Maddow: Right-wing extremists have a history of attacking power substations
Almost ten years ago, in 2013, at least two people in California lifted a heavy manhole cover to climb down into an underground vault on the side of the road. They cut fiber-optic cables that severed 911 emergency call lines, landlines and cell phone towers. Not long after, someone opened fire on a power substation hitting key pieces of the infrastructure that caused not only power transformers to go down, but others to overheat and melt down.
Even after ten years, no one knows who did it and the police have no suspects. What they discovered, according to MSNBC's Rachel Maddow who detailed the report on Monday, is that someone had placed a rock at the area where someone should shoot to administer the maximum amount of damage.
Earlier this year, Maddow continued, a group of three Ohio men was thwarted as they plotted to take down power station. Among the ghost guns, ammunition, bomb-making manuals and pro-Nazi ideology, police found the article about the attack on California.
Now it has happened again, where someone opened fire on a substation in North Carolina, sending a whole county into the shivering darkness. Based on the briefings and the reports thus far, Maddow explained that it seems the first attack happened on a substation and then a second one did, indicating it could have been one person or a small team of people. The fence had been damaged going into the substations.
Police aren't saying much, rather they're repeating over and over that it was someone who knew what they were doing. It's unclear whether they think that's an inside job or if was a planned attack from someone who researched exactly how to inflict the most damage. Law enforcement hasn't made any arrests nor have they indicated there are any suspects. They did speak to a woman online who bragged she knew who it was and implied that a drag show was the target of the attack.
"But honestly, bottom line we really do not know," Maddow explained. "At the first press conference yesterday where the sheriff and local officials took the first questions about what had happened, they were immediately asked and then asked repeatedly whether this attack on the electrical infrastructure in North Carolina might be related to threats and intimidation that have been directed at local LGBTQ groups in Moore County recently, and in particular, at a drag show at a downtown venue in the town of Southern Pines, a show that started just minutes before the power stations were shot up and the lights went out."
She noted that there were a lot of right-wing protesters trying to shut down the event Saturday night, just hours before the power stations were shot up. It follows another protest by masked right-wing paramilitary groups at an LGBTQ group last month in the nearby town of Sanford, North Carolina. In fact, there were about 4 different anti-LGBTQ hate attacks by far-right, milita groups over the weekend. One in Columbus, Ohio, and another in Lakeland, Florida.
Groups that monitor militias and hate groups have noticed a significant increase in mobilization and attacks over the past several years against LGBTQ people, people of color, Jewish Americans, Asian Americans and more. Last year, hate crimes rose 44 percent. In 2022, hate crime reports were already increasing again at the halfway point of the year.
See Maddow's opener below:
Part 1:
Part 2:
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