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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsNYT : The Coronavirus Becomes a Battle Cry for U.S. Extremists
White supremacists seek to stoke the fear and disruption caused by the pandemic to push their agenda and to recruit.https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/03/us/coronavirus-extremists.html
Americas extremists are attempting to turn the coronavirus pandemic into a potent recruiting tool both in the deep corners of the internet and on the streets of state capitals by twisting the public health crisis to bolster their white supremacist, anti-government agenda. Although the protests that have broken out across the country have drawn out a wide variety of people pressing to lift stay-at-home orders, the presence of extremists cannot be missed, with their anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic signs and coded messages aimed at inspiring the faithful, say those who track such movements.
April is typically a busy month for white supremacists. There is Hitlers birthday, which they contort into a celebration. There is the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, the domestic attack 25 years ago that killed 168 people and still serves as a rallying call for new extremist recruits. But this April, something else overshadowed those chilling milestones. It was the coronavirus, and the disruption it wreaked on society, that became the extremists battle cry.
Embellishing Covid-19 developments to fit their usual agenda, extremists spread disinformation on the transmission of the virus and disparage stay-at-home orders as medical martial law the long-anticipated advent of a totalitarian state. They are being very effective in capitalizing on the pandemic, said Devin Burghart, a veteran researcher of white nationalists who runs the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, a Seattle-based research center on far right movements.
What success the groups have had in finding fresh recruits is not yet clear, but new research indicates a significant jump in people consuming extremist material while under lockdown. Various violent incidents have been linked to white supremacist or anti-government perpetrators enraged over aspects of the pandemic. The New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness said in March that white supremacists have encouraged followers to conduct attacks during the crisis to incite fear and target ethnic minorities and immigrants. We have noticed domestic extremist groups taking advantage of the Covid-19 pandemic by spreading disinformation, Jared M. Maples, its director, said in a statement. The coronavirus has been dismissed as a hoax, painted as a Jewish-run conspiracy and, alternatively, described as a disease spread by nonwhite immigrants, he said.
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NYT : The Coronavirus Becomes a Battle Cry for U.S. Extremists (Original Post)
Celerity
May 2020
OP
We'll see how successful they are when they start dropping like flies in another month or two.
smirkymonkey
May 2020
#2
Sure wish we still had an FBI and DoJ, instead of Billy Barr's Dirt Services.
Hermit-The-Prog
May 2020
#3
Turbineguy
(38,063 posts)1. I suppose there must have been
"We want the Plague!" parties in Europe 6-1/2 centuries ago.
smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)2. We'll see how successful they are when they start dropping like flies in another month or two.
I really want them to pay for their stupidity and hatred.
Hermit-The-Prog
(36,133 posts)3. Sure wish we still had an FBI and DoJ, instead of Billy Barr's Dirt Services.
Trump cuts funds to fight anti-right wing violence (2017-08-14)
empedocles
(15,751 posts)4. Given current information on Covid infections etc., Dems have to like the
probabilities going against trump and the rw in the coming months.
And, if they [supremacits, magats, etc.,] start predictably getting infected, spreading the infections, getting hospital sick, and dying - trump will automatically turn on all of them. 'Great' for all of them - 'plagues on all their houses'.
2naSalit
(90,569 posts)7. Yeah, he likes
terrorists who don't get sick and die after all.
tanyev
(43,885 posts)5. I guess that's the hill they're willing to die on.
mopinko
(71,355 posts)6. guess what? it's a battle cry for real patriots, too. stay the fuck home.
i've been thinking about the long term implications of a lot of this shit, and i think we are about to experience an era of everyday heroes.
not to be a fatalist, but we are about to experience a surge of evolution.
i got a good feeling about it, myself.