https://www.compuserve.com/news/story/0002/20201008/KBN26T2ZF_9
Unsure if this is behind a paywall, but I'm sure there will be more coverage sooner than later.
The gist (from the Reuters article) is that thirteen people, including seven men associated with the Wolverine Watchmen militia group, were planning to attack the state capital and detonate explosives (possibly at a bridge) to divert attention during their kidnapping of Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer from her vacation home (whom they then planned to put on "trial" for her "crimes"). They planned to do this before the November 3rd election, in order to prepare America for a coming civil war after the election.
I'm starting this in Current Events but I can foresee this going to RP eventually, for some obvious reasons. Until then, just the facts in the case if possible.
(For what it's worth, I agree they deserve life in prison.)
Funnily enough, the article on FOX news kept spelling the name of a guy involved in the plot, Fox, in all caps, which resulted in some rather unfortunate sentences :D
Worth a snorty smirk at least! O0
Idiots.
Quote from: solops on October 09, 2020, 12:55:22 AM
Idiots.
Not sure if that was directed at the media or the assailants.
Either there's a whole lotta stupid in this country nowadays.
For what it is worth, I'm not sure that this was a "Right wing" militia, (as the title of the thread suggests) Frankly, there isn't much information on this group. They were not on the SPLC's radar, which is very finely tuned to detect right wing groups. ;) I would point people to this video,
https://twitter.com/i/status/1314281015591022592
Where Brandon Caserta poses in front of a anarchist flag, while claiming the Declaration of Independence is an anarchist document. Late in the video, he appears to possibly begin to argue against the US Consititution, but the video ends before he completes his analysis, so I can't accurately evaluate what he was saying.
In summary, based on the limitted evidence I have seen, this group may be a left wing or anarchist group.
Quote from: jamus34 on October 09, 2020, 05:53:40 AM
Quote from: solops on October 09, 2020, 12:55:22 AM
Idiots.
Not sure if that was directed at the media or the assailants.
Either there's a whole lotta stupid in this country nowadays.
The wannabe kidnappers.The whole concept fails on so many levels it is hardly believable. As a matter of fact it is not believable. I think the real reason is something else entirely and the story we were given is a quick cover thought up by a particularly stupid government bureaucrat.
^ I don't know. Every time I've bet against the stupid of humanity I've lost.
^HA
The ACTUAL truth won't come-out for some time and won't matter by that time. The, 'Spin' will be broadcast by the Dems and their media allies that it's all a, 'Vast Right Wing Conspiracy', where've I heard that one before, orchestrated by Trump to influence the election....somehow. Somebody will come-up with some way to link, "Stand Back, Stand Down" as code words to attack now. Kudos to the Justice Dept. and FBI for getting ahead of this and acting so quickly. :clap:
Quote from: Sir Slash on October 09, 2020, 10:36:07 AM
The ACTUAL truth won't come-out for some time and won't matter by that time. The, 'Spin' will be broadcast by the Dems and their media allies that it's all a, 'Vast Right Wing Conspiracy', where've I heard that one before, orchestrated by Trump to influence the election....somehow. Somebody will come-up with some way to link, "Stand Back, Stand Down" as code words to attack now. Kudos to the Justice Dept. and FBI for getting ahead of this and acting so quickly. :clap:
They can claim he was Right wing, but he was no fan of Trumps. My guess is he's totally Antifa.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1314326553506000897
Conspiracy believing idiots with guns make everyone look bad....
Quote from: Tripoli on October 09, 2020, 05:55:42 AM
For what it is worth, I'm not sure that this was a "Right wing" militia, (as the title of the thread suggests) Frankly, there isn't much information on this group. They were not on the SPLC's radar, which is very finely tuned to detect right wing groups. ;) I would point people to this video,
https://twitter.com/i/status/1314281015591022592
Where Brandon Caserta poses in front of a anarchist flag, while claiming the Declaration of Independence is an anarchist document. Late in the video, he appears to possibly begin to argue against the US Consititution, but the video ends before he completes his analysis, so I can't accurately evaluate what he was saying.
In summary, based on the limitted evidence I have seen, this group may be a left wing or anarchist group.
There's also a video of him with a Don't Tread on Me flag, which lefties usually don't swing that way. I'm thinking he's a right-wing anarchist, aka an ANCAP.
The BBC reports they have links to a militia group called the Boogaloo Bois.
It's actually quite hard to describe the motives of the group. It's not "right-wing" in a traditional sense. Members of the movement are vehemently against law enforcement - some have been arrested for killing police officers.
Broadly speaking, they are extremist libertarians - think Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, but with guns.
The term "Boogaloo" is usually a reference to a civil war. They have an entrenched hatred of big government - confusingly they are also often pro-Trump, though not exclusively. Hence why their ire is often focused on state rather than federal government.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54470427
To be clear, it doesn't make a difference to me if these guys were right-wing nutjobs or left-wing nutjobs. Either way they're nutjobs who should be locked up. But it's interesting to try and pin down what their beliefs exactly are. "Right-wing anarchism" strikes me as being a hilariously contradictory hodgepodge of ideas.
The mainstream media are vile.
There are two quite different concepts of right and left wing in US politics, unfortunately.
On one paradigm, left wing is progressive and right wing is conservative -- although even then that doesn't necessarily cash out to clear distinctions in ideas, since established progress acknowledged as such becomes honored and protected by conservative movements later. (On a trivial example, a lot of the music beloved by US conservatives today, were radical left-progressive in their day.)
On another paradigm, right wing to left wing tracks the level of governmental power and authority, with total anarchism on the far right and total autocracy on the far left.
These terrorist militia are right wing on the governmental authority scale, anarchic; and (so far as I've been able to tell, granting that media spin may be dizzying the details) conservative in mood, or maybe regressive, on the progress vs preservation scale, thus right wing again by that standard. And thus why I titled the thread originally. (This might change in the future with more information released.) That doesn't mean they agree solidly with 'conservative Christian' beliefs or values, for example -- as a general rule, conservative Christians wouldn't agree with their plot, and might go so far as to regard it as literally God-damned! (Raising my own hand on that one. >:( ) But then again they might be trinitarian Christians at least in the shape of their theology, and so be classified as conservative in that regard, compared to people trying to get rid of what they regard as errors in established majority theology (who themselves may be attempting to recover conservatively what they believe to be a truer original belief.)
Most conservatives in US political parlance are lawful about protecting what has been established to work against threats of false progress, and are willing to support strong government rather far on the left wing of autocracy vs anarchism; but also tend to demand that the strong government should leave individuals alone as much as feasibly possible, for which they're willing to sacrifice some power of the government (not power IN the government of course) to reduce the influence of government over the individual. So they're more right-wing on the anarchic scale than most progressives, relatively speaking; although there are progressive anarchists, too, who are right wing in one regard (anarchism) but left wing in the other (progressivism).
This double-mixing of paradigms makes it easy for propagandists to switch for convenience between meanings, naturally.
Quote from: JasonPratt on October 09, 2020, 06:35:41 PM
This double-mixing of paradigms makes it easy for propagandists to switch for convenience between meanings, naturally.
Yet again, it all goes back to my old Poly Sci professor at Auburn, Dr. Kelley.
The scale of "right" and "left" is false. It pretends that the farther away from center each side gets, the farther away from each other they get. The more accurate way to look at it is as a circle. The farther to the extremes you go, the closer the ideologies get back to each other.
We're too black and white on trying to do tick boxes of everything just having two ideologies. Authoritarian thought can mix in either way, so can anarchic thought. Both Marxism and Libertarianism shift to archaism as you take both ideologies to their most extreme interpretations.
^That's how I was taught as well, especially old school WWII era fascism and communism...they are so far apart on the circle that they are almost right next to each other.
Quote from: Gusington on October 09, 2020, 08:46:31 PM
^That's how I was taught as well, especially old school WWII era fascism and communism...they are so far apart on the circle that they are almost right next to each other.
Exactly.
Anarcho-Marxism: Eliminate private property. Redistribute to the masses and end government. The exploiter/producers will adapt, die, or be eliminated in the process. In the end utopia will be achieved because we'll achieve post scarcity by forced redistribution and the elimination of authority.
Anarcho-Libertarians: The Individual is supreme. Eliminate the government and allow the producers and strong to rise to the top unfettered. The weak and the parasites will learn to produce, die or be eliminated in the process. In the end utopia will be achieved because we'll achieve post scarcity by the producers and the strong surviving and the weak and parasitic dying off via the elimination of authority.
Quote from: SirAndrewD on October 09, 2020, 08:55:32 PM
Anarcho-Marxism: Eliminate private property. Redistribute to the masses and end government. The exploiter/producers will adapt, die, or be eliminated in the process. In the end utopia will be achieved because we'll achieve post scarcity by forced redistribution and the elimination of authority.
Anarcho-Libertarians: The Individual is supreme. Eliminate the government and allow the producers and strong to rise to the top unfettered. The weak and the parasites will learn to produce, die or be eliminated in the process. In the end utopia will be achieved because we'll achieve post scarcity by the producers and the strong surviving and the weak and parasitic dying off via the elimination of authority.
:clap:
While the right-wing anarchic description may be correct, word is coming out now that some of those arrested were BLM supporters, which would be more left-wing in the progressive/conservative sense.
Of course that depends a lot on what it means to 'support' BLM the idea (which idea(s)) or BLM the movement (which movement(s))? More details as I run across them, or if anyone else has info.
Regardless of the specifics of their ideology, they planned to kidnap/kill an elected governor. They deserve a lot of hard time at minimum.
One hundred percent agree.
Yes, but isn't it funny how this story has dropped-off the radar screen? Kind of like it doesn't really fit someone's narrative or not scary enough for Halloween. :coolsmiley:
Every once in a while I'll search around for a current update analysis of the car attack in Charlottesville. I know the driver was eventually found, captured, tried, and convicted, but while the Democrats keep talking about the "very fine people" comment (which they take totally out of context of course), they never seem to talk about the actual casualty of a murderous attack that same day.
This baffles me; and I see quite a bit of misinformation (including today by the way) going around on right-side circles about what happened during the attack, which also needs clearing up -- they treat the attacker like he was innocent and only trying to escape from people in fear they were going to break into his car, which is NOT AT ALL TRUE (there's clear and extended video evidence about this, including his approach to the target point minutes before the attack) -- and granted the fatality wasn't from being actually struck by a vehicle so far as I've been able to tell so far, although if the Democrats are willing to continually take Trump's statement out of context and misconstrue the deaths of various people since then (as being innocent victims of racial police genocide), I don't know why they wouldn't bother to continually misconstrue this either. (And if I've gotten the wrong idea about this, and she was struck, then their silence is even more confusing to me!)
It's like something about this incident turns out to be hugely inconvenient to their rhetorical strategy, so much so that they leave the topic totally untouched in their official rhetorical strategy. But I haven't been able to find out what it is.
Anyone who has a detailed after-action report (dating after the arrest, prosecution, and conviction; I've seen ones before the arrest), or finds one, post it along. I'm very curious.
If the death was not from vehicular homicide (or something similar like car hits person, person falls and cracks head on a curb) what was the cause of death? I thought this was vehicular homicide - and that the guy was convicted of either manslaughter or 2nd degree murder.
What I understood was that the girl (Heather? -- I'm bad with names) died from shock-related underlying health complications from having been near the impact of the Dodge Charger (?) attempting to push the minivan into the crowd which was passing in front of the minivan. That would have been a conviction of manslaughter on charges of reckless endangerment, of course, and maybe attempted murder, though not of her specifically. But so I came to understand (perhaps wrongly) she wasn't actually struck. (The attacker, whose name I've totally forgotten, did strike numerous people backing up after ramming the minivan, but it was sort of incidental contact with them rolling off the car after they had jumped on it.)
But I haven't found much information about the case so far, post-trial.
Quote from: Gusington on October 09, 2020, 08:46:31 PM
^That's how I was taught as well, especially old school WWII era fascism and communism...they are so far apart on the circle that they are almost right next to each other.
Classical left wing strategy to distance themselves from nazis and fascist.
Quote from: jejo68 on October 16, 2020, 05:28:22 PM
Quote from: Gusington on October 09, 2020, 08:46:31 PM
^That's how I was taught as well, especially old school WWII era fascism and communism...they are so far apart on the circle that they are almost right next to each other.
Classical left wing strategy to distance themselves from nazis and fascist.
:DD ::)