New: My look at why police didn't see MAGA insurrectionists as a threat ahead of the siege on the capitol.
Institutionally, American police have seen pro-Trump extremists as allies, especially during 2020's historic anti-racist uprisings. huffpost.com/entry/cops-mag…
It's imperative to remember the scale of state violence visited upon Black Lives Matter protesters in 2020.
And all the stories, so many stories, of cops choosing to ally themselves with white fascists showing up to confront & attack BLM protesters. huffpost.com/entry/cops-mag…
American police's institutional MAGA-ness also likely made them blind to the reality that the president's followers posed a threat to police themselves. huffpost.com/entry/cops-mag…
Some of the stories of cops treating rioters with kindness during the siege are remarkable. huffpost.com/entry/cops-mag…
Just before the siege in DC two men performed a grisly reenactment of the police murder of George Floyd — something Trump supporters have been known to do as a way of taunting BLM activists. (CW: disturbing.)
Those two MAGA chuds re-enacted Floyd's murder because the MAGAverse shares the same goal as the institution of American policing: the violent enforcement of a racial caste system. huffpost.com/entry/cops-mag…
At any rate, there was always plenty of evidence that a) MAGA people were going to riot this week and b) that the president's fanatical supporters have a propensity for violence. huffpost.com/entry/maga-ter…
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What Leaf didn't acknowledge in that interview is that he attended the 2019 conference of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, which is closely tied to this country's anti-government patriot movement, which includes militias. huffpost.com/entry/michigan…
A vile neo-Nazi suddenly relocates to PA from Texas & starts a Lancaster-focused blog that's linked to a pro-Kremlin site run by a man — closely tied to a Russian oligarch —who recently bought a $440K house in Lancaster without evidence he has any income.
Then that Nazi blogger in Lancaster produces a bunch of bull shit propaganda about anti-racist protests that gets picked up by Fox News and promoted by MAGA propagandists like Ian Miles Cheong.
Jeremy admits he has a 2013 warrant for unpaid fines in another county.
@HuffPost confirmed the officers belonged to Spokane County Sheriff's Office, which would not explain why it felt suddenly compelled to arrest Jeremy on an old out-of-county warrant huffpost.com/entry/jeremy-l…
New: Data shows right-wing vigilantes & paramilitaries have confronted or attacked anti-racist protesters about 500 times since cops killed George Floyd in May. This includes at least:
64 assaults
38 attacks by car
9 shootings
3 deaths
The data, collected by @areidross, a doctoral fellow at the @C4ARR, includes 387 incidents of intimidation, such as vigilantes appearing at protests and using racial slurs, making threats, brandishing guns...
“There just isn’t anything else to compare it to,” @areidross said. “I’ve never seen anything like this in my life.”
Ross said the data includes abt 2 dozen instances of cops supporting or collaborating with right-wing vigilantes & paramilitaries. huffpost.com/entry/white-vi…
NEW: There's been a big proliferation of Facebook groups devoted to the "boogaloo," a term for civil war, during the pandemic.
Thousands of armed right-wing militants, mad at lockdown measures, are plotting & preparing for violence against the government huffpost.com/entry/boogaloo…
A new @TTP_updates report has identified 125 Facebook groups devoted to boogaloo.
Over 60% of the groups were created in just the last three months, according to the report. The 125 groups have tens of thousands of members. huffpost.com/entry/boogaloo…
The potential for real-world violence by these Facebook groups came into focus earlier this week, when an boogaloo enthusiast live-streamed himself on Facebook driving around Texarkana, Texas, allegedly looking for a police officer to shoot and kill. buzzfeednews.com/article/emmanu…
I pressed Bloomberg's campaign on how exactly it calculated that he "cut" stop and frisks by "95 percent" as mayor. A spokesperson sent me some numbers that didn't answer my question.
.@alyssaguilera, a spokesperson for @CPRAction, told me: “The nation is just now starting to learn what Black, Latinx and other New Yorkers know intimately ― Bloomberg’s legacy in NYC was 12 years of racist policing and criminalizing poverty." huffpost.com/entry/bloomber…