Fascists are the Tools of the State

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Re: Fascists are the Tools of the State

Postby American Dream » Fri Aug 31, 2018 9:32 am

Letter from Germany: “Right Wing Extremist Movements Exploding”

Only a few days later, on 26 August, a terrible knife attack took place in Chemnitz (also Saxony), in which one German Cuban was killed and two other men were injured. As suspects, a Syrian and an Iraqi man were arrested.

Within a short time, this message spread, mostly in the form of fake news (“Muslims murder three German men!”), like wildfire in the social media.

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Pegida hunting victims in chemnitz

Instigated by prominent AfD politicians, around 800 – 1000 and one day later more than 6,000 often violent right-wing extremists gathered in the center of Chemnitz and staged a hunt for people whom they considered to be migrants or leftists.

600 policemen were present and barely intervened, but watched inadvertently.

On the one hand, because they were far too few, and on the other – and not only protesters from the left political camp, but also bourgeois reporters and journalists – it comes more frequently and more bluntly to open sympathy with right-wing extremists from the ranks of the police.

You have to imagine that – where there are left-wing, or simply progressive, capitalism-critical protest events such as in Hamburg (G-20), Stuttgart (protests against the train station S21) or now in Hambacher Forst, a wonderful, ancient, protected forest, which is to be destroyed for a coal mine, so where in these protest thousands of police with brutal force, water cannons, truncheons and tear gas act against people who are just for justice, peace and conservation, there is practically nothing on the part of the police, when crowds marauding through the streets and even unabashedly into the camera show the (in Germany forbidden) Hitler salute.

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Hambacher Forst… The police did not hesitate to protect the coal company that is planning on destroying this forest, while adding to global warming at the same time.

And then it happened also that a short time later, the, of course, police-internal and secret arrest warrant against the suspected main culprit appeared in the Internet. The leak had to come from a police officer!

Since yesterday, investigations against the law enforcement officers and extreme right-wing politicians („Bürger in Wut“ / “citizens in anger”) Jan Timke, he is suspected of having illegally published the document.

In view of these facts, more and more leftists or even progressive people are really afraid of the police, but also of other public authorities.

Everyone still remembers the almost complete cover-up of the NSU affair in front of the public.

What if the neo-Nazis, the racists and right-wing extremists have managed to infiltrate the state unnoticed, if they have their people in all the authorities, right down to the executive floors?

And many are worried – would that be a far-right coup within the possible?

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Thilo Sarrazin and his new chauvinist book. He’s a member of the SPD! (So much for social democracy!)

P.S. Exactly at this point in time (exactly today) ex-politician Thilo Sarrazin has published his new anti-Islamist book “Hostile takeover: How Islam hinders progress and threatens society”. And it’s a shame that Germany’s leading right-wing populist is not a member of the nazi party, but of the social democrat party SPD.

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https://oaklandsocialist.com/2018/08/30 ... exploding/
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Re: Fascists are the Tools of the State

Postby American Dream » Thu Sep 06, 2018 9:23 am

Gee, what smells so bad around here?


This week’s controversial ‘Urban Shield’ training won’t be repeated, Alameda county says

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A small number of Stop Urban Shield coalition protesters were arrested as they tried to hang a banner and block Gate 8 into the Alameda County Fairgrounds in Pleasanton, Calif., on Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. Urban Shield is an event for law enforcement that includes SWAT training and disaster preparedness.

Stop Urban Shield opposes the SWAT training that has been a part of the event.

In the view of sheriff’s spokesman Sgt. Ray Kelly, the event is already evolving.

“Is it the end of Urban Shield? No, it’s not,” Kelly said. “It’s being refined, it’s being evolved and changed.”

Besides its military-like training, Urban Shield has been criticized for its vendor choices. The event typically has a vendor show at the Alameda County Fairgrounds in Pleasanton. About five years ago, an Urban Shield vendor sold “Black Rifles Matter” T-shirts during the time the Black Lives Matter movement was making waves.

Last year, the Oath Keepers, which the Southern Poverty Law Center describes as one of the largest radical anti-government groups in the nation, also participated in Urban Shield.

But Kelly said things have changed.


https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2018/09/04 ... unty-says/
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Re: Fascists are the Tools of the State

Postby American Dream » Fri Sep 07, 2018 8:21 am

The Far-Right Uprising

BY
MARCEL TSCHEKOW


Last week a racist mob terrorized Chemnitz in eastern Germany. This violent street militancy displays the increasing confidence of an emboldened far right.

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A man raises his arm in a Heil Hitler salute towards heckling leftists at a right-wing protest gathering on August 27, 2018 in Chemnitz, Germany.

The AfD in the northeastern state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern has become home to some particularly questionable police officers. One leading member, Nikolaus Kramer, comes from the extreme right-wing fraternity scene, shares pictures glorifying Nazi soldiers on social media (he once commented on a picture of SS officers with the line “a black bloc isn’t always a bad thing”), and maintained a second Facebook profile on which he “liked” right-wing extremist groups.

Perhaps scariest of all is the case of the terror suspect, former police officer, and AfD member Haik Jaeger. He is part of the oft-ridiculed far-right “prepper” scene, who stockpile food and build bunkers in preparation for the collapse of the social system. He was a member of the prepper group “Nordkreuz,” which was founded by another Mecklenburg police commissioner and recruited heavily out of the military reserve. This organization as well as Jaeger himself are accused of terrorism due to their alleged plans to assassinate political opponents.

Nordkreuz was ultimately discovered because it emerged in connection with an investigation into the case of military lieutenant Franco A., who made kill lists of his political opponents. This man’s case is known throughout Germany, having spent a year falsely posing as a Syrian refugee as part of a plan to carry out a terrorist attack that would have been attributed to an asylum seeker. Along with A., another soldier, an AfD member, was also arrested.


https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/09/chem ... mmigration
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Re: Fascists are the Tools of the State

Postby American Dream » Mon Sep 10, 2018 11:00 am

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The Hate Report: Police vs. antifa

High-level officials with the Louisiana State Police emailed around a fake list of purported antifa activists that originated on the conspiracy theory website 8Chan and was shared widely by neo-Nazis, according to a lawsuit filed this week on behalf of a New Orleans lawyer.

As BuzzFeed reported last year, a group of trolls spent months creating a sprawling list of the personal information of people on the political left. They scraped sources like a petition condemning the Trump administration and the personal Facebook pages of people associated with the pro-immigrant group By Any Means Necessary, or BAMN. Then they released the document on 8Chan, claiming it was a “full list of antifa members.”

That list was quickly spread on white supremacist and neo-Nazi websites including Stormfront, claims the lawsuit, filed by Harvard Law School lecturer Thomas Frampton on behalf of New Orleans civil rights attorney William Most. And from there it apparently made its way into the hands of Louisiana State Police.

Most is suing to force the Louisiana State Police to release a copy of the document. He learned of the document after seeing it was an attachment in department emails he received in a public records request.

“These citizens have been victimized once by Neo-Nazis; are they now being victimized again by law enforcement?” Most wrote in an email.

The lawsuit echoes recent instances around the country where police departments have been accused of working with white supremacists or of unfairly targeting antifa over competing right-wing groups.

In February, California Highway Patrol officers were found to have coordinated with the white supremacist Traditionalist Workers Party to hunt down members of antifa during a 2016 protest. Emails uncovered by lawyers for anti-racist protesters found that police officers offered to protect a white supremacist rally organizer while seeking the help of racist protesters to identify their antifa opponents.

Last summer, the Berkeley Police Department came under fire for using evidence unearthed on the anonymous online message board 4chan. The site is notorious for spreading malicious conspiracy theories like Pizzagate, often to purposefully stir up controversy.

The evidence these online activists dug up was seized on by Berkeley police, who partly relied on it to arrest Eric Clanton, a 28-year-old college professor who allegedly attacked white supremacists with a bike lock. Clanton, who was charged with four counts of felony assault with a deadly weapon, pleaded no contest to lesser charges last month. He is serving three years of probation.

The Louisiana allegations add fuel to the argument that police departments are targeting antifa activists disproportionately compared to the far-right activists antifa often clash with. Several times over the past year, police departments have been accused of being heavy-handed against peacefully protesting anarchist and antifa protesters while seemingly giving violent far-right-wing protesters a free ride.

Portland police are currently investigating the conduct of officers who confronted counterprotesters during an August protest.

Earlier this month, the ACLU criticized Portland police for targeting left-wing protesters based on their political opinions. “The Portland Police Bureau’s response to protest is completely unacceptable in a free society,” the head of the Oregon branch of the ACLU, David Rogers, said in a statement. “The repeated use of excessive force, and the targeting of demonstrators based on political beliefs are a danger to the First Amendment rights of all people.”

Similar allegations arose after clashes between antifa protesters and Philadelphia police last week. After officers were filmed violently throwing black-clad protesters to the ground and punching them, the police department announced it was investigating the conduct of cops at the protest.


https://www.revealnews.org/blog/the-hat ... vs-antifa/
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Re: Fascists are the Tools of the State

Postby American Dream » Wed Sep 19, 2018 4:15 pm

Colorado state trooper told right-wing activists to “stick around” if they want to fight, video shows

“I know some of you came here to fight,” the trooper says in the video. “That is not happening today. If you want to fight, stick around. I’ve got a couple of guys, they also want to fight.”

The trooper’s comments were met with cheers by the crowd. Some of the men the trooper was addressing are known as the Proud Boys, according to organizers. The group is a far-right self-described “western chauvinist” group. The Southern Poverty Law Center has designated the Proud Boys as a hate group.

The Capitol Hill gathering was a permitted event rallying against bias and censorship of right-wing commentators on social media. The trooper in the video was on duty, according to CSP spokesperson Josh Lewis. CSP is not releasing the trooper’s name. The officer has been placed on paid administrative leave while CSP investigates the content and context of the online video, Lewis said.

The event was organized by Major League Liberty, a right-wing pro-Trump podcast. One of the podcast’s hosts, Louie Huey, has been involved with the Proud Boys in the past, according to his Facebook account.


https://www.denverpost.com/2018/09/17/p ... e-capitol/
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Re: Fascists are the Tools of the State

Postby American Dream » Sun Oct 07, 2018 9:43 am

Racist Nazi symbol found on North Charleston police flashlight; origin a mystery

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After a white North Charleston officer was fired for hitting a handcuffed black man, a search of his car revealed a police-issued flashlight emblazoned with a racist Nazi symbol and the words “The Wig Splitter.”

Officer Leroy Hair denied ownership of the flashlight and any knowledge of its origin. But he suggests in a new lawsuit that it had been used by other officers to beat minority suspects.


https://www.postandcourier.com/news/rac ... 14cd8.html
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Re: Fascists are the Tools of the State

Postby American Dream » Tue Oct 09, 2018 8:37 pm

"JTTF & Klan – Hand in Hand" begins at @30 minutes:


This Is America #34: UPS Strike, JTTF & Klan – Hand in Hand

Next, we talk to someone in North Carolina, about a developing situation, where local police that have built a career off of surveilling anarchists and antifascists have been shown to be the handlers of an informant within one of the largest KKK groups in the South. We discuss the Greensboro Massacre and its historical implications as well as what this news means for the present day.

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https://itsgoingdown.org/this-is-americ ... jttf-klan/
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Re: Fascists are the Tools of the State

Postby American Dream » Sun Oct 14, 2018 9:27 am

Greek police could have prevented murder of rapper by far right

A forensic report revealed Greek police’s failure to prevent the murder of Pavlos Fyssas by far-right Golden Dawn party.


https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/10/ ... 20545.html
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Re: Fascists are the Tools of the State

Postby American Dream » Tue Oct 16, 2018 6:00 pm

Right-wing group was camped on rooftop with weapons ahead of major rally

The revelations were withheld from city officials for more than two months following the incident.

LUKE BARNES
OCT 16, 2018


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PRIOR TO A MAJOR PROTEST IN THE CITY ON AUGUST 4, PORTLAND POLICE OFFICERS "DISCOVERED INDIVIDUALS [AFFILIATED WITH THE GROUP PATRIOT PRAYER] WHO POSITIONED THEMSELVES ON A ROOFTOP PARKING STRUCTURE WITH A CACHE OF FIREARMS," INCLUDING LONG GUNS. NO ARRESTS WERE MADE. (PHOTO CREDIT: DIEGO DIAZ/ICON SPORTSWIRE VIA GETTY IMAGES).

Discovering a far-right group stationed on a rooftop with a stockpile of weapons, overlooking a major demonstration, might rattle most people, especially if that group has a documented history of clashing with counterprotestors. But evidently not the Portland Police Bureau.

On Monday it was revealed that, prior to a major protest in the city on August 4 — which ended in brutal clashes between far-right and anti-fascist demonstrators — Portland officers “discovered individuals [affiliated with the group Patriot Prayer] who positioned themselves on a rooftop parking structure with a cache of firearms,” including long guns. No arrests were made, and no one outside of the police department, not even the mayor, was informed about the incident until now.

The news comes after a weekend of far-right violence on both the East and West Coast. On Friday, the Proud Boys, a far-right group which has repeatedly worked with Patriot Prayer, attacked several people near the Metropolitan Republican Club in New York City, shouting on one occasion “Are you brave now, faggot?” And on Saturday in Portland, Patriot Prayer leader Joey Gibson organized a “Flash March for Law and Order,” which ended in brawls between the group and counter-protesters. According to reports, police at that demonstration did not intervene to stop the violence.

In response to the attacks in New York, the NYPD announced Monday evening that it was looking for 12 individuals — nine of them Proud Boys, three of them counter-protesters — allegedly involved in the brawls. Police said they believed they had evidence to bring charges against them. Officers arrested only three people the night of the attack, however, all of them counter-protesters.


https://thinkprogress.org/portland-poli ... e482d1714/
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Re: Fascists are the Tools of the State

Postby American Dream » Thu Oct 25, 2018 12:50 pm

Army Parrots Racist Right’s Talking Points on Antifa

In what are believed to be the first public Defense Dept. assessments of anti-fascists, internal documents whitewashed antifa's enemies but admitted the group posed no threat.

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“In between acts of racist incitement, Anticom members predicted a forthcoming 'massacre' and 'a genocide,' in which white supremacists would have 'the military on our side'”


"With the newly released documents, we again find a U.S. agency targeting anti-fascists as security threats while downplaying the menace posed by white nationalists,” said Ryan Shapiro, Property of the People’s executive director.

One of the documents, dated June 30, 2017, is titled “Situational Awareness: Criminal Activity Sometimes Associated With ANTIFA and ANTI-ANTIFA Gatherings.” Warning of potential violence at “scheduled nationwide protest[s]” for the 4th of July holiday, it portrays Antifa as a sprawling “network of left-wing anarchist group [sic] whose goal is to ‘smash fascism in all its forms,’ specifically sexism, racism, homophobia, government corruption and Islamophobia.” (Some anti-fascists are anarchists, while others are not.)

Antifa’s antagonists, however, are portrayed in a more favorable light: “According to open source [publicly available information, often news reports], ANTI-ANTIFA members are individuals and groups who are engaged in a political battle against ANTIFA, but who are not affiliated with racist nationalists.”

The Army did not provide its basis for that assessment beyond saying it came from “open source” information.

This anti-antifa claim is more than just false—it’s a popular talking point with fascist groups hoping to disguise their racism.

One of the most vocal anti-anti-fascist groups is an extremist collective called Anticom or Anti-Communist Action. Now largely defunct, the most active version of the group billed itself as “the right’s response to antifa.” But Anticom was more than anti-communist; the group was intimately tied to neo-Nazis, as leaked chat logs published by the media nonprofit Unicorn Riot revealed. In between acts of racist incitement, Anticom members predicted a forthcoming “massacre” and “a genocide,” in which white supremacists would have “the military on our side” the leaked chats reveal.

The group had a presence at Unite the Right, and members worked as security for prominent white nationalists like Richard Spencer, ProPublica reported. Despite appearing at white supremacist rallies and promoting genocide online, Anticom told ProPublica that “all races and ideologies are welcome” in the group, as long as they “are anti-communist.”

“Anti-anti-fascist just means fascist. The question that arises is why is the U.S. Federal government casually using a term originating in neo-Nazi circles?”
— A New York City-based antifa activist


Similarly, chat logs from the now-defunct white supremacist group the Traditionalist Worker Party also showed the violent group trying to salvage its reputation after Charlottesville by shifting the blame onto anti-fascists. “You want people hating antifa as much as possible lol,” one wrote in the logs, which were published by Unicorn Riot. Elsewhere in the logs, the violent group discussed building explosives to use against anti-fascists.

“‘Antifa’ means anti-fascist, i.e. people who are against fascism,” a New York City anti-fascist activist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told The Daily Beast. “The provenance of the term ‘anti-antifa’ originates in the messaging of neo-Nazi movements and is absolutely a term used by ‘white power’ groups and adherents around the world. Just breaking down the term, anti-anti-fascist just means fascist. The question that arises is why is the U.S. Federal government casually using a term originating in neo-Nazi circles?”

Daryl Johnson is a former Department of Homeland Security analyst focusing on far-right extremism. Speaking broadly, Johnson disputed that those who clash with antifa are free of white-supremacist associations. “We’ve seen violence initiated by far right activists at these protests, and they’re racist and anti-government, a vast majority of them,” he said.

Although the TWP and Anticom have disbanded or fallen in stature, their anti-anti-fascist posturing has been taken up by other far-right groups like the Proud Boys, American Guard, and Resist Marxism, which have fostered violent extremists while publicly claiming not to be racist.

And although those far-right groups claim to brawl with anti-fascists out of self-defense, their members have been accused or convicted in a series of brutal attacks. Overall, the far-right has been responsible for most extremist killings over the past decade, according to data compiled by the Anti-Defamation League. From 2008 to 2017, 71 percent of extremist murders were carried out by the far right, dwarfing killings by Islamic extremists (26 percent) and far-left extremists (3 percent).

Meanwhile, the Army assessments ultimately conceded that antifa posed no known threat to the U.S. military.

“The ARTIC is not aware of any threats from Antifa directed at the Army or DoD in general,” the report stated. The closest it came to describing a threat was warning that anti-fascists are confrontational and could cause injury or property damage. “As such, DoD personnel or assets could become collateral damage as a result of violence instigated by Antifa organizations or its members.”

ARTIC was able to locate only one possible anti-fascist attack on a military service member. The Army could not conclusively state that the attackers were anti-fascists but cited to The Daily Beast anAir Force Times story as the basis for the incident’s inclusion. The victim, an Air Force officer, was likely targeted for flying Confederate flags from his motorcycle during a protest last year in Olympia, Washington. Washington, admitted to the union in 1889, was not a Confederate state.

“On 05 SEP 17, two males allegedly part of a local ‘anarchist’ group assaulted an Air Force (AF) officer on a motorcycle during a protest in Olympia Washington,” the report reads. “The AF officer was reportedly targeted due to confederate flags attached to his motorcycle. Open source reports that the AF officer was sprayed in the face with mace and struck on the back with a baseball bat and a glass bottle filled with red paint. There is no indication however, that the AF officer was recognizable as a member of the DoD or targeted due to his military affiliation. While not specified in the reporting, the individuals who attacked the AF officer were likely members or supporters of Antifa.”


More: https://www.thedailybeast.com/army-parr ... on-antifa/
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Re: Fascists are the Tools of the State

Postby American Dream » Sun Oct 28, 2018 7:17 am

Felons, Nazis: Michigan is occupied by an army of 3,000 armed, unregulated "police reservists"

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Many states use police reservists to help out for things like big sports-matches, but they typically have state-wide oversight of reservists, with background checks and sufficient training.

Not Michigan: the same austerity that prevents the state from hiring enough cops to fulfill core policing duties also means that the state can't fund the agency that is supposed to oversee the 3,000+ reservists toting guns and handcuffs and driving around in cop cars. Each city is allowed to make up its own rules about how much background checking and training each reservist gets before being armed and sent out among the citizenry. The minimum allowable amount of both is zero.

Which is how Michigan cities and towns have armed and deputized literal Nazis (the Barry Township Police force actually disbanded its reserve force when it realized it had allowed a violent Nazi named John Raterink to become a reservist; when Barry later reinstated the reserve force, it gave Raterink a gun and let him return to duty).


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Re: Fascists are the Tools of the State

Postby American Dream » Thu Nov 15, 2018 10:00 am

Republican Circles Embracing Proud Boys in Recount Fight

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In recent years, the Republican Party has fallen back on a variety of voter suppression tactics to ensure electoral victories, from shutting down polling places in working class areas of color, gerrymandering and redistricting, to pushing new laws like Voter ID, as well as programs such as Cross-Check, which have been successful in kicking literally millions off the voting rolls. In the past when confronted with these tactics, such as in 2000 during the Florida voter recount, the Republicans have also turned towards another tried and true tool in their toolbox: far-Right muscle.

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Paid Republican staffers take part in the Brooks Brothers Riot.

In 2000, Republican operative Roger Stone was instrumental in what was known as the “Brooks Brothers Riot,” where hundreds of paid Republican staffers and operates descended on the office where the vote recount was happening in Miami-Dade Florida. The group then attempted to storm the building and violence broke out, pushing the State to shut down the recount itself and became instrumental in handing the election over to Bush.

Now, in the lead up to another possible recount, Roger Stone and various forces within the GOP and the far-Right are pushing groups like the Proud Boys to mobilize in an attempt to shut down the possible recount, but also intimidate and demoralize Democratic voters who are also demonstrating, largely African-Americans.


Read more: https://itsgoingdown.org/florida-proud-boys/
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Re: Fascists are the Tools of the State

Postby American Dream » Tue Nov 20, 2018 1:18 pm

An Atomwaffen Member Sketched a Map to Take the Neo-Nazis Down. What Path Officials Took Is a Mystery.

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by A.C. Thompson Nov. 20, 10:45 a.m. EST

It was a grisly scene inside Apartment 3722 at the Hamptons, a gated community in Tampa, Florida.

One body lay face up on the floor, wedged between a wall and an air mattress. A handgun was stuffed in a holster on the dead man’s waist. The other body, clad in a black T-shirt and shorts, was slumped back on a futon, a shattered and bloody iPhone on his lap. A police investigator would later write that the two men had been “shot multiple times at close range with an assault rifle.”

There were some obvious clues that this was no ordinary double homicide. Tacked to the wall near the bodies was a large black-and-white flag bearing the insignia of the Schutzstaffel, or SS, Adolf Hitler’s elite paramilitary unit. On a nearby shelf was a black Stahlhelm, the distinctive helmet worn by Nazi soldiers during World War II. There were multiple copies of “Mein Kampf” and a prominent place was reserved for “The Turner Diaries,” the infamous novel of race war in America that has inspired generations of terrorists, among them Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber. A framed picture of McVeigh sat on a dresser.


About the Partnership
This story is part of an ongoing collaboration between ProPublica and Frontline. Watch “Documenting Hate: New American Nazis” on PBS on Nov. 20 at 9 p.m. Eastern, 8 Central, and online at pbs.org/frontline.


On that night in May 2017, the police quickly took two suspects into custody and developed a rough outline of what had happened. One of the suspects, Devon Arthurs, 18, said the victims were his roommates, and members of a neo-Nazi group called the Atomwaffen Division. Arthurs said that he’d decided to leave the group, and that he’d killed the men to keep them from carrying out what he said were their plans for violence.

The second suspect detained by police, Brandon Russell, also lived in the apartment. Russell told the authorities he’d just returned home from a weekend of training with the Florida Army National Guard. And then Russell revealed something that should have set off alarms among federal investigators assigned to track the growing threat from armed, violent right-wing extremists. He said, and the police quickly confirmed, that the single-car garage attached to the apartment was full of explosives.

Explosives experts from the Tampa Police Department and the local FBI field office soon found components of a crude pipe bomb as well as radioactive materials. The search turned up ammonium nitrate and nitromethane, the mixture used by McVeigh to destroy the federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995. There were sacks of explosive precursors, including potassium chloride, red iron oxide and potassium nitrate. There were homemade fuses fashioned from brass 5.56 mm rifle cartridges. In a closet, they found two Geiger counters.

And there was a cooler with the name Brandon scrawled on the lid in black marker. Inside, the investigators discovered HMTD — hexamethylene triperoxide diamine — a potent, highly volatile peroxide-based explosive. It has become a favored tool of terrorists both here and abroad, who cook it up in small batches using recipes circulating on the internet and in improvised weapons manuals.

At Tampa police headquarters, investigators put Arthurs and Russell in separate interrogation rooms. They wanted to know about the killings, about the neo-Nazi group and about the explosives.

Arthurs said the apartment had served as a nerve center for Atomwaffen Division, a white supremacist organization of 60 to 70 people that has spoken openly of its hopes of igniting race war in the United States. If the authorities could access the group’s encrypted online chats, Arthurs said, “it’d be easy to track down each member.” The interrogation was videotaped, and a recording was obtained by ProPublica and Frontline.

“The things that they’re planning were horrible. They’re planning bombings and stuff like that on countless people, they’re planning to kill civilian life,” Arthurs said. A detective asked if Atomwaffen had drawn up a list of specific targets. “Power lines, nuclear reactors, synagogues, things like that,” Arthurs replied.

“I’m telling you stuff that the FBI should be hearing,” Arthurs said, adding that he thought lives could be saved.

To this day, it is unclear if the FBI talked with Arthurs or what steps it took to shut down Atomwaffen. The FBI declined repeated requests to discuss the case. But this much is clear: Within months of Arthurs’ warnings, Atomwaffen members or associates had killed three more people.

...In December 2017, a 17-year-old Atomwaffen follower was arrested on suspicion of murdering the parents of his ex-girlfriend after they ended their daughter’s relationship with the neo-Nazi. A month later, Samuel Woodward was charged with killing a gay Jewish college student in California. Woodward, ProPublica reported in the following days, had participated in weapons training with Atomwaffen members in Texas in the months after the Tampa slayings. Woodward’s fellow Atomwaffen members cheered online when he was arrested, calling him a “one man gay jew wrecking crew.”

Brandon Russell met Devon Arthurs online, on a site called Tinychat that provides video chat services, Arthurs said. Both young men lived in Florida — Brandon in Tampa, Devon in Longwood, a suburb north of Orlando. Wearing headsets, the two would sit at their computers and talk deep into the night.

Eventually, their conversations moved over to Iron March, a now-defunct neo-Nazi forum with the tagline “race war now!” On Iron March, Russell posted photos of himself posing with a Mossberg shotgun while wearing a white T-shirt bearing the words “Natural Born Killers” and an image of a Nazi eagle. Online, he celebrated school shooters like Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris (Columbine High School) and Seung-Hui Cho (Virginia Tech); mass murderer Anders Breivik (a self-proclaimed National Socialist who killed 77 people in Norway); and Hitler.

In addition to his fascination with fascism and acts of violence, Russell had one more obsession: nuclear weapons. He posted instructions online for building improvised nuclear reactors — it's not clear how realistic these plans were — and studied nuclear physics as an undergraduate at the University of South Florida.

When Russell launched Atomwaffen in 2015, Arthurs was one of the first recruits to the group. Arthurs began gravitating toward Nazi beliefs at 13 or 14, according to his father, Alan Arthurs, who said he’s still mystified by his son’s interest in Nazism. “I don't get it. I don't get it. I don't know why,” he told Frontline and ProPublica.


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Russell’s jail booking photo. He is currently serving a five-year prison term.
(Frontline)


In the spring of 2017, Devon Arthurs and Russell moved into the Tampa apartment. Arthurs had dropped out of high school and had no job. But Alan Arthurs believes his son and Russell were making lengthy road trips to sell illegal firearms in states far from Florida.

In time, Russell and Arthurs were joined in the Tampa apartment by Andrew Oneschuk, 18, and Jeremy Himmelman, 22, two Atomwaffen members from Massachusetts.

Oneschuk and Himmelman were the dead men police discovered in the apartment on the night of May 19, 2017.

Alan Arthurs said his son called him after the shooting and confessed to killing the pair. Over the ensuing hours, Arthurs told a shifting series of stories about his motives. He told his father he’d killed them to head off Atomwaffen’s terrorist plans. He said something similar to investigators. But he also offered an even stranger version: that he’d converted to Islam and supported ISIS, and that he’d killed the two men because they mocked his newfound religion. A judge has since ruled Arthurs mentally incompetent to stand trial.

In his interrogation shortly after his arrest, Arthurs said he was aware of his mental health problems and wished he’d been hospitalized long before. He said that people might not think he looked like a terrorist, but that he had been engaged in dark and dangerous conduct.

And then, in quite composed fashion, he sketched out in great detail both the terrorist ambitions of Atomwaffen and the tactics law enforcement might use to infiltrate the group and bring it down. He warned the Tampa detective leading the questioning, Kenneth Nightlinger, against underestimating the group. Repeatedly, he tried to push back against what he seemed to regard as the detective’s skepticism.

Arthurs said Atomwaffen drew inspiration from The Order, a neo-Nazi terrorist group active during the 1980s. Led by Robert Mathews, the organization believed the U.S. had been taken over by a shadow government of powerful Jews. The Order bombed a synagogue and in 1984 assassinated Alan Berg, a prominent Jewish radio host who lived in Denver.

Russell and Atomwaffen “venerate” The Order, Arthurs said in his interview with detectives. “These people, they have no human empathy like we do.”

“These people ... they know exactly how to build, they knew exactly how to build bombs that could've destroyed this entire building,” Arthurs said.

Nightlinger often pressed for more information.

“Do you know about specific plans that these two individuals had?” the detective asked, referring to Oneschuk and Himmelman.

Arthurs said the men were planning on blowing up power lines near a major highway. They were going to use the HMTD to do it.

The detective pressed further.

“Did Brandon ever specifically talk about doing anything similar to that? To any government buildings?”

“Oh, absolutely. All the time,” Arthurs answered.

“Any specific ones?”

“Government offices, federal buildings,” Arthurs said.

The detective at one point tried to assure Arthurs that he and others would act on his information.

“This is absolutely serious stuff,” said Nightlinger, encouraging Arthurs to pass on “any information” that could be used to combat “these misguided individuals.”

Arthurs apologized for seeming flustered.

“I'm not trying to sound like a schizo cause I know that I'm trampling over words and stuff,” he said.

“No, no, you're in control, man,” Nightlinger said. “You're good, keep going.”

And Arthurs did.

Arthurs told the detective that Russell acquired guns and trained him and the other roommates in how to handle them. He said while Russell had joined the Florida Army National Guard, he’d used the American flag as a doormat to the apartment. He warned that if Russell was given the chance, he’d easily be able to reacquire the explosives that had been confiscated from the garage.

And repeatedly Arthurs offered to help law enforcement round up Atomwaffen members and dismantle the organization. He’d open up his computer. And he thought it would be easy to penetrate the computers of the others.

“You think having your computer, an FBI agent as you requested, sit down and go over this stuff, you think then you would open some eyes?” Nightlinger asked.

“Yeah, I definitely do,” Arthurs said. “I think that it would open some eyes to a much bigger thing than what happened today, and I think that I could definitely, basically save a lot of lives overall.”


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Police and federal agents discovered HMTD and other explosive materials in Russell and Arthurs’ Tampa garage.
(Exhibit from U.S. vs. Brandon Russell)


At one point, the detective seemed persuaded. Nightlinger suggested he would pass the word to the appropriate agents in the FBI.

“I mean they're actually going to be actually be made aware of this and they're going to do their homework,” he said. “Just to make sure you're not talking out your ass about something here in order to maybe gain some favorable treatment.”

The FBI would not answer questions about its handling of the Tampa case, saying that the investigation remains open. Agents have questioned former Atomwaffen members in at least two states, according to individuals with direct knowledge of the inquiry.

In a statement, the FBI said: “The FBI is not permitted to discuss any facet of the Brandon Russell investigation. The decision not to discuss this investigation was made in accordance with Department of Justice Guidelines and FBI Rules and Regulations.”

ProPublica and Frontline reviewed the crime scene photos and police reports from the Tampa apartment with Kerry Myers, a former FBI bomb tech who investigated the Oklahoma City bombing.

“They were making bombs,” Myers said. “This is a bomb maker's workshop.”

Myers added that the materials were enough “to blow up a car, blow up an airplane, blow up a bus. We have the same basic explosive kit here that the Boston Marathon bombers had.”

Alan Arthurs, who had watched his son’s involvement in Nazism develop over the years and seems to have been the first person Devon called after the killings, told ProPublica and Frontline he has never been interviewed by FBI agents. The local Tampa detectives didn’t question Alan Arthurs until June 5, 2017, more than two weeks after the crimes, according to Police Department records.

At the Tampa apartment, investigators recovered one of Russell’s notebooks, which contained a hand-drawn map of a quarry located between Orlando and Tampa. The map included GPS coordinates for the quarry and a description of its operations. Such facilities often use high-powered explosives to blast through rock. McVeigh stole blasting caps from a mining operation before the Oklahoma City attack.

The quarry in Florida, a sand mine, is owned by E.R. Jahna Industries. Reached for comment, company executive Adell Jahna said that he had never heard of Atomwaffen and that the company had never been contacted by local law enforcement or the FBI in connection with the case.

During his interrogation, Devon Arthurs had not only warned of Atomwaffen’s violent ambitions, but said repeatedly that the organization had attracted U.S. military personnel as members and was aiming to recruit more.

Arthurs said Russell, the group's founder, had signed up for the Florida Army National Guard in part to get the kind of combat training he might put to use for Atomwaffen. Russell had been drilling in Pinellas Park with the 53rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team on the day of the murders. In his own interview with Tampa police, Russell said he expected his unit to be deployed in 2018 and was considering the Army as a career.

“He joined specifically for the knowledge and the training, and he wants to use that training against the government,” Arthurs said of Russell during his police interrogation. “These people join the military specially to get training. To get access to equipment.” The ultimate goal, Arthurs continued, was to become more equipped to kill people.

Defense Department directives and the regulations of each military branch bar service members from engaging in white supremacist activity. Service members can face criminal charges and expulsion from the military for violating these policies.

After Russell’s arrest, the Florida Guard mounted an investigation into his activities while in uniform. Three weeks after Russell was jailed, the Guard wrapped up its inquiry. In a report, the Guard listed some of the troubling things it had found:

Russell had a tattoo of the Atomwaffen logo on his right shoulder. The investigator on the case noted that the U.S. military did not maintain a database of tattoos that might have been used to screen for troubling affiliations.

Two of Russell’s superiors had warned him about his conduct after he repeatedly “vocalized his hatred for homosexuality and ‘faggots.’”

Russell had “seemed very anxious to receive body armor, and keep his military issued gear.”

But the investigation concluded that Russell had not sought to recruit other soldiers for Atomwaffen, and that he “did not present consistent characteristics that would have led a reasonable person to suspect Russell held such radical beliefs.” Investigators determined there had been no negligence in allowing Russell into the Guard or in his continued presence in its ranks.

The two-page summary of the investigation, obtained by ProPublica and Frontline, contains no references to Arthurs’ statements to authorities about other possible Atomwaffen members in the military. Nor does it contain any evidence that the Guard had alerted officials in other military branches to the potential presence of Atomwaffen in their ranks.


Image
Russell bought this rifle after he was released from custody by Tampa police and the FBI.
(Exhibit from U.S. vs. Brandon Russell)


The Florida Army National Guard did not respond to repeated requests for an interview regarding Russell.

This year, ProPublica and Frontline identified seven Atomwaffen members with military experience, including Russell.

The Pentagon did not respond to detailed requests from ProPublica and Frontline to discuss Atomwaffen and its possible recruitment of current or former military members.

In a statement, a Pentagon spokeswoman, Maj. Carla Gleason of the Air Force, said: “The DoD uses a multi-level approach to learn as much as possible about potential new soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines so we can assess whether they should be extended the privilege to serve in the military. While we can't guarantee that every person who enters the service will be free from holding extremist thoughts, various screening tools provide us the best opportunity to identify those who do not share our values.”

Kathleen Belew, an assistant professor at the University of Chicago, has studied the historic links between the white power movement and the U.S. armed forces. White power groups, she said, have long drawn from the ranks of the military. And former soldiers have become leaders of white supremacist groups over the decades.

Aryan Nations chief Richard Butler did a stint in the Army. KKK Grand Dragon Louis Beam served in Vietnam, as did White Patriot Party leader Frazier Glenn Miller. In 2014, after decades of involvement with white extremist groups, Miller murdered three people outside of a pair of Jewish institutions in Overland Park, Kansas. He was eventually sentenced to death and is awaiting execution.


Read more: https://www.propublica.org/article/an-a ... -a-mystery
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Re: Fascists are the Tools of the State

Postby American Dream » Mon Oct 07, 2019 9:45 am

Trump responds to impeachment: “The best defense is a good offense”
BY OAKLANDSOCIALIST ON OCTOBER 6, 2019

Image
Trump speaking at UN in September.
His speech contained dog whistles to the far, far right.


You didn’t have to be Machiavelli or Karl Marx to know that Trump would defend himself by going on the offense. The key to understanding his offensive lies in the speech he gave at the UN on September 24, as the Ukraine scandal was just starting to make the news. In that speech, among other things he said: “Like my beloved country, each nation represented in this hall has a cherished history, culture, and heritage that is worth defending and celebrating, and which gives us our singular potential and strength…. The free world must embrace its national foundations. It must not attempt to erase them or replace them.” He talked about “the differences that make each country special.”

Image
Fascists from Francis Parker Yockey (left) to today’s Alexander Dugin (right)
spoke in the same terms that Trump used at the UN.


Fascist traditions

Trump knew exactly what he was doing. Such comments are actually dog whistles for extreme nationalists and outright fascists. Certain fascist traditions such as those of American fascist theorist Francis Parker Yockey (1917-1960) talked a lot about cultural traditions. Today, a leading figure who plays that tune is the Russian fascist and Putin ideologist, Alexander Dugin, who talks a lot about a “multi-polar world”. While that may sound very democratic and “anti-imperialist”, as Alexander Reid Ross explains (Against the Fascist Creep), what it really means is “national apartheid” – each nation steeped entirely in its own “national/cultural traditions.” We see the real meaning in Zionism in Israel or Indian “Hindutva” (Hindu nationalism, whose ideology lies behind Modi’s invasion of and repression in Kashmir).


Continues: https://oaklandsocialist.com/2019/10/06 ... d-offense/
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