Not good

Close to Hungary and Viktor Orban.  Hitler was Austrian.  Just saying.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Full speed ahead

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Skinhead disavows own work

They may have jumped the gun on out-and-out revelations of their nefarious plans, but if they do well in November, they're ready to break open the vault.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The crazy is everywhere

A surge in far-right populism in France provoked President Emmanuel Macron into calling a high-risk national election that could determine the future not only of his country but of the European Union itself.

Across the Continent it was a good if unspectacular night for center-right and far-right parties and a terrible one for liberals and especially greens.

But in France, the far-right National Rally, led by Euroskeptic and NATO-skeptic firebrands, completely crushed Macron’s liberal Renaissance and all other contenders.

  Politico

Backlash for decades of reason?

In a high-risk gamble to regain the political initiative, Macron bet that voters will turn back the far-right tide and show Marine Le Pen’s National Rally cannot win at a national level.

“France needs a clear majority in serenity and harmony. To be French, at heart, is about choosing to write history, not being driven by it,” Macron said.

I'm not feeling confident about this.

Macron’s snap decision to dissolve the National Assembly was met with disbelief by his supporters, with several people screaming “Oh no” as he spoke to a crowd in a televised address from his party headquarters in Paris.

In contrast, jubilant supporters of the National Rally party celebrated as Macron announced the dissolution of parliament, something the party had called for as the scale of their victory became apparent.

[...]

Le Pen declared her party “ready to exercise power,” and told her ecstatic followers: “I can only welcome this decision.”

The far-right surge in France was replicated elsewhere in Europe on a dramatic night of upheaval in EU politics. In Berlin, Olaf Scholz’s ruling coalition parties were beaten by the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which came second to the conservatives. Far-right parties were also on course to make gains in Austria, the Netherlands, Spain and Italy, according to early estimates.

[...]

As president of the world’s seventh largest economy, Le Pen would almost certainly rock the EU to its foundations, prioritising patriotic interests over international collaboration. Celebrating her party’s win in Sunday’s EU vote, she said the result should send a message to Brussels and “put an end to this painful epoch of globalism.”

[...]

“Tonight’s message, including that of dissolution, is also addressed to the leaders of Brussels,” she said. “This great victory for patriotic movements is in line with the direction of history, which is seeing throughout the world the return of nations.”

Isolationism, and perpetual war.

The lead Socialist candidate Raphaël Glucksmann responded to the triumph of the far right by saying: “Everywhere in Europe, we are witnessing a wave that is shaking our democracy.”

[...]

Le Pen spoke on stage next to the National Rally’s lead candidate for the EU election, Jordan Bardella. As she finished speaking, the audience of several hundred sang the French national anthem, the Marseillaise, waved French tricolors and visited the buffet to get more drinks.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

A little bit of hope

Scores of rightwing extremists were defeated in school board elections in April, in a victory for the left in the US and what Democrats hope could prove to be a playbook for running against Republicans in the year ahead.

In Illinois, Democrats said more than 70% of the school board candidates it had endorsed won their races, often defeating the kind of anti-LGBTQ+ culture warrior candidates who have taken control of school boards across the country.

[...]

Teachers unions, including the Illinois Education Association, endorsed candidates in school board elections around the state. The IEA backed candidates in about 100 races, and around 90% of those candidates won.

[...]

Republican-backed candidates in Wisconsin also fared poorly. Moms for Liberty, a rightwing group linked to wealthy Republican donors which has been behind book-banning campaigns in the US, said only eight of its endorsed candidates won election to school boards, and other conservative groups also reported disappointing performances.

[...]

The 1776 Project, a political action committee which received funding from Richard Uihlein, a billionaire GOP donor, said only a third of the 63 candidates it had backed in Illinois and Wisconsin had won their races.

  Guardian

All the book banning, LGBTQ bashing, and curbs on teaching racial history must be taking a toll.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Trump rally in Waco today

Under the weight of state and federal investigations and trials, and in the wake of the Trump Organization CFO's conviction, Trump chose Waco, Texas, for his first official 2024 campaign rally.  

People who understand Trump's personality from watching him for the past several years have noted that if he loses his bid for another presidency or is in danger of paying a real price for his criminality, he'd attempt to "burn it all down," and I think that's a good assessment.  It appears to me from his rantings and "bleats" (as Tim Miller calls Trump's Truth Social posts), and his choice of first rally location, he's preparing the "burn it all down" path.

In the chapel at Mount Carmel, the longtime home of the Branch Davidian sect outside Waco, Texas, the pastor preaches about the coming apocalypse, as David Koresh, the sect’s doomed charismatic leader, did three decades ago.

But the prophecies offered by the pastor, Charles Pace, are different from Koresh’s. For one thing, they involve Donald Trump.

“Donald Trump is the anointed of God,” Pace said in an interview. “He is the battering ram that God is using to bring down the Deep State of Babylon.”

[...]

Pace said he believed it was “a statement — that he was sieged by the FBI at Mar-a-Lago and that they were accusing him of different things that aren’t really true, just like David Koresh was accused by the FBI when they sieged him.”

[...]

“Waco was an overreach of the government, and today the New York district attorney is practicing an overreach of the government again,” said Sharon Anderson, a retiree from Etowah, Tennessee, who is traveling to Waco for Saturday’s event, her 33rd Trump rally.

[...]

Alex Jones, the conspiracy-theorist broadcaster who helped draw crowds of Trump loyalists to Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, rose to prominence promoting wild claims about the Waco standoff. Roger Stone, the longtime Trump associate and former campaign adviser, dedicated his 2015 book, “The Clintons’ War on Women,” to the Branch Davidians who died at Mount Carmel.

“Waco is a touchstone for the far right,” said Stuart Wright, a professor of sociology at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas, and an authority on the standoff.

[...]

Funds for the construction of the chapel at Mount Carmel were raised by Jones, whose obsession with Waco conspiracy theories led to his firing in 1999 from Austin radio station KJFK and the start of his own media empire, Infowars.

[...]

Trump has a long history of statements that feed the far right, even as he claims that was not his intent. That list includes his equivocating response to the 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that left one woman dead; his message to the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” in a presidential debate; and his exhortations to supporters in Washington just before many stormed the Capitol in an attempt to overturn his defeat.

[...]

In a speech at the Conservative Political Action Coalition conference this month, he described the 2024 presidential election as “the final battle” and vowed “retribution.”

[...]

Parnell McNamara, the sheriff of McLennan County, home to Waco, said he did not believe there were security concerns beyond the ordinary preparations for a presidential campaign rally.

“Him coming here, to me, is just a totally different situation, and really has nothing to do with that,” he said in reference to the 1993 raid, for which he was present as a U.S. marshal. “I have not heard anybody even bring that up.”

  Yahoo

Let's hope the sheriff is right. But I'm guessing he's not on alt right chat forums. He could be.

A brief accounting of what went down at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco in 1993 is in that article.

Invocations of Waco persisted into the next generation of militias and other extremists that emerged in response to Barack Obama’s presidency and supported Trump’s. In 2009, the founder of the Three Percenters movement warned of “No More Free Wacos” in an open letter to then-Attorney General Eric Holder. The Oath Keepers issued a statement warning that the Bundy family could be “Waco’d” in their standoff with the federal government in 2014.

According to Newsweek, in 2021, Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the Proud Boys and a onetime FBI informant, denounced the agency as the “enemy of the people” in a Parler post, writing: “Remember Waco? Are your eyes opened yet?”

A Texas Proud Boys chapter made a pilgrimage to the Mount Carmel chapel on the anniversary of the raid last year, according to Pace, whose politicized, QAnon-inflected theology is rejected by some other Branch Davidians.

Trump is aware of all that. He's going to Waco as another signal and nod to the violent faction of MAGA.

Donald Trump resumes high-profile political rallies Saturday in a unique place in the political world: Waco, Texas.

[...]

Trump is accused of possibly playing to extremists for scheduling the rally during the 30th anniversary of the deadly siege of the Branch Davidian religious sect in Waco.

[...]

[T]here are a lot of reasons for a Republican politician to visit Waco, although focus has turned to one: The 1993 raid-and-fire that claimed more than 70 lives.

[...]

Trump’s campaign said it chose Waco because Texas is a Super Tuesday primary state and the city is as close a central location as you can find within the sprawl of Texas.

[...]

Some far-right conservatives regard the 1993 fiasco as a deadly example of federal power. One of them, Timothy McVeigh, retaliated by bombing the Oklahoma City federal bombing exactly two years later, on April 19, 1995.

[...]

In a video posted this week, Trump told his followers, "They're not coming after me. They're coming after you." In a Truth Social post, he berated prosecutors for even considering indictments when it is "known that potential death & destruction in such a false charge could be catastrophic for our Country."

[...]

Waco also has large pockets of religious conservatives, a big part of Trump's political base.

The biggest example, Baylor, describes itself as a "Private Christian University and a Nationally Ranked Research Institution."

[...]

Trump may well use this rally for "emboldening Far Right forces."

[...]

While Trump is calling for massive protests, many analysts are skeptical the rally would turn violent. And one said the choice of venue could more be about annoying liberals than riling up extremists.

  USA Today

I'll post a follow-up after the rally. So check back later today.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Empathy for Brazil

Bolsonaro was handily out of the country.  And where?  Why, Mar-A-Lago, of course.

Flashback to November...

UPDATE:

And Bannon is still online/on air fomenting uprisings.

UPDATE 1/9:  You wouldn't extradite a sick man, would you?

Some good news

It's Sunday

On Thursday night in Castle Rock, Colorado, a group called “FEC United” (FEC stands for faith, education, and commerce) held a “town hall” meeting that featured a potpourri of GOP candidates and election conspiracy theorists. Most notably, the event included John Eastman, the Claremont scholar who authored the notorious legal memos that purported to justify the decertification and reversal of the 2020 election results [...] , but perhaps the most ominous aspect of the evening was its location—a church called The Rock.

If you think it’s remotely unusual that a truly extremist event (which included more than one person who’d called for hanging his political opponents) was held at a church, then you’re not familiar with far-right road shows that are stoking extremism in church after church at event after event.

[...]

Last week, the New York Times’s Robert Draper wrote a must-read profile of former President Donald Trump’s one-time national security adviser Michael Flynn.

[...]

During the Biden administration, he’s taken his show on the road, launching a “ReAwaken America” tour that features conferences that combine “elements of a tent revival, a trade fair and a sci-fi convention.”

[...]

[T]he tour is sponsored by Charisma News, a charismatic Christian outlet. The next thing you should notice is the list of upcoming venues: Trinity Gospel Temple in Ohio, Awaken Church in California, The River Church in Oregon, and Burnsview Baptist Church in South Carolina.

[...]

MAGA Christian nationalism is emotional and spiritual, not intellectual or ideological. While a number of scholars have done yeoman’s work in identifying the basic tenets of Christian nationalism, I’m still partial to Baylor University historian Thomas Kidd’s formulation of the ideology as “more a visceral reaction than a rationally chosen stance.” Kidd provides a telling example:

I recently saw a yard sign that read “Make Faith Great Again: Trump 2020.” I wondered, How can re-electing Donald Trump make “faith” great again? What faith? When did it stop being great? No coherent answers would be forthcoming to such questions, but that’s the point. The sign speaks to a person’s ethnic, religious, and cultural identity in ways easier to notice than to explain.

But a MAGA Christian nationalist will read that sign and know exactly what it means–when Trump wins, America wins, and the church wins. The man, the nation, and the church are the movement.

[...]

It’s no coincidence that Paula White, a pentecostal pastor herself, was Trump’s spiritual adviser.

[...]

MAGA Christian nationalism is often rooted in purported prophecies. I’ve spent every single day of the Trump era living deep in the heart of Trump country, surrounded by Trump-supporting friends, and attending church with Trump-supporting Christians. If there’s anything I know by heart, it’s the “Christian case for Trump.” I’ve read all the essays. I’ve heard all the arguments. It’s in the air out here.

There’s the pragmatic or prudential cost/benefit analysis—he’s a bad man, but his judicial appointments are good. There’s the cultural argument about threat—the left has grown so terrible that we have to punch back. But there’s also another argument entirely, one that’s impossible to discuss rationally—that Trump is divinely anointed by God to save this nation from imminent destruction.

[...]

It’s possible to overreact to this, to paint with too broad a brush. Michael Flynn is not speaking for the Evangelical mainstream. Millions of Republican Evangelicals have likely never even heard of the ReAwaken America tour. They dismiss “prophecies.” They’re legitimately aggrieved when they’re lumped into a movement and an ethos they find strange and appalling.

[...]

For all the (legitimate) talk of cancel culture from the left, many Christians self-censor out of fear of the right. They know Michael Flynn is dangerous, but saying so out loud carries a cost. So they remain silent. They stay in their anti-left lane.

[...]

But underreaction can be dangerous too. We know that fanatical religious subcultures can do an immense amount of damage to the body politic. We know that they can be both deadly and destabilizing. A Christian political movement that’s so focused on the threat from the left can often unwittingly facilitate the rise of radicals.

[...]

[W]e have to know what we face, and what we face is an Christian subculture that is full of terrible religious purpose. The seeds of renewed political violence are being sown in churches across our land.

  French Press

And good for them

Fox News host Tucker Carlson's special on the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol [that relied on fabrications and conspiracy theories to exonerate the Trump supporters who participated in the attack] was the last straw for two network commentators. Stephen Hayes and Jonah Goldberg have resigned [in protest of what they call a pattern of incendiary and fabricated claims by the network's opinion hosts in support of former President Donald Trump].

[...]

Carlson's series on the Capitol insurrection aired on Fox's paid streaming service "Fox Nation" in early November.

"They've begun to fight a new enemy in a new war on terror," Carlson warned his viewers in the first episode. "Not, you should understand, a metaphorical war, but an actual war, soldiers and paramilitary agencies hunting down American citizens."

[...]

Goldberg says that he had been assured by Fox's news leaders that, as Trump left Washington D.C. following his defeat, the network would tamp down on incendiary commentary and claims.

[...]

"It's basically saying that the Biden regime is coming after half the country and this is the War on Terror 2.0," Goldberg tells NPR. "It traffics in all manner of innuendo and conspiracy theories that I think legitimately could lead to violence. That for me, and for Steve, was the last straw."

[...]

According to five people with direct knowledge, the resignations reflect larger tumult within Fox News over Carlson's series "Patriot Purge" and his increasingly strident stances, and over the network's willingness to let its opinion stars make false, paranoid claims against President Biden, his administration and his supporters.

[...]

Fox News also jettisoned the leaders of its political desk, laid off a bunch of researchers and installed a new opinion hour at 7 p.m., shifting news anchor Martha MacCallum from that time to a less visible mid-afternoon slot. The news anchor at 11 p.m., Shannon Bream, was pushed back to midnight in favor of Greg Gutfeld's opinion-driven comedy show. All these moves tilted the channel to even more Trump-friendly content, even as its news programs gently tried to correct the record on the 2020 elections and the siege.

[...]

Asked for comment for this story, Carlson says the departure of the two "will substantially improve the channel."

  NPR

OAN staff doesn't even believe OAN's bullshit

In interviews with 18 current and former OAN newsroom employees, 16 said the channel had broadcast reports that they considered misleading, inaccurate or untrue.

[...]

The channel did not broadcast live coverage of Mr. Biden’s swearing-in ceremony and Inaugural Address. Into April, news articles on the OAN website consistently referred to Donald J. Trump as “President Trump” and to President Biden as just “Joe Biden” or “Biden.”

[...]

OAN has also promoted the debunked theory that the rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 were left-wing agitators.

[...]

Charles Herring, the president of Herring Networks, the company that owns OAN, defended the reports casting doubt on the election. “Based on our investigations, voter irregularities clearly took place in the November 2020 election,” he said. “The real question is to what extent.”

Herring Networks was founded by Mr. Herring’s father, the tech entrepreneur Robert Herring, who at age 79 runs OAN with Charles and another son, Robert Jr. About 150 employees work for the channel at its headquarters in San Diego.

  NYT

America's Murdochs

During the Trump presidency, [OAN] moved right, [Marty Golingan, a producer at the channel since 2016,] said. And when he was watching coverage of the pro-Trump mob breaking into the Capitol, he said, he worried that his work might have helped inspire the attack.

He added that he and others at OAN disagreed with much of the channel’s coverage. “The majority of people did not believe the voter fraud claims being run on the air,” Mr. Golingan said in an interview, referring to his colleagues.

He recalled seeing a photo of someone in the Capitol mob holding a flag emblazoned with the OAN logo. “I was like, OK, that’s not good,” Mr. Golingan said. “That’s what happens when people listen to us.”

[...]

Mr. Golingan added that, since Inauguration Day, OAN’s news director, Lindsay Oakley, had reprimanded him for referring to Mr. Biden as “President Biden” in news copy.

[...]

In a survey last month, Pew Research reported that 7 percent of Americans, including 14 percent of Republicans, had gotten political news from OAN. By contrast, 43 percent of Americans and 62 percent of Republicans had gotten political news from Fox News, the survey found.

Am I to understand that the other 30+ percent of Republicans don't get any political news at all? Or they just didn't want to say?

In a Reuters/Ipsos poll last month, about half of Republicans said they believed that the Jan. 6 attack, which left five dead, was largely a nonviolent protest or was the handiwork of left-wing activists. Six in 10 of Republicans surveyed said they also believed Mr. Trump’s claim that the election was “stolen.”

[...]

In a mid-November promotional ad, OAN accused Fox News of joining “the mainstream media in censoring factual reporting.”

[...]

The day after Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, Mr. Herring instructed OAN employees in an email, which The New York Times reviewed, to “report all the things Antifa did yesterday.”

[...]

Some [stories] are reported by Kristian Rouz, an OAN correspondent who had written for Sputnik, a site backed by the Russian government. In a report in May on the pandemic, Mr. Rouz said Covid-19 might have started as a “globalist conspiracy to establish sweeping population control,” one that had ties to Bill and Hillary Clinton, the billionaires George Soros and Bill Gates, and “the deep state.”

Ms. Britton, the former OAN producer, recalled checking a website that Mr. Rouz had cited to back some of his reporting. “It literally took me to this chat room where it’s just conservatives commenting toward each other,” she said.

[...]

Herring confirmed that about a dozen OAN workers had left in recent months, saying many of them were not high-level employees.

....but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

We have not yet dodged the bullet

It has been a while since former president Donald Trump said something as ridiculous as what he said Thursday night during an interview with Fox News’s Laura Ingraham.

  WaPo

That publicly, anyway.

Ingraham had asked the former president to opine on security at the U.S. Capitol, including on the once-imposing physical barriers that have recently been scaled back.

Trump said it was “disgraceful” and that it was “a political maneuver that they’re doing,” a vague “they” that, as usual, refers broadly to Trump’s opponents.

The former president then tried to rewrite history.

“Right from the start, it was zero threat,” Trump said of the Capitol. “Look, they went in. They shouldn’t have done it. Some of them went in and they’re — they’re hugging and kissing the police and the guards. You know, they had great relationships. A lot of the people were waved in and then they walked in and they walked out.”

“They're persecuting a lot of those people,” the former president said of those who had been arrested.

He did grudgingly then admit that some of those arrested were more problematic, just as he once grudgingly admitted that not all immigrants were criminals and just as he once grudgingly admitted that there were some white nationalists involved in Charlottesville. But now, as on those occasions, his most immediate assessment of what happened reveals his most honest opinion. Just as the reporting at the time indicated, Trump approved of the storming of the Capitol.

He not only approved; he called it forth.

The litany of law enforcement injuries is probably familiar to you now — concussions, bruises, a heart attack, death — and tells a very different and more accurate story than the one Trump offered.

It is ridiculous for Trump to make claims like this, but we're accustomed to such behavior. The familiarity of it, though, can blur how dangerous it is.

[...]

Shortly before Trump’s interview with Ingraham, [...] Fox News host Tucker Carlson welcomed the far-right personality Jesse Kelly.

[...]

“Things kind of break down at some point, don't they?” Carlson asked.

“They will break down. They are breaking down,” Kelly replied. “I’ve said this before and I’m telling you, I’m worried that I’m right: The right is going to pick a fascist within 10 to 20 years because they’re not going to be the only ones on the outs.”

“Right,” Carlson replied. “That's right.”

They're not worried about it; they're eagerly pushing for it.

“The inevitable counter to communism is fascism,” Kelly wrote on Twitter last month. “We will see a monster rise on the Right in response to the Left’s violence and censorship. It will be awful. But it is coming. I promise you that.”

[...]

Carlson and Ingraham pulled in millions of viewers last month and, on Thursday, hundreds of thousands saw Carlson nod at fascism as hundred of thousands more heard the former president reframe a fascistic attempt to undermine the results of the 2020 election with approval.

[...]

[T]hat commentary overlapped with real-world manifestations of how the political right is rejecting democracy.

One of the less obvious occurred in Missouri. Last November, voters were asked to weigh in on a proposal that would expand Medicaid coverage in the state. It passed by a 6-point margin.

Republicans in the state legislature, though, have blocked funding for the program. One offered an explicit rationale for opposing the move.

“Rural Missouri said no,” said State Rep. Sara Walsh (R). “I don’t believe it is the will of the people to bankrupt our state.”

This is not a unique case in Missouri where the voters approved something that the people in power decided didn't need to be implemented. And I doubt it's unique to Missouri. In fact, they tried to pull it off in the national election of 2020. They might not fail next time.

As Carlson’s show was airing Thursday, Gov. Brian Kemp (R-Ga.) was signing into law a bill that imposes new restrictions on voting in his state. It’s an odd turn of events for Kemp, given that he and other state Republicans were praised in the months after the 2020 election for rejecting Trump’s efforts to undermine confidence in the results in the state.

[...]

We've documented the GOP's shift away from small-l liberalism, but rarely have so many examples of that shift presented over such a short period of time. Many in the party are concerned about losing power in the face of an evolving American electorate and, as a result, many embrace the idea that democracy should or can be handcuffed.

"Canceled." 

 ...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The terrorists among us

It’s not easy to say who exactly stormed the Capitol. The ADL, tracking far-right live streams and scouring as many pictures and videos as possible, tells me the groups include extremist and alt-right organizations such as the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, the Groyper Army and the Three Percenters, as well as various militia organizations.

[...]

The connecting thread is the “Stop the Steal” movement, which brought all these groups together in various state capitals in the months-long struggle over the election results.

[...]

As Holt notes, the Internet chat rooms and message boards and other platforms he tracks have been absolutely lighting up with such chatter. Their understanding of this moment is that they successfully placed the U.S. government under siege.

“These communities are discussing the attack as some sort of validation that it actually is possible for them to exert their power like this and achieve results,” Holt tells me. “They’re talking about this as the first stab in a greater revolution.”

  

Huh. And I thought we were fighting terrorists "over there so we don't have to fight them here."

“A lot of these extremist groups have explicitly discussed what the attack on the Capitol represents for their ability to overwhelm law enforcement,” Holt told me, adding that the security failures are seen as “validation of a broader narrative about the government buckling” that will awaken others to its “corruption.”

“His supporters pulled off a violent, armed insurrection attacking the U.S. Capitol,” Maddow noted. “And then they all just walked away to tell their war stories about it.”

Or, as Greenblatt put it to me, these groups “are certainly not going anywhere.”

The FBI has been saying for years that the biggest threat here is white nationalist groups.  Maybe now they'll get funded to do a better job of ferreting them out and protecting the country from them.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The "antifa" killer

Here's what really happened in Denver.

We're all expecting it

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

No more dog whistles

Bring out the racist, fascist megaphones.

Lara Trump recently joined Republican congressional candidate Laura Loomer at a campaign event in Florida, throwing the support of the Trump name behind the far-right activist and self-described Islamophobe.

President Trump's daughter-in-law and campaign adviser was photographed with Loomer, the GOP nominee to challenge Rep. Lois Frankel (D-Fla.) in a reliably blue district, at a campaign event with some pictures showing a lack of face masks and social distancing.

[...]

A self-described "proud Islamophobe," Loomer has been banned from several social media platforms for violating policies around hate speech.

In 2017, she tweeted "how many more people need to die before everyone agrees that Islam is cancer & we should never let another Muslim into the civilized world?" That same year she was banned from Uber and Lyft after she tweeted that “someone needs to create a non Islamic form of @uber or @lyft."

In 2018, Loomer was removed from Twitter after she persistently harassed Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), one of the first two Muslim women elected to Congress. She was removed from Facebook and Instagram in May 2019 for similar harassment.

[...]

[S]he has baselessly suggested that the 2018 high school shooting in Parkland, Fla., was a "false flag event" and celebrated the death of 2,000 migrants at sea.

Several congressional Republicans have nonetheless endorsed Loomer, including Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) who have both endorsed Loomer.

She has also received the support of President Trump.

  The Hill

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Domestic terrorists

You know who they are, and it's about time it got officially publicized.

The most recent in-depth analysis of far-right terrorism comes from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

[...]

The report says “the majority of all terrorist incidents in the United States since 1994, and the total number of rightwing attacks and plots has grown significantly during the past six years”, with the far right launching two-thirds of attacks and plots in 2019, and 90% of those in 2020.

[...]

The second most significant source of attacks and plots in the US has been “religious extremists”, almost all “Salafi jihadists inspired by the Islamic State and al-Qaida”.

The report shows the far left has been an increasingly negligible source of attacks since the mid 2000s.

[...]

Last Monday, the Department of Justice announced that it had brought an array of charges, including terrorism related offenses, against a US army soldier who subscribed to a mix of white supremacist and satanist beliefs which are characteristic of so-called “accelerationist” neo-nazis like Atomwaffen Division.

Last week, federal charges were brought on Steven Carillo for the murder of a federal security officer and a sheriff’s deputy. Like the three men arrested for an alleged terror plot in Nevada earlier this month, the FBI says Carillo identified with the extreme anti-government “boogaloo” movement, which is principally concerned with removing government regulation of firearms.

[...]

Eric Ward, executive director of the civil rights nonprofit the Western States Center, said: “We are deeply concerned by the idea of any type of law that creates a legal definition around domestic terrorism. There are significant laws already on the books that meet the challenges of this moment.”

Ward said that rather than new laws, “we need a responsible leadership that is actually willing to use the tools that are already on hand”.

Ward added: “Too often we have to respond to political crisis with criminalization. And I think that is a mistake”.

  The Guardian

Terrorism is terrorism, pal.

There are also concerns around the creation of a surveillance state.

Well, it's too darned late for that concern. Shift it to concern for ridding us of the surveillance state.

Mike German, Brennan Center fellow, is a former FBI agent who investigated rightwing extremists but is now focused on law enforcement and intelligence oversight and reform. He sees arguments for domestic terror statutes as part of a broader reorientation of the “national security establishment” away from conflicts in the Middle East.

German attributes this move to a realization “that Isis and al-Qaida were were not as threatening to Americans as they had been, and that foreign counter-terrorism in general was sort of running out of steam”.

German said: “It’s a way of expanding the target realm that gives the counterterrorism enterprise targets that they can use to to get statistical accomplishments, rather than looking at whether or not the violence itself is reduced.”

Perhaps the problem is not in the designation, but in the remedies.

Something you don't see every day

Domestic terrorism charges against white men in America.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Perfect

[London p]olice said 113 people were arrested on Saturday, including a 28-year-old man detained on suspicion of urinating by a Westminster memorial dedicated to the murdered police officer Keith Palmer, after far-right activists organised a counter-protest to BLM groups. The Metropolitan police said its officers were injured after being kicked, punched or hit by missiles as they faced hundreds of angry demonstrators, who claimed they were protecting statues.

[...]

[Patrick] Hutchinson and his friends, who are security and martial arts experts, attended an anti-racist protest on Saturday to “try and keep the peace”. When far-right groups began to clash with black protestors, Hutchinson said the man he helped had been caught alone and left by his friends.

[...]

In an interview with Channel 4 News, the personal trainer and grandfather said: “You don’t think about it [being scary] at the time, you just do what you’ve got to do.”

[...]

“His life was under threat, so I just went under, scooped him up, put him on my shoulders and started marching towards the police with him.”

  Guardian

"There were people trying to protect him, but unsuccessfully. And then the guys went in there, they sort of put a little cordon around him to stop him receiving any more physical harm.

"He was under physical harm. His life was under threat.

"And whilst they did that I thought, 'well if he stays here he's not going to make it.

"So I just went under, scooped him up and put him on my shoulders and sort of started marching towards the police with him whilst all the guys were sort of surrounding me and protecting me and the guy I had on my shoulder.

"I could actually feel strikes and hits as I was carrying him, so these guys were probably taking some of that themselves on their person."

Mr Hutchinson downplayed any notion that he is a hero and said the men who were with him and protected him as he carried the man also deserve credit.

Without them, he said, he likely would have been trampled by the crowd as well.

  Chronnicle

Nice friends the guy has to take off to save their own skin. How humiliating for him this picture must be. He might lose his standing with his "friends".

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Far-right arrests in Vegas

Three far-right followers have been arrested at Las Vegas protests over the killing of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, by police and charged with inciting violence.

The plot was reportedly foiled with help from an informant.

Stephen Parshall, 35, Andrew Lynam, 23, and William Loomis, 40, who allegedly belong to the "boogaloo" movement, all live in Las Vegas where they were arrested on Saturday by an anti-terrorism unit headed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

[...]

Reports of far-right activists, sometimes heavily armed, infiltrating the protests over the past week have included several claiming to be part of the "boogaloo" movement.

[...]

If convicted on federal charges, the men face up to 30 years in prison. They were also indicted on state conspiracy to commit terrorism and other charges, which carry heavier sentences.

  alJazeera

The boogaloo movement?

The "boogaloo" movement, which has adopted Hawaiian shirts as a uniform, promotes "a coming civil war and/or collapse of society", said the Nevada US Attorney's Office on Wednesday.

Trump's wearing a Hawaiian shirt under his suit at all times, isn't he?  His pajamas are Hawaiian print.

According to a report by the Network Contagion Research Institute, the group wants a second civil war organised around the word "boogaloo".

The Boogaloo Wars.

A charge sheet said the three men's initial plan was to "firebomb" a power station to distract authorities as they incited a riot. They also intended to take Molotov cocktails to a Black Lives Matter protest.

I have a feeling the plan would have failed to get the Boogaloo war they want. These aren't the brightest bulbs on the Christmas tree.

Also, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, right?