprisings like the Battle of Blair Mountain in 1921, to the resistance to coal mining in predominately white rural Appalachia today, white working people have been in conflict with those that uphold predatory economic, political, and social systems.

The history of the white working class is also one filled with collaboration with those same rich elite power holders. White working people have played the role of foot soldiers for the political and economic elite, participating in genocide and the enslavement of other peoples, and overall protectors of the ruling class. White working class participation in state and paramilitary organizations and formations like the Ku Klux Klan, the Minutemen, the U.S. Armed Forces, and the Council of Conservative Citizens has undermined the struggle for freedom among all people.

It is with these conflicting histories in mind that we hope to incite a movement amongst white working people that works toward the total liberation of all working people, regardless of skin color, religious background, sexual orientation, gender identity, nationality, or any other division that bosses and politicians have used to fragment movements for social, political, and economic freedom.


With that in mind, we have compiled the following principles of unity that define the basis of our organizing.



WE STAND AGAINST WHITE SUPREMACY

ImageThe white working class has a rich history of rebellion against tyranny and oppression. The white working class also has a long history of being the footsoldiers of genocide and oppression. In the periods before widespread adoption of white supremacist ideals, the white working class openly rebelled and found common cause alongside slaves, natives, and other people being attacked and exploited. In the wake of such bonds and cross-race unity amongst the lower classes, the rich created a series of laws to favor white workers and servants at the expense of workers and servants of color. The relative privileges that white people have been afforded since that time have kept us protecting the rich while also allowing our communities to remain impoverished and unstable. The white working class will only see real political, economic, and social stability once we abolish our allegiance to white supremacy. We have a duty and an obligation as freedom loving people to stand against the reactionary ideologies of white supremacy and white nationalism that menace communities of color and keep control over white communities.


Continues at: http://www.redneckrevolt.org/principles
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Re: The Secret Origins of the Patriot Movement

Postby American Dream » Mon Dec 05, 2016 1:20 pm

http://www.redneckrevolt.org/single-pos ... -AMERICANS

TO OTHER WORKING AMERICANS
December 3, 2016

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To other working Americans:

As the election season of 2016 has finally come to an end, the ramifications of this election are on everyone's minds. The coming year is going to bring tremendous change. Although we probably all agree on that statement, we probably have very different ideas about what those changes will be, and whether or not they will be positive. Hopefully, we can try to find some common ground.

We assume that most working class people are tired of living in poverty, living paycheck to paycheck, watching the products of their hard work evaporate before their eyes. Times are tough for many of us, and many of us have been wondering in private how we're going to survive. Politician after politician makes empty promises, but no matter which party is in power, there is no real relief for working Americans. Instinctively, we start to look around for who to blame, and the messages we're bombarded with make it seem easy enough... we blame Muslims, Black people, Brown people, "illegals". It all seems very simple. We're competing with these people for jobs and resources, so it seems like a logical enough conclusion.

Historically, white working class folks have nearly always been at odds with immigrants and folks of color. It's a lot easier to recognize ourselves and our loved ones in others who share the same traditions, culture, religious beliefs, etc. The majority of the faces we see on TV, in our community, and the folks we identify as leaders usually look a lot like us. We can often relate easiest to other white people, no matter how poor or rich. They look like people we'd see across the dinner table, and that makes it easier to hear each other out, even when we disagree. Most of us would scoff at anyone claiming that we intentionally seek out an allegiance to whiteness, or to being white, but without noticing that we're doing it, our natural enemies become non-white people.

The problem with this idea is that we've had it wrong for centuries. We've been kept blind to the true nature of what is really going on. Look around. Who lives in the houses or trailers in the same neighborhoods as us? Who works next to us in the factories, or cooks alongside us at the restaurants? Who is working in the fields with us, picking produce that we'll see at inflated prices later in the supermarket? It sure as hell isn't rich white people. It's Brown people, Black people, and other working class white people. They are the ones that are in similar situations to us, living paycheck to paycheck, stretching to feed their families like we do. So why then would we view them as so different from us that we literally view them as our enemies?

Allegiances, traditionally, are made among people who have common interests. Throughout American history, white working people have generally believed that our interests are based on looking out for each other, and we've seen our community as folks who have the same skin color as us. We've felt it was important to work for the betterment of other white folks, for our culture, for our shared identity. The truth, however, could never be further away. Whose interests have our actions really served? White workers? In the short term, the answer may be "yes". Working for the advancement of the white race at the cost of other folks does buy us relative privileges, occasional access to better jobs and neighborhoods, and even some luxuries. In the end, however, we're still poor, we're still breaking our backs to make other people money... and those people aren't working folks of color.

The true, long-term interests of white workers lie with the fate of all other workers, no matter what their race. All workers, of all races, are exploited. We are exploited because we put in the lion's share of the work, skill, and experience, and we bear the scars and lifelong pain from working class life, but we never actually get ahead enough to breathe free. We work multiple jobs to barely meet our needs, while bosses and the people in charge profit from that labor. We are born where we're at, and we die where we're at while rich politicians and white collar business owners live in the lap of luxury. Who are these rich people? Who are these politicians? The truth is that 95% of them are white. They are also mostly male. Almost all of them are English speaking. They are also mostly Christian (or at least pretend to be so). And yet, in spite of having so many superficial things in common with one another, our lives are completely separate. When we stay up late at the kitchen table with a stack of bills, trying to figure out how the budge is going to work, they're eating at restaurants where they'll never even look at the amount on their bill. Tonight, when we finally go to bed in our noisy apartments, our modest houses, or our crowded trailers, they will go to bed in luxury and comfort, with no worries at all. Tomorrow morning, they'll wake up hours after we do, and they won't have to rush through getting their kids to school, or pray that their car starts so that they won't be late for work again. They might look like us, but they don't actually know us at all.

The blunt reality is that for the last five hundred years on this continent, white working class people have been treated as disposable, and used as tools to colonize and kill people of color, feed and support the wealthy, and do the back-breaking work that creates the wealth and high living standards of the same white rich people who have always been in charge. We have been promised that if we just work hard enough, we will be like them. The trust is that we have worked and pushed ourselves for our entire lives, all the while sacrificing our own needs, wants, aspirations, while hoping that better future really is just around the corner. As hard as it is to admit, in those sleepless nights we all know it really is as simple as that. No one denies the history of what has happened at working people's expenses. Wars, poverty, poor health, homelessness, wage slavery... these are all preventable ills created by someone, but perpetuated by us... the same workers who suffer these ills.

For some five centuries we've been used by the rich (among our own race) to promote their agenda, and we have suffered because of it. Yet, somehow, we've still been convinced that our allegiance is to other white folks, including to these same rich white bosses and politicians that would sooner see us die than actually help us as allies. Let's get real, how often do these white rich bosses or so-called "race-realists" actually just give help to poor white folk, in any way that doesn't benefit them through a photo opp and a tax break? When does this actually happen? Do you really think they care at all about our well-being? Where's the allegiance from them, the people that put us in the hardest living situations we face, and simultaneously spew out the pro-white speeches at political rallies and gun shows?

When you walk into your workplace tomorrow, where are the majority of the Black folks? Or Brown people? Or women? Are they in positions of power? Sure, some might be, but where are the majority of the folks of color that are at our workplace? That's right: they're side by side with us, experiencing the same bad management, unpredictable paychecks, long shifts, and wage slavery as us. Logic tells us that we should also be side by side in our fight for liberty, and an end to oppression. Wouldn't that make more sense than continuing to only work with the same people that rob our paychecks and swindle us out of the products of our labor?

The heart of the matter is that we've been too busy fighting the people who should naturally be our allies against these injustices. The rich whites have used our skin color against us, have used our instinct to fear people who are different than us... they've used workers against workers, us against us. They've blinded us with these ideas of "white pride" and "white nationalism" into fighting other working people of other races, while they sit on the sideline and laugh.

For far too long, the ignorant stooges of the rich within our race have thrown up a red flag to these ideas... have spewed words like "pinko" and "communist" at white folks that may have finally started to awaken to the truth of what's really happening here. I'm not a communist. I hate Stalin. I hate Lenin. I hate Mao. I also hate Trump, Clinton, and Obama. These people, all of them, are the ruling elites that I despise, because they live in luxury while the rest of us work away our very existence to barely eat.

White working people, the time is now to form the real alliances that will actually better our lives. It's time to see who our real allies must be.

For starters, we have to reject the ridiculous notion that migrants and refugees from Mexico or Syria are our enemy, that they are somehow stealing our jobs or are somehow really "terrorists". Let's get real: who's really stealing our jobs? Who is really harming us? Well, let's see, a generous estimate of the number of illegal immigrants working in the US is 6 million (notice I said working, not living). This stands in stark contrast to the conservative estimate that nearly 5 million jobs have been outsourced thanks to "free trade" agreements pushed by both political parties. Well, let's ask ourselves, who's really stealing our jobs? Poor Mexicans? Or Rich White CEOs?

We've been fed ridiculous ideas of the "invading" brown hordes, and the rich whites that make up the upper tiers (and financiers) of right-wing militias salivate over our reactions. If we're busy fighting the Mexicans and Muslims, and trying to round up all the "illegals," then we're too busy to fight the real enemies, the ones who set us against each other to begin with. Most of us that keep falling for these lines mean well. Hell, we only want to defend our families and our communities... but in reality, we're weakening them even more, by fighting our real potential allies and diverting our attention from the real enemy, the "enemy within," the politicians and the race-realists, the bosses and white collar criminals who are the only ones really profiting off of us to begin with.

And why are all these immigrants and refugees coming here in the first place? Why has there been a rush to get into this country? About 80% of the Mexican immigrants here in the US have entered since 1994, which was when NAFTA was passed, a free trade agreement that benefits nobody but the rich people on both sides of the border. Surges in Muslim immigration are much more recent. In 2016 alone, there have been over 38,000 Muslim refugees admitted into the United States. Why is that? The United States military is involved in active conflict in 4/5 of the top countries where Muslims refugees are coming from; Syria, Somalia, Afghanistan, and Iraq*. White nationalist and so called patriots keep telling us that we need to be worried about terrorist threats and immigrants, but in reality, those folks are fleeing problems in their own countries that were created by American politicians and their foreign policies. If the people in power do not care for their citizens, maybe it is time we start to genuinely care for each other, regardless of race, religion, or creed.

Whiteness has been an interesting concept in American history. The evolution of the identity of whiteness on this continent tells us everything we need to know about the situation we find ourselves in. I think that David Gilbert explains this complicated history the best, in his essay "Looking at the Working Class Historically":

Up until the 1680’s little distinction was made in the status of Blacks and English and other Europeans held in involuntary servitude. Contrary to common belief, the status of Blacks in the first seventy years of the Virginia colony was not that of racial, lifelong, hereditary slavery, and the majority of the whites who came were not "free”. Black and white servants intermarried, escaped together, and rebelled together.

There were a series of servile rebellions that threatened the plantation system in the period preceding the transition to racially designated chattel slavery and white supremacy. In 1661 Black and Irish servants joined in an insurrectionary plot in Bermuda. In 1663, in Virginia, there was an insurrection for the common freedom of Blacks, whites and Indian servants. In the next 20 years, there were no fewer than ten popular and servile revolts and plots in Virginia. Also many Black and white servants successfully escaped (to Indian territories) and established free societies.

The 20 year period of servile rebellions made the issue of social control urgent for the plantation owners, at the same time as they economically needed to move to a system of perpetual slavery. The purpose of creating a basic White/Black division was in order to have one section of labor police and control the other. As Allen says, “The non-slavery of white labor was the indispensable condition for the slavery of black labor”.

A series of laws were passed and practices imposed that forged a qualitative distinction between white and Black labor. In 1661 a Virginia law imposed twice the penalty time for escaped English bond-servants who ran away in the company of an African life-time bond-servant. Heavy penalties were imposed on white women servants who bore children fathered by Africans. One of the very first white slave privileges was the exemption of white servant women from work in the fields and the requirements through taxes to force Black children to go to work at twelve, while white servant children were excused until they were fourteen. In 1680, Negroes were forbidden to carry arms, defensive or offensive. At the same time, it was made legal to kill a Negro fugitive bond-servant who resisted recapture.

What followed 1680 was a 25 year period of laws that systematically drew the color line as the limit on various economic, social, and political rights. By 1705, “the distinction between white servants and Black slavery were fixed: Black slaves were to be held in life long hereditary slavery and whites for five years, with many rights and protections afforded to them by law.”

We can infer from these series of laws that white laborers were not “innately racist” before the material and social distinctions were drawn. This is evidenced by the rulers’ need to impose very harsh penalties against white servants who escaped with Blacks or who bore them children. As historian Philip Bruce observed of this period, many white servants “...had only recently arrived from England, and were therefore comparatively free from... race prejudice.”

The white bond-servants now could achieve freedom after 5 years service: the white women and children, at least, were freed from the most arduous labor. The white bond servant, once freed, had the prospect of the right to vote and to own land (at the Indians’ expense).

These privileges did not come from the kindness of the planters’ hearts nor from some form of racial solidarity. (Scottish coal miners were held in slavery in the same period of time.) Quite simply, the poor whites were needed and used as a force to suppress the main labor force: the African chattel slaves. The poor white men constituted the rank and file of the militias and later (beginning in 1727) the slave patrols. They were given added benefits, such as tax exemptions to do so. By 1705, after Blacks had been stripped of the legal right to self-defense, the white bond servant was given a musket upon completion of servitude. There was such a clear and conscious strategy that by 1698 there were even “deficiency laws” that required the plantation owners to maintain a certain ratio of white to African servants. The English Parliament, in 1717, passed a law making transportation to bond-servitude in the plantation colonies a legal punishment for crime. Another example of this conscious design is revealed in the Council of Trade and Plantation report to the King in 1721 saying that in South Carolina “Black slaves have lately attempted and were very nearly succeeding in a new revolution – and therefore, it may be necessary to propose some new law for encouraging the entertainment of more white servants in the future.


We can see the evolution of the idea of whiteness in America, as a racial identity that stood in contrast to the identity of black and brown folks. The "us vs them" mentality was created and stoked by politicians and policy. Once our allegiances stopped being to other impoverished working people, and we instead aligned with white people of all classes, we lost track of who the real enemy was. Unfortunately, we're still there. The rich people among our own race have made us so confused that we'd rather be on the border hunting for brown working people than actually fighting those people that create the social conditions that we all collectively suffer in. I mean, let's be honest here, if this was actually about securing our borders, why wouldn't we be talking about the danger of illegal immigrants coming through Canada, or even talking about any white illegal immigrants?

Our blind hatred and distrust of non-white people will continue to be the nail in our coffins. We've been similarly divided from recognizing our shared interests with the rights of women, people with different sexual and gender identities, people with disabilities, and people of different religions.

The rich and powerful have been great at dividing workers up from each other as much as they can, by distorting and magnifying our existing divisions and differences. Now, unlike traditional conservatives, Trump’s rhetoric has actually appealed directly to the white working class. He claims that he opposes free trade agreements like the Transpacific Partnership (TPP) and has said that NAFTA was a mistake. But beneath this populist rhetoric lies a bleak reality – Trump, like all politicians, is just one more opportunist intentionally playing towards the worst elements in our society. He makes appeals to the concerns of white working folks, by calling Mexican immigrants "rapists" and "criminals", and threatening to make a registry of Muslims in this country. But we have seen where those policies take us and we do not want to even begin to go down that road!

We consistently get used and thrown to the side, just to expand the power of those already above us. Over and over again, we've shown that we'd rather support some billionaire TV personality while our kids go hungry at night, than actually organize together for better pay, or fight back against the people that have been using us.

It's a sick reality, and yes, the stakes are high in 2016. They're high every year. And deep down, we all know that even though Trump may seem like a breath of fresh air, we're still going to be screwed, and we're still going to be ranting about the "illegals" stealing our jobs, or the Muslims being "terrorists", or these crazy hippie liberal SJWs... while ignoring the rich, white, Christians among us that rake in the profits and power. Wake up! We've fallen for this crap for far too long! No Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton or Rand Paul or Bernie Sanders is going to save us! Only we can do it... together, as people of all races and backgrounds that are sick of living like this!

This is an open call to all pissed off white working people. This is an open call to ignore the rhetoric of the alt-right, to ignore the false allegiances that the rich whites try to get us to buy into, to ignore the illogical and ridiculous race-baiting from the ignorant among us! This is a call to reject the IDEA of whiteness; that is, to reject the idea that our allegiance is somehow determined by what skin we have, even when our real living situations are so different. This is an open call to no longer ignore the fact that our real allies are not determined by skin color, but by our social conditions. Our real enemies are mostly white English speaking Christians. Our allies are folks of all colors who are forced to work for a living, to provide for their families and keep a roof over their heads.

Until we start to recognize ourselves in our neighbors, we are doomed to repeat everything that's happened for the last centuries. We'll still be here trying to climb out of the hole we find ourselves in, and our children will inherit the same destiny, and our grandchildren after them, and so on... until finally, a generation of white working people will realize that we've been tricked and used, primarily by people of our own race. We will be stuck in someone else's fantasy until we recognize that the glorious white nation promised by the alt-right is only about power for them, and the same hard lives for us!

To meet other working people who are working together to seek liberty and a life worth living, you can reach us at: communication@redneckrevolt.org

Hurry. There's no time to lose. We've already been losing for too long.

Signed, respectfully and hopefully,

Redneck Revolt
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Re: The Secret Origins of the Patriot Movement

Postby American Dream » Sun Feb 19, 2017 8:00 pm

My Journey Out of the Militia Movement

I had to do something. I resigned from my III% organization and began searching for people like myself: people who believed that the best deterrent to a tyrannical government was strong, armed communities that cared for themselves and the working class people that resided within them. I stumbled across Redneck Revolt and it was like coming home. Here was a group that was advocating for everything I believe we need: ensuring that every working class person has the means to defend themselves from the aggression of racists, fascists and the enforcement arm of the state. People who know that our problems can’t be voted away and that change had to come from the ground up, not from the top down.

I STUMBLED ACROSS REDNECK REVOLT AND IT WAS LIKE COMING HOME. HERE WAS A GROUP THAT WAS ADVOCATING ENSURING THAT EVERY WORKING CLASS PERSON HAS THE MEANS TO DEFEND THEMSELVES FROM THE AGGRESSION OF RACISTS, FASCISTS AND THE STATE.


In just a few days it feels like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders. I can see farther now. I understand that the enemy is not other poor people, it’s government. It’s the rich elite. While I was a III% I was always concerned by our low numbers. Now I realize I have tens of millions of allies just ready and waiting to wake up and decide to take charge of their own destinies, and the destinies of their communities. The rising tide of fascism and racism in this country, while disgusting, has awakened vast swathes of the population who don’t want to see history repeated, who don’t want to see poor families broken up and who are tired of being crushed by the unfeeling boot of bosses and government officials.

We have the power. We always have. It’s time to remember that fact and do something with it.


More at: https://itsgoingdown.org/journey-militia-movement/
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Re: The Secret Origins of the Patriot Movement

Postby American Dream » Wed Feb 22, 2017 12:35 am

MESSAGE TO THE PATRIOT MOVEMENT

February 20, 2017

Image

Original video recorded Feb. 17th, 2017.

Over the past few weeks, Redneck Revolt has been communicating with a former member of a III% Patriot Militia based out of Ohio. Peter made contact with our organization after questioning the basis for an upcoming operation that his local militia group was asked to be involved in, that would have had III% members mobilize for an armed response against a Black Lives Matter protest. He expressed that after 5 years involved in various Patriot groups, a recent personal experience had made him decide he could no longer be part of an organization that treated other working people as the enemy. Peter had recently realized that the reasons he had gotten involved in the Patriot Movement, initially worries about government overreach after Sandy Hook, had been turned into a fear of Muslims, undocumented people, and groups like Black Lives Matter and “antifa”.

In the time since Peter first contacted us, we've worked to build a relationship, and grow alongside him. We feel that both sides have much to learn from each other, especially about Peter's personal journey to understanding his own participation in rhetoric and mobilization against other working folks, and now his dedication to fighting against the people actually responsible for destroying our communities. We look forward to working with Peter, as well as others coming out of the III% Patriots and other related movements as they work to leave behind old ideologies, and start to fight for real liberty for all people.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytX3o4qp4fs

This is the transcript of the above video, which Peter made as part of a collaborative effort to reach out to current and former members of the III% and other Patriot Movements.


More at: https://www.redneckrevolt.org/single-po ... T-MOVEMENT
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