RawStory

A sociologist explains the biggest mistakes the media is making about our political moment

You already know the House Select Committee released text messages sent to Mark Meadows while the January 6 insurrection was underway. Some of them came from three hosts at Fox, imploring the former White House chief of staff to get the former president to stop the violence. What you did not know was that some came from Jake Sherman. The founder of Punchbowl News said so last night.

“I knew I had communicated a ton with White House officials that day as I sat in the Capitol,” Sherman wrote on Twitter. “This thread stuck out to me. That’s because they were my texts to meadows.” He posted a screenshot of text messages read by ranking Republican Liz Cheney. The full House voted last night to hold Meadows in criminal contempt.

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Biden is under fire from a familiar GOP tactic — here's what Democrats need to do to fight back

It started just over two weeks ago with a Wall Street Journal opinion headline: “Biden’s covid Death Milestone: More Americans have died of the virus in 2021 than in all of 2020.” That unleashed the pig pile.

Republican politicians and their right-wing media sock puppets fell over themselves claiming Biden and Trump were somehow the same on covid. Or perhaps – gasp – Trump was better. It’s hogwash.

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'Like Nazi Germany': DC insider says Patriot Front's vandalism might put far-right group in more legal trouble

Richard Painter, who formerly served as the chief ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush, tells Raw Story that the leadership of the white supremacist group Patriot Front could potentially face legal consequences after its leader instructed members to consult him about vandalism.

The insular white supremacist group has painted over at least a dozen murals honoring George Floyd and other Black people killed by the police in the past year, and has also reportedly vandalized a Hmong cultural center in St. Paul, Minn. in recent months. In early 2019, the group’s posters were placed at a synagogue and at an LGBTQ center in Burlington, Vt.

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BUSTED: 'Overtly fascist' Patriot Front leader caught on tape telling members to 'consult' him about vandalism

Following its highly publicized Dec. 4 march on the Lincoln Memorial, the white supremacist group Patriot Front held a national call with about 135 members on the conferencing platform Mumble.

The insular white supremacist group is known for its furtive nighttime stickering, postering and spray-painting campaigns and highly choreographed flash mob-style rallies, both of which are repackaged as heavily stylized social media propaganda campaigns with fascist aesthetics designed to appeal to alienated, young white men. Footage of banner drops is interspersed with members engaged in fight scenes, hiking and scaling mountains, meant to convey that they’re conquering their destiny.

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Two Patriot Boys arrested on Jan. 6 charges -- including #PoleTosser who 'swung' at Michael Fanone

The FBI has arrested Lucas Denney, a Texas man who taunted the agency with vitriolic social media posts and posed with high-profile Republican leaders like Sen. Ted Cruz after online sleuths nicknamed him #PoleTosser for hurling a wooden pole at law enforcement officers during the violent confrontation on the west plaza of the US Capitol on Jan. 6.

The 44-year-old Denney of Mansfield, a suburb south of Fort Worth, is the president of a Three Percenter-oriented group called Patriot Boys that has been active in anti-vax rallies and vigilante patrols along the US-Mexico border this year. The FBI also arrested Donald Hazard, 43, of Hurst, Texas. Both men are charged with assaulting, resisting and impeding certain officers with a dangerous weapon or resulting in bodily injury.

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Cop-punching MAGA rioter arrested after being spotted wearing exact same outfit he wore to insurrection

A Colorado man captured on video punching Capitol police officers during the January 6 insurrection has been arrested by the FBI some 11 months later.

Avery Carter MacCracken, 68, of Telluride, Colorado was identified from FBI posters and online photos by a resident of that town. The individual contacted local San Miguel County Sheriff Bill Masters, who turned the information over to the FBI.

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Why they fight: It's not just about Trump -- the insurrectionists believe 'their version of America is under threat'

The Jan. 6 rioters’ composite profile reveals an insurrectionary base willing to resort to political violence to resist challenges to the dominant position of white Christendom and patriarchy in the United States.

At about 8 a.m. on a Thursday morning in late June, FBI agents in tactical vests appeared at the front door of Casey Cusick, a 36-year-old Christian evangelical pastor, in Palm Bay, Fla.

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A historian explains the very real threat of white Christian patriarchy in the US and a one-party takeover

I’m one of those people who likes a view from 30,000 feet. I want to know how we got to this moment in history and where we might be heading. To that end, I got in touch with Thomas Zimmer. He’s a professor of history at Georgetown University. He pays particular attention to political developments in the United States since the 1960s. We were in sours moods, so that’s where we started.

John Stoehr: Let's start with our moods. We're both today feeling pretty pessimistic. I have my reasons, but what are yours?

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Why is the NRA fighting US sanctions against Russia?

Gun-hungry Americans buy more ammunition imported from Russia than from any other country so when President Joe Biden blocked the importation of Russian ammunition the National Rifle Association trained its sights on the ban.

Russian brands include Barnaul Ammunition, which provided ammo to the Russian army during World War I, and Tula Cartridge Works which has ties to the mentor of Russian agent Maria Butina.

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Recently arrested Capitol rioter texted with Proud Boys leader -- a signal of broader coordination

Federal court documents allege that one of two men recently arrested in connection with the Jan. 6 assault on the US Capitol communicated in advance with a Proud Boys leader, pointing to a wider organizational footprint in the execution of the effort to overwhelm the Capitol and prevent transfer of the presidency from Donald Trump to Joe Biden.

Ronald Loehrke, 30, was arrested today in Cummings, Ga. and charged with obstruction of law enforcement, unlawful entry on restricted buildings and grounds, and violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds, according to the government. James Haffner, 53, was arrested in South Dakota on Wednesday, on the same complaint. He faced the same charges, along with an additional charge of assaulting, resisting or impeding certain officers.

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'War is coming': Unarrested #PoleTosser rioter flagrantly taunts FBI, poses with GOPers and 'patrols' the border with his pals

He’s known as “AFO #258” on the FBI’s most wanted list, signifying that he’s one of the individuals sought by the agency for involvement “in violent assaults on federal law enforcement officers at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.”

The volunteer online sleuths who have been poring through open-source video and matching images to social media profiles for the past 11 months have a catchier name for Lucas Denney. They call him #PoleTosser, a nicknamed earned when Denney launched a giant wooden pole toward a line of police officers in the midst of a pitched battle on the West Plaza as rioters lobbed projectiles and the two sides exchanged blasts of chemical spray.

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Armed left-wing activists are prepared for the next Rittenhouse -- but analysts say the armed right is a bigger threat

The Kyle Rittenhouse verdict revealed a stark divide in how Americans view race, political violence and guns: For partisans on the right, the verdict vindicated Rittenhouse as a hero who stepped forward to help protect property as police lost control, and who used justified deadly force to defend himself — a symbol of law and order against a backdrop of urban chaos.

On the left, the verdict is seen as a green light for white vigilante violence against Black racial justice protesters and their allies — both an extension of state violence and a reminder of law enforcement’s systemic failure to protect people of color. The violence meted out by Rittenhouse, resulting in the deaths of two men and injury to a third, is also viewed as the inevitable and tragic result of a country awash in guns. Consequently, the idea of adding more guns to protests is widely considered anathema by progressives.

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Stunning new data on radical Republican policies shows how the richest workers got a lot richer under Trump's rule

Donald Trump's presidency and the Covid pandemic combined to make 2020 a remarkably enriching year for the highest-paid workers in America. Meanwhile, the numbers for the bottom 99.9% are, in a word, awful.

Just one in 900 workers makes $1 million or more, a new Social Security report on wages shows. My annual analysis of this data shows that this thin and rich group made 14% more money in 2020 than in 2019.

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