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Mark Pitcavage

@egavactip

Dec 13, 2024

Let's see how antisemitic Twitter is doing right now. I know; I'll search on the recent uses of the term "Holohoax," a Holocaust denial expression meant, as you no doubt figured out, to characterize the Holocaust as a hoax.

Hmmm. Quite a references. Let's look at a few.

Here's a typical one, making essentially highly qualified claims ("soldiers") to assert falsehoods. Others found plenty of documentation. Note as well their explanation for the Holocaust denial laws that some countries have.

This post, from an hour ago, is similar, asserting things (like there were no gas chambers killing people) for which there is an incredible abundance of evidence.

Read 11 tweets

Mark Pitcavage

@egavactip

Dec 12, 2024

Gather round, people, while this thread tells you of the George Santos of the mountains of West Virginia, a man named Joseph De Soto, recently elected to the WV state legislature, and who was just arrested for threatening to kill other members of that body.

This past year, De Soto--a recent arrival to West Virginia--ran for a seat in the state house. He beat the incumbent in the GOP primary. Unfortunately, not a single Democrat ran against him; his only opponent was from the tiny right-wing extremist Constitution Party. De Soto won.

De Soto boasted, though, a sterling resume--he was a "physician-scientist," biblical scholar, conservative writer, and former U.S. Army combat medic. He had three doctorates, including medicine, pharmacology, and "national security."

Read 11 tweets

Mark Pitcavage

@egavactip

Sep 21, 2024

https://twitter.com/daily_cowboy/status/1837283908444115257

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The sovereign citizen movement emerged in Wyoming in the 1980s. By the mid-1980s, sovereign citizens were printing their various notices and declarations in the classified sections of Wyoming newspapers.

https://twitter.com/daily_cowboy/status/1837283908444115257

Here's (part of) a 1985 declaration by sovereign citizen Murray Watson claiming that he has signed no contracts that would put him under the jurisdiction of admiralty law (a common sovcit belief is that a conspiracy replaced the common law with admiralty/maritime law).

A couple of months later, John Allemand Jr. published a similar document. Here's a segment:

Read 8 tweets

Mark Pitcavage

@egavactip

Aug 20, 2024

This is a little thread about the benefits of phraseology searching when monitoring/conducting research on extremism, whether you are a scholar, journalist, activist or something else.

My example is from the sovereign citizen movement, which is peculiarly susceptible to this

methodology (as you'll see), but it is broadly applicable for many different types of extremism, though much less useful for movements, such as the boogaloo movement, that tend to communicate primarily in memes.

I'm going to start with something I found in an old newspaper. My original research question was basically, "When did sovereign citizens first start using the phrase 'threat, duress and coercion' in their documents or on other documents, such as when signing a driver's license?"

Read 15 tweets

Mark Pitcavage

@egavactip

Aug 6, 2024

This is a thread that seems as if it is about one person, but there's a TWIST, and it's actually about another person, and about how the influential extremists are not always the ones you read about on the news or hear about on social media.

Ready?

Last night I thought about making a post about the first prominent white supremacist I met face to face. After some thinking, I realized it was probably Nord Davis, a Christian Identity adherent from North Carolina. I saw him at an event in Ohio in 1996 not long before his death.

Davis's greatest notoriety probably came after his death, as it was revealed that he'd had ties to the family of 1996 Atlanta Olympics bomber Eric Rudolph. Here's Nord in the early 1970s, when he was running for office on the far right American Party ticket.

Read 19 tweets

Mark Pitcavage

@egavactip

Aug 3, 2024

I'm in procrastination mode today, so let's talk about sovereign citizen license plates, an always interesting subject. I've made hundreds of posts about sovcit license plates, so why not a few more?

Specifically, I want to talk about their origins and early use!

The sovereign citizen fixation with license plates pre-dates the movement itself (which began to cohere in the late 1970s). It starts with its parents: the tax protest movement and the Posse Comitatus. Anti-gov't extremists really did not like having to have (& pay for) plates.

Some simply wouldn't use them. Here is tax protest guru Vaughn Ellsworth arguing for this tactic in 1975.

Read 16 tweets

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