Share this page!

Mark Pitcavage Profile picture
Twitter logo
4 Nov, 4 tweets, 1 min read
1. Today, the Medal of Honor is our nation's highest award for bravery, given only to people exhibiting the utmost in bravery or self-sacrifice (like throwing themselves on

"Lawmakers Ask Biden to Rescind Medals for Wounded Knee Massacre"

nytimes.com/2021/11/03/us/…
2. a grenade). However, in the early decades of the Medal's history, throughout the 19th century, this was not the standard, and in some cases the Medal was almost handed out like candy. For example, during the Civil War, the Medal was promised to any member of the 27th Maine
3. who reenlisted, resulting in hundreds of undeserved medals awarded. As a result, as early as a hundred years ago, the U.S. government began "unawarding" nearly a thousand such medals awarded in previous decades. Leaving any political or ideological issues completely aside, it
4. would seem highly unlikely, by the very nature of the circumstances at Wounded Knee, that the actions of the men awarded the Medal of Honor there would meet twentieth or twenty-first century standards for the award.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
　

Keep Current with Mark Pitcavage

Mark Pitcavage Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @egavactip

Mark Pitcavage Profile picture
6 Nov
One of the historical questions related to extremism that I've pondered for years is the odd composition of white supremacy in the history of anti-government extremists over the past 50 years. I'll explain in this thread....
Leaving aside single issue movements, one of the best ways to visualize the extreme right in the U.S. is as two overlapping spheres, each consisting of a number of movements. One sphere consists of white supremacist movements, the other of anti-government extremist movements.
The two spheres have a fairly small amount of overlap. In the 1970s and 80s, the amount of overlap was far higher, but it began to decrease in the late 80s, a trend that continued for the decades afterwards. What I find so interesting is the identity of the white supremacists
Read 16 tweets
Mark Pitcavage Profile picture
28 Oct
I've been talking recently about the sovereign citizen habit of taking a word and replacing it with a homonym or similar sounding word with a different meaning in order to change the meaning of a word or sentence. Here's another example. It is common for sovereign citizens not
to use the word "inalienable," as in "inalienable" rights, but to use "unalienable"--and usually "un-a-lien-able." In this way they can speak about the word "lien" (remember they are obsessed with liens and the UCC).
Here's an example mentioned in a court decision on a filing by sovereign citizen/tax protester Robert Beale (father of alt right writer Vox Day).
Read 6 tweets
Mark Pitcavage Profile picture
27 Oct
Thanks to all who responded! Here's the answer: The "reliance defense" was one of the most popular tax protest strategies of the 1990s. In the 70s-80s, tax protesters generally tried to make their tax protest arguments in court, like the 5th Amendment meant they didn't have to
pay income tax or that the 16th amendment was never lawfully ratified. Those always failed. Then, in the early 90s, a number of tax protest leaders began selling "expert letters" to people telling them that in their legal opinion, those people didn't have to pay taxes. That
way, or so the reasoning went, if those people were ever charged with tax-related crimes (crimes that generally require a *willful* intent to violate the law in order for conviction), they could whip out those expert letters and basically say "Judge, I honestly thought I didn't
Read 4 tweets
Mark Pitcavage Profile picture
27 Oct
Sovereign citizen gurus consistently do a fascinating thing with language. They have the habit of taking a word in print that has multiple meanings and ascribing to it the wrong meaning rather than the actual meaning in context. They also do the same thing with homonyms or
similar-sounding words.. This allows them to really twist the meaning of the passage, because they have radically changed the ostensible meaning of a word in it. For example, they may refer to a defendant in a criminal case and say that this person is "on the defense."
Then they say that means the prosecution is "on the offense," which means that the prosecution are the real "offenders." See what I mean?

In the next two tweets is an example I found this evening, which deliberately conflates "birth" and "berth." It's quite fascinating to me.
Read 5 tweets
Mark Pitcavage Profile picture
24 Oct
I've been thinking a lot about extremist criminal recidivism recently, and this is a thread on that subject.

How often do extremists who committed an extremist-related crime come out of prison and commit another extremist-related crime? Especially for something like terrorism?
My knowledge base comes from having observed or tracked thousands of right-wing extremist-related crimes over the past 27 yrs, including hundreds of murders & scores of terrorist acts, so my thoughts are basically about RWE, though some are, I think, also applicable elsewhere.
Certainly recidivism does occur. Off the top f my head, I can think of white supremacists who committed several bias-related crimes. And I believe that recidivism is fairly high for the white-collar crimes of hard-core sovereign citizens.
Read 21 tweets
Mark Pitcavage Profile picture
25 Sep
Based on 25+ years of anecdotal observation, here are a few things I've learned about terroristic threats such as these.

1. Most have no chance of actually being followed through on; they're main effect is the threat/intimidation factor on the victim.

2. Although you might
think that extremists would make up the majority of these threat cases, they seem rather to be in the minority. Many threat cases are made by people with more or less "mainstream" views, but who are particularly unstable, volatile, and/or incitable.
3. Quite a few threat cases are actually made by inmates of jails/prisons. Not surprisingly, these actors may make threats for ideological/partisan reasons, but also for personal reasons bc of how they perceive they've been treated or how angry they are at judges, attny, etc.
Read 6 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

Like this author's thread?

Get emails when @egavactip has new unrolls!

Check out other threads from @egavactip!

Read all threads by @egavactip

:(