#apparently they are trying to be some of kind of ' puppet activist ' but it's not really doing anything actually helpful

[wolflover33100aj]

CHOKE

No thank you, I'm good

[anexplanationofunfortunateevents]

here we go

As of Friday evening, special prosecutor Robert Mueller has officially filed the first charges in the Trump-Russia investigation.

Quick civics refresher: a prosecutor can get an indictment if a grand jury thinks it’s more likely than not that a specific individual has broken the law. 

So here’s what you may be wondering about this one:

WHO: The indictment has been sealed, so we won’t know until Monday at the earliest. We don’t even know if it’s one person or several people. You can get into the parlor game of who’s been told to expect charges, who’s confessed to solicitation on Twitter, who got themselves kicked off Twitter after a yoogely entertaining meltdown, whatever. Pretty much the only person in Trump world we can rule out is Trump himself, since it’s unclear whether he can be charged while in office. We’ll know when we know.  

IDGAF WHICH ONE OF THEM IT IS! LOCK THEM UP! LOCK THEM UP!: I know, right?

WHAT: The indictment has been sealed, so we won’t know until Monday at the earliest. All we know for sure is the scope of Mueller’s investigation, which is crimes related to the Russian sabotage of the 2016 election or any crimes his office comes across during that investigation. It could be espionage or it could be tax evasion. The most likely prediction seems to be that it’ll be one of the more clear-cut cases against someone they think they can flip. We’ll know when we know.

WHY NOW?: It doesn’t feel this way because Trump time is like dog years, but in terms of large, complex criminal investigations, Mueller’s is moving at warp speed. For historical context, the only thing we can even remotely compare this to is the Watergate investigation, where the special prosecutor was on the job for ten months before bringing charges against anyone – and compared to this, Watergate really was just a third-rate burglary. Think of how long it would take you to work through what we know publicly about this case. The office is working as fast as they can without screwing it up and now’s the time they think they can prove at least one case beyond a reasonable doubt.

WHY IS IT SEALED?: This is one of those things that probably sounds more dramatic than it is. It’s not uncommon for defendants to get the chance to turn themselves in before the charges are announced publicly, or for law enforcement to want time to plan an arrest that won’t turn into a circus without tipping off, say, a wealthy defendant with connections abroad in time to flee the country. Most dramatically and least likely – though at this point we have to get used to thinking of this stuff as a possibility – they might need to make arrangements to put a potential informant into protective custody. 

DID WE GET HIM? IS IT OVER?!: Sorry, no. This is, at best, the end of Act I. The tipping point may be coming soon, but a lot can happen between now and “soon.” You need to prepare yourself, because things can get darker fast. Someone a whole lot more even-keeled than Trump would panic with the walls closing in like this. Keep an eye on activist groups like MoveOn and Indivisible in case we need to mobilize quickly against an even more authoritarian turn. Firing Mueller, pardoning everyone around him, a show trial of Hillary Clinton, war with freaking Belgium – assume we’re going to have to put up a fight against something serious any day now.

The regime did so much desperate covfefe-flinging last week that it looks as if they had some sense this was coming soon, but even before this news dropped, there were quite a few developments that they seem to have been trying to drown out over the past few days:

The CEO of Cambridge Analytica contacted Wikileaks to try and get them to make the stolen DNC emails easier to search, months after everyone knew that Russia was behind the hacks. To be clear: the head of a Trump campaign data contractor reached out to a known agent of the hostile foreign power which was trying to undermine American democracy and said “here’s how you can sabotage our election more effectively.”

Remember Junior’s “Russia – Clinton – private and confidential” meeting we found out about over the summer? It turns out the Russian attorney who went to that meeting had talking points which were approved by the Kremlin. That means she was acting as an agent of the Russian government when she spoke to Junior, Kushner, and Manafort in Trump Tower. 

The administration is nearly a month behind in implementing the sanctions we placed on Russia for interfering in the election, but Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is eliminating the committee that is supposed to be implementing those sanctions. 

Right before the indictment(s) came down, Assistant US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Dana Boente announced his resignation, after apparently being asked to leave. This is probably not coincidental and feels… kind of ominous. The EDVA hears a lot of national security cases, which means that Boente is up on (for example) the case against former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. This year, Boente has also served as Acting Attorney General and Acting Deputy Attorney General, which means he’s seen a lot of the Trump catastrophe up close. 

Trump’s personal attorney apparently sold several NYC apartments for millions of dollars over market value. Cash. 

Nevertheless, Republicans in Congress have gone full Inquisition along with the White House, announcing several investigations into a grandma in Westchester County. Right-wing media is, naturally, participating with their usual rabid glee.

This is 100% garbage and none of it deserves the time it took me to write out, or the time you’re going to put into reading it, but you can’t look out for the disinformation if you don’t know what buttons they’re trying to push with it. So I want to emphasize: there is no coherent thread here because they don’t need or expect you to believe any of their deflections. They just need to scream and yell and point fingers until a critical mass of people give up and say everyone’s corrupt nothing matters. 

Republican and Democratic donors paid for the research behind the Steele dossier and the House intelligence committee is ON IT. The specific donors were identified earlier last week. Fusion GPS was initially hired by the conservative website Washington Free Beacon, which in turn is largely funded by Paul Singer, a wealthy Marco Rubio backer. Once Trump got the nomination, Republicans lost interest in trying to stop someone they damn well knew was a threat to the republic, so the law firm of the DNC and Clinton campaign picked up the tab. Trump is trying to make this into a thing, but this is not a thing. All campaigns pay for opposition research; the only way this was unusual was that there was so much outlandish dirt on Trump for opposition researchers to find. This did not stop the Free Beacon itself from screeching the Trump party line the day it was reported that the DNC had paid for the dossier. 

There’s an investigation into the investigation of HER EMAILS. There is no similar investigation into the Trump White House’s current use of private email systems. 

There’s another investigation into a conspiracy theory which was debunked years ago when it was first put out by Nazi wife-beater Steve Bannon’s propaganda machine. It is….*heavy sigh* that in return for a donation made by one Russian national to the world-class charity Clinton Foundation back in the year 2000, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton personally and unilaterally made nine different government agencies sign off on a 2010 sale of interests in a Canadian uranium company to Russia. It really is as stupid as it sounds. The point is just to shove enough crap in your face that you assume there’s something ominous you’re not seeing. The reasons they’ve brought back this specific garbage seem to be: 1) as a way to work “Clinton” and “Russia” into the same sentence (NO PUPPET! NO PUPPET! SHE’S THE PUPPET!) and 2) there appears to be some tenuous connection to Mueller, who was the FBI director at the time, and who they are now furiously attempting to discredit. 

The storylines themselves are ridiculous, but the fact that they’re being spun is anything but. This week, Trump personally pushed the Department of Justice to lift a gag order on an FBI informant to testify about a case which was connected with a trucking company which was connected with the uranium sale. The White House is absolutely not supposed to pressure the DOJ in specific cases.

THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH HOW YOU FEEEEEEEL ABOUT HILLARY CLINTON. Save that shit for your therapist. This is the full coordinated power of the executive and legislative branches of the federal government mobilizing against a private citizen, apparently for the sole reason that “LOCK HER UP” grievance politics are the one thing the Pepes still think Trump will deliver. THIS IS STRAIGHT AUTHORITARIANISM. WE CANNOT LET IT WORK.

Also? The Russia investigation is the existential threat to Trump and everyone who’s thrown in with him – which is why they’ve focused on it so frantically – but there’s a lot of bad news they’re drowning out. Puerto Rico is still experiencing a humanitarian disaster, and what little recovery effort is happening is being exploited by Trump cronies. Immigration agents are terrorizing kids who need to see a doctor. Republicans in Congress want to slash taxes on the wealthy and are still trying to sabotage Obamacare. And oh, a bad Republican story which (so far) doesn’t appear to be directly related to Trump: Georgia was sued over potential security failures during a special election earlier this year, and the government responded by wiping the data. As you watch this unfold, remember: Trump is the most pressing symptom of the civic rot perpetrated by Republican party and his ties to Russia are his his biggest liability, but neither they nor he is the underlying disease.

[i-aim-to-overanalyze]

Motif Chapter 3

Summary:  Skywalker was used to being electrocuted-it was a regular occurrence. Not to say that he enjoyed it-but it was an unavoidable obstacle in his line of duty. Which is why he doesn't see the point of resting a few days in the med-bay. However, after the recent incident, something strange begins to occur. Anakin thinks perhaps there is a truth about electrocution trauma after all.

First | Previous

A/N: It’s been a while since I’ve updated this one, hasn’t it? This chapter was a pain-in-the-butt to write that I may or may not have put off writing it. But it’s finished and ready for you guys to enjoy now!

Palpatine sat at his office, high above the never-ending traffic of Coruscant. He stared at the skyline as he drummed his fingers against his desk. He was puzzled. It had been a few days since he last saw Anakin, but the boy’s reactions still aggravated him. He’d acted like a nervous banshee around Palpatine, ready to bolt out of there if he had been well enough.

As far as the Chancellor was concerned, there was no reason for this behavior. Young Skywalker had been feeding out his palm, docile and pacified, shortly before this strange behavior occurred. Something clearly had changed between the time he left for his assignment and the hospital visit. The way the young knight reacted to his presence spoke for itself. He reacted with repulsion, eyes widening in some sort of revelation.

Palpatine didn’t understand it. He had spent years grooming the boy to become his apprentice. He took full advantage of his age to play up a grandfatherly persona. He had looked over the report of Anakin’s last mission countless times. The report was full of details from different perspectives, but nothing was out of the ordinary. Unless the report was falsified, nothing indicated Anakin’s turn. They could’ve make up that report to make him believe his plans were going smooth as usual. He scowled, knocking the papers off his desk. No. Skywalker wasn’t that smart! He was too impulsive to try a tactic such like that! Nor did he believe this of the Jedi council’s doings. He had made sure to plant enough doubt into Anakin to keep him from fully trusting the council ever.

He had hoped to make another visit to Skywalker’s hospital ward again, however the drudgery of a politician’s life kept him from going. Unfortunately, being a secret sith lord doesn’t allow him to bypass all the chancellor duties he was expected to uphold. Trust him, the senate meetings were no hoot to mediate. He knew sowing seeds of disharmony into the senate to make it divisive was part of his plan, but after a while, their incessant bickering started to grate on his nerves. There were too many voices, too many opinions all bottled up in one room. There’s a reason why he wants to do away with democracy. If not for the betterment of the galaxy as he sees fit, then for his own sanity.

He had naively hoped to be able to persuade all of them to readily follow his every suggestion, but there were stubborn minds in the senate. Some of them belonged to species that were impervious to Force tricks but others were just very stubborn idiots. Padme Amidala, being a key example. How he hated her!

He slammed his fist against the desk, growling at just the thought of that pestering woman. Another one of his foolish ambitions had been to make her into a puppet of his will. For a while, she’d been under his spell, or at least went along with his schemes. Begrudgingly, she had been vital to his rise as Chancellor. He’d orchestrated the entire conflict for that sole purpose; if she’d had refused to take his bait, it would’ve set his plans back a bit.

However, she grew up and shed her skin away from his control and he never managed to reclaim her as a pawn ever again. It infuriated him. The two played a game of chess. Sometimes he thought she was aware of his moves, his plans for the future. Other times he was fully convinced he had fooled her. Then again, she had grown to be quite a successful political activist. She was a thorn in his side and she knew it. She knew there was something about him that didn’t reek of the kind senator that she once knew.

Though they fully understood that the dynamic had shifted, they kept playing their roles. He played the role of her faithful former mentor and she kept playing her role as his grateful former student. He cursed himself inwardly for teaching her too well on how to work the political atmosphere. No matter. Sooner or later she’d either fall to his grasp once more or he’d dispose of Padme properly.

Of course, the main problem with Padme was Anakin’s schoolboy crush on her. He admired Padme greatly and it didn’t escape Palpatine’s eyes. She, too, appeared to share the same sentiment. Although young Skywalker claimed the two were only friends, even someone as blind as a bat could see they were in love.

Love. Even the word disgusted the Sith Lord.

The most worrying thing of this debacle was how easily swayed Skywalker could be of others. This was something Palpatine utilized to his advantage, but it meant he could easily fall onto Padme’s side. Something the Chancellor wished to avoid. It could very well be Padme’s influence that caused him to grow suspicious of Palpatine.

Palpatine sighed, mulling it over. He could not stoop to his future apprentice’s level and act impulsively about this matter. He didn’t get this far into his plans by acting on a whim. No, he thought things through slowly and deliberately.

As much as he hated having his pawn captured by Padme, it could prove useful in the end. A good Sith turns their opponent’s ambitions against them.

He smirked to himself. Yes, that’s exactly what he’ll do.

In another part of Coruscant, inside a dusty old temple, sat Anakin. He was completely unaware of Palpatine’s plotting, for he was in a predicament of his own.

He was alone in the suite, Ahsoka having stormed off somewhere into the depths of the temple. He hadn’t followed her, knowing it’d be best not to. She needed time alone to cool off. That wasn’t the only reason. He privately feared that the dark music would ensue if he attempted following.

It apparently hadn’t mattered though because the music followed him into the suite regardless. A melancholy tune hung over his head, taunting him of the events that occurred a few hours previous. It was a slow, dragging piece that kept subtly hinting those dreaded three notes. If Jedi were allowed to have holo discs, he might’ve tried blocking it out with space pop music or whatever was popular these days. He thought over the idea of smuggling in some discs, but he really didn’t want to try explaining his actions in front of the Jedi Council if discovered. There was a lot of tactics he pulled in defiance of the Council, but they usually had a justification behind them. This, he had nothing without sounding like a complete lunatic.

He hated the idea of what he was about to do: meditation. Having exhausted all the other solutions, it was the only option left. He hated meditation. He hated to sit still and try to focus on the massive feedback sent him all at once. However, it was the only option to hear what the Force had to say on this matter.

He wasn’t the most spiritually rooted Jedi; it one of the many reasons the Jedi Council loathed him. He never had to be, as the Force was always at his fingertips. Whereas others worked hard to strengthen the connection between them and the Force to grant them further strength and finesse. He still respected the Force, it was what freed him from his bondage of slavery. It was because of this respect that he was willing to attempt meditating.

Admittedly, the music sounded like it agreed with this sentiment, growing to a more hopeful tune again. It reminded him of the tune he heard with Ahsoka as they entered the Temple.

He took a deep breath and tried centering himself. His mind wanted to wander back to what Ahsoka had said and how she reacted—no, he couldn’t focus on that right now. The only thing that required his concentration was the Force. It didn’t matter how much the music was bothering him. It didn’t matter how squishy the meditation pillow was or how itchy his tunics were. Not even his aching muscles mattered. What mattered was being one with the Force and the Force being one with him. He was calm. He was peace. He was—

“Argh.” He complained out loud, opening his eyes before closing them once more.

He had to do this, he couldn’t go to Obiwan about this. For a brief moment, the idea of talking with Obiwan sounded alluring. He quickly squashed that idea down. He couldn’t face him when knowing how Obiwan would react. He’d think Anakin was going insane. He’d brush it off, telling him not to worry about it. That’ll “pass in time” much like his nightmares about his mom had.

Not to mention, Obiwan was busy trying to keep another planet fall into Separatists’ hands. He didn’t have a time to lend an ear to Anakin.

“Let me help you.” A voice interrupted his thoughts. Its words echoed against the crevices of his mind.

“W-what?” He spluttered out loud. He instinctively reached for his lightsaber as he scanned the room. Nothing.

“Relax,” The voice making a tsking sound, “Don’t be afraid.”

“How do I know you’re not some evil apparition?”

“Listen to the sounds, what do they think?” The voice spoke again. It sounded ancient and whimsical. He could tell by their tone that they were amused by his reaction.

Sighing, he listened intently to the music. It sounded nonthreatening, peaceful even. Nothing like those ominous trio of beats that still haunted the foreground of his mind. He felt like he could trust this voice. He didn’t know why, but it felt right by the Force to do so. It sounded crazy, but then again the Force is rarely logical in its’ actions. Very much like Anakin’s split-decision plans in heated moments of battle.

With that in mind, he slowly closed his eyes and once more focused on reaching out to the Force. The tidal waves that made up the Force crashed against him, threatening to drown him—but he didn’t struggle. He let them wash over him as he resisted the urge to fight against the immersion.

“Good.” The disembodied voice uttered.

Anakin twitched his nose but continued to concentrate on following the thread of the music. Everything leads back to the Force. The Force binds the whole galaxy together; without it, nothing exists. This is what Obiwan and the other Jedi cemented into his young skull. It was all about finding the connection between the object and the Force. As the Force makes up all things, so will a creation of the Force reflect its character. He was uncertain if this doctrine applied to a disembodied musical score, but it was worth a shot. He found himself losing control of his body, everything felt numb and foreign and unmovable by his thoughts. This worried him. He didn’t like giving up control of his body. It reminded him of bad things, like being a slave again—

“You are a child of the Force. The Force will not harm those who serve it dutifully.” The voice once again chastised.

Now that he had gone deeper into the Force, he attempted reaching out to the voice. He caught a brief glimpse.

The figure was shimmery, glowing dimly like a far-off star. The hood of the figure’s cloak obscured their face from Anakin. The glimpse faded once the figure turned its’ gaze towards him, catching him in the act.

“Don’t focus on me, young one. Focus on the Force,” They insisted, “My being is not more important than the Force that which binds all things together and holds the galaxy in place. I am merely here to give aid in your quest.”

He smirked. Typical dutiful Jedi. He shook his head—well his metaphoric head, as his spirit was currently detached from his body. He ventured further into the Force, past where he’d found the disembodied voice. He followed the music on a wild goose chase, straining his ears to hear strings and brass sections urging him to continue onwards. The music was the same as the one he encountered previously with Ahsoka and now the disembodied voice. That strong, united cry of hope. He pressed after it, always just a reach away from grasping it.

The music kept eluding him, leading him to going deeper and deeper into the Force. As he did, he felt the Force begin to move around him. Images of things long past flashed past him.  A huge ship crashing into Corusant.  Padme in pain. The Jedi Temple in flames. They flew by so quickly, he could barely comprehend what they meant.

Eventually, he came upon a forest. It wasn’t apart of his mind shield nor of anyone’s elses. The forest was alive with Force energy. The air hummed, replicating the tune he had been following the whole way down. He was starting to realize that the music wasn’t some crazy jacked up hallucination. Somehow it intertwined with the Force. No, it was the Force. Maybe the music acted like the language of the Force, its’ symphony screaming to anyone who listened hard enough.

“You are correct.” The spirit announced, appearing in front of Anakin.

Anakin stumbled back, surprised that the mysterious spirit had chosen to actually reveal itself to Anakin.

“Ho-how’d you—”

“My spirit is one with the Force—all thoughts known by the Force I also know.” The voice explained, “The music you are hearing—it is the music of the galaxy, something every Jedi could once hear. Each being has their own melody in the narrative. A melody that can shift and change depending on the paths one takes in life.”

“So those three beats,” Anakin swallowed.

“Could be a part of your melody if you keep going on your current path,” The spirit finished. His eyes had a gleam of sadness in them, and Anakin felt like he had let the being down despite having just met the being.

“The music is a manifestation of the Force. You should listen well to its’ warnings.”

Anakin drew a deep breath.

“Okay. You said that the music could be heard by all Jedi at one point, why’d that change? And how are you here? I was told that there is nothing—”

“but the Force after death?” The spirit raised an eyebrow, “In a way, that is true. I am not lying when I say that I am one with the Force. Like the ability to hear the galaxy’s symphony, it is an ability lost to the Jedi Order. One that requires extensive training while living. I died before completing my training—I can only manifest a physical appearance deep in the Force.”

As Anakin conversed more and more with the spirit, he couldn’t help but think how eerily familiar their voice sounded. There was no way he knew this person before they died—the ability to exist afterlife was something lost to the Jedi Order after all.

“What about the music, though? Wouldn’t that require training of some sort—like surviving being electrocuted a number of times?” Anakin cross his arms.

The spirit let out a booming laugh.

“While it does indeed normally require training, it does not involve being electrocuted a number of times,” The spirit said with mirth, “However, the Force felt like an…intervention was need on your behalf.”

“W-what?” Anakin said indignantly.

The spirit opened their mouth to say more when the forest began to shake, causing Anakin to grasp onto a tree trunk.

“Anakin?!” A voice echoed above the music of the forest—Ahsoka.

“It appears your padawan needs you.” The spirit commented, giving a meaningful look towards him, “It was good to see you again, Anakin.”

“Wait—what?!” He shouted. He attempted to step closer to the being only to be jolted backwards from the severance of the connection. His spirit flew back into his body quicker than he’d expected, as he suddenly snapped his eyes open into the increasingly worried gaze of Ahsoka.

He vaguely realized he was being cradled in her lap, something he remedied by sitting up hastily.

“Hey,” He croaked, “What’s up, Snips?”

Ahsoka narrowed her eyes at him before looking away.

“The Council wants to see us.”

A/N:  Music used: Anakin's theme from Phantom Menace and the Force theme. Not a whole lot, but this was Force-heavy hence the over-use of it. I'd really recommend taking a listen to Anakin's theme, it's a hidden gem in my opinion. It has a heavy dosage of innocence with that subtle Imperial March in case you forgot that tHIS INNOCENT SWEET SUMMER CHILD BECOMES DARTH VADER

Also, hmm, wonder who that mysterious force figure could be?? For those who doubt Anakin not recognizing them consider this: 1. He has not heard their voice since he was a kid, it's been like 13 years. 2. He's not expecting them to be around in the afterlife 3. Anakin is dumb, hence the Force enabling the "Hints Menu" for him.

[sharyjournals]

Sharkwater Extinction (2018) - another must watch for everyone! i’m so amazed by the shark conversationists & activists for doing whatever they can to help save sharks and enlighten people about this devastating problem happening in our world today. i have never thought that 100 million sharks get killed every year not only for shark fin soup but are also turning up in pet food, livestock feed, fertilizer and even in cosmetics. some also kill them for fun and enjoyment which is just totally horrible. 

shark finning in costa rica (illegal)

it’s always the same with the government they say one thing and do another

illegal activities are still happening like, to bring illicit fins in a country all you have to do is land them in port on the weekend when there are no security officials around, no operations & establishments are closed 

people don’t realize there’s so much money in the trade of animals, especially of fins, it’s a billion dollar industry 

there’s multimillionaires playing mafia rings like puppeteers trying to EXPLOIT THE RESOURCE

there are mafia warehouses drying shark fins

WHAT CAN WE DO TO HELP SAVE SHARKS WORLDWIDE?

taiwanese companies pay huge to buy docks in costa rica. these were multimillion dollar deals that lets them work without fear. they have thousands of boats fishing in eastern pacific & bring their catch to costa rica through these private docks which is then shipped out through the airport. they are a VERY POWERFUL MAFIA. they bought this government and the past ones too. 

sharks are worth an enormous amount of money, and mostly for their fins where a single pound of fin is worth over $200 so fisherman around the world in poor countries pull up sharks and CUT OFF ITS FINS, THROW THE REST OF THE BODY BACK, dry the fin. you don’t need refrigeration systems on your boat so even the most decrepit boats can go out there and make enormous amounts of money. SHARKS ARE BEING KILLED EVERYWHERE.

costa rica is a good country but unfortunately there’s very bad layers in it. the problem is a big local company owned by a costa rican millionaire owns two boats and bring in FIVE TONS OF SHARK FINS EVERY WEEK. they unload at night because no authorities are working then and dry the fins to sell to singapore or taiwan. he has helicopters, apartments, hotels, all thanks to shark fins.

in bahamas, one of the most amazing sharks in the world, the oceanic whitetip shark goes there only on May, was once of the most abundant large predator on the planet, they were everywhere but because they have massive fins that are highly valued in the fin industry their POPULATION HAVE DROPPED 99% in the atlantic and caribbean

in miami, there are shark hunting businesses, some of them does not believe in endangered sharks and think of them as just propaganda, for them there’s plenty of sharks to catch every trip, and believed that sharks are just animals on earth that are meant for people to eat

people tell you your whole life to be afraid of sharks. everything we’ve been receiving from the media, from everybody, is that sharks are dangerous and they’re gonna kill you and eat you. but the reality is totally different. they have been on earth for 400 million years and survived five major extinctions that wiped out most life on the planet. they’ve seen life on earth rebuilt from scratch five times. 450 million years of shark’s presence on earth we have decimated in 30 years. shark populations dropped 90% in 30 years. 90%!!! HOW COULD THIS BE HAPPENING?!! 

it’s so terrible and fucked up how boats catch sharks, smile and take pictures while leaving them injuries, if not kill them. when people do those kind of stuff for fun, i have absolutely no contemplation of what’s going through that person’s head, why that’s fun for someone, said madison. 

the killing of sharks is one if the biggest concerns that we should have on the planet ecologically today. we depend on ecosystems for survival. we depend on other species. they’re part and parcel of ourselves, of out daily lives. removing sharks is removing part of the framework that allows life to exist on land. it’s the animal that sits on top of 70% of the oxygen in the air that we breathe from phytoplankton in the oceans. if you remove one species, the consequences ripple through entire ecosystems. and right now, we’re removing the most important predator the planet has. and the consequences are going to not affect oceanic ecosystems, they’re going to affect our ecosystems and ourselves. 

we’re now killing up to 150 million sharks a year, and it’s not just shark fin soup anymore. sharks are now being killed and renamed and fed to us, so we don’t know we’re eating shark. there’s a massive scandal representing tens of millions of sharks every year. eating sharks is a bad idea. we’re eating endangered super predators. we’re eating animals that can take 40 years to reach sexual maturity. they can have very few young. most of the pollution we’ve ever made as a species has gone into the environment untreated. and that accumulates in living animal matter and concentrates as you go up the food chain. by the time you get to sharks, they’re enormously toxic. with things like lead, and mercury and even neurotoxins. so it’s important that we keep sharks out of our food. and it’s recommended, women and children, don’t eat them at all. it’s really important to bring this message to the public. 

in panama, shark fins are just $5 and in china it’s 200 bucks. a pound of the little sharks are also 50 cents. they even kill baby hammerheads. there are confiscations, fins are kept in custody at the coast and ocean department of the environment ministry. 

rob: we’re here in a parking lot in panama city, with hundreds of dollars of shark fins confiscated from people that were trying to check these into airlines and fly them to asia. a seizure of 800 pounds of shark fins in panama representing $300,000 in shark fins many of which are illegal and on the endangered species list including the scalloped hammerhead shark, our favorite species. there’s 38,868 fins confiscated. we’ve seen many different shark species of many different sizes. among these, probably the largest hammerhead fins, to the newborns, to lighter ones. they seem to really get a little bit depressed when they see these little small shark fins from hammerhead newborns, plus 1, plus 2 years, which are the sharks that hang around the nursery areas. it’s disappointing to see the large amount of baby hammerheads that they’re using for the shark fin trade because they’re destroying the whole population. it’s sad. and it’s just the tip of the iceberg. panama is one of the important places where the big mommas come to give birth.  it’s an important nursery area. it’s part of the heritage that panama has so it’s important to protect them. 

when we started making sharkwater, there were four countries that have banned shark finning. when we were finished, there were 16 countries. now there’s more than 90 countries around the world that have banned the process of finning but none of them have banned the importation of fins which means you can fin as many sharks as you want as long as you put the fins on a shipping boat before you bring them into port, not a fishing boat, which is a massive loophole. 

in africa, there are reefer containers full of frozen shark. you can actually see a fin just laying on the wharf and some blue shark tags stating that blue sharks that were landed there were caught in spain. so apparently they’re not really trying to hide it. 

we just saw two japanese longliner boats that showed up in cabo verde. one of them appears to be transshipping onto a freezer container ship. at the end of the dock they’re unloading blue sharks. there’s tons of them. they’re all big blue sharks in the container. blue sharks are cute, they’re dopey, big eyes, they don’t really ever bite people. they’re loading the shipping container full of tens of thousands of pounds of blue sharks onto a shipping boat to leave the country. the word is out around the world, that sharks mean money. 

you know we spent 4 years 15 countries trying to figure out what the biggest environmental issues were out there only to discover that one of the biggest destructors of our life support system is in our own backyard. we are in a little plane looking for DRIFT GILL NETS and later see what’s caught in the nets that are A MILE LONG, that just hang as a curtain at night. it’s a hugely destructive method of fishing that catch everything that comes into it. dolphins, whales, turtles, tons of sharks. 

some fisheries will waste 85% of what they bring to the surface as bycatch. right now, we’re wasting 54 billion pounds of dead fish every year that’s brought out of the ocean and killed and thrown back because it wasn’t our target fish. we wanted the more expensive ones. we threw back all these amazing animals. 

we’ve seen a blue shark and a thresher shark that are still alive and caught in the drift gill nets. you can see their mouth’s opening and closing and then struggling. the blue shark had the mesh caught in its mouth and the thresher shark was mangled, all messed up from thrashing around within the net. really sad to see an endangered majestic super predator stuck in a primitive fishing method. 

the biggest issue we have on the planet right now is aside from the environment, is our lack of awareness of what’s going on. we don’t know about our individual actions, about our consumption, about out governments and corporations destroying our life support system. if we did, our morals would engage, and we’d be guided to a world that works. we’d hold our friends and our family, and our governments accountable for this stuff. we just don’t know what’s going on. so, knowing how we’ve already so decimated the oceans, this method of fishing should not be happening. THE ONLY REASON IT’S HAPPENING IS ‘CAUSE PEOPLE DON’T SEE IT. they don’t know what’s happening here. 

in miami florida, 33% of pet food products tested positive for shark DNA, including blacktip and mako shark which is a vulnerable species known for very high mercury levels. we also found traces of scalloped hammerheads, milk and blue shark DNA in the beauty care products we tested. 

shark population has dropped an estimated 90% in the last 30 years. 100 million sharks get killed every year and nobody notices. it is astronomical. and this is a huge consumer awareness issue that can be fought and can be won. we’re not just killing sharks for shark fin soup, we’re killing sharks for a myriad of crazy reasons. sharks are now being killed and renamed and fed to us. things like rock salmon and flake so we don’t know we’re eating shark. sharks are also turning up in pet food, livestock feed, fertilizer and even in cosmetics. we’re smearing endangered super predators on our faces without knowing it. 

it’s important for all of us if we want to ensure a healthy environment into the future to make sure that things we buy, foods, cosmetics, are shark-free. insist on a world that’s shark-free. 

elephants kill 200 people a year. sharks kill 5 people a year. we kill 100 million of them and nobody notices. the reality behind sharks is that they are not predators of people. you know if sharks ate people the oceans would be a really dangerous place and people would be getting eaten every day but they are not. what is unfair and irresponsible is wiping out 90% of the most important longest lasting predator the planet has for the sake of soup. conservation is the preservation of human life on earth. people don’t understand how ecosystems work because they never taught it. if you look at the education system why are we taught shakespeare and algebra before we are taught conservation or we are taught how to survive on the planet. especially if we know by mid-century that our survival is very much in jeopardy. 

this is really important. we depend on the oceans to survive. we depend on life. it’s life that gives us our food or water and our air. this is the generation. this is the task of your time. are we going to save the ecosystem we depend on for survival or are we going to live in lack and starvation and crisis and fight each other over what is left? we are all entirely morally bound together and that if we are made aware of these issues we will make different decisions. be conscious of what you eat, where you put your garbage, and how you live your life. nothing is more important than this. there’s never been an issue this big. there’s never been an issue that needs your involvement more than this. you’ve got an opportunity to be a hero, so be a hero.

[iol247]

Battleground social media: How disinformation, propaganda and manipulation shape our online discourse

From Putin, Trump and Zuma directly to your screen – or via a myriad of intermediaries – the goal is the same: influence. In this multi-part series we explore how disinformation and propaganda flood our timelines and unmask some of the players involved.

18 May 2020 - Susan Comrie, Micah Reddy and Sam Sole

To live in the 21st century is to be manipulated.

From local mayors to Russian intelligence agencies to energy lobbyists and presidents, those seeking to boost their political power and influence increasingly turn to the dark arts of propaganda and disinformation to distort our world-view and further their agendas.

But these actors often rely on subterfuge, meaning that investigating the original source of disinformation is a bit like searching for a black hole: it cannot be seen, only inferred by watching how its gravitational pull re-arranges the universe.

Similarly, without a smoking gun – like the Bell Pottinger emails from the #GuptaLeaks – we can rarely see who directs disinformation and propaganda; we can only infer who may be responsible based on whose interests it serves and the faint trails it leaves in the political ether.

In South Africa, there is growing evidence that our social media space is manipulated by a wide range of actors: from the international white right to the fan club of former president Jacob Zuma.

For example, in recent years we have seen the rise of anonymous Twitter accounts, vocal activists and obscure non-profits that have taken to the streets, the courts and the pages of social media under the banner of “radical economic transformation”.

A mix of true believers, manipulators and opportunists, these groups raise genuine grievances about South Africa’s racially-skewed economy but also help to spread dangerous disinformation aimed at energising their base and targeting their perceived enemies.

Is there a hidden gravitational force pulling their strings? Is there a common goal that unites the defenders of former president Zuma with those championing economic reform and the energy lobby that is pushing for a Russian nuclear deal while also fighting to protect coal? Are there puppet-masters pulling the strings?

Armed with new evidence, including hundreds of messages from WhatsApp groups, we went looking for answers. This is what we found.

Chapter 1

The first missile hit at 1pm precisely.

“#HandsOffNUMSA. The Racist AmaBhungane is going after NUMSA because NUMSA has been vocal in its opposition against Independent Power Producers and has been winning Cases in Favor of Workers and Against Capitalists.”

The person holding the grenade launcher was Shampene Mphaloane, a young, dedicated proponent of radical economic transformation (RET). But at the time, we only knew him by the Twitter handle Superblack (@hostilenativ).

During the rest of the day – 20 September 2018 – he would send another 20 #HandsOffNumsa tweets, calling us “Stratcom”, “Racist Agenda setters” and “vile White Monopoly Capital bulldogs”.

Online abuse has become routine for amaBhungane since the first pro-Gupta trolls started targeting us on Twitter in 2016. What was unusual this time was that we were getting abuse before we had published our investigation.

Superblack (@hostilenativ): “AmaBhungane is drafting a Story to tarnish the reputation of NUMSA due to NUMSA’s opposition towards the IPPs and Privatization of Eskom. #HandsOffNUMSA”

Three days before, on 17 September, we had sent detailed questions to both Numsa general secretary Irvin Jim and the chairman of the Numsa Investment Company, Khandani Msibi. By 20 September, Superblack (@hostilenativ) not only knew about our questions, but knew who had sent them.

Superblack (@hostilenativ): “This is the Stratcom Agent behind the Propaganda Campaign against NUMSA and its General Secretary Irvin Jim. He always surfaces wherever the Interests of White Capital are at Stake. His name is Micah Reddy. He is also on the Soros Funded R2KCampaign #HandsOffNUMSA”

To which former ANC MP Tony Yengeni responded both menacingly and nonsensically: “Ive saved his face for the rainy day..”

***

The first thing Mphaloane wanted to know when we tracked him down was how we managed to link him to the Superblack (@hostilenativ) account.

We explained, then confronted him about the #HandsOffNumsa campaign.

“I didn’t necessarily run the campaign… I provided my opinion to the article,” he told us.

“[T]he investigative journalist at the time … sent a couple of questions to … a lot of people who were mentioned in the article, and they started to circulate the questions to quite a number of people, myself included. So, I started to comment around the article that was going to be published.”

Union sources confirmed that amaBhungane’s questions were circulated on WhatsApp. But evidence suggests Mphaloane was not just casually expressing his opinion.

Of the 41 tweets posted that day using #HandsOffNumsa, half came from Mphaloane’s Superblack (@hostilenativ) account.

So who is Mphaloane and why did he rush to Numsa’s defence?

***

The first time we heard Mphaloane’s name was when the newly-formed SA Natives Forum approached the Western Cape high court in February 2018, seeking to permanently stay the corruption charges against former president Zuma.

SA Natives Forum was registered eight days after Zuma resigned, and it waited just one day more before filing a 420-page application arguing that all criminal charges against Zuma should be dropped.

Mphaloane was both a director of SA Natives Forum and its spokesperson.

“We are an independent, non-partisan, social justice foundation and think tank. And that implies we are not related to any political party and we are independent,” he told the SABC’s Bongani Bingwa during an interview a month later.

“We’re not in touch with the former president at all,” he added.

On the question of who was funding the pro-Zuma case, Mphaloane was coy: “In so far as who’s funding us, we will release an audited financial statement at the end of the financial year…”

That never happened and Mphaloane now says that their lawyer, Lucky Thekisho, agreed to work on contingency: “Their argument was, if we win this, then we can try and get a cost order.”

Although Mphaloane studied chemical engineering, his CV describes his work at SA Natives Forum as “developing and managing a social media outlet … as well as providing advocacy and managing campaigns that are of national interest”.

By July 2018, he was looking for new opportunities. “My background is engineering but now I’m looking for anything so I can fund the struggle,” his Superblack alter ego tweeted.

***

Shortly after Superblack’s #HandsOffNumsa Twitter offensive, Mphaloane changed his LinkedIn profile to reflect his new job: claims specialist for 3Sixty, the life insurance company owned by the Numsa Investment Company and chaired, like its parent company, by Msibi.

Two weeks later, in mid-October 2018, amaBhungane published the results of its investigation – Numsa cornered by capital? – alleging that Msibi used his position at the Numsa Investment Company and its financial resources to gain political influence in Numsa, pushing both the union and Jim, its general secretary, closer towards the Zuma faction.

Once again, Mphaloane hit back:

Superblack (@hostilenativ): “Forces of Imperialism are not happy that NUMSA has a thriving Investment Arm that can fund NUMSA’s litigation against IPPs so this is how lauch their attack. Mass media propaganda. #HandsOffNUMSA”

What followers of Superblack were not told was that he was being paid a salary by the company he was defending.

We put it to Mphaloane that it looked like he was using an anonymous account to attack his employer’s perceived enemies. “Where am I attacking? There’s a difference between attacking and responding to an article… I just have my own opinion which I’m expressing.”

We put this apparent coincidence to Msibi too: “I know Shampene but I didn’t know [Superblack] was his account,” he claimed before doubling down: “AmaBhungane did write a story about me … you had a campaign against me.”

Is it plausible that Msibi was unaware that he had such a prominent RET champion working under his roof?

Access the documents we used for this investigation, by clicking on the Evidence docket.

Two sources from the Numsa Investment Company told us that Mphaloane and Msibi had a close relationship – although both denied it. One incident both sources recalled was when Mphaloane’s work laptop was stolen, and Msibi personally intervened to ensure he received a replacement.

But in a group with 1 200 employees, that kind of personal attention stood out.

Msibi did not deny this but explained: “Shampene … didn’t have a laptop because his was stolen and some senior person resigned and his was available. I was not going to get a new laptop bought when there was a laptop lying around of a senior person. Why can’t he use it?”

***

“A lot of things are just coincidental,” Msibi told us. “Shampene, if he is [Superblack], I don’t think he has that many followers to actually be having any impact online.”

In fact, Superblack (@hostilenativ) has more than 32 000 followers, making Mphaloane an influential voice on Twitter and an amplifier for his politically outspoken boss, whom he regularly retweets.

Before and after: Superblack (@hostilenativ) was one of the most popular accounts on RET Twitter. It was deactivated last week after amaBhungane started asking questions.

“[I]nitially when I started this account, I just wanted to give my own view into things… But it was not my intention to remain anonymous, I was not trying to hide something,” Mphaloane told us.

But a few days after our phonecall, the Superblack (@hostilenativ) account was deactivated.

The evidence suggests that Mphaloane used his Twitter alter-ego to target Numsa and Msibi’s perceived enemies.

The question is, would he do the same for the pro-Zuma lobby?

What we would discover is that a WhatsApp group had been set up with this in mind.

https://amabhungane.org/stories/battleground-social-media-how-disinformation-propaganda-and-manipulation-shape-our-online-discourse/

[garancefranke-ruta]

Protesters March from the White House to the Capitol Against Trump Muslim and Refugee Order

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Thousands of people converged on the White House Sunday to protest President Trump’s executive order banning the entry into the United States of people from seven majority-Muslim nations, along with refugees of all religions from around the world.

“Shame! Shame!” the protesters chanted in the direction of the president, who was that afternoon at the White House holding phone calls with the Crown Prince of the United Arab Emirates, Mohammed bin Zayed, and then screening the animated film “Finding Dory.”

It was at least the fourth significant protest to address the new president at his new home since he took office on Jan. 20, during which time his disapproval rating has risen to 51 percent, according to the Gallup daily tracking poll, while his approval has sunk to 42 percent.

Protesters came because friends told them about the gathering. They came because they saw something on Facebook. Because they were on a list-serv. Because they were part of one of the new anti-Trump groups that have sprung up since the election, like Indivisible. They came to show solidarity, and outrage, and love. To tell the president, this is not who we are, and demand he undo what he had done.

The protest was called for 1 p.m. in a Facebook posting, and word of it was tweeted and shared overnight in documents listing protests around the nation against Trump’s abrupt Friday move. By 1:30p.m., Lafayette Park across from the White House was nearly full, and so were those parts of the pedestrian plaza in front of the White House gates not still cordoned off and full of inauguration structures.

Somewhere in the crush of people there were official rally speakers. Newly elected Democratic U.S. Sens. Kalama Harris (Calif.) and Catherine Cortez Masto (Nevada) were there, according to reports on social media.

Newly elected @SenCortezMasto and @KamalaHarris are at the White House protest against hothead #MuslimBan. #NoBanNoWall pic.twitter.com/UIkgd5yy6s

— Alice Ollstein (@AliceOllstein) January 29, 2017

Occasionally a cheer would go up that indicated the direction they were in. Without a sound system that could cover the entire park and grounds, few could hear anything other than the chants and the conversations of those in their immediate vicinity. But with the tumult of signs and sounds and people threading their way through the mass, it became an active sort of standing around. People pointed fingers at the White House, and livestreamed themselves and the rally on Facebook and Facetime, and took pictures of the crowd, and the signs, and each other. Protesters scrambled up into trees, and onto a wall surrounding the Bank of America building across from the U.S. Treasury building to get a better look. A woman with a microphone there ignored the distant official speakers and led the section of the crowd I could see in chants.

Some of the chants were old standbys, often heard in Washington:

“Whose House? Our House?”

“Stand Up! Fight Back!”

“This Is What Democracy Looks Like!”

There were new ones for the new occasion, and the new president, too:

“No Hate, No fear / Refugees Are Welcome Here!”

“Hands Too Small, Can’t Build a Wall!”

“Evil Plans! Tiny Hands!”

“No Ban, No Wall!”

Not everyone was in sync as they chanted, which had the odd effect of making that last one at times it sound like, “No Bannon, No Wall!”

Chief White House strategist Stephen Bannon, the former Breitbart chairman, was a particular focus of ire at the protest, with some accusing him of being a Nazi or fascist in signs and comments.

The general sentiment outside the #Whitehouse. pic.twitter.com/t0YLlVl6R8

— Garance Franke-Ruta (@thegarance) January 29, 2017

Around 2:15 p.m., the crowd got antsy and a cry went up, “March! March! March!”

The woman with the sound system announced that the group would be marching down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Trump Hotel, which is located just blocks from the White House, and the U.S. Capitol.

If this had been part of the plan, it was not previously advertised on Facebook.

The protesters turned around and started to walk out of the White House plaza, heedless of whether or not they had a permit to march or whether the streets were clear of cars. They were followed by the crush of people who had been in the park. The size of the gathering began to become apparent. It was more than 500 people. More than 1,000. They marched past me, a thickly packed crowd pouring out of the park and turning right, heading down 15th Street toward Pennsylvania Avenue. There were more than 5,000 people, certainly. The crowd kept going and going, increasing in size as word of the protest spread across social media, and as passersby joined from the street.

Many marchers had brought their children. There were pregnant women, and toddlers, and strollers galore. A few well-tended dogs. Groups of college students. Government workers. Non-government workers. People from Maryland, and Virginia, and D.C. Musical instruments, mainly drums, and at least one puppet.

The D.C. Police Department, skilled in the ways of de-escalation and crowd control in a city that is used to marches — and also one that voted more than 90 percent against Trump — blocked intersections with their cars to protect the marchers from errant traffic.

Signs ranged from the polite “I Love My Muslim Sisters & Brothers” to the pointed “Impeach Twitler” to the crude “First They Came for the Muslims And We Said NOT TODAY Motherf***er.” Some were educational – “97% of ISIS Victims are Muslim.” Many were scrawled on cardboard boxes by people who grabbed the first available poster-making material at hand on short notice. One individual sported a sign made out of a pizza box.

At the Trump Hotel, one declared, “Protest is the new brunch.”

The scene outside the Trump Hotel after security ceded the steps. Sign: "Protest is the new brunch." pic.twitter.com/FKaJDxxOLd

— Garance Franke-Ruta (@thegarance) January 29, 2017

Another sign said simply, “Decency.”

Decency. pic.twitter.com/yiBGW84luO

— Garance Franke-Ruta (@thegarance) January 29, 2017

Security personnel standing guard outside the hotel eventually thought the better of trying to keep the activists off the hotel steps. A triumphant cry went up as they receded. The protesters surged up the steps and stood on the landing outside the hotel, which kept its enormous black doors shut. “Shame! Shame! Shame!” they chanted. Guests exited through a side door.

Behind the throng, marchers continued on toward the Capitol, its white dome appearing polished to a shine in the flinty winter sunlight.

View from the Newseum this afternoon #MuslimBan pic.twitter.com/0JScYG705a

— Brittany Harris (@brittharr) January 29, 2017

Outside Trump Hotel, heading toward the Capitol. Never seen this kind of thing in DC. Crowd keeps coming & coming, growing bigger & bigger. pic.twitter.com/ia72umkHoT

— Garance Franke-Ruta (@thegarance) January 29, 2017

At Dulles Airport an hour away, lawyers still worked frantically to sort out the consequences of the executive order as conflict reports about its implementation continued to pour in and travelers remained detained.

Another protest against the executive order was called for the following week. This time, people would have more time to plan.

[lodelss]

Leah Sottile | Longreads | July 2019 | 25 minutes (7,518 words)

Part 3 of 5 of Bundyville: The Remnant, season two of Bundyville, a series and podcast from Longreads and OPB. 

I.

I have seen LaVoy Finicum die and die and die. 

Log onto YouTube and watch Finicum’s end, spliced, paused, and dissected by people who never knew him but who, too, have again and again watched it happen.

When Finicum was killed, law enforcement officers were acting on an opportunity to arrest the leaders of the weeks-long Malheur National Wildlife Refuge occupation in Oregon. Finicum was one of just a few actual ranchers who joined the Bundys’ occupation. Ranching was Finicum’s dream — something he’d only started doing once he turned 50. He didn’t grow up a rancher, but he intended to die one.

In the final seconds of his life — on the very last day of his 54th year — Finicum proved to be even more of a true believer in the purpose of the occupation than the Bundys themselves. 

That frigid late January day, an informant tipped the feds off that cars carrying the Bundys and other leaders would be traveling to Grant County, Oregon for a meeting with citizens and the area’s sheriff, who was allegedly sympathetic to the cause. 

But the group never got to the meeting. Before they could arrive, members of the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team and Oregon State Police SWAT team stopped the cars on a remote bend. Ammon Bundy followed law enforcement orders to get out of the car with his hands up, kneel on the ground, and crawl towards the officers. But Finicum refused to surrender.

Suddenly Finicum, who some viewed as a grandfatherly voice of reason back at the refuge, was yelling at the officers from his driver’s seat. He told them: “Back down or you kill me now.”

“Boys, you better realize we got people on the way,” Finicum yelled. “You want a bloodbath? It’s gonna be on your hands.”

In his back seat, the other occupants of the car — Ryan Bundy, a grandmother named Shawna Cox, and 18-year-old gospel singer Victoria Sharp — frantically tried to call people back at the refuge, but realized they’d been pulled over in an area with no cell service.

“I’m going to be laying down here on the ground with my blood on the street, or I’m going to see the sheriff,” Finicum yelled out the window. Finicum told the occupants of the car he would leave, try to get help. “You ready?” he asked. 

“Well, where’s those guns?” Ryan Bundy responded, telling the other passengers to duck down. 

“Gun it!” Cox said. “Gun it!” 

Finicum slammed the accelerator. Driving at over 70 miles per hour, careening around a bend, the sound of bullets pecked at his truck. Up ahead, the FBI and Oregon State Police had blocked the road. 

Finicum jerked the wheel — either to avoid hitting the road block, or to speed around it altogether. “Hang on!” he said. The truck crashed into deep banks of snow, sending up a white wave that made it look as if he’d plowed over an FBI agent. Finicum leaped from the truck, hands raised. All around him, officers yelled, “Get on the ground!”

This is all on the internet: Cox’s cell phone captured the conversation and fear in the truck, drone footage shot from above shows the lone white Dodge Ram pickup. 

You can see the crash, see the driver’s door fly open. You can see Finicum hop out as he taunts at the police that they’re “gonna have to shoot me.” You can hear the three bullets — bang, bang, bang. Dead. 

Every time I watch the video I think I’ll hear some new intonation, some missed revelation, and yet Finicum always dies the same. Three pops. He doesn’t jump or yelp. He simply crumples: a body tense and alive one second, a heavy sack of bones dropped to the ground for eternity the next. A puppet without a hand. Gravity stronger than spirit.

As Finicum stumbled in the snow, he yelled to the officers to shoot him before reaching multiple times toward his jacket. The overhead video captures that. Later, official reports said Finicum had a loaded 9 mm handgun in his inside jacket pocket. The shooting was ruled justified.

And yet now, three years later, a movement of people across America see his death another way entirely: As an assassination. An execution. A carefully-calculated hit on a lifelong member of the LDS church and short-time associate of the notorious Bundy family. Finicum is seen as a friend to men whose favorite part of the U.S. Constitution is the line about well-armed militias. The snowy road where he died is Finicum’s own Golgotha. The FBI roadblock is referred to, in some corners of the internet, as “the killstop.”

***

Three years after Finicum’s death, inside a VFW hall on a puddled side street in Salem, Oregon, a specific brand of nostalgic, stars-and-stripes patriotism is unmistakably on display. 

A Betsy Ross flag hangs in one corner; a flag poster is tacked to the far wall. A bulletin board is bordered by stars-and-stripes rickrack. Red, white, and blue practically seep from the walls as if it were sap pushed from the very planks that hold up the roof. 

On the breast of every person who has paid $50 to be here is a round pin that reads Justice for LaVoy, set on a border of American flag ribbon.

When the day’s program begins, some 100 people push themselves up from folding chairs the best they can, placing palms over hearts. A curly-haired cowboy in tight jeans leads the room in a twangy rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner.”

The room turns its collective body — overwhelmingly white and over 50 — toward a  yellow-fringed flag. They sing low and soft with the cowboy, like it’s church. 

As this day unfolds, it will become evident that this is, in a way, a kind of church. These people are believers in an American religion with its own martyr, its own symbols. They have their own prayers, moral teachings, and deadly sins. The name Robert LaVoy Finicum  — or just LaVoy — is a hallowed one in the collective mind of the Patriot movement.

The people have gathered here to remember the death of Finicum. They are angry, mourning. 

And the Passion of Finicum is bolstered by another belief held here: The federal government is so corrupt that it will kill its own citizens if they live too freely.

That message, to one degree or another, has always been on the wind in the West. Since the federal government sent troops in to exterminate Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest; since it declared the polygamous Mormons in Utah in rebellion; since it put a sniper on a mountaintop in rural Idaho and shot a bullet through Vicki Weaver, standing inside her cabin at Ruby Ridge in 1992, holding her infant daughter. But it’s the primary teaching of the Patriot movement — a movement that was around long before the Bundys — that will remain long after Cliven has faded into a folk herodom. 

There’s a key difference between Cliven Bundy and LaVoy Finicum. As I’ve written about the Patriot movement, I’ve come to understand that Bundy might be the godfather of a movement that has bedeviled feds across the West. But to a lot of ranchers, he’s a joke — an affront to everything so many public lands ranchers have worked for. Those people see Bundy’s ideas about the federal government as outlandish and a distraction from the real issues in rural America: jobs, water, development, health care.

But Finicum’s death resonated in the Bundys’ world and far beyond it. He believed in the same disproven, unsupported claims as the family, but the difference was that he believed in those things enough to die for them. Death seems to have softened more people to the idea that the government is the aggressor. With his death, Patriots could point to another marker on its timeline arguing that the government can and will come after people. 

But who Finicum really was before 2016, what he really believed, has never been clear to me. He’s no ancient prophet with a story lost to time. His life story can be told. The government said that Bill Keebler, after bombing the BLM building, claimed his actions weren’t for LaVoy, but for “what he stood for.” So what did he stand for?

Finicum in January 2016 at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge during the armed takeover led by the Bundys. Finicum described himself as wanting “to be like the guy standing in front of the tank at Tiananmen Square.” (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, File)

Glenn Jones wrote something in his journal about Finicum, and Keebler said his bomb was for whatever Finicum stood for. Both craved eye-for-an-eye acts of revenge, payback: virtues the Patriot movement has always prized. The movement is fueled by a burning for comeuppance, and at its worst, that’s gotten a lot of people killed. In 1995, Timothy McVeigh bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City — an apparent act of revenge for Ruby Ridge and Waco. 

Since Finicum’s death, the message of his martyrdom has been amplified by a very powerful voice: a woman sitting at the back of the VFW behind a table of belt buckles, T-shirts, stickers, and hats bearing Finicum’s distinctive cattle brand. Miniature American flags decorate the tablecloth. 

Dorethea Jeanette Finicum, who goes by Jeannette, is a pretty 59-year-old woman with blue eyes that sparkle and a bright smile with a perfect gap between her two front teeth. She wears a denim shirt embroidered with blue flowers, ashy-blond hair that suggests she’s from a different era, a different world where hairstylists still feather and shag. She is the Patriot movement’s Lady of Sorrows, and people here love to touch her: placing hands on her back, offering handshakes. One man holds her in a tight embrace: “Jeanette, I will never, ever forget you,” he says. Behind her, someone has displayed an Old Glory afghan for the room to see.

She’s a “chuck wagon mom” who, the moment three state-issued bullets ended her husband’s life, turned into a full-blown political activist. Today, she is indisputably one of the stars of the modern Patriot movement. 

She sells stacks of Only By Blood and Suffering, the novel her late husband wrote about an overbearing government that attacks a cowboy rancher, shooting and killing him. Sitting next to her behind that table of goods is her new husband — a plain man in a plaid shirt who scurries away at the sight of a reporter. 

Since the summer of 2018, the widow Finicum has taken a film about her husband called LaVoy: Dead Man Talking on the road — a film she and its producer, a 49-year-old Washington state man named Mark Herr, describe as a documentary made up mostly of footage from Finicum’s free YouTube channel. 

Before queuing up the first hour of the documentary, Herr takes the microphone. All eyes turn his way. “All right let’s get started,” he says. “If you oppose white supremacy, if you oppose — you’re against — white supremacy, would you please stand?” 

The room rises. 

“You don’t agree with white supremacy? OK,” Herr says. “If you’re pro–responsible government — you’re pro-government. You’re pro–responsible government, would you please clap?”

The room claps.

“Wow!” Herr exclaims. “Very interesting!” 

This goes on: Sit if you want the federal and state governments to combine (no one sits). Sit if you want the legislative, judicial, and executive branches to combine into one big entity (no one sits for that either, including producer Ryan Haas and I, who felt it was the sporting thing to do).

“Oh that’s so interesting!” he says, forcing surprise into his words.

“Guess who you’re standing with,” he says, as the room settles back onto the folding chairs. “You stood with LaVoy Finicum.”

Just before Herr hits play, a woman who organized this event reminds the room that there is security here. Anyone caught recording will be removed. A huddle of men and women in sweatshirts bearing the logo of the Idaho Three Percenters militia settles into seats. A man with a handgun on his hip — nestled in a leather holster embossed with the words “We, the People”  — leans against the wall near the only two reporters in this room, me and Haas. 

Dead Man Talking is Finicum’s story told through the eyes of the Patriot movement — so it’s mostly about his life after he went to the Bundy Ranch standoff in 2014. The movie doesn’t answer questions about how Finicum came to believe what he did, or how that belief compelled him to die.

Illustration by Zoë van Dijk

The film is concerned, primarily, with the man’s death. Dying, after all, is what he’s known best for; Finicum’s public life was only a blip: 21 months out of 54 years. From the time Finicum arrived, alone, at Bundy Ranch in 2014, to the time he died a leader at the Malheur occupation in 2016, only 650-some days passed. He was a martyr made at the speed of the internet.

Finicum’s videos — posted to his YouTube channel — say pretty much nothing anyone in the Patriot movement wouldn’t have heard before. He was like a low-calorie Cliven Bundy delivering a droll, monotonous soliloquy about the Constitution, the founding fathers, freedom, liberty. 

But the videos are a window into everything Finicum wanted to be seen as. In some videos, he wore a cowboy hat, black suit coat, and a Western bow tie — as if he’d just strolled out of a tintype photograph. Behind him: a woodstove, a kerosene lantern, a painting of a cowboy crouched by his horse, and one of a Mormon temple. 

In other videos, blades of grass wiggled in front of the camera, a bright blue sky behind him. “It doesn’t take too much to see that dark storm clouds are gathering,” he said, crouching in front of the camera. “We need to have our houses in order. We need to have our relationships in order. We never know how many days we have on God’s green earth here, and we need to make the best of each and every one of them.”

His channel shows him stockpiling for the end. And in the Bundys, it is as if he saw proof that the horses of the apocalypse were on the horizon.

But the Bundys were shopping a conspiracy theory that Finicum bought hook, line, and sinker when he arrived at Bundy Ranch, as if he’d been waiting to hear it. Like he’d had his finger on a light switch in a dark room for years, itching for the chance to flip it and light up his whole world. 

  II.

LaVoy Finicum and his cousin Josh Cluff both called the tiny, tiny town of Fredonia, Arizona, home. In the winter, the wide-open lands all around it are an otherworldly picture show of red cliffs dripping with melting ice against blue skies. Snowfields are untouched, stretches of pure white fleece that go all the way to the edge of the earth. 

At a lone gas station near Kanab, Utah, where Haas and I make a pit stop, a large pickup truck is surrounded by women and girls in matching prairie dresses: navy blue, plum, lime green. They’ve formed a chain, passing a truckload of boxes into a FedEx van. Their hair is pinned back in braids and waves, styles unmistakably associated with polygamous sects like the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — a radical offshoot of Mormonism. 

Seeing them is a reminder that polygamy is still alive and well in this area and around the rural West, despite FLDS leader Warren Jeffs being sentenced to life in prison in 2011. The towns of Colorado City, Arizona, and Hildale, Utah, aren’t far from here — and they’ve long been FLDS strongholds. And they were, essentially, in LaVoy Finicum’s backyard.

The homes and rusted trailers of Colorado City spread south along State Route 389, petering out, then swelling again to form the town of Cane Beds. That’s where the Finicums lived. They participated in civic life, which often intersected with the FLDS church. One of Finicum’s post office boxes was in Colorado City. He attended town hall meetings there, too. Today, just off State Route 389, LaVoy Finicum Road leads the way to Cane Beds (one report attributed the naming of the road to Finicum himself, who requested the switch before he died). 

In the days after his death, prominent polygamists joined the anti-government chorus in declaring Finicum a martyr. Ross LeBaron Jr. — whose father created the polygamous sect Church of the Firstborn of the Fulness of Times — gave a written statement to a Salt Lake Tribune reporter: “LaVoy, the Bundy’s [sic] and others are my heroes. They stood for something bigger then [sic] themselves. They are not sellouts like many are today. I thank God for all those that are standing for the greater good.”

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As I’ve reported in desert towns around the West — up north in Panaca, all through the Arizona Strip — I’ve noticed that this type of interaction between mainstream Mormons and FLDS is typical. Sam Brower, a private investigator who wrote a book called Prophet’s Prey: My Seven-Year Investigation Into Warren Jeffs and the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints, says polygamists are “part of the landscape.”

Cane Beds, he says, is for “FLDS refugees” and people who often “still believe in polygamy,” but it’s also just a really cheap place to live. 

“I know after [Finicum] was killed, there were people — ex-FLDS people I know — that were saying, ‘I knew that guy, he was living down the road from us.’ They knew who he was.” 

I tell him about the women I saw near Fredonia, how it surprised me to see a group I thought was so fringe, living outside the boundaries of the law, out in the open. “There’s a degree of tolerance,” he says. “You just become more callous to having them around all the time.” I’m bothered by this. Finicum, at the end of his life, was so obsessed with freedom and liberty, and yet I never heard him rage on YouTube about the oppression of women and sexual abuse of girls happening in his literal backyard.

Finicum, who was Mormon, lived around and in FLDS strongholds for much of his life — could even have been friendly with them. In talking to Brower, I have to wonder if living so close to people with a radical lifestyle might have made Finicum more open to hearing fringe religious ideas. 

Like when the Bundys talked to him about the White Horse Prophecy — how they believed their quest against the government was prophesied by Joseph Smith himself. If Finicum had been around people who were preaching an alternate gospel all his life, might he have been more open to believing fringe ideas, instead of questioning them?

***

Robert LaVoy Finicum was born January 27, 1961 to David and Nelda Finicum, and was baptised nearly two weeks later in the Fredonia LDS ward by his uncle, elder Merlin Cluff. 

By the 1960s, Finicums and Cluffs had been around the Arizona Strip for generations. LaVoy’s grandparents Dale and Beulah Finicum homesteaded in the area, living in a dug-out house in the ground. LaVoy’s parents, too, embraced the pioneer grit that helped settle this region. When Finicum’s father, David, was a teenager, he made local headlines when he shot himself in the leg. He was riding on a horse when it brushed against a tree branch that  caught the hammer of the revolver in his saddle and shot him. He rode for 20 more miles before getting help, according to one account.

In 1986, Finicum’s parents rode in a horse-drawn covered wagon from Kanab, Utah, to St. George in a reenactment of the Honeymoon Trail — a wagon train that, in the 1870s, helped populate the Arizona Strip along with transporting goods to St. George to help in the construction of the LDS temple there. After the building was complete, the trail continued to be used, carrying couples, instead of supplies, to be married in the temple.

LaVoy, though, was raised in the far northwestern corner of Arizona Navajo territory, where his father took a job with the Arizona Department of Transportation, paving and repairing roads. He attended school in Page, Arizona.

The family home was close to Lee’s Ferry, Arizona, named for Mormon settler John D. Lee. Lee was executed for helping murder 120 pioneers traveling through a Utah canyon on their way west, an event now known as the 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre. It is considered one of the earliest acts of domestic terrorism. 

Lee’s Ferry, also, is the birthplace of a foundational prophet of the FLDS church, Leroy Johnson, who was also an early leader in Colorado City. 

In February 2019, I traveled to the Fredonia home of Finicum’s younger brother, Guy. He looks, and sounds, eerily like LaVoy: He’s bald, wears wire-rimmed glasses, speaks in a measured-tone. And he laughs when I say I just want to hear more about who his brother really was. “Nobody would have dirt like the little brother,” he says. He’s a licensed mental health counselor who works with substance abuse recovery programs, and his words come across with a measured delivery.

“We were kind of isolated down there. No television, only the friends in the couple houses next to us and then the Navajos that lived on the reservation around us,” he says. It took them 45 minutes to get to school. “We’d be the only white faces on the bus.” He says the family was accepted with open arms by the tribal community.

Guy says his brother, as a child, was “the Batman and Joker rolled into one character. He was my nemesis,” Guy says. “He loved to tease me. But as soon as we left the home he was my hero. … He said, ‘Hey, here’s my brother.’ He included me.”

He tells me that LaVoy always wanted to be a cowboy, but “as a little boy, he didn’t have any cattle. So that was my job. I was his livestock,” he says, letting a laugh loose again. “I got a hog tied and earmarked more than once.” I’m so used to hearing grim recollections of LaVoy’s death, it’s surprising to hear his brother laugh about a memory of him.

In high school, LaVoy turned his attention to basketball. Their father poured asphalt by the house so LaVoy could put up a hoop. 

“Every morning I’d wake up hearing that ball bouncing,” Guy says. 

After graduation, LaVoy served his LDS mission in Rapid City, South Dakota, but held onto his passion for basketball long after it was realistic for him to keep pursuing it. 

Upon returning home, he married a woman named Kelly “after a very short courtship,” according to Guy, and the pair soon had their first child. Kelly was from Oregon, and the newlyweds moved there so LaVoy could take a job managing apartments in a Portland suburb. Finicum also hoped he could walk onto a local college basketball team, but quickly realized he couldn’t spend money on tuition that could be used to feed his family.

“He regretted that decision because he was never able to get a college degree. … He had to go to school to play basketball,” Guy says. “But he felt like he had neglected his wife and his little kid.” 

Kelly and LaVoy had four children, and got a divorce in 1989. “LaVoy’s problem is, he always wanted to be a cowboy,” Guy explains.  

Finicum, from his 20s to 40s, bounced around the West. I found addresses for him in Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Las Vegas, near Flagstaff, in St. George, Cedar City, and Provo, Utah. For the most part, he worked as a property manager — something he excelled at, Guy says. But the work never seemed to really interest him. 

“Every time he’d get successful, he’d get sick of living in the city and try to move back home. And when he’d come back home, he just could never get a foothold and find anything that he could support his family on. So they’d come back here and be dirt poor and struggle,” Guy says. Sometimes LaVoy would move to cities before his family, sleeping in his car as he looked for work, brushing his teeth and shaving with a jug of water. 

As we’re talking Guy gets up from his seat in the living room. “I want to show you something,” he says, and disappears into a nearby room. He emerges with a packet of papers in his hands, fixed together with a single strand of suede cord. 

He explains that one year when LaVoy had no money to buy Christmas gifts, he gave him these drawings instead. Guy delicately fingers through the old pages. There’s a drawing of their grandparents’ house, and below it LaVoy wrote about the old wood cookstove inside, the ticking clock on the wall, the smell of percolating coffee — a beverage choice that set them apart from their LDS relatives. 

Guy smiles, but as we look, one page strikes me as particularly haunting. It’s a sketch of the private family cemetery plot in Cane Beds, where LaVoy is now buried.

In LaVoy’s depiction of it, he sketched the place as if there was just one body buried there. In the center of the drawing is a sole gravestone and a mound of fresh dirt. Around it is an old wooden fence, two trees, then vast white nothingness.

***

In July 1990, several months after his divorce, LaVoy married a woman named Rachel, and soon they had two children together. That marriage was short-lived. (I reached out to both Kelly and Rachel on Facebook, but never heard back.)

In 1992, Jeanette Finicum was at a singles dance at her church, and she was line dancing when her future husband walked in. “I can remember being out on the floor and this gorgeous cowboy walked into the room,” she said. “He sat up on the stage and he just sat there watching all of us dance. And I thought to myself, ‘Boy, I want to dance with him.’” 

They danced — a slow song. And when Jeanette asked LaVoy to keep dancing, he said he had no rhythm. She called him chicken. “He says, ‘I’ll tell you what. If you can tell me how many kids I have, I’ll dance this next dance with you.’”

She guessed six. He nodded.

“I went, ‘Oh my gosh, you have six kids?!’ And I’m going, ‘Oh my heck, you are definitely the package deal,’” she recalled. “To make a long story short, two weeks later we were married.” (According to Finicum’s obituary, the couple married in 1994.)

The pair raised 11 children together. LaVoy and Jeanette later moved near Prescott, Arizona, where they became foster parents. Guy explained that being a foster father was perfectly suited to his brother. “He was a very alpha personality. And he just carried presence with him that nobody ever wanted to challenge,” he said. Boys who other foster parents couldn’t control “just would fall in line behind him.” Foster parenting, too, allowed him to earn enough to attain his cowboy dream. 

Records from the Bureau of Land Management show Finicum cosigned a grazing permit in 2009 with his father, but started ranching by himself in 2011 near Mount Trumbull, deep in the Arizona desert, near the Grand Canyon. In 2014, he was in good standing with the BLM. He always paid his bills on time. 

According to Guy, the Finicum boys were raised hearing stories of how the federal government was trying put ranchers out of business. Ranchers who once could run cattle near the Grand Canyon were slowly pushed out, and national monuments like the Grand Canyon-Parashant further reduced grazing areas. 

“That was kind of the culture we grew up with is these guys are here to tell us what to do and take away what we have,”said Guy.

Even when LaVoy was finally able to ranch, something he achieved in his 50th year of life, “he couldn’t make it work very well,” Guy said. Then he went to Bundy Ranch in 2014, met Cliven Bundy and saw yet one more rancher saying the government was no friend to ranchers. 

When he died, Guy said,  ”he was right in the middle of his dream.”

  III.

On June 23, 2015, Finicum wrote a letter to the BLM: 

“I am writing you this letter to express my appreciation for the time we have associated together in connection with my grazing on the Arizona Strip. It has been a pleasant association and without conflict,” he wrote. “I have the greatest respect for you and judge you to be honorable men.” 

He continued: “At this time I feel compelled to stand for [sic] up for the Constitution of our land and in doing so please do not feel that I am attacking your character.” He repeated what Cliven Bundy had been telling people at Bundy Ranch: about the Founding Fathers; about Article 1, Section 8, Clause 17; and the idea of government-owned land being a ruse. Wool pulled over the eyes of hard-working Americans. 

“This is not about cows and grass, access or resources, this is about freedom and defending our Constitution in its original intent.” 

This confused BLM employees. 

On July 13, an employee called Finicum “to discuss what’s going on.” Finicum was cordial but explained he was making a stand. 

“When asked if he was going to turn-out his Livestock + pay his grazing fees, he wouldn’t answer + resorted back to the Constitution and making a stance,” the employee wrote. 

In 2015, Finicum’s permit only allowed for him to graze cattle from October 15 until May 15. But on August 7, a BLM employee called Finicum to let him know he saw 24 of his animals in two pastures, asked him to remove them within a week, and told him he couldn’t put any more cattle out. 

Finicum replied that  he was “not asking for permission.”

Finicum published a video to YouTube that same day, claiming the BLM had drained his water tank to fight a wildfire “without so much as a hidey-ho or a please.” 

“It’s mine. It’s for my cows. I need it,” he said. “Quit stealing.” 

Three days later, the BLM received another letter from Finicum, which stated, “I am severing my association with the BLM.” He took to YouTube again, telling viewers it was time to “do something more than just talk.”  In the video, he’s crouched by the camera in fringed leather chaps with a long scarf tied around his head and a cowboy hat over it. This isn’t the same droll Finicum of the year before, in front of the woodstove and the temple paintings. He’s fired up — and he’s talking directly to the men at the BLM — the people who, two months earlier, he said he had so much respect for. “You gonna come in there like you did with my friend Cliven?” he said. “Well, I’m telling you, leave me alone. Leave me alone, leave Cliven alone.” 

Finicum in the video posted to hisYouTube channel, pAug. 14, 2015.

In the days that followed, the BLM found 32 cows, two bulls, and 24 calves under 6 months old in trespass. All had Finicum’s brands and earmarks. Nearby more were observed near a water trough, but the water was off. 

On August 24, the BLM mailed Finicum a trespass notice. On United States Department of the Interior letterhead, they told him he owed $1,458.52. 

***

Guy Finicum tells me his brother was always a crusader for the little guy. He says that’s why he went to Bundy Ranch: LaVoy saw a little rancher being bullied by the big government.

“There are individuals to this day who consider LaVoy the best friend they ever had. And often these individuals were those who had no friends — the ostracized ones, the ones who were picked on,” he says. “And LaVoy wouldn’t stand for anybody picking on anybody.” Court documents allege that on September 1, 2015, Finicum was meeting with Keebler — the Utah man who would later go on to push the button on a dummy bomb given to him by the FBI, believing it would destroy a BLM building near Finicum’s ranchlands. Finicum, according to the documents, told Keebler he was ready to plan a confrontation similar to the one at Bundy Ranch. In a meeting with Keebler, which was recorded by the FBI, Finicum said he “wants to be like the guy standing in front of the tank at Tiananmen Square” and that if he died in a confrontation with the government, “then the cause is the poor rancher’s widow.” 

According to the federal government, that meeting occurred one week after Finicum received notice that he was racking up BLM fines. About a month later Keebler brought the two FBI agents — who he thought were his fellow militiamen —to a meeting at Finicum ranch in Northern Arizona to strategize a standoff. 

By October, his trespass fines had increased to $5,791.72. 

“We as a family were quite concerned when he started drawing a line in sand with the BLM,” Guy says, “because I’m like, ‘LaVoy, I know you don’t like bullies, but you’re picking a fight with the federal government — they don’t lose! They don’t lose’ … And he’s like, ‘Well, they’re wrong.’”

The way his brother explains it, after LaVoy went to Bundy Ranch, all he could see, everywhere he looked, was the federal government “amassing more and more power.” 

“He went from a person flying under the radar to a person who became very vocal in just a matter of a year,” he says. LaVoy believed the country was on the verge of a collapse. It was the entire premise of his novel, Only By Blood and Suffering. 

“He wrote a story with an ending of a cowboy getting into a shoot-out with the federal government and gets killed, and then here that’s exactly what happened to LaVoy,” says Guy. “What do you make of that?” I ask.

He pauses. “It’s no accident.”

LaVoy didn’t do all the things his cowboy protagonist did. But “that was the person he wanted to be,” Guy says. “He wanted to be a person who had the ability to stand up and make a difference and protect what he believed in.”

None of this seems important to the people inside the Patriot movement: the man who struggled to make ends meet; the foster father devoted to helping the kids who needed direction; the rancher who failed time and time again to achieve his dreams, only to finally attain one and only see it for its imperfections. 

Finicum, the Patriot martyr, is a man obsessed with his own end, a man willing to conspire against the government, then die over and over again in an infinite internet loop. 

“It must be so painful to see the video of the shooting,” I say to Guy. 

“What’s harder is hearing the commentary on it, and people saying, ‘Well this is who he is, and this is what he was doing, and this is what happened,” Guy says. I ask for an example. He points to the way the media reported his brother was reaching for a gun in the inside pocket of his jacket. “There is no way my brother would put a gun in his pocket. OK? And how do I know that? I grew up with him,” he says. “We’ve carried guns in a lot of ways, and carrying a gun in a coat pocket doesn’t work. … When you carry it without a holster, it goes in one place. It goes in your waistband, tight against your body.”

The gun in Finicum’s inside pocket is the source of many conspiracies around Fincum’s death — ones that seemed to gain traction during the summer of 2018, as one of the FBI HRT agents, who’d been on the scene, stood trial. Agent W. Joseph Astarita was accused of firing two bullets at Finicum as he leaped out of the truck, then lying about those shots. Video footage does, in fact, show a round piercing the ceiling of the truck as he jumps out with his hands up. Astarita was acquitted of all charges, and the bullets still haven’t been accounted for. To people who saw conspiracy in Finicum’s death, the trial, some felt, gave their version of events credence: If someone was lying about a bullet, wouldn’t they be willing to lie about a gun, too? YouTubers analyzed photos from the scene. Some reason that if Finicum’s weapon was found as police photographs show it inside his jacket pocket, and he tried to reach for it, that gun would have come out upside-down.

It’s not a surprise to me that as even-keeled and even-minded as Guy Finicum seems, that he might not see the reasoning for the shooting in the video of his brother. He theorizes that LaVoy wasn’t reaching for a gun, but was trying to keep his balance in the snow after being shot with a nonlethal projectile. He doesn’t understand why the FBI set up the roadblock where they did, in a place where Finicum might not have been able to brake in time.

He and LaVoy disagreed a lot about liberty — about the best way to convert the hearts and minds of their fellow Americans. LaVoy wanted to fight the government; Guy thought getting individuals to think about liberty — and what it meant to them — was more effective. 

“He’d say, ‘No, we got to make a stand.’ And I’m saying, ‘No, I don’t.’ I don’t think we need to, I think we just need to put our hearts in the right place and become that within ourselves,” he recalls.

So it wasn’t entirely surprising for Guy to watch LaVoy go to Harney County, Oregon, to join the Bundys in the refuge occupation. But with no end in sight to the standoff, Guy was worried. So worried, in fact, that he drove to Oregon. 

“I thought things were kind of crazy, and I thought, ‘What in the world’s my brother doing?’ I went up there to talk sense into him, honestly,” he says. But at the refuge, he listened to what LaVoy and Ammon Bundy had to say. He got to know people. He thought maybe it wasn’t what the media had made it out to be.

“My whole attitude completely shifted, and I left saying to my brother, ‘Stay the course. Stick to what you know you’re doing,’” he says. Guy doesn’t think his brother committed suicide by cop. But he claims that he felt his brother was going to die in Oregon.

“People may say you can’t know things like this, but I knew when I said goodbye to him up there in Oregon he was going to die up there. I knew,” he says. “Don’t ask me how I know. I was just standing there and all of a sudden it hit me that he was going to die there. So when I said goodbye to him up there, I really thought it would be the last time I’d ever seen him.”

Guy shakes his head. Says he can’t believe he just told us that. It’s so personal. 

And I don’t know what to do with it either. Sitting there in his living room, I don’t think I understand a love that is so strong you can simply step aside and watch someone you love get what they want most, even if it will kill them, leaving behind daughters and sons, foster children, a wife, a mother, a brother. A ranch. A hard-fought dream.

It makes me wonder if LaVoy’s dream was never about being a lone horseman in the country, but was a way to further escape reality and dissolve into the fictional, apocalyptic world where he could be a hero. 

He ranched in a place so far-flung, it makes Cliven Bundy look like he is ranching in New York City. Finicum was so alone out there. He had his cows, his old cow dog. It looked perfect. And yet, even then, it wasn’t perfect enough. He believed he was entitled to something more. 

Guy Finicum, like people across this country, has a sticker donning his brother’s name on the back of his truck. I ask if he thinks of LaVoy as a martyr. 

“He is a martyr for his cause. He did far more to push the word out about what he stood for by dying than he ever would have if he was out there speaking on the circuit,” he says.

He’s seen Patriots around the country talking about LaVoy like they knew him. Like they really got him. For a while, Guy argued with people online, tried to edit his brother’s Wikipedia page to correct all the things someone somewhere was saying his brother was based off the final seconds of his life. 

People didn’t really know LaVoy, he says. “I believe the vast majority people don’t even know who LaVoy really was, or what he really was standing for.”

  IV.

Back in Oregon at the VFW, Jeanette Finicum is talking to her flock about Oregon Democratic Senator Ron Wyden. During the 41-day Malheur occupation, Wyden told a news station that “the virus was spreading” the longer the armed standoff continued. 

“What was the virus?” Finicum asked the crowd. 

“Freedom and truth,” the only person in this room wearing a red Make America Great Again hat calls back. 

But if the goal of the movie Dead Man Talking is to tell the truth and buck the media’s portrayal of LaVoy Finicum as an extremist, racist, or anti-government radical, the journey it has taken over the past six months has been circuitous. She hasn’t shown it to schools, libraries, mainstream GOP groups, or media. 

In fact, if the film’s hosts across America show anything, it’s that the Patriot movement is everywhere — not just the West. It is alive and thriving, and it adores Jeanette Finicum: the poor rancher’s widow. 

The film debuted at the Red Pill Expo in Spokane, Washington, a conference that featured speakers known for homophobia, climate change denial, and an overall obsession with how the “deep state” is apparently operating behind the scenes of the American government. 

Last September, the Colorado Front Range Militia screened the film; the next day, the Heritage Defenders — a conservative group linked to anti-Muslim legislation — got a preview.

The film made its way to Tucson, hosted by people involved with a group of gun-toting local conspiracy theorists that believed they had found evidence of an immigrant child sex trafficking ring — a wild conspiracy that drew the interest of QAnon and Pizzagate believers nationwide—which actually turned out to be just a pile of junk in the desert.

The path continues like this: Finicum brought it to Utah, hosted by the widow of the bankroller of the Sagebrush Rebellion, Bert Smith. It went to Pennsylvania, hosted by an Agenda 21 conspiracy theorist. It went to Northern Idaho, paid for by an Idaho Three Percenter who floats QAnon theories on Twitter.

Last summer, Finicum and Herr hosted one of Dead Man Talking’s very first showings at a separatist religious community called Marble Community Fellowship in northeastern Washington. She appeared onstage next to Washington state representative Matt Shea. 

In Salem, the crowd doesn’t hear about how, eight months after LaVoy’s death, Jeanette applied for a new grazing permit with the Bureau of Land Management, or how she met with BLM employees in November 2017 to pay all the fees they owed. 

“The meeting went well” in “what could have been an awkward situation,” wrote one of the federal employees in an email afterward. 

It was as if when LaVoy died, his own personal stand against the government died with him. He became an avatar for whatever anyone wanted him to be.

Jeanette, at the microphone at the VFW, talks about how police shot her husband. “That’s murder, people,” she says. 

“That’s right,” someone in the audience calls back. 

“No American citizen deserves that,” she says. “We deserve our right to due process. We deserve our right to a trial. We deserve to have charges. We deserve to be served with a warrant. We deserve that process. Do we not?”

“You hear my husband saying, ‘We’re going to go see the sheriff, you can arrest me there. Follow me and you can arrest me there,’” she recalls. “He was not fleeing law enforcement when he left that first stop. He left to go to law enforcement whom he trusted. That’s what he was doing.” 

The room nods. 

They believe Finicum — after fighting with the government, after occupying a federal property for weeks — was entitled to choose which agency arrested him. To do what he pleased. 

“He had done nothing wrong,” she says.

Before the day is done, the Old Glory afghan that’s been sitting behind Finicum’s table is auctioned off from the stage. 

The singing cowboy leads the room again; this time he’s an auctioneer. Quickly, there’s a bidding war over the blanket. Two hundred. Three hundred. Seven hundred. Finally a couple wins the afghan. They pay $1,500. That money will go to Jeanette. Behind her merchandise table, Jeanette pops up from her seat one more time as people file downstairs for a spaghetti dinner. Someone is making an offering. 

She hands a man a copy of Only By Blood and Suffering. As if collecting tithes, she accepts his offer. He gives her $500 for the book. 

***

Leah Sottile is a freelance journalist based in Portland, Oregon. Her work has appeared in theWashington Post, Playboy, California Sunday Magazine, Outside, The Atlantic and Vice.

Editors: Mike Dang and Kelly Stout Illustrator: Zoë van Dijk Fact checker: Matt Giles Copy editor: Jacob Gross

Special thanks to everyone at Oregon Public Broadcasting.

[hereticaloracles]

New Moon in Aquarius- Surge

I got no prosperity but yo I’m a piece of it. So let the guilty hang in the year of the boomerang. And now it’s upon you.” – Rage Against the Machine, Year of Tha Boomerang

Effective Date: January 27th 2017

Helios’ Astrological Angle on the New Moon in Aquarius– Can’t stop this flow… Can you feel the currents churning within you? Our world is changing, and we are changing along with it. We are not the same people we were a month ago, and tomorrow we will not be the same as we are today. Everything is happening so fast that there is no way to keep track of it,  and it is becoming harder and harder to keep your head above water. When this happens there is only one thing to do- Dive.

Artemis’ Tarot Take on the New Moon in Aquarius-  Welcome to the twilight zone.  Here, in the year of the Star – which is ruled by Aquarius – we reach a land that is upside down.  Or is it right side up?  We emerge from the Year of the Tower alchemically transformed.  We have seen our nightmares manifest, our beliefs disintegrate and erupt from the ashes as new entities – fiery inspired phoenixes ready to burn away the outdated trappings of dusty old paradigms.  We started the first day of Aquarius season with one of the largest protests to ever grace American soil take place against the new emperor of the “free world.”  And the planet of the libertine, Uranus, has swung direct, letting us know that his influence has been highly prevalent in what has transpired for us collectively.  Do not forget that the outer planets influence the collective.  This full moon in the Uranian sign of Aquarius is here to make it very clear; give me change or I will become the agent of change myself.

  The Sun, Moon and Neptune– I tell you one thing, this Moon is PISSED. This whole chart reeks of the Sacred Feminine rising up to correct a grave error- And you know I tend to avoid even mentioning anything woo-woo like that (I say as an astrologer… *rolls eyes). The protests that we have seen take the world? That���s just the opening act. With Neptune here you would think that this would be a potent Lunation, but this is coming together in a different way- Neptune is the dream that fuels this whole chart, enabling the Sun and Moon to get things done. This configuration (and the chart in general) is indicative of some seriously major change incoming. This is the real change, change from the ground up. No matter where this Moon falls in your chart, you will feel this in your life. Those obstacles to your success will start to crumble, one by one. This is the time to move forward with your efforts. Quit trying to half-ass your progress, keeping one eye fixed on the past. That is only weighing you down. You need to be free from the fetters of your feelings, and nostalgia to the way things used to be is cutting you off at the knees. Focus on what is, focus on the now. You keep trying to retreat to your nest- That is the LAST thing that you need to do. You need to get out there! Get into the world, shake things up for yourself. I don’t know how many times I have to keep telling you that no one is going to do it for you, but apparently it bares repeating. You will be amazed at the doors that will open should you only be open and communicate your hopes, dreams and challenges to others. There may be someone listening that has a solution- or even better, you might be theirs! (Minor Planets used: Mors-Somnus, Circe, Isis, Pandora, Lachesis, Eros, Osiris, Asclepius; Asbolus, Chariklo, Altjira, Diana, Hybris, Orpheus)

The Sun (Ace of Swords), The Moon (Queen of Pentacles), Neptune (9 of Swords)-  Fuck yes, Ace of Swords.  6 months ago, during the Aquarian full moon, we were given the weapons we needed to battle the jabborwocky in our personal lives.  Now we are being given a weapon to defeat the collective’s phantoms.   Eclipses have a bit of a staggered effect.  Whatever you manifest into your life during one will pop out 6 months later during the next lunation in that sign.  That means whatever efforts you put into place – whatever demons you slayed and whatever demons you let escape – will karmicly manifest now.   During the Full Moon Aqua back in August, we had a giant cluster of planets sitting in Virgo.  Inversely, we now have a cluster of planets sitting in Pisces.  The nitpicking and correcting of the late summer has now allowed us to learn how to manifest.  It is now our duty to manifest.  We are all ready.  Can’t you feel it?  There is electricity in the air, and we are all plugged the fuck in.  Smoke signals are being sent by the tribe, and we must answer them now.  The Moon is directly channeling the Queen of Pentacles, the mother of the earth, and the nightmares we have manifested due to our faulty paradigms must be tackled.  This is a very revolutionary moon, and definitely the marker of the times to come.  The key to the next 6 months will be the Ace of Swords – truth.  We must all trust in each other and in ourselves, that we are more than capable of demolishing the old world and birthing a new one collectively.  Remember, order is an emergent property of chaos…  At this time, we have the opportunity to create a new world.  We just need to do it together.  Aquarius is the rivers and tributaries that connect the larger bodies of water.  Start networking; networked revolution.  This is the Leo/Aquarius polarity; when our leaders fail us, we rise up as a collective to fix the imbalance.

Mercury and Pluto– It’s another Magic Moon! Mercury and Pluto together have this fascinating ability to transform literally anything. I call them the Philosopher’s Stone aspect. You are putting in the work that you need to, and that is great; The only problem is that the changes you see happening are minuscule, and not taking place nearly quick enough. You must be patient, more is happening beneath the surface than you can see. Keep on your work, in fact double down on it- Change your mindset and the way you are thinking from waiting on the magic to work into living your life like the changes already have happened. Yes, this is another fake-it-til-its-real trick, but once you put it into action, and if you convince yourself, then all of a sudden the changes you want to see will catch up to you. But them that’s magic for you! (Minor Planets used: Bienor, Panacea, Phaethon, Karma, Heracles; Echeclus, Deucalion)

Mercury (King of Pentacles) and Pluto (4 of Cups)-  So this essentially tells me, “Quit whining about what could have been and start manifesting what could be right now.”  The planets are brimming, absolutely spilling with opportunity for us right now.  We are looking at all of the things that are going to shit right now (and trust me, that is a lot of stuff in both our personal lives and in the collective).  But what we must realize is that in this chaos we are being offered an opportunity we should not refuse; to manifest our own destiny.  We are at the precipice now, Heretics, where we must choose either to continue handing our power over to the puppets of our collective shadow, or to take responsibility and duty back into our hands.   This idea may be spreading around to everyone’s minds right now; how can I provide for my friends?

Oh, and never forget – resistance is necessary for flight.  

Venus, Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus– Remember how I said the Sacred Feminine was pissed? Well its gobsmackingly obvious here as well. It literally reads like the women of the cosmos are abandoning the men because they have overwhelmingly had it with the boys’ shit. Who can blame them? They only have two true aspects represented in the sky, The Moon and Venus, aka The Mother and The Consort. That isn’t enough– Not when then men have the Scholar, the Teacher, Warrior, Golden Child, Elder, Inventor, Magician and the Tyrant! Well I guarantee that even though they have less seats at the table, their strength is that they have all the backing of the thousands of female asteroids and minor planets standing behind them. Their voices ring in unison, compared to the fractured shouts and squabbling of the boys. And what is it that they want? They want liberation, and so do you. No matter what your gender or race, whether you are able-bodied or who you love, everyone has faced some form of marginalization, and this configuration makes it so you want your struggles to be heard. This is a big aspect, and a potent one. You see the possibilities around you and you see an opportunity to create something different for yourself, AS WELL YOU SHOULD! There is nothing wrong with trying to change your station in life, and reaching upward is so, so human. Do not allow yourself to feel guilt for wanting more from your life. The interesting thing is, you can just have it- Don’t listen to Saturn. He respects a well-thought out plan. Jupiter and Uranus are more concept guys, and when they are together you can make some serious magic happen. You cannot force Jupiter, nor should you ever try- In working Jupiter, you kind of have to ignore him. Impress him with your own efforts first and then he will come to shower his golden gifts upon you. Once that happens, you have to capitalize on them, boldly and fearlessly. That needs to be your approach to this time. Fear has no place in your future, and you must defeat it now, with grace. (Minor Planets used: Sedna, Astraea, Atropos; Eris, Niobe, Atropos, Narcissus, Damocles; Haumea, Siva, Hephaistos; Chaos, Hygeia, Magdalena)

Venus (Page of Swords), Jupiter (Page of Wands), Saturn (Hangman), and Uranus (Empress)-   Venus is embodying the political activist of the tarot; the page of swords.  Her values are in the collective as she burns through the final degrees of Pisces – heading into her fiery, Aries version next.  When you speak out right now, you are speaking out with the force of generations behind you.  This can also be extremely useful in your personal life.  If there was a time for art, it is now.  Especially art that has a political bent to it.  Saturn is looking away right now, letting us manifest destiny as we please.  If you needed a worm hole to another dimension, it is surely right now.  Jupiter is manifesting new projects left and right; allowing you the creative fire you have been desperately clawing for.  He is a proponent of the arts, and a social life stirrer during this time.   You will be graced with even more opportunities if you put your energy into your creative projects, and the renaissance we spoke about in our Jupiter in Libra post is signaling that it has in fact begun.  Look around you, this chaos is the perfect soil to plant our intentions.  Uranus is The Empress, implying that the revolution will come from the earth itself, the sacred feminine, the arts, and our collective need to care for each other.

Mars– The Warrior is all alone, out in the cold. You probably feel shunned right now, having gone into kind of a self-imposed exile. You feel that you are unwanted and unloved, and that you are nothing but a burden to those around you. You feel that they are lying to you when you are brave enough to confess this to them and they try to assuage your fears. No one feels secure in their place right now, as if at any moment we could all be swept out to sea. With Mars at the Anaretic of Pisces, no one is sure of who they are or where they belong, and indeed this can cause you to hermit pretty severely, or change your group of contacts drastically. Your values and your moral code are undergoing a rehaul right now, and after it happens you may not recognize your life. You will have a challenge to face, and you are your own opponent. You have to kill what is old and has outlived its time within yourself. To do this, you must seek solitude even though you want to be surrounded by those who care about you- you are not in a position to return that love at this point. Defeat yourself so that you can rise again. (Minor Planets used: Varuna, Quaoar, Salacia, Vulkanus, Siwa, Persephone, Achilles, Apophis)

Mars (Magician)-  Well well well, it looks like we are being given a super power.  So this New Moon happens literally the day before Mars moves into Aries.  This is it, it’s time to let your old dreams die and start using the tools you have been given.  Again, we are being told that we are in a state of chaos so that we can create.  Use that anxiety that has riddled your life and channel it into the energy needed to birth your dream into existence.  We have all felt like we are floating in the ocean, unaware of where up is or down is.  We are panicking and clawing at our throats, freaking out over the fact that we can’t figure out which way to invest our energy to find the air we need.  At this time we must remain still and trust in our intuition to push is through this lunation.  If we push in the wrong direction, it can be disastrous for us.  Aim for your target using your heart, because right now we are blindfolded to our future direction.  Aim true, because once Mars goes into Aries the day after this lunation, the chariot begins its roll through the battlefield.

New Moon in Aquarius- Surge was originally published on Heretical Oracles

[lodelss]

Bundyville: The Remnant, Chapter Three: The Widow’s Tale

Leah Sottile | Longreads | July 2019 | 25 minutes (7,518 words)

Part 3 of 5 of Bundyville: The Remnant, season two of Bundyville, a series and podcast from Longreads and OPB. 

I.

I have seen LaVoy Finicum die and die and die. 

Log onto YouTube and watch Finicum’s end, spliced, paused, and dissected by people who never knew him but who, too, have again and again watched it happen.

When Finicum was killed, law enforcement officers were acting on an opportunity to arrest the leaders of the weeks-long Malheur National Wildlife Refuge occupation in Oregon. Finicum was one of just a few actual ranchers who joined the Bundys’ occupation. Ranching was Finicum’s dream — something he’d only started doing once he turned 50. He didn’t grow up a rancher, but he intended to die one.

In the final seconds of his life — on the very last day of his 54th year — Finicum proved to be even more of a true believer in the purpose of the occupation than the Bundys themselves. 

That frigid late January day, an informant tipped the feds off that cars carrying the Bundys and other leaders would be traveling to Grant County, Oregon for a meeting with citizens and the area’s sheriff, who was allegedly sympathetic to the cause. 

But the group never got to the meeting. Before they could arrive, members of the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team and Oregon State Police SWAT team stopped the cars on a remote bend. Ammon Bundy followed law enforcement orders to get out of the car with his hands up, kneel on the ground, and crawl towards the officers. But Finicum refused to surrender.

Suddenly Finicum, who some viewed as a grandfatherly voice of reason back at the refuge, was yelling at the officers from his driver’s seat. He told them: “Back down or you kill me now.”

“Boys, you better realize we got people on the way,” Finicum yelled. “You want a bloodbath? It’s gonna be on your hands.”

In his back seat, the other occupants of the car — Ryan Bundy, a grandmother named Shawna Cox, and 18-year-old gospel singer Victoria Sharp — frantically tried to call people back at the refuge, but realized they’d been pulled over in an area with no cell service.

“I’m going to be laying down here on the ground with my blood on the street, or I’m going to see the sheriff,” Finicum yelled out the window. Finicum told the occupants of the car he would leave, try to get help. “You ready?” he asked. 

“Well, where’s those guns?” Ryan Bundy responded, telling the other passengers to duck down. 

“Gun it!” Cox said. “Gun it!” 

Finicum slammed the accelerator. Driving at over 70 miles per hour, careening around a bend, the sound of bullets pecked at his truck. Up ahead, the FBI and Oregon State Police had blocked the road. 

Finicum jerked the wheel — either to avoid hitting the road block, or to speed around it altogether. “Hang on!” he said. The truck crashed into deep banks of snow, sending up a white wave that made it look as if he’d plowed over an FBI agent. Finicum leaped from the truck, hands raised. All around him, officers yelled, “Get on the ground!”

This is all on the internet: Cox’s cell phone captured the conversation and fear in the truck, drone footage shot from above shows the lone white Dodge Ram pickup. 

You can see the crash, see the driver’s door fly open. You can see Finicum hop out as he taunts at the police that they’re “gonna have to shoot me.” You can hear the three bullets — bang, bang, bang. Dead. 

Every time I watch the video I think I’ll hear some new intonation, some missed revelation, and yet Finicum always dies the same. Three pops. He doesn’t jump or yelp. He simply crumples: a body tense and alive one second, a heavy sack of bones dropped to the ground for eternity the next. A puppet without a hand. Gravity stronger than spirit.

As Finicum stumbled in the snow, he yelled to the officers to shoot him before reaching multiple times toward his jacket. The overhead video captures that. Later, official reports said Finicum had a loaded 9 mm handgun in his inside jacket pocket. The shooting was ruled justified.

And yet now, three years later, a movement of people across America see his death another way entirely: As an assassination. An execution. A carefully-calculated hit on a lifelong member of the LDS church and short-time associate of the notorious Bundy family. Finicum is seen as a friend to men whose favorite part of the U.S. Constitution is the line about well-armed militias. The snowy road where he died is Finicum’s own Golgotha. The FBI roadblock is referred to, in some corners of the internet, as “the killstop.”

***

Three years after Finicum’s death, inside a VFW hall on a puddled side street in Salem, Oregon, a specific brand of nostalgic, stars-and-stripes patriotism is unmistakably on display. 

A Betsy Ross flag hangs in one corner; a flag poster is tacked to the far wall. A bulletin board is bordered by stars-and-stripes rickrack. Red, white, and blue practically seep from the walls as if it were sap pushed from the very planks that hold up the roof. 

On the breast of every person who has paid $50 to be here is a round pin that reads Justice for LaVoy, set on a border of American flag ribbon.

When the day’s program begins, some 100 people push themselves up from folding chairs the best they can, placing palms over hearts. A curly-haired cowboy in tight jeans leads the room in a twangy rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner.”

The room turns its collective body — overwhelmingly white and over 50 — toward a  yellow-fringed flag. They sing low and soft with the cowboy, like it’s church. 

As this day unfolds, it will become evident that this is, in a way, a kind of church. These people are believers in an American religion with its own martyr, its own symbols. They have their own prayers, moral teachings, and deadly sins. The name Robert LaVoy Finicum  — or just LaVoy — is a hallowed one in the collective mind of the Patriot movement.

The people have gathered here to remember the death of Finicum. They are angry, mourning. 

And the Passion of Finicum is bolstered by another belief held here: The federal government is so corrupt that it will kill its own citizens if they live too freely.

That message, to one degree or another, has always been on the wind in the West. Since the federal government sent troops in to exterminate Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest; since it declared the polygamous Mormons in Utah in rebellion; since it put a sniper on a mountaintop in rural Idaho and shot a bullet through Vicki Weaver, standing inside her cabin at Ruby Ridge in 1992, holding her infant daughter. But it’s the primary teaching of the Patriot movement — a movement that was around long before the Bundys — that will remain long after Cliven has faded into a folk herodom. 

There’s a key difference between Cliven Bundy and LaVoy Finicum. As I’ve written about the Patriot movement, I’ve come to understand that Bundy might be the godfather of a movement that has bedeviled feds across the West. But to a lot of ranchers, he’s a joke — an affront to everything so many public lands ranchers have worked for. Those people see Bundy’s ideas about the federal government as outlandish and a distraction from the real issues in rural America: jobs, water, development, health care.

But Finicum’s death resonated in the Bundys’ world and far beyond it. He believed in the same disproven, unsupported claims as the family, but the difference was that he believed in those things enough to die for them. Death seems to have softened more people to the idea that the government is the aggressor. With his death, Patriots could point to another marker on its timeline arguing that the government can and will come after people. 

But who Finicum really was before 2016, what he really believed, has never been clear to me. He’s no ancient prophet with a story lost to time. His life story can be told. The government said that Bill Keebler, after bombing the BLM building, claimed his actions weren’t for LaVoy, but for “what he stood for.” So what did he stand for?

Finicum in January 2016 at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge during the armed takeover led by the Bundys. Finicum described himself as wanting “to be like the guy standing in front of the tank at Tiananmen Square.” (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, File)

Glenn Jones wrote something in his journal about Finicum, and Keebler said his bomb was for whatever Finicum stood for. Both craved eye-for-an-eye acts of revenge, payback: virtues the Patriot movement has always prized. The movement is fueled by a burning for comeuppance, and at its worst, that’s gotten a lot of people killed. In 1995, Timothy McVeigh bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City — an apparent act of revenge for Ruby Ridge and Waco. 

Since Finicum’s death, the message of his martyrdom has been amplified by a very powerful voice: a woman sitting at the back of the VFW behind a table of belt buckles, T-shirts, stickers, and hats bearing Finicum’s distinctive cattle brand. Miniature American flags decorate the tablecloth. 

Dorethea Jeanette Finicum, who goes by Jeannette, is a pretty 59-year-old woman with blue eyes that sparkle and a bright smile with a perfect gap between her two front teeth. She wears a denim shirt embroidered with blue flowers, ashy-blond hair that suggests she’s from a different era, a different world where hairstylists still feather and shag. She is the Patriot movement’s Lady of Sorrows, and people here love to touch her: placing hands on her back, offering handshakes. One man holds her in a tight embrace: “Jeanette, I will never, ever forget you,” he says. Behind her, someone has displayed an Old Glory afghan for the room to see.

She’s a “chuck wagon mom” who, the moment three state-issued bullets ended her husband’s life, turned into a full-blown political activist. Today, she is indisputably one of the stars of the modern Patriot movement. 

She sells stacks of Only By Blood and Suffering, the novel her late husband wrote about an overbearing government that attacks a cowboy rancher, shooting and killing him. Sitting next to her behind that table of goods is her new husband — a plain man in a plaid shirt who scurries away at the sight of a reporter. 

Since the summer of 2018, the widow Finicum has taken a film about her husband called LaVoy: Dead Man Talking on the road — a film she and its producer, a 49-year-old Washington state man named Mark Herr, describe as a documentary made up mostly of footage from Finicum’s free YouTube channel. 

Before queuing up the first hour of the documentary, Herr takes the microphone. All eyes turn his way. “All right let’s get started,” he says. “If you oppose white supremacy, if you oppose — you’re against — white supremacy, would you please stand?” 

The room rises. 

“You don’t agree with white supremacy? OK,” Herr says. “If you’re pro–responsible government — you’re pro-government. You’re pro–responsible government, would you please clap?”

The room claps.

“Wow!” Herr exclaims. “Very interesting!” 

This goes on: Sit if you want the federal and state governments to combine (no one sits). Sit if you want the legislative, judicial, and executive branches to combine into one big entity (no one sits for that either, including producer Ryan Haas and I, who felt it was the sporting thing to do).

“Oh that’s so interesting!” he says, forcing surprise into his words.

“Guess who you’re standing with,” he says, as the room settles back onto the folding chairs. “You stood with LaVoy Finicum.”

Just before Herr hits play, a woman who organized this event reminds the room that there is security here. Anyone caught recording will be removed. A huddle of men and women in sweatshirts bearing the logo of the Idaho Three Percenters militia settles into seats. A man with a handgun on his hip — nestled in a leather holster embossed with the words “We, the People”  — leans against the wall near the only two reporters in this room, me and Haas. 

Dead Man Talking is Finicum’s story told through the eyes of the Patriot movement — so it’s mostly about his life after he went to the Bundy Ranch standoff in 2014. The movie doesn’t answer questions about how Finicum came to believe what he did, or how that belief compelled him to die.

Illustration by Zoë van Dijk

The film is concerned, primarily, with the man’s death. Dying, after all, is what he’s known best for; Finicum’s public life was only a blip: 21 months out of 54 years. From the time Finicum arrived, alone, at Bundy Ranch in 2014, to the time he died a leader at the Malheur occupation in 2016, only 650-some days passed. He was a martyr made at the speed of the internet.

Finicum’s videos — posted to his YouTube channel — say pretty much nothing anyone in the Patriot movement wouldn’t have heard before. He was like a low-calorie Cliven Bundy delivering a droll, monotonous soliloquy about the Constitution, the founding fathers, freedom, liberty. 

But the videos are a window into everything Finicum wanted to be seen as. In some videos, he wore a cowboy hat, black suit coat, and a Western bow tie — as if he’d just strolled out of a tintype photograph. Behind him: a woodstove, a kerosene lantern, a painting of a cowboy crouched by his horse, and one of a Mormon temple. 

In other videos, blades of grass wiggled in front of the camera, a bright blue sky behind him. “It doesn’t take too much to see that dark storm clouds are gathering,” he said, crouching in front of the camera. “We need to have our houses in order. We need to have our relationships in order. We never know how many days we have on God’s green earth here, and we need to make the best of each and every one of them.”

His channel shows him stockpiling for the end. And in the Bundys, it is as if he saw proof that the horses of the apocalypse were on the horizon.

But the Bundys were shopping a conspiracy theory that Finicum bought hook, line, and sinker when he arrived at Bundy Ranch, as if he’d been waiting to hear it. Like he’d had his finger on a light switch in a dark room for years, itching for the chance to flip it and light up his whole world. 

  II.

LaVoy Finicum and his cousin Josh Cluff both called the tiny, tiny town of Fredonia, Arizona, home. In the winter, the wide-open lands all around it are an otherworldly picture show of red cliffs dripping with melting ice against blue skies. Snowfields are untouched, stretches of pure white fleece that go all the way to the edge of the earth. 

At a lone gas station near Kanab, Utah, where Haas and I make a pit stop, a large pickup truck is surrounded by women and girls in matching prairie dresses: navy blue, plum, lime green. They’ve formed a chain, passing a truckload of boxes into a FedEx van. Their hair is pinned back in braids and waves, styles unmistakably associated with polygamous sects like the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — a radical offshoot of Mormonism. 

Seeing them is a reminder that polygamy is still alive and well in this area and around the rural West, despite FLDS leader Warren Jeffs being sentenced to life in prison in 2011. The towns of Colorado City, Arizona, and Hildale, Utah, aren’t far from here — and they’ve long been FLDS strongholds. And they were, essentially, in LaVoy Finicum’s backyard.

The homes and rusted trailers of Colorado City spread south along State Route 389, petering out, then swelling again to form the town of Cane Beds. That’s where the Finicums lived. They participated in civic life, which often intersected with the FLDS church. One of Finicum’s post office boxes was in Colorado City. He attended town hall meetings there, too. Today, just off State Route 389, LaVoy Finicum Road leads the way to Cane Beds (one report attributed the naming of the road to Finicum himself, who requested the switch before he died). 

In the days after his death, prominent polygamists joined the anti-government chorus in declaring Finicum a martyr. Ross LeBaron Jr. — whose father created the polygamous sect Church of the Firstborn of the Fulness of Times — gave a written statement to a Salt Lake Tribune reporter: “LaVoy, the Bundy’s [sic] and others are my heroes. They stood for something bigger then [sic] themselves. They are not sellouts like many are today. I thank God for all those that are standing for the greater good.”

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As I’ve reported in desert towns around the West — up north in Panaca, all through the Arizona Strip — I’ve noticed that this type of interaction between mainstream Mormons and FLDS is typical. Sam Brower, a private investigator who wrote a book called Prophet’s Prey: My Seven-Year Investigation Into Warren Jeffs and the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints, says polygamists are “part of the landscape.”

Cane Beds, he says, is for “FLDS refugees” and people who often “still believe in polygamy,” but it’s also just a really cheap place to live. 

“I know after [Finicum] was killed, there were people — ex-FLDS people I know — that were saying, ‘I knew that guy, he was living down the road from us.’ They knew who he was.” 

I tell him about the women I saw near Fredonia, how it surprised me to see a group I thought was so fringe, living outside the boundaries of the law, out in the open. “There’s a degree of tolerance,” he says. “You just become more callous to having them around all the time.” I’m bothered by this. Finicum, at the end of his life, was so obsessed with freedom and liberty, and yet I never heard him rage on YouTube about the oppression of women and sexual abuse of girls happening in his literal backyard.

Finicum, who was Mormon, lived around and in FLDS strongholds for much of his life — could even have been friendly with them. In talking to Brower, I have to wonder if living so close to people with a radical lifestyle might have made Finicum more open to hearing fringe religious ideas. 

Like when the Bundys talked to him about the White Horse Prophecy — how they believed their quest against the government was prophesied by Joseph Smith himself. If Finicum had been around people who were preaching an alternate gospel all his life, might he have been more open to believing fringe ideas, instead of questioning them?

***

Robert LaVoy Finicum was born January 27, 1961 to David and Nelda Finicum, and was baptised nearly two weeks later in the Fredonia LDS ward by his uncle, elder Merlin Cluff. 

By the 1960s, Finicums and Cluffs had been around the Arizona Strip for generations. LaVoy’s grandparents Dale and Beulah Finicum homesteaded in the area, living in a dug-out house in the ground. LaVoy’s parents, too, embraced the pioneer grit that helped settle this region. When Finicum’s father, David, was a teenager, he made local headlines when he shot himself in the leg. He was riding on a horse when it brushed against a tree branch that  caught the hammer of the revolver in his saddle and shot him. He rode for 20 more miles before getting help, according to one account.

In 1986, Finicum’s parents rode in a horse-drawn covered wagon from Kanab, Utah, to St. George in a reenactment of the Honeymoon Trail — a wagon train that, in the 1870s, helped populate the Arizona Strip along with transporting goods to St. George to help in the construction of the LDS temple there. After the building was complete, the trail continued to be used, carrying couples, instead of supplies, to be married in the temple.

LaVoy, though, was raised in the far northwestern corner of Arizona Navajo territory, where his father took a job with the Arizona Department of Transportation, paving and repairing roads. He attended school in Page, Arizona.

The family home was close to Lee’s Ferry, Arizona, named for Mormon settler John D. Lee. Lee was executed for helping murder 120 pioneers traveling through a Utah canyon on their way west, an event now known as the 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre. It is considered one of the earliest acts of domestic terrorism. 

Lee’s Ferry, also, is the birthplace of a foundational prophet of the FLDS church, Leroy Johnson, who was also an early leader in Colorado City. 

In February 2019, I traveled to the Fredonia home of Finicum’s younger brother, Guy. He looks, and sounds, eerily like LaVoy: He’s bald, wears wire-rimmed glasses, speaks in a measured-tone. And he laughs when I say I just want to hear more about who his brother really was. “Nobody would have dirt like the little brother,” he says. He’s a licensed mental health counselor who works with substance abuse recovery programs, and his words come across with a measured delivery.

“We were kind of isolated down there. No television, only the friends in the couple houses next to us and then the Navajos that lived on the reservation around us,” he says. It took them 45 minutes to get to school. “We’d be the only white faces on the bus.” He says the family was accepted with open arms by the tribal community.

Guy says his brother, as a child, was “the Batman and Joker rolled into one character. He was my nemesis,” Guy says. “He loved to tease me. But as soon as we left the home he was my hero. … He said, ‘Hey, here’s my brother.’ He included me.”

He tells me that LaVoy always wanted to be a cowboy, but “as a little boy, he didn’t have any cattle. So that was my job. I was his livestock,” he says, letting a laugh loose again. “I got a hog tied and earmarked more than once.” I’m so used to hearing grim recollections of LaVoy’s death, it’s surprising to hear his brother laugh about a memory of him.

In high school, LaVoy turned his attention to basketball. Their father poured asphalt by the house so LaVoy could put up a hoop. 

“Every morning I’d wake up hearing that ball bouncing,” Guy says. 

After graduation, LaVoy served his LDS mission in Rapid City, South Dakota, but held onto his passion for basketball long after it was realistic for him to keep pursuing it. 

Upon returning home, he married a woman named Kelly “after a very short courtship,” according to Guy, and the pair soon had their first child. Kelly was from Oregon, and the newlyweds moved there so LaVoy could take a job managing apartments in a Portland suburb. Finicum also hoped he could walk onto a local college basketball team, but quickly realized he couldn’t spend money on tuition that could be used to feed his family.

“He regretted that decision because he was never able to get a college degree. … He had to go to school to play basketball,” Guy says. “But he felt like he had neglected his wife and his little kid.” 

Kelly and LaVoy had four children, and got a divorce in 1989. “LaVoy’s problem is, he always wanted to be a cowboy,” Guy explains.  

Finicum, from his 20s to 40s, bounced around the West. I found addresses for him in Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Las Vegas, near Flagstaff, in St. George, Cedar City, and Provo, Utah. For the most part, he worked as a property manager — something he excelled at, Guy says. But the work never seemed to really interest him. 

“Every time he’d get successful, he’d get sick of living in the city and try to move back home. And when he’d come back home, he just could never get a foothold and find anything that he could support his family on. So they’d come back here and be dirt poor and struggle,” Guy says. Sometimes LaVoy would move to cities before his family, sleeping in his car as he looked for work, brushing his teeth and shaving with a jug of water. 

As we’re talking Guy gets up from his seat in the living room. “I want to show you something,” he says, and disappears into a nearby room. He emerges with a packet of papers in his hands, fixed together with a single strand of suede cord. 

He explains that one year when LaVoy had no money to buy Christmas gifts, he gave him these drawings instead. Guy delicately fingers through the old pages. There’s a drawing of their grandparents’ house, and below it LaVoy wrote about the old wood cookstove inside, the ticking clock on the wall, the smell of percolating coffee — a beverage choice that set them apart from their LDS relatives. 

Guy smiles, but as we look, one page strikes me as particularly haunting. It’s a sketch of the private family cemetery plot in Cane Beds, where LaVoy is now buried.

In LaVoy’s depiction of it, he sketched the place as if there was just one body buried there. In the center of the drawing is a sole gravestone and a mound of fresh dirt. Around it is an old wooden fence, two trees, then vast white nothingness.

***

In July 1990, several months after his divorce, LaVoy married a woman named Rachel, and soon they had two children together. That marriage was short-lived. (I reached out to both Kelly and Rachel on Facebook, but never heard back.)

In 1992, Jeanette Finicum was at a singles dance at her church, and she was line dancing when her future husband walked in. “I can remember being out on the floor and this gorgeous cowboy walked into the room,” she said. “He sat up on the stage and he just sat there watching all of us dance. And I thought to myself, ‘Boy, I want to dance with him.’” 

They danced — a slow song. And when Jeanette asked LaVoy to keep dancing, he said he had no rhythm. She called him chicken. “He says, ‘I’ll tell you what. If you can tell me how many kids I have, I’ll dance this next dance with you.’”

She guessed six. He nodded.

“I went, ‘Oh my gosh, you have six kids?!’ And I’m going, ‘Oh my heck, you are definitely the package deal,’” she recalled. “To make a long story short, two weeks later we were married.” (According to Finicum’s obituary, the couple married in 1994.)

The pair raised 11 children together. LaVoy and Jeanette later moved near Prescott, Arizona, where they became foster parents. Guy explained that being a foster father was perfectly suited to his brother. “He was a very alpha personality. And he just carried presence with him that nobody ever wanted to challenge,” he said. Boys who other foster parents couldn’t control “just would fall in line behind him.” Foster parenting, too, allowed him to earn enough to attain his cowboy dream. 

Records from the Bureau of Land Management show Finicum cosigned a grazing permit in 2009 with his father, but started ranching by himself in 2011 near Mount Trumbull, deep in the Arizona desert, near the Grand Canyon. In 2014, he was in good standing with the BLM. He always paid his bills on time. 

According to Guy, the Finicum boys were raised hearing stories of how the federal government was trying put ranchers out of business. Ranchers who once could run cattle near the Grand Canyon were slowly pushed out, and national monuments like the Grand Canyon-Parashant further reduced grazing areas. 

“That was kind of the culture we grew up with is these guys are here to tell us what to do and take away what we have,”said Guy.

Even when LaVoy was finally able to ranch, something he achieved in his 50th year of life, “he couldn’t make it work very well,” Guy said. Then he went to Bundy Ranch in 2014, met Cliven Bundy and saw yet one more rancher saying the government was no friend to ranchers. 

When he died, Guy said,  ”he was right in the middle of his dream.”

  III.

On June 23, 2015, Finicum wrote a letter to the BLM: 

“I am writing you this letter to express my appreciation for the time we have associated together in connection with my grazing on the Arizona Strip. It has been a pleasant association and without conflict,” he wrote. “I have the greatest respect for you and judge you to be honorable men.” 

He continued: “At this time I feel compelled to stand for [sic] up for the Constitution of our land and in doing so please do not feel that I am attacking your character.” He repeated what Cliven Bundy had been telling people at Bundy Ranch: about the Founding Fathers; about Article 1, Section 8, Clause 17; and the idea of government-owned land being a ruse. Wool pulled over the eyes of hard-working Americans. 

“This is not about cows and grass, access or resources, this is about freedom and defending our Constitution in its original intent.” 

This confused BLM employees. 

On July 13, an employee called Finicum “to discuss what’s going on.” Finicum was cordial but explained he was making a stand. 

“When asked if he was going to turn-out his Livestock + pay his grazing fees, he wouldn’t answer + resorted back to the Constitution and making a stance,” the employee wrote. 

In 2015, Finicum’s permit only allowed for him to graze cattle from October 15 until May 15. But on August 7, a BLM employee called Finicum to let him know he saw 24 of his animals in two pastures, asked him to remove them within a week, and told him he couldn’t put any more cattle out. 

Finicum replied that  he was “not asking for permission.”

Finicum published a video to YouTube that same day, claiming the BLM had drained his water tank to fight a wildfire “without so much as a hidey-ho or a please.” 

“It’s mine. It’s for my cows. I need it,” he said. “Quit stealing.” 

Three days later, the BLM received another letter from Finicum, which stated, “I am severing my association with the BLM.” He took to YouTube again, telling viewers it was time to “do something more than just talk.”  In the video, he’s crouched by the camera in fringed leather chaps with a long scarf tied around his head and a cowboy hat over it. This isn’t the same droll Finicum of the year before, in front of the woodstove and the temple paintings. He’s fired up — and he’s talking directly to the men at the BLM — the people who, two months earlier, he said he had so much respect for. “You gonna come in there like you did with my friend Cliven?” he said. “Well, I’m telling you, leave me alone. Leave me alone, leave Cliven alone.” 

Finicum in the video posted to hisYouTube channel, pAug. 14, 2015.

In the days that followed, the BLM found 32 cows, two bulls, and 24 calves under 6 months old in trespass. All had Finicum’s brands and earmarks. Nearby more were observed near a water trough, but the water was off. 

On August 24, the BLM mailed Finicum a trespass notice. On United States Department of the Interior letterhead, they told him he owed $1,458.52. 

***

Guy Finicum tells me his brother was always a crusader for the little guy. He says that’s why he went to Bundy Ranch: LaVoy saw a little rancher being bullied by the big government.

“There are individuals to this day who consider LaVoy the best friend they ever had. And often these individuals were those who had no friends — the ostracized ones, the ones who were picked on,” he says. “And LaVoy wouldn’t stand for anybody picking on anybody.” Court documents allege that on September 1, 2015, Finicum was meeting with Keebler — the Utah man who would later go on to push the button on a dummy bomb given to him by the FBI, believing it would destroy a BLM building near Finicum’s ranchlands. Finicum, according to the documents, told Keebler he was ready to plan a confrontation similar to the one at Bundy Ranch. In a meeting with Keebler, which was recorded by the FBI, Finicum said he “wants to be like the guy standing in front of the tank at Tiananmen Square” and that if he died in a confrontation with the government, “then the cause is the poor rancher’s widow.” 

According to the federal government, that meeting occurred one week after Finicum received notice that he was racking up BLM fines. About a month later Keebler brought the two FBI agents — who he thought were his fellow militiamen —to a meeting at Finicum ranch in Northern Arizona to strategize a standoff. 

By October, his trespass fines had increased to $5,791.72. 

“We as a family were quite concerned when he started drawing a line in sand with the BLM,” Guy says, “because I’m like, ‘LaVoy, I know you don’t like bullies, but you’re picking a fight with the federal government — they don’t lose! They don’t lose’ … And he’s like, ‘Well, they’re wrong.’”

The way his brother explains it, after LaVoy went to Bundy Ranch, all he could see, everywhere he looked, was the federal government “amassing more and more power.” 

“He went from a person flying under the radar to a person who became very vocal in just a matter of a year,” he says. LaVoy believed the country was on the verge of a collapse. It was the entire premise of his novel, Only By Blood and Suffering. 

“He wrote a story with an ending of a cowboy getting into a shoot-out with the federal government and gets killed, and then here that’s exactly what happened to LaVoy,” says Guy. “What do you make of that?” I ask.

He pauses. “It’s no accident.”

LaVoy didn’t do all the things his cowboy protagonist did. But “that was the person he wanted to be,” Guy says. “He wanted to be a person who had the ability to stand up and make a difference and protect what he believed in.”

None of this seems important to the people inside the Patriot movement: the man who struggled to make ends meet; the foster father devoted to helping the kids who needed direction; the rancher who failed time and time again to achieve his dreams, only to finally attain one and only see it for its imperfections. 

Finicum, the Patriot martyr, is a man obsessed with his own end, a man willing to conspire against the government, then die over and over again in an infinite internet loop. 

“It must be so painful to see the video of the shooting,” I say to Guy. 

“What’s harder is hearing the commentary on it, and people saying, ‘Well this is who he is, and this is what he was doing, and this is what happened,” Guy says. I ask for an example. He points to the way the media reported his brother was reaching for a gun in the inside pocket of his jacket. “There is no way my brother would put a gun in his pocket. OK? And how do I know that? I grew up with him,” he says. “We’ve carried guns in a lot of ways, and carrying a gun in a coat pocket doesn’t work. … When you carry it without a holster, it goes in one place. It goes in your waistband, tight against your body.”

The gun in Finicum’s inside pocket is the source of many conspiracies around Fincum’s death — ones that seemed to gain traction during the summer of 2018, as one of the FBI HRT agents, who’d been on the scene, stood trial. Agent W. Joseph Astarita was accused of firing two bullets at Finicum as he leaped out of the truck, then lying about those shots. Video footage does, in fact, show a round piercing the ceiling of the truck as he jumps out with his hands up. Astarita was acquitted of all charges, and the bullets still haven’t been accounted for. To people who saw conspiracy in Finicum’s death, the trial, some felt, gave their version of events credence: If someone was lying about a bullet, wouldn’t they be willing to lie about a gun, too? YouTubers analyzed photos from the scene. Some reason that if Finicum’s weapon was found as police photographs show it inside his jacket pocket, and he tried to reach for it, that gun would have come out upside-down.

It’s not a surprise to me that as even-keeled and even-minded as Guy Finicum seems, that he might not see the reasoning for the shooting in the video of his brother. He theorizes that LaVoy wasn’t reaching for a gun, but was trying to keep his balance in the snow after being shot with a nonlethal projectile. He doesn’t understand why the FBI set up the roadblock where they did, in a place where Finicum might not have been able to brake in time.

He and LaVoy disagreed a lot about liberty — about the best way to convert the hearts and minds of their fellow Americans. LaVoy wanted to fight the government; Guy thought getting individuals to think about liberty — and what it meant to them — was more effective. 

“He’d say, ‘No, we got to make a stand.’ And I’m saying, ‘No, I don’t.’ I don’t think we need to, I think we just need to put our hearts in the right place and become that within ourselves,” he recalls.

So it wasn’t entirely surprising for Guy to watch LaVoy go to Harney County, Oregon, to join the Bundys in the refuge occupation. But with no end in sight to the standoff, Guy was worried. So worried, in fact, that he drove to Oregon. 

“I thought things were kind of crazy, and I thought, ‘What in the world’s my brother doing?’ I went up there to talk sense into him, honestly,” he says. But at the refuge, he listened to what LaVoy and Ammon Bundy had to say. He got to know people. He thought maybe it wasn’t what the media had made it out to be.

“My whole attitude completely shifted, and I left saying to my brother, ‘Stay the course. Stick to what you know you’re doing,’” he says. Guy doesn’t think his brother committed suicide by cop. But he claims that he felt his brother was going to die in Oregon.

“People may say you can’t know things like this, but I knew when I said goodbye to him up there in Oregon he was going to die up there. I knew,” he says. “Don’t ask me how I know. I was just standing there and all of a sudden it hit me that he was going to die there. So when I said goodbye to him up there, I really thought it would be the last time I’d ever seen him.”

Guy shakes his head. Says he can’t believe he just told us that. It’s so personal. 

And I don’t know what to do with it either. Sitting there in his living room, I don’t think I understand a love that is so strong you can simply step aside and watch someone you love get what they want most, even if it will kill them, leaving behind daughters and sons, foster children, a wife, a mother, a brother. A ranch. A hard-fought dream.

It makes me wonder if LaVoy’s dream was never about being a lone horseman in the country, but was a way to further escape reality and dissolve into the fictional, apocalyptic world where he could be a hero. 

He ranched in a place so far-flung, it makes Cliven Bundy look like he is ranching in New York City. Finicum was so alone out there. He had his cows, his old cow dog. It looked perfect. And yet, even then, it wasn’t perfect enough. He believed he was entitled to something more. 

Guy Finicum, like people across this country, has a sticker donning his brother’s name on the back of his truck. I ask if he thinks of LaVoy as a martyr. 

“He is a martyr for his cause. He did far more to push the word out about what he stood for by dying than he ever would have if he was out there speaking on the circuit,” he says.

He’s seen Patriots around the country talking about LaVoy like they knew him. Like they really got him. For a while, Guy argued with people online, tried to edit his brother’s Wikipedia page to correct all the things someone somewhere was saying his brother was based off the final seconds of his life. 

People didn’t really know LaVoy, he says. “I believe the vast majority people don’t even know who LaVoy really was, or what he really was standing for.”

  IV.

Back in Oregon at the VFW, Jeanette Finicum is talking to her flock about Oregon Democratic Senator Ron Wyden. During the 41-day Malheur occupation, Wyden told a news station that “the virus was spreading” the longer the armed standoff continued. 

“What was the virus?” Finicum asked the crowd. 

“Freedom and truth,” the only person in this room wearing a red Make America Great Again hat calls back. 

But if the goal of the movie Dead Man Talking is to tell the truth and buck the media’s portrayal of LaVoy Finicum as an extremist, racist, or anti-government radical, the journey it has taken over the past six months has been circuitous. She hasn’t shown it to schools, libraries, mainstream GOP groups, or media. 

In fact, if the film’s hosts across America show anything, it’s that the Patriot movement is everywhere — not just the West. It is alive and thriving, and it adores Jeanette Finicum: the poor rancher’s widow. 

The film debuted at the Red Pill Expo in Spokane, Washington, a conference that featured speakers known for homophobia, climate change denial, and an overall obsession with how the “deep state” is apparently operating behind the scenes of the American government. 

Last September, the Colorado Front Range Militia screened the film; the next day, the Heritage Defenders — a conservative group linked to anti-Muslim legislation — got a preview.

The film made its way to Tucson, hosted by people involved with a group of gun-toting local conspiracy theorists that believed they had found evidence of an immigrant child sex trafficking ring — a wild conspiracy that drew the interest of QAnon and Pizzagate believers nationwide—which actually turned out to be just a pile of junk in the desert.

The path continues like this: Finicum brought it to Utah, hosted by the widow of the bankroller of the Sagebrush Rebellion, Bert Smith. It went to Pennsylvania, hosted by an Agenda 21 conspiracy theorist. It went to Northern Idaho, paid for by an Idaho Three Percenter who floats QAnon theories on Twitter.

Last summer, Finicum and Herr hosted one of Dead Man Talking’s very first showings at a separatist religious community called Marble Community Fellowship in northeastern Washington. She appeared onstage next to Washington state representative Matt Shea. 

In Salem, the crowd doesn’t hear about how, eight months after LaVoy’s death, Jeanette applied for a new grazing permit with the Bureau of Land Management, or how she met with BLM employees in November 2017 to pay all the fees they owed. 

“The meeting went well” in “what could have been an awkward situation,” wrote one of the federal employees in an email afterward. 

It was as if when LaVoy died, his own personal stand against the government died with him. He became an avatar for whatever anyone wanted him to be.

Jeanette, at the microphone at the VFW, talks about how police shot her husband. “That’s murder, people,” she says. 

“That’s right,” someone in the audience calls back. 

“No American citizen deserves that,” she says. “We deserve our right to due process. We deserve our right to a trial. We deserve to have charges. We deserve to be served with a warrant. We deserve that process. Do we not?”

“You hear my husband saying, ‘We’re going to go see the sheriff, you can arrest me there. Follow me and you can arrest me there,’” she recalls. “He was not fleeing law enforcement when he left that first stop. He left to go to law enforcement whom he trusted. That’s what he was doing.” 

The room nods. 

They believe Finicum — after fighting with the government, after occupying a federal property for weeks — was entitled to choose which agency arrested him. To do what he pleased. 

“He had done nothing wrong,” she says.

Before the day is done, the Old Glory afghan that’s been sitting behind Finicum’s table is auctioned off from the stage. 

The singing cowboy leads the room again; this time he’s an auctioneer. Quickly, there’s a bidding war over the blanket. Two hundred. Three hundred. Seven hundred. Finally a couple wins the afghan. They pay $1,500. That money will go to Jeanette. Behind her merchandise table, Jeanette pops up from her seat one more time as people file downstairs for a spaghetti dinner. Someone is making an offering. 

She hands a man a copy of Only By Blood and Suffering. As if collecting tithes, she accepts his offer. He gives her $500 for the book. 

***

Leah Sottile is a freelance journalist based in Portland, Oregon. Her work has appeared in theWashington Post, Playboy, California Sunday Magazine, Outside, The Atlantic and Vice.

Editors: Mike Dang and Kelly Stout Illustrator: Zoë van Dijk Fact checker: Matt Giles Copy editor: Jacob Gross

Special thanks to everyone at Oregon Public Broadcasting.

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