Morning Briefing: Proud Boys on Trial for Seditious Conspiracy
This week, the Proud Boys, the far right violent extremist street gang, will goin on trial for sedition conspiracy related to the Capitol Riot on January 6, 2021.
Morning Briefing: This week, federal prosecutors will launch the second seditious conspiracy related to the Capitol Riot on January 6, 2021, and “this time bringing charges against leaders of the right-wing Proud Boys.”
After a two years, the federal investigation into the Capitol Riot has resulted in hundreds of hours of video evidence, thousands of court documents, and “with more than 950 people arrested.”
Despite the sprawling criminal investigation into the Capitol Riot, federal law enforcement has yet to identify the suspect who planted pipe bombs near the Republican and Democratic national committee headquarters, and the FBI has announce the agency is “raising the reward to $500,000.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has appointed Christopher Rufo to the board of trustees of the New College of Florida, Rufo is a far right activist who “rose to national prominence demonizing racial justice advocates and attacking LGBTQ communities.”
Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes said said in a statement following the storming of government institutions by supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro that “democracy will prevail and Brazilian institutions will not bend.”
Must Reads
Laura Jedeed writes that “the idea of combining political instruction and 35 hours of intense, combat-focused pistol training in 2023 America seems insurrectionary on its face. And it is, but not in the immediately obvious way. The guns are a red herring. The insurrection, if Patriot Academy has its way, will be bloodless: a heart transplant for the body politic. Patriot Academy, along with many fellow-traveler evangelical organizations across the country, is engaged in a life-and-death struggle to rewrite America’s Constitution—and teaching its supporters how to defend themselves with a handgun, just in case. Rick Green, founder of Patriot Academy, has always been ahead of his time. In the spring of 2001, back when he was a fresh-faced twentysomething in the Texas state legislature, one of Green’s proudest accomplishments was a bill that required all of Texas’s public school students to spend a week each year studying the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.” [The New Republic]
Elizabeth Dwoskin reports that “in the weeks leading up to Sunday’s violent attacks on Brazil’s Congress and other government buildings, the country’s social media channels surged with calls to attack gas stations, refineries and other infrastructure, as well as for people to come to a ‘war cry party’ in the capital, according to Brazilian social media researchers. Online influencers who deny the results of the country’s recent presidential election used a particular phrase to summon ‘patriots’ to what they called a ‘Festa da Selma’ — tweaking the word ‘selva,’ a military term for war cry, by substituting an ‘m’ for the ‘v’ in hopes of avoiding detection from Brazilian authorities, who have wide latitude to arrest people for ‘anti-democratic’ postings online. ‘Festa’ is the Portuguese word for ‘party.’ Organizers on Telegram posted dates, times and routes for ‘Liberty Caravans’ that would pick people up in at least six Brazilian states and ferry them to the party, according to posts viewed by The Washington Post.” [The Washington Post]
Sarah Stankorb writes that stories of sexual abuse are “are alarmingly common within the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), the country’s largest evangelical body. Women and children in SBC are taught to defer to men, particularly those in roles of authority, Brown explained, and to her mind, this has contributed to submission and obedience when those authority figures are bad actors. It’s one theological setup for widespread abuse. Some denominational leaders knew the scope of the crisis but denied having a way to intervene—largely, according to emails and SBC legal opinions later made public, in an effort to avoid liability. Even when abuse was reported, pastors often moved to new churches, where they abused again. Some SBC leaders even maligned survivors as attention-seeking Jezebels and tools of Satan. Among their biggest targets was Christa Brown.” [Vice]
Radical Reports Book Club: Jesus and John Wayne
Discussion on Twitter Spaces: Jesus and John Wayne: Chapters 1 — 5 (Thursday, January 12th at 12:00pm EST)
This Week in Extremism: Patriot Front, WLM, and Rising Neo-Fascists
Join the discussion on Twitter Spaces on Friday, January 13th 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.