Tag: Trump white supremacy

How Trump’s Focus on Antifa Distracted Attention From the Far-Right Threat

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Federal law enforcement shifted resources last year in response to Donald Trump’s insistence that the radical left endangered the country. Meanwhile, right-wing extremism was building ominously.

WASHINGTON — As racial justice protests erupted nationwide last year, President Donald J. Trump, struggling to find a winning campaign theme, hit on a message that he stressed over and over: The real domestic threat to the United States emanated from the radical left, even though law enforcement authorities had long since concluded it came from the far right.

It was a message that was quickly embraced and amplified by his attorney general and his top homeland security officials, who translated it into a shift in criminal justice and national security priorities even as Mr. Trump was beginning to openly stoke the outrage that months later would culminate in the storming of the Capitol by right-wing extremists.

Mr. Trump’s efforts to focus his administration on the antifa movement and leftist groups did not stop the Justice Department and the F.B.I. from pursuing cases of right-wing extremism. They broke up a kidnapping plot, for example, targeting Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, a Democrat. Continue reading.

Actions by Proud Boy at Capitol show ‘planning, determination, and coordination,’ U.S. alleges

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A police riot shield used to break a window, then a door kicked open from the inside — new court documents detail the first moments of the Jan. 6 breach of the U.S. Capitol that left five people dead and more than 100 police officers injured.

A criminal complaint against two Montana brothers and a detention memo against a prominent member of the Proud Boys help explain how, the government believes, one segment of a mob overran a small, poorly defended line of Capitol Police officers. In these and other filings, prosecutors trace the actions of possible key instigators in the storming of the Capitol, including members of the Proud Boys — a far-right nationalist and nativist group with a history of violence — and other right-wing extremist groups.

According to prosecutors, citing surveillance video and social media, Proud Boy Dominic Pezzola was one of the first to lead the charge both outside and inside the Capitol, helping overwhelm police defenses after stealing an officer’s riot shield. Continue reading.

Trump jumps into a divisive battle over the Republican Party — with a threat to start a ‘MAGA Party’

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PALM BEACH, Fla. — Former president Donald Trump threw himself back into politics this weekend by publicly endorsing a devoted and divisive acolyte in Arizona who has embraced his false election conspiracy theories and entertained the creation of a new “MAGA Party.”

In a recorded phone call, Trump offered his “complete and total endorsement” for another term for Arizona state party chairwoman Kelli Ward, a lightning rod who has sparred with the state’s Republican governor, been condemned by the business community and overseen a recent flight in party registrations. She narrowly won reelection, by a margin of 51.5 percent to 48.5 percent, marking Trump’s first victory in a promised battle to maintain political relevance and influence after losing the 2020 election.

In recent weeks, Trump has entertained the idea of creating a third party, called the Patriot Party, and instructed his aides to prepare election challenges to lawmakers who crossed him in the final weeks in office, including Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R), Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Rep. Tom Rice (R-S.C.), according to people familiar with the plans. Continue reading.

Conservatives are accidentally telling on themselves with their new complaint about Biden

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President Joe Biden’s inaugural speech won praise from many observers, who appreciated his calls for unity and his unflinching but still optimistic assessment of the problems the country faces and the path forward. But many Republicans and conservatives lashed out against Biden in the days that followed, picking up on what others might have assumed were innocuous passages and using them as a source of outrage.

The talking points quickly became quite common on the right, revealing disturbing trends in right-wing thought.

On Fox News, Guest Dan Henninger said of Biden’s speech: Continue reading.

Proud Boys organizer arrested in Florida over riot at Capitol

Biggs had organized a 2019 rally in Portland, Oregon, in which more than 1,000 far-right protesters and anti-fascist counter-demonstrators faced off.

ORLANDO, Fla. —Two Florida men, including a self-described organizer for the Proud Boys, a far-right extremist group, were arrested Wednesday on charges of taking part in the siege of the U.S. Capitol earlier this month, authorities said.

Joseph Biggs, 37, was arrested in central Florida and faces charges of obstructing an official proceeding before Congress, entering a restricted area on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol and disorderly conduct.

According to an arrest affidavit, Biggs was part of a crowd on Jan. 6 that overwhelmed Capitol Police officers who were manning a metal barrier on the steps of the Capitol. The mob entered the building as lawmakers were certifying President Joe Biden’s election win. Continue reading.

‘A hack job,’ ‘outright lies’: Trump commission’s ‘1776 Report’ outrages historians

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Two days after historians responded with dismay and anger to the White House’s “1776 Commission” report, the Biden transition team announced President-elect Joe Biden would rescind the commission with an executive order on his first day in office.

The report was intended to a version of U.S. history that would “restor[e] patriotic education” in schools. Historians largely condemned it, saying it was filled with errors and partisan politics.

“It’s a hack job. It’s not a work of history,” American Historical Association executive director James Grossman told The Washington Post. “It’s a work of contentious politics designed to stoke culture wars.” Continue reading.

This is white supremacist domestic terrorism. We’ve been here before.

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When domestic terrorists fueled by outlandish conspiracy theories spun by a white supremacist president of the United States stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 to overthrow the government, I was shocked. But not surprised. Our history is filled with eruptions of violence when our nation’s entrenched system of white supremacy feels that its place at the center of American life is threatened.

David Blight, Ron Chernow and Nikole Hannah-Jones, three chroniclers of our fraught racial history, were the perfect people to put the Capitol insurrection into greater perspective.

“We have plenty of precedents for what happened on January 6, not at the federal level, but in white-on-black violence in the South during Reconstruction,” Chernow told me in a primer he emailed to me before appearing on my Sunday show on MSNBC. “During this dreadful period, we had numerous cases of rampaging whites invading legislatures.” Chernow is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of a biography of President Ulysses S. Grant. Continue reading.

Trump Launched A Civil War — Now We Must Defeat His ‘Army’

The second American Civil War is here.

No official announced Trump’s civil car. That’s why our major news organizations dance around the awful truth, using confusing language.

But we don’t need a press release to recognize that Trump directed his white supremacist followers to attack a branch of our national government on Jan. 6. The treasonous assault capped years of undermining the judiciary and the executive branch’s intelligence, law enforcement and health agencies. Continue reading.

From Charlottesville to the Capitol: Trump fueled right-wing violence — and it may soon get even worse

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As security is ramped up in Washington, D.C., and state capitols across the U.S., the FBI is warning of more potential violence in the lead-up to Joe Biden’s inauguration on January 20. Federal authorities have arrested over 100 people who took part in last week’s deadly insurrection at the Capitol, and The Washington Post reports that dozens of people on a terrorist watch list — including many white supremacists — were in Washington on the day of the insurrection. “This was something that had been coming for a long time,” ProPublica reporter A.C. Thompson, who covers right-wing extremism, says of the January 6 riot. “If you looked at the rhetoric online … it was all about revolution, it was all about death to tyrants, it was all about civil war.”

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The Quarantine Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

Security is being ramped up in Washington, D.C., and state capitols across the United States as the FBI is warning of more “potential armed protests” in the lead-up to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s inauguration, following last week’s deadly insurrection at the Capitol. By Wednesday, 21,000 National Guard troops are expected to be in Washington, D.C. FBI Director Christopher Wray spoke publicly for the first time, more than a week after the insurrection, Thursday. Continue reading.

Trump’s ‘zero tolerance’ border policy was pushed aggressively by Jeff Sessions, despite warnings, Justice Dept. review finds

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The Trump administration and then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions barreled forward with their “zero tolerance” border crackdown in 2018 knowing that the policy would separate migrant children from their parents and despite warnings that the government was ill-prepared to deal with the consequences, according to a long-awaited report issued Thursday by the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General.

The report called the Justice Department and the attorney general’s office a “driving force” in making sure the Department of Homeland Security aggressively prosecuted adults arriving with children, findings that cast doubt on statements made by Sessions that the government “never really intended” to separate families.

The bureaucratic chaos and trauma for families that resulted from the policy were not unanticipated consequences, the inspector general found. “DOJ officials were aware of many of these challenges prior to issuing the zero tolerance policy, but they did not attempt to address them until after the policy was issued,” the report states. Continue reading.