Morning Briefing: White Supremacist Group Promotes Book-Burning Event During Pride Month
The New England White Network (NEWN), a White Supremacist group based in New Hampshire, has 'taken out an advertisement in a small northern Maine newspaper' promoting a book-burning event in June.
Morning Briefing: The New England White Network (NEWN), a White Supremacist group based in New Hampshire, has reportedly “taken out an advertisement in a small northern Maine newspaper promoting a book-burning event later this year,” and the advertisement included the phrase “During pride month, New England White Network is going to party like it’s 1933.”
Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s official residence in Harrisburg was firebombed and the attack caused a “significant amount of damage.” Law enforcement has reportedly arrested Cody Balmer who “allegedly climbed the residence's fence, used a hammer to break a window and threw Molotov cocktails in to start the blaze.”
In Seattle, Washington, local law enforcement has reportedly “arrested a man on suspicion of a hate crime for reportedly throwing rocks at people and cars while shouting profane insults,” and three other individuals have reportedly “been charged for allegedly yelling homophobic slurs out a car window and shooting water beads at bystanders outside a Seattle LGBTQ nightclub.”
In Newberry, Florida, Alexander Justin McAfee was arrested “after he was pulled over for having a homemade tag and allegedly refused to identify himself,” the tag reportedly “appeared to be homemade, with messages like ‘Sovereign Citizen’ and ‘Free Traveler.’”
Must Reads
Moira Donegan writes that “they’re rounding people up, and you could be next. The Trump administration has largely dispensed with due process rights in deporting immigrants, who are now being targeted for their protected speech, having their visas or green cards summarily cancelled without process and sometimes without notice, and getting kidnapped off the streets and hustled into vans so that they can be shipped to ‘detention centers’ too far away for their loved ones, or their lawyers, to visit them… Now, the Trump administration may be seeking to extend the lawlessness and cruelty of its deportation regime to the next logical target: American citizens… This would be illegal. But so is so much of what the Trump administration is doing with its deportation policies. It is illegal to cancel visas and green cards without due process, as the Trump administration has done and continues to do as part of a widening dragnet in its anti-immigrant purges. It is illegal to target immigrants for their speech, as the Trump administration has done to pro-Palestinian and anti-genocide activists, from Rümeysa Öztürk to Mahmoud Khalil. It is illegal to deport people to a foreign prison where they have no recourse to enforce their rights and no path to pursue their freedom – it is illegal to do this, as the Trump administration has done, specifically to prevent its victims from seeking to enforce their own rights in American courts.” [The Guardian]
Melissa Gira Grant writes that “in recent weeks, the Trump administration has fully embraced the art of the immigration raid as reality television. They are intentionally producing devastating scenes designed to circulate on social media. But beyond offering viewers a chance to participate in the administration’s cruelty, this content creation serves a strategic purpose. Why are Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and ‘border czar’ Tom Homan showing up personally for raids, cameras and influencers in tow? Because the Trump administration currently does not have enough agents to round people up or camps to put them in. (ICE is currently looking for new contractors, with plans to spend an additional $45 billion over the next two years on immigrant detention.) But if Noem and Homan appear in person for these raids—if they become news events, if they generate posts—they can terrorize many more thousands of people than they can deport. This mass-deportation machine relies upon propaganda, chaos, and fear to accomplish what they cannot with the laws, enforcement officers, and infrastructure they have at their disposal. This might also explain why, when the team touched down in Arizona earlier this week, Noem was accompanied by the far-right extremist content creator Chaya Raichik, the architect of the influential X account Libs of TikTok. The Trump administration is branding traumatic arrests and detentions as some depraved cross-over event between law enforcement and internet vigilantes.” [The New Republic]
Lil Kalish, Nathalie Baptiste, Alanna Vagianos, and Matt Shuham write that “Since Trump took office, this pattern has repeated again and again. The promise to safeguard kids has become a main pillar of Trump’s second term, with the administration insisting that ‘President Trump will always protect American children’… Yet, proposed funding cuts would take away free school lunches for millions of kids and could make it harder for foster children to be placed in stable, permanent homes. The 20-plus state abortion bans that have gone into effect since the fall of Roe v. Wade — one of Trump’s favorite policy rollbacks to take credit for — have forced children to give birth to children. Trump has also signed a slew of executive orders that target kids — perhaps most notably, one that would abolish the Education Department, cutting crucial infrastructure that supports millions of public school students nationwide. Protecting kids from cultural bogeymen is another key Trump theme, whether it’s measures to shield children from the imagined perils of ‘transgender ideology’ or the alleged ‘murderers, human traffickers, gang members’ crossing over the southern border. His actions in this realm convey no meaningful benefit, since the dangers he describes are greatly exaggerated or outrightly imagined — but his administration has visited tremendous harm on children from marginalized groups.” [Huffington Post]
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.
Do you think they’ve read the books they want to burn? lol. It’s so disordered—driven by blind commitment to twisted ideologies. American Taliban.