Morning Briefing: White Supremacist Atomwaffen Division Propagandists 'Dark Foreigner' Found Guilty
Patrick Gordon Macdonald, the White Supremacists propagandists known as 'Dark Foreigner' accused of participating in terrorist activity for Atomwaffen Division, was 'found guilty on all charges.'
Morning Briefing: Patrick Gordon Macdonald, the White Supremacists propagandists known online as “Dark Foreigner” who was accused by prosecutors of “trying to sow hate and fear by helping create racist recruitment videos and other propaganda,” was “found guilty on all charges.”
Macdonald has pleaded not guilty to participating in terrorist activity for Atomwaffen Division, the violent extremist accelerationist neo-Nazi group which was “branded a terrorist organization in Canada in 2021.”
Justice Robert Smith found Macdonald guilty on the charges of “participating in terrorist activity, facilitating terrorist activity and committing an offence for a terrorist group.” While prosecutors have not indicated what penalty they will seek, the “maximum sentences for his charges include life in prison.”
Anti-abortion extremists are reportedly escalating their tactics, and “invasions and disruptions are surging dramatically since Trump’s pardon of 23 convicted extremists,” and California has become “ground zero for aggressive tactics by extremist groups.”
The trail is set to begin for Max Misch, self-described White Nationalist who is “accused of violating Vermont’s gun magazine capacity law,” as Misch allegedly purchased a “30-round rifle magazine in New Hampshire back in 2019” and brought it back to Vermont.
In Matawan, New Jersey, Maciej Wojciak has been “accused of removing a Pride flag from a donut shop and then making Nazi salute gestures,” and the charges include “bias, intimidation, terroristic threats, criminal mischief and disorderly conduct.”
In Ventura, California, John Williams was arrested and “accused of spray painting swastikas across the city,” and is facing charges of “felony vandalism, misdemeanor vandalism, hate crime and parole violation.”
In February at JFK International Airport in New York City, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) seized “White Supremacist/Neo-Nazi material” valued at $394, according to CBD’s monthly notice of “Seizure and Intent to Forfeit.”
Must Reads
Melissa Gira Grant writes that “QAnon influencers such as Shady Grooove have helped bring the movement’s theology to a far broader audience. Before he was stumping for a congressional candidate, he had built a burgeoning following on Twitter and YouTube. He and other social media brand names spread the messages attributed to Q—the apocryphal highly placed government official at the center of all the unhinged intrigue—from lesser-known image boards like 8kun. They posted musings on the meaning of bread crumbs (as followers have dubbed these gnomic dispatches from Q) to their own social media platforms, putting them in front of yet more followers, who can chew them over and share them again. QAnon takes every platitude about the internet democratizing the media and marries it to the far more instrumental cult of the personal brand. It generates more ‘truths’ than can be true—and, for a few, a kind of celebrity… In the invasion of the Capitol, QAnon was both frontline and the first blood. The group wound up coming closer than anyone might have imagined to seeing its fabled storm blow through the seat of power in Washington. Before the Q faithful swarmed Congress, the prospects for a post-Trump afterlife for QAnon seemed dim, more likely to diffuse, refracting their various conspiracy theories across multiple, smaller self-organized fringe organs of conspiratorial cultural reaction.” [The New Republic]
Bob Smietana writes that “long before Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was on the scene — much less overseeing health and human services for the United States — Seventh-day Adventists were trying to make Americans healthy again, promoting a plant-based diet and exercise as keys to physical and spiritual wellness. ‘Let the diet reform be progressive,’ wrote Ellen G. White, a 19th-century Adventist leader, in Testimonies for the Church. ‘…Tell them that the time will soon come when there will be no safety in using eggs, milk, cream, or butter, because disease in animals is increasing in proportion to the increase of wickedness among men… God will give His people ability and tact to prepare wholesome food without these things.’ Now a group of Adventists hopes to take advantage of the rise of Kennedy’s ‘Make America Healthy Again’ movement to show how the Bible can solve America’s health problems. ‘We believe we have a voice,’ said Brian Beavers, an Adventist teacher and pastor. ‘And we can contribute to making America healthy.’” [Religion News Service]
Frederick Clarkson and Ben Lorber write that the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) is at the “cutting edge of Christian Zionism, a global movement of primarily evangelical, Pentecostal and charismatic Christians who believe that the Bible mandates unqualified support for the state of Israel. As global outrage grows against Israel’s eliminationist, expansionist agenda, Trump’s second term seems to be shaping up as even more aggressively pro-Israel than his first. In his first weeks in office, Trump called for the ethnic cleansing of more than two million Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and for U.S. occupation of the beleaguered territory, which remains devastated after nearly a year and a half of Israeli bombardment and invasion. Key Trump administration appointees have also pledged support for Israel’s annexation of the West Bank, including White-Cain, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, who promised Trump will bring changes of ’biblical proportions’ to the Middle East… All of this makes clear that, as the U.S.-Israel ’special relationship’ enters a dangerous new phase, the NAR will play a pivotal role.” [In These Times]
What to expect from Radical Reports: Morning Briefing provides a daily round-up of reporting on the Radical Right; Extremist Links offers a weekly round-up of extremists activities including the white supremacist and militia movements; Narratives of the Right delivers weekly analysis of the current narratives in far right online spaces and promoted by right-wing media; and Research Desk provides monthly highlights research and analysis from academia on the Radical Right.
No quarter for Nazis