Militia members arrested in alleged mosque attack plot

[annabenedetti]

Assistant U.S. Attorney Anthony Mattivi told the court that Stein conducted surveillance on the apartment complex wearing a bulletproof vest and while armed with a handgun and assault rifle. He compared Somalis to cockroaches. That conduct so alarmed another militia member that he contacted the FBI and agreed to become an informant.

The group had talked about wide ranging potential targets including a county commission meeting, refugee aid groups and landlords who rent to refugees, Mattivi said. Other targets under consideration included a Black Lives Matter protest in Chicago and a mass shooting in downtown San Antonio. They discussed using another militia member as a suicide bomber.

Friday's detention hearing provided a glimpse into the government's case and defense strategies in a case built on drone surveillance, intercepted messaging apps and recordings from a wired human informant.

Defense attorney Ed Robinson portrayed his client as a "prepper" who was simply preparing for social upheaval during which people would have to protect themselves. He pointed to concerns about refugees voiced at the highest levels of Kansas government and by Trump.

 

[annabenedetti]

Update:

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — Three western Kansas men accused of plotting to attack Somali immigrants in Garden City are asking for a delay in their federal trial.

Attorneys for Curtis Wayne Allen, Patrick Eugene Stein and Gavin Wayne Wright jointly filed the motion Friday. Federal prosecutors joined in the request.
The Hutchinson News reports (http://bit.ly/2pshW8F ) U.S. District Judge Eric Melgren did not immediately act on the motion. The trial is currently scheduled to begin June 13.

The three men, all members of a small regional militia group, are accused of conspiring to detonate truck bombs at an apartment complex where about 120 Somali immigrants live in Garden City.

 

[ok doser]

.... accused of conspiring to detonate truck bombs at an apartment complex....

prolly not a good idea :idunno:

 

[annabenedetti]

The rise of 'sovereign citizens'

Although the Trump administration is reportedly planning to restructure the Department of Homeland Security’s countering violent extremism (CVE) program to focus exclusively on radical Islam, a 2014 national survey of 175 law enforcement agencies ranked sovereign citizens, not Islamic terrorists, as the most pressing terrorist threat. The survey ranked Islamic terrorists a close second, with the following top three threats all domestic in origin and sometimes overlapping: the militia movement, racist skinheads, and the neo-Nazi movement.

. . . .

Militia members are not necessarily sovereign citizens, but their beliefs are intertwined. Today’s sovereign citizen movement can be traced in part to two popular Patriot ideologies: the Posse Comitatus movement, built around the theory that elected county sheriffs are the highest legitimate law officers, and the Freemen-on-the-Land movement, a fringe ideology whose adherents believe themselves subject only to their own convoluted, conspiratorial, and selective interpretation of common law.

There was significant overlap between the Patriot movement and white nationalism. One of the movement’s foundational texts was The Turner Diaries, a 1978 novel by the white supremacist William Luther Pierce that describes a near future in which a small group of patriots fighting the extinction of the white race work to bring about a race war and the eventual genocide of non-white peoples.​

 

[intojoy]

The rise of 'sovereign citizens'

Although the Trump administration is reportedly planning to restructure the Department of Homeland Security’s countering violent extremism (CVE) program to focus exclusively on radical Islam, a 2014 national survey of 175 law enforcement agencies ranked sovereign citizens, not Islamic terrorists, as the most pressing terrorist threat. The survey ranked Islamic terrorists a close second, with the following top three threats all domestic in origin and sometimes overlapping: the militia movement, racist skinheads, and the neo-Nazi movement.

. . . .

Militia members are not necessarily sovereign citizens, but their beliefs are intertwined. Today’s sovereign citizen movement can be traced in part to two popular Patriot ideologies: the Posse Comitatus movement, built around the theory that elected county sheriffs are the highest legitimate law officers, and the Freemen-on-the-Land movement, a fringe ideology whose adherents believe themselves subject only to their own convoluted, conspiratorial, and selective interpretation of common law.

There was significant overlap between the Patriot movement and white nationalism. One of the movement’s foundational texts was The Turner Diaries, a 1978 novel by the white supremacist William Luther Pierce that describes a near future in which a small group of patriots fighting the extinction of the white race work to bring about a race war and the eventual genocide of non-white peoples.​

Imma join the white team


Sent from my iPhone using TOL

 

[annabenedetti]

Alt-right activists say Trump and Bannon are giving them “space to destroy” by keeping FBI away

Top alt-right podcasters say the Trump administration is deliberately backing off investigating domestic extremists

While the neo-fascist alt-right is not entirely happy with President Donald Trump’s first few months in office, one thing for which they are grateful is that the new administration is giving them free reign to engage in building their movement, completely unencumbered by any law enforcement scrutiny of their activities.

“He’s going to give us space to destroy,” Michael Peinovich, the creator of The Right Stuff, an alt-right podcast network said during a Sunday guest appearance on “Fash the Nation,” the movement’s most popular web radio show.

Peinovich, who also goes by the pen name “Mike Enoch,” was referencing a 2015 remark by Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, then the mayor of Baltimore, which some people interpreted as giving support to rioters who committed numerous acts of violence in the city following the acquittal of several police officers who had been on trial for the death of a black resident.
“He’s going to give us space to operate, and frankly, it is space to destroy,” Peinovich continued.

“Now is the time that we have to make hay while the sun shines . . . while these investigations of ‘domestic terrorist groups’ are not being funded by the government, they’re not being pushed by the Department of Homeland Security” argued one of the co-hosts of the program, an anonymous former Republican political staffer who calls himself Jazzhands McFeels.

“We’d probably be facing [redacted] [racketeering] charges or some [redacted] like that,” Peinovich said, discussing what he believed might have happened if Hillary Clinton had won the 2016 presidential election.

“We have to use these four years to grow into something that can’t be defeated by that kind of thing,” Peinovich said, referring to possible future investigations of neo-fascist groups.
Some parts of the Trump administration actively want to encourage the growth of the alt-right, the former Hill staffer “Jazzhands McFeels” said, claiming that Trump’s top strategist Steve Bannon secretly was trying to enable the fringe movement.

“They kind of expect us to be doing this. I’m not saying he’s our guy, but they want — at least Bannon, I would think — wants us to be able to operate in that space. So we should and we are,” he said.

Both podcasters’ statements were met with agreement by podcast guest Richard Spencer, an alt-right editor who operates a series of niche web publications and conferences catering to self-styled racist intellectuals who has since tried to rebrand himself as more of an activist.​

 

[The Barbarian]

When can we expect the expose' on BLM?

I suppose that would be when someone could show that BLM leadership was stockpiling weapons in preparation to attack other people.

I doubt if Trump actually wants white supremacists running loose in the streets with bombs and weapons, killing Muslims or whatever kind of Americans they hate.

But the fact that some of them think he does, is troubling, and comes from his pandering to them.

 

[ok doser]

I like the fact that these guys are out in the open :idunno:

 

[annabenedetti]

“The Only Good Muslim Is a Dead Muslim”

A meatpacking town in Kansas opened its doors to Somali refugees.
Then a group of Trump supporters plotted to kill them after Election Day.
​

As well as informing how and why the three suspects came to plan the massacre of Somali Muslim immigrants, including children ("There's no leaving anyone behind, even if it's a one-year-old. I'm serious. I guarantee that if I go on a mission, those little [redacted] are going bye-bye"), the article provides the backstory to how immigrants have always been a useful component of the meatpacking industry: "Refugees provide an almost ideal workforce for slaughterhouses. They have legal status, can’t afford to complain about dangerous jobs, and are less likely to join unions."

Long article, but well worth the time. It underscores the power of conspiracy theories across social media, and how that fear can be exploited by political parties:

On October 21, Stein appeared at a bail hearing in Wichita. His attorney, Ed Robinson, offered a provocative defense: A steady stream of fake news, spread on social media, had convinced the Crusaders that America was in a state of emergency. Stein believed that the presidential election was rigged against Donald Trump, and that the Muslim Brotherhood had seized control of the government. Even if Trump somehow managed to win, Stein was certain that President Obama would immediately invalidate the results and declare martial law. United Nations tanks had already been sent into southwestern Kansas to subdue the populace. Everyone was in on it—from Obama to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, “even getting down to the local government.”

Such conspiracy theories, Robinson observed, weren’t just emanating from fake-news outlets. In the days before the election, the Republican Party had been mailing out election flyers in Kansas attacking Democratic candidates for “moving terrorists to Kansas.” In a high-profile speech on August 4, Trump himself warned that terrorists from Somalia and other Muslim countries were scheming to gain entrance to the United States by posing as refugees, calling it “the great Trojan horse of all time.” In the face of a coming revolution, the Crusaders saw themselves as a special breed of patriot, a self-chosen few unwilling to stand by while Muslim foreigners took over the country. In the words of Stein’s attorney, they decided to put together a plan to “deal with that mosque and those people.”



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