Morning Briefing: 300 Members of Oath Keepers Were Current or Former Employees of DHS
Morning Briefing: 300 Members of Oath Keepers Were Current or Former Employees of DHS
More than 300 members of the Oath Keepers, the far-right militia group, 'described themselves as current or former employees of the Department of Homeland Security.'
Morning Briefing: “More than 300 individuals on a leaked membership list of the far-right militia group the Oath Keepers described themselves as current or former employees of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS),” according to a report by the Project On Government Oversight (POGO).
“Hate crimes surged in Los Angeles County in 2021 to their highest level since 2002,” according to a report released by the county Commission on Human Relations.
German lawmakers are reportedly “digging deeper into an alleged coup plot uncovered last week, when police detained dozens of people linked to the far-right Reich Citizens movement.”
The far right and right-wing media has increasingly targeted the LGBTIQ community, particularly the transgender community. The often violent rhetoric has had consequences across the country, including in Texas were “drag performances, particularly those where children are present, have increasingly become the targets of anti-LGBTQ rhetoric this year.”
An analysis of more than a decade of data found that “radicalization is now more likely to take place online rather than in person—but is also more likely to result in a conviction for non-violent extremist offenses.”
An increasing number of people are encountering White Supremacists ideas while gaming, as “one in five adults reported being exposed to white-supremacist ideologies in online games in 2022,” according to a new report by the Anti-Defamation League.
Extremists Activity:
Twitter has reinstated the account of Baked Alaska, the far right extremists named Tim Gionet, “who pleaded guilty in July to a misdemeanor of parading, demonstrating, or picketing inside a Capitol building on January 6.”
Antiemetic and anti-LGBTIQ flyers were distributed in Newport News, Virginia; the Goyim Defense League distributed antiemetic flyers in Fresno, California; antisemitic graffiti was found at a high school in Sterling, Virginia; antisemitic graffiti was found at a train station in Upper Montclair, New Jersey.
White Lives Matter propaganda was identified in Kaukauna, WI (the WLM Wisconsin chapter has also recently created a Twitter account); Patriot Front propaganda was identified in Pendleton King Park in Augusta, Georgia; and White Supremacists and neo-Nazis targeted a drag show event in Lakeland, Florida.
This Year in Extremism: Discussion on Far Right Extremism in 2022 - Join the discussion Friday, December 16th at 12:00pm EST (11:00am CST / 9:00am PST).
Must Reads
Thor Benson writes that “to better understand extremism in the US, it’s necessary to understand who is being radicalized. It’s primarily right-wing extremism, but right-wing extremism covers many different groups and types of people who engage with it. It’s not just the people who join militias like the Proud Boys or the Oath Keepers, it’s the seemingly ordinary people who latch onto QAnon or other conspiracy theories. The January 6, 2021, attack in Washington is a good case study on what kind of people have become radicalized in the US. There were members of militia groups there, but research has shown roughly 90 percent of the people who stormed the Capitol were not affiliated with militias or other far-right groups. Many were business owners or regular working people who became convinced over time that the 2020 election had been stolen from Donald Trump.” [Wired]
Philip Bump writes that “the mob mentality that drove the Capitol riot is, in fact, omnipresent in a segment of America’s and the world’s political right, stoked and elevated as a means of demonstrating toughness but with occasional collapses into actual violence. The venue for Greene’s comments was the annual fundraising gala for the New York Young Republican Club (NYYRC). In attendance, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), was a who’s who of well-known right-wing voices: Bannon, Donald Trump Jr., former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani. But there were also less-familiar members of the fringe in the room, like Jack Posobiec, whose embrace of misinformation and aggressive online persona have elevated his status on the right, and the publishers of the white nationalist website Vdare. Far-right European politicians also made appearances.” [The Washington Post]
Jonathan Freedland writes that “the danger may incubate on screens, but it doesn’t stay there. That much has been clear for a while. Recall the massacre of 92 mostly young Norwegians in 2011. Or the slaughter of 49 at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019. Or the mass killing at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh six months earlier. Or the gunning down of 10 Black shoppers and workers in a supermarket in Buffalo by a white teenagerMay this year. These horrors follow a pattern in which the killer seeks not only to murder but to livestream his butchery, accompanying it with the release of a supposed manifesto, a long screed identifying all the same enemies: Black people, LGBT people, Jewish people.” [The Guardian]
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.
