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Footage of the January 6 Capitol insurrection revealed hundreds of references to 1776in signs and in speeches, on t-shirts and hats and stickers. 1776 was chanted in the Capitol halls by leading figures within the so-called alt-right, including some who had also participated in the racist riot in Charlottesville, Virginia, and by those who believed themselves participants in the dawn of the next American revolution. The Proud Boys, too, cite this date; they sell their merch through a store called 1776.

We are researchers of media manipulation and disinformation at the Harvard Kennedy Schools Shorenstein Center, and we wanted to know more about how 1776 became the battle cry of the insurrection. Our research reveals that the popularity of 1776 owes in part to keyword squattinga tactic by which right-wing media have dominated the keywords 1619 and critical race theory and enabled a racialized disinformation campaign, waged by Trump and his acolytes, against Black civil rights gains.

1776 on Google Trends. Screenshot via authors.

According to Google trends data for the past five years, 1776 showed an annual spike around July 4. But after the publication of The 1619 Project, the New York Times journalistic series that tells the history of Black Americans role in creating the nation, 1776 became a popular conservative rejoinder. In September 2020, Trump formed the 1776 Commission to support what he termed patriotic education. (The commission was part of a series of racist retaliations against Black civil rights organizing and educators pledging to teach a more comprehensive, diverse, and inclusive US history; Trump later signed an executive order banning critical race theory from federally funded organizations.) When he announced the commission, Trump explicitly targeted critical race theory and the 1619 Project, calling both toxic propagandaideological poison that, if not removed, will dissolve the civic bonds that tie us together.

On January 18, 2021Martin Luther King Jr. DayTrump released The 1776 Report, a long screed meant to wipe away academic and journalistic efforts to reconcile Americans history of violence, displacement, and racial and ethnic trauma. The report recast the racist roots of American education; for instance, in the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan promoted a public-school curriculum that emphasized Americanizing all foreignersan effort, in part, to prevent Catholics and immigrant groups from establishing their own schools and curricula in non-English languages. Klan members ran successfully for school board positions across the country, popularizing the slogan of America Firsta phrase which, coincidentally, featured prominently at this years Conservative Political Action Conference, and appears in the name of a far-right political action conference. The report fizzled in the wake of the Capitol riot; still, its an exemplary piece of racialized disinformation that claims to identify problems with contemporary American education, but often espouses color-blind racism by minimizing how racial inequalities shape educational outcomes in the US.

So, why was Trump so invested in retaliating against the 1619 Project? The project unsettled the education systems dominant narratives. It pieced together the history of slavery in the US from the perspective of those who were enslaved. It brought into the present day the continuing consequences of slavery as well as the contributions of Black Americans over a 400-year period. It also offered a damning critique of whiteness as a social constructone whose scope, over time, has broadened to include Germans, Greeks, Irish, Italians, and Spaniards to maintain structural barriers that keep power concentrated in the hands of a few. Teachers became excited about using materials from the project in their classrooms and began sharing curriculum online; recently, the Pulitzer Center announced a program called the 1619 Project Education Network to train educators in media literacy and racial justice.

For the right-wing, criticizing the project became a cause clbre, taken up by figures like New York Times Opinion columnist Bret Stephens, who termed 1619 a failed project, and Newt Gingrich, who remarked, during a Fox and Friends interview, The whole project is a lie. Nikole Hannah-Jones, a Times journalist who conceived of the project, endured racist harassment and death threats across social media.

As researchers, we wanted to assess the pervasiveness and tactics of racialized disinformation. Using Media Cloud, a tool created by MIT and Harvard for analyzing news, we compared coverage of 1619 by right-wing media (including The Federalist, Fox News, Daily Wire, and the National Review, among others) and left-wing media (including The Root, Daily Kos, Salon, and The Grio, among others) in the US. According to our analysis, right-wing media wrote nearly three times as frequently about 1619 than the left-wing media did. Similarly, between September 2020 and February 2021, right-wing media covered critical race theory twice as frequently as left-wing media. This asymmetrical coverage is indicative of keyword squatting, a networked propaganda strategy that ensures the counter viewpoint is steadfastly tethered to these keywords across a range of platformsincluding Reddit, YouTube, Facebook, and especially on the front page of Google Search.

Keyword squattingdefined by the Media Manipulation Casebook as the practice of creating online contentaround a specific search-engine-optimized term so as to dominate the search results of that termhas been leveraged by right-wing media to extend the duration of attention to propaganda campaigns, including those linked to controversial keywords like antifa or the caravan. And it works: Googles top news stories on critical race theory reflect ongoing bombastic headlines, like Chinese Americans mobilize against critical race theory, from Fox News, or Critical Race Theory is Indoctrination, not History, from Real Clear Politics. Likewise, searching for 1619 on YouTube returns a video from conservative outlet PragerU titled, Whats wrong with the 1619 project?

Media Cloud analysis of 1619 coverage. Screenshot via authors.

Media Cloud analysis of Critical Race Theory coverage. Screenshot via authors.

Had Trump won reelection, his 1776 Report would have been called up by conservatives as an authoritative source on Americas foundingas if the thousands of history books, written from the perspectives of white people, were not enough. Instead, Trump lost the election. Within hours of taking office, Bidens team removed the 1776 Report from the active White House website. (It remains on the archived site of the Trump administration.) In search engines, the report has been buried by the American Historical Associations statement of condemnation.

Count this as a temporary win. It is not possible for our nation to move forward without repairing the damage of a history erased by slavery and denied by those who seek to rewrite US history. What makes a nation strong is not its ability to tell a unified story of its founding, but rather its efforts to grapple with the sum of us, so that we may forge our collective identity through self-determinationand so that we may realize our highest moral duty to fix this divided house.

ICYMI: What the pandemic means for paywalls

TOP IMAGE: Outside the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. Jose Luis Magana/AP Photo

Read more:
How a racialized disinformation campaign ties itself to The 1619 Project - Columbia Journalism Review

The Southern Poverty Law Center says there are 68 known hate groups active in Florida. That's only four less than California, which has twice the population. Of them, 47 are White supremacy groups, like those involved in the insurrection at the U.S Capitol in January.

Extremism in Florida, however, isn't confined to one ideology. The center says 21 of the hate groups involve Black separatists.

Most of the White supremacist groups existed deep in the shadows until January's insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

Scott Ernest was intimately familiar with these white supremacy groups now in the national spotlight.

He was a student at the University of South Florida when he moved to Montana 10 years ago, lured by a group that wanted to create a whites-only community. There, he was a moderator for Stormfront, a discussion board for white nationalists and the alt-right.

At one point, the West Palm Beach group had more than 300,000 members.

"As someone who actually recruited for it and ran a hate group that was on that map that was just taken off this year because it's dead," he said.

ALSO READ: These Are The Floridians Among Those Facing Charges In The Capitol Siege

Ernest left the movement several years ago because he identifies as LGBT, something that didn't exactly mesh with the beliefs of most people in that group. He says the final straw was when one of the white nationalists he was working with was arrested for threatening to shoot local school children.

"That was my own personal Capitol insurrection," Ernest said. "That was where I kind of realized I'm not on the right path here. And I do see other people having that very same thing."

Today, Ernest splits his time between Montana and Florida, trying to lead people out of the wilderness of hate.

Lori Hall is a professor specializing in race-based hate groups at the University of South Florida's St. Petersburg campus. She says the number of groups in Florida are growing slightly, and existing groups are gaining members.

"It's not that it's not occurring other places," Hall said. "It's that we're not seeing it other places as much as we're seeing it here. And there's a lot more movement in Florida for various reasons whether that be tourism, whether that be Southern culture, whether that be because we're a Republican state."

She says the Sunshine State is home to White supremacist groups such as the KKK, Proud Boys and Neo-Nazis, racist skinhead groups and neo-Confederates. It's also home to Black separatist movements such as the Nation of Islam and the New Black Panther Party.

Sicarii 1715 is a San Diego-based anti-Semitic and racist fringe religious group whose followers believe that Blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans are the true descendants of the 12 Tribes of Israel.

Of Florida's 68 hate groups identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center, 14 are statewide. The rest are groups with chapters, nestled in urban, suburban and rural communities.

Hall says the members come from all walks of life.

"They're lawyers and they're construction workers and they're all of these different people that hold power within society, and they're making decisions about other people based on their bigoted beliefs," she said.

"That is the invisible harm that occurs," Hall said. "The things that we see visibly we can understand and we can quantify. But the things that we don't see are where the real harm and the perpetuation of inequality occurs."

One of those people, Kelly Meggs of Dunnellon, heads the Florida chapter of the Oath Keepers. It's a militia composed of current and former military, police, and first responders and are considered white supremacists. Meggs, his wife and another man from Englewood were charged with domestic terrorism in February for storming the U.S. Capitol.

There's also Sharkhunters International, a southwest Florida group that organizes tours to sites that were historically important to the Third Reich. And the neo-Nazi Atomwaffen Division came to light in 2017 when one of their former members was accused in a double murder in Tampa.

Because of our First Amendment rights of freedom of expression, the U.S. is one of the few developed countries that doesn't outlaw hate groups.

Radicalization, she says, occurs in different ways for different people.

"Some people hold these beliefs, and they go out looking for solace and they find it," Hall said. "Then, there are some people who lack education on topics, and they go out looking for education, and they find it in the wrong places. And then, they get kind of what we call infiltrated. Their mind starts to get all of the same imagery and the same messages and they buy into this, and they become radicalized."

While Hall says the numbers of groups in Florida is growing, Scott Ernest believes acts like the Capitol insurrection are a lashing out from what he describes as a "last gasp."

"I don't see the movement as growing," Ernest said. "A lot of what I'm seeing right now like the Capitol breach it's the last gasp of a dying movement. They know that people are moving on from hate. People are becoming more tolerant."

But when people think they're backed into a corner, they lash out. Ernest says we can expect more outbursts like the Capitol insurrection as they perceive their movement to be weakening.

"Just like Trump lashing out, it was a very similar situation, whereas Trump's ideology is a dying ideology. So he lashes out. And because he lashes out, his cultists lash out also," he said. "And that's just what's been happening in Florida, that's what's happening all over the place."

But Ernest believes there will be a time when these hate groups will become so marginalized that we'll see fewer organized marches like in Charlottesville, for instance, and more acts of violence.

He says hearing a lot lately from people want to escape the cauldron of never-ending hate, They're reaching out to his group called Hands of Eir. It's named after a Norse goddess who heals people.

"You know, sometimes they're not necessarily trying to have big changes in their lives. Sometimes, they just want to do things better," Ernest said.

"A lot of them are probably ones that they may be racist themselves, but they prefer the dog whistles, rather than the outright racism. I think that there have also been people that have woken up after the insurrection and have basically decided, hey, I need to change," he said.

"Yeah, we've been getting quite a few. It's been crazy."

Ernest says he's helping people turn their lives around, one person at a time.

Go here to see the original:
Florida Is Home To Second-Most Hate Groups In The U.S. A Former Member Explains Why - WJCT NEWS

Authorities investigating the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol say two extremist groups that traveled to Washington along with thousands of other Trump supporters weren't whipped into an impulsive frenzy by President Donald Trump. (March 10) AP Domestic

Government documents leading to the arrest of an East Naples man linked to violence at the U.S. Capitolclaim heis a memberof the far-right group, theProud Boys.

Christopher Worrell, 49, was arrested after FBI agents executed asearch and arrest warrant by 6 a.m. Friday in the 200 block of Stanhope Circle, according to the FBI.

In a statement of facts filed in courtby an unidentified FBI officer who is assigned to the Fort Myers Resident Agency of the Tampa Field Office, the officer outlines his probable cause to charge Worrell in a Jan. 6 incident in Washington, D.C.

More: East Naples arrest could have connection to Capitol Riots and Proud Boys. Here's what we know

More: FBI: Man arrested at East Naples home in connection with Capitol riot

Read: 'Zip tie guy' Eric Gavelek Munchel charged in connection to Capitol invasion has ties to Lee County

The officer states that Worrell violated multiple laws including:

entering or remaining in a restricted building or grounds without lawful authority,

knowingly and with intent to impede or disrupt the orderly conduct of Government business,

knowingly engaged in any act of physical violence against a person or property in any restricted building or grounds,

used orcarried a deadly or dangerous weapon in relation to his violations,

willfully and knowingly uttered loud, threatening or abusive language, or engaged in disorderly conduct at any place in the grounds or in any Capitol Buildings with the intent to impede, disrupt or disturb the session of Congress or either House of Congress.

On Jan. 13, a tipster contacted the FBI to report that they believed Worrell traveled to the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, and potentially participated in the riot. The details are included in the FBI statement of facts a federal magistratesigned March 10.

Christopher Worrell of East Naples at the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, a photo included in an FBI statement of facts a federal magistrate signed March 10, 2021.(Photo: Photo courtesy of the FBI)

The tipster said they are an acquaintance of Worrell's live-in girlfriend.

During a raid Friday, FBI agents arrested Worrell at a home owned byTrish Priller. Worrell's Facebook Page says he and Priller are in a relationship.

Priller, who declined comment Saturday, isan executive assistant at the Naples Daily News. As of Saturday, Priller'ssupervisors could not be reached for comment.

In the report, Priller is not identified, but thetipster saidthe girlfriend told them that Worrell is a Proud Boy and that she and Worrell went to Washington, D.C., to be there on Jan. 6, according to the statement of facts.

The tipster also told the FBI that they had seen a video on Worrell's Facebook page that showed him participating in the riots.

On Jan. 18, the officer interviewed Worrell and askedif he had participated in the U.S. Capitol riots. The report indicated he was agitated that the FBI was at his house, but admitted that he was at the Capitol on Jan. 6. Hedenied entering the Capitol building and denied criminal conduct.

He also was agitated when asked about the Proud Boys, stating, "the Proud Boys were not a racist white supremacist group like the media tries to portray."

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The Proud boys were established in 2016 and "are self-described 'Western chauvinists'who adamantly deny any connection to the racist 'alt-right.'They insist they are simply a fraternal group spreading an 'anti-political correctness'and 'anti-white guilt'agenda," according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

As of Feb. 3, USAToday reported six people charged for their involvement in the Capitol riots were linked to the Proud Boys, stating they arean extremist group with ties to white nationalism.

The investigator also found images of Worrell on various Twitter accounts, but noted he does not know the credibility of the information posted on the account.

In some of those photos, Worrell wears what looks to be a Proud Boys patch on his tactical vest, which appears to be the same vest he wore at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, the statement of facts states.

Worrell was also identified in multiple images and videos showing the events of Jan. 6, and placing him within the restricted area.

In those images it shows Worrell with a canister clipped to his vest that appears to match paper spray gel and is later seen in a photo spraying a substance from a canister.

It is not certain who the target was that Worrell was spraying, but in other photos and videos from that time of day, law enforcement officers are positioned where he appears to direct the pepper spray, according to the statement of facts.

As of Saturday, Worrell's attorney could not be reached for comment.

Worrell on Friday appeared in federal court, where a judge in the Middle District of Florida ordered him released. The Justice Department appealed and a chief judge in Washington, D.C., federal courttemporarily halted his release pending further review.

A videoconference hearing to determine whether to release Worrell is set for 12:30 p.m. Tuesday.

In 2009, Worrell was arrested for impersonating an officer after he followed and pulled up toa woman onU.S. 41 East and Guilford Road in East Naples trying to get her to pull over for running a red light, according to his arrest report.

He had a loaded handgun, handcuffs, knives, boxes of ammunitionand a fake badge in his possession when deputies arrested him.

In May 2010, Worrell was sentenced to three years probation and two years of community control for his charge of impersonating a law enforcement officer.

Read or Share this story: https://www.naplesnews.com/story/news/crime/2021/03/13/capitol-riot-east-naples-man-arrested-involvement-believed-proud-boy/4679842001/

Continued here:
East Naples man arrested for involvement in Capitol riot believed to be 'Proud Boy' - Naples Daily News

An open letter to Gov. Ronald DeSantis:

I really have not recovered from the shock of national broadcast news and newspapers reporting that Floridas governor had set aside thousands of vials of COVID-19 doses specifically for folks who reside in affluent Florida ZIP codes.

Add to that the searing sight of our American flag, along with the Capitol building, being desecrated on Jan. 6, adding another permanent scar to our history.

Yet here again you are using the muscle of your office to do as you please rules regarding the American flag be damned:

Section 7m of the U.S. Flag Code authorizes a governor to place the American flag at half-staff upon the death of a present or former government official or the death of a member of the Armed Forces from the state who is killed while serving on active duty.

Listening to Rush Limbaugh 40-plus years ago when he began his radio career, he underscored that he was catering only to the rich and those who were as far right as possible. Just as we listen to whomever we choose in our homes, listening to Limbaugh was a personal choice. Those who foster racial hatred, homophobia and all other phobias are the Limbaugh crowd and ones personal choice to listen.

Im wondering if your recent behavior is your way of letting the alt-right folks know youre in their ballpark?

While America is trying to heal and find solace with one another, I find your behavior (placing the American flag at half-staff for Limbaugh) is indeed shortsighted and a tragedy for all Floridians.

Original post:
Letter to the Editor: Disagrees with Florida governor - The West Volusia Beacon

Last week, the killer behind the wheel during the April 2018 vehicular attack in Toronto was convicted. He claimed he was on a mission for the incel movement, an online subculture of so-called involuntarily celibate men who direct misogynistic rage at women.

This week, for International Womens Day, we take time to honour and recognize the progress that has been made to reduce gendered limitations. We can also use this day to acknowledge where dangers still exist and how societal structures continue to perpetuate and encourage harmful narratives about women.

Brad Congdon, an instructor with the Department of English whose research focuses on forms of masculinity, answers questions about misogynistic subcultures, the pervasiveness of violence against women and how we can continue to support positive gender identity. Have groups like incel always existed or are they a product of online culture?

Theres nothing new about misogyny, or men meeting for the purpose of resenting women. Its only because of online culture that we can speak of incels as a subculture, with their own terminology (e.g., Chads and Stacys; Supreme Gentlemen; gymceling; steroidmaxxing), routines, and spaces. Its only because men from different localities, regions, and countries can easily and anonymously meet, communicate, and socialize in these online spaces that incels can collaboratively articulate and disseminate an extremist ideology. There was certainly male resentment in a pre-internet eralots of itbut the fact that men can now go online and receive an informal education in, and ongoing encouragement for, a type of juvenile, insecure misogyny is relatively new.

Theres obviously a long history of men-only groups, but the latter part of the 20th century is when we started seeing mens rights and mens liberation groups. Most of these groups are post- or anti-feminist, arguing that womens social and economic advances have negatively impacted men. Rather than focusing on, say, economic changes that might have resulted in mens changing position, they accept the current political and economic system for what it is and turn their attention to either changing masculinity or blaming women generally, and feminists in particular.

The kind of stochastic terrorism that has been occurring against women is possible because the internet is such a powerful tool for communication and organization.

Women often seem to be the target of male violence. What does research tell you about why this happens?

Im reminded of this quotation from Nicole Brossard, writing about, and not long after, the 1989 Polytechnique Massacre in Montreal. Brossard wrote of the killer, All things considered, M.L. was no young man. He was as old as all the sexist, misogynist proverbs, as old as all the Church fathers who ever doubted women had a soul. He was as old as all the legislators who ever forbade women the university, the right to vote, access to the public sphere. M.L. was as old as Man and his contempt for women.

Which is to say that, historically, violence against women is everywhere. It often takes the form of systemic or symbolic violence. Historically, systemic violence has involved laws that disadvantage women, that stop them from voting or owning businesses, holding office or opening bank accounts. It involves men controlling their bodies. It involves the ways that laws are shaped to make it difficult to prosecute sexual crimes against women. And the list goes on. Symbolic violence includes, among other things, the abundance of images in our culture that indoctrinate girls to be submissive, sexy, and unequal partners in society.Research indicates that men target women for a variety of reasons, but Id suggest that these incidents of physical, illegal violence all happen in the context of a society that has long been structured by violence against women. Were pretty bad at preventing or punishing violence against women, at least comparably speaking, but were more likely to act out against acts of assault or murder than we are to punish those who, for example, work to limit womens access to healthcare. Prosecuting individuals, though necessary, is a way of implying the violence is the result of individual moral failings, rather than a societal problem.

Its been noted that theres a powerful gender dynamic to most terrorism and violent extremism. In your opinion, how do certain gender perspectives or expectations foster extremism?

I admit that Im not expert in extremism, but gender seems to play a substantial role. Cynthia Enloe wrote that nationalism comes from masculinized memory, masculinized humiliation and masculinized hope. Michael Kimmels recent book on extremism argues that, at the root of extremist, right-wing politics, is the idea that modern men have been emasculated and humiliated, and that part of what they seek is a restoration of the centrality of mens bodies and authority. Similarly, Annie Kelly, writing about the alt-right, sees at the heart of this extremism a discourse of anxiety about traditional masculinity.

There are different forms of extremism and nationalism, but theyre united by the idea that the world as it is, is flawed. Theyre typically conservative, in that they view a better version of the world in the past, whether its the past represented in history or religion or both. So, almost all extremism involves some idea of returning to previous social structures, and in particular what are considered traditional gender roles.

What are some of the steps we can take as a society to counteract the way we ascribe gender and support people of all genders in developing positive identities?

There are probably too many to list, but Ill start by saying that representation is important. The more we see people of all genders in roles that have traditionally been set aside for cisgender white men whether those are real roles, like parents, partners, friends, CEOs and presidents, or imaginary roles, like superhero or space captain the more children will grow up seeing a degree of gender equality and acceptance, and thinking of those things as normal. More importantly, we need to see women, whether cis-gender or trans, in those actual roles, since popular representation can only do so much. And we need to see anti-sexist policies put in place, because without institutional and systemic support, it might all be tokenism or window-dressing.

See the rest here:
Ask an expert: Brad Congdon on violence against women and the importance of representation - Dal News