Unpacking right wing online culture and communication on social media

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > Unpacking right wing online culture and communication on social media

Unless: Jul 24, 2005; I art

pretty sure �culture� is complex and sustains a society

the online right wing is violent nihilism bent on radicalization to perpetuate a low-intensity race war

# ¿ May 11, 2023 11:27

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# ¿ May 17, 2024 02:05

Unless: Jul 24, 2005; I art

Weka posted:

dang fellows, we haven't unpacked right wing online culture and commkunication on social media in ages.

everything�s happening on telegram and navigating that rabbit hole is only comparable to the trauma induced by social media and AI moderating

the survival mechanism will probably get more folks to deep dive for the 2024 election

# ¿ Aug 11, 2023 22:17

Unless: Jul 24, 2005; I art

https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2023/08/10/revealing-andrew-tates-secretive-war-room-brothers/

# ¿ Aug 12, 2023 02:36

Unless: Jul 24, 2005; I art

quote:

Researchers who track how the far right in in the US mobilizes, self-promotes and recruits are reporting that women are playing a growing role in the movement.

They often work behind the scenes to advance conspiracy theories through social media and softly attract new women into the fold. But at the same time, in recent years �alt-right� women have also shifted to influential public-facing roles in rightwing media production and far-right national politics.

They have taken prominent roles in events like the January 6 attack on the Capitol, count US congresswomen in their number and have seen the emergence of powerful new groups like Moms for Liberty.

�[Far-right women] have a lot more power than you think,� said Dr Sandra Jeppesen, a professor of media and communications at Lakehead University in Ontario, Canada.

Despite their seemingly understated presence in extremist groups and far-right politics, they can be effective organizers, responsible for bringing thousands of people to the Capitol for the January 6 �Stop the Steal� rally and now mobilizing against inclusive education.

Some women figures on the far-right scene have a lot of money, especially the most prominent ones, said Tracy Llanera, an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Connecticut. The most high-profile far-right conservative women are involved in social media production because they fit the mold of what Llanera calls �the acceptable faces of conservative propaganda�.

They include Fox News commentator Tomi Lahren and Canadian far-right YouTuber Lauren Southern, who produce conservative media and rightwing propaganda, amassing a huge following and millions of dollars.

Even so-called �Tradwives� � such as TikToker Estee Williams, who promotes strict adherence to traditional gender roles � generate income from their social media content. The Global Network on Extremism & Technology recently linked Tradwives to �alt-lite� and �alt-right� ideologies.

�I think women definitely want power,� Jeppesen argued. �I don�t think �alt-right� women go into politics for altruistic reasons.�

Like men in the movement, women commit to far-right politics believing there is a crisis and they have to commit to extraordinary action, she stated. In the days leading up to 6 January 2021, Marjorie Taylor Greene, the extremist congresswoman from Georgia, paid tens of thousands of dollars for a promoted Parlor post stating the need for a grassroots army and created a Photoshopped image of her and Donald Trump.

The post, used as an election fundraiser for Greene�s campaign, garnered millions of views and played a strong role in mobilizing people to the Capitol, Jeppesen explained.

While Greene�s social media presence attracted insurrectionists to Washington DC, the far-right election-denial group Women for America First ultimately held the permit for the rally outside the White House, helped to coordinate the march that became the January 6 riot, and eventually organized fundraisers for election audits in Georgia and Arizona in 2021, Vice News reported.

Other female insurrectionists played a pivotal role in the riots and spreading election denial conspiracies during and after.

Jessica Watkins, an Oath Keepers member and founder of the Ohio State Regular Militia, arranged for both militias to travel to the Capitol, organizing and communicating on site with the encrypted walkie-talkie-style app Zello. Sentenced to eight and a half years in prison, people such as Watkins are considered political prisoners to members of the far-right movement.

When Ashli Babbit was killed by Capitol Hill police during the January 6 attack, she was promoted as a martyr, with even the former US president Donald Trump calling her parents. �Women make better martyrs in the �alt-right�,� Jeppesen said about Babbit�s lingering effect.

Another growing power on the far right is Moms for Liberty, a group that began as a small parents� rights group but which has spread across the US and is a leading force in promoting book bans.

The group � with a fervent membership of conservative mothers � aims to affect US education, attacking anything that meddles with the far-right view of what is suitable for bringing up children, said Llanera of the University of Connecticut. �Mothers protect their offspring, out of the private sphere where they are most relevant,� she added.

Iowyth Ulthiin, a PhD student at Toronto Metropolitan University and researcher at Lakehead University, explained that rightwing sects will use a broad appeal to a general issue like children�s safety in order to spread far-right ideas.

�Who doesn�t love children and want them to be safe?� Ulthiin said.

Far-right mothers start building rapport with other parents, using the vulnerability of their children to open the door to QAnon conspiracy theories and anti-government sentiment.

The far right can take the same recruitment posture online. Ulthiin�s research has seen women in the �mommy blogger aesthetic� on Instagram, known for sharing photos of �lovely, enviable lives�, become subtly political and then escalate rapidly into conspiracy theories.

Most notably, film-maker Sean Donnelly produced an eight-minute documentary, QAmom: Confronting My Mom�s Conspiracy Theories, about his mother�s transformation from a new age Californian to an outright conspiracy theorist who believed well-known celebrities would be arrested for pedophilia.

Ulthiin said that women who fall into the far-right trap often have similar psychological profiles. �It would be a similar crowd to those who are in danger of joining a cult,� they said.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/12/conservative-women-tradwife-republican

# ¿ Aug 12, 2023 18:36

Unless: Jul 24, 2005; I art

mark immune posted:

that�s a lot to unpack

yep, but it tracks if you follow the thread and its previous incarnations

i�m feeling a definite chill on posting things about unpacking far right stuff as they keep rearing their head on every single echelon of political and business power, but it�s cool to notice it and write about it if you have the kind of legal that can handle the constant onslaught of their weaponized judiciary

�

the times has an interesting piece about the nypd�s new deputy commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism

quote:

Rebecca Weiner learned about catastrophic threats at an early age: She grew up in Santa Fe, N.M., near the cradle of the nuclear bomb.

Her grandfather, a mathematician, fled Poland in 1939, studied at Harvard and then moved to New Mexico in 1943 to help develop atomic weapons. In college, Ms. Weiner studied the ethical questions that Manhattan Project scientists, and their wives, confronted as they devised the bombs that annihilated two Japanese cities, but that they hoped would �end war as we know it,� she said.

Now, Ms. Weiner, 46, has been named the New York Police Department�s deputy commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism, commanding about 1,500 people spread throughout the city. The bureau includes dozens of analysts and hundreds of officers and investigators who monitor threats like bomb plots, mass shootings and spontaneous chaos like a social media influencer�s video game giveaway that drew thousands of rowdy teenagers to Union Square this month.

A lawyer and 17-year department veteran, Ms. Weiner is taking over a bureau that includes a counterterrorism unit created after the Sept. 11 attacks. Since its inception, the unit has helped foil a plan to kidnap an American-Iranian journalist and what officials say were dozens of terrorist plots.

It is also a bureau whose work remains shrouded in secrecy and that has been condemned because of its surveillance activities, including in 2011, when the public learned that its officers had been spying on Muslims for years.

The bureau has been most visible when it has violated civil liberties, but Ms. Weiner said in an interview that it had protected them more conscientiously in the past decade. The unit�s focus, now, she said, was on stopping so-called lone wolves like the man who massacred Black residents of Buffalo at a supermarket, the truck driver who mowed down eight people on a Manhattan bike path and the man who stabbed the author Salman Rushdie last August in Chautauqua, N.Y.

In the interview, Ms. Weiner ticked off some of the threats New York City currently faces: the Islamic State, right-wing extremists and accelerationists, a white supremacist movement that advocates overthrowing the government.

�The individual actor has been the biggest concern for a while,� she said, adding that what kept her awake was �the concern that we�ve missed something.�

Ms. Weiner, who was sworn in last month as her two sons, 5 and 8, held a Bible, is the rare top police executive who does not have close personal ties to Mayor Eric Adams, a former police captain who identifies closely with the force. Rather than walking a neighborhood beat, she joined as a civilian junior analyst with a law degree.

In 2020, during a panel discussion hosted by the Global Security Forum, an annual gathering of experts and officials, the moderator � a woman � asked Ms. Weiner whether she led with �tough love mothering� or by embracing a �flirtatious, more traditional vamp style.�

Ms. Weiner was silent for a moment.

�I hope those aren�t the only two options,� she replied, then burst out laughing.

�I am going to be who I am,� Ms. Weiner told the moderator. �And that�s how I�m going to lead from wherever I am in the organization.�

Reassuring residents of the bureau�s intentions and practices is a crucial task for Ms. Weiner as police departments in general confront �an erosion of trust,� said William J. Bratton, who met her when he returned to lead the department for a second term as commissioner in 2014.
Ms. Weiner�s intellect, humor and approachability should help, Mr. Bratton said.

�One of the reasons she collaborates so well with people is that she makes her points without alienating people,� he said.

Ms. Weiner said that the participation of her grandfather, Stanislaw Ulam, in the most secret military initiative of World War II influenced her career choices.

�I was always interested in national security work, in protecting our country,� she said.

Mr. Ulam, Ms. Weiner said, played memory games with her when she was a child to test how the brain resembled a computer. But she was particularly fascinated by her grandmother, Francoise Aron Ulam, who came to the United States from France and met Mr. Ulam in 1941.

Ms. Ulam spoke three languages, helped write her husband�s memoirs and worked as a �calculator� on the Manhattan Project along with other wives, performing complex mathematics using paper, pencil and slide rules.

Ms. Weiner grew up wanting to learn more about her and the other young women who relocated to Los Alamos so their husbands could work on �the Gadget,� the nickname for the bomb.

�Many of them were really grappling with the same ethical quandaries as their husbands, but without the exhilaration of knowing that they were in charge of the scientific discovery,� Ms. Weiner said.

She helped her grandmother write her own memoirs as a student at Harvard, where she majored in history and literature and met her husband, Drake Bennett, a reporter at Bloomberg News. She earned a law degree at Harvard, then began researching international security as a fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government�s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

When she joined the Police Department in 2006, she was one of only a few female analysts. She rose through the ranks, becoming director of intelligence analysis in 2012 and assistant commissioner of the intelligence bureau in 2016.

John Miller, who became deputy commissioner of the bureau in 2014, said she had a �remarkable� ability to recognize how security threats were changing.

�Whether it was the shift to Al Qaeda to ISIS, or the shift from sleeper cells to lone wolves to domestic-inspired racism, it was Rebecca and her team of analysts who were always on the cutting edge,� Mr. Miller said.

By the time Ms. Weiner joined the department, the counterterrorism division had developed a secret demographics unit composed of officers whose job was to create a map that showed where different ethnic groups lived. The goal was to learn where terrorist suspects could blend in, but the unit�s tactics shifted into a blanket surveillance of Muslims and developing databases of where they shopped, worked and prayed.

The unit was exposed in 2011 by The Associated Press, prompting lawsuits by Muslim and civil liberties groups, who said the tactics violated the rules that had been established as a result of a 1970s case involving the department�s spying on students, civil rights groups and suspected Communist sympathizers. Known as the Handschu case, the litigation led to federal guidelines prohibiting the Police Department from collecting information about political speech unless it is related to potential terrorism.

Ms. Weiner did not work in the demographics unit, but she helped handle negotiations between the department and lawyers for the plaintiffs in the suits filed after the unit�s tactics were exposed.

�There was a level of mistrust that we had to rectify,� she said.

Jethro Eisenstein, a lawyer for plaintiffs in the Handschu case, said Ms. Weiner had shown a strong regard for civil liberties. During one negotiation session in 2016, Ms. Weiner asked hypothetically whether the bureau should investigate someone who had declared support for ISIS online.

Of course it should, the lawyers replied. Her response was surprising, Mr. Eisenstein recalled.

��Really? Just based on that?�� she said.

�She was reviewing a lot of things that people said and then trying to decide whether that warranted a disruption of their lives,� Mr. Eisenstein said. �She was really putting on the brakes.�

Ms. Weiner and other police officials now meet monthly with a civilian representative who reviews the department�s investigations and reports potential wrongdoing to a federal judge. The representative has submitted five reports since 2018. All found the department in compliance with the guidelines.

Naz Ahmad, the acting director of the CLEAR project, one of the organizations that sued the department over the spying program, said the representative had helped police officials consider how their work affects civil liberties. Still, Ms. Ahmad added, the department did not have to detail its online investigations or divulge the race or religion of its targets.

In 2016, the city�s inspector general found that in more than 95 percent of case files, the targets of investigations �were predominantly associated with Muslims� or engaged in political activity associated with Islam.

�We have no insight into whether those numbers have changed,� Ms. Ahmad said.

Ms. Weiner said the bureau did not track the race and ethnicity of people it was investigating, but she said the demographics would be different today, given how the threats had shifted to right-wing extremism.

Often, she said, the threats came from people driven by conflicting ideologies, like Ethan Melzer, a soldier who consumed both ISIS and neo-Nazi propaganda before hatching a plan to kill U.S. service members.

Ibrahim Bechrouri, who teaches surveillance and counterterrorism at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said the bureau Ms. Weiner now oversees remains too secretive.

�It still does not have enough oversight,� he said. �We don�t have any transparency on what is happening now when it comes to the use of new technologies.�

Ms. Weiner said the bureau shares information �whenever we can.�

�Ultimately, our job is to protect people,� she said. �We�re not withholding information to benefit us. We want to protect people�s lives.�

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/13/nyregion/rebecca-weiner-nypd-intelligence-unit.html

# ¿ Aug 14, 2023 00:18

Unless: Jul 24, 2005; I art

tristeham posted:

unpack this bitch

🖕

lol @ the part where she says that ISIS, right-wing, and accelerationists are the three biggest threats

# ¿ Aug 14, 2023 00:53

Unless: Jul 24, 2005; I art

mark immune posted:

drat... even more to unpack. but we still haven't unpacked your previous post

🤷🏼‍♂️

is this the first time you�re reading about suburban white women

# ¿ Aug 14, 2023 01:29

Unless: Jul 24, 2005; I art

The Artificial Kid posted:

I don�t think I understand what you�re getting at, can you unpack it a bit more? (srsly) Do you mean there are bigger threats than right wing domestic terrorists and accelerationists? That the police themselves are right wing accelerationists? What angle are you coming from?

sure

even institutions typically associated with the wildest parts of middle-eastern demonization post-9/11, like the nypd, are publicly acknowledging stochastic right-wing terrorism in the same sentence

whether or not they�re able to prioritize it, due to internal infiltration, widespread cultural bias, or the lack effective tactics, ought to be on everyone�s radar in terms of, both, severity, and case study

personally, i think this is a rare public admission, like the fbi�s old 2006 report on white supremacists in law enforcement

https://theintercept.com/2020/09/29/police-white-supremacist-infiltration-fbi/

the 2021 dod �Report on Countering Extremist Activity Within the Department of Defense�

https://media.defense.gov/2021/Dec/20/2002912573/-1/-1/0/REPORT-ON-COUNTERING-EXTREMIST-ACTIVITY-WITHIN-THE-DEPARTMENT-OF-DEFENSE.PDF

and the 2018 frontline propublica where a defense contractor was busted for being atomwaffen

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPLvWO_SOgM

not saying �ya gotta hand it to �em,� or anything remotely close, but when i see folks putting in even a token effort, i�ll note it and see where it goes

# ¿ Aug 14, 2023 02:08

Unless: Jul 24, 2005; I art

good unpacking from f.d. signifier

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rS4JtfgeEQ

# ¿ Aug 14, 2023 03:04

Unless: Jul 24, 2005; I art

Centrist Committee posted:

I saw a headline that Rubio is going after the peoples forum in NYC under the umbrella of anti-China hysteria so yah agreed

rick perlstein has a lot of great history in his books, Before the Storm, Nixonland, The Invisible Bridge, and Reaganland about the German American Bund, McCarthyism, and the John Birch Society

I�d wager most of the folks in elected power are totally ignorant of the history of these groups

Marco Rubio posted:

Dear Attorney General Garland:

I write to express my concern over certain far-left organizations that are reportedly tied to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and operating with impunity in the United States. Combatting Beijing�s malign influence must be a key objective for the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). Unfortunately, it appears the DOJ is either unaware or ambivalent to this growing threat.

It appears that organizations tied to Neville Roy Singham, a U.S. citizen, have been receiving direction from the CCP. Mr. Singham is the founder of Thoughtworks, a Chicago-based software consultancy, and for many years, promoted far-left causes. Mr. Singham reportedly created a dark money system that allows him to send funds to a number of far-left organizations. At the core are a series of non-profits, such as the �United Community Fund� and �Justice and Education Fund,� that have almost no real-world footprints, listing their addresses only as UPS store mailboxes in Illinois, Wisconsin, and New York. According to the New York Times, reporters, �tracked hundreds of millions of dollars to groups linked to Mr. Singham that mix progressive advocacy with Chinese government talking points.�

One such organization that is allegedly backed by Mr. Singham is Tricontinental, a Massachusetts-based think-tank that advocates for socialist revolution. Another is Code Pink, an organization that has received more than $1.4 million from two groups linked to Mr. Singham. Code Pink and an affiliated organization, �No Cold War,� deny the Uyghur genocide, assert Beijing�s erroneous territorial claims, and have publicly sparred with Hong Kong pro-democracy movements. Moreover, Mr. Singham has funded CCP party-to-party trainings at the Nkrumah School in South Africa. In these sessions, African political leaders are taught that America is engaged in a �hybrid war� against the People�s Republic of China (PRC) by distorting information about Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. As the bipartisan, bicameral U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission notes, the CCP�s party-to-party trainings are �the primary mechanism Beijing employs to spread its ideology of authoritarian governance on the African continent.�

According to the New York Times, many of the organizations Mr. Singham financially supports are linked directly or indirectly to the CCP. Non-profit filings show that nearly $1.8 million flowed from one of the UPS store nonprofits to Chinese media company Maku Group.

In 2021, Maku and Tricontinental agreed to work with a Shanghai university to �tell China�s story� in Chinese and English. Maku�s website shows young people gathering in Mr. Singham�s office, facing a red banner that reads, �Always Follow the Party,� with an image of General Secretary of the CCP, Xi Jinping, in the background. Mr. Singham also started a newsletter �Dongsheng News� that promotes pro-CCP talking points in foreign languages. Despite operating out of the PRC, the address for Dongsheng News leads to People�s Forum, a New York-based events space that is funded by Mr. Singham. Corporate documents show that in 2019, Mr. Singham started a consulting business with a group of entities located in the PRC. Those partners are active in the propaganda apparatus, co-owning with the municipal government of Tongren a media company that promotes CCP policies.

Given this, I request that DOJ immediately investigate the following organizations, and all related organizations linked to Mr. Singham, for potential violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act:

Code Pink
No Cold War
Tricontinental
United Community Fund
Justice and Education Fund
People�s Support Foundation
New Frame
People�s Forum
Dongsheng News

The CCP is our greatest adversary, and we cannot allow it to abuse our open system to promote its malign influence any longer. Thank you for your prompt attention to this important matter.

# ¿ Aug 14, 2023 13:56

Unless: Jul 24, 2005; I art

quote:

A neo-Nazi �active club� counts several current and former members of the United States military as its members, the Guardian has learned, including a lance corporal machine gunner currently in detention on insubordination charges and a former US Marine Corps staff sergeant who was booted from the service for stealing large quantities of ammunition.

Lance corporal machine gunner Mohammed Wadaa and former Marine Corps staff sergeant Gunnar Naughton are part of the Clockwork Crew, California�s first �active club,� according to the group�s own internal research records and social media posts, as well as law enforcement sources.

Active clubs � white nationalists and neo-fascist fight clubs that train in combat sports � are a growing concern for US law enforcement. Their recruitment among active and former members of the military underscores both the broadening appeal of the fitness-centric organising model and the American armed services� persistent struggle with extremism within the ranks.

The Clockwork Crew, formerly known as Crew 562 (the area code for Long Beach, California), was founded in 2021 and counts roughly a dozen members, researchers say.

The group has considerable overlap with other California active clubs, as well as with the Golden State Skinheads, a more �traditional� skinhead gang of whom some members stabbed several anti-fascist protesters at a chaotic 2016 clash outside the state capitol in Sacramento. Clockwork Crew�s reach also briefly extended to eastern Europe: Juraj Mesić, a Croatian neo-Nazi, headed an eight-person chapter in that country before being arrested in March for racist abuse of an immigrant worker, according to news reports and internal chats.

Researchers say Clockwork Crew stands out because of its members� willingness to engage in public confrontations and the key roles played by active-duty and veterans of the armed forces.

�We�re seeing a more aggressive, more hostile far right,� said Jeff Tischauser, a senior researcher at the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). �Groups like the Clockwork Crew are more willing to take their hatred into public spaces and shout people down outside of synagogues and in communities they perceive as predominantly Jewish.�

Last year, the SPLC listed the Clockwork Crew as a designated hate group over the participation of some members in a 2022 hate march by the Goyim Defense League, an antisemitic hate group, and another episode that spring when some Clockwork Crew members drove through San Diego and harangued passersby from a van draped in white nationalist propaganda.

�They�re trying to recreate the cell-based, ready-made force that RAM had where five to 20 people can go out and intimidate people with propaganda, flyer-ing, and highly aggressive posturing,� said Tischauser, referring to the Rise Above Movement, the now-defunct street-fighting neo-Nazi crew whose members have been targeted by federal authorities for participating in street violence against political opponents in California and Virginia during the presidency of Donald Trump.

The Clockwork Crew was co-founded by Mohammed Wadaa, a lance corporal with the 3rd battalion, 5th regiment of the 1st United States Marine Corps division out of Camp Pendleton, the Marine Corps base just north of San Diego and one of the largest in the country. Photographs from Wadaa�s Telegram posts show he lives on base in Camp Pendleton in a room adorned with a poster of Adolf Hitler.

A 25-year-old from Oregon who has been in the Marine Corps since at least 2018, Wadaa has claimed one of his ancestors fought alongside the Nazis in the Handschar Division, an SS unit made up of Bosnian and Croatian volunteers to suppress anti-fascist partisans in the former Yugoslavia. Wadaa has participated in the Clockwork Crew�s banner drops and sticker campaigns, and has taken part in marches with members of other hate groups, including the Goyim Defense League.

Wadaa is currently under court martial for disobeying Marine Corps general orders prohibiting advocating extremist ideology and having extremist tattoos, the military branch confirmed. He entered a guilty plea on 27 July. He was sentenced to 11 months in the brig, a reduction in rank to Private, and will be given a bad conduct discharge, according to court records and a Marine Corps spokesperson.

Wadaa co-founded Clockwork Crew with Nicholas Daniel Large. Wadaa and Large met through the Church of Aryanity, a neo-Nazi cult, and at first intended to create a west coast chapter of the group, per communications unearthed by the Southern California Research Club, an independent research cooperative monitoring far-right extremism in southern California. Large works mostly as a propagandist, creating Clockwork Crew�s insignia, including stock Neo-Nazi iconography, and plastering cities in Orange and Los Angeles counties with hateful stickers. Large also has made death threats against California state senator Scott Wiener.

The duo have drawn recruits from the broader far-right community, in particular the west coast chapters of the �White Lives Matter� network, another hate group affiliated with the broader �active club� nationalist movement. But Clockwork Crew has also made targeted efforts to recruit from within the military and the veterans community.

Among those recruits was Gunnar Naughton, a Kansas native and erstwhile civil war re-enactor who served in the Marine Corps� 1st Reconnaissance battalion as a sergeant until military authorities caught him and five other Marines stealing more than 10,000 rounds of ammunition and several grenades from a weapons depot at Camp Pendleton in the winter of 2021.

Naughton pled guilty to charges related to the theft in July 2021 and was dismissed from the Marine Corps after being demoted to Private. At his sentencing, Naughton claimed he was bullied by other Marines in 1st Recon and pressured into taking part in the ammunition theft.

Naughton first appeared in Clockwork Crew�s circles the following year, in July 2022. A month later, he used volunteer work in eastern Kentucky following lethal flooding there as an opportunity to spread white nationalist propaganda and proselytize for the group, according to posts to Clockwork Crew�s Telegram channel.

Ezra Liel, a 22-year-old from the central valley town of Turlock, who enlisted in the Army National Guard in 2021, is another Clockwork Crew member, according to his own social media history, photographs of his neo-Nazi tattoos posted to the group�s public channel and information obtained by the Southern California Research Club.

In Telegram group chats with members of other violent neo-fascist groups, including the Base, Liel has claimed he was once affiliated with the Atomwaffen Division, a defunct guerilla group involved in five murders and at least two bomb plots.

Liel has also posted photos of himself in a US army uniform toting a machine gun, as well as bare-chested snaps of his Black Sun and Valknut tattoos, both widely used amongst fascists. �I am an NCO [non-commissioned officer] and officers and lower enlisted decided to launch an investigation into me and essentially try to cancel me,� Liel wrote on January 25, 2023.

Photographs obtained by the Southern California Research Club show Liel participated in a Goyim Defense League march in Los Angeles and public training sessions publicised by Clockwork Crew on their Telegram account.

In other posts, Liel describes himself as an �open supporter of Azov�, the far-right Ukrainian social movement and volunteer regiment. Elsewhere, Liel mulls over volunteering for combat in Ukraine and discusses logistics about travel and enlisting in the Ukrainian military with other neo-Nazis.

Another member, social media sources show, is Jayde Milne, a former member of the Marine Corps reserve from Orange county who currently lives in the coastal city of Oxnard. Milne, who has been dipping in and out of the skinhead scene in California, was released from the Marine Corps reserve in 2020 and often refers to his military experience in group chats. Milne appears in the earliest propaganda video shot by Clockwork Crew in 2021.

Several members of the Golden State Skinheads have also turned up in Clockwork Crew�s internal communications, including John Gahagan, a Fresno resident from a family immersed in California�s white supremacist culture, Jonathan Court, a Golden State Skinhead who is also a recruiter for the Asatru Folk Assembly, a neo-Nazi pagan group, and Will Planer, a Golden State Skinhead who was convicted of felony assault for knocking a counter protester unconscious with a pole at the 2016 Sacramento melee.

Wadaa, Large, Naughton, Liel, Gahagan, Milne, Court and Planer did not respond to a request for comment.

Far-right extremists have long been a problem in the modern US military, from race riots and Ku Klux Klan demonstrations on bases during the Vietnam war through Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh�s troubled service in the army�s First Infantry division. The Marine Corps is no exception, with dozens of members brought up on disciplinary charges related to far-right views and actions in recent years. Last month, the Boston Globe found at least 82 current and former military service members immersed in far-right ideology were arrested over the past five years. This month, the Globe documented the involvement of at least 10 army and marine veterans in NSC-131, a growing New England white nationalist street-fighting group with connections to Patriot Front and other active clubs � including the Clockwork Crew.

To this day, commanders and military judges struggle with how to address radicalization in the ranks. Since Joe Biden took office, the Department of Defense has taken public steps to recognize that far-right radicalization is having a major impact on rank and file discipline. In a February 2021 address to the military, Lloyd Austin, the defense secretary, condemned rightwing extremism as �views and conduct that run counter to everything we believe in and can actually tear at the fabric of who we are as an institution�.

�I�ve seen this before � I�ve lived through it as a soldier and as a commander,� Austin said in his remarks. �It�s not new to our country and sadly, it�s not new to our military.�

However, the changes since put in place have not been evaluated and have been criticised for being insufficiently rigorous. Meanwhile, hard-right politicians like Alabama senator Tommy Tuberville have attacked efforts seeking to root out white nationalists.

Kris Goldsmith, an army veteran who researches far-right extremism in the military and veteran community, said that veterans and active duty soldiers are targeted by far-right groups as a guaranteed way to lend credibility to those organizations. �People who are in the military, who�ve served in the military, are team players and valuable members of teams,� Goldsmith said. �We are mission oriented, and a veteran�s involvement lends status to organisations we join that can influence civilians in ways that other demographic groups cannot.�

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/aug/14/revealed-neo-nazi-active-club-us-military-members

# ¿ Aug 14, 2023 14:42

Unless: Jul 24, 2005; I art

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/22/charles-haywood-claremont-institute-sacr-far-right

quote:

The founder and sponsor of a far-right network of secretive, men-only, invitation-only fraternal lodges in the US is a former industrialist who has frequently speculated about his future as a warlord after the collapse of America, a Guardian investigation has found.

Federal and state tax and company filings show that the Society for American Civic Renewal (SACR) and its creator, Charles Haywood, also have financial ties with the far-right Claremont Institute.

SACR�s most recent IRS filing names Haywood as the national organization�s principal officer. Other filings identify three lodges in Idaho � in Boise, Coeur d�Alene and Moscow � and another in Dallas, Texas.

SACR�s public-facing presence is confined to a slick one-page website advertising the organization�s goal as �civilizational renaissance�, and a society �with strong leadership committed to family and culture�.

The site claims SACR is �raising accountable leaders to help build thriving communities of free citizens� who will rebuild �the frontier-conquering spirit of America�. It condemns �those who rule today�, saying that they �corrupt the sinews of America�, �[alienate] men from family, community, and God� and promising to �counter and conquer this poison�.

It also prominently features SACR�s cross-like insignia or �mark� which it describes variously as symbolizing �sword and shield� and the rejection of �Modernist philosophies and heresies�.

Finally, the site advises that SACR membership �is organized primarily around local groups overseen by a national superstructure� and �is by invitation only�, offering an email address for those �interested in learning more�.

The Guardian emailed the website contact address from a pseudonymous address but received no response.

Heidi Beirich is co-founder of the Global Project on Hate and Extremism and an expert of the far right. She characterized the rhetoric on the website as �palingenetic ultranationalism�, a feature of fascism that proposes a revolution as a means of national rebirth.

Haywood has become more active and prominent as a blogger and commentator on the far-right podcast circuit since selling his solely-owned Indianapolis-based shampoo manufacturing company, Mansfield-King, to a competitor for an undisclosed price in September 2020.

On his personal website, The Worthy House, where he styles himself �Maximum Leader�, Haywood has written that the sale made him �rich beyond the dreams of avarice and looking to cause trouble�. Mansfield-King was reportedly �on track to do $45m in revenue� in the year before its sale.

He has featured on Claremont Institute podcasts like The American Mind and shows run by Claremont Institute staffers and alumni, like the New Founding podcast. He has also written for Claremont�s website, The American Mind.

Indiana company records show that Haywood incorporated SACR as a domestic nonprofit in Indiana on 22 July 2020, just ahead of the sale of his company. IRS records show that on SACR was approved as a nonprofit fraternal organization�with provision to create subsidiary lodges�under section 501(c)(10) of the Internal Revenue code.

The organization�s structure, aims, and apparent secrecy are striking in the light of some of the ideas Haywood has promoted in articles on The Worthy House website.

One idea he has repeatedly raised on the website is that he might serve as a �warlord� at the head of an �armed patronage network� or �APN�, defined as an �organizing device in conditions where central authority has broken down� in which the warlord�s responsibility is �the short- and long-term protection, military and otherwise, of those who recognize his authority and act, in part, at his behest�.

The �possibilities involving violence� that APNs might face, Haywood writes include �more-or-less open warfare with the federal government, or some subset or remnant of it�.

Further on, Haywood writes: �At this moment I preside over what amounts to a extended, quite sizeable, compound, which when complete I like to say, accurately, will be impervious to anything but direct organized military attack�, adding that �it requires a group of men to make it work� what I call �shooters��say fifteen able-bodied, and adequately trained, men.�

These �shooters�, Haywood explains, �can operate my compound, both defensively and administratively�, meanwhile, �I have the personality, and skills, to lead such a group.�

Haywood was one of the first on the right to try to rehabilitate the rioters who stormed the US Capitol on 6 January 2021. Just over two months after that incident, he praised it as an �electoral justice protest�, commenting that �the Protest was pretty awesome in every way. Its most precise analog in American history� is the Boston Tea Party.�

The Guardian requested comment from Haywood via text message and email after attempting to contact him via telephone but received no response.

Laura K Field is a political theorist and a senior fellow at the Washington DC based thinktank the Niskanen Center who has written and spoken extensively about the �reactionary conservatism� of the Claremont Institute and those in its milieu.

In a telephone conversation, Field said that �some of the Claremont Institute�s leaders have taken on an apocalyptic view of America and think we�re already in a situation where our society is more conflict-ridden than we were before the civil war�.

Their fears of �unyielding technocratic tyranny� mean that some in Claremont circles have been �dabbling in talk of secession for years�, and �believe they need to use whatever they might need, including paramilitaries�.

Haywood�s ideas have seen him characterized as an extremist even by others on the far right including former American Conservative columnist Rod Dreher, who wrote last December that Haywood was �seriously, batshit crazy� and characterized him as writing from a �Midwestern F�hrerbunker�.

State and federal tax filings, however, indicate that Haywood has succeeded in attracting men to help him build a network in line with his ideas. Although there is no public membership list available, federal and state filings from regional lodges identify their officers along with those who initially incorporated each lodge.

In particular, Skyler Kressin of Coeur d�Alene, Idaho, appears to serve a key role in SACR. Idaho and Texas company records show that Kressin incorporated lodges in Boise, Coeur d�Alene and Dallas; serves as a director of the Couer d�Alene and Dallas lodges; and was named as the principal officer of the parent organization on its 2020-2021 tax return.

Like other members revealed as officers in the filings, Kressin appears to be an affluent professional working as a tax accountant.

The Guardian emailed a request for comment to Kressin but received no response.

According to tax records Haywood has funded SACR through his Howdy Doody Good Times foundation, for which he and his wife, Alison Murphy, are both listed as directors. In the 2020-2021 tax year the foundation gave $30,000 to SACR, followed by $10,000 the following year, according to its 990 filings.

Further funding for SACR was provided by the Claremont Institute, which gave $26,248 in 2021 in one of only two grants the organization distributed that year, per its own IRS filings.

In another indication of what appears to be a mutually supportive relationship, Haywood�s foundation contributed $50,000 to the Claremont Institute in 2020-2021.

The Guardian emailed Claremont media spokesperson David Bahr inviting comment.

On Haywood�s sponsorship of SACR and his Claremont ties, Field, the political theorist, said: �What�s creepy about the local-level stuff is that this country has a history of local autocracy � the way they�re acting undermines the rule of law.�

# ¿ Aug 22, 2023 16:20

Unless: Jul 24, 2005; I art

Weka posted:

Unless, why are you so concerned with these relative nobodies instead of the most powerful people in America? Both are right wing and it's the second group who are responsible for millions of deaths.

i think it�s myopic and ineffectual to lump both american parties together

the bush years woulda been vastly different if the supreme court ruled different in bush v. gore, added bonus of shaping policy that accepted anthropocentric climate change 23 years ago

friends of mine have been shot at in their homes by these people

# ¿ Aug 24, 2023 11:31

Unless: Jul 24, 2005; I art

my bony fealty posted:

its funny that one has only to look at the years 2008 - 2016 to see how dogshit wrong this is

im sorry what happened in 2008

# ¿ Aug 24, 2023 19:38

Unless: Jul 24, 2005; I art

my bony fealty posted:

Muslim takeover of America

i missed it

i coulda sworn bush was president all year

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dw_USyFqFMY

lol @ that youtube news video being older than your regdate

# ¿ Aug 25, 2023 01:58