Senior Research Fellow, ADL Center on Extremism. Historian, long-time expert on right-wing extremism. Long-lost scion of Sidney Greenstreet. My own views only.
Hello, if you are viewing this profile for the first time. I mostly tweet about issues related to extremism, terrorism, hate, & civil rights. I may occasionally attempt snark or humor; it helps me stay grounded while dealing w/dark subjects. I try to be a decent person. Welcome.
The ages of the people indicted are 70, 72, 55, 75, 71, 82, 65, 56, 73, 55, 76, 64, 81, 69, 68, and 69. Makes you wonder what their informational world was like.
THREAD: THE TWITTER FILES PART THREE.
TWITTER’S SECRET LENGTH LIMITS.
In this thread, I use my special access to internal Twitter records to expose the methods put in place--at the behest of Hillary's emails--to limit the length of *all* conservative tweets to 280 characters.
I've read hundreds of pages of his diaries, looked at the hate symbols illustrations he drew, looked at the lists & links he posted to social media, and I can say that the evidence for his white supremacist beliefs is overwhelming.
Elon Musk has no expertise in extremism.
Musk doubles down on his claims that there's no evidence the Allen, Texas mall shooter had white supremacist beliefs, and that
@bellingcat
"does psy-ops" professionally.
Well, yes, Mary R Forever flag paws eyes bug X bullhorn MAGA, I have studied a little history. In fact I have a Ph.D. in military history, with one of my areas of particular expertise being the World War II era. But don't let my knowledge get in the way of your ideology.
Congressman Paul Gosar calls JCS chairman General Mark Milley a "homosexual-promoting-BLM-activist," a "deviant," and a "traitor," and claims that “in a better society, quislings like the strange sodomy-promoting General Milley would be hung.”
As someone with a Ph.D. in military history, let me say, first, foreign nations *have* invaded the U.S. from the sea (during the Revolutionary War & the War of 1812), and, second, the subsequent paucity of invasions had nothing to do with "gun owners" but a lot to do with oceans.
NRATV host credits gun owners with preventing an invasion of the US: "It is no coincidence that no foreign nations have ever stormed the beaches of America"
Oregon GOP state rep Mike Nearman is charged with official misconduct and criminal tresspass. He was caught on cameras letting protesters into the Oregon Capitol who attacked police with bear spray, while others assaulted reporters and broke glass doors.
1. Why do the
@NewYorker
,
@MSNBC
, and others persist in willingly giving extremist Steve Bannon a free platform? No good comes of this--only the legitimization and normalization of extremism.
By giving Steve Bannon a platform, the New Yorker is legitimizing a Nazi. This decision is in poor taste.
Please let the
@newyorker
know what you think.
To paraphrase: "I will not even make the slightest, most effortless sacrifice in order to protect the people around me from a deadly disease and I will abuse those who suggest I should."
Woman who spray-painted antisemitic graffiti on a Michigan synagogue says she planned to do as many hate crimes as possible and blame them on the Ukrainian Azov battalion.
Do you think this photograph of a horde of Ohio protesters (inc. some extremists) angry at Gov DeWine's anti-pandemic measures pushing up against the doors of the Ohio Statehouse building is a Pulitzer-worthy photograph? It was taken by
@joshuabickel
of the Columbus Dispatch.
I made a post a few minutes ago about the ability of QAnon adherents to believe the most outrageous things. It amazes me but does not *surprise* me, because I've encountered this before.
I want to tell you that story.
Does removing a statue lead to google being shut down and every history book burned?
Will all the historians in the world also be inflicted with Alzheimer’s simultaneously?
On this day in 1995, a right-wing terrorist detonated a truck bomb in front of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 men, women & children, and injuring hundreds more, in the worst act of domestic terrorism in U.S. history.
Woman spraypainted "n***** stay out," "Hail Trump," & swastika on neighbor's home. US president's name used explicitly for racial intimidation. Sad, not surprising.
"Arrest made in racially charged vandalism in Toledo."
What a society we live in, in which a doctor who dedicated his life to saving the lives of millions of others would be raked through the coals instead of lauded.
This is a thread about a Ku Klux Klan group that got what was coming to them when they messed with the wrong people in North Carolina in 1958.
If you'd like to know more, read on.
"All indications are that Bundy has made millions as a professional extremist and conflict entrepreneur and that he is now doing his best to fraudulently convey his considerable wealth into shell corporations and Wyoming trusts."
I realized earlier today that the white supremacist attack on the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh was the deadliest act of right-wing terror in the US since the Oklahoma City bombing.
For some reason, there are some people on the right who have decided that "antifa" are coming gunning for the Sturgis motorcycle rally. I hate to break it to them, but "antifa" is not Latin for "Sellers of black velvet Harley Davidson paintings."
Henry Ford, one of the richest men in the U.S., decided he need a media platform that he controlled, in order to spread his views more broadly. He purchased a newspaper, the Dearborn Independent, in 1918 and quickly turned it into a major outlet for antisemitic propaganda.
This is Tom Washington, president of the NRA in 1994, and about a year before his death, during an interview in which he criticized the the new and emerging militia movement. Among the things he said was the following, which I found rather prophetic:
Reporter
@EmmaVigeland
: Do you think Joe Biden is a socialist?
Trump supporter: Yes.
Reporter: How would you define socialism?
Trump supporter: I define socialism as when you bring down your own country, your own race, because he’s not black.
🎥
@TheYoungTurks
I'm in procrastination mode today, so let's talk about sovereign citizen license plates, an always interesting subject. I've made hundreds of posts about sovcit license plates, so why not a few more?
Specifically, I want to talk about their origins and early use!
Kansas white supremacist allegedly abducted, murdered African-American woman. Allegedly had a pattern of befriending, then attacking, black people.
"‘True definition of evil’: Alleged Shawnee murderer is white supremacist, family says"
The "Betsy Ross flag" is not a white supremacist symbol or a hate symbol. Isolated examples of usage do not make it a "thing." It's a longstanding historical and patriotic flag overwhelmingly used by ordinary Americans.
For those who might be interested, this was my opening statement at the House hearing yesterday. I can't watch myself on video so I haven't seen it myself. 🙂
ICYMI: Senior Research Fellow with our Center on Extremism,
@egavactip
, made it clear for lawmakers on the Hill yesterday -- the U.S. is experiencing a surge in white supremacy that cannot be ignored. Watch below and read his full testimony here:
Andrew McCabe has had a long, respected career at
@FBI
, including much terrorism-related work. He has dedicated his life to protecting our country--and this is how the president treats him, with taunts and harassment. War on truth, war on law.
#NeverThoughtIdLiveToSeeIt
Media outlets should think long & hard before granting white supremacists a platform that can reach millions. This piece was not a general story quoting Kessler for a few seconds, among others--it was a one-on-one interview. No experts, no debunking or exposure of mistruths. 🙁
@NPR
is actually asking Jason Kessler, the organizer of the Unite the Right rallies right now: What do you think are the differences between races?
He proceeds to literally rank the races
A conservative federal judge threw out a case against white supremacists bc he thought leftists should have been prosecuted. Appeals court overturned him. He did it again, and gave a sentence of "time served" to the one who pleaded guilty.
Sandy Hook victims have not yet gotten a dime from Alex Jones, who continues to hide & transfer assets.
I've gifted this article so you can get past any paywall.
Aryan Brotherhood of Texas member tried to bribe the officers who pulled him over, offering them a "bunch of guns" and a pound of meth. The officers were not receptive.
"'Violent' drug-dealing Aryan Brotherhood gang member sentenced to 30 years"
Ah, yes, Twitter, the "free speech" platform.
"Twitter has suspended the accounts of a prominent Tesla and Elon Musk critic, PlainSite founder Aaron Greenspan"
A timely article! Thanks to the Trump tax "cuts," my refund went from $3100 last year to $34 this year. So I definitely need advice as to what to do with that $34. Maybe go to Buffalo Wild Wings.
But at least my taxes will be helping to make some billionaire financially secure.
This is one thing that's so confounded me over the past 9 years: the many people who say things like "he cares about the hungry," when there's simply no evidence to support it. They perceive things that are not there.
If you reply, please don't use abusive language about anyone.
Woman at Trump rally NH today: “He seems to really care. When he’s on stage - his presence when he talks to us, his patriots. He loves us. He cares about us. He cares about what we do. He cares about how sad we are. He cares about the hungry.”
"I can't help but recognize the potential for some bad things to happen--and if they were to get a charismatic leader, it's hard to say what might happen, somebody they would follow into the very gates of hell."
There are militia folks on trial right now, or facing trial soon,
Garry Trudeau is correct that nearly 100,000 white southerners fought for the Union during the Civil War. There's a very readable book on the subject: Lincoln's Loyalists: Union Soldiers from the Confederacy, by Richard Nelson Current.
The man in charge of a Vermont town's water supply has been secretly lowering water fluoride levels for more than a decade because he is anti-fluoridation.
A better analogy is that you live in a house you built together with some people & after a while they declare that two bedrooms and a living room are now a separate country because they are afraid you might do something about the enslaved people they are keeping in the basement.
10 Tips for Journalists Newly Covering the Far Right
1a. Don't reach for low hanging fruit. What Richard Spencer tweets is virtually never important. Spencer’s importance in general has been highly overrated.
This *Idaho jury* even asked the judge if they had the power to also make the far right blogger *apologize* to the drag performer.
"Idaho drag performer awarded $1.1 million in defamation case against far-right blogger"
For as long as I have examined extremists, I have seen them re-purpose World War II propaganda poster art for their own ends. Here's a recent example from the far right. The irony of the message of the original (on the right) compared with the extremist version is palpable.
On our class trip in the 8th grade, I was kicked out of the El Paso Planetarium because I forgot to spit out my gum before entering, so I can understand what Lauren Boebert must be going through.
they're all in blue cuz Candace Owens paid for their travel & required they wear BLEXIT shirts.
they're paying Black people to risk their lives as props for the COVID-infected racist president.
This...remarkable...quote comes from the right-wing Heritage Foundation. It was published in 2022 but apparently removed within the past couple of days ().
The mayor of an Alabama town and pastor of a local church killed himself after a right-wing news website called 1819 News (praised by Steve Bannon) cruelly doxxed him as transgender.
I deleted a tweet I made about the awful, misogynistic opinion piece in the
@WSJ
by Joseph Epstein about Jill Biden's Ph.D. because I decided I didn't want to provide a link to the actual piece. Apologies to those who had retweeted me; I do think it is worth tweeting about.
Paul Gosar, Mark Finchem, Anthony Kern must pay $75k in attorney fees for losing a defamation lawsuit against a Democratic ex-legislator. Judge said suit was frivolous & intended to harass.
There once was a Capitol rioter
Who thought himself quite the fighter.
But when the judge threw the book
He just trembled and shook
And his demeanor became rather quieter.
Yiannopoulous's reaction to the Christchurch shooting was to claim that New Zealand "mollycoddles extremist leftism and barbaric, alien religious cultures".
"New Zealand bans Milo Yiannopoulos in wake of Christchurch massacre"
In 2017, white supremacists staged 421 propaganda incidents across the U.S.
In 2018, white supremacists staged 1,187 such propaganda incidents.
That's not a movement in decline.
In 1942, when the Holocaust began, the Jewish population of Germany was around 200,000 (men, women, children). The size of the German Wehrmacht was over 8 million (not counting police). Don't pretend that a small number of Jews with firearms could have prevented the Holocaust.
#History
has shown us that the first thing a government does when it wants total control over its people is to disarm them. President Reagan once stated, “if we lose
#freedom
here, there is nowhere else to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth.”
#2A
#GOP
The Ku Klux Klan killed hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people; burned down or bombed hundreds of schools and churches; and terrorized millions.
"Wokeness" has done what? Irritated people online?
@eyeslasho
People need to open their eyes to the fact that this woke nonsense is a cancer. It is as toxic to society as the KKK was. People making everything about race are the issue, they were the problem 100 years ago, and they are the problem today.
Aryan Brotherhood of Texas member pleads guilty to smuggling migrants across the border, illustrating that, when profit is involved, white supremacist prison gangs readily move ideology to the back seat. DOJ press release here: .
It turns out that "structural alkaline silver" does not actually "vibrate" at a frequency that destroys the covid-19 virus. Looking forward to him facing a judge and jury.
"Man who allegedly sold fake COVID cure arrested after 3-year manhunt"
Ohio man killed by his own explosives he was making to sell in order to pay off a new riding lawn mower he had purchased.
“This can happen very easily to anybody,” said the local sheriff in perhaps 2021's most inaccurate statement made to date.
This is just ridiculous. This country has had neo-Nazi rallies every single year for decades, and many other white supremacist events each year besides. People who give "reminders" ought to know what they are talking about first.