Morning Briefing: Trump Pardons Oath Keeper Associate for Capitol Riot
President Donald Trump has pardoned Thomas Caldwell, whose sentence Trump had previously commuted for his convictions related his participation in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Morning Briefing: President Donald Trump has pardoned Thomas Caldwell, whose sentence Trump had previously commuted for his convictions related his participation in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Caldwell was on trial with Oath Keepers for seditious conspiracy, and federal prosecutors said he “called for civil war ahead of the 2021 Capitol attack and played a key role in the anti-government militia’s planning ahead of the riot.”
In Bedford, Texas, local law enforcement is reportedly investigating after “adhesive flyers promoting a White supremacist organization were reported to authorities.” The propaganda was placed in various locations in Stormie Jones Park and promotes Patriot Front, the neo-fascist White Nationalist group.
Richard Spencer, the White Supremacist who helped organize the Unit the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017, has reportedly “lost his bid to reverse the subsequent post-jury trial judgment against him.”
The White Supremacist gunman who killed 23 people in shooting at an El Paso Walmart in 2019 has reportedly “been offered a plea deal to avoid the death penalty,” and the gunman allegedly “believed he was acting at the direction of President Donald Trump,” according to his defense attorney.
Five years after COVID-19 fueled incidents of hate targeting Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, “Stop AAPI Hate is receiving fewer incident reports yearly but they’re still happening by the hundreds and are likely an undercount,” and advocates are “worried it will only intensify in a political climate of immigration crackdowns.”
Must Reads
Jeff Sharlet writes that “Trumpist rhetoric, from Trump on down, is rife with the idea that ‘their’ women are ‘sexier’ than Left or liberal women. This rhetoric is as common among right-wing women as among men. And even as it celebrates body modification—there’s no shame in plastic surgery on the fascist Right—it frames itself via a topsy-turvy idea of authenticity. Trump women, goes the thinking, are ‘real’ precisely because they try hard to perform ‘woman’; liberal and Left women are not ‘real women’ because, in this logic, feminism makes them rebel against their ‘natural’ roles. The range of such roles has expanded from those of the 1950s even for fascism women, which is why Noem can comfortably show her power—just so long as she contains it within a still-just-as-narrow spectrum of femininity: ‘maternal’ or ‘sexy.’ Much is rightly being made of the Noem video’s tone of domination. Stacks of anonymous men of color caged by Noem, who looks more Hollywood than ‘Homeland Security’… The video is a trap because for fascism the aesthetic—the physicalized embodiment of a theory of power—has always been a central ‘idea.’ But that trap only ‘works’ if we judge its result by pre-fascist norms.” [Religion Dispatches]
Christopher Mathias writes that “before neo-Nazi Anders Breivik massacred 77 people in Norway in 2011, he emailed a 1,518-page document, a compendium of his own writing and other far-right texts, to over 1,000 people. The deranged screed warned that Muslim immigration to Europe amounted to an ‘invasion’ of people — whose culture was ‘incompatible with Western society — that would lead to the cultural and demographic suicide’ of the continent. Earlier this month, the vice president of the United States went on TV to say the same thing. Speaking with Fox News host Laura Ingraham, JD Vance asserted that Germany is suffering an ‘invasion’ of people who are ‘totally culturally incompatible’ with ‘Western civilization.’ This purported ‘invasion,’ Vance said, will lead to a ‘civilizational suicide’ if it’s not stopped. It barely triggers a 24-hour news cycle anymore when the vice president and his boss, President Donald Trump, use the same language as fascist mass murderers. I’ve witnessed this process of normalization over the last eight years as a reporter covering the far right, seeing neo-Nazi talking points, especially around immigration, enter the mainstream discourse with horrifying, accelerating speed. I fear now that many of us here in America still haven’t registered the logical endpoint of such rhetoric, which both dehumanizes subgroups of human beings and presents them as an existential threat.” [MSNBC]
David Gilbert writes that “over the weekend, thousands of people joined the ‘Tesla Takedown’ protest movement at the company’s showrooms across the country. At the same time, a much smaller number of Elon Musk supporters turned out at Tesla locations for a counterprotest movement that some participants dubbed ‘Tesla Shield.’ While the protest movement comprises people angered at Elon Musk’s role in the dismantling of federal government agencies, the counterprotest movement that showed up this weekend was peopled mostly by MAGA supporters. Among them were an array of far-right extremists, including members of the Proud Boys, armed militias, and at one event in Idaho, a guy dressed as Hitler. As Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) rips through huge swaths of the federal government and puts people’s lives and livelihoods at risk, the Tesla protest movement has gained traction. Tesla’s stock price has dropped by more than 30 percent since the beginning of the year. Isolated incidents of vandalism against Tesla vehicles and chargers as well as dealerships have led Trump to push the Department of Justice to treat alleged violent protesters as ‘domestic terrorists,’ and now some extremist groups have taken it upon themselves to help Musk fight back.” [Wired]
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.
