Growing body of evidence shows GOP has a paramilitary wing

[Kid Berwyn]

There's a growing body of evidence showing the Republican Party has a paramilitary wing

by María Isabel Puerta Riera
Alternet, March 16, 2021

United States Senator Ron Johnson said recently that he wasn't scared when, on January 6, armed insurgents sacked and looted the United States Capitol. They "love this country," the Wisconsin Republican said. But "had the tables been turned and President Trump won the election and tens of thousands of Black Lives Matter and antifa [stormed the seat of government], I might have been a little concerned."

That statement was disturbing not only for the implicit racism it carried, but for the stunning confirmation of what's becoming clear to those of us who are paying attention. The Republican Party has a paramilitary problem, and it isn't new.

Snip...

The Republican Party seems to be very comfortable with these groups around, as we have seen in Nevada, Oregon, Michigan, and other states. However, this is not a recent venture, since the accounts of strengthening ties can be traced back even before Trump won the election in 2016. The openness about their common interests is perhaps new, but it's not surprising. Alarms were sounded when state Senate Majority Leader, Republican Mike Shirkey of Michigan, participated in a rally organized by paramilitaries that stormed the Michigan Capitol back in April 2020 alongside a member of a group involved in the planned kidnapping of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

Though Michigan has a history of paramilitaries, the state GOP had tied itself to them, especially since the election as party co-chair of Meshawn Maddock. She organized a protest to interrupt ballot counting in Detroit, where paramilitaries were present.

Continues...

https://www.alternet.org/2021/03/republican-paramilitaries/

Every word.

[empedocles]

1. Prosecutors alert

[Kid Berwyn]

3. Metro Times has a dandy briefing on the "Party of Q"

How a Michigan couple radicalized the state’s GOP and emboldened insurrectionists

Party of Q

By Steve Neavling
Metro Times, Feb. 17, 2021

Two months before Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, an angry mob descended on the basement of the TCF Center in downtown Detroit.

Shouting "Stop the count!" and "Let us in!" they pounded on the windows of a large conference room, where workers were counting absentee ballots for the general election. A prayer circle broke out, and some held signs that read "No Reason for Treason" and "Christians for Trump."

Police scrambled to stop them from getting inside as election workers looked on in fear.

At the center of the chaos were state State Rep. Matt Maddock, R-Milford, and his wife, Michigan Republican Party co-chair Meshawn Maddock — an antagonistic, Trump-loving power couple whose influence is growing as the state GOP shifts further to the right.

Like the violent insurrection on Jan. 6, the protest in Detroit was inspired by falsehoods about the election. Earlier in the day, Matt Maddock falsely claimed on social media that 35,000 ballots "showed up out of nowhere" in the middle of the night and that Democrats "were pretty much cheating in front of poll watchers."

Continues...

https://www.metrotimes.com/detroit/how-a-michigan-couple-radicalized-the-states-gop-and-emboldened-insurrectionists/Content?oid=26461313

[Frustratedlady]

2. Have any of Gov. Whitmer's alleged about-to-be kidnappers ever gone to trial?

I still shudder to think of how that could have played out.

[Kid Berwyn]

7. Correction: Ty Garbin pled guilty.

Press release from the federal prosecutor:

Ty Garbin Pleads Guilty To Conspiring To Kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer

Member of Kidnapping Plot Admits Guilt, Promises to Cooperate with Government

GRAND RAPIDS, MICHIGAN — One of six men accused of conspiring to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer pleaded guilty to that offense today in federal court, U.S. Attorney Andrew Birge announced today. Ty Gerard Garbin, of Hartland, Michigan, admitted his guilt in a change of plea hearing conducted by Chief United States District Court Judge Robert J. Jonker. The Court scheduled Garbin’s sentencing on July 8, 2021, at 3:00 pm. He remains in the custody of the United States Marshal pending sentencing.

Garbin pleaded guilty pursuant to an agreement with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Michigan. Garbin has agreed to fully cooperate with federal and state law enforcement in the investigation and prosecution of all criminal activity, including the conspiracy to kidnap the Governor. His obligation to assist law enforcement continues until all investigations and prosecutions are completed. The United States Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Michigan agreed not to seek additional criminal charges against him arising out of the conspiracy to kidnap the Governor. The entire plea agreement is publicly available on the Court’s PACER electronic docket system.

Garbin faces up to life in prison and there is no parole in the federal system. The District Court will determine the ultimate sentence to be imposed after evaluating the applicable federal Sentencing Guidelines and considering the statutory sentencing factors, including the nature and circumstances of the offense; the history and characteristics of the defendant; the seriousness of the offense; and the need to promote respect for the law, to provide just punishment, and protect the public from future crimes of the defendant.

Garbin is the first defendant in the case to plead guilty to the indictment handed down by a federal grand jury in Grand Rapids, Michigan on December 16, 2020. Trial is currently scheduled to begin on March 23, 2021.

The charge in the indictment against Garbin’s co-defendants is merely an accusation, and each remaining defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in a court of law.

Source: https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdmi/pr/2021_0127_Garbin

Still, Fed. Judge Robert J. Jonker, a Smirko Bush appointee, has made it difficult for federal prosecutors.

[Frustratedlady]

11. Thank you for the info. I had lost track of that horrible situation.

I am extremely impressed with how the women handled themselves during the whole scenario. None of them backed down and appear to be stronger than the men who meant them harm. You can certainly see which were the adults.

[Yeehah]

4. Fascist freikorps is what they are

Willing to give away every liberty fought for by generations of Americans and install a dictatorship in the USA.

[dalton99a]

6. +1

[Kid Berwyn]

9. Fascists must like someone else to do their thinking.

The dangerous ones, though, are scary smart. Take Mr. Establishment, for one.



The Real McCloy

THE CHAIRMAN: JOHN J. McCLOY; The Making of the American Establishment,
By Kai Bird (Simon & Schuster: $30; 800 pp.)

By ROBERT SHERRILL
APRIL 19, 1992 12 AM PT
SHERRILL IS CORPORATIONS CORRESPONDENT FOR THE NATION MAGAZINE

EXCERPT...

When McCloy took over as high commissioner of defeated Germany, he talked a tough line about crushing the many still- active Nazis. But he promptly turned to mush, permitting Chancellor Konrad Adenauer to fill his cabinet with notorious antisemites and Nazi war criminals (some of whom became McCloy’s personal friends). McCloy also vastly expanded the shameful programs begun before he got to Germany, of letting some of the worst war criminals off the hook.

He commuted two-thirds of the death sentences of mass murderers (such as the SS officer who personally executed 1,500 Jews) and radically reduced the prison sentences of doctors who had conducted experiments on death-camp inmates, of high-ranking Nazi Judges who had administered Gestapo justice, and of industrialists who had built the Nazi war machine.

McCloy freed some immediately, including Alfred Krupp, whose munitions factories had worked thousands of slave laborers to death. Krupp’s original sentence had included loss of all property; McCloy canceled that punishment and within a few years Krupp was again one of the richest industrialists in the world. Obviously McCloy’s obsequiousness toward money and power made him the wrong man to reform Nazi Germany. “Though he could understand the special culpability of the ‘big Nazis,’ ” Bird writes, “when it came to a wealthy and politically well-connected man like Krupp, he suspended his good judgment.”

As high commissioner, McCloy dabbled disastrously in the intelligence business, setting up a network of agents in Germany that included the likes of Klaus Barbie, who had shipped 78,000 French Jews to the gas chambers, and Gen. Reinhard Gehlen, who had been responsible for some of the “grisliest mass killings on the Eastern Front.” Not surprisingly, many of the intelligence operations carried out under McCloy were, says Bird, “fiascos.”

CONTINUES...

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-04-19-bk-588-story.html

Mr. McCloy was joined by another “Mr. Establishment” type with extensive ties to wealthy NAZI industrialists and anti-communist NAZI spy rings, former CIA Director Allen Dulles, in service on the Warren Commission. Coincidentally.

[The Magistrate]

12. Forgotten History, Sir

Thank you for bringing it forward.

There were some damnable things done in the name of opposing Soviet Communism.

[Kid Berwyn]

16. You are most welcome, kind Sir and old Friend.

DemocraticUnderground has played no small role in preserving these truths.

For example, where have we seen Russ Belant’s work frequently and long-mentioned, besides DU?

OLD NAZIS, THE NEW RIGHT, AND THE REPUBLICAN PARTY
BY RUSS BELLANT

BOSTON: SOUTH END PRESS, 1991. 148 PP. $11.00 (PAPER).

While the "Reagan Revolution" made it popular in the United States once again to be openly discriminatory, neofascist thinking is presently burgeoning among the extreme right in this country. Russ Bellant, in his important book Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party, exposes the roots and growth of domestic fascist networks, which include Nazi collaborators, within the Republican Party. He reveals how such members, during the Reagan era, held positions of power on the Republican Ethnic Heritage Groups Council, an ethnic outreach division of the GOP. Bellant also scrutinizes the American Security Council for its participation in anti-Semitic and racist practices under the guise of anticommunism.

It seems to me that any educator, or any citizen for that matter, interested in protecting what is left of democracy in this country needs to engage this type of research. For those who are skeptical of Bellant's conclusions, they can either take the word of Allan A. Ryan Jr. — the former Director of the Office of Special Investigations for the Department of Justice — who says on the book's cover that it is "Well-documented and reliable," or they can begin to do some research of their own — which is what education for a responsible citizenry is supposed to be all about!

Source: https://www.hepg.org/her-home/issues/harvard-educational-review-volume-65-issue-1/herbooknote/old-nazis,-the-new-right,-and-the-republican-party

Old Nazis, New Right, and the Republican Party: Domestic Fascist Networks and Their Effect on U.S. Cold War Politics. by Russ Bellant (PDF)

https://www.russbellant.us/Bellant-Old_Nazis_the_New_Right_and_the_Republican_Party.pdf

It’s important to label them for what they are, NAZIs. If more had the guts back in Reagan’s day, we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in today, good Sir and Friend.

[joetheman]

5. They all are smitten.

PUTIN


TRUMP - GOP



TRUE AXIS OF EVIL

[Kid Berwyn]

10. Axis of Weasels

It really is no wonder Mitch McConnell and Co. were loath to look into Putin and GRU. Turns out the large part of the GOP wet their beaks.

Why Marsha Blackburn fell on a grenade for Donald Trump

Tennessee senator blocks a bill to mandate reporting foreign election aid, Because the GOP has a Russia problem.

Sophia Tesfaye
Salon, June 14, 2019

At least a dozen Republican congressional campaigns used materials stolen from Democrats by Russian hackers during the 2016 election. Several other Republican campaigns received millions in contributions from an oligarch with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. In 2018, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee called on the National Republican Congressional Committee to make a bipartisan pledge not to utilize stolen or hacked information in House elections. After months of negotiations, in September of 2018, House Republicans backed out and refused to sign the pledge. These are just some of the often-overlooked reasons why Republicans have been so reluctant to criticize President Trump’s willingness to accept “dirt” on an opposing candidate from a foreign government.

One day after Trump told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that he wouldn’t necessarily go to the FBI in the event his re-election campaign is contacted by foreign groups, Senate Republicans killed legislation to safeguard American democracy from foreign interference.

Democratic Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., failed in his attempt to unanimously pass a bill that would require candidates to report election assistance offered by foreign governments to federal officials. Under Warner’s Foreign Influence Reporting in Elections (FIRE) Act, campaigns would have to report contacts with foreign nationals who are trying to make campaign donations or coordinate with the campaign to the Federal Election Commission, which would then notify the FBI. It’s already illegal for electoral campaigns to knowingly accept help from a foreign entity or power.

“This legislation is pretty simple, even for this body. It would require that any presidential campaign that receives offers of assistance from an agent of a foreign government has an obligation to report that offer of assistance to law enforcement, specifically the FBI,” Warner said on Thursday. “We ought to make clear that if any foreign power tries to intervene again in an election, the least we can do is ask for a requirement to report it to law enforcement.”

Continues...

https://www.alternet.org/2019/06/why-marsha-blackburn-fell-on-a-grenade-for-donald-trump/

Who’d ever imagine that the Kremlin could successfully subvert the USA through the hypocrites on the right wing?



Besides Maj. Marco, I mean.

PS: A hearty welcome to DU, joetheman!

[nykym]

8. I have one question

when are those in power going to ask these assholes for proof of their lies.
We need to make them own their bullshit.

[Kid Berwyn]

17. Absolutely essential question.

If they are NOT held to account in public, the fascists will continue to spread the Big Lie and the false belief that Drumpf was cheated will continue to grow until they launch their next insurrection.

Enabling a Fascist Putsch and Empowering a Big Lie

BY WERNER LANGE
CounterPunch, Jan. 15, 2021

January 6, like December 7 eighty years earlier, will forever live in history as a day of infamy. Yet unlike the foreign military attack on the US base in Pearl Harbor in 1941, the domestic terrorist attack upon the US Capitol in 2021 enjoyed the objective support of nearly one-third of the US Congress and vast sections of the US population. “Stop the Steal”, the rallying cry of the violent mob which invaded and ransacked the US Capitol was officially echoed by 147 members of Congress, all Republicans, later on that infamous day and trumpeted loudly throughout the land for months by none other than the President of the United States and his regime. Fascism in America reared its ugly head almost simultaneously at the top and bottom of the power hierarchy on January 6, 2021. And its decapitation is nowhere in sight.

There was, of course, no realistic possibility that this dramatic and diabolical last ditch effort would succeed. Over 50 failed lawsuits and negative rulings by some 80 different judges have secured the legitimacy and integrity of the November election results in the eyes of the law, but not in the polluted minds of Trump’s enablers in Congress and his rabid followers in the public. In fact, with each successive filed and failed lawsuit, the conviction of a stolen, not lost, election took greater hold of greater numbers of those 70 million citizens who voted for Trump. According to a nationwide survey conducted just prior to the November election, about 65% of the registered voters (whether Republican, Democrat or Independent) all agreed that they trusted the US election system. By late December that trust had risen to 80% among Democrats, but plummeted to 45% and 30% among Independents and Republicans, respectively. Similarly, by year’s end, 90% of Democrats said the 2020 presidential election was free and fair, while only 28% of Republicans agreed. In mid-November 27% of Republican voters said Trump should never concede, whereas by late December 36% held that position. In other words, there is a direct positive correlation between the number of lawsuits filed challenging the election results and the number of Americans, primarily Republicans, who firmly believe that the election was stolen.

So. what was the real purpose of this bizarre parade of DOA lawsuits? It was not to overturn the election results. It was to convince increasing number of Trump supporters to embrace the Big Lie that the election was stolen and that a Biden presidency is illegitimate. The manifest function of these frivolous lawsuits was an abysmal failure, but their latent and real function proved to be a resounding success.

And therein lies the ongoing and growing danger.

At his “Save America” rally in front of the White House, Trump not only openly incited the violence that followed at the US Capitol that fateful day, but more ominously he declared that “today is not the end, it’s only the beginning” and that “for our movement…the best is yet to come”. That movement is a fascist one. He and his enablers in the suites of Congress and his cult followers in the streets of America are hell-bent on creating a fascist America in the future.

The effort and tactic are not without historical precedent. One of the Big Lies effectively used by fascist forces and assorted masters of deceit in Weimar Germany was that of the “dolchstoss”, the “stab-in-the-back” that unpatriotic liberals and a corrupt ruling elite supposedly inflicted upon the German people causing a great nation to lose WWI. Those alternative facts launched by an effective propaganda enterprise helped pave the path toward the Third Reich. That Big Lie then, like the stolen election lie now, resonated among vast sections of an angry and frustrated populace. Stable governments rest upon the secure foundation of the consent of the governed, something that the Biden Administration lacks in the minds of tens of millions of Americans who are absolutely convinced his presidency is illegitimate, and that they were, in effect, stabbed in the back by a rigged election controlled by liberals and traitors. Those behind the “Stop the Steal” effort have officially, as of January 6, lost the battle; but they are more determined than ever to win the ongoing domestic war.

Continues...

https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/01/15/enabling-a-fascist-putsch-and-empowering-a-big-lie/

What do fascists call a failed putsch?

Practice.

[mahina]

13. Shame on them

[Kid Berwyn]

18. Shame that only the good have a conscience.

People who think violence for personal gain can be justified know them not.

Inside Michigan’s Capitol, April 2020

The Men Accused Of Plotting To Kidnap Michigan’s Governor Also Practiced Breaching The State Capitol

New details have emerged as part of a guilty plea by one of the defendants, and they include the allegation that extremists also discussed the best way to attack a Secret Service convoy.

Ken Bensinger, Jessica Garrison
Jan. 27, 2021, BuzzFeed News

Excerpt...

According to that document and other filings in the case, Garbin was a member of a group called the Wolverine Watchmen whose members linked up with two other like-minded individuals last June and began planning actions against the state government at a time of mounting anger over COVID-19 lockdowns. The men used social media, including Facebook, as well as encrypted messaging services to recruit and organize. They referred to elected officials as “tyrants” and expressed desires to provoke a civil war and potentially overthrow the government.

Whitmer, a Democrat, was a particular target of their ire, apparently because of the lockdown she imposed starting in March to control the spread of the coronavirus in the state. The restrictions provoked anger among many Michigan residents, resentment that was stoked in April when then-president Donald Trump tweeted “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” Soon thereafter, the Wolverine Watchmen, who allegedly had discussed killing police officers prior to that time, shifted their attention to the state’s elected officials.

One of the defendants, Adam Fox, initially pushed the group toward a plan to storm the state Capitol in Lansing, barricade the doors, and then execute state legislators on live television, according to affidavits and court filings in the case. According to Garbin’s plea agreement, the men specifically discussed hanging the public officials and using Molotov cocktails and improvised explosive devices as a distraction at the time of the assault.

In subsequent training exercises in both Michigan and out of state, a second man, Barry Croft, allegedly introduced homemade explosives and heavy armament into the scheme, attempting on multiple occasions to construct bombs using gunpowder, shrapnel, and fireworks.

Fox told Garbin and other members of the Wolverine Watchmen that Croft wanted to “restore our Constitutional right by any means,” according to the plea agreement.

In July, the conspirators traveled to Cambria, Wisconsin, to conduct what they called “field training exercises” with militant extremists from other states. Once there, the plea agreement said, they used plywood, shipping pallets, and a door frame to build what they called a “shoot house,” according to the plea agreement, and then “practiced breaching it with firearms to simulate assaulting the Capitol or elsewhere.”

Continues...

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/kenbensinger/michigan-kidnapping-plotters-practiced-breaching-state

For some reason, corporate media have turned their attention elsewhere.

Aloha, marina! Better days are ahead!

[gab13by13]

14. There is also a foreign wing,

[Kid Berwyn]

19. Managed in part by one Steve Bannon, NAZI.

THE FAR-RIGHT INTERNATIONAL

It is not only the Left that makes use of internationalism. From fascists in the street to heads of state, the Right is showing a willingness and enthusiasm to co-ordinate across borders. Simon Childs finds out more.

March 26, 2019
The New Internationalist

On a hot July day in 2018, as US President Donald Trump visited the UK, MEP Kent Ekeroth, from the far-right Sweden Democrats party, joined protesters on Whitehall in London for the Free Tommy Robinson demonstration. The former leader of the English Defence League (EDL), real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, was serving time for disrupting the trial of a rape-gang in the course of his provocative ‘reporting’.

Snip...

THE BANNON CONNECTION

The nationalist far-right today is, counter-intuitively, internationalist, according to Jason Stanley, author of How Fascism Works. He argues that multiple factors are helping to create an international movement.

For starters, you have ‘alienated young men in many societies across the world’. In Europe, they find common cause in a shared belief in existential threats to the ‘European way of life’. That idea finds a sympathetic audience across the Atlantic, where it ‘resonates with the [perceived] threats to whiteness in the United States’.

Next you have numerous ultra-nationalist governments. Vladimir Putin in Russia, Narendra Modi in India and Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel, for example. The internet then connects all these disparate threads, which are given a cerebral gloss by ‘weird far-right intellectual figures’, like French journalist Guillaume Faye, author of Why We Fight: Manifesto of the European Resistance.

Stephen Yaxley-Lennon stands atop this international network. ‘Tommy Robinson’ has become a lucrative global brand. In 2018 he advertised a Deplorables Tour of Australia – a nod to Hillary Clinton’s unwise barb about bigoted Trump supporters – offering his fans a private dinner for $700. During his time in prison he gained high-profile backing, including from Steve Bannon, the former White House Chief Strategist who is treated as a Trump proxy by the media. He called Yaxley-Lennon ‘the backbone’ of Britain on an LBC radio talk show.

Continues...

https://newint.org/features/2019/02/11/far-right-international

[malaise]

15. True

Mostly made up of incompetents. Which revolutionaries are so obsessed with counting likes and being in the media to the point that they expose themselves?

[Kid Berwyn]

20. Thankfully incompetent. And infiltrated.

They want the attention to raise cash. No Big Bucks. No Big Lie.

Follow the Money Behind the Capitol Riot

Super PACs contributed to the officials who objected to certifying the 2020 election results, writes Brennan Center Fellow Ciara Torres-Spelliscy.

Brennan Center, Jan. 25, 2021

Donald Trump is the first president to be impeached twice. He currently faces an article of impeachment from the House for inciting an insurrection and for encouraging rioters who stormed the Capitol on January 6. Two senators who contributed the chaos by raising objections to electoral college votes from key swing states now face Ethics Committee investigations. And some members of Congress stand accused of leading reconnaissance tours on January 5 for the would-be rioters. But who funded these elected officials and their campaigns?

Let’s start at the top with President Trump, who egged on a crowd to go to the Capitol and “fight,” moments before they did just that. During the 2020 election, he was supported by two super PACs, America First Action and Preserve America PAC, according to Open Secrets. Preserve America PAC was primarily bankrolled by the late Sheldon Adelson — perhaps best known as the founder, chairman, and CEO of Las Vegas Sands Casino — who contributed $90 million.

Meanwhile, American First Action received significant donations from three related Florida sugar companies: $725,000 from Fanjul Corp (which sells the Florida Crystals brand of sugar), $450,000 from New Hope Sugar Co., and $450,000 from Osceola Farms. Vital Pharmaceuticals, which produces the Bang brand of energy drinks, gave American First Action $250,000 during the 2020 election cycle. Three other Florida agricultural firms — Agro-Industrial Management, Americas Export Corp, and Sem-Chi Rice Products — gave the super PAC $350,000, $350,000, and $250,000, respectively. America First Action also received a mysterious $1 million donation from “Deuterium Electron LLC,” which seems to have no other online presence.

During the 2018 election cycle, corporate-backed super PACs have also supported Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Josh Hawley (R-MO), who led objections in the Senate to the 2020 presidential election results. In a video of the insurrection released by the New Yorker, rioters invoked Cruz as wanting “us to do this.” Previously, Cruz was supported by the Texans Are super PAC. Contributions to this group included $250,000 from TRT Holdings, which owns Omni Hotels and Origins Behavioral Healthcare; $150,000 from Valero Energy; $90,000 from Jennmar, a coal mining supply company; and $50,000 from Holly Frontier, an oil refiner.

Hawley was infamously pictured giving a power salute to the rioters in real time on January 6. In 2018, he was supported by a small super PAC called CFG Action Missouri, which was bankrolled by Richard Uihlein, son of one of the founders of Schlitz beer, and who was once labeled by the New York Times as one-half of “the most powerful couple you’ve never heard of.” Additionally, Hawley was the beneficiary of huge Republican super PACs that supported multiple candidates.

Continues w/link city...

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/follow-money-behind-capitol-riot

So we expose them for the cheap bastard traitors they are. It’s the least they deserve.

[Initech]

21. What's the difference between the GOP and ISIS? Not a whole lot.