Tag: militia

Remember Hitler’s Boogaloo Boys

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Hitler with SA Brownshirts

The key to reading history of Nazi Germany, a wise professor once explained to me, is to attempt to understand the logic and mentality of those who embraced the Nazi movement without ever losing sight of what an ultimately absurd and fundamentally evil project theirs was. This is the approach readers must bring to Daniel Siemens’s Stormtroopers: A New History of Hitler’s Brownshirts, a superbly detailed account of the Sturmabteilung (SA), the main paramilitary wing of the Nazi party from its inception in 1920 until the consolidation of Hitler’s power in 1934. Siemens, a professor of European history at Newcastle University, looks beyond the traditional trope of the SA, or “Brownshirts” as they were commonly known, as a group of rowdy young psychopaths looking to brawl. His book paints a far more frightening portrait of a million-member organization that flourished by promising young German men a world of hypermasculinity, camaraderie, and egalitarianism—with genocidal undertones…

Of course, the phenomenon of far-right militias taking up the mantle of “border defense” in the face of migrant influxes is hardly a thing of the past. Present-day groups such as the BNO Shipka in Bulgaria or any of the sundry militias in the Arizona desert similarly seek to supplant the democratic state as the protector of the “people” and the “homeland.” While there is no group of equivalent influence to the SA in America today [article written in 2018] histories like Siemens’s should give pause to those who would think that the problem of far-right violence will disappear if we simply dismiss it as the actions of a few thugs.

Same as it ever was, same as it ever was, same as it ever was…

Armed vigilantes detain migrants –their leader is busted after NM governor calls the Feds

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Paul Ratje/Getty

❝ Armed rightwing militia members detained a large group of migrants at the US-Mexico border and coordinated with US border patrol agents to have them arrested, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, in a series of actions the civil liberties organization called a “kidnapping” and a flagrant violation of the law….

❝ The so-called United Constitutional Patriots posted several live-stream Facebook videos this week that appeared to detail their activities at the border…

❝ Nora Meyers Sackett, the spokesperson for New Mexico governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, told the Guardian her office was working with the attorney general to “verify what exactly happened regarding this group”, adding in an email, “If migrant families feel menaced or threatened at all when they arrive at our border, that’s completely unacceptable, and it should go without saying that regular citizens have no authority to arrest or detain anyone…”

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❝ The head of the militia group…was arrested Saturday by the FBI on charges of being a felon in possession of firearms and ammunition…

Larry Mitchell Hopkins, 69, who lives in the tiny village of Flora Vista in San Juan County, was arrested in Sunland Park, a border town near El Paso, the FBI said in a statement…

❝ “This is a dangerous felon who should not have weapons around children and families,” New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas said of Hopkins in a statement issued Saturday. “Today’s arrest by the FBI indicates clearly that the rule of law should be in the hands of trained law enforcement officials, not armed vigilantes.”

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said in a Twitter message a day before Hopkins’ arrest, “We are actively working with @NewMexicoAOG as well as local and state police. Menacing or threatening migrant families and asylum-seekers is absolutely unacceptable and must cease.”

Just a few of the fascist-minded fools who infest rightwing America.

The real face of terrorism in America

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Gavin Wright, 49, Curtis Allen, 49, and Patrick Stein, 47

Three Kansas men from a militia cell called “the Crusaders” plotted to bomb a mosque and apartment complex home to Somali immigrants…

Curtis Allen, 49, Gavin Wright, 49, and Patrick Stein, 47, were charged Friday with conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction, according to the Department of Justice’s national security division. The Crusaders call Muslims “cockroaches,” and they had discussed attacks brutal attacks on Muslims for months, federal prosecutors said.

FBI agents working on tips from an undercover informant said the three men planned to blow up four car bombs at the Garden City apartments. Allen, Wright and Stein hoped the attack on the 120-resident complex would “wake people up,” the feds said.

The arrests followed an eight-month investigation that took the agents “deep into a hidden culture of hatred and violence,” said acting U.S. Attorney Tom Beall. “Many Kansans may find it as startling as I do that such things could happen here.”…

If you read more than the TV Guide, watch more than Fox Noise, you shouldn’t be surprised.

…Allen, Wright and Stein had stockpiled guns, ammunition and explosive components, prosecutors said. They also spied on possible targets and planned to issue a manifesto, according to the feds.

They decided on the apartment complex in Garden City, a meatpacking town of 26,000 people in southwestern Kansas. Many Somali refugees who work at a Tyson Foods beef slaughterhouse live there, and the complex includes a mosque where they worship together.

“They chose the target location based on their hatred of these groups, their perception that these groups represent a threat to American society, a desire to inspire other militia groups, and a desire to ‘wake people up,'” the complaint said…

They talked about attacking targets such as city or county meetings, landlords who rent to Muslim refugees, organizations that assist Muslim refugees, a mall frequented by Muslims and Garden City’s African Community Center, investigators said. They decided on the W. Mary St. apartment complex in August, according to the complaint.

…Police in Liberal arrested Allen on Tuesday night after his girlfriend said he beat her, the charging documents showed. His car had ammo for an AR-15, an AK-47 and a Glock handgun, according to investigators.

Liberal police later found nearly a metric ton of ammo at Allen’s house, investigators said. FBI agents who searched G&G, where Allen worked for Wright, said they uncovered a detonator believed to be a homemade explosive and other bomb components…

Federal agents took custody of all three of them Friday morning. Allen, Wright and Stein face up to life in federal prison without parole if they’re convicted.

Throw away the key!

Nutball Bundys go on trial

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❝ This Wednesday, September 7, marks the start of the trial of brothers Ammon and Ryan Bundy and six other defendants charged for their actions during the 41-day occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Harney County, Oregon, earlier this year. The case is the first to bring the Bundy family and their supporters before a courtroom and jury after they were at the center of two volatile standoffs with the federal government.

❝ The Bundy family first gained attention in April 2014 when Cliven Bundy, Ryan and Ammon’s father, forced a showdown with federal officials at his Nevada ranch after the government announced it would seize his cattle for his decades-long refusal to pay public-land grazing fees. The Bundys called on militia members and anti-government extremists to support their crusade, leading to an episode where 400 armed supporters intimidated federal agents tasked with confiscating Cliven’s livestock into abandoning the job and leaving.

❝ His sons renewed their defiance at the start of 2016, occupying the Malheur refuge. The takeover began as a protest of two local ranchers’ prison sentences for arson on Bureau of Land Management land but developed into a weeks-long rally of roughly 25 to 40 people calling for the seizure of federally managed lands across the West to be given to states, counties or private landowners. Even without support from the jailed ranchers and many locals in Harney County, the armed occupiers lingered, controlled access to the refuge, and made use of government offices, computers and vehicles. The occupation wound down only after state police shot and killed one of the leaders, Robert “LaVoy” Finicum, while apprehending the Bundy brothers and others during a January 26 highway blockade.

❝ Cliven Bundy was then arrested in early February at the Portland airport while traveling to support the last of the Malheur occupiers.

❝ “The case against the Bundys is pretty substantial,” says Ryan Lenz, writer for the Southern Poverty Law Center and its Hatewatch blog, which monitors hate groups, militias and anti-government activities. “The real questions at the heart of this trial is what kind of antics will happen and what respect and deference will they give to the court.”

Watch this space. Our uptight media will make scant mention of the trial. No doubt. For-real journalists, especially those cognizant of American history and nutball outlaws like the Bundys will offer thorough coverage. Which we will point out.

No bail for Bundy – judge considers him untrustworthy

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❝ Nevada rancher and anti-authority figure Cliven Bundy lost a renewed bid Thursday for release from jail ahead of trial on federal conspiracy and assault charges stemming from an armed standoff against government agents two years ago.

❝ U.S. Magistrate Judge Carl Hoffman pointed to the violence alleged in an indictment accusing Bundy of inciting the impasse to stop a roundup of cattle from public land near his ranch in April 2014, and to a history of Bundy ignoring federal court orders.

“You say you’ll continue to do ‘whatever it takes,'” Hoffman said in a Las Vegas courtroom where some Bundy backers wore brown T-shirts emblazoned with the three-word slogan.

“I do not believe, Mr. Bundy, that you will comply with my court orders any more than you have complied with previous court orders,” the judge said.

❝ Bundy and four of his adult sons are among 19 people now facing federal charges that could put them in prison for the standoff for the rest of their lives…

❝ Bundy’s defense lawyer, Joel Hansen, said his client simply won’t acknowledge that federal law applies. That consistent denial led Bundy last week to decline to enter a plea to charges including conspiracy, assault on a federal officer, threatening a federal officer, obstruction and firearms offenses. Hoffman entered a not-guilty plea at that time on Bundy’s behalf…

❝ Several people who face charges with Bundy in the Nevada standoff also have been charged in the occupation of an Oregon nature preserve that aimed to oppose federal land restrictions. A judge on Wednesday prohibited U.S. marshals from transferring Cliven Bundy’s sons Ammon and Ryan Bundy and others to Nevada for court hearings.

It’s only been about 150 years since this was all sorted out. Part of the federalism of living in a democratic republic. Nutballs challenge it every now and then – and lose. Most of the time they don’t carry guns into the discussion.

Cops finally bust closet Confederates in Oregon

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❝The FBI has established checkpoints around a national wildlife preserve in Oregon where some armed activists still are believed to be holed up, saying the decision came out of “an abundance of caution.”

Authorities arrested the leaders of the small group that has been occupying Malheur National Wildlife Refuge for more than three weeks during a traffic stop where gunfire erupted and one man was killed late Tuesday…

❝The FBI said early Wednesday that anyone leaving the refuge would have to show identification and submit to a vehicle search. Only ranchers who live in the area surrounding the preserve will be allowed to pass the checkpoints.

❝The takeover at Malheur that started Jan. 2 was a flare-up in the so-called Sagebrush Rebellion, a decades-old conflict over the U.S. government’s control of millions of acres of territory in the west. Protesters say they are defending the Constitution.

Like most closet Confederates, the Bundy militia is populated by liars. They have as little care and comprehension of the standards, purpose and foundation of the US Constitution as any Klavern of right-wing nutballs.

❝The FBI said gunshots rang out after officers stopped a car carrying protest leader Ammon Bundy and others near the refuge. Activists said Robert LaVoy Finicum, a rancher who acted as a spokesman for the occupiers, was killed.

Federal officials said they had probable cause to arrest Finicum, who told NBC News earlier this month that he would rather die than be detained.

Protest leader Ammon Bundy and four other senior members were taken into custody following the confrontation along Highway 395, near the reserve in northeast Oregon around 4:25 p.m. local time…

❝All of those arrested face federal charges of conspiracy to use force, intimidation or threats to impede federal officers from discharging their duties, the FBI said.

Old, out-of-date dudes figure their guns and God make them immortal. They will never get it. What they have learned is that constitutional due process and legal challenges have ruled against their anarchist belief system for decades. Most citizens of the United States do not consider cowboy movies to be anything more than romantic [usually racist] cornball. Not something to live or die for.

Ranchers stealing from taxpayers ain’t any less criminal than corporations stealing from taxpayers. The corporations own more politicians and better lawyers – so they usually get away with it. This clown show isn’t even capable of a half-serious soap opera.

Though probably ended by the time this post appears, Kelly House has been live Tweeting from the press conference w/FBI, Sheriff, local law enforcement following the arrests.

Cartoon of the day

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Much of the crowd that attends sideshows like this are no different from the disturbed individuals who go to carnivals hoping to see someone bite the head off a chicken – and spit blood on the audience.

You can still turn out a crowd like this for a snake-handling preacher who believes the Earth is flat. You can still turn out a mob who feel safe enough in their robes and masks to burn crosses while they prepare to lynch someone. Or at least shout that they will. A few of the most demented will go on to commit some kind of cowardly murder.

This may be the 21st Century in the world that seeks knowledge and progress. There remain many, self-deluded, easily-led, ignorant of much that has changed since the 14th Century. They still vote.