Snapping the Spine of Uncle Cracker

[Eddie]

They've already id'd a "protestor" breaking into an Auto Zone as any off-duty cop.

Far-right ‘boogaloo’ militants have embedded themselves in the George Floyd protests in Minneapolis: ‘They want their civil war’




Jordan Green yMay 28, 2020
Young, white men dressed in Hawaiian-style print shirts and body armor, and carrying high-powered rifles have been a notable feature at state capitols, lending an edgy and even sometimes insurrectionary tone to gatherings of conservatives angered by restrictions on businesses and church gatherings during the coronavirus pandemic.

Just as many states are reopening their economies — and taking the wind out of the conservative protests — the boogaloo movement found a new galvanizing cause: the protests in Minneapolis against the police killing of George Floyd.

A new iteration of the militia movement, boogaloo was born out of internet forums for gun enthusiasts that repurposed the 1984 movie Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo as a code for a second civil war, and then modified it into phrases like “big luau” to create an insular community for those in on the joke, with Hawaiian-style shirts functioning as an in-real-life identifier. Boogaloo gained currency as an internet meme over the summer of 2019, when it was adopted by white supremacists in the accelerationist tendency. In January, the movement made the leap from the internet to the streets when a group boogaloo-ers showed up at the Second Amendment rally in Richmond, Va.

It’s not just the jittery aesthetics and pop-culture irony that sets boogaloo apart from an older generation of militia activists, but also its unbridled hostility towards law enforcement. In late 2019, the movement spread beyond private Discord servers to multiple Facebook groups with names like Thicc Boog Line, Boojahideen of Occupied Appalachistan and, in North Carolina, Blue Igloo. Some of the memes generated and shared on the Facebook pages contain overt signals towards white nationalists, including images of the German Wehrmacht during World War II and references to the failed war to preserve white rule in Rhodesia during the 1970s. But others signal an interest in building bridges with the political left by lifting up the names of black victims of police violence like Oscar Grant, Eric Garner and Breonna Taylor, alongside right-wing martyrs like LaVoy Finicum, Sammy Weaver and Duncan Lemp, the latter a boogaloo-er who was killed by police in March during a no-knock raid at his home in Maryland.

When protests against the police killing of George Floyd escalated into clashes between police and protesters on Tuesday night, a significant segment of the boogaloo movement was electrified.

At 8:38 p.m., an anonymous Discord user identified as [MN-TC] Jimmydean338 posted in the #SOS channel for the private Citizens Liberty Organization server. The post displayed a red button inscribed with the words, “Send help!” followed by the address 3000 Minnehaha Ave., which is the location of the Minneapolis Police 3rd Precinct. “Police opening fire on protesters breaching precinc [sic],” Jimmydean338 wrote. “Not a drill.”

At about 11:30, the Big Igloo Bois Facebook group posted a photo of a young man holding the trademark boogaloo flag depicting an igloo and palm tree in the protests.

“If there was ever a time for bois to stand in solidarity with all free men and women in this country, it is now,” the admin for the page wrote. “This is not a race issue. For far too long we have allowed them to murder us in our homes, and in the streets. We need to stand with the people of Minneapolis. We need to support them in this protest against a system that allows police brutality to go unchecked.”

Benjamin Ryan Teeter, a resident of the coastal community of Hampstead in southeastern North Carolina, reshared the red button panel posted by Jimmydean338 on his Facebook page at 11:44 p.m., writing, “Lock and load boys. Boog flags are in the air, and the national network is going off.”

Teeter, who is active in the North Carolina Libertarian Party and has participated in weekly armed excursions through downtown Raleigh with a group organized through the Blue Igloo Facebook group over the four weeks alerted his friends that he would be driving, not flying to Minneapolis.

Tom Bailey, a Libertarian candidate for Congress in 2018, commented, “Grim.” To which Teeter replied, “Exactly! I love it!”

Another private Discord server set up for boogaloo users — named “We should all Led(better)” — had designated special channels for different functions: #on-scene-only (for users on the ground), #off-scene-intel (for remote users sharing information), and #location-want-to-repond (for users across the country to coordinate travel to Minneapolis).

Boogaloo activists who showed up for the first night of protests on Tuesday met with mixed reaction.

One, a white man identified on Facebook as Michael Solomon, posted photographs of himself and another friend holding high-powered rifles while posing alongside black protesters, including one wearing a Black Lives Matter hoodie. But another, Tyler Scott of Minnesota man, warned in the Big Igloo Bois thread: “This is not the time for boog, this is how a race war starts.” He added that the protesters “jumped one of our 3%ers” — a term that denotes an older generation of militia activists — “earlier tonight and stole a firearm. They are not with us. They’ve made it clear they don’t want us.” Scott’s statements were met with skepticism, with other commenters suggesting he was making it up or speculating that the older militia activists were racist and had it coming.

“I think for a lot of boogaloo-ers, their primary interest is resisting the state, what they believe to be state tyranny,” said Alex Friedfeld, an investigative researcher at the ADL Center on Extremism in Chicago. “They have this hostility towards law enforcement…. They oppose these [pandemic] directives. They’re upset about no-knock raids, police brutality. The George Floyd case — this is an example of police brutality, this willingness of the state to execute those who disobey — so it’s not surprising that they showed up to protest.”

The nascent boogaloo movement is not monolithic, Friedfeld said, and it draws from spectrum of groups from the right wing to the far right, from militias and anarcho-capitalists to white supremacists. An internal struggle is underway to define the movement’s relationship with race, he said.

“You see this in the Facebook comments,” Friedfeld said. “You’ll see very strong condemnations of racism and homophobia. Then there are people who use racially charged phrases such as, ‘Vote from the rooftops.’ It’s a reference to Korean shop-owners who went to rooftops to fire on looters [during the 1992 Los Angeles riots], who are presumed to be black. There’s this debate: Why are we accepting Black Lives Matter when they won’t accept us? There’s a good deal of social distrust.”

Antifascist Twitter accounts on Wednesday issued a steady stream of stern warnings against making common cause with boogaloo.

“It’s a right-wing thing; it’s a neo-fascist thing,” said Daryle Lamont Jenkins, a veteran antifascist organizer based in New Jersey, in a Twitter video. “And they’re trying to use what’s happening in Minneapolis as a jump-off. Do not let them. They are not our friends.”

Jenkins told Raw Story that he fears that boogaloo-ers are bringing their apocalyptic fantasies about civil war to Minneapolis and will leave residents to pick up the pieces.

“They can be more aggressive, and they can cause the police to be more aggressive,” he said. “They can get people hurt because they want their civil war…. People who are in the community, all they know is they have to defend themselves. The people they hate get hurt, and they walk away scot-free. So, it’s kind of a win-win for them.

“You don’t even necessarily have to be interacting with anybody in order to pop something off,” he added. “You’re going to be one with the crowd.”

Jenkins noted that Minneapolis has rocky track record with armed white men interposing themselves in protests against police brutality: In 2015, five people at a Black Lives Matter protest were shot, resulting in non-life-threatening injuries. A white man from Bloomington named Allen Scarsella was later convicted in the shootings.

Jenkins charges that the boogaloo-ers are operating in bad faith, citing a fellow New Jersey resident named Paul Miller who was recently involved in a Memorial Day reopen protest. Miller identifies himself as a “Boogaloo Boy” on his Instagram account, which also includes the Latin Catholic motto “Deus vult,” or “God wills [it],” generally associated with Islamophobia.

On Wednesday, Miller re-shared livestreams from Minneapolis on his Instagram, while refraining from providing his views on the action underway. A previous post includes a whimsical video of armed protesters during an April 30 reopen protest at the Michigan state capitol captioned, “When the boogaloo kicks off cuz the boys had enough.”

Others more definitively signal that Miller’s politics don’t align with the protesters in Minneapolis. One  calls for the release of the white father and son who are charged with murdering Ahmaud Arbery, a black jogger in Georgia, while another contends that the media is burying coverage of migrants “rioting throughout France.” Miller frequently uses boogaloo hashtags with Instagram posts, including #bigluau, #boogaloomemes, #boogaloo2020, #Boogvirus, #boogaloosidequest and #boogaloobois.

“There’s two versions of boogaloo,” said Friedfeld of the ADL. “There’s the white supremacist burn society down and build a white ethno-stage. And then there’s the anti-government resist tyranny at all costs, and if it creates a civil war, so be it version.”

So far, the wing of the boogaloo movement that’s shown up in the streets is the more mainstream, outwardly inclusive version.

But some white supremacists, especially in the accelerationist tendency, are likely cheering events in Minneapolis from the sidelines, or looking for ways to melt into the crowd.

A user identified as “Terrorwave Refine” messaged at 11:59 p.m. on Tuesday: “Boogaloo boys are reportedly on [sic] place. If someone really wanted to kick off the boogaloo, now would be a fine time to fire some shots and frame the crowd around you as responsible.”

Earlier in the evening, a user named “The Shitpost Facility (Dick)” wrote, “I hate that I support the n****** over the pigs at this point, get some you dumb monkey f****ot. This is absolutely the end goal of our philosemitic society. Imagine giving n****** ‘civil rights’ hahahha.”

Another, named “Uncle Paul,” forwarded Dick’s message, adding, “I don’t support either the n****** or the pigs… certainly not the k****. However, I’ll do some pushups and pull-ups while I watch them redacting each other.”

Benjamin Ryan Teeter, the North Carolina man traveling to Minneapolis, said he is motivated to join the protests out of genuine solidarity with black residents who are oppressed by police violence. Teeter, who describes himself as an “LGBT left-leaning anarchist,” said he plans to “defend the protesters.”

He deflected when asked if he and other boogaloo-ers are consulting with local residents to see how they can best support them, as opposed to pursuing their own agenda.

“I think trying to get the police to stop killing people is trying to support the people of the community,” he said. “If we’re not willing to stand up because we might hurt someone, how bad are we going to allow things to get?”

Teeter insisted the share of white supremacists in the boogaloo movement is no greater than any other group or political party. But he pleaded ignorance when asked about Dillon Goad, a North Carolinian who attended the first Raleigh boogaloo walk on May 1 wearing a Hawaiian-style shirt. In addition to his primary Facebook page, Goad has an alt page under his name that pays tribute to Hans Friedrich, a member of the SS Infantry Brigade accused of murdering Jews and communists in the Soviet Union.

Teeter posted a breathless update at 1:23 a.m. on Wednesday.

“Baltimore cop shot,” Teeter wrote. “Chicago is a powderkeg. MN police are planning an emergency exit if the building is breached.”

Goad was the first to comment: “It’s all coming together.”

Reached on the road nine hours outside of Minneapolis on Wednesday evening, Teeter demurred when asked about Goad.

“Dillon is someone I’m not familiar with,” he said. “I don’t want to speak to the account without knowing. I don’t know if it’s a satire account or something else.”

Whether their movement is infiltrated with neo-Nazis or not, there’s little doubt that the boogaloo-ers want to see an escalation in Minneapolis.

In a post that has now been removed from the We should all be Led(better) server, (KS) RugbyIsLife lamented at 11:38 p.m. on Wednesday: “Looks like it’s just a bunch of looting that should have been booging. Are people going to wake the fuck up and start laying down lead or just steal TVs and shit?

Violent protests by the black community....unfortunately......that just plays right into the hands of the worst of this crowd, Yes, the Nazis pray for escalation...and they might get their wish.

I never thought Minneapolis would be the test case for Civil War 2.0......I am deeply worried by what is going on right now. And saddened. It's like a train wreck you can see coming....

Canada is looking better every day,

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[Cam]

They've already id'd a "protestor" breaking into an Auto Zone as any off-duty cop.

Far-right ‘boogaloo’ militants have embedded themselves in the George Floyd protests in Minneapolis: ‘They want their civil war’




Jordan Green yMay 28, 2020
Young, white men dressed in Hawaiian-style print shirts and body armor, and carrying high-powered rifles have been a notable feature at state capitols, lending an edgy and even sometimes insurrectionary tone to gatherings of conservatives angered by restrictions on businesses and church gatherings during the coronavirus pandemic.

Just as many states are reopening their economies — and taking the wind out of the conservative protests — the boogaloo movement found a new galvanizing cause: the protests in Minneapolis against the police killing of George Floyd.

A new iteration of the militia movement, boogaloo was born out of internet forums for gun enthusiasts that repurposed the 1984 movie Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo as a code for a second civil war, and then modified it into phrases like “big luau” to create an insular community for those in on the joke, with Hawaiian-style shirts functioning as an in-real-life identifier. Boogaloo gained currency as an internet meme over the summer of 2019, when it was adopted by white supremacists in the accelerationist tendency. In January, the movement made the leap from the internet to the streets when a group boogaloo-ers showed up at the Second Amendment rally in Richmond, Va.

It’s not just the jittery aesthetics and pop-culture irony that sets boogaloo apart from an older generation of militia activists, but also its unbridled hostility towards law enforcement. In late 2019, the movement spread beyond private Discord servers to multiple Facebook groups with names like Thicc Boog Line, Boojahideen of Occupied Appalachistan and, in North Carolina, Blue Igloo. Some of the memes generated and shared on the Facebook pages contain overt signals towards white nationalists, including images of the German Wehrmacht during World War II and references to the failed war to preserve white rule in Rhodesia during the 1970s. But others signal an interest in building bridges with the political left by lifting up the names of black victims of police violence like Oscar Grant, Eric Garner and Breonna Taylor, alongside right-wing martyrs like LaVoy Finicum, Sammy Weaver and Duncan Lemp, the latter a boogaloo-er who was killed by police in March during a no-knock raid at his home in Maryland.

When protests against the police killing of George Floyd escalated into clashes between police and protesters on Tuesday night, a significant segment of the boogaloo movement was electrified.

At 8:38 p.m., an anonymous Discord user identified as [MN-TC] Jimmydean338 posted in the #SOS channel for the private Citizens Liberty Organization server. The post displayed a red button inscribed with the words, “Send help!” followed by the address 3000 Minnehaha Ave., which is the location of the Minneapolis Police 3rd Precinct. “Police opening fire on protesters breaching precinc [sic],” Jimmydean338 wrote. “Not a drill.”

At about 11:30, the Big Igloo Bois Facebook group posted a photo of a young man holding the trademark boogaloo flag depicting an igloo and palm tree in the protests.

“If there was ever a time for bois to stand in solidarity with all free men and women in this country, it is now,” the admin for the page wrote. “This is not a race issue. For far too long we have allowed them to murder us in our homes, and in the streets. We need to stand with the people of Minneapolis. We need to support them in this protest against a system that allows police brutality to go unchecked.”

Benjamin Ryan Teeter, a resident of the coastal community of Hampstead in southeastern North Carolina, reshared the red button panel posted by Jimmydean338 on his Facebook page at 11:44 p.m., writing, “Lock and load boys. Boog flags are in the air, and the national network is going off.”

Teeter, who is active in the North Carolina Libertarian Party and has participated in weekly armed excursions through downtown Raleigh with a group organized through the Blue Igloo Facebook group over the four weeks alerted his friends that he would be driving, not flying to Minneapolis.

Tom Bailey, a Libertarian candidate for Congress in 2018, commented, “Grim.” To which Teeter replied, “Exactly! I love it!”

Another private Discord server set up for boogaloo users — named “We should all Led(better)” — had designated special channels for different functions: #on-scene-only (for users on the ground), #off-scene-intel (for remote users sharing information), and #location-want-to-repond (for users across the country to coordinate travel to Minneapolis).

Boogaloo activists who showed up for the first night of protests on Tuesday met with mixed reaction.

One, a white man identified on Facebook as Michael Solomon, posted photographs of himself and another friend holding high-powered rifles while posing alongside black protesters, including one wearing a Black Lives Matter hoodie. But another, Tyler Scott of Minnesota man, warned in the Big Igloo Bois thread: “This is not the time for boog, this is how a race war starts.” He added that the protesters “jumped one of our 3%ers” — a term that denotes an older generation of militia activists — “earlier tonight and stole a firearm. They are not with us. They’ve made it clear they don’t want us.” Scott’s statements were met with skepticism, with other commenters suggesting he was making it up or speculating that the older militia activists were racist and had it coming.

“I think for a lot of boogaloo-ers, their primary interest is resisting the state, what they believe to be state tyranny,” said Alex Friedfeld, an investigative researcher at the ADL Center on Extremism in Chicago. “They have this hostility towards law enforcement…. They oppose these [pandemic] directives. They’re upset about no-knock raids, police brutality. The George Floyd case — this is an example of police brutality, this willingness of the state to execute those who disobey — so it’s not surprising that they showed up to protest.”

The nascent boogaloo movement is not monolithic, Friedfeld said, and it draws from spectrum of groups from the right wing to the far right, from militias and anarcho-capitalists to white supremacists. An internal struggle is underway to define the movement’s relationship with race, he said.

“You see this in the Facebook comments,” Friedfeld said. “You’ll see very strong condemnations of racism and homophobia. Then there are people who use racially charged phrases such as, ‘Vote from the rooftops.’ It’s a reference to Korean shop-owners who went to rooftops to fire on looters [during the 1992 Los Angeles riots], who are presumed to be black. There’s this debate: Why are we accepting Black Lives Matter when they won’t accept us? There’s a good deal of social distrust.”

Antifascist Twitter accounts on Wednesday issued a steady stream of stern warnings against making common cause with boogaloo.

“It’s a right-wing thing; it’s a neo-fascist thing,” said Daryle Lamont Jenkins, a veteran antifascist organizer based in New Jersey, in a Twitter video. “And they’re trying to use what’s happening in Minneapolis as a jump-off. Do not let them. They are not our friends.”

Jenkins told Raw Story that he fears that boogaloo-ers are bringing their apocalyptic fantasies about civil war to Minneapolis and will leave residents to pick up the pieces.

“They can be more aggressive, and they can cause the police to be more aggressive,” he said. “They can get people hurt because they want their civil war…. People who are in the community, all they know is they have to defend themselves. The people they hate get hurt, and they walk away scot-free. So, it’s kind of a win-win for them.

“You don’t even necessarily have to be interacting with anybody in order to pop something off,” he added. “You’re going to be one with the crowd.”

Jenkins noted that Minneapolis has rocky track record with armed white men interposing themselves in protests against police brutality: In 2015, five people at a Black Lives Matter protest were shot, resulting in non-life-threatening injuries. A white man from Bloomington named Allen Scarsella was later convicted in the shootings.

Jenkins charges that the boogaloo-ers are operating in bad faith, citing a fellow New Jersey resident named Paul Miller who was recently involved in a Memorial Day reopen protest. Miller identifies himself as a “Boogaloo Boy” on his Instagram account, which also includes the Latin Catholic motto “Deus vult,” or “God wills [it],” generally associated with Islamophobia.

On Wednesday, Miller re-shared livestreams from Minneapolis on his Instagram, while refraining from providing his views on the action underway. A previous post includes a whimsical video of armed protesters during an April 30 reopen protest at the Michigan state capitol captioned, “When the boogaloo kicks off cuz the boys had enough.”

Others more definitively signal that Miller’s politics don’t align with the protesters in Minneapolis. One  calls for the release of the white father and son who are charged with murdering Ahmaud Arbery, a black jogger in Georgia, while another contends that the media is burying coverage of migrants “rioting throughout France.” Miller frequently uses boogaloo hashtags with Instagram posts, including #bigluau, #boogaloomemes, #boogaloo2020, #Boogvirus, #boogaloosidequest and #boogaloobois.

“There’s two versions of boogaloo,” said Friedfeld of the ADL. “There’s the white supremacist burn society down and build a white ethno-stage. And then there’s the anti-government resist tyranny at all costs, and if it creates a civil war, so be it version.”

So far, the wing of the boogaloo movement that’s shown up in the streets is the more mainstream, outwardly inclusive version.

But some white supremacists, especially in the accelerationist tendency, are likely cheering events in Minneapolis from the sidelines, or looking for ways to melt into the crowd.

A user identified as “Terrorwave Refine” messaged at 11:59 p.m. on Tuesday: “Boogaloo boys are reportedly on [sic] place. If someone really wanted to kick off the boogaloo, now would be a fine time to fire some shots and frame the crowd around you as responsible.”

Earlier in the evening, a user named “The Shitpost Facility (Dick)” wrote, “I hate that I support the n****** over the pigs at this point, get some you dumb monkey f****ot. This is absolutely the end goal of our philosemitic society. Imagine giving n****** ‘civil rights’ hahahha.”

Another, named “Uncle Paul,” forwarded Dick’s message, adding, “I don’t support either the n****** or the pigs… certainly not the k****. However, I’ll do some pushups and pull-ups while I watch them redacting each other.”

Benjamin Ryan Teeter, the North Carolina man traveling to Minneapolis, said he is motivated to join the protests out of genuine solidarity with black residents who are oppressed by police violence. Teeter, who describes himself as an “LGBT left-leaning anarchist,” said he plans to “defend the protesters.”

He deflected when asked if he and other boogaloo-ers are consulting with local residents to see how they can best support them, as opposed to pursuing their own agenda.

“I think trying to get the police to stop killing people is trying to support the people of the community,” he said. “If we’re not willing to stand up because we might hurt someone, how bad are we going to allow things to get?”

Teeter insisted the share of white supremacists in the boogaloo movement is no greater than any other group or political party. But he pleaded ignorance when asked about Dillon Goad, a North Carolinian who attended the first Raleigh boogaloo walk on May 1 wearing a Hawaiian-style shirt. In addition to his primary Facebook page, Goad has an alt page under his name that pays tribute to Hans Friedrich, a member of the SS Infantry Brigade accused of murdering Jews and communists in the Soviet Union.

Teeter posted a breathless update at 1:23 a.m. on Wednesday.

“Baltimore cop shot,” Teeter wrote. “Chicago is a powderkeg. MN police are planning an emergency exit if the building is breached.”

Goad was the first to comment: “It’s all coming together.”

Reached on the road nine hours outside of Minneapolis on Wednesday evening, Teeter demurred when asked about Goad.

“Dillon is someone I’m not familiar with,” he said. “I don’t want to speak to the account without knowing. I don’t know if it’s a satire account or something else.”

Whether their movement is infiltrated with neo-Nazis or not, there’s little doubt that the boogaloo-ers want to see an escalation in Minneapolis.

In a post that has now been removed from the We should all be Led(better) server, (KS) RugbyIsLife lamented at 11:38 p.m. on Wednesday: “Looks like it’s just a bunch of looting that should have been booging. Are people going to wake the fuck up and start laying down lead or just steal TVs and shit?

Violent protests by the black community....unfortunately......that just plays right into the hands of the worst of this crowd, Yes, the Nazis pray for escalation...and they might get their wish.

I never thought Minneapolis would be the test case for Civil War 2.0......I am deeply worried by what is going on right now. And saddened. It's like a train wreck you can see coming....

Canada is looking better every day,

Yeah I just caught up this morning, this is some scary shit. It's sad too because the vast majority of the protestors are peaceful and didn't want this at all.

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[Surly1]

this report from ground zero reiterates that white supremacists are coming to create mayhem under cover of protests with entirely different goals and constituencies. The grotesquery of racists using antiracist protests as cover is already disturbing, the impact is more so. Beware.

Lidia Yuknavitch
1 hr
this is from a dear friend on the scene :: please read if you want to understand another danger emerging :: main point: This is now a military operation by the State of Minnesota against alt-right, white nationalists and anarchists that have come into Minneapolis to use the protests against police brutality as cover for their death fantasy.

So for those of you who are interested - I have no idea how national media is covering this - here is what is happening on the ground from my perspective. It is a long post.
All day yesterday people were out on the street helping businesses - EVERY SINGLE BUSINESS IN UPTOWN has boarded up windows and locked down their stores. The 3rd Precinct, which burned on down Thursday night, is on the east end of Lake Street. Uptown, where we live and the 5th Precinct police station is located, is three miles west on lake street. All of Lake Street was looted on Thursday night. On Friday EVERY BUSINESS on Lake Street and adjoining commercial districts, was boarded up.
Many spray painted murals on the plywood - let folks know they were a local or minority owned business. Essential businesses.
Last night was by far the worst night. Protests during the day were peaceful. There was an 8:00pm curfew. Everything changed when the sun went down. There are roving and highly organized bands of anti-government neo-nazi white men cruising the city, breaking off plywood, looting stores, and then setting them fire to the buildings.
On the Northside, which is predominately African American, the situation was much the same. Local civic groups were trying to protect local businesses and homes. there were many fires.
The violence and destruction is NOT being driven by local people. The cars on the streets have either removed their license plates, or have out of state plates.
Here is a post from a neighbor, "Everybody! We need to get our heads around what’s happening, Mpls and St Paul are being attacked by fascist “accelerationist” white crazies. Trying to divide & destroy us.
Accelerationism: the idea inspiring white supremacist killers around the world -Vox"
Expect these same types to infiltrate all of the legitimate protests happening in other cities in America. We are fighting an enemy within.
These "accelerationists" burned down the 5th Police Precinct, our post office, every pharmacy. The Wallgreens and CVS within a few blocks of our house are still burning this morning. The grocery stores were all hit. Every bank has been hit. Every liquor store, every gas station. They have guns and accelerants.
When National Guard show up, they disappear into the neighborhoods and have been setting fires. It is a violent game of arsonist wake-a-mole. There is no longer any fire fighting service available - overwhelmed. So neighbors are using garden hoses to put out the fires and save homes. Pictures neighbors are sharing - these are young white men, heavily armed.
According to authorities there are over 10,000 of these "accelerationists" in the city. St. Paul arrested over 50 people last night. ALL OF THEM were from out of state. The authorities are checking phones of the people they have arrested, doing contact tracing of sorts on these people. These people are connected to right wing militia style groups with a civil/race war fantasy. They are opportunistically using the legitimate, peaceful George Floyd protests as a cover to actualize their neo-nazi fever dream.
Gov. Walz just said, "If you know where these people are sleeping today, let us know and we will execute warrants. Allie and I were helping the owner of a commercial building up the street - a friend, and two of these guys came up to us. Wanted to know where the free food was being distributed. He gave them an address that was three blocks away. Had no idea what we were talking about - not from here.
Allie, the girls and I are fine and safe. Exhausted. Angry. We have not really slept in three days. Everyone in Minneapolis/St. Paul is the same.
So, what to do? Our neighborhood group is meeting at the park this afternoon. I think that they will organize our neighborhood watch to patrol, try to spot fires and get them out ASAP.
Major protests are planned for today. They want the other three police officers involved in George Floyd's murder arrested, they want the MN Attorney General, not the Hennepin County Attorney to manage the case. They want the MPD disbanded and reformed with many alternative public safety and law enforcement strategies used. But the legitimate protests will end at 8:00 pm.
The Gov. and the mayor are calling in thousands more National Guard Troops. We already had more National Guard troops in the city than ever before. They are doing a good job but were overwhelmed last night by sheer numbers. Gov. Walz is the highest ranking soldier to have ever served in Congress and led the National Guard - he clearly sees this for what it is and will fight it. This is now a military operation by the State of Minnesota against alt-right, white nationalists and anarchists that have come into Minneapolis to use the protests against police brutality as cover for their death fantasy.
They are trying to force authorities to use deadly force and "accelerate" the violence.
It is dark friends.
The other side - this morning the neighborhood is out in force helping with the clean up, re-securing businesses. Massive food distribution at community centers. People taking in neighbors whose homes were destroyed or whose neighborhood was so impacted that it is no longer habitable. Allie was ion contact with students, many of whom are refugees from war torn countries, that were hearing explosions and fire and sirens - they were calling her to make sure she was okay.
Today I will garden. My flowers are starting to really come into bloom. Vegetables coming in strong. New raised bed being built. Eat some good food. Feel grateful. Train our new puppy Ruth, who is just a pip. Take her to the lake and give her a swimming lesson. Then I'll take a nap. I think tonight will be a long one.

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[Surly1]

... and takes it to Uncle Cracker in the process.

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/5w7kwtLJtVc" target="_blank" class="new_win">http://www.youtube.com/v/5w7kwtLJtVc</a>

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[Surly1]

An essay by one of my favorite young writers. Call it what it is.

Donald Trump Is a Nazi. Full Stop.
We can stop with all the hedging and qualifying

Drew Magary

Donald Trump walks back to the White House after appearing outside of St John’s Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C. Photo: Brendan Smialowski /Getty Images

He’s a Nazi. He’s not scarily reminiscent of a Nazi. He doesn’t have alarming Nazi-like qualities. Your president, my president, is a fucking Nazi. That’s not a standard bit of tweeted hyperbole. It’s a truth. It’s bedrock. There’s no sly coding to it. You don’t get to go OH DEAR PRESIDENT TRUMP IS SAYING THE QUIET PART OUT LOUD when there has never been any quiet parts to Donald Trump, nor any disguising his zeal for outright fascism.

If the past four years have not made it clear, if 100,000 dead and kids in cages and open admiration for fellow dictators didn’t do the trick, then this week better have. This eternal harbinger of misery got on the horn with 50 governors yesterday and demanded they “dominate” American protesters by arresting them, contact tracing them, and putting them in jail for 10 years. Then, later that day, he deliberately ordered his own men to teargas peaceful protesters and fucking PRIESTS to clear the way for him to walk — with the laziest possible gait — over to an empty church so that he could hold a bible upside down on camera. He has authorized, with some dubious legality, the American military to suppress the very people they serve. But of course, he barely needs the military when he’s already openly encouraged local police forces and everyday white shitbags to do as they please with the lavish caches of artillery they already possess. And they have.

This is Nazism, gas included. This is the enemy. This is war. Anyone who says otherwise is part of the same complicity industrial complex that led us to this flashpoint to begin with. I don’t wanna hear any more BUTs to any of this. Every time you say BUT, another American is force-fed a flash grenade on camera. Your time expressing vague disappointment over Trump’s rhetoric and the general state of affairs is over. The chance of this ending peacefully? Also gone. Don’t tell me to break bread with Nazi sympathizers. Don’t tell me that I can votemy way out of this when the destruction you see before you has been wrought by a President that the majority of us did NOT vote for, by local officials who have suppressed and gerrymandered their way to permanent tenures, and by corporate lobbies who are agnostic to all of it.

He’s found his bliss, and it’s in remaking this country in his own image: sour, ugly, hateful, and miserable.

And don’t tell protesters — REAL and genuine protestors and not the handful of dipshits co-opting the cause — how to protest. Who the fuck expresses their anger flawlessly? Why should anyone rein in their anger after what we’ve all just witnessed? Windows will be broken. I don’t care. What’s the cost of one window against the cost of losing George Floyd? Against reporters getting arrested on camera for reporting? Against kids getting unprovoked rubber bullets to the face? We are under attack from within and all but helpless right now. People just wanna be left the fuck alone by this asshole Nazi President. They just wanna LIVE. They want, you know, actual freedom. And yet, Trump refuses. He’s not gonna change. He’s not gonna grow interested in things OTHER than being a Nazi. This is his calling. He’s gotten approval from his bloodthirsty supporters and it’s given him true purpose. This is the hardest he’s worked in his whole life. He’s found his bliss, and it’s in remaking this country in his own image: sour, ugly, hateful, and miserable.

When I was growing up, you couldn’t be a Nazi openly. Outed Nazis and Klansmen were shamed and laughed into isolation. They were alone. But once the internet came around — a positive development in so many other aspects — they found each other. They connected. Suddenly they didn’t feel so alone. Suddenly they felt emboldened. Freer to be themselves. And Donald Trump, being a Nazi himself, realized that he could round up this disparate coalition, shelter them inside a gleeful GOP, and lead them. I didn’t see a single moment of shame from him or from any belligerent police officers this week. All I saw was pride. And I don’t see anyone who has the power to stop any of this right now laboring to do so.

This country built its modern reputation on two world wars that it was late to the party for. America was a decisive factor in both of those wars, but now finds itself late to a war happening on its own soil. If you can’t see that war outside your door right now, you’re either a fool or you’re cheering it on. I don’t want a fucking thing to do with you either way.

There is no acceptable response to Trump and the GOP right now other than outright hostility. All they want to do with power is hurt people with it. They are Nazis, and they have only begun fulfilling their grandest Nazi ambitions. I promise you that they won’t stop trying. Call them what they are. Nazis. Terrorists. This party cloaked itself in the American flag and now stands poised to render us history’s greatest disappointment.

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[Surly1]

Well past time to remove these monuments to American treason.

Jefferson Davis statue torn down in Richmond, Virginia



RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Protesters tore down a statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis along Richmond, Virginia’s famed Monument Avenue on Wednesday night.

The statue in the former capital of the Confederacy was toppled shortly before 11 p.m., news outlets reported.

Richmond police were on the scene and videos on social media showed the monument being towed away as a crowd cheered.

About 80 miles (130 kilometers) away, protesters in Portsmouth beheaded and then pulled down four statues that were part of a Confederate monument on Wednesday, according to media outlets.

Efforts to tear one of the statues down began around 8:20 p.m., but the rope they were using snapped, The Virginian-Pilot reported.

The crowd was frustrated by the Portsmouth City Council’s decision to put off moving the monument. They switched to throwing bricks from the post that held the plaque they had pulled down as they initially worked to bring down the statue.

The Pilot reports that they then started to dismantle the monument one piece at a time as a marching band played in the streets and other protesters danced.

A protester in his 30s was hit in the head as the monument fell, causing him to lose consciousness, Portsmouth NAACP Vice President Louie Gibbs told the newspaper. The crowd quieted as the man was taken to a hospital. His condition was not immediately clear.

A flag tied to the monument was lit on fire, and the flames burned briefly at the base of one of the statues.

The actions come amid national protests over the death of George Floyd who died after a police officer kneeled on his neck.

A statue of Christopher Columbus in Richmond was torn down by protesters, set on fire and then submerged into a lake on Tuesday. News outlets reported the Columbus statue was toppled less than two hours after protesters gathered in the city’s Byrd Park chanting for the statue to be taken down.

The death of Floyd, who was black, has prompted similar Confederate monument removals around the nation. Some people say the tributes inappropriately glorify people who led a rebellion that sought to uphold slavery. Others say their removal amounts to erasing history.

Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam last week ordered the removal of an iconic statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, which is four blocks away from where the Davis statue stood. A judge on Monday issued an injunction preventing officials from removing the monuments for the next 10 days.

Portsmouth Confederate statues beheaded, partially pulled down by protesters

Demonstrators beheaded four Confederate statues before pulling one down using a tow rope Wednesday night at the Portsmouth Confederate monument as police watched.

A protester was injured as the statue fell, hitting him on the head. Louie Gibbs, vice president of the Portsmouth NAACP, said the man, who was in his 30s, lost consciousness. The man’s head was cut open, and he was transported to the hospital.

After he was injured, demonstrators stopped to offer prayers and a quiet moment of solidarity before police told them they needed to leave the area.

Efforts to tear one of the statues down began around 8:20 p.m., but the rope they were using snapped.

The crowd, frustrated by the Portsmouth City Council’s decision to put off moving the monument, switched to throwing bricks from the post that held the plaque they had pulled down as they initially worked to tumble the statue. They then started to dismantle the monument one piece at a time as a marching band played in the streets and other protesters danced.

A flag tied to the monument was lit on fire, and the flames burned briefly at the base of one of the statues.

The monument, at the intersection of Court and High streets, sits at a site where slaves were punished on a whipping post, Cassandra Newby-Alexander, a Norfolk State University history professor, told The Virginian-Pilot in 2017.

The crowd watches on as a group works to pull down part of the Confederate monument during the Remove the Stain rally in Portsmouth, Va., on Wednesday, June 10, 2020. (Kristen Zeis / The Virginian-Pilot)

Using bolt cutters, one demonstrator knocked a rifle off of the statue. The dedication marker also was taken down. Later, some of the protesters knocked the heads off of all four of the figures.

The protesters gave a sword and rifle they ripped from the monument to 73-year-old Vietnam veteran John Hooks. Hooks was born in Portsmouth but has moved around over the years.

“I’m a mixed bag of emotions,” he said after someone handed him a piece of the monument. “This is where they sold us into slavery.”

A band plays as the Confederate monument is destroyed by protesters in Portsmouth, Va., on Wednesday, June 10, 2020. (Kristen Zeis / The Virginian-Pilot)

Hooks said Wednesday he noticed white, black and Asian people protesting together.

“You’ve kept your foot on our neck for 401 damn years. When are you going to get the hell off?” Hooks said.

Portsmouth Police Chief Angela Greene said at a press conference late Wednesday night that officers did not initially intervene with protesters in part because there was so few of them at the time, it would have put the officers at risk. She also said there was no immediate threat to public safety. However, once a protester was injured, she said police quickly stepped in.

She also said that an elected official — whom she would not name — had told police officers not to arrest protesters before Greene arrived on the scene, creating some confusion. By the time it was sorted out, Greene said the vandalism to the monument had already begun. She said by then, the police’s priority had changed from “the preservation of property to the preservation of life.”

Crowds gather for the Remove the Stain rally at the confederate monument in Portsmouth, Va., on Wednesday, June 10, 2020. (Kristen Zeis / The Virginian-Pilot)

Protesters started spray painting the monument in the afternoon after Portsmouth NAACP President James Boyd and Gibbs were arrested and charged with trespassing. Boyd and Gibbs were released about 30 minutes later on summons, according to defense attorney Don Scott, who also serves as a state delegate representing the 80th District. A police spokeswoman confirmed the charges.

The monument was covered with the letters “BLM” — black lives matter — written in black, green and red spray paint along with the name of George Floyd, a black man who pleaded for help as a white police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes in Minneapolis last month. His death has sparked protests across the country.

Saleen Martin✔

 · 10h

Replying to @Saleen_Martin

Saleen Martin✔@Saleen_Martin

One of the statues came down and hit a man in the head. People are calling for doctors and medics. I am not posting the video of it hitting this man. Everyone is taking a knee.

97

9:13 PM - Jun 10, 2020 · Portsmouth, VA

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"No curse words,” several people yelled to those with the spray paint cans as police officers watched in the afternoon.

Around 4 p.m., some demonstrators started painting “Black Lives Matter” in large yellow letters on the ground in front of the monument. As the crowd grew around 8 p.m., a demonstrator dumped a bucket of yellow paint on one of the figures on the monument and a few people threw water bottles at it.

Saleen Martin✔

 · 11h

Replying to @Saleen_Martin

Fire appears to be fizzling out now.

Saleen Martin✔@Saleen_Martin

Before vs. after

745

8:55 PM - Jun 10, 2020 · Portsmouth, VA

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The Portsmouth City Council held a virtual meeting at 5 p.m. Wednesday to discuss the monument and the day’s events. The meeting was scheduled before the publicized Remove the Stain rally was scheduled to begin at 7:57 p.m. at the monument. At the meeting, they put off a debate about what to do with the monument until next month.

Nate Whitaker, 18, was at the monument in the afternoon. He said it has no place in a city that is predominately black, and in fact, it has no place in any city.

“It represents hate,” said Whitaker, who went to I.C. Norcom High School and is headed to Morehouse College to study cinema and African American studies.

Former Councilman Mark Whitaker, Nate Whitaker’s father, said he raised the issue of removing the monument at a June 23, 2015, City Council meeting.

“My sentiment hasn’t changed. I’ve received a lot of criticism over it, but it’s a symbol that represents an ideology of white supremacy," Mark Whitaker said. “It really speaks to the consciousness of a city and of a people that would allow such an image of hate to continue to stand all these years.”

Handprints cover the Confederate monument during the Remove the Stain Rally at the confederate monument in Portsmouth, Va., on Wednesday, June 10, 2020. (Kristen Zeis / The Virginian-Pilot)

Boyd and Gibbs were arrested in the wake of another protest Tuesday night, where demonstrators placed bags and tarps over parts of the monument and left a message in front of the statue denouncing police brutality and systemic racism.

Video of the initial confrontation posted on Facebook showed Boyd and Gibbs standing inside the monument’s fence speaking with officers. They said they had previously received permission from city officials.

The woman narrating the video said Portsmouth mayoral candidate Cliff Page called the police and asked them to respond.

After several minutes, officers approached Boyd and Gibbs, placed them in handcuffs and walked them to waiting patrol vehicles.

Later in an interview with a Virginian-Pilot reporter, Page said he wants the monument to remain in its place.

“I don’t want it moved, I don’t want anything but staying here,” he said.

Hannah Iverson, of Portsmouth, said that her family fought for the Confederacy, but she doesn’t support keeping the monument. She said it belong in museums and history books, “not in our streets.”

Throughout the day, several people came to argue with protesters about the monument.

Two city workers came out to the monument during the protest Wednesday afternoon to install red metal no trespassing signs.

As the protesters watched, state Sen. Louise Lucas came out and complained about the arrest of Boyd and Gibbs.

“They can’t arrest them for going over to city property," she said, "They should not be arresting them.”

Earlier in the day, a police department spokeswoman said protesters went to the monument Tuesday night and “chalked an outline of a body on the ground with the words ‘I can’t breathe.’” The message alluded to the final words of Floyd as the police officer knelt on his neck.

Efforts to remove the monument from prominent view have been the subject of intense debate for years in Portsmouth. The conversation reached a boiling point three years ago after a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, where James Alex Fields Jr. drove a car into a crowd of people — killing one person.

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[Eddie]

Well past time to remove these monuments to American treason.

Jefferson Davis statue torn down in Richmond, Virginia



RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Protesters tore down a statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis along Richmond, Virginia’s famed Monument Avenue on Wednesday night.

The statue in the former capital of the Confederacy was toppled shortly before 11 p.m., news outlets reported.

Richmond police were on the scene and videos on social media showed the monument being towed away as a crowd cheered.

About 80 miles (130 kilometers) away, protesters in Portsmouth beheaded and then pulled down four statues that were part of a Confederate monument on Wednesday, according to media outlets.

Efforts to tear one of the statues down began around 8:20 p.m., but the rope they were using snapped, The Virginian-Pilot reported.

The crowd was frustrated by the Portsmouth City Council’s decision to put off moving the monument. They switched to throwing bricks from the post that held the plaque they had pulled down as they initially worked to bring down the statue.

The Pilot reports that they then started to dismantle the monument one piece at a time as a marching band played in the streets and other protesters danced.

A protester in his 30s was hit in the head as the monument fell, causing him to lose consciousness, Portsmouth NAACP Vice President Louie Gibbs told the newspaper. The crowd quieted as the man was taken to a hospital. His condition was not immediately clear.

A flag tied to the monument was lit on fire, and the flames burned briefly at the base of one of the statues.

The actions come amid national protests over the death of George Floyd who died after a police officer kneeled on his neck.

A statue of Christopher Columbus in Richmond was torn down by protesters, set on fire and then submerged into a lake on Tuesday. News outlets reported the Columbus statue was toppled less than two hours after protesters gathered in the city’s Byrd Park chanting for the statue to be taken down.

The death of Floyd, who was black, has prompted similar Confederate monument removals around the nation. Some people say the tributes inappropriately glorify people who led a rebellion that sought to uphold slavery. Others say their removal amounts to erasing history.

Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam last week ordered the removal of an iconic statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, which is four blocks away from where the Davis statue stood. A judge on Monday issued an injunction preventing officials from removing the monuments for the next 10 days.

Portsmouth Confederate statues beheaded, partially pulled down by protesters



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<p data-page="1" data-item-type="depthscroll" data-item-id="depth_scroll_top" data-item-number="top">Demonstrators beheaded four Confederate statues before pulling one down using a tow rope Wednesday night at the Portsmouth Confederate monument as police watched.</p>
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<p>A protester was injured as the statue fell, hitting him on the head. Louie Gibbs, vice president of the Portsmouth NAACP, said the man, who was in his 30s, lost consciousness. The man’s head was cut open, and he was transported to the hospital.</p>
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<p>After he was injured, demonstrators stopped to offer prayers and a quiet moment of solidarity before police told them they needed to leave the area.</p>
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<p>Efforts to tear one of the statues down began around 8:20 p.m., but the rope they were using snapped.</p>
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<p>The crowd, frustrated by the Portsmouth City Council’s decision to put off moving the monument, switched to throwing bricks from the post that held the plaque they had pulled down as they initially worked to tumble the statue. They then started to dismantle the monument one piece at a time as a marching band played in the streets and other protesters danced.</p>
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<p>A flag tied to the monument was lit on fire, and the flames burned briefly at the base of one of the statues.</p>
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<p>The monument, at the intersection of Court and High streets, sits at a site where slaves were punished on a whipping post, Cassandra Newby-Alexander, a Norfolk State University history professor<a href="https://www.pilotonline.com/history/article_c09deef2-f83c-5181-837b-23970020b2fc.html" target="_blank">, told The Virginian-Pilot in 2017.[/url]</p>
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<div>The crowd watches on as a group works to pull down part of the Confederate monument during the Remove the Stain rally in Portsmouth, Va., on Wednesday, June 10, 2020. <span>(Kristen Zeis / The Virginian-Pilot)</span></div>
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<p>Using bolt cutters, one demonstrator knocked a rifle off of the statue. The dedication marker also was taken down. Later, some of the protesters knocked the heads off of all four of the figures.</p>
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<p>The protesters gave a sword and rifle they ripped from the monument to 73-year-old Vietnam veteran John Hooks. Hooks was born in Portsmouth but has moved around over the years.</p>
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<p>“I’m a mixed bag of emotions,” he said after someone handed him a piece of the monument. “This is where they sold us into slavery.”</p>
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<div>A band plays as the Confederate monument is destroyed by protesters in Portsmouth, Va., on Wednesday, June 10, 2020. <span>(Kristen Zeis / The Virginian-Pilot)</span></div>
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<p>Hooks said Wednesday he noticed white, black and Asian people protesting together.</p>
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<p>“You’ve kept your foot on our neck for 401 damn years. When are you going to get the hell off?” Hooks said.</p>
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<p>Portsmouth Police Chief Angela Greene said at a press conference late Wednesday night that officers did not initially intervene with protesters in part because there was so few of them at the time, it would have put the officers at risk. She also said there was no immediate threat to public safety. However, once a protester was injured, she said police quickly stepped in.</p>
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<p>She also said that an elected official — whom she would not name — had told police officers not to arrest protesters before Greene arrived on the scene, creating some confusion. By the time it was sorted out, Greene said the vandalism to the monument had already begun. She said by then, the police’s priority had changed from “the preservation of property to the preservation of life.”</p>
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<div><img alt="Crowds gather for the Remove the Stain rally at the confederate monument in Portsmouth, Va., on Wednesday, June 10, 2020." data-src="https://www.pilotonline.com/resizer/CuFAEMFnnfB_qsQVtnWPenN_YFE=/1400x0/top/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/tronc/HC65QA5VPNHCZGA4YZQYQCIDJQ.jpg" data-src-small="https://www.pilotonline.com/resizer/vO66v6nbnyj21LdhpsKH6wbpUcA=/415x278/top/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/tronc/HC65QA5VPNHCZGA4YZQYQCIDJQ.jpg" data-src-medium="https://www.pilotonline.com/resizer/TWrqPm12LnH4UZTq4RzS1hL6Hjk=/800x536/top/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/tronc/HC65QA5VPNHCZGA4YZQYQCIDJQ.jpg" data-src-mobile="https://www.pilotonline.com/resizer/vO66v6nbnyj21LdhpsKH6wbpUcA=/415x278/top/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/tronc/HC65QA5VPNHCZGA4YZQYQCIDJQ.jpg" src="https://www.pilotonline.com/resizer/TWrqPm12LnH4UZTq4RzS1hL6Hjk=/800x536/top/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/tronc/HC65QA5VPNHCZGA4YZQYQCIDJQ.jpg" data-role="intersectionobserver" /></div>
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<div>Crowds gather for the Remove the Stain rally at the confederate monument in Portsmouth, Va., on Wednesday, June 10, 2020. <span>(Kristen Zeis / The Virginian-Pilot)</span></div>
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<p>Protesters started spray painting the monument in the afternoon after Portsmouth NAACP President James Boyd and Gibbs were arrested and charged with trespassing. Boyd and Gibbs were released about 30 minutes later on summons, according to defense attorney Don Scott, who also serves as a state delegate representing the 80th District. A police spokeswoman confirmed the charges.</p>
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<p>The monument was covered with the letters “BLM” — black lives matter — written in black, green and red spray paint along with the name of George Floyd, a black man who pleaded for help as a white police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes in Minneapolis last month. His death has sparked protests across the country.</p>
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<div> · <a data-scribe="element:mini_timestamp" href="https://twitter.com/Saleen_Martin/status/1270884262192074753"><time datetime="2020-06-11T01:03:14+0000" pubdate="" title="Time posted: June 11, 2020 01:03:14 (UTC)" aria-label="Posted 10 hours ago">10<abbr title="hours">h</abbr></time>[/url]</div>
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<div><span><span title="Saleen Martin" data-scribe="element:name">Saleen Martin</span></span><span><span data-scribe="element:verified_badge">✔</span></span><span title="@Saleen_Martin" data-scribe="element:screen_name" dir="ltr">@Saleen_Martin</span></div>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">One of the statues came down and hit a man in the head. People are calling for doctors and medics. I am not posting the video of it hitting this man. Everyone is taking a knee.</p>
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<div><a title="Like" href="https://twitter.com/intent/like?tweet_id=1270886937432395777" data-scribe="component:actions"><span data-scribe="element:heart_count">97</span>[/url]</div>
<div><a data-datetime="2020-06-11T01:13:52+0000" data-scribe="element:full_timestamp" href="https://twitter.com/Saleen_Martin/status/1270886937432395777"><time datetime="2020-06-11T01:13:52+0000" pubdate="" title="Time posted: June 11, 2020 01:13:52 (UTC)">9:13 PM - Jun 10, 2020</time>[/url] · Portsmouth, VA</div>
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<p>"No curse words,” several people yelled to those with the spray paint cans as police officers watched in the afternoon.</p>
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<p>Around 4 p.m., some demonstrators started painting “Black Lives Matter” in large yellow letters on the ground in front of the monument. As the crowd grew around 8 p.m., a demonstrator dumped a bucket of yellow paint on one of the figures on the monument and a few people threw water bottles at it.</p>
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<div> · <a data-scribe="element:mini_timestamp" href="https://twitter.com/Saleen_Martin/status/1270881202963132429"><time datetime="2020-06-11T00:51:05+0000" pubdate="" title="Time posted: June 11, 2020 00:51:05 (UTC)" aria-label="Posted 11 hours ago">11<abbr title="hours">h</abbr></time>[/url]</div>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Fire appears to be fizzling out now.</p>
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<div><span><span title="Saleen Martin" data-scribe="element:name">Saleen Martin</span></span><span><span data-scribe="element:verified_badge">✔</span></span><span title="@Saleen_Martin" data-scribe="element:screen_name" dir="ltr">@Saleen_Martin</span></div>
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<div><a data-datetime="2020-06-11T00:55:28+0000" data-scribe="element:full_timestamp" href="https://twitter.com/Saleen_Martin/status/1270882307700928512"><time datetime="2020-06-11T00:55:28+0000" pubdate="" title="Time posted: June 11, 2020 00:55:28 (UTC)">8:55 PM - Jun 10, 2020</time>[/url] · Portsmouth, VA</div>
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<p>The Portsmouth City Council held a virtual meeting at 5 p.m. Wednesday to discuss the monument and the day’s events. The meeting was scheduled before the publicized Remove the Stain rally was scheduled to begin at 7:57 p.m. at the monument. At the meeting, they put off a debate about what to do with the monument until next month.</p>
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<p data-item-type="depthscroll" data-item-id="depth_scroll_middle" data-item-number="middle">Nate Whitaker, 18, was at the monument in the afternoon. He said it has no place in a city that is predominately black, and in fact, it has no place in any city.</p>
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<p>“It represents hate,” said Whitaker, who went to I.C. Norcom High School and is headed to Morehouse College to study cinema and African American studies.</p>
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<p>Former Councilman Mark Whitaker, Nate Whitaker’s father, said he raised the issue of removing the monument at a June 23, 2015, City Council meeting.</p>
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<p>“My sentiment hasn’t changed. I’ve received a lot of criticism over it, but it’s a symbol that represents an ideology of white supremacy," Mark Whitaker said. “It really speaks to the consciousness of a city and of a people that would allow such an image of hate to continue to stand all these years.”</p>
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<div><img alt="Handprints cover the Confederate monument during the Remove the Stain Rally at the confederate monument in Portsmouth, Va., on Wednesday, June 10, 2020." data-src="https://www.pilotonline.com/resizer/kUqu4B7LiiOP7eQNUEwbhpfaGmA=/1400x0/top/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/tronc/JAXTWLEGVFEGJM2ZV33FIBWH4M.jpg" data-src-small="https://www.pilotonline.com/resizer/TANrqxokVRpuvmYZBT-1_mxgWrI=/415x278/top/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/tronc/JAXTWLEGVFEGJM2ZV33FIBWH4M.jpg" data-src-medium="https://www.pilotonline.com/resizer/K-Ulhgv0nFvn7XVnPE8-d6A3E9U=/800x536/top/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/tronc/JAXTWLEGVFEGJM2ZV33FIBWH4M.jpg" data-src-mobile="https://www.pilotonline.com/resizer/TANrqxokVRpuvmYZBT-1_mxgWrI=/415x278/top/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/tronc/JAXTWLEGVFEGJM2ZV33FIBWH4M.jpg" src="https://www.pilotonline.com/resizer/K-Ulhgv0nFvn7XVnPE8-d6A3E9U=/800x536/top/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/tronc/JAXTWLEGVFEGJM2ZV33FIBWH4M.jpg" data-role="intersectionobserver" /></div>
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<div>Handprints cover the Confederate monument during the Remove the Stain Rally at the confederate monument in Portsmouth, Va., on Wednesday, June 10, 2020. <span>(Kristen Zeis / The Virginian-Pilot)</span></div>
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<p>Boyd and Gibbs were arrested in the wake of another protest Tuesday night, where demonstrators placed bags and tarps over parts of the monument and left a message in front of the statue denouncing police brutality and systemic racism.</p>
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<p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/BLM757/posts/2321647154796417" target="_blank">Video of the initial confrontation [/url]posted on Facebook showed Boyd and Gibbs standing inside the monument’s fence speaking with officers. They said they had previously received permission from city officials.</p>
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<p>The woman narrating the video said Portsmouth mayoral candidate Cliff Page called the police and asked them to respond.</p>
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<p>After several minutes, officers approached Boyd and Gibbs, placed them in handcuffs and walked them to waiting patrol vehicles.</p>
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<p>Later in an interview with a Virginian-Pilot reporter, Page said he wants the monument to remain in its place.</p>
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<p>“I don’t want it moved, I don’t want anything but staying here,” he said.</p>
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<p>Hannah Iverson, of Portsmouth, said that her family fought for the Confederacy, but she doesn’t support keeping the monument. She said it belong in museums and history books, “not in our streets.”</p>
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<p>Throughout the day, several people came to argue with protesters about the monument.</p>
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<p>Two city workers came out to the monument during the protest Wednesday afternoon to install red metal no trespassing signs.</p>
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<p>As the protesters watched, state Sen. Louise Lucas came out and complained about the arrest of Boyd and Gibbs.</p>
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<p>“They can’t arrest them for going over to city property," she said, "They should not be arresting them.”</p>
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<p>Earlier in the day, a police department spokeswoman said protesters went to the monument Tuesday night and “chalked an outline of a body on the ground with the words ‘I can’t breathe.’” The message alluded to the final words of Floyd as the police officer knelt on his neck.</p>
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<p data-page="2">Efforts to remove the monument from prominent view have been the subject of intense debate for years in Portsmouth. The conversation reached a boiling point three years ago after a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, where James Alex Fields Jr. drove a car into a crowd of people — killing one person.</p>
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Really, this is the least of my concerns......but it is exactly the kind of mob behavior that worries me....when it gets applied to cars and shops and businesses.

It isn't just tearing down statues that bothers me. It's the general tearing down of the rule of law.

And the response by the people who are supposed to be in charge...who are managing it rather poorly.

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[RE]

Well past time to remove these monuments to American treason.

So if Alaskans voted to Secede from the FSoA, we would be Traitors?

RE

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[Surly1]

Well past time to remove these monuments to American treason.

So if Alaskans voted to Secede from the FSoA, we would be Traitors?

RE

Welcome to Hotel California, motherfucker.

I have been vigorously arguing elsewhere with a right wing troll who says that secession was NOT treason, per se. It seems to me that if you swear an oath to defend the constitution, and you violate that oath and go to war with the country who continues to operate under that constitution, you've got a treasonous behavior. I'm sure there is a legal argument otherwise; hell, even Alan Dershowitz was able to cobble together defenses for Jeffrey Epstein in between "massages" from underage girls, so a lawyer can argue anything.

When you secede, we call the nukes.

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[RE]

Well past time to remove these monuments to American treason.

So if Alaskans voted to Secede from the FSoA, we would be Traitors?

RE

Welcome to Hotel California, motherfucker.

I have been vigorously arguing elsewhere with a right wing troll who says that secession was NOT treason, per se. It seems to me that if you swear an oath to defend the constitution, and you violate that oath and go to war with the country who continues to operate under that constitution, you've got a treasonous behavior. I'm sure there is a legal argument otherwise; hell, even Alan Dershowitz was able to cobble together defenses for Jeffrey Epstein in between "massages" from underage girls, so a lawyer can argue anything.

When you secede, we call the nukes.

Well, it's not a Free society if you're not free to leave.  And so much for Democracy as well.

RE

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[Eddie]

The history of the secession argument is interesting, It was the north that first threatened to secede, around 1825 if I remember correctly.

Subsequent to the Civil War, the emergence of a strong federal government with federal law that clearly trumped state laws.....which was a major turning point in history that most people don't quite get (especially right wing trolls)  secession by a state or group of states became impossible.....and it will stay impossible until such time as the federal government is not longer able to enforce its hegemony.

In other words, the federal government will have to abandon its current role....of collecting most of the tax and handing out benefits to the states...and enforcing the interstate commerce clause, etc, etc,.

Secession is a redneck pipe dream.

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[Surly1]

The history of the secession argument is interesting, It was the north that first threatened to secede, around 1825 if I remember correctly.

Subsequent to the Civil War, the emergence of a strong federal government with federal law that clearly trumped state laws.....which was a major turning point in history that most people don't quite get (especially right wing trolls)  secession by a state or group of states became impossible.....and it will stay impossible until such time as the federal government is not longer able to enforce its hegemony.

In other words, the federal government will have to abandon its current role....of collecting most of the tax and handing out benefits to the states...and enforcing the interstate commerce clause, etc, etc,.

Secession is a redneck pipe dream.

Point me to the 1825 thing, if you will. I like to think I know my history, but I don't know this reference.

Before the Civil War, the country was These United States; after, it was The United States. To your point.

Also to your point, red states are net takers of Fed largesse, and blue statues are net payers. They won't like it in cousinfuck country when the checks quit coming in.

As I said to RE, welcome to Hotel California. Uncle Cracker ain't going' anywhere.

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[Surly1]

Well past time to remove these monuments to American treason.

So if Alaskans voted to Secede from the FSoA, we would be Traitors?

RE

Welcome to Hotel California, motherfucker.

I have been vigorously arguing elsewhere with a right wing troll who says that secession was NOT treason, per se. It seems to me that if you swear an oath to defend the constitution, and you violate that oath and go to war with the country who continues to operate under that constitution, you've got a treasonous behavior. I'm sure there is a legal argument otherwise; hell, even Alan Dershowitz was able to cobble together defenses for Jeffrey Epstein in between "massages" from underage girls, so a lawyer can argue anything.

When you secede, we call the nukes.

Well, it's not a Free society if you're not free to leave.  And so much for Democracy as well.

RE

Who's stopping you? Got a passport? No? Go get one.
Somalia is beautiful this time of year: dust, and locusts.
You can open the Diner Mogadishu bureau.

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[Surly1]

Well past time to remove these monuments to American treason.

So if Alaskans voted to Secede from the FSoA, we would be Traitors?

RE

More likely, shortsighted assholes.

Alaska ranks 7th on the scale of states most dependent upon Federal tax dollars. With most Alaskans on the slurp, I don't like your chances of "independence." Perhaps Vlad wants to acquire a vacation dacha in Juneau.

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[Eddie]

The history of the secession argument is interesting, It was the north that first threatened to secede, around 1825 if I remember correctly.

Subsequent to the Civil War, the emergence of a strong federal government with federal law that clearly trumped state laws.....which was a major turning point in history that most people don't quite get (especially right wing trolls)  secession by a state or group of states became impossible.....and it will stay impossible until such time as the federal government is not longer able to enforce its hegemony.

In other words, the federal government will have to abandon its current role....of collecting most of the tax and handing out benefits to the states...and enforcing the interstate commerce clause, etc, etc,.

Secession is a redneck pipe dream.

Point me to the 1825 thing, if you will. I like to think I know my history, but I don't know this reference.

Before the Civil War, the country was These United States; after, it was The United States. To your point.

Also to your point, red states are net takers of Fed largesse, and blue statues are net payers. They won't like it in cousinfuck country when the checks quit coming in.

As I said to RE, welcome to Hotel California. Uncle Cracker ain't going' anywhere.

I was a little confused...it was 1814....the Hartford Convention.....it didn't get a lot of traction. It was over the War of 1812, near the last gasp of the Federalist Party.

In 1828 South Carolina first started making secession noises, at that time over tariffs.

https://www.politico.com/story/2012/11/10-facts-about-secession-from-us-083856

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