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After yet another right-wing Twitter figure was embarrassed by poor turnout and overwhelmed by counter-protester turnout in San Francisco on Saturday, self-styled alt-right pundits have spent the last 48 hours ridiculing him and distancing themselves from the embarrassment. Also, Instagram and Twitter have booted him of their platforms. Still, a GoFundMe to help fix the organizer's front teeth has raised over $26,000.

SFist surmised two weeks ago that Texas-based Twitterer Philip Anderson a seemingly passionate but highly confused young Black man who supports the Proud Boys and hates Black Lives Matter and all things Left was likely operating under some delusion of grandeur and without the confirmation of many of his scheduled speakers when he began tweeting out a flyer for a "free speech rally" in San Francisco's Dolores Park.

Such events can not get permits for Dolores Park, as SF Rec & Parks assured us. But Anderson turned out to be somewhat more determined than we'd guessed, obtaining a permit for an event in UN Plaza and flying himself to San Francisco to appear, all while costing SF taxpayers money with police protection, etc.

Berkeley Antifa helped galvanize turnout among local leftist activists to make a show of force at Saturday's event, and by all accounts there were several hundred counter-protesters facing off with Anderson and perhaps a small handful of supporters and Proud Boys. It's not even clear if any of his scheduled speakers showed up at all, and current leader of the Proud Boys, Florida-based Enrique Tarrio, had publicly backed out of the event two days before.

As the Chronicle reports, Anderson took the "stage" around 1 p.m. after already being punched, claiming that he was only interested in "free speech," but obviously understanding what he had come to San Francisco to incite. He reportedly had a lot of plastic and glass bottles thrown at hime. A couple of other Trump supporters and Proud Boys were confronted by the throngs of counter-protesters, and at least two other men one with a MAGA hate were reportedly injured after confronting counter-protesters on Market Street about 90 minutes later.

Violence was thankfully kept to a minimum, and Anderson claims he was punched was for "no reason." But the antifa kids clearly saw reason enough to be outraged in bringing the Proud Boys who claim not to be racist but merely "western chauvinist" and overlap quite a bit in their supporters with white nationalists to the middle of San Francisco for a rally.

The event had many parallels with an equally poorly planned Patriot Prayer rally in San Francisco in the wake of Charlottesville in the summer of 2017, which was canceled, protested, rescheduled, and ended up being a bust for gun-toting organizer Joey Gibson.

And while Anderson tried to make the case that the "optics" of his bloody mouth and taking a punch from antifa were good for the alt-right cause, this Twitter thread documents the various troublesome figures whom Anderson unsuccessfully tried to lure to the event by naming them as speakers without their permission, and figures who are now denouncing his foolishness for holding such a poorly planned event with little security of his own.

One Proud Boys leader, Joe Biggs, went on Twitter to decry Anderson's poor organization and poor planning, and says that his knocked-out tooth just makes them look "weak." He claims, spuriously, that he and Tarrio will hold their own event in San Francisco soon to raise money for Anderson's dental work, and it will be better organized and protected by more Proud Boys.

Berkeley Antifa has also been taking pains to document Anderson's support for the Proud Boys, despite his being a minor figure thus far in the alt-right, by all accounts, with fewer than 2,000 followers before his Twitter account was suspended over the weekend. Tarrio, who identifies as Afro-Cuban, and Anderson, both like to claim their own race as proof that the Proud Boys is not a racist group but as has been widely noted, they promote Islamophobia, xenophobia, violence against leftists, everything Trump, and their membership has for obvious reasons overlapped with many a racist and white-supremacist group.

Unfortunately, like Trump, embarrassments like this may only incite a stepped up sense of importance among alt-right figures, with San Francisco and Berkeley being their favorite stages (after Portland) for street battles aimed at gaining video content for their social media crusades.

Hopefully we can get through the next two weeks before the election without any more of this bullshit.

Previously: Trump Supporters Turn Out for Small 'Free Speech Rally' at UN Plaza, Outnumbered by Counter-Protesters

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Alt-Right Figures Distance Themselves From SF Rally Organizer, With One Proud Boy Vowing a 'Better Planned' Event in SF - SFist

Richard B. Spencer is a clean-cut, boyish-looking, business-suited man in his early 40s who talks a lot about ownership, especially when it comes to his fellow white people, whom he believes own the United States. In his speeches to enthusiastic post-collegiates who closely resemble him, he borrows talking points from Joseph Goebbels and drops German phrases. "I am an artist before I am a politician," claims Spencer, founder of AlternativeRight.com.

"Men's rights activist" Mike Cernovich, author of such reading material as How to Cheat on Your Girlfriend and Misogyny Gets You Laid, is a pro-wrestling fan who "wants to be a household name." Otherwise, conspiracy theorist and budding entrepreneur Cernovich tells an interviewer in the new documentary White Noise, "I'm not a political guy. I'm an author and everything"in between helpings of nitric oxide booster capsules.

Lauren Southern, a native of Canada, makes a point of saying she's "at war with the world," and enjoys going to protests with "FUCK ISLAM" painted on her face. When she isn't having fun confronting a boatload of migrants in Italy or lounging in a palatial Russian mansion, anti-immigrant YouTuber Southernthe very image of a Fox News info-Barbieglowingly describes herself as "a persecuted white girl" who does shocking things that "put you on the map." Picture The Bling Ring staffed by Hitler Youth dropouts.

If you think you've already seen enough hyper-rightwing goons on TV and online to last you a lifetime, you may want to skip White Noise. The first feature-length doc from the publishers of The Atlantic, it was put together by rookie filmmaker Daniel Lombroso, a video producer for the respected 163-year-old magazine. Alarmed by the ubiquitous voices of the far right, Lombroso embarks on a four-year odyssey stalking would-be stars of the Twitter-sphere Spencer, Cernovich and Southern, as they strut around country club parking lots and rented hotel ballrooms, talking up a storm.

It's not easy being a white supremacist these days. The flies that swarm around Donald Trump (and occasionally land on his Vice President's head) tend toward sallow complexions, heavy drinking and a shared superiority complex. Plus pills, an astounding number of pills.

Director Lombroso was evidently inspired to research the alt right after the 2016 election. Who were these well-scrubbed young menit's a mostly-male clubmarching in a Nazi-Germany-style nighttime torchlight parade during the infamous 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia? Apart from their frat-house blazers and lusty grog-chugging, what exactly are their basic political issues, besides taunting liberals, feminists, Blacks, Jews, "invaders" (a.k.a. immigrants) and non-violent demonstrators? White Noise doesn't particularly go there, largely because there's nothing beneath the surface.

And yet Lombroso's easy-target subjects, gaudy as they are, make a nominally fascinating study. Their poisonous, publicity-seeking antics may be shallow, but they offer valuable comic relief for the 2020 election season. As prospects have declined for the President, so have the fortunes of these neo-fascist great thinkers. Business is a bit slow. Cernovich, a seller of smart pills, seems on track for a nervous breakdown. These days Spencer spins out fantasy scenarios from the safety of his mother's home in Montana (as he explains, "I don't want to be a beautiful loser"). Meanwhile Southern is married, a mother and not quite yet apologetic for her role as a blond race-hatred groupie. Her filmography lists only one documentary, yet more than 30 credits under "Self." It's all about Self.

The documentary slowly peters out. However, the filmmakers have included, by way of context, this quotation from author James Baldwin, who knows something about social inequality: "I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain." There's a fair amount of pain in the United States of America these days. Maybe we can do something about it together, if we try.

"White Noise" debuts Oct. 21 on iTunes, Amazon Prime Video and Google Play.

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Meet the talkative alt-right sales reps of White Noise - East Bay Express

In Trumps America, disciples of white supremacy are so worried about losing their position in an emerging world of multi-ethnic diversity. They decided there is nothing to lose in taking the fight to the gutters as the only way to hang on to the last vestiges of their perceived power. Of course, they seek out allies from an army of dim-wits and deplorable, together with some witless religious bigots from African

When a Yale psychologist, Jennifer Richeson heard about the August 2008 report of the U.S. Census Bureau, her immediate response was that, This is probably freaking somebody out. That report had predicted that by year 2050, there will be a seismic shift in American demographics, when the population of minorities is expected to rise up to 54 per cent and they would emerge the new majority, while the whites in America will become the minority. In the years that followed, Richeson and her group carried out a series of experimental research in an attempt to elicit reactions on what that meant to the average white person. What they found was unsettling but crucial to understanding the politics of Trump, Brexit and the resurgence of white nationalism all across the globe.

The research showed that when people hear about the rise of a particular group, they automatically fear it will imperil theirs. According to Richeson, making the U.S. racial shift salient increases racial bias. This leads to negative attitudes towards minorities, opposition to diversity, anxiety and the feeling of threat by the majority groups. The study of demographics on political attitudes also noted that whites who traditionally are independent voters tend to lean more towards being conservative, as they become increasingly aware of a dwindling white population. This observation has been noted for its impact on the future of American national politics.

Another famous social psychologist, H. Robert Outten, replicated identical findings in a similar study conducted in both the U.S. and Canada. The fear of what a future shift in demographics would mean is making some in white communities lose sleep.

One other theory that had been suggested as fanning the embers of white nationalism is the fear and anger emanating from the concept of a zero-sum game. The belief by some that whenever blacks or any of the other racial minority groups are getting ahead, whites must have something to give up. You bet that certain politicians seeking votes would ride on the wave of such false narrative by implicitly or explicitly stoking fear. These people would not hesitate to lend their voices and give a platform to the Alt-right movements, whose agenda are the American version of the warped Aryan racial superiority, reminiscent of Hitlers Nazi Germany.

Despite all the lies and half-truths, however, its important to note that even the much referenced 2050 majority-minority census data may be missing a key salient aspect of the analysis, which is that white people will still overwhelmingly be in the majority. Its only by lumping every other race together into one category that they become the minority.

It has also been widely reported that even with the growing minority population, the hierarchy of races has largely remained unchanged and so the perceived threat of minority domination is by far exaggerated. In other words, Whites in American and the world over, would still be the dominant global power. Caucasians and Jews will continue to maintain positions that pull the levers of control over world politics and economics.

We are is 2020 after all, a time when mentally unstable and morally depraved men, who before now existed only in the fringes are taking the centre stage. But what should we expect when the group now believes that they have a Grand Wizard in the White House as an ally! Stand back and stand by, he told Proud Boys. The reality of this moment is no doubt stranger than fiction.

What is indeed a fact is that as other races continue to improve on themselves and get ahead, both economically and politically, some of those powers will be shared. A multi-cultural society in which all races and ethnic nationalities are upwardly mobile and peacefully co-exist as equals, is the imperative of an emerging new world. That, I believe, is the natural evolution of humankind and any attempt to suppress it in order to stick to the old order is akin to trying to halt a moving train. Without question, such would guarantee chaos and spell doom for humanity, as evidenced by the recent surge in racial unrest across America.

The widespread protest and racial tension arising from the George Floyd murder case and many others recently is a great pointer to the fact that the old system cannot be propped up for much longer. Many white Americans understand this so well and that explains the massive support for racial justice we have seen lately. Unfortunately, there still exists a sub-group, trapped in the old colonial mentality of Jim Crow, who though in the minority are very loud to the point of drowning the sane voices of the silent majority.

Just recently, the president of the United States re-tweeted a message from a group that claims that a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles exists that runs a global child sex-trafficking ring and is plotting against him. Just to be clear, I am not in the least flabbergasted by any claim made by QAnon or whatever the morally depraved alt-right jokers are out to sell, but if anyone had told me before now that an American president could sit in the hallowed grounds of the Oval Office and shamelessly peddle conspiracy theories capable of inciting bloody violence, I would ask him to quit watching horror movies.

We are is 2020 after all, a time when mentally unstable and morally depraved men, who before now existed only in the fringes are taking the centre stage. But what should we expect when the group now believes that they have a Grand Wizard in the White House as an ally! Stand back and stand by, he told Proud Boys. The reality of this moment is no doubt stranger than fiction.

In Trumps America, disciples of white supremacy are so worried about losing their position in an emerging world of multi-ethnic diversity. They decided there is nothing to lose in taking the fight to the gutters as the only way to hang on to the last vestiges of their perceived power. Of course, they seek out allies from an army of dim-wits and deplorable, together with some witless religious bigots from African who are cheer-leading from across the Atlantic. This later group are easily sold on any agenda in so far as its clothed in religious garb. Today, the American far-right has inundated the world with an avalanche of falsehood and conspiracy theories in pursuit of their ungodly agenda. For them, they play by no rules and truth is not allowed to get in the way. In their arsenal are massive propaganda tools deployed to misinform and obfuscate.

The common enemy remains the same, namely: The Jews, LGBT and in America, blacks, non-white immigrants and certain sub-cultures. Lately even fellow whites viewed as non-conforming, likes Gretchen Whitmer, the current governor of Michigan, who they planned to kidnap.

There is a popular saying that history often repeats itself and the world definitely had seen this movie before. The Nazi Party, in its early years, was quick to recognise the power of an effective propaganda tool and Hitler himself had this to say:

Propaganda must not investigate the truth objectively and, in so far as it is favourable to the other side, present it according to the theoretical rules of justice; yet it must present only that aspect of the truth which is favourable to its own side. The receptive powers of the masses are very restricted, and their understanding is feeble. (Mein Kampf, chapter VI).

The Fuhrer hired Joseph Goebbels and established a Party newspaper known as Volkischer Beobachter, a widely circulated publication. Goebbels on his own, added another voice when in 1927, he started Der Angrif. Trump, on the other hand, has Breitbart, One America News Network, Mike Pence and QAnon.

The common enemy remains the same, namely: The Jews, LGBT and in America, blacks, non-white immigrants and certain sub-cultures. Lately even fellow whites viewed as non-conforming, likes Gretchen Whitmer, the current governor of Michigan, who they planned to kidnap.

They attack ferociously and crush anything that gets in the way. They dismiss science, deny climate change and attempt to brand the Bill Gates of this world as anti-Christ with a global agenda. They throw innuendos and sling all kinds of mud, hoping that some would stick. The mental cripples that support them have no idea what is going on and happily chorus the attacks.

The world suffered incalculable loss under Hitlers Germany and it required a World War II that lingered between 1939 and 1945, and resulted in the death of an estimated 70 to 85 million people, to stop him in his track. Thankfully, history had taught us that no matter how long it takes, good will always triumph over evil.

Osmund Agbo, a public affairs analyst is the coordinator of African Center for Transparency and Convener of Save Nigeria Project. Email: eagleosmund@yahoo.com

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American Alt-Right, Proud Boys and the Rise of Neo-Nazis, By Osmund Agbo - Premium Times

In April 2020, the United Nations Secretary-General, Antnio Guterres, addressed members of the Security Council by warning them that the COVID-19 pandemic could threaten global peace and security.

If the health crisis was not managed effectively, he feared that its negative economic consequences, along with a mismanaged government response, would provide an opportunity for white supremacists, right-wing extremists and others to promote division, social unrest and even violence to achieve their objectives.

In early October 2020, less than a month before the United States federal election, the FBI thwarted an alleged terrorism plot by right-wing extremists to kidnap the Michigan governor, storm the state capital building and commit acts of violence against law enforcement.

Their aim, according to court documents, was to start a civil war leading to societal collapse. To date, 14 men have been arrested on charges of terrorism and other related crimes. Several of them are linked to the Wolverine Watchmen, a militia-type group in Michigan that espouses anti-government and anti-law enforcement views.

The FBI recently briefed U.S. senators on the evolving concern of domestic violent extremists, groups whose ideological goals to commit violence stem from domestic influences such as social movements like #MeToo, Black Lives Matter and government policies.

The composition of many of these organizations are right-wing terror groups whose grievances are rooted in racism, misogyny, anti-Semitism, anti-LGBTQ sentiments, Islamophobia and perceptions of government overreach. Given the wide range of grievances, these groups are defined as being complex, with overlapping viewpoints from similarly minded individuals advocating different but related ideologies.

Feminist researchers believe the rise of disenfranchised middle-class white males is leading to increased toxic masculinity within society, as evidenced by the increased popularity of the so-called manosphere to share extremist ideas and vent their grievances. Law enforcement agencies are concerned that the manosphere and similar online communities are radicalizing young men to commit violence to achieve their goals.

This concern is valid, with plenty of evidence to support it.

According to the University of Marylands Global Terrorism Database, there were 310 terrorist attacks resulting in 316 deaths (excluding perpetrators) in the United States alone from 2015 to 2019.

Most were right-wing extremists, including white nationalists and other alt-right movement members. This alt-right movement also contains the incel (involuntary celibate) members who are a growing threat to women.

But the increase in right-wing terrorism is not just a U.S. problem. The UN Security Councils Counterterrorism Committee says theres been a 320 per cent increase in right-wing terrorism globally in the five years prior to 2020.

Recent terrorist attacks in New Zealand (2019), Germany (2019) and Norway (2019) are indicators of this trend. The Centre for Research on Extremism at the University of Oslo reports that both Spain and Greece are growing hotbeds for right-wing terrorism and violence.

Canada isnt immune to these violent extremist ideologies. Many sympathizers to these causes reside in Canada, and as such there is always a risk for attacks. But the Canadian government is taking notice and has listed Combat 18 and Blood & Honour as right-wing terrorist organizations.

Right-wing extremism is of such concern that when the top international security policy-makers met at the 2019 Munich Security Conference, they ranked it among space security, climate security and emerging technologies as the top global security threats.

It would appear as though the world is at the dawn of a new age of terrorism thats different from before. Famed terrorism researcher David C. Rapoport argued in his influential thesis The Four Waves of Rebel Terror and September 11 that modern terrorism can be categorized into four distinct waves.

The first Anarchist Wave began in the 1880s in Russia with the Narodnaya Volya (The Peoples Will) conducting assassinations of political leaders. It continued until the 1920s, spreading across the Balkans and eventually into the West, influencing the creation of new terror groups within different countries.

The 1920s saw the beginning of the Anti-Colonial Wave coming out of the remnants of the First World War, when groups like the Irish Republican Army (IRA) began using ambush tactics against police and military targets to force political change.

In the 1960s, the New Left Wave was created. This third wave emerged from the perceived oppression of Western countries within the developing world (like Vietnam and the Middle East). Its tactics included plane hijackings, embassy attacks and kidnappings perpetrated by groups like the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

Finally, the 1990s witnessed the birth of the Religious Wave in which terror groups like al-Qaida used religious ideology as a justification to overthrow secular governments with martyrdom tactics like suicide bombings.

What all these waves have in common is that they last for a few decades and become infectious over time, spreading across the globe as new groups learn and adopt the successful tactics of previous ones.

This brings us to todays right-wing terrorism.

Already observers have signalled the decline of violent Islamic movements and the rise of far-right extremist activities. Is right-wing violent extremism the new fifth wave of modern terrorism?

If so, theres no doubt the negative societal impacts of COVID-19 will only help accelerate the radicalization of its adherents.

And if the duration of the previous four waves have taught us anything, its that this new one could be around for many more years to come.

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Right-wing extremism: The new wave of global terrorism - The Conversation CA

The U.S. militia movement has long been steeped in a peculiar and unquestionably mistaken interpretation of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and civil liberties.

This is true of an armed militia group that calls itself the Wolverine Watchmen, who were involved in the recently revealed plot to overthrow Michigans government and kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

As I wrote in Fracturing the Founding: How the Alt-Right Corrupts the Constitution, published in 2019, the crux of the militia movements devotion to what I have called the alt-right constitution is a toxic mix of constitutional falsehoods and half-truths.

The term militia has many meanings.

The Constitution addresses militias in Article 1, authorizing Congress to provide for organizing, arming and disciplining, the Militia.

But the Constitution makes no provision for private militias, like the far-right Wolverine Watchmen, Proud Boys, Michigan Militia and the Oath Keepers, to name just a few.

Private militias are simply groups of like-minded men members are almost always white males who subscribe to a sometimes confusing set of beliefs about an avaricious federal government that is hostile to white men and white heritage, and the sanctity of the right to bear arms and private property. They believe that government is under the control of Jews, the United Nations, international banking interests, Leftists, Antifa, Black Lives Matter and so on. There is no evidence of this.

On Oct. 8, the FBI arrested six men, five of them from Michigan, and charged them with conspiring to kidnap Whitmer. Shortly thereafter, state authorities charged an additional seven men with, according to the Associated Press, allegedly seeking to storm the Michigan Capitol and seek a "civil war. Included were the founders and several members of the Wolverine Watchmen.

As revealed in the FBI affidavit accompanying the federal charges, the six men charged claimed to be defenders of the Bill of Rights. Indeed, some of the men in April had participated in rallies in Lansing, the state capital, where armed citizens tried to force their way onto the floor of the State House to protest Governor Whitmers pandemic shut-down orders as a violation of the Constitution by a tyrannical government intent upon sacrificing civil liberties in the name of the COVID-19 fight.

According to the FBIs affidavit, the conspirators wanted to create a society that followed the U.S. Bill of Rights and where they could be self-sufficient.

Militia members imagine themselves to be the last true American patriots, the modern defenders of the United States Constitution in general and the Second Amendment in particular.

Hence, the Bill of Rights and especially the Second Amendment, which establishes the right to bear arms figure prominently in the alt-constitution. It is no accident that the initial discussions about overthrowing Michigans so-called tyrannical governor started at a Second Amendment rally in June.

According to most militias, the Second Amendment authorizes their activity and likewise makes them free of legal regulation by the state. In truth, the Second Amendment does nothing to authorize private armed militias. Private armed militias are explicitly illegal in every state.

Additional foundational principles of militia constitutionalism include absolutism. Absolutism, in the militia world, is the idea that fundamental constitutional rights like freedom of speech, the right to bear arms and the right to own property cannot be restricted or regulated by the state without a citizens consent.

The far rights reading of the First and Second Amendments which govern free speech and the right to bear arms, respectively starts from a simple premise: Both amendments are literal and absolute. They believe that the First Amendment allows them to say anything, anytime, anywhere, to anyone, without consequence or reproach by government or even by other citizens who disagree or take offense at their speech.

Similarly, the alt-right gun advocates hold that the Second Amendment protects their God-given right to own a weapon any weapon and that governmental efforts to deny, restrict or even to register their weapons must be unconstitutional. They think the Second Amendment trumps every other provision in the Constitution.

Another key belief among militia members is the principle of constitutional self-help. Thats the belief that citizens, acting on their inherent authority as sovereign free men, are ultimately and finally responsible for enforcing the Constitution as they understand it.

Demonstrating this way of thinking, the men arrested in Michigan discussed taking Gov. Whitmer to a secure location in Wisconsin to stand trial for treason prior to the Nov. 3 election. According to Barry County, Michigan Sheriff Dar Leaf a member of the militia-friendly Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officer Association the men arrested in Michigan were perhaps not trying to kidnap the governor but were instead simply making a citizens arrest.

Leaf, who appeared at a Grand Rapids protest in May of Gov. Whitmers stay-at-home order along with two of the alleged kidnappers, mistakenly believes that local sheriffs are the highest constitutional authority in the United States, invested with the right to determine which laws support and which laws violate the Constitution. The events in Michigan show how dangerous these mistaken understandings of the Constitution can be.

The Wolverine Watchmen are not a Second Amendment militia or constitutional patriots in any sense of the word. If they are guilty of the charges brought against them, then they are terrorists.

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The FBI and Michigan law enforcement shut down the Watchmen before an egregious crime and a terrible human tragedy unfolded. But as I concluded just last year in my book, there is little reason to think the militia movement will subside soon.

Unfortunately, I did not account for the possibility that President Trump would encourage militias to stand back and stand by, which seems likely to encourage and embolden groups that already clearly represent a threat. Expect more Michigans.

Continued here:
Plot to kidnap Michigan's governor grew from the militia movement's toxic mix of constitutional falsehoods and half-truths - The Conversation US