Online far-right movements fracture in wake of Capitol riot over 'gullible' QAnon believers

Online far-right movements are splintering in the wake of last week’s Capitol riot, as some radical anti-government movements show signs of disillusionment with the relatively hands-off approach of some QAnon conspiracy theorists amid warnings of future violence.© Provided by NBC News

Users on forums that openly helped coordinate the Jan. 6 riot and called for insurrection, including 4chan and TheDonald, have become increasingly agitated with QAnon supporters, who are largely still in denial that President Donald Trump will no longer be in the Oval Office after Jan. 20.


QAnon adherents, who believe Trump is secretly saving the world from a cabal of child-eating Satanists, have identified Inauguration Day as a last stand, and falsely think he will force a 10-day, countrywide blackout that ends in the mass execution of his political enemies and a second Trump term.

Several QAnon supporters were arrested after storming the Capitol last week, including Jacob Chansley, whose lawyer said his client believed he was “answering the call of our president.”

QAnon believers have spent the last week forwarding chain letters on Facebook and via text message, often removing the conspiracy theory’s QAnon origins, in an effort to prepare friends and family for what they believe to be the upcoming judgment day.

According to researchers who study the real-life effects of the QAnon movement, the false belief in a secret plan for Jan. 20 is irking militant pro-Trump and anti-government groups, who believe the magical thinking is counterproductive to future insurrections.

Travis View, who hosts the QAnon-debunking podcast QAnon Anonymous, said Q supporters are waiting for a “miracle that prevents Biden from being inaugurated,” and it is beginning to grate on those anxious for more real-world conflict.

“I have seen some Trump supporters chastising people promoting QAnon-like conspiracy theories," he said. "It seems some Trump supporters are reassessing their coalition and laying judgment on the QAnon wing."

The split has become apparent on extremist forums like TheDonald, from which QAnon adherents have fled to an identical sister site due to constant pillorying for their fantastical thinking on the original site. The new website is named after The Great Awakening, the mythical judgment day of mass arrests and executions.

It is also apparent on viral TikToks and Facebook posts on the more mainstream parts of the web.

“I can’t believe the number of the gullible people who are still out there saying Q is going to run to the rescue in the next five days and you’re going to see military tribunals,” a user in one viral TikTok video said. “Look, I’m a full Trump supporter and I enjoyed reading all the stuff about the deep state and I believe most of it.”

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who has frequently quibbled with QAnon supporters, also lashed out at believers of the conspiracy theory in a viral video earlier this week.

QAnon supporters have predicted blackouts for years, citing posts from “Q,” the false digital prophet at the center of the conspiracy theory. Q frequently posted about routine outages of major services, alluding to them as potential warning signs of the Great Awakening. In August 2018, Q posted three times about outages on the video game service Xbox Live, wondering “Anybody have problems with their X-Box Live accounts?” to the conspiracy theory’s followers.

While several specific doomsdays have passed without any prophecies coming true, experts who study QAnon believe another failed prophecy on Inauguration Day could further decimate the movement.

Fredrick Brennan, who created the website 8chan where “Q” posts and has spent the last two years attempting to have the site removed from the internet for its ties to white supremacist terror attacks, said he believes reality may devastate the movement on Inauguration Day.

“This week has been hugely demoralizing so far and that will be the final straw,” he said. “Even though Q is at the moment based on Donald Trump, it is certainly possible for a significant faction to rise up that believes he was in the deep state all along and foiled the plan.”

MSM FINALLY ADMITS THE PUBLIC SECRET OF POLICING 

It's not just your perception. Police are tougher on left-wing protests than right-wing ones


President Donald Trump's supporters were still rampaging through the US Capitol when the question arose: If these had been Black Lives Matter demonstrators instead of overwhelmingly White, militant Trump backers, how different would the police response have been?

© Natalie Behring/AFP/Getty Images Police are seen in a cloud from a smoke bomb during a protest to oppose the right-wing group Patriot Prayer, which was rallying in Portland, Oregon on September 10, 2017.

The Black Lives Matter Global Network hit the question hard in a statement following the Capitol siege.

"When Black people protest for our lives, we are all too often met by National Guard troops or police equipped with assault rifles, shields, tear gas and battle helmets," the group said in a statement. "Make no mistake, if the protesters were Black, we would have been tear gassed, battered, and perhaps shot."

Black Lives Matter protesters -- Black and White, old and young -- were indeed tear gassed on June 1 -- to clear an area around the White House so President Trump could walk to a nearby church to have his picture taken.

But police response to protests in the Trump era may depend as much on the politics of the demonstrators as on their race, experts say.

And demonstrators on both the right and the left see police as siding with right-wing protestors, according to a policing expert.

"The right-leaning protesters will say police used force against Black Lives Matter and not them because they are on the 'right' side, the same side -- they 'back the blue,' they are pro-police," said Ed Maguire, a criminal justice professor at Arizona State University. "The left-leaning protesters believe the same thing: that the police are on the side politically of the right."

"What we saw with the Black Lives Matter protests was a really massive over-response, and what we saw at the Capitol was a similarly massive under-response," he said.

The conduct of some police officers during the Capitol siege highlights Maguire's point.

At least two Capitol police officers were suspended for their behavior during the incident. According to Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan of Ohio, one of the suspended officers took a selfie with members of the mob, while another wore a "Make America Great Again" hat and directed people around the Capitol building.

At least two off-duty police officers from Virginia have been arrested in connection with the breach of the Capitol and face federal charges, including "violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds."

Officers from New York, Philadelphia, Seattle and Texas are also under investigation by their departments.

Ten times as many arrests

Left-leaning protesters are significantly more likely to be arrested than right-leaning ones, according to a 2020 study from Lesley Wood, an associate professor of sociology at York University in Toronto.

Wood studied media reports of arrests at 64 demonstrations in the United States in 2017 and 2018.

She bracketed anti-abortion demonstrations and those backing Confederate statues, White supremacy and President Trump, for example, as being right-wing, while considering demonstrations in favor of gun control, immigration and civil rights, among others, to be left-wing.

She focused on protests that face counter-protests because they are "more likely to be violent, and present special challenges for the police," she wrote in the study, "Policing Counter-Protest," published in the journal Sociology Compass in 2020.

She found that 10 times as many left-wing protesters were arrested as right-wing protesters: 279 from the left and 26 on the right. The political identity of the other 38 people arrested in the 2017-2018 US demonstrations was unknown.

"Police in North Carolina, Virginia and Louisiana were more likely to arrest those condemning Confederate statues than those protecting them," Wood wrote. "Police in Georgia arrested anti-fascists rather than neo-Nazis; and across the country arrested anti-racists and Trump opponents rather than Islamaphobes [sic] and Trump supporters."

The size of demonstrations is often contested, but the left-wing protests Wood studied tended to be larger than the right-wing ones. Even with the size of protests difficult to pin down exactly, left-leaning activists appeared to be about two-and-a-half times more likely than right-leaning ones to be arrested, she told CNN.

"It is really striking that you see that left-wingers are arrested at a much greater level," she said.

Wood underlined a key factor: Police have different views of right-leaning and left-leaning demonstrators.

"The logic of policing protest has been one of threat assessment, and they tend to see left-wing protest as more threatening than right-wing," she said in an interview with CNN.

"That is tied to many things, such as race," Wood wrote. "Groups that are critical of the police are seen as more threatening. That helps explain why Black Lives Matter, which was critical of the police and black-led, was seen as threatening."




Police outreach

Wood wrote that police agencies aim to be "professional, cost-effective and legitimate" in protest situations, valuing "political neutrality, permits and negotiation between police and organizers."

Months of demonstrations and counter-demonstrations by the right-wing Patriot Prayer group and left-wing groups including antifa and members of religious and human rights organizations in Portland, Oregon, in 2017 and 2018 provided a case study for Wood.

"While the Patriot Prayer activists worked with the police, the police had no success in communicating with the anti-fascist leadership," she wrote. "Police perceive protesters who refuse to negotiate, do not have a centralized leader, and hide their identity from police, as more threatening."

"Because police repress on the basis of their understanding of threat, it means that left-wing protesters, racialized protesters, protesters who are seen as ideological or irrational, are more likely to be arrested and have militarized tactics used against them, such as tear gas and pepper spray," Wood told CNN.

But Bill Johnson, executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations, questioned some of Wood's conclusions.

"The author explains that leftist counter-protesters deliberately utilize the tactic of 'no platforming,' which is defined thus: 'No Platforming means disrupting rallies that aim to promote racist or fascist ideologies by organizing such large counter protests that the planned speeches cannot be heard,'" Johnson told CNN by email.

"If I'm reading the study correctly, leftist counter-protesters are thus more likely to be arrested because by definition they are breaking the law by deliberately trying to shut down lawfully permitted rightist demonstrations," Johnson said.

Johnson also pointed out that the left-wing protesters include, in Wood's words, "communist, anarchist and socialist antifascists."



Those ideologies, Johnson said, "share a common thread of wishing to tear down an existing legal/political/social structure and replace it with something else. By definition, then, we would expect protesters who are adherents of those ideologies to overtly present anti-social behavior to a greater degree and extent than other groups who do not share that same wish. And thus we would expect more arrests."

And he noted that Wood's paper includes little data about the reason for protester arrests or the results.

"There is no indication of the judicial disposition of the charges: Were they sustained? Shown to be false? That would seem to be an important bit of data," Johnson said.


A history of imbalanced policing

The United States has a history of policing Black-led events more than White-led ones.

A landmark study of more than 15,000 US protests during the Civil Rights period and the decades after it found that, at some points in that era, police were more likely to be present and to take action at Black-led events than predominantly White ones.

But the paper, "Protesting While Black? The Differential Policing of American Activism, 1960 to 1990," published in the American Sociological Review in 2011, also found that in many years, the race of protesters appeared to make no difference to policing.

Police arrested 61 people on January 6, the day the Capitol was overrun by Trump supporters. More people have been arrested in connection with the storming of the building since then.

A CNN analysis found no less than nine occasions when police arrested more Washington demonstrators in a single day than they did on January 6, ranging from 133 LGBTQ activists at the Supreme Court in October 2019, to 575 protesters against Trump Administration immigration policy in June 2018.

On June 1, 2020 -- the day of President Trump's photo op at the church near the White House -- police arrested 316 people.

CNN's list is not comprehensive, but all nine demonstrations share a common factor: they were left-leaning demonstrations.

Capitol rioters included highly trained ex-military and cops

WASHINGTON — As President Donald Trump’s supporters massed outside the Capitol last week and sang the national anthem, a line of men wearing olive-drab helmets and body armour trudged purposefully up the marble stairs in a single-file line, each man holding the jacket collar of the one ahead.

The formation, known as “Ranger File,” is standard operating procedure for a combat team that is “stacking up” to breach a building — instantly recognizable to any U.S. soldier or Marine who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was a chilling sign that many at the vanguard of the mob that stormed the seat of American democracy either had military training or were trained by those who did.

An Associated Press review of public records, social media posts and videos shows at least 22 current or former members of the U.S. military or law enforcement have been identified as being at or near the Capitol riot, with more than a dozen others under investigation but not yet named. In many cases, those who stormed the Capitol appeared to employ tactics, body armour and technology such as two-way radio headsets that were similar to those of the very police they were confronting.

Experts in homegrown extremism have warned for years about efforts by far-right militants and white-supremacist groups to radicalize and recruit people with military and law enforcement training, and they say the Jan. 6 insurrection that left five people dead saw some of their worst fears realized.

“ISIS and al-Qaida would drool over having someone with the training and experience of a U.S. military officer,” said Michael German, a former FBI agent and fellow with the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. “These people have training and capabilities that far exceed what any foreign terrorist group can do. Foreign terrorist groups don’t have any members who have badges.”

Among the most prominent to emerge is a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel and decorated combat veteran from Texas who was arrested after he was photographed wearing a helmet and body armour on the floor of the Senate, holding a pair of zip-tie handcuffs.

Another Air Force veteran from San Diego was shot and killed by a Capitol Police officer as she tried to leap through a barricade near the House chamber. A retired Navy SEAL, among the most elite special warfare operators in the military, posted a Facebook video about travelling from his Ohio home to the rally and seemingly approving of the invasion of "our building, our house.”

Two police officers from a small Virginia town, both of them former infantrymen, were arrested by the FBI after posting a selfie of themselves inside the Capitol, one flashing his middle finger at the camera.

Also under scrutiny is an active-duty psychological warfare captain from North Carolina who organized three busloads of people who headed to Washington for the “Save America” rally in support the president’s false claim that the November election was stolen from him.

While the Pentagon declined to provide an estimate for how many other active-duty military personnel are under investigation, the military’s top leaders were concerned enough ahead of President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration that they issued a highly unusual warning to all service members this week that the right to free speech gives no one the right to commit violence.

The chief of the U.S. Capitol Police was forced to resign following the breach and several officers have been suspended pending the outcome of investigations into their conduct, including one who posed for a selfie with a rioter and another who was seen wearing one of Trump’s red “Make America Great Again” caps.

The AP’s review of hundreds of videos and photos from the insurrectionist riot shows scores of people mixed in the crowd who were wearing military-style gear, including helmets, body armour, rucksacks and two-way radios. Dozens carried canisters of bear spray, baseball bats, hockey sticks and pro-Trump flags attached to stout poles later used to bash police officers.

A close examination of the group marching up the steps to help breach the Capitol shows they wore military-style patches that read “MILITIA” and “OATHKEEPER.” Others were wearing patches and insignias representing far-right militant groups, including the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters and various self-styled state militias.

The Oath Keepers, which claims to count thousands of current and former law enforcement officials and military veterans as members, have become fixtures at protests and counter-protests across the country, often heavily armed with semi-automatic carbines and tactical shotguns.

Stewart Rhodes, an Army veteran who founded the Oath Keepers in 2009 as a reaction to the presidency of Barack Obama, had been saying for weeks before the Capitol riot that his group was preparing for a civil war and was “armed, prepared to go in if the president calls us up.”

Adam Newbold, the retired Navy SEAL from Lisbon, Ohio, whose more than two-decade military career includes multiple combat awards for valour, said in a Jan. 5 Facebook video, “We are just very prepared, very capable and very skilled patriots ready for a fight.”

He later posted a since-deleted follow-up video after the riot saying he was “proud” of the assault.

Newbold, 45, did not respond to multiple messages from the AP but in an interview with the Task & Purpose website he denied ever going inside the Capitol. He added that because of the fallout from the videos he has resigned from a program that helps prepare potential SEAL applicants.

Retired Air Force Lt. Col. Larry Rendall Brock Jr. of Texas was released to home confinement Thursday after a prosecutor alleged the former fighter pilot had zip-tie handcuffs on the Senate floor because he planned to take hostages.

“He means to kidnap, restrain, perhaps try, perhaps execute members of the U.S. government,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jay Weimer said. “His prior experience and training make him all the more dangerous.”

Federal authorities on Friday also arrested Dominic Pezzola, a 43-year-old former Marine from New York who identified himself on social media as being a member of the Proud Boys.

The FBI identified Pezzola as the bearded man seen in widely shared video shattering an exterior Capitol window with a stolen Capitol Police riot shield before he and others climbed inside. He also appears in a second video taken inside the building that shows him smoking a cigar in what he calls a “victory smoke,” according to a court filing.

In an online biography, Pezzola, whose nickname is “Spazzo,” describes himself as “Marine vet/ boxer/ patriot/ Proud Boy.” Service records show he served six years stateside as an infantryman and was discharged in 2005 at the rank of corporal.

According to court filings, an unidentified witness told the FBI that Pezzola was with a group at the Capitol whose members said they would have killed “anyone they got their hands on,” including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The witness further stated that members of this group said they would have killed (Vice-President) Mike Pence if given the chance,” the affidavit said.

Army commanders at Fort Bragg in North Carolina are investigating the possible involvement of Capt. Emily Rainey, the 30-year-old psychological operations officer and Afghanistan war veteran who told the AP she travelled with 100 others to Washington to “stand against election fraud.” She insisted she acted within Army regulations and that no one in her group entered the Capitol or broke the law.

“I was a private citizen and doing everything right and within my rights,” Rainey said.

More than 125 people have been arrested so far on charges related to the Capitol riot, ranging from curfew violations to serious federal felonies related to theft and weapons possession.

Brian Harrell, who served as the assistant secretary for infrastructure protection at the Department of Homeland Security until last year, said it is “obviously problematic” when “extremist bad actors” have military and law enforcement backgrounds.

“Many have specialized training, some have seen combat, and nearly all have been fed disinformation and propaganda from illegitimate sources,” Harrell said. “They are fueled by conspiracy theories, feel as if something is being stolen from them, and they are not interested in debate. This is a powder keg cocktail waiting to blow.”

The FBI is warning of the potential for more bloodshed. In an internal bulletin issued Sunday, the bureau warned of plans for armed protests at all 50 state capitals and in Washington, D.C., in the coming weeks.

Meanwhile, police departments in such major cities as New York, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Houston and Philadelphia announced they were investigating whether members of their agencies participated in the Capitol riot. The Philadelphia area's transit authority is also investigating whether seven of its police officers who attended Trump’s rally in Washington broke any laws.

A Texas sheriff announced last week that he had reported one of his lieutenants to the FBI after she posted photos of herself on social media with a crowd outside the Capitol. Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar said Lt. Roxanne Mathai, a 46-year-old jailer, had the right to attend the rally but he’s investigating whether she may have broken the law.

One of the posts Mathai shared was a photo that appeared to be taken Jan. 6 from among the mass of Trump supporters outside the Capitol, captioned: “Not gonna lie. ... aside from my kids, this was, indeed, the best day of my life. And it’s not over yet.”

A lawyer for Mathai, a mother and longtime San Antonio resident, said she attended the Trump rally but never entered the Capitol.

In Houston, Police Chief Art Acevedo said an 18-year veteran of the department suspected of joining the mob that breached the Capitol resigned before a disciplinary hearing that was set for Friday.

“There is no excuse for criminal activity, especially from a police officer,” Acevedo said. “I can’t tell you the anger I feel at the thought of a police officer, and other police officers, thinking they get to storm the Capitol.”

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Bleiberg reported from Dallas and LaPorta from in Delray Beach, Florida. Robert Burns and Michael Balsamo in Washington; Jim Mustian, Michael R. Sisak and Thalia Beaty in New York; Michael Kunzelman in College Park, Maryland; Juan A. Lozano in Houston; Claudia Lauer in Philadelphia; Martha Bellisle in Seattle; Stefanie Dazio in Los Angeles; and Carolyn Thompson in Buffalo, New York, contributed.

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Follow Associated Press Investigative Reporter Michael Biesecker at http://twitter.com/mbieseck; Jake Bleiberg at http://twitter.com/JZBleiberg; and James LaPorta at http://twitter.com/JimLaPorta

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Contact AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org

Michael Biesecker, Jake Bleiberg And James Laporta, The Associated Press

Rare sedition charge gains interest after Capitol attack

“Those who started a riot have no idea just how oppressive the government can actually be and they are about to find out,” they will pay “a substantial price, certainly a price none of them ever expected.”

SEPARATED AT BIRTH 

NEW YORK — A Civil War-era sedition law being dusted off for potential use in the mob attack on the U.S. Capitol was last successfully deployed a quarter-century ago in the prosecution of Islamic militants who plotted to bomb New York City landmarks.

An Egyptian cleric, Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, and nine followers were convicted in 1995 of seditious conspiracy and other charges in a plot to blow up the United Nations, the FBI’s building, and two tunnels and a bridge linking New York and New Jersey.

Applications of the law making it a crime to conspire to overthrow or forcefully destroy the government of the United States have been scant. But its use is being considered against the mob that killed a police officer and rampaged through the U.S. Capitol last week.

Michael Sherwin, acting U.S. attorney for D.C., has said “all options are on the table,” including sedition charges, against the Capitol invaders.

“Certainly if you have an organized armed assault on the Capitol, or any government installation, it’s absolutely a charge that can be brought,” said Andrew McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor who secured convictions at Abdel-Rahman’s 1995 trial.

The challenge, he said, is whether prosecutors can prove people conspired to use force.

“In our case, conspiracy was a layup because of the nature of the terrorist cell we were targeting. In this case, can they show conspiratorial activity or was it one of these things that spontaneously combusted, which makes conspiracy harder to prove?” McCarthy said.

Karen Greenberg, director of the Center on National Security at the Fordham University School of Law, said sedition charges in an attack against the centre of U.S. government are even more appropriate than in the New York bombing plot.

“Of course we should use it here. That’s what this is, seditious conspiracy,” she said.

Prosecutors had scant evidence against Abdel-Rahman when they arrested him months after a bomb exploded in February 1993 at the World Trade Center, killing six people.

Then-Manhattan U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White went to Washington to convince the FBI and Attorney General Janet Reno that Abdel-Rahman should be charged with seditious conspiracy, a law enacted after the Civil War to arrest Southerners who might keep fighting the U.S. government.

The law’s hefty penalty — up to 20 years — boosted its value before terrorism laws were overhauled in 1996, McCarthy said.

Prosecutors offered jurors Abdel-Rahman’s fiery speeches, witness testimony and a recording of his conversation with an FBI informant in which the sheikh said U.S. military installations could be attacked.

Abdel-Rahman argued on appeal that he was never involved in planning actual attacks against the U.S. and his hostile rhetoric was protected free speech. His conviction was upheld and the so-called “Blind Sheikh” died in prison in 2017 at 78.

In another case, Oscar Lopez Rivera — a former leader of a Puerto Rican independence group that orchestrated a bombing campaign that left dozens of people dead or maimed in the 1970s and 1980s — spent 35 years in prison for seditious conspiracy before President Barack Obama commuted his sentence in 2017.

In 2012, U.S. District Judge Victoria A. Roberts in Detroit dismissed seditious conspiracy charges brought against a militia group’s members who spoke of engaging local, state and federal law enforcement in combat.

While considering bail in the case, the judge said “their right to engage in hate filled, venomous speech, is a right that deserves First Amendment protection.” She also wrote that the group’s rhetoric spoke of “reclaiming America, not overthrowing the United States Government.”

Before the Capitol attack, federal prosecutors talked about using the seditious conspiracy statute in cases involving protests against police brutality, though none were brought.

In a Sept. 17 memorandum, Jeffrey A. Rosen, now the acting U.S. Attorney General, urged prosecutors nationwide to consider filing seditious conspiracy charges against what he called “violent rioters” during racial injustice demonstrations sparked by the police killing of George Floyd.

Rosen wrote that the law didn’t require proof of a plot to overthrow the U.S. government.

Lawyers interviewed by The Associated Press agreed that it would be stretch to try to put President Donald Trump or lawyer Rudolph Giuliani on trial for sedition for what some have criticized as incendiary rhetoric at the rally preceding the mob attack on the Capitol.

McCarthy labeled Trump’s actions that day reprehensible, but said “you would never be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he intended force to be used.”

Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond law professor, said prosecuting Trump for urging people to march to the Capitol and not be “weak” or other statements would be a problem.

“I think people who work in the area of criminal procedure would say it has a checkered history,” Tobias said of seditious conspiracy law, which has drawn criticism for targeting those with unpopular views and chilling free speech.

“People who are absolutists about the First Amendment would be troubled by it and civil libertarians on either end of the spectrum,” he said.

New York civil rights lawyer Ron Kuby, who represented Abdel-Rahman for a time, predicted that with or without a sedition charge, the people who committed the most serious offences at the Capitol will pay “a substantial price, certainly a price none of them ever expected.”

“Those who started a riot have no idea just how oppressive the government can actually be and they are about to find out,” Kuby said.

Larry Neumeister, The Associated Press

Gun-toting Canadian triggers FBI probe of alleged white-supremacist terror plot tied to U.S. election

If the 22-year-old Canadian man thought his border crossing into Detroit would be routine, he was sorely mistaken.

© Provided by National Post National Guard troops move along the National Mall the day after the House of Representatives voted to impeach President Donald Trump for the second time January 14, 2021 in Washington, DC.

First the driver was directed into secondary inspection at the Ambassador Bridge entry point, and then interviewed by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s “tactical terrorism response team.”

What they found was troubling: an assault rifle and two other guns, plus extremist white-supremacy material on his cellphone, according to a Federal Bureau of Investigation affidavit that came to light recently.

Before sending the traveller identified as “E.G.” back to Canada, the border officers concluded he was part of a cell in the planning stages of an extremist attack.

Indeed, further investigation of the man’s teenage contact in Dublin, Ohio, uncovered a plot to disable chunks of the American electricity grid, the conspirators vowing to die for their cause, the affidavit says.

The group was to be “operational” as soon as this past November, in case Donald Trump lost the U.S. presidential election, according to the document, which was inadvertently unsealed and obtained by The Associated Press last month, before being put under wraps again.

The conspiracy appears to have popped onto law-enforcement radar thanks to that ill-fated border crossing in Michigan.

The affair marks the second time in the last year that Canadians have been accused by U.S. police of associating with far-right terrorists there.

E.G. tried to get into the U.S. in October 2019. Former army reservist Patrik Mathews of Winnipeg crossed the border a few months earlier, allegedly joining up with members of the Base, a white-supremacist group bent on precipitating a race war. Mathews faces numerous charges and has been in custody since his arrest early last year.

It’s unclear whether any charges have been laid in the E.G. episode.

The U.S. Attorney’s office in southern Ohio, which is overseeing the case, could not be reached for comment Thursday, but previously told the National Post it could provide no information about the matter as there were no publicly filed documents.

Asked if Canadian police are looking at E.G., RCMP spokeswoman Robin Percival said the force works closely with its international partners, but does not comment on investigations “by other countries.”

Barbara Perry, an expert on extremism at Ontario Tech University, said the case underscores how violent far-right groups have extended their tentacles into Canada, helped by the Internet.

“It was chilling,” she said of the FBI affidavit. “There are connections between the Canadian and American movements because so much of their activity is online. So those borders mean nothing … It really is a global movement.”

The affidavit, filed last March in U.S. federal court in Wisconsin, supported an application for a search warrant.

It says officers at the U.S. border found an AR15 assault rifle, a high-volume shotgun and a pistol in E.G.’s vehicle, though all had U.S. permits. He said he was planning to visit friends Natalia in Tennessee and Chris in Ohio.

On his phone, they found multiple images of Nazi, white power and anti-LGBTQ propaganda, said the affidavit. Some of it appeared to evoke the Atomwaffen Division, a neo-Nazi terrorist organization founded in the southern U.S.

Further investigation indicated that he and Chris, who was just 17, had known each other online for about two months. It appeared to be a recruitment relationship, where the Canadian was trying to “suggest his bonafides” for joining the group, wrote FBI special agent Tiffany Burns. E.G. said at one point he was Italian, but that “they were fascists.”

Chris later told investigators he thought E.G. might be autistic, as he was “so detailed by nature and very focused on rules.”

In a series of texts, the pair discussed taking out student loans to buy a bus and convert it into a motor home. “If we aren’t going to be alive to pay it back, it’s free money,” Chris exclaimed at one point.

When Chris said he didn’t like his Mexican stepmother, the Canadian suggested they “go siege on her,” an apparent reference to the book Siege , in which neo-Nazi author James Mason urges followers to commit acts of violence to destabilize the system, according to the affidavit. The book was discussed by the duo and images of it appeared in their texts.

Meanwhile, a former white supremacist acting as an undercover source for the bureau detailed Chris’s plans with other collaborators.

He wanted to create neo-Nazi cells across the U.S. to commit acts of violence, becoming operational by 2024 in the belief the Democratic party would win the U.S. election that year. But he said the timeline would be accelerated if Trump lost the 2020 race, alleged the affidavit.

In late 2019, Chris began discussing a plan, which he dubbed “Lights Out,” to impose a large-scale power outage by firing rifle rounds into electrical sub-stations.

“Leaving the power off would wake people up to the harsh reality of life by wreaking havoc across the nation,” another member of the group told the source.

The same person predicted their efforts would end violently.

“I can say with absolute certainty that I will die for this effort. I swear it on my life,” the FBI’s source quoted him as saying.

“I can say the same,” echoed Chris, Canadian E.G.’s friend.

'This is the age of war': Alleged Canadian neo-Nazi pleads not guilty to weapons charges

Facebook to ban ads promoting weapon accessories, protective gear in U.S.

(Reuters) - Facebook Inc said on Saturday it will ban advertisements for weapon accessories and protective equipment in the United States with immediate effect until at least two days after U.S. President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration on Jan. 20.

© Reuters/SHANNON STAPLETON FILE PHOTO: Supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump rally outside the State Capitol building as votes continue to be counted following the 2020 U.S. presidential election, in Lansing

Following the attack by supporters of President Donald Trump against the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, the social media company said it will now prohibit ads for accessories such as gun safes, vests and gun holsters in the United States.

"We already prohibit ads for weapons, ammunition and weapon enhancements like silencers. But we will now also prohibit ads for accessories," Facebook said in a blog post.

Three U.S. senators sent a letter to Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg on Friday asking him to permanently block advertisements of products that are clearly designed to be used in armed combat.

The senators, all Democrats, said the company must take this and other actions to "hold itself accountable for how domestic enemies of the United States have used the company's products and platform to further their own illicit aims."

Facebook on Friday blocked the creation of any new Facebook events in close proximity to places such as the White House and U.S. Capitol in Washington, as well as state capitol buildings, through Jan. 20.

The FBI has warned of armed protests being planned for Washington and all 50 state capitals in the run-up to the inauguration.

Buzzfeed reported this week that Facebook has been running ads for military equipment next to content promoting election misinformation and news about the violence on Jan. 6.

A Facebook company spokesperson said all the pages identified in the Buzzfeed story had been removed, and that the company was working with intelligence and terrorism experts and law enforcement.

(Reporting by Ann Maria Shibu in Bengaluru; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)

MY PILLOW GUY WANTS TO SMOTHER DEMOCRACY

Attorney in Mike Lindell martial law plan denies knowing of pro-Trump plot

A US army cyber attorney has expressed confusion at apparent plans among Trump allies to place him in a senior national security role, as part of a mooted move to impose martial law and reverse the president’s election defeat. 

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© Provided by The Guardian Photograph: REX/Shutterstock

A day after his name and location appeared in notes carried into the White House by the My Pillow founder, Mike Lindell, Frank Colon told New York magazine he was “just a government employee who does work for the army” at Fort Meade, in Maryland.

Reporter Ben Jacobs added that Colon “seemed befuddled [over] why he would be floated to the president in any senior role and said that he never met Lindell”, although he said he had “seen him on TV”.

Ads for his sleep-aiding pillows made the mustachioed Lindell a familiar figure on American screens before he emerged as a leading Trump ally and booster.

The president was this week impeached a second time, for inciting supporters to attack the US Capitol on 6 January, leaving five people dead. Trump will leave office on Wednesday, when Joe Biden becomes the 46th president. Nonetheless, Trump still has not conceded defeat in an election he claims without evidence was stolen through mass voter fraud. Lindell has insisted Trump will begin a second term.

“I get called into a lot of projects for the Pentagon,” Colon told Jacobs, formerly of the Guardian, saying such projects included the Operation Warp Speed programme for coronavirus vaccine development and delivery.

He also said it “would be odd to reach that far down” in the Department of Defense for a role like national security adviser, but also said “people know me in the Pentagon” because not many people practise cyber law.

Jacobs reported that though Colon said he did not use Twitter, an account under the name Frank Colon Esq contained messages supportive of Trump and said of Biden: “If you need the military to protect you from the people during your fraudulent inauguration the people didn’t vote for you.”

Lindell did not respond to the pool reporter at the White House on Friday, when his notes were captured by a photographer from the Washington Post. He did not comment to New York magazine.

But on Friday the New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman reported that Lindell had been “carrying the notes for an attorney he’s been working with to prove the election was really won by Trump, wouldn’t say who it was. Said some of it related to reports Trump is now unable to see because he doesn’t have Twitter.”

Twitter and other platforms banned Trump after the Capitol attack, in which a police officer who confronted rioters and a supporter of the president shot by law enforcement were among those who died. Multiple arrests have been made amid reports of further pro-Trump protests before the inauguration.

Haberman said Lindell’s White House meeting was “brief” and “contentious”.

“Lindell,” she wrote, “insists the papers he was holding, which were photographed and visible, didn’t reference ‘martial law’. An administration official says they definitely referenced martial law.

“But an administration official says Trump wasn’t really entertaining what Lindell was saying. Lindell also seemed frustrated he wasn’t getting more of a hearing.”

Haberman also reported that “among the items on Lindell’s list was replacing [national security adviser Robert] O’Brien”.

The super-rich are using luxury concierge services to get COVID-19 vaccine

If you have a net worth of $800 million, then you may be in luck when it comes to securing the COVID-19 vaccine

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© GIUSEPPE CACACE/AFP via Getty Images A sign indicates the way to the COVID-19 vaccination service at al-Barsha Health Centre in Dubai on December 24, 2020.

According to Forbes, that's the minimum standard you must reach to join Knightsbridge Circle, a prestigious luxury concierge service that has been flying its members to places like the United Arab Emirates to get inoculated.

The Telegraph in the U.K. first reported the news of the luxury vaccination "holidays."

On its website, Knightsbridge Circle is described as "an exclusive travel and lifestyle service" that "has encapsulated a simple idea: exceptional personal service at an unsurpassed level."

"A carefully curated membership ensures that clients receive unparalleled access to the very best of everything that life has to offer," it reads.

Indeed, the concierge service currently has a long waiting list, and you're only able to join if you're personally invited. Additionally, the services are capped to 50 members only.

Knightsbridge Circle describes its services at length, saying it anticipates clients' needs by "sourcing the most desirable events and bespoke journeys; locating luxurious accommodation and transport; negotiating premium upgrades and savings; opening doors to unique and unforgettable experiences."

One of these "unique and unforgettable experiences" is flying to another country to get a COVID-19 vaccine, which the vast majority of the worldwide populace isn't even close to receiving.



"It's like we're the pioneers of this new luxury travel vaccine program," founder of Knightsbridge Circle Stuart McNeill said to The Telegraph, adding that approximately 20 per cent of members have already flown to Abu Dhabi and Dubai in the UAE to receive the vaccine.

"You go for a few weeks to a villa in the sunshine, get your jabs and your certificate and you're ready to go."

McNeill says the two UAE cities are offering up private vaccinations of the Pfizer vaccine, and in India, the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine. His services have only just secured the Indian trips, and he's started booking them this week.

He estimates a cost of almost $70,000 for a month-long trip to Dubai with first-class Emirates flights, a meet-and-greet, accommodation in a sea-view apartment and, of course, the purpose of the voyage: the COVID-19 vaccination.

"They land, have their first jab and wait for the second one," he said. "We've got some people that are going to India for the whole time and others are talking about flying in, having the first jab, flying out to Madagascar, and then coming back for the second jab later."

Sure, why not?

One caveat to the vaccination via Knightsbridge is it will not facilitate the package for anybody under 65 years of age. As of this writing, no one under that age has received the COVID-19 vaccine through the concierge service.

McNeill says his service has a "moral responsibility" to prioritize individuals who "really need" the vaccine.

"It's not just been our members, but their parents and their grandparents as well," he said to The Telegraph. "But if you're a 35-year-old young chap who goes to the gym twice a day, you've got no chance of getting the vaccine through us. That's for sure."

Around 40 per cent of Knightsbridge Circle members are from the U.K. It's unclear how many members, if any, are Canadian. The services report a 15 per cent increase in membership numbers since the pandemic began last year.

In the past, Knightsbridge Circle has made some outrageous, dream-like scenarios come to fruition, including vow renewals by the Pope himself and a private viewing of the U.K.'s Crown Jewels in Tower Bridge.

News of the private trips comes as the world rushes to vaccinate amid big surges in COVID-19 infections, and as Canadian doctors call for more transparency about the vaccine rollout.

The Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians is calling for a clear description of who is being prioritized for the first doses and why. It also wants priority to go to those directly caring for patients who are critically ill or suspected of having COVID-19.

The association says many members in areas with limited human resources have not been vaccinated, but urban providers who have less patient contact appear to have received doses.

— With files from The Canadian Press

How Anti-Abortion Terrorism Fueled The MAGA Attack On The Capitol

Last week, the world watched in horror as a pro-Trump mob, urged by the President himself, attacked the U.S. Capitol in an effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Thousands of angry people, rushed the Capitol building, overwhelming the law enforcement officers who were staged outside. They smashed windows and broke down doors; thousands of them flooded into the Capitol building itself. For several hours, they occupied congressional offices and triumphantly paraded through the House and Senate floors, wreaking havoc and calling for violence against and death for politicians and police officers, alike. By the end of the seditious melee, five people were dead.

© Provided by Refinery29

One of the people there was John Brockhoeft, who posted online about his presence at the Capitol. Brockhoeft isn’t just any Trump supporter. He’s also a convicted anti-abortion terrorist.

His presence wasn’t a coincidence, but an example of the long-standing crossover between anti-abortion and white supremacist terrorist movements, and how America’s complacency around both has helped pave the way for this moment of terrifying insurrection.

There were other anti-abortion activists who were involved in the attack, according to a NARAL report. One of them was Abby Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood clinic director turned anti-choice extremist, who was present during Trump’s speech inciting the riot. Another was Taylor Hansen, an anti-choice activist connected to a group called Baby Lives Matter, who posted violent videos to Twitter during the riots.

As long as abortion has been legal in this country, it has been under siege. Since 1977, there have been 11,905 acts of violence against abortion providers, including 42 bombings, 189 arsons, and 11 assassinations. Clinics have experienced more than 700,000 incidents of disruption.

These acts of violence and harassment grew steadily over decades, as anti-abortion extremists saw how little retribution they faced for escalated their tactics. In 1982, Joseph Scheidler, an anti-abortion activist who literally wrote the book on how to harass abortion patients and staff, hired a private detective to find a teenager’s address and then harangued her mother from an adjacent balcony to talk her out of an abortion. Scheidler inspired Randall Terry, another anti-abortion extremist, to found Operation Rescue — a radical, direct-action anti abortion group — in 1987. Terry once proclaimed, “If you think abortion is murder, then act like it’s murder.” He also led thousands of people in massive blockades at abortion clinics, chaining themselves to doors, laying down in front of traffic, gluing locks — anything to prevent the clinic from operating. Law enforcement’s presence was often lax or non-existent; in San Francisco, it took the police two hours just to show up after the blockade began.

Operation Rescue was able to shut down clinics across the country and terrorize abortion patients, unchecked by the federal government, for nearly a decade. That sense of complacency among lawmakers and apathy on the part of some law enforcement officials helped fuel the dramatic rise and escalation in anti-abortion extremism. By 1993, just two decades after Roe v. Wade was decided, anti-abortion extremists had escalated from picketing to stalking to blockading to bombing to assassination.

Brockhoeft came of age as an extremist in that environment. He bombed two abortion clinics in Cincinnati in 1985, and was convicted three years later of attempting to bomb an abortion clinic in Florida. He was out of prison by 1995 and further embraced the far-right. In April 2020, he was spotted outside the Ohio Statehouse, surrounded by armed, right-wing extremists, aggressively protesting the COVID-19 shutdown order.

Much has been made of the racist double standard that law enforcement displayed in their response toward the Capitol rioters as compared to how they dealt with Black Lives Matter protesters. A video appeared to show Capitol police officers opening the protective gates around the building, allowing a swarm of pro-Trump rioters to march past. Once the mob had successfully broken in, a Capitol police officer, in full uniform and a neon vest, posed for a selfie with a rioter. The mob kept moving, marching toward their next site of desecration.

It was a harrowing moment of familiarity between law enforcement and law breaker, one that is well known in abortion rights circles. In August 1979, a Fort Wayne, Indiana abortion clinic received a bomb threat. The city refused to dispatch either police or fire officials, forcing clinic staff to search for the bomb themselves. Nearly 40 years later, Becca Ballenger, a clinic escort in New York City, called in a complaint about protesters violating the 15-foot buffer zone at the clinic. When he arrived, she told Refinery29, she watched the responding officer approach the violator, shake his hand, and give him a hug. He then turned to the group of clinic escorts and said, “What are you doing to restrict their First Amendment rights today?”

When law enforcement refuses to take anti-abortion harassment and violence seriously, even if it’s only in certain cities, it signals their tolerance of that behavior. But it’s not just law enforcement––our cultural complacency around anti-abortion terrorism has helped normalize what should be unthinkable. The image of sweet grandmothers quietly praying the rosary and polite teenagers, standing alone with a gentle sign (a la Juno) belie the very real aggression and violence that has always existed. Under the Trump administration, clinics have reported receiving an increasing number of harassment, threats, and violence. As a clinic escort myself, I’ve seen the rhetoric and behavior outside the clinic shift, with harsher, more openly racist rhetoric from increasingly angry men wearing a mix of “Abortion is Murder” T-shirts and “Make America Great Again” red hats. It’s no coincidence that at the same time, white nationalist groups have risen by 55% over the last few years, emboldened by a President who called them “very fine people” after rioting in Charlottesville.

If you asked yourself, “How did this happen? Where did these people come from?” while watching the riot unfold, ask yourself another question: When was the last time you saw what was happening outside an abortion clinic? When was the last time you really paid attention? When was the last time you just ignored someone spouting well-known falsehoods about abortion, about Black Lives Matter, about the results of the 2020 election? We hear so much about “breaking out of our siloes,” but we don’t have to excuse right-wing extremism to see it happening. At the very least, we have to start acknowledging that it’s happening, that it’s been happening, and many of us just haven’t cared enough to speak up because it didn’t affect us. Until it did.

Conspiracy theories and outlandish rhetoric aren’t without consequences, particularly when encouraged by those in power. In 2015, anti-abortion extremists launched a highly visible smear campaign against Planned Parenthood, featuring doctored videos that accused the organization of illegally selling fetal body parts. It was absurd and completely untrue, but that didn’t stop Congressional Republicans from embracing the conspiracy theory, decrying Planned Parenthood, and opening an investigation into the organization. Just a few months later, Robert Dear opened fire on a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, killing three people, including a security guard. Dear confessed that he was “upset with them performing abortions and the selling of baby parts,” a direct reference to the cooked-up, anti-abortion smear campaign — a conspiracy theory that certainly has echoes in other far-right conspiracies like QAnon.

President Trump has been booted off various social media platforms, but he doesn’t need a Twitter account to continue to fuel the the same kinds of wild conspiracy theories that led Robert Dear to murder three people. He doesn’t need a video on Facebook to incite his supporters to ever-more rabid and racist violence. The coup attempt at the Capitol wasn’t inevitable––it was entirely preventable. But not without a justice system that prioritizes the rights and lives of the marginalized. Not with police officers who pose for selfies and even join the insurrectionist riot. Not with city officials ignoring credible bomb threats. Not without each of us decrying right-wing fascism and violence, no matter who the target may be.

Like what you see? How about some more R29 goodness, right here?

The FBI Knew About The Capitol Riot Beforehand

Ivanka Trump Called Capitol Attackers "Patriots"

Congresspeople Are Testing Positive For COVID-19

UNIONS OPPOSE USE OF PRISON LABOUR

White Supremacists Attacked The Capitol. 

Now, Prison Labor Will Clean Up The Mess

WHIZY KIMLAST UPDATED JANUARY 8, 2021,


PHOTO: KBD/UPI/SHUTTERSTOCK.

On Wednesday, January 6, a violent mob of Trump supporters stormed and occupied the Capitol in an attempt to stop Congress from counting the electoral votes that would confirm Joe Biden as the 46th president. At the time of writing, five people have died as a result of the insurrection.

After the mob was sufficiently amused by their selfies and live streams and had stolen enough artifacts to remember the insurrection, they left behind a heap of broken glass, furniture, and trash — and also a very important question. Who, exactly, would clean up this mess? It's important to ask exactly whose labor we rely on to return to a veneer of normalcy and civility in the wake of a violent riot of white supremacists. Does the U.S. government go antiquing for some replacement mahogany desks?

As TikTok user Jessica Jin (@jinandjuice) explained in a viral video yesterday, one possible replacement for damaged government furniture could be new pieces produced by incarcerated people in federal prisons:

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@jinandjuice
Cleaning up after a coup is literally dirty business. #coup #fyp #congress #capitol #furniture #justice #prisonlabor #america♬ original sound - jessica jin


Federal Prison Industries (FPI), also known as UNICOR, is a government-owned corporation that uses prison labor to produce everything from office furniture to awards and plaques. As Jin explains in the video, FPI is a "mandatory source" for government agencies, meaning it must be given priority when the government is considering the purchase of goods of the kind that FPI manufactures, such as office furniture. After an agency realizes it doesn't have the goods it needs in its inventory, and other agencies don't have excess supplies, it must next consider if FPI's products are comparable to other commercial sources for "price, quality, and time of delivery."

There are exceptions to this process, which means it's not as simple as every single government office chair having to be sourced from FPI — but according to the Federal Acquisition Regulation, which lays out the rules for the federal government to procure goods and services, "agencies are encouraged to purchase FPI supplies and services to the maximum extent practicable [emphasis added]." According to its fiscal year 2019 annual management report, "FPI sells products and services to the majority of federal departments, agencies, and bureaus."

Prison labor has a long history in our country, codified by the 13th Amendment, which outlaws slavery and indentured servitude in the U.S. "except as a punishment for crime." Within federal prisons, FPI jobs are coveted as some of the higher-paying ones — boasting rates between 23 cents to $1.15 an hour. Federal inmates are required to work unless medically exempt, with workdays lasting upwards of 12 hours, and a large portion of their meager earnings automatically go toward "court-ordered fines, victim restitution, child support, incarceration fees, and other monetary judgments" and paying for their own room and board in prison — paying to be imprisoned.

While Jin's TikTok focused specifically on replacing items in the Capitol, prison labor goes beyond federal buildings. Many state universities also procure furniture produced by the exploitation of incarcerated people; inmates pick potatoes in Idaho, fight California wildfires, and during COVID, inmates in New York have been forced to make hand sanitizer — a product they were not allowed to use themselves.

The government, for its part, insists that prison labor is for the good of incarcerated people. FPI's website claims that it is "first and foremost, a correctional program," and on a page that delves into the corporation's history, states that "despite periods of criticism from detractors, increasingly constrictive procurement laws, misinformation and stigma associated with the value of inmate-made goods, prison industry work programs have endured."

Prison labor pretends that forcing incarcerated people to work for little to no pay is meant to be rehabilitation, a generous path to moral salvation. FPI claims that their laborers show reduced instances of recidivism, but the Government Accountability Office reported this year that in fact, FPI had not "reviewed its impact on recidivism (a person's relapse into criminal behavior) in over two decades." Overall, there is very little data on the idea that prison labor programs are effective in their stated intent to rehabilitate.

What is clear is that it can be a profitable enterprise. In the 2019 fiscal year, FPI employed about 16,500 people incarcerated in federal prisons. Its biggest customer is the Department of Defense, which provides FPI with over half of its total sales. In 2019, its net sales were about $531,453,000.

Given the incomparably higher rates of incarceration of Black Americans compared to white Americans, the exploitation of incarcerated people isn't simply a labor issue. More precisely, it's an intended function of institutional racism — what many call modern-day slavery — rearing its ugly head in the aftermath of a display of violent white supremacy.