Kathleen Parkers column that appeared in the Nov. 14 Telegram was a written version of selective hearing and a lopsided view of what has happened.

According to the U.S. Constitution, it is the Electoral College that has the heavy lifting in determining who has won the election. There are many steps in the process that involve the voters, each states governor, sending of certificates of the vote to the NARA (National Archives and Records Administration), the deadline for receipts of the electoral votes (on Dec. 23 this year), the transfer of certificates to Congress and the counting of the electoral votes in Congress.

It is at that time that the number 270 becomes significant, as that is the determining majority needed for the president and vice president be elected.

Interesting side note: In the absence of a majority of Electoral votes the House of Representatives selects the president and the Senate selects the vice president. (see https://www.archives.gov/electoral-college)

Where, Kathleen, is your disgust and vitriol for the Not my President crowd? Have they contributed to our nations common sense of purpose? All I could see is that the group sows division and uses violence to promote hatred and keep peoples emotions so amped up that rational thinking is overwhelmed.

After voting, most people just went back to their lives. Antifa and BLM attacked and injured Trump supporters. Apparently, the Lefts definition of tolerance does not include people who dont think like them.

April Cousins

Little River-Academy

Read more here:

Parker column, Electoral College, Antifa and BLM | Letters To The Editor | tdtnews.com - Temple Daily Telegram

Russell Schultz is a former member of the Proud Boys who offers some insight into why men would want to join the group and what happens inside of it. But while Schultz has quit the group, he hasn't quit the mindset.

On the night of a recent Million MAGA March in Washington DC, a large man in a Proud Boys polo shirt runs at a Black woman from behind and punches her in the head. She falls to the pavement.

Russell Schultz sent video of the episode to CNN, saying the puncher should go to jail. The sentiment is a bit of a shift for Schultz, a former Proud Boy whos been filmed in street brawls himself and who often shows up at protests in Portland, Oregon, with a giant black flag that reads, F**K ANTIFA.

The Proud Boys is the group President Donald Trump urged to stand back and stand by as he refused to condemn White supremacists during a political debate this fall. Members have become a recurring feature of political rallies across the country, whether at their own events, as counterprotesters at left-wing rallies or as security for other right-wing groups events. Some have been filmed getting into street fights.

Why do men join the Proud Boys? Most of it is just to fight, Schultz said. They want to join a gang. So they can go fight antifa and hurt people that they dont like, and feel justified in doing it.

Last year, he was indicted for rioting after a brawl between far-right protesters and anti-fascists in Portland. He pleaded not guilty, and with another activist involved in the brawl Joey Gibson of the right-wing group Patriot Prayer hes filed a federal lawsuit against the Multnomah County district attorney, claiming theyre being unfairly prosecuted because of their political beliefs. The case is pending.

Schultz, 51, joined the Proud Boys in the fall of 2017 and left in May 2019. He says he quit, but the Proud Boys say he was kicked out. His exit should not be interpreted as a total repudiation of all the Proud Boys stand for, or a new enlightened state opposed to all political violence. Schultz still shows up at rallies, and hes still motivated by antipathy toward antifa. He defends his past actions with the Proud Boys, including violent threats, as justified to fight antifa. Or he dismisses them as just jokes.

The blurred line between whats ironic and whats sincere is a feature of the new far-right that was born on the internet in the Trump era. (Schultz said the word joke about three dozen times in the couple hours CNN interviewed him.) Its harder for someone to be held accountable for what he believes if its not clear what, exactly, he believes. And it allows him to try on a persona with the safety valve of being able to say later it was all fake.

In person, Schultz is mild-mannered and polite. In his old Proud Boys videos, hes menacing. He now says he was just emulating the promo videos of professional wrestlers.

In 2017, Schultz was at a free speech rally with Patriot Prayer. All (of a) sudden fights are breaking out all over the place, and here come marching across a field are these guys in black-and-yellow-striped polos, Schultz said. And it, to me, it just looked like something from Braveheart.'

They were the Proud Boys. The first degree of membership in the Proud Boys is to declare you are one, which Schultz later did. The second degree is to be punched while reciting the names of five breakfast cereals, which he did, too.

It was just a joke. No one hits hard, Schultz says. The five breakfast cereals is a joke thats supposed to emulate getting beat into a gang. You know, it is just a spoof, a parody, but it got taken too far.

Heres another supposed joke: An ex-member recently said on the encrypted messaging app Telegram that he was staging a coup so Proud Boys would no longer capitulate to the left: We recognize that the West was built by the White Race alone and we owe nothing to any other race. Proud Boys chairman Enrique Tarrio said there was no coup. Then both sides said they were just joking.

Schultz is Jewish and says he voted for Obama twice before voting for Trump twice. He liked the Proud Boys joking and the drinking. But he began to notice some patterns among those who joined. They join the group now because it gives them a sense of belonging. They have this inner-person side that they want to be, but theyre afraid to be.

Theyre men whove never had wingmen before, he says. Theyre afraid to say whats on their mind for fear of getting into a fight. But if they have that guy or that group behind them, theyre more bold in saying what they think, because they think someone has their back. The Proud Boys are the vehicle that attracts those people and accepts them in.

In the fragments of his social media presence left behind from his Proud Boys days (he got kicked off Facebook and Instagram), Schultzs on-screen presence suggests hed found the confidence to be quite outspoken.

Ahead of what he called a pro-Jesus march in December 2018, Schultz posted a video warning antifa not to disrupt it. He says, in part:

At the last rally I nearly ran over you with a car and I didnt feel bad about it one bit. Youre lucky I didnt kill you because I wouldnt feel any remorse.

You shoot me with feces I cant prove you cant prove you didnt put something in it like HIV.

I am going to shoot you. And heres where the best part of the odds is, I still have a chance to fight for my freedom in court. You dont have a chance to fight for your freedom cause youre f**king dead. See Im going to shoot you in the chest or your head. Center mass.

It might be in your best interest not to show up with feces infested with HIV, whatever it is, and live, live so you can see what were planning in 2019. Cause if you shoot us with feces theres a good chance you might not survive to see 2019.

When CNN said these looked like violent threats, Schultz defended them. They are violent threats and its for good reason, too, he said. Antifa was saying they were going to come over and start throwing urine and feces on us. And so that was my way of saying, OK, if you do that, thats a threat. I dont know if it was AIDS-tainted. And I made that threat so they wouldnt come over. And they didnt come over. So, it worked.

CNN reached out to Rose City Antifa, the Portland-area anti-fascist group, about these allegations. No one from our organization threatened to throw poop at the Jesus thing. Rose City Antifa has never put AIDS in poop. Nor am I certain how one would do so.

This video had, in fact, been downloaded and posted by Rose City Antifa, which has been tracking Schultz for years. Though public protests are what get the most attention, most of what anti-fascists do and Schultz agrees with this is online. They research and document far-right activists they deem fascist and make that information public. This resulting document is called a doxx which can be a simple collection of biographical details but often functions as a kind of indictment, listing specific acts of racism or misogyny, as well as associations with other people deemed fascist.

In Schultzs case, they made fliers about him and posted them around his neighborhood and his local bar. Violent Alt-Right Organizer In Your Area, the fliers headline reads.

He was just one of the dudes in the crowd at rallies, explained A., an activist with Rose City Antifa who would not give a full name. (The vast majority of anti-fascist activists are anonymous, they say out of fear of far-right violence.) But outside of that context hes much more vocal, especially on social media. Schultzs social media presence was one of the most remarkable things about him, A. said, in that he made explicit threats.

Schultz, in A.s view, has this Im an operator mindset that older right-wing men have. They get really into the idea (that) this is like their war and thinking through and trying to get into the mind of the opposition. Its very Rambo-y, but it also descends into a misogynistic and creeper vibe by listing all the terrible things theyre going to do to you.

Included in Rose City Antifas doxx of Schultz is one of his old Facebook posts, which says, Feminism only works on and when there are guys willing to F**K you. Schultz said this, too, was just a joke, just trolling.

In fact, he had a reputation for being good at trolling, at saying things that would make antifa upset, Schultz said. Like what? Like what you just mentioned, about women only have power as long as theres men willing to you know which, coming from me, with two beautiful daughters, you know, its contrary to my whole life.

He explained all of his past commentary by saying, Anything I ever did that was incendiary was so that (antifa) would see it and react to it.

He says he wanted more antifa activists to show up at right-wing rallies not for the street battle, but for the more important media battle.

Im not baiting them into doing violence. Im baiting them into showing up in enough numbers. Because when you see enough people in Black Bloc, people get scared, Schultz said, referring to the activist tactic of wearing black clothes and face coverings to avoid identification. The people that arent involved in (the protests), that dont think about it they see all these people looking like ISIS.

A., of Rose City Antifa, said they did monitor the videos Schultz and his comrades made as a way to gauge how many would turn out at their rallies and what their emotional state would be. They took note when a far-right activist would give away a little more operational detail than he should have.

I think a lot of people assume the end goal of doxxing is to get Nazis to not be Nazis anymore by convincing them of the flaws of their ideology, A. said. Thats not necessarily the case. There are other organizations that help deradicalize people. The main goal, A. said, is to provide a community resource to people directly affected by activists like Schultz and then present clear obstacles to their continued organizing.

Before speaking to CNN, A. said, Rose City Antifa went through their old doxxes. They see them as successful, particularly for the less prominent activists theyve targeted. The older and slightly more marginal types they really do not come around anymore.

Schultz says he quit the Proud Boys in 2019 for a couple of reasons. One, the men who wanted to climb the ranks of leadership were taking it too seriously, he says. They were making a more formalized national hierarchy, Schultz says, and he thought that would bring more intense scrutiny from law enforcement and reporters and he worried that if one member committed a crime, they could all be liable for it. Schultz also felt pressure from one of his daughters to quit, he says.

The Proud Boys chairman says Schultz was kicked out, namely because he would make a complete ass of himself in videos on social media.

Scorned ex-girlfriends are the worst. As soon as you break up with them, they want to lie to the world and say how small your equipment is, Tarrio told CNN, in reference to Schultz. Currently there is no criminal activity happening in the Proud Boys.

Asked what Tarrio would say about him, Schultz said, Oh, hell probably talk crap about me. I dont care. Enrique always deflects.

As we watched the video of the man in the Proud Boys polo punch the woman in Washington, we asked Schultz: Did he feel like he helped bring the nation to this point, with his propaganda?

Yeah. Honestly, I had a role in it. I never advocated for the violence to come out of it, though.

In other words, he still says it was just a joke.

View original post here:

What an ex-Proud Boy says happens within the groups ranks - WTOP

After months of carnage in US cities, tensions are rising between the two main perpetrators, Antifa and Black Lives Matter. Given their different ethnic make-ups and agendas, its a shock this unholy alliance lasted so long.

If there are two organizations that can be held most responsible for the riots that have scarred America throughout 2020, it is Black Lives Matter and Antifa. These groups have caused millions upon millions of dollars worth of damage and committed hundreds of crimes in the pursuit of what they consider justice.

I know the true end game for these groups is not the election of Joe Biden, but I get the sense that theyre at least happy that Donald Trump is going to be out of office (barring the biggest case of voter fraud in history). And with that small victory, it would appear that a divorce is under way between the two groups.

According to certainsources, there have been tensions for months over Antifas way of doing things and whether or not this has tainted the protests. After all, when you start lighting cities on fire across the nation, its pretty safe to assume that people are going to stop listening. You go from being someone with something to say to someone intent on destruction. Hardly the best way to get a point across.

There are also issues over authenticity. Some BLM activists are pointing out that many of the members of Antifa are white and privileged. And the Antifa groups are digging through social media trying to cancel social justice protesters. So, it seems like Antifa is too white and too rich for BLM tastes, and some organizers in BLM arent pure enough for Antifa.

As someone who has seen both of these groups do what they can to damage his country, its hard not laugh as I watch this all play out, mostly because its entirely predictable if you understand the reality of the situation. On one side, there are Black Lives Matter organizers with skeletons in theircloset. On the flip side, Antifas demographic tends to be rather similar to a Ku Klux Klan meeting.

These issues have been pointed out over the course of months. Many people on social media have seen videos of mostly white crowds, made up of Antifa supporters, chanting BLM slogans. The irony of the situation is that theyre usually chanting them at someone who is not white. And for all of their supposed attempts at seeking justice, all they have managed to do so far is light fires as another old white guy was nominated by the Democrats.

In a sense, all it was going to take was time for these groups to actually look at one another and realize that there is no natural fit. That is the funny part. Both of these groups are doomed to fail, because they do not seek anything positive. They say that they do, but actions speak louder than words. You cannot claim to want justice for one group while committing injustices toward another and expect people to pay attention.

The bitter irony? Two groups that say that they are battling for racial justice are dividing among racial lines. If the irony were any more delicious, you could serve it up as a Thanksgiving dessert.

Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

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Is ANYONE actually surprised that rioting comrades Antifa & BLM are seeking a divorce as racial tensions come to the fore? - RT

Members and allies of the far-right group the Proud Boys, some wearing bulletproof vests and armed with knives, marched through the streets of Sacramento on Saturday in a show of force, blasting loud music and chanting while attempting to provoke counterprotesters.

The day of political demonstrations began in the morning and stretched late into the afternoon; it was the fourth consecutive weekend of pro-Trump protests in the state capital, according to local news reports. A handful of arrests have resulted from the demonstrations. Another is planned for this coming Saturday.

The Proud Boys are a loose network of self-styled Western chauvinists that the Anti-Defamation League describes as a right-wing extremist group. In the hours following a peaceful demonstration at the state Capitol building two days after Thanksgiving, they spilled into the streets of downtown Sacramento, chanting Whose streets? Our streets! and F*ck antifa! while butting up against police cordons that blocked their path. The demonstrators exchanged insults and threats with roughly a dozen people identified as part of antifa, a loose connection of anti-fascist activists, often shouting across police blockades.

Each protest has followed a similar pattern, beginning with peaceful demonstrations and speeches in the public park outside the Capitol building, organized by President Trump supporters who believe the election was stolen, or anti-maskers furious at public health mandates implemented by Gov. Gavin Newsom and other Democratic leaders.

The San Francisco-based office of the ADL for the Central Pacific region is alert to the ongoing demonstrations, particularly the presence of the Proud Boys. In an email statement to J., the ADL said the events were a cause for concern for a number of reasons even though it had not noticed any overtly antisemitic expressions by demonstrators.

First, they bring attention and possibly attract new adherents to extremist agendas and groups like the Proud Boys, the statement said. Second, their provocative and divisive rhetoric can and does lead to violence, as we saw in Sacramento and elsewhere.

An ADL report describes the group, an all-male national network of die-hard Trump supporters who espouse traditional Western values and frequently find themselves in street brawls with counterprotesters, as bigoted, misogynistic and xenophobic. The Southern Poverty Law Center calls it a hate group. Many Proud Boys reject the racist label, instead describing themselves as American patriots who refuse to apologize for creating the modern world.

Proud Boy leader and founder Gavin McInnes, a former media executive, calls the group alt-light, although members have partnered with more overtly white supremacist and antisemitic groups, such as those who participated in the violent Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017.

The Proud Boys gained widespread notoriety during a Sept. 29 presidential debate when Trump, evasive when asked to condemn the group, instead haltingly told them to stand back, and stand by.

Autumn Gonzalez, an organizer with NorCal Resist, an immigrant-aid group in Sacramento that supports counterprotesters, described the melting pot of right-wing ideologies present at the pro-Trump rallies.

Theres a crossover between Jeffersonian-type conservatives who feel unrepresented by the state government in California, and more traditional hate groups like the Proud Boys, she said, as well as other various MAGA folks who arent necessarily in an organization, just big Trump supporter-type people.

The crowd matched Gonzalezs description representing a cross-section of Californias right-wing contingent united in their support for the president.

Among the attendees were anti-communist Chinese activists distributing flyers to expose the ills of the Chinese Communist Party; anti-maskers fuming at public health mandates they believe to be a violation of their liberty, average pro-Trump conservatives waving American flags, and petitioners making demands to recall Gavin Newsom. There was even a table set up by a fringe group of California secessionists advocating for New California, a 51st state, featuring low taxation and conservative values.

The rally had a strong Christian current running through it. At times it resembled an evangelical revival mixed with a political rally. One man flew a Christian flag a white banner with a navy square backgrounding a red cross alongside an American flag. On multiple occasions attendees bowed their heads in prayer.

Lydia Mitchell of the Path Ministry in Sacramento delivered a fiery sermon, railing against enemies on the left who want to take our country out and make it a one-world government.

Critiques of globalists were frequent; one demonstrator waved a sign reading defund George Soros and another wore a T-shirt with the QAnon motto: Where we go one, we go all.

We know our president stands for God and puts him first, Mitchell said. And his main agenda is to bring Jesus and the lord back to America.

The Proud Boys were a focal point of the event, celebrated almost like a high school football team symbols of manliness, if a bit amateurish. They even have team colors: yellow and black.

We support our Proud Boys! a speaker said to loud cheers, commending them for protecting demonstrators from these fools who try to come out here and harass us for being American.

The leader of the Central Valley branch, known as Shawn K., spoke to the crowd about his devout Christianity and his decision to homeschool his elementary school-age daughters to provide them a Christian education.

When the rally was over, the Proud Boys went on the march.

A crowd of supporters carrying American flags and Trump flags, wearing bandanas over their faces to conceal their identities and wearing bulletproof vests with Dont Tread on Me patches moved through downtown Sacramento, blasting music on boom boxes and yelling chants in rhythm.

Police cordoned off city blocks to prevent violent confrontations, lining up in rows from sidewalk to sidewalk wearing riot gear and holding batons. Some were on horseback. Their goal was to stand between opposing protest groups after earlier demonstrations led to scuffles and arrests.

There were roughly a dozen counterprotesters identified as members of antifa. Its adherents, like the Proud Boys, make up a loose network of activists united in their opposition to fascism, who will at times use force against it. Members range in their worldviews and political outlooks, though most are anti-capitalist, and identify as political anarchists or communists. Some antifa members engaged in destructive protests during periods of social unrest over the summer.

Protesters on opposite ends of the political spectrum frequently stood nose-to-nose exchanging insults and threats. At other times they stood silently facing each other, inches apart, daring someone to make a move, as police officers looked on.

At one point, a right-wing protester confronted a J. reporter, yelling insults and blocking the reporters iPhone lens. Asked if he was a Proud Boy, he responded, Im a white boy, motherf*cker.

Many Proud Boys reject the idea that they are racists or white supremacists. The group includes non-white members, although nearly all of the Proud Boys demonstrating in Sacramento were white.

J. interviewed a Proud Boy named Odin, who declined to give his real name for fear of retaliation from an employer. Odin, who wore a black cowboy hat and a bandana over his face, said he is a former Muslim and now a Christian, and that the Proud Boys accept people of all races, provided they believe in the foundational value of Western chauvinism.

He understood that to mean family values based on the traditional nuclear family, where men were men, women were women.

The problem is preserving those traditional Western ethics, morals, he said. A Western chauvinist is a proud American patriot.

Asked about the Proud Boys approach to violence, and why he carried a knife and wore a bulletproof vest, Odin said it was for protection. We never start the fight, but we finish it, he said.

Critics of the Proud Boys say the group often uses language that obscures some of its core beliefs, and that the phrase Western chauvinism is a smokescreen for a fundamentally white supremacist and xenophobic ethos.

Proud Boys also commonly flash a hand gesture associated with white supremacy. The OK symbol a circle formed with the thumb and forefinger with the other three fingers extended up, resembling the letters WP for white power became an internet meme three years ago.

Some have called the use of the hand signal an ironic joke. But it has been used by violent white supremacists like Brenton Tarrant, the Christchurch mosque shooter, who flashed the gesture to reporters at a court hearing in 2019.

On Saturday, numerous Proud Boys made the OK or white power gesture while posing for photos.

The ADL warned about the type of political rhetoric advanced by the Proud Boys and others like it, which may work to divide Americans along racial, ethnic or other lines.

Their coarsened and extreme speech and conspiracy theories pit Americans against each other, the ADL statement read, which forms the basis for antisemitism and other forms of bigotry against marginalized groups.

See the original post:

In Sacramento, Proud Boys take to the streets, and they're angry J. - The Jewish News of Northern California

Michelle Dawson, a pro-Trump councilwoman in Yacolt, Washington, recently went viral for the tearful rant. She posted her tearful diatribe after her husband was fired for harassing a journalist at the so-called "Million MAGA March" held in Washington DC following the election.

In the video, Dawson sobs and blames "antifa" for her husband, Jeremy Dawson, losing his job as a construction foreman. She charges his employer with "bend[ing] their knee to fascism."

Michelle has since deleted her video, but not before Twitter account @JaredPushner snagged a copy. The account intercut Michelle's video with footage of Jeremy's interaction with the journalist that resulted in his firing.

The account called for people to be the judge of Dawson's actions.

Councilwoman Michelle Dawson is very upset that her husband Jeremy was fired from his job. She blames it on Antifa. https://t.co/TkGBPBgpQJ

In her portion of the video, Michelle is heard acknowledging her husband could have handled himself better. But she downplays his choices in behavior, calling them simply "probably not my husband's best moment."

Boys will be boys and everyone makes mistakes so let's overlook his actions, right Michelle?

The footage of Jeremy, however, tells a different story. In the clips shown in, Jeremy was seen both verbally and physically assaulting Portland, Oregon reporter Laura Jedeed, calling her a "bitch" and a "maggot-a**" and stepping on her foot.

Jedeed repeatedly asked him to step back away from her. Jeremy refused.

Jeremy then issued a veiled threat to Jedeed.

Jedeed asked for clarification as to what will happen in the lobby, but Jeremy doesn't respond.

The video then cuts back to Michelle, who is weeping while decrying the supposed violence of antifa.

At no point did Jedeed threaten, curse at or come in voluntary physical contact with Jeremy Dawsonnor were any "antifa" around.

The video concludes with shots of Michelle Dawson weeping and saying she's afraid to get out of her car, cut with shots of her husband physically shoving Jedeed while taunting her and yelling in her face. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the video did not garner much sympathy for the Dawsons.

People on Twitter were outraged.

@JaredPushner Actions have consequences. I have no sympathy for Michelle Dawson or her husband. None.

@JaredPushner Jesus.. all I see is this guy is dangerous. What kind of man speaks to and intimidates a woman like https://t.co/gmdxbPZR1f

@JaredPushner He got off easy being fired. He should have been arrested for endangerment and harassment. My money i https://t.co/dqVDug6Pq1

@JaredPushner His fault 100%, even if this actually was a member of Antifa (rather than a basic BLM protestor) ho https://t.co/yzFC5ls9ul

@JaredPushner @CopingMAGA Get in someones face, dont back off when politely asked, threaten them harm ..... the https://t.co/Gg5AaUQGBG

And on Reddit, where the video was posted to PublicFreakout, people were similarly unsympathetic.

"Well what did we learn? Actions have consequences." --Cjohnso186102

"I have never smiled so much watching someone cry as I did with this video. F'k her. Hope she gets fired too." --jkbpttrsn

"Well he will just have to pick himself up by his bootstraps." --MC_ScattCatt

"The "fu*k your feelings" crowd sure loves whining like a bitch about their feelings." --tylrmhnn

"Bunch of f'king hypocritical morons. It's ok for them to call people names, cuss at people that don't agree with them, act abusive as fu*k but when they suffer the consequences of their abhorrent behavior, omg then they're being unjustly attacked!!!" --pontedealma

The video posted by @JaredPushner has gone viral in recent days, racking up more than 400,000 views on Twitter and more than 46,000 upvotes on Reddit.

None of the parties involved in the video have made any comments to the press yet about the incidents.

Read the rest here:

Pro-Trump Washington Councilwoman Tearfully Rants After Husband Is Fired For Harassing Reporter - Comic Sands

On the night of a recent Million MAGA March in Washington DC, a large man in a Proud Boys polo shirt runs at a Black woman from behind and punches her in the head. She falls to the pavement.

Russell Schultz sent video of the episode to CNN, saying the puncher should go to jail.

The sentiment is a bit of a shift for Mr Schultz, a former Proud Boy who's been filmed in street brawls himself and who often shows up at protests in Portland, Oregon, with a giant black flag that reads, "F--- ANTIFA."

Some have been filmed getting into street fights.

"Most of it is just to fight," Mr Schultz said.

"They want to join a gang. So they can go fight antifa and hurt people that they don't like, and feel justified in doing it."

Last year, he was indicted for rioting after a brawl between far-right protesters and anti-fascists in Portland.

He pleaded not guilty, and with another activist involved in the brawl - Joey Gibson of the right-wing group Patriot Prayer - he's filed a federal lawsuit against the Multnomah County district attorney, claiming they're being unfairly prosecuted because of their political beliefs.

Mr Schultz, 51, joined the Proud Boys in the fall of 2017 and left in May 2019. He says he quit, but the Proud Boys say he was "kicked out".

His exit should not be interpreted as a total repudiation of all the Proud Boys stand for, or a new enlightened state opposed to all political violence.

Mr Schultz still shows up at rallies, and he's still motivated by antipathy toward antifa.

The blurred line between what's ironic and what's sincere is a feature of the new far-right that was born on the internet in the Trump era. (Schultz said the word "joke" about three dozen times in the couple hours CNN interviewed him.)

It's harder for someone to be held accountable for what he believes if it's not clear what, exactly, he believes.

And it allows him to try on a persona with the safety valve of being able to say later it was all fake.

In person, Mr Schultz is mild-mannered and polite. In his old Proud Boys videos, he's menacing.

He now says he was just emulating the promo videos of professional wrestlers.

In 2017, Mr Schultz was at a free speech rally with Patriot Prayer.

"All (of a) sudden fights are breaking out all over the place, and here come marching across a field are these guys in black-and-yellow-striped polos," Mr Schultz said.

"And it, to me, it just looked like something from Braveheart."

They were the Proud Boys.

The "first degree" of membership in the Proud Boys is to declare you are one, which Mr Schultz later did.

The second degree is to be punched while reciting the names of five breakfast cereals, which he did, too.

"It was just a joke. No one hits hard," Mr Schultz says.

"The five breakfast cereals is a joke that's supposed to emulate getting beat into a gang.

"You know, it is just a spoof, a parody, but it got taken too far."

Here's another supposed joke: An ex-member recently said on the encrypted messaging app Telegram that he was staging a coup so Proud Boys would no longer capitulate to the left: "We recognise that the West was built by the White Race alone and we owe nothing to any other race."

Proud Boys chairman Enrique Tarrio said there was no coup. Then both sides said they were just joking.

New wingmen and social media swagger

Mr Schultz is Jewish and says he voted for Barack Obama twice before voting for Mr Trump twice.

He liked the Proud Boys' joking and the drinking. But he began to notice some patterns among those who joined.

"They join the group now because it gives them a sense of belonging. They have this inner-person side that they want to be, but they're afraid to be.

"They're men who've never had wingmen before," he says.

"They're afraid to say what's on their mind for fear of getting into a fight. But if they have that guy or that group behind them, they're more bold in saying what they think, because they think someone has their back. ... The Proud Boys are the vehicle that attracts those people and accepts them in."

In the fragments of his social media presence left behind from his Proud Boys days (he got kicked off Facebook and Instagram), Mr Schultz's on-screen presence suggests he'd found the confidence to be quite outspoken.

Ahead of what he called a "pro-Jesus march" in December 2018, Mr Schultz posted a video warning antifa not to disrupt it. He says, in part:

"At the last rally I nearly ran over you with a car and I didn't feel bad about it one bit. You're lucky I didn't kill you because I wouldn't feel any remorse. ...

"You shoot me with faeces - I can't prove - you can't prove you didn't put something in it like HIV. ...

"I am going to shoot you. And here's where the best part of the odds is, I still have a chance to fight for my freedom in court. You don't have a chance to fight for your freedom cause you're f------ dead. See I'm going to shoot you in the chest or your head. Center mass. ...

"It might be in your best interest not to show up with faeces infested with HIV, whatever it is, and live, live so you can see what we're planning in 2019. Cause if you shoot us with faeces there's a good chance you might not survive to see 2019."

When CNN said these looked like violent threats, Mr Schultz defended them.

"They are violent threats and it's for good reason, too," he said.

"Antifa was saying they were going to come over and start throwing urine and faeces on us. And so that was my way of saying, 'OK, if you do that, that's a threat.' I don't know if it was AIDS-tainted. And I made that threat so they wouldn't come over. And they didn't come over. So, it worked."

Singled out by anti-fascist opponents

CNN reached out to Rose City Antifa, the Portland-area anti-fascist group, about these allegations.

"No one from our organisation threatened to throw poop at the Jesus thing. ... Rose City Antifa has never put AIDS in poop. Nor am I certain how one would do so."

This video had, in fact, been downloaded and posted by Rose City Antifa, which has been tracking Mr Schultz for years.

Though public protests are what get the most attention, most of what anti-fascists do - and Mr Schultz agrees with this - is online.

They research and document far-right activists they deem fascist and make that information public.

This resulting document is called a doxx - which can be a simple collection of biographical details but often functions as a kind of indictment, listing specific acts of racism or misogyny, as well as associations with other people deemed fascist.

In Mr Schultz's case, they made fliers about him and posted them around his neighborhood and his local bar.

"Violent Alt-Right Organiser In Your Area," the flier's headline reads.

"He was just one of the dudes in the crowd at rallies," explained A., an activist with Rose City Antifa who would not give a full name. (The vast majority of anti-fascist activists are anonymous, they say out of fear of far-right violence.)

"But outside of that context he's much more vocal, especially on social media."

Mr Schultz's social media presence was one of the most remarkable things about him, A. said, in that he made explicit threats.

Mr Schultz, in A.'s view, has "this 'I'm an operator' mindset that older right-wing men have. They get really into the idea (that) this is like their war - and thinking through and trying to get into the mind of the opposition.

"It's "very Rambo-y, but it also descends into a misogynistic and creeper vibe by listing all the terrible things they're going to do to you."

Included in Rose City Antifa's doxx of Mr Schultz is one of his old Facebook posts, which says, "Feminism only works on and when there are guys willing to f--- you."

Mr Schultz said this, too, was just a joke, just trolling.

In fact, he had a reputation for being "good at trolling," at saying things that would make antifa upset, Mr Schultz said.

"Like what you just mentioned, about women only have power as long as there's men willing to - you know - which, coming from me, with two beautiful daughters, you know, it's contrary to my whole life."

He explained all of his past commentary by saying: "Anything I ever did that was incendiary was so that (antifa) would see it and react to it."

He says he wanted more antifa activists to show up at right-wing rallies - not for the street battle, but for the more important media battle.

"I'm not baiting them into doing violence. I'm baiting them into showing up in enough numbers. Because when you see enough people in Black Bloc, people get scared," Mr Schultz said, referring to the activist tactic of wearing black clothes and face coverings to avoid identification.

"The people that aren't involved in (the protests), that don't think about it -- they see all these people looking like ISIS."

Consequences of an abandoned joke

A., of Rose City Antifa, said they did monitor the videos Mr Schultz and his comrades made as a way to gauge how many would turn out at their rallies and what their emotional state would be.

They took note when a far-right activist would give away a little more operational detail than he should have.

"I think a lot of people assume the end goal of doxxing is to get Nazis to not be Nazis anymore by convincing them of the flaws of their ideology," A. said.

"That's not necessarily the case."

There are other organisations that help deradicalise people. The main goal, A. said, is to provide a community resource to people directly affected by activists like Mr Schultz and "then present clear obstacles to their continued organising".

Before speaking to CNN, A. said, Rose City Antifa went through their old doxxes.

They see them as successful, particularly for the less prominent activists they've targeted.

"The older and slightly more marginal types - they really do not come around anymore."

Mr Schultz says he quit the Proud Boys in 2019 for a couple of reasons.

One, the men who wanted to climb the ranks of leadership were taking it too seriously, he says.

They were making a more formalised national hierarchy, Mr Schultz says, and he thought that would bring more intense scrutiny from law enforcement and reporters - and he worried that if one member committed a crime, they could all be liable for it.

Mr Schultz also felt pressure from one of his daughters to quit, he says.

The Proud Boys chairman says Mr Schultz was "kicked out," namely because he would "make a complete ass of himself" in videos on social media.

"Scorned ex-girlfriends are the worst. As soon as you break up with them, they want to lie to the world and say how small your equipment is," Mr Tarrio told CNN, in reference to Schultz.

"Currently there is no criminal activity happening in the Proud Boys."

Asked what Mr Tarrio would say about him, Mr Schultz said, "Oh, he'll probably talk crap about me. I don't care. ... Enrique always deflects."

As we watched the video of the man in the Proud Boys polo punch the woman in Washington, we asked Mr Schultz: Did he feel like he helped bring the nation to this point, with his propaganda?

"Yeah. Honestly, I had a role in it. I never advocated for the violence to come out of it, though."

In other words, he still says it was just a joke.

Read the original:

Ex-Proud Boy on life inside the far-right group's ranks - 9News

When President Donald Trump convened the White House Conference on American History in mid-September, he wowed attendees with news that hed signed an executive order establishing a National Committee to Promote Patriotic Education.

This was necessary, he said, because U.S. teachers have been pushing students to hate America. The major culprit? The late Howard Zinns 40-year-old, 784-page book, A Peoples History of the United States. Trump accused the World War II veteran-turned-scholar of promoting propaganda intended to make students ashamed of their own history.

Unsurprisingly, Trumps audience ate up these declarations, but however rapturous the response, neither his rhetoric nor his conclusions were particularly new. In fact, he was repeating a longstanding trope about U.S. education, zeroing in on those responsible for delivering both critical thinking and concrete skills to future generations of leaders and workers. And, while Trump did not specifically mention college professors, the idea that a cadre of left-wing educators are indoctrinating impressionable young adults has become the raison dtre for a host of conservative groups that are working to establish a firm toehold on campuses throughout the 50 states: Campus Reform, the College Fix, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, the Leadership Institute, the National Association of Scholars and Turning Point USA, among them.

Of particular interest and urgency for them is the denunciation of scholar-activists who support Black Lives Matter and anti-fascism (or antifa).

Alexander Riley, a Bucknell University sociology professor, made the case against antifa on Campus Reforms daily blog, calling the anti-fascist movement a loose confederation of half-educated malcontents who entirely reject the logic of intellectual debate. He then went on to say that antifa groups want to crush the skulls of those with whom they disagree in the manner of sociopathic criminals throughout humanity.

Black Lives Matter has been similarly slammed, with founder Patrisse Cullors repeatedly referred to as a trained Marxist whose agenda includes the destruction of the family. Pulitzer Prize winner Nikole Hannah-Joness 1619 Project has also been hammered for teaching self-loathing.

As vitriolic as these statements are, it is important to note that Campus Reform does far more than publish a hyperbolic blog.

As Truthout has previously reported, Campus Reform trains conservative students to become paid campus journalists who report on progressive faculty and student groups whose views they oppose. It is a project of the 41-year-old Leadership Institute, a multimillion-dollar organization with deep roots in the Reagan-era New Right, that, in 2016 alone, spent $15.8 million on campus activities.

Conservative donors have been more than happy to pony up for the cause, and Campus Reforms work has been made possible thanks to the support of foundations connected to libertarian billionaire Charles Koch and dark money outlets, including Donors Trust and the Donors Capital Fund that the Charles Koch Foundation controls. Other support for Campus Reform has come from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Ed Uihlein Family Foundation, mutual fund manager Foster Friess, and other deep-pocketed donors.

This support has enabled Campus Reform to train students to monitor and report on progressive campus activism and establish conservative organizations to counter the purported left-wing biases they claim are evident at every college and university in the country. The group also places affiliated students on a fast-track to jobs at conservative think tanks; media outlets including Breitbart, The Daily Caller and Fox News; and with local, state and federal lawmakers once they graduate.

Case in point: Gabriel Nadales. Nadales is currently the regional field coordinator at the Leadership Institute and is a frequent contributor to the Campus Reform blog. Although he did not respond to Truthouts three requests for an interview, his YouTube videos, frequent appearances on Fox News, and writing about his time as an antifa activist consistently portray the anti-fascist left as hateful people who think they are opposing totalitarianism, but who are instead little more than domestic terrorists. As Nadales tells it, when he was 16, he was lured to demonstrations protesting cuts to public education. I wanted to be part of fighting for a better world, he told Fox News. I thought the U.S. was a fascist nation. I didnt believe in America.

That was in 2010. Nadaless conversion to conservatism, he says, occurred after he enrolled in southern Californias Citrus College, where he was introduced to the economic theories of Milton Friedman and Thomas Sowell. Their insights, he says, caused him to do a complete 180 and he subsequently found his way to mentorship at the Leadership Institute, formed a Young Americans for Liberty chapter at Citrus, and took his spot on the conservative lecture circuit after he completed his studies.

Antifa does not stand for something. They stand against something. They stand against the First Amendment, Nadales told Fox Newss Laura Ingraham. They are such cowards that they have to cover their faces and are mostly up to something not good.

Nadales is hardly alone in making these assertions, and they have had an impact, placing faculty who have expressed support for antifa groups and Black Lives Matter in Campus Reforms crosshairs. Some have also found their way onto the Professor Watchlist maintained by Turning Point USA, a list of hundreds of college faculty members who are openly critical of capitalism, or who support movements for social justice that the right finds threatening to business as usual.

This includes Truthout contributor and Rutgers history professor Mark Bray, author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook, published by Melville House. My first run-in with Campus Reform was right after my book came out in August 2017 when they noticed me on Meet the Press, he told Truthout. It was two weeks after the Unite the Right march in Charlottesville, Virginia, and Bray says that Campus Reform misconstrued his comments about violence and reached out to the president of Dartmouth College, where Bray was then a visiting professor, for comment. President [Philip] Hanlon denounced me and because Campus Reform reported this, the story was picked up by Breitbart and I got hate mail and death threats. But more than 120 Dartmouth faculty and the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) signed a letter of support for me, he said. This helped me enormously. The bonds of solidarity we build with each other make the threats and doxing less effective. Theyre absolutely essential.

Bray called these bonds into play again this summer after Trump called antifa a terrorist organization and Bray responded. Writing in The Washington Post, he noted that Trump misrepresented the anti-fascist movement in the interests of delegitimizing militant protest and deflecting attention away from white supremacy and police brutality that the protesters oppose.

Conservative media outlets including The American Spectator, Breitbart and the Campus Reform blog as well as the Israeli media outlet Haaretz picked up Brays comments. I continue to get negative pushback, Bray says, and while he finds this disturbing, it has not been silencing for him.

Like Bray, Campus Reform-target Johnny Eric Williams, a professor of sociology at Connecticuts Trinity College, has also remained outspoken. Although he was forced to take a semesters leave after he and his workplace were targeted by the group following tweets about racism and white supremacy that went viral, he has refused to stop speaking out. Ive been through the wringer, but its my job to tell the truth, he told Truthout. Since my leave, the administration has supported my First Amendment speech rights. Thats what academic freedom is all about.

Tenured Texas A&M sociology professor Wendy Leo Moore agrees. Moore is currently facing a two-day salary suspension for participating in Septembers #ScholarStrike. After Jacob Blake was shot, many of us felt that we had an obligation to do the strike in a way that paused and called attention to racism, police brutality and white supremacy, Moore told Truthout. I teach about criminal justice, and while I did not want to disrupt the flow of my classes, and knew that my students had been having a really challenging time due to COVID, I decided it was important to take a stand and participate.

Moore had been informed that the college opposed faculty participation and had been warned that the college considered the strike an illegal work stoppage, a violation of a Texas law banning strikes by state employees. It was not a strike against the state, Moore said. It was a work stoppage to support Black Lives Matter and [oppose] racism. It was a pedagogical decision for me to take part.

To date, Moores stance has been lambasted in several articles posted by Campus Reform, but like her peers, she is heartened to have received the backing of the American Sociological Association, PEN America and the AAUP, and expects to have a hearing before the colleges Committee on Academic Freedom, Responsibility and Tenure on Campus in late November.

The right wing has targeted people who are pushing economic justice, environmental justice and racial justice, and any professor who explicitly supports Black communities or other communities of color can get the rights attention, said Jasmine Banks, executive director of UnKoch My Campus, an organization promoting fiscal transparency and democracy on campus. Their tactics aim to make it risky to promote equity and inclusion.

Naming names and stealth attacks including the surreptitious taping of speeches, lectures and programs are part of the rights game plan, Banks says. Since gotcha-type provocations orchestrated by well-known conservative provocateur James OKeefe took place in 2015, Campus Reform has largely focused on overt, coordinated disruptions and threats to particular faculty members, with each attack lasting for about a week before the group moves on to someone else.

Last winter, Liberty University business marketing student Addison Smith, a Campus Reform contributor and Turning Point USA activist, was accused of illegally recording private conversations on campus. Under Virginia state law, failure to get the consent of at least one party to the taping of a conversation is a felony, but as of October 20, 2020, Smith was still writing for Campus Reform and appears judicially unscathed.

Truthout reached out to the Campus Reform writers Lacey Kestecher, Leo Thuman and McKenna Dallmeyer to request comment for inclusion in this article, along with numerous people from the Leadership Institute, including Gabriel Nadales, but none of them responded to requests for comment.

Groups like Campus Reform work hard to create the illusion that conservatives are a beleaguered minority on campuses, says Isaac Kamola, a political science professor at Trinity College and creator of Campus Reform Early Responders, a year-old effort to assist individuals and institutions that have become the focus of right-wing acrimony.

In truth, theyre going after anyone who is not teaching a worldview that they subscribe to for example, that the U.S. was founded on structural racism a viewpoint they call un-American. This can then roll out into calls for violence against an individual or an institution, or calls for a professor to be fired or sanctioned.

But the ultimate agenda is not simply to boot out progressive faculty, Kamola says. Rather, its to gain a greater foothold into the academy for conservative, libertarian ideas. Their conservatives-as-victims narrative reinforces straight, white, male power. Charles Koch and his allies believe that if you can get people when theyre young, give them jobs and a chance to meet prominent scholars and activists, launch them into careers, youll have an unparalleled power base, he said. Our job is to call them out on this.

See original here:

Right-Wing Orgs Are Enlisting Students in Their War Against Campus Progressives - Truthout

In a USA Today op-ed published Tuesday, Ben Crump, the lawyer for the families of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and many more Black people killed by police, outlined who he'd like to see lead the Biden justice department. And he put a familiar face at the top of the list: Tony West, a veteran of the Clinton and Obama administrations who happens to be Vice President-elect Kamala Harris' brother-in-law.

After an "exhausting" 2020 spent fighting for civil rights and "speaking truth to power," Crump wrote that he's cautiously optimistic "President-elect Joe Biden and his still-unnamed attorney general will be our partner in the hard work of repairing our criminal justice system." After all, Biden "ran on an ambitious criminal justice reform platform" that included promises "to end federal private prisons, mandatory minimum sentencing and the federal death penalty," among others, Crump wrote. "Moved by Biden's promises, Black voters carried him to victory in the presidential election," and now it's time for Biden to nominate an attorney general "committed to delivering the Constitution's promises of justice and equality," Crump continued.

To Crump, the choice here is clear. West ran the Justice Department's Civil Division under former Attorney General Eric Holder, where he "led various efforts to reduce racial bias, improve procedural fairness, strengthen the relationship between communities of color and law enforcement, and hold police departments accountable," Crump wrote. And while he's gone on to work in the private sector, West has "always remained a public servant at heart," Crump concluded.

Biden has so far revealed top picks for his communications and economic teams, as well as his choice for Homeland Security secretary. All of his cabinet picks will have to pass a Senate vote, and Crump notes West most recently was approved 98-1 to be associate attorney general. Kathryn Krawczyk

Read the original here:

GOP Sen. Josh Hawley tries to explain how Democrats are both 'Marxists' and 'corporatists' - The Week

Editorial Page Editor Adam Van Brimmer blogs on local topics of interest most weekday mornings in the "Savannahs Town Square" Facebook group. The following is an excerpt from one of those posts.

Talking Point: Thankful election hasn't produced violence in the streets

Perhaps my greatest fear about the Nov. 3 election was the risk of a violent aftermath.

Somebody was going to lose, and both parties have fanatical wings. What's more, one candidate was all but egging on his rabble-rouser supporters ("stand back and stand by") while the other appeared to lack the influence to suppress the far left.

Thankfully, we've seen little violence in America's streets since Election Day. The Million MAGA March in Washington, D.C., led by President Donald Trump's supporters, was largely peaceful, although there were some skirmishes once night fell. And it is unclear whether it was the protesters or the counterprotesters who initiated the clashes.

What's interesting now is the public opinion. In a pair of conversations with Republican voters over the weekend, I was told the absence of violence was evidence that the fears of right-wing rampages were a media creation. Also, the consensus was that if President Trump had won, we would have seen riots and more from the liberal militants. They cited supporters of Antifa and Black Lives Matter.

We'll never know if the liberals would have risen up as described, although we can look to numerous peaceful anti-Trump marches staged over the last four years and think that we wouldn't be on the brink of a civil war. Yet those demonstrations were pre-George Floyd, and President Trump's rhetoric over the last several months has sharpened the edge.

Had Trump beaten Biden, the frustration might have boiled over.

Regardless, let's hope the fallout continues to be low key. Tensions will remain high at least through the Jan. 20 inauguration. President Trump continues to protest the election but has not (yet) moved to incite violence, which is good. And President-elect Biden has found the right tone for dealing with a difficult situation.

Let's hope both candidates -- and their more passionate supporters -- continue to suppress their darker instincts.

Read the blog posts and engage in the conversation by searching for "Savannahs Town Square" on Facebook and clicking the "join" button.

See original here:

Savannahs Town Square: Election results and the absence of violence - Savannah Morning News