#Right Wing Violence

[justinspoliticalcorner]

The Proud Boys are back: How the far-right domestic terrorist group is rebuilding to rally behind Trump

Aram Roston at Reuters:

A dark SUV cruised past former President Donald Trump’s supporters near his Bedminster golf club in New Jersey on a windy April afternoon. Billowing from the vehicle were three flags: one for the Trump campaign, two others with the initials “PB” – the insignia of the far-right Proud Boys movement. Through the open windows, three Proud Boys flashed the “OK” sign with their hands, a gesture often associated with white supremacy and the far right. Trump’s fans cheered. Four men dressed in the signature black-and-yellow shirts of the Proud Boys spilled out of the SUV and began glad-handing the crowd like homecoming heroes. The Proud Boys are back. Four years after the failed effort to overturn Trump’s 2020 electoral defeat, the violent all-male extremist group that led the storming of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, is rebuilding and regaining strength as Trump campaigns to return to the White House, according to interviews with eight Proud Boys, two U.S. law enforcement officials and four experts who track the group’s online activity.

Since the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, four former Proud Boys leaders have been convicted in federal court of seditious conspiracy, each sentenced to 15 or more years in prison. At least another 70 members were charged with participating in the violence. But that crackdown hasn’t stopped the Proud Boys. Some Proud Boys say they are preparing to emerge once again as a physical force for Trump, drawn to his hardline nationalism and convinced their leaders will be pardoned if he wins. Trump himself promises to pardon convicted Jan. 6 rioters if he’s elected. After last Thursday’s historic guilty verdict against Trump, an Ohio Proud Boys chapter vowed “war” and posted a video of Proud Boy street brawls that ended with the message, “Fighting solves everything.” A Miami chapter said, “Now, more than ever, we are recruiting!” Some posted images of the upside-down American flag symbolizing the “Stop the Steal” movement that falsely claims Trump won the 2020 election. One Proud Boy told Reuters that America is in a period of “calm before the storm.”

The group’s main Telegram channel, however, posted a message urging Proud Boys to stay calm and not get drawn into a trap and risk arrest. “Trump is, of course, getting railroaded but we will not be walking into any honey pots over this.” In recent weeks, the group has become more prominent at pro-Trump events, highlighting the risk of renewed violence in this year’s presidential election. Dozens of Proud Boys – some in body armor and helmets – marked the third anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection with a show of force at the statehouse in Columbus, Ohio. On April 20, nearly a dozen gathered at a rally for Trump’s Republican campaign in Wilmington, North Carolina.  More recently, groups of Proud Boys from two chapters mixed with tens of thousands of Trump supporters at a campaign rally in Wildwood, New Jersey, in May.

On a boardwalk near the entrance of the Wildwood rally, several Proud Boys identified themselves as members of the “New Jersey State” chapter. One said they were there to provide security and stop agitators from “disrespecting or assaulting everybody.” Inscribed on his wraparound sunglasses were the initials “POYB” – short for “Proud of Your Boy.” He wore a ring with the initials “PB” and a black shirt with the yellow laurel wreath of the Proud Boys. Three men from another chapter greeted them, their faces hidden by gaiter masks. The re-emergence of the Proud Boys at Trump’s political rallies and events coincides with polls showing a majority of Americans fearing political violence will flare around November’s election. It also comes when Trump’s use of incendiary rhetoric is inspiring his supporters to target his opponents – including judges, prosecutors and political rivals – in a wave of threats that’s unprecedented in modern American politics.

Trump himself has not ruled out the possibility of political violence if he loses in November. “If we don’t win, you know, it depends,” he said when asked by Time magazine in April if he expected violence after the election. If he’s jailed or put under house arrest, “I’m not sure the public would stand for it,” he said in a Fox News interview that aired on Sunday. “At a certain point there’s a breaking point.” Before the last election, Trump told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by.” Three months later, federal prosecutors say, the group’s leaders plotted and led the insurrection of the U.S. Capitol. Trump’s baseless, rigged-election claims inspired the gathering, and Trump himself urged the assembled crowd to march on the Capitol as Congress certified Democrat Joe Biden’s victory.

A spokesperson for Trump did not respond to questions for this story about his rhetoric, Jan. 6 and the Proud Boys. As the Proud Boys regroup, they’ve made changes designed to make them less vulnerable to law enforcement scrutiny, including doing away with layers of top leadership, according to interviews with members. The Proud Boys now operate with self-governing chapters in more than 40 states, with little apparent central coordination, members said. While the group’s structure has changed, its Canadian founder remains an inspirational figure to today’s Proud Boys. Gavin McInnes, a British-born far-right commentator who lives in New York, announced his resignation from the Proud Boys in 2018. But he remains deeply involved with the group, according to interviews with Proud Boys.

[...]

After McInnes stepped down, his successor, Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, raised the Proud Boys’ profile, pulling them from the fringe of the far-right toward the center of Trump-era Republican politics. Tarrio, a Floridian of Afro-Cuban descent, was sentenced last September to 22 years in prison for seditious conspiracy, defined as an effort by two or more people to overthrow the government or use force to hinder its operations, and other charges related to the Capitol riot. He has appealed.

Two criminal defense attorneys for Tarrio did not respond to emailed questions and phone calls. In the past, McInnes, Tarrio and a group of leaders dubbed “Elders” spoke publicly on the group’s behalf, set the agenda and guided its confrontations with left-wing groups around the country. They sat atop a formal structure and could disband Proud Boy chapters or expel members. Now, members say, the chapters are largely independent of each other and ban communications with the media. Most members who spoke to Reuters for this report did so on condition of anonymity. The group’s resilience has surprised some extremism experts. “The amazing thing is that so many people from the Proud Boys can be in jail and yet you have these active chapters,” said Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the nonprofit Global Project Against Hate and Extremism. “Traditionally when the head of a neo-Nazi or white supremacist group goes to jail or dies, the organization will collapse, but that does not seem to be happening with the Proud Boys.”

[...]

During the Trump administration, the Proud Boys engaged in large-scale street brawls with antifa – antifascists – and other leftist groups across the country, typically by taunting demonstrators to instigate a fight. They adopted the slogan “Fuck Around And Find Out,” and emblazoned the letters “FAFO” on hats and t-shirts. Some historians compare the Proud Boys to fascist European militias of the 1920s and 1930s such as the Brownshirts, a Nazi paramilitary group that helped bring Hitler to power in Germany. Proud Boys say they’re nothing like the Brownshirts and bear no resemblance to fascists. But street violence and extreme nationalism are features of both groups. In the weeks before the Capitol riots, some wore a patch inscribed with “RWDS,” short for “Right Wing Death Squad,” a term used to describe Central and South American paramilitaries who supported right-wing governments and dictatorships. [...]

After Trump left the White House, the Proud Boys turned to America’s culture wars. They clashed with supporters of abortion rights and vaccine mandates, and harassed organizers of Drag Queen Story Hours, where female impersonators read at libraries or bookstores to children. Fights often ensued. Since the 2021 Capitol attack, Reuters identified 29 incidents of political violence involving the Proud Boys, almost all of them centered around social issues. All but one of the eight cases in 2023 involved clashes between Proud Boys and left-wing activists at demonstrations supporting LGBTQ+ rights. The tally was based largely on news reports and court records of fights, assaults and other physical confrontations. This year, the Proud Boys have returned to politics. In the first three months of 2024, there have been far fewer Proud Boys public events than in the same period last year. But half of them have been pro-Trump and the rest have been political in nature, related to guns or immigration, said Kieran Doyle of the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, a U.S.-based nonprofit that monitors political violence.

On April 24, Proud Boys founder McInnes appeared at Columbia University’s pro-Palestinian protests. He told Reuters that the Proud Boys were not getting involved in the anti-Israel unrest, saying he was there to “ridicule” liberals by pretending to be a left-wing journalist. It didn’t work, he said, because people saw him and posted alerts on social media. “They recognized me and were scared.” There’s no authoritative count of Proud Boy members. McInnes claims there are about 5,000, down from 8,000 during Trump’s presidency but up from lows after the Capitol riot arrests. Official estimates of the Proud Boys’ strength vary widely, from 300 to 3,000 members, said a law enforcement source who has monitored the group. Reuters could not independently corroborate its numbers. Some former Proud Boys have abandoned the group for other, more overtly racist and violent groups, including the neo-Nazi Blood Tribe and the underground “Active Club” scene, a white supremacist male movement, one Proud Boy told Reuters.

Reuters has an informative article about far-right domestic terrorist group Proud Boys is rebuilding to rally behind convicted felon Donald Trump.

After the January 6th Insurrection, the group turned towards right-wing culture war items to launch protests, such as COVID mitigation measures (esp. vaccine mandates), drag story hours, and abortion access.

Read the full article at Reuters.

[kick-a-long]

so this is why i don't trust conservatives or the far right even if I also don't trust tankies and the far left. islamaphobia is the twin of antisemitism. EVEN IF the teen who stabbed those kids was an islamic terrorist WHICH IS TOTALLY UNCONFIRMED AND THERE ARE PLENTY OF FAR RIGHT WHITE CHRISTIANS WHO ATTACK PEOPLE to attack a house of worship is disgusting. it's no surprise that now that violence has been normalized that it's being used against muslims as well.

the target changes, the political alignment changes, but the message is the same: "if you are different, you don't deserve to exist."

never accept religious or ethnic violence, call it out where you see it.

[davidaugust]

Riots from rumor, rumor from Russia.

Russia tries to use us to sow chaos.

“The rumor was included in an article published by Channel 3Now, a site with suspected links to Russia, Logically said. The article was then cited by Russian state-affiliated news organizations including RT and Tass.” -AP

With ABC in US saying Channel 3Now’s Facebook is run by people in Pakistan and the US, and Daily Mail saying Channel 3 Now started 11 years ago sharing videos from Izhevsk, Russia.

Sources:

AP: https://apnews.com/article/britain-riots-unrest-social-media-misinformation-attack-5824d3136675e10d6a25c9e17287c994

ABC: https://abcnews.go.com/amp/International/wireStory/online-misinformation-fueling-tensions-southport-stabbing-attack-killed-112437256

Daily Mail: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13695801/amp/The-Russian-linked-fake-news-website-fuelled-lies-Southport-stabbings-sparked-violent-protests.html

[nando161mando]

Twitter is now paying people to spread hate

Reminder: if you’re still on Twitter—your presence and your interactions generate revenue. You’re literally funding the alt right.

#DeleteTwitter

[corporationsarepeople]

Tucker Carlson's portrayal of the deadly Jan. 6 attack as a largely peaceful event on his prime-time Fox News show set off a dangerous new wave of social media chatter that includes death threats against Capitol police officers and Democratic leaders, according to experts who monitor extremism and a report from Advance Democracy shared exclusively with USA TODAY.

The segment that aired last week downplayed the violence at the Capitol two years ago, falsely recasting the Washington mob that breached the Capitol as an “orderly and meek” gathering of “sightseers.”

Carlson’s claims, which accompanied clips of Capitol security footage, drew an angry reaction from right-wing users who fired off threats on Elon Musk’s Twitter and in pro-Trump forums directed at politicians who have made public inquiries into the violence, especially the congressional Jan. 6 committee

Those threats came in far greater numbers than before the broadcast, according to the Advance Democracy report.

Jan. 6 riot:Hundreds of identifiable people remain free. FBI arrests could take years

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Crowdfunding extremism:Extremists raised $6.2 million on crowdfunding websites in 'heyday' of financing

On Twitter, posts relating to Jan. 6 using violent rhetoric increased fivefold from the previous week, the report shows.

The outpouring of violence concerns extremism experts, who said Carlson and Fox News are playing with fire by spreading disinformation that could inspire violence against the targets of their coverage.

"If there were an attack right now on one of the groups or individuals that was mentioned in Tucker's report — one of the dumping grounds for his ire — I would not be surprised at all," said Megan Squire, deputy director for data analytics at the Southern Poverty Law Center. "I mean, that's basically what we're expecting right now."

[briarpatch-kids]

One of my formative "Portland style" activism experiences was my mom calling me from the Occupy Wall Street protest excitedly telling me they're gonna gas them if they don't leave. Like... genuinely excited at the prospect of getting Teargassed for the Cause. Another was my friend in high school showing off their bruises from when they were rammed by police bikes for an anti police brutality protest. It's all about how much you can gain minor injuries and the social capital of it rather than the actual cause. That friend never even mentioned that the triggering event for the police brutality protest was the cops habit of tazing mentally ill people, just how they totally got bruised up at a protest by the cops.

When Portland people try to school me on activism I can't help but be like "honey we have Militias, in the plural." I'm glad you can break windows and start fires in the Pearl District, but we would be shot dead for that here and the cops would just watch.

[diveintomydream]

Every human wants to live in peace

[vavuska]

That's exactly why I blocked my anonymous answers right now. I reposted a tiktok video about the insane number of mass shootings in the US and I received a lot of hate for no reasons and now this defamatory accusations that hurted me a lot. As a victim of child abuse, I feel deeply disgusted and also completely ashamed of how some persons use children and victims to ruin innocent people life and reputation, also this show no emphaty for the deep pain and traumas that we deal with every day. This is not respectful for real life victims and abuse survivors. This person should be stopped right now, because he is deliberately trying to harass people and turn a mass of internet bullies against everyone he doesn't agree with!

@shoeshine-for-neptune

@unstoppable-armsnotsigns @officialmacgyver

Link for reference:

And see the comments above!

Also, this coward blocked me, because I called out his behavior. But I have both screens and links, so I want to proceed to sue him for defamation, that's a crime, I can do it.

Oh. And in the comments you can see his DISGUSTING and DISTURBING reaction to this post:

“Lol. Shut up.” that's what this waste of oxygen says to people who experience abuse as child (and as young adult as well), he doesn't care about victims, he just want to use them to make the others fight with violence and guns his own battles. Specifically, this 'politicizaton' of the world 'pedophile' has been used by the religious right to further its agenda of LGBTQ+ repression, and by the political right to dismantle opposition arguments (because most of the time they aren't even able to develop their argumentation properly).

More exhaustively this is a common thrope nowadays among right-wing extremist and conspiracy theorist: using false 'pedophilia' claims to diffamate leftist activist and LGBTQ+ people is dangerous, not only because the false accuser ruins the life of the person falsely accused, but also sets back real victims by delegitimizing their experience and also spreads dangerous, false anti-LGBTQ+ tropes.

This is why horrible crimes such as child abuse and exploitation shouldn't be used as a political weapon, expecially because defamation is a crime too.

[thedreadpiratejames]

First thing they need to do to stop this is stop airing Fox News on the Armed Forces TV Network.

[taliabhattwrites]

[readingsquotes]

"RG Cravens, a senior research analyst at the Southern Poverty Law Center, has tracked the Leave Our Kids Alone protests since they began disrupting school board meetings last summer and threw their weight behind a controversial anti-trans statewide ballot measure.

The reason these counter-demonstrators are drawn to protests over the war in the Middle East, he said, was that they see them through the prism of a broader rightwing view that “traditional” societies and families are under threat. “Their animosity towards the campus demonstrations are part of this Christian far-right perspective that LGBTQ folks are threats to Christianity, and so are Palestinians or Muslims,” Cravens said.

The campus demonstrations at one of California’s flagship public education institutions, Cravens said, fed into a ready-made narrative from the extremist group about the fundamental corruption of modern schooling. “Their presence at UCLA is consistent with their anti-inclusive education ideology – they argue that public education institutions are failing and are sources of terror for the Jewish community the same way that trans folks are terrors to schools and children alike.”

The school protests, where several demonstrators have been photographed making Nazi salutes, have served as focal points for disparate elements of the southern California far right, a number of whom have sought out violent confrontations. The attempts to bar districts from teaching LGBTQ+ topics have largely been unsuccessful, but a number of school board candidates running for office around the region have aligned themselves with the movement. Similar tensions in public education are playing out in New York City, Toronto and elsewhere.

Beyond UCLA, a number of far-right actors, including a violent white supremacist charged in connection with January 6, the founder of the Proud Boys, and a former member of the streetfighting Neo-Fascist Rise Above Movement have stood alongside pro-Israel demonstrators confronting Gaza solidarity encampments at universities across the country.

...Aside from the rightwing school protesters, other extremist elements were documented on UCLA’s campus. On the weekend before the raid, photos emerged of a flag featuring the symbol the Jewish Defense League, a virulent Jewish supremacist organization founded by Meir Kahane that has committed “countless terrorist attacks in the US and abroad”, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. The JDL was formally delisted as a terrorist organization by Joe Biden in 2022, over protests from Palestinian groups.

...Authorities so far have not made any arrests. Meanwhile, southern California’s far right has continued to mobilize alongside pro-Israel demonstrators, with the Christian nationalist Sean Fucht leading a march on 8 May through Los Angeles’s West Adams neighborhood near the University of Southern California’s campus.

Schubiner of the Western States Center expects further clashes like the one at UCLA as the year rolls on, unless there is a concerted effort by law enforcement to hold people accountable for assaults such as the one on 30 April. “The rise of political violence has been part of an effort by the rightwing to shift the window to what is acceptable, and what we saw at UCLA can be attributed to those efforts,” Schubiner said. “When there aren’t legal consequences for known, violent perpetrators involved in bigoted movements, it leads to an atmosphere of impunity, which is incredibly dangerous.”

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Don Moynihan at Can We Still Govern?:

Robespierre, a central architect of the French revolution, may seem like an unlikely reference point for modern American politics, and Donald Trump in particular. But in one way he articulated a theory of governing that Trump is enacting today:

"If the basis of popular government in peacetime is virtue, the basis of popular government during a revolution is both virtue and terror; virtue, without which terror is baneful; terror, without which virtue is powerless. Terror is nothing more than speedy, severe and inflexible justice; it is thus an emanation of virtue; it is less a principle in itself, than a consequence of the general principle of democracy, applied to the most pressing needs of the patrie [homeland, fatherland]"

Trump won’t use the word terror in such a way. But when he labels his opponents to be enemies of the people, fulminates against the deep state, and declares “I am your retribution” the ethos is the same. Set aside how much the retribution is driven by his interests, versus those of his supporters. The key point is that Trump has normalized retribution as a proper scope of presidential action and the use of political power. Terror becomes the perverted populist funhouse mirror of patriotism. Far more than his first and second campaigns, Trump has made vengeance the central theme of his re-election platform, even reposting an wordcloud analysis of his campaign speeches that highlighted this theme.

Trumpism hastened a new version of right-wing politics, one that is not conservative nor libertarian in a meaningful sense, but one that urges the embrace of state power to go after their movement’s perceived enemies. Terror is chiefly directed towards public officials who stand in the way of Trump’s goals and interests. These include other politicians, educators, public health officials, election officials, judges, and other parts of law enforcement.

[...]

Lesson 1: Terror is Used to Subvert Legal Accountability

When Senate Republicans refused to indict Trump for encouraging a mob to storm the Capitol in a bid to intimidate public officials into overturning the election, they promised that the legal system would hold him accountable. The problem is that the legal system is deeply wary of Trump’s ability to intimidate public officials.

The FBI petitioned a judge to stop Trump from lying that its employees were ready to use lethal force against him. This is not an unreasonable concern on the part the FBI. After the Mar-A-Lago raid, a Trump supporter wrote on Trump’s social media platform wrote “Violence is not (all) terrorism. Kill the F.B.I. on sight” before attempting to do precisely that at a FBI field office. Right-wing media then printed the names of the FBI agents. Within the space of a couple of weeks, three officials who challenged Trump in some fashion in court were victims of swatting: the Maine Secretary of State who sought to remove him from the state ballot, the judge presiding over his election interference case (who was placed under 24-hour protection), and special counsel Jack Smith. In Colorado, state supreme court justices that ruled that Trump should not appear on the state ballot faced four “swatting” attempts. Another judge in a different Trump case faced a bomb threat. The family of Michael Cohen, a key witness against Trump, was doxxed. [...]

Lesson 2: Terror Provides a Means of Control Over Officials Trump Has No Authority Over

Terror provides a basis of control over individuals that Trump has no direct authority over using tools such as intimidation or outright threats. Just as Robespierre and other authoritarians could call upon “the people” and assume that militant supporters would act, Trumpism out-of-office has looked to non-democratic tools to reshape politics and regain power. Many of his targets are state or local officials (such as judges and election officials). An analysis by NBC News shows that Trump strategically times his social media attacks on judges or agencies when they seek to hold him accountable for wrongdoing. [...]

Lesson 3: Terror Will Be a Feature of American Public Life Regardless of The Election Outcome, But Worse if Trump wins.

Trump has primed his supporters and much of the Republican Party to refuse to accept that any electoral loss is legitimate. Searching for alternative explanations involves conspiracies, which requires vilification of election officials, judges or other parts of the “deep state.” While Trump losing will feed conspiracy mongering and intimidation, it is, I believe a lesser threat than Trump winning, which will marry informal terror and state power. Trump has repeatedly shown a willingness to use state power to punish his perceived enemies, and has primed a second administration of lackeys willing to do so. For example, Trump allies have prioritized using federal law to prosecute Alvin Bragg, for prosecuting Trump. Even if such as case does not end up imprisoning Bragg, the point is to create a sense of fear to discourage any officials from pursuing Trump. Trumpism has normalized abuses of state power by treating efforts to hold Trump accountable as outrageous.  [...]

Lesson 8: Most of Us Will Not Resist Terror

The fearful hypocrite becomes a more prominent character in political life under terror. Members of the Republican Party, right wing media, and business interests who once denounced Trump now embrace him or remain silent. Some privately express concerns they will not attach their names to when talking to reporters. It is easy to be disgusted by such hypocrisy. But this is not just opportunism. It is partly fear. These officials generally can’t afford to spend the hundreds of thousands of dollars that Mitt Romney spent on security. They are aware of Trump’s comfort with using public power to engage in retribution. [...] Faced with such harassment many will choose to withdraw, or more carefully manage their statements and actions. They will prioritize physical and psychological safety over doing what they believe to be the right thing. Such a decision may be understandable from an individual perspective, but it is a disaster from a collective point of view, since it implies that public officials will be too scared to tell the public the truth.

Don Moynihan wrote a solid piece in his Substack that the Trumpist MAGA cult seeks to rule via intimidation and threats towards its opponents to entrench their rule unchallenged.

[lectorel]

Got permanently banned from a subreddit for saying law enforcement shooting someone dead in the street was still a bad thing even when the victim was a violent right-wing fanatic.

Gotta say, I did not expect that to be such a controversial statement. So repeating it here: law enforcement shouldn't kill people. Even violent assholes have a right to be taken in alive, and it's a failure of practice and policy when someone is killed in the process of an arrest.

[politicalantibody]

It is possible that hairless apes like us are hardwired for violence. As a reference, Chimpanzees are also known to commit murder amongst their own kind. Part of the purpose of civilization is to contain violence between humans. We may need to accept that this tendency amongst humans may always exist, so that we may contain it more effectively than we have been doing so far.

Obviously consequence-free ways of killing people don't exist in real life, and are (at least for some people) more of a power fantasy. But it's also interesting to me the way that people with a worldview that would permit consequence-free killing in ideal circumstances--people who, say, oppose the death penalty because its implementation is liable to be flawed, and not because they don't think the state should be in the business of killing people--will often reason backwards to a place where they imagine such mechanisms of killing could or do in fact exist.

Sometimes this gets deployed in a kind of rhetorically lazy way ("oh, we should kill all the rich people/pedophiles/landlords/drug dealers/rapists/whoever"), sometimes you see this as motivated reasoning to justify explicit programs of violence (the American war on terror that seemed to imagine drone assassination as an ideal mechanisms of killing that generated no side effects, created no resentments, exacerbated no political tensions), sometimes it's even more cynical that that ("Hamas are bad people; therefore we must kill members of Hamas; therefore it is necessary to kill anybody else we might kill in service of killing members of Hamas").

I think the only really strong safeguard against that kind of reasoning is a strong prior commitment to nonviolence as a fundamental principle, but that's possibly the most unpopular philosophy there is. You don't meet a lot of people who are willing to bite the bullet that all killing is wrong, full stop.

[berrysquared]

just cactus ring things ya know