Michigan militia members arrested for planning kidnap of Governor Whitmire

[Loren Pechtel]

I am confused how this particular group is labeled "right wing". My understanding of the label, right wing, is strong support for the government in power and the police. The label would fit the Proud Boys with the additional labels of extreme and militant. This militia group that was planning the attack is strongly anti-government and think of the police as oppressive jack-booted thugs (pretty much the same position on authorities as antifa has). They could rightly be labeled as revolutionaries or just plain nuts.

They were following the directions of their spiritual commander and planning an attack on those "oppressing" the right.

 

[skepticalbip]

The left-wing extremists have been plenty destructive and murderous.

.... proceeds to bring up the SLA and other lib'rul horrors FROM A HALF CENTURY AGO.

You haven't seen the news in over fifty years???

 

[Elixir]

The left-wing extremists have been plenty destructive and murderous.

.... proceeds to bring up the SLA and other lib'rul horrors FROM A HALF CENTURY AGO.

You haven't seen the news in over fifty years???

Y'know, I was just wondering if Derec was even alive when Patty Hearst was making headlines.

More urgent:



Yeah right, Cheato. You send out your terrorists to kidnap and kill her, then complain that she doesn't thank you when the institution that you have opposed from day one puts a stop to it.
If antifa organizes a similar plot against you, I'll oppose them, okay? So far I haven't seen them "organize" shit. Not like the people you refuse to condemn.

Presidunce Asshole has most certainly gone off the deep end.

 

[skepticalbip]

^ ^
And yet, that militia group call the federal government and Trump tyrannical oppressors they want to overthrow.

 

[Patooka]

These domestic terrorists should have just stood by...

 

[Patooka]

^ ^
And yet, that militia group call the federal government and Trump tyrannical oppressors they want to overthrow.

That's true. Not all rightwingers support Trump

Gov. Whitmer kidnapping suspects linked to ‘boogaloo’ anti-government movement, NBC News finds

Croft was seen wearing the insignia of the Three Percenters, an armed anti-government movement, among other online warning signs, according to NBC News.

Caserta’s social media timelines shows a rapid radicalization path, including a 30-minute YouTube video in which he declared “the enemy is government,” NBC News found.

So if you think the Three Percenters, the Boogaloo movement and supporting Kyle Rittenhouse isn't right wing, you really shouldn't be contributing to the discussion until you get better educated.

 

[Elixir]

^ ^
And yet, that militia group call the federal government and Trump tyrannical oppressors they want to overthrow.

I didn't know that. So - the enemy of my enemy isn't necessarily my friend if it's Donald Trump?

 

[Derec]

Y'know, I was just wondering if Derec was even alive when Patty Hearst was making headlines.

No, I have not been.

Yeah right, Cheato. You send out your terrorists to kidnap and kill her,

What evidence do you have that Trump "sent" these people to "kidnap and kill [Whitmer]"?

If antifa organizes a similar plot against you, I'll oppose them, okay? So far I haven't seen them "organize" shit. Not like the people you refuse to condemn.

To be fair, the Michigan plot wasn't really "organized" in any real sense of the word either.

But as far as Antifas, they had actually occupied a portion of a major US city for weeks.



This Michigander Militia did not manage to occupy territory in Lansing or any other city.

Presidunce Asshole has most certainly gone off the deep end.

That does without saying. Doesn't mean that academia/media/politicians who support left wing violent extremism haven't gotten off the deep end as well.

 

[Derec]

The ones on the right aren't so open about their support, but it's there--and it's far more serious because it translates to actual action. The right wing thugs are getting active support from the police and the government.

Sounds like a bunch of paranoia. It is the FBI who investigated and arrested these people after all.

Now of course, had they been left wing radicals, the mainstream left would be denouncing the FBI like they did in the 70s when FBI was working to bring down the Weathermen and the BLA terrorists.

 

[Derec]

Buddy. I'm with you. Antifa are a bunch of asswipes. They certainly help the right wing cause than help the left wing. However, they are mostly harmless. They might be responsible for what, four or five attacks over the last few years. Right wing terrorists have killed thousands of Americans (McVeigh being the worst, but not the only). They have attacked thousands of people. Intimidated people. You can't honestly compare the two.

You are right that in the 90s right wingers were more active. But if you look at the history, Black Panthers, Black Liberation Army, Weather Underground etc. have been responsible for a lot of deaths, bombings and overall carnage.
And even in the 90s you had the LA Riots (black radicals waging war on US pretty much) in 1992 and anti-capitalism riots in places like in Seattle in 1999.

And since 2014 the left wing extremists have become more brazen and active. They rioted, looted and burned down buildings in Ferguson, Baltimore, Milwaukee, Charlotte etc. in that first wave of #BLM extremism. 2020 brought even more violence. #BLM and Antifa (occasionally joined by Proud Boys and others in opposition, but it's a very lefty city and most destruction had been by left wing radicals) have been raging in Portland for moths uninterrupted, basically making it impossible to live in that city like a normal human being.

 

[Derec]

Militias and white supremacy are to my knowledge always associated with the right wing.

There are left-wing militias. There are black supremacist militias, like the ones who have been marching at Stone Mountain several times this year.

If nothing else, militias are obsessed with their guns, which is a right wing thing. Gun toting liberals don't start militias. But wait, perhaps a link will help.

True liberals are probably not likely to start militias. But true liberal !=leftist.

https://www.businessinsider.com/right-wing-extremists-kill-329-since-1994-antifa-killed-none-2020-7

I wonder what criteria they use to delineate the attacks. For example, the guy who shot up that festival in Las Vegas a while ago is usually counted as "right wing" but he did not really espouse any particular ideology. On the other hand, street gang Crips' origins lie in the black radicalism of the 1960s, but their violence is usually not counted as ideological.
Los Angeles Gangs: The Bloods and the Crips

Nobody is claiming that there's never been left wing terrorism. The claims is that the right wing terrorist groups are currently the biggest terrorist threat in the US.

As biased as that BI article was, even their numbers put a lie to that claim. White people are ~70% of the population. More than half are right of center probably. Muslims are <1%. And yet Muslim attacks do not lag by much (95 vs. 117) compared to those committed by much more numerous white people. But white people, especially those on the right, are an acceptable target for moral panics, while it is increasingly non-PC to criticize Muslims or so-called POC or to point to violence committed by them. See the reaction in this forum every time I refute the PC "white people are the real problem" dogma with statistics that state that blacks are >5x more likely to kill somebody than whites.

Seth Jones, a counter-terrorism expert, who helped create the dataset, told The Guardian: "Left-wing violence has not been a major terrorism threat."

Except that it was a major threat in the 60s-80s and it seems to be staging a comeback. They are mostly blocking highways, rioting, looting, burning down businesses etc. at the moment, which is bad enough as it is, but they might graduate to tactics of BLA and WU soon.

He said: "The most significant domestic terrorism threat comes from white supremacists, anti-government militias and a handful of individuals associated with the 'boogaloo' movement that are attempting to create a civil war in the United States."

What about black supremacist anti-government militias? I guess it's not PC to talk about them...

 

[Derec]

The left-wing extremists have been plenty destructive and murderous.

.... proceeds to bring up the SLA and other lib'rul horrors FROM A HALF CENTURY AGO.

I did not mention SLA.

 

[Derec]

No, that's a difference. To suggest that it is the most important or only difference is simply false.

It's a big difference in the long run, as it affects the way these groups are written about. For example, racist black extremists are often lauded as "civil rights leaders" by the media even when they were nothing of the sort!

And again, glorifying anyone, or expressing support for them, is a constitutional right.

Since I did not suggest they should be prosecuted, that is irrelevant.

You don't have to like it, but you are wasting your time if you are trying to persuade those reading your posts that this is an equivalently immoral act with killing people and destroying property.

I did not equate actual terrorism with merely glorifying (different) terrorism. I was comparing how Left and Right treat the extremists in their ideological camps. On the Left, the doctrine of "pas d’ennemis à gauche" ("no enemies on the left") is still the dominant one, something I do not see on the right.

 

[fromderinside]

How many conservatives lionize organizations such as Posse Comitatus? But many so-called "liberals" and "progressives" lionize Black Panthers, BLA and Weather Underground ...

I guess you don't get out much. The same gangs that got all gun toting enthusiastic about restricting grazing on federal land in Northern Nevada are the people who used guns to take k over a natural reserve in SE Oregon who were supported by the blankity blank boys from Southern Washington that got off without a hair misplaced in Portland, the same place where Posse Comitatus originated some6ixty some odd years before.

Not only is the history longer and more violent by the rightists, the consequences were much worse for leftists who were harvested by the hundreds during the seventies and eighties.

There was no time where leftist activist organization memberships came near the 145 thousand Michigan Militia members in the late eighties which was just one of the violent rightist organizations. I'm not even counting the huge membership and carnage caused by the KKK and associated organizations.

Then there's the rightist cult movements which produced thousands of dead US citizen suckers. If you pause a moment Trump is well on his way to another multi-hundred thousand person rightist disaster.

Yeah fear is a wonderful thing isn't it.

 

[bilby]

It's a big difference in the long run, as it affects the way these groups are written about. For example, racist black extremists are often lauded as "civil rights leaders" by the media even when they were nothing of the sort!


Since I did not suggest they should be prosecuted, that is irrelevant.

You don't have to like it, but you are wasting your time if you are trying to persuade those reading your posts that this is an equivalently immoral act with killing people and destroying property.

I did not equate actual terrorism with merely glorifying (different) terrorism. I was comparing how Left and Right treat the extremists in their ideological camps. On the Left, the doctrine of "pas d’ennemis à gauche" ("no enemies on the left") is still the dominant one, something I do not see on the right.

Is this the same left that can't be persuaded to support the less right-wing of the two major parties in your country because they selected a candidate who wasn't quite as left as their favourite?

I see a left that's constantly wracked by splits and schisms, allowing the more united right to dominate at the ballots despite being less popular overall.

 

[ZiprHead]

The left-wing extremists have been plenty destructive and murderous.

.... proceeds to bring up the SLA and other lib'rul horrors FROM A HALF CENTURY AGO.

I did not mention SLA.

No, but virtually every post in this thread by you has been nothing but whataboutism.

 

[Jarhyn]

... in a thread about white people plotting to storm a government building with explosives to kidnap and potentially murder a democratically left-leaning elected governor of a state, why are we allowing a derail about left-leaning terrorists? That isn't the subject here. It is clear floor-shitting.

It happens every goddamn time, like fucking clockwork. Start a thread about something like this, and within a page or three, there Derec is to talk about left leaning terrorists.

But where are they? Where are all these left wing terrorists kidnapping governors and storming government buildings with explosives? When was the last time leftists were arrested buying explosives to commit an attack, eh? I have never had a left-leaning person threaten to attack me for expressing political views, even back in the days when I held right-wing political views.

And the media still isn't calling THE RIGHT WING TERRORISTS IN THE OP, "terrorists".

 

[Bullmoose Too]

I’m rather curious, in a morbid sort a way, in what they were going to do if successful. They kidnap and kill Whitmire and then what? Was their actions suppose to inspire a general uprising in a propaganda by the dead type way?

 

[skepticalbip]

I’m rather curious, in a morbid sort a way, in what they were going to do if successful. They kidnap and kill Whitmire and then what? Was their actions suppose to inspire a general uprising in a propaganda by the dead type way?

I don't know what this particular militia expected but some militias have grandiose ideas that their actions will trigger a massive revolution that will bring down the "the tyrannical government".

 

[fromderinside]

These are the same kids who used to wipe their runny noses on their sleeves grown up. Now they are planning government head taking because they want individual freedom. Same reflex same result.