Morning Briefing: FBI Thwarts Neo-Nazi Plot to 'Completely Destroy' City of Baltimore
Morning Briefing: FBI Thwarts Neo-Nazi Plot to 'Completely Destroy' City of Baltimore
A White Supremacists neo-Nazi couple, including founding member of terror group Atomwaffen Division, have been charged 'with conspiring to damage an energy facility.'
Morning Briefing: Sarah Clendaniel and Brandon Clint Russell were “arrested on federal charges of plotting to attack multiple energy substation with the goal of destroying Baltimore.”
The couple, fueled by White Supremacist ideology, reportedly targeted “five facilities operated by Baltimore Gas and Electric, which serves 1.2 million customers in central Maryland.”
Russell is reportedly a “founding member and leader in the dangerous neo-Nazi terror group Atomwaffen Division, was recently released from prison after serving time for possession of explosives.”
The arrest come after experts have been warning for months of possible domestic terrorist attacks on the country’s power grid.
James Mueller, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, has reportedly stated that “further reading he did about the Three Percenters has changed his view of the militia group, which he now condemns.”
Several homeowners in predominantly Jewish neighborhoods in the suburbs of Atlanta reportedly found “antisemitic flyers encased in plastic baggies weighed down by corn kernels and thrown into their driveways.”
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Audrey Clare Farley writes that “Perhaps there is a lesson here for progressives, and not just analysts. While progressives have been critical of Christian Nationalism, they have, on the whole, been unwilling to take a hard look at Christianity. Does the disproportionate focus on conservative white evangelicals provide cover, by enabling them to mark Christian Nationalism as some kind of historical aberration—a “hijacking” of faith? With Catholic history in mind, it is certainly harder to ignore that there really has not been a time since at least the fourth century when people were not paying with their lives for the Good News. Long before American Klansmen began burning them, crosses were symbols of terror. If, like Catholic movements past, a DeSantis campaign would test the boundaries of whiteness, it might also test the sincerity of those who claim to be invested in dismantling it.” [The New Republic]
Matt Shuham reports that “the fact checks of Died Suddenly’s claims are seemingly never-ending. Even some right-wingers have grown irritated with the film. A reviewer in The New American, a magazine owned by a subsidiary of the far-right John Birch Society, wondered if Died Suddenly’s obvious errors were intended ‘to discredit those with legitimate concerns about Covid vaccines.’ The film’s true innovation is its shamelessness, where it sinks to depths few have gone before. That’s because in order to drive home its central theme — sudden death — it features long runs of tragic headlines and footage of unrelated medical incidents to shock viewers. During a montage of Google results showing news of the sudden deaths of purported vaccine victims, filmmakers included an actor whose sister said he died from a fall, a teenager who took his own life, and a cloud gaming service, not a human being, that one article said had “died” when Google discontinued the product. It also references Kim Jung Gi, a popular artist who died in October; his representative told HuffPost that the filmmakers ‘never did a fact check’ before including him in ‘Died Suddenly.’” [Huffington Post]
Kiera Butler writes that “the 16 million people who have watched the film Died Suddenly on the far-right platform Rumble may have been expecting more of what they saw on social media: titillating speculation about Covid vaccines’ role in celebrity deaths. Yet viewers of Died Suddenly encounter much more than just a tired and repeatedly discredited strain of medical misinformation. Its premise is that the vaccines are a tool of global elites who want to “depopulate” the world—a variation on the “Great Reset” narrative that “globalists” like George Soros and Bill Gates orchestrated the pandemic in order to reprogram people to accept a new age of Marxism. This conspiracy theory gained traction in neo-Nazi and white nationalist groups, which are increasingly intermingling with the anti-vaccine movement.” [Mother Jones]
This Week in Extremism: Far Right Narratives and Conspiracy Theories
Discussion with Amanda Moore about the various narratives and conspiracy theories that are animating the far right. Join the discussion on Twitter Spaces Friday, February 10th at 12:00pm EST (11:00am CST / 9:00am PST)
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.
