sacramento + white supremacy: eyes wide y’all

“Three Neva­da men with ties to a loose move­ment of right-wing ex­trem­ists ad­vo­cat­ing the over­throw of the U.S. gov­ern­ment have been ar­rest­ed on ter­ror­ism-re­lat­ed charges in what au­thor­i­ties say was a con­spir­a­cy to spark vi­o­lence dur­ing re­cent protests in Las Vegas.”
—3 held in Las Ve­gas on ter­ror charges, fox5vegas

“Cal­i­for­nia High­way Pa­trol of­fi­cers de­tained a man near the Capi­tol on June 4, 2020 whose ve­hi­cle has been spot­ted out­side Gov. Gavin Newsom’s home in re­cent weeks, ac­cord­ing to of­fi­cers on the scene. Newsom’s ad­dress was writ­ten on a truck win­dow … An­oth­er win­dow had the words ‘Bring it! Booga­loo!,’ a term for an anti-gov­ern­ment move­ment that has been con­nect­ed to white su­prema­cist groups and pro­mot­ed vi­o­lent messages.”
—CHP de­tains man near Capi­tol, Sacra­men­to Bee

 

Y’all get­ting it yet? This is what we’re talk­ing about. The protests aren’t vi­o­lent. They’re be­ing in­fil­trat­ed by white su­prema­cist groups work­ing to start a civ­il war and de­lay the No­vem­ber election.

Stop the nar­ra­tive about loot­ers and vi­o­lent pro­tes­tors at all costs! Keep our fam­i­ly safe. Lis­ten to or­ga­niz­ers. Don’t get riled up by white peo­ple break­ing shit. Pull their ID. Take a pho­to of it. Steal their phone so we have their con­tacts. Since the law en­force­ment and mil­i­tary won’t help de­fend us. We de­fend us. At. All. Costs.

I have been protest­ing since 2002. That’s 18 years. I’ve nev­er heard fire­works in crowds un­til now. Call me para­noid but I think these are an alt-right sig­nal. Watch the pat­tern. And most im­por­tant­ly watch who has the fireworks.

I hope I’m wrong. I don’t dis­ap­prove of fire­works as protest. I’m see­ing a pat­tern around the coun­try and not­ing it to try and keep peo­ple safe. That’s all. 

And I’ve worked close with the new gen­er­a­tion for the last 11 years. Helped train some of em. None of the dozens of youth I know in Sacra­men­to seem to know any­one bring­ing fireworks.

There is more than meets the eye here. Please give the fol­low­ing a quick read, and help rec­og­nize the re­al­i­ty of or­ga­nized vi­o­lent white su­prema­cy in all of our towns:

“Dr. Cur­tis Ryan, a wide­ly pub­lished schol­ar and pro­fes­sor of po­lit­i­cal sci­ence and ter­ror­ism at Ap­palachi­an State Uni­ver­si­ty, of­fered the fol­low­ing … I en­cour­age you to take time to read …

‘Ac­cel­er­a­tionists, the Booga­loo, and oth­er ran­dom thoughts:
I’ve been try­ing to avoid post­ing about pol­i­tics, but as demos and ri­ots (two dif­fer­ent things) are go­ing on in mul­ti­ple cities af­ter the mur­der of George Floyd, there are sev­er­al things you should pay at­ten­tion to.

Among them: ac­cel­er­a­tionists, Hawai­ian shirts, the Booga­loo, and Pepe the Frog. Sounds goofy, I know. But please get what these are, and do it fast, be­cause they will be dead­ly. That’s not a joke. So this is just a quick post and then I’m out. I’m ex­haust­ed by this. But also deeply alarmed.

So … the short and off the cuff version:
I’ve been teach­ing about ter­ror­ism for many years now, and there is a con­nec­tion be­tween that top­ic and these events. Specif­i­cal­ly this word: ac­cel­er­a­tionists. Ac­cel­er­a­tionists are white su­prema­cists who are try­ing to start a sec­ond civ­il war that will so­lid­i­fy a white fas­cist state in the U.S. Ob­vi­ous­ly, with an ex­plic­it racist in the White House, fas­cists and white su­prema­cist groups have felt that their mo­ment is now through­out the Trump pres­i­den­cy, but they are also afraid that their pre­ferred leader may be oust­ed in November.

Hence all the ur­gency to cre­ate chaos and fo­ment vi­o­lence in Min­neapo­lis, At­lanta, and oth­er cities. Each of the ma­jor cities rocked by ri­ots has claimed that peo­ple from out­side are do­ing much of the prop­er­ty dam­age, com­mit­ing acts of ar­son, and — some­what baffly­ing­ly — tar­get­ing mi­nor­i­ty-owned businesses.

But pro­test­ers, the over­whelm­ing ma­jor­i­ty of whom have been peace­ful un­til at­tacked by mil­i­ta­rized po­lice, have not­ed that these are usu­al­ly sin­gle masked white men (you may have seen sev­er­al on film, like the one peo­ple were call­ing ‘um­brel­la man’).

They were also well rep­re­sent­ed in the main­ly white right wing MAGA ral­lies against COVID lock­downs, even storm­ing state hous­es with AR-15’s and suc­cess­ful­ly shut­ting down the Michi­gan state legis­tature. Not that all those pro­test­ers fit that de­scrip­tion, but that is not the point.

The point is that in the lat­ter in­stance, they could get away with pret­ty much any­thing, us­ing their white priv­i­lege as a shield. In the for­mer in­stances, of protests against the mur­der of cit­i­zens of col­or, ac­cel­er­a­tionists and oth­er white su­prema­cists and far right groups are us­ing pro­test­ers as their shield, while they fo­ment chaos, de­struc­tion, and violence.

Trump et al are al­ready try­ing to shriek about an­tifa and left­ists in gen­er­al. But the on­line chat­ter on white su­prema­cists site and oth­er venues is at an over­load point: They think it’s here. The big one they’ve been wait­ing and prep­ping for. And they en­cour­age mem­bers to go and sow mayhem.

Many ac­tu­al­ly call this the Booga­loo. I know, this sounds like a joke, but sad­ly it’s not. Long sto­ry here. Too long for this post.

Like most far right ex­trem­ist terms, it be­gan as a meme and an in­side joke (4chan, 8chan, Strom­front, and oth­er far right fo­rums were al­ways awash in memes and in­side jokes — from the white pow­er sym­bol [orig­i­nal­ly a joke, now real] to pepe the frog [orig­i­nal­ly a car­toon, now used as a Nazi sym­bol]. So even such be­nign or bizarre com­bos like Hawai­ian shirts or skull masks are now ap­pro­pri­at­ed as Booga­loo and Nazi sym­bols respectively.

If you’ve nev­er heard of the Booga­loo, or ac­cel­er­a­tionists, or missed the deep con­nec­tions of white su­prema­cist groups to this White House, well now you know.

And please pay close at­ten­tion, be­cause there is also an ‘ac­tive mea­sures’ cy­ber cam­paign, and yes, it’s from Rus­sia, that seeks to am­pli­fy these voic­es and ten­sions, from COVID con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries to protests of po­lice bru­tal­i­ty and killings. That’s well un­der­way too, so un­for­tu­nate­ly much of what is out there on Twit­ter and the in­ter­net in gen­er­al is non­sense. But the broad­er threat is real, and it is cur­rent­ly at­tempt­ing to hi­jack legi­mate protest and legi­mate anger at op­pres­sion, and turn it into civ­il stife with­in the US, while at­tempt­ing to blame the vic­tims themselves.

So all I can say re­al­ly is please pay very close at­ten­tion and treat what you see crit­i­cal­ly, as we con­front yet an­oth­er hor­ror of 2020.’”

I copied and past­ed this. You could too.

 

—an­dru defeye

Flom­mist An­dru De­f­eye is the Guer­ril­la Poet Lau­re­ate of Sacra­men­to. Copy­right © 2020 An­dru De­f­eye. Foto by Chris Hopkins.

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