FBI: ""Boogaloo" on the loose in Charlotte, North Carolina"

[NoSavingByTheBell]

Boogaloo' on the loose: FBI warns Congress about extremism on the right

Authorities who study extremism told Congress Thursday that far-right groups, not the radicals of antifa, currently pose the most serious threat of political violence in America — including attacks on the police, mayor's offices and shop owners who deny entry to customers who refused to social distance or wear masks.

“The undeniable facts are right now that right-wing extremism is a much bigger problem. That’s where the violence is coming from,” said Heidi Beirich, the recent co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism and former director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, where she spent the past two decades tracking and reporting on far-right extremist activity in the U.S.

Beirich was called to testify Thursday as part of a virtual hearing of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Intelligence & Counterterrorism, along with JJ MacNab, a fellow at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, and John Donohue, the former chief of strategic initiatives for the New York City Police Department and a fellow at Rutgers University’s Miller Center for Community Protection and Resilience.

The subject of the hearing, led by subcommittee Chairman Max Rose, D-N.Y., was “assessing the threat of accelerationists and militia extremists,” such as members of the so-called boogaloo movement, which has recently become the subject of increased national interest following the arrests of several alleged boogaloo members on charges mostly related to violent actions or plots relating to the Black Lives Matter protests. Among them was an active-duty Air Force sergeant arrested in May and charged with fatally shooting two law enforcement agents in California, including one federal security officer, and injuring two others.

Rose made a point of declaring at the top of the hearing that “this ain’t about politics today.”

“If there’s something happening [anywhere] on the political spectrum that involves violence, upending society, threatening institutions, we gotta look at it,” Rose said, insisting that “it is incredibly irrelevant to me which groups we look at so long as we are looking at the principal ones that threaten people’s lives.”

[NoSavingByTheBell]

Since late May, when protests against police killings of Black people began spreading to cities around the country, there have been dueling narratives about who was responsible for instigating violence, including damage to property and clashes with police, at the otherwise largely peaceful demonstrations.

President Trump and others within his administration, including Attorney General William Barr, have consistently sought, without evidence, to blame violent activity at these protests on antifa, an amorphous movement made up of various radical leftists and anarchist groups united in their willingness to use violence against neo-Nazis, white supremacists and anyone else they consider to be “fascists.”

At Thursday’s hearing, Republican Rep. Mark Walker, the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Intelligence & Counterterrorism, insisted that antifa is not just “a conservative talking point” and should be reviewed along with other violent extremists, including those with ties to white supremacy, antigovernment militias and other far-right accelerationist movements, such as the boogaloo.

“Over the past three months, there’s been a consistent effort by antifa supporters to infiltrate protests to lay siege to government buildings and target law enforcement,” said Walker.

However, a growing body of evidence, including intelligence reports, leaked law enforcement documents, as well as a number of indictments filed by Barr’s own Justice Department, has revealed significant threats against police and protesters by followers of far-right accelerationist and antigovernment militia movements, including the boogaloo. There has been little evidence of similarly coordinated efforts by groups associated with antifa.

In her written testimony, MacNab addressed recent efforts to paint “Antifa as the Fictional Enemy.”

“Known for confronting racists and right-wing militant groups at protests, causing property damage, and engaging in street violence, the various subgroups that make up Antifa are not without fault,” wrote MacNab. “They are not, however, the hyper-violent army that anti-government extremists make them out to be.”

MacNab acknowledged that “in the last two months, there has been a noticeable rise in left-wing private paramilitary groups.” However, while “the right-wing/left-wing labels may not be as clear as they once were,” she wrote, “the overwhelming majority of anti-government extremists are still right-wing.”

MacNab also sought to disentangle the somewhat confusing web of extremist ideologies that have come to identify with the boogaloo, emphasizing that the white supremacist wing of this movement is much smaller than the antigovernment extremist faction.

“Both movements want to tear the nation apart, to accelerate the downfall of society so that they can rebuild it to fit their idea of utopia, but they have different visions of what that utopia entails,” she wrote in her statement.

[El Kabong]

JJ Macnab UC Berkeley alum....all you need to know.

[Beanz]

JJ Macnab UC Berkeley alum....all you need to know.

Here comes fucking Joseph McCarthy to shut you down.

[El Kabong]

JJ Macnab UC Berkeley alum....all you need to know.

Here comes fucking Joseph McCarthy to shut you down.

Sure thing pal. What story are you working on today comrade? Whatever it is I'm sure it features you in the role of victim.

[NoSavingByTheBell]

Are we now demonizing victims, is it now a disgrace to be a victim?

Woe unto him who spouts this crap and then one day becomes a victim himself!

For that is normally the karma one earns