The Right's New Bogeyman

[Nevilledog]

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Since the #Dobbs rulings, the name "Jane's Revenge" has been floating around in political discourse, particularly among conservatives trying to redirect the conversation. But is Jane's Revenge an actual threat?

@etbrooking spoke with @TheAtlantic:

theatlantic.com
The Right’s New Bogeyman
A mysterious pro-abortion-rights group is claiming credit for acts of vandalism around the country, and right-wing activists and politicians are eating it up.
10:45 AM · Aug 16, 2022

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/08/janes-revenge-antifa-dobbs-roe-abortion/671098/

No paywall
https://archive.ph/zzQ6T

​​A mysterious pro-choice group called Jane’s Revenge has drawn attention to itself in recent months with a short series of strongly worded “communiqués” promising violence. The first of these statements was posted to a radical-leftist blogging platform in early May, shortly after a draft of the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade was leaked to the press. “We are in your city. We are in every city,” it said. “Medical imperialism will not face a passive enemy.”

Right-wing media outlets have provided ample coverage of this new threat, and anti-abortion politicians have demanded government action to address it. But the group’s practical significance remains in question. Just how meaningful is Jane’s Revenge? It has now taken credit for incidents of vandalism and property destruction in 16 cities throughout the U.S., among them the firebombings of a pro-life medical office in Buffalo, New York, and the offices of a Christian-fundamentalist lobbying group in Madison, Wisconsin. Two of its statements have emphasized: “We are not one group, but many.” But at this point nothing indicates that the authors of the anonymous blog posts have any real connection to the actions they cite. Emerson Brooking, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, told me that, for what it’s worth, the group’s “high-handed and ambitious” language reminds him of the early declarations made by the diffuse hacker collective Anonymous.

Whoever is behind Jane’s Revenge, the group has become a prominent bogeyman on social media. (I reached out to the communiqués’ author or authors via email but did not receive a response.) Erin Gallagher, a research assistant at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center, started following the online conversation in June, after the Jane’s Revenge blog promised to unleash a nationwide “Night of Rage” whenever the Dobbs decision was handed down. Gallagher found major nodes of activity at the Twitter accounts of Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri (who later proposed legislation to punish members of “militant leftist groups like Jane’s Revenge” for vandalizing pro-life centers) and the right-wing journalist Andy Ngo (who attributed incidents to Jane’s Revenge in a long Twitter thread). In other words, Hawley and Ngo are among the figures driving the most discussion of the group. “I think it’s helpful to see whose voices are dominating a particular conversation on Twitter, especially when elected officials are prominent in the discussion,” Gallagher told me recently. “Content about their ideological enemies doing evil things likely performs very well.”

News articles about the threat of Jane’s Revenge have also clustered at conservative sources. Gallagher noted that many of these cite a list of more than 100 “attacks on churches, pro-life organizations, property, and people since the Dobbs Leak” created by the Family Research Council, an evangelical think tank. That includes specific incidents of arson for which Jane’s Revenge has claimed credit in its blog posts, but also many other property crimes, such as smashed windows and pro-abortion-rights graffiti. One report on the list describes a fire at a Catholic bookstore that has not been ruled an arson, much less a politically charged attack. Eleven other instances of reported vandalism or suspected arson on the list have no obvious ties to Jane’s Revenge or the Dobbs decision. Three involve broken statues at Catholic churches, for example, and nothing more. A pastor in Arizona simply guessed that “pro-abortionists” and “the wrath of ‘Jane’s Revenge’-type vandalism” must have been responsible for another one—a rock thrown through his church’s front window.

*snip*

[BlueGreenLady]

1. I'm wondering if this is a false flag group

funded by Christo-fascist right wingers?

[Nevilledog]

2. It would certainly fit their modus operandi, just like with the George Floyd protests

[Hugh_Lebowski]

5. Not even ... I know a whole bunch of JRev's ...

It's real, for realsies.

[SergeStorms]

3. Another "Antifa"?

A catch-all term used by republicans for propaganda use, that describes anyone, or group of people, opposed to their strong-armed, fascistic tendencies?

First time I've heard of "Jane's Revenge" to tell you the truth.

[sop]

4. DeSantis will pass the Anti-Janes's Revenge Act in short order.