The Secret Origins of the Patriot Movement

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Re: The Secret Origins of the Patriot Movement

Postby Iamwhomiam » Thu Feb 23, 2017 11:41 am

Amazing what can happen when haters personally interact with those they hate.
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Re: The Secret Origins of the Patriot Movement

Postby American Dream » Fri Mar 17, 2017 1:16 pm

http://rosecityantifa.org/article/2017- ... rch4trump/

Unpacking the March4Trump: Klan, Police, and III%ers Oh My!
Wed, Mar 15, 2017

On March 4th, supporters of Trump’s proto-fascist presidency took to the streets nationwide in a variety of rallies and marches. In response, counter protesters organized in a number of different ways to shut down these events, with varying degrees of success. While, between local and alternative media, much has already been written about the events that took place in Lake Oswego, Oregon. Beyond the overt pro-Trump agenda though that the marchers were supporting, the Oregon “March4Trump” served as a vehicle for the more insidious agenda of white nationalist and militia movement groups. While the growing ties between the patriot movement, white supremacists, and the Alt-Right have begun to be unveiled, the “March4Trump” provides an excellent example as to how exactly this melding is taking place.

But the real story is not the screaming that was carrying back and forth across State Street. In full view of the Trump supporters and counter-protesters, white supremacists and militia members were using this event as a cover to organize in public. The Trump administration is creating opportunities across the nation for violent white supremacists to parade in the open, practice their organizing skills, and gain supporters.

The Portland metro area has a recent transplant to the city, a bona fide member of the KKK and a Christian Identity believer, who has also previously worked with the National Socialist Movement. His name is Steven Howard, and he was present at the March4Trump, mixing it up with those at the rally and taking part in the harassment of the counter-protesters, unopposed by the so-called “security” claiming to “manage” the march.

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Steven Howard, the NSM, and the KKK
Howard is not just another southern boy who posts the occasional selfie with the Confederate flag. He has been an Imperial Wizard of the Northern Mississippi White Knights of the KKK since at least 2012, appearing in several documentary films. In 2016, he was working with the National Socialist Movement, and attendedtheir rally in Harrisburg. Recently, he has moved to the Portland area, and is known to reside in Vancouver, Washington.

Renamed the National Socialist Movement (NSM) in 1994, the National Socialist American Workers Freedom Movement was founded in 1974 by former members of the American Nazi Party. The NSM has been stepping up their recruitment efforts in the last decade, and is the largest Neo-Nazi group in the country,according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. In the last decade, the NSM has been attempting to change their image, to appeal to a wider audience and shake their ties with Third Reich Nazis. They haven’t worn Nazi uniforms since 2007, instead adopting an all black “battle dress” attire. Following the presidential election in 2016, they replaced their swastika emblem with a rune, in attempt to curry favor with the “alt-right” Neo-Nazi rebranding.

The NSM has proved so popular that it has even drawn converts from the KKK, but this has also backfired, as it did in 2007, when Gordon Young, former leader of the World Knights of the KKK who took on leadership of the NSM in Maryland, was forced to resign after being charged with sexually assaulting a minor. Howard’s affair with the NSM also faded quickly. Although it is unknown what caused Howard to depart from the NSM, recently a couple of their members referred to Howard as a “media whore” in an online video, and Howard has returned to referring to himself as the Imperial Wizard of the Northern Mississippi White Knights of the KKK.

On March 4, Howard was in Lake Oswego, where he harassed several counter-protesters, and then stood guarded by the III%ers “security team,” who seemed more than happy to let this KKK member do as he liked in their midst. This is unsurprising, given that the III%ers and Howard share similar roots in the history of American white supremacist movements.

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Christian Identity
What is unseen in the March 4 photos, is that under his neck bandana, Howard has a 14/83 tattoo. Many people are aware of the “1488” Neo-Nazi slogan, that stands for the “14 words” motto coined by a member of the white supremacist terrorist group The Order. “88” is a stand-in for “HH,” or “Heil Hitler.” In the case of Howard’s tattoo, “83” is for “Hail Christ,” a popular substitution used by members of The Christian Identity movement.

Christian Identity is a racial interpretation of Christianity, which believes that all non-white people will be killed or enslaved to create a heavenly kingdom on earth for “god’s chosen” race. Christian Identity was promoted by George Lincoln Rockwell, the founder of the American Nazi Party. Gordon Kahl, a sovereign citizen tax resister killed by the FBI in 1983 shootout following a shootout with US Marshals, had ties to both the Posse Comitatus movement and Christian Identity. And so did The Order, which was inspired partly by Kahl’s death and by William Luther Pierce’s race-war fantasy novel, The Turner Diaries. The Idaho-based white supremacist church Aryan Nations practices a version of Christian Identity, and Randy Weaver, the target of the ill-fated Ruby Ridge standoff, also had ties to the movement. Christian Identity proponents believe in typical anti-semitic conspiracy theories, and often train in paramilitary tactics as a way of resisting the government and preparing for their fantastical race war.

Howard may pale in comparison to these far more violent figures in American white supremacist history, but he is of the same lineage. The groups he is active with are carrying on the violent, racist legacy, and as Howard showed on March 4, he looks to continue in those footsteps, by assaulting and berating people in a public park in Lake Oswego.

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It is perhaps unsurprising that the march organizers are willing to let KKK members and fascists join them, given that they have questionable racial politics of their own. The march was organized by a member of the Oregon III% (The III%ers, or Three Percenters), who are a decentralized militia with links to the Oath Keepers. Unlike the Oath Keepers however, whose membership is strictly former or active servicemen and police, the III%ers are willing to engage with folks with criminal records and other problematic behaviors. These groups have a made it their mission to oppose lawful government, and enact their own vision of a United States in which might makes right, and their armed gangs of paramilitary soldiers confront the federal government, seizing public property for their own enrichment. In the mindset of the III%er, a gun is the only law that counts -- and as the armed “security” at the march has shown, they don’t mind if white power thugs like SH join their gatherings and harass people that they dislike.

In context of the most recent March4Trump, the III%ers agenda became clear when members swooped into organize a caravan from Salem to Lake Oswego after one of their members was able to infiltrate the organizing staff during the fallout of from “Kevin the Geek” being ousted from the planning of the march. This strategy reflects the underlying agenda of the III%ers to use patriotic and Pro-Trump events as a smokescreen for pushing their own agenda.

The III%ers and the Oath Keepers are the contemporary face of the militia or armed patriot movement, which has been experiencing a resurgence since 2009. The 1990s militia movement surged in response to both the Ruby Ridge andWaco standoffs, but reached a peak in 1995, when Timothy McVeigh, a Christian Identity proponent, bombed the Oklahoma City Federal Building with Terry Nichols. The militia movement drew much of its language and concepts from the decentralizedPosse Comitatus movement, started in Portland, Oregon in 1969 by a former member of the American fascist organization, The Silver Shirts. Posse Comitatus had deep ties with the Christian Identity movement, and inspired many sovereign citizens. In addition to Christian Identity fantasies of race war and anti-semitic conspiracy theories, Posse Comitatus was united by the idea that the US Constitution’s description of federal powers was a sham, and that county sheriffs were the only legitimate force of legal interpretation and law and order.


Continues at: http://rosecityantifa.org/article/2017- ... rch4trump/
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Re: The Secret Origins of the Patriot Movement

Postby American Dream » Mon May 29, 2017 3:24 pm

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LETTER TO THE PATRIOT MILITIAS: THE ALT RIGHT MURDERS VETERANS

Christian was increasingly obsessed with the same conspiracy theories that the alt-right cultivate in order to expand the gap between reality and fiction. While many on the alt-right disbelieve conspiracy theories like “Pizzagate,” they continue to promote them to gain followers and manipulate a distrust in the surrounding community and media. When the alt-right began holding “free speech” rallies, Christian’s rhetoric became increasingly violent toward those targeted by the alt-right. Joey Gibson’s local Portland Prayer group, also known as the “Warriors for Freedom,” helped Christian locate a material outlet for his hatred. When he arrived at one of Gibson’s “free speech rallies,” Christian immediately attempted to attack counter-protestors with a baseball bat unprovoked. After police confiscated his bat, Gibson continued to scream at antifascists, even throwing up a Nazi salute and racial slurs, but was welcomed within the rally.


Read at: https://antifascistnews.net/2017/05/29/ ... -veterans/
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Re: The Secret Origins of the Patriot Movement

Postby American Dream » Sat Jun 17, 2017 7:35 am

The Birth of Canada's Armed, Anti-Islamic 'Patriot' Group

An eight-month VICE Canada investigation into the inner workings of the group has found it to be a tight-knit openly anti-Islamic group that is unique in Canada's far-right ecosystem—one that, as one expert puts it, seems to be a "wholesale lift of an American militia." During VICE Canada's investigation, the group's rhetoric and tactics rapidly escalated from virulently anti-Islam online posturing to IRL monitoring of mosques, live fire paramilitary-style training, claiming to buy land, and plans for creating smoke and flash bombs.

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The Canadian III% is, in essence, a direct lift of an American militia that has been outfitted with a rough paint job to fit into a Canadian worldview—even the name III% comes from an American myth that it was three percent of the American population that fought against the British in the War of Independence. The group is hierarchical, similar to motorcycle clubs or the Soldiers of Odin, and to become a member you have to be patched in by showing loyalty and worth to your superiors.

The Albertan group claims to meet on a weekly basis to train with live ammunition and prepare themselves for when the "shit hits the fan." The group's attention shifts constantly, but it seemingly revolves around hating on Antifa, the influx of refugees crossing Canada's borders and, most prominently, the possibility of a Islamic terrorist attack. Unlike the Soldiers of Odin, or other like-minded groups, the III%ers don't seem to feel the need to play coy with their hatred of Islam.


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https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/the- ... riot-group
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Re: The Secret Origins of the Patriot Movement

Postby American Dream » Tue Sep 12, 2017 2:45 pm

Cowboy Stories

by Nora Brooks


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Cowboy, Western United States, c.1900. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.


Once near the Alvord Desert—a corner of Oregon literally never in the news until last year, when cowboy militants took over the Malheur wildlife refuge in protest of the jailing of ranchers for burning federal land—my then husband and I stopped at a gas station on the way to a hot spring up the highway. We were almost out of gas. We had swimsuits on under our hiking gear. I had put my hair into two braids running down my shoulders and pinned a toy sheriff’s badge to my shirt. I didn’t think about doing this at all. Wearing the sheriff’s badge was a lark, like impersonating a character from Bonanza. It was supposed to be sexy and a little ridiculous.

You can’t pump gas yourself in Oregon by law, so we went into the store to find the attendant. The two guys standing by the checkout stared at me blankly, something itchy and uncomfortable in their gaze. The guy behind the counter had creases from the sun fanning out around his eyes and white hair. He was wearing the kind of thin white cotton shirt that hints at the undershirt beneath it, aviator glasses and a huge gray Stetson. “So you’re the sheriff,” he said.

I looked down at my chest. I waved my plastic badge away like imaginary flies. “It’s nothing.”

I did this partly because this was the only place to buy gas for 100 miles.

He showed me his own badge, which was real. It made a heavy noise when he put it down on the counter. I unpinned mine and handed it to him. Without hesitation, he took it. I was playing a character, but he was not, not for a second.

In the West cowboys can be found everywhere, just as soon as you get outside the urban outposts of liberal thought and artisanal pickles that dot the coastal edge of the continent: namely Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland. (You could throw in some of the larger towns like Boulder, Colorado.) Outside of this, the landscape is comprised mostly of churches, diners, bars, and sagebrush. This polarized geography can make for some remarkable moments of mutual misunderstanding. It is precisely the sense that what was valuable in this sheriff’s world was a joke to mine that Trump was able to ride to victory.

Even in the West and the great swaths of the Midwest, most people live in cities or the suburbs that ring them; the rural areas are underpopulated, with only 20% of the U.S. population according to the 2010 Census. But Trump didn’t need to get the votes of city-dwellers. He just needed enough geographical distribution of his wins to get the electoral vote. Just before the election, the Agri-Pulse Farm and Ranch Poll reported that 55 percent of farmers and ranchers who responded were voting for Trump, compared to 18% for Clinton. Thirty states, nineteen made up of vast pasture lands and farms, gave Trump the votes he needed.

One thing that made Trump so popular in these parts was his stance towards federal regulations that hold sway over how land and water can be used, and can make the difference as to whether a small family outfit will survive. The president of the Nebraska farmers’ union told Modern Farmer just after the election that farmers were “just by god mad, and they don’t want the EPA telling us what to do.” Oregon farmer Shelly Boshart-Davis told the local news that: “When Trump would talk, he talked about getting rid of regulation. As a small business, as a farm, that really, really spoke to us.”

It’s not so much that Trump made himself seem one of them—no one would mistake him for a farmer or rancher—as he convinced them he heard them.

A case in point is the Bundy family. During the presidential race, one commenter for Daily Edge, a political news company, tweeted in early November that Trump was “Cliven Bundy in a suit and tie.”

Cliven Bundy is the patriarch of a Nevada ranching family with a long history of bucking the authority of the Bureau of Land Management. He first achieved minor folk hero status in 2014 at the Battle of Bunkerville, as it is known in certain corners of the Internet. At issue was more than a million dollars in fines owed to the BLM for illegally grazing his cattle on public land for over 20 years. His family had made use of land in the area since 1877, some of which is now part of the nearby national park. In 1993, environmental restrictions meant to protect an endangered turtle put new limits on grazing. He refused to recognize the authority of the BLM and continued to make use of the land. When in 2014, the BLM finally insisted on collecting their money, he refused to pay them. Consequently, they confiscated his cattle.

The story might have ended there, except for an ex-marine named Ryan Payne and the network of militia groups he founded, Operation Mutual Aid. Cliven posted pics of his cattle on social media and issued a plea for help. Within 24 hours, Payne and his men were at the Bundys’ back door, having driven through the night to reach them. “We’re just a little farm family down here. We don’t have military training, we don’t have military equipment. We don’t even have a shotgun that works right,” Cliven’s son Ryan said at the time. “So when Ryan Payne and his militia started showing up, we could finally have a ray of hope that we can have a little bit of defense.”

Payne soon was in charge of tactics for the whole operation. Under Payne’s guidance, protesters surrounded BLM agents guarding confiscated Bundy cattle, at one point shutting down a highway with snipers. Finally, the BLM surrendered the cattle and went away. The Bundys draped a banner over a freeway overpass reading: “The West Has Now Been Won!”

The BLM probably backed down so quickly that day at Bunkerville because of the specter of Waco.


Continues at: http://brooklynrail.org/2017/09/field-n ... oy-Stories
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Re: The Secret Origins of the Patriot Movement

Postby American Dream » Wed Oct 04, 2017 8:34 am

More War on Terror?: The Politics of Punishment and the Shooting in Las Vegas

Outbreaks of mass violence must be understood as social problems in need of political solutions rather than criminal justice problems in need of more punishment.

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Las Vegas police participate in a 2012 "Multi Assault Counter Terrorism Action Capabilities" training at Nellis Air Force Base.

More carnage at the hands of men with guns. Nevada, like much of the country, lacks meaningful restrictions on access to assault rifles and the ammunition that feeds them. We can only hope that an event like this will undermine the logic of expanding gun ownership and “open carry” perpetuated by the gun industry and its prime lobbyist, the NRA, and lead to a more rational interpretation of the Second Amendment.

More likely, however, is an intensification of the politics of fear and an expansion of the War on Terror, driven in part by misguided but well-meaning calls to define this latest mass shooting as a domestic terror incident. It is understandable that when people see the horrible acts of non-white people labeled as terrorism, they want similar acts by whites to be labeled the same way, in the hope that by doing so the power of the NRA and the radical right will be undermined by equating gun violence with whiteness.

For now, we know nothing about the killer’s motives. Was there some sort of warped political motivation behind this or was this a case of profound, but all too common, untreated mental illness? One of the first such mass sniper shootings was carried out in 1966 at the University of Texas. The shooter had a massive brain tumor and had been turned away from medical treatment before killing 14 people from the university clock tower.

Demanding that the Las Vegas shooting be treated as terrorism runs the real risk of further expanding the power of the FBI, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and President Trump to engage in more of the unjust and counterproductive practices associated with prosecuting the War on Terror in the US. The FBI routinely relies on scams that border on entrapment to lure young and vulnerable people into “plots” that have been entirely created and facilitated by the FBI. The more outlandish the plot they cook up, the more headlines they get, despite the total inability of the person arrested to conceptualize, much less carry out such an attack.

Following 9/11, the US created a national network of “Fusion Centers” designed to gather intelligence and fight terrorism. When it quickly became clear that there was no such work for them to do in the vast majority of jurisdictions, they quickly shifted over to an “all hazzards/all crimes” posture that has led to an expansion of surveillance of non-violent political groups.

An expansion of the War on Terror would likely further accelerate the militarization of policing as well. Trump recently signaled his support for this when he dialed back the modest restrictions President Obama had placed on the transfer of military hardware to local police forces. Broadening the mandate of this “war” will encourage even more military hardware on our streets, and possibly more importantly, an expansion of the “warrior” mindset among police, who already view much of the public they police as “enemies.”

While calls for equality before the law are much needed, we too often equate that with expanding the use of punishment. Do we really want to increase the arrests of whites for drug violations to make the War on Drugs more racially just? Shouldn’t we instead question the basic idea of using police, courts, and prisons to manage an urgent public health issue? We need to break the habit of equating justice with punishment and look instead to develop prevention mechanisms that bring us more safety.

We should support rational gun control legislation and a rethinking of the Second Amendment that would allow us to reign in the availability of assault weapons. Unfortunately, such a “supply side” approach is unlikely to be very successful. There remains strong political support for easy access to guns of all kinds. Even robust restrictions on handguns would be slow to make much a difference, because there are currently more guns than people in the US.

We need to also consider a broad range of demand side solutions. Keep in mind that one of the greatest drivers of gun sales and the cynical politics of gun deregulation is racial fear and animus. Whenever there are increased calls for racial justice, such as the emergence of Black Lives Matter, gun sales increase. This is a political problem that gets to the heart of racism in American society. It is this reality that must be addressed head on if we hope to reduce the stockpiling of guns.

Closely related to this is a deep distrust of the state and any kind of broadly collective approaches to the common good. Large swaths of the population feel deeply alienated from a state that they see as directly producing economic displacement in their lives while providing what they see as hand outs and special treatment for “others” such as immigrants and people of color. This kind of loss of political faith is driving militia movements, Oath Keepers, the open carry movement, and other to turn to weapons as a mythical defense against an imperial state.


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Re: The Secret Origins of the Patriot Movement

Postby American Dream » Tue Oct 31, 2017 8:09 am

Guest Article: What’s Going on in Québec? (Part 1)

As we saw on September 30, many far-right groups across Canada tried to rally against “illegal” immigration but ended up gathering only a handful of protesters, largely outnumbered by anti-racist activists. Everywhere except in Québec. In Québec, the groups gathered at Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle, at the border between Canada and the US, and managed to attract over 200 people protesting the influx of immigrants that had come to Canada over the past months. There were around the same number of counter-protesters and also a large police presence there, and the organizing group, Storm Alliance, considered the Québec rally a big success, which was not the case in the rest of Canada.

Most of the groups active today started in late 2015, following the Syrian civil war and subsequent refugee crisis in the Western world. Some of them are chapters of other groups, like the Soldiers of Odin and PEGIDA, but most of the big groups of the moment were founded in Québec, starting with La Meute:

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La Meute (French for Wolf Pack) first started as a Facebook-based group created by Éric “Corvus”
Venne and Patrick “Ptrk” Beaudry, two Canadian army veterans:


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The bulk of their activism is anti-Muslim as they are afraid of Canada and Québec in particular becoming “like France,” which they see as having been taken over by “Islamists.” They are managed in a militarized way, with different ranks having different colour wolf paws on their Facebook profile photos and with 17 different sub-groups, or Clans (lol), one for each administrative region of Québec. They also have an English section (formerly managed by Shawn Beauvais-MacDonald, of Charlottesville fame) as well as a France chapter. They started having rallies in the spring of 2017, when they gathered in Montreal against M-103. They believe that the anti-fascists who come to oppose them are pro-government and pro-Sharia because they can’t fathom being against Islamophobia and against authoritarian governments at the same time.


More at: http://anti-racistcanada.blogspot.ca/20 ... uebec.html
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Re: The Secret Origins of the Patriot Movement

Postby American Dream » Tue Oct 31, 2017 10:21 am

Guest Article: What’s Going on in Québec? (Part 2: The Politics)

Then came 2015, the Syrian immigrants, the worldwide rise of the far-right, the creation of groups like La Meute and PEGIDA Québec and with them, a greater feeling of islamophobia all over the province. Québec City and the surrounding areas have for years been especially fond of right-wing discourse, primarily on talk radio. They often pride themselves on being different than the more progressive and multicultural city of Montréal.

The Grande Mosquée de Québec, part of the Islamic Cultural Center of Québec City, was the target of different hate crimes in the recent past (though not all of them were deemed hate crimes by the law). They received a pig’s head wrapped up with a bow, their president got his car set on fire, and, in early 2017, 27 year-old Alexandre Bissonnette opened fire inside the mosque, killing 6 people and injuring 19 others. He was known to his peers for having far-right racist, anti-feminist and all around hateful beliefs.

A lot of the far-right groups had started circulating conspiracy theories about George Soros, the New World Order, a plan to replace white people with people of colour, and the need to defend “our culture.” They incorporated the shooting into these conspiracies, saying that it was ordered by Trudeau to make white Québecois look bad, that there was a second Muslim shooter who was Bissonnette’s gay lover (!), and other such nonsense. The premier of Québec, Philippe Couillard, was invited to a popular talk-show following the shooting and had to warn people that hate speech would not be tolerated, even online. Shortly after, a man was arrested for issuing threats to the Muslim community on Facebook. Then came motion M-103 at the federal level. This fueled the far-right’s conspiracies about a plan to shut them up with immigration and Sharia and got them more active in the streets, like we saw in the last article.


More at: http://anti-racistcanada.blogspot.com/2 ... ec_30.html
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Re: The Secret Origins of the Patriot Movement

Postby American Dream » Wed Nov 08, 2017 10:25 am

Jim Goad Interviews Michael A. Hoffman, Who Questions The Existence Of ‘Homicidal Gas Chambers In Auschwitz’

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For the 13th episode of his podcast, Jim Goad’s Group Hug, far-right columnist Jim Goad interviewed Michael A. Hoffman, author of the ahistorical book They Were White and They Were Slaves: The Untold Story of Enslavement of Whites in Early America.

CONTINUE READING








American Dream » Sat Jan 31, 2015 2:29 pm wrote:A Vast Right Wing Conspiracy: The Secret Origins of the Patriot Movement Part II

Due to the Lobby's long-time support of Holocaust revisionism (Carto co-founded the Institute for Historical Review) it still receives praise from leading Jewish conspiracy theorists. Self-described revisionist historian Michael A. Hoffman II recently cited the path Carto helped set him on, noting:

"As a heretic these many years (I was a voracious and reasonably precocious reader as a kid, and 44 years ago, in 1969, I stumbled upon a booklet published by Willis Carto, The Myth of the Six Million -- my career as a thought criminal was launched)..."

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Hoffman


http://visupview.blogspot.com/2013/10/a ... et_26.html


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"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 » Wed Nov 29, 2017 4:53 pm

They’re certainly Christian, but not just any Christian—they’re evangelical Protestant, Pentacostalist, and members of radical sects that preach racial purity as the Word of Jesus. (Catholicism is certainly stocked with conservatives on social issues, but white supremacists tap into such a long and ignoble tradition of anti-Catholicism that they tend to have their own right-wing organizations, mostly fighting against women’s rights and gay rights.) Some belong to churches like the Christian Identity Church, which gained a foothold on the Far Right in the early 1980s. Christian Identity’s focus on racism and anti-Semitism provides the theological underpinnings to the shift from a more “traditional agrarian protest” to paramilitarism. It is from the Christian Identity movement that the Far Right gets its theological claims that Adam is the ancestor of the Caucasian race, whereas non-whites are pre-Adamic “mud people,” without souls, and Jews are the children of Satan. According to this doctrine, Jesus was not Jewish and not from the Middle East; actually, he was northern European, his Second Coming is close at hand, and followers can hasten the apocalypse. It is the birthright of Anglo-Saxons to establish God’s kingdom on earth; America’s and Britain’s “birthright is to be the wealthiest, most powerful nations on earth . . . able, by divine right, to dominate and colonize the world.”

A large proportion of the extreme right wing are military veterans. Several leaders served in Vietnam and were shocked at the national disgust that greeted them as they returned home after that debacle. “America’s failure to win that war was a truly profound blow,” writes William J. Gibson. “If Americans were no longer winners, then who were they?” Some veterans believed they were sold out by the government, caving in to effeminate cowardly protesters; they can no longer trust the government to fight for what is right. Bo Gritz, a former Green Beret in Vietnam, returned to Southeast Asia several times in clandestine missions to search for prisoners of war and was the real-life basis for the film Rambo. He uses his military heroism to increase his credibility among potential recruits; one brochure describes him as “this country’s most decorated Vietnam veteran” who “killed some 400 Communists in his illustrious military career.” In 1993 Gritz began a traveling SPIKE (Specially Prepared Individuals for Key Events) training program, a rigorous survival course in paramilitary techniques.

Many of the younger guys are veterans of the first Gulf War, a war that they came to believe was fought for no moral principles at all, but simply to make America’s oil supply safer and to protect Israel from possible Arab attack. They feel they’ve been used, pawns in a larger political game, serving their country honorably only to be spit out and stepped on when they returned home to slashed veteran benefits, bureaucratic indifference to post-traumatic stress disorder, and general social contempt for having fought in the war in the first place. They believed they were entitled to be hailed as heroes, as had earlier generations of American veterans, not to be scorned as outcasts. Now a guy like Bo Gritz symbolizes “true” warrior-style masculinity, and reclaiming their manhood is the reward for signing up with the Far Right.


Excerpted from “Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era”, by Michael Kimmel
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Re: The Secret Origins of the Patriot Movement

Postby American Dream » Thu Dec 14, 2017 4:52 pm

Meet 'Patriot Front': Neo-Nazi network aims to blur lines with militiamen, the alt-right

There had been other recent indications of neo-Nazi organizing in Kitsap County, as well as elsewhere in the Puget Sound region generally, notably banners erected on freeway overpasses. One of those, reading “America is White,” was reported to Busey the week before, but had been taken down before an officer could arrive to remove it.

“I went on their website and read their manifesto,” Busey said. “It’s a bunch of blah, and towards the end it talks about minorities. This does not come to a free-speech issue for us. We did look to see if this was a hate crime, but the answer to that was no.”

There had, however, been a hate crime committed by a young white man who was involved in the same group in mid-September at Kitsap Mall in Silverdale, north of Bremerton. Matthew S. Holland, 26, reportedly attempted to recruit two kiosk workers at the mall into his neo-Nazi organization, and then began verbally assaulting a Filipino woman at the mall, demanding to see her green card, and then similarly abusing a Hispanic security guard. Prosecutors charged him with felony malicious harassment; he currently awaits a January trial.

Kitsap prosecutors, however, told Hatewatch that they knew virtually nothing about Holland, who they said is not from Kitsap County but recently arrived from out of state.

Wherever the fliers have appeared, authorities have wondered: Where are these neo-Nazis coming from? And just who and what is Patriot Front anyway?

The origins of Patriot Front lie in neo-Nazi organizing that began in 2015 at the messageboard IronMarch.org, itself an outgrowth of the community of dedicated fascists who commented at online forums such as 4chan and Stormfront, and allegedly founded by Russian nationalist Alexander Slavros. IronMarch in turn spun off the activist group AtomWaffen (German for “Atomic Bomb”) Division, whose members engaged in various far-right actions earlier this year. AtomWaffen activists favored plastering fliers advertising their organization, and their reach included the University of Washington campus in Seattle.

While AtomWaffen was explicit in its embrace of German-style Nazism, other fascists at IronMarch began discussing ways to broaden their reach in order to compete with alt-right and Identitarian groups such as Identity Evropa for young recruits. Out of these discussions they created a new group in 2015, first named Reaction America, then renamed in 2016 as American Vanguard. When one of that group’s leaders was exposed for offering up information to an antifascist group and IronMarch users and administrators began "doxxing" AV members, the group broke away from IronMarch. In early 2017, the organization once again rebranded as Vanguard America. After an AtomWaffen member in Florida shot and killed two other members in May 2017, telling authorities the group was planning to blow up a nuclear plant, a number of AtomWaffen participants joined ranks with Vanguard America.

The leader of Vanguard America, a Marine Corps veteran from New Mexico named Dillon Irizarry (but better known by his nom de plume Dillon Hopper), began organizing rallies at which members openly carried firearms. At its website, VA claimed that America was built on the foundation of White Europeans, and demanded the nation recapture the glory of the Aryan nation, free of the influence of the international Jews.

VA had a significant presence in Charlottesville for the “Unite the Right” rally in August, as several of its members joined in the August 11 torch-bearing march onto the University of Virginia campus. The next day, a phalanx of VA marchers chanting “Blood and Soil!” marched toward the protest at a city park, and then were recorded acting as a shield wall meant to protect the park.

Among those VA marchers was James Alex Fields, the 20-year-old Ohio man who, later that afternoon, allegedly drove his Dodge Challenger into a crowd of counterprotesters and maimed 20 people, killing one, 32-year-old Heather Heyer. VA later issued a statement claiming that Fields was not actually a member of the organization.

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Thomas Rousseau, left, at Charlottesville, flanked by Alex James Fields at the right. Source: It's Going Down.

Another marcher that Saturday in Charlottesville – indeed, photographed only two marchers away from Fields – was the youthful Thomas Rousseau, who not only was a member but had taken a prominent leadership role in the group online. Based in Texas, Rousseau noted in chats that VA’s statement “never said that he did anything wrong.” Soon he and other participants were recommending yet another name change.

On August 30, Rousseau announced, in a major split with Irizarry/Hopper, that “we are rebranding and reorganizing as a new entity,” and henceforth be known as “Patriots Front” (the “s” was dropped in short order). “The new name was carefully chosen, as it serves several purposes. It can help inspire sympathy among those more inclined to fence-sitting, and can easily be used to justify our worldview.”

The mention of “fence-sitting” was a reference to the ongoing discussion within the online neo-Nazi community about engaging and recruiting young men sympathetic to their underlying cause but not yet fully radicalized. There have been similar discussions about drawing in “Patriots” from the far-right militia movement, who have traditionally insisted on drawing a line on participating in outright white supremacist activity.

Rousseau also made it clear that the plan was to translate online discussion into real-world actions, concrete activism: “You will be expected to work, and work hard to meet the bar rising,” he wrote. “Inactivity will get you expelled, unwillingness to work and contribute in any capacity will as well.”

The “work,” as Patriot Front’s organizing has played, has primarily comprised making their presence felt at rallies and protests, spreading the word with freeway banners, and plastering fliers in public locations, where they are often summarily removed.

So far, that ethos is how Patriot Front organizing has played out on the ground. The group first made its presence felt in Houston in late September, when about a dozen members appeared outside a book fair and demanded a fight with antifascist organizers who reportedly were inside giving a talk. (Rousseau later led a similar protest outside an Austin bookstore.)

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Thomas Rousseau, right, shouts outside a book fair in Houston on September 20. In the background is longtime neo-Nazi Robert Ray Warren. (Image from video still.)

In addition to Rousseau – who could be seen wearing a dark blue shirt and leading chants – the Houston protest notably featured the presence of longtime neo-Nazi figure Robert Ray Warren, a contributor to the alt-right website The Daily Stormer (under the pen name “Azzmador”) who had also marched in Charlottesville. Earlier that summer, Warren was involved in a heated dispute with an Oath Keeper at an alt-right rally in Houston that became a well-known marker of the division between “Patriot” militiamen and the alt-right.


More at: https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/201 ... -alt-right
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Re: The Secret Origins of the Patriot Movement

Postby Jerky » Thu Dec 14, 2017 8:19 pm

Taken as an aggregate, these articles point towards a truly terrifying image of our age, out of which rises a gestalt that is undeniably indicative that we really are headed down the very darkest of all possible roads.

Jerky
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Re: The Secret Origins of the Patriot Movement

Postby Burnt Hill » Thu Dec 14, 2017 11:35 pm

Jerky » Thu Dec 14, 2017 8:19 pm wrote:Taken as an aggregate, these articles point towards a truly terrifying image of our age, out of which rises a gestalt that is undeniably indicative that we really are headed down the very darkest of all possible roads.

Jerky


That's also how I see things, on Tuesdays.
On Thursdays I live in a world that rejects the idea of this aggregate and wont be denied a beautiful future.
But yeah, every day is Tuesday lately.
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Re: The Secret Origins of the Patriot Movement

Postby American Dream » Sat Feb 17, 2018 12:38 pm

Trump’s Military Parade Isn’t Fascist. It’s Older and Much Worse.

Image

Kathleen Belew, in her forthcoming book Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America, reveals a 2009 report by the Department of Homeland Security that states the single factor correlating most highly with surges in Ku Klux Klan membership (going all the way back to the 1860’s) is an influx of veterans returning from war.


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Marine Scout Snipers pose with Nazi-inspired unit flag.


Read at: https://godsandradicals.org/2018/02/17/ ... uch-worse/
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Re: The Secret Origins of the Patriot Movement

Postby American Dream » Tue Feb 27, 2018 7:37 pm

Pondering a coming civil war, Oath Keepers call for armed guards to patrol schools nationwide

February 27, 2018 Ryan Lenz

It was only a matter of time before the Oath Keepers panicked in the aftermath of a horrific Florida high school shooting that left 17 students dead.

In a call to action discussed during a nearly three-hour webinar on Monday, the largest and most influential antigovernment “Patriot” group encouraged members to post armed guards outside schools nationwide, even if that school district asks them to leave or if doing so they would violate gun laws.

“[N]otify the school of your intent,” Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, wrote in a national call to action. “Notice the key word there is ‘notify,’ rather then ask for permission. When it comes to standing outside schools within the limits of the law to defend the lives of our children, you don’t need to ask permission of bureaucrats or politicians.”

The idea to send armed Oath Keepers to schools nationwide began after reports surfaced that an Oath Keeper in Indiana had begun staking out a spot overlooking a school in Fort Wayne, just north of Indianapolis, and had called on national leaders to join, according to The Indianapolis Star. Within hours, the Oath Keepers announced their call to action, warning that “leftist ‘blood dancers’” were preparing to “push for more infringements on our right to keep and bear arms.”

Such panic is not without precedent. In fact, fears that restrictions will be placed on the 2nd Amendment run rampant through the movement and remain central to the identity of the Oath Keepers, an antigovernment group that emerged in 2009 from the Tea Party-fueled backlash against the election of President Obama.

That year, Rhodes announced the formation of the Oath Keepers and called on military and police personnel to honor their oaths to the Constitution by refusing to follow 10 orders, including those to disarm American citizens. Since then, the group has responded to almost every mass shooting with resistance to any effort to restrict gun rights or cut access to ammunition.

But the political climate following the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, has been particularly heated, and the Oath Keepers’ Monday night webinar announcing their call to action rose in tone and tenor to a fevered pitch as participants defined the charged climate following the Parkland shooting as preamble to a federal gun grab.

“You have to give them nothing. They want it all,” said David Cordrea, a self-described “armed citizen advocate” who writes regularly on the Oath Keepers website. “Above all else, we will not disarm.”

The discussions over gun control became a window into a movement that has struggled to define itself after President Trump’s election, a time when racist hate groups have capitalized on a tacit approval of their politics coming from the White House. Rhodes, the former Army paratrooper and Yale Law School graduate who founded the Oath Keepers, has long distanced himself from such white nationalists. That is, until recently.

On Inauguration Day, Rhodes attended The DeploraBall in Washington, D.C., an event sponsored by conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich and other racist “alt-right” figures. His Oath Keepers helped guard a day of rallies organized by the anti-Muslim hate group ACT for America and protected, and also guarded members of the racist “alt-right” at the University of California, Berkeley, last year as they protested university officials canceling conservative speeches.

With the shooting in Florida igniting a fury in the movement, Rhodes on Monday night warned that some places of the country such as California have already fallen to what another speaker labeled a “deep state coup against Trump.”

“If [the left] can contain Trump long enough until he’s gone, then they will win all the marbles,” Rhodes said. “if they can change the [ethnic] demographics enough to pack the vote, they get a lock on power.”

Since the 1990s, when the passage of the Brady Bill ignited wild fears of 2nd Amendment infringements, and the gun shows of the era that became waypoints in the migration of conspiracy theories and radical right ideologies into the mainstreams, there have been few issues like gun control that have led to growth in the antigovernment movement.

Ill-fated efforts to charge gun offenses at Waco, Texas, and Ruby Ridge, Idaho –– events that inspired Timothy McVeigh to bomb the federal building in Oklahoma City –– became proof that the government was coming for America’s guns. The federal siege of white separatist Randy Weaver’s cabin at Ruby Ridge in 1992, a tragedy that left three people dead including Weaver’s wife and son and a U.S. Marshal, became a touchstone for the radical right.

Matt Bracken, a former Navy SEAL who participated in the Oath Keepers’ webinar, warned that if the federal government does come to restrict access to guns, as some suggest they did in Ruby Ridge, what would follow would be tantamount to civil war. Because, he suggested, there are gun owners willing to die –– and to kill –– to defend their rights.

“If there are 100 Ruby Ridges happening every week, they will run out of FBI agents,” Bracken said.


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