Those Nice White Boys

Cops in Coeur d'Alene got a tip over the weekend that a truck filled with guys dressed in riot gear were headed for the park where a Pride Parade was scheduled.

31 were arrested. 31 were released on bail ($300 each). They all made bail at the same time, and there's no word that I've uncovered on who came up with the $9300 to spring these assholes.

note: "Patriot Front" is a rebranding of the dickheads who called themselves "Vanguard America" when they came to Charlottesville for the Unite The Right thing in 2017.

Charlottesville - Aug 2017

Washington DC - Jan 2021

And then the Coeur d'Alene cops started getting death threats.

WaPo: (pay wall)

Idaho police get death threats after Patriot Front arrests, chief says

Police in Coeur d’Alene have also received threats to publish officers’ personal information on the internet

Police in Idaho said they’ve received death threats after arresting dozens of suspected members of a white supremacist group right before they allegedly planned to riot at an LGBTQ Pride event Saturday.

Coeur d’Alene police received about 150 calls in the two days after making the arrests, Chief Lee White told reporters Monday at a news conference. In about half of them, callers identified themselves and praised the police department for stopping the 31 men, who are accused of having ties to Patriot Front, which the Anti-Defamation League identifies as a hate group.

“And the other 50 percent — who are completely anonymous and want nothing more than to scream and yell at us and use some really choice words — offered death threats against myself and other members of the police department merely for doing our jobs,” White said, adding that they’ve gotten calls from as far away as Norway.

White said the department had also received threats to dox police officers, or maliciously publish their personal information on the internet.

On Saturday afternoon, Coeur d’Alene police, acting on a tip from a 911 caller, pulled over a U-Haul truck less than a quarter-mile from a park that was hosting a Pride event, White said. The men were clad in riot gear that included shields, shin guards, helmets, a smoke grenade and long metal poles like those used by some U.S. Capitol rioters on Jan. 6, 2021, White told The Washington Post on Sunday.

Police found an operational plan detailing what the would-be rioters intended to do once they arrived at the event, the chief said. It included how to confront people and when to use the smoke grenade, he added.

“I have no doubt in my mind that had that van stopped at the park or … near the park that we still would have ended up in a riot situation,” White said Monday at the news conference.

Men tied to hate group planned for riot, ‘confrontation’ at LGBTQ event, police say

The threats against the police department and the Pride event follow warnings from the Department of Homeland Security that violence could erupt in coming months as the country faces midterm elections and a Supreme Court decision on abortion rights, the Associated Press reported. It was the latest push by DHS to alert people to the rising danger posed by domestic violent extremists, a shift after the agency’s focus on the threat of international terrorism following the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

Experts are also warning that white supremacist groups are building thriving communities on social media to recruit new members, the AP reported last week. They traffic in homophobia, sexism and conspiracy theories, escaping detection by authorities through the use of insinuation and coded hashtags, according to experts.

Police didn’t know what they would find after getting the tip on Saturday and then pulling over the U-Haul, White said Monday. While police knew from the caller’s information that they probably would be facing a “crowd of people … who might pose some difficulty for us,” they were surprised by the amount of equipment the men were carrying.

“That level of preparation is not something you see every day,” White said, adding that “it was clear to all of us that there was some ill intent there.”

On Monday, White praised the tipster and encouraged others who witness suspicious behavior to do the same. “This one concerned citizen rather than pulling out their phone and videotaping this for their 15 minutes [of fame] on YouTube, or Snapchatting it or something like that, took the time to call 911 and report some suspicious activity.”

“And as a result, we likely stopped a riot from happening downtown,” he said, adding that the caller’s identity will be protected. “Since myself and other members of our agency have been receiving threats, including death threats, I think it’s appropriate to withhold that person’s information.”

The Anti-Defamation League identifies Patriot Front as a white supremacist group that “justifies its ideology of hate and intolerance under the guise of preserving the ethnic and cultural origins of its members’ European ancestors.” One of Patriot Front’s hallmarks is staging “flash demonstrations” across the country, according to the ADL.

Each of the men arrested Saturday was charged with criminal conspiracy to riot, a misdemeanor, The Post reported. By Sunday, all of them had bonded out of jail while their cases proceed.

Daddy State Averted

Idaho - land of gemstones, mighty fine potatoes, and bigoted shitheads.

WaPo: (pay wall)

31 tied to hate group charged with planning riot near LGBTQ event in Idaho

Police in Idaho arrested 31 people who had face coverings, white-supremacist insignia, shields and an “operations plan” to riot near an LGBTQ Pride event on Saturday afternoon. Police said they were affiliated with Patriot Front, a white-supremacist group whose founder was among those arrested.

Authorities received a tip about a “little army” loading into a U-Haul truck at a hotel Saturday afternoon, said Lee White, the police chief in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, a city of about 50,000 near the border with Washington. Local and state law enforcement pulled over the truck about 10 minutes later, White said at a news conference.

Many of those arrested were wearing logos representing Patriot Front, which rebranded after one of its members plowed his car into a crowd of people protesting a white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville in 2017, killing Heather Heyer and injuring dozens.

The group’s founder, Thomas Ryan Rousseau, was among those arrested, according to jail records. Like the others, Rousseau was arrested on a charge of criminal conspiracy to riot, a misdemeanor. The arrestees were held on $300 bail. Some of the other men arrested also have been linked to the group.

A man is detained with a group of 31 people who were charged with criminal conspiracy to riot, in Coeur d’Alene. (North Country Off Grid/YouTube/Reuters)

In photos and videos posted on social media, a group of men dressed in hats, sunglasses, white balaclavas and Patriot Front’s signature khaki pants were seen kneeling on the ground with their hands zip-tied behind their backs as police officers kept watch. An onlooker taunted the group, yelling, “Losers!”

White said the people were headed to City Park, which was hosting Pride in the Park, an event advertised as a “family-friendly, community event celebrating diversity and building a stronger and more unified community for ALL.” Organizers did not immediately respond to telephone and email requests for comment from The Washington Post on Saturday evening, but they wrote in a post to the group’s Facebook page that it was a “successful” event.

The group, North Idaho Pride Alliance, urged people to “stay aware of your surroundings this afternoon and evening” in the city.

Authorities had been aware of online threats leading up to the weekend, White said, so police had increased their presence in the city’s downtown. Two SWAT teams and officers from the city, county and state assisted in the arrests.

The Panhandle Patriots, a local motorcycle club, had planned a “Gun d’Alene” event on the same day as Pride in the Park to “go head to head with these people,” an organizer said in April during an appearance with state Rep. Heather Scott (R).

The organizer was not identified by name in a video but wore a vest bearing the alias “Maddog” and the insignia of the Panhandle Patriots group. He lamented that the Pride gathering would be “allowed to parade through all of Coeur d’Alene,” saying that “a line must be drawn in the sand” against such LGBTQ displays. Scott did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Post late Saturday.

In a news release posted on the group’s website, the Panhandle Patriots encouraged the community to “take a stand” against the LGBTQ “agenda.” It also suggested without evidence that “extremist groups” were trying to hijack the event to provoke violence and said the group would change its event name to “North Idaho Day of Prayer” in response.

Suggesting without evidence that someone is doing the shit you're doing - "extremist groups trying to hijack the event" - is classic Daddy State.

Rule 1: Every accusation is a confession

Reached by phone late Saturday, a representative for the Panhandle Patriots declined to comment on the day’s events, telling The Post, “We are not answering questions right now.”

White did not mention a connection between the Panhandle Patriots event and the arrests. He said those arrested had come from several states “to riot downtown,” with riot gear, at least one smoke grenade and documents “similar to an operations plan that a police or military group would put together for an event.”

A white-supremacist march in D.C. was pushed by a fake Twitter account, experts say

He did not see firearms at the scene of the arrest, he said, but emphasized the situation was “very fresh.”

However, firearms were present in the vicinity of the park, White said. Police had been in contact with the FBI “all day,” he said.

White noted that the authorities’ understanding of the situation was still developing and said at the news conference that law enforcement had not yet interviewed those arrested. Representatives for Patriot Front were unable to be reached for comment.

More charges are possible, White said. The first court appearances for those arrested will probably be on Monday, Kootenai County Sheriff Bob Norris said.

Today's Wingnut

Nick Fuentes again. It's hard to take this asshat seriously because I have to think nobody actually believes the way this clown says he believes.

He's just pretending because this is his formula - it's what sells, and that's how he pays his mortgage.

But the point is that Fuentes doesn't have to believe the way he says he believes - there are literally millions of rubes out there who take this shit to heart, and will act on it once they're well-enough conditioned.

We saw how this can play out Jan6. So we have to take it all very seriously.

Right Wing Watch:

Today's Wingnuttery

Translation:

"Don't let reality distract you - I need you to stay committed to the rage-inducing fantasies that pay my mortgage."

Right Wing Watch - Stew Peters

Today's Wingnuttery

They're out there pimping some primo bullshit to the rubes. Hard.

Right Wing Watch - Mike Flynn lying his ass off about pretty much everything, but in particular:

• no "creator" in the constitution
• no "god" in the constitution
• no "lord"
• no "savior"
• no "worship"

And holy fuck, dude - no - the Bill Of Rights is absolutely not a fit for the 10 Commandments.

Rachel Last Night

Sometimes, the scariest thing you can do is to watch one hour of Rachel Maddow.

Here's the link to Bart Gellman's piece in the Atlantic. (limited freebies),

And it's a long one - there's an audio version embedded that goes for about 90 minutes.

Technically, the next attempt to overthrow a national election may not qualify as a coup. It will rely on subversion more than violence, although each will have its place. If the plot succeeds, the ballots cast by American voters will not decide the presidency in 2024. Thousands of votes will be thrown away, or millions, to produce the required effect. The winner will be declared the loser. The loser will be certified president-elect.

The prospect of this democratic collapse is not remote. People with the motive to make it happen are manufacturing the means. Given the opportunity, they will act. They are acting already.

Who or what will safeguard our constitutional order is not apparent today. It is not even apparent who will try. Democrats, big and small D, are not behaving as if they believe the threat is real. Some of them, including President Joe Biden, have taken passing rhetorical notice, but their attention wanders. They are making a grievous mistake.

“The democratic emergency is already here,” Richard L. Hasen, a professor of law and political science at UC Irvine, told me in late October. Hasen prides himself on a judicious temperament. Only a year ago he was cautioning me against hyperbole. Now he speaks matter-of-factly about the death of our body politic. “We face a serious risk that American democracy as we know it will come to an end in 2024,” he said, “but urgent action is not happening.”

- more - and it just gets worse.

So They Tell Us

Q: Why do Republicans argue, "This is not a democracy, it's a republic"?

A: It's a way of branding our government with the GOP label, which is both good conditioning, and good camouflage for that conditioning. It gets people used to thinking in terms of the first clause of that statement, so when our traditions of democratic self-governance have been torn down and carted away, we're already used to, "This is not a democracy", which can then be followed by, "and it never was."

A year ago, in The Atlantic: (pay wall)

Dependent on a minority of the population to hold national power, Republicans such as Senator Mike Lee of Utah have taken to reminding the public that “we’re not a democracy.” It is quaint that so many Republicans, embracing a president who routinely tramples constitutional norms, have suddenly found their voice in pointing out that, formally, the country is a republic. There is some truth to this insistence. But it is mostly disingenuous. The Constitution was meant to foster a complex form of majority rule, not enable minority rule.

The founding generation was deeply skeptical of what it called “pure” democracy and defended the American experiment as “wholly republican.” To take this as a rejection of democracy misses how the idea of government by the people, including both a democracy and a republic, was understood when the Constitution was drafted and ratified. It misses, too, how we understand the idea of democracy today.

When founding thinkers such as James Madison spoke of democracy, they were usually referring to direct democracy, what Madison frequently labeled “pure” democracy. Madison made the distinction between a republic and a direct democracy exquisitely clear in “Federalist No. 14”: “In a democracy, the people meet and exercise the government in person; in a republic, they assemble and administer it by their representatives and agents. A democracy, consequently, will be confined to a small spot. A republic may be extended over a large region.” Both a democracy and a republic were popular forms of government: Each drew its legitimacy from the people and depended on rule by the people. The crucial difference was that a republic relied on representation, while in a “pure” democracy, the people represented themselves.

At the time of the founding, a narrow vision of the people prevailed. Black people were largely excluded from the terms of citizenship, and slavery was a reality, even when frowned upon, that existed alongside an insistence on self-government. What this generation considered either a democracy or a republic is troublesome to us insofar as it largely granted only white men the full rights of citizens, albeit with some exceptions. America could not be considered a truly popular government until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which commanded equal citizenship for Black Americans. Yet this triumph was rooted in the founding generation’s insistence on what we would come to call democracy.

The history of democracy as grasped by the Founders, drawn largely from the ancient world, revealed that overbearing majorities could all too easily lend themselves to mob rule, dominating minorities and trampling individual rights. Democracy was also susceptible to demagogues—men of “factious tempers” and “sinister designs,” as Madison put it in “Federalist No. 10”—who relied on “vicious arts” to betray the interests of the people. Madison nevertheless sought to defend popular government—the rule of the many—rather than retreat to the rule of the few.

American constitutional design can best be understood as an effort to establish a sober form of democracy. It did so by embracing representation, the separation of powers, checks and balances, and the protection of individual rights—all concepts that were unknown in the ancient world where democracy had earned its poor reputation.

In “Federalist No. 10” and “Federalist No. 51,” the seminal papers, Madison argued that a large republic with a diversity of interests capped by the separation of powers and checks and balances would help provide the solution to the ills of popular government. In a large and diverse society, populist passions are likely to dissipate, as no single group can easily dominate. If such intemperate passions come from a minority of the population, the “republican principle,” by which Madison meant majority rule, will allow the defeat of “sinister views by regular vote.” More problematic are passionate groups that come together as a majority. The large republic with a diversity of interests makes this unlikely, particularly when its separation of powers works to filter and tame such passions by incentivizing the development of complex democratic majorities: “In the extended republic of the United States, and among the great variety of interests, parties, and sects which it embraces, a coalition of a majority of the whole society could seldom take place on any other principles than those of justice and the general good.” Madison had previewed this argument at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 using the term democracy, arguing that a diversity of interests was “the only defense against the inconveniences of democracy consistent with the democratic form of government.”

Yet while dependent on the people, the Constitution did not embrace simple majoritarian democracy. The states, with unequal populations, got equal representation in the Senate. The Electoral College also gave the states weight as states in selecting the president. But the centrality of states, a concession to political reality, was balanced by the House of Representatives, where the principle of representation by population prevailed, and which would make up the overwhelming number of electoral votes when selecting a president.

But none of this justified minority rule, which was at odds with the “republican principle.” Madison’s design remained one of popular government precisely because it would require the building of political majorities over time. As Madison argued in “Federalist No. 63,” “The cool and deliberate sense of the community ought, in all governments, and actually will, in all free governments, ultimately prevail over the views of its rulers.”

Alexander Hamilton, one of Madison’s co-authors of The Federalist Papers, echoed this argument. Hamilton made the case for popular government and even called it democracy: “A representative democracy, where the right of election is well secured and regulated & the exercise of the legislative, executive and judiciary authorities, is vested in select persons, chosen really and not nominally by the people, will in my opinion be most likely to be happy, regular and durable.”The American experiment, as advanced by Hamilton and Madison, sought to redeem the cause of popular government against its checkered history. Given the success of the experiment by the standards of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, we would come to use the term democracy as a stand-in for representative democracy, as distinct from direct democracy.

Consider that President Abraham Lincoln, facing a civil war, which he termed the great test of popular government, used constitutional republic and democracy synonymously, eloquently casting the American experiment as government of the people, by the people, and for the people. And whatever the complexities of American constitutional design, Lincoln insisted, “the rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissible.” Indeed, Lincoln offered a definition of popular government that can guide our understanding of a democracy—or a republic—today: “A majority, held in restraint by constitutional checks, and limitations, and always changing easily, with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people.”

The greatest shortcoming of the American experiment was its limited vision of the people, which excluded Black people, women, and others from meaningful citizenship, diminishing popular government’s cause. According to Lincoln, extending meaningful citizenship so that “all should have an equal chance” was the basis on which the country could be “saved.” The expansion of we the people was behind the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments ratified in the wake of the Civil War. The Fourteenth recognized that all persons born in the U.S. were citizens of the country and entitled to the privileges and immunities of citizenship. The Fifteenth secured the vote for Black men. Subsequent amendments, the Nineteenth, Twenty-Fourth, and Twenty-Sixth, granted women the right to vote, prohibited poll taxes in national elections, and lowered the voting age to 18. Progress has been slow—and sometimes halted, as is evident from current efforts to limit voting rights—and the country has struggled to become the democratic republic first set in motion two centuries ago. At the same time, it has also sought to find the right republican constraints on the evolving body of citizens, so that majority rule—but not factious tempers—can prevail.

Perhaps the most significant stumbling block has been the states themselves. In the 1790 census, taken shortly after the Constitution was ratified, America’s largest state, Virginia, was roughly 13 times larger than its smallest state, Delaware. Today, California is roughly 78 times larger than Wyoming. This sort of disparity has deeply shaped the Senate, which gives a minority of the population a disproportionate influence on national policy choices. Similarly, in the Electoral College, small states get a disproportionate say on who becomes president. Each of California’s electoral votes is estimated to represent 700,000-plus people, while one of Wyoming’s speaks for just under 200,000 people.

Subsequent to 1988, the Republican presidential candidate has prevailed in the Electoral College in three out of seven elections, but won the popular vote only once (2004). If President Trump is reelected, it will almost certainly be because he once again prevailed in the Electoral College while losing the popular vote. If this were to occur, he would be the only two-term president to never win a plurality of the popular vote. In 2020, Trump is the first candidate in American history to campaign for the presidency without making any effort to win the popular vote, appealing only to the people who will deliver him an Electoral College win. If the polls are any indication, more Americans may vote for Vice President Biden than have ever voted for a presidential candidate, and he could still lose the presidency. In the past, losing the popular vote while winning the Electoral College was rare. Given current trends, minority rule could become routine. Many Republicans are actively embracing this position with the insistence that we are, after all, a republic, not a democracy.

They have also dispensed with the notion of building democratic majorities to govern, making no effort on health care, immigration, or a crucial second round of economic relief in the face of COVID-19. Instead, revealing contempt for the democratic norms they insisted on when President Barack Obama sought to fill a vacant Supreme Court seat, Republicans in the Senate have brazenly wielded their power to entrench a Republican majority on the Supreme Court by rushing to confirm Justice Amy Coney Barrett. The Senate Judiciary Committee vote to approve Barrett also illuminates the disparity in popular representation: The 12 Republican senators who voted to approve of Barrett’s nomination represented 9 million fewer people than the 10 Democratic senators who chose not to vote. Similarly, the 52 Republican senators who voted to confirm Barrett represented 17 million fewer people than the 48 senators who voted against her. And the Court Barrett is joining, made up of six Republican appointees (half of whom were appointed by a president who lost the popular vote) to three Democratic appointees, has been quite skeptical of voting rights—a severe blow to the “democracy” part of a democratic republic. In 2013’s Shelby County v. Holder, the Court struck down a section of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that allowed the federal government to preempt changes in voting regulations from states with a history of racial discrimination.

As Adam Serwer recently wrote in these pages, “Shelby County ushered in a new era of experimentation among Republican politicians in restricting the electorate, often along racial lines.” Republicans are eager to shrink the electorate. Ostensibly seeking to prevent voting fraud, which studies have continually shown is a nonexistent problem, Republicans support efforts to make voting more difficult—especially for minorities, who do not tend to vote Republican. The Republican governor of Texas, in the midst of a pandemic when more people are voting by mail, limited the number of drop-off locations for absentee ballots to one per county. Loving, with a population of 169, has one drop-off location; Harris, with a population of 4.7 million (majority nonwhite), also has one drop-off location. States controlled by Republicans, such as Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas, have also closed polling places, making voters in predominantly minority communities stand in line for hours to cast their ballot.

Who counts as a full and equal citizen—as part of we the people—has shrunk in the Republican vision. Arguing against statehood for the District of Columbia, which has 200,000 more people than the state of Wyoming, Senator Tom Cotton from Arkansas said Wyoming is entitled to representation because it is “a well-rounded working-class state.” It is also overwhelmingly white. In contrast, D.C. is 50 percent nonwhite.

High-minded claims that we are not a democracy surreptitiously fuse republic with minority rule rather than popular government. Enabling sustained minority rule at the national level is not a feature of our constitutional design, but a perversion of it. Routine minority rule is neither desirable nor sustainable, and makes it difficult to characterize the country as either a democracy or a republic. We should see this as a constitutional failure demanding constitutional reform.

Radical Right Roundup

We can't actually round 'em all up and ship 'em to exile on some tiny island in the middle of the BumFuck Ocean. And while the notion may be a pleasantly diverting daydream, we don't really want to do that.

So what we can, and by right, ought to do is try to keep a close eye on them.

Right Wing Watch, Kyle Mantyla | October 1, 2021 5:32 pm

Right Wing Round-Up: Invading the Suburbs

• Sebastian Murdock @ HuffPost: Alex Jones Just Lost 2 Sandy Hook Cases.
• Casey Michel @ The Bulwark: Why Was Mike Pence Hobnobbing with a Sanctioned Genocide Denier?
• Matt Shuham @ Talking Points Memo: Idaho’s Secretary of State Physically Recounted The Vote To Prove Mike Lindell Wrong. Lindell’s Still Not Convinced.
• Megan Squire and Hannah Gais @ Hatewatch: Inside the Far-right Podcast Ecosystem, Part 2: Richard Spencer’s Origins in the Podcast Network.
• John Wright @ Raw Story: Marine lied at Trump rally about pulling baby over wall in Afghanistan: report.
• Media Matters: Newsmax host warns the suburbs are being “invaded” by undocumented migrants.
• Kelly Weill @ The Daily Beast: Oath Keepers Panicked That the Left Would ‘Decapitate’ Them After Failed Capitol Putsch.

Here's today's reminder that what we see going on over there on the right is not hypocrisy.

They're doing this shit on purpose.

NOTE: Everybody at DumFux News is vaccinated, and the on-air "talent" has aggressively pushed more than a few lies concerning COVID-19, including the "controversy" over masks. But then they unveiled their newly refurbished bureau digs in DC, they let a few publicity shots leak out.

And the Daddy State thing for today:

Rule 1: Every accusation is a confession. 

AHA! But Never Mind

There's a quality of endlessness in the epic amounts of horrendously shitty behavior that get revealed on a fairly regular basis.

And what makes it all even worse is the feeling that the people indulging in all that shitty behavior are shielded from being held fully accountable because of their connections in government, and their PR consultants' cozy relationships with media.

WaPo: (pay wall)

Huge hack reveals embarrassing details of who’s behind Proud Boys and other far-right websites

Researchers say it will allow them to gain important new insights into how extremists operate online

Epik long has been the favorite Internet company of the far-right, providing domain services to QAnon theorists, Proud Boys and other instigators of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol — allowing them to broadcast hateful messages from behind a veil of anonymity.

But that veil abruptly vanished last week when a huge breach by the hacker group Anonymous dumped into public view more than 150 gigabytes of previously private data — including user names, passwords and other identifying information of Epik’s customers.

Extremism researchers and political opponents have treated the leak as a Rosetta Stone to the far-right, helping them to decode who has been doing what with whom over several years. Initial revelations have spilled out steadily across Twitter since news of the hack broke last week, often under the hashtag #epikfail, but those studying the material say they will need months and perhaps years to dig through all of it.

“It’s massive. It may be the biggest domain-style leak I’ve seen and, as an extremism researcher, it’s certainly the most interesting,” said Megan Squire, a computer science professor at Elon University who studies right-wing extremism. “It’s an embarrassment of riches — stress on the embarrassment.”

Epik, based in the Seattle suburb of Sammamish, has made its name in the Internet world by providing critical Web services to sites that have run afoul of other companies’ policies against hate speech, misinformation and advocating violence. Its client list is a roll-call of sites known for permitting extreme posts and that have been rejected by other companies for their failure to moderate what their users post.

Online records show those sites have included 8chan, which was dropped by its providers after hosting the manifesto of a gunman who killed 51 Muslims in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019; Gab, which was dropped for hosting the antisemitic rants of a gunman who killed 11 people in a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018; and Parler, which was dropped due to lax moderation related to the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.

Epik also provides services to a network of sites devoted to extremist QAnon conspiracy theories. Epik briefly hosted the neo-Nazi site Daily Stormer in 2019 after acquiring a cybersecurity company that had provided it with hosting services, but Epik soon canceled that contract, according to news reports. Epik also stopped supporting 8chan after a short period of time, the company has said.

Earlier this month, Epik also briefly provided service to the antiabortion group Texas Right to Life, whose website, ProLifeWhistleblower.com, was removed by the hosting service GoDaddy because it solicited accusations about which medical providers might be violating a state abortion ban.

An Epik attorney said the company stopped working with the site because it violated company rules against collecting people’s private information. Online records show Epik was still the site’s domain registrar as of last week, though the digital tip line is no longer available, and the site now redirects to the group’s homepage.

Epik founder Robert Monster’s willingness to provide technical support to online sanctuaries of the far-right have made him a regular target of anti-extremism advocates, who criticized him for using Epik’s tools to republish the Christchurch gunman’s manifesto and live-streamed video the killer had made of the slaughter.

note: the guy who runs a web hosting service where all this shittiness can live and thrive is named "Monster" - there can be nothing more perfect than that anywhere in the universe.

Monster also used the moment as a marketing opportunity, saying the files were now “effectively uncensorable,” according to screenshots of his tweets and Gab posts from the time. Monster also urged Epik employees to watch the video, which he said would convince them it was faked, Bloomberg News reported.

Monster has defended his work as critical to keeping the Internet uncensored and free, aligning himself with conservative critics who argue that leading technology companies such as Facebook, Twitter, Amazon and YouTube have gone too far in policing content they deem inappropriate.

note: and that's the key - they can hide their shitty behavior behind a claim of "freedom", using the strength of our constitution against us.

Monster did not respond to requests for comment from The Washington Post. But he said in an email to customers two days after hackers announced the breach that the company had suffered an “alleged security incident” and asked customers to report back any “unusual account activity.”

“You are in our prayers today,” Monster wrote last week, as news of the hack spread. “When situations arise where individuals might not have honorable intentions, I pray for them. I believe that what the enemy intends for evil, God invariably transforms into good. Blessings to you all.”

Since the hack, Epik’s security protocols have been the target of ridicule among researchers, who’ve marveled at the site’s apparent failure to take basic security precautions, such as routine encryption that could have protected data about its customers from becoming public.

The files include years of website purchase records, internal company emails and customer account credentials revealing who administers some of the biggest far-right websites. The data includes client names, home addresses, email addresses, phone numbers and passwords left in plain, readable text. The hack even exposed the personal records from Anonymize, a privacy service Epik offered to customers wanting to conceal their identity.

Similar failings by other hacked companies have drawn scrutiny from the Federal Trade Commission, which has probed companies such as dating site Ashley Madison for failing to protect their customers’ private data from hackers. FTC investigations have resulted in settlements imposing financial penalties and more rigorous privacy standards.

“Given Epik’s boasts about security, and the scope of its Web hosting, I would think it would be an FTC target, especially if the company was warned but failed to take protective action,” said David Vladeck, a former head of the FTC’s consumer protection bureau, now at Georgetown University Law Center. “I would add that the FTC wouldn’t care about the content — right wing or left wing; the questions would be the possible magnitude and impact of the breach and the representations … the company may have made about security.”

The FTC declined to comment.

Researchers poring through the trove say the most crucial findings concern the identities of people hosting various extremist sites and the key role Epik played in keeping material online that might otherwise have vanished from the Internet — or at least the parts of the Internet that are easily stumbled upon by ordinary users.

“The company played such a major role in keeping far-right terrorist cesspools alive,” said Rita Katz, executive director of SITE Intelligence Group, which studies online extremism. “Without Epik, many extremist communities — from QAnon and white nationalists to accelerationist neo-Nazis — would have had far less oxygen to spread harm, whether that be building toward the Jan. 6 Capitol riots or sowing the misinformation and conspiracy theories chipping away at democracy.”

The breach, first reported by the freelance journalist Steven Monacelli, was made publicly available for download last week alongside a note from Anonymous hackers saying it would help researchers trace the ownership and management of “the worst trash the Internet has to offer.”

After the hackers’ announcement, Epik initially said it was “not aware of any breach.” But in a rambling, three-hour live-stream last week, Monster acknowledged there had been a “hijack of data that should not have been hijacked” and called on people not to use the data for “negative” purposes.

“If you have a negative intent to use that data, it’s not going to work out for you. I’m just telling you,” he said. “If the demon tells you to do it, the demon is not your friend.”

Several domains in the leak are associated with the far-right Proud Boys group, which is known for violent street brawls and involvement in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and was banned by Facebook in 2018 as a hate group.

A Twitter account, @epikfailsnippet, that is posting unverified revelations from the leaked data, included a thread purporting to expose administrators of the Proud Boys sites. One man who was identified by name as administrator of a local Proud Boys forum was said to be an employee of Drexel University. The university said he hasn’t worked at Drexel since November 2020.

Technology news site the Daily Dot reported that Ali Alexander, a conservative political activist who played a key role in spreading false voter fraud claims about the 2020 presidential election, took steps after the Jan. 6 siege to obscure his ownership of more than 100 domains registered to Epik. Nearly half reportedly used variations of the “Stop the Steal” slogan pushed by Alexander and others. Alexander did not reply to requests for comment from the Daily Dot or, on Tuesday, from The Post.

Extremism researchers urge careful fact-checking to protect credibility, but the data remains tantalizing for its potential to unmask extremists in public-facing jobs.

Emma Best, co-founder of Distributed Denial of Secrets, a nonprofit whistleblower group, said some researchers call the Epik hack “the Panama Papers of hate groups,” a comparison to the leak of more than 11 million documents that exposed a rogue offshore finance industry. And, like the Panama Papers, scouring the files is labor intensive, with payoffs that could be months away.

“A lot of research begins with naming names,” Best said. “There’s a lot of optimism and feeling of being overwhelmed, and people knowing they’re in for the long haul with some of this data.”

So what exactly happened as a result of the Panama Papers? Anybody remember?

Tucker

Not meaning to amplify a putz like Tucker Carlson, but there's a subtext here that might be worth looking at.

Axios:

The National Security Agency issued a statement Tuesday calling claims made by Fox News host Tucker Carlson that the NSA is spying on him "untrue."

Driving the news: Carlson claimed on "'Tucker Carlson Tonight," Monday that the NSA was monitoring his electronic communications "in an attempt to take this show off the air," but the agency said this did not happen and he "has never been an intelligence target."

Of note:

• On his show Monday, Carlson admitted his claim was "shocking" and "ordinarily we'd be skeptical of it." But he said a whistleblower provided evidence that such surveillance was occurring.
• The host has yet to share the evidence.
• A Fox News spokesperson pointed Axios to a segment from his Tuesday evening show in which he called the NSA's statement a "paragraph of lies." He said the statement "does not deny" that it read his private emails without his permission.
• Carlson insisted the agency and the Biden administration won't answer his question about whether they read his emails.

Keith Olbermann:

Republican Freak Show Du Jour

What this latest bullshit comes down to is the Republicans getting their undies all knotted up over Critical Race Theory because Americans are saying we prefer a dose of healing reality instead of the continuation of the GOP's toxic fantasies.

• CRT has been around for decades
• It's available as an elective at some law schools and at some universities 
• It's not being taught anywhere in K12 - because it's not a body of knowledge - it's a study tool

Learning more about America's history of systemic racism and the sometimes-totally-ineffectual attempts to change it will not cause anyone to hate this country. And if that's what you think, then this country is so thoroughly fucked up that we can't afford not to teach people about it so we can have a decent shot at fixing it.

The Texas Tribune:

What is critical race theory? Explaining the discipline that Texas' governor wants to "abolish"

Those who study the discipline say attacks on it are targeting any teachings that challenge and complicate dominant narratives about the country’s history and identity.

Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law a bill last week that restricts how current events and America’s history of racism can be taught in Texas schools. It’s been commonly referred to as the “critical race theory” bill, though the term “critical race theory” never appears in it.

But in signing the bill, Abbott said “more must be done” to “abolish critical race theory in Texas,” and announced that he would ask the Legislature to address the issue during a special session this summer.

Meanwhile, the debate has taken hold across the nation. Last year, conservative activist Christopher Rufo began using the term “critical race theory” publicly to denounce anti-racist education efforts. Since then, conservative lawmakers, commentators and parents have raised alarm that critical race theory is being used to teach children that they are racist, and that the U.S. is a racist country with irredeemable roots. U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz and others have called the theory racist itself for centering the nation’s story on racial conflict. In addition, conservative commentator Gerard Baker has argued that critical race theory bans critical thought in favor of what resembles religious instruction.

Those who study the discipline say that the attacks have nothing to do with critical race theory, but instead are targeting any teachings that challenge and complicate dominant narratives about the country’s history and identity.

They say that critical race theory itself actually shifts emphasis away from accusing individuals — in history or in the classroom — of being racist, which tends to dominate liberal discussions of racism. Instead, it offers tools for shifting public policy to create equity and freedom for all.

So what is critical race theory, and why is it relevant to Texans? And why is there an effort against it in Texas — and around the nation?

What is critical race theory?

Critical race theory is a discipline, analytical tool and approach that emerged in the 1970s and ‘80s. Scholars took up the ways racial inequity persisted even after “a whole set of landmark civil rights laws and anti-discrimination laws passed” during the civil right movement, Daniel HoSang, professor of ethnicity, race and migration and American studies at Yale University, said.

“These scholars and writers are asking, 'why is it that racial inequality endures and persists, even decades after these laws have passed?'” HoSang said. “Why is racism still enduring? And how do we contribute to abolishing it?”

HoSang described critical race theory not as “content,” or a “set of beliefs,” but rather an approach that “encourage[s] us to move past the superficial explanations that are given about equality and suffering, and to ask for new kinds of explanations.”

In the introduction of Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement, a seminal collection of the foundational essays of the movement edited by principal founders and scholars like Kimberlé Crenshaw and Neil Gotanda, the editors write that critical race theory is about transforming social structures to create freedom for all, and it’s grounded in an “ethical commitment to human liberation.”

Key concepts

Racial formation: One key concept in critical race theory is racial formation. Developed by sociologists Michael Omi and Howard Winant, the theory rejects the idea that race — Black, white, Asian — is a fixed category that has always meant the same thing. Instead, it traces the way that race has been defined, understood and constructed in different ways throughout history. Omi and Winant define race as an “unstable and ‘decentered’ complex of social meanings constantly being transformed by political struggle.”

For example, they write that in the U.S., the racial category of "Black" was created as slavery was established and evolved. Africans whose specific identity was Ibo, Yoruba or Fulani in Africa were grouped into the category "Black” as they were enslaved in America. Part of the meaning of being “Black” in America was being less than human and therefore enslavable. James Baldwin wrote in “On Being White and Other Lies” that Europeans who moved to America became “white” through a process of “denying the Black presence, and justifying the Black subjugation.”

Omi and Winant describe racial formation as the “process by which social, economic and political forces determine the content and importance of racial categories, and by which they are in turn shaped by racial meanings” — a process that has continued throughout history.

Monica Martinez, a history professor at the University of Texas at Austin who specializes in Latinx history, described how racial formation has played out in Texas in the racialization of Mexicans and the history of anti-Mexican violence.

“Before this region became Texas, there were debates about the character of Mexicans as a group of people,” she said. Figures like Stephen F. Austin and John Calhoun cast them as “treacherous people, thieves and murderers.”

From 1910 to 1920, she explained, hundreds of ethnic Mexicans were victims of lynchings, as well as violence at the hands of police and the Texas Rangers. Many of them were American citizens, and they included labor organizers and journalists who were writing about race and injustice. This amounted to an effort to “remove Mexicans from having economic or political or cultural influence,” she said.

“Oppression was enacted through violence, and it was sanctioned by governors, Texas legislators and local courts,” she said.

Oppression was furthered by “Juan Crow” segregation laws that racially segregated communities, relegated Mexican American children to poorly developed schools and intimidated Mexicans from voting. This system of laws and policies had lasting effects on Mexican Americans and how they’re conceived of today.

Rhetoric has played a role in racial formation as well, continually loading the term “Mexican” with racial meaning.

“100 years ago, people talked about Mexicans as bandits, as thieves, and as a threat,” she said. “Today, they talk about them as potential cartel members and gang members.”

This language contributes to racial profiling and violence today. “In communities in south Texas, anybody who looks 'Mexican,' or looks like an 'immigrant,' can be targeted—not just with policing, but also by [general] hostility,” she said.

Racism is structural: The mainstream understanding is that racism is an individual prejudice and choice. The default is to be free of bias and racism, so racism is an exception from the norm. It can be addressed by individual measures, such as humiliating and punishing the person who messes up, and enforcing moral codes on an individual level.

On the other hand, critical race theory says that racism is inherent in our institutions and structures of governance. It’s ordinary, and it’s baked into all our consciousnesses in complex ways through our education, government, the media, and our participation in systems. Racism must be addressed not just by punishing individuals, but by shifting structures and policies.

HoSang, the Yale professor, explained that critical race theory isn’t focused on “the stock characters of a racist,” such as Bull Connor, who directed police to use fire hoses on civil rights protesters in Birmingham, Alabama. HoSang said that a focus on denouncing individuals is “not a good use of our energy.” Instead, he said, the question is, “Even in places where civil rights and anti-discrimination laws passed, why do these forms of inequality persist?”

“So [critical race theory] actually says, no, we shouldn't be preoccupied with trying to discern ‘who is the racist here,’ because that moves the attention away from the structures,” he said.

One example of this is in housing segregation — how “many, many complex layers” of “policies around zoning, lending and redlining, around private realtors and developers” have reproduced unequal access to housing, which in turn furthers gaps in generational wealth and stability, HoSang said.

In his article for the Austin American-Statesman, Dan Zehr traces how this process has played out in Austin, which has one of the highest levels of income segregation in the nation. In 1928, city plans created a “negro district” east of Interstate 35 and denied public services and utilities to Black people outside of it, pushing Black residents to the eastern part of the city. When the government began offering loans to promote homeownership and help citizens rebuild wealth as part of the New Deal after the Great Depression, neighborhoods for people of color were excluded through a practice called “redlining.” Austin’s “negro district” was the largest redlined zone in the city, Zehr writes.

“As most Americans gained equity in new homes or upgraded the value of their existing houses, the black population saw a racial wedge driven deeper between Anglo affluence and African-American poverty,” he explains.

All these processes are systemic. “You can’t explain [this] through any one person's biases and prejudices.” HoSang said.

Is critical race theory being taught in K-12 classrooms?

Experts and teachers put it plainly.

“Nobody in K-12 is teaching critical race theory,” Andrew Robinson, an 8th grade U.S. history teacher at Uplift Luna Preparatory in Dallas, said. “If I tried to walk in and teach critical race theory, my kids would just have a blank stare on their face.”

“Critical race theory is not being taught in schools,” Martinez said.

Keffrelyn Brown, a professor of cultural studies in education at UT-Austin and a teacher-educator, agreed.

“A vast majority of teachers in K-12 schools don't know critical race theory,” she said. “They are not coming into the classroom and saying, ‘I'm going to teach critical race theory.’”

HoSang pointed out that to begin with, critical race theory is not “a body of content that can be taught.”

Given that, Abbott’s calls to “abolish critical race theory in Texas” make no sense, those who study it said.

“I don't think you can ‘abolish’ a theory,” Brown said.

How does Texas' new law and surrounding debate discuss critical race theory?

While it has gained the ire of national Republicans on Fox News and elsewhere for months, critical race theory was thrust in the political spotlight in Texas this spring because of the progress of HB 3979. Lawmakers claimed that it combats the theory.

The wording of the bill is vague — for example, it bans discussion of current events unless a teacher “strive[s] to explore those topics from diverse and contending perspectives without giving deference to any one perspective,” and teachers can’t teach that “with respect to their relationship to American values, slavery and racism are anything other than deviations from, betrayals of, or failures to live up to, the authentic founding principles of the United States, which include liberty and equality.”

In an early statement supporting the legislation, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said that critical race theory is a “woke philosoph[y]” that “maintain[s] that one race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex or that any individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist or oppressive.”

The phrase “critical race theory” does not appear in the bill once, however.

Brown described the way the term “critical race theory” has been mobilized as a label that has nothing to do with critical race theory itself.

“It has become the catch-all phrase for any kind of perspective, or any kind of framework, or any kind of knowledge that shows the roots of racism and how deeply they are embedded in our society,” she said.

Experts pointed out several key mischaracterizations of critical race theory.

Political discourse has claimed that critical race theory unfairly assigns guilt and blame to individuals based on their race. In one section that lists concepts teachers can’t teach, the bill prohibits teaching that “an individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish or any other form of psychological distress on account of the individual's race or sex.”

“[Critical race theory] has nothing to do with sentiment, guilt or shame,” HoSang said. “In fact, one of its premises is that those are not actually helpful places to examine. It's taking us out of racism as a psychological and emotional question, and is focusing much more on the structures, the policies that people create that govern our lives.”

Martinez said the worry comes out of “false claims that when you teach histories of slavery, or race, or racism, that you make some white students feel guilty or shame for being white.”

To focus on directly instilling racial guilt would be taking a liberal, individualistic approach that critical race theory actually critiques.

The bill also prohibits teaching that “one race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex,” or that “an individual, by virtue of the individual's race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.”

If anything, Martinez said, the current, longstanding way of teaching Texas history already teaches that one race is superior. “Look at how it teaches the history of the Texas revolution — that people like Stephen F. Austin are racially superior to the treacherous Mexican, like Santa Anna,” she said. “Texas history has been taught in a way that celebrates people who were fighting for the institution of slavery, that were espousing publicly that Mexicans were an inferior race.”

HoSang agreed. "There’s so much of the dominant curriculum that does just what the bills claim they're objecting to, in terms of constructing a moral ideology," he said. “One could argue the current curriculum promotes intolerance and animosity against Indigenous people, and that it does the same for immigrants.”

Future impact

Brown, the UT-Austin cultural studies professor, described the new Texas law as an effort to “try to stop the momentum over the last year and a half of families and communities saying we need to know more about racism.”

“We need to understand [our history of racism] so that we actually can get to a place where we are operating with justice, with equity, with fairness,” she said.

Instead, she said, the bill may “create enough confusion and possible concern that teachers or districts would just simply not talk about issues of race, or racism, for fear that it's going to create some conflict.”

Abbott’s press office did not comment on what he additionally wants the legislature to do about “critical race theory” during this summer’s special session. But many teachers worry about the “chilling effect” that the new law will already have on their attempts to teach history well — which includes nurturing students’ critical thinking skills by bringing in multiple perspectives on historical events, and showing how the past has impacted present day issues.

“What they're trying to say with this is that the actions of the past aren't affecting the present,” said Robinson, the 8th grade history teacher in Dallas. “They want us to act like slavery and Jim Crow have no bearing on the issues in our society right now. And if that's the case, then they should cancel my class.”

And don't overlook the subtext of all this bluster: the pearl-clutching carries with it further attacks on public schools and teachers unions.

A Special Meme

This showed up on one of my social media feeds:

"I never cared..." being the operative phrase.

Classic non-acknowledging acknowledgement of an abusive gaslighter.

He still doesn't care about anyone but himself - but now he seems to be feeling defensive because he's been called out for being an uncaring asshole. And of course he doesn't like it, but instead of stopping for a little reflection and self-examination, he externalizes it by getting hostile and aggressive.

And like others have pointed out, he's adopted the technique of turning it around so he can claim to be the real victim.

This shit is rife across the intertubes. 

It's almost like somebody's out there actively recruiting these assholes, trying to radicalize them for some odd unimaginable political purpose.

Jan6 Update

"The Great Replacement" is today's terminology for White Fright - the fear that brown people will treat us as badly as we've treated them, so we can't afford to allow "those people" to gain an equal footing.

Keeping us in conflict with one another is a straight-up divide-n-conquer strategy on the part of a "conservative ruling class" that wants to tear down our traditions of democratic self-government in order to replace it with plutocracy.

When I reach back and help others achieve or approach equity with me, we all gain some power, which strengthens my own position.

Let's stop being stoopid about this rights thing.

More for me doesn't mean less for you -

it's not a fuckin' pizza, mushbrain.

Professor Robert Pape:

Today's Reddit

When your tough guy shit falls flat and someone's there to show the world what a fuckin' poser you are.

It's The Capitalism Stoopid

This should make for some great theater.

The MAGA Gang loves to shit themselves about "freedom" and their right to stand up to the man and such, and how it's a matter of the free market, and then they whine about how the corporations are trying to force them to comply with government regulations, so they expect one government entity to ride in and rescue them from some other government entity, which is actually - of course - owned and operated by the corporations, so we'll just have to shoot it out cuz that's what the founding documents guarantee me the right to do - according to the government - and if you don't like it, well you can take it up with my buddies down at the duly-elected government-funded Sheriff's office.

But maybe I'm getting ahead of myself - and the story. Or am I?

Axios:

Europe to set a global vaccine passport standard

Europe seems poised to set the global standard for vaccine passports, now that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has signaled that vaccinated Americans will be allowed to travel to the continent this summer.

Why it matters: Opening up travel to vaccinated Americans will bring new urgency to creating some kind of trusted means for people to prove they've been vaccinated.

The big picture:

• There will probably never be a single credential that most people use to prove they've been vaccinated, for every purpose.
• But the EU's system will help set a standard for a proof of vaccination that's both easily accessible and difficult to forge.
• The U.S. is being closely consulted on the European passport, so any future American system will likely use similar protocols.

Details:

• Informal mechanisms like simply asking someone whether they're had a shot can suffice in many situations. A system for international travel will likely be far more stringent. And there's a wide middle, too.
• Other activities that don't need the same rigorous standards as international travel could rely on the CDC's vaccination cards; options like a printed QR code, similar to what's been proposed by PathCheck; or a digital QR code, like the ones created by CommonPass or the Vaccine Credential Initiative.
• There may be some state-issued credentials, like the Excelsior Pass in New York.
• A national credential is theoretically possible, and could be linked to the biometric information that already exists on many chipped passports — the World Health Organization is working with Estonia to develop something along those lines — but that would meet steep political resistance in the U.S.

The bottom line:

• The world of vaccine passports is almost certainly going to end up as a mishmash of different credentials for different activities, rather than a single credential used by everybody for everything.

Go deeper: Americans will likely have to navigate a maze of vaccine "passports"

Cue the outrage.

You know it's coming - they just haven't amped it up on DumFux News yet.