General / Off-Topic Regarding violent extremism in the USA

[Adept]

I didn't want to post this in the Manchester event thread. It wouldn't be appropriate to have a general discussion and analysis there, I feel.

Anyway, there was a thread recently where the "Freemen of the Land" weirdos were referenced. The less said about that thread the better, but this Guardian article will add some context to them as well.

They hate the US government, and they're multiplying: the terrifying rise of 'sovereign citizens'

In fact, a 2016 report by the US Government Accountability Office noted that “of the 85 violent extremist incidents that resulted in death since September 12, 2001, far-rightwing violent extremist groups were responsible for 62 (73%) while radical Islamist violent extremists were responsible for 23 (27%).” (The report counts the 15 Beltway sniper shootings in 2002 as radical Islamist attacks, though the perpetrators’ motives are debated.)

Johnson said: “There are a lot of people – millennials – who have no idea of Oklahoma City and what happened there in 1995.”

The Oklahoma City bombing, which killed 168 people, including 19 children, was widely assumed to be related to Middle Eastern terrorism, but the perpetrator turned out to be someone quintessentially middle American: a white Gulf war veteran, Timothy McVeigh, who used his military knowledge to build a huge truck bomb out of commercial fertilizer. He and his collaborator Terry Nichols – who described himself as a sovereign citizen – saw the attack as the opening gambit in an armed revolt against a dictatorial and globalist federal government.

“Many of [the people attracted to such movements] are guys my age, middle-aged white guys. They’re seeing profound change and seeing that they have been left behind by the economic success of others and they want to return to a never-existent idyllic age when everyone was happy and everyone was white and everyone was self-sufficient.”

Militia members are not necessarily sovereign citizens, but their beliefs are intertwined. Today’s sovereign citizen movement can be traced in part to two popular Patriot ideologies: the Posse Comitatus movement, built around the theory that elected county sheriffs are the highest legitimate law officers, and the Freemen-on-the-Land movement, a fringe ideology whose adherents believe themselves subject only to their own convoluted, conspiratorial, and selective interpretation of common law.

There was significant overlap between the Patriot movement and white nationalism. One of the movement’s foundational texts was The Turner Diaries, a 1978 novel by the white supremacist William Luther Pierce that describes a near future in which a small group of patriots fighting the extinction of the white race work to bring about a race war and the eventual genocide of non-white peoples.

 

[Deleted member 115407]

That's funny - I suppose they don't include violent rioting by extremist progressives in those statistics.

 

[Zetta]

Saw a piece on boingboing based on the same article

A 2014 survey of 175 US law enforcement agencies found that they ranked "sovereign citizens" as the top domestic terror threat, and with good reason: members of the heavily armed, white-supremacist-adjacent movement regularly kill cops during routine traffic stops and other interactions.

But Donald Trump's DHS will refocus its "countering violent extremism" (CVE) program to focus exclusively on radical Islam.
The sovereign citizen movement is part of a constellation of far-right groups that includes overt white-supremacists, militias, and other groups of "middle-aged white guys" who see "profound change and seeing that they have been left behind by the economic success of others and they want to return to a never-existent idyllic age when everyone was happy and everyone was white and everyone was self-sufficient."

The movement has been around for a long time, but it was supercharged by the waves of foreclosures as deregulated, bailed-out banks stole trillions of dollars' worth of Americans' homes in acts of overt fraud, and got away with it.

The movement is getting younger, and takes its cues from Alex Jones, a snake-oil peddler who uses conspiracy theories to sell millions' of dollars worth of nostrums like Infowars Life Silver Bullet Colloidal Silver, Infowars Life Brain Force Plus, Infowars Life Super Male Vitality, and Infowars Life Liver Shield.

In 2009, a man with white supremacist and anti-government views shot five police officers in Pittsburgh, three fatally.
In 2012, self-described sovereign citizens shot four sheriff’s deputies, two fatally, in St John the Baptist, a Louisiana parish.
In 2014, two Las Vegas police officers eating lunch were killed by a husband-and-wife pair inspired by the Patriot movement; the couple were killed by police before following through on their plan to take over a courthouse to execute public officials.
The same year, survivalist Eric Frein ambushed a Pennsylvania state police barracks, assassinating one state trooper and wounding another, then led law enforcement on a 48-day manhunt.
In 2016, a marine veteran-turned-sovereign citizen killed three law enforcement officers in Baton Rouge and wounded three others.
​

https://boingboing.net/2017/05/16/pepe-meets-bundy.html

 

[Minonian]

And people wondering why also the cops that violent in the states? If everyone running around with guns, than your finger on the trigger tends to be itchy.

 

[Adept]

That's funny - I suppose they don't include violent rioting by extremist progressives in those statistics.

Did you try actually reading the article? Nothing particularly funny about it.

Would you like to share a credible source on "violent rioting by extremist progressives"? That sounds like a pretty good oxymoron, but I'm open to being surprised.

 

[Monk]

It is something to keep an eye but, as with most things, it gets blown way out of proportion.

Take it from an American living in a part of the Midwest with close ties to the South. Nearly everyone is good, we just have wildly different fears and conclusions about how best to go forward with the country.

It worries me when I see these sort of articles waved about while left-coast elites point their fingers at my neighbors. I might think my neighbors are fearful and ignorant but I don't doubt for a second that they would come to my aid or protect my home in a time of need. I'd do the same for them, even though I know they think I'm some kind short-sighted, bleeding-heart elitist.

Yes, there are extremist elements...but we have to be careful not to conflate those people with a broader political ideology in the same way that many do for radical Islam and Islam as a whole.

 

[Talarin]

Your point is?

 

[Jenner]

It is something to keep an eye but, as with most things, it gets blown way out of proportion.

Take it from an American living in a part of the Midwest with close ties to the South. Nearly everyone is good, we just have wildly different fears and conclusions about how best to go forward with the country.

It worries me when I see these sort of articles waved about while left-coast elites point their fingers at my neighbors. I might think my neighbors are fearful and ignorant but I don't doubt for a second that they would come to my aid or protect my home in a time of need. I'd do the same for them, even though I know they think I'm some kind short-sighted, bleeding-heart elitist.

Yes, there are extremist elements...but we have to be careful not to conflate those people with a broader political ideology in the same way that many do for radical Islam and Islam as a whole.

Fistbump - From one American to another.

 

[Deleted member 115407]

Fistbump - From one American to another.

Seconded.

 

[Boomer Kay]

I didn't want to post this in the Manchester event thread. It wouldn't be appropriate to have a general discussion and analysis there, I feel.

Anyway, there was a thread recently where the "Freemen of the Land" weirdos were referenced. The less said about that thread the better, but this Guardian article will add some context to them as well.

They hate the US government, and they're multiplying: the terrifying rise of 'sovereign citizens'

It's not limited to the U.S.
https://www.thelocal.de/20170125/what-is-germanys-extremist-reichsbrger-movement
But instead of re-enacting some sort of wild west fantasy, they're all about the German empire. Crazy kind of paleoconservatism.
Sometimes I think I preferred the times before the internet. The village idiots were just as manifold, but they would not get as much platform.

 

[Adept]

It is something to keep an eye but, as with most things, it gets blown way out of proportion.

Take it from an American living in a part of the Midwest with close ties to the South. Nearly everyone is good, we just have wildly different fears and conclusions about how best to go forward with the country.

It worries me when I see these sort of articles waved about while left-coast elites point their fingers at my neighbors. I might think my neighbors are fearful and ignorant but I don't doubt for a second that they would come to my aid or protect my home in a time of need. I'd do the same for them, even though I know they think I'm some kind short-sighted, bleeding-heart elitist.

Yes, there are extremist elements...but we have to be careful not to conflate those people with a broader political ideology in the same way that many do for radical Islam and Islam as a whole.

I'm sure you're correct with all that. It's not like the article claims that there are huge swaths of these people. I think the truly dangerous far-right nutjobs number in the thousands at most. That is still quite significant, as actual terrorism threats go.

 

[Adept]

But instead of re-enacting some sort of wild west fantasy, they're all about the German empire. Crazy kind of paleoconservatism.
Sometimes I think I preferred the times before the internet. The village idiots were just as manifold, but they would not get as much platform.

It was kind of upsetting once the IT stuff got so easy to use that throwback mouth breathers started using it. Sure ruined a lot of discussion boards and such.

 

[Minonian]

It's not limited to the U.S.
https://www.thelocal.de/20170125/what-is-germanys-extremist-reichsbrger-movement
But instead of re-enacting some sort of wild west fantasy, they're all about the German empire. Crazy kind of paleoconservatism.
Sometimes I think I preferred the times before the internet. The village idiots were just as manifold, but they would not get as much platform.

Great Hungary... that's the thing of past, and i don't see any chance either peaceful or violent in the near future to get it back what's lost.
I guess we all have our whackos.

 

[Patrick_68000]

And people wondering why also the cops that violent in the states? If everyone running around with guns, than your finger on the trigger tends to be itchy.

This is the far west

 

[Minonian]

This is the far west

http://savepic.net/9337037.jpg

Also? MP Space sims. It's the Wild Wild Space...

 

[lysan]

It is something to keep an eye but, as with most things, it gets blown way out of proportion.

Take it from an American living in a part of the Midwest with close ties to the South. Nearly everyone is good, we just have wildly different fears and conclusions about how best to go forward with the country.

It worries me when I see these sort of articles waved about while left-coast elites point their fingers at my neighbors. I might think my neighbors are fearful and ignorant but I don't doubt for a second that they would come to my aid or protect my home in a time of need. I'd do the same for them, even though I know they think I'm some kind short-sighted, bleeding-heart elitist.

Yes, there are extremist elements...but we have to be careful not to conflate those people with a broader political ideology in the same way that many do for radical Islam and Islam as a whole.

It's just Adept seeing ghosts everywhere, nothing more than bombs & shootings in London, Norway, Belgium or France.

People are violent by nature as far as I'm concerned, we didn't evolve that far from our ancestors.

 

[PigKiller]

It is something to keep an eye but, as with most things, it gets blown way out of proportion.

Take it from an American living in a part of the Midwest with close ties to the South. Nearly everyone is good, we just have wildly different fears and conclusions about how best to go forward with the country.

It worries me when I see these sort of articles waved about while left-coast elites point their fingers at my neighbors. I might think my neighbors are fearful and ignorant but I don't doubt for a second that they would come to my aid or protect my home in a time of need. I'd do the same for them, even though I know they think I'm some kind short-sighted, bleeding-heart elitist.

Yes, there are extremist elements...but we have to be careful not to conflate those people with a broader political ideology in the same way that many do for radical Islam and Islam as a whole.

And yet the people running this country at this very moment are exactly the type that use and support policies that appeal to the extremists that Adept is talking about.
These are the type that take over nature preserves, film and record the whole thing, then at trial get acquitted because a jury of helpful neighbors who themselves may never take up arms but still think they did the right thing. Or at least nothing wrong.

It's not the overt acts themselves that is the danger but the sympathy they generate. Especially in politicians.

 

[Robin of Spiritwood]

And yet the people running this country at this very moment are exactly the type that use and support policies that appeal to the extremists that Adept is talking about.
These are the type that take over nature preserves, film and record the whole thing, then at trial get acquitted because a jury of helpful neighbors who themselves may never take up arms but still think they did the right thing. Or at least nothing wrong.

It's not the overt acts themselves that is the danger but the sympathy they generate. Especially in politicians.

The phenomenon is probably universal.
Blasphemy and honor killings benefit from societal approval in other parts of the world.

 

[Sonof Hibachi]

I'm a Brit and have met several "outcast" types whilst covering thousands of miles in the US, firstly in a clapped out old VW Fox, and then later whilst riding a brand new Road King. I drank with hard right Republicans in Wickenburg Arizona, Hell's Angels in Montrose Colorado, gang members in Oakland and an Idaho Militia man in Booneville Missouri (he was visiting his Nan!). 99.9% were friendly, kind and generous folk.

I grew up in the Middle East and found 99.9% of Muslims friendly, kind and generous folk.

I have been settled back in the UK for 27 years and find 99.9% of Christians friendly, kind and generous folk.

I have shared a beer with Tottenham fans whilst wearing an Arsenal shirt, and found 99.9% of Spurs fans to be friendly, kind and generous folk.

Most people just want to be left alone and they will be friendly, kind and generous folk.

The 0.1% spoil it for everybody, but the generalisations made in the OP's sources really annoy me.

 

[GJ51]

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Former-professor-arrested-in-beating-at-Berkeley-11174575.php