Mark Pitcavage Profile picture
Senior Research Fellow, ADL Center on Extremism. Historian, long-time expert on right-wing extremism. Long-lost scion of Sidney Greenstreet. My own views only.
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Feb 20 18 tweets 7 min read
Hello, folks. Today I want to take you on a guided tour (🧵) of the findings of a new report on an important subject: extremist-related murders in the United States.

I want to tell you about murder and extremism for the year 2023. ⬇️

adl.org/resources/repo…
ADL Report: Murder and Extremism in the United States in 2023 In 2008, we began compiling a dataset of all (domestic) extremist-related murders in the U.S. we could find, back to 1970. Since 2015, using that data, ADL has released annual reports analyzing the deaths caused by extremists (you can find the reports at ). adl.org
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Jan 31 19 tweets 6 min read
This is a thread about a Ku Klux Klan group that got what was coming to them when they messed with the wrong people in North Carolina in 1958.

If you'd like to know more, read on. The story starts with James "Catfish" Cole, a Klan leader in North & South Carolina in the 1950s/1960s. Cole usually tried to terrorize Black Americans, but in the late 1950s he expanded his hate to Robeson County, where the local population was divided between whites, Blacks & Image
Jan 13 8 tweets 2 min read
His argument is not all that coherent, but it boils down to 1) the Capitol storming was just a "5-hour riot" and 2) they did not deny the authority of the existing political order and attempt to put some alternative order in its place.

Let's take these in order. Image First, it's important to acknowledge that the actual storming of the Capitol was merely the final and, thankfully, unsuccessful part of a series of acts that occurred in many states and at many levels, from the day after the election up to Jan 6.
Jan 5 8 tweets 2 min read
I was doing some sovereign citizen monitoring today and went down a rabbit hole that resulted in me discovering that sovereigns in Arkansas have created their own "common law court."

There's an interesting history behind this.
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Anti-government extremists began creating their own bogus judicial/quasi-judicial entities with the Posse Comitatus in the early 1970s. At the time, the focus was on creating "citizens grand juries."

In the early 1980s, however, some anti-government extremists began to conceive
Dec 19, 2023 13 tweets 4 min read
Your holiday gift from me, friends, is a new look at right-wing domestic terrorism in the U.S. I examined terror incidents (attacks & plots) from 2017-2022 to look at trends in right-wing terrorism.

Report below⬇️; this thread shares some findings.

adl.org/resources/repo… The key takeaway is that, although there has been a long term increase in right-wing terror incidents since the mid-2000s, there's been a sharp rise in recent years. From 2017 to 2022, we've conservatively documented 67 such incidents. Image
Dec 12, 2023 5 tweets 2 min read
Thread:

The sign claimed, in effect, that Jewish bankers were buying U.S. politicians & causing the downfall of the U.S.

It urged people to "name the Jew," a common antisemitic trope.



"Antisemitic sign hung outside Michigan GOP congressman's office"foxnews.com/politics/antis… Many antisemites, especially of the white supremacist variety, are obsessed with "naming the Jew," i.e., pointing out Jewish people in government, media, etc., in order to suggest Jewish control and conspiracy. The below example is from Montana this past October. Image
Dec 8, 2023 13 tweets 3 min read
Book thread:

I've read literally thousands of books on the Second World War, but few have *fascinated* me in the way the 2007 book Tapping Hitler's Generals, by Sönke Neitzel, has. I've re-read it multiple times (indeed, I'm re-reading it now, which is why I make this thread). Image The book emerged from a WW2 project (that remained unknown for decades after the war ended) in which the British (and later the U.S.) secretly recorded conversations by high-ranking German (& Italian) prisoners in Allied POW facilities.
Nov 3, 2023 4 tweets 1 min read
The article claims that Ventura looks back "shamefully" at how his gubernatorial victory "served as a catalyst" for Trump.

There are things the article doesn't mention, though.



"Jesse Ventura’s shocking election 25 years ago previewed Trump’s"wapo.st/40p3RdL It doesn't mention his support for far right candidate Ron Paul. It doesn't mention his support for 9/11 conspiracy theories. It doesn't mention his appearance on the Alex Jones show. It doesn't mention his television show Conspiracy Theory, which gave legitimacy to things like
Aug 17, 2023 6 tweets 2 min read
I want to share this image as an example of white supremacist "meme warfare." Ignore the yellow scribble; I added that to make it less shareable.

First, note that the meme is centered around an image of Oliver Anthony singing the right-wing song "Rich men north of Richmond." Image That image has become a popular meme for various types of right-wing extremists.

This particular variation was created by a white supremacist, who changed the lyrics to reflect (and spread further) two white supremacist coded concepts.
Aug 2, 2023 14 tweets 5 min read
On this day in 1944, the uprising of the Polish Home Army (the main resistance force) occurred in Warsaw, a tragic, brave, foolhardy and desperate attempt by the Polish underground to seize the city from the Nazis before the Soviets arrived. Image The Home Army leadership thought the Germans were in desperate straits, about to abandon Warsaw in the face of Soviet assault. They did not realize that the Soviet offensive was spent and the Germans had launched a significant local counterattack. Image
Jul 25, 2023 7 tweets 2 min read
I'm gifting this article so you can read it without worrying about a paywall, because I think the article is worth reading. I would, however, like to provide some important context for it.

wapo.st/3O4kuG1 This article is about "Gold IRAs," their extreme dubiousness, and how they advertise on right-wing outlets like Fox, etc.

But Gold IRAs are only a relatively recent twist on the much older and larger relationship between gold and silver companies/dealders and the U.S. right &
Jul 14, 2023 6 tweets 2 min read
Edward James Smythe--a man who thought the only thing bad about self-promotion was that it didn't say enough about him--warns about "professional Jews." Image One publication described Smythe as a "whiskey-guzzling old reprobate whose great sorrow is that Hitler is too merciful toward the Jews."

https://t.co/sdh9rqxASNoldmagazinearticles.com/edward-james-s…
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Jun 29, 2023 13 tweets 5 min read
Once upon a time there was an American Airlines pilot in California who joined the tax protest movement and refused to pay his income taxes. In 1984, he was arrested after threatening to shoot IRS agents who came to his house. His name was Eldon Warman. He also threatened to execute an IRS agent for every $1,000 the IRS took from him.
Jun 16, 2023 14 tweets 3 min read
I got this response today from an apparent Black Hebrew Israelite, and thought it would be useful for a little education. I'll mention two things. First, he claims that "Edom" refers to "Caucasians." The term "Edom" refers to a people in the area of the "Holy Land" in ancient Image times; it is sometimes called "Esau" or "Edom-Esau," as Esau was allegedly their founder. The "Edomites" are the bad guys in several religious sects that pose revisionist biblical histories. For Black Hebrew Israelites, who consider themselves descendants of the ancient
Jun 15, 2023 7 tweets 2 min read
An extremist pamphlet from 1950, courtesy of Bolerium Books, by Robert Henry Williams, designed to inform "governors, mayors, police" and others of the secret enemy plaguing America. Note the blurb by LTG Pedro del Valle, a prominent postwar extremist. Image Williams was a Harvard graduate and former U.S. Army officer. He was kicked out of the Army Reserve about the time this pamphlet came out, because of his extremist publications, which included his 1947 "The Anti-Defamation League and its use in the World Communist Offensive."
Jun 8, 2023 4 tweets 2 min read
It's been a while since I did a hate symbols thread, so here is a quick one, with some interesting images I've collected over the years.

We'll start with something you don't see much anymore (this is from 2005): a Ku Klux Klan rally. Or at least the location of one. Image I was able to obtain many images because white supremacists like to pose for the camera as much as the next person. Here we see a Nazi flag and, on the wall, a Celtic Cross. I think a lot of the other writing on the wall may just be metal band names. Image
May 23, 2023 5 tweets 2 min read
Lindell offered $5 million to anyone who could prove him wrong. Someone did and is now going to court over it.

reviewjournal.com/news/politics-…?

"Election fraud challenge ends in lawsuit against MyPillow CEO" I can think of two similar extremist-related cases in the past. One was when tax protester Irwin Schiff offered a $100,000 reward to anyone who could prove that the Internal Revenue Code required people to file tax returns. Someone did (see below) but a
law.justia.com/cases/federal/…
May 10, 2023 4 tweets 1 min read
I'd like to share the obituary of a man I never met. Years ago, when I was about to graduate from college, I had a thought, and asked my mom: "Am I the first person to graduate from college on my dad's side of the family?" I come from a long line of coal

legacy.com/us/obituaries/… miners, brewery workers, and butchers. My mom thought for a second and said, "No. Your cousin Myron is a teacher, so he must have graduated from college." And indeed he did, 20 years earlier, in 1968. My first reaction was, "Damn, I'm not the first." My second reaction was not
May 10, 2023 4 tweets 1 min read
I don't think the author proves his point. The "criticism" basically appeared elsewhere in the transcript, but was moved to a place in the interview where it more clearly identified MX.

"MLK’s famous criticism of Malcolm X was a ‘fraud,’ author finds"

washingtonpost.com/history/2023/0… If the sentence appeared nowhere in the transcript, there would be a better case, although even then one could not be sure. Having given hundreds of interviews over the years, I know that often an initial interview is followed up by additional questions or clarifications later.
Apr 21, 2023 4 tweets 1 min read
Since I'm quoted and paraphrased here, I feel I need to make clear what my points actually were. In talking about neo-Nazis (among those in the past who would most publicly

forward.com/fast-forward/5…

"It’s Hitler’s birthday. Here’s why so few antisemites are celebrating" celebrate Hitler), I described the decline of once-prominent public-facing neo-Nazi groups, including the National Alliance, Aryan Nations, and the NSM, and the rise of less public, more underground accelerationist neo-Nazi groups like Atomwaffen, the Base, Rapekrieg, etc.,
Apr 21, 2023 6 tweets 2 min read
The sovereign movement has a long history in Utah. In the 1980s, one of the most important early sovereign citizen gurus, Walt Mann III, was a Utahn. Other

sltrib.com/news/politics/… @SchottHappens

"Is the sovereign citizen movement finding a home inside the Utah GOP?" more recent influential gurus like Winston Shrout have also had Utah ties.

This story is about a women who filed a sovereign citizen document declaring a $5 million lien on her own property.

Historically, that tactic emerged in the 1980s during the farm crisis, when sovereign