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Tag: right wing extremists
Extreme Right Terrorists Appear To Be Targeting Power Substations

Extreme Right Terrorists Appear To Be Targeting Power Substations

The 40,000-plus North Carolinians who have been without power since Saturday because someone knocked out the power grid in Moore County have largely been restored to service now, thanks to workers at Duke Energy who scrambled to replace the equipment destroyed in what has all the earmarks of a domestic terrorist attack. The investigation into the attacks continues apace, with the FBI issuing search warrants both for individuals and for cell phone data.

But in the wake of the attacks, a larger national picture, much more disturbing in its implications, has emerged—one in which it’s now clear that Moore County was not an isolated incident. Utilities around the nation, ranging from the Pacific Northwest to Florida, are reporting a recent uptick in similar gunfire attacks on power substations—all of them in many ways embodying the spread of online extremist content promoting such terrorist attacks and explaining how to carry them out.

Back in January, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) warned that American extremists have begun exhibiting an unhealthy interest in attacking the power grid—at first regionally, then nationally—as a means of disrupting the country. Far-right domestic extremists “have developed credible, specific plans to attack electricity infrastructure since at least 2020, identifying the electric grid as a particularly attractive target given its interdependency with other infrastructure sectors,” according to the DHS report.

There were indications that such an agenda may have been behind a series of incidents last month in Washington and Oregon, when at least six different attacks on power substations were reported to the FBI. Two unidentified substations operated by Puget Sound Energy, as well as two others operated by Cowlitz County Public Utility District in the Woodland area of southwestern Washington, were subjected to “vandalism,” the latter causing a brief power outage in the area. The attackers cut open a fence and then shot up transformers, apparently targeting specific pieces of equipment.

Another significant attack was reported by the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) against one of its substations in Clackamas County, Oregon, which it described as a “deliberate physical attack” early on Thanksgiving morning. Oregon Public Broadcasting and KUOW report that a BPA security specialist described the attack in an email: “Two people cut through the fence surrounding a high-voltage substation, then ‘used firearms to shoot up and disable numerous pieces of equipment and cause significant damage.’”

Four days later in Clackamas County, there was another attack, this time on a Portland General Electric substation, though details of the attack were unavailable. (Most of the utilities, understandably, were tight-lipped about the incidents.) However, records indicate the attack managed to disrupt electricity in at least some areas of Clackamas County: The county’s computer systems were knocked offline.

The BPA specialist’s memo also referenced “several attacks on various substations,” recently in Western Washington, “including setting the control houses on fire, forced entry and sabotage of intricate electrical control systems, causing short circuits by tossing chains across the overhead buswork, and ballistic attack with small caliber firearms.”

Meanwhile, across the country in Florida, reporters found that there have been at least half a dozen “substation intrusion events” in recent months, though none of these involved vandalism by gunfire. Rather, these intrusions involved people who manually turned off the power substations by tripping switches. Most of these incidents resulted in brief outages that were quickly restored.

NewsNation obtained a memo indicating federal law enforcement suspects the people behind the Florida intrusions possess inside knowledge about how the grid operates, and are familiar with powering down equipment without causing damage.

“The fact that someone has potentially identified a critical substation and then has knowledge of those critical pieces of equipment inside that substation leads me to believe that they’re dealing with people who have inside knowledge,” the memo read.

While some of these incidents may turn out to have non-political (and thus non-terroristic) motivations, the DHS’s January memo warning of attacks like these as likely terrorism events was well-grounded. It indicated that conversations among far-right extremists online have increasingly focused on encouraging so-called “lone wolf” attacks involving only a single terrorist. Other online chatter includes efforts to inspire people with minimal training to also target electrical infrastructure, with weapons ranging from improvised incendiary devices, hammers, power saws, and guns.

Electrical infrastructure has become a key target for the most recent iterations of accelerationist neofascist groups like The Base and Atomwaffen SS. One such terrorist cell that targeted the January 2020 pro-gun protests in Richmond, Virginia, discussed targeting the power grid and cell towers in the area to debilitate any police response while disguised as both left-wing activists and as “3 Percent” militiamen, believing it would direct violence towards the groups blamed for the destruction.

A group of Marines who moved to Idaho from North Carolina tried to set up a terror cell that would conduct assassinations and other criminal acts targeting “leftists” and the government, using attacks on the Pacific Northwest power grid as their primary tool. In a propaganda video, the members of the neo-Nazi organization, which called itself “BSN,” could be seen practicing with firearms in the vicinity of high-power transmission lines.

The outages in North Carolina were widely celebrated by right-wing extremists, who drew a connection between the attacks and the drag-queen performance held that evening in Southern Pines. One neo-Nazi Telegram post laden with slurs against the LGBTQ community celebrated the "magnificent act of sabotage" as a "beautiful escalation" in a broader culture war.

SITE Intelligence Group, according to Newsweek, also identified a neo-Nazi publication warning that "these attacks will only continue" unless such drag shows cease altogether. At the far-right-friendly message board 4Chan, commenters described specific tactics that further harm the power grid. Others proposed focusing their attacks on taking down the electrical infrastructure in larger cities such as New York and Washington, D.C. since they "are not majority white."

Rita Katz, founder and executive director of the SITE Intelligence Group, told Newsweek that the Moore County attack is consistent with recent online neo-Nazi messaging.

"The sabotage against the North Carolina substation aligns perfectly with directives and methods seen in accelerationist neo-Nazi communities," Katz said. "If this was indeed a far-right terrorist attack, my worry is that it will serve as a proof of concept for other far-right extremists.”

Katz also says they see plans to do the same against power stations near prominent news and media companies they consider enemies. Targeting infrastructure, she explained, is "a key objective for accelerationist neo-Nazis, who care less about any distinct outcome and far more about sowing any kind of chaos."

A widely shared post published this summer by a neo-Nazi publication included "a detailed manual" that called power grids "the main satiating tool the system uses to keep the masses from rioting" and advised on ways to inflict maximum damage, including what to target when shooting at substations.

With such material readily available to wannabe saboteurs, Domestic Terrorism Threat Monitor (DTTM) director Simon Purdue told Newsweek that "the threat posed by attacks on critical infrastructure cannot be underestimated."

"The situation in Moore County offers only a glimpse into the chaos that attacks such as this can cause, and larger scale assaults could bring disruption on a statewide or even national level," Purdue said. He pointed to "a steady slew of manifestos, social media posts, videos and even instruction manuals on this kind of attack being produced by extremists over the past few years."

"The Moore County case was small-scale when compared to some of the plans that we have seen," he added, "and infrastructure needs to be better protected against such attacks."

Election season overtime is finally winding down, so Democratic operative Joe Sudbay joins David Nir on The Downballot as a guest-host this week to recap some of the last results that have just trickled in. At the top of the list is the race for Arizona attorney general, where Democrat Kris Mayes has a 510-vote lead with all ballots counted (a mandatory recount is unlikely to change the outcome). Also on the agenda is Arizona's successful Proposition 308, which will allow students to receive financial aid regardless of immigration status.

Over in California, Democrats just took control of the boards of supervisors in two huge counties, Riverside and Orange—in the case of the latter, for the first time since 1976. Joe and David also discuss which Democratic candidates who fell just short this year they'd like to see try again in 2024, and what the GOP's very skinny House majority means for Kevin McCarthy's prospects as speaker.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

The Original Oath Keepers' 'Patriot' Celebrity Is Still In Jail For Child Rape

The Original Oath Keepers' 'Patriot' Celebrity Is Still In Jail For Child Rape

The first time I came across the Oath Keepers back in the summer of 2009, it was all because of a then-29-year-old ex-Marine wearing a skull mask and ranting about the need for “Patriot” militiamen to “rise up” in “a violent revolution.” It was a telling introduction.

The Marine’s name was Charles Dyer. He was an Iraq War combat veteran, and his videos began turning up in late 2008 and early 2009 on YouTube. I was monitoring the rapid increase in militia organizing that began occurring around the time Barack Obama began running for president, which then skyrocketed for the next four years. Dyer’s videos, which attracted hundreds of thousands of views, made me concerned—especially as I realized that he was a spokesman for this new organization that focused on recruiting military veterans into a far-right ideological army, and which was closely associated with the blossoming Tea Party movement.

Dyer’s videos, posted under his nom de guerre “July4Patriot,” comprised him ranting into a video camera about government “tyranny.” He wore his military uniforms—including his Marine dress uniform—but obscured his face with a skull mask (the first I had ever seen of them, well before they were adopted as the face covering of choice by alt-right neo-Nazis nearly a decade later).

He also had a fondness for “inspirational” anthemic music in the background, usually of the Celtic variety, and sometimes so loud it obscured what he was saying—but his incendiary, violent rhetoric was worrisome:

The enemies of the Constitution are not far away in some distant desert. They’re found right here on our own soil. We have become complacent. We have allowed the tyrants to take over this country, and we have no one to blame but ourselves. The time is now. We must rise up together and resist while we still have the ability resist.

This was stock rhetoric of the Patriot movement that I had been hearing since the 1990s. But most of the people indulging in this seditionist talk back then were ordinary citizens with little or no military background. On the other hand, Dyer not only had such a background, but claimed that there was an active antigovernment “resistance” within the armed forces:

I know many of you are afraid of the government. You wonder how you will fight something as strong as the U.S. military. I ask you this question: Who is that’s behind those rifles you fear? They are your sons, your daughters, your mothers and your fathers. They are American citizens just like you. And let me assure you that there is a resistance within the military. We will not be silent, we will not obey, we will not allow the American people to have their rights taken away in any manner. We will not disarm the American people during martial law. Let me assure you, Patriots, that we will die fighting our brothers in arms if we must, but we will not fight our countrymen.

As he posted more videos, Dyer’s rhetoric began ratcheting up the violence. What particularly sent him over the edge was the wave of outrage whipped up by right-wing media and conservative pundits over a bulletin issued by the Department of Homeland Security in early 2009 warning that right-wing extremists planned to be recruiting military veterans like himself into their ranks.

The bulletin, as was clear back then to anyone looking at domestic terrorism seriously, was an appropriate warning due to longstanding concerns about far-right infiltration of the ranks of the military, as well as recruitment of veterans into extremist ideologies and organizations after they returned home. People like Charles Dyer.

But right-wing pundits like Michelle Malkin and Glenn Beck began shrieking at the tops of their lungs that the bulletin was part of an Obama administration conspiracy to designate all conservatives far-right terrorists so they could begin rounding them up and imprisoning them. Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity joined in the bashing, as did a number of veterans groups like the American Legion, all of it handily whitewashing away the very real record of right-wing domestic terrorism in the United States.

All of this fueled and justified the anger of people like Dyer, who was furious about the bulletin:

They are already desperate to keep us from fighting back. The DHS has even issued a letter labeling Patriots as traitors, calling us right-wing extremists and domestic terrorists. Call me whatever name makes you feel justified in persecuting me. But should I care what men made of pure evil think, or label me as? Should I compromise my principles or make a whore of myself for these piece of filth? I think not.

But with the DHS blatantly calling Patriots, veterans, and constitutionalists a threat, all that I have to say is: You’re damn right we’re a threat. We’re a threat to anyone that endangers our rights and the Constitution of this republic.

“Patriots, we are not overpowered. If we united under one banner and fight for our children’s liberty and the constitution, our resolve is invincible to any standing army,” Dyer said in another video.

In one video showing him participating in paramilitary exercises, he answers someone who asks him whether he would advise signing up for the armed forces. “Join the military?” said Dyer. “Depends on what you want to do with it. Me? I'm going to use my training and become one of those domestic terrorists that you’re so afraid of from the DHS reports.”

Comments left behind on his YouTube channel were almost uniformly sympathetic and indicated that he had a significant audience for this rhetoric:

“This Marine is right on. Those now in power in Washington are hell-bent on destroying America and The Constitution. The Marine is right, America is a Republic, NOT a democracy, and what he says about laws that infringe on the 2nd Amendment is right. Any law that 'infringes' on the right to keep and bear arms is unconstitutional. This Marine is a patriot. Those that disagree with him, you know where the border is.”

“You only wish that's what he was. Everything he said in that video is true. And if you weren't so blind to what is going on right now, ie. the government wanting to nationalize the banking systems, wanting to increase gun laws ... not that there aren't over 20k already on the books, I could continue. The American people aren't free anymore, they just have a false sense of freedom, given to them to keep them complacent and happy as they go about their daily lives ... but soon that will end.”

“I believe there is a mountain of truth to this video. Everyone I know is stocking up on guns/ammo/food. I was in the military and I think most servicemembers feel the same as him. They took the oath to protect and defend the constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. Most military members are very patriotic and attuned to what is going on. When I was in, most everyone hated Clinton. I can only imagine what they feel toward Obama and the Congress.”

In reality there were good reasons to be concerned about the radicalization of American veterans: In the 1990s, both Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and Atlanta Olympics bomber Eric Rudolph had manifested the danger when radicalized extremists also possess military training and capabilities. In 2008 the FBI had issued its own internal report exploring the problem. It concluded:

  • Although individuals with military backgrounds constitute a small percentage of white supremacist extremists, they frequently occupy leadership roles within extremist groups and their involvement has the potential to reinvigorate an extremist movement suffering from loss of leadership and in-fighting during the post-9/11 period.
  • … Military experience—ranging from failure at basic training to success in special operations forces—is found throughout the white supremacist extremist movement. FBI reporting indicates extremist leaders have historically favored recruiting active and former military personnel for their knowledge of firearms, explosives, and tactical skills and their access to weapons and intelligence in preparation for an anticipated war against the federal government, Jews, and people of color.
  • ... The prestige which the extremist movement bestows upon members with military experience grants them the potential for influence beyond their numbers. Most extremist groups have some members with military experience, and those with military experience often hold positions of authority within the groups to which they belong.
  • ... Military experience—often regardless of its length or type—distinguishes one within the extremist movement. While those with military backgrounds constitute a small percentage of white supremacist extremists, FBI investigations indicate they frequently have higher profiles within the movement, including recruitment and leadership roles.
  • ... New groups led or significantly populated by military veterans could very likely pursue more operationally minded agendas with greater tactical confidence. In addition, the military training veterans bring to the movement and their potential to pass this training on to others can increase the ability of lone offenders to carry out violence from the movement’s fringes.

However, the projection-fueled hysteria over the Homeland Security bulletin focused precisely on this problem became so overwhelming that Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano was forced to issue an apology and retract the bulletin. The consequences went much deeper, of course: DHS’ domestic-terrorism-monitoring section was gutted, and the Obama administration fell into hunker-down/failure mode when it came to the radical right. Even more consequentially, these failures led to the ability of far-right extremists to keep festering and recruiting and growing. Especially groups like the Oath Keepers.

Dyer revealed his identity for the first time at a Tea Party event in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, on July 4, 2009, where he gave a speech that promptly showed up online. It was advertised as an appearance by “July4Patriot,” but he told the audience his real name. He also told them the name of the organization for whom he was speaking and recruiting: the Oath Keepers.

In his speech, Dyer also described the “10 orders we will not obey”—the Oath Keepers’ original credo, a list of the kinds of actions used by authoritarian states—rounding up people, ordering the entire populace to be forcibly disarmed, imposing martial law, creating concentration camps—which mostly reflected the paranoid fears of black helicopters and FEMA common among movement Patriots.

The Oath Keepers, in fact, had only been founded that March 2009 by a former aide to Congressman Ron Paul of Texas—himself a well-established wellspring of far-right extremism with a mainstream patina—named Elmer Stewart Rhodes. A Yale Law graduate with a smooth media demeanor, Rhodes began showing up on TV, ranging from an appearance with Chris Mathews on his MSNBC Hardball program to an honored spot at the 2010 Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) annual convention.

Dyer kept posting videos, but without the skull mask. They mostly showed him engaging in paramilitary training exercises in rural areas, apparently in Oklahoma. He voiced extreme agitation and paranoia about the DHS bulletin, which he claimed targeted veterans as domestic terrorists. Dyer also made his own affiliation with the Patriot movement explicit, and made it similarly clear that the Oath Keepers were part of that movement:

The Patriot movement is basically just all different kinds of organizations across the United States. You’re looking at militias, or maybe the American resistance movement, the umbrella organization, and you may have the Ohio militia or the Michigan militia or whatever, militias all over the place. Citizens militias like in San Diego. They’re all under the Patriot movement. And we’re trying to take back this republic, and restore this republic like it's supposed, like it was intended by our Founding Fathers.

Dyer’s rhetoric became increasingly seditionist, especially the talk about “a violent revolution”:

I’m not gonna be hiding from my command anymore, I’m sure not gonna be hiding from the ATF or hiding from the FBI, I’m not hiding from any organization. If they wanna come take me, I’m not gonna be afraid. If I’m afraid at that point, we’re in a tyrannical government in the first place, and people need to rise up. At that point, there needs to be a violent revolution.

This was part of a larger trend we were seeing elsewhere across the country, including in the West and the South, of people forming militias and conducting paramilitary exercises, and wielding threatening seditionist rhetoric without restraint. The numbers of militias in the United States began spiking from their mid-2000s low of 131 to 512 in 2009, eventually hitting an all-time high in 2011 at 1,360.

Dyer’s speeches and activism, meanwhile, were being heavily promoted at the Oath Keepers’ website through 2009. Dyer shed his pseudonym altogether and began simply using his real name.

However, Dyer’s career as a spokesman for the Oath Keepers ended abruptly and in ugly fashion. He was arrested in January 2010 and charged with raping his young daughter. Investigators found a grenade launcher in his home.

Rhodes promptly disavowed him, claiming that Dyer had never been an actual dues-paying, card-signing member of the Oath Keepers.

In fact, however, Rhodes and Dyer were working closely together for much of that year leading up to his arrest, according to Rhodes’ ex-wife, Tasha Adams. In my interview with her earlier this year, she described how Rhodes—enamored of Dyer’s videos—had taken the budding radical under his wing.

Adams says Dyer was recruited by Rhodes into the organization early on, and Rhodes began putting him to use as a spokesman at events like the one in Broken Arrow. Adams said that Rhodes became “obsessed” with Dyer (“Stewart used to talk with his mother all the time”), and “almost immediately invited him to our home.”

After having Dyer sleeping on their couch for several days, Adams found out that Dyer was under investigation for having molested his own young daughter, but “he didn’t stay much longer after that.” Shortly after he departed, Dyer in fact was charged with the crime and eventually convicted; he’s currently still serving his 30-year sentence.

“He had sort of an eerie vibe about him. Just his demeanor,” Adams said.

At the same time, Oath Keepers by 2010 had become a fixture on the Tea Party scene, becoming listed cosponsors of Tea Party gatherings and making their presence felt, and welcomed, among that movement. This corroborated what I had been seeing elsewhere: The Tea Party, marketed on Fox News and CNN and everywhere else as a nominally mainstream movement, was rapidly becoming a massive conduit for a revival of the ‘90s Patriot “militia” movement.

This trend became cemented over the following year, and eventually the Tea Party movement became wholly consumed by Patriot ideology, rhetoric, and agendas. And the Oath Keepers were one of the leading purveyors of that transformation.

Yet they continued to be treated as mainstream by the media, particularly right-wing outlets. Fox News and particularly Bill O’Reilly—where Rhodes began popping up with regularity—were eager to indulge Rhodes’ claims that his group really wasn’t a militia (even if they were functionaries of the same Patriot movement) and similarly eager to deny that militias had taken over the Tea Party.

Of course, O’Reilly and his Fox cohorts had also been among the leading voices claiming that Obama’s DHS was trying to smear conservatives and the Tea Party with accusations of domestic terrorism. This line of attack became broadly used by Republicans across the board to hammer into the narrative their denial that right-wing domestic terrorism posed any kind of real threat to Americans.

The end result of that narrative, after more than a decade of denial, was the Jan. 6 insurrection, when a mob of Donald Trump-loving Patriots attacked the U.S. Capitol and attempted to prevent Trump’s loss becoming manifest in the peaceful transfer of power. And it surprises no one who has watched the Oath Keepers over the years that Rhodes is now on trial for seditionist conspiracy for having attempted to lead that coup.

Rhodes has always attempted to present Oath Keepers as a mainstream organization, but the façade was thoroughly exposed in 2009 by Justine Sharrock at Mother Jones,whose in-depth report revealed a cadre of armed and angry extremists with paranoid ideas and unstable dispositions behind the claims of normalcy and civic-mindedness, with the patina of authority that having military and law enforcement veterans on your membership rolls can provide.

Dyer, in fact, was not an anomaly. He was the embodiment of the kind of people the Oath Keepers were built to attract: Only borderline stable, simmering with anger and paranoia, and underscored with a constant thrum of menace and potential violence. The kind of people who to this day comprise Trump’s MAGA army.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Trucker ‘Convoy’ Arrives In Northwest Amid Random Gunfire And Political Confusion

Trucker ‘Convoy’ Arrives In Northwest Amid Random Gunfire And Political Confusion

One month after trundling out of Washington, D.C., with nothing but a few Ted Cruz photo ops under their belt, the “People’s Convoy” protest—a sort of rolling roadshow of far right-wing “Patriot” grievance, modeled after the truckers’ protest that shut down Ottawa in February—is still going, sort of, and can’t figure out when to call things quits.

The whole affair took on ominous undertones this weekend when, upon reaching the Pacific Northwest, shots were fired after protesters attempted harassing them from a freeway overpass. A badly organized rally in Olympia the next day was just a circus of far-right conspiracism and extremism. And at its end, the convoy organizers announced they intend to return to D.C., and this time they “mean business.”

The convoy, as it announced when it left Washington, headed to California so it could travel to Sacramento and protest the state Legislature over health mandates and “critical race theory”—which it did, to relatively little effect. It kept going after that, attempting to harass individual legislators by traveling to the home of a California Democratic leader in Oakland.

However, that protest turned into a fiasco for the convoy when they found themselves stuck on narrow streets in the middle of neighborhoods, leaving them sitting ducks for teenagers who began pelting them with eggs. One video showed a trucker getting out of his cab to confront his tormentors and being forced to flee back inside.


The protest then turned north and passed through the Portland area on Friday, which is where it encountered protesters along Interstate 205 northbound, as Vishal P. Singh reported for Kos. Videos recorded on livestreams show that about four or five people—one of whom draped a banner over the railing—threw objects at the trucks, in response to which someone from within the convoy fired gunshots directed at them; the same livestreams showed shots being fired at an overpass several miles farther north as well.

The first encounter occurred in Portland near the intersection of Interstates 205 and 84 at the overpass on Glisan Street, which cannot be accessed from the freeway. Video shows three or four people tossing objects—which appear mostly to be eggs and paint-filled balloons—in the direction of the trucks, which have stopped in a line across the three lanes of the freeway.

At one point, a fire truck participating in the convoy got out a water cannon and sprayed it in the direction of the protesters—but to no effect, since its range was too short. Eventually, as the protesters appeared to be leaving, one of the convoy participants could be seen pulling out a pistol, and several gunshots could be heard.

Then, 18 miles farther north on I-205, across the Columbia River near its junction with Interstate 5 in Vancouver, Washington, members of the convoy again apparently opened fire on people standing on the 134th Street overpass. One livestreamer claimed they were throwing objects, but their video showed the person standing on the overpass above them was waving a flag and appeared to be a supporter; nonetheless, in another video of drivers approaching that scene, multiple gunshots can be heard coming from the convoy.

Finally, in a video collected by antifascist activist @Johnthelefty, a police officer catches up with the caravan in Vancouver and, rather than inquire about the gunfire, chats with the activists agreeably and shakes their hands.

The convoys’ supporters thought the gunfire was justified. On Twitter, one of them posted:

What SHOULD people do if gangs of transvestite communist ninjas organize to try to cause accidents by throwing paint-bombs at Semi-truck windshields?

Well... These guys decided "Shoot the Bastards" is the appropriate response.

Pretty sure society is all reaching this conclusion.

The next morning, the convoy headed north to Olympia, where the plan was to hold a rally at the state Capitol. The “People’s Convoy” group arriving from the south were met by smaller convoys arriving from northern parts of Puget Sound (including Whidbey Island) and the Seattle Eastside. The majority of these vehicles were four-wheelers festooned with banners.

But after pulling up their big rigs and parking along the avenues to the east of the Capitol, the convoy participants got out to discover that the 1 p.m. rally they were supposed to be attending was barely in motion. The livestreamer who operates 1st Responders Media, Josue “Big Joe” Felix, could be seen wandering the grounds in search of the rally venue, muttering: “I do not know where the rally’s gonna be at!”

It turned out to be a very small affair involving a few dozen people, taking place under and around some red portable shelters near the Tivoli Fountain, about 1/8 mile from the Capitol itself. And as it got underway under a drenching downpour, it became clear that its chief organizers—a group called We The People Against Communism (WTPAC)—were extremist conspiracy theorists of the first rank.

The first speaker was a woman from WTPAC who launched into a rant claiming that “democracy is socialism”:

We’re all sitting around waiting for voting to change what’s going on, and I need to tell you guys it’s not gonna change it. You guys have voted and voted and voted and voted and voted and where has it got us? Communism! Communism!

The next thing you guys need to figure out is you need to ask all your political candidates why do they support democracy? Democracy is socialism, socialism is communism, and that is how we got here! Democracy is not for the Republic!

America was founded upon God, and it is a Republic, not a democracy! And we need to remember that, and it is time that we stand up and defend! Our! Country!

We own it! The government does not own it! It is ours! We! Pay! Them!

Reverting to a bullhorn, she continued to rant that “we are going to take on the hospitals and the pharmacies,” and urged the rain-drenched audience: “And if you still have kids in school, get! Them! Out! These schools are just Communist government-ran camps! Get your children out of public school! Collapse the system! That’s how we win!”

The crowd applauded.

One speaker defended Tusitala “Tiny” Toese, the Proud Boy currently in prison awaiting trial on charges involving his participation in protest violence in Portland in August 2020; another was a trucker who urged the Olympia gathering to get out larger crowds.

But the most striking speaker was a woman, apparently a member of WTPAC, who told the crowd she was born and raised in China and served in its military before coming to the United States after the Tiananmen Massacre in 1989, and had brought to the rally a sign proclaiming: “Stop CCP [Chinese Communist Party] Infiltration”.

“The CCP is the root of all evil,” she claimed. “They helped Joe Biden steal President Trump’s presidency.”

She went on to claim that COVID-19 was a Chinese bioweapon: “This time, so-called COVID-19, the Wuhan virus, we call it the CCP virus,” she said. “It unleashed a virus to attack the United States. Lock you down, into your house, wherever, so that you are not allowed to get together like this, we are today.”

She also claimed that Zoom and TikTok were part of a Chinese plot to collect facial-recognition data on everyone, “what you do, what is your social circle. This is a planned attack, planted by the CCP.” She also claimed that the Biden administration is releasing Chinese spies, and now Chinese intelligence is attacking “me and my colleagues here,” and that she and her family have been threatened. She then launched into a rant claiming that Biden is a puppet of Chinese Communists:

Biden is the biggest traitor I have ever seen in the United States! Biden, his brother James Biden, and his son, Hunter Biden, under this so-called fake president! He is not what we voted! He stole the position! But under the help of the Chinese Communist Party, CCP. We must not give up. And Biden is treason, and Biden is a traitor. That’s why, when we welcomed him, the slogan I had on the red curtain, banner, it said: ‘Impeach Traitor Joe Biden.’

The crowd lustily applauded her as well.

One of the final speakers was a convoy leader named David Riddell, from Lebanon, Ohio, known among the truckers and their online fans as “Santa,” thanks to his beard and portly appearance. Riddell appeared to be taking on the role of convoy spokesperson, announcing that they were next taking their roadshow to Post Falls, Idaho, where the owners of a speedway had offered to host them, and they planned to spend at least week figuring out their next step.

But Riddell also made clear that their convoy protest would not end. Rather, they planned to return to Washington, D.C., in part because it was clear they felt humiliated:

You made fun of us, you placated us with cute little words, and you came out and had your little photo op meetings with us, that’s going to happen no more.

When we go back to D.C., we are not the same convoy that went there the first time. We are not the same convoy that left there. We are coming back with teeth and a backbone! That’s all there is to it! We are going there and we will be heard!

I don’t think they understand the sincerity and the hearts of American Patriots today! We are totally fed up with tyranny!

However, there never was a point in the event when it was clear exactly what they were protesting in Olympia—since most mandates in Washington state have been or are being rescinded—or what their demands might be. Instead, it was just Patriot movement angst:

So we’re going back to D.C. We want you to join with us. Come from wherever you are. Start forming your convoys. We’re doing the same thing we did before, but this time we’re serious about it. We’ve learned some stuff since last time. We’re going back there, and we’re going to be heard. How many’s gonna go with us?

We’re going in to do business. We don’t need 100 trucks. We don’t need 200 trucks. We don’t need 500 four-wheelers. We need tens of thousands of all you to get in your vehicles, join with us, and come to Washington, D.C.

You’ve taken our money and put it back into special interest groups that does not represent the people, and we’re coming to make sure that you understand that we’re not happy with that! We’re tired of that. The American people are fed up—we’re fed up with that nonsense. You’re struggling from week to week and trying to pay your bills, so some fat cat in Washington sells off his special-interest group and they buy him a house and give him a plane ticket to a great vacation somewhere, where you’re hoping just to go to an amusement park somewhere with your family! They tax you to death and do not represent you.

Just as their demands and their entire purpose is unclear, the “People’s Convoy” is also unclear about how it is able to keep operating, especially for people who claim to be barely able to live paycheck to paycheck. That fundraising income must be a powerful incentive to just keep going and going anyway.

Reprinted with permission fromDailyKos.

Often There’s No Sensible Middle

Often There’s No Sensible Middle

Some time ago, I heard a power company executive arguing that humans have played no role in global warming. Actually, he went further, “demonstrating” that global warming isn’t even happening. (This is often done by cherry-picking dates to start with an unusually warm year.) He ended by spreading his arms and beseeching us in his common-sense voice, “Can’t we meet in the sensible middle?”

To which I thought, “If I say the moon is made of lunar rock and you say it is made of green cheese, is the ‘sensible middle’ that the moon is half lunar rock and half green cheese?”

That’s the problem with sensible middles. You can’t do the give-and-take without agreeing on facts. Nowadays, some of the thorniest problems get hung up on one side’s dismissal (or corruption) of accepted science. We can compromise over how far our society will go in confronting climate change, but we must first agree it exists.

Thus, when we ask questions like “Would Hillary Clinton be a centrist president?” what do we mean by that? We can be sure that if nominated, Clinton the candidate will try to seem centrist, as will her Republican foe. Americans like the sound of moderation.

Some debates can’t logically end in compromise. The right to abortion does not lend itself to concessions, making it a landmine for Republicans in a general election. Religious conservatives want abortion banned, but most Americans want it kept legal. So you have Republican candidates saying that they oppose abortion but would allow it in cases of rape and incest.

They may even paint others as extremist: “My opponent won’t even make an exception for rape or incest.”

In reality, the so-called extreme position is the only logical “pro-life” stance. If one holds that the organism formed at conception is a full human person, it is a full human being whether conceived through rape or through marital love. There is no biological difference.

I don’t agree that two cells fused at fertilization are a full human being. I respect the views of those who do, but not if they won’t accept the consequences of their position.

Another problem in reaching a sensible middle is finding the middle. Tax and spending policy is an area where compromise can be reached. But there’s no middle to work toward when one side portrays any tax increase as a deal killer.

In 2011, eight Republicans running for president were asked at a debate whether they’d accept a deal with Democrats giving them $10 in spending cuts for every $1 in tax increases. This would seem a conservative’s debt reduction dream, but not one of the eight would say yes to it.

The candidates were surely mindful of President George H.W. Bush’s electoral loss after breaking his pledge, “Read my lips: No new taxes.” The elder Bush happened to be doing the responsible thing, but his party’s right wing had moved fiscal management from the realm of political science to black-and-white religion.

Today this faction doesn’t want its leaders to be seen shaking hands with President Obama, much less compromising with him on matters of substance. The outcome is Republicans disinheriting their own ideas because Obama has adopted them. The great example was the Affordable Care Act, whose blueprint came out of the conservative Heritage Foundation.

Many Americans only pretend to seek a sensible middle by placing the middle in the middle of their stuck beliefs. No, it’s worse than that. Many are scuttling rational thought altogether, accepting or rejecting beliefs not on their merits but based on who is holding them. The end product is neither a middle nor sensible.

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Web page at www.creators.com.

Republican presidential candidates are pictured during the Iowa GOP/Fox News Debate at the CY Stephens Auditorium in Ames, Iowa, Thursday, Aug. 11, 2011. From left to right: former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum; businessman Herman Cain; Rep. Ron Paul, R-TX; former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney; Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-MN.; former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty; former Utah governor Jon Huntsman; former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall, Pool)