TWO DECADES OF GOP ATTACKS
Nancy Pelosi Was a Target of Misogyny and Threats. That Turned Into Violence
, Bloomberg News
(Bloomberg) -- The attack at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s home this week underscored the potential for violence from the escalating threats and misogyny directed at the California Democrat in recent years.
Threats against members of Congress have been on the rise, according to data from the US Capitol Police. But the hundreds of criminal prosecutions stemming from the Jan. 6 attack as lawmakers met to certify President Joe Biden’s election win offered a new perspective on the depth of hostility and threatening rhetoric specifically directed at Pelosi.
Police who responded to Pelosi’s home early Friday found her husband, Paul Pelosi, 82, in a struggle with an intruder, according to San Francisco Police Chief William Scott. Police said the suspect, David DePape, 42, of Berkeley, California, struck Paul Pelosi in the head and body before being subdued and will face charges of attempted homicide, assault with a deadly weapon and elder abuse.
Scott told reporters a motive was under investigation, but a person familiar with the investigation said that the intruder had shouted “Where is Nancy, where is Nancy?” before attacking her husband. Using the research site DomainTools.com, Bloomberg News found several websites registered to a David DePape that railed against the government and technology giants, and espoused far-right conspiracy theories. Blog posts took aim at immigrants, “climate hysteria” and feminists, among other targets.
Elected officials who serve as the public faces of their political parties unsurprisingly tend to bear the brunt of criticism -- and, sometimes, threats -- from their opponents. A November 2020 report from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace identified an “overwhelming amount of online abuse, harassment, and gendered defamation” that women in politics face at higher rates compared to their male counterparts.
Political scientists and extremism experts have been raising the alarm about the evolution of violent speech to violent acts as political polarization in the US deepened during former President Donald Trump’s time in office and since the 2020 election.
Pelosi had been the target of political vitriol through the years, but the prosecutions of Jan. 6 rioters driven by Trump’s baseless election fraud claims show the degree to which the 82-year-old House speaker has become a singular focus of right-wing anger.
Federal prosecutors, in charging papers and other court filings, describe rioters searching for Pelosi as they entered the Capitol and shouting that they were “coming for” her as they tried to get past law enforcement into the House chamber. One woman allegedly demanded that police bring Pelosi out so the mob could “hang that f---ing bitch.”
A North Carolina man brought guns and ammunition to Washington on Jan. 6 and texted a relative the following day that he was thinking of going to see Pelosi speak “and putting a bullet in her noggin on Live TV.” He’s serving more than two years in prison after taking a plea deal.
Earlier this year, jurors in federal court in Washington heard how a Texas militia member convicted of bringing a firearm to the Capitol on Jan. 6 told people around him about wanting to drag Pelosi down the steps of the Capitol “by her ankles.”
A Pennsylvania woman who pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor offense for illegally demonstrating at the Capitol admitted filming a selfie-style video in which she said, “We were looking for Nancy to shoot her in the frickin’ brain but we didn’t find her.”
Arkansas man Richard Barnett is set to go to trial later this year on a mix of felony and misdemeanor charges that accuse him of illegally going into the Capitol with a weapon. A photo of him sitting in Pelosi’s office with his foot on a desk was widely shared on social media. Prosecutors quoted a video that appeared to show him bragging about leaving a hand-written note referring to Pelosi with an obscenity and featured a photograph of the note in court filings.
Pelosi has a protective detail because of her position, but many members of Congress do not. Asked about any special security measures taken to protect Pelosi and her family after Jan. 6, a spokesperson for the US Capitol Police said in an email that, “For safety reasons, the USCP does not discuss potential security measures.”
©2022 Bloomberg L.P.
PAUL PELOSI ATTACK
Blog posts under the name David DePape contain references
DAILY HIVE
BY OCTOBER 29, 2022
Paul Pelosi and Nancy Pelosi attend the TIME 100 Gala Red Carpet at Jazz at Lincoln Center on April 23, 2019 in Manhattan, New York.
The man charged with attempted homicide for striking House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband in the head with a hammer had posted about QAnon conspiracy theories, including disinformation about election results, the Holocaust, and space aliens, amongst other topics.
According to Rolling Stone, in blog posts, the accused man, David DePape, wrote screeds that questioned the legitimacy of the Holocaust, climate change, and the 2020 election results, and also had sections dedicated to transphobia, racism and misogyny. Although Facebook deleted the post on Friday, he also posted similar content regarding conspiracy theories on the platform.
AP reported that DePape wrote a blog entry in August titled “Q,” which included references to QAnon and memes about deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Another August post featured his views on gun rights: “You no longer have rights. Your basic human rights hinder Big Brother's ability to enslave and control you in a complete and totalizing way.”
The 42-year-old attacked 82-year-old Paul Pelosi at the couple’s San Francisco home. He apparently asked Paul Pelosi, “Where is Nancy? Where is Nancy?” before hitting him in the head with a hammer. Pelosi suffered a skull fracture, and underwent a “successful surgery.” Pelosi somehow managed to call 911 before the attack, allowing the police to arrive in time to prevent further injury.
Speaker Pelosi was in Washington, D.C. on the night of the attack.
Gene DePape, David’s stepfather said, that although he hasn’t seen his stepson since 2003: “David was never violent that I seen and was never in any trouble although he was very reclusive and played too much video games.”
A number of Republicans were quick to blame Democrats and President Joe Biden for the attack. After Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) tweeted that violence “shouldn’t happen to Paul Pelosi. It shouldn’t happen to innocent Americans. It shouldn’t happen to me,” Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) said that she made the attack about her and added, “YOU called for Nancy Pelosi to be executed.”
Pelosi's status as GOP campaign-ad villain
faces new scrutiny after violent home
invasion
The speaker has headlined Republican attacks for almost
as long as she's led House Democrats — a political truism
her party is lamenting after her husband's assault.
Republicans have targeted Pelosi, among the highest-ranking women ever to serve in U.S. government, during election cycle after election cycle. | Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photo
By SARAH FERRIS and JEREMY B. WHITE
10/29/2022
Over Nancy Pelosi’s nearly two dozen years leading House Democrats, she’s played another consistent role: one of the GOP’s favorite political villains.
Republicans have targeted Pelosi, among the highest-ranking women ever to serve in U.S. government, during election cycle after election cycle. Ahead of the 2010 tea party wave election that swept the GOP to the House majority, the Republican National Committee remade its website with a “Fire Pelosi” theme that depicted her in flames. Even from the minority in 2018, she starred in dozens of GOP spots that sought to link her to vulnerable Democratic candidates.
And that hasn’t changed in what could be her final year leading the caucus. Less than two weeks before the Nov. 8 election, Pelosi remains a fixture in Republican attack ads airing in districts from Montana to Wisconsin to Pennsylvania. Many of the ads cast her as the “liberal elite,” criticizing her for “lying” or working with Biden to “destroy” the country.
“Biden and Pelosi are breaking our country,” the narrator reads in a House GOP ad promoting their candidate, Ryan Zinke, in Montana’s newly created 2nd District. Another ad from the House GOP campaign arm blasted Democratic candidate Eric Sorensen in Illinois for being “in Pelosi’s pocket” and “in lockstep with her costly liberal agenda.”
However, the GOP’s laser focus on Pelosi, while hardly a new phenomenon, is drawing new criticism in the wake of the violent assault on her husband early Friday morning. The assailant, whose online activity was steeped in conspiracy and baseless allegations about the 2020 election, had been specifically searching for the speaker, according to law enforcement officials — calling out “Where’s Nancy?”
Hillary Clinton, no stranger to Pelosi’s mantle as GOP target, tweeted Saturday: “The Republican Party and its mouthpieces now regularly spread hate and deranged conspiracy theories. It is shocking, but not surprising, that violence is the result. As citizens, we must hold them accountable for their words and the actions that follow.”
An array of top Republicans has sharply condemned the Pelosi home invasion, making clear that it was unacceptable criminal behavior. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who has traveled the country campaigning for House Republicans, said: “We can have our political differences, but violence is always wrong & unacceptable.”
But as Democratic lawmakers decry GOP political rhetoric with a new fierceness, the attack on Paul Pelosi is becoming the latest inflection point in an American political discourse that’s grown exponentially coarser since Republicans first embraced Nancy Pelosi as an attack-ad bogeywoman. While both parties regularly demonize their opponents in campaign messaging — Democrats hammering former President Donald Trump, as well as House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) — the speaker has occupied an arguably unique position.
Greene, for one, got stripped of her committee assignments by Democrats last year after social media posts surfaced showing the Georgia Republican liking a Facebook comment that called for Pelosi’s assassination.
Pelosi’s fellow Democrats insist that the focus on her goes too far in a political world now defined by the Jan. 6 Capitol siege by Trump supporters. Rioters that day also chanted Pelosi’s name as they walked through the building they had invaded, and some eventually ransacked her office. It was later reported that some of those who broke into the Capitol that day had intended to seriously harm the speaker, who is second in line to the presidency.
The attack horrified California state senator Scott Wiener, a San Francisco Democrat, but he said it was “completely and utterly predictable” given the endless demonization of Pelosi by Republican politicians, conservative media and social media trolls.
“We have an entire right-wing machine dedicated to promoting conspiracy theories, to brainwashing people, and to directing their anger towards specific leaders including Nancy Pelosi,” Wiener said. “That machine led directly to this attack.”
Wiener added that he has faced intensifying acrimony in recent years, including a death threat specific enough that the man making it was convicted of multiple felonies last month. He attributed that to the “mass delusion” of election denial and to proliferating online toxicity that has seeped into the Republican Party.
“QAnon doesn’t necessarily exist anymore, but QAnon is now part of the DNA of the Republican Party,” Wiener said. “The big establishment forces in the Republican Party,” he added, “they created this monster.”
Democrats have already emphasized what they call rising, dangerous GOP extremism in some of their own hotly contested midterm races. The House Democratic campaign arm has centered its message on so-called pro-Trump “MAGA Republicans,” pointing to candidates who have supported right-wing conspiracy theories or showed up for at least some of the Jan. 6 events designed to protest congressional certification of Trump’s loss.
White reported from San Francisco.
Terror experts: Hate speech and online
extremism fed Pelosi attack
Reuters
October 29, 2022
By Heather Timmons
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The frequent targeting of U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi by online extremists and political opponents likely contributed to the violent attack on her husband Paul, terrorism and extremism experts said.
The intruder at the Pelosis' home yelled "Where's Nancy?" before assaulting Paul Pelosi with a hammer, according to a person briefed on the incident. An internet user with the same name as the man arrested at the scene, David Depape, expressed support for former President Donald Trump and embraced the cult-like conspiracy theory QAnon in online posts that referenced "satanic paedophilia."
Police have yet to comment on a motive in the attack.
But terrorism and extremism experts believe it could be an example of the growing threat of so-called stochastic terrorism, in which sometimes unstable individuals are inspired to violence by hate speech and scenarios they see online and hear echoed by public figures.
"This was clearly a targeted attack. The purpose was to locate and potentially harm the speaker of the house," said John Cohen, a former counterterrorism coordinator and head of intelligence at the Department of Homeland Security, who is currently working with state and local law enforcement across the country on the issue.
"This is a continuation of a trend that we have been experiencing over the past several years. It is a threat dynamic that has law enforcement extraordinarily concerned."
Pelosi has been demonized online and in public by both far right and far left-leaning political websites and figures. Graphics depicting her being beheaded, and a call to send immigrants to her home, with her address, circulated online this summer, according to Site Intelligence Group, which researches online extremism.
Rita Katz, executive director of Site, said the Speaker was a hate figure for much of the political right, and is the "face of the Democratic establishment and, as such, at the center of many QAnon-adjacent conspiracy theories."
Those theories and people who espouse them are sometimes promoted by more mainstream public figures, amplifying the threats, experts say.
"While the intent may be to mobilize one's political base or generate ratings it also adds to the volatility of the threat environment," said Cohen.
Individual attackers, sometimes known as "lone wolves" frequently combine personal with political grievances and are reinforced and radicalized by things they read online, the DOJ's research arm The National Institute of Justice reports.
Attacks on political figures, places of worship and races or ethnicities have occurred in the United States for decades, but law enforcement professionals say the current environment is particularly dangerous.
"Today's radical extremism threat has this powerful digital component that can really accelerate recruitment and activate violence across a broader threat landscape," Aisha Qureshi, a social science analyst at the National Institute, said in an agency podcast before the Pelosi attack.
"Just the sheer volume and speed of misinformation spread through social media really exacerbates this problem," she said.
Threats against political leaders are rising in the United States. Cases related to "concerning statements and threats" against members of Congress jumped from 3,939 in 2017 to 9,625 in 2021, according to the U.S. Capitol Police.
"Look at the FBI attack in Ohio," said Todd Helmus, a senior behavioral scientist at security research firm Rand Corp., referring to an August incident when an armed man tried to break into the Cincinnati FBI headquarters.
Helmus linked that incident to rhetoric surrounding the FBI's removal of classified documents from Trump's Florida estate. Site said the Pelosi attack was being celebrated online by far-right supporters.
"We're just waiting for more of these things to occur," said Helmus.
(Reporting by Heather Timmons; Editing by Daniel Wallis)
A pig's head. Graffiti. Dayslong protests. Nancy Pelosi's
A police officer stands outside the home of Paul Pelosi, the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in San Francisco, Friday, Oct. 28, 2022. | Godofredo A. Vásquez/AP Photo
By JEREMY B. WHITE
10/29/2022
SAN FRANCISCO — The hilly San Francisco neighborhood where House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband was attacked has long been a magnet for tourists, celebrities, billionaires — and political protests.
Pacific Heights, one of the ritziest sections of one of the wealthiest cities in America, has commanding views of the San Francisco Bay and homes valued in the tens of millions of dollars. But the presence of Nancy Pelosi has attracted unwanted attention many times over the years.
Her address was hardly a secret long before Friday’s predawn attack, when police say a 42-year-old man whose online history suggests an obsession with delusional conspiracies broke into the speaker’s home and struck her husband with a hammer. Paul Pelosi, 82, was hospitalized with serious injuries but expected to recover.
Just days before the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, protesters defaced Pelosi’s mansion with spray paint and left a pig’s head out front, apparently angry about the size of a coronavirus stimulus package. Later that year, activists stuck an eviction notice at her door calling for an extension of a federal eviction moratorium.
In 2007, anti-war demonstrators held a dayslong vigil outside her home to denounce the war in Iraq.
On Friday morning, San Francisco Police Chief William Scott told reporters that officers arrived at the house early that morning and found suspect David DePape and Paul Pelosi grappling over a hammer, which DePape then used to strike Pelosi.
Nancy Pelosi was in Washington at the time of the attack, but DePape allegedly called out “Where’s Nancy?” after breaking into the home through the back, echoing a chant used by Jan. 6 Capitol rioters.
Scott emphasized that the Capitol Police have primary responsibility for protecting the speaker. But he condemned violence against elected officials and their loved ones.
“Their families don’t sign up for this, to be harmed,” Scott said. “It’s wrong.”
By Saturday morning, Pelosi’s block no longer resembled an active crime scene. The police tape had come down, and a single police cruiser remained. But neighbors were still processing what had happened.
Interior designer Natalie Loggins has become accustomed over the years to Pelosi’s presence attracting protests. She saw the anti-war protesters and heard about the severed pig’s head. A break-in and assault, she said, were of an entirely different magnitude.
“It goes way far and beyond to break in and to actually hurt someone,” Loggins said, adding she was “really disgusted, of course, that there could be this type of violence against elected officials and their family.”
Researchers and elected officials argue the tenor of the animosity directed toward Pelosi has become darker and more dangerous as she has become a symbol of national Democrats. They say political attacks on Pelosi have fed into extremist hatred.
Brian Levin, who leads the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino said in an interview that he has tracked “a real toxic brew that is different from what it was like even in recent years,” with conspiracy theorists, often stoked by social media, directing their ire toward an “intertwined, attached set of villains” in public life. Pelosi figures prominently among them.
“Now we’re seeing eliminationist language,” Levin said. “It’s not just, ‘Nancy Pelosi has failed policies, don’t make America like San Francisco. Now it’s: ‘Nancy Pelosi and her ilk are existential enemies who must be eliminated.’”
While DePape does not explicitly mention Pelosi in a pair of websites, his writing suggests he has marinated in a toxic stew of online conspiracy theories like the QAnon narrative that a powerful cabal of elites — often including Pelosi — is abusing children.
Only the GOP Celebrates Political Violence
David Frum: “There’s nothing partisan about political violence in America… But if both Republicans and Democrats, left and right, suffer political violence, the same cannot be said of those who celebrate political violence. That’s not a ‘both sides’ affair in 2020s America.”
“You don’t see Democratic House members wielding weapons in videos and threatening to shoot candidates who want to cut capital-gains taxes or slow the growth of Medicare. Democratic candidates for Senate do not post video fantasies of hunting and executing political rivals, or of using a firearm to discipline their children’s romantic partners. It’s not because of Democratic members that Speaker Nancy Pelosi installed metal detectors to bar firearms from the floor of the House. No Democratic equivalent exists of Donald Trump, who regularly praises and encourages violence as a normal tool of politics, most recently against his own party’s Senate leader, Mitch McConnell.”
AMERICAN LIBERTARIAN CONSPIRACY FREEK
(ITS A FRISCO THING)
Suspect in assault at Nancy Pelosi home
posted about QAnon
AP
By MICHAEL BIESECKER and BERNARD CONDON
29 Oct, 2022
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David DePape, right, records the nude wedding of Gypsy Taub outside City Hall in San Francisco in December 2013. DePape is accused of breaking into US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's California home and severely beating her husband with a hammer. DePape was known in Berkeley, California, as a pro-nudity activist. Photo / AP
The man accused of breaking into House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s California home and severely beating her husband with a hammer appears to have made racist and often rambling posts online, including some that questioned the results of the 2020 election, defended former President Donald Trump and echoed QAnon conspiracy theories.
David DePape, 42, grew up in Powell River, British Columbia, before leaving about 20 years ago to follow an older girlfriend to San Francisco. A street address listed for DePape in the Bay Area college town of Berkeley led to a post office box at a UPS Store.
DePape was arrested at the Pelosi home yesterday (NZ time).
San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said she expected to file multiple felony charges, including attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, burglary and elder abuse.
Stepfather Gene DePape said the suspect had lived with him in Canada until he was 14 and had been a quiet boy.
“David was never violent that I seen and was never in any trouble although he was very reclusive and played too much video games,” Gene DePape said.
He said he hadn’t seen his stepson since 2003 and tried to get in touch with him several times over the years without success.
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“In 2007, I tried to get in touch but his girlfriend hung up on me when I asked to talk to him,” Gene DePape said.
David DePape was known in Berkeley as a pro-nudity activist who had picketed naked at protests against local ordinances requiring people to be clothed in public.
Gene DePape said the girlfriend whom his son followed to California was named Gypsy and they had two children together. DePape also has a child with a different woman, his stepfather said.
Photographs published by The San Francisco Chronicle identified DePape frolicking nude outside city hall with dozens of others at the 2013 wedding of pro-nudity activist Gypsy Taub, who was marrying another man. Taub did not respond Friday to calls or emails.
A 2013 article in The Chronicle described David DePape as a “hemp jewellery maker” who lived in a Victorian flat in Berkeley with Taub, who hosted a talk show on local public-access TV called “Uncensored 9/11”, in which she appeared naked and pushed conspiracy theories that the 2001 terrorist attacks were “an inside job”.
A pair of web blogs posted in recent months online under the name David DePape contained rants about technology, aliens, communists, religious minorities and global elites.
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An August 24 entry titled “Q” displayed a scatological collection of memes that included photos of the deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and made reference to QAnon, the baseless pro-Trump conspiracy theory that espouses the belief the country is run by a deep state cabal of child sex traffickers, satanic paedophiles and baby-eating cannibals.
“Big Brother has deemed doing your own research as a thought crime,” read a post that appeared to blend references to QAnon with George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984”.
In an August 25 entry titled “Gun Rights”, the poster wrote: “You no longer have rights. Your basic human rights hinder Big Brothers ability to enslave and control you in a complete and totalizing way [sic].”
The web hosting service WordPress removed one of the sites on Friday afternoon for violating its terms of service.
On a different site, someone posting under DePape’s name repeated false claims about Covid vaccines and wearing masks, questioned whether climate change is real and displayed an illustration of a zombified Hillary Clinton dining on human flesh.
There appeared to be no direct posts about Pelosi, but there were entries defending former President Donald Trump and Ye, the rapper formally known as Kayne West who recently made antisemitic comments.
In other posts, the writer said Jews helped finance Hitler’s political rise in Germany and suggested an antisemitic plot was involved in Russia’s recent invasion of Ukraine.
In a September 27 post, the writer said any journalists who denied Trump’s false claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election “should be dragged straight out into the street and shot”.
Both Sides Should At Least Agree on
This Basic Principle: Murder Is Not OK
By Dustin Rowles | Politics | October 29, 2022 |
We didn’t write about the attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi yesterday. We are not a breaking news site; we are a commentary site, and the commentary surrounding this attack was both ghastly and predictable, just as the attack itself was both ghastly and predictable. It took no time at all for Fox News to minimize the attack; for Caitlyn Jenner to blame the violence of San Francisco; for the right to chalk it up to a crazed loon acting alone.
He may have been crazed, and he may have been acting alone, but it’s only because he’s been radicalized by a Republican party steeped in conspiracy. He may have acted alone, but he did so with the implicit permission of the tens of thousands who advocate this brand of political violence. TFG is out of office, but it’s not getting better. It’s getting worse. I don’t know where it stops. A lawmaker will be killed, and I doubt that will change anything, either, because the person who commits the assassination — regardless of how extreme he has been radicalized by elected officials or the top cable news channel in the country — will still be characterized as acting alone. Things are bad, and I would expect them to get worse over the next 12 days, and maybe thereafter, too.
I know there are thousands of liberals who would probably celebrate the deaths of certain Republican public officials (or Supreme Court justices), but at least Democratic politicians aren’t encouraging it, at least our media echo chambers do not advocate political violence.
All the same, I think it’s incumbent upon the entire media infrastructure — from Fox News to the Daily Kos — to at the very least say, “Hey! Murder is not OK.” It’s not OK to kill Nancy Pelosi, and — no matter how much you might detest him — it’s not OK to kill Mitch McConnell, either. Vote. Protest. March. Get so angry that your teeth crack from grinding. But don’t murder.
Jake Tapper — of all people — says it best here.
“We’re at a moment right now of extreme polarization, where calls for violence are leading to actual violence. We cannot pretend that these are all isolated, fringe events. There are people in mainstream accepted society - elected officials, TV anchors, others - who have been creating a permission structure that is helping to open the door to this violence, a permission structure created when they dehumanize opponents or smear them, or belittle or make light of acts or threats of violence against their perceived foes or spread conspiracy theories.”
We don’t need to offer examples of those permission structures — we see them every day on Fox News, on social media, from the former President of the United States. We know exactly who Tapper is talking about. I don’t know how to make it stop, but we should at least speak out against it.
While discussing hammer assault on Paul Pelosi, CONSERVATIVE PODCASTER Chris Plante plays The Beatles' Maxwell's Silver Hammers, sings “made sure she was dead”
PUBLISHED
CHRIS PLANTE (HOST): The break-in was, according to a police sergeant in San Francisco, at 2:27 a.m. – 2:27 a.m. California time, of course. And there is video of the break-in. So that probably rules out being invited in then, and all that.
...
But there's video of the break-in at 2:27 a.m., according to a San Francisco police sergeant. Alright. We got that going for us. That's the – that's the thing. And it does look like Nancy has an alibi, but that doesn't mean – I know. I kid. I kid. I just kid. Womp, womp, womp. Bang, bang. Maxwell's silver hammer.
THE RIGHT CLAIMS IT WAS THE LEFT THAT ATTACKED PAUL PELOSI
Pelosi attack suspect David DePape was a psychotic homeless addict estranged from his pedophile lover & their children
Leading politicians blamed the political right for the brutal attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul.
“This is despicable,” said President Biden. He noted that the alleged attacker, David DePape, 42, shouted the same line, “Where’s Nancy?” as the supporters of Donald Trump, who stormed the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. “And what makes us think that one party can talk about stolen elections?” said Biden. “COVID being a hoax? It’s all a bunch of lies.”
California political leaders agreed. “This heinous assault is yet another example of the dangerous consequences of the divisive and hateful rhetoric that is putting lives at risk and undermining our very democracy and democratic institutions,” said California Gov. Gavin Newsom. “This attack,” said San Francisco’s state Sen. Scott Weiner, “is terrifying and the direct result of toxic right-wing rhetoric.”
Journalists, en masse, agreed with their assessment. DePape “appears to have made racist and often rambling posts online,” noted AP, in a report that encapsulated the media narrative, “including some that questioned the results of the 2020 election, defended former President Donald Trump and echoed QAnon conspiracy theories.”
But DePape’s politics have little rhyme or reason. In past years DePape shared a post about Stephen Colbert’s 2006 roast of President George W. Bush at the White House Correspondents dinner; linked to videos of Disney films altered to make it look like the characters were swearing; and claimed, “Jesus is the anti-Christ” — not exactly a litany of right-wing tropes.
And, as I soon discovered, DePape lived with a notorious local nudist in a Berkeley home, complete with a Black Lives Matter sign in the window and an LGBT rainbow flag, emblazoned with a marijuana symbol, hanging from a tree. A closer look reveals the characteristics of a homeless encampment, or what Europeans call “an open drug scene.” In the driveway, there is a broken-down camper van. On the street is a yellow school bus, which neighbors said DePape occasionally stayed in. Both are filled with garbage typical of such structures in homeless encampments. People come and go from the house and the vehicles, neighbors say, in part to partake in the use of a potent psychedelic drug, ibogaine.
Neighbors described DePape as a homeless addict with politics that was, until recently, left-wing, but of secondary importance to his psychotic and paranoid behavior.
“What I know about the family is that they’re very radical activists,” said one of DePape’s neighbors, a woman who only gave her first name, Trish. “They seem very left. They are all about the Black Lives Matter movement. Gay pride. But they’re very detached from reality. They have called the cops on several of the neighbors, including us, claiming that we are plotting against them. It’s really weird to see that they are willing to be so aggressive toward somebody else who is also a lefty.”
Not all of the news media missed DePape’s history of drug use, psychosis, and homelessness. CNN reported that a woman named Laura Hayes, who said she worked with DePape 10 years ago making hemp bracelets, said he had been living in a storage shed. “He talks to angels,” she said, and told her that “there will be a hard time coming.”
Another woman, Linda Schneider, told CNN and Bay Area NBC TV affiliate, KRON4, that she got to know DePape around 2014 and that he was still homeless, living in a storage unit, and using hard drugs. “He [was] likely a mindless follower of something he saw on social media because I don’t think he had the courage to be part of any political or terrorist group,” said Schneider. “His drug use began again and he went off his rocker.”
But much of the rest of the news media, particularly local journalists who could have interviewed DePape’s neighbors, were swept up in the narrative that DePape was more like John Wilkes Booth, the fanatical but sane assassin of Abraham Lincoln, than John Hinkley, Jr., the mentally ill man who shot Ronald Reagan. DePape is much more like one of the hundreds of psychotic homeless people I’ve interviewed in recent years than the fanatical climate ideologues who I’ve been writing about in recent weeks.
Wrapped up in their own obsession with Trump Republicans, most journalists have missed the real story. David DePape is not a microcosm of the political psychosis gripping America in general. Rather, he’s a microcosm of the drug-induced psychosis gripping the West Coast in particular.
Drugs, Paranoia, and Pedophilia
I visited the Berkeley house where DePape had lived with his former lover, Oxane “Gypsy” Taub, 53, a charismatic Russian immigrant 11 years David’s senior. DePape appears to have fallen under the spell of Taub around 2003, when DePape was a quiet, video game-obsessed 21-year-old in Powell River, a town of 14,000 people that is a four-hour drive up the coast of British Columbia from Vancouver.
A Nov. 27, 2008, article in the Oakland Tribune said Taub and DePape were married with three children. But DePape’s stepfather, Gene, told AP yesterday that Taub was his stepson’s girlfriend, not wife; that David and Taub had two, not three, children together; and that David’s third child was with another woman.
The article, which carried the headline, “Need is great on Thanksgiving Day in the East Bay,” described Taub, Pape, and their three children eating Thanksgiving dinner with the homeless. Taub told the reporter that they were there for the community, not because they couldn’t afford to eat at home.
Taub was in the news again five years later when she, then 44, married a 20-year-old man, Jamyz Smith, naked, at City Hall in San Francisco. A photo in the December 16, 2013, edition of The San Francisco Chronicle shows DePape, Taub, Smith, and the three children huddled under a blanket watching television together. The caption describes DePape as “a family friend.” As in The Oakland Tribune article, the focus was on Taub, with no quotes from DePape
DePape filming Gypsy Taub at her City Hall wedding in San Francisco on Dec. 19, 2013.
Michael Short / San Francisco Chronicle / Polar
DePape and Taub have two children together.
San Francisco Chronicle / Polaris
The episode was typical of the chaos that swirled around DePape during the years leading up to his alleged attack on Paul Pelosi.
Michael Shellenberger is the best-selling author of “San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities.”
Meaghan Ellis, AlterNet
October 29, 2022
Donald Trump speaking with attendees at the "Rally to Protect Our Elections"
A presidential historian has offered a blistering assessment of former President Donald Trump's role in influencing political violence and normalizing violent rhetoric.
On Friday, October 28, Michael Beschloss made an appearance on MSNBC’s “The Beat” where he weighed in on the assault of Paul Pelosi, the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). “We’re in a time where violence is licensed and encouraged by an ex-president of the United States,” Beschloss said during the broadcast.
“An awful lot of people are encouraged by a former president to think the way you get your political goals — which may be an authoritarian, even fascist, society — is by encouraging violence,” he added. “That’s the climate we’re in.”
Paul Pelosi's attack has caused quite a stir as reports suggest it is politically motivated. Per HuffPost, "Suspect David DePape was after Speaker Pelosi, who was not at the San Francisco home at the time, according to a source briefed on the attack. The Republican Party has long demonized Pelosi in comments and political ads."
Reports have also indicated that DePape has a history of circulating conspiracy theories. Speaking along the same lines, MSNBC’s Katie Phang also spoke during the segment and emphasized that threats against politicians are at an all-time high.
On Friday, per the news outlet, authorities also indicated that "U.S. Capitol Police launched investigations into 1,820 threats and concerning statements in just the first three months of this year."
Speaking to Phang, Beschloss also chimed in saying, “You and I look at the 45 presidents of the United States ― all but about one have taken it seriously that part of their job was preserving public safety."
“Once again, Donald Trump as an ex-president and a president is in a dark category of his own,” Beschloss added. He said Trump “encouraged violence at his rallies” beginning back in 2015 during his campaign, and “did this periodically as president of the United States.”
Phang also highlighted remarks from presidential historian Jon Meacham where he issued a stern warning.
“One of the marks of the end of a republic is the normalization of political violence,” Meacham said during an appearance on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports.” on Friday. “It just is. And everybody needs to remember, including us, that what we say matters, that words have consequences, and that things that seem improbable one hour can happen in the next.”
“Violent acts can change history,” he added. “And a mature democratic society ― lowercase ‘d’ ― has to have a way where we mediate our political differences without political violence.”
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