Limbaugh, Right-Wing Pundits Try to Blame Max Blumenthal for Kansas Rampage

White supremacists began pointing fingers almost immediately after the lethal rampage at two Jewish community centers in Kansas by longtime white supremacist Frazier Glenn Miller (aka Frazier Glenn Cross). Some supported Miller or blamed Jews for the attack, while others disavowed him.

Meanwhile on the mainstream right, several leading conservatives attempted to blame liberals for the massacre. Specifically, they pinned the blame on a single liberal journalist, Max Blumenthal, because Miller on a handful of occasions praised Blumenthal’s against-the-grain reporting on the right wing in Israel. From there, they blamed liberal organizations more broadly for the incident, including one for whom Blumenthal has not worked for since 2009.

Leading the charge was Rush Limbaugh, who on his widely syndicated radio show Monday cited a column by Ron Radosh at PJ Media – headlined: “Who Inspired the Nazi Klan Leader’s Actions in Kansas? The Answer Here” – that detailed a handful of Miller’s characteristcally expletive and hate-filled rants that approvingly cited Blumenthal’s criticism of Israeli policies.

Working off Radosh’s piece, Limbaugh attacked not just Blumenthal and his well-known father (Clinton confidante Sidney Blumenthal) but also Media Matters, the liberal organization that monitors right-wing media:

LIMBAUGH: Max Blumenthal is the son of Sidney Blumenthal, who is, of course, Hillary Clinton’s confidant.  But Max Blumenthal, if I’m not mistaken, works at Media Matters for America.  And Max Blumenthal is one of a cabal of left-wing journalists that despise Israel, and this guy found his way to things that these people had written, and he was inspired. He admits he was inspired by all this, and that’s why he took action against the three Jewish people in Kansas City.

This is preposterous and blatantly false. Where to begin?

Blumenthal, who is of Jewish descent and has spent years off and on in Israel, does not “despise” Israel. Blumenthal has written a number of articles that criticize Israeli policies, just as Rush Limbaugh regularly criticizes the policies of the United States. Does that mean Limbaugh “despises” America? Of course not.
What’s more, there is no indication whatsoever that anything Blumenthal wrote “inspired” Miller.

As Limbaugh’s rant progressed, the distortion deepened:

At any rate, this guy, Glenn Miller, is a former KKK member.  He once ran for office as a Democrat. All the KKK are Democrats.  They always have been.  He’s an anti-Semite, obviously, and he did shout “Heil Hitler” when he was arrested, and this is what has been posted by him. These are apparently some really wacko extremist, pro-Nazi, anti-Semitic websites, and this guy’s posted plenty there where he identifies the people who inspire him.  He mentioned the name Max Blumenthal.

Limbaugh wrapped up the episode with this: “You got a former KKK member, literally insane, run for office as a Democrat, inspired by some people at Media Matters.”

Limbaugh, speaking on Monday, was wrong at just about every turn. He said that Miller stabbed three people, but everyone knew by Sunday night that three people had been shot to death. He claimed that Miller was a “huge Democrat” – in reality, he ran for office as a Democrat and a Republican and had no connections or success in either party. And Blumenthal does not work for Media Matters – he was a staff writer there from 2008-9.

Notwithstanding Radosh and Limbaugh’s lies and distortions, their attacks on Blumenthal spread quickly throughout the right-wing echo chamber, especially at neoconservative websites where Blumenthal is the subject of frequent attacks for his criticism of Israel (particularly his book-length expose of the Israeli right, Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel). At the the Washington Free Beacon, an unbylined story headlined “Kansas KKK Shooter Cited Max Blumenthal” claimed that it found “over 300” references to Blumenthal at VNN.

Max Blumenthal

Even liberal, pro-Israeli publications such as Haaretz ran with the smear. That paper published an article headlined “Kansas Murderer Admires Prominent Israeli Critic” and citied the Free Beacon piece, though it was eventually taken down by the editors of the paper due to its dubious claims.
In reality, as we have detailed at Hatewatch extensively, Miller was inspired by the far-right, white supremacist ideology he adopted in the 1970s, which included racial and ethnic hatred, homophobia and a emphasis on violence (as he explained last fall to the Southern Poverty Law Center). Miller was willing to appropriate any piece of information from any source that might help prove a point he wanted to make, and that included various “liberal media” and “Jew reporters,” as he typically referred to Blumenthal.

Miller had a history of violence and was ginned up by the ceaseless drumbeat of racial hatred that he bathed in daily at the Vanguard News Network. Any attempt to characterize his motives as deriving from “liberal” sources is an attempt to turn public understanding of the wellsprings of this kind of violence on its head.

Blumenthal is anything but a revered or celebrated figure on the far right, considering he spent many years writing exposes of far-right American extremists before turning his attention to their counterparts in Israel. In fact, he is widely reviled by users of VNN and related hate sites.

Alex Kane and Phan Nguyen at Mondoweiss performed a search of the various references to Blumenthal at these sites and found that the following descriptions were far more typical:

    “Jew Max Blumenthal”

    “Kike Max Blumenthal”

    “Jewish propagandists including … Max Blumenthal”

    “an avowed queer like Max Blumenthal”

    “Max Blumenthal … a flamboyant, exhibitionistic anti-racist”

    “that douche bag sodomite Max Blumenthal”

Kane and Nguyen also examined the Free Beacon claim that VNN referenced Blumenthal over 300 times and quickly ascertained that the references actually numbered closer to 40. And the vast majority of these, in fact, were viciously disparaging references such as those above.

Moreover, picking Blumenthal out of the literally thousands of various people and organizations who Miller cited over the course of his many years of hatemongering is mostly an exercise in selective blame-laying, considering that Miller was far more likely to approvingly cite the works of ostensibly mainstream conservatives. These include such neoconservatives as FrontPage.com editor David Horowitz, a close associate of Ron Radosh’s. In one post, Miller describes Horowitz as ”one of those jewish (sic) neocon ‘new friends’ of the White man who actually throws Whitey journalistic bones from time to time, such as his book ‘Hatin Whitey.’”

Perhaps Radosh should denounce Horowitz for inspiring Miller’s murderous rampage?

Indeed, Horowitz’s publication has apparently condoned Miller’s behavior in the past – notably, his role in the 1979 Greensboro Massacre, in which Klan members shot and killed five protest marchers. Miller was a leader of that massacre and did no prison time. A 2004 FrontPage review of a book about the incident blamed the victims for the massacre because they were Communists, and ultimately praised the KKK and neo-Nazi perpetrators: “In this war they were the patriots fighting an anti-American threat that was global in scope.”

Ironically, a recent FrontPage article not only blames Blumenthal for the Kansas shootings – once, again, because Miller had cited him – but concludes that his greatest dream was realized by the killing of Jews (though in fact no Jews were killed in the incident). It does not mention that David Horowitz was cited and praised even more fulsomely by Miller. And Haaretz, as Kane and Nguyen note, was cited 11,500 times at VNN.

Federal Retreat in Nevada ‘Range War’ Gives Green Light to Extremists

[Cross-posted at Hatewatch.]


The antigovernment “Patriots” and heavily armed militia members backing Cliven Bundy in his “range war” with the Bureau of Land Management were thrilled by the apparent confusion and retreat by federal agents at the scene of the roundup. At least momentarily, they smell victory.

The blog “Bearing Arms” summed up the sentiment on the far right: “It is now a virtual certainty that Obamite acts of tyranny will be resisted, by hundreds, even thousands, and if necessary, by force.”

Many of the leading “Patriot” and antigovernment conspiracist figures were ecstatic over the “victory,” which they said proves the legitimacy of their view that the federal government is a fraudulent entity with no legitimate power.

Leading the parade was noted militia figure Mike Vanderboegh, who wrote that the “feds were routed”:

It is impossible to overstate the importance of the victory won in the desert today. While the behind-the-scenes details are not clear yet, it is obvious that something unprecedented in the war on the west that has been waged by the imperial federal government has, against all odds, happened. The feds were routed — routed. There is no other word that applies. Courage is contagious, defiance is contagious, victory is contagious. Yet the war is not over. The empire, you may be assured, WILL strike back. This will be the subject of angry words at an Obama cabinet meeting on Monday. Someone in federal government will want blood, rest assured. The feds, having lost the Mandate of Heaven and demonstrated their impotence in this case, will not want to repeat it lest the peasants get the right idea — that they are not as omnipotent as they claim to be.

Vanderboegh, who spoke by phone with Cliven Bundy’s son, saw the event – as did most of his far-right brethren – as truly historic:

I congratulated Ammon and told him that this was perhaps a pivotal moment in American history. He also agreed with me that it is impossible not to see the hand of God in all of this. I told him that it was my opinion that the empire would surely strike back, but that they would likely come at the Bundys and their supporters sideways next time. Still, it was a great victory, a pivotal moment, in the relationship between the federal government and the American people. Nothing will be quite the same after this, mostly because it has demonstrated to those whom the government would victimize that they only require someone with the guts to stand up to leviathan — and the armed friends to back them up in the argument.

That was the sentiment at Alex Jones’ InfoWars site, where the headline proclaimed: “Historic! Feds Forced to Surrender to American Citizens”. The site also featured an article from Ron Paul himself who warned that federal agents might be planning a lethal raid against that Bundys as retaliation.

In the meantime, Sheriff Richard Mack – who appeared at the scene and helped craft a strategy to women as human shields – also weighed in at InfoWars and similarly warned against a coming raid.

On his daily show at InfoWars, Alex Jones himself warned that there would be many more such incidents.

It’s a very special time to be alive. And the victory that you saw at that event? There’s going to be more of that as people push back, as they see victory. And the feds, if they miscalculate, and start shooting people, at another Lexington or Concord, are going to set a revolution off in our favor.

At the slightly more mainstream TownHall.com, financial columnist John Ransom declared that the “War on Federal Bureaucrats Opens at the Bundy Ranch.”

Meanwhile, the Oath Keepers – the conspiracist “Patriot” group that linked up with Mack and his “constitutional sheriffs” at the standoff site to provide the protesters much of their manpower over the weekend – has not only vowed to keep up its presence at Bundy’s ranch but has sent out a national call to make their way to Nevada over the next week.


Oath Keepers president Stewart Rhodes noted that they were “concerned that the domestic enemies of the Constitution that infest the federal government might try to take advantage of folks going home, and attempt to make a move on the Bundy family.” So to prevent any raid, they were “calling on all Oath Keepers who can possibly get here to come to the Bundy Ranch to serve as volunteers on an ongoing, rotating watch.”

“I am urging each and every Oath Keepers member who can, to get here and spend a bit of time to ensure that the Bundys are not alone,” Rhodes added. “We need boots on the ground. We want you here, standing watch, which is appropriate for us Oath Keepers since our motto is ‘Not on Our Watch’.”

Rhodes also appeared on an Internet radio program for the NorthWest Liberty News in which he said that a number of leading far-right figures – including Chuck Baldwin, whose Montana-based Liberty Fellowship is a hotbed of “Patriot” radicalism – were making their way to the scene in Nevada this week, along with a number of far-right legislators who were lending their names to the cause, including Rep. Matt Shea of Spokane, Wash.

Rhodes called for his fellow Oath Keepers to gird their loins and head for Nevada:

This is an ongoing fight, so I also encourage you to get ready, prepare yourselves, get geared up and get your logistics secured away, and be here next week. Because I think what’s going to happen is – I haven’t got a crystal ball, but my suspicion is they’re going to regroup and then come back even more. They’re going to double down, and so we need to be ready to do the same thing. So we’ll need a lot more folks here.

In Nevada, local opinion makers are decidedly less enthusiastic. At the conservative Las Vegas Review-Journal, columnist Steve Sebelius noted that the court orders and numerous rulings requiring the federal government to remove Bundy’s cows remained intact:

About the only thing that’s different is that a bunch of armed would-be insurrectionists have gotten the message that if they show up with tough talk and loaded long guns, there’s a good chance the government will back down. And that’s not a very good message to send.

However, as Ian Millhiser at ThinkProgress observes, the story is far from over. Many of these activists, in fact, could find themselves behind bars soon for having broken various laws, including the threatening behavior that was directed at federal agents, as well having crossed state lines with various weapons and wielded them in Nevada “in furtherance of a civil disorder” – also a federal crime.

Bundy Supporters Reportedly Harass Conservationists, BLM Workers over Nevada ‘Range War’

[Cross-posted at Hatewatch.]


Apparently Cliven Bundy’s supporters in his showdown with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) over cattle grazing rights aren’t satisfied with having forced the government to end its roundup operation. Now some of them are bent on punishing the people they blame for the creating the situation.

Rob Mrowka of Las Vegas, who heads up the Center for Biological Diversity – the Tucson, Ariz.-based environmental organization whose lawsuits over the desert tortoise forced the BLM’s hand in rounding up Bundy’s cattle, which had been grazing for free on public lands that comprised the animal’s habitat – says he started getting calls about three days before the right-wing Bundy media blitz. And then it became a deluge.

“It kind of started out with a phone call from a guy in Mississippi who called, and myself and someone in the Tucson office picked up and talked to him,” Mrowka said, adding that a third colleague did not pick up, and for him, he “left a disturbing voice message. That was just the start of it.”

The message the man left on the voicemail was similar to what he told Mrowka and his colleague in person: “I am holding you personally responsible for every one of Cliven Bundy’s cattle that is confiscated. For his son David, who’s in jail, and for anything that happens to them in the future. And since I am holding you responsible, I plan on making you pay. There’s no need for you to call me back. This is your notice. You’ve been fighting a war against us for awhile, we’re gonna start fightin’ back.”

“Since then, there’s been about a hundred emails, most of them very hateful and vulgar and intimidating – ‘You’re going to be held responsible,’ that sort of thing,” Mrowka said. He’s spoken with various law enforcement authorities about it, including the FBI, but so far none of the messages have reached the level of a direct threat.

“The thing that’s been frustrating is that we’re the only ones speaking out about this, and it’s really not in our wheelhouse,” he noted. “We’re about speaking up for endangered species. We don’t know that much about sovereign citizens and their theories.”

Mrowka said he has been forced to get up to speed what his harassers are talking about when they use obscure pseudo-legal language to make outlandish claims that the federal government has no authority over the lands where Bundy’s cattle graze – classic hallmarks of antigovernment “Patriot” movement ideology in action. He said that sharing information with his colleagues about sovereign citizens has helped all of them get a better handle on the level of radicalism they’re up against.

Federal employees are also in the sights of the “Patriots” in the wake of the Bundy “range war.” “I can’t speak firsthand, but I have received some confidential information that federal employees are receiving harassment similar to what I have been receiving,” Mrowka. “In fact, one of the Twitter links that is attacking me also posted the pictures, names, addresses and maps of some of the BLM officers that have been involved. And I understand that the BLM offices are just being inundated. As are those of the Clark County Commission.”

Hatewatch independently confirmed that BLM employees are enduring personal harassment.

Richard Mack Explains Nevada ‘Range War’ Strategy: ‘Put All the Women Up in the Front’

[Cross-posted at Hatewatch.]


As part of Fox News’ eager coverage of the recent “range war” showdown over Cliven Bundy’s cattle grazing rights in Nevada, the network broadcast a segment from the scene Monday that was remarkable both for the reporters’ seeming embrace of the far-right antigovernment “Patriot” movement and for its subjects’ startling clarity on their strategy for confronting federal agents: using women as human shields.
Richard Mack, the erstwhile Arizona sheriff and longtime figure in the Patriot movement, was at the scene. He told Fox reporter William LaJeunesse that the people who gathered there to stop law enforcement from rounding up the illegally grazing cattle – which had grown to hundreds by the time the Bureau of Land Management caved in and returned many of the cattle – were prepared to lay their lives on the line in standing up to the government. Or more precisely:

We were actually strategizing to put all the women up at the front. If they’re going to start shooting, it’s going to be women that are televised all across the world getting shot by these rogue federal officers.

Mack’s radical Posse-Comitatus-based ideology, which claims that county sheriffs are the higest constitutional level of law enforcement, lines up nicely with Cliven Bundy’s antigovernment views. That explains why Mack has taken a lead role in helping promote Bundy’s cause in far-right media circles.

Monday’s Fox News segment, hosted by Gretchen Carlson, was also noteworthy for LaJeunesse’s characterization of the situation, which seemed to embrace the Patriot ideology:

And you know, it was those protesters and sympathizers, self-described Patriots, who provided Cliven Bundy the leverage he needed to get his cattle back, and to get the BLM to back off. Indeed, they were also backed up by many Second Amendment supporters, who were a well-armed militia, with assault rifles and handguns, who were prepared to respond to any assault or use of force, if you will, by BLM agents.

So you had the tensions mounting when these protesters went to I-15, closed down the road. When cowboys went down and tried to get the cattle back, they surrounded these BLM agents, confronting them, who were guarding the cattle inside holding pens. Now, above and around were marksmen in sniper positions. A retired Arizona sheriff worried about what was going to happen next.

LaJeunesse also explained to his audience: “Bundy says that he doesn’t recognize federal authority here, that his grazing rights predate and preclude federal authority in this area.”

However, he neglected to mention that Bundy has tested those claims in multiple court cases and has lost at every step, leading to the court order authorizing BLM to round up his trespassing cattle on federal lands.

Hannity's Bullying Isn't A Persuasive Argument For Sea World

Memo to SeaWorld: Having Sean Hannity champion your cause does not exactly advance your argument that you deeply care about the animals in your keep. Rather the opposite.

Hannity hosted a segment last week purportedly to debate a proposed new law in California that would ban performances by orcas in the state and require marine parks to begin the work of returning wild-born orcas to their native waters. We say "purportedly" because, as with all things Hannity, this wasn't a debate. It was another piece of sexist bullying masquerading a right-wing performance art.

Hannity invited two women on to debate the subject: former Sea World trainer Bridgette Pirtle Davis, and Lisa Lange of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the latter of whom probably came on thinking she might get a chance at a fair shot to air her views on Hannity's show. Hah. It wasn't long before she realized that no such shot existed.

After interviewing Pirtle Davis, who now defends SeaWorld after having been at one time part of the group of ex-trainers who appeared in the documentary 'Blackfish' before her appearances were edited out, Hannity turned to Lange and before she could even say a word, handed her a turd of an opening remark:

HANNITY: Does PETA really stand for People Eating Tasty Animals?

It quickly went downhill from there. Hannity quickly made it clear he wasn't interested in discussion the details and core issues of orca captivity. No. All he really wanted to do was get someone from PETA on so that he could attack the people who proposed the legislation as a bunch of kooks. Because he then set out to make sure that everyone knew that PETA as an organization has taken a lot of stands on animal rights that people will consider nutty.

There's a problem with this: PETA is not involved in the California legislation at all. The Animal Welfare Institute, in fact, is the organization that is providing the primary guidance for the legislators writing this bill, and those efforts are being overseen by a genuine orca scientist with deep knowledge of both wild and captive orcas, Naomi Rose.

But then, Rose probably knew better than to ever appear on Fox, and evidently no one warned poor Lisa Lange.

Just interesting, perhaps, is the appearance of Pirtle Davis on Hannity's show as a critic of the legislation, who ignorantly (and falsely) accused the advocates of the legislation of wanting to simply turn the animals loose in the sea. (This is a baldfaced lie.)

She also defended her former boss now, completing her circuitous transformation into a complete circle, having once been a severe critic of SeaWorld.

"I didn't feel the animals were mistreated," she told Hannity

Well, here's what Pertl told an interviewer back when she was part of the 'Blackfish' team and before she found she could reap more attention by going on Fox and attacking SeaWorld's critics:

Had I allowed myself to take in the bigger picture of orcas and marine life parks, maybe ten years spent coming to this realization that captivity is immoral would have been spent creating change soon enough to prevent lives like Alexis and Dawn being lost.

... Ultimately, the same concerns voiced as a result of Dawn's accident had been voiced after incidents in the past. Lessons not learned and continually disregarded. Many of those taking care of the animals are fighting for less responsibility to be placed upon their ever-drooping dorsal fins.

Show schedules, public interactions, and dining obligations create a strain on animals already in a highly stressed environment. They are proudly introduced as "ambassadors" but they are simply work horses for a profit hungry industry desperate to remain relevant in a society that has already begun to recognize we have moved past such a trite necessity.

Now Pirtl Davis -- whose interviews in 'Blackfish' were left on the cutting-room floor -- has found that she can get more media time by turning back and re-embracing that profit-hungry industry. We wish her lots of luck with that. And we hope she really enjoys being in the company of Sean Hannity and his nasty, bullying ilk. Serves her right.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

Pete Santilli’s Violent Rant about a ‘Fight to the Death’ in Nevada

[Cross-posted at Hatewatch.]

The rhetoric from right-wing pundits concerning Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy’s showdown with federal authorities over cattle grazing rights has quickly grown overheated. But talk show host Pete Santilli – who has a notable history of extremist statements – has reached an entirely new level of hysteria.

Santilli devoted more than an hour of his Internet radio broadcast on Monday to interviewing Bundy. As the interview progressed, Santilli became increasingly incendiary, calling on members of militias in the region to show up and defend the ranchers. At the end of the exchange, Santilli concluded with a rant that veered close to suggesting that federal law enforcement officers at the scene should be treated like enemy terrorists waging “jihad” against ordinary Americans:

We talk of, ladies and gentlemen, the American Dream. We talk of it. We talk of the pride that we have in what our Founding Fathers put forth for us, our U.S. Constitution. The flag – all the men and women that have given their lives to defend what this man is standing and defending. Right now. And it’s now a matter of determining: Are our domestic enemies, right now, more of a detriment to the survival of our nation than these foreign enemies that we get so energized to go and kill?

Do we need to dress these federal agents up as a bunch of brown people and say that they came from the desert and they want to wage jihad against us, or are we going to call it jihad, just about, against the American people at this point?

The federal government, ladies and gentlemen, has become so out of control, so tyrannical, to the point where they do it swiftly, silently, to the point where the American people don’t even recognize what tyranny is.

As he wrapped up the rant, Santilli became even more explicitly violent, characterizing the Nevada showdown as a “fight to the death”:

Is it time now, at this point in time – if this is not THE issue, right now! Where we stand and fight to the absolute, and I say, death! There is no other option! The federal government must get out of the state of Nevada, with respect to that 600,000-acre ranch – they must leave. We want that to be done peacefully. If they don’t want it to happen peacefully, it is gonna be by their choice.

Santilli’s solution: Militiamen and “patriots” need to bring their guns:

Ladies and gentlemen, when I say, I’m calling upon every single American anywhere in the vicinity of Clark County, pool your money together, fill up your gas cans, get your cameras. If you’re in Nevada and you can legally carry, get weapons out there, OK? We’re going to stand and fight in Clark County, Nevada! They will leave or else!

Of course, if gunfire actually does break out, one can rest assured that he will almost certainly be nowhere in the vicinity himself.

Right-Wing Media Eagerly Promote Cliven Bundy and His Anti-Federal Faceoff

[Cross-posted at Hatewatch.]


Mainstream media coverage of the showdown in southern Nevada over Cliven Bundy’s cattle has so far been scrupulously balanced. Most outlets – including local TV stations from nearby Las Vegas, as well as cable news outlets CNN and MSNBC – have presented Bundy’s belief that the U.S. government has no jurisdiction over the land on which he grazes his cows as well as the government’s explanation of how it is enforcing land use rules fairly for everyone.

The same cannot be said for right-wing media outlets, led by Fox News, which have steadily characterized the Bundy family as heroic patriots standing up to a tyrannical government. A number of far-right pundits have even been urging people to go to the scene in Clark County to make their presence known.

Fox’s Sean Hannity led the parade of Bundy boosters on Fox, featuring a segment on Tuesday night that included an interview with Bundy and a narrative that presented his claims at face value. Indeed, Hannity himself repeated Bundy’s favorite question: “Why do they own all that land?” (Hannity reportedly plans to devote an entire show to the situation on Monday.)

Fox’s Greta Van Susteren also featured an interview on Thursday with Cliven Bundy and his adult son, Ammon Bundy, who was hit with a Taser during a ruckus on Wednesday. Again, it was a sympathetic report, featuring no countervailing information, and it included an interesting explanation from the father and son regarding their attitudes towards the courts:

VAN SUSTEREN: There’s a court order that says that the federal government can do this. So what’s your response to that.

CLIVEN BUNDY: My response is it’s the wrong court. I’ve never had my due process in a Nevada state court, a court of competent jurisdiction.

AMMON BUNDY: Hey, uh – I like my Dad’s little story he uses to explain the situation. If someone came in and busted into my house and abused my children, and I call the cops, they don’t respond. And then I take them to court, I show up in the courtroom, look on the stand, and it’s the very person that abused my children looking down at me in a black robe. How in the world are we going to get justice in that court?

The Bundys have been receiving support from other right-wing sources, including the Koch-sponsored Americans For Prosperity, which has acted as public boosters for the family’s activities. AFP’s Nevada chapters have been actively promoting anti-Bureau of Land Management stories through social media.

The further to the right the outlet reporting the case, the more extreme the coverage has been. Over at the Drudge Report, the front page’s upper-left hand corner has featured string of updates from the scene with headlines such as:

County Commissioner Says Bundy Supporters ‘Better Have Funeral Plans’…

Lawmaker: Cattle Roundup ‘Reminded Me Of Tiananmen Square’…

Family: ‘Wake up America…they are taking everything from us’…

Militia Members Arrive: We’re not ‘afraid to shoot’…

At conspiracy-minded Alex Jones’ Infowars, there has been a steady flow of antigovernt “Patriot”-oriented stories, including one in which Bundy called on the local sheriff to begin arresting federal agents.

And at right-wing RevolutionRadio.org, headlines proclaimed that “up to 5,000” militia members were to begin arriving at the scene in Nevada today. “We may well be on the cusp of a serious stand-off involving thousands of people,” the website warned. “Keep in mind that most of them will be armed. Given the circumstances, things could turn very bloody very quickly.”

Indeed, a large number of additional protesters did arrive at the scene today, but fortunately things remained peaceful.

Nevada Rancher’s Interview With Volatile Talk Show Host Reveals His ‘Patriot’ Movement Leanings

[Cross-posted at Hatewatch.]

 If it wasn’t clear from the pronouncements that Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy made in TV interviews this past week – most notably his assertion that “I don’t recognize the United States government as even existing” – the confrontation in the Nevada desert that has drawn a horde of antigovernment ‘Patriot’ movement supporters and militiamen out of the woodwork is a classic example of the conflict between so-called Patriots and the real world in which bureaucracies like the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) operate.

That’s especially clear after a review of remarks Bundy made previously in the media, including threats to start a “range war” and “do whatever it takes” to keep his cattle grazing freely on public land. The most notable of these was an appearance at a cattle owners convention in South Carolina in 2012 at which he trumpeted his refusal to recognize the legitimacy of the government; speaking at the same gathering was noted Patriot movement leader Richard Mack.

Bundy has been outspoken in promoting his antigovernment beliefs, including during an interview with far-right radio host Pete Santilli earlier this week. Santilli has a colorful and sordid record of saying extreme things on the air, most infamously his wish that someone would shoot Hillary Clinton in the vagina. In recent weeks he has explicitly aligned himself with the Patriot movement.

Much of the interview revolved around Bundy’s belief that the U.S. government can’t possibly own the open public lands of the interior West:

Who owns this land? Who has title to this land? Is it the state of Nevada? Or is it the federal government? And if it’s the federal government, then I want to understand, I know I’ve asked this question: How does the federal government own 90 percent of the state of Nevada? How does that happen?” […] The other question I bring forth, according to our Constitution, how could this possibly be? We claim the Constitution is the law of the land, and so how could this happen here in America? How could this happen that the United States could own this vast amount of land – not only in Nevada, but in the Western United States? So this is an issue that I bring forth.

Santilli chimed in enthusiastically, claiming: “They don’t own it!” (In reality, of course, the U.S. government owns full title to public lands, which were usually acquired by treaty with other nations, and manages them through the BLM.) Bundy claimed that he, not the government, was “the manager of this land, at least because of my rights.” If anyone is trespassing, he said, it is the BLM.

The upshot of the interview was striking: Santilli wound up calling on militia members to make their way to the scene of the confrontation in Clark County. Bundy himself said that “now it’s time to get on our boots and I guess make our stand.” Santilli urged “anyone in the general vicinity” to make their way to the protest site so they could “stand in the face of tyranny”. He also vowed to call Sheriff Mack and ask him to speak to the Clark County sheriff so he would do the “constitutional” thing.

“We need a show of force,” Santilli said, comparing the confrontation to standoffs with federal authorities that occurred in the 1990s and are credited with inflaming the militia movement – namely, at Waco, Texas, and Ruby Ridge, Idaho.

Santilli then called for militias from around the West to come out and defend the Bundys, saying there needed to be “a constitutional defense against a tyrannical government,” by which he meant “an organized militia” and “a Second Amendment.”

Bundy agreed. “You know, the things like militias, you know, I haven’t called no militia out or anything like that, but hey, it looks like that’s about where we’re at,” he told Santilli. “We’ve got a strong army here we have to fight, they are bound and bent and not gonna back off, we don’t have our state officials not stepping up and saying no. So until the state officials step up and say no, or the county sheriff says no, it’s going to keep escalating to the point where we’re going to have to take our land back and take our rights back.”

“And maybe it’s the time we’re at in life,” Bundy said. “It just seems like we’ve worked our way all the way to this point, now are we gonna back off, or take it to – somebody’s going to have to back off. If they’re not, We The People are gonna put our boots down and we’re going to walk over these people.”

Bundy vowed not to back down: “They’re up against a man who will do whatever it takes,” he told Santilli.
Santilli agreed: “This is what our Founding Fathers, Mr. Bundy, would want us to do – to protect ourselves from a tyrannical government. This is not a conspiracy theory, is it?”

Antigovernment ‘Patriots’ Gather Near Scene of Nevada Rancher’s Dispute Over Cattle Grazing Rights

[Cross-posted at Hatewatch.]


A Nevada rancher appears to have backed down after threatening to open up a “range war” with the federal government if they rounded up the cattle he had illegally grazing on public lands. Authorities responded to the rancher’s threat with a show of force – an estimated 200 federal agents who descended on the scene – and rounded up the cattle. However, a large contingent of about a hundred antigovernment “Patriots” is now gathering near the site of the roundup as a form of protest and making their presence known.

On Wednesday, the confrontation escalated into a brief dustup between federal law enforcement officers and the protesters, including the son of the rancher at the center of dispute, Cliven Bundy. During the ruckus, caught on video, Bundy’s adult son, Ammon Bundy, was shot with a stun gun that bloodied his shoulder. Eventually the officers retreated, amid much celebration by the protesters.

The core of the dispute is Cliven Bundy’s ongoing claim to the right to graze his cattle on a sensitive piece of southern Nevada’s Mojave Desert known as Gold Butte. Bundy’s family had grazed cattle in the area for generations, but in 1993 Cliven Bundy stopped paying his fees on the land, claiming that the United States government was not the legitimate landlord.

In 2013, a federal judge enjoined him from continuing to graze his cattle on the federal lands, an order he has studiously ignored. So this week, federal authorities moved into the area and began sweeping up Bundy’s trespassing cattle.

Bundy threatened a “range war” if Bureau of Land Management agents took custody of his stock, calling them “cattle thieves.” But, initially at least, the threats appeared to fizzle as the roundup of Bundy’s cattle proceeded apace, accompanied by a heavy law enforcement presence at the scene, while Bundy sputtered helplessly on the sideline. On Sunday, another adult son, 37-year-old David Bundy, was arrested after getting into a confrontation with the federal officers; afterwards, Bundy and his compatriots described for reporters their alleged ordeal the hands of federal officers.

BLM officials, meanwhile, defend the crackdown on Bundy’s activities by noting that he is the only rancher in the region who refuses to acknowledge or heed the federal permit system for grazing rights. “Cattle have been in trespass on public lands in southern Nevada for more than two decades. This is unfair to the thousands of other ranchers who graze livestock in compliance with federal laws and regulations throughout the West,” the BLM website noted.

Several interviews that Bundy has given over the years makes clear that he subscribes to Patriot movement theories about the legitimacy of the federal government, or the lack thereof, and to Posse Comitatus theories about the enshrinement of the powers of the county sheriff.  He also has taken to comparing his confrontation with federal authorities to ill-fated clashes at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and Waco, Texas, in the 1990s, that were infamous for inspiring militia organizing the fueled the Patriot movement then.

Bundy’s campaign to ignore federal grazing laws has support among his fellow Patriots, who are now coming to his defense in far-right media outlets. This notably includes Alex Jones’ Infowars, which is avidly promoting the Bundy ranch story, as well as Pete Santelli’s Internet radio show. All of these outlets depict Bundy’s “range war” as a last gasp fight for American freedom against looming federal tyranny. A “We Support Cliven Bundy” Facebook page has a similar tone.

Even the Drudge Report is adopting the Bundy story, leading the site’s front page with updates from the “Standoff At Nevada Ranch” (though in fact no standoff is taking place). So is Glenn Beck’s The Blaze, which has been headlining it on their website’s front page.

As a result, the scene of the roundup has attracted an encampment of about a hundred “Patriots” and Bundy supporters who have parked along the roadside and harassed the roundup vehicles. They are keeping their anger over the presence of federal law enforcement officers and their firepower burning.

“Right now it looks like the movie Red Dawn,” another of Bundy’s sons, Ryan, told the crowd. “Right now we’ve got 200 plus federal agents up there in a military compound that they have put together and they’ve got snipers….everybody’s armed, and they’ve been monitoring our ranch with high-tech surveillance equipment….it was never about the grazing fees, it’s about control.”

Santelli, in his interview with Cliven Bundy on Monday, called for militias to turn out and protect Bundy and his family. And that appears in fact to be happening. The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported on Wednesday that two militiamen from Montana had joined the scene; one of them posed with a high-caliber long-range rifle, saying he and his cohort were there to protect the Bundys from “tyranny”.

The scuffle on Wednesday appeared to follow efforts by the protesters to prevent vehicles involved in the roundup work from leaving the scene. At one point, officers began bringing in guard dogs and demanding that people get away from a truck whose exit had been blocked. At that point, some shoving and scuffling occurred, officers pulled out their tasers and Ammon Bundy was hit in the chest.




Eventually the truck moved on and the law enforcement officers all got into their vehicles and followed the roundup vehicles away from the scene. The protesters were jubilant.

A BLM statement noted that peaceful protests have “crossed into illegal activity” in recent days, with people “blocking vehicles associated with the gather, impeding cattle movement, and making direct and overt threats to government employees. These isolated actions that have jeopardized the safety of individuals have been responded to with appropriate law enforcement actions.”

League of the South Looks to Street Theater to Increase Visibility

[Cross-posted at Hatewatch.]

You will know the League of the South’s street demonstrators by their flags – a variety of Confederate flags, yellow “Don’t Tread on Me” Gadsden flags and stark, black-and-white so-called Southern Nationalist flags. If the league’s organizers see their hopes realized, such demonstrators will be a common sight on city streets and plazas in the South.

The league’s leaders have developed a street demonstration strategy they hope will increase their public profile in the coming months. At a state conference in Alabama last month, they unveiled some of the details of that program, including a protest of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery in May.

The Alabama gathering, held at the league’s meeting hall in Wetumpka, near Montgomery, featured speeches by president Michael Hill, Georgia chapter chairman Ed Wolfe, South Carolina chapter chairman Michael Cushman and Brad Griffin, editor of the Occidental Dissent blog, who writes under the nom de plume “Hunter Wallace”. Griffin recently wrote about the league’s strategic shift in a post titled, “The Logic of Street Demonstrations.”

The shift appears to be primarily Hill’s idea, as he made clear in his opening remarks, and seems to be connected to the increasingly belligerent and radical positions he has staked out in recent years –symbolized by his exchange with a black reporter in Tallahassee earlier this year. Upon being asked if he minded if the league was depicted as a “bunch of racists”, Hill responded: “So what? I’m standing up for my people – white Southern people – no one else.”

Several of the conference speakers celebrated Hill’s response, including Griffin, who added: “We’re standing up for our people. It is the right thing to do, it is what we ought to do. We should have started doing it a long time ago. The fear of sticking our necks out has long been one of our worst enemies, and that more than anything has to be overcome before we can gather the numbers to move forth.”

Griffin and the other speakers argued that street demonstrations will provide people with a clearer view of their choices. They presented a disparaging view of counter-protesters, typically describing them, as Griffin did in a recent post, as “a bunch of queers and lesbians gyrating on a sidewalk with tambourine.”

Cushman celebrated the shift toward unapologetic racism by observing that the league was “smashing that taboo”: “We’re supposed to be embarrassed to talk about race. We’re supposed to turn red in the face and kind of turn away and whisper if we say anything at all about race. We’re smashing that taboo as well.”

Wolfe, meanwhile, demonstrated that the league is in the thrall of Posse Comitatus/sovereign citizen theories of government, describing at length how the United States is “not a nation, but a corporation.” Wolfe then argued that the Southern states more naturally made a true “nation” since the white people in it were “bound by blood”.

Hill, in a video made at the gathering, elucidated Wolfe’s point even farther, explaining that while people mistakenly believe “nationalism” relates to political borders, it actually relates to “borders that distinguish a people, a blood people.” He then went on a rant about those borders:

And who are our people? Our people are white European Southerners. Now, we’re mainly from the British Isles, but we’re also from other parts of northern and western Europe, and even parts of central Europe. But we are a distinctive people, based on blood. And from that blood comes culture. And from that culture comes our political institutions, and from the political institutions come our borders, and our nations – our nation-states, as we call them.

Germany, France, England, Ireland, Scotland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden – Dixie. They’re all the same. We are a people. We are a nation. We are a blood, with the land.

Predictably, Hill’s remarks at the gathering were all about whipping up ethnic fears, warning that the white majority population of the United States was on the verge of becoming a minority, which “will mean the end of our civilization.” He went on: “There comes a time when you got to get just pure mad-dog mean. If your civilization is worth fighting for, that’s what you will – you will let nothing deter you from it.”

Far-Right ‘Jury Nullification’ Concept Resurfaces in Marijuana Debate

[Cross-posted at Hatewatch.]

Can members of juries really stand in judgment of the laws they are sworn to apply? Can jurors really choose to acquit someone of a crime because they believe a law is unjust?

This concept – known as “jury nullification” – has been promoted in previous decades by far-right extremists who sought to “nullify” a variety of federal laws by encouraging jurors not to enforce them. The cases involved civil rights laws, tax statutes and criminal acts by white perpetrators aagainst black victims. It was avidly promoted in the 1990s by members of the antigovernment “Patriot” movement, particularly so-called “Freemen” in Montana who promoted the sovereign citizen ideology.

More recently, it has popped up in the context of the debate over marijuana legalization. It was signaled by a 2011 New York Times op-ed that advocated nullification in court battles over marijuana arrests, which disproportionately affect young black men.
A 2013 case, in which a medical marijuana dispensary owner was accused of breaking federal laws, gained even more attention after then-San Diego Mayor Bob Filner urged the jury to nullify the man’s arraignment. (The defendant eventually accepted a plea bargain.)

A 2012 case, in which a New Hampshire man accused of growing marijuana was found innocent by a local jury, is widely regarded as an instance of nullification. Recently, New Hampshire magazine ran an article examining the question titled “Understanding Jury Nullification” that presented it in a largely positive light. Executive Editor Rick Broussard told Hatewatch that the magazine – which mostly features lifestyle-oriented fare – included the piece because nullification had become part of an ongoing legal debate in the state.

Far-right activists also remain prominent promoters of the concept, which continues to percolate in anti-tax and antigovernment circles. The efforts to promote the idea were applauded by the Washington Times in an article last year, as well as in a John Birch Society magazine article. Most recently, a paleoconservative Republican from Alaksa sponsored legislation in the state assembly that would explicitly permit jury nullification, raising concerns in the law enforcement community.

So, what is “jury nullification” all about?

There is in fact a long history of jury nullification both in American and English law –  cases in which the jurors simply ignored the requirements of the law and set the accused free. However, it has primarily been viewed as a malfunction of the law, not as a principle to be embraced.

“Nullification is, by definition, a violation of a juror’s oath to apply the law as instructed by the court,” according to a 1997 ruling by Judge Jose Cabranes, who said jurors who reject the law should not be allowed to serve. An appeals court upheld the ruling but determined that only “unambiguous evidence” of a juror’s disregard of the law can justify dismissal.

Other jurists have been equally clear about the actual standing of jury nullification:

“It is a recipe for anarchy . . . [when jurors] are allowed to substitute personal whims for the stable and established law.” – Colorado circuit Judge Frederic B. Rodgers

“Jury nullification is indefensible, because, by definition, it amounts to juror perjury – that is jurors lying under oath by deciding a case contrary to the law and the evidence after they have sworn to decide the case according to the law and the evidence.” – D.C. Superior Court Judge Henry F. Greene

The leading proponent of jury nullification is a Montana-based outfit called the Fully Informed Jury Association (FIJA), which has attracted a substantial audience among libertarians and drug-war critics (a small splinter group, also based in Montana and with a similar name, was overtly extremist and closely associated with the Montana Freemen). Here’s how the group touts itself on its website:

The American Bar Association (ABA) wrote that FIJA drew its support from “a wide and unusual spectrum of political thought – from the National Rifle Association to gun control advocates, from abortion rights supporters to their opponents, and from backers of marijuana legislation to law-and-order types.” The appeal of FIJA crosses the full spectrum of American lifestyle and ideology because the FIJA goals reflect the goals of those who are alert to the fragile liberties of Americans.

In reality, FIJA’s origins and orientation are extremist and built on long-rejected legal theories adopted from the old Posse Comitatus movement. The Posse and their followers, who preached that taxes were illegal and that the IRS was an unconstitutional body, became extremely frustrated as their followers, beginning in the early 1970s, received hefty sentences for their mounting tax violations. Convinced that the legal system itself was corrupt and would never allow their view of constitutional law to see the light of day, they developed the idea of organized jury nullification: if they couldn’t get the courts to change, all they had to do was get one or two jurors to hang up the process.

The chief proponent of the concept in Posse circles was a Montanan named Red Beckman. He had a long and colorful career as a tax protester and anti-Semite; his book, The Church Deceived, described the Holocaust as God’s judgment on “the Anti-Christ Church” for worshipping Satan, and was noted for repeating the charge that Jews are Satan worshippers. He appeared as a keynote speaker at numerous Christian Identity events over the years. Beckman was an early and important influence on LeRoy Schweitzer, the leader of the Montana Freemen.

Beckman’s ideas about jury nullification became a cornerstone of his anti-tax strategy, and they quickly gained popularity, not just among the Posse, but among many elements of the far right that were coming into conflict with legal authorities. Not only could jury nullification solve problems related to tax cases, but juries could also potentially overturn charges ranging from malicious harassment to firearms violations and bomb building. As the Posse mutated into the Christian Patriots, who then became merely “Patriots,” the theories became more distilled and more widely distributed.

Jury nullification played a prominent role in several of the court cases involving “Patriot” movement leaders who were arrested for various crimes in the 1990s, including the 1996 trial of leaders of the Washington State Militia on charges of bomb building and conspiracy. Militia sympathizers attempted to hand out copies of the “Citizens Rule Book,” a pamphlet distributed by FIJA and other “Patriot” organizations that tells jurors they are “above the law” and have the right to judge the law, to members of the jury.

Jury nullification raised its head in the 1997 trial in Spokane, Wash., of the gang of three terrorist militiamen who called themselves the “Phineas Priesthood,” when that trial ended in a hung jury on an 11-1 vote to convict. It soon emerged that one of the jurors had been reading the “Citizens Rule Book”. When the three men – Charles Barbee, Robert Berry and Verne Jay Merrell – were retried a few months later, jurors were screened for having read the text, and the trial produced three convictions and life sentences.

Richard Mack Pitches Classic Posse Comitatus Theory on Fox’s Lou Dobbs Tonight

[Cross-posted at Hatewatch.]

Richard Mack, the former sheriff of Graham County, Ariz., and an antigovernment “Patriot” movement figure who leads the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, has a long history of promoting the theory that county sheriffs, not federal law enforcement, represent the supreme law of the land. This radically decentralized vision of government was first promoted by the old far-right Posse Comitatus movement.


Mack shot from obscurity to right-wing stardom in the mid-1990s when he challenged the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act and won a victory in the U.S. Supreme Court that weakened the law. For the past two years, he has zigzagged across the country spreading conspiracy theories about the federal government and promoting his organization as a “line in the sand” against government agents.

Fox Business channel’s Lou Dobbs Tonight gave Mack a platform to promote his views last night. Lou Dobbs, of course, is no stranger to controversy.

Mack did not disappoint, telling Dobbs that in order to “save America”, county sheriffs need to refuse to obey federal gun laws. He hinted, as he often does, that civil war might result if they fail to do so.
The legislation that sparked the segment was a set of local ballot items approved by voters in Burlington, Vt., in early March. The ordinances, which do not involve state or federal authorities, “allow police to seize weapons from suspects of domestic violence, ban firearms from any city establishment with a liquor license and require gun owners to safely store all guns.”

Mack is calling on sheriffs in Vermont to refuse to enforce the laws: “Sheriffs have a constitutional duty to refuse to comply with such ordinances. We’re seeing sheriffs in New York oppose the Safe Act and Gov. Cuomo. If we have sheriffs in New York doing this, how much more should we have sheriffs doing it in Vermont?”

Last night’s segment began with Dobbs describing the Vermont ordinances as “Obamaesque.” Then Mack started into a diatribe about radically decentralizing government to “take America back”:

MACK: Well, we want the borders protected. They ignore the immigration laws, and they do pick and choose quite often. But we don’t want to pick and choose. We want the Constitution enforced by those in local and municipal jurisdictions who swore an oath to do just that.

And so this really is a badge vs. the badge situation, and I believe that the biggest badge in the county is the county sheriff. The county sheriff is the only elected law enforcement officer in the county. He reports directly to the people, he’s not a bureaucrat, he doesn’t answer to other bureaucrats.

If we’re going to take America back, then we must do so one county at a time, sheriff by sheriff.

Then Mack railed against the federal government, which he said has “raids going on against honest American citizens all the time.” He told Dobbs that “we’re not trying to cause civil war or revolution,” but that the only peaceful way of saving America is through nullification:

MACK: This isn’t just a mess anymore, Lou. This is America dying. And we can save her. And we can make it all peaceful if we have sheriffs and local officials that will just tell the federal government, “There’s a few things you’re not gonna do here.”

Dobbs never bothered to ask Mack how he could argue for local control while trying to undermine local control in Burlington. That would be too much to expect.

‘Patriot’ Leader Among Apparent Victims of Washington Mudslide

[Cross-posted at Hatewatch.]

Among the dozens of apparent victims in Saturday’s tragic mudslide near rural Oso, Wash. – the current official death toll is 16, with over 100 people still missing and unaccounted for – was a man familiar to reporters who covered Snohomish County politics in the 1990s: Thom Satterlee.

Satterlee, 65, and his wife, Marcy, 61, were among the people listed as missing after Saturday’s massive landslide, which wiped out an entire neighborhood next to the North Fork of the Stillaguamish River in central Snohomish County. His granddaughter, Delaney Webb, 20, and her fiancée, Alan Bejvl, 21, were also in the residence at the time of the slide. Satterlee’s home was in the middle of its path, and it remains unclear, as body-recovery efforts continue, whether the family will ever be found.

Thom Satterlee during his 'Freedom County' campaign

Thom Satterlee (credit: Everett Herald)

Thom Satterlee became a well-known public figure in the county during the 1990s, after becoming outraged by the passage of the state’s Growth Management Act in 1990. He became involved in the nascent antigovernment “Patriot” movement, which was organizing militias in the region at the time, but Satterlee chose to apply the ideology to local politics: He organized county “secession” efforts that would allow rural districts to break away from dominance by their urban neighbors.

In Snohomish County, the effort was dubbed “Freedom County.” The secessionists were led primarily by three people: David Guadalupe, who had previously been involved with the far-right American Land Rights Association; John Stokes of Camano Island, a onetime real-estate agent who had run afoul of state wetlands laws, and who eventually moved to Montana and became involved in broadcasting Patriot propaganda on the radio there; and Satterlee, who had declared himself a “sovereign citizen” and Christian Patriot. Sovereign citizens generally claim that they are immune to most federal criminal and tax laws.

Their efforts were stifled at the state level by legislators unpersuaded by their arguments. Satterlee and Stokes in April 1997 filed a complaint with the United Nations against Washington for violating the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights because the state would not create Freedom County: “the right of self-determination and self-government … are being denied by the state of Washington,” the complaint alleged. However, the U.N. informed them that it could not help.

A Superior Court decision ruled that Freedom County did not exist. When Guadalupe and Satterlee appealed to the State Supreme Court, the court commissoner wrote: “Having studied the pleadings filed by Mr. Guadualupe and Mr. Satterlee, which are in the main legally incoherent despite a heavy larding of pseudo-legal rhetoric, I find no basis to grant a stay.”

Satterlee was a “common law” proponent who tried to give “legal advice” to similarly ideologically inclined people. For instance, he repeatedly tried to give advice to a tax protester named Floyd Ryan at a hearing in July 1997, prompting the judge to order him to sit down. In a 1995 election he was involved in, he identified himself as 46 years of age, but gave his only occupation as “consultant.” Satterlee at one point tried to pay his taxes with checks backed by pseudo-legal “liens” filed against a federal judge in Seattle over his handling of a conspiracy and weapons case against a group of western Washington militiamen.

Eventually, Satterlee’s activities attracted the attention of the FBI, especially after he and his cohorts began threatening to arrest the legitimately elected sheriff, Rick Bart, if he wandered into their territory. They even appointed their own sheriff – a former federal agent himself who now subscribed to sovereign-citizen beliefs and went by the nom de plume Fnu Lnu – but then gradually their activities ceased.

Satterlee was found guilty in 2002 of illegal law practice. He remained active in far-right Patriot politics in the ensuing years, and he and Marcy signed on to a “Liberty Action Committee” forum in 2007.

The Everett Herald noted that during the Freedom County battles, Satterlee had lived in a home farther up the North Fork Stillaguamish, but that he and Marcy had moved into the home on Steelhead Drive about five years ago.

Geologists have said that they had long warned that the Oso hillside was unstable and might unleash a catastrophic slide. Yet county officials continued to issue permits there, even after a 2006 slide in the area acted as a harbinger of the horror to come. Logging was also permitted in the area above the slide.

Long-Running Conspiracist Fears Still Fuel Anti-Wolf Sentiments in Mountain States

Wyoming hunters with Klan-style hoods show off their kill.

[Cross-posted at Hatewatch.]

To say that there is deep local antipathy to federal wolf recovery efforts in many of the Mountain West states where biologists are attempting to revive the endangered species would be an understatement. Sentiment against the big canine predators in places like Idaho and Montana, especially among cattlemen, often borders on sheer rage.

That has translated, politically, into a situation where lawmakers in Idaho recently approved $400,000 in funding to kill as many as 500 of the state’s estimated population of 650 wolves, leaving as few as ten breeding pairs. The bill was promptly signed into law by Gov. Butch Otter, who has made loathing of wolves a centerpiece of his political image.

Much of the antipathy is predicated on old-fashioned fear about wolves, particularly given their predilection for preying on livestock and family pets in areas where humans inhabit their range, not to mention the potential threat they represent to human life. But there is also a political element, particularly in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming, that is fueled by far-right antigovernment paranoia and conspiracy theories.

Wolf recovery efforts are frequently depicted as the imposition of the “New World Order” on residents of the rural areas where the creatures roam. A number of far-right outlets, including the John Birch Society’s magazine and the conspiracist website World Net Daily, have run pieces describing how wolf recovery is a key component of a plot by radical environmentalists on behalf of the United Nations to destroy private property rights in America. In the Mountain West, holding such views is not uncommon.

It was while I was covering a Tea Party event in western Montana, in fact, that I first encountered this melding of conspiracy theory paranoia about wolves and far-right political dogma. Several speakers at the event described how wolf-recovery efforts in the region were part of a United Nations-derived plot to control their lives and destroy their property and gun rights, and a booth at the event handed out literature describing the conspiracy.

When militias were first organizing in Idaho and Montana in the early to mid-1990s, much of the anti-government sentiment that drove recruitment revolved around resentment for the just-instituted wolf recovery efforts.

“It was seen as direct government intervention into their way of life and telling them what they had to put up with and what they couldn’t shoot,” recalls Amaroq Weiss, Wolf Recovery Director for the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental organization that has filed numerous lawsuits over the years to prevent the wolf hunts in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. “So this goes way back. The wolf has always been a surrogate for hatred for the federal government in the areas where the reintroductions took place.”

Sure enough, the conspiracy theorists who fueled the Patriot movement’s militia organizing in the 1990s also used wolf recovery as a recruitment tool. Bob Fletcher of the Militia of Montana was fond of telling audiences in the 1990s that the wolves’ reintroduction was a predicate to the elimination of private property rights, the culmination of which would be the construction of concentration camps in the Northwest woods to incarcerate formerly gun-owning Americans.

The John Birch Society’s house organ, The New American, published an article in 2001 more or less outlining this same conspiracy: “Simply put, the ‘wolf recovery’ program is a form of environmental terrorism. Thus while the U.S. government is working through the UN to fight a war against terrorism abroad, it is collaborating with UN-linked environmental radicals to wage an eco-terrorist campaign against rural property owners here at home.”

Likewise, World Net Daily’s conspiracy peddler in chief Joseph Farah chimed in: “Just because your particular ox is not being gored by these wolves, your turn is coming. Believe me. If western ranchers don’t have any property rights, guess what? Neither do you – no matter where you live. And they’ll be gunning for you soon enough.”

Even an ostensibly “mainstream” organization like Idaho For Wildlife recently featured an anti-wolf recovery screed about the United Nations and the New World Order.

The embodiment of the extreme nature of these sentiments came this winter when a group of men wearing Klan-like hoods posed with the corpse of a freshly killed wolf and an American flag and then posted it on Facebook. The page that published the picture belonged to a couple of Wyoming outfitters, who later explained that they were harkening back to Western vigilantism: “Trying to make a statement!…Frontier Justice! Wyoming hunters are fed up!”

Hate-Filled Rant Leaves Longtime Catholic ‘Traditionalist’ Isolated

[Cross-posted at Hatewatch.] 

 

Austin Ruse

It only took a brief rant to wreck Austin Ruse’s budding career as a “traditionalist” Catholic pundit. Ruse, president of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-FAM), an anti-LGBT hate group that lobbies at the United Nations, was on American Family Radio (AFR) last week when he said that the “hard left, human-hating people that run modern universities” like Duke “should all be taken out and shot.”

While violent rhetoric is an increasingly common feature of far-right rhetoric, it is particularly jarring coming from a pundit and think tank official who markets himself as “pro-life” and “pro-family.”

After Right Wing Watch posted Ruse’s rant – and then publicized his self-pitying responses to having his own words played back – Ruse found himself suddenly isolated. The American Family Association – on whose program he made the rant – severed all ties with him, saying: “AFR condemns such comments, no matter who makes them.” One of C-FAM’s board members, Monsignor Anthony Frontiero, resigned from the board after Faithful America petitioned him to do so. And C-FAM may lose its status at the United Nations.

Ruse eventually buckled and apologized, telling Talking Points Memo:

“I deeply regret and apologize for using the expression ‘taken out and shot’ on the Sandy Rios Show this week. It was not intended to be taken literally. I have dedicated my life and career to ending violence. I regret that these poorly chosen words are being used to attack my friends at American Family Radio and American Family Association.”

Notwithstanding the apology, AFR’s Sandy Rios defended Ruse’s remarks as being “words of life” that warn believers against listening to liberal professors. Rios insisted that Ruse’s words were the kind people make in private conversation all the time, which may well be true around her workplace – AFR is a wing of the American Family Association, whose spokesperson Bryan Fischer has made all manner of offensive and outrageous remarks.

Ruse still appears to have a friend in the Family Research Council (FRC), which prominently featured him earlier this month in a panel discussion on the U.N. Ruse used the opportunity to promote a conspiracy theory (one promoted for some time by C-FAM) that a cadre of United Nations officials were working to make abortion rights a component of every U.N. treaty. He also castigated the U.N. generally as a hotbed of socialism.

Perhaps more noteworthy were remarks by Ruse’s fellow panelist, Pat Fagan of the FRC. Speaking about a U.N. panel that criticized the Vatican over sexual abuse, Fagan compared the panel’s report to Kristallnacht, the night of violence that Nazi Brownshirts subjected Jewish merchants to in November 1933 and which foreshadowed the Holocaust:

FAGAN: This is just an analogy and I don’t want to take it directly, but the first really egregious act that was very public and against the good of people and against the good of the Jews was Kristallnacht in Germany. And that was very significant because the police permitted it. And that was the beginning of the end, when those who were there to enforce the law failed to do so and did not protect the citizen from these bullies – more than bullies, murderers.

Now, this is not Kristallnacht. But it is the breaking of a pretty big window. They didn’t go around smashing all the windows, it’s just that if you think of the Vatican as a shop on Main Street, well, they didn’t break all the windows on Main Street but they went up to the shop and they smashed through the big plate glass window.

Now, this is good, because it is now made very clear what is going on.

In the discussion that followed, Ruse lauded Fagan’s remarks on this point.

Today, Ruse published another mostly self-pitying piece on the fallout from his comment, which he now admits was a “gaffe” (nothing more, nothing less, in his mind). It remains to be seen if Ruse can recover.

Right-Wing Extremists in Montana File for Legislative Races as Democrats

[Cross-posted at Hatewatch.]

Democratic primary voters in some Montana legislative districts will see new and unfamiliar names on the ballot this year. That’s because at least eight Democratic candidates are actually far-right “constitutionalists” and Tea Party activists. One of them is the current Republican vice-chairman for Sanders County. Two of the others have turned out to be homeless.

Most of the activity has occurred in Gallatin County, where Bozeman is the main population center and county seat. The county is home not only to Montana State University but also a variety of extremist elements. Key members of the radical Montana Freemen group were active there in the 1990s.

Chief among the new crop of candidates is Michael Comstock, a well-known local Tea Party activist and antigovernment “Patriot” movement organizer who has run previously as a Republican. This year, he filed to run in the Democratic primary for the state Senate seat in District 24, a seat currently held by Republican incumbent Roger Webb, who is running for re-election.

Comstock claimed during an interview with KCFW-TV in Bozeman that he’s a mainstream Democrat in the tradition of John F. Kennedy and Montana icon Mike Mansfield, and more mainstream than his primary opponent, Democratic activist and educator April Buonamici. But as the blogger Montana Cowgirl observed in her posts calling out Comstock and the other candidates, no one in Bozeman who knows Comstock is fooled by this, since he has been a colorful figure on the local political scene for many years:

Comstock’s main focus is his concern about a possible takeover by ‘a one-world UN controlled government,’ the Bozeman Chronicle has reported.  In his campaign literature and on Facebook, he says he is worried about the impending collapse of civilization.  He proudly calls himself ‘a Tea Party extremist’ and believes the Muppets have ‘sold out to socialism and bad behavior.’

A Montana Human Rights Network profile of Comstock published in a 2012 newsletter noted that he is a prolific author of letters to the local newspaper editors, where his views have been well noted:

In 2003, he complained that ‘women and minorities get a free leg up on this white male [Comstock]’ when it came to employment. He’s also advocated getting rid of the minimum wage, which he called a ‘relic of our socialist past.’ He claimed the devastation in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina was ‘directly attributed to 100 years of corrupt liberal politics.’ In another letter about Katrina, he complained that the media gave too much credence to the ‘rantings of opportunistic race-baiting leftists.’ He said statistics proved more focus should have been on white victims. While ‘blacks did constitute the majority of deaths,’ Comstock wrote, ‘proportional to their represented numbers, whites suffered the most deaths.’

Montana Cowgirl has also identified several other bogus “Democrats” on various Montana ballots, most of them in Gallatin County. A man named Harry Pennington, for example, has filed to run as a Democrat for the state Senate seat in District 32, currently held by incumbent Democrat Franke Wilmer. Pennington’s Facebook page is rife with Tea Party material and conspiracist material about President Obama.

Pennington and another candidate – a woman named Laura Springer, who is unknown in local politics, was last registered to vote in a distant county and filed papers to run as a Democrat in House District 63 – listed the same street address in Bozeman as a third candidate, a “Patriot” and local militia organizer named Dane Peeples, who filed as a Democrat to compete against the incumbent Democrat, Rep. Tom Woods, in House District 62.

When a reporter from the Associated Press investigated why all three listed the same street address, it turned out that the home belonged to Peeples, who had no idea why the other two candidates listed his address as theirs. When the reporter asked the other two, they explained that it was because they actually were homeless at the time and needed to use an address. Springer told the reporter she was living out of motels. And Pennington turned up in a December 2013 news feature about the virtues of new government-funded services for the homeless as one of its clients.

All three, it appeared, had met up through a online “constitutionalist,” Tea Party forum called the Constitution Club, where both Peeples and Springer have active accounts, as Montana Cowgirl documented.  Among the other users on the site is a far-right extremist from Bozeman named William Wolf, who last month threatened to arrest a local judge under the auspices of “the Montana Unorganized Militia”. Peeples claims to be active in a different militia group calling itself the ‘Irregulars’ .

Meanwhile, in Sanders County – on the western side of the state, far removed from Bozeman – another dubious Democrat has filed to run for a legislative seat. Gerald Cullivier, who was elected GOP vice chair for the county in 2011, filed to run as a Democrat in House District 13. The field already features two registered Republicans and a registered Democrat.

As Montana Cowgirl explained, Cullivier is not a mainstream Republican but hails from its far-right wing, having campaigned on behalf of far-right candidate Matt French in 2012.

The Great Falls Tribune surveyed the state’s legislative races and found that, in all, eight elections featured Tea Party candidates running as Democrats. Interviewed for the story, Cullivier claimed he was running as a conservative Democrat, having broken with the Republican Party because it “wasn’t conservative enough.”
A fellow Tea-Party conservative from Sanders County, Terry Caldwell, has similarly filed to run as a Democrat in House District 14, also claiming to have a desire to make the Democratic Party more conservative.

There were others: In the Choteau area, arch-conservative David Brownell filed for the state Senate District 9 seat against registered Democrat Joan Graham. Brownell, too, claimed to be merely a conservative Democrat, though he knew nothing of the party’s platform.

The Tribune found another dubious Bozeman-area candidate: Kathy Hollenback, running against registered Democrat Denise Hayman for the nomination in House District 66. Hollenback also lists a dubious address – one belonging to Gallatin County Republican precinct chair David Ponte – and appears mostly to have been active in Tea Party politics prior to this year.

The Montana Human Rights Network has seen similar behavior in the past. “I would generally say that we hit, like most people in the country, a peak of extremist filings in 2010,” MHRN co-director Rachel Carroll Rivas told Hatewatch. “We saw a lot of those people elected to office here in Montana. And I think we actually saw a lot of pushback from the public and from within the mainstream Republican Party on some of those ideas.

“Some of those more wild-card extremists have actually made their way out of elected office because, you know, making Anderson Cooper isn’t necessarily good for the party when it’s a joke,” Rivas noted, referring to the national attention that a Montana Tea Party legislator received for proposing a “birther” bill requiring all presidential candidates to provide their birth certificates.

“That being said, we still have a very conservative arm of the Republican Party, and the dial, because of what happened in 2010, has been moved right. So it’s harder to pinpoint in some ways who are the extremists because the dial has moved so far that there’s a large number of people that are included in the ‘responsible’ camp.”

Montana Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee Director Lauren Caldwell told the Tribune that the primary challenges came as a surprise. “It appears there’s an organized effort to file tea party Republicans as Democrats,” Caldwell said Wednesday. “It is sort of dirty politics at its worst. The goal appears to be to deceive voters.”