Morning Briefing: Proud Boys Planning Disruptive Protest During Pride Month
Morning Briefing: Proud Boys Planning Disruptive Protest During Pride Month
The Proud Boys, the far right violent extremist street gang, are planning disruptive protests during the 'target rich environment' of Pride month celebrations.
Memorial Day Special Discount: Receive a 35% discount on both monthly and annual paid subscriptions - forever.
Morning Briefing: The Proud Boys, the far right violent extremist street gang, “are now more active than ever, and are busy planning disruptive protests at Pride month celebrations across the country in June.”
The Ohio chapter of the group has reported called the upcoming month of LGBTIQ events a “target rich environment.”
The Countering Extremism Working Group was formed to combat extremism within the ranks of the U.S. military, however, two years since the establishment of the working group “the effort has vanished virtually without a trace.”
Shane Lamond, a Lieutenant and the head of an intelligence unit within the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, D.C., “faces criminal charges after allegedly warning the leader of the far-right Proud Boys group about an arrest warrant and leaking other law enforcement information.”
The New Hampshire attorney general’s office met with Task Force Butler, an organization of military veterans that recent published a report on the activities of a neo-Nazi group throughout New England, and “state officials encouraged the veterans group and others to report hate crimes to their office.”
Must Reads
Spencer Ackerman writes that there is a “yearning on the right for violence to reassert its social dominance at home, as it does American dominance abroad. In April, a Texas jury convicted Daniel Perry, an Army sergeant, of murdering a Black Lives Matter protester during a 2020 demonstration in Austin. Perry claimed that his victim, Garrett Foster, leveled the AK-47 he was legally carrying, but witnesses contradicted that at trial. On the eve of Perry’s conviction, Tucker Carlson, predictably, painted the murderer as the victim. The next day, Governor Greg Abbott, a man not known for his clemency, tweeted that he was ‘working as swiftly as Texas law allows regarding the pardon of Sgt. Perry.’ Left unsaid was that Foster was an Air Force veteran. The public deference the right typically demands for veterans stops when a veteran’s politics are inconvenient.” [The Nation]
Jordan Green reports that “Robert M. Weaver, then employed in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, co-organized the Jericho March — a series of quasi-religious gatherings attended by a loose coalition of Trump supporters who staged weekly rallies in state capitols that culminated with a major demonstration in Washington, D.C., in December 2020. The Jericho March helped set the stage for what transpired less than a month later on Jan. 6, 2021. Texts obtained by the January 6th Committee show that Weaver communicated extensively with Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, a featured speaker at the rally, and also received confirmation of Trump’s approval through an undisclosed contact within the Trump camp.” [Raw Story]
Zoya Teirstein writes that “for nearly a decade, the Oath Keepers — which formed in 2009 in the wake of Barack Obama’s election to the presidency — have responded to disasters like hurricanes and floods by administering rescue operations, serving hot meals, and doing construction work. Disasters provide the Oath Keepers with opportunities to fundraise and gain the trust of people who might not otherwise be sympathetic to their anti-government cause. By arriving to crisis zones before federal agencies do, the Oath Keepers take advantage of bureaucratic weaknesses, holding a hand out to people in desperate circumstances. This all serves to reinforce the militia members’ conviction that the government is fallible, negligent, and not to be trusted. And every time a new person sees the Oath Keepers as the helpers who respond when the government does not, it helps build the group’s fledgling brand.” [Grist]
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.
SA
Remember when you could pretty much live your life without necessarily having to worry about being shot randomly? It’s so ridiculous online when people say ‘it was always like this for some people.’ No, it really was not. Life has not been easy for many people, and we always had hate crimes and hate groups and violence. But we we did not have huge roving bands of paramilitaries and we did not have coordinated regular organized terrorism against groups for about 70 years, and for all the random violence in our country that was PRETTY NICE. We had more peace and we had some hopes things would get better.