Morning Briefing: White Nationalist Candidate for City Council in Maine
Richard Ward, far right activist with a 'well-documented history of provocative political actions that use neo-Nazi and white supremacist rhetoric,' is a candidate for city council in Bangor, Maine.
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Morning Briefing: Richard Ward, far right activist with a “well-documented history of provocative political actions that use neo-Nazi and white supremacist rhetoric,” is a candidate for city council in Bangor, Maine.
A failed candidate for city council and school board, Ward has a documented history of posting, replying, and reposting on posts Twitter/X “containing white supremacist, anti-trans, anti-LGBTQ, and racist rhetoric,” including posting an image celebrating Anders Breivik, the neo-Nazi White Supremacist terrorist that killed 77 people at the Workers' Youth League (AUF) summer camp in Norway in 2011.
Patriot Front, the neo-fascist White Nationalist group, has been highly active in recent weeks. In Seward, Alaska, several members of the group gathered to build “community with local nationalists,” and the group is “now active and recruiting in Alaska.”
In several communities around the country, members of Patriot Front have been distributing White Nationalist propaganda, including in Aurora, Central City, Denver, Golden, and Leadville, Colorado; Woodstock, Georgia; Coeur d'Alene, and Hayden, Idaho; Yorkville, Illinois; and Farmington, Utah.
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Tess Owen writes that there is a “new guard of paramilitary activists whose youthful membership, edgy aesthetics, use of Instagram, and, in many cases, overt nods to religion points to a new brand of anti-government Christian nationalist militias. Many of these new groups, whose follower counts range from dozens to thousands, began quietly setting up shop on Instagram over the past two years. The Tech Transparency Project, which monitors extremism online, identified nearly 200 Instagram accounts as ‘militia related’ and categorized dozens of those as part of this new generation of Christian nationalist militias. Over time, these groups have continued to grow their audience on Instagram, publishing slick propaganda imagery from IRL meetups that often shows groups of armed men with their faces covered or censored. Many of the Christian nationalist groups on Instagram try to hide behind what appear to be businesses—operating merch stores, for example, that are linked to their accounts, which they can use to fund themselves through sales of apparel, tactical gear, patches, or even weapons training. Experts say that this emergent movement draws on a number of trends in the modern extremist landscape, including that it establishes a paramilitary wing of surging Christian nationalism in the US and reflects the sensibilities of a new generation of fitness-obsessed, ‘Christ-pilled’ young men, some of who call themselves tradcaths.” [Wired]
Josh Kovensky writes that “the man who led a congregation that gave birth to the religious movement Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth now follows has a few principles for you to understand. A former Navy man, they’re informed by his career in the armed forces. But the kind of warfare he envisions isn’t always physical: it’s spiritual. That man is Jim Wilson, father of Idaho pastor Doug Wilson. The younger Wilson now leads a Christian movement that Hegseth has repeatedly praised. But his church was an offshoot of a congregation led by the elder Wilson, who wrote a book in the 1960s called ‘The Principles of War: A Handbook on Strategic Evangelism’ that informs much of how this movement of Christian Nationalists is trying to accomplish its goals. The militaristic language appears everywhere in their approach. When Doug Wilson, current pastor of Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, gave a sermon with Hegseth in the pews earlier this year, Wilson emphasized that one’s spiritual experience is akin to war: ‘You are going into conflict,’ he said. At Christ Church D.C., the group’s Washington project, the pastor there (again with Hegseth attending) told those gathered that ‘we understand that worship is warfare. We mean that.’ It goes further than the military analogies that show up throughout evangelical Christianity and in other denominations, where terms like ‘spiritual warfare’ are used as a metaphor for prayer, rooting out sinister thoughts or seeking God’s will in one’s life.” [Talking Points Memo]
Amanda Marcotte writes that “anti-LGBTQ activist and former Kentucky County Court Clerk Kim Davis has filed a lawsuit petitioning the Supreme Court to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 decision that legalized marriage equality. The suit, which was brought on Davis’ behalf by the Liberty Counsel, a far-right group devoted to so-called ‘religious liberty’ cases, seeks to appeal a jury verdict that requires her to pay $360,000 in emotional damages and legal fees to a gay couple she denied a marriage license to on religious grounds after the court’s ruling. Davis’ refusal to issue marriage licenses in the wake of the Obergefell decision provided her with 15 minutes of fame. A federal judge in Kentucky sentenced her to six days in jail for breaking the law, and after her release she gave interviews to ABC News and Christian publications, attended President Barack Obama’s 2016 State of the Union address and embarked on a speaking tour of Romania in support of a referendum that sought to cement the country’s ban on same-sex marriage. But while most people might have forgotten Davis, she hasn’t moved on. She has spent the last decade proclaiming her alleged victimhood to establish her Christian martyr bona fides. When she ran for reelection in her rural Appalachian county in 2018, she lost by 8%. Now she’s asking the Supreme Court to rule that the only way to preserve the religious freedom of anti-gay bigots is to strip marriage rights away from LGBTQ people.” [Salon]
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.
